How To Impress The Venezuelan Consulate

I'm standing in the back garden of a nice looking house in a suburb of the northern Brazilian city of Boa Vista. It's approaching 9am, it's hotter than it really should be at that time of day, and I've just removed my shorts, when the back door swings unexpectedly open, and a smartly-dressed lady in her twenties gives me the kind of look you'd probably give someone if you found them half-dressed in your back garden. To add insult to injury, this lady is clearly an employee of the Venezuelan Consulate, to whom I will very shortly apply for a tourist card permitting me to enter the Bolivarian Republic via its land border with Brazil. I'm not sure that a view of my boxer shorts will have helped my case.

Ao once again I find myself caught with my pants down in an inappropriate South American situation. This time, however, I fear I may have provoked a major diplomatic incident. In my defence, I can explain. Having arrived at the Consulate straight from the overnight bus from Manaus, hoping to get my visa in time for the noon coach to the border, the large and burly looking security guard at the front of the building took one look at me and shook his head. Apparently, despite the searing heat, the Consul would not admit me to the premises while wearing shorts, and I must immediately put on a pair of long trousers before attempting to enter. It was suggested to me that the garden at the rear of the property would be the best place to facilitate the quick change. Unfortunately someone else clearly tipped off the consular officials as to my presence, one of whom emerged to greet me at precisely the wrong moment. Oh dear.

Amazingly this rather major faux pas seemed to provoke nothing more than mirth on the part of the unfortunate victim. In many respects I was more disturbed by this response than any of the other possible reactions - a woman laughing at you while you are undressing is slightly off-putting to say the least. (No, I've still not got used to it...) Anyway, my semi-naked form was clearly no big deal for the Venezuelan consular authorities, unlike other details of my application. For some reason, I'm not sure exactly why, I was slightly economical with the truth regarding my occupation. Not wishing to explain to the Consul himself (I was, by now, thankfully clothed appropriately) that I am in fact unemployed and homeless, I instead rolled back the months and suggested I might work for Credit Suisse. With hindsight it's fairly obvious that this was an error. While most countries in the world would much rather admit a (supposedly) moneyed and (apparently) respectable bank employee than a feckless wandering youth, the Socialist Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela would I suspect be the exception. A series of pointed questions about what exactly I do (did) for CS followed. Realising my error, I immediately began downplaying my importance in greasing the wheels of global capitalism (not exactly a difficult proposition given the truth), much to the scepticism of the mustachioed official.

Luckily, however, at that moment a very attractive young Brazilian lady entered, apparently looking for a visa herself. Immediately the consul lost interest in me, and invited the hot young Brasileira to his office for a "personal hearing". Shortly afterwards, my visa was granted, and I left as happy as I was surprised. As I walked down the street, however, a voice called to me - it was the original lady to whom I had, ahem, exposed myself. Apparently she'd forgotten to give me some necessary paperwork and had rushed after me to rectify her error. I thanked her before looking at the green leaflet in my hand. 32 pages of warnings and condemnations of Sex Tourism. I guess she had a point - if I had exposed myself in the Venezuelan Embassy who knows what else I might be capable of?

Slow Boat Down The Amazon

`Four days by boat to Manaus? That is not a journey of the modern world, it sounds like something from the nineteenth century.´

Alfredo´s tone was one of surprise and credulous awe rather than scorn, though I´m sure others would question my sanity. If there is something slightly nineteenth century about a four day ferry journey 1000 miles down the greatest river in the world, there is certainly something positively Victorian about taking that journey to get to a place you have no wish to visit, would in fact rather avoid, and which takes you another 800 miles out of your way. So it is that I found myself standing on the docks at Manaus at six this morning, wondering what to do with myself for 14 hours before the overnight bus to Venezuela. Manaus is a city of 2 million people, 1000 miles from anywhere, at the convergence of the Rio Solimoes and its greatest tributary, the mighty Rio Negro. Together the two form what is known as Rio Amazonas, the longest, widest, most voluminous river on the planet. In this vast desolate wilderness of forest the Amazon is the only viable communications link; as such, Manaus is a major international port 1000 miles from the ocean. It has more hookers and `love hotels´ than anywhere I´ve ever been, and everything apart from the whorehouses and this internet cafe is seemingly closed on Sunday. The people are rude and try to rip you off at every turn; it´s hotter than hell. So why am I here? Because, to quote a cliched proverb, `life´s a journey not a destination´; as far as journeys go, few can compare with 96 hours on a floating gin palace down the Amazon.

