First stop, the big schhmoke, Dublin!!!

The Merri and Jessi adventure tour began in the completely frozen over, ice skating death trap known as Dublin.

I met a jetlagged Merri in the architectual muddle that is Dublin Airport. I'd been certain that her flight would be delayed, Merri had arrived in the middle of what the media had dubbed 'The Big Freeze', conveniently coinciding with 'The Big Freeze' on the 2009 budget.

The day before Merri arrived the Airport had been shut, in traditional Irish Style, as a nation we are unable to cope in any severe weather conditions.

She did however arrive on time, 7.30am. Merri had had the wonderful experience of flying for the first time, with our wonderful airline that is Ryanair. Luckily, every British and Irish person had forewarned her of the extra charges which the airline likes to lamp on. This however, had not prevented Merri from cramming her carry on luggage to the max, exceding the 10kg limit by .65. To avoid the extra charges, she was told to take something out, which, obviously, she put straight back in once the baggage had been weighed.

We got the slow moving Aircoach into town, Merri giggling about the irish accents all the way. Like most foreigners that come to these shores, she had a thing for the way we add H's everywhere and concentrate on the R's. Its something thats easy to take for granted, until your an Irish person abroad, I like to believe we're everybodies favourite.

It was my first time in Dublin since I got back from traveling, but it wasn't how I remembered, everything was white! It was my first time to see snow on O'Connell Street, and that was only the beginning. We got off at Trinity, and quickly learned that walking would be quite the task that day. What had started off as snow all over the city, turned into a condensed layer of thick white ice. It really is no exaduration to say it was like an ice rink. We had to walk slowly and carefully, with many near slips. The city was remarkably quiet for a time when most people should be making there way to work. I put it down to the ice, and not the neverending recession.

After a breakfast in Bewley's our next stop was good old Trinity College, the oldest and most discriminative college in Ireland! Oh and most prestigious. Secretly, I do love Trinity, putting behind the lack of Catholics in its early years, it did educate some very great minds, such as Bram Stoker, Oscar Wild, Samuel Beckett and Ernest Walton (that ones for Mark/Smithers). I rang my old Castlebar buddy Mark, who shall for this article be referred to by his nickname, Smithers, who was in his on Campus accomodation. We called up for yet more tea, a chat, and then this Physics student gave us our own person tour of Trinity. It was a good thing too, Merri had already coped on that I wasn't shaping up to be the greatest tour guide, not knowing it was Daniel O' Connell on the great big statue on the top of O'Connell Street...

Smithers showed us around the equally slippy Trinity, but because the students weren't back yet, alot of building were closed. We did see some good ones though, and hats off to Smithers, he really knew his stuff. He also got us into see the 'Book of Kells' for free with his student card, although I'm not sure that Merri really appreciated one of our national treasures by exclaiming, 'Who's Kells??'

After our lovely tour, we left Smithers back to his project and to figure out the chill factors at 3am in the morning (what Physicists do when they're bored apparently). Next stop was the Dublinia. So, I'd seen these signs for Dublinia around Christ Church when I lived in Dublin but never actually knew what they were all about. I believe its something you do in part of the Vikings Splash tour, which, like many tourist things, in January was closed. So we just went to Dublinia, which is just really a shitty museum about Vikings. Our main motivation for going there was potential warmth, and of course history. We were tragically disappointed though. It was fecking freezing in the 'museum' and the whole thing looked dated and crappy. And childish. I am a still a secret nerd however and stuck around to read about those crazy vikings. We also found one functioning radiator which we loitered about for a bit.

Having had enough of being a tourist for one day, and the below minus temperatures in the day time, we decided it was time for soup in the pub followed by pints of Guinness! We went to the 'Stags Head' and waited there in warmth until Emma rang. We would be crashing on Emma's couches for our time in Dublin. She was a wonderful host supplying unless pots of tea. That was to come though, first we met up with Emma in Grogans, one of my favourite pubs in Dublin, tiny and long and always packed. We had hot ports and then the three of us carried on to Brogans, where we met all the Graphics folk ad stayed for a few drinks before sliding our way all the way back to Emmas for more yummy warm soup and tea!!

Day one of Ireland on Tour had come to an end :)

Travelings never over...

So it took me a few days to settle back into life in Ireland.

My very lovely father helped out a very jetlagged and tired Jess in Dublin airport at 10.30am upon my return.

