Rarer than a Congo Bay Owl...

Apologies for so few posts lately, but due to the incidents related in the last post (in short, most of my valuable being stolen, I am not online that often. And when I am, i find it very diffcult to punctuate with the baffling Spanish keyboard layout. Really, what nation thinks you should hit ctrl alt 6 then 4 to make the @ symbol? Tis as mad a policy as anything Zimbabwean.

So my posts will be few, but may pick up next month when to complete Book 3 I will get around to acquiring a new laptop...

Feeling like a fool

After nearly twenty years of travel, six continents and thirty five countries I have been held up at gunpoint, knifepoint, and 'goodness there are a lot of you aren't there?'point. But only on three prior occasions has some cowardly bugger delved into my belongings and stolen from me. Namibia, Thailand and Malawi, welcome Ecuador to your little hall of shame.

What makes me feel stupid is that it is one of the oldest tricks in the book - someone posing as a bus company official came on board, asked to see my ticket then 'helped' putting my bag overhead. I planned on pulling it straight back down the moment he wasn't looking, and did so, but by then my laptop, camera, and three day old binoculars were already gone. He left a copy of Dickens though, which is nice for me but shows he has no appreciation of finer things.

I'm more angry with myself than I am with him, and after a morning spent in an Ecuadorian police station realise that far worse things can happen to you than a little pilfering.

Still, I'd really like my photos back...

Dead crush

Some crushes you grow out of (Debbie Harry, what happened to you?), others just fade away - sometimes you get slapped out of one.

Elle MacPherson fuelled many an unlikely scenario in my pubescent years, but after she has casually admitted to taking rhino horn (and taking it regularly), she now repulses me. I hope she goes to jail for this, and hope the people she buys it from do to.