September 2, Lima

Sometime over the last week I lost my diary. No biggie.

Today I discovered I lost my second credit card (my Cashpassport card - previously I complained that it is an expensive alternative to travellers checks, but since they Western Unioned all my money to me without charge, I think they are great).

Tonight I got my purse stolen in a Barranco salsa club. I'm having trouble keeping my spirits up now. I lost 50 solars, not that much money, but I lost my notebook with all my writing in it (for the second time, but this one for good). I also lost the book I am reading (Disgrace, finally) and pages of the quantum physics book I printed out and have been reading on this trip as well.

I lost the email address of someone I promised to write to and who will be upset that I dont write. (Though I did give him my email, joking that I might just lose my notebook.)

Now I am bummed. And I really want this trip to be over and to recuperate from my stupidity.

And I have lots of cash, American dollars, on me now to not lose or get stolen in the next few days until I return home.

What is wrong with me that I keep losing things?

August 31, Iquitos

So I am out of the jungle. I am covered in mosquito bites and have a huge scratch on my leg but otherwise no worse for wear.

The cutest thing in the world is a baby sloth. A much better pet than a cat. In fact, I met the sloth just after being rejected by a loner cat. It is the size of a teddy bear with a shapeless torso, a long neck topped by the placid smiley face of a turtle and four long flexible limbs with three sharp claws that wrap themselves around you and cling until you prise it off of you. It has a tiny arrow-shaped tail and all its sexual bits are hidden (at least on the female). It is covered in brown course fur that is surprisingly human like and when upset admits little squeaks. I haven´t wanted a pet in a long, long time, but I want a sloth so badly! Like all animals the baby is cuter than the adult, but I want a pet that does nothing but clings to me and lets me pet it. I bought a disposable camera so hopefully I will have photos of me and the baby sloth.

In the jungle I swam in an Amazon tributary, camped in the forest, walked, canoed, had my whole body and face licked by monkees, played with puppies, and ate huge meals of delicious vegetarian food cooked by the natives who hosted me and my guide. I didn´t, however, walk for hours and hours a day, which is what I had wanted. Though whether I could actually have handled it, I´m not sure. It wasn´t that hot but very, very humid and I was pouring sweat and itching from mosquitoes the whole time.

I think my romance with the Amazon is now over. It is the Amazon but it isn´t as beautiful as Australia´s rainforest or even the cloud forest in Colombia. It isn´t that palmy or ferny, isn´t that dense, has no waterfalls (there are streams but they were all dried up as it is a very dry dry season). Maybe it is because the Amazon is a basin and not in the mountains. Also the river itself is enormous, so not that beautiful. The Orinoco and the rivers in Canaima in Venezuela were much narrower and therefore more beautiful because you felt the forest about you on both sides. I admit the Amazon is great for bird and animal spotting, though. A, my very knowledgable guide, showed me monkees and eagles and kingfishers and bats (cute little furry things) and ants and spiders.

The question, of course, is did I have sex with my guide? Guess!

August 26, Iquitos

Tomorrow I go to the jungle, on a four-day Amazon trek, just me and a 29-year-old guide.

Yes, I am already worried. The guy who sold me the trip asked to be let off another trek he was supposed to do so he could go with me instead. When I came back into the agency to let him know which hostel I was staying at he was leaving and asked me if I had had lunch. I didn´t have lunch with him, but I did meet him later. He said he didn´t need to be at work anymore and had nothing to do and offered to show me around Iquitos on the back of his vespa. He took me to a floating bar on the Amazon and we shared a beer (a big bottle). I almost went dancing with him tonight at a live gig, but decided it was better to get a good night´s sleep.

Why do I put myself in these situations you ask? Well, the group tours are all about relaxing in lodges, pirranah fishing, and visiting villages to stare at the natives. Not what I want. (And they are way more expensive - this trip costs me $AU178!). I want to walk in the forest for hours at a time, going deeper in. And to be in a boat along the rivers of the Amazon forest.

So wish me luck. I see this as (potentially) a final opportunity to get some spine and say ´no´. I hope I´m only projecting, obviously, but if it does come to this, let me practice, ´No´. ´No, thanks.´

At least I will have made some self-improvement.

Wish me luck!

Write at you again in several days.

August 25, Lima

Tomorrow I am off to Iquitos to find myself a jungle tour. I didn´t get to Laeticia, the Amazon outpost in Colombia, so I will go to the jungle here in Peru.

G was not able to pick me up from the airport after all, though I did not get the email before I left Bogota. I waited in the airport for 2 hours for him before I went to check the internet, but this was okay because I met a lovely Australian, my age, who has been living in Lima with her local boyfriend for 3 years. She is an ex-competitive skier from Jindabyne. It has been great to meet her, talk English, meet Peruvians, go to bars for live music and pisco sours.

I´m so far behind in my story. I believe I left off in Palomino, after getting my phone stolen. I went to find N after leaving the two Riohachans. I found him playing pool at an outdoor bar. I greeted him but he was uninterested in talking to me. I decided to leave Palomino as I only really came back for N and D. As I walked past with my backpack, though, N asked if I was leaving and if I wanted a beer. So I stayed and drank while this sleazy man talked to me in Spanish and gave me weird looks. N insisted he was a nice man and I was misinterpreting things. He said I should stay and took my backpack back to the hut.

That night N, D and I went to the beach. We went to C's camping hostel. C is the one who was supposed to meet me in Palomino originally. I asked C if he had been contacted by S and C from Tayrona and he said no, that he was very sorry he didn´t meet me but he may not have been in Palomino when his friends were calling. C was very nice, my age, chatty (in English), open, and kept telling me he was upfront, honest, talked to everybody the same, men and women alike, didn't expect anything from the women he talked to. He kept giving me cocktails (rum, coke, lime).

N and I went down to the beach, got naked, and had sex in the waves. This was beautiful as well as awkward and hilarious and fun. The waves were full of those beautiful phosphorescent beads. N was quite drunk but he´s much more fun when drunk - and seems like he can only make a move when he is drunk. I like N. And I felt bad that he knew about Jason. I just had sex with Jason. N I actually like and wanted to have sex with him.

When we got back up to the group of travellers around a campfire, N kept drinking and got drunker and drunker. I got drunker too, but not that drunk. C then decided to prove himself wrong and come on to me, saying he wanted me to come home with him. He kept asking if I felt comfortable as he sucked my bottom lip and wooed me. I was not comfortable, but I said that I was. What is my problem? So partly lured by the promise of a bed and a shower I went home with C. The bed was an unblown-up mattress on the floor inside mosquito netting and the shower was bowls of water (this isn´t a bad way to shower), but it was decidedly more comfortable than the kitchen tent at D and N's. Sometime in the early morning, I had sex with C, sex I didn´t particularly want to have and that was quick and ordinary.

And of course I felt bad about leaving N passed out near the fire, but I don't have patience for that kind of drinking. I wish he had stayed sober enough to be possessive of me. But I can´t blame him for my bad behaviour. In the morning I went back to N and D's but neither of them were there. I grabbed my stuff and caught a bus Santa Marta so that I could catch another bus to Aracataca the next morning.

