loco-mbia

when g left ecuador 5 weeks ago, i flew straight to cali in colombia. arriving in that country was like a slap to the face with a hot fish: a hot fish that's laughing. everything was different. there was something more human and proud about the colourful architecture (a sharp contrast to ecuador's knife-to-the-wrist depressing cities of prison-grey). here i suddenly felt completely relaxed and safe. here the people were smiling, engaging, friendly and alive. here the people were sexy!

in fact, the colombians get a 7/10 on the ondrej population fuckability index. whilst they don't quite have denmark's 10/10 cold shower 5-times-a-day AAA rating, there is plenty of elbow-to-the-back-of-the-neck hyper-gorgeousness to keep one's eyes ogling and boggling from here to next christmas, and after 7 weeks in ecuador (1/10 on the ondrej population fuckability index), the sudden, sharp rise gave me a whiplash injury for which i had to seek urgent treatment.

for the first three weeks i volunteered at an association called manos amigas in the town of ibagué. this organisation basically tries to give the kids in the poorest part of town something to do when they aren't at school (thereby augmenting their education and keeping them off the streets where many adults are just lurking around taking drugs), and making sure that they get something to eat at least once a day.

they do an amazing job, and though in three weeks it's difficult to take ownership of a volunteer role and do anything significant, i loved my time there and the opportunity it gave me to see the life of these people. in particular, my little heart of stone would melt every time i was with the kids, and i became an unashamed and profligate cuddle merchant. it was a cuddling blitz! it was a cuddle-rama! it was a 3 week festival of cuddles! the open affection and love that these children express - children that have nothing to give but give it anyway - was so unbridled that i almost want to weep with joy when i think about it. love. it was like someone had pressed my 'restart' button, and when i woke up, i was deeply aware of just how wonderful this world was. how wonderful it is. colombia is all about love.

every weekend i did something different (half because i wanted to explore the surrounding area and half because i wanted to get away from the gringo i was living with whose negative energy left me catatonic. the poor guy tried to use cocaine as a substitute for personality, but you can't create something from nothing. when i caught him with his head shoved into his cupboard snorting a line so that he could make it through dinner, i regretted not snapping this low point in humanity with my camera for an awesome instagram photo. oh well - next time). 

weekend number one i disgraced myself by playing the typical australian tourist in cali and getting so drunk on free alcohol that i spent 12 hours repainting my hostel's bathroom with several tastefully chosen coats of bile, and hugely pissing off my date who had to carry me home. hello ondrej? what a loser.

weekend number two i escaped to the glorious mountains near salento in the coffee highlands for forest trekking, green relaxation and a dastardly bout of laryngitis.

and weekends number three and four i went to bogota searching for love...or its nearest equivalent. it turns out that cyndi lauper was mistaken when she sang about fun: it's not girls but boys that just wanna have fu-un. oh boys! just wanna have fun :) that's all they really wa-aa-aaant...

i might take this opportunity to mention the fact that in south america, god is winning. obviously first prize goes to jesus who just shits all over the opposition (though his mother is on the podium as well, either in second place or also in first place in an an equivalent setup to the masked polytheism of christianity's trinity). but they're not alone. i've seen not a few buddhist institutions, i stayed with the hare krishnas as you'll soon find out, and i even met some fake jews who clawed their way back through family trees desperate for a sense of identity, only to find themselves in synagogues where the rabbis were preaching the same nonsense we've come to know and hate from the churches, temples and mosques of the world. on the one hand i feel like throwing my hands up and saying 'god bless them all!', but as you know i feel that nothing undermines human intellectual integrity as much as the concept of god, especially within the confines of organised religion, and when i am witness to a classroom full of children who swing from the rafters and cannot concentrate for even 30 seconds during a lesson on short division but sit in silent awe during a daily prayer about jesus, mary and the rest of them, i'm deeply troubled by how inverted these priorities are. 

i wanted to avoid the madness of christmas (without being stuck in a hostel full of aussie tourists powdering their noses and talking about beer and pussy, something that would invariably precipitate an acute episode of 7th-floor auto-defenestration) so i headed off to a hare krishna retreat in the mountains near bogotá for a week of yoga, meditation and indentured labour.

