So, my job at an optical place will pay for half of my schooling to take an Optician’s course.  In Canada a license is required to be an Optician, so I would be graduating with an Optician’s license (not a degree). While it’s been an option for as long as I’ve been working there (and I could have already started! Arg!) I hadn’t really given it much serious thought. Well, one of my co-workers and I got to chatting about it and it actually does sound like a pretty perfect opportunity for someone in my position. “Someone in my position” I guess meaning someone who’s got giant plans that will require a lot of money, and average-ish job experience to back them up.

Allow me to also point out that an Optician is NOT the same as an Optometrist. An Optician is the Optometrist’s bitch. Or,

A licensed health care practitioner who makes, dispenses, fits, or sells eyeglasses and/or contact lenses, for remedying defects of vision in accordance with the prescriptions of ophthalmologists and optometrists.

So, it is more or less the equivalent of being a pharmacist for glasses only. Sorry guys, no drugs.

Let’s discuss.

Why I should do it:

- The course is cheap. Cheap to begin with, not including how much my employer will pay (half!)

- Once I become a student Optician, I get a raise. Once I am licensed, I get a raise.

- Money aside, this is actually something I really enjoy doing. No, I don’t want to do it for the rest of my life (I want to live on a self-sufficient farm in Colombia for the rest of my life, but still in el futuro). But, I absolutely love my job now and would be more than happy to carry on as a practicing Optician, and having it as a fallback job option. When I do eventually move to New Zealand, I’ll have increased my job opportunities tenfold.

- By staying here an extra two years, and with a raise, I’ll be able to save a shit-tonne of money and be able to go on a giant extravagant trip for like 5 years (including a year livin’ it up in New Zealand).

- I kind of snuck into this job. I sort of had a friend’s mom who used to work there tell me she thought it would be something I’d be really good at. She recommended me for the job, and I ended up getting it. It paid off, though! Anyways, you could say I snuck into this opportunity. That does not seem like the sort of opportunity that one should pass up.

- The course is only two years (or one and a half to fast track it, my plan). Also, it’s almost entirely practicum which means LITTLE TO NO homework! Perfect for a girl like me. I hate homework, and I could never commit to more than a year and a half of school.

- There are actually a lot of awesome charity programs I can become involved in as an Optician. You are required to be a licensed Optician to work with charities that dispense donated glasses around the world. It could be me!

- I can still go on some trips during this time frame. I don’t have to be 100% locked to Calgary the WHOLE while.

- After 2 years of living in a truck I both long for a brief period of being settled, and to be back living in my truck. But, it might be nice to move in somewhere and know I’ll be living there for a long time. You know, settle down a little bit. Temporarily, of course. Very temporarily.

- I will also have this time to beef up my shit in other ways. You know, like learn guitar, take a bar-tending course, learn Russian. All things I am actually wanting to do, by the way.

So let’s summarize: More money, cheap school, qualifications to carry on with me, getting paid more to do exactly what I’m doing right now, saving up cash, moving to New Zealand with better prospects, taking advantage of a really good opportunity, learning stuff!, more job experience to go along with it, possible sweet charitable work.

Why I shouldn’t do it:

- The idea of staying in Calgary for another two years is very, very unappealing.

- Boyfriend. Ok, I know it sounds silly, but he is not stoked on this plan. He was all set to roll out to New Zealand in the fall, and is not delighted at the thought of staying at the same job he’s at for another two years (or a similar job, or working much at all).

- I will be locked into a boring, monotonous routine! Yup, I won’t be able to take off whenever I like (because of SCHOOL) and I’ll be committed to staying at the same job for an extra two years! Same shit day in, day out for a set amount of time.

- I might go crazy staying in Calgary that long. I am already climbing the walls a little bit and looking forward to getting out of here.

- Don’t wanna do it until I’m 40.

Yeah yeah, so the pro’s outweigh the con’s by VOLUME, but how important is moving around freely with no commitments to me? I am an Aquarius, so pretty important. Buuuuuut, maybe it’s worth it? You know, to leave two years later with waaaay more money and something to back me up so I can take off for YEAARRS. But maybe I’ll go crazy in that time instead?

