You Better Belize It

Belize is an odd country. In pretty much every way imaginable it is different from its Central American neighbours. Geographically firmly ensconced in the Central American region, but culturally much more Caribbean. Surrounded by Spanish-speaking countries yet anglophone. It remained a colony until 1981 whilst the rest of the region gained their independence 160 years earlier. Though partly thanks to that it has been a haven of stability whilst all around there has been turmoil and strife. It's a midget in terms of population, with fewer inhabitants than the Bahamas and fully an order of magnitude less than its neighbours. But what's it really like?

Although I missed Belize's independence celebrations by a day the bunting was still up during the length of my stay (do they ever take it down?). Here you can see that there is still fondness and attachment towards its ex colonial master.

America For Americans

I did, finally, go to a national park in Costa Rica. It would have been scandalous not to. Though in the end it turned out to be neither cloud forest nor volcano, which are the usual natural suspects for tourists to Costa Rica. Instead I opted for a dry tropical forest at the Guanacaste biosphere reserve in the northwest of the country. Of course, with my knack for mistiming I of course turned up in the rainy season when the dryness of the forest is not really appreciable. The park is home to the standard roll call of mesoamerican fauna, of which, as per usual, I saw precious little. It's also an important nesting site for marine turtles, and the beaches can see thousands of females coming up to lay their eggs in the season. Instead I saw a few spider monkeys swinging directly overhead (which was pretty impressive), iguanas basking in the sun, and a whole host of crabs infesting the mangroves. I went with my host in Liberia, Laura, a young Aussie girl. A fascinating character who has the fortitude to follow through with her convictions to make the world a better place, she has spent time living in protest zones and organising activist movements. And although I don't see radical activism as a sustainable way forward, I admire her principles and how far she's prepared to go to defend them. It's perhaps fitting then that the national park is also home to the hacienda Santa Rosa, an ordinary-looking old farmstead (well, it was an old farmstead up until a decade ago when some poachers burnt it down, but since it's been lovingly rebuilt) that saw its own protest against imperialism back in 1856, in what was perhaps the most pivotal episode in Costa Rican history, when the Costa Rican army defeated the invading army of the American filibusterer William Walker. His name may not be well-known outside of Central America, but his episode is familiar to everyone here as the start of US attempts at hegemony of the region.

Red-legged crabs scurrying into their burrows amongst the mangroves.

Tico Time

Costa Rica is the most stable, prosperous and visited country in Central America. It's also probably the most boring. Named the Rich Coast by Christopher Columbus it proved to be anything but, with next to no mineral wealth, and not even much of an indigenous population to enslave it became the forgotten backwater of Spain's American colonies. This proved to be beneficial to the country's future stability as it made the agrarian society, made up mainly of immigrants and their descendants, more equal; unlike other Central American countries where a coterie of families controlled the vast majority of political and economic power. It was so far-removed with what was happening in the rest of the colony (it was nominally a province of the Captaincy of Guatemala, but had very few dealings with the leadership there) that it was informed of its independence from Spain by letter a month after it theoretically occurred. Fast forward to the present and Costa Rica has been spared the wars and internal turmoil that have plagued its coregionists. It also embarked on an enlightened, somewhat socialist (though don't tell the Americans), path. In 1949 it unilaterally got rid of its armed forces, the only country of any consequence to have done so in the world (the other ones are all tiny and usually island nations in the South Pacific). Then in the 70's, seeing that it had little to offer the world other than coffee and bananas, a conscious decision was made to preserve the country's forests in an attempt to lure foreign capital via tourism.

In a country devoid of historic monuments the rather ho-hum national theatre from the turn of the last century is the most grandiose historical building.

I Heard It Through The Grapevine

Getting information about where to go whilst travelling is always an interesting process. The first port of call for many (including myself) is some sort of guidebook. These are useful places to start, with a lot of info in a single place. A mistake many people make though is to view guidebooks as some sort of Bible, as the sole, unquestionable, infallible source of facts. Mistakes can, and often do, arise and should be expected. Not only that, but in limiting yourself to a single, popular source of data you end up following a well-worn path taken by many other travellers (an entity known as the Gringo Trail here in Latin America, and the Banana Pancake Trail in Southeast Asia), staying in the same guesthouses and hostels, and perhaps only interacting only with other tourists. Instead you should spread your net wide in your search for travel tips: trawl the net, talk to friends, other travellers, locals, read books and articles and generally keep your eyes and ears open.

Sometimes more than one source of information is required.

