Tuesday, August 12, 2014

New Years Tango, San Telmo, Plaza Dorrego





Available through Amazon Books

New Years Tango
From the book, "Stranded In Chicken" by David Rice
David Rice traveled the 
Americas  by bus following the
 Pan American Highway 
much of the way when he 
backpacked from 
Antarctica to Prudhoe 
Bay

I flew back to Santiago and hopped right on a local bus to the first class bus terminal where I got an overnight ticket 950 miles due east to Buenos Aires. When I arrived in Buenos Aires I walked around the terminal to the Metro, locally called the Subte, to head to the San Telmo area, the region where the Argentine Tango originated.
My hostel was within a block of the metro station.
 Nearby on the corner of Defensa and Humberto the Plaza Dorrego becomes an outdoor nightclub on weekends were Tango is serious entertainment.

The clubs get rolling at around midnight and the party goes until dawn for the Portenos, as the people of Buenos Aires call themselves. Tables crowd the
whole square and the center becomes a dance floor as couples demonstrate the Argentine Tango in all its nuances. They then invite everybody to dance
the tango.

I love to watch the dance and was encouraged to try myself a few times, inviting a lady who was standing nearby. We both laughed as we went through the motions and tried a few dances in a vain attempt to master the complicated steps. We then
sat back down and had a drink and enjoyed the show.
I have danced all my life but the tango is difficult to learn, especially when it includes several regional versions. Without my felt hat and suspenders I just couldn't let my inner dancer free.
See David Rice's book on 

I spent five days in the hostel and toured the city and included the Plaza de Mayo where Juan Peron and Eva often stood to address the people. The grieving women of Buenos Aires, The Madre de la Plaza de Mayo, still march through the city on
Thursday in front of the notorious Pink Palace. They still demand to know where their loved ones had gone during the, "Dirty War."

From Colonia I caught a bus to Montevideo the next morning. I wanted to visit the capital of Uruguay and I also needed a visa for my return to Brazil as I headed north.  The Brazilian immigration official, however, just wasn't too friendly and she insisted that I needed a return transportation ticket to get the visa. Usually I am able to talk my way around this and make the official understand that I am passing through and I am able to get the visa without having a return ticket.  The officials do this because they want to be sure that you have a way out of their country. At the border crossing, however, no inspector ever asks to see your return ticket. 
The Brazilian official in this instance did not relent as we talked, so I decided to go north without passing through Brazil. I returned to Buenos Aires, via Colonia, where I spent Christmas.

I visited many beaches along the way, David Rice


When I reached Buenos Aires I booked into a different hostel closer to the tango action at the Plaza Dorrego. A considerable upgrade it turned out, Hostel San Telmo offered a free breakfast and much more comfort.
On December 27, I went out to the Recoleta Cemetery to see the burial place of the Perons. I continued my tour of the city museums and sights including downtown which has great shopping areas with pedestrian-only streets and upscale shops.
Many of the buildings reminded me of French European architecture.
At other times I went to San Telmo and just sat on a bench and ate white chocolate ice cream while watching the people go by.

I had a surprise one day when I met the German man who I traveled with in Panama on the sailboat through the San Blas Islands. It really didn't amaze
me to run into him again, I know that more than likely I will run into the same people several times on a long trip. We all travel the same trail: the backpackers trail around the world. All the sights are on the same trails, we all head to the same places. I have run into the same people four or five times in different countries on long trips.
I also reacquainted with a couple that I met on my first stay in Buenos Aires, a Dutch couple who were traveling around the world by air. I joined them for New Years champagne and tango dancing on the Plaza Dorrego where we met another traveler from Australia. We sat in the square and watched tango dancing while we drank red Malbecs and Champagnes at the old bars with their open windows. We then danced to the music while doing our best Argentine tango. We partied for what felt like long into the morning but when we left Plaza Dorrego for our hotels, the local people were just starting to get warmed up.




I toasted the New Year and said my farewells to Buenos Aires. I looked forward to the last leg of my journey, a bus north on the second of January heading to a town called Villazon where I planned to start my trip home. I was feeling elated at the dawn of a new year and the end of an exciting trip. Every bus ride and
boat ride had been flawless, every person that I met, happy and friendly, how could I know what a downer I was in for next.

