On my last day in Cartagena I was out having breakfast with my friend Elo in a square splashed with warm Caribbean colour. We were sitting in the sweltering shade outside a cafe, and had just finished our food when a young American man came and sat at the table beside us with a sigh.
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I arrived in Cartagena in the early afternoon. The outskirts of the city are tall white apartment buildings, a bit too Miami for me, but further in is the old town, surrounded by an ancient stone wall. My bus dropped me outside the walls, so in the afternoon heat I meandered between tall vacation apartment towers and beneath the great stone gate leading to the old town.
Continue readingA hungover-looking Juan picked me up in the jeep after a shower and breakfast (rice, arepas, plantain) and we drove deeper into the desert. The first day of the tour was, to be sincere, a load of old dicks. The second day was much better. Well, better might not be the word. Mystifying is more like it.
Continue readingThe morning after my mammoth jungle hike, I had a big breakfast and left Journey Hostel. I was headed to the desert.
Continue readingAfter staying the night in Cody’s asylum, I spent the morning having breakfast and talking with him in the kitchen. I asked Cody of his plans for the future – if he ever wanted to stop travelling.
Continue readingWay behind on my diaries again. Call myself Kerouacian. Kerouac actually wrote shit. What a problem I am.
Continue readingThe trek back to Acatenango was exhausting – our ninth consecutive hour of slogged vertical hiking – but I felt lighter. The worst was done. Whatever came next, in the night or the next day, would be milder. A mist swept over the mountains and buried us as we hiked back to camp, deadening the red glow of the volcano and muting our tramping footsteps. We passed other backpackers who had set off too late and would reach the ridge of Fuego to find the summit obscured by cloud; they would see nothing but an orange haze. We had been very lucky.
Continue readingLast week I had what was almost certainly the most intense experience of my life so far, and may well prove to be the most intense experience I ever have… ever.
Continue readingI left Palenque on the 7th of November and took a shuttle bus to the Guatemalan border. The bus’s suspension was bollocksed, so every little dint in the road was translated into a monstrous metallic shutter that jangled my poor bum bones to dust.
Continue readingI’m not in Mexico anymore; I am in Guatemala. I wasn’t planning on going to Guatemala, but then I thought: hey – that looks nice. So now I’m here. But before I write about the big G, I need to wrap up Mexico like a cosy little quesadilla. Vamonos.
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