The Jaguar Express

There's a lot you can do on a two week trip to Cancun. Especially if you just take a plane there and then escape from Cancun as quickly as possible. Incidentally, that's also the only sensible thing to do when going to Cancun.


Rarely have I encountered a worse traveler's hell than Cancun. The room rates are crazily much higher than what you'll pay for way better rooms just a few bus hours away. Restaurants and taxi drivers have adjusted their prices accordingly. The beaches are besieged by pasty, fat tourists who think the city is an American colony that has nothing to do with Mexico except climate-wise. Throughout major parts of the year there's nowhere you can turn without witnessing tequila and taco gushing out of mouths and noses of stupid people who just the night before encumbered themselves with tattoos on their foreheads.

Among the star attractions of the city I'd like to mention the tigers. They're kept in tiny cages and have had their teeth and claws pulled out. It must be that way so that tourists can cuddle the big cats in relative safety. Oh, and talking about predators; because the drug barons in the area have the habit of dumping bodies in the sea, the sharks of Cancun have learned to gastronomically love people.


The beaches of Cancun are lovely, but that fact is well hidden except right after a particularly bad hurricane has visited the region. Then the coastline returns to its pristine state, with picturesque, idyllic sandy coves framed by good-looking rocks. Then the city council puts everyone to work, covering it all up with insane amounts of sand trucked to there from a place that probably could use the sand a lot better than Cancun does. Why, oh why? Because that's how the Cancun hotel overlords thinks lazy and sun-craving tourists want their beaches.

So, what is the alternative to becoming a part of the problem that is collectively named Cancun? Well, the best you can do is to go somewhere else. In December 2010 that's exactly what I did, and here's my photo journal from my fairly successful escape from Cancun.


Just two-three hours to the south there's Tulum. Buses that probably are much more comfortable than anything found in your own country take you there, and when you arrive you'll find Mayan temples that weren't designed by Disney and beaches that are enchantingly pretty despite the fact that they have never been touched by a landscape architect. And they have dragons there! Tulum is so worth a thorough visit.

Keep going south for four hours or so, and you'll be in the border town of Chetumal. True, there's the unfortunately named Hotel Ucum, but apart from that it's a decent place to stop, with a brand new amazing Zoo and a real Mexican town feeling to it.

From there you can easily travel to Belize. It's a country that you may not have heard about, but you should go there anyway. From Chetumal there are inexpensive direct boats to the island paradises of Belize, located right next to the second largest barrier reef in the world, or you can just get on a direct bus to Belize City.


Belize isn't part of the actual Caribbean, but this fact has not been shared with the people living there. In Belize everything is done in slow-motion, people speak as if they all went to the same language course in Jamaica, and the strangest things can pop up anywhere with no warning at all. If someone tells you that Belize "is too dangerous", they've probably just misinterpreted some statistics. The country has only three hundred thousand or so citizens, which means that you don't need a whole lot of criminal action going on before it looks really bad per capita. Don't worry about it. Tourists are safe in Belize.


The islands are particularly safe. As long as you don't trip over a turtle or is hit by a playful dolphin you'll probably return to the mainland with no damage. Go for walks and snorkel the reef, observe strange birds and animals, talk to the locals. They're always short of gullible conversation partners, especially now that the Americans hardly can afford traveling abroad any more.

If you're still not convinced, the national motto of Belize should do it. "Sub Umbra Floreo". "I blossom in the shade". I'm not kidding, it's right there in their flag, just check it for yourself! And people live by the motto. It's in the shade beneath the trees you'll find the locals, and if there's something that is likely to make people agreeable and fun to talk to, it's gotta be lazing in the shade.

When you've had your doze of sun and sand, you can quickly move across to a different world entirely, namely Guatemala. Six hours by bus from Belize City will take you to Tikal, quite possibly the easiest place in the world to pretend you're Indiana Jones. Located right in the middle of the jungle it's an enormous Mayan city with no inhabitants. Unless you count the jaguars, the coatis, the howling monkeys, the toucans and the parrots, of course. There are lots of them in the abandoned and only partially excavated city of Tikal.


