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On the Varieties of Nature

a travel blog by Alex Kent

Obadiah Walker, writing in the 17th century, recommended travel abroad to:

"...learn the Languages, Laws, Customes, and understand the Government, and interest of other Nations... To produce confident and comely behaviour, to perfect conversation... To satisfy [the] mind[s] with the actual beholding such rarities, wonders, and curiosities as are heard or read of. It brings us out of the company of our Relations, acquaintances and familiars; making us stand upon our guard, which renders the mind more diligent, vigorous, brisk, and spiritfull. It shews us, by consideration of so many various humours, and manners, to look into and form our own; and by tasting perpetually the varieties of Nature, to be able to judge of what is good and better."

He also praised its ability to break the habit of laziness, disentangle the traveller from "unfitting companions" and reform the vice of drinking. Hmm.

So, I’m setting off around the world in search of rarities and wonders. Much to Obadiah’s doubtless disgust however, I fully intend to laze, drink, and maybe even make some ‘unfit’ friends along the way. Hopefully it won’t ruin my chances of returning more learned, comely and formed in my humours. After all, with the prospect of ‘perpetually tasting Nature’s varieties’, who could resist?!
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Zippity Doo Da

Monteverde, Costa Rica

Our next stop, high in the cloudforest, was the strange little town of Monteverde. Founded by Quakers for dairy production, it had an Alpine feel to it only enhanced by the weather, which found us in shoes, jeans, jumpers and raincoats for the first time in what felt like forever. It was actually quite a welcome change and made me very nostalgic for the autumn I am missing back home.
The region is famous for its numerous zip lines and canopy tours, so we booked ourselves on one straight away and spent the most incredible morning hurtling through the treetops on zip-wires up to 750m long and god knows how high. The mist and rain affected the visibility so much that on the longer runs you were just launching into a wall of grey, the wire disappearing into nothingness, until about half way along you could see neither where you were going nor where you had come from but only the valley floor far below and the forest canopy as it hurtled past. Truly exhilarating. The course also included a huge 'tarzan swing' which was a real heart-in-mouth leap of faith. Although you only free-fell initially for about 4 or 5 metres, it felt like a hell of a long way, and when the wire tautened and you started swinging out over the valley at breakneck speed, hurtling towards a large and extremely solid looking tree, it was impossible not to scream. Needless to say I didn't hit the tree, but swung merrily backwards and forwards a few times with my stomach doing cartwheels before they reined me in. A great day.

permalink written by  Alex Kent on October 8, 2007 from Monteverde, Costa Rica
from the travel blog: On the Varieties of Nature
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La Fortuna

Fortuna, Costa Rica

From Monteverde we made our way to nearby La Fortuna to soak in some Hot Springs and trek up to a nearby waterfall - another hot and sweaty slog, but definitely worth it. The falls were beautiful, sitting in a self-carved corner which glittered with spray in the sunlight and glowed green with lichen as the water roared and boiled in the plunge pool at the bottom. The river ran off into a beautiful blue pool which was gorgeous for swimming although seriously chilly - and byt he time I had gone through the wretched rigmarole of trying to change into a bikini in public while preserving my modesty (oh to be a boy), I had somewhat lost the flush from the climb! After an excellent plato del dia in a little cafe recommended to us by a taxi driver, we hit the road once more to make for the Bright lights of the capital.

permalink written by  Alex Kent on October 10, 2007 from Fortuna, Costa Rica
from the travel blog: On the Varieties of Nature
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The End of the Beginning

San Jose, Costa Rica

In San Jose we settled into Tranquillo Backpackers - a nice hostel in a less than nice part of town. Our guide book warned us that it was a booming red-light district by night, but even when we arrived early evening, the hostel manager was horrified to see us leave the car unattended - "Go, NOW, go and stand by it. Yes, go NOW." - albeit that it was locked, within eyesight, and a 10 second walk away!

