Fri 1018 Just had breakfast on terrace. Going to drop some laundry in shortly, having checked it should actually be back same day and if not tomorrow morning. I am *probably* going to extend here an extra night, but I'd like to put the decision off for a few hours while I see what sort of shape my body is in.
I have been forming a rough plan to go to Barranquilla (shortly) before carnival, get some hopefully-not-insanely-priced comfortable private accom and put in a few days there getting to know the place and taking it easyish before moving to that overpriced dorm for carnival. In some sense I don't want to hang around here in Santa Marta any longer than necessary, but I don't have anything specific I want to do in BQ before carnival so there's no immense rush and I don't want to be in transit to BQ (admittedly not an epic journey) if I'm feeling ropy.
I'm going to start bashing out some notes on the Valle de Ñymejan tour shortly. All from memory, if I'd had the Priv with me I might have made some notes during the hike - I did get left to my own devices at times - but it probably wouldn't have been ideal to be doing so anyway.
Plan for today is to drop that washing in, do work on the hike write up, go out for lunch and water, extend here and/or book transport to BQ and BQ accom and *maybe* if I feel solid enough go out to Mango Rock for a few beers late-ish (10/11pm). I'd sort of like to get the onward travel plans sorted *now*, but really I need to get more confidence in my body first. FWIW while I felt mildly queasy cleaning my teeth this morning, I attacked the hostel breakfast (arepa+scrambled eggs with juice and coffee, the usual) with gusto and touch wood my stomach isn't issuing any after-the-fact complaints yet.
My shoes are pretty much brown with caked on dirt after the hike. This is odd and mildly unfortunate given they seemed to keep getting washed off naturally at times during it. However, it's hardly critical, and I will probably give them a blast under the shower once the dirt has had a really good chance to dry and flake off on its own.
1148 Right. Dropped laundry in, popped out for 4l bottle water, copied tour photos onto Priv so they can be uploading. Stomach feels intermittently mildly nauseuous but nothing terrible.
Kind of don't want to do this as it feels like a huge chore but let's just bash on. I will probably make some random "general" comments in the midst of the chronological write up. There'll probably be a lack of "and the view was just amazing, totally worth the effort" comments a lot of the time. On the whole there *were* some pretty cool views and it was on the whole a good experience (shall I commit myself to going as far as "great experience" ?) but on a practical minute-by-minute level during the actual walking I was just looking at the ground on front of me and trying not to fall or to think about how much further it might be. (Years ago someone told me you should never look at the summit when you're walking uphill, as it's offputting to think how far away it is and never seems to get any closer. I think a similar principle applies to going downhill too.)
I'm stifling even up here on the terrace but can't be helped. Intermittent cool breeze but very few. I'd be tempted to put this down to losing acclimatisation during the tour - parts of it were cool verging on cold in terms of weather - but parts of it were warm and with the exertion I was sweating like a pig a lot of the time. I'm not joking - well, IIRC pigs don't actually sweat, hence the mud thing, but YKWIM - my security belt containing my passport, my long-sleeved wool T-shirts, etc, were if not actually so damp I could wring sweat out of them within an ace of being so, and were really noticeably *wet*. I had developed a sweat rash round the intersection of genitals and legs by the last day, though fortunately I only noticed it or it only developed when we'd finished the walking.
On that note, I am going to say mildly personal gross things like that during this write up. I don't think Future Steve will mind, and it's not like I'm revealing deep personal secrets, they're just mildly distateful observations but I do want to capture the full "flavour" of the tour as best I can.
Anyway, so having packed my bags on Sun night, I managed to get a few hours of sleep and got up rather unwillingly about 515 (I couldn't resist a 10 min snooze on the alarm). I did the last bits of packing, tried to have a shit but didn't need to go, hung around on balcony outside room waiting for it to get a bit lighter before heading down, noticed moon was full and practically overhead, went down, had English conversation with bloke on reception and handed in daypack to store and walked over to agency.
It was borderline light and there were a few people about so it didn't feel too threatening. Naturally no one was at the agency, there was no bell to ring, so I hung around for maybe 10-15 mins (at this point I'll say for hopefully the last time that this was four days ago now, so take this entire write up in the context that my memory may be imperfect and I may end up accidentally mixing days up etc) before a bloke (the one loudmouth had called the owner) came down and opened the door. He told me the Spanish guy had hurt his leg and had had to cancel - somehow this didn't make me feel any more confident. Imagine the first half day or so this tour is riddled with a low-level background paranoia I'm going to be kidnapped (express or otherwise). Anyway, he got a taxi to take us over to the other side of the town to meet the guide.
He was talking to me a little bit and mostly to the driver and you have to imagine me straining my Spanish muscles to make sure I can understand as much as possible in case anything suspicious is being said. ;-)
So after a fairly long ride (to somewhere near La Quinta) we got out and I was introduced to a youngish (25ish? I never asked him his age) bloke who was wearing a T-shirt and cap with the company logo on who was to be my transport and guide. (Incidentally I do know his name, but in the interests of anonymity - his and mine - I am not going to write it here. I will send myself an e-mail with these details in just for future reference.)
