Rather than worrying about nearly being rammed from his boat by a massive mammal, Chan said “I kinda hope he doesn’t swim into my lines. I don’t think my rods are rated to land humpbacks.” Badass.

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The backpacker's nemesis

I’ve only just come to terms with this one, actually. For some reason, facing death by a large Irish man was acceptable; it’s something that can happen any day of the week and has done since we first tried to cow the Celts under British rule. However, the notion that my feet were left looking like a bombsite (literally) left open wounds, and it’s only now that all the scars are healed that I feel alright to warn others about it.

Backpacking is almost by definition an exercise in cutting financial corners. You slum it around Europe or the world for a few months in an attempt to see the world without becoming so debt-ridden that you can’t experience life when you get back home. Clothes get washed in bathroom sinks and ‘clean’ gets redefined as ‘not smelling quite as much’. You sleep in dorm rooms in hostels because it’s cheaper than double beds in hotel rooms, and ignore the fact that there is a drunk Irishman wanting to take out his disagreement with an Australian on you. You try to take in culinary delights of each region but end up getting poor-quality versions of what you want because you’re loathe to spend more on the real thing. Supermarkets become your restaurants: you learn the astute differences in bread between countries.

So by backpacking you’re less willing to pay money on taxis, buses and metro fares. And, because space is at a premium when you’re packing for your jaunt away, you get rid of shoes and replace them with that perennial standby, flip-flops.

I wore my flip-flops from day one. As soon as I was in my room in Paris, I put them on and set about walking the city. The first night was amazing: we walked from Il Marais across the river and back again, a sort of lazy promenade which gives you the best impression of the city and its lifestyle.

The second day I put my flip-flops on again, bright and early. The problem was that I hadn’t counted on being out on the streets of Paris from 9am until 11pm without really sitting down. Things felt bad about 3pm: my ankles ached and every time I put pressure on the bottom of my feet my brain shouted at my body to stop moving. You ignore that, it’s part of the backpacking credo.

So when I (honestly did) limp back into the hotel room I knew things weren’t going to be pretty, and I had a plan. I’d wrap a towel soaked in cold water around my ballooning ankle to stop the swelling and fill the bin with water to bathe my feet in. That all went great, apart from the fact that the bin was too small and had holes in it, and to get your feet anywhere near the water involved arching them, which I couldn’t do for the amount of scar tissue that was forming on my feet.

The medical student travelling with me actually flinched a little bit when he saw my feet. I didn’t willingly show him my soles: I knew it would be a bit awkward when he saw that I’d ruined my feet on day two of our travels and would give me actual informed medical advice – and that’s not what backpacking is about. But he demanded it, and went “Ah, yeah, well. That’s not good.” In fact he was worried that I’d not make it onto the plane (our one bit of luxury on the trip) down to Seville the day after.

I did, even though he refused to sit next to me on the flight for fear that my feet might actually explode over him with the change in pressure. And, after a night slept on the floor of the room, with my feet above the rest of my body on a chair which became sodden with water dripping from my soaked-towel cold compress, I managed to carry on for the rest of the trip without collapsing in pain with every step. It still hurt like hell, and I thought about scaling back on the walking, but that’s not the backpacking way.

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2. Animals and Amazonia in Bolivia
3. No bed, no trains, but drugs and hookers

Boca fans at a typically hysterical match

“Don´t worry, he´s killed ten people so you´ll be safe.” We were in La Boca, home to Boca Juniors Football club and reputably one of the most dangerous areas in Buenos Aires. I felt anything but safe.

Why we ended up walking around La Boca with a possible murderer was due to our penny pinching backpacking ways. Although we never noticed how much a drink was, the hostel´s price of 200pesos for transfers and ticket to a Boca Juniors football match seemed extortionate, especially as the tickets were reputedly sold for 30pesos at the stadium.

Our plan was simple – get to La Boca at 9am on the day of the match and buy a ticket from the box office. But even the most simple of plans don´t always work out. Match-day was Sunday, and after tasting Buenos Aires´ famous Saturday nightlife we awoke very late and suitably hungover. We finally made it to La Boca at 4pm and swiftly but stupidly purchased a ticket straight off the side of the street for the 30pesos. Within ninety minutes, a sympathetic official had gently broken the news that the tickets were faker than the legendary chests of Buenos Aires (they like their plastic surgery).

