Rafe’s playing his guitar downstairs. It’s been a while in the making, as it was with a luthier in Toulon for most of the holiday. Our driver has done a wonderful job in getting us to Hyères and Toulon, but we haven’t gone any further as he has been finding driving in France a rather stressful experience. It’s a reminder of both how little I cared for driving way back when, but also how much more in control I could be when faced with a setback, which was encouraging – in a round-about sort of way.
Anyway, we’ve been to Toulon and back and recovered the guitar. It cost him a lot more than he planned, but given that it involved refitting all of the frets, restringing the body and fitting a brand new set of tuning pins, it’s not all that surprising.
I just enjoyed stepping into the luthier’s workshop. It felt like walking into an older world, into a time when things were fixed or remade by craftsmen… before Amazon’s buy-it-again culture drove so much of it underground.
For the second day in a row, we settled on a seafood lunch. Traveling solo makes it easy to forget how complicated catering for a group can be, and there have been reminders of those Camino days out here. Fortunately, that’s not been an impediment to securing my favourite French dish of all out here: moules au Roquefort. I grew up on the more popular moules marinières – a memorable and delicious excuse for day trips to Calais from my childhood home by the sea – but one taste of the powerful combination of fresh mussels and the tanginess of Roquefort cheese in Brittany two years ago has made me a convert. If it is on the menu, I will accept no substitute.
We took a jaunt into Toulon’s maritime museum. It wasn’t quite as interesting as Barcelona’s drassanes, but then, I have a major preference for pre-1900 history, so I tend to switch off in the presence of most modern history exhibits (the fault of a heavily 20th century-skewed history curriculum at school, I think). It does have a nice collection of nautical paintings, though, which are always beautiful to observe.
Rafe is making a bouillabaisse for supper tonight, so we stopped off at E. Leclerc on the way home to pick up some supplies. I shall miss Rafe’s superb cooking when this holiday is over, but it is a reminder of how much I enjoy my solitude. Living on my own for seven years has only honed my reclusive tendencies, I think, and the absence of stillness gets to me sometimes. It’s a helpful reminder that, while I’d like to find Her and settle down and all, I have to balance my ambitions with my very human nature.
On another note, the moon was so bright last night that it was almost as bright as daylight outside. I wish we had nights like that in the UK. BB x
Something I’ve done to pass the time out here in Hyères is to download one of the newer releases in the Pokémon series, of which I’ve been an on-and-off devotee for years. Are you surprised? I imagine not. It tallies extremely well with my lifelong obsession with teaching myself the names of all the birds and beasts around me.
The game in question, Pokémon Champions, is a very different game to the ones I’ve played before, in that it is exclusively targeted at what is known as PvP (player versus player), being arguably the most accessible method yet for players around the world to test their mettle against each other. In principle, at least, it’s a great idea.
Rafe and his friends seem to have been playing Champions for a while, so I thought I’d give it a go, being something of a veteran player of the series (I got my first game – Pokémon Ruby – when I was around ten and was into the TV show well before that). I might even have gone so far as to call myself something of an expert.
Or… so I thought.
After winning through the first few rounds (against what was clearly a generous AI opponent or two) I got absolutely mauled in the later tiers. Unlike the mainline games – which used to have a proper challenge for competent players in the postgame in the Battle Tower and its variants – Champions pitches you immediately against the rest of the world, most of whom prefer to play with the current titans of the competitive metagame.
I can take a loss, but it was a bit disheartening to be able to go no further with my favourites. The real heart of the Pokémon series – which, let’s face it, is a sanitised modern take on animal baiting – was and always has been about going on a journey with your chosen team, developing a bond with them as you go. The battles were the main appeal of the game, it’s true, but they made a lot more sense when you’d gone on an adventure and grown together. Victories and losses felt keener, more interesting, more deserved.
Champions necessarily strips that all away so you can get straight to business – and, in so doing, it loses its heart. I thought I might enjoy the challenge, but I’m nothing if not stubborn, and I don’t like the idea that progression means switching out the team that I have named and grown up with for monsters that will get the job done better. Stripped down to competitive PvP, it becomes much more about prediction, calculation and synergy. It’s the endgame all Pokémon trainers have always been working towards, no doubt, but it’s a lot less enjoyable that I expected.
