The Writing Imp

~ Tales from the Existential Laundry Basket

The Writing Imp

Category Archives: writing

#19  This is the end, my beautiful friends, the end.  Swimming with Dugongs: Adventures in Central America.

16 Sunday Dec 2018

Posted by thewritingimp in fiction, holidays, humour, life, Mexico, Pindar, politics, travel, writing

≈ Leave a comment

manatee-dominican-republic-01

This is the end, my beautiful friends – The Mermaids

We are in two minds to go and swim with whale sharks in Holbox, but this is a pain in the rectum to get to and will take up two solid days of the six we have left. So, we opt for opulence and relaxation on the Isle of Mujeres, after this we will be back in England the fattening pens of work. I have already occurred the wrath of the grammar school I’m going back to, but we will never get the chance to take two and half months off again until we are either retired or dead. Term started three days back, and they have not been able to find a teacher that can teach Chemistry. My blaze attitude of: ‘If you can’t find any one, I’m back in the country on the 14th September I’m happy to come back then.’ My laidback outlook is not what the leadership, and helicopter parents of tomorrow’s professionals want to hear – but needs must when the Devil drives, even in a Catholic school!7024c70e46e93458343991aab3304695

So, we are on a bus travelling to and through Cancun, there has been a gang shooting a few days before in the centre. The east side of Mexico is far safer than the lawless west side – I am aware I sound like a gangster writing that, ‘I’m Eastside’ (Not sure if I’m doing the arthritic ‘sign language fingers’ right?, if nothing else I look like a younger Richard Madeley/older Ali G, or a confused Albanian doing an injured eagle on the freeway, heading to the service station of liberty – it has an M&S.

South-Point-Isla-Mujeres-18

We don’t get shot at and it’s not long before we are shooting the short distance across the sea to the Women Island, which appears to be Golf buggy island as we step off the boat. We have opted to stay out of the middle at the top of the island at Maria’s Kin Kan. The wife is neither happy with the location, the room or the price (I’ve booked it!); location from the centre about four miles, the room – not on the sea front, she makes her annoyance abundantly clear to a perplexed Maria, it is crafty ploy to try and get us upgraded – it does not work! Price: £600 for 6 nights, I point out this is reasonable, £100 a night for a place like this, is very good value, we are only getting it this cheap as it’s out of season and I have booked at the last minute, it is normally twice this price. The rooms at the front are booked out in a few days’ time, Maria does not have the super power to move the hotel a few miles down the seafront. The Wife goes to unpack while I give a DNA sample and passport details. “She’ll be fine, Maria, once I give her the right balance of mogadons and white wine and lie to her about our finances.”

IMG_0409

The hotel is fantastic, ok the room does not overlook the sea, but there is a private white sandy beach, a jetty, infinity pool, the twinkling lights of Cancun at night, the underwater museum two kilometres off shore. We are one of five guests staying here, by the next day we will be the only ones for two days. We are A list VIP Royals, the chef, Gas from Argentina, will become our exclusive chef for the next day (I will have a face-lift and a lobotomy, and the wife will have a bum-tuck and breast augmentation – I think I may be getting carried away with the situation?), “Whatever you want, doesn’t matter if it’s not on the menu, I will cook it for you.” Hey, what’s not to like?

For me, if you are after a package holiday to the ‘Eastside’ (arthritis pose) of Mexico, Isla Mujeres is a far better option than Cancun itself.

By breakfast The Wife has calmed down, which is good as the only other people at breakfast are the owners. “I’ve been thinking about the money–” “You can’t take it with you, there’s no pockets in a shroud.” Just before she can reply the chef is upon us asking what we want for dinner. “Red snapper and squid,” I snap back, readily. He suggests other meals, now he has a free hand, he’s worked all around the world, large stints in Spain and Italy. The food on the island is generally great.

Stitched Panorama

The island is incredibly small, a golf buggy will do you. There are mainly Americans without children around, the shops sell trinkets aimed at sports fans, of teams I don’t know well; Minnesota Musk Oxen, Arizonia Alpha-males, Santa Monica Serial Killers, The Michigan Muscleations, New York Dolls and The San Francisco Friends of Dorothy. We buy Christmas tree baubles, this has become a travel ritual now, it’s nice in the warm glow of Christmas to be reminded of exciting travels past (–the ghost that never visits in your youth!) Baubles for the children started with my sister in law, she buys them Villeroy and Boch, posh ceramic ones in the January sales and gifts them over eleven months later, (very organised, but then again, she does most of her Christmas cooking in October and freezes it!), it’s a great gift idea, the offspring are already adamant they are taking them with them when they leave the nest, so that is testament to how much they are treasured. They have some in-joke, that we don’t fully understand, about a ‘fat Mexican’ so we hunt down the ‘fat Mexican’ in baubalised form. The ones we buy are of a fat Mexican with ‘very’ flexible feet: Roberto! (sorry)

cancun_underwater_museum_jason_decaires_taylor9

We kayak out to the Cancun Underwater Statue Museum, I have read an article about this, and it looks amazing. It’s an easy two km paddle. I would have liked to have dived it, but snorkelling will do. The Wife is not sure she will be able to clamber back on board the slippery kayak, but there’s no way I’m not having a look. It’s a little limited to what you can see without a guide and an aqualung, but I manage to see the terracotta figures, cars (VW), large heads and few mooning arses. Well worth a visit, especially if you’re a diver.

On the penultimate day I come down with a fever, sweating away even in the air-conditioned room. I have recovered a little by the last day, but still under the weather, there is a seven-hour flight to recuperate on. My body is having an allergic reaction to working again, that and some dodgy seafood from down by the catamaran port.

On the last night, the Wife says, “You were right about this place, it’s been absolutely amazing, you’re always right.” I write that down, remind her what she has just said, and it’s going on her gravestone.” ‘Eventually’, can take a while to occur sometimes!

Isla Mujeres, Maria’s, is a long way from landing at Manchester airport, dumping my bags at home, quickly saying hello to our daughter, put my suit on and being in work less than two hours after touching down. It will start again, work, the existential life-laundry struggle, amassing enough money to escape again, enough pension-pot not to have to drink your own urine, but the memories of a month in Cuba, hummingbirds, pumas, manatees, friendships forged. They will keep us warm when we are old and voting to re-join the European union. These jaunts away that make you feel alive (at least in your imagination), restore your faith in humanity, give you the freedom to take risks, remind you that life’s for the living, these are what separate YOU and I from the also rans.

So, when the stories and anecdotes have been recounted, the odd person would tentatively ask: How much did it cost all together? The meticulous accounts of The Wife’s: £10,166 exactly. Seems a lot, but that is the equivalent of five two-week holidays. I know large families that go away for two weeks in the summer and spent four grand – seems a bargain now, maybe?

IMG_0418

BIG LOVE and Happy holidays, my fellow humans.

 

I had to give evidence to the Manchester bomb inquiry, the bomber Salman Abedi – a mass murderer who I met several times as a teenager, but never directly taught, went to the school I worked at for years. I couldn’t the authorities anything meaningful, he was a fickle boy and was not radicalised during his time at the school.

7c9e077d99f4ddf4a540b7152d33f110

What I will say is: Don’t look back in anger, ‘cos you’re not going in that direction, and if you are, have a change of direction.

