And so it ends...

...for now.

Ushered home by a smiling Polish hostess on an Irish airline and given the unrivalled welcome of Irish passport control, sure your not wearin a towel on yer head, come on in. Back on to buses where we Do Not Talk to Strangers, escorted home by phalanxes of 08 SUVs down avenues of flashy new apartment blocks unsullied by occupants, the paint long dry.

I have lost 5 kilos, 3 pairs of flips flops, 2 cameras, 2 mp3 players, 3 towels and more memories than I care to recall.

I have missed fish fingers and vinegar, crisp cold mornings and the sound of a tent zip, real butter and Bulmers, comfortable silences and being biffed. I have discovered beer, butterflies and birds, tomato and lettuce and hummus, vegitarianism and undercooked steaks.

I've learnt and forgotten, hello, thank you and please, in 15 languages. I've laughed at jokes I didn't understand, laughing only to share a smile. I've ironclad many of my stereotypes, and shattered others. I've met budding popstars and budding buddhists, dumpster divers and militant vegans, white robed zealots and near naked monks, bushwhackers and Bush-bashers and the multitudes in between. I've filled in a little more of humanity's jigsaw for myself, only to highlight how many pieces I'm missing. I have been compared to Jesus, Colin Farrell, Chuck Norris, and been called Dee, Dave, Dean, Dermot, Dickhead.

I have stood in tall buildings and hoped for an earthquake, climbed volcanoes and hoped they'd erupt, swam with alligators and hoped they'd attack, gone to football matches and hoped for a riot.

...I have travelled kilometres of airport escalators, cycled a rickshaw, lounged in business class, battled into cattle class, shared a sadhu's pipe, dived to 27 metres on a breath, slept on benches, bed bugs and beaches, climbed Mt Fuji, swam with sharks, walked with orangutans and armadillos, rode a camel, eaten momos, paneer, nasi goreng, pad thai, empanandas, dhal bhat, fished for pirhanas, conversed with minah birds, fired an M16 rifle. I have marvelled at the power of nature in a waterfall, in a sulphur cloud, in a petrified forest, in a glacier's folds, in the pulsing heart of a monsoon storm...




That's me, that is.

Crocodile DumbD

The sun is high in the sky and I squint exaggeratedly. I sit slumped atop my horse, the reins gripped in one hand, swaggering down just another dirt road. My other hand rests on my camera as if it were the butt of my trusty rifle. I tip the rim of my hat at a passing pick up and pretend the attendant dust clouds don't bother me nuthin. Vultures circle overhead, we're in jaguar and anaconda country and they smell potential carrion, but I ain't afraid. I hum "Achy Breaky Heart" to myself under my breath. Keepin it real.

I spent 4 days in the Pantanal, the outback of Brazil with a biodiversity equal to the Amazon basin and I saw more animals than I could shake my imaginary rifle at. I was roomies with Helmut. He is a retired German of indeterminate age, who now captains sailboats and quaffs beer in his spare time. He sports white hair and a thick white moustache and his grizzled face is offset by eyes as blue as the waters he plows, Arrrrrrrrrrr. He's hale and hearty and up for anything. He arises early every morning to skinny dip in rivers positively cosmopolitan with alligators and parasites and pirahnas. ( "I'd rather skinny dip with pirahnas than..."). He wanders the room naked and showers with the door open. I once tried to get in the spirit of things by doing the same but spent the whole time worrying he'd wander in casually and crack me with his towel before challenging me to a GrecoRoman wrestle which he could win with is arms tied. He dives off 12 metre rocks and rejoices in making the youth look old. He has 'Ladies' in every country he visits and recounts his elderly acrobatics gleefully. He mutters to himself absently in German and often comments to me in the same, I stopped correcting him. He would randomly burst into songs at yodelling volumes. He'd shake the trees in the jungle if he wanted the resident animal to move into a more photogenic position, the guide would only shake his head mournfully. He farts anytime, anywhere, unfazed, as if it were just another comment in German that no-one understands. Something of a legend.

The wildlife of course was the reason I had come here and it was quite spectacular. The place was a benetton ad of birds. There were kiri kiris, fierce birds of prey with the bodies of hawks but betrayed by a slightly ridiculous faded red beak like a bouncer in a clown nose. There were toucans, the bird from the guinness ads, their beaks perhaps painted by that little guy under the sea. There were macaws, or parrots as we know them, bright red and green ones or blue and yellow ones. Apparently they were always in pairs as they mate for life but judging by the squawking between some of them this didn't necessarily mean a lifetime of marital bliss. There were huge pelicans, black and white with a blood red scarf and a 2 metre wingspan, kingfishers, parrakeets, little red helmeted sparrow things, black vultures, those dive bomb birds with the long necks and awkward legs and many more that I couldn't identify.

There were also monkeys, anteaters, an armadillo (which was amazing, he was eating fruit and snuffling around only 3 feet away from me, because I am such a stealth master. They called me The Indian after that, though that may also be because of my dark and brooding good looks.) There were turtles, wild boar, water pigs, skeletons of jaguar kills, and many mammals whose names I can't spell. On the jungle trek I was walking in flip flops and nearly stood on a tarantula, the girl behind me spotted it only when I had already unwittingly stepped over it. There were also these giant ants who hollow out a tree and then defend it from all comers with ferocious bites. Bang on the tree and they swarm out, 50 bites can kill a man apparently.

I swam too with the alligators and parasites and pirahnas. The alligators would stay beside the shore, eyes and nose visible until you got too close and then they would quietly submerge completely into the murk and the water would seem to chill somewhat, shark in the water. I have never seen such impressive machines. When they walk on land they don't actually slither, they raise up on legs like hydraulics, giving them maybe a half a foot clearance, and then sort of march. And don't look them in the eye, there's nothing there.