First shock of the tour was that he was going to take me out to the starting point for the walk on the back of his motorbike. I am guessing this was an economy measure because the Spanish guy (if he ever existed) had fallen through and so I was on a solo tour. (And while I remember, let me make the general point now that in many ways it being a solo tour was not a bad thing. I got to practice my Spanish quite a lot - for all I was super aware of constantly making really basic errors and lacking vocabulary - as no one else spoke English, but if there'd been two of us - especially if the other was a native speaker - I'd have been more reticent about speaking and about asking for clarification when I didn't understand.) My motorcycle experience to date had been limited to that semi-involuntary trip over to a shop to be sold at when I was in Indian. This was about 30km or so. I did at least get offered a helmet (the guide didn't wear one; I don't know if he would have worn the helmet if he'd been on his own, but lots of motorcyclists here don't wear them).
I tried to maintain a positive attitude and tell myself this was a bit of an adventure. It was sort of fun but I did also feel a bit uncomfortable, especially at first, and holding on to the handrail things below the seat was a bit of a strain at times. I naturally got a bit edgy when the guide insisted on overtaking other vehicles.
So we stopped in Minca for breakfast (arepas with eggs cooked into them; quite nice) in some small shack kind of place. Minca very touristy looking (one of the hosts on tour told me later it didn't used to be like that 5-10 years ago), not unpleasant but really obviously something of a tourist hub. For all that it still had that slightly down-at-heel small town vibe, for better or worse. Guide not super talkative during this time but then I wasn't either; I tried to remind myself it's possible to have a friendly silence and we did talk a little bit.
Then back on the bike up into the hills. This involved a fair chunk of dirt road (much bouncing around and dust and some iffy overtaking) but maybe a third of the way up there were some roadworks and I had to get off and walk past them and it turned out they were paving the road (reinforced concrete, to judge from the spiky-looking metal ties we rode past and which I imagined landing on if the bike skidded over), presumably from the top down, and while a bit narrow the surface was pretty decent above there. So now I'm in a position to say smug experienced traveller things about how I remember the road wasn't all paved last time I was here on a subsequent visit. :-)
We passed some steps the guide indicated was where we'd start walking up but we had to ride a fair way past that point to leave the bike at a small shop. I seized the opportunity to try to go for another shit (the guide had been rather dismissive of the possibility of toilets when I'd asked him at the cafe in Minca; in hindsight I think it would have been acceptable for me to take a shit at the side of the path just about anywhere and he thought I was "insisting" on a proper toilet, whereas while I'd certainly *prefer* a proper toilet - I've still not actually had to take a wild shit, if memory serves - "when you've gotta go you've gotta go", but at the time I kind of formed the impression shitting in the woods would not be acceptable to him from an " eco-vandalism" POV) but managed to squeeze out only the tiniest bit. I don't know if use of toilet was free but I asked and while they seemed a bit disorganised (maybe felt it was rude, probably not) they asked me for 1k so that was fine.
We then walked back to the steps. I asked the guide a few questions as much to break the silence as anything else but didn't feel too awkward.
In theory I have a GPS track of the walk which would probably be interesting to look back on (I've not looked at it yet, it's inconvenient on phones, and if it's crap/broken there's not much I can do). Hard to write too much about the walk in detail. This first day it was mostly uphill, it wasn't *easy* but not terribly hard - about what I'd expected, really. Guide did intermittently fiddle with his smartphone but I think in the main he was sorting out stuff re the trip. I did the same "earwigging with attention" thing when he made some phone calls, in case he was saying stuff about the victim nearly being in position. Obviously probably they'd use code had that been the case, but not all criminals are going to make a proper effort. :-)
Latter part of walk was along "espina del diablo" , so called because it's a fairly narrow path with a drop either side - it did, but not unusually or noticeably so to my mind.
At some point earlyish in this walk we did stop (there had been the odd brief rest; it wasn't hard enough for me to want to wuss out and ask specifically to rest otherwise) for maybe 5-10 mins to sit on the grass and the guide gave me a chocolate bar (he appeared to require little sustenance, including water - once or twice he would drink from a mini-waterfall type stream, but he didn't seem to be carrying any with him - when he did that we discussed water and he said it *probably* wasn't a good idea for me to drink it, it also turned out I wouldn't be able to buy any more bottled water during the tour but I would be able to refill my bottles with boiled water at the hostels and that I could also use on those bleachy purifying tablets on the "wild" water if necessary (I did have some with me, though never used any), he did also mention some people had those filters and didn't say anything bad against them, but so far I've resisted temptation on grounds of expense and weight, plus the purely anecdotal evidence of Patrick telling me on a trip he made in Nepal only the people using those things got sick - there was further chat about this with host at hostel on second afternoon actually, my suspicion is that the water's basically OK but if you're not used to it it might cause some minor-ish unpleasantness, if you were going to stay six months it would be worth going through that possible small pain, but when you're staying one night it's not) and we admired the view - which was very cool - a bit.