 

Bit longer this week, but that’s it then for a while. The end of this travel journey documented. I would like to dedicate these blogs to Trevor Wolfe from Boulder, Colorado. Trevor and Olivia, we met in Costa Rica. He had a degree in Botany, worked in the burgeoning marijuana business and we would often chat on Facebook, about many things, his horror and shame of Trump, my shame of leaving the brotherhood/sisterhood of the EU, both add up to the same thing, our collective fear of the rise of nationalism and self-interest, that then gives birth to xenophobia, that appears to be igniting globally – divide and rule, fanned by neo-liberal sponsored division. Then the communication went dead, when I was asking him about the legalisation of pot in the North Americas. I wanted to buy some shares and he had the inside track. This was strange, he was usually very prompt in replying. I saw something with his name on and a college friend writing a eulogy. I dismissed it thinking it must have been his father with the same name, and… this was the reason why he was not getting back to me, I don’t go on Facebook much. A few days later, I realised it was Trevor that had died, aged just 30 years of age. Both The Wife and I cried, we had only met Trevor a few times, but he was one of those beautiful, beautiful, people that restored your faith in humanity and Americans, the world is a much sadder place without him. Life is an absolute bastard sometimes, and if nothing else, reminds you: to love is to suffer. RIP Trev, and let all that partake raise their joints in your honour.

Graphic1

Next time: There is no next time. Only the now… Don’t dream it, be it!

@thewritingIMP  www.ianmpindar.com

monochrome imp middle patternIan 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

I was asked what books I read while I was away, and the fact you are probably reading this on the Goodreads site, here goes, by far the most read, and often re-read where the Rough Guides to; Cuba and Central America.

The others were, in this order;

& Sons                       David Gilbert

The Curry Mile          Zahid Hussain

England, England    Julian Barnes

Version of Us            Laura Barnett

Breathing Lessons  Anne Tyler

God in Ruins            Kate Atkinson

The Amateurs           John Niven

…and they say men don’t read fiction, and those that do don’t read women authors!

Advertisements

#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  Oh look, there’s a jungle cat and its offspring: Swimming with Dugongs: Adventures in Central America.

05 Thursday Apr 2018

Posted by thewritingimp in holidays, Pindar, travel, wildlife, writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Costa Rica

two manatees

Corcovado National Park is magical. I was hoping to see turtles nesting at night on the huge golden deserted beaches, but we are not in luck, neither are the young British volunteers, and they’ve been out every night for a week.

leatherback-nesting

The highlight is tracking and finding pumas, a mother and a juvenile. They often leave the thick cover of the forest at this time of year in search of the newly laid turtle eggs.

3129500749_cd9c90e8e8

This will be the wildlife highlight for The Wife, but will be secondary for me, as the photo at the start may indicate. I particularly like the tame band (I looked it up) of coatis, that carry on eating around you like animated characters from a Disney cartoon as you pass them in the jungle.

coatimundi5b

The place we have stayed in, Finca Exotica Eco Lodge is fantastic, but a tad expensive, for example, a glass of wine is $7, I drink beer to help or finances, but the budget is shot, and we both have a spare kidney to sell when we get home. Our room has open sides and bats fly through at night – not scary, very exciting. All guests eat together, which adds to the community feel of the place, as like-minded people share stories and break bread. I would highly recommend it, especially if you are only away for a few weeks. You can actually fly in, as there is rudimentary airstrip, that was once part of the gold mining in the area a century back. ‘The plane, boss, the plane’, is what it feels like when a plane arrives.

Home_4

The only drawback of being slap bang in the middle of a rain forest is all your clothes get damp, even the ones in your case, it’s a small inconvenience. If you are going for the wildlife alone, I would make the journey to The Amazon, everywhere is secondary to there. The collective is just as invigorating on the way back to Puerto Jimenez. The young guy in charge of the tickets has laconically said he will sort us a small hire-car out at what seems like a ridiculously low price for the nine days we have left in the country, it is the low season, and he has.

62867334

So, we have wheels, something we should have done a week before and cut out a lot of hassle. We drive back to the seafront where we meet Tim and Chloe yet again. They have adopted a stray ranch dog they have found on the street in San Miguel, that kept following them. They are paying for the vets bills and the air flight to get him back to Colorado, about a US$1,000. In a way it’s commendable, although, I wouldn’t do it – all paid for by marijuana growing, you can add your own moral to this story.

We are trying to get to Monteverde cloud forest, but we are lost in the dark on a Friday night, weekend nights in Costa Rica are notorious for drunk/drug drivers, and we are on route 1, The Trans Pan-American Highway, full of uncompromising trucks and cars that don’t always dip their beams as the hurtle towards you. I’ve been driving for four hours and need to get off the road. We end up in a town called Oronita, driving the wrong way down a main one-way street, this is a strong indication it is time to rest. The people are friendly, the food is good. Our Friday is spent with the locals, mainly men, in bar singing karaoke songs. It is an interesting night, a window on another world: same but different. When the same very pissed guy tries to focus hard on The Wife’s face, but his eyes seem to go in and out of vision on her breasts, and when they abate for a second, he asks her to dance again. Forgetting she has refused him the first time, it is probably time for bed, and The Wife chooses me!

karaoke-quotes-funny

Next Time: #12 Crocodiles, Cloud Forests & Selfies: Swimming with Dugongs: Adventures in Central America.

@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

 

#10 They come in threes! Swimming with Dugongs: Adventures in Central America.

19 Monday Feb 2018

Posted by thewritingimp in holidays, life, travel, writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Costa Rica, iphone, life, money, ripped off, San Jose

two manatees

It is our first night in Coast Rica, we are both stood at a service till in a leafy suburban district of San Jose on a Sunday night looking at the receipt having taken the money, trying to work out the exchange rate, and the till swallows the card back in – it’s a preloaded card with the lowest conversation rate. We decide to go back the next day when the bank is open.

We have booked a shuttle bus to San Miguel on the coast with the Gray Line Bus Company the next day. The Wife has gone off to the bank to get the card back, the bus has turned up thirty minutes early. So, I pack the bags inside and tell the driver my wife is just around the corner at the bank, we drive to the bank. The Wife has been gone nearly an hour and getting the card back is proving harder than anticipated as the bank are ultra-cautious about its provenance. The driver has only been waiting a few minutes and is in moaning-overdrive. I reassure him, having popped into the bank she won’t be long. Another five minutes and she’s still not returned, he’s now threatening to drop me and the bags back at the hotel. The situation is not helped by the non-return of The Wife, then he loses patience and drives me back to the hotel, dumps me and our bags outside and The Wife confused as she leaves the bank (without the card – they have no access to the machine!) and I’m, and the shuttle bus are not there. Just phone her I hear you say, herein lies another problem. I have either lost my phone or had it stolen in Havana, the later me thinks, and I may be being unkind here after the positive things I have said about Cubans, minus Havanan taxi drivers. But when I have got to the airport, checked nothing has been left in the taxi, then realised at the check-in my phone is not in my shorts pocket. I suspect the cleaner has kicked it under the settee of the Airbnb. We had a generous tip to give her and at the last minute our friends wanted to meet for lunch, so we used most of the money to pay for the food, so the tip was not as large as she was expecting judging by her expression, the iphone was charging on the floor next to the settee, and I thought The Wife had picked it up with the charger. When I very tactfully contact the owner of the accommodation, a close friend of the cleaner, and suggest it may have been kicked by accident by one of us under the settee in the rush to leave, she replies: ‘Cubans are honourable people and what you are suggesting is unhonourable!’ Alarm bells start to ring, bells that could have been avoided by giving the cleaner a more generous tip! But ‘thin-slicing’ the initial psychological gut feeling that your first thought, is normally the right one, I think the cleaner did it!

