Naples : Go west my boy!
We had planned on doing a Victorian Secret fashion shoot at the
New York : Tensing for the sprint south….
After the excitement of the previous night we weren’t up until late, Marie went out to buy a new phone while I lazed around. We went out for bagels in a cool little store nearby and decided what to do with the rest of the day. I wanted to go to a legendary camera store which was closed the previous day so we set off to walk most of the way there. It was hot and sunny again and, despite my protesting feet, another perfect day to spend in one of my favourite cities in the world. I was really going to be putting the miles in on those shoes, new or not. We took a subway a few stops since the store was going to close reasonably early and its a good job we did. The place was a mad house! Its jewish owned and run, which means its closed on Saturday so it was full of local shoppers who packed the place out. It was a huge store anyway and they stock everything. I got given a catalogue on the way in which was 3 cm thick and despite the masses of staff still had to queue to ask questions. I had wanted to buy a big telephoto zoom but I was still waiting on my last pay cheque so decided to hold off. I did pick up a nice point and shoot though which will now live in my pocket when I need something convienient to take with me. The store has a set of tracks that deliver the items to the assistant within a couple of minutes that is a wonder to see. They didn’t have the elusive backpack I was after though, that will be a job for ebay I think…
New York: New York Reality
Driving in Manhattan seemed easy enough on thursday night at 9pm but I was about to try it on a Saturday morning which was going to be fun. I gave myself plenty of time… I thought. The traffic was pretty heavy, I wouldn’t like to do this on a weekday, but I just had to go for it and cross my fingers. I was hopelessly lost after a while but Yoda knew where to go. I was thinking ‘when am I going to go over the bridge’ before I realised I was already halfway downtown and had missed the junction. It cost me less this time too as I missed all the rip off toll places that had cost me a fortune the night before. I saw Jax again on a billboard as I turned into the Theatre district which was funny. Glad to see she’s still working and has an excuse for not mailing me and inviting me to a load of model parties! :p
Boston MA: Wheeler Dealer
I was woken by Eric with the minivan ringing me up, his phone was dead so he only just got my message. I sleepily started negotiating, blah blah, broken AC, there is a better one with AC and less miles for $3k,blah blah, so I offered him $2k. He said he only wanted to go as low as $2200 which was ok, that would be fine so I offered him that and he said he would have to check with his wife (!) and get back to me. I said I needed a couple of days to get the cash from the ATMs as I could only get $600 a day. He said ok and I started looking for insurance. He phoned back to say his wife said ‘stop messing about and take the offer’. Cool. Seems like I had a minivan. Or not…
Boston Ma: Police Busts and Strip Jenga.
I had another fun weekend all told. I woke late on Helens couch and it was warm and sunny outside. I checked craiglist and there were now a glut of reasonable looking vehicles. Great.The distance they at was not so handy but I phoned one of them and the guy, Eric, offered to drive down to show it to me the next day. Cool. There were a few more but this one looked pretty decent and it had the advantage of a broken AC unit so would be a lot cheaper. I decided to go for a wander over and around Harvard and mentally prepare myself for the party at Tony Daggets that night.
(more…)
Back in the U.S.S.A!
Well I made it to the States, Boston to be specific, although I wasn’t completely sure it was going to happen. Customs and immigration were a nightmare and we got here extremely late on the Monday night. I had hitched a ride with the Boston crowd who had come down for the weekend and they were a good group to know. The previous night we had spent dancing until the early hours and I threw myself upon their generosity and begged for a lift. I had to get out quick before Daniella’s crazy room mate came back and knifed me in the early hours. I really need to check up on what I said still.
(more…)
Boston Invasion Party time!
Living near the center of Montreal with Daniella meant I could finally do some easy tourist things, but that didn’t really happen as we spent most of the day in Sex Shops. I didn’t get pictures. The previous day was really nice and we had hiked up to the Mount Royal which the city is named after to eat Ice Cream and watch the mad guy rant to himself in the sun. Plenty of tourists and a nice place to hang out, was maybe the last nicest of the year for the Canadians in that neck of the woods as winter had started its move south and wouldn’t be stopping for a while. They say in Montreal that the spring lasts for 2 hours it is so quick, I was hoping the fall would be a little slower.
Dancing in the Dark
Today was a great day in Montreal. After going to bed at 5.30am (gulp!) I woke up at 11.15 and set off for my cycling date with Daniella. I had been playing poker the night before with the Montreal boys and the time had literally flown by. How they all manage to stay up until that time and not worry about work I never found out, although I suspect Louis and Yorvis are secretly millionaires, Mikhael was between jobs and Andres was working afternoons. Never found out what Ben was doing, but in the morning he was gone. I only lost $10 over 2 games though and didn’t buy in, so I think my gambling problem is under control and now I have had a good practice for Las Vegas!
A walk in the woods.
The woods smelled of strawberries, but maybe that was just wishful thinking as the season was too late. Maybe it was the ones Daniella had brought with her, we ate some for breakfast, but not poor Mounia as she is allergic. Somehow we had managed to stay up until midnight and didn’t drag ourselves out of our tents until 11am. I had a cold night despite my down sleeping bag and crappy sleeping mat. Perhaps another couple of pairs of socks would have stopped my feet feeling like ice blocks.
Noodles, Drums and bad vibes
We managed to get out the Bates Motel for just after 11am, which was good, I just hope I get my $300 deposit back on my card sooner rather than later, ie not getting it when Im in Montreal. We cruised up to the backpackers but I couldn’t get in until 1pm so we headed up to Kensington Market to get some coffee and chinese food. Might have to go back and buy some clothes, they have lots of pimping gear up there. The backpacker look is so last year, vintage 70s gear might be the way forward.