I'm always amazed by the things that you notice about your country after being away for a while, that are so insignificant when you live there. When I got back from living in the Netherlands, I was in awe of the rolling hilly scenery that I'd always taken for granted. In the Netherlands there isn't even the slightest mound, let alone a hill or mountain. Its below sea-level scenery bored me to tears, so Ireland was so beautiful to my eyes that I almost cried with sentiment.

This time however it was the darkness that struck me. Where the hell was the sun???!!! Coming from summer to winter is one thing, but being so far from the equator means that in the winter, we get a whooping 7 hours of day light during the winter, if we're lucky. And even at that, Mr. Sun, barely makes an effort, and meerly creeps up to a pathetic height before returning. There was no overhead sun like I'd had in the Equator. More like hip level. I'd been telling the time via the sun in South America for lack of any other device so I was really thrown off when I noticed it got dark at 4pm.

Regardless to say the weather was also an issue. Despite it being freezing, I did consider it a blessing to be greeted with snow instead of the usual rain. At least you can throw snow.

It finally felt like Christmas, and after a solid day of sleep, I was ready for the usual Christmas Eve antics, which involved drinking in my favourite Castlebar pub, The Irish House, and the usual reunion of friends that haven't been together in the same room since the previous xmas eve. Christmas in Ireland, generally involves heavy drinking, every day, until everyone returns to work. So thats what I did, plus show off that I was for once, browner than everyone else. I may not be tanned in South America but when I got back to Ireland I looked Colombian compared to everyone else. I also became that annoying person that entered 'In South America...' every five minutes into a conversation until it was pointed out to me...

After the Crazy Christmas antics I had my Tour of Ireland to look forward to with Aussie Merri who'd be coming over the 7th of January... Let the adventures continue!

Quito, and Mitad Del Mundo

Returning to Quito would not be the highlight of my trip, nor would it be the ideal way to spend my final two days in the continent but tragically pre-booked flights home from this city would dictate my fate.

For some reason Quito was the only city in South America in which I had trouble finding a hostel, so I ended up staying in the slightly shabby but central, Mitad del Mundo Hostel. My first night I met a strange ex model from Chile, who was starting a new job in a department store the next day. He'd quit his modeling career as the drug taking life style no longer appealed to him...

I've never seen anyone so anxious about a new job, and later that night he asked me to accompany him in a taxi to his friends apartment to return a key, because he was nervous of the danger on the streets.

I also met the mysterious Joannes, a dutch musician, who, in three days, I did not see without his guitar. They were an equally odd pair, and set the tone for the hostel and my remaining time in South America.

Having already visited Quito, and not being too crazy of its dangerous busy streets, I opted for day trips out for my time there. The first of which I spent in Orvato, a small town an hour and a half away from Quito, where, according to the trusty book, the best market in South America was to be found. I'd have to

disagree with that statement, but nevertheless it did provide adequate Christmas shopping opportunities. Although not very exciting, I enjoyed my time there, the small town was a 'real' South American town, with traditional women trying to get you to buy various Alpaca goods.

The following day I visited the equator, or to be more precise, the town where its located, Mitad Del Mundo. The funny thing about this tourist attraction is that, its actually entirely fake. There is a massive park dedicated to the equator, with a large globe monument, a red line going the length of this park with a stadium for dancers, and of course plenty of restaurants and overly priced tourist shops. The site was actually created when French scientists in 1700's discovered the equator. Although very close, the real equator is 240 meters north, this discovery was made 12 years ago with the introduction of GPS.

This was lucky for a small museum which was already located exactly on the equator. The Museum had originally been set up because of the archaeological remains and this spot, unsurprisingly, in seemed the Inka's knew all about the equator before us, having worshipped the sun from this point. Now the museum also has a red line, and tour guides tell you about the equator as well as the remains, although, the preciseness of their scientific information is questionable, as are the 'experiments' you do on the sight. Thanks to my brother, I now now that the Coriolus effect cannot be demonstrated in a sink, although I still don't know how she faked it. I must admit, I was suspicious when we began to replicate 'light-as-a-feather-stiff-as-a-board' to demonstrate weightloss on the equator line...

My last night in South America was to be filled with tragedy as this was when I realised I had lost my beloved memory stick, holding ALL of my photos of South America. This by far was my greatest loss on the trip, topping a camera lens in Argentina. I became famed in the continent for losing things with almost every move, it had become expected and I'd learned not to buy anything I actually cared about (bye baby alpaca blue hat in Bolivia). This loss really broke my heart however, and I searched every inch of my hostel room, including a very smell boys bed. It was not there. After much self torture, I concluded that it had either been left in the computer two days ago, or, I'd accidently left it in my bag and it had fallen out somewhere, probably in Ortavo. It was a sad day, and my self-loathing and frustration outweighed any emotions I'd previously had about going home the next day.

