Unless my premium bond numbers come up trumps during the next few years, my travelling over the last eight and a half months is almost certainly a journey that I won't retake. But what a journey it was. I visited 49 cities in 12 countries. I swam with sharks, turtles and octopuses. I hiked through a jungle. I climbed 8 volcanos, singing leg hair on red-hot lava on one of them, sledging down another, and almost encountering an avalanche on another. I dangled several hundred metres in the air in a paraglider. I visited a cocaine factory, a brothel (in a non-participating capacity), and met Pablo Escobar's brother. I walked in numerous tropical storms, and indeed got through four umbrellas.
I learnt a lot during my travels, and discovered many things about countries in Central and South America that I previously knew nothing about, and indeed previously had no real inclination to visit. I learnt that Mexicans do not all have moustaches. I learnt that no matter how full a Guatemalan chicken bus may appear, there is always room for one more passenger. I learnt that Colombians do not all either grow or smuggle drugs, and that as a general rule, the people of Ecuador do not cover their mouths when they sneeze.
I also learnt that the standard of hygiene in Latin American toilets is often a lot lower than back in Britain: during my travels through the Americas, I visited many servicios to match the worst toilet in Scotland. Early on, I had an experience in a Cuban bus toilet that will always remain untold, and from then on, I visited the best and worst toilets that the Americas had to offer. There was the toilet in the downtown Zona 1 bus station in Guatemala, which fortunately had a low slung door that I could look out over as I crouched precariously over the porcelain, to watch that nobody stole my rucksack. Perhaps ironically, the worst toilet, or at least the worst smelling toilet, was the one that I encountered in the USA, the Yosemite national park john that had me and a friend dry-wretching in adjoining cubicles as we tried to clench and squeeze. The toilet in the Capitoli in Cuba's capital nearly matched this, if only for the old woman whose job it was to handflush it after I had exploded several street vendor hot dogs into the toilet bown as she sat outside reading her newspaper. The flushing of my hotel room toilet in San Salvador was also memorable, for the way all deposits did fifteen circular laps of honours before finally being sucked away.
But most of all, I learnt that the people in Latin American people are really not that different to people back in Europe. One of my clearest observation during my 8.5 months of travelling was about how similar to people in the UK the people are in the countries that I visited through Mexico, Colombia and Ecuador and all of Central America. They may have different colour skins, speak a different language and have different customs and cultures, but ultimately we are all the same.
I saw old men in cowboy hats stagger drunkenly along the road in a town in Chihuahua, Mexico that could quite easily have been old men in tweed bonnets zigzagging through Glasgow town centre after closing time at the Horseshoe Bar. In the same rural, backwater town, I was eating a torta when some young men in a large 4-wheel drive truck pulled up alongside, cheesy Mexican folk music blaring from their stereo. It could have just as easily have been me eating a kebab in a Glasgow suburb, and a group of young boyracers in baseball caps pulling up in their souped-up Nissan Cherry, happy-hardcore techno music blaring from their stereo.
In almost every country I visited, I saw things that reminded me of home. Teenage girls check their hair in shop windows reflections as they walk past talking about teenage boys, whilst very young children insist on going to the toilet at times that are either inappropriate or when their parents are sitting comfortably and do not want to take them. Some people in England snack on pork scratchings whilst supping on a pint. In In Mexico the locals eat packets of crunchy 'Pellita Cracklin', an almost identical product except for the optional sachet of chili sauce that could also be used to clean the insides of industrial machinery. I developed an addiction to the similarly tasting Chicaronnes in almost ever country I visited.
Outside UK train stations, taxi drivers immediately add a few extra pounds to the meter fare when someone with a foreign accent gets into their taxi. In Chihuahua, my taxi driver took me to the cheapest hotel he knew in the city centre, and then hung around the hotel lobby until I had checked in and gone to my room so he could collect his commission from the hotel manager. Two days later, I discovered a hotel nearby that was 50% cheaper.
People that I met in Guatemala, Mexico and Colombia complained about corruption in government and the politicians siphoning off state money for personal gain. Meanwhile, here in Britain, our MP's buy chandeliers and duck ponds for their second homes, and expense it back to the British tax payer.
