How do you spell home comforts? C-o-l-d.

I arrived in Bogotá, the capital of Colombia, yesterday afternoon. I came straight from Cartagena on a bus trip that was supposed to last a casual 20 hours but due to standard delays (traffic, guerillas) was actually 25 hours long.

The journey doesn't make it into my top 5 all'time worst bus trips list. That list is dominated by north Indian buses in 2003. Peter and Gergely, if they are reading, will know what I mean. However, at times the bus's "entertainment" did threaten to push it up into the hall of fame of worst bus journeys. There were Spanish-dubbed DVDs: Rush Hour 3 (astonishingly, the second time I have half-watched this on a bus in the past two weeks), I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry (few laughs in English, very few laughs in Spanish), and Die Hard 4.0 (I was asleep). Throughout all these movies and all night long the driver played his music at the front of the bus. It ranged from Latin pop, to salsa, to merengue, to vallenato, to Latin rock. I didn't enjoy this - particularly at 3am when all I had brought with me on the bus in terms of music was The Stroke's Is This It? (I listened to it approximately 5 times). What I appreciated even less, though, was the bunch of Colombians near the back of the bus who had brought their own instruments and spent most of the journey looking for any excuse to start playing and singing. They played an impromptu concert at first light at 5.30am - over the sound of the driver's tunes. I was not amused.

It reminded me of a line I read in the Lonely Planet last week:

How do you spell "life" in South America? M-u-s-i-c. Without it, life would grind to a halt.

To which my immediate thought was: How do you spell lazy, stupid cliché...?

Anyway, what did I think of to take my mind off the constant blairing away of "South American life"? The old continent. E-u-r-o-p-e.

I thought a little of winter Saturday mornings in London and Edinburgh. (Something I have consciously missed in recent weeks. Bacon sandwiches; grey skies; long coats; Saturday Guardian or Sun; the Premier League, the FA Cup or even the Six Nations on the TV.) But for some reason, on that bus journey up into the Colombian mountains, I thought mostly of other parts of the old world that exist in my memory. September in Vienna. April in Hamburg. February in Turin. Summer in Budapest. A late August morning in Munich. Autumn in Warsaw. June in Paris, and November in Paris, and January in Paris.

I don't know why this was in my head. Maybe it was partly because I was finishing off Vassily Grossman's Life and Fate. But mainly my theory is that - 86 days away from home - I'm not exactly homesick but I would enjoy something a bit nearer to home. Streets that don't smell of sewage or trash (Santa Marta and Getsemani, Cartagena - stand up). Reliable pavements. Reliable pastries ("Oh that looks nice and sweet. It'll go perfectly with a cup of coffee! ... Oh, it's full of cheese, you say. And that's salt, not sugar, on the top. Never mind.") Good food. (Something I have been severly disappointed by since Mexico. Apparently it won't get better until Argentina. Hard times.) And some European weather.

So I am loving what I have seen of Bogotá so far. Driving into the centre from the north and west it actually looks like Eastern Europe! I never thought I'd be so pleased to see concrete tower blocks and grey and red pavements.

And the cold. How I love the cold. Last night I was wearing a T-shirt, sweater and scarf just sitting in the hostel (having my first proper English conversation in a good week and a half too. Home comforts.) I went to bed under two blankets and a sheet, inside my sleeping bag, wearing a T-shirt and boxers and slept like a baby after my musical mystery tour from Cartagena. Admittedly, my first hot shower in over a month this morning was a 90-second let-down, but after a long time without experiencing anything below 25 degrees centigrade, the weather here is great.

It's a lovely, grey, chilly Sunday; I've already managed to get hold of a bowl of cornflakes and I'm wearing my jacket. Time to stop blogging and go explore my "home" of the next few days.

New Look!

I've attempted to make this page less painful to look at... and removed the now-defunct "disclaimer". What do you think?! Here at James's America I value your feedback and hope to make your web-surfing experiemce an enjoyable one... etc BTW, I can't seem to find a better colour for the main heading.

