Mexico to Cuba…via England

​MEXICO TO CUBA… VIA ENGLAND.

WORSE THINGS REALLY DO HAPPEN AT SEA.
The ride up to Belize City is pleasant enough, everyone cheerful and friendly on the bus. 

On my first encounter with the Hummingbird Highway three months ago it was full of the gorgeoues jasmine smell of orange bloom. On the way back up again, it has become the smell of valleyfuls of thick yummy marmalade. 

I arrive in Belize City, hang out at a Shell gas station (it’s weird seeing one of those again) and spend a couple of hours listening to the reggae emanating from the shop radio and watching people go about their evening socialising. 

Having had my fill of social resusitation, I go and I sleep at the edge of a cemetery on the other side of the road.
I go into town next morning to be told by the US Consulate that I don’t need a visa for the US. This is great news – it means that I can get a ferry from Yucatan to Florida and see what happens from there.

I get a bus to Chetumal, equally pleasant and straight-forwards, sharing the ride with seven of those curious folks, the Mennonites. I try being jolly with one of them and promptly give up when I suddenly remember that the Mennonite thing is to take a vow of grumpiness. No laughing or earthly pleasure allowed. Very puritan. I seriously hope that God is doing his love thing for them, I reckon you’d need it. It certainly doesn’t show on their faces, though the retro bumpkin dungarees clobber combined with the ZZ Top beards is quite jolly.

I get some money at Chetumal, having shared a taxi with a briefly met spotty red-skinned Irish woman. Ten months in Asia has not done her complexion much good bless her. 
I get the second class night bus to Merida. I discover that ‘second class’ means a reckless driver who likes going as fast as humanly possible and then slamming on the brakes as hard as he can with no warning. 

Imagined job interview: 

Boss: ‘Senor, all our first class driver positions are filled. How badly can you drive?’ 

Applicant: ‘Oh, very bad sir, I drive like a drunk man wearing moon boots who has just had an argument with his wife, and is now looking for indiscriminate vengeance’.

Boss: ‘Excellente, you start on Monday’.
Well I suppose that’s another traveller cliche I can cross off the list.

I arrive at Merida 5.30 am, almost totally sleepless and rather battered. In my sleep-deprived fug, I completely fail to communicate anything intelligent with anyone about finding a boat to Florida, thus reminding me why I have no interest in being Central America generally; my almost completely useless Spanish.

I spot and flag down an equally stupored looking Aussie, in trouble cos he’s been refused to be allowed on a plane cos he has no visa for the US. (It has run out by just one day – bastards!.) We hook up as we have mutual obstacles – visas, lingo, place to stay, and more pressingly, a lack of breakfast.

I go to get funds out of an ATM, and to my shock, I seem to have the very surprising and disastrous sum of fifty dollars in my account.

Ah.
Merida May 20th (ish) 2003

Oh crap. No money. Like almost zero. A slight Spaniard in the works. I currently have 550 pesos (thirty US dollars, about twenty-five quid), which will last me about five days. I have emailed three people asking them to send money. I hope to God someone does – I don’t know what else I can do. I have to get to the US somehow whatever happens – all flights are via Miami.

For the moment I have to draw my strings in. How do I keep going on fifty bucks? Maybe I can work at the hostel or a nearby WWOOF farm. Worst case scenario: I have to go to the British Embassy and get myself deported to England, in which case, I have to pay them back, I can visit people, go earn money and start again. That doesn’t sound so bad…
As a security measure before I had left England I had asked my bank to transfer one thousand pounds into my friend Helen’s bank account so that supposedly I would still have safe money if I ever happened to get robbed. ATM machines at this time very unhelpfully do not show you what your current balance is, so the only way I can know how much money I have is to make a note of it on paper as I am going along. I had phoned Helen whilst in Belize two weeks ago to check that she has recieved the transfer, as I figure it might be time to move it back into my current account; I was reckoning that maybe I only had a few hundred US dollars left in it. Seeing as how Helen seems not to have received the thousand pound bank transfer, I presumed (wrongly) that the money was still in my current account.

WHERE’S IT BLOODY GONE THEN??!
Next day.

I feel like going back to Norfolk for a bit and starting over, and having a recharge. After all, it’s been eight months without hugs, excluding one with Sofie in Victoria. Wow – I can remember the one hug I had in eight months!

I get a response from a very old girlfriend after a plea for financial assistance. She tells me to get a job to pay for the ticket. Imagined unsent email back to her goes thus: 

‘If I worked as you helpfully suggest I would make six dollars a day (the going rate), and if I sleep on the streets and never eat anything, I would have enough money for a ticket in approximately six months. Thanks for your thoughtfulness. Not.’ 

Just stupid bitterness really. Feeling slightly desperate. Realise the pettiness of it and so don’t reply. Life’s short and should be kept sweet.
Next day.

I phoned dad last night at 2 am here, 8 am in England. He tells me not to worry and that he will sort it out. I start making new plans for what to do in England; see people, tie up loose ends and suchlike. 

Weird. 

I was supposed to be going to Florida.
Saturday may 10th?

I am staying at a hostel. Well it looks like I shall receive money by Wednesday/Thursday if all goes well, which is a great relief. So big thanks to my dad. Also I have just discovered there is lots of nice free vegetables and cheese here at the hostel, so I can feel at ease now. I notice how calm I’ve been about all this, with only really one brief feeling of panic. It seems like I am really lucky in coming to Merida in the first place. It’s a nice city and the hostel is really good too. I’m glad I’ve got the opportunity to actually stay awhile someplace in Mexico, to feel what it’s like and discover how friendly the locals are here, so actually it’s been very nice, the architecture is very interesting here too, the colours very beautiful. As are the Mexican Mayan women by and large yum yum it’s been tooooooo long godammit.

The grand plaza is truly romantic, with lots of entwined couples on benches, two clowns regularly perform in the evening, and it’s lovely to people watch here. Really people watch, not just letching at women. There are wandering mariachis as well. All I need now is to find a free art gallery or two. It’s a nice way to end my current trip – half in the tropics, half in a grand old Mexican town; a halfway step to the bustling grey suburbia that’s about to become common to me again back in England. 

Merida was founded in 1542 by the Spanish. It has a sixty percent Mayan population, the highest of any Mexican city. Its cultural influences are a mix of Spanish, Mayan, French, and British.
Sunday May 11th or 12th

Hey guess what? Anxiety again! This is what the vessel of me expects to be filled with, it pretty much seems like it. Anxious about getting caught up in Norwich and never getting to New Zealand, of having a repeat situation of procrastinating for two years (or of not going at all). To keep me inspired: thoughts of tropical exotica in Australia. Funny really cos yesterday I had the realisation that there are so many things I’m scared of that I don’t need to be. Maybe there are many elements of Norwich I can relax and be involved with, and still be focussed on going to New Zealand/Australia.

Ye Gods. I haven’t even got back yet.
Wednesday 17th May

Well I’ve got my ticket to England now… well, I will have when I go to pick it up this afternoon, no problems I hope. 

I can’t take photos cos I’m waiting for a CD to be made and the shop has the memory card out of my camera, so not much to do. 

I go shopping for fruit and veg with my new-found riches (mango! mango! mango!) and then go to see ‘Shanghai Kid in London (London Knights)’ (Jackie Chan and Owen Williams). Watching a movie is a real treat, though really expensive – almost the same as English prices.

I have met some very nice people in the hostel; two Mexicans (who I will try to help find work in England), Esther Ann Nisha Boller who fantastically lives next to Vigeland Park (a wonderful wonderful collection of sculptures) in Oslo. She wants to go to Molde Jazz Festival and we are travelling on the same flight back to Amsterdam, which will be good. I can’t really go anywhere until I get my pictures back from the photo processing place. 

I would like to see a Cenotes (blue pool/cave) though I may go to Chitchen Itza instead. It’s almost as if I’m only going to go in case I regret it when I get home. Might go to Tulum on the coast where Moby is supposedly playing at a free full moon beach party. That might be good, though possibly a hassle. (As it turned out, the Moby gig was a mere rumour.)
Esther has invited me to hang out with her on Isla Mujeres in order to lie on the beach to improve sun tans; she’s Norwegian so she needs to. Seems like I should figure out how much money I’ve got first.

I meet a nice Czech chap who has cycled from Mexico City to here (obviously) and we are going to watch a European football semi-finals thing between Real Madrid and Juventus in a bar somewhere.

Football interests me not a jot normally, but to be hanging out in a bar with a nice guy with lots of cheering Hispanics is fab.

Bored bored bored bored bored… 

I am in waiting mode. I get my plane ticket, get my photo CD, buy mangoes and bananas (bargain). 