Fuck!

Luckily, I have until the fall to decide. I go to Cuba next month, and move out with my boyfriend April 1st. So, hopefully those things will influence my decision in one way or another and I can come to a happy conclusion that I’m excited about!

Somehow, crawling the walls - so to speak, has only started now. Sure, I’ve had brief moments where I get this dull ache in my gut like when I hear a Spanish song on the radio or something. But now I think the fun and gluttony and frivolousness of the past few months has worn off. It’s not fun anymore. I just wanna be sleeping in the back of my truck at some gas station with 40C heat, eating rice and beans, not speaking the language, wearing clothes that are literally falling off of me and full of holes, fighting cockroaches in my bed before sleeping, showering when the opportunity arises.

At some point, I guess, I began to immerse myself to some extent to the general lifestyle around me. Poor, hungry, unkempt. Arriving home and having the power and the ability to eat as much junk food as possible, buy new clothes, party with my friends, whatever, was like some kind of fairytale.

It’s not as fun anymore, though. I am back to feeling trapped and depressed and spoiled. I want to go back to being free, just driving all day and eating whatever I can find.

How can I summarize any of it? How can I describe things like washing maggots out of my clothes, going days with no running water or electricity, seeing someone get stabbed and bleed to death in the street, watching children beg with babies strapped to their back?

I feel nauseous, and at the same time the most bizarre sort of homesickness you could imagine. But yeah, I am really fucking homesick.

Somehow in the past few months things have gotten incredibly disgusting. I don’t really know how it happened, but it got to the point where cockroaches are now living in the truck. I think their Brazilian, but I’m not sure. All through Colombia we’ve been unable to give fellow travellers rides since the truck was waay too awful.

Alas, about a week ago Josh went on a 3 day hike with some fellow Canadians we met. While he was away I finally cleaned it out. It took 2 full days, and it was friggin gross. I bleached the bed sheets and everything

Anyways, gross.

Aaaand, after 2 full days of cleanin:

Sweet!

It was a good day. After that we were able to drive 3 people to Medellín!

Oh yeah, the transvestites. Bogota has more prostitutes and transvestites than I’ve ever seen before. Driving around a few days ago, Josh and I were trying (unsuccessfully) to get on to this major road and kept getting lost in the backstreets around it. Just a few blocks from where we’re staying we found a street where ALL the transvestites hang out. I say all, because I can’t imagine there could possibly be any more in existence than we saw. And they were definitely all men. Eventually we found our way onto the highway and drove across town to our destination. On our way back (in a very different part of town) we found where all the (mostly) female prostitutes hang out. The Colombian prostitutes where the most revealing scraps of clothes I have ever seen. Like they are seriously ONLY trying to cover the nips and the cooch.

Other than all the women and men of the night, Bogota is a bitchin’ city. It’s friggin cold at night and cool during the day, but it’s nice being able to wear a sweater again. The plaza Bolivar is beautiful and gigantic, and there are still people with loaded donkeys wandering around the city centre.

We’re skipping town tomorrow to head to coffee land, and I’m excited to get somewhere less peligroso. Bogota is fun, but it’s lame having to walk home checking over your shoulder every 2 minutes.

Colombia is certainly a country with its fair share of problems. In the latin American travel scene, two countries have pretty bad reputations for crime and overall dangerousness; Colombia and Venezuela. I certainly feel much safer here than in Venezuela. Colombia doesn’t even feel sketchy or unfriendly at all. Rather, it feels quite developed and peaceful. You wouldn’t even know there’s a war going on. That being said, I am visiting this country at a very good time. Alvaro Uribe (the prez of Colombia) seems to be at the height of his FARC eradication plans/hard line military leadership. If anyone’s been following the news in the past year or so, you’ll recall there were some major events concerning FARC. Their leader died last year, and a few other regional leaders were captured by military forces. Apparently FARC’s new leader has some pretty crazy plans he’s hoping to carry out in the next little while, mainly targeting urban centres. However, that times does not appear to be right now!