If you want to live and travel cheaply, Guatemala is the place for you. There are heaps of places to visit and lots of things to do. Not everything is handled professionally, but it's generally done charmingly. Compared to what you pay, it's always amazingly good value for money. Just make sure to do your own conservative estimates of how close you should go when a local wants to show you a crocodile, a snake or whatever else they may have around.

You should also appreciate being fascinated by people who wear traditional clothing simply because they have no other garments. A great place to observe and interact with them is by traveling with them, on the chicken buses, school buses from the USA that are so old that they cannot be legally used in North America any more, so they're sold to Guatemala.


After Tikal it was time for us to travel back towards Cancun. To avoid actually visiting the city, we decided to wait for our plane home in the old Mayan city of Chichen Itza, three hours away. The contrast to Tikal is enormous, despite the fact that the two places originally must have been quite similar. Chichen Itza was recently named one of "The New Seven Wonders of the World", even though Tikal is many times more magical and impressive.


The problem is that the "New Wonders" were chosen based on an open vote on the Internet. The winners in such cases will always be the one with most visitors. And Chichen Itza has a lot of visitors, all eager to say that they've visited a New Wonder. Most of those who go there are people who reckon they should experience "something cultural" before they go home, after having spent almost their entire vacation cuddling toothless tigers, burn in the sun and eat too many burgers and steaks. There are so many people like that, that Chichen Itza has degenerated into a weird mix of theme park and historical monument. The local Mayans can hardly wait for 2012 and Judgment Day to arrive.

Oh well. I really just wanted to tell you that the photos from my trip are now available. Have a look and decide for yourself whether a trip to Cancun without visiting Cancun maybe would be good for you, too. If so, go in December, January or February. The temperatures will be nice, allowing you to explore in comfort, and there will be no hurricanes getting in your way.

Happy trails!

Bjørn

Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional

At last I'm done with the most strenuous part of my pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago; preparing my photos from my journey so that there's a chance you will enjoy browsing through them.

And I really mean that. Walking hundreds of kilometres may sound demanding, but when all the facilities are as super great and the trail is as easy to follow as the Way of Saint James is, it's a trivial thing. You want some proof? Try the many pilgrims in their 70's and 80's you're bound to meet on your way from France to Santiago de Compostela.

Have a look at these photos, and see if maybe they'll make you want to discover the wandering bug living inside you!

True, during the first few days I hurt in many places:
* A sunburn on my left side, which is the one that gets hit all the time when you walk towards the west.
* Sore corners of my mouth, a result of eating way too many crisp baguettes.
* As my toe nails kept falling off, the nerves from my feet complained a bit.
* A sore throat resulted from the sudden changes from chilly mornings to hot mid-days.

The good thing about having numerous issues with your body is that you can't be annoyed by the same problem for long at a time. And even better; all your pain will gradually decrease, until suddenly one day after a long walk you'll discover that nothing hurts anymore. The only thing stopping you from continuing the walk is that it's getting dark. By then your body will be a walking machine, and you will feel slightly super-human. It took me about a week to get there, and it was worth it.

Anyway, you don't have to walk the entire 800 kilometres in order to be a qualified pilgrim. A hundred kilometres by foot is the minimum requirement, and then your time and ability decides how much more you will add to that.

If you for some reason can't walk all the way, I think that you should at least not just walk the last 100 kilometres to Santiago. That part is more frustrating than suitable for getting you onto the VIP list for entrance to the Night club in the Sky. Unless you enjoy walking in a flock like a sheep, that is.

The scenically most rewarding day, to me, was the first one. It's a walk across the Pyrenees from St Jean Pied de Port in France to Roncesvalles in Spain. While the experience is highly dependent on the weather you get, there's nothing like this landscape and natural drama anywhere else than what you find here.

