The Writing Imp

~ Tales from the Existential Laundry Basket

The Writing Imp

Category Archives: Uncategorized

#18  From Manatee to Yucatan, Every Woman, Every Man.  Swimming with Dugongs: Adventures in Central America.

24 Saturday Nov 2018

Posted by thewritingimp in fiction, Mexico, Pindar, thewritingIMP, travel, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

manatee-dominican-republic-01

We could have spent longer on Caye Caulker, but we have sampled all it has to offer except Zika virus, the accommodation owners have both had it a few weeks back and we are keen to avoid it. The fast boat to Chetumal in Mexico leaves at 7am, stopping at San Pedro (last night I dreamt of San Pedro – there’s your earworm), so we can pay our tourist tax to Belizean government – B$38. A Dutch guy in the queue discovers he has left his passport back in Caulker, that’s a bad start to any day.

The same tourist taxation occurs in Mexico at the port – US$20, not Mexican pesos, but painfully slow, we are glad there are only 20 on the boat and not 200! We decide to get the bus to Tulum, along with bunch of insular young Israelis and a friendlier older travel companion in his thirties. All except him are very aggressive to the driver, whose job is to get us to Tulum asap, but says he will stop somewhere so they can eat. When he passes several potential eateries, they become even more aggressive. The older traveller has lived in San Francisco for the last seven years, working in IT, he has a more placid personality, until the driver stops at a roadside restaurant, probably taking commission on the passing trade. The older Israeli guy is now not happy with the menu and he’s now stomping his feet and threatening to cancel his bank payment. It is interesting to observe them, they should be happy-go-lucky laid-back travellers, but they are a far cry from that, all bar him have just finished their national service, before that, uni, maybe this is a factor? I honestly don’t know is the truth, but as a bunch they are unpleasant and bullying, and I know that may make me sound anti-sematic, which I’m not, but I am ant-Zionist, but they are two separate issues, even if the right-wing media melds them together, as a young female Israeli once told my wife years ago whilst fleeing her national service, ‘We Israelis have a siege mentality, it is part of our DNA, can you imagine not being able to go on holiday to any of the countries surrounding you because they hate us, welcome to the Israeli psyche!’ Luckily the driver is an ‘unpopular’ Mexican and not Palestinian!

Beach-in-Tulum-5846e27b5f9b5851e502e481

We jump out in Tulum, none of the Israelis say goodbye except the older guy. Hey, maybe they don’t want to chat to a middle-aged English couple, maybe they have each other for that, but I know if I was in in my mid-twenties and a middle-aged English couple that had just been on the road for two months in Central America, I would want to know more! Also sounding like an old fart, travel is so much easier these days, I have browsed a couple of sites and booked our low budget hotel literally on the road. Tulum has a fantastic coastal Mayan site which you can get around in over an hour without a guide, Iguanas abound, worth a night to see.

16592665459_0a9189e36a_b

After two nights we travel onwards to Valladolid, travel is easy in Mexico. Saying ‘Valladolid’ isn’t. The trick is to say it fast like you have a speech impediment and throw a cheerful ‘yeah’ in middle somewhere. We stay at a small boutique hotel with a plunge pool. Like most central and South American towns and cities, it is a variation on a theme, large church or cathedral, unless you are devoutly religious, there is only so many houses of God you can look at, and even if you are, there can only be so many times you can observe Jesus in excruciating pain nailed to a cross. Then there’s the square, surrounded by the restaurants and top end hotels. But Valladolid has something special, it has a cenote, a what?, I hear you say, a cenote is a beautiful deep sink hole fashioned within the sedimentary rock, and there are many in Mexico, but this one could not be more convenient. The morning we have a dip there, we only come across two other people using it, I’m told not many locals can swim, as they are not taught in school. Whenever there is a drowning, it is normally a local. Not sure the sign in English ‘If you cannot swim, avoid accidents’ helps? These ‘plunge holes’ are also a great place to escape the heat of summer.

Valladolid-Cenotes-770x512

We are staying here so we can visit the best-preserved UNESCO protected Mayan ruins of Chichen Itza. Go early, as early as you can, this place gets rammed, and we are there out of season. It’s difficult not to overstate the tackiness the huge number of vendors within the complex detracts from the magnificence of the place. We are there quite early, we catch the public bus, and by the time we leave there must be over a hundred pitches trying to sell you tat. You can accept the people, after all they are coming for the same reason you are, but the tackiness of the place -Tacksville, with a capital, bold and underlined ‘T’! Saying that, you should see it, it is magnificent, the main temple is enormous and restored. The most interesting building is the ball court, two teams would complete to get a rubber ball through their opponents’ hoop, and the captain of the winning team would have their heart pulled out of their body and sacrificed to the Gods! This is the winner!! This was an honour, you got to dwell with the Gods. This is what Paul Pogba probably feared at Manchester United, this would explain why he played so badly when he was captain. Hire a guide, ours, Irvin, is incredibly knowledgeable and interesting.

 

Chichen Itza ballcourt2394

chichen

Chichen-Itza-its-all-about-the-junk

I get my haircut in Yeahadod by an old hand, Michello, confident in my Spanish and his experience. I think I have asked for cross between a Bowie 80’s cut and a Rupert Everett 90’s. A female hairdresser comes to my aid, “He thinks you want a long back and front.” I’m interested to find out what that might look like, but I suspect I might look like the lead singer of Kasabian after a heavy night out. When I was a student in the 80’s you could model for designer saloons, and I visited a posh one on King’s Street, Manchester, and after a wait, a man that was dressed like Roy Chubby Brown on a stag do appeared, he even had the goggles on his head (honestly), camper than a row of illuminated taffeta Christmas trees, he uninvitedly ran his fingers through my hair and exclaimed in a camp vibrato, “I’ll shave it aaalll offf, and leave a single thin whisp to flick across. That’s all I can offer you!” “No, you fucking won’t.” With that my hair modelling days were gone in the caress of an effete hairdresser’s moisturised fingers. I would have looked like I was emphasising with cancer patients. About this time, I had a number 3 all over, and thought it looked quite suave, picture a cross between Brad Pitt and Jude Law, my girlfriend at the time took one look and said, “You look like you’ve just come out a concentration camp!” – unkind, to say the least, apologies Brad and Jude.

david-bowie-db001sr

rcb_roy_chubby_brown

We go a day trip to Rio Lagratos, – Alligator River, there are no alligators, only crocodiles. It is a great place to see flamingos, eat fresh fish, and just to prove you are a proper tourist cover yourself in think grey mineral mud, which supposedly exfoliates the skin and makes you live for a thousand years, and also give you an opportunity to look (more) ridiculous on social media.

dd7b6bc2a6a6ba2f39eea6902a50798f

IMG_6484

We fully access all areas of another interesting Mayan ruin on the journey back, Ek Balam, our Guide, Roberto, knows everyone, this proves useful as an Archaeologist from the Anthropological Museum in Mexico City is working on preserving, an already well-preserved freeze, because this particular chamber has been completely hermetically sealed for 1,000 years, not seen by another human eye. We are invited in like VIPs. I try to think what I was doing a 1,000 years ago? Catching the plague and dying.

waystoplay-ruins-ekbalam

The roads on the Yucatan are straight, Romanesque, there are no meanders or deviations to keep you awake, you can see the vanishing distant point, clearly, like when you had to draw railway lines in junior school. The worry now is Roberta’s head is lightly lilting to the ‘eyes closed’ position, I offer to drive several times when I think he is going to give us a closer look at the adjacent roadside ditches – spoiler alert, we don’t crash, but our chances would have been greatly increased if I had fallen asleep as well.

 

Next time: This is the end, my beautiful friends.

@thewritingIMP  www.ianmpindar.com

blocklinecol3 (6)

Ian M Pindar writes books, and also about himself in the third person sometimes, so it looks as though he has a large team of dedicated professionals working around him. His latest book is in fact a novella and has the strange title of: ‘Foot-sex of the Mind’. It is not a Mills and Boon, but about finding out what is important in life far too late.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=ian+m+pindar

BookCoverImage

 

 

#17 Literally swimming with Dugongs: Adventures in Central America.

27 Saturday Oct 2018

Posted by thewritingimp in Belize, holidays, Pindar, Uncategorized, wildlife, writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Belize, Caye Caulker, crabs, manatees, sharks, Stephen King

manatee-dominican-republic-01

The bus across Belize to Belize City, not the capital, at one-point cuts through a quiet cemetery, not a deviation, the main route, like you might stop off on a sightseeing tour to observe the resting places of the dead. We have just missed the ferry out to Caye Caulker, this allows us to wander around the city centre, the people are friendly, there is a distinct Caribbean feel with New Zealand architecture. We sit on a restaurant veranda people watching. Talking to the manager, I’m still not up to speed with everyone speaking English. He tells us of the corruption at the top of the government and by several wealthy families, this is a familiar story.

