Gaining a penis and gaining weight.....

“Oh my God, you’re wearing earrings?!” Julie looked at me with great curiosity and eyed up my ten pence Bolivian purchases made from nuts which were dangling from my ears. “I am!” I replied proudly as I did a dramatic twirl. “I thought I’d make an effort since I caught you washing your face earlier! VAIN!” “Well, they go beautifully with your outfit”, she pointed out, her sarcasm far from wasted on me as I looked down and examined my clothing from the feet up, which consisted of flip flops with socks, baggy and faded grey hiking trousers, so ill fitting the crotch almost meets my knees, my beige moneybelt hanging loosely over the waistband, my black fleece, which I wear almost every day, a baseball cap with my unconditioned and dry hair sticking out from underneath and all of this spectacularly topped off with a head torch. Hillbilly anyone? Traveling is fantastic, I love it, backpacking especially, but I can’t remember at what point over the last seven months on the road I began to consider acts of basic hygiene as vanity or when I stopped getting my hair done and began cutting it myself with a crap pen knife scissors.

Back home, I wear nice clothes, dresses, skirts, I wear make- up and have my hair done. Here, after living out of a bag for so long “practical” most definitely prevails over “fashionable” resulting in me dressing in such an a- sexual manner that I could be mistaken for a boy from as close as two feet away. Before departing for this trip I was warned about the dangers of South America, muggings, robberies etc, but no one warned me about the unwanted sex change I would experience.

Girl or boy....You decide!

Looking like shit absolutely all the time can be a little depressing, so both Julie and I have started avoiding mirrors but now and again I accidentally catch a glimpse of the person formally known as myself in one. “Fuck, the state of me” a sighting causes my face to tighten momentarily into an expression of fright and revulsion. “I can’t believe you looked in a mirror”, Julie who has been wearing a bright orange rain coat everyday for the last seven months asks me, “What’s wrong with you? It’s better not to know, not to look.” “It was an accident”, I tell her in a small traumatised voice, “I won’t be doing it again, trust me”.

Unbelievably, we still get wolf whistled at once in a while by what I can only assume are men just freshly released from a long and lonely stretch in an all male prison. After hearing a whistle or a “hello baby” being aimed at us from across the street or a car, I typically turn to Julie, my black rain mac to her orange rain mac and ask “Are they mental? Look at the state of us. We’re dressed like men, are they gay and think we’re men? We’re not even hot men!”

Sometimes we find ourselves walking past clothes shops. “We don’t belong in the likes of there” I tell my travel partner who is on the hunt for some “lesbian type sandles”, i.e . practical and disgusting, black, flat walking sandles with velcrove straps. “There's nothing in there for us, look away!” I say as I clump off in my Frankenstein style hiking boots which surround my feet like boats. Gone are the days when the word “accessories” actually meant what it is intended to, necklaces, handbags, bracelets, shiny and nice things. No, now to me the word means headtorch, Swiss army knife, earplugs and spare toilet roll.

Another reason I hardly recognise myself these days is that I have gained weight, which I only partially accept responsibility for. In certain countries in South America whilst doing this type of traveling, it is virtually impossible to avoid piling on the pounds, unless like Julie you are lucky enough to get a stomach parasite living in the lining of your innards, which only allows food to stay in your body for two seconds before being ejected in ways not suitable for such a high caliber blog as this one (some people have all the luck). Testament to my theory of the difficulties of staying slim in countries such as Peru and Bolivia are the not “hourglass” figures of the local women but “beach ball” figures, which can be seen waddling down streets, sitting eating ice cream and cakes in the many establishments which sell such treats or on the street market stalls trying to sell you chocolate and cheese puffs.

Take the other morning in Peru for example, I decided to try and have a healthy breakfast, so ordered cereal with fruit, yoghurt, brown bread and coffee. I asked for all of this “Sin azucar” (without sugar) and got the usual response in South America to any issue “No problemo”. So, my ¨without sugar¨ breakfast arrived, the fruit drenched in syrup having come straight from a tin, mixed with sugar coated cereal and bright pink, sweet yoghurt, all of this was drizzled with chocolate sauce. The (sweet) brown bread arrived fried and buttered and when my coffee arrived, I was asked if I wanted “two or three sugars” in it.

The jeans I brought with me on this trip are a pair I never wore at home because they were too baggy. Now, they are so tight that I am literally bursting out of them and have had to sew almost an entire new ass in patches at the back. Steps are the enemy of these jeans, lift my leg and rip, out flops my ass.



Another day, another ass patch.

The second reason for the weight gain is that I was so obsessed with exercise before I left for this trip that my body went into some kind of shock when it all stopped. Whereas before I was in the boxing gym five or six times a week for two to three hours a go, had a personal trainer and watched what I ate, now, I stuff my face with sugar, get on long bus journeys (12 – 30 hours), sit in a catatonic state for most of it, arrive at my destination, have a nap and then get up for lunch, moving around as little as possible. Therefore, apart from the sex change, gaining weight is my only complaint about traveling. So until I get home and back to normal life, it´s bigger trousers and more ass patches for me. Pass the sugar please!

There is a glimmer of hope however as we are currently en route to volunteer in an organic farm in Ecuador for a month. The farm is really isolated and you are only able to eat what they cook for you, which is all organic and vegetarian food. Also, we will be working on it and working equals moving, which is good! After the farm, I will bid farewell to Julie for eleven days as I have signed up for a silent meditation retreat. Yes, silent, so help me God. I will not be permitted to speak, read, write or make eye contact with anyone for the entirety of the course. They will only feed me twice a day and let’s face it, it’s not exactly like I can complain if I don’t like the food or want more! My sister reckons I will only last two days on the retreat before freaking out and escaping to find the nearest bar. I however, am determined to stick it out for the entirety and also welcome any attempts at sect like brainwashing that might occur during my time there.




The new me.

Julie may have to come and rescue me after the eleventh day, she’ll find me sitting in the corner of a dimly lit concrete room, devoid of any furniture, me rocking back and forth, perhaps wearing long robes, my head shaved, repeating “feliz aici, feliz aici” (happy here, happy here) over and over. She’ll grab me by the shoulders (now hopefully boney from starvation) and shake me as I continue to stare into space, a vacant, dead look behind my haunting and hungry eyes. She’ll pull a bottle of red wine out of her bag and wave it in my face, I’ll come alive at once! “Right so, lets go!” I’ll stand up and skip out the door, hopefully a slimmer and more feminine version of my current self. I can’t wait!

tandblekning

Brazil: Perving in the Panthanal...