Rich's birthday fell during our stay so we went out to sample the nightlife and ended up on something of a wild goose chase, taxi hopping around the city to try and find 'the place to be' - who would have though it could be so difficult to track down in a capital city? At any rate, we had fun, although it's not somewhere I'll be rushing back to. It was nice to be back in the hustle and bustle of a city though, and I enjoyed drifting around, window shopping and people watching for a couple of days, before I packed by bags and said goodbye to Central America for (very nearly) the last time.

For this trip at least.

permalink written by  Alex Kent on October 11, 2007 from San Jose, Costa Rica
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A Holiday Within a Holiday

Graeme Hall, Barbados

Reunited with the boy at last. Details to follow - I'm feeling too emotional at having said goodbye to him again today to write about it now!

permalink written by  Alex Kent on October 14, 2007 from Graeme Hall, Barbados
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A Holiday Within a Holiday Within a Holiday

Bequia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

See above.

permalink written by  Alex Kent on October 17, 2007 from Bequia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
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Back to Barbados

Graeme Hall, Barbados

More sun, sea and sand.

permalink written by  Alex Kent on October 22, 2007 from Graeme Hall, Barbados
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The Final Farewell

San Jose, Costa Rica

So here I am, back in Tranquillo Backpackers, immersing myself in frantically typing up my route over the past few months and trying not to dwell on the fact that I am again all alone and boyfriendless for at least the next four months. Boohoo!

Tomorrow still seems rather unreal - South America at last, and I haven´t the faintest idea what I´m heading to ... off to do some research.

permalink written by  Alex Kent on October 27, 2007 from San Jose, Costa Rica
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Quito? What Quito?

Quito, Ecuador

I love official airport taxis. There is nothing more relieving than arriving, frazzled and emotional, in a new country and having a friendly lady gently coax your destination out of you, very forgiving of your rusty Spanish, charge you a set price, give you a ticket and point you to the nearest cab, where a friendly man helps you with your luggage and cheerfully takes you on your way.

It may well be a rip off, but it was just what I needed.

Another thing I needed, and in this I was once again guided by the indespensible Lonely Planet, was a hostel full of people mindlessly having fun and being sociable. El Centro Del Mundo provided exactly that, and I´m not too ashamed to say that my 5 days in Quito were spend doing almost nothing cultural or remotely productive. Instead I surrounded myself with new friends, drank a hell of a lot of rum and coke (free in the hostel 3 nights a week) and tried to cheer myself up.

I also managed to visit the equator, and had great fun leaping from one hemisphere to another, balancing eggs on nails (apparently it´s easier there) and observing the opposing flows of draining water. It genuinely does work!

On, and Hallowe´en was cancelled. That was interesting. Apparently it interfered with some Ecuadorian national day, and the President didn´t want the local culture to be subsumed by a mass of American commercialism. Good for him! So he policed the streets and threatened to fine any bars hosting parties and arrest people in costume. (I consequently spent the following night dressed as a man, while my new friend Alex paraded around in my miniskirt and top for the local Irish bar´s ´replacement´ cross-dressing Hallowe´en night. Don´t ask.)

I also managed to find, negotiate and book (totally in Spanish, a huge achievement) a great last minute cruise to the Galapagos Islands on a fabulous boat called the Beluga.....

permalink written by  Alex Kent on October 28, 2007 from Quito, Ecuador
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In The Footsteps of a Salopian ...

Galapagos, Ecuador

A totally ridiculous place - I was only there minutes before I was on the point of tears at how amazing it was. Admittedly the fact that I hadn´t been to sleep and had only a very few hours earlier reclaimed my rightful gender probably wasn´t helping matters. However, tiredness and emotionalness aside, the Galapagos truly are incredible.

From the barren red earth of Isla Baltra when you fly in, to the entertaining souvenir T-shirts at the airport, to the inumerably streams of diving birds plunging into the depths and reminding me vividly of sitting on the beach in Bequia, everything was captivating.

