Picton to Nelson and Abel Tasman

After my weekend in Wellington, I took an early morning ferry across to the South Island, which drops you off in the small town of Picton. The typical way to do the South Island is in a basic loop around the outside (with a stop in the middle at Queenstown and/or Wanaka as you cross over from one side to the other), but I hadn’t decided whether I wanted to go clockwise or counterclockwise. Since I was going to hit everything at some point, there was no practical difference, so I left it up to random choice and asked the desk clerk for the Intercity bus line to decide for me. She said counterclockwise and so I bought a ticket to Nelson.

The bus was more than half empty and I was a bit low energy, so I pulled out my brother’s iPod (he sent it over to replace my dead one), pulled up some music I recognized and decided to chill out for the couple hour bus ride. About fifteen minutes later, just outside of town, I could hear the driver making some announcement over the loudspeakers and paused my music so I could listen, figuring he was going to say something about our schedule or some construction issue on the upcoming road.

‘O no, it was nothing that mundane. He was giving us a history of the settlement of this particular area. The name and date of the original exploration (Dutch, ergo the Dutch name “New Zealand” and later the British). A little bit about the timber farmers that were the first settlers in these valleys, but “more about that later, when we get closer to Nelson. . .” I actually pulled out my ticket to make sure that I hasn’t inadvertently gotten on the wrong bus and was on some sort of guided tour.

Nope. Intercity public bus. NZ$26 ticket to Nelson. Just a regular old bus, with the unpaid for, but added, bonus of a knowledgeable tour guide/driver. I am not sure I can say this often enough – these people may be the nicest and friendliest I have ever met. By the way, this ended up not being a one time occurrence; more often than not, the bus drivers played this informative role on the buses I took.

At Nelson, I walked through the middle of town to the end of the main road, then up a hill to the nicest hostel I stayed at one the entire trip, the Golden Lodge. The hostel was the second floor of a historical mansion on top of a small hill with a great view over the town and the harbor. Inside, everything was quite plush: big living room with a big screen TV, nice rooms, expansive kitchen, and nice furniture everywhere. And an oddity for New Zealand – free wifi. I stayed there a couple days, then wandered a bit further west to Motueka, which is right next to Abel Tasman National Park.

Abel Tasman is the most visited park in all of New Zealand. You can do all or part of a 25 mile, three to five-day hike through the park, sleeping at huts maintained by the Department of Conservation. The park borders the ocean and has some of the nicest water views in the entire country. Unfortunately, I managed to bring some torrential rainfall with me to “the sunniest place in New Zealand,” so I didn’t partake in any of the hiking, though I wanted to originally. My knee is a bit jacked up, after getting dinged back in Sudan, but the hiking in this park was fairly level, unlike most of the rest of the opportunities coming up, so I was a bit disappointed in my bad luck on the weather front. Instead, I took a water taxi up and down the coast, to catch some of the rain sodden views and then set off south for the long bus ride to Fox Glacier.

Seen on the Bus

I have written before about some of the joys of traveling overland and avoiding planes. There are some downsides, for sure, but being able to feel the miles go by and see some of the things you see out the window of a bus, car or train (instead of the world literally flying by at 20,000 feet) is something that I really cherish about this particular trip.

Today I took a short one-hour bus ride from Nelson, New Zealand up the road to Motueka, which is closer to the Abel Tasman National Park, since I'm going to do a little boating and hiking there tomorrow. I don't have any New Zealand guidebook, so I have no idea if this is mentioned anywhere, but as I was daydreaming and listening to my brother's iPod and looking out the right side of the bus as we drove by the Moutere Inlet on the Coastal Highway, I saw a sight that put a big smile on my face.

There were a bunch of messages spelled out in the tidal flats in rocks collected from nearby (though I couldn't see any big supply of rocks around). People's names -- "Angie," "David and Susan," "Thomas was here/UK" -- messages "Live Proud," "Backpack=Life" -- and others. It went on for quite some distance; I estimated a couple miles.

I had seen people spell out things with rocks before. There is a series of similar things just off the path on the last day of the hike I took up Kilimanjaro. What I particularly thought was nice about these messages is that they would be completely submerged for half of the day, when the tide was up, only to emerge each day as the tide receeded. Messages straight from the life-giving ocean.

It was a nice moment to remember why I've liked staying earthbound on this trip.

Various Notes

Sorry its been so long between me writing here. Having my computer going on the fritz has set me back, especially with pictures. The damn thing works one day and then not for two days. And back and forth. In any case, here are some various notes from some of the countries I've shot through in the last few weeks.

* Russian women are incredibly beautiful. Right up there with Columbian woman in frequency of appearance on random streets. The odd thing is that you see hundreds of model-like women in their 20s walking around. . .and absolutely no attractive women over 35 years old. Its like some switch gets pulled and they go from 9s and 10s, on the common scale, and fall off the cliff down to 1s and 2s. So odd. In every other country in the world, there are very attractive "older" women out there, but in one of the countries with the highest concentration of beautiful young women, there are none.

* If I had cornered the market on black boots in Russia, I would have already bought my Caribbean island to live on.

* This isn't remotely a unique comment, as I've heard/read it in scores of places, but Russians don't smile. At all.

* St. Petersburg is incredibly beautiful and should be a lesson to the rest of Russia. Hey Russia, try a new coat of paint occasionally!

* I have met and talked to a lot of people that had a great time on the Trans-Siberan or Trans-Mongolian. Unfortunately, I was not one of them. Most of the stories I have heard involve lots of drinking and partying with groups of tourists that are riding together in the train. Didn't happen for me. I didn't take the semi-official Trans-Mongolian that most tourists end up getting steered to -- I was travelling a different day of the week than that train was going. So, I got on the more Russian version and it was empty. In my train car, there were 9 cabins of 4 beds each -- 36 total possible berths. It was me and a family of three in the entire train car for the longest stretch I took -- 4 days from Moscow to Irktusk. Basically didn't have any contact with any human being at all for four days (save for a brief bit on night one, which I will write a seperate blog on). Pretty boring. And the scenery out the window wasn't that great either. Glad I did it -- pretty unlikely to ever do it again.

* I loved Bejing. Totally unexpected, since I default to not liking big cities. It was clean. People were very, very friendly. Got into a really fun and cool hostel right near the Forbidden City that was in an old, traditional courtyard neighborhood, down a couple alleys, seemingly in the middle of no where in the heart of the city. The sights were really good - Forbidden City was great, Summer Palace was fine (except for the crowds), even the Great Wall at the mega-tourist spot I went to was incredible. And the food. . .mmmmm. . . dumplings for breakfast (and lunch and dinner). Gotta love dumplings for breakfast.

* One reason I was unexpectedly happy with Bejing is that I actually saw the sky for a couple days. Had heard about the pollution (and got it in the south later), but had some actual, real blue sky days there. One thing I loved in that respect were the self-propelled, motorized bicycles. Bascially they had a little motor in them and when you petaled them, they charged up the internal battery, so that you could use them as a motorized bike until the charge ran out. Then you petaled again for a bit and charged them up again. Incredibly good idea. Haven't seen them before and I think they ought to be government subsidized everywhere.

* I can't spell and there is no spell check possible on this slow-ass public computer. Sorry.

* Hanoi is how I pictured a SE Asia city. Big. Loud. Busy. Bicycles and motorcycles everywere (video soon, IF I can fricking upload anywhere). People hustling about. Wow. Liked it. A lot.

* Speaking of Vietnam, I'm obviously having "opposite day" on this part of my trip. People loved the Trans-Mongolian; I didn't. Everyone hated Vietnam; I thought it was cool. I have heard a bunch of veteran SE Asia travelers say they hated Vietnam. Not sure why. Sure, you get a ton of people hitting you up for cab rides and tours and everything, but if you can't deal with that, there aren't many places you should be traveling to. Guess I've just gotten so used to that part of travel that it doesn't phase me at all. Vietnam is certainly a big touristy spot -- tons of Australians up there on cheap flights. The tourist spots are overrun with people and such, but that's partly because the spots are pretty damn great. Ha Long Bay was beautiful (again, pics at some point - promise). Hoi An was very nice, though it was in the midde of a typhon when I was there. I liked it. Except. . .

* Horns. I want to kill people when I hear horns. I think they might just be at the top of my current 'hate list.' Its especially bad, since my iPod is dead, so I have nothing to drown them out with. So, here is how driving works in Vietnam. You honk at everything you pass on the road - I suppose as a warning you are going to pass them. And by everything, I mean everything -- other cars, other buses, motorcycles, people walking 50 feet away in rice fields. Everyone. Something about that sound just kills me. Drives a stake right into the core of my being.

The really annoying instance was the bus driver from Danang to Hoi An, luckily only a two hour ride. I can understand honking on two lane roads (one lane each way) when you approach someone. They need to pull over as far as they can. But this road was four lanes. Nice road. Good condition. Regular sized lanes. We drove the whole way in the left hand. Everytime the driver approached one of the hundreds of motorcycles in the other lane, he'd honk long and hard. These for bikes just minding their own business in their own lane. Far, far from being anywhere remotely close to getting hit. But away goes the horn anyway. Arrrggggg.

* I really like cities where people live on the streets. Eating at sidewalk cafes. Beers at tables on the sidewalk. Storekeepers hawking their wares out front of their places. Bikes pulled up on the sidewalks. Activity. And warmth. I do like the warm weather, especially after sun-down.

* The movies I have seen on TV (buses and hotels) here that are translated into Vietnam completely crack me up. I have seen 4-5 now, so think I can make a small generalization. Every single one has just used one person to do all the dubbing. It is quite amusing to watch a movie and have one woman dub all the parts -- male and female. And with no voice inflection at all. Every time I have seen it, just makes me chuckle a bit.

* I was worried about China and the language issue and I was right to a degree. Very few people speak English. It is really imperative to have a phrasebook with the written Chinese symbols to show people when you are trying to get directions or a cab or such. And make sure you have a business card of the hotel/hostel, you are staying at on you at all times. If you need to get a cab back there (or have someone call them and translate for you), you will regret not having it on you.