I did see Marquez's childhood home in Aracataca. Then I took the bus all the way back to Palomino because I realised that I had N's money, the money he put in my pocket at the beach. I had totally forgot about it. I felt so guilty for leaving without saying goodbye after abandoning him at the beach and then taking his money (he has very little) that I had to go back. I went to the farm but neither N or D was there. I left the money and a note, but I found N on the main street as I stopped to wait for the bus. I apologised and took his contact details. He was obviously surprised that I came back, and grateful, I think. He didn´t seem angry at me, though he did say he was feeling down.

Sunday, 22 August, Bogota

I´ve been writing more in my notebook, but thought I´d just take a few minutes to blog. I leave Bogota in a few hours to go to Peru. G, who I met last year in Lima is picking me up from the airport and I am excited to see him again - and to be met at an airport!

The last few days in Colombia have been nice. I stayed for two nights in the city of Tunja, which has a city centre dating to the 1500s. It also has European things like cafes and trendy bars, though I still had trouble finding anything other than Colombian food and pizza laden with meat. I spent a lot of time walking around because, though the streets, like everywhere in Colombia, are numbered sequentially, I kept getting lost. I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone, starting out on one street and magically ending up on another.

I spent yesterday in Villa de Leyva, a very popular spot with Colombians and foreigners alike, though it was (nicely) not crowded as I expected. This is a bigger, wealthier Barichara, a whole white-washed town. But the houses and hotels are much grander and the arts and crafts are of a much higher standard than elsewhere in Colombia. I ate pasta, drank red wine and spent 250,000 pesos on an artwork that I fell in love with and now have to carry around with me.

In Tunja, I took myself to a cafe-karaoke bar, and after a song in English came on and I could join in the singing, my neighbours began to talk to me (in English and Spanish) and I even sang a few songs (Sound of Silence, Hey, Jude, No Baby Don't Cry). This was a lovely night. Yesterday, I felt like my old Australian self. Happy to be alone, reading and enjoying good food, wandering beautiful streets.

But more later. I want to get to the airport nice and early.

August 17, Barranquilla

So, I left myself on the bus to Palomino. I had called N to let him know I was coming back and he said he´d meet me at the bus station. I seem to do a lot of waiting in Palomino, but at least N did come and get me.

I stayed that night with N and D. We sat around in N and D´s gazebo and I chatted, mostly with D, who spoke slow Spanish to me that I could mostly understand. I slept in a tent in their wood and palm-roofed kitchen, with only a blanket between me and the dirt. I was hoping to go for a mountain walk that N told me about in the morning but at around 8.30 in the morning I heard my phone ringing. N said it had been ringing since 6.30 and when I answered it was my Riohacha lover saying he has been in Palomino since 5.30am. Did he tell me he was coming? I wanted to stay with N, who I really like, who is educated and works to save the world, and speaks English.
I was flustered and embarrassed. I asked N if I should tell Jason that I would meet him later after our walk, but N said to go meet him now and we could walk in the afternoon. He wanted to read.

So I went to meet Jason, who was waiting for me with a friend, an older man. We walked to the beach, which turned out to be quite beautiful, with colder water than further up the coast and a little bit of surf too. Jason kept climbing up coconut trees and the men smashed them on rocks so we could all dribble coconut water into our mouths. Jason was all over me and the three of us swam. After a swim we continued walking along the beach towards the river, where it meets the sea. This was really lovely, cold, unsalty water. Jason walked me over to a deserted part of the river and we had sex in the water, generous, lingering sex.

But when we got back to our stuff I opened my bag to take a photo and my phone was gone. It was taken out of its rubber case, off my keyring, spirited away. So was 50 mil pesos. My wallet was neatly in my purse pocket where I leave it. Jason asked some kids who were playing around the area something I couldn´t understand, acting indignent. I said something to him about how I had been in Colombia for more than a month and had nothing bad happen to me when I was alone, and now with him I get something stolen. He and his friend were mostly silent on the walk back. I was morose. Sad mostly about losing all my photographs. At this point I blamed Jason and his friend for not taking care of me, but now I think the friend probably took my phone. They knew I had it, and they knew I had a 50 mil note as well. And N and D say that Palomino is a safe place.

When we got back to the main road of town, I had trouble leaving. I told Jason I was upset and wanted to go, but he kept grabbing me to his lap and kissing me, meanly. I think he´s a con artist. Who fucks a girl really well and then comes to another town to steal her phone? I can only figure it is about his power over me and as he was losing it he got a little mean, made a little fun of me for not understanding him. Finally, I said I was sorry that the morning had ended badly, but that I was very upset and needed to be alone, and I said goodbye and walked away from them.

So, fair punishment for sex that I should never have had? Punishment for not listening to my inner voice that said walk away from Jason? Punishment for my inability to say NO! I choose to see it this way. I´m not particularly upset, other than with myself. I figure if nothing else I have a good story (I tell it better than I have written it).

August 14, Barranquilla

I arrived back in Barranquilla last night and had bug larvae squeezed out of my legs and ass. I hadn´t finished telling G and M the story of my stolen phone when M sent me off to the shower after a gaze at my bitten up legs so she could heal them. I get out of the shower and she tells me that what I thought were infected mosquito bites were actually the swellings where an insect had injected larvae into my leg that hatches tiny worms that feed on blood. Ugh! She squeezed blood and pus out of my three bites until the little larvae balls - looks like what comes out of a white-head - appeared on the toilet paper she was squeezing my red skin with. She then broke open an antibiotic pill and rubbed the powder into my bites.

This is what couchsurfing is for! Imagine if I just kept waiting for the bites to heal! M says I was lucky I didn´t get a fever.

I seem to leave a little piece of myself everywhere I go, as if I am trying to divest myself of something that I haven´t yet found. So far I´ve lost my toiletries bag, a few pairs of earrings, the butterfly tank top that I love and use for swimming, my swimming bottoms, and latest, my notebook, with the writing I do when I can´t get to the internet. It is as if my journey doesn´t want to be recorded, not in photos (which I lost with my phone), not in pen.

I´m not quite sure what is wrong with me but maybe I am moving from place to place too fast. I was in a rush, hoping to get to Venezuela to visit S, but it´s not really a reasonable thing to do. She can´t leave Caracas and Caracas is far away from Colombia, either very expensive plane rided or very long bus trips. So I will stay in Colombia.

I will try again to summarise my adventures last week. After visiting the school children, N and I walked to the river for a swim. He further chopped up the pants I chopped up in Tayrona because they were so ripped and used those to swim in. The river had quite a strong current, so we attempted to entwine, kiss, and stay in one place by gripping onto rocks with our hands and feet. It was fun. And very refreshing: it was so nice to finally be in cold water! After our swim, N and I had almuerzo in town and that evening I took off for Riohacha, saying I would come back to Palomino on my way back to Barranquilla.

Riohacha is the city where Marquez´s telegraph operator went to work after rejected by Fermina Diaz. Whether Riohacha of now bears any resemblence to Riohacha of then, I don´t know, but it is a low, spread-out city of typical Colombian cement boxes with barred windows and doors and a nice, fat beach with painted palm trees. In Riohacha I was picked up by a charming 22-year-old, who I wasn´t totally comfortable with. I felt like he paraded me around, showing to his friends and neighbours that he had a white girl on his arm. He didn´t listen to me even when I managed to communicate with this boy with no English, and he talked incessently.