6a00d8341c8f3e53ef019affe2f885970d

I cannot be 100% sure it was the cleaner, and I want to believe it isn’t, but I take the moral high ground and refuse to put a comment on their Airbnb homepage, rather than something negative and inflammatory – no one can get into the phone anyway, it’s just an ornament or more likely, spares only.

So, The Wife has walked back to the hotel for me to tell her that the shuttle bus has gone without us. The hotel travel agent rings the company and explains, we offer to pay half the fare tomorrow if they will meet us half way financially, they categorically refuse. It’s cost us US$150, then add the same fare again the next day if we are to go by bus. The Wife is fuming. I decide to ask a tour guide that is dropping people off if he is interested in taking us, he will do it for US$120. So, we end up in San Miguel that night, 2km out of the centre. They have come in threes;

  1. The iphone, which I was doing everything on in Cuba – for this reason, I feel devastated at its loss! And I come from a pre-mobile, meet you every hour on the hour behind the mixing desk generation. I can only get a small measure of what it must be like for addicted millennials that have them strapped to their wrists like an extra brain? If I was at home, I would just get another one. When I get home, I upgrade from a 5 to a 6, I can see the screen much better, (and millennials do not sneer at me as much), so something positive has come from the loss.

38762-Stars-Can-t-Shine-Without-Darkness

2. Being ripped off at Mexico City airport, which has cost in the region of another £450 extra.

3. Ripped-off by the Gray Line Bus Company, and now no pre-loaded card, and the American card company cannot get a new one to us, as we have no fixed abode in the Americas. We have other cards.

Gray Line

The bus shuttle hassle would have been negated if we had just hired a car from the start. They are cheap in Costa Rica, and it’s the best way to get around and see more.

We are sat in the room at the budget hotel, which is another US$200 for three nights. We don’t normally stay higher end, but have a rule when we fly into an unknown foreign country we stay in ‘nice’ accommodation until we have our bearings. The Wife starts to cry, this is very unlike her: “Let’s just go home. This would never have happened to us when we travelled when we were younger, or when we went around the world with the kids.” She goes through the last three recent mishaps and I start to reassure her. The phone is just a phone, it can be replaced, the airport was just one of those things, and the major one, the one she feels responsible for, as she has primarily in charge of finances – the massive overspend. I tell her we have savings, but we will not be able to take over two months off work and travel for many years to come. She is only partly relieved.

I have gone into detail about these three events, and they all happened within a four-day time-frame, as you will always encounter trials and tribulations if you are away for months travelling independently – let’s face it, shit can happen at home and sometimes without leaving our own dwellings. It’s about resilience, the old cliché, ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.’ And if I’m being honest, having a few quid in your back pocket to travel though the occasional shit-storm helps. They came in a three like another staid cliché, but that was the worst of the time while we were away.

We are sat in the bar, a couple of drinks inside us, and The Wife agrees, we shouldn’t worry about the money, it’s annoying, but like I always tell her. ‘When we get to the end of our lives, we will have more money that we can spend, and we will be glad we lived a bit, while we had the health and the enthusiasm to do it’ – I’ll get back to you on my death-bed on that one.

I asked a famous economist once, I was in my mid-twenties and going out with his great niece at the time, what advice he would give someone my then age about money, he didn’t need to think, he replied without skipping a beat: “Enjoy yourself while you can, don’t worry about pensions and investments. I’ve got more money than I know what to do with, and that’s about it, you’re a long time old, have some fun.” – Somethings stay with you and travel through life with you, a touchstone.

A few moons ago I did a course on Conflict Resolution and one of the tenets that stuck with me was ‘positive peace’ –  out of something negative, something positive occurs. The relaxing of money worries, made for a better holiday… and a better outlook on life.

33fafbee220e678eb46fb520b1e1e291

 

Next Time: Celebrating the Rain.

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

@thewritingIMP  www.ianmpindar.com

monochrome imp swirly letters

 

 

 

#6 When it’s gone, it’s gone: Santiago de Cuba. Swimming with Dugongs: Adventures in Central America.

30 Monday Oct 2017

Posted by thewritingimp in Cuba, food, holidays, humour, politics, travel, writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

carnival, festival, food, rum, Santiago de Cuba, Spanish lessons, wages, water

two manatees

I find Santiago de Cuba underwhelming, I will explain. I’ve done my research, Santiago is the cultural capital of Cuba – try telling that to Havanans. It’s closer to Haiti and the Dominican Republic than Havana and is heavily steeped in Afro-Caribbean culture. Entrepreneurial and rebellious are adjectives to displace poor, and as the second city you can only compare it to the capital. We have coincided our travels to be in Santiago, the far end of the island from Havana, for the festival to end all festivals some would have us believe! We have fantastic central roof-top accommodation that looks westerly over the harbour, with only four ships of any size berthed, two of these are Chinese (Americas loss, I sense) below the distant rolling hills, it looks spectacular from afar.

2617_w

A couple of people contacted me to question if the $25US/month Cuban wage was in fact true, it’s an average. We are told a story of a high school English teacher that earned $50CUC/month, who gave his job up to conduct culture walking tours, the day I spoke to him he had led ten people at $10CUC each, he had made twice is monthly wage in one day! Tourism is the bag to be in. I speak with another teacher when we are browsing in the large indoor market, also an ex high school teacher, that now has a shoe stall and makes $60CUC from that ­- more when tourists are around, and still does private tutoring, like he said – who can survive on $25CUC/month!

ed44a9db658e1714b597b92d4835cdda--spanish-jokes-funny-spanish

I have learnt my Spanish from a set of cds on the way to work and back for two months. I have smashed the Luminar beginners course – if ever you are a representative of a food company attending a trade-fair in Madrid – I’m your man, although I felt a little cheated that the sexual chemistry between Mr Hanendez and Miss Roberts never conjugated in the present tense! – maybe it does in the advanced course when they get married, have relationship counselling, and eventual divorce? I moved onto intermediate (bought cheap on eBay – it’s my own fault), which consists of what I imagine to be an exiled Nazi war criminal giving Spanish lessons in South America somewhere (sorry I cannot be more specific than that), at least he sounds Germanic, male and life-weary, he spends most of the time berating his English university students, he does also appear to have a Weinsteinian favouritism to the females, his two catch phrases are ‘no, no, no, no, no one will understand you,’ and ‘you must get the push of the verb correct, to get the correct tense, it’s consssensual, not conselssual. Occasionally he reaps praise on one of the women and you can sense their utter relief that they have eventually appeased him – Stockholm syndrome comes to mind. So, one day we set off on a cultural walking tour as outlined in the Lonely Planet, we walk in the general direction of the farthest point to start and will work back towards Plaza Céspedes, near our casa, but half way to the start, we discover we have left the guidebook, containing the detailed route to navigate, it is 35C in the shade and neither of us is willing to go back for it, the blame game starts and we both agree that it’s the other persons fault! I have a good grasp of the route in parts of a foreign city that I never ventured into ever before and I have intermediate Spanish-Nazi to fall back on. I know Pedro Pico (a street named after PP himself –  is the starting point, and with a few ‘Donde esta Pedro Pico?’ We’ll have no problem finding it, two problems here, no local seems to know where Pedro Pico is, if he is a peak, a person, a priest, a shop, or a mime artist we are meeting or trying to find! Secondly, what Herr Eichmann has failed to tell me is that the people will not only not know what/where/who Pedro Pico is, but they will do so in machine-gun Spanish. After my third enquiry of PP and blank faces and machine-gun Spanish, at least I think it’s Spanish? The Wife is like a little dismissive echo, ‘fucking Pedro Pico!’ We eventually find Pedro Pico, it is a little forgettable side road, but not for us! Even now when the Wife is sleeping, and I whisper, ‘donde esta Pedro Pico?’ she will murmur back, ‘fucking pedro pico!’

