An Erratic Traveller
Gillian Perrett Joined: April 23rd 2008
Logged in: January 6th 2012
Logged in: January 6th 2012
Random trips made during an erratic life.
Travel Blog Posts
Nagasaki Ten days weren’t enough to show us all of Japan, but it was enough to explode a lot of stereotypes. Japan has so much to offer that ten days seemed almost an insult, even with first-rate travel professionals to organise the trip. We saw a lot: houses … gardens … temples … galleries … shopping centres … public transport. I quickly let go of a number of inappropriate assumptions I’d taken with me. Here goes ... Japan is different from the rest of Asia. Wrong in an important way. It is no more different that all countries are different. Being away from the mainland has encouraged the country to hold onto its traditions. If anything sets it apart, it is that it is fully developed. And that was my first insight: that SE Asian development isn’t ... read more
Quito The taxi drive asked $2 above the normal fare to take me to the airport. Even so, he was still reluctant to drive through a burning roadblock. "Don't go into the city centre," my friend had warned me earlier that morning. "The criminal classes will be having a field day with the Police and Security Services on strike. The army's closed the airport as well." I hung around at the bottom of our street hoping to see what was going on. The city was alternatively unusually quiet and unusually noisy by turns. I didn't know how to read these signs. "Always confront an emergency with a full stomach," I thought. I popped into the closest restaurant that offered a three-course lunch for $1.50. The soup was a thick broth with lumps of yucca and a large ... read more
Isla Santa Cruz Charles Darwin spent five weeks in the Galapagos in 1835. He wrote in his diary, "Nothing could be less inviting than the first appearance. A broken field of black basaltic lava, thrown into the most rugged waves, and crossed by great fissues, is every where covered by stunted, sunburnt brushwood, which shows little signs of life." Darwin got it right. The Galapagos is not your usual tropical paradise. Palm trees do not fringe beaches, and the beaches don´t have spa-warm waters. There are no sunbathing chairs and no waiters bringing sundowners. Of course there is no trace of Darwin´s visit other than the research station named in his honour and his face smiling out of many of the T shirts hanging off the souvenir stalls. So what makes the Galapagos special? There is its history. Many ... read more
Riohacha The Caribbean coast dances to a different rhythm. And dance it does. From the moment we arrived in Riohacha we heard salsa music everywhere. At the end of our street was a general store-cum-bar, with loud music blasting out of it all day and much of the night. On the beach icecream vendors set up a couple of small ice chests with a couple of extra-large speakers. Music moved around us as cars drove by. And it was hot. Riohacha is an untouristed town, a relaxed tropical spot where the locals move slowly and take their relaxation seriously. Everyone moves towards the beach in the evening for the music, the sea breezes, a swim, icecream and a beer. Craftworkers set up their wares on the pavement, hoping to attract customers in this onrush. It would be ... read more
Mirador a las Cabñas Indichuris An earthquake woke me my first morning in Baños. It would have been much more exciting if I hadn´t thought it was the guy in the bunk above me rolling over! Baños is situated on the side of a volcano, a reminder that Ecuador is a very new country and still rising with as the Andes rise. I never saw the volcano Tungurahua: the town is too close to the foot of the mountain. Even when I took a night trip, slated to go to the volcano, I saw nothing. We got a view of the town in the dark, a bonfire, and the chance to buy kebabs from a barbque. Perhaps the driver chickened out. Quiteños flock to Baños for weekends and holidays to take the cure. Baños means bath and the baths in ... read more
Punta Gallinas After two weeks in the city and days on rollercoaster roads in the cloud forests, what better antidote than a spot of ecotourism in the desert? And if it includes a visit to an ethnic minority, then so much the better! La Guajira is a peninsular that juts north into the Caribean Ocean around the border between Colombia and Venezuela. What particular microclimate has produced this desert surrounded by jungle I don´t understand, but I do know that it contains a small area where a mountain range rises out of the desert and and sustains its own cloud forest with fresh water streams that run down into the desert and dry up. We found Kaí Ecotravel in the Lonely Planet, phoned, and booked a tour without paying a deposit. Thus we flew from chilly Bogotá to ... read more
La Candelaria Colombia celebrated 200 years of independence while I was in Bogotá - with concerts, speeches and fireworks. The President opened a 100-year old time capsule. Bogotá, the guidebook assured me, had moved beyond its image of violence and drugs. But how to get to know a new city? Capitals are complex. They are extensive. They have long histories. They reflect the different regions and the politics inside their countries. All these things are true of Bogotá, a city about which I hardly knew even the clichés. Bogotá has over 8.5 million people, and 10% of them earn 80 times more than the poorest 10%. Yes, eighty times! But this would be more confronting to the visitor if the poverty were not mainly confined to certain enclaves. Bogotá is a city of culture, with museums of history ... read more
