Messages from Minsk

Message 1 - Message in a Bubble

This entry comes to you from a city at the end of the world.

To reach this forgotten and isolated place, I had to travel thousands of miles by land and air. I also had to travel back in time, back to a time when the hammer and sickle ruled Eastern Europe.

I am writing from Mogilev, a small city of a few hundred thousand people close to the Russian border.

This is not my first visit to Mogilev; I have visited this off-the-map place many times. In fact, I lived and worked here for six months in a nearby orphanage when I was 26 years old. Now I am back, back at the end of the world, back in the USSR.

A few days ago I had a party in this flat with a Mexican, a dozen 19-year-old Belorussian girls and plenty of Soviet vodka. Written on the bottom of the cups we were drinking our vodka from were the words: Made in the USSR. On a shelf in this room are an assortment of books dating back to the early days of the Soviet Union. Believe it or not, there are also a number of magazines, dated 1990 - 1991, which appear to glorify Stalin (the covers show photos of Stalin meeting The Workers, Stalin hugging a little girl).

A few days ago I said goodbye to the Mexican as he boarded a train to Moscow at a station which has changed little since the days when Khrushchev and Castro were sharing vodka and missiles.

Perhaps this country's Soviet past is not so much in the past after all.

But I'm getting ahead of myself here. Let me get back to the very beginning, back to where it all began.

Message 2 - Condoms for Breakfast

Picking up from where I left off, I departed Quito, the capital of Ecuador, on 15 February. I managed to have more adventures and misadventures during my final hours in South America.

I arrived at Quito airport with $25 to pay the necessary departure tax, only to find that the $25 tax had become a $32 tax.

I had a grand total of $31.75 in my wallet and my Visa Electron cash card which would not work in the airport cash machines. I was 25 cents short and the airport staff would not let me proceed through security until I had paid the departure tax in full.

I was facing being stranded in South America because of a tiny sum of money, and could well have been, had an American tourist not learned of my plight and stepped to give me 25 cents.

This little episode made me angry and so when, after proceeding through security, I was approached by a young woman who started asking me questions about why I was in Ecuador, I was more than a little rude with her. I was in no mood to explain I had been living with Indians in the Amazon rainforest for the past four weeks.

With a smile, the young woman asked me to follow her into a nearby room. She was going to exercise the little bit of power that she had and she was going to teach this angry Englishman a lesson.

She pointed to a sign on the wall, written in Spanish, of which I could understand just one word: NARCÓTICO. That one word was enough.

After putting my signature to a sheet of paper, I was instructed to drop my trousers and place a protective sheath over my private parts. I was then x-rayed to see if I was carrying any illegal substances in my stomach.

Of course there was nothing of any interest in my stomach, other than plenty of boiled and fried bananas, a liquidised Mars Bar, a rusty licence plate, the remains of a young female bather and a small wooden puppet going by the name of Pinocchio.

After an apology from the young woman, my stomach and I were allowed to go on our way and I finally boarded my flight and left Ecuador and the Amazon far behind.

Message 3 - Trials and Tribulations in Toronto

After another pit stop in Panama and a few days in Mexico City with my friend Cesar, I flew on to Toronto where I had a ten-hour wait for my connecting flight to London.

I had intended to spend the day discovering Toronto, but it didn't quite turn out that way. In fact, it didn't turn out that way at all.

I arrived at the airport with no cash. I planned to use my Visa Electron card but I could not find a cash machine that would accept it.

I spent five hours walking around Toronto, through slush and snow, in freezing temperatures, searching for that elusive cash machine, but I could not find a single ATM that would give me cash.

After almost being stranded in Ecuador, I could have been stranded in Canada too. Luckily the airport bus driver accepted my Visa Electron and so I was at least able to get to and from the airport.

After walking the streets for the afternoon I headed to the CN Tower where I had arranged to meet the infamous David Shakespeare, the star of many of my mass emails.

But David turned out to be just as elusive as that cash machine and we did not meet. (I found out some days later that David was waiting for me on the opposite side of the tower).

After an hour I headed into the tower. They accepted my Visa Electron card and so I was able to reach the top of the CN Tower.

Standing 553 metres tall, attracting around two million visitors every year, the CN Tower is an icon of Canada and currently holds the title of the world's tallest freestanding structure on land.

Near to the top of the tower is a glass floor which I stood upon and looked at all of the cars and crowds far below, smaller than ants, wrapped up in their lives, thinking about money and sex and family and money and sex, most of them unaware that the foreign policy of the world's major powers is endangering all of our lives.

Next to the glass floor is a sign which states that the glass is strong enough to hold 14 hippos (or three average-sized American teenagers) but despite this many of the people around me were still too afraid to walk onto the glass. People are such wimps.

After scaling the tower I made my way back to the airport to catch my flight to London.

Looking back, I did not enjoy my brief stay in Canada.

After a month in South America and a few days in Mexico, returning to a capitalist country was not pleasant and I found the people of Toronto to be rude and insincere. In fact, I saw little difference between Toronto and any US city, with people hanging around on street corners selling hockey tickets and the awful Support Our Troops posters scattered across the city.

A Canadian told me that Toronto is possibly the worst city in Canada to visit, and perhaps I am being a little too judgemental, but I really did not like Toronto or the people and I have no desire to return.

Message 4 - Perchance to Dream

I arrived at Heathrow the following day and boarded a coach that took me from London to Liverpool.

I arrived at my Mother's house around midnight and after unpacking and repacking I set my alarm and fell asleep at two in the morning. A little under two hours later the alarm woke me and at 4.30am my Mother, my brother and I made our way to a local bus stop where we boarded a coach that would take us to Ostend in Belgium.

By this point I was exhausted. I could barely think, let alone speak, and all of my energy was spent just trying to keep my eyes open.

In the past three days I had been to Ecuador, Panama, Mexico, Toronto, the UK and now I was on my way to Belgium. I had barely eaten, barely slept and had gone from unbearable heat in Ecuador and Mexico to six below zero in Canada to rain in the UK.

In a word, I was tired.

A day later my family and I arrived at our hotel in Ostend and I was finally able to get my head on a pillow. I closed my eyes and slept for more than fourteen hours - and woke up feeling tired.

Message 5 - Feeling Old in Ostend

Exhaustion aside, I enjoyed my time in Belgium and I was glad that I got to know my Mum, Jackie, and my brother Mark a little better.

I am not close to my family; we are very different people I think, and this was our first family holiday for years and years and a chance for us all to enjoy ourselves and spend some quality time together.

I enjoyed the holiday too, though spending my days with a bus load of people twice my age is not normally my idea of fun.

Still, they were pleasant days. I got to explore the beautiful city of Bruges and, after my ordeal in the Amazon rainforest, a short holiday in Belgium was a welcome prescription for rest and recovery.

My family and I returned to the UK on Friday and on Sunday I packed my bags once again and headed to Liverpool John Lennon airport where I boarded a flight to Riga in Latvia. Once there I made my way to Belarus and to the Soviet Union.

Message 6 - Back in the USSR

The Republic of Belarus really is an anomaly.

It is hard to believe that in the year 2007 this throw-back to the Soviet Union still exists.

Everywhere you go in Minsk there are reminders of the past: Statues of Lenin, Soviet symbols, the KGB - still called the KGB - driving around in their 4x4s, silently observing the population.

Belarus is stuck in a time-warp; it's not that things in Belarus aren't changing, they are, they are just changing very, very slowly.

A black hole in the centre of Europe, the Republic of Belarus is trapped, trapped in the past, perhaps a little afraid of the future.

Life is different here, different to any other country I have visited. Belarus is cocooned, protected by a bubble.

There is almost no unemployment, no risk of terrorism and very little crime. The problems we face in the West don't apply here. Life is safer, different, unique and a little detached from reality.

It's difficult to put into words, but this is similar to what life was like in the Soviet Union. Simply, people felt protected.

Unfortunately, because Belarus is still pretty much the same as when Gorbachev was in power, life can be frustrating. Nothing works and when things do work they mostly work badly.

Common sense could not get a visa for Belarus; bureaucracy rules, the transport system is a mess, things are old and getting older.

Belarus does, however, have one redeeming feature: its people. Belarus is home to the finest people in Europe, possibly the finest in the world. Warm, friendly and sincere, these are good people and they have not yet had their souls corrupted by capitalism.

