Oculi Novi

Of Rio de Janeiro, seen through the eyes of the Naughty

2008-05-30T16:53:00.000-07:00

It was night when we arrived and I was tired.

Not so much as my drivers would have expected though.

Sure the jurney had been long, but they had given me so few possibilities to express my true power and speed as we ventured further and further south.

Finally on this last part north I showed my worth and I believe I vanquished any fear my owners had that my age was an indication of weakness and frailty.

It was somewhat awkward to enter the final destination of this monumental journey at night.

The deserted streets swung by as I rolled on towards the refreshing ocean breeze of the seafront and a much deserved rest.

We stopped briefly one, then again, this time by some man who spoke of me and then we were off once again between the wide and small roads of this awesome capital, up and down hills until I was finally given shelter and some of my load was relieved.

The next day we awoke early to go visit this beautiful city.

The sun was shining and the roads were packed with slim, yet round and beautiful looking Kombis, which smiled and winked as I sped by. I guess not many like me make it this far...

We drove to the most beautiful spots of the city, we overlooked the Ciudad Meravigliosa, climbed up to the Cristo Redentor, roamed the peaceful Lagoa and cuised down the cool palm-shaded length of Ipanema.

I could see why this was the final stop of the jurney, the Omega. You should always leave the best for last and visiting anything after Rio de Janeiro would steal it of its beauty and make it pale by comparison. So in the setting sun, I head back to the parking space to rest for the night.

As I sat there, quieter and lighter than I had in almost a year the reality of what was happening dawned on me.

I had won, I had made it. Against all ods, against the belief of many and few, I had cross two continents, two tropics, the equator, 17 countries, and tens of thousands of miles to get here.

I thought back at all those miles, all those days, those nights when my travel companions would take refuge in me, when I carried them accross mountains, vulcanoes, deserts, salt planes and rivers to golden shores where they could be embraced by the suttle mists of slumber within my caring walls.

I thought of the surf boards which for so long would irritatingly pull on my roof when speeding along, of the stickers which I would display with pride, as a testimonial of my enduring jurney and of the love for experience and adventure that I shared with those who travelled with me.

I thought of the music, all those notes, all those words, all those songs which accompanied us from the first mile to the last corner and which I would sing along to with the growling of my roucous voice.

If the music we listen to is the soundtrack to our lives, then what a life this has been, with a score fit to match the adventures we had.

And finally I thought of the people who joined me in this adventure, of how man and machine can join into a perfect symbiotic harmony, of how creatures so different can feel so close and one of the same.

As I fell asleep I wondered why people believe that we do not have souls, yet treat us like friends and companions. For if a soul is something everlasting, immortal and eternal, then is it anything more than the unforgettable memory of our existance?

Two weeks in Rio

2008-03-31T13:40:00.000-07:00

Many ask me why I wanted to move so far from home.

Many tell me that people are the same wherever you go.

Well the answer is no :)

Check out these two videos, both goals are for the 3-1, naturally I was always on the winning side !

Number 1 is a goal of Real Madrid. They were playing in a completely full Bernabeu stadium although against a team that they quite like: Espanyol. This was part of the First Division games.

Number 2 is a goal of Botafogo in Maracana, playing against Fluminense, in a stadium less than 1/8th full, for a qualifying match where both teams were already qualified and playing with reserves. Check it out :)

So there you go, that is exactly why I'm here right now :)

Thanks a mil to Txarlie and Roque for taking me to the stadium, I'm starting to develop a taste for it :)

A month on the run

2008-03-15T15:56:00.000-07:00

I'm finally back in Rio de Janeiro and I have been since last tuesday.I'm not sure why I'm writing this since nobody is going to read it, I guess it's the modern version of a diary.

It was a colourful last month, I was in Genova, London, Listowel, Dublin and Madrid, and you probably know this as I've pretty much met everyone I know except for my friends in Genova, who seem to be working hard at ignoring me since I broke up with Raffa.
But such is life, let bygones be bygones my accounting teacher used to say so I will follow his advice.

It was a wonderful time, Genova was great, got to see some friends, London was hilarious, specially the nights out with Matt and that infamous night, 2 days before Patty's exam when Gasta, Chapis and I hit the bars and ended up discussing sociology at Gasta's house at 5am.Thanks for the bed Gasta, I'll get ou back here in Rio :)

So on we get to Listowel, my grandmother unfortunately has been pretty ill lately, but she seems to be getting better, it's hard when you're 84 year young, but nobody ever accused her of being the kind of lass that gives up. Here the night life was also interesting, specially when Matte, Ned, Mike and Billy were down and ironically we spent the night with Sarah and two brothers who's names I know but cannot spell for the life of me, in a real old school pub where old men danced and sang, reminiscing a time when you had to milk your own cow and the queen was not welcome on the emerald isle.

So, one week spending quality time with my mum & grandmother later and off I went for the last few days of cold weather in Europe in the wonderful Madrid. So, to make the pain easiest here we go. Madrid is beautiful, the weather is wonderful, the women and my best friend all seem to live there.

So I crashed at Peter's house for what was supposed to be 3 night, spent my days walking around the city, meeting friends and ex girlfriends and being allover merry about everything.One night in particular stood out when we hit the bars with a Naughtie Hottie revamp, bringing together once again the guest list from Costa Rica, starring Cata, Maria and Txarlie. Joining the fun with international representation were Mariana, representing US and Spain, Bou representing Burgos, Sofia for Madrid, and Peter representing some Hungary, Finland and Colombia.

So with 50% of the UN covered we started with a concert and ended up with a blur. The night took its casualties and finally only Bou, Txarlie, Cata and I remained to hold the fort. I got home at 5am, went to sleep and ended up, one hour later, looking for the bathroom which brought me into the wrong room. So at 6 am as I was looking for the light switch I hear voices from just nearby asking who the hell was in their room... a quick apology and a pit-stop later and I was back in bed snoring happily.

Perl of the trip though was meeting Marta again. After 4 years since we broke up and without hearing her voice, we met up again and it was wonderful. It was quite an amazing experience, many people say that you should never meet up with your first love but this wasn't the case. Marta is the same happy bubbily person that I remembered, I am glad we waited so long to meet up again because I truly found a friend that knows me like few others!

So guys, thanks to all of you.Aazir, Maurizio, Ema, Elena, Gian, Massi, Paolona, Matteo, Carmen, Paolo and Sara for Genova.Matt, Ned, Chapis, Gasta, Iain and Angela for London.Mum, Gran, Mike, Billy, sarah, Unpronounceable brothers, James, John and Will for Dublin.Peter, Rocio, Txarlie, Cata, Maria, Mariana, Bou, Inigo, Palomita, Ana, Pablo and specially Marta for Madrid.
To see all of these names listed out here makes me wonder why I want to leave, but then I set out from the ancient continent of Europe and upon landing on the golden, jungle-coated shores of latin America my question is answered. I am happy here and now, perhaps I won't be for long, but here and now I am. I love the feeling this part of the world has, the joy in the Cariocas and I will try to make this my home.

And you are all invited.

It wasn't an easy trip, but I'll tell you about that next time round. Ciao!

Beija-Flor has won!! WOOOOO!!!

2008-02-06T19:24:00.000-08:00

So it was worth staying till 5am just to see them!

2007 champions and wonderful samba school Beija-Flor (Humming Bird), has done it again and claimed the second title in a row!

Champions 2nd time in a row, Beija-Flor!!!

Also, my second favourite, Grande Rio, came 3rd! Cool!!

I'll be dancing and singing their song all week!
Woooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Of Rio de Janeiro, A Cidade Maravilhosa and the Carneval

2008-02-06T06:53:00.000-08:00

CARNEVAL!!!!!

So I've arrived amongst the lush vegetation framed by montains and ocean that is the wonderful Rio de Janeiro and I couldn't have chosen a better time, because the Carneval has just started.
The fattest kid in town has been named king of the Carnival, and together with two godesses who are elected the Queen and Princess of the Carneval they have received the keys of the city and the party has begun.

Just to prove I was actually there :D

The city is vibrating to the sound of samba, but to more degrees than just meets the eyes. There is an electricity in the Air, an underground vibration that seems to go unobserved by many people who have travelled here just for the party.

I cannot expect to understand it but I have started to think of myself as an adopted child of this city. There is a pride in the voice of the cariocas when they talk about the Carnival.

On Sunday we decided to go search for a ticket for the monday night and whilst we were at it we met up with some friends of Achille's.Two of these had been judges of the Carnival at some stage, so they were experts in all that was Carneval.

So we roamed the streets outside the Sambodromo and scored every detail of each float whilst chewing on Grilled Cheese, Hot Dogs and sipping cokes and beers.It was a great night, at the end we found a Stage 1 ticket and I was psychologically ready to attack the Carneval the next day.

But first let me explain how the Carnival works, because I imagine many (as didi I), just think of it of a state-promoted attraction for tourists and alike. Boy is this off the mark!

The carnival is a competition amongst the schools of Samba, and its not for the faint hearted either. Each school prepares a theme and a song (samba naturally). Then the school creates the floats, the Fantasias (costumes), prepares the Batteria (the band) and sends out offers to famous and beautiful samba-loving women to act as Madrine (godmothers) to the various sections of the parade.

The parade of the Scuola de la Samba de los Trees Huggeros

The parade lasts 2 nights, each night 6 samba schools parade, they have 50 minutes from when the parade starts to when it ends for all of its people and floats to be on the Avenida, which is the road that runs through the Sambodromo, the immense concrete structure that was designed and built specifically for the Rio Carneval and which accomodates some 200,000+ people.

Each samba school has somewhere between 6 and 8 of the most spectacular floats in the world, with people dancing from top to bottom. Between the floats there are Alas (wings), which consist of people dressed with a particular costume and which all dance to the rythm of the Batteria; but don't think that this is the Moskow ballet, the paraders must move at a specific speed, to make sure that no time is wasted, but that the 50 minute time limit is not overtaken; but apart from that it's wonderfully original and democratic, with everyone dancing in their own style and fashion.

Not the kind of place you want to be if you've been substance abusing...

It sounds chaotic but it's not, its amazing, everyone has a favourite school, but everyone cheers for everyone. At the end of each school huge handfuls of flags of the following school are handed out and people wave with eagerness as if they were born and bred there.

Schools are massive things, the costs of the floats is recovered by selling the Fantasias to people that want to parade, and also by selling places on the floats. In fact it is a social symbol to be on a float as it is an indication of wealth. The only people that do not have to pay for the pleasure of parading are the women that during the year make the Fantasias, and they have a place of honour in the parade with some of the most beautiful and colorful costumes.

So, the Batteria plays on, half the floats and parade walk by, then the Batteria, with the Godmother, move out and start walking down the Avenida, then the other half of the parade follows suit and they parade until the last float closes the line and the Avenida is cleaned up in prepartion for the next school.

But is it all so simple? Of course not, the Floats, for majestic and wonderful such that they are are mechanical, built in pretty much a rush (they have about 6 months to make them and many can be seen getting a finishing touch just as they enter the Avenida), and well, they're made in Brasil... So the result is that they are the huge, friendly, living giants of parade and just like living creatures they move too quickly, too slowly, they stop and break down. All this made more interesting by the fact that the driver cannot actually see where he is going.

