South America by freighter ship

Sorry, updates will come...

2009-10-14T13:08:00.000-07:00

To anyone still wondering what we're up to and where we've gone - all is good, just adapting back to the UK, but I do intend to finish up the blog with the final leg of the trip etc. In the meantime, check out this article. Its been an amazing week for UK climate activists!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2009/oct/12/climate-activists-campaigns-greenpeace

11 month trip around South America completed...without setting foot on a plane!

2009-09-20T10:18:00.000-07:00

After 15 days and a combination of cargo ship, bus and ferry, we arrived safely in the port of Harwich, UK, on saturday the 19th September. Expect full updates and loads of new photos very soon...x

Bullock's bollocks

2009-09-02T16:46:00.000-07:00

The Labour party MP and Mayor of Lewisham Steve Bullock recently wrote a load of old bollocks about The Camp for Climate Action on his blog, comparing climate change activists to football hooligans:
http://www.labouronline.org/wibs/167209/?PageId=2a815d3a-a0ad-aa24-01ec-ceb6b6bbd069

I felt obliged to respond with an email direct to Sir himself. Here's what I said:

Dear Mr Bullock

I am writing in response to your recent ignorant remarks about The Camp for Climate Action. Your comparison of climate campers to violent football thugs is an absolutley disgraceful insult to the diverse, caring, well-informed and peaceful people who make up this extraordinary movement.

Would you have said the same about the Sufferagette movement had you been around to witness their 'selfishness'? And how about the civil rights movement, with that thug-like Martin Luther King?

You say that you believe that the climate change activism movement is counter productive? In what way? Did you miss the last few years worth of positive media coverage about the camp? Did you fail to see how each year the camp has brought the atrocious desicions made by your party into the limelight, such as the expansion of Heathrow or the breath of new life delivered to the coal industry?

Or maybe that is the point. Maybe the fact that these pesky environmentalists are continuosly highlighting the absolute double standards and hypocrisy your party demonstrates in it's climate change policy is the cause of the bee currently residing in your bonnet. You claim to be 'desperately worried' about climate change. So desperately worried that you continue to represent a party who wishes to continue business as usual, with total expansion of airports and building new coal-fired power stations? Are you aware of the work of the world's body of climate scientists?

And please tell me, how will the camp be seen as 'self indulgent' by those currently 'struggling through the recession'? I imagine many of the those affected by the current economic situation may feel some sympathy to a movement which is highlighting and criticising the flawed system which put them into that situation in the first place.

And finally, as if to prove your lack of knowledge about the camp, you air your concerns about the 'repair of the Heath' and collection of rubbish. The carefully organised waste sorting system will make recycling a straightforward affair for the local council, and will serve as a demonstration of good waste management to those visiting from the local area, therefore helping to meet local recycling targets. Locals will be encouraged to visit the camp and participate in a wonderful range of environmental workshops and activities, including activities for the children, making for a great local bank holiday event. So far, after every climate camp, the land has been left in an equal, if not better state than it had been found. This has been noted upon by the landowners of previous camps.

I do hope that you plan to visit this year's camp. You never know, you may learn a thing or two!

Kind regards,

Lewis McNeill

Ps. In further posts you may like to consider using a spell-check. Peopel may pick up on it.

The end is nigh; homeward bound.

2009-08-29T19:12:00.000-07:00

I must apologise for my recent slackness in writing anything. I'm way behind, and am once again writing from Colombia, having swiftly traversed the length of Ecuador. The reason I've not written much has not only been our recent push north, but also because all our internet time has been spent applying for jobs back in the UK. With the end of out journey in sight, we've been looking for answers to 'what next'? I applied for a Climate Change Co-ordinator position with an organisation in Leeds. I spent a fair amount of time on the application, and the presentation I had to prepare once I was short-listed for an interview (which was conducted via Skype), but didn't get the job. Undeterred I've appled for two more since, and am waiting for replies. Colette also spotted an opportunity; a placement with Amnesty International. Her application won her a phone interview, and again we await the result.

So really we've been planning the next chapter of our lives, and as a result our minds and hearts have not really been in the 'here & now'. A couple of months ago we'd begun to miss home a little, and even though we've had great times since, the feeling hasn't really subsided. I suppose there comes a point in all big trips where you just feel like you've run out of steam. The thought of a 30- hour bus ride to new lands just doesn't hold the same appeal it once did, the new landscapes and scenes no longer seeming so new.

I really thought that I'd got the job, and had begun planning the journey home. Despite being unsuccessful, I feel that there are too many opportunities for a job passing by at the moment, and being so far away without the power of flight may be hindering my application. Hopefully Colette will get her position, but it would begin in September.

We feel ready to return, and so we've booked our cargo passage home. We will board the ship on September 6th in Cartagena, Colombia, and 13 days later or so we should be back in the UK. We're very excited!

I've still got a bit of catching up to do, so I'll be writing a few more posts, including the advice on cargo ship travel that I've been promising from the start, as well as the 'very incomplete guide to vegetarian eating in South America'.

In the meantime I'm planning to leave civilisation for a few days to enjoy our final week in Colombia; we're off to the beautiful Playa Blanca to camp, swim and laze around in hammocks drinking rum. And then we take the ship to the Dominican Republic for some final Caribbean fun before crossing the Atlantic once more.

The clean-burning stove project: life in the Peruvian sticks (Soundtrack: Santiago, Santiago, Santiago)

2009-08-25T16:33:00.000-07:00

The clean burning stove project was one of the few projects that we'd known about before setting off and had wanted to take part in. The organisation builds highly efficient eco-stoves in the homes of the villagers of San Juan del Iscos, near the city of Huancayo. The idea is simple: the stoves both reduce high rates of respiratory disease sustained by the villagers (due to smoke-filled cooking areas associated with cooking on an open fire in an enclosed space) and reduce local deforestation, as less fire wood is required for the more efficient new stoves.

We were fortunate with our timing. The day we arrived in the little village was the first day of the year's biggest event, the Fiesta of the village saint; Santiago. The men & boys of the village were all dressed in a unique uniform of knee-high Maralyn Manson type boots, combat trousers, blue blazers, yellow capes and perculiarly hats adroned with colourful feathers.

They wandered around holding what could be described as mini whips, swilling beer from little plastic cups and emitting manic, high-pitched laughter (this 'Santiago cackle' became a tad tedious during our stay). The Cholitas were dressed in their finest home-spun dresses of amazing colours and their traditional hats. They were all so warm and welcoming. Before I knew what was happening I was adorned with my very own yellow cape, a whip was shoved into one hand, a beer into the other and it was demanded I join in with the general cackling and dancing. The dance, like those we'd experienced of the indigenous people of Bolivia, consisted of steady shuffle around in pairs of two, with the occasional 360 swirl. It's slightly less challenging than, say, Tango, but nevertheless the locals seemed impressed with our natural ability! One tradition involved a local youth climbing a 40 ft tree trunk, dislodging the fruit and beer that had been hung along its length, to reach the basket of goodies that hung at its zenith. I was so releived that no one asked me, the visiter of the village, to get up there myself. At one point, different groups of visiters battled each over in the main square. It was a bizarre event, and we still haven't worked out its trus significance. They wore very non-PC masks meant to resemble the African slaves who were brought over by the Spanish, and we gathered that this was something to do with the whips. The men from different villages entered the centre of the square in the uniforms and masks, fooling around in a very slapstick manner pretending to be bumbling oaths, much to the amusement of the hundreds of onlookers. Then, a 'referee' would appear inbetween them, before they began thrahing each other with the whips. After a brief tussle which each time looked like it might boil over into a full on braul they would give each other a manly hug, and walk off together, leaving the next two in line to begin. For the second time that day i was glad to have been left out of tradition.

It was clearly quite novel to have a few gringos present and everywhere we went people invited us to sit down and drink with them. There's a bit of an etiquette involved. Take the bottle of beer and fill the communal plastic cup provided. Pass the bottle to whoever you select to take the next drink before nodding in their direction and saying "salud pappi" before downing the beer, flicking away the foamy dreggs and passing them the cup. A few people we'd come accross in parts of Peru seemed to associate foreigners with swine flu. It certainly wasn't an issue here as the foamy little cups circulated from mouth to mouth.

The people were some of the friendliest we've met on the trip. They would tow us around making sure we'd met all of their families and several even invited us to the dances thay were holding at their houses as part of the festivities.

That was our introduction to San Juan de Iscos, and we were promised that the best of the partying was still to come. We were introduced to our host family of the week, a stout Cholita called Maruha, her elusive husband whose name I forget and their daughter Katty.

The accommodation was just as traditional as we'd hoped; a modest farm house made from adobe mud bricks, complete with two cows, two puppies, a pig, a sheep, and about 400 guinipigs, all of which were bundled into the small yard every night for safe keeping. We shared our bedroom with another volunteer. I had the top bunk, which lay about a metre underneath the bare wooden beams and broken tiles which let narrow streams of light penetrate the otherwise dark room during the day. Sometimes I'd wake to find little piles of brick dust on my pillow, dislodged by a mouse or early morning bird on the roof above.

We happily settled into the daily routine of life on the farm. Each morning I'd wake at about 5am to the hideous sound of a local donkey who quite clearly thought it was a cockrel. I'd hop out of my bunk (whilst Colette slept on, being the earlybird she is) and wander out into the fresh morning air to visit the toilet; an outhouse accross the lane with a classic squat-over-the-hole-in-the-ground model loo. Then I'd shovel up the impressive quantity of offerings left by the cows on the yard floor during the night, before feeding the ungrateful, squeeling guini-herds. Of course guinipigs are a delicacy here in Peru and so our family have a bit of a scheme going on with around 10 pens of the little blighters.

Then, after a carbohydrate-packed breakfast (sometimes consisting of chips and rice!), we'd attempt to milk the cows. There's definately a knack to it, its all about the rythm 'n' squeeze. After that we sometimes helped to cut some grass for the animals, using little hand scythes. The tools used in these parts are all manual, including the ox-drawn ploughs. I'll definately be purchasing one of these effieicant little scythes for future allotment adventures.

By 9am we'd be finished with the chores, and ready to meet with the local primary school kids for classes. The schools had been shutdown due to the old swine flu, so the organisation had agreed to hold classes in a little eucalyptus wood nearby. From 9.30-12.oo we'd teach environmental education and english, and sometimes play a bit of footie. It was really good fun, and the kids loved our recycled craft activities. I came up with a deforestation session, aimed at backing up the stove project, which involved an adaptation of musical chairs where another tree had been chopped down each time the music (my harmonica) had stopped.

In the afternoons we'd get down to the nitty gritty; making the stoves. We'd walk to the home of whoever had arranged to have a stove built (there was a list in order of priority - those deemed to need a stove most urgently would be selected first), carrying a couple of sections of tin chimney and a steel 'counter' which forms the upper surface of the stove. All the villager had to do was be ready with a pile of 'barro' (mud made from clay-like mud and donkey crap), a couple of large adobe bricks, and about 20 normal bricks.

Making the stove first involved the destruction of the existing stove. this could be pretty hard work, as the kitchens were generally cramped and dark, with little ventilation. Due to years of cooking with no chimney, the walls and ceiling around the stove were caked in thick soot which formed stalacmite-like formations. We'd have to use a mattock to break up the bricks, many of which were still hot from lunchtime, making the still air thick with ash and soot. We'd be blowing black dust from our noses for days afterwards.

Then came the fun bit. After levelling out the ground you must grab handfulls of barro and slap it onto the ground before placing the adobe bricks on top. Each new layer of bricks needed a new layer of barro lobbed on, sending splatterings of mud everywhere. We'd come away caked in the stuff. Finally we'd add the counter, fit the chimney, and then use the rest of the mud to seal any gaps and smooth the whole thing over. They look amazing. We hope to bring this skill back with us, with Colette's mum being the first in line for a free installment in the garden!

Usually the owner of the house would put on some tea or pour us tin mugs of homemade Chicha, a drink made from fermented maize. We'd clean ourselves up, sip our drinks and admire our new creation, each stoves being slightly different in structure from the last.

One grateful old chap invited us back for breakfast on the following saturday at 7.30. Unable to refuse the offer, we headed back there for the agreed time, after being w
I loved life in the country. We soon felt like part of the community and helped out where we could. Every Wednesday afternoon the community gets together to share out tasks, help each other harvest the crops oken up to the increasingly tedious sounds of Santiago music at 4am. Unlike the recorded music which would blare from the neighbours house from about 7am, this was a live band. Four o'clock in the morning! We anticipated that the breakfast may involve some kind of meat and so we'd decided that we would eat what we were given so as not to offend. I think we were both secretly hoping for some tasty free-range bacon, sliced from the family swine merely minutes before serving. It was not to be. We were sat down right next to the CD player which was pumping Santiago at full blast, manic laughter n all. And then he lovingly placed our breakfast before us; bowls of hot water containing pieces of chunky corn and what appeared to be some kind of internal organ. I identified the grey, papilated slithers as stomach lining. We'd seen many of them hanging on the washing lines of those we during our installation trips, drying out in the sun alongside other miscallaneous internal organs and smalls. Well I say 'smalls', but as a general rule the Cholitas are far from petite. Bravely we began to slurp, chew and gulp, with forced smiles and "muy bien"'s. Colette was in fact far braver than I, finishing every last drop. Lets just say I was happy at the arrival of the family cat...
from the communal land and prepare the goods for sale in the nearest town. All profitss are shared. Socialism at work.

Like in many of the more rural places we've visited, the rural folk of Iscos are very much aware of the rapidly changing climate. As people who spend long days out in the fields they are very connected to the outdoor environment and more sensitive than most to the change. Many told me about the times when they can no longer work during the day, due to the intense heat. They pointed to the distant glacier that sits above the city of Huancayo, telling me that when they were young you couldn't see any of the dark rock beneath the ice. Now about half of the visible mountain top has its rock exposed to the sun. Before, the light coloured ice would reflect the sun's heat and keep the glacier cool. Now the dark surface of the rock absorbs more of the heat, melting more of the ice around it in a self-enforcing process known as a 'positive feedback'. Other examples of these phenomena are of course being observed in sea ice, with the melted ice being replaced with dark ocean water which in turn absorbs more heat. It's the people like those living in Iscos, who live low impact lifestyles and have done the least to cause anthropocentric climate change, who will be the ones who first feel its brunt.

One day, as we returned to the house we were met by the sound of an ongoing, hideous scream. We identified the awful noise as pig. Realising it was our friendly pig Thomas, we rushed back to find him pinned down by three men, whilst another held a nasty looking sharp object. It was time for Thomas to bid farewell to his testicles. It was pretty grim. There didn't seem to be any anesthetic involved. We couldn't watch. Thomas was just not his friendly self for days. I understood completely.

Our last day just so happened to coincide with the final Santiago blow-out. People from as far away as Lima had come to witness the festivities. There was plenty more dancing and Santiago laughter. This time different families teamed up in their best threads to 'battle' each other with group dances in the square. One family that we'd befriended insisted that we join their family as part of their dance, as were 'good dancers'. There were no traditional costumes left, so they tied my hoodie around me like a sash, and popped a Cholita hat on me as there were no 'man-hats' left, and I was left to prance around in a distinclty less macho manner. The dance was a success, and our presence was enjoyed by the crowd, although we never did find out who won. Later that evening we had to take the bus to Lima. After saying goodbye to our family, and the many other lovely people who'd made us feel so welcome, we took the bus to Huancayo, and then the night coach to Lima.

Climate Camp - a video response to the London MET's request for information!!!

2009-08-25T09:48:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gKRl5lsPOA

Have you voted for this year's 'Britain's got direct action'?!

2009-08-18T15:46:00.000-07:00

Have your say on which of our celebrity coal-fired power stations will get a visit from activistd this october!

http://climatecamp.org.uk/press/2009/08/08/activists-launch-public-online-vote-to-choose-a-coal-plant-to-shut-down

http://www.thegreatclimateswoop.org/?q=about

...and why? Because...

"Apartheid didn’t collapse, people got together and struggled, and sang, and persisted. Women weren’t given the vote, they joined with each other and made universal suffrage essential. And so it goes. It’s a well-worn argument, but that doesn’t make it less right. Most of the freedoms we enjoy today have been won by people stepping out of line to make the world a better place by taking back power. And this means confronting the powerful who wish to preserve the status quo. Climate change won’t just go away until we, that’s you and me, get together and create moments of resistance and celebration that break through this grey, complacent slide towards catastrophe".

An interesting debate of an apocolyptic nature....

2009-08-18T08:12:00.000-07:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2009/aug/17/environment-climate-change

Climate camp sets up in Wales

2009-08-13T16:14:00.000-07:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2009/aug/12/climate-camp-cymru-blog
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/8198012.stm

Paro in Peru - stuck in a blockade again

2009-08-13T16:07:00.000-07:00

We decided to go straight to the capital, Lima, from Cuzco and found some cheapish ticksts at the station. The journey was to take around 20 hours, starting at 8pm. As is quite common in these parts the journey was a roller coaster ride with the bus rattling along at full speed round winding mountain roads, despite the thick night fog. After the initial anxiety, as per usual we were able to salvage some very broken sleep until the early hours.

At around 3am the coach stopped. At first I thought it was a loo break, and fell back into a slumber, happy that the stationary vehicle would offer a better prospect of sleep. But as the day of light increased, a glimpse through the window revealed that we were one of maybe 40 coaches bumper to bumper, sitting along a road in the middle of nowhere. It was quite clear that we were stuck in a blockade, or 'Paro'.

In the previous month there had been a series of high profile paros in Peru, targeting the main routes between the major cities. I'm still not completely sure about what they have been in opposition to, although I know some may have been in response to the horrendous government masacre of indigeous people in the Amazon back in June (see earler 'News roundup' post) , and others against the government's water privatisation proposals.

At the front of the line I could make out group of people and a small plume of black smoke. Wiping the sleep from my eyes I grabbed the camera and went to investigate. There were groups of people engaged in heated arguments between those responsible for the blockade and those caught up in it. The scenery combined with the filthy black smoke form the burning tires on the roadside created a post-apocolyptic, Mad Max II -like scene. There were a group of men with a crowbar trying to dislodge a huge boulder that sat on an embankment a few metres above the road. I asked a few people what it was all about. Some said lack of jobs, others mentioned that the main road through the nearby town needed serious work, and that it had done for 15 years; the people of the town had taken advantage of a strike on the previous day to finally send a powerful message the government -get on with it!

As the time passed, tensions began to run high as patience dwindelled. Occasionally someone one would begin to roll or kick rocks off the road, only to be met by the angry, old Cholitas (indig enous women), who imediately began to replace each rock with 3 more. At one point, a rock-throwing battle broke, initiated by some idiot teenagers. There was a lot of shouting and people began moving back out of the wa y, and a few of the vehicles at the front reversed out of the danger zone. I scuttled higher up the embankment from which I viewed the situation, along with many other spectators. It was all over pretty quickly, with the offending youths retreating high among the rocks, perching like baseball-capped v ultures. Thankfully, despite the high tension of the situation, that was the only violent incedent of the day.

We spent the rest of the day chatting with other bemused travellers (many of which were on their way to catch a flight) and sitting in the sun relaxing. It was a fine place to be stuck in a blockade. People began to eat their lunches on the grass and, to our disappointment, followed the local tradition of using any availabl e place of natural beauty as a bin. We d ecided to try and set an example by wandering around bagging the litter. Some looked shocked whilst others, the bus driver included, sniggered and made snide remarks. It did have the desired effect though; a lady with her children came up to us thanked us, pressing her children to follow our example, and shortly afterwards we saw others picking up wrappers and bottles too.

During the day we'd become concern ed about the many children caught up in this - would they really make us stay put throughout a cold night with no heating or supplies? During one of the many community debates and meetings which took place on the frontline, I had my say. I too am an activist, I said, and am supportive of peaceful direct action when the government continuosly fails to listen to the people. But surley holding up young mothers and babies, without water or food is unfair, and no way to drum up sympathy and support for the cause?.

The day went on, and the radio reports m ade their various predictions for how long it would last, the favourite being 48 hou rs (this was bac ked up by the "VIVA EL PARO! 48 HORAS"! grafitti that had been painted on the windscreens of each vehicle hours before. Supprisingly the police were nowhere to be seen for most of the day. I couldnt help but imagine the police response on the UK if a major route had been blockaded! Helicopters, video cameras and truncheons all round. The light began to dwindle, and we began to wander if it really would last so long. Then , suddenly the coach engines started up one by one. They were letting us through! We had been there for 16 hours!

So, the 20 hour journey had turned into one of 36, so we were happy to reach a hostel in the early hours mist of Lima. The plan was to sleep for an hour, find migration to sort out our illegal status, and then head off to begi n a voluntary project in a rural village; making ecological stoves out of mud and donkey shit.