Medellín There's an awful lot of coffee in Columbia. So we'd heard, and decided to head straight to the Zona Caferia from Medellín, our port of entry from Ecuador. Medellín is a read brick and tile city surrounded by mountains that provide a deep green backdrop. The road from the airport to the city winds through rich agricultural country with comfortable farms and and commercial nurseries. The city was once the centre for the cocaine trade. The obvious reminder of violence past is the large number of security personnel in evidence. It is now a safe place to visit and has diversified its economy, which is clearly continuing to thrive. Civic pride is apparent everywhere, from the almost sparkling new metro system to the space given to formal artworks (including its most famous citizen Fernando Boltero) and ... read more
Pucará I CLOSE the assemblage of barbed wire and rough poles that does duty for a gate and join the neighbours' children at the roadside. While I´m exchanging morning greetings with Doña Consuela, a camioneta comes along; she shepherds all of us up onto the truck floor. I am among a gaggle of primary school kids and three of the oldest people I´ve ever seen. One has rheumy eyes. On is bent over like an inverted L. The third is so frail he could vanish in front of my eyes. On the way we pass los orsos waiting for their bus. They´re not bears, just ¨bear volunteers¨ known as "los gringos de los orsos, the bear volunteers." They pay US$600 a month to live in a house in the village and participate in the Andean Bear Research ... read more
Otavalo Estoy en Otavalo. ¿Dónde estas? Yes I'm in Otavalo. And it's high in the Andes in northern Ecuador, just north of the equator, not far from the border with Columbia in Latin America. Elevation is 2560m. Altitude sickness has kicked in; yet it is a new world for me and immensely exciting. Strangely, my Spanish has improved since I left Argentina last October, but it will need to get much better before I can understand anything much about the culture here. Except that the people are friendly and welcome strangers. It is a textile centre, with a very busy craft market that attracts tourists from all over the country. It's best for a newcomer to let the pictures speak for themselves. ¿Como viajé aquí? A twenty-two hour flight, Sydney - Auckland - Santiago - Quito delivered ... read more
Nagasaki
Ten days weren’t enough to show us all of Japan, but it was enough to explode a lot of stereotypes. Japan has so much to offer that ten days seemed almost an insult, even with first-rate travel professionals to organise the trip. We saw a lot: houses … gardens … temples … galleries … shopping centres … public transport. I quickly let go of a number of inappropriate assumptions I’d taken with me. Here goes ... Japan is different from the rest of Asia. Wrong in an important way. It is no more different that all countries are different. Being away from the mainland has encouraged the country to hold onto its traditions. If anything sets it apart, it is that it is fully developed. And that was my first insight: that SE Asian development isn’t ... read more
Quito
The taxi drive asked $2 above the normal fare to take me to the airport. Even so, he was still reluctant to drive through a burning roadblock. "Don't go into the city centre," my friend had warned me earlier that morning. "The criminal classes will be having a field day with the Police and Security Services on strike. The army's closed the airport as well." I hung around at the bottom of our street hoping to see what was going on. The city was alternatively unusually quiet and unusually noisy by turns. I didn't know how to read these signs. "Always confront an emergency with a full stomach," I thought. I popped into the closest restaurant that offered a three-course lunch for $1.50. The soup was a thick broth with lumps of yucca and a large ... read more
Isla Santa Cruz
Charles Darwin spent five weeks in the Galapagos in 1835. He wrote in his diary, "Nothing could be less inviting than the first appearance. A broken field of black basaltic lava, thrown into the most rugged waves, and crossed by great fissues, is every where covered by stunted, sunburnt brushwood, which shows little signs of life." Darwin got it right. The Galapagos is not your usual tropical paradise. Palm trees do not fringe beaches, and the beaches don´t have spa-warm waters. There are no sunbathing chairs and no waiters bringing sundowners. Of course there is no trace of Darwin´s visit other than the research station named in his honour and his face smiling out of many of the T shirts hanging off the souvenir stalls. So what makes the Galapagos special? There is its history. Many ... read more
Riohacha