I slapped myself hard across the face for the second time in as many minutes and grimaced as I pulled away my hand to reveal a half dead mosquito squashed into a smear of my own blood, the other half of the insect was wedged underneath a fingernail. I tried to remove the tiny corpse, but inevitably pushed it further in, cursing Mother Nature as I did so. I was in the Brazilian Pantanal, a swamp like environment (fun?), which straddles Brazil’s border with Bolivia and Paraguay and is one of the world’s most productive habitats (stay with me). Annual floods, fed by tropical rains, create a giant nursery for aquatic life, including 260 species of fish (yawn) and is one of the hemisphere’s greatest natural phenomena...apparently.

I had only been there for a few hours but already felt like an unwelcome house guest, the large birds flapped their billowing wings above me and seemed to cackle, "You don't belong here city girl, be gone, be gone, be gone!" The red neck mosquitos buzzed around me more than anyone else in my tour group and used my body as an all you can eat buffet. Now, high maintenance I am not, I enjoy and appreciate nature, especially when fermented and served with ice or char-grilled, neatly arranged in a tower formation on a plate and drizzled with a delicious sauce. I should have guessed that three days in the Pantanal, would not be my thing, perhaps due to the fact that I am not someone who enjoys accidently swallowing moths, squinting in the blistering heat at trees trying to find the invisible bird everyone else in the group is in awe of and lying awake in the dark, waiting for a jaguar or puma to maul me to death. In this Jungle like environment, even the tiniest of creatures can kill you, like the microbes in the river that swim into your urethra and eat your privates from the inside out. Fantástico, I´ll give it a shot, I thought.

I started the tour in a positive frame of mind, particularly when I laid eyes on our handsome guide, Alex. He shook my hand as his deep brown eyes looked into my soul from under his cowboy hat, his shirt flapped open to expose a perfectly muscular and tanned chest. "You are my Brazil", I thought and once again my urethra crossed my mind. I then realised that I was going to have to feign interest in nature to get him to like me. Shallow? Yes!

Alex´s back.

Me, Alex and (unfortunately) the rest of the group travelled towards the camp in an open topped truck. The cool breeze blew through my hair as I admired the scenery, flat, green marshy land stretched as far as the eye could see. I felt momentarily as though I was in one of those films where a young journalist or photographer travels to the depths of the jungle to pursue her passion for art and nature. Me, a slightly more worn out and older version of the person I was imagining and not a journalist, but unemployed and with very little prospects felt as though I should have been wearing a large brimmed hat, dark, glamorous sunglasses and a chiffon scarf, which would elegantly flow in the wind. I envisioned myself later, sitting on a mosquito guarded porch, drinking iced tea, overlooking vast plains and perhaps holding hands with a nappy clad baby chimpanzee that I had rescued from baddie, evil monkey poachers. I would say something like, "One simply adores the Pantanal, the animals are my family. Alex, you can get dressed now"



Alex´s back.

In reality, we arrived at the camp and I was given the choice of either sharing a room with eight men or a tent with Julie. I went for the tent, or what should have been more aptly named "the sweat box". After sharing a meal of rice and a lot of beans with the rest of the group, there was nothing to do but retire early to my tent and try to fight the effect of the beans. With angry mosquito bites dotted around my skin, screaming to be itched, wearing sandals with my thick hiking socks, which were tucked into my trousers to avoid bites, I had never looked so unattractive. Without a torch, I blindly felt my way around the camp to my tent where I bedded down for the night. I slept for about an hour in all my clothes and with a sheet over my head in an effort to deter mosquitos, before being woken up by the noise of something grazing outside my tent (not Alex unfortunately).

I bolted upright and slowly unzipped the tent. I saw five horses outside, running around the campsite and neighing. I woke Julie up, "There are horses outside, they might run thorough the tent and kill you", I told her. For the next few hours, I alternated between lying down, bolting back upright when I heard a noise, unzipping the tent, looking around, lying down again, bolting back upright and repeating the whole process over and over again for hours. Occasionally, the horses would gallop around the camp site, I had visions of them tripping over the wires that held the tent up and dragging me around as I screamed for help. "Take me back to the city!" I said to Julie in a tiny, quivering voice as I slapped a mosquito off my cheek.

The following morning, after only three hours sleep, I was pretty tired, but went with Alex and our group on a "trek", to find some wildlife to look at. The trek consisted of us walking slowly around a forest area in circles; Alex would occasionally point at a tree, whilst I looked at his ass. We came across some very large birds at one stage, which we all stared at for what felt like forever to me. I am really not a fan of birds, but whenever Alex said "What a beautiful bird!" I was very vocal in my pretend agreement with him. "Yes, beautiful!" I told him, which was followed by a mental order for him to find me attractive, it didn´t work.

Alex´s back.


We walked around and around the forest in circles for about five hours and saw a total of maybe three animals. There were however lots and lots of Toucan birds. Each time Alex said "Look, a Toucan!" the group would "Ooh" and "ahh". Now, I am not a bird racist, but to me all Toucans look the same, if I've seen one, I've seen them all. Every time someone in the group saw one of these birds, they would all exhibit signs of the early onset of Alzheimer's and "Ooh and ahh" again as if they hadn't already seen twenty or so of the damn birds in the last few hours. At this stage, I was sun burnt, itchy and irritated, I wished I could pull a chord; release a trap door and that would be the end of me.

I began to suspect that Alex had a touch of the bullshitter about him. He chose not to wear shoes on the trek, in order not "to scare the animals." "What animals?" I thought. He didn't wear a shirt, which I appreciated and had three very large knives placed down the back of his shorts. The knives, aside from serving to further clarify his extreme masculinity, I believe were no more than props for the benefit of us tourists. As there were no animals, I considered the knives as useful as me taking my itouch or credit cards into the forest, which I did. After walking for hours and not seeing very much at all, Alex began to do things like whisper for us to wait and then he would disappear, light footed, off further into the forest. Each time, he would return and say, "It was nothing, I thought I heard something", or "It´s gone now". "Yeah, right" I thought “heard something, my ass!” After seeing yet more Toucans and eventually an Armadillo, "Beautiful animal" according to Alex and no one else on the planet, we headed back to camp for more beans.

