On unexpected visitors
'He surveyed me – sprawled and discombobulated on the bed of the studio flat – with a look of proud disdain.'
I gazed up to see a well-built young man dressed in the pristine white garb of an indigenous tribesman. He hailed from the remote territory of the Sierra Nevada. As a resident of this imposing and secluded mountain territory, he was, culturally and geographically, a long way from home.
He surveyed me – sprawled and discombobulated on the bed of the studio flat – with a look of proud disdain. With his arms still crossed, he nodded gravely in response to my hesitant greeting. He gave a terse grunt as if instructing a minion to cull a surplus citizen.
Angie interrupted the tense male stand-off.
‘Look who I found in the marketplace!’ she enthused, as if offering an explanation making some modicum of sense. I waited for more.
‘He has come to seek justice for his tribe. I said that we can help him.’
I sought further clarification with my face. Too little meaning had yet assembled in my receptors for a reasoned verbal response.
‘I thought that we could organise an international conference to bring the world’s attention to their situation,’ she clarified, somewhat.
The large tribesman continued to observe me coolly while delving into a large leather pouch for a large lump of resin with which he mixed the coca leaves he kept in a separate pocket. He appeared to have made the 1,500km round-trip without any other possessions.
I pulled the sheet up to cover my nakedness, while he chewed impassively. I processed the only thoughts currently available to my mind into words.
‘I am watching my country play Portugal in the World Cup,’ I explained, in case it wasn’t clear.
‘I am for Portugal,’ he returned dully.
‘Oh,’ I parried, quick as lightening.
He remained standing behind me for the duration of the match.
On principle, I waited until half-time before changing into my day-wear – shuffling off to the bathroom with my sheet worn like a toga to protect my diminished dignity.
Until Portugal won on penalties, his brooding visage offered no trace of emotion. The result cracked a small hint of a smile on his granite features.
He left soon after.
We didn’t organise a conference.
On bungling muggers
'But some sixth sense compensated for the conventional one and I found myself wheeling around to find the whole feral pack lunging towards me.'
On my return from the ascent, I passed four teenage urchins sitting by the side of the road opposite the shack. Their matted hair and grubby clothes suggested labourers on a break or the ingrained grime of the hopelessly impoverished. One asked me the time.
I heard no response to my answer. This was largely because my ears were blocked with wax and filled equally unhelpfully with the high-pitched cacophony of tinnitus. But some sixth sense compensated for the conventional one and I found myself wheeling around to find the whole feral pack lunging towards me. A hand circled my throat and I glimpsed a crude paint-encrusted knife in his grimy mitt. My elbow flashed out instinctively and caught him a glancing blow on his jaw while deflecting the blade away. I lurched onto the road putting a passing car between us before sprinting down the centre of the highway. But then… I noticed several figures ahead descending the slope of the hillside shack and fanning out across the road.
I was surrounded.
After several bad seconds, the scary scenario dissolved as quickly as it emerged. The figures ahead drifted away to some unrelated purpose, while the footsteps behind me receded into silence. Like a lazy pack of lion cubs looking for an easy kill, my opportunistic muggers had quickly given up on the slog of the chase. While flushed by my escape, it felt a bit too easy. A few minutes later, I flagged down a passing police car and made a perfunctory complaint. As muggers went, I told them, with a hint of disapproval, these were clearly bungling amateurs.
On uncertain encounters
'Darkness fell. Rather worryingly, I had no idea where home lay – unfriendly unwelcoming home though it was. If the situation reached critical point, the option of striding off unilaterally was thus rather compromised.'
Darkness fell. Rather worryingly, I had no idea where home lay – unfriendly unwelcoming home though it was. If the situation reached critical point, the option of striding off unilaterally was thus rather compromised. The growing babble of my internal monologue had concluded this would be my last resort. Albert had led me to a very quiet corner of the city he knew backwards. Surveying all points of the compass without recognising any familiar landmark, I elected to head towards the busiest place.
At a junction, I chose the road with the most shops, while half-expecting him to question where I was going. Other than the rather confrontational – ‘away from you’, I had no effective answer. Albert shadowed me closely like a pursuit cyclist hugging the wheel of his opponent before the race proper breaks out with furious intent. The recurrent theme of his conversations concerned us buying some cocaine and seeing ‘where that took us’. A brief flash of that prospect crossed my mind. I didn’t want to be taken there. Or anywhere near it.
