Winter Warmers

Why moan about winter when its arrival is the best excuse for a holiday?

Us Brits, being creatures of habit, like to holiday in the middle of summer. Wary of mixing seasons, some are even encouraged by the long, cold nights to head to the ski-slopes, the one place even more wintry than what we’ve left behind.

But the ‘warm’ winter break has steadily gained currency. And not just for the well-heeled who take holidays like the rest of us drop Anadins. Why go away the one time the rain eases off enough to see our green and pleasant land without sporting a sou’wester and wellies? A week away at the end of January, for example, gives you something to look forward to while all around are contemplating the futility and blackness of their existence. And by the time your suntan’s faded it’s almost spring! Favourable deals for flights and accommodation off-season can be easily found though find out why first: monsoons and coup d’etats can become tedious and unsatisfying.

As September 11 may have scared many off travelling, bargains are likely to appear so you can help keep the tourist industry afloat as well as your finances. Holidaying on the hoof has its advantages. While it’s comforting to have a room booked when you’re new in town, you may want a little variety in terms of place, price and atmosphere. So why commit yourself  now when you might find attractive alternatives there? Local places not only offer the character ruthlessly scrubbed out of most hotel chains – they also tend to charge local rather than international prices.

And talking of such places – where better than an island which hasn’t, so far, let anyone build a single one of these cold, anonymous clones...

Lost Souls in Zanzibar

If anywhere is worth visiting for its name, it’s got to be Zanzibar. And if you are that impulsive you’ll be far better rewarded here than from that surprisingly cheap weekend away in Ulan Batur.

I first heard of Zanzibar when a character in a play I was reading claimed he’d sold his soul to the Devil there. I grabbed my atlas and was too, soon sold. To find it on a map you’ll have to look very carefully for a couple of small dots off the coast of Tanzania. Less than 100km long and a third that in width is Unguja or Zanzibar Island. Along with the smaller, and less visited, Pemba, the pair are technically part of Tanzania though largely independent, politically and culturally. 

Zanzibar is found by boat or plane across the 35km channel from the Tanzanian capital Dar-es-Salaam. It can also be reached by the same means from Mombassa in Kenya. Dire Slum, as one of my travelling companions affectionately called it, has less to recommend itself than Zanzibar. But it’s a good base for travelling onto some of Africa’s best safari parks such as the Serengeti or trekking up Africa’s biggest mountain, the snowcapped Mount Kilimanjaro.

After disembarking at Zanzibar town and getting that glamourous stamp in your passport, its Islamic culture is soon evident in Stonetown – the oldest part of town whose ancient labyrinthine quarters are now a world heritage site. Architecture built and influenced by the myriad of European and Arab traders is lent colour by the calls to prayer from the town’s minarets. The harbour bustles noisily and colourfully day and night – its modern traders dealing in carvings, artwork and fruits of the seas, their quayside stalls illuminated by the flames of the cooks’ grills.

The island’s history marks it out as more than just a pretty place. Two trades: spices and human, elevated the territory to a major market between east and west. Slaves were captured from east Africa to work on the island’s plantations or sold to Arab traders.
The arab influence was consolidated by the rule of the Sultan of Oman from the 1800s whose descendants were not overthrown until 1964.

Nowadays, the turquoise warmth of the Indian Ocean, the white sparsely populated beaches and its warm temperate climate makes it a genuine island paradise. The lack of established Western hotels makes it a destination suited to those interested in the place they are travelling to rather than the inside of a resort. That’s not to say luxury lodgings can’t be found – they just happen to complement the surroundings. But otherwise it’s difficult to bankrupt yourself.

People are generally honest and friendly. The hassle is relatively light though the tourist dollars attract some unwanted attention around the food and art stalls about the quayside and backstreets. Once out of town, the island has various idyllic settlements with basic, cheap apartments to rent. And once you’ve strolled along some of its pristine beaches you’ll realise how irrelevant the decor of your room is. Unsurprisingly, it’s excellent for diving and snorkelling though concern is mounting over reef damage.

Most people use Zanzibar town as a base for staying at one of the island’s beachside settlements or taking trips such as a spice tour or visit to one of the small nearby islands.  While the culture is clearly muslim, it’s one which exists in harmony with the Western visitors who are the island’s largest source of income. You can drink alcohol, it’s just that the locals, like most sober people, might not appreciate your frolicking drunk and naked in the town fountain, however wittily it’s done.

