If you read this you are gay: All aboard the Kindle express, first stop

So, Hugo has been here a couple of weeks and we are essentially embarking on a tour of paradise. We started out in Cartegena, which was a stunning city that has world heritage status around the old town. We managed to catch up with the German boys for a couple of nights which was some pretty heavy drinking.. For the second time I tried to go to a south American league game and for the second time I managed to fuck it up. I had been told that it kicked off at 5.30pm, I had even bought myself a Real Cartegena shirt in preparation. When we were about to get in the taxi there were a load of people in shirts crowded around a TV watching the match. Apparently it was 3.30 kick off. Tidy. Our first hostel there was pretty mint, it had a swimming pool at the centre, a big bar and a roof terrace to hang out on, and hang out we did.

Hard going

Hugo learned first hand the issues involving having to be a lot more organised over here than in south east Asia. We had been planning to sail over to panama, but due to the fact that it is now Carnival there were no boat available when we wanted to leave, so I spent an entire day trying to plot our exit from Columbia, as I was aware that our next destination definitely would not have internet. After an impossible amount of searching I found flights for $250, booked them and got no fucking confirmation back. The company I booked with were based in San Diego, 3hrs behind us. We were due to leave at 7am the next morning and I could not find out if I had even booked the flight until 11am the next day when their offices were open. Pretty convenient. In the end I had to phone them the next day, speaking to some Indian call centre moron who did not speak English, which tipped me over the edge and I just cancelled them. This meant another 5 hours rescheduling and rebooking every thing. But after visiting Tayrona National Park it quickly became worth it. What had failed to occur to me was the weight of our rucksacks combined with the 2.5hr trek through the jungle to our final destination. A steady flow of travellers were passing us with ease avec their tiny day packs. Needless to say anyone with a brain had left their rucksacks at the hostel. It was pretty hard going. A German lad called Felix had come with us from Cartegena and he did not seem to struggle as much, but for someone who has not exercised for about a year it was tough. We reached the first beach resort about half way there at around 5pm, and took the decision to stay there. The only sleeping option were hammocks, which were strung up in this big hut type thing which looked pretty eerie. I had not slept in a hammock before so I came prepared with rum and valium. I got a bit of a camp-fire going and then we drank the rum and prepared for what lay ahead. These hammocks had mosquito nets which was a nice touch. When I woke in the morning a 5 cm square part of my shoulder had been pressed against the net, and I had a patch of around 20 bites, tidy stuff.

Early the next day we got going again, and on the way I spotted a local guy smoking a massive joint, so I stopped off to make a quick purchase. As soon as I turned around I saw that two of the army guys who man the park had been watching the whole thing from about 20 metres away, so I was preparing myself for another 'fine' (as we entered the park they spotted our rum and 'fined' us $5 to let us take it in. But I was not too sure what the etiquette with this was, so as I went behind some rocks I buried the weed. When I walked past they said nothing, so I went back ten minutes later and dug it back up. I knew I was kind of a marked man after this so I buried that weed in about 20 different places over the course of the next 6 days. When we arrived after another sweaty hike it was like paradise. Breath-taking beaches sitting afoot huge jungle covered mountains. Our accommodation for the first night was considerably worse. Row after row of hammocks so close that when you got in you were touching the person next to you. We had run out of rum and when I felt the heat of proximity I knew that I was in for a bad night. I could hear mosquito approaching, then the noise would stop right as they got to me, but I was so wedged in that I could not even slap them away. There were also several bats flying around in there which did not contribute to our comfort.

hell

Hugo quickly developed a fear of them and tried his best to irritate them out of there by following them with his torch. Occasionally when he caught it right it looked like the batman signal against the roof. About as cool as it got in those surroundings. It got to about 5am and I knew something had to change. Hugo said when he woke up he looked around and could not see me, then he peered over the edge to see me fast asleep in the dirt floor, surrounded by beer cans with at least 5 flies on my face at any one time. Needless to say we upgraded to the Mirador the next morning, which was this big pergola type construction on top of the rocks. It was very windy up there, very windy indeed. This suited me, I had a sleeping bag, hugo on the other hand, for someone who is not so keen on the cold at the best of times, was not quite so comfortable. He only had a sheet, so he was cocooning himself, and I believe one night he even sealed himself in with masking tape. The views we had when we woke up were incredible, it is probably the best place that I will ever sleep.