The first float of Grande Rio, and one of the most amazing!

Some of the floats are so massive that they cannot turn into the Sambodromo, so they are brought onto the Avenida in two pieces and then assembled on the fly. Others we saw broke down entering the and had to be pushed by hand, one other's steering broke and they had to perform a Austin Powers-like manouvre back and forth to get a 10 ton behemoth into the Avenida with limited steering. Whilst this is going on, the parade cannot wait so there is an increasing gap between the parade and the problematic float. This is one of the best moments of the parade because no float is quite as good as a problematic one.

Just like a problem child, everyone loves the float that breaks down

People cheer their hearts out when a damaged or delayed float finally starts moving and catches up with the parade, its a wonderful sight.

So what about the people watching? One could say that they are faithful to Samba and to the previous winners. They or should I say we, danced all night, from 9 pm when Padre Miguel entered the Avenida till 5 am when the last float from Beija-Flor streamed by.

Amazingly there is not a single person of the 200,000+ smoking joints or cigarrets, or drunk, people just drink a couple of cokes, a beer or two, a few bottles of water and then dance and dance and sing. Sing? Yeah, because the schools publish the songs and play them on the radio weeks before the show, moreover they print a booklet with the songs of all of the schools, so you can just read the straight off the page and sing with everyone else, even with a limited knowledge of the Portuguese :P Each song lasts about 3-4 minutes and loops for the entire hour or so of the school's parade.

She turned around as I was taking the pic, so she deserves a mention

By the end you have the sounds of samba in your head and you leave the Sambodromo exausted but thrilled, surrounded by people who head for omnibuses, trains and taxis, still singing the tunes of their favourite schools. So, which was the best school of the ones I saw?

Here's my list
Best Batteria: Padre Miguel

Best Women: Grande Rio
Best Theme: Villa Isabel
Best Song: Imperatriz
Best Broken Float: Villa Isabel
Best Float: 1st float of Grande Rio

Best Over All: Beija-Flor
Most Crowd Inspiring: Beija-Flor

Lets see who wins (Go Beija-Flor or Grande Rio!!)

Of Panama, Bocas del Toro, Panama City and final adventures

2008-02-06T06:52:00.000-08:00

It been a long time in the making and someone finally bitched at me to finish or better continue the blog, so why not!

a hole remains in Bocas del Toro, returning to the normality of life, of David, and the final twists and turns of this magnificent journey.

Lets start from Bocas del Toro, first of all its an island which isn't easy to reach, specially if you're a group of 4 guys and a girl with a van full of stuff you don't trust to leave behind and a tight wallet to boot.

We left the Naughty in a parking lot after much debate on whether we should pay as much as a car and whether we should leave the keys or not.

At the end we settled for leaving the keys and not paying more. A kind of modest sacrifice.

The boat ride is packed with foreigners and isn't gentle. Its akin to a bus ride in Honduras, except I imagine the suspension is even harder here. You bellow at full speed across some pretty amazing crystal blue ocean and weave in an out of small caribean islands. Finally you reach the main island of Bocas with its colourful main street and buzzing life.

We decided to start scouring the area for a place to stay and after being brought to some ridiculously expensive extorsion centres, we settled for a centrally located Hostel called Heike.

Now Heike is a great little place, run by friendly people who seem to be just more tourists passing by who decided to stay a little longer and eventually got a deal whereby they run the place and the boss turns a blind eye to their complete lack of dosh.

The first night we headed out to find some fun and ended up meeting a whole bunch of fun, drunk and interesting people in Heike s sister hotel, Mondo Taitu.

After piling up the drinking buddies we headed over to several other bars which all appear to have been built on the water and designed to help backpackers, balancedly challenged from alcohol, to fall into the glittering abyss...

Short of damage to our livers and much ado about nothing, the first night passed by with only mild casualties and a pretty bad hangover which was made all the worse by one of the worst burgers in history at a massive 4 dollars!

Moreover in the delirious drunkness of the previous night, we seemed to have scored the friendship of a Valentian of dubious sexuality, which apparently had also been invited to join us in the Naughty in our trip to Panama.

Natually when the alcohol wore off and the reality wore in, we found the error of our ways but couldn't for the life of us understand which one had committed the fatal mistake of extending the invitation to the connational of the magic 3.

Natxo seemed to believe I had invited him and seemed pissed by the fact that he was a "pesado", David seemed frustrated at the idea that someone was entering the van without consulting him, and Roque seemed to just get over his hangover.

Biancas as usual was bucholic and didn't seem to care particularly.

We decided to set out for one of the famous beaches, and, one quick taxi drive later, ended up in what is probably the lamest beach in the carribean.

Not only was the beach filthy and the water dirty, it also seemed to contain some kind of animal/chemical/algae that would sting your sking like shit whenever you went into the water.

Fortunately a bloated, round hide of a dead cow came to help and we engaged first in a footie match between us, and eventually attracted the attention of the local youth who promptly organised a footie match.

Now, the team was the 4 of us and Biancas, but due to centuries of inbreeding and basically being ignorant dicks, they decided that a woman was unworthy of their spectacular football field (we were on the beach) and the Biancas couldn't play.

Having been brought up by an Irish mother with whom my dad, my brother and I have a hard time keeping up, and with a dad that was travelling a lot for work, I felt that my female parent would probably kick my ass back to the early 80s if I let it slide.

So for the first time in 2 months I showed the best of my italian polemic side and told Biancas to ignore the generations of inbreeding talking to her and to try to break his ankle at the first chance.

Biancas tho was having none of it so she simply retired to sunbathe whilst I insulted the parents of the sexist fool, who were probably brother and sister anyway...

The game was like an unfair videogame. The first team of kids played and were small, weak and defeated. Then came the late teenagers, who were stronger, faster, better and defeated with more difficulty.

Finally came the beheamoths, those who do nothing all day but play footie on the beach and who are big, strong, fast and more than all, evil muthas...

There was much bone cracking, and eventually we retired to drink, read and play some volleyball.

We decided to head ack to the hostel and prepare for night number 2.

The night was a wierd one indeed. We ended up in a beautiful bar called Barco Undido, the sunken boat.

Its effectively built around the sunken wreck of a boat, and it is a true deathtrap for drunken tourists. That night David managed to convince a 34 year old mother-of two that the way to win my heart over was to grab my crotch repeatedly, and Natxo began his being stalked by a Chilean connational.

Of course it was a night of rhum, fun and blurred memories, which ended up with some looking for private rooms, and others trying to chat up a couple of locals at a burger stand at 5 in the morning in a desperate last attempt to get lucky.

The next day again, there was much toxicity to be gotten rid of, so we headed to the beach once again, and this time we got it right, we hit playa del drago and playa de la Estrella. Here we saw what the Carribean is really like.

Playa de la estrella is so called for its huge number of starfish lying just a few feet beneath the crystal clear water. If that weren't enough they slowly move between corals which resemble flowers and spunges.

The sight was simply too beautiful to ignore, so we rented some scuba diving equipment from a cute 17 year old (whom naturaly we tried to chat up) and hit the water.

Towards the end of the 2 hours I was diving quite far out when I see a kid jumping into the water and swimming as fast as he could towards me.

Naturally the first thing you think is that you're gonna get eaten by sharks, but not this time. As the kid gets closer, I notice that he is swimming towards some dolphins, swimming just a few meters away from where I was.

The water was murky so I never got to see the slender creatures dance in the absence of gravity, but I did get close enought to almost touch them on the surface and to hear them click and sing.

Sitting there, with the sound of the dolphins in my ears, the beauty of the beach in front of me and a clear sky above me I thought this trip would never end.

That night we once again hit the nightlife of Bocas del Toro together with some newly acquired friends. The party this time was across the bay on a bar built on poles above the water.

The night was amazing, with Natxo being pursuited by a Chilean stalker, Roque falling in love with a Brasilian/Portuguese and David and Biancas just being allover ingenious in they demonstration of alcohol consumption.

Half way through the night we moved from the bar to a ship in the harbour and as the ship sailed around in circles, we partied and danced till dawn.

It was ironic to discover that one of the girls we were hitting on was the mother of the 17 year old who has rented us the snorkelling kit, I guess we're starting to get old!

We once again returned to the quietness of our slumbering hostel-room companions to discover that a new girl had joined the room, and that the next day we were bound for an extra dose of Argentina & Carribean.

We decided to hit a miniscule island which is in reality a natural reserve. The island is tiny, it takes about 40 minutes to get there and you have to pay to get onto it.

It takes a full 20 minutes to walk around the coast and most of that is spent evoiding fallen trees. It is basically a pile of sand with trees in the middle. We landed there with a group of 5 argintinean girls and just relaxed under the scorching sun before wading back out to the boat and heading back.

The final night was amazing, whilst the others decided to embrace their Pimp and Gangsta egos I sailed down the well known road of dressing up as a nerd with undoubtable results. Roque subjectes me to the worst possible attack of fits of laughter when upon awaking I found him overlooking Bianca's bed with an open shirt, a disgustedly hungover expression on his face and the remains of a painted beard on his face and cross on his chest. My friend I will never forget that!

So was the adventure over? Almost, we finally left the island and made our way down the country and to Panama City. The trip was long tho and we decided to stop on the city of David. I was driving, the sun was setting and we were looking for the hostel when we arrived at a crossroads.

The sun was blindingly low so I never noticed it approaching. I slammed on the Naughtie's breaks and she stopped firmly but smoothly. The guys in the back hardly noticed. What they did notice was my face turn deadly pale.

You see, as we approached the crossroads a truck was coming in the other direction and it was towing a damaged car. When they saw us arriving the driver panicked and slammed on the break. The car being towed was tied to the truck using a steel pipe, and this made it so that the bonnet, which had only been laid on top of it, fell off with much rattle.

At this point the driver of the truck went to inspect the damage. I had stopped a few meters before our stop line, so in no way was I responsible, although the driver didn t seem to agree. I was wondering what to do (ok I was in total panic, my brain shut down and I was shouting at the others "what do I do? what do I do?"), and I decided to move from the middle of the road. i turned the corner and parked the Naughty. At this point, the driver started walking up to my window with the steel bar in his hands and my bubble just popped. I completely frieked out, at this stage David, Bianca, Natcho and Roque got out to talk to the guy whilst I sat there shaking in terror and smoking a fag.

What followed is one of only two things I regret missing of the trip (Mofletines, the other being Jerry's explanation on the beach on christmas night :P).

David, Natxo, Roque and Bianca started first apologising, then apparently confusing him with technical/legal babble. But this is just hearsay, I'll never know.

Eventually the guy decided not to use our van as a ramming tool, or us as doormats and drove off. I relinquished the wheel and sat in the back whilst we drove out of David as we deemed it would not be too safe to stay.

Over you say? Well no :P See with the Naughty the adventure never ends. We arrived in Panama CIty and decided that the day before I left we would go see the canal around 3-4pm when the ships were passing through. Before that we just chilled and I went to an internet cafe to copy some photos and burn a few cds. As I was there I checked my email and discovered that I could check in for my flight for Rio the following day. I had my passport handy so I decided to check in.

