Channelling the Cane Spirits

Friday 04.04.08 (Continued)

Despite the fine weather the remainder of western Europe seemed to be enjoying, Switzerland's capital Zurich was overcast, that shade of formless grey that does nothing but promise large helpings of dreariness. This time I'd memorised the overland route to the hostel but seemed to be progressing straight from the bahnhof (train station) into an industrial district. I engaged two men having a chuckle at my expense (a bewildered backpacker is an amusing thing to behold), and queried regarding directions. The African one of the pair spoke English, and when I enquired about the safety of strolling in these parts, he replied heartily, "Don't worry man, you are in Switzerland!" With confirmed directions from a friend on the opposite end of the cellular, I was gone, all waves and danke schöns.

I encountered an Australian couple on the way, and when they escorted me behind some large stacks of scrap metal, the hostel materialised like I'd just pushed a trolley onto Kings Cross platform 9¾. I was hustled into one of four beige barracks and introduced to the owner, Tina. Naturally my first question for her was regarding the nature of the place. Nestled between the Autobahn and the railway, a schrebergarten (gnome-infested public garden plot) and an industrial park, Biker's Home is not your average hostel. At once a home for immigrants awaiting papers and accommodation for East German workers, we were about as far from the Swiss ideal as humanly possible. I soon became part of the family, which meant drinking large quantities of the local beer, Feldschlosschen with brave backpacker and German alike. The high wages offered keep foreign workers arriving; especially the East Germans who still don't enjoy equality in their homeland nearly twenty years after the Wall came down. There were no such barriers in Tina's, just a night of beer and laughs punctuated by some frankly bizarre attempts to make oneself understood.

On Saturday morning I climbed aboard a sleek locomotive and caught the fast rail for Solothurn. For just a one-hour journey, the price was thirty francs (over AUS$30), but was as soothing as a warm bath on rails. Once there, I was re-united with Susanna, who I'd met previously in Mexico in 2005, and we caught a bus toward her village of Halten. She lives in one of the oldest dwellings of the village, a 300-year old ex-farmhouse comprising four storeys and a basement. Although presently partitioned into three apartments, the tenants are more like a big family and there's always a fair bit of traffic between, whether to swap beers, dinners or the day's news.

We made our way back to Solothurn in the morning to meet Susi's good friend Joceline for drinks. As we sheltered from the cold inside a groovy cafe on a river bank, it became apparent it was perfectly acceptable to drink beer at any hour of the day, but after buying a round realised a fistful of Francs really doesn't go too far in this tiny nation, even if food, shelter and the household Lindt chocolate stash are already accounted for.

On Thursday I took Bobby to Bern, just an hour distant by train and Switerland's capital city. Nestled within a hairpin bend of the river Aare, Bern's gorgeous historic town is dressed in green sandstone - a UNESCO world heritage site built up in layers around the steep banks of the fast-flowing and green-hued waterway. Not long after the city was founded, its mayor shot and killed a bear, which became the town's icon, and ever since, its most controversial attraction. Just on the other side of the Nydeggbrücke Bridge, a pair of spartan concrete pits are home to two frustrated brown bears, pacing up and down like they could use a change of scenery.

As the weekend pulled into the station, I was reminded of my holiday's imminent ending. We made the most of the occasion with a carriageload of Feldschlossschen, horse, schnapps and wine, and a traditional Racklett of cheese melted with whatever else you'd choose to load on top. Before I knew it, nine great days had elapsed and I was departing midday on Monday. I rode first a bus, then train to Zurich, and soon was airborne, bound for Heathrow Airport. From there, I caught a ten hour flight to Bangkok, followed by another ten hour journey to Sydney. There was just one more flight, a Qantas into Melbourne, and I was back on solid ground, exhausted after 30 hours in controlled environments; into the waiting arms of my parents after eleven months abroad.

Monday 24.03.08

No sooner had we left mountainous Ayacucho for Ica at a quarter past nine in the evening, the driver switched the lights off, leaving us to try and eke out some shuteye while he wrestled the steering wheel, braked savagely, bounced curbs and generally acted in a manner not especially sleep-friendly. I did go up the front to ask whether he could turn them back on, but a hostile stare put paid to any further dialogue. The air temperature sank to a level that would make a mammoth shiver as I rugged up in my sleeping bag (bus jockey's best mate) and nursed my bulging bladder. Finally after almost busting a valve, the drivers swapped and I relieved myself roadside as enthusiastically as one could when one's extremities are imitating something sold by Birdseye.