It reflects a frustrating trend in the series of late, dividing the franchise between the mainline games – which have become so defanged in their difficulty level as to become stultifying at times – and the competitive environment of the VGC. For those of us in the middle – competent players who have dedicated a lot of time to the series but aren’t that interested in smashing teams we have no connection to against each other just to climb the ranks – there is no middle ground.
For the first time in the franchise’s history, I won’t be getting the next game in the series (Winds and Waves) largely on account of the fact that I can’t justify the expense of a Switch 2, but also because it’s getting to the point where I’ve outgrown what the series has become. It feels like Pokemon used to have a lot more heart and a lot more of a challenge, except the two were kept in balance, while they have now been almost surgically separated.
I can’t knock Champions’ concept. It’s just missing the more sheltered element that the mainline games had which let you train against computer-controlled teams, which were a lot more forgiving while still posing a genuine challenge to experienced players. If it had that small tweak, I might just be convinced to return.
Come on, Pokémon. Remember when you had one of your own characters convey arguably the most important message in the whole franchise back in Gold and Silver? We do!
Strong Pokemon. Weak Pokemon. That is only the selfish perception of people. Truly skilled trainers should try to win with their favourites.
Karen, Johto Elite Four
Sure, they had an NPC completely contradict that memorable quote in the Ruby and Sapphire remakes (which was a really callous thing to do). There’s been a lot of that retconning lately, such as dropping the famous “Gotta catch ’em all!” tagline when the franchise became far too big to accommodate them all in a single game.
All the same, I think it’s sad that the company has lost a lot of its heart and soul. For the sake of future Pokemon fans, I hope they see the light and start to try to move the series back toward its humbler roots. BB x
Another day, another step into autumn. I’ve just finished the washing up and am reading about Enrique’s rebellion on the island of Hispaniola in Simon Park’s Wreckers. The others are downstairs watching a League of Legends championship (apparently that’s a thing). Work seems a long way away.
I wonder what the future holds? Where will I be in a few years’ time? It’ll take me a year or two to find my feet as an English teacher once I get to Santiago, but I have every confidence I’ll get there in the end. Where will I be? Will I have a flat of my own in trendy Providencia or Nuñoa, or will I find myself in some other part of the city? Who will I choose to spend my free time, as I’ll have so much more of it than I have ever known?
What worlds will my new friends introduce me to, when our paths cross? My friendships have taken me to the blossom forests of Prague – where I was told it was a shame they had no daughters left to bring me into the family – and the starlit streets of Athens, where I saw my dear friends tie the knot after a Cadillac ride through the city. One of my wildest relationships sent me across the ocean to the American South. Even this spontaneous adventure to Hyères is the fruit of a friendship. My friendships open up the world to me.
With any luck, She is over there, waiting. It does nobody any good to pin hopes on dreams, but I’m starting to really believe that. Hopefully she’s a Spanish speaker, because while I’m prepared to teach any children I’m lucky enough to have to speak Spanish, I’d rather they learned from somebody who grew up speaking it – not from a professional mimic. I may be 40% Iberian to 26% English, as the DNA test said, but I can’t help the fact I grew up in England. There’s a whole world I still need to learn: language, lifestyle and love. I hope there is space enough in my heart.
We’re running low on some of the smaller groceries. Five men get through a lot more food than I thought. Time for another trip to E. Leclerc, I think. BB x
Flight EZY2804 to Bristol, Somewhere over Greece. 13.08.
Inch by inch, mile by mile, the wild ride of the summer of ’26 is drawing to a close. Outside it’s approaching the high 30s again, but the fierce heatwave that has held the British Isles in its grip all summer is being swept away by the first cool winds of autumn. Over the last two months I’ve seen it all: scorching heat, howling blizzards, thunder, rain and snow; mist, fog and diamond dust. It seems only right that as my life settles back into some kind of order, the weather should follow suit.