Following that there's a really nice hike through forests and along rivers all the way to Pamplona. The next 500 kilometres, though, to Ponferrada, can easily blur into a long, grey memory consisting of fields, villages and churches that may be hard for you to tell apart. I mean, it's certainly all nice enough, but it soon gets old, which is also what it all happens to be.

If you're lucky and socially able, you may find company and conversations that will carry you through this part. If not, you had better have lots of sins and problems at home to think about, or at least an MP3 player loaded to the brim with goodies.

I can recommend the roughly hundred kilometres between Ponferrada and Sarria, but after that you may want to check out Spain's public transportation, or find routes to walk that strays off from the official short and overcrowded pilgrim trail.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not dissatisfied with the final bit of El Camino de Santiago. All in all I was delighted by walking it. I met people along the way who I enjoyed getting to know. I saw varied and breath-taking landscapes as well as intriguing villages and churches. My Spanish was improved and I understand much more of the way Spain works than I did previously.

Still, to me, the by far best part of walking the Way was mastering the long days of walking, and the fact that they made me feel stronger than I have felt in years. For the better part of a decade I've had a problem with my knees. During this walk I must have rebuilt some supporting muscles, so that now I can again easily walk uphill for a whole day and not feel any pain in my knees at all. That result alone is worth twenty-three days of walking, I think.

Although it's not at all my favourite long walk, I'll happily recommend the Camino de Santiago if you want to try it for yourself. Let me know it if you need more information to get going.

Buen camino! #8D)

Bjørn

There He Goes Again

As mentioned in my last post here, I've been walking. From France I walked 809 kilometres along the Camino de Santiago. It took 23 long days of walking. I logged the trip with GPS here, but as usual I'll also upload the more, I think, interesting views I had on the trip on-line.

Actually, the photos should have been available to you now. After all, I've been at home for about six weeks now. But they're not ready yet, and now I'm off again! I just told the tap in my bathroom, and this is the expression it made when it heard I was going to Cancún without finishing the gallery from my previous trip first:


If I had two more days before the plane leaves, I would have finished the gallery. Instead a few quick glances at the trail will have to do for now. The full gallery will show up here probably just a few days into 2011.

As I suspected, the pile of photos I gathered along the trail consists mainly of fields, forests and churches. It's really, really difficult to take photos that haven't been taken thousands of times before along the Camino. Here are some of my attempts:


The climb up from the French side of the Pyrenees offered the most stunning views along the entire trail. It's too bad, really, that the best bit of the trip is put right at the start of it. Fortunately, I did not know this, so I just enjoyed the views and figured it was a taste of what was to come. It wasn't, but to be fair, there were a few nice bits of scenery later as well.


Coming down from the mountains on the border between France and Spain I was met by this cozy forest. Just a few days before, hikers had to be rescued down from the cold and misty mountain by helicopter. Some of the evacuees may well have planned their trips for years. It's not fair that I, who had not planned anything at all, was given this great welcome by the Roncesvalles forest.


A 300 kilometres long boring bit is what awaits you after a few days of beautiful and exciting surroundings at the start of the trail. Here you will often be tortured by the view of several kilometres of trail ahead of you, with no signs of any shade, water, nice views or other refreshing elements at all. People with all kinds of handicaps walk the trail. If I had to walk it with a serious handicap, I think I would have walked as a blind person. Not seeing the trail may be a good thing.


A week or so before the finishing line, I found this group of cows grazing in an opening in a forest. Other animals than domestic ones are rarely seen. I saw some deer, rabbits, a fox and a dozen squirrels. That's all. There's no need to worry about being eaten by dangerous animals on this trail.


There's a real danger you'll overdose on churches and religious art on the Camino. If you're eager enough, apparently you can enjoy seeing about 1800 churches along the eight hundred kilometres or so of trail. That's less than 500 metres between the churches, on average. Crazy catholics! Anyway, some of them are really worth stopping for. I liked this one a lot. It's the Cathedral of Léon.