Should I ever decide to write a novel, I will look no further for characters than the NV Dom Migoel, a rusting hunk of lurid orange steel with two decks full of cargo, most of it illicit, a couple of hundred passengers in tightly-packed hammocks, and a bar that opens at 5.30am and closes, well I´m not sure it closes to tell you the truth. One man who would know is Felix Carlos Alberto, known to his friends as `FC´. Like a certain ex-housemate of mine who uses the same nom de guerre, FC is a huge bear of a man, 6ft 5 and close to 300lbs. Like a certain ex-housemate he patronises saunas and massage parlours all across South America, and like a certain ex-housemate he drinks like a fish. When the bell announcing breakfast rang each morning, I would stand on the top deck of the boat and peer out into the redness of the beautiful Amazon dawn, gently sipping my sweet black coffee. FC did likewise, swigging cachassa (the gasoline used to make that deadly Brazilian cocktail, the Caipirinha) from the bottle. He confided in me one night that he had drunk a litre a day for as long as he could remember. Quite how that played with his commanding officers in the Brazilian army is hard to say, but a litre a day barely touched the sides as far as I could see. FC´s four day foray from Tabatinga to Manaus was a mere warm-up, as I write he is back on the river again, drifting down to Belen to meet his mother. He had sufficient supplies of hard liquor to drift right on across the Atlantic and round the Cape I think.

Then there was Antonio, an elderly yet sprightly Jackie Chan lookalike, who in spite, or perhaps because of, his total lack of teeth, managed to be blind drunk for 96 hours straight. He repeatedly asked me to teach him some English, I repeatedly did so, and he repeatedly got even drunker and forgot it had ever happened. By the end of the third day he had forgotten who I was and introduced himself to me all over again. Each time, copious quantities of saliva would scatter from his gaping mouth, showering all within a ten feet radius. Delightful. Slightly less drunk, though just as entertaining in their own tragicomic way, were the young couple, one of whom inhabited the hammock next to mine. She was heartbreakingly beautiful, and seemed scarcely old enough for the two children she ineffectually doted on. He was feckless, drunk, and clearly charming, though unfortunately for him, it seemed his luck had run out a while back. In the process of running out and leaving her, literally, holding the baby, he inadvertently got on the same ferry as her and her quite fearsome mother. Understandably stunned, he tried to reason slowly and clearly, in Spanish, presumably hoping no-one else could overhear or understand. Guess again! She said nothing, but sobbed violently, safe in the knowledge that her mother´s peremptory stares would silence her former love. Hell hath no fury like a mother-in-law scorned.

The only other tourists with me on this Brazilian floating asylum were a nice couple from Austria. Their English is better than my German, so we had a fine old time comparing notes on the resident patients, er passengers, joining us on our voyage of lunacy. For a while I was exceedingly hopeful that the infected blister on Wolfgang´s foot, slowly spreading its pain and discoloured swelling up his ankle and into his calf, would allow me my first ever up close and personal view of gangrene. Disappintingly Wolfgang and his girlfriend Karolina did not share my enthusiasm for such a research project, and promptly disembarked at one of our frequent stops (ostensibly to take on more passengers, in reality to increase the quantity of smuggled goods on board) to have it seen to by a doctor. They too had travelled down through Colombia (loving it as much as I) and are heading north into Venezuela - I suspect we may meet again.

On the subject of smuggling, however, I must report that the lunacy inherent in the peoples of these parts extends as far as officialdom. At 3am on the first night, as expected, we were boarded by Brazilian Customs, who conducted a thorough search of, well, me at least, hoping to find narcotics. My particular officer spoke good Spanish, and was thus able to take full advantage of my vulnerable status as an Englishman abroad. At first I was confused by his impression of a kitten drowning in a pail of water, until with a smirk he muttered the word `Ronaldinho´, and at once I realised he was aping David Seaman being lobbed by the bucktoothed Brazilian boy wonder in the 2002 World Cup.