It took just shy of two hours to get from the apartment to Eleftherios Airport, but I did add to the commute by walking to Syntagma Station via the National Garden. I didn’t want my last memory of Athens to be the air-conditioned carriage of the underground, and I needed a wake-up. A steady drip on the plastic roof over the patio beside the bedroom kept me up late last night, until I used a bit of science and drowned it out with a rain track, after which I fell asleep in seconds. Fun fact: the constant change from sound to silence in a steady leak triggers the body’s defence mechanisms, anticipating a threat for as long as the sounds continue to change. White noise, on the other hand, is far less threatening, no matter the volume. The signal wasn’t superb, so thank goodness somebody thought to upload several hours’ worth of rain recordings to Spotify – I wouldn’t have cared much for a YouTube ad waking me up every five minutes.
August is nearly over. Just over a week of summer remains – but it’s certainly been a summer to remember. I’m not sure I deserve even half of the miracles I’ve had the good fortune to witness since I stepped out of the door back in July with a backpack, a suitcase full of winter clothes and a smart new wedding suit – but I’m grateful for every single one of them.
It’s very easy to hit thirty-two and look around at your world with a rising sense of anxiety as everyone marries off and starts to lay down roots. Find them while you’re young, they say – and yet here you are, single and rootless. When will it be my turn, you catch yourself asking. But I think I’ve cracked it. The question you should be asking yourself is very different. Would the child I was look at me now and take heart?
I think he would. I haven’t found Her, but I have found my way back to the thing that made me happiest: the wild. If the eight-year-old me knew that in my thirties I’d be traveling the world in search of pumas, albatrosses and giant tortoises, I think he’d be ecstatic. Nobody could ever dream of replacing Sir David Attenborough or Valmik Thapir (or any of the great wildlife presenters of my childhood) but the fact that I get to live in the world they showed me when I was just a boy is the greatest gift of all.
What was the highlight of the summer? It’s such a difficult question. Dancing with Alex and Elena at their wedding? Teaching my first ever English Literature class? Celebrating Spain’s victory over Argentina in the World Cup Final? Swimming with turtles, sailing with albatrosses or watching a fully-grown mountain lion tread through the snow just feet away? Every one of them has been written upon my heart, which is now so very full. I thought my happiness was conditional upon finding my other half, wherever She may be, but this year I’ve learned to find it in myself by allowing me to be me, the way I always wanted to be.
September is always a bumpy landing. September brings Inset, the annual safeguarding talk that makes me question whether I believe in this job, and the return of a fresh-faced generation of students that remind me that I’m in the best line of work in the world. September will be familiar – I know what to expect – but this time, something feels different. I don’t think I’ve ever gone into the start of a new school year quite so positive. I just have a feeling that, finally, things are going my way.
Oh, for sure. There will be trials ahead. There always are. But I know I can face them head-on as a man, supercharged by a summer of light and life and animal encounters.
In many ways, I haven’t changed since I was eight. I’m still writing the same book about a a brave hero and a red-haired princess. I’m still listening to Juan Martín and Michael Jackson. I’m still singing in school choirs, dancing with every fibre of my being when the beat comes on and playing a passable passage on the violin when the occasion demands. I’ve added a few languages to my roster since then, changed my look a few times, and loved and lost and learned to live again – but fundamentally I still hold true to the same values I built up as a kid. Teaching has allowed me to hold onto these things, and for that much I am truly grateful.
England welcomed me home with golden fields and petty public transport pencil-pushers. The bus driver from Bristol wouldn’t let a girl on the bus because she didn’t have the right ticket and wasn’t helpful at all when she looked distressed, there being few other buses around on a Sunday afternoon. Three of us got up to help her out but the man in front got there first and bought her a single ticket. On top of that, I arrived just in time to catch an earlier train, but the man at the ticket barrier at Bristol Temple Meads wouldn’t let me through on account of the fact that my ticket was for an hour’s time – “you don’t need to be on the platform yet”. With two thirds of the southbound services cancelled, he was probably trying to stop me from using my Advance Single ticket on board an earlier train where there would almost certainly be no ticket checks… but really. I’m out of the country for nearly two months and the most trouble I have with public transport is back to back on the day I get home…? If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s jobs-worthiness, and we English are especially bad at it. When I manage to escape this country, that kind of behaviour will be top of the list of the reasons that drove me away.
Anyway. I’m home, in the familiar comfort of my flat, and July Me had the common sense to stock up so I’d have something to eat when I returned in case the supermarkets were closed – which, being a Sunday afternoon, they inevitably are. Just occasionally I surprise myself by planning ahead.