That afternoon, we clambered into a small tin boat for a tour on the river. Again, the scenery was really pretty, but the animals had clearly checked out except for the imaginary ones Alex kept thinking he saw. "Look Toucan!" someone said causing me to feel like screaming until I lost consciousness.

That night, I went to bed early again as there was nothing else to do. It wasn´t horses that kept me awake that night, it was some kind of devil animal making loud grazing sounds and rustling in the trees above my tent. Once again, I was sleep deprived and spent the night sitting upright, slapping myself and watching the shadows outside in fear of seeing hungry eyes and fangs looking to eat some Irish meat.

On the final morning of the tour, a small group of us went Parana fishing. I hooked large juicy pieces of meat onto my rod and threw it into the river, one second later I would pull it out with the meat having been devoured and my hook Parana free. This happened time and time again, I was obviously emitting my city girl fumes as everyone else in the group was successful in catching numerous fish and I caught nothing. When we ran out of meat, we actually used the Parana that had been caught as bait to try and catch their friends and family. A severed fish head, still warm from life on my hook came back cleanly polished off. "Isn’t nature wonderful?" I thought.

Finally, the time came for me to leave the Panthanal and return to civilisation. I unfortunately had to go without saying goodbye to Alex , so my dream of inviting him to my country to give him a tour around my world and city will never happen. I´d point to a stiletto heel mark on a hard wood floor, "Look Alex!" I´d say, "the tracks of a fashion conscious female!". I returned to my hotel, sun burnt, itching and literally full of beans. I stretched out in a normal bed, closed my eyes and dreamed of bright lights, big cities and wonderful places where animals come packaged and the smog filled skies are Toucan free. "Ah, bliss" I thought.

Uruguay and internet pimping....

"Vhat ze fuck iz zit?" I was awoken by my panic stricken German room mate rolling up her sleeves to show me a pink rash that was covering most of her arms. "Vhat iz it?" she asked me again, her voice reaching levels of hysteria as she rolled up her trouser leg to expose and point at more of the rash. "Don´t you know?" I asked her, remembering that she had told me the night before that she had spent the last seven years studying medicine. "No, don´t you?" she asked, her voice now quivering with anxiety as she continued to pace the room itching and freaking out over a rash, which honestly didn´t look THAT bad. I eyed her up with great suspicion, mentally pronounced her the "fake German doctor" and restrained my urge to provide an imaginative diagnosis. "All signs point to Leprosy, get yourself a bell immediately before your arms fall off".



My room-mate. Bit of a hypochondriac if you ask me.

Once again, I was playing the waiting game. I had arrived in Uruguay and had to sit tight in a nice quiet beach resort called Punta Del Esta, whilst I waited for my credit cards to arrive. There was very little to do there except occasionally go to the beach to add to my freckle collection and get to know the conveyor belt of gringos that were passing thorough what I came to think of as MY hostel for the nine nights that I waited there.

Punta del Esta is a pretty, laid back Uruguayan beach town with beautiful sunsets, one of which I watched with another guest from the hostel, Christopher, an English nineteen year old gap year student. Christopher had a cheerful, boyish face mismatched with the deep and raspy voice of a much older man. He not only sounded but also acted middle aged and said things to me like "I´ve always dreamed of watching the sun set over Uruguay" and "Ever since I was a child, I´ve wanted to come to South America". "You´re wasting your youth, Sonny" I thought, "You should be binge drinking in a bush like the rest of us were. Did me no harm" I thought as I went unconscious from trying to bang a nail into the table using my head.

Another guest I befriended at the hostel was an English guy, whose name I can´t remember, lets call him Pinocchio. Pinocchio had a job which I coveted, he was a ghost writer for men who 1. either are too busy or 2. too shy to write to women on Internet dating web sites. So, Pinocchio writes to the women pretending to be the men who hire him. He gets paid on the success of the dates, which both fascinated and baffled me and led me to raise a number of questions, such as what constitutes a "successful" date? Did he get $100 for first base? Was there an STD money back clause? So many questions. I considered Pinocchio a literary pimp of sorts and was in awe of the possibilities that such a job held. The potential for bending the truth at the expense of others was so attractive to me. I imagined the trouble I could cause with such a job, which I would only hold for one day before being fired, but oh, what a day it would be!

Sample of some things I might write....

Dear "Desperate and Thirty"...
I recently lost my job. Out of interest, what do you think constitutes as "sexual assault" in the workplace?

Dear "On the shelf".....
How do you feel about conjugal visits? Visiting hours are between one and three.

Dear "Lonely Loser".....
Whats your home address? The authorities are watching mine.

My credit cards arrived on day ten, so I headed to Montevideo (the capital) for one night before catching my flight to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil the next day. A reunion with my travel companion, Julie awaited. "Ciao Ciao Uruguay" and "Hello Hello (in Portuguese) Brazil! Whoop Whoop!!

Argentina: A house cat named Eve and her celebrity friends....

Note: I have no real photos as my camera was S.T.O.L.E.N by South American baddies.

After being mugged (the most recent time), I was confined to my swanky hotel room in Buenos Aires, whilst I waited for my emergency credit card to arrive. I was reluctant to leave the hotel and venture out into the dangerous external world because:

1. After being robbed three times on this trip I felt like everyone wanted to steal from me. "Everyone is guilty until proven innocent", being my new motto.

2. I was reluctant to spend the money that the Ukrainian mafia had lent me in case I needed it at a later date.

So, I became like a Persian house cat, the confinement of the four walls, my Universe, the man who brought me food, the object of my affection and the toilet, my giant litter tray. Perhaps house cats, like me actually make a conscious decision to stay indoors, afraid that some armed muggers may be out there just waiting to steal their jingly belled collar. ´No one is getting my jingly belled collar,´ I thought as I faced yet another night in watching "E" T.V ("E" for Entertainment), which was the only T.V channel available in English.




Mine, mine, mine.

