Channelling the Cane Spirits

Wednesday 02.04.08

Bogota's airport was stuffed tighter than a rocker's jeans, and it appeared the star attraction was the Iberia desk servicing the two A-340 flights to Spain. More or less ninety minutes and two passport checks passed before I finally reached the weigh-in and passport/ticket desk. On route to the gate, I breezed through another passport check, a screening point and metal detector patdown, a 2-point bag search partial frisk into a bag screen plus patdown ticket check, onto the final double tear-off ticket validation and I was aboard; I may have forgotten to mention three hours behind schedule. It was about this point, with just moments left in Latin America that my timing belt re-adjusted to fire all systems randomly and leave me completely in the lurch for the next couple of days. I'm blaming the radiation.

Madrid's Terminal 4 is huge, beautiful and a very long way from everything else. The Iberia section is not only a train ride away, but right at the end, making it the airport equivalent of the outer part of Outer Mongolia. Let's keep that in mind for later. I hauled my belongings (now a rucksack, suitcase, backpack and laptop) down to Madrid's metro system. I surfaced in the dead-centre of the city at Plaza del Sol feeling like a B-Double of the backpacker world and spent two hours trying to find a hostel bed that was both vacant and wouldn't require me to pawn off half my stuff; though I doubt anyone would be too keen on Peruvian handicrafts or year-old Explorer socks. When I finally checked into a hostel I realised a day had slipped between the cogs and my early flight to Switzerland was leaving the next morning. I had time to visit one tourist site – the Picasso exhibition at the Reina Sofia, but embarrassingly began passing out while trying figure out the cubist ones.

So as you may guess, come Friday my five-Euro deposit alarm clock failed to fire and I was instead woken by the superior timing of my German-manufactured roommates at 8am. With just forty-five minutes before my aircraft took to flight, I surmised I wouldn't probably make it. €11 and three anxious phone calls later, I transferred to a later flight, and by early afternoon I was on the metro back to Terminal 4. To get to the Iberia gates from the second floor weigh-in and screening point, it was a quadruple escalator descent and then a five minute subway ride to passport control. But where was my passport? The final words of the screening point guard ring through my ears: "Are you sure you have everything?" Well, now that you're re-mentioning it, no.

Suddenly the airport's expert people-funnelling system began to work against me. How could I get back there? Everything so far had been completely one way. With only a quarter hour before the boarding call, I got moving. Up two escalators and down two and I was on the other side of the tracks. Into the train and out of the train. Through the baggage pick 'n' mix; running now, nothing to declare. Past the huggers and sign holders to the elevator. Second floor. Toe tapping. A power-walk to security; a conversation in Spanish: "Ticket please."
"Er....I lost it there," pointing toward the guard on the other side of the glass, "That man has it."
"You can't go through without a ticket." An anxious and somewhat frantic re-iteration. A security guard is called over and motions me to step forward; another fretful repeat of the same thing. I pass through and approach the screening guard. "Señor, I left my passport here ten minutes ago, have you seen it?"
"Hmmm, so far in that time I've picked up four phones, two wallets...." my mind is racing so much I miss the rest. "That way please," he gestures to yet another security guard, this one armed, who disappears into a tiny booth shaped like an Art Deco snail. He emerges with the passport. I decide not to kiss him, instead saying thank-you's in as many directions as I could face. No one notices.

I quickstep down the first two escalators, consider sliding down the next two and leap aboard the waiting train seconds before the doors shut. A five minute break. Out and up two escalators, I triumphantly present my passport and make a break for the gates. Mine is the third-last but I have the moving walkways on my side and make double time in straight lines, reaching the gate fifteen minutes late, but incredibly with time to spare.

Monday 11.06.07

Somehow my travels in Latin America always seem to involve me hanging off the back of some random vehicle. This time it was a dune buggy i was trying not to fall off, as it raced through the streets of São Conrado. Soon we were tearing uphill along a road through tropical forest, which increased in gradient until the buggy was emitting an incredible rasping din (and several cubic metres of carbon monoxide per minute) as it laboured upward. Finally we reached our destination atop a hill overlooking the entire bay, with views all the way past Ipanema to Copacabana in the distance.

Here was a spot to launch both hang-gliders and paragliders, and today we strapped giant parachutes to ourselves and ran in pairs off the cliff. From our floating vantage-point the São Conrado bay was incredibly beautiful, surrounded in lush volcanic mounds, a long wide stretch of beach, apartment towers, huge mansions amongst trees and of course gigantic favela Rocinha not far away. We banked and soared high over the water and came to rest perfectly on a stretch of grass next to the beach.

Drinking soon followed on the beach promenade, coinciding with the pinkening of the skin of my English companions, and then my first swim in Rio. I realised, whilst stuffing my face full of all kinds of meat after dark, that i will miss the BBQ smorgasbord restaurants once I leave Brasil. I'll miss the sushi banquet appetiser, but most of all the rotisserie spits brought to the table with 5 kinds of beef and 3 kinds of pork cuts, and the venison, chicken, sausage and [sigh] chicken hearts.

