Next stop was Palenque. I took a night bus there with Olatz and Nienke, and we arrived at 8am and wandered through the little mountain city. It’s hillier and more haphazard than flat Merida, with the latter’s colourful cobbled lanes replaced with topsy-turvy highstreets crammed with pharmacies and hat stalls. At the end of each street, when each one inevitably dipped away or curved around, green broccoli mountains line the horizon. I noticed very few backpackers or tourists in the city, which is simultaneously pleasing and a little intimidating when you can’t speak the language and are aggressively blonde.
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Mexico | Salsa Man
Maaan I’m a bad writer. Not in the sense that what I write is bad – no. What I write is glowing brilliant amazing, fuck you. I’m a bad writer in the sense that I just don’t… do it. I spend my time thinking about writing and getting excited about it, and then I simply do not do any writing. But whatever, I’m here now. Hello.
Continue readingMexico | Conch
The next morning – BIG BREAKFAST – Luuk and Bas were due to leave for Bacalar, a lagoon town in the south. I’d heard that it’s more of a party place than anything, and it was in the wrong direction for my journey. Instead, I reluctantly hugged my jolly Dutch boys goodbye in the hostel, and that afternoon, along with Nienke, Olatz, and a cool New York stoner-screenwriter called Ian, we hired a car and headed out in search of cenotes.
Continue readingMexico | Cursed
Olé!
Do they say ‘Olé!’ In Mexico? I do not know. But that’s my mood. Olé! Vamonos!
Continue readingMexico | Whole Lotta Holbox
Well shit, I’m in Mexico. I’ve been here sixteen days already and not written a jot because every time I tried to write it was rubbish. It’s too cool here to describe conventionally. I love it. Esta muy bien, or whatever. Still working on the Spanish.
Continue readingSerbia | What The Hell Is ADD?
I spent a few nights in Belgrade doing not much of anything – I had a decent amount of work to catch up on, so while Jack went out exploring, I stayed in the air-conditioned hostel common room and tapped away at my laptop. Or at least… I tried to. It’s hard to tap away at your laptop when you’re in a hostel: my attention span is hot garbage when I’m in a silent, empty room, let alone a busy dining space with backpackers cooking spaghetti. I have an uncannily potent ability to become distracted. You could bundle me into a sensory deprivation chamber and leave me floating for 24 hours in some black void with nothing but a laptop opened to Excel, and I’d still find a way to slack off for half the day: prodding the veins in my hands, twiddling my beard, doing silly voices to nobody, cracking my knuckles, farting horrendously then saying “oh goodness” and finding myself very funny.
Continue readingCroatia | Bees????
Howdy x
I’ve gone and got myself behind in these dairies again, so I’m gonna do another whiz-through to catch up.
Continue readingFrance | Strasbourg Encore
Strasbourg was utterly lovely and relaxing and restorative. I stayed with Jeanne for a week and a half, in the apartment she shares with two friends just outside the pretty town centre.
Continue readingPortugal/Spain/France | Montage!
Alright, so I’m a bad traveller and a bad writer. I’m actually in Strasbourg, France, at the moment, although my diaries are currently languishing somewhere in Portugal. If I try to properly recount the trip up to date it’ll take me another three weeks and I’ll never catch up, sooo… gonna just rush through a few cities right now. Here I go.
Continue readingPortugal | Lost in the Woods
On the final day of our lovely Ericeira mini-break, Tanya, Felix and I had one last coffee together in a cafe, then the pair of them got a cab back to Lisbon while I hopped on a bus to Sintra.
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