But things are changing. But we'll get to that later.

Message 7 - Message from Minsk

Undoubtedly the most surreal moment of this visit to Minsk occurred when I went with Emily to the funeral of her uncle who had died some days earlier.

Emily had just buried her beloved hamster Pushok and she asked me to accompany her to her uncle's funeral to give her support. It was a bizarre experience.

It started with Emily and I meeting her uncle's grieving relatives outside his flat. After a long wait, his coffin was brought out and placed in the street on four wooden chairs. The lid was taken off and we took it in turns to place flowers on his body.

I had never met this man before and the first time I saw him he was lying in a coffin, his skin a horrible yellow colour, almost translucent.

I placed a red rose on his chest and the coffin was sealed and placed in a funeral car. We clambered into a Soviet bus and followed the coffin to the cemetery where Emily's uncle was cremated.

After the cremation, we made our way to a cafe where I sat for four hours, surrounded by the man's wife and daughter and grieving relatives, a stranger in their midst, as everyone took it in turns to stand up and make a speech about the dearly departed.

My God it was so awful! It was such a depressing experience and so weird, being there when I didn't know any of those people.

I hope that when I die my funeral is nothing like that; I don't want people to cry and tell sad stories about me, I want people to celebrate my life and the fact that I lived.

Other than that, that month in Belarus was one that I enjoyed; basking in Emily's love, visiting the kids at the orphanage, eating in restaurants, losing money at the casino and doing the normal things that I do when I visit the last surviving remnant of the USSR.

After the month was up I returned to the UK and tried to make some money. In early May I boarded another flight and made my way back to Belarus once again.

Message 8 - Message from Mogilev

On April 26, 1986 there was a huge explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Ukraine. A plume of radioactive fallout drifted over Europe. Most of the fallout fell over Belarus.

Mogilev - along with Gomel - was one of the cities in Belarus most affected by the accident at Chernobyl. When I first visited Mogilev in 1999, I was told not to drink the milk or eat the mushrooms.

Eight years later here I am back again in Mogilev and yes, I am drinking the milk. I try not to, but faced with a calcium deficiency or possible radiation poisoning, I usually opt for the radiation poisoning.

Besides, the girls of Mogilev drink it and they are beautiful, so I think I will take my chances with the milk.

It's just a shame it's in those damn bags.

Message 9 - A Mexican in Mogilev

Until a few days ago my friend Cesar was here with me in Mogilev.

He flew to Belarus a couple of weeks ago and we spent our time visiting classes at a local university so that the language students could hear native English and Spanish speakers in action and ask us questions about England and Mexico.

We invited most of those students back to our flat and have had lots of parties, spent lots of money, drank lots of vodka and played lots of drinking games.

My time in Mogilev has been enjoyable enough. The people in this part of Belarus are friendly, warm and communicative. But they seem to have changed since I first arrived in September 1999.

Back then if I visited a cafe with someone they would insist that they pay for themselves. Now people are more than happy to let me pay for them and, to be honest, I have gotten pretty sick of it.

It is not nice to go out with someone - both men and women - and have them order things from the menu and then just assume that I will pay for them. On the whole, the people I have met have been very nice, but because I have met so many, I feel now that a few have been taking advantage of me.

I guess it was inevitable simply because Cesar and I met dozens of people. Nonetheless, it has put on a dampener on what otherwise would have been a nice time. It never use to be like this; like everyone else, the Belorussian people are changing.

When I return here later in the year I will not be so foolish with my cash. I have been a little stupid, and next time I will be much wiser and more careful because these incidences have almost ruined what otherwise has been a nice fortnight in Mogilev.

Message 10 - Putting My Passport to Sleep

So, this is my final message.

I have just re-read this entry and realised that there was nothing much to report.

No getting lost in the Amazon rainforest, no great cliff adventures. I didn't even get arrested in Latvia.

Cesar is back in Mexico now, no doubt drinking his USSR vodka and, I hope, remembering the days he spent with me in this crazy country in a flat in a little city at the end of the world.

There are no lessons to be learned from this entry, no great wisdom shared. Just a tale of an Englishman who went to the USSR and came back a little poorer and a little older.

It's time to put my passport to sleep for the next few months. But it won't be resting for too long. There are many more people to do and things to see.

Until next time, take care, Emily. Take care, Cesar.

Thanks for reading this.

Skyler Black.

Adventures in the Amazon

Day 1 - Pitstop in Panama

Picking up from where I left off last time, I left Mexico City on January 15 and boarded a flight to Quito in Ecuador.

I enjoyed my time in Mexico City and look forward to returning. Never have I visited such a city of contrasts, where abject poverty goes hand in hand with great wealth, where old men on bended knee shine the shoes of young men dressed in designer suits.

My flight to Quito included an unscheduled change in Panama City, giving me the chance to become one of around 7,000 Britons who visit Panama each year and also giving me less than seven minutes to run through the airport to catch my second flight to Ecuador.

I was met at Quito airport by a man named Jose who drove me to my hotel. He did his job, making sure he ripped me off by charging me three times the normal rate for an airport pick-up.

I had arrived in South America.

Day 4 - The Sting

After three days in Quito, I was ready to head to the Amazon. I had taken a few Spanish lessons, learned a couple of words and got to know the capital a little.

I also got my head around the fact that the US dollar is now the national currency of Ecuador. I arrived in Quito just as the country was swearing in it's new president, the left-leaning Rafael Correa. Evo Morales and the great Hugo Chavez were in Ecuador to show their support for their new friend.

I met another volunteer in Quito, a young man named Ash Perrin, who was also heading to the Amazon. We had been in touch by email and arranged to meet in the capital. For reasons I will explain later, I shall refer to this young man as The Clown from now on.

Just before we were due to catch our bus, we popped into KFC where I mentioned to The Clown that in all my years of travelling I had never been the victim of theft or any sort of crime.

I explained how, although I have been ripped off and attacked in the UK, I have never had any serious problems on my travels. Even as I was uttering those words, I felt I was tempting fate.

An hour later and we were sat on a bus headed for Puyo, gateway city to the Amazon.

As we left Quito, three young men boarded the bus. One sat next to me, three sat behind. The one sitting next to me engaged me in conversation while occasionally looking back at his friends.

I knew something was going on, but my wallet and passport were in my jeans pocket, and my backpack was on the rack above me, so I thought that I was safe.

After the young men left the bus, a woman sitting across from me told me they had searched my backpack. They had stolen my personal CD Player and a mobile phone my Mother had borrowed me.

I was a little disappointed, especially about the CD Player as I needed it to listen to my language CDs, but the area where these young men left the bus was nothing more than a slum, and when people live in poverty it is inevitable that some will turn to crime.

The theft was soon forgotten as we continued our journey and the road grew ever steeper as we climbed higher and the bus zoomed along at break neck speed.

Occasionally I would look out of the window and see nothing but a small kerb separating the bus from a 200 foot drop into a roaring river below. I soon learned to stop looking out of the window.

We arrived in Puyo late evening and boarded another bus which would take us to the Arutam Rainforest Reserve. As the bus made its way along a dusty road, The Clown and I wondered what on earth we were doing. We had no idea what to expect. We didn't even know if anyone knew we were coming. We just knew that we were going to have to get off the bus, in the Amazon rainforest, in total darkness, without a torch or a box of matches between us.

Two hours later we arrived at Arutam and were met by friendly looking Shuar Indian named Ernesto who emerged from the darkness and took us into his hut. Ernesto owns the land around Arutam, all 2710 hectares of it. He is in his mid fifties and has two wives and 22 children, eleven boys and eleven girls.

After a brief introduction, I was shown to my living quarters, which turned out to be a hut a short distance from Ernesto's house.

The hut was quite possibly built by Homer Simpson. There were huge gaps everywhere and the walls didn't quite make it to the roof. My bed was five planks of wood resting on four upturned logs.

Before I went to bed, Ernesto recommended that I shake out my boots before putting them on in the morning in case a tarantula had made his home there during the night.

I turned out the light and was engulfed in a darkness I have never experienced before. Total blackness. The kind of blackness where your eyes never get used to the dark and you see nothing at all.

I lay there for hours, listening to the sounds of the jungle, expecting to feel something crawling up my leg at any moment, and eventually I feel asleep and had some very strange dreams.

