OCTOHUNT 2010

Right then, thanks for clicking on the link.

Hopefully the reason you're here is because you're curious about Octohunt 2010 and want a little more information. If that's the case, you've come to the right place. Below is an explanation of what Octohunt is all about, along with a taste of what to expect on the day.

If you were among the 50 or so people who came along last year then this is just a little refresher. If 2010's going to be your first time then welcome aboard. It's nice to have you along for the ride.

The concept's pretty simple:

• You and some pals form a team of no more than four people.
• I give your team a list of cryptic clues relating to sites of interest in Soho, along with a map and a list of street names.
• Your team tries to answer as many clues as possible in the allotted time (about 90 minutes).
• The winner is the team with the most correct answers.

Each clue refers to a site of interest in the Soho area. It might be a shop, church, bar, cafe... anything really. Your job is to locate the site of interest and scribble the name down on your answer sheet (None of the venues referred to in the clues are actually participating in the event so there's never any need to physically go inside).

Clues include a cryptic reference to the site you're seeking and will often (but not always) refer to the street on which the site is located. Some clues will be pretty easy, some will require a bit more brain work and others will be so utterly confounding that if anyone gets them I'll call for a Royal Inquiry.

A small treasure will also be placed outside the front of each venue (last year it was a fluorescent sock). If your find this treasure, grab it! The team with the most treasures also wins a prize.
See, simple!

Below I've included 7 clues from last year's hunt, along with a reduced list of Soho street names to help you solve the problems. Also, because I don't expect you to spend your lunch-hour scouring Soho, I've provided the actual answers jumbled in among some decoys at the bottom of the page. But don't get used to this luxury. You won't get the answers served up to you like this on the day of the Octohunt. That'd make life way too easy for you and massively reduce the need to scramble around Soho for an hour-and-a-half dodging cabs, dealers, hookers, hustlers, bug-eyed-shell-shocked-club-refugees, stage lovvies, media tossers, hipsters on fixed wheel bicycles, Antipodean coffee-hounds, furtive post-coital professional sex enthusiasts, barrow boys, wannabe screen writers, screen writers and London's gay community. And that'd defeat the whole purpose.

Anyway, you get the picture. Here's the sample...

Clues:

• Look for the ‘Cadbury Tavern’. It’s just d’own an alley off Berwick Street.
• Looking for a hit of table tennis this treasure headed to ‘big cigarette’ street only to find basket cases.
• Go to the street where Zorba feels at home. Find the venue where striped African quadrupeds are prohibited.
• Have you got a lust for life? So does the man who played Begbie. Find his street and then sign up for some detective work.
• Find treasure by ‘freedom’ on small cigarette alley.
• Find the ‘sterling spot’ and look for Alan Alda’s character from MASH.
• This treasure’s hiding out at a sweet venue on a street almost named after French shit.

Street names:

Marshall Street, Great Malborough Street, Tenison Court, Meard Street, Beak Street, Wardour Street, Upper John Street, Golden Square, D'Arbly Street, Warwick Street, Silver Place, Brewer Street, Carlisle Street, Manette Street, Greek Street, Little Marlborough Street.

Venues:

Hummus Bros, The John Snow, The Reading Room, Sacred, Bar Chocolate, Absolute Radio, The Soho Arts Club, Hawkeye, Quo Vadis, Ping Pong, Zebrano, St Patrick's Church, BBFC, Private Eye, Church of the Assumption, Sugar Tree, Poland Street Dental Clinic, Liberty, Flat White, Pilars of Hercules, Bar Italia.

Answers to follow soon.

Good luck

That is all,

Dale Atkinson

AUF WIEDERSEHEN BET

We met a human puppy on the Bolivian border and when she turned up at our hostel in Tupiza a few hours later, we decided to keep her.

Betti Hell: twenty-years-old, German, stringent critic of the English speaking world as represented by Alan Hook and ruthlessly efficient eating machine.

Okay, so that’s not her real name. Her parents christened her Elisabeth. She just couldn’t pronounce it when she was little. The Hell part is genuine though. It mans something different in German apparently.

Betti prefers a slightly haphazard approach to travel. It prioritises last minute cigarettes and involves vanishing travel documents and packing while the cab idles on the curb outside. This is not the way Alan Hook likes things done. The Hook technique places a strong emphasis on effective time management and demands that bags be packed the night before departure and generous time margins allowed for all transit scenarios.

So, for three and a half weeks I travelled with a couple of inverse clichés, the laid back German and the rigidly efficient Australian, an involuntary witness and mediator to their bickering matches, like a child whose parents are staying together for his sake, oblivious to the fact their refusal to terminate the partnership is doing him more damage than separation could ever manage.

But like the child in that tortured analogy, now that Betty has belatedly packed her bags, misplaced her bus ticket, found it again, smoked a cigarette and walked out the door, I miss the bickering.

I miss her mild Bavarian accent providing a candid assessment of Alan’s photographic ability: “What is dat? It is just kraap.”

I miss her withering opinion of Alan’s suitability as a prospective partner: “You would be a shit boyfriend, Alan.”

And I especially miss her general appraisal of Alan: “Dat is because you are an idiot”.