I go through all the process then I get a warning at the end saying "please remember to present a valid picture ID and yellow fever certificate when checking in"

Yellow what?... wtf?... oh crap...

I run out, down to a travel agency which confirms that I need a valid yellow fever cert to travel to Brasil, but no ado they say, it needs to be dated 10 days before travel to be valid... shiiiitttt!!!

I run back to the Hostel, I enter the room when David, Natxo and Roque are and speak the works that before me have come from the space. "Guys, we have a problem!" which translated to "I'm screwed".

So Natxo proposed we go to the airport and speak to someone on the local medical staff.

Three hours later we had picked up two canadian girls we met in Bocas, spoken to half the staff in the airport, discovered the prices for flights to Colombia, yet were still a certificate short.

We did however have the address of the National Vaccine Center for Panama. We decided that worrying was pointless so we met up with an old friend from Mexico I met in Maersk and his lovely wife, had some food, then Natxo, Marie and I hit a rock bar and had a few shots of whisky. In an ironic conclusion to the trip we ended up in this unknown bar, sitting beside one of the first guys we had me on the trip in Guatemala. I left them chatting and hit the sack, although the risk of not getting the plane the next day kept me from getting much sleep.

The next morning I woke up early and Natxo, Roque and I hit the Naughty after bidding Biancas and David goodbye.

We drove up and down the city looking for the bloody centre and finally found it after 2 hours at 9.30 am. My flight was at 11.30 which means we had to be at the airport at 10.30 and it was about 30-40 minutes away so we were running on a thin line.

I had reheased my lines well, shaven to give me more of a baby face. I entered the room of the doctor and started reciting my play

"They stole my bag" - true

"I didn't know I needed the certificate" - true

"You have to help me" - true

"If I miss this plane I'll have to wait 10 days and I'll miss a flight to paris, one to ireland and then one to italy" - true

"I had my cert in the bag" - not very true at all :P

She looked up at me with a stern face and said "I'll help you if you help me..."

An hour later I was eating a sandwitch in the airport with Natxo and Roque, my bag was on the plane, being weighed down by a yellow fever certificate, but my wallet was 40 dolalrs lighter.

I smiled at this and as we gobbled up the last few chips I realised that this trip was over, but another one was about to begin.

This is probably the only thing that kept me smiling as I bid Natxo and Roque farewell and I waved that white beauty of the Naughty rumble into the distance.

A new trip was about to begin in Rio de Janeiro, the city of cities, but I smiled at the knowledge that sometime, somewhere, the Naughty Adventure would continue...

Of Costa Rica, losing some, finding some and nearly killing some other

2008-02-02T14:39:00.000-08:00

The night after the rafting was amazing, Txarlie turned up completely unchanged after 4 years and it was a fantastic reunion.

We decided to celebrate the only night as 7 of us together and joined by Margot for the special event, and we opened the bottle of 23 year old Zacapa that I had received from the guys, Teresa and Christina on my birthday in lake Atitlan. The bottle traveled across of almost all of Central America and it was sure worth the wait, Zacapa is officially the best rhum on the planet!

We finish it off whilst chatting about music, new places and old memories, and head out to test the local music scene.

The night was fantastic, we danced to the sound of some lame raggaeton and then decided to extend our own party by driving the Naughty just out of the Hostel and drink rhum till dawn in company of Maria, Catalina, Margot, Txarlie, Natxo, Jose, David, Roque and of course the Naughty.

The entire gangs, left to right, Jose, Margot, David, Roque, Cata, Natxo, myself, Bianca and the Naughty

It was a hilarious night, we stayed up to bid Maria a sad farewell and after that, since sleep did not appear to be an option, we reache a time around 9 am when Txarlie, Natxo, Roque and I decided that we should go to a neighbouring town and find the founder of Calypso. This genious is a 95 year old man that has been living his entire life as a musician on the caribbean. We arrived at his house and he wasn't at home, so we were instructed by the neighbours that he may be having breakfast at a nearby restaurant.

Natxo with his tongue out, Txarlie and the bottle of Zacapa

We arrived there and thankfully he was nowhere to be found. Thankfully because the sight of 4 very unsober youngsters turning up at his breakfast would probably have been sufficient to finish off the musical talent.

The Caribbean by Mansanillo, paradise

We had some breakfast and headed back to bed. The two days ware spent in the company of Txarlie, naturally with a night of delirium and then we bid Txarlie farewell after a great footie match of Real Madrid and a dip into the Carribean.

You gotta love photoshop, right guys ;)

At this point we were joined by the latest member of the trip, Bianca, all the way from Switzerland. We had a last meal together, bid the wonderful Cata farewell with tears in our eyes, and head out to cross the border to Panama, on our last stretch.

The amazing border between Costa Rica and Panama

We drove across the world's funkiest border and arrived just before 6 which is closing time at the offices. The result was the fastest boarding crossing in the world.

We settled down in the first town and woke up early next morning for a little shopping spree, and a boat ride into the delirious abyss of Bocas del Toro.

Of Costa Rica, Pacuare River and a guardian Angel

2008-02-01T13:45:00.000-08:00

We traveled the country from the Pacific to the Carribean and arrived in Porto Viejo, we checked into the colourfull Rocking J's.

Here we met up once again with the lovely Margot and settled down into 3 lovely tents pitched on a wooden floor with a comphy matress on each.

The first three days went by with a series of parties, a lovely dinner offered by Catalina & Maria and we met up once again with the great Jose, his pimped car and funky sound system.
After a couple of nights spent listening to Reggaeton and going to the beach, we decided to celebrate the farewell to Maria by going rafting.

The Pacuare is considered the 5th best rafting river in the world. There are rapids of class 3 and 4 in the lower section and it is exactly those 35km that we decided to challenge.

The rafting experience was the most expensive entertainment we entained in the entire jurney but it was some of the best money ever spent.

We woke up early in the morning and drove with quite a headache to a bar where were picked up and brought to the Pacuare River.

Here we were introduced to out guide, Angel and told that there would be two boats, both of 6 people, one with us and the Angel, the other with 6 yankees and a guide that looked like he was out of Baywatch.We also had 2 support Kyaks in case something went wrong.

Team Angel

We started off slowly, learning how to row in syncrony and how to repond to the commands of the angel, we descended the first rapids and were shocked after a few bumpy rides to discover that all we had hit was a class 2 rapid.

We rafted ahead of the yanks over several rapids and finally we made it to the half way point where we had a rest and got some food under our teeth.

Half way through and all alive

The Pacuare is a dream, its is just completely virgin jungle. The rafting alternated extremely intense moments of rowing and trying to figure out commands over the roar of the river with other quieter moments where we could just let the current drag us and and admire the wonderful lush vegetation and animals, this is what really makes it one of the best rafting rivers on the planet.

This is a class 3...

We ended our lunch break and put our wet t-shirts, life jackets and helmets on, and prepared the second and more challenging part of the river.

Angel seemed quite happy and we were having the time of our life. We had been rafting for some 4 hours now and were coming up to the final part of the river and the final level 4 rapid when all hell broke loose.

Things getting serious

Perhaps we had gotten a little overconfident and had loosened the foothold on the boat, but i don't think anythink could avoided what happened. It didn't seem like we were going very fast and Angel noticed that the water was getting shallow, he tried to warn us, but as soon as he said "cuidado", we didn't even have the time to ask him regarding what and the raft came to a sudden dead stop with incredible force. Natxo, Maria and I were flung across the raft as we were sitting on the high side, Roque, who was on the low side but with a footstrap managed to hold on whilst David and Catalina ended up in the river. We tried to extend a paddle for them to catch on to, but it all happened too quickly. David heroically managed to grab hold of Catalina but she was pulled away by the current.

Angel somehow managed to grab David and pull him into the boat although in a slight state of shock.Natxo, Roque, Maria and I paddled with all our strength to get the boat to shore, at this stage Catalina had managed to grab hold of a rock in the middle of the river just 50 or so meters before the final and most vicious rapids began. We hit the shore and as Roque leaped from the boat with Angel to go help Cata. Angel told Cata to try descend a little more the river which she did, and he then threw a life line to her which she managed to grab on her second attempt.

We pulled Cata to shore and all reunited in a huge hug, thilled that nobody was hurt.

This may sound like a drammatic description but it was a few very tense minutes during which we feared for Cata and David's safety is they had actually ended up in the class 4 rapids.

We got back into the raft and passed the rapids with the help of the baywatch guide. One on the other side of the rapids, the other guide left us as the original crew of the boat.

Angel tried to relax Catalina, who was pretty under shock, by telling her that things like this happen all the time, but his movements betrayed his calm demeanor as he lit up a sigarette and smoked it with a very trembling hand.

We resumed the last part of the rafting this time with a lot more fear and respect for the river but as we were coming up to the final few bends, we run into the exact same situation whereby the raft stopp abruptly. This time the impact wasn't quite as intense and the first time and the fear and experience from the first time meant that only Mr Bristol had some stability issues and ended up with his ass well out of the boat. With some quick reactions and some help with Roque and myself he was back in the raft and finishing off the final rapids.

All in all it was the most exiting day in trip and one of the most exiting in my life. The trip was amazingly bonding, and perhaps it was part of the reason why it was so sad to see Maria and Catalina go, that and the fact that they are simply two amazing people and friends. Thanks girls, I really miss you!!

Thanks guys, you're the best!!

Once the rafting was over we head back to Rocking J's and met up with Txarlie, after 4 long years.

Of Costa Rica, slow creatures on the trees and slower on the ground

2008-02-01T06:15:00.001-08:00

We headed down to tickle out love for nature to the National Park of Manuel Antonio.

Being the cheap yet knowledge loving bastards that we are, we decided that to splash out on a full official guide (20-25$ each) was way too much, whilst going without would have been an insult to millions of years of darwinian evolution. So we managed to be convinced by some guy standing around in the square that he was an unofficial, yet very skilled guide.

Small little bats covering from the sunlight under a palm leaf. Notice the albino!

It should have been a hint the fact that he had a book with postcards of the animals and their names written in the writing of a 3-year-old.

Modern day dinosaurs

He told us that the only problem was that because he did not have a telescope, he would be unable to see the animals up close, but that we would see plenty anyway.

We arrived at the park and another hint was given by the fact that the guy let slip that his cousin was in fact an official guide, obviously the gene pool had favoured his relative. Moreover he was unaware of an increase in price that had occurred 2 weeks earlier, so he could hardly have been a very popular choice amongst the tourists scouring the land for an illuminator.

I know its just a grasshopper, but it was pretty huge

The park was awesome, but no thanks to the guide. He was completely and utterly useless. In fact he was so useless he was annoying and I tried to seperate myself from him as much as possible. The only thing he could recognise was the strangulator tree and that purely because it couldn't get up and walk away from him.

This was a recurrent scene:

He would walking in a straight line noticing nothing.

When he saw a group of people with a proper guide looking at something he'd run up to them and asking them with a soft voice

lame guide - "what are you looking at?"
tourist with proper guide - "a monkey!"

and he would turn to us with great voice and shout

lame guide - "over here guys, I ve found a monkey!"
us - "where?"
lame guide - "over there... somewhere..."

