On unlikely train stations
'While savouring the first meal to stimulate our taste-buds in four days, I wondered idly about the location of the train station we needed to return to Cuzco.'
While savouring the first meal to stimulate our taste-buds in four days, I wondered idly about the location of the train station we needed to return to Cuzco.
But as we paid the bill, a final twist in the trail presented itself. A low grumbling thunder – incongruous to our setting, but vaguely familiar – grew to a crescendo before slowly giving way to a high-pitched hissing and squealing that seemed to emanate from some strange and unexpected mechanical behemoth. The light from the front of the restaurant – which for some reason had no outer wall – was suddenly snuffed out. Blocking the view of the narrow high street, a full-sized train had drawn up alongside the building. Without batting an eyelid, our waitress suggested we better get on if we wanted to get back to Cuzco that night. We stepped from the restaurant into the carriage.
Such a wonderfully surreal surprise is a good argument for not reading your guidebooks too carefully. My better-read friends looked unperturbed. Their loss.
On suspect entertainment
'A climate of frivolity was intended, but the tension was palpable.'
The orchestral ‘tune-up’ proved to be the first song. The collective noise emanating from the corner might only qualify as music in some obscure atonal sense beyond my Western-tuned ears, but the fear in the eyes of the musicians willed us to find harmony where there was none. I suspected they were winging it.
Young girls and old women stepped out of the lengthening shadows to hunt down partners. As if playing the coy partner in a mating ritual, the foreign audience was collectively tiptoeing backwards towards the anonymity of the gloom at the back of the unlit room. The local ‘dancers’ forcefully took our hands, pulling us back towards the centre. They exchanged nervous looks before turning back to us with joyless glassy smiles. The eight-year-old who reached up to my waist gripped my hands with all her childish might and jumped wildly from side-to-side, while swinging our entwined arms upwards in series of random violent movements, creatively adapted following furtive glances towards her equally clueless peers. A climate of frivolity was intended, but the tension was palpable.
But then, quite suddenly, the equatorial sun slipped down over the horizon and plunged us into darkness. The cacophony continued and the crazed arrhythmic tramping of feet thundered on. With the crowd now reduced to a collection of confused shadows, Grainne, Johanna and I wordlessly identified each other and with a keen mutual sense of opportunism we slipped out the side-door before somebody found a candle. Now, we moved quickly, skipping down the hill like nimble goats.
Not all culture is good culture. Sometimes it’s not even culture.
On the lost village of San José
'The village was wreathed in the ankle-high fog of a Hammer House of Horror film.'
The village was wreathed in the ankle-high fog of a Hammer House of Horror film.
By the side of the road, I glimpsed a waist-high sculpture resembling a giant mushroom. The gentle ebb and flow of the fog revealed similar structures dotted about. The village was failing to win its battle with nature – held in the cloying grip of churned up clay and encroaching mountain meadows. The road was the capillary to which the village clung. It connected with Mexico proper – the trickle of lifeblood that gave it existence. Simple wooden bungalows littered patches of the street randomly, but there was no sign of human activity. But when we rounded a bend, a curious sight befell us.
‘Find the Italian woman in the house on the hill,’ Giovanni had been told by a compatriot, when buying weed in Oaxaca. This tip supported the myth and the reality of the village’s existence. Reality often disappoints for being more prosaic than the infinite horizons of the imagination. In this respect, the hill we found was unusual.
Like a pimple of magma erupted from an adolescent volcano, it was small, dark and perfectly formed. To complete the cartoon picture, its earthy whole needed a black Hitchcockian house etched against the night sky.
And funnily enough, it did.
Its slanting wooden silhouette burned with the blaze of human life from windows gazing down at the two grinning figures at its foot. It was the kind of hill whose summit undoubtedly holds an Italian lady.
On unusual border crossings
'We entered Mexico on our hands and knees. We scrambled up a slippery bank under the barrels of guns wielded by stony-faced soldiers glaring down from the ridge.'
It was an undignified arrival.
Like amateur trapeze-artists, we held our rucksacks above our heads to steady ourselves, before stepping gingerly off the narrow-beamed motor-boats onto the muddy shore.
We entered Mexico on our hands and knees. We scrambled up a slippery bank under the barrels of guns wielded by stony-faced soldiers glaring down from the ridge. They looked more inclined to take prisoners than issue visas.