While there’s plenty of beachside entertainment, the emphasis is on relaxation. Sipping cocktails against a tropical sunset while waiting for another succulent mystery fish to do its turn on the barbecue can be repeated surprisingly often. A fish supper in Bermondsey struggles by comparison.

For good or worse, the world is shrinking in inverse proportion to the travel industry’s ever widening net. Zanzibar still retains a large slice of old world exoticism. And while it may capture your soul, you no longer have to sell it.

The Sorrows of Kilimanjaro

People don’t always go on holiday to relax. If they did, there would be little tourist industry around Mount Kilimanjaro. So what happens when you head for the hills with the minimum of preparation. Gareth Mason explains…

Few people climb Mount Kilimanjaro and then keep the story to themselves. Some, wordless but proud, wear the T-shirts. Others warn you not to take its challenge lightly, the grave nodding of their heads interrupted by a psychotic twitch which speaks more than words. Up to 80 per cent of trekkers don’t make it to the top, they tell you. Scary words like ‘death’, ‘training’ and ‘preparation’ were thrown at me while I stubbed out my cigarette and finished my beer the night before I went...    

I was careful not to sound over confident about my alpine adventure. I said the right things like: ‘If I reach the summit’ and, ‘well, of course altitude sickness can strike down any of us.’
But deep down, I thought differently. Had I not sprung with goat-like enthusiasm up the Andean heights to Machu Picchu? And much of my adolescence was spent running up hill and down dale in bleak English mid-winters. I’d even run a ‘team’ 24-mile crosscounty race in which I’d been tied by the waist to three other runners. It was awful. And then I did it again. So five days to climb a mountain and back? Surely no problem.

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Know thy mountain

Preparation is not my middle name and for good reason. It’s James, and to me, planning has always got in the way of a good idea.

So when I turned up at the gate to Kilimanjaro National Park, I was sure that the contents of my midi-sized rucksack would cover my needs. At first, I declined the offer to rent some gloves, a woolly hat and ski-pole. ‘I’m warm-blooded,’ I breezily told my girlfriend while the man in the kitstore looked at me with the narrowed eyes he reserved for idiots.

With commendable commonsense, my girlfriend told me that warm-blooded creatures are adapted to warm climates not cold ones, before shoving a balaclava on my head. She had decided not to join me on the basis that after the stories she had heard, she didn’t want to climb any mountain ‘that much’. Later, I realised she was onto something.

Booted and suitably equipped, I hauled on my rucksack – a harmless seeming action which caused an immediate ripple of amusement among the gathered porters and guides. My mistake? I didn’t even have to carry it! ‘Easy life!’ I rejoiced inwardly, my confidence now dangerously inflated.

Easy does it

The gentle walk up to the Mandara hut was a pleasant morning’s work. We strolled slowly onwards and up along the winding paths leading through the rainforest which hugs the lower slopes. Tramping over the root-strewn path, we passed close to where coffee was grown, orchids popped up and waterfalls gently flowed.

My mind was free to wander about life’s more trivial matters interrupted only by the odd monkey, either Colobus or Blue, and the odd group of daytrippers. These could be identified by their small daybags, large cameras and air of happy innocence. ‘Part-timers,’ I thought, inflated by the self-importance of my own mission. They were not to be confused with another species whose clumping rhythmic footsteps was usually heard some time before their bodies followed. These dirty, worn-out people with faces devoid of expression were less like a blank canvas than one which has lost meaning through being painted on too much. Near-silent walking machines, their movements were economical, simple and repetitive, mere shells of once enthusiastic tourists. 

I might have asked: What happened to these people? Where do they come from? But my guide Dismas’ understanding of English was different to mine and I would, no doubt, find out soon enough.

Three hours and seven kilometres later, climbing from just below 2000m to around 2700m, we arrived at Mandara Hut. The only pain I’d felt thus far was guilt at the sight of my staggering guide wearing my rucksack round his head like some kind of bizarre fashion accessory. Personally, I’d barely broken sweat and considered suggesting we carry on to the next stage. Fortunately, I kept my mouth shut and instead went off to read my book in the pleasant mid-summer sunshine.