* China is big. OK, I've said that before about other places/things, but seriously. China is big. Here is how big.

Have you ever heard of Nanning, China?? I hadn't ever heard of it before and I'm a pretty good geography buff. Its a large city in south China that I stopped in on my way to Hanoi.

Over 6.5 million people live there. Put that in perspective for a second.

London is 7.5 million. Hong Kong is 6 million. Berlin is 3.5 million. Philadelphia is 4.4 million. Toronto is 4.6 million. You heard of those cities??

Of course. Who the hell has heard of Nanning, that hasn't been in the area?? That amazed me.

Upbeat travel story

A friend of mine was IMing me today about my pictures and I was asking about the possibility of getting some of them published somewhere in conjuction with some of my writing and she made what I thought was a telling comment -- basically something along the lines of "you are too negative and positive sells."

Good point.

And I do have a lot of positive travel stories. Perhaps I have been a bit too focused on the negative side in the past few months.

Here is a bit of background on the situation when this exchange all went down. I was in Oslo, Norway at the time. As ya'll know by now, the only reason I was in that part of the world was to get to the northernmost city in the world. Online, and in the guidebooks I had seen, people had said that I could get a bus from Oslo to Hammerfest -- a long one, to be sure, but a direct bus.

When I got to Oslo on a bus from Malmo, Sweden, I asked at the bus station about buying a ticket for the next day on that bus. Turns out that bus doesn't exist anymore. Apparently, you can only go about half way up Norway via buses. This was a major problem. Getting this close and not making one of my (revised) travel goals was going to be really annoying.

I turned to one of the travel forums out there for advice. In this case, the Lonely Planet ThornTree forum. The first post that follows was my request for information. The rest of the give and take was between me and a Norwegian that immediately chimed in and helped me out.

By helping me out, I mean that he stepped me entirely through this process. He went over my options. I decided on the boat option. He then researched that for me (the boat's website was in Norwegian) and got back to me on my choices. I thought I'd include the exchange on the forum, just because it was so amazing to me that this guy was replying to me within minutes of my posts - check out the time stamps on the postings!

The savior portion of this can be shown by his explanation of how to get to Hammerfest by bus: "The first onward bus will be the 1530 bus to Storslett (basically in the middle of nowhere. You'll arrive at 2130 in the night and have to find somehow to survive until next morning (it has started snowing here today!)."

I later told him I was going to write a blog about it, and he asked to remain anonymous, so I'm not going to post the follow-up emails. Basically, after this exchange on the forums, he then helped me out at an even higher level.

He ended up calling the boat that was leaving Bodo (the town that I was taking an overnight train to that night) the next day for the trip all the way to Kirkenes, which is on the Russian border. He reserved a cabin for me on that ship and I was set to arrive with plenty of time and pay when I got there.

Then I took the first leg of the train, from Oslo to Trondheim, and noticed that I had mistakenly bought a train ticket for the wrong night. I had tickets for the next night. The conductor let me on the train to Trondheim, but the next train wouldn't let me continue on the wrong ticket. So, I had to get a hotel for the night.

As a result, I wasn't going to make my reservation for the boat. I emailed him and apologized for my screw-up, and he then proceeded to call the first boat and cancel me out. And, of course, then called the boat coming through the next day and booked me on that one. All this without me asking, because I was so embarrassed and annoyed that I'd screwed up the train ticket.

This all from a person that I never met. Never talked to. And likely will never meet in my life.

The road is good. And I'm the luckiest traveler in the world.


Posted
28-Sep-2009 17:30
by: michaelshodson


far north travel right now
I am in Oslo and trying to get from here to Hammerfest, then back down to Helsinki. It doesn't appear there are any buses running from Oslo to Hammerfest this late in the year, so am taking the train to Bodo tonight. From there, I am going to try to use local buses all the way up, I hope.

My question more is the return. I have looked around and can't see any overland (I am not flying at all) way from north Norway to Finland. I do see roads on the map. Any bus companies or such go those routes this time of year that anyone knows of?

Posted
28-Sep-2009 18:57
by: XXXXXXX

The best way of getting from Bodø to Hammerfest would be Hurtigruten, but it might be too expensive. You could try to look for bargain tickets at https://www.velgogseil.no/bestilling.aspx?arr=KKN&dep=BOO - only in Norwegian, but I'll give you the essential translations:

Voksne=adults
Barn/Baby=children/baby

Then select travel date(s), the price includes cabin(s) and breakfast. The "Kjøretøy" section applies to vehicles, just leave it as it is if you're not bringing a car.

This offer applies for Bodø-Kirkenes tickets only, but you can leave the ship at any time (but you can't continue on the same ticket on the next ship).

This will cost you NOK1325, which is far less than you'd have to pay with local buses and basic accommodation along the way.

Other options are plane, check fares at http://www.wideroe.no/?language=en, tickets start at about NOK 1100 (with connection in Tromsø).

The bus trip will be quite cumbersome. If doing this, leave the train at Fauske (do not proceed to Bodø) and the 08:55 bus from there to Narvik, arriving 1330. The first onward bus will be the 1530 bus to Storslett (basically in the middle of nowhere). You'll arrive at 2130 in the night and have to find somehow to survive until next morning (it has started snowing here today!). The next onward bus does not leave until 1925 next day, it will take you to Alta, dropping you off there at 2230. The onward travel to Hammefest will be by local boat, it does not leave until 0700 next morning. Do you really want to do this?!?

Posted
28-Sep-2009 19:08
by: michaelshodson

hmmmm -- you do not paint a good picture. I do really want to do this, but am a bit worried about it now. Will check the Hurigruten option. They are still sailing this late in the year? You know how frequently?

Posted
28-Sep-2009 19:13
by: XXXXX

Ah, I see now youre arriving in Bodø tomorrow morning. As I told you, the bus trip will be very cumbersome. Unless you have some places along the route you wish to visit, you should forget about it - it will turn up as the most expensive option, as you'll have to organise at least two overnight stays on the route.

If you are less than 26 years old, Widerøe has youth tickets available tomorrow for NOK 1089 from Bodø to Hammerfest. As the night train from Trondheim arrives in Bodø at 09:10 tomorrow morning, your first option is the 12:25 from Bodø to Tromsø, and from there with the 13:35 plane to Hammerfest, arriving there at 14:18. If youre 26+, prices tomorrow start at NOK 3529 - you're essentially forced to book full fare tickets on such short notice.

There's no bargain tickets on Hurtigruten tomorrow. A basic ticket without cabin or meals will cost you about NOK 1356, it will be much more comfortable and interesting than doing this trip by bus. And probably less expensive, too...

Posted
28-Sep-2009 19:18
by: michaelshodson

you are wonderful for giving all these last minute tips. Many thanks.

I can't take a plane -- my mission is to get around the world without taking any planes -- and hitting the southernmost and northermost cities -- which is why I need to get to Hammerfest.

I don't mind paying the fare for the boat, if that is the best way there. I would hate to fail now. It sounds like I need to take the boat -- but I am totally unsure how to book that. Should I go to a travel agent here in Oslo today before I board the train this afternoon? Is there an easy way to do Bodo to Hammerfest online on the boat site?

THANKS

Posted
28-Sep-2009 19:19
by: XXXXXX

Hurtigruten runs daily around the year. You can't book online for tomorrow as the boat has left Bergen. You could try calling the ship directly, tomorrow's northbound from Bodø is MS "Polarlys", leaving at 15:00. Their phone number is +47 994 87 275. The boat arrives in Hammerfest at 06:45 on ht 1st of October.

Students get a 50% discount on Hurtigruten if you ask nicely. :)

Posted
28-Sep-2009 19:23
by: michaelshodson

I wish I was a student :) hell -- I might go back to school after this trip -- I will need the break . . .

OK -- daily ships -- that is GREAT news. You are going to laugh at me for another reason -- I don't have a cell phone -- so no calling the ship. Since they are daily, I assume I can go somewhere in Bodo and buy a ticket for this part of the trip on whatever ship arrives that day.

Correct? If so, do you know where to go in Bodo.

And seriously -- you are the nicest poster I have yet met on this site. SO many thanks. You are about to make it into my daily blog today -- so I need the correct spelling of your name!

Posted
28-Sep-2009 19:27
by: XXXXX

Then it is the onward travel from Hammerfest. I am really clueless about bus options there, you should try contacting the tourist office in Hammerfest, contact info is at http://www.hammerfest-turist.no/index.php?page_id=6068. Getting to Kirkenes should be easy (by bus or boat), from there you can take a dailiy bus to Murmansk, see http://www.pasvikturist.no/wips/1085838145/.

Posted
28-Sep-2009 19:28
by: XXXXXX

Please PM [private message] me, and I'll help you with booking a ticket on the ship. I'll need your name, gender, year of birth and nationality. Please confirm your arrival time in Bodø (check your train booking) as well.

Posted
28-Sep-2009 19:33
by: XXXXX

There's no ticket office in Bodø - there are travel agencies, but they will probably demand a booking fee. At this time of year, you could usually just pop up on Hurtigruten and get a ticket, they are unlikely to be fully booked.

As with regards to "daily" ships - in the low season (now), there might be cancellations. So you shouldn't rely on the daily ship arriving, check first at http://www.hurtigruten.no/Norge/praktisk/Hvilket-skip-fra-havn/ - enter harbour of departure and date to see which ships will leave for the next few days. E.g., the northbound from Bodø is cancelled on October 2nd.

Posted
28-Sep-2009 19:39
by: michaelshodson

many, many thanks. Seriously, you are a savior.

Blogging the bus

So I am currently on a bus from Malmo, Sweden (right across from Copenhagen -- you can see it from there) to Oslo, Norway. I am in the process of making a mad dash up to the northernmost city in the world, Hammerfest, Norway. That will make the southernmost and the northernmost on this same trip. I had to wait around for a damn long time in Germany, waiting on my visa company back in the U.S. to get my Russian and Chinese visas for me for the next stage in the journey.

