Selling The Big Issue In Khartoum

When I was 17, I rather foolishly went to see the then recently re-released horror film The Exorcist at the cinema at midnight on Halloween. I was so terrified I had to stop the car on the way home and chain-smoke a couple of a friend's cigarrettes just to stop my hands from shaking. I slept with the lights on for about a week. Though I own the film on dvd and have watched it dozens of times, it still never fails to scare me senseless.

With this in mind then, imagine my horror when my Sudanese dive trip concluded with noxious green liquid began oozing from my aural cavity. This delightful discharge was accompanied by the kind of searing pain I'd only previously encountered in hospital beds shortly before some kindly nurse began dishing out the intravenous opiates. While I was almost certain I was not the victim of diabolic possession, I was undeniably in some considerable discomfort. Such discomfort, in fact, that I was forced to take my life in my hands and take drastic measures indeed. I went to the doctors in Sudan.

Given the quality of food, hotels, roads (not to mention the prison cells) in Sudan, this was certainly not an adventure upon which I embarked lightly. Maybe it is evidence of how far the NHS has fallen on hard times, or perhaps my negative experiences of the British medical system are skewed because of my long residence in 3rd world east London, but I was pleasantly surprised by my exposure to Sudanese primary care. Admittedly my waiting time was reduced somewhat by my skin colour and nationality (a not uncommon example of the positive discrimination which is often experienced as a white man abroad), not to mention the fifty dollar bill in my hand, but the service was exceptional. The doctor spoke impeccable English, superior certainly to that of anyone in my own GP's surgery in Bow (not once did he say "innit"), his office was spotlessly clean, and the equipment included a striking array of shiny new plasma screen monitors on which I was able to view the live ultrasound of a young Beja tribeswoman taking place behind a curtain. (While the Qu'ran clearly forbids both craven images of living things and women from showing uncovered skin in public, I'm not at all sure of the ruling on random passers-by staring intently at digital images of a foetus swimming around the womb.)

I'm not sure either whether the doctor had seen Linda Blair's fluourescent green oozings in the scariest film of 1973, but his reaction upon peering into my ear was certainly similar to my response to The Exorcist. For a second I was tempted to grab the crucifix from his wall and do something unspeakable while exclaiming " fuck me Jesus!", just to see what'd he say, but the urge thankfully passed. According to the good doctor (as the sign above his desk proudly annoucned, the esteemed recipient of a "degree from the prestigious University of Khartoum") no less) I was not the victim of Satanic visitation after all, but in fact had an ear infection of some unusual severity, for which he prescribed a rockstar-esque cocktail of potions and pills.

And here's where the trouble started. Due to a US trade embargo dating from the Khartoum government's rather ill-advised decision to back Saddam Hussein in the Mother of All Battles in 1991, Sudan is not connected to the international banking system. There are no international ATMs or credit card machines in the country; even the Khartoum and Port Sudan Hiltons only accept payment in hard currency. Consequently visitors must carry all funds necessary for the duration of their visit in cash, and hope that they don't become an unfortunate exception to Sudan's generally negligible crime rate and scrupulously honest people. I myself spent the first two and a half weeks of my stay carrying the best part of two thousand dollars, in fifty dollar bills, in a money belt down my trousers. However, having spent most of that on my dive trip, I was left with a mere $150 for my last three days. After forking out $50 for a bus ticket back to Khartoum, $50 for a doctor's appointment and a $39 dollar charge for medicines was not exactly ideal.

And thus, with $11 to survive on for three days, I found myself sneaking into the Blue Nile Sailing Club in the dead of night, and unfurling my sleeping bag on the lawn. While camping is a generally-accepted holiday and leisure pastime, it usually involves one or both of a) a tent and b) a rural location. People who spend nights in sleeping bags in parks are usually described as "homeless" rather than "camping", though to my shame I must admit it's not the first time I've slept rough in an urban setting. (NB: getting shit-faced and trying to find a hotel room in Brighton at 4am on a Bank Holiday weekend is not a good idea. Nor is trying to sleep on a gravelly beach when the tide is coming in, nor indeed is attempting to find repose in a "secluded" corner of a 24 hour convenience store, using a family size packet of dried pasta as a pillow.) At least the Sudanese don't much care where you sleep - given the extraordinary heat, many of them pull their beds into the street anyway. Unfortunately the downside of the balmy tropical nights which make outdoor sleeping so pleasant in Sudan are the scorching daytime temperatures, which meant that all of my precious $11 (yes, I survived 72 hours on just over a fiver at the prevailing dollar-sterling exchange rate) was spent on liquid refreshment. Say what you want about the evils of global capitalism, but when the mercury is pushing 45 degree Centigrade, the ability to procure an ice-cold bottle of Pepsi in deepest darkest Africa should not be underestimated.

