Home Archive by category "The Americas"

Category: The Americas

Love Latin music? Don’t go to Latin America

I’m sure most of you would recognise Latin music when you hear it, even though you might have trouble describing it. “Sounds like salsa”, you might say before some pedant informs you, “actually this is merengue”. Terms like bossa nova and rumba float indefinably in the public consciousness, with echoes of plastic buttons on the rhythm options on cheap, 1970’s electric organs. At least for old farts like me. Maybe these days it comes as a largely ignored, free sample…

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El Salvador’s suicidal bus service

I think it’s fair to say that I’m better qualified than many to know what dangerous public transport really is. I’ve been hurtled the wrong way down a motorway against the oncoming traffic, protected only by the driver blaring his horn. I’ve been flung around whilst overtaking on blind bends over a precipice while the driver talks on his phone. I’ve shot past the flashing lights and wailing siren of an ambulance speeding its way to an accident, because our…

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A traveler’s view on cultural appropriation

Cultural appropriation – taking intellectual property, traditional knowledge, cultural expressions, or artifacts from someone else’s culture without permission. Let me tell you a story… Sitting at a cafe in Medellin, Colombia, I was eating the classic Italian dish of Lasagna, accompanied by salad and a croissant, typically French but actually Austrian in origin, although in all likelihood copied from an Egyptian pastry dating back to ancient times. A French cultural organisation was promoting a day of free music so I…

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In search of the shit things about Colombia

No doubt you’ve all heard wonderful things about Colombia, so there’s no point in me repeating them all here is there? So, at great effort and minimal  expense I made an intrepid search to discover all the rubbish bits about the country that other blogs won’t tell you about. The tragic failings of paper tissues   Whoever it was in the Colombian, paper serviette design department, they didn’t get the message that the whole point of the object is to remove…

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The secret of a great hostel

With the internet’s wonderful ability to distribute our opinions to all and sundry, no matter how ill informed or deluded we may be, maintaining a truly shit hostel has become an almost impossible task. Try hiring a sex pest to work behind the desk or cultivate a family of cockroaches in the bathroom and you’ll tend to find your establishment slipping down the rankings on hostelworld.com fairly quickly. Back in the halcyon days, before even the Lonely Planet had written…

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Telegraph pole art in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

Street art with a difference in the Dominican Republic. Once in a while, whilst wandering city streets around the world you come across a great creative idea that could be transplanted almost anywhere to brighten up a cityscape. The decorated buildings of Tirana in Albania or the Soviet apartment blocks of Central Asia were two such examples.  Santo Domingo has used a different canvas: telegraph poles. Few would claim that concrete poles or creoste soaked wooden ones do much to…

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Jamaica and why I’m never going back

Failing to understand Jamaica and why I’m never going back.   Originally this was going to be a story of my regret at failing to gain a real understanding of Jamaican life but by the time came to leave, regret had descended into really not giving a fuck at all. So here’s my new story of trying to understand Jamaica. The first hurdle in trying to understand Jamaica is language. If you only looked around you this would seem like a…

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Bacchanalian delights of Carnival, Trinidad

Celebrating Carnival in Trinidad    In much of the English-speaking world, the term Bacchanalia has been largely abandoned to the classics and literary references. However in Trinidad the spirit of the Roman cult’s frenzied celebration of Bacchus, the god of wine, freedom, intoxication and ecstasy, has been embraced in popular culture. Although modern carnivals in general are Christian in origin, a final indulgence before the abstinence of Lent, the pagan roots are brought to the fore in Trinidad. Bacchanale is a…

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The Beauty of Bolivian Buses

The city of Cochabamba in Bolivia decided to make public transport a lot more visually stimulating for its people by splashing a load of colourful paintwork all over its buses. You have to wonder why more places don’t try something similar as its a great advert for the place and helps liven up the daily commute.   Using some traditional design ideas brought up to date with modern stylings, the buses are highly distinctive but each driver has added their…

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Cholitas and Bolivia’s colonial hangover

Think of an image of Bolivia. Would it be those women with the bowler hats by any chance? How about its famous, sweater wearing president Evo Morales? The bowler hats make for an iconic image, because of course we recognise them as our own culture implanted into an alien environment. The president’s sweater, proudly worn as a testament to his indigenous heritage, is however, only marginally less of an import: it may be made from local alpaca wool but needles…

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