"E" T.V is an American channel presented by orange, anorexic hosts with hungry eyes, who excitedly wave their stick arms around as they discuss topics close to my heart such as which celebrity has the worst cellulite, who is cheating on whom and which model turned actress was recently seen falling out of an L.A nightclub with cocaine on her nose. I love it. I was also glued to the count down of the "100 Best and worst celebrity beach bodies".

Occasionally, on this channel, movies would be shown with story lines based around some kind of parent and child body swop. The start of the story would usually begin in a Chinese restaurant or involve something to do with China and an elaborate curse resulting in the body swop. Typically, in such a film, the parent (now the teenager) goes to high school (in the teenagers body) and makes a total tit of him or herself ruining the only chance the teenager ever had of getting some action. In turn, the teenager attends a very important deal clinching business meeting in the parents body and fucks that up. In the end, however, the story manages to once again involve something to do with China and the body swop is reversed, but not until a huge improvement has developed in the parent, child relationship resulting in the growth of a more meaningful bond between the two.

This led me to imagine what might happen if my mother and I were to experience such a swop. She would spend hours in a hotel room in Buenos Aires, watching "E" T.V, her mind blank for the eight hours a day she was awake, a vacant stare spread across her young, beautiful face, occasional thoughts running through her head such as "Just two more hours of "E" T.V and then bed. Well, maybe three more."

It was at this point, I realised that due to lack of external stimuli, my level of intellect was actually regressing and that pretty soon, I would have the mental ability of an egg. I worried that if I were to take an I.Q test, I would likely score a four, which I would read as a three and be happy with.



The number 3 and my I.Q score.


Therefore, I decided to leave the safe haven that was my lovely hotel room and venture out into the mad and bad city to buy a book, confident, perhaps foolishly that I still had the ability to read. Before I left, I spent about twenty minutes strategically hiding money in different places around my body. "Take that asshole mugger!" I thought as I placed a neatly folded note inside my secret pocket, "Screw you baddies", another one in my sock. Off I went, into Buenos Aires city, a walking advent calendar, a surprise behind every pocket. Although, I didn´t get mugged again and consider just leaving the safety of my hotel to be enough of an achievement, I don´t think I would call the excursion a roaring success. I....

Walked to find a book shop.

Got lost.

Found book shop, was closed.

Walked to cinema.

Was hour and a half early for film, left cinema.

Went to a cafe for an hour and a half and imagined what kind of place the world would be if humans were half machine (influenced by Science Fiction book am reading).

Went back to cinema.

Went into film.

Film was in French with Spanish subtitles.

Left without watching film.

I went back to the safety of my hotel room, turned on "E" T.V, watched the comforting sight of a fat Jack Nicholson (worst beach body contender) belly flopping off a yacht in the South of France, man boobs flapping and sagging to each side. "I´m home", I thought as I curled up into a ball, placed my head on my tail and purred loudly.



Jack, a contender but to me, always a winner.

Finally, after six nights in the hotel, my credit card arrived! "Next stop Uruguay!" I told the T.V. On my last night in Buenos Aires I decided to venture into the hotel lobby bar to eat. I brought my book with me in the hope that it would act as a deterrent in case anyone wanted to talk to me, people often want to talk to me. I didn´t yet feel that I wanted to interact with three dimensional people, my T.V beach body friends, that was one thing, but REAL people? No way! And what if they had cellulite?!

Unfortunately, the book had the opposite of its intended purpose and actually attracted rather than repelled attention. "Hi, what book are you reading?", a voice came from beside me. "Drats" I thought and cursed my friendly demeanour and unstoppable charm, which oozes form every pore of my body. The voice behind me belonged to a man called Richard, an airline pilot for Qantas whom I mentally placed somewhere in a beach body category between a pudgy Leonardo DiCaprio and an unkempt Rod Stewart. "My name is Niamh and I have been brainwashed by "E" T.V," I thought.

Richard and I exchanged general chit chat for a few minutes before I realised that I had an overwhelming urge to talk about my muggings. As soon as I got the chance, off I entered into a monologue about everything bad that had happened to me on this trip, "I was mugged here, there, everywhere!" I told him. I saw Richards face change from a calm expression to one of shock. He released sympathetic "oohs" and "ahhs" every now and again, which I appreciated. After a while, I became acutely aware that I was perhaps talking too much, so I apologised and said "sorry, you are the first real person I´ve spoken to since last week". "Real person?" I thought, that was a weird thing to say. I became instantly worried that my choice of words made it sound like I had been having doll tea parties in my hotel room all week, the marionette doll, the clown and me, seated in a circle, me discussing the inevitable downfall of Lyndsay Lohan as they gazed mutely at the floor, heads lolled to one side. "Scabies", the clown, might have a patch over one eye from when a previous discussion over whether dwarfs and midgits are the same thing got out of hand and I had to get violent with him. "Crazy Scabies," I thought, "so argumentative" and then remembered that he wasn´t real.



"Scabies"...he doesn´t exist.

Richard, however seemed to understand the feeling of isolation that can occur after being robbed abroad and told me about the time he was "almost" mugged in Thailand. "´Almost´ never won the race, Dick," I thought, but appreciated his attempt to identify with me, which I also interpreted as an act of mild flirtation. The art of exaggeration or indeed lying to get someone to like you is all to familiar to me. "What´s that you say handsome man? You hate celebrities? me too! They are just sooooo superficial!" I might announce as I sit on my copy of heat magazine.

I finished eating and decided to retire to my room, I bid my new friend goodbye but not before he invited me to a "free drink, pilots cocktail party" later that evening. Now, any one of those five words used in isolation would be enough to guarantee my appearance later, let alone such a fantastic combination. "You´ll have to pretend to be crew," he told me. "Oh, I´ll try!" I replied.



Step into my office.

Cut to a few hours later, I was seated in the hotel bar surrounded by an audience of pilots as I sipped on my red wine (free for us Qantas crew) and told my travel stories. It of course gradually became obvious that I did not actually work for Qantas but no one seemed to care. There was also an array of American Airline pilots at the cocktail party, one of whom (Rob) was particularily interested in my tales. He listened intently and asked lots of questions about my experiences over the last five months in South America. I heard him say to other pilots in his American accent, "Man, you´ve gotta meet Eve, she has done everything, climbed volcanoes, jumped off cliffs, went sand surfing in the desert!" Rob made this Eve character sound so purposeful and fulfilled. ´I´d like to meet her´, I thought.