I don´t know why I agreed to meet him again that evening. I was upset that he hadn´t taken me right back to my hostel like I asked after our swim in the ocean, but he was so ingratiating I just let his will overpower me. We agreed to go dancing. Instead we made out at the beach and I took him home with me.

I left the next day for Cabo de la Vela, a tourist village on the La Guajira peninsula where the desert meets the sea and the land is occupied by the nomadic Wayuu people. Here I felt like I had travelled to the ends of the earth. It was all desert, barely-there salt-water ponds, scrub and scrappy trees, abandoned Wayuu stick houses. I went on a tour, saw a salt mine, travelling with 5 others, lovely people. I slept in a hammock in a hut on the beach and we went to two different beaches for a swim in the warm and surfless Caribe sea.

I returned to Riohacha after two days in Cabo and hopped right on a bus back to Palomino. As the four-wheel drive was driving through the central market on our return I saw my 22-year-old lover and hid. I didn´t want to see him again, though I admit to a nice night. On the bus I got a phone call from him. I couldn´t understand a word, told him I was on my way to Palomino, wondered when I could hang up and finally did when it seemed he was done talking.

More tomorrow.

August 13, Santa Marta

Such adventures this past week, but not much access to the internet. I can't possibly write everything down in the limited time I have so I'll give a general sweep of impression.

I walked to Pueblito in Parque Tayrona with a beautiful Venezuelan malaria researcher and her rasta boyfriend. Pueblito is this grassy oasis of round rock bases left over from pre-Colombian times. It comes after a long, beautiful, difficult walk up through the jungle, which for us involved a dip in the clear cold water of a shallow sand river. I finished the walk with inner thighs on fire from the rash I get from wearing wet clothes. My clothes have been damp for at least a week. I crave nothing more than doing laundry. But this dampness on my Pueblito journey I owe purely to sweat, which drips from me like from a man as I exercise in the heat of a Colombian coastal day.

That walk did me in and I only stayed in Tayrona overnight. I recoiled a bit from the beaches because it involves... wet, sticky clothes and long walks. Also, the old guy who ran the camp that charges 15 pesos per night for a hammock kept touching me and kissing me and trying to hang out with me. S the beautiful girl from Cali was trying to protect me a bit, I think, from him.

I'm probably the only person in the world who didn't want to stay in Tayrona forever. But, goddamn it, I like floors to put my bags on and places to hang my wet clothes! I have to be more persistent in my questioning of other backpackers to figure out how they do this sort of thing for so long.

Then there is the Palomino saga... I was going to go with S and her boyfriend Mr. C to Palomino and stay with their friend there. But they were on Colombian time, which means who knows when they will leave, if they will actually go where they say they will. My burning thighs wanted out of Tayrona so I left ahead of them, told they will call their friend C and I should wait for him at the gas station. I waited for him at the gas station. I waited for them, figuring at any moment they would emerge from a bus. Finally I let a pudgy young man steer me to a hotel across the street where I finally got a shower.

The hotel room was fusty musty and hot, dark and depressing. I was feeling pretty lousy but when I left the room that night a curly haired boy drinking in the bar next door invited me to join him and his friends for beers. Turns out they are a group of environmentalists, N and D living under gazebos in one of the towns small farms. They are volunteers, teaching recycling and sustainability to children and learning from the locals and organising projects. Most importantly they spoke English, though D, a woman I found a bit mesmerising with her long, long course curls, voluptuous body and bohemian clothes, spoke mostly in slow Spanish to me, helping me to learn.

I drank with them and then met them the next day for a trip to the capital of La Guajira, Mingaeo, where they brought me to meet local school children. There was a festival celebrating an independence battle and the kids were dressed as the Queen of Spain, soldiers, natives and other historical figures. We came at the end of the shows unfortunately but I watched the young kids chase each other around. The boys ran around hitting everybody with pieces of foam broken from a set piece. Now I understand why I was such a geek. If a kid came and randomly hit me I would have taken it personally and got upset. But the girls merely smiled and ran away, kind of joining in the game. Not that some of them didn't hit back.

Later a group of children of various ages encircled me, but I couldn't talk to them much. They asked me to dance and one girl put regaton on her cell phone and danced with me. They seemed thrilled by me even though I couldn't always understand or answer their questions and they gave me a string bracelets and two foil rings to remember them by. I was sorry not to have anything for them, but I gave the girl who gave me the bracelet an earring out of my ear and a bit of change since she actually asked me for money.

So I'm not dipping into the stories but fully tasting them, aren't I?

To come: the beauty of the end of the earth, the 22-year-old from Riohacha who followed me back to Palomino and stole my phone, my ongoing problems saying no to men...

What a crazy, up and down trip I'm having. And now I have absolutely no photos (gone with my phone) so you'll all just have to come to this beautiful country to see it for yourselves!

August 3, Taganga

I have finally left Barranquilla. This is what happens with couchsurfing. I intend to stay only a few days but I end up staying much longer, partly because I really enjoy my hosts, partly because in the face of their kindness my will gets subsumed by theirs. I don´t think Colombians have the same sense of time as we do in the West. They aren´t always on the go, go, go, and from what I can tell they spend a lot of time doing nothing. At least this was my experience in Barranquilla. There´s not that much to do and many people don´t have enough money to do much anyway. M spent a lot of time lying on the couch or in the hammock, and so did her mother when she came to visit. Maybe they do more when guests aren´t around.

Anyway, this meant I spent a lot of time also doing nothing, well, I did a lot of talking. But when I said ´I want to go to this place´, or ´I am going to leave tomorrow´, often it didn´t happen. G liked to organise things for me, like taxis and buses, and if he didn´t get it done, I didn´t go. I´m not complaining. It is nice to have people care for your safety. It just means that I don´t have lots of stories from my time in the not beautiful city of Barranquilla.

Yesterday I watched 3 documentaries, 1 on a gay, misanthropic Colombian writer, and 2 on the problems of the monetary system and how it is going to lead to one global government ruled behind the scenes by bankers. Called Zeitgeist and Zeitgeist Addendum, the documentaries gave an utterly convincing explanation about how Jesus is just a sun god based on ancient astrology (12 disciples the zodiac, 3 kings a constellation, that kind of thing), provided evidence that 9-11 was a Bush Administration job, following a long history of US designed efforts to get us to enter wars, and talked about how the Fed Reserve Bank is the biggest evil put on the world´s people because it enslaves people and government to debt. The second documentary then discussed a utopian project to build a resource economy, where technology would make everything abundant so we wouldn´t need to pay for anything or work anymore.

Yesterday evening, G, the German couchsurfer and I finally made it to La Cueva, the bar where Marquez and other writers and artists drank and wrote. Now it is a fancy, expensive place, but it was nice to be there. On the night I left off my last blog, the three of us, plus M went to a nice bar with wood and booths that played traditional Colombian music. We shared a bottle of aguardiente. Then we went back to G´s, now joined by his brother and girlfriend, G bought another bottle of aguardiente, and we danced a bit and made merry until 5.30am. This was the first time I´ve been drunk in Colombia.