Oh yes, I did ask the guide about mobile signal, perhaps at that point, and he said that he had it sometimes but not always. I *never* did and he said Movistar was useless there, with Claro you could sometimes get signal in that region (Sierra Nevada).
So a small lesson learned there: since I could see as soon as I arrived my Three SIM was roaming on Movistar, I should have preferred to buy a local SIM for a non-Movistar network (which would almost certainly have been Claro), then I'd have had a better chance of having intermittent comms during this tour. As it was I *hadn't* taken both my SIMs, but if they had been for different networks I might have done (and in hindsight should have done). This isn't/wasn't critical - if Claro's deals had been appalling I probably shouldn't have insisted on going with them - but as it is I *expect* Claro and Movistar have similar PAYG offerings, and I never actually spoke to Claro to find out. I don't really know if this kind of diversification crossed my mind when I was buying the local SIM - probably not, as I didn't particularly expect to be doing much "rural" tourism and in large towns/cities I would expect any network to work well.
Early afternoon we arrived at first hostel; there was a sole MoS there waiting for us. (I say MoS; conversation that night and other nights and with guide generally suggest this is an extended family business. "They" own all three of the hostels and at least some of the land - some at least of which is active "fincas" - and eg they own the land and made the path to the view of the 100m waterfall only about 18 months ago - and have been offering this tour (or similar) for maybe 2-3 years IIRC. Host of the second night (who was a youngish looking 70) said he had had the idea for years but only in the last few years had the security/political situation improved to a point where it was really practical.)
He gave me a glass of "lulu" juice (apparently harvested from a wild tree nearby) - aha, quick web search suggests this is "luló", better known of course as solanum quitoense - and they showed me my room (a six bed dorm, which I had to myself) and I sort of felt I'd been shoved off to one side to wait while they " did stuff". I was probably not really worrying about paranoid shit at this point - there'd been ample opportunity to do something to me up to this point, so why keep up the charade so long? - so I don't mean that in any sinister way.
I did note there was no light and no mains socket in the dorm. The room was large and clean although there were gaps in the roof boards covered by a green plastic sheet which flapped in the wind, so the room was clearly not sealed off. They were (and I'm now mixing in information from later conversations) building a second story on top of an existing building (which had initially had a large single floor, stretching out over the front "garden" area - there was a small patch of tiles still left - but apparently it had been neglected for many years and suffered damage).
This is probably a good point to make the general observation that while all three hostels were really quite different in style and shape, they were all off-grid places with solar power, water from IIRC local streams and no roads. This means getting building materials in is difficult and expensive, as they have to be brought in by horse/mule/foot from near-ish roads. (This isn't to say they're as remote as the tour might suggest - we took a scenic route of course. But I think the nearest road to the first night's hostel was about 40-50 minutes' walk, for example.) They also, while clean enough, all had a very rustic kind of construction with lots of air gaps around the place where roofs met walls etc. I find this mildly surprising given the lowish temperatures at the first two, although on the other hand it wasn't in general unpleasantly cold. (However, the showers weren't heated and the first night we didn't shower until after dark when it was getting cold; I think the guide said he wasn't going to shower that night, and the "resident" guy said he made a point of doing it during the day. I did force myself to splash around in and under the shower by torchlight for maybe 15-30 seconds, but it was damn cold.)
I don't know if it's just a matter of personal preference or that it seems bright compared to previously having lived with candles/oil lamps/wood fires whatever (incidentally cooking and heating of the kitchen was still by wood fires; fuel is apparently quite handy as local trees will die off at times etc), but at night even with solar lighting it did feel a bit dingy in some areas (not all; obviously it depends how the bulbs have been placed). I'm not complaining, it was in a way quite nice and novel and sort of cosy, but am trying to give the flavour.
Then again, while there was a bit of an ongoing construction feel especially at the first hostel, it seems a bit odd for that first hostel to have no bulb in the bathroom, and it really wouldn't have hurt to have one in the dorm.
I asked about charging phone or my USB power bank and was told that would be possible. As I never had a socket in my room this wasn't super convenient, and in the end as I wanted to take it to bed with me to charge phone as I read myself to sleep, USB power bank only got charged - and then only a bit - overnight in guide's room at second hostel. But that extra charge was enough to see me through the trip; TBH the power bank might have been enough without a top up anyway.
There also seems to be a habit (perhaps even a timer) of turning the electricity off centrally at (to me) unhelpful times. Yes you don't want power from your limited solar-charged battery dribbling away all night, but for example that second night my powerbank didn't get a full charge as the electricity was turned off during the night. And then on third night when I got up about 530am (more on this later) the electricity was off and I couldn't turn the dorm light on despite it still being dark. (Yes, I had a torch, but it seems odd to have lighting installed but unusable.)
