a life told in stories

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2010-05-29T18:26:00.000-07:00

This is a total coincidence, but I've just worked out that it was a year ago today that I left the United States. I remember that I arrived home on the coldest possible day. In keeping with that tradition, the past couple of weeks have been almost offensively bad.

I'm returning to this blog briefly to extract inspiration for my application to one of the creative writing courses at my university. I have two of them due on Friday, as well as another eight essays to mark; oh, dear, it's another one of those weeks. This year has been largely made up of those weeks, recently broken by debaucherous weekends, which make the weeks simultaneously easier and more difficult.

But last night was the first night that I have chosen to stay at home, not because of schoolwork, but just because. I was tired and it was cold. But also, the more I socialise, the more I feel like I don't have a self; my identity, my truth, exists in the way I present myself to others. I start to exist in the space between my body and the other person, rather than inside my head.

Finality

2009-11-07T00:24:00.000-08:00

In the backyard this evening, I could hear two different musics playing; the sound of a Saturday getting warmed up. We’ve just had two of the nicest days of weather and I’ve been in here, staring at my computer, willing the thoughts to somehow get themselves from my head into the screen and organize themselves logically. All of my flatmates have finished; I went to see the opera singer perform her final recital, and to see the fashion student’s work displayed in the final exhibition. I’ve got this one essay and this one exam, and an application for a writing course, and it’ll all be over by Tuesday. Come on, Tuesday.

My mother has returned from Europe, abandoning my sister to whatever havoc she can wreck in London. I’m going to have a potluck to celebrate the great American holiday of Thanksgiving. Next time there’s a sunny day, I want to go to the beach and eat gelato. Once this essay is finished I want to leave this room and I don’t want to look at this computer for a very long time.

Ten months of two thousand and nine

2009-10-22T18:38:00.000-07:00

Spring has a temper this year. It seems to have rained once a day for the last two weeks, with plenty of windy gusts and small doses of sunshine. I almost expect a tornado.

This month I have turned twenty-two. I like this age, it sounds pleasantly alliterative and has given me a nice enough week so far. It will soon be time for exams, but I am trying to ignore that for as long as I can. I made my own pasta a couple of days ago (it made me sore-backed and bleary-eyed) and am working on some creative writing for the application I have due in November.

I have also been watching a lot of Gossip Girl. I am trying to use it as material for my writing but really it is just addictive, a beautifully made and shameless soap opera. I now know how to download things off the internet. This makes the internet a lot more exciting than it was before.

I would like to release a zine at ZineFest in November. It will be different to the ones I have done previously. I am sort of hoping that if it gets a bit of momentum then it will be a good epicentre for future creative work. Not that I'll have a lot of time for that next year! I'm doing summer school, followed by Honours and completing my psyc major, followed by finishing my thesis next summer. Wow. Then it will be time for a holiday.

A moment's rest

2009-09-28T19:32:00.000-07:00

It's wearing down to the end of the year in Wellington. There is a very familiar feeling that comes with this. It's the start-of-exams, beginning-of-warm-weather, getting-close-to-Christmas feeling, but it's not here quite yet. This could be because the weather has not sufficiently warmed up, and insists on providing us with regular doses of rain and wind (not that that's unusual).

The holiday won't be as long for me. I've made the decision to do summer school at Victoria, one philosophy class that will finish off my major and one creative writing course that should be great if I get into it. This burst of studiousness paves the way for me to do honours in philosophy next year. This will officially make me a post-graduate student. Indeed one of the main reasons I am doing it is for the feeling of superiority over the measly undergraduates (a feeling I have always had but until now never been able to justify). Other benefits include the philosophy camp, having drinks with the staff, occasional free pizza and being able to talk about philosophy with other people without sounding like a weirdo.

In other news, my sister and mother have fled the country. I wish they'd taken me with them. I saw them off on the bus at 7am. They hadn't had much practice carrying their backpacks and I felt like a clucky mother seeing her children clamber up the steps of the schoolbus with packs about twice their size. Word on the street is that they're either in Denmark or Berlin. My sister evidently finds squirrels quite engaging. I spent a week at the house up in Brooklyn looking after the dog. I told her that Mum and Steph were going on a very long walk.

Friday night at the check-out

2009-09-10T23:45:00.000-07:00

All times are strange, but some days of the week are stranger than others. All of Sunday is strange, both the morning, the blank afternoon and the evening. I think that Sundays feel like the end of the world. Fridays, there's another weird day. Right from the beginning, the little kick: ooh, it's Friday today. The afternoon lags a bit but everybody is cheerful. Exceptions are made, because it's a Friday and everybody wants to go home. Then the late afternoons/early evenings, when it seems that time stretches on forever. I love those late afternoons.

But now it is ten to seven. The play that I wanted to see was booked out. None of my flatmates are home, none of the ones I want to talk to at least. I have some movies on my hard drive, and some rhubarb in the fridge. I could make crumble. I could go to the supermarket and get some wine and something from the video shop (it's half-price on TV shows today). I guess I could go downtown and celebrate Friday in true style. Or I could do something more productive, work on some of the things I've been planning that never seem to happen. Nothing happened at all in the holidays. Four seasons of Doctor Who happened instead.

Is this how the world is lost?

When I fit back in

2009-08-13T02:34:00.000-07:00

When you fall asleep in a room you love, a twinkling tower room, safe and buried beneath a feather duvet; when you see the city light up the harbour, reflected in 3am; when you find that big and small are the same thing, you are fitting back in. There are worse cities, worse small towns to be stuck in than Wellington. And this is my town now. Again, these streets belong to me.

School is getting busier but I am still enjoying it. I may try and fit Honours in next year, if they'll let me, and that will require being at school over the summer. Work has disappeared which I'm not too sad about, although it makes me poor. At least I can catch all the buses I want with my Gold Pass. I am getting very unfit now that I am not walking up the hill every day.

I am playing more music, or rather I am playing more music in front of other people, or rather one person, my flatmate Rose. This is the first step to playing it to many people at once. She says she will give me singing lessons. We go out together on the weekends and drink a lot. This is novel but makes Sundays a bit unpleasant.

I have ceased being depressed about the state of music in Wellington and am starting to see it as the culmination of a natural process, and also my duty to fix. We are having band practice on Sunday at Kate's house. She lives in a room full of keyboards and even has a fold-up fold-down organ. My flatmates (I still have to resist calling them roommates) and I may form a terrible-pop-song covers band. This was a 1am idea. I would like to cover some of the songs I was forced to listen to on repeat in the buses of Central America.

I am going to night classes for Spanish every Wednesday. I think I am retaining what I know, maybe even getting a bit better. I may attempt to use some on the nice Argentinian boy who works at the bar downtown where I go with both my parents, separately. It is mid-term break in one more week. We will have a party at my house. I will clean out the fridge. I may sleep in. We might have one of those semi-summers that we sometimes get in September. I like this term best, because when it is time to study for my finals it will be sunny outside.

More than a month now

2009-07-14T04:10:00.000-07:00

I'm no longer able to say the exact number of weeks that I've been back off the top of my head. The organism is adjusting to its environment once more. I noticed this in Santa Barbara, when I started whitening my teeth and rolling up my denim shorts. Now I am putting up my collar, carrying a leather bag, wearing a red beret to protect my ears from the cold, and complaining about the state of the Wellington music scene.

So far I have been through the stages of interest in my surroundings because everything seems new; alienation and disconnection because some things have changed, if subtly; and plain irritation at my own culture, because I know it so well, and it is mine, and I have the right to do that. I miss the States, often and suddenly, and I don't know why or what it is that I miss exactly. I find myself daydreaming about moving to Scotland, or getting wistful when I send parcels overseas at work. Greece, Japan, Kuwait, oh to be there, somewhere that isn't here, that I don't know so well.

But then other times I get this feeling of comfort that I haven't felt for a long time. It's what I longed for in those cities in Central America, just to know where things are and how to get them, the closest place to buy ice cream, the bus stop, the post office. And other times I get a feeling of homefulness, the kind of feeling induced by sitting next to a heater with a cup of tea and a crossword while rain comes down the windows.

Things that have struck me about New Zealand now that I am back. How small everything is, especially the roads. When I went to radio camp last weekend it just seemed so odd that State Highway 1 between Wellington and Auckland is only one lane each way. Also I have realised how reserved the people are, how little they hug or talk in public. But I am happy to be back to the food, to have healthy food actually be affordable and not to have additives in cream (oh, and no instructions on the side for how to whip it).

I have been at work for most of the past six weeks. I guess it has been good to have something to fall back into that is productive in some way but it has also tired me out, and I feel like I haven't had a chance to do a lot of the things I wanted to do before school started. And now it's here! So I will be super busy. I did move out of home, and though I will miss having money to spend, I think it was the right choice. I just wish I had more time to spend in my room with its wood floor and huge window, and the sloping backyard with an apple tree at the bottom.

The last great adventure

2009-06-04T17:16:00.000-07:00

So now I have returned to my home. I think I will keep writing in this blog, because I like it, and now I have an impressive number of posts so it is worth keeping up. Here is my last travel episode, partially written before I left Texas and completed today. Soon I will write about my return to Wellington, but don't expect that to be very interesting.

Big Bend: Full of Events

I once had a plan. The plan was ambitious, it involved traveling to the East Coast via North Carolina then all the way back to California on virtually no money. Then it was necessary to return home early, so the plan was curtailed; it became a plan to travel to California via New Mexico and Arizona. On even less money. Then Southwest Airlines offered me a cheap flight. So the plans died. So did my dreams, almost. Then I convinced Yasmin, my temporary roommate, to drive me to Big Bend, a national park in southwest Texas on the border with Mexico. And the dreams remained alive.

Oh what a journey. I wanted adventure, we had it. It takes eight hours to drive to Big Bend from Austin. First is the hill country, green and tree filled and gently rolling. Then the empty flatlands of West Texas, which slowly become the desert and mountains of Big Bend. We had four people, a small car and quite a lot of stuff, which slowly expanded so that I was sitting in the passenger seat with my legs tucked up.

We survived the drive there, although Yasmin got a speeding ticket (note, first event). West Texas is real Texas, flat and isolated and very empty. The land we saw from the freeway looked totally unused, no animals grazing or crops growing. It’s the place of ranches and small towns and trucks, the place where you don’t want to be seen wearing an Obama t-shirt. Fort Stockton is the last major town before Big Bend, bless its little heart. A beautifully desolate town, where the hint of the Wild West remains, subverted by a main street of drive-ins and chain stores and kids smoking meth out the back of the trailer. Maybe.

Big Bend itself is totally inspiringly beautiful. It’s a sort of plant-filled desert, with hard ground and spiny cactuses and tough animals lurking around. We saw plenty of roadrunners running, heads down, skinny legs motoring. Then there are the mountains looming, big rocky red ones, looking tired and dusty. Despite it being May and, you know, the desert, it rained much of the time we were there. This is where the events start.

The first campsite we were at was being irrigated. Unsure why. We did move our tent like the nice man said but were still woken up in the morning to find ourselves nearly flooded out. At least we weren’t eaten by javelinas, this brand of vicious pigs that are attracted to the smell of food. (We actually saw some the next day; they looked kind of cute and are very blind.) Oh, and it also rained while we were cooking dinner. Most beautiful moment: the hot springs at night, a natural pool surrounded by the rushing rapids of the Rio Grande. The kind of place money can’t buy, and the stars coming out and the desert all around.

The next day it was off to Mexico, as we took a short walk to see the Rio Grande. We didn’t realize we’d already seen it the night before as it is somewhat unimpressive and not very grande at all. This river forms the border between Mexico and Texas for two thousand kilometers, but is looking a bit thin due to a great big dam and some global warming. It certainly sparked some interesting thought processes in my American companions and I. I mean, you wouldn’t have to swim to get across this river. You could walk across, easily (and the hot springs on the Texas side might provide a good reason to do so). As much as the US might talk of border security, there was no patrol at the river at all, only a station on the road out of the park (story about them coming later). I thought of how the majority of Texans would feel if they could see the little stream that separates them from big bad scary Mexico. We all thought of John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’, and how one of the unforeseen consequences of climate change is erasing boundaries between us.

There was an interesting fellow hanging out on the Mexico side of the river. He was called Victor the Singing Mexican, he was indeed singing and he had left a jar on the US side for donations. There were other artifacts from Mexico for sale around the park. This is pretty obviously illegal, but the park rangers seem to turn a blindish eye beyond putting up notices warning tourists not to buy anything. Victor spoke very good English, bizarre considering we were in the middle of the desert. He said that he used to run boat tours, then 9/11 happened and he couldn’t anymore. I’m sure he has a very interesting story, and some day I would like to return to hear more about it.

After that we moved campsites, to Chisos Basin, up in this beautiful circle of mountains. We took a walk, the Window Trail, which led down between the cliffs and desert trees to an opening that showed the plains so far below, and a stream falling over the edge. It was a very nice hike, just the right length. On the way back it started raining, slowly then quickly, and we ran, arriving back at the campsite dripping and cold. Oh well. Time for dinner, right? Right?

Um, no. We had been deceived into thinking that we could cook our food on a grill outside the visitors centre, as there was a charcoal ban in the rest of the campsite (which become steadily more ridiculous as the rain kept falling). In fact we should have brought our own grill. Oh. After a fair amount of anger (not at each other, luckily) and discussion of what to do, we made the decision to not spend any more money and survive on whisky, marshmallows and cold beans until the morning. So we huddled up in our tent as the clouds gathered overhead, and drunk ourselves into sleep as the thunder rumbled and the rain came down.

Of such things are camping holidays made of. It seems impossible to go camping and not have about ten things go wrong. Bears, being late, losing people, rain, not enough food, too much food. The normal. But on our way home we were struck by more events, quite extraordinary, coming like lightning. Out of nowhere, that is. So we packed up on the Saturday morning, drove some more through the park, once again awed by its beauty but not particularly sad to be leaving.

I have said that we did not notice any security at the actual border with Mexico. That’s because all the guards are hanging out at a nice comfortable post on the road out of the park, where they don’t have to walk too much. Their job seems to be confined to asking people if they’re US citizens, and if they reply in the affirmative, letting them go on their way. Given that we were all strictly legal, how could we mess this up? Well… Confronted with an official asking me if I am a US citizen, I have to say no. Really, I do. Even if it seems very unlikely that he will ask for any ID and probably just let us go on our way with no fuss. Even if I am the least Mexican-looking person in the car, being the only blond one and having the fairest skin. But the thought of the trouble I could get in for claiming to be a US citizen when I am very much not is quite intimidating. So, I confess that I am not a native. What follows is a confusing story told in two-part harmony as both Yasmin and I try to explain that I’m a New Zealand citizen, but I don’t have my New Zealand passport, only my UK one, as I’m a citizen of both, but this one doesn’t have my visa in it, and I didn’t bring my other one as I didn’t expect to need it, and I keep it safe at home because it’s got my visa in it, and I’m here on a tourist visa, but I was a student, but then I left, then I came back. On a tourist visa. Yes, I guess that’s a B1. I don’t know.

Luckily the Texan officials seemed a bit confused. I guess they don’t have New Zealanders with UK passports coming through very often. So they went to check my name, found I was OK but handed me a piece of paper while warning me that I had to have the right passport on me, or else I could go to jail. Or be fined. No one told me this. Then they let us go, thankfully without searching the car for drugs. Or more Mexicans, which we could very easily have had hiding in the trunk.

