Well what a carry on. I can't believe that it's been the best 8 months since the blog was updated. I've got rakes of excuses but I don't think I should go into that here. Just get started again and try to get some continuity back into the posts. I kept all the photographs of the travels, luckily enough but apart from the odd hand jotted note I don't have a lot of consecutive text. Ahh but what the feck. I'll just tag some stuff onto the photos untill I get up to date. I'm back in Holland at the moment but that won't last for long. It's colder than a gravediggers arse and the old joints are seizing up and heeding the call of warmer climes. I hope to be out before Christmas. Health issues have clouded my southern skies for the past few months. But those are other stories. Part of catching up. If you have the time and inclination to stick with me then we'll be back on track in no time. So where should we start. Probably at the point of departure. I boarded a plane for Curacao at the beginning of May as I remember it. This with the lively intention of connecting with an Avior flight to Valencia in Venezuela. Ahhhhhh. The best laid plans of mice and men. Missed the transfer. Curacao airport dies as soon as the last flight leaves and of course no one takes euros. Churlish of me to expect that an ex-dutch colony would prefer euros to dollars. You might as well try paying in conch shells. No taxi. No sympathy. The only place to change euros was the nearest hotel...bar...casino...shit-hole. They call it the airport hotel but only because it corresponds approximately with the end of the longest runway. That shit I wrote about packing a small bag was actually just that. Shit. The bag I had was something akin to the rock of Sisyphus. I think all my problems later in the journey were probably due to dragging that burden along miles of featureless road. But I made it. Checked into the hotel, hit the bar and tried to stay sober enough to get back to the airport by eight the next morning. Didn't manage to say sober but did manage the early start, thanks be to the lord for those tap-dancing cockroaches.Anyway no alternative flight to Valencia. Got ripped on a small 15 minute flight to Punto Figo. At least I got onto the mainland. Next post Venezuela.

Believe me it was a joy to return to the Posada El Limon. For any of you not familiar with this little jewel, set providentially between national parks, white, sandy beaches and some of the best that Venezuela has to offer, then let this be my recommendation.The management and staff are a blessing and are more than capable of helping you with any particular nature of study, stimulation or entertainment that you might desire from a visit to Latin America. For me it was a short opportunity to wonder and to take a little rest before careering on with my journey along the Caribbean coast. I say that not only because the management are old and dear friends of mine, but because a stay there presents nothing but relaxation and joy. All the contact guff is in the Lonely Planet guide but I'll include all the contact details in a later post. You can save yourself the price of the guide and keep your money for the good Polar Beer. Something I probably imbibed a little to much of on this particular visit. Bernadus and his good lady wife Selina, plus the kids Pablo and Jade gave me a good time of it. Unfortunately I did visit in the rainy season which meant not only the customary of showers of rain but a hail of ripened mangos. The big Mangos come down like mortar shells and the smaller starch mangos rattle off the the rooves like machine gun fire. A fruity fusillade. None the less i had at least a few days to recover from the stress of over enthusiastic travelling and had the chance to meet a few old friends that I had not seen for years. In addition to this the eclectic collection of guests were included: Georgina, the niece of Jenny Agutter. (Still my beating heart). And a Welsh professor of ancient languages from Tondu. I've lost or never never rembered to write down those e-mail addresses but should either of you read these lines then get in touch. Or at least Georgina...get your Aunt to. We still have outstanding issues. .I have a few unresolved questions which stem back to my teenage years. The words naked and pond come to mind  Bdah bdah.

Between memory and truth somewhere falls the shadow. Bart still maintains that during a weeks stay I managed to drink ten cases of beer. This seems improbable in the extreme but not impossible. During the rainy season the insects proliferate and for some reason they have their eyes and probosces fixed firmly on me this year. I'd been feeling progressively more dicky as the weeks wore on but had put this down more to my age and the rate of travelling rather anything else. My great friend B.M. had turned up from the Islands, something he'd be threatening to do ever since I first started haunting this corner of the Caribbean and he took me off to an old friend of his: Juraco, who is not an unknown figure to many of my childhood friends. He is also someone who holds the English crew in great affection. The politics run a little contrary since Juraco is a great "Chavezniste" much as myself. This is not a universally shared sentiment among my immediate friends. Especially Bernadus. Nonetheless we trooped down to regard the legacy of Mr. D. Sedge Willett, a man held in special high regard in these regions but better known to us as the wee grey fellow. The world and his brother are now earning a living here with mozaik techniques perfected and performed by the wee grey one. He and his fine son Helmut are well remembered in this corner of the world. We had a wonderful barbeque with the artist and his family. This was probably to prove my last flirtation with red meat and green peppers and laterly my enduring romance with alcoholic beverages. A fine time was had by all and between the profit and the loss we celebrated old and new friendships and the virtue and value of broken things.

You can only drink beer and dodge falling mangos for so long. I'm not sure about Venezuela. It surely seems like a fine country and I'm sure that the time I had spent there was not long enough to form a conclusive opinion. I guess that takes a lifetime really. There is a strange magnetism that draws me to Colombia however, maybe it's the same attraction that drew Bolivar. He was born in Caracas but gave up the ghost in a borrowed shirt in Colombia. Cartagena I think. The Venezuelans claimed his bones and shipped them back to Caracas. I'm not sure what happened to the shirt. The 24 hour rule would have surely run out on that one. Colombia is more edgy, which appeals to me. Echoes of Coventry I think. Bishops gate. The taxi ranks on a Friday night after chucking out time in the clubs. That brooding sense of impending doom which threatens but never actually arrives.A punch in the head which really isn't that bad.  After an uneventful flight from Valencia to Caracas I think I must have been musing on this as I touched ground in Bogota. Magic of all magic, wonder of all wonders, there is a WIMPY bar in the airport at Bogota. Will my luck ever run out? They even have the smooth brown mustard, "french mustard" I think they used to call it in the Wimpy bar in Coventry. Tasted like brown vinegar icing. While I was sucking down that stuff I seem to remember my bro and sister prefering the ketchup and this made me feel very interesting and continental. Jesus God I loved that stuff. Colombia may be the last repository of me and all things Coventry. I already have the borrowed shirt. But know this. When the town council demand, upon the threat of severe repercussion, the repatriation of my bones, as surely they will, then I want to buried at a point of triangulation between where the Coventry Theatre used to be, where the Kinks played and the Who first got banned for smashing up their instruments, The Jaguar pub where Bill Beckett gave me my first hit of acid, and the Wimpy bar where I first tasted something french. It may require some drastic civil engineering but that has never been an issue in my home town. Everything has gone: Jaguar, Triumph, Rover, Humber, Francis Barnet,Alvis, Austin, Morris, the Rootes group, Cov Rad, Fishy Moores, Two Tone, the piss-house in the upper precinct, Norman Butter, The Locarno where Pink Floyd previewed Dark side op the Moon with Hawkwind in support, The Lanch, Barclay James Harvest on the same bill as  MC5 (kick out the jams), Highfield Rd., Beefheart at Warwick Uni, demonstrations, citizens help, The Paris, The Gaumont,  Rolls Royce, Bob, Mum & Dad and Jase, most of my family and most of my mates. In fact what hasn't gone has gone to fuck. But just as there is a time for leaving then there will be a time for returning. The Sky blues WILL win the champions league. Lady Godiva will be doubled up on the back of the horse of Simon Bolivar. The taste of a Wimpy on Bogota airport brings it all flooding on in and flooding back. How far do you really have to go to find the way back? Bogota is the mustard.