I think the highlight of my time in Barranquilla was dancing in the rain with M. I was lounging around reading, a bit bored, and it poured and poured, thundering and lightning. I was sticky and hot and decided to go out and play in the rain like I did when I was a child. A great African song was playing on the stereo, so I danced outside the door. M joined me and we danced and danced to this really long song. She then got out the shampoo and conditioner and washed my hair. It was joyous.

Must go. Tomorrow will go into Tayrona National Park for beautiful beaches and forest walks.

30 July 2010, Barranquilla

I write to you from Barranquilla. This is an industrial/residential town, with many neighbourhoods full of one-story houses. I am back to couchsurfing, which has been lovely. I haven´t been on the go, go, go, but have been hanging out talking to G and M. M does not speak English, but we have managed to have some pretty serious girl talk with my limited Spanish and her even more limited English. I think she is very frustrated about this because she tells G that she thinks we would be close friends if we could speak the same language, but I'm just so happy I am communicating and understanding anything at all in Spanish that I am chuffed. Only couchsurfers can speak slow enough for me to understand. No one that I meet in public can slow down their speaking.

I talk in English with G in the mornings and late evenings, when he comes home from work. He is an avid reader, loves Neitzche, considers himself a nihilist and an atheist. He has the exuberance of someone who knows that his ideas are right, though he claims to understand that all is relative to our own egos. We can talk for four hours at a time. And let me tell you, he is doing most of the talking.

Today the three of us went into town and wandered through the streets of street sellers, soaking up the local atmosphere. We went into his favourite used bookshop, a wonderful two-level place of dusty old books in neat piles on the shelves. I bought two more books in Spanish by Eduardo Caballero Calderon. One day I will be able to read them. I began the young adult book by Calderon that I bought and couldn´t get through the first sentence, even with the help of my Spanish/English dictionary. But I will keep trying. How else to learn?

Cartagena is a quaint and romantic place. I preferred the neighbourhood my hostel was in, Getsamani, to the city inside the walls, but both are full of coloured houses with balconies. In Getsamani everything is rustically run-down and the doors to the houses are open so you can see inside to the tile-floored living rooms with couches, porch chairs and television sets. On Tuesday I met an Israeli couchsurfer in the hostel and we went out to an expensive sushi dinner together. We drank mojitos and the chef made me a beautiful gourmet vegetarian sushi, but it was the most expensive day I have had so far in Colombia. The sushi was $515,000 pesos, two drinks (it was happy hour) $13,000.

While we were eating and discussing the politics and economy of Israel, the two New Yorkers I invited myself to sit with in the square in the old town the night before came into the sushi place. I was engrossed in conversation, when I heard a male voice say,`'Is that Rachel?` I had sat with them for an hour and a half or so and talked about the politics and economics of Latin America. They both worked in finance and were much more pro-capitalist than me. I would love to have the Colombians I talk to explain to the Americans I talk to how the West and capitalism have fucked over their country, because I am never able to adequately get across the pillaging nature of capitalism. It is interesting, though, that economic views are so predictable. They are deeply related to one´s country's economic experience. Americans don't really understand the negative impacts of capitalism and South Americans feel exploited not only by the US but mostly by their own corrupt politicians.

The three men and I later met up in the old city to go to a salsa club. But the club was pretty empty and we paid $10,000 (which got us an overpriced drink) to get into a non-salsa discoteque. This was okay. The music was fine, but the boys wanted to stay on the upper level, which was really crowded and I could tell they really wanted to dance with Colombian girls. The Israeli and I didn´t stay that long.

On the Tuesday I took a trip to the Isles de las Roques. I wanted to try to find a little boat to tae me there, as a Swedish guy in the hostel suggested but I wandered around on Monday unable to find the right port for those boats. Instead I went to the modern art museum with a special exhibit on Mexican art and it´s normal South American art exhibit. It was a small and nice gallery. By Monday night I felt I had done Cartagena. I had walked around the old neighbourhoods and some of the ordinary central bits of Cartagena. So, it was good that the trip to Playa Blanca took all day Tuesday. I booked the trip in the hostel and was told to arrive at 7.30am. The large cruising boat didn`t leave until 9.00.

On the boat I talked with a Colombian man and his young son, who both spoke English. They were on a three-month holiday together. The boy was very smart and sweet. Our first stop was at an island with an aquarium. I didn´t want to go to the aquarium, was just desperate to finally get in water - so I hopped into the Caribbean, though there was no beach on this island. Some others were also in the water and one older woman talked to me a lot in rapid-fire Spanish that I barely understood.

The next stop was Playa Blanca, a long beach of white sand, trees, and many people trying to sell you things. We had lunch on the island and I went for a snorkel. It was decent - I saw some nice small phosphorescent fish and one nice coral. Here the Caribbean is very warm and waveless, clear green. So I was a little bit lonely and bored and came back sunburnt.

Now, though Barranquilla doesn't have much to see other than the bar that Marquez and other writers hung out in, and I'm not doing much other than talking, I feel good to be with couchsurfers and in a home. Tonight we are meeting a German couchsurfer and going for drinks at a bar. So next post may be about Barranquilla nightlife.

24 July 2010, Manizales

My trip has definitely gotten better since leaving big cities. I am also hostelling for a bit, which means I meet people who speak English to hang out with.

On Thursday and Friday I was in the quaint city of Salento. It is a small town of very colourful restaurants and artesan shops. On Thursday I walked the religous steps up a mountain - with messages about Jesus - and then found a trail. I met a man who asked me if I wanted him to take me to the river. I said yes because the river looked and sounded so good. We walked through barbed wire, mud, swamp and when we got to the river he started massaging and kissing me. I wouldn't let him kiss me on the lips, nor would I engage in chatter about his penis size, nor did I touch him back. He was a bit angry. But I bought him a beer and then went back to the hostel, a lovely, small, clean, wood-floored place.

On Friday I went hiking with the other folks in the hostel - young Americans and an old German couple. We walked through a valley of farmland with vews of the mountains before and behind us. We entered the non-cleared part of the mountains and it was beautiful ´bosque´, rainforest. It was such a gorgeous walk that I felt wonderful. Though it did get hard at the end as we kept climbing up and up and up. Finally we reached a mountaintop house serving hot drinks with cheese (this is normal in Colombia). After drinks and a rest we walked all the way back, which took half the time (maybe an hour and a half).

I spent the evening drinking beer with an interesting Israeli boy and left for Manizales in the morning. It was a beautiful mountainous bus trip and Manizales is such a pretty city, strewn through the mountains on all different levels. There is a cable car up to the top, the historic centre, and I took photos.

Today, I spent the day in a national park, in a bus driving from cloud forest to desert. Then my group spent 3 hrs climbing a snow-topped peak. We didn´t climb very far but we climbed to 5,000 feet so it was really hard going. We stopped every 5 minutes to recover our breathing. Climbing at high altitude is not fun and it is cold, and bare dirt peaks covered in snow aren't beautiful to me, but I am glad I made the climb as I kept wanting to give up.

After a big Colombian lunch, we went to hot springs for an hour. In a half hourwe party.

19 July 2010, Cali

Finally, I have gotten back into my gmail account (well, it isn't working at the moment on Z's computer, but thanks to Michelle I was able to reset my password because she got me back into my lipmag account, which was the address my password reset was sent to). So, thank you, Michelle! This makes me feel so much better, having my gmail, my blog, my photos, documents, contacts(!!) back.

