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In this country they talk a lot about people “living below the poverty line,”  and while I agree that there is an unfair divide of wealth in the UK keeping the rich rich and the poor poor, I also think it is a downright insult to those who really suffer. Using the word ‘poverty’ in this context demeans and lessens the severity of its meaning. At the end of the day the poor people in this country live in luxury compared to those living in real poverty in third world countries around the globe. Poverty doesn’t mean not being able to afford the newest games console or sky TV (most seem to have them regardless) or other luxuries that you just don’t need, it is not being able to put a meal on the table to keep everyone fed and healthy, not owning clothes or shoes or struggling to survive from day to day never knowing if tomorrow might be your last.

The thing is, industries in first world countries are only ever interested in selling their latest product and fueling ever increasing levels of consumerism. Got an iPad? No good now, even though it works fine (for whatever use it is exactly that those slabs of junk offer) you now need the iPad 2. How ridiculous. It used to be that you would use something until it stopped working and you needed a new one, nowadays, it’s the need to own the newest and the best, regardless of whether the old one is still doing the job. The riots going on around the UK have proven that this sort of thinking is rife here, the idea that we have to have everything, the most important thing for people today seems to be owning the latest and best things we don’t need or have a use for.

The following statistics are from the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) here in the UK:

Percentage of children who wanted but could not afford…

a hobby or leisure activity 14%

to have friends round for tea or a snack once a fortnight 18%

to go on a school trip at least once a term 13%

to have a one-week holiday away from home with family 62% 

I’m sorry to sound callous, but are these really the sort of things that classifies someone as “in poverty” in our country? We are not talking about things people need just to live life from day to day, as the title itself states, this is what people want and expect to be given.

Now for comparison, some facts and figures from Somalia,

94% of primary school aged girls are out of education

85% of children (both sexes) who do go to school will survive until their final year of primary school

38% of the adult population are literate.

An average of 199 out of 1000 under fives die. (WHR)

Average life expectancy in Somalia is between 36 and 44 (WHO)

- NationMaster.com. 

“As the UN announces that famine has spread in Somalia to three additional regions the US has put the first number to the amount of children under 5 who have so far perished from starvation in the last 90 days: 29,000″

- Care2.com.

What has brought this up? Why am I writing about this? Well, it is all because I read an article today by Liz Jones of the Daily Mail. Now, I know what you’re thinking, but I don’t usually read such a tripe of a tabloid and especially not her typically self obsessed articles about fashion and beauty, this time however she was reporting on the current famine in Somalia so I skim read the first few paragraphs. In the end I read the whole thing, captivated by the suffering she described.

“I meet Salatho, who arrived this morning with her three children aged seven, six and four. To save these three, she left her three youngest children behind in her village of Dinor in Somalia to die. I ask how on earth she could do that — leave her little ones behind? 

My translator tells me she cannot answer because Salatho has never been asked how she feels before. It turns out that human emotion, grief, is the biggest luxury of all here. 

This woman did what she had to do. If she allowed herself that ultimate Western accessory depression, then she would just lie down in the sand and die.”

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2025490/Somalia-famine-makes-mockery-world-I-come-from.html#ixzz1UxFMdA4q

She is right, their suffering makes a mockery of all of us living in the first world. Don’t get me wrong, I am not some namby-pamby supporter of humanitarian groups either, I believe they do more harm than good by creating people, communities even whole countries who are dependent solely on hand outs whilst their arrogant do-gooder minions waltz around among the poor and starving in huge white air conditioned  4x4s. Reading books by Paul Theroux has permanently turned me against those sorts of people too.

The fact is, no-one in this country lives in real abject poverty, there are options and benefits open to everyone to ensure they can afford enough to get by. It seems today, people here expect a too much and in their greed have lost sight of what really matters. The are so absorbed by commercialism they want everything for nothing, thus feeling it is their right to take what they want as we saw this week. MP Stephen Williams put it better and more succinctly than I ever could in his blog following the riots of the 8th August:

‎”Everyone wants to be rich and famous, without wanting to work hard to reach those otherwise acceptable ambitions. So I think the prime motivators behind the looting are greed and jealousy, rather than sorrow and anger.”

These two parallel running news stories are both saddening and infuriating with one country unable to keep its children alive long enough to see adulthood because of lack of food and health care, the other unable to keep theirs out of prison because of selfish crimes of jealousy and greed. Yet both are lumped together by that same word, that p word. Which one do you really think deserves (for lack of a better word) that title?

Unsurprisingly, with a slight hangover to boot, I wasn’t feeling in tip-top condition at 10a.m the next morning. The typical Spanish breakfast, a strong milky coffee and a couple of highly processed pastries which come in separate packets and in a variety of shapes, but which all taste the same (overly sweet, processed and devoid of goodness), didn’t do much for my mood nor my stomach. Pushing away my half eaten pastry, I was bombarded with queries as to whether I liked it or if there was a problem and did I want another one, a different one. 

We set out around 11 (or 12, frankly my stomach hurt too much for me to take note) and passed through very much the same scenery as the previous day. Eventually however we reached hilly land that signalled the border area of Spain and Portugal, very beautiful, unfortunately it meant the roads became winding and pitched up, then down, then up again, leaving my stomach churning worse than ever.