First night hostel had two dogs and a smallish grey-and-black-striped cat. One of the dogs was a low-slung kind of model which had something wrong with its feet (I asked eventually and apparently a motorbike had run over one of its front feet). I guessed (correctly) the cat was a tom as it kept meowing for food all the time, in an endearing but mildly annoying way. I wonder if it was not much more than a kitten because it really wasn't that big. It did let me stroke it; I didn't attempt to stroke any of these dogs.
We had a bit of a chat in the kitchen the first night. There was a biggish looking spider on the wall over by the stove but I did my best to ignore it (I wasn't that near it), checked to make sure I wasn't leaning up against the wall and kept an eye on it to make sure it wasn't on move. I noticed it was still there the next morning (I was wondering about sneaking a photo of it) and at that point I twigged it was actually an asterisk someone had marked on the wall. :-) I hadn't been too shitted up about this and slept fairly soundly (and had a thick synthetically fluffy kind of blanket so wasn't cold). Getting up at 530 to see the sunrise was a bit of a struggle, especially given the temperature, but - we walked a couple of minutes out of the hostel to a hillside - the sunrise was really very impressive. The clouds formed a solid cotton-wool-ish carpet below us in the valley (with some higher hills poking through like islands) which very gradually started to develop holes as the sun warmed things up. Mountains in the distance (with that misty quality which makes them look kind of two dimensional, as if they were enormous cardboard cutouts placed at three or four different distances), sun rising over them etc. Took some photos but colours obviously not captured very well.
Gonna take a break from this now and at least poke at pre-carnival BQ accommodation to see how it looks. Thinking will got out for lunch in an hour or two (prob Valeria's, not to take any chances) then come back here and see how I feel and try to decide about future plans. TBH will probably decide "book here for one extra night and see how I feel tomorrow" anyway.
Oh, been cleaning up some e-mails and reminded I lost my 300ish day Duolingo streak as a result of this tour. But that's OK, the whole business is a bit artificial anyway (I could buy hundreds of streak freezes with my lingot balance, so I could be an arse and just buy a new one every day and never do any actual study and still get a huge streak) and I also lost it through "genuinely could not use DL" circumstances rather than laziness.
Right, quick poke on booking.com (is their name a clever trick to insure you always write something "hyperlinkable"? - I can just write "hostelworld" but I don"t like to write "booking" as a name for their site) suggests - without looking too closely into location - that pre-carnival I could have a private room for five nights from £50-£100 for all five nights, maybe less. The lower end of that is absolutely cool with my budget and I could stretch to the upper end if I had to. (I am not tracking my spending too closely during the trip, as usual, but I'd hope the final total clocks in around £3-3.5k all-in. "Normal" days are probably well under their share of that, but things like this tour I just did and the massively overpriced BQ carnival accommodation are way over-budget on a per-day basis, and it's hard for me to judge how the two are balancing out. I don't want to "miss out" on interesting stuff to save money (the marginal cost of doing stuff while I am here is lower than the cost of travelling here specifically to do it) but I don't want to go insanely over budget for stuff I'm not *that* fussed about. Like the tour I just did, I was happy that was a worthwhile splurge before I did it. Carnival is a bit more of a "well, since I'm here might be cool to check it out, but I'm not that enthused" thing and yet it seems pretty expensive. Staying in a dorm to keep costs down is fine, but as it it I'm doing that *and it's still freaking expensive*, even before I spend any money on other things.
OK, let's bash a bit more out before lunch. Stomach intermittently mildly nauseous, nothing very strong but not exactly reassuring.
So after breakfast we set off walking again. Oh, I should say that despite not being asked to express any dietary preferences or doing so unasked, the food was from my POV almost perfect. Virtually no sauces, every single salad was undressed, meat, rice, vegetables, arepas. I always felt mildly edgy about the edibility of an upcoming meal but not too much after the first few meals.
Second day's walking was hard. There was a lot of downhill - the guide did give me a stick after maybe the first hour, I didn't seem him do it but given we were in middle of nowhere I suspect he had chopped it off a tree there and then, and that did help, though I managed to blister my right hand with friction from the pole - and my legs were killing me and I had to pay a lot of attention to my footing and did half fall over a fair few times and IIRC did end up on my arse once or twice. I think the guide (who was often a fair way in front of me, which was sort of nice as I kind of felt alone but also for the same reason mildly scary sometimes) did slip once or twice himself.
I didn't IIRC ask for any extra breaks until we got to the point of crossing a small river via some boulders. I always struggle with this kind of thing. Anyway, I got a small way across and my legs were sort of trembling (I had noticed this a bit on the walk down but it wasn't too bad) and I had to ask for a rest. Guide said this was because of the muscles being so tensed up with all the downhill. Anyway, we did get over OK, though (for the only time, perhaps foolishly) I did put my phone and camera in a dry bag inside my pack before going over.