Without prejudice

I know there are some people out there who are looking forward to a neat, historical account of my trek through the jungle, revealing some of the interesting tit-bits I learnt about Matthew Scott's kidnapping, and probably telling various amusing and disgusting stories about snakes, spiders and mosquitoes. But those people will have to wait (for a few days anyway).

Instead, you can chew on this, a half-baked, half-arsed treatise-cum-rant on a subject that has been floating around my head without reaching any neat conclusions, which, if you ask me, is what blogging really should be about anyway:

***

Travelling on your own teaches you a few things about the world and a lot of things about yourself. In the past couple of weeks I have come to realize just how much I can enjoy my own company – it’s scary how long I can go without feeling the need to get away from the internal monologue – and I have reflected on one of my main dislikes in life – prejudice.

I think what started me off on my reflections on prejudice was when a top English bloke I went trekking with told me how pleasantly surprised by me he had been. He said he’d initially expected that I would not be good craic – but in the end we got on very well. I didn’t want to pry him on this subject any more than I did, but I was left wondering: what was the initial prejudice he had against me that made him assume I would be boring?

It might have been:

1. the standard prejudice against middle-class southern English people (I have this prejudice myself. Posh twats.)
2. or the standard prejudice against solo travelers. (I have this prejudice myself. Fucking wierdos.)

Even though I probably would make the same snap judgment about myself, if I were in someone else’s shoes (draw your own conclusions about how these prejudices of mine are against people like me), it really irritated me that he had initially made a negative judgment about me.

I think this is because there is one kind of prejudice that no human being can stand. Like everyone, I have my own hierarchy of which prejudices are least acceptable (for me it goes – in reverse order of acceptability – racial, then national, then religious, then class. For some, I’m sure class will come first. Other racially sensitive souls might look the other way on a bit of religious bigotry etc etc.) but there is one kind of prejudice that is absolutely the worst and least acceptable of all: prejudice against me.

This is very relevant to being in Latin America for an extended period of time. The resentment towards gringos can be staggering at times – making unprecedented levels of rudeness quite standard. Of course, not everyone is like that, and some people are just arseholes: they are rude to everyone. But at times it does get me down that I am being treated badly because of how my racial ancestors from a country to the north of here have tended to abuse and look down on the peoples of this continent and culture.

It does annoy me – but I don’t want to get on my high-horse about it. I’m as susceptible to prejudice as anyone else. (Cf my two prejudices above, which morph into a blind bigotry when I overhear middle-class southern English solo-travellers…. “What? How dare he intrude on my trip!? He can’t possibly be appreciating this continent as much as I am! Oh, thank God, he can hardly speak Spanish. I’m better than him… It’s OK.”) Anyone who pretends to be above prejudice is undoubtedly an even bigger wanker than the many millions of decent human beings who happen to have the nasty habit of routinely judging people on the spot, based on what their religious/racial/national antecedents did 50/250/2000 years ago.

I’ll always remember the period around late 2006, when The Observer columnist Nick Cohen (pictured) used to have attached to his masthead the tagline “Without prejudice”. This was such a ludicrous, grotesquely pretentious conceit that I enjoyed having a mental argument against Mr Cohen every week when picking up the main section of The O. Of course, he saw sense after just a few weeks and removed his tagline – much to my disappointment.

Anyway, I’m continuing to travel, continuing to broaden my mind and continuing to meet new people, some of whom are undermining my own prejudices about solo-travelers, Spaniards etc, whilst some small kernels of prejudice remain… the fight is never over.

"Hablas muy bien español!"

Today I am back in Santa Marta, on the Caribbean coast of Colombia, after a couple of days in Valledupar, a city a few hours inland from here.