As the night progressed, more and more pilots surrounded me as I told my stories. I was respectful and well behaved, not at all like my usual self. "Are they all like you in Ireland, Eve?" one asked. I didn´t tell them my name was Eve, it just stuck and I kind of liked it. I heard Rob tell my mugging story to the hotel manager, but he added his own twist, "Eve managed to keep one of her bags, because she´s so smart".

After a few hours, I decided to call it a night. I bid farewell to my work colleagues and went to leave. Richard, touched my arm meaningfully and told me that I needed to stay out, relax and "get drunk". I don´t think anyone has ever before told me that I needed to "get drunk", I usually have that pretty much covered of my own accord. I was however, conscious of the fact that if I stayed out with them that before I knew it, it would be 7am, I would be very drunk indeed, dancing on some bar somewhere and would miss my 8am boat to Uruguay the next morning, so I went to bed. The next day, I made the boat and headed to Uruguay for a whole new adventure where a real beach with real people and hopefully less TV awaited me.

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Irritation, more muggings and wonderful Ukrainians!

With Chile and the earthquake experience behind us, we made it to Argentina and had a night out to celebrate the joy of being alive and nearly killed ourselves in the process. Irish people celebrating surviving a natural disaster in an Irish bar will always lead to trouble. Many many things happened that night that I´m not allowed to mention including Julie drunkenly setting fire to the receipt after we ate.

After four months of traveling together, Julie and I have become like an old married couple. I often hear myself saying things to her like "have you taken your antibiotics?", "you look tired, maybe you should go have a lie down." In reality, I don´t care if she does either of these things, much like an old married couple might not care, but it has all just become habit. We´ve also become semi telepathic. I´ll look at something and then at her and we´ll both roll our eyes up to heaven or laugh, knowing exactly what the other one is thinking. To our horror, we´ve also noticed that because we are both in our 30´s and travelling together some people suspect that we might indeed actually BE a couple. When checking in to some hostels we have been offered "matrimonials" instead of "twins". I overcome this by being very quick to comment on how attractive I found a man I recently saw or by mentioning my ex boyfriend as soon as possible. "You sound kind of bitter mentioning your ex all the time to strangers" Julie told me. "Yes, I do, Bitter, but straight!"


The Happy Couple.

We flew to a place called El Chalten in Patagonia, a freezing cold barren "town" visited for its beautiful surrounding mountains, the town itself has nothing to offer. There is no phone signal there, roads are vacant except for crazed dogs who run around the streets chasing one another and any kind of decent food is in short supply. We lived off ham and cheese sandwiches for days. The local supermarket looked like something that might feature in a murder mystery film, a proper red neck place where the butcher, a large burley man with a blood stained apron eyeballs you and grins whilst he cuts the meat instead of looking down at it. I imagined that if he could speak English he would do so with a thick southern American drawl and say something like "Well hello there lil´ lady" as he locks the only door out the place and imagines what my severed head might look like impaled on a stick.




Local Butcher in El Chalten.



The town where the local butcher has his lair, bodies are buried under these houses.




Pretty place we trekked to where the local butcher can´t find you.

We did some great trekking there during the day and then returned to our hostel, which resembled a mental institution. The walls were made of ply board and weren´t tall enough to meet the ceiling, leaving a large gap in between the two rooms. I had a man peek over the wall into my room one night. I sat there in bed, reading a book, wearing a woolly hat, gloves, two jumpers, a jacket and with three blankets over me. Not sure what he was hoping to see, but doubt it was that. Julie had the misfortune of sleeping beside the excuse for a wall that separated the two rooms and was kept awake on the first night by a couple next door interfering with one another and on the second night by a man interfering with himself. Eww. Thank God for my ear plugs is all I can say.



Mental institution, where the action happens.

We shared a car to this town with a random man from Spain called Javier, the kind of name that when pronounced correctly sounds like a chain saw being started up. For three and a half hours Julie and I sat in the back of the jeep with our hands over our mouths trying not to breathe in. Javier had a breath that smelt like it could remove paint, I actually sat there retching for most of the journey. Each time he opened his mouth to talk the smell got worse and worse and god damn him, he had alot to say. I typed a message into my phone to show Julie, "I hate him, I hate him". She nodded and mouthed "me too" and quickly put her hand back over her mouth. Javier had a fondness for ducks and was in Patagonia to watch them. As if I didn´t hate him enough already this gave me all the more reason to do so.

A duck.....FASCINATING.

We ran into Javier everywhere we went, on the street, there he was, up a mountain, there he was, in the shop, there he was, all too keen to linger and talk about ducks at us. We met him on a hike one morning, five seconds in and the ducks were mentioned. "I found one but it got away from me" he told us, disappointed. "Lucky duck" Julie told him. I laughed. When we bumped into him, I did what I usually do when I am in front of someone I don´t like, I pretend they aren´t there. When Javier made conversation with us I held back my usual onslaught of charm and instead gazed mutely at the ground and made dirt semi circles with my foot. I wondered if he thought I was perhaps just aloof or shy, a mysterious creature rather than someone who was irritated by his very existence. When he finally left, Julie told me how shit I am. "I hate you, you left all the talking to me!" "Yes, yes I did!" I told her with no remorse.

We traveled to a really cool place in Patagonia called El Calafate, which is where there is a massive glacier the size of Buenos Aires. We sat there happily looking at it as we ate yet more ham and cheese sandwiches. Before long, Julie and I were rudely disturbed by two French women who, clearly captivated by the back of our heads, chose to stand behind us rather than in any other spot in the entire National Park. They disrupted our peace and spoke very loudly practically bending purposely to shout in our ears. Julie and I rolled eyes at eachother, me reading her mind, "some people" I telepathically communicated to her. "I know" she telepathically communicated back to me, which was followed by a silent "you look great by the way". Following this French disruption we moved to a more isolated spot only to have a man stand right beside us and blow cigarette smoke in our direction. "Some people", again our eyes rolling. The feeling of irritation lead me to think of my friend Jason and the conversations about "some people" that we often have with one another. Back when I had a job and a normal life we would mail eachother statements about those that were irritating us....

"I don't know why SOME PEOPLE insist on eating their crisps so loudly".

