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It was 31^o C and a cold one slipped easily
down my throat. The cyclists were lying in the hot sun, and yet this
was still England. We were awaiting our pickup from the European Bike
Express, which was on the way down from Middlesbrough. They do three
routes: Alpine, Mediterranean and Atlantic. For some of the cyclists
this was their third trip, a good omen I thought. The Alpine route bus
pulled in, on time to the second, picked up its passengers and their bikes,
and was off. Soon we were on the Mediterranean bus, off and rolling.
The idea is that buses drop you off en route and pick you up at a mutually
agreed point somewhere on the return route.

I was taking ‘time out’ from urban London and its tourists,
to join all the rest of the tourists who had gone to the Costa Brava.
Through ‘The London Cyclist’ I had found out about the Bus
and its enormous specially designed bike trailer. This was a holiday
that had to be taken in a limited time. I wanted to chill out, with some
good food, wine and a little exercise, in other words, fifteen days of
fun in the sun, or so I hoped.

A couple called the Champions were taking their tandem. They had King
of the Mountain racing jerseys – and of course they were dropped
off in the south of France to do some climbing. Meanwhile I and one of
the other fellow cyclists, John McGuigan, spent the night at the town
at the end of the line. Empuriabrava is a large holiday town, with large
campsites, and man made canals with hundreds if not thousands of moorings
each with their own house! It was not exactly what I wanted from my holiday
but I knew that if I looked around I would find many uncrowded places.
The next day John cycled off. I stayed another day as my birthday was
coming up and I wanted to celebrate. And celebrate I certainly did.
I swam in the Med, went for a cycle ride, ate an excellent fish dinner,
drank lots of wine with some Germans, and then smoked a cigar. The next
morning I woke up somewhere near my tent and decided it was time to move
on. The idea was to spend two or three days at a different campsite and
explore the local area in a cycling softy sort of way.

A good campsite on the other side of town in a small National park, called
‘Camping Laguna’ became a favourite. Laguna is still big
but it faces the sea, and the town can be reached by wading across the
Lagoon exit or a fourteen kilometre ride to the nearest bridge. My next
stop going south was a small town called Sant Pere Pescador, a campsite
by the river, which of course was called, ‘Camping El Rio’.
This place is the start of a cycle track that leads all the way to L’Escala.
From here it was a delightful days gentle cycling starting on a slightly
roughish track from the river, continuing by the sea and ending up as
a paved track into L’Escala, a popular resort but at the same time
still a nice old town.

I had travelled down the coast on a boat and had seen some great looking
harbours, from Rosas to a lovely town called Cadaques, and had decided
that not withstanding a very hard climb, I would visit it. At first the
fifteen Kilometre climb seemed not too bad, then perspiration broke out
all over my body - or was it the red wine leaking out of my system? Then
I began to wonder: why was I carrying so much gear? It’s at times like
this that I remember all the stories about the cyclists who cut their
toothbrush in half, have an extra small toothpaste tube and also don’t
carry a bottle of wine in their bottle cage! The hill grew steeper, the
cars hooted to give me encouragement, the sweat streamed into my eyes.
I looked up and the lovely girl in front said, “If you can’t keep
up you don’t deserve me”. Another two Kilometres and I new the
fantasy of the girl wasn’t enough to keep me going, so I changed
the fantasy to an Afghanistan warlord chasing me on horseback and I had
to get to the top before he cut my head off. I collapsed finally at the
top of the hill with clouds all round me, so no vista after all that effort.
Then rolled all the way down to Cadaques, wimped out and booked into a
hotel for this one night. The film the ‘The Bourne Identity’
had its last happy scenes in this town and it was certainly worth the
pain of the climb. Should I come back this way again, I will certainly
revisit this picturesque town by the sea. My one mistake was to buy a
disco ticket without looking or listening properly to the seller. It
turned out to be for young people between the ages of twelve to sixteen.
Embarrassing, especially when the doorman asked me, “where is the
young person that you’ve brought with you”? As he looked
at my one ticket and me!