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Despite failing to convince myself that 8pm was a normal time to go to bed, sleeping pills aided a surprisingly restful night in my shared bunk hut. My only problem had been finding the right bunk in the right hut when, last to bed, I crept in like a thief in a night, under a blanket of darkness.

Over a leisurely breakfast, I watched the other 100 or so walkers set off before our team of three followed. We were now supplemented by a cook, Tomasari. His enthusiasm to over-feed me improved my Swahili no end as I struggled to find new ways of explaining why I couldn’t finish the mounds of pasta and chips accompanying my many-coursed meals.

The second day took us 14km out of the forest and into open scrubland from which life sprang in bright bursts of colour in the form of exotic plantlife. Fire and rain has sculpted the landscape. Wide black swathes of burnt heather gave way to head-shaped clumps of mud – topped with mohican-like tufts of grass. Rising now for sharper, longer stretches, our route stretched into a visible far distance. Out of which rose the black and white peaks of Kilimanjaro: Mawenzi and Kibo.

It was around now, where the temperature drops to zero, that an unusual sensation crept up on my left knee. Mildly irritating at first, I walked with the leg completely straightened for the last two hours as we climbed the boulder-strewn path up into the clouds. When bent, it felt as if the surrounding ligaments had been stretched tight before receiving hundreds of tiny electric shocks. Apparently, it was my blood thickening – something I’m quite happy to have discovered later. Nobody commented on why half my body was engaged on a silly walk.

Head in the clouds

After five hours, we reached Horombo hut, perched on a hillside above a yawning empty space filled only by the cloud which swept past our faces. At 3700m, it was for me an all-time high, and explained my shorter breaths and the slower motion activity around me.

That night, a fellow trekker sensibly advised me that the slower you ascend, the longer your body  acclimatises. So our headlong progress ahead of the pack wasn’t so clever then? What’s more, everyone else seemed to be taking a day’s rest to adjust to the altitude. My bunkmates asked me whether I’d taken a course of Diamox for altitude sickness or done any training. I had to laugh, of course, but afterwards felt a little glum. Later a trained nurse, saw the burn on my neck left by the day’s raw, high sun. She winced like she was back in the accident and emergency ward.  

By the morning, my left knee seemed to have regained its ability to work as a joint at the expense of both my thighs. It seemed a fair trade.

At breakfast, I’d met two Australian girls on their way down from the summit. Both had been badly ill, one crawling her way up to Kibo Peak while swallowing dangerous handfuls of paracetemol and Diamox between regular bouts of vomiting. With this dubious medical advice, they gave me the few pills they had left over. Dropping one ‘D’, I booted up gingerly and set off for the dread Kibo hut. I had perused the guide book the night before and it made grim reading. A lot of walking, a lot less oxygen and 48 hours away from my next night’s sleep. I had nothing to do but walk and get used to the idea.

By day three, there is little to distract you from your task. Here, neither animal, vegetable or mineral live in any abundance – the big black crow-like birds are lords of the barren, rock-strewn wilderness they survey. The path stretches thirteen kilometres ahead to The Saddle which bisects the two looming peaks. Our bodies now faced the twin assault of the cold and a high, unblinking sun.  

I made a renewed attempt to pace myself. Previously, my intentionally half-speed moonsteps had still swept me past my fellow walkers. I’d even heard a mutter of ‘He ain’t so pole-pole’ levelled at me as I passed. It means ‘slow’ in Swahili and appears to be repeated for emphasis. So I figured my survival depended on adapting my stride to more pigeon-sized moon steps. It lasted about five minutes – the effort of deliberately walking so slowly was more of a strain than the ravages of altitude sickness.

The rise was more gradual now and physical effort became more laboured as we slowly reeled in the clusters of large boulders which monopolised the landscape. A sign stating starkly ‘Last Water’ summed up the desolation while the young guy who passed us had little positive to say from his stretcher. By the time we reached Kibo Hut, my head was pulsing with increasing urgency and I needed my arms to help lift my legs.

We weren’t here to stay the night, but I was assigned a dorm to lie back before our midnight assault on the summit. Photogenic sunrises apart, it’s said that leaving in darkest night stops people from giving up before they start by keeping them ignorant of what’s ahead.