The Guatemalan customs office consisted of a large shed of corrugated iron in which a pudgy-fingered official sweated over an ancient typewriter to record our details inaccurately, at the official sloth-like pace. It was a long queue, and his two-fingered technique suggested the bulk of his training lay elsewhere. Moving about us like a paranoid drug-dealer was a man with a wedge of bank notes thicker than War and Peace. He was the Bureau de Change.
On the Mexican side, the authorities were even less inclined to modernisation, but their methods were quicker. A single official scribbled down our details, prioritising speed over administrative accuracy. Alongside the diminutive customs shack, a shop sold tinned food and mangy fruit and vegetables. Chickens clucked about our feet on the dusty track to civilisation.
Here on the edge of Mexico, ten of us waited for the taxi we had booked in Tikal. The taxi that turned up several hours later had space for five. We crammed in muttering impotently about what we would say to the tour operator we would never see again. The 4-hour drive to Palenque was an experience to endure and forget. It’s hard to make friends while simultaneously defying the laws of physics, and avoiding shattering your front teeth with your kneecaps. Hell – as Sartre would’ve said if he had spent more time backpacking – is Other People in a cramped minibus.
On displaced arms dealers
‘Somewhat bored with my own internal monologues, I sought alternative company in a bar.’
Somewhat bored with my own internal monologues, I sought alternative company in a bar. My guidebook said it was one of the liveliest local spots, but its handful of customers suggested we were off-season. I drank a few Cuba Libras with two middle-aged American teachers – Suzanne and Harriet. A world away from home, they were frustrated only by the lack of a marijuana to help them giggle and forget.
We were joined by Gary – a compatriot with whom they shared a wary acquaintance, but little else beyond their nationality. I suspected they voted on opposite ends of the political spectrum. When he left the room, they warned me with whispered urgency to watch my step. Gary, it seemed, was ‘a little bit intense’.
Gary spoke terrible Spanish in a low growl. The barman – to whom he addressed much of his aggressive banter – looked nervously at the holstered handgun. Its owner was on one of his drinking sessions – a situation only enjoyed by him. He was also a bad drunk which is rarely a good thing with a man carrying a pistol.
My eyebrow rose in surprise when he explained that he ‘did a lot of work with the orphanages in the area’. I hoped this didn’t mean he was building up his client base. I asked him about his previous work. He told me, with a wry smile, that he had spent a lot of time ‘making good’ in Chad and Angola during the ’70s and ‘80s. Something rang a bell, but it didn’t peal loudly enough to stop me saying:
‘Doing what? Just backpacking about?’
He laughed involuntarily.
He hadn’t been backpacking.
The thought clarified in my mind that Chad and Angola were less on the adventure trail than countries that popped up under the Bad News Abroad section of the newspapers. Suddenly, working in orphanages sounded less ironic than a possible source of redemption for a Terrible Human Being. And Guatemala was perhaps not just a high-value retirement destination for Westerners, but an excellent place to hide from the international authorities.
On alpha males and tired guides
'He reminded me of a character in the film Animal House whom – according to the end credits – is killed by his own platoon in Vietnam.'
Blane belonged to the warrior class operating in the hazy world of army intelligence. Over lunch, I overheard my father politely asking where his unit was based. Blane’s stentorian response was incongruous for a luxury cruise: ‘Sector G, Zone 3!’ It may have been Europe, it may have been Central America, it may have been Timbuctoo, but he didn’t use our names for these places.
He reminded me of a character in the film Animal House whom – according to the end credits – is killed by his own platoon in Vietnam. His small-talk sounded like it was learnt by rote from a How to Lose Friends and Alienate People CD.
Towards the end of the trip, Blane congratulated one of the more volubly slick guides on his professional performance. ‘I like your style, Gilberto! Very informative! Very enthusiastic!’ he yelled with all the soothing affection of a drill sergeant waking a recruit. Gilberto, a young man with a future in multi-lingual PR, merely wiped the spittle from a face that had by now simply run out of smiles.
‘If you’re ever in Miami, we should meet up for a drink!’ Blane hammered on aggressively. Gilberto mumbled something about his unpredictable schedule. Like a spent mobile phone without its charger, he simply had nothing more to give. Even for tips.
On dangerous diving
'As the needle ground to a final halt, I pondered philosophically how much emergency air remains in the tank when all measurable indications suggest there is none.'