Back on the Bus, John, the Champions and I exchanged stories and drank
some wine, maybe more than a little, as the bus rolled on into the night,
through France and on to England – and yes we did have fifteen days
of fun in the sun.

About Tony, the author of this article: I have worked,
lived and rolled about this lovely planet from a very young age and in
fact just back from a magazine shoot in Rio. I’m nearly sixty five, still
alive, my get up and go has not completely got up and gone and like good
whisky I’m still going strong. If you would like to contact Tony, his
e-mail address is: tony@annis.co.uk

Well, it’s now official: European budget carrier Ryanair has completed
its take-over the low cost airline Buzz , formerly owned by KLM. Ryanair
paid EUR 20.1 million (USD$21.5 million) some EUR 2.8 million lower than
the original purchase price. Ryanair has formed a new subsidiary - Buzz
Stansted - and the company will operate a fleet of 10 aircraft, employ
up to 130 people and start flying on May 1st. It will serve a network
of 12 routes, formerly operated by KLM UK/Buzz. The new Chief Executive
of Buzz will be John Osborne, a former Director of Operations for Ryanair
and former Chief Executive of GB Airways and Virgin Express.

~~~~~~~~

And still on the subject of Ryanair, a recent Mail on Sunday article,
spotted by webmaster Paul made the Beetle laugh. It states that Ryanair
boss Michael O’Leary is, in his spare time, a keen breeder of Aberdeen
Angus cattle. The article asks how would he like it if you agreed to
sell him a pedigree bull, but actually, out of the cattle carrier toddled
a hamster? The article then goes on to compare this to booking a flight
to Ryanair’s new destination, Barcelona - you actually get flown
to Girona, some 60 miles away. In response, Mr O’Leary says: “Don’t
be cross; by comparison Gatwick is also a long way from the centre of
London.” (It’s actually 30 minutes away from either Victoria
or Blackfriars station in central London - Beetle). The article goes
on to show how in Ryanair’s world Hahn manages to become Frankfurt 70
miles away, and how Forli doubles as Bologna some 50 miles away. Not
so long ago, readers may remember the howls of discontent when the Beetle
travelled 2 hours from Oslo to Ryanair’s base at Torp airport.
By way of appreciation, the article says that “whilst many have
managed to come to terms with Ryanair’s rather cavalier attitude to customer
relations. i.e. you got a cheap ticket - what are you moaning about?
But why is it that for an airline that hails from a country famed for
its blarney, Ryanair manages to exude so little charm?”

~~~~~~~~

A Ryanair Joke spotted by one of our readers

American special forces have this morning reported the successful takeover
of Baghdad airport. However further inspection by Irish journalists of
the lack of ground staff and no open services or shops revealed it to
be the Ryanair Baghdad airport. American troops have in fact landed 400
miles south of Baghdad but will avail of the feeder bus that leaves from
Mohammed O’Kelly’s Irish bar every day at 6pm.

All the houses in Kaza are built in traditional Spiti style: massive
two-storied mud brick structures. Their flat mud roofs are supported
by beams of poplar tree trunks with a network of branches and twigs crisscrossed
over them. Stacks of shrubs pulled from the mountainsides and used for
fuel surround the edges of the roofs like thorny crowns. Such buildings
as these are practical only in a rainless climate and Spiti, lying in
the so-called rain shadow of the Himalayas, are a high-altitude desert
and see virtually nothing of the southwest monsoon that drenches virtually
the entire Indian subcontinent each summer. In winter, when huge amounts
of snow do fall in Spiti, the weight on the roofs would become unbearable
and so they are swept clean as snow accumulates. Every house has a long-handled
wooden snow pusher.

On that first visit to Kaza we stayed in a guesthouse built along traditional
lines. After attending the fabulous lama festival in Ki Gompa that I
described in my last letter we returned to our guesthouse and relaxed
on the veranda drinking cups of chai. The sky was a deep blue and as
the sun set; the mountains lining the Spiti Valley took on magical hues.
And there were some clouds in the usually cloudless sky.

