The 1000 Day Holiday

Take 50,000 people

Place them in the Nevada Desert. Ban money and commercialism. Social status is checked at the gate. Allow freedom of expression and an environment where radical self reliance is key.

This is Burning Man. A community of people from predominately developed countries adopting a community spirit I’ve seen only in developing countries. Where you look out for your camp mates, neighbours, strangers.

Its a leave no trace event. By the end of cleanup you shouldn’t be able to tell there was a city there for over a week.

Thats like relocating the entire population of New Plymouth, (NZs 12th Biggest city!) into the desert.

24 hours a day for an entire week those 50,000 people do whatever they want, learn, explore, party, share and grow.

It starts before you even get there. Months of planning, teaming up with other people to form a camp. Planning actually starts for most camps as soon as they are home from the previous burn.

The drive in, slow, the dust enveloping you, your car, everything.

You get to the gate, its around 3am. A dust storm is in full force and the greeters run up to your car, welcoming you home. You cant help but get this strange feeling in your chest that you are somewhere special.

They ask if we are virgins, we are taken over to bells at the entrance and told to ring out or virginity.

It begins.

While I was in Belize, I adopted Baby. It seems quite a popular thing to do these days. She didn’t seem to have a home, even less a body. So I picked her up and brought her along for the ride. Shes disadvantaged since one of her eyes can be a bit wonky, so tends to weird people out a little.

Baby watching the world go by

Baby even has her own space in my pack, with a grand view of the world poking her head out from the top of my pack. She seems to spook some people as I walk past, or the luggage loaders on buses and boats when they glance down and see her staring up at them. Sometimes you’ll hear their conversations stop mid sentence, others exclaim and laugh. Its great fun, and generally promotes interaction and and great deal of laughter.

She even keeps an eye on those who have fallen asleep in public places.

This is all leading up to the most interesting encounter Baby has had to date.

We had one guy in my dorm, who after a couple of days said to the others in the room that he couldn’t take it any more, and put a shirt over baby as she was just laying there in my pack.

A day or so later he was talking to the girls in the room wide eyed and says.

“You know that guy with the Baby.. You know that paddling pool is also his?”

“Do you think he bathes the Baby in the Pool?”

Brilliant Idea! Unfortunately I left the next morning so wasn’t able to Bathe baby…

With a name like that, and a scuba tank strapped to your back, you would dive it too.

The Temple of Doom is a Ceynote in Mexico, its name coming from its 3 holes which appear from below as a large mouth and eye sockets of a skull. It has both fresh and Salt water layers, which when you mix them it gives a acid like blurring effect called a halocline.

After jumping a couple of metres into the mouth of the skull with all my scuba gear on, we descended into the darkness.  

As my dive master swam through the halocline, from the side, it appears as if smoke is trailing off him. From behind I couldn’t see anything due to the blurring effect, only the direction of illumination coming from his torch.

Stalactites hanging from the roof, and crazy formations of different colours on the floor and walls meant I spent a lot of time swimming on my side and back to get the full view. Watching your bubbles run up the cave roof almost looking like water trickling uphill was very spacey. The only way to tell depth was by the need to equalize.

After the dives I asked my DM if he had dived other sites around Tulum. He replied he had only dived the reef twice, he lives for cave diving. He has been living in Tulum for 2 years. 

Cave diving, definitely addictive.

We caught a Linea Dorada bus from Belize City to Chetumal, Mexico. This being an international route, you have to get off the bus and pass through immigration. The benefit of taking an International Bus is that they wait for you to clear immigration and take you onto your destination.

We even get added fun at Mexican border as you get to punch a button which displays a red or green light determining if your bags are searched.

I got though no problem, loaded my bag back on the bus and waited for my travel buddy.

5, 10, 15 minutes no sign, I told the driver my friend was still not there and I was going to look for them. He huffed and puffed a bit. But off I went to find her as he had parked so that you couldn’t see the bus when you emerged from security, and was no longer standing at the corner so people could find it.