After 15 minutes or so, I watched the needle pass half-way on the pressure gauge, and creep slowly but surely towards the red. As it passed serenely into my reserve supply, I signalled to Sophia – by turning the gauge towards her and tapping its face to draw attention to its near completed downward plunge.
Considering we were still skirting the seabed, she was surprisingly unconcerned. A planned slow ascent was required to avoid my lungs swelling tragicomically beyond their natural boundaries as the pressure maintaining their natural form reduced. The appropriate metaphor for the bad end of this cautionary tale is a bursting balloon.
Perhaps this unexpected responsibility for my own breathing further increased my intake of air. Either way, the consequences were soon apparent. As the needle ground to a final halt, I pondered philosophically how much emergency air remains in the tank when all measurable indications suggest there is none.
Does the life-giving mix noticeably dwindle – leaving you gasping nostalgically for what is no more? The answer was negative – and came to me abruptly. It was very simple. One moment, like those preceding it – you have air. The next – you don’t. Your lungs become instantly jobless. Time, more literally than at any other moment in my life, stood still. My mouth froze in a rictus of unemployed terror.
We can, like a whale, exist for a small period without the luxury of breathing, but the time constraints are reasonably limited. Just about enough time, it proved, to make a grab for the leg of the instructor who till then might have wondered if I wasn’t a little bit too old to be quite so clingy. Having now gained her full attention, the slit-throat hand signal I never expected to use, sprung readily to mind.
Within a few seconds, I had her spare regulator thrust into my mouth like a baby’s dummy. Entwined with this umbilical cord of rubber, we slowly corkscrewed to the surface without further mishap.
Back on the boat, all came clear. While my gauge was in the red, she had simply ‘misread’ my gauge – a simple enough error. I laughed along mirthlessly.
On charming brush offs
'In their place stood a fearful vision of Colombian beauty, arms crossed, head shaking in disbelief, finger wagging in admonishment.'
I chose instead to express myself on the ‘dance-floor’ – a vague front-room space dangerously compromised by the minefield of tangled feet stretching out from the sofa. I danced Western-style; a solitary rebel among the tightly-clamped pairs.
Suddenly, the swirling couples parted. In their place stood a fearful vision of Colombian beauty, arms crossed, head shaking in disbelief, finger wagging in admonishment. As I slowed obediently to a halt, her demeanour softened somewhat. She beckoned me over with a dainty finger, her eyes mischievously narrowing. Abundantly curved, full-lipped and jutting of cheekbone, she was tightly and elegantly enveloped in no more clothing than was practically needed at a hot little party on a cool Bogotá night.
I explained I couldn’t dance salsa, but generally meant well. She explained that she could. And she could.
For the next hour or so, Marta led me a merry dance, the Kind leading the Blind, the Beauty and the Beastly. She spun me out and reeled me in so that I had no idea of where I was going or how I would get there. I experienced what it was to dance salsa well without knowing how. She danced with her friends, she danced with other guys, but each time I returned to the fray, she adapted her trained and fluent form to the music, sweeping my left feet along with her.
When, for the umpteenth time, she leant her face towards me, eye to eye, parted lips hovering a sixteenth of an inch from mine, I eased instinctively forward to kiss her. She pulled back gently, but no alarm clouded the radiance of her smile. ‘I have a boyfriend’ she told me with a huge winning smile, before sweeping me around once more with a delighted flick of her hand. It was the most charming and stylish brush off I’ve ever experienced.
On jumping off cliffs
'While the pedestrian dots in the streets got no closer, it was the tiny white curls of the faraway waves that brought back the fear.'
The wind had caught us. Like some flimsy bug held within its mighty fickle fingers, we were cast off into airy space. As the crumbling cliff-face receded beneath my dangling and redundant feet, the potential nightmare took a dreamy diversion up and away from the threat of a fearful plunge. While I didn’t really doubt our craft’s airworthiness nor its pilot’s abilities, it was good to have them affirmed. The adrenalin still flowed, but the raging torrents required to hurl myself off a cliff gave way to the gentle waves of calm euphoria.
Miguel talked about his love life.
‘I have three girlfriends – that is good, no?’
With his power to cut me loose onto the jagged rocks, I completely agreed. ‘A good number,’ I replied. ‘Enough for variety, but not too many to forget names.’
‘The latest is seventeen. You think that’s too young?’
‘How old are you, Miguel?’ I parried, while confusing the packed beach below with an ant’s nest.