Naturally, despite better judgement, I wanted to drown my sorrows. I ran into Joannes playing his guitar outside the hostel with some homeless people and we went for a drink. He too was leaving the next day, and was drowning that sorrow. We foolishly stayed up until 5am drinking, which made for a very hungover Jessica the next day.

I'd been told from home all about the snow that awaited me, which seemed lovely, until I realised that this could cause trouble to my flights. I was flying first to Amsterdam, and most of the flights the day before had been cancelled because they were snowed under. I turned up to the airport hoping the best however, to be greeted with an hour and a half delay. Not caring too much I fell asleep at my terminal until we could board.

For the record, I want to say KLM are my new favourite airline. There seemed to be a never ending supply of food and drink (although I couldn't stomach the free alcohol they were so desperate to give me), and we each had our own tv with movies, tv programmes, games, music, etc. It certainly helps when your flying for 13 and a half hours.

We flew forward in time, which meant I slept little and arrived at 6am in the Netherlands. We'd had to circle for a bit because the runway was too icy to land on (I'm happily not a bad flier). I was certain my flight home would be delayed, and waited for its status to change in the sceduled 3 hour stopover. By some Christmas miracle however it wasn't, despite the inches of snow, and we boarded shoddy Aer Lingus, and I wondered when they began competing with Ryanair in levels of cheapness and nastiness.

Finally I arrived home, a whole day later, wondering why it was soo dark all of the time, and trying desperately not to catch a cold. Despite the mandatory initial shocks, I was glad to be home, and to see my friends, family, and enjoyed Irish accents for the first time.

Next??

Hmm, getting money, learning to drive, and finding a job in a moany recession ridden country, and hopefully, returning to Dublin asap. Still, I love it, and after Bolivia, everything looks nicer, I'm even grateful for being able to get the dole!

Final Count Down...

After Diving, came to wonderfully beautiful Tyrona park, which, in reality, is just a park which involves hiking to a series of amazingly beautiful beaches. Its the picture everyone has in there head of paradise, white beaches, clear ocean, palm trees, coconuts. Oh, and of course sunshine!

I arrived with Bethany and we were later joined by Steph, Lou and Erafan. Our first night was spent sleeping in hammocks, gazing at the stars... Unfortunately, sounds nicer in words than it was in reality. We were positioned high on the rocks above the ocean, which although practical for avoiding mosquitos, it also provided a shockingly freezing sea wind, that resulted in keeping us up all night from the cold, so the following night we switched to tents.

Although shockingly beautiful, there really isn´t much else to say about the time spent in Tyrona, its completely desserted, and prohibited from bringing hard liquor into the site, I guess to stop people from drowning. So the nights were a little dull. To pass some time, we even went on a hike through the forest to some ruins. Exercise was a shock to these bodies that had spent days chilling on the beach. As the hike ended we stubbled across Mashette carrying men, who used these intruments to cut us some fresh coconuts. Yum.

We returned to Taganga, for yet another big night out, and more beach time. It proved to be a remarkably difficult place to leave. While in Taganga, I had the chance to meet Holly and Dan again, who´d I´d been traveling with from La Paz to Cuzco with. We caught up in our adventures since, they´d just gotten back from the Lost City Trek, and filled me in on their eventful night out when they returned with their tour guides, a father and son. When the pair asked the group were they wanted to go out, they said a nightclub... however, they kept taking them from stripclub to Brothel, including the girls from the trek. They also found out that along the Colombian Coast, its common for the father to ´help´their sons to loose their virginity, by providing them with a donkey, usually around the age of 10. Google proved it to be true...

Finally they decided to ditch the Brothels and returned to Taganga, where upon they were searched by the police, and unluckily, one of the guys from there hike had a tiny piece of weed remaining on him, so they had to bribe the police to get away. Rough night! I should point out, I¨ve never been in a place where I¨ve been more afraid of the police than the locals. I kept meeting fellow tourists who´d been stopped and searched and had cocaine planted on them and then having to pay massive bribes.

We finally left Taganga and returned to Cartagena to catch our flights. Bethany flew back to America and I back to Quito, where I await the finally count down to home...

ps, there would be beautiful photos but IM A IDIOT THAT LOST HER MEMORY KEY WITH ALL HER SOUTH AMERICA PHOTOS!!! GRRRRR

Jessica Timlin Hearts Diving

So never did I ever imagine I´d end up doing a diving course in South America, but Taganga is the place to start, one of the cheapest locations to get your Padi Cert, it seemed like a waste not to give it ago, especially when I had some cool amigos to join in with.