So far driving in Colombia (which has consisted of driving about 1000kms from the Venezuelan border to Bogota) has been very peaceful. There are military checkstops everywhere on the highways, and random soldiers just keeping watch with gigantic machine guns. Like HUUUUGE guns. We’ve found tonnes of very friendly mountain hotels where you can eat and sleep for $15, and they couldn’t feel any safer.

We’ve also visited some crazy beautiful colonial towns, and some freezing cold mountain villages.

So far the biggest danger we’ve been faced with is the aguardiente, aka “firewater”. I think you know what that means. It tastes like juice, goes down smooth, and has a high percentage of alcohol. You can buy aguardiente (and rum!) in tetra packs here. They even sell juice box sized portions.

Otherwise, what can I say about this place? The cuisine is decent (lot’s of rice, beans, and plantain) and they have the most delicious soft drink in the world (Colombiana) and people seem to shower with hot water. Also, everyone loves Henry.  I am in love.

Do you wanna hear a very tragic (and complicated) FML story?

Ok so, I arrived in Venezuela about a week ago. I had heard thatthere are two exchange rates for money here; the black market rate (5-6 bolivars to the dollar) and the “official rate” (2.25 bolivars to the dollar). Obviously banks use the official rate. So, on the Brazilian side of the border before coming in we attempted to withdraw cash to exchange in Venezuela and double our money (and make things affordable). We tried 2 out of 4 bank machines at a bank that doesn’t normally work for me. It didn’t work with my card.

We entered Venezuela. We went through immigration no problem, and moved on to customs (for the vehicle). It was here that we learned the state insurance that you are legally required to buy, is expensive. Why? They ONLY sell it by the year. THE YEAR. The total cost of one year’s insurance in Venezuela at the official rate? $338 CAD. The price at the black market rate? $100 CAD. SUCH A DIFFERENCE. We were obviously unable to do much about it, though so we proceeded to look for a bank machine to withdraw the cash. That’s what this post is all about. Long story short, we were stuck with no cash on the weekend having to wait until Monday for the banks to open so we could manually withdraw the cash.

Alas, Monday finally came around. We woke up early and headed straight for the bank around the corner. I should point out that we had 0 money left that day, and thus had to wait until after getting cash to eat.

After waiting in line forever at the first bank, we finally reached the teller who took one look at my visa/plus card and just said “no”. Totally uncool. We headed out for the next bank, about a block away. Luckily we didn’t have to wait in line too long there and they seemed to be able to do cash withdrawals on VISA cards. Thank Jesus! As the woman was in the midst of processing the transaction Josh had an obvious revelation that we should go back to Brazil, and see if the teller at the Brazilian bank could do a cash withdrawal. At that exact moment the teller came out with the visa receipt. I asked if it was too late to back out of the transaction, and she said it was already done and I had no choice but to sign. What a bitch.

We took the cash and got into the car feeling really stupid about what we’d just done. I tried to reassure Josh telling him that none of the bank machines at ‘Banco do Brasil’ have ever worked for me, and that the teller probably couldn’t withdrawal the cash anyways. We decided to check. We drove back to the border (all the while getting more and more suspicious looks from the military checkpoint lads) and went to the Brazilian bank. We’d got there right as it had closed for the day, and decided to give up. However, a woman inside the bank withdrawing cash seemed pretty eager to help us, and managed to get the security guard to come over so we could at least ask if they can do cash withdrawals on VISA cards. He just pointed at the bank machines and looked at us like we were idiots. It was at that moment the Brazilian woman pointed out that ONE of the FOUR machines had a little sign taped over it saying “foreign cards”.

Yes, the machine worked. We withdrew a whole bunch of cash and headed back to town to see if we could get the cash advance canceled or refunded at the other bank. This may sound like a lot of work, but I assure you it was the difference of about 500 dollars. At this point we were both delighted, and incredibly enraged at our own stupidity.

We proceeded to drive back to the bank, and beg them to cancel the VISA transaction to which they replied “No, we can’t. You can’t cancel VISA international charges.” Which is actually totally false (we called VISA international) and rather they just didn’t want to cancel the transaction. What jerks!