A friend once told me that when her parents split up and her mother was going through her photograph albums with her new partner, and she was telling him about events with her ex-husband, it meant nothing to her knew partner – why should it, it was a previous life. I always remember this story when I’m living in my car just to ‘get away’ for a few days and it’s these little almost inconsequential events to the rest of the world that are invisible glue – we will always have Pedro Pico and The elephants at Kuala Lumpur Zoo! (https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/6946206-28-a-woman-in-bloom-travails-through-life-sometimes-avoiding-the-p)

8b1d1c71ce256eec5b45b05a59b9fb7c--karneval-vintage-ads

We visit the Museum de Carnival, an aperitif to the carnival proper, the procession is the same night and we are excited after the museum. We have wandered down to have a pre-cursory look at the floats, thinking more will appear later (they don’t). Temporary spectator stands have been erected along the main wide road down by the docks where the flotilla sets out from.  When we return for the allotted start time it appears that everyone apart from the stall vendors are still getting organised. We wait around for a hour and a half, eventually they set off on Cuban time, then appear to stop for another half an hour, there are several ensembles of dancers, we watch most and a few floats – we are underwhelmed and bored, this is dubbed one of the greatest carnivals in the world, there is obviously no trades descriptions act in Cuba. We both agree, ‘Is that it, let’s go and do the other Cuban festival thang and get pissed on rum!’ And pissed we did get, mightily so. We had befriended a young male salsa teacher, Rico, the night before and half-arranged to meet up again with him. He has informed us he will take us to his ‘ghetto festival’ but is baffled to why we would even want to go when the main events are in the centre. I do the Cuban thing and buy a bottle of run and a two-litre bottle of coke, all of a sudden I have lots of friends, people Rico knows, if they’re a friend of Rico, they’re a friend of mine. We have no objection sharing drink with locals, we are in Delores Plaza, a professional sound system has been set up and dancing is occurring, ranging from professional salsa teacher all the way down to inebriated middle-aged gringo on holiday dancing! It’s great vibe, we still want to visit the ‘ghetto carnival’ but Rico is still baffled, he says this is much, much better, so we stay and buy another bottle of rum and coke and we gain even more friends. It’s a great night and we swim home, once home I casually vomit in the toilet, as I do so I think to myself in mid-reflux, ‘this is quite pleasant!’ – that’s when you know you are beyond pissed on Havana Club – I deserve to feel much worse the next day, but I have ejected most of my hangover into the Santiago sewer system.

0d451896b38168f88c4f7ec888fc2936

We are hassled by the same eccentric drunk the next day, I think his name is Mr Bidido, we endure him the first time, but he hassles us again, forgetting he has hassled us before and The Wife politely says, ‘We just want some privacy’ to which he replies ‘Well, fuck you then!’ in English.

I foolishly have a three-meat bird dish in a restaurant overlooking Delores Plaza, that consists of two unknown fowl and luncheon meat – this is again one of the better tourist restaurants! It can mean only one thing: Imodium on the trip to Baracoa, via Guantanamo, there’s a lovely bay there with a huge military complex on. This ‘bunged-up’ ride will pale into insignificance compared to the bus ride back and the ‘walk of shame’.

2251837501_ddfce0fc5b

We go and observe the bullet holes in the wall of the military barracks, where the first bungled event of the revelation occurred, almost terminating the path to the victorious republic before it was even born, if you want to an exemplar of how not to lead a guerrilla attack, read about this one, the then barracks is now a high school, has been from 1963, and you can casually wander in and take photos while school is in progress, no one asks us for a police check, DNA sample and two references, like they would in the UK, they are patriotically proud of the bullet holes next to the books.

We struggled to find bottle water at one point one day, and we had to ration what we had. The food often ran out in the restaurants. For example, in one of the better restaurants, next to the museum of carnival I order two dishes from the menu, the waiter says they’re not available, then we spend a few moments choosing an alternative to be told they’re not available, this feels like a sketch from Monty Python, so I ask him what is, he points to three dishes off the extensive list, there is no rice, chicken, tomatoes, green beans, etc, etc, we decide to get a sandwich, to be told the bread has run out, I’m not making this up, this in the second biggest city in Cuba! The answer to the scourge of food is, ‘it’s festival time!’ I semi-sarcastically ask if more people have turned up this year, it shoots above his head when he replies, ‘no, the same.’

39bedb370a72011fc909f22a81b7d50e--food-for-the-soul-soul-food

Santiago is a long, long, way behind Havana. I wanted to like it so much more, the pollution is absolutely horrendous, and although there are not many vehicles on the road the belching ancient lorries can instantly reduce your life-expectancy by six months as they pass. Not since India have I experienced pollution so choking. We did eat at one great Caribbean restaurant, St Pauli. It’s a double-edged sword, with more money and freedom, less embargoes, the food would not only be better quality, but actually available, tourism would be better organised, money would pour in and it would be a fantastic destination, but that is obviously not what everyone wants, I’d just be happy with decent available food and drinking water, then I could forgive the carnival to end all carnivals, which I’ve seen better in Moss Side, Manchester.

8fcfbcc175a17a348d776371eef2c353

P.S. So adamant was I at the time, without the guidebook to hand that it was Pedro Pico, I later realised it was Padro Pico, which makes much more sense, as this is a prominent unmissable tourist attraction, and not an insignificant side street! The Wife never re-checked the route later as I did, and it will always remain my secret – ‘Fucking Pedro Pico!!’

 

Next time:  THE bus toilet incident (The walk of shame!)

 

@thewritingIMP  www.ianmpindar.com

 

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

 

 

#3: Getting Ripped off, or supporting the Cuban People?   Swimming with Dugongs: Adventures in Central America

02 Saturday Sep 2017

Posted by thewritingimp in Cuba, holidays, humour, Pindar, politics, travel, writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Agatha Christie, AirBnB, Coppelia, public-toiletaphob, queuing, taxis, Viñales

 

two manatees

There is a famous Cuban film called: Strawberry and Chocolate, it won the Oscar for the best foreign film in 1994, as well as lots of other foreign awards, and it is partly set at Havana’s most famous outdoor ice-cream parlour, Coppelia. It is in the modern part of Havana. The guide book tells us that queuing is part of the Havanan experience, when we arrive we are informed we will wait at least one and a half hours to get served, Cubans seem happy to wait, I cannot even find the end of the queue! You can go to the VIP tourist section, pay more, well, get ripped off (supporting the Cuban people! (StCP!)).