Climate Camp Video

2009-08-09T08:13:00.001-07:00

Oh yeah, did I mention how amazing The Camp for Climate Action is and how you should go this month?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWk6_iN3o2Y

Machu Picchu

2009-07-20T17:04:00.001-07:00

Originally we'd planned to find the ruins of Machu Picchu by ourselves, bypassing the plethora of tour agencies and following the route in our own time. However we'd met some people who had recommended the 'jungle tour' which included some mountain biking and trecking all for a pretty decent price. I was well up for the cycling bit, so in the end we booked onto a tour.

Our group was a nice varied bunch, made up of a couple from Oz, another from Barcelona, a couple of comedy welsh fellas, a guy from South Korea, and a bunch of rowdy young Chilean cousins.

On the first day we travelled high up into the mountains to Abra Malaga (4316 m) where we were surrounded by the snowcapped Huacay Willca Mountains. Here we were issued our bikes, helmets and gloves, and began a two hour descent, bombing through different ecological zones at a crazy speed. I loved it! It's been a while since I've mounted my trusty stead, the majestc Raleigh Mantaray, and I've certainly never reached speeds like that before. At times it felt like 'Tour de France', the 15 of us cruising down, passing each other and various other groups along the way. The views were awsome. It made for pretty good buzz and has wet my appetite for more mountain biking. Can't beat a good bit of wholesome, carbon-free fun! As we descended the temperature rose, the insects began to sing and the sweet unmistakable scent of tropical forest became frequent. That night we stayed in the small town of Santa Maria, which felt to us a bit like Colombia, and where the local kids seem to play volleyball twenty four hours a day.

The next day was on foot. We walked for many hours, climbing narrow paths which ascended through the forest, passing the remote homes of banana growing families. It was a pretty tough day, which made the natural hot springs all the more rewarding when we got there. We stopped for the night in another tiny town, and all went out for some food and cocktails.

Next day was a 4am start, and we continued along the sacred valley of the Incas, following the beautiful Urubamba river and a disused railway track. It was a nice walk, and we reached the town of Aguas Calientes in good time, where we relaxed for the afternoon.

The next morning we started at about 3am and hiked up to the entrance of the ruins. It was pretty tough going, steep step after steep step for about 2 hours, along with the hoards of others making the same pilgramage. By the time we reached the top, there were probably eighty or so people already there, from all over the world and by the time we were allowed to enter the crowd probably swelled to about three hundred.

The 'Lost city of the Incas' were every bit as impressive as the pictures, and being there for the sunrise was nice, especially as only a fraction of the 2500 or so daily visiters were clambering around at that point.

The Incas had commenced its construction around AD 1430 as a kind of exclusive dwelling for the Inca rulers (although there are various theories about its purpose), but was abandoned a hundred years later as the Spanish pushed futher into the territory on their bloody conquest, although it turned out they had'nt even known about it anyway. Consequently they did'nt destroy it like the many other significant inca settlements they left smashed in their wake.

Most people queue for the twice daily opportunity to climb up Wayna Pichu mountain, which over looks the ruins. After hearing tails of irate tourists fighting tooth and nail to make it for the 200 places allowed, we decided to climb the less often visited Machu Picchu mountain, which stands at the oposite end of the ruins and is much higher, offering an even more spectacular view. And it was worth it. After our sweaty, heart-pounding ascent in the mid-day heat, we were rewarded with a really special view, and spent a few hours up there. To make the day even more memorable, our Australian friend proposed to his girlfriend on the way up, to the cheers of our motley crew! Luckily for us, the sun shone all day with no cloud or mist to obscure the view. All in all it was a wicked trip with a great group of people.

Border crossings - illegal aliens in Peru (Soundtrack: Sting - Englishman in Peru)

2009-07-20T16:46:00.000-07:00

We returned to Copacabana had a quick breakfast, went to the book exchange for new reading material and then did a bit of haggling for bus tickets to the city of Cusco, Peru. Unfortunately the official at the border didn't agree with our calculation of 90 days as the total of our duration in Bolivia - he counted 91 days (including the day we arrived as one whole day, as opposed to one day being 24 hours after the moment we arrived). So, we had to join the naughty line to await our charge of about one quid fifty each. The meagre penalty itself we could have lived with - it was what happened afterwards that became a ball ache. As we'd had to spend extra time queuing in two queues we were quite far behind in line, and most of the people from our bus had moved on. The bus conductor was getting impatient and moved us to the front to get our stamp, telling us to hurry up. We got our stamps boarded the bus once more. It wasn't until we had almost reached our destination that we realised that we'd only recieved our exit stamp from Bolivia, and not our entry stamp for Peru! Whilst we had been waiting to pay our fine (which we shouldn't have had to pay in the first place) our fellow passengers had dissapeared, not to the bus as we'd thought, but to another office to get their entry stamps. No one had told us about the other office and we'd been rushed through. So we were illegal aliens in Peru.

As we passed through vast expanses of open fields the air became jet-black with smoke from huge areas of burning grass; some kind of natural pasture burning for grass renewal. It gave the impression of traveling through a war-torn country dotted with the smouldering remains of bombed-out villages.

We arrived in Cusco late and managed to find a fairly cheap hotel despite the 'historical centre of Peru' being possibly one of the most tourist-driven places in South America, due to it's history as the capital of the Inca empire and its close proximity to Machu Picchu.

Despite it being completely over-run with visiting foreigners (ourselves included of course), with over 850,000 visiting in 2007 alone, and with all the high brow accommodation and restaurants to cater for them, Cusco is a pretty nice city. There's plenty of nice old colonial architecture and narrow cobbled roads and stone walls (many of which were built by the Incas), and the many plazas are always bustling. You do get sick to death of the countless people trying to sell you dinners and massages though, prompting the creation of the Irish bar's 'NO GRACIAS!' T-shirt. There were few street parades during our time there and we visited an art exhibition of giant paper mache swine-flu related pigs!

We found respite from the masses in the local semi-open air market, where each we'd start by eating breakfast with the locals. This would consist of a couple of Tamales (steam cooked corn dough, sweet or savoury, wrapped in a corn husk) and bad coffee, and maybe an egg buttie for good measure.

Due to the daily turn over of visiters using Cusco as base to visit Machu Picchu, there's a pretty good night life, with several clubs lining the central plaza. On our second night I asked around to see if I could get a gig or two and soon enough I'd been invited to play at 4 clubs the following night!

The first one had a really nice layout with the booth up on a balcony looking down onto the crowd below. Some classic Hip Hop and Funk coaxed out a couple of B-boys and soon enough there was a battle going on, much to the delight of the circle of onlookers. Thats the first time I've played to the B-boys in a while and it felt good, reminding me of the K0 Rockin'It days! Just shame I was playing on the most basic of CD decks - I was itchin' for a scratch! In the second I played mainly breaks and a bit of reggae, and ended up playing for a good 4-5 hours, so I never made it to clubs 3 and 4!

We booked the mandatory trip to Machu picchu. We chose the 4-day 'jungle tour' which would involve one day of bombing down a mountain on a bike and a few days trecking through the jungle to get to the ancient site. We'd originaly wanted to do it alone, without a tour, but the price was pretty reasonable and I was well up for some mountain biking. So we packed our bags and got ready for some serious walking.....

Isla del sol

2009-07-20T09:19:00.000-07:00

During my last day in Sorata I came down with some pretty bad sickness, maybe food poisoning. This put me out for a good 5 days, leaving me a bit underweight and weak. During that time I still managed to get back to Cochabamba, which took the best part of a day, where Colette was waiting to give me lots of sympathy and attention. Eventually we finished off our loose ends and were ready to leave the city where we'd stayed for a good 2 months. Once again we caught the bus to La Paz, where we stayed for a week, buying presents and shipping two huge parcels home. We stayed in a cheap little hostel near the 'witch market', where rows of stalls sell all your ceremonial needs; coca leaves, incense, colourful sweets, tiny figures and, of course, a selection of llama pheotuses in their various stages of development.

Then we headed to Copacabana, a small town on the shore of lake Titicaca. The journey involved the crossing of a narrow stretch of the lake using a coach 'ferry'. It's a nice place, if a little over done on the tourism front. It feels a bit like a seaside resort with the boats and endless blue of the vast lake; lago Titicaca is South America's largest lake and one of the world's highest navigable lakes, sitting on the border between Bolivia and Peru at 3812 m. We found a really nice room with a great view of the lake for only 15 bolivianos each per night, around a quid forty or so each.

After a couple of nights we caught a boat to the sacred Inca island of the sun - Isla del Sol. I've probably used the word 'stunning' one too many times in my writings on this blog, but I really can't find another word to adequately describe the beauty of the places I've been fortunate enough to visit on this trip. The island is stunningly beautiful. The rich colour of the deep blue water, the immense Illampu glacier on the horizon, the clear air and bright blue sky, and the lack of any paved roads or vehicles make it such a wonderfully tranquil place. The boat drops you off on the south side, which is pretty busy with tourists on half-day or day trips, but once you walk up the hill and over the peak people are few and far between and consist mainly of the scattered 800 or so Aymara or Quechua families which inhabit the island. Once again we found a lovely place to stay, with an awsome view of the distant Illampu. We'd wanted to camp on the island, which can be done safely for free, but in the end the low temperatures were enough to deter us.

Later in the evening we witnessed an impressive 'moon rise' and the reflected yellow light shone across the water and provided sufficient light for shadows. The next morning we woke up early for sunrise, which could be seen from the comfort of our bed once the curtains were opened. We set off for a walk to the northern end of the island. We wandered through the scenery of a time gone by, passing the brightly clothed locals as they walked their mixed heards of goats, sheep, llamas and pigs along the dusty paths. I'm not quite sure where they were taking the animals, but everywhere we went people were walking their flocks back and fourth, from children of no more than 8 years to women who looked impossibly old, whose weathered faces had endured a life's worth of the island's harsh climate. Donkeys and llamas grazed side by side on the sloped fields above us. Occasionally a walking bush would appear on the horizon and trundle towards us, eventually morphing into an old man or woman hunched over at a right-angle with a huge bundle of harvested bean stalks slung over their back. We passed quiet hamlets where children ran to greet us and people worked harvesting corn or ploughing the fields with a bull-drawn plough. And all without the sound of a single internal combustion engine! Perfect.

Colette became annoyed at my insistance on taking lots of photos of donkeys. She thinks I've developed an obsession. However, I'll be having the last laughs when I return home to jobless situation with an entrepreneurial trick up my sleeve; 'Donkeys of Bolivia' calender 2010 here I come. Only April, August and November left to capture.

We reached the north side and checked into another cute place at a bargain price. After a read and doze on the beach we walked to the Inca ruins right near the northern tip and watched another gorgeous sunset. This is the kind of place we could have stayed for a week. But we had reached the 89th day of our 90 day visa for Bolivia, so after getting up for a final sunrise, we reluctantly caught the boat back to Copacabana to get ready to cross the border to Peru.

A few days in Sorata (Soundtrack: the river)

2009-07-20T08:00:00.000-07:00

After a sleepless night at sub-zero temperatures, we were glad to get into the tightly-packed mini bus and head back to La Paz. Once at the bus station, Colette took a coach back to Cochabamba to finish off her project whereas I'd decided to visit the small town of Sorata for a few days, as my project was pretty much wrapped up. I'd seen a photo of Sorata back in Tupiza, our first stop in Bolivia, and had wanted to visit ever since. It's a beautiful little town, nestled high in the Andes below the spectacular Illampu glacier.

The descent into the valley should have been a wonderful experience in itself, but the mini bus driver seemed to think he was some kind of ralley driver, tearing around the many blind bends along the winding road at a death-wish speed. He seemed intent on driving on the wrong side of the road around each bend which not only meant we couldn't see any oncoming traffic but we were also only inches away from plummeting down the sheer drop to our left. I seriously thought my time had come.

It was all made worth it when I checked into a gorgeous little place with a balcony over looking stunning views, where my bedroom window looked down into a lush valley (and a rustic sign pointing to the nearby reggae bar) from which came the steady sound of the river below.

I spent 3 days walking, reading and just kicking back enjoying the serenity of the place after so long in the city. In Sorata you can go on walks without having to pay or take a guide - a nice break from what I call the 'privatization of wandering'; where one can no longer just walk and enjoy the common land without having to organise it through a tour operator.

As I wondered along roads coated in orange dust I passed whole families up on the hillsides harvesting their corn. Here and there a teathered bull would lazily observe me as I passed and chickens and goats foraged at the roadside. Plumes of grey smoke could be seen rising from various points across the valley as farmers burnt the dry grass to make way for the new crop.

Here are some photos Sorata, a town where I would seriously consider retiring to one day.......

Summer Solstice 2009 - Aymara new year 5517

2009-07-19T14:32:00.000-07:00

We'd decided to go and check out the summer solstice celebration on June 21st. Summer solstice here marks the new year for the Aymara people; a native ethnic group in the Andes and Altiplano regions of South America which have been around for as long as 2000 years. Roughly 2 million live in Bolivia, Peru and Chile.
The celebration takes place in the ancient pre-Inca ruins of Tiwanaku, near the south-eastern shore of Lake Titicaca. It's quite a journey from Cochabamba, so we decided to make a weekend of it, with a stop in Bolivia's capital La Paz. The bus journey was a standard 10 hourer, which took us through the barren, arrid Altiplano ( high plain) region where the Andes are at their widest point. Leaving Cochabamba the road carves through valleys of red clay and rock, and as it ascends the views get better and the drop on the right-hand side gets concerning. In fact we'd heard just a few days earlier that a bus had gone over the edge a week earlier. Once the road reaches the zenith the Altiplano begins. For hours on end we passed through the various parched shades of beige, light brown and sand, with small settlements scattered here and there made up of various adobe buildings with corragated iron roofs held in place by large rocks. It seems such a harsh environment in which to eck out a living, although I imagine the scenery is transformed during the rainy season. Like in most pueblitos of Bolivia, the walls of houses and buildings had huge political slogans scrawled over them in big block capitals, either in support of the first indigenous president Evo Morales, or for or against the new constitution which the MAS (Movement Towards Socialism) government has been given the task to create. The villages and towns of the Altiplano being indigenous, the messages were all 'EVO SI' or 'CONSTITUCION NUEVO-SI'.

Eventually the isolated towns became more and more frequent and impressive snow-capped mountains emerged to our right. And then, as the guide book and any travel literature written about La Paz descibes the amazing view of the city was revealed, with its impossible sprawl of buildings spilling down into the valley surrounded by hills overlooked by the mighty, snow capped Mt Illimani which towers at 6402 metres.

After a wonder around in the evening we spent the night in a lovely freezing dive of a hotel, with the mandatory ice cold shower to get us started in the morning, before catching a minibus to Tiwanaku. The mini buses are basically the little Nissan people carriers that are ubiquitos in South America and carry you anywhere around the town or city for a set price of about 20p and stop anywhere you wave them down.

We arrived in the late afternoon, and it was soon apparent that Solstice was a big event. The little streets of the village, which is close to the ruins, were lined with makeshift stalls selling hot food and drinks, the usual selection of brightly coloured hats, gloves and ponchos, and the occasional llama feotus. We'd been told that it would get cold, but as the sun made it's farewell we were content in the knowledge that we'd come prepared with extra socks, trousers, jumpers, hats and gloves.

The main square had been transformed into a festival with a decent sized stage set up complete with lights speaker stacks. Unfortunately, the whole place was plastered with the advertisements of the corporations who had sponsered the event - apparently this was the first year that solstice had gone corporate, and there had been a big push to make this year's sacred ritual celebration into some kind of mini Glastonbury.

We had a good night though. The first few groups on stage were traditional Aymara music, with about 15 people on stage in traditional dress with a variety of drums, crazy horns and panpipes. It wasn't long before I joined in with the big group of Bolivians dancing in front of us, all holding hands in a circle walking round in one direction and then 'Oy!', and then walk around in the other direction! It was good fun, and they all seemed happy and amused to have a few gringos get in on the act.
As the night went on, the temperature dropped and one local guy who had befriended us for the evening told me it would get as low as -15 degrees! Our multiple layers soon seemed inadequate.

Luckily, we had the power of the coca leaf to sustain us. The coca plant is an important part of indigenous culture in much of South America. The Aymara have grown and chewed coca leaves for centuries, and used its leaves in traditional medicine as well as in ritual offerings to the earth goddess Pachamamma and the sun god Inti. The leaves are very nourishing; rich in vitamins, protein and calcium and are used as a mild stimulant to overcome hunger, fatigue and thirst. Its also effective against the effects of altitude sickness. The active ingredient is the cocaine alkaloid, which of course is what is used to produce the drug cocaine. But the levels present in the leaves are insufficient to cause the effects and addiction associated with the drug cocaine. Various studies have shown that chewing or taking the leaf as a tea has only beneficial effects. The leaf here has the same place in Andean life as coffee in European life. It is used as a flavouring for Coca Cola, hence the name. Never the less, this leaf has been the source of much controversey since the US launched its 'war on drugs' back in the 80's. Mass US-backed erradication programmes have left thousands of Bolivia's poorest without work, and have played an important role in the rise in anti-American sentiment which eventually lead to the landslide election of Evo Morales in 2005 (he himself had been a 'cocalero' and an important leader of coca growing union which was part of a powerful movement of coca growers' unions, consisting of campesinos who are resisting the efforts of the erradication efforts). Despite the UN 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, which lists the leaf alongside cocaine and heroin, and the ongoing demonisation of the plant and its growers, the US embassy promotes the consumption of coca tea to its citizens to minimize the impacts of altitude sickness!

At 5am, everyone gathered at the entrance to the ruins to que to enter. By this point we were pretty damn shattered and cold. We eventually got in, and gathered around the main part of the ruins - the gateway of the sun. Here, the Aymara shamens, wearing traditional multicoloured hats and garments performed various sacrifices to the pachamamma, including the burning of a gift of coca leaves, insense, copal and a llama pheotus. Apparantly, they also performed a 'wilacncha' or blood sacrifice where a llama was killed and it's blood (among the most important type of animal blood the Incas offered to the forces of the earth, mountain peaks and sky). Somehow, we seemed to miss this-probably due to the sheer volume of people between us and the alter. To our right thousands were gathered underneath a huge Wiphala flag - the colourful rainbow chequered flag that represents the indigenous people of the Andes.

As the sun began to rise above the horizon, the 40, 000 people present (made up mainly of Aymara and Quecha peoples, with a scattering of Europeans) lifted their palms to the sky to recieve the energy of the sun and welcome the new year and beginning of the new agricultural cycle.

It was a nice moment, although by that point it was tainted by the fact that we were so unbearably cold - we just wanted the sun high in the sky so we could be revived back to warm blooded mammal status. The whole night had been very interesting, but we both felt that it might have been a more authentic affair if we'd experienced it a few years ago, before the corporate tentacles had taken hold.

There were more rituals and dances planned throughout the day, but by this point we-d taken our fill, and were ready for the minibus back to the capital. Colette would take the bus back to Cochabamba, whereas I-d planned a little trip to a town called Soratafor a few days of walking, reading and relaxing in the hills.

Clandenstine shots from the streets of Bolivia (Soundtrack: Micheal Jackson, Micheal Jackson, Micheal Jackson)

2009-07-04T14:24:00.000-07:00

For some time now I've wanted to take some pictures of the colourful people of Bolivia but the thing is, in general they don't take too kindly to haurds of gringos sticking cameras in their faces and snapping away everyday. So, we decided to do a little 'guerilla snapping' from our coach seats on a rewcent trip from Cochabamba to the capital La Paz. These shots are mainly from the streets of El Alto and La Paz.

The Camp for Climate Action 2009 - reclaim your future!

2009-07-02T13:31:00.000-07:00

In the summer of 2006, shortly after my return to the UK after my first big trip away, I went on a little road-trip with my friends Sam and Yerma to the South West to visit Stone Henge and the lovely town of Glastonbury. Whilst in Glastonbury I noticed a poster advertising a camp that would take place later on that summer, near to the UK's single largest point-source of CO2 emissions: Drax power station near Selby. The camp would be a space where people could get together and talk and learn about climate change, and take peaceful action to challenge it's root causes, so the poster said.

2 months later, along with 600 others, I was pitching my tent in the shadow of the beast that is Drax, in a field in Yorkshire. Throughout the week I attended a wonderfully varied collection of workshops about all aspects of climate change, from how the national energy grid works, to the effect our diet has on global emissions, to the rise of biofuels and their role in deforestation and the media's protrayal of climate change. I also got involved with some practical skill shares; so many people with an amazing variety of practical skills left me feeling a little inadequate - in my mid 20's and my highest technical achievement to date was probably wiring up a lightbulb. How would I really fare if the world as we know began to disintegrate around us?

You could learn how to build a micro turbine or an efficient 'rocket' stove from a reused vegetable oil can, how to power a sound system from a 12 volt battery, or even how to build a compost toilet!! I was blown away. I needed to gain skills!

