Ben Welsher | Writings

Day 153 - Beijing Our next journey was longer than average. 14,000 miles separated its beginning and end, or rather its end and its beginning for we were leaving this new world and returning to the old. From Rio to São Paulo and a couple of days in Bogota of table-tennis (just to remind you Michael, 82-0, eighty two - nil) and quinoa education before another flight north to Los Angeles via Miami. 24 hours in the city of angels gave enough time for a stroll along Santa Monica Boulevard with its parade of entertainers, freaks and pot-peddlers. Tanned, athletic bodies pumped volleyballs back and forth on Venice Beach. Clean streets, straight lines, faintly familiar conventions. Even my fingernails, usually blackened with transit, were a pristine white through no doing of my own. Skateboarders looped and leapt along the promenade, sharks fought over morsels at the aquarium and the Hollywood sign remained elusive. After a wholesome dawdle there were two happy travellers when a pub was foun...

Day 71 - San Agustín It was late on the 70th day that we arrived at this little town in the hills. Our first of five buses that day had an electronic speedometer fitted in view of and presumably for the benefit of the passengers. The fact that it only had space for two digits when the driver could easily have put three to good use was concerning indeed. We tempered our fear as we careered along jinking roads with the knowledge that at least we were making good time. If there are any maxims of foreign travel then 'don't sit at the back of a minibus' should be one. It was a rule we had repeatedly failed to abide and again we rued while bring thrown violently over bumps and down potholes with nary a dab on the brakes. To distract from the spine realigning ride Michael quizzed me on my Spanish. Nouns, adjectives and the linguistic lesions that are irregular verbs until my brain could contort itself no longer. "¿Hola?", "¿Hola?" our greetings met no reply. ...

Day 69 - Desierto de la Tatacoa The road forked. One way lay the city of Cali, population: 2.5 million. The other way lay the Tatacoa Desert, population: goats. Which way to go? The town of Villa Vieja lay on the fringes of the desert's sparse expanse. It is a town were nothing much happens and nobody seems to have anything much to do or at least not with any urgency, mañana indeed. A chicken bus replete with actual chickens dropped us in the main plaza. Shaded from the beating sun, old men ruminated in small groups while schoolgirls giggled in green gingham. A 'mototaxi', something akin to a cage welded to a moped, would take us the rest of the way. The first sign of our desiccated destination was a cactus sat incongruously among the trees. Trees that gradually turned to stunted shrubs above grass that straggled and yellowed. The landscape opened up before us as rocky dunes took the place of flat pasture. Life seemed absent save for wandering cows and the ubiquitous goats...

Day 61 - Cartagena Time passed slowly as the two travelers sat in an office squirrelled away in Tocumen International Airport. How slowly I cannot tell you for even the digital clock mounted on the plain white wall had stopped. Flight departure time was 30 minutes away but the battle to leave Panama still raged. Eventually our gratefull hands clutched a sheet of incomprehensible words and numbers meant to speed us to the next continent. Our reluctant hands abandoned our luggage to an airport worker whose assurances that they would meet us in Colombia were not entirely reassuring. Cartagena, famed haunt of pirates and privateers and redolent of the age of sail, lay before us. Despite several centuries some things haven't changed, it remains a busy port, services still exist for sailors long at sea. The latter point was illustrated most vividly as we stepped into, and i'll abandon euphemism here, a brothel. However unequivocal we might have thought our request of 'discotequ...