Left with two hours until kickoff, we wandered towards the main area in La Boca. To say I was nervous is an understatement: football violence is supposedly rife in Argentina and the week before some innocent bystanders had been shot and killed by Boca Junior supporters. There was a heavy police presence, kitted out in riot gear, which did nothing to ease my sense of dread. The box office was closed and a quick investigation among the street sellers revealed that they hadn´t any legitimate tickets left. The solution to our problem came in the form of a self confessed ‘hooligan´ (“I am – what do you say? – a hooligan”) who offered us the services of his boss, the aforementioned possible murderer, who came complete with bruises which looked suspiciously like he had been head-butting people. For 130pesos, this man and his gang would organise for us to be sneaked into the game. Determined not to miss the match and with all other possibilities exhausted, I reluctantly agreed.

The next hour, one of the strangest of my life, was spent following various hardened men through the dark streets of La Boca. Were they going to rob us? Kill us? Or just take us to the match? Luckily it was the latter and our new hooligan friends, by running a highly professional though illegal operation, successfully bribed numerous officials allowing us to finally walk, two at a time, through the turnstiles into the stadium.

The atmosphere was amazing. The stadium was awash with blue and gold; flags and banners gently swayed in the breeze; thousands of rolls of toilet paper were thrown onto the pitch and even the brass band never stopped. And when the Boca team came out, the crowd threw small pieces of paper in the air making it look like there was snow in Buenos Aires. The supporters, some hanging from the bunting or with legs dangling over the edge of the stands, sung and danced for the entire match, so much so they shuck the whole stadium. Intermittently, the fans produced machines from which jets of blue and yellow smoke erupted. It was an amazing sight. Pity Boca lost.

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Those brilliant new people might not be so brilliant, however.

I went to Madrid this summer. It was fun. I beat the owner of the hostel at Pro Evolution Soccer (twice), ate the best tapas at a local bar which was crammed to the gills with people then wandered down the street and stood in a square with lots of homosexuals dancing to Michael Jackson songs. They gave me free condoms

Unwittingly joining in with one of Europe’s biggest LGBT parties in one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world was definitely a highlight; something to bore people with on cold Autumnal days back in Britain. What happened when I got back to the hostel probably wasn’t a highlight.

I’d been sensible, having a train to catch the following morning and gone back to get some sleep, deciding not to boogie on down with lots of hand-holding men and women, a vibrant DJ and a bunch of equally-puzzled, equally-enthralled tourists. Only I’d entered what could have been my last night on Earth..

An Englishman, an Irishman and an Australian walked into the hostel. Sounds like the start of a joke, right? Not quite. They’d been travelling separately for months but met up somewhere in Eastern Europe, got on quite well and decided to go along together for the rest of their trips. Initially all seemed well, until they got liquored up.

I was on the top bunk of my bed reading a book when the tubby Irish guy came in and punched the locker and shouted “Fuckers!” as loud as he possibly could. At that moment my life flashed before my eyes and I tried to figure out how to fight off an eighteen-stone drunk Irishman with a pillow, my mobile phone, a blunt locker key and a copy of ‘Maggie Cassady’ by Jack Kerouac. He sat down on his bed and was out of sight, which was slightly more concerning. (By now I’d decided that it was best to fling the pillow at him then try stabbing him in the carotid artery with the key, in case you were wondering). The fact that he was breathing like some sort of minotaur, squealing “those fuckers” and making a sound which sounded like someone punching themselves in the head didn’t help, either.

The Englishman came in and started talking the Irishman down from his rage, which was quite nice. It turns out that the Australian was only interested in collecting notches on his bedpost while the Irishman and Englishman (owing to their inferior genetics, presumably) were after a good time partying in the various bars of Europe. They only eventually realised I was in the room, holding my pillow in front of me like it was a bulletproof shield, when I couldn’t hold in a cough anymore. “Oh, hey mate. Dara, we’d better go. The lad’s trying to sleep.”