Here ends the Great Adventure of 2026. It’s been a blast. To those of you who have been reading my adventures, known and unknown, thank you for coming along for the ride! It’s nice to know I’m not always speaking into the void. I’ll write a little less when term kicks off, but do stick around for the next adventure – whenever that may be! BB x
How do I describe what I’m feeling right now? I’m not sure. So I’ll do my best to reason my thoughts as I write. That’s what this whole blog exercise is for, after all, right? To throw down all the scattered puzzle pieces in my head so that they make a lot more sense on paper. That’s the idea behind it, anyway.
It’s like this. I’ve spent the last ten years of my life teaching foreign languages: English, Spanish, French, Arabic and even Italian. I do it because it’s what my degree was all about, primarily, but also because I have a pretty good ear and, frankly, I’m pretty good at it. In the last five years – after I’d earned my stripes – I’ve started teaching more and more literature, first through the Spanish Language B section of the International Baccalaureate Diploma, then as a fundamental part of the A Level course for both French and Spanish. The further I get into my teaching career, the more I hunger for the literary side of the course, genuinely revelling in the exploration of theme, character, identity and authorial philosophy. I love teaching the little ones, too – it’s immensely entertaining to go from discussing the corruption of the soul in French to learning Spanish phonics with various animals within the space of an hour – but every year I feel myself drawn ever closer into the literature.
Here in Chile, for the first time since my schooldays, I’ve had the freedom to teach English Literature as though it were my alma mater. It feels as natural as breathing. It helps that I have being using the same skills for years now to deliver the literature aspects of the French and Spanish courses, but… there is something more to it. This feels… right, somehow. Like this is what I was meant to be doing all along. And I’m feeling very conflicted about this.
I shouldn’t. This was always the plan – to move back to Spain and teach English Literature, if I could. But it is never going to happen in the UK. Never. I wouldn’t be allowed to cross over because of a lack of subject expertise and experience, no matter how much I point to my long years teaching literary analysis in another language. Similarly, it’s tremendously unlikely I’d be hired as a Spanish Language and Literature teacher in Spain, for which I am arguably more qualified, because why on earth would you hire a foreigner who has acquired your language from scratch to teach it to children when there are so many native speakers who are far better equipped to do so?
In short, my qualifications and my intentions simply do not add up. I did Spanish at university because I wanted to move back to Spain, but because my profession is teaching – a career path from which I will not stray on principle – I find myself stuck, unable to break into the Spanish education system as easily as mother did with music. I know what I want to do, but the barriers are all around me.
It’s frustrating – and yet the impression I get out here, in a school built upon the IB core philosophy of the universality of thought, is that none of that matters. Where I came from, what credentials I hold, what language I use from day to day. The only thing that matters is a passion for literature and for inquiry, wherever that takes me.
We could learn a lot from this system. Rather, I could learn a lot from it. The only question is, does Spain have anywhere that follows the same philosophy? That really would be the dream, if I could only track it down.
The sun has been out all day. Only now, in the last moments of the evening, has a thin carpet of cloud been pulled up as though to tuck it into bed. This would be only the third day of sunshine I have had since arriving in Chile, now four weeks ago to the day. So I have come up to the top of Observatory Hill to watch the sunset lay its Midas touch upon the Andes, perhaps for the last time, and think about the future.
Tomorrow, one last class of Othello – a proper hour and a half’s marathon on morality and ethics, Augustinian philosophy and Paper 2 preparation – and then it’s over. This strange exchange with Chile that was never on the cards until suddenly it was. I hope I leave a good impression.
And after that… somewhere completely different. Somewhere I have wanted to go since I was six years old. Somewhere… enchanted, even. BB x
Week two started slow today. A couple of meetings and a non-starter quest for a functioning laptop meant that I spent the day working on my books, which was a lovely way to spend the day productively – as well as a reminder to myself that I am technically on holiday – albeit perhaps not as exchange-heavy as it could have been. I have bigger events coming up this week, though, and I suspect it will be the last week of my exchange when it really feels like I have a fully functioning timetable.