Day 5 - Into the Amazon

It's Friday now, my fifth day in Ecuador, and I am writing this on a sheet of paper in my hut, to be added to my blog later.

From now on I will try to keep a regular record of my experiences so I don't have to write about them later.

Today I accomplished an ambition and ventured into the Amazon rainforest. It was incredible.

The Amazon is the world's largest rainforest. Larger than Europe, it stretches across eight countries, from Ecuador to Brazil, and is home to a third of the world's species.

Despite more than thirty years of deforestation, the Amazon is still about 70% - 80% intact. There are up to 70 Indian tribes living in the Amazon that have never had contact with the outside world. Many of these Indians still hunt with bows and arrows.

The Arutam Rainforest Reserve is a protected area on the edge of the Amazon in Ecuador. In one direction is the Andes, in the other, undisturbed rainforest stretches all the way to Peru and Brazil. It was into this rainforest that I ventured alone today.

I wandered along a trail that cuts into the Amazon for 6km. At one point I thought to myself: My God, I'm in the Amazon. Then I thought to myself: My God, I'm in the Amazon! There are jaguars, pumas and anacondas living in this forest! So I returned to the reserve, borrowed a machete and returned to the trail.

I spent four hours in the Amazon and didn't want to leave. Eventually it grew late and I returned to Ernesto's community where I played chase with some Shuar kids and ate a meal of mashed banana before returning to my planks of wood, where it's now time to turn off the light in the hope of finding sleep.

Day 6 - Problems with the Volunteers

A curious thing happened today. Other than myself and The Clown, there are three other volunteers here, one German boy of twenty and two 19-year-old German girls.

This morning I went to Ernesto's hut with The Clown and the German boy to tuck into a breakfast of boiled banana (the German girls eat in another hut) and both The Clown and the German ignored me.

They were both speaking to each other in English but made no attempt to include me in the conversation and when I tried to speak to them they were unresponsive. This has not happened to me for a long time. I have been nothing but nice to the volunteers, but it is clear they don't like me very much. They are spending a lot of time together and ignoring me.

The Germans girls spend most of their times talking about 'hot guys' and using words like 'awesome' and 'cool'.

Other than that, not much happened today. Tomorrow I do what I came here to do, starting work helping the Shuar in the reserve.

Day 7 - Chased by a Rabid Dog

Okay, so the dog was not rabid, but it was still pretty wild, and it did chase me.

After spending the morning planting trees, I headed into the Amazon again, passing Ernesto's hut to reach the trail, when a crazy dog saw me and went wild.

I think it was the fact I was carrying a machete; the dog saw me as a threat. It followed me along the trail for half an hour, barking wildly and running at me, only backing off as I raised the machete.

Drenched in sweat, I shouting obscenities at the mutt as I made my way backwards up the trail. It was only as I made my way deeper into the Amazon that the animal gave up the chase. I sat on a tree stump and took some time to recover before continuing on my way.

I left the trail today and explored the Amazon on my own terms. I returned to my hut early evening where I write to you from now. It's 9pm and time for sleep.

More tomorrow.

Buonas noches.

Day 8 - Secrets of the Shuar

I must say, I am disappointed with this project. I came here expecting to be living in the rainforest with Indians who walk around with their faces covered in paint and their penises hanging out.

Instead, I am living next to a road which cuts through the Amazon, with indifferent gap year students and Indians who wear jeans and t-shirts and who listen to Britney Spears on crappy hi-fi systems.

Until quite recently, the Shuar were amongst the most feared of all Indian tribes, famous for shrinking the heads of their enemies.

In the 1960s Christian missionaries arrived and introduced the Shuar to God. Today you can see many churches as you travel the 48km from Puyo to Arutam. Next week the volunteers and I begin laying the foundations for a church in Arutam itself.

Today, the Shuar living in and around Arutam are budding little capitalists. They want their microwave ovens and MTV. They still live much as they did centuries ago, in old wooden huts, surviving on a diet of manioc beer and fruit from the forest, but now they have fridge freezers, TVs and bicycles.

There are, however, still many Indians living in the forest who shun the outside world, who walk around with their faces covered in paint and their penises hanging out, and we should be thankful for that.

Day 9 - Lost in the Amazon

I have come to understand that the Shuar people are completely obsessed with bananas.

Every meal we eat together involves bananas, whether it's fried banana, mashed banana or boiled banana. I should be grateful however; today a banana quite possibly saved my life.

I was walking in the jungle earlier this afternoon when I urgently had to answer the call of nature.

I always carry toilet paper with me for these little emergencies. After finding a tree to hide behind, I did my business, only to find that I had left behind a perfectly formed, yellowish banana. It looked so real that I was almost tempted to try to peel it.

After leaving my banana in the jungle, I continued my exploration of the Amazon and followed the same route I took yesterday leading to a narrow stream. Unfortunately, at one crucial point I took a wrong turn and after about half an hour of walking, I realised, with total horror, that I was lost.

It's difficult to put into words how horrible it felt to be lost in the Amazon. I tried to retrace my steps but I couldn't find the way I had came and I ended up becoming more and more lost.

My vision became blurred as panic set in and though I was trying to think logically, I was so afraid, it was impossible for me to do so.

At that point, for the first time since I got stuck on a cliff in the Ukraine six months ago, I knew that my life was in danger.

I was lost in a rainforest larger than Europe, and even if I walked the equivalent of the distance from the United Kingdom to Germany, I would still find myself in that rainforest.

After an hour of walking, I spotted something which made me cry out in joy, the sweetest sight I have ever seen: There, next to a big old tree, was the banana that I had deposited earlier.

I was saved by own poo.

I knew then how to get back to the trail and I knew that I was not going to die in the Amazon. I was so happy to get back to the reserve and so happy to be safe that for a moment I almost hugged The Clown.

But it was only for a moment. And only almost.

Day 11 - Meeting Saddam Hussein

You will have to excuse me, for I appear to be going mad.

I am having some very strange dreams.

A few nights ago I dreamt that I was living in a big house and Saddam Hussein was employed as my butler. He went away to get executed, only to turn up for work the next morning. I tried to tell the world that Saddam Hussein was not dead, he was my butler, but before I could spread the word I woke up.

The following night I dreamed that Samuel L Jackson and I met Michael Jackson, who was dressed as a woman. Someone told Michael that my name was Peter Pan and he greeted me as Peter. Before I could explain that I was not Peter Pan, I woke up again.

Last night I had the strangest dream of all: I dreamed that I had become a God, omnipotent, and I could travel the world in the blink of an eye. Unfortunately, I was being stalked by Howling Mad Murdoch from The A-Team who had also become a God. Before he could catch me the dream came to an end.

I think that the anti-malaria tablets I am taking are doing strange things to my brain. Or perhaps I am really am going mad in the Amazon rainforest.

Bizarre dreams aside, nothing much of note has happened in the past days. The German boy left the project which I was quite happy about. That just leaves myself, The Clown and the two German girls.

Tomorrow a new French volunteer arrives. I am putting all of my hopes in him, that he will be someone who will want to talk to me, someone I will be able to have an interesting conversation with who will not ignore me or find me uninteresting.

Until tomorrow, this is me, going mad, lying on planks of wood in a hut on the edge of the Amazon rainforest, wishing you well and saying goodnight.

Day 12 - The Discovery

The French volunteer has arrived.

He is a gap year student.

Day 15 - Pitstop in Puyo

For the past three days I have been asking myself one question: How much rejection can one man take?

The German girls left the project on Friday to go travelling and The Clown went with them for a week.

I was getting on well with the French boy (who from this point on I shall refer to as The Frog), when on Friday night two French ecotourists arrived. I awoke Saturday to find that The Frog had left for the weekend to visit another city with the ecotourists.

I was left alone with Shuar Indians with whom I cannot communicate as I do not speak Spanish (or Shuar), so I headed to Puyo for two days which is where I am now, writing to you from an Internet cafe.

Earlier I bumped into one of Ernesto´s eleven daughters, a girl called Cecilia who is studying in Puyo. I met her in Arutam. We spoke as best we could given the language barrier, until she asked me if I had a girlfriend. When I replied that I did, she became uninterested, she played with her mobile phone, she looked away.

I ask myself that same question once again: How much rejection can one man take?