My dormitory resembled a Great War casualty ward. The only words spoken were uttered in subdued muffled tones amid the bodies strewn about the beds. Several, huddled tight and shaking in their sleeping bags, lay with their faces turned to the wall, alone with their ugly symptoms. One was spoonfed by his porter, presumably before a priest came to administer the last rites.

By now, my brain felt as if it was roughly pinioned in a vice while being steadily pounded with a small wooden hammer. Over the next four hours, it got worse.

I pushed away my dinner and retired to my bed  to try and shut out the reality. Slipping in and out of sleep, I felt like I’d woken up on my kitchen floor after downing a large bottle of Tequila. But while Tequila abusers can counter its symptoms with water and sleep, climbing the summit now would be like getting off the kitchen floor and attaching myself to a moonshine whiskey drip.

Fortunately, by late evening the pain had eased enough to lessen the odds of my skull exploding. I didn’t need the alarm call to wake me a little before midnight. Like zombies, we rose silently from our private torment, as one.

Trouble at top

I took half a Diamox before setting off. I’d been told that it wasn’t recommended for youngish hearts but figured my head needed some kind of bribe before ascending new heights. A near full moon illuminated little to cheer us. The dark scree making up the final climb is broken only now and then by rocky enclaves. Some way up, reaching high into the moonlit sky, could be glimpsed a ridge. I assumed it was simply the end of one stretch of slope. It was actually the summit. Suffice to say, the distance was deceptive.

Our feet slipped through this loose surface making progress slow, inefficient and tiring – the thin air no longer an efficient fuel. The alternative was to walk so slowly it looked like you’d need a timelapse camera to record your movements. And with the cold plummeting further, I opted for what I knew best – getting it done as quickly as possible. As my heart threatened to crash through my rib cage, I was forced to rest every half dozen steps or so setting off again as soon as it calmed to a pounding thump. The contest between premature heart failure and frostbite was finely balanced.

We reached Hans Meyer’s Cave – a lonely rocky overhang which had offered refuge to the first explorer to reach the top. It looked like a good place to die.

This was when preparation began to mean something significant. With walking boots, gloves and balaclava a feeble barrier to the subzero temperatures, my corduroy trousers, extra jumper and thin waterproof top were proving a little lightweight. All I needed was a tweed jacket, monocle and pipe and I could have been a Victorian gentleman explorer.

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The 225 minutes of climbing were not what I would describe as ‘quality’ minutes though perhaps ‘character building’. To save me repeating myself, simply keep re-reading these last few paragraphs for the best part of four hours while sitting naked on an exercise bike in an icerink and peddling very hard. It was a bit like that, though the pain and views were far greater.

I welcomed the rocky snow-patched section which followed the scree as it indicated some kind of visual proof of progress. But this proved even harder work to traverse and itself seemed to stretch into infinity. My attempt to switch off all senses than those needed for walking caused an internal rebellion. Muttering aloud, I cursed the mountain and sun alternately, one for being there, the other for its absence.

But all of a sudden, totally unexpected, I stumbled onto one of life’s better surprises. Scrambling over a stack of boulders at what I had assumed was the top of the endless ridge, I  was confronted by a sign which read: ‘You are now at Gilman’s Point 5,680m. Tanzania. Welcome and Congratulations’. The shock would have numbed me it the cold hadn’t got there first. I had done it.

In an instant, all the demons which had whispered thoughts of failure over the last three days dissolved into the very thin air. But this sudden flush of elation disappeared after a couple of minutes of inactivity let the cold tighten its icy grip.

As sunrise was still 90 minutes off – far longer than I reckoned was needed to kill me – I almost went straight back down. The icy path to the opposite and higher end of the summit at Uhuru Peak looked precarious. With no light, and my relief at reaching this summit, I had little motivation to find another. Only when I realised that I’d have to go back down the hellish scree slope in the dark did I decide to go on.

We made steady progress to Uhuru Peak once I was half-sure I wouldn’t slip off the side of the path to my death in the crater beneath it. The sun finally answered my exhortations to rise as we staggered up to its flattish top, all 5,896m of it. Several other people popped up from different routes. Most looked confused.