We went out to cosy Layul’s restaurant for steaming bowls of skiu,
homemade noodle squares with delicious chunks of local vegetables in a
flavourful broth, and steamed momos with chilli sauce. Some juicy apricots
from farther down the Spiti Valley (it’s a bit too high here for
apricots trees to grow: 3600 meters) completed the meal perfectly. It
had been a wonderful day and we slept like logs.

The next morning was unmistakably cloudy and we wondered. After all,
we were in Spiti, virtually in Tibet, where the skies are a soul-piercing
blue, where the houses are made of earth and water carefully measured!
We did some shopping in the bazaar that afternoon and bought some incredible
wooden masks, just like the ones the lamas had worn in their dances and
beaded collars with strange tribal designs. Even a tantric mirror, a
convex brass disk worn to keep away evil spirits.

Well, there’s nothing evil about rain and no one would want to
keep rain away in a dry place like this, or would they? Anyway, that
evening it started to drizzle. It was not the sort of rain that would
attract much attention in temperate climes – a light, insistent
sprinkle, consisting of mist rather than discrete drops. But it fell
continuously for three days and three nights. During the first day, there
was no foreboding among the locals. A day of light rain is an infrequent
but not a truly unusual occurrence. Rather, there was quiet enjoyment–
a sprinkle to refresh the fields and lanes was a welcome event.

But the morning of the second day brought a change in local consciousness.
It was not only the fact that it was still raining, it was also that the
rain, light as it was, had been continuous – it had not let up for
more than five minutes in the past twenty-four hours. And the look of
the sky and the feel of the air promised more of the same.

The dry dusty paths that are the town’s streets were already turning
into a substance somewhere between mud and slime. It was earth not used
to being wet and didn’t know how to handle it. People started collecting
mud and putting it on their roofs: the idea being that the thicker the
layer of mud on the roof, the longer the rain would take to percolate
through it. No one seemed particularly worried about the extra weight
the mud-brick walls and the roof-support beams were being subjected to.
After all, these houses were “built”. The walls were two
feet thick. The main thing was to keep the houses from dissolving.

Before we retired on that second night, having sat through a day of precipitation
identical to the one before, and having watched bag after bag of mud being
dumped onto the roof, I carefully questioned the owner about sleeping
under this now sodden roof, bearing I didn’t know how many times
its usual weight. Our room, wouldn’t you know, was on the top floor
of the guesthouse.

“Don’t worry! No problem! The building is strong and the
roof is thick and the water will not come through,” he said. But
he said it with such hearty offhandedness that I was not at all reassured.
Before we went to bed we organized our belongings for a quick getaway.

It was two-thirty in the morning when we woke up, Carol having just been
nailed between the eyes by a dollop of water. Directing our torch beams
around the room, we noticed strange patterns on the white walls, ochre
stains that hadn’t been there when we went to bed. And in a few
places water was running quite uninhibitedly down the walls. We quickly
packed the rest of our belongings. Stepping out on the veranda, I realized
that the entire town was awake and that it was still raining. People
were on their roofs spreading still more mud. We moved down to a vacant
ground floor room and blithely resumed our night’s sleep.

The next day dawned grey, and yes, it was still raining. All the ceilings
and floors of the upstairs rooms were pocked with leaks, but the building
had not collapsed and our ground-floor room, though somewhat damp, was
unblemished and leak-free.

Nature called, and as I was inside the outdoor toilet, a piece of land
above it gave way and a miniature landslide composed of bowling-ball size
rocks and a ton of mud stopped just short of the outhouse door. And just
short as well of the nicely ambiguous headline that would no doubt have
appeared in newspapers throughout the world: “Tourist washed away
in toilet.”