The Mirador

There were a few Americans also in the Mirador so the next night I went and dug up the weed and set about building a camp fire on the next beach along (a short passage through the jungle). Just as I was getting her going the military type people appeared out of nowhere and instantly walked in my direction. It was the only time that I had weed on me, and my bumhole began to twitch. For some reason I was wearing thin trousers over my swimming shorts, and in the shorts pocket was weed, two packs of burns (one as a wallet) and a lollipop. He patted me down and felt everything in my pocket, which he asked to see. As I went in for the first pack of smokes I managed to move the weed to the top of the pocket. He felt me up again and this time felt the ball of weed and asked me to take it out. I brought out my auxiliary burns and managed to move the weed out of my pocket and round the back of my trouser leg. This time he felt me again and only felt the lollipop, which he assumed was what he felt before. When he walked away and started searching the rest I tried to act calm, so I put a cigarette in my mouth, lit it and almost spewed when I realised that I had lit it the wrong way round. Smooth. They left empty handed and slightly dejected that they did not pick up a haul. I was pretty god damn relieved to see the back of them. The next day me and Hugo went on a bit of a trek through the jungle to see some old ruins which was pretty cool. The ruins themselves were turd, as is the case with ruins, but the trek there was pretty cool, involved a bit of bouldering etc. It took about an hour and a half to get up there, and when we arrived at the ruins a few of the yanks were up there. I had seen a phone that someone had put next to my camera, and knowing about Hugo's ability to lose things I asked him on the way down if he had left his phone up there, which he had not. I did not bother to ask anyone else. Needless to say when we got out of the jungle someone realised it was theirs and they had to go up and back again to find it. Whoops.

Not sure how this happened

We had originally planned to stay until the friday, then a night in Teganga followed by buses to Baranquilla to fly out to panama early monday morning. Instead we liked it so much there that we opted to stay one more night in Tayrona, although we were both down to the very last of our money. We had dinner and got an early night as we knew the horrendous trek out of there that lay in wait the next day. I woke up at 2am on the verge of spewing and shitting myself. To get to the toilet I had to climb down the rocks in the pitch dark and walk over to the camp. When I got there I was not the only one having similar issues, there were people spewing and crapping everywhere. I felt like I had spewed out my soul and when I got back hugo was awake, fairly smug that it was not happening to him. His arrived about 2 hours later, but I think not so bad as he was not sick. I guess this is down to the fact that he is taking malaria tablets, which are a general antibiotic. I could not sleep after that so we set out early doors. We had just enough money to pay for a horse to take our rucksacks, but the 2.5hr walk back was a horrendous experience. We were so meek, and I was impossibly dehydrated, but every time I tried to drink I would spew it back up. Pretty ideal conditions for a trek. Anyway, we managed it, thoroughly unenjoyable and tough going, but soon enough we were on the bus en route to Baranquilla. The city was a bit of a hole, it felt much more like Columbia. The hostel was okay, it was run by a really nice italian guy who we chatted with for quite a bit. It made me feel even worse about what happened to his towel. My stomach had begun to sort itself out and I took a shower the next morning as we had to leave at 4am. I took a bit of a risk and let one rip, and I realised instantly that a squit of diarrhoea had just sullied his pristine wh ite towel. This almost tipped hugo over the edge, and when he saw it his first question was where the trail ended up. After a brief search he realised that the rest had landed in his flip flop, so every cloud.