I’ve always wanted to visit Belize, it has an amazing biodiversity. When I first started teaching I used to play an ecology board game with the pupils, based in Belize, but I will admit I had to look up where it was beforehand. The SAS do their jungle training here, but I never saw any – hey have been camouflaged? We’ve done enough jungles, so we are hurtling across the Caribbean Sea to Caye Caulker, the sun bouncing off everything, past the stilted wooden fishing huts.

Caye-Caulker-Roads

We have a westerly sea-front apartment, it’s quite magnificent, we’ve gone up market, this opulence was on the bucket list before we set off. The coffee machine is a delight, air conditioned, and you can see why the Canadian couple that run the place have semi-retired here. There is something here for everyone, we bump into many people we have befriended previously, that night, you can’t miss people on Caulker – both an advantage and a disadvantage! It also reminds you that as much as you think you are a cutting-edge independent traveller, you are only beating the track many thousands have already beaten. We meet David that night, you can party hard here, and he looks as though he has just come out of a hostage situation, followed by a festival, he wearily tells us he doesn’t think he can manage another night ‘on it’, and his Canadian friend, Marco has partied so hard, he has run out of the onward funds to get to his sister’s wedding in Ireland in a few weeks. The Split bar at the end of the island, with the fast-flowing tidal current is the place for the young to go and exchange travel stories and bodily fluids.

maxresdefault

The mini-supermarkets all appear to be run by Chinese, Caulker is a stepping stone for them, corruption revolves around getting a passport, and once you have one, you can move onto America more easily. The wife asks the young female assistant if they have any long-life milk and she returns with fly-catching paper! I pretend to be a self-milking cow and she returns with a police officer, only joking, two police officers!, only joking… long life milk – there are no cows on Caye Caulker, but there are plenty of mosquitoes and as we walk back in the semi-darkness, a lot of scuttling. The scuttling turns out be various species of quite large crabs, if you are afraid of crabs, especially ones you can’t see until you are upon them, avoid Caulker. Think of the yet unwritten Stephen King book, The Crabs. There is a very large stubborn one on our porch, which I have to shoo off, it looks at me as if to say, ‘I know where you live, and I have these nipping castanets!’

p10005841

One of the many joys of the tiny island is the bakery where the bread and sweet delights are baked daily. I pop out on a borrowed push bike every morning and sing, ‘Rain Drops keep falling on my Head’ in a jovial ironic out of tune way.

DSC_6775 copy

Another reason we have come to Belize is for me to dive the Great Blue Hole, a beautiful dive site 70km off the coast, as the name aptly suggests it is a big blue hole, and divers hold it up there as a must dive. I’m chatting to a dive master about it, telling him about our previous travels and he advises, ‘It is just a deep blue hole on a reef, the dugongs have come in to breed, we have spotted them every day for almost a week, this side of the reef, that would be better for you, I think?’ I have seen most animals and fish in the sea, but the only animal I want to see are dugongs (manatees, sea-cows), I even considered going to the Gulf of California to observe them, but then the chances are slim. So instead of travelling to look at a 124m deep by 318m wide oubliette, we are now going looking for manatees. To say I’m excited is an understatement, when the dive master cautiously says there is never a 100% chance of a sighting, but I would say there’s  minimum of 80%.

pc1bluehole0001sm

There are only seven passengers on the boat the next day, among them a newly-wed Scouse couple, Lianne and Simon – an ex-diving instructor. We spot the most beautiful of the turtles – a Hudson turtle, rays, dolphins and many species of shark, including nurse sharks, these ‘couch potatoes of the sea’ are usually solitary and nocturnal, but have changed their behaviour as they are constantly fed by tourists, this angers Lianne, a member of the Shark Conservation Trust.

greenseaturtle_reef_hawaii_istock

On the last snorkelling stop of the day, where he says we have the most chance of spotting the manatees, the captain points to the water and I think he’s saying, here is the best spot, but he is pointing to say he has seen one. I don’t believe him, as we can see nothing. I’m about to burst with excitement, along with Lianne and James, the wife is observing us, trying to make sense of it all, telling me not to get my hopes too high. Visibility is about 30m and we swim off as a group in the direction the captain is adamant they will be found. We search for about 15 minutes, then I spot a solitary one in the distance, I can feel the adrenalin making me smile under the water and I approach it guardedly. It laconically swims up to me, two feet from my face for a closer look – they have very poor eye-sight. I’m face to face with a male dugong, it casually turns and flippers off – mariners used to think they we mermaids due to their body shape and rear flipper (tail fluke). He dives towards a sleeping female on the sandy seabed. We float and watch from the surface; another female appears, and her and the male kiss. Simon has an underwater camera and is taking photos. We watch them until it is time to go, get back on the boat, unable to contain our excitement, this is the most amazing sea-spectacle I have ever witness in my life, and a toss-up with pink-river dolphins in the Amazon.

‘Is this better than seeing pumas in the wild?’ The Wife asks me aloud and the sharp look that Simon, Lianne and I give her is her answer.

980x

Vs

You decide?

We cruise past a mangrove swamp on the way home, but everything else that day will be anticlimactic. The wife has too much rocket-fuel rum punch and in her inebriated state tries to get $20,000 out of the service till. We meet up with Simon and Lianne later and I start to catch up the wife’s intoxicated state. To celebrate life, travels, and most of all magnificent creatures of the ocean, already knowing that the memories of three sea mammals in distant warm tropical waters will wash over us and warm us forever.

 

Next time: From Manatee to Yucatan, Every Woman, Every Man.

@thewritingIMP  www.ianmpindar.com

blocklinecol3 (3)

Ian M Pindar writes books, and also about himself in the third person sometimes, so it looks as though he has a large team of dedicated professionals working around him. His latest book is in fact a novella and has the strange title of: ‘Foot-sex of the Mind’. It is not a Mills and Boon, but about finding out what is important in life far too late.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=ian+m+pindar

BookCoverImage

 

Key words:

#11 Celebrating the Rain. Swimming with Dugongs: Adventures in Central America.

09 Friday Mar 2018

Posted by thewritingimp in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

two manatees

It’s worth paying for a guide on the short walk through the San Miguel Antonio National Park, in our case the enthusiastic Nathan ­- enthusiasm has to be number one on the job spec for tour guides, it’s very rare to find a guide that is not enthusiastic, the hybrid teachers/custodians of the natural world. He points out many animals we would have missed, especially with the use of his telescope (not a euphemism!); bats, lizards, three species of monkey.

Guided-Tour-Manuel-Antonio-National-Park-A-13-JPG

Some people have told us they didn’t see much, but we saw more animals on this short walk than any other place in Costa Rica, or Central America, and all in less than an hour and a half. The end of the tour leads to a lovely sandy bay. Some parts around the river, the short cut back over a bridge were restricted due to the chance of being eaten by crocodiles. That would have eclipsed the previous days mishaps, they have partly evaporated now, (see last week’s blog).

article-2567183-1BDD3F2D00000578-447_964x530

‘Getoutadda water!’

Back at the hotel that night a young Canadian is playing great music, he’s 21, moved here to escape the extreme cold of Quebec. He sings in French, Spanish and English. He casually tells us about the ubiquity of drugs. How he had friends in the drugs trade, one night they were all heading to a disco in nearby Quepos, just down the coast, and got pulled over by the police for speeding. When they got into Quepos, the driver casually quips, ‘Good job they didn’t search the trunk, there’s 3kg of coke in there.’ He says that was the wake-up call to cut them lose, we listen to the redemptive story, then he casually adds, ‘But I still carry a gun!’ It makes him feel safer he informs us! It makes us feel more European, as we don’t allow people easy access to guns so they can shot their school ‘friends’ and ex-teachers, spouses, neigbours, intruders, shoppers, concert attendees, add some of your own to the list.

images

It is here we meet a Colorado couple, I’m going to call them Tim and Chloe, not their real names. Tim is a licenced marijuana growing in Boulder, difficult to think of there without thinking of ‘Mork and Mindy’. He works for a big company making US$50K per year and another US$100K growing it in his basement to sell – his ‘home-grown’ is putting his wife through medical school, ‘The American Dream’ in action! For my American hombres, in Britain marijuana is a class B drug, the scale only goes down to C! ‘One person’s cigarette is another’s prison sentence!’ He is a fascinating character, even though he holds me personally responsible for Brexit, and is adamant that there is no way Trump can win!! – add some more exclamations marks if you so wish. He, like many liberal-lefties have not yet worked out Donald is a genius, like, the biggest genius in the world! He has a degree in botany (not Trump, he has a degree in lobotomy, I think, that’s why he might be a genius?), and we discuss all things horticultural and economic. We will bump into Tim and Chloe a few times on our travels. The bar manager is also from Colorado, the Costa Rican barista is the singer’s girlfriend, so a few drinks in the bar ends up including; beer, local cocktails, plus tequila sunrises, and red wine – not the best options to operate heavy machinery the next day, luckily, we only have to operate ourselves.8df39a36f6e8739b3b2fcb3b4ae6-guns-dont-kill-people-people-kill-people

We are getting a shuttle bus to the southern end of Corcovado National Park, via Puerto Jimenez. When the bus pulls into Palme North, about half the way there, the driver jumps out and starts chatting to the driver of the public bus and tells us and three other people that this bigger coach will take us onwards. I ask the driver if he has sorted out the fare with the driver and he says, ‘yes, he has’, it transpires, he hasn’t and we have to pay the local fair of $8, this is on top of the $40 we have paid the driver. The reason he is keen to deposit us, he has to drive to Drake, where most of the younger travels are heading, saving him about 6 hours extra driving – the exact same thing has happened to several others we have met. This is another example of unscrupulous drivers. My advice yet again is to just hire a small cheap car.

