Our bus arrived into the capital, San Salvador. We took a taxi straight away out of there to Sunzal, near La Libertad on the coast. We got dropped off at the Surfer’s Inn, where we were very warmly greeted by Antonio and his wife. For $6 each we got a simple but large private room. This became our new home for the next 2 weeks. It was just a 5 minute walk to the rocky beach with the main point break. We hired surfboards and went out almost every day. The almost was because of some huge waves for a couple of days, up to an estimated 12 foot. That wasn’t enough to stop Joz going for a paddle though. It was generally good, particularly in the mornings before the wind chopped it up, but the weekends were too crowded and I could hardly catch a wave.

Breakfast consisted of a fresh mango or two fallen from the trees at the hostel. Most often we would visit the local restaurant for lunch and dinner. Plate of the day was $2.50 or $3 for lunch and papusas for dinner at 3 for $1 would cost us $1.50 each. With beers varying from $1 to $1.50 this was the cheapest country of the trip so far. We did extend our budget sometimes including the worlds best ceviche – mixed seafood in lime juice, this one served on a bed of watermelon.

All sound pretty good so far? That’s because I didn’t mention the heat, humidity and mosquitoes. The first night we were there we were drinking a beer at Balsamo, the neighbouring hostel, which actually became quite a regular event, it was 30 degrees and very sticky at 21.00. Our room would get quite hot, but with no fly wire on the windows we had to keep them closed and rely on the fan to survive. Even during the day and afternoon we would have to retreat to the hot room to escape the relentless mozzies. A swim in the ocean was not at all refreshing as the water is so warm. Similarly, there was no such thing as a cold shower.

After our 2 weeks of fun we ventured along Ruta de las flores (Route of the flowers) to Juayua (pronounced Huayuuua, or nobody will understand you!). This is a nice little town which has a big food festival every weekend and is very popular for Salvadorian tourists. I heard a rumour that it was possible to eat guinea pig. With my phrasebook in hand I went in search. Nobody understood me, so I had to resort to gestures along with ‘like a rabbit but smaller’ in Spanish. I was soon directed to a stall and told to ask for ‘rana’. Turns out it wasn’t guinea pig, but I saved myself a trip to France…

Not just the legs, the whole frog! No, it doesn’t taste like chicken, not much flavour at all, but quite chewy.

We went with the guide from the hostel for a short hike just out of town to see the waterfalls, also very popular with the Salvadorian tourists. They were pretty cool, but the best bit is the tunnels linking them up. You can float through with the flow of the water in complete darkness, avoiding protruding rocks, with just enough room to keep your mouth above the water. The pools and tunnels were built to direct water to a hydro electric power plant. If you take a wrong turn you can end up as energy!

After a few beers, our pleasant time in El Salvador had come to an end.

Obviously the next logical step after Cuba is Nicaragua. Dasha and I flew into Managua, jumped on the internet at the airport and started doing some research about the place. We read lots of warnings about how dangerous the country is and particularly not to share taxis with other people – ok, that’s good to know. Our search for cheap accommodation was not going well. The information desk didn’t speak English, but much worse than that, they didn’t have any information! A taxi driver was paying me plenty of attention so I thought I would see if he could be of any assistance. Eventually information found me a phone number for the hostel I wanted to stay at. I called them, they had plenty of space and our mate the taxi driver drove us there. Nice place with a kitchen, swimming pool and wifi – back in civilisation! We walked down to the food court. It was horrible. Full of every American franchise you could imagine. I can’t believe the atrocious effect America has on surrounding countries who imagine one day living the American dream.

The next day we spent almost all day by the pool catching up on hundreds of emails and the like. The remaining portion of the day we spent in the pool, at the supermarket or in the kitchen making the world’s most delicious fresh salad sandwiches and vego pasta – so, so good after a month in Cuba. We had a few beers locally with a couple of Canadian dudes we met, but didn’t find too much action. Managua’s not a place that you can safely go wondering around anywhere you want, so really need taxi’s to cross town.

The next day, a taxi to the bus station, straight on to a bus to Rivas, 20 min wait and on to the next bus to San Juan Del Sur. Found ourselves accommodation 20m from the bus stop and after a few hours found my brother, Jozza!! Beer beer beer happy happy happy!

San Juan is a very touristy (mainly Americans) town on the beach. One of the main reasons for coming here is to surf, but the surf beaches are a short drive, or long bicycle ride as it was for us, away. We were looking for accommodation for a month, but with Semana Santa, or Easter Week, approaching everything was booked out. Apparently the town goes from 20,000 to 200,000 people for the busiest weekend. We hopped in a cab and went to El Gigante, following some advice of locals and the internet. We stayed one night in this small, quiet town to check out the area. It was a 15 min walk to the first surf beach, Amarillo. Another decent hike along the beach and around the point and we arrived to Colorados, the main break in the area. Here there were a few big fancy houses on the beach. We saw a few people sitting on their front fence and went for a chat, to see if they knew of any accommodation available. Turns out Seth and Lindsay were managing a few houses and had just one left. We went and checked out the two storey townhouse overlooking the golf course. By our standards, it was quite luxurious, yet surprisingly affordable. With only a 5 min walk to the closest beach, Panga Drops, we took it immediately.

This was our new home for the next month. It’s part of the Hacienda Iguana golf and surf resort. There‘s really nothing around, no shops or supermarkets, only two choices of quite uninspiring restaurants and a few friendly neighbours. There’s constant security, the head of which is a reptilian type character by the name of Eric Phillips, who has been known to eat small animals if they cross his path.

We spent the entire month surfing once or twice a day as we felt necessary with the boards we hired. We spent most of our time at Panga Drops – not the easiest wave for beginners, but we gave it our best crack. Jozza spent a bit more time at Colarados and was super stoked to get into a few barrels.

We only had a few days each without surf. Mine was after copping a fin to the face and splitting my nose open to the bone (or is actually cartilage?). The very next day I was feeling pretty crook and actually collapsed on the beach, apparently due to food poisoning. I’ve only felt similar to that once before – the first day of this trip at the airport in Melbourne. I also missed one day due to a severe hangover the day after my birthday. I thought that was reasonable. Dasha kept smacking herself in the nose with her board, but I think the only thing that kept her out of the water was her strained ribs. Joz had just a couple of days off due to a cut on his leg. It seemed like pretty much every day one of us was hurting ourselves somehow.

I mentioned that this was a very remote place. Most of the time we were lucky enough to get a ride with a neighbour in to town to do our grocery shopping. Without this help it would be very difficult, especially for the large quantities of beer required. One morning I went on a mission to Rivas using the public transport. It was a 50 minute walk to the front gate, which I timed very well – the next bus (big old yellow American school bus that you see in all the movies), which only run every two hours, was there within a minute. It was already quite full as I climbed in the back door. There were still some women with bags waiting to get on, so I got out to make room and climbed up the ladder and onto the roof with a few of the locals. The whole journey we were ducking and weaving to avoid trees. At one point a monkey howled loudly at us as we drove directly underneath him, only a couple of metres away. After about an hour we arrived in Tola, a small village. Here we all had to get off. The bus drove around the corner and parked again to pick up more passengers. It was very confusing. The bus was totally packed and I had to stand there and watch it drive away with locals barely hanging on to the bars on the back of the bus – crazy buggers. Everyone else who didn’t get on were waiting for communal taxis. After maybe 15 minutes another bus turned up and we all piled on. Surprisingly, I was back on the roof. I think it was another 40 minutes and I finally made it to Rivas. Close to 3 hours for about 30km.

Surf by day, beer by night and next thing a whole month is gone. We all progressed with our surfing, but still have a lot of work to do. We called in to Granada for a night on our way back to Managua. It was nothing special, but much more comfortable and relaxing than Managua.

While in Managua, I got to have a day trip to visit my World Vision sponsor child. What a brilliant day! I caught a taxi to the office and met Odeir there. We drove down to the Masaya office where we met Carlos, his Aunty (Arlin?) and her son Cristian. We went to Carlos’ school which was incredible. Carlos took me by the hand and led me into his classroom – he was the king, showing off his gringo donor.

Then we had a full school assembly, opening with prayer and the national anthem, then followed by dancing and singing performed by some of the secondary students on the stage in front of the welcoming banner and balloons that had been set up for me.