About the authors of this article: Carol and Martin Noval
have lived in India for more than twenty-five years and organize and lead
cultural and adventure tours and treks throughout India and the Himalayas.
Check out their website: www.tripsintoindia.com
and can be reached at: tripsintoindia@usa.net

Iris, a British lady of considerable character and pluck, is on a 23
week overland expedition from Quito in Ecuador to Caracas in Venezuela.
After this, she plans to do a 3-month voluntary placement in Ecuador,
and then visit Central America for another overland trip between Panama
City and Mexico City, ending up with perhaps another 2-month voluntary
placement somewhere in South America again. This amazing journey will
take Iris one year. Here is an extract from Iris’ journey notebook.

13^th December 2002: Iquitos, the Amazon,
and Bolivia

I am in Iquitos - at the frontier of the Amazonian Jungle. We arrived
here by plane five days ago and the next day after arrival went off early
in the morning up the Amazon to a Jungle Lodge called Muyuna Lodge. It
took us 2 hrs 15 mins to get there (140 kms or roughly 90 miles) and we
thought that fast but on the way back it took less than 2 hours and we
stopped for petrol. Maybe we were going with the current on the way back!
Anyway, it was quite an experience although unfortunately I was a little
under the weather there and so missed quite a few late night and early
morning excursions and one day’s excursions into the jungle. I think
the heat caused a reaction - I was dehydrating fast and had to rest and
rehydrate with electrolyte solutions and it worked. Within 24 hours I
was back on form.

We saw lots - local medicinal trees, local insects (the odd spider but
I missed the tarantulas (1) because of my illness (2) because they only
visited them at night and I wasn’t about to do that - I’d
rather face that kind of fear in broad daylight!!!) The trip I most enjoyed
was to a local village where we were invited to a couple of homes to see
how they lived and worked and to cook our barbecue of fish kebabs (catfish),
which were delicious. Unfortunately, my camera broke down, which I didn’t
realise until much later and all my excellent photos (especially of me
holding the local anaconda round my neck and one of a little 3-yr old
showing us his ultimate “clockwork” toy - a live baby caiman
(crocodile)). This afternoon we fly back to Lima and if I have time to
email again I will, before we move on to other beaches and other camp
sites!

23^rd January 2003: from the Amazon in Ecuador
to the Salt Flats of Uynuni (Chile)

I spent five days on the Inca Trail and needed a shower at the end of
it as we didn’t have any such luxuries in our rough campsites. Occasionally,
we got a proper loo (washroom – Beetle) ,if loos in Ecuador,
Peru or Bolivia could be called “proper” - I’ve experienced
it all - no water, no light, no toilet paper, no soap, no sink at times!
- but Chile spoils us on the whole with beautifully clean loos with all
facilities in just about every service station en route! But more often
than not it was squat over a hole in the ground and get on with it! Of
course, at the end of the Inca Trail we were able to return to Cusco,
to our hotel there, and get a couple of nights with hot showers and to
celebrate New Year, which most of our number did in style, but as I think
I said, Judith and I just had a quiet meal and were early to bed.

And then we were off to other climes, travelling off down through Peru
and into Bolivia and that was our first real shock, to see how poor Bolivia
is. No proper infrastructure, roads that are just rough tracks so that
at times one is fording rivers without benefit of bridges. Our first big
stop was La Paz and what a town that is! I loved it there. It is so frenetic
and vibrant but mainly because of the ethnic groups (local Indians) who
set up stalls in the street so that pavements are barely visible and very
often one has to wend ones way through shoppers pausing to browse between
the stalls that are set up on both sides of the pavement with a very narrow
passage between them. But you can buy just about anything in the street
from a tiny screw which would fit a pair of spectacles to replace one
lost, to a full bathroom suite and more besides. Some of our group needed
to replace cameras which haven’t stood up to the climate and so
they got their replacements in La Paz in the street markets and came out
with some very good bargains.

But the incredible thing about La Paz is its altitude (over 4,000 metres)
and the way it is literally built down the mountainsides and I reckon
in most of the streets coming down from the summit, your knees must touch
your chin trying to get up those slopes! We were only in La Paz a couple
of days and so not enough time to see everything, but we had a city tour
and went to their Valley of the Moon, so called, but which should really
have been called “Lunar Valley” because it gets its name from
the fact that the landscape is lunar, not because of any religious connotations.