Mapa-Peninsula-de-Osa

Puerto Jimenez is sleepy bewitching sort of place, we sit overlooking the bay drinking cold beers and watching out for dolphins. We are here to get a collectivo three hours down the coastal track to an ecolodge deep in the rain forest. We have a close friend that worked in Costa Rica, and he says his only regret was not staying deep in the Corcovado jungle, so we have gone upmarket. The collectivo truck looks like a supply truck from the second world war, it delivers everything down the track, people, letters and goods.

IMG_6092

I peer out from above the cab, this is brilliant, invigorating, but very basic, ‘hang onto your fillings’ travel. We are traveling into a tropical rain forest in the ‘Amazon’ of Central America, Scarlet and green Macaws flutter hither and tither, birds of prey dot the sky, I spot two eating snakes beside the roadside, the sun on your face – life can get better than this, but not much, believe me, the wind in your hair, we are alive, we are young once more.

 

Continue reading →

#9 Then the food changed into Technicolor! Swimming with Dugongs: Adventures in Central America.

29 Monday Jan 2018

Posted by thewritingimp in holidays, humour, Pindar, politics, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

two manatees

Your world can only be viewed in black and white like you have been transported down a worm-hole to 1940’s Britain, rationing is still stalking the nation. You have been asked to cook a Michelin star meal for Winston Churchill with no alcohol, only three ingredients and a broken oven that uses marsh gas – You might kill yourself by accident, or on purpose. I’m painting a picture, an Alan Partridgesque picture for dramatic effect, but not with oil paints, sat a modern desktop computer. Then you are transported in the opposite direction through another worm-hole, what are the chances – ‘improbable’ would be a layman’s evaluation. You are now in a hotel in Mexico City, the capitol city of Mexico, that has all the internet in the world, you are tired after travelling, it’s late at night and you order a green ensalada tortilla, you put a spoonful in your mouth and you literally explode in ecstasy, fragments of you are stuck all over the walls, blood, sinew, brain and viscera drip everywhere, it’s that good (well, it is after a month in Cuba), you want to cry – happy tears, not sad ones, and the world turns from black and white into Technicolour.

1200x630bb

You’re in your own heavenly scene from the Wizard of Oz, but not being attacked by deranged monkeys and the nasty witches are all dead – Ding! Dong”!

Wizard_of_Oz

That’s what it felt like, an epicurean delight. A friend once told me that he went for a posh meal on a significant birthday, and the sticky toffee pudding was so good he cried. If I had not received an Alan Partridge book for Christmas, that’s how I might have explained it! Another friend told me that when her grandma came over from India in the 1970’s she looked behind the tele to try and see the little men inside. This is how having the internet for the first two days felt like, the last two times in Havana, where you have to go to a public space to use the internet, it had either not worked or been so slow, you just gave in.

Mexico City is great place to visit, we are only here for three nights, mainly as it is the cheapest way to fly out of Cuba. The only thing that is disconcerting about the centre is the groups of armed riot police. On our meanderings we spot three lots of about twenty police-officers. Normally bored, playing on their phones. I ask many people why? I get variations on a theme, to protect the people, protect property, for reassurance, it has the opposite effect on me – It all adds up to the same thing, Mexico can be a dangerous place! Although we never saw any trouble, between 15,000 to 25,000 people die every year in the drug war related deaths. Take the average of those figures, and it’s a fifth of a million people in ten years!! This is the reason we will be flying over El Salvador, which is even worse than Mexico. What is worrying and quite eerie is how fast the centre of the heavily protected Mexico City shuts down on an early evening, by nine it’s dead. One instant all the shops are open, crowds of people throng the streets, and then virtually nothing, a few convenience stores and a smattering of restaurants. It is so spooky we decide to eat in the hotel the second evening, we are just behind the main cathedral –  The Assumption of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven – if she’s not got in, there is little chance for anyone else! The reason I suspect there is such a large visible police presence on the streets is to protect tourists. A dead foreign tourist is bound to make the news back home, another dead Mexican is very unlikely!

APTOPIX Mexico Clowns Pilgrimage

Due to time restrictions we take two bus tours. The place you have to visit is the Anthropological Museum, always in the top ten of world museums. It’s a spectacular building, filled with the most amazing Mayan, Incan and Aztec collections. The Sun Stone (The Stone of the Five Eras) at 24 tons and 3.5m in diameter is a must-see. Due to time constraints it is the only museum we actually visit – less is definitely more in this case.

National-Museum-of-Anthropology-Mexico-City-with-Kids-6

The Wife has been here before. Towards the end of our visit to the anthropological museum she casually says. ‘Yeah, I’ve been to this museum before with the Chicas.’ ‘The Chicas’ are set of her female friends that go away most years to drink cocktails in hot countries. ‘You leave it until now to casually tell me this?’ ‘Yeah, if I’d have told you earlier, you would have expected me to know a lot more, and where things are.’

I am glad we have visited Mexico City, it was much more invigorating and exciting than I envisaged. We are flying to San Jose in Costa Rica. The rich-coast country is top of my list for the two and half months we are away, simply for the wildlife. It’s early in the morning at the airport, we have our outbound tickets out with Interjet, but they are scamming us, and many others. Telling us we need some proof of leaving Costa Rica, The Costa Ricans don’t care and don’t enforce this, but it is an easy way of Mexican airlines making a lot of money. We have to change our tickets from 9am to 8pm to sort out what to do – a full day in an airport. When I ask where we change our ticket with their airline, the attendant casually points to the terminal next to him, ‘This is our travel agent!’ This is very annoying curveball and in retrospect, quite easily avoidable, happens in other South and Central American countries regularly, so, beware. Two options are either to buy a cheap bus ticket over the boarder out of the country you are flying to, even if you don’t use it, or another great alternative is FlyOnward.com. This company basically lets you rent an onward ticket for US$9.99. They purchase it in your name, send you the confirmation via e-mail, and you can show / print to convince the airline. (Fly Onward cancels the ticket after two days – you can’t actually use the ticket.) It is quick to do, and great if you are actually undecided where to go next. The beauty is you don’t spend hours trying to get a refund for a ticket you don’t actually use.

Like I’ve said, Mexico is the cheapest way to get out of Cuba, and if you’ve never been to Mexico City – go, it’s wonderful. We went before Mr Trump was elected and the talk of an enormous pantomime wall to be paid for by the Mexicans themselves was not an imagined reality. If you are an American at the airport pretend to be a democrat, even if you’re not, and when they look suspiciously at your passport and then accusingly back up at you, get in first blow with ‘The wall is fake news!’ (Don’t do the accent, or sex-pest any women, or call Mexico a shit-hole, nothing good will come of that,) if that fails, pretend to be Canadian!

 

Next Time: They come in threes.

 

@thewritingIMP  www.ianmpindar.com

monochrome imp all black

Ian M Pindar writes books, and also about himself in the third person sometimes, so it looks as though he has a large team of dedicated professionals working around him. His latest book is in fact a novella and has the strange title of: ‘Foot-sex of the Mind’. It is not a Mills and Boon, but about finding out what is important in life far too late.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=ian+m+pindar

BookCoverImage

#5: The revolution starts here. Swimming with Dugongs: Adventures in Central America

07 Saturday Oct 2017

Posted by thewritingimp in Cuba, hobbits, holidays, humour, Pindar, politics, thewritingIMP, travel, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Bar El Cambio, Camagüey, Cuba, Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, Hobbit, Hunter S Thompson, revolution, Santa Clara, toilets, trains

two manatees

Santa Clara slap bang in the middle of Cuba was liberated by Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara and his bandoleros in 1958 when he derailed a military train carrying 350 government troops and munitions, it sounded the death knell for Batista and Guevara is such a hero in these parts that a massive statue is located 2km from the city centre on the outskirts of town. It is the statue, and the museum that marks the spot of the derailing we have mainly come to see, although the museum was shut the day we tried to visit. Santa Clara is supposed to be an artsy edgy cultural centre, it was lovely, but no great shakes if you are on a tight schedule.