I had planned by now to be on the second day of a six-day trek to la Ciudad Perdida (aka The Lost City - aka the sight of Matthew Scott's infamous kidnapping in 2003 - don't worry - security has improved drastically since) but the trek has been delayed basically because my Irish friend Jenny and her mates were still on their way here from Cartagena. So, at a loose end for the weekend, I decided to take up an offer from a Colombian girl I had met on a bus last week to visit Valledupar. I made this choice largely because of (not in spite of) the fact that Valledupar gets not one word of mention in my Lonely Planet guidebook. Not one. And it has a population about the size of Edinburgh.

My choice was rewarded by an authentic couple of Colombian days. Previously (Wednesday, Thursday, Friday morning) I had been in Taganga, a tiny village stuffed to the brim with western backpackers and - I would estimate - more budget hostel space than the whole of Edinburgh. In Valledupar I saw not one westerner. Not one. Even in the "touristy bits", which included - amongst no others - a pretty river and an impressively large main square.

I was quite pleased too to spend the whole time talking in Spanish with my new friend Jessica, her mates and the family she was living with.

For the past month and a half I have been - depending on the people I meet - varying between days of speaking almost entirely English, days of speaking entirely Spanish, and days of hardly speaking at all. (Estimated respective distribution: 50-35-15%).

I've found that my level of spanish in this time has oscillated considerably. Some days (or hours) my tongue feels completely tied and I make tons of mistakes and forget words. Other hours (or days) it all flows off the tongue readily and I have no difficulty. In general, though, my level has dropped quite a bit from the high of 2003. I have forgotten some words; I hear myself making mistakes but can't avoid them in time; I speak a bit slower on the whole; Colombian Spanish is tricky for me to understand.

The measuring stick for how well I speak is how often people complement me on my spanish. The more I hear "You speak very good Spanish" the worse I am speaking. If I'm not complemented at all, I know I'm on good form.

This rule of thumb rests on the following assumption: you only complement someone on their language if they a) speak to an acceptable level and b) sound like they need encouragement. If someone simply speaks a language, there is no need for you to remark on it, beyond perhaps: "Where did you learn to speak Spanish?"

I was pleased that over the course of the weekend and several hours' conversation, only once did I get the "Hablas muy bien!" treatment, and once I was able to pass as a native of Bogotá to a cab driver in order to keep the cost of the fare down. (Admittedly Jessica did almost all the talking in the cab.)

I've now set myself up to be vaguely studious with my Spanish, after the past weeks of simply staying still with it, practising but not improving. I'm reading García Márquez (the price which I haggled down with an elderly bookshop owner in a part-excahnge deal. After our chat about South American literature, he even commented on the irony of a white man negotiating a deal with a Colombian to save a few pesos on the cost of a Márquez novel. A classic moment which I'm only faintly ashamed of) and I'm making notes on the words I don't know.

But still, in keeping with the rythms that have built up in my trip of the last two months, I'm looking forward to a few days of just English. Yin and Yang.

November 11

Here in Colombia, November 11 marks the indepedence of the city of Cartagena from Spain. And what better way could there be of marking this historic occasion than the Miss Colombia contest, which concludes this Friday? (Sadly I have now moved on from Cartagena, as I felt I couldn't justify chilling out there for than than the week I had already spent. So I will miss the major Miss Colombia events. But I did see the beauty queens at least once, at a go-kart race organised by Juan Pablo Montoya, the Colombian Formula One driver.)

November 11 is also a national holiday in all of Colombia (or at least the nearest Monday is, or something. It's hard to tell when a day is a holiday in a country like Colombia, which combines the lazy Latin/Caribbean stereotype with the trademark Third-World work ethic - shops are open all day, all the time.)

In Cologne, Germany, November 11 marks the beginning of the carnival period, which concludes in February with Ash Wednesday. In fact, der Kölner Karneval begins at 11.11am on 11/11.

Meanwhile, in the UK, 11am on 11/11 is a time for sober reflection of Armistice Day. I believe the same date is Veterans Day in the USA.