Tried a couple of ATMs with my card but they all wanted to charge me a couple of bucks per transation. That was ok for me at the airport but not in the city, I found the RBC didn’t charge me later on so I will be sticking to them. I was broke though so I couldn’t treat Britni to the lovely mangosten they had in the chinese fresh food stalls. Im sure I can find some in Chicago, although at nearly three pounds a pound they were very expensive. Thailand has spoiled me 
I got dropped off and we said our sad goodbyes. Really great girl, I hope she gets back to doing what she loves, photography, as soon as she can, I could do with some lessons Was gonna be a long ass drive back to Chicago and she drives like a maniac so I hope she made it ok! She taught me a trick or two, and Im not talking about her singy-songy southern accent! More importantly I hope she doesn;t get sacked, first time she has had a sicky but it was Niagara Falls dammit with some great company, she had to come.
I moved into the Canadania backpackers which is downtown and then went for a walk around. I’m getting my bearings now after driving around the city for a couple of days looking for random things, I spotted the Toronto branch of the Mountain Equipment Company and made a mental note for the next day. Not that I can carry much more, I only really bought a sleeping mat and now it seems like I have no room and the damn thing fit on the outside! The beastie boys are playing this weekend too, but looks like I will miss it as hopefully I will be in Montreal by then.
Kaydi had invited me to the last drum circle event of the year so I got cleaned up and we rode the street car west to the park. Its nice she can take some time out of her last years study to show me a few things. The park has a big bowl in it and it was packed with hundreds of people playing the drums and maybe a thousand in total. Fire jugglers, people with glow sticks, people dancing… We met a couple of Kaydis friends from saturday and sat dinking wine and laughing at the girls in front of us grinding away at each other. Too dark for photos despite my camera, I really needed my flash but I wont make that mistake again.
They finished up at about 10.30 which Im sure the local residents appreciated as a hundred drummers tended to make a lot of noise. It was kind of strange to listen to it too as it was completely organic, Im not sure anyone was in charge and it slowly changed into different rythms as you sat there. You could hear melodies in the pattern too somehow. Very strange. Very cool. I walked west with the Kaydis friends back to their place which was over the Pizza Pizza as I was meeting some couchsurfer friends in a local bar although I was very late and I got my first sense of bad vibes on the way.
Some well built white guy with a mohican was walking towards us, minding his own buisness and it seemed like when he was 5 meters away he saw my camera on my shoulder so he looked at me, touched my arm as he passed and started saying ‘Hey buddy, can I get…’. I felt like I was about to be mugged, but I ignored him and just kept walking as he ran out of ideas of things to ask me for. I had no cigarettes and I wasn’t going to give him any money so why should I stop? So he could find an excuse to smack me?
We got to the bar a while later and I met up with Mark and Megan again, sadly I had missed most of the other people as it was a bit late but there was quite a good group still there and we even had a couchsurfing barmaid working the bar. A bit later she was very glad we were there. I also met Dave Smaller who said he was going to Montreal on friday so looks like I can get a cheap ride share there. The guy in my dorm room said it cost him $90 which seems a bit expensive.
Eventually there were just three of us left and we went out for a cigarette with Dani the CS barmaid and during the constant stream of panhandlers one of the other guys in the bar came out and started telling us his story which was kind of bizzarre. He said he had been back in Toronto 4 hours as he had been deported from the the UK for asking his clients in the defense industry where the WMDs were. His cousin had recently been killed by friendly fire and he had had enough. Seemed like a bizarre story, but the guy was very drunk and kind of emotional. I mostly believed him, but then he said he didn’t have any money for his bar tab, insulted Dani and lied to her about lending Mark $50 and lost any respect he might have just gained.
I guess if we see him on the news in a few days killed by the CIA there might be something in it. He was writing it in a blue binder about the general and the dutch protistutues it was his job to buy for them with his platinum mastercard. Very strange story.
These couchsurfers area lot mroe hardcore than the Birmingham lot as there are meetings planned for Wednesday and Thursday too. I can hardly keep up! Im not getting much sleep as it is, and despite being in a dorm in a comfy bed I had the usual dubious pleasure of beeing woken up by some noisy German who wouldn’t stop snoring. He would stop when I would kick the underneath of his bed but soon started again. At least I wasn’t up since 5am like the english guy in my room. I need to organise my pack and dig out my ear plugs….
Living the dream, stealing bandwidth and sleeping in my car.
Its going to be 6 degrees tonight apparently, not the best time to be homeless in Toronto, although the forcast is mid twenties for next week so things are looking up for the time I move into the hostel. After brunch my mission was to get a sim card and a sleeping mat, I typed camp into my tomtom and drove the 8 miles it told me to. Luckily it wasn’t a gay store, but what I hoped, along with a lot more shops in a plaza. I spent about 4 hours there going in all the shops. First I tried a news agents and the woman who was working looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language when I asked for a pay as you go sim card. I also found who to call to replace the ancient canadian sales tax refund I still had. $193 will come in handy, pity I dont have the intrest from 7 years on it.
I found a electronics type store and yes they did sim cards. My eperience in the UK on tueday spoiled me as it took about 45 minutes (with the assistant on the phone to the company) just to get me sorted out. They wanted loads of details and the stupid thing cost me 30 quid! With only $10 credit. Simply insane! Still I now have a local phone number although Im not convinced it wouldn’t be cheaper to continue using my o2 sim since I will only be here for a month or so. I will have the same nightmare in the US too no doubt.
