The Dervish Hordes of Omdurman

The drums beat louder and louder, the intoxicating rhythmn quickening. The setting sun casts a golden light across the scene, and the unmistakable aroma of marijuana drifts through the dusk air. A brightly-dressed man in yellow robes marches gaily around the edge of the circle wafting clouds of incense from a brazier swinging aily by his side. Hundreds of voices cry out in unison, singing the first line of the shahada, the Muslim declaration of faith, "la illaha ila-llah, la illaha ila-llah, la illaha ila-llah, la illaha ila-llah". There is no god but Allah, there is no god but Allah. Everyone dances wildly, limbs flailing, heads thrown back, dreadlocks swinging. The chanting continues incessantly, "la illaha ila-llah, la illaha ila-llah". Even my feet are twitching now, as everyone in the crowd begins to sway in time to the music. A man breaks out of the circle and dances into the centre. Suddenly he is up on one leg, spinning manically, all the while chanting. "la illaha ila-llah, la illaha ila-llah". All around me, other dervishes break out of the circle and begin to spin around, chanting, always chanting, lost on their personal path to God.

This is about as far away from most people's image of Islam as it's possible to get, more Woodstock than Wahabi, in many ways closer to an ecstasy-fuelled Shoreditch rave than a veneration of Allah in one of the world's most strictly Muslim countries. Yet Islam it is, and hardly could there be a better example of Sudan's perplexingly contradictory attitude to religion than the Whirling Dervishes.

As has become well-known in the West, and particularly in the UK, in the last few days, Sudan is officially an Islamic republic, with Islamic Sharia - "street" - Law in operation, at least in the Arab north of the country. Indeed, prior to his now infamous sojurn in Taliban-controlled Afganistan, a certain well-known Saudi construction magnate and outspoken religious cleric spent five years resident in Sudan in the mid-1990s, departing only after intense American pressure forced the Khartoum government to expel him. From what I can discern, Sheikh bin Laden is a hero to the majority of Sudanese, as much for his unpublicised (in the West) philanthropy as his better known slaying of infidels. Most of the tarmac highways in Sudan (of which there are not many) were financed and built by Osama and his construction firm, as was the Port Sudan International Airport.

Yet perversely, bin Laden's strict Saudi Wahabi interpretation of Islam would be anathema to the Sudanese, who tend towards the much more laidback, mystical, Sufi strain of the religion, and incorporate many traditional tribal beliefs and practises into their faith. Such "un-Islamic" ideas as witchdoctors, exorcisms, and saints are apparently common in Sudanese Islam, while women openly converse or shake hands with unknown men (including strange white men with backpacks) without apparent fear of reprisal. Amazingly many Sudanese love having their picture taken, and unsolicited offers of pictures to unwary travellers are common. Local children in particular are often openly enraged at polite refusals - unable to believe that a khawaja (an affectionate term roughly equivalent to the Spanish "gringo" or the Thai "farang") could possibly ever venture outside without a camera. Most perversely of all, at least in the eyes of orthodox Islam, the Sudanese are apparently rather partial to alcohol, and despite the strict ban on the importation and sale of booze, homemade moonshine is apparently a big hit with locals, particularly in rural areas. (Suffice to say I have not tried it myself - a Spanish traveller I met who had, assured me that he was lucky to escape with his life. He was talking about the hangover, but the consequences of being caught don't really bare thinking about. Being arrested once in Sudan was careless, twice would surely be foolish.)