‘I am thirty-five. She is very beautiful with lots of… you know…’
As we sought the thermals, he flourished his apparently free hands – clutching at the thin air for words to describe her nubile lines.
‘Curves?’ I ventured, settling down into the conversation.
‘Yes, curves!’ he shouted with satisfaction and a far-away look in his eyes. He took his hands off the frame again to celebrate the fact – much like a driver letting go of the steering wheel to discuss philosophy with a nervous passenger.
‘I love curves! Young curves!’
For the next ten minutes or so, we gently swept back and forth above the strip of land between mountain and sea. While the pedestrian dots in the streets got no closer, it was the tiny white curls of the faraway waves that brought back the fear. Endless miles of dark rippled blue, bar the odd mast to be skewered on.
He pointed to a landing spot on the beach in the lee of a smart hotel. The beach began to loom large with its stick figures now fleshing out to individualised life-size humans, while I dimly remembered the importance of the landing process, the details of which I’d largely forgotten. Perhaps because I hadn’t really listened, preoccupied as I was with what would happen if I stopped on the edge of the cliff and Miguel ran off it.
‘Bend your knees!’ he yelled, as the sand grains rose one by one to greet us.
I bent my knees. In one gentle thump our four feet soaked up our collective weight. We were down. Miguel unhooked the hang-glider in one neat movement. A small crowd of Japanese tourists applauded us enthusiastically.
Like moonwalkers returned to earth, we strode up the beach with our kit slung nonchalantly over our shoulders.
It was unclear which of us was the pilot. I smiled modestly and gave Miguel a congratulatory pat on the back.
On unhappy marriages
'Over beers, we cheerfully swapped stories until we were spotted enjoying ourselves by a roaming drunk. It’s a hazard, I guess, of socialising in public.'
Over beers, we cheerfully swapped stories until we were spotted enjoying ourselves by a roaming drunk. It’s a hazard, I guess, of socialising in public.
She was one half of an unhappy marriage. She sidled up to us simpering, slurring, and dribbling an oily mix of English and Portuguese. Her husband, she explained, pointing disdainfully towards an inscrutable man in the corner, did not please her ‘in any way’. She supported her judgement with crude, mocking gestures to convey the inadequacy of his manhood. Our audience was required to complete his humiliation.
Her performance signalled the end of intelligent conversation for the night – the rest of which we spent gently fending her off her encircling arms as she mumbled bitter-sweet nothings in our ears. Her husband showed no sign of being affected by the vodka-soaked vitriol cutting savagely across the hum of the bar. He sat – serene and unmoving – in his corner seat with just the hint of a sinister smile that suggested his revenge was just a question of time...
On insalubrious bars
‘We moved next door where the relationship between natural and manufactured sound was less extreme, and conversation a possibility. The infrastructure was similar, but the working girls younger.’
We moved next door where the relationship between natural and manufactured sound was less extreme, and conversation a possibility.
The infrastructure was similar, but the working girls younger. If the women in the first bar resembled mothers of a certain age providing for Catholic-sized families, most of the girls in its neighbour were barely in the foothills of adulthood despite messy attempts to fossilise their youth under thick layers of makeup.
When I returned from the toilet, a giggling cluster cooed and winked. I smiled back shyly, briefly giving into the daydream that an entire group of nubile young women were flirting with me. But the wiser part of me understood my viability as a potential punter. Unlike most of the resident barflies, I not only had the cash, but was sober enough to climb the stairs to a nearby boudoir.
Rather strangely – perched on a platform 20ft above the bar – sat a bedraggled man hunched over a giant pipe organ – the like of which might have graced a cathedral. But a cathedral sporting hard-core porn on screens that flanked its pulpit. His posture was less classical musician than creature from The Muppet Show.
It was hard to say how long he had been there. No obvious route to the platform presented itself. Marooned and forgotten, he now played only for himself.
On politics and football
'During the interval, the warm buzz of the crowd was disturbed by an unexpected visitor. A clique of suited heavy-set men had emerged from the rear of our stand. Their dark shades more usefully disguised their identities than kept out the sun.'
During the interval, the warm buzz of the crowd was disturbed by an unexpected visitor. A clique of suited heavy-set men had emerged from the rear of our stand. Their dark shades were practically employed to disguise their identities rather than keep out the sun. Within their protective huddle, a fat smiling man waved about him like a mafia capo dei capi daring his audience to defy him. For this was a different type of criminal, and one clearly deluded by power.