Accordingly, I spent my last evening in Sudan, literally penniless, enjoying a 5 mile stroll through the southeastern suburbs of the capital to Khartoum International Airport. I'm not sure I can pay more glowing a tribute to the hospitality, friendliness, and honesty of the good people of Africa's largest country than to say I was able to sleep in a park for two nights, leave all my possessions under a tree for two whole days, and then wander aimlessly through the outlying slums of the capital with no danger my health or wellbeing whatsoever. It might be a total shithole with minimal infrastructure and precious little of interest to actually see, but of the forty or so countries I have visited in all corners of the globe, Sudan must rank as the safest and friendliest, bar none. Which sort of begs the question of how and why they've spent almost the entire fifty years since independence committing bloody genocide against each other. But that's another story...

Lost...

I wake with a start as the bus halts suddenly. "Where am I? Shit, I think I missed my stop. There's a tank pointing at me. What the hell?"

I've fallen asleep on buses before of course.

When I'm incredibly drunk, a kind of reflexive self-preservation instinct takes over, and despite being almost unconscious, I somehow manage to stagger to the night bus stop on Tottenham Court Road, from where my alcohol-sozzled mind knows with absolute certainty the bus, any bus, will take me home to Islington. A cab would never work - only a bus will do. Any bus. Of course this is not strictly correct - only one of the buses goes to Islington - and in any case I haven't actually lived in Islington for three years. No matter. I inevitably fall asleep and wake up some hours later in a remote, and inevitably hostile, corner of the capital, from where I will battle my way back home through the mean streets of north/east/south/west London.

Despite these early hours experiences of locations as unfriendly as Walthamstow, Wood Green, and Leytonstone, however, I've never found myself confronted with a mobile artillery piece. Not even in West Ham. Things get worse when I notice the sign by the side of the road. "Trablous, 1km". Great, I missed my stop in Byblos. I'm in Tripoli.

I wasn't intending on visiting Tripoli at all. Lebanon's second city is supposedly off-limits to tourists since the recent, well-publicised violent hostilities between the army and Sunni militants in a Palestinian refugee camp to the north of the city. Indeed, the ever-cautious British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, who currently "advise against all but essential travel" to Lebanon as a whole, specifically recommends avoiding "war-torn" Tripoli. Still, as I'm here...

In the event, the FCO were probably correct about Tripoli. Not on the grounds of safety or security of course - aside from tanks and roadblocks on the outskirts, Tripoli seemed less edgy than Beirut even - but because it's mostly quite dull. The contrast with Beirut, especially the upscale areas, is quite staggering. A wonderful medieval souq, a Crusader castle, a mostly conservative Sunni Muslim population. No Chanel boutiques, cleavages, or cafe lattes here: visiting Tripoli was like taking a daytrip back to the Middle East.

After passing a pleasant, though unremarkable afternoon wandeing the labyrnthine alleyways of the old city, I picked up a share taxi for the 90 minute drive back to Beirut. And from here my transport difficulties began once more. As the aging Mercedes cruised along the seafront highway into Beirut, a beautiful sunset dying the sky a verdant crimson, my driver asked where I wanted to be dropped off. The conversation clearly did not go as well as I thought - minutes later I found myself in an unfamiliar neighbourhood in South Beirut. No matter - this would afford me the opportunity to explore some more of the city - if I walked long enough in roughly the right direction, surely I'd find my way eventually?

An hour later, it is now pitch dark. There are no neon lights on this street, no Lebanese Army checkpoints, no German sportscars parked outside plush apartments. There are, however, hundreds of posters of a dimly familiar, bearded, bespectacled face, and countless yellow and green flags bearing a logo with a Kalashnikov. I've seen that flag before. I struggle to read the Arabic inscription on one of the many banners. "Hiz...Hizb...Hizba...Ah. I know what it says. 'Hizballah'." At this point I must admit to feeling a little nervous. I'm lost, after dark, in a Hizballah neighbourhood in south Beirut. While I'm not at all convinced by the Western media's oversimplified demonisation of Nasrallah and his army as Iranian-sponsored terrorists, while I know they are a respected political party as well as a highly effective guerilla army, while I know all about their hugely effective social and community work among the poorest of Lebanon's citizens, still...