Outside of Fort Stockton we had our last and most serious event. We were driving down the right lane of the freeway, probably at a speed that seemed quite normal but would be unthinkable on a New Zealand road. There were some trucks in front of us, three or four maybe. One truck was passing one of the others. I expressed surprise that trucks could overtake each other, as they are the road equivalent of wooly mammoths. So we came up behind and moved into the left lane, and began overtaking the last truck in line. We were at least halfway up his body when he began MOVING TOWARDS US. Us, little tiny car sitting in the left lane. I think what happened next was that Yasmin slowed down, and possibly ran off the road a bit. It’s all a bit dizzying. I just remember the massive truck being very very close to our right side, and probably screaming, before we got behind it.

It was all very disturbing. Not long after, we passed the truck. It seemed odd that the container on the back was completely unmarked (no ‘How’s my driving?’ sticker, thanks very much). The cab had the name of a Florida company on it. We furiously took down every number we could. Then we hit a sudden rainstorm, and the truck sped up. The speed limit for trucks in that part was 70, and he was doing 80, and it was raining! Crazy man! We were worried. We thought he was probably on drugs. Apparently he made kissy faces at us as he went past. How evil. Later on, the rain stopped, and we passed him again. We eventually made the decision to call the police. They caught up with him outside of Ozone, we saw the car go past. Who knows what the result was? Maybe he sweet-talked his way out of it. Maybe they found the container was full of coke. We don’t know.

In the end, after several more rainstorms and passing an accident, we arrived safely back in Austin. Oh Austin, how I miss you now. How I particularly missed you while being rained on in the wilderness and while on that scary fast freeway. How good it is to have a roof over your head, and food in the fridge, hot water and soft blankets.

Life is uncertainty. And change.

2009-05-17T11:35:00.000-07:00

I have been away from home for almost ten months. When I think of my old house, I imagine my family carrying on the same as we always did. Going to work, coming home, arguing about the dishes, vacuuming on weekends, walking the dog every day, going out for dinner now and again. A tick-tocking kind of routine, comfortable, familiar. But I forget that we only get so many times round the clock. While things are not changing, they are winding down, grinding away.

My grandmother has reached the venerable age of ninety-one. She has very recently started using a computer for the first time, to send emails and sometimes check this blog. Now she has bowel cancer and, last I checked, is in hospital. She still sounds cheerful and chirpy and it makes me sad, because I don't feel cheerful or chirpy at all. I don't know how I feel.

Readjusting to life standing still has not been simple. I haven't really had anything to do here in Austin, and while I do like it here, I'm not going anywhere. Physically or any other way. When I was backpacking, I was constantly on the move, and while that had its own problems, suddenly stopping is odd. It's like running at full tilt and then jolting to a halt. You need to readjust your balance, to pull in your flailing limbs and set your neck straight.

And so while I was getting onto this, my grandmother was getting sicker. My mother isn't telling me what to do, but I know I need to get home. Besides, it makes it so much worse being so far away. Now I'm just waiting to hear if I'll be leaving this week or next week. It's such an odd feeling, suddenly being cast back from whence you came. It's definitely a feeling of a flight cut short, a jolt of reality. And that's OK. I'm OK, or I'm telling myself I am, and I hope my grandmother's OK, or I'm telling myself she is. I want to be philosophical about this. I know about life and death and change and acceptance and everything. I do. But I don't know about fitting back into Wellington so quickly. I haven't had time to readjust to the idea of returning.

Cuba, the Middle

2009-05-06T10:50:00.000-07:00

The days have really been sinking away here in Austin, Texas. I think I'll be leaving in less than two weeks, but I have no idea where to. I've also stopped denying the heat. It's 30 degrees every day and humid. I'm sitting on Ania's bedroom floor in front of the open door to the garden to try and catch any breeze that might be going, and sweating. I might get up at some point to make myself a mojito with the rum I brought back. And I'm going to try and write about Cuba, which has taken me ages because I keep telling people about it instead of writing it down.

One of the things about Cuba is that it doesn't work. That is, the people don't work, and the plumbing isn't on the job either. I think Cuba is much like one of the vintage cars that prowl the streets; just functioning enough to keep going, but not sounding too healthy, seeming like it's going to fall apart any moment but still managing to keep it together. Sometimes you can't get bread, because none has been baked, or because the people in the bread shop don't feel like selling it. Often a store will be closed, and the staff will be inside, but they just don't feel like serving. Restaurant service is dismissive at best, non-existent at worst. It drove my aunt mad. In this way it sounds similar to what I've heard about Russia (which is pretty new to capitalism, after all). In fact, talking it over with Ania (who was in St. Petersburg for three months back in the fall) Cuba is like a hotter, more colourful, more cheerful Russia. And it may sound presumptive from someone who was in a communist country for only two weeks, but this work ethic seems pretty well connected to the political system. If you're not going to get anything for working hard and striving to get ahead, then you're not going to; if there's no benefit in innovation, then you won't invent anything new. Maybe you could jiggle the communist system to solve this issue, maybe not. And I guess it's not really an objection. I mean, as long as the country is ticking over day to day there's not really an immediate problem. But this could explain why each house in Cuba has tanks for water, which are filled up every second day by a truck. Or why there isn't really any street food like you find in Mexico (most Cubans seeming to subsist on pizza and hotdogs and ice cream, a very unvaried diet).

I spent all of my two weeks in Cuba in Havana, it being very pricey to travel as a foreigner in Cuba. The tourist industry there is very much set up to get you into an expensive hotel, to an expensive restaurant, to the beach and back to the airport preferably without seeing more than the sanitised version of Cuban culture. Um, I don't think I was technically legally staying with my aunt; she was renting an apartment, and my name was written down and everything, but the bed I was sleeping in was meant to be occupied by the landlord. He actually lived somewhere else but it meant I had to take all my things out of the room each day in case an inspector came.

Havana is beautiful. I think. I guess it's smelly, yes, and dirty and crowded, all things which bothered my aunt. But to enjoy being in Cuba you have to be a bit of a romantic. You have to smell the cigars, not the rotting rubbish and blocked drains. You have to gasp at the beauty of the colonial buildings and be enchanted by their decaying grandeur, and not worry too much about the lack of building standards or housing codes that would condemn them in your home country. You have to be inspired by the story of the revolution and not think too hard about what fifty years of the same leadership will do to a country. You have to fall in love with Che and not listen to the rumours of how he was dismissed from Cuba and left to his death. You have to glory in the past and not worry about the future of a country that is totally unprepared for the onslaught of capitalism.

I digress. Really Havana is quite enjoyable without totally burying your head in the sand. And discussing and learning about the current state of politics doesn't take too much away from the fairytale streets, lined with tall brightly coloured buildings with intricate metalwork and old-time balconies. Most of the walls are literally falling off, and some of them have collapsed completely. It would be an amazing place to make a film. Old people sit on their doorsteps, children play in the street, men sit around tables of dominoes as the day falls. People queue, for bread, for the bus. There are occasional signs of Santeria, the voodoo religion mixed with Catholic saints, if you know where to look for them: women dressed in white skirts with white scarves tied around their heads, or the figure of Icarus dangling upside down from the window opposite our apartment. Goat skins are left outside to dry in the sun for drums.

The abundance of art and music in Havana astounded me. Perhaps it was in comparison to the other countries I visited, or perhaps because in a communist environment I'd expect it to go the same way as street food; not useful, not necessary, not pursued. But Bellas Artes, the art gallery of Havana, was packed with amazing Cuban artists (I wrote down heaps of names; let's see, Fidelio Ponce de Leon, Tomas Sanchez, Carlos Garaicoa). So I was interested to learn about the laws against criticism of Fidel and communism. My aunt and I went out one night to a youth centre (it was pretty cool) to see a movie, and beforehand they were playing some Cuban music videos. One of them had an obvious anti-government message, even to me with my non-existent Spanish (a hammer and sickle symbol in a rubbish bin next to a swastika needs no translation). My aunt raised her eyebrows. One audience member stood up and starting talking loudly. 'He's saying it's illegal,' my aunt told me. The video was stopped. Apparently there was a rapper arrested recently for being too anti-Fidel; they were going to put him in jail but there was too much of an international outcry.

As well as Bellas Artes, I went to visit the Museo de la Revolucion. It was very oddly laid out and only partially in English, but did have some interesting artifacts, mainly odd clothing belonging to various people (some complete with bloodstains). It was also very angry about the United States, just in general, but somewhat understandably. It referred to them as the 'Yankees' ('yanqui' in Spanish) and I am curious about whether they will tone this down if/when the blockade is lifted. Also, how about all the anti-American billboards? Really, I mean, I've been to Egypt. They're meant to be Muslim and want to kill all Americans, but there was nothing like the anti-US messages that are everywhere in Cuba. I kind of love it. Someone has to do it, after all, and they've kind of being screwing all of Central America over for years. A Cuban guy that I met refused to refer to it as the United States of America, his logic being that he is also American, and also in a State. So he referred to it as Gringolandia.

Um, funny story. So the US doesn't have an embassy in Cuba, obviously. Instead they have a 'Special Interest Section', a grey blockish building down by the Malecon (the wall that runs along the waterfront, quite the party spot at night). Sometime during the Bush years they put up digital signs in the windows of the upper floors of the building, which displayed anti-Cuban messages in bright electric red. Cuba didn't take kindly to this. The response was to put up a large number of flag poles right in front, flying black flags with white stars, reputedly one for every person that died in the revolution. This effectively blocks the messages.

One day my aunt and I went to visit Matanzas on the Hershey Train (named after, yes, Mr Hershey, who built his own train line to the port to get his sugar out easier). In all Central American countries you would expect the train to run late. The difference in Cuba is that it often doesn't run at all. So we turned up at 8.30am (much to my disgust, I was tired) and then had to return at 12.30pm. In the meantime we got to see the Jesus statue that stands on pretty much the only hill in Havana, next to Che's old house. It was erected shortly before the revolution, then a few months after that came into effect, one of Jesus' arms was blasted off by lightning. It was said to be an omen. The train was seriously the most decrepit beast I have ridden on. The seats were barely still there. It passed between houses built so close to the tracks that a child could have reached out and touched them. Then it picked up speed, rattling and shaking and jolting along so hard that literally couldn't sleep. I'm just thankful that it stayed on the tracks, and that it didn't break down for hours.

So. What else? Che! Oh yes, Che! It seems that Fidel doesn't believe in living idols. He doesn't appear on any coins, there are no statues or t-shirts of him (it's illegal to make one, actually). This doesn't mean that Fidel isn't idolised. I mean, the country is pretty much his plaything. He's still alive, retired somewhere near a beach. He writes these reflections, and when a new one comes out they stop all the programs on TV so they can read it out. If he doesn't believe in living idols however, he sure does believe in dead ones. Che is everywhere. I guess he's one of the most marketable things they have. You can buy t-shirts and posters, postcards, keyrings, lots and lots of books, anything you want really emblazoned with the silhouette of the hero. It's all very ironic (as is the Adidas store downtown, and the mall out in Playa). I wonder how Che would feel about all this. Camillo Cienfuegos, the other dead leader of the revolution, is not nearly as visible; I can only assume he wasn't as good looking. I also wonder what would have happened if Che had survived and run a country, grown old and grey-haired instead of being burnt out and immortalised. But there's certainly something about his spirit, divorced as it may be from the actual man: revolution and youth and hope. I'm totally in love with him. I'll chalk him up on my list of useless crushes.

I guess that was Cuba, a country somehow still stopped fifty years back. When it comes, and it will, capitalism will hit it like a ton of bricks. The revolution that was fought half a century ago was fought against a different kind of enemy, and the lack of change in the administration has not been matched by a lack of change in the opposing forces. One of the problems is that you can't tell people what to think, you can't control them and expect them not to desire what they've been denied. The young people in Cuba want capitalism because they want the stuff they see on TV, and they won't listen if you simply tell them that it won't make them happy. They have to learn that for themselves. But it makes me sad, that the revolution will come to nothing in the end. All power corrupts, and Cuba has not been protected against what is coming for it. It's far from a perfect island paradise.

Cuba, the End

2009-05-04T10:06:00.000-07:00

In a totally out of order way, this post will be about leaving Cuba. Eventually I will find the energy to write about the middle of Cuba itself, but I would like the present to be dealt with first.

As I began to mentally prepare to leave Cuba, there was a complication. Swine flu! It’s funny when a news item like that starts to actually affect your life. My first thought was that this was the explanation for my sniffle. As the story developed, it became possible that I wouldn’t be able to get out of Cuba. I liked Cuba a lot, but I wanted my clothes and my computer, and to be able to walk down the street without being harassed. To stop feeling like an outsider. In fact, that last day in Havana was one of those less good ones. I got hassled by men more than normal, and I got rained on. I was looking forward to just getting back, and was playing Spider Solitaire in the apartment when my aunt burst in with the news that I wouldn't be able to leave because they were closing the airports. We walked down to ask Cubana Airlines what was up, and on the way we passed a man leaning over a dog and doing something to its neck with a knife. Just on the pavement. I still don't know if the thing he was doing was beneficial veterinary medicine with rudimentary tools, or some kind of voodoo magic. It could have been either, but I looked at him and decided that I couldn't handle this kind of thing anymore. I wanted out. Luckily, my flight the next day was still going to go! I think the last one to leave Cuba before they closed themselves down.

Cancun airport didn’t seem to realize it was at the epicenter of a news storm. A few people, mainly tourists, were wearing masks and there was a questionairre to fill out on your way through security (if you have all the above symptoms, you should contact a doctor. Oh. Really?). After another night in Cancun airport I was finally on the plane back (it’s those last few agonizing minutes when you’ve landed and everyone is standing waiting for the doors to open… out of the last thirty hours of waiting and delays, they’re the longest). Anyone who has to sleep in Cancun airport should know that there is two seats with three armrests missing, on the entrance side next to the restaurant. This means you can actually lie down on them and go to sleep. I had dreams about lions, where I protested that they didn't have lions in Central America.

So the doors open, and we go down the steps into the little Terminal Two at Austin airport (the one that the other terminals didn’t want to talk to, it’s seriously miles from the rest of the airport and bright green). I’d been through some pre-arrival culture shock in the airport at Cancun, what with the accents and the exuburance and the general Americaness. So I was a little worried about my ability to deal with Texas, but the immigration official was very nice and friendly, the customs man made a joke. The people in reception let me use their phone and chat to me about swine flu. Everybody smiles, and everybody speaks English. How relaxing you are, United States. This is why I like you.

And so now I am happily inhabiting Ania's house in Austin, where there is an astonishing excess of food including chocolate. It still feels weird to drink the water from the tap, and I keep looking for the wastepaper basket for the toilet paper (plumbing not being so great down there). Letters from my friends in New Zealand greeted my arrival, and my computer full of my music, and a thumb piano which I am learning to play. Oh music, I have missed you. And dairy products. And the Daily Show, and all the trappings of life which may be excessive and unnecessary but which belong to me, and my culture, which I can criticise but which still feels so good. And now I can chat to the people that serve me in the supermarket, and laugh with people, and be accepted in the street. I'm happy. Reverse culture shock can come later.

Cuba, the Beginning

2009-05-02T13:56:00.000-07:00

So my premonition that I might not be able to write from Havana turned out to be correct. Internet there was $9US an hour, and still slow. What can you expect from a country that still uses telegrams? Yes, telegrams. So I have much to catch up on. To make it easier for me and for everyone, I will update in easily digestible nuggets rather than one big novella. Speaking of which, my great-aunt has just released a book! A real one, for sale and everything, about her life. So anyone who has heard the story of my grandmother’s half-sister and the orphanage and the mysterious parcel paper can rest assured that I didn’t make it up.