I bought a power inverter too so I could charge my laptop in the mini van. I also spent some time discovering I could put all the seats into the floor so I can really stretch out, should be handy for the freeze fest tonight.
I got my sleep mat, tried to use the internet in a coffee shop but failed and then went for a sponge wash in the supermarket :p Loving life on the road, but I was staring to stink. I drove back into town and by chance parked up near an open wifi spot so I could send a quick mail and update my blog. I can see this being a perenial problem as I move about but Im sure I’ll get by.
I also got the address of a hostel and went down to book myself in for when my mobile room goes back to the rental company. The girl on the desk was shocked when I said I was sleeping in my car and said I could take a shower, which was very nice Compared to my week in the Gobi Desert I was doing fine, but she looked at me like I was scum
I’m just chatting to Tim at home and Kaydi who I met in Ireland last year. Shes a torontonian and I’ll be meeting up in a while for a drink. I’ve paid my parking all night and need to move at 7am so better not get too wasted. I think I better stash my stuff in a locker at the hostel too, getting robbed will not be a good move.
40 hours to go
and Im not packed, will be frantic tomorrow no doubt. My drivers licence arrived this morning so thats another piece of the puzzle. There are quite a few other things to do but nothing really major. Nothing I can’t sort out by staying awake all night on Thursday :p
Im sorting Sally out with my old computer so at least I have one regular reader, if only I can find someway to always make her homepage my blog Will go to see my 96 year old nanna for possibly the last time tomorrow, although Im secretly banking on coming back for her 100th birthday. Just as long as I get a return flight I don’t mind.
I really had better sort out a definitive list of stuff to sort out tomorrow, the packing can wait and all I really need is my camera, passport and cards. Everything else is immaterial. I just have to be careful I dont start thinking I can just start blowing my money as soon as I arrive. I need a laptop and also want a couple of lens but I will try to hold out until the el’ cheapo USA. This is all assuming they let me in, but then I can always hop back to Canada and look at my flight options. I also have to assume I will get into Canada with a one way flight, I better print some bank statements eh? One more for the never ending list!
Last day in the park
Still so much to do but I spent all day in the park playing frisbee and juggling. First we went to Big Wok in Birmingham for brunch. I can’t say Im a fan, you can tell if you should eat there from the patrons, and none were Chinese. I cycled up with Martin and Pepe, our new, and for me very temporary, flat mate and on the way back Pepe who had been in the city 2 weeks raced to the park in the most direct route while Martin tried to get me lost in the back streets.
Was a good weekend all things considered, but thats easy when your mind is on the day shift and they give you the weekend off from your last weekend at work. Very decent of them I think. On Friday I nearly didn’t go out, 3 days notice isn’t much to give people when you are leaving, Karl was busy, Jude called in sick…. ! but Pete Sparks was out so I hooked up with him and we went to see another work group who were celebrating Sam and Frans ‘career break’ years off. Very sensible, but since I didn’t have 5 years servitude wasn’t an option for me. We ended up in Oceana dancing until 3am, was kind of weird, 5 theme bars and 2 dance halls, but when the DJ shut up and started playing some good music I started to enjoy myself.
Now I just have to pack up all my stuff here, haul it up to Stoke, sort it all out for storage or charity shops and wait for my flight on Friday. I hope my diving card arrives next week. Come to that Im still waiting on my drivers license! I assure you I know what I’m doing
Mortgage and pension, the death of hope.
So, earlier in the year they announced we would be abandoning our current shift pattern and moving to 12 hour shifts. It was official, starting 1st June. My immediate thoughts during the presentation were ‘how much money do I have saved’ and ‘how many months do I need to work before I can quit’. Actually the prime consideration was to get anything possible out of the company before taking an extended leave, ie quitting. The new holiday period would start on the 29th of September, so that was my deadline. No holidays abroad while saving every penny; use my holiday at the end to cushion the awfulness of leaving all your work colleagues in the lurch. I booked 3 weeks holiday until the 29th of September, using up all my holiday left for this year bar 5 days I can carry over.
I had managed to build up a considerable amount of time in lieu at the beginning of the year. The company is loath to pay overtime, unless they’re really desperate, but you can work a day and have a days holiday. Its not like I was screwing them over this, I was covering people when they were off and working my shift recovery week and weekends. I was doing them a favour, overtime would have been infinitely preferable but impossible to get. When the new shift started I had 140 hours owed to me, of which my line manager was barely aware. He was barely aware of my second name most of the time, just someone to say hello to and hope I don’t ask him a question in ear shot of his manager so he actually had to do something about it. I swear the filters on his email account diverted all my mail directly to the trashcan because he would not answer any emails. Seriously. You only got a response if you CC’d his boss. It wasn’t just my problem either.
So when I point out all this time I’m owed there is mass panic, ‘we owe you 140 hours??’,'How is this possible?’. First there is the careful checking of the figures, they pull out old outdated lists of what they think I should have worked and it obviously doesn’t match. I’m not stupid, I entered all my time in the rota when I did it, its all backed up and untamperable by me, I filled in my time reported card and another manager approved it, most importantly I actually came to work so if they were really checking they could see logs of me doing stuff on the servers. When the rotas changed I was working my seven day shift, Monday to Sunday, 62 hours of fun. Come the 1st of June my rota had me down as working the very first shift, directly after my night shift. Um, 24 hours…. I don’t think so. And this was the start of the worst week in the new pattern, 6 x 12 hours over 7 days.