Cecilia, you're breaking my heart, you're shaking my confidence daily...

Day 17 - Taunted by Tarantulas

Two days have passed since my last entry and all I can say is I was bowled over by the welcome I received when I returned to Arutam.

Not from the Indians, or The Frog, but from the insects and creepy crawlies that had taken up residence in my hut while I was away.

I found a bizarre, wood-coloured spider on my door which I only spotted when I tried to hang my coat on it. I tried to kill it but it moved with lightening speed and hid under my planks of wood.

Then I went to move my toilet paper and a huge black tarantula jumped from behind the roll, landed on the floor with a light thud and darted under my bed, where it probably ate the other spider. (You wait ages to see a tarantula and then two turn up at once).

Last night I was lying in my bed when a huge moth almost the size of my hand found it's way inside my mosquito net and started flying into my face. I tried to turn my torch on, but it wouldn't work, and all the time this black monstrosity was hitting me in the face. I ended up using half of my bottle of mosquito repellent killing one moth.

I am being taunted by tarantulas and attacked by giant moths. I have become a walking buffet for bugs. I smell. My clothes are ruined. The people here don't like me. What the hell am I doing here?

Day 18 - La Cascada / El Volcan

Today was a strange day. The day started with a three hour hike to a beautiful waterfall in the Amazon, a spiritual place for the Shuar, where the souls of the departed are supposed to find their peace.

Later The Frog and I had a water fight with a few Shuar kids and shortly afterwards The Clown returned (without the German girls, who have now left the project) and very quickly he started ignoring me again. As you can imagine, I was not happy.

I call the clown The Clown because that's exactly what he is - a clown.

He paints his face, puts on a red nose and entertains kids at parties. People like him because he's funny and good at making jokes about bodily functions (I am not funny and spend most of my time trying to control my bodily functions).

Shortly after he returned to Arutam he began ignoring me and today he did it again. A few hours later The Frog thought it was okay to be rude to me too. Well, after weeks of dealing with gap year students who have been treating me like crap, enough was finally enough.

I erupted.

I shook The Frog. I screamed at him. I told him and The Clown exactly what I thought of them. I went a little overboard, completely freaking out, and by the end of it they both looked terrified.

They both apologised, and although I still don't like them, I think it will be a while until I am treated like crap again, at least by them, until I meet somebody else who thinks they can treat me like crap.

Days 19, 20 and 21 - Two Feathers

These past days have been wonderful, some of the best of my life.

It is Sunday now and The Clown, The Frog and I have just returned from spending the weekend with an Indian family who live deep in the rainforest. The head of the family, a man named Jorge, met us at Arutam and took us on a gruelling five hour hike to his home, which included wading through a river where we hoped no hungry piranhas were waiting for us.

We spent the weekend bathing in waterfalls, swinging from vines, fishing and then eating our catch. We even got to eat some strange worm-like larvae living inside a tree.

Jorge's children, six girls and one boy, were amazing. The sweetest children I have met. All big brown eyes and wide smiles. I spent the weekend giving them aeroplane spins and playing chase.

When I was a child and I dreamed of visiting the Amazon, it was this weekend I dreamed about. Even the farting competitions and silly conversations between The Frog and The Clown couldn't spoil it.

We left the family this morning and returned to Arutam. As we were leaving, one of the little girls, whose name I cannot pronounce, gave me two little feathers as a parting gift.

I am not ashamed to admit that a few minutes ago I took out those feathers and cried a little to think that I may never see those beautiful children again.

I will keep those two little feathers for the rest of my life. They will always remind me of a beautiful weekend and the nicest children I have ever met.

Days 22, 23 and 24 - Isaac Newton with Stitches

As my adventures in the Amazon draw to a close, here is a brief summary of some recent events...

Two days ago I was walking along the dusty road that cuts through the Amazon and runs alongside Arutam when a large coconut type object fell from a tree and landed a few feet in front of me. Had it landed on my head, it would have left me with a serious injury.

I learned that Jorge will be visiting Arutam again next week and so I headed to Puyo where I bought some gifts for him and his family, including soap, sweets, toothpaste and lots of presents for the kids. I did not want to be like one of these moronic gap year students; seeing the poverty all around me and doing nothing, and so I am glad I have done something, even if it is something very small.

A few more volunteers have arrived and as much as I hate to say it, they are spending most of their time with The Frog and The Clown and I can find very little to talk about with them.

I have learned that Ricky Martin is the Prince of South America and Shakira the undisputed Queen. But that is not such a bad thing.

I have now seen five tarantulas, two parrots, one bat, two cockroaches, two giant moths, one grasshopper the size of a small bird and one very poisonous but very flat and very dead snake.

Day 25 - I'm Not a Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here

So that's it. My adventures in the Amazon are over. Today I said adiós to the Arutam Rainforest Reserve. Its 9pm on Thursday and I am writing to you from a hostel in Banos, tourist haven and adventure sports capital of Ecuador.

None of the volunteers said goodbye to me. The Frog travelled to Puyo this morning for the day but rather than share a bus with me, he disappeared early, which meant he did not have to say goodbye.

I said farewell to the Amazon earlier and took a long walk alongside a stream. At one point I had to climb over a fallen tree trunk which was resting vertically against another tree. As I jumped off, the tree rolled and fell into the water with a thunderous roar.

On my way back to Arutam I came across a beautiful huge butterfly, easily as big as my hand, resting on a piece of wood.

It refused to move, and did not seem to mind my presence, and so I sat and watched it for a while. As I did so, it slowly stopped moving and passed away before my eyes. I realised that the butterfly had gone there to die, and that almost made me cry.

I left Arutam shortly after midday and some of the Shuar, including Ernesto, said goodbye to me and wished me well.

And that was my goodbye to the Amazon.

Day 30 - The Ultimate Adventure

This entry comes to you from Banos where I have been for the past five days. I think I have accomplished more in these five days than I have in any other five days in my thirty-three years on this planet.

On Friday I went white water rafting (only a Level 3 river, so quite wimpy and not scary enough) and then on Saturday I went horse back riding and ended up with a horse with a farting problem.

On Sunday I climbed the Tungurahua volcano, which erupted in August killing at least five people. I paid for a guide for the day who, funnily enough, turned out to be a young Shuar man.

It was incredibly gruelling, climbing into the clouds, but well worth it. We cycled part of the way back and on one very steep road my brakes failed, which could have been very nasty.

Later I hired a quad bike for two hours and went roaring around town, which was fantastic. I topped the day off with a Swedish massage at a nearby massage parlour before heading to a local restaurant and tucking into fried sea bass for less than $5.

Yesterday I went canyoning, abseiling down three waterfalls, one more than 45 metres high, and today I hired a bicycle for the day and planned what I thought would be a leisurely day but one that turned out to be another day when I risked life and limb.

I cycled towards Puyo until I got to a huge waterfall, the name of which escapes me. I took a cable car ride across a ravine to reach the waterfall but on the way back I thought it would be a good idea to try to climb the ravine myself. That was a mistake.

As I was climbing, I got to the point where I could go no further, and I knew I had to turn back. My backpack was weighing me down and so I let it go. It rolled and rolled. And rolled. And then rolled some more, until it almost rolled into a river.

I managed to get back down without too much trouble, but I lost quite a bit of sweat on the way and it brought back a few memories of a certain cliff and a certain brush with death.

I am back in the hostel now and this will be my last entry from Banos before leaving for Quito in the morning. By coincidence, an hour ago I bumped into a young Japanese man who arrived in Arutam the night before I left. What he told me filled me with horror.

It seems that the volunteers have given up on the project and many of them, including The Clown and The Frog, and their entourage, are coming to Banos tomorrow morning. Worse yet, they will be staying in this very hostel! My God! The horror!

To think that they will be here, using this computer, socialising and ignoring me. I will be sure to leave early tomorrow. I really need to wash the memory of those awful people from my mind.

Day 31 - Pitstop in Panama

So this is my final entry.

It's Wednesday 14 February - Valentines Day - and I am writing to you from Quito. Tomorrow I leave Ecuador, exactly one month to the day since I arrived in this beautiful part of the world.

At 07:40am I board a plane that will take me back to Mexico, with another brief stop in Panama on the way. After spending two days in Mexico City, I will head to Canada for a day, where I hope to meet up with the infamous and elusive David Shakespeare.