He had been identified as a particularly hated member of the government. But with safety in numbers – these bystanders could express their true feelings. Anger audibly rippled through their ranks. As news of his presence spread, the nearby fans turned their backs on the pitch to face down this real foe – deigning to rub shoulders with the common man. Arms were raised in unison to point down their object of hatred. From many voices, one chant emerged.
‘Corrupto! Corrupto!
corrupto! CORRUPTO!
CORRUPTO! CORRUPTO!
As the hostility boiled outwards towards him, the politician shamelessly pretended the abuse was adulation. To this dark new song, the good-natured mockery of the Paraguayan team bore no resemblance. It wasn’t going to fade away like the fickle distraction of a Mexican Wave.
Finally, the bodyguards – perhaps more objective in their perceptions than their boss – shuffled him away in a disordered retreat. I could still make out his pearly teeth – frozen now within a rictus of fake cheeriness as he retreated from the stage still manically waving as if compelled by some mad instinct – like a well-beaten boxer refusing to acknowledge the truth of the judges’ decision. Perhaps the madness was needed to do his job, but today, confronted by the awful truth, he was shown the boundary of his power. His lies could not cross it.
Seconds later, a whistle from the referee signalled the return to a game of football. The happy cheers returned. The politician was gone. The will of the people had prevailed.
He was not forgotten, but consigned forcibly back to his realm. The failures of the Paraguayan defence had brought rapturous joy to the crowd, but the public own-goal of one of their leaders left a bitter taste unsuitable for humour. In a grim campaign, it was a small but rare victory. For a few moments, the time, the place, the country, all belonged to them.
The Drug Trafficker
'‘I’ll sue you, and I’ll sue your newspaper,’ hissed Frank, leaning his gaunt face close enough for me to smell his sulphurous prison breath.'
‘I’ll sue you, and I’ll sue your newspaper,’ hissed Frank, leaning his gaunt face close enough for me to smell his sulphurous prison breath.
Frank was a commanding presence, and a threatening one, as he thrashed out his terms. He was clarifying how he would respond if I used his real name. This was no great surprise. Unless he escaped or bribed his way out ahead of his scheduled sentence – many former associates on both sides of the wall would rather he kept his insights to himself.
The Colombian gang, for example, who the previous week had stabbed, minced, and set fire to a prisoner in a neighbouring cell during some periodic riots. I saw the stringy detritus of the victim’s genitalia nailed above the door of the next-door cell – a grisly example of internal criminal justice. Their previous owner made the mistake of ‘cutting’ a fellow inmate with a strong support network. This superficial ‘hit’ perhaps netted him $10. In response for this outrage, the victim wanted bloody revenge, rather than counselling.
The knifeman must have been desperate or desperately ignorant, Frank reasoned, as the Colombian was left alive as well as being one of the more influential residents. The last Frank saw of his neighbour was of him being surrounded by a gang of men circling him silently with the grim intent of Shakespearian villains. Frank closed his cell door before half a dozen crudely-fashioned blades swooped fatally down upon their target.
On meeting the locals
'An urbane, suited and moustachioed American invited me to join a throng being assembled at the bar. He admitted to being an oilman who had once been Scottish.'
An urbane, suited and moustachioed American invited me to join a throng being assembled at the bar. He admitted to being an oilman who had once been Scottish.
Further details were not forthcoming; he was more at ease drawing other strangers together and subtly conducting the flow of conversation from a distance, almost as if he wasn’t up to no good. Something Machiavellian in his dark piercing eyes could not be fully shrouded by his warm and persuasive manner. If a pub had a secret service, he was undoubtedly its ‘M’.
Unsurprisingly, I have no memory of his name. With incontestable insistence, he asked me about my greatest journalist achievement. Put on the spot amongst a crowd of strangers, I stated that I had none worthy of the boast, but he wouldn’t relent. When I awkwardly muttered about my recent ‘talking live about a guinea pig beauty contest’ on Radio 5, his expressive eyes widened in disbelief.
‘But really?’ he responded with incredulity. Grasping to offer something more substantial, I stammered about an interest in human rights. He held his hands up in mock horror before comically clamping them over his ears. He gave the impression, for all his genial demeanour, that he found the concept of humans with rights quite beyond the pale. Later, the oilman made a suave exit. He wished us well with sinister charm and a significant look – perhaps the mere tip of the iceberg that concealed its true nature. My impression was that the next time things might not go so smoothly for us.