I've often wondered how some Brits would react, learning that a bunch of Krauts are using the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month to mark the beginning of several months' festivites and debauchery. Now I learn that a whole load of Spics over this side of the Caribbean are holding a beauty contest to mark the most sombre day in the offical calendar of the USA and also Her Majesty's Commonwealth....

It reminds me of how I've always thought that us Brits are missing out big time when it comes to Shrove Tuesday/Ash Wednesday. In New Orleans they have Mardi Gras, in Rio de Janeiro they have Carnival, in Britain we have... pancakes.

Safe and sound in, er, Colombia

So I managed to enter Cartagena de Indias OK without an onward ticket.

In fact, at the eleventh hour in Cancún (well, about 9pm on Monday) I met an Argentine who showed me how to make a free flight reservation just to calm my nerves. But then they didn't ask me anything when I got to Cartagena, despite what I would call a shaky performance at immigration. ( I always get so nervous).

They did, however, thouroughly search my bag at customs - but only because when I pressed the button that randomly shows a red or a green light*, it came up red. Obviously I used up my good luck at immigration. No complaints there.

*The same thing had happened coming through Tijuana on October 1 - to both me and Sam who I was travelling with. (Very bad luck apparently). The guy at the desk said how annoyed he was with this new system of button-pressing. It meant he had to search good fellas like Sam and me and left him unable to discriminate, he explained, nodding towards a bandanna-wearing Mexican walking past us. In the end he gave our bags only the most perfunctory search immaginable. I could have been carrying a small nuclear detonator and 5kg of cocaine and he would not have noticed.

The customs officer here in Cartagena was sincere but sympathetic. I got a laugh for my hip-flask of Tequila and kid's cricket bat and was on my way after about 7 minutes.

Low- and higher-stakes gambling

Today is my last day in Mexico. I spent it as I had always planned to: on the white-sanded, Caribbean beaches of Cancún. It was a nice day and I took another small step towards evening out my farmer's tan. (Still many steps on that path. I may never make it to the end.) But I must say that after my third trip through Mexico, having taken in a broad sweep of the country from north to south, I am really underwhelmed by the Yucantan Peninsula. Mérida was nice, but the Caribbean Coast is very much the American Costa del Sol. Beautiful beaches, gorgeous weather, and no need to trouble yourself with local food, currency, customs or language. For a "hardcore", adoptive tapatío/mexicano like me, it just isn't right. The parallels with the Costa del Sol even extend to the fact that both areas were deveolped at the behest of non-democratic governments in the 60s/70s. I like my American history to go back at least 60 years....

Anyway, having given myself a fair bit of time around the Peninsula, a couple of times I found myself at a bit of a loose end as to what I should do. Embracing the freedom of not knowing where I might sleep the next night, and in keeping with my mini-philosophy about the randomness of life and how often decisions needn't be mulled over, I found myself tossing a coin a couple of times to decide where to go next. The coin came up tails both times and, as a result, I have still not been to Chichén Itzá, the most famous Mayan ruins in the peninsula. Instead I have been to Izamal ("The Yellow City"'s yellowness was - as far as I could see - it's only notable quality) and tiny Puerto Morelos (very pretty, almost as quiet as I was hoping).

But today I'm deciding to gamble for slightly higher stakes. Technically, to enter Colombia I need an onward ticket out of the country, or at least South America. I don't have one, and I've decided to risk it, in order to save the cash I would otherwise have to shell out (the pound isn't doing so well, after all) and retain full flexibility.

The (rather flimsy) evidence I have gathered suggests that border officials in Colombia rarely bother about the onward ticket or the evidence of sufficient funds (which I do plan to have covered if necessary) but still, my next blog post will either be coming from sunny Colombia (the first South American, and the first equatorial country I've ever visited - exciting!) or perhaps a detention centre in Miami.

The question I will have to ask myself, waking up at 3.45am tomorrow, is: do I feel lucky....?