I can't think of anything else specific about that second day's walk, although even the mostly uphill bit later on was a definite struggle and although I don't think I asked for any extra breaks I was definitely drawing a bit on willpower to keep going and was pleasantly surprised when we did arrive at the hostel. (We had stopped at a small unoccupied property maybe 30 mins before that, so I sat and panted, and wasn't sure if we had much further to go. I tried to avoid asking things like "how much further?" as it seemed more likely to be depressing than helpful.)
Had a fairly good chat with the youngish-seemed 70yo bloke at this hostel (his wife seemed very nice too but spoke much less). We talked a bit after arrival, I had a shower (room here was actually a private double with an en suite, but all very rustic and cold shower and no light in bathroom) then had lunch (incidentally every meal, except at first hostel where the resident guy joined us, was just me and the guide), then after killing a bit of time on my own reading in my room (incidentally I should perhaps have taken my headphones, as entertaining myself with music on phone is less battery draining than reading) and then popping out to admire the view I was invited into the kitchen for warmth and a chat before dinner. This was all pretty interesting but I did feel the flaws in my Spanish quite a lot. Even worse when after dinner the host started telling me and the guide (his relative, of course) some stories about revolutionary types turning up and asking him questions. Partly out of "nerves" and partly as I felt he was telling the guide this as much as me, I didn't like to interrupt to ask questions, but while I did get about 60-70% of the gist I felt a bit at sea and thus a bit of a fraud and didn't dare make any except the most guarded and general observations in case [bizarrely, "Where do you go to my lovely?" suddenly playing here on terrace, compared to more moderny genericy jazz-with-a-beat until now] it suddenly became clear that the guy had been talking to "me" for half an hour and I hadn't understood a word of it.
For this reason I don't propose to write down any of these stories here. I have noticed other travel writers being similarly evasive, and they usually seem to me to be insinuating the stories are too racy to be put in print. While I might feel mildly out of order writing down what I was told "in private" on those grounds, the stories were interesting but not I think deeply compromising, and my main reason is (as I already said) that I might turn out to massively misrepresent what I was told.
Incidentally my legs were hurting a bit - not *agonising*, but hurting - going up and down hostel stairs earlier.
I'll put some brief notes in my private e-mail about those stories for my own interest.
Right, it's 1414. I'm going to go out for lunch and just maybe a beer or two at MB; I still haven't had my "beer at the finish line" for the tour, and if I'm feeling OK that might be a nice thing to do.
1932 Sorted, respect due. Poked on hostelworld and booking.com. No single room available but booking.com had a double room (still shared bathroom) for 36.46k (compared to 40k been paying for single or 60-70k for double IIRC - this is with my 10% "Genius" discount but still cheap even so, as I presumably wasn't eligible for that on previous bookings here). I went to reception, they told me they had no single (as expected) so I showed them the booking.com listing, after about four staff debated the issue (with slight involvement from me), including whether or not breakfast was included (which the listing clearly said it was) I got this for the advertised price - paid cash as under 50k min for card (didn't even ask) but still good. Don't know if they're unhappy, probably not, but at least they probably don't have to give booking.com their cut this way. hostelworld had the same room at 70k and that was cheapest private room; can't be sure but think often one has been cheaper than the other.
Will probably go on to BQ on Sunday but let's wait and see how I feel tomorrow.
I wore my shoes into the shower earlier to get the worst of the mud off, they're a bit damp inside (but they had already been soaked after a water-crossing accident on the tour, so no major harm) but tolerable.
I went out to Valeria's for lunch, waiter remembered me. I had two "limonada de yerbabuena" , which turned out to be a bit pricey at 7.5k each but call it medicinal. :-) Power went off before I could pay with card but I said I'd wait and it came back on after 10-15 mins. Then went and had one beer and an americano at Marley Bar. Beer was nice enough but a) didn't want to overdo it as stomach felt a bit heavy anyway b) there was a really annoying little kid beggar/vendor who for some reason the staff didn't chase off, who stood by a tree next to my table for ages just loitering, then sat at a table next to me for a while and kept intermittently pestering (most of these people accept a polite "no thanks", or at most need two or three refusals) for money and I felt a bit on edge with the little shit there. He then moved on to some other tables and pestered some other people similarly, and though I think he left me alone I didn't feel comfortable.
I think I might go withdraw a big chunk of cash tomorrow; I feel "safe enough" here in SM and I think there's an ATM nearby, and the alternative is to be withdrawing a lot in BQ (which I might have to do anyway, but at least if I withdraw here I can spend a few days in BQ without withdrawing and get the lay of the land). I have been (very slightly) OTT about preferring to pay by card rather than cash, I think - yes card is better (more secure, about 1.5% cheaper) but it's not a huge deal.