Coppelis-parada.jpg

The ice cream can only be described as the quality you would get from a supermarket’s own brand when you are trying to save money and you have invited the whole class to your child’s birthday party, and that may be being generous on quality! The reason I highlight this is two-fold, firstly, I’m not sure Cubans actually know when they are queuing, it is so innate to them, and secondly, you don’t know what you’re missing until you’ve had it. Crap ice cream and excessive queuing would equate to elevated levels of moaning and complaining for many, dare I say, a first world problem!

st and c

The precursor to this is a journey in a motorised taxi, Havanan taxi drivers will rip you off if you don’t keep your wits about you. We have jumped in this taxi at the start of the Melecón, because it is incredibly hot (35°C), when we stop the driver switches the meter off that he has had on all the way. He times the fare by four! I remonstrate and I refuse to pay the amount he is demanding and tell him I’ll wait for the police – I have no idea the level corruption/integrity of Havana’s finest, but I’m prepared to find out, so is he, and why wouldn’t he if he can make several times his usual fare, (I will take about average wages in Cuba in the next blog). He then negotiates, when he realises I’m being serious. I end up giving him twice the ‘actual’ fare and walk off, he does not follow us, we do not get challenged by the law, unsurprisingly. This is taking StCP! too far. On our return to Havana in three weeks’ time, the taxi we get from the bus station, after 18 hours on a coach, is shared with two local women. We drop them first and they give the driver no money, even though we have agreed to share the cost of the ride. The driver then stops at a garage to get some cigarettes and leaves the meter running! When we get to our accommodation we are paying for the time it took him to laconically purchase cigs, and the two women’s ride home, then he tries to add some more on as well. We refuse to pay the exorbitant amount and he refuses to get our luggage out of the boot. The owner of the AirBnB intervenes and basically says the easiest way to resolve the issue is to pay him the full amount he is demanding! It still annoys me now, we would have given him a tip anyway. Be careful with taxi fares in Havana, negotiate before you get in, and not in a laissez faire/fare? way. If they pretend not to understand English, write it down, or type it into your phone. Nearly ALL Cuban people are lovely, but be wary of the capital’s taxi drivers!

motor taxi

We have explored Havana enough, we have our bearings, it will be great to return more knowledgeable. We are going to Viñales (pronounced Bin-yarl-es), we have by chance managed to share a ride with an Australian couple that are over to get married in Mexico, as it is half the price of doing it in Perth, Australia. Not half the price for their friends and relatives though! They work underground in the mining industry as explosive experts and I have a vision of them emerging from their shifts like the ‘Unbreakable’ Kimmy Schmidt and the Indiana Moles. If you complete twelve hours underground, you must emerge every time and think, ‘This is fucking brilliant, absolutely fucking brilliant up here!’ Unless you are emerging into a barren desert, even then it’s probably pretty good. We have debated with an English couple we met on the plane the best way to get to Viñales. It is about three hours on the disserted roads, they have decided to get a collectivo – that is not only packed with other budget ‘cattle’ tourists, there is a good chance of carbon monoxide poisoning – think cloud on unsteady wheels, and just to add double insult to injury we pass them broken down on side of the motorway, when we chat to them later it has taken them 6 hours, compared to our two and a half and they have saved the equivalent of about five US dollars each.

bus+collectivo

Transport in Cuba is interesting, you will see huge numbers of Cubans waiting patiently by the side of the road, waiting to be picked up by anyone, or anything, as public transport is chronic. There is, you guessed it, a queuing system, but priority is given to the old, infirmed and the pregnant, my advice is not to wait outside a maternity hospital.

Viñales is a big tourist trap, it is part of the Cuban Golden ‘package tour’ triangle, along with Trinidad. We have booked accommodation in advance, via our Airbnb, the owner of the accommodation has lied to us to get her to stay at one of her friends places, as when we arrive with our cases the one we think we are staying at is full, but she knows of another less desirable one that is vacant. The Wife has rumbled this quickly, and when the guesthouse owner says something to her about this other place and then shows us the sub-standard accommodation, The Wife is shouting at her, ‘You give Cubans a bad name!’ The female guesthouse owner is shouting back at her in Spanish, I’m walking backwards from this cultural exchange at this point. The Wife doesn’t need my help, she needs a cold drink. I leave her in a bar and go on the hunt for accommodation, which I love, the nosiness, the negotiating and the badinage. Viñales is a tiny farming village of about 300 people that now accommodates 1,500 guests, being a beautiful UNESCO area has helped massively, it is a beautiful place, and you have to go. I find a lovely place with a veranda on a side road, that we discover is a cut through for noisy lorries early in the mornings. I don’t mind as early the next morning a happy farmer in a cart being drawn by two oxen wishes me ‘beunos dias’ and I return the greeting with a big smile and take a picture with my mind’s eye for a future cold dark winter’s mornings in England.

Screen-Shot-2016-03-30-at-12.50.28-PM

We do a few of the tourist activities, tobacco/cigar/coffee production, on a guided walk with a young local woman. I have a dodgy stomach and as we pass her home on the outskirts of the village she points me to her toilet, which is outdoors and involves balancing on a precarious bowing thin plank of wood over a pit. It smells like it has dead mammals that have shat themselves just before they died somewhere in the gloom below – the thought of falling in their appears to cure me instantly. It is the other side of basic, it reminds me of the Australian joke: A Pommy visits an outback pub and is directed to the outdoor toilet by the landlord. Out the back are two open piles of shit, he climbs on the smallest pile and begins his business. Another man appears on the larger mound next to him. “You’re not from around here are you, mate?” “How can you tell?” “You’re in the bloody ladies!”

Viñales is the only pace The Wife gets a dodgy stomach in the entire time we are away – she has the stomach of a peasant, whereas I have the stomach of high-royalty! It is on the only occasion she has the panic-face of impending disaster she shoots into the bar in the corner of the main plaza. She runs past the confused man collecting the 1CUC entrance money and disappears for me to sort. I get drinks in and wait for the dancing to start and on her return when I ask over the state of the toilets she replies, ‘Marginally better than shitting myself!’ Like I said in the first blog, if you are a public-toiletaphob, Cuba is not the place for you. When we return home, our washing has been taken from the line along with the two French women in the next Casa. When we awake early the next morning to get our bus our washing has been returned, it would make for a dull Agatha Christie, but at least no one got murdered and everyone had clean underwear!

Like I said earlier, Viñales is a tourist trap, but it’s a beautiful tourist trap in a tropical landscape with friendly people and the best food we had in the whole of Cuba. If you’re in Cuba you have to go. You might even see a happy farmer with a smile as wide as his face wishing you ‘good morning’ leaving you in no doubt that it is, and when you reflect back on it and some of your first world problems you might just smile outwardly like a happy looney-ballooney or Nut-Womble!

IMG_5693

Hasta la vista, habaneros.

Next time, #4: So, you think you’re badly paid!

 

@thewritingIMP  www.ianmpindar.com

I wouldn’t mess with this desperado!