i arrived on christmas eve and within a few hours found myself jumping up and down in the temple singing hare krishna to a trumpet rendition of jingle bells while a congo-line of children ran screaming around the room. something seemed extremely correct about the situation.

i loved the people there - both locals and gringos - made up of all sorts including business people, retirees, recovering drug addicts, a circus performer, and of course a few religious zealots. one of these zealots gave me a tour when I arrived, and as we paused in front of the closed altar in the temple she turned to me and said 'be here when the altar opens: you will receive so many blessings'. it was at this point that i noticed that her pupils were pinpoint, and i couldn't help thinking: 'my god, religion really is the opiate of the masses.'

incidentally, when the altar did open later that night there was what appeared to be a giant potato dressed in human clothing on it. my brain almost ate itself. you wouldn't believe how many blessings i received from that giant potato.

days either started at 4am with a morning worship (that i attended only once out of interest before i became completely devoid of interest 45 minutes later and headed back to bed) or otherwise yoga sessions at a more civilised hour run by awesome gringette hannah. every day we performed 5 hours of 'service'. i was made to chop wood, cut down trees, haul large rocks from one place to another and plough fields until i was barely breathing and begging for euthanasia. at this stage i casually pointed out to the hare krishnas that they were exploiting me (a comment that induced a ripple of panicked glances) and the rest of the week was spent painting pictures of cows on tiles, chopping vegetables or walking in the hills. lovely!

i can't say that the setting of the retreat was über-relaxing: my room was 50 metres from a busy four-lane highway vibrating with 24 hour road train traffic, and on the one occasion that i did a long hike into the hills behind the camp i was attacked by a vicious pack of 8 dogs that bit me on the foot as i jumped onto a ledge and started screaming like a child, certain that i would be ripped to pieces and devoured by those hounds, or at least die later from lack of access to adequate antibiotics. how very zen.

as much as i loved being there, by the end of the week i had accumulated so much good karma that i was feeling nauseated, so i hurried back to bogotá to restore the balance with lots of sex and drugs. now that's what i'm talking about.

my first time in bogotá, i opened the golden cage in which i keep my heart (i ripped that cage's fucking door off) and in that state of heart-cage doorlessness, i met jp, a boy i saw again before i went to the krishnas, and with whom i spent almost every minute of my time afterwards, up until the departure gates at el dorado airport last sunday afternoon.

we went camping, we went paragliding, we went partying, and we generally had the time of our lives. in this heavy ether of young love, i couldn't even wipe the smile off my face when we were attacked by four men armed with knives who robbed us of our money and documents. the boys missed one of jp's pockets so we still had enough cash to go and grab some dinner afterwards. it was perfect! 

i'm not going to rant on, but if the kids of ibagué pressed the reset button on my system, jp got rid of the system altogether. i feel that i'm experiencing a life-approach paradigm shift. my heart's going into super-nova and i'm ready to love everyone. i feel so excited about life that i want to scream!

i'm now back in berlin where it all started. g's got a funky little apartment here and this wonderful city really is the centre of the universe. it is pure potential. i'll be back in melbourne next friday. i'm not sure how i feel about coming back, but i do have the feeling that this adventure, now 10 months in, is just the beginning of something even greater. i realise that everything changes, everything moves on. all of our joys pass. our sadness passes too. it's easy to get lost dreaming about a shining past or a potential-laden future and forget that these things do not actually exist. all we have is this one moment, right now: this breathtaking, intense, ephemeral, love-filled, limitless, incredible moment. and then it is gone. enjoy it!

and see you soon :)

jboy bday

it's christmas. for many years i have had a very negative approach to christmas. on the one hand, i reject a religious tradition for which i have no affinity, on the other hand i feel desolate when i consider the hyper-commercial and materialistic nature of the tradition's current manifestation. but i know that we do not live in a cultural vacuum, and instead of rejecting this festival outright, i want to use it to express what all of these cultural celebrations are supposed to express anyway: our love for each other. i want you to know - i want all of you to know - that i love you. i don't love you a little bit or even a lot: i love you so much that I am bursting at the seams with it. what i deeply hope for you in this new year is that when you look around yourselves, you see lives filled with happiness and love. i hope that you feel breathless with the joy of being alive, and i hope that when you look in the mirror, you love the person staring back at you unconditionally, and feel truly proud of what a wonderful, beautiful person you are. you are all amazing, and i love you. i love you!