The next four weeks are going to be travel crazy. From here, I need to get to Hammerfest (hopefully the buses are still running -- the internet says they run through September, which means I am cutting it close), then back down somehow to Helsinki. Down to St. Petersburg, to celebrate finally finishing Crime and Punishment. Then down to Moscow, where I will catch the Trans-Mongolian to Bejing, with a stop in Ulan Bator, on a good friend's recommendation. Then to Shanghi and, if I have time, quickly to Tokyo and back. Then from there down to Hanoi.

All in about a month. My target date for Hanoi is October 24th.

Not sure that is possible, but I do love being on the road. This stretch will be the true test of that, for sure. If I was any good with google maps or the various internet tools, I'd be able to pull up the rough mileage I am going for in this month. I know its going to be a high number -- perhaps I shouldn't try to find out.

And today brings another first for me. Internet on the bus. When I hopped on the bus, I was pleasantly surprised to see that there were power plugs, so that I could write some and watch some video on the nine hour ride. Turned my computer on at the bus station and habitually hit the icon to see about internet, thinking there may be free internet at the station while I waited to leave. Voila. Internet on the bus. While moving. How cool is that??

Updated Travel Stats

My very good friend, Doug Muzzy, requested a basic update on how I’ve managed to get from Egypt to Instanbul and I thought it would be a good time to update some of my travel statistics and recent basics of the trip. I don’t think I’ve done that since I left South America. Which gives me an excuse to post an old link to one of my old posts. . . and tell you if you haven't read any of my older stuff -- it is there and ready for you to read now :)

travel times update

As to the route, for Doug, I crossed Lake Nassar from Wadi Halfa, Sudan to Aswan, Egypt on the weekly ferry. It is the only overland method to get from Sudan to Egypt and vice versa. At Aswan, I took my leave of the Oasis Overland truck that I’d traveled on for the last three weeks.

They were on a five-month trip from Capetown to Cairo and were a heck of a lot of fun to travel with for a few weeks. That being said, I have no idea how they managed to travel together for that long a period of time – more power to them, but there is no way I would have made it (or more likely, no way they would have been able to put up with me for that long and would have voted me off the truck).

Another great friend of mine, Dave Roberts, flew from Germany (he and his wife’s home for the past four or so years) to meet me at Luxor. I took the train from Aswan to Luxor to meet him, we saw the sights there, and then we took the overnight train to Cairo and spent a few days there. Dave then flew back to Germany to finish packing for their move back to the States, which I think happened this week. I then took a bus over to Dahab, on the coast of the Red Sea and did some scuba diving there.

In Egypt, I decided to cheat on one of my travel goals. As most of you know, I decided before the trip started to get one tattoo on each of the continents I went to. On the original route, that was to be five tattoos. Since my route change, it’s now going to be six.

In Panama, I got the map of the world. In Uruguay, I got the modes of transport that I was going to use on the trip, for the most part. In Africa, I was going to get the summit of Kilimanjaro and the date that I summited (June 4, 2009). My unexpected problem is that there are very few tattoo parlors in Islamic countries – tattoos are frowned upon here. I did manage to finally find one online in Cairo, but the additional problem I had was that I was due to leave the next day to scuba dive for a few days. Fresh tattoos and swimming are not a good mix.

So I put off the Africa tattoo until leaving Africa. I will be getting it done in Berlin, since I will have a bit of a wait there for my Russian and Chinese visas. Considering how short a period of time I am going to be in Europe, I’m totally unsure of what tattoo is going to be appropriate for there also, but I have a destination neutral idea, so I will be doubling up my tattoo total in one location.

In any case, back to the route. From Dahab I took the ferry to Aqaba, Jordan. That ferry is the only option, if you are planning on going to Syria or any of the other countries in the Middle East (and Indonesia, I think) that will not let you enter if you have an Israeli stamp in your passport.

From what I’ve read, you can sometimes talk the Israelis to stamp a piece of paper upon entry, instead of your passport, but that isn’t guaranteed. The other problem is that even if you get the Israelis to agree to do that for you, the Syrians might still turn you down if you have an exit visa from Taba, Egypt, because if you exited from there. . . you had to be going to Israel.

Damn immigration agents.

The reason that the ferry isn’t the preferred choice, if you had a choice, is that it’s a bit unreliable on its departure times. For me, it was only about three hours late in leaving, so not a big deal. I’ve heard of ten-hour delays.

From the port of Aqaba, there was a group of about eight of us that met on the ferry that were all going to Petra. We negotiated a fairly reasonable group rate from two taxi drivers to take us there. From Petra, I took a minibus to Amman, switched to a taxi cab to the Syrian border, waited around there for about five hours for my visa (they aren’t big fans of Americans, hence the delay) and then took another cab to Damascus.

One of the things I didn’t expect in the Middle East was how compact everything is – the distances are so, so much shorter there than what I’d been experiencing everywhere else on the trip. Taking a taxi from city to city would not have been a realistic option in many other places on the trip. There, it is common.

I wanted to take the train from Damascus to Hamah, but the cab driver must not have understood which station I was trying to get to and he took me to the bus station instead. So, bus to Hamah and another bus from there to Aleppo, in northern Syria. From there to Goreme, you should have already read my blog about taxis and idiot bus companies. If not, scroll on down and read it.

In Goreme, I met Aileen and we then took an overnight bus to Olympus, then she went off somewhere for a couple days and I went directly on to Istanbul on another overnight bus.

That very boring update provides me the opportunity to update my time/method of travel information. I don’t think I’ve done this since I got to Africa, so here goes. From Capetown to Istanbul:

Bus 265 hours
Train 65 hours
Truck/lorry 109 hours
Ferry 5 hours
Taxi 8 ½ hours

Total 452 ½ hours = 18.85 days

I arrived in Capetown, South Africa on April 10th and left Istanbul on August 28th. That is roughly four and a half months. For some reason, I have been telling people that I spent five months in Africa (and another half month getting to Istanbul). Apparently reading a calendar isn’t one of my talents. I’d expected originally to get out of Istanbul about three weeks before I did, but now that I look at the timeline, I think I did fairly well, all things considered.

Books read on this leg of the trip:

Notes from a Small Country and Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson (I aspire to be one-third as good/funny/interesting as he is)
Quiet American by Graham Green (best English language writer to not win the Nobel Prize in the 20th century)
Loving Frank by
Too Close to the Sun: The Finton Hatch Story by Sarah Wheeler (Robert Redford in ‘Out of Africa,’ quite interesting)
Around Ireland with a Fridge by Tony Hawks (maybe my silly travel ideas really will inspire some publisher sometime)
The Voyage of the Jerle Shannara by Terry Brooks (mindless fantasy stuff)
Treaty Planet by Anne McCaffrey and Jody Lynn Nye (mindless poor sci-fi)
The Road by Cormac McCarthy (depressing doesn’t come close to describing it)
Lolita by Nabakov (master wordsmith. . . in his 3rd language)
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
Memories of my Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (incredibly good. One of the best I’ve read.)
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami (very good Japanese author I had never heard of)

Three continents so far an only two countries that I didn’t like: Costa Rica and Ethiopia. And even for those two countries, I can honestly say there are incredible things to see there. Both countries have gotten excellent reviews from many other travelers that I know or that I have read. My dislike of each isn’t me just be contrary, which I am certainly capable of, but rather just that I just had bad experiences in both of them.

In Ethiopia’s case, perhaps I built it up too much in my mind. It was one of the 6-7 countries that I was most excited about visiting on the entire trip. The danger with heightened anticipation is that the expectations are that much harder to meet. On the other hand, some of the countries that I had low or no expectations of (Columbia, Syria, Egypt, Uruguay, Uganda) were some of my favorites.

Probably a lesson in there somewhere. One of the phrases I’ve used for a long time about setting goals in your life might apply: set the bar low; you will look that much better going over it.

pissed off in Turkey

I’d better write this while its all still on my mind, because I’d prefer to just purge it as soon as possible. I’ve written before that all is not wine and roses when on the road this long – though many travel writers paint such an overwhelming positive picture about the glories, without ever mentioning the down sides. Maybe that is the way to get published and I’m going to have to wipe out these occasional down-side travel stories.

A couple of days ago was one of those simply annoying and aggravating travel days.

The day started in Aleppo, Syria. I was in the process of rolling through Jordan and Syria quickly, in order to get to Turkey. Originally, I had figured that I could catch a boat from Alexandria, Egypt to Istanbul or Greece – in order to continue my route to the northernmost city in the world, in Norway – but after research, I finally realized that was impossible. There was no way I could see to go by sea from Egypt to Europe. So I had to go overland quickly.

Around that same time, Aileen, a friend I met and traveled with for a while in Africa, decided that she’d had enough of the real world since she’d gotten home and wanted a week or two more of traveling. She wanted to go to Turkey. I was going to have to go through Turkey. The timing was good. She booked a flight.

She was arriving late in the evening on the 16th. I was leaving early that morning from Aleppo to meet up with her in a town called Groeme, in east central Turkey. From looking at the map, it seemed like a relatively simple travel task.

I asked the people at my hotel in Aleppo about buses from there to Antyaka, Turkey, which is about forty or fifty miles across the border. They told me that buses run pretty much all day, starting at 5 a.m. I got up around 5:30, walked to the bus station, and asked around at the various bus ticket offices about a bus to Turkey. They told me that there was one bus at 5 a.m. (that had left, obviously) and one at 2 p.m., which was going to be way too late for what I needed to do that day.

No problem. One bus company said that I could just take a taxi. This may seem odd, but distances in the Middle East are fairly short and I had already taken two of three taxis for similar distances (100-150 kilometers). I asked how much and was told 1,500 Syrian pounds (slightly over $30 U.S.). That seemed a bit steep, since the bus ticket was only 250 Syrian pounds. I told them so and they said I should wait and see if anyone else showed up to split the cost with me. Sounded reasonable, so I waited around for about forty-five minutes.

No one else showed. I then started asking other cabbies that were there how much they would charge me for the ride and quickly got a counter-bid of 750 Syrian pounds. I made sure that were talking about the same thing (going to the map and repeatedly pointing to the town in Turkey I needed to get to – making sure it wasn’t just a ride to the border). I felt assured they were going to take me all the way to Antyaka for half the price of the other taxi.