How can I forget the time she was suffering from a chest infection and took a few days off the cigarettes to aid her recovery? Her announcement on the final night of smoke-free living that: “I think I am healthy enough to start smoking again tomorrow” will go down as one of the greats.

As will her discussion with Alan over whether or not to pack his torch the night before a 3am departure. It’s a textbook example of its kind:

Alan: “Do you know where my torch is?”
Betti: “Yes. Why are you always worrying about where things are?”
Alan: “I don’t want it left behind.”
Betti: “You would be a terrible boyfriend Alan.”
Alan: “Because I wouldn’t want my girlfriend leaving things behind?”
Betti: “Because you would get angry if she did.”
Alan: “If it was because she was being careless I would be.”
Betti: “See, dat is just craap.”
Alan: “What? German boys wouldn’t get angry if you left their torch behind?”
Betti: “Lots of boys wouldn’t care. They like a girl who would leave things behind.”
Alan: “Well they can use their own money to buy a new torch then.”

Alan’s final word, that Betty should: “fucking pack your bags now”, was perhaps a little strong but our departure was pleasingly prompt the following morning. Which aptly demonstrates that while Alan may have some distance to travel before becoming the ideal boyfriend, he already has all the key components of fatherhood down pat.

But it was Betti's general world view which made the most fascinating listening. Her assessment of the ornithological offerings of the South American continent would perhaps offend the more enthusiastic twitchers out there - "bird watching is just kraap” - but it's a difficult view to challenge.

And her excessively vocal and honest assessment of an American tourist’s amateur recording of the majestically soaring condors floating over the Colca Canyon will make for an interesting commentary for the viewers at the tape’s Christmas screening: “Who is going to watch dat? It is so boring.”

Good times. Good times indeed.

But the crowning moment of our association came halfway up an 800m climb on the second day of our Colca Canyon trek. Face flushed with exhaustion, Betti paused for breath on the sweltering track. “C’mon”, said Alan, strolling past at a casual lick, “it’s not that hot.”

“Fuck you Alan,” she fired back between panting breaths, “I am German… I BURN!”

Indeed you do, Betti. Indeed you do.

That is all,

Dale Atkinson

GERMAN DICTIONARY ANYONE?

In my dorm room in Cusco a few days before heading off on the hike to Machu Picchu I run into a cardboard cut-out German called Brun. We get into conversation and I mention that Alan and I are planning to do the Salkantay Trail without a guide.

“Oh!” he says in a voice trembling with Teutonic excitement “I just LOVE people who do it by themselves!”

“Yes,” I say in reply. “So do the people who do it by themselves. That’s the problem”.

Puzzled look in response.

What's the German word for double entendre?

That is all,

Dale Atkinson

COMING SOON TO A SCREEN NEAR YOU

Alright, I'm back. It's been a cascade of activity since the last update from La Paz. In the last three weeks in Peru we've smashed up a three day trek through the Colca Canyon, ridden a bike down a massive, sandy wedge of mountain, rafted a bunch of rapids and, most notably, taken a four day, 90km march under full pack to Machu Piccu, where we were beaten through the gates by Susan Sarandon, despite being first up the mountain by more than 40 minutes. Damn celebrities.

Oh yes, and I turned thirty, which, on reflection, was the most dangerous thing I've done since arriving in South America, due largely to the irregular alcohol measures offered by the bartenders of Cusco's nightspots. The second day of my 30th year proved one of the most challenging of the trip, for which I have Alan Hook to thank. Fortunately for me, I have two years to plan my revenge. He'll keep.

I'm going to sit down tomorrow and scribble up a few of the more notable actions of the recent campaign. I can't promise chuckles, but I'll do my level best. Highlights are set to include:

• German Betty's views on birdwatching, Alan Hook and early mornings
• the re-education of Cusco's cab drivers
• Belgians... good or evil?
• Successful parenting through disipline, with Alan Hook

All that and much, much more coming to Truedrinks soon. Stay tuned.

That is all,

Dale Atkinson

"MMMMMMMMMMM"

I did manage to put down a few paragraphs in the last few weeks. They’re not up to much but I’m sick of wrestling with them, so in order to get these monkeys off my back I’ll present them in their rough form and hope for the best.

The Argentine lad who rented us bikes in Salta described his country’s northern neighbour, Bolivia, as “exotic”. I wasn’t sure what he meant at the time. I am now. Argentina is another country. Bolivia is another world. It’s the South America you think you should read about in the books that consistently make the top 100 lists of broadsheet cultural supplements, written by men with Spanish sounding names and internationally recognised literature awards. It’s distinct and “real” in the rather patronising way travellers (myself included) sometimes have of classifying the authenticity of their experiences – as if your experience of Brazil or Argentina were any less grounded in reality for having hot water, good roads and punctual public transport.

But the atmosphere is different here and not just because of the altitude. It’s haphazard and chaotic in a soporific kind of way, like the movement of bees in a smoke-filled hive. Things are constructed in a mend-and-make-do fashion. They get busted and break down but are fixed in the space of a few hours like grandpa’s shovel. It feels like the whole place is held together by eight-gage wire and bailing twine. And that’s not a criticism.

Despite Bolivia’s relatively recent recruitment to the list of South American countries the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade doesn’t feel compelled to terrify visitors into avoiding, it’s already pretty well established on the tourist trail. Mainly this is because it’s an oasis of cheap living on a continent of affordability. It’s where you go in South America when you’re long on time and short on money.