Carlos took control of the photography for me, taking about 180 photos. There was speeches by the principal, parents committee and a community leader. It was amazing how genuinely grateful everyone was for my support. Even though I was the first ever donor to visit this community, I had no doubt that they knew the money was coming from real people, not just some imaginary endless foreign fund. I received a certificate of appreciation and a gift and then had to make a speech myself. This was followed by a tour of the arts section. Apparently government schools don’t have these kind of facilities and materials. And all of the students choose to take these courses as extra curricula activities outside of normal class times. Everyone was very proud of what they had, so nice to see. We sat in the computer room for a bit of a chat with the principal, community leaders and world vision staff and facilitators. The sincerity shone through. After that it was off to a restaurant with una buena vista. Then it was time for farewells. Arlin was also very grateful for the visit. It was a shame I couldn’t meet Carlos’ mother, but she had to work. Carlos was of course very shy at the start of the day but I scored a big hug at the end of it. He looked so funny with his new oversized Essendon jacket on clinging to his frisbee.The only big shame for the whole day was that my Spanish is so poor. Maybe again in 5 years time….

From Managua Joz and I shot up to Leon. It’s the country’s second largest city, but much more vibrant and flowing than Managua. The highlight here was our trip to an active volcano. We didn’t get to see any lava, just a bit of stinky steam and smoke. But the entire outside of the mountain is covered in volcanic rock, on one particular side, about the size of gravel. This makes it possible to slide down on a sled, or bum board, at potentially high speeds.

Yes, very fast, but I didn’t break the mens record of 84km/h, or the womens, 87km/h! But when I got off at the bottom I was shaking, adrenalin pumping. A few mojitos and I was back on the level. Luckily, because we had to focus on the mission at hand. Our bus was departing at stupid o’clock, so we had to push through. Along with some new friends, we found a reggae bar for some beers, then followed it up with a late night venue, which was surprisingly, yet not disappointingly, empty. We left there at 3, finished packing our bags and wandered up the road for a taxi, which luckily was there within a few minutes. We were at our bus stop (petrol station) by 3.30 for our 4.00 bus as required. There weren’t any other passengers waiting with us, but there were quite a few locals hanging around boozing, in a few different groups. A little bit of a sketchy place to be hanging out, especially in a Central American country! Joz just started playing his guitar and trying to make friends with everyone, with the theory that if one group started hassling us someone else would stick up for us. The petrol station sold beer which was handy. It got to 5, still no bus, starting to worry. A dude told us we could go with him at 8 for free…. maybe, we said. Joz had a girl doing a bit of a pole dance for him in the petrol station while he was buying beer. All a bit random really. We asked the staff at the petrol station, they said the bus is often an hour late, but never 2. It was after 6 by the time it came. Pretty glad to get out of there and farewell our cocaine sniffing ‘brother’.

I think that’s the first time I have ever slept through an entire country – Honduras. And so we made it to El Salvador.

For some more photos check out here and also here.

 

What not to do after spending 6 weeks in Jamaica surrounded by locals and backpackers smoking weed: forget to wash your socks.

I arrived into Santiago de Cuba. Things were good. There was a lot of security and customs officers, asking the same questions, which I had all of the answers for. I got all the way through to baggage claim, was excited to have a beer with my new local friend Timmy, when customs decided to search the single male clean shaven freshly washed hair good looking tourist arriving from the world’s most renown marijuana smoking country. Of course this didn’t bother me, as I don’t smoke. This guy was very thorough though, making me empty out every single item out of both of my bags. He was searching little hiding places I didn’t know I had and finding little pieces of bark and sand and dirt and who knows what from the inside of seams which has been there forever and a day. He was testing little bits that he particularly liked by adding a couple of drops from 3 different bottles. They all turned yellow and no one seemed to mind. Then, when he picked a piece off my smelly socks and it turned red, I got a little worried. He tested quite a few pieces off this one pair of socks and about 4 or 5 turned red. I was becoming a little more worried. I didn’t think it would be that big of a deal though, since they didn’t find any real quantities, and it was only one pair of socks, and one piece from a shirt that was next to them. So how big of a deal was it??? After 2 hours of having absolutely everything unpacked and repacked, the result was a $110 fine. I asked if I could call my embassy, he said, ‘sure, there’s a payphone outside’. I didn’t have any money or the phone number so I just ran with it. All of it was done with proper paperwork and a whole heap of stamping and carbon copies and more stamping and signatures, so it was legit. I was feeling pretty average, mainly disappointed with my own naive carefreeness, when I found a taxi driver with an awesome Ford 57 (according to the sticker on the windscreen). He drove me to the bus station via a bar, a tourist restaurant and a local restaurant. It’s not often you get to shout your taxi driver dinner and a beer!

People are strange, when you’re a stranger.
Cuba is a very unique country. I really can’t get my head around how things operate. It’s a communist country, yet that seems to have very little impact on the every day backpacker. Taxi drivers still hassle you everywhere you walk and try to rip you off. Hustlers pounce on you as soon as you get off an inter-city bus, before you can even get your bags. Prices for accommodation and even restaurants have to be negotiated. And of course tourists love horse rides (we met a guy that paid $40, while we paid 4 cents each as part of the public transport system).

Then you’ve got the Casas Particulares. This is the most common form of accommodation for the budget traveller, the only option other than hotels (which are apparently very poor quality anyway) or free camping. The idea is that you are staying with a family, but unfortunately, in our opinion, you get treated more like a hotel guest – of course you have a private bedroom (and often bathroom), but if you choose to pay extra for dinner, you are waited upon like you’re in a restaurant, rather than having a family dinner, and are served up excessive quantities of food, which you feel some obligation to attempt to eat. They generally charge $20 or $25 including breakfast. At first this seems like an excellent income for the family, but they have to pay the government $200 per month, plus 20% tax on any profit. It’s far from easy. Also no wonder they try hard to sell you dinner for 6 or 8 bucks each, which won’t get taxed at all. When it comes to meal time, either lunch or dinner, everybody is certain that all tourists love to eat excessive quantities, especially seafood and even more particularly lobster (although its actually crayfish). Our first experience of the lobster was fantastic. We had been chatting with our Couch Surfing mate David, drinking his cocktails, and mentioned that Dasha had never tried lobster and I very rarely. The next evening when we called in for a cheeky cocktail, he brought out a massive platter – 5 grilled lobster tails on top of a salad (they don’t bother eating the rest of the animal). It was nothing short of brilliant.

It seems that I may be making somewhat of a habit of seeing the coolest thing on the last day. I wanted to buy dominoes, and surprisingly that was very hard. We met a dude willing to sell his personal Bucanero set, which sounded perfect since Bucanero was my beer of choice during my 3 weeks. We went for a stroll in the evening to find his apartment. This entire block was incredible! In a city that is relatively flat, there is some kind of… might have to ask my geologist friends out there, but perhaps a sink hole? So the top of all of the buildings are at the same level as the rest of the suburb, and from the street there is absolutely no way of telling that there is anything special here, but there’s an extra 3 stories below street level, built in this hole, with natural rock faces visible around the perimeter. It was a shame we didn’t get to go there during the day time for a photo session. It was actually quite a surreal and little bit spooky place in the evening. If you want to find it, you’ll have to stay with Ernesto.

After successfully learning to kite board it was time to move on. I caught a couple of taxis and buses and arrived in Oracabessa, a small coastal town.

I met up with Sebastian and his new Danish friend Magnus (DJ Madness). The reason for visiting Oracabessa was a big dancehall party featuring most of the big names in Jamaica. It was beyond a true Jamaican experience. We were all well patted down and checked for drugs, but as soon as you get in people are selling weed everywhere anyway. I saw one guy getting searched by a female security guard. She pulled one joint out of his pocket, felt another two in his other pocket but just ignored them. Pretty funny. We got there at about 10 and got stuck in to the rum – a 200mL flask and a pepsi for about 6 or 7 bucks was the same price as 3 beers. Early in the night was a whole heap of no name dudes, most of whom really sucked, they couldn’t sing in tune at all. It got better as the night went on and became morning and I became less attuned to balance. At about 6 in the morning, things got very interesting. I was in the crowd, bopping away to someone that I had no idea who it was, when the whole crowd turned around and started running in a panic in the opposite direction. I joined in with the panic as I had not a clue as to what was going on. When I made it to the safety of a small bar, I looked back and saw stubbies being hurled at the stage and, even more unexpectedly, being hurled from the stage back at the offenders in the (now totally diminished) crowd. The newspaper the next day explained that these Vybz Kartel fans didn’t particularly like Bounty Killer. After about 5 minutes some music started up and everyone strolled on back in front of the stage as if nothing had happened. Well, this time the Bounty Killer fans didn’t like Vybz Kartel. Again, bottles were flying in both directions as the rest of us fled. This put quite an abrupt end to the party. I interviewed a couple of locals, which was fun, even though I could barely understand a word they were saying in Patois, which was also the case listening to the performers of the evening. I spent my last $2 on some dodgy fried chicken (I was actually expecting some delicious, freshly cooked jerk chicken), and walked home with my broken flip flops in my hand in the early morning light. I must have looked terrible. But that was my true Jamaican experience.