There are always so many birds around campus. The nest boxes the students have put up all over the school site for their CAS project obviously help, but it’s not just the charming little rufous-crowned sparrows that make the place feel so friendly. The mockingbirds are always perched somewhere, every time I look up I see a caracara of some description hanging in the air, and just before break this morning I know I saw the faraway silhouette of a condor circling the heights of Manquehue.
It’s the meadowlarks that are currently lending some extra charm to the place, if I had to choose a standout. I first got to know these characterful creatures in snowy Patagonia, but it turns out they’re just as common up here around Santiago, hopping about in the car park and sitting quite fearlessly on the school fence, singing their hearts out as the Year 7s play some kind of tag game just feet away.
My BIRDA app tells me my total count of species I’ve seen so far is up to 818 after this weekend’s exploits. Even I have to admit that’s getting to be a dizzying figure, and well over three hundred of that total are birds I have seen in the last five months. I’m not a professional lister like many seasoned birdwatchers, chasing a particular total on my life, year or patch list, but it’s fun having an app where you can log it all, and in so doing learn something about the sheer diversity of species you have found – and, consequently, discovering what is still left out there to see.
I probably could have seen more species if I’d paid through the nose for that Abra Málaga trip, but I wasn’t really after that kind of number-obsessive behaviour. One albatross would have been magical enough on yesterday’s boat trip, and I was blessed with four different kinds. It does not pay to go out into the wild with great expectations. Nature provides on its own terms.
Not too much to report for now, but keeping my writer’s block at bay with regular note taking. And it does seem to be working! BB x
So far so good! I hit the exact hurdle I expected at check-in – namely, Iberia failing to allow for middle names and slapping them on the end of my surname, making for one heck of a name – but the lady at the desk waved me on in without a fuss. My suitcase is off on its merry way, and in another half hour or so I’ll leave this charging station and set out after it.
It hadn’t really dawned on me quite how far a fourteen-and-a-half hour flight truly is until I saw it printed on my boarding pass. That’s an odyssey of a journey right there, and all of it in the dark, being one of those nightchaser flights that seemingly travels backwards in time.
My contact in Santiago has got in touch, so I no longer need concern myself with my suitcase once I reach the other side of the world – and that really is a load off my mind! I have an aisle seat at the very back of the plane, so I can’t guarantee I’ll have slept all that well by the time we arrive. I hope they have a decent film or two on tap! I’m conscious that I’m missing the France/Morocco quarterfinal as I write, but maybe it’ll be showing in one of the bars en route to the C Gates.
The news here is all about the heat – that, and Nigel Farage’s impending by-election against Count Binface. There are so many reasons I would move abroad – not least of all the number of colleagues who tell me (in the nicest possible way!) that they don’t think I belong here – but when it comes to political satire, we really are the best in the world. Where else would a would-be prime minister be forced to spend the summer debating against a man with a bin on his head?
Enough of this madness. Onwards! To a country of wonderful wine and breathtaking mountains where they speak my grandfather’s language. The forecast is eternally in flux, but it now looks like it’s set to snow throughout my stay in Puerto Natales. Strangely enough, it will be the first snow I’ve seen in nearly two years. I hope I have packed enough for the cold! BB x
In the blink of an eye, my second year at Taunton has come and gone. It’s been another hurricane season, I won’t deny that. A little easier than last year, perhaps – if only because of the repetitive nature of teaching the same course – but every bit as busy. Since September, I’ve taken my student Funk Band out to their first external gig, joined a band of my own, taken a team to the Oxford Schools Finals Day for the second year in a row and led a public speaking workshop in the form of a legal practice (which, of course, I am totally qualified for…). I have returned to Extremadura under iron skies, taken yet another school trip to Barcelona and travelled all the way to Peru in search of the Andean condor on one of the most amazing adventures of my life. I have not found Her – Somerset is proving a very dry place – but I have made some good friends at work, which is a positive. I haven’t exactly had much time to commit to the search, and I have also spent almost every day of my holidays on the road, which is terribly self-indulgent of me, but it is how I survive the manic 24/7 existence that is working in a boarding school.