There are more pilgrims than pilgrim sculptures along the trail, but that's just with a narrow margin, I think. I photographed this one outside the Cathedral of Burgos an incredibly early morning with an intense sky above it. The clouds were menacing, making even the sculpture look sort of scary.

There you are. That's all I have for you now. In a month or so you'll get more. I'm pretty sure the final collection will include several insect close-ups, vineyards wearing autumn colours, ancient bridges, cobwebs at sunrise, a butt from a bordello, graffiti, mountains, more mountains and the valleys between them. You might as well preparing mentally for it now.

Until thne I'll be in Mexico most of the time. Or in Belize. Or maybe even in Guatemala. It'll be a great end of a most satisfying year of travel.



Merry Christmas to you all!

Bjørn

Shimlalaya Express

Yay! Another round of India photos are ready, lookie here. After having been burnt and boiled thoroughly in Rajasthan during the first two weeks of the trip, the time had come to travel up into the mountains and cool down a bit. So I did, through one of the most dirty and depressing main bus terminals I know, Kashmiri Gate in New Delhi. You really have to look after your mind there, or you might well lose it.

Fortunately everything went fine there, and five hours later I was in Chandigarh, possibly the one and only well organized city in India. Even I can look like an ant if I'm far enough away from the observer. Indians, however, can look like ants even when you have them right next to you. They're experts at swarming and teeming about, creating an apparent chaos, but still getting things done in their very special way. And if you annoy them, they will pee on you. Or at least that's what the smell in many Indian cities hints of, I believe. But not in Chandi!

In Chandigarh everything is in perfect working order, chiefly because the city was planned and designed by the architect Le Corbusier, much like Brasilia. Even the garbage in the city has been used to build a park. 50 men have worked for 20 years to create art in many forms out of rocks, broken plates and toilets, power outlets and wires and bottle caps. Rumour has it that it's the second most visited tourist attraction in India, after Taj Mahal. This of course sounds crazy, but then again, apart from Taj Mahal, which major Indian tourist attractions can you name?

Anyway, I quickly moved on from Chandigarh and further up the mountains. Shimla was my goal. Partially because Shimla is a name to fall in love with, and secondly because on the buses taking you there, Hill Sickness Bag are distributed to the passengers. So now my travel sickness bag collection has been extended.


It's difficul to be completely prepared for arriving in Shimla. It probably looks different from all cities you've been to before. The central part of the city is located on the ridge of a mountain, many places with room for buildings on only one side of the street. Many places the city looks like it's full of skyscrapers where every floor has its own look, but when you look closer, you see that the terrain is just crazy steep, and the skyscrapers you saw at first, turn into houses with different designs just being located very close to each other horizontally, but often far from each other vertically.


I don't think I've ever seen a city of this large size with so many houses and so few streets. It's just not possible to fit in normal streets between many of the houses in Chandigarh. Yet there's lots and lots to see when walking around there, including real mountain monkeys. For more details, please see the captions I've given the photos.

So, now that I've finished India, can I rest? Not at all! Everything's ready for my next project, which is to run the semi-marathon here in Oslo on September 26. I'm not in a really good shape right now, but that's fine, except the next thing on my schedule is to get up really early on September 27 to get on the plane to Bordeaux, from where I'll get on a train to a place where I can walk almost 800 kilometres to get to Santiago de Compostela on the west coast of Spain...

Sometimes even I, myself, don't really understand how I'm thinking. But that's what it's been like for a long time, and it usually works out well. I'm sure that applies this time as well.

In the meantime, take care! #8D)

Bjørn

Indian Summer

I may be wrong, but I think I went to India last April. Now I've finally decided to finish off the pile of photos I seem to have dragged with my home from there. I limited myself to taking only one photo per two million people in the country, but even that turned out to be a large number of image files. To help me get through it all, I've decided to split it into two batches, and now I'm done with the first part. Hooray! Look here to see the results.