Suddenly there is a huge bang and a bright flash of light. A rocket screeches into the air just in front of me. For a moment I am totally transfixed with fear. Just for a second I come very close to losing control of vital bodily functions. Then I hear the children's laughter. I look to my left, from where the missile just launched. In place of the cadre of keffiyeh-wearing, AK-47-toting mujahideen I fully expect to see, three small boys argue over who will light the next firework. Yes, that's right. A firework.

Just as I'm digesting this revelation, I am tapped on the shoulder. My still slightly nervous Arabic greeting "salaam aleikum" is met by a smiling response. "wa leikum a'salaam". Five minutes later I am sitting in a taxi, conjured from thin air as if by magic by a couple of charming men who simply couldn't do enough to help the lost foreigner. Not for the first time I feel more than a little guilt about my misplaced assumptions.

Fifteen minutes after that I sit in a pizza restaurant in the upmarket suburb of Hamra, listening to the excited English chatter of fashionably-dressed students from the nearby American university of Beirut, sipping an ice-cold beer and munching some excellent bruschetta. 20 minutes ago I was dodging Hizballah "rockets"; three hours ago I was wandering a four hundred year old souq.

Just another normal day in Lebanon.

Be Careful What You Wish For

It's 5am. I sit in a dingy smoke-filled room with fake wood panels on the walls, drinking my thirty-fourth cup of tea of the evening. It seems my fervent prayers to the travel gods have been answered, and I will after all get to see the real Turkey, away from the tourist hordes. I'm in a motorway service station somewhere between Antioch and Alexandretta, waiting for a bus. Glamourous though it may sound, those two cities stopped being interesting around the seventh century AD; regardless of which, I'm not sure this tea and kebab joint by a highway was ever really a highlight of the country even in Seljuk or Mamluk times. No-one here speaks English, I've asked three people to point out our location on the map of Turkey in my Lonely Planet "Middle East" and got three totally different answers, and I can't quite shake the feeling I've been abandoned to my fate by the Sula Bus Company. Still, looking on the bright side, at least there are no tourists here...

To pass the time I read. As I turn the pages of Alexander Maitland's compelling biography of the late Wilfred Thesiger, the legendary British explorer as famed for his total rejection of modern Western civilisation as for his incredible desert traverses in Sudan, Ethiopia, Libya and Saudi Arabia, I wonder what the likes of Thesiger would make of my predicament. Not a great deal probably; when you're the first man to traverse the impassable "Empty Quarter" of southern Arabia, you've lived with the Marsh Arabs in southern Iraq for seven years, and you count the Abbysinian Emperor the Ras Tefari Haile Selassi as a close personal friend, you probably don't regard Turkish truck stops as much of an adventure. Nevertheless, after a couple of weeks spent hanging out with people whose idea of "exploring" is finding a Starbucks in Istanbul, I feel suitably off the beaten track. Particularly because as time passes it seems more and more likely that I'll be seeing out the rest of my days here at this Anatolian version of a Happy Eater.

I console myself with the fact that given twenty years of sitting here I should at least have grasped the rudiments of basic Turkish. Until this morning I was rather proud of the fifty or so words (twenty of which are the numbers 1-20 I must admit) of Turkish I'd picked up; the ability to order a beer, some hummous, and a chicken shish kebab, and ask the price all earned me much appreciated kudos from the locals - on one occasion, at Ephesus I chuckled smugly to myself as a barechested Brit with a Cockney accent and a Manchester City tattoo on his left bicep (glory supporter?) paid 4 euros for the same glass of orange juice I'd just picked up for 2 lira using my amazing new Turkish skills. Now, however, as I attempt to enunciate such complex phrases as "no I don't want more sodding tea, where the fuck is the bus?", I realise the limit of my capabilities in this particular tongue was reached just after I learned "thank you" ("teshekur ederrim" if you wanted to know).

Eventually, after a couple of years, the relevant bus arrived, and I was charged a further twenty lira for the privilege of a seat, thus leaving me with the princely sum of six Turkish lira to my name. "Still", I thought, "there's bound to be a cash machine at the bus station in Antioch". After around five hours of travelling through scenery that alternated between the spectacular vistas of mountains, plains, and Mediterranean in the countryside, and the slightly less spectacular industrial dystopias of steelworks and gas refineries that dot the towns along Turkey's southeastern coast, we finally arrived at the desolate and remote Antakya Otogar: situated, of course, a good few miles from anywhere, and notable for the singular absence of any holes in the wall from which to remove hard currency. Once again I faced the less than ideal prospect of taking up permanent residency in a remote Turkish bus station.