Carlo, the casa owner in Trinidad has arranged the next three accommodation places, this is a massive relief for us. I’m not sure if it is because of this, but Maria the owner of the Casa welcomes us like we are her children returning from a bloody war. The bon hommie is smothering, she speaks no English, so we are reliant on my pigeon Spanish, which is fun, but very tiring after a while.

We hired taxi from Trinidad, that we have paid 60CUC (*StCP! – see last week’s blog for average wages in Cuba – $25/month!) and takes an hour and a half, to drop us at the Che memorial first before Maria’s. The imposing Che is keeping watch on the very outskirts of town and fields – in case the local farmers rise up! Unsurprisingly it’s a very impressive memorial to the cigar smoker of the year 1959.

Conjunto-Escultorico-Comandante-Ernesto-Che-Guevara-Plaza-de-la-Revolucion-Santa-Clara-Cuba-3-e1420686795330

statue-of-che-guevara

Fidel Castro won it the year before in my completely made up poll to save time, Winston Churchill had a good run before, J F Kennedy did well just after, if George Burns is still alive(?) I should put him somewhere! Che smoking cigars was quite bad idea as he was a severe asthmatic! Dipping them in honey would have helped very little, but it gives you something to do when your waiting for another guerrilla battle to fight or a train to derail!

Che g.jpg

With no internet we cannot book a bus at the station for the next day, but like the way of the world, Maria knows someone and we are sorted. If you can get a local to book your bus it saves a lot of hassle and queuing. The bus station toilet is up to public Cuban standards, they don’t do minus-star ratings in Cuba for obvious reasons. There is a cubicle designed for a pit pony and men at urinals nonchalantly ignore me, like I’m a naughty dwarf that has been sent out of class for tampering with himself! Until one fella looks in, not hard to achieve, and I reply a belligerent, pitiful ‘hola’, to which, thankfully he does not reply or strike up a conversation! Surprise, surprise, the toilet does not flush and I take the cistern lid off as experience of two previous casas gives me a good idea how to fix plumbing in Cuba, it is half full of water and disintegrating toilet paper! I maybe misguided, but I’m public spirited! Other urinators look on at the gringo on holiday trying to the fix plumbing! My Spanish isn’t good enough to do dismissive Spanish swearing, but I have a GCSE in International Body Language, so I know it is not something the casual toilet visitor would be prepared to undertake! I tell the attendant that the toilet is ‘se rompe’ it is broken, and begrudgingly he brings a bucket in to flush my embarrassment away in what appears to be a pilot episode of ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm!’ I make a quick(ish) exit. The toilet opens into a café and the there’s one door with inadequate plantation shutters, health and safety would be apoplectic!

The bus takes 7 hours instead of 4, not helped by stopping at a Bali Hai type service station for nearly an hour and a half while the tourists held captive are fleeced or go hungry. We eventually reach Camagüey, everyone’s preferred destination except the drivers – there’s always two drivers on a bus in Cuba, the unions would not have it any other way!

rail-map3

This looks like an extensive, efficient rail system  – don’t be fooled! The reality is below.

filename-dscf4337-jpg

There’s a train system in Cuba, honestly, it is mainly a single track between major towns and cities and here the station is literally crumbling to such an extent that it has a metal fence around it for fear of falling debris, although you’re chances of suing someone is about the same as a train arriving on time. I suspect when a train eventually passes through the town people throw a party! I eventually hope to catch the train back from Santigo de Cuba all the way back to Havana, when I suggest this to the casa owner she just belly-laughs at me with contempt. When I eventually see the ‘tourist train’ it has broken windows and looks like it has not moved for months. Avoid the trains, when they run, they usually breakdown, not surprising as they are mainly from the 1960s.

We like Camagüey, Cuba’s third biggest city, it has a real buzzy soul to it, although it takes us all our time there to learn to pronounce it right!

download

My sandals that I have had for nearly ten years have flopped, unbound and become a severe tripping hazard. I bought them in Australia ten years ago, I have become attached to them on the occasions when it’s warm enough to wear them. So, I have to buy some new ones, we traipse around shoe shops losing the will to live until I settle on a pair of leather Adidas slip-ons, that would not be my first choice, but needs must, when otherwise you look like a homeless nomadic sadho! With them being new, cheap and hard to keep on, my feet turn tide-mark brown. I walk around like an oversized Hobbit, and the locals think it’s some form of British holiday ritual. If you want them they are size 9 UK, and would not fit the wide feet of a hobbit.

najarro_48_5

The happy looking fella on the right must have been on holiday we I visited!

We love this city, my favourite place is Bar El Cambio in the corner of Parque Ignacio Agramonte, graffiti splattered walls, a few tables, very surely waiters (even when you order in Spanish!) I have visited this bar before through the writing of Hunter S Thompson, The Great Gozo himself used to drink in here. This for me is better than the tourist trap of the Hemmingway Bar in Havana, this still feels fresh, like he might wander in and join the surely bar staff in misanthropic banter. I could quite easy get pissed in here and be carried home as homage to the great man, wake up with a festival hangover and still smile. Instead of that we have booked a ticket to see some authentic Cuban music on the back of the great music we have sampled in Trinidad. When we get there, it is empty apart from three tables of tourist. It’s Cuba and eventually I have to visit a sit-down toilet, never expect to find a toilet seat and you won’t be disappointed! This toilet, for a mid-range venue does not surprise me and when I return to the table and report on the state of the toilet –The Wife says, “Image what the men’s is like?” I’ve been in the women’s pity pony cubicle, auditioning for yet another episode of ‘Curb your Enthusiasm’. The answer is pretty much the same – where are all the toilet seats? Are there endless gurning competitions occurring in Cuba?

Then the venue starts to fill up, the band start a two-hour sound check/tune up. It’s student night, there must be some promotion at the university as everyone is under the age of twenty-five and knows everyone else. They all do the Cuban drinking thing; two-litre bottle of cola and a full bottle of Havana Club per table. It is a surreal evening, the band cannot be heard above the chatter of completely uninterested students, it is like a Venereal Disease waiting room! We feel like middle aged tourists (full disclosure – we are!!) at one of our children’s twenty-firsts. It is absolutely fascinating, I get chatting to a few of the students about Cuba from their young educated viewpoint. They want little of the ‘Old Cuba’, they are looking far beyond the shores for change. They love their country, but as is the prerogative of the young they want so much more than their parents and grandparents had. They become disinterested in me when I tell them I have no sexually transmitted contagions to share, not since 1987 – it was dark, a lot of alcohol was involved and I think it was another human, the clinic told me it was definitely mammalian! They are not sure if I’m being serious, and neither am I after so much Havana Club and an afternoon in Bar El Cambio!

STD and Teen Girls

Next time: When it’s gone, it’s gone: Santigo de Cuba.

* StCP! = Supporting the Cuban People

@thewritingIMP  www.ianmpindar.com

monochrome imp swirly letters

Ian M Pindar writes books, and also about himself in the third person sometimes, so it looks as though he has a large team of dedicated professionals working around him. His latest book is in fact a novella and has the strange title of: ‘Foot-sex of the Mind’. It is not a Mills and Boon, but about finding out what is important in life far too late.

BookCoverImage

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=ian+m+pindar

#71: Evolving biodiversity. The Curious Incident of the Gap in the Year. Travails through life; sometimes avoiding the pointing fingers and arrows of outrageous fortune.