I'm quite content with the photos, but I'm afraid I made few major new discoveries on this trip. The closest I got to something of the kind may have been when I during transportation glimpsed "Anu's Rear Parts Repair Shop" outside, but I fortunately never got around to taking any photos of whatever they did at that place.

The cheapest flight from Norway to India will take you to New Delhi, and when you get there, you typically leave ASAP for the city Agra to the south. Agra isn't much to look at either, but it does have the major draw called Taj Mahal. Any seasoned traveler must have been there at some stage, and now I have. It was nice enough, but the best part was walking around in it's vicinity and see all the strange sights available there.

Right next to Taj Mahal, but entrance-wise far away from it, I found a Hindu temple that appeared to be THE place to be burnt if you died anywhere around there. Indians aren't more shy about their way to say goodbye to their dead than we are, so I could observe the interesting ritual without feeling bad about it. After a while, unfortunately, there were more people there looking at me than following the burning of the corpse. That was a bit embarrassing, so I left.

The next mandatory stop in the region was Jaipur, yet another chaotic and filthy large city inhabited by several million too many people. Again I just walked around with big eyes and looked at everything. It was mainly modern misery, but also some ancient grandeur. Once upon a time the Indians really knew how to build palaces. One of them turned out to be a cinema with a well maintained interior from the 1950s. Apparently many go there because it's air-conditioned. It was quite chilly, but people kept warm by talking frantically into cell phones, letting their children roam freely about and by laughing heartily every time the movie contained anything resembling violence. Also, at the Raj Mandir Cinema they still have a break in the middle of the movie, in which you can go out and warm yourself and stock up on more popcorn.

While the city of Jaipur may not have that much to offer, you don't have to travel far from there to find some magnificense. Just outside the city you'll find Amber, a gigantic fortress stretching across several mountains and hills, looking almost like you've found the brother of The Wall of China. I was not at all prepared for that, so I was really, really happy to discover this on just an easy daytrip out of town by rickshaw.

By now I had had it with cities and culture. What I needed was calmness and nature. I found this in Ranthambhore National Park, right next to the town Sawai Madhopur. That's the place to go if you want to see a wild tiger or two, and an easy way to get there from Jaipur is by train. I traveled on crazy class. Fortunately the trip isn't too long, so the lady on the seat opposite mine had not managed to bury me higher than to my knees in empty peanut shells when it was time to get off the train.

Despite having the least enthusiastic guides I've ever met, we actually saw both tiger and leopard. This was also all they cared about. The landscape was breathtaking and there were lots of beautiful birds and lovely deer around, but the park rangers just did not pay any attention to them. Then again, if I had been leading a tour through a forest in which I was not on top of the food chain, I might have looked twice at any crows or daisies either.

Anyway, I've put up some photos on my Web site, and there will be more coming along soon!

I'll round off this post with my best line on this trip:

As usual I was wearing my stupid tourist hat, Indiana Jones style, to make sure people understand that I'm not one of them. Also, it makes people notice me, so that if I ever walk straight into a crocodile or something, the people sent out to look for me will not have too hard a time tracking my movements. Anyway, a young boy in the Taj Mahal came up to me and asked "Ha-ha, are you a cowboy?", to which I immediately replied "Yup. Are you an Indian?"

I received no reply. #8D)

Bjørn

My Epos From Cyprus

I've been on a package holiday! It still turned out fairly well. I'm particularly satisfied with my timing. Just as this issue of a major Norwegian daily, in which I'm depicted as a rather lazy worker, came out, I sat down on a plane to Larnaca, Cyprus. A week later I returned, and by now this article should be forgotten by everyone.

(The article is in Norwegian. I gave an interview where I tried to explain that I prefer to "retire" every second month now instead of just retiring completely when I reach the age when that is a normal thing to do. The reason is that I think I have more options for what to do with that time now than when I'm 70.)