5 mins more and still no sign. Finally shes through and I’m telling her to hurry up as the bus driver is getting impatient. I turn around and the bus is pulling out into traffic 100m away!

I sprint after the bus. no luck. Fsck, my bags on that bus and I don’t know if it terminates in Chetumal or continues all the way to Cancun. WTF.

I ran back to my friend and jump in a cab with 2 others who were also left behind.

We get to the bus station 20 minutes later just as the bus pulls in, I bust past security explaining my bags are on there, and then start shouting in my “most excellent” Spanish at the bus driver why the FSCK he left without us and with my bag on board. The only bad bit was that I couldn’t get my Spanish swear words working as they are unpractised.

He didn’t give much of a toss about the situation, but I didn’t get out his face until he had paid our 100 Peso taxi fare ($10).

He then spent the next 20 minutes giving us the bad eye as we waited in line for tickets for the next bus. At least it now had cost him money and that appears the only way he might ever learn his lesson.

Ive seen a lot of animals during this trip.

Big, small, scary, dangerous…Smart and Stupid.

I had the chance to snorkel with Manatees in Caye Caulker, Belize.

While watching them, you really get the sense that there’s not much going on in the brain department. They move extremely slowly and it took them a couple of minutes to turn and swim to us to investigate what we were. They slowly swam up to us, and cruised past. I couldn’t see much movement in the eyes as it swam by.

Being slow and stupid in appearance they may be the weirdest creature of my trip. Yet upon researching them, they evolved from the same family as elephants but went back to the sea, have an advanced long term memory and can learn tasks/tricks much like dolphins.

So I think they win the laziest animal award. It takes dedication to evolve back into the sea, shorten your trunk to a funny shaped lip and basically become a sea blimp.

Maybe they’re the smart ones after all.

I had one of the worst dreams ever.

I dreamt I was a truly cash strapped backpacker. My budget was exhausted and I had to resort to eating pasta and tomato sauce for every meal.

It woke me up in a cold sweat and took quite a while to settle down and relax again. It sounds stupid, but Im definitely a food traveler so this was not a pleasant dream..

Quarterly Performance Review time.

I’m down to double digits days left (88) and dropping. Interesting times. So in 5 lines or less this is what happened in the last  Quarter…

Learnt how to swallow a 5inch nail up my nose from a random street dude/busker.
Popped an ear drum while sailing to cuba, allowing me to blow smoke out my ear…
Jumped around roasting marshmallows on Lava.
And jumped into a Mud Volcano

Future Plans:  now till Day 1000 (28 sept). You will find me in Belize, Mexico, Burning Man, West Coast USA and then into Canada for work! ARGH
If you’re going to be in these spots drop me a line!

It should be a Party Right? Ive been on the road for 900 Days, 90% Done, 90% Broke, 10% of no idea on what I’m going to do post Day 1000…

The day started in Monteverde, Costa Rica at 5.30am.

4 buses, 1 taxi, 9 hours, 1 border and who knows how many KM’s later. I’m back in Grenada, Nicaragua.

Time to start the celebrations: A beer, or 9 and see what happens.

This is just an example of the work involved in putting on this production. Happily brought to me by me, shared with ??? I’m smiling all the way!

Oh and what havent I seen in the 900 days? A chicken on a chicken bus. I might buy one, put it on a leash and take it for a ride just to tick that box.

I heard a legend of 1kg+ river shrimps on the Rio San Juan, in the very south of Nicaragua.

I needed no more encouragement, I was on the next 10 hour boat ride across the lake to taste them for myself.

While we didn´t manage to find any shrimps that met the 1kg mark. There is no denying they are a pretty impressive size, and damn tasty to boot.

Nothing beats hiking up a live volcano, standing on a lava chute, where 6 inches underfoot molten lava is flowing and can be see through the cracks. Then roasting marshmallows on the lava that’s rolling towards you…

if you’re wondering why in that video I’m not standing there very long its because lava is over 1000 degrees Celsius. My tevas need some new glue…