Hopefully this sees my mood pick up. I admit I have not been the traveller I would like to be. I am beginning now to recover from the flu thanks to the healthy food that Z keeps serving me and lots of rest. The rest is a problem, though, because I feel more like sleeping than doing anything else. Today I wandered around Cali, a big city of 4 million, and just kept thinking about how down I felt and how I don´t particularly want to be here. I feel at the moment like this trip is something I have to endure. I guess I am just not interested in being in big, non-beautiful cities anymore.

Cali is a party city but I haven't felt up for partying. I must get out soon, but I think Z likes having the company and she is another who is treating me so well. But I need to get to the north coast and its beaches. It will be well deserved. At least it is hot here and, today, sunny.

In Bogota I went to the botanic garden. The tropical greenhouses are very lovely, all palmy and orchidy and lily-paddy. However, it poured so I spent more time reading When I Was Five I Killed Myself (excellent book!) in the cafe than wandering the gardens. I walked from the Transmilenio stop (the train-like bus system), ate fried yucca and plantains while it poured, stopped in a big beautiful wood library while it poured again, walked through a huge park to the botanic gardens. I got lost on the way back in the big park and ended up accepting a ride from a military man to the Transmilenio stop. He asked me if I had a boyfriend and told me he loved me but dropped me off safely at the stop. Well, maybe not so safely: I had to walk along a tiny median strip between the Transmilenio, which has it's own lanes, and the highway in order to get into the stop, which felt very dangerous.

I also spent a day with A´s other couchsurfers going to the Salt Cathedral, a vast, vast serious of coves with crosses and halls with benches made in the salt mine. This is a huge attraction in Colombia, but I wasn't that impressed. Natural caves do it for me much more than a lot of simple religious crosses and a few detailed angels. The scale of the place was the most impressive part.

from World Nomad´s blog, 16 July 2010

So, I´ve lost access to my Blogger blog. I resume journaling here.

Bogota is a nice city. I cannot find a better word than ´nice´. It isn´t beautiful (though there are beautiful things here), it isn´t grand (though there are grand things here). It is neither friendly or unfriendly. It isn´t full of garbage and graffiti, there are many roads of second-world-looking warehouses and shops, there are gated communities and shopping malls.

There is a stunning very old section of colourful small houses, some amazing cathedrals, impressive colonial buildings of grandeur, stylish cafes and bars, industrial roads, large highways, a shitload of road construction, neighbourhoods swathed in new apartment building, identical building after identical building, green mountains rising up around the city. It is warmish but grey, low-lying. Bogota is an incredibly architecturally diverse - hodgepodge - affair. I dig it.

My time here has been marred by the flu that is debilitating me a little bit, my constant dry mouth because I can´t breathe out of my nose. I have played the traditional Colombian game of tejo, where you throw heavy metallic - not disks, not balls - space-ship like objects at a slanted board of mud. The object is to get your tejo to stick in the mud in the middle of two pink paper triangles stuck on the board with gunpowder in them. If you get in the middle zou get 6 points. If you make the gunpowder go off you get 3 points. Otherwise the person whose tejo sticks nearest the middle gets 1 point. I was actually alright at this muddy game that involves drinking beer. You pay for the beer, not the game.

I am not feeling very motivated to write much, or even to do much. Tonight I take a night bus to Cali, where hopefully it is hot and sunny. This, I need.

And Buenos Aires done

Today I lost my wallet, somewhere between Buenos Aires and Lima. I only lost some Argentinian pesos, but I've also lost yet another debit card. Luckily I have the Travelex card, but it is expensive to use, almost $5 everytime I take out money on it. And if I lose that, well, then...

I am in Bogota at a hostel. It is difficult to organise couchsurfing at the last minute when you have no mobile phone, but I hope to be at A´s, a German couchsurfer living in Bogota, tomorrow. I think I will feel better when I get there. Now, I admit to being a little bit freaked out. I am very tired, it is nighttime and when I went to leave for a walk, the host at the hostel told me to leave everything here in a locker (but I have no lock) and to be careful. So I didn´t go far, just to a shop where I could buy an avocado and a loaf of bread from outside the grilled door of a shop.

Travellers here have stories worse than me losing a wallet. One girl has been pickpocketed (in a group of people) twice in South America. Another also lost his credit card and spent a lot of money to get it couriered to him. But they all seem very nonchalant. It is only me who is timid.

There are many Australians here.

I think some of you will laugh when you read this, but I found a boy in Buenos Aires. This is why I am so tired, not much sleep. It was a true travel adventure. Hector started talking to me at the tango restaurant he works for in La Boca, where I was drinking a glass of wine. He got to me while I was finishing my wine and asked if he could come with me as I left even though I think we had only spoken a few sentences. He doesn't speak any English. I was feeling sick, down, and lonely, so I said yes. We started out with the idea that he´d walk me back to San Telmo but he quickly said we would go to his place to leave his jacket (I think that was the indication, anyway). So I decided to go with him.

He turned out to be super, super sweet. And indefatigable. It felt like an adventure to stay where he lives, in a room. His room is off what seems like the roof of a building. There is a shared kitchen and bathroom. To use the toilet, I had to slide a heavy door, attached to nothing, across the doorway to indicate it was in use. There was no light. Late in the evening he took me to the shared shower, a single stream of water, hot for a little while, then cold. This shower was an attention he paid me. I was happy to stay in bed, but he got me up, provided me with soap, shampoo and conditioner and guided me to the shower. Then he had to have a cold one.

When we got to his room, Hector kept plying me with tea. He left me and bought cold pills. He wanted desperately to feed me but I wasn´t hungry. I couldn't even eat a whole alfombra, the special Argentinian chocolate-coated cookie. He went out again and bought hamburgers, but I still insisted I couldn´t eat. He kept asking me if I was trying to be thin, but truly I was not hungry for once in my life. He also kept cleaning everything up right away: when I took off my skirt and put it on the floor, he took it and draped it over a chair. The television was on and his computer, playing music. He downloaded some Pink Floyd for me. We could barely talk to each other. I could understand nothing he said and my sentences were so poorly put together and badly spoken that it was difficult for him. So, I know almost nothing about him. I guess the prospect of sex gives someone infinite patience. I would have found trying to talk to me unbearably frustrating.

But his kind attentions were persuasive. When I finally got to the point of crawling into his bed and I took my skirt off, he said 'Wow´. I still had my leggings on.

I was so impressed by his intimacy and respect for me that I agreed to meet him again the next night, at his restaurant. However, I finally got in touch with W and organised to meet her and a couple of friends to go see a 6.00pm planetarium show. So I spent the afternoon trying to find the market at La Boca again. I was lost and worried I wouldn´t find Hector before I had to catch a bus to take me into Palermo to meet Wanda. At the last moment I found the market but Hector wasn´t at the restaurant. I left a note for him with his fellow hawkers/waiters asking to meet me at my hostel at 10pm. I felt a little silly going out of my way for this stranger, but he was so kind it felt like the right thing to do. He found me at the bus stop at La Boca, having gotten my note, and did indeed come to get me at 10pm that night.