Am probably going to go out to MR about 10ish.
I asked about my laundry and was told it would be here tomorrow morning. This isn't a problem but kind of makes being told it would be here this evening a bit annoying. Only very mildly annoying, as I'm staying here tomorrow anyway (and it would probably be here before checkout if I wasn't) and I *don't* need the clothes urgently. Might as well mention now that I wore the same pair of trousers the whole tour (I took my second pair with me in case of emergencies but really wanted them clean for when I got back here), I wore the same wool top the first 1.5 days and changed to the second wool top after my shower on arrival at hostel on day 2, then wore the other wool top for the rest of the time. On day 4 I did "swim" (I should probably say "bathe" , it would be more accurate and has a nice "Stalky & Co" /"Famous Five" vibe to it, although I *did* do a tiny bit of legs-only backstroke so technically I did swim) in a pool on a river at one point (I think this was technically scheduled, but lest the guide not bother on grounds of illness I specifically asked if there would be an option, saying I thought it might help me feel better) and afterwards I changed my underwear but decided to stick with the wool top; I had my two thinner synthetic long-sleeved tops with me but decided to just stick with the wool one.
I'll need to pack up the stuff scattered round the room before "checkout" tomorrow - I need to repack properly after dividing stuff up for the tour - but since I am only going to another room I can eg pack the daypack *and* main pack and carry the two bags separately so I can just shove everything in willy-nilly and sort it out properly in the new room.
Oh, I will mention that had brief chat with some of staff while on terrace writing this lot up before lunch, and one suggested I go in the pool as the cold water might help my leg muscles. I had half intended to do this anyway, on "taking advantage/fighting my insecurities" grounds, especially since my new single room is right next to the pool and thus super convenient for getting changed in. I didn't get round to going in til 5-6pm and it was a little bit dingy (the pool is effectively at the bottom of a two storey pit formed by the exterior walls, with no ceiling) and the water was cold but not really cold (perhaps having been warmed by sun during day) - I stayed in a few minutes but didn't feel like lingering. I had it to myself anyway.
Let's just knock out a bit more of the tour; I am now mostly killing time until a) shoes dry off a bit b) it's time to head out to MR and hope it's not heaving and I can't get a seat at the bar.
So around the time I went to bed on day 2, I was in the corridor/biggish open-dingy area near my room and spotted something on floor. I thought at first it might be a cockroad, but closer examination proved it to be a spider of the style and size (but probably not species) which I think would be large but not exactly unheard of in the UK. I wasn't super happy (especially as it was only a metre or two from the not-full-length curtain which served as a "door" to my room). As it happened the guide came over to talk to me at that point and I said something about it - quitely calmly, I think, as best I can recall I didn't really like standing there talking to him with it there on the floor next to me in the near-dark, he nudged it with his boot (I did wonder if he was going to tread on it, but he seems like a decent chap and didn't) and it moved a little bit; personally I think it was dying because it seemed so sluggish. Anyway, he picked it up and chucked it over the open-air top of the adjacent door frame.
(In passing, he - as did many other people we met during tour - was wearing wellies the whole time. This certainly made sense for some of the river crossings - nothing *extreme*, Ciudad Perdida style - especially as he had to help the inept tourist get across. I will say that although they're obviously only waterproof to a bit less than ankle depth, the Mount Low 8 shoes served me well in this regard, most of the time my feet were dry despite mud and shallowish-water-crossings, and especially given my ineptitude and fear of falling over and getting phone or camera wet I sometimes just walked through shallowish water rather than try to balance on boulders and risk a fall.)
I then went to bed feeling a bit edgy. I flirted with leaving the light on all night, but even if the power wasn't going to be cut off centrally (which it probably was, given problem with charging powerbank) I thought that might be a bit out of order given the curtain serving as a door was far from light-tight and the guide's room was at other end of corridor. I had - for lack of other options - been leaving my stuff around on the floor after partially unpacking backpack, which suddenly seemed like a bad idea - though really I had no choice. Things weren't helped by finding a smaller (borderline not-disturbing) and much more lively specimen crawling around on my backpack. I lost sight of it for a while, and later on could have trodden on it on the floor but didn't because I'm just such a nice guy. My backpack fell over and the light change/vibrations disturbed it and it scuttled off under the bed.
As a compromise I shoved a damp tissue over the sink (which was in the bedroom, not the en-suite) and hung my clothes up on the basin to keep them off the floor while l was sleeping (as I wanted to wear them again the next day, being new on that afternoon and with no walking miles on it). I then turned the light off and went to bed, feeling mildly under seige. I was reading on my phone as usual and it now being the only light in the room I came under bombardment from a couple of moths and some other small beetle-ish thing. I tried pulling the top sheet over me to form a kind of tent, my first attempt was a bit half-hearted and the friendly little chaps flew in under the gap and proceeded to batter around in the small space under the sheet around my head. I don't normally mind moths or beetles particularly, but at close quarters like this and after the two spiders I wasn't terribly happy. After a bit of "fuck off, you little bastard" activity to get them out from under the sheet, I tried again taking care to get the sheet over my head and down into contact with the mattress so I was actually enclosed (at the top, which is where the light was and where it mattered), and that stopped them getting in, although the sheet was thin enough for the light to show through and they did keep up a less intensive series of attacks on the sheet as a result.