If I ever needed proof that the manager who thought up the rota really didn’t like me it was the fact I was expected to work 134 hours over a fortnight. He told one of my colleagues ‘there would be winners and losers’ in the changeover (with a smirk), well I wasn’t going to be his loser and said I would be having the beginning of the week off as my shift recovery week. When we’re going through the 140 hours owed they could only get it to 92, they put my shift recovery down ‘I thought you took that as a holiday’. So I have to book a holiday to get out of working a 24 hour day…
I did all this extra work between Februay and May and after they finally agreed that ‘yes, we owe you all this time’ the discussion turned to when I was supposed to take it. It was now around the beginning of July and both of my colleagues had the majority of July and August booked as holiday. So of course they say ‘you have to take it before September’…. um how? There is no way I can leave one ex-shift leaver and a new starter while I have August off. Besides, it needs to go higher for approval, they can’t just give someone a month off. I point out I have three one month holidays the year before and no one minded and they dont even seem to be aware I had been away.
‘Send me a proposal’ says my manager, so I of course I propose all of October. I get no reply after a few days, must mean he approves right? I mail him again saying my colleagues don’t mind. A few more days we’re on days and he calls me over to say that he has checked and no one else is off that month so I can have it. Sweet, 7 weeks holiday. I start changing the rota and one of my colleagues has a few days booked at the end of the month. What happened to ‘no one is off’. Oh well, I add my annual leave name next to his and say nothing. He’s a manager, he checked, he obviously knows more that me…
I have seven weeks booked, and had to give eight weeks notice. I think you can see the simple sum I needed to do. I was due back on the first of November, healthy, fit, tanned, after some great adventure… to go back to a windowless room working 12 hour shifts with no toaster*. It wasn’t all bad, my salary now was pretty good, I was spending little on rent, my car was a junker but good on fuel. It was easy to save money, the people I worked with were nice enough, lots of character but mostly cynical as hell. You throw enough money at people, get them on a good pension and they start paying a mortgage, you will probably have to wheel them out of the door. Mortgage, pension, pension, mortgage…. That’s the mantra under everyone’s breath when you’re trying to get through a 12 hour night shift on 2 hours sleep and the phones are ringing and servers are down. ‘We know!! (get off the phone so we can fix the bloody thing!)’.
I didn’t want to come back to this, the stage was set, I hadn’t breathed a word to anyone at work about my plan, all I had to do was make the decision and resign….
* Ok, I did set the fire alarm off doing muffins but who the hell puts a smoke detector in a kitchen? You need a heat detector.
I can’t believe it
I’m in shock… Someone left me a negative feedback on ebay! I was on 232 and doing so well! And for what? He bought some LCD shutter glasses and ‘Actually, I needed to buy a special converter for these to be effective at all!’. Yeah, the ‘special converter’ is a video card here in a box.
How annoying, but Im still on 99.6% positive and he has -1 :p I sent him a mail, I also have his address and I have a good mind to go around to his hick USA town and give him his £5 back (in 10p peices ). He’s on the map now….
Here is the mail I sent him, with luck he will close his account and the negatives are then wiped out.
Just a few pointers.
You shouldn’t leave someone negative feedback if you’re slightly unhappy. Did I misdescribe the item? Did it not turn up? Was it damaged? Did I really rip you off on the postage?
The answer to all these questions is ‘no’.
You bought something you thought would plug into your video card and would magically make all your games into 3D. Try doing some reading and research, it will only work on certain ASUS cards, which is what I wrote in the description.
I suggest you close your account and start again, people are wary of buyers who will leave negative feedback for no reason. You got exactly what you paid for but because you have no idea what you’re buying that somehow becomes my fault.
Welcome to ebay, I really hate having to give someone negative feedback, it just makes me so cruel, but its all I can do to keep unreasonable idiots like yourself away from everyone else.
Have a nice day!!
Mark
Salty Dogs
I got up at 11am and packed, checked out at noon but was pretty hungry. I woke up with a pain in my stomach though, it felt like there was a brick in my stomach, obviously something I had hadn’t agreed with me. I had a bit of a headache too, but no fever. Still, it didn’t seem like such a great idea going on a ferry for a day and a half if I was going to be ill. I generally don’t get ill when Im away, I had a few loose ‘movements’ the week before, but nothing to stop me from travelling, I was just getting used to the water and the food.
I needed a cash machine and breakfast so I started walking up the road into Adabraka, it was pretty warm but ok, even with my backpack on. I found an ATM but it didn’t take my card, by now I was 3/4 of the way to the Orangery so I popped in for some breakfast. Something was bugging me on the way, and I looked in my little backpack and couldn’t find my money belt. While I waited for my food I checked my big
backpack but it wasn’t in there either. Im not suprised as I never put in there anyway. I had locked all my stuff in a locker in the room, including my money belt but couldn’t remember taking it out. I ate and took a taxi back to the guest house, and it was propped up in the locker. Phew. It was getting on for 1.20pm or so now and I had to get to the ferry for 5pm or so, but plenty of time as I figured it would only take an hour or so to get to the pier. I got another taxi saying I wanted to go to the barclays ATM and then to the tro-tro station to Akosombo, I asked which station it was and he said he didn’t know but he gave me a price of 25,000 so I said ‘ok, you can ask someone on the way’. There aren’t that many stations in Accra and how would I know since i was the tourist.