It's not a misleading article, mind you. The only error in it is that by now I'm a lot more tanned than on the photo in the newspaper, so there's no reason to complain.

I don't complain about Cyprus either. It's easy to spend a week there having a look at a strange, little country.

The most peculiar thing about it is obviously that the island is a bit of a war zone. The northern third of the island is occupied by Turkey, and in many areas there are enough checkpoints and soldiers around that you never forget it.

As a tourist the "war" is not a problem, but it's strange when you walk up the main pedestrian mall of the capital. Suddenly a man in uniform comes up to you, demands to see your passport and asks "I hope you are aware of the fact that Turkey is occupying parts of our island?". Then he lets you continue your walk. A hundred metres or so further up the street, beyond some barbed wire and skeletons of houses full of land mines, you arrive at a fairly normal-looking Turkish border control post, where you hand in your passport and fill out a form. With all formalities completed, there are now no signs or conversations in Greek around anymore.

Apart from that, it was impossible to be in Cyprus and not think that I was in Greece. Wherever I turned there were old churches, blue and white vistas, olive trees, old women with white hair and black clothes, mathematical symbols and new and old ruins.


I ended up walking lots and lots of kilometres on this trip as well. With a GPS in hand I managed to find more than twenty hidden treasures on the island, without disturbing too many snakes and spiders with my feeling around in dark holes in nature. It was a sweaty activity, fortunately mainly because it was so hot every day.

Among the pleasant surprises I enjoyed, I can mention that I did not end up in the city of Sin (Agia Napa), there was a salt lake with flamingos near my hotel in Larnaca, there was a pool on the roof and I wasn't at all burned by the sun.

Still, would I recommend anyone going there?


Nah. Not really. But maybe I'll serve up some more photos from there eventually. We'll see. First I'll be working in July, both for my employer and with my own photos from India this spring.

Bye for now!

Bjørn

A Petra Dish For You

Hey! I'm almost up to date with my photos! At least I'm done with the pile from Jordan, so go ahead and have a look if you like.


The trip to Jordan turned out to be almost just Petra. I went in February, which turned out to be an especially good month to visit Jordan for people that enjoy making snowmen. My original plan was to have a look at some dunes and scorpions as well, but a blizzard closed all the roads I had wanted to travel on. So instead I spent a good deal of time in Petra, which was great, and some fairly bleak days in Aqaba, the grey "beach" town just east of the mine field that is also known as the border to Israel.

It took only about 10 hours to get from my kitchen to the gates of Petra. The flight is 5-6 hours long, and then there's a two hour taxi ride to the rocky delights. Mind you, the hours on the plane may turn out to feel a lot longer. Especially if you, like me, end up sharing a plane with ninety middle-aged, female, over-perfumed, slightly drunk cosmetics distributors on a company trip. I was fine, but next time I'll bring a jock strap or something.

Even though Saudi-Arabia is just next door, you can hardly say that Jordan is a Mekka for anything at all, and certainly not for tourism. Both when I arrived and when I left, the only planes I saw at Aqaba International Airport were the SAS planes I traveled with. Tourists to Jordan seemed mainly to consist of busloads of people coming in on express visits from beach hot-spots in Egypt. It's a long ride, so all they had time for when they arrived in the late morning was to have a quick look around at a couple of temples, before they had to leave and go back. I'm glad I had more time to see Petra properly.

I wasn't so happy, however, about the Jordanian hotel breakfasts. Lacking tourists and an understanding of what and how one should eat, and I suspect having too many people employed to do the dishes, the morning meal typically entered the table distributed across 15-20 tiny plates, all full of vaguely alien objects that may or may not have been for human consumption. Fortunately, there was always some cereal to rescue me. Mind you, the milk I was offered to pour onto the cereal was as a rule kept boiling hot. Oh dear.

Never mind. I had not come to Jordan to enjoy the food, but to explore the mountains that contain the treasure of Petra. Any further details regarding this can be found in the gallery I have just published. The short of it is that I liked it very much, and I recommend that you use at least 2-3 days exploring and experiencing Petra.

