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Good day to you and your kin,
Pack it up, pack it in, let me begin. Put aside that e-mail from Technical Standards marked "Error concerning uplifts in the sample of independent Russian cinemas in Scarborough" and pay attention.
Being happy or at least of a reasonable level of contentedness-ness (?!?!) is not just nauseating it's a little disappointing, frankly. The best, the most inspired and the most creative songs, poetry, books and philosophy are not about wandering lonely as a cloud through daffodil fields and all that gumpf. There are surely twice as many words in the English language for being a miserable so and so as there are for skipping down the street admiring the pretty flowers. You wouldn't catch TS Elliott, Bob Dylan and Thom Yorke eulogising on the beauty of a sunny life. How can you think great thoughts when you can't find, for example, any bitterness? It's a slippery slope I tell you. I'm not happy, as it were. I want my money back.
BARRY MANILOW HAS A BIG HONKER
Rio de Janeiro is the city of images. Sun and the beach. Seduction and the Samba. Sugerloaf and the big Christ statue. Money and poverty. Lola the show girl and the girl who dances on the sand. I took the pictures and ticked the boxes but to be honest I could give or take it. Maybe it was because it wasn't like it was brochure: The sun didn't shine, it rained, and nobody went to the beach. Maybe it was because I slept in a room where I played a game of guess that smell (I eventually settled on mildew over rotting fish). And maybe it was because after nine months I resented always having to look over my shoulder in a city I got no warmth from (literally and physically). Travelling is that fickle, it's often a personal opinion on temporary circumstances.
Oh look out, here's the second paragraph which convention dictates must be in contrast to the first. And why disappoint Convention, she's a lovely girl. What caught me in Rio was the Favela's (the endemic lawless shanty towns) and the night life. Both interwoven in the city's fabric and interwoven with each other. They give the city its edge, its colour and its fascination, for me anyway; a bewildering visual spectacle and, simply, the life of the city. If you're going to go take your chances with somebody relieving you of everything you've not lost in 11 months you might as well do it by dancing crazy Samba till dawn in a Favela. Which was nice.
MONTE'S VIDEO SHOP AND FRIENDS
Onwards and upwards, except when you're going downwards. My new road trip going south from Rio came replete with twenty two hours on a bus with lips pursed to the window to overcome the failed air con and a vision of Armageddon; rush hour in Sao Paulo, a city of 17 million people with absolutely nothing going for it. The first stop was the Iguazu falls, the world's biggest waterfall; 1.2 million litres of water thoroughly rains on Niagara's parade and anybody else who is around too. Quite a spectacle dear boy, as is the walkway built so you can lean over the precipice, crazy fools! The second stop was Uruguay to take out a few rentals at Monte's video shop. Why go to Uruguay? I don't know really, it seemed rude not to if nothing else. It has none of the ego and showbiz of its big neighbours, it's simply a rather nice place to be for a couple of days.
I AIN'T GETTING ON NO PLANE FOOL
Buenos Aires, or BA to the cool kids (get the title, do you, do you?!?!) is the the world's cheapest great city. The only question is do you tell the Portenos - Buenos Aires' super fashionable, rich and aloof residents - how cheap it is? Yeah, of course you do. Get there soon before somebody picks the economy out of the toilet it fell in to five years ago. Five pounds for a great steak (served by a real life giant), 150 pounds a month for a (good) apartment and a tenner for a night out in a city that legendarily lives at night (after 2am that is). The giant city of Portenos relvolves around the holy trinity of Steak, Tango and Football. Each represent the passionate, European and sultry heart that beats through BA, a city that oozes class from every pore. It tastes like Italy, carries itself like Paris and moves at the speed of New York - crossing roads in Bangkok is just preparation for the world's widest road, 22 lanes of traffic that knows my weakness is day dreaming.
The difference between Rio and BA comes down to this. Rio has the Maracana, a mecca of world football that only 8,000 bothered to go to when I saw a game. BA has two rival clubs of River Plate and Boca Juniors; their cauldrons of sound were two of the greatest ninety minutes of my life! (Ahem, well possibly). The "Bombonera" is Boca Junior's amphitheatre of sound that rises like a phoenix out of the shanty shacks of BA's poorest and roughest district. It is so steep that even the seats have hand rails in front of you to stop you falling down and over the edge! I wanted to grab the whole thing in my hands and hug it forever! No, really. However the fanatical hard core Boca fans would almost certainly have killed me first, you don't mess with them. Which was why I was just a touch anxious to be taking six green fingered Americans, Canadians and Americans with me who had never been to a "soccer" game before. The risks in Boca are just a tad higher than parking your car in a housing estate when going to Millwall. When opposition players are substituted they leave the pitch with a riot policeman and his shield above their head. Lean over to the next man in the office and tell him he's a "Pooto", if he's Spanish he may not appreciate it. In the end all I had to contend with was listening to commentary about what the "deeee-fence" were doing. Grrrrrrrrrrr, save my soul.
SO THAT'S TWO OF YOUR DOLLARS FOR ONE OF MY POUNDS THEN?
Time for a change of scene. Time to move on from Latin America. Adios to the world of scary stray dogs, toilets that don't take toilet paper ("i wouldn't go in there for a whie"), begging as a way of life and dust that gets in to every line of your palm. So, from a people of hundreds of millions who can't make a decent packet of crisps to one who don't know the proper name for it.
Mmmmm, how interesting, my website has had 15,074 hits so far, more than almost any other STA site. Computer nerds all of you. New pictures on line at www.statraveljournals.com/mrpaulmullens including how to cool down a football crowd and a new bridge for Andy.
Do you know the way to San Jose?
Huesta Luego,
Paul.
"IF YOU DON'T GET BACK TO THIS MEETING PLACE AT THE ARRANGED TIME FOR THE MINIBUS...YOU'RE F****D": INSTRUCTIONS FOR SAFELY LEAVING A SAMBA PARTY IN A FAVELA.
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