I had lovely night with Lydia (self-doubting but beautiful Korean woman) and Penny from Wooten Bassett no less (close to my roots). We get on absolutely famously – she’s definitely best mates kind of a person. Down to earth Wiltshire lass. We understand each others humour. That’s pretty rare. 

Tomorrow I’m off to the Isle of Women (Isla Mujeres) to meet up with Esther and/or Penny. I seem to be doing better at women right now, which makes a change. This morning a rather interesting Belgian woman appeared, so like a desperate bugger, I decide to stick around one more day and see if we have anything more worthwhile to say to each other. She comes back to Belgium in a month, so maybe…

It feels like the old three buses at once scenario… that has habit of being a bit messy. I am quite up for a casual flingette. Now, do I go for Esther or Penny? Knowing me, I’ll just end up making a steaming twit of myself/oh well it’s just people being into each other. 
Today I take about 250 photos of walls and doorways purely for their abstract art thing potential. I love the way the Mexicans know how to make the most of boring old concrete. In many places, people’s house fronts are painted fabulous bright sunny colours, and where different surfaces or properties meet there are the most spectacular blocks of colour combinations. This is interspersed with flaked paint revealing the previous lurid colour underneath, or exposed rocks where the concrete has fallen off makes endless beautiful compositions. Eventually after a few hours I have to stop taking photos as it starting to make me spin out.

*IN* THESE PICS ARE VIEWABLE ONLINE?
Upon reaching Isla Mujeres, I book into a clubby trendy hostel that is stingey with the food and full of nubile young women. After asking for the whereabouts of Norwegian Ester, a guy tells me that she has been shagging anything that moves, which leaves me feeling pretty dumb. 

I get very pissed on the beach with Penny and two women from Manchester and an Ozzie guy who’s very upfront about his sexuality which of course I find really annoying. I am afterwards fed up and frustrated at my own inability to get beyond a certain shyness. 
I turn down golf cart riding with them the next day. Partly cos I feel like I’m bad company at the moment, partly cos it looks like a real waste of money and mostly because I can’t bring myself to pretend to enjoy an activity so spectacularly vacuous. 

I decide to walk round the island instead and sing in the sea. It’s too bloody hot and apart from the joys of singing my woes in a reggae stylie and enjoying the warm blue surf, walking is hard on bare feet and I have to wear my shirt on my head turban-style. To keep the hot weight off my feet I am walking with a stick. I seem to be attracting the attention of the locals. I probably look like Gandhi.

 

Most of the way round I pass a woman walking her dog. We say ‘hello’,  and we walk past each other. I turn round and look at her and she is still looking at me. I walk on and turn again after a few moments and she’s still looking at me. She’s an unusual looking woman. Tall and big with a strange bobbed hairstyle that is slightly wild and a tatty home-made skirt that’s been made out of an old pair of jeans. It seems she is equally intrigued by this man wearing his shirt on his head and who has no shoes.

‘Are you a walker?’ she calls out to me.

I don’t quite understand what she means.

She further asks me where I’m going and whether I’d like to crew on a boat. This blows my mind slightly. It sounds really interesting. She’s quite sexy in an obscure kind of way and it’s come at an obviously really really crap moment – just after I’ve got myself in debt to my dad and bought a plane ticket home. I ask to see her boat anyway, and it’s cramped but groovy, and smells like small boats have a habit of smelling; like chemical toilets. 
Despite the weird smell, we engage enthusiastically and finally I give in to the urge I have to pull her to me… fantastic sex then ensues along with intense conversation for the next two days, and then I leave. Which is hard to do when the woman you’ve just met has her tongue in your mouth and is trying to have sex with you whilst you’re trying to scramble out through the boat’s tiny hatchway…
Feeling intensely conflicted between obligation and desire, I almost panic, but I do leave – she insists that I do – and once away from the boat and her, I feel curiously strong and capable. 

ENGLAND:

INSIDE-OUT HOLIDAY AT HOME.
23 May 2003

The flight home is uneventful, except that Esther isn’t on the flight which is probably just as well. 

I love seeing the drizzle as we arrive at Schipol Airport in Holland, the country looking gloriously green and grey at the same time. Welcome back to Europe. The ride home is easy.
On the ferry, I realise that I do have shyness issues that I need to get past as it leaves me in victim mode, which is crap. I pluck up the courage to ask for rides off the ferry, and I am successful. Ask and you shall receive. Good stuff. Seek and you shall find. Exercise your weak muscles. It turns out afterwards that my ride to Ipswich mysteriously has done a runner (or has collapsed stoned in the toilet or something), which isn’t too much of a bother. Still I learn something useful.

 

Oh, to be back in England; It’s a wonderful fresh view for me to see my green green homeland, as if through the eyes of a foreigner…

The first thing I notice is the gleaming tiled roofs of packed together old Victorian terraced houses. 

As well as the wonderful sense of seeing everything as if through new eyes, I also feel a familiarity that soaks deep into my bones. I feel strangely more of a person than the version of me that had left for Canada somehow.
There appears to be inadequate train information regarding how to escape from the grimy rainy port of Harwich. Eventually I get to Ipswich where I have to change trains.

Two old boys, probably relics from the Golden Age of Steam chat to each other and stand on the platform looking dapper in their perfectly neat green uniforms and peaked caps.

‘Dennis, what has happened to the 5.15 to Stowmarket?’

‘Well Eric, I do believe that there has been a mechanical failure on the lines just after Colchester. I have been told that it is going to be ten minutes late.’

‘Well Dennis, may I suggest that we make full use of this unexpected time and go and make a nice pot of tea?’

‘Very good idea Eric, let’s go and make a pot of tea’.
This is just the kind of detail that makes England the quirky little place that it is. Wonderful!
Now then. Norwich….

First day back in England, at Nautia housing co-op, receive a very lovely welcome from Richard Jackson. I’m feeling pretty good, focussed and relaxed.
May 24th

After initial jubilation with friends in Norwich I come crashing down again and I feel weird and anxious about what and where next. Nothing I’m not already expecting then. Helen’s friend Teresa is here, she reads Tarot cards for me and tells me I need to use my healing abilities – she says I have a lot to give. 

I feel weird about what Shawn is/was all about. As much as I fancy Shawn it comes at some risk; of course it does – it’s a huge change/challenge. Maybe talking with Teresa may clarify things.
It transpires that the reason I had no money in Mexico was because my bank had mislaid one thousand pounds and put it in a holding account. (Whatever one of those is.) I tell my dad and he refuses my offer to pay back the airfare he gave me.

Oh. Suddenly I don’t need to earn any money to continue on my way. I am so relieved by this and the fact that I have had an excuse to be back home briefly that I forget to be angry at the bank for screwing up.

So.. I buy myself a new ticket back out, ready for the next bit.
I go to a party and have weird pleasure of saying hello to long unseen friends and then explaining to them that I am flying back out to Cancun within the week…

MEXICO:

ISLE OF WOMEN.
11th June Isla Mujeres, Cancun.
I am back on the AA (Absolute Absolution) again. Very weird. 

Despite my anxieties whilst in Mexico last time about what coming back to England would be like, I absolutely loved being back there, and was pretty much comfortable that England is ‘here and now’ just as the AA is going to be ‘here and now’ too. 

Days one and two on the boat have actually been awkward and uncomfortable, despite some fairly satisfying sexual stuff with Shawn.

So it’s goodbye to the familiarity of Englishness, the lush green of the deeply-loved countryside, the refreshing coolness of the air, the greenness all around, people I know well, relationships most of which seem to be working better; I certainly notice a significant shift in my confidence generally, though I was still a bit wobbly at the party. I have always found parties a bit tricky. 

After having no sleep Saturday and Sunday and then travelling by plane for eleven hours, it’s come as a shock to rediscover how much I love what I have back in Norwich. I have deliberately stepped out of what is safe and comfortable to do what? I need to be clear about this in order to remain objective (and stay grounded and get not wrapped up in head trips).

This boat trip is not forever; a luscious land-based reality is still going to happen.

To be here in an environment where I hope I will be actively encouraged to be more able. To get better at working in a team, and on a practical level learn how sailing works, get better at Spanish, and stay fit and healthy.
I spend two weeks on the boat moored up at Oscar’s restaurant with Shawn and June whilst we wait for Ed and the rest of the crew to turn up. Me and Shawn spend time getting to know each other, which is quite satisfying after a year of sexual abstinence. Everything else is a bit psychological and tricky sometimes, but I’m up for it. I feel like I need a bit of mental stimulation and challenge. I’m a bit concerned about how things are going to be when everyone else turns up. Shawn has warned me that she will ‘become a different person’ when she has to be captain. This I am to discover later I will find quite difficult.
Shawn tells me that she wants there to be no presumptions about how our new relationship might function. We are to progress very deliberately and cautiously (mostly on her part, I still presume too easily). Holding hands and flirting when other people are present is a no-no amongst other things. It’s weird, but it’s really quite worthwhile to have my assumptions about relationships challenged and woken up a bit. 

