Pirates Of The Caribbean

When the Spaniards first colonised the Americas their primary interest was gold and silver. Initially taken directly from the local civilisations, such as the Aztec and the Inca, and then extracted from the rich mines of Potosi, Guanajuato and Taxco. Once every year two great convoys of ships would sail from Cadiz to Havana before splitting up, one heading for Portobelo in Panama, and the other to Veracruz on the central Gulf coast of Mexico. For centuries these were the only Spanish ports in the Americas allowed to trade with Europe.

Even for Latin American standards the pace of life on the Caribbean coast is slow. It may seem idyllic, but the heat, humidity, sand flies and mosquitoes

Albatross

Melbourne was the end of the line for me as far as my Australian adventures were concerned. Nevertheless I still had a crucial job to do: sell the car. Having never owned a car I had assumed that this would simply involve placing an add online or in a hostel and then just sit and wait for the deluge of offers. Sadly it wasn't to be. Posting the ads proved to be quite straightforward. Online was naturally easy and took just a matter of minutes whereas with the hostels I had to print out flyers and individually put them up in each hostel.

Although I had been to Melbourne before and my car shenanigans, I still took the time to do a little sightseeing, such as visiting the Royal Exhibition Hall, the only extant world exhibition building from the 19th century.

Oecussi: Life In The Parking Lot

From Kupang there are daily buses that connect directly to Dili, East Timor's capital. That, however, would be far too simple, and for those who know me well, know that I never do things the easy way if it can be done in a far more complicated fashion. Instead I set my sights on the small East Timorese exclave of Oecussi sandwiched into a small slice of the north coast of the island by West Timor (although theoretically it isn't even a real exclave as it has access to the sea). I've always been fascinated by regions that are separated from the main body of their country. How did they arise? are they viable? what are the connections like with the rest of the country? Do the people identify with the rest of the country or want to be apart?

A traditional house from the western half of the island (including Oecussi). Note the very low door.

Exotic Souvenir

On the ferry to Surabaya from Makassar I started to feel a little unwell. I thought it was due to the kretek smoke that was permeating the cabin and thought that some sleep and fresh air once on terra firma would be all I need to feel better. Unfortunately that wasn't the case and the first day back in Surabaya the dull, throbbing headache that had developed aboard was joined by a vice-like sensation behind my eyes and pain in my joints and muscles. I had a sneaking sensation and after looking into the symptoms online and getting a second opinion I was certain that I had picked up an unwanted souvenir in the Moluccas: dengue.

An Aedes aegypti mosquito, the vector of the dengue virus, biting an unsuspecting victim (actually, given the a photo was being taken of it the perhaps the victim was suspecting after all). [Photo from Wikipedia.]

Climbing Kerinci

Travelling down the interior of Sumatra you get a good sense of its size and relative wildness. The Trans-Sumatran highway is a joke: barely wide enough to let two trucks pass, winding along the hilly spine of the Bukit Barisan mountains and potholed, you'll be lucky if you achieve an average speed 40lm/h. It gives you plenty of time to watch the surrounding countryside go by. Small, dusty, farming villages with their adjoining rice fields, vegetable patches and banana trees alternate with large chunks of forest spilling down to the roadside from the wild, green mountains. Encroachment onto virgin forest is a problem as the human population of Sumatra increases and demands greater space and resources. Nevertheless this is still a haven of biodiversity and is the last refuge on earth of some of the world's largest and most majestic animals: the Sumatran tiger, Sumatran orangutan (slightly different to its Bornean cousin) and Sumatran rhino are found nowhere else on earth (actually there is a small population, estimated at 25 individuals, of Sumatran rhinos in Sabah). Naturally it's difficult to get out to the places where these animals live, and a sighting is as likely as winning the lottery. Instead I decided to just go for a hike in one of Sumatra's three main national parks.

Statue of a harimau (Sumatran tiger) guarding the road that snakes through the tea plantations to the Kerinci National Park and the iconic volcano that lords over the surrounding countryside.