On this occasion, however, I had not taken into consideration the legendary hospitality of the Arabs (for the cynics out there, no, that doesn't involve orange jumpsuits, beheadings, and YouTube). For the bus company was Syrian, the passengers were all Syrian, and as a guest in their country (well, nearly), they were obligated to look after me. Code of the desert you see: one day they may be passing my, er, tent, and be in desperate need of hospitality. Most of the Arabs may not live in the desert any longer, but the old ways live on. "Only six lira, no problem! Welcome to Syria! Have a chocolate chip cookie." "Mmm...don't mind if I do. Shukran". It will doubtless surprise many of you to learn this, but because of Islam's roots in the Arabian desert, such hospitality is customary not just in Arab states, but across the Muslim world (though some of the Iraqis might admittedly have let standards slip a little lately). In Rory Stewart's "The Places In Between", the former British diplomat's incredible tale of his walk from Tehran to Kathmandu in 2002, the Afghan mujehideen's desperate desire to kill an infidel Westerner (and what's more, a Brit) in their midst is tempered by Stewart's status as a visitor in their lands. Instead of chopping his head off they kill the fatted goat and let him sleep in their front rooms. I'm not recommending you try this at home or anything, but...

Anyway, after a very pleasant sojourn through the formalities at the Turkish-Syrian border, I arrived in Aleppo. Syrian immigration is quite something: polite and friendly guards sit beneath posters in a multitude of languages advising guests to report any "troublesome behaviour" from Immigration officials to their supervisor; furthermore "if this does not resolve you issue, please call Minister of Interior, phone number 337676". No, I haven't tried it yet, before you ask. You're welcome to give him a call though. Next to each of these posters, indeed all over Syria from what I can see, stands the image of a shy-looking man, seemingly much more suited to the life of a provincial optician than military dictator of one of the founder members of the infamous "Axis of Evil". This is, of course, President Bashar al-Asad, Syria's number one opthalmic surgeon, and also lifetime ruler. At least I know where to go if my contact lenses start playing up in Damascus then. As a fellow University of London alumnus I'm sure old Bashar would love to hear from me. We could compare notes on Crush and Cocktails, and bemoan the expense of being a student in London. No?

Well, bus adventure aside, I certainly feel I'm off the tourist trail here in Aleppo. Crossing the border from Turkey was like crossing into a different world. Arab and Muslim dress abound here, everything closes early today, the Sabbath, and people in the street address me in Arabic, not cliched English of the "lubbly jubbly, good price for you friend" variety. Syria's second city is everything I hoped it would be: the great souk is like every fairytale of the Orient come true at once, the Christian Quarter is an openair archaeology museum, and the locals couldn't be friendlier. I even saw my first roadsign for Baghdad earlier, as if to emphasise the fact that this is the real Middle East. Still, I think I'll stick with Syria - I hear Iraq is overrun with British and American visitors these days, and something tells me the locals are a little more welcoming here.

The Starbucks Express

The small bus stopped suddenly. My heart froze. Half or dozen or so men in exceedingly dirty clothes and muddy wellington boots, carrying foot-long machetes, were boarding. The first one, his face moustachioed and weather-beaten, and his hands calloused from heavy labour (burying bodies? I mused to myself), paused slightly when he saw me. Then a smile lit up his face as he greeted me: "Buenas tardes señor, ¿como está?".

Someone in Bogota told me that the way to spot FARC members is their penchant for wearing wellies at all times, even in towns on sunny days. If this is correct, Colombia's woes are much greater than I realised, for in the coffee region everyone wears wellies. I only hope the army can hold out against the rampant hordes of welly-wearing Marxists until the weekend when I say "adios" to Colombia. Happily for my bus journey, I think this means of identifying the rebels may lack something in the way of accuracy, as these particular rubber boot aficionados seemed to be employed by the coffee industry rather than the militant revolutionary forces of the international proletariat. Coffee is big business here, and it's taken very seriously indeed by the Colombians, nowhere more so than at the Parque Nacional de Cafe, Colombia's answer to Disneyland. Actually, that's not quite true; no-one could really describe a theme park devoted to coffee beans as serious. Regardless of the tone, it's a very informative place, which teaches the visitor all he or she might want to know (and a good deal more besides) about the whole bean to cup process.

