route with a gap
I booked my flight to Quito! 1st September.
Then I confirmed my place on a six week spanish course there.
THEN I looked up temperatures in Quito .... between 8 and 19 degrees, year round.
Aaaargh.
So the next two problems are:
1. How to get across the Darien Gap?
Answer: by sea through the caribbean, I think. I can fly from Surinam's Paramaribo to Trinidad, and I hope boat from there.
2. Where else to go in S America, before I hit central America / the sea.
The places I had wanted to go were Guyana, Trinidad, Venezuela (largely because it's next to the Caribbean / sea routes to central America).
The places I wanted to avoid were the Peru-Bolivia backpacker route (because it's a backpacker gap year route), Brazil (because I've been there, and because you get mugged), Colombia (because you get mugged, kidnapped, knifed, etc).
(I know this routine - it invariably means that the FABULOUS places you hear about en route are out of your time-limit and you can't go there.)
So I started reading around the region, and bloody hell:
(The other places I really don't want to cut out of the itinerary are Cuba and Mexico.)
How in hell do you cover a ton of countries, with pre-booked tickets out of there, without losing your mind or doing it all too fast?
Then I confirmed my place on a six week spanish course there.
THEN I looked up temperatures in Quito .... between 8 and 19 degrees, year round.
Aaaargh.
So the next two problems are:
1. How to get across the Darien Gap?
Answer: by sea through the caribbean, I think. I can fly from Surinam's Paramaribo to Trinidad, and I hope boat from there.
2. Where else to go in S America, before I hit central America / the sea.
The places I had wanted to go were Guyana, Trinidad, Venezuela (largely because it's next to the Caribbean / sea routes to central America).
The places I wanted to avoid were the Peru-Bolivia backpacker route (because it's a backpacker gap year route), Brazil (because I've been there, and because you get mugged), Colombia (because you get mugged, kidnapped, knifed, etc).
But the easiest way to travel along the northern bit is the Amazon, which means going via a bit of Peru at least, and via Manaus in northern Brazil.Worse, almost every country requires you to arrive with a ticket out of there pre-booked. AKA, you need to decide your time limit and route out of every country before you're allowed into it.
It occurred to me I'd always wanted to go along the Amazon in northern Brazil, but the other way around, the romantic east-west boat trip to the interior: Recife - Belem - Manaus: and somehow I didn't want to spoil that pristine trip by buggering it up with real factual knowledge of just the exotic bits of it.
(I know this routine - it invariably means that the FABULOUS places you hear about en route are out of your time-limit and you can't go there.)
So I started reading around the region, and bloody hell:
- French Guiana* and Suriname sound stunning - much more the sort of place I enjoy than Macchu Picchu or the damn Andes.
- Guyana turns out to be one of the most dangerous spots you can go to right now: along the lines of 'don't go ANYWHERE alone'.
- And the Colombian coastal town of Cartagena sounds interesting too.
(The other places I really don't want to cut out of the itinerary are Cuba and Mexico.)
How in hell do you cover a ton of countries, with pre-booked tickets out of there, without losing your mind or doing it all too fast?
[* French Guiana is /still/ a French colony.
So it's part of the EU, trades in the Euro,
and the addresses are via France, not the Americas.
Bloody weird.]
So it's part of the EU, trades in the Euro,
and the addresses are via France, not the Americas.
Bloody weird.]
posted by Lectrice at martes, agosto 01, 2006
14 Advice:
oh don't be such a snob. peru and bolivia have a lot more to them than a bunch of 19 year olds. go forth and find something to change your opinion. i dare you.
I understand that, but:
1. It's cold. My internal thermometer has adjusted to the point that a British heatwave is too cold for me. It's going to feel VERY cold.
2. I'll probably be going through them anyway en route.
3. I can't go to EVERY country in south America.
4. I just spent 12 months sharing hotels with gap year kids. I think I've served my sentence more than most.
5. All the good things in Peru and Bolivia are kind of half my sort of thing (like ancient civilisations, mountain plateaus, beachlife), whereas the good things along the northern coast are 100% my sort of thing (like countries where colonialism has left Indian, Laotian, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Chinese, Dutch, French, African AND British communities behind in the same place - can you imagine the languages? the food? the culture? Add that to the history of penal colonies, naval intrigues and the caribbean on your doorstep. That gets my travel nodes quivering)
The Dutch side of my family used to own plantations in Surinam in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. When I was a boy I inherited my mother's stamp album, which she'd inherited from some aunt or other, I think, and it was full of exotic stamps from South America. I used to dream of going to live in Surinam, though I had no idea what it might be like. I suspect what mental picture I had of it was actually based on scenes from Tintin in the Congo. Not very PC at all.
*bowing my head in shame*
you win, you are supremely supreme in your right-ness.
*not poking my tongue out at you at all*
and i don't know who was the fucker that made it impossible for me to get to your other site. i am informed that i am forbidden, that i dont have the permission to access sarsparilla on this server
Go to the Galapagos and see the turtles.
yes, please do go to the galapagos. you remember my friend petrina?she says you have to. coz it is totally and utterly worth the money.
and i want to see a photo of a blue footed boobie on this here blog.
and the galapagos would just be sooooo coooooooool.
*g*
What about the Iguazu Falls on the Brazil/Argentina border? They are supposed to be absolutely spectacular.
Vicky Highrise
Yes, VERY good call. I massively regretted not seeing them last time I was in Brazil. But ... I don't want to go that far south.
So I'm consoling myself with the Angel Falls in Venezuela - apparently the world's highest - though not bordering three countries, like Iguacu/Iguazu do.
Incidentally, have you been to the cafe at the rear corner of Selfridge's lately? They renamed it Iguazu, after the Argentinian part of the falls. Good cocktails.
Lux: that was my prime motivator in choosing to start in Ecuador. :)
I have a good friend who just moved to Cartagena. If you decide to go there I could ask her for some tips for you.
Where´s Cartagena? < looks embarrassed >
I thought you had mentioned it in your blog. In fact, and I quote, you wrote "And the Colombian coastal town of Cartagena sounds interesting too." So yes, it's in Colombia.
Are you in Quito yet? Ya estas en Ecuador?
Oh. duh. Yeah. :))
Si, soy en Ecudaor ahora ... yo pienso.
[Yo puedo escribir en español por la primera vez!]
Publicar un comentario
<< Home