I arrive in London late Sunday and then early the next day I head to Belgium for five days with my mother, my brother and his girlfriend. I return on Friday and head to Latvia and Belarus on Sunday.

I have managed to spend this month in South America without making a single friend and I have been rejected by almost everybody I have met.

If I let it, this could really affect my self confidence. But I think I am stronger than that. And I am lucky to know people, people better than the morons I have met in the past month, who do like me and do find me interesting and do enjoy my company.

I really should not let these bastards get me down, although at times I have. It is unfortunate that I continue to have such problems with Westerners I meet.

This has been a difficult month and my time in the Arutam Rainforest Reserve was not a project I enjoyed. With a Laura or a Wyatt or a Cesar or a Craig, it could have been different.

Despite the difficulties of the past month, I did get a magical weekend out of it and I have two feathers with me as a reminder of those wonderful two days.

It goes without saying that I will return to the Amazon. When I was a kid and I dreamed of an Amazon adventure, it was always Brazil that I dreamed about. The next time the Amazon and I meet it will be in Brazil and there will be no Frogs or Clowns.

Thanks for reading this entry, which turned out to be a larger than a rainforest.

Take care.

From the memory box of a Professional Englishman.

Madness in Mexico City

Ever since I was a boy I've dreamed of visiting the Amazon.

Some kids want to be astronauts. Some want to be firemen. But not me. I wanted to be an Indian, living deep in the Amazonian jungle with some unknown tribe, who would accept me as one of their own and teach me the ways of the forest.

I think a lot of that came from watching a film called The Emerald Forest based on the true story of a boy who was kidnapped by a Brazilian tribe.

It fascinated me then - and still does today - that there are Indians living in the Amazon who have never had contact with the outside world. Unknown tribes, who have lived in the rainforest for eons, and have never seen or spoken to a white man.

When I was twelve, I resolved to save up the money I was earning from my paper round - which was about £2.60 a week - and use it to visit the Amazon.

I guessed that it would take me about six months to save up the necessary airfare. When I arrived in the jungle, I genuinely believed that I would come across a tribe who would 'see the light of the forest in my eyes' and take me in as one of their own.

I planned to spend the rest of my days living blissfully amongst the trees, bathing in clear lakes and flirting with bare breasted young women. Yup, I was a strange kid.

Well twenty-one years later, at the grand old age of 33, I am finally on my way to the Amazon where I will spend the best part of a month living with the Shuar people in Ecuador.

This is the latest part of my travels. I left London Heathrow on Saturday morning and spent five hours in Toronto before boarding a connecting flight to Mexico. My time in Toronto was too short for me to form any impressions of the city, but I will return in late February, on the way back to the UK, which will give me a chance to explore Toronto and give me a taste for Canada.

I arrived in Mexico City at half past eleven in the evening on Saturday night where I was met by my friend Cesar, from my days in York, who remains one of the nicest people I have ever met.

Yesterday I spent a very nice day in his car and his company, exploring the sprawling megalopolis that is Mexico City, one of the biggest, most violent and most diverse cities on the planet.

We visited the ancient city of Teotihuacan, getting lost along the way, which gave me a chance to get a taste for the 'real' Mexico, as we passed through forgotten towns where old men in sombreros stood around, killing time and drinking beer.

We planned to visit a bull fight, but ran into some fajitas on the way, and arrived at the fight as everyone was packing and leaving.

I am not quite sure how I would have reacted to watching a bull fight, but very much regret that we were too late, as I would have liked to have experienced it just the once. I think that killing animals for sport is very cruel, and I may well have been the only person there cheering for the bull, but I would have liked to have watched it once nonetheless.

As we were late for the bullfight, we visited a restaurant instead, where I tucked into some dead cow, so it wasn't all in vain.

In a few hours time I return to Mexico City airport where I board a flight that will take me to Ecuador in South America, where I will stay in the capital, Quito, for four days before heading to meet the Shuar on Thursday. You wonder why I visited Toronto and why I am currently in Mexico if I am visiting the Amazon rainforest. Well, it was simply the cheapest way of doing it.

A round trip ticket from the UK to Ecuador costs around £600, but I was able to find a return flight from the UK to Mexico for £299 (sometimes it pays to spend ten hours searching Google) and flying from Mexico to Ecuador costs just £230, albeit with a dodgy Panama airline, known for losing the occasional plane.

It also gave me the opportunity to meet Cesar again (before he visits me in Belarus in April) and spend a bit of time in Mexico.

I will return to Mexico City for two days in late February, before heading briefly to Toronto and then returning to the UK. I travel to Belgium the following day and visit Belarus a few days after that.

I think that I have learned a very important lesson in the past few months, and my time in the Ukraine has been a big factor in that. What I have learned is that life doesn't have to be about problems or suffering, life can be wonderful too, if only you let it.

True, for some people life can be very difficult, if you are terminally ill for example, and we live in a horrific world, but still, life can be lived to the full, if you don't let the bastards get you down.

With this in mind, I am leaving my hotel in Mexico City shortly and putting my faith in Panama aviation, hoping that I will make it safely to Quito in Ecuador.

Tomorrow I have five hours of Spanish lessons, followed by four on Wednesday, and then on Thursday comes the most difficult part of my journey, when I leave Quito and board a bus that will take me to a province from where I must make my way into the Amazon and to the Arutam Rainforest Reserve where I will meet the Shuar people.

The Shuar were once regarded as the most fiercesome people in the Amazon and were known for shrinking the heads of their enemies. Today they are much nicer though.

I will spend the best part of a month living with the Shuar, helping them farm their food, teaching the kids English, helping the men hunt and learning how to make wooden baskets. I will visit other tribes who live deeper in the rainforest.

I only hope that on Thursday the Indians are expecting me and they don't take one look at this unshaven Englishman, who will at that point speak about three words of Spanish, and say to each other: "We don't understand a word this man's saying. Let's eat him."

Providing that doesn't happen, and providing I make it there and back in one piece, I will write to you again from Ecuador in mid February to let you know how things went. If you don't hear from me again, you can guess that things did not go well.

Until next time, if there is one, take care.

Thanks for reading this.

Take care, Cesar.

From the memory box of a Professional Englishman.

Reflections from Riga

Before I start, I must apologise for the fact that this entry is two years late.

I first intended to write a blog entry from Latvia, entitled Reflections from Riga, a couple of years ago, during one of my first visits to this tiny country.

However, then, and on each visit since, I haven't been able to find the time to share my thoughts on this little corner of the world.

That will change today.

When I first thought about writing this entry, all those years ago, I had no idea that some of those reflections would eventually come from a police cell in Riga, in which I found myself after being arrested a few days ago. But we'll get to that in a moment.

To truly understand why I was arrested, you need to first understand something about the Latvian people. That is, the Latvian people are like the weather.

By that, I don't mean that they have lots of dandruff (snow) though well they might, nor do I mean that they urinate a lot (rain), and I don't mean that that they have copious amounts of intestinal gas (wind) though I am sure that they do, what I mean is that the Latvian people are generally very cold.

And incredibly rude.

Take for example my experiences in an Internet cafe in Riga I have been using for years. Never once have the people who work there said hello to me or thanked me.

And this is not confined to Internet cafes. Again and again, every day, I am struck by the rudeness of the Latvian people. I am not hoping for a fake smile - something I would find in the UK - just a bit of common courtesy and an acknowledgement that I exist.

I realise that Latvia's past is a tortured one. They suffered through WWII and years of Soviet rule, but so did the Belorussians, and the Ukrainians, and they are not as rude as this.

It was this rudeness that led to my arrest.

To cut a short story long, I was in the Old Town a few days ago and I visited a restaurant called Steiku Haoss (no need to mention what was on the menu in that establishment).

I settled down and began tucking into my dead cow, and asked the waitress how much a Diet Coke cost. She told me she didn't know. So I started to look through the menu for the price, only to have the waitress snatch the menu from my hand and go through its pages.

I hated that. But I ordered a Diet Coke. Ten minutes passed and I didn't see my Diet Coke. I asked to see the manager. He never came. Then when I asked a young waitress where he was, the quick, rude and typically abrupt Latvian reply I got was a step too far.

I freaked out. I lost my appetite. I put my coat on, found the manager, shouted that the service was absolutely terrible and refused to pay for my meal.