We reached the Spanish unnamed border checkpoint around 1p.m. The air had been cool and fresh back in Luisa’s village as we had been higher up topographically, during the journey, however, we had obviously descended quite a lot as it was now unbearably sweltering. It was the sort of heat that hits you the moment you open the car door, with sun so bright as it reflects off the light coloured paving and buildings that you unintentionally squint your eyes up tight. The Spanish side was rather uninspiring. There was one large square building with a sign signalling it was the boat house, where you could rent boats across to Alva in Portugal and little else. High above us was an old iron rail-bridge which crossed the waters of the Duero river before it widened into a species of lake, although not wide enough to warrant a separate name. Luisa was eager that we tried to cross the bridge on foot, and persuaded the reluctant and outwardly complaining Ana and Marta to follow her up a scraggy path through undergrowth to the railway line. There had once been a small cafe at the top which undoubtedly served refreshments to weary travellers who had walked the lengths of the abandoned rail-tracks and its tunnels. It was obviously abandoned now and like the path up, being reclaimed by nature.

Marta and Ana were complaining about the heat and needing a coffee. Luisa was enthusiastic despite my apparent disinterest, I was actually just in pain, and in great danger of throwing up, and the moaning of her friends. We started crossing the bridge high above the road where we had left the car. The train tracks ran down the middle of the bridge, flanked on both sides with flimsy pathways made up of 10ft long sheets of metal just wide enough to walk on and, ravaged by the elements, now orange with rust. Their edges were disintegrating and warped, leaving large vertigo inducing gaps looking down to the tarmac 100ft or so beneath us. The railings, in much the same state as the bridge in general, were just as rusted and rickety and didn’t look like they would offer much support to anyone falling or even leaning against them.

The sky was brilliantly blue and completely free of clouds, the sun beat down on our shoulders, none of us had remembered sun-cream.

Luisa set quite a pace across the bridge, I was watching my footing intently so as not to trip on a rogue screw or to stick my foot down a gap and thus end up plummeting to the ground. I was watching so intently in fact that my eyes focused too hard on the repetitive pattern of metal sheet, gap, metal sheet, gap and I got that strange sensation of falling forwards like the sort of involuntary myoclonic jerk experienced when standing too close to a train platform. I had to stop and close my eyes and reach blindly for the railings for support until the dizzy feeling stopped. My hands were sweating profusely, I clutched my camera tightly and feared it would soon sluice clean out of my hand like a wet soap, tumble then plop irretrievably into the gently flowing Duero. We stopped dead in the middle of the bridge for photos as we crossed the imaginary line drawn by us humans to signify a border. The sign on one side read ‘España’ and on the other ‘Portugal’. We cheered triumphantly as we entered a different country.

Encountering a group of 10 or so tourists at the other end, the change was as dramatic as it was sudden. Offering to take a photo of the four of us, one of the men spoke in the strange language with almost Arabic speech intonation, peppered with familiar words that sound like Spanish that could only be Portuguese.* Pointing to himself he shouted, “bombero” or something like it, meaning fireman in Spanish. The ever-friendly Marta jabbered excitedly back to him, “en españa, os llamamos, ‘bombero-torero’!” (translating as “we call you firemen, ‘bullfighting-firemen’ in Spain” which makes more sense in Spanish as it rhymes…but its meaning still isn’t entirely clear for a non-native speaker like myself.) NB: I have since found this site by googling the phrase. Still entirely confused.

Quickly recovering from her bout of enthusiasm, Marta was complaining again about Luisa not warning us about the right footwear (we were all in flipflops) and that her feet hurt and that she was tired from the early start and that we hadn’t had a drink since the house and that she had driven the whole way. Ana added words and nods of compliance, and asked how far it was until somewhere to sit down. Luisa was clearly gritting her teeth (in an almost British fashion!) and encouraged them to push on along the tracks saying it was just around the corner ahead. The tracks, bordered by a sheer wall man-hewn through a cliff on one side, a pile of loose scree on the other, followed a natural curve in the land. Begrudgingly the girls carried on, complaining their legs were being scratched by the dried up weeds, and that Marta (whose skin as I noted was a lot paler than most Spaniards) was burning on her shoulders. We reached some abandoned buildings before which stood what I can only describe as a giant rotating turntable, I assumed it was used to redirect the engines from the tracks into the repairs or maintenance building.

Standing sulkily smoking in the shade of the aforementioned building, Marta and Ana complained more as Luisa tried to get them to smile in a group shot. I mentioned I could hear twittering that to me sounded like bats, the girls assured me they were birds. They were definitely bats.

Finally admitting I felt awful, Marta, a nurse, delved into her bag and produced what looked and tasted like a Rennie. Within 10 minutes I felt so much better, my energy returned and my Spanish with it.

We carried on past the eerie graffitied ruins of the old station platforms. The rooms were still standing but were gutted and filled only with the detritus left behind by junkies and squatters. It was rather sad reading the painted signs ‘Restaurant’ or ‘First Class Lounge’ which lead through to the still beautiful high vaulted rooms now filled with nothing but dust, food containers, vodka bottles and an assortment of scrunched up clothing items.

Finally we reached buildings that were still pretty dilapidated, but were nevertheless inhabited, judging by the washing hanging on lines beneath the first floor windows.

We had a sit and a drink in a small bar. As it was getting late and we still hadn’t had lunch, we abandoned the idea of boating and went in search of the restaurant another friend of Luisa had advised me and her to go to when we’d met up the week before. We asked around for the place, Marta approached two old Portuguese men, but they scratched their heads and spoke in rapid dialect, I understood nothing, the girls didn’t seem to get much more. Eventually we settled on a restaurant which was in the vicinity of the one we were looking for, lo and behold it was the right one under a new name! The aging owner was very excited to meet Luisa, who’s friend was a good patron of theirs. He spoke broken Spanish, inserting Portuguese whenever he was unsure, a mishmash of language like our ‘Spanglish’ which they call, fascinatingly, Portuñol.