Three potential outcomes presented themselves.
If his interest was sexual, his tale of a passionate night with a lady-friend may have been a cover story, while he gauged his chances. In a region where homosexuality was often viewed with disgust and incomprehension, a passing stranger might offer a good opportunity for a discrete liaison. In the film Within and I, the narrator fears that the predatory Uncle Monty will proposition him ‘even if it must be burglary!’ I mused the prospect fearfully. Albert was a far more intimidating figure than Uncle Monty.
The second possibility was robbery. If so, we were reaching a critical point in a sinister and protracted dance of deceit. The final one was that the exotic difference of a far-flung stranger was more appealing for a lonely man than spending another night in with his mother. In conclusion, two out of three possibilities came under the category of Very Bad Things to Avoid.
It was impossible to decipher without resource to truth drugs, by which I don’t mean snorting lots of cocaine together to get him to talk. And his imposing height and biceps loomed worryingly large in my mind’s eye for reasons related to my second guess. His persistence had exceeded the boundaries of friendliness even amongst the warm and courteous people of this land. I wasn’t that charismatic.
On dark and stormy nights
'I finally left when they meekly explained that if I wasn’t Señor Duarte, they couldn’t give me his room. They were sympathetic, but quite firm.'
It was around now that the newsflash about the weather came back to me. Perhaps I had also read something in the morning newspaper, but it had been written in Spanish so it didn’t seem as real as if it were printed in my own language. But there was something very real about the wind that was increasingly buffeting me, the growing rumble of thunder, and what might now be euphemistically described as a heavy shower.
I had to laugh at the irony of having paid for the best hotel room I’d had in a year, while wringing out the excess water from my jeans to lighten the load on my legs. Walking methodically through every block in the quarter for the second time, I’d by now lost my enthusiasm for cheerful whistling. The wind, which drove the slanting rain, drowned out all other sounds including my initially polite requests to a higher power for a moonlit night and a sense of direction. I strange ripping sound tore across the sky.
Well into the second hour, I begrudgingly admitted my incompetence, and that I was no longer having a good time. It was impossible to find anyone to help solve my conundrum as the entire population had fled the streets. Badly parked cars suggested they had been hastily abandoned. Faces glimpsed at me from behind twitched curtains. As I strode balefully down the deserted streets, I felt rather like the lead character in the movie Carrie when she leaves the High School Prom after the incident with the bucket of pig’s blood. With nobody listening, I began to berate myself. Quite loudly – as it happens – as my voice was difficult to pick up over the howling wind. The rain could be quite fairly described as ‘crashing down’.
Eventually, I started entering hotels on the rather flimsy evidence that despite bearing no resemblance to the one I sought – they were still hotels. In Hotel España, I even asked for my room key despite the lobby being clearly laid-out differently – and constructed from different materials – to the one I had known all those hours ago. I finally left when they meekly explained that if I wasn’t Señor Duarte, they couldn’t give me his room. They were sympathetic, but quite firm.
I left that hotel at around two in the morning. My exit was illuminated by a flash of lightning.
Sometime later, Hotel Italia loomed up before me. It seemed familiar. It was familiar. It was mine. On some pro-Spanish whim, it seemed I’d spent much of the night tracking down its Iberian equivalent.
Mildly hysterical, I related my ordeal to the night porter who silently observed the pool of water spreading around my feet. My nonsensical spiel almost convinced him that I was a passing lunatic rather than a guest. Eventually, he placed the key on the counter before stepping back to maximise the distance between us.
On imaginary dinner parties
'The hands of his corpse were hacked off in a ritualistic gesture to stop his soul finding eternal peace. The $8 million ransom was not paid and his hands remain at large. It is not for me to say what’s happening with his soul.'
A dinner-party chez Perón would, no doubt, be a lively affair. Amongst his former compadres were communist guerrilla pin-up, Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara; Alfredo Stroessner, ‘the dictator’s dictator’, who ruled Paraguay for 35 years; future socialist Chilean President, Salvador Allende, who was overthrown in a US-backed coup; Alberto Pinochet, Allende’s successor, and good friend of Margaret Thatcher; and that stalwart of Spanish fascism, General Franco.
Presumably, all of Evita’s charms would be needed to keep the conversation off football and politics. With too few women to allow the conventional boy-girl, boy-girl seating plan – same old stale, male, middle-aged dictators and revolutionaries, I hear you say – the place settings would probably be commie, fascist, socialist, Perónist, commie, fascist, socialist, Perónist etc.