06 Monday Feb 2017

Posted by thewritingimp in children, family, fiction, gap year, holidays, humour, south America, thewritingIMP, travel, Uncategorized, wildlife, writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Brexit, Galapagos, iguanas, land tortoises, Lonesome George, penguins, photographs, xenophobia

 

download-1

Guayaquil in Ecuador is a pleasant enough place next to the Pacific; some have said it has an edge to it. You can’t take your gun into a restaurant (or roller skates – Have you ever been threatened with a roller skate?) – That may suggest a slight edginess, (or an American High School disco!), but it seems fine to us. It has a nice coastal frontage, and the large numbers of land iguanas in Bolivar Park are well worth a visit, nothing says South America like feeding an iguana fruit, snorting cocaine, reading a Marquez book, toting your gun on roller skates during your main course and shouting random lines from Speedy Gonzales – I may have made the last parts up, or read them in a Hunter S Thompson book!

images-1

Before we have come away, we have all written down one ‘dream’ thing we want to do, think of an achievable bucket list with one item on – tick, where’s the number for Dignitas! Everyone’s done his or hers now apart from me. I remember like yesterday getting a new Parker pen for Christmas in the sixth form and then setting about my A level Biology evolution assignment. I fell into it like you might fall into a fiction book, lost. Only momentarily being distracted by the young neighbourhood kids singing up at me “Pindus, success on a plate for you” This was a slight derivation on an advert at the time for Findus fish fingers – funny, the storage unit of the mind! I remember thinking then of all the places in the world I’d like to go, this is A number one, top of the pile (kick your legs in the air)… The Galapagos Isles – So good they named it after the old Spanish word for saddle, due to the shape of the giant tortoises backs’. So I told The Boy he was in charge on the mainland and left them behind, ‘Hideous Kinky’ as that maybe.

stock-vector-ecuador-and-galapagos-islands-political-map-with-capital-quito-with-national-borders-most-197027903

The Galapagos lie 1000km west of the Ecuadorian coast and is part of the nation of the earth’s belt. This is where I have to check myself a little, have some measure, and not write a novella on the home of evolution. On landing we get shown to the 20-birth cruiser that will be home for the week ahead. We are all introduced to one another and the crew, Diago, the guide for the week is very charming and knowledgeable. I’m sharing a birth with a bohemian Italian, Fernando, he can speak four languages fluently. He shares a story about Heathrow Airport when I tell him I’m English. He has passed through there a few weeks previous. “I went up to the international help desk and asked them, “Do you speak Italian?” “No” the young woman replied, “French?”. “No”. “German?”. “No”. Exasperated he asks, “What languages can you speak?” “Oh, I can speak English!”She says like it’s a major achievement for her. “But it says this is an international help desk, what happens if people can’t speak any English?” “I can’t  help them then!” “Ok, let’s talk in English.”This is only one reason why Brexit was such a bad idea.

We take small boats around from the main town port of Santa Cruz to a natural mangrove nursery. The amount of biodiversity is enormous, I will avoid mentioning all the animals, but just on that first brief trip we observed; blue-footed boobies, land and marine iguanas, fire lizards, sea lions, Sally-Lightfoot crabs, bottlenose dolphins, manta rays, frigate birds, baby sharks, Galapagos hawk, lava herons, oyster catchers, storm petrol, green and hawksbill turtles. It is, bloody amazing!

The next morning we are up early to go and see the giant land tortoises, this is a mini bus ride and I sit next to Diago and naively  and slightly pleadingly ask, “We will see them, won’t we.” “If we don’t, it will be the first time ever we haven’t.”As we pull away from the small town (village), he casually points without speaking, to three we pass by the side of the road. Then as we pull off the tarmacked road and bump down the track, we have a comedic moment were a giant tortoise, this is four foot high, refuses to leave the track when the driver bibs the horn, and four of us have to alight to lift a 200kg turtle out of the way! We are heading to a watering hole and there are another fifteen there, several even bigger than lazy one we have met.

hw5rfhg

You can never tire of seeing a giant tortoise, it’s like a cross between ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ and ‘Around the world in 80 Days’. Their tastiness was almost their downfall, somewhere near 200, 000 were eaten; even Darwin ate them! But how did such enormous tortoises get from the mainland? Have a think about that for a second (?), they can weigh up to 400 kg! [Have you finished thinking – you’re only cheating yourselves!] One possible explanation – a now defunct land bridge from the mainland, but that is incredibly unlikely. The accepted theory is they swam!! Hey up, I hear you say in a Yorkshire accent. You would, and I did, think they would do the opposite of swimming, sinking without grace, so in 1923 William Beebe, a naturalist, threw an enormous one in the sea and watched as it “floated buoyantly!” He was astonished apparently, and so am I. So the most popular theory goes like this; turtles can float, pregnant turtle falls into the sea on the mainland, floats/swims/gets carried by strong easterly ocean currents and when she climbs out she has an island archipelago named after a body.

There are many great aspects to the boat, but falling asleep after lovely food and beer/wine and waking up at another new island in the Galapagos is the best. It was on the first Island – Bartolome, this is where my stills camera plopped into the sea, just after we had been to spot white-tipped sharks over the headland, on the opposite bay. On the sandy beach that also had the largest male sea lions I have ever seen. I excitedly spotted Galapagos penguins in the surf, so in my excitement to film tropical penguins and get my video camera out, the other camera, plopped out of the camera bag, and failed to work ever again, even the memory card followed suit, this is why there are no photos of The Fat Peruvian of Peru! Then to top it all, by the time I get the video camera cranked up, the penguins have gone. Out of the bad comes the good (positive peace), this meant I could only record everything with the video camera, and consequently have lots of better footage.

Some on board are not bothered about snorkelling around the iconic Pinnacle Rock, but I’m not missing out. So I set off on my own, the penguins are shooting and speeding around me in the warm water. I have no one to share it with, and amazingly none of the others see them, it was after the triumph of this I spot a very large murky figure in the water ahead, it is enormous, and the shape shouts one thing: shark! Fucking BIG shark!! And it appears to be getting bigger as it leaves the murk twenty metres away. ‘Cling to other people’, ‘make yourself bigger’, there is no one, just me. A twelve stone bloke, how big can I make myself? – it is not a great white nasty, it’s a male sea lion, weighing in at about a ton, we have been told not to approach them as they can be very dangerous. It fixes me in its eye-line, transfixes me, and moves towards me, whilst never taking its eyes from mine, it nudges me deliberately on the left shoulder and carries on. I’d rather it be a sea lion than an enormous hungry shark, but not much can scare me, I’ve been to prehistoric island of Komodo!

Galapagos Iguana

On our next excursion we come across a group of German photographers taking pictures, pretty much of everything, one appears to be snapping rocks. Diago tells me of one trip he ran for photographers, again German, they took 2,000 photos a day! 14,000 by the end, spent all nighty editing them down to just thousands, can you imagine, “Here’s a photo of an iguana, here’s another photo of an iguana, and another, just another 700 to go.”

Lonesome George, the last giant Galapagos turtle (died June 2012).

We visit the Darwin Research Conservation Centre on our last day, I’m keen to meet the legendary Gorgeous George, originally when he was discovered, the last of a sub-species from Pinta Island, each island has their own sub-species, not much swimming had appeared to be going on, why risk it? He’s gorgeous mainly because of alliteration only, originally he was Lonesome George. He’s a legend in his own lunchtime, he’s up there with Harriot, the female Giant Tortoise Darwin brought back on HMS Beagle in 1836 (died 2005) that ended up in Australia, and also metaphorically in an upward direction in heaven that are connected now. They have been throwing ‘sexy’females of other subspecies in with him since 1971, he died in 2012, but I can only conclude two possibilities; firstly, GG is xenophobic and will only make the beast with two-saddles with a Pinta female, or, he’s a homosexual. He took the genes with him, it was a lot of pressure to bear, he was well over a hundred years old. I hope the Anglo-Saxon race doesn’t depend on me to bring forth the fruit of my loins at that (un)ripe age with lots of tourists ‘doggedly’ exalting words of encouragement! Donald Trump appears to be in charge of that now! (I did read on the internet that he is thinking of banning anyone without a spray tan from all public places, as that’s where his random thought generator stopped whilst he lost interest on Twitter the night before! It must be true as its unreal news: unreal is the new real!)

2a5d07e500000578-0-image-a-77_1436418537150-1

I buy a lovely photograph of three iguanas on the beach at Bartolome the night before I fly out, it is just three iguanas among the hundreds I saw, but every time I stop to look at it I can see beyond it to the white-tipped sharks, tropical penguins like arrows in the water, Pinnacle Rock and a massive belligerent sea lion giving me a territorial nudge.

 

All Galapagos iguanas eat vegetation, the marine iguana consumes only algae – this is very unusual in the animal world, a vegetarian lizard. They are amazing animals, to regulate their salt intake from the sea water they sneeze concentrated brine out of their nostrils, it is worth going there just to see this. And after the amazing ‘BBC Planet Earth’: iguanas vs snakes, that maybe another reason, the most amazing piece of documentary making ever (although some of it is staged!), watch it if you have never seen it, you will remember it for the rest of your lives. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3OjfK0t1XM

I see everything and more in the Galapagos, the only ones missing from my Eye-Spy book of Galapagos animals is the hammerhead shark and the flightless cormorant.

The Galapagos Islands are amazing. It is not only me with a degree in Ecology that feels this way, everyone agrees it’s been amazing. The only two other experiences people on board say gazump this is walking to Everest Base Camp and the Amazon Rain Forest in Brazil.

On my return to England I am in the NHS system to get my left dislocating shoulder sorted out, and on my first visit I tell the consultant about how I dislocated it in Australia and how an aggressive sea lion also had a go. The next time I visit him he has scheduled me to be his last appointment before lunch, and he explains, “Tell more about the Galapagos Islands, I want to go.” I explain and advise him further that if you’re going that far, you have to go to the Amazon Rain Forest as well, that will also blow you away. The next time I see him after my shoulder has been operated on (not by him), he tells me he has booked both… he will not have regretted it, I’m absolutely certain of that.

