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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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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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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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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