While stowing the sleeping bag before sunrise in Ica, i was approached by a maté-sipping stranger named Greghor. We'd shared the same refrigerator and since we were going the same way, we took a mototaxi to Haucachina. Just five or so kilometres from Ica's centre floats a palm-dotted oasis amongst giant sand dunes, serving as an isolated mission in a previous incarnation. But we'd arrived for an entirely different purpose than for the quiet appreciation of those above. The old colonial barracks have become a hotel and various other buildings have sprung up to support a new sandboarding craze. In a cyclone of irony, I found myself with plenty of time for contemplation as a bowel-quake heralded a violent bout of sickness. Within moments, I was shitting a tsunami and contorted in a relative amount of pain. Luckily it was as acute as it was severe, and despite a couple of aftershocks, the seas were calm in just a few hours.

I spent the afternoon with my achilles tendon between the teeth of a particularly capricious monkey before we roared upwards into the dunes. Our driver pushed his buggy to a level which bettered even his counterpart's in Brasil (see Com Emoção), and then of course there was the sandboarding. As the shadows grew long, we hurtled down the giant slopes as fast as we dared, but all too soon the sun had dived below the horizon and we had retired to oasis Huacachina.

With Apollo's chariot's horizon to horizon gallop underway again, we followed suit toward nearby Pisco on Peru's coastline. The entire region had been struck by an earthquake of magnitude 8.0 on August 15, 2007, and Pisco was still showing the scars. The town looked as if the Big Bad Wolf's Bigger Badder Brother had huffed and puffed and blown the place down bricks and all, and now all the little Piscovites had seen the error of their ways and reconstructed with straw and sticks.

Pisco wasn't the most charming of places, feeling decidedly sketchy even though the day was far from over, so with arms full of fresh fruit we climbed aboard a combi and went down the coast to Paracas where Greghor would stay the night. The road bisected a hellish wasteland of dark brown earth that appeared blasted clean of any life whatsoever. Apparently lots of brick smelters stood here before the quake, but traces of their previous existence were few and far between. To my dismay, not a single straw or twig smelter, which would have helped supplement Pisco's alternate housing boom was within sight....at least in the places I was looking. After a brief swim and seafood snack in laid-back Paracas, I returned to Lima to stay the night.

By late morning, I was sitting amongst the rank and file of fellow aeronauts on a flight beginning its bank and ascent toward Bogota, Colombia's capital. We hadn't yet escaped Lima's mammoth sprawl, and from barely a few thousand feet it became apparent just how brown Lima was. Umber buildings carpeted almost-treeless terrain gridlocked by dusty streets overlooked by barren hills. We pierced the smog layer, and although the offshore Pacific swayed deep and blue, Lima's share bore swarthy serpents of contaminants shifting with wave motion.

I'd been expecting Bogota, so close to the equator to be hot. Instead at my new lodgings I was donning layer after bulky layer until I looked like a psychedelic Michelin Man. I had underestimated the effects of altitude, and here at 2600m, the air was chilly. There wasn't much more to do than to socialise with new-found friends; and of course the Tetra-Pak red wine certainly helped with that.

Thursday 27.09.07

The last couple of weeks of fine weather had brought a change in the atmosphere of Paraguay - spring had begun, and Paraguay's already strange trees were flowering in even more weird and wonderful ways. Yet another change was apparent as I visited Plaza Uruguaya. The indigenous people had left, leaving just a terrible mess of rubbish which teams were now cleaning up, and after making some inquiries found they had been moved to the grounds of a military barracks in Asunción. They now had better access to sanitation and care for their children (some of which had been born in the city park), but perhaps their plight will become all but forgotten by the majority.

I had moved to my friend Pedro's home midweek - a stylish, architecturally designed house, and its shape and attention to detail made it a very pleasant place to stay in. He lives with his father, now in a wheelchair after a stroke, and the house buzzes with an entourage of cleaners, therapists, nurses, four dogs, a cat and Maribel, a woman that lives there with her adult daughter and oversees the lot. Most of the week was spent sampling beverages, always the same ones and often repeatedly, but we were determined to make the most of Sunday, and left for another wakeboarding session on the Rio Paraguay. On the river, running a lot shallower thanks to the lack of rain, I was far more proficient on the board this time around, but my driving skills failed to please when I hit muddy bottom with the propeller on the inside of a bend whilst trying to steer clear of some waterskiing chump who had crashed.