Despite the beauty of this African sunrise, a few photos taken with my gloves off told me that this panorama would be best appreciated in an atmosphere less conducive to hyperthermia. Turning hastily to the four corners of the world, I took some final shots with shaky, re-gloved hands and entrusted the rest of the scene to memory. Here, on the crown of Africa, the only way was down.

It's all over now

The 2,200m 14km descent we made an hour after returning to Kibo Hut was not my idea of a celebration. But success and oxygen lent an extra spring to my step and a smugness which I failed to suppress.

I met, on the way down, those friends who had delayed for a rest day and survived thus far. I felt transformed now into the wise man of the mountain, dispensing sound advice which could be distilled into: ‘Don’t do anything I did.’ As I met the 30th such person, it occurred to me how less pleasant this would be if I’d instead become the inspiration for a parable of ‘the boy who went too fast’.

The rapid downhill walk home over the next day and a half rendered my stair-climbing muscles impotent for the next 24 hours. And I found out just how many layers of skin my parched lips had lost when I closed them upon a heavily-spiced chicken drumstick on my first evening back. More than I’d realised, my screams suggested.

But if the memories fade and the snapshots reel  me back into some similar enterprise, I will dust down my diary and remind myself of the horrors many of us put ourselves through for the sake of an ‘experience’. Then I’ll pull on on my tweed jacket, don my cap at a jaunty angle and just maybe... pack an extra pair of socks.

African Travel magazine 2001  

The Drums, The Drums

Even the citizens of Rio find Salvador exotic. Gareth Mason arrives on a Tuesday…

While we wait for our weather to decide between winter and spring, it’s little consolation to see pictures from across the world illustrating the hottest of parties. Swallowing unnatural quantities of chocolate at Easter hardly compensates for that lost fun. But with a little planning, you could exchange this year’s frown for the widest smile on the next. Shrove Tuesday means church or pancakes to many.

To others, it is the hook on which carnival is hung, drawn out and quartered around the world. And cities, like Rio de Janeiro and New Orleans host one huge annual bash that tends to keep the flame burning for the rest of the year. This month we are focussing on one such place which even the proud inhabitants of Rio admit, under their breath, to being wilder than home...

In Salvador, second only to Rio for visitors, the crowds have swollen well before carnival. On land and sea, people come in their thousands, first to venerate their saints, later to dance till daylight on its beaches. Salvador, a city of two million, is state capital of Bahia. It’s often dubbed ‘Africa in exile’ – a legacy of the slave trade installed by their 16th century masters, the Portuguese. Here, African rhythms mingle with the smells of its food amid the hillside colonial architecture of the old fortified town.

While the Catholic churches are truly impressive – compared to the regular one’s agnostic tourists feel compelled to visit – it is Candomble, an Afro-Brazilian religion performed with elaborate ceremonies, dancing and drums, which has 1,000 temples dedicated to it. And if the drums don't get you, the berimbau will. You will hear this one-stringed instrument twanging along to another local institution, Capoeira. This is a bizarre part-dance, part-martial art developed by slaves from Angola now gaining currency in Nokia phone ads and leisure centres worldwide, and practiced by the New Yorker who took himself rather too seriously in the corridor outside my dorm.

Arriving towards the end of the (not very) rainy season in mid-August, what could I expect from a Tuesday night in Salvador? Preferring to be lost in the middle of an unfamiliar place than on its outskirts, I found a friendly bustling hostel in the Centro Historico, heart of the old colonial centre. The pastel coloured colonial buildings, now protected by UNESCO, have been fully restored and contribute the visual appeal to a city, which otherwise looks rather drab. The main churches are grouped around the square, one of which has a huge ceiling covered in gold leaf, another, built by former slaves, houses wooden effigies of black saints.

The bigger musical events usually take place here – one night here I saw local boys, Olodum, a carnival drumming group who starred on Paul Simon’s Rhythm of The Saints. This surreally beautiful quarter is part of the upper half of the city which looks down from high on the coast most directly connected by cable car. The docks and commercial area of the lower city look out upon a bay which extends over 1,000km and encloses 38 islands.