So I went back to the original taxi and asked to get my backpack out of the truck. The guy loudly said, “no, no” and pointed to the taxi and said something to the effect of “I am taking you. Your bag is already in my cab.” I told him that I hadn’t paid and that the other taxi driver was taking me right now for half of what he was going to charge me.

And he immediately cut his price to 500 Syrian pounds. Now look, I’m fine with the whole haggling thing. Hell, as a criminal defense lawyer, I had to constantly size up how much my prospective clients might be able to pay before quoting my fee. But its pretty annoying to have people quote you triple the price of what they will take. And I’m sure he was doing quite well at 500 – as quick as he offered it. I probably could have gotten the ride for 300 or so – twenty percent of the original price.

Mild annoyance, but now that I had the leverage, I made sure we were leaving immediately. For 500 pounds. Payable when I got there. Shortly after, two other guys piled into the back of the cab and we took off.

It took about an hour to the border. When we got there, me and the two other passengers went inside and got stamped out of Syria quickly and easily. On the other hand, the cabbie couldn’t get his car through customs. I never knew what was going on (no one spoke good enough English to explain), but the customs guys kept putting a rubber hose down the taxi’s gas tank, pulling it up, looking at it, and then yelling at the cabbie about something. This went on for a short while, and then the cabbie went off to talk to someone in the main building. Us three passengers were just left there to wait.

And wait. And wait. For about two and a half hours. Occasionally the cabbie would come out of the building and talk to the other two guys and make hand motions to me as if we were soon to leave. Then he’d disappear again and the three of us would just look at each other blankly.

First Syria didn’t want to let me in. Now they didn’t want to let me out. Make up your mind guys.

Eventually, the cabbie got some supervisor out of the building to come look at his taxi. The supervisor and some new assistant walked up with another rubber hose, talked to the cabbie, didn’t even put the hose in the gas tank, and let us go. Bureaucrats – gotta love ‘um.

We drove another hour or so to Antyaka and finally got there around 1 p.m. or so. At the beginning of the day, I’d figured on getting there around 10 or 11, so I was slightly worried about my schedule to get to Groeme and meet Aileen.

As we were pulling into the town, I told the driver a few times that I needed him to stop and let me change by Syrian pounds for Turkish lira somewhere. An official exchange bureau preferably. He told me “yes, yes – no problem” every time I asked. Lo’ and behold, we get to town, he stops at the place to let me out of the cab, and there is no exchange bureau anywhere in sight. He told me I could get a bus to the town I was going to across the street and I asked him again about changing my money.

He told me that he’d make change for me. I had 3,950 Syrian Pounds. That should have gotten me about 125 Turkish lira, according to the exchange program on my computer. He wouldn’t give me more than 115. I didn’t know how exchangeable Syrian pounds would be, the further I got away from the border area, so I accepted the screw-job and took the money.

The day hadn’t started off as the best introduction to Turkey.

I went across the street to buy my bus ticket. The bus was due to leave there at 3:30 and take about nine hours to get to the town of Kaysari, where I would get off and catch a mini-bus to Groeme. I was assured those mini-buses ran about every half hour and would be running that late at night. I bought the ticket and again went over it with the guy that sold it to me two or three times.

“So this bus leaves from right here (pointing at the parking lot) at 3:30, right?”
“Yes. Here.”
“15:30? (pointing to the line on the ticket that said that) From right here?”
“Yes. 3:30. Here.”
“Today, right? This ticket is for today?”
“Yes.”
“OK, because I am going to walk into town to go to use the internet. I will be back here before 3:30. OK?”
“Yes. OK.”

I left my backpack there and walked into town to use the internet. I emailed Aileen to tell her that I was going to be in very late that night and that she might beat me to the hotel (earlier I’d told her that I’d get there way in advance of her). Checked Facebook, other emails, sports scores and such. Enjoyed the air conditioning in the café. Left at a quarter to three and got a sandwich on my way back to the bus station.

I got there right at three o’clock. The ticket guy and his co-worker were frantic.

“Bus left.”
“It LEFT??!! You are kidding me. Its only 3.”
“Bus here at 2:30. We looked for you. Could not find you.”
“You told me the bus left from right here at 3:30!”

I rarely get angry. I was furious. First time on the trip, I think, that I was screaming. I threw my small backpack down and had a semi-fit.

“No. Leaves from main station at 3:30. From here 2:30.”
“But you fucking told me it left from HERE (pointing at the ground and walking in a circle around where I was pointing) at 3:30.”
“No. We looked for you.”
“Well you wouldn’t have had to look for me if you’d fucking told me the right time the bus left in the first place.”
“Sorry. We look. You can take taxi.”
“Taxi to where?”
“To bus station. Leave now, you catch bus.”
“How much is the taxi going to cost?”
“15 lira.”

The bus ticket had cost 35 lira. Now, on account of their screw-up, the ticket was essentially going to cost 50 lira. Not a huge deal, but I was irate.

“Well, you should pay for the taxi. You screwed up. Not me.”
“No. We give refund. You can take bus tomorrow.”
“I need to get there tonight. And you fucking screwed up. You should pay for the taxi.”
“No. Refund. OK?”
“No.”
“Well, you need to go now if you get bus.”

I wasn’t getting anywhere. And logically, I realized that it wasn’t that much money. If I wasn’t going to meet a friend – I’d have taken the refund and booked a ticket on the other company’s bus, which was leaving at 8 p.m. O’ well. I took the cab.

The entire next couple hours, I stewed in the bus. I read for a bit, but couldn’t concentrate. My iPod helped, but I just was going to be annoyed for a while about this.

To make matters worse, I wasn’t sure they sold me the correct ticket. In the destination line on my ticket it said “Trabzon” not “Kaysari.” I had no idea where Trabzon was, but on the other hand, I had looked at a map and knew that Kaysari was close to Groeme. I told the guys loading my back onto the bus that I was going to Groeme and asked if this ticket/bus was the right one. They seemed to say yes, but I wasn’t completely confident. On the bus, I asked when I would get to my destination, where I had to pick up a mini-bus, and they said about 1:30 a.m. I didn’t know if I would be able to get a ride that late. More stewing.

Then I looked out the left side of the bus and there was the Mediterranean. And in my last note in my journal about this particular ride, I wrote: “Totally unexpected. Smile. Guess it’s OK.”

Spoke/wrote a bit too soon.

About 10:30 that night, the bus made a stop at a bus station. One of the guys running the bus came all the way back to my seat and said, “You. Here. Groeme.” I asked if this was Kaysari. He said no, but I should get off. Groeme was as close to this station as Kaysari.

I was skeptical. I got off the bus and the young guy took me to talk to someone at this station. This guy also said that Groeme was as close to here as it was to Kaysari. By this time, they had gotten my backpack off the bus. I still was totally unsure. I asked if I could get a mini-bus from here and couldn’t get an answer. The new guy from the bus station told me to follow him and he would call a friend to see about a taxi.

No idea why I got off the bus. Of course, as we walk over to use the phone – the bus leaves.

Guy calls his taxi driver friend. Sure, he’d take me to Groeme. For 100 lira. Double the cost of the seven and a half hour bus ride I just took. I asked the guy to show me where we were on a map. He got out a map and showed me. Kaysari was a lot closer to Groeme than this town was.

I threw my second fit of the day.

“Why the hell did you get me off that bus? Was that bus going to Kaysari??”
“Yes.”
“But Kaysari is a lot closer to Groeme than this town is – and there are mini-buses there to take me to Groeme.”
“You can get bus from here also.”
“When.”
“8 a.m. tomorrow.”
“But I fucking need to get there tonight!”
“OK. Taxi?”

I’d only been in Turkey for about half of one day, but I’d taken note of one tendency here: when you are getting screwed over (intentionally or not), they just tend to smile a lot and play dumb. They might not understand my English, but even if they do, they aren’t going to admit it. This was essentially the “not my fault – guys on the bus told you to get off, not me” defense.

In the final analysis, it was my screw up to get off the bus in the first place. But that wasn’t going to stop me from being pissed.

I ended up taking the taxi. I talked the guy down slightly, to 90 lira. When I ended up getting to the hotel in Groeme, the hotel owner had me give him the short version of the story. He ended up telling me that 90 lira was a fair fare from that town, but agreed that I’d gotten screwed by essentially getting kicked off the bus. He also said that particular bus company had done it to a number of people and he didn’t know if it was intentional on their part, or just ignorance of the shortest way to Groeme.

The company is Metro. Let’s just say, I won’t be ever taking them again.

Other than that – Turkey has been fabulous. The people are great. Scenery is spectacular. Costs aren’t too bad. Tons of stuff to do. I really like it here.

I just hate cabbies, immigration agents, and now, selected bus companies.

p.s. There is this law in Turkey that says that writing or saying anything "anti-Turkish" is a punishable criminal offense. I'm assuming that this post would not rise to that level, but I'm risking it anyway!

http://asiapacific.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGEUR440032006?open&of=ENG-TUR

notes on a bus, again

Various thoughts while trying to remember how to write, since it's been so long.  Let's talk about Sudan for a bit and knock some of my notes out.

    Sudan was the first fully Islamic state I have visited – Sharia law is in effect there. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharia.  It was also the first police state I've been to.  You have no doubt read about the problems there – foremost of those the situation in Darfur, but also the independence movement in South Sudan, which might make headlines in a year or so, even in the U.S.  It's pretty much impossible to get to Darfur these days, and I wouldn't have wanted to go anyway.  No one in Sudan wants to talk about it either, so you get my thoughts and observations on other topics from this interesting country.

    Before I get to the full Sudan story, I have to tell yet another bus ride story, this time the two bus rides from Gondor, Ethiopia to Khartoum, Sudan.  At the time, I was still on the Oasis Overland truck.  Pretty much everyone on the truck was fed up with Ethiopia and wanted to get out of there as soon as possible.  Sean, an Australian/Irish guy (damn, I wish I could carry two passports) and I decided to hop off the overland truck a couple days early in Gondor and head over to Sudan on our own quickly.  Sean is a big guy – probably 6'2'' or so and maybe 225 pounds.

