Lady is the Tramp

As I walk along the empty beach under the cover of night, two beach dogs come running and barking at me, its dark so I hesitate, then I smile, they’re my two little four legged neighbours. They don’t know that I will be leaving soon, that I will not be walking along the sea with them as the sunsets in the horizon, talking to them as I avoid the plastic bottles left carelessly in the sand. Sometimes we just walk; other times we sit closely getting lost in the horizon. Tonight as I write I give them extra attention, extra love, extra cuddles and company. 

Lady and Manchas with their dog friend Shark

They are stray dogs, the luckiest stray dogs in the Yucutan, stray dogs with local and international friends, strong stray dogs with names and great personalities. Manchas is the youngest and the most energetic comes around jumping, ready to play, wanting that imaginary bone, wanting some energetic play time, we have tried some running and I let him win every time!! Lady sits, lets the boyo have his playtime and, then follows me closely, as if she is happy merely with my presence.

These Mexican perros have become my two greatest friends in Progreso, they come everyday spontaneously unannounced without a set time, or without booking an appointment simply to say hello and then run freely. From the time the fishermen leave to the sea as the sunrises, until my daily walk as the sun disappears they’re always about.

One of my favourite things about travelling has always been the friends I make along the way, the ones I share a little especial moment with, with a “Hello I am here” smile, truly they are the ones that keep me coming back for more, feeding my addiction and expanding my horizons.

The five minutes that could have been days or weeks of liquid cultural adrenaline, the five minutes learning about a life at sea, the same five minutes that made me want to get onboard and experience that life even if it was for one day, (truly I was hoping I would get to see the sunrises everyday, but instead got rocked to sleep far later than what my body had initially requested… I am a bit short on beauty sleeps!!).  The five minutes of randomness listen to a friend playing guitar while I my slowly closed my happy eyes on the cold floor of a bus station. The five minutes when I learned about freedom through the lips of a Gerry, a former convict in USA who on his first day of freedom after years in the jail bumped into me (how lucky was he right?!). The five minutes of a walk in Paris with strangers laughing till tears of pain run through our faces. The five-minute ritual of grabbing some Cevapcici, sit and smell the Adriatic, with a friend from Down Under on a Sunday afternoon. And I could go on talking about all these 5 minutes of doubts, secrets, surprises, instant friendship by dumping a security guard on the sea and peddling as fast as you can, but then I would ruin the future materials for The Blog!

There is this crazy surprising mix of people out in this great planet, and that is what makes travel worth it, is getting out of your safety, of your control zone and let the vulnerability kick in with, as The Gift say “five minutes of everything”. Course there are also these people that drive me insane at work, who do not read the repeated emails, reply by asking me something I already gave them the answer to (thank God for copy and paste), with whom I wish I could spend five minutes trying to figure out if they suffer from some sort of Aphasia! (Luckily the paste seems to do the trick).

Perfect Sunsets

Today my last five minutes go to the Manchas and his friend Lady, the Tramps of Puerto Progreso beach: _________________(non distinguishable audible sounds)!!! 

The Travellers Notebook

Open Travellers Notebook

Tonight was a sad night, it was sad not out of the things that make people usually sad, because I was laughing and chatting, like happy do. It was sad because as opened my little notebook to add something else to the many things I have added over this year I noticed there are only a few pages left.

This little notebook was initially a gathering of A5 blank recycled brown paper pages that someone thought looked good, got it produced for the masses, sent it to a shop, Helena passed by liked the way it look, took it home with her and early this year in Tenerife decided I should have it.

In the beginning I was quite confused really didn’t know what sort of things I should write, like if there was a right and wrong list. As the days passed by it became this notebook no one knows I have with me all the time. As the time passed by it started to contain a bit more, a piece of paper with tips for the Amsterdam girl trip we never looked at, the Asia odyssey I haven’t lived yet, a train ticket that reminds me I have been home and hugged my mum at least once this year, the memories of my Californian adventure, the right southern ticket for the wrong northern train, the Chevy road trips, the desert trip, my timeless artwork which will always look as if I did it 23 years ago, the San Francisco prose, the Seattle weekend, little quotes mixed up with dates, address, locations, the piece of napkin which story is unknown, it even knows my name in Arabic!

It is the cliché essence: “It has more than it meets the eye”. From the I don’t really know of Tenerife in January, to the I need some more pages in Progreso as I write.

I wish it was neverending, I wish I had more of this little notebooks pages. 

As It getting near its end, I write less and less, it’s a page I don’t want to turn, a book that I want to keep forever young as in it first days of life when I was walking about in Brighton daydreaming under the snow with the possibilities that the future secretly stored. I just don’t want it to be over, and yet I wish I had start it a 960 days ago.

The good thing about sadness, is that point of view based feeling at it’s best. The half a dozen empty pages I so want to hold on to make me sad I will have to put it down, but when I look back at all the things that precede those empty blank pages in a random unorganised chaotic order, it shows me not only all the stories I should of blooged about, but in its essence my very own 2011 best adventure book.