David Rice, "Stranded In Chicken"






Friday, August 8, 2014

Boat Passage, Panama to Cartegena


Boat Passage, Panama to Cartegena
David Rice's "Stranded In Chicken"
Order through Amazon

Running Aground
During the Afternoon of our fifth day on the boat, the skyline of Cartegena came into view, a beautiful sight indeed, until we got close. We headed for the channel into the harbor but failed to reach it before darkness came. With a shudder we ran aground on a sandbar offshore. In the blackness of night our keel remained pinioned on the edge of the channel in the unbearable heat while the captain vainly tried to re-float. After several hours passed the captain sent two of us ashore in the spare inflatable to lighten the load while he remained and tried to free the boat. We rowed into port guided by the lights of the city.
No customs inspectors met us in this one-time haven for smugglers, just oppressive heat and humidity. We tied up the inflatable at the marina as the Captain had instructed and then we went into the city to find lodging. It was not until the second day ashore that I went to customs for my passport stamp and official welcome to Cartagena de Indias.

Cartagena
I spent a day at the old walled town built by the Spanish in 1533. At the harbor a fort once defended the city from pirates. Balconies overhang the narrow pedestrian streets with many sidewalk cafes and many tourists. The heat and humidity, far worse than what I had fled in Missouri, was oppressive in the city but I booked a room for two nights because, although I had seen the city many times before, I always loved the history and romance, the architecture, and the friendly people of Cartagena.
I was now in South America, my goal, and I could slow down. Although my true goal was Brazil, I wanted to cross Venezuela and try to find a boat to Tobago to see where the steel drums got their start.

For two days I enjoyed the great street food in Cartagena, chicken, sausage, great bread, and lemonade, cold and refreshing fruit drinks. For lunch or dinner I would find a stand near a shady spot and dine.  For a splurge one of the mornings I went to the Charlestown Cartagena were a sumptuous breakfast cost $20. Expensive, yes, but a nice treat. The Charlestown Cartagena serves an endless cup of coffee, lots of fruit, and the morning paper in many languages including USA today and The Wall Street Journal. The newsstand price for those two papers alone in expensive Cartagena would nearly cover my breakfast so with the bottomless cup of coffee and several papers to read, I considered the price of breakfast at the Charlestown Cartagena a bargain. 
From the City of Cartagena, I headed to Santa Marta, Colombia, Parque National Tayrona, a 15,000-hectare Jungle preserve that borders the coast of the Caribbean.  I left the bus and walked to the entrance of the park to sign in with the guard. From the guard building I walked three quarters of a day on a dirt road through coconut palms to the beach. At the beach they rent a hammock that you sling between trees by the shore. I planned to stay at the park for two days.

The Tairona Beach Park is named after the pre-Columbian Indians who built a city further east. The beach seemed endless, with palm trees leaning out over the water. And those waters are exquisite but the rip currents are fierce. Nobody swims there except at the beach called La Piscina.

  I met two young men and a woman from Medellin. The kind trio didn’t want me to be by myself there for my safety so they invited me to string my hammock near theirs. I strung the hammock between the palms and we sat by the fire talking. The wind came up a little and the men warned me to keep an eye on the wind; coconuts might fall if the wind came up too much.
I slept fitfully because I could hear the wind speed increasing and the trees all around me swaying. I couldn’t stop thinking about falling coconuts.
Suddenly a crashing noise woke me with a start as something came smashing down on my hammock. I was sure I was a dead man from a fallen coconut. When I looked down I realized that the wind had ripped a palm frond from the tree and it was now draped across my legs. Sleep would elude me until the magic of sunrise made the long night of fitful sleep all worthwhile.
I spent three days at the park, hiking in the jungle, looking at birds and the howler monkeys, beachcombing, visiting with people on the beach, and dodging coconuts. Each night the trio and I, joined by other backpackers, lit a fire on the beach and sat around talking and drinking a little rum mixed with sweet coconut milk.
Such freedom seems elusive in the modern world so I cherished it. Soon I would nearly loose my freedom to the Venezuelan police.