Next time: Swimming with the Piranhas.

All the missing travel blogs can be found on https://www.goodreads.com/author/dashboard

@thewritingIMP  www.ianmpindar.com

My latest book: Hull, Hell & Homecomings, is out later this year to coincide with Kingston upon Hull being the 2017 UK City of Culture.hull-hell-and-homecomings-8

I write books. You can buy any of them at very reasonable prices here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=ian+m+pindar

monochrome imp swirly letters

s:

 

test: The writing IMP

06 Monday Feb 2017

Posted by thewritingimp in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

#61: Drinking in the Morning Sun. The Curious Incident of the Gap in the Year. Travails through life; sometimes avoiding the pointing fingers and arrows of outrageous fortune.

30 Saturday Apr 2016

Posted by thewritingimp in family, fiction, gap year, holidays, humour, New Zealand, thewritingIMP, travel, Uncategorized, writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

New Zealand, Sharm el Sheikh, Ethiopia, Oyster Bay, Sauvignon Blanc, sperm whales, water, Terry Gilliam

sperm whale

It is good to have a few days back with Don and Lauren in the Waitakere Hills before my mum and dad arrive. When they do we basically go on an abridged whistle-stop rerun of the trip we have just completed. The day before they arrive we are sat up late, the warm glow of alcohol within and we move on from the time we all learnt to dive in Sharm el Sheikh. Lauren tells us of her crazy journey through East Africa back in the 90’s, a few of them buying a lorry to hopefully sell on at the end, fighting locals off trying to loot them, lost in Africa. An ex-boyfriend and her were the first tourists to visit Ethiopia after the civil war and they kept going back to the Consulate to try and get a visa to get in. The officials thought they were certifiably mad! But when they would not desist the consulate waivered with the reassuring words. “We are strongly recommending you don’t go, very strongly”, the austere man in an incongruous suit stopped short of saying ‘unless you have a large band of psychopathic mercenaries to protect you.’ If you are not the enemy in this world you are invariably ‘a friend’ and they had a wonderful time visiting historical monuments and staying with locals. It is a story I often turn to when I think my travels have been arduous in the past. There is only the scary night I spent on Komodo with prehistoric dragons that comes anywhere near, but that was only one night, and the rats were marginally scarier than the dinosaurs.

komodo-dragon.jpg

My mother is flustered as I wait for over an hour at Auckland airport at one in the morning. Walking boots have to be cleaned in an autoclave if you want to get into NZ – my father has cleaned their boots so thoroughly they look brand new. Unfortunately my mother is carrying a small explosive device, well, a yoghurt from the plane, and is told off like she is back at school, she is flustered, I laugh at her, and she tells me it is not funny, but we all know it will be. Now is not the time to tell them I want them to take my acoustic guitar in a hard case back with them.

We stay in a hotel in Auckland opposite The Whitehouse brothel; it is an exact replica of its bigger brother – wonder if they have a Clinton/Lewinsky suite? My dad offers The Boy one of his T-shirts, which would have been moderately fashionable in the mid-eighties and the look on The Boy’s face is priceless, we take a clandestine photo later, it becomes a running joke between the two of us. The one on offer is a long way from ‘The live Fast Die Young’ garment that nearly spilled over to family violence in Goa, watched over by teenage hormones.

The other family in-joke is my father’s ability to sleep in the most unexpected locations. The one that makes the kids chuckle was a few days into their jaunt, he dozed off while throwing some dice (no one says ‘die’) out his hand, to be fair he may have been jet-lagged, but this does not stop the kids laughing uncontrollably and waking him up with their laughter. Another time after going to visit the Sperm Whales off the cost of Kaikoura he fell asleep while the boat was jumping like a bucking bronco. He is having the time of his life, this after being coerced into coming away. He is a friendly verbose Yorkshireman – in the Youth Hostel we stay in in Wellington, he knows everyone’s life stories within ten minutes of meeting them. We leave him alone for a few minutes and we hear a blow-by-blow account of every traveller’s life – he’s like a travelling counsellor. At this stage the Boy is baffled: “Does granddad know them?” Even though he is usually forty years older than the people he is talking to, I will reply dryly “Yeah, they bowl together.”

Glow Worm caves

Some of the new highlights are; the aforementioned Sperm Whales, the magical twinkling glow-worms at Waitomo Caves. The Girl especially loved it and it reminded her of her pet ever-multiplying Glowy back in Kerala. Kayaking past Split Rock in Abel Tasman National Park in fantastic weather, often I see the severed rock on the label of a Marlborough wine and it transports me back. Which in turn transports me a few miles up the coast to the time my dad, The Wife and myself went on an organised wine tasting tour, which was more like a sophisticated pub-crawl. The minibus was full of Brits and my dad to the untrained ear was a connoisseur!, expounding the qualities of his oenological skills. Spitting out would have been plain rude! By the end of the guided tour a little merry to say the least, one of the party says to my dad holding up a glass of Oyster Bay Sauvignon Blanc – my dad having just spoken to the bus driver/guide/retired police officer and armed with new information unknown to us, expounds further, “The Oyster Bay Wine Company don’t have to try particularly hard as every bottle they make is already pre-ordered or can be sold easily.””Wow,” says the impressed drunk as he looks on at the seasoned sommelier, “You really are an expert, Brian, where did you gather all your expertise?” My dad gives him a pre-emptive stare, “We went on a wine tasting in Germany once on holiday!” Brain’s latest book ‘Bullshit your way through Wine,’is only available to alcoholics! It still makes the Wife and I laugh to this day.

The other incident that makes me chuckle is Don’s hair brained idea to clean his large fresh water tank out in his garden. They have no mains water up in The Hills and all necessary water is captured from the guttering – this can lead to rationing of showers. I tell him no good will come from trying to clear the small amount of gunk that has collected in the huge sealed subterranean receptacle, and anyway, you have a filter system that removes gunk. I’m having none of it as he brings forth trunks, snorkels, face-masks, head-torches and swimming goggles and woeful scrapping kitchen implements. The Boy is willingly roped in. I quickly lose interest as I watch them through the hatch as they stir up the white-gunk and what appears to be a blind-cave fish, but turns out to be a small anaemic twig. I wander off to help in the vegetable patch, an hour later they emerge from their aquatic oubliette, Don Looks crestfallen, “Nupe, we’ve just made it worse, it’s no good.” The boy is still enthusiastic as his head appears from below life a human-mole, “I think we can still do it, if we just–“ Don cuts in, “I’m giving up, the tank’s contents are victorious.” “You’re like a couple of retarded Terry Gilliam characters,” I add with all honesty. Don lets out a laugh in agreement.

TERRY-GILLIAM-5

Another nod to eco living, they have is a long drop toilet, as the name suggests the contents of the toilet drop a long way into the what looks like a cupboard in the garage below. It is not as bad as it first sounds, it doesn’t smell, and as you sit on the toilet you have an incredible view over the low hills to Bethells Beach. I ring him from England, it’s Father’s Day there and ask him what he has been up to. “Oh, today, I shovelled all the human waste of my family and occasional visitors out of the bottom of the long drop and spread it on the garden.” “Some of that waste is some of my best work, I’ll have you know, Shit-shoveller!”He goes on to tell me with the home-improvements they are going to carry out, the long-drop will have to go. “What about the planet? What will you do on Father’s Day next year night-soil engineer?” “I can’t fucking wait.” He concludes.

Abel Tasman IMG_0250

If my dad has had a great time, it is easily matched by my mum’s experience. This has been the holiday of a lifetime; it will never ever be equalled. We have our final meal up the Sky Tower; I insist we do, so every time they see Auckland on the tele, they are reminded of their time away. We have also insisted they stop off at Sydney on the way home; we have tried to get them to stop at other places, such as Singapore, which my father last visited in the late 50’s! – but they are not having it. They love Sydney – why wouldn’t you. I ask my mum what Bondi Beach was like? And she replies, “It’s not as good as Bridlington Beach!”

No sooner have we dropped my parents at the airport, but a friend has popped over from Sydney to see us. She is in two minds whether to move from England to Sydney or Auckland, so we try and give her a feel for the city, by the end she has decided it will be Sydney.

Our time in NZ is coming to an end, it has been fantastic, the scenery, the coffee, the hospitality, the history, the walking, the driving, the list is endless. The only low point is the death of Lauren’s dad, Alan Bell; that reminded me so much of my own granddad. We will be back at some point; lots of friends appear to be fleeing to the other side of the world for some reason.

Recently New Zealand had a competition to design a new flag and then a referendum about changing it, which had to be a good idea, because most people outside of Australasia have no idea which flag belongs to Australia and which belongs to New Zealand. And for me as an outsider, the Union Jack in the corner just says: ‘Remember we still own you, and you like it!’ So why this entrant didn’t win, and they stayed with the empire Southern Cross traditional version, is again, beyond me! After you have read the caption underneath this entry from the ‘artist’James Gray, it could not fail to make you laugh every single time you saw it a fluttering.