His wife, a hefty, tall and broad-shouldered woman took our order. She spoke no Spanish and so resorted to the English tourist favourite of speaking your own language very slowly and loudly. We had wanted to try bacalao (codfish) a Portuguese speciality, “não bacalhau” enunciated the wife clearly, shaking her head to clarify her point. We were given the option of beef or pork instead and I was amused to hear that the Portuguese for pork ‘porco’ resembles the English much more than the Spanish ‘cerdo’. I would rather have had beef, but I conformed with the others, too afraid to try and speak Spanish to a Portuguese, the clash of languages was making my brain hurt. The other dish we had been wanting to try was ‘lulas’ which I had only managed to determine from Luisa that it was “like Spanish ‘rabas’ but not really like them at all.” Clear as mud.

They were a lot more easy to describe when they came out – they were various pieces of octopus cooked in butter. I had only had one experience with octopus before and it had been a bad one but I duly tried a piece with extra tentacles…it was delicious. Granted it didn’t really taste of anything but butter, and the texture was like chewing a springy gummy sweet but it wasn’t at all bad.

The drinks order was more scarring. All I wanted was a glass of cool water, but the owner, singling me out, as tends to happen in Mediterranean Europe, called me “rubiecita” (the diminutive of ‘rubia’ meaning ‘blondie’ or ‘little blonde’) and decided I would like some wine. I didn’t, but couldn’t find the words to decline his offer with out offending. He brought me a glass of very pale white wine which tasted…well, I’m no oenophile, but bloody awful. It was very watery as it’s appearance suggested, but with a tinge of the taste you get from sucking the rubber on the end of a pencil. I suggested to the girls that we poured it off the balcony we were sat on, but they just told me not to drink it and it wouldn’t be impolite. Seems etiquette differed in Portugal. The owner was offended when we came to leave and my glass was still full. In Portuñol he asked why I’d left it, and when I jokingly said I only really like red, he slammed his fist on the till and growled, in a tone I wasn’t sure how to read, that I should have told him so. He would get me a glass of red he said, I would like it he said. Would. Like. It. Despite my protests he put a glass under the tap of a nearby barrel and filled it to the brim with pale red wine. He watched defiantly as I took a sip and smiled in victory as I proclaimed, fakely, that it was really delicious, “mmmmm está muuuy rico…” He insisted I paid him, so I had to take the kitty money from Ana and hand it to him. He beamed and told me a joke I only half understood about his mute cousin who only talked when drunk. I belly-laughed unconvincingly. As soon as his back was turned we legged it. The girls found it hilarious, especially the joke part where they had watched my panicked and baffled face as I waited for some kind of cue that it was the punchline before making an I-totally-don’t-understand laugh.

We traipsed back along the route we had come, back past the derelict station platform and railway maintenance building with its enormous Lazy-Susan. The heat was even closer than before and very oppressive. We moved at snail’s pace across the bridge, vaguely whooping as we crossed the border and re-entered Spain. The car was a veritable sauna which had been roasting slowly in the direct sunlight for a good 5 hours waiting just for our return. I felt like I was about to melt as I lay back in my seat, strapping the black seat-belt, which seemed to be made of molten lava, over my chest.

As I dozed in the back of the car on the 5 hour return journey to Salamanca I smiled blissfully to myself as I recalled our trip. Everything about the last 2 days had been so different and so properly Spanish, right down to the dancing donkey, late night SingStar and the complaining and bickering. I had actually experience proper Spain, probably for the only time in my entire 10 months living there. What a great way to say goodbye.

*I have the luck of having made many Brazilian friends during my time abroad, and their accent is a lot easier for people who understand Spanish to understand. Interestingly it doesn’t have the unusual Arabic twinge to it which surprised me so much in Porto.

Instead I think I have done pretty well. I have seen 17 countries, 15 capitals, 6 islands(1 on a lake), and 3 autonomous regions, travelling in 31 aeroplanes from a 4-seater prop to a MD-11 and crossing borders by boat, bus, car, train and foot (across 2 bridges). I have climbed ancient temples in monsoon rains and scorching sun, perused art until 5a.m., watched my first (and last) football match and first and last bullfight, swum fully clothed 200m underground, ridden a dolphin, modelled wedding dresses, snorkelled in the Atlantic and the Pacific with sea snakes, stingrays and sharks, taught English, sampled port wine, climbed an active volcano and stood so close to lava my skin blistered, swum with whale sharks, hit my first piñata, worn a bikini of real starfish, run with the bulls, spotted pink river dolphins, survived a “chicken bus”, heard the roars of howler monkeys, searched in vain for quetzals and fished without catching a thing. I have stood at the bottom of one waterfall and the top of another, zip-lined through a cloud forest, kayaked through rapids and parachuted off a cliff. I have slept in 5-star hotels, rough hotels, hostels, B&Bs, posadas, jungle lodges, Travelodges, and in tents and hammocks beneath the stars in rainforests and on 100m wide desert islands watching some of the most beautiful sunrises and sunsets. I have handfed bears, snakes and jaguars, touched tapirs, comforted a baby monkey, netted an angry vulture, put cream on an itchy lion, injected a 9ft anaconda, watched 3 live animal surgeries, 1 autopsy and fainted once.  I have been the witness of one mugging and the victim of two. Through all of this to keep me going I have eaten enough plantain hot and fried, baked and crunchy, cold, soggy and flaccid to last me for life, nibbled cautiously on the face of a pig and the legs of a frog, tried horse, conch, termites, ice-cream flavoured with meat, hot-dog and beer, licked ants from a twig, developed a taste for octopus, enjoyed freshly caught fish bbqed on the beach.  I have eaten arepas, tacos, hornazos, natillas, gestampte muisjes, fajitas, molé, currywurst, patacones, cassava, bacalao, gallo pinto, morcilla, tarta tres leches, lulas, pepper pot, stroopwafels, tamales, pico de gallo, patatas bravas, membrillo, jeta, hagelslag, cerviche, empanadas, revuelto, bitterballen, all washed down with custard (yes, as a drink), chicha, flor de cana (like it was going out of fashion) and coconut milk straight off the tree. I have made friends from Holland, Brazil, Japan, France, Korea, the USA, Germany, Saudi Arabia, China, Italy, Norway, New Zealand, Taiwan, Turkey, Hong Kong, Iceland, Greece, Switzerland, Malaysia, Australia, Russia, Azerbaijan, Ireland, South Africa and of course Spain. And to top it all off I have learnt a new language.