But for the corruption and personal greed that continues to hamper a lot of Latin American countries, I was reminded on many occasions that 99.9% of people are inherently good (even if some of of them do mistake me for a Gringo or a German). Many locals in many countries went well out of their way to help me, and I lost count of the number of random acts of kindness I enjoyed from complete strangers during my travels, from the man in Medellin that walked me fifteen blocks to show me exactly the doorstep I was trying to get to, to the guy in Quito that offered me the use of his laptop when the cafe we were in informed me that the free internet facility was out of order. Instead of all the steretypes and preconceptions that I might have had about crime and unfriendliness in Latin American, all I encountered were welcoming smiles and warm handshakes, in every country that I visited.
In eight months, I wasn't robbed once or had even one item stolen from my possession, despite the reputation of Latin America, and despite many times having to put my faith in the unsecured makeshift roofrack of a chicken bus or collectivo. Indeed, the only crime I experienced in eight months was the daylight robbery I suffered at the hands of a taxi driver in Costa Rica that clearly thought I had been born the previous day. I could count the number of times I felt I was in an uncomfortable situation on one hand, and most of these were when I did something stupid, like walking through a bad neighbourhood in Guatemala City to get to the house of the old lady whom I was staying with, or getting into friendly conversation with a group of high-spirited, would-be muggers in Granada, Nicaragua.
A smile can go a long way in Latin America, and of course, being able to talk some Spanish helped - my travelling would certainly not have been nearly as enjoyable and rewarding without the chance encounters and conversations I had with local people in almost every country I visited. I met some real characters during the last eight months. There was the Cuban that wanted me to take his wife/daughter take back to Scotland, when I met him on the beach on the first day of my travels. Then there was Mexican that reassured me that he always kept on the right side of the law because his parents had brought him up correctly, but that he did have the necessary connections should I need a prostitute, drugs or anything else of an illegal nature during my stay in Chihuahua. There was the girl in Medellin that openly admitted she prefered extranjeros (as all Colombian guys are cheaters) and her ideal guy is a pink-skinner ginger. And of course, there was the gay in San Francisco that liked the colour of my eyes and wanted to know the average size of a European male appendage.
I was fortunate to meet some wonderful people during my eight months in Latin America, some of whom now call friends and I am sure I will keep in touch with, people whose kindness and hospitality I hope I can indeed repay in the future. By making a point to avoid other extranjeros, and spending as much of my time as I could with locals in almost all of the countries I visited, I learnt much that I wouldn't otherwise have discovered, and spoke more Spanish than I would have otherwise. Complete strangers that I had previously only exchanged messages with on the Internet, took me on a weekend road-trip around Mexico, bought me an expensive meal in Colombia's top restaurant (she is of course now my lovely girlfriend!), and drove me in their cars to see numerous places that I wouldn't otherwise have seen in Guatemala, Mexico, Colombia and Panama.
On a personal level, I learnt many things. I learnt I need to care about myself more in certain situations, and care about others more in others, something I had possibly forgotten in recent years. I learnt that I can last at least another hour on a local chicken bus after I start thinking my bladder is about to burst and I am going to suffer an embarrassingly wet trouser leg. I learnt that wearing the same underpants for 4 consecutive days (and 3 nights) will not cause any permanent physiological damage, and indeed, early on in my travels, I also learnt that I should not have bought two of the same top for going travelling, as with a limited wardrobe in my rucksack, it just makes me look like I don't change my clothing very often. I also quickly realised that eating local food, and specifically street-food does not necessarily mean taking your life into your own hands or result in repeated subsequent visits to a toilet. I was sick twice during my eight and a half months of travelling, and neither time was because of the many elotes/mazorcas, casados, bajos, hillachas. caldo de pollo, dobladas, tamales, baleadas, pinchitos de pollo gallo pinto. ceviche, pastelito, bandeja paisa, fritanga, morcillo, chorizo, aguapanela. choripan, arepas, papas criolles, empanadas, sancocho de gallina, lechona, ajiaco santafereño, fritadas, panecook, salpicon and many other local delicacies that I ate.