Anyway, whilst he was showing us a grasshopper, Maria and I turned around only to discover one of the rarest sights in the park, a 3 nailed sloth, already extremely rare , had made its once-in-a-week descent from its tree to take a dump and was moving slowly just 1 meter from us.

One of the rarest sights in my life

It was quite an exciting moment to be honest, it's the natural park's equivalent of winning the lottery!

Apart from that we saw Lizards, Iguanas, Frogs, Gold-web Spiders (much to the arachnophobic joy of Natxo), Sleeping Bats, Lobsters, and Badgers disrespecting Yankee tourists.

Scream Natxo, scream!!!

We packed up and eaded out to the final part of our jurney with Cata and Maria, and also one of the best few days in the trip: Puerto Viejo, Rocking J's, Rafting & Txarlie!

Of Costa Rica, walking, talking and eating raw fish

2008-01-31T05:13:00.000-08:00

I found myself at 7.30 am getting to know the wonderful Catalina in the garden of Txarlie’s office/house. The sun was out and she was working on her winter tan while chatting away. The others awoke from their alcohol induced slumber several hours later and we worked hard at a post-party breakfast. After some singsongs, and a breakfast of clams and mussels imported by our missionary to Santiago del Chile, we packed the Naughty and turned up the music.

Breakfast on grass, Manet - 1863

We left San Jose and set out to Malpais, by driving across to catch a ferry in Puntarenas.

The trip was really fantastic, we played backgammon and palas whilst waiting for the ferry. We then sailed across the straight whilst watching the sun set against a beautiful landscape.

After about an hour we arrive to the other side of the bay, drove for about 45 minutes and arrived in Malpais. Here we settled down for the night in a hostel where we paid 40 dollars for a 4 bed room and had to listen to the bitchy landlady complain all night about the fact that 2 of us were sleeping in the van. We ate a late pizza and toasted for the second time to Maria’s 27th birthday since Roque admitted not remembering the we had celebrated her birthday the night before.

We hit the sack and headed out the next day to some waterfalls next to Malpais. It was a sight for sore eyes and an interesting and cheap way to shower salt water off.
On the way back to the Naughty from the waterfalls we found that it was feeding time at the zoo as the caretaker of the waterfall was feeding a dozen white faced monkeys.

The waterfall, nature's shower for the homeless

We headed out to an adjacent beach about 4 km from Malpais and we relaxed for the rest of the day, cooking, drinking and then drinking some more.

Me exposing my scultured body, Natxo as usual with his tongue out and Maria just looking...well... quite good actually...

As the sun set at 6 we were well on the way and by 10pm the bbq was over as were the bottles of rhum so as some of us fell asleep others dug into the beer.

I awoke in an extremely humid 6 person tent to discover that Maria and Natxo had joined me and Roque had opted to sleep across Catalina in the 2 man tent with David retiring to the sanctity of the steel walls of the Naughty.
It was quite an awkward feeling to discover traces of birds around the tent and to realize that it could easily have been the howling monkeys with a bad attitude that were singing us to sleep in the nearby trees the night before.

Roque was cleaning up so I helped him out and then we sat down to watch sunrise. Once we realized that the sun had risen several hours earlier and we were actually still quite drunk and staring at a cloudy sky.

We set out for breakfast and were joined by Natxo, who failed to understand that the likelihood of finding food next to an isolated beach are little to none. He therefore started walking down the beach barefooted.

Mmm... sun setting and still standing... gotta work on that!

Once the beach was finished and no food was found, we started walking down the gravel road, and decided that since we had 2 sets of sandals and Natxo has flat feet, we would share the pain by each walking with one of Roque’s sandals whilst being barefooted on the other, and the third used my super comfy Nike’s!

After a terribly long time we arrived in town, we settled down for some terrible breakfast and showered again in the waterfall. We found on the beach another set of sandals much to Natxos joy and met the girls half way back to the Naughty.

We left the beach of perdition and headed out to Santa Teresa.

After a couple of rivers and some very vicious roads, we arrived on a strip of dust with a couple of buildings and checked into a small house with 6 beds.

Here we met up with Dani, Elena and the lovely aussie Margot. We spent a couple of days surfing, messing around on the beach, and watching some great football in the local bar.

Before arriving Cata declared that she was more interested in the local produce than in surfing and her wish was made true by a local harmless stalker who kept inviting himself to anything we did.

The highlight of the stay was the sushi adventure. Elena turned out to be an excellent cook and quite obsessed with sushi. Naturally in us she found great apostles for her credo.

We spent Sunday evening from 7 to 8 in the dock waiting for the fishing boat to arrive and then we bought 2kgs of the finest tuna money can buy.

Back at the flat we make some 150 pieces of sushi and ate until the word sushi was associated with digestives systems exploding.

Better and more addictive than any drug, thanks Elena!!!

The next morning the adventure finished and we set out to the Miguel Antonio National Park, some dodgy guides and finally Porto Viejo.

Of Costa Rica, where few became many

2008-01-28T08:27:00.000-08:00

Ok, so I m in Panama, still trying to catch up with all that I haven't written and that I really should have :P

I'm off tomorrow but my trip is far from over. Although I'll be leaving the Three Musketeers and the Naughty, the adventure is just beginning. I'm heading to Rio de Janeiro for the Carnival and there's a good chance that I will stay there to live when it's over. But more about that when I know more about it.

So, where were we? We left Nicaragua and headed to Playa Tamarindo in Costa Rica. here we met up with the unlikely brothers Steven and Max, surfer dudes that were parked beside us on the beach. Max is short, pale and blondish, Steven is tall, black and build like a brickhouse, but aparently they share a father...

The unlikely, yet extremely funny, brothers

So we settled down for another couple of days of surf waiting for Natxo, Maria and Cata to arrive.

This lead to a quiet night out on the drink which led to sushi cooked by the wonderful and extremely silent Gregory. We sat down to enjoy the music of a completely insane musician called Jose which had a laugh that would made Eddie Murphy fade into the wilderness.

The night kind of evolved from a quiet night of music to a smallmobile party by the van, where we enjoyed the taste of the lasting Nicaragua's finest rhum, Flor de Cana. The night quickly degenerated into what proved to be one of the most fun and distructive nights of the trip. We slept in the Naughty and imagine our suprise when we awoke to find blood all over the van.

Turns out it was just a minor scratch on the hand but moving around and leaning of various surfaces had turned it into a scene from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

So off we went, several bottles of water later we hit the road and headed to Punta Islita, a tiny and completely unknown location on the Nicoya Peninsula where rich Yankees go to escape from the all seeing eye.

"Hello Sir, have you seen a tall Pakistani guy that looks like Bin Laden but speaks in English?"

Roque had a friend that was staying there in a rented villa and we fancied ourselves in a huge bed being massaged by beautiful women. Unfortunately it didn't quite turn out that way, in fact we spend two days driving around and couldn't find him anywhere.

2 Howling Monkeys and one on the tree

The alpha male obviously felt threatened by my manliness...Hear him roar!

On the plusside we did get to see a tree full of very pissed off Howler Monkeys and a beach covered with lobsters, which of couse we quite fancied in a pot with spaghetti, but who were way to quick for our reflexes slowed by age and the harsh life of the road.

For rent: beachside compact mobile room with great sea view. price: free

The Naughty in sleeping mode on the beach of Punta Islita

So we headed out of Punta Islita and headed towards San Jose, where Txarlie had kindly offered his humble house as a checkpoint for our weary souls.

The Naughty learns to swim! Its now a car, a hotel, a nightclub and a boat

1 hour from Punta Islita we got an sms from Roque's friend telling us how to find him... doh...

We arrived in San Jose and the van regained its ancient mojo when the number of member reelevated from 3 to a much more chaos inducing 6 with the arrival within a few minutes of Natxo and Maria. Naturally by the time Maria had stepped out of the taxi we were through our second bottle of celebratory wine! Later that night we went to pick up Catalina at the airport and by the time she joined the ranks the atmosphere was hot and begging for a party!

We scoured the city looking for Txarlie's secretary's house as the keys she had previously given us weren't working and had called her, very suspiciously to ask her where she lived :P

After finding her in a dark corner of San Jose and her realizing that we weren't out to assault her, we stopped off at a supermarket, and let Natxo's exuberance loose in the lanes. What resulted was a meal and a quantity of alcohol fit for the finest Sorority initiation, I hit the kitchen and cooked up some fine spaghetti al salmone and then we danced like fools all night in the sittingroom of Txarlie's house whilst celebrating Maria's turning 27!

This may seem wierd, but the simple idea of having walls, enough beds for all and the prospect of a hot shower the next morning made us forget about hitting the town.

So next morning we hit the road again and head back to the Nicoya peninsula for another few days of beach and an interesting walk to town!

Of Nicaragua, New Year's and the IQ of surfers

2008-01-24T10:38:00.000-08:00

It comes as no great suprise to me that the return of Natxo marked the end in what would have been semi-regular updating of the blog.

I left off in the days following xmas and the whole trauma of sexual harassment.

We crossed over to Nicaragua and spend a night in Leon and a few days of delirium in the beautiful Granada where we met some really funky people, including a couple of great colombian engineers (finally some brains ;)), called Santiago & Daniel and the great Bernardo.

The friendly locals welcome us to Nicaragua

Bernardo is a 70 something year old spanish man that fleed Spain during the dictatorship and has spent most of his life sailing around the world from which he has gained a knowledge of... well, pretty much everything. He lives in a small room in a Hostel in Granada and has been there for the last 3 years. His hobby is to paint horseshoes with the flags of countries, which he does at the amazing rate of 1 a day. This is somewhat suprising since from the amount of paintdrop that end up on his belly you'd guess he was ravishing a canvass with incredible intensity and speed.

Bernardo has been elevated to the man of the trip so far, due to his prodigous memory. There is not one place he has not been to or does not know about. Upon telling him that I was from Genova he started telling about a bar in Via Pre that was owned by a Mr.Arturo in 1976 who's son called Stefano was probably now running it, all this concluded with his signature word "amigo!".

All you had to do was name something, like a tiny town in chile and this is what he would say:

"In 1687 that town was founded by a Sr.Marquez Velasquez del Rio Gomez who sailed from Sevilla in 1686 leaving behind a wife called Sr.a Filippa Castillo Suarez, a daughter called Nadia and a dog called Roberto. This man was actually looking for land for his cocoa plantation and discovered instead that the soil, due to its high content in phosphorous, was perfectly suited for the cultivation of the rare Turkish springroot, which we grew there and sold for 2 doblons per pount until he returned to Spain a rich man and was killed in Vico del Colon in Murcia by Don Sergio Gimenez de Gotardo who was sleeping with his wife, amigo!"

After saying all that in one breath, he'd get up, walk out the door, and come back to sit down 5 minutes later after ensuring that nothing was happening in the roads outside.

He found a place in our hearts by naming Roque "il Basko", David "il Moro" and myself "Genoves".

Two of Colombia's finest on he right and The Great Bernardo on the left

We spent the following days partying in the town, with a highlight on the second night when we picked up some random friends in a bar and decided to hit a late night bar on the beach. Once we discovered that the price was fixed no matter how many people we managed to fit 9 people into a normal 5 person taxi, including a very large man from el Salvador, David, a 1.80m+ Dutch guy, Roque, also 1.80+ and myself at 1.97. We hit the bar and watched the sun come up over the lake while happily chatting and laughing till 8am.

