Student life again

CURITIBA, PARANÁ, BRAZIL - 11th February 2010

Our road trip back north from Florianópolis ("back" for Luis, Bruno and the car; a whole new world for me) began first with a drive around the northern part of Ilha de Santa Catarina - accompanied for one last hoorah by our loyal Aussie sidekicks. Armed with an excellent addition to his English vocabulary thanks to certain clientelle of Tucano House, Bruno reliably informed us that the north of the island was where "Brazil's rahs" live. It is not hard to see why - the streets are bordered by vast palace-come-mansions running adjacent to the beach, but obviously protected from the riff-raff by towering gateways and spiky-topped fences that give a feeling of The OC mixed with Fort Knox.

We had a walk down the beach and got our one and only "Team Photo" (which will appear shortly), before heading back down the island for an incredibly emotional parting of ways with the Aussies (naturally, we were all in tears). 4 hours up the road - through a mahoosive thunderstorm as we scaled the hills - and we were in the hilltop city of Curitiba, just a shade under 1km above sea level. Yet another wonderful example of Brazilian hospitality came in the form of Luis' mother, who immediately had me feeling right at home with delicious food on the table (including an awesome meat-loaf style dish traditional to her hometown area), clothes straight in the wash, and plenty of good banter. Evening is evening, however, and we were straight out to a bar to meet up with Bruno and a couple girls he knows from the language school where he works/Luis knows through university. Thanks to yours truly, all conversation took place in English, and as the drinks went down and the night went on I found myself in the surreal and slightly embarrassing position of sitting adjudicator in a deep philosophical/moral debate-come argument that, despite its serious content (ranging from homosexuality to parent-children relations to the nature of sex), was taking place in a language foreign to 80% of its participants. A surefire way to make you feel lingusitically inferior.

Somewhere in the middle of all this high-brow chat, however, came the distraction of a bunch of girls singing a Portuguese version of "Happy Birthday to You!" to one of their friends (it never ceases to amaze me how many alternative languages can be squeezed into the same musical straitjacket). They'd all had a few and were generally loving life, but for whatever reason one of them decided to come over and strike up a conversation. Me being English went down amazingly well, and she proceeded to tell me everything she knew about South America to inform my upcoming travels - including "finding herself" in Bolivia's Uyuni desert. Lovely girl, but her excitability soon drew another friend over to attempt to steer her away (I guess she incorrectly thought her friend was annoying us). This latter girl will be remembered for a long time.

I have no idea what the first words she said were, but I immediately was lost for words. She's Brazilian, from Rio, but listening to her speak English was like listening to Kate Winslet or something. I guess it was shock, but I just sat there flabbergasted at this girl who one minute appeared to be like any average girl conversing in Portuguese, but the next minute was talking like a young debutante in Home Counties England. Oh, and she was stunning. It turned out she was an actress - as were all of them - and they were in Curitiba for a few months for a production they were all involved in. Her perfect English elocution made some sense when it emerged that she'd spent 2 years at RADA... but the real surprise came 24 hours later when Luis and I were watching TV - who should pop up in an advert for a prime time serial but the very same girl!!! Amazing scenes... but more memorably, an amazing voice. Arguably, the perfect voice.

Anyway, back to reality and the weather was very much against us, but rain showers would remain the order of the day for the length of my stay. As such, Tuesday saw us take to the city and check out the sights. Most stunning, but for some reason totally ignored by the LPG, is the Curitiba Wire Opera House - a massive auditorium resembling London's Royal Albert Hall in shape and size, but built in the heart of an old quarry, surrounded by jungle and accessible only by a bridge over a waterfall fuelled river, and held together by the intersecting network of wires and glass that allow you to simultaneously feel indoors, but surrounded by stunning nature. 8th May 2010 sees a whole bunch of us Pembrokians graduate, and objectively speaking Oxford's Sheldonian is one of the best places you could hope to have your ceremony. Hearing that Luis' sister's graduation was here, however, made me more than slightly jealous. One way or another, it was clearly a fantastic place for Luis to add some Brazilian Backing of the Bid (right)...

A good walking trek around one of Curitiba's parks saw us encircle a man-made lake and built up a good appetite for another excellent home-cooked meal, and we also had time to wander around the city's Botanical Garden - centred around an architecturally stunning glass house that would be right at home at Kew, and whose two-tiered internal walkways in amongst the palm canopy were a (surprisingly) novel experience. A big Tuesday night was always the plan, however, and we met up Bruno and the girls again before us boys went our own way for a fairly unique sample of Curitiba's nightlife.

As future blogs will make clear, sleep was quite spectacularly thrown out the window that night.