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.

monochrome imp swirly letters

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

BookCoverImage

 

 

key words:

 

 

It would be rude not to talk politics and revolution in Cuba. #2: Swimming with Dugongs: Adventures in Central America

18 Friday Aug 2017

Posted by thewritingimp in Cuba, humour, politics, travel, writing

≈ Leave a comment

two manatees

The Museum de Revolución is the only attraction I want to go to immediately, the rest can wait until the end of the month when we meet friends back in Havana. I have also vowed to walk the entire length (5 miles) of The Melecón like a Habanero, after seeing a travel programme set there in my youth. We will do this twice, buy a bottle of rum and large bottle of coke, share and make friends. As you can imagine a Revolutionary ‘History is written by the victors’ Museum it is very partisan affair with blood splattered clothing of fallen ‘socialistas’ and ‘Cuban Freedom Fighters’ and the many souvenirs and trinkets aplenty. The US and the then US backed President Batista forces are referred to as ‘The tyranny’ like an unimaginative wrestler. A black and white photo of bloodshed of the rebel reads, ‘the Cuban Freedom Fighters being molested by the tyranny!’ ‘Molestation’ is a euphemism here! Massacres happened on both sides in equal measure. But by 1959 The Castro Brothers and poster boy, Che Guevara were rolling into Havana atop tanks smoking cigars. Whatever your views; and no system is perfect, but when they took over a small few and Americans (Gansters, Politians, etc) were doing very nicely. A million people did not go to school from a population of 7m (now it’s 11.5m), and Cuba has the highest literacy rate in the entire world, yes, the entire world! As well as some of the best doctors and hospitals, I googled about lifts in Cuba – it is more expensive to live on a bottom floor flat than the top, as nearly all apartments don’t have lifts. It is amazing how many Americans are either going or thinking of going to Havana for a ‘different’ kind of lift! People, pre-1959, were often starving in the countryside, this in a tropical country that was easily capable feed itself. So whatever turmoil the revolution brought for the few back then, you could see why it was not long before the revolution was snowballing to Castro and co.

heroico1
Fidel Castro with members of his leftist guerrilla movement "26th of July Movement" entering La Havana after their victory over the forces of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959.
Fidel Castro with members of his leftist guerrilla movement “26th of July Movement” entering La Havana after their victory over the forces of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959.
castr che

So historically back in 1959 revolution was more beneficial for the many not the few, and so was born The Cuban Republic, and the great animosity between a superpower and little tiny Cuba. Cuba is the ONLY country to defeat America in a Latin or South American conflict, so you can imagine how well that goes down with dick-swinging men in power? The botched Bay of Pigs invasion is still a cause of embarrassment for some at the top of the US military.

bayofmap

In 1963 the world was on the brink of nuclear disaster, like never before, (hopefully). A tour I successfully tried to get on while in Havana but failed, was a tour of the nuclear bunkers, a friend had been and said it had been fantastic and insightful, an elderly woman took them deep under Havana and summed the view of probably the entire world’s populous back then, as, “We were all absolutely terrified, we thought the missiles would fly and we would immerge into a nuclear wasteland.” Cuba would not have survived without the muscle of Russia, it’s bit like a the runty school bullies mate taunting you with the knowledge there is serious backup! But survived they have, in whatever form that is? Against the embargoes of many countries, the collapse of communism and Venezuela.

547a1002e67ea

Don’t forget to add to the animosity of the USA occupying a part of Cuba down in Guantanamo Bay; this is a legacy of the Spanish/American war over a century ago, and America says it is essential for guarding the Panama Canal, it obviously isn’t with their influence in Panama itself as well as neighbouring countries, such as Coast Rica. You would be rightly pissed off if a foreign country occupied your land. Imagine how Americans would feel if say Iran controlled Boston, or Mexico occupied Florida? It looked as though this might change under Obama, but is unlikely under Trump. US service personnel hate Guantanamo (GIT-MO also, ‘Old Droopy’), it is the only American base servicemen and women cannot step outside in the whole wide world! They are prisoners! I’m sure the irony does not escape them either, when the festival fireworks erupt and samba music fills the air.

We have the obligatory photo taken on the tank outside them Museum that Fidel Castro has ridden into Havana on in 1959. The Lonely Guide book makes me giggle as walk the short distant to have a look at ‘The Granma’ yacht that the revolutionaries crossed on from Mexico in 1956 to unsuccessfully have a go at a revolution, a botched ‘try before you buy’ attempt: “The Granma yacht is guided both night and day continually, I assume this is to stop someone stealing it and escaping in it!”

Granma yacht

It has not been easy over the years and decades, and people have suffered, as I will elaborate in later blogs, but young or old, Cubans are patriotic, even if the differing generations don’t agree on the best way forward. The outward internet-looking under thirties are not children of the revolution, they are the offspring of a global connected world, they see what it offers and of course they want a chunk of it. The old men that run the country know this; they don’t like it, but needs must when the devil drives. It will be interesting to stand behind unorganised rich Americans at money exchanges just to register the shock and expletives when the Cuban authorities tax them 10% to change over money – that’s the price of progress after so many decades of mistrust.

So Cuba is steeped in politics, it, among other things is what defines it. It is changing because it has to now, it has been abandoned by new oligarchs, dodgy presidents, and Venezuela is in turmoil, not helped by the crash of the oil price. It will survive because whatever the people are, they are incredibly resilient, it is their DNA, but change is blowing in with tourism, Americans that don’t already know the warmth and intelligence of the Cuban people soon will and by a process of osmosis they will meet and love Cubans, because we are not different, we all want the same things; to love and be loved, happy and healthy friends and family and enough to get by comfortably.

Hasta la vista, habaneros.

@thewritingIMP  www.ianmpindar.com

blocklinecol3 (4)

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

 

Swimming with Dugongs: Adventures in Central America. #1: Cuba, da, da, da, da, da, Cuba.

Featured

Posted by thewritingimp in Cuba, family, food, holidays, humour, Pindar, Pindar Family, politics, travel, writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Cuba, Havana, internet, money

two manatees

So this is ten years on from our family gap year. The kids have grown up, the nest abandoned, for now; The Boy is working/getting drunk, etc in Australia, The Girl is waiting to start Uni. We have planned to go to Cuba for a long time, we nearly went fifteen years ago when we came into a few grand – where there’s a claim, there’s certainly a blame! But I put my foot down which is a rarity in hours for ‘Pushover Pindar’ as the family unit call me, then laugh like psychopaths! Instead we had a new kitchen fitted in the dilapidated basic house which we had just moved into. When I say basic, it had a gas fire and a shower in the kitchen! Yes a shower in the kitchen with no door on it – the house had been a multiple social security tenant’s house. I only tell you this as a few people say we are always travelling, sometimes it’s a fine line between being assertive and relaxed.

It is planned, The Wife has sacked her job off, I’m working at an academic school that is so desperate for Science Teachers, they are letting me go early and come back late – two and a half months we will be away in total, hurrah.

vida vidal

The first and only major hurdle is getting visas for the Republic of Cuba. There is nothing on the online website’s dropdown menu that says we are going for a holiday, or we are tourists. The box you have to tick is ‘supporting the Cuban people!’ This will become our motto whenever we are being ripped off, which when you’re a tourist – ‘supporting the Cuban people’ is quite frequent.

You know you are in underdeveloped country when you have to line up patiently to have a headshot taken with a digital camera from an operative inside the customs both. People get annoyed, but we take it in our stride, it’s all part of the experience, I pass the time thinking of famous people in mug shots, I decide on Steve McQueen.

steve Mcqueen

Everyone’s bags are re-x-rayed, when it looks like we’re through! Money is a hassle in Cuba; there are two currencies that run side by side. The Cuban convertible (CUC) – tourist money and money the rich Cubans use (there are some, they all work in tourism!) and the peso, or local money, in theory only Cuban nationals can use this, but once you get acclimatised, you can buy some things with it, like food, especially in out the way places. We have to queue to get our CUCs as you cannot buy them beforehand; this takes nearly an hour at twelve o’clock at night. Cubans say their greatest exports are: cigars, rum, music and dancing. Whenever a Cuban tells me this I add, ‘queuing’ to the list! It always raises a smile.