We headed out the next day for a devastating New Year's followed by some incredibly relaxing days along the south coast and San Juan del Sur. The town itself is a little packed with tourists but there are some of the most amazing beaches I have ever seen, just a few miles north and south, particularly Playa de la Flor and Playa del Coco.

Playa del Coco, what a sight!

We decided to spend New Year´s in the town and it was a blast. We ended up staying in the house of the most boring man in the planet, sleeping on a double bed which seemed to be made out of steel and hatred.

In good European tradition David, Roque, The Naughty and I headed out to San Juan to plan and enjoy the end of year meal. We parked the Naughty on the side of the road in the middle of the town, turned up the funky music and decide that there is no better end of year meal than one that leaves more time for drinking and the rhum started flowing.

We met up with an Argentinian girl and her boyfriend. The girl is the sister of a guy that was living in with Natcho in Genevra, and we ignored the official coundown as we decided that the coming of the new year should be officially based on the time given by the Naughty´s clock.

Looking smashing for the ladies on new year's night, also featuring the lovely Naughty + Violetta & boyfriend

As midnight struck we all toasted and shared some of the rhum around by getting the parking official drunk, a guy that was just walking by and by spraying the front of the Naughty with a water gun specially filled for the occasion with Nicaragua´s finest rhum.

The rest of the evening was an inebriated laugh of music on the beach which lead to very sleepy faces the next day and a horrible hangover for what would be an even more horrible trip.

We decided to go to playa Madeira, a surfer´s paradise, but the road to get there was a 10 mile strech of hidious stones and potholes that would put the moon´s craters to shame.

Fine sewing in Playa Madeira

We finally arrived however, we parked the van facing the ocean, pulled up the roof and settled down for 4 days of surfing, eating with a fire on the beach and simply not showering.

When the sun sets at 5:30 on an isolated beach there s not much to do, and after three days of cooking pasta on a fire in sea water, I was tired of cooking and wanted to be served, so we head down along the beach looking for some kind of hostel that allegedly was there and served food and drinks.

When we arrived we found that owner to be the biggest rascist-prick in the world, and the hostel to be in complete darkness and packed with surfer dudes that were wondering how to extend a bbq made for 8 people to 15. Now surfer dudes are wierd creates, almost completely unable to talk and walk fully erect in their natural condition, when their environment becomes polluted by alcohol, their vocabulary shrinks from the full 50 words to a simple "dude", "yeah!" "rocks" and "surf". They also tend to venerate the biggest idiot of the bunch, probably because he's sense of balance has developed sufficiently to allow him to stand up on a moving plank of wood...

Anyway the Dicklord (aka the owner) told us that he was pissed and couldn t be bothered cooking so if we wanted food we d have to make it, oh and we´d have to pay full price.

We thought of leaving initially, but then we realised that we could simply cook, eat and walk out afterwards considering how drunk the idiot was. So I ended up cooking again, only this time, when the guys saw that I was making pasta, everyone wanted some, so I ended up making pasta for 15 people, and this is how you do it:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Pasta a la Paul for 15 drunk stupid surfers

You will need:

1.4 Kgs of pasta

300 gr bacon

2 onions

1 garlic

4 tomatos

15 drunken stupid surfers

Cook as follows:

Chop & fry the bacon
Chop and fry the garlic and onion

Add the bacon to the onions and let it cook with the chopped tomatoes for a while until you have a decent sauce. Add pepper (non was available), any kind of seasoning and salt.

Once the sauce is ready let it cool and HIDE 1/3 of the sauce.

Cook the pasta in a pot the size of a house which takes 45 minutes to boil.

Serve as follows:

Take the pasta, mix it in with 2/3 of the sauce and tell the drunk sufers that there weren´t enough ingredients to feed everyone and tha pasta is a little tasteless.

Pinch some bbq before they get to it, fill your plate with pasta and add the hidden sauce, without being seen by the surfers, repeat for your friends.

Listen to the owner thank you and tell you that you eat for free and that the pasta tastes great, pay for 2 people, stick 3 bottles of beer in you pockets, leave the den of perdition.

Of Honduras, la Ensenada and more crazynes

2008-01-08T06:19:00.000-08:00

There is a place in the wold where people drive terribly, that place is called Honduras.

Here is the proof:

Driving suited to the greatness of Honduras

It is also gifted with Tegucigalpa, an unpronounceable name which has won a special place in our hearts as the ugliest city on the planet!

I've already been through this, but let me pick up on the latest news.

We decided to test the extent of the hidious city and we hit the Dunkan Maya to watch some local footie and test the local brew.

The 3 greatest and 3 newest supporters of Municipal

So where did we decide to spend Christmas if not Honduras!

We bit the departing Natxo farewell (boy do we miss you!!), as he was going to Santiago del Chile to spent xmas with his family, and off we went to the north of the country with a rattling Naughtie Hottie, searching for a little corner of Carribean paradise to chill for a few days on white sand beaches.

Adios Ignacio, we'll miss you a lot and your hair a lot more!

Being the Naughties the adventuress that she is, she appeared bored by the unchallenging roads that the main route to Tela was presenting us, so she lead us on to the way more uneccessible Ensenada.

Ensenada is a road really, calling it a town is a bit much, there are 2 hotels, 5 shacks that sell water in bags and 3 or 4 huts along the beach that roast fish and sell it to the very rare foreigner and pretty scarse local tourists that makes it to a beach which is lost in space and time.

We decided to Splurge as the Lonely would call it and checked into a majestic hotel with 2 rooms which contained 2 double beds and were spotless. The best 12 dollars ever spent.

We then got to know the extremely effeminate Jerry or Gary, we never figured it out, and from there there things started to get extremely surreal.

First of all a brief description: Jerry of Gary is 43, tall, thin, black, 3 children and is completely and utterly gay, which he displays with a very un-heterosexual mustache and by a flamboyant behavior.

So, we left the hotel and went to the went to the beach and sat in the shade waiting for the food to arrive.

So cute you can eat them, but on the menu there was only fish

Gary appear and asks us if the van parked down the road is ours, yep we say and he starts telling us that leaving it there is not a good idea as someone might steal all out beloved belongings. We inform him that we no longer have any beloved belongings after Mexico and Guatemala, but he suggests that we move the van anyway into the parking of the Hotel, which his uncle owns.

So we got to the Van and a tire was flat.
What followed cannot really be described with words, but taking a photo of it would have been considered impolite. I´ll make a long story short:
* The spare wheel is released with a spanner we didn´t have
* The wheel nuts are released with a spanner which is millimetric in a country of inches, which is different from the above one, and which of course we didn´t have...

So Gary started stopping every single car driving by, which of course were all of his family members.
After 15 minutes there were 13 people trying to get the wheel off our van, of which several arguing about which was the best method and several about who owned which land.

Eventually, when so many cars had stopped that people could no longer drive through the town, the town members were racing to see who had the best spanner set that could solve the problem. Finally a mechanic arrived to the rescue with a single tyre iron and changed the wheel in 3 minutes flat.

Changing the tyre took the best part of an hour, and by the time we returned to David and Victoria they were pretty sure we had been killed.

The day continued pretty uneventfully on the beach playing Petanca or how do you spell it, and finally Roque and I decided to head out in search of some Xmas eve fun.

Not all is rotten in Denmark...

What we found was a ridiculously drunk Jerry who's sex drive and flamboyancy had been exulted to the extreme!

We needed to get money to pay for the hotel and for some evening fun, so Roque, Gary and I drove to Tela (the town 3km and 20 minutes away), on the way back we stopped off at a Garifuna variation of a Voodoo ritual where the people dance in memory of the dead and some say the dead dance with them. It was a musically wonderful, but for some reason I just couldn´t bring myself to enter the room where the ritual was in act...

We continued along the deserted and dark dust road and Jerry started telling us about where people were buried, how they´re spirits would jump on his bycicle when he was riding by and make it suddenly very heavy. Not the kind of stuff that would scare someone who loves horror stories, movies and books, but in a pitch black night, with no ligts and a small wooden cross lit up by the lights of a van, it does have some punch to it.

We sat down in a dark hut on the beach listening to him first describe his family and life choices, then his loves, and in what seemed like a descent into madness, eventually describe the surgery he received on his anus and finally listen to him offer sexual favors.

We kindly denied and tried to steer the conversation towards music in the area and the Garifuna way of celebrating Xmas eve. We then met some people who told us that David and Victoria had finally emerged from their cove and had gone for a walk with Karim, one of the spiritual, musical and financial leaders of the community.

So we decided to follow their trail, waling to Triunfo a town 5km away.
The walk was amazing, in the jungle, unlit and untouched except for the light of the full moon shining down past an infinity of stars. Unfortunately the discussion we had had with Gary had opened his flood valves and he was more than a little insistent about the fact that unless you´re been with a black gay man, you can t be sure that you´re not going to like it. In particular he seemed to take a real liking to tall white guys and at every corner, he wanted to please me sexually.

Roque was enjoying in quiet silence the fact that he was not the victim of such terrorism and did everything in his power not to draw attention to himself, although it became quite difficult when he went for a pee and Gary went running towards him offering to get down on his knees.

The walk turned out to be harmless and our heterosexuality made it out untarnished, when we finally arrived in Triunfo, met with David, Victoria and Karim and spent the night dancing Punta in a shack with 6 other people amongst which an amazonian black girl and the wife of the hut's owner who didn´t seem to mind young tourists dancing the night away with his wife.

We returned home listening to Karim talk about the Garifuna rhythms and it was a wonderful experience all together. The next day we just relaxed for Christmas and left early the morning of the 26th to head back to Tegucigalpa.

Naturally the shit Honduras roads wanted to bid us their personal farewell, just 150 kms after we had repaired our spare tyre, they punctured another hole in the Naughty's pained tyres and we were once again forced to stop at a Llantero.

The Honduras death-tracks claim another rubber victim

We bid Victoria farewell at the airport and head east towards our next stop: Nicaragua, new year´s and our first surfing experiences!

We´re going to have to write you a little esquelita ...

2008-01-08T06:00:00.000-08:00

(Translated from Carretera y Manta)
Verbatim transcript of our dialogue with a police man on the roads of Honduras, on Christmas Eve:

(Imagine the voice of Mr. Agent as that of Hugo Chavez and his face as that of an intoxicated Chavez)

-- Good morning, Mr Agent, and Merry Christmas, by the Grace of God
-- Good morning, gentlemen. I please provide your driver's license and permit for the vehicle
-- Here are, sir Agent, by the grace of God we have all the documentation in order
-- You do not have a front number plate
-- No sir, this is a motor vehicle of Californian origin, and therefore has only a number plate on the back
-- Agreed. Do you have the relevant safety triangles?
-- Well, look, Mr Agent, we do not have the aforementioned triangles
-- You are aware that this is a serious violation, eh?
-- Very serious, Mr Agent?
-- Yeeeesssss! Very serious ... I am going to have to write a little esquelita (*)...
-- You see you, Mr. Agent, all our stuff was stolen in El Salvador, and we had the triangle in our bags when it got stolen...