That’s not to say that there isn’t heaps to see and do here. It’s just that other places in South America are easier to get to and get around. And it doesn’t have any beaches.

The country’s biggest tourist draw card is the spectacular Salar de Uyuni, the world’s largest salt flat, which sits amid an astonishingly barren but beautiful stretch of the Andes Mountains. A four-day, four-wheel-drive tour of the region will set you back something in the region of $100US, which is incredible value provided you’re getting what the agents are showing on the tin.

We’d heard mixed reports about the quality of the salt flat tours, with some travellers complaining of drunk drivers and inedibly bad food. One rumour doing the rounds told of a couple of English girls being abandoned in the middle of the altiplane desert, which prompted us to adopt a don’t-pay-the-ferryman approach to reimbursing the tour company for their services.

The fact our tour was delayed by a day due to a general strike by cabbies and bus drivers protesting for the right to get behind the wheel while drunk was slightly concerning. But we needn’t have worried. As well as being a paragon of sobriety our driver, Bernardo, was a superstar and possibly the most cheerful bloke on the planet. His ready and frequent laugh fell somewhere between Woody Woodpecker’s manic cackle and the delighted chuckle of a small boy who has just done something wildly inappropriate and gotten away with it.

Alongside being Bolivia’s most cheerful chap, Bernardo was also a hell of a bush mechanic, repairing punctures and replacing shock absorbers in the time it took us to see a sight or eat a lunch. I lost count of the number of times we returned from taking photographs to find the little bloke’s feet poking out from under the vehicle, a happy little song drifting up through the engine bay. A few moments later he’d be up and dusting himself off, with whatever minor problem he was working on fixed and buttoned down.

He’d often be so preoccupied with his vehicle that he’d miss his lunch, something we always felt guilty about and compelled to rectify through the provision of snacks. On day two, after suffering a couple of minor mechanical failures, Bernardo worked through the lunch-break to make the vehicle fit to complete another five hours of hard driving. When we got back to the car we asked him if he’d eaten anything for lunch and, as was the usual custom, he claimed that he had. It was clearly a lie and as soon as we were on our way Alan reached for the enormous packet of assorted biscuits he’d purchased before departure and started handing them around the car.

The first two times the bag came around, Bernardo showed considerable restraint, taking just one or two biscuits. By the third time the packet came forward his urge for sustenance had clearly outstripped his urge for courtesy and he grabbed a fistful and walloped the whole lot past his grinning gob, letting out a muffled “muchas gracias” as a cascade of crumbs fell down his shirtfront.

It was just about the highlight of the trip until two days later, when handing around a bag of coca leaves. For the sake of my mother, I will take this opportunity to point out that coca leaves are legal in Bolivia and while they are the base ingredient for both cocaine and a number of prescription painkillers, they offer only a mild stimulant effect when consumed in leaf or tea form and are considered by the local people to be a pretty effective means of curing everything from altitude sickness and stomach aches to accidentally burning your eyes out with a curling iron.

The preferred technique for coca leaf consumption is to de-stem the leaves, shove a handful in your cheek, nibble off a bit of catalyst (basically bicarbonate of soda or something similar to stimulate saliva flow) and suck on that bad boy until it looses its structural integrity or your face goes numb.

Surprisingly enough, despite his frequent exposure to high altitude, Bernardo suffered a bit from altitude sickness, so when the coca leaves did the rounds he became what can only be described as very excited indeed.

He was like a little kid eating chocolate buttons at a friend’s birthday party. Great handfuls of leaves disappeared into his mouth and his cheek swelled as if he’d developed an ulcer under a bad tooth. When Alan temporarily withdrew the bag from between the front seats to extract a few leaves for himself, Bernardo’s hand probed and groped the vacant space until the bag’s return.

Bear in mind that while all this was going on we were travelling along a corrugated dirt road at speeds approaching 100kmph. The provision of stimulants to those in charge of potentially lethal machinery is generally frowned upon but I’d happily do it again to get a repeat of the moment when, cheek pouch limit reached, Bernardo turned to me, fixed me in a wide eyed stare and let out a long, satisfied “mmmmmmm” before turning his attention back to the long road ahead.

Language is overrated.

What a smashing treat it is to go barrelling across the top of the world, a massive wadge of coca leaves in your cheek to ward off the symptoms of altitude sickness, a gormless smile plastered across your numb lips. The otherworldly scenery is absolutely stunning and I won’t try to describe it. I’ll post up some pictures when the bandwidth allows.

Sadly, I get the feeling the place is already wrecked in a man-destroying-the-things-he-loves kind of way. It pains me to say that. In more ways than one.

The first reason is that I think it’s true. The tracks are potholed, dusty and corrugated but they are extremely well trodden. In a place which is partially marketed on the offer of solitude and isolation there’s precious little of it on offer. A bank of 4x4s lines every sight to see and the ground is littered with rubbish. On the second night of our trip I went outside to watch the sunset and counted 18 tourist vehicles parked up outside the newly custom-made dorms. At least 60 people must have been staying in our village alone.