True to form, my summer holidays are set to follow the same trend. After a few days’ reprieve – just about enough time to tidy the flat and pack – I will be traveling across the Atlantic again, bound this time for Chile, nearly 1,500km further south than where I left off in April. Please don’t get me wrong – this one isn’t a purely self-indulgent adventure. I’m off to work at a school out there in Chile’s capital, Santiago, for three weeks or so. As to what form that work may take, I am still completely in the dark. I imagine any rational human being might balk at the idea of being less than a week away from traveling to the other side of the planet at no small expense without so much as an address or even the vaguest idea of what to expect, but I’m at that stage of my life where I am entirely my own agent and any change is welcome. The alternative is a rather static Somerset summer, alternating between driving lessons and debilitating bouts of hayfever. With my timetable for the next academic year allowing some time for the former, I think I can allow myself to dodge the latter by switching seasons in a Spanish-speaking country.
I won’t be hiding under an austral snowstorm all summer. When my five weeks are up, I’ve a wedding to attend in Athens, which I have been looking forward to for a very long time. Once again, I’ve only planned the beginning. How I get home after four days in the Greek capital remains up in the air. Maybe I’ll find a quiet spot in Thessaloniki and soak up the Mediterranean sun while I work on my novel. Or maybe I’ll travel back home across Europe, seeing Romania like I planned years ago. I haven’t decided yet.
I really don’t know what the next two months will bring. At the very least, I hope they bring change, whatever that looks like. My boss would really like me to stop saying yes to everything. She means well, I know. But if I don’t say yes to things like this, my youth will slip through my fingers and I will find myself in the same job ten years from now, still hoping that She will appear. The apps don’t work – everyone is exhausted – so, like a good scientist, I have to go and do the fieldwork. I don’t expect to find Her in Chile (let’s be honest, at a distance of nearly twelve thousand kilometres, it would probably be better for me if I didn’t), but it can’t hurt to try – and along the way, it would be nice to make some new friends and learn something new. I have work to do, of course – this Spanish Language A: Literature course won’t write itself – but with several long flights on the cards, that shouldn’t be a problem. With one “buffer” week on either side of my placement, I should have plenty of time to explore.
In short, I don’t know how this ends. I don’t know how it middles either. But I do know how it starts. Since I’m going all the way to the far side of the world, I figured I could go a little further. Before my placement begins – the day after the FIFA World Cup Final – I will be indulging my inner Attenborough once again in the desolate wilds of Patagonia. After a little shopping around, I’ve found a respectable guide who will take me in search of one of Chile’s most magical creatures: the puma. I didn’t have any luck with the jaguars in Manu this Easter, so hopefully Patagonia will deliver.
I hadn’t planned on going back to South America so soon – but here we are. Life is full of u-turns, but they aren’t always as exciting as this. So here’s to the summer of ’26! BB x
Shortly after eight this morning, we crossed over into the Reserved Zone. After three days of travel through Manu’s enormous national park, we have finally arrived at the inner sanctum – where the wild things truly are.
If it had stopped raining for even a minute or so of the eight hour journey upriver, we might have seen a lot more of those wild things than we did. As it was, the rains had swollen the river to a monstrous size, swallowing up most of the sandbanks, so the only creatures that were much in evidence were the water birds – who probably would have been there anyway.
All the same, it is hard to describe just how incredible this place truly is. The mountains are far behind us now, concealed by the clouds that covered our approach. Now it is only the river and the forest in every possible direction.
It’s surprising how quickly you get used to the sight of free-flying macaws; birds that until now I have only ever seen as captives of the pet trade. Pet parrots are such a thing – or at least, they were in my childhood – that seeing them wild almost feels like the reverse of normality.
So many of the iconic birds live here in Manu: blue-and-yellow, red-and-green and the iconic scarlet macaw. There was a scarlet macaw at the Bonanza lodge this morning, in fact, sheltering from the rain. A “free pet”, according to our guide, who comes to the lodge because of the prospect of handouts (and, evidently, shelter). There is little need for a cage when the animal is already in its natural habitat, I guess.
I realised only when we got to our destination – the Jaguar Eco Lodge – that I have finally lost my first object of this trip. Frustratingly, it’s my card reader. It’s not the end of the world – I’ve managed every other adventure without it – but it does make blogging on the go a lot less feasible as I can’t share the photos I’ve been taking on the go. I guess you’ll just have to wait. I’ll have to backdate these posts anyway, as I’m already three days behind – power has been a precious commodity, WiFi even more so m, and more importantly, I haven’t wanted to waste even a second on my phone when I’m out here in one of the most beautiful places on earth.