But as the unfortunate Gillian Gibbons and her teddy bear "Mo Mo" have found out this week, despite all the eccentricities of Sudanese Islam, it is after all a very important part of life here. Perhaps more so than any other Muslim country I have visited, Islam is a very public facet of Sudanese society. Walk along any street or sit in any hotel at one of the five allotted prayer times each day and there are countless hundreds of Sudanese, uniformly clad in their mostly immaculate white robes and skullcaps, kneeling on a mat or carpet in supplication to Allah, quietly muttering the shahada to themselves. This can pose a few logistical problems for the unbeliever, as it is supposedly considered very bad form to walk in front of a praying Muslim. No problem when said devotee is kneeling on the pavement of a wide street, but it is a different story when he is blocking the door of your hotel room, from which you need to exit at some speed in order to reach the bathroom down the corridor to deal with what you fear may in fact be a new and virulent strain of cholera. Allah apparently took pity on my pathetic state and has, as yet, neglected to smite me for the rather ungainly manner in which I hurdled two of his faithful on my way to the disgusting hole in the ground which doubles for a bathroom in the "Namarg" Hotel in Wad Medani earlier this week. Happily his mercy has also extended to granting me a reprieve from the more unpleasant symptoms of my mysterious stomach ailment. Allahu Akbar!

As I watched the dervishes twirling and whirling, my thoughts drifted back through time, and came to rest in roughly the same location a century or so earlier, with the brave men of the British Army who faced down a force of some forty thousand "dervish" devotees of the Sudanese Caliphate at the infamous Battle of Omdurman in 1898. Despite their vastly superior numbers, and their absolutely fervent belief in the power of Allah to bring victory, the dervish army were massacred in their thousands by the well-trained and crucially well-equipped forces. The Sudanese were a formidable foe: 15 years previously their fearless infantry charges had defeated the British and allowed the Mahdi - the self-appointed Islamic Messiah - to expel the anglo-Egyptian rulers of Sudan and famously to murder the Governor General, Charles "Chinese" Gordon in Khartoum. So impressed was Rudyard Kipling by the heroism of the Sudanese warrior-mystics, he eulogised them in his poem "Fuzzie Wuzzy". His admiring description, "You're a pore benighted 'eathen but a first-class fightin' man" might appear grimly familiar to modern British soldiers fighting Muslim foes in Afghanistan and Iraq.

After the performance had finished, I was approached by an array of curious locals, with whom I sat and drank tea. Some were Arab Muslims, some were not (the ethnically African south of Sudan is overwhelmingly Christian and/or Animist in its beliefs), but inevitably given our surroundings, the conversation eventually turned to religion. While the majority were simply curious about "Christian" ways (like most westerners in Muslim countries, when asked I pretend to be Christian, the concept of atheism not being well understood or well-regarded), it soon became apparent that one had a more sinister agenda, and he quickly began trying to back me into a corner. Despite my attempts at evasive diplomacy, the questions were relentless.

"What do you think of Islam?"

"Do you know that if you convert to Islam you will go to Paradise - if you don't you'll go to hell?"

"Why do Christians not believe in the Prophet Mohammed, Allah praise him?"

"Why do Christians allow their women to whore themselves?"

"Why do Christians...?

And so on and so forth. At this point I was getting a little flustered. Luckily, my audience shared my discomfort, and rounded on the interrogator angrily. Such was the vehemence with which he was condemned, my would be saviour slunk off into the night. The remaining Sudanese were appalled at this extremism, and clearly ashamed at the implied insults to a visitor in their country, and what's more to what Muslims call "people of the Book" - Christians and Jews. The apologies were sincere and profuse, and typical of the relaxed attitude to religion I have overwhelmingly found in Sudan. I finish with a quote from the Bradt Guide to Sudan, by Paul Clammer:

"More than just a religion, Islam is a social code that presents a specific way in which society should be run. As such, visitors have a particular responsibility to behave in a manner that's sensitive to local traditions, although the Sudanese are very tolerant and foreigners are usually forgiven for minor cultural gaffes."

Just be careful what you call your teddy bear.

The Sound of Silence

I sit in a Bedu tent, made of goatskin and old sacks, drinking tea. As the sun sets, the desert air cools rapidly, and we huddle closer to the camp fire. The wind howls, our resting camels low softly in the distance, but otherwise there is only silence. Despite my limited Arabic, and the limited English of my guide, Suleiman, I chat with our hosts in their immaculate white robes and red and white chequered headdresses. Their questions are endearingly naive.

"Are there Bedu in your country? Deserts? Trees? Birds?"