Dangerous Island

Sumatra is a dangerous place. It's not the inhabitants though, but the island itself. Something deep down in Sumatra, more fundamental, geological, doesn't seem to like people. I've already mentioned the Boxing Day earthquake, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. There have been at lest half a dozen serious ones since then claiming a few thousand lives. Slightly further back in time southern Sumatra was host to the largest volcanic eruption of the past 180 years when the Krakatoa (aka Krakatau) volcano erupted violently in 1883. The explosion, which was heard up to 5000km away, became the first worldwide media sensation, claimed the lives of over 36,000 people, plunged the world into an ash-induced winter for several years, and even had a film made about it.

Intricate decorations adorning a traditional Batak house in the Toba area.

Putrajaya, Pants, And Other Ponderings

So, getting from East Malaysia to West Malaysia by boat didn't work out either. My German couple were ready to take me with them, and even wanted to go to Singapore. But it just didn't seem like it was meant to be as they discovered their boat had a leak and were forced to leave it in Borneo themselves. I'm sure Charley Boorman didn't have these problems when he was filming By Any Means, but then again he has his own BBC film crew and lackeys to organise his itinerary. Kuching was getting boring and 16 days really were enough. I had seen all I wanted to, and had begun to get itchy feet. With a heavy heart I headed down to the airport as soon as I got the bad news and bought myself a ticket to Kuala Lumpur (although, as an aside, I did get to do something that I had dreamt of doing for some time, namely turning up at an airport and just buying my ticket on the spot).

The famous Petronas Towers which I revisited 7 years after my first trip here.

Risk And The Perception Of Risk

Most visitors to the Philippines do not visit the southern island of Mindanao. But then again neither do Filipinos who live in Luzon and the Visayas. Not because they can't afford it (although it's true that many can't it is possible to get a cheap, budget airline ticket from Luzon to Mindanao for only $20 or less, well within the reach of the burgeoning Philippine middle-class), but because they are afraid to. Mindanao is home to various separatist rebel groups (such as the unfortunately-named MILF) and has seen numerous bombings, abductions and killings of foreigners and locals alike. For most Manileños it's a lawless, anarchic place with danger lurking around every corner, completely forgetting that the vast majority of people who live there are ordinary citizens just trying to get on with their lives (if it was so dangerous they would have probably left long ago themselves). I, however, despite the many warnings and looks of incredulity from other Filipinos, was determined to go there. Partly because I find that there is always a huge disconnect between risk and the perception of risk. Often when I mention that I have been to North Korea the first question people ask is "but isn't it dangerous?" to which I, in all honesty, reply that it is probably the safest country to visit as a tourist, even more so than Japan, South Korea or any European country (with the possible exception of Liechtenstein). The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office would rather err on the side of caution and advises against travel to Mindanao (see map below), but luckily I am travelling on a Czech passport and a brief perusal of their foreign office website I found no similar warning, so that makes it OK to visit then. My other reason for going to Mindanao is far more prosaic: the only scheduled international sea connections from the Philippines leave from the island. One south to Indonesia, the other west to Malaysian Borneo. I had lost in my attempt to enter the country overland, but I was damned if I was going to be beaten twice in succession.

The British FCO travel advisory for the Philippines. As you can see the vast majority of the country is considered safe. Only Mindanao is dangerous, especially the western part where you shouldn't go under any circumstances (only that's where my ferry leaves from).

Rucks And Malls

I had bought my plane ticket to Manila online with Cebu Pacific, the Philippines' answer to Ryanair. I had no problems buying the ticket, with the online check-in, or even with getting to the airport by midnight (my plane was scheduled to depart at half past one in the morning). What I hadn't counted on awaited me as I came to deposit my rucksack at the check-in counter and get my boarding pass. I handed over my passport and check-in printout. "And your return ticket sir?" I replied that I was not returning to Taiwan and that from the Philippines I was travelling onward to Malaysia. "But Philippine immigration requires that you show us an onward ticket." Ah... I tried explaining that I was planning to catch the scheduled ferry to Borneo and that these tickets were impossible to purchase without turning up in person. This failed to make an impression on any of the staff of the airline. So, with 15 minutes left before the end of check-in I persuaded the stewards to let me use their computers and quickly bought the cheapest online ticket I could find, one that I don't intend to use at all. I suppose it's an unofficial visa.

The streets of Manila are overflowing with life. Around every corner there's a hive of activity.