In an ideal world I'd just have left the phone off and waited to go to sleep, but I wanted to distract myself after those spiders earlier. I should say I was (re-)reading Mark Twain's "Roughing It" and luckily had got past the tarantulas-in-the-boarding-house story earlier that afternoon while sitting on the bog.
I did fall asleep OK - I was tired of course - but I was woken in the morning (545ish, to see sunrise) by my watch alarm, and I then thought "why didn't the phone alarms go off?" and the fucker had gone dead in the night. Yes I hadn't left it charging on the powerbank, but it had started the night around 90% and the screen turns off automatically after a minute or two so it really should have lasted and gone down to 70%ish. I don't know what the fuck happened; I couldn't get hold of powerbank until we started walking (as guide said there had been no charging overnight so we needed to leave it as long as possible now) and when I plugged it in to charge in my pocket it showed 34% straight away. So I don't know if the battery is degrading fast, though my gut feeling is some sort of software glitch massively increased the battery drain that night.
I was particularly antsy about this as I thought it might mean I'd lost the first two days worth of GPS track (no syncing to Dropbox, of course, as I had no connectivity), but when I had a chance to actually turn phone on at a rest stop I had a quick look and it *looks* like there are decently sized track files for those days, though I haven't inspected them yet (nothing I can do either way now, of course). (I did manually back them up to Dropbox this morning, as it looks like the automatic sync has failed for them. Not ideal but given the phone did die it's not terrible.)
OK, so we're now at the morning of the third day. Oh, the sunrise on the third morning was OK but it was very foggy/cloudy (very much expected there) so there wasn't really a lot to see.
I think I'm going to break off for now, if not for tonight, and I may even post this as one entry and write a separate one tomorrow - getting something posted to the blog acts as insurance against losing it, a form of cloud backup. (Yes, I am writing this on Dropbox text editor on Priv so that's also backed up, but some freak accident (eg select all, type "x" , have entire text replaced by a single "x" , undo doesn't work) could still lose it.
Do I have any general observations to make at this point? I will note that the camera lens was sometimes a bit steamed up when I took it out of the leg pocket on trousers to take a photo during the walk; I had to wipe it on my jumper (trying to find a dry patch) to get this off (not ideal I know, though the lens already has a scratch in the middle which causes an annoying bright spot if the light is really intense but is mostly not a problem) and some of the photos I've taken are (I think; bear in mind I mostly see them as postage stamp sized squares on phone screen unless I make an effort to click through to an individual one) blurry in places as a result of taking a photo without doing this wipe.
I didn't sleep all that well last night. I think one way or another it was too bright with light coming through the translucent uncurtained window and I couldn't block it out with the single thin sheet, and maybe I was also feeling too hot despite having the fan on.
There is a small tear in the fabric of the small top pouch of the backpack. I did mildly over-pack it (with "want to get at easily" items) on the trip but nothing insane and I'm not exactly delighted about this. I will stick some tenacious tape on it tomorrow and that should stop it growing. I haven't given the bag a full inspection so fingers crossed this is the only damage it's sustained. (I *think* this rip occurred during the tour, but of course I can't be sure.)
I did put my security belt in the wash I handed in today - I flirted with doing it in sink, but it had been so soaked in sweat I thought I'd get it washed properly and it wouldn't be too much of a loss as I wouldn't be out today. I was thinking it's a bit of a shame not to have it tonight but really I leave my passport in my room *anyway* so it's not a huge loss. That reminds me that (as always) the contents of that belt were in sealed plastic bags so they didn't suffer from the sweat, although (again I *think* this happened during the trip) the friction seems to have detached the front cover (it's only a cheap paper thing) from my vaccination booklet; I don't think this matters and I will tape it up (don't have any clear sellotape with me) when I get back home.
On the first night the host guy told me that putting grillo (cricket) legs in water and letting them infuse gives a liquid which is really effective in treating colic. This is apparently a traditional remedy. I am 95% sure it was grillo legs, but I could be wrong.
2325 At MR, jotting this on HTC. Chap called Omar came up and spoke to me at the bar a bit ago in English, somehow didn't take to him - perhaps cos he was standing next to me not sitting - but still, nice of him really. he went out ld the bar soon after with some friends and wished me a good night and I reciprocated.
Mulling randomly, it occurs to me my knees didn't play up at all on the tour, which is encouraging.
there is and has been on every visit here a small plasma globe ( the size of the one I have in my flat) next to the vj. it's a sort of cool and I quite like the fact its not a super fancy big one.