(Pause dramatic, slow and intense observation of each of our stunned faces)

-- Ah, yes? And why didn´t you buy a new one?
-- You see you, Mr.Agent ... they stole our passports, credit cards, telephones, and the last thing on our mind was to buy triangles
-- Aaay ... Well, I fear that the infringement is going to cost around 1500 lempiras ... (75$)
-- Look, we can show that we have a police report of the theft
-- But this claim is from Mexico, not El Salvador!
-- Yes, sir, in the city of El Salvador, Mexico ... (doesn´t exist...)
-- And where are you all from ?
-- Two Spaniards, an Italian and an American, Mr Agent, by the grace of God

(Pause dramatic, slow and intense observation of each of our stunned faces)

-- Aha ... I do not know if you have seen ... but while we spoke, I have been watching you... I work for the Honduran intelligence, and I was surprised to see that you are so diverse and colorful
-- Yes, sir, we are, we are friends from the university, each from a different country

(Pause dramatic, slow and intense observation of each of our stunned faces)

-- Fancy that on a day such as today, I met a group of four Europeans also ...
-- A day such as today Mr Agent?
-- Yes, sir, one day 24 December a year ago. They were a Norwegian, a Chinese and an Australian. And I told them that I have a collection of foreign currencies, that I am compiling for my daughters when they are older. The save them in a box ... Maybe you have some foreign money you could give me to add to my collection...
-- Mr agent, we do not have coins because they stole all our euros, as you can read in the police report...

(Pause dramatic, slow and intense observation of each of our stunned faces)

-- Ah, well ... Well, you Spanish right? Well I have a group of friends that are Spanish engineers who were building a dam in Choluteca, and I remember that they were very good people, and they love the drink! They would call me so that we would go out and drink occasionally, very good people ...

(Pause dramatic, slow and intense observation of each of our stunned faces)

-- Aaaah, Mr Agent, I bet you would also like to drink, eh?
-- Suuuuuurrre, friends ... always appreciates a little liquor in the body, no? And today, being Christmas Eve, we must celebrate!
-- Well, we also intend to celebrate tonight, God willing, Mr Agent, and by shear coincidence carry two bottles of French champagne in the refrigerator of our vehicle ... maybe you would like if we gave one to you as a gift?
-- Well suuuurrreee! A bottle for tonight would be very good!

(We hand over a bottle of shit champagne wrapped in newspaper, under the watchful eye of and intelligence agent with slight alcoholic deviations)

-- Mr Agent, we promise we´ll buy a triangle at the first petrol station, and with this bottle we can forget the fine, right?
-- Yes, of course, my friends, you can now continue your journey, but with caution, eh?
-- Yes Mr Agent, with caution and always accompanied by the grace of God, and specially on a day like today that Jesus Christ is reborn in the hearts of every one of us!

(Mr Integrity taps with his fingers three times on the bonnet of the van)

-- Off you go and Merry Christmas!

* esquelita = fine

Coming soon: Christmas in Honduras: Tyres, Cops & Gay Sex

2007-12-26T19:16:00.000-08:00

Tegucicalpa, don't even try to pronounce it, took me 3 days...

2007-12-26T18:42:00.000-08:00

FIRST OF ALL MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!

This year I ve been really shit, no cards, no emails, no text messages, nothing...
I guess it was spending Xmas on the Carribean that made me lazy, but if you're in a place that makes hot water by wrapping an electri wire around a shower head, then you'll probably appreciate that internet connections are somewhat far fetched...

So you're probably wondering about the title, well, it will probably take me a long time to finish writing this, but lets start from the start.

We arrived In Tegucicalpa after a relatively long trip from the wonderful El Salvador and found out right away that people here aren't as nice as the Salvadoreans, nor are the women, but here fortunately they aren't all married at 17 so the esthetic factor kinda falls into second place when it comes to not being shot by angry husbands.

Tegucicalps is somewhere in between Guatemala City and San Salvador, its not as horrific as Guate but not as clean and nice as San Salvador, so we settled into a fair and cheapish hotel and hit the roads searching for some entertainment.

We came across the Dunkan Maya, where if you buy a bucket of 5 beers you get some chicken wings, great! No need to eat! Turns out that the final of the local footie cup was on and we joined up with a table of funky Managua fans and became avid fans of the team that was randomly selected for us. Managua suffered a goal 48 seconds into the game and that was it, but it still made for a fun afternoon, specially considering that being 3 finance graduates and an engineer, we just cound's figure out the maths of having 5 beers in a bucket and 4 people.
The simple solution was to get a bucket each, but those went dry before the end of tha match and we ended up ruining the whole mathematical perfection by ordering a 5th bucket.

Many chicken wings later we got up with wabbling legs and went back to the hotel to get changed and hit the night clubs. Turns out that Hondurean women love tall white guys which worked out for me just fine, although they refuse to either talk or look at you when dancing which unfortunately suppressed hope for further evolution during the night.

Then the band started to play. Light went off and a single guital starts to play, Natxo yells "this is so Pink Floyd!!" with great expectations, of course he should have known better in latin america... he realised the error of his ways when two obviously gay charachters came on stage, somewhere of a cross between Ronaldo and a Leprechaun dressed like a very gay Ricky Martin.

The night ended with quite a few laughs, lies that we were reportes searching for new musical talent and a taxy back to the hotel after Natxo collected a few phone numbers of local girls, one of which had a boyfriend packing a gun sitting in front of her when Natxo got her number... guess some cultures are very different.

Up early next day, bought a No29 Suazo Inter T-Shirt (everyone here is an Inter fan as Suazo is a bit of a national hero) and decided to work off the hangover by drinking some beers whilst watching Real Madrid - Barcellona with two fanatics of Real Madrid (Roque's grandfather played for the team and his other grandfather was the president), luckyly our Barcelona representative (David) was asap, picking up a friend from the airport.

90 minutes later there were 5 smiling faces at the table, I had found out that Inter had beat bloody Milan 2-1 in the derby, Natxo and Roque has seen they team beat Barcellona in Barcellona 1-0 for the second time in 20 years, and David didn't care about the demise of his team, because he had been joined by an old sweetheart from the US named Victoria!

We decided to head north to the coast for a couple of days and Xmas, so we packed our bags into the Naughty Hottie, hugged Natxo fairwell as he has gone to Santiago del Chile for Xmas with his family for two weeks, and set in the afternoon sun.

100 Km from Tegucicalpa we stopped in a town called Seuatepeche to sleep as the Hondureans are absolutely insane and drinving at night is just insane.

We slept in a decent place with hairs of the previous clients in the beds and drove on to Tela the next morning, and this is where the adventure really begins!

Alive and WITH PHOTOS!!!

2007-12-23T18:08:00.001-08:00

Heya,
I GOT PHOTOS UP FOR THE LAST TWOO POSTS, WOOO!!!

I m still alive and heading to the north of Honduras to spend XMas on the Carribean!

http://dondelloranlosvalientes.blogspot.com/

Ciao!!

El Salvador, where to begin?

2007-12-18T15:53:00.001-08:00

Currently we're in El Salvador. Truth be told we almost didn't come.People told us that it was violent and dangerous. Couple that with a distinct lack of things to see and a fame for earthquakes and civil war and it wasn t on the top list of places we wanted to stay in. But how wrong we were.

I can't really play the guitar, but the ladies love it!

Since we hit the border from Guatemala the people were friendlier and the women hotter, which is not a neglectable point for 4 single guys, we stayed in a room just past the border in an unpronounceable town, where we ate, discussed football and started to retreat to our room around 9.30 pm when we were kidnapped by the landlady of the hostel and her 4 children.

To make a long story short we were chatting to them until 1 am. For quite some time she stressed how hygene-conscious she was and how she forced her staff to always wash their hands before they start cooking for the customers, she then proceeded to invite us to taste her excellent cousine by insisting that we dip our fingers (unwashed) into the roast that would be served the next day :S !

Off to bed then with sweet dreams of two of her daughters, but it was other female company that got us in the room. When we turned on the light, sinister shadows scurried on the walls, as they did from under the cuscion upon inspecting the bed. This was somewhat of a traumatic experience as we are all hardened westerners with little acclimatisation to sleeping with cockroaches, no matter how much we like to travel. Finally we wrapped up as tighly as possible, left the light on, sparked up a few insect repellers and fell asleep.

Not all creatures in the house looking like cockroaches ;) What's the legal age in El Salvador?

We were apparently not bothered by the nasties any more but we still suspect that some may have taken residence in the equatorial growth which resides on top of Natxo's scull but which is so dense it is impenetrable to man or machine.

So off we went the next day, having haistily packed and headed to Santa Anna. We got there around noon on a sunny day but were unimpressed by the town and the hostel we searched for was full. So, being the day just started and since murders don't come out for another 5 hours, we decided to continue to Sucitoto, which the guide describes as "similar to Antigua but without the tourists" and boy are they right.

Looks like an add for tanning creams...

Sucitoto is as close to a painting as you will ever get, the cobble streets, the silence, the colours of the flowers and the almost complete lack of cars and tourists make it seem frozen in time.

We hit the town!

The people are friendly and more honest than Guatemala.Personally I love it because barganing is considered rude so prices are fixed and you're not left with an after feeling that no matter how little you paid for it you've been screwed.

This morning we went to play a game of football at 9 am with some of the local guys, tomorrow we may replicate. We won 2 games and drew another 4 thanks to the skill of or two spanish forwards, our strong spanish female defence-centerfield-left winger and then a nebula of 3 more useless el salvadoreans and a tall pale goalpost which moved around the field puffing and panting.

The stress is killing...

Sucitoto is the most relaxing place I have been to in a long time, we came for an evening and we are now on our third day here.

Allegedly we will be leaving tomorrow, if it is true, it will be hard and I anticipate a few minutes of sad silence when we finally drive out of this lovely town.

Guatemala: Fire, Water and Brimestone

2007-12-18T14:50:00.000-08:00

It seems like months since I last wrote on the blog as so many things have happened...

First things first, I was robbed of pretty much everything :P
We arrived in Antigua and decided that we were smarter than most. We parked the van outside the hostel and went and somberly acknowledged the warning from the hostel that leaving a car on the road was dangerous.

So off we went, we met up with James and Phil again and went for a few drinks, agreeing that when we returned, if there were no other cars on the street, then we would move the Naughty Hottie to a parking lot.
Well, there were no other cars on the road when we returned but neither was there a window in the side of the van or my large bag with all of my clothes :P
I found out that my passport, camera, mp3, and mobile phone were all safely in my room as well as a couple of socks, undies and tshirts. I also saved my jeans, linen pants and bathstuff.

Not that you really care about that stuff, but the idea not losing the above made me quite happy and I started talling the others how lucky I had been.
Not being Irish optimists they found that someone who had lost all his clothes to be saying "que suerte" was somewhat entertaining and "que suerte tengo" joined my previous catch phase "que guapo" on the book of travvel quotes being kept by our local scribe, Sir. Bristol.

There is not much to tell on our excursions except that they were amazing.