In other news, my travel sickness bag collection has opened at a museum in Hå in Norway. I was invited to attend the opening, which was a nice gesture. Except the opening was on June 12, and I received my invitation on June 15. I'm sure it was meant well. #8D)

At roughly the same time, the results from the voting for the Wikipedia/Wikimedia photo of the Year was completed. I did not win! But my iguana photo made it to a split tenth place, and this pleases me a lot. Thank you, Charlie, I could not have done it without you!


Now I'm stuck in the rain in Norway, considering whether I should escape somewhere for a week or so, or whether I should just stay home and do something useful. I'm tempted by both options. Does this mean I'm getting old?!

Bjørn

Moztly Harmless

Phew! Only half a year has passed since I returned from Mosambique, my photos from the trip are ready to be scrutinized by your eyes. It wasn't supposed to take that long, but it did. And in the meantime I've visited Jordan and India fairly extensively, so now I have two more mountains of photos to conquer. It's a good think I rather enjoy editing photos.


This trip was more rushed than I usually prefer it to be, because I chose to join a typical (not too) organized overland truck tour. With a purpose-built vehicle and fairly seasoned guides, this part of Africa was all too easy to visit. I escaped from the rather dull program as often as I could, and most of these photos were taken on the "side trips" I made on my own.

We started out by driving from Johannesburg into Swaziland, the tiny country stuck between South Africa and Mozambique. Our camp was in Hlane National Park, known for its many predators. Supposedly we were safe there, as our camp was surrounded by an electric fence. This worried me slightly, since there was no electricity whatsoever available inside the camp. But we were fine nevertheless. And compared to the 120 or so members of the Johannesburg police force who were killed in 2009, we were absolutely fine.

I won't blog about the animals I found there. Look at the photos instead.

We continued into Mozambique, which made a noticeable difference. Strange sights kept popping up. In Maputo they were building a football stadium, paid for by money borrowed from the Chinese, as always eager to befriend countries with more natural resources than they can handle. Originally the stadium was meant to be used in connection with the 2010 World Cup tournament taking place in Southern Africa. I'm eager to find out in what decade it will be finished.

Mozambique has lots of unemployed people. The strategy seems to be that instead of having workers get things done, let's have time take care of business on its own. When it comes to camouflaging planes and helicopters, this works very well. By leaving the flying machines out in the open at an airbase just outside the capital, they've succeeded in hiding them all inside a wide selection of bushes and weeds. Well done, Mozambique Air Force!

Little work was done at the petrol stations as well. People were employed there, but they had precious little to sell. On a good day there would be petrol on offer, at other times the selection was limited to yoghurt, old bread, engine oil and soap. Which makes sense, since most of the petrol stations were owned by PetrolMoc, and I assume Moc is short for "Mock-up".


Mozambique is huge and the roads are horrible, so even with more than a week in the country, it wasn't possible to make our way more than about a quarter up along the coast. We camped on beaches and ate mostly food we had brought from South Africa. There's not much that can be easily and reliably bought in Mozambique. If you choose to eat what you can find there, chances are you'll have bananas and mangos for breakfast and grilled barracuda for lunch and dinner each and every day. Unless you become a meal, yourself, that is, which is quite possible, thanks to a healthy population of crocodiles.

My final verdict is that I found Mozambique to be a pleasant country to visit. However, if you're the kind of person who prefers a certain minimum of comfort and reliability, you might want to wait 5-10 years before you go there. There are many beautiful spots, but sort of difficult to get around unless you have your own transportation. Also, the country is haunted by cyclones, which may mean that anything of any size, up to and including small towns, can suddenly be gone. When you choose when to go, choose wisely!