Me, Lou, Steph and Bethany started our course with Posidon Diving School, which began with a rather dull and cheesy 3 hour video on the joys, dangers and safety procedures surrounding Diving.

Some little introductory facts about Diving...

1. If you hold your breath while diving, you rupture a lung, so the most important rule for Diving is to NEVER EVER hold your breath.

2. If you ascend to fast, the excessive nitrogen which is now in your blood from the increased pressure of diving, won´t have enough time to work its way out and you can get the bends, or other decompression illnesses, and will have to go into a decompression chamber.

3. No one can dive below 40 m as the oxygen in your tank becomes poisoness.

4. Its important to equalize the pressure in your ear with the altering surrounding pressure as you descend or you risk causing injury to your eardrums.

These were just some of the cheerful facts we were introduced to through the video, but lets be honest, you´d have to be a bit dim if you held your breath, went up to fast, and you´d never go below 40m. Still the effects of pressure and volume of water slightly fascinate me, and the effects it can have on a person.

After the video it was off to a secluded beach to begin our diving exercises. This is right about where my ´freak out´began. I hated it, completely and absolutely for the first 2 hours and was so convinced that I was unable to go below the water, without the consuming fear of not having enough oxygen, that I thought I´d be cancelling the whole thing the next day. We were out with Gurt, our German instructor, and his assistant Juan. My ´freak out´was so ridiculous and illogical, that even when I was standing on the ground I couldn´t put my head underwater, even though I was breathing with the regulator. Fear is a funny thing. Every instinct in my body was telling me that what I was doing was wrong, I was going to drown, to get to the surface immediately. So, Gurt handed me over to Juan while the girls stayed in the company of Gurt who taught them the exercises.

Juan became my hero in those few hours, performing what I can only class as a small miracle. I´m not exactly sure how he did it, but slowly, bit by bit, he taught me to over-ride my instincts with rational thoughts, and to become comfortable and confident with my equipment. My mask wasn´t too big and my regulator was working normally despite my instance. At some point I realised I wasn´t scared anymore, and that I´d been swimming around under (very shallow) water with Juan for 10 minutes.

The girls had completed the exercises for the day, and with my new found confidence I joined Gurt and completed all the exercises first time. They involve tasks such as taking your regulator out and finding it again, flooding your mask underwater and blowing the water out to clear it, breathing from your buddies regulator (you always dive in pairs, your partner is called your buddy), breathing from a free flowing regulator (awful) taking your weight belt on and off, and many more.

The next morning we completed our remaining exercises in the pool, we learned emergency assents, how to find neutral bouyancy, swimming without our mask for a minute with a buddy, swimming while breathing through your buddies octopus, and probably a few more.

That afternoon began our dives. We did one that afternoon of 12m and one the following morning of 12m. Each dive typically began with us having to repreform some of the tricker exercises to Gurts satisfaction. Then began our walk under the sea. And thats when I fell in love with Diving. To anyone that hasn´t dived, its a pretty hard experience to adequtely describe. Its remarkably peaceful, and relaxing, probably due to the slow movement and controlled yoga like breathing. The feeling of weightlessness is pretty unique, I guess its a freeness you could imagine you would achieve if you grew wings and began to fly. And then of course theres the things you see, the fish just act as if your a normal and natural part of their surroundings, they swim relaxed and freely around you, and they´re beautiful. But what can´t be underestimated is the beauty of the corals and plants underwater. Weird would be a good description. At 24 its pretty refreshing to see a world completely new and alien to me. Quarter life crisis solved! The dives always pass remarkably quickly, and I was constantly frustrated to always be the first one running low on air so we´d have to begin to surface.

After the 12m dives, we moved on to 3 18m dives, which, as an open water diver, is as low as I´m qualified to dive. On our last dive Gurt brought the underwater camera with some hilarious results...

It borderlined on ridiculous the saddness I felt when we finished diving. I practically went into moarning and Bethany laughed at me as I sadly tried to recreate the feeling by swimming at the beach, but to no avail. Instead, we constrated on studying our PADI books for our up and coming exam. Needless to say with my obsessive new passion, I passed easily with 92 percent. We all passed infact, and proudly became open water divers. I have a feeling this isn´t the end...

