May 2010 Archives

Whilst chatting the other day about packing lists, belongings, and the items that travellers take around with them, it struck me that in my travels, I have picked up a fair few items from around the globe. Checking my rucksacks, I made a list of a few of the things that I currently have with me:

• Training shoes, sandals, sleeping bag liner - India
• Spectacle case - Chile
• Nail clippers and sellotape - Turkmenistan
• Rucksacks, mosquito net - England
• Cameras, lenses - Hong Kong
• Laptop, filter caps - United States of America
• Spectacle repair kit - Zimbabwe
• Towel - British Antarctic Territories
• Sleeping bag, memory card reader - Canada
• Sleepmat - donated by American woman in China
• Scarf - Morrocco
• Thimble - WW1 soldier's issue
• Heavy duty needles - Peru
• Sail maker's needle - Canadian square-rigged ship
• Alarm clock - Sudan
• Torch, rain coat - Ireland
• Padlock - Kenya
• Key clip - France
• Calculator - Bolivia
• Camera blower-brush - China
• Strong button-thread - Mongolia

This Overland journey has been one of the more hectic ones, and I haven't had as much time as I would have liked to get things done. The Blog has fallen behind as well, and many people have emailed me about this. Where does all the time go?! The answer is that the style of Overlanding in South America has changed considerably since I was last here, twenty years or so ago. The lady from Dragoman assures me that this has been done to meet market demand, but I remain to be convinced. In my opinion, if you create a particular type of product, the customers who want that will flock to buy it, whilst those who want something else will not.

So, what is the difference? How has Overlanding changed over the years? Twenty years ago, when I Overlanded on an Exodus truck for 6 months from Bogata to Bogata, the trip was not split into so many small sections. People came for a reasonable length of journey, and entered fully into the spirit of truck life. The journey was an adventure, and comprised about 60% camping, and 30% hotels, when we got to the bigger cities. As far as I can remember, we stayed in just 2 or 3 campsites during the whole 6 month journey: the rest was all 'bush-camping'. We rarely got to a camping spot after dark, and there was plenty of time to get the chores done, then gather around the camp fire to discuss the events of the day, and get to know your fellow passengers.

Nowadays, things are very different. In the 3 months so far, we have only had 2 nights of bush camping. We have stayed in a lot of very dirty, run-down campsites, and the passengers have had to pay for this privelege. On a number of occasions we have camped behind service stations, which are frequently noisy and full of dog dirt. Most of the time we stay in hostels or hotels, which seems a great waste of money as the whole point of an Overland truck is that it carries its own accomodation with it. There have been a lot of very long drive-days, with early starts and late arrivals. But the biggest change of all apllies to the kind of places that we have been visiting. An Overland Trip in South America these days consists mainly of driving between places where adventure activities are available. I have lost count of the number of chances we've had to do ice climbing, zip-lining, white water rafting, rappelling, sand boarding, mountain bike riding, kayaking, dune buggying, etc. etc. All well and good, except that all these activities can be done just as easily at home, in your local leisure park. There's nothing particularly 'South American' about any of them, and time is wasted that could have been much better spent actually exploring South America, meeting the people, and getting to know the countryside and spectacular scenery. Last time I was here, we did practically no 'activities', but we did spend a lot of time wandering around little towns, pottering around markets, exploring villages paths or city streets, and getting to know the real South America and its people. I was rather hoping to repeat the experience, but have had my work cut out to manage even a small amount of what I did last time.

Never mind. Its a different experience to what I was expecting, but I'm still seeing a variety of amazing places and have been taking plenty of photographs that I hope will one day form part of my travel photo portfolio and provide a small income for the future. I'm very pleased to now have 585 photographs accepted and online at the Lonely Planet Image Library, which should provide a good guide as to how photos sales will progress for me. I've started my own travel photography website as well, and will announce when it is ready to go online. I hope to get a lot of the preparatory work done whilst I have a 10 day break in Quito, the capital of Ecuador, at the beginning of June. There might even be some time to prepare more photographs for Lonely Planet, but I expect the majority of that work will have to be done after my next trip to Africa.