After a five o’clock start, we got back into the boat and sailed downriver to Boca Manu, where the Madre de Diós meets the Manu river. Our first port of call was the ranger station, where we were officially signed in and registered. Of the 29 rangers that work within the park, 11 come from the native communities that live within its borders. That much was plain from the personnel at the station, who looked about as far removed from Europeans as the modern world allows.
They were exceptionally kind. If we were not on a guided tour, I would have liked to stop and chat for a while. After all, I once wanted to be a park ranger myself. If it hadn’t been for my dismal mathematical ability and my lacklustre scores in Biology – coupled with my desire to raise a family – I might even have followed that path.
Manu is home to 1.030 species of birds. That’s an astonishing one tenth of the birds that can be found in the entire planet. So I might be forgiven for being a little glum at the prospect of the seemingly endless rain continuing for a third day, grounding most of the park’s birds deep within the cover of the trees.
At least a few of the shorebirds were gracious enough to put in an appearance, on what little of the shore remained, including a few handsome cocoi herons, wood storks and a jabiru, a marabou-esque migrant from Brazil.
We even had the good fortune to see the sandy-coloured nightjars that usually roost on the sandbars. They had sought refuge on a sunken tree, and looked rather disgruntled at their change of roost.
After another unbelievably good lunch on the boat courtesy of our chef Bernadino, we made straight for the nearby horseshoe lake of Cocha Salvador in search of giant otters. The usual location, Cocha Otorongo, has been out of bounds ever since it was raided by one of the local uncontacted tribes eight months ago.
There are signs in various places warning you to stay away from the tribes, not so much because of the risk to your own life through conflict, but because of the far greater risk to theirs of disease.
It feels strange to be in a part of the world where there are still people in the forest who remain free and out of step with the world. I don’t know what to make of it.
Powerboats are not allowed on the horseshoe lakes or cochas out of respect for the local wildlife. There is a catamaran for use by guides and their groups, provided you bring your own paddles. We couldn’t see the otters from the jetty, so we set out along its south arc in search.
The cochas are a sanctum like nowhere else I have ever known. I must have counted over a hundred species of animal and bird in the space of a couple of hours, despite the driving rain that returned to lash us throughout our quest. There were at least four species of kingfisher out and about, and an impressive young tiger-heron, which wasn’t as skittish as herons often are and allowed us to float right past.
My companions looked utterly despondent as the hours went by, the rain came down harder and the otters remained invisible. But I was having a great time, though I would have traded an hour of the day for a little sunshine, if only to make the conditions for photography a little better (I had to crank my shutter speed right down and force a steady hand to compensate for how dark it was beneath those clouds).
Another American bird that kept us company on our jaunt around the lake was the anhinga, an extended version of the cormorant, whose habit of swimming so low in the water that only its long neck breaks the surface has given it the alternative name of “snakebird”.
However, while the otters remained beyond our grasp, my primary target for the day was met over and and over again: the utterly bizarre hoatzin, a plant-eating bird that looks like an unholy cross between a hawk, a parrot, a pigeon, a chicken and a cormorant. Understandably, perhaps, this half-breed is in its own family. I’m not sure any other bird family would admit it as it of their own.
It really is, quite literally, the ugly duckling of the bird world. And I absolutely love them in their weirdness.
The otters never did appear, but we were finally relieved of the rain and rewarded with a stunning Amazonian sunset as we sailed back upriver to the lodge. We even encountered a family of night-monkeys on the walk back to camp, but my lens couldn’t handle the darkness all too well. I guess I’ll just have to keep trying! There’s always tomorrow’s night walk.
The sun is climbing toward its pinnacle in the enormous Peruvian sky. The UV warnings on the weather apps are off the charts, so I’m going to have to layer up properly with the sun cream before I leave the bus, or I’ll be fried out there. My destination today is Paracas, a coastal resort town some 256km to the south of Lima – more specifically, the Islas Ballestas and their seabird colonies.