We’re about ten years away from a five star resort and spa being constructed next to the insanely impressive slat flats of Uyuni, which will offer rejuvenating salt-pack facials and coca leaf enemas between day trips to the mountains and lagoons that punctuate the high planes. But who am I to say that’s a bad thing?

And that brings me neatly to the second reason it pains me to say the place is losing its appeal, which is that saying that makes me sound like the kind of pretentious bore who sits in hostel common-rooms wearing cargo trousers and canvas shoes, telling everyone who’ll listen about the best technique for sleeping on a ferry and how they’ve been travelling for 900 years with only 600 grams of luggage. Any person who’s spent more than a few hours in a hostel will be familiar with this grizzled, backpacking cliché. You’ll find him lurking in the kitchens and hovering over the PCs waiting to swoop on an unsuspecting novice to regale them with tales of previous adventures, the punch line of every story being: “But that was ten years ago… It’s ruined now of course.”

Twat.

That is all,

Dale Atkinson

THE BLACK HOLE OF LA PAZ

Sorry about the lack of communication in recent times, but I was trapped in the black hole of La Paz for five days and it’s taken the accumulation of a few less taxing evenings to come to physical and mental terms with the withering nature of that city’s recreational activities. It’s a fun town but not one that lends itself to the compilation of coherent thoughts, even of the unstructured and haphazard variety that I manage to present to this forum. Fortunately, the tranquillity of Lake Titicaca has provided a salve to the bumps and grazes left by the all-night parties of the world’s largest high-altitude city.

All that, of course, is just a convoluted way of saying that that the words haven’t come easily over the last three weeks and I’ve been too lazy to sit down and grind it out at the laptop. We’ve all done some incredible, indescribable things in that time, many of which I can’t do justice in words, so I’ll pitch up the following photographs and let you draw your own conclusions.
















































That is all,

Dale Atkinson

RAWHIDE

My Mum tells a story about my Dad’s first time on a horse, the punch line of which is that the man who is so adept at so many of the things he tries, could only get the animal to go in reverse.

The ability to back a horse up is apparently a difficult skill to acquire but unfortunately for the old boy it isn’t so highly prized when not allied to a similar deftness in making the horse operate in the forward gear settings.

I relate this tale not to show Dad up but to demonstrate that horsemanship is not something that runs in the Atkinson bloodlines. This is perhaps unsurprising considering that we descend from Irish peasants, whose experience of equine stock was probably limited to the occasional trampling beneath the hooves of the squire’s horse.

Sadly, on yesterday’s evidence it would seem that genetic inheritance goes beyond the mere transference of physical traits and, along with my slightly ginger hair and slender physique, I appear to have acquired my father’s ability to instruct a mount to completely ignore my instructions and do whatever the hell it likes, something I thoroughly demonstrated through my ability to get the horse to munch on grass and bite my foot.

Despite my best efforts to make my bloody animal behave in the same predictable and civilized manner as everyone else’s, my pony just wouldn’t be told. That I didn’t know what to tell it was possibly a contributing factor but it came as no surprise when, thirty minutes into the ride, the gelding stumbling twice and developed a heavy stoop over the left forelock. We clearly weren’t getting along.

I drew this to the attention of the guide who studied Moro’s gait for a second before motioning for me to pull up and dismount.

“Lame?” I said.

“Si” the guide said in return.

Whether he was referring to the horse’s leg or my riding ability wasn’t clear.

Either way, he felt compelled to swap mounts, something that was warmly and mutually welcomed if my horse’s Lazarus-like recovery was any indication.

My second pony, a sleepy looking bay mare, proved to be a better fed and less cantankerous animal and we got along just fine. By the end of five-hour ride I cold even nudge her into a canter without feeling the urge to cling onto the saddle post with both hands, so perhaps genetic pre-dispositions can be overcome.

Having previously dismissed as expensive folly any form of non-work-related equine activity that doesn’t involve the placement of a wager, I am now pleased to announce that horse riding is, wait for it… okay. Subsequently, I will remove trail-riding, three day evening and even pony-clubbing (and by pony-clubbing I am not referring to the activity of clubbing ponies, which I neither condone nor encourage) from my list of things to ridicule.

For me, a day in the saddle of a bicycle still beats a day in the saddle on a horse, but not by as much as previously projected and I can now say that I understand why little girls love their ponies. That said, Alan’s love for the equine species is still something of a mystery but the kid’s certainly got chops when it comes to riding horses. He’d only been on a horse once before but that didn’t stop him spending the day acting like Breaker Morant (minus the priest shooting obviously). The bloke’s a natural to the point where if the Village People eventually reform, he’s a walk-up start to be the cowboy.

Actually, speaking of cowboys, perhaps Alan’s equine management skills are not such a mystery given his enthusiasm for six-guns blazing, shoot-em-up Westerns. You can’t be brought up on a diet of Eastwood and Wayne without picking up a few tips on how to handle a horse.

A few weeks ago, back in Puerto Madryn, we were discussing our favourite films and bonded over a shared nostalgia for the Gary Cooper classic, High Noon. It’s obviously slightly perverse that a film made in 1952 should be a point of common interest between two people born roughly thirty years after it was released, but from such patches the fabric of childhood is constructed.