                                                                                                Amazon Books


Lost City 
I left the park and walked back out to the highway where I flagged down the bus and headed to Santa Marta where I spent two nights. Good fruit drinks and skewers of pork cooked on a charcoal fire kept me happy. From Santa Marta, travelers book a five-day jungle trip to the ruins of Ciudad Perdida, the lost city of the Tairona culture.
I learned that on that trip you need to proceed with extreme caution. It is only recently that groups could go in there at all because of rebel activity. Someday I will risk this trip but at that moment, I had Riohacha and the border of Venezuela in sight. From there I went through Venezuelan custom and on to Maricaibo and from there to Caracas. 

Caracas 
It was my first time in Caracas and although I stayed for two days I didn't enjoy the expensive city with a great deal of poverty. Many of the city dwellers are desperate and dangerous. The despair makes the city unsafe to walk at night. I left Caracas for Rio Caribe where I planned to catch a boat to Trinidad. On the way there I had a run in with the Venezuelan military.

Excerpts from David Rice's, "Stranded in Chicken"
See Reviews at Amazon Books

                   

                    I've seen thunderstruck archipelagos! and islands
                    that open delirious skies for wanderers:
                   Are these bottomless nights your nest of exile,
                   O millions of gold birds, O Force to come?
                   True, I've cried too much! Dawns are harrowing.
                   All moons are cruel and all suns, 
bitter:
                   acrid love puffs me up with drunken slowness.
                   Let my keel burst! Give me to the sea!
                        
                       The Drunken Boat, Arthur Rimbaud







Thursday, July 31, 2014

Boat Passage, Dinner With The Kuna Queen


                                       "He gave the impression that very many cities had rubbed him smooth." 
                                        Graham Greene



Then the front of the boat suddenly
 lurched up and I
hung  on to the
 stainless steel 
rail with a death
grip. 
Just as quickly, the boat
 pitched down
 and came crashing 
 into a wave with a
shudder.   
By dawn there
 was little left of
 
me and I prayed for a  merciful  death.
David Rice Stranded In Chicken
Boat Passage, Dinner With The Kuna Queen
David Rice

It is not so much the look of a hostel that gets me to visit but where the hostel is located that will seal the deal when I am racing through a country. I found just such a place in San Jose, Costa Rica, a hostel not so attractive but one just across from the bus station where I could get an early shot to Panama City.
Once in Panama City I put into the Prima Vera Hostel and started a search for boat passage through the Kuna Island of San Blas to Columbia. I was flexible in my plans and would head to any area of South America but I expected that most boats would be headed for Cartegena.
Boat travel was preferred at this leg of the    trip because roads south of Panama through the Darien Gap are relatively non-existent.
According to various reports, any travel in the  Gap is dangerous. Over the years a few four wheelers have made the trip but several travelers through the Gap have been kidnapped and held for ransom.
The Darien Gap is just that, a gap in the Pan American Highway that runs from Prudhoe Bay in Alaska to Ushuaia in Argentina. The Gap is a ninety-mile stretch between Yaviza Panama and Turbo Colombia where there are no roads. 
The land south of Panama City is mountainous terrain that then levels to river delta and swampland. The area has never been developed. The isthmus south of Panama City is 30 miles wide and ninety miles long. The roads resume in Columbia but the only safe way to get from Panama City to Columbia is by boat or air.




I wanted to go by boat so I checked other hostel bulletin boards and finally found a note from a German guy who knew a Frenchman who owned a 
sailboat. The French captain was taking paying passenger to Cartagena out of desperation; he had run out of money while on a world cruise.
I emailed the captain and then waited while I enjoyed Panama City. There was so much to do and see in the lively place. The life of the city seethes on Avenue Espania where you can find anything: hostels, gambling casinos, girls, music, and street food. There is just a lot going on.
You also find the cheapest taxis anywhere: $2.00 for any trip, even a 45-minute ride to the airport.

                                                                               Amazon Books


In the morning I caught a bus to the locks on the Panama Canal to watch the ships go through.  The normal sized boats go through in the morning and the supertankers go through in the afternoon. It is great watching the boats go through and imagining where they have been and where they are going, who is aboard, where do they come from, are they happy living every day at sea, what are their beliefs.