Taiwan 101

There are many different calendars in the world. Different cultures and religions each have their own, preferred watershed dates from which to start reckoning the beginning of time. For most Christians it's 2012, for most Muslims it's 1433, for Jews it's 5772, it's 1132 for Nepalis, 1390 for Persian Muslims and 2004 for Copts and Ethiopians. As you can see there's plenty of diversity out there and the Republic of China doesn't want to feel outdone, so they count their years from the demise of imperial China and the foundation of the Republic in 1911. This year is 101. Although the official year is based upon the Western, Gregorian, calendar, for celebrations and festivals it is still the traditional Chinese calendar that rules the roost. And that is why I have stayed in Taiwan so long.

A dragon dance, but with a difference, in Maoli. The dragons head is garlanded with firecrackers and during the dance  people throw more firecrackers at the dragon. It's very loud and smoky.

Climb Any Mountain (Just Take A Map)

In palaeontology the thin, iridium-rich, band that marks the K-T boundary is indicative of a cataclysmic event that wiped out the dinosaurs and changed the face of the world entirely. Similarly in archaeology, throughout Eurasia there is often a band of ash that is consistently found towards the beginning of the 13th century and which marks the Mongol conquests; from Novgorod to Nishapur and Kiev to Korea. They did a truly thorough job. Yet despite their prowess at razing cities the nomadic warriors were less adept at building them. Under Genghis's successor, Ögedei, they realised that their sprawling empire needed a capital and so they founded Karakorum. By all accounts it wasn't that impressive and housed mainly foreign subjects - artisans, merchants, clerics and envoys from all over the dominions, whilst the Mongols preferred to continue living in their gers on the outskirts of the city. One astounding aspect of the city, and the Mongol empire in general, was its liberalism and tolerance regarding religion. Buddhism, Nestorian Christianity, Islam, Manichaeanism and Shamanism were all represented and coexisted equally, each with their own places of worship. Something that European civilisation still hasn't really managed to properly do today.

Holding history. A fragment of 13th century, glazed, clay piping from the Karakorum ruins. Bits like these lie scattered around the site whilst most of the ruins remain under the soil.

Sorry For The Inconvenience But Our Country Is Closed. Please Try Again Later.

Travelling through Russia was certainly far easier than I had imagined. People were generally polite and helpful, the roads were of good quality all the way to the border, I had no trouble with the police (one did stop by me whilst I was hitching, but more out of curiosity and to have a chat than to try and extort money), and hitching was a breeze.

The gorgeous Altai landscape (even the people and the outdoor toilet can't detract from the beauty).

Kul

Kyrgyzstan is a land of mountains, but also of lakes (and also of horses, but I'll touch on that later). To get a true taste of the country, both metaphorically and literally, you need to leave the towns and cities - Bishkek feels like a relaxed, provincial eastern European town - and head for the hills, where the nomadic Kyrgyz soul resides. The first place I made for was Issyk Kul lake (a bit of a tautology as kul means lake in Kyrgyz). Talk to any Kyrgyz person and they will tell you that you haven't seen Kyrgyzstan until you've seen Issyk Kul, which is seen as the jewel in the country's crown. It is indeed a special lake. Although Kyrgyzstan is a small country, smaller even than Britain, the lake is one of the biggest in the world (10th by volume, and 7th deepest). For the landlocked Kyrgyz it is their beach destination and is suitably equipped with hotels, deckchairs, parasols and all other beachy paraphernalia. Even the water is salty. However, due to it's high altitude - 1600m - it's not particularly warm despite its name (which translates as "Hot Lake"), as a brief dip unequivocally demonstrated. (The name refers to the fact that, because of its depth and high salinity, the lake never freezes, even in the depths of winter.) This means that the "beach" season is very short, outside of which there's barely a soul to be seen. Not that I was particularly interested in taking a dip, the surrounding landscape is far more interesting to me. The lake is surrounded on all sides by tall mountains and in the east, on a clear day you can spot the challenging 7000m peak of Khan Tengri on the tri-border with China and Kazakhstan, lording it over the other lesser mountains of the surrounding Tian Shan range - not that I ever saw it as at this time of the year the mountains are almost constantly shrouded in a blanket of cloud, at least at the higher elevations.

A "popular" beach on Issyk Kul, framed by a spur of the Tian Shan mountains.

Orient Unexpress

Before I continue I would like to mention a little nugget of information that I learnt on Athos but forgot to put in my last post, and which also shows how the monasteries are no longer content with the spiritual but also stray well into the temporal realm. Among the Athonite community it is an open secret that Ratko Mladić, the Serbian general indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court in the Hague, is spending time at the Hilandari monastery disguised as a hermit. So, if anyone from the ICC is reading this, you know where to find him...

Anyway, back to the main narrative. From Athos my plan was to head east towards Istanbul and Asia. A rather straightforward task when you look at the map, but when I got off the ferry in Ouranopolis, fresh from my monastic sortie, the only buses were going back to Thessaloniki - definitely not the way I wanted to go and in grave violation of my First Law. Instead a brief consultation of a map in a nearby souvenir shop (being careful not to arouse the suspicion of the owner) showed that the bus was heading north (in the right direction) for 40km to the town of Stagira, before taking a right turn west (the wrong direction) towards Thessaloniki. (If the locations mentioned here are not familiar to you then you can consult the following map.) My course of action was obvious: get off at Stagira and keep heading north until I hit the main highway heading east. Unfortunately the map wasnt particularly detailed and failed to show the roads very well, or, for that matter, contour lines that would have informed me that Stagira was up in the mountains rather than at sea level where I needed to be. There followed a few kilometres trudge to a junction to where I wanted to go and an hour's wait as the traffic along the mountain road was sparse to say the least. I was anticipating a night in the Greek countryside but luckily I was finally picked up by a friendly couple who took me a good dozen kilometres past where they were actually headed to get me back to the coast and the main road at the town of Olympiadas, for which I was immensely grateful. And although it was only 6pm the last bus had already left and it was dark, so my hitching efforts were more out of lack of anything better to do than expectations of catching a ride. By 8pm I decided to call it a day and went in search of a spot to sleep. Since the day had been pleasant with blue skies shelter didnt seem to be an important priority and so I plumped for a large log in some abandoned wasteland against which to set up a very crude lean-to. A rather short-sighted choice as I was awoken at 4am by the ever-increasing pitter-patter of rain which made me flee to the safety of a large culvert whilst trying to keep my stuff only partially wet. The rain, interspersed by a few snow flurries, was to last for the next 6 days.

The massive, Byzantine-era walls of Constantinople might be 1500 years old, but they have withstood the test of time remarkably well.

The Usefulness Of Maps

From my recent posts it looks as if my time here in Romania has been a constant search for ever more obscure minorities. It may have looked like I had gone as far as I could with the Saxons, but I managed to dig out (almost literally) one more ethnic group despite having to travel quite far (almost 2000 years) to find them.

The name Romania comes from the Romans, which seems obvious enough. It is, however, strange when you stop to think about it. The Roman legions were only in what is now Romania for a mere century and a half before getting kicked out by the Goths. They did leave their language though, which has remained to this day, making Romania an island of Latin language surrounded by Slavic and Hungarian. But the Romans didn't stroll into an empty country. The land was home to the Dacian tribes who were not, by any means, simple cave-dwellers. Though in the end they still got steamrollered by Trajan and the Roman war machine. What I find quite amusing is the pride that Romanians have for being the descendants and cultural inheritors of both the Dacians and their Roman conquerors. For example the unassuming, regional town of Deva has both a statue to the Dacian king Decebalus as well as to his nemesis Trajan, just 200m further down the road (I'm not sure what either would have made of the juxtaposition).

The evocative ruins of Sarmizegetusa.

I Hate Mondays

When I was still gainfully employed I, like many of my office-rat peers, was not generally pleased when Monday came around and woke me out of my weekend-induced torpor with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Now that I'm on the road I am no longer beholden to the Mon-Fri working week and generally lose track of which day it is. Nevertheless I still manage to find reason to hate Mondays. It's common policy in many places, especially those not on the well-trodden tourist path, to close their musea one day a week, which usually happens to be a Monday. And so it was today as I ambled around Târgu Mureş, every place I wanted to visit (admittedly not many, but still) was closed for the day. So I was limited to just wandering the streets and watching the people pass by as I sat in the main square and basked in the rare October sun. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Back to Maramureş.