It was a disposable conversation and aside from the fact I couldn’t shift the film’s theme tune from my head I didn’t think much more of it until a few days later when wandering the isles of the Puerto Madryn supermarket on the hunt for snacks. I was evaluating the respective merits of chocolate chip cookies as opposed to Pringles when, to my general surprise and delight, I found myself in front of the DVD rack, fixed in the strong and silent gaze of Gary Cooper.

I grabbed the DVD and ran to Alan. He too was delighted, but being a sound head on steady shoulders he resisted the temptation. A backpacker, he reasoned, shouldn’t waste cash and valuable luggage-space on impulse DVD purchases, even if the DVD in question was slender and retailing for less than £5. High Noon could wait until the return to London.

But some itches cannot be satisfied with the promise of future scratches and, in less than 24 hours, Alan had invented a pretext to return to the supermarket to claim the DVD. Sadly, High Noon is a classic. And classics, like the forward motion of time itself, do not wait on man. On his return, the DVD was gone.

What followed was two days of self-flagellation and despair. “I should have bought it when I had the chance” he’d say as a pod of sealions playfully swept beneath his sea-kayak. “It won four Oscars in ‘52” he’d mope as another meal of exquisitely prepared seafood was laid before him. “Maybe I can get the deluxe edition when I get back to London. It comes in a gold-trim case and features a separate audio CD containing the film soundtrack” he’d gush optimistically while repairing yet another mechanical failure on his bike. He’d absentmindedly hum the theme tune while walking down the street. A man in a broad brimmed hat would walk past and he’d instinctively make finger-pistols with his hands. The preoccupation was rapidly becoming an obsession.

Three days after the first discovery of the now absent DVD and we were back in the supermarket. Superficially we were there to buy a new set of flip-flops but we both knew the real reason for our return. We would leave Puerto Madryn the next day. This was our last chance to secure High Noon.

Excited by the possibility that it might be there but too scared to check in case we merely confirmed its absence, we avoided the DVD aisle. Alan looked at the toothbrushes. I selected an apple. Alan looked at the hand towels. I compared the price of cookware. After forty minutes of procrastination I’d had enough. I simply had to know. I walked to the aisle I now knew so well and, with my eyes closed in insulation against thwarted expectation, I arranged myself in front of the rack. My breathing was shallow and my heartbeat rapid as I slowly opened my eyes. The glare of the neon strip-lights momentarily blinded me. As my retinas adjusted to the light I thought for a second they were playing tricks on me. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t possibly be.

It was.

There, just where it had been three days before when I first laid eyes on it, sat High Noon. I grabbed the cover, lifted it high above my head, and ran to where Alan stood comparing brands of dental floss in the personal hygiene aisle.

He let out a cry as I came near. “You’re kidding!” he said.

But I wasn’t.

Thirty-six pesos later it was ours. Unforsaken and unmistakable ours.

That is all,

Dale Atkinson

BABY GOT BACK

You haven’t lived until you’ve sung Hey Jude to a room full of bemused Bolivians. At least that’s how it feels to me on this sunny Thursday, which is now classified as “free time” thanks to a nationwide road blockade that has seen all public transportation parked up on the highways and byways in protest against a new road tax that either has been or is being introduced. I haven’t taken the time to find out which. Just to grumble about the result.

We were planning to head to the high-plane saltflats around Uyuni today on a four-day jeep trip. But thanks to the strike we can’t get out of town for at least another 24 hours, so here I am, sitting by the pool, scribbling up my notes from the last two weeks of South American adventuring. As frustrations go it’s probably at the lighter end of the scale. After all, they have a table-tennis table, and any day you get to whack something with a ping-pong paddle isn’t wasted.

A couple of my travelling companions are actually grateful for the delay after a night drinking the appropriately named Hobo Whiskey. From what I could see this morning this Argentine firewater more than lives up to its name. Certainly the glazed look in Alan’s eyes and the time-lapse nature of our breakfast conversation point to a distillation capable of delivering all the effects of long-term homelessness in the safety and comfort of your own home.

Not that last night’s revellers would actually be homeless for long considering the consistently excellent quality of musical execution at the Tupiza Karaoke Bar and Discothèque. The locals would have been more than happy to see gringo boots left under Boliviano beds, particularly Alan’s size 11s after he dazzled the assembled crowd of mid-week drinkers with a full-throated rendition of Mumbo No 5. In Spanish.

Now I’ve been travelling with Alan for five weeks and while I don’t wish to cast stones from my own casa-el-glasso, Spanish is not a language he has fully mastered in that time. In fact, the only complete sentences I think I’ve head him utter in Spanish have related to the ordering of beverages and the requesting of bills.

So it came as some surprise when he stepped to the mike and delivered an absolutely flawless performance. Simon Cowell would have been on his feet. Danni Minogue would have cried and then, live on national television, asked him back to hers for a nightcap. It was nothing short of unbelievable. Of course, I was slightly intoxicated myself at the time so I can’t discount the fact that I may be overplaying the fluency of his delivery. But the one thing I can say with absolute certainty is that he sure as hell wasn’t singing in English. .

With the ice now broken and thawing to an extent that would require Non Government Organisations to intervene on behalf of low-lying nations all over the world, I made my way to the microphone to teach this small part of the world to sing. While the achievement of perfect harmony remains an elusive dream, I like to think my rendition of Hey Jude at least brought people closer together, particularly the sing-along end section which was delivered with splendid enthusiasm, if not precision, by several drunk gentlemen in the front row. Thanks Jugo and friends.