Lots of things around the subject of me being vague, non-precise in my language and claiming to have a bad memory because of previous drug abuse are all challenged too. It winds me up and feels freeing by turns. This is going to be quite a strange ride I can tell.
The night everyone else turns up, Shawn conducts a conversation, asking each of us present what the most ‘lined up’ experience we have ever had was (i.e. when we felt the most fully functioning as a person). 

Everyone tells their story and I say how swimming in the river in Belize with Zoe has been mine. We note how sometimes when you ask people when their most amazing experience was, it often seems to have happened years and years ago. We conclude that we would do ourselves a service by doing things that will make us feel absolutely wonderful much more frequently. 

After this interesting discussion I go and say hello to the night by standing in a quiet spot on the front-end of the boat on my own. What starts out as a bit of a stretch turns into an enormous sensation of energy flowing into me, opening me up and making me literally vibrate physically for about half an hour. It’s amazing. I release a lot of pent-up old crap. I take this to be a good omen, most definitely. 
I guess that any sense of deep connectedness and of feeling ‘right where I am’ has for the most part come in the first place from being in the historically-rich landscape that I grew up around:

The last time it happened spontaneously without meditation was a long time back at ‘The Rollrights’, a circle of standing stones in Gloucestershire England…

It happened two days after Christine, my girlfriend at the time announced that she didn’t want to see me any more. We were both about twenty and I’d just come back from Inter-railing on my own round Europe in order to try and get some perspective on our increasingly wonky relationship.

I was staying at Wendy’s house in Newbury, a mutual friend, and Wendy and a couple of her mates were going off to ‘visit the ancient sites’. Sue and Steve were travellers of the ‘New Age’ variety; into having dreadlocks, drinking beer and smoking dope and probably were into other drugs too.

They lived in an old Panorama single-decker bus painted dark blue with a large flower painted on the back: The Bluebell Bus.

So I jumped aboard, on this short vacation from a life where everyone was on the dole busily achieving precisely nothing but a stoned mind.

At that time, I’d had nothing to smoke, and about two mouthfuls from a tin of cheap lager, but I was quite upset about me and Christine – the day trip was to give me something else to think about whilst I got myself back on track.

First we visited the Uffington White Horse near Swindon. 
Its old. Very old; 

There is a theory that the Belgae tribe copied the design from a Gaulish coin.

Some believe it to be ‘non-representational art’; but who the hell would want to put a huge ‘random’ squiggle on the ground and preserve it for centuries for no reason? 

Most likely it was a cult-figure/tribal symbol.
There is a novel: ‘The Scouring of the White Horse’ by Thomas Huges published in 1857, and much more recently, one my favourite bands XTC from nearby Swindon feature the White horse on the cover of their album ‘English Settlement’.
In more recent times, nearby Marlborough College has been taking care of it, cutting away encroaching grass to prevent it from gobbling up the White Horse over the years, alongside other individuals and groups at different times throughout history. 
The White Horse Hill is situated on a five thousand year old walking track called The Ridgeway. The Ridgeway was probably established for walking livestock and as a trading route. Back then the entire south of England was forest and it must have been quite difficult to find your way across the country, hence this route followed the distinctive ridges of the Chiltern Hills just north of London, passing westards to the south of Oxford, across the Berkshire Downs and Lambourne (next to Uffington and itself  racehorse training country), and then to Avebury, another ancient place with the largest stone circle in the world.

Avebury has been in me since I was six years old, and I went there on my first school trip; away from the town and everything I’d ever seen. I don’t think I’d even been to the countryside before. Then one day, I got off a coach with a bunch of other six year olds, and I’m there in this really weird place, a tiny village surrounded by this huge circular ditch, twenty foot deep and twenty foot wide, dotted with huge towering stones. It seems huge to me as an adult. The effect on six year olds must be incredible! Living only just down the road about twenty or thirty miles for a lot of my growing up, we would visit occasionally. I think of it as a huge belly button; an umbilical.

From Avebury another track follows down to Stonehenge, and from there you can follow another ancient track to Devon. These routes I suspect were mostly practical in their original uses. Ancient ways of thinking have rubbed off and given these places their magic that still endures with some people.
The White Horse is a 150 metres long and carved out of the turf, exposing the chalk beneath. There are about eighteen others around Wiltshire, (crop circle country) most of them made in the nineteenth century. I personally think the bit about the Uffington White Horse being non-representational art is crap. Various cults were known to have had featured horses as an aspect of Goddess worship, one variation being that the Goddess rides a chariot pulled by a White Horse.

This one may have been dedicated to the Roman goddess Epona (hence the word ‘pony’) who would pull the moon through the sky.
If you sleep in the eye of the White Horse at full moon and make a wish, it will come true. I tried it once and wished I wasn’t so blinking cold, so I retreated to my tent – Hey! My dream came true!
Back again on our perambulations, we doodled about on the side of the hill and admired the windy view, looking out over the vast flat expanse to the north of the Ridgeway. Good place to blow out the cobwebs. 

Afterwards we drove off up to a different part of the country, Gloucestershire about thirty miles away. In the middle of nowhere, not on any ancient tracks that I knew of at least, were ‘The Great Rollrights’. The name derives from an old name ‘Rollendrith’ which in turn came from ‘Hrolla-landriht’; ‘The Land of Hrolla’. 
At the time, the place just seemed like an insignificant circle of rough stones. Standing at mostly about three foot tall like broken teeth at strange angles, over the last six thousand years gravity and weather have sucked the stones back down into the soil. 

There the stones stood, fenced off in the corner of some picturesque but otherwise unremarkable undulating farmland, hemmed in between a strip of tree cover and a narrow country lane. It was a fairly un-touristy spot. None of Stonehenge’s stunning grandeur, and consequently none of its tourists; I hope it stays that way. 

The kids larked about running round and squealing and laughing.

Wendy made a grandiose show of ‘feeling the stones’ – ‘Oh this ones hot!’, ‘Oh this ones cold!’ Wendy was a bit messed up after going through a bitter divorce and was frequently prone to shows of what I thought was irritatingly fake ‘witchy’ behaviour. I feel utterly unimpressed and fairly lost by the whole event, me busy being a sulky bastard over the loss of my girlfriend; not doing ‘cosmic’ today thanks.

I leaned against the tallest stone in the circle. Not for any reason other than the rest were too stubby and I couldn’t lean against any of them.

Being fed up, I blanked out from Wendy and her kids. I breathed out. I found myself relaxing and feeling increasingly comfortable, leaning against this stone in my little mental refuge. I mentally sank further into somewhere safe and internal. I felt myself getting somehow glued to the stone. Something like relief or release. Somehow I felt something in the air; dare I say it – an energy. I felt a twisting spiral that came down out from the top of the sky, down through me and this stone and then coming outwards again way down into the ground. It was going the other way too, coming up out of the ground, through the stone and me, and way up into the sky. I was freaked. I was transfixed and astonished. Physical reality became a blur way outside of me.

I heard a woman’s voice. It wasn’t Wendy or anyone I recognised. She said:

‘Don’t be afraid. I am part of you, and you are part of me.’

I was almost dumbstruck.

‘What should I do?’ I don’t know if I spoke it out loud or just in my head.

The reply came.

‘Do whatever you want. Just remember to always take me with you.’

The voice receded, and the energy carried on spiralling.
Wendy approached and tried to speak. I’ve no idea what she said. She went away and came back later, I’ve no idea how long she took, my brain wasn’t understanding things like ‘time’.

She gabbled at me. We were in different worlds. I think she wanted to leave. I became vaguely aware that everyone was waiting for me.

She stood in front of me rolling a cigarette. When she’d rolled it, I took it from her and smoked it to nothing in one long hard draw. She looked surprised. I absolutely detested cigarettes. ‘You don’t smoke!’ she exclaimed.

‘I do right now.’

Reluctantly I left the place and went back to the bus. 

Steve: ‘You alright man? You looked like you was trippin’ out!’.

Sian, Wendy’s seven year old daughter ‘Mum, is Richard alright?’

Wendy ‘Yeah man, where did you go!? Tell us what happened!’ a big grin on her face.
‘Er. I’ll tell you later’

I didn’t feel frivolous. I didn’t speak to anyone for three days after that.