Las mujeres con la Dignidad Rebelde

And books, well books need a name, San Cristobal gave it the title “Las mujeres con la dignidade rebelde”, Shoreham-by-Sea the index “May be budget forces be with me”, 67 topes between Ocosing to Palenque and Madonna Inn men waterfall WC, made it to a few of the highlight of the contents, and the last few blank pages, well those could be just another random collection of the credits, but as those are already in the inside cover…. It will simply be as it has been… an odyssey to the unknown.

A precious souvenir

Sometime ago... in Croatia

 

As I walk under the hot sun in the walled city once called Ragusa, I leave my passengers behind, get on the small side streets and find Tina waiting for me by the restaurant’s door.

The blonde slim waiter to whom I once casually said “I will be back” has become my weekly business contact point. After booking the tables for the evening I sit outside in one of the alley tables. Today I want to experience something new, so I order frog legs. The food order comes with company.

My server sits across the table and before I realise she is telling me all about hippies, musicians, girls wearing flowers in their hair sitting at the beach and smoking funny things. She talks about this city, a happy place where she spent her youth. She is talking about a time when several nations were as one and how with the fall of the night all these teenagers that were friends become adversaries in a war they didn’t start.

I wish to interrupt her, to freeze that moment right there, it’s at the grasp of my hand, I could take a picture of Tina sitting opposite me, with the thin walled alley full of empty tables. She stops for a moment and smiles as if she read my mind, but through her eyes I can see it was only a moment to breathe. She is smiling at me as if in the background there were people walking living their life in 1990. She is looking at me as if behind me the first bomb had just fallen and her neighbours are not going to be her friends anymore.

This middle-aged woman, now a humble server at a restaurant, as there are so many, is yet again giving me more than I had bargained for. She is making the history I talk about every week real. It’s not something I read on book, it’s not a bullet hole I once saw on a church wall, it’s something behind her eyes. Something that teaches me  about that things you can’t find on internet, that you can’t find in the mostly useful pages of guidebooks.

As she carries on telling more about the before and the after, about that unusual day that followed a night like so many others, I devour the newly experienced mythical chicken tasting frog legs. For a few moments I get lost in time travel without having to undertake years of experience to build an impossibly smart device.

When I finish the food Tina walks away with my plate, pulls out a cigarette and gets back to her daily chores. I get up and as I walk back through those Dalmatian streets I feel it’s the first time my feet actually touch that ground.

I walk away with the most precious of souvenirs; the picture I never took. 

Chiapas, the bliss of ignorance

Off the beaten track

I spent about 12 days doing what I love the best: traveling. It was all very simple, I got on a car with a friend and head south to the green, hilly, poor, amazing state of Chiapas.

Xmas Tree, Canyon del Sumidero

The southernmost state of Mexico welcomed us with its green and wild mountains where part of the population lives in the jewel of pueblos of its lands: SanCris as the inhabitants kindly called it or San Cristobal de las Casas for the foreigners looking for it in a map. Others live in between the mountains, the waterfalls, the trees, carrying out Mayan-Catholic rituals, waiting for nature to tell them when to marry, when to create life, (which happens quite a lot), they live in small communities high above the clouds as they forefathers did, preparing their children to live their life according to mixture of pre and post Hispanic traditions, praying in churches unique to them, churches where you must step in to absorb the complexity of what goes on inside.

Ancient Palenque

It's a state of living inheritage, a land of amazing ruins, canyons, of rituals, gourmet food. It's a place if hippies, of new art, new music (a bit of Mayan Trance anyone?), a place of tradition and modernity. Where exploring a city might mean spend a whole morning just walking in a same street letting your senses do all the exploring.

Gas for the road

The more I saw, the more I wish I could see, the more I've seen, more I fantasied I could see, the more I learned the more ignorant I felt. It's a beautiful state of "being", when you leave to go somewhere not knowing anything about and you leave feeling like you know you know a lot less about life, about the world, than what you knew before. It's an awareness of your own ignorance, of all the things you don't know. Aware of the existence of objects, of people, of lost forgotten traditions, healers that have serious conversations with your blood to heal you, of walking in a town full of short warmly dressed indigenous people with a blonde, blue eyed friend. Away from the city cameras are not welcomed unless you are a friend, outsiders should be there to help or to buy something home or street made, and does not matter how old, it seems that everyone is trying to sell you something to ensure the continuation of their daily life. Languages and traditional clothes change within 10 long kilometres of winding roads in the mountainous jungle, and the hard lifestyle carries on.

Sweets - Chiapa del Corzo

The art and the ancient history of this green world are like a magnet of Europeans and other explorers that turn to SanCris to be at home in a cradle of an ancient culture.

I left happy, fatter, with winter boots and under a warm blanket of ignorance on my backpack.