Each answer is considered carefully, as if it were the sage advice of a prophet, rather than the observations of a slightly scruffy backpacker. Then the line of questioning switches from my far off exotic homeland to my suddenly not-so- personal life. How long am I travelling for? Where is my wife? How many children do I have? With the aid of Suleiman, who as a guide has been exposed to Westerners before and obviously knows a little of their strange ways, I explain that I am unmarried, that in the West people tend to marry later, that I have no children. This is greeted with sceptical laughter.

But what of, ahem, sex? Suleiman and I explain about the concept of girlfriends, dating, pre-marital sex. My audience sits in stunned silence. It's clear that despite their mobile phones and pickup trucks, their exposure to Western culture has been exceedingly limited. They look at me as if I had just told them I'd been to the moon. (As that particular heavenly body illuminates the sand, I briefly consider telling them about Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. After some reflection I decide not to - I fear my credibility would evaporate instantly). Slowly a sly grin creeps across the faces of the younger ones as the implications of sex before marriage become apparent. I feel guilty. As they trudge piously away from the fire to pray, I feel a bit like the serpent in the Garden of Eden.

As Suleiman - he does not pray - and I sit in silent contemplation of the odd exchange in which we just participated, an ancient radio set hums quietly. I cannot understand the dialogue from the chat programme, but the music is familiar enough. As if to emphasise the surrealness of the situation, the unmistakable saxophone notes of Kenny G drift across the sands. I cannot contain my laughter. Dinner is served in traditional style. A communal bowl of sticky rice into which we all dip our (right) hands, fashioning a handful of rice into a congealed ball with the fingertips, before gracefully consuming without a hint of spillage. At least that's what the Bedu do; in no time at all I closely resemble an autistic five year old let loose on a rice pudding, with a sticky mess all over my face, hand, and lap. Everyone politely pretends not to notice.

I had long hoped to meet some "non-Westernised" Bedu, and here, in the red desert of southern Jordan, I found them. Suleiman and I had travelled alone, by camel, for two days to reach them. Wadi Rum is not particularly remote and many toursits visit every day. Yet the overwhelming majority do so by 4 wheel drive; early on our first morning we saw literally dozens of them roaring past us, slowing down briefly to take photos of the two eccentrics riding fully laden camels, now in the 21st Century. Part of me wished I was wearing Bedu robes instead of khaki trousers for the full Lawrence of Arabia effect.

Once they had screeched past us in some crazy catch-me-if-you-can race from sight to sight, Suleiman and I settled down to the gentle rhythm of travel by camel. We spoke little, often sharing no more than a couple of words for hours. Suleiman confided in me that he only travels in the desert by camel - he hates large groups of people and goes to the desert in search of silence and solitude. And, oh, what silence there is to be found in the desert. On our first night, having not seen another soul for the best part of six hours, we made camp in the shade of some giant red boulders. After unsaddling the camels and collecting firewood, I scrambled up the rocks to get a better view of the fast-approaching sunset while Suleiman set about preparing dinner. As the sun sank lower in the sky, the already vivid colours of the desert were tinged first orange, then red, and finally purple. Darkness came quickly, and soon an impressive canopy of stars illuminated the cloudless night sky

After a simple enough dinner of rice, potatoes, and bread (Dr Atkins would clearly not approve of Bedu living), washed down with gallons of sweet black tea, we settled in for the evening. As I lay in my sleeping bag on a mattress of desert sand I stared up at the sky and listened to the deafening, echoing silence of the night. As a habitual city-dweller I had always imagined that the phrase "the sound of silence" was a product of Simon and Garfunkel's drug-addled minds; a function of LSD or pot, or coke or whatever else long-haired types with guitars were dropping, smoking or snorting back in the Sixties. Yet at Wadi Rum I finally registered what they were talking about. Granted, it could perhaps have been something to do with the the thick clouds of distinctly "herbal" smoke drifting from the quietly grinning Suleiman, but I like to think it was something more profound.