Meanwhile, back on the boat…  

David, aka ‘Poppa Neutrino’ is a tall slightly overweight robust looking guy with a big white beard and a battered sun hat. He’s in his seventies, could enter the Ernest Hemingway look-a-like competition and possibly win, and is spoken of in reverential terms amongst the rest of the crew. He is a classic patriarch.

This kind of human dynamic gives me the creeps a bit; I’ve seen it before with the Transcendental Meditation people and think I can keep myself out of trouble with it. I’m not going to be anti or resistant and I’m not going to suck up just because it’s expected of me. These are just ordinary people who’ve constructed their own weird social dynamic. That’s all it is to me.
Shawn loves this guy like a father – with good reason. She was born in a hippy commune in Vermont with a gay  sperm-donor father absent in New York City from year zero and has a lesbian mother, being conceived by artificial insemination. The commune lived by the principles of Gurdjeff, a hard-nosed Russian free-thinker of the turn of the 1900s whose idea of life seemed to be one of spiritual development through giving yourself a hard time as often as possible. It’s one thing to deal with difficulty when it happens in as constructive a way as you can and when you need to, but quite something else to get on a self-flaggelating head first melodrama roller-coaster. Been there, done that, tore the tee shirt to shreds. It’s crap with no end. (Yes I know I’m a hypocrite; I should get off the boat right now before it’s too late. Still maybe some hot sex might make up for it.)
Anyhow, Shawn grew up with a bunch of hippies whose idea of nurturance was to discourage her mother from cuddling her and to leave her to stew in her own juices until she stopped crying (which apparently indicated that all was now well again). I wonder if they were just using the Gurdjeff thing as a handy excuse for being a bunch of emotionally-retarded idiots.

Shawn grew up, got straight ‘A’s in everything at school because she’s blessed with genius, but is ultimately bored by the whole school system thing. She got into drugs and turned into a 300 lb drug-addled TV couch potato. Eventually something up her arse finally exploded (apart from possibly her appendix) and she travelled to the other side of the States with the grand ambition of being a bum on the streets of Phoenix Arizona. At least it’s warmer there. Predictably, she had an eye-opening time, met too many of the wrong sorts of people and eventually in her late teens goes back to her strange relationship with her mum in Vermont.
Whilst there wondering what the hell to do with a family monster called ‘Thanksgiving’, she met two friends of her mums who’d come up to visit. They seemed to understand where she was at and took her under their wing. They were David and Betsy who liked to live on the move. (They are both on the boat now, Betsy having changed her name to ‘Aurelia’.) They had firstly lived out of station wagons and old buses in the sixties and seventies, and had latterly taken to the water and lived and worked in sailing boats and rafts. They were the first people to sail a raft across the North Atlantic, in a raft built from junk. Water rats on a grand scale (www.floatingneutrinos.com). They were Gurdjeff people too.

They had a couple of grown-up kids of their own, and one their hobbies seemed to be rescuing screwed up kids with no lives and useless parents.
David took Shawn off on a walking trip across Mexico where he taught her about playing music on the streets; him twanging his cheap guitar and she learning to sing swing and blues tunes. They had no money, they lived at ground level with the Mexicans, they ate with them, slept in their porches and sometimes their beds, and Shawn lost weight and got her act together.
I’m not big on Gurdjeff, but that’s one interesting father figure. The winter previous to me meeting them, David had gone back to Greenwich Village to conduct something like a social experiment. The FN’s had previously built a junk raft on a quayside in New York City and squatted the spot, sending a vocal message through the New York media that anyone can have their own space even if you don’t have any land. (If they can do it in the Far East, then why not in the States?) It’s a bit ‘Waterworld’ but I’ve come across people living this kind of lifestyle before. (Like the guy on his caravan raft in Tofino.) 

When I ask David, he tells me that the Floating Neutrinos have met the various wacky house-raft people themselves when they went up there looking for giant driftwood trunks to build their own new raft. They didn’t use them in the end as it was very illegal – the driftwood is all protected as a natural preserve, ironic in the extreme as most it is there on West Coast beaches because of trashed old growth from Oregon and northwards that had broken free from log booms and washed up there…
Anyhow, a later solo experiment of David’s was to live in a box on wheels on the streets of Greenwich Village and the surrounding area. He knocked up the box out of plywood and did his thing; playing chess with passers-by during the day. He reasoned that nobody takes any notice of bums and having a portable bedroom would be warmer for an old man like himself and even more anonymous. So this he did for three months. How much of this was driven by choice or circumstance I don’t know.

It tickles my own notions of mobile living; whether it’s being in a van, a caravan, living out of panniers on a bicycle, having a horse and wagon or living out of a rucksack. I’ve imagined folding bow-top caravans that you could pull with a bicycle. How could you retain comfort and a sense of security whilst not turning your load into a freedom-restricting burden? I am really quite intrigued by this man’s thinking, who so late in years hasn’t finally given up on his dreaming and retreated towards the casket. Having said that, he did try to get me into the idea of travelling round South America with him on foot whilst sleeping in a similar mobile box at night. I don’t know whether he has thought of this himself, but it seemed to me to be like taking the funeral casket with him, easing into that ultimate day, still moving but with death in mind. There seemed to be something very beautiful about this to me. It didn’t seem polite to ask how he regarded it.

Along with a pile of kids he’s fathered who mostly didn’t seem to get along with him (him being more left-field than most), he’s had four divorces and as many heart attacks.

Come the day, I suspect they won’t want him in Heaven or Hell, and he’ll just have to come back and dance the whole ballet all over again… I don’t think he’d thank me for saying that somehow.

David says himself that if he has any regrets it’s that he hadn’t hit the booze so much and had such a god-awful bad temper. (This I can vouch for.)
Galen is one of David’s grandchildren, is from San Francisco, is in his mid-twenties and is along for the ride. After hearing so many messed up stories about his grandfather he decided that he finally has to meet the guy and make up his own mind. Galen is conscientious in an ecological sort of way, sharp-witted and down to earth. He feels a little like an outsider too, so he’s good to be around – he’s interested in, but not buying into the whole Gurdjeff thing lock stock and barrel. Galen wants to ‘make a difference’ somehow and also wants to open a cafe-style place in San Francisco, and now he’s here looking for inspiration in the operations of group dynamics.

THE GULF OF MEXICO:

WORSE THINGS REALLY DO HAPPEN AT SEA.
Boat life, I discover, does not fulfil many of what I feel to be my travellers’ version of home comforts. I normally enjoy the variety of visual perspectives you get on the move. Here everything is reduced to a monotone blue swirling upon a mostly flat horizon. 

My cabin is cramped up in the bow-point (right at the front); It’s sweaty, and the sea gurgles round the outside of it like it has terminally bad guts. It rolls around constantly, which for the first few days is horrible. After a while I don’t really notice it so much, and the feeling of being right up where the boat is slicing through the sea is a cross between being inside a plough cutting through a liquid field and being right up in the top part of a rocket voyaging through blue space on some grand mission.
The skies are fantastic, and I do really enjoy doing the night watch on the helm between four in the morning and 6.30 am. The light on the compass is often too dim to see by, so I line up the two fore-masts with a particular star in between them and follow that. This really creates a feeling of following in a fantastically old way of living, of finding your way through unknown waters using what signs the heavens show you and having to rely on whatever the winds and currents give you. It really feels like that; it’s lovely.  It’s a nice mental space to be in, in the silently gurgling darkness with everyone else asleep, just me, a creaky boat, fluttery sails, the sea, the moonlit sky, a ginger cat and my wandering imagination. 

Unfortunately, its not just the my imagination that is wandering; I have completely failed to realise that my method of star-following navigation hasn’t taken in account the fact that stars revolve round the Pole Star and move through the night sky, so I’ve been sending us on a curve rather than a straight line. Oops.
Our journey, we are informed by our captain and by some of our very experienced crew, will likely take between three and five days, and so we are thus provisioned with food and water. If you were to look at the map, you would probably say ‘Oh yes, Cancun is just here, and Havana is not so far away, just about two hundred odd miles. Good’.

What actually happens is that the combination of a new captaincy and a new-ish boat that has not been fully tested for sailing the hard upwind short route and probably my wonky steering (I’m saying nothing) ends up with us taking the very very long way round up into the Gulf of Mexico and spending a certain amount of time drifting…
The water runs out first, and we hail a passing container ship asking them for assistance. Luckily for us, we can rely on the fact that international shipping laws dictate that if anyone in distress hails another ship, you are legally obliged to come to their rescue.