Phew.

It has been the most tiring and most testing time of my life but I know it was worth it even the bad bits. If I were granted a second life, I’d just go and do it all again.

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On my final weekend abroad, a Spanish friend of mine, Luisa, had invited me to go on a trip with her and 2 other amigas to her village and on to the Portuguese border. As arranged, I turned up at 6:30 p.m. last Saturday, and waited, as instructed, outside the Avenida pharmacy and as expected, they didn’t arrive until 7:15 – Spanish timing.

As I bundled my bag into the boot, crushing the piles of food they had bought for dinner, I was introduced to Marta, a gorgeous, curly haired 30-year old who didn’t look a day over 25 nor very Spanish, with a pale complexion and light brunette hair. She was our designated driver and also one of the bubbliest and nicest Spaniards I have ever met. She spoke in rapid, clear Spanish and made a special effort to involve me in the conversation even though my replies were laboured and staccato. Her boyfriend worked in Madrid, but was currently in Poland, she asked me if I liked Madrid, she loved it, I lied and said I loved it too. Luisa gave me a funny look.

We drove over the river to the south of Salamanca, not somewhere I have spent much time, it being an ugly area of high rise flats, bins and crime in stark contrast to the beautiful old town. There we picked up Ana, a rather more reserved girl who didn’t seemed nearly as enthused to meet me as Marta had. As we pulled off, Luisa explained to me unabashedly in front of Ana that the area we were in was the part no-one wanted to live in because it was full of “gitanos” gypsies. I laughed to myself, saying such a thing in England would be taken as an insult by someone like Ana, but she just nodded in ascent as she gazed out of the window with a wan smile. How I am going to miss the easy-going ways of the Spanish.

We drove west along a very long, straight and dusty road for about 45 minutes. Energetic Marta was talking constantly the whole way. She made a joke about how in Spanish, good-looking girls are colloquially called monuments, and how the men kept staring as we passed as there were four “monumentos” in the car.

During my winter months here, I had taken the trip to and from Madrid and Portugal many times and marvelled at just how ugly the scenery of Castile y León was. For the whole journey, all you would see was miles of flat, barren, browny-beige land stretching off into the distance with the odd derelict barn or bare tree. Looming too, one after the other were the skeletal, metal arms of the industrial crop watering systems. Placed exactly in the middle of the fields they stretched the whole diameter of the field, and trundling on their wheels they could circle around and water the whole area. I had never seen such a contraption before as unlike England, Spain has the luxury of lots of open space.

I had always thought it strange that the countryside should be SO barren and unattractive, it seemed dead, dull and depressing. So it came as a shock when as soon as spring came around these seemingly lifeless and infertile fields leapt into life. Suddenly my surroundings were lush, fecund and full of colour.

As we drove that day I watched the monsterous sprinklers in action, bringing life to the vast swathes of crops. We passed fields filled with thousands of bright sunflower faces staring back at us as they followed the sun’s path across the sky. The odd confused plant was facing away from us like when a dancer on stage takes the wrong steps and ends up with their back to the crowd.

Every single column of what I assume to be a collapsing aqueduct, the duct part on top long gone, was now covered in a mountainous eerie of twigs and guano. Atop many stood a huge and proud looking white stork, the baby bringing kind, which are very numerous in that area of Spain. Two nesting pairs have even made their home in Salamanca’s Plaza Major.

We weren’t far from Ciudad Rodrigo a pueblo which, although not internationally famous like Pamplona’s San Fermin, is at least locally famed for its annual running of the bull, in which I participated in back in March. As such, some fields were designated grazing ground for the verahermosa bulls, a breed which is specifically bred just for bull fighting. One of Spain’s arguments backing the blood sport is that this breed of bull wouldn’t even exist were it not for the tradition. Until I lived in Spain, I had never noticed just how different these animals look from the regular old fresians you see dotted around British farmlands. For one they are huge. Stocky, broad and muscular, they hold their large heads high. The first thing you notice when you see a field full of them are their brilliant horns. They are so white and dagger shaped they look fake, as if someone had crept in during the night and stuck on them the horns off a plastic Viking helmet. Years of fine tuning and perfecting has created a very impressive animal which looks out of place grazing peacefully in a field.

This is a MACHINE not a herbivore!

I never did quite catch the name of the tiny village of some 200 inhabitants in where Luisa’s family owned a 100-year old farmhouse. Marta and Ana, seeing themselves as Salamantinas and therefore big city women (I’ll point out now that Salamanca has little over 150,000 people), hadn’t heard of the place either and laughed at its quaintness and how “backward” it seemed. Indeed I did feel like I had stepped back in time to scenes from Bienvenido Mister Marshall and into that part of the country’s history people like to pretend never happened. What was that? Franco? Isn’t that what the French used to spend?

“Village people always stare like that,” Luisa said, rolling her eyes at three ancient, wizened old women sat in the fading evening sun outside the doorway of their crumbling stone house. All three had stopped talking as we passed by, watching our every step, and only resumed their husky voiced chat once we were far down the cobbled path. It felt like a different world there, I felt like I was back in somewhere like Guatemala or Mexico. The children behaved like those in the rural parts of Latin America too, stopping their games in the streets in order to follow us shyly a few paces behind, giggling and hiding whenever I turned and waved.