I retired to my seat, content that I’d probably just achieved the high point of everyone’s evening – if not year – only to have the glow of my fame-spotlight completely extinguished by Trina, who threw down a stunning rendition of Living Next Door to Alice, which conclusively proved that the good people of Bolivia are as equally perplexed as to the identity of the song’s subject as the rest of the world.

A high watermark had been achieved and, for all money, it looked like it couldn’t be bettered. Stepping up to the mike after that would be like following Vegas Elvis onto stage moments after he’d wiped off the sweat and thrown his towel into the crowd after bringing the full 15-minute encore version of Suspicious Minds to a thunderous close.

I for one was of the opinion that betters could not be bested on this occasion and looked on in pity as Kat took the mike. Little did I know that in five short minutes the crowd would have well and truly forgotten Trina (Trina? Who the f*ck is Trina?), with a new hero taking her place.

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a tall blonde Australian woman stand in front of a room full of Bolivians and, without the aid of a backing track or lyric sheet, deliver a word perfect rendition of Bustarhym’s “I Like Big Butts”. But let me tell you, until you have, you haven’t experienced even a fraction of what life has to offer.

There are Bolivian men today who, having reached the pinnacle of their worldly existence, are right now making appointments with their lawyers and priests to settle up their affairs. Like Alexander of Macedon, who shed salt tears after conquering the known world because, for him, there were no more worlds left to conquer, they are destined to live the rest of their lives as broken, aimless men. But at least they’ll always have Tupiza.

That is all,

Dale Atkinson

THE WHEREABOUTS OF BUBBLES

There have been some inquiries of late as to the whereabouts of Bubbles the sock monkey. As regular Truedrinks followers will already know, Bubbles has been my friend and on-and-off travel companion since we met in the front bar of Jolly Gardeners in the summer of 2007, his unique and inimitable brand of cheeky high-jinks over that time earning him numerous fans and admirers.

He is not accompanying me on this journey and while I do not intend to address all the reasons for his absence, I will explain some of the background behind the decision in order to prevent the wild speculation that always seems to dog my erstwhile friend.

Our friendship has always been somewhat tempestuous but, for the main part, the partnership has been fruitful and mutually beneficial. Clashes of personality and temperament always become apparent whenever travelling with someone over an extended period of time, and minor irritants are sometimes chaffed into mortal wounds by the general stress of late nights, substandard lodgings, cramped transportation and general travel fatigue. The Iinfrequent but much discussed differences between us were, in most instances, caused by that grain of irritation which comes with living cheek by jowl. From such irritants peals often grow. Sadly, in a small number of cases, ulcers are cultivated too. Despite everything that has happened, I steadfastly maintain that our journeys have produced more pearls than ulcers.

The occasional flare-ups between Bubbles and myself have not been helped by the fact that, due to this blog, our friendship has been lived, to some degree, in the public eye. I must take a full measure of responsibility for this. The wild speculation and exaggeration that swirls around our adventuring and the intense analysis of our actions and activities is my fault alone. That is has led on occasion to animosity and hostility between us is something I constantly dwell upon and always regret.

Unfortunately, Bubbles does have a dark side. Luckily, few are acquainted with the gremlins that sadly lurk in his soul. This is as it should be. Everyone is entitled to a private life, even those special few whose exploits generate attention of a kind which ensures ownership of their life and lifestyle passes to the general mob, whose acquaintance with the individual is limited to the Chinese-whisper anecdotes that accompany anyone of true individualism and class.

Behind the lively public raconteur lives an intensely private sock monkey and it would be neither fair nor proper for me to give oxygen to private fires, the light and heat of which belong only to those whose feelings kindle the flames. We all fail in action and spirit and the blame as often lies as much with the person taking offence as the one doing the offending.

His errors of judgement and wildly erratic behaviour; the Vatican fistfight, the misappropriation of Mr Farouk Habibi’s camel and subsequent demolition of two thirds of the Great Souk of Damascus, even his muddle-headed and frankly bizarre attempts to smuggle hashish into Amsterdam in my backpack, have all been well documented to varying degrees of accuracy in the grubbier sections of the international press. On those issues I will maintain my silence except to say that they were very much the actions of a sock monkey struggling to come to terms with some deeply personal issues relating to his uncertain parentage.

My door remains open to Bubbles and I sincerely hope that, at some point in the future, we resume our world travels together. However, space between us at this time is vitally important not just for me, but for Bubbles too. I am ashamed to say that my presence all-to-often led directly to the unsavoury or dangerous circumstances in which Bubbles would place himself and his friends. I, like many people, am guilty of goading Bubbles into impulsive and unpredictable action in the hope of being pulled along on the bow wave of his wild adventuring. This selfish manipulation of a truly free spirit is to my eternal shame. I am as much to blame as he.

Finally, I ask that you respect Bubbles’ privacy. I am not in direct contact with him at this time but sincerely believe that he will get in touch with his public as soon as his treatment allows. Please do not do anything to hamper his recovery.