NZ flag

I have spent time with one of my best mates that lives on the other side of the planet. Technology now brings us closer; but never close enough, it is an emotional time at the airport after we have all killed time at The Butterfly Creek animal farm nearby. Two grown men trying to keep a lid on their emotions, a son realising it is ok to shed a tear when you are leaving someone you love behind, regardless of your gender, regardless who is watching… regardless.

Next time: The Sydney Ducks are after me.

@thewritingIMP  www.ianmpindar.com

monochrome imp swirly letters

 

I write books. You can buy any of them at very reasonable prices here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=ian+m+pindar

 

#59: Careful of the Wraiths. The Curious Incident of the Gap in the Year. Travails through life; sometimes avoiding the pointing fingers and arrows of outrageous fortune.

19 Saturday Mar 2016

Posted by thewritingimp in family, fiction, gap year, hobbits, humour, Lord of the Rings, New Zealand, thewritingIMP, travel, Uncategorized, writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Lord of the Rings, Hobbits, Wraiths, glaciers, Gandalf, Bilbo Baggins, Samwise, Gollum, Orcs, Jane Campion, Mordor,

Fellowship-of-the-Ring-horse-tidal-wave

For the next few days we stay in and around Glenorchy, at the top of Lake Wakatipu. We have past and visited, the Dart Valley and Queenstown – the latter we would be partying in if we were younger and not with two kids. The boy has a new journal, but it is no ordinary/bog-standard journal, it is a: Lord of the Rings Travel Diary Location Guide Book. It is a thing of beauty, I have shied away from LotR, but nothing says NZ like Lord of the Rings film locations – forget sheep and rugby.

LoR di9ary

The boy has read it from cover to cover and held it aloft a few times to compare and contrast the photo with the scenery juxtaposed behind it. It was here I experienced two ‘precious’ Déjà vu Rings out of body experiences. Before any train spotters contact me, I started doing the research and I got bored – please don’t send me the exact gird references, I won’t thank you, no one will! We stay in Glenorcy in a bothy behind the pub, we look directly up at Mount Aspiring and it is quite spooky, on the snow-capped top we expect to see Frodo and Samwise climbing.

Mount-Aspiring-lake-wanaka-e1363776387102-940x561

I know it is overused and rarely apt, but, it is surreal, we are in a film. It is this sleepy place that Jane Campion’s dark TV series Top of the Lake is partly filmed, and as that series may suggest, it’s quiet, too quiet, and is best not to break the surface.

gollum

It is with the excitement of Mount Aspiring as our backdrop we set of in the enema to find Mordor. The boy has his book for reference, but after about 20km the road has long since turned into a track and the track is fast about to turn into a path only accessible by Gollum. The Eye of Mordor is nowhere to be seen, both the boy and I are disappointed. On the drive back I stop and ask a young women with a horse where she’s hidden a bloody big place like Mordor. “There’s none of the set left now, it was mainly computer generated,” and she points in the near distance to a pine forest, “It was over there.” We have every right to be disappointed, I engage her in greater discussion about the film, until The Wife saves her, leaning forward and informing we have to get on. “You should be a tour guide for the Film,”I suggest. She points to lots of horses in two nearby fields. “All the horses here were in the film.”

horses

From what I can see everyone in New Zealand had some involvement in the films. At the start of our time in NZ, sat outside a café in Auckland I got chatting to a couple in their twenties. I informed them the boy is obsessed with the films, “We were both Orcs,”they casually tell me. I convey this to The Boy, but he knows better than to encourage me in conversations with strangers.

orc

When I used to teach the function of the eye in High School we used to have a model eye on a white column. I would start off by saying, “The Eye of Mordor is watching you,” in my best deep creepy Sauron voice. The kids loved this, and if they were messing I would look the other way and The Eye of Mordor would turn to watch them!

Mordor

 

The second surreal moment came when we decided to make a dam. Dam building is probably my childrens’ favourite outdoor activity. On this occasion we made the dam at the exact location where the Wraiths are chasing Arwen and Frodo in The Fellowship of the Rings, when the wave burst down the river in the form of galloping white-horses and washes the Wraiths away. I found this quite spooky, when I looked over to the tree line, I half expected the Wraiths to come crashing through the forest. It shows how powerful the mind can be and how it can conjure up the unreal, like believing in the ghosts or Donald Trump!

don T

We’re on the road again after a few days to see enormous slow-moving lumps of ice, through the Haast Pass; then we stop at a café with a fish farm. Tourists like us pay for fish food and feed it to the ravenous salmon – it appears to be a Win/Won relationship for the owners – and the fish – for now! We arrive late afternoon at the Fox Glacier National Park and stay nearby, we observe tinkling glow-worms in a cave guarded by an ‘Artful Dodger’ Kia parrot, any place with a Kia parrot can never ever be dull – all that surprises me is they don’t swear!

SetWidth1200-Fox-Glacier-Hike-New-Zealand

I have never walked on a glacier before, and after an over the top safety talk that would suggest we are taking on the north face of the Eiger without any safety equipment. We are lead to believe there is one quite treacherous edge we have to negotiate, where there is only a metal chain railing to hold on to, unless you fall precipitously into the depths of hell, as we pass the tame path, the wife turns to the young male guide and exalts, “Is that it? Bloody hell.” To which he meekly replies, “Yeah, that was it, we have to point out any potential hazards to guests.” “Bloody hell” is her repeated mantra, and he knows her well enough to just keep quiet and slip is magical ring onto his finger. It’s exhilarating to be on a glacier in the sun, the kids absolutely love it, exploring the well-beaten crevices, they cannot contain their enthusiasm and eagerness to explore. I suppose in the scheme of things it is not particularly cheap, you can’t do it for much under $NZ 200 for a family of four, but somethings are worth forking out for – somethings money can buy.

The Wife turns to me as the offspring disappear into an ice-cave, “This is why we came away.”

I smile and reply, “All we have to do,” I pretend to smoke an imaginary long pipe and stroke a very lengthy beard, “is to decide what we have to do with the time that is left to us.”

She gives me an obtuse look, and then adds, “I’d like a nice glass of wine.”

Next time:   Rocks with your pancakes?

@thewritingIMP  www.ianmpindar.com

blocklinecol3 (6)

I write books. You can buy any of them at very reasonable prices here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=ian+m+pindar

For a free chance of a signed copy of my latest book: Foot-sex of the Mind https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/175088-foot-sex-of-the-mind

 

#58: Pissing On Lime Trees. The Curious Incident of the Gap in the Year. Travails through life; sometimes avoiding the pointing fingers and arrows of outrageous fortune.

26 Friday Feb 2016

Posted by thewritingimp in family, gap year, holidays, humour, travel, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Anthony Hopkins, Burt Munro, World’s fastest Indian, Japan, Kia parrots, Fiordland National Park, Milford Sound, walking, Tamagotchi

slope point

The first stop off after Curio Bay is Slope Point, the most Southerly protuberance on the South Island, but on this day the rain is intermittent, but mainly lashing down; it is the first time it has rained on our jaunt around the Southern Isle. They are keen to brave the elements and walk across a few fields to see a ‘tourist sign’. You know the type at the extremities of any major jutting landmass that points in various directions: New York, London, Tokyo, McDonalds, salvation, the toilets. I stay in the car and read The God of Small Things. We have already seen the 45 degree angled trees that have tried to cower from the wind; it is a warning sign for me to stay warm, dry and unwindswept. It also cuts down on special effects for the Lord of the Rings films.

Slope Point tree

They arrive back sodden, exuding equal measures of relief and exhilaration – as if they have just found a penguin egg that Captain Scott dropped. Ultimately they are pleased to be dry – I look at the photos and if evidence needed I had made the right decision, it stares back at me in grey sodden digital form.

We make our way to Invercargill, one of the world’s most southerly Cities – they call it a city, I wouldn’t with a population of 50,000. I’m interested to visit as it the NZ setting for the lovely World’s Fastest Indian film, about a motorbike, not a Native American, the film stars Anthony Hopkins as the land speed record (184mph) setting Burt Munro. I ask Alan Bell if he knows him, everybody knows everyone in NZ. “Yip, met him once, bit if a grumpy bugger, threw a spanner at one of me mates that worked for him.” Not how the film portrays him! When I ask about his world speed record on a bike under 1,000cc in 1967, Alan simply replies. “Yip, he did that as well.”

worlds fatstest in

Also in the film Burt, his real name was Bert, but an American paper spelt it wrong and he changed the spelling of his real name! When he flies away on his travels to the US he gets a neighbour’s son to pee on his lime and lemon trees. It is something Lauren has been making all the men do in her own garden up in the Waitakere Hills, I think it is literally a piss-take, but this film assures me the extra nitrogen is greatly received. It does not amaze me that people would urinate on a citrus tree in Invercargill, just the fact these trees could actually grow there!