The road from Maramures to Transylvania passes some beautiful mountain passes, decked in their autumn raiment.

Polish. Impressions.

From Warsaw the road takes me south and east. The eastern part of the country is quite rural and relatively devoid of tourists. The summer colours are particularly vivid: the endless blue sky; the deep green of pastures and forests, now a mix of oak, elder, rowan and beech; and the gold of the rape and wheat fields (a growing number of which are just stubble dotted with bales of hay, signalling the imminent end of summer). Rickety buses, which surely remember the deep days of the Cold War, ply the pockmarked country roads between towns and villages, keeping the communities alive; even ricketier, rusty tractors labour in the fields. Chickens scramble about in the gardens in the villages. Young storks can be seen in the mornings, circling overhead, as they get flying lessons from their parents in preparation for the long migration south. The topography is also getting more wrinkled, a prelude to the Beskids that form the border with Slovakia to the south.

Sunset in rural southeast Poland.

The Problems Of Becoming Solvent

Poste restante is a great idea, and, before the advent of the internet, was the only way for people to keep in contact whilst travelling around like I am now. The basic premise is that letters or packages are sent to a post office in a given location and the post office will then keep the letter or package for a given time until the addressee comes and collects it. Courier services, such as FedEx and DHL, are also very useful in that they can deliver mail to pretty much anywhere in the world in just a couple of days. Sadly, as I found out whilst in Riga, the two systems are not mutually compatible.

A sumptuous Jugendstil door in a turn of the century house that has unfortunately been neglected.

The (Un)Talented Mr Jelinek

I believe I possess certain talents and character traits that help me in my travels: I am adaptable and have a pretty cheery disposition, which means that I view setbacks as just another exciting challenge to be overcome; I get on well with almost anyone; I have a reasonable ear for languages and am able to pick up a few basic words pretty quickly; and I have an affinity for maps and orientation so I generally know which way I am going. One useful skill I don't have, quite the opposite in fact, is a sharp, on-the-ball, presence of mind. And so, last week, whilst extracting funds from a cash machine in Tallinn, I just walked off leaving the card to be sucked back into the bowels of the dispenser. I, of course, was blissfully unaware until a few days later when, in a small town in the northeast of the country, I needed to replenish my funds and discovered that my card was gone. There followed 10 mins of stressing alternated with me (loudly) cursing my stupidity again. since it was a Sunday night I wasn't going to get anywhere fast and so I decided to calm myself down by going to a local bar to watch the (dismal) World Cup final instead. The next day required a radical change of plans. Initially I had wanted to go for a hike in the national park where I found myself before heading south to Estonia's second city Tartu via the town of Kunda (Czech speakers will know why). My Kunda plans, however, had to be shelved and I scurried back to Tallinn with the aim of finding the offending cash machine and retrieving my card - it was a long shot but had to be tried. Unfortunately I was out of luck and so had to phone my bank and cancel the card so that a new one can be issued. The only problem is that the card will be delivered to my home address in the UK and so I will need to co-ordinate with my mother and get it sent out to me somewhere along the road, which will give me an excuse to see whether this poste restante thing really works. At least I still have my credit card (for the time being anyway).

But back to the travelling. As well as the historico-cultural shift from neat Northern Europe to ex-Soviet Estonia (intriguingly many Estonians consider themselves as being part of Northern Europe in a bid to distance themselves from the perceived negative label of Eastern Europe) there has been an ecological change as well, as the more temperate climate has loosened the birch-conifer monopoly on forests, which are now more varied. The landscape is permanently green as the one thing that Estonia does share with its northern neighbours is a sparse population for its size. Summer is also unequivocally here as Estonia is currently experiencing a minor heatwave as every day I've been here has topped 30 degrees. Summer brings with it welcome trappings, such as swimming in one of the many lakes that dot the country and an abundance of forest fruit just begging to be picked, such as tiny, yet delicious, forest strawberries and blueberries. But along with the good comes the bad, and the hot weather heralds the sound of summer too: the slapping of exposed flesh as another mosquito or horse fly finds its mark. The latter are particularly persistent here and I've seen some that are up to 5cm long, veritable B-52s of the insect world and slightly nightmare-inducing.