After a recovery day we set off for Black River, via Ocho Rios and Mo Bay. It took us a long time and we arrived after dark. We stayed in a bus at Sunset Beach. Black River is quite well renowned. Check out this photo and see if you can tell why. Hint: Never smile…

Yes, right in the middle of the town… a crocodile. We went on a boat ride up the river to see a few more. It was ok. You can get really close to them while they sunbathe. They can apparently grow up to about 4 metres. At the bridge where we stopped to turn around we had the opportunity to swim. I waived this opportunity, something doesn’t feel right about swimming in a river that you’ve just paid money to see crocodiles. I went swimming at our guesthouse and that was freaky enough. Even thought the owner assured us that it was totally safe, with zero visibility I was in and out of there very quickly. The town was ok, very Jamaican, but nothing special. Played some pool with a dude in a bar, but nothing to write home about… oh, hang on, I just did.

Next stop, not too far down the road, was Treasure Beach. It has a high ratio of tourists, but is very small and has generally avoided the big hotel complexes and all inclusive type tourism and is very minimalist when it comes to hustlers. The two other boys loved the place, for me it was ok. We went straight to the beach with our snorkelling gear, which didn’t get wet that day. There was some small waves rolling in so we opted for body surfing instead. We stayed for 5 nights and it was good to be able to cook for ourselves rather than have rice and peas twice a day.

The next day, we caught a taxi, actually a car impersonating a taxi, to Southfields. From here we walked the 1.5 km along the road to Lovers Leap, a ‘cliff’ where two slaves apparently jumped into the sea rather than have to part. This could be true, if they could jump about 2 km. It was not a cliff, just a very steep hill. The place was closed for renovations (more likely no one could be bothered running the place any more) so we made our own backpackers leap over the fence. The view was brilliant. At 500 metres elevation you could see the coast for kilometres, with the blue sea disappearing into a hazy sky. We found the small hiking trail across the football pitch and headed down. Halfway we could see some splashing going on. It looked like dolphins having some fun. It took us one hour to get to the bottom, where we expected to find a small beach, but instead found one of the world’s biggest rock pools. It was beautiful, but certainly didn’t feel like the traditional perception of Jamaica. There was a ledge, hundreds of metres long, where the small waves smashed into the rocks. It looked very nice and deep, but we decided it wasn’t safe trying to climb back up with the waves breaking over the rocks. On the land side of this ledge the water was knee deep, slowly tapering back to land about 15-20 metres away. We had to settle for a relaxing bathe al naturale here. The water was a perfect temperature – refreshing after the hike down in the midday sun, yet warm enough to laze around for half an hour without getting cold. We went for a wander along the coast a bit, but it was much of the same. We did encounter a random fisherman walking along the rocks with just a hand line. It was a big hike to catch no fish. After a bit more splashing around it was time to head back. It was really quite hot now and very little breeze the whole way. Magnus made it up in 40 minutes the crazy bugger. Sebas and I weren’t exactly slow finishing in 55. I was really struggling, so much that the first drink was non-alcoholic. Yeah, hot.

We went out to a local bar on the Friday night. It was good vibes with a nice young crowd – mainly locals with a few tourists floating about. Played some pool and had a good evening. So good, that we went back there Saturday night. Unfortunately, I did myself a bit of a mischief. We were drinking overproof rum at home before we went, then more at the bar. Its always cheaper to buy a 200mL bottle and a mixer than drink anything else. The overproof rum put me over the edge and I had to leave the pub early – needless to say the memories are hazy. At some point I realised that I didn’t have the key to get in our room and rather than going back to the pub, I came up with the ingenious solution of sleeping in a tree! It was such a fluffy and inviting tree. I believe I slept very comfortably for many hours before returning to our room. It was 2 days later that I met a girl who told me that I was actually trying to sleep in another tree closer to the pub, but she insisted that I go home. I showed her!

Our guesthouse called us a taxi to take us to some random town. On the way he called his mate to meet us there and take us to Mandaville. From there it was a bus to Kingston, a shuttle bus to the other Kingston bus station, a minibus to Papine and a taxi to Red Light. That’s as far as public transport goes. Here we play the hitch hiking game, very similar to the waiting game somewhere as remote as the Blue Mountains. There literally was not a single car drive past that had any spare seats for more than an hour while we chatted with locals and ate little fried snacks. Micky from the hostel was driving past and picked us up, for our seventh vehicle for the day. We drove 100 metres around the corner and stopped at the bar for one and to pick up Michael, the hostel owner. Another 10 minutes and we finally arrived in the dark to Mount Edge Hostel. Even with smooth connections all of the way (until Red Light) it had taken us almost all day. The hostel was buzzing. There was about a dozen guests and most were enjoying a drink and a smoke.

I awoke in the morning and the view from the balcony looking over the valley was beautiful. After a delicious breakfast we went down to the river for a dip in the chilly natural pool, followed by a barefoot hike in the undies up stream a few hundred metres, taking in magnificent scenes of small waterfalls, pools and lush flora. Along with some conversations about permaculture and renewable energies, I was feeling very energised myself. I had planned on staying 4 nights, but soon convinced myself that it wasn’t necessary to stay in Kingston and increased it to 6. I didn’t do a lot, but you don’t need to do a lot, just enjoy the feeling of the picturesque surrounding mountains.

I did visit an old Rasta man’s house. He has a couple of acres covered with trees and plants, mostly of the edible variety, of which we bought some. I also found time to visit the Rasta camp, about an hours walk away. It wasn’t quite what I was hoping for. We didn’t get to speak to anyone about how they run the place, what they do there, or what Rastafarianism is about. Instead, we played games with kids for about an hour. Of course this was fun, and the kids are gorgeous with their dreadlocks, but not particularly educating for anyone.

The Wednesday was a public holiday and there was a pool party in the tiny village of Red Light. It was running all afternoon and into the wee hours, but I only went for a few hours in the evening. I was amazed by how many people there were. Young people had seemingly wandered down out of the mountains for this glorious occasion, with Dancehall music blaring louder than the human threshold for pain, continually being interrupted briefly for the DJ to say something stupid. It became impossibly annoying after not too long.

I had a wander around down town Kingston one day. Nothing too exciting, nor scary, but from the stories I hear and the odd couple of super dodgy looking blokes I wouldn’t be strolling around in the evening. I went to the craft market which must have had 100 little stalls in there, with 100 people working, yet I was the only customer in the entire place for the hour I was there, checking out there handmade items, wondering which ones were factory made and/or imported from China, then spending just a few dollars in one shop – I don’t know how they can survive.

My last night at the Hostel was great. A couple of friends of the place turned up with instruments and amplifiers and had a proper jam session. It was an awesome finish to my stay there. Would I go back to Jamaica? Yes, but not desperately. There were a few places I didn’t make it to that I would have liked to. Besides that, the only places I would excitedly return to would be the Blue Mountains and especially Bounty Bay. Maybe Treasure Beach because I didn’t get to see the whole area.

The rest of the Jamaican pictures are here.

Next stop – Cuba!

Everybody in Negril tries to sell you something, Danny from the local market was no exception. He got a bit excited when I said I was going to Montego Bay that afternoon because he lived there and would be driving home in a few hours. I told him I would only pay $6, the same as the taxi fare. After some time he accepted. It worked out really well for me, only having to take one car from door to door instead of 3 taxis. I stayed the first 2 nights at Bethel Court Guesthouse (hostel), $20 for a dorm. Was a nice friendly atmosphere. I checked out the yacht club and put up a notice, hoping to find a captain sailing to Cuba in a few weeks time. I’m not the biggest fan of the yacht club scene. It seems that yachties hardly leave the marina complex and their impression of a city or even country can be based on such a small area. Of course the prices are inflated too.

I spent the next few nights at Cedar Ridge Guesthouse for the same rate. I was looking forward to some quiet time in the mountains (only 10-15 mins drive to town) to do some research and writing. It certainly was very remote. There is no public transport to get there and I was the only guest. Gregory is a young guy who has just started running his massive family home as a guesthouse. He is nothing short of a legend. I arrived there on a Friday. He and his neighbour had organised a bbq for the Saturday afternoon. He had told his mate Chris to turn up at 15.00, who decided that 15.45 might be a bit more appropriate, knowing Gregory. When he arrived, I was the only one home. Not only that, but I didn’t have a key and was a prisoner in this house. We chatted through the bars of the door for half an hour before I finally found a key. This key was good news, because Chris had brought a bottle of rum and was not rude enough to drink alone. We polished that off and then some I had floating around with Gregory and many others appearing at some stage in the proceedings. The bbq jerk chicken wasn’t actually ready until 23.30! Epic, to say the least.