Journey To The Centre Of The Earth

Although Guayaquil is the biggest and richest city in Ecuador, the cultural heart of the country lies inland, in the mountains. The country is split down the middle by two parallel mountain ranges about 80km apart and peppered with still-active volcanoes, creating a long, high valley nicknamed the Avenida de los Volcanos (Volcano Alley). It is this valley that is home to the iconic peaks of Cotopaxi and Chimborazo (the latter's peak being the furthest point from the centre of the earth thanks to the equatorial bulge) as well as the cultural poles of Quito in the north and Cuenca in the south. The Incas also mainly stayed there when they came conquering through*, as they were not big fans of the lowlands.

The iconic domes of Cuenca's cathedral dominate the city's skyline.

Coming Up Blanca

When people ask me where I wish to go, I often reply "wherever I haven't been yet". I'm always curious about what is over the horizon, around the next corner, or on the other side of the hill. This is why, having already visited the south of Peru back in 2004 (can it have been that long ago?), I sped from the border straight to Lima, with only a brief stop in Arequipa to reacquaint myself with its pretty colonial heart. In Lima I had work to do though, and so stayed a little longer. When travelling for a long time things, inevitably, begin to fall apart. And so it was with me: in the few days following my departure from La Paz my watch strap broke, a drawstring on my backpack snapped, the zips on my daypack and camera bag gave up the ghost, one of the holes in my trousers expanded to embarrassing (and perhaps arrestable) proportions and, more importantly, the buckle on my backpack's belt snapped. The latter widget is one of the most important parts of a backpack as it transfers the load away from your shoulders to you hips and legs. Without it carrying your backpack for any length of time becomes agony and an unholy proposition.*

As you can see my the two outer tines of my buckle have snapped, rendering it useless. My boots have also taken some punishment, but will hopefully see me through to the end of the year (I just hope it doesn't rain much where I'll be going).

Not A Peaceful City

La Paz is not just the highest capital city in the world, it towers over its nearest rival (Quito) by a full 800m. It is a city that takes your breath away. Literally. People who fly in directly from lower altitudes often suffer headaches, pains and other symptoms of altitude sickness and need a few days to acclimatise. At ground level La Paz is anything but peaceful: traffic-clogged streets, old buses belching fumes, poor homeless sleeping on the street, rubbish. Yet I love this city. There is a vibrancy and industriousness that many places lack. A hearty snack (though often of dubious benefit to the well-being of your stomach) is only a few footsteps away, markets spill out onto the steep streets, Aymara women tend stalls where you can buy traditional herbal and folk remedies, from coca leaves to dried lama foetuses, old and new jostle for position on an all-out urban assault on the senses. Then climb up the hillside to El Alto (The Heights), the slum that has metamorphosed into a thriving city in its own right, and peer down at the metropolis, not quite unfolded, as the sheer valley topography creates creases and crinkles in the patchwork of brick houses. Terracotta is the dominant colour, shining in the high altitude sun, as most can't afford to paint or plaster their walls. And above it all, lording over the fine panorama, is Illimani, Bolivia's second-highest peak. Only down in the teeming calles of the city proper can you get away from its hypnotic presence. And then you wonder whether you're out of breath due to the altitude, or because of the view before you.

Illimani looming over La Paz, as it tries to squeeze into every last nook and cranny afforded by the valley topography.

Amazoning

The Gran Sabana continues for several hundred kilometres south of Santa Elena. The Brazilian border though is much closer. It's so close, and so porous, that regular taxis shuttle back and forth from Santa Elena and don't even bother stopping at immigration. I only realised I was in Brazil when the driver told everyone to get out and I had to walk back to the border post to get my entry stamp (I didn't bother with the Venezuelan exit stamp though, so as to save as much precious space in my passport as possible). The Brazilian savannah is much like the Venezuelan one: dry, dusty and sparsely populated by Pemon, the same indigenous tribe that lives across the border. The main industry consists of smuggling heavily subsidised Venezuelan petrol across the border and selling it in Boa Vista, the nearest town of any note. The Brazilian authorities probably turn a blind eye to it as it saves the government substantial sums of money and provides employment in an otherwise neglected corner of the country. It's a further 1000km due south before you get to Manaus, the first major city. 1000km and you're still very much in the north of the country. Brazil's a big place.

The grandiose Teatro Amazonas, an extravagant masterpiece of European high culture in the middle of the rainforest.