The comedy didn´t stop there, however, as I was then treated to a hilarious array of jokes and comments about Hugo Chavez and his `Bolivarian Revolution´, which seems to be regarded with even more scorn here in Brazil than in Colombia. But, ladies and gentlemen, now for the grande finale. Drum roll please. Suddenly it all turned serious. As I showed a couple of innocent items (books I think) to the officer, his previously friendly and jovial demeanour disappeared in a flash. He looked at me with a frown, and shouted in Spanish, `MARIJUANA! YOU HAVE MARIJUANA!´ I froze in terror. Of course I didn´t have any Marijuana, but that didn´t matter. I´d read about this kind of thing countless times - everyone has. This was the moment where I was set up for drug smuggling. At best I´d escape with my liberty only after paying an enormous, trip-ending bribe; at worst I was destined to languish, in a rancid Brazilian penitentiary, occasionally remembered by TV news reports met with a cynical response from viewers like myself: `Of course he did it, just look at him´ Clearly he sensed my terror - it can´t have been too difficult after all. Then he emitted a strange, almost bestial noise. A howl of sorts I think. He literally fell onto the floor (we were kneeling at this stage), and began rolling around, convulsing, clutching his sides. I can´t ever recall seeing someone laugh so much in my whole life. `Welcome to Brazil!´were the only words he could muster.

While all in all the four days (is that all it was?) were pleasant and relaxing, the incident with the customs official was by no means the only unpleasantness I had to endure. On Friday evening, while being treated to some freshly caught Amazonian fish as a personal favour from the chef, I inadvertently swallowed a large chunk of bone. Or rather I nearly did. Instead of either sliding down as normal, or choking me to death in a couple of minutes, the offending piece of fish skeleton wedged itself somewhere in the deeper recesses of my throat. And there it stayed for a night and a day. This was slightly disconcerting to say the least. Fearing it might dislodge of its own accord and just kill me in the night, or worse, that anything I ate could at any time become stuck fast against it, with the same result, I took matters into my own hands. At this point, by some happy coincidence, my mood was boosted further by the previously unannounced arrival on board the ship of a Biblical plague of giant Amazonian cockroaches.

There are certainly parts of my journey so far which must sound quite glamourous and exciting, particularly when read from an office cubicle. I can assure you, however, that finding yourself in a darkened cockroach infested bathroom, one hand bracing against the wall while the other conducts a manual inspection of the upper regions of your digestive system is not nearly as fun as it sounds. Attempting to grab a slippery piece of fish bone in between the knuckles of your index and middle fingers is fairly difficult I have to say, even more so when the involuntary gag mechanism which is opening your throat keeps being contradicted by the equally involuntary snapping shut of your mouth to prevent any curious cockroaches from joining the party in my palate. Eventually, 18 hours later, I finally prevailed.

At this point, around 1pm on Saturday afternoon, I was so overwhelmed with relief that I promptly went to the bar and drank six beers in short order to celebrate. And so the last day on board drifted along much like all the others - a joyous combination of hammock, beer, saccharine Brazilian soft rock, sunshine, and the scenery of the greatest river flowing through the greatest forest in the world. And of course the lunatic Brazilians themselves. While my time in this,the fourth largest country on earth, will be limited to scarcely a week, I feel that four days on a riverboat down the Amazon has given me more of an insight into real Brazilians than a much longer trip around the tourist traps of the coast. I'll definitely return to see those one day, though only after I've learned some Portuguese. Imagine the characters I'll meet when I can actually speak...

My Portuguese tutors, Flavia and Ana.

Sunset over some nameless Amazonian port, hundreds of miles from anywhere.

Hammock City.

The Bar!

Cargo.

Into The Jungle

I sit in the bow of a small wooden canoe in a brown creek, holding a primitive cane fishing pole. Monkeys shriek in the trees on either side of the river, pink dolphins frolic in the murky waters ahead, and pairs of colourful macaws fly overhead. I feel the tension grip my line, and yank hard. I pull out another fearsome red bellied piranha, my eighteenth such catch in just over an hour. This is the Amazon alright.

I had caught my first glimpse of the great rainforest from the plane. About half an hour after leaving Bogota, a casual glance out of the plane window revealed the terrain below had dramatically shifted from the usual, well, English-looking, green fields and rolling hills of the Colombia I've come to know, to something entirely different altogether. As far as the eye could see, all was dark. For a second I was flummoxed, thinking the vast featureless expanse below could only be ocean, an impossibility on this landlocked internal flight to the south. Then I realised. The rolling sea below wasn't water, but trees. This wasn't the Pacific, it was the Amazon.

There is something definitely unromantic about air travel; namely the convenience of boarding in one hermetically sealed featureless generic airport and arriving in another equally sterile characterless concrete vault, without any conception of the journey, of the gradual transition from one environment to another. Yet the visual perspective from a plane cannot be beaten. Only from the air can the sheer scale of the Amazon even begin to be comprehended. According to the stats on Wikipedia (not a source I quote with a great deal of confidence), the forest itself occupies over 5.5 million square miles, making it larger than every country on earth except Russia. Colombia's small portion of the rainforest alone is bigger than Germany or California, and it really shows from the air.

