Andy's Glasses

So from Cartagena we need to get to the island of Providencia, in the Western Caribbean. How hard can it be? When our days in Cartagena are spent looking at that very body of water. The problem is that bodies of water are big. Unlike, say, human bodies or glasses of water. And furthermore, access to places is ruled by the gods of the skies. The airlines. Who decide that to fly from Cartagena to Providencia is just too easy. It might encourage tourists and you wouldn’t want that. So on xmas morning we woke at 3.30 to go to the airport to fly… south. Away from the Caribbean, to Bogota. From there, after a suitable wait, obvs, we few north and west, over the coast, to the island of St Andres. Which is so close to Providencia you can almost smell it. Ish. And only after waiting for another 3 hours at that tiny little island airport do you qualify to get on a weeny little plane (because Providencia is a weeny little island with a weeny little runway) and be among the 18 people who finally arrived where we wanted to be, just about 15 hours after leaving our hotel that morning. You could almost have swum it quicker. Well, Mel could. Though I’ve never seen her swim carrying suitcases. Whilst I cheer from a boat, sipping margaritas.

Providencia is Colombian like the Falklands are British. Or Gibraltar. Along with St Andres, the two islands are much nearer to Nicaragua than Colombia. And Panama lies between those 2 fine nations, should you be looking solely at the land. But Colombian they are, which you can tell because you have to pay your excess baggage fines in Colombian money. Otherwise the island is just like any other Caribbean island. Nothing works properly. But that’s because its really ‘unspoiled’ here. No massive, luxury hotels ‘spoiling’ all that coastline. No spoiling workers coming out to mend the wifi, which is patchy at best, because its Christmas and the locals don’t work that day. Or on many of the others. The great thing about the unspoiliness is that the beaches are simply wonderful. Just beaches and tropics. Nothing commercialised. No hordes of great fat Americans breaking the sunbeds and blocking out the light. Mainly because there are no sunbeds and the light is spectacular.

When we arrived, the rather immense feeling of ‘middle of nowhereness’ almost overwhelmed my inner princess who bemoaned the lack of luxury… then I got back in touch with my long-lost back-packer-dude and embraced the fact that Providencia is just different. In a good and fab way.

And when the wifi returned, learning that Harry Kane had scored his second hat-trick in 4 days to become the best goalscorer in the ENTIRE FUCKING WORLD, was the icing on the cake. Even if the cake tends to be a bit stale.

Buenas Dias

A xxxx

So we’re in Cartagena, still. Cos its lovely. Still. Or perhaps, ‘again’ now the cruise ships have left leaving behind a distinct lack of hats and hundreds of thousands of dollars for the local economy, so they’re not all bad. Part of the charm of Cartagena is that it was a Spanish fort. Which still stands. aWhere the colonialists kept all the gold they could steal from the local people. Like all colonial ‘civilising forces’ the Spanish introduced to the Indigenous natives 2 things in particular: theft on a nationalised scale and the Spanish Inquisition to ‘help’ the locals see the error of their ways. A red hot poker up the jacksy will often serve as a catalyst in spiritual revelation more swiftly than a thousand psalms.

And there was lots of gold here in Colombia. There still is. The natives had been using it for generations so the Spaniards just gathered it all up and locked it in the fort. Which, as I learned yesterday, was a fairly awesome structure. But it had to be. Because Cartagena de Indias was Jonny Depp central in the 16th and 17th centuries. This was where the Pirates did the Caribbean. They came from all over the world to sack the Spanish ships which tried to sail back to the motherland laden with all their stolen treasures. And most of the pirates were British. Few French, probably some Portuguese, maybe even Italians, though doubtful as they’ve always had surrender issues when it comes to a fight. Not so the British. Always loved a fight. You can just imagine, hanging off the ships by their cannons shouting ” come on, Jose, bring it on, if yer fuckin’ ‘ard enough!!!”

And here we are, a mere 400 years later, shouting the same thing at Jose Morinho, though obviously in a slightly different context. Because we all know, Jose is not in any way ‘hard’ when it comes to psychological robustness. He cracks under pressure. And because for him that ‘special one’ title is not just some mere aspiration but a God-given right, even without the poker, with each relentless victory of Manchester City, his delicate psyche crumbles just a little more round the edges.