Temple No.2 Tikal, made even more amazing by the morning mist

We went to see the Mayan ruins of Tikal under a mystical and haunting fog and paddled with kayaks across lake Atitlan from San Pedro to Santa Marta. But the most spectacular was surely climing to the top of the Acatenango vulcano and watched the lakes of fire rolling fireballs of rock just a few feet from us, then see the Volcano of Fire explode in a cloud of dust against the setting sun.

Sunset on Acatenango Vulcano, with the Vulcano del Fuego in the background

The crew of the HMS Naughty Hottie in a hot spot (in his absence Roque is replaced by a broom with a hat)

But no words can do this proper justice, nor can photos really, but you'll just have to wait until I have a faster internet connection so that I upload a taste of the beauty we say.

But that was by no means the end of the trip! We travveled down to lake Atitlan and stayed in San Pedro, a cute and cheap little town where we met up with Phil and James again, although unfortunately only briefly and celebrated my 27 years with several bottles of rhum, and some happy ciggies.

Lago Atitlan, go there, see it!

After much departure from the moral road, those whom I claim as my friends decided to wrap my eyes in Teresa's finest pijamas and expose me to the lost-childhood entertainment of the piñada. The fact that they had carried the piñada all the way from Cicicastenano in a huge bag was a pretty good indication that they had bought it, but for some reason, although I saw the bag, my state of relax never quite expanded to curiosity and I never wondered what it might contain or why they would be carrying around a 1 meter bag as if it were made of paper.

In fact I was so clueless (not to mention a little altered by the rhum) that I was reluctant to hit the piñata thinking that perhaps my bag had not been stolen and that they were trying to get me to hit it with a stick :P

Anyway, Teresa, Cris, David, Roque and Natxo thanks so much, it was the best birthday ever!!!

Finally we left the safe haven of the lake and wanted to head to the beach to get those famous surf board wet. But the mountains was a bit much for the Naughty Hottie who started acting Naughtie and became quite a bit of a Hottie when the water pump burst on the road to the beach. Naturally, being blessed by some travelling God (Mercury I believe) we broke down in front of a kiosk in the middkle of nowhere where 3 people were eating and they were of course 3 mechanics, of which the boss was Frankling, allegedly the best mechanic in Santa Lucia.

The friendly Franklin is a 30 year old preacher who speaks perfect english and prides himself on not being a wife beater, we told us that the water pump in the car was fucked and that we needed to go to Guatemala City early the next morning and see if the only shop with VW spare parts actually had a spare part available. This was quite unlikely since they only had one water pump and the weren t sure of which model it might belong to.

In the likely even that the pump was not a match we were to spend a week or more in Santa Lucia waiting for a spare part to arrive from Mexico. You'll probably never go to Santa Lucia and lets just say you re not mising much...

That night was Santa Lucia's patron Saint funnily enough which resulted in Teresa winning 6 glasses in a bingo, and David getting ripped off by a couple of street games which were obviously rigged.

The next day early Roque and David set off to the capital with the non-wife-beater and with trembling hands the opened the only box in the country to find a compatible match!

A very relieved Roque discoveres that yes, the pump is the right one! Non-wife-beater in the background

A quick (hours and a half) drive back to the dusty kip called santa lucia and Frankling with his gand of chubby and less chubby workes set down to turn the Naughty Overhottie back into a road worth vehicle.

Once the repair was complete it turned out that the Naughty was having enough of the trip and her old joints were rattling, specifically either the oil pump or the crank shaft.

Upon much reflection and debate amongst the three owners, it was decided that the aging white lady would be fit for another 10000km if it had already been through 300,000 so we crowded in, turned up the music and set off for the El Salvador border!

Belize, Guatemala and something in between

2007-12-02T18:19:00.000-08:00

Three very tanned Spanish guys...

I made it! I flew to Belize City and met up with three very tanned spanish guys and a Naughtie Hottie!

... and the Naughtie Hottie in Hopkins, Belize

After sorting out the van we started driving around the wierd country that is Belize.

We left the apparently crime-ridden Belize City and headed down the cost until we ended up in a tiny town called Hopkins.

Having never been to Jamaica I don´t know what it looks like but I am sure it is just like this.
The coast is a single long beach broken by wooden peers and shacks built onto the beach.

The population is an incredible mix of garifuna, spanish and native american. We found a small shack on the beach that was being rented out by night and settled down with the sound of the waves softly crashing beneath the floor of the hut.

This is where we stayed for the night, we spent quite some time chatting with the family that was renting the room and then ravished a plate of fish, banana and rice with great satisfaction.

Finally we went to sleep and prepared for the next day´s trip to Guatemala.

Our hosts in Belize

We got up early the next day and set out for Guatemala. The jurney was quite incredible as Guatemala is one of only two borders and roads out of the country of Belize.
What is found between these two places though can hardly be considered as a border.

Its more of a patchwork of shacks and people that are more worried in getting you to pay taxes than in actually making sure that they want to let you into their country. Matter of fact they really don´t care who you are, there have no way to check if you´re a multi felon, so they just look at you, stamp your passport and let you through.

Before you do that though, you need to get out of Belize, which for some reason seems to not want tourist to leave and forces them to pay an exit tax...
This is either to stop locals from shopping in the much cheaper Guatemala, or to buy that extension to the west wing of some politian´s villa...

So after fumigating the car, paying entry tax, paying exit tax, paying car tax, paying air breathing tax etc etc we finally set out on what must have been the most wonderful and aweful road man ever conceived.

Calling it road is a bit optimistic, its really a 100km strech of mud which runs from Belize to Santa Elena and which is stomping ground of quite a large amount of local fauna.

Matter of fact we found on the road whilst driving: people, cows, dogs, sheep, pigs, boars, peacocks, a kind of ferret and we finally run over a bat which got stuck in a window wiper.

We were also told that this road was quite dangerous for assaults, so we kept out head and acceleratior foot down and tried to make it as quickly as possible, although it still took over two hours.
One suspicious scene was that of a man carrying what looked like a large bloody amputated human leg, but we didn´t stop to ask to for direction so it may just have been a game of the mind!

Flores

And finally we made it to Flores, the island in the middle of the lace which Santa Elena is built on. We were drivin around looking for a hotel when we were approached by a Dutch guy on a scooter that told us he was working in a youth hostel, and what a youth hostel it was!

Los Amigos (http://www.amigoshostel.com/) is a must stay hostel for anyone travelling though here, in fact its so good we ended up staying several days of which a couple just spent playing table games and reading. Were were also joined by Teresa, addition no 5 to this section of the jurney and element no 4 of the spanish inquisition. Looks like I still have to hold my own against an ever growing crowd!

Next stop: Tikal, the lost Mayan city

Teresa, Natxo & a pale guy in ¨Los Amigos¨

The waiting game

2007-12-02T13:41:00.000-08:00

They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but it also true that some places are simply more amazing than others.

One of them is definitely not Rio's airport.
I arrived at aproximately 9.30, my flight was at midnight, so I was sure that I had all the time in the world.

Then I saw the queue... an endless stream of hot an bothered people, waiting to clear security
with various degreese of calmness.
The Brasilians chatting and waiting, the Latin Americans talking away whilst pretending to carelessly look at their watch and trying to hide a little fear that they might lose theflight, and finally the US citizens, unaware that the delays are caused by their xenophobia, complaining out lout about the inefficiency of the airport.

Getting into the a plane for the US is becoming more and more entertaining by the day.
First, before you even check in, you're asked if you're a terrorist. Here I really had to wonder if some froidian slip has ever actually brought an enemy of the war on terror into the steroidic arms of the US justice system.

After confirming that I was not a terrorist, I was asked if anyone had tampered with my bag and so on. No, no, no, no, no. At this stage I was asked for my passport. The dialogue went something like this:

"Where do you live sir?"
"Nowhere, I just left Norway"
"Where is your residence?"
"Italy"
"But your passport says you're Irish..." - could see the confusion mount in the eyes of a poor girl obviously chosen more for her thick us accent than for her bright and bliding iq, and who blatantly takes her job as defensor of the civilized world very seriously.

"Yeah, it's Shengen, we're European, you can move around no problem, we're not that afraid of terrorists..."
"Sir, you cannot say that word, you may spread panic!"
"What? Terrorist? Come on! It's not like I said bomb or anything!"
"Sir, those words cannot be used in this kind of environment!"

Anyway, she let me go with a warning and a fat finger wagging.
I checked in, stood in line for what seemed like an eternety and finally got to emigration.
To make a long story short the fun isn't over.

After you've done emigration you're scanned, checked for explosives, drugs and leprechauns and finally send on your way.
Some fat dude stops you as you're walking towards the gate and asks you if anyone has tampered with your bags since the girl asked you at checkin and if you're changed your mind and have now become a terrorist. A quick no and you're on your way, certain that nothing now stands in your way!

Then the most peculiar thing happens... another fat dude with a thick us accent asks you if you've converted to fundamentalist islam and if anyone has tampered with your bags...
I look back in disbelief at the first fat dude who had just asked me and was standing not 40m back.
Surely I haven't converted in 40 steps... surely they don't think anyone tampered with my bags in the 40 meters that separate the two fat guys and which is completely empty...

Another tired no and the gate is within grasp, you can smell the kerosene of the engine exausts fill the air like a sweet nectar which will magically carry you away from this madness and into the beginning of your trip, but its not to be.

As I hand my ticked to the woman at the gate the heavy hand of a heavy man with one hell of a heavy accent touches my shoulder, and I am informed that I have been randomly selected to relinquish my shoot and for a further security screening.

Fortunately this did not last long, and even more fortunately I was not asked any more if I was a terrorist, because at this stage I m sure 90% of the population has been converted!

Farewell Rio

2007-11-29T14:58:00.000-08:00

Hi guys,
I'm leaving Rio to go join the carovan of love!
Tonight I m flying to Miami and tomorrow I m off to Belize City.

I've only been here fore a week but God am I going to miss this city.
Good news though, I have a couple of good excuses to come back and live here for a few months, so start saving and preparing your passports to come visit!

I'll get in touch soon with plenty of photos :)
Ciao!

Boats, Beaches and Helicopters

2007-11-26T10:45:00.000-08:00

The weekend was a laugh!

Well, friday and saturday were amazing.

We drove about 40 km out of Rio, flying though a hectic load of insane traffic and past the Maracana' stadium, along what seemed to be a never-ending beach dotted with people of all ages, and ended up in a small shack on the beachside.

The Maracana' with a flag waiver hired by the govenment to welcome my arrival

Here we proceeded to drink 4 beers, 3 caipirinas, 2 bottles of water, and eat a huge roast fish with salads and chips which generously fed 3 of us. The total bill was a staggering 20 euros...

No further comments required I believe!

Smidgeons of coast

Ok so after a terribly harsh friday morning we decided to hit a field and try home remote-controlled helicopters.

Its an incredibly fun and hard sport.

Ideal for the energetically challenged

My father, confident of his abilities as a smart man bought a combustion engine remote control Helicopter a few months ago.

Fortunately the Engine was french and therefore on strike. Fortunately because this stopped my dad from assuming he could fly it and probably dumping 1000 euros worth of plastic and carbon fibre into the ocean.

Breakfast or Blender?

So there we sat, watching and learning for a couple of hours; whilst a royal eagle hovered overhead, curiously scanning the humming demonic machines that were invading its space, and probably wondering whether it was a predator or a prey.