Lost World

The name Roraima may not be familiar to most people, yet nevertheless it is a place that is famous throughout the world. It is one of the largest and tallest of the hundred or so tepui that are found in southeastern Venezuela, spilling over into neighbouring Brazil and Guyana. Tepui are geological formations unique to the area (known as the Guyana Shield): large, sandstone mesas that rise many hundreds of metres, vertically, out of the surrounding countryside. When they were first 'discovered' by European explorers in the mid 19th century they fired the Victorian imagination. The remoteness and inaccessibility of these 'islands' in the jungle, along with the exciting new theory of evolution, led to fevered speculation as to what may live on their summits. The most famous example is Arthur Conan Doyle's book The Lost World where a group of explorers finds a surviving population of dinosaurs (or a more recent incarnation in the animated film Up). When real life explorers finally did make it to the top of some of these tepui they may not have found any dinosaurs, but what they did discover was no less incredible...

Roraima (to the right) and Kukenan (to the left). Still quite a long way to walk to get there.

Profits Of Doom

Whilst I was tramping in Fiordland I quickly realised that the month I had given myself for New Zealand was nowhere near enough. Certainly not enough to do half as many of the hikes as I would have liked. But, not being the master of my destiny on this occasion, there was little I could do but return quickly to Christchurch, retrieve my belongings, say my last goodbyes to Liam and Eila, and make my way to the North Island.* Although I was reluctant to leave the south so soon I was, at least, glad to experience the genuinely aestival weather of the north that allowed me to finally stow away my jumper.

Two ways of getting to Wellington: the Interislander ferry from the South Island (on the left), or on a huge cruise ship from Australia (on the right).

Sounds Good

As pleasant as New Zealand's towns might be, a visitor to the country would be severely short-changed if that is all they saw. There is less than a handful of buildings that surpass 150 years. In terms of style or architecture there is nothing that doesn't mirror some British style (except for a few Maori offerings, but more on that later). New Zealand's true allure stems from its natural beauty, dynamic geology, and unique flora and fauna. If you don't like or appreciate the outdoors then don't even bother coming here. And of all the wild places in New Zealand, the southwestern corner is the wildest, ruggedest, harshest, and undeniably the most breathtaking.

Views like this are what draw people to New Zealand. The Routeburn valley of Mount Aspiring national park.

Belum

I was now in the southeast of Australia, a part of the country I had already visited before, and I was alone. So what was I going to do? The answer was simple: party! Well, not quite. Over my years travelling and living in London (which is the 12th largest Australian city by population) I've accumulated a fair number of Australian friends whom I rarely get to see due to the obvious insurmountable distances. My little sojourn in the southeast would hopefully redress that, as the urban strip stretching from Newcastle to Melbourne is home to around two thirds of the country's population so pure probabilities meant that I would be able to see most of them.

A cliched photo of the Sydney opera house and CBD taken from the iconic harbour bridge.

Old And New, And Maybe True Blue

With my brother gone my father and I could revert to sleeping in the back of the car. We had a week to get down to Sydney for my father's departure and so we decided to forgo the well-worn coastal route through the beach resorts of Surfers Paradise and the Gold Coast, and instead we headed inland over to the dividing range before heading south into a part of New south Wales known as New England. The gently rolling green hills, quaint, tidy towns, and burbling streams, so uncharacteristic of the archetypal image of the vast Australian outback, dry, inhospitable, and probably out to get you.

The vast, untamed expanse of the Great Dividing Range at Gibraltar national park.

Coasting For A While

From the outback we had to quickly reach the coast as my entourage was about to expand substantially once again. My brother had also decided to come out and join us and we were to meet at the northern coastal town of Townsville (an odd, tautological name if you think about it). About 100km before reaching our destination we picked up a hitchhiker and since the roles are usually reversed I took the rare opportunity to do a good deed and help out another traveller. He turned out to be from Romania (although he initially said Transylvania as more people are familiar with that name thanks to Bram Stoker). As we progressed through our initial introductions it turned out that not only was he Romanian, but he had spent the past year in Indonesia studying Bahasa and was a good friend of Horia's. On top of that he actually knew who I was and had seen my blog before (and could even remember its ridiculous name). It seems that the world truly is getting smaller.

Iulius chilling with us at a national park. He's currently travelling throughout Oceania on his own little anthropological project to study indigenous and colonial cultures and their interactions (he had some great stories about his travels in Papua New Guinea). You can see his progress on his website, Southern Cross Badge.