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1. TYSKAB #2: your feet will disintegrate
2. No bed, no trains, but drugs and hookers

Exit Festival in Serbia

Having grown out of Reading Festival, tired of seeing fifteen year-olds ‘getting down’ to The Pigeon Detectives and The Klaxons, myself and several uni mates decided to take a punt on Exit Festival in Serbia. Although not as well publicised and thus not quite as mainstream as the likes of Benicassim, Rock Werchter and Melt Festival, Exit heads an impressive array of festivals in Central and Eastern Europe, ranging from Poland to Croatia.

After a bit of research into Exit, we were allured by the prospect of a festival in a medieval fortress overlooking the Danube River. However, what made the standard ‘What shall we do this summer?’ conversation around our student house transpire into reality was the price. With four days of music, Exit is priced at just £72 a ticket. I sold my Reading ticket for £210.

My friends and I, however, are criminally guilty of not carrying ideas through: usually due to a lack of funds and a major problem with laziness. Yet Exit – unlike the larger British festivals – does not require the hassle that usually accompanies getting a ticket. They were available from the official website from November right through until May, some comparison with the whole 30 seconds you get for Reading or Glastonbury.

Serbia is an oft-maligned part of Europe, somewhat untouched by the consumerism we might encounter in Britain. As a result, you are travelling to a country with a real sense of its own flavour and history. On the downside, it’s a bitch to get to. The vast majority of festival-goers seem to fly to Budapest, the capital of Hungary, and then from there catch a six-hour train to Novi Sad, the provincial university town in Northern Serbia, North-East of Belgrade. To save money, we flew to Bratislava in Slovakia, planning to catch another train to Budapest from there.

A twenty-pack of Marlboro lights costs £1.80, two litres of beer £2, and a big meal £3. You can get pissed, sick and give yourself lung cancer for very little.

To compare Bratislava to Budapest is very simple, much like comparing Darren Bent to Andrey Arshavin. One is shit, the other is not. It was not worth the small amount of money saved. Bratislava is the stereotype of Eastern European shithole: something you might have seen on Hostel or Behind Enemy Lines. If you want to experience what life in a former USSR city is like, then Bratislava is the place for you.

Regrettably we therefore had little time to see Budapest. We had heard a lot to recommend ‘the Paris of the East’, and we were not disappointed. Budapest, like Talinn and Krakow, is one of the cities in that part of the world quickly becoming a major budget destination for British tourists. Economic problems have conspired to create a place favourable to a student wallet: fantastic clubs, cheap beer and a multitude of genuinely fascinating sights. The major place of interest for the vast amounts of students converging on Budapest was the Szechenyi Spa: Budapest’s most famous outdoor Turkish baths. A £10 on a day ticket, to sit out in the sun in the deliciously warm and bubbly baths, engaging oneself in a traditional Hungarian social arena, was so, so worth it. Go. Seriously.

The primary reason for enjoying the luxury of the baths is the horror that will lie in front of you – the train. Although quite possibly preferable to the overpriced coach journey, the train ride to Novi Sad felt like catching the last train out of Poland as the Nazi’s came up over the horizon. In this case, pushing works. And if you don’t get a seat then you face the prospect of hunching up on the floor or standing by the toilet for the entire six-hour journey, unfortunately upped to eight due to numerous Serbian border checks.

But if it’s an adventure you’re after the train is recommended. Rolling into Novi Sad at sunrise, with a mist descending over the Serbian cornfields (just don’t read up on Slobodan Milosevic before you go) was genuinely magical, especially coming off the back of a mad train ride with pilled-up Glaswegian squaddies, a model from Blackpool and Felix the German.

Your typical Serbian male

Novi Sad itself is quite small and concrete, though rather more cosmopolitan and modern than you might think. Those in apartments (usually about £20 a night) head into town, whilst those camping (£20 for a week) caught a taxi to the top of the old army barracks in Petrovaradin: the site of the festival. Serbia gets a lot hotter than you might think, and the campsite lacks much in the way of shade. Crawling into your sleeping bag in your sauna of a tent at 8am, and being promptly awoken at 8.30am by the blistering sun, leaves you bleary-eyed to say the least. We found sanctuary at the river beach, one of the highlights of the holiday. Many a pleasant day was spent here.