News came of a 'Rave' party on Ipanema beach at night, so we walked half an hour to get there. Despite the flashing lights, fire juggling, plenty of glowing material and people waving their hands in the air like they were drowning in a pool of Chanel No. 5, there was no music to be heard. It turned out to be a shoot for a movie or soap opera, and pretty much a complete waste of time. I seemed to be the only person to see the funny side of it though.....

Copacabana, once a beachside paradise for the elite is now an overcrowded, overdeveloped and congested place, with one of the highest population densities in the world. 9 out of 10 buildings in Copacabana are at least eight storeys high. All of the boutique bars, shops and restaurants are now situated in Ipanema or neighbouring Leblon, along with the up-and-coming social elite of Rio and those that pretend to be. Copacabana these days is the queen of roadside stalls, typical food, souvenirs, all you can eat, and the ever-present homeless laid out on cardboard. Returned to the people, the area is now saturated with the aged and not-so-famous, who can be seen all over walking their little fluffball dogs (some wearing socks), to the shops for an Açai juice to go.

Monday 21.05.07

The flight from my home town Melbourne into Sydney was business as usual for most with breakfast and newspaper it seems. I'd have to guess McDonalds caters for Qantas these days because I could have sworn it was a Bacon & Egg McMuffin I downed ten kilometres or so above the earth at eight-thirty in the morning. As we began our descent, I suddenly noticed the incredible proliferation of white shirts and suits from nose to tail. I was the only passenger not referred to by the cabin crew as 'Sir' or 'Madam' and every scrap of paper in the vicinity appeared to be an index or speculation of some sort. On one side of me, Miss Market Analyst could see the stocks in BHP Billiton had gone up three cents in the previous day's trading, while on the other side, Mr Company Vice-Manager was reading how it was high time to sell that apartment in Milan in favour of one in Berlin. We landed, and just seconds passed before swarms of PDA's and Blackberries buzzed around the cabin, encouraging me to make large swatting gestures to try and ward off the radiation.

Within a couple of hours I was in another aircraft (courtesy of Lan Chile) hurtling down the Kingsford-Smith tarmac. Curiously, it squeaked like a bicycle from the 1940's and visibly flapped its wings on rotation, and we landed in much the same fashion across the Tasman Sea in Auckland, which was blanketed in thick cloud and pouring with rain at the time. We completed a mandatory walking lap of the glassed-in departure zone and left not long after, to cross the Pacific Ocean for Santiago - capital city of Chile. At around 8pm New Zealand time, it was officially Sunday again, and we had 8000km to go. With fortuitous timing and joined by a brain-wide strumming, the Spanish words and phrases I had learned eighteen months before began salsa-ing their way back as we approached our destination. I could already feel my moustache and eyebrows begin to thicken in earnest.

Mountains loomed bare below, jutting like the tips of brown icebergs out of a dense smog that stretched up Chile's enormous coastline as far as I could see. Further inland the Andes stood, blanketed in winter snow, but for now we would be descending to the capital city. It was a staggering US$56 for an Aussie to enter the country, but thankfully I received a free ride to my hostel with Nang, a Hong Kong businessman I had made acquaintances with on the long flight. Santiago didn't create a great first impression with its buildings unkempt and rubbish strewn here and there in drainage channels or piled in heaps in vacant lots. During our journey into the centre of the city, ruins, slums and stray dogs could be seen at every turn. Barrio Brasil, the downtown neighbourhood where I stayed was nice enough, but the entire town was fairly deserted on the day I was there, apparently commemorating a battle long gone with Peru.

The temperature must have dropped to about two degrees in my room during the night, but thanks to strategically planned en-route nap time, jetlag wasn't much of an issue. Breakfast was a bread roll and coffee, and I departed in the brisk morning air for the airport, bound this time for Brasil. Once airborne, the plane banked east and we left the smog and Chile behind, climbing until we were high over the Andes. As we later soared over Porto Alegre in the south of Brasil, we encountered a huge amount of turbulence. Bucking like a rodeo bull, the Airbus A320 descended to escape the worst of it and as I hung on, I couldn't help but regret I had stowed my cowboy hat in the luggage compartment.

Rio de Janeiro was beautiful even from the air at night, lights twinkling on the rolling hills like silver and gold sugar sprinkles superglued to upturned egg cartons. The hot and sticky outside air was a polar opposite of Santiago's, causing my t-shirt to cling to my chest in unattractive ways. Like my sweat glands, my instincts soon kicked in as I all at once negotiated new money, temperamental caixas (ATM's) and a language I knew nothing about. I was kicked off the first bus because I had no money, requiring a tricky reversal down the stairs (they should equip backpackers with a beeper for this purpose), sending Cariocas (residents of Rio) scattering behind me. I regrouped with fried chicken upstairs, ready to make another attempt at the Cidade Maravilhosa (Marvellous City).

The next bus took me to Copacabana beach in the southest of the city, past high-rise buildings, manicured parks and a game of futebol played on a stretch of sand. In a moment of bizarre synchronisation while stopped at a set of lights, everyone in sight on the bus and off, had their little finger stuck in their ear or nose. I walked up the streets of Copacabana feeling a little like the inside of an empty icy-pole wrapper on a hot day and checked into my hostel, Che Lagarto. A midnight wander about the neighbourhood revealed the footpaths all over were a patterned mosaic of white and black tiles, punctuated with the occasional homeless Carioca passed out on a bed of cardboard.