I realised that my retreat was not so quiet. Sunday was the best day. It wasn’t the earliest start, but we went to a beach, paid $3.50 to enter and then a further $7 to buy a cup, which can be refilled as many times as you want until 18.00. We smashed down a heap of rum, went and did some backflips on the floating pontoon and just generally ran around crazy on the beach. It’s not a massive party, but really good vibes.

Chris told me how he was starting up a business with a mate, doing online marketing, including for Kite Boarding Jamaica, in return for some free lessons. I thought that sounded pretty cool and decided to go and check out the joint with him. The place was beautiful. A proper white sand aqua water palm tree paradise, away from the big crowds and associated hustlers. There was accommodation available, but at $45/night it was well out of my budget. It was paradise. I wanted to stay. I struck a deal with Julia, the German owner of the school. I would pay $15/night to sleep on the couch in the shop and only get charged local rates for lessons and equipment hire. This was perfect. I ended up staying there for 11 nights, boarding for 9 of the days. It took me 8 days to be able to say that ‘I can kite board’, meaning actually stand on the board and not get blown down wind. I had some quiet time in the mornings and evenings, but not boredom. There was a German couple staying for a large portion of the time and we shared a few beers here and there.

We visited the all inclusive hotel down the beach. It was really nice, but absolutely horrible. All inclusive means that people really never leave the complex, hardly a Jamaican experience. It could be any hotel in the world. It’s really no more than a change of climate for these people. Our favourite line was, ‘Ok everybody, follow the flames to the beach, and remember, this is a party atmosphere!‘ We had a couple of free rums and games of pool and got out of there.

On the Friday night we went to Pier 1 in Mo Bay, along with Julia, 2 of the instructors – Santino and Shaun, Chris and Gregory. It was a fun night and interesting to see the Jamaicans in party mode, with some good daggering on the dance floor. Jamaicans are very homophobic. There was a small hens party, dancing around with a blow up dude, dude included. Normally guys constantly try to dance with girls, but this doll kept them away. I asked to borrow him, put him on my shoulders and walked over to the boys and said, ‘Have you met my brother? He’s a bit of a dickhead!’ They freaked out, slapping him off me, ‘Get that off ya!’ Julia thought it was funny and wanted to take a photo, but the boys wouldn’t allow it. The night was so good that I actually went back the following Friday for another session.

Got up at 6.15 to get to the airport. Was going ok until we arrived in Kingston. There were 4 Russian guys, well behaved, but minimal English. At least one immigration officer walked off with each of them, leaving no one at the desks. The queue didn’t like this. I’ve never seen so much yelling and arguing going on at immigration before. After a delayed flight and a long queue, immigration wasn’t happy that I didn’t have an address to stay at. He sent me to the information office, who let me use their computer for half an hour to ‘find it’. I was worried immigration would give me a hard time and check my flights, quite the opposite, just waved me straight through.

It took me more than 1 hour and 4 ATM’s to get any cash out. Taxi hustlers were going crazy, especially when I said I wanted to go to Negril, the furthest point on the island, with a government set fare of $285! It was now 15.00, and the 4 or 5 buses I needed to catch would mean some travelling and transfers in the dark, which didn’t seem wise from what I had heard about the country. I accepted one drivers offer to stay at his house in Spanish town and catch the bus in the morning for $46. I couldn’t believe after this he was still trying to sell me various long distance trips in his taxi. By the time we met his wife, drove through peak hour traffic and got to his house, it was 20.00 – an entire day wasted. For dinner I ate a pie I had prepared in Barbados and customs hadn’t bothered to check.
I woke to some tragic news. This is not the sort of thing you need when you are travelling in a foreign country – one of my last 2 flip flops had been eaten by a dog. A Havaiana! I slowly tied my shoelaces in grieving and moped out of the house. The bus stop was chaos. Buses shouting and people honking, no signs and no whities. My instincts took over and I found the bus I needed straight away.
I got squeezed in the last seat on the minibus – 4 people wide and slammed in by the sliding door with my backpack almost in my face for 2 hours. Had to wait over an hour in Mandaville for the next bus to be ram packed and ready to leave. This got me to Savanna La Mar, where I jumped out with a girl and straight into a taxi which turned out to be a ‘route taxi’. These operate in place of buses, and of course get rammed with 4 in the back. That got me to Negril. Another short taxi ride, who tried to charge me more than the previous half hour ride, got me to Westport Cottages, at $25/night the cheapest in town. At first I wasn’t enjoying Negril. Every car tooting to sell you a ride, everyone on the beach selling you something, most often ganja, the beautiful sea and beach lined with hotels designed for Americans or other fat semi-retired people who think that money can buy everything – but then at some point, after having a massive meal for $4.50 and a few beers for $2-$3 each, I relaxed, looked out to the sea and thought, ‘I’m in Jamaica!’

I spent the next few days drinking beer, listening to live reggae, swimming, running on the beach, drinking beer, and not too much else. Made friends with Lara, from Sydney. We went to Ricks Cafe. There’s some natural cliffs, some tastefully constructed and paved terraces and a massive pub. The number 1 and 2 items on the itinerary are cliff diving and profit making – I’m not sure in which order. I jumped off the basic cliff, about 10m and scary enough, while others were doing backflips and somersaults.

Then there was a platform about 4m higher, where local kids would dive off for tips. But the real deal was the dead tree, which only the fittest, strongest (possibly most perfect male bodies in the world), local guys would attempt. It must have been 20m high, and they would still do dives. The dried up tree looked like it could snap at any point whilst they were monkeying around on it and showing off. Really cool place.

We wandered down the street about 50m, away from the 400 tourists and found a very quiet bar for dinner. So quiet in fact, that once the 3 domino players left, we were the only ones left. We took the table and invited the barman to join us… for the next 3 hours, resulting in a Nil all draw. Crazy rules. It’s amazing that a place like this can even afford to have the lights on, meanwhile there’s thousands of $$$ being spent across the road.

Not knowing what to do, on so many levels, I followed the light. The light happened to be a campfire on the beach. The main Rasta’s name was Culture. On a 7 mile beach, plastered with resorts designed for people that aren’t me, there was this little dot of a paradise that I was open enough to see. After 2 beers, I was fortunate enough to be dubbed a Rasta, and was invited to stay, sharing a room with the main man.

It doesn’t get more real than this. They live very simply and cheaply, praying to capture just one of the hundreds of tourists that pass by daily, eating cheap local grown produce, including herbs and spices. It honestly is a tough way to get by. Reading this, you probably haven’t reached the point of realising that this also means a high level of prostitution all of the way along the beach. It really caught me by surprise. For quite a few days, every girl I talked to was a prostitute. Very sad.

After a whole day on the beach here, hoping to help sell beer, massages, or some incredible 3D art, my biggest problem is the intensity of the sun off the water – “Irie Mon!”

I ended up staying with the Rastas for 5 nights, I think. I really lost track of time here. It’s not that it’s a super fun exciting place, I just made the best of what I had to deal with. During the day there is hundreds of people, not all old farts either, sunbathing and being generally lazy in front of their hotels. During the evenings, everybody hibernates. There’s normally about a handful of people in each bar. I found this quite surprising. People really go there with the attitude of doing absolutely nothing. My favourite bar was, actually, I don’t have a clue what the name was, but if you find a barman named Neil, you’re in the right place! He kept the bar open for me until 4.30 one morning. That was the end of a very big day. When I woke up, hungover and no doubt still some blood in my alcohol system, the Rastas handed me breakfast along with “Jennifer Brown” – JB overproof rum, 63%. That set the theme for the day. I met a couple from Sweden (again my memory is very loose) who were keen to check out Rick’s. I joined them for the journey and this time, with a little extra Dutch courage, I swam across to join the kids on the 14m rickety platform. They were more than happy to let me join them for a small donation. It was bloody scary, but I liked it so much I did it twice.

We called in at my little locals bar across the road. The barman was happy to see me again, which was cool. From there it was back to the beach for one at the campfire, then a wander in search of nightlife, which came in the form of my new favourite bar. As I said, there was only a few of us, but it was fun. There was a Russian couple and the girl loved dancing on the tables – reminded me of someone else I know.