We drop sail as this big grey freighter bound for Guatamala changes course and sidles up to us and dwarfes us with it’s lumbering elephantine enormity. It’s offer of assistance is like having King Kong offer to pick grit out of your eye. It radios us telling us it has dropped a wooden pallet with water containers strapped to it and then turns and disappears to the south. We all stand on deck straining our eyes to find a brown coloured blip in the rolling sea. After we have nearly given up hope of finding it, Ed spots it through the binoculars and we turn the engines on and motor up to the pallet. We drag it aboard; it has two five gallon containers attached to it, containing about four gallons of water in total. 
The water gets dubbed ‘Dr. Pepper’ water on account of its peppery taste. To me it tastes like it’s been drained out of an old radiator or something. I won’t drink it it’s so foul.

This water obviously doesn’t change our situation much. The food’s running low too. No vegetables left except a couple of onions and two bulbs of garlic and several limes.

It’s been a mad journey so far. I’ve been analysed, criticised, loved (so I am informed) and it’s all been a bit much for my fragile but carefully-guarded ego. No sex with Shawn, in fact almost zero actual conversation that isn’t loaded with some kind of psychoanalysis. But lots of short temper and instruction barking instead. She has this notion that if she barks urgently enough, I’ll instinctively understand how to do things I know nothing about, like dropping an anchor for example. She may well be the captain, but respect is something you have to earn, regardless of who you are. I’m not into it. On the other hand, I’ve had a few psychological possibilities opened up to me – like my self-image of vagueness and bad memory is rubbish and I don’t have to be that. I can choose intentionally what kind of interactions and what kind of day I want to have. It’s up to me to make them happen.
In amongst the intense psychological wranglings that are inevitable with a bunch of New Agers cramped in a tiny space, has been the curious set of interactions between Galen and Shawn.

Galen being male and single has been ‘coming on’ to Shawn which leaves me with a mixture of feelings. Me feeling generally powerless cos Shawn seems to have disconnected from me completely without any explanation other than ‘she would become a different person when she became captain’, which emotionally I don’t understand. I also feel a kind of bitter amusement that Galen doesn’t know what he’s letting himself in for if he tangles with her. I’m also horribly jealous because he’s more her age, better looking, he can conduct himself more eloquently than me and he’s ‘family’. It occupies the ‘nagging anxiety’ part of my brain.
Some time later, the balance shifts. Shawn is trying to get Galen to drop anchor. She treats him the same as she did me.

He doesn’t understand the boating terminology because no-one has explained any to him. He asks what to do. She yells at him. He politely says he doesn’t understand the procedure. She just yells more angrily ‘Just fucking do it you fucking idiot!’ 

He does nothing. There’s nothing he can do except maybe shout back at her. He can see that this will achieve nothing useful.

I step in quietly, bypassing Shawn and explain slowly and quietly what he needs to do. Shawn backs off. She thanks me later; she realises she’s handling things wrong.

I have a very strong suspicion that, knowing a little of how she grew up, she’s probably at a point in her life where she’s venting a lot of anger and frustration. She readily admits that she doesn’t ‘do’ emotions. Anger is usually the first emotional expression that has to come if you’re going to get yourself on the way to being a fully functioning person. Unfortunately we’re on the receiving end of it.
At another time, towards the end of the journey, having nothing better to think about, Shawn decides she’s going to have a go at Galen because he’s going to put the wrong flavoured (chicken) stock cube in the rice. Galen coolly and rationally says it is a mistake, and he’s sorry and he’ll put the right flavoured stock in the rice.

Shawn won’t let go of it, and practically accuses Galen of trying to mess with David’s health. (He can’t eat anything meaty because of blood pressure.)

Galen points out why would he want to mess with his own grandfather’s health. Shawn is being very irrational.

June drops in: ‘What’s going on?’

Shawn says her piece. Galen says his piece. I’m looking on, incredulous at this huge debacle over a chicken stock cube. June asks me for an outside view of what’s happening.

Shawn interjects ‘Oh don’t ask him, his opinion isn’t worth anything.’

I’m smirking at Shawn’s ridiculousness and me and Galen are giving each other silent wide-eyed knowing looks of ‘She’s mad!’.
When it looks like we heading into a rainstorm we decide to make the most of it. We are nearly out of water again and this is the only opportunity we have to restock. 

Dave and Ed inform us that under ordinary circumstances we would steer well clear of the lightning storm; there is a very real danger that with the boat being the most prominent object in the sea, we would stand an uncomfortably high chance of getting blown to pieces by a bolt-strike.

Given this information we vote on whether to sail into the edge of the storm. We vote yes. We like a little bit of adventure now and then.

We reef the sails (lower them) to slow us down and kept in the rain storm for as long as possible. We run round madly collecting containers to collect water in and pots to scoop up water out of the reefed mainsails. 

We hit rain. It is joyous. We’ve been really low on water for a few days. Here is a bountiful gift. It makes me think of those who go much further without water. I’ve never gone without water before. I gulp deliciously at the fresh nectar in the tin cooking pot I am using as a scoop. 

I have not been drinking any of the ‘Dr. Pepper’ water because of the chemicals in it and it tastes like it has been drained out of a rusty old radiator. I’ve drunk about a pint in three days. I’ve been getting delirious with dehydration. Drinking the caught rain is cool and heavenly. I am banned from drinking the rainwater without putting bleach in it first. Well you can stick that. I drink it ‘straight’ anyway. It’s nectar. Guess what? Everyone else comes down with buggered throats. Oh! What might have caused that I wonder?!
We are passing through an area in the world which is directly responsible for our wet European weather, the Gulf Stream. Warm air rises off the sea, high-tails it up the East Coast of America, across the Atlantic and then dumps half an ocean of rain on us.
I decide that floating in an over-sized yellow matchbox in a desert of sea is not really my cup of tea. 

Eating food that manages to have no fruit or vegetables in it is just plain nasty. We have been provisioned for a five day journey that so far has taken more than two weeks. There’s only so much unadulterated rice beans and soya mince a reasonable human being can take.

My cabin is dead sweaty too. Wahh! I want land!!!

Then again, I am learning some basics about sailing which has been very worthwhile, though I seem to have developed a talent for screwing things up a lot. Aided by inadequate sleep, food, water and criticising persons breathing down my neck.
We have to get rescued again a week later by an absolutely enormous cruise liner called the ‘Inspiration’ who give us food to last us a few days. Fruit! Wonderful!!

The cruise liner is over the horizon but we pick it up on our radar. The distress call is made (again), and a short time later, the ‘Inspiration’ appears; a dot on the horizon. 

Within half an hour its size is becoming apparent. As it gets ever closer it gets bigger and bigger and bigger; a quarter of a mile long I would say, and two hundred metres high above the sea line, a gleaming white and polished chrome monument to pointless affluence. 

Shawn speaks on the radio and asks how we should approach the ship. The captain of the cruise liner replies that we should stay right where we are and they will motor up to us. He doesn’t want to have the potential added burden of having to deal with scratches on his nice shiny boat. It’s really weird hearing this tinny little voice on our radio thats coming from such a huge object.

We bob about like a cork as this floating white elephant draws up to us sideways. It must have enormously powerful docking engines to be able to do that. The captain of the Inspiration radios further that on absolutely no account must our craft touch theirs.

We are untouchable hippy filth with the potential to ruin their glossy white ship. Certainly a yellow paint scratch or a rubber tyre scraping down its side wouldn’t look very nice.
We crane our necks upwards and exchange waves with American tourists videoing and taking pictures of us. Probably happy to see something other than the sea and cheesy cabaret shows whilst skipping about in their giant floating shopping mall. 

There is an idea on board that we are providing these ships with opportunities for good karma, but I agree with Cory who thinks it smells of bad organisation and the abusing of other people’s better nature. I get the distinct impression that the crew who bring us food from the cruise liner think we are inept. They certainly don’t look impressed with our claims to be sailing round the world when we seem unable to even supply ourselves with an adequate amount of food and water for the short distance we have so far come. This is compounded by the way David seems to be more interested in using the event to advertise the Floating Neutrinos website than displaying any humility. The crowd seem to enjoy the spectacle of this little yellow wooden box full of lost Americans though, and I guess that ultimately it is a good public relations exercise for the ship.
I wish I was doing something more en-nobling.

Seeing all these ‘normal’ people smiling and waving at us, I register a feeling in my heart that I want to be with ordinary people again. 

It reminds me of the time me and my Transcendental Meditation chum Mike went to do Yogic Flying for World Peace. (Bouncing up and down on our arses on foam whilst meditating.) We were in Washington DC in the height of a sweaty summer surrounded by ordinary black Americans busily occupying themselves by being normal. They obviously and correctly took us to be crazy. That and the sight of so many women blew my mind. Upon returning to the TM ashram in England, I lasted one more week of male sexual repressedness registering only the feeling of ‘BULLSHIT’ through every bone and nerve-ending in my body. 