"I don't know why SOME PEOPLE just HAVE to know whats in my sandwich".

"I don't know why SOME PEOPLE have to walk so close to my desk".

Ah, how I miss the office life!

The neuroticism would often extend to ourselves...

Me to Jason: "I think I sound like a leprechaun when I´m on the phone to English people".

Jason to me: "I hate my voice." "I hate my mouth and people looking at it". I stare at his mouth now every time I see him.

In this dysfunctional friendship of ours, we enjoy drawing pictures for one another of matchstick people representing us (not common behaviour for people in their thirties, I understand). I´ve drawn pictures of us at parties, Jason usually illustrated as being drunk out of his mind, unconscious and lying in a pool of his own vomit as I happily dance around him with drink in hand, enjoying myself. I´m always sure to have him wearing ladies high heels in these pictures to remind him that I think he should be taller. Another picture for him showed us in London, me pushing him in front of an oncoming train as he wobbled in his high heels.

Prior to my South American trip, it was Jason who joked the most about me potentially dying whilst away. "See your empty coffin at the funeral!" he told me with a laugh. He drew this picture of me being held up by a man with a gun as my travel partner gets herself out of danger and into a taxi, leaving me behind.




Might actually happen.

Unfortunately, Jason might not be too far off the mark. On my second day of travelling alone, I was mugged (again) two days ago and one of my bags was taken. It had pretty much everything valuable in it that I have, passport, camera, half a banana, credit cards etc. I was left standing on the street without a penny to my name. Luckily I wasn´t hurt, this is a statement I am growing tiresome of having to say. "I was in the earthquake, but luckily I wasn´t hurt." "I was mugged in Santiago, but luckily I wasn´t hurt, I was mugged in Buenos Aires, but luckily I wasn´t hurt" and it goes on and on. There is nothing lucky about being robbed three times in four months! The annoying thing is, I´m actually really careful with my stuff, but that doesn´t seem to matter.

What WAS lucky was that my passport was found. Some woman picked it up from the street and handed it into the police. The police station was utterly hilarious and the charming policemen helped me get over the shock of what had happened. They were a million times nicer than the policemen in Chile who were no help when I was mugged there. I wonder if I´m going to be able to compare treatment of me by the police in each country I visit! I walked into the police station here in Buenos Aires on Friday to be met by a round of applause by three policemen, one of whom was holding my passport. The look of sheer delight on their faces at being able to hand my passport back to me was hysterical. "She´s here, she´s here" they announced and waved my passport at me. I´d like this reception every time I enter a room, I thought. I was indeed ecstatic to get the passport back.

Things settled down and one of the policemen got down to business.

"I like your skin", he told me.

"Gracias" I replied, mortified but also thinking how hilariously inappropriate this was, I had just been mugged afterall!

"I like your hair, the blond, very nice".

"Gracias", thinking damn my hair brush was in that bag too.

"I can´t believe you are thirty, I thought you were maybe twenty".

"No, I am old" I replied.

"Do you have children?"

"No"

"A boyfriend?", he gave me a serious look.

"No. I had one but he´s gone". Damn, should have lied.

"Why he gone? Why, tell me, tell me everything!"

"Are we going to discuss the mugging?" I asked, grinning now.

"Tonight we go to dinner?"

"I can´t tonight." I lied, but started feeling upset again thinking that I actually had no money to buy anything to eat, so maybe I should have said yes.

Then, luckily another tourist came in, so Mr. Police man became all business and actually did some work.

My family heard about the mugging and kicked into action. "Who can we contact in Buenos Aires?" they thought. I´m not sure at what point they decided to contact the Ukrainian Mafia, but I´m grateful that they did. Later that night I got numerous phone calls to the hotel, one from a man with a thick Ukrainian accent, a deep gravelly voice telling me that he knew my brother, not to worry and that his friend would be calling to my hotel soon with cash for me. I was genuinely touched by their kindness even though I didn´t have a rats ass who they were. Then, I got another phone call from someone called Carlos with good English saying he was on his way with the money. About twenty minutes later an elderly Ukrainian couple called to the door of my hotel. They saw me and threw their arms around me, they had no English but I could tell they were lovely people, whoever the hell they were. I understood that we were to wait for something or someone, so wait we did. The woman every now and again would cup my face in her hands and kiss it followed by a long hug. Eventually a man arrived with his Russian girlfriend, I suspected that this was the man with the money, although it wasn´t obvious at first. He told me I could come and stay with them and wanted to know exactly what had happened. I explained it all to him in English and then he translated it to my audience of the two Ukrainians and one Russian.

Anyway, the nice people gave me money and my family managed to pre pay for me from Ireland to stay in a swanky hotel. So, I am living it up on room service for the moment, until my emergency card and more money arrives. Things could be worse, indeed I do feel very lucky to be okay and am grateful for the Ukrainians, whoever they are! Some people are good people.

Chile, An Earthquake and crime....“Yes Officer, I believe a leprechaun stole my credit card.”

I’ve had a pretty eventful two weeks. My credit card was stolen, I was mugged and I (luckily) survived a massive earthquake (8.9 Richter scale). Not only that, but most shocking of all is that the leprechaun (Dwendy) that I have been carrying around with me for the last four months has gone missing, leading me to think the obvious, that it was he who took my credit card.

We arrived in Chile after getting a painful 30 hour bus from Bolivia. I had the worst seat on the bus with no window but instead had this to look at......



My view for 30 hours. Jealous?

On my first day in Santiago, I was walking around the city taking photos when a man crept up behind me and grabbed my camera from my hands. Now, I wouldn’t call myself a violent person, however I am the kind of person who yells “fuck you” instinctively when someone stands on my foot. As soon as the words leave my mouth I regret it and recoil in terror, it’s an innate instinct of some sort that I can’t control. So, when I was mugged, I grabbed the camera back from the mugger, yelled “hey” and hit him. He ran like the wind but my camera was damaged in the scuffle. I’m not a good person to mug. This aggression comes from somewhere and is probably why I enjoyed boxing so much when I took it up last year. It may also have had something to do with the fact that the gym was ninety nine percent male and I one hundred percent enjoy looking at men with big muscles.