Up top, wandering early evening about the craft shops, bars and eateries of its close, cobbled streets, I met, without trying, my first half-dozen friends. Each one wanted to share a drink. And around now, I heard the first drums. I stopped for a kilo of food. In Brazil, you can buy your dinner by weight so you only have one person to blame for small portions. By sundown, bands popped up on the stages dotted about the quarter playing various samba strands including the home-grown Axe. Like most of the local music, it relies heavily on African rhythms pounded out by large troops of drummers. Swaying harmoniously down the narrow streets, the drummers face off against rival groups. All are backed by mobs of dancing followers picked up along the way. They didn't finish early. Nothing ever did. By the time the drumming stopped, the berimbaus of the capoeira classes heralded a new day.

During carnival in Bahia, they say there are one and a half million people dancing at any one time. And if you’re not around for Shrove Tuesday, you can’t go far wrong with a regular one, or a Wednesday, Thursday...

After seven such nights, through a surfeit of good times, I fell ill. I took a bus to deep inside the country and rested for a few days. But the drumming remained with me for some time.

Fashionline magazine spring 2002

The Complete Bankers

Wine, women and song are popular local options to part visitors from their money, but there’s a less fun and more expensive alternative. Gareth Mason learns the hard way…

Credit card fraud is big business in South America and many of the exponents in Quito are masters of their craft. And when you compare the Ecuadorian minimum wage with what can quickly be extracted from the average gringo bank account, the sophistication is unsurprising. Hidden cameras, false card slots, and well-practiced sleight-of-hand head the favourites. And a drug that removes the willpower of those whose drink it’s slipped into sounds like a collaboration between Fu Manchu and Professor Moriarty. (But actually it’s made in Colombia.)
My own personal financial tragedy transpired one afternoon at Banco de Guayaquil on Avenida Amazonas. It was a classic combination of audacious, planned teamwork, and criminal technology.

As I strolled to the glass-fronted annex housing its cash machines, a young woman drifted alongside me. I held open the door for her and she entered first. But instead of approaching one of the machines, she stood instead in the rear corner with her back to the wall, while waving me towards one of the vacant dispensers.

A minute later, cash in hand, I went to leave. But the door was blocked from the outside by a sweaty, gurning man, who pointed inside to a swipe machine on the wall beside the girl. With her encouragement, he gestured for me to swipe my card to open the door. Ever keen to help, I did it seven or eight times, up, down, back to front – I’d have performed a traditional dance if it helped. It seemed to work and the man opened the door as if I had successfully triggered the lock...

It didn’t seem quite right, so the next evening, I checked by bank account just in case…
Wealth redistribution is all very well, but 2,000 dollars in less than 36 hours exceeded my charitable instincts. My card had clearly been copied in the machine temporarily ‘installed’ in the bank. Every few hours, withdrawals were made up to my cash limit and well into my overdraft. Only on an academic level am I interested in how large the deficit would be if I had not pursued my paranoia instinct.

Less surprised were the bank staff where the heist took place – or in its main branch on Avenida Colon. My tale of criminal genius didn’t raise an eyebrow, let alone an apology, or the effort to pick up a pencil and record the details. ‘Your bank can get the money from our bank,’ I was told in a flat monotone by the woman from customer relations as she contemplated the more urgent state of her fingernails. We agreed on one point only – that the bank generally didn’t mount swipe machines on its walls.

Thankfully, she was right about the money. Within a few months, I got it all back. Many others have lost much more, and never seen it again depending on their bank and how quickly it was reported. Perhaps it helped that I wrote my own police report – stamped without being read – and in Spanish so deliberately bad that it wouldn’t make sense to anyone in England, even if they spoke the language, and knew where Ecuador was.
Not all card-carrying gringos are so lucky.

Quito Sun 2004

The Art Of Noise

Several years ago, snoozing in my sleepy English country village, my dreams were broken by the piercing scream of a car horn. It was the driver’s way of saying goodbye to his kids. He did it most days – each time around half an hour before my alarm clock went off. I didn’t own a shotgun (it was Kent – not Texas), but soon formulated several drastic (and violent) plans to bring this peace-wrecker to justice. By not getting around to it, I remained at large in the community for the daily loss of those precious 30-minutes of sleep.

Woken by barking dogs in Quito, the other morning, I realised I had learned some measure of tolerance. The dogs had been happily duetting with the cockerels since dawn – a cacophonic chorus supplemented by wailing car alarms. If excess noise is an occasional by-product of Western life, in the Latin world, it’s just another form of expression.