At one point the four of us had to step aside as a tractor passed, which looked to be on its last legs and carrying two flat cap and plaid wearing young men. All that was missing from that scene was a wheat sheaf dangling from the men’s teeth. Luisa waved jovially to the cross eyed gentleman who was hanging off the back and staring at me (or was he?) and addressed him on first name terms.

We had a quick drink at one of the village’s 3 local bars (the number drops to 2 in the winter, when the pool bar closes). It was be-patroned by your stereotypical village drunk, a bleary eyed man shouting obscenities alongside his political views from a wheelchair.

Back in Luisa’s house we set out an impressive spread of the typical stodgy Castile y León fare. During our last intercambio meeting, I had mentioned casually to Luisa that I had never got to try the Salamancan special “hornazo” and probably never would as I was leaving very soon. Hornazo is basically an empañada, both being baking tray sized slabs of filled pastry. Like a giant pasty, except the pastry isn’t flaky, but very bready and thick. Hornazos aren’t just any old empañada either, as they are stuffed with every edible part of the pig your mind can conjure (apart from jeta, thankfully. And yes, those are pig snouts…) Following our conversation, Luisa’s mum had very kindly made one just for me to try, and I was ecstatic not to be trying a substandard shop-bought version, this was the real deal, an authentic hornazo homemade by a Spanish mum. Perfect. It contained diced chunks of bacon, pork lion and chorizo, in that order, layered one on top of the other. People often put eggs in them too, but this one didn’t have any, I was pretty grateful for that as it was very heavy without. Decadent and delicious, I somehow managed three slices, wanting to show my gratitude to her mother more than to sate my hunger. This was accompanied with an equally large and heavy empañada of salmon and prawns in bechamel sauce, which Ana and Marta thought unusual and Luisa defended as her mother’s speciality, crispy tostadas of bread, cheese and nut spread, Doritos, and a smidgen of salad leafs slathered in oil and more cheese chunks. Luisa apologised profusely for forgetting the bread stick and asked us anxiously if we were still hungry….

After getting merry on a couple of glasses of red wine over dinner, which I point out we started at 11:20 and finished around 1a.m., we headed out to another bar. Rather amusingly it was named “The Cuban” (well, El Cubano) even though my being there was probably the closest that place had come to becoming multinational, having brought its foreign visitor count up to one. It was set up, rather confusingly, as a bamboo beach hut, with dirt floors inside, and wooden tables and benches outside. One wall was filled with a number of newspaper clippings and photographs, some black and white but all of the same theme: a donkey. Yes, you needn’t reread that. This was no ordinary donkey either, it was stood on its hind legs, with its front ones resting on the shoulders of a man, who was dressed in the typical farm labourer white shirt, dungarees and braces. It looked as though they were dancing a waltz. The same pose of man and donkey in this strange embrace was repeated over and over in each picture. It is a shame as I have only remembered this details whilst writing and therefore promptly forgot once we ordered our drinks. So we will never know what exactly that was all about.

Our old friend the wheelchair drunk had moved on too, and was there, bottle of beer in hand looking even more dishevelled than 3 hours prior.

We sat outside and laughed together as the girls attempted to remember as many slang words for the male and female genitalia as they could. Turns out they have a LOT. Far more than we do and is necessary. When asked to name as many words for ‘penis’ in English, I came up with a paltry 3 words, thus proving the Spanish have an excess of non dictionary classified and un-learnable words. I will never be a nativa.

For two hours we played cards, and it was my first time (apart from a random night with a Spaniard on an island in the San Blas) playing with Spanish decks. Their cards have only 42 in a pack, and are decorated in a similar fashion to tarot cards. They are divided into the 4 suits: oros (golds), bastas (clubs, the beating kind), copas (cups) and espaldas (swords). I was introduced to some very salubrious games including, “Culo Sucio” dirty bottom, and “Burro” donkey (hey a theme?!).

Back in the house Luisa turned her computer on and insisted in embarrassing us all by making us sing kareoke. It didn’t really work as I could only sing English songs, and the girls vice versa – Luisa on the other hand had a tone perfect voice and was able to sing in both languages perfectly.

We went to be at just gone 4 with alarms set for 10…

Today I have been informed by a Travel blog I have linked to my twitter that they have FINALLY got the money and people together to start rebuilding these statues. I am so relieved as it was such an immense loss.

Here is a small collection of photos from my time here in Spain:

El Puente Romano al atardecer - The Roman Bridge at sunset.

Las viejas costumbres no mueren, corrida de toros en Ciudad Rodrigo - Bullfight in Ciudad Rodrigo, old habits dies hard.

Los victores - Victories

The Whale-shark, despite its misleading name, is in fact the largest fish species in the world. Fully grown adults can reach lengths of over 40 feet and live for up to 70 years. It is a gentle giant that feeds solely on minute plankton which it funnels in to its immense mouth whilst swimming by leaving it open in a gaping, toothless smile.

I have been fascinated by these huge creatures since I was tiny and had long been desperate to see Whale-Sharks in the wild (I didn’t wish to see one couped up in an aquarium.) Whilst on the Pacific coast of Panama, so much had I wanted to see them that I had gone to Coiba Island on a Whale-Shark spotting trip, even though the chances were remote as it was out of season. Disappointingly we didn’t see so much as a fin.

So when I discovered a few weeks later during my final few days in Mexico that the season was different on the Caribbean coast (where I was) and fell between the months of June-August (when it was), I decided I had to give it another go.