Well, the journey to actually get to Cuba was kind of, um, eventful. Eventful in a missing-flight and breaking-down-at-ticket-desk kind of way. I did consider whether to write about this part because I would like to maintain my aloof expert traveler persona, but it is better if you know the truth. I arrived at the airport an hour before the plane left, which it turns out is not enough time to check in for an international flight (who knew?). I still maintain that there is no reason I couldn’t have got on the plane apart from stupid bureaucracy. It was sitting there mere metres away from me for a full hour while I cried at the Cubana woman. Eventually it transpired that I was able to go on standby for a flight the following day, and I calmed down, and lay outside under a palm tree. No harm was done, quite the contrary as I met a nice girl from Lake Tahoe who was also sleeping in the airport.

Cuba is like another world. Things just… aren’t the same. The vintage cars really do exist, and people do use them. I took many photos which I will be able to put up when I eventually get my films developed (um, back in New Zealand). In fact, many of the coolest cars operate as collective taxis. Tourists aren’t allowed to take these, though I did with my aunt. Most of them are in various stages of decay, with the insides gutted apart from the seats so it feels as if you are sitting in a skeleton. And the cigars. People really do casually smoke them while walking down the street. Cigar smoke will always be a Cuba smell for me (along with rotting rubbish bins and blocked drains).

I guess that a lot of the things that are unique about Cuba are a result of their political system. But then maybe it’s the culture that has given rise to that system, or helped it survive. It’s so fascinating to be in a country that is organized in such a different way. Has it changed my politics? Yes, I think. I’m not a communist now, not at all, but it has helped me to see that there are other ways of doing things, other methods of organization. In our Western democracies perhaps we can become set in our ways, certain that any change we make has to be done through the existing systems, which we assume to be working and fair. I don’t know. Maybe I left with the spirit of revolution. So much for ‘Take only photos, leave only footprints’…

Now I have an urgent appointment with some cupcakes. Watch this space, and I will write more soon!

Journey to Cancun

2009-04-14T09:59:00.000-07:00

I've come this far. I left DF Sunday night. The last leg will be tomorrow morning; oh, I hope the bus doesn't break down or I will miss my flight. I'm assuming I will be able to update this from Havana but at this stage I'm not taking anything for granted. My aunt is sending me emails about things she wants me to bring; originally most of it was medication, but now it's just a computer mouse. Apparently there are no USB-connection mice to be found in Havana. This is making me curious about what else will not be there.

Sunday, as promised, we went to the pyramids. One of these days I will look up the long complicated name so I can tell what pyramids they actually were. Anyhow they were very big. Much bigger than the Mayan ones I've seen, but it could be just because they're not covered in jungle. Most things in Mexico City were very big, and very crowded, so the pyramids were no exception. They were covered with people who looked like insects from the bottom. There was a Temple of the Sun (which they have recently discovered was not dedicated to the sun at all, oh history you fiend) which we climbed up. I'm amazed I made it. The Temple of the Moon was a little smaller, and you could only climb half-way. The sun was beating down on the plain, and we had walked all the way down the avenue from the entrance.

That night I took the bus from a very large very crowded bus station (see the Mexico City theme here?). Mexican bus terminals are almost more like airports, huge with gate numbers and ticket desks and people with suitcases and places to buy bad food. It was sad to say goodbye to Patricia and her parents. It was sadder to spend the night crushed into a single seat, then the whole of the next day sitting in the bus terminal at Villahermosa. I would have left to explore but it was so hot and so humid and frankly traveling for two months has sapped some of my adventurous spirit. I spent another half-night on the bus, then was unceremoniously deposited at the terminal in Merida at 3.30am. So I slept on the uncomfortable terminal seats for four hours.

I am telling you all this so you know that I am not really having a holiday. Not all the time at least. Merida is very pretty. This afternoon the plan is to finally find my cenote, which together with learning to surf, was one of the most looked forward to things on this trip. Then I suppose the next time I write I will be in Cuba!

Snails and Mexico City

2009-04-11T18:11:00.000-07:00

The bus to visit Oventik, a Zapatista community about an hour from San Cristobal, went very fast. Very fast on a narrow winding road, that went higher and higher and got mistier, through steep hillsides and snapshots of village life. A girl next to me wore a Strawberry Shortcake T-shirt. I was surprised at the deforestation on the way, but I don't know why. There wasn't a huge amount, and people have to eat. Maybe it just looked very new to me, very fresh, for communities that have lived there so long.

As we got closer a realisation bubbled to the surface, that I didn't know what I was planning to actually do when we got there. Walk around? Have lunch? This wasn't an amusement park. When we pulled up on the main road beside the sign asserting that this was a Zapatista Autonomous Zone, and I was faced with a white gate leading on to one steep street going down the hill, this realisation had turned into a feeling of slight stupidity. I gave my passport to a girl with a scarf pulled half-heartedly, almost coquetishly, over her lower face. I followed her into one of the painted buildings lining the street, one room with three men wearing dark masks. I had the distinct feeling that I might have got myself more than I bargained for.

Luckily, the natural human instinct that says that anyone with a mask is an unknown quantity up to no good proved to be false. They seemed quite content that I just wanted to take some photos of the murals on the buildings. I was ushered into another building with more masked faces to get a permit for that, and the rules (the only one of which I grasped was 'no people'). I deplored my terrible Spanish that didn't allow me to be anything more than brisk, and actually initiate a conversation with any of the people I met.

The whole of the visitable village was that street, and a basketball court at the bottom. It was all very misty and didn't make for great photos. The buildings were all painted brightly, with revolutionary images (like Che on the hospital) and others that seemed more tranquil (like a tree with people, masked and unmasked, sitting in it looking quite happy). A lot seemed to be women. One I liked was of a woman's face masked by cobs of corn, showing just the eyes. There were several weaving co-operatives, a couple of shops selling food. The hospital, with the Zapatista Ambulance parked outside. And a comedor slash souvenir shop, selling everything you could want. Zapatista keyrings included, which weirded me out and sent me into thoughts about counter-culture-capitalism that I haven't yet resolved. It got mistier and colder, and I returned to San Cristobal quiet and thoughtful.

I spent fourteen hours on a bus to get here, to Mexico City, also known as DF. I fell straight into the arms of my friend Patricia from Santa Barbara. She has been looking after me incredibly, ushering me around the huge city on the vast public transport system, allowing me to see more than I ever would on my own. It's lovely to be in a real home for once. I am definitely getting slight tiredness messages from some part of my brain, saying it's time to settle down and sleep in the same bed for more than one week.

Mexico City, as well as being very big, is much more than I was expecting. Witness the downtown historical area, full of old European style buildings, beautiful with an old-time atmosphere. The Palacio de Bella Arte, with murals and an Art Deco interior, slowly sinking into the ground. Many of the old buildings here are. It's what you get if you build on a lake. The Basilica de Guadalupe that we saw today is on quite a nasty lean. They seem to be doing things to it inside to help. The real Virgin de Guadalupe, an oft-copied painting and 'proof' of the appearence of Mary in Mexico, resides in a much newer building (it's meant to be shaped like a hill. Very modern). She's very popular. You go under the altar to see her, and they've installed conveyor belts to keep people moving.

Also today we saw the Museum of Anthropology. Huge. Like the city, and full of pieces of pottery and stone and bones from the Aztecs and Maya and the civilisations that preceded them. Last night it was the trendy bohemian area Coyoacan, with a market all around the park, and full of churro stands, dulcerias, hip bars and coffee shops. The day before, the main cathedral. Very crowded (as is a lot of the city, and this is Semana Santa, so it's emptier than usual) and you can buy holy water for ten pesos. Unfortunately however we were not allowed to take the tour up to see the bells and the tower. The cardinal was hanging out upstairs.

Although I'm glad I missed the Semana Santa accomodation headaches I would have had in the ritualised Guatemala, I do feel sorry for the lack of chocolate eggs at this time of year. It seems that eggs really are not part of it here at all. Don't even talk about hot cross buns, warm from the oven, with melting butter... There doesn't seem to be a lot of ceremony here in Mexico for Easter, apart from very religious church going and self-flaggeration (!). There is one where they take painted paper dolls of Judas, fill them with gunpowder and throw him on the fire. Another tradition is throwing water over each other on Holy Saturday. But Patricia says the people in charge decided that too much water was being wasted, so now they turn off the running water in many suburbs on that day (not ours, thankfully). So yes, an interesting place to spend Easter; but I'd really like someone to save me a Cadbury Creme Egg.

Another unreasonably long bus trip coming up, to Cancun, which I'm hoping to split into pieces. If thee's time, maybe tomorrow we go to visit the pyramids. Then Cuba. I better not say that too loud, the United States might hear me, and cancel my recently-received electronic Approval to Travel (a new facet of the Visa Waiver Program). I officially have my plane ticket back to NZ, leaving California July 6th, arriving Wellington July 8th. I expect a parade. And presents.

I guess this is what you call spring

2009-04-05T19:40:00.000-07:00

I lost an hour of my life today. Has anyone seen it? I feel like this has happened before, very recently. I was out with friends last night, and they told me about the loss, and I came close to panic. Just a total sudden absence of bearings in space (which I'm used to) and time (which I am not). Oh, Doctor Who, where are you when I need you? Speaking of which, I found out only minutes ago that David Tennant will be leaving. Leaving! But he can't! Forget Jesus, he's our only saviour!

I have being enjoying Mexico no end. Today I went to the zoo in Tuxtla, which I shared with many Mexican families enjoying their Sunday afternoon. I think that zoos are joining my list of things that remain the same wherever you go, like the inside of a movie theatre. Just like home there were kiosks where you could buy fast food and ice cream, and a souvenir shop filled with fluffy stuffed animals. There were many children. It was very hot, and I didn't have enough water. It made me dizzy when I stood up too fast.

There was a nocturnal house, but no elusive kiwis, just a lot of racoon-like mammals. I really liked the zorrillo espalda blanca (white backed zorrillo). He was fluffy and fat and had a striking white stripe on his head and back, and rolled around cleaning himself. I made the mistake of going into the insect house. Most of it seemed to be spiders, and they weren't the kind of spiders that were easy to miss, if you know what I mean. I don't like to be a wimp but that did me in. I found an excellent turtle that had a pelicularly huge head (tortuga de tres lomos). It looked a mix between an old man and the mole from Wind in the Willows, and had a snout with two perfect nostrils. In the corner a number of them seemed to be trying underwater acrobatics, all sitting on each others' backs. The scarlet macaws were striking, and huge. The panther (different from the puma!) was so cuddly looking, with huge puppy feet. The great horned owls were the grumpiest looking things ever, and so angry. If they had hands they would be writing letters to newspapers every morning. And the tapirs are not big cats! They look like huge tailless pigs with elephant snouts.

I had a good time, and a nice conversation with a man from Mexico City outside the panther cage. He asked me about New Zealand, and I said it was colder with a lot of mountains and beaches and everything was very clean. We got talking about society somehow, and I said that everybody had enough to eat and somewhere to live, and that most people were fairly equal. I feel weird when I talk about my country like it's utopia, but I can't start complaining about my student loan or John Key to someone from a country with the biggest rich-poor gap in the world. I could hear my voice saying that I was able to get reasonably-priced health care, that if I couldn't find a job then the government would give me money, that if I got hurt at work they would look after me. That yes, we had higher taxes, but we had better social security. It sounded too good to be true in a country like this.

In other San Cristobal news, I have experienced the joy that is La Casa del Pan (the best bakery out of Berkeley; well, in Mexico, anyway), found new rubbery flip flops, woken up to blue sky and magenta bouginvilla in my colourful dorm bed right next to the window. Felt chilled by the night winds. We're high up here. Yesterday I went to the centre for Mayan Medicine, run by a group who are doing an amazing job preserving traditional remedies. My scientific mind may be a little doubtful, but I'm willing to accept there's probably some placebo effect behind the waving of chickens. Although I don't know about the rule that the mother of a newborn boy cannot eat avocados for three months after the birth (or else the boy's penis becomes inflammed).

On the way to the centre, I got lost, as is my wont. I wandered into a barbed wire gate and a sign saying 'Revolution'. I thought "tensions" were meant to be over here, but this seemed to be some kind of encampment, no pasar, with a few banners proclaiming indigenous rights. It interests me, but still the only face mask I have seen was worn by a person clearing the rubbish downtown. Tomorrow I will go to Oventik, a village outside. I will report.

Black sand, brown skin

2009-04-03T13:53:00.000-07:00

To which I should add 'purple bruises'. Surfing hurts. It hurts, and it's hard. I must have swallowed half my own weight in seawater. I wish I could report that having tried the sport and discovered the many drawbacks I have decided never to get on a surfboard again. Instead I´m counting down the months to a NZ summer and calculating the price of a wetsuit.

One day saw me journey from Leon,Nicaragua, to La Libertad, El Salvador. In kilometres this can't be that long, but it took me six buses, thirteen hours and a pedi-cab. On one of the buses, someone actually had a chicken in a sack. I am glad to know that 'chicken bus' is not a misnomer. The experience of two borders in one day, and the fact that I only saved about $10 over the direct shuttle, convinced me thatit wasn't cheating when I decided to take the fancy international bus on my last journey. I do feel like a little less of a traveler.

It was El Salvador that made me skip over Guatemala entirely. I'd heard before I got there that the people are very friendly, but I didn't really believe it. But I could swear that the instant you step across the border smiles widen and are more frequent, desire to help without monetary reward is greater and tendency to rip you off is decreased. It must be something in the water. I was planning to avoid El Salvador because they've just had an election and I was worried about unrest (the kind that involves firearms; they were in a civil war kind of recently, after all). But I'm so glad I didn't. It is meant to be dangerous, but to be honest I saw less security men with guns than in Honduras, and locals tend to keep the violence to themselves. One hopes.

Playa El Tunco was a pleasantly laid back spot with a decent black sand beach and a right point break. The latter was the location of my attempts to surf, which I will not stop complaining about because I can actually feel my bruises healing as I whine. First I took a surf lesson, wanting to start off on the right foot. My teacher was called Bamba. I learnt over the days I was there that every local surfer has two names, and that it is actually possible for black hair to get bleached-surfer-blond streaks, which looks really weird. He taught me how to stand up on the board,or rather, what I would be doing if I was able to stand up on the board, and took me out to catch some waves. Alright, I thought. This isn't too bad.

That afternoon I gave it a try by myself. It was almost comical. I got knocked over just getting through the waves breaking on the beach. The size of the waves at the break scared me so much. I made a vain attempt to catch a few and just ended up underneath them. The size of the board you learn on means you can´t just dive under waves. When you see the white water coming, you have to either try to catch it or yell 'Abandon Ship!', jump off your board and dive under impending doom. You end up swallowing a lot of water while your board drags at your ankle, caught in the white wash.The tendency of waves to come in sets means that once you get caught once at this spot, you tend to be stuck, emerging from under the wave only to find another one coming towards you with no time to swim away. The 'oh no, not again' feeling is one I would get used to. But that first day, I emerged from the waves despondent, sore, tired, with my lungs full of salt water, and found that my flip flops had been stolen by the high tide and that I was bleeding. I was ready to give up on this stupid idea.

By the next morning, I had difficulty lifting my left arm above my shoulder. The cut on my thigh had blossomed into a tri-coloured bruise. Muscles I didn't know I had ached. I decided I would body-board that day. But the next found me back out there early, with the water glassy, the light soft and a morning flock of pelicans saying hello. I caught a few waves, felt better. I aimed to stand up by the time I left El Tunco (unfortunately this did not happen). I began to feel like I wouldn't give up after all. That day, actually, I got this strange sense of standing at the beginning of a very long path, and knowing that I was going to be going down it and feeling every bump on the way. Why will I be doing this? I couldn't say. But there's something very peaceful about paddling out and waiting for the wave, calm in a beautiful ocean. Most of surfing is waiting really. This is followed by a burst of speed, an oh-heavens-it's-coming-straight-for-me-this-is-it, a paddlepaddlepaddle, then a surge as the wave catches. And if it makes me feel like this now, imagine how great it will be when I can actually surf.