Conversely, in Rio one morning, I once sat outside a café while some huge paving stones were being dropped off the back of a lorry. As each concrete slab crashed against the pavement, workmen breakfasting alongside me banged their fists on the table and cheered, before returning to the excited babble of their pre-work conversation.

In Quito, meanwhile, the main players in this Latin symphony of noise are the cars and motorbikes. Their horns alert the surrounding world to everything from ‘Don’t even think about it,’, ‘I’m behind you,’ and ‘I don’t entirely agree with that overtaking manoeuvre,’ to a plethora of unfathomable philosophical outbursts. While Tarzan yodelled ‘Ungawa’ when he needed to herd elephants or get Cheetah to put the kettle on, the horn is used here as an equally flexible tool of communication.

Off-road, the pavements resound to the noise of street vendors selling their wares in voices pitched to distinguish themselves from the Latin audio soup. A man walks by broadcasting the English alphabet on a tape recorder at a volume which hurts more than it educates, while from a nearby bar, the extended bellow of a football commentator suggests the world ‘gol’ is spelt with 16 ‘O’s.

And as the global population grows and mingles, the noise pollution too spreads unstoppably. Even in faraway London, the soundscape is subtly changing. Now the embarrassed silence of passengers on its buses and underground trains is slowly being broken. The odd whispered sentence here, the occasional bellow of laughter there, and sometimes, outrageously, a full blown animated conversation. But these aren’t spoken in the accents of the home counties! For London has a growing Latin American population and this tide of immigrants flows with more vigour than the stiller waters of older inhabitants.

Golden silence is clearly an increasingly rare commodity. I recently disturbed my neighbours with some late-night music and conversation. The ensuing loss of neighbourly love and the break-up of my beautiful relationship with my landlord led to my seeking alternative lodgings.
Clearly, there are complex exceptions to the rules that I have yet to learn.

Quito Sun 2004

Plumbing The Depths

Sharks and deep water terrified Gareth Mason – so he enrolled on a scuba diving course off the coast of Mexico. Positive thinking or seaside suicide?

The island of Cozumel in Mexico claims to be the world’s most beautiful diving spots. After a couple of months backpacking through central America, I was tempted by its exotic Caribbean waters and budget-priced scuba diving courses at rock bottom prices. Mexico’s best, according to the guidebook, offered me the chance to confront two phobias: sharks and deep water. It was fuzzy logic from the ‘confront your fears’ school of thought.

Shortly into my first day’s training, laden with pipes and tanks, I wobbled unsteadily into the sea at Villablanca beach. After all, learning in a swimming pool with this wealth of underwater richness would be like hiring Pavarotti to play the spoons. Just six feet under and a new world exploded into life. Bright coloured, strange-shaped fish, sponges and gargonians drifted lazily past me with only half an eye on the floundering, clumsy figure who had joined them. Everything the ocean cradled seemed to sweep right up to the shoreline.

Cozumel’s waters are known for the intensity and shades of blue but the tableau becomes more dazzling when you dip beneath the surface where the brilliant sunshine illuminates the wide expanse of life. Snorkelling, let alone diving, is a spectacular experience. Those I recognised included a moray eel coaxed by my instructor Luis from beneath its rock-home and a barracuda with its dentist-free zone of razor-sharp teeth. These had gained local notoriety after the recent death of a woman snorkeler whose twinkling necklace was mistaken by the barracuda for the silverfish it usually dined on.

Underwater, my vocabulary was reduced to a dozen or so hand signs steered the chat more to ‘See that!’ and ‘Me no breathe’ than intelligent debate. One time, 30ft under, I was internally debating how to say to Luis: ‘You appear to be switching off my air supply. Can we can discuss this?’ His smile while I signed ‘out of air’ didn't encourage me. Fortunately, it was Part 3 of my latest test and he turned it back on soon after my breathing became laboured. In water, my mind struggles to retain more than two instructions. I learned to recognise Luis shouting underwater without hearing the words or seeing the lips. It was in the eyes and usually followed my latest attempt to drown the pair of us.

Around 20 years ago, I’d sneaked into Jaws underage. I still carried the mental scars. I'd find bungee jumping into a pit of giant cockroaches more appealing than being lost at sea wondering what just scraped against my right foot. But the first time I gently settled on the ocean floor, it all changed.

