Ben Welsher | Writings

Day 143 - Rio de Janeiro It was early morning in Rio and Christ peered through the mist. Text messages flew back and forth. "I'm here" "At the hostel?" "Yeah" "Are you? Which room?" "6" "The girl at reception says you haven't checked in and they don't even have a room 6" "Oh. Where am I then?" Not at the right hostel as it turned out. Still, I had a welcome little sleep in one of their beds before sheepishly leaving. Little else of blog-worthy note occurred for the rest of the day. Mike and I watched Barcelona cede the La Liga title to some awful team from Madrid and got drunk with a pair of English girls whilst espousing the joys of our jungle tour (moreso me than Mike) as they were headed to Bolivia next. We did manage to find diversions other than football and intoxication (important though they are) in the rest of our time in Rio and spent a peaceful few hours striking around a tropical rainf...

Day 140 - São Paulo Tears of frustration and pain lurked threateningly at the corners of my eyes. An overnight bus journey to South America's largest city had turned into a trip of torment. Whether it was my hours of walking the previous day or another, unknown cause I was in a bit of a sorry state. My right leg, from top to bottom, was a barely functional mass of discomfort. The muscles howled with indignation at every attempted movement. I shivered uncontrollably for several hours as the bus bisected São Paulo's vast suburbs and now I struggled to stand at the terminal as I waited for my bag. Porters descended on the bus, jostling in their hurry and running over my foot with their trollies. Eventually the crowds dispersed and I managed to retrieve my luggage. Doing my best to swallow self-pity I hobbled to a taxi and headed for a hostel Mike had recommended having arrived there the day before. Several hours of sleep proved somewhat restorative despite loud jazz music outsid...

Day 139 - Automotive hell 1, lights off from the off. 2, no movies. 3, people are playing music off their phones 4, no food provided, I want my packed lunch. 5, aircon is set to stun. 6, the decor is shit. 7, I want to go somewhere snowy and it's taking me to Sao Paulo. 8, the woman that has just spent 20 minutes in the driver's cabin may have been administering executive relief, this service is not available to passengers. 9, not enough stops. 10, the conductor is forced to wear claret trousers with a salmon pink shirt and a claret tie, that is cruel. 11, the seat next to me isn't occupied by a pretty Brazilian girl with tight clothes and loose morals. 12, too many stops. 13, it cost eighty dollars. 14, it's trying to kill me.

Day 136 - Foz do Iguazu I wouldn't have thought it odd had a church bell struck a single, sonorous note right at that point. For I was alone, frighteningly literally. The Argentinian-Brazilian border was at my back, the bus I crossed on at my front, going at 40mph and not turning around. "What are we going to do now?" I could only ask myself. I had just set foot in a country whose language might as well have been Sanskrit for all I knew. Looking about for a clue, the merest hint of what I should do next having discounted my initial idea of getting into the foetal position. I noticed a fellow former passenger had also been deserted and approached with my best 'help the poor gringo' look. Rudimentary Spanish gleaned the information that more buses were imminent. He also informed that should I need a hostel his friend was picking him up shortly and they could take me to such a place. I had to question the merits of my decision as I sat in the back of the car heading...

Day 131 - Buenos Aires I think I finally put my finger on it in Buenos Aires. An explanation for a malaise grown over recent weeks that niggled and pricked my waking hours. I thought I could shake it, I just needed a bit more sleep. But it was emotional lethargy that saw days pass in this coolest of capitals without the slightest endeavour to sample its 'je ne sais quoi'. There were broad boulevards, architecture redolent of Paris and beautiful public spaces but somehow the city lacked something. It was I that lacked something though I realised. It suddenly struck me that we all form a connection to the place in which we live. We invest something in our home and it in turn invests something in us. The wandering alien severs his connection and loses a certain sense of belonging. I had no door to shut the world behind, no space to claim as my own. I was caught in a river whose course was unknown but whose current was insistent. Despite the new-found clarity and understanding I s...

Day 127 - Mendoza I'm desperately searching for an emotion, be it sadness or gladness, regret or disdain. There is no clarity only a vague nagging feeling that something is not right, the world is never as it should be but even less so right now. It tickles the back of my neck, it sours the beer in my glass, it stymies all action and makes every notion impotent. Do I attribute it to events still in motion? To dark days of high consequence? Is it the slow breaking of my heart or a great brittle chunk cleaving from the glacier of my being? My hand picks furiously, uncontrollably at my nails, discomfort in all but words. And words, words, how they fail me. Not with pen in hand but in situation out of hand. Do I lack emotion or do others have too much? No matter the rights and wrongs of that preposition logic always loses to emotion, the needle of ration crushed by the sledgehammer of feeling...

Day 123 - Santiago "No" was the answer to my request. It was hard to pinpoint exactly what the 4 of us had done the previous evening to warrant the Hotel manager's curt response but it could be any one of a number of things. "This is not the way people behave." His English was impressive. I had been sent down to the lobby to ask humbly, futilely if we could stay another night. I was beginning to get the impression we could not. The seeds of this behavioural nadir were sown several days earlier when, having come to the end of our Bolivian tour, we found that Darren, Dee, Teresa and Sofia were also heading down into Chile. Our collective first stop was San Pedro de Atacama, a little tourist town on the edge of the world's driest desert. After washing the dirt of the road from ourselves myself and Michael decided a spot of lunch was in order. Having located a pleasant venue on the main plaza we were joined before long by, as chance would have it, a couple o...