Besides which, there are the cute boys. It's not just a stereotype. It's true. And the laidback lifestyle. Oh, Playa El Tunco was lovely. I met a great bunch of people there: my fall-over-gorgeous French roommates; the eptiome of California surfer from Santa Barbara; a cute Canadian couple, the girl learning like me and complaining every second, like me; Devin, bearded, Pacific Northwest and talking 100 miles a minute.

Twenty-eight long hours of bus travel later,and I am in San Cristobal De Las Casas. Getting into the first Mexican bus terminal was amazing. A bus terminal with seats, and a ticket office with people dressed nicely, and bright lights and clean streets and a bus leaving shortly. It seems so civilised. Oh, I love you Mexico. San Cristobal seems fantastic already. I'm staying in an excellent hostel near the indigenous market. I took a wander down and saw the beautiful costumes and fell in love. So far, San Cristobal is the only town I would consider living in. It's spectacular.

Island hopping: Volume II

2009-03-26T11:37:00.000-07:00

While in paradise, I had a lot of time to think. And what I thought one day was that I would really like to go to Cuba to visit my aunt. So that´s what I decided to do. Now I am skipping like a stone, heading northwards to Mexico to catch planes from Cancun.

First destination was another island, Ometepe, two volcanoes joined by lava in Lago de Nicicaragua. A beautiful place and a beautiful journey out there. I finally seem to be getting Nicaraguan scenery, the volcanoes and the dryness, and am appreciating it a lot more. I only spent two nights there, which was too short really. I swam in the green water which didn´t really make the grade after the clear water in the Carribean. I stayed in the same room as someone from Olympia, who knew a friend of mine; yes, the world really is that small.

Yesterday I journeyed long and hard to make it to Leon. I took a bus, a boat, and three more buses. I shared a bag of very cheap mangoes with a guy from Wisconsin. I now know how to eat them properly! I shall never falter again. It was very warm, and the journey from Rivas to Managua was lined with trees and it felt like summer. Managua, like most Central American capitals, is a bit of a nightmare, particularly if you just want to get out as quickly as possible. You arrive at one bus terminal, and your bus will leave from another bus terminal on the other side of the city. It is too hot, too far and too dangerous to walk. Taxis are expensive. The local bus system is a nightmare; I had to ask five people before I could figure out the number of the bus I needed to take, and then you need to find out where it leaves! And then it is packed to the gills. I could actually feel my ankles sweating. And then, I managed to get on the only bus to Leon that takes the long way around. By this time it was dark. They switched off the lights in the bus. We went down an unpaved road for a hour or so, while most people got off until I was the only one left, trying to hold on to my remaining mangoes and controlling my panic that we weren´t actually going to Leon at all.

Thankfully I am here now, slept like a log last night (although I always sleep well when traveling; all the sights and sounds of the day ease me right off). Found a great panaderia for breakfast, and also a guy I know from Honduras. He is still waiting for his green VW bus to be fixed in La Ceiba (exactly what he was doing when I last saw him four weeks ago). Maybe tomorrow I will go all the way to El Salvador to learn to surf, then Guatemala, then Mexico, moving fast now. But now I must detatch myself from the internet and go and explore Leon. And find a towel. I am ashamed to say I left mine on Little Corn, so relaxed that I forgot that a good traveler always knows where their towel is.

Island hopping: Volume I

2009-03-26T10:16:00.000-07:00

Back on dry land Little Corn Island seems both a long way away and very very close. I will probably have forgotten half the things I wanted to say about it because it has been a long time now. During the past couple weeks I have either had spare time or access to the internet but never both at once. So I now embarking on a mammoth effort to get this up to date.

It took me a total of two nights and three days of uncomfortable travel and bad hotels to reach Little Corn Island. Although I may have sounded quite excited about Bluefields in my last post, this enthusiasm disappeared once it got dark and the seediness ceased to be illuminated by the light. Instead the seediness lurked in corners waiting to jump out and frighten me. I was very very glad not to be by myself and to be kept company by the Pole, who was in possession of a large machete (although this probably should also have made me nervous). We tied the door of the skyblue hotel room closed with rope, and I tried to sleep while ignoring the mice on the bed and the sound of business transactions being conducted in the rooms on either side.

The ferry ride to the islands was, I think, my first time at sea outside of Cook Strait. It was kind of a test of endurance for the I-don´t-get-seasick mantra. Five hours of one and a half, two metre waves (although my imagination could be inflating this). I huddled up in a ball in the half metre of space between the bench and the side of the boat, told myself I was asleep and tried to think happy thoughts. Later I found out that I had missed seeing most of the boat throw up. Locals were not exempt; appearently they had consumed large quantities of orange Fanta. I did get to witness them cleaning the boat with hoses once we got into the port.

One very bumpy panga ride later we were in paradise. I was there for ten days, lying on the beaches under coconut palms and snorkeling in the turquoise water. Oh, the Carribean! Little Corn Island has no cars, and it sounds odd, but I didn´t realise until I was there that this meant there wouldn´t be any roads. The island was traversed by paths, only one paved, the others dirt and very narrow. Maybe it was this that reminded me of childhood, trotting around in Paekakariki. It felt like I was playing at living. Or maybe it was that the island was so perfect, like a fairytale, and that when you´re young you have no doubt that places like that exist. It´s just when you get older that you get jaded and cynical and decide that all the best places have been usurped by tourism and four-star hotels and older blondes with too much tan and bad dye jobs. Little Corn has been saved, and I think it´s due to its size. It´s so much effort to get there that only really dedicated backpackers make the journey. You can fly if you have the money, but nobody with money is going to enjoy an island where there´s only electricity after 4pm and a dodgy water supply.

While I was there I. Wished you were. Swam in the sea and couldn´t believe how beautiful it was. Got very sunburnt on my first day, am still peeling. Started to think that my blood was becoming saline and that there was salt encrusted on my bones. I didn´t comb my hair for days, and started to feel like a genuine shipwrecked soul. I collected shells on the beach and started to make jewellery, feeling like I was a kid again, out beachcombing. I walked for ages every day along the dirt paths in between shrubby trees and bitter lemons, ate coconut bread and lots of potato omelettes, enjoyed cooking for myself, got up early. Read a Tom Robbins book, visited my friends on the north side, panted in the heat. And snorkelled!

I´d never really seen coral before, or fish like this. And now I am in love. I was a little bit nervous to start with, and the first time I tried to go out by myself, the first thing I saw was a giant eagle ray floating along. Oh gosh! I got out quickly. But then I went with others, and got used to it. I went on a boat in the deeper water, and saw nurse sharks, black with round noses and meancing in a kind of friendly way, and schools of bright blue fish. And in the shallower water, the coral up close; brain and stag and others, bright and living and a perfect backdrop for the fishes. And what fishes! My favourites were the painted lady fish, which I named because it looked like an older women done up in blue eyeshadow and pink lipstick for a night at the theatre. And the crazy triangle fish, not a normal fish shape at all, like a 3d fish experiment. And the black fishes with glowing blue specks! The last day I went by myself, closer into shore. I saw a turtle! But he didn´t hang around for long; several barracuda, the only fish that still make me nervous; lots of hunks of coral filled with fish playing in the corners; three cuttlefish! They look so odd, like bizarre squid, not really fish at all, tentacles coming out of their mouths. These ones could have been a family, one big, one medium, one small. They gave me a wise look out of their eye. And I saw three seperate eagle rays, not scary anymore, just beautiful, flapping along the bottom of the sea with their backs all spotted with white, funny heads and long long whip-like tails. Oh yes, snorkeling was great, like flying over an alien world, just a breath away from real life.

I had to leave the island, I could tell. I did consider staying there for a long time, but there wasn´t any chocolate. I couldn´t live without chocolate. There was property for sale as well; if I had any kind of capital I would have considered buying it, setting up a hostel maybe, and spending some months of the year there, the rest in an urban area. Possibly some day. Oh, Little Corn Island.

A quick one, before I´m gone

2009-03-10T10:52:00.000-07:00

Actually there will be internet on this island, so what am I complaining about? The electricity, however, might be dodgy. There are no cars. There is a coral reef; my first coral reef! And palm trees, though really I have seen so many of those since last July. But maybe some of these will have coconuts on them, which can be taken down and turned into piña coladas. Yum.

I last wrote in Granada, where I spent a couple of days both hating the city and thinking it was stunningly beautiful. Another reason to distrust Lonely Planet (my dissection of that guidebook will form an entire post when I finish my trip) which seems to think Granada is the best thing since... Prague, or something. Clean streets, tourist restaurants galore, white people, lots of people asking for money. Not good. But beautiful, with the blue volcano in the background, seen down cobbled streets in late afternoon light, lined with orange, blue, bright pink houses. The churches of the city, some freshly painted, some in crumbling states of disrepair, domes seen above the skyline. The old market, a gorgeous grey stone with turrents and two twisted dead trees in front, overun with stalls and people and noise. On Friday evening, a men carrying a life-size statue of Jesus from a cathedral down the street, a brass band playing and everyone crowding around with bowed heads. Like a funeral. I think I´m being to get Catholicism.

But I had to get out, I didn´t quite get Granada. Still don´t understand that particular backpacker scene you find in the bigger spots. So headed first to small village, Catarina. Was sort of ill. Looked at lookout, at crater lake and volcano. It was very windy and a little bleak, and dusty and brown. Went onto Masaya, a downhome practical kind of place with a tourist market where I bought a hammock. Now I can sleep anywhere! Next day, up to Laguna de Apoyo, the aforementioned crater lake, a lot nicer on a better day from close up. The drive down in the bus is fantastic; a "two way" street worthy of Devon Street in Wellington (ie. a goat track), with views of the lake through the trees and the surrounding hills. Hill? Odd, being in a crater. Every way is up. On the way down, the bus toots its horn, so that cars coming up have a chance to get out of the way. It doesn´t really go any slower though.

Being in the lake was lovely, a layer of beautifully warm water floating on cold. Very mysterious, how that lake came about. Where does the water come from? Where does it go? I heard tell that the lake has healing waters. Maybe it was that, or positive thinking, but my red bumps have nearly disappeared. Still unsure what actually caused them. Slept in an expensive dorm, noisy, and nearly panicked when I heard the bus horn early the next morning. Grabbed my stuff in a very undignifed way, found the gate locked; thankfully, it was the bus on the way down, not on the way up the hill. Looong day of travel yesterday. Oddness at the Managua bus station, four guys all telling me different things in Spanish about which bus to get on; normally it´s realtively straightforward. Made it to El Rama, a sketchy but seemingly friendly port town and the end of the road. Slept in a fairly dodgy cheap hotel, had deadlock. Heard people doing things all through the night; what was anyone doing up at three in the morning? Why was the town not deserted when I had to catch the boat at five thirty? I guess they can´t sleep for the dodginess.

Am now in Bluefields, even sketchier town. Have however found Polish guy to beat anyone off. Have already noticed difference walking down street. For all its badness, I like it. The path from the dock winds through overhanging houses, wet stones, rubbish and weird smells. The hotel has narrown wooden corridors painted a bright shade of sky blue. It´s lovely to hear Creole again, and be near the sea. I think I was missing it, inland. On the bus I kept imagining it would pop up behind the next hill, like it did in the car when I was a child. And tomorrow, I go in a boat. A boat! To an island!

What they have today

2009-03-06T16:46:00.000-08:00

Title inspired by what becomes a fact of life to those traveling in countries like these: just because something is on the menu, or written on the board, doesn't mean it is actually available. No hay, as they say. Like the mojito I just wanted. Instead I have a strong Cuba Libre (don't worry, I have actually been a practical teetotaller down here; am not drinking away my travel funds). I have become so used to the no-hay idea that I have started asking for things in a very hopeful/skeptical tone of voice and getting really excited when I find they have them.

Where did I last leave you? In Jinotega, that's right; that place out on the edge. It got a bit crazy there. The power cut out soon after I finished writing, so I went and hid in my very dark wooden box for a while and felt odd. It was very cold that night and the wind was loud. I had a scary dream about ghosts. It was that kind of town. In the morning, I left. I went to Matagalpa, a place only slightly more on the tourist trail. The views on the bus journey were as pretty as the guidebook promised. Lots of hills, I remember, and little fincas (farms) and people selling flowers. Matagalpa itself is not particularly beautiful. I had a feeling when I got off the bus that I've yet to shake; a feeling of traveling from ugly dirty town to ugly dirty town, and missing the clean wholesomeness of home. However.

There was both a teething puppy and a kitten in my cheap hotel, and a six year old girl who found my lack of Spanish (and everything else) hilarious. I was a bit upset because I fould the puppy trying to teeth on the kitten. I briefly considered trying to take the kitten with me in my backpack. I would give it a cool name and we would be best friends and become famous, and I would be in the newspaper when the kitten died. I was pondering the practicality of carrying an animal in a backpack on public transport across borders when the kitten asked to be let out of my room, where I was sheltering her. She walked away and I felt rejected. A dream died that day.

The first exciting thing that I did in Matagalpa was find real food. I had heard mysterious tales of lunchtime buffets in Nicaragua. Food so far has been disappointing. Yes, if I ate meat I would have more variety, but that wouldn't change the quality (the meat here looks sketchy as hell). Life has involved a lot of eggs, beans and tortillas; one might say too much. Honduras I remember being particularly bad. I had these strong longings for the food in California, particularly as can be found on the table of Marianne and Ron; food with life, with health, with taste and vitamins. Instead I found eggs, beans and tortillas. And queso fresco, which I believe you can get in the States, but which has not thankfully found its way to New Zealand. It's crumbly white cheese, very salty and pungent. I have developed a hatred for it that I feel for no other food (I like to say that I'll eat anything that isn't meat). Unfortunately it isn't easy to get away from. I remember having the worst meal ever in Honduras. I'd just spent a rainy bus journey dreaming of macaroni cheese, homemade, with crisp broccoli and green beans in pesto. I went for lunch, kind of late (food here is difficult to find outside of meal times: 11.00-1.30 for lunch and 5.30-7.00 for dinner). The kind people at the restaurant looked very perplexed when I asked for something without meat and then produced a special dish, which unfortunately was really horrible. Dry dry plantains with yukka (a kind of tasteless root) and cabbage, a odd kind of tomato sauce, and the dreaded queso fresco. It was a low point in my life.

To return, however, to Matagalpa (the Cuba Libre is making my mind wander). I found a buffet there. I had lunch. It was $2US. It was tasty. It had vegetables. It had BROCCOLI and GREEN BEANS. I nearly cried with joy. Nicaragua is officially the bestest country from now on.

The other exciting thing that happened in Matagalpa was that I went on a walk. It was up in the hills, and it was hard to start, but that was OK. It was beautiful, and out in the middle of nowhere. There were lots of brown trees and little houses, and I saw some coffee bushes (I can report that they are short with red berries). It felt very special. I had a very good time. Then I unfortunately got lost (I should have been warned when my photocopied directions turned into a series of things like "Cross this barbed wire fence and you will see a tree; go slightly left, climb another wire barbed fence, there will be a small path, etc."). I ended up in a steep field with rocks and some tall yellow grass, it was very hot. I picked up a stick to fight off any prospective snakes and eventually fought my way out, and found myself at a house. After being laughed at by young boys (I'm getting used to this) and barked at by dogs, a man pointed and gave me instructions in Spanish that I could not understand. I wondered how often crazed-looking white girls carrying sticks ended up in his backyard. Thankfully the small path I took became a road, which lead me back to the city. Just in time for a buffet lunch.

