Around the world in 367 days

Si, un poco. Todavia estoy apprendiendo y todos las dias soy un poco mejor. Espero una dia puedo decir "Si claro, hablo espanol".

Or something along those lines anyway!!

When we set off from the UK we put some Spanish language courses on our iPods thinking eight months would be sufficient to learn the basics before we got to Central and South America. There were just 8 lessons, each one hour; it should have been plenty of time! With eight weeks to go, I still hadn't started them, but still it should have been plenty of time. 8 days to go, and still not having listened to the first lesson, it would have been pushing it. The fact that 8 hours from Chile on the plane and I'd still rather watch reruns of "Everybody loves Raymond" was not a good sign!

Finally, eight weeks AFTER getting to Central America I started listening to them and I've got to say, they were rubbish!!! After 5 lessons we were still saying "No hablo espanol, habla ingles?"

Then we met Richard and Amy who put us onto language tapes by Michel Thomas and I have to say they are excellent. We were going to take some Spanish lessons but we haven't needed to. In lesson 1 you learn over 1000 words, and given that you only use a couple of thousand in average day to day life, it's impressive progress. Over the next 7 lessons you learn the structure, tenses and rules that allow you to pick up the language very quickly.

I would definitely recommend them to anybody needing or even just wanting to learn some Spanish. They are purely audio so my spelling is probably questionable. Spanish is a really nice language and pretty easy to develop once you have the grounding and I'm really enjoying using in day to day life.

Twinned with using the language everyday we are slowly getting better. Two months ago I couldn't say a word, two days ago we had a 30 minute chat with a couple of drunk Ecuadorians on a square in Vilcabamba and I'm pretty sure we understood each other most of the time. Although, they appeared to think we had come to some agreement over the sale of Deborah for some prized horses as we tried to leave...

I only have a few gripes with the tapes. Firstly, one of the two people on the tape learning at the same time doesn't seem to pick it up too well - half the time you are waiting for him while he struggles to say 'puede' for the umpteenth time.

Secondly, no matter how good the tapes are it still takes time to pick up the vocabulary. A few weeks ago I tried Lengue Linguine as a fairly safe option on the menu only later to find out that lengue means tongue!! Of all the places I dreamed of first eating tongue it was never having got all the way to Colum-b-i-a; at least I had some fava beans and a nice Chianti to wash it down with, tft tft tft tft tft!!!

I'm just glad I steered clear of the next pasta option, the Pene Penne!!!

Posted by Alexander at 01:01 | Permalink | Comments

Don't you hate it when TV shows broadcast a show that is just a collection of bits from past episodes. You know, the whole wobbly flashback thing that Friends did every now and then. Another thing that bugs me is when they start introducing all these celebrity guests. Will & Grace did it for a while with Madonna, Minnie Driver etc popping up for a few episodes before disappearing. When they did these things it just struck me as lazy or as if the writers had no imagination whatsoever!!!

Anyway, mini-rant over, back to the post...

Welcome to the 100th post!! It's been emotional; I've laughed - you've cried, but we made it in the end. So, I thought I'd just have a quick recap of some of the highlights and lowlights from the last 99 posts. And here to introduce the nominations, as voted by yourselves truly, is former Radio 1 DJ Bruno Brookes (sorry, he's all I could afford, however, he does have a certain pedigree in this milieu)...

Thanks Alex, so the good (in no particular order):

Three is a crowd
Obituary One
A day in the life
Travelling Trials
Obituary Two
Tribute

Try as I might I couldn't find any bad but I sure found some ugly and that's not even taking his self portraits into account:

Inner Bloggerlogue
Paint Drying
Evolutionary Jumps
Phil Vickery
Worst punch line in HIStory

Thanks for that Bruno but less of the quips please when we get to 200, I'm not paying you to be a comedian!!

If you still want more, don't forget you can use the archives links on the right or skip the mindless drivel and head straight to the galleries. I might argue that all 99 posts should have been marked good, whilst you could quite easily argue that they were all bad and pretty ugly. The beauty of blogging is that everyone is right, if you don't like the posts then vote with your fingers...

Hello? Hello?? Anybody??? In cyberspace, no-one can hear you scream...

Posted by Alexander at 00:00 | Permalink | Comments

Time flies when you are having fun; where has the last 9 months gone? We now have just 100 days of travelling left. In that time we need to get from Colombia to Brazil by way of Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Argentina - that's a lot of miles we need to cover but hopefully we should see some pretty cool stuff in the next three and a bit months.

The good thing is we have some cool things to look forward to when we do get back: a wedding, birthdays, Christmas markets in Germany, Costa Rica, New York and of course Christmas and the New Year itself. It's not all good though, there's the state of my stock portfolio , deciding where to live, finding a job and negative equity all waiting for me in the New Year too!

Posted by Alexander at 00:35 | Permalink | Comments

As it turns out we loved Colombia. The colonial towns were great, with lots of stunning scenery but the people are definitely what made it. They are all so friendly, animated and joyful people only too willing to spare a couple of minutes for a chat.

We are heading back to Quito in a couple of days as I need to be there for a week but being back in Ecuador is no hardship. Throughout our travels I have said that Laos was my favourite country but that has now been superceded by both Colombia and Ecuador. I think, pushed on the point, I would say that Ecuador is my favourite country, it really does seem to have everything. The Galapagos Islands, great Volcanic and Mountainous areas, rain forest and a great coastline being just a few highlights from this small but stunning country. It even boasts the highest point on earth; eat that Mount Everest!!!

Posted by Alexander at 03:29 | Permalink | Comments

We've been in Colombia for coming up two weeks now and the place is definitely growing on me. Our first impressions hadn't been great after we landed in Medellin which is a pretty uninspiring city. Transport has generally been a lot harder and a lot more expensive and the first few people we met weren't really what you would call friendly.

However, next stop was Cartegena and this is a great colonial town. It's the most touristy place we've found yet in Colombia but still the locals outweigh the tourists by some way. We spent four days here just chilling in nice cafes, going to nice restaurants and bars and exploring the city and the surrounding suburbs.

After Cartegena we decided to go off the map a little and headed inland. First stop was Mompos, a nice little town in the central wetlands, now past it's best days as a major port but still interesting in itself. While we were there they had a nautical celebration and also a march through the streets that we participated in as the only foreigners - quite odd!!

Next stop was Bucaramanga and a nice village called Giron, but we only stayed here a couple of nights before we headed off to our current location of San Gil. San Gil was the first time we had seen any tourists in 5 days but still we have seen less than 10 in the last 3 days. This town has a great location and is renowned for it's adventure sports so today I went and did some rafting on the local river with a very friendly group. It was my first time so I stuck to a Class 3 but I enjoyed myself and am already looking forward to tackling a 4 or 5 in Peru hopefully.

What's really changing my mind though are the people. Almost everyone we are meeting now is so friendly and also patient with my attempts at Spanish. The country has obviously had a pretty chequered history and the local people have suffered a lot because of this so the warm welcome is great. The current president seems to be doing a great job of cleaning up, the recent rescue of 15 people who had been kidknapped 6 years ago and the ongoing destabilising of FARC are contributing to a much safer and enjoyable atmosphere here. It is interesting seeing the country as it is now; I can't imagine being able to go a week without seeing another tourist as Colombia starts to show up more and more on travellers radars.

Tomorrow we are heading down to Villa de Leyva for more adventure sports, hiking and general fun!!

Posted by Alexander at 20:12 | Permalink | Comments