Cozumel’s stunningly clear waters offer visibility up to 80ft while water temperature, averaging 80 degrees Fahrenheit, matched the sweltering and humid temperatures above the waves. With the depths unveiled, there was no unknown to fear. And once comfortably gliding back and forth, the false gills of my aqualung seemed almost natural. A crap fish, perhaps, but a fish nonetheless. An off-shore hammerhead drifting in for a spot of gringo baiting would not have fazed my new-found confidence. Luis humoured me by telling me how to face an aggressive one. I practiced shark nose-bashing enthusiastically. Whether this aquatic machismo would have lasted if faced with anything bigger than the one which came with my action man deep sea diver, I may never know.

After three days training at the beach, we took the boat out to two of the 30-odd reefs to plumb the depths. The first, Palancar, is probably Cozumel’s most popular and like most of the island’s reefs is a drift dive. It’s around 30ft deep before disappearing into the gloom. The second at Chancanaab varied between 50-90ft before sharply cutting down into an abyss. Amid the scattered coral and sponges, shoals of small fish twitched this way and that dodging the larger mouths of indigenous creatures such as sea turtles, rays, groupers and amberjacks. Elsewhere, lurking out of our sight was the nocturnal Toadfish, unique to the island’s shores and a myriad of evocatively named associates from the Honeycomb Cowfish, Queen Parrotfish and Trumpet Fish to the Foureye Butterflyfish, French Angelfish and Cherub Fish.

Once I’d cast myself blindly off the boat, and worked out which way up I was, I drifted slowly down into the underwater kingdom – awed by its scale, stillness and silence. The dark, looming corrals and rock formations were palaces and homes to creatures of which I’d never dreamed. The overhead hum of the motorboat drifted off till all that was left was my steady inhalation of breath and the streams of escaping air.

Here as we slowly circled down I remembered my botched attempts at a controlled emergency ascent. Ascending from 20ft my lungs had emptied barely half-way up. So, what would happen at 60ft, I wondered, if some freakish accident befell me? I recited my options, decided four consecutive disasters were unlikely to follow and descended to new depths. I knew one moment of madness could book me an unpleasant session in one of the island’s two hyperbaric chambers. This helped focus the mind. Indeed, I might have worked harder at school if I’d been told that otherwise my lungs would swell to the size of a small hot-air balloon and my blood would fizz like Cola.

Spielberg’s monster is now banished from my nightmares – I'm a far greater threat to myself. And who knows, one day I may yet laugh in the face of a Great White. But I might want to work up to that.

Commissioned for Scuba World 2000

Inside View

Gareth Mason finds that visiting one of Quito's prisons is a sobering and cautionary dip into a very alternative culture...

When the prison door shuts behind you – you’re on your own. And that’s just the visitors. You soon find that the Ecuadorian prison system is somewhat different to what you find in Europe or North America. A vaguely organised chaos prevails behind those locked doors. Prisoners and visitors are free to wander from wing to wing, from foodstall to coffee stand, while yelling children charge about the women’s prison making a playground of their closed concrete home. Most of the foreigners jailed here have been sentenced for drug trafficking. Some are lifelong criminals, some incarcerated for a one-off job which went badly wrong. A few offer compelling cases to be set free.

It is not uncommon in South America for travellers to be set up by drug smugglers unwilling to risk their own liberty taking a bag through customs stitched full of cocaine. Being a gringo offers little immunity to the drug laws – where being a gringo means you almost certainly have more money to lose than the natives. Many prisoners are awaiting sentences long after they were arrested while many have lost considerable sums of money to crooked lawyers who took the case before hotfooting it with the cash.

Money rules life inside. This includes paying for the cramped shared cells and the digestible alternatives to the cauldron of greasy slop which serves as default prison food. Fresh food, books, cigarettes, toiletries and clothes are all gratefully received by the inmates, whether for personal use or as a form of barter. Many foreigners simply want company or news from home in a place in which they will always be an outsider. Visitors are considered sacrosanct in its overcrowded labyrinthine corridors and few who go are unmoved or not intimidated by the life inside. It’s a dark flip side to the pleasurable free life of most travellers through this colourful continent. Its true horror is how ‘normal’ you may find so many of its inmates.

Quito Sun 2004