It was nice staying with the Rastas, but at the end of the day, they were still hustlers, trying to push for every dollar they could, even to me and my friends that I took there for a beer by the campfire, which was a bit disappointing. I even found out 2 months after staying there that my Swedish friends were threatened with violence and forced to hand over $40 for an $8 loan they had taken less than an hour earlier from one of the guys. You really can’t trust people in this country. I also learnt that the phrase “No problem” means you can pay for it later. For example, “yeah, you’re alright mate, grab yourself a beer, no problem”. I gave one of the guys, Toto (who seemed genuine), my VB singlet, which he really seemed to appreciate. Hopefully it gets him a few laughs from passing Aussies, Kiwis and the like. I also bought the guys a sack of yam heads to plant, hoping that they can do a little more work and a little less complaining about not having money for food… time will tell. I think the happiest I saw them was the day I was leaving and handed over a heap of cash – the JB was flowing in no time. That put a very abrupt end to my alcohol free day, but after just a couple, I was on my way…

Curly went to Barbados and Dasha to Puerto Rico. Then the plans were for Curly to continue to Jamaica and for Dasha to visit her friend in NY. Meanwhile in Barbados…

Dear Dasha,

Arrived 08.00. Cleared immigration 08.30. Chatted to lovely tourist information until 09.00. This made customs very suspicious of the dread-locked-patch-bearded-smelly man. Had to empty my bags. Card didn’t work in ATM. Got on bus with $EC – not acceptable. Luckily dude paid for me. Made friends with Ron Stares, Canada. Got off at St Lawrence Gap. Overwhelmed by hotels and tourists – think I made a wrong turn somewhere. Ocean looks beautiful. Dude at internet café prejudice asshole. Managed to exchange EC135 for B95. Wandered up and down looking for somewhere cheap, struggling. Paid B80 to stay at Rio. Cool and met many others. B0.90 for 2 bananas, B11.50 for chicken and mash (been awake for 9 hrs by now without eating). About 4 or 5 B$ left in my pocket. Kept in search of room for rent. Difficult. Adopted aloe vera selling friend – nice but just wanted money. The beaches are amazing. They paved paradise. How can we ever draw the line between natural beauty and the ability to see it!?!? Saw dominoes and cards in action. Have to go again. Kept wandering, searching, calling, struggling. The hot afternoon sun was starting to set. With $B3 left, found a bar selling local Banks beer for $2! The last $1 went on club Keno, doubled to $2 to pay my bus home. Credit card paid for fruit for breakfast and Mt Gay rum for dinner. Lets hope I can clear my debts tomorrow! (laundry and calling Aus bank) 22.15 bed.

Dear Dasha,

I woke up at 7.15 to the sound of my alarm, a very unfamiliar sound. I had no idea what was going on or where I was – or where you were!! After a few seconds it hit me and so did my hangover, telling me to lie down. Tried, but knew the sun was shining. Squeezed some lime into my water bottle, paused at the door to wait for a shower to pass, then went to the beach for a run and swim. Not sure if it was the hangover, lack of fitness or soft sand, but it was hard going. Met Wilma. Showed me her apartment for rent. Really nice, but too expensive even at (genuine) special rates. She drove me to her friend, Malcolm. $B250 for 6 nights, half the price of the guesthouse. Wilma is awesome, genuinely trying to help me, not rip me off. Went for a drive with Malcolm. Nice guy. Buildings everywhere, no gaps between towns. Lots of cricket grounds, but I missed a tournament last week! Cooked dinner for me and my housemate Alexi. She spends ALL of her time in her room, working online. Time for a rum and a movie. Seems that I’ve missed Australia day.

Dear Dasha,

Got up at 09.30, was a great sleep. Got myself ready and went for another drive with Malcolm. He has birds – canaries, finches, a parrot etc. and was going to pick up a hen for his whistling cock, Chirpy, who came for the ride too. He drives a tip-truck, which is pretty funny, way too big for his needs. We drove up the West coast to St Lucy in the North, much less populated, then home along the East coast. East was very nice (reminded me of Aus with yellow sand, rocks and surf). Saw some surfers. Waves were pretty rough. There are breadfruit trees everywhere, and they’re in season. Had breadfruit cou cou the other day – delicious!! Was like a cheesy mash, with gravy. Just had lunch at 17.00, now having a beer. Heading to St Lawrence Gap tonight to meet some Csers including Charles, so should be fun.

Dear Dasha,

Met up with Charles, a local electrician, and Jess from Mexico – she makes babies. Also bumped into Daryl from the guesthouse. He bought me 5 beers to celebrate his last night on the island. Nice people. Early night but a good night. Spent today reading and writing, swimming and chilaxin. The beach and water is incredible. So relaxing. I think people can see it in my eyes. Yet at the same time as having this peaceful bliss, I wish I could bulldoze every building in site and let Mother Nature regain what is rightfully hers, and in her infinite wisdom provide enough bananas and breadfruit for everybody! Having a beer at the Ship Inn (again). Meeting Jess and maybe others at 20.00 at the Friday fish market. Sounds brilliant!

Dear Dasha,

Turns out sounds can be deceiving. The fish market was big, with lots of fish cooking, but not how people had explained it. It was about $10-$15 for a meal, not as cheap as I was expecting. If you were lucky, which I was, right in front of the toilets, you got a good size chunk of fish, in my case delicious Marlin. If you were unlucky, like my new found pome friends, by the dominoes, you got little more than a fillet of flying fish. People had been telling me how it draws a good mix of a crowd. If you consider 17000 tourists and 100 locals a good mix then you would agree. There were a lot more locals after dinner though by the stage checking out the break dancing. Unfortunately Jessica and Charles didn’t make it, leaving me on my own.

Bloody birds have been flying inside and eating my banana. I got picked up this morning at 07.15 by Kyesha, another couchsurfer, and Aron. We went for breakfast at a farmer’s market. It’s a serious set up he’s got, couple of hundred people there. This afternoon I’ve been snorkelling. Quite nice but not very colourful. I saw an eel. He scared me. No turtles though. Tonight Jessica is coming over for dinner then we head to the Reggae Lounge for happy hour. Chop chop!

Dear Dasha,

Reggae Lounge was cool. It’s a nice big bar, half outdoors, playing good tunes and cricket on TV. Unfortunately, there was never more than 10 people in there. Apparently the crowd turns up at 1.00. After happy hour we went next door to McBrides, just in time for their happy hour. Spent the night there with a bar full of English dancing to cheesy pop. It was ok. It was a late start the next day. I spent hours on the net trying to find a flight from Jamaica to Cuba – incredibly expensive, and always via Panama, America and Mexico, or Canada! The Cayman Islands might be my answer. I’m going to go to a travel agent today. My last day, so have to book something!

Dear Dasha,

The travel agent sorted me out. Cuba via Caymans. I’ve heard other people print an itinerary without actually paying for it and it works. Then I went to a bar and met 2 Canadians and a Bajan. Went to a beach with them, Harrismith’s, it was beautiful. The best place on the island. Unfortunately couldn’t swim because of the rocks at high tide, but we could drink beer. Back in to town to catch happy hour at Mojo, say goodbye to Jessica and hello/goodbye to her friend Aina from BCN.

Did I like Barbados? Not really. Am I glad I stayed for a week? Yes, because the last day was my favourite!

We weren’t sad about leaving Antigua. From sailors and people we had spoken to, a little island nation called Dominica, very often confused with the Dominican Republic, sounded much more like our kind of paradise.

As we were coming in to land, the sparsely populated mountainous island, smothered in green, gave a powerful feeling of natural beauty and an inner connection.

The plane came to a halt and people started disembarking on to the tarmac. It started raining, so they closed the door and we waited for it to pass – pretty funny. Outside the airport, taxi drivers hassled us. Dasha, Tina and I walked up the road in search of a bus, apparently only a few times a day. A car pulled over and offered us a free lift. We were blown away, this place was too good.

We found Mario in Roseau, the capital city. It’s not a big city, but with thousands of people arriving daily on the cruise ships, the harbour is chaotic and unpleasant. People are trying desperately to obtain a piece of the westerner’s wallets, mainly offering tours to the most popular destinations. We got out of there quickly. I found it ironic that as you drove away from the town, the harbour in particular, it was obvious that the wealth was decreasing, yet the natural beauty was increasing dramatically. We were driving through a huge valley, with steep mountains on both sides, trees clinging on to every surface. It was overwhelming.

It was only a 10 or 15 minute drive to Le Petit Paradis in Wotten Waven, but it felt like a different world. We got ourselves a bamboo shack with a gas cooker. The living space was open with a beautiful view over the trees. Humming birds often buzzed around the flowers. Other cheeky birds would fly in and start eating our bananas, telling us that they are ripe. Geckos jumped and ran around everywhere, catching flies and mosquitoes for us.

Our first couple of days we didn’t do a lot. It was such a friendly little village and just relaxing felt really good. We wandered down a street and found the local shop, with local guys playing dominoes. Dominoes in Dominica – gold. The guys play with serious intensity, slamming the dominoes on the table, the snake like chain bouncing all over the place. After about 20 minutes, when they finished their game, we got to play with a couple of guys. Although the rules seem incredibly simple, the guys have some tactics and a bloody good idea of what pieces everybody else has in their hand.