We got to the ATM, the traffic was pretty bad but of course he didn’t ask anyone. We went around the block and I asked where he was going, to the STC station he said. I may be a tourist but I knew there was no bus going there so I insisted we go to the tro station. Past the ATM we went again and off to the Tamale tro tro station. The stupid driver got forced into the station by a bus right up his arse only to find it was the wrong station so then we had to turn around in the chaos and wait to get back out. Seems like it was third time lucky and we went to the station in the market and there was a tro to Akosombo. I gave him 30,000 and got out while he protested. He got out and started shouting at me, ‘uh oh’ I thought, but the people around asked what I’d been charged and where we went and agreed with me. Typical man, too macho to sak for directions but I’d be damned if I was paying the 40,000 he wanted, 25k was probably too much as it was.
The Tro was half full and now it was 2.30pm after taking an hour to drive about 3 miles (well, 6 miles with the route he took). I got a seat and sat there sweating with everyone else. The bus started filling up slowly, but not as fast as I’d like. Some guy got on and started giving a speech in English about how he was HIV positive and lost his wife to the disease and how his daughter was also infected. Ghana has lots of posters all over the place saying that people with HIV shouldn’t be stigmatised as it could be you next. Some people listened, most just talked and ignored him, i guess its a pretty regular thing in ghana to get a lecture on AIDS prevention while waiting in a bus. He said some weird things though, like telling people to take their own scissors to the salon when they got a haircut…. a razor, fair enough, but I dont think you can get HIV from dirty scissors.
After about an hour the bus was full and we pushed our way out of the market tro station, the place was like organised chaos but we got out somehow. Another guy got on the bus, I had to move seats to make room for his briefcase and as we worked our way through town and now the guys starts yelling some nonsense I couldn’t understand. ‘Amen’ everyone shouted back at him a few times, he told them a few jokes and got everyone laughing. Then, bizarrely, he pulls out some condoms from his pockets and gives a lecture and demonstration on their use. Wasn’t a complete demonstration of course :p Everyone was laughing, and even more so when he pulls out some femidoms and demonstrates their use too! Lord only know what he’s telling them, but eventually the lesson ends and he pulls out a big sealed box and starts going on and on about them. Heres me thinking they are the AIDS meds he as to take everday or something, but then after 15 mins building them up people start buying them all through the bus. He sells nearly the entire box, probably 30 small boxes at 15,000 each (£1). I get a look at one and its caffiene and ginseng energy tablets. They lap em up, can’t get enough of them. Then he pulls out some boxes of deworming tablets, gives another 10 minute spiel and sells one box. Something wrong with the balance of sales i think. Then he jumps off the bus and goes back into the city. I guess he makes a pretty good living.
The bus wasn’t running to the schedule I’d like though, it took an hour to get out of Accra so at 3.30pm I only have an hour to make the ferry, and I need to buy some food if I assume Im not getting anything on the boat. But the guy is not exactly breaking any speed limits, he keeps stopping to drop people off and then we have a 5 minute break as they pull all their shopping off the top of the bus, sacks of yams, new bicycles (the lad who got it was so pleased with his dad) but what can you do but wait and hope you make it. I saw a few mileage markers to Akosombo and amuse myself by mentally working out how fast we’re going, I figured it might be pretty tight as the pier isn’t actually in town but a taxi ride away. After multiple drop offs we finally get to the tro station by the market, I get a taxi to the pier at 4.30pm. Barring any major mishap I was going to make it and 15 minutes later, 15 minutes before the scheduled departure I walk up into the second class floor and meet Anna and Tua again. I guess they were getting worried I was going to abandon them, but it was not the case.
I dumped my stuff and went back out to buy a straw mat to sleep on, some bread, red onions, tomatoes and tinned sardines. At least I wasn’t going to starve now, and I wasn’t the only person with a brick sitting in my belly, we all had the same food the day before so it wasn’t malaria after all! The girls were sitting in the galley area, but it was pretty busy and pretty stuffy. I had a look upstairs on the bridge deck where all the cabins were and there were a load of ghanian soldiers and about a dozen tourists. Seems that was a better place to sleep so we moved up there and set up ‘camp’. I needn’t have worried about leaving on time though as we sat there for more than an hour loading more stuff up. I had charged my mp3 player with my new £25 charger (my third since I got one off ebay that broke and one from maplins that would have blow up all my gear if I had plugged it in, pile of crap) but it wasn’t up to the job and despite saying 100% charge only lasted for 10 minutes, same with the second set of batteries. The girls were gutted, but at least they have me for entertainment! Tua sat and wrote her diary while I played cards with Anna, and despite her assertion she was a poker champion I won every game. Shame for her she wasn’t playing poker :p
We set off and it was pretty flat, no wind, still no mosquitoes (Ghana was great for that, it was so dry there weren’t any, much better for my malaria paranoia) and down went the sun and away went the cards. Took them about an hour to turn the light on up on the deck so there wasn’t much to do. I sat and read on my phone, having a backlight is great for that. They started serving food downstairs and we went and got some, rice+tomato sauce+boiled egg; the staple of the galley. It was ok, and cheap plus they had cold drinks but it got a bit tedious after 6 meals of the same. We were promised omelette for breakfast the next day but that wasn’t to materialise.
I had told the girls to get the west side, i.e. the left so we wouldn’t have the sun in the morning but they had a blonde moment and had claimed the right side. No biggie I thought, I had a sleep mask anyway, but then the wind started picking up. It got quite blustery, and you could feel occasional prick of water on your skin. Rain or a bit of wind swept surf from the bow? 10 minutes later we got the answer as it started raining! Doh! We grabbed all our stuff and ran for the back of the boat where they had a big canopy, typically the German group on the left side (our side dammit! :p) just moved their stuff to the wall and stayed put. Our side got soaked! We sat at the back cursing our luck and after a while the rain stopped and the wind died down, but the side of the boat was soaked. So much for an early night! Still, nothing you can do, just hate the people that got there early and got a cabin (with AC!) 