merry christmas.

amazon

the final installment of g+o's ecuadorian adventure saw the boys disappear into the amazon jungle for 5 days. after 30 minutes in a small aircraft, 2 hours in a van, 2.5 hours in a boat down a huge river and a further 30 minutes up a smaller one, they had finally arrived at their little isolated jungle retreat near the colombian border.

there were no large tame animals within arm's length desperate to be photographed. there were no views of snow-capped volcanoes whose beauty would explode into our eyes like a gunshot blast and scramble our brains. there was just a dense jungle filled with the sound of hidden birds and insects, deep rivers with warm water to swim in, hammocks to snooze in, and torrential tropical storms whose pounding on our hut's straw roof would draw us irresistibly into the most profound of slumbers.

there was also - and what a change this was - an amazing 24 year old guide called romulo who was passionate about the jungle, passionate about us having the best time possible, and so comfortable with himself that it was impossible not to feel at ease in his presence.

we hiked through the jungle during the day and hiked through the jungle during the night. we cruised up and down the river. we spotted the birds, the dolphins, the stingray, the anaconda. we swam in piranha infested waters and survived!

not much more to say about the jungle. can somebody please cut it down and build a maccas?

trekking el altar

\

there he was: my g-man, hanging from a cliff's edge by his fingertips, with a heavy pack on his back. below, there was a sheer drop to rocks, melting snow, and almost certain death. *shudder*. my heart still races with the intensity of that fear. my heart still races with the intensity of the relief that g is still around to be loved.

so the next installment in G+O vs ecuador was a 4 day hike in the el altar region of central ecuador. the plan was to hike up to 4000m on the first day, 4600m on the second and camp early so that we could head out well before dawn for a glacier climb on our third day. we had tents, we had crampons, we had ice-picks, we even had horses! oh man: we were ready.

riobamba is a fuckshitcunt city in central ecuador that g and i soon came to know and über-hate. we busted out of it ~ 9am and were soon powering our little legs up a gorgeous green valley at top speed near the el altar volcanic mountain range.

our guide was a man named eloy - a 40 year old man with nystagmus and a drug history who was rescued by jesus (and converted into a self-righteous cunt). we got along ok on the first day, but decided not to tell him too much about our private lives after i said that we didn't have wives and he joked back with a classic ecuadorian expression: "soltero maduro maricón seguro!" which translates as 'single older man, faggot for sure!' i laughed with him, but then realised what he'd said and thought: who the fuck are you calling older?

despite eloy's claim that he was an amazing guide that had a super-human capacity to care for his trekkers (i quote: when they are thirsty i give them something to drink, when they are tired i carry their packs, when they are cold i put my arms around them to warm them, when they cut their finger i feel the pain myself), he was the worst guide either g or i had ever had. when it came to guiding, there was none to speak of: he just disappeared. we were within 100m of him less than 5% of the time as he would just run off and leave us to follow his footprints in the snow, or (when there were no footprints), just continue ahead in the direction we thought he'd taken.

the first day we reached the campsite by lunchtime and decided to head up to the second night's campsite that afternoon. this meant an ascent from 2754m to 4600m in one day, but a diamox a day keeps the doctor away. the doctor and his ex-boyfriend in fact: away on holidays and still breathing without mountain sickness.

we arrived at 4600m at 17:00 and started putting up the tents just as a blizzard hit. this is a photo of our tent 1 hour after pitching it:

after a night of heavy wind and snow (in which i slept like a baby but g was wide awake with the fear that the wind would lift the tent up and throw us over the cliff's edge), we woke to an exquisitely beautiful view of the high mountain range covered in a fresh layer of snow, and our own tent half buried in it!

the view of the lake below our campsite went from this on the first afternoon:

to this the following morning:

so the glacier climb was dumped for being unreachable and dangerous, and the horses were sent back with our crampons and tents, and we loaded up our backpacks to attempt a crossing of the mountains through the snow into an adjacent valley where there was an old farmhouse we could sleep in for the next two nights. because his pack was so heavy, eloy asked us to carry extra stuff, so i ended up carrying a backpack on my back and another smaller one on my front.