The Caribbean coast dances to a different rhythm. And dance it does. From the moment we arrived in Riohacha we heard salsa music everywhere. At the end of our street was a general store-cum-bar, with loud music blasting out of it all day and much of the night. On the beach icecream vendors set up a couple of small ice chests with a couple of extra-large speakers. Music moved around us as cars drove by. And it was hot. Riohacha is an untouristed town, a relaxed tropical spot where the locals move slowly and take their relaxation seriously. Everyone moves towards the beach in the evening for the music, the sea breezes, a swim, icecream and a beer. Craftworkers set up their wares on the pavement, hoping to attract customers in this onrush. It would be ... read more
Mirador a las Cabñas Indichuris
An earthquake woke me my first morning in Baños. It would have been much more exciting if I hadn´t thought it was the guy in the bunk above me rolling over! Baños is situated on the side of a volcano, a reminder that Ecuador is a very new country and still rising with as the Andes rise. I never saw the volcano Tungurahua: the town is too close to the foot of the mountain. Even when I took a night trip, slated to go to the volcano, I saw nothing. We got a view of the town in the dark, a bonfire, and the chance to buy kebabs from a barbque. Perhaps the driver chickened out. Quiteños flock to Baños for weekends and holidays to take the cure. Baños means bath and the baths in ... read more
Punta Gallinas
After two weeks in the city and days on rollercoaster roads in the cloud forests, what better antidote than a spot of ecotourism in the desert? And if it includes a visit to an ethnic minority, then so much the better! La Guajira is a peninsular that juts north into the Caribean Ocean around the border between Colombia and Venezuela. What particular microclimate has produced this desert surrounded by jungle I don´t understand, but I do know that it contains a small area where a mountain range rises out of the desert and and sustains its own cloud forest with fresh water streams that run down into the desert and dry up. We found Kaí Ecotravel in the Lonely Planet, phoned, and booked a tour without paying a deposit. Thus we flew from chilly Bogotá to ... read more
La Candelaria
Colombia celebrated 200 years of independence while I was in Bogotá - with concerts, speeches and fireworks. The President opened a 100-year old time capsule. Bogotá, the guidebook assured me, had moved beyond its image of violence and drugs. But how to get to know a new city? Capitals are complex. They are extensive. They have long histories. They reflect the different regions and the politics inside their countries. All these things are true of Bogotá, a city about which I hardly knew even the clichés. Bogotá has over 8.5 million people, and 10% of them earn 80 times more than the poorest 10%. Yes, eighty times! But this would be more confronting to the visitor if the poverty were not mainly confined to certain enclaves. Bogotá is a city of culture, with museums of history ... read more
Medellín
There's an awful lot of coffee in Columbia. So we'd heard, and decided to head straight to the Zona Caferia from Medellín, our port of entry from Ecuador. Medellín is a read brick and tile city surrounded by mountains that provide a deep green backdrop. The road from the airport to the city winds through rich agricultural country with comfortable farms and and commercial nurseries. The city was once the centre for the cocaine trade. The obvious reminder of violence past is the large number of security personnel in evidence. It is now a safe place to visit and has diversified its economy, which is clearly continuing to thrive. Civic pride is apparent everywhere, from the almost sparkling new metro system to the space given to formal artworks (including its most famous citizen Fernando Boltero) and ... read more
Pucará
I CLOSE the assemblage of barbed wire and rough poles that does duty for a gate and join the neighbours' children at the roadside. While I´m exchanging morning greetings with Doña Consuela, a camioneta comes along; she shepherds all of us up onto the truck floor. I am among a gaggle of primary school kids and three of the oldest people I´ve ever seen. One has rheumy eyes. On is bent over like an inverted L. The third is so frail he could vanish in front of my eyes. On the way we pass los orsos waiting for their bus. They´re not bears, just ¨bear volunteers¨ known as "los gringos de los orsos, the bear volunteers." They pay US$600 a month to live in a house in the village and participate in the Andean Bear Research ... read more
Otavalo
Estoy en Otavalo. ¿Dónde estas? Yes I'm in Otavalo. And it's high in the Andes in northern Ecuador, just north of the equator, not far from the border with Columbia in Latin America. Elevation is 2560m. Altitude sickness has kicked in; yet it is a new world for me and immensely exciting. Strangely, my Spanish has improved since I left Argentina last October, but it will need to get much better before I can understand anything much about the culture here. Except that the people are friendly and welcome strangers. It is a textile centre, with a very busy craft market that attracts tourists from all over the country. It's best for a newcomer to let the pictures speak for themselves. ¿Como viajé aquí? A twenty-two hour flight, Sydney - Auckland - Santiago - Quito delivered ... read more