Returning home, I was interrupted when entering my room. A near-naked middle-aged Ecuadorian man was descending the stairs from the floor above. Momentarily surprised to be caught wearing little more than a self-satisfied smile, he paused, before drawing himself up with all the dignity he could muster. Our eyes met and narrowed together in recognition. A few days earlier, he had approached me, very drunk, in a café, and asked me to be his blood brother. He looked uncertain, not quite placing me, before reverting to bluster.
‘I apologise for my appearance,’ he said with typical Latin sensitivity for appropriate sartorial elegance and deportment. ‘But I am going downstairs to have sex with the lady on the second floor.’
And with his head held high, he passed on by.
On hints of trouble
'A prostitute grinned at me from a near toothless mouth and took my hand in an iron grip.'
A prostitute grinned at me from a near toothless mouth and took my hand in an iron grip.
She whirled me about till the end of the song, before I prised her fingers off mine, one by one. Her friend whispered a coquettish greeting in my ear. She seemed friendly.
‘Where are you from?’ I asked with schoolboy innocence. ‘Colombia’, she huskily returned, while seeming to say a lot more with her eyes and lips.
‘What kind of work do you do?’
‘Masajes,’ she replied, after giggling inadvertently and swallowing a smile. Lips slightly parted, she encircled my middle finger with a firm hand before applying a stroking motion. ‘Tu quieres masajes?’ I did like massages, but I had no aches and pains, so declined politely.
Morgan tutted disapprovingly at our undignified frivolity. ‘You guys should have standards,’ he said with a grimace. ‘We’re just dancing!’ I laughed.
‘Hmm.’ In his mind, other business was afoot. He had already warned Stewart.
‘See the fucker in the red shirt, huh?’ What do you think that fucker’s waiting for? He is strong, yes, but I would take… him… down.’ It was remarkable how many sentences this good-hearted Scandinavian could end with this apocalyptic phrase. And tonight, as prostitutes drifted across his vision, supposed revellers shifted position subtly about and around the dance floor looking, no doubt, to gain some strategic advantage when it all went off. He remained vigilant, assessing the threats, weighing up the real tough guys from those with muscles vainly sculpted in gyms, those that he could ‘take down’, if called upon now, as he’d done many times before.
All around, the crowd danced, sang and drank, as if there was no threat, no undercurrent of destruction bubbling up beneath the apparently innocent surface impression.
The club closed at two. Nothing had gone off. This time. Only Morgan knew how different it might have been. We departed to our beds peacefully, and blissfully ignorant. Somewhere close by, a small light blazed, illuminating the unsleeping sentinel, who is our ears and eyes.
On climbing mountains
'My misery plummeted further with the unexpected barrier of a crevasse materialising in our path.
My misery plummeted further with the unexpected barrier of a crevasse materialising in our path.
To me, it revoked the vague reassurance that the tariff of technical difficulty for the climb was negligible. Ironically, the crevasse represented descent, but a far hastier one than I craved. It also revealed the second aspect of my acrophobia – of falling helplessly into an uncharted abyss.I sat down for some minutes to contemplate the natural snow-bridge stretching across the gap, before calmly telling Abraham I would not be crossing it. It was a couple of feet wide and being ‘natural’ there was no accounting for its on-going capacity to support a human body. The depth of the crevasse remains unknown. The bridge spanning the void was the length of one long man and dipped down in the middle before rising to a steep slippery bank on the other side
I was painfully aware that I had failed to keep my footing when I had an entire mountainside to grip. True, I was attached to a professional guide, and one well-trained, I imagined, in catching stray jittery gringos. But how could rope skills defeat the laws of physics when his spare frame barely matched the weight of mine?
Two of the German climbers caught up, while I pondered neurotically. I waved them on, but they insisted I go first. The first gestured kindly enough, but I couldn’t tell whether it represented solidarity, sadism, or an opportunity for him to coldly make his own personal risk assessment. Staring at the narrow strip of snow ahead, I narrowed the focus of my gaze onto it – cropping out its surroundings from both my retina and mind’s eye. Numb with fear, I stepped forward to the brink figuring I had a one-in-three chance of falling in.
On getting lost in Quito
'The next morning, I set off to explore the old city, but spent most of the day haplessly circling it while perambulating its bleak back-streets.'