I needed to get a police report for my broken camera for insurance purposes. Two strapping Chilean cops came to my hostel. They both wore sunglasses and chewed gum, which I took as clarification of their authority. If only I could chew gum like them, I thought, hardly able to contain my jealousy. With no one there to translate for me, I had to reinact the entire scenario for them. I played both the part of the mugger and myself and said things in Spanish like “I photo”, “a man”, “he take” and did a grabbing action with one hand towards the pretend camera I was holding in the other. I gave either an Oscar winning performance or exhibited clear signs of schizophrenia. The police thought they saw some holes in my story and accused me of breaking the camera. “You”, said one of the cops whom I mentally pronounced the bad one of the two, “you” and he did a stamping action with his foot, trampling on the pretend camera I must have carelessly placed on the ground some seconds earlier. I shook my head at his statement and actions that I decided carried a slight yet distinct hint of accusation.

At this point, someone with Spanish turned up and interpreted for me although I was beginning to enjoy this game of charades I was playing with bad cop. Bad cop said that unless I actually had the man who mugged me that there was nothing they could do. Lesson for you, if you are ever mugged in Chile make sure you hang on to the mugger, perhaps take him back to your hostel and make him wait there until the police arrive. I realised then that Julie and I should have beaten the mugger to death, it seemed like the only possible solution.

I had given up all hope of getting anything from the police and wondered when would be a good time to mention that I had been the victim of another crime when a leprechaun recently stole my credit card. This wasn’t a theory that I’d want to stand up in court and testify to, however I accepted it as a perfectly acceptable one. The credit card company told me that the person (it wasn’t a person, it was a leprechaun) who stole my card had used it to buy a flight, a mobile phone and some groceries. I had visions of Dwendy sitting in first class on a plane bound for Ireland, eating his groceries whilst reclined in the seat with his tiny feet up on the dinner tray. “Bastard” I thought and regretted the kindness I had shown him in the past. Leprechauns are so dammed ungrateful.




The face of a cold blooded thief.

The policeman was still rabbiting on about something. I was only half listening at this point and instead had begun to imagine myself down the police station filling in a report about Dwendy and the stolen credit card. I imagined it would go something like this.

Description of Thief:
Approximately 30cm in height, wearing a little green jacket with green breeches buckled at the knee. Also wearing black stockings and a long coned hat, which is sometimes used as a weapon. Around his neck is an Eizabethian ruff and frills of lace at the wrists, which may be signs of a homosexual disposition. His voice is high and strange as if its been recorded and played back at faster speed. Likes to leap on walls and spin balancing himself on the point of the hat with his heels in the air. Sometimes stands upside down. Known to fix shoes in the night, traditionally interested in pots of gold, but recently progressed onto credit cards.

If there was any justice in this world Dwendy would be locked up in a prison cell only allowed an hours recreational time a day in order to play basket ball with the Boogie man.

I wondered how long Dwendy could withstand torture before he’d confess to the crime and considered asking bad cop if he enjoys torturing leprechauns. I imagined bad cop shining a bright white light in Dwendys eyes and asking him where he was the night the credit card was stolen. Beads of whiskey sweat dripping down his ruddy face as Dwendy would proclaim “I was mendin’ shoes” or “I was at de bottom of de rainbow”. Bad cop would pound the table and yell “There are holes in your story Mr. Dwendy, there are no rainbows at night!” At this point, the rubber glove might come out. I wondered how many shamrocks and stars bad cop would extract out of Dwendys rear end before either the credit card was found or he confessed. He’d then be hauled off to a maximum security prison where he might be picked on for only being 30cm tall or the even bigger infliction...having red hair. He might have to share a cell with a burley murderer named “Gnasher” who likes to cuddle and is attracted to small mythical creatures. One day, justice will be done Dwendy, one day.

On a more serious note, we made it out of Santiago and arrived in Pucon, a small Chilean town overlooked by a massive volcano. We climbed the volcano on our first day there, feeling lots and lots of vertigo. I realise now that I was dizzy due to tremors happening under the ground. I went to bed that night and was woken up around 3:30am by what I can only describe as a continuous and deafening rhythmic banging. Julie and I both woke up at the same time. “It’s an earthquake”, she said unfortunately stating the obvious. I told her that we needed to get out as the house was about to collapse. It (the building) was moving from side to side, violently. I tried to open the door, but it was jammed as it had obviously become dislodged in the quake. I had to really force it open, took about 5 attempts to do it and the quake was getting stronger and stronger the whole time. I got out of the room and had to hold onto the wall to stop from being flung about. It felt like being on a ship during a really bad storm. We reckon it took us about a minute to get out of the building. The woman who owns the hostel was outside screaming at us to come down (we were on the first floor), she was totally hysterical and hyperventilating, which in turn scared the shit out of me.

The earthquake passed and we gathered outside with the other guests in the hostel. I began to worry about the volcano and was asking anyone who knew anything about earthquakes if they thought the volcano could now erupt. I was also worried about a potential tsunami, every bad scenario runs through your head at a time like that. Another, albeit smaller earthquake hit when we were standing outside and all we could do was stand there and wait for it to pass. The ground was moving from side to side, trees were rocking, it was crazy. We slept in the sitting room on the floor after that, the moving floor. The ground continued to move all night.

The next day, we realised the extent and devastation that the quake caused throughout Chile and were warned that there was another, bigger one coming. The electricity came back on long enough for me to skype my Mom who obviously worried about me proclaimed "I never knew your voice could sound so sweet" followed by "today you are the favorite daughter!" We were advised to go out and get food and water supplies. There was a 20 minute queue for the supermarket and when we were in there stocking up another quake hit causing things to fall off shelves. Thankfully the anticipated bigger one never came. The smaller quakes continued for about three days. We were trapped in Pucon, all roads north and south were destroyed. It was a few days before we could get out and as soon as we could we got the bus to Argentina. It's been days since the quake, yet I still feel like I have sea sickness and think I feel the ground moving now and again (it's not). Lucky escape for us both and an all too eventful two weeks filled with crime, bad and good luck (good luck we weren’t hurt in the quake). Is someone up there trying to teach me a lesson I wonder? And if so, does it have anything to do with leprechauns?



The Volcano. It scared me.

Bolivia: My inner animal is a horse, Julie’s is an amoeba.