This second night was not quite as effusive as the first, but still lovely. Hector bought me pizza and gave me beer. I was late to leave for a 5am taxi at the hostel to take me to the express bus to the airport. Hector paid for my taxi and gave me a small tango metal statue and two alfombras to remember him by. He took my email address and kept asking me for my return date to Australia. I think he wants to email me when I get home.

I think I like the way these Argentinians raise their boys. Like M in Venezuela - who grew up in Buenos Aires - Hector was all chivalry and attention. Lovely. And, might I say, lucky me. Lucky that I attract these sorts of men and that I know whom to go home with.

The planetarium show was sold out, so W and her friends and I drank beer at a very lush, old-fashioned velvety bar with wood floors for a couple of hours and then went home. It was also lovely to see W again, who, you remember, hosted me last year.

Obviously meeting Hector greatly increased my mood, but I am back to being flat and anxious. It was nice to be in Buenos Aires because it was familiar and I felt safe, despite the warnings. In Bogota, however, all is again new, English is hard to come by. I put myself in the hands of taxi driver at the airport. He was lovely and treated me fairly, kindly, even, but not a great way to travel in a ´dangerous´country.

Travel blog 2: Return to South America

I am here in Buenos Aires again. It is cold but sunny, an improvement on both Melbourne and Sydney. Sydney was so cold, UniNSW conference rooms so cold, that I came down with a cold. So, I am not in the best spirits for travelling.

I was not able to find a host in Buenos Aires, so I am in a hostel. It is a particularly nice hostel, though, all sort of tango arty, with high ceilings, painted walls, red with murals, tiger-print furniture in the common lounge.

Last night I met with E, who I spent a couple of hours with last year. It was nice to reconnect with this gentlemanly Asian couchsurfer over beer and `Arabic´ food. I ate the smallest falafal sandwich I have ever seen. Sort of large dolmade size! Good thing I had had a large lunch of pizza and empanadas (roquefort and cheese and onion). I was treated to lunch by a young woman I met coming off the plane. We took the bus together to San Telmo, where there are a bunc of hostels. I was very proud to have been able to read the map and know when to get off the bus.

J, the Australian girl who has family in Buenos Aires whom she is visiting, took me to lunch in thanks for lugging one of her big bags around San Telmo in search for hostels. She didn´t end up staying at the hostel with me, though, as a cousin came to pick her up from the suburbs and whisk her away. An interesting young thing, she has a brother whom she lives with in her parents house when they are living in Buenos Aires for 4 months of the year, whom she has an AVO against for domestic violence. She considers herself a feminist and works as an exotic maseusse. Best of luck to her.

I spent a while in the sun in a square in San Telmo today, drinking very nice and expensive hot chocolate. Tango music started to play and tango dancers danced for us, then the woman came around to collect money in a hat. Now I will go to La Boca, the area I loved best last year.

12.00am, Monday 16 August, R's ....sun

Back to old patterns: I got picked up by a Pakistani. Not quite like the Bangladeshis in my younger days travelling in foreign cities, but close enough. Actually, the guy was 30, which is considerably younger than the types who used to pick me up. He talked to me at the beach today and then tried to hold me in the water. So that's it - from now on I turn into a bitch and walk off after saying hello. It would be nice if girls were as chatty to strangers as boys are.

So here's my advice if you want affirmation you are beautiful: travel alone. But if you don't want the men who in their desperation think you are beautiful because you deign to talk to them to touch you, then travel with a companion. Or stay at home.

Today was truly back to travelling - I walked for around three hours in blazing sun - lovely. I went to the park, past the Catalan art museum that looks like a palace, and walked around the waterfalled plaza below Olympic Stadium. It is a vast, mostly empty space, with patchy grass, yellow and black poles, views overlooking the city, a promenade, and the fountains - steps pouring with water. Olympic Stadium looks like a coliseum.

Across the way I saw mysterious black stone constructions on top of the hill. What was it? A fort, a neighbourhood? What? I decided to see if I could get there and find out. I walked on a track through fresh-smelling oleanders and brush until I got to... a cemetery. It is very beautiful and very distinct. The constructions turn out to be kind of graveyards: walls built of small round stones housing rows and rows of boxes. The boxes are covered by a plaque engraved with a family name and most are enclosed within glass, behind which are plastic flowers, vases, statuettes, photographs.

The cemetery is full of these grave monuments, as if it is a ruin of an extensively-walled city. The cemetery itself is enormous, as I discovered. It extends around and down the hillside, and as I walked lower and lower, down staircases leading to more sections of walls, traditional gravestones, mausoleums and statuary appeared. Some mausoleums were like little cathedrals.

I got lost in the cemetery and I didn't want to wind back up the hill, so it took me around 2 hours to finally get down the hill and emerge somewhere that was not train tracks or the port. I finally came to a major road that circles the city. When I finally got back to civilisation, I found myself in a less upscale part of town, with plain though colourful buildings and unglamorous people, like drunken mechanics.

I wandered about, trying to find a street sign, but I finally had to ask someone for help. She pointed to a roundabout on my map and told me I was there. Not too bad, I walked some way back up the mountain. I started my climb on two outdoor escalators, which brought me to a hillside suburb of apartment blocks and local cafes.

I am so tired now, I must to bed. More later.

11.15am, Sunday August 15, Bellapon bakery

I was going to resume no-coffee travelling but the cafe con leche at the tapas bar last night was so good that I refuse to say no. So I am in a bakery, with a chocolate-filled croissant stick and a cafe con leche. Also I buy a loaf of pan gallec. I sit at the first table from the door, not too far from Plaza Espana.

Yesterday I arrived safely at R's place, thanks to a friendly airport worker who spoke English and was getting off at the same stop. Otherwise I probably wouldn't have figured out when to get off the bus despite my map.

Pratt is an interesting suburb, almost like a movie set, with narrow streets, lined with apartment buildings and first-floor shops. There is something about the narrowness of the streets, the level closeness of street to sidewalk, and the colourfulness of boxy buildings that make the neighbourhood look a little unworldly - but cute and welcoming.

Today I aim to walk up a mountain in the Parc de Montjuic and then go to the beach.

?, Sunday August 15, R's kitchen .... easily awake

Oh, being back in the travelling mode in which I get woken up by the morning sounds of other people and get out of bed without regret, without difficulty!

Last night I had to stop writing and jot down notes because I was so tired (so some of this is a little bit of a repeat as I fill in details). I didn't describe the feeling of being on a motor scooter: a little bit scary because my hands were holding on behind rather than in front of me, a little bit moon-like because turning my head in a helmet while moving quickly drags wind, but otherwise great.

The back of a motorbike is an excellent place from which to see a beautiful city speed past without the hindrance of windows and doors, and also an excellent place from which to feel a cool breeze on a warm night.

A motorbike is not the place, however, in which a physically awkward person is to feel graceful. When I do such things as get on and off a motorbike I think about Geena Davis and how she used to make clutziness sexy in her movies.

So tooling down the streets of central Barcelona on a scooter was, obviously, quite divine. We passed the Placa d'Espanya, the two Gaudi buildings, blocks and blocks of old, old apartment buildings with balconies and awnings (awnings!).


Barcelona!