    We got up around 4:30 a.m. and headed over to the bus station.  We ended up on a medium sized bus to the border with a capacity of probably sixty people or so.  They managed to fit about ninety people on board.  The first four hours of the ride weren't so bad.  The last couple hours were fairly horrible. 

    Sean and I were in the last row of the bus.  Good for safety.  Bad for bounciness of the ride.  Sean was in the back right corner and right in front of him and me was the back stairwell of the bus.  They managed to fit five people in the back row of the bus.  During the last couple hours, I had three different people sitting immediately next to me (as people entered and exited).  All three stunk. 

Don't get me wrong – at this point on the trip, I stink also.  I have frighteningly gotten fairly used to showing just a couple times a week.  And if it's a cold shower, I pretty much just shampoo my hair and give up on cleaning the rest of me.  That being said, I feel fairly confident that I have never, and will never, stink as much as any of these three. 

    Did I mention that one of the particular things that is completely different in Africa than in the U.S. or Europe is that there is no sense of personal space?  At all.  I think of all the things that I've heard from travelers in Africa – this is the one that confounds and bothers westerners the most. 

At one point in the last couple hours, Sean (who was horribly uncomfortable and cramped up the entire way) had a guy sitting on his knees.  Sean's legs were slightly sticking out into the stairwell and a guy just decided to use his legs as a chair.  Or a stool.  Tough to tell.  Sean just looked over at me and shrugged.  It wasn't like we had any room to move anywhere.  Hell – he barely had room to shrug.  Like I said, he's a big guy.  And these buses are not good for big people.

One of my favorite images of the entire trip happened on the last few hours of this particular bus ride.  The bus stopped by the side of the road to drop some people off and pick more up – strangely, there always seemed to be more people getting on than off – African buses work in a different space/time continuum. 

An older guy ambled onto the bus.  Sean and I guessed that he was about sixty years old, by his appearance, which meant he was probably forty.  That obviously wasn't the highlight.

He was carrying a live chicken in his left hand.  He was carrying an AK-47 in his right hand.

Come on – that's awesome.  Africa, baby.

Another strange thing about African buses, at least the ones that you pay for once you get on (unlike the occasional nice ones where you buy a ticket):  sometimes people don't want to pay.  I've never seen this anywhere else.  It never happened in chicken buses in Central America.  I've never see it in inner-city public transport in South America.  But this bus ride was probably the 8th or 9th time I've seen it in Africa.

A guy – always a guy, of course – gets on the bus.  The ticket/collection guy comes by and asks for his money.  The passenger, now seated, shrugs his shoulders in the "I ain't paying" way.  By the way, this obviously is all happening in languages I have no comprehension of, so take my translations with a grain of salt.  Ticket guy starts yelling at the passenger.  Every time the passenger responded the same way – silence and more shrugs. 

That never works.  The ticket guy starts yelling more and pulling on the guy to evict him from his seat.  Then comes the return fire from the passenger.  I tend to think the passenger is saying something like "not 60 from here – only 20" or something of the like, but who the hell knows.  Most times in the end, the passenger hands some money over and its over.  Of course, I have no idea if they managed to get some sort of deal in the process.

That wasn't how this argument ended.  The passenger never forked over the money and the ticket guy pulled him off the bus.  As he was throwing him out the door, the passenger reached back and grabbed the ticket guy's jeans.  "That's it motherfucker – its ON!"  Again, just my translation, but I'm pretty sure on this one.

And so started the fistfight.  Briefly next to the bus, but then ranging back and forth behind the bus.  At some point, the dozens of people standing there broke it up.  It was hard to tell who got the better of it – we didn't see the passenger – but the ticket guy had a pretty nice little scrape on the side of his face.  And then the bus moved on.  No big deal.

Sean's comment?  "I've seen 3-4 fights in Africa.  These guys have no idea how to fight."  I trusted him.  Sean looks like he knows how to fight.  And he is Australian and Irish.  That's good enough for me.

We got to the border.  Did the border formalities on the Ethiopian side.  On the Sudan side, we had to do the usual immigration stamping in.  Then we had to go to the local police station and sign some register.  No apparent reason – it wasn't like they had a computer to input it into to track us – just the first glimpse that we were in a police state.

Then we got on the Sudanese bus.  The first mode of transport I had taken in about two months that left without being full.  Not even close to full.  It was a full-sized bus and there were probably only thirty people on board.  I had two seats all to myself.

And it was air-conditioned.  Air conditioning.  Mmmmmmm. 

Sean and I both tried to remember the last time that we had been blessed with air conditioning.  Ethiopia?  Nope.  Kenya?  No.  Uganda.  Tanzania.  Zambia.  Namibia.  Nope on all fronts.  It was South Africa.  Four months ago.

The bus took off.  Well, we didn't make too much progress, the first police check was about 10 minutes later.  The bus stopped and a guy got on board and checked everyone's ID.  This was the first of seven such stops on the way to Khartoum.

The fifth such check was a personal highlight.  The guy came onto the bus.  Checked everyone's ID.  Got all the way back to Sean and I sitting in the last two rows.  I handed him my passport.  He said something and pointed to my small backpack, obviously wanting to look in it.  I opened it up and showed him that I wasn't smuggling in liquor, or dirty magazines, or U.S. imperialist propaganda documents.  He pulled out my copy of Crime and Punishment and proceeded to slowly flip through it.

You never know what I might be hiding in there.

I would have given it to him – he seemed quite interested – but I have promised myself (and ya'll) that I will finish it before I get to St. Petersburg.  A possible détente moment in U.S.-Sudan relations passed by on account of my book greed. . .

One last highlight of this trip.  And yes, I realize that this blog has devolved into 'immigration agent' and 'bus' stories – but you try traveling around the world on the ground and tell me what strikes you.

As I said, Sudan is a strict, very strict, Muslim state.  Sharia law is not to be scoffed at and by all accounts, they take everything, mostly their religion, seriously here.  The woman are all fully cloaked up.  Alcohol is prohibited, strictly (we know – we tried to find some).  The government censors the internet – there are a number of websites that are banned.  Police checkpoints.  A government permission document is even needed to take a single picture inside Sudan.

The memory I shall take from the bus ride, aside from the police checks, was the selection of videos playing on the TV's in the bus.  First, there was a really horrible 1970's Hong Kong kung fu movie that was dubbed into English, with Arabic subtitles.  Fine – crappy entertainment seems par for the course on buses around the world.

But after that – in very straight-laced and Muslim Sudan – four hours of DVDs showing World Wrestling Federation championships.  O' and don't be mistaken.  These weren't just any championships.  This was Wrestle Mania XX – the Women's Championships.

Four hours of very scantily clad women throwing themselves around a ring and doing everything short of pulling off each other's clothes, in an effort to amuse and entertain Bubba out in the live audience.  One of the competitions was between two former Playboy playmates – both of which stripped off their costumes to wrestle in . . . well, about nothing.

Sean and I looked at each other simply amazed at what we were seeing.  I had figured that if I had this sort of stuff on my laptop and the police found it – I'd be doing five years hard time in some Sudanese prison.

The kicker: the Muslim women on the bus were loving it.  They were pumping their fists and rooting on their favorites.  I wanted to tell them that I could introduce them to some guys they might like back at home, but. . . well, another moment of possible U.S.-Sudan reproachmont went by the wayside.

I'd be a horrible diplomat. 

Arusha, Tanzania to Kampala, Uganda

After I finished my hike up Kilimanjaro, I went back to Arusha, in order to sort out my next move. I had intended on going on to Serengeti National Park and Ngorongoro Crater to do some more wildlife viewing, but changed my mind after getting a couple prices quoted. I opened up my guidebook, took a look at what sort of time I had available, and spontaneously decided to go to Uganda. I’d heard great things about how beautiful it was and I also wanted to make one last effort at securing a permit to go and see the mountain gorillas in Brindi Impenetrable National Park.

There have been a lot of long bus rides on my trip. I have gotten quite used to them, and in many respects to quite enjoy them. But this one was brutal.

By the look of my map, the distance between Arusha, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya is less than 200 miles. The road goes around Mount Meru, the second tallest mountain in Tanzania, up to the border crossing and then straight up to Nairobi. There, the bus would drop off and pick up some passengers and proceed due west to the Uganda border and then onto Kampala, which is 660 kilometers (((((MILES)))))).

To give you an idea of how bad the road was -- using road in its most liberal definition-- between Arusha and Nairobi, it took about eight hours to transverse those 180 or so miles. We made less than 25 miles an hour. Until we got to the outskirts of Nairobi, not an inch of the road was paved. Gravel. Potholed. Pretty brutal.

The bus to Nairobi was completely full. I had the good fortune of sitting on the side of the bus where there were only two seats – the other side of the aisle had three seats. I had the misfortune of sitting next to a woman that must have weighed close to 300 pounds. She boarded the bus with her dinner, a large container of fried chicken. Lest I forget to mention, there was to middle arm rest in our row for the convenience of some separation. At least she exited the bus in Nairobi.

The bus left around 5 p.m. from Arusha. It was supposed to leave at 3 p.m., so in ‘Africa time’ it wasn’t that late of a departure. As I said, mid-way on this leg of the trip, we had to go through the border formalities between Tanzania and Kenya.

Exiting Tanzania was simple. I’m likely to jinx myself, but exiting every country so far has been easy. My slight complication on entering Kenya was that I needed a double entry or multi-entry visa to Kenya. I was merely transiting through Kenya this day on my way to Uganda, then I’d be reentering Kenya a few days later to come back to Nairobi and head north from there.

When I got to the counter, I explained to the guy working there that I needed a double entry or multi-entry visa. He said that wouldn’t be a problem and that although the normal fee was $50 U.S., he’d ‘do it for twenty-five’ as a favor to me. Well, wasn’t that nice? I thanked him and he shuffled off with my passport and my $100 bill to do his paperwork.
He came back with my passport and showed me the visa that he’d pasted in there. He also handed me back $50. I said, “I thought you were only going to charge me $25?” He said, “yes, its $25 for you, but its also $25 for me.”