And, if all the debates and science became a little too much, there was always the evening entertainment, where one could learn how to salsa, engage in a bit of Thai Chi, or even get involved in some speed-dating! There was live music and a cinema space, which gave the whole camp a distinctly festival-type vibe. And to keep in contact with the outside world, there was a whole 'internet' tent run by Indymedia. All of the energy used was generated from the many micro turbines and solar panels that had popped up throughout the week, and the majority of construction materials had been collected from skips and waste bound for the landfill during the months in the run up to the camp. I found it amazing. A group of normal people, without leaders or hierrachy, had built a sustainable 'village', with all the facilities needed for over 1000 people, in the space of days, even with the police's attempts to prevent them.

As climate camp is a non-hierarchical organisation, all of the desicions are made by consensus. Sometimes the daily meetings would drag on as we tried to find a solution with which everyone was happy, but in the end, this point was always reached - it really worked, and everyone was happy with the desicions. I'd never experienced anything like this before and found it a fascinating experiment in real democracy.

I met many fascinating people throughout the week, of all ages and from all walks of life, and I made some good friends. Many of them were organising themselves into small 'affinity' groups and planning non-violent direct action (NVDA) for the highly publicised 'Day of Mass Action' which was to be held on the final day of the camp, when those who fancied it could have a bash at causing mass disruption to the operation of the power plant, to send a powerful message to the government that we need a low-carbon future and the sooner we make coal-power history the the closer we get to preventing a global meltdown. People were learning how to use bike locks to attach themselves to equipment and how to form human-blockades, all under the close scrutiny of the 1000 or so police that had been drafted in from forces all around the country and positioned around the camp. This was all new to me. Although I'd become aware of activist movements over the years, and seen various videos of protests and actions, this was the first time I'd been in a position where I was surrounded by people who had decided to take the bold step, in the age old tradition of 'civil disobedience', of breaking the law in order to push for social change. And, it was the first time that I'd experienced the police's response to this type of 'unacceptable behavior'.

After careful consideration I'd decided that I was not yet ready for direct action, but there was plenty of other important stuff to be getting on with in the running of the camp. Nobody made me feel like I was 'copping out' of the action, there's no pressure to climb a fence and lock onto a conveyor belt; peaceful direct action is only one of the 4 stated aims of the camp, the others being education, movement building and demonstartion of sustainable living.

The camp left an indelible impression on me. I'd learnt so much, met so many amazing people and become inspired to learn and act more. The next camp, at Heathrow in 2007 was bigger, better and it's level of organisation even more impressive. By the next camp, which took place at Heathrow airport in 2007, I felt that I was ready for the peaceful direct action bit too, after probing deep into the history of social movements that used non-violent direct action to make the world a better place. The civil rights movements of Ghandi and Martin Luther King, the Sufferagets, the anti-road movement of the 90's (which forced a huge cut in the Conservative's road expansion plans). In all of these examples the movements were attacked and demonised by the media and government of the day and anyone else who felt threatened by people who actually have the courage and conviction to risk their liberty and break the law in order to make social change. These same people are now looked back on as heroes and heroins who took personal risks and achieved positive change.

There's no doubt that the Heathrow camp was the most exciting, inspiring, amazing thing I've ever experienced! The only thing more exciting, inspiring and amazing was the 2008 camp at Kingsnorth power station in Kent!

I can't big up the climate camp enough, and am currently feeling rather upset about not being able to make this year's camp, which will take place between Aug 27th - 2nd Sep, near London. Excitingly, there will also be Welsh and Scottish camps this year, not to mention new camps in Holland and France. Despite not being in the UK for this year's camps (though I really have been tempted to get back to the UK in time) I've been rounding up people out here and have already inspired a handfull of people to attend this year's UK, Australian and German camps!

So, the purpose of this post is really to encourage all those who read it to get involved. I challenge anyone to go to the camp(s) this summer and not returned buzzing with inspiration and energy! Last year I managed to persuade about 6 new people to go - and it changed their lives; each of them will be going again this year! Here are 5 reasons why YOU should go to your local Camp for Climate Action this year:

1/. It's the most exciting thing you'll ever experience!

2/. You can learn how to make vegan cakes, group desicions and a wind turbine, watch a film in a solar cinema and take part in a céilidh dance with 200 people all in one day!

3/. You can meet an amazing bunch of people and make new friends.

4/. It's a free camping holiday with elements of a festival and science seminar all in one. And this year's weather will make for good camping.

5/. You can become a part of a vital movement that is trying to stop the world from frying. We are the last generation who will have the chance to prevent catastrophic global climate change that will render the planet unsuitable for life as we know it. We can't wait for governments and 'other people' to sort out this problem - we must be the drive of change now! It's now or never for the future of humanity and our amazing planet - get onboard!

Here's the website: http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/

Here are some great short films from last year's camp (filmed and edited onsite during the camp at Vision on's solar powered studio)
http://www.undercurrents.org/climatecamp/index.htm

Here's some articles about previous camps that will get you in the mood:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/inside-heathrows-protest-camp-a-battle-to-save-the-world-462080.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/aug/21/comment.transport

The streets of Cochabamba

2009-07-01T12:07:00.000-07:00

News roundup. The crisis in full swing.

2009-06-15T12:40:00.000-07:00

The last couple of months have seen a few momentous happenings, here in South America, and in other parts of the world. I have worked some of them into the presentations I've been giving here in Bolivia and thought I'd give a round up here:

First ever planned evacuation of an island community due to sea-level rise

Firstly, May saw the beginning of a truly momentous event. For the first time in the history of humanity, a whole community of people are being forced to leave their homes, livelihoods and history due to the lost battle against rising sea-levels. This is the start of what is likely to be the largest displacement of people in the history of humanity. As low-lying nations become smaller and smaller, deserts spread leaving land unproductive for crops and animals, glaciers melt and droughts become more frequent, more and more people will earn the title 'climate change refugee' and be forced to join the burgeoning masses of people with nowhere to go. Who will take them in? And, the majority of them will be the poorest people of the world; those who have done the least to cause the problem in the first place.

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/05/first-climate-change-refugees-evacuate.php

Bolivia's highest glacier has gone

Another symbolic occurance has passed recently. Chacaltaya, not long ago the world's highest ski resort, has officially disappeared. It's predicted that most of the Andes Glaciers will have melted over the next 20 years, leaving tens of millions without water. Conflict is already on the rise between mountain communities, as vital water supplies dwindle, and communities positioned higher up attempt to divert water, leaving those below with reduced supplies.

http://solveclimate.com/blog/20090506/bolivias-chacaltaya-glacier-melts-nothing-6-years-early

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/24/andes-tribe-threat-bolivia-climate-change

Climate change responsible for 300,000 deaths per year
A compehensive study by Kofi Annan's Global Humanitarian Forum has looked at the human cost of climate change. This is the first time a study has saught to quantify climate change-related death rates and the number of those whose lives are being seriously affected.

http://www.ghf-geneva.org/index.cfm?uNewsID=157

Peru's indigenous fight for the their survival and for the survival of planet earth

The indigenous people living in Peru's Amazonian jungle have been mobilized for 7 weeks in response to the Peruvian governments attempts to drive them from their ancesterol homes and open the forest up to foreign corporations for logging and oil extraction. This is part of the NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), the same trade agreement that initiated the Zapatista uprising in Mexico at the beginning of this century. When people are pushed and pushed until they face the potential elimination of their culture and way of life, they are often left with little choice but to resist and stand up for their rights. A wave of peaceful direct action such as road blockades and the occupation of foreign oil refineries was finaly met with government-backed violence just over a week ago, when helicopter gunships opened fire onto the thousands of unarmed indigenous people below, killing up to 50. The Peruvian Amazon is the largest swathe of Amazon rainforest outside of Peru and Garcia's goverment are intenet on opening up 70% of it to destructive resource extraction. Not only are these brave people fighting for their own survival, but they're unwittingly fighting for the survival of all of humanity at a time of climate crisis. If we loose the remaining rainforests of the world, we loose the battle against catastrophic climate change.

http://www.takepart.com/blog/2009/05/21/indigenous-peoples-fight-to-protect-peruvian-amazon-from-big-oil/

http://www.amazonwatch.org/newsroom/view_news.php?id=1843

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jun/13/forests-environment-oil-companies

Down with tha Cochabambinos

2009-06-15T08:58:00.000-07:00

There's so much to like about Cochabamba. Firstly, despite being a city, it really doesn't seem like one. Everything we need is a few blocks walk away, and there's a nice sense of community. Then there's the climate - we have just entered autumn, and the leaves are falling, yet everyday the sun shines from start to finish, and it's warm enough to wear shorts and vest. The people are friendly and there is a strong presence of indigenous campesinos who have migrated here from the countryside, or who travel here daily to sell their wares. The city sits nestled in a valley surrounded by impressive green hills, with old Christy keeping watch above.

I began a placement with a local environmental education organisation called Gaia Pacha, and Colette has been working for an orphanage for mentally handicapped children. I have been working on two main projects; the creation of a package of environmental education activities and games for local school children, and the creation of a 'sensory' garden for the youth at a centre for blind children/youth. The latter has been the more challenging of the two. I've been teaching two sessions per week with my group of five students. Usually, I can get by with my combination of bad spanish and hand signals, but obviously in this case the hand signals don't go very far. It's been vey enjoyable though, and together we've managed to transform a corner of scrap land at the centre into a lovely garden, complete with lot's of touchy-feely plants, smelly herbs and flowers, and even a few veggies.

I've also been giving some presentations. Gaia Pacha invited me to give one about my experiences in environmental education. It was to be my first presentation in spanish, and quite frankly I was shitting myself. But in the end, it went well. I dedicated about half of it to the amazing Camp for Climate Action, and the audiance seemed pretty impressed by the organisation and determination of the growing movement of climate change activism. A few weeks later, I gave another at a climate change afternoon I organised at our house, this time focussing on recent developments in climate change and a more detailed look at climate camp, running through the whole process of last year's camp at Kingsnorth. At least three people came to ask me for contact details for the camps due to take place in their countries this year, which was pleasing. This has definately been a big step forward for my presentation giving confidence - as many of my friends know, giving presentations has always been a fear of mine. But I'll always remember the vital tip from that seminal text 'How to give successful presentations' - "Never wear an ostentatious belt buckle while giving a presentation, as this could be seen as a ploy to direct the audiences' attention away from your face". This is truly the key. (Thanks again for that one Pinsey!!!).

I've also been involved in the translation of script for the creation of English subtitles for a locally made film about climate change and it's affects on the people of Bolivia. This was both fascinating and sad, hearing first hand how poor, mountain communities are struggling to hold it together in the face of the climatic change which they have done the least to create.

Just by chance, my birthday fell on the first friday of the month, which meant that it was the Q'owa; a ritual that is part of the millennial Andean tradition of Bolivia. Today it is practiced in the valleys and in the eastern part of Bolivia. It involves the presentation of gifts to Pacha Mamma (mother nature in the native Quechua language) including the burning of coca leaves and the the consumption of Chicha - an alcoholic drink made from fermented corn. Small amounts of the drink are poured onto the ground for her to absorb. This offering is given with the purpose of receiving protection and blessing from the gods. It is a reciprocal process; the people nourish Pachamama and she protects them and helps with families, work, and business. On the first friday, the air of the city is full of smoke from people making offerings from the front door steps of their homes and shops, and there's a really nice vibe around the place. There was a bonfire, and a local band, but unfortunately we missed the 'burning of the llama feotus'. Shame.

The day after, we went to the annual Cochabamba fair. It was the strangest fair I've ever been to. It had all the usuals - candy floss, hot drinks, fair rides, but then it also seemed to double up as a huge commercial fair, with whole areas dedicated to the sale of new tractors and the latest in dentist chair design. In fact there werte two dentist chair strongholds, and we tried out some superb new models, which were slightly more exciting than the rides on offer.

Next week I should be doing another radio interview, and hopefully I'll also be going on a trip with 'Energetica', an organisation that fits solar panels for the small mountain communites not reached by the energy grid. So, we've been keeping busy here in Cochabamba, and have made many good friends and acquaintances along the way. It's nice to feel a part of the community again, and I'll be a little sad when we move on in a week or so. But then again, I am getting the itch again, and the promise of new adventure is beginning to bubble once more.

A love affair with Cochabamba

2009-06-12T14:17:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been a while so I thought i'd better get on with it and write something about our last 8 weeks or so here in Bolivia. Well, after Potosi we headed to the city of Sucre for a few days. We didn't really fall in love with the place. The highlights were two museums we visited. The first was this dinosaur park positioned near a cement factory that had discovered a huge piece of prehistoric land covered in dinosaur footprints whilst digging. It was pretty cool, and I got to see the prints of all of my childhood favourites. There were also some huge, life-sized models which were both deliciously taccy and impressive.

The other museum was about Indegenous culture and was fascinating. One of the things that really made me want to spend time in Bolivia is the strong indigenous culture here. We learnt about the Pacha Mamma (mother nature) rituals, the traditional dress and music and dances of the various ethnic groups that live in the Bolivian Andes.

With little else to hold us in Sucre, we moved on to Cochabamba.

Cochabamba was a name I was aware of long before I'd had any inclination to travel to South America. As I was becoming more aware of global issues, and generally more upset about the injustices of the world, an old friend of mine had began to supply me with a steady trickle of anarchist 'zines' and activist videos. This was how I learnt about the 'water war' of 2000. The Bolivian goverment at the time had decided to sell the city's water to a subsidiary of the American corporation Bechtel. After privatisation, water bills rocketed, and left the poorest people with bills up to 50% more expensive for the resource that should be a given right to all life.Incensed at these unaffordable price hikes, the people of Cochabamba began to organise. They took to the streets in protests that resulted in the city being shut down on three seperate occasions by general strikes and road blockades. The president at the time responded with violence, sending in armed troups, leaving over 100 people wounded and one 17 year old boy dead. By April, the Bechtel officials finally gave up and scuttled back to the states, and the people had won back their water. The Cochabamba water revoult has since become a global legend.
The 10 hour journey to Cochabamba was an offroad affair, at one point we had to navigate around a pile of debris from what looked like a recent landslide. We arrived around 5am. Our first impressions were far from positive; we knew that Cochabamba was Bolivia's 3rd biggest city, yet as we approached through the generic grids of ramshackle suburbs it felt somehow hostile, a little intimidating. Maybe we were just tired. As the taxi took us to the cheapest option in the Lonely Planet, we had our first view of 'Cristo de la Concordia'; a 112.2 ft tall, pure white and illuminated statue of Christ perched up on the hillside, arms spread apart, looking down on the city below. Apparently he's the biggest in Latin America, beating his more famous doppleganger in Rio de janero.

For a few days, we moved from cheap hostal to cheap hostal, searching for a room in which we could get a decent night's sleep. We had spoken to someone at the organisation Sustainable Bolivia about volunteer opportunities, and had decided that we might stay for a month or so. After a few days in the city we'd decided that we liked it afterall. But, we just couldn't find anywhere to stay. In one place we were welcomed to our new room by a used condom slouched in the corner, in another the concrete balcony leading to our room was slanted at an alarming angle, with cracks that pointed to imminent disaster. And the paper-thin walls left nothing to the imagination. If our neighbour Pedro knew the things I knew about him...But then finally, we were lead to shining beacon of light - Bolivia house. For 180 US dollars per month between us, we have been staying in a gorgeous house, complete with bacony, huge kitchen and fantastic garden complete with mandarin tree and humming birds.

And, just to complete the picture, I found a cool little club called La Marka, whose owners almost ejaculated when i told them that I play drum & bass and a little dubstep. So we were set up. Amazing house, great volunteer projects and a place to DJ every weekend.

A speech by Paul Hawken

2009-05-21T08:28:00.000-07:00

Today I was forwarded this amazing speech by Paul Hawken, an environmentalist whose written some books which have had a pretty big impact - I remember one corporation CEO, featured in the great film 'the corporation' http://www.thecorporation.com/, talking about how one of his books had left him completey enlightened and lead to a complete turn around of how he viewed life and ran his business. The book was 'The ecology of commerce' - I picked it up in Cairns, Australia on my last big trip, but never got round to reading it. This speech pretty much sums up my current thoughts about the world, our place in it, pessamism and hope, and quite franky it has brightened up my day!

The Unforgettable Commencement Address by Paul Hawken to the Class of 2009, University of Portland, May 3, 2009 :

When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a
simple short talk that was "direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate,
lean, shivering, startling, and graceful." Boy, no pressure there.

But let's begin with the startling part. Hey, Class of 2009: you are
going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth
at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of
decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation... but not
one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute
that statement. Basically, the earth needs a new operating system, you
are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.

This planet came with a set of operating instructions, but we seem to
have misplaced them. Important rules like don't poison the water,
soil, or air, and don't let the earth get overcrowded, and don't touch
the thermostat have been broken. Buckminster Fuller said that
spaceship earth was so ingeniously designed that no one has a clue
that we are on one, flying through the universe at a million miles per
hour, with no need for seatbelts, lots of room in coach, and really
good food, but all that is changing.

There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will
receive, and in case you didn't bring lemon juice to decode it, I can
tell you what it says: YOU ARE BRILLIANT, AND THE EARTH IS HIRING.
The earth couldn't afford to send any recruiters or limos to your school.
It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and
that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint. And
here's the deal: Forget that this task of planet-saving is not
possible in the time required. Don't be put off by people who know
what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it
was impossible only after you are done.

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my
answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is
happening on earth and aren't pessimistic, you don't understand data.
But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and
the lives of the poor, and you aren't optimistic, you haven't got a
pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing
to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore
some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world. The poet
Adrienne Rich wrote, "So much has been destroyed I have cast my lot
with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary
power, reconstitute the world." There could be no better description.
Humanity is coalescing. It is reconstituting the world, and the action
is taking place in schoolrooms, farms, jungles, villages, campuses,
companies, refuge camps, deserts, fisheries, and slums.

You join a multitude of caring people. No one knows how many groups
and organizations are working on the most salient issues of our day:
climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger,
conservation, human rights, and more. This is the largest movement the
world has ever seen. Rather than control, it seeks connection. Rather
than dominance, it strives to disperse concentrations of power. Like
Mercy Corps, it works behind the scenes and gets the job done. Large
as it is, no one knows the true size of this movement. It provides
hope, support, and meaning to billions of people in the world. Its
clout resides in idea, not in force. It is made up of teachers,
children, peasants, businesspeople, rappers, organic farmers, nuns,
artists, government workers, fisherfolk, engineers, students,
incorrigible writers, weeping Muslims, concerned mothers, poets,
doctors without borders, grieving Christians, street musicians, the
President of the United States of America, and as the writer David
James Duncan would say, the Creator, the One who loves us all in such
a huge way.
There is a rabbinical teaching that says if the world is ending and
the Messiah arrives, first plant a tree, and then see if the story is
true. Inspiration is not garnered from the litanies of what may befall
us; it resides in humanity's willingness to restore, redress, reform,
rebuild, recover, reimagine, and reconsider. "One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept
shouting their bad advice," is Mary Oliver's description of moving
away from the profane toward a deep sense of connectedness to the
living world.

Millions of people are working on behalf of strangers, even if the
evening news is usually about the death of strangers. This kindness of
strangers has religious, even mythic origins, and very specific
eighteenth-century roots. Abolitionists were the first people to
create a national and global movement to defend the rights of those
they did not know. Until that time, no group had filed a grievance
except on behalf of itself. The founders of this movement were largely
unknown Granville Clark, Thomas Clarkson, Josiah Wedgwood and their
goal was ridiculous on the face of it: at that time three out of four
people in the world were enslaved. Enslaving each other was what human
beings had done for ages. And the abolitionist movement was greeted
with incredulity. Conservative spokesmen ridiculed the abolitionists
as liberals, progressives, do-gooders, meddlers, and activists. They
were told they would ruin the economy and drive England into poverty.
But for the first time in history a group of people organized
themselves to help people they would never know, from whom they would
never receive direct or indirect benefit.. And today tens of millions
of people do this every day. It is called the world of non-profits,
civil society, schools, social entrepreneurship, and non-governmental
organizations, of companies who place social and environmental justice
at the top of their strategic goals. The scope and scale of this
effort is unparalleled in history.

The living world is not "out there" somewhere, but in your heart. What
do we know about life? In the words of biologist Janine Benyus, life
creates the conditions that are conducive to life. I can think of no
better motto for a future economy. We have tens of thousands of
abandoned homes without people and tens of thousands of abandoned
people without homes. We have failed bankers advising failed
regulators on how to save failed assets. Think about this: we are the
only species on this planet without full employment. Brilliant. We
have an economy that tells us that it is cheaper to destroy earth in
real time than to renew, restore, and sustain it. You can print money
to bail out a bank but you can't print life to bail out a planet. At present
we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross
domestic product. We can just as easily have an economy that is based on
healing the future instead of stealing it. We can either create assets for the
future or take the assets of the future. One is called restoration and the
other exploitation. And whenever we exploit the earth we exploit people
and cause untold suffering. Working for the earth is not a way to get rich,
it is a way to be rich.