I am now in Granada. Granada is very beautiful. All the buildings are colonial in style and painted bright colours, and every street is spectacular. It is also, however, quite touristy and feels artificial after being in the north. How odd after towns like Jinotega, where you couldn't find an English menu if you tried, to be able to play beer pong. Unfortunately my buffets have disappeared; there seem to be no local restaurants here that I can find. Sigh. Oh well. Tomorrow I will go to a small village closer to Managua. Maybe they will have one for me.

Hello people, please help.

2009-03-05T07:01:00.000-08:00

I am now in Granada which is nice. But I have a problem.

For some reason mosquitos do not like me. So all through Belize, Guatemala and Honduras I was secretly laughing at all the poor people being bitten and itching themselves to death. But with true ironic charm, now that I am in 'bug free' areas, I am being eaten by something.

It is very mysterious. I am being bitten at night, generally in the early morning, on both my legs and my left arm only. The bites are small and red and itchy but not unbearable. I have no idea what it could be. It's not bed bugs; I found someone who's had them and the bites are different. I considered that it could be fleas, but it seems unlikely that four hotel beds in a row would be so infested! I thought maybe they could be in my clothes, but last night I slept without my pajama trousers and they still got me. The night before, I slept in long leggings with insect repellent on and they still got me. See the theme?

So what is it? Have I suddenly become allergic to cotton? Is there a special kind of insect in Nicaragua that is invisible and only bites me? If anyone has any idea what this could be, or has a lot of time on their hands to find out, please let me know. I am out of ideas.

Continuing along the road

2009-03-02T15:18:00.000-08:00

It hasn´t been long since my last post, but to be honest there isn´t much to do in this town. So I will tell tales of Nicaragua so far to people a long way away.

I am currently residing in Jinotega, a untouristy town in the mountains. It´s known as the City of Mists, and is set in a circle of hills that make it feel almost Scottish. I am staying in an exciting flimsy hotel. It´s the kind of place where there are three generations of family members sitting downstairs, and the rooms are in a loft, sectioned off by thin boards. There was a light, but it quickly stopped working. It costs, however, half of my budgeted cordobas; only $2.50 US. I had a tamarind juice at lunch, with a view of the misty cold hills. It was delicious, and tasted like a grandmother.

Today I traveled by bus from Estelí, where I happily had some company, picked up in Honduras. Yesterday the company and I tried to make our way to a waterfall somewhere in the countryside, an hour walk from town (said the increasingly unrelible Lonely Planet). After a dusty but charming walk along a dirt road (attempts made to converse with a pot-bellied man riding a bicycle proved yet again that my Spanish is going nowhere) I was getting hot and sore. So I hopped on the colourful bus passing by, certain that I would see my friends at the waterfall and all would be well.

A long while later, I descended from the bus to discover that I was about 10km further down the road than I should be. There was no choice but to wait for the bus to return. Sitting on a rock eating a cantalope with a Swiss Army Knife, I was forcibly reminded of all the times I have spent on Mills Road in Brooklyn, Wellington, waiting for buses and gazing outward. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

I am happy to announce that they have coffee here, real stuff, but very sweet. And ice cream; I had the biggest one in the world yesterday, to make up for my bus fiasco. We also went to see ´He´s Just Not That Into You´, or ´Simplemente, No Te Quiere´en español. The sound was terrible, but it was in English, and a delightful slice of a world a long way away.

The journey on the rattling school bus today was one of the better ones. Along a dusty pot-holed dirt road, it traveled through some beautiful countryside. Steep hills, lots of rocks and dust and the most amazing trees I have ever seen. Strange and fantastic, each one was different. Leafless, with branches big and small; spiking straight up into the air or regularly patterned, asymmetrical, gorgeous. Many branches have moss in shades of grey or brown, some possibly Spanish (it was hanging down anyway), some have white opaque balloons that might be insect nests. Some hung sparsely with fat green succlent leaves; and every so often, one with white or pink or bright bright yellow flowers. This part of the world is going in my book of places to return to and photograph, along with the White Desert in Egypt and Barton Creek Cave in Belize. I wasn´t really able to get any good shots through the bus windows. They seemed to be in the middle of building the road we drove along. There were a few stone houses, irregular wooden fences, and a church or two in the bizzare dry landscape; on a rocky hillside, a brown cow sat with three delicate white birds.

And now, in Jinotega, I have already visited the only tourist attraction, a large white church. Maybe I will do some crochet in my wooden box room, and find some cake. Tomorrow I will carry on to the next town, and hopefully visit a coffee farm (does it grow on bushes? Trees? I drink it every day and don´t know). There is also a chocolate factory there; I´ve tried some already. It´s different, no milk at all, and slightly gritty, but growing on me.

In coffee country

2009-03-01T08:34:00.000-08:00

Honduras now lies behind me, which I am not too sad about. I am happy happy to be in Nicaragua, and using the fastest internet that I´ve had in ages, even if the ´p´on my keyboard isnt working too well. You will forgive the spelling mistakes.

After the rain in La Ceiba, I got on another bus further along the coast to Trujillo. Here is where I will actually start being a better sort of travel writer instead of just a diary keeper, and tell you some things about Trujillo. It was one of the earliest Spanish settlements in Central America, founded in 1525. It has a spectacular location on a wide bay, with jungle covered mountains rising behind the town. Near Trujillo was where Columbus first set foot on the American mainland on his fourth voyage. Trujillo was used as a shipping port for gold and silver, and that means one thing... pirates.

So theres your history. The town itself is kind of OK, the backdrop of mountains and the sea certainly adds a little something special. I stayed out of town, at a place called Casa Kiwi. Owned and run by yes, a New Zealander, called Chaz of all things. It was ridiciously odd. There was Kiwiana on the walls, and chips on the menu, and a semi clean beach out the front. Casa Kiwi did me well for a few days; I made some half hearted attemts at day trips, visited the old fort (relatively unimpressive) and was going to go snorkelling but chickened out due to fear of scary sea creatures lurking in sea grass. I sat on the beach and watched the mountains at sunset, beams filtering through the clouds. And oh yes, I climbed a mountain. Yes, I did, although we didnt actually reach the top. But it was very hard and difficult and I am still sore, although I think I did it for my Mum.

So, Honduras. I had some thoughts about it catching the buses. I wasnt all that keen on the idea of it to start, and I remain unconvinced. I attribute this uninspiring nature to two things that Honduras lacks: civil war, and volcanoes. Both Guatemala and Nicaragua, and El Salvador, have these things in abundance, whereas Honduras has remained unscarred by revolution and violent earthly activity. perhaps civil war is good for the national character, although this is a thesis that I could find difficult to advance in academic circles. The closest thing to a war in Honduras seems to be going on between two cellphone providers, Claro (que tienes mas!) and Tigo. They have carved out their terrority on walls everywhere and will go into battle any day now.

So Im not sad to be out of Honduras. After the gruelling hike, I took a night bus to the caital, Tegucigalpa. Another reason not to trust Lonely planet: in everything they have to say about Teguc, they fail to mention it is an absolute hellhole. Every capital city in Central America seems to be rife with crime, and if they look anything like Teguc, are places to be avoided at all costs. Brown and dirty and full of poverty, climbing up the hills, full of traffic. Even the Coca Cola delivery truck had an armed guard with a gun; there were two outside the service station store. Literally could not get out of there fast enough.

Nicaragua, I like. I do. I expected to like it. I learnt yesterday that in Honduras, 45 out of a thousand are murdered; in Nicaragua, its 15 in a thousand. There isnt even a guard outside the ATM! Although that could actually be a mistake. So after bus after bus, we crossed the border at Las Manos, and starting traveling through Nicaraguan cowboy country. The landscape already seems volcanic, and dry and dusty, with feathery trees and moss growing on power lines. The bus played Kenny Rogers, and the afternoon sun shone through the dirty windows.

The buses in Central America, as well as being old and shuddery, are certainly set up for sound. Normally they play Latin pop as loud as possible. By the time I leave I will be able to sing along to a fair few songs. Every bus, and taxi as well, also comes equipped with messages to God. Dios Es Amor, or Dios Me Guia; often, however, the messages are more like disclaimers. One from yesterday: Solo Dios Sabe Si Volvere (only God knows if I will return, I think). This makes me feel slightly uneasy. Road accidents arent all up to fate, you know. I think dangerous driving accounts for a good part of it.

My sunburn is finally starting to fade. I failed to wear sunblock on a beach jaunt, because I didnt believe that anything other than New Zealand sun could burn me. This was a mistake. I have now invented a new kind of torture for backpackers: sunburnt shoulders.

Recipe for a rainy day

2009-02-23T17:13:00.000-08:00

Hello Honduras. I like you, I feel you should know that. I like that your people are friendlier than Guatemala and that the visa officials seemed to like my name a lot. I like that you are slightly cheaper than Guatemala. I really really love how the buses are not those crowded minivans but the old yellow school ones, and that I don't have to argue to get a better price. I pay the same as everyone else, and don't have to worry. But oh, Honduras, you could be treating me a bit better.

It's nothing big, as traveling affairs go, and I won't bore you with the details, although complaining about bad journeys could be raised to the level of a sport among backpackers. Just a few wrong buses one day after a early early start; the next, the one hotel in town that might have fitted my budget looking extremely condemned; a lot, a lot of walking with a backpack that I know has got heavier since Texas; and today, it is raining. And my hostel moved. I think that there should be a rule that when a hostel moves, it notifies Lonely Planet, who use their extreme superpowers to magically change the map in every one of their guidebooks. So this particular set of circumstances has meant that most of my time in Honduras so far has been spent inside a bus. Not lounging on the beach as I would like to, although hopefully that will come soon. Not in this weather though.

In a further note, I think my Spanish is actually getting worse. I wonder how this is possible. Maybe my brain has turned to mush.

Honduras has been particularly beautiful though, from the bus windows. Lots of pointy blue hills with trees on them, the tops obscured by clouds. In Omoa, a beautiful bay with a calm dark sea. Today, gashs of red earth between the hills. And a church with a basketball court. Odd. This is old pirate country, exciting times. Back then, this area of the world was bursting with riches and ripe for the picking, overrun with outlaws and slightly-more-legal outlaws called privateers. All the Europeans seemed to be at it; Spain in the lead, but competing with England, France and Holland, all who wanted a slice of the rich fruit pie called America.

Tomorrow, if it hopefully stops raining, I will take trip to a Garifuna village. Hopefully there I will be able to track down some of the culture that I've read about but seems hidden, below the surface. All I've seen of the Garifuna so far are people on the buses that have darker skin than the rest and a few sellers of coconut bread. It's been hard to pin down any sort of culture, even in Livingston, although there I saw some of the older people dressed in gingham and hats. It was very cool in a Doctor Dolittle sort of way. If it is still raining, maybe I could continue the policy of comforting myself with chocolate, crochet and the internet.

Water and walking; or, Guatemala for now.

2009-02-20T20:06:00.000-08:00

My Lonely Planet Guide to Central America makes the walk from Livingston, Guatemala, to Los Siete Altares sound very easy. It does say that it takes one and a half hours, but I scoffed at that. Who takes one and a half hours to walk somewhere? They must be dawdling. I´m a Wellingtonian. We eat long walks for breakfasts, literally sometimes.

Lonely Planet did not mention that although it is a ´beach walk´, there is actually very little beach to walk on. Also, about every 20 metres or so, there´s a little inlet that is bridged by extremely dodgy bits of driftwood. This makes the whole thing a lot more like an obstacle course. The weather as well, may not in fact be Carribean, but involve a light gale coming off the sea that reminds one of Wellington on a better day. And it is one and a half hours at a good solid pace. It may have been pleasant, apart from the above, and the rubbish strewn along the shore. There seemed to be a lot of single shoes.

There was, however, a nice waterfall at the end. And then I had to walk back.

Herein lies the pitfalls of solo travel. Traveling alone as a female does indeed raise eyebrows in this part of the world, including from other backpackers. And of course random guards at ruins and places, who question, "Donde esta sus amigos?" No, solo una. But this doesn´t really bother me. So far I´ve felt surrounded by others, quite safe, and actually glad to be able to go my own way. It´s just the little things, eating meals alone. And not having anyone to be grumpy at when I get tired and hungry and have to walk a really long way. It´s like what they say about atheists and God.

Anyhow, I better be fast. I feel like they want to close the internet place. So, Rio Dulce was large and wet. I went paddling on it and saw birdlife galore. And an otter! Wow. Livingston is a seaside town that´s pretty nice for a few days. It has the Garifuna culture, which I´m expecting a lot more of as I head down the coast. Let you know about it then. Which is what I´ll be doing tomorrow at 5am, catching the old ferry to Honduras. Oh joy. For now, back to my hammock. Yes, I sleep in it. Saves money.

Blessed limonada

2009-02-17T09:18:00.000-08:00

Guatemala is really good looking. I had no idea I would be staring at beautiful waterscapes all day. So, I´m not complaining. Although I also had no idea that so many things are negoitable; bus fares are rountinely ten quetzales less than what they tell you.

First stop for me was Flores. As an island on a lake, it´s certainly pretty, but also tourist filled and slightly santified, like real life is left behind across the bridge. Tuk tuks frequent the city, little scooter-carts that buzz around like insects. The most fun ever on a ride to the bus station. So, from Flores I took a (typically overcrowded) minibus to the town of El Remate.

El Remate is described in my guidebook as a "two street town". I only counted one. It´s right on the shores of Lago de Peten Itza, smaller than Flores and more genuine. Most tourists only pass through at full speed on their way to Tikal. The location meant that my palm-leafed hut had a picture perfect view of the water. Horses grazed on the green field by the shore, broken down docks strutted out into the water, mooring water-filled wooden canoes. I spent a lot of time hanging out at Comedor La Benedicion, a little restaurant (of sorts) with a grandmotherly señora, one outside table and a lot of chickens running around. Wobbly handwritten signs proclaimed the menu. The licuados there were amazing; who knew fruit whizzed up with ice and sugar could be so good? I would walk over hot coals to get another licuado con fresa. I will have such fond memories of sitting at that table, maybe playing Scrabble with some friends from the hostel, and watching the dusty lane opposite. Occasionally it would be traversed by a mother chicken leading her children in single file, or a couple of dogs, or a bicycle.

Since I just happened to be in the area, you know, I thought I´d pay a visit to Tikal. One of Guatemala´s biggest tourist attractions, Tikal is the former Mayan capital set in the jungle. The Hotel Sak-Luk gang (two doctors, an architect and a journalist, all American, picked up at the hostel) set off at 5.30am. As we wound our way through the jungle, the night got lighter and turned into a grey grey dawn. I´d heard that if you arrive early enough, you don´t need to pay to get in. But at the gate the guard seemed very interested in seeing my ticket, and he had a gun, so I wasn´t going to argue. Tikal was green and grey sky and a lot of very old stones. Most of these stones were in large piles. I sat on one of these large piles, Temple II, and ate breakfast. There was no one else around at that hour, except the bird calls and the mist around Temple I. It was pretty cool. So were the massive ants that sat on my discarded banana peel, they must have been half an inch long.

Other highlights of Tikal include: the cute raccoon-ish animals that move in packs, running up and down the trees and snuffling. Climbing to the top of Temple IV and emerging above the jungle, an island in a sea of green, broken by the tips of a few other temples in the distance. The monkeys in the trees at the top of Temple IV, the guard who let me jump the fence to get closer and who put up with my terrible Spanish. The crocodile lazing in the pond at the entrance. He looked sleepy. I was sleepy too at that point - Tikal is Big! - and had to return to Comedor La Benedicion for some restorative vegetable soup. But it was sitting in El Mundo Perdido (The Lost World) that I thought about the dead city, and the dead people, and all the villagers whose homes have not survived. Their huts weren´t made out of stone, and they´ve been forgotten, the population that would have made Tikal bustle and live. Must have been quite the place to be, back in the day, I guess.