From La Paz we went off to Potosi - a very, very long drive along increasingly
difficult roads and especially because the road through the mountains
is being upgraded and there is lots of roadwork going on. Potosi is even
higher than La Paz at nearly 5,000 metres altitude and claims to be the
highest town of its size in the world. It is an incredible place and
the first night one almost took one’s life in one’s hands
trying to negotiate its narrow streets with all the traffic milling around
and it is also amazing how everyone comes out at night - the streets were
thronged with people and of course all the shops were open until whenever,
it seemed. We stayed in a hostel there for a couple of nights before going
on to Sucre, which of course, as I told you, is the capital city of Bolivia,
vying with La Paz for that title, as La Paz thinks it should be the capital
city as the seat of government is there. However, Sucre is a lot quieter
than La Paz and I suppose more “upper class” as there are few
ethnic groups there and everyone looks very cosmopolitan and prosperous.

We stayed two nights in Sucre and then took off for Uyuni which really
is at the back of beyond, a real frontier town, the gateway to the salt
flats. But as usual the ethnic groups are there in their hundreds, setting
up stalls for the tourists, and I can see that in a few years, if things
go well, Uyuni will become a large town or even a city because it is clear
that the inhabitants are planning for it that way with some quite amazing
edifices being built there. We stayed just the one night there as the
jumping off point for the salt flats and the next day all piled into our
jeeps and away we went.

Our first stop was at a small settlement just on the edge of the salt
flats where the salt is processed and one sees big piles of salt waiting
for the process to commence. And then we went on to the salt flats themselves,
and talk about “white-out”, without sunglasses we would have
been suffering from salt blindness! We were heading for a place called
“Fish Island” which is in the middle of the salt flats and is
literally covered in tall cacti. People wandered off to have a good look
at the place, but I was feeling the heat and had a slight tummy upset,
and so I was just content to sit in the shade and let the more energetic
ones do the exploring. Reports were that it was just an island of cacti,
and once you’ve seen one…. We had lunch there and were off to
our first overnight stop in a hostel where we had to bunk up, six to a
room, sharing one bathroom. The only saving grace was that we had hot
water and electricity from a generator, but of course, we had to wait
for the generator to be switched on before we got those luxuries!

Next day, we left the salt flats behind and were off to see a volcano
from a distance and to explore three lakes each full of flamingos. Needless
to say, lots of photos were taken and at one lake we had lunch and so
could linger to explore and appreciate the incredible colours the lakes
turn from the mineral deposits pouring into them - yellows, pinks, browns
- one has to see the contrasts to really appreciate them.

The next night was spent in a really rough hostel. There was a cold strong
wind blowing and here again it was dormitories with bunk beds and very
basic toilets with no running water at all, we had to flush the loos with
a bucket of water taken from a big tank, and the sink could be used just
to spit one’s mineral water out as one brushed one’s teeth
but again no running water there either. We had been told there was no
electricity but in fact they had just fitted some bulbs in the dormitories
and so when the generator kicked in at about 20:00 we were able to see
to go to bed, but in the morning, when we got up at 04:00 to get away
early, it was pitch dark except for our torches and the occasional candle
dotted about!

This last day on the flats, was very cold. We visited some geysers and
hot springs and people actually stripped off and laid down in the hot
springs; others were induced to just soak their feet, whilst the more
trepid of us just kept all our clothes and boots on and just waited for
hot drinks and breakfast to be served el fresco. And we did get hot drinks
and scrambled eggs and toast from the camping gas rings, so it was worth
the wait.

And then on to the border - the whole point of getting up early was to
get us to the border with Chile at a place called San Pedro de Atacama
and that is where our jeeps deposited us and where we were herded into
coaches for the crossing into Chile. And what a difference in Chile.
We were like schoolchildren let out after a long exam period. Okay, San
Pedro was a town of adobe houses, but the camp site did provide us with
hot showers and running water and electricity, and the town’s people
were very friendly and welcoming without being as mercenary as in other
places, demanding one buy something, one could just wander around at ones
leisure and look at the merchandise without having to keep saying: “No,
gracias.”