On Monday morning, my last in Paraguay, we left for Asunción's produce market, the biggest of any kind in the country, large enough that a car is needed to manoeuvre between the sections. Of course by 9.30am when we arrived, all the best tomatoes had gone, so while prices for the remaining crates were being organised, I picked my way between pyramids of pumpkins, obelisks built of onions and cairns made of capsicums; while noting this large smelly section was just one tiny part of the market, and i didn't even get to see the mandioca (Cassava) or potatoes across the car park. I gathered my belongings back at Pedro's house, and with a little hesitation, boarded the bus heading in a southerly direction for Buenos Aires. After a time (and perhaps a nap) we were cruising past grey-green fields dotted with palms, their fronds streaming back in the breeze like a gathering of hippies standing in a wind tunnel. The sun had set long before we crossed the border, and once a few hours of agonising formalities were over and done with, we were on our way into the night towards the capital of Argentina.

When I drew the blinds open after daybreak, it was as if we had landed in a different part of the world. Dead-pan heavy stratus cloud blanketed the sky, dumping rain onto swamps sprawling where fields should have been. Having failed to check the prevailing weather in Buenos Aires previously, things looked ominous for my stay. At one point we passed a car that had fallen off the side of the road (though not a curve lay in sight), swarmed over by emergency response teams. What surprised me most though, was the people I was sharing the ride with. I seemed to be surrounded by Paraguayans, many with their families, leaving their country to work in regions of Argentina. Thankfully the rain eased, and after 21 hours, the bus finally reached the terminal.

I checked my emails to discover a friend from Melbourne, Adam had arrived the night before, so I made my way to the hostel where he was staying. After he returned from a tour in the afternoon, we took a twilight stroll around the historical centre. Buenos Aires has shades of Paris and the rest of Europe, mixed into something that is not distinctly South American. Certainly there are more than a few things in common between this huge, cultured city and my own, Melbourne. I found it well presented and stately, with an air of sophistication. We walked through Plaza de Mayo, a square looked over by some of the city's most important buildings, including the Casa Rosada (Pink House). It was from the balcony of this building, the President's palace, that famous figures such as Pope John Paul II and Eva Perón have addressed the nation.

Wednesday 19.09.07

In preparation for leaving Asunción, there were a few bureaucratic hoops to jump through; once again I had found myself enjoying a place so much, i was close to overstaying my Visa. Despite a couple of days of running around, i was only half successful, and the rest would have to wait until I returned in six days. Come evening, two fellow students from Germany, Isabel and Jan boarded the bus with me, bound for the high Chaco, a sparsely populated and vegetated region in the far northwest of the country. It was adventure largely into the unknown - we had only fairly limited information of how to get to the national park we wanted to visit, but we had taken every precaution with food, water and equipment to ensure our survival.

Much later, the bus driver signalled for me to accompany him at the front, and he told me that we would soon be approaching our stop - Estancia La Patria, a police checkpoint about 20km from the park entrance. When we alighted at 4am, it became clear that we were positioned almost halfway between nowhere and nowhere else, and at that particular moment, stuck there. With a bit of a chuckle, the bus driver climbed back into his vehicle and sped off up the Trans-Chaco highway to Bolivia, less than two hours distant. We made ourselves comfortable and attempted to bribe the cops to take us to the park, while noting with a little revulsion the two metre long viper nearby which they had killed just before our arrival.

I gleaned a couple of minutes sleep before the mosquitoes arrived, and by the time i had summoned the energy to find my repellent, the sandman had all but bitten the dust. I spent the hours normally reserved for neighbourhood trash collection wandering about the place. The Estancia, aside from the checkpoint consisted of only a few scattered buildings, a family of goats, a handful of pheasant, and a general store that stocked mostly fertilizer and condiments. The policemen were cheerfully pessimistic but we found a man willing to take us in his truck all the way.

The Trans-Chaco highway is infamous in South America. It is a long, straight road connecting Asunción to Santa Cruz in Bolivia that cuts through a flat expanse of disagreeable terrain - a blisteringly hot, arid dustbowl in the dry season, and a near-impassable mire in the wet. Buses during the latter are frequently bogged for days in the Bolivian part, but very recently the entire Paraguayan section has been paved, and the bitumen extends all the way to the border. Off the Trans-Chaco though, the roads are still rutted and dusty, and it was up one of these that we were travelling to the national park.