Of course, the pursuit of silence, solitude and the elusive Bedu were not my only motivations in trekking from Rum to Aqaba by camel. T.E. Lawrence, the enigmatic, almost mythical figure immortalised in David Lean's epic film, Lawrence of Arabia, famously made the same journey in 1917. Unlike Lawrence I was not accompanied into town by a legion of irregular Arab cavalry; nor did I in fact arrive in Aqaba on my trusty humped steed, instead hitch-hiking the last few kilometres into town in the flatbed of a pickup truck driven by a pious family heading home to Saudi Arabia. Yet in some small way I liked to think of myself as following in Lawrence's footsteps.

One of the most enigmatic and most-romaticised figures in modern history, "El Awrens" as he was know in Arabic, made his name by living with the Bedu, speaking their language, adopting their customs, wearing their clothes. By virtue of his acceptance by the Arab leaders, Lawrence was able to assist, advise or lead (depending on who you ask) the Arab Revolt against Ottoman Turkish rule during the First World War, securing a legendary reputation for himself, and in the process doing a great deal to ensure an Allied victory over the Axis Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Ottoman Turkey. Lawrence's promises of Arab independence, subsequently broken by the Allied governments at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 (much to Lawrence's disgust), still haunt the Middle East today as the artificially-constructed states of Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan, Palestine, Syria and Lebanon, struggle to maintain their existence.

More than once the Bedu remind me of the total artificiality of the national borders in this region, replying with a shrug when I asked where they are from. "Some call it Saudia, some call it Jordan. We call it the desert." Theirs is a tough existence, eked out from some of the harshest conditions on earth; indeed, T.E. Lawrence famously called it "a death in life". Yet as I lay down in the sand, gazed up to the heavens, and listened once more to the awesome, deafening roar of total uninterrupted silence, I found myself starting to dread the return to civilisation. As the great desert explorer Wilfred Thesiger wrote in Arabian Sands: "No man can live this life and emerge unchanged. He will carry, however faint, the imprint of the desert, the brand which marks the nomad; and he will have within him the yearning to return, weak or insistent according to his nature. For this cruel land can cast a spell which no temperate clime can match." I know what he meant.

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.

One Night In Cali

"Pssst, señor, ¿que quieres? Bueno precio..."

Perhaps it's my overactive imagination, perhaps it's the psychotropic antimalarial drugs I'm taking now, or perhaps it's the preponderance of prostitutes, male and female, that proposition taxi passengers at the traffic lights, but I get the sense that Cali is a little bit dodgy. Once the home of Colombia's biggest drug cartel, and still a major base for the narcotics industry, the city also lies on the very edge of FARC-controlled territory. Though usually remaining in rural areas outside of the city, the guerrillas detonated a huge car bomb here in April, an incident that did not fill me with particular excitement as I boarded the plane in Bogota. Upon arrival, a long taxi drive into town ensued. Staring out of the open window into the fetid darkness of the tropical night, there was a certain thrill to be had from the knowledge that somewhere out there lurk earnest peasants in muddy fatigues, carrying AK-47s and copies of "The Communist Manifesto", agitating for the overthrow of liberal capitalist democracy here in Colombia. Just so long as they stay out there and don't start venturing any closer to me, mind, there's a limit to how close I want my thrills.

The city of Cali itself is not beautiful. In many ways nor is Bogota, but the capital has a charming historical district and a striking mountain setting; neither attribute Cali posesses. No matter, however, for despite its preponderence of low-slung American style strip malls, centreless sprawl and slightly eerie emptiness, Cali is widely famed for the beauty of its women and the insanity of its nightlife, both of which had long ago attained near-mythical proportions in my mind at least. I'm not sure why or when I first heard about Cali, but I do know that for a long time I had wanted to go there, my interest piqued by no doubt tall tales of outrageously beautiful gangsters' molls dancing till dawn in sweaty, sexy nightclubs, all underlaid with the definite dark edge that comes from being a city built on white powdery foundations.