Put off by the 6a.m. start, my parents  opted to stay in bed whilst I set off from our hotel room just as dawn was breaking and caught my taxi to Cancún some 50km away. From there, I would catch a boat out past the tourist haven of Isla Mujeres (Women Island – is that where they used to send them?) into open waters where the search would begin.

I was joined on my voyage by our captain, a guide, a Japanese tourist and his camera with lens was longer than my forearm, and an Italian family, which consisted of a hugely obese father, his leathery tanned wife and his daughter in her twenties, both the women, ironically, were exceptionally skinny.

After 70 minutes, the island was far behind us and Cancún had been reduced to a mere smudge on the horizon. We were approaching a group of boats similar to our own that were all congregated around an apparently empty stretch of water. Our captain signalled to the guide who excitedly exclaimed, “they are here!.” As he pointed alongside our boat I caught my first glimpse: a huge darker blue shape moving through the lighter blue water.

Our instructions were simple: we had to sit on the side of the boat waiting in our flippers and goggles as the captain carefully positioned us, and kept us moving alongside an also moving shark. On his signal, “salten!” we should jump into the water and start swimming immediately in same the direction as the Whale-Shark. The comically skinny pair went first, both flopping gracelessly into the sea. Within seconds the daughter was up at the surface again and I could see through the plastic panel of her goggles her eyes were wide with absolute terror and at the same time hear her fast, panicked breathing through her snorkel tube that sounded like Darth Vader hyperventilating. We had been warned by our guide it could be an overwhelming experience at first to feel so tiny and vulnerable next to such an immense creature.

When my turn came, my heart leapt with fear, not because of the animals I was about to join, I had no fear of them, but of the jump itself, I have never really liked the sea. On the shout from the captain I threw myself in the water regardless, and as instructed, started kicking furiously with my flippers in the direction of the shark. My mask jarred against my face on impact with the water and for a few seconds I was unable to see anything underwater through the flurry of bubbles thrown up by my unceremonious entry. My heart was beating fast with excitement, yet as I finally saw an immensely sized patch of shadow moving through the water a few feet in front of me, my heart skipped a beat. Finally my eyes adjusted to the light and I saw the majestic creature before me in all its glory and oh my goodness. Here words, normally my strong point, fail me. I cannot describe how beautiful it was.

It was both in front of me and yet far behind me at the same time, moving swiftly despite its size.  I admired up close its tough deep blue skin mottled with oval shaped white patches that I immediately recognised with nostalgia from the illustrations in my childhood science books. I was dwarfed by this amazing beast, yet I wasn’t remotely afraid because its movements were so gentle as it glided through the water. Despite this I had to kick with all my might just to keep up. Gradually the shark overtook me and as I slipped further and further down its huge body, I gasped in awe at the size of its massive dorsal fin, at least as big as my whole body. Eventually I stopped and watched it fully pass and was almost knocked flying by the sheer force of its tail.

All in all, myself and the Japanese man, who took some spectacular underwater shots on his camera, did the most jumps. The Italian father didn’t swim at all, and his family clearly afraid and not understanding the gentle nature of these animals were in the water for less than 5 minutes.

I swam with numerous sharks, and even had the luck to swim with a mother and her calf, although this baby could already compete with an elephant in size and weight. I loved every minute, swimming above and all around them, from the different angles I took in every detail of their appearance and admired how the moved  effortlessly and rhythmically through the water.

I also answered a question that had been asking for years – is it possible for a person to be swallowed by a Whale-Shark? At one point my guide encouraged me to overtake a shark and whilst swimming just in front, take the chance to peer into its cavernous mouth. I discovered that although these beasts are massive, a person definitely couldn’t fit in their mouth, something that was especially a source of comfort at that moment. I also noticed a wrasse was clinging precariously just inside the giant’s mouth.

It was all over too soon, and the complaints of the Italians meant that we were heading back to the mainland in no time. In the way back as I was pondering my experience I realised that my life jacket felt gritty as if filled with sand. On closer inspection however I saw they were hundreds of miniscule, transparent eggs clinging to the lining. I held one on the end of my finger tip, in was barely a millimetre in size, yet this tiny speck was what fed and sustained those huge creatures I had just had the pleasure to share some time with.

Isn’t nature truly beautiful and astounding!?

These pictures do nothing to convey the size nor the beauty of these majestic animals, but here you are.

And now, somewhere I came across today whilst searching other travel blogs. I had never heard of it before and at first I thought this picture was just a very clever photoshop!

Tianmen Dong, or Tianmen Cave, is located in Zhang Jia Jie in the Western Hunan Province of China. It’s name poetically translates as “The Gate to Heaven.”

So let me rewind to mid August last year: I had just spent 6 weeks high in the Venezuelan Andes, volunteering at a zoo, learning Spanish and generally having a fantastic time. On my final night, in order to take away some lasting memories of the bars and clubs I had frequented during my time in Mérida, I did something I never normally did – I took my camera out with me. On our way home however, my male companion and I were mugged. Nothing too serious, just two men, one armed with a piece of wood hammered through with a nail, who patted us down and relieved us of our money, our cameras, and almost 5 weeks of memories which I had stupidly not backed up. I still kick myself now, up until Venezuela I had been religious about making sure my photos were safe, but I had gotten lax and overly relaxed during my time in the posada.

Not what I had been expecting of my last day in Venezuela, I spent it rushing back and forth to the Police Station in the hope of getting a statement for my insurance. Unsurprisingly nothing ever came of it, although to be honest I wasn’t too bothered as no amount of money was going to bring my photos back.

That night following the attack I flew alone to Caracas and spent the night in a dive of a hotel near the airport. Still in shock from the attack I felt genuinely uneasy about being by myself for the first time. Even bolting my door shut and jamming my backpack in front of it didn’t give me any peace of mind and I barely slept.