Such scale is awe-inspiring, frightening in a way, particularly when one is flying over it. Assuming you didn't succumb to the heat, the biting insects, the deadly snakes, spiders, scorpions or big cats, one could walk for thousands of miles through the forest and never come across anything even closely resembling civilisation. Whether or not such a hike would encounter humans of a lightly less than civilised disposition is unclear; the forest is so vast and unexplored that anthropologists believe there are many "uncontacted" tribes still waiting innocently for the modern world to blunder in and destroy them. I find this prospect quite staggering in its implications. Consider for a moment the possibility, no, the certainty that there are groups of people, more or less like you or I, wandering around in the rainforest totally oblivious to the rest of the world. They have never encountered electricity, machines, in all probability, the wheel. They are unaware of the whole course of human history beyond the narrow confines of their own society, unaware of the existence of a geography beyond their own little world, totally unaware of other languages and cultures. Yes, who knows how many Americans may be wandering lost in the forest?

Incidentally, I do not mention the fear engendered by flying over such a vast expanse of wilderness out of mere curiosity; in my final Spanish class I had been priviliged enough to read a compelling article in Colombia´s premier daily newspaper, El Tiempo, about the truly appalling safety record of Aerorepublica, the country´s second biggest airline, who in recent months have had real problems successfully landing on runways. As Aerorepublica flight 7481 hurtled out of the sky into what seemed like yet more undisturbed green jungle, I can´t say I didn´t think about this questionable record for just a second. While I´m always keen for a spot of off the beaten track adventure, the prospect of hacking a new path through a few hundred miles of virgin rainforest did not fill me with much enthusiasm.

Bearing this is mind, fast forward 48 hours and picture the scene: `Jimmy´, our indigenous guide hacks at the undergrowth with his machete, clearing a path through the jungle. I´m dripping with sweat, and more than a little terrified as my eyes scan the path ahead for all manner of savage beast: poisonous vipers, 30 foot anacondas, giant tarantulas, jaguars, any or all could set upon me at any moment. To make matters worse, I´m wearing only a pair of slightly faded sky blue Tommy Hilfiger boxer shorts and an eccentric Indiana Jones style hat. Quite how I came to find myself wandering through a remote stretch of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest clad only in my pants I´m really not sure. I can only say that at the time, having just finished bathing in a delightfully cool forest stream, it seemed logical to allow myself a chance to dry off before putting my trousers back on. Now, however, as insects, birds and who knows what else hiss, hum and shriek all around me, I´m beginning to reconsider. The Amazon is no place for a man without trousers.

All in all I spent the best part of four days exploring the remote regions of the Rio Javari on the border between Peru and Brazil, and an idyllic four days it was too. Fishing for piranhas, catching caimans (an Amazonian species of crocodile) bare handed, forest walks, scaling the canopy to a platform 130 feet up; I did many unforgettable things and saw many incredible creatures. Yet for me at least, the most amazing sensation of all was the feeling of being so deep in the wilderness. Six hours by boat from Leticia, itself 500 miles from the nearest road, this really was the back of beyond. As I lay in bed at night, nothing but a mosquito net between me and the jungle, listening to the chorus of howls, wails and clicks emanating from the trees and admiring the blindingly bright carpet of stars above, I really felt a very long long way from anywhere. In the age of mobile phones, blackberries, and constant instantaneous communication, that is a rare sensation indeed, and a privilege I feel immensely fortunate to have enjoyed.

I must remember to keep my trousers on next time.

"Chantelle, je t'aime"

"That parrot's dead!" "No he's not, he's just resting!"

Ok, this one is definitely alive.

Yes, that's me, and yes, that's a crocodile.

That's not me, but it is a deadly red-bellied piranha.

Sunrise over the Amazon.

Adios a Colombia

`Hola, como esta? Soy de Inglaterra, y voy a Brasil´
`Ola. Snsh veyt minhuto bem vindo htyu ererh bassaborte´
`Er, Que?´

What the fuck? At this point I realise the utter stupidity of spending a month intensively learning Spanish only to immediately head to Brazil. Portuguese is a truly ridiculous language, of which I understand not a word. The really irritating thing, however, is that it´s sufficiently similar to Spanish that they can understand me perfectly, thus giving the illusion of ease, an illusion that is immediately shattered as soon as they commence their seemingly part Russian, part French, part Latin response, all of which with the kind of accent that should really necessitate some intensive enunciation sessions with a speech therapist.