(predictive text shit can infer I meant to type virtually nonexistent word "liker" instead of "like" but it can't capitalise first word in sentence. cos reasons. but it's better than a hardware keyboard, why would anyone want that? get with the programme, daddio!)
I need to install a reputable on screen kbd, this HTC TouchPal clearly sucks, maybe another one won't be so dumb and predict practically nonexistent words so readily.
oh, I did say to host on 2nd night that K had been imagining somwhere to relax with the green mountains and a bit of mist, cool but not cold etc. of course the tour didn't quite qualify as I was walking a lot not hanging around relaxing for a few days and the lack of my minimal creature comforts (Wi-Fi even if slow, ability to order and pay for coffee and/or beer at will instead of being more of a house guest, ideally fewer spiders), but still, in some ways it did realise it.
Keane everybodys changing and now simple minds don't you forget about me. decent songs but bit surprised they play them here somehow. not v busy. half the time all 3ish staff out front smoking. think it's illegal indoors here and was on my last visit, though unlike other places this bar seems to lack a smugarse "breathe easy, this is an environment 100% free of tobacco smoke" ( translation from memory) sign which I assumed was legally mandates like the equivalent wanky signs back home).
it's addictive writing this live stuff. need to fight temptation.
wow, live vsn of don't you forget about me straight after. nah cancelled as o types ghat sentence. and cock me doea this l
this production bite.
two of the staff playing dominoes across bar. I reckon there are about 5-10 customers here including me and the people smoking outside.
on a random note prompted by thoughts of massive imo ovestaffing in movistar shop, it occurs to me that maybe labour is so cheap here (tho that alone would not be enough) that a not so busy bar like this can survive. and also reminded by having seen some atomic shrimp videos and comments thereon that notwithstanding general col stuff, food is apparently cheap in UK and that may account for me always thinking stuff is expensive in Latin American supermarkets.
doors "break on through " playing and the keyboard player looks like Denson on "if...."
air-con units show 16c. in London in winter I would hace mh heating set to 18c and consider that thrifty, and i would probably wear a jumper indoors too. but psychological temp is a Funny thing and in this heat The arcón is v welcomd, though tbh i do find The arcón in here on fiercd side of nice.
not drunk, Just emulating it vía médium of shitty TouchPal. and yes i know that sentencié has random shitty accwnts. oh I was on Spanish mode. but it wasn't earlier. I think. the predictions would have been even worse.
just had piss. no air-con in tiny cubicle, felt like a little tropical paradise. and had a double light switch with one doing nothing like both my rooms at current hostel.
had noticed on previous visits but bot written before, there is a mountain mural on wall and the way the lighting changes on it is quite cool.
0310 Home. Bar very obviously shutting around 3, I was able to pay on card this time (38k with tip I think). Had got a beer shortly before closing and was necking it slightly. Youngish attractiveish woman (who said IIRC she was called Carolina or Christina) had been going round saying goodbye to everyone, she came over and spoke to me in English, bit weird but sort of nice (I spoke to her a bit in Spanish as a kind of returning-favour deal). Just after finished speaking to her two cops came into bar, I noticed other people drinking up and leaving so I *didn't* ask cops if all OK but just left. Nothing deeply threatening about cops except that they were cops coming into bar despite no obvious trouble.
Minor lag getting into hostel but very amicable chap hadn't seen before let me in, made him a nominal apology for getting back late and he was very decent about it. Will clean teeth and go to bed. Not tired right now but esp w excess aircon (not that I won't feel too hot in room tonight with just fan) and wanting to be up for breakfast and illness and not sleeping that well last night I was yawning a bit (the music was OK but not so much to my taste as to be energising) for last hour-ish and I'm kind of glad to have seen the whole night out without it going on much longer. Yes, 38k on receipt, seems odd that tip - which is on receipt, as well as on bill saw in bar - is only 2k, though to be fair while I don't know local customs back home there would be no tip for sitting at bar getting served while 10%ish for table service in restaurant, so 5%ish for bar service is not terrible - I'm not complaining, I would just have *expected* 10% but if they're not charging that fair enough. I am 90% sure they asked if I wanted to pay a tip and I said yes, but I can't rule out the possibilty they asked if I wanted to pay a reduced tip and I said yes.
Anyway, tooth cleanse then bed. I feel OK standing in breeze of max speed fan and not drunk, but I "need" to be up before 10 for breakfast so best get to bed ASAP.
0325 Must say I will kind of miss SM and this hostel (for all that its nominal lively programme of events isn't happening, presumably due to low occupany) but I can't hang on here forever and nice to leave regretting it rather than glad to shake the dust off my heels, as always.
Oh, I had a vague idea but I did count up on the bill and I had 9 Aguilas there. Not exactly restrained but not insane either.
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