The painting of the Big Man Guru Dev fell on my head during meditation the morning I decide to run away. Someone looked at me slyly and grinned that I must be thinking impure thoughts. At 11.35 am I packed a bag and left, telling only one person I was leaving, for fear of being talked into staying. (That had happened twice already.) I got back home to Don’s house in Newbury and looked up an astrological chart; it seemed I had left at exactly full moon. A sign from the gods to my confused mind that I’d done the right thing.
Three quarters of the way through the boat trip I decide (in my mind at least) to press on towards New Zealand. I’ve got a real appetite for temperate climes, fresh cool air, decent water and a sense of culmination of aforementioned ambitions. Most of these things are basic down to earth desires. If I don’t sort out the basics, then I’m not really doing myself any favours.
Our trip has been marred with hazards. The crew of the ‘Inspiration’ that came out to give us food had regarded us most disdainfully. I imagine one object of their disdain might very well have been the shonkiness of our boat. 

I was once a volunteer for a couple of days with Sea Shepard, an anti-whaling direct action protest group. Nothing spectacular, I merely spent a weekend angle grinding rust off of a knackered looking old fishing tug. Two guys helping were well-seasoned old fishermen from Hull. 

‘Bloody hell, this is tough going’ says I.

‘Aye, well why do you think that steels so bloody thick?’

‘Dunno – why?’

‘Well you imagine being out in the North Sea, and a bloody storm kicks up. You imagine what weight there might be in a huge thirty or forty foot wave?’

‘Ooh. Loads I ‘spect.’

‘Right, and you imagine what it might be like if two of them waves came right at your boat both at the same time?’

‘Err..’

‘You’d be bloody crushed like a tin can, that’s what’d ‘appen. Now you know why this steel’s two inches thick.’
And here we, planning to sail round the world into the vastest watery spaces, through some of the nastiest currents. In a boat made of marine ply and household insulation foam.
July 12th

Do I stay with the boat during/after Cuba? It depends on what I want to achieve and where the boat goes. I have a feeling I don’t want to be obliged to live by a set of someone else’s mental principles, even though the ride is otherwise free. Maybe I can get appropriate ‘training’ elsewhere. Thinking of groovy eco things to go for in New Zealand. Maybe something bicycle based or theatrical.
This is the whole Floating Neutrinos philosophy in a nutshell:

‘If you could do just one thing before you die, what would it be?

Open yourself to the idea of gauging the best you’ve ever felt and opening to the possibility of consciously changing your state of mind at any given moment.

Being conscious of how we approach scenarios and other people.’
Feeling like I want to run away from situations doesn’t mean I have to. It’s a chance to resolve difficulties and learn from them.

I have to ascertain whether I believe the person(s) involved is or are ultimately on my side. This will make dealing with the situation more balanced and adult.
What Goes down, Must Come Up…

Then finally it comes to me!

Talking to Cory about bikes and alt-tech.

Wanted:

People interested with combining WWOOFING, cycling and teaching alternative technology in schools and festivals, to tour all over the country. Must be drug-free with an active interest in practical and personal problem solving.

Satisfies: building friendships with active practical fun teaching good for the planet focus, with travel and hands in the dirt, face to face with hearts and bodies in the hills and the wind.

Vision:

To cycle as an evolving collective of people learning and sharing personal and practical ability. To teach and demonstrate practical and appropriate eco-technologies in schools and colleges, demonstrate at festivals, work on WWOOF farms in between and cycle the land in between. Bicycle based.

Income to come from donations (?) from schools, and be self supporting working on WWOOF farms.

What was meant to take a few days has taken weeks and now unbelievably we are waiting to get rescued yet again for an third time, this time by the Cuban coastguard.

We are tantalisingly close to the shore, only a few feet away. There is land! Solid and green! Full of people and things happening! Gimme! 
I feel like a failure today for feeling socially useless. Take a change of perspective. Understand that I have been programmed to feel failure. I don’t have to buy into it.
A brief tickle with actual land. The day before yesterday in the middle of the Gulf I could smell the refined and unmistakable smell of horse-poo. (I grew up next to a stable yard, so I should know what it smells like.) As distant grey mounds on the horizon appear a day later, they fantastically rise and join together to form the north-western coast of Cuba some seventeen miles away. As we eventually draw in close in the dark of the day, I can smell earth.

Majestic grey mountains laid up like a king’s feast on a platter of glorious green mangrove. Decrepit fishing boats spice the coastal waters. Yes, I am obsessed with food. As in Belize, I’ve had some further insights into where the mind can go in the absence of sex and other home comforts. 

A sparsely supplemented diet of tortilla, eggs, beans (a modicum of fruit and veg blagged over the radio from the ‘Inspiration’ cruise ship) leads me to fantasise of raspberries and cream, carrot cake (with lemon dates and walnuts), fish and chips (crunchy batter, tomato sauce), and a particular favourite fantasy – Yeo Valley organic raspberry yoghurt: from feeling the weight of the cold dewy tub new out of the fridge. The sound of the lid creaking off, peeling back the tin foil on top, licking off the dried glob of yoghurt on it and then sticking a big spoon into the thick creamy stuff. Hoiking a dollop out with a quiet but distinct ‘slurp’, the satisfying sense of yoghurt and spoon suction resistance. Thick and solid on the spoon. And then the taste as it reaches my mouth… mmmm…
At near-land we off-load Cory and Patti and their two kids. They’re sick and have had enough. 

At one point in the trip, David had accused Cory of being sexually repressed, and that David wasn’t going to give up pressing this issue until Cory declared that he was cool about David having sex with Patti. Meanwhile Patti is suffering from hormonal weirdness and seasickness whilst trying to breast-feed a young baby and deal with a toddler in a tiny and easily dangerous space all at the same time. Cory is doing his best to be with his family and keep up with the fabulous Floating Neutrinos both at once. I really like Cory. He is a science teacher in Phoenix with what seems to me a level and enquiring mind. At the end of my night watch I enjoy sitting talking with him as he takes the helm for the start of each new day. He is usually calm, thoughtful and sensitively insightful. He is good to have around (as far as I am concerned at least). 
Cory and Patti and their kids are rescued by ‘Charlie’ an English professor acting as translator (a rotund balding chap with a huge grin), Oscar who drives the coast-guard’s motor boat is a worried looking minion from the governmental machine bedecked in military green. They take away Cory and Patti and their two youngsters and swap them for gas, water, fried chicken (yummy!) mangoes (huge) long green beans, tinned tuna, fabulous Cuban rice, maize flour and cucumbers. We feast for a few days.
Next day, we tack back out to sea and head up coast for Habana (Havana). It’s been two days now, and we should get there either tonight or tomorrow (winds willing).

Then I suppose we can expect more weird immigration obligations. I guess actually on the whole I mostly like the people I am travelling with. I feel like I’ve had some challenging but interesting insights into how I deal with various situations. (Like how I deal with criticism for example.) 

I’ve been finding it difficult to make up my mind about which route to take once I get to Cuba: do l get a boat back to the States and get a plane ticket to New Zealand? Stay with the AA to Panama? (They are considering maybe heading from there across the Pacific to Australia.)

I have been waking up in the mornings and consciously deciding to have a good day. This seems to make a difference. 

This afternoon we drop sails so that we can drift towards Habana. We do not want to arrive in the middle of Sunday night.

CUBA:
Coming into Hemingway Marina is very exciting for three reasons. The first one is a mysterious explosion in some part of a town which we can see about a mile from where we are, as we are drawing in towards the marina. This is a few weeks after Castro has had a hundred or so dissidents shot.

The other two reasons; land proper at last and all it implies, and thirdly because I have to do most of the steering up to the large rusting metal buoys outside the marina. It’s like playing a video game.