After Tikal all anyone was capable of was lunch and swimming in the mirrored lake from a palm-roofed hut. We watched the sun set out there, eating ice cream. The next morning, I found the energy to pack my things and head to Comedor La Benedicion once again. It also functions as one of the local bus stops. Our adopted señora was making the morning tortillas. The two doctors tried their hand, found it difficult (I´m proud to say mine turned out the best). Just as my mini-bus pulled up, I said goodbye for the last time and the señora handed me a bag of just-cooked tortillas, too hot to touch. The bus pulled away from El Remate.

Through more jungle, I am now in Rio Dulce. More water, a river, and a bridge crossing it (the longest in Central America). Tomorrow I will take a boat down to Livingston, a Garifuna town on the coast. It´s rained a lot already today. The rickety old hostel I´m staying in is right on the water. It´s pretty special; everything seems a big sketchy, like it´s about to fall into the water. Touch wood. Plenty of jungle around too. Typical. There has been a lot of jungle in the past few weeks. The rest of the world seems a very very long way away.

P.S. I would just like to mention that this post has been riddled with computer disasters. I have had to rewrite it in full. Oh, life.

Oh, Belize!

2009-02-13T18:43:00.001-08:00

Yes, my last post was kind of all over the place. You´ll have to excuse me. I´m easing myself back into the use of a computer. Computer=communication with people I have previously known in my life=what? So now I will write about Belize for fifteen minutes or so, before I detatch myself from this amazing piece of machinery for a few days.

Belize! You place you! I feel a little sad that I wasn´t able to do more traveling in the country. I would have liked to see the south coast. But Belize is the odd one out of Central America. It´s the only country where the official language is English (and what a relief that is!). It´s also a lot more expensive. Belize dollars are worth half that of US dollars, and given New Zealand´s current exchange rate, it gives the most easy currency calculation you will ever have: 1=1. A bit depressing, yes.

In Belize they speak Creole, and their national bird is the toucan. As soon as arrived on the bus from Mexico I was lead onto a series of yellow school buses rumbling along dirt roads. One of them was playing reggae.

This will be continued!

The jungle did not eat me

2009-02-13T13:30:00.000-08:00

Computers are so weird after nothing but trees for two weeks. And the Guatemalan internet won´t let me check my emails. I´m in Flores, it´s an island in a lake, and tomorrow or the day after I may go to Tikal. Then onwards and southwards, making a snakelike line towards the coast down to the bottom of Nicaragua. And back up.

That´s the future. So, Barton Creek Outpost. Lack of civilisation. Hmm. How about that? Where to start when one is sleepy from lunch? With the Mennonites or the dirt road out there, or the snakes (that I never saw) or the toucans (that I first saw today). Or the green green greeness of it all. Maybe I will just have to tell you when I see you, about hunting the iguana and the rangers up the creek, and the canoes. And the cave! Oh the cave! Joy and wonder!

So now I am back where normal things happen, and people speak Spanish, which I don´t really. I have spent much time standing looking incredibly dumb while thinking of something to say. There are so many white people all over the place! I must run away from them! I shall go the Carribean, where the Garifuna live, and laze on beaches and avoid malaria.

I will also write again soon.

White sands, tired eyes

2009-01-30T16:01:00.000-08:00

Mexico is deliciously warm. "It´s 82 degrees in Cancun," said the flight assistant as we landed in our very Mexican (read: slightly dodgy) aeroplane. It´s also humid. I´m in Tulum, south of Cancun on the Yucatan, and tomorrow I go to Belize. Bug spray! I forgot to put on my bug spray! Damn.

I think I will go to bed at eight o´clock again. Oh, sleeping ridiculously early. Tulum is filled with hostels, and my hostel is filled with very skinny very brown backpackers. I wonder if I will be that skinny and brown by the time I´m back in the States. I don´t know if it would suit me.

My Spanish is really poor. After some initial successes, I feel weighed down with my inability to say a thing. Tulum is an interesting place. So many white people. In an interesting way. Not a full out touristy way, just a lot of backpackers, which has got me thinking about backpackering, and how it relates to tourism.

I spent today lying on the most picture perfect beach. White sand, palm trees, warm, warm water. Then at 4pm a storm rolled in. You could see it coming and it was amazing, a literal wall of cloud eating up the blue sky. I ran for the bus stop, putting my head down as the wind started up. Riverlets of sand ran across the beach between my feet. It got too windy to look up at all, and then it started to rain. I huddled under the eave of a palm frond covered restaurant with two backpackers and an middle-aged American alcoholic, who complained that his taxi had been stolen by two young mothers.

Goodnight America

2009-01-27T10:56:00.000-08:00

Austin, Texas, isn't trying hard to woo me in my last few days in its arms. The weather has been grey and rainy and generally unTexas like. There's been no impetus to get up before eleven. The girls in the house I'm staying are all systems go, getting back into a new semester, reading, learning, homeworking. It's so odd to observe it and not be involved. It feels kind of wrong.

Instead, I'm reading my Central America Lonely Planet, children's books about the Maya, and my Spanish textbook. I'm making lists, trying not to be worried about descriptions of tropical diseases, and getting excited. On Thursday morning, early, I fly out to Cancun, Mexico. It'll take me a few days to get from there to Belize, where I'm going to be volunteering at Barton Creek Outpost, somewhere in the jungle. Mmmm, jungle. I feel like there will be lots of jungle in the next couple of months, mixed with volcanoes and Mayan ruins and white sand beaches.

This is the trip that will turn me into a veteran backpacker. All my traveling before has been in lots of about three weeks before returning to somewhere familiar. This time, it'll be two or three months before I'm back in the States. Finally, I will earn my stripes.

Head above ground

2009-01-08T13:47:00.000-08:00

Santa Barbara doesn't seem to have changed much since I've been gone. But times are strange here, as these are my last few days before I pack up and leave. To where? I literally don't know. I'm fighting off the depression that is crawling around my ankles every day now. I know that as soon as I'm in the next place, I'll feel fine. But extracting myself from an unfinished thing still feels kind of wrong.

I've given the reasons for cutting my exchange short so many times they start to sound false. But as trivial as they sound when I hear them with my own voice, I know that exchange rates and costs of living and really big loans are solid things. It's just kind of sad. And maybe I could have fought harder to stay here. At the end of last quarter, when I had the chance, two more ten-week terms and another trimester at Victoria sounded like hell. And although I don't know what the alternative is yet, I'm excited to find out. I just have to keep my head above ground a little longer.

From Canada onwards to...

2009-01-07T13:52:00.000-08:00

Sitting back here in sunny Santa Barbara makes Canada seem like another world. Or another country. Hmmm. Anyhow. The second half of winter vac (oh, tell me someone else wants to shorten that word! 'Vacation' is far too long) was as eventful as the first.

I visited these distant relatives on Salt Spring Island, right next to Vancouver Island. I really feel ashamed calling them relatives. It's so manipulative. Anyhow, there was a wooden house and really good mashed potatoes, and I decided to stay for trifle. I played poker with a younger cousin. There was a dog. Times were good. Getting from there to Vancouver is kind of a blur, of early morning and ferry terminal and sleeping on a very uncomfortable seat, and taking a taxi with some people I didn't know. But eventually in this big city I found one Miriam Clark, and we went and ate $3 potatoes in a very awesome diner. Vancouver was full of slush and wet. The Sky Train track overhead turned into a waterfall. It was dark.

In Vancouver I... spent most of my money on public transport. Caught up on Wellington gossip. Saw a lot of homeless people. Saw some hipsters. Went to an unimpressive gig at a hipster bar. Slept on Miriam's couch, and barely made the bus in the morning.

Bus back to... Olympia, from which I departed on Tuesday morning in a light grey Honda Civic with the aim of making it to Chicago by 4pm Friday so I could fly back to California. It sounds insane in retrospect, and to be honest it sounded insane at the time but I did it because I wanted to. And what a country we saw! Gosh the States is so big. And empty. So far most of my time has been on the populated parts of the west coast, but there's a lot of land out there.

So we drove, and drove, and drove. Along the Columbus River in northern Oregon, tall cliffs and trees and winding. Down eastern Oregon, starting flat then rising to a high emptiness touched with white snow. The kind of world where wolves and witches live in abandoned wooden houses. Crossing through Idaho at night, and into Utah, where the factories outside Salt Lake looked like miniature cities, all lit up. Falling asleep to find the world outside icy and white, and finally stopping in a motel somewhere in the middle of nowhere at 3am. We drove seventeen hours that first day.

The next day, New Years Eve, we made it to Colorado through the Utah I've always wanted to see. Big red mountains and stunning vistas and no people, not even Mormons. Colorado was also gorgeous, and we drove through the mountains until sundown at a condo at Copper Mountain. Then up the side of a mountain via a dirt road to a windy windy spot, a house in a dark lonely place. We stood on the balcony and drank champagne, and made New Years wishes that were whisked away by the wind. We counted down to the New Year in the hippest bar in Denver, then next morning groaned our way to the suburbs to meet some real Americans. My carmate's family have an open house brunch on New Years Day, and there was food and many friendly people who clucked at the travelers.

So the last leg. Flat flat flatness all the way to Nebraska, which was flat and filled with cattle lots that smelled terrible. Then Omaha further did us wrong, by being seemingly empty of any good places to eat at 10pm. We slept in another motel near Iowa City. The next day I remember being oddly beautiful, with classic Mid-Western barns set back from the road and feathery trees. And the Mississippi River. And Chicago, just long enough to get a stuffed pizza before my plane, like the most beautifully classic city with skyscrapers in a shade of burnt brown.

What a journey, and back to California.

Winter wanderings

2008-12-24T16:48:00.000-08:00

Outside of Southern California, it's actually winter. Berkeley was cold rain, dropped leaves still clouding the streets. Olympia was snow, snow that frosted every tree branch and made each building look edible. Vancouver Island is black and white. I've never seen such a monochrome world.

Most likely it hasn't made the news anywhere else, but over the past week Washington State has been deluged by snow storms. As people from outside the state (or my cousin who lives in the hills where such weather is normal) will tell you, it's not the amount of snow; it's that no one knows how to deal with it. To me, it sure looks like a lot. By the time I left, Olympia was under about two feet, at least. But a guy who used to live in Iowa used his tall frame and long arms to gesture, explaining how much is regular for his locale. One winter he saw two snow ploughs trying to attack a drift. One would ram up against it and get stuck, then the other one would pull it out of the snow, again and again.

While the midwest is cool with large dumps of frozen water, the Pacific northwest isn't dealing so well. Snow ploughs seem scarce and people don't seem to know how to use them properly. Olympia's downtown streets were full of ice and slush and snow and made for a bumpy bus ride out on Monday. Sea-Tac airport was canceling flights, trains stopped running and the Greyhound was a lost cause. Luckily, the local bus system was running so I was able to get up to Mt Vernon to visit my mysterious rural firefighting cousin by catching four of them one after the other. In Olympia, people stopped going to work and starting spending time roving in gangs down quiet streets, dragging sleds and looking for steep hills. Cars became more and more buried by the day. The liquor store did good business. I actually saw someone carrying a dead squirrel. I think he was going to eat it.

Ah, Olympia! A magical time of snowfall and fairy-dust frozen rain! I had to run out on Monday morning to catch said buses, so I feel I didn't give an appropriate goodbye to several people who had taken me, pretty much a random New Zealander fond of acoustic folk-pop, into their homes and their lives for nearly a week. The whole town made me seriously happy. Ability to walk places! Working bus system! Little bars and coffee shops! Sense of community! Friendly happy smart people! The number of exclamation marks in this paragraph already is a sign of how gosh-darn-exciting the place was. Maybe I won't go on my sub-culture analysing rant here, but you should know: I believe there is hope for the world.

So what did I do for six days? Pretty little. Slept in past eleven every day, stayed up late. Saw 'Dreamgirls' of all things, and 'Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix'. Cuddled Orson (a friendly cat with no tail), baked cookies, had long kitchen conversations, expressed amazement at the snow once every ten minutes. It was actually kind of great to be in a town where snowfall like that is unusual. I imagine if I'd been somewhere on the east coast, people would be all bitter and jaded.

I definitely feel like I'll back back in Olympia. For longer. The place sucks you in.

Getting out of there on the buses, I had an amazing run of luck. Every bus seemed to be running, I found every transferring stop, didn't have to wait in the cold too long. It's still one of the most nerve-racking things I find when I'm traveling, unfamiliar bus routes. I think this is due to a childhood incident that my mother will remember. My sister and I were coming back from an art class in Wellington, I must have been about eleven, and my dad put us on a bus to the train station where we would take the train back to our little seaside town. However, the final destination of the bus was not the train station, but a distant Wellington suburb called Eastbourne, about 45 minutes away. My poor little sister and I had never seen the train station stop from that side of the street before, and it was dark and unfamiliar and we were scared, so we stayed on the bus. By the time we passed the roundabout that said 'Petone' in flowers I knew we'd gone too far, so we had no choice but to stay on, all the way to the bus depot where the sympathetic bus driver let us use the phone to call Dad. We eventually arrived home to a very clucky mother. From memory there were hot water bottles. I am now painfully aware how easy it is to miss bus stops, and that in a foreign country it is unlikely that you will find hot water bottles when you eventually arrive at your destination.

Oh yes, I am now technically in another country. This morning I caught the ferry from Washington, where I was staying with a Cairns cousin named Craig. He lives in the country. There was a lot of snow there, and tall dark evergreens, and a grey lake. Cousin Craig kindly gave me some Marmite and pineapple lumps and Chelsea Golden Syrup. I also met his son, who's twelve, a pleasantly awkward age. It's funny, somewhere in recent years I've turned into the kind of older cousin who intimidates younger relatives, possibly the person that you always thought was old and big and you could never imagine turning into.

I'm now spending Christmas in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, with very very distant older relatives who are similar to grandparents. Speaking of which, I should go and give my sets a call; after all, it's already Christmas in some countries.

Taking new turns

2008-12-10T19:09:00.000-08:00

The weeks since Veteran's Day have gone so fast. Here I am, happy to say that four out of five finals have been completed, and the doctor says the mole on my leg probably isn't cancerous. Less happy to see that the NZ dollar continues to remain about the 54 cent mark. Someone give that thing some coffee! I'm tired of seeing it lurking around down there with a hangdog expression and good words for no one!

The world here is turning greyer and colder and more difficult. This term has really worn down my reserves. The academic in me is turning up her toes and saying she wants to go to bed and sleep in tomorrow, when it's raining outside and so warm under the covers. If I'm here for two more quarters, we'll start back in January and only get a week for Spring Break until mid-June. Then it'll be back to school in New Zealand in mid-July. That route leads to a possible graduation in November, but it also leads to pain, and burnout, and confirmation of the feeling that I'm running through my undergrad degree as fast as I can because I want to get to the cool crisp air of the other side. I know there's no right way to go about school, and I love academics, but life shouldn't be about the next test, and the next and the next until freedom. All these young people I know work so hard, spending their years cooped up in boxes until they're opened up and let loose. To go to grad school where they continue to sacrifice themselves on the altar of academia. I'm not sure how long I can keep going, waiting until I start to enjoy it again.

Don't listen to me, I'm just worn out and tired and need a holiday. But I did have this really cool idea for a college where you'd study sciences, like biopsychology, and then interpret what you learnt as works of art. Like large models of cells made out of crochet, or films that reflect on some of the ways our brains receive and process visual information, or symphonies based on action potentials in neurons. I saw a photography exhibit down in San Diego where someone had taken close up scientific images of parts of his body and printed them up large. I think he did chromosomes as well. That was pretty awesome.