If you’d like to contact Iris, whether to wish her luck with her
trip or to ask questions about her itinerary and places visited, I am
sure she would like to hear from you. She can be contacted on: irisej2002@yahoo.co.uk

During my trip to Egypt the guide said we could ride a camel but first
we were to go inside Cheops Pyramid, the largest one comprising around
two million three hundred thousands blocks each weighing two and a half
tons. When inside all I could think of was what if two million blocks
come tumbling down on me in twenty seconds?

Outside the guide told us how much to pay the camel driver and how much
to tip. But the driver kept pulling at my leg asking for more money.
I was too busy pretending I was Lowell Thomas the explorer on my camel
and ignored him as I gazed off over the desert. He finally got mad at
me “not listening” and dropped the reins and for one mad moment
I thought he was going to kick the camel and send the camel and me careening
across the desert. As I got off “Coca Cola” both the driver
and the camel spat on me. Maybe it was just the camel. I guess he did
not like Lowell Thomas. The driver when he found out I was an American
had told me my camel’s name was Coca Cola. I later heard him tell a Canadian
that the same camel’s name was Canadian Club. The camel’s breath
was as bad as mine.

Berlin: we were told that 22 percent of Berlin’s population was
over 60 years of age and have 22,221 dogs. Some are not registered (the
dogs). They have to pay a tax if the dogs are registered.

At the ostrich farm in Outshorn South Africa I have learned that ostriches
have small brains and big hearts. Bigger than mans. I learned that a
male ostriches feet turn red when the want to mate. My nose turns red.
They do everything by instinct. Ostriches are desert animals with little
oil on their feathers. If taken to a wet climate their feathers rot.
They have found in an ostrich’s stomach ladies high heels, spark
plugs and coins, from which they die of copper poisoning. They will eat
anything especially anything shiny. They have little feeling in their
bodies. They have cut open an ostrich’s throat to take out an object
the ostrich swallowed and the ostrich continued to eat during this process.
The female sits on the eggs during the day as she is more camouflaged
than the male and the male goes on duty at 4pm and sits on the egg during
the night. Ostriches mate for life. I believe swans do too and some
humans. They were experimenting with ostrich eyes as transplant for human
eyes. I have never heard if this was a success or not.

About the author, Mac: during a century of travel (well 78 years!)
both in and out of service I have travelled to over 150 countries (I count
both North and South Dakota as countries) and for some reason have jotted
signs and happenings that I thought funny at the time. So here is the
perfect opportunity to share some of my anecdotes. I can be e-mailed
on: macsan400@yahoo.com

Next month: border crossings

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From the UK Foreign Office: “The Chief Medical Officer
at the Department of Health — on the basis of information from the
World Health Organisation — has strongly advised the UK public to
defer travel to Hong Kong, Beijing, China’s Shanzi province China
and Toronto in Canada for the time being due to the outbreak of Severe
Acute Respiratory Syndrome”. The situation in China is being kept
under careful review. Travellers are advised to monitor the FCO website
and the href="http://www.doh.gov.uk/sars/index.htm"
target="_blank">Department of Health website regularly. Further information
on SARS is also available on the href="http://www.who.int/csr/sars/"
target="_blank">World Health Organisation website (www.who.int)

Leighton House Art Gallery & Museum, the former home
of the great nineteenth century classical painter Lord Leighton is now
open to visitors as a mixture of stately home and art gallery. An impressive
collection of high Victorian art is on show here, along with various contemporary
art exhibitions. The house itself is also a dramatic sight, with its
ebony woodwork, ornate mosaic flooring and exquisite Persian carpets.

Address: 12 Holland Park Road

Telephone: 020 7602 3316 Admission times: Mon-Sun, 11am-5.30pm;
Closed on Tuesdays Admission: Free

Website: href="http://www.rbkc.gov.uk/leightonhousemuseum">leightonhousemuseum