Riding With The Stockmen

It was of course nice to see my father again after a year and a half and it would be good to spend "quality time" with him. However I would, by necessity, have to change my way of travelling to accommodate him somewhat, as it would be hard to expect someone in their late 60's to hitchhike and sleep rough, which would have been my first resort if left to my own devices, out of necessity if nothing else (Australia was already expensive seven years ago when I was first here, but since then the Aussie dollar has appreciated in value by about 40%, whilst prices have simultaneously gone up too, on the back of a gigantic natural resources boom, so that a simple overnight bus trip now costs more than my entire monthly budget in most Asian countries). The first thing that needed to be decided was transport: how are we going to get about this not insignificant country. Since flying was out of the question some sort of vehicle was in order. We weighed the pros and cons of renting and buying and decided upon buying our own vehicle, judging it might work out a little cheaper and, more importantly, give us more freedom and flexibility. It is a dream of many to buy a van, to be fully self-sufficient, and head off into the wild blue yonder. The reality though was that most of the vans for travellers on sale were either wildly overpriced or in such poor mechanical condition that arrival at our intended destination was akin to a spin of Russian roulette. So after discarding the poor pickings of Darwin's van offerings we expanded our search to estate cars (station wagons) in which it would be possible, at a pinch, to sleep in the back. Here the selection was far greater and of better value as it was aimed towards a more discerning, local market, rather than gullible backpackers. And within a day we had found ourselves a 2001, 4 litre Ford Falcon (a decidedly Aussie model not found anywhere else) that had been converted to run on LPG (thereby hopefully reducing our upcoming running costs).

With our trusty car, just before setting off, that, in flagrant contravention of Aussie backpacker tradition, we have neither painted with flowers nor given a name to.

Pics 2 (Asia)

It took me almost exactly 19 months to zig-zag my way from Turkmenistan through to Australia. As the largest continent, and cradle of civilisations there is plenty to see, taste, explore and experience. I have had innumerable encounters with unfailingly lovely people, made some life-long friendships, tried a plethora of strange dishes, witnessed some spectacular(ly odd) ceremonies, seen breathtaking landscapes, and learnt  much about culture and history that have allowed me to understand the world a little bit better (I hope). I also hope that this knowledge has made me a better, wiser person

Mushy introspection aside Asia has been an agreeably cheap destination (apart from North Korea) and I've managed to average a daily spend of £11, of which I'm quite proud. That average will definitely not hold out in the following months though. I've also picked out a selection of some of my favourite photos (in no particular order) from the past 19 months that I haven't previously used in any of my posts. Some of them perhaps have some deeper meaning or political significance, whereas other I just found beautiful. I hope you like them as much as I do (what are your favourites? are there any that you particularly like? If so feel free to let me know by leaving a comment.).

Mongolian girl.

When My Ship Comes In

Before leaving Dili for my little tour of the country I had spent a few days owing around town in my (misguided?) quest to try and get to Australia without flying, the elusive Holy Grail of overland travellers. In fact just before leaving Indonesia I had received an e-mail offering just that from a private yacht planning to skirt north around New Guinea and hit Australia's east coast. Unfortunately the timetable was such that I would have had to have gone immediately, thereby forfeiting the possibility of seeing East Timor and Caroline. Although it pained me the choice was obvious. So instead I had to resort to printing out some flyers with my contact details and going round the city's hotels, dive centres and other places where foreigners congregate in the hope of catching the eye of someone with a boat … going to Australia … soon. A long shot I knew, but in the absence of a marina where yachtspeople could moor and be easily approached it was my only hope. I didn't fancy my chances as the main sailing season had already passed; but hope springs eternal.Upon returning to Dili one of my contacts told me that a boat heading in my direction is scheduled to arrive the next weekend. And so I have made that my deadline: if I don't manage to get a ride on it, or with some other boat that may turn up until then, I'll cut my losses and fly. In the meantime I had to find a way to keep myself occupied...

The statue of Maria atop Mt Ramelau, Timor's highest peak, catching the sunrise over a sea of clouds. I could use some divine intercession to help me find a boat to Australia.

Here Be Dragons

My jaunt to Sumba completed I returned to Sape to join the well-trodden path to Labuanbajo. The town constitutes Indonesia's eastern outpost of mass tourism, as people from around the world flock to visit the islands of nearby Komodo national park, home to the eponymous dragons, the largest extant species of lizard in the world and dive in the renowned reefs in the surrounding national marine park. Being the wannabe naturalist that I am I couldn't not go, so I signed up and joined the queue.

A Komodo dragon in full swing, long, forked tongue out tasting the air.

Swimming With The (Jelly)Fishes

Sulawesi is undoubtedly one of the world's oddest-shaped islands. Sometimes described as resembling an octopus or the letter K. Either way, its trailing tentacles and testing topography make travelling time-consuming. Bus journeys rarely take less than 8 hours and the various boats that service intra-island routes have seen better days. The tenacious are, however, rewarded with spectacular views of jungle-clad mountains that sweep down to isolated bays with turquoise waters and some of the best diving to be found anywhere in the world.

Sunset in the Togians always seems to be gorgeous.

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.