Also at this school would be this class about dreaming. This idea was inspired by my professor in Human Memory, who is pretty awesome, and written papers on another type of conscious awareness called meta-awareness which relates to "repressed" memories of sexual abuse. Exciting stuff! Sorry, going all psychology nerd now. But this meta-awareness is basically the consciousness we have about being conscious. Like, when you're reading a very boring page of some ancient philosopher, and suddenly you realise that you've been day dreaming for half a page. But you continued to read while your mind was somewhere else! Even though you couldn't process it. So there's an attention that's paid to what it is that your mind is doing, and that's meta-awareness. I hope you know what I'm talking about; it's like a reality check. When my professor was explaining this to us, he told us about lucid dreaming. The idea is that when you're dreaming, your meta-awareness is off in the corner twiddling its thumbs. When you have a lucid dream, it wakes up and starts paying attention. If you want to have lucid dreams, you can help by getting in the habit of giving yourself frequent meta-awareness check-ups during the day. One way to do this is to look at your palm, and check the lines on it. If you get in the habit of this, you'll do it in your dream, and when you can't see the lines (I guess the dreaming mind isn't too great with details) it'll provide a cue to your meta-awareness. So it can wake up (hopefully you won't) and you can start having fun.

Anyhow, at my school, there would be classes about dreams. And for homework, you would have lucid dreams where you went to meet with your professor, and he would give classes. Or maybe not, because dreams about classes don't sound great. But you get the gist (speaking of gists, have you heard about the gist text effect? Oh no... I really need to stop studying...).

Going up to Berkeley again in two days! Food! And flannel sheets!

Denim shorts in November

2008-11-24T16:07:00.000-08:00

I had a shock last week in Spanish class. Possibly it was induced by being in said class at 8am on a Monday morning. Over the weekend, we'd been asked to complete a photocopy sheet that depicted various scenes in Spanish speaking countries in different seasons (Spanish often reminds me of primary school). 'Chile', the third box said. 'Octubre'. It showed some happy people sitting in some mountains eating some food in the middle of some flowers (no sign of the violent revolutionaries that I thought were everywhere in South America). 'Es otoño, y hace buen,' I wrote. 'Los esposos quieren merendar'. (It's autumn and it's nice weather. The couple want to have a picnic.) A girl in my class put her hand up when we read them out. 'Es primavera [spring]', she said. 'The seasons are reversed in the southern hemisphere.'

The seasons are reversed in the southern hemisphere?!

I don't know when October became autumn for me. I don't know when the school year started beginning in September, or when the idea of fires and eggnog at Christmas started sounding good. I don't know when I started saying to people, 'It's so hot for November.'

Admittedly, this November would be hot by New Zealand standards. When I talk to my mum, and she tells me about how 'warm' it's getting in Wellington, I never have the heart to tell her what the temperature is like here. About how most days, still, people walk around in short sleeves; and yes, it's a little chilly in the shade, but the skies are clear blue. I actually can't remember the last time it rained.

So at the moment, Santa Barbara is winding up to be a combination of a) things that I like right now and b) things that I think I'll end up liking in the future. The weather, the bicycles and the closeness of everything is in the first category. Or like today at the end of lecture, when we picked up our last test papers along the front of the hall; 'They're arranged alphabetically,' the professor said. 'A on the mountain side, Z on the ocean side.'

Oddly enough, with five classes, I'm the only one I know not screamingly busy at the moment. It's kind of like the eye of the storm; last week was hell, and finals are coming up after Thanksgiving. Oh, Thanksgiving! How exciting! I give thanks for the enthusiasm Americans have for their holidays. I'm using my 'free' time to think about how the NZ dollar is now worth only 53 US cents, and worry about what I'm going to do. And also go out and hear music. I've been charmed to find a music scene that's what I'd term small but healthy. Thriving, even. Hidden in people's living rooms, there are things going on most nights a week. Maybe I've become less critical since I got to the US (my cynicism! No, where is it going? Help!) but I've been impressed by almost everything I've seen thus far. It makes me excited for the future.

Coming soon: three weeks on from the election of Barack Obama, I talk about politics. I avoid dying from finals and share some more information about UCSB. I then ramble about music scenes for a little bit. Watch this space.

More of Mexico, and Montecito burns.

2008-11-13T21:57:00.000-08:00

Last weekend was a looong one, making this week short, which is a relief, but also not, because I have much schoolwork to do. Five European girls and I seized the day given to us so kindly by the Veterans and went south. I always thought of 'running to Mexico' as a very romantic concept. It kind of is; there's nothing like an open grey freeway to make you feel like you're going somewhere. But the actual border crossing with Tijuana is not nearly as windswept and barren as I would like. I hoped you'd have to take some moth-eaten bus to a desk in the middle of a red sandy desert, with only huge cacti and a barbed wire fence for company. There would be a little wooden shack with a little wooden desk and a little wooden man with a stamp, and a cardboard sign with an arrow saying 'Mexico'.

But the largest border crossing in the world (I heard that somewhere, don't quote me) is an altar to sin and depravity, just like Tijuana itself. It's covered in billboards advertising liquor and Viagra for the duty-free shopper, and fast food joints that have crept over the border. The crossing itself is resembles the world's most confusing subway station, all grey concrete and inclining ramps. I did see some dodgy looking men hanging around the overpass to the American side last time I was there, back in September. Probably they didn't realise how awesomely stereotypical they were being, pursuing their strange ends in the shadows.

So, short summary of another country: ate a lot of food, tried and failed but hopefully improved my Spanish, rejoiced in the dirt and the noise. Bought some fantastic boots with a lot of language confusion, had a haircut (happily the concept of a 'trim' is familiar to everyone). Patronised a delicious establishment called Papas and Beer, a chain nightclub in Baja California Norte. Huge overpriced drinks and the most enthusiastic bumping and grinding I've ever seen; and this whistling concept, where a male employee comes along with a whistle and points at some unsuspecting girl, who he then dances with inappropriately and takes photos with. THEN he makes her drink this unknown substance, grabs her round the middle, puts his hand over her mouth and jerks her back violently; picks her up, spins her around over his shoulder, then jiggles her upside down. I'm not sure what it's actually meant to do. Possibly make the girl throw up. Or just embarrass her. Or both. Although we did see one girl who seemed to enjoy it a lot. They got Marissa just after we arrived, a beautiful, reserved and extremely cynical Dutch girl. The look on her face will keep me laughing for weeks; but I'm worried it might have severely mentally damaged her, possibly for life.

We spent the Monday night back in San Diego, and on Tuesday I got to have a quick coffee with my friend Jesse who lives there. I meet him in Egypt, and it feels so weird to be able to just have a normal coffee with a guy I haven't seen for so long. San Diego officially has some of the world's best weather. Caught the train back the same day, five hours of staring out as California rolls by. Concrete, factories, parking lots and emptiness. Near LA a group of young kids skating with blue hills and palm trees behind them.

It's started getting dark very early here, much earlier than at home. It must be being closer to the equator, and daylight saving. The sun sets at about five; I saw it from the eighth floor of the library today, an orange ball hanging above the sea, throwing last light on us. The tree outside my window is still shedding its leaves - it must have so many! Just like how the sky never runs out of rain. I wonder if it will go quite bare for winter.

Winter seems to be taking its sweet time about it. Today it was too hot to sit in the sun for long, and everyone's still in T-shirts. Tonight is particularly balmy. There's a fire out at Montecito, burning up the rich people's homes. It's not that close to us, not close enough to worry, but if we get evacuated maybe I won't have to take my tests.

Folk shows and schoolwork

2008-10-27T11:20:00.000-07:00

Hello! So I can't log onto the blog I normally post music reviews on, Much Better Sundays. It will have to go here instead. Oh well, it's all the same Internet, right? To provide a general update on my situation, I now think that five classes might not have been such a bright idea. I feel like the schoolwork is gently melting my brain, and we're only half-way through the term!

Halloween is coming up this weekend. I think the university is getting ready to go into crisis mode. Thousands of people descend on Isla Vista with the intent of cramming as much of a good time as possible into two days. I've had no prior experience of the chaos, but if all the fliers and warnings and community preparation meetings are anything to go by, this is going to be madness. I think I might dress as the tooth fairy. I have a white dress, and now I need some teeth. At the moment, it'll be enough of a celebration if I don't have to do schoolwork for a day.

The weekend following Halloween (and the US and NZ elections, eek!) is a long one; we get the Tuesday off, so I think we're stealing the Monday too. I'm hoping to take a trip, to LA, San Diego or even Ensenada in Mexico. Looking forward to that beacon of relaxation, and of course Thanksgiving! Which I'll be back in Berkeley for. Mmmm, composting, coffee and the Cheese Board... But more on the culture shocks of SoCal some other time.

I spent a delightful Sunday night at the Biko Garage, a performance space attached to the student housing co-operative. I love going there, because it's like going home among the ironed-perfect blond-tanned California sorority girls and the associated frat guys. This place is filled with hippies and hipsters wearing vintage. They all seem pretty nice, and I'm planning to infiltrate them like all those viruses I've been learning about in school.

The first (and last) band on Sunday was called Girl Band. They sound like the kind of music I came to America for; three girls with charming voices, a harp, a guitar, a ukulele, occasionally a glockenspiel or cheap keyboard. It was beautiful and the crowd obviously loved them. I get the feeling they're IV natives (one of their members is in another indie pop band, Watercolor Paintings) and don't play all that often. They were extremely lovely, although it would also be good to see them branch out a little more from the mold. At the moment they sound like a cross between Joanna Newsom and Au Revoir Simone, and while that is a beautiful combination, no one wants to be a mixed drink. Be a cocktail!

Desolation Wilderness, a four-piece (maybe? I couldn't see properly) had psychedelic wafty indie-rock that it was nice to hear again. They have that one great thing going for them: a very attractive lead singer, and it was good to jiggle along. I feel like their music might benefit from repeated listening. Maybe. That's a maybe.

L.A.K.E. were the headliners of the night, if there can be headliners in a small garage packed to the gills. It was like a pressure cooker in there. I'll add "hot steamy gigs" to my list of outside-the-box energy solutions. The other one so far is gyms. I've started actually going to the rec centre here (!; yes) and thought about all the energy that people are burning up. Literally. If we could somehow mine this resource, turn the treadmills into mousewheels that power some kind of generator, then maybe our energy problems wouldn't be completely solved, but I for one would stop feeling like gyms are the most useless places on earth.

Anyway! L.A.K.E.! Releasing new album thingie! They have actually have a track on the first Bicycle Records comp. for those people back in NZ who have acquired the above from the Polka Dots. I bought their first album after the show which is very minimalist sweet indie pop and not fantastic. But their live show was good. They've started bringing funk and indie together, and I like what they're making, and you can dance to it, and people did, and it was awesome. And they're cute. The Biko garage crowd are very nice. They are friendly and share their water. I like it.

One year older

2008-10-15T17:01:00.000-07:00

As of today, I am legally allowed to drink in the United States of America. This is a relief. I can now also go into places to see music that I want to see.

I'm not doing much for my birthday here, at least, not what living in Isla Vista should demand of me; that is, to drink until I cannot drink no more. I got an email to that effect generated by the office of the Vice Chancellor. It had my name on it and wished me a happy birthday, reminded me that drinking myself into the gutter is not a good idea and informed me that everyone wants me to "have a great time but also live to see another day". They're not kidding (by the way, I also want to live to see another day). This is the university that has compulsory online alcohol education for every new student. Kind of an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff, given UCSB's reputation.

So I'm going out to dinner tonight with a couple of friends, and to (finally!) see some bands play at the co-op, and look forward to tomorrow when my two mid-mid terms will be over. And this weekend, when I'm going to pick myself up a guitar, and have a birthday picnic on the beach, and enjoy the fall sunshine and the beauty of being here.

Brown buildings and bicycles

2008-10-06T17:39:00.000-07:00

There's not as much time for writing now that classes have started. I'm not sure what it is, whether the long break since I was last at school or the new country or the different schooling system, but I'm actually doing my work for once. And the reading, like, on time. Could also be a strategic move considering I'm doing five classes, which is a high course load even for people not adjusting to a new place (and looking for work). We'll see how this ends up; with me dying? Possibly.

I'm getting up at seven every morning now, for my Spanish class at eight. The sun gets in my eyes as I cycle along the bike lanes that run through the university housing into campus. The buildings here are all modern and brown, and the mountains to the north are blue, darker against the sky. The view from the eighth floor of the library is a point of pride; you've got a panoramic view of the mountains and ocean and the whole of Isla Vista as you study, and at sunset the light strikes all the books and makes them golden.

I can tell it's autumn, or what passes for autumn in California. There are still days, like today, when it's too hot to sit in the sun for long. Then you have to find a bench helpfully positioned under one of the many trees on campus, most likely close to a green collegiate lawn, and sit in the shade. Then, unfortunately, you find it's slightly too cold and you have to move back, where you lose patience for reading and fall asleep. Just me? We had rain on Saturday morning, that was kind of exciting. Apparently, if it rains on a school day, no one goes to class. Also, no one attends the day before Thanksgiving, and certainly most seats will be empty on the Monday in November just before Veteran's Day on the Tuesday. I've been following this schedule with care and wide eyes in case I should innocently go to school when I'm supposed to. I've also heard that professors use these student-initiated holidays to give passwords to the students that do attend to use on the final exam.

Everything I heard about Santa Barbara being a party school has been confirmed. Del Playa Drive, the street next to the ocean, packs out on Friday night. Most of Isla Vista becomes unofficially pedestrianized. The police hang around just waiting for someone to fall off, out of, into or over something. I haven't attended any parties yet; I'm kind of biding my time, I guess. Things at the moment are just kind of mellow (or 'chill') as they say. Maybe for my 21st birthday next week I'll have a picnic out at the beach.

I think this place is changing me. I now willingly exercise. I will return to New Zealand all blond and tan and giggly.

In Santa Ynez

2008-09-23T13:15:00.000-07:00

Whoever said it was always sunny in Southern California was lying. We have been gifted with fog, hiding the mountains. It's not summer here any more, and I should get some more jumpers.

Our apartment is regulation white, with regulation uncomfortable purple couch. I'm looking forward to the day in a couple of months where I will wake up on Sunday morning, pad out of my bedroom into the living area, look around and feel at home. I'm looking forward to the day I will be sad to leave and have to pack everything up. We don't have enough stuff on the walls and the place feels unwelcoming, and slightly pissed off.

I feel like I've free-fallen out of a plane into the middle of someone else's life. This is called culture shock. It's the shock part I'm really feeling, the bit where you hit the ground and realise that everything is new. You don't understand these people. They barely speak English. They go to the gym. They don't walk. They told us about this in orientation, some kind of "cultural rollercoaster" or "cultural iceberg" or whatever, instead of telling us useful stuff, like how to get to Trader Joe's.

Our part of the artificial village of Santa Ynez is inhabited by transfer students and internationals. Maybe this makes us more likely to bond. I don't know. My two roommates are both transfers from community colleges in other parts of California. We were meant to have a fourth but she didn't show and they haven't given us another. We went out to dinner with the other families in our building, and got to know each other, possibly so now if someone is being loud we can tell them off nicely. None of this sounds very interesting. I'm scared out of my mind, for no reason. Classes start day after tomorrow. It'll be nice to feel useful.