Pro Backpacking

BYRON BAY, NEW SOUTH WALES - 3rd January 2010

"Feral" is a word that is not commonly used in the day-to-day vocabulary of an Englishman. In contrast, the Aussies love the word and talk of "feral shoppers" in malls on Boxing Day, "feral traffic" around Melbourne at rush hour, and "feral people" in the scummier suburbs of the city. After my experiences of the last 20 hours or so, I'd offer the following additions:

• Feral like Greyhound coach queues. My Greyhound from Melbourne to Sydney left half an hour late due to incompetent organisation (they decided to swap buses and bays for no reason), but as we arrived on time I figured it was a one off and ignored it. However, a quite remarkable feat was achieved outside Sydney's Central Station last night, as I arrived at 6.30pm for my 7pm coach to Byron Bay to find the best part of 300 backpackers sprawled around in every direction around 3 waiting Greyhound coaches. There were no signs on any coach (or indeed anywhere whatsoever), no announcements, and certainly no order to the queuing system. I've heard rumours that the word "queue" doesn't actually exist in Australia*, but what I faced here was, organisationally, more akin to a baggage reclaim in Bombay circa 1992 than the supposedly "highly developed" tourist industry of an economically advanced country. The Greyhound Method was to queuing for the first coach (no one told us about this - we figured it out by asking around), and once at the front of the queue checking if our name was on the driver's passenger manifest. If not, queue for the second bus. If not again, the third. And if you weren't on there (which was the case for several) you were, apparently, going to be on one of the 2 buses that were arriving at 7.30pm. Absolute shitshow.
  


• Feral like tourism in Byron Bay. The way Byron, right, is described by some travellers and even by the LPG ("congratulations, you've reached the promised land") leaves you wanting to place a tidy wager on it being the location of the Second Coming... and if size of audience is Jesus' criteria, it wouldn't be a bad shout. Early yesterday evening I had a quick browse around to try and book some accomodation overnight here, and soon discovered that there is, quite literally, not a single free bed in the town. At any price (bar one at $240). With absolutely no hope of a Sydney-style last minute accomodation get-out clause, I just booked myself a night Greyhound to Brisbane with accomodation less of an issue up there. But not everyone did the same, and arrival in Byron early this morning revealed wandering clumps of backpackers ambling from hostel to hostel desperately searching for a bed. Further walking revealed streets full of cars with passed out peeps in the back, and even the odd corpse kotching on a bench. I have no idea what the offical population of this place is supposed to be, but at this moment in time - with another 3 Greyhounds full arriving first thing tomorrow, I'd say that figure is off the mark by a factor of 10.
  


• Feral like the Cape Byron Walking Trail. The last 3 months has involved some pretty serious walking - the jungle-clad ascent to Matheran, 10km tour of Singapore with Billy, and rain-soaked mission around Albert Park being just a few. I always thought it'd take something special to top Kuala Lumpur though - non-stop walking for 10 hours on the back of no sleep is not ideal preparation for the cross-country gradients and sapping humidity of the Bukit Ninas Rainforest in the middle of the city. Then came this morning...
  
  
  About 20 minutes walk out of the main Byron Bay town centre begins a 4km trail through the Cape Byron Coastal Rainforest (see above) to the historic lighthouse at the summit, and back round via the Easternmost Point of Mainland Australia and the beaches on the northern shore of the cape. All well and good, except that as I set off on my way I was (almost inevitably) greeted by a phenomenal rainstorm and was dripping wet within about 2 minutes. Bags and clothes stored in a locker, the only option was to lose the t-shirt and pretend I was in the sea. All well and good, except that being in the sea doesn't involve stomping in soaking boots through soaking mulchy footpaths and up hundreds of muddy, mucky steps though the dense forest. Even a highly trained athlete like yours truly felt pretty shattered by the time I reached the top, but the Sun came out just as I came across a couple of chicas enjoying a spectacular lookout (see right). All well and good, but the emergence of the blazing Australian summer Sun, on the back of torrential rain, when you're surrounded by rainforest, produces thermal humidity like nothing I've experienced in India, Malaysia or anywhere. Between gorgeous relief from a periodic coastal breeze, your body is engulfed in an all-encompassing heat that is much like the wall of heat that used to greet passengers disembarking their aeroplanes in India before airconditioned walkways... but more potent. Oh, and I got bitten my a leech (for the second time on my travels - I forgot to mention it happening with Kyemala on the ascent to the summit of Anigundi Coffee Estate).

Feral as times may have been, taking the rough with the smooth is all part of the fun, and the latter in particular was a top class experience - and the soaking state of my clothing was rectified with half an hour of blazing beach sunshine. Things are gonna get a whole lot more feral for the next 10 days though - 5 more overnight bus trips are needed to cram in 3 days safari around Fraser Island and 3 days on a catamaran over the Great Barrier Reef. Photos are unlikely to appear for ages... sit tight!

* apparently they just call them "lines of people"

Sleep 0, KL 1

KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA - 30th November 2009

In a move away from the norm on this blog, I'm going to briefly adopt a writing style honed to perfection by a Miss Z. Anderson of (the original) Gotham City.