Still, linguistic nightmares aside, I managed to negotiate my way into Brazil successfully, but such is the way with formalities here in the `Three Borders´region of the Amazon, where Brazil, Colombia and Peru converge on a narrow stretch of river, I took my shiny Brazilian stamp and immediately returned to Colombia. There is effectively no border here, as I discovered last night when I inadvertently wandered into Brazil. Despite the proximity and de facto merger of Leticia and Tabatinga into one united conurbation, the differences between the two towns are striking. Where Tabatinga is dirty, rundown and chaotic, characteristically a frontier town, Colombian Leticia is a sprightly and prosperous place. On the face of it, this fact should be slightly surprising. 500 miles from the nearest road, reachable only by riverboat and plane, aside from a nascent tourist industry there seems little here to support any kind of town, let alone one so obviously prosperous. The economic miracle of Adam Smith´s famous `Invisible Hand´has never seemed so enigmatically well-hidden as here.

The answer to this conundrum, of course, is simple. Cocaine. An oasis of semi-civilsation in the midst of vast swathes of impenetrable jungle resolutely controlled by the FARC, with virtually unpatrolled borders between the coca-leave producing Peru and the cocaine-consuming Brazil, Leticia is a prime spot on the trade route for Colombia´s number one export product. In the interests of idle curiosity I asked a taxi driver a little about the industry in these parts; he was only too happy to respond. (By way of an aside, there is something infinitely rock and roll about sitting on the back of a motorbike discussing the narcotics industry in Spanish as you roar around the streets of a Colombian border town trying to find th best exchange rate from the street money changers.) A kilogram of pure cocaine apparently costs US$1,200 in Leticia, which is quite staggeringly cheap; according to my source (on this particular topic, I think a guy who drives a motorbike in Leticia is probably quite reliable), that same kilo, once cut with various potions and powders, will make 3 kilos in the west, with a street value of around US$300,000. Suddenly it all makes a little more sense. No wonder Pablo Escobar was in the top ten of the Forbes Global Rich List for over a decade. Still, he did die in a hail of bullets in a Medellin sidestreet, so perhaps the life of an international druglord isn´t all gravy...

My brief investigation into Leticia´s import-export industry over, I head to the port to catch a boat down the Rio Javari to a remote ecolodge in Brazil. Or perhaps in Peru? As I´m already officially in Brazil, I avoid the passport formalities of my three fellow explorers, two affable Catalonians and a typically chirpy Colombian, yet follow them to Santa Rosa, Peru anyway. This is my third country in half an hour, which is in itself a little disconcerting. It feels bad to be back in Peru, a country to which, despite its inestimable natural and archaological wonders (everyone should see Machu Picchu once), I took a strong dislike on my last visit in 2002. Santa Rosa is no different. Visibly much poorer than Tabatinga or Leticia, Santa Rosa is little more than wooden shacks rising out of the mud. With typical Peruvian efficiency we find the Immigration Office closed, the presiding bureaucrat at lunch, where we join him in a quite appalling restaurant, replete with various indigenous Amazonian animals caged in heartbreaking squalor. Combined with the excruciating noise emanating from the live band, this makes for a thoroughly unpleasant half hour; finally the necessary formalities finalised, we are free to go. I am officially in Brazil, while Luis, Alfredo and Francesco are officially in Peru. All of us are actually in Colombia, as we stop once more to secure vital supplies - a crate of Aguila beer - for the six hour journey into Brazil. Confused yet? I am...

But so it is that with a slightly heavy heart I say goodbye to Colombia, a country I can honestly say I´ve come to love over the last month. The people, the culture, the scenery; what a fantastic place. I will certainly return one day, hopefully soon, and that´s not something I can say about too many places. You´ll shortly find below a selection of photographic mementos of some of my Colombian amigos and amigas - I hope to see them again one day soon. Perhaps in Nora´s case, on MTV. But for now I move onto new adventures. The Amazon!

Akiel, from Trinidad (and Tobago), and Miguel, my anarchist Spanish teacher


Samuel, the craziest dog in Colombia


Akiel and Paula Andrea. She´s quite normal, for a Colombian

Nora. Like Shakira she´s from Barranquilla. Like Shakira she´s a singer. Unlike Shakira, seeing her emerge from the bathroom in just her lacy underwear was not one of the all time highlights of my time on earth.