That is all,

Dale Atkinson

HEADWINDS AND HINDQUARTERS

On the cycle again in Puerto Madryn, this time out to the sealion colony at Punta Lomas. It’s a 30 kilometre round trip and by all accounts a snack for a couple of finely tuned athletes like Alan and myself. Of course, we weren’t taking into account local conditions, which on the outbound leg consisted of a steady upward incline into a 16-knot wind on a track varying between gravel and shale. Unfavourable, particularly the road surface which rather perversely managed to reduce traction while also increasing friction.

My Uncle Bob, a former club cyclist back in South Australia, still competes in triathlons alongside my Mum and Dad. Mum does the swim, Dad the run and Bob grinds out the cycle leg.

Now, leading up to these triathlons Uncle Bob has a tradition of expressing concern about the possibility of strong headwinds. On a number of occasions he has pointed out that conditions will be much tougher for the pedal man if a gusting northerly or bitter southwester picks up while he’s out on the course. His concerns are raised with such frequency that, Mum, Dad and Bob’s wife, Aunty Helen, have started making fun of his preoccupation with barometric conditions and tease him mercilessly about it.

The teasing has become such a long-established feature of their triathlons that Mum, Dad and Aunty Helen have developed a headwind rating system with which to more effectively mock Uncle Bob. It is called the “Bobfactor”, with a slight zephyr of breeze rated a “Bobfactor” of one and hurricane-force winds earning the maximum “Bobfactor” rating of ten.

It is now standard practice within my family to rate all wind conditions using the “Bobfactor” and to make pointed references to Uncle Bob success or otherwise in combating whatever prevailing weather conditions we are discussing at the time.

Well Bob, I can only apologise on behalf of my chortling parents. Your concerns regarding the headwinds are entirely legitimate. I have now experienced “Bobfactor 6” and frankly, that’ll do me.

Not that the prevailing weather conditions were the only handicap we were called on to overcome. You can’t cycle hub-deep through loose gravel and shifting sands without one or two mechanical problems becoming evident.

Fortunately, Alan Hook is a mechanically minded chap. A motor enthusiast, he’s broken vehicles down and successfully reassembled their constituent parts. He can name the parts of engines and knows what they do. He can bleed a brake-line in a way that doesn’t end with the car informally parked-up in a shop front window. He loves gears and front differentials – positively lives for turning engines. Give him a cog and a chain and a mechanical failure to sort and he’s Larry.

So, he was absolutely delirious on the way out to Punta Lomas when the gears on his bike started shifting in an unpredictable and entirely unsolicited way. Delirium grew to ecstasy as his chain skipped the cogs and became lodged between the wheel hub and the spokes. Twice.

By the time his front tyre went flat, with me some 800m ahead and in full possession of the tool kit, he had just about reached the seventh stage of enlightenment. Fortunately for me, nothing else went wrong. Otherwise I’d have had to build him a shrine and start a religion.

In fact, Alan’s impending achievement of Nirvana may not be that far off given that his strange, almost mystic allure to Brazil’s animal life forms seems to have gained traction south of the border too.

Suffering that flat tyre and no doubt bothered by the fact the only means of repairing it was freewheeling down the far side of yonder hill, Alan found himself sharing his frustration with a stately little guanaco.

Unsure of its intentions, Alan was disinclined to immediately offer the hand of friendship to an animal of uncertain temperament and physical prowess. Sadly, my return with the repair kit ensured that the true potential of the relationship was not fully explored.

We will never know what might have been.

That is all,

Dale Atkinson

SUFFER THE LITTLE CHILDREN

Back on the bikes again, this time around Buenos Aires, which is a pleasingly flat city to take in on a cycle.

On the tour with us was an American girl. She would have been around 16; self-conscious and just a little plain in a way that will disappear forever once she grows into her looks. Not that that offers much consolation now, particularly as she suffers from the worst case of Sexy Mum I have ever seen.

Sexy mum was in her mid 40s and beautifully presented. An Argentinean New Yorker by way of Madrid, Paris and Amsterdam, her back-story as exotic and fascinating as her looks, which it has to be said, had seen some artificial improvements over the years – skin tightened, breasts lifted. Not that we were put off by that. If anything, it actually made her sexier.

It’s a tough break being a slightly awkward daughter to a smoking hot mum and you could visibly see the girl’s exasperation build as one by one each of the lads over looked her to look over her sexy mum. Half way through the tour she decided she’d had enough and demanded to go home. I wasn’t surprised. There must be only one thing worse than being a teenage daughter to a sexy mum. And that’s being a sexy mum’s teenage son.

That is all,

Dale Atkinson

KNOWING YOUR PARK FROM YOUR PUERTO

There are two airports in Buenos Aires. This is important, particularly if the bus you return to town in is delayed in traffic and you only have 1 hour to get from the central bus station to the departure gate of Andes Airlines flight 132 to Puerto Madryn.

It is vital in these circumstances to clarify your choice of domestic or international terminal when communicating your destination to the cab driver. Be aware that the generic word for Airport in Spanish – aeropuerto - has a very specific meaning in Buenos Aires. Aeropuerto and Aeropark may sound similar but they are NOT the same thing and their variance in function is a subtle but important one.

So, for a stress free trip to catch your domestic flight, why not do a little research first? That way you wont end up heading entirely the wrong way down the city’s most crowded street, putting valuable metres and time between you and the busiest domestic airport in the country.