We went hiking to Trafalgar falls. It was crazy how busy it was with all of the cruise ship tourists. We waited a while and they left, leaving the big waterfall just for us, swimming into the flow of the water as close as we could to the turbulent water. It was funny climbing over the rocks in my undies. Just 100 metres downstream there was a hot spring feeding in from the side. We found a rock pool to ourselves and sat there in serenity, gazing out to the incredible mountains, feeling quite blissful for about half an hour.

We continued our hike to Laudat. Along the way we stopped to pick grapefruit, bananas, papayas and some flowers for making tea. This is a true paradise. In Laudat we were eyeing off someone’s orange tree, when an old guy came out mumbling croakily at us. Of course we thought he was yelling at us, but it was quite the opposite. He was very friendly, we just couldn’t understand him. After a good 5 minutes of some sort of conversation we left with another 4 grapefruit in our backpack.

At the end of the road after Laudat is Titou Gorge. This is a spectacular narrow river gorge that you can swim up in the super chilly water to the waterfall. It’s only a metre wide in some places, a couple of metres the rest, and about 10 metres high. Really cool. On the way out, we sat under a hot water fall spouting out from a piece of bamboo

On Sunday we hiked the opposite direction to Morne Prosper, with a few hundred metres higher elevation, it was hard going in the hot humidity with slippery ground under foot. We stopped to chat with a farmer, Elijah. He was 26 and started farming just a year or two ago. He showed us around his vegetables and big pigs. He picked some fresh coconuts for us using a 10 metre bamboo poking stick. Never did he ask for any money, just a genuine, friendly dude.

We wandered into the town. It was very quiet, apart from church, because it was Sunday. We asked people if there were any shops to buy lunch. They didn’t seem to think so. We walked down further and saw ‘variety shop’ so called in. They were selling clothes and stuff. I considered eating a delicious looking leather belt, until the lady next door overheard and offered us food, ‘Would you accept food if I offered?’

‘Ummmm, yes!’ She brought us out chicken and rice and yams and bits and pieces and an unopened bottle of sparkling grape juice. It went down very well. When we offered to contribute towards the cost of the food she declined. As we were taking our plates up to the house to say thankyou and goodbye, she brought out fruit cake! Brilliant. On the way home we visited another farm, Elijah’s neighbour. He was more of an opportunist, gave us a bag full of vegies which we gave a small contribution for. An excellent day.

Dominica is a geologically new volcanic island. It has steep rocky mountains which cause it to rain and being tropical, creates a rainforest. It rained at some stage every day we were there, even though we were told it was the dry season. Some mornings we had planned to go hiking, but woke to heavy rain and knew there was no point getting out of bed. We had a couple of days during which we hardly left the shack. That wasn’t a bad thing. We kept ourselves entertained. We also made lots of friends during our stay. People somehow gravitated towards our little shack. Kai from Holland became our local tour guide/tourist information. We bumped into Sebastian, a German dude we met in Antigua. He joined us in the shack for a few days. Others also joined us in the shack during our stay. Our most notable guest, however, was Joey “The King Courager” Magloire, a 68 year old Calypso singer. He has 6 children to 6 different women, possibly in 6 different countries from what I could gather. He also has 6 grandchildren. This seems to be a fairly typical attitude in Dominica. I met another man who was proud to have 9 children to 3 women, and 26 brothers and sisters from his father. The rumour that there are 7 women to every man helps explain this situation. But back to The King, he is one of the hustlers that greets the cruise ship tourists, trying to get them on to his mates buses for a set commission. He does well, especially with his sign that reads “Ich sprechen sie Deutch”, which gets a few smiles. But at the end of the day, the man that was born on the 6^th day of the month is lonely. We met him when he was dropping off someone to stay at the guesthouse (and of course collecting his commission). He didn’t try to hustle us, or sell us anything, he wanted to be our friend. He came every night and we cooked him dinner and he told us stories and jokes:

Q. You’re in the jungle, you see a lion, a beer and a baby horse. You have a gun with one bullet. What do you do?

A. Shoot the lion, drink the beer and ride off on the horse.

Pretty simple, but he was so proud of it that he told it to everyone. It made us laugh. We never figured out why it was a baby horse.

A man was hitch hiking along the road. A truck with a cow in the back pulled over and gave him a lift. When the hitch hiker got out, the driver looked back and saw the cow wasn’t there. “What happened to the cow?” he asked. “It fell out when you stopped to pick me up,” replied the hitcher. “Why didn’t you tell me?” asked the driver. To which the hitcher simply replied, “If I fell out the cow wouldn’t have said anything!”

Now again, not that funny, but the passion, repetitiveness and laughter that he told it with was hilarious – laughing to himself, “and it’s true, the cow wouldn’t have said anything!”

When The King didn’t work on one Sunday, he cooked duck neck soup and brought it up along with a fresh loaf of bread for all of us. He gave us a copy of a CD he recently recorded for the governments campaign. It had the same song on it 3 times. He really was a sweet old man. If anyone ever goes to visit, say hello to him from all of us.

We met a Canadian couple, Alex and Zoe (or A to Z for short) who had a hire car. I can tell you first hand that there is not much room for a suitcase in a RAV4. We went snorkelling at Champagne Bay, where bubbles come up from under the sea. We wanted to go to Victoria falls, but when we reached the Rasta shack at the start of the trail, it was raining too much, which would make the hike dangerous as well as uncomfortable. It was fun hanging out with the Rastas for a while anyway.

He recommended going to a point near Rosalie, so we did. I wasn’t expecting such a big hike, which meant we got stuck in one of the downpours, trying to keep dry with banana leaves, but the reward at the end was brilliant. There were rock cliffs facing directly on to the Atlantic Ocean, with big waves smashing in. A huge turtle was floating around to keep us company. There were a couple of rock pools. The water flowing in from the mountains was actually significantly colder than the ocean water splashing in. We sat in the furthest out pool, waves crashing and splashing around us, looking back up to the cliffs with Tarzan vines hanging down. A couple of bigger waves rumbled in, almost washing us out of the pool. Zoe made a run for it over the pointy rocks in between waves. Alex and I decided to duck under water in our rock pool as the waves pummelled the surface. Newspaper headlines were flashing through my mind, the most common and repeated words being “Australian”, “idiots”, “tourists” and “drown”. We kept our calm, knowing that a break in the set would come. Of course, it did. Really lovely place, I recommend it to everyone.

Another day we went hiking up a river. This is the first time I have ever done something like this and I loved it. We started off walking along the edge, jumping from rock to rock when needed to keep our feet dry, but soon this wasn’t possible. Once our feet were wet, there were no limits. We were waist deep, crossing through gushing water, climbing up small waterfalls. It really was quite challenging at times. Along the way we found some natural geothermal activity. The colours were amazing – red, orange, blue, yellow, green, brown – all coming from different minerals in the water.

A highlight of exploring Dominica and its natural beauty is the Waitukubuli trail (the easy way to remember the name is Way-To-Kubuli, Kubuli being the local beer). When completed, it will run from one end of the island to the other, divided into 14 segments, or days hiking. Although not yet completed, some sections are well signed and perfect for hiking. Other hikes on the island are less well sign posted. Some it is highly recommended that you take a guide, others it is compulsory. One such hike is to the Boiling Lake. A French dude got himself lost for three days up there. He called France to send a helicopter from Guadeloupe. Normally you think, ‘I won’t need a guide, I’ll be right’ but on this occasion, a 6 hour round trip, even with our local mate Kai, we decided to take it a bit more serious.

It was a great hike, through the forest, which was different to the fruit filled rainforests we had seen previously, then up to a peak for a magnificent view, looking out over the sea.

We continued down, up and down again into the Valley of Desolation. Here there is a whole heap of sulphur springs going on. Just a little further and we reached the Boiling Lake, the second largest of its kind in the world. I wasn’t expecting too much after reading other peoples comments, but I would like to take this opportunity to say it was brilliant. I believe it is often difficult to see due to clouds, but we were extremely lucky with the sunny weather. When the wind blew the steam away, we got a clear view of the lake, bubbling ferociously from the Earth’s core. The lake must have been about 100 metres across, while we stood about 30 or 40 metres above. Apparently the water temperature is 90 degrees on the edge of the lake and has caused a few injuries to people who have dropped a hat or something near the edge. The overall hike was moderately difficult, but not like what I have read from other people’s opinions. It is a must for anyone visiting the country with a small base level of fitness.