The first living cell came into being nearly 40 million centuries ago,
and its direct descendants are in all of our bloodstreams. Literally
you are breathing molecules this very second that were inhaled by
Moses, Mother Teresa, and Bono. We are vastly interconnected. Our
fates are inseparable. We are here because the dream of every cell is
to become two cells. In each of you are one quadrillion cells, 90
percent of which are not human cells. Your body is a community, and
without those other microorganisms you would perish in hours. Each
human cell has 400 billion molecules conducting millions of processes
between trillions of atoms. The total cellular activity in one human
body is staggering: one septillion actions at any one moment, a one
with twenty-four zeros after it. In a millisecond, our body has
undergone ten times more processes than there are stars in the
universe exactly what Charles Darwin foretold when he said science
would discover that each living creature was a "little universe formed
of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute
and as numerous as the stars of heaven."

So I have two questions for you all: First, can you feel your body?
Stop for a moment. Feel your body. One septillion activities going on
simultaneously, and your body does this so well you are free to ignore
it, and wonder instead when this speech will end. Second question: who
is in charge of your body? Who is managing those molecules? Hopefully
not a political party. Life is creating the conditions that are
conducive to life inside you, just as in all of nature. What I want
you to imagine is that collectively humanity is evincing a deep innate
wisdom in coming together to heal the wounds and insults of the past.
Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came
out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of
course. The world would become religious overnight. We would be
ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead the
stars come out every night, and we watch television.

This extraordinary time when we are globally aware of each other and
the multiple dangers that threaten civilization has never happened,
not in a thousand years, not in ten thousand years. Each of us is as
complex and beautiful as all the stars in the universe. We have done
great things and we have gone way off course in terms of honoring
creation. You are graduating to the most amazing, challenging,
stupefying challenge ever bequested to any generation. The generations
before you failed. They didn't stay up all night. They got distracted
and lost sight of the fact that life is a miracle every moment of your
existence. Nature beckons you to be on her side. You couldn't ask for
a better boss. The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic,
not the dreamer. Hopefulness only makes sense when it doesn't make
sense to be hopeful. This is your century. Take it and run as if your
life depends on it.

Paul Hawken is a renowned entrepreneur, visionary environmental
activist, and author of many books, most recently Blessed Unrest: How
the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw
>It Coming. He was presented with an honorary doctorate of humane
letters by University president Father Bill Beauchamp, C.S.C., in May,
when he delivered this superb speech. Our thanks especially to Erica
Linson for her help making that moment possible.

A little something for vegetarian week

2009-05-18T11:21:00.000-07:00

As Monday marked the first day of national vegetarian week, I thought I'd put up this interesting article from the guardian this week for all to browse:

Can vegetarians save the world?
A small town in Belgium has gone meat-free one day a week. A sign of things to come, says one food historian. By Tristram Stuart.

For decades, environmental arguments against eating meat have been largely the preserve of vegetarian websites and magazines. Just two years ago it seemed inconceivable that significant numbers of western Europeans would be ready to down their steak knives and graze on vegetation for the sake of the planet. The rapidity with which this situation has changed is astonishing.
The breakthrough came in 2006 when the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) published a study, Livestock's Long Shadow, showing that the livestock industry is responsible for a staggering 18% of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. This is only the beginning of the story. In 2008, Brazil announced that in the 12 months to July it had lost 12,000 sq km (3m acres) of the Amazon rainforest, mainly to cattle ranchers and soy producers supplying European markets with animal feed. There is water scarcity in large parts of the world, yet livestock-rearing can use up to 200 times more water a kilogram (2.2lbs) of meat produced than is used in growing wheat. Given the volatile global food prices, it seems foolhardy to divert 1.2bn tonnes of fodder – including cereals – to fuel global meat consumption, which has increased by more than two and half times since 1970.
Vegetarians have been around for a very long time – Pythagoreans forbade eating animals more than 2,500 years ago – but even as the environmental evidence mounted, they didn't appear to be winning the argument. Today in Britain just 2% of the population is vegetarian.
Thankfully, a more pragmatic alternative to total abstinence now seems to be emerging. In September 2008, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a vegetarian himself, called on people to take personal responsibility for the impacts of their consumption.
"Give up meat for one day [a week] initially, and decrease it from there," he said. "In terms of immediacy of action and the feasibility of bringing about reductions in a short period of time, it clearly is the most attractive opportunity." This week the Belgian city of Ghent met his demands by declaring Thursday a meat-free day. Restaurants, canteens and schools will now opt to make vegetarianism the default for one day a week, and promote meat-free meals on other days as well.
This is not the first institutional backing for such a move. In Britain, the NHS now aims to reduce its impact on the environment partly by "increasing the use of sustainably sourced fish and reducing our reliance on eggs, meat and dairy". Last year, Camden council in London announced that it would be issuing a report calling for schools, care homes and canteens on council premises to cut meat from menus and encourage staff to become vegetarian. (In the end the initiative was shot down by Conservative councillors who insisted that people should not be deprived of choice.) While in Germany the federal environment agency in January called on Germans to follow a more Mediterranean diet by reserving meat only for special occasions.
These initiatives may sound novel, but in fact they reinstate what was for centuries an obligatory practice across Europe. The fasting laws of the Catholic church stipulated that on Fridays, fast days, and Lent, no one could eat meat or wine; on some days, dairy products and fish were also banned. Even after the Reformation Elizabeth I upheld the Lenten fast, insisting that while there was no religious basis for fasting, there were sound utilitarian motives: to protect the country's livestock from over-exploitation and to promote the fishing industry (which had the ancillary benefit of increasing the number of ships available for the navy).
Towards the end of the 18th century, two consecutive bad harvests in Europe created shortages. There was a huge public clamour for the wealthy to cut down on their meat consumption in order to leave more grain for the poor. The idea that meat was a cruel profligacy became current, and led Percy Bysshe Shelley to declare that the carnivorous rich literally monopolised land and food by taking more of it than they needed. "The use of animal flesh," he said, "directly militates with this equality of the rights of man."
In the wake of last year's food crisis and with mounting concern over global warming, we appear to have reached a similar crisis moment.
The vegetarian argument is complicated, however, by the fact that in terms of environmental impact, no two pieces of meat are the same. A hunk of beef raised on Scottish moorland has a very different ecological footprint from one created in an intensive feedlot using concentrated cereal feed, and a wild venison or rabbit casserole is arguably greener than a vegetable curry. Likewise, countries have very different animal husbandry methods. For example, in the US, for each calorie of meat or dairy food produced, farm animals consume on average more than 5 calories of feed. In India the rate is a less than 1.5 calories. In Kenya, where there isn't the luxury of feeding grains to animals, livestock yield more calories than they consume because they are fattened on grass and agricultural by-products inedible to humans.
In a paper published last month in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, food ecologist Annika Carlsson-Kanyama showed that kilo for kilo, beef and pork could produce 30 times more CO² emissions than other protein rich foods such as beans. On the other hand, the paper also indicated that poultry and eggs had much lower emissions than cheese, which was among the highest polluters. So do meat-free days, and arguments for vegetarianism in general, take adequate consideration of these subtleties, or should we all be chucking out the cheese and going vegan?
"A vegetarian day is a simple message that people can understand," says Carlsson-Kanyama, "though probably what we ultimately need to do is eat less animal products overall."
Alex Evans, fellow at the Centre on International Cooperation at New York University, points out that more and more people – including Sir Nicholas Stern, the author of a 2006 review on the economics of global warming – accept that the only equitable way of achieving an international agreement on climate change is for rich and poor nations to converge on an equal per capita "fair share" of carbon emissions. "The same ought to apply to food," Evans says, "but currently there is no agreed method for calculating what is my 'fair share' of the world's food supply – in particular how much meat."
Based on the global food production figures published by the FAO, I did a few preliminary calculations. Global average consumption of meat and dairy products including milk was 152kg a person in 2003. Average EU and US consumption, by contrast, was over 400kg, while Uganda's was 45kg. In order to reach the equitable fair share of global production, rich western countries would have to cut their consumption by 2.7 times – and this doesn't include the fact that the butter will have to be spread even more thinly if the global population really does increase by another 2.3 billion by 2050.
However, still further reductions would be necessary because global meat production is already at unsustainable levels. The IPCC among other bodies, has called for an 80% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Since high levels of meat and dairy consumption are luxuries, it seems reasonable to expect livestock production to take its share of the hit. For rich western countries this would mean decreasing meat and dairy consumption to significantly less than one tenth of current levels, the sooner the better.
It is all very well for 2% of the population to live in a monastic state of meatlessness while everyone else gorges their way towards environmental meltdown or the nearest heart clinic. Vegetarianism is good for the willing minority, but not much use as a campaign tool. Beginning as Ghent has done, with one meat-free day a week, is a historically-proven idea palatably re-fashioned for the age of eco-consciousness. It also appears to be gaining popular approval, even if McDonald's need not fear for the survival of its Big Mac, yet.

Stuck in the world's highest city: a dynamite & diahrrea conspiracy

2009-04-26T12:21:00.000-07:00

Potosi was once a city of unbelievable wealth, the richest city in the world, a wealth that was generated by the plundering of the abundant silver present within the big, brown mountain 'Cerro Rico' whose moody presence looms over the city.

The Spaniards, using the slave force of millions of indigenous people and imported African slaves, managed to extract so much silver that it was said to have underwritten the spanish empire for 2 centuries. Up to 8 million people died under the hellish conditions of the mines, where miners are exposed to a variety of noxious chemicals and temperatures can range from between below freezing to 45 degrees celcious. The Spanish took almost all of it, and left Bolivia with nothing, as one of the poorest countries in Latin America.

Sadly, people still search for the few remaining slivers of silver. Thousands of people still work the mines, despite the life-shortening silicosis pneumonia which usually kills after 10 years of labour, and shockingly, up to 6000 children work there. They know that the majority of their quarry is long gone, and they barely make enough money to survive, yet they cling to the dream of one more big find.

We had the opportunity to visit the mine, and I almost went, but in the end the idea of scrambling around in a damp, crack 4km deep amongst exploding dynamite didn't quite draw me enough, and anyhow, we got to see a fascinating film called 'The devil's miners' that more than substituted. It followed the life of this poor 13 yr old who is working the mines with his 9 yr old brother as their dad died, so the need for family income left them with little choice in the matter.
Interestingly, the miners split their worship between their Catholic God, when they are above ground level, and El Tio, the devil, when they enter his domain. Each of the mines has its own devil, and the miners regularily visit him to adorn him with gifts to ask for safety and good fortune. They spend up to 24 hours at a time in the mines, hamster-like cheeks stuffed with coca leaves (which give energy and supress hunger) and may breath in a noxious mixture of gases whilst using basic pick-axes and gas headlamps.
We loved the city. Cerro Rico is so impressive, making an amazing unreal super-imposed backdrop, especially when it's colours morph from shade to shade as the sun make's it's daily descent. The worn splendour of the old streets and buildings tell of better times. One thing that took me a while to notice was the complete lack of chain supermarkets - probably the first city i've been to without them. As we don't use these over-packaging, producer-exploiting, 'corporate take-over of our foodchain' - attempting stores of discontent, we wouldn't usually notice their absence straight away. But as far as we could tell, Potosi was supermarket-free and small independent food stores are thriving. How refreshing. We met up with Chaz again, and decided to go and watch a local derby between Real Potosi and another team from the city. The game was pretty mediocre, and the atmosphere lackadaisical, but it's highlight was pretty amusing. The presence of the military police was explained after the linesman on our side made a dodgy decision, which the crowd didn't take to well. A deluge of fruit and empty plastic bottle flew towards him, and landed around his feet as the game continued. He tried his best to pretend he hadn't noticed, but as the bombardment continued, two military police moved between him and us and held their riot shields up to stop the rogue apple cores from interuppting his game!!!!

We found a great little restaurant called the Llama, which did a nice selection of veggie set meals, and a few llama dishes. Llamas are an animal of huge importance in the Andes, as a source of food and wool. After a bit of research about their rearing, we found they were free-range, and decided to treat ourselves with a rare meat meal. It was lovely, I devoured the pork-like meat like a wolf. The restaurant also doubles up as a book exchange, and I found a selection of speaches by Hugo Chavez, which is pretty interesting.

We had planned to leave, but decided to stay one more day to check out a museum. Little did we know that a 48 hour strike and blockade of the city had been planned. So, we awoke to find that no transport would be entering or leaving the city for the next two days, and that many businesses - including the museum which had been our reason for staying the extra day - were closed in solidarity. The miners had blockaded the main roads, whilst locals closed the inner city roads with plastic tape, banners, and loads of big rocks. And so it was, our first Bolivian blockade! It was actually quite nice - the blockades here are a regular occurance, and often have the vibe of a public holiday. People set up their stalls and children and adults alike played games in the middle of the car-free streets. It all felt a bit like a 'reclaim the streets' protest. I think they were calling for better roads, as the current roads are no more than rough dirt tracks. But then the miners seemed to be behind it, so we weren't quite sure what it was about (I later learned that historically the miners have taken a lead role in many political actions in Bolivia).

On the second day we'd heard that some taxis were taking people out and on to Sucre, if you paid them a bit more, so we decided to join a French and Swiss girl who were going to look for a taxi. As we approached the bus station there was a fair bit of commotion and and there were a big group of miners who seemed to be getting tad rowdy, it looked and sounded like they were brawling, but I couldn't be sure. There were a few massive bangs as they let off sticks of dynamite. It all seemed a bit tense, and a lady selling bus tickets for one of the bus companies was trying to tell us that it was impossible to leave until 7 pm, when the 48 hours was up. We decided to look for a taxi all the same, agreeing that as a bus ticket vendor, she'd obviously be inclined to tell us that. But, as we turned a corner, we realised that it would probably be best we waited after all. One taxi had found an unblocked street, and driven away, much to the annoyance of the miners, who proceeded to run over to block prevent further cars from doing the same. As more dynamite exploded, another car attempted the same route, only to be met by miners who surrounded the car and began letting the tires down and forcing the doors open!!! Other cars that had been heading for the same route began reversing speedily back up the hill, and we decided to follow suite! It was pretty exciting stuff! The people here certainly let thier voices be heard when they want something done. I can't imagine the people of a city in the UK coming together to blockade the city for 48 hours to make demands on the government (though sometimes I wish they bloody well would)!

So, we decided we'd let it run its course, and stay one more night. We bought tickets for early the next morning and checked into a hotel accross the road from the bus station. It was a grade A shit hole, but at least we wouldnt have to worry about getting to the bus station early the next day. Unfortunately, later that night, Colette woke up with a dodgy tummy, and was soon bursting from both ends. This went on throughout the night, and sure enough my stomach began too, and we were soon tag-teaming the loo. There was no way we'd be getting that early morning bus, so I asked if we could pay for half a day, to give us chance to recover before the evening bus. We took the day to recover, and felt well enough to travel on to Sucre in the evening.

Salar de Uyuni - the world's biggest salt lake

2009-04-26T11:49:00.000-07:00

We set off in the morning and met up with the two others we'd be sharing the Jeep with for the 4 day tour, Arry from london and Lesley from the States.

We began our ascent and our first stop was a view over a deep gorge with a dry river bed at the centre, below tall, impressive red craggs. We continued up and up along a winding dirt track, sometimes with steep drops on either side.

After around 7 hours we stopped in a tiny settlement, San Antonio de Lipez at 4200m above sea level, with stunning views of a nearby snow-capped montain and a little church and stream. It was such a peaceful place. Choalitas rounded up a herd of Llamas and lead them across the stream as I sat and watched. Each llama had brightly coloured fabrics woven into their fleece's and around their ears, the traditonal practice of an indigenous festival, giving them the appearance of 'cyber-llamas' returning from some kind of llama rave. As soon as the sun disappeared behind the hills the temperature dropped off quicky, and we felt the harshness of this barren, desolate habitat. We found the bodyof a huge Condor - it was only a juvenile and was still massive, and had apparently died of natural causes.

Interestingly, each of the small mud houses has its own solar panel, supplied by the government, to provide what little electricity the people there use. Looks like even Bolivia is ahead of the UK in solar capacity. Later in the evening the stars shone brilliantly, and the milkyway spread across the sky like a sliver of pale mist. We had a lovely dinner prepared by our guide and his helper, and retired early to our beds to mummify ourselves in piles of thick blankets.

4am start. The air was so cold and thin and Mercury shone bright above the the horizon. After a hearty breakfast and a short drive we stopped at the ruins of an ancient town which had been abandoned. The sun hadn't yet materialised from behind the hills and we wondered around the eerily silent remains of a town which had been abandoned under mysterious circumstances. Apparently bad spirits had decided to move in and people had begun to die, one by one, so the people did a runner - spooky stuff.

We set off again and passed vicuñas (a bit like a deer), some animals that resembled chinchillas and loads of llamas. The sun rose and we enjoyed its warmth as landscape merged into desert.

We stopped at this amazing area of crazy rock formations formed by weathering, including the 'tree of rock'. Spent 30 min or so clambering around on the rocks - I love climbing around on stuff, i'm sure it's a hangover from our ape days. Might have to get involved in a bit of rock climbing when I get home.

There was so much breathtaking scenery we could hardly breath. Actually that was probably the altitude. We reached 4900 m above sea level at one point. The physical effects on your body include shortness of breath and a slight throbbing pressure like sensation on the old cerebrum, a little unpleasant times, but nothing too unbearable. We made like the locals and chewed mouth fulls of coca leaves which seemed to help.

Over the following three days we stopped at stunning glacial lakes with flocks of pink flamingos sifting through the turquoise water, snow capped volcanos and smooth, banded hills looking like scenes from Dali paintings. We stopped at a thermal pool for a dip in waters 30 C warm, checked out some geysers of bubbling mud and eggy sulphurus steam, and mirror-perfect lakes that reflected the surrounding mountains.

On the final morning we drove to the actual salt lakes before sunrise. Salar de Uyuni is the world's largets salt flats at 10,582 km² . About 40,000 years ago, the area was part of the massive prehistoric Lake Minchin. Eventually the lake evaporated, leaving behind Poopo Lake and Uru uru lake, and two major salt deserts including Uyuni. It's the most surreal thing I've ever experienced. It's incredibly vast, white, crispy salt, split into a consistent pattern of cells stretching as far as the eye can see. It felt like walking on hard snow. The sun began to rise. It was a gorgeous moment, ruined temporarily by the our driver blasting some ridiculous 80's classic from the Jeep (can't remember the track, it was a classic, but there's a time and a place - maybe a school disco or wedding, but surely not here). I don't know what he was thinking.
We then headed to the 'island' Lomo Pescado which is just bizzare - an island made of ancient coral reef covered in cacti up to 15 ft tall. I climbed to the top and got an idea of just how huge the flats are. It seemed like a real island in the middle of a calm, white ocean. I'll never forget it.
Met a nice chap called Chaz from Gloucestershire. We chatted about his home on a longboat, and once again it got me thinking about whether or not this could be an option for me one day. Certainly one way of keeping ahead when rising sea levels begin to reclaim the land.

After breakfast at the island, we continued on through the bright sea of salt, stopped to take a few photos, and watched the weekly 'crossing of the train' - the one train which crosses the flats to transport salt and minerals to Chile (whose distant mountains we could see).

It was a great 4 days, even though it was a long time to spend in a Jeep. It was amazing to see so many different landscapes over such a short period of time, and to get a glimpse of Bolivia's natural untainted beauty (well, i suppose it was slightly tainted by the presence of the many tour Jeeps bombing around, including our own). Definately one of the highlights of the trip. We arrived in the town of Uyuni, bought our bus tickets to Potosi for later that evening, ate some mexican food with Chaz, and got ready to move on once again.

A wander around Tupiza

2009-04-25T14:20:00.000-07:00

Tupiza

2009-04-16T16:24:00.000-07:00

The bus ride from Villazon was awsome. As we made our bumpy ascent into the mountains we passed some fantastic scenery . As the light diminished the black outlines of cacti on the hills resembled an exodus of strange alien figures . We saw our first Llama. After emerging from a mountain tunnel, we spotted the carcass of a coach that had tumbled to it's fate 200 feet below - a reminder of the dangers of Bolivian roads.

We arrived in Tupiza and found a little place for 40 bolivianos a night - roughly 4 quid between us. The balcony looked out onto the jagged red clay mountains that lay on one side, the kitchen over looked the grey rocky hills on the other. Depending on the time of day, the various types of hills and mountains surrounding us would change colour. There were various shades of greys, browns, and reds, and despite being barren and desolate, it was beautiful. From time to time we spotted herds of wild mountain goat clambering amongst the red rocks far and high in the distance.