Yesterday’s failure by his Manchester United to hold on to a sure-looking victory against 10-man Leicester hit the man hard. Firstly he started on his own team, accusing them of childish mistakes, a very Jose thing to do. Act like a baby accusing others of childishness. And then he started the personal paranoia shit about Manchester United having the worst possible holiday fixture list of all the ‘top teams’. As if Sky, BT and the Premier League’s main objective in setting the 85 odd fixtures over the next 10 days was to, first and foremost, upset the little Portuguese twit.

All I know about (and certainly care about) is that Spurs were the only top 7 team to win yesterday, other than Man City, who simply don’t even count any more in the true battle. And that made me feel very nice. Very good. And very hot. Though the latter may have been due to the weather here.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

I have friends who ‘cruise’. I admit it. People I know and consider ‘close’ are among those who like to spend two weeks a year trapped in an immense floating city with about 5000 like-mindeds. Though I’m not sure there is too much mind involvement at all. And whilst there they will be given 9 square meals a day, plus snacks, obviously, in case you get peckish, and have ‘all the entertainment you can eat’, just like at Butlins. And every day this floating palace pulls up to some port or other and literally vomits out 5000 people into some small, quaint local environment to clog up the streets, fill the shops and restaurants and get set upon by the locals. Who lie in wait with endless supplies of virtually everything the cruisers don’t really need but aren’t bright enough to realise. Its part of the rather horrible elitism of cruisers that they know they’re going to be ripped off but simply can’t help themselves. They’re put on this bit of land to spend and by George that’s what they’re going to do.

The gorgeous northern Colombian port city of Cartagena lies on the Caribbean. And hence is ‘on the route’ for the hundreds of cruises that pootle round that part of the world every Christmas. So the cute little ex-colonial streets started filling up really early with hawkers and sellers of everything from bottles of water to hats, more hats and even more hats. I don’t know how many heads people on cruises have but it must be at least 4 each judging by the number of hats currently available round here. Unquestionably, you need a hat; its freakin’ hot. But the question comes as to why you need 8 hats. And food. Why offer food to people who’ve eaten 3 full meals before breakfast? Better to sell them a diet plan or exercise program. Why they all want to buy emeralds is another issue altogether.

A few years ago we were in Venice for a weekend. And as our waterbus pulled round a ‘bend’ (can you call it a ‘bend’ on the water??) we saw about 10 fucking humungous cruise ships, each one about 20 stories high. But every one was empty. Because the normal cruisers who occupied them had temporarily suspended their eating to be unceremoniously dumped, en masse, into St Mark’s Square. Which became, when we strolled casually in there an hour later, the most horribly congested place in all of Europe. We managed to escape down an alley whilst they were buying their hats and found lovely quiet streets filled with art and cafes and even Venetians, who don’t wear hats.

We used to joke, Mel & I, that we’ll go on a cruise ‘when we’re old’. But in fact I think euthanasia is preferable. The old dilemma; heaven or hell. Because the more I see of cruises, the more like ‘hell’ it seems to be.

I’m hoping the boats are calling their people back for the next meal by now. So it’ll be safe to once more venture out into the lovely streets here and have a drink in a piazza to celebrate Spurs victory at Burnley. I’m declaring it a national holiday.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

Its not easy being an intrepid international explorer, forging new frontiers, breaking new ground, creating new barriers and discovering places and peoples that no-one else knows about! Its like finding out that there is actually life in Leicester, but in even more exotic and surprising places.

And the reality is, of course, that we arrive at an airport, grab anyone waving a placard around that bears our name, and they lead us onwards down the river bank, to the hillside, across the hostile native lands… to a hotel of sufficiently high standard that my wife may find happiness there in any of the first 4 rooms they show us.

We think; ‘we’re in Medellin’, that’s cool. Escobar country, most dangerous most murderous city the world had ever known, and we’re strolling round eating ice-creams as if it were the most natural thing to do. Which, on a balmy evening in the tropics, it kind’a is.