The other hike we did which was amazing was around Freshwater Lake. It was very steep in many parts as it followed the ridges surrounding it. From the highest point we could see the Caribbean Sea on one side and the Atlantic Ocean on the other, with the Lake directly in the foreground. It really does feel like a place that Columbus should be exploring. It was a long hike to get there. I think we ended up walking about 20 km that day, a lot of it up hill.

We met an American along the way at his house. His house was originally a bus, which was well passed its driving days, which he had decked out. After that he extended off the side of the bus to create a massive outdoor living area. He was also working hard in the driveway and garden. He had some logs from a tree trunk placed aesthetically around. They had started sprouting! Everything grows so well here. They say if you stand still long enough you’ll grow roots. I believe it. This place really was fantastic. The view he had looking down the valley all the way to Roseau was astonishing. We stayed for a drink to watch the sunset, then rode in the back of his ute at uncomfortably high speeds back to our guesthaven.

Dominica was the scene for one of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Of course this creates some nice tourist traps. One of them is the Indian River. The King had called ahead for us, locking in his commission of 25%. We were hoping for more nice people, but these dudes were full on hustlers, trying to sell us accommodation that we really weren’t interested in. The set fee of $15 was negotiated down to 12.50 , which really is a rip off. He rowed us up the river for about 10 minutes to a bar, where the price was higher than at Victoria falls (which is very remote). We wandered around for 20 or 30 minutes then went back downstream. The scenery was spectacular. I can see why it has become so popular, yet it’s popularity is what spoils it. The trees on the side of the river have amazing root systems that twist and turn everywhere. The branches hang right over the river, creating a dark, mysterious tunnel. It feels like a place where crocodiles or piranhas or some sort of mythical serpent would consume you if you merely touched the water. There is a hiking trail from the highway down the river to the bar. I would try to find it rather than paying for the boat ride if I had my time again.

What else did we do in Dominica? There was Bob the snake man. He makes his money by looking like a freak and lurking in the bushes with a large boa wrapped over his shoulders. When tourists drive past, they stop for a photo and give him a dollar. One day Dasha and I were hitching down the hill in to Roseau. A proper Rasta picked us up in his beat up old ute, smoking all the way. Playing in his car was ‘Sharon want a hotdog in her mouth,’ which we heard about 5 times a day. If anyone ever finds this song please let me know where I can purchase it. He also stopped to give Bob a lift in the back, minus the snake. This same Rasta called in at our little haven one evening to give us a sample of some kind of locally grown herb that can be smoked and makes you feel funny.

We didn’t know how long we were going to stay in Dominica, maybe 10 days we thought, which was what was stamped in our visa. When we finally left after 20 days of serenity, immigration didn’t even blink. So, where to next???

Rest of the pictures here.

We knew we were getting close – we could smell it. Still miles from the island, the smells of flowers were drifting out across the ocean. After 25 days and 8 hours we arrived in English Harbour, Antigua. White sand beaches, palm trees, rum and Rastafarians. A tropical paradise…

… for some. Yes it ticked some of the boxes, but our overall impression was not that brilliant.

We arrived boxing day, in the evening, so immigration was closed. This meant that we weren’t allowed to go to shore. With no supplies left on the boat, we risked the short dinghy ride and found the closest beer. It was cold, and it was GOOD! We sat on deck listening to music from on top of the hill at Shirley Heights, quoted as ‘a Caribbean institution’, on a Sunday evening. The next morning Captain Morgan rowed to shore with our passports, cleared immigration and all was good… until he told us that he wanted to leave the next day. In order for him to leave, we had to sign off the boat. To do that, we had to book an onward journey out of the country. This was tough, because none of the 5 of us knew where we wanted to go. Decisions had to be made. Sam and Roger chose Jamaica, Curly, Dasha and Tina chose Dominica. We found ourselves cheap accommodation at Marsh Village. It worked out to just under $8 each per night, when the ‘Hostel’ was charging $70 for a couple. The next morning we went to immigration to sign off the boat. The woman working there was nothing short of horribly nasty. So rude. She wouldn’t accept just our flights, even though that’s what she had requested the day before. Now we had to also provide bank statements and accommodation receipts. After a couple of hours we returned with all the documents, which she didn’t even bother to look at. It was farewell to Captain Morgan and farewell to our little home of the last month. Looking at the small boat docked next to all of the other yachts it was hard to believe that we had actually just crossed the Atlantic in it.

Chocolate came and picked us up and took us to our new home for a week, a simple bungalow with a nice view over Falmouth Harbour. Our welcoming gift was some fresh picked coconuts – nice juice and delicious, soft flesh. The sunsets we enjoyed from our balcony whilst sipping on a cold rum were really pleasant, the sun resting just beside the bay. The thing about English Harbour (Falmouth included) is that it is not really much of a town, just a harbour that has been renovated to keep the sailors coming there. There are restaurants, souvenir shops and a few bars and cafes, but it doesn’t have much of an atmosphere. We went for a hike from English Harbour, around the point and coast, over the hill and arrived at our little beach at the back of Falmouth Harbour.
This was by far the best way to view the area. It was a really pleasant short hike, despite the drizzle. We had a good night out at the Rasta Shack. There were some dreadlocks, some smoking and reggae music, but it was still lacking some feeling.

Now I say that it was not our favourite island, but we didn’t really explore that much. We did get a hire car one day and go for a bit of a tour. If you’re planning on doing the same, get a 4WD, it was painfully (especially for Roger with his perhaps broken ribs) slow in our little car. We made it to Devil’s Bridge, which is an awesome rocky coastline with waves smashing in from the Atlantic, where nature has created a rock bridge which only the insane would dare cross, with a major risk to health and well being swirling below. I’ll never forget that crazy crab.

We also visited half moon bay. This was very nice. It had tropical coloured water with some small waves for body surfing – a nice and fairly rare combination. We walked around the point to the next bay, much the same, without the waves, but with a hotel complex for the ‘millionaires’ as we were told by security, who would not let us leave through the private carpark to get back to our car – jerks. We drove past the Sir Vivian Richards stadium and that was our day. Generally the island does not have the lush, vibrant, alive feeling that I associate with tropical. On one other day Sam and I went to St Johns, the capital city. It was nothing special – touristy shops and restaurants by the harbour front where the cruise ships dock, blending into a more local atmosphere as you get further away from it. We had a beer at a very local outdoor bar. Nobody spoke to us. It was not that exciting.

So the people. What about the people? Well, to be honest, some people were nice, some very average and some (dare I say many?) were downright rude. Well I guess that’s just life in general. They were certainly very lazy. People described a 5 minute walk in St Johns as “pretty far”. When we told people we were going to walk up to Shirley Heights, about a 30-40 min walk, they thought we were crazy for ‘hiking’ that far. So for New Years Eve, after a few mohito’s and more at home, we headed up to Shirley Heights for the big party and to watch the fireworks from all directions. I would have preferred to be watching Curtly Ambrose and Richie Richardson playing in their band, but it was on the other side of the island. After about half an hour we managed to hitch a lift in the back of a ute, for the remaining 500 metres. When we got there, at about 23.46, there was no one! It was pretty funny. We couldn’t have picked a quieter spot to celebrate new years on the whole island. For the ‘count down’ there may have been about 20 people. We saw fire works, that were very average, along with a bushfire down the cliffs, inaccessible to anyone who may have cared, which would probably be a grand total of zero. We got a ride back down to English Harbour, where there was a band playing on stage and hundreds of people all being drunk and excited. It was an ok finish to the evening.

We spent some time at a nearby beach. It was average. We spent way too much time at the Mad Mongoose (oh yeah, I saw a mongoose!), arranging our future travels. It’s extremely frustrating in the Caribbean. You are only allowed in to a country if you have a return ticket or an onward journey booked. I don’t know what happens if you try to take your return journey into a country with no further travels booked. Seems to be a totally pointless system. Also, there are almost no ferry services between any of the islands. It’s crazy. The islands are so close, it could all be made so simple! So before leaving Antigua to Dominica, we had to have an onward journey out of Dominica… or at least convince the airline that we did.

The rest of pictures are here.

Another short flight and we were descending toward Gran Canaria. From here the picture was not at all what we were expecting. A green tropical paradise it most definitely was not. It is a brown, dry, harsh, rocky Island, generally peaked at the centre and tapering down in all directions. Our primary reason, however, was not for a tropical holiday, or in fact to explore the island at all. We were staying in Las Palmas with the intention of hitch hiking on a boat across the Atlantic to the Caribbean.