Tupiza is just under 3000 metres high, and we could feel it- the smallest of actions could leave us feeling breathless.

We met a few other travelers and went to the nearest 'bar'. We were led by a man through the front of his little llama/alpacca clothing shop out into the back, to his new pride and joy - a bar which he hoped would soon be the centre of Tupizza'a nightlife, but which was empty for the moment.

The next day, we went for a bit of a hike, with a French girl called Rafael. The scenery was stunning, and throughout the day I enjoyed moments of the rare sensation of silence. We walked along dried-up riverbeds, between dry shrubs and cacti, climbed a huge rock formation called 'punto del diablo' (the devil's point) and big clay/scree hills that resembled huge solidified globs of volcanic lava. We found huge canyons, and passed high, jagged clay formations that towered above us looking sinister like a landscape lifted straight out of The Lord of the rings. It was somewhere in this region of Bolivia where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid met their maker at the hands of the Bolivian police in 1906. It made a nice change to be able to go for a walk without having to take a guide and pay through the nose.
We met a couple of lovely Irish gals on horses, and later on that night we all met up for dinner.

The next day, we got up and prepared for a 4 day Jeep tour around Bolivia's South West, finishing in the famous 'Salar de Uyuni', the world's largest salt lake.

Bolivia bound

2009-04-14T18:47:00.000-07:00

By the time we'd reached the bus station, we'd decided to give the north of Argentina the wide birth, due to tales of dengue death and mayhem. We'd hoped to camp, but came to the conclusion that this was a bad idea. It was mainly Colette who had the doubt - I had been of the opinion that we should find out exactly where the outbreaks were and avoid those areas, not the whole region. However, 2 things made me realise we'd probably made the right choice; as we boarded the bus for Jujuy anyone boarding north bound buses was handed a free big bottle of 'Psst' mosquito repellent, courtesy of the Argentinian government, and during our 30 hour bus ride, I saw south bound traffic being stopped and fumagated by men in boiler suits and masks at least 3 times. Some people complained about over the top media scare mongering and claimed that it was nowhere near as bad as people were saying. We decided against finding out for ourselves. We really were due to be in Bolivia by this point anyway.

We arrived at La Quiaca after dark, and decided to stay the night and cross the border the next morning. Stepping off the bus we could imediately feel Bolivia's proximity. The indigenous blood was evident in the faces of the people and the traditional dress of the women, or 'cholas' who sat huddled in groups amongst their blankets and wears, chewing mouth fulls of coca leaves. As it was Easter saturday we could hear Mass being projected into the night by loud speaker from the church. The mountain air felt clean and crisp after so long in the city, and the beds in the chilly little hotel were necessarily equipped with layers of thick alpaca blankets.

After a good night's sleep we had breakfast and set off for the boarder, which was a 10 minute walk along a disused railway track. It felt like we were walking through the set of an old wildwest movie, rugged and dusty with mountains in the distance.

The boarder crossing was pleasant as far as boarder crossings go. There was no que, the official was cheery and it was all very straighforward and swift. The cheeky face of Evo Morales beamed down at us from a poster hung on the wall (Bolivia's first indigenous president). We walked over a bridge and saw people washing clothes in the river below. Walking up the street we passed Cholas selling fruit, street stalls selling anything from cigarettes to pliers and, behold, juice ladies! We'd being missing fresh fruit juice in Argentina, and hadn't really seen any since Colombia, so we were happy to see the juice ladies with their orange press mobile stalls out in force. Pomello for me, 25p. The street was colourful and buzzed with activity and we traded the last of our Argentinian pesos for bundles of ancient looking Bolivianos. We were in Bolivia.

A few Buenos Aires shots (more to follow)

2009-04-10T14:28:00.000-07:00

Buenos Aires Pt III: other stuff

2009-04-10T14:22:00.000-07:00

One weekend we visited a guy who lives in the Delta of Tigre, north of the capital. He had bought some land and was hoping to create a sustainable eco-village where couch surfers could come and stay in exchange for a little work. He'd invited anyone on the couch surfers website to come along for a working weekend. It was a beautiful area with rivers lined with weeping willows and a few oaks here and there giving it quite an English feel. We talked of his plans, shared ideas, did a bit of land clearing with machettes and then had a sleep over in a wooden shack on stilts with candles and a bit of a sing song. Was very nice, and met some great people. Unfortunately we left before the Kiwi guy arrived to build an earth oven - really want to pick up some natural construction skills and this would have been a fine chance.

In one unfortunate week I left my card in the cash machine and had my account emptied and had my MP3 player stolen at a hostel. Wasn't too bad in the end though - the bank refunded my money and the guy who was responsible for leaving my MP3 player in a vulnerable place coughed up some cash, whicch was quite a result, but will never make up for the loss of my music.

One night we went out with our friends Yami and Santiago from Colombia to a 'contact dance' night at this big house where a traveller/hippie/new age type community live. There was some live music, some entertaining performance, and plenty of contact dancing - an intimate dance where people dance with each other whilst maintaining body and eye contact. Basically it looks like people rolling around on each other's backs and jigging aound each other in circles whilst always touching. At times it was mesmorising and quite cool to watch, which is all I did - not wearing the appropriate atire of hemp fisherman pants and poncho was my official excuse for not participating. It was a fun night, but once again I was disappointed by the aire of supiriority given out by so called 'hippies'. I've been to my fair share of hippie gatherings and I've often left feeling that the community seemed quite closed and cliquey, and looked down on those who didn't know whether their chakras were open or closed, or who didn't adopt the lotus position and meditate at any given chance. Surely to be open to all people and the desire to share philosophies with others should be the ways of the enlightened hippie? How are you going to change world conscienceness by sticking in closed groups and shunning outsiders or newcomers? Was fun overall though, and had a good old bash at various percussive instruments during the spontaneous jams that broke out through the night.

One day we went with Alcira to a permaculture day, out in the country. It was a nice day out, and made me realise how much I craved some clean country air. We didn't learn that much on the day, as it was all in Spanish, but we did learn about a technique of planting called-Fukaku named after it's Japanese inventor, who is a bit of a legend amongst the permaculture movement. Whilst there, we met a lovely couple called Dave and Elisa. Dave is English and had met Argentinian Elisa in the states back in the day, and they'd both moved to Argentina. They'd lived though Argentina's dark recent years - the 'dirty war' where up to 30, 000 people were 'disappeared' between '76-'83, under Jorge Rafeal Videla's military dictatorship. They currently live in La Plata just outside of BA and run an organisation called MACA (Musica, Arte, Cultura, Ambiente (environment)). As the name suggests, they're involved in the arts and environmental education and work with local youth and schools. I spoke about activism in the UK and they invited me to visit them and do an interview for their radio station.

On our last night we checked out 'La bomba' which is basically a weekly drum circle put on by this amazing percussion group in a little stadium type place just off some random street in the city. We'd heard a lot about it during our stay but had foolishly waited till our last night to go. It was fantastic - the drummers were amazing, it was far more than your average drum circle. These guys took you on a journey through loads of different styles, with intricate layers of complex patterns ranging from samba to an imitation of techno and other electronic genres. They have a 'composer' type guy who directs the group abd each week they have a guest musician play with them, from saxophonists to rappers to turntablists. In our case it was a funky jazz trumpeter. There must have been 500 people or more there, and together we lapped it up, dancing, cheering and drinking - it was true festival vibe! We had met up with our Irish friend Paddy (of Venezuela and Amazon river boat fame), Jeff and Yami, our former couch surfing hosts, and had a wicked last night in the city.

The next day, we'd decided to visit La Plata on our way out of BA, to honour our invitation from David and Elisa. And we're glad we did. David and Elisa are fascinating people and were amazing hosts. We stayed with them in their lovely home for 2 days and met their family, enjoyed Elisa's wonderful cooking, had interesting conversations and learned about what it was like to live through the 'dirty war', and learned more about the Falklands. We visited their friends who live a very sustainable life out in the countryside, and helped them distribute some Fukaku balls (they'd also been to the permaculture course). It was there I did the interview. Sod's law ensured that the one day on the whole trip I had an interview was the one day that a cold and sore throat robbed me of my voice. Literally, my voice had pretty much gone, and to make things worst, at the last minute I was told it would all be in Spanish! However, I soldiered on and with a bit of translation help managed to hold it together. They asked me about the trip, the ship, the voluntary work, activism and my opinions on environmental awareness in Latin America. So soon, my huskey broken spanish will be broadcast throughout the homes of Buenos Aires! Result!

We had the opportunity to camp on their friends' organic farm in La Plata to help out for a few days, but sadly had to decline due to time limits; the extra 4 weeks meant that we really had to push North and head to Bolivia.

It was such a shame that we had no time left to explore the rest of Argentina. There's some stunning areas such as Patagonia and the 'lake district', and loads of opportunity for camping (where we couild have put this blasted tent to use), not to mention the many organic farms we could have worked on through the WOOF network. But we simply had to move on. To stay any longer would have ment cutting time in Bolivia, Peru or Ecuador, all countries with volunteer work we were excited about.

We considered stopping off somewhere in the North of Argentina on our way up North, maybe Salta or Jujuy, but had been warned about an outbreak of dengue fever.

So, still undecided on exactly where we would go, we made our farewells to David and Elisa and took the train back to BA to find a bus to our next destination.

Buenos Aires Pt II: The work bit (Soundtrack:Tango in the streets)

2009-03-25T15:42:00.000-07:00

After a few days we got involved with an organisation that works with children living in 'Las Villas' ; the poor neighbourhoods aka slums which circle the city and spread into the smog hazed distance. L.I.F.E. (Lunchamos para una infancia feliz y con esperanza) which translates to ' We strive for a childhood with happiness and hope' http://www.lifeargentina.org/ are doing just that - attempting to give children living in these communities a bit of space in which to play, imagine and be creative, to give them a chance to have a childhood, a phase in life which can be drastically reduced when living in these conditons. It was certainly an eye-opener to see the parts of Buenos Aires that few tourists get a chance to glimpse. The impossible number of tiny shacks appear to hold each other up, in the dusty streets lay huge piles of rubbish - mini landfills where stray pregnant dogs rummage for scraps, and nearby children play games or harrass the dogs. Old beat-up cars and trucks trundle past, "cumbia villera", the genre of music that has emerged from the slums in recent years, blaring from the windows.

Once our mini pulled up, we'd be met by a group of beaming, cheering kids all overjoyed that the LIFE crew were back. After a bit of pushing and shoving to secure a shoulder ride or piggy back, we'd go to one of the small public spaces allocated for the sessions, sometimes just the living room (for living room read bare concrete room, with a few pictures on the walls to liven up the dominant grey, and maybe a CD player in the corner) of somebodys house in the community. The idea is, we help them out with their homework, help them to learn some english, play games and give them something positive to focus on.

Most of the kids were so cute and affectionate, despite living in such tough conditions. Others I found to be more of a challenge, sometimes the older boys could be a bit unpredictable, and at times aggressive, but its to be expected - these kids are tough. In this world so alien to my own childhood, they have to be. Generally though, once they'd accepted you, they'd get stuck into the activities, often with suprising results. I found that doing a little 'beat-box' workshop tends to get even the most non-chalent of the older lads interested. I introduced the tetrapack wallet activity which I do regularly with kids in the UK, and as always it went down a treat.

Many of the kids we worked with were HIV positive. It's tragic to think that already some of them are destined to a shortened life, even before facing the multiple challenges of a life of poverty. A recent phenomenom has been the spread of 'Paco' a cheap, cocaine residue which is now ubiquitos in the slums, and sadly, is used by many young teens. Paco is even more toxic than crack cocaine because it's made mostly of solvents and chemicals like kerosene, with just a dab of cocaine. I can only hope that the little friends I made during my short time there don't fall into that trap.

My time with LIFE was cut short due to the discovery of another project, one which could not have been more perfect for me. Colette found the project description whilst we were studying at Spanish school and rushed to show me. Fundacion Argentina Etoecologia, an NGO based in BA, was looking for an intern to create a programe of climate change education to be used by teachers in primary schools accross Argentina. The internship would last 4 weeks, and require a second week of Spanish school first, to get me up to scratch. I had to apply for the position as I would a formal job, including a cover letter and CV......in Spanish!

So it was set ; 5 more weeks in Buenas Aires. Colette would work at an orphanage whilst I worked on my project. This was a significant change in the grand plan, and the thought of spending that length of time in the big city didn't exactly fill me with joy, but I knew since reading the description that there was no choice in the matter - this was perfect for me and an opportunity I could not refuse. Spreading the word about climate change is partly why I'm here afterall.

So, for 4 weeks I planned and created a short programme of climate change awareness education including teacher's notes on how to use the package effectively. I worked in the apartment of Alcira, FAE's president, in the Constitution area of BA. Other tasks included helping her with translations of letters to other environmental organisations and advising a member of the Argentinian Navy on the impacts of climate change on the marine ecosystem.
Alcira seemed impressed with my work and as a result made me an official representative of the organisation!

Prince Charles must have had the same idea - during my time with FAE he was out visiting South American leaders to try and drive home how close we are to catastrophic global meltdown http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/mar/12/prince-charles-brazil-climate-change-warning. Maybe he's been reading my blog? If so Charley, why didnt you take the boat? Surely not a case of insufficiant time and funds old boy? Really though, big up to the prince meister - he is doing a lot of good stuff for the cause, I only wish others with such high profiles would make some noise.

As we hadn't planned to be in BA for so long, and Argentina is one of the more expensive countries we'll visit, we decided that we had to cut our daily living expenses so that we dont have to make too many sacrifices later in the trip. So, we made a profile on Couch Surfers http://www.couchsurfing.com/ and began looking for people to take us in. The concept is simple; there are many people in the world who like to meet people from other countries/cultures and simply want to help out others, so a network as formed in which people offer space in their homes for people to come and live! For free! I'd heard about it a few years ago, but this was the first time I've been involved.

We've had a good experience so far. We stayed in a palace of a home with a new Argentinian friend, Yami, complete with indoor pool, hooker pipe and our own private room with onsuite bathroom (only the finest marble of course) for a week. We even had a maid! Then we stayed with a guy called Jeff from Oklahoma for 2.5 weeks in his nice 12 story high city apartment, with an amazing view out accross the city and again our own room. It's a different world up there, a community living high above the other city inhabitants, kind of like the canopy high up in the rainforest. There was a dove nesting on his balcony, it's egg hatched during our stay, and we often saw urban birds of prey circling above.

As well as making new friends, we've saved a fair sum of dosh - often its the daily accommodation fees which make up the largest percantage of your daily spending when traveling. And to honour the exchange, we've already offered the homes of our parents to a whole array of fascinating characters, who are probably on their way to England as we speak. He he he, not really, don't worry Mum & Dad, joke!

But really, as soon as I get settled back home I'll definately repay the Karma and have people to stay.

Buenos Aires Pt. I : the culture bit (soundtrack: The Gotan project, la revancha del tango)

2009-03-20T16:05:00.000-07:00

We arrived at about 8am feeling a tad groggy, but excited. After a coffee at the bus station, we headed towards the subte (tube) station to get a tube to San Telmo, one of the old areas of the city, popular for its traditional cobbled streets & architecture, markets, artisans, smokey old bohemian cafes and that kind of thing.

Checked into a hostel in time for free breakfast (consisting of the traditional Argentine sweet pastries, bread & jam, coffee) and had a rest before setting off to explore. The first thing that struck me about BA was that it didn't feel like we were in Latin America at all. Indeed the 'Paris of South America' does feel very much like a European city, after absorbing millions of European immigrants throughout the 19th century, many of which were Italians.

And thanks to the Italian influence, there's some tastey treats to be found. There's an abundance of tastey cheese-based snacks, and I'm talking quality cheese, available at a reasonable price. No more of that south American water sponge 'cheese'. For now, anyway. Colette has been indulging ever since, and it's certainly been a challenge to my attempted low-carbon (aka less dairy) diet. A challenge I reckon I've temporarily failed, mainly due to my tired, bored taste buds who have been pushed to the point of rebellion over the general lack of dietry excitement in recent times. Empanadas. They're the snack of choice here, and are basically little pasties, hand made and filled with a variety of fillings including a tastey cheddary type of cheese with onion, blue cheese (a particular treat!), spinach, and of course plenty of tastey looking meats. That has been another temptation - the meat - which we've so far managed to overcome. We are in the land of the steak! Everywhere you go, mouth-watering steaks abound, all offered for a price that boggles the mind. The meat here is cheap as chips. In fact its cheaper - I could eat a prime Argentinain slab for less than the cost of a kilo of potatoes. This is not the place for 2 meat - loving vegetarians.

And then there's the Mate! The presence of mate was first observed as we got closer to Argentina, in the South of Brazil. The Argentines visiting Foz de Iguacu could be seen wondering around sucking on metal straws (bombillas) protruding from tiny brown cups (gourds), thermos flasks hung around their shoulders. Its a type of shrub thats dried and used like a tea - in fact it's comparable to green tea. There's a real ritual to its preparation, and people pass it around, taking Mate is a social affair. We've become fairly partial during our stay, and now have our own Mate drinking apperatus and a half kilo pouch of mate (courtesy of my new friend Alcira, who I'll come to shortly).

There's plenty of live music. We've seen amazing reggae bands, local bands playing all sorts of latin fusions, jazz-funk bands (one of the best jazz-funk bands I've ever seen in fact) and, last but not least, we got to see the mighty Manu Chau. And of course there's the Tango we' tried our hand at Tango too which has been fun. I really like Tango music, which probably explains my love for the heavily tango influenced Gotan project.

San Telmo has a great atmosphere, especially at the weekends when the square is packed with people eager to watch the free Tango shows whilst sipping drinks out on the cobbled streets, and the artisans gather to set up their stalls. Sunday is a day out here - it feels like a festival with street performers, music and artists selling their work. Bands just turn up with their amps and generators and play. You'd never get that in the UK, you`d need a licence for this, a permit for that......
And of course, we' tried our hand at Tango too which has been fun. I really like Tango music, which probably explains my love for the heavily tango influenced Gotan project.

Despite there being plenty to see in the city, we've probably missed a lot of sights due to that fact that you need to keep your eyes squarely on the ground just in front of you in order to avoid the abundant piles of dog shit. I've never seen so many dogs in a city. But these are different from the usual latin American city dogs, in that they have homes and owners, and are usually not pregnant and attached to leads. 'Paseadores de perros' are the people employed to walk the dogs of the people who have dogs but not the time in which to walk said dogs. That sentance is up for review. Its's hilarious - you have a person (usually male, muscle-bound and bursting with machismo) walking up to 14 dogs in one go. You'd have to be strong to do it too - some of the dogs are monsters (this is reflected in the size of some of the deposits left, unless there be bears in these streets). Unfortunately though, poopa scoops have yet to catch on, and so we're left to run the turd gauntlet on a daily basis.

We had only planned to stay for 1 week or two, but then we found a Spanish school with a promotion of one week's free lessons. One week turned into two, and we discovered some volunteer work we couldn't refuse....and so we were locked into another 4 weeks in Buenos Aires.

Top ten climate change deniars and the secrets behind their motives!