Habana just gets closer and closer. Adrenalin rush. Old man Dave takes over after my initial guiding in and is responsible for the really tricky bits (and us subsequently crashing into a concrete post thing whilst trying to get round a really tight bend).
There is much contradictory screaming of instructions between David (the pilot) and Shawn (the captain) at me about what I should do with anchors and long wooden sticks. Apart from thinking perhaps that I should stick them up their arses, I function fantastically despite their lack of clarity. Apart from falling down the anchor line well and bruising my left leg and yelling back at Shawn that I can’t follow her fucking orders as I have fallen down a fucking hole.
Locals lolling around in rubber tyres, lazily chatting and laughing to see such fun, the decadent imperialist gringos clearly devoid of mojo getting their karmic rewards and trashing their boat… Well actually we only squish it slightly as it’s only thin plywood and has loads of bouncy foam filler inside it. Further up the dock we come past a cruiser about 150 foot long with the deck fifty foot above the water. Either they built it there or they have dug a special channel to motor it into place and filled the channel back in again afterwards or they flew it in suspended underneath a fleet of military helicopters. It’s called ‘Lady Jenn’. it’s secret name is the ‘I’m Absolutely Unhygenically Stinking Rich, And I’ve Got An Enormous Dick Too’, but you can’t write that on the side of a vessel. It wouldn’t all fit on for one thing. It’s somewhat of a small mercy that our boat doesn’t offend the local peasant sensibility visually. (I.e. it looks like a floating shanty.) 
July 22nd

Feeling very distant and weird, like I’m leaving a girlfriend that I’m not sure about; wondering about colourful missed opportunities and such-like. In some ways it’s an easy way to plan to be with guys in an on-going way but it’s also so slow-moving to hang with these guys, and not at all straight-forward in almost every other sense. I feel a bit awkward around them in a half-in half-out kind of way.
Last night on the marina we met a Belgian chap who has delivered a boat here down from New York. He gives us beer (Budweiser!) and assorted cake things – he’s flying back to France tonight. By some strange quirk of fate he’s met these chaps before in New York. I guess the sailing community must be a relatively small world. He’s another oldie doing the eternal travel thing. It’s amazing that someone can do something so exotic and different for a living.
Me and Galen go and get pizza via a hotel swimming pool. (The first chance to get a free bath essentially.) It’s nice to gate-crash for free stuff that other people are daft enough to pay lots of money for. Oh yeah the pool is on the way to the pizzeria; the pizza doesn’t come out of the pool. Obviously.
The next day, I get talking to the crew on the Big Knob boat, enquiring about getting a ride with them to anywhere, and they are actually really nice people. Unfortunately they are already fully-crewed.

Today I loll; completely, solidly, motionless. The eternal clanking of ropes on masts and the continous raspberry-blowing farting of vibrating jib sails above my head – it ends. The tumultuous stomach gurgle of sea rolling past my cabin in the bow point – it ends. No more physically sloshing about. Thank heavens. All that peace AND pizza, beer and cookies on the same day. Not baaad!
Got Billy Bragg’s ‘Milkman of Human Kindness’ in my head. Thinking of Kirsty MacColl. 

Welcome to the Sunshine State of Socialism.
No-one’s quite sure what they want to do. June wants to get some breathing space and to look around Habana. Aurelia and Ed want to just hang out and do nothing. Shawn maybe wants to find something to make a video of and Dave wants to meet Fidel Castro to discuss how the Floating Neutrinos might play an integral part in the future of Cuba’s tourist economy.

‘You gotta think big in this world if you wanna get anywhere son!’ he says, a grin on his face and a glint in his eye.

I think the Ernest Hemingway look-a-like thing has gone to his head, or maybe he’s just always like this. 
July 22nd

Start the day with various members of the crew getting snotty with me, I think it might be because of my non-communicated ambivalence about staying with them but that’s only a guess.

‘Aurelia’ decides to harangue me which really pisses me off; for asking a question twice about the confusing nature of the Cuban currency. 

I go to the chandlery and meet some normal folks. One boat leaving, but I pass it up. Maybe I should have gone for it. 
I go wandering around outside the westernised Marina Hemingway into the real life Cuba outside and a guy asks me if I need anything. Having heard that Cuban pesos buy you things more cheaply than American dollars do (on the basis that only tourists have dollars and only Cubans have pesos). I tell him some change would be handy and he leads me off down some side-streets to a small bank. The bank has a long queue so without patience we go to the house of a money-changer where other locals are there exchanging their hard fought pesos for American dollars. It’s a slightly shady experience and just the sort of thing you read about in exciting travel journals. 
Afterwards he asks if I would like to buy cigars, (I would not), and then if I need to eat. We go to another persons house which is doubling up as a lunch-time take-away service and I have a very cheap and satisfying meal of rice, beans, beef and vegetables for double the listed price of ten pesos. It still only comes to thirty pence, so I have no quibble with that. Realising that the bloke who is leading me round desperately wants me to buy cigars, a commodity of absolutely no interest to me whatsoever, I give him four dollars and say thank you very much. He goes back to the area he picked me up in, so he can wait for his next tourist.
I then go into Habana on the free hotel bus and get off just as Ole Man Dave is getting onto it.

Almost at the same time I am expressing my surprise at seeing him (and having to hide some degree of dread), I get pounced on by two elderly musicians who ‘Guantanemera’ me into a corner whilst David jumps back off and videos us. These two oldies have literally penned me in with their guitars so that I can’t escape. I’m plain startled by the whole event. He gets back on the bus and I try to duck under the guitars. David then gets back off the bus again yelling at me to ‘Give them some goddamn money!’. Which I do, partly out of confusion and wanting this whole scene to go away and partly in some lame attempt at keeping in this bully’s good books.
Feeling great now (not) I wander off into Habana.. For tourists everything is more expensive than being in the US. A fair retribution for decades of being snubbed by the Americans.
The city is crumbling dramatically. 

The expected presence of old American cars with big fins and lots of style. Also there are lots of Skodas and Ladas which is I suppose what you might also expect but it actually hasn’t occurred to me that there would be the Soviet influence too.

Something I really enjoy about Central America is there ingenious approach to transport generally. In Belize and Mexico, old US school buses are quite common and there are a few in Cuba too. The Latino thing is to see how many members of the family you can get on a Honda moped. The most I ever see is five; dad, two kids and mum breast-feeding a baby at thirty miles an hour in traffic in the middle of town in Merida. It all looks so cool and easy too.

Most impressive in Cuba are bicycle rickshaws, which I guess are common in many parts of the world. They are so damned handy for carrying stuff and people; why can’t we have them in Britain?! I love them! Another very surprising transport device I have never seen before are these huge buses which consist of an articulated truck cab with over-sized trailers with automatic doors and absolutely jammed with passengers. The oddest thing is the shape of the trailer which has a big dip in the middle in the area between the front and rear wheels. Very odd looking. How these things get round corners I don’t quite understand. Great lumbering tin dinosaurs.
It’s apparent the Cubans do not have much connection with the rest of the world. Any other capital city you go to would have internationals from all sorts of places, especially in its restaurants. Apart from going to a Turkish-style eatery in the tourist zone, the only apparent international connection is when I come across a bunch of men and boys doing some kind of Chinese martial art and there being a mural on a wall showing a big yin-yang and various Chinese images, notably free of communist images. At a part of town away from the general tourist area is an alley which is the tiniest Chinatown I have ever seen, consisting of about ten buildings huddled together in one street. Unlike London, Vancouver and Victoria whose Chinatown areas are a historical result of immigrants finding their own space, I get the impression this one in Habana exists for a very different reason. It seems to be there in order to say ‘Look! We’ve got political bedfellows!’ The most notable thing about it is the lack of Chinese people. I see two. Maybe they are all in the kitchens. This seems unlikely as they don’t seem to be serving Chinese food. It just looks like normal Caribbean food in pseudo-Chinese surroundings.
Back in the centre of the tourist zone there is a shady green square surrounded by lovely old buildings with lots of grand arches. It is lined with stands selling books. Mostly it’s old propaganda from the fifties and sixties about the revolution, lots of Che Guevara and Fidel Castro stuff, mostly in Spanish of course. The occasional novel, Isabel Allende, Dostoyevsky and some books of Cuban painters (revolutionary no doubt), national atlases (no international ones) and the occasional book on acupuncture and Tai-chi. I wonder if the library has a similarly limited range of information. (It’s been closed every time I wanted to have a look.) These book stands are state-owned and it’s obvious they don’t want you to be interested in too many things. I’m not sure whether these books are just for the tourists or whether this is as broad as information gets in Cuba. I do know that if you want to use the internet you have to hand over your passport. My guess is that Cubans don’t have passports as none of them are allowed to go anywhere outside Cuba.
Also in this shady green square is a rather bizarre statue of some conquistador chappie holding a scroll in his right hand. Part of the scroll has broken off adding to the impression that he is actually holding a small stick of a certain size and shape. Looked at from the side it really looks like this otherwise elegant man is gaily standing there having a wank. I wonder whether the person who created this sculpture had some issue with the people who commissioned it or he didn’t like the person he was sculpting?
Every time I come to this square it seems to attract really violent thunderstorms with the lightening sounding like it is crashing down barely a street or two away. It is rainy season so I don’t think it’s just me. With tomorrow being the eve of the forty second anniversary of the revolution, it seems to invoke for me a replay of the actual event. (I’ve no idea how it actually happened but presumably there were explosions; they always seem to be a main feature of revolutionary activity.)