—

Early the next morning I flew to Trinidad in twin-prop Caribbean Airlines plane, where, as often happens to me on all forms of transport around the globe, I was sat next to a nutcase. In this case, it was an Opus Dei priest who informed me he had been watching me at the airport, invited me to his church and forced a large number of propaganda-filled leaflets on me. As soon as we landed, I ducked down behind the crowds at baggage reclaim and hailed the first taxi I could find outside. Now I had the added fear that I was being watched and that I was possibly about to be abducting and brainwashed by members of a notorious cult (thanks Dan Brown…).

Trinidad had been a last minute addition to my travels and I hadn’t read up on it at all before my arrival. I found out too late that unlike it’s tourist friendly sister island,Tobago, Trinidad was basically a no go area for foreigners. The island recorded 485 homicides in 2010, making it the murder capital of the Caribbean, hardly something to put in the tourism brochures. Whats-more it’s ugly. Almost all the island’s income, I learned, is based on industry, and the whole island, once a haven of natural beauty, is now covered in factories.

My “safe” hotel was located in Chaguaramas on the northern tip of the island, next to the local port and around 10km from central Port-of-Spain. I spent 3 lonely days, mostly in my hotel room awaiting my flight to Guyana. When I wasn’t on an organised trip of the capital (sat in the car, doors bolted, with a minute to hop out for photos), or of the Caroni Bird Reseve (delightful boatride where at dusk you can see ruby tinted clouds of Scarlet Ibis returning to roost) I wasn’t allowed out of the complex of the hotel. When I suggested to the woman at reception that I could walk to the nearby, well-renowned and apparently award-winning, fish restaurant, she looked appalled. She told me in her heavy Caribbean accented English, “thees iz naut thee place tuh goh fuh a waulk aluhn.”  I tried to reason that as it was only a 2 minutes away, and that a taxi really wasn’t necessary. The fear she held for me in her eyes told me this wasn’t just a ploy (as often they are) to extract money from the “rich” foreigner. I allowed her to ring for a taxi. She was also concerned about my return from the restaurant, seeing as it was a Sunday night, and there would’t be many taxis around. She told me the driver would wait while I finished my meal (“ow lang d’yah tink ya’ll be eytin?”) and come and collect me afterwards.

—

My flight to Guyana was uneventful, and as I landed on a dirt strip runway early in the morning, I surveyed with new hope the vast swathes of unbroken rainforest below. This was what I had really come travelling for, to see the untouristy, the unvisited, the unknown.

I was immediately struck how poverty stricken, to an entirely new level, this country was. The taxi ride to Georgetown looked like a scene from a wild west film with ramshackle wooden huts as houses, but rather than desert, the background was spectacular rainforest, thick, uninhabited and virgin.

I awaited the arrival of my boyfriend, Marcus, in Kara Lodge, Georgetown’s most “expensive” hotel. It was writhing with Americans, either Christian missionaries looking to bring “enlightenment” to the uneducated masses or business men seeking their fortunes in niche tourism, and very few others. I felt out of place once again, sat by myself in the hotel restaurant at lunch, listening in on their conversations on the various tactics to change “this poor destitute country” i.e. make it more like their own…!

The day of Marcus’s arrival, I took a taxi to the Surinamese embassy to apply for my visa. I had been turned down the day before for wearing shorts, and a string top, the irritable guard, a sour faced large lady, saw this as inappropriate attire for this very official looking wooden shack. That day I succeeded in entering the barbed wire compound. This was also the life-changing moment, although it didn’t particularly seem it at the time, when I met a bald, sweaty Australian man in the waiting office. I had seen him walking the dirt track to the embassy from my taxi window. He stuck out to me too, and for a moment I understood the stares of the locals I had endured as even I gawping as we passed him by. This meant something far more important to me however. Another real tourist. I wasn’t alone here.

In the sweltering waiting room our first meeting was short. He introduced himself as Bob. I disliked him at first as he bragged how he had spent the last 10 years of his life travelling, and was currently taking 3 years to cycle the length and breadth of South America. We arranged, I grudgingly, to meet at Kara Lodge that night, “after all,” I thought to myself, “beggars can’t be choosers.”

At 8 that evening, the three of us stepped out the entrance of our hotel just as night was falling. Within minutes we had been accosted by a man of tramplike appearance, who spoke to us in an almost indecipherable Guyanese accent. He followed us down the empty, dark road, telling us how he had just been let out of jail. Bob, attempting to defuse the situation as he clearly had many times before, started by congratulating him. That didn’t shake him off, we started walking faster. My warning lights were flashing nineteen to the dozen, “get out!” my brain was yelling to me. But we were on a deserted road. There was nowhere to go. The old man began to get angry and mutter threats under his breath (“ahyll gut yers…”) peppering them with Guyanese swear words I didn’t recognise, and others I did.

It wasn’t supposed to end badly that night however. I don’t believe in god, but if I did I would believed in that moment he had been smiling down on me. A pair of lights appeared around the corner of the street ahead, and slowed as they came towards us. With my blonde hair I was the most conspicuous person in the whole town. It was my taxi driver from the night before who, as per my request, had taken me to his favourite local restaurant so I could try out some typical Guyanese fare. Last night he had seemed a little bit overbearing, talking constantly and thrusting his rapidly written number into my hand as bid him a hasty farewell outside the hotel, take-away bag in hand. In that moment however, I couldn’t have been happier to see anyone else. He leant out of the window and in a worried tone asked us where we were going, before begging us to get in his taxi, telling us he would even take us there for free, “these streets ain’t for walkin’ after dark!” A real life deus ex machina!