The next morning, I set off to explore the old city, but spent most of the day haplessly circling it while perambulating its bleak back-streets.
Seeking directions, I was offered a bewildering range of options from growing knots of debating locals. While familiar with my congenitally poor sense of direction, I was less aware of the courteous Latin habit of giving a helpful-sounding answer – correct or otherwise. Nonetheless, I was touched by their concern. One man insisted on waiting 20 minutes with me until I was safely aboard a bus. Several buses and a taxi merely brought me down more blind alleys. I walked alone through an underpass hewn into the mountainside – choking on the fumes of the hurtling traffic, before retracing my steps to avoid exiting the city altogether.
I stumbled across a wizened old man playing a lonely fiddle. The fiddle was as scratched and worn out as its owner and the awful screeching sounds they emitted sounded like the soundtrack to a shattered dream. Less profitable busking than a self-imposed public humiliation for his failures in life. As his playing endured, his symphony of profound sadness was accompanied by tears and convulsive heaving sobs. I threw my spare change into the battered dusty hat at his feet – mere pebbles in the deep well of his miserable despair. I had only been lost that day.
On Brits abroad
'With a surname that includes the word Angel – it was the loveliest of surprises to hear her sing like one. This I hadn’t expected when one night she snatched the microphone off the lead singer of a band in the Hot Potato.'
And then there was Tracie. Tracie had several other descriptive names, and from these monikers much can be learned.
Given, rather than christened, by the god-fearing locals was the rather sinister La Bruja Pallida, or The Pale Witch. Scary Tracie was another, possibly down to her rather forward manner when tired and emotional – an impression most out of keeping with the genteel ways of the average Latina.
Auntie Tracie hinted at the eccentric relative who might educate you in ways too radical for the common-or-garden parent. The possible irony inherent in Doña Angelini – in that nobody ever called her it without smiling – was the source for my favourite sobriquet – Donna.
With a surname that includes the word Angel – it was the loveliest of surprises to hear her sing like one. This I hadn’t expected when one night she snatched the microphone off the lead singer of a band in the Hot Potato. She had sensibly first imbibed a bottle of rum to calm any possible performance anxiety. I was relieved and touched in equal measure by the strength and sweetness of the alto that emerged from her usually X-rated vocal cords. It reminded me of that Susan Boyle moment, but performed with the panache of a plastered Amy Winehouse.
My first sighting of her had been clearing the floor of a party with a voice like thunder. I concluded I would be safest keeping my distance. The second time, we were introduced formally by MJ on a busy Saturday night high street. I was intimidated less by the stentorian tone than being confused by a flow of words and dramatic gestures more complex than any Spanish I had heard that month.
Once I felt secure in her company, I was surprised to realise she was little over 5-foot tall.
On shamanic ceremonies
'Night fell within minutes of our arrival at the Shaman hut. He gestured towards a plastic container filled from an old petrol can in which the magic potion lay.'
Night fell within minutes of our arrival at the Shaman hut. He gestured towards a plastic container filled from an old petrol can. Within it, lay the magic potion.
‘How much should I drink?’ I asked Jorge. ‘All of it’, he replied. I sunk a huge and deeply unpleasant draught of the rank liquid. It took several difficult minutes to work my way through this bitter medicine. Shortly after, I found and used – in the fullest top and bottom capacity – the garden outhouse located about 10m from the backdoor.
Despite enormous efforts of mental and physical will, I was never to reach it again. It’s not just the taste that makes vomiting a natural reaction to Ayahuasca – it’s part of the process apparently. I followed the ritual religiously. Something happened about ten minutes later. Not quite sure what, but its effect on my ability to move and think was profound enough for me to forget most of my Spanish, bar the lie: ‘Toda esta bien’ (everything’s fine!) to the inquiries of Jorge. My English was soon reduced to the more honest ‘Urgah, naah!’, which sadly, my mono-lingual hosts were unable to fathom.
With these communication difficulties, it was easier to explore the depths of my soul, alone, in the middle of a jungle, under the spell of an overpowering hallucinogenic. My senses heightened to the myriad jungle sounds, my eyes accustomed to the moonlit sights. A lot of shimmering went on within the thick teeming canopy.
Communion with the spirit world is the aim of these trips. They say you meet the animals you deserve. Shamans are thought to inhabit the bodies of the elusive jaguar.
I did not see any jaguars.