by the time we left, the snow was already melting, and with heavy packs and gumboots, the path through the mountains was treacherous. there had been two horsemen - one of which returned with the horses the way we had come the first day, and the other - angel - who continued with us to carry some of the food. angel beat out the path, eloy was nowhere to be seen, and g and i continued on slowly following their footprints, falling to the ground as sheets of snow collapsed under us, or crashing down inclines onto rocks and into ditches. i won't deny it: we were scared for our lives. shit-scared. on two occasions we had to negotiate significant cliffs - one down and one up. g was left hanging from the first one when the snow path collapsed under his feet (as per the intro) and stayed there until angel rescued him. on the second, angel waited for us at the top and just put out an ice-pick in time for g to grab onto when the rocks gave way under his little frog's legs and he was left hanging over yet another precipice. it is a horrible thing to watch helplessly when someone you love's life is in danger, and obviously even worse for the one you love...what do you reckon g?

the danger, however, we accepted: we wanted an adventure. but what we also wanted (and had paid for) was someone to show us how to get up and down the cliff-edges and across snow fields that were collapsing under foot. we got nada. when we descended to below the snow level, angel ran ahead to dump stuff at the shelter and go home, and we were left with eloy, who disappeared...quite literally without a trace. there were no longer footprints as there was no snow, there was no path, and we basically bush-bashed in the direction of the hut until we glimpsed our ghost guide sitting in the distance on the other side of the mountain. we were exhausted, and it was at this point that g fell and twisted his ankle. it was a minor sprain that responded to strapping and rest, but what if he'd broken his leg and couldn't continue? we were isolated in the mountains by ourselves with no idea where we were, no path to follow, and no one to show us where to go. what a bad guide. what a really bad guide. incidentally g also cut his finger when he fell and i'm sure eloy didn't feel a fucking thing.

now that that badness is out of my system, i have to tell you that the crossing itself was simply breathtaking. the dusting of snow highlighted what were already spectacular views, and every time we reached a new valley or got a new view of the soaring mountains around us we almost gasped with the beauty of it. the snow-fields were vast, and stretched to the horizon. below, lush green valleys with running streams opened up in every direction. though we were a bit scared being up there alone, it also meant that we had this wonderland all to ourselves. g and o on top of the world!

i can't help myself: i have to spit out this final bit of bile: when we got to the farmhouse and eloy disappeared to go to the toilet, i put down my two backpacks and sneakily picked up his, just to see how heavy it actually was. it was lighter that one of mine: OMFG.

the next day i hiked out to a crater lake with eloy while g stayed in the farmhouse valley resting his ankle. we were the only people there, and though there were many rooms with beds in them at this very pretty hacienda - perhaps 5 rooms of beds in our building and other rooms in the other building - eloy crammed himself into the same room as us for both nights. it was his turn to be shit-scared: he claimed that the house was haunted by evil spirits but that he could stay alive by being close to us. evil spirits? god? supernatural activity? how horribly difficult it must be to live a normal life while in the clutches of this fundamental treachery to intellectual integrity. i almost forgave poor eloy. almost but not quite: cunt.

the final day was a gorgeous hike down from the heights of el altar into the heat of the farmland below. we took it easy and just loved it. we eventually arrived in a village where a car was waiting to take us back to riofuckya. while handing back the rented gear, we decided to mention to the dutch owner of the agency that the guiding had been less than what we had expected. she dismissed us with an expression that said "i'm so sorry, but i've already got all of your money so i don't give a shit whether you enjoyed it or not". it was such a slap in the face. though dad's going to be upset that i say it, i was ready to bust that bitch's head like a coconut. instead, we just sucked it up, grabbed our stuff, and headed back to quito.

conclusion? amazing. definitely two thumbs up for the el altar region and the hiking of it. we have amazing photos and amazing memories. the bad parts only augmented our conspiratorial intimacy, and the left over venom? hey: i just put it online. what's a blog for? peace to you all! (except the fuckers at agencia de viajes julio verne!)

galapagos

what do you think about when you hear the word galapagos? isolated pacific islands, giant tortoises, charles darwin? perhaps your mind wanders and you ask yourself why we're still battling with the infectious stupidity of organised religion over 150 years after the publication of 'on the origin of species'? i know i am. but let's get back to the islands.

like many people, i thought that the galapagos islands were a remote natural paradise, devoid of any non-tourist human activity (past or present) and bursting with countless animal and plant species, all competing for tourist dollars.