Yet aside from the coffee itself, the main reason to visit the so-called "Zona Cafeteria" is the scenery. Set in lush mountains to the west of Bogotá, quaint little towns and spectacular fincas dot the verdant hillsides. I spent the Independence Day weekend in one such pueblo, Salento, hiking in the countryside during the day and joining in the local July 20th festivities by night. These festivities mostly seemed to consist of eating trout (a local delicacy), drinking aguardiente, and high speed synchronised dancing. One fellow traveller (from Belfast I believe, though I didn't meet him myself) apparently over-indulged in the local culture to such an extent that he was taken into protective custody by the police, who feared the consequences of the local menfolk catching up with the paralytic Ulsterman who had been touching their women. After a 1am call from the cops, the owner of the local traveller's hostal, an affable British chap called Tim, headed down to the station to interpret. After much violence and swearing, it was decided to allow the Irish miscreant to remain in a cell for the rest of the evening; upon his release the next morning, the police insisted he sign a statement affirming he had not been mistreated. Something tells me a Colombian in a similar position in UK might not have been granted such hospitality. What's the Spanish for "fell down the stairs"?

Unlike the unfortunate Ulsterman, however, I managed to restrain myself for once, having to rise early for a trek. Six hours of hiking through a nature reserve in the cloud forest certainly seemed preferrable to a hangover and a story about a Colombian police cell, especially when it afforded the opportunity to see the unique wax palm trees that dot the area. Though certainly aesthetically-pleasing, the wax palm (see photos below) is seemingly a particularly pointless species, growing a ludicrously long thin trunk before sprouting normal palm leaves about 60 feet up in the air. Any time you meet an evangelical Christians who attempts to debunk the theory of evolution with reference to so-called "intelligent design", please direct him to the Valle de Cocora in central Colombia, where a cursory inspection of the Peter Crouch of palm trees will provide him with ample evidence that "intelligent design" is a totally fallacious concept. But more about God later.

After beginning my weekend with a flight to Cali, I planned to return to Bogotá via road, both on grounds of expense (because of the distances involved internal flights in Colombia are not overly cheap) and because I dimly recalled reading some strikingly congratulatory comments about the spectacular scenery on that road in Paul Theroux's "The Old Patagonian Express". Indeed, after travelling by train and bus from Boston to Bogotá, Theroux was keen to suggest this particular road passed through some of the most spectacular scenery in the whole of the Americas. Of course when reading such glowing tributes from the comfort of one's armchair, sipping a mug of cocoa, the true implications of words such as "spectacular" are often hidden. Five years ago I crossed the Andes on a bus, in Peru, and after a 20 hour journey so nerve-shatteringly awful I almost turned to religion, I vowed never to do it again. 18 hours of figuratively shitting myself as we barely negotiated hairpin bends on narrow pot-holed roads with vertiginous drops just inches from the outside wheels of the bus were followed by two hours of actually shitting myself after consuming some toxic corn-based snack at a roadside truck stop. "NEVER AGAIN" I promised myself.

In light of this experience, quite how I found myself sitting in the front seat ("for best views" the driver told me in Spanish, without a trace of irony) of a 17 seater minibus snaking its way at high speed around cliff top roads in thick cloud and pouring rain, I'm not sure. Unlike Peruvians, however, Colombians seem to take a slightly more positive view of the concept of road safety, and do therefore have such measures as seatbelts and paved highways in place. Not that a seatbelt would be a great deal of use were the bus to plunge 7,000 feet over the side of a cliff, but I guess it's the thought that counts. In fact, so seriously do the bus companies take the issue of safety, that each of their ticket booths features a highly tasteful scorecard of crashes, injuries and deaths on each route in the last 6 months. I didn't enquire about the stats for a longer timescale; some things are better left unsaid.

In addition to all these admirable measures, it seems Colombian buses are also equipped with a giant digital speedometer, allowing everyone on board to monitor velocity at all times. Should the driver get a little too carried away and exceed the 80km per hour legal limit for his rattling jalopy, a noxious alarm sounds until the speed is reduced. While surely well-intentioned, I found this invention to be totally and utterly terrifying. Who really needs to know that the bus is approaching a 90 degree switchback on the wrong side of the road at 72kph? If you ask me it merely panders to the vanity of the driver's constant Juan Pablo Montoya impressions. And while we're on the subject of Colombia's number one racing driver, I don't ever recall him finding himself confronted with a 15 ton articulated lorry as he takes the racing line through the apex of a blind bend, as happened to our noble chauffeur innumerable times on Sunday. Nor does Señor Montoya have to juggle mobile phones, two-way radios, gear sticks, steering wheels and cholesterol-rich snacks as he tears around the streets of The Principality in his state of the art racing machine.