At first the city seemed empty but this was because everyone was in 'the village', massing through the decorated streets.

R and I enjoyed the festival for a bit, wandering in the barely-there gaps between people while drinking beer with lemonade (the fizzy kind) - this allows people to drink more. Eventually we walked to the tapas place for dinner, where we sat at the tapas bar, plates of potato, vegetables and meats encased behind glass above our heads, and ate potatoes and mushrooms and drank more beer. After dinner we continued our slow ramble, conversing mostly in English. R's English is close to intermediate, while I can't understand a word he says in Spanish.

At 11pm a lively band began playing in the Japanese-themed street. There had been other bands playing in various streets throughout the evening but this band located the night party, with mostly young people spilling into the block with beers and talking and dancing.

These young people were good-looking, stylish, a variety of types. I watched girls with dreadlocks in bright summer dresses, girls with bias cut hair or thick square glasses. A cute and smiley girl behind me in a peach sundress, with bright light purple glasses and ahort black hair was jumping, dancing and singing with the joby appropriate to the moment. R only occasionally danced and I made eye contact with the addictive girl. She eventually introduced herself. Marina. Marina's friend was standing against a building, and one can't let a girl dance alone. So we jumped to the music together, the kind of music you can't not help jumping to.

Marina is the type of girl I'd be mimediate friends with, I think, in different circumstances. But R was hot in the pulsing crowd, so we left after 4 or so songs to walk a little more and then go back to R's suburb, Pratt, by way of La Rambla, Barcelona's Champs d'Elysees, a wide stone-paved strip lined with umbrellaed tables.

These sun- and music-drenched cities of the Spanish-speaking peoples are addictive, though of course I am here in Barcelona on an ideal weekend.

1.30am, Saturday, August 15, in bed ....perfect

It is a beautiful warm night in late-summer Barcelona and the Festa Major de Gracia is on. I don't think I could have had a more Barcelona experience than I have had this first night in this cheery city.

1. I rode into town on the back of a motor scooter.

2. I saw a parade. It had drummers and sparkler-like fireworks spewing with loud bangs from huge twirling contraptions. It was like a movie parade.

3. I wandered the alley-like streets of the Gracia neighbourhood, ambling in street-filling crowds under the colourful canopies of a neighbourhood festival.

4. I ate tapas.

5. I drank cheap glasses of beer mixed with lemonade while standing in the streets listening to Spanish music that made me want to jump up and down with dancing pleasure.

The draw of the Gracia festival is the street-decorating competition, whereby residents use recycled materials to deck out their streets according to theme. One street - the one that usually wins, R tells me - created a medieval mead hall, complete with a 'stone' castle entrance made from newspaper-stuffed frames, walls lined with various coats of arms, and wonderful paper chandeliers emanating plastic-gel flames.

One street was themed Japanese, with paper and foam cherry blossom trees, a sand garden and a colourful canopy of dangling origami dragons and plastic lotus flowers. Another street had plastic disks hanging from the canopy, first in shades of peaches and pinks, then blues and purples, greens and yellows. It was simple and very beautiful.

Two streets had autumn/Halloween/Carnivale themes, with orange leaves and black bats, while another canopied its blocks with papie-mache autumn branches, another simple and effective design. There was also a woodland sprite street, complete with a large papier-mache fairy statue kneeling above a fountain.

These streets, mind you are packed. You slither through the bodies of people that cover entire streets, inching your way from one block to another.

With R, I ate tapas (in Spain!), sitting at the bar/counter. We had potato in a garlicky mayonnaise and mushrooms coated with garlic, oil and parsley. Delicious.

Later in the evening I couldn't resist dancing to the strains of a Carribean-inflected band at the end of a street. The street wasn't so crowded, the night, I suppose, being still very young. I found myself dancing alone next to a purple-spectacled girl with short curly hair and a pink sundress. I was drawn to her, also dancing alone, and we shared smiles. I wanted to know her and finally talked to me. She spoke English. I'm sure we would have been great friends!

Barcelona is full of a diversity of people decked out in a variety of styles. Everyone (young people) looks great, be they hippy, funky, professional or street.

I would have liked to dance longer - and if I was here with MS or S we'd be dancing all night, I'm sure - but R was hot and not into dancing, so I only danced for 15 minutes or so.

Wonderful!

7.35pm, Friday August 14, Terminal 7 ....at last

I am on the road again! It is very welcome. I had a day of sleeping in, laundry and wrestling with Auunt K's computer and scanner. But the sun came out in the afternoon; I had my last piece of NY pizza.

Yesterday, before heading to Bronxville on Metro North, I bought an arepa con queso from a Columbian cafe in Woodside and chatted a little bit of Spanish to the waitress. The arepa was delicious and very filling. I wasn't hungry again until late in the afternoon, which found me in Bronxville with L, J and baby L, all also starving. We found a deli, where I had a great, sweet bread pudding and a knish with mustard. Not a real knish unfortunately, but the square kind sold on the street. I never did get to Yonah Schimmel's knishes this visit. I have just finished a pumpernickel bagel, however.

Just before, the news had a feature on the Australian healthcare system, highlighting how Australia’s tax-funded healthcare costs less of the Australian GDP than America’s private systems costs the American GDP. Australians live longer and are happier with their care than Americans. About time we start hearing that kind of rhetoric. Though the story did add that 42% of Australians also have private insurance, attributing it to avoiding long waits and choosing a surgeon of one’s own rather than Howard's tax levy.

2.45am, Friday August 14, ....Aunt K’s

It is the end of my last night in New York, America. I had a great time - S joined Aunt K, her husband K and I for dinner and then S and I went for a sing at Marie’s Crisis piano bar.

What I still love about New York: the amount of people on the train to Queens at 2am. At 1.30am French Roast cafe was still serving food and coffee to a good amount of people. Yesterday a man gave me his Metrocard when he saw me trying to top-up my card. I used his card for the rest of the day.

Today I spent several hours with L, J, and their new son. I finally saw their living quarters in Yonkers, which they have been in almost since I’ve been in Australia, said hi to L’s dad, sister and neices, walked around downtown White Plains (where I grew up) and visited A at work. S and L are very excited about how White Plains has changed, but I still find it a completely uninteresting place, though the area where L and J might be moving to is a nice neighbourhood with a mixture of houses, a part of town I’d never had cause to be before.

Tonight Aunt K and I took K to his first Indian meal and the waiters were excited to recommend things to him. They even brought out a little cup of mango lassi for him to try. We had poori, that great puff of thin-fried bread so astonishing on first encounter.

Marie’s Crisis was a bit of a disappointment. The crowd was singing showtunes that S and I didn’t know. There was hardly any Les Miserables. I’m not up on good old classics like Hello Dolly! And Gypsy. Nor have I seen anything recent. So my repetoire is sadly lacking. S has the same problem.

1.00am, Thursday August 13, Aunt K’s ....blissful

It is blissful to be back with a good, beautiful friend in a big city with lovely warm evenings. Being with S gives me energy.

Thanks to my parents I had enough money to enjoy a pricey dinner and $30 bottle of wine in SoHo with S - also due to my stinginess in South America and the excellent exchange rate between the American and Aussie dollar.