2009-03-09T12:46:00.000-07:00

Here's a nice little round up of some of the world's most prominent cimate change skeptics.....and some interesting information on where some of their salaries come from.....
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/mar/06/climate-change-deniers-top-10

Post-forum Brazil blitz: A journey through the length of Brazil (Soundtrack: Coach engines)

2009-03-01T10:21:00.000-08:00

On the last night of the forum, we managed to get to a free Jorge Ben Jor concert, in a huge venue in Belem called Hangar. It was a massive gig, as he's a massive name and one of Brazil's most well known artists, most famous for his Bossa nova style. I`ve had a few of his tracks for a while, so it was a bonus to get to see him. It also kind of made up for the many music events which had fallen through at the forum. At the beginning, when we'd first arrived in Belem, I`d done a fair bit of pushing the DJ thing and secured myself some pretty big gigs over the duration of the forum; I had been set to DJ at a huge Reggae night, a daytime Hip Hop event with an open mic, a gay and lesbian night and, prehaps most excitingly, I was to be the DJ for a Hip Hop crew from New York called the Readnex Poetry Squad http://www.myspace.com/readnex who were meant to be playing on the last day on a big festival stage.
Frustratingly, each one fell through, or moved location at the last minute, or simply disappeared from existance. I did get to play with the Readnex though, although I wasn't DJing as such, just playing their instrumental tracks from a laptop, which was still quite fun and I got to fulfill my fantasy of playing on a festival stage!
We packed up, said goodbye to the great bunch of people we'd befriended and left the free forum accommodation (the classroom floors of a local college). After a few days spent back in Belem city we decided to hit the road and head south, and it took some time to decide between Bolivia or heading really far south to Argentina. In the end, we opted for Argentina, as it seemed to make sense to go as far south as we we going to go, and then work our way north through Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and then Colombia again, where we'll get our boat home.
A quick glance at a map will show that Belem is a long, long way from Argentina, so we prepared for a long, long journey. From belem we headed to Cuiba, and then to Campo Grande, racking up a total of 60 hours in one go. After a day's break in Campo Grande, another 20ish hours got us to Foz Do Iguacu, where we would stop to check out some of the most world's most amazing waterfalls. We camped in a great hostel, where we put the tent up in the shade of orange and avocado trees whose fruits we could help ourselves to.
The falls are from the Iguazu River, located on the border of the Brazillian state of Parana and the Argentine province of Misiones. The falls divide the river into the upper and lower Iguazu. Guaraní Indian legend has it that a god planned to marry a beautiful aborigine girl named Naipí. She wasn't really up for it, so she did a runner with her mortal lover Tarobá in a canoe. As a result, the god was less than happy and in rage proceeded to smash the river, creating the waterfalls and condemning the lovers to an eternal fall. The girl can now be seen as a rock, and her lover a tree.It was absolutely stunning. We'd heard a lot of hype about the falls beforehand and sometimes things don´t quite live up to your expectations when you've had something hyped up so much, but this place was amazing, and undoubltedly one of the most beautiful I've had the pleasure to witness. The energy of the place was awsome, with such a phenominal volume of water just roaring through and crashing together from over 240 different falls, with rainbows appearing everywhere with all the mist.

We spent a day exploring from the Brazillian side, and then a day from the Argentine side, the latter being our favourite. For accomodation we put the tent to use and camped in a really nice campsite in Puerto Iguacu for a couple of days, before taking a final 20 hour bus trip to the capital of Argentina, Buenos Aires. I think it's safe to say that we've officially earnt the title of true 'hardcore bus travelers', or maybe just 'crazy fools'. We've also mastered the art of stretching a hotel free 'breakfast' into a free breakfast, lunch and bus snacks - it's all about the subtle under-the-table rucksack filling.

More photos

2009-02-24T13:04:00.000-08:00

Recently I've recieved a few requests for more photos of the journey, which is lovely as it shows that there are at least a few people following the blog!
So, I've begun to add pages of photos only, which I`ll eventually get round to labelling. These pages will be titled 'Photos', followed by the location, ie 'Photos: Trinidad and Tobago'.
They will be in order, so you`ll have to go back to the earlier posts to find them.

Once again I`m a little behind, but over the next few days expect to hear tales of 60hour + bus rides, magnificent waterfalls, volunteering in Argentinian slums and our first 'couch surfing' experiences. Plus more recent photos that need updating, once I've found a cheap place to burn them onto CD......

Thanks for reading, hope you're all well and happy,

Love from Lewis and Colette x

World Social Forum 2009: a report for a new Hull Magazine

2009-02-05T09:47:00.000-08:00

We'd arrived a week early with high expectations of the Forum. We'd travelled over 4000km to get there from Colombia; 5 days by bus & 5 more by Amazonian river boat sleeping amongst a tangled web of hammocks. 100,000 people were expected to descend upon the city of Belem, which lies at the confluence of the mighty river Amazon and the Atlantic ocean, to speak of their struggles and campaigns and discuss strategies to achieve a better world. 'Um outro mundo e possivel' (another world is possible) has been the forums' tag line since its birth in 2001, in southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre. The forum rose in part as a direct challenge to The World Economic Forum which takes place in Davos, Switzerland every January, where top business leaders, politicians and economists get together to discuss how best to maintain the Capitalist status quo. The Porto Alegre declaration of 2001 states that the forum is "an open meeting place where social movements, networks, NGOs and other civil society organizations opposed to neo-liberalism and a world dominated by capital or by any form of imperialism come together to pursue their thinking, to debate ideas democratically, to formulate proposals, share their experiences freely and network for effective action. Since the first world encounter in 2001, it has taken the form of a permanent world process seeking and building alternatives to neo-liberal policies".

Things kicked off with a huge demonstration through the streets of Belem, starting at the port where the visiting Greenpeace vessel 'Arctic Sunrise' was docked. It was every bit as colourful and lively as you'd expect a Latin American demonstration to be, and when the inevitable deluge of wet season rain arrived it did nothing to dampen spirits. In fact it only served to whip the crowds into a heightened frenzy as people cheered, danced, and chanted to the sounds of samba drums whilst being soaked to the bone with lashings of cool rain.

The workshops commenced the following day with over 4,300 on offer over the duration of the week, with titles as diverse as the organizations presenting them. Would it be the 'Palestinian Grassroots anti-apartheid wall campaign: Root causes & prospects for common struggle', or the 'India Resource Centre: International Campaign against Coca Cola'? How about 'Indigenous Environmental Network: Indigenous peoples energy & climate justice' or the 'International network for the abolition of foreign military bases'. The list was endless, and it soon became apparent that it would be impossible to attend all of interest.

A strong theme this year was the importance of the Amazon basin as a source of Biodiversity and as a vital carbon sink. As a result of the 'call for indigenous peoples participation', over 3000 indigenous people were present, many from tribes based in the Amazon basin. Members of Tribes such as the Jawari wandered around painted from head to toe with traditional tribal markings, complete with colourful feathered head dress, spears and bows & arrows. Indigenous people from around the world were also represented, coming as from as far as Canada to talk about the Tar sands operations which are wrecking havoc in Northern Alberta, and from Nigeria to speak against the oil companies that are displacing and brutalizing communities across the Niger delta. Hearing these stories first hand from the people who daily face the reality of predatory corporations operating in their lands was extremely poignant. Never before have I heard such an array of stories and accounts which have painted such a vivid overall picture of the extent to which the Neo-liberal stage of Capitalism is responsible for the planetary crisis we are facing. However, it was heartening and inspiring to hear of the range of resistance world wide; the globalization of struggle.

Unfortunately however, there appears to be much room for improvement in the organization of the gathering. Things were chaotic from the beginning, when no one could give us details about accommodation, or how / who to pay for registration. The Forum was spread between The Universidad Fedral Rural da Amazonia (UFRA) and and the Universidad Fedral Do Para (UFPA). It was difficult to board the buses going inbetween the two, due to the number of people attempting to squeeze their way on. A simple shuttle bus system would have lightened the pressure from the normal bus service.
The programme of workshops had been drastically altered without amendments being made and apparently this was known even before the programmes had been distributed. We only worked this out late in the week, after many a frustrating hour finding our way to the poorly signed workshop locations only to find nothing there. We would be told one thing by one volunteer, only to be told the opposite by another, resulting in countless wild goose chases.
When attending gatherings such as this one tries to shake off the expectation of the religious punctuality championed by top-down organization, but there are limits. A few big boards detailing amendments, or volunteers with knowledge of the re-jigged workshops would have saved a lot of wasted energy.
For a forum with a strong theme on Amazonian deforestation due to soya monocultures grown for cattle feed, there was little in the way of vegetarian or vegan food. It was impossible to buy any on the UFPA campus, and most of the veggie options at UFRA were overpriced. Yet, ironically, it was all to easy to buy a can of Coca Cola. The only water available was sold in tiny overpriced plastic bottles, and all food and drink was served in disposable plastic and polystyrene cups and plates which overflowed from bins and littered the ground. Despite both the Fedral and State governments ploughing huge sums of money into the Forum, it appeared that responsible waste management had been forgotten, with no recycling facilities to be seen.

At times, looking around at the hoards of confused people walking through the scattered plastic debris in search for non-existent workshops, it was hard to imagine "another world is possible". It's a sad irony that ethical responsibilities such as these could be neglected at such a symbolic level; a gathering that is meant to epitomize this 'movement of movements'. It goes without saying that good environmental & ethical practice should be sown into the very fabric of the World Social Forum - as Ghandi once said, we should be the change we wish to see in the world.
One can only hope that these problems have been duly noted and added to the 'things to improve' list.

Overall, despite these contradictions, the Forum was a positive experience and I left feeling inspired, with a notebook full of new contacts and ideas. The Forum's strength is definitely in the sheer diversity of it's participants & the potential for bridges to be built between them, and for the strengthening of alliances united in their resistance. For me this is what the forum is about; sharing experience, inspiration, solidarity, strengthening alliances and forming strategies. I spoke enthusiastically of the Camp For Climate Action throughout the week, and people listened eagerly and expressedd interest in forming Climate Camps in their regions; as a result we may see a new camp pop up to challenge the Canadian tar sand operations. This demonstrates the importance and effectiveness of having a space created in which ideas are shared and movements furthered. Another reassuring thing was to see the sheer number of young people present. Whoever said today's youth are apathetic?

Global Capitalism is in crisis, it's indefatigable greed seeding the beginning of its own demise. And here, in Brazil, gathered the nuclei of a peoples movement, a movement with perhaps the energy, ideas and determination required to replace the current flawed system and institutions. Indeed another world is possible and it has surely never been more necessary than now.

Down the Amazon on a river boat

2009-02-04T14:34:00.000-08:00

After buying some fruit and salad for supplies, we boarded the '11 de mayo'; a classic three-tier Amazonian river boat. By the time we arrived, the little vessel already looked packed to capacity, the middle floor consisting of a huge chaotic web of hammocks. We managed to get a recommended spot-second floor, near the front so that we were away from the sound of the engine and would recieve ample breeze to keep those winged bloodsuckers away. We tied our hammocks to the nest.
We bumped into our Irish friend Patrick, who we'd met earlier in Venezuela, and met a couple of girls from New York also on their way to the forum. The hammocks were up, and we had a crew.
After a couple of hours, we left the busy port, passing other boats straining under the weight of passenegers and freight. We were away, and once again it felt good to be on the move.
For 5 days we gently cruised down the Amazon, soaking up some amazing scenery, and experiencing the warmth and hospitality of the Brazilian people. We passed river- dwellers, fisher folk, dolphins, snakes and birds.
During certain stretches, kids from river-dwelling communitys paddled frantically towards the boat in traditional dug out canoes, approaching from all directions, emitting strange howling noises to notify us of their presence. On reaching the boat (which was travelling much faster than them and could easily have dragged them underneath and into the propellors) they attached home-made grapple hooks onto the hull so that they were being towed along. The spray from the bow wave would begin to fill the tiny vessels, so one kid would be there desperately bailing out the water, whilst the other would sell sugar cane, fruits and shrimp to the passengers onboard. Some of the kids would simply beg, making hand signals which were met by a string of plastic bags containing clothes tossed overboard. It was really fun and interesting to watch, and all onboard crowded around the edge to look down and cheer them on!
One night we got together with a group of other gringos, and Brazilians heading to the Forum, and had a jam on the top deck with guitars, bongos, singing and beat boxing. The atmosphere was electric, maybe in part due to the amazing sheet & fork lightning that light up the wide sky around us.
It took a few nights to get used to the sleeping bit. The hammocks were literally touching and criss-crossing each other, so that you were generally aware of all your neighbours' movements. Ocassionally you'd have someone clumsily squeeze between you. Sometimes they'd duck and attempt to go underneath, inevitabley head-butting your arse. Now and then a rogue foot or elbow would serve you a little wake-up jab, usually just at the point where you had finally reached the verge of slumber. We stopped at a few small ports along the way, and just when you thought the boat's population had reached it's maximum, more people boarded. And just when you thought that no new hammocks could possibly have the audacity to enter your carefully guarded and already crowded territory, one would magically appear above or below you, during the time it took to blink. Early each morning, usually at around 2am, the wind would pick up and the rainy season deluge would begin. This was the only down point of being positioned where we were; the breeze that helped us remain bite-free would also bring with it heavy lashings of rain. You'd have to jump out of the hammock, fumble at the ropes to pull down the tarpaulin covering the deck, and receive a battering by the rain in the process, all before having the chance to wake up.
I loved every minute of it! I spent lots of time reading, dozing (sleeping in the day was often more fruitful than in the night) and talking to the many great people we were sharing the experience with. The majority of people on board were obviously Brazilian, and despite the language barrier friendships were made, and laughs were had. What a warm, friendly, welcoming bunch of people!
The food was pretty lame, but we'd known it would be, and enjoyed the extras we were able to pick up along the way. Frustratingly, it was only on the last day that we realized there was a kitchen available to use on the bottom floor. I'd recommend that any Veggies, and especially Vegans, take plenty of extra food. You can ask for the meal without meat, but you'll still pay the same price of 6 Reais per meal, regardless of the fact that it's only rice, beans and salad, and should be sold for significantly less.
Finally we approached the city of Belem. The immense metropolis sprawled accross the horizon, appearing alien after 5 days of only trees as a back drop. It had been a great journey, a highlight of the trip so far, and testament to the beauty of terrestrial/aquatic travel; these are the types of experience lost to the rushed traveller of the skies. I reccomend anyone travelling in the Amazon to give it a go.
After packing away our hammocks, and a flurry of photos and fairwells with our neighbours, we were ready to enter the city.

(The trip cost roughly 200 R each, for 5 days. You must have your own Hammock, cheap ones can be bought for 10 R each, with ropes for 6 R per set, around any of the market stalls in Manaus. Haggling is normal and expected. Better and more comfortable hammocks can be bought for between 20-30 R, but are heavy, and quite large so not so suitable for the backpack.)

Amazonas (soundtrack: strange animals)

2009-01-22T11:22:00.000-08:00

For 5 days our buttocks were firmly planted on either the seat of a night bus, or the seat of a bus station waiting for the next night bus. From Maico to Maricaibo, Maricaibo to Caracas, Caracas to Santa Elena where we crossed the border to Brazil. Another bus to Boa Vista, and then the last leg of the bus part; Boa Vista to Manaus. We´d seen that some people had posted that you can take a direct bus from Caracas to Manaus, but as is often the case in these parts, one nugget of informnation is provided by one person, and then denied by the next - no one in the stations seemed to know anything about a direct bus. It was a tough 5 days, with little in the way of proper sleep or proper food. But we did well, and our spirits were kept high by our new sense of mission.

As we´d blitzed through Venezuela so quickly, we´d made good time, and decided to break up the trip with a stop in Manaus, an unlikely city that sits bang in the middle of the Amazon jungle.
On our first night we went for a drink with a lovely English couple we´d met in the Boa Vista bus station. They too had given up flying and had come here via boat.....though they did it the ultimate way - by sail boat!!!! It really wet our appetite for gaining some sailing skills, and I think I´ll take a course when back at home. Then you can become crew on boats that are sailing to various locations around the world to actually deliver the boat to its new owners. Apparently you don´t even particularly need the skills as sometimes they just want a few extra people to help out onboard, for company and night watch duty. Certainly got us thinking. Maybe for our return? That´d be one skill to gain for a low carbon future.

We decided to go on one of the many 'Amazon Jungle Tours' on offer in Manaus. Despite them being a bit generic and 'the thing to do' whilst in Manaus, we thought it'd be a good way to have an inter-travel break, and to at least spend 3 days in a tranquil environment with plenty of wildlife.

It ended up being a great few days. To start with we left Manaus and crossed the Rio Negro and passed the 'Encontro das Aguas' or 'meeting of the rivers' where the dark water of the Rio Negro meets the cremey coffee water of the Rio Solimoes. The water doesn't mix, due to differences in density and temperature, so you just get this sharp contrast in colours where the different water bodies meet, that continues for a few km. After another short drive in a camper van, we boarded a lanch and journied through mangrove-like areas of river, carving our way between roots, branches and submerged logs, occaisionally passing the bankside homes of river-dwellers. People bathed and washed clothes, whilst the children splashed in the brown water and waved at us.
After arriving at the rustic lodges, we imediately spotted pink and grey freshwater dolphins only 20 feet away, surfacing and rolling, their breathing clearly audible. Later that day we took Kayacks into the calm back waters, and saw loads of different birds; Egrets, Kingfishers, Herons, Ospreys, Green Parrots just to name a few. Distant thunderhead clouds loomed ominously, ocassionally emitting deep rumbles,
whilst the birds and insects sang their repetoire of weird and wonderful songs.
That night we took a boat deeper into the jungle, to set up camp for the night in hammocks. The hammocks were comfortable, but from about 4am onwards I just couldn't get to sleep - I was just too amazed at the sounds of the pre-dawn chorus and the troops of Howler monkeys roaring their blood-curdling territorial roar close to the camp.
We trecked through the jungle learning about various edible plants, Brazil nuts and rubber trees along the way. Then we took the boat to the home of a nearby riverside family and learnt about their way of life which is completely dependent on the river.
After lunch, and a swim in the lovely luke-warm river (only 30 feet or so away from the dolphins), we fished for Piranhas. Colette caught one, and i caught a few lovely catfish, but they were all too small to eat, so we gently returned them to the water.

That evening, as the light diminished, I spent a while watching our comrades, the bats, as they acrobatically launched their assult on the local mosquito population. Then we went to look for Caimen. The guide shone his torch along the river banks looking for the shining amber eyes of these little crocodiles. After a couple of failed attempts, we located one and got near enough for the guide to catch it in his hands to show us close up. It was a beautiful creature, and it was amazing seeing it so close.
After 3 days and 2 nights we returned to Manaus to continue on our mission to the WSF. The next bit of the journey would be very interesting - the quintessential Amazonian experience; Travelling down the Amazon for 5 days on a riverboat.

Desicions, Desicions: mission to the 2009 World Social Forum???

2009-01-08T14:27:00.000-08:00

Just before Christmas, I´d discovered that the 2009 World Social Forum(http://www.fsm2009amazonia.org.br) would be held in Brazil in January, and got very excited about the possibility of going. Each day through the Christmas/New year period Colette and I debated whether or not it´d be feasible for us to go. Yes, the forum would be in Brazil, and yes, it was in January, and yes, it´s unlikely we´d ever have the opportunity to attend a World Social Forum in South America again. But, Belem is on the North East coast of Brazil, and Brazil is immense, taking up half the South American continent (about the size of the continental USA).
And, of course, we didn´t have the option of flying!! The distance is 4461.3 km!!!
The only possible route overland would be a 4461 km epic requiring 5 days/nights on buses solid back through Venezuela 5 days on a river boat on the mighty Amazon from Manaus to Belem. This would be a monster journey, a diversion that would take us way off track as we were meant to be heading South to Ecuador to begin a project in January.

We battled with this decision for days on end, until it became stupidly frustrating. In the end, we decided to go for it. Even though we were dying to get stuck into some projects, we hoped that attending the forum would renew our motivation, inspiration and hope. To be an activist, you need to be an optimist. But when the world´s troubles are so immense and complex, it´s easy to become overwhelmed and occasionally that hope wavers.
Every now and then you need to be surrounded by other people who share your views, and your hunger for change. You need to be reminded that around the world, tens of thousands of people are fighting for a better world and that there is still hope.
After returning from amazing gatherings such as Climate Camp (www.climatecamp.org.uk), I´ve always been invigorated and energised from witnessing the creativity, love and determination that people have for creating positive change. Its infectious and empowering, and if channeled correctly, can really inspire great things.
Maybe we´d find out about some amazing projects/organisations which are doing amazing things in South America, which we could then get involved in later in the trip? Maybe going to the World Social Forum would actually define the rest of our trip?

And this of course is the beauty of travelling without a rigid plan. If something comes up, you have the freedom to drop everything and head in the opposite direction.

And so, with excitement and a new sense of purpose, we headed to the Cartagena bus station, to begin our long journey to Brazil for the 9th World Social Forum.

Cartagena: A new year´s freestyle (soundtrack: Endo G and Killa B)

2009-01-03T08:21:00.000-08:00

Cartagena was every bit as beautiful as it had been made out to be. We spent many an hour just wandering around the old town; cobbled alleys, colourful old buildings looking like they were about to collapse into one another, huge balconeys giving birth to cascades of flowers and horse-drawn carriages rattling through the streets below. Here and there old men wander past tries calls ¨Tinto, Tinto¨ as he tries to sell his tiny cups of extra sweet coffe (Tinto).

Cuban son and Salsa fill the air from the array of tiny bars and cafes that line the streets, along with the old buildings making the whole place feel like Havanah, Cuba, or at least what I imagine Havanah to be like.

It used to be the main Spanish port on the Caribbean coast, and was used to store treasures stolen from the indigenous people before they were shipped back to Europe.
As a result, it became a target for pirates and was repeatedly sieged during bloody attacks, some of the worst happening during the 16th century (Bad Karma I say - thats what ye get for being nasty imperial colonialists, yaaarrrggggghhh!). To try to pevent the attacks the Spaniards built huge walls encircling the town, making it into a fortress.

It´s a pretty amazing place. Walking around, you really do fell like you´ve gone back in time a few centuriese. Until you pass the Hardrock Cafe that is. Behind our posada was a park that was home to a troop of little monkeys and some Iguanas which run around fighting each other like battling dinosaurs.