We had to stop some Ghanian woman from stealing our mats twice, cheeky cow. We later learnt Sandra from Holland wasn’t so vigilant and had hers pinched. She even accused me! Of course I wouldn’t, but we made it a joke later when I kept apologising for pinching it. I wouldn’t have minded sharing mine with her though, she was lovely! The deck dried out a bit so we reclaimed our places and sorted out our gear, it was only 9pm but everyone started getting ready for bed. Looks like we timed it right as soon after they killed the light. Wasn’t easy to sleep, it was so early still. I read for a while while the girls played 20 questions. Seems they only knew pop stars and actors, all too easy, so I kept them going for 15 minutes with Neil Armstrong and Einstein. They were so puzzled by a person know for his travels and couldn’t pin him down to a continent :p After about 2 hours of annoying everyone else on the deck we went to sleep.
On the lake without a paddle
We got back to the bike and started off down the hill. I wasn’t a sealed road but was pretty dry, we passed several buildings and people would wave and say hello, making the occasional comment to Joseph as we passed in the local language. Someone was standing in the middle of the road and this is when it got a bit bizarre. As I rode towards him I moved to right and he moved to intercept, I moved left and slowed down to pass him as, har har, he was having some fun with the tourist. But as I passed him he grabbed the handle bars! Im guessing he could easily have pulled us over, but i pulled against him and kept my balance but he did something and the engine then revved wildly like I opened the throttle full and we sped down the road for a second. I instinctly pulled in the clutch and braked a bit, but not too much as the guy was now behind us. The engine was on full throttle and smoke was pouring out the back, i killed the ignition and rolled some more until we went 100 meters and then I stopped to kick it back up. The engine was still on full revs and some nearby chap helpfully pointed out that the throttle cable had been pulled out when he grabbed the handle bars and it was an easy fix to put it back in. Stupid bastard! If he did that to someone who didn’t have their wits about them we would have been shooting down the road and heading for a quick and nasty accident. Apparently the guy was the local nutter but Im very suspicious that he knew exactly what he was doing and wanted to see me lose it. Still it would do no good to go back and lamp the guy so we kicked her up and got the f**k out of dodge. We didn’t head right back to the main road and town, but took a detour to the crater of an extinct volcano that overlooked the town. We hiked up with some local kids and I took a few panoramic shots with my camera, as well as some pics of the kids which they loved. It was a ogod spot to look up to the three huge extinct volcanos overlooking south-western Uganda, northern Rwanda and south-eastern Congo. Indeed one of the peaks was the border for all three countries, which I will have to hike up one day. We rode back into town and I had been so trigger happy in the batwa village I had to go and back up my photos onto my hard disk. Its a great little item, and saves me having to carry multiple memory cards. Although if it gets nicked or dropped I will be heartbroken! We then went west past the hospital with the sealed road ending as soon as we’d gone by. The bike was a pain to drive with the gears being the wrong way around but I was getting the hang of it by now. It was a beautiful day and didn’t look like we would be getting the late afternoon rain which had drenched the town the previous day. We passed a couple of cops and waved hello, well, how were they going to stop me even if they wanted to :p We turned off onto a dirt track and went a couple of winding kilometers down to the lake, ending at a new guesthouse that was being built, alledgely with the aid of the swedish government… We walked around to a little jetty and Joseph was yelling across the lake to a guy in a dug out canoe. He paddled furiously towards us and pulled it up on the bank. He collected a bunch of small branches of trees to keep our bottoms (semi) dry and we wobbled aboard. Now my arse isn’t *that* fat but you had to wiggle to get your hips into the thing. I sat at the front, Joseph behind and the fisherma behind. We kicked off and went in search of some otters. Pausing only to collect me a paddle (whether to make it more authentic or to cut down the work load, I dont know) we followed the lake bank around to the ‘otters garden’ seeing planty of birds flitting around, bright red dragonflies buzzing over the water and fish splashing off the surface as we interupted their feeding. A couple of ducks dove in search of food and seemed to swim for ages before popping back up. Apart from the wildife there was no human sounds apart from the plop of the paddle in the water and my panting as I did some work! But no otters! We had to go about 4 km and didn’t see a sign of them. We pulled up on a small penisular with great views of the volcanos and climbed up to have a look. Joseph and the fisherman were chatting away and he told me it was for sale. He said it was about £2k, which seemed very cheap for where it was, but there was no road (or electricty, running water or mobile coverage). There were a few rows of various crops and apparently it was owned by about 4 farmers who were trying to sell their various shares. We took a few pics and got back into the canoe. I was sceptical but intrigued. On the way back my sceptism was abated somewhat by the fleeing glimpse of an otter in the distance. So they did exist and weren’t just made up to get tourists to a scam ‘for sale’ penisular.
The Gorillaz – kids with guns
My taxi driver warned me several times to be ready at 5am, he would be knocking on my door! I was up at 4.50, brushed my teeth, grabbed my gear and waited! typical, had he ran off with the deposit I had paid him or was he just useless? I called his number, nice waste of £2.40 to hear him say he would be there in 1 minute. Bleh! My mobile provider had also finally mailed me to say they wouldn’t unlock my phone as agreed theh day before I left as it was second hand. C**nts! He showed up and off went down some very poor roads. Very slow and no chance for any extra sleep on this leg, there were potholes and rocks galore. 5 am was a pretty stupid time to leave since we were there a good hour before time, I got him to play me some African music on the way up and he didn’t seem to mind the same 6 songs repeating about 10 times. At least it wasn’t Michael Bolton!