Serbia is also immensely affordable (a key student concern). A twenty-pack of Marlboro lights costs around £1.80, two litres of decent beer about £2, and a big meal about £3. This means, simply, you can get pissed, sick and give yourself lung cancer for very little.

The festival itself usually kicked off about nine in the evening, carrying on until nine or ten the following morning. The fortress in which the festival is held is astounding. The dance arena must be the most incredible space for dance music in Europe: the floor is surrounded by ramparts, conspiring to create a bowl. One side is hacked off to create a slope, packed out with ravers. Other smaller stages (and believe me, there are a lot) have a similar feel, though not on such scale. What’s more, the festival organisers are not afraid to stick their neck out and book some slightly off-the wall acts. Where else could you see Madness, Prodigy, Grandmaster Flash and Moby on the same bill?

In addition, the sheer range and character of the bands on offer, from Croatian Ska to Latino Trip-Hop, will leave you with a distinct flavour in your mouth upon departing. I can now honestly call myself something of a fan of Romanian techno. Alongside the fantastic acts and incredible location, the festival is noticeable for the effort put into little extras: great lighting, chill-out areas at the top of the fortress, maps and so on. The security is iffy at best, but that is a necessary evil (or maybe a positive) of a non-EU festival: you are able to enjoy the sounds of Sub Focus as the sun rises over a medieval fortress in Serbia. Not something you get to do every day of the week.

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1. No bed, no trains, but drugs and hookers

I don’t have great memories of Barcelona. Sorry. It’s not a great thing to say, but a lot of the city really sucks. It’s filthy, and overcrowded, and full of people who want to steal the contents of your pocket or have sex with you for money. It’s also full of homeless people who will sit next to you when you sleep in a train station for a night and suffocate you with the musk of urine, faeces and the cumulative smell of what must be years of not washing.

La Sagrada Familia: one of the few good bits of Barcelona

Barcelona was a bad luck charm to me. Every time I went to the city something went wrong. The first time I didn’t have a bed in a hostel in the Barri Gotic. Eventually, after much arguing and some very English sarcasm, they found a place. The second time, I couldn’t actually leave the city – trying to get a train from Barcelona to Valencia on a Friday is seemingly impossible: everyone must want to get out of there. So I slept in the train station, until that closed at 12.30 on a Saturday morning. Then I wandered the streets for four and a half hours until they opened the doors again and let in the unshaved, unwashed backpackers and the slightly loony local homeless.

That morning wasn’t great. At about five past five, I sat down on the cold metal seats (presumably so you can’t sleep on them overnight, even if the station were kept open) and listened in to a conversation between a local homeless woman and an American female tourist. The Barceloneta was quietly mumbling to her about “la problema femenina”, and the American could only reply loudly and awkwardly “Yes. I know.”

Barcelona likes its graffiti, even outside five-star hotels

The third time was better. I’d learnt that Barcelona was something to be tolerated, rather than enjoyed, and had learnt that you don’t go to the train station first thing in the morning, you get to your hostel early to make sure they keep your booking and you do everything you can to get the hell out of Dodge as soon as humanely possible.

You don’t walk down Las Ramblas ever (despite what everyone will tell you about it being a Barcelona must-see: if you enjoy the backs of people’s heads, dirty, wide-spaced cobbles and a rat run of inconspicuous beer sellers leaning into you and offering you weed and prostitutes forcibly taking you by the arm and trying to drag you to their bordello, then maybe it’s worth visiting), but especially at night. Everything around it is amazing: the Barri Gotic, the true old city, with narrow, vaulting streets and a complete lack of Burger Kings, McDonalds and KFCs; Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia, a candlewax cathedral on one side and a Las Vegas casino frontage on the other, and his Parc Guell, a play park on a hill with views over Barcelona – where pickpockets and dealers and prostitutes and pimps become insubstantial ants; and the Diagonal, a great incongruent street in the middle of the city. But ultimately, it’s somewhere you watch your wallet – and your watch, counting down the hours until you get to move on to somewhere else.

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A year in Paris has its ups and its downs

Ah Paris! The city that invented chic, the home of romance and glamour. I set off on my year abroad filled with excitement and apprehension in equal measure. I had been planning how to spend my year away from university for what felt like an eternity, but I soon realised that even the best-laid plans can turn to dust in the face of hard Parisian reality.