In the end we wasted an entire weekend (waiting for the banks to open totally unnecessarily), hundreds of dollars on crappy exchange rates, and lot’s more cash trying to call VISA and get some answers. And after all that, we had to go buy the ridiculously expensive insurance (remember, it’s only sold by the year).

So far, Venezuela’s only saving grace is the fact that it sells the world’s most inexpensive fuel. It’s a little less than a dollar to fill up the tank. No complaints there.

Oh, and one last and very important thing. Through all this commotion I learned that if you hand someone your VISA card, you have authorized them to make a transaction. Simple as that. And if you didn’t want to make that transaction? VISA won’t help you. When travelling in the future, I now know never to rely on VISA to help me out.

Oh, one problem. It’s Saturday, and it’s easter weekend. All the shit’s closed. OH, OTHER PROBLEM. I can’t leave this border town until I get money because in order to legally bring in my vehicle, I have to pay for the insurance and get the permit. HEY, WHAT’S THIS? The insurance office doesn’t take VISA! No way! What fun!

At least I still have a few Brazilian Reals left.

Oh, and one last thing. The “official” rate (aka the rate which you get when you withdraw cash from the machine) is worth half what the black market rate is. And when you are out buying and spending, everything is priced at the black market rate. Which means by coming into the country without a tonne of foreign currency, everything is going to cost twice as much and be really expensive.

For example, car insurance purchased at the black market rate? $100. Car insurance purchased at the “official” rate? $200.

In conclusion, we have to try and get cash sent to us Western Union, only because we can’t use the ATMs. Again…

How the hell do currencies end up having two values, anyways??

“Soup.”

“Oh. What kind of soup?”

“Chicken…

“I like chicken soup!”

… foot. And cow’s tail”

The highway to Georgetown

We arrived in Guyana, today and headed straight for Georgetown. Guyana is a weird looking country. Oh, and everyone speaks English.

First of all, just about all of the buildings are on stilts, and most of them are sporting some pretty trippy designs/colours. All these houses look more or less the same, and they all line the highway (almost) constantly along the 200km stretch to Georgetown.

Secondly, there is livestock ALL over the highway. I have seen my fare share of cattle on the road, but not like this. People with small homes and no land own farm animals, and leave them to wander all over the road since they’ve seriously got nowhere else to put them. Ridiculous.

Thirdly, there are these really weird boxy cars here. When we first arrived literally EVERYONE was driving them. They look like pretty crappy construction and I can only assume they are super cheap. Maybe a build-your-own kinda deal?

Anyways, we lucked out by meeting a very helpful and lovely chap who took us for lunch and got us a sweet deal on accomodation. So, I am going back to enjoying my lavish digs now.

Delicious battered banana with peanut sauce

So, we’re in Suriname. In Suriname, as it turns out, there are a lot of immigrants - namely from Indonesia and India. Because of this we’ve had the chance to eat some lovely foreign fare (although I guess technically everything we’ve been eating for the past year and a half is foreign to us) and discover new delights. My favourite new delight is the baka bana.  Apparently this literally beans “baked banana”, and all the Dutch tourists we’ve met ensure me it is not fried, as it tastes, but indeed baked. When you order a baka bana you get one greasy battered banana, and plenty of spicy peanut sauce to dip it in. I don’t know why the peanut sauce is so special in Suriname, but it is sooo much better than regular peanut sauce, and sooo much different.

I told my sister about the amazingness that is baka bana, and she wanted recipes. So, I looked up a bunch. Upon doing so I found gazillion of baka bana recipe sites that all instruct you to fry the banana. I knew it. The Dutch are lying bastards. (Just kidding!)

In case you’re at all interested in eating this magical banana sensation (although it’s not the same without the proper peanut sauce) here is a recipe.

I was only able to find one ok-ish recipe for peanut sauce on the internet, and it is here. If anyone you know has a better recipe, please tell me. I  think for that particular one you might wanna ditch the “liquid red pepper” and substitute real chili peppers. Don’t be a wimp.