Scotland

Every time I come here it astonishes me once again how incredibly bleak this country is. Over the course of the past year I made a dozen trips up here. The highest temperature I ever observed in Aberdeen was 12, and that was in July. The hotel still had the heat on. Many of my travels take me to small , random provincial cities (Perth, Stirling, Inverurie) that always seem to require l

engthy travel for often very brief meetings. One of the frustrating things about provincial Scotland is that you always need a cab to get around. The trains don’t always go to all the places, and even if they do, once you get there, there is no public transport to get around, certainly not to industrial states on the outskirts of towns. going over my expenses this evening, I calculate I have spent over 150 pounds on cab fares, and that is fairly typical for a day trip to Scotland. Add on my food and drink expenses and it has been a pricey day. The other reason for needing to take cabs is that the weather makes other forms of transit unreliable. In my year of traveling here, I have had every sort of natural

disaster strike (Icelandic ash clouds, fog, blizzards, torrential rain etc) and every time the last transport to collapse has been the cabbies. So it was today. I left London at 5am and it was 13 degrees. By the time I landed in Edinburgh it was pouring rain and 1 degree. I went to meet a friend in the centre for a coffee. By the time I got to Waverley, it was snowing. In late morning I got a train to Perth, and by Haymarket it was a blizzard. I managed to get to Perth, but all the trains back were cancelled, yet for £70 someone was willing to drive me. Predictably, by the time I got back to Edinburgh airport, it was sunny and there was no sign they had had snow at all- the typically Scottish four seasons in one day. As one of the cab drivers put it, Scotland has unbeatable scenery and natural beauty, but you cant do anything about the grim weather.

But it is not only the weather that is grim. Waiting for meetings, I kill hours in desolate pubs, serving dishes I cant even recognize. I sit, waiting and watching. I watch people getting hammered at 11am, mothers feeding fried pizza and chips to their kids for lunch, fighting by 3pm, bored staff, and overweight, pasty faced people of all ages. It is grim. my meetings tend to be repetitive, the questions variations of the same. Then I always end up back at the same place- Edinburgh airport. After a client lunch that (regardless of the client) has generally made my normally tolerant arteries clench up, I always head for the Yo sushi bar. I am not generally a Yo sushi fan,

but after a day of fried mars bars, the thought of cucumber Maki seems appealing. Afterwards I check the board, find my flight slightly delayed, wander past the Rosetta stone stand and marvel all the languages I wish I spoke, then flop down in a booth in the pub across from gates 10 and 11 and wait for my flight. Or I wander into the BA lounge and look for some vaguely readable publication, which normally ends up with me flipping through the Scotsman for 10 minutes, ordering a wine and waiting for my flight. I check my email. I got over a power point. I make some phone calls. I sip my wine. Another day done.

if only every country was like Barbados

After achieving independence, many former colonies of European empires have struggled to shake of the negative legacy of colonialism and prosper as independent states, and this is as true in the Caribbean as in several other parts of the world. It is not, however, true of Barbados, which can claim easily one of the highest standard of living in the Western Hemisphere. it is indeed an amazing little country, not dissimilar from Bermuda in its prosperous and pleasant lifestyle. I find myself chatting to a local driver about driving in Moscow and traffic "laws." It soon becomes clear that this guy has no idea what a bribe is, he simply doesnt know what i am talking about. once i finally get the idea across, he looks appalled and assures me such things would never happen in Barbados. Other than perhaps a bit of bankers and white collar crime, it is a safe and law abiding place. the locals are helpful and friendly, and hotel is so incredible that we wouldnt have to leave it if we didnt want to, but of course, we do. This is an island with serious history and sites. There is a beautiful botanical garden to explore, and St Nicholas Abbey, one of only three Jacobean manor houses in the Western Hemisphere (my fathers swears to have taken me to Bacon's Castle, one of the others, but i have no memory of it!). St Nicholas's Abbey was a sugar plantation, which now produces its own very smooth but very strong rum. It has all the necessary characteristics of a grand old house with its curved Dutch gables, chimney stacks, coral stone finials, and great rooms filled with fine antiques and china, as well as an amazing retro radio and some old editions of the Telegraph. but my favourite part was after the rum tasting when there is a short film of the island made by British travellers in the 1930s. what is amazing about the video is its sheer amateur nature. It wasnt meant to be shown publicly, and simply shows glimpses of every day life in Barbados, and people going about their work, crafting wagon wheels and so on. when travelling it is easy to take photographs or write blog entries that highlight the noteworthy, the incredible, or the interesting aspects of a place that is different to what one knows. but this short clip captures the everyday, and as a result seemingly transports you back into to time with it. incredible.

St Lucia: into the wild

it seems hard to believe that i didnt really know how to ride a bike until 2008. friends had sort of shown me when i was a kid, and other tried once in Estonia in about 2003- but biking was never something i was comfortable with until my previous employer decided to participate in the UK government's cycle scheme. We were all called into the staff room and informed that the company was dedicated to fulfilling its "corporate responsibility" and being "green" and as a result had decided to heavily subsidise all members of staff who would agree to ride bikes to work. since it worked out being practically free, i signed up on the spot and 2 or 3 weeks later was issued with a cute red brompton. the hard part came next when i had to figure out what to actually do with it. Learning to ride a bike is probably never easy, but i am sure that London traffic didnt help. but i got better, and i now never take public transport unless i am going really far or have tons of suitcases with me. so, perhaps mistakenly, i like to think of myself as a cyclist, although in reality my cycle experiences are rather limited. when i found out i would be going to St Lucia, someone told me that it was possible to cycle through the rainforest there, and i was immediately intrigued. Sure enough, you can actually rent bikes there cheaply and easily and go off on your own through the rainforest, so i persuaded a girl about my age from the ship to join me, and off we went. I was amazed that the rental bikes were of top quality- i am used to riding a Brompton, so getting on a massive full suspension off road bike was initially baffling, but soon i felt as though i was biking on air. Riding was a pleasure, not effort, even going over rocks and through mud. but even that feeling of lightness could not compare to the feeling i had getting out on the road, looking ahead, and seeing nothing but endless layers of trees and green space. i have never seen nature so raw before. the road, which at times dwindled into a muddy single file path, twisted and turned through the forest, at times winding along the edge of terrifying ravines. whilst on the bike, i would be too scared to look down, but a few times i dismounted and simply stared at the ravines filled with some of the world's most lush vegetation. it was breathtaking.

then, suddenly, there was a waterfall. i jumped into it, then met up with a bunch of locals who showed us how to smash coconuts and eat them...and there we all were, sitting by a waterfall, eating coconuts and staring at the vegetation. It was all most surreal, but tremendous. it reminded me why i travel.

Jimmy of Bequia

our travels around the Caribbean bring us to many small and random places. One of the smaller, even by small Caribbean island standards, is Bequia, one of the Grenadines. It has a population of just over 4,000 living on seven square miles of land. The inhabitants are an improbable mixture of Black, Scottish and Indian- although no one is able to explain to me fully the peculiarly large Scottish representation. For a long time the place considered to be not worth colonising, and through the 17th century, it was populated by Carib and Arawak Indians, as well as occasional runaway slaves and shipwrecked peoples- supposedly a few Portuguese and Dutch slave ships on route to Sint Eustatius from West Africa reportedly shipwrecked on the reefs. In the 18th century, settlers arrived, and certain sectors, such as sugar, took off.

today, it