But then, instead of leaving, I argued my case with the manager and tried to explain how awful his staff were. He threatened to call the police, and then suggested that I did this in every restaurant.

That REALLY got my goat.

So I told him to go ahead and call the police.

I sat down and waited for the police to arrive. Twenty minutes later they came, two of them, in a tiny little police car to match this tiny little country.

The manager gave me an ultimatum. Pay the bill in full or the police would arrest me and take me to a police station and I would have to pay the bill there.

I offered to pay for the food I had eaten, but as it was his staff's rudeness that had made me lose my appetite, I refused to pay for the entire bill.

So I was arrested.

The police took me in their tiny little car to a tiny little police station where a very big police officer was waiting for me. On the way there, I was wondering to myself what had I done, half expecting to be beaten to within an inch of my life.

But I wasn't going to pay the bill.

The police were actually very nice. I spent a total of about eight minutes in the police station. They took a photocopy of my passport and told me that the restaurant couldn't get me to pay unless they took legal action against me, and as I am heading to Belarus tomorrow morning, let them come and try.

So I didn't pay the bill.

It was a very petty event, a very small thing, not exactly hanging off a cliff in the Ukraine, and I admit I overreacted. I should have just got up and left, or enjoyed my meal and then refused any service charge, but rude, nasty people really get to me.

The thing was, before I lost my appetite, I was really enjoying that steak! It was bloody gorgeous! I was tempted to return to the Steiku Haoss - how hilarious would that have been!

As I passed the restaurant the following day, by pure chance, I saw the manager leaving. He pretended not to see me.

So that was the story of my arrest.

But my problems with the Latvian people did not end there, I am sad to say. Just yesterday I was coming out of another restaurant in the Old Town and a stupid young man very deliberately shoved into me.

I think it was my bright white coat and hat that made me a target - perhaps he thought I was a snowman come to life and he wanted to see if I was real. He shoved me so hard that I thought at first he had stabbed me and I immediately looked down at my chest.

When I shouted and asked why he did that, he muttered something in Latvian, gave me the finger and went on his way. I was so angry I could spit, and though I am no fighter, I had to restrain myself from just running after him and rugby tackling him to the ground.

And these have been my reflections from Riga.

No doubt I will return here, as it's a cheap and convenient stepping stone to Belarus, but I will not do so with any sense of eagerness. In a few weeks time Latvia hosts the next NATO summit and just over two dozen world leaders will pour into Riga. Amongst them will be the mass murdering war leader George W. Bush, for whom the entire Old Town was closed off during his last visit in May.

Let's just hope he pays a visit to Steiku Haoss and gets the same waitress who served me.

As for me, tomorrow morning I trudge through the snow and the slush, in my white coat and hat, as I make my way to the local bus station to find a Soviet era bus that will take me to Minsk, where I will arrive early tomorrow evening.

Until then, it's time to leave these cold Latvians to their weather.

Goodbye from Riga.

From the memory box of a Professional Englishman.

Kisses from Kiev

First Kiss

Upon my right hand and scattered across parts of my body are a number of mosquito bites.

The bites don't itch anymore and they are gradually disappearing, as my body recovers from being a six foot buffet for these annoying little creatures, but when these bites are gone for good, I will feel a little sad, as these bites are all I have left to remind me of a time and a place I am leaving behind forever.

Today it's one month since I left the United Kingdom. Without a doubt, this has been a bizarre month, even by my standards.

The last thirty days have seen me fly from the UK to Riga and then on to Simferopol in the Crimea, where I spent five days lying on the beach and eating in restaurants with Emily, before getting stuck on a cliff and being rescued by a man named Dima.

A few days after my adventure with ants and lightening came to an end, I left the Crimea and travelled by bus to a small provincial city in the Ukraine called Berdyansk.

There I took part in a two week project aimed at educating young people about gender issues. I was one of a number of volunteers, from the UK, USA, Northern Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland and Italy.

We stayed in a camp together next to the Sea of Azov and visited a number of local universities and schools and prepared workshops and led discussions about gender issues in the Ukraine.

I found myself doing things that I thought I would never do, like facilitating presentations, and speaking to classes full of Ukrainian students. It was a very nice, very good experience and one that I enjoyed immensely.

It is hard for me to believe that only five days have passed since I left Berdyansk. I find myself missing the other volunteers much more than I thought I would, even the people I didn't speak to often.

This surprises me a great deal. My experiences with Westerners are generally not positive, and it is difficult for me to be in the West because of British and American foreign policy.

Last year I had a terrible time when I took part in a project with paraplegics in Slovenia and met four female volunteers, four nasty, sex obsessed harpies, who spent most of their time gossipping about me and doing all they could to make my life unpleasant.

Because of that I was unsure about taking part in another project and really didn't know if I would go to Berdyansk, right up until the day before the project began, but today I am very glad that I did.

With the exception of the project in Slovenia - which was a great work camp but was spoiled by those nasty imps - the people I meet on these projects are very different to the couch loving, TV obsessed, general population who work in offices or stack shelves in supermarkets or clean toilets for a living.

Volunteers who take part in international work camps are - most of the time - interesting people, with ambitions which stretch beyond planning their next holiday lying on a beach in Spain.

The project in Berdyansk was no exception.

I met some of the finest people I have met on a work camp. Laura, Miriam, Fiona, Sybil, Celine, Wyatt, Davide, Karen... shy people, ready to take a risk and try something new, each venturing into the unknown with just a backpack and no idea of what to expect.

The time I spent with these people, and the camp leaders, Olga and Anna, and many of the students we met can be summed up in a single word: Lovely.

How nice it was to avoid the back stabbing and nastiness. How strange that the person I communicated with the most was an English girl. My problems with the fairer sex in my home country are well documented in my emails, but Laura, a young English lass, was simply a lovely, sweet and kind person. A rare find.

I miss her and all of the volunteers, especially first thing in the morning, when I wake up and realise that now I am alone.

My time in Berdyansk has given me another gift box of memories to add to my collection for me to take out and cherish in years to come.

From drinking vodka while sitting in a small wooden boat on a beach to numerous restaurant visits, from one of the strangest nightclubs I have ever seen to encountering Peter, a crazy student, destined to be a dictator in later life. ("No, no, no!").

If I had to think of a single highlight of my time in Berdyansk, it would have to be the afternoon that myself and a handful of volunteers and students took a ride on an inflatable banana boat.

This basically involved being pulled across the Sea of Azov (the shallowest sea in the world, fact fans) by a speed boat. We skimmed the sea at break neck speed, before being thrown off.

In total we were thrown off three times.

It was exhilarating and scary as hell, but it was also very wonderful and very funny, and I loved every minute of it. How sad I feel now writing these words, now that those moments are memories, and those people have become a part of my past.

Last Kiss

On Saturday I boarded a train to Kiev, leaving Berdyansk behind.

I shared a compartment with Davide, an Italian boy who was leaving the same day. How glad I was for the company, as it saved me the loneliness of a 17 hour train ride to the capital. We ate potato together and passed our time speaking, smiling and sleeping.

On Sunday we arrived at our destination and I was met at the train station by Emily who was joining me in Kiev for two days. At the station I said goodbye to Davide and came close to shedding a tear, spared only by the dim hope that one day we will meet again.

Shortly after Davide left, Emily and I were met by a Ukrainian woman. She was the landlady of a flat I was renting for our time in the capital. She showed us to the flat and left me to take my first hot shower in over two weeks and to go to the toilet alone in peace. My return to civilisation was complete when I plonked myself in front of the TV and watched a few minutes of BBC World.

Emily and I spent the next two days exploring Kiev together. The city was very different than I had imagined. Very westernised, almost like a European city, and nothing like Minsk, it's Soviet neighbour.

Despite still being quite a closed country, the Ukraine boasts a bustling and thriving capital, both expensive and ultra cheap, with super wide streets, plenty of Soviet architecture, and plenty of shopping malls, McDonald's restaurants and Starbucks cafes.

Despite the Westernisation, I liked Kiev a great deal and enjoyed the two days I spent there.

The Ukraine is the biggest country in Europe (if you ignore Russia) and Kiev is a worthy capital. While we were in Kiev, Emily and I visited the Caves Monastery. Kiev's most famous attraction, the Caves Monastery is a labyrinth of caves and tunnels.