29th November 2009:

• 8.45am-9.30am: wake up, have shower, make breakfast, brush teeth, get changed, leave
• 9:45am-4.45pm: Sentosa Island (+transport) with Neha (another Pembrokian visiting Singapore)
• 4.45pm-5.45pm: Another shower, pack things for Kuala Lumpur
• 6pm-10.30pm: Night Zoo safari with Neha with transfer to/from her hostel
• 10.30pm-11pm: Walk 2km from Little India to Golden Mile Complex to catch KL bus
• 11.30pm-4.30am: Bus journey - too cold/short a journey to sleep.

30th November 2009

• 4.30am-5am: Walk around aimlessly in deserted KL city streets. Get some Malaysian cash from an ATM.
• 5am-5.30am: Overhear some British accents and befriend a motley crew of a couple from Cornwall, a guy from London and two Norweigian girls - all have been up all night. Have a sociable beer before they get a taxi home.
• 5.30am-7.15am: Sit in 24 hour internet cafe as nothing else is open. Pass time/bring blog up to date.
• 7.15am-8am: Walk to Petronas Towers to join queue for tickets to observation bridge
• 8am-8.45am: Towers closed to public on Mondays (who knew?!) - spend hours taking photos of Towers from various angles.
• 8.45am-10.30am: Walk to various tourist spots (galleries etc), have breakfast.
• 10.30am-3.30pm: Take Monorail to Chinatown - walk around, see sights, have lunch, walk around some more, see cool historic buildings
• 3.30-6pm: Discover massive rainforest by the side of a main road - go exploring up random dirt path. Turns out to be massive protected rainforest (see below) - get totally knackered but v.satisfied. Walk back into town.
• 6.30pm-present: Wander into Times Square Mall. Mind-bogglingly massive. Have dinner.
• 11.30pm-4.30am: Bus leaves back for Singapore.

Roughly speaking, I've not had a proper bit of shut-eye in about 36 hours, and in the interim period have walked all over Sentosa Island (a big theme-park style semi-man-made island to the south of the city), all around the Night Zoo, all the way from Little India to Golden Mile, and then spent all of today (16 hours since 4.30am) walking all over KL - all of which in typically equatorial humidity. I'm absolutely shattered, and have resorted to spending a lengthy period of time here in the internet cafe not so much for the internet as for the comfortable chair and the air conditioning. However, I don't think I have ever been more satisfied with any other 36 hour period of travelling - especially when I come to write it all down, and you realise just how much you've done and how much you've seen (and how far you've walked... although you can't really replicate that in words).

Today in KL has seemed like a dream. The fact that I arrived in the middle of the night has given my time here a strange time-warped dimension - it's as if I've somehow fabricated extra hours in the day. Such a feeling prevailed throughout the day - every time I looked at my watch I was continually surprised as to how early it was. Looking back from the evening, you realise just how easy it was to see so much when you just wander around (especially with a map!).

KL has been cool (though definitely not literally) - it didn't immediately stand out to me in the way Singapore did, but then no other city ever has. But wandering around - and wandering about I did - you gradually get a feel for the vibe of the place. The Petronas Twin Towers are the standout attraction, but there's far more to the city that them. All the same, they are the most beautifully constructed skyscrapers you'd ever want to see - their towering height is elegantly balanced by a gradual tapering of its chrome structure; the tapering itself grouped into 5 distinct blocks symbolising the 5 pillars of Islam. Photos will follow once I'm back in Singapore.

KL's finest feature in my eyes was, however, found by complete accident on my way to pick up another Hard Rock Cafe t-shirt to add to my collection. Bukit Nanas Forest Reserve, it turns out, is located in Kuala Lumpur City Centre and represents about 10 hectares of preserved land that remains in the same dense natural rainforest state that was existent pre-urbanisation. The only human influence has been the construction of the KL Tower - a communications/observation tower (v.similar to the CN Tower in Toronto) right in the middle of it. However, as you're trekking up the dirt paths rising steeply from the busy city roads underneath, you are soon totally surrounded by dense growth, and the sole sound is the whining of crickets or the rustle of monkeys jumping around overhead. The air is thick and dense with moisture, and as I worked myway through the overgrowth I soon found myself constantly wanting to scratch the incessast itching on my arms, legs, face - pretty much anything exposed - as all sorts of bugs, flying or otherwise, feasted on my (presumably) delicious O+ blood. It's damn hard work, and you sweat like a pig - and after about 45 minutes walking there's not much worse than looking up to see a never-ending set of stairs stoned into place ahead of you. I counted 152 - one after another - and sat and panted like a dog for 5 minutes afterward. What made the whole experience so good for me, though, was not just the satisfaction of being out with nature, but the fact that this place was not mentioned on my map, or on any of the tourist destination landmarks around the city. I didn't see a single other human all the while I was walking... it was just me, the bugs and the monkeys. And it was awesome.