Unsurprisingly, the achievements of Perónism are viewed with ambivalence. It is less a political movement than a cult. His followers include numerous democratically-elected presidents – such as another husband and wife dynasty, Nestor and Cristina Kirchner – suggesting his legacy is barely tarnished by his schizoid political dealings.
Perón died on the job in 1974. Three days of official state mourning followed. His funeral cortege drew a million. In 1987, his body was dug up by some of those unlikely to have lined the streets in tears. The hands of his corpse were hacked off in a ritualistic gesture designed to stop his soul finding eternal peace. The $8 million ransom was not paid and his hands remain at large. It is not for me to say what’s happening with his soul.
As my mother might say, he was a ‘bit of a character’.
On elusive public defenders
'A few moments later, a small, angry man burst in from a side-door. He glared at me and demanded my business.'
I passed through the thronging petitioners and wandered unchallenged up the wide empty staircase. At the entrance of one of several deserted-looking offices, the name of the Public Defender appeared on a small typed label that appeared to be trying to merge quietly into the woodwork. Nobody was inside, but there were signs of working life about the threadbare dusty room. I took the open door as an invitation.
A few moments later, a small, angry man burst in from a side-door. He glared at me and demanded my business. I explained, but he was clearly preoccupied with more weighty matters. He paced back and forwards in a harassed manner answering half my questions bad-temperedly between staring aghast at several towers of paper piled precariously on his desk. He seemed to be stuck in the agonising throes of indecision. I felt like I’d entered the circumlocution room from Dickens’ Bleak House in which reams of legal documents from half-forgotten cases go around and around ad finitum.
He testily admitted that he shared the office with the Public Defender, but was neither able nor willing to aid me concerning her current whereabouts. He begrudgingly conceded that the other desk in the office belonged to her. I left my business card on it with a note asking her to call or email, explaining I was a journalist, and friend of Zoe. I never heard from her. More importantly, neither did Zoe. But someone picked up my card. A few days later, I received an anonymous email.
On tense stand-offs
'I was in the Right Place at the Wrong Time.'
I was in the Right Place at the Wrong Time.
I was many scores of miles from anywhere with a name I recognised. The shroud of blackness was pierced only by the fire’s thin flame. While it drew us in like moths – the gaze of the demons of my imagination were perhaps drawn to us huddled in the shadows.
While pretending to contemplate the distant hills, I assessed my situation. My thinking was clouded by the reality that this was exactly what I had meticulously planned to avoid. The bus-stop was more an outpost on the 10-hour drive to the Colombian border than an actual place. A solitary foreigner in a sleeping village – my options were limited.
A rotund man with an extravagant moustache slouched against a wall – his face glowing in and out of focus with each drag on his cigarette. ‘I can take you across the border …’ he growled, ‘… for a price’. I appeared to have been transported into a Spaghetti Western. The growling man wore no bandolier, but looked like a gun would suit him. Time stood still, while the eyes of the other men fell expectantly on me.
During such moments of tense stand-off, it feels best to simply do something decisively. If nothing else, to extinguish the scent of fear so easily detected by the jackals of humanity. So, minutes later, I boarded his creaking jalopy with feigned nonchalance. We set off into the unchartered gloom towards what he – Omar – assured me was Colombia.
His price was $25 – an expensive taxi ride in these parts, but acceptable if he was telling the truth. With insufficient data to process my decision properly, I set the odds of an incident free journey at 50-50. I figured that if he reached into the glove box I could elbow him in the face before he could turn a gun on me. Luckily, he didn’t keep his music cassettes in there.
‘I’m a Christian – you can trust me,’ Omar assured me gruffly as we pulled onto a quiet mountain road – a vista unblemished by a single twinkling life-signifying light. Seconds later, he screamed ‘Hija de puta!’ at a passing driver, whom, as far as I can remember, we had almost forced off the road and didn’t – to my untutored eyes – resemble the daughter of a prostitute.
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.
Ten Days In Greece
Mixed omens on arriving in the land of the Olympian Gods. My bag was first off the carousel, but the moment I passed through the airport doors, I dropped my e-cigarette on the pavement and smashed it beyond repair.