Yet in truth, none of this really mattered, for we had God on our side all along. As we pulled out of the Terminal de Autobuses in Armenia, just before donning his imaginary flame retardant suit, leather driving gloves and crash helmet, our intrepid driver solemnly crossed himself and offered a couple of silent prayers to the big man upstairs. Many of the passengers followed suit. An hour later, as we deftly avoided the still-smoking scene of a (very) recent head-on collision between a Renault Twingo and a twenty ton truck by sneering at the oncoming traffic and veering casually into the opposite lane at 63kph, I too was on my knees, offering myself in supplication to God, Jahweh, Allah, Buddha, Robbie Fowler, and any other deity I could think of.

Still, on the plus side, our journey to Ibagué was completed in half the official four hour allotment; not an outcome that would be repeated on the second leg of the trip back to Bogotá. In fact, at times on that hellish six hour drive, I was almost overcome with nostalgia for the suicidal tendencies of the earlier driver, particularly when the giant neon speedo dipped below 10kph for the umpteenth time. Night buses in Colombia hold their own particular terrors; Lonely Planet is particularly vehement in its advice to avoid them, and legion are the tales of unwary travellers who lose all their belongings when a nice man with a gun flags down and boards their bus at 2am. Yet such were the crowds of revellers heading home after the Independence Day weekend that waiting for a journey in darkness was the only option. "Still, at least you can't see the cliffs at night", I thought to myself as we waited to depart; fervently hoping for a driver without the quivering moustache and devilish glint in the eye that so often signifies lunacy in South America. I needn't have worried; regardless of the psychiatric state of the driver, our bus' engine was so weak that speed was an impossible dream, and the Colombian army had so many units on highway security patrol over the weekend it was difficult to go 50 yards without seeing a listless pimply youth with a machine gun. What good these soldiers of boredom would actually be in the event of an actual firefight with the FARC or some would-be bandits I'm not sure, but I suppose they act as a deterrent.

Yet there were other horrors to contend with, not least the driver's grim obsession with the spirit-crushingly irritating Vallenato music omnipresent in much of Colombia. There are many ways to kill a man with his own accordion, and I thought of them all as the terrible folk tunes played grimly on and on. At one stage the radio station was briefly changed; my relief was short-lived, however, as a Spanish language version of Robbie Williams cigarette-lighters-in-the-air anthem "Angels" replaced the incessant whining of the accordions. "Angeles" (sample lyric: "voy a amar a los ángeles...") was even more awful in reality than you could ever possibly imagine, and was very nearly the final straw. Yet somehow I survived, finally rolling into Bogotá at 2am, over twelve hours after leaving Salento. For what it's worth, the scenery on the road WAS incredible, at least the small sections I could see through my fingers, and unlike in Peru I managed not to soil myself at any point of the journey, which was a distinct bonus as I'm sure my fellow passengers would agree.

One more week of class in Bogotá, then it's off to the Amazon on Saturday. Sadly I won't be taking the bus - being 500 miles from the nearest road, Leticia is inaccessible by any means except boat or plane - though a couple of weeks from now I will be facing the delightful prospect of a 16 hour journey on Brazil's Trans-Amazonian highway. While there are no mountains to contend with there, I'm sure ample excitement will be provided by the unavoidable traverse of the Yanomami Indigenous Reserve. In case you're not aware, many anthropologists regard the Yanomami as the most violent people on the planet (yes, they're even more violent than Glaswegians). When the road was built in the early 90s, the Brazilian army had to massacre hundreds of Yanomamis irate at the intrusion of the white (well, light brown) man into their territory. Armed only with poison arrows and blow darts, the locals stood little chance of victory, though they did cause a substantial number of deaths. In the circumstances it's probably best not to run into them on the road; to be on the safe side the highway is closed between dusk and dawn and all stoppages are expressly prohibited. I'm not sure what happens in the event of a breakdown...

A rare Colombian Wax Palm Tree

Liverpool and England striker Peter Crouch

Ludicrously tall Wax Palms in the Valle de Cocora

Hummingbird silhouetted against the cloud forest

Hummingbird on a sugar feeder. Mmmm....sugar...

Coffee!

While I understood most of the coffee-making process, I still can't work out where these peanuts come into the equation. What's that? They're beans? What kind of beans?

In Latin America this sign means "don't catch the birds". In Spain, however, it's a more serious offence. Quite how you'd fuck a parrot I don't know...