In some respects I was slightly disappointed. The nightlife was great, but by Colombian standards lacked just a little something. My strong desire to visit a Caleño Salsatecca to see the locals showing off their salsa skills was tempered with the news that the Juanchito district, home of the Salsateccas, is widely considered off-limits to sane people, let alone gringos, on the grounds of its proximity to some pretty "exciting" slums. I'm not sure if this is true, personally I don't believe it, but for once discretion proved the better part of valour and I elected not to find out. I did, however, head to legendary Cali nightclub, Kukumukara, where I was treated to some quite incredible mountain views. The giant peaks in question were not another extension of the mighty Andes, viewed out of the club's windows however, but were rather contained, more or less anyway, in the skimpy tops of almost every female in the club.

It's quite probable that there are eminent plastic surgeons in Britain, with long and distinguished careers in cosmetic medicine, who have never seen as many silicone breasts as are to be found in a Cali nightclub. In many respects entering Kukumukura was like walking into the pages of Playboy magazine (without the ninety year old pederast in a silk dressing gown in the corner obviously), as a veritable ocean of almost-naked surgically-enhanced flesh lurked at every turn. While some of the women were undeniably attractive, a large number bordered on the grotesque, particularly those who had teamed their artificially-inflated cleavages with similarly pneumatic posteriors. With the temperature in the club rising rapidly, for a time I began to worry about the melting point of silicone, fearing I might suddenly find myself alone, save for numerous steaming piles of molten plastic on the floor. My fears were soon allayed, however, by numerous shots of Aguardiente, the potent local firewater imbibed in vast quantities here. It's nasty stuff, a lot like a kind of sugarfree sambuca, all the more nauseating for being served ice-cold. Still, it's certainly a required ingredient if I am to attempt salsa dancing, which I duly did with little notable success. The other higlight of the evening was certainly one of the bands' live rendition of "La La La La La La Bamba" - to hear a Latin group in a Latin American club actually play that was just too amusing for words.

Anyway, with enough eyefuls of silicone, not to mention Aguardiente, to last a lifetime, I departed Cali early on Friday morning to take in the scenic delights of Colombia's coffee-growing heartlands. About which, more later...

Love In The Time Of Cholera

Bougainvillea fringed wooden balconies overhang narrow cobbled streets lined with brightly painted houses. Horse drawn carts clatter across the stones as laconic, dark skinned men sit on the dusty pavements swigging beer from the bottle and playing dominoes. Music wafts into the night air on the warm ocean breezes, and the most beautiful girls in the world gently sway their hips in doorways, while their grandparents rock rhymthically in their chairs.

As I've already written, the Lonely Planet guidebook describes Cartagena as "a fairy tale city of romance, legends, and sheer beauty" and "the most spectacular colonial city on the continent". I can't vouch for the second claim, as my experience of South America is thus far limited to Peru, Bolivia, and Colombia, but I can certainly confirm that Cartagena is indeed a very special place. An hour and a half flying time from Bogota, and Cartagena feels every bit of it. The palm trees lining the runway, the blast of hot air when the door opens, the pools of rainwater in the streets from the customary afternoon storm, even the noticeably darker inhabitants; make no mistake about it, this is the Caribbean.

Yet the difference between Cartagena and Bogota is more than just geographic - there's a distinct time shift between the Andes and the coast. Everything is much slower here, on island time as it were. There's another, more subtle, time difference though; in many respects Cartagena lies in a different century from the capital. While it has the same accoutrements of modern life as any big city in Latin America - internet cafes, cash machines, mobile phones - wandering the old town here could quite easily convince you you'd stepped into a timewarp. Put it this way, Cartagena is the only place I've ever been where the horse drawn carts seem plausibly authentic rather than tacky and artificial.