I'm going to have to get myself a bike. I've been convinced by the bike paths that are better maintained than the person paths, and the odd lack of pavements in Isla Vista. They just suddenly disappear! And you're walking on grass! Or in the road! People here ride big solid beach cruisers, like the SUV of the bicycle world, the girls in pastel shades of pink or yellow or green with baskets and flowers printed on the seat. There seem to be a huge amount of sororities and fraternities, which I find endlessly fascinating, with their crazy Greek symbols and mysterious 'RUSH' signs. Right now, I just feel lost.

Going north, new home

2008-09-18T20:56:00.000-07:00

The last days in Ensenada seemed to pass like some kind of dream. No, I'm serious. Probably didn't help that I didn't want to eat (because my appetite was all wonky) and couldn't sleep all that well (probably due to apprehension about all the stuff that was going to happen in the next couple of days). But it seemed vaguely unreal, like the calm before the storm. Drinking beer at all kinds of day. Sitting in the common room with a motley bunch of people that didn't have anything in common except the room. Stef, my German traveling buddy and speaker of Spanish, depressed about returning home after a year of freedom in New Zealand. Peter, one of those American exports you find living in Mexico, middle aged, long hair, possible alcoholic, talks a lot and loudly. Teresa, from Florida, twice my age, pleasantly ignorant and slightly disapproving. Carlos, entrepreneur, great photographer, owner of African relics, takes me to the bus stop at 4.30am. Me, whoever I am, curious about the future, white girl, turning browner every day. Like God or whoever had picked a random bunch of people out of a hat and put them in a small Mexican city.

A Mexican city with the best fish tacos, like, ever. I broke my six-year seafood drought for these things. God, they were good. Everything in Ensenada was located with relation to this fish taco stand. As in: 'You go to the fish taco place, and turn to the right, and walk two blocks.' I think it was pretty much the centre of the universe for four days.

We were in Mexico for Independence Day and the show of pride this induces. On the street corner there are pyramids of white, red and green flags for sale, along with horns and windmills and hats. The festivities had fireworks and traditional music and fudge. And horchata, better than in California by far (sorry, guys). And dancing, the women with huge white skirts and the men with knives and bottles of tequila on their heads.

But all good things come to an end. So yesterday I got on a bus at 5am. Ironically, considering what you might think about Mexican time-keeping, that was the only bus I caught that day that wasn't late. Don't even talk to me about Greyhound anymore. I didn't get to where I am now, Santa Barbara, until 7pm, a journey that really is only about 6 or 7 hours direct. Crossing the border wasn't a nightmare, exactly, but certainly got my heart racing; I had to get to LA by a certain time to get a certain bus to SB, etc. The border guards were all friendly as hell, but fast, no. At the processing office one was playing on his computer with Microsoft Paint. I've no idea what he was trying to draw. They just seemed to be totally unconcerned with maintaining the reputation of US border control as hungry pitbulls with a license to search and detain. Oh, and for the record, no one searched my bags; I am content with my cheap Mexican mescal. In a plastic bottle. It's meant to taste like lighter fluid.

Strolling around trying to find buses with a pack that must be a third of my body weight wore me out big time. I think I have muscles on my legs that weren't there before; well, they hurt, so they must be there. I just passed out last night, with my clothes on; tried to wake up at 11pm to call my mum, and put the alarm on. I woke up when it went off, and I swear I got up a couple of minutes later; when I looked at the time it was 3am.

Soon I'll write properly about Santa Barbara and Isla Vista, the community where all the UCSB students live. After twenty-four hours, I'm reserving judgement, although right now it's living up to its raucous reputation with gusto. The parties are loud, and when I went downstairs to spy, I found the front fence being used as a backdrop for what looked like an impromptu photo shoot for an adult magazine. It is, however, as I heard, beautiful here. On the orientation today, I saw the swimming pools, and the bike lanes, and the monolithic light brown buildings that all look kind of the same. I think life as a student could be pretty perfect here, easy, relaxed. At this early stage I think it's the people I've yet to meet who will make the difference. Otherwise I'll be stuck in this perfect paradise with the characters from The Rules of Attraction.

[That's a book by Bret Easton Ellis which I read back in NZ. It's written a while ago but is a really good portrayal of the tedium of sin and the monotonous life of a modern indulgent college student. Depressing as hell. What I heard about UCSB put it back in my mind, and I've got to say, I haven't had any reason to forget it so far. Harsh first impressions? What I thrive on. So maybe I should say I'm attempting to reserve judgement.]

Palm trees and plastic bottles

2008-09-14T17:39:00.000-07:00

I'm now starting to feel like I don't really want to leave Mexico. Mexico's great. It's dusty and dirty and loud. It's everything I'm expecting Santa Barbara not to be.

We spent two days in Santa Rosalia. As most Mexican people will tell you, two days is a long time to spend in Santa Rosalia. There's not much to really do. Mainly we hung out on the front porch of the Hotel Del Real, reading, playing ukulele. The ukulele seemed to impress passersby, including a policeman who was at work checking car registrations. He told Stefanie that most cars didn't have one, and there wasn't really a lot he could do to make them have one, except ask nicely. He was also upset that he didn't get to carry a gun.

One of the most exciting things we saw in S.R. was a plaque on the building housing the 'Thrifty' ice cream shop. It explained how, in some long ago year, the Police Chief of Santa Rosalia had arrested William Somebody, a U.S. citizen wanted on ten charges of murder. Maybe this was what our policeman had dreamed about when he signed up for the force.

We took a night bus to Ensenada. Twice they stopped the bus at military checkpoints, and made everybody get off the bus and open their luggage. They have sun-faded photos up of some of the drug shipments they've found. I have to say, people say horrible things about the corruption in Mexican officials, but we've had nothing but friendliness. Maybe it's because we're female. Actually, Mexico is a lot less scary than I'd planned. Although men in Loreto had a weird habit of lurking down dark streets. They didn't rob us or anything. They just seemed to be hanging out, looking sketchy.

So we got to Ensenada about 7.30am. We were unsure where to stay; got to the only backpackers hostel and the door was opened by an Australian guy with no pants on, scratching his head and yawning at the hour of day. 'You've come to the right place,' he said. We're certainly having a nice time here, hanging around, drinking coffee, talking to the owner, Carlos, a soft-spoken dreamy Mexican guy who seems to know at least four languages. There aren't many others staying here (read any, apart from Peter, from North Carolina). In fact, Carlos is out at the moment. He left us in charge, with strict instructions not to open the door to anyone. Hopefully he'll be back before anyone wants to get a room.

Ensenada's an interesting place. Lots of cruise ships stop here, so along the waterfront is this touristy stretch of souvenirs and restaurants, and bars that were already getting started when we went down at 11am. But you go one street away from this, and the tourists just disappear. I'm immensely thankful to Stef for speaking Spanish; not only is it sometimes essential, it's allowed us to connect with Mexican people.

Last night, on our way back from wearing out our shoes all over the city, we heard the opening strains of John Lennon's 'Imagine', as sung by a young band of Mexican teenagers (you have not lived until you've sung 'do, do, do do do' as the sun sets over Ensenada). Intrigued, we returned, to find another band playing amidst food tents and dancing. We had a feeling this might be connected to Mexican Independence Day, coming up on Tuesday, but were still a bit confused. Even more so when I was given a free pina colada, and free food. Were these people religious? I started to think this was just the Mexican way, but my thoughts about the inherent goodness of all of humanity were interrupted when the pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place: the speeches, the signs for something called PAN, the words action, national and political. We had walked in on a fiesta for the political party currently in government. We got out of there.

Today we finally got to a beach. The beach was sandy. Very sandy. There is still sand on me after a shower. Sand... Oh, sand...

Oh, the humidity!

2008-09-10T09:26:00.000-07:00

So it´s definitely been raining. The last thing I expected. The clouds are still out there, hanging around... Oh no, please go away before we need to get to the bus stop! Please!

The temperature´s a little more bearable up here. Mulege is absolutely full of palm trees, and it´s by a river, and it´s quite cute but quite small. They had a flash flood a couple of weeks ago, so down by the river there are dead cars and fallen streetlights.

There´s not a heck of a lot to do. Our hotel room is beautiful, it has bright colours and carved wooden headrests. I took a 40min walk to the beach, and all I found was a lot of stones. It could have been a beach in England (then when I double-checked the guidebook, found that it was polluted and not recommended for swimming). I keep spying these gorgeous beaches from the bus, all white sand and turquoise water, but am realising that it takes a car to get to them. I was so unhappy at this thought that I wrote a song about it.

We did take a tour up to a cave painting site in the hills, a rare tourist luxury. The landscape was incredible, the hills all red and rocky with sunlight playing off them, the cacti huge and towering above the trees, all green from the recent rain. Hiking up to the cave (slash wall, there was minimal concave action going on there) there were frogs dancing all over the place. I guess they don´t get many feet tramping on them. We were shown a cave where the native people apparently used to live; I never really believed that anyone would want to settle down in a big dark hole in a rock, but this one looked quite comfortable and spacious. The painting itself was pretty exciting (although I´ve always thought they look like they´ve been done by a wayward child with a crayon). There were deer and turtles and stuff. Most interesting were the small white handprints; little signatures, marks from a long time ago, with the same mentality as graffiti. I was here, I existed, this is me, this is my mark.

Slowly cooking

2008-09-08T08:18:00.000-07:00

So when I left Wellington in winter, damp, cold, windy and more cold, I promised never to complain about the heat, and wished it to be hot, hot, hot.

Now is when I break my word, and bring out the old saying, "Be careful what you wish for."

Loreto, about three quarters of the way down the peninsula of Baja California (that´s the big sticky-out bit on the side of Mexico), is currently thirty degrees celsius. It´s 9.15 am. It reaches thirty eight degrees during the day. My traveling companion (who, fortunately, speaks Spanish pretty well) and I have been huddling inside the air conditioned motel room (painted a bright shade of orange) too afraid to go outside. Today we´re catching the bus and going north, hoping to find a beach and cooler air.

It´s beautiful here, though. Distant mountains provide a backdrop for palm trees and low-slung buildings. The mission was built sometime in the 1600s or something. Too bad the most comfortable place is the supermarket. They´re having a fiesta to celebrate the town´s anniversary, which is pretty cool, and they´ve got a few flags up. The music doesn´t start til after 11pm, and oddly enough there doesn´t seem to be any dancing.

Finding my way across the border and to the bus station in Tijuana turned out to be pretty much as hard, and not harder, than I´d thought. On my way out of San Diego in the tram I felt like I had stage-fright. But when you get into those kind of chaotic situations, something innate kicks in and gets you into a bus with a guitar playing mistrel, into a taxi when you get off the bus too early. You kind of go on auto-pilot, and somehow welcome the fact that you don´t have to pretend anymore; I feel like I spend a lot of energy in the US pretending like I´m not a tourist, trying not to make mistakes. But backpacking is fueled on mistakes. You put a certain amount in one end, with a certain amount of money, and see where you get to.

The roads here are a shock after the four-lane freeways in the US. The main road down Baja is two lanes, both seem incredibly narrow, with no shoulder at all. Our driver on the (nineteen hour!) bus ride down here took the bends at quite a speed, and smoked out the window. The sun rose on rolling barren hills filled with scrub land and the most awesome cacti. Wow! The men wear Texas-like cowboy hats and have short legs. The signs on shops are hand-painted. Compared to Egypt, this is easy living; hardly any harrassment from shop-keepers, and if there is any from men I can´t understand it so it´s easy to ignore. I think we´re in a rich part of the country. There are no homeless people, in comparison to San Diego where there are three to a corner. All the children are really cute, I want to steal one, and the beer is cheap.

Wide streets and shadows

2008-09-04T16:29:00.000-07:00

Is it getting hotter? I think it's been getting hotter. The midday sun is to be avoided at all costs and the heat beams up from the pavement, warming my feet from the inside out. No wonder people don't walk much here.

I'm still hanging out in San Diego and am staying with a friend I met in Egypt for a couple of nights. This is great. There is a dog named Norm and lots of stringed instruments. We watched The Daily Show and the speech of the Republican nominee for vice-president, Sarah Palin. We made nasty comments about her and felt slightly better.

It is nice to see the city outside of downtown. It makes me feel less like a tourist. San Diego is actually America's 6th largest city, or something, but it's spread out. So the center has big shiny buildings and impressive fountains but feels sleepy. They also have a park, Balboa Park, which is kind of like heaven, in that it is very pretty and has lots of plants and water features. I think when they coined the phrase 'a walk in the park' they were probably talking about Balboa Park, not somewhere like Golden Gate Park where you are enveloped by drug pushers and fog, or Central Park in NY where you risk your life and limbs (I hear). The Zoo is also in this most marvelous park (and they have a kauri tree - odd) but I have been too lazy to go. And if I went by myself I would just start talking to the animals and then people might look at me funny; actually, maybe not, this is America. Everybody talks to themselves.

Tomorrow I have to go to Mexico. One thing about San Diego that I did not pick up from Veronica Mars is that Tijuana is right next to it, kind of squashed up against the border like a rotten tomato. So all I have to do is catch a tram to the border, walk across, find the bus station and fight off anyone who tries to steal my kidneys. I read that Tijuana has become more dangerous recently because rival narcotics gangs keep shooting each other. Ha! Fun!

America is kind of great but a little hard to get used to. The paper is a different size. I'm not kidding! They don't have A4! And the light switches go the other way. But the hardest thing is the driving on the right side of the road. Everywhere I walk, I have to mutter, 'Left, then right. Left, then right.' It sort of feels like waking up one day where the world is almost normal, but just a little bit wrong. Maybe like being schizophrenic. Or having your brain tapped by aliens.

Slightly insane in San Diego

2008-09-02T11:13:00.000-07:00

Where I'm waiting, waiting, for what feels like days. Nothing to do, lots to worry about. Trying to meet up with a friend who lives here and is currently on vacation. This city is sleepy. No one to really talk to, and I get very annoyed with my own company after a while. However, I can hardly complain; I'm on holiday...

We're not in Berkeley anymore.

2008-08-31T19:40:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I woke up far too early with a little more tequila in me than I would have wanted. The fog had rolled into Berkeley and everything was grey. The Oakland Greyhound station is in a beautiful old building with a round atrium and two very friendly security guards. The sight of the hills disappearing in the grey morning made me want to cry. I would have wept buckets if I had known that the quality of coffee outside Berkeley just does not match up.

The little tin can bus we were traveling through the California plains in was also a little sub-par, and the AC was not quite up to scratch. As we toddled along I was reminded of lobsters in a pot, heat slowly rising until they are boiled alive. LA was oddly lovely. I guess they wrote the (metaphorical) book on urban beauty, right? The bus smashed into the back of a car in front as we were leaving LA, so we spent an hour and a half sitting, waiting, while police, ambulance, firemen came and went. Our names and addresses were taken by a very good looking poilceman. I finished my book, and spent the rest of the journey gazing out as dusk turned into night, watching the lights of the cars. I love California.

California Dreamt.

2008-08-29T15:37:00.000-07:00

I've stopped writing the diary I've been keeping for five years. To avoid feeling like a failure I'll write something other people can read. I don't promise to be very interesting.

I've been in Berkeley for a month now, but I haven't noticed the weeks go past. Considering how little I have to do I haven't been a very diligent correspondent. Tomorrow I'll hopefully catch a bus to San Diego, eleven hours of thinking time away. Then the real traveling will begin. It's kind of a painful thought. My bag is really heavy, filled with clothes from the $1 thrift store, and will be a literal drag through Mexico for two weeks. Then I finally head to Santa Barbara, my surrogate home for nine months and apparently a haven for ironed-straight blond hair, rich kids and STIs.

Not to sound pessimistic. I love California. I love the grey freeway loops and the golden brown hills and American voices. I intend to get good at swimming in Santa Barbara, since everyone here exercises except me. And eat lots of fruit.