We continued struggling to made arrangements for our trip. We were trying to get to Kaieteur Falls, the country’s most impressive attraction and the world’s largest single drop waterfall. Although maybe only some 140 miles away from the capital as the crow flies, the waterfall was hidden deep in the thick Guyanese jungle. There is little or no tourist infrastructure in Guyana, and once you reach the end of the road (read cleared dirt track through the rainforest), quite literally, in Mahdia, it is up to you and a machete to organise a route through the remaining 40km of virgin forest to the falls.  We had little interest in the easy and overpriced route by plane, an option taken only by the upper class adventure travellers, which would have us hurried in and out on the same day. Instead it would take us (so we thought…) 3 days of driving, hiking and some very dodgy wooden kayaks to reach our goal.

The aforementioned non existent tourist infrastructure meant that we found ourselves trapped in Georgetown, increasingly frustrated, as plans were constantly changed and cancelled. Fearful of spending unnecessary money in the relatively expensive hotel, we made the fatal error of moving to the cheap, travelled hostel/miner hangout, Jerry’s Place, on Bob’s recommendation.

At dusk on our first night at Jerry’s we hailed a taxi to take us to a restaurant only to discover to our embarrassment that it was barely 2 minutes around the corner. On collecting our pizzas, we declined the offers of a taxi from the hawkers outside on the grounds that it was still light, only two minutes walk away, and that the drivers were making us uneasy, giving us strange grins and making half-hidden threats in jovial tones, “leave them, they want to take a walk? Yaes, eet’s a good night to stretch your legs! He, he, he.”

Unsurprisingly perhaps, within 40 seconds, we were accosted at gunpoint by three youths. We were stood outside a relatively busy bar, however when questioned later, strangely no-one inside saw a thing. I handed over my handbag without resisting.  I had failed to clear it out after moving hotels that morning, and it contained my new camera which I had bought just the day before, my blackberry, some bank cards and a bit of cash. Two of them frisked Marcus, whilst the other with the gun, pointed it in my direction. After all his pockets were checking they turned on me. One of the unarmed youths, with a wicked smile, pointed to me whilst speaking to his armed friend, “just shoot her!” They cackled  like hyenas as I burst into tears.

For whatever reason he decided not to pull the trigger and within seconds it was all over, and they’d run off in the opposite direction from which they had come and disappeared into the growing darkness.

That night I understandably reached rock bottom. I felt trapped in Georgetown as our plans kept being delayed further and further and now I had been attacked for the 2nd time in under a week. I felt like I was being watched, that nowhere was safe. This feeling was compounded when the very next day, a random man let himself into our hotel room and shocked to see someone inside shiftily asked us what date we were leaving as he had someone “asking about the room.” Immediately suspicious, we went to reception and asked the manager about our mysterious visitor. He had no idea who he was. He hadn’t been a staff member, just an opportunist robber. Nowhere felt safe, the streets, our room, everyone was out to get me. I had panic attacks trying to decide if it would be better to leave our passports hidden in the room, or to chance taking them in the money-belt once again. It has been proved to work in the field, as it hadn’t been discovered under Marcus’s t-shirt during the mugging. That was perhaps the one thought that saved me from insanity at that point, at least our passports and my hard won exotic stamps had survived.

My torment lasted for two more days, and six whole days after I arrived in Georgetown, we finally managed to start our trip to Kaieteur.

I have never felt so relieved to leave a place as I did that grimy, lawless little capital. I watched from the bus window (read rusty VW campervan) with a smile on my face as we left its filthy, menacing streets behind. We drove into the wilderness on tracks that quickly became less and less navigable as they became more and more reclaimed by nature. Signs of habitation grew fewer with every mile we advanced and soon, all we saw for hours on end were great swathes of vegetation towering over and around us and our battered VW.

This, was what I had come to Guyana to see.  I hadn’t come to experience the people, and the desperate levels of depravity poverty leads them to; that had meerly been an unfortunate byproduct of visiting such a place. I had wanted my travels to be more than a drunken full-moon party on a beach in Thailand, and finally that’s what I was getting. I had come to see the natural beauty of an almost untouched land, and to experience something that very few others had. I had to put my troubles behind me and focus on the journey ahead. It would prove to be worth even the greatest hardships.

I am going to attempt to catch up on my travels since “Sabe usted de vinos?” but it is going to take a very long time, so please be patient.

I have had some ups and downs since my last post, my main reason for not posting. I was mugged twice in short succession (namely one week apart) and the end of my travels were tainted my numerous problems back home as well. Upcoming posts I need to find the time to write:

* My final weeks in Venezuela and finished my Spanish course and zoo work.

* My 3 lonely days in Trinidad barricaded in my hotel room.

* A turbulent 2 weeks in Guyana and Suriname, during which time I experienced the best and worst moments of my travels.

* Five days in Amsterdam, The Hague and Tiel, with a Dutch friend of mine I had met whilst travelling with whom I went to the AppelPop music festival.

* A quick two weeks back in England, where I decided my future plans were in Spain.

* Four days visiting my good friend who was aupairing in Paris, where I spent the whole night walking the streets at La Nuit Blanche.

* Settling down in Salamance, initially for three months to learn Spanish.

* Trips to Zaragoza, Madrid and Barcelona.

* Christmas and New Year in London.

* A week long trip at Christmas to Tenerife to relive my childhood haunts.

* Another three months in Salamanca, and visits to Toledo and Segovia, as well as Ciudad Rodrigo where I ran in a bull run.

* My continuing life in Spain, which I have made my home for the time being teaching English.

* My upcoming trip to Porto, Portugal next week.

I intend to post my stories from the tail end of my trip to South America in the next week…

Here is a teaser of what’s to come:

The most beautiful sight I have ever seen...