The return to Johannesburg went via some days of safaris in the Kruger Park in South Africa. There's almost no way that can fail, unless you go there for the shopping and hiking in the mountains. What you'll find is a tranquile, savannah-like land, where easily driven roads takes you between a huge number of different species of animals. I had a great time, and I'd also like to recommend a visit to the Moholoholo Rehab Centre just outside the gates of the Kruger Park, where you can have close encounters with birds and animals desperately in need of some care, medical assistance and/or psychiatrists. Just make sure you don't play too wildly with the young rhino they have!


This is how thick your skin should be before you head for Mozambique.

Good luck, and happy trails!

Bjørn

Going easter than usual this Easter

I'm about to thoroughly break a promise.

Once upon a time, towards the end of the last millennium, I promised myself never to return to New Delhi. Guess what? I'm soon on my way to that very city and Rajasthan again! And I don't even know what I'm going there fore. Turkish Airlines just waved a cheap ticket in front of me, and I willingly grabbed it. Oh well. It could be worse. I think.


The last time I was there, it was mainly the conditions at the airport that made me move on to Kathmandu rather quickly. True, I was less than a seasoned traveler back then. Today I would probably cope better (we'll see!), but looking back at my notes from my visit, I can see why I hated the place.

Take the toilets, for instance. It was the first time in my life that I had to use a lavatory with no door to hide behind while doing my business there. But if you have to, you have to, and I really, really had to.

It went fairly well, until I got to the part where one wipes one's ass. Inexperienced as I was, I had brought no toilet paper, and there certainly was none of the kind available inside my stall either. This was when the missing doors became a great feature. I waved my hand, and immediately some guy with a roll of toilet paper appeared. He sold me what I craved, at one rupee per wipe. Expensive, but well worth it, I thought.

I also remember that the toilets had muzak. You know those birthday cards that play something quite, but not entirely unlike a melody when you open them? Well, they had one of those hanging on the wall by the sinks there. It played the theme from Lambada. Six seconds long, over and over again. Which was quite fitting, as few people spent more than six seconds in the airport restrooms. Even though three men were hard at working changing batteries in the Lambada card and keeping the mirrors and sinks nice and shining, no one ever went anywhere near the toilets to clean them, apparently.

I saw few other passengers at the airport, but hundreds of people worked there, doing nothing. They just walked around, looking rather gloomy. Every now and then someone would come up to me and say "Don't worry, sahib Torrissen". This kind of freaked me out a little bit. First, why did they know my name, and second, what was there not to worry about? Did they pity me for being about to enter the accident-prone Indian air space? I still don't know.

Oh, and the food was awful. Golden Fried chicken turned out to taste decidedly fishy. And not smoked salmon-fishy. Not at all.

Fortunately, everything should be in perfect order there now. The last thing I did before leaving, was to put eight full pages of my best ideas for improving the airport into a suggestion box hanging on the wall there.

On my way to New Delhi I'll get to spend an evening and a morning rediscovering Istanbul. That's the price I have to pay to get a ticket to India at roughly the same price as a ticket to my hometown in Northern Norway would come to.


I'm looking forward to an alternative and extended Easter in Hindu-land, although this might turn into an a lot more hot experience than I normally would want.


I'll try to keep you posted here about my Indian early summer during the next few weeks.

See you later!

Good Heavens, Sort Of

Time has behaved in strange ways lately. Since I returned from Africa in December I've been busy working, enduring Christmas, chatted about the cold weather and declining camel rides in Jordan, but now I've pulled myself together and finished the first photo journal from my time in the Drakensberg and Lesotho.

If you click your way through the photos, you'll join an African maths exam, you'll get to see how I get almost so lost that I need to be rescued and die of shame, you'll meet good olf Falkor and you get to see that blizzards can be encountered even in the middle of an African summer. Oh, and there are of course, like always, some fascinating bugs to see.

Maybe I'll post some stories from this trip here later, but the short of it is that the mountains of Southern Africa are well worth visiting.

Oh well. Now I just have to work my way through the piles of photos from Mozambique and the Middle East.

I'll be back.

Bjørn