And then you realise that the place you’ve been wandering round for a few days is the most civilised, the most rarified, most upmarkety, middle-classy, super-softy region in a city made up of hundreds of regions catering to all types. And that’s when you go to the ‘centre’, where there are thousands of homeless, tens of thousands of drug addicts, multitudes of poor living on the breadline. And there are slums and ramshackle housing and shanty towns. And its great and its real and although a bit more ‘edgy’ it does make you realise how sanitised a version tourists usually get. Not that I mind sanitised too much.

Then the weirdest thing happened. We got on the plane in Medellin (altitude 2km +) and on the plane, as virtually everywhere I’ve sat for more than 3 minutes in the last 6 days, I fell into an exhausted sleep. 50 minutes later we arrived in Cartegena (coastal; altitude +1 metre) and as soon as the plane doors opened it was like a weight lifted off my head, the curtains vanished, the muzziness, fatigue and general ‘shit’ I’d been feeling just disappeared. Ok, I’ve still got a bit of a cough which I brought with me, along with my Spurs hat, for comfort, but the feeling of just ‘bleueueuhhhhh’ was suddenly no more.

Altitude Sickness. Never had it before. But it must have been. Which is such a relief. Because you can’t die from it So I can stop googling things that you really can die from which share the symptoms. Its sea level for me from now on. I’m moving our bed downstairs when we get home, first thing.

Happy clear-headed Friday

A xxxx

Buy a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day; show him a rock and he can spend a lifetime… doing stuff with it.

Because that’s what you do with rocks the world over. You look at them, you film them, you watch them at sunrise, check them out at sunset, admire them at noon and, in the case of this one at El Penon, you can even climb it!!! Because someone built some stairs on the side. 760 of them. Not that I was counting. I didn’t have to, they number the significant ones (‘125’) to encourage you (‘575’) or to depress you (‘600’). They don’t let you climb Ayers Rock in Australia but that’s because it is very historically important to the Aborigines. The El Penon rock has no such stigma attached. But being at well over 2000 metres above sea level, its not really the same easy climb that 760 steps would be at Southend. And when you get to the very top, you just fight your way through 263 market stalls selling beer, sweets, t-shirts and hats. Not ‘kiss-me-quick’ hats, like you’d get in Southend, probably ‘shoot-me-quick’ ones, being in Columbia. If I could read Spanish, I’d know.

We ‘did’ the rock and we went to a nearby town called Guatape. A very hard place to pronounce. Hence the ‘rock and the hard place’ tour from Medellin. Not convinced its worth the entry fee, if I’m honest, lorra miles covered for not too much gain. Though Guatape, a ‘one-fish-town’ if ever there was, does inevitably have a Bolivar Square. Phew.

Loving Columbia though. Lovely people, friendly, wonderful. But oddly they get a bad press. In fact for decades they lived through some of the worst violence known anywhere on the planet, with Columbians finding novel and horrendous ways of killing each other for any manner of reasons.

The country is rich in gold, emeralds, silver and platinum. The plains, due to volcanic events, are amazingly fertile, so coupled with a wonderful, moderate tropical climate, absolutely anything will grow here with ease and abundance. Coffee, avocados, bananas, all manner of fruits, potatoes, cows can graze everywhere because it all so wonderfully green. And to compensate, the social history of the country is plagued with terrible political corruption, instability and murder. Which goes back really to just after the last war, about 1948 or so. Communist guerrillas from Venezuela, paramilitary gangs from Columbia, civil wars; when the drug shit happened it was almost a form of stability. Though the murders escalated massively in the Escobar years.

So now, ole Pablo is remembered in contradictory ways. Medellin was ‘his town’, where he was born, where his family still live, where he always ruled. Where there is the only metro system in the country. Where he built housing for thousands of poor Columbians. And they remember him by selling t-shirts with his image. No beauty, ‘the perfect face for radio’. But as with Al Capone, with the Krays, the world likes to remember gangsters fondly. Even ones almost totally irredeemably evil, like Pablo Escobar.