But for all the lessons I learnt during my eight months of travelling, there were also a lot of unanswered questions, questions that I could not get the answer to because of either my lack of ability in Spanish, or the innappropriateness in asking the question. What was the school girl that spoke about five hundred words a minute to me on a bus in Honduras actually trying to tell me? Why did the young girl that splattered sick on my bare leg in Nicaragua not lean out the window instead of vomiting on the floor of the bus beside me? Why did Carlos the Mexican choose the same food as I had chosen four nights in a row in Nicaragua and Costa Rica? Why did Fabian the Australian always come back with an ashen face when he went to the toilet in Hostal Pangea in Costa Rica? Did the taxi driver in Costa Rica really think I was stupid enough to pay GBP 50 for a ten minute ride in his taxi? Why were two soldiers and a man in an Argentinian top shooting birds with an air-rifle in central Panama City? Why did the collectivo bus drivers in Bogota, Colombia always accept a 1000 peso note when the advertised fare charge was 1300? Why did Alejandra in the orphanage in Bogota always use a red pen to mark any full stops and commas in her homework)? Why were there wild crabs in the middle of the Colombian Jungle on the hike to Ciudad Perdida? Why did Ecuadorians never cover their mouths when they sneezed?
But perhaps the most unanswered question is the one I have constantly been asked myself over the last few months: what was the best thing I did during my eight months of travel?
With so many exciting and varied experiences to choose from, it's a question that is impossible to answer. Was it was swimming with wild sharks, turtles and sting rays in Belize? Or my first night dive with octopuses in Honduras? Perhaps it was the five weeks of family life on the banks of Lago Atitlan in Guatemala. Or the many rewarding moments of my volunteer work in Bogota, and in particular, the feeling of having ninos calling my name and wanting to hug me each morning when I arrived at the orphanage. Perhaps it was standing at the top of Ciudad Perdida after several days hiking through the jungle. Or standing at the top of Half Dome in Yosemite. Or paragliding over Medellin. Or sledging down a volcano in Nicaragua. Or hiking up Cotopaxi with crampons on our feet, and an ice-axe in our hand, until a potential avalanche ruled out our summit bid. With so many unforgetable experiences and memories to choose from, "what was the best thing I did?" is definitely an impossible question to answer.
For all the places I did get to in my travels, there were also many that I didn't. I often had to make difficult decisions on the places I would visit at the expense of other places that I would not. I didn't get to the Palenque ruins in Mexico, which some people say is as spectacular as Tikal in Guatemala. Nor did I get to Acapulco, which I really wanted to visit just so I could say that I'd been and gone slightly loco. I didn't get to Semuc Champey caves in Guatemala, which Kirk the Australian raved about, mainly to wind up Fabien the Australian who didn't go for a reason which I now forget. I didn't climb Volcan Santa Ana in El Salvador. I didn't swim with whale sharks in Roatan in Honduras. I didnt get to Esteli to see the most beautiful girls in Nicaragua, nor indeed to San Jose to learn how to surf. I didnt get to Tortuguera in Costa Rica to see turtles laying their eggs, and I didn't hike up to Volcan Irazu (because of one too many cervezas the night before). I didnt get to the unspoilt San Blas islands before they become spoilt by overtourism in Panama. I didnt party on Uruguay Street in Panama City, as I had nobody to go with and didn't want to go myself. I didn't get to Cali in Colombia, or the Galapagos or the Devil Nose Train in Ecuador. And of course, I didn't get to most of South America.
A trip that was originally planned on a motorbike adventure around South America found me leaving UK without my motorcycle license, and spending half my time in Central America and most of the rest in Colombia. But I have no regrets of how things panned out. Towards the end of my travels, I occasionally found the splendour of places that I was visiting paling, because I had already seen so much splendour. Quito's teleferico seemed less impressive, having rode the Medellin cable car only a fortnight earlier. The views from Panecillo mirador in Quito seemed less inspiring having seen similar city scapes numerous times before. The prospect of a dawn panorama of Machu Michu at the end of hiking the Inca trail even seemed less appealing, having already hiked through the jungle to Ciudad Perdida.
I am sure that a few months (or years) sitting in front of a computer in an open-plan office cubicle will soon reignite the desire to see and visit more of South America, but in the meantime, I have no regrets. When the suntan fades and the harsh reality of being back in a 9-5 8-6 working environment kicks back in, I will still have the memories and photographs to remind me of the great times I have had over the last eight months, and many new friends to keep in touch with. I also still have a lot of local currency of many of the countries I visited , which I will keep safe somewhere just in case ....
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