First, however – a few observations about Peru. For one thing, my dating apps have exploded. Without even lifting a finger, I’ve got more hits in twenty four hours than I’ve had in four years, and that’s no exaggeration. I wonder what that says – about me and about this country. Is it because the odds of somebody finding me attractive have been boosted by the overwhelming numerical force of some ten million people? Am I simply more interesting to a Latin mindset than a European? Or – dare I say it – is it something more sinister?
Is it because I’m white?
Hear me out. Malinchismo is a concept we study at IB and A Level Spanish – that is, it’s a concept I always try to include in any syllabus I’m teaching that involves Latin America. In short, it’s a form of cultural “cringe”, an embarrassment of one’s own native culture in the presence of an outsider, which often manifests in the invisibilisation or even eradication of the affected community. The term itself is Mexican and comes from the problematic folk anti-heroine La Malinche, a teenage girl who served Hernán Cortés and his conquistadors as translator and thus played a major role in the toppling of the Aztec Empire.
It may be Latin American in concept, but it is a global phenomenon. It explains the demand for skin-whitening creams in Africa and Asia and the dominance of English as a trade language, even in corners of the world that don’t see many Brits. It has even sunk its claws into our own island, with RP and its bratty sibling Estuary English swallowing up most of the old accents and dialects.
Peru, like the US, is a billboard country. Commercial is king. And the face of those enormous commercials is very rarely Peruvian. Giant posters for everything from sportswear and energy drinks to doctors and dental practices all feature the same cast: lithe, beaming individuals, all handsome, all sporty, all white.
I’ll use the dating apps as a counterpoint. There are so many beautiful native faces and body types out there, and that’s just from a glance. But I’ve yet to see any of them represented on the billboards. It’s as though they’re all advertising some supernatural deity, removed from this world, above and beyond the reach of the average Peruvian.
Which, I suppose, isn’t all that far from the truth.
What do we do about it? By the looks of things, not that much. The hostel I’m staying in has a crowd of white tourists (including me), many of them on the next leg of a grand tour of South America. Very few of them speak any Spanish whatsoever.
In the hostel, they talk. Largely about things travelers always talk about – that is, home – and swap stories of nightmare experiences along the road. They talk of the continents they’ve ticked off. They talk of ayahuasca: two guys who can’t have meat or salt or sugar or sex for a month because a shaman put a plant spirit inside of them which – or so they were told – would react most fiercely if they broke their diet pact. Others talk blithely of Iguaçu Falls (“beyond the waterfall there’s not that much else to see”), Rio (“the party scene is decent”) and Patagonia (“it’s actually really expensive and full of couples”).
Most of the travelers I was with this morning have gone. It’s only a handful of stragglers who opted for the Paracas Reserve tour and the Hacienda San José slave tunnels. Everyone else has gone on to Huacachina, an oasis town famous for its sand dunes – which we venerate by driving all over them in petrol-belching dune buggies.
Say what you like, but it’s a strange way to appreciate another country. Imagine if the White Cliffs of Dover were turned into an enormous quad-bike park, charging wealthy Arab and Chinese holidaymakers a handsome sum to tear up one of our most beautiful landscapes. It’s not exactly an awkward comparison.
What saddens me more, I think, is the lack of genuine wonder. Maybe it’s a Western thing to avoid poetic adoration – at least out loud. Maybe we’re just too sanguine. It might come across as “gushing” or insincere. Either way, you hear a lot more about their “trips” than their trips. The whole of South America seems to pass them by in a psychedelic haze.
The whole thing smacks of colonialism. Not the naked, gun-point kind that subjugated the Americas long ago, but a more insidious march of cultural domination. When we holiday abroad and talk about home, and not about the places we see, we build up a temple to the West and its ways that is, quite frankly, underserved. By demanding adrenaline sport holidays and beach or ski resorts, we are only tightening the chokehold that Western culture has over the world. It doesn’t matter that it’s no longer fashionable to abuse the people when we’re quite happy to continue to tear up the land itself. That is colonialism – it just walks, talks and dresses like the very Western liberals who claim to despise it.
Tourism makes up for about 8% of Peru’s GDP. Many Peruvians rely on the tourist industry and the money it brings to make a living. The least we can do is to come here with an open heart and an open mind and tread softly.
This is not our world. We should be gentle in how we handle it. BB x