I somehow ended up with a great cabin, one of the best on the boat in fact, with two walls which were entirely window so I could fall asleep and wake up with the sea gliding past tight next to me. Every attention had been payed to detail, and I couldn´t stop grinning with smug excitement at how lucky I was to be there.

Trip 1:

Wow. North Seymour, like Baltra, is utterly flat -

a slab of tectonic plate which has been pushed up to sit above the surface. The vegetation is dry and scrubby, but the sense of barrenness goes no further. Bright reddy/orange crabs scuttled away from me as I left the boat and I was immediately hypnotised by the gracefully enormity of the pelicans as they patrolled the surf, and the balletic perfection of the frigates´dramatic dives. I was so absorbed that I practically walked into the little black marine iguana at my feet - but while I was admiring him I suddenly noticed that the beach was littered with lazing baby sealions, irridescent with velvet wrinkles. A yellow-faced Baltra land iguana basked motionless in the sun as if he was put there solely to face the camera, as the blue-footed boobies whistled and honked to each other in playful courtship. It was quite impossible to take in each new wonder before being distracted by the next - the whole place as alive with creatures, living on each other´s doorsteps, without a hint of concern over each other´s presence of ours. The fearlessness of the animals is something it is utterly impossible to prepare yourself for. Every ingrained habit is telling you to approach them with caution, but more often than not they just get bored of waiting and run up to inspect you! It´s hard to convince yourself that it is real - that you genuinely are face to face with a wild sealion; genuinely are standing in the middle of a mating ritual with horny extrovert birds weaving a dance of seduction around you, oblivious to your presence. Our guide´s expert commentary brought everything even more to life, and it really felt like I was learning, discovering - literally living an episode of ´Planet Earth´!

Trip 2:

I am getting ahead of myself, but I just have to mention a great moment, which left me with an inane grin for hours. I came in off the dingy after our afternoon visit, changed and drifted the 3 metres to the lounge/bar where there was a bowl of pimento stuffed olives, a plate of cheese and salami, another or Ritz crackers, and a cold beer. And did I mention that the Gypsy Kings were gently strumming away on the stereo while we rocked at anchor in the dark bay? Bliss on board as well as on land.

That day´s highlight (and the highlight of many subsequent days in fact), so fabulous that I laughed the whole time it was happening, was swimming with sealions. We snorkelled for perhaps 20 minutes and although the scenery was pretty, it was simply too cold to be properly absorbing and a lot of people got out of the water pretty quickly. When only two or three of us were left, three sealions found us and swam a hypnotising dance around us. They would twist and turn, dive and leap, hurtle out of hte deep to within inches of your mask, then glide past you to double back underneath and stare at you with a very self-congratulatory expression. They loved you to play back too. I started diving down with them, twisting around and doubling back, trying to hold their gaze while they outmanoevered me and it just made them more ambitious - swimming closer then darting away more quickly, diving deeper, writhing around overexcitedly infront of me as they wove a path around each other and us. It was magical.

Besides that, more beautiful scenery - the turquiose waters,

warm rounded banks of baslat rock and yellow sands of the previous day gave way to dramatic cliffs, gorgeous barrelling left-hand breaks that would have made Dave green, blow holes spouting salt spray 30 metres into the air - and, of course, the profuse and staggering juxtaposition of birds, mammals and reptiles of every shape and size. The boobies are so comical, stamping their rubbery blue feet, and the tentative courtship of young albatrosses, forming the first bonds which will join them for life, is so touching.

Another island:

Punta Espinosa, on Fernandina Island, blew me away. Even after several days of non-stop wildlife spotting and hugely varied scenery, it was just so fabulous that I felt like I had arrived in the Galapagos anew. An irregular. messy stretch of coastline formed where lave flows have pushed out into the sea, it is lapped by beautiful turquoise waters which alternately foam up against the rocks or flow inwards to fill rock pools and tranquil coves. Against a beautiful backdrop of golden-brown volcanoes which glowed in the afternoon sun, the water was alive with pelicans, boobies, frigates and comical flightless cormorants whose silly stunted wings look much less daft and pathetic when you learn that they can dive to 35 metres. THIRTY FIVE METRES!! I felt pretty chuffed when I did that with a scuba tank on my back. Closer to the shore, the marine iguanas wove their way in and out of the surf or basked in sun-drenched piles on the rocks. Away to my left, sealions rested beneath the shade of a mangrove, while a couple of penguins bobbed about on top of a wave. While the exquisite orange and turquise cracs scuttled with the lava lizards around my feet, I tried to absorb the moment. Within 10 metres of where I was standing were at least five endemic species, along with a hord of other wildlife - all utterly unafraid and happily going about their lives against a backdrop of black lava, golden sand, green mangroves, turquoise waters and dramatic, sweeping volcanoes. I could have stayed there for days. To cap it all, a little way along the shore, we witnessed the most beautiful and captivating courtship display yet. Two cormorants, first on land sang, flapped and rubbed beaks, and then on water swam an exquisite synchronised dance, circling around one another, bobbing and weaving, and intertwining their necks. They were totally oblivious to the playful interference of a young sealion and they must have carried on for ten minutes. It was utterly enchanting.

I am aware that I have been sickeningly poetic in trying to describe my experiences there over the last week, but it is impossible not to be. Whatever preconceptions or expectations I had about the Galapagos, nothing could compare to the experience of actually being there. It is difficult to say exactly why it was so wonderful - the landscape, the climate, even the animals themselves are not that exceptional - I think it is simply the fearlessness of the creatures. The opportunity it provides to witness nature as it was supposed to be - as it is when humans are not there.

permalink written by  Alex Kent on November 2, 2007 from Galapagos, Ecuador
from the travel blog: On the Varieties of Nature
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Welcome to bus travel

Guayaquil, Ecuador

Having had one more night back in the hectic hostel it was time to begin the tedious process of getting to La Paz (Bolivia) overland in the shortest time period possible.

The first leg was mild - eight hours down through Ecuador to Guayaquil - a huge, industrial port city, and by all accounts a place to be missed. Excellent. Luckily I am blessed with an almost irresistable ability to sleep on buses, so the day passed in a daze of snatched views out of the window, Spanish films, English films (it´s fascinating to see how much they tone down the language when they write the subtitles) and reading, in between long periods of dreaming.

I had a hostel recommendation, so upon arriving I wasted no time getting to the relative comfort and security of my dorm room and rangthe bus company to try and reserve a ticket to Lima (Peru) for the morrow. Unfortunately Iwas too late, and they were all gone. Apparently every one else was also trying to get out of thisdamn place.

The next morning I headed straight to the bus station and, after a bit of a panic and a row when she told me there were no seats for Monday either (when i had been assured the night before that there were some) I managed toreserve a seat and spent the rest of the day drifitng around the new waterfront development, which is generally accepted to be Guayaquil´s main redeeming feature.

In fact it really wasn´t so bad and the development, ´The Malecon´, is fine - very bland and faceless, full of ice cream and food vendors, families and undefined modern sculpture in the ´poles, wires and sails style´ - rather like strolling down Embankment on a touristy Saturday in the summer - but very clean and jolly. At the far end of the Malecon is a district called Las Penas where cute narrow cobbled streets wind their way up a hill between brightly painted and elegantly aged colonial wooden mansions. One route up the hill is a tourist highway, but more by luck than design I managed to find an alternative route up and spent a blissful couple of hours (despite the sweltering heat) strolling up the hill between people´s back yards and gardens, catching occasional glimpses of the huge view and being greeted amiably by everyone I met. The top of the hill affords the best views over the city which the smog permits, and, thankfully there is a sweet little church where I retreated, with my best devout face on, to get out of the sun for a bit and catch my breath.

I passed the evening in some more drifting and sat by the water until 10ish, reading my guidebook and reflecting that all in all it had been a rather nice day.

permalink written by  Alex Kent on November 10, 2007 from Guayaquil, Ecuador
from the travel blog: On the Varieties of Nature
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