The Airbnb we are staying in have ordered us a taxi, but it has not turned up. We have the hassle of negotiating a new one. There are two types of cars in Cuba; new ones, Japanese and Chinese produced, and old ones from before the revolution (1959!) classic American cars. We jump in one of the later and the pollution it’s producing is like something from Wacky Races. Heading into central Havana in an American Studebaker – if that doesn’t make you feel alive, stop the world and get off.

By now it’s 1.30am in the morning and the narrow and on first impression, shady looking and crumbling streets are empty. I pass the taxi driver the address along with my pigeon Spanish and he goes out of his was to make sure someone is home. From the outside, the apartment (112 Villages) looks rough, but inside it is immaculate, large ceilings, colonial elegance, fantastic.

IMG_5613

The government stipulates that all rented tourist’s rooms must have; AC, a fridge, shower/bathroom. We are too wired to sleep, so we head out and find a bar (Monserrate) still open and sip cuba libres. The toilets in Cuba are not for the feint-hearted! This is my first experience, a tiled bathroom, one lone urinal in the corner and one sit-downer, surrounded by an enclosure a pony could easily look over, it has a plantation shuttered saloon door on, with an ironic bolt lock. Anyone that enters the bathroom looks down on you both physically and socially. This is one of the posher bars that tourists frequent! I find it quite amusing, but if you’re a public-toiletaphob, Cuba is not the ‘sanitised’ place for you!

havana

We wake late to discover we are in the heart of the old town not far from Parque Central. It feels vibrant and safe, we eat brunch in Café Paris, queue for more currency for an hour and a half!, in a beautiful colonial bank. Use a service till if you can, there is no rhyme or reason which ones work, but some do. We go on an open top bus tour with Cuclo, the commentary is rubbish, a half interested young woman that looks as though she has been out clubbing all night tells us the name of every hotel, when it was built and how many people it can accommodate, and little else – I know more about Havana than her, except the history of the hotels! We get our bearings and sunburn.

IMG_5598

That’s me under the tv.

We head to PA’s bar on Agromante for great cold beers, I get chatting to the owner. He has football shirts adorning one wall of the top teams from around the world, with the omission of Man City! After much discussions he reluctantly agrees he should get a City shirt. The Wife asks me in all honesty if I know him! “I do now,’ I reply. The beer, heat and jetlag send us to sleep, we reluctantly pull ourselves out to get in sync with a walk and food in Plaza Vieja. Havana is crumbling, there is little money for renovation except in Vieja and the important public buildings, which have been restored meticulously back to their original architectural splendour. It has been going on since the 1970’s, Eusebio Leal Spengler is the mastermind, and the Habaguanex holding company (WWW.Habaguanex.ohc.cu) a charity that splits the money from tourism equally between restoration and social projects. I read recently there will be as many as 110 direct flights from the USA this year alone – that’s a lot of US dollar! The upside of this is a beautiful decaying city will be brought back to life and lots of people in Cuba will be better off. Havana reminds me of Beunos Aires, a city that is starting to decay around the edges – The Paris of the South, but forty years on from their financial disaster, again precipitated by America!

Cuba already feels good, we are relaxing into it, the people are friendly, and despite reports to the contrary, appear happy and helpful.

 

Here’s my initial/landing top 4 tips for Cuba;

  1. Pay an agency to sort your visa out, it’s not expensive and will save you mucho hassleo.
  2. When you land get enough money for at least three days, if in doubt go for a higher, rather than a lower amount.
  3. Buy an internet card (you put a code in to the only government provider available!) and head to a plaza with everyone else. Expect the connection to be poor to awful! Don’t use one of the big hotels.
  4. Americans only. If you get money out using an American account the Cuban bank/government will charge you 10%, yes 10%! Change all the money you need into Euros and exchange them. Western Union was good option for Americans I met.

15-Havanna-17

Hasta la vista, habaneros.

Next time, #2: It would be rude not to talk politics and revolution in Cuba –- Out 18/8/17

@thewritingIMP  www.ianmpindar.com

blocklinecol3 (4)

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

 

 

#73: Journey’s end: life continues (back to life, back to reality.) The Curious Incident of the Gap in the Year. Travails through life; sometimes avoiding the pointing fingers and arrows of outrageous fortune.

20 Monday Mar 2017

Posted by thewritingimp in children, family, gap year, holidays, humour, south America, travel, writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

family, Glastonbury, home, middle-classes, Quito, school, teenagers, travel

75 life

This is the last few days of what should have been a year away, but now has to be eleven months as we have to go back to get The Boy into his comprehensive school, so he’s not classed as a re-admission and on a waiting list. We go on our last excursion from Quito to the belt of the world at Cuidad Mitad del mundo (Middle of the World City).

download (8)

We jump back and forth from the northern to the southern hemispheres. The Boy is reluctant and remonstrating with us, “It’s such a sad touristy thing to do.”

“Yep, but when someone asks you how many times you have crossed the equator, you can say ‘dozens of times’. “ He is not convinced, he is practising to be a proper teenager in a few days’ time.

“In the merchant navy they shave your head the first time you cross the equator. We could shave your hair off in a symbolic gesture of solidarity to seamen.” He laughs, well, he’s nearly a teenager. “We could just shave it off anyway, so your new brutal hairstyle matches your personality!” A young non-nonsense Australian joins in, “Hey, you are a tourist, mate. Get jumping, you’ll feel better for it.” So reluctantly he joins his sister who is already bounding the line like she is in a Disney musical. He feels better for it and it lifts his, and everyone else’s mood. We take the obligatory photos of the brutal monument dedicated to 0º-0’-0”Latitude.

We visit The Magic Bean Café for the last time on the morning of our departure and evaluate our nearly-year away. It feels like we are in an ephemeral bohemian novel – Marquez springs to mind, surreal that it will soon end. We, the parents, could travel onwards forever now, more addicted than institutionalised, more enthused than jaded, with a topping of escapism thrown in. Should we have paid forty grand off the mortgage, rather than spent the equity on taking a gap year? I say ‘squandered on coming away’ to The Wife to evoke a reaction. The answer is obviously ‘no’. We discuss the best bits about the last year of our lives, and the good seem to outweigh the bad bits by about ten to one. But don’t kid yourself there won’t be travails, annoyances, and resilience needed during a full year away. Even the relative hardships untarnish to memories that make us laugh and smile.

We are in Quito airport, this is the last time we will need to check our bags in, the next time we will be reunited will be in Manchester, after they get delayed at Heathrow!, and we will be ‘home’. Customs have taken it upon themselves to go through all our bags quite methodically, (except The Girl’s, or ‘Pequena mula de drogas’ as we like to call her. The Boy is not only accosted by this perceived violation, but his hormones are nipping away at him as well, he is about to explode, we both try and calm him, but he can’t fight against it any longer, he bursts.

“My life is over…”he tries to contain himself, but he has no chance, “I’ve been backstage at Glastonbury… and, I’ve been around the world. WHAT ELSE is there left for me to do?!”Both The Wife and I burst into laughter. “WHAT, WHAT? “ Exhorts the pre-teenager.