It was interesting enough, but when Emily had to wear a head dress to get inside, and when we saw the body of a child wrapped in cloth and on display in a glass coffin, along with a dozen other poor souls, it reminded me of just how much I dislike religion.

Religion played a part in the invasion of Iraq (though of course oil was the main motivating factor). It also played a part in the bombing of Lebanon, where Israel concentrated a great deal of its bombing in mostly Christian areas.

Millions have died because of something that, if you look at it with an open mind, seems preposterous.

Two hundred years ago we were burning witches at the stake. Religion was created by man thousands of years ago and yet people still cling to these beliefs. I am going off the subject here, so I will save that story for another time and another blog entry.

Despite the Caves Monastery leaving an unpleasant taste in my mouth, I enjoyed Kiev, and will return.

Emily left the Ukraine on Tuesday and returned to Belarus. Before she left, we met up with Laura and Karen for a few hours and ate borsch together (a lovely beetroot soup, the national Ukrainian dish).

Now we have left the Ukraine behind. I am currently making my way to Lithuania, which I will use as a stepping stone to get to Belarus.

More adventures await me in Minsk and beyond. But nothing I experience in that mixed-up and Soviet playground will compare to my time in the Ukraine.

There will be no banana boat rides or drinking vodka while sitting in a small wooden boat. No crazy nightclub visits. No reflection groups or discussions.

My month in the Ukraine, both terrible and wonderful, is over now.

I did not take a camera with me and so did not take a single photograph. I have nothing to show that I was ever there, nothing to remind me of the people I met, nothing but memories and these rapidly fading mosquito bites.

And when these reddish souvenirs, these tiny kisses, are gone forever, my time in Berdyansk will truly be consigned to history.

The people I spent time with, and laughed with, and drank with, will, for me, remain only in my memories. I will never see those people again. We have all left for different places and different people, now that our time together is at an end, and life is moving on.

Take care all.

I will miss you.

From the memory box of a Professional Englishman.

Crisis in the Crimea

This is an entry I thought I would never get to write.

I thought about writing this blog entry, even constructing sentences and the odd paragraph in my head, but I was certain that it would forever remain unwritten, as I was sure I would never see a computer again.

Everything you are about to read is true. It all really happened, a little over five days ago.

My story begins at 7pm on Monday 28th August 2006. I was walking across a path leading through the hills and cliffs of Balaklava, a small town in the Crimea in the Ukraine, bordering the Black Sea.

I arrived in the Ukraine on Tuesday 22nd. The same day that I flew in, a severe thunderstorm gripped parts of the country and brought down a Russian airliner near the Ukrainian city of Donetsk.

All 170 people on board were killed.

I considered this to be a near miss. My own flight from Riga in Latvia to Simferopol in the Crimea was delayed for some hoursdue to a 'technical difficulty' and earlier in the day a plane crashed just a few hours from my destination. A lucky escape, I thought.

But my real lucky escape was yet to come.

So, I was walking across this path, admiring the view, picking my nose and minding my own business, when I slipped, fell off the path and landed on a ledge about seven foot below.

I dusted myself off, wiped the snot from my cheek and thought about climbing back up to the path. But it would have been difficult.

The way down looked easier, so I decided to climb down instead. It was my plan to make my way down to the ocean, change into the swimming trunks I was carrying in my backpack, place my clothes in my bag and swim around the cliffs until I made it to a nearby beach.

With this in mind I began my descent.

After about ten minutes of climbing, I realised that it was going to be more difficult than I had thought. What had started off as a steep slope was rapidly becoming a cliff face and many of the rocks I was using as footholds were loose.

There were two moments as I climbed that I was paralysed with fear. I was holding onto the rock and simply couldn't find anywhere to put my feet. I was afraid that my next move would send me tumbling down into oblivion. Going back up was now going to be extremely difficult, and I figured I didn't have far to go, so I continued my perilous descent.

Two hours later I was still climbing. And now it was beginning to get dark. I got to the point where I couldn't climb anymore and so I came to a stop on a ledge next to a small branch jutting out of the rock.

I realised then that I was stuck. I was stuck on a cliff in the Crimea and nobody knew I was there. Then I remembered that I was carrying my mobile phone in my backpack.

Unfortunately, I had no credit, and couldn't connect to anyone, either in the UK or the Ukraine, other than the Ukrainian emergency services. Worse still, no one could connect to me either.

After being put on hold and being forced and listen to awful Ukrainian music, which I thought would be the last music I ever heard, I got through to a woman who spoke English relatively well.

I explained my predicament, but she was having difficulty understanding the meaning of the word "cliff" and when she asked me where I was, all I could say was I was on a cliff in Balaklava, and there are dozens, perhaps hundreds of cliffs in Balaklava.

I convinced her to call Emily in Belarus. Emily had been with me in the Crimea until Sunday. I was able to pass details of my location to Emily via this woman. Convinced I would now be saved, I settled down beneath my little tree and waited for morning.

Around about midnight I watched as a storm began to form miles out to sea. Two sheets of lightning lit up the night sky. One, to my right, forked across the sky while the other, directly ahead of me, was a simple, single bolt which kept striking the sea.

The thunder, which had began as a low rumble, steadily grew louder, and I realised that the storm was headed right for me. Worse than that, the bizarre bolt of lightning was headed right for me too.

All I could do was wait.

The first drops of rain hit me an hour later. By 2am the storm was right above me. I found myself in the eyes of a storm like no other I had ever witnessed.

My little branch and I bore the full brunt of Nature's rage. This was an ocean storm, born from the Black Sea, and I was hanging onto a cliff beneath a branch directly in its path.

For more than two hours I crouched there, drenched in sweat and rain water, a soaked towel covering my head, as the storm lashed the rocks around me.

The wind and rain began to loosen the rocks and every so often one would break free from the cliff and whizz past me before falling into the sea. The worst thing was that although the lightning was illuminating the cliff face every couple of seconds, I couldn't see the rocks. But I knew they were close.

There was one, that came within about fifteen feet of me, that must have been huge, because even over the storm I heard it come booming down the cliff, break in two and go crashing into the sea.

The cliffs in the Crimea are the most unstable I have ever seen. Erosion to the extreme. And the storm was weakening the cliff face ever more.

By about 4am the storm had began to move off towards Balaklava. It seemed that my prayers had been answered. I had not been fried and my little tree had not burst into flames. The closest that strange bolt of lightening had come to me was about 60 feet.

That might seem like quite a distance, but it was enough for me to be blinded for a second, a bolt of blue seared across my mind, and enough for me to shout "Fuck!" at the top of my lungs!

So, I was thanking my lucky stars that I had not been barbecued, when shortly before 5am I watched in disbelief as another storm began to form a few miles out to sea.

I cursed my rotten luck.

With the exception of the storm that had brought down the Russian airliner a week earlier, there had been nothing but clear skys and calm seas for the past seven days. Now on the day I become acquainted with my little tree, Mother Nature decides to vent her fury.

I prayed that daylight would come before Storm No.2 made land. This was not to be. Fortunately however, the second time round it was not so bad. There was little thunder and the lightning was not quite so awful.

At about 6am the first signs of daylight started to poke through the clouds. I thanked the Lord for that.

Then at about 6.30am it started to rain. And rain. I tucked my t-shirt away in my backpack in a vain attempt to keep it dry and sat there, bare chested, as the Lord emptied His bladder upon me.

To get a feeling of what this was like, imagine taking a cold shower. For two hours. Now imagine that cold shower is on the edge of a cliff.

Eventually the rain stopped, but not before it had clouded over, and the lightning had made a very brief reappearance. Just to let me know it was still around.

By 10am on Tuesday morning the rocks (and my jeans) had almost dried off and I was ready to consider my options. Looking around, I was startled to see that beyond my branch was a sheer drop of about two hundred feet to the ocean below.

I understand that when people tell stories, especially death-defying stories, there is a temptation to embellish or exaggerate. But it is no exaggeration to say that I really was just a few foot away from being dashed to pieces and sprinkled over the Black Sea.

During the night I had taken some comfort from the fact that my little branch had some foliage attached which I took as a sign it had not been struck by lightning. Looking at it in the daytime, I realised that the inside of the bark was almost completely burnt out.

My branch had been hit by lightning. Quite recently.