We had a great time on New Year´s eve. Our friends were staying at a hotel with a terrace over-looking the main fort, so we met loads of friends (many of which we´d met previously along the road) there for a cocktail party. At 11-ish we set off for the old town, and later on 7 of us managed to crash a party that was happening in one of the main squares. It´d had been fenced off, and would have cost a couple of hundred dollars to get in, but somehow we just drifted through an opening in the fence! If we´d have actually planned to crash it, we´d have probably been busted, but as we just wandered in spontaneously, without even thinking about it, nobody noticed. After dancing around to the live salsa on stage drinking Champagne, the spontaneity continued when our dutch friend Dustin randomly asked me if i wanted to try and get on stage to rap. There was some famous Reggaeton crew performing, and we agreed that we thought we could do better. So, somehow, he got talking to some of the stage crew, giving them some bullshit about us being a famous crew in Europe. When asked our names, he came out with a beauty of a cliched classic: he was ¨Endo G¨, and I ¨Killa B¨!!!! Incredibly, a short while later, a guy came and said ¨okay, come on¨ and before we could think about it, Dustin and I were lead underneath the stage, up some stairs and into the bright lights! The rest of our friends couldn´t believe what was going on, screaming up at us from the front of the crowd with bemused faces. We were handed a mic each, a beat started, and we took it in turn to rap, 8 bars each, to a crowd of about 1000 people!!! It was insane, non of us could believe it! Everything just happened so spontaneously that night.....if we´d had time to really think about getting up on stage, or thought about what we were going to say, I´m sure we´d have come unstuck. But, we just did it, and it worked...depsite being hammered i do remember us holding down a freestyle on rhythm, and it ended up being the highlight of a crazy old new year´s eve!!! Just a damn shame no one brought out their camera. In hindsight, maybe I should have used that opportunity to denounce President Uribe. Hmmmm, maybe it was a good job I wasn't thinking clearly afterall...
Our roll came to an end when we tried to help ourselves to the free buffet afterwards.....we´d pushed our luck too far, the staff looked unimpressed, and so we decided it was time to leave before we were given the boot.

What a night!

Christmas in Colombia

2008-12-27T08:16:00.000-08:00

We set off from Merida to Maricaibo, and then from Maricaibo to Maico just past the Colombian border. We must have been stopped by military police about 7 times along the way. Each time the officer would make his way along the bus, checking peoples ID at random, and eventually asking to see our passports. On one occasion the guy asked to see our airport stamp. With a combination of broken spanish and sign language, I tried to explain that we didnt come on the plane, because of course that's bad for mother earth, and that we came on a boat. He continued to point at random pages in my passport wanting to see an airport stamp, and repeating a word i didn´t understand. In the end, he could see he wasn't getting anywhere with this simple grinning gringo, and after recieving what appeared to be a back hander from the bus driver's assistant, he left the bus and we continued. Obviously he´d wanted a bribe (the corrupt cops/military here will pick any bullshit excuse), but had got sick of this simple grinning gringo. Not quite sure what was going on, but we saw the bus conductor give many of the cops back handers along the way, it´s pretty crazy.

The bus ride which was meant to take about 12 hours ended up taking almost 24, namely due to the delapidated dinosaur of a bus which we boarded in Maricaibo, thinking we'd save a few dollars. After every stop we´d begin a painful accelerration and lumber away in a cloud of dust and exhuast fumes, serenaded by a chorus of angry horn beeps from drivers unfortunate enough to be caught behind us.

We finally got to our destination that night - the little fishing village of Taganga. After a shower and some well deserved beers and food, we thankfully collapsed onto our bed. Next morning we were awoken by the sounds of tropical birds, and looked out of our window to see a beautiful blue sky and the sea!
Taganga was a great little place. During the brief walk along the road from our hostel to the sea front you´d bump into donkeys lazily chewing on crap, goats with their young nervously wandering around, chickens pecking in the dust and dogs playing and dozing in the shade. Children played in the sun, flying home-made kites in the ever-present forgiving breeze. The locals were really laid back and friendly, and you could buy amazing fresh fruit juice everywhere for $1. The fruit in Colombia is amazing, our firm favourtie being Maracuja (passion fruit). You cut the skin open to reveal a clump of sweet, delicious slime, which smells as amazing as it tastes, despite looking like yellow frogspawn. We spent a few days checking out the beaches nearby, which were horribly overcrowded due to it being Colombian holiday time and reading James Lovelocks' 'The revenge of Gaia'.

Went diving and it felt amazing to be underwater again. Had 4 dives and saw a few fish I'd never seen before, their names escape me now, along with Morray eels, a few different species of angel fish, and the highlight, my first Hawksbill turtle and on Christmas eve!

Met loads of great people, many of whom we'd met earlier in Venezuela and began planning Christmas festivities. The Colombians actually celebrate Christmas at 12 midnight on the 24th. The atmosphere was great throughout the town and we prepared for a night of serious rummage. They seem to love these ridiculous giagantic blow-up nativity scenes out here, every town we visited had them. Giant virgin Marys looking like somewhere between a monstrous smirf and the Michellin man, towered above huge cribs and ill-looking giant donkeys, all lit up with christmas lights. They're truly tac-tastic. To add to the tac, everywhere you went you were serenaded by the sounds of an awful medly of singing Christmas lights, playing the same mini 'mega-mix' over and over again, until you couldn't help imagining taking a rock and pummeling them to smitherines.
Christmas eve passed in a haze of cheap rum, and Christmas day was a rite-off as I suffered the most hideous hang over I've experienced for some time. I eventually sprang back to life after electrocuting myself trying to plug some Christmas lights in (that´ll teach me to curse the lights and we got started on a belated Christmas dinner, which wasn't very traditional but delicious all the same.

Boxing day saw us heading to the nearby Tayrona National park where we camped for 4 nights, next to the beach. At last, the tent had been errected!!! After more than 2 months of lugging the damn thing around, we actually put it to use.
The National park was gorgeous, amazing beaches and rock formations, and plenty of jungle walks, including one to a Pre-hispanic settlement called Pueblito, which is
still inhabited by Tayrona Indians. Saw a troop of amazing little monkeys but the
Toucans remained elusive. Loved cooking over an open fire once again, so satisfying, even with the hot smoke seering my pupils and lungs. And the stars! Frogs and toads sang their nocturnal chorus, glow worms flashed here and there, and a scan over the river with the torch would reveal the amber eyes of small Caimen lying in wait of passing fish.

Venezuela Pt II: Andes, fanny tours & a 3-wheeled bus

2008-12-15T18:41:00.000-08:00

On arriving back in Santa Elena from our Roraima treck, we decided to get the bus that evening back to Cuidad Bolivar despite being knackered as doing the night buses saves on a night's accommodation. It was another 12 hour journey, but the coaches in Venezuela are similar to those in S.E. Asia; modern, efficient and comfortable, having reclining seats and ample leg space. But, like their Asian counterparts, the conductors seem to believe that all people boarding are actually Inuits from the Poles and that they must therefore recreate Arctic living conditions on the bus by blasting the air conditioning on full for the duration of the trip. As the full coaches set off, people in every seat begin to rummage in their bags and pull out jumpers, hats and blankets in anticipation of the incoming ice-age. I remember the first time in Thailand 3 years ago where I foolishly boarded night bus in my beach attire. Never again. Now I always take the trusty sleeping bag.

We arrived early the next morning and spent another night in Ciudad Bolivar, where we met Stephanie (Germany) and Rickie (Sweden) who accompanyed us on the following night to our next location, the city of Merida in the North-West. This was a 20 plus hour journey, with a change in BarinasAs we got closer, the scenery became completely different, with the road winding around colourful little villages, farms and highland rivers full of trout. The people looked more like indigenous Andeans and wore traditional hats and ponchos. The climate changed from humid to cool and cloudy. Merida is located on a plateau formation in the valley of the Chama river, in the 400km long northern end of the Andes range that belong to Venezuela. It stands at an altitude of 1,630 m above sea level, and is surrounded by mountains including the highest Venezuelan summit: the Bolivar Peak.We loved it. It's a university city, so has a youthful vibrance about the place, and it feels really liberal and laid back. Combined with the charm of Andean culture, it made for a nice place to stay for a while. We first stayed in a lovely hostel with a terrace which looked out onto the nearby mountains and it felt like eating breakfast in the Alps every morning, with the pleasant slightly more comfortable temperature. We found a couple of Veggie restaurants, our favourite being restaurante vegetariano on Ave 3, Calle 27, where you could get a set menu for 7 bolivars, the cheapest set menu we'd seen. I think it was vegan. The only thing we disliked was the air pollution from the fleet of huge, ancient American cars that constantly patrolled the streets. Some of them looked as though they were about to disintagrate. They must get them cheap from the states.

We decided to do a week of Spanish lessons at the IOWA Institute. With it being low season, there weren't many travellers around, so the classes were very personal. We were impressed with the school and were enjoying being in Merida, and so 1 week of lessons became 2.

After spending some time going to bars to ask if I could DJ, and being told to come back, and going back and then been told to come back again, I finally got myself a set at Banana's cocktail bar. I got to play for about 4 hours, with the cocktails flowing freely to me & Colette (and plenty subtly finding their way to our friends. Well, maybe not that subtly..). It's pretty funny here, I'd noticed on the radio and in another bar that the DJ's always plug themselves on the mic, and so the bar manager continued to shove the mic in my face and order 'Habla'! Of course after a few cocktails it didn´t take much persuasion to get me on the mic (Yes Nick!) much to Colettes' disgust. "Soy DJ Defunkt de Inglaterra, terra, terra! Este es Drum & Bass, bass, bass! Que paso Merida?!".It went down well, and reminded me how much I miss mixing to a crowd. The aim is to get to play at least once in each country visited.

One day, we went with our good friends Eli (Eng) and Bert (Holland) to Llano del Hato to see Latin America's 2nd largest telescope. The plan was to check out the stars, and then just find a spot to throw up the tent for the night, and get the bus back again first thing in the morn. The bus journey along this road is amazing. We passed campsinos ploughing their fields with oxen-pulled ploughs, gorgeous little villages with houses painted yellow, blue and pink and then "BANG, SSSSSCCCCCRRRRRRRR". I thought we'd been hit by another vehicle, and looked out of the window to see a wheel roll past. Then we realised that it was actually our wheel, and it had fallen off, just like that. We literally grinded to a halt. It was hilareous, we were all just pissing ourselves! The passengers calmly collected their belongings, and got off the bus to wait for the next, as though a wheel gone AWOL was just a part of their daily routine. After finding his wheel, the driver joined us in waiting for the next bus, and left his 3-wheeled casualty for dead on the narrow mountain road.

After 2 more hours we stopped for food at a cute little cafe. An annoying local guy persistantly tried to impress us by roughly picking up a tiny decrepit kitten by it's flea-bitten tail, poor little bugger. He was soon scared away by Colette's scowl of disapproval.
We finally reached the telescopes to be informed that they were closed until the following week. We pleaded to be let in, for just a quick peep at the stars, but it was in vain, and so we decided to return to Merida! The day had neem a disaster, but we'd all had such fun!

We weighed up doing another treck (especially with tour operators with names such as 'fanny tours & adventures'), or some camping in the hills but in the end decided that it was time to move on, as we'd been in Venezuela for 5 weeks and spent a fair bit of money. Also, we reckoned we'd have plenty of chance to see animals such as Caimans, Piranas and Capyburas once we'd entered the Amazon. After some careful consideration, we decided that Colombia would be our next port of call. Most travellers we'd met were either on their way there, or on they're way back, and all who'd been had given rave reviews. So, risking the initiation of 4 simoultaneous heart attacks from our parents, we got ready to head West to Colombia..........

Wake up call

2008-11-21T17:00:00.000-08:00

I recently read an article which left me feeling depressed and angry (http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2008/11/25/one-shot-left/). It certainly served as a wake up call and a stark reminder of the situation we´re facing.

It took me a while to decide on whether or not to do this trip. I felt that it would be a tad hedonistic to go swaning off around the world again, at such a critical point for the future of humanity and our planet. Shouldn't I be helping to plan and organise direct action in the UK, to pressure the Government into rapid and radical change?

Climate change activism is blooming in the UK at the moment, as more and more people wake up to the severity of our situation.

A growing number of people are loosing faith in our government's supposed will to seriously tackle climate change, and are sick of the rhetoric that surrounds it. They are realising that it could very soon be too late to turn things around and prevent 'run away' climate change, and that their children (not just their Grandchildren, or Great Grandchildren) will face problems more severe than any that have been experienced in the history of mankind. Hence the recent bloom in climate change-based activism in the UK, and in other countries.

When 57 activists shut down Stansted airport earlier this month to highlight the ludicrous plans for infinate airport expansion, at a time when the science says we need to drastically reduce this industry, it's not because they're 'idiots' or 'troublemakers'. They're not doing it for kicks. They really don't want to disrupt people's holidays - they know that without the masses onboard, things won't change. In fact they´d hoped the situation wouldn't become so drastic as to warrant this type of behaviour. But, when all other avenues for negotiation are closed down, what choice is left but to take your future back into your own hands?

When the Sufferagettes engaged in a programme of civil disobedience to fight for the right to vote for women, they were chastised, and told that they were wasting their time. But those ordinary women had made a brave commitment to stand up and act and they eventually made the change they knew was right.

And the same for the masses of brave black people in the states, who after years of oppression realised that non-violent direct action was the powerful tool which they needed to instigate a just social change. Lead by that amazing man Martin Luthur King, they overcame their fear of the law, and successfully created a better future for their prodigy. And King himself had studied Ghandi and India's mass movement for change earlier in the century. Again, non - violent resistance, or Satyagraha, was ultimately what lead to India's freedom from British rule.

So, the people who are being brave enough to challenge to stand up to the system today are only following in the age old tradition of civil disobedience. But this time, it´s not only about oppression, but about our collective future on this planet.

It must have been a terrible and stressful inconvenience for those whose travel plans had been ruined by that action. But the inconvenience that we will all face due to increased freak weather events, rising sea levels, loss of agricultural land and productivity and increased conflicts over dwindling resources will be far greater.

So, that article reminded me that we had decided that this trip would't just be about us. We planned to participate in many environmetal awareness projects, and to spread the word about climate camp and this new movement for global change. We also planned to learn new skills for for living in a changing world, gained through working on organic farms and permaculture projects.

So, with a renewed sense of urgency, we're preparing to enter the productive bulk of this trip, starting with a 2 weeks of spanish lessons to help us in communication in these issues. Then, in early January, we've organised a stint in an environmental education centre & organic farm in Ecuador. Here, we also hope to meet a prominent local environmental activist whose raising awareness about the effects of climate change in South America.

I will anyone who has read this to read the above article link if they haven't, or again if they have. It's too late to wait for someone else to make things better for us. The change has to come from ourselves.

Photos: Roraima, Venezuela

2008-11-20T12:35:00.000-08:00

Venezuela - Enter Bush´s axis of evil. I mean oil. Soundtrack: car alarms and Reggaeton

2008-11-20T04:56:00.000-08:00

After worrying about whether or not we had enough money for the tickets & departure tax etc we were relieved to finaly board the sea prowler and got ready for a pleasant 3 hour trip to Guiria, Venezuela´s north eastern port. Onboard, we met our first bunch of backpackers, an interesting mix; a spanish guy who´s traveling around working as a dive instructor, an American Christian missionary on his way to try and persuade indegenous people to adopt his beliefs, a German herbalist with only his mountain bike and tiny backpack on his way around the worlds' vertical axis (he'd already done a trip on his bike previously around the world laterally), and a guy from Liverpool who just seemed angry and annoyed at everything.

On arrival, I was in for a bit of a shock. Up until this point I was sure that my Spanish was adequate enough for getting around, and doing all the important things you need a different language for. However, my first dialogue with a taxi driver highlighted the fact that my Spanish was weak at best, and that much work needed to be done.

We headed straight to the local bank, only to find that none of the 4 cards we have between us worked in the machines, so after finding a hotel (the hostel we´d intended to use appeared to be shut), we went into a bank, phrasebooks in hand, to put my Spanish to its second test. This time, I was understood, and to our delight, our palms were crossed with silver.

It felt great to be back in Latin America. The reggae and socca that'd been our daily soundtrack in T&T was replaced with Salsa, Merengue and, unfortunately, Reggaeton - South America's answer to urban music. Despite my dislike for the latter, it took me straight back to my first visit to Latin America 3 years ago, when I travelled through Central America. Aaaah The hustle & Bustle in the streets, the smells of the street food, the music pumping from every possible nook & cranny, the piles of stinking rubbish in the street.....okay, this bit was horrible, in fact I´ve never seen dirtier, rubbish-filled streets like these before.

Anyway, we soon realised that Venezuela was going to add to the dent in our budget already caused by T&T. If only we´d have got our hands on those US dollars; you can change them for a good rate here, and more or less double your wealth. People want them here so that they can buy things overseas....as the Bolivar fuerte, isnt that ´fuerte´(strong) anywhere outside of Venezuela. In fact they're pretty worthless anywhere else. As a result, you can either get money at the official rate which at the time was 2.15 to $1 US, or you can change US dollars in most shops, for up to 5 to $1 US. This is the black market. And we had hardly any US with us. This wouldnt have been quite so annoying if we hadnt already lost a large fraction of our savings due to the devaluation of the British pound over the last few months. To add to this, the inflation in Venezuela over the last year has been very high, so everything was pretty expensive, in fact damn expensive.

After a couple of days in Guiria, weighing up our money situation and adapting to a new world, we got a bus to Cuidad Bolivar. Here I made a classic mistake. When we asked how long the bus would take, we were pleased to hear only 2 .5 hours. However, the number 2 sounds very much like the number 12 in Spanish. So, after 3 hours on the bus we asked how long it´d be only to discover that we had only 10 hours left, mas o menus. Ah, yes, the distances, how could I forget?! And there was us thinking that we were prepared for the trip with our meagre packed lunch.

Spent a few days in Cuidad Bolivar, which has some nice colourful colonial Spanish buildings, with cobbled streets and the works. There are a couple of beautiful old hostels, or posadas, to stay in, one of which was Posada Patria; a German-run building of no less than 275 years. It had an open courtyard with lots of plants, loads of cool artifacts on the walls, a lounge dedicated to Cuban Jazz, hammocks and a couple of randy tortoises who kept us entertained with their rather noisy and perculiar copulation sessions.

We also stayed in Don Carlos, another beautiful posada, whose belgium owner took delight in taking any opportunity to share his opinions on the country's political situation. We made a habit of asking pretty much anyone we came accross, mainly Venezuelans, what they thought of Senor Chavez to try to build a more accurate picture of whats really going on with the 'revolution'. And, we got some interesting insight. But more on this later.

Most travellers staying in this town are either on their way back from or heading to 2 of Venezuela´s most magnificant natural wonders; Angel falls, or Roraima in the National park of Cainama. We tried to find a way to check out Angel Falls without flying, but had no luck. Instead, we headed to Santa Elena on the Brazillian border to go on a 6 day treck to the top of the impressive Roraima; one of many huge table-top mountains (or 'Tepuis') that are scattered around the Canaima National park. Apparently they were the inspiration for Author Conan Doyle's 'The Lost World' (what a classic) and I can see why, the whole place did seem very Jurassic Park. It wouldn't have seemed so unusual if we'd passed a Diplodocus or two along the way. It was a stunning area, totally unique and formed from the oldest rocks on earth. After the second day, it still seemed implausible that we'd actually reach the top....the monstrous rocky sides jut vertically from the base of the mountain and dissapear into the clouds. It took 3 days to reach the plateau, stopping to camp along the way, and swimming & drinking the cool river water.

Canaima, the name of the park, derives from the novel "Canaima" by Venezuelan author Rómulo Gallegos, and means "spirit of evil" in the language of the Pemón, the indigenous inhabitants of the park. It didnt feel particularly evil though. At the top there are many endemic species, that is, plants and animals found nowhere else on earth. We found cool carnivorous plants like sundews, and tiny crawling black frogs. Unfortunatley, this century will probably spell the end of the road for many of these organisms. As things warm up, they won't be able to migrate any further up, as they already live on the top, so unless they rapidly evolve wings and fly to somewhere with a more suitable climate, they're f*cked. It's sobering to think that we may be some of the last people to see these lifeforms that have been in existance for so long.

It definately seemed like some other world-type shizzle on the top; big craters, crazy plants, crystal clear lakes and streams, and all surrounded by the white clouds below. Although, once again, the beauty was tainted by the touch of man, the paths strewn with plastic food wrappers and beer cans discarded by tourists and locals alike. By the end Colette and I had collected a bag full of other people´s waste.

We spent two days on top, the highlight being the amazing view once the clouds had cleared.