the truth is that the islands are pretty barren, with surprisingly few species of animals and even less species of plants than i had expected. the other truth is that many of the islands are inhabited - the capital puerto ayora has a population of almost 20,000 inhabitants, and before the ecuadorian government sent a group of people over to the islands in 1832 to claim it once and for all, they were temporarily inhabited by whalers and pirates, all of whom left their mark (graffiti, rats, treasure, etc).

one of the more interesting human stories is that of german dentist freidrich ritter and his lover dora strauch, who left their respective spouses to come and live in the islands in 1929 seeking a natural life. where it gets weird is that they removed all of their teeth before leaving germany, and took only a single set of steel dentures to share between the two of them to munch the food that they grew outside the lava tunnel they lived in. after a few years of regularly being beaten to a pulp by freidrich, dora eventually killed him by poisoning his food and headed back to germany, where she got back with her husband and wrote a book about her adventures, the proceeds of which presumably went towards buying a new set of teeth.

what about the animals? yes: they were amazing, of course they were! because most larger animals on the islands have evolved without any predators whatsoever, they haven't learnt to fear humans, and you can just walk right up to them and they don't give a shit. (the honey badger would feel right at home there). you can - and we did - come face to face with giant tortoises, blue-footed boobies, sea lions, green sea turtles, iguanas, penguins and many other animals and they just sit there totally unperturbed while you're having a cameragasm.

the islands are volcanic, and some are covered with huge lava fields, frozen in various states of ripple or kink that make you feel like you're on another planet.

so what did we actually do? there are various ways to explore the galapagos - some tours are land-based, where you stay in a hostel and cruise out to various places during the day, and others are boat-based, where you sleep on the boat and thus are able to go to islands that would otherwise be too far away. g and i went on an (expensive) 7-night cruise on a catamaran with 6 staff (including our guide who to my initial distress was also called diego), and 8 other tourists. there were 3 lovely swiss germans, a honeymooning swedish couple, two burnt-out and teched-up middle-aged canadian hippies and an older french woman called coco. coco pushed everyone right to the edge, so much so that on the penultimate day of the tour, when she dropped her camera into shallow water during a beach landing, the entire boatload of staff and tourists exploded in a collective ecstasy of schadenfreude.

we were served three meals a day plus snacks - it was like a high class restaurant - and had a little cabin with a little bathroom and a double bed set above it. it was cool, but i can't deny that i was a bit scared during one night's choppy ocean crossing where g forced me to sleep on the fall-out-of-bed-and-smash-your-face-on-the-floor side of the bed and when we ploughed into some of those big waves we got airborne.

our guide was professional and really knew his shit, and that's exactly what we wanted. the other staff were good, but i have to say that it's difficult to have a relaxed affinity with most ecuadorian men when they know you're gay, because the culture is super-macho, misogynistic and homophobic like a mofo. misunderstanding? fear? i think most of these guys just don't know how to react in the presence of known faggots (we will turn on them. we will turn on them and force them to become part of our pink shirt-wearing, kylie minogue-listening, cock-loving army). on one occasion the boat's engineer walked into our room while g and i were spooning, and though he apologised (why the fuck was he coming into our room anyway?!), he treated us with suspicion for the rest of the cruise, and would regard us with a condescending facial expression that i was tempted to treat with a swift kick to the nuts.

the cruise was a bit like a boot-camp. a bell would ring for breakfast at 07:30, another bell an hour later when it was time to head to one of the islands in the dingy, another for lunch etc, and by the end of it we felt a bit like pavlov's dogs. once we got over the fear of missing something and living in regret for the rest of our lives, we stopped going out to all of the islands and allowed ourselves to just lie back and relax on the boat, and that was as amazing an experience as seeing the wildlife.

so, final thoughts on the galapagos islands? go there. this is something you must do before you die. but my advice: do it just before you die. because at the end of the day, it's a week of watching, rather than doing. though it's some of the most spectacular watching you'll ever do, those islands and their animals aren't going anywhere. while you're still young and beautiful, spend your time riding, hiking, swimming, dancing, leaping, lunging, and all the other things that you won't be able to do when you're old and decrepit (but still able to go on a galapagos tour). or you could just go now and have the time of your life! two thumbs up for those wonderful islands.