I bought him some breakfast, it was about a quid each and we waited for the other 7 people to arrive. Eventually a Australian Couple, Darren and Amanda from Brisbane showed up with their driver. Dressed in nice new jungle gear too! :p They took a lot of holidays too since they both owned their own businesses, and were usually independant travellers but this time they had opted for a tour. Fair enough, not many backpackers would be splurging £200 on an hour with some gorillas anyway! However I got the impression this wouldn’t be the kind of trip my mother would find easy, and the group we would be visiting were the newest and potentially most challenging to get to. The other 5 people never showed up and after a quick pep talk hired a couple of porters to carry our stuff and drove about 4km to the path. I guess I could have asked for my $25 park entrance fee back as I never actually went into the park because the gorillas had recently moved just out of it. They weren’t sure why, possibly because of competition with another nearby group but they were still pretty close.
We began the hike down the rather steep trail to the bottom of the valley passing through fields and past a few houses along the way. The gorillas are all guarded to protect them from bush meat poachers, and also keep them away from the locals who, as you can imagine, woud rather not have to deal with huge 200 pound apes eating their bananas and terrorising them all the time. We were also protected by a couple of guards carrying AK-47s, which was reassuring since we were only a few kilometers from the Congo, and a few years ago several tourists were killed in the same park by Congolese guerillas. Lots of dangerous types then! With straining knees we reached the steam on the valley floor in about half an hour or so, crossed over and walked for another 10 minutes to where the rest of the guards and guides were waiting. We could see their camp nearby and passed through a few old gorilla nests where they slept before. They were waing in a recently slashed and burned area on the hill side and we dropped our coats, staffs and non essential items, got hydrated and went gorilla hunting!
Well, it didn’t take long, about 30 seconds and there was a gorilla sitting next to the clearing munching away on leaves! He didn’t seem at all bothered by us, quite happy to sit and eat, posing for photos. Darren had a nice digital SLR with a good zoom, and I reckon he got some great shots. I blasted away on my little canon. 2 minutes of playing model was enough and he rolled into the bush in search of better food and less attention. We crossed over a rather tiny plank over a small gully into the uncleared jungle and found another gorilla under a bush also eating. I guess thats what they do best :p We got pretty close, about 3 meters and the guide hacked us a better path so we could see him better. There were other babies in the tree that we could also see, not too clearly but making a lot of movement. We moved back down the valley in search of the boss. We saw him briefly along with a baby, but he disappeared quite quickly and we carried on to the stream below. It was great fun, the jungle is no barrier if you’ve got a big machette and dont mind getting dirty. We were slipping down near vertical slopes and pulling ourselves through thick bush, sploshing in bogs and trying to avoid big holes as we clambered over big fallen trees. There was another gorilla up the other side over the river and we could see the bushes move as he pulled leaves from the branches but we couldn’t see him. It was ‘too steep’ to get up and have a look, but it wasn’t that bad. We set off back the way we came looking for the dominant silverback we lost just earlier. The babies were still swinging away, but you couldn’t get a good photograph.
We hacked a new path and found a way to the boss, Nkuringo, you could just see him through the trees. Our guide from the office, the little guy with the machette and Darren up in front about 5 meters away from us while I was gallantly helping Amanda through the brush when there was a mighty roar and Nkuringo stood up and confronted the 3 guys in front! I was glad I wasn’t in front as a fully grown male gorilla showing his teeth and lungs to you is probably not the most pleasant experience! Darren aparently got quite a shock (but no photos :{). The video was going and although I didn’t capture it I certainly got the sound! The guides were not too bothered though and just roared back at him, I guess they knew not to take any shit :p After we changed our underwear we sneaked up a bit more and found him happily eating away again in the clearing and you could see more movement in a nearby bush. We snapped away as the hour was nearly up and boy had it gone fast! We edged closer and Nkuringos son came out and started to play in front of us! Tiny little fella was rolling around and beating his cheat just a few feet away with his father watching patiently in the bush nearby. Cool!
We snapped away like mad until Amanda and my memory card ran out. Thank goodness for the video, which was better in the low light anyway. I had stupidly forgotten my tripod. At least I had spare batteries though! Eventually we had to go and left them in peace. Those gorillas are raking it in at £200 an hour, but what a great job! :p We hiked back up the hill, and I regretted hiring a porter but they made out it was miles and really difficult, which it wasn’t. Still Amanda had a hard time of it and they both had quite a trek to go as they had optioned a 2 hour walk through the NP rather than drive 5 hours around it. I was kicking myself for not being prepared for a lift north as they were heading my way. I had thought it possible but with my stuff everywhere and laundry being done it was not possible. Oh well. We got to the top and I went with them to the start of the trail in their 4WD, sending my taxi driver back to the office to wait for me. We had swapped emails and I promised to send them a DVD of the gorillas in exchange for their photos. Which is good because I suspect my photos were rubbish! They set off with their armed guards and since i haven’t heard about any tourists being kidnapped assume they arrived safe and well.