Bit of an issue if you don't like your neighbour

When we arrived in Panama City, a very nice place by the way, we made o9ur arrangements to get across to the San Blas islands, a two way 3hr jeep journey that was departing at 5am. After the Tayrona rucksack débâcle I advised Hugo that we should consider just taking stuff in our day packs. Hugo looked slightly disgusted and we decided to take our whole packs. When we got up and walked down to the Jeep we were met with equal disgust, and we had 5 minutes to transfer anything we needed into our day packs. Hugo quickly realised that he had managed to lose his kindle, just 72 hours after he managed to sit on mine and break it. So we are now down two kindles amongst various other things that Hugo has managed to misplace along the way. The jeep ride was an experience. It was a cross between a roller-coaster and a simulator. Good fun, and the scenery was pretty special. We caught a boat down a river which opened out into an ocean full of tiny little islands (365 to be exact).

It's not 5 star but it is certainly competitive

Some of these islands are inhabited by the indigenous Kuna people, whilst others had some very basic guest huts on them. We chose one and it was picture postcard beautiful. Conditions were very basic, there was some toilet type thing but no shower and we were living in sand floored huts, but it was all part of the experience there. We were living amongst a Kuna tribe, and the ruddy Kuna's seemed to have a meeting outside our hut every bloody morning. It became a tad irritating as I have not felt particularly well slept of late. My mattress was so soft that Hugo could not tell if I was in bed from the outside as I just disappeared into it. Food was included in the accommodation cost, which was three sort of meals a day. Breakfast was some kind of egg type thing and bread, followed by the standard rice and burnt salty fish for lunch and dinner (life is so hard). On our first day we took a trip to snorkel off one of the other islands. This mess of a bloke turned up on our boat, covered from head to toe in bright white sun block. I did not even need to speak to him to know he was english. We went for a snorkel and swam to a nearby island, before coming back to see one of the most ridiculous things I have seen. Mr Bean, as I shall call the sun block guy, was trying to get back to land by climbing over the coral about 30 metres from shore. In between my laughing all I could hear was him screaming and shouting, it was so funny but he was also clearly killing really quite a lot of coral. When he got to shore he was covered in cuts and some yellow shit which no one knew what it was. In the rush to pack my daypack I had forgotten my head torch, which was kind of a problem as there was no electricity or lights in the hut. One night we came in at 11am and there was a massive yelp from the floor and something big ran under the bed. After emptying my pants I realised that one of the local dogs had somehow managed to get in

Bean

We spent that evening with Bean and some nice American guy. I had assumed that Bean was some 50+ year old sex tourist, but it turns out he was only 36 years old and had just quit his job writing questions for the Weakest Link game show, and was about to become a lawyer. It is amazing what you assume about people and what you find out. A few days before Hugo arrived I met an American couple who were travelling on the money that the girl had won appearing on the wheel of fortune game show. The day Hugo arrived I got chatting to an Austrian girl on a park bench and ended up going for a few drinks, and it turned out that she had gone on a game show in Austria and won £50,000. Mother fucker. Maybe everyone I see travelling is some piece of crap that has won big on television, that is certainly the assumption that I will make about most people that I meet.

Impossibly aquatic

We spent a few nights chilling on San Blas and have now returned to Panama City for a few nights of the Carnival, which will probably be a massive disappointment but I have no idea what to expect. We bought a bottle of rum yesterday and started drinking it at midday. We were so drunk that we did not really see much of the festival and we were back at the hostel by 8pm utterly wasted. I looked though my photos this morning and it looks like I spent most of my time carrying around some kid dressed in a ridiculous costume. There are at least 4 separate occasions that I have scooped this kid up and I am carrying him around, poor kid probably did not have a clue what was going on. My last memory is me and hugo getting kicked off one of the floats and then there is a nice photo of me lay in the road pissing down a drain. There is plenty more where that came from. On the plus side my spanish is slowly improving, but there are still plenty of things lost in translation. The other day I asked a guy if he sold ice cream (he was carrying a cool box). He started talking for 30 seconds and then started doing an impression of a chicken. I did not have a clue what he said or led him to the chicken impression, so I laughed along with him and repeated my question. This type of thing is fairly commonplace. Over and out.