JandalsnAll

Beepbeep. beepbeep. beebeep. beepbeep. beepbeep. beepbeep. beepbeep. beepbeep. beepbeep. My alarm beeps nine times. I wait until the last beep before I tell myself I have to get up. Arrggh, I moan. And the sneaky thought passes through my head: Do I really want to go to Spain today? Wouldn’t I much rather stay in bed? I could just pull up the covers and sleep all day. At 6.15am its not going to be light for at least….two hours. But I suppose if one wants to get out of the caravan once in a while and go to far and distant countries, one must really get up…. Read the rest of this entry »

Day three was miserable. I was miserable. For some reason all that standing around on rocks yesterday waiting for the sun to set in the freezing cold had left me with a killer sore-throat. The rain had started up again and I had at least four long hours drive to get to Achill Island. Woe is me. I decided to take a break in the city of Derry/London Derry (as it is known so as not to offend either Northerners or Southerners) for lunch and ended up spending an hour trying to find the Post Office as I was under the impression postage would be cheaper here- which it was not… Read the rest of this entry »

 Funny how you never know what little surprise life will throw into your day….

Day Two started off well, as days like these tend to do. I could see blue sky and sea from my window. The forecast was great – here was a rare summery day, though the wind carried a wintery chill, tidings from the season to come. I had a leisurely breakfast, then leisurely set off on my way to the Giant‘s Causeway, car packed to the brim with useless camping equipment and a restless surfboard. I had a 20 minute drive around the coast ahead of me so I thought perhaps a morning surf, then the rest of the day at the Causeway, which was after all, the natural phenomena I had driven seven hours to see. First thing I did was head out of town in the wrong direction. ….. Read the rest of this entry »

“Come on Henry!” I shouted, “My work here is done, it’s time to go on a road-trip!” Henry sat in a fug of unspent motor oil, still in half slumber, his side-mirrors twitching as he dreamed of running free down endless roads with a sexy lady Toyota at his side.“Henry!” “Wake up!” Henry grumbled back to life and reluctantly let me take control to back out of the car park. He’s always grumpy when he wakes up. So we were off. Off to far and distant lands, new countries, new cultures. Well at least one new country. Kind of. We were off to the far and distant land of Northern Ireland. Only six hours driving to go….

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We arrived in Mexico City with barely a smattering of Spanish. Lyn knew a few words from time in the USA, I knew a bit of Italian and Ang knew how to say “Donde esta el bano”.As advised, we caught a safe taxi from the airport and were quickly introduced to the Mexican style of driving, and the large cavernous language gap as our driver began gesturing and verbalizing in such a way that demanded a response. Anything. Three long blank stares and some useless attempts at communication later, he eventually found his way to our accomodation in the historical centre where, once settled, we realized a communist rally was in full swing in the zocalo. Not wanting to be recruited we walked carefully around the protestors on our way to the supermarket where purchases included the essential staple of muesli bars and the not so essential purchase of Mexicos healthy alternative to Oreos, “Lors”.

Dinner proved to be a near futile mission until the server in one small hole in the wall pointed out a young woman in response to my unsucessful vegetarian enquiry. Convieniently she spoke English and was able to translate a few things and we ended up with Enchiladas con verdes. Though Lyn had pointed out that verdes was a sauce, and I suspected it would have something green in it, I was unprepared to find my enchiladas floating in what at first glance was unidentifiable (though definitely green), but what I now believe to be green jalapeno sauce. I believe this to be so from the extreme temperature of my entire body after eating a plateful with no refreshment of an kind. Such was the effect that it required the purchase of a bottle of milk with a picture of smiling kids on the label from the nearest seven-eleven. The phrase “sin verdes” will forever be etched on my traumatized tongue in preparation for future meal orders. Our next days foray into the city included a visit to the Cathedral and a walk up to the bell towers. Our group guide was verbal and demonstrative and imparted a lot of information, most of which I think was about bells. And some guy named Juan. But I cant be entirely sure. We did see the bell-ringers ringing the bells however, which was cool. Our other main excursion involved a rather awkward encounter in a farmacia, where at a counter full of staring Mexicans one member of our trio tried to describe and eventually purchased certain items necessary to females at certain times of the month. Very conveniently these particular items were actually shelved in a long line above the counter and in plain pointing view. But that would’ve been too easy…..

What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas…….

We’d been driving for hours – five at least,- with just the one stop in a bustling rest area where rich RV-ers accompanied their pooping pets to the desert bathroom and Indian traders sold their wares under the hot sun.The sun was beginning to disappear and the desert landscape had long since been transformed from the empty tundras of earlier in the day. The incoming night lay ahead, broken only by the headlights of our hire car. Squinting out the window conjured enchanted forests where firs stood in the milky black, only the snow under each tree holding light, a silver shadowy deathbed.

It’s not going to be a good day when you wake up in the morning and realize you have fallen asleep on top of your alarm, have smothered its long ago faded frantic squeals. You know this innately when on realizing the time and flying out of bed, you inexplicibly manage to pull a small but significant neck muscle that will leave you only able to look sideways by turning your whole body 90 degrees for the next week. Squid have eyes that can look forward, backward, sideways, upways and downways. Lucky squids.

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I arrived at the airport in plenty of time to pick up the world class athlete – like all celebrities, she was fashionably late. Having just arrived from a week on Ibiza, she was most impractically clothed for the Irish climate and I feared she may be stricken down with a debilitating case of the shivers on exit from the airport. But she makes it to the car without needing a wheelchair, and I put the heater on to stop pneumonia setting in. We drove through the Irish country-side from Shannon to Doolin in Henry, my trusty new Toyota Starlet, and Gen was given the royal tour of the hostel, and my magnificent and mobile lodgings, where she would be lucky enough to reside for the coming night. So exclusive is the accommodation , that none have ever been deemed special enough to stay there before. But here was a world class athlete…
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I left Shannon airport on a Tuesday afternoon and arrived in Madrid on Tuesday evening. Is it not bizarre that a person can be in a completely different country in just a couple of hours? Perhaps if I’d been forced to spend a week on a boat, or a month sitting on a donkey, I might have found some time to learn a little Spanish. As it was, I arrived in Madrid with little more than the few words I’d learnt from watching Dora the Explorer – and even those I couldn’t quite be sure of, as Irish Dora speaks Gaelic and Spanish, and I, speaking neither languages could really only guess at the difference. So my ability to communicate with the natives was limited to ‘Hola’ ‘Adios’ and ‘Una beera por favor’ (the last phrase courtesy of a friend of legal drinking age, and not my little friend Dora). Add this limited vocabulary to my decision not to bring a guidebook (for its brick-like weight and space was already allocated to far more important things such as soon to be purchased clothes), and some might say I was somewhat unprepared. But I figured I’d get by this time round with making good use of my pointing finger combined with a few select grunts and snorts, and resigned myself to the idea that I might have to play the dumb tourist for a few days – and I was obviously doing a darn good job of it too as the first lucky Spanish person I pointed and grunted at, the guy at the airport metro information desk, warned me I should hold on to my bags on the subway (which as we all know is code for ‘you could only look more like a prime target if you had a hundred euro note stuck to your bum’)…..
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