The cheeky s.o.b. of a taxi driver had accepted my suggestion I buy him lunch to the tune of 7,500 schilling, and told me there was nothing left to eat. I can believe it, the lying git would have cleared them out *if* he had eaten anything. It was impossible to spend 7,500 on lunch so my intention of tipping him went right out the window. Pity, I intended to give him more than he swindled out of me, pity for him anyway. And he cost me about 9,000 since i rang him when he was late! And he sealed his fate when we arrived back at the hotel and I struggled my bags, coat, sandals and various stuff off the back seat while he just sat there. When I managed to get it all in my hands he offered to help, nice one, goodbye….muppet! Back at the hotel, after i got over my heart attack over how much they had charged me for doing a few items of laundry I was soon tracked down by Joseph and we hammered out a deal for the following day. Local pygmy village, climb up a old volcano and off to see the fish otters in the nearby lake. We’d have a motorbike, I could drive if I wanted to.
I can’t wait for the weekend to begin….
Cos then I leave this god forsaken wet country! I went into town to get a guidebook (10% off, thanks fake student card ) and some boots. I think I managed to put myself off spending £100 for boots I might only wear one day. My old ones will have to do I guess, but they are 12 years old and kinda heavy. But I need something closed where Im going, at least for a while.
I came home and found my new hat waiting on the step. Stupid post office makes me collect an old t-shirt Chris sent me that would go through the hole with some encouragement, but a brand new £50 hat is left for someone to steal. Glad we’re in a cul-de-sac!
Had fun at work, Jude is always sending dodgy mails to people when I leave my PC unlocked so he gave me a chance on his and I took it. Nothing too bad, but he was livid. It will be fun and games tomorrow as he attempts to exact his revenge. But he who lives by the sword, dies by it, and I can give as good as I get…
Im walking in the Air
Today was the big day I was going to do something touristy! I didn’t get up
very early after getting into ‘The Da Vinci Code’ which I hadn’t read before.
After a quick lunch of egg sandwiches on the roof I jumped into a taxi for
the 40km ride to Kakum National Park. I got there for pretty much the last
walk of the day, flashed my student card for my discount and hung around the
museum waiting for my guide. We had a good chat about our lives while walking
up to the canopy walkway a couple of Canadians had built 11 years ago. It was
just us two which was great because if I was going to see any wildlife it
would be now since I knew when to shut the hell up was trying to walk
quietly. Didn’t make any difference really, the jungle was pretty dense. You
could occasionally hear animals moving around but you couldn’t really see
them. The most interesting thing on the way up to the walkway was one of
those ferns that bunch its leaves up when you touch it. Yawn.
The Canopy walkway was hardly the terrifying nightmare Anna and Tua had
described it, but then Im not really afraid of highs and it looked solid and
pretty new. If it had looked like a deathtrap I might have changed my mind.
You really need binoculars t see anything up there, there were a few
butterflies knocking around but not monkeys ad virtually no birds. Apparently
there was one but was taking a picture in the other direction and missed it
Doh. All in all a great trip :p Still, it was nice to get up in the tree tops
and see over the jungle. I got a few nice photos, I hope. I’d hardly taken it
out with me because its not much fun to have no subject to take photos of. I
was constantly seeing great things when walking around but it feels so
intrusive to whip your camera out and point it in someone’s face.
The waitress at my hotel had foolishly told me that she would send people to
‘Oasis’ if they had stopped serving food so I took her advice (and my custom)
and went down there to eat dinner. At least there were more people than
usual, but they were mostly speaking German so that was me out of the
conversation. Was a nice place by the beach though and they had a good menu
so I was happy. Having tourists mean that they actually had some food in that
I wanted to eat, as opposed to choosing from a small selection of what they
could be bothered to cook. I was told many times that there was no bananas,
pineapples or oranges. Its Africa for cripes sake, go onto the street, buy
some and sell them to me for a massive profit!
Back to Angkor (third time)
We’d arranged to be picked up the next day by the motodriver that had
hassled us all the way from where the bus had dropped us off to our
guesthouse, but that wasn’t until 4pm. Had a wander around siam reap, used
the net, off loaded a load of photos onto my portable harddrive, got
attacked by the rain, wandered through the market (all thoughts of bird flu
momentarily forgotten (there are chickens *everywhere*!)), sat in a posh
french cafe and had posh shakes (read same same, twice the price (you pay
for the orchid)). Back at the GH the usual plans to extort more cash from
the tourists began, ‘oh we’re early, we take you to shop first’ yeah……
was fun to see the one girl ring the bell and turn on the lights in this
huge shop and all the girls come running in case we want to buy
something…. we didn’t. Overpriced tourist tat! Still the drivers got there
commission, we wasted 5 minutes before we could buy our tickets to one of
the wonders of the world…. everyone happy!
You can buy your tickets the day before and get a free sunset (which is
nice cos it was the only one I was gonna get). We hung around the ticket office
until the alloted time and hit the temples. Didn’t have much time, it just
stopped raining as we handed over our $20 so it wasn’t gonna be much of a
sunset. We checked out the south gate, nice linked balustrade, with naga’s
on the end…. bah, look at the photos, nice, nice, but not very
spectacular. onto the Bayon, everyone’s seen it, huge pillars with faces on
all 4 sides. Its a nice temple, one of my faves, still a little run down,
they haven’t touched it for a good few years. More wooden walkwalks for the
less agile tourist, same magic. Great place. We basically stayed there
until it was nearly dark and headed back, getting my moneys worth on my new
camera. haven’t used it a great deal, kinda worried about it getting nicked
but its paid for itself now I reckon. Nice and small, 5mp, card is big
enough, fits well in your pocket and doesn’t look terribly expensive.
had to be up early the next day so didn’t want to overdo it, no pizza
adventures that night!!