Having secured an internship with a top international recruitment agency, I must admit that I was feeling pretty smug, especially since I was lucky enough to be paid more than the usual rate of a third of the minimum wage. I arrived in Paris a week before I was due to begin work, in order to look for a flat. Surely it wouldn’t be too difficult to find somewhere?

It wasn’t quite the ‘Sex and the City’ cocktail-sipping, Jimmy Choo-wearing lifestyle I had fantasized about

I set about scouring the internet for flat-shares and trying to arrange apartment viewings in my less than perfect French. But despite all my best efforts, the weeks passed and I failed to find anything. It wasn’t for want of trying; I visited several apartments that I would happily have lived in, only to be told by the other tenants that they had already seen twenty or more prospective flatmates and were expecting more. My heart sank. Individual studios were no better.

The Parisian studio is a law unto itself, inconceivable to those who have not experienced this phenomenon first hand. Generally, they are the size of a cardboard box, with a sofa bed, kitchen and shower all crammed into one room. And when I say kitchen, I mean a microwave if you’re lucky, and a little camping stove. I seriously contemplated renting one such delight, and paying 600 Euros per month for the privilege, and was only saved from this depressing fate when a friend of my parents offered me her own empty apartment for half the usual price. It was a lucky escape indeed from an existence that would undoubtedly have had me sprinting back to Britain within weeks.

And so I ended up living in the tenth arrondissement, half way between Gare de L’Est and La Fayette, and within easy walking distance of Montmartre. I could not have found a more perfect location if I had tried. I was (finally) living the dream. Ok, it wasn’t quite the ‘Sex and the City’ cocktail-sipping, Jimmy Choo-wearing lifestyle I had fantasized about, but hey – beggars (and poor students) can’t be choosers.

Life quickly settled into a less than glamorous pattern, involving a mad metro dash to work each morning, a day of mindless data inputting, followed by a mad metro dash home again. The nine-to-five ‘adult’ lifestyle was actually rather dull. I reminisced fondly of messy mid-week student nights out, and days when my lectures didn’t start until 2pm. Working in a foreign country was certainly an unforgettable experience, even if it wasn’t the laugh-a-minute existence I’d hoped for. I went through every emotion possible: excitement, frustration, disappointment, elation and loneliness. This was an aspect of the year abroad that I hadn’t really considered in the pre-departure meetings.

Determined to get the most out of my experience, I made a conscious effort to embrace all things français, watching French television, reading French newspapers and spending my days working with French people. But despite this, I remained in many ways resolutely British, and strangely drawn to all things home-like. A weekend in Paris was not complete without a trip or two to Starbucks (I know it’s expensive and I don’t care. I like it!) And my favourite night out with friends? Burger and chips, followed by a few drinks in our favourite Irish bar. Travelling is all about exploring new places, meeting new people and embracing a different way of life. But some things in life are just unbeatable, so why try?

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Where to go...where to go... | Kate Johnson

It’s part of the Amazon, but not what you would expect. Instead of lush tropical jungle and endless rivers flowing towards the mighty Amazon river, much of Bolivia’s slice of the Amazon basin offers visitors a less typical Amazonian experience.

For many Bolivia is hardly the first country that springs to mind when planning an Amazon trip. Yet the Amazon basin encompasses over half the country, offering pristine rainforest and savannah lands, also known as pampas. It is these savannah areas, large wetlands overflowing with animals, which draw visitors to the area.

Getting there, however, is not always easy. While the gateway town of Rurrenabaque has an airport, the dirt runway turns to mud at the slightest sign of rain with many flights cancelled during the wet season. The only other way there is via a very bumpy and nerve ranking journey along dirt tracks, even taking in parts of the world’s most dangerous road. With journey times of 18 hours on a local bus or 12 in a jeep from the Bolivian capital of La Paz, it’s not for the faint-hearted.

From Rurrenabaque, it’s three more hours along a bumpy road to the departure point where all tours of the pampas leave. After climbing into a motorised canoe, our group of eight set off down the river, spotting numerous animals and birds along the way. A caiman quickly peeped over the water, the world’s largest rodent the capybara waded through the river and spider and cappuccino monkeys swung from the trees. The smell of bananas attracted the cappuccino monkeys who jumped on our arms and heads and tried to steal the bananas from the boat.