We were shattered by the end of it, and a bit damp & battered, but it was well worth the effort. On the evening of our return to Santa Elena, we took the bus back to Cuidad Bolivar and planned our next stop; Merida.

Trinidad & Tobago (soundtrack: Unknown ´Soca´ artists -´I´m gonna eat me some pork this Christmas´ & ´Big banana, small banana´)

2008-11-15T06:39:00.000-08:00

As we got ready to disembark, we spotted several vultures circling above. Were they awaiting our arrival? A rep from the shipping company collected us, and took us to the immigration office, where he announced a few extra costs which hadn´t been mentioned, including a fee for the immigration officer to come out and see to us on a Sunday. We weren´t sure whether or not we were been had, but it was a reminder that we were now out on our own, and fair game to anyone and everyone who fancied trying their luck at releiving us of a few dollars! I reccomend that anyone wanting to travel by cargo ship should look into these 'extra costs', as we hadn't been prepared for them. At this point, we were warned about safety in and around the capitol, Port of Spain. ¨Don´t go here, don´t go there, and certainly don´t go out after dark¨. This would become a typical warning from the locals on the island. We'd heard a few things about Trinidad before we'd left ie ¨ooooooh, its dangerous there, be careful¨ etc etc, but these days thats a common response when talking about travel in places that are generally out of peoples´comfort zone. If I´d have listened to everyones tales of concern about different places to which I´d planned to travel, I probably wouldn´t have gone to study in Hull (¨oooooh, it´s rough there, becareful¨!).
So yeah, listen to people, be aware of the risks, do your research, be sensible, but don't live in fear. However, in this case some of the warnings turned out to be justified; the crime-rate in Trini is rocketing at the moment, with shootings and stabbings a daily reality. The murder rate for 2008 stood at 460 by the time we left, and is probably over 500 now, which is pretty crazy for a small island. However, many of these are gang and drug - related, and as we had no intention of taking drugs with gangsters, we kept clear of trouble. We´d no more desire to wander around Port of Spain at night time than we would in certain areas of Manchester, London or Hull. Common sense.

During the taxi ride to our guesthouse, we were introduced to the sounds of 'soca' music, with classics such as "I'm gunna eat me some pork this christmas", and "Big banana, small banana"- a fallic tale of the pros and cons of differning penis sizes.
After a day or two, we realised just how expensive it was going to be in Trini. Our guesthouse was owned by Colette's neighbours' wife, and was out in the middle of surburbia, with only taxis to take us anywhere (¨don't use buses - you 'll be mugged¨). Getting everywhere would incur a significant cost, not to mention being environmentally unsound.

And then came a ray of sunshine (not that we needed more sunshine - it was already reaching 32 degrees each day, and we were feeling pretty frazzled)....in the form of a Trini guy (Trini, not Trannie) called Kyle. His Russian girlfriend was using one of the rooms in the guesthouse as a beauty salon for her business, and so he visited on a regular basis. He imediately adopted us as friends, and drove us to a local supermarket to get some food, with there being no local shops. He was a self - employed blind fitter, and had recently spent some time working in London, where he'd met many friendly Brits who'd looked after him and treated him well. So, it seemed that he wished to make it his mission to treat us well in return; bring on the Karma! Meeting this great guy would define our short stay in Trinidad.

For a few days he insisted in driving us to various spots to partake in various Trini traditions. We stopped at Roti stalls to eat ´Rotis´ and ´Doubles´, simple snacks which had been introduced by the Island's Indian population (that is, immigrants from India, not indegenous Indians). These were a delight to us veggies; a snack consisting of chickpeas in a curry sauce, wrapped in a fried bread, all for about $1. Although, after a couple of days' indulgence, Colette persuaded me that the fried bread element rendered them from being a healthy option, and if I continued to consume them at that rate, I'd be heading for cardiac arrest. We stopped at roadside fruit stalls along small roads in valleys surrounded by lush, verdent vegetation where we drank fresh milk from coconuts hacked open by Rastas. We tried local delicacies such as salted chunks of dried mango dyed bright pink, a truly hideous concoction....why would one corrupt such a wonderful fruit in this way? We went to Trinidad's most popular beach - Maracas, where we ate 'cheese 'n' bakes, instead of the more popular 'shark 'n' bakes, of course. It angers me that publications such as Lonely planet still promote foods like this to travellers. Due to over-fishing, the world's shark population is in a dire state, and it won't be long until many species become exticnt. Not only will this be a tragic loss of an awsome creature that has been patrolling the seas since long before the dinosaurs even existed, but it will also prove devastating to the marine ecosystem as a whole by eliminating a vital top predator. Okay, rant over. For now.

Unfortunatley our priority in Trinidad was getting me to the hospital to make sure I hadnt sustained a fracture during an incident that occurred just before I left England. My right arm was in a removeable sling, which was a bit of a bugger, and made lugging the old backpack around even more of an arduous task. I had no idea how much it would cost, or how long it'd take for me to be seen to. But, Lady Luck appeared to be on our side once more; Alina, Kyles' girlfriend, had an aunty who worked in the hospital. With a single phonecall, a free X-ray and consultant was arranged! Back of the net! Only hitch was, the consultancy would be the day after our boat to Venezuela, so we'd have to stay an extra week for the next boat. What a shame; we'd have to go wait a few days on the neighbouring tropical island paridise of Tobago.

So, after spending a night at Kyles' where he cooked us some delicious food including fried plantain (his genorosity knew no limit!) we caught the boat to Tobago.

Here, we felt a little more free, as it's meant to be much safer than its big sister. We stayed in Bucco beach, a lovely little area which was quiet and had a wonderful beach and amazing sunsets. The locals seemed much more welcoming, and we were 2 of only about 6 tourists in the whole area. There was a jetty at the bottom of our path from which we could jump into the sea each morning. Did a bit of fishing too, which is a rare treat. Caught 5, retruned 3, and ate two. I no longer eat fish, unless I can catch them myself. Due to over-fishing, our once abundant oceans have been ravaged, and are about to be turned into a prehistoric slimey mess. Let me explain. With big predators often gone or greatly depleted, organisms lower on the food web grow more abundant, reducing their own prey in turn. Around the world, loss of fish, combined with increased nutrient inflow from pollution, has caused a bloom of primitive organisms in the ocean: the same algae, bacteria, and jellyfish that dominated the seas before the explosion of complex life 600 million years ago. This has been dubbed by some as “the rise of slime.” I've always had a deep interest in the ecology of the oceans and have a degree in Aquatic biology. I refuse to support an industry that is destroying such a vital ecosystem. However, very occasionally I use a rod and line to catch my dinner. This technique is very selective, and if you catch something thats too small, you can pop it back relatively unharmed to grow bigger and reproduce. And of course, you don't catch turtles, dolphins, birds and whales by accident. But, I suppose in order to be free from hypocrisy, I shouldn't even take the few that I do. But, when living in countries where it's not so easy to get a healthy, consistant protein intake as a vegetarian, a sustainably caught fish here and there I can justify. So, after abstaining from eating fish for over two years, the succulent, tastey flesh was a delicious treat.

One day we went on a little boat trip to do some snorkelling over whats left of the Caribbean's once flourishing coral reef. On the sunday night, the weekly 'Lime', or party, came to Bucco beach, for the notorious 'Sunday school'. This was really fun....there wereBBQ's set up (with a suprising amount of veggie options), soundsystems pumping, steel drum bands drumming, and artisan stalls. We also had the pleasure of meeting local legend...the one....the only......DJ MICROWAVE!!! Legend indeed. He carries his set up around in a microwave, and actually DJ´s from inside the microwave with the door open! DING! And what a fine selection of reggae old and new.

We met a Venezuelan guy who told us to take US dollars to venezuela, as you can get a good rate of exchange on the black market. We attempted to procure some, but missed the bank closing time, and decised to get some in Trinidad the next morning, before we caught the boat. In the end, we couldnt get any which later prooved to be a frustrating hiccup.

The next day we returned to Trinidad and our good man Kyle picked us up from the port. We stayed the night at his house again, where his lovely Mother made us feel most welcome - we talked about vegetarianism, the environment, Obama, and how these fit into her belief a practicing Jahova's witness.

"Are you sure you want to go to South America tommorrow? You can spend Christmas here y'know, we have a wicked Christmas and ting 'ere in Trini y'know!" repeated Kyle, bless him, he really wanted us to stay! He'd become great friend, and we shall definately be in touch.

The next morning, we had a bit of a panic as we couldn't draw any money out from all 4 cards. A wildgoose chase ensued, to what must have been almost every ATM on the island, yet we could not get more money. We pondered on the posibility of staying an extra week and getting money and US dollars, but decided that we were already week behind schedule due to the hospital, and we'd already spent too much money whilst on these islands. One week more was simply too much (much to Kyle's dissapointment). If only the boat was more frequent than once a week. If only we could fly! So, we decided we had enough money to get us to Venezuela where we would contact the banks. We said bye to our good friend, and boarded the sea prowler.

Summary

We left with mixed feelings about Trinidad & Tobago. If we hadn't have met Kyle, we may not have had such a good time. The current levels of violence and the horror stories that we'd heard, had marred our stay slightly. Trinidad seems to be a very divided island, with astonishing contrasts in the welfare of different social classes and a hefty dollop of racism (between the black and Indian communities). One minute you'd be driving past expensive, lavish neighbourhoods, then as if a line were drawn on the ground, you'd be passing impoverished slums, and you'd hear the click of the cars' central locking system as it was activated by the driver.

Sadly, despite the beauty of the island, its population doesn't seem to give a shit about keeping it tidy (obviously it may not be a priority of the poorer people, but what about the rest?) and everywhere we went the roadsides were littered with plastics.

One thing that struck us imediately about this island was the number of cars. Theres far too many. The roads are gridlocked at any point in the day, jammed with 4x4s and old, beat - up, over-sized American monsters. There is public transport, but I guess the old American ideal of personal car ownership is as strong as ever here, and as the island has significant oil reserves (for now), petrol is dirt cheap.

We enjoyed Tobago much more, as it is far more relaxed, and the locals were much friendlier, and there are less cars. But overall, this Caribbean chapter was a bonus; we wouldnt have visited if it weren't for the fact that this is where we'd disembark. We could have gone further and got off in Guyana, or Brazil, but for 90 euro per day each, we had to limit the passage to 12 days. And anyway, this was the closest stop to Venezuela where the trip would truly begin. We just had to come and see what the revolution is all about.

Photos: Trinidad & Tobago

2008-11-12T06:48:00.000-08:00

11 days at sea (soundtrack: Mr Scruff - Shanty town)

2008-11-05T10:48:00.000-08:00

On our first evening we had to speak to the chef to inform him of our meatless dietary requirements. He nodded an unconvincing nod of understanding, and retreated to the kitchen to put our meal together. 5 Minutes later we were each presented with a plate of canned mushrooms, sweetcorn & French fries, in three separate piles which formed a pattern not dissimilar to the radiation symbol. Hmmm, could be in for an interesting 11 day diet, we thought. However, this appeared to be a one off, and we were pleasantly surprised with the food for the rest of the passage. Obviously we made it known to him how much we appreciated the extra effort of having to prepare something different for us (a common source of veggie guilt!). Meals consisted of nice French bread and fresh salad, followed by a great soup, a main which could be anything from chinese style fried vegetables, to veggie bolognaise, to omelettes, with fruit or ice cream for desert. Breakfast consisted of fresh fruit salad, yogurt, honey and a few cornflakes thrown on top. Not sure how well vegans would do. We dined in the officers´ mess room, so ate with the Croatian Captain and other officers, and the only other passenger; a french lady called Ana. She was doing the full 7 week loop from France-St Martin-Trinidad-French Guyana-Brazil-France.

Our days slipped into a relaxing routine. Get up at 8ish for breakfast, go to up to the bridge or bow (the very front of the ship, as seen in ´Titanic´) to sit in the sun and read for a few hours, get too sweaty to sit in sun any longer, eat lunch, study Spanish, go back into sun to read/stare at sea in hope of spotting marine life, do some exercise, have doze.....
Anytime when inside the bridge, whoever was on duty was only too happy to show us how everything worked, and we could see our exact location on the screens. We passed by the Azores, and crossed the mid-Atlantic ridge.

As the days went by, it got hotter and hotter, and we gradually adapted as we moved further south-a nice change from being picked up in chilly England and dumped into the steaming tropics 8 hours later in a tsunami of perspiration. On our first full day of steaming, I stared into the sea in the hope of seeing a whale or any form of marine life, and amazingly, literally only a few minutes later I saw.....a whale! Not sure what species, but it must have been a few hundred meters ahead of us, its huge black back back emerging from the water and glittering in the sun. Followed it for a little while before it disappeared with one final blow. Couldn´t believe my luck! That turned out to be he only whale I spotted, though I did see a pod of dolphins. Frustratingly, Colette missed them all. To top it off, I saw three shooting stars one night as we approached the Caribbean, and she missed each one in turn! In the end I think she thought I was making it up. Or hallucinating.

In the evenings, we generally went to hang out and drink with either the Croatian crew or the Fillipino crew (they had separate recreation rooms, and didnt really integrate much, which is a shame). The Croatians would show us music videos - anything from Barry White live, to their undisputed favourite - a live performance by a 60´s Solvakian rock band ´White Button´, whose lead man looked disconcertingly like my Dad in skin tight leathers and various flambouyant garments which I´m sure must have looked good in the 60´s. When we visited the Filipino crew we were in for a surprise. ¨You like to dance? Later, when drink more beer, we dance! This is disco¨! And sure enough, after a couple more beers, they began to warm up. I cant remember the last time I laughed so much! Those guys have energy! We had an assortment of styles, from attempted break dancing, to random shuffles, to a few dances that one could only describe as homo-erotic. They are at sea for a long time I suppose...... Anyway, it was clearly a novelty to have girls on board, and they lined up to have a dance with either Colette or Ana. It wasn't long before I grabbed my Drum n Bass and breaks CD´s, and party picked up a notch. Everyone was going crazy......I´d expected many things of this ship, but never that we´d be raving the night away with the Fillipino Massive!

Both crews were all absolutely lovely guys, and they all went out of their way to make us feel welcome for the duration. I think it was novel to have young passengers traveling on board, for some reason its usually elderly couples that travel on cargo ships.

On day 10, we had the bonus of being able to disembark in the Caribbean island of St Martin for a full day. Had a wander around, chilled on a beach, and bought gifts for both crews; Huge bottles of duty free Mt Gay rum. And, I mean huge!

By this point, the water in the sea was warm enough for us to fill up the swimming pool (yes, there was a pool!). On our last day, it was the crew´s half-day holiday, so they brought out the Filipino sound system, beer and rum, and we had a pool party (with more Filipino dancing).
12hours later, we were docked at the Port of Spain, Trinidad. It was time to leave our beloved Platon! I´d grown quite used to life on board, and couldn´t really be arsed with this whole backpacking malarkey anymore! We´d made good friends, not least our steward, Malvin, who was just a great guy all round.

We got our backpacks together, said some heart-felt goodbyes, and prepared to leave the ship.

Photos: Onboard the Platon

2008-11-04T06:37:00.000-08:00

Embarkation - Enter the Platon

2008-11-03T18:29:00.000-08:00

After one night in a hotel in Le Harve (France) we took a taxi to the docks, as you´re not permitted to enter on foot. The taxi firm we used was meant to be the only firm who´re allowed into the part of the port where the cargo ships dock. Our excitement was quickly dashed upon arriving at the passport control box at the docks´ main entrance, where after much paper shuffling and concerned looks it emerged that only Colette´s name was on the passenger list, and not my own! After a phone call and more paper shuffling we were waved through, and the taxi driver drove us through an alien world of stacked containers, cranes and crazy container-picking-up vehicles which zoomed around resembling giant metallic tables on wheels with the driver hung 30 feet high in a tiny cockpit, not unlike the tiny gold men who drive Zoids (this will make no sense to those who were not lucky enough to own Zoids as children). He drove us to the edge of the dock and said "this is it", or the French equivalent. But the boat was nowhere to be seen. In fact, there was no one around at all, just dangerous looking cranes and Zoid table vehicles flying about the place. It seemed like we shouldn't be there at all. In fact, a few security cars drove by, the drivers eying us cautiously, and we were sure we would be picked up by immigration control at any moment. Eventually, one car did approach us. Its occupants informed us that the ship was late, but was due to arrive in 40 minutes and that we were in the right place after all. Relief! We got the portable soundsystem out and had a little dance, much to the amusement of the dockers who were gathering to await the ship.

Sure enough, 40ish minutes later, CMG CMA PLATON appeared on the horizon, and slowly but surely made her way towards us. What a beauty! After an hour or so, we were able to embark, and after climbing the 60 + narrow steps to the bridge (control floor at top of the actual building bit of the ship, for those who aren´t down with shipping lingo). We were shown to our cabin (one floor below the bridge) by one of the Croatian crew. And what a cabin! A spacious, light, airy room with a double bed, onsuite shower/toilet, sitting area, writing desk & 2 windows (or portholes). Luxury! The days of roughing it in a filthy, diesel coated container for 11 days must be over. For those privileged enough to be able to pay for their passage that is. The sad truth is that some desperate people in the world do still attempt to flea to better lives by becoming stow-aways on these ships.....often with tragic consequences. After settling in we were taken on a tour of the boat, and met the Croatian and Filipino crew. The next day, the ship was ready to ´up anchor´, and we were away!

And so we begin...

2008-10-20T05:48:00.000-07:00

Over the last few years we´ve been involved in the UK´s growing climate change activist movement and have learnt a lot about anthropocentric (human-based) climate change. We´ve made many significant changes to our lifestyles in an attempt to tread more lightly on our home planet. We hope that by leading by example, we might inspire others to do the same, as every person must play their part if we are to avoid a global catastrophe.

I love to travel, so acknowledging that flying is by far the most environmentally damaging thing a person can do was by no means easy. In fact, I know of many people who call themselves ´green´ who still fly here, there and everywhere, cancelling out any positive gains they make in other lifestyle changes. We in the West just love to fly, and the recent phenomenom of cheap flights means people are flying more than ever. And, many have been fooled into thinking they can consume their way out of the problem by simply buying carbon offets (more on this later). So, we´ve joined an increasing number of people who´ve taken the pledge to give up air travel and must now find alternative means to get around. It took me a little while to get my head around the fact that I would no longer fly. But at the end of the day, I don´t need to fly to have a quality life! And I can no longer justify taking part in something that is destroying other people´s quality of life. During the Heathrow third runway debate there have been many indignant wails of protest along the lines of ¨but it´s my right to fly¨!! Well, try telling that to the people of Bangladesh, whose lives are already being devastated by flooding caused in part by the lifestyles of us in the West. The UN estimates that climate change is already responsible for 150,000 deaths per year. Surely a persons´ right to fly doesnt outweigh a persons´ right to simply live? Put that way, I think its a sacrifice I can live with. Of course, to travel long distances will always incur an environmental cost. The most environmetally sound option is to stay in your home country (unless you can sail/cycle long distances). However, the impact of one´s travels can be reduced significantly by choosing alternative modes of transport-in this case we will piggy-back on the emissions of a cargo ship. Let me explain. The cargo/freighter industry is by no means environmentally sound, in fact, it is a significant contributor to global anthropocentric emissions. However, we decided we could justify this mode of travel on the following grounds:

- The aviation industry works on a supply and demand basis, so by traveling on a cargo ship, we are not adding to the demand in the aviation industry, we are simply freeloading on the emissions of a ship which is already making the journey to deliver goods. As the ships only take a maximum of 6-10 paying passengers, there´s no scope for an increasing demand in cargo ship travel to increase the number of ships on the sea. We are simply 'freeloading' on the back of emission which are already being produced, instead of contributing to a new source of emissions - the aviation industry, currently the fastest-growing source of emissions globally.

- Where there are currently no alternatives to the petrol based kerosene used to fuel air-travel, there are many solutions on the horizon for the shipping industry to clean up it´s act, including technologies such as huge kite sails, and simple changes such as slowing down.

-I hope to use this trip to make some noise about climate change, producing climate change awareness education material, and giving presentations on climate change activism where I can, to generate awareness and debate in places where it's full implications have yet to be realized.

Unfortunately for us, cargo ship travel is far more expensive than flying, so we just had to work extra hard to save those pennies. I'm sure it will be worth it. The thought of traveling accross the Atlantic on a ship definately appeals more to me. It's funny how things change so quickly - it wasn't really that long ago since the only option to reach the Americas from Europe was by boat. And now when i tell people of our plans, they look at me like I'm insane. Well, once the aviation indusrty collapses due to a combination of rising oil prices as the global supply dwindles, and increased pressure to reduce it's emissions, maybe we'll see a return to over-land and sea travel. or, maybe we'll all just have to bite the bullet and travel less.