We had expected to be roughing it somewhat, so it came as a surprise when we discovered proper accommodation there, complete with a reasonably equipped kitchen. It wasn't long before we set off to explore the nature trail. The temperature was climbing steadily, and a searing wind blowing in gusts. Every endemic species here, from cactus to flowering bush to tree, employed some kind of spikes or thorns in their structure, some of which ultimately ended up in my feet or legs. Prolific especially was the Floss Silk Tree, also known as Samu'u in Guaraní or Palo Borracho (drunk trunk) in Spanish; featuring a fat spiked trunk, bright green foliage and cotton-like seedpods.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floss_silk_tree

There was still plenty of heat left in the air after nightfall, and with flashlights in hand, we joined a park ranger to scout for wildlife. The national park plays host to many large mammals, but being the dry season, the only creature that crossed our path was a medium-sized tarantula. In the mud surrounding a waterhole, we were at least able to discern recent tracks of tapir, giant anteater, puma and even jaguar, and while i was out alone later in the evening in the middle of nowhere, the Chaco was alive with the chirps of insects and frogs, the fluttering of things winged, and the odd vague snort or movement in the distant brush.

Thankfully, a public service to and from the park existed on Fridays, but our route to Filadelfia, capital of the Mennonite colonies in the middle Chaco was far from direct and included several detours, including one almost to the Bolivian border to pick up a package. Finally, after seven sweaty hours on the road, we arrived in Filadelfia at 9pm. The Hauptstrasse (main street) was a wide avenue of dirt more than 5cm deep in places; though for a Friday night, the place was far from lively. The only signs of life were the scores of motorbikes and the odd car driving up and down the street, and apart from two restaurants, everything was closed by this time. The Mennonites, their favoured tongue being Plattdeutsch (Low German), are deeply religious folk and most don't drink, smoke or even eat unhealthily, so it's no surprise the dust-filled streets were as empty and dark as if they were on the Moon.

Friday 08.06.06

With a couple of local artists from the favela (slum), plus my friend Kyle and a handful of Norwegians, we set off to paint some graffiti in favela Rocinha. Two buses and 10 cans of spray paint later, we finally reached São Conrado, the expensive beachside bairro in front of the great favela. From its high-rise apartments we walked inland past a sprawling market and then rubbish-strewn streets, the atmosphere and smell thickening as we neared. After lunch, we ventured in, led by our local friends, but crime is not usually a problem in the favelas - culprits caught by the gangs are swiftly dealt with, often by death.

Finding a wall not only free of graffiti, but also with permission from its owner, was a tricky task. We also were wary of spraying over the tags of the A.D.A - Amigos dos Amigos (Friends of Friends): the gang in control of Rocinha. We caught a bus, gears crunching all the way to the top of the favela, past scores of broken-down cars littering the road. The favela spread over to the other side of a ridge, and it was here, just past a hairpin that we found some painting room.

For the rest of the afternoon, until darkness fell absolutely, the guys painted their pieces onto the wall, an action which is not illegal in Brasil, and in a lot of cases is appreciated by the local community. Later with beers in hand, we sat with the locals on the street corner nearby, offering near-empty paint cans to the local youths, and it was here I sprayed my first tag, on a fence across the road. From what was being sprayed, it soon became apparent the youths were part of the A.D.A. When offered drugs for free later in the night, and saw various guns proudly displayed by kids no older than 16, we decided it was time we left, careering down the hill in a minibus to safety.

Saturday we found ourselves waiting an hour for a tram in Lapa bound for Santa Teresa, a bairro on a shoulder of Corcovado. Once aboard the old yellow tram, I hung off the side (because they ran out of seats) as it sped its way over the famous white aqueduct (the Arcos) in Lapa. Barely a foot's clearance lay between me, balanced on the narrow running board and holding on with white knuckles, and the chicken wire fence that ran along the edge. The tram soon had its bogeys on solid ground again, as it lurched up a steep cobblestone-lined road, now missing power poles and overhanging branches by mere inches. We hopped off for a delicious paella in the middle of the suburb, then jumped back on the tram for an equally hair-raising return to the station.