Wonderful City is Medellin. Tomorrow we head off to Cartagena in the north.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

So its all been a bit quiet on the Columbia front, you may have noticed. Because my current lurghi has meant I have two distinct and exclusive modes at the moment. I’m either travelling or sleeping. Nothing else. I go see a city, or a coffee plantation or, yesterday, a cloud forest and then, I sleep. Its all I can do. Other than eat. I can stay awake for that, but only cos its ‘medicinal’, innit. Then I go back to sleep. Or try. Ok, so I moan a bit too, but its allowed.

I wasn’t too upset to leave Bogota, although we did eat at a couple of quite amazing restaurants. The food here is pretty wonderful generally, but the portions are so humungous that once we learn that for an unquestionable fact, we’ll order one meal and ‘share’. Even though I’m not really a natural ‘sharer’, as much as a natural ‘FUCK OFF ITS MIIIIIIIINE!!!!’r. But order a steak and they give you two. Order a fish and you get two. Which sounds great, is great, but its actually too much. Apparently. So I’m told.

I know so much about coffee, its scary. I will never again go to Costa (I fucking hate Starbucks anyway) and order a ‘latte’. I want to know which grade of bean, grown in which country, at which altitude and the name of the geezer wot picked it. Because I probably met him yesterday. And don’t get me started on the roasting. I intend to become the world’s biggest coffee-bore. I’m qualified. The main problem being; I only do just want a latte.

From Bogota and the big cities, to the little towns up in the mountains of the cloud-forest, there’s a ‘Bolivar Square’. Its compulsory. And they probably have them in loads of other countries in South and Central America too. Because, it would appear, Simon Bolivar single-handedly ousted those bastard Spaniard dictators from: Columbia, Venezuela, Panama, Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru. If I’d have known that’s all you have to do to get all those squares named after you, I’d have gone to war against Spain myself. Bolivar was by birth a Venezuelan but died as a Columbian. Which is a bit like living your life as a Spurs fan but being buried in an Arsenal kit. They also name squares after dates. 23rd October Square, or 19th July Square. Any date will do because Bolivar freed some country or other on all 365, so pick your fave and name that square. Ironically Bolivar became, when president, the dictator he’d spent his whole life opposing.

This pic was after we’d walked up to the almost top of the cloud forest. Its about 2,600 metres above sea level so there’s no air, as we know it, and the 30 degrees of temperature feels like 40 because there’s so much more UV. Such is life in the ‘coffee triangle’. Where today we leave and fly off to Medellin. A place one time at the heart of Pablo Escobar’s empire. Apparently there’s less murders there now. A helluva lot less, I’m hoping.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

Are you familiar with the word ‘schvach’? Its yiddish. Its pronounced ‘shvu’- then a ‘ch’ in the most guttural you can manage. Like all yiddish words still in common usage, its fabulously expressive and can mean 200 different things. All of which, in this instance, relate to ‘weak’ or ‘feeble’ or inadequate in some way. You can moan that a cup of white-ish tea is ‘schvach’, or a dress that’s dull and lacking colour could be so described too. And it can also be used in the first person. And for 2 days I am that first person. Schvach.

I’ve had a bit of a cold. No biggy. Just a bit of a cough, bunged up, usual stuff requiring just a little ‘man-heroism’, which we’re good at. Then Friday night I boarded a plane. And by the time I arrived in Bogota, 12 hours later, felt so stiff and tired and horrible, that I just put this down to it then being 4 am local time. So we went to bed and woke up at 9 feeling a bit better. Or were we?

By the time I’d even realised where I was and what time differences were involved, Spurs were already 3-0 down at Man City. And that is NEVER the best way to start a vacation.

Mel was shattered all day as we cruised round our bit of Columbia’s capital. Which is so not what you’d expect. Its quite beautiful, very up-market and we hardly saw anyone get shot nor were offered sacks of cocaine to smuggle out of the country when we left, in condoms. Its nice here. Civilised. If a little unspectacular in the normal way of former Spanish colonial cities.