There is certainly a fairytale quality to all this: the gingerbread houses, the horsedrawn carriages, the walls defending the city from pirates, and Cartagena's history rivals any yarn from a children's storybook. Founded in 1533 on the site of an old Carib Indian settlement, Cartagena quickly grew into the most important port in Spanish America. Almost all the incalcuable treasure - gold, silver, emeralds and the like - extracted from South America's soil was shipped through Cartagena back to Spain. To put the quantities into some kind of perspective, the mines of a single Bolivian town, San Luis Potosi, reputedly yielded sufficient riches to build a solid silver bridge, 6 feet wide, all the way back to Madrid. Cartagena's spectacular architecture was one result of all this commerce; the constant scourge of piracy was another. The most famous of these buccaneers (you may wish to look away now if your version of history was taught in a British school), Sir Francis Drake, held the whole city to ransom in a long and bloody siege in 1586, graciously agreeing not to raze it to the ground upon receipt of ten million pesos. In response to this and numerous other assaults by seamen flying the skull and crossbones, the Spanish colonialiasts ringed Cartagena first with a series of forts, and later with the city walls which still stand today. Standing on the ramparts watching the sun sink slowly into the Caribbean, it's not at all difficult to imagine a pirate galleon sneaking over the horizon...

In addition to its ancient myths and legends, Cartagena was more recently the setting for Gabriel Garcia Marquez´s 1985 novel "Love In The Time Of Cholera", a fantastical fairytale loosely based on his own parents' courtship along Colombia's Caribbean coast. The book, published after his Nobel Prize for Literature yet arguably his best, will soon receive a great deal more publicity when the Hollywood adaptation hits screens across the globe later this year. Directed by Mike Newell, of "Four Weddings and a Funeral" fame, with a screenplay by 'Gabo' himself, and starring Javier Bardem, Benjamin Bratt, and Catalina Sandino Moreno, the movie promises to put Cartagena even more firmly on the tourist map as it was filmed on location in the city.

The story gets its name from the fearsome cholera epidemic which forms the backdrop to a hilariously absurd love story. In an amusingly (though not for me) apt parallel to the novel, my own whirlwind romance with Cartagena was also painted with a similar backdrop on the canvas as I battled a mysterious stomach ailment. While it obviously wasn't cholera, after some careful reading of the Health section of the Lonely planet (I strongly recommend you never try this), I am however sure that it was one (or all) of Typhoid, Amoebic Dysentry, or Hepatitis A. Still, luckily for me, Colombia, as you all well know, is renowned as the "drug capital of the world", and as a result the regulations regarding prescpriptions are somewhat lax. It seems that in place of the highly secure system in place in Britain (where any totally illegible scribble on something vaguely approximating a green piece of paper with a doctor's name will suffice), merely going up to the counter and saying "Amoxycillin, por favor" will produce favourable results. Whether such leniency extends higher up the drug potency chain is unclear. "Methadone por favor"? Hmmm... Anyway, as a result of my battle with a species of bacteria hitherto unknown to medical science, I ate two meals between last Wednesday and yesterday (Monday), subsisting almost entirely on a diet of gatorade and immodium. Personally I think it could be the new Atkins. Fortunately my initial tentative foray into the field of experimental pharmacology seems to have had some success, and I'm now back eating again. I may limit my intake of the ubiquitos Colombian "frijoles" (beans) for a while, however.

I conclude with an update on the "Usnavy" anecdote from my previous update. It seems another popular name in the Choco is taken from the currency. As the locals astutely inferred, any man important enough to have his picture on a dollar bill must be worth naming your offspring after. Unfortunately, however, that was the full extent of the intelligence on display in Choco province, hence a large number of children now run around the streets known as "Onedollar". To be fair, I'm not sure "George Washington" would be much better, but...

On that note, I'm off to conclude my homework - a 20 minute presentation (in Spanish of course) on "the history of guerillas in Colombia". I'll write again after the weekend, when I should be able to report on Cali, the self-styled salsa capital of the world, and also the Coffee Region. Pictures of Cartagena are below.

"Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition." Except perhaps here, at the Palacio de la Inquisicion.

This being Colombia, dancing in the streets is mandatory.

Like Freddie Mercury, Fernando Botero likes Fat Bottomed Girls.


"¡Dios mio! It's the damned English again!"