Welcome Aboard
The French sailboat captain responded via email after a day.
“Welcome aboard, meet at the docks near Colon in three days with all your luggage and we will leave.”
When I arrived at the port near a Spanish stone fortress, I could see the boat anchored in the bay at Portobello. I waved and soon realized that he saw me when he hopped into an inflatable and headed for the beach. Within minutes of our greeting, we headed out to his sailboat. With hardly a flourish he hauled anchor and me and three other passengers were underway headed for Cartagena, Colombia via the Archipelago de San Blas.
Pirates still roam the Caribbean and not the movie kind. These boat owners all have weapons aboard and although the captain never showed his, I suspected that the former kitchen equipment salesman from Paris was armed because I noticed that one cabinet on the boat always remained locked.
The trip was idyllic and I looked forward to a relaxing 5-day cruise.

 Idyllic that is for the first two hours. I have been on the water before but I am no sailor and had no idea when we set sail on the glassy waters of Colon Bay that before long the open ocean would turn our deck into such a frenzy of pitching and heaving that I would wish to die.
Once we hit rough water I spent the rest of the day and all of that night hanging over the side puking. When there was nothing left to throw up, I upchucked phlegm until I nearly dried up. The deck would roll to the side and I swear the mast would nearly smack the wave tops. Then the front of the boat would suddenly lurch up and I would hang on to the stainless steel rail with a death grip. Just as quickly, the boat would pitch down and come crashing into a wave with a shudder. By dawn there was little left of me and I prayed for a merciful death. As the sun rose, however, we came miraculously into the lee of an island and knifed through glass calm water. The captain dropped anchor in a sheltered cove.
I jumped into the jade lagoon with all my clothes on to clean up. I swam around the boat a few times trying to clean my shirt and within a few minutes, I couldn’t believe it but I felt well enough to think about breakfast.
That dunk in the lagoon turned out to be a timely spiff up for me because later in the day we would be invited to dine with a Queen.
 
Date With The Kuna Queen 
 I came aboard after my dunk in the water with my clothes cleansed of the nights nausea. After a change of clothes I went ashore with the other passengers to the Island of El Porvenir to get a needed stamp to clear customs. The captain radioed for a meeting with the customs inspector and then we waited and waited some more.
Waiting gave us the opportunity to small talk and I learned a little about my fellow passengers.
Four of us had started the trip, five including the captain. We lost one who headed back to Panama via the small airport on El Porvenir. The captain, in his early 60s, had forsaken the life of a businessman in Paris to sail around the world. He had bogged down in Panama City and was gathering resources by taking passengers to Columbia so he could continue his world cruise.
We also had a German guy, a guy from Holland, and a Canadian. They were all backpackers in their late 20s who, like many travelers, had an obsession to roam the world.
One had a wealthy family, another barely scraped by to fund his travels, another taught English. They were the same as all travelers who want to see the world: some meeting friends along the way, some volunteering, some learning about the world, some teaching language, others teaching composting, most doing anything to make expenses while they tour the world.
I saw myself in their faces; 40 years ago that was me, lured by exotic places and the chance to meet new people, see new flora and fauna, and to try new foods. Travel had been an obsession with me then and still is. Above all else, at the top of my list was adventure.
Once we had our custom stamp, we returned to the boat to sail on. We soon arrived at an idyllic island with a reef where we entered a sheltered cove and anchored in an azure lagoon. We fished and snorkeled on the reefs and then I went ashore to pick coconuts. By the time I returned to the boat, the Kuna Indians had come out in dugout canoes and offered their handmade textiles, fish, fruit, crabs, lobsters, and coco loco, a coconut drink fortified with a shot of rum.
A beautiful Kuna woman was among the men and it seemed that sunrays followed her as she moved. Her eyebrows were busy birds that fluttered with questions, dived with demands, and hovered with approval. With every tilt of her head or twist of her body she directed the men in a concert of impromptu commerce. She was the maestra leading the ensemble with every movement of her expressive body and animated face.
She was lovely and compelling to watch as she spoke to the men with authority one minute and kindness the next. Although theirs was not a matriarchal society as far as I knew, she left no doubt that she controlled the group of men. She invited us ashore for dinner in impeccable English and instructed us to bring the rum.