S and I put our names into the lottery for Hair on Broadway but we didn’t win $25 tickets. We trundled over to the TKTS stand but the tickets were $90 a person. We stood on a corner with a village Voice searching for movies to see but didn’t find any we particularly wanted see, so we walked around SoHo, found a Korean restaurant and cocktail bar, and got in five minutes before the close of Happy Hour for our $5/6 cocktails.

I had a white peach flavoured coktail and S a lime and jalepeno one. Both delicious. The bartender was young and chatty and he told us a bit about New York history, the Chinatown wars between the Chinese and … that the police let go due to lack of language skills. Also the prevention of a major highway through the Village due to community activism.

S and I talked about Anmerica, politics, boys, sex, personal frustration and change, friendship, all kinds of interesting and engaging things. It is also nice to walk again. My heavy backpack turns out not to be so burdensome after all and I jetted through Times Square, dodging through crowds, not because I was in a hurry but so that I didn’t have to break the rhythm of moving.

6.15pm, Sunday August 10 ....porch

My mom is indirect. She doesn't say, 'When are you planning on having dinner ready?', but 'We're starving.' Or she'll say, 'I'm hoping Rachel doesn't want to do anything for the next few days because I'm exhausted'. My first response, the one that mostly stays in my head, is hostile: 'Well, eat, then.' Or, 'I didn't ask you to entertain me'. This must be how I developed my well-honed sense of sarcasm. N responds to Mom similarly. Given I am so much like my mother I probably have the same problem of indirectness, so a new goal: say things politely - or, just, say what you mean, don't imply it.

Being on a family holiday seems to make Dad more demonstrative to Mom. He kept taking her hand in Boston. Lovely.

Yesterday, after a morning when N had to throw our parents out of the tiny hotel room because they weren't leaving on their own accord to give us space and privacy, we finally all packed up and left.

After leaving the hotel we walked through the ubiquitous Quincy Market. Dad and I decided to go to the aquarium together, Mom and N walked and shopped. I finished my deli tub of marinated mushrooms while waiting on the long, traffic-guided ticket line to the aquarium, and when Dad and I finally made it into the exhibits the exorbitant ticket fee was worth it. While on line we caught a glimpse of the sea lions, and the first exhibit inside is the penguins, endlessly fascinating, playful and cute to watch.

The phosphorescent, large-lipped and expressive-faced fish were a wonder, and I also enjoyed finding tiny camoflauged frogs, watching corals float in the water, and especially loved a tent of transparent small jellyfish with trails of lacy tenatcles and long, long threads. They were exceptionally beautiful and delicate creatures.

After meeting back up with Mom and N, we all, starving, tried to find a nice place for lunch, but we were walking through the business district on a Saturday, so no open restaurants. Finally we found an open cafe, and though it had no ambiance to speak of, it did have decent cheap food. I enjoyed a goat's cheese, fresh basil and pesto foccacia sandwich.

We then walked back to the central gardens. I kept walking, circling the park, while everyone else sat in the sun. Finally Dad decided it was time to go. He took a different route back to NY, one that involved getting lost and frustrated again. It was a much prettier route through rural New Hampshire.

The past Wednesday and Thursday I spent in New Hampshire with L, a work colleauge from my Ellery Queen days. We met up in Woodstock, where she and Mom communed over kintting, and then L drove me to her old, odd and characterful house. She and her husband J had finished putting antique-blue floor to ceiling bookshelves on one wall of the dining room and the house had a half-furnished, just moved-in look even though they'd been there for 4 years. Wood-floored, the large kitchen had a severely sloping floor that led to a screened-in porch with table and benches as well as chairs and coffee table - a lovely spot.

Upstairs had one very large bedroom and another smaller bedroom off an adjoining front room, a strange design. Their cat, a fat tabby, took to me and allowed me to pet her, whereas usually, according to L, she swats visitors. We spent Thurs evening at a meeting of L's book group (not as good as the group we were all in together in NYC - I still miss that group!) and drove to Hanover on Friday to meet Mom and her friend E after a morning of kayaking between the shores of Dartmouth College.

12.11am, Friday August 7, bed at Boston Mariott ....closer than necessary

I am writing in the bed that I will be sharing with my mother and sister in our little room at the Marriott. Dad is in a cot bed at our side. I guess I came home to be near my family... I use the opportunity to bond with N.

I knew that driving here and finding the hotel was going to involve my Dad stressing and my mom exacerbating his stress by trying to help. It was sweet, though, how as soon as we picked up N, Dad was more laidback, as if driving around Boston was exactly what he wanted to be doing.

The four of us spent a couple of hours walking around the park, the Beacon Hill area, and the river. Beacon Hill is lovely old brick rowhouses with bay windows, sometimes copper roofing, window boxes of geraniums and cobbled sidewalks. It is the first part of Boston I have really liked and is, of course, the most expensive bit.

We then walked to a building of art spaces and looked at the work in several studios - wire sculptures of cats, women, animals and people; oil paintings using images from old photographs; landscapes; abstract paintings. We had a nice patio meal outside at a fancier sort of restaurant than I am used to - $20-26 for mains. I had a nice plate of gnocchi with a fancy cheese I've never heard of, corn, and peas. We also shared zucchini fritters, teumpura-like ,and I had a ginger shandy - wheat ale, ginger beer, lemon and mint.

Afer filling our stomachs my family went to see Funny People. It amuses me that we go all the way to another city to watch a movie, but this is normal for us. I guess it saves trying to figure out something else we all want to do. Free Shakespeare in the park was the first suggestion but I really don't like Comedy of Errors so I voted no on that one. Funny People was very good, though - I laughed and laughed. We laughed more than the rest of the full theatre because we understood all the joking at the expense of Australians. For example, the scene where they are watching a rugby league game and Adam Sandler's character says, 'Where are the black guys?' Mom, N and I were hysterical.

7.00pm Saturday August 1, my parents' porch ....bugs

It is still light and warm here in upstate New York. I've awoken from a nap. Today Dad and I went for a picnic and a game of miniature golf. Dad made falafels and yoghurt dip this morning; Mom made her mother's Russian eggplant dip; I chopped up some tomato. We ate our middle-eastern lunch at Lock 9-C, where we watched a tall yacht and its four sailors rise up on the water and pass through the iron gate on their way to Chesapeake Bay.

I chose a circle of sunlight in a dappled field of trees for the site of our feast, and Dad and I leisurely ate. Afterwards we walked a bit, but we did not find any paths through the woods, so our exercise was short-lived. Instead we drove off to eat ice-cream in Granville before dropping by C's to see if her children wanted to join us for mini-golf. They didn't.

I had an excellent game of golf for the first half, mostly making par and hitting my shots just right, winning against my father. Once the course started to get fancy, with hills and passageways and shoots, my skills were outmoded. Dad and I tyed, both 9 over par.

Yesterday was a lazy day at home spent listening to the driving rain. Mom and I got out for a walk in the evening when the rain let up but it was mostly unpleasant: bug-filled, with my socks drooping and bunching down my heel in Mom's sneakers. As I said to Dad earlier today, bugs should be an adventure, not a lifestyle. I can barely stand visiting here, let alone image how I could live here amongst the mosquitos, deer flies, Lyme's-diseased ticks and wasps. But everyone's cottage gardens are blooming thickly, so that's something.