This morning after a ridiculously early night, I felt ok, still a bit coldy, and Mel was much better. 14 hours sleep will do that. So we went with our guide on a ‘city tour’. Which was fine. But as it progressed my increasing levels of ‘schvach’ reduced my energy to nothing. I felt like shit. Left Mel to finish an art gallery as I sat on a bench in the shade and dozed. Then came back to the hotel and slept for two hours in drug-assisted bliss. Just ibuprofen, don’t get excited.

So is this just the cold? Jet lag? And the fact that Bogota, at 2.5kms above sea level doesn’t have much in the way of oxygen as us sea-level dwellers know it?

Tomorrow morning we’re flying off to ‘coffee country’. Where coffee comes from. We’d always thought it comes from Starbucks or Waitrose but it doesn’t. The world’s best coffee comes from a place called Pereira in Columbia.

Happy Sunday, except for Rachie in Australia, in which case, happy Monday

A xxxx

We love a winter holiday. Mel ‘needs’ sunshine because she’s SADS and I ‘need’ to go with. To carry the bags. And buy water. Loads and loads of water. So come Christmas time, we’re gone. And because you need to go far and wide for sun at this time of year, we book early. To put this in perspective, we’re planning next Xmas trip now. Even though the flights haven’t come out yet. But we’re going to Australia next winter because our mate’s daughter is getting married so we’re waiting, like vultures, for BA to make the flights ‘live’, then we shall pounce. Though instead of razor sharp beaks we use airmiles. Its an evolutionary thing.

So tonight’s trip was booked last Feb. 10 months ago. And its a big trip, all around Columbia, which is a very beautiful (apparently) and very large country. And we’re seeing all of it, except the druggy, murderous, gang-killer bits. Hopefully. So that’s sorted. Great. Done. Dusted.

Or is it?

Checked in last night for our maiden flight to Bogota and there’s a little problem.

We’d booked ‘extra leg room’ as its a night flight and we’re too mean to actually pay for business class travel. Avianca (Columbia’s) airline are the only ones to fly direct and they don’t take our airmiles so its ‘extra leg room seats’. Not that we have extra legs, just, cos…

These are emergency exit seats, so at the online check-in it asked the usual questions: are you disabled, do you know more than 3 people who are? are you a child? are you capable of opening a door in the middle of a TOTAL FUCKING PANIC!!!!!? Yeah, yeah, we’re fine and cool and able bodied and not children, blah, blah, blah. Then an unusual question: ‘do you speak Spanish?’ Ooohhh, in all honesty I’d have to answer ‘no’ to that really as quite frankly, I don’t. Barely a sodding word. “If you’re sitting in the window seat you MUST speak Spanish”. Well I don’t. Then you can’t sit there, end of!

So from February, we now learn, just 24 hours before take-off, that we possibly, probably, don’t have the seats we’d pre-booked 10 months ago. And may have to thus travel in the hold with the baggage. And this is discriminatory. This is an abuse. This wrong. And this is certainly now very stressful as I woke up at 5 this morning having been dreaming of being strapped to an airplane wing.

I hate… things.

Happy worrysome Friday; they’re getting back to us, they’ve dealt with hysterical phone calls before.

A xxxx

Yesterday morning Spurs were in 7th place in the league, just behind (fucking!!!) Burnley and with a resurgent Leicester creeping northwards up the table behind us. That was horrible. 7th place is not nice. And with not even a UEFA place for 6th place this year, 7th is… just shit. I know, I know, there are teams who’d give their collective spleens for 7th place, in fact, safe to say, all the teams who occupy positions 8 to 20 probably fall into that category. But I’m a Spurs fan. We think big. We think big club. We’re arrogant, we feel a sense of entitlement, we feel its our damned RIGHT to be in the top four. And as of last night, we once again are.

For how long I don’t know as we’re visiting Manchester City on Saturday. Not for tea. For football. The latest lambs to be offered for sacrifice on the alter of Noel Gallagher’s Abu Dhabi billionaires. And much as I hate Manchester City, they have now won their last 15 games in a row. Superlatives abound. ‘The best team EVERRRRR’ is now the pundits cry as they’re fast running out of appropriate gushing. All of which, I hate to say, are deserved and earned.