Dining With The Kuna Queen
By all means when the queen of any island invites you to dinner you put on your finest duds, even if it is a sun-bleached silk shirt and khaki shorts, and you show up on time. Late in the afternoon the captain opened that locked cabinet and out came not guns as I suspected but the rum bottle. We piled into the inflatable and hauled up on shore where the Kuna Queen greeted us and led the way to her-palm frond castle. She bid us sit at a log table as she served us a seafood stew with fish and crab. The bisque would have made the chef for the Queen of England envious.
We stayed late, talking and drinking coco loco well into the night as I fell for this Kuna Queen and her little slice of paradise.
We staggered into the inflatable in the dark of the early morning and then returned to the sailboat. Around noon of the following day we woke to no tourists and no other boats in sight. We went ashore again. No sign of the queen but I had a good look at the Kuna’s palm houses made of woven cane walls and palm branch roofs. These people truly lived for the day, the hour, the minute I realized. If a storm should come and blow the straw hut away, they would just gather more palm and build their house anew.

In the afternoon, Kuna boats gouged out of huge trees came in from the open sea to bring fish and produce for sale. They pulled alongside our sailboat just like sea-born delivery trucks. Each time we met a group of men they would ask us if we had some rice or beans, coffee, or cigarettes. Although the sea provided all their needs, they craved foods common to us but not available to these island dwellers who harvested the sea. Coffee, cigarettes, and beans were exotics to the Kuna.
By now I was warming to this experience of touring the San Blas Archipelago.
Of the 350 or so Islands in the San Blas group only 43 are inhabited by the Kuna; most islands do not have enough water to sustain a settlement. 

We visited several of the larger islands and although my first day had been misery, the $250 that the boat passage to Colombia cost started to look like a bargain. Each afternoon we dropped anchor in a secluded cove to fish and beach comb We sailed among the islands for three days.
Paradise faded in the sunset as we picked up a breeze and headed across open water to Cartagena. With me dreading another siege of seasickness, the winds cooled and pushed us gently away from Eden towards the unknown. Then the winds slackened and the heat rose.

Running Aground 
I could still see the clouds hugging the Khuna archipelago of San Blass as we entered the open ocean and I was relieved to see a glassy surface off into infinity with no storm clouds in sight. Then the wind all but died and we were forced to use the motor. We lugged slowly south as the heat became oppressive.
 Soon I was wishing for the cooling palapas of the Kuna and a repeat dinner with the queen.

I would like to share with you my backpack trip from the USA through 
Central America to South America and south all the way to Ushuaia and
 on to Antarctica.
From there I was back on the Pan American Highway 
and went north all the way to the northern end of 190 at Prudhoe Bay 

     After a swim in an Antarctic volcanic lagoon, a freezing dip
 in the Arctic Ocean at Prudhoe Bay, and a stare down of a grizzly bear, 
 what could go wrong.  I had my answer soon enough when I found myself 
stranded in a town called Chicken.
                   

                             Order through Amazon,  Stranded In Chicken




Friday, April 25, 2014

Backpacking The Americas, Prudhoe Bay To Antarctica

"Stranded In Chicken,"  A Backpack Travel Book
 
by David Rice 

Color Cover, Black and White Interior Photos

Two Years Of Backpacking the Americas, From Antarctica To Prudhoe Bay

Available through Amazon Books
David Rice, Two years of 
backpacking in the Americas

David's account of his travels is
available through Amazon Books
 Excerpts from the book,
"Stranded In Chicken"
By David Rice

     I live in the Ozarks of Missouri where I take care of a 100 year old house in the countryside. I tend a garden while caring for the old farm and I take a rent from my house in the city.
I have always loved the hills of Springfield in late winter and although I live comfortably in the rural house for most of the year, at times I get restless and feel the need to travel.
Since this account is a confession of sorts, to tell you the truth, travel is more obsession with me  than need.