Brazil Fun Fact #1: Drugs is "droga" and so is "crap!" made for a funny reaction on my behalf when I heard a guy at a serious (but informal) meeting saying "why do people allways hide my drugs!!!"

Slave to the wage!? Nah!

2007-11-26T10:11:00.000-08:00

Let me start by saying that the main reason I came to Brazil was to stop working, so it only seems right that I spend sunday and monday under a 35 degreese sun dressed in Safety gear, loading and unloading a Diamond Wire cutting machine from one of Subsea 7 vessels.

The "USS I Can't Believe It's Not Sinkin'"

You see, Achille is the MD of CUT-Brazil, so when he told me he had a bit of a test to run I said "sure!" problem is that Brazilians work at a rate which is rather different from what I was used to in the US, more like that of Norwegians but in a different way.

Achille explaining how to take Troy

Whilst in Norway people work hard but not for long because the government won't let them work offshore for over 2 weeks, here in Brazil people go offshore for 6 weeks at a time.

Tons you say? Well, yeah but lets put it this way, they don't kill themselves, at least not when in dock :P

In fact what is normally a 2 man job becomes a 8 man debating society. It's actually pretty interesting, everyone brainstorms, from the Head of Engineering to the welders, everyone talks over eachother and at the end, after quite a long time, something totally different is agreed since nobody really listens to eachother.

An example of this is the connections, usually we simply send a CAD drawing to the company and they provide the connections, but not here! 8 people stood (+myself and a scottish bloke to a side, no point overcrowding!) next to a machine, which only 1 person understood and tried to estimate how to connect it up.

Things do eventually get done, and I have to say, although things move slowly its a totally stress-free environment and everybody is smiling.

See today I realised something. Some guy yeaterday told me that there's no need to be rich in Brazil, only middle-class. I thought he was wrong but thinking about it, he's not.

See, most people start working their asses off to have a nice house, a nice car and so they can retire one day and have enough money to have a good life. But then they forget what the original objective was happyness and their objectie becomes making money which is really only a mean to happyness, so they're kinda fucked.

Here, you can lead a great life if you have an average income and that just sounds great for now :)

Anyway, all went well and we packed up the stuff and went home.

Wingardium leviosa!! (aka a really big guy pulling a chain)

Btw, anyone who thinks that Brazil is a machistic society has never been to Rio. There is a female to male ratio of 8 to 1 for some reason (I kid you not) and anywhere you go, including the manly world of offshore offices, there are way more women than men! Can't complain...

Oh, and I did actually do some work, I didn't only take photos of other people working...

Brazil Fun Facts #2 & #3

2. The Offshore Personal Protective Equipment for women is not a reinforced G-String :(

3. In Brazil the "Pierino" (Italy) or "Kerryman" (Irish) jokes, have Hugo Chavez as a subject :P

I saw a monkey!!

2007-11-23T06:03:00.000-08:00

And here it is:

A monkey on a tree that looks like Italy's Prime Minister (the monkey, not the tree)

I know, it looks like a cat on a tree, but trust me:

1. it looked a hell of a lot like Romano Prodi

2. it was also trying to throw feces at an italian whilst running away,

Hence it was either an Italian politician or a monkey, and since it was about 40cm tall and we're not in Italy, I opted for the second.

Not that much to write actually, we spent most of the day driving around the mountains around Rio, its simply unbelievable, check out the photos, although I can assure you that they just can't render justice to the real sight.

Smidgens of Rio

The city itself is a work of art placed on nature's most incredible canvas.

I'll stop there because I promised Gaston that this blog wouldn't be a hippy/poetic one like Natxo's and I'd try to keep it real.

Unfortunately you're always aware that this isn't Europe and you just have to be alert. It just seems like paradise does not exists, no matter how beautiful the people, food, city and weather are there is something that taints the perfection, the crime and the poverty.

Its quite ironic, if you're in Ireland everything costs way too much and you freeze you're nuts off, if you're in italy life is affordable and good but the people just complain too much, here people are friendly everything seems to be idillic until someone pulls a gun at you at a traffic light.

They say that the city really needs the Christ Redeemer looking over it, and he will provide protection.

I say, all you really need is a bit of luck, cop-on (basically don't wear gold, watches, use mobile phones in certain areas, etc) and someone who knows the places where you can and must not go.

In other words you need either a Jesus or an Achille, my butt should be pretty safe, 'cos I've got both:

The Achille & The Jesus

We drive through the city, hit Copacabana and after a quick warning from my mentor, the AC goes on and the windows go up.

Shortly after that we arrive at Ipanema, another planet apparently, down come the windows and off goes the AC, which donates enough new hp to the methane pickup to easily climb over the mountains and reach the 60 km of beach which streach out of the city.

An there we sat, looking out over the ocean, sipping coconut milk (genetically engineered to be more refreshing than usual) and wondering why would anyone not want to live here...

My new hobby: doing fuck all

Finally, still wondering why places like Aberdeen even exist, we head back to the city to a small town called Urca.

Its like a corner of paradise, built on a small island in the middle of the city, it is comprised of beautiful houses but, because there is only a bridge to access the island, it is crime-free.

See, here in Rio people don't burgle your house, they assault you.

A certain number of guys break a window, knock down a wall or pretend to be techs or cops.

They come into your house with guns, lock you up in your toiler (if you're lucky), and then proceed to take everything you own, perhaps even you if they think you're worth some cash.

But Urca is different, the bottle neck of the island access would allow the cops to intercept any assault as it were leaving. And lets put it this way... assaulters here aren't arrested...

So there you have it, perhaps perfection does exist, it just comes in small portions :)

Urca & the city

Finally we headed home, relaxed after a devastatingly tiring day and headed out to Rio's most antique churrascaria where we ate steaks good and large enough to convert a vegan.

And that's it really, my tiny post with a couple of photos and not much to say has become a poem.

Don't get used to it tho, here in Rio I've got internet daily but I'm off to reach the carovan of love on the 29th in Belize City (http://www.dondelloranlosvalientes.blogspot.com/), so from then on its only sporadic internet cafes, ciao!

Rio de Janeiro!!

2007-11-22T13:03:00.000-08:00

I made it! finally in Rio after one very long trip across the pacific.

I arrived just in time too! Achille met me at the airport and has offered me some shelter for the coming nights. Met his charming Brasilian girlfriend Rosana back at the house and settled into my room.

After a quick change we darted out under a starry sky to drive along a desolated Copacabana & Ipanema and finally settle down to watch Brazil beat Uruguay 2-1 last drinking Cachaça and eating some amazing meat next to the Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas, Rio's internal lagune.

Rio's somewhat familiar roads remind me of parts of Houston for the vegetation, but the feel is more european, italian even.

The streets are lit up like those of the ligurian Riviera with dashes of Palma di Mallorca.

All in all a wonderful first impression, I'm posting the view from my bedroom 'cos you can see the Cristo Redentor!

Let you know more when it happens to me.
Ciao!

One night in Paris

2007-11-22T07:04:00.000-08:00

I was just going to add a few lines about this in the first post on Rio, but then my knowledge of Hiltonian porn pushed me into creating a separate post with an irriverent title :P

I left the house in Dublin around 2 (in the photo you can see the Dart :P), got to the airport around 4 which gave me plenty of time to scrap my existing 20G seat at the bulkhead and book an emergency exit for the long haul to Rio.

The girl at the counter said it was an "Emergency Isle" which in travelling terms is the equivalent of a Rolls Royce Silver Shadow, 21F, great!.

So, several hours later I arrive in a hyperactive Paris due to an unsuprising public transport strike. By pure coincidence my dad was actually in Paris at the same time and was due to catch a flight out at 9pm. My flight on the other hand was due to arrive in at 20.15 so I thought that it would be great it we could just hug and chat for a few of minutes since I haven't seen him in a couple of months and won't for another few.

Naturally French organization ensured that no stairs could be found to let us out of the plane so we spend 15 minutes waiting to be released from our tin prison and naturally by the time I got to the gate dad had just entered the bus... Vive le France!

I called Sol and Luca, whom I was supposed to meet in Paris and we agreed that getting to Paris center was safe but there was a risk of not getting back to the airport on time due to the lazy ass metro drivers, which ment I was about to spend one hell of a night in the world's most unorganised airport (never been to Lagos tho, so it may actually be the 2nd).

Needless to say it was a bit of an adventure, I met this lovely guy called Dennis from Cameroon and we settled down as well as we could on the steel chairs which are obviously engineered at great expense by the same guys who specialize in placing sharp rocks under your towel at the beach.

Around 4 am and with only about 2 hours sleep I realized that my toes and nuts were freezing so I set off to look for some warmer place and found one, pretty close by.

Put simply there are long really thin heaters along the corridors where the automatic rollers are, these are as uncomfortable as hell to lie on but with a bit of bag-buffering turned out to be a relatively warm place to another hours or so of sleep. (Check out my bed in the pics)

When I woke up the guy from Cameroon had joined me a little further down the heater, at this stage thought my back was killing me so I set off to find a more confortable place, whilst trying to avoid David in case he thought I was trying to get away from him...

Anyway to make a long story short, after 12 hours in Paris, 3 hours of disected sleep and many pages of my book later, I dragged myself over to the gate and waited patiently for the flight to appear.

It does, together with a suspiscious screen which indicates the order of boarding and the rows in the plane...

Yeah you guessed, row 21, seat F was nowhere near the bloody Emergency Exit, it was a middle seat between what I m sure would have turned out to be two fat americans. My Silver Shadow had turned into a G-Wiz with the reliability of an Alfa...

At the end I managed to change back to my original 20G seat which I guess was ok, but there was much swearing at the Air France girl in Dublin. The plane took off and after 11 hours of watching Transformers, The Simpsons (Mike, Billy & Steffen I finally saw it!! it not great but I watched it twice anyway), Happy Potter 4 and a romantic comedy called Licence to Wed (I apologise, I was really bored and tired but I can't sleep on the plane) I arrived on the golden shores of the River of January. Ciao!

4 Countries in 5 Days

2007-11-20T03:48:00.000-08:00

Not sure how this happened!
In reality I was never a fan of blogs, always thought that not many people would be interested in reading what I had to say. Matter of fact anyone that knows me wouldn't need to read my blog because I'm pretty outspoken about what I think in the first place...
This changed when I decided to head off on a trip for a couple of months, starting from Rio and then on to Central America.
My parents and friends have asked me to send some photos and just figure out some way to let them know that I'm still alive.
So here I am, sitting down on the sofa in Mike's house in Dublin writing this log and trying to imagine where the next posts will come from, and when.

The last few days have been fantastic.
Saturday London, then Dublin Saturday evening, Listowel on Sunday, Back to Dublin on Monday, today I'm off to Paris at 5 and tomorrow at 10 I'm off to Rio de Janeiro.
So, last thing before I start re-packing my stuff, thanks to Matt, Ned, Mike and gran first of all for the beds :)
Thanks to everyone that took some time off to meet up and have a beer before I left: Billy for coming all the way to Dublin, James, Will, Gasta, Patty, Elzbieta, Iain, Linda, Matti, China, Emma and everyone else.
Hope to see you guys soon!