Pep Guardiola has taken the potential that 64 zillion bitcoins can often buy you and turned it into the slickest, most brilliantly oiled footballing machine. Because that’s what is written on HIS tin. Its what he did at Barcelona, the previous incumbents of ‘best team ever’, and he did it at Bayern. And you have to love Pep. He is the anti-Jose. He is lightness and charm. And he admits defeat and takes responsibility. Not that he has to do that often. He doesn’t whinge about referees and attack team doctors for doctoring.

So we forget about Man City. We don’t look back in anger, just hope that statistically, their unbeaten run has to end, and whenever it does it will be ‘unlikely’ so why not this Saturday? IS THERE SOME FUCKING LAW AGAINST THAT?!?!?!?!

With Liverpool and Arsenal both failing to score last night, or concede either, oddly, that elevated my team back to 4th. Where competition is stiff as… a very stiff thing. Whilst down at the other end, West Ham’s point, though doubtless welcome by them (if not by Arsenal) wasn’t sufficient to lift them out of the ‘dead zone’, where competition is equally as stiff but far less pretty.

At the end of the day (a phrase all footballing tales have to include) night will fall. Deeds will be done. Acts completed. And as Spurs travel to Manchester, I’m traveling to Columbia. Tomorrow night, in fact.

Meanwhile,

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

Everyone’s talking about Bitcoins. Shame we didn’t have conversation a decade ago when they were worth nothing and 100 dollars’ worth bought then would now be worth about $1.6 billion. But no. They told us it was a ‘fad’. That it was a way for money launderers, dark webbers, drug dealers and arms buyers to pay for things in an anonymous way. Its like having a Swiss bank inside your computer. But in English. Or in numbers really. And this remarkable ‘currency’ really doesn’t exist in any real sense. Bitcoins are just assigned values to blocks of data which, and this is the really, really, REALLY important bit: are finite in number. There’s only so many, like shares, so you need to buy an existing one if you want to join the bubble. They can’t, as they do with currency, just print more.

They don’t ‘print’ anything, in fact. You have a virtual ‘wallet’ and in it you keep your Bitcoin(s) or part thereof. Because at the current day $17,000 valuation per Bitcoin, you can buy just a little bit of one, should you desire. Though, from personal experience, it ain’t quite that easy.

Two weeks ago I started thinking about the Bitcoin phenomenon. Because, like so many things, it seemed to have ‘easy money!!!’ written all over it. But when you dig a little deeper you learn about the potential pitfalls. Mainly that it is currently a ‘bubble’. Something that can burst, leaving you with, basically, the inside of a bubble. Nothing but air. Others think that ‘it is the future’ and can only just keep going up. Like the ‘dotcoms’ did?

Anyway, I joined a company called Coinbase who, according to everyone who knows, is ‘the place’ for Bitcoin. There are loads of others but these are ‘the guys’. And its not easy. And in fact three days after trying to register I received an email telling me that I’d passed security. Sorry ’bout the delay, busy here. Then I read, just yesterday that should you be Bitcoined up and need to sell, particularly if things were starting to look a little ‘downslidey’ or dubious, it could take you so long to sell the fuckers that in the 3, or 4, or 5 days it might take, the bubble would be certainly in gross deflation mode, at very least.

But what’s really scary is that these things aren’t real. You have this ‘wallet’ that is virtual and in it, a potential fortune. And most ironic for this totally virtual and online thing, as all the gurus stress massively, WRITE DOWN YOUR PASSWORDS (keys, as they’re known) ON PAPER. WITH A PEN. IN INK. KEEP A COPY. OR SIX. Because if you lose it, your money has gone. Forever. There is no ‘forgotten password?’ button in Bitcoinland because you wouldn’t be secure. They reckon there is currently about $40 billion in lost-password-hell, never to be claimed. Other than by me, but they won’t let me have it.

So to join the bubble or to not to join, that is the question. Fucked if I know the answer.

Happy Chanukah

A xxxx