Get it right first time every time and get to your destination happy.

We made the flight. But we were last to check in.

Thanks go out to our driver Jorge who earned every centime of his ludicrously generous tip.


That is all,

Dale Atkinson

CIRCLE THE WAGONS

Off we go to watch Boca Juniors play at the famous “chocolate box” ground in Buenos Aires, known locally as La Bombonera.

Tour guides are quick to play up the danger of watching football at the ground and go to some lengths to describe the surrounding area as bandit country. While it’s probably fair to say La Boca isn’t the most pristine neighbourhood on the South American continent it’s hard to imagine it being more dangerous than just about anywhere in Rio. That’s not an impression willingly fostered by the companies that charge a truly stunning premium to take tourists to watch Maradona’s old club play the beautiful game.

My good friend Joe Wallace of www.theroastdinner.blogspot.com fame is certainly of the opinion that the whole set up is a scam, having visited the ground under his own steam last year. He would, no doubt, have upbraided me for having more money than sense for forking over the equivalent of a month’s worth of street food to get to the game, emphasising his point with a disappointed shake of his freakishly oversized head.

Unfortunately, his analysis would be spot on. Certainly the premium was not reflective of the quality of the service provided.

The bus taking us to the ground was late but that didn’t really matter because the match didn’t start until four hours after the advertised time anyway. Fortunately for us, the guides had just the remedy for unexpected downtime and took us straight to a back-street bar and grill where we were invited to enjoy the reasonably priced cold beer and BBQ meats. Not much in the mood for either, Alan and I decided to take some time out to explore the neighbourhood only to be told pretty promptly that it wasn’t safe for us.

This seemed entirely unlikely but as we didn’t know where we were or what time the group was heading to the ground we decided to stick around and wait it out. Two hours later, following the departure of 90% of the tour group to the ground, Alan, myself, and a small band of increasingly worried football fans were left waiting outside the bar while our guide paced the sidewalk talking urgently into his mobile phone. Things were not going according to plan. Whether it was a failure to secure tickets for us or just transport to the ground wasn’t made clear until nearly 45 minutes later when, our clearly flustered leader, announced that we would be walking the seven blocks to the ground. Evidently the mean streets of La Boca could be made to respect honest pilgrims after all. Convenient.

Clearly operating under the doctrine of what Alan says the Army calls ‘raincoats on, raincoats off’, on reaching the ground we were again asked to wait for the arrival of what, I can only assume, where hastily arranged panic-tickets. I say this because instead of receiving a formally issued conventional paper ticket, each tourist was given the ground pass of an absent Boca Junior season ticket holder. I had the good fortune of going to the football as Ruis Sergio Martin and can I just say that it enhanced the experience enormously. There’s nothing like being a true believer.

In the end the match turned out to be less eventful than the journey to the ground, ending in a nil-all draw, but that didn’t stop the local fans behaving as if they’d just won the league. The singing and dancing was unrelenting throughout the game, with the action on the pitch having absolutely no impact whatsoever on the volume or fervour of the tunes.

Despite the paucity of on-field action the tension, the drama, the buzz and the atmosphere were clearly too much for our tour guide who, at half time, was spotted smoking a king-sized joint up the back of the stands. Well I guess you need something to bring you back down after leading 15 strangers through Apache country.

Great day, great experience, useless tour.

That is all,

Dale Atkinson

NOT SMALL ENOUGH, THROW IT BACK IN

We headed to Rosario for a few nights and on the first day hired bikes and took a ride along the Rio Parana, a wide, handsome river about eight times broader than the Thames at any point upstream of the Barrier.

Recreational fishermen scatter the bank sporting cane fishing poles rigged with about four metres of line, a small float and a hook baited with some kind of insect. These pescadores extract fish from the waters with a stylish snap of the wrist, flinging them over their shoulders and onto the bank to flap and gape before being lobbed into the bucket with their equally unfortunate fishy-friends.

We watched one man haul in a decent, pan-sized fish, which he promptly de-hooked and hoofed back in the water.

“Es pequeno?” I said, asking if the fish was undersized.

He replied with a string of Spanish too advanced for me to decipher before motioning to the yellow bucket next to his feet. It was half-full of fish, all of them shorter than the length of a £5 note and a fraction the size of the catch he’d just returned.

Argentina is now the only place I have ever seen a fisherman throw one back for being too big. It’s nice to know that they’re fishing for the future.

That is all,

Dale Atkinson

THE AGA CAN'T

There are three main categories of backpackers in South America; intoxicated Australians, Israelis taking a year off after 18 months of national service and posh British kids on gap-year.

The Brits are typically about 19-years-old and all of them have the accents that come as standard with tuition at the right sort of schools. They have names like Ollie and Seb and have been sent out by their parents to gain valuable life-skills before heading back to the UK where all those life-skills will be dampened by three years of soft student living.

Two prime examples were preparing pasta in the hostel kitchen last night. Frustrated by how long the water was taking to boil, one of the lads checked the hob and noticed the flame was no longer burning beneath the pan.

“You’ve turned the gas off, you absolute arse.” He said.

His friend looked perplexed.

“What? Oh, sorry. I only know how to use an Aga.”

Who says the class system is dead?