The rain doesn’t abate, so we go shopping for books for the children and birthday presents for people back home. We let the children decide what film to watch to keep out of the elements and they choose a Jim Carey one. We drive out west and stay in a lovely place overlooking the sea in Riverton, the South Islands oldest ‘European’ settlement.

On the way to Te Anau we stop off at the Clifden Suspension bridge, a smaller replica of the World famous Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol, unsurprisingly we are the only ones there. Te Anau is the gateway habitation to the Fiordland National Park, which contains Milford Sound. We check the availability of the first campsite we like the look of, it is not full, but the woman on the reception tells us Brenda further round by the lake has accommodation. This is another example of the sleepy honesty of New Zealand. Most other places in the world, they would be shuffling and rearranging to squeeze us in and get our custom, but instead she points down the road where they can birth us all within the same lodge. The air and sky are crystal clear and it feels like a Victorian health tonic – like we will live another few months longer by just taking large lungfuls of the ‘elixir of non-polluted atmosphere.’The clear skies give way to a cold night and the next day encouraged by the fresh air we walk part of the spectacular Kelper Trail – if you are a walker or tramper! The Kepler is one of the most enjoyable 37 miles you could ever wish to walk – we only complete six.

mirror lake

We are up early the next day to visit Milford Sound. The drive is spectacular through the mountains to the fiords; there are few tourists, most of which are Japanese. We watch, fascinated as a bus load of Japanese shuffle from their coach, half clad in face masks, like a Michael Jackson tribute fans’ day out, or a tag-team of surgeons trying to break the non-stop operating record! They waddle around the Mirror Lake, so called as you can see a perfect reflection of the snow-capped mountains in its glassy waters. The Japanese look as though they are on a shaky conveyer belt, not breaking stride once on their circular shuffles back onto the bus. We observe them and the boy asks why so many are wearing facemasks, after the obvious aforementioned jokes. I start to espouse some of the/my theories. 1 (and 2). Hygiene reasons, not just to stop aerial contaminants entering, but quite philanthropically stopping others getting theirs. 3. Cut down on communication through facial expressions – some psychologists believe this, and more so in the young, that don’t need to communicate with such outmoded analogue facial communiques, when you have social media for that, and you can marry your compatible computer, or your sexy Tamagotchi! 4. Deindividuation, another psychologists’ favourite, anonymity in the crowd, the comfort of being anonymous. 5. Hay fever. 6. Anti-social, sorry, I mean personal choice reasons – stick a facemask on and pair of earphones (headphones would attract too much attention!) as well, and you would have to be determined and really want to chat to someone to violate their ‘personal space. ‘ If I was a renowned psychologist I would call it: ‘ I just can’t be arsed talk to you ‘syndrome. 7. Popping to shops without your make-up on, apparently so! It would cut down on the Paparazzi getting a good shot! Just when I think I have heard them all, a friend has a Japanese student staying with her, who says it is because Japanese people are modest and don’t want other people to see them (8). The Boy is as baffled as I am when I have gone through all the theories I know of. They all hop back onto their coach like nervous paranoid penguins. I explain to the boy that they don’t get many holidays, the least in the developed world; some surveys suggest that of the 16.5 days holiday they are granted – most only take half! Maybe that’s why they’ve got the masks on, so people cannot see how pissed-off they really are? (9) It might suggest why they always look so austere/miserable as well, even with the Dick Turpin surgical disguises? If you have a ‘theory’ I have missed, let me know and I will add it, although 9 is probably enough, maybe a top ten would round it off nicely? If you are Japanese and married your Tamagotchi – I would love to see the wedding photos. Tamagotchis can be either sex and can now produce tami-babies! I would offer care as you can contract the nasty STD Tamagotchis Sillyfuss from them, but be sure to have your ‘significant other’ checked out before flipping them open before a possible hybrid Ho-no SapIan Tamagotchei.

japanese facemasks

I digress. The trek up the mountain to the Routeburn is too arduous for the girl, so we turn back like two defeated Hobbits. We eat lunch at the Homer Tunnel and eventually get to Milford Sound to catch the last boat of the day. We are transported to Scandinavia. We stay at The Blue Duck Pub, try and construct a dam in the steam next door, but are beaten back by sandflies. On the way back the next day we stop off at the Homer Tunnel again to meet the Kia parrots – the only Alpine parrot in the world, they are inquisitive/cheeky/belligerent depending if they are sidling up to you for closer inspection/robbing your lunch and coffee/or tearing the rubber seal and windscreen wipers from your vehicle!

kia parrot

They are protected, so many feel obliged to let them destroy their cars while they watch on and laugh, whilst filming the destruction enfolding! These ‘Clowns of the Mountains’ are amazing bizarre creatures, they are not small either, 47cm tall. Like most parrots they are intelligent, and with a ready supply of locals and tourists offering them food and drink, apparently caffeine doesn’t affect them, just who has carried out this quasi-scientific study, I have no idea. They look ripe for their own Disney full-length feature. We are reluctant to leave them behind, but we have learnt enough to surmise these are fickle creatures that will not miss us.

milford sound

We drive around the next day on the other road through The National Park to Arrow Town, an old nineteenth century gold mining village. It has been done up like a Wild West frontier town to attract tourists like us, but we don’t mind, it’s beautiful and the Thai curry we have is a delight. We walk down to the river, past the tourists’ slouches, where schoolchildren panhandle for freckles of gold in the holidays, to the lovely Arrow River. We read between the lines of the tourist information on the Chinese huts, dislocated from the main habitation of the day and try to envisage how hard it must have been for these men to leave their families behind in the hope of returning prosperity, but finding mainly hardship and racism. It leaves us both a little melancholy, but the hardship of distant others evaporates as we drink our wine and plan the route onward.

Next time: Careful of the Wraiths.

@thewritingIMP  www.ianmpindar.com

I write books. You can buy any of them at very reasonable prices here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=ian+m+pindar

Click here for a chance to win a free signed copy of my latest book: ‘Foot-sex of the Mind.’ Finding out too late what is important in life. https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/175088-foot-sex-of-the-mind

 

← Older posts

Recent Posts

  • #19  This is the end, my beautiful friends, the end.  Swimming with Dugongs: Adventures in Central America.
  • #18  From Manatee to Yucatan, Every Woman, Every Man.  Swimming with Dugongs: Adventures in Central America.
  • #17 Literally swimming with Dugongs: Adventures in Central America.
  • #11  Oh look, there’s a jungle cat and its offspring: Swimming with Dugongs: Adventures in Central America.
  • #11 Celebrating the Rain. Swimming with Dugongs: Adventures in Central America.

Recent Comments

20: 50 (17-15) mista… on 20: 50 (17-15) mistakes of the…
Graham Mercer on 1: So you want to be a fiction…
thewritingimp on 1: So you want to be a fiction…
Graham Mercer on 1: So you want to be a fiction…

Archives

  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014

Categories

  • Australia
  • Belize
  • children
  • Cuba
  • family
  • fiction
  • food
  • gap year
  • hobbits
  • holidays
  • humour
  • life
  • Lord of the Rings
  • Mexico
  • New Zealand
  • Pindar
  • Pindar Family
  • politics
  • religion
  • south America
  • thewritingIMP
  • travel
  • Uncategorized
  • wildlife
  • writing

Recent Posts

  • #19  This is the end, my beautiful friends, the end.  Swimming with Dugongs: Adventures in Central America.
  • #18  From Manatee to Yucatan, Every Woman, Every Man.  Swimming with Dugongs: Adventures in Central America.
  • #17 Literally swimming with Dugongs: Adventures in Central America.
  • #11  Oh look, there’s a jungle cat and its offspring: Swimming with Dugongs: Adventures in Central America.
  • #11 Celebrating the Rain. Swimming with Dugongs: Adventures in Central America.

Recent Comments

20: 50 (17-15) mista… on 20: 50 (17-15) mistakes of the…
Graham Mercer on 1: So you want to be a fiction…
thewritingimp on 1: So you want to be a fiction…
Graham Mercer on 1: So you want to be a fiction…

Archives

  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014

Categories

  • Australia
  • Belize
  • children
  • Cuba
  • family
  • fiction
  • food
  • gap year
  • hobbits
  • holidays
  • humour
  • life
  • Lord of the Rings
  • Mexico
  • New Zealand
  • Pindar
  • Pindar Family
  • politics
  • religion
  • south America
  • thewritingIMP
  • travel
  • Uncategorized
  • wildlife
  • writing

Blog at WordPress.com.

Cancel

 
Loading Comments...
Comment
    ×
    Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
    To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy