1999 Travel Diary

On Thursday 25th February '99 I departed from London Gatwick on a direct flight to Santiago de Chile. On the flight I was sitting next to a woman who was half Chilean and half French, and a Dutch guy married to a Chilean women. Within minutes off taking-off we were all chatting in a mixture of Spanish/French/English. I had a couple of glasses of wine and my heart lifted as I realized I was traveling once again!

I was met at the airport in Santiago my one of my Chilean mates and we caught a taxi into the city. The sun was shining and the grey weather of the English winter seemed far away! We went directly to my friends apartment which was in a really smart and central part of the city. The apartment had all the mod cons, a view of the main river and mountains, and was close to the metro line. My Chilean mate had thoughtfully arranged to take his two week annual vacation to coincide with my arrival.

We spent a couple of days arranging things in Santiago and then headed south. We spent 10 days visiting his friends and family, a couple of beaches and the city of Concepcion. We had a great time just relaxing, eating well and soaking up the good weather. Back in Santiago I got down to studying a little Spanish. It was certainly a challenge being totally immersed in Spanish, but I suppose it is the best way to learn a language! The autumn in Santiago was really pleasant with warm sunny days and cool evenings. I managed to convince the city library that I was a student, so I was able to use their Internet service free of charge. I was meant to be using the Internet for study and not for sending messages to my friends! I also managed to get a new International Student Identity Card - so I was officially a student again!

My 90 day Chilean tourist card expired on 26th May, so I bought a 45 day return ticket to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, leaving on that day! It was a really cheap ticket, but with a crazy routing via Bogotá, Colombia!  I spent a pleasant couple of weeks in Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro, enjoying the beach and hectic nightlife. The weather wasn't fantastic, but was very comfortable. The only hiccup was when two thieves jumped me while I was walking back to my hotel after a night out. One held a rather big knife to my throat, while the other searched my body for money. They were very through - I got quite nervous when they unfastened my jeans to look for hidden money. Luckily I only lost the money I had left in my pocket, about US$10! As it happened I had only walked home as I didn't have enough for a cab!

From Rio I caught an express bus north up to Salvador de Bahia - 28 hours! The city of Salvador was really interesting. Bahia is known as "Africa in Exile" as it is populated by descendants of the African slaves bought over to work the sugar plantations. The afro-Brazilian culture is famous for its fascination with music, dance and a distinct cuisine. The city also has some of the best colonial architecture in the whole of Latin America. I spent almost a week in Pelourinho, the famous historic sector of the city, and then began my journey south towards Rio. While in Salvador I managed to get free Internet access by building a website for the hostel I was staying at - www.elitenet.com.br/vagaus. I enjoyed my visit to Salvador de Bahia, but found the continue pressure from street sellers, drug pushers and prostitutes rather exhausting.

From Salvador I first took a ferry across to Isla Itaparica and spent a couple of days staying at the house of a Brazilian artist. Not being very into art myself, it was strange staying in the very arty house - of course I pretended to be totally absorbed! Next I took an express catamaran south to the beautiful island of Morro de Sao Paulo. This island was truly a tropical paradise and the weather was perfect. I spent a week on the island enjoying the beach, the excellent sea food and hanging out with some French guys that I met. From the island of Morro de Sao Paulo I traveled down to the Brazilian holiday resort of Porto Seguro. This place was packed with Brazilians trying to escape the winter of Sao Paulo. The beaches were beautiful and crammed with samba bars - it was certainly a sight seeing the Brazilians on holiday! They just can't stop dancing!

From Porto Seguro I returned to Rio de Janeiro, where I spent my final week in Brazil. The weather was good so I soaked up as much of the sun as possible, knowing that I would be returning to very cold weather in Santiago de Chile. The days on Copacabana Beach just slipped by - each day I would go down to the same section of the beach, do my pull-ups on the exercise bars and chat with the locals. Many of them seemed to just have slipped out of the west and were now retired in Rio, one of the guys was a friend of Ronnie Biggs!

On 8th July I left Rio bound for Santiago. The routing was crazy enough via Bogotá, but then we could not land in Santiago due to fog. The final routing was Rio - Sao Paulo - Bogotá - Córdoba - Buenos Aires - Santiago, quite an expedition. The return journey took 2 days, however, I did get a free night in a 5 star hotel in the center of Buenos Aires. Lucky enough the night I spent in Buenos Aires was the Argentinean Independence Day, so I had a fun time!

I arrived back in Santiago on the morning of 10th July - the weather was freezing! The night time temperatures were below zero, and in my hotel without any heating it felt like I was in the Antarctic! Normally I cursed carrying my sleeping bag, but now it was my savior! After much deliberation I decided that I would travel up towards northern Peru and Ecuador to escape the austral winter.

On 3rd August I took a direct bus to Arica, the most northerly town in Chile (30 hours from Santiago). After resting a couple of days I crossed the border into Peru and took another bus to Lima (22 hours). Despite everybody hating Lima, I managed to spend a pleasant week there! It is of course a big, noisy, dangerous Latin American city, but the people are really friendly when you give them a chance! I checked out the trendy sea front Barranco suburb as well as Miraflores.

After Lima I traveled a further 8 hours north to Trujillo, where I stayed at the nearby beach resort of Huanchaco. I spent almost two weeks in Huanchaco, as I had some people to look up who were friends of my friends in Santiago de Chile. I stayed at the same hostel that I had stayed at with Steve well over a year before and was quite surprised to find my picture up on the wall! The local specialty of Ceviche (raw fish) was another good reason to hang out in Huanchaco

Next I traveled to the historic city of Cajamarca in the northern Peruvian highlands. Cajamarca is where the Inca King Atahualpa was captured and executed by the Spanish. The city was very beautiful with some fine colonial architecture. I did a couple of interesting hikes in the area and spent some time wallowing in the famous hot springs (also used by the Incas).  From Cajamarca I took a 16 hour bus trip to Chachapoyas - certainly not a journey for the faint hearted! The single lane dirt road first climbed up over a pass of 4000m, descended to cross one of the major tributaries of the Amazon at 900m, and then ascended back up to the town of Chachapoyas at 2,400m. A lot of the time there were dramatic shear drops of over 1,000m - of course without any safety barriers!

The Chachapoyas region is quite "undiscovered", but contains spectacular pre-Inca ruins, beautiful mountain scenery and super friendly people. Until recently this area was out of bounds to the tourist due to problems with terrorists and drug traffickers, but now it is really peaceful. I visited the immense pre-Inca fortress of Kuelap, that is supposed to contain three times as much stone as the great pyramids of Giza in Egypt - it was certainly impressive! I also did a hike up to the recently discovered Karajia tombs, which were built into a steep cliff faces near to Chachapoyas. I hadn't realized just how out of shape I was, and I returned with some painful hiking blisters!

From Chachapoyas I quickly made my way up to the northern border of Peru. I crossed the border from Peru to Ecuador at a really peaceful crossing in the mountains. I had planned to take a 5 hour bus journey from the border to a town called Loja, and then to rest the night. However, I discovered there was a direct but to Quito leaving immediately, so I hopped aboard. I didn't realize that we would travel to Quito via the coast and the journey would be 18 hours. The length of the journey did not worry me, but I had read that it was not advisable to travel at night in the coastal region. Sure enough at 2.00am in the morning, when we were all sleeping, the bus was attacked by a group of thieves. They threw huge rocks at the bus and smashed two of the large side windows! The driver realized that the thieves were trying to stop the bus and so he put his foot down to get out of the dangerous town. You can imagine it was quite a shock to be awoken by the windows smashing around us and the driver accelerating!! Luckily we managed to get away without any further problems, except being freezing the rest of the night as we climbed over passes of over 3000m in a bus without windows on one side!

Ecuador was super cheap this time! I stayed in a good hotel in Quito for US$1.50; breakfast, lunch and dinner cost about US$0.75 each; I joined the gym at the Hilton hotel for $30 a month (Gym, jacuzzi, sauna, Turkish bath, heated outdoor swimming pool); and Internet cost only $0.50 per hour (including a drink). I was able to live a very comfortable life for less than US10 per day! Ecuador was in quite a severe economic crisis and things felt a little unstable.

After only one week the volcano Guagua Pichincha put an abrupt end to my amazingly cheap life of luxury. The volcano which is only 5km from the center of the city suddenly started to awaken. On Wednesday 29 October the city was showered with a fine, toxic, volcanic ash. I hadn't realized anything had happened, until I left the hotel and suddenly noticed that I was having difficulty in breathing and that my eyes were itching! The city was put on Orange Alert and the authorities advised that there was a 90% chance of an eruption! With out wasting any time I rushed back to my hostel, packed and caught the first bus north to Otavalo. Otavalo was a safe 100km north of the volcano. On 7th October there was a significant eruption and most of Quito was covered in the nasty volcanic ash - I was pleased to have escaped the main eruption!

I spent nearly three weeks in Otavalo waiting for the Guagua Pichincha to settle down. The city is renowned for its artisan works and it's traditional Andean music. I stayed at a little hostel run by a friendly family and I soon felt at home again!

I had a very pleasant time visiting the beautiful lakes of the region and enjoying the traditional Indian culture of the city. I also took the famous train journey from Ibarra down towards the coast. I rode on the roof of the single carriage 'Rail Bus', which descended from Ibarra at 2,500m to Rio Blanco at 700m. The spectacular trip took me through the heart of the Cotacahi-Cayapas National Park and included going through many tunnels and across bridges spanning the river canyon! I returned to Otavalo by hitching a ride on a huge logging truck - my Spanish certainly came in handy. I also visited the beautiful Cuicocha crater lake nearby to Otavalo. I went up to the crater lake with a group of friends including Bernardo a friend from Quito.

On 17th October I returned to Quito. Within a few days I was back to the luxurious and super cheap life style that I had been living before the eruption of Guagua Pichincha. Unfortunately, after a few days back in Quito I was attacked by a group of thieves. It was the middle of the afternoon, in a street with plenty of people, when I was suddenly surrounded and had my trousers slashed with a razor. The thieves were obviously trying to cut my pockets, but instead managed to slash my leg. Fortunately the wound was pretty shallow, but it was a good 3 inches long! I had to drop my trousers in the street and tie a bandanna around it to stop the bleeding - what fun! I lost nothing except a bit of blood, but it was quite an unpleasant experience!

The two volcanoes continued to threaten Ecuador for the remainder of the year. Tungurahua, some 125km south of Quito, continued to show a very high level of activity and kept the resort of Baños firmly closed to residents and tourists alike. The volcano next to Quito, Guagua Pichincha, continued to periodically shower the city in volcanic ash. It certainly seemed that the predicted end of the world would begin in Ecuador!

On Thursday 25th November there was another significant eruption of Guagua Pichincha. The volcano sent up a mushroom cloud 10km high and dumped 500,000 tones of volcanic ash over the city! When I awoke the following morning there was a 0.5cm layer of white ash covering everything. The city looked a little like it was covered in a dusting of snow - it felt as if Christmas had arrived early! The ash was pretty toxic so we were all forced to walk around with dust masks over our faces - of course the poor didn't seemed to be concerned about the damaging effects of the volcanic ash!

I continued to hang out in Quito spending my time using the Internet, visiting the gymnasium at the Hilton Hotel and socializing - tough life! There were regular showers of volcanic ash, but I got used to carrying my little mask around so this was not a great problem! The real problem was the rising levels of crime. It seemed to me that the majority of travelers that I met had been robbed. I took allot more care than usual - for example always returning to my hotel at night in a taxi - a little more expensive, but very necessary!

In early December Quito celebrated its foundation with the "Fiestas de Quito". There were many street parties, processions, bull fights, and these crazy buses called "Chivas" driving around the city blaring out music, full of partying locals! With people drunk and hanging on for their lives, it definitely wasn't something one would see in the western world!

On the 13 December I became the boss of the hotel that I was staying in! The owner decided to go to Mexico for a couple of weeks to visit his family in Puerto Vallarta, and left me to run the fort. I didn't really have to do any work except control the alarm systems and keep an eye on things - my type of job!

Just before Christmas I got together with a group of other travelers in my hotel and we went to one of the 'Rich peoples' supermarkets and bought lots of Xmas goodies! We had our Christmas dinner in my room - three tourists and three Ecuadorians. The dinner was surprisingly good, almost like one at home, and we washed it down with some great Chilean champagne! It was nice to spend Christmas where people were satisfied with a few treats as opposed to the normal excesses that are considered essential at home!

Paula, my girlfriend from Canada, arrived safely on 26th December as scheduled. We spent a couple of days exploring the historic center of the city and managed to climb one of the biggest virgins in Quito!! After Quito we headed down to the small town of Vilcabamba in southern Ecuador to celebrate the New Millennium. Vilcabamba is an idyllic little town famous for the longevity of the locals. Due to the towns altitude of 1,800m it enjoys a warm pleasant climate and is surrounded by spectacular countryside. Paula and I did a challenging hike up to the peak of the Mandango mountain, the altitude really hit Paula since she hadn't had time to acclimatize before the climb. From the top we had spectacular views of the Vilcabamba valley and beyond.

New Years celebrations began quite civilized with a bottle of Chilean champagne on the balcony of our hotel. We spent a few hours with some friends listening to the New Millennium being welcomed in across the world on short wave radio. We waited for news of the Y2K bug triggering the predicted end of the world, but all seemed pretty calm so we cracked open another bottle of wine and then went down into the town. In the town we found a cute little street party complete with disco ball and danced our way into the New Millennium. Everything seemed to be going very smoothly until the excessive alcohol levels in my blood triggered a major Y2K failure in my own brain. Apparently I had a great time in the first few hours of the New Year and was very entertaining to my friends and locals alike! (Pictures by request!)

Return to Home Page