Julie to me: “I can’t believe you want to go into a mud hut up a mountain with some old hippie you just met to sweat your arse off and discover your inner animal.”

Me to Julie: “Why not? I bet I’m something shit like a ferret.”

Cut to a couple of days later, both Julie and I are in a Taxi trying to find the hippie meeting spot to get the hippie bus up the mountain to the sweat hut. However, true to form we missed the bus having gotten a Bolivian Taxi man, who like everyone in Bolivia enjoys lying and told us he knew where he was going. We got there too late, the hippies (punctual ones) had already left. Gary, the old hippie who had invited me to the hut to “discover my inner animal” (in a non sexual way, I think....hmm?) told me that he had done a lot of these sweat hut gigs and that he had once experienced a vision of himself in female form rise out of his own body as he sweated his arse off, “no drugs involved” he told me as his eyes glazed over from the magic cookie he had ingested a few hours earlier. It was Gary who suggested that my inner animal might be a horse, which may explain why I have a penchant for eating grass and using my tail to swish flies from my rump. I was truly sorry to have missed the sweat lodge, however something tells me that it won’t be the last time I’ll be invited to perform a traditional native American ritual in a sweat hut in the middle of nowhere by some genuine hippies...maybe.

Picture of horse, its like looking in a mirror....neigh.

We made it to Cochabamba (still Bolivia) after a 15 hour night bus. We almost missed the bus as Julie spectacularly locked herself in the hostel toilet as we were about to leave. I had to summon a man with a screw driver to get her out. I almost had to be peeled off the ground as I was laughing so hard at her expense! ha ha.

We were at carnival last weekend, which is a huge deal all over South America. The locals practice their dancing and playing of instruments year round for it. We made the 5 hour trip to a place called Oruro where the biggest nearby celebration was being held. We travelled there with a group of volunteers (do- gooders) one of whom we are friends with, the rest of whom we could take or leave, preferably leave. Included in the carnival package was ‘accommodation’, a space on the floor where over 30 of us slept. The hardwood floor had just been varnished with what can only be described as something toxic/ poison based. I slept with my face on it, inhaling it and had the most lucid dreams. My inner animal didn’t like it.



Yes, looks like a crack den.

Carnival itself was amazing, we stood all day and night watching in awe as nonstop high energised dancers and bands passed us by. The festivities in some parts of South America last for 9 days and nights. The people believe that there is no such thing as sin during this period, so husbands and wives are free to cheat on one another with no consequences, none except the carnival babies that are born fatherless 9 months later. Leaves me wondering how many fellow backpackers end up in the ´knocked up´, rather than ´banged up´ abroad category.

As per usual I got hit on by small, young Bolivian boys, three at the one time in fact. One was standing beside me during carnival, was up to my elbow (again) and could not have been any more than seventeen years old, although he told me he was twenty seven when I said I was thirty. He reached up standing practically on his tippy toes to grab my hand and said “You are big, tall milky woman, where is your father from? You are hot.” A chat up line bound to make any woman fall at his tiny feet in bliss, I’m sure. I laughed and thanked him. He then said “I am pretty for you”, enunciating every word and pausing for effect, again I thanked him. Then his two (minature) friends had a go, two more twenty seven - seventeen year olds. One kept asking me to drink from his can, begging me more like. I said no, so he asked me to kiss the can, which I did thinking he would then stop asking. Then, weirdly I saw him kiss the can where I had kissed it. “It’s like WE kiss”, he said. Again, I laughed. I need to stop with the laughing, I think it encourages them. Unfortunately, I had no camera that night, but they all basically looked exactly like the Bolivian boy child from my last blog entry only with no top on, which you may have already tried to imagine.




We held hands, his in mine.

The being pelted by water balloons is getting really really annoying now! It’s been going on for a whole month (pre carnival thing). They come from every angle, I can’t go anywhere without being drenched by passangers or drivers in cars, supersoaked by kids on balconies like snipers and getting water balloons thrown at me from everywhere. Julie had three full buckets of cold water thrown over her yesterday when she was on her way back from the doctor after he told her that she is sick with an amoeba, last thing she needed! Another time we were spotted leaving a restaurant and had at least 40 boys, all running after us with water balloons shouting “GET THE GRINGAS”....which they did. If only I had a real gun (private thoughts for a moment).

In Bolivia, although we feel safe most of the time, the biggest danger we come across is the getting to and from places and the fear that our bus driver will be shitfaced. Apparently due to some recent bus accidents where the drivers have indeed been hammered, the Police are trying to crack down on it all and enforcing a no drinking whilst driving policy (shocker!). The drivers, are however not happy about this and are actually publically campaigning for their right to drink whilst driving. Gotta admire their determination!

We definitely met some colourful characters over the last couple of weeks. Julie and I were in an Irish bar when two men came over and started talking to us. One, whom I later learned is called ‘sex pervert’ by all the women in the bar made a bee line for me (of course). Words cannot describe the sleaziness and stink off this man! He told me he was a professional gambler and then entered into a ten minute monologue about odds on certain bets. I vanished into an intact inner world where I didn’t listen but nodded my head, which annoyingly he took as encouragement to keep talking. I tried my best not to breathe and was fearful of his sudden movement which stirred his smell. I waited calmly for a break in his solo act for the perfect moment to mention my ficticious boyfriend. “I’m meeting my boyfriend in Buenos Aires”, I blurted out, nothing to do with the gambelling he had been rambelling on about. I told him we had been together four years, ´sex pervert´was suddenly interested. He asked if I was going to marry my boyfriend and I instinctively shook my head and said “no way” and then thought “shit!!” I had obviously made my ficticious boyfriend too much like my ex boyfried (he was real....unfortunately). I summonded Julie who was being pestered by my sex perverts friend (a ´sex pervert´in training) and we moved to another table out of their view and smell.



´Sex pervert´to my left.

We had a lucky escape yesterday as someone made an attempted robbery of our hostel room. We are almost positive we know who it was, a man we had breakfast with and whom we later thanked for translating from English to Spanish the account of the whole attempted robbery to the girl who was working in the hostel. We concluded later that he was most definitely guilty. I actually said “thank you” to the man who tried to steal from me. Anyways, he got nothing and I noticed he had his fly down, jokes on him, ha ha!

I would buy this man dinner.