1451-Marilyn-Monroe-Quote-We-should-all-start-to-live-before-we-get-too (1)

So we are back in the routine, we have been for, total disclosure here, ten years! This all happened ten years ago, ten years have got behind us all. Writing now, only affirms how much it has enhanced all our lives. All those that appear scared by life, or cannot bare the stress of any change, the comfort of the everyday, some seem visibly shocked by what we have done, even now after both the children have made it to university. But how did you educate them? What did you do for money? What about your jobs? I know most of us are only a few months away from the streets, but you cannot let your fears paralyse you, or you become a ghost in the machine, living to work – stay optimistic and good things happen to you, it’s not purely by chance – you won’t win the lottery, if you don’t buy a ticket. The Wife gets the same job back she left. My job as a shortage secondary science teacher is not only left open, they have decided to give me a three-grand pay increase for some unknown reason. The Boy gets back into his old school, but tells all but his very closest friends he has been away in London for the year. The Girl starts a new junior school nearer to our home. I ask her how her first day of school went.

“We had Geography, and we are doing about the Amazon Rain Forest. “ I light up as she tells me.

“Did you tell them you’ve been, about piranha fishing, the caimans, the anacondas, collecting poison arrow frogs, swimming in a river?”

“I didn’t want to show off!”I am both sad, and immensely proud of her at the same time.

“Did you not say anything at all? Offer to bring some photos in? The trinkets you bought from a Shaman?”The look she gives me, reiterates what she has already told me. Then she adds, “The teacher had most of it right, but I didn’t want to correct her!”

photo06_4a

Two months after being back I’ve been sent on a middle-management course. We have to give a five-minute talk on any subject after a coffee break and a few of us are deciding what to talk about. I genuinely have no idea and express these feelings aloud. ‘You must have done something interesting across the summer holidays?’ ‘I did go around the world with my family all last year.’They look at me as if I’m taking the piss; I’ve not even considered it might sound a bit showy. So I talk about this, I set about my talk giving a very brief résumé of the places and the people and pre-empt the worried questions the professional middle-classes always ask, always the education issue comes up first – can you image the fine now? I tell them semi-flippantly, ‘schools don’t mind when middle-class people take their children out of school, it’s the working classes they object to, as they’re not taking them to museums and immersing them into the language and culture.’ My time is up and the ‘facilitator’ asks if anyone would object if I was given a little more time to answer some more questions that people may have. A resounding ‘yes’ ‘that’s fine’ ‘I want to know…’ I become defined as the teacher that took a family gap year for the rest of the course, but there are worse things to be defined by.

People ask what our family gap-year away was ‘really’ like? At least for the first few weeks anyway;

We have;

Basked in the glow of the Golden Temple with relatives and roots,

met and impersonated penguins,

observed tigers on the stalk,

walked in the footsteps of Ghandi,

counted and framed shooting stars in the Australian dessert,

traversed glaciers,

submerged ourselves on the Great Barrier Reef,

ridden through Pushka on a camel with the wind in our hair,

stepped through petrified forests,

experienced the havoc a few can inflict on the many,

surveyed the sunrise over Micha Picchu,

Traced the Nazca Lines,

upheld the natural jewellery of poisonous arrow frogs,

been awed as pink dolphins break the water’s surface,

Epicured on piranhas in the Amazon,

abandoned black-screens for analogue books,

lived with few material possessions,

set our watches in every time zone,

witnessed The Boy undergo the biological change; wrestle the hormonal beast,

laughed with friends of every nation,

grown much closer as a family,

and… seen the world is connected by love and friendship…

I think… but mostly I just reply, “Yeah, it was great.”

If you take your kids out of school and go around the world for a year, you have to expect them to be more; independent, confident, secure, better readers, empathetic, wiser. The flipside for some is the travel bug bites them, they are more, as the great philosopher Eric Cantona once said: secure, independent and loved. But now they also have wings and they may glide further from the nest and end up working in Australia, or travelling through South East Asia, where they are now, but would we have had it any other way?: No! Don’t forget as parents we are only the bows, our children are the arrows, we have done the best we could, and will endeavour to do so, when at times it’s bloody hard, but that’s what families are about, that’s the invisible glue that sets fast.

quote-love-is-the-glue-that-holds-the-world-together-starhawk-62-88-32

Disclaimer

I may have a break from my blogginations for a while; there is tricky book to finish. Recently I spent two and half months in Central America and Cuba with The Wife, I may tell you about that at some point. The biggest complaint I’ve had while writing this irreverent flickering images nonsense  is calling The Wife,‘The Wife!’, feminists hate this, and they have every right to do so, I appreciate that – she doesn’t hate it, and she is a proper feminist. When I set off with the first blog she didn’t want her name mentioned, this was probably a wise thought, ‘I know what you can be like, people that know me might read it.’ She has mellowed, she is the reason we went away in the first place, she is the real risk taker in our relationship – I was only a risk-taker by association. She was the one that made a decision that has enhanced all our lives measurably, and the memories only get rosier with the passing of time, for this and many other reasons, is why I love her, so when I write: ‘The Wife’, what I mean is ‘my’ intelligent, beautiful,  Punjabi Princess.

IMG_0047

BIG LOVE to you all for reading these blogs in numbers that have astounded me, and as you travel and travail through life, catching and avoiding the pointing fingers and arrows of outrageous fortune, take my BIG LOVE with you, always… and make sure the glue is setting hard.

@thewritingIMP  www.ianmpindar.com

blocklinecol3 (3)

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

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

 

Epilogue:  Through the Sun Gate: Machu Picchu.

This was the highlight of our family gap year: at least for The Wife it was. The sun creeping over the verdant Andes, the conical sides of Mount Huayna like benevolent reaching arms, to the blanket of the scattered ancient Inca ruins below. The Wife fighting for words to express its beauty; for her no anti-climax, for the rest of us the satisfaction that we have all made the three and a half day trek without oxygen and stretcher bearers. To stave off altitude sickness I have chewed the recommended cocoa leaves – all that occurred was an aching jaw like I had been hit a few days previous by Mike Tyson in a bad mood. The continued expectant eyes’ of the porters that I might have some ‘spare leaves’ – I felt like a drug dealer, I gave them all of them.

I have equal measures of wonderment and relief that we have made it, especially with a nine-year-old daughter, not so much in tow, more running ahead. The Wife has led us to the iconic photographic point – you know the one I mean. The children now more interested in the Mother and baby Llama just to our right, which are now bathed in the smiles of their own mother. The place is deserted; it is seven in the morning, ideal for photography in the still. She is punctuating the endless pictures with sighs of contentment and flowery adjectives – ‘this is why we are here’. The children are getting restless and not sharing her excitement now. Then it happens, whilst the baby llama is content to feed from its mother’s milk. The Madonna lets out the loudest expulsion of mammalian wind we have ever heard – ever! At the same time her short tail rises up and levitates in the air momentarily, before comedically falling back to its resting position. The children fall with it, into uncontrollable fits of laughter, I have no option but to follow suit. The laughter is not echoed by The Wife at the end of her (rudely) interrupted pilgrimage. Now would be a good time to break open the unused oxygen cylinder.

Several years pass and my wife is relaying the tales of our year out in the kitchen to a friend. She is waxing lyrical about the Incan ruins, her highlight, just as both the now teenage children enter the kitchen.

“What you talking about?” enquires the eldest.

The wife knows best not to mention Machu Picchu, it has been code named ‘Old Peak.’ – the rough Quechuan translation into English.

“She was telling me about Machu Picchu, it sounds soo wonderful. You are so lucky to have been.”

“Did she tell you about the Llamas?” The children look at each other trying to suppress something.

“No, what about the Llamas?” she lightly demands looking at The Wife, whom is shaking her head rhythmically from side to side.

Then they’re off again, transported back, memories underlined by laughter, and I have little choice again, but to join in.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Madonna and child!

#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:

 

← 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
Advertisements

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

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

Cancel
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