Now that is a guy that should be employed on Wall Street to do some creative accounting. Actually, given some of the revelations of the past few years, that is where he might have gotten his training.

The money part was fine, but I was much more worried that he’d given me the wrong visa. The visa was clearly labeled “Single Journey Visa.” I’d been clear that I needed a multi-entry visa. I asked him a couple times if this visa would allow me to enter more than once and he told me that it was a multi-entry visa and that I could enter Kenya as many times as I wanted for the three months it was valid. There was absolutely nothing on the face of this visa that indicted that – I figured that he’d just charged me the multi-entry visa price, given me a single entry visa for his internal accounting procedures, and pocketed the difference in price.

But he did it with a smile.

We got to Nairobi around midnight and shortly set off for Kampala. I had made a horrible strategic error in what I brought, or didn’t bring, on board the bus. I’d forgotten to take my sweater out of my backpack. I really don’t know what I was thinking. It was quite hot when we left Arusha, but I knew that the bus was going to be an overnight bus. I also knew that we were going to be going to higher elevations in Kenya and Uganda, which meant for cooler temperatures.

The good news was that the bus was more than half-empty on this second half of the journey, so I could use both my seats to squish in a fetal position to try to sleep. The bad news was that the windows on the bus didn’t all properly close all the way. It was cold. Not freezing cold like the air conditioned bus I took from Capetown to Windhoek (so cold on that bus that I was wearing a sweater, jeans, wool socks and boots and couldn’t sleep), but still pretty damn chilly, especially in a T-shirt.

Add to that a crazy bus driver, who apparently received some monetary bonus to drive as fast as humanly possible – much faster than the road conditions would warrant a sane man – and it wasn’t the best night I had spent on a bus.

Side note: You remember that I’ve said that one of the ways I rate a country is on how many pictures of its President adorn the walls of businesses? You can add a much, much more basic measure – the state of the roads. How the hell some of these countries think they are going to make any economic progress with roads in these conditions is beyond me.

Twice, I got thrown out of my seat. I think in an earlier blog, I’d mentioned that you generally don’t want to sit in the front of the bus, because that is the most dangerous place to be in case of a wreck. On the other hand, if the roads are really bad, you don’t want to be in the far back of the bus (where I was this time), because you are going to be right over the back axle and subject to the biggest bouncing effect. It was like a trampoline in the back of this bus.

The first time I got thrown out of my seat, I was tossed up into the air as the bus braked as hard as it could. So, I went up and the bus slowed down rapidly. Me up. Me forward. Me into the metal seat back in front of me. Then me falling to the ground between the seat in front of me and my seat. The second time, I almost made it over the seat in front of me. I managed to wake up in the middle of my unintended high jump and grab the top of the seat back in front of me, so that I didn’t vault over into my neighbor’s lap. Not sure which one of these exercises imparted the bruise that I got on my left bicep, but it was quite a nice one.

Getting tossed about occasionally was one thing, but the roads on this second part of the journey were actually much better than the first part. The ride was mostly smooth enough that you could get some sleep in occasionally – and that’s where the cold part kicked in. Like I said, it wasn’t really cold, but between the breeze coming in from the windows that wouldn’t close properly and the temperature, it was tough to sleep.

But there were some newspapers lying around the floor of the bus. Time to improvise. I’m not sure what movie I’d seen this in, but I saw the newspapers and knew it was time to pull a hobo trick. My movie addiction does have some useful purpose after all.

Time to use the newspapers for insulation. And as blankets.

So I added a couple layers of newspaper insulation under my T-shirt, laid back down, and then pulled some of the papers over me as pseudo-blankets, to partly cover up my exposed arms. They kept blowing off me, but I eventually came up with a solution that involved sleeping on my side and holding the newspaper in place between my back and the seat. If I didn’t move too much (or get tossed about because of the road), the papers would hold in place long enough to let me catch a few winks.

I got to Kampala Sunday morning, took a cab to a nice hostel mentioned in my guidebook with two things I needed: a bar and internet. I’d made the decision I was going to take 24 hours off, drink too much, and waste time on the internet. Recuperation time.

In my book, I’d deserved it.

Postscript – the Kenyan visa did end up being a multi-entry visa. I didn’t get charged again a few days later when I reentered Kenya from Uganda. Suppose I should have more faith in bureaucrats. . . well, now that I think about it. . .

its not all fun, frolic and glamour on the road. . .

While I have enjoyed almost every single minute on the road and have truly appreciated the dozens of emails that have gone something like "sounds great! Wish I was out there doing the same thing," there are then days like today.

I wish it was all wine and roses out here. Alas, it is not.

As many of you know, I am in Nairobi. Although, in my opinion, this city appears to have gotten a little bit of a bad rap (its referred to as Nairobbery by many), I really don't want to spend too much time here. I am ready to push north as soon as possible. The problem is that I need a visa to get through Sudan -- and that is supposedly not an easy thing for an American to get.

So I set today out to get started on that process. And I wanted to try to find my way around Nairobi a bit on foot -- since its appeared to be pretty safe to me in the downtown area the last few days -- and since the Sudan Embassy appeared on the Lonely Planet map to only be 7-8 blocks away.

I got started around 10 a.m. this morning. I walked around the corner to where the Sudan Embassy was on the map. I didn't see any sign for the embassy where it was supposed to be. I asked a couple security guards in the area where it was. They gave me some complicated directions that seemed to indicate the embassy was 4-5 kilometers away.

Let me pause at this point and make a quick point about asking directions in Africa. Everyone here is INCREDIBLY helpful. Everyone wants to help you find whatever you are looking for. I probably have asked for directions 50 times or more in the last 4-6 weeks. I have yet to ever get a "I don't know" as a reply. Every single time, the person I ask just starts kicking some directions back to me.

Problem is that about 75% of the time, the person I am asking has no idea what they are talking about. I've talked to a number of travelers about this phenomenon and it happens to everyone else all the time also. There is something about the African mindset that thinks it is better to try to help you, even if they have no really effective way to actually provide help. Its nice, in its way, but its also a little frustrating.

So, I trundle off in the direction that these guards told me to go, but I was thinking to myself, "my guidebook is only 2 years old, what is the chance that an entire embassy has moved in that time frame?" When I got about two blocks away, I ran into a policeman and asked him for directions also. He pointed me back to where I came from and basically told me it was in a high rise building at the same place my guidebook indicated. I turned back around and went to the building.

I got inside and asked the security guy at the desk what floor the embassy was on and he told me. . . the embassy had moved about 4-5 kilometers away. OK, so the original security guards next door were right and the cop was wrong (though all of them sounded equally convinced they were 100% right -- which makes deciding on which directions to follow a bit difficult). The guy at the desk told me I could take the number 8 bus right to the embassy. Well, not really a bus per se, more like a run-down van, but just as effective. Just tell the driver on the bus to let me off at the Sudan Embassy. The number 8 bus stopped only a couple blocks away.

I found a number 8 van and asked the driver about the Sudan Embassy. He told me it was on his route. I paid my 20 shillings (about 25 U.S. cents) and felt pretty proud of myself that I wasn't going to pay about 750 shillings for cab. A short while later, the driver told me to get out and pointed down the road.

I walked down the road a little bit and the Sudan Embassy was right there. I walked up to the front gate and asked about a visa. A very, very nice guy came out in a few minutes and told me that part of the embassy was closed for the day. It was about 1 p.m. That part of the embassy is only open from 9 a.m. until noon. I asked him how many days it would take me to get a visa and he said "two." I asked again to make sure and he repeated it back to me.

Right now, I am literally knocking on wood in the internet cafe. I'm hoping that just writing that hasn't jinxed me.

He said, "just make sure you have all your stuff in order. It is fast here. Don't worry." I asked him what I needed, just to be sure. Passport. Two passport photos. Money. And a letter from my NGO saying how long I was going to be working in Sudan.

Ummmmmmmm. Huh??

I told him I wasn't going to be working for an NGO there. I was just traveling through quickly. He said it might help me to get a letter from my embassy saying that. OK -- I thanked him profusely and told him I'd see him tomorrow morning. I then looked on my map for where the U.S. embassy was. It was outside of town on the other side of town -- looked to be about 6-7 kilometers away on the map.

Knowing a cab would cost me an arm and a leg, if I could even find one over on this side of town, I decided to take another number 8 bus back into town and either take a cab from there or find my way via bus/van to the U.S. embassy.

The van took me back downtown. I asked a couple cabbies how much to the U.S. embassy. Everyone told me 1,000 shillings ($12-13 U.S. dollars or so). I've been overbudget for a while and was getting pretty cocky about navigating via the bus/van thing, so I said screw that and went around asking van drivers and such which one I needed to take to get to the U.S. embassy.

It was about 2:30 at this time. I gave myself about a half hour to see if I could figure out what van to take. After asking around for a bit, I came to a semi-consensus (like getting directions, figuring things out like this by asking locals needs to be done on a triangulation basis -- ask 4-5 people and see if most of the signs point the same way). Consensus was the number 11 van, and most people thought I could find one a couple blocks away. Which I did.

Out to the other side of town, which is a beautiful, tree covered neighborhood, with a number of embassies in the area. Found the U.S. Embassy around 3:30. As I was walking up to the security gate, I literally muttered to myself, "let's hope that U.S. embassy personnel actually keep moderately real office hours."

Nope. The office that does U.S. citizen assistance closes at 3 p.m.

Now look, those of you that know me, know that I was very prone to having quite short office hours myself. That is, when I felt like working at all. But when I was a government employee, I actually did show up at the office from 8 to 5 or 9 to 5. I was getting paid by taxpayer money -- I thought it was usually a good idea to at least be there.

I want a foreign service job when I'm done with this trip.

quickie in Africa

I am sitting in an internet cafe in Kisori, Uganda right now, awaiting my overnight bus (on one of the worst stretches of road I've been on yet) back to Kampala. Then tomorrow morning, I will take another bus to Nairobi, Kenya and start on my Sudan visa quest. But as bad as the internet is - no pictures yet - thought I'd give you a quick update.

I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro last week. It was amazing. Difficult. Rewarding. Just simply one of the best experiences of my life. Blog coming soon.

Then I spontanously decided to hop a bus from Arusha, Tanzania to Kampala. I had 4-5 days to kill before I needed to be in Nairobi and decided to add another country to the trip, since I heard Uganda was beautiful. It is.

Got here Sunday morning (bus ride will be another blog) and decided to have a rest/beer day. Needed it badly. Also decided to make a seemingly futile, last ditch effort to get a pass to see the mountain gorillas in Bwindi National Park. They offer eight a day. At $500 U.S. a pop. Most are reserved months in advance. But there are cancellations. . .

I got a pass for Wednesday on that Monday afternoon. Hopped an overnight bus down here. Got a good night's sleep last night - first one in a while. Up this morning and got my hour with about 12 of the 19 mountain gorillas in this group in the park. I am hoping that a couple of the 250+ pictures I took actually are in focus. Perhaps some video also.

Pretty good week. Kili and mountain gorillas inside of seven days. Neither of which were booked in advance. I may be the luckiest traveller I know (knocking on wood as I say that, in the hopes I don't totally jinx myself.)

Lots of blogs and pictures from Nairobi this weekend. Promise.

Namibia

One of the countries that I have been most excited about seeing is Namibia and I arrived early this morning. I took a 20 hour bus ride from Cape Town in the coldest frickin' bus I have yet ridden on. It was so damn cold, I only think I slept about 3 hours or so. I was literally shivering so hard, I couldn't sleep. And yes, I was wearing my fleece, jeans, and wool socks and boots.

I am not sure why I was so excited to come here before my trip. I had only done a little bit of reading about it (mostly about the Namib Desert, which I still am totally excited about -- great pics coming, I hope). I just had a good feeling for this place.

Its one of the only German colonies from the colonial period, where every European power was snapping up land everywhere (Germany tried to make up for this by snapping up a lot of land until the 20th century). It is interesting seeing road signs in German here.

I stayed too long in Cape Town, so I've decided on a whirlwind week here in Namibia. I booked a six day safari starting tomorrow. Three days in Etoshia National Park and three days in the desert. Here's hoping I get my first great shots in Africa.

I might, might be online in the middle of this trip. I think we spend one night at a hostel. Other than that, I'll be camping and off line. Hopefully this time next week, I'll be posting some good pictures for everyone.

Bingo on the Bus

One of the small, unique aspects of riding the buses in South America is bingo on the bus. It didn’t happen on every bus, but I ran into it about a half dozen times.

The bus steward or stewardess (not sure what you are supposed to call them – I do know that flight attendants haven’t been stewardesses for quite a while – I had three dates with one back in the early 90s in D.C. and on the third date asked what it was like being a stewardess – I didn’t get a fourth date) would come down the aisle early on the trip and hand out a bingo card to everyone. Then he or she would go somewhere and call out the letters and numbers. Fifteen minutes later one of the passengers declared victory and their was polite clapping on the bus. Then the incredibly loud movie would usually start up on the television screens in the bus.

I never did play. I always figured that my Spanish wasn’t good enough and that when I thought “B36” was called out, it might have been “B16” and so on. I really didn’t want to be the gringo that called out “Bingo!” and when my card was quickly checked, it turned out that I had marked half of the slots incorrectly. Plus, I didn’t see the point – bingo has never been a game that has held much intellectual interest for me.

Late in the South American portion of my journey, I was mentioning bingo to some other travelers. They did speak excellent Spanish and told me that most times the winner got a free full-fare ticket to anywhere that bus company went to. Just yet another reason I should have worked on my Spanish before I came down here.

trip to the boat

OK -- quick blog about how I got to where I am in the last couple days. Partly to show how incredibly lucky I am (hope I don´t curse that) and more to show how cool people are out in the world.

My boat to Africa was set to leave a port called Sao Francisco del Sur on the 31st. I had worked out all the details with the shipping company (lots of back and forth details, more later) over a period of weeks and they told me to call the local shipping agent a couple days before the boat left to figure out the time to meet the boat and agent at the port.

So I went to a little, little, little town in Uruguay called Cabo Polonio for about three days with some new friends I met. Pictures up when I get to South Africa. The place is not in the guidebooks. About 70-80 permanent residents. No electricity to speak of, except for the one store in town, a nicer hotel that I didn´t stay at, and the occasional generator. If you want seculusion and relaxation -- this is the spot for you. Obviously, no internet. So no way for me to get email.

No problem. I left on the 27th. I was planning on a quick, but long, trip to the waterfalls on the Argentina/Brazil border, then over to the port and catch my boat. Bus from the little town (not the town, which there are no roads to, but the bus stop is literally people standing by the side of the road - where big sand dune trucks take you to and from the highway to the village), left around 4 or 5 p.m. I was going to the border town between Uruguay and Brazil about 2 hours away, place called Chuy. Then hopefully catch an overnight bus to Porto Alegre in Brazil and then a 12 hour bus to the falls. Get there around the evening of the 28th. Hit the falls on the 29th. Bus to the port on the 30th. Easy.

Got to Chuy around 7:30 p.m. or so. There was a bus leaving for Porto Alegre at 11 p.m. Perfect. Stopped to check my email. Email from the shipping company. The ship I was taking was earlyto the port. Two days early, to be exact. It was arriving some time on the 29th. What mode of transport is ever early??

Had to obviously ditch my plans for the falls. Also realized that I had forgotten half of my electronic gear at the hostel in Cabo Polonio. And my jeans and more importantly, my belt. I´ve lost about 3 inches in my waist on this trip. My khakis barely, barely stay over my hip bone without a belt. Obviously no time to go back and get that stuff either.

Email Chance in Buenos Aires and ask him to sort out the stuff with the hostel owner. Figure out a way to get the stuff to him and have him ship it over to South Africa. As usual, he´s a rockstar and replies immediately and says he is on it. Check mark for that small issue.

Bigger issue -- how the hell do I catch my boat? I email the shipping company, but it is late Friday night in the U.K., where they are based. Try to email the local shipping agent from the info that I´d been given, but the email address was wrong. Damn.

OK, had a bus ticket to Brazil and from there an entire full day to get to the port. On the map and the guidebook, it looked possible. Finished up at the internet cafe, walked over to buy my bus ticket. It was about 10 p.m. Bus station was locked up, but some American standing there said he was on the 11 p.m. bus I wanted and the ticket agents would open at 10:30. I had read in the guidebook earlier that you needed to get your exit visa stamp from Uruguay about 3 kilometers south of town. I had already done that, so I was set. I went around the corner for a late sandwich to hold me over for the night.

I got back and bought my ticket at about 10:45. The ticket agent asked for my passport. I handed it over. She asked about my Brazil visa. I had gotten it a week earlier in Montevideo (blog later -- first time I had to get a visa in advance of the border). I pointed out my exit stamp from Uruguay and my paid visa into Brazil. She motioned and I eventually got the point -- I didn´t have an entry stamp into Brazil. But up to now, every time I had taken a bus over the border, the bus stopped, we all got out, and got stamped there. Apparently, not at this border crossing. I needed to go into Brazil beforeI had my visa stamped, get it stamped there, and come back and then board the bus. She said she could not let me on the bus without the stamp. She also said that to get the stamp, I had to have a ticket into Brazil, so she sold me the bus ticket for the bus leaving in 10 minutes and pointed to the cabs out front.

I got into the cab, pointed to my passport, and said ´Brazil visa,´ímmigration,´and made stamping marks in it. I also through out a bunch of ´rapidos´to make sure he understood we had to haul ass. He got the point. I got in and we started off. About 5 minutes later we jetted right past what I assumed was the Brazil border stop. I frantically pointed at it as we went by, and for about 5 minutes after, and tried to get him to understand I had to get stamped and get back by 11 p.m. In Spanish/Portuguese and more with sign language, he got the point across -- that station was closed and we had to go 20 more kilometers to get to the next one.

Well I´m fucked. And not remotely in the good way. Plus, I am now steaming.

I figure that the ticket agent knew I´d never get back for the 11 p.m. bus and she just made me buy a $25 dollar ticket for nothing. I was wondering if we´d make it back before the bus stop closed again. I recalled there might have been a bus leaving for Florinopolis (in Brazil, even further up the coast, towards my final destination) at 1:30 a.m., but I had asked another agent about that bus earlier and wasn´t sure it ran on this particular night. Could I catch any bus tonight? Could I trade in this ticket?

Damn it. I think I have been screwed by everyone. And when I asked the cabbie how much, when I got in the cab, he said 400 pesos -- about $20 dollars. At the time, I figured ´what the hell´, get me my stamp and I won´t mind getting totally and completely ripped off. Now I was pissed about the bus ticket, the cab fare, and that I might miss my boat. Not necessarily in that order, of course.

The cabbie got me up to the town where the police/immigration station was open by about 11:15. I went in, got stamped and came back out to the cab. He then started driving off, but not the same way we came. About 2 minutes later, he pulls up to a bus station in the town in Brazil. He then tells me that the bus that left 20 minutes ago from Uruguay would be at this station in about 10 minutes. I could catch the bus here with my ticket and be on my merry way.

There are about 2 cabbies in 10 that I think are the greatest people in the world (and about 5 in 10 that should rot in hell). I think I must have told this dude ´mucho gracias´ about a dozen times. I handed him a 1,000 peso note for my 400 peso bill. He said he didn´t have change. I pulled out the smaller bills and coins I had and told him I only had 360 pesos. And he took it.

Great cabbie andone of the South American change moments. My trip to the boat was looking up.

So, the overnight bus got to Porto Alegre at about 6 a.m. I needed to get a bus about 10-12 hours up the coast to Sao Francisco that night (the 28th), so that if the boat was leaving early the next morning (the 29th, per the email), I would be there and ready to go. One of the frustrating things about buses in Central and South America are that there are usually about 6-10 bus companies and only some of them go to certain locations. And I was in Brazil. New language: Portuguese. Similar to Spanish, but I was beyond clueless.