Most people think that this sounds like a pretty crazy idea. I tend to agree with them. But then I thought, what’s the worst that can happen – we get stuck in a hurricane, become shipwrecked on a desert island and I get to be Gilligan. We arrived in early November, about 2 weeks before a massive rally of 250 boats known as ARC would be leaving destined for St Lucia. The method was to put up an advertisement on notice boards and hang out at the Sailor’s Bar and try to talk to as many Captains as possible, to find out if they needed crew to assist them in their crossing. Unfortunately we were far from the only people with this idea. We found it much much easier to meet fellow hitch hikers than captains, particularly captains with space on board. This was because most of the boats had already organised their crew 2 months earlier with the aid of internet sites. The hostel we stayed in, Alcaravaneras, although fairly disorganised, were very friendly, relaxed, accommodating and helpful. But most importantly it had a fantastic roof top terrace adjacent to the kitchen, where we met and made good friends with many other hitch hikers. It was amazing hearing everyone’s different stories as to how and why they had come. It also made the pain of hanging around doing nothing productive, whilst trying to look for a boat a lot more enjoyable. We must have made friends with about 30 of the possibly 100 hitch hikers. Some were lucky and found boats leaving prior to the arc. A smaller group of fortunate people found space on the arc. The rest were left to find other options after the arc departed. We were in the last group. This didn’t turn out too badly for us though. We found a captain, with a boat, looking for 5 people, for a relatively small contribution to all costs. With our extensive networking previously undertaken we assembled our crew and went for it. Our departure was set for about 24/25th November.

But more about that shortly. For now I’ll talk about our 3 weeks on the Island. We only managed to get out of the city for one day. We hired an 8 seater van and filled it with friends from the hostel. We drove to the South of the island to Maspalomas and Playa del Ingles. It was far from my kind of paradise, but a must see nonetheless. We walked past all of the touristy shops and cafes to the beach and it was rammed. We looked left and could see people for kilometres. We looked right and again people as far as you could see. There was no point walking anywhere, so we dropped our things and went straight in. The water was beautiful, warm and clear. Yet for some reason, out of the 5000 or so people on the beach, there was never more than a handful of people in the water. Most of the people here were tourists of the retirement age, who come from the colder parts of Europe to spend a few months of doing nothing other than sun bathing. Not an attractive beach on a couple of levels. The other thing that this place did have, which was pretty cool, was sand dunes that stretched maybe 2 km by 1.5 km. They weren’t as awesome as our Mongolian ones, but were still very cool and created interesting ever-changing formations.

Lunch was surprisingly too cheap to pass up (1/2 chicken, chips and salad for $6), and then we headed for the top of the mountain. The drive up was brilliant, working our way up the rocky faced valley covered in caves. I would love to go exploring around there properly. You could tell that these would have been residences at some stage and possible still get infrequent use today. A little bit further along the dry nothingness and deep down in a gorge was a proper tropical paradise. Although only a couple of hundred metres long, this place had some sort of unique micro-climate, or soil type, or perhaps water supply that made it very different to the rest of the surrounding area, smothered densely with lush green big leaved plants. We made it to the top, to the start of the walking track to Roku Noblu, or Knob Rock as I prefer, just in time to catch the end of the sunset. Watching the golden-orange colours slowly fade from above the clouds, with jagged mountains poking through, is arguably the best sunset so far. I went for a run along the track to the peak where the view was very similar, but struggling for oxygen in the high altitude (well, 2000m is high for me) makes it feel more rewarding. The two Polish guys went off exploring further in the dark, not very smart, even by my standards. They returned after half an hour and that was pretty much the end of a successful day.

I’ll take this opportunity to mention the abnormality in the time space continuum that exists in this area. There really is something strange about this island that makes it difficult to achieve much in a day. A typical achievement for a day may be taking your washing to the laundry, going to the beach, moving to a different hostel, or simply cutting your toenails. Sometimes these tasks can take up to 3 days. Of course 4 hours of siesta doesn’t help and makes life very frustrating.

Having the Arc in town is a fair bit of a fiesta in itself, but if you haven’t realised already, when Dasha and Curly are in town there has to be a real party. Las Palmas chase WOMAD – World of Music, Art and Dance, from Thursday until Sunday. We have been to WOMADelaide and it was brilliant, held in the botanical gardens. Unfortunately, Spain doesn’t have such greenery, so it was held across a couple of Plazas. This was a much smaller version than the Adelaide one, but we still managed to catch some good bands. Highlights were ‘The Creole choir of Cuba’, ‘Hanggai’, a Chinese rock band using traditional instruments and throat singing, Muntu Valdo, a one man band, who by recording live and playing back riffs, beats and vocals sounds like half a dozen people on stage, and An Eastern European gypsy rock band ‘Balkatalan experience’, with lyrics like ‘Hir ai kam, hir ai go!’ and ‘Disco disco partizani!’ The best thing about a Spanish fiesta is that you don’t get the exorbitant beer prices, stalls selling cans for $2, or you can grab take aways from 100m away for $1.40. Many groups of friends opt to buy a bottle of spirits and mixers to share and this is also perfectly acceptable.

The Arc held an official opening, which consisted of a dodgy marching band accompanied by jugglers and stilt walkers (interestingly, the closing ceremony held one week later consisted of a dodgy marching band accompanied by jugglers and stilt walkers) followed by a dinghy race. We missed the dinghy race, but two of our friends entered on a raft which they built from a broken pallet and as many plastic bottles as they could find in bins. They came flat last. At the end of the race, which happened to be in a petrol station, there was a party! It was pretty funny – everyone dancing around to bad disco music in the middle of the day, buckets of water being thrown around everywhere and beers being consumed. When siesta time came, the music stopped, metal roller doors came down and everyone dispersed within 5 minutes. Mark, an Aussie skipper, suggested that we go to his boat to keep the flow rate continuous. Matt, a Pome skipper, upped the ante and we all agreed to go drink-sailing on his 50 foot catamaran, for our first Atlantic sailing experience. We sailed out for about 40 mins, saw Lanzerote from 100 km away, turned around and sailed back in. We drank some more beer in the port then went back to the petrol station for the dinghy trophy presentation (Mark, Matt and Glyn won) and of course more beer.

We made it to the beach a couple of times. It’s not the nicest, particularly the Northern end which is packed with hotels on top of hotels. The beach in this area is protected by a reef, meaning no waves, no fun. Right the way along the 2 or 3 km of beach front has been built up with a concrete wall to form a boulevard, leaving very little dry sand on a high tide. The sand itself is partly yellow partly black, making it not the most beautiful beach in the world. To the South end is where the waves are, the locals are and the run down and derelict buildings for the squatter are – much nicer. We saw some good surfing and got in some excellent body surfing ourselves. Sam and I also had one night out in the area which was pretty cool. We were walking along the almost desired boulevard at about 2ma, when a random guy from Chile befriended us and showed us where the action was. Just 100m around the corner was a massive Plaza, with 2 bars pumping out music, one each side. Both bars were busy, but so was the square itself, with people from the squat selling cheap icy cold beers as their only source of income. It really is possible to live for free in our current society. Squatting, dumpster diving, a few hours socialising on weekends and the rest of your time is free to go surfing, juggling or do whatever you want.

The rest of our time we spent either on the roof top of the hostel chatting or at the sailors bar chatting. Yes we chatted with lovely people, but we suffered severely form Jellyfish Syndrom, the feeling of floating around doing nothing, achieving nothing.

It was fantastic when we finally agreed to cross with Captain Morgan, mainly because it meant 5 of us who were already friends  would be together for the 3 weeks. Our first step for the preparations was, of course, to go sailing. We went out for a couple of hours to watch the start of the Arc. The coast guards kept chasing us and yelling at us in Spanish to get out of the way of the race. Good to see our captain knows whats going on. On the way back in he went to start the engine to navigate our way through the scores of boats in the harbour and it failed. This meant that while the two most experienced sailors were truing to fix the engine I was left at the helm to sail backwards and forwards, telling the others to pull ropes when we had to change tack and avoiding both yachts and commercial ships! Pretty sweet. The next most important item to prepare was our provisioning. It’s pretty crazy trying to figure out what 6 people are going to eat and drink for 3 weeks (minimum) with no corner stores if you run out of anything, not even a neighbour for a spoonful of sugar. An $850 trip to the supermarket and we hope we have everything.

The last thing to prepare is the weather. This is a little more difficult. In fact, all we could do was look at the forecasts and choose our departure date. The whole reason that the Arc leaves at this time is because it’s the start of the trade winds, that is, the wind typically blows from East to West, with very little chance of low pressure systems, more commonly known as storms, developing. However, as our preparations were underway, a low was on its way. We had to delay for about a week. As the system was about to clear, there was a second on it’s way, with a small opening of opportunity for departure. With what looked like a third system developing across form America, we decided to risk the chance of some undesirable winds and go for it. With Christmas just around the corner, we left on the 1st of December at 14.00…..