I took the airport metro for 10 Euros rather than a 38 Euro taxi. Getting off at Monastiraki, I exited the station and the Acropolis materialised illuminated above me. It reminded me of arriving in Berlin one winter night where my random exit brought me to the foot of the looming Brandenburg Gate redolent with grim history. But this time, the streets were swarming with revellers in the warmth of a pleasant spring evening.
I found my hotel without problems thanks to some unusually successful interaction with a map. I thus looked very much like I was the new tourist in town and the streets I walked towards Omonia felt like they might be slightly dangerous – if this was a dangerous place. But it wasn’t. In ten days, nowhere suggested any sense of threat. Some streets looked very poor; the city threw up a light litter of homeless, but little sign of the desperate impoverishment I half-expected from their financial crash. Perhaps the warm spring night helped – even the one-legged man on my street corner seemed reasonably cheerful and secure soliciting coppers from his roadside post.
The value of understanding the Greek alphabet occurred to me while looking at near indecipherable street signs. Also, how some maps give the streets completely different names.
I had the first of my half-dozen gyros dinners. It became my default stomach-filler when nothing more creative sprung to mind. Afterwards I wandered up and down the old Agora – the ancient market place where Socrates once asked too many questions. Around the fringes of the nearby city squares hung small knots of young African men and the fug of marijuana. They appeared friendly, but set apart from mainstream Athenian life.
Temples on Top
I was pleasantly surprised not to be charged to visit the Acropolis. None of the usual hidden charges – the literature suggested I needed some form of ticket. Only two temples of note remain. The Parthenon is in something like its fifth version. I was reminded how the Ottomans accidently blew one of them up four centuries ago as they thought it was a good place to store explosives. Bloody philistines.
I chose to dine in Kolonaki. The small backstreets soon proved beyond the ken of Google Maps, my map, and me. I walked through a lively student area and eventually settled down outside a pleasant little restaurant in a cobbled street on a gentle hill. The waiter looked crestfallen when I turned down his huge platter of mezze with barely a glance, and plumped for a rather predictable Moussaka. Happily, it was magnificent and the Greek house wines were quite palatable.
After a long search, I found out where I was on the map. I was in a place called Exarcheia. It was North-East of my hotel rather than the South-West I had planned. Ironically, it was nicer than Kolonaki despite what people say. Kolonaki, on my one brief visit, simply looked plush and full of luxury shops. In Kolonaki the following night, I chose the wrong restaurant by making the mistake – not for the first time – of confusing a welcoming smile from a waiter as a sign the restaurant was serving something I wanted to eat. I chose a souvlaki place having forgotten this largely involves more skewered meat. I ate vegetarian. Stupid on all fronts.
The Lost Marbles
The pretty receptionist was young enough to be a younger friend’s daughter, but her apparent enthusiasm for my cause still made me feel around 30. I commented on her brilliant English. In a Bristolian accent, she told me her father was English. Her colleague was equally helpful, which firmed up my false sense of youthfulness.
I went for a walk in the national park where for reasons unknown I felt close to fainting. I drank lots of water and one of the popular slushy drinks that are no doubt required to deal with the full glare of an Athenian summer. I walked past orange trees and stumbled across a small pond containing several hundred turtles. I visited the giant columns of the Temple of Zeus, Hadrian’s rather modest arch, and the impressive ancient Olympic stadium where the marathon of the first modern games ended.
I later visited the Acropolis museum where there’s clearly plenty of room to slot in the Elgin marbles. My favourite exhibit was a Lego model of the site which combined past, present and imaginary in the characters swarming about it. They included Elgin pilfering the marbles, Elton John singing in one of the old theatres, and Gandalf arriving on a donkey.
Beneath the southern shadow of the Acropolis, I discovered a maze of atmospheric narrow lanes mainly catering for tourists where the charm superseded the commercial. I remembered I was on holiday, and stopped for a beer.
Lots of riot police on the streets as I walked home from dinner in Kolonaki but unclear what they were waiting for. The newspaper said bomb-making kit was found in an anarchist squat. I passed a small bookshop and was surprised to see about 100 faces – seemingly disembodied – staring out at me, or perhaps towards a charismatic author within.
I booked a ferry to Mykonos on my smartphone – a rare foray into fully using the potential of technology. Nobody was going to do it for me. I was dissuaded from going to Santorini by a rather dismissive – and less alluring receptionist – as it was apparently too far, but didn’t like his suggestion that I should settle for one of the islands merely an hour or so away. Mykonos also has the added attraction of the mythical isle of Delos nearby.