I pulled out the email about where I needed to go and starting going down the bus ticket line. They kept pointing to other companies. I asked at about four of five of them and finally got to the one that I was fairly certain was right. I asked him about the bus to Sao Francisco and he pointed and said to go to the agent in the stand immediately next to him. I went there. That guy pointed back to the person I just came from. I went back and got pointed back to the other guy.

It was ´Who´s on First,´ but in language I didn´t speak. I saw a bus outside bording people - the sign in the front of the bus said ´Curitiba.´ That was reasonably close to where I needed to be, after consulting my map. I went back to one of the ticket guys that kept pointing me off next door, pointed at that bus, said ´Curitiba?´, got a nod, and bought a ticket. Curitiba was a big city, over a million. I figured that I would get in at about 5 p.m. or so and be able to catch a bus to Sao Francisco that night. It looked like about 150 kilometers between the two. I also figured that I would get into Curitiba early enough to call the local shipping agent and confirm the time the boat was leaving. Maybe I wouldn´t have to rush down, if the boat was leaving late on the 29th.

The bus was supposed to take 11 hours by the guidebook. It took more like 14 hours. I got in around 8 p.m. I found the internet cafe at the bus station and checked my email, hoping for an email back from the shipping people in the U.K. that I´d emailed asking for follow-up. It was Saturday. No email. I used Skype to call the number I had for the shipping agent in Sao Francisco (after getting help navagating the menu, which was in Portuguese, by another helpful bystander).

The number I had wasn´t working. I went downstairs to check on buses to Sao Francisco. No buses that night. The first one left at 6:30 a.m. and got in around 9 a.m. or so. Rent a car? Hitchhike?

I went back up to the internet cafe and re-read the email. The boat was ´now due to arrive on the 29th.´ There had to be some amount of time to load and unload, right? I also checked the boat schedule again, after this port, they had two more stops in Brazil. If I missed it the next day, I was absolutely sure I could catch it in Rio de Janeiro before it was to leave there three days from then. Totally and completely sure.

I decided to trust to fate, buy the bus ticket for the next day, get a few hours sleep (I hadn´t slept more than about four hours total in the last two days) and see what happened.

Got up, took the bus, got into Sao Francisco around 9 a.m. or so. Took a cab to the port. The guy at the enterance to the port didn´t speak English, but I showed him the email with the name of my boat. He seemed to say that the boat was there and let me in, pointed down past some of the huge stacks of cargo containers waiting to be put on freighters and said ´go up there a ways and look to the left.´ I assumed. I walked down there on a complete travel high -- I´d navigated the shoals and made my boat. Cool.

Two freighters getting loaded. My ship, the MOL Wish, was not one of them. Hmmmmmm. Now I figured I had missed it. One of the guys loading one of the two freighters spoke English. I showed him the email, he immediately nodded and said that the MOL Wish wasn´t due in port until 4 p.m. Golden. I had made it. I asked him where the local shipping agent was in town and he gave me directions that I didn´t understand, but it was a fairly small town and I had hours to find him. No worries.

I walked back towards town, looking for an internet spot to check email from the shipping agent in the U.K. (hopefully) and also to verify the address of the local person I was supposed to contact. Its a Sunday, which means that about everything is closed. I asked a guy on the street about an internet cafe and he pointed off down one street and said there was one down there. I walked in the direction I thought he indicated for a couple hundred yards, as he was stopped at a train crossing to let a train pass by. I saw him back up from the crossing and come towards me. He honked, pulled over, and told me I was going the wrong way. He told me to hop in -- I did, and he drove me to the internet cafe.

When I got there, I still had plenty of time before the boat arrived. Since it was a Sunday, I assumed the shipping agent probably wouldn´t get to his office until a couple hours before the ship arrived, so I checked email and killed a half hour reading the news. Then I got up and asked the owner of the internet store, Mohammad, who spoke very good English, if he knew where the shipping agent´s office was.

He said the office was close by, but it was closed because it was Sunday. He asked why I was asking about it and I told him I was catching a ship that afternoon. He got the ship´s information and the name of the agent´s company and said he knew the agent, Fabio, but he didn´t have his cell number. He told me to hold on, while he tried to track it down. He then made a couple calls, got the cell number for Fabio, called him for me and put me on the phone with him.

Fabio just came by Mohammad´s place about an hour ago to pick up my passport to take it to Brazil immigration. I´m sitting here waiting for him to come back and trying to figure out how much I should tip Mohammad on top of my internet bill (he waved me away earlier and told me I didn´t owe him anything).

There are plenty of times I love being on the road. And the people are usually at the top of the list of reasons why. It has been a really good, though long and tiring, two days to get here.

Can´t wait to see my ship in another hour or so. And get some sleep.

Offline for about 11 days or so. And then get ready for lots and lots and lots of content. Do me a favor -- tell a few of your friends -- I still need more eyeballs ;)

Bus Rides

I am going to write more about the pros and cons of traveling the world mostly by bus, but as I just got done with a 58 hour trip from Cuzco, Peru to Santiago, Chile and its 7 a.m. here and I can´t get a hotel room for a few hours . . . I shall throw down a few thoughts.

Movies (or music) on the bus: For most people reading this back in the States, this might be an odd choice to start off a discussion of 10+ hour bus rides. You (and I before the trip) would figure that the biggest concerns are how to sleep and make sure your stuff isn´t stolen. For those of us that have taken some of these buses -- there is no other place to start.

The first 24+ hour bus trip I took was from Guayaquil, Ecuador to Lima, Peru. I sat in one of the first few rows of the 2nd floor of the bus (some of them are two story jobs, with first class seats on the bottom floor, with the driver, and the bathroom down there and the regular seats -- which are still nice -- are up top). On configurations like this, since the driver is down below, there is a huge window up front where you can look out at the scenery and the oncoming traffic.

This is not always a good thing.

This particular bus driver was like almost all the drivers I have experienced in Latin America, which is to say, slightly insane. Double lines, signifying no-passing zones, are completely optional. In fact, I think most bus drivers just take them as challenges to try to pass multiple vehicles at once. Up hills. Around corners. Visibility to oncoming traffic?? Nah -- the power the force will propel you to victory, Luke.

So my options were to watch this driving lesson (and some admitedly great scenery) out the ´big screen´of the front window, going from floor to ceiling, all the way from side to side on the bus or. . . . a remake of ´The Hitcher´ on the small television screen right above the window. O yea! And while we are talking about movies, let´s mention the volume. High. Very high. My iPod with the fancy earplugs that are supposed to drown out outside noises does generally work, if I put the music volume up high enough, except to drown out --- loud screaming from people being murdered in horror movies.

Essentially my choice was to watch fictional people get killed on the small screen or to perhaps watch myself get killed in the big screen. Would the soundtrack of the movie somehow coincide with the live version action??

And while we are at it -- why on Earth would anyone ever want to remake ´The Hitcher´?? Wasn´t the original movie bad enough? Is there really a need for an updated one? Hell, I don´t even think the original one is 20 years old yet.

´The Hitcher´was followed up by ´Die Hard 6´(or whatever the last one was -- 6 feels about right) and then a Wayans Brothers movie that I am quite happy to have no idea what the title was. It was about one of the Wayans brothers playing a midget who poses as a small child to steal some stuff from a rich family that takes the ¨child¨ into their home. I´ve never been so happy to see a movie in Spanish, so I couldn´t follow the dialog.

That was the evening portion of the bus ride. The next day brought ´Severance,´which is a U.K. slasher film. The first scene in this picture was a group of people traveling -- in a BUS -- that gets lost in the middle of nowhere. Obviously everyone leaves the bus and all but about three of the dozen people die horrible deaths in the next two hours. After that film came ´Shutter,´which I thought might be a good picture. I recognized a couple of the actors, though I don´t know their names. Turns out that it was a Japanese horror movie -- one of those types that pretends to be some big psychological twister.

Next movie was ´Dead Silence.´ First, I´m not kidding. These films all came back to back to back. Second, you get get the jist from the title, in this case a ventriloquist´s puppet kills off whomever gets it his/its way. I moved to a seat directly under the TV, so that I couldn´t see it, put my iPod volume on high, and tried to read a book until we got to Lima.

On the music front, here was the playlist from one part of my bus ride a few days before from Lima to Nazca (the songs were listed on the TV screen as they played, so I was able to write them down): Alejandro Sanz, Bon Jovi, Christina Aguilera, Erasure, Flash Dance, Johann Sebastian Bach and Leann Rimes. Played alphabetitically, of course.

Quite an interesting mix.

My latest bus ride was a 30 hour trip from the border of Peru and Chile to Santiago, Chile. We left at about midnight, so we only got one movie last night -- ´The Dark Night´ in Spanish. I have now seen this movie once in a U.S. theater and three times in a bus, in Spanish. I really didn´t like it any of those times, but at least it wasn´t a horror flick right before I fell asleep (O yea -- forgot to mention two things: first, I have an incredibly active imagination, which is why I hate horror movies, and second, the common side effect to the anti-malaria medication that I am taking is that it promotes very active dreaming.)

As we woke yesterday morning for a full day on the bus -- the first time I was to go a full calender day, from midnight to midnight, on a bus -- we got some other big budget U.S. movie in Spanish, with Spanish subtitles. I frankly can´t remember it, but I was happy it wasn´t a horror movie. Then we started a TV festival for the rest of the day. Three television shows that were shown back to back to back, and then another episode of each in sequence again. And again. And again.

The first show was a Latin America show called ´Gags.´ It was a latin version of ´Candid Camera.´ Funny little pranks and stunts pulled on people on the street. It was actually pretty amusing and easy to follow, since they were all sight gags and dialog didn´t matter. Then came repeats of one my favorite shows, ´House´, and in English to boot. VERY nice. It gave me a bit of a home-on-the-couch feeling. After ´House´came repeats of. . .

´Fresh Prince of Bel-Aire.´

Is Will Smith just Chile´s answer to France´s love for Jerry Lewis?? I will let you make the call.