 

The book stalls hastily cover all the stands and everyone hides under the eaves of the grand buildings, waiting for the rain to stop. People wander in and out selling tightly wrapped cones of peanuts; strange but tasty deep-fried batter things, peanut brittle and something else which amounts to being peanut halva (which is really good).
I wander out of the tourist area and buy cheap bananas and a mango which I sit and messily eat (no knife) whilst watching kids playing football in a residential square. Two kids start throwing cake at each other. Unfathomable but funny… Kids eh?!
I am discovering Cuban pesos are not so easy for a tourist to spend – why accept crappy pesos from a tourist when you can have their lovely dollars? Fair enough, I don’t have a problem with that. (Well I do at first, and now I don’t.)
I get picked up by a couple of young Rasta chaps who then take me back to their room to smoke weed (bought with my tourist dollars). Inevitably, it’s a strange encounter. 

After having had Dave shout at me for not giving money to the Guantanemera duo in the morning, I’ve been wondering about how and when I say ‘no’ to people who are asking for money in the street. Back home in England sometimes I’ll say yes and sometimes I’ll say no, depending on whether they look like the kind of people who are in genuine difficulty or are busking for it, it also depends on whether I’m feeling generous or harassed or whatever. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. 

Maybe being a gringo in Cuba there’s no question about what I should do. I haven’t thought about it. A couple of times I have had people I’ve walked past try to call me over and chat me up, presumably in the attempt to ultimately squeeze me for money. 

I think I feel like it’s a bit of an insult to my intelligence to go through some charade of friendship in order to undermine it all by involving money. It has happened a couple of times today and it is starting to do my head in, especially when this deflected ‘friendship’ is instantly responded with calls of ‘Fuck you asshole!’ A bit unpleasant really, and makes me feel quite awkward. An old guy is very sweet when I ask him for directions and he quietly holds out his hand and plainly asks me for a dollar which I give him. There is something in the way he approaches me. It has a certain decorum about it and that feels honest.
Anyway, I am wondering at some point in the evening about all these encounters and how they are influenced by my sense of trust and faith in other people and how it is also influenced by my willingness or otherwise to interact with and meet complete strangers. I wonder what would happen if I just stayed with saying ‘yes’ to situations and just go with whatever happens.
So anyway, I meet these two Rasta guys at this point, and instead of maybe registering distrust and sticking with that, I think ‘Okay, where does this take me?’ They do the usual chatting me up thing, this time by finding out whether I like reggae music and what I do and whether I like to smoke weed. They invite me to come and smoke with them, which involves meeting up with a friend of theirs in the plaza and then following all concerned down some obscure set of back-alleys. It’s a situation I guess could have gone in any direction really, but they seem like safe enough people to be with. ‘Ras Ta Fari, love and peace’ as they often repeat. 

We come to a shady place for making a deal with some guy, and I am asked to hand over ten dollars to pay for it. This is obviously how these guys finance their religious experiences. Having previously decided to go with it, I semi-reluctantly agree, with the guy doing the scoring handing over his ID card to me as security for my ten dollars. We wander off discreetly in a separate direction and we meet up again minutes later. Next we all disappear into a warren of tiny rooms being let out as apartments behind one of the crumbly building facades. 

In a tiny room where it looks like these six guys live, we skin up and smoke. Our communication is moderately good and is aided by a Spanish ‘High Times’ cannabis enthusiasts magazine as a vehicle for connection. I think I must have relaxed by this point and feel like these guys are pretty cool really. 
After hanging out for about half an hour, we all stumble off back into the city; me having no idea where I am going and becoming increasing unable to speak. My inability to speak is bothering me but is accepted with a ‘Love and peace, Ras Ta Fari’. At some point we end up at a reggae music bar, the only place in the city that plays reggae so they tell me. 

I should have realised it, but obviously I am expected to fund the entire evening. I can’t quite decide whether I am having a good time or whether I am just being fleeced; whether I am just being an uptight gringo or just a bit of an easy touch. Utterly unable to converse. 
Finally I decide that actually I need to get the last bus back to Marina Hemingway, which works as a handy get-out option. Trying to find my way to the bus stop is very confusing; everywhere looking pretty much the same, and being a bit stoned just adds to my confusion. Asking some friendly looking chap for directions, he insists on accompanying me and then asks for a drink because he is thirsty. He tells me if I give him the money, he will get a better deal than I would in the shop that he suggests buying it from – otherwise I will just get ripped off as a tourist. This seems like a halfway reasonable suggestion, though my sense of trust and goodwill is rapidly getting burnt out. I hand over the dollar but he doesn’t go in the shop… He is walking away briskly and I follow him for some distance, him being far away enough to just run off round a corner without me being able to do anything about it. He hides round a corner but I find him. Next thing he does is to just walk away, my money in his hand with me calling after him in a futile way. I need to change my attitude to all this, I know that much. 
On top of that I seem to have missed the bus and then end up paying seventeen dollars for a ten dollar taxi ride back to the marina. (Guess what, no, he doesn’t have ten dollars change for a twenty dollar bill, only these three dollar bills here.) I end up spending forty two dollars, but I guess I’m due some giving away money karma. Maybe I’m due some not-getting-screwed karma and also some not-being-a-muppet karma too.
I don’t feel good at all. I feel socially useless and I don’t want to be in Cuba, and don’t know how to get out. Today I will look at possible ways out by plane etc. I bust my expensive mp3 player. (It gets water in it.)
I spend the day in Habana buying books for Helen, eating in a fancy restaurant and basically giving money away. I go with the flow. I meet a nice Jehovah’s Witness called Luis who cheers me up and helps me feel good about people. He tells me his version of the Cuban situation, which makes the whole JW thing seem utterly sensible. I give him ten dollars cos I like him. It also helps put the AA bullshit into perspective. 
After dismantling and leaving it in the sun, my stereo is now working. Relief. 

Shawn decides to kick me off the boat. Drugs not allowed. Nothing personal. And I’m the king of China.

There is no malice or act of defiance in the ‘mistake’ I have made, which seems to be what she thinks. Now I am in a very vulnerable situation. I do not have enough money for airfare and hotels in Habana. Nor do I really want to sleep on the streets, especially when carrying valuables.
Now that I am officially off the boat, I have to buy some sort of exit ticket to satisfy customs and AA loonies. (My passage out having previously been assured by my being a round-the-world crew member.) Two weeks of indecision crams into three hours and I buy a’safe route’ air ticket back to England – I can guarantee getting into the country and being able to work once I am back in England.
Shawn is an absolute freak. I don’t think I’ve disliked anyone as much as I can’t stand her. Since being captain I think she has spoken to me like a normal human being probably twice in a month. (I.e. not barking or screaming orders or trying to psychoanalyse me.)

This morning whilst me, her and David are sitting in a small rowing boat, she starts doing her ice cold captain thing at me  on our way to the customs check out people and I finally flip at her, shouting at her to stop being such a cold bitch.

This afternoon she offers to have a ‘conversation’ which she imagines consists her telling me in a one-way fashion that ‘I’m fucked up and I should look at why it’s all my own fault.’ 

I try to say something to the effect that I think she’s arrogant. She responds with ‘Your opinion isn’t worth anything to me, I didn’t ask for your opinion’. 

She goes off on some wide-of-the-mark accusations about drugs and then refuses to hear anything I have to say about the matter. Quite how any of this bullshit constitutes a conversation I’ve no idea. 
I’m certainly not perfect but she’s crazy. She refuses to listen to me. June is a touchy old bag who insists on pedantically picking holes in whatever I say and do half the time, randomly. 

David likes declaring how he’s just got a couple of things to figure before he gets completely enlightened (then the rest fawn over him).

AAARRRRGGGHHHHH!!!!!

I like Ed, he seems to be more heartfelt and saner. It’s probably because he’s Canadian.

I say goodbye to him and to Galen. Galen finds Shawn too much as well, which is helpful and reassuring to know.

Galen’s a lot more down to earth thank god. I am really glad he’s part of the crew and I tell him so.
I guess my rough time with the Fabulous Floating Neutrinos has been largely down to me having an extreme dose of sour grapes at having the promise of sex suddenly and unexpectedly withdrawn. I can’t help wondering if Shawn only shagged me to get me on the crew. She’s a bit ‘Hookers for Jesus’ somehow.
I spend the next day sitting on the grass in the car park of Habana Airport and have a really mentally productive day, I am having some realisations of forgiveness of others, and of feeling like I really do have the capacity to make the most of situations if I choose to see it. Actually feel pro-active and happy about going back to England.
Read more about Poppa Neutrino in APPENDIX TWO.

Flight back to Gatwick; 

then back to Norwich.

So – now what?

Being back is delicious.