Amazon Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews From Amazon

By Amazon Customer on April 21, 2014
This book is fun to read. A light hearted and interesting account of the author's backpacking trip south from his home in Missouri all the way to Antarctica. He then goes north to Prufhoe Bay.
I found myself envying his courage and, while I could never pitch a tent in Torres del Paine or the Alaskan wilderness as he did, a little part of me would love to try. Be you ardent backpacker or armchair adventurer you wont be able to put this inspirational and entertaining book down.


You Pisceans and Sagittarians will, I hope, empathize with one born under the sign of the compass rose. I have been around the world more than once and would love to do it again, this time staying completely on the ground.
My tale is one of the traveler. While I neither boast nor apologize, this is my story and for convenience rather than contrition, I will call it the confessions of a traveler.

Garden
The warm winds across the prairie in March usually start the feeling. I will be out planting a vegetable garden and the sun's warm breath comes on the back of my neck like the soft caress of a kitten. I know, however, that before June ends, this kitten will become a tiger that will claw up the dust in my dooryard and scorch the grass and garden beyond my toleration. By July, blistering heat will smother the hills and I will long to be somewhere else. My thoughts will be all about air conditioning and unfortunately my old house has none.
A hot afternoon in April had me sitting on the porch wondering where I was going to go next. I have made many long trips throughout the world and I know that to make an extended trip I would need to arrange many details. Africa kept coming to mind as I read the guidebooks. I started to make plans for a trip to the southern parts of Africa.

Details
First I arranged to visit my doctor and get the needed shots. Rabies topped the list because of the wild dogs in Africa. Next was yellow fever, hepatitis, and tetanus.
I called friends and asked them to collect my mail and to look in occasionally on the two houses for me while they harvested my plot of onions, carrots, and garlic.
I needed a new passport and ordered one right away when I realized that I didn't have many free pages and there could be a several month waiting period.
After many nights through April on the porch looking over itineraries and Lonely Planet guidebooks, I made up my mind; I would soon be hiking in the southern parts of Africa.
The month of May smothered the land with sticky heat and as May neared its end, I made arrangements to leave. On the first day of June, I went to the Greyhound bus terminal and bought a ticket.

Two years through the Americas, Antarctica to Prudhoe Bay

Changes
Change rules the traveler and the traveler rules change. Freedom is the air that I breathe and the world seems like my back yard. My mother must have swaddled me in a Rand McNally bunting because a map brings me new life. Change is part of that excitement, new places, new people, new customs, new dress, new food, and new music. And the freedom to change itineraries is at the heart of it all.
I leaned back in my seat on the bus and watched as Missouri sped by the window. I thought back to those nights on the porch of the old farmhouse when I planned my trip to Africa.
As it turned out I did not need to worry about rabies, Africa had faded from my plans. For the next eight months I would take a very long bus ride. A drastic change of plans, yes, but this is the confession of a traveler and that is what a traveler does; a traveler is free to change plans at any moment.
I would leave the hot winds of Springfield behind me and travel for the better part of the next year but I would not be going to Africa. I would instead head south and take an extended trip aboard countless local and long-haul buses on an eight-month tour of South America. I vowed to head inexorably south and I would not stop until the roads ran out.
Indeed the roads did end at a dock in the southern reaches of Tierra del Fuego. I kept on south by boat, however, and fulfilled the dream of every traveler; I planted my hiking boots on new turf.

I love the passport stamp but at the southern end of my trip only 
the penguins greeted me and they had  no customs inspector

No turf crunched beneath my boots on landing, however; I found only icebergs. Antarctica's treasured stamp on my passport would elude me, at the southern end of my journey, only the penguins greeted me and they had no customs inspector.

Page Two, next post, south on The Pan American Highway

Related: 
Mexico First Class Bus Service

Amazon Review For "Stranded In Chicken" 

By Jan on June 2, 2014
Verified Purchase
The book whetted my appetite to fulfill my bucket list. I was good to reflect on places visited, with many good 
memories.
It was a reminder that the world is full of things to see and to experience. Cultures to explore, exciting flavors
 to test the palate, and new friends to meet.
However I am not sure I could carry all my hair and face products in a backpack!! So I would need a wee different
mode of travel to see the world.
I wish I could have see color photos of the places visited.
I have recommended the book to my fellow travelers.