After a couple of hours on the river, our next stop was our accommodation which was simply dorm rooms in wooden cabins built on stilts. Ours came with two resident alligators who lazily basked in the sunshine and the water beneath the cabin. As we lazed in hammocks, we watched numerous birds and even spotted a toucan.

The following day was spent anaconda hunting in a marsh area, where water climbed half way up our thighs. We spotted a sleeping black anaconda, as well as a tiny but deadly milk snake. Snakes spotted, we sailed further down the river to an area inhabited by pink river dolphins. Even though there were alligators and caimans five minutes up the river, we all jumped at the opportunity to swim with the wild pink river dolphins who gently nibbled at our feet. Our last activity of the day, after watching the sunset, took us alligator hunting in the dark. The eyes of the alligators glowed red in the dark and our guide even plucked a baby one from the water, though this isn’t exactly ethical!

By day three it was time to bid farewell to the mosquitoes, but not before we went piranha fishing. They really do have shark teeth. After only two more hours sailing on the river, three hours in the jeep and 28 on the bus, thanks to a landslide, we made it back to the animal that is La Paz. It was worth it though.

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Because safety is secondary when you're low on Rand

Having spent a highly leisurely week or so partying and wandering in South Africa’s ‘mother city’ it was time to leave. Me and my travel partner were on the final straight of our gap year and had two weeks to amble north to Johannesburg before flying home. We had booked coach tickets for the 6 hour journey from Cape Town to Bloemfontein and had a leisurely two hour wait for the coach to arrive at its stop directly behind our hostel.

Having looked at the tickets and seen 0620 printed on them I opted to stay in the hostel till 6:15 before sauntering over, this casualness being based on how little fun sitting at bus stops is and the proximity of it to our hostel. However when looking at my coach ticket I had failed to see the R (rand) symbol following 0620. This of course denoting how much the journey cost and not what time the coach departed. Dick. The coach had left at six and by the time we had worked out what had happened it was six twenty five. In the grand scheme of things this was a moderate fuck up meaning a whole heap of hassle involving cancelling/rebooking hostels, travel arrangements and our schedule for the final two weeks of our gap year.

The following shit-scary joy ride entailed cruising through three red lights, the wrong way round a roundabout and some overtaking manoeuvres that meat headed chump Vin-Diesel would be proud of.

Based on this I took what was in retrospect a fairly large risk based on our delicately balanced finances and the startling combination of drink driving, lawless roads and cars that would make your average safety conscious Volvo owner vomit, which we had experienced frequently on out travels so far. I quizzed a taxi driver at the bus stop on how far away the bus would be now and where the next stop is. In the twenty five minutes since it had left the driver estimated it would be at the next stop 26km’s away on the other side of Cape Town. He also estimated that for the right price he could get us there before it leaves again.

What then entailed was pure Hollywood. After piling in with all our belongings the taxi had to be push started for around 100m before the engine snarled into life. A beauty our taxi was not. On cue the skies opened and our taxi devoid of front windscreen wipers, seatbelts and properly closing windows began its mad chase across Cape Town. The following frankly shit-scary joy ride entailed cruising through three red lights, the wrong way down a one way street, the wrong way round a roundabout and some overtaking manoeuvres that meat headed chump Vin-Diesel would be proud of. All this in a car that would have failed its MOT in the UK around 73 years ago.

The kilometres flew by and leaving the motorway we rose over a bank to see our bus down the valley sat gloriously stationary at the petrol station. With about with a hundred and fifty yards and a T junction to go we saw the doors of the coach close and the engines fire up. Aghast, our driver gunned the dilapidated engine, screeched through the junction and blocked the coach’s exit with a skid as small crowd of onlookers cheered and whooped (no exaggeration). We flew out, waving our tickets at a slightly bemused coach driver, who grudgingly let us on to the sound of cheers. Inconvenience and death avoided with a few thrills to boot. Sure it sounds like a classic gap year yarn embellished for entertainment, but I can assure you it hasn’t! As the locals would say: ‘That was lekker bru, massive jols or what, eh?’

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