To add insult to injury, the branch had since become home to an ants nest, and the ants were just waking up, and coming out to inspect this stranger who had taken up residence on their patio.

By 10.30am I had convinced myself I was not going to be rescued. Was anyone even looking for me? I had not received any texts and nobody could phone me because I could not receive calls.

So, I called the Ukrainian emergency services again and got through to an obnoxious young woman. After explaining my predicament to her, she offered to put me through to the police in Balaklava.

But the police in Balaklava do not speak English. Of that I was sure. So I asked her to pass on a message to them. She thanked me for calling and abruptly hung up. I called again. She hung up. And again. She hung up. I couldn't believe it.

The bitch left me to die.

So, at 10.35am I began climbing back up the way I had came. I tied my towel to my little tree, to give me something to cling on to in case I came sliding back down and missed my branch. Slowly, and ever so cautiously, I began my ascent, climbing parallel to the branch.

It was terrifying. Absolutely terrifying.

If I fell and couldn't grab that tree, I was dead. My throat was dry. I would have been perspiring but I had nothing left to perspire.

After an hour, I realised I could climb no further. The rocks were too loose. I put my foot on one boulder, about half my size, to test it, only for it to break free, covering my face in dust, and tumble down the cliff, splitting in two, missing my little tree by about a foot.

I was clinging onto the cliff, considering my next move, when I felt a single drop of rain on my forehead. I turned to face the sea and what I saw filled me with dread.

There, coming towards me, was a wall of rain. I had perhaps a minute before it hit land and I was washed away. I had no time to get back to my little tree. To my right was a narrow shelf in the rock with a stone jutting out beneath it. There was no time to test it. I made the decision to leap and grab the rock.

If it was loose, like so many others, I would plunge to my death. I jumped. The rock held. I pulled myself into the shelf and moments later the rain hit.

I got completely drenched. That was the very worst moment for me. Lying there, on that narrow shelf, in a puddle of water. I was up so high and all I could see was ocean. It was a very depressing moment.

I lay there for half an hour until the rain came to a stop and then lay there a while longer to give the rocks a little time to dry. Then I made my way back down to my little tree.

By this time it was midday on Tuesday and the sun made its first appearance of the day. I decided that the best course of action for me to take was to simply wait for a boat to pass.

I was too high to be seen, but had found the remains of an old beer bottle, and planned to use it to reflect the suns rays and catch someones attention. On any given day, dozens of boats passed this cliff, taking eager Ukrainians to the beach.

So I watched. And waited.

That's when the wind, which had been quite strong up until then, really picked up. It started blowing a gale. The Black Sea, which until that day had been this peaceful, serene and beautiful thing, became a raging monster. The biggest waves I have seen crashed into the cliff below me with terrifying ferocity.

The ants retreated. My little tree shook and swayed. I held on for dear life. The hours passed and I didn't see a single boat. Not one. The sea was just too damn rough, even for fishing boats.

By four o'clock in the afternoon I was starting to feel the effects of dehydration. I was dreaming of shashlik (a Georgian invention, meat on a stick. Love it) and a cold glass of Diet Coke.

All the while this was going on, my bodily functions were going into overdrive. I was burping and farting away. I thought it quite bizarre that my organs were continuing to function normally, blissfully unaware that they might soon be littering the cliffs of the Crimea.

I needed to open my bowels in a big way. It had been 30 hours since my last meal, and it wanted out. With one hand clutching the tree, I did my business, instinctively attempting to look around to make sure no one was watching. Funny, because if somebody had been watching, it would have been wonderful!

By the time I was finished, the sturgeon I had eaten a day earlier proceeded to roll off the ledge and returned to whence it came.

By this point I had accepted that it was more likely that I would die on this cliff than be rescued. I started to think about the futility of my situation and how stupid I had been. I didn't want to die here, in this lonely spot, only to be found months or years later, an old skeleton wearing Versace jeans.

I thought about jumping from the cliff. I thought that perhaps I could escape with a few broken bones. Looking back now, in the cold light of day, I realise that I would not simply have broken a few bones. It was more likely that my spine would have been ripped out or my head cracked open as I bounced from rock to rock.

Another option was simply to stay there, next to my little tree, and allow myself to die of thirst. As the hours went by, that seemed like an ever more appealing option.

Instead, I decided to set my sights on a ledge about thirty foot above me. It was wider than my ledge. I had even seen some grass on it. It was the penthouse of ledges compared to my bedsit ledge. The ledge became the Promised Land and I set my sights on reaching it once the gale had died down.

I continued to take shelter beneath my little tree when, quite suddenly, I was jolted out of my thoughts by the sound of a man calling my name. I looked up and saw three concerned faces, looking down at me from my penthouse ledge.

The name of the man who rescued me was Dima.

He brought fifteen colleagues with him. It would have been impossible for me to remember all their names, and so I resolved to remember just one, the name of the man who reached me first.

My rescuers were all very kind, very polite and very professional, despite carrying old, Soviet equipment with them. They came down from an angle, so as not to send rocks crashing my way.

A safety belt was tied to my waist. A helmet was shoved on my head. I was given a piece of rope to cling to. And then Dima and I and two of his colleagues all climbed the cliff together.

As we made our way to the top, rocks continued to break free, plunging into the ocean below. I understood then that had I not been rescued I would have died on that cliff. I would not have made it back to the top. The rocks were too loose, the cliff too steep.

I would have joined the boulders and remains of the sturgeon I had eaten a day earlier at the bottom of the Black Sea.

After giving me water and coffee, my rescue team took me to a local fire station (with two fantastic Soviet fire trucks outside) and I was given a bed. Everyone was very nice. They all wanted to shake my hand, they took lots of photos and someone even produced a video camera.

On the walls of the fire station were two pictures of a forest and one poster of a little girl holding a dog. I remember thinking how nice that was. Visit any fire station in the UK and all you'd see is tits and arses.

After a short rest and about fifteen minutes of saying thank you, I was driven back to my hostel by one of the firemen.

Once there I had a wonderful hot shower. It was incredible, the best I have had. I attempted to wash the stones, dust, dirt and crap from my hair. After that I was given a meal by one of the women who works at the hostel. It consisted of a boiled egg, a piece of bread topped with ham, and a tomato. Shortly afterwards, Emily's Aunt visited me and brought me some bread rolls.

A little later, after telephoning my Mum and Emily, I visited a local restaurant where I was finally able to live my dream - I ordered hot shashlik and an ice cold glass of Diet Coke.

Then it was back to the hostel. By 11pm on Tuesday night I was exhausted, I had aches in places where I didn't know I had places, and it was time for me to sleep, which I did, for about eleven hours.

I found out the next day that a Ukrainian rescue team began looking for me at 8pm on Monday evening.

The search was later abandoned due to the storm, which was so bad that it had uprooted trees. Early the next morning the search began again and two more rescue teams joined in.

Emily had spent the night worrying and crying. She had called my Mother and she too, along with my sister, had spent the night worrying and crying. Emily also contacted her Mother and her Aunt in the Crimea and they spent the night worrying and crying, along with Emily's uncle, who spent the night worrying but not crying.

A great deal of pressure was put on the Ukrainian emergency services, and this was why so many teams joined the search, and perhaps why it had only taken about 24 hours to find me.

Today I am a very minor local celebrity.

There is a story about me in the local paper. They spelt my name wrong and they have written that I fell 30 metres, but still, the bulk of the story is true.

Now that the experience is over and I have escaped almost unscathed, I do not regret that it happened. (I say almost unscathed, because this morning I woke up with two very long white hairs on my head. I hope this is not a sign of things to come).

What happened on that cliff has given me a benchmark, an experience so awful that I can compare it to lesser events in my life and suddenly they don't seem so bad.

I often have problems with people. Shortly before I came here, I had my mail stolen in the UK and I was threatened, but it all pales into comparison next to the 24 hours I spent on that cliff.

The Englishman Who Fell Down a Hill and Found A Mountain.

A few hours ago I returned close to the spot where I spent my 24 hours in hell. It was important for me to return. Venturing down a little, I was even able to make out my branch, way down below.

So, on my very last day in Balaklava, I leave here a little stronger. I also leave a towel, tied to a branch, on a ledge, on a cliff in the Crimea, not far from where I write to you now.

Take care. And thanks for reading this.