P.S. Top 3 Diving Songs...

1. Grizzly Bear ´Deep Sea Diver´

2. Radiohead ´Pyramid Song´

3. Interpol ´Stella was a Diver´

I´m a nerd...

The wonderfully bizarre, Taganga

The town of Taganga is one that grows on you the longer you stay, and its also one of those places that many people get stuck in, but its not something to complain about. Its much smaller than the big cities of Santa Marta and Cartagena, with the advantage of a half decent beach. The place is flooded with hippies that sit on the street outside the supermarket making jewellery and playing music. The people of Taganga are amazing, an eclectic friendly, quirky bunch who are constantly eager to thankyou and welcome you for coming to Colombia.

Me and Sass checked into the strange Casa Blanca which is right on the beach, and at first seemed ok, but wore a little thin after a while, with a hostel door that didn´t close, no ventillation and the creepest nightguard I´ve come across yet. He was in the list of Taganga freak all-stars what continuously grows by the day. Often leaving people locked out and leering on the girls of the hostel. The worst story I heard was that he crawled into the bed of a girl I met staying there and began to spoon her as she slept...

The first night at Casa Blanca was yet another accidental big one... Sass went to meet her beautiful and lovely Argentinian man Octavio, while I stayed drinking on the terrace with Aussie Matt, Tim and Naomi. Matt and Tim had come to Taganga to do the Lost City Trek but had been putting the date back by the day, and were still there over a week later when I left. They gave me a lowdown on some of their favourite characters of Taganga, each with their own specially designated nicknames. ´Black Dog´ was a South American Albino child of about 1 or 2 years of age who´s father, ´Papa Dog´ was a miget with a rather creepy voice box who sang and played the harmonica to tourists for money, whos wife was ´Mama Dog´an overweight women. I didn´t believe such an unusual family existed, until I saw them with my own eyes together on the beach. Oh, and Mama Dog has a habit of slapping Papa Dog around a bit. How Black Dog was concieved does not bare to think about...

We all stayed up all night, which was broken up with night swims in the sea and finally the sunrise.

The next two days were fairly chilled, sunbathing, swimming, eating and getting to know the locals would pretty much sum it up. Then came Bethany, and the English sisters Lou and Steph and we inquired into starting Diving school and working our way and becoming PADI certified open water divers.

Finally, Colombia!!!

It took two flights for me to reach Cartagena, first I flew to Bogota and changed planes there. Colombian airports certainly are strick and thorough, haven´t seen so many sniffer dogs in one place, and the questioning you get going through immigrations was intense. It all took so much time that I had to run for my next plane.

However, I finally made it to Cartagena, and what hit my first was the intense heat when I got off the plane, its 40 plus all year round along this coast, what with it being on the equator. It was pretty strange walking through an airport decked out with snowflake and snowmen decorations when the climate says otherwise.

Colombias been the originally unplanned goal since arriving to South America, everyone along the way said it was there favourite country so I figured I´d have to squeeze it in.

It certainly is different to other south american countries, theres a big Carribean influence, the music becomes more reggae, the people happier and friendlier, its louder, water comes in a bag, and theres plenty of rum going around.

I spent my first night in the big city of Cartagena, but tragically spent it in the worst hostel I´ve been in yet, North Star, which was overpriced, ants in my bed and my matress was as thin as cardboard. However, it was only a stop of before I headed to the next Carribean city of Santa Marta, four hours away, and closer to the beautiful carribean beaches I was now craving.

Although not much goes on in Santa Marta, it had the bustling street business that I love in South America, street venders, markets, dogs everywhere you look, people on motorbikes narrowly missing pedestrians. I stayed in the Brisa Loca hostel, which made Santa Marta more interesting. I was due to meet up with Bethany again, the american girl I travelled with from Mendoza, Argentina to La Paz in Bolovia. She´d gone to Tyrona park but would return in a few days.
In my beautiful Air-conned room I met Sass, and English/French girl who´d lived in BA and planned on moving there permanently. Me and Sass made friends with the majority of the bar staff in the hostel which lead to some unplanned drunken but fun nights. I also met some interesting characters, including a Resturant owner who hated Argentinian women after his Argentinan ex wife turned out to be gay and divorced him taking much of his wealth. There are plenty of travellers who are trying to work things out along the way...

The day before Me and Sass were due to head to Taganga Bethany returned, which lead to much screaming and then catching up. It was nice to have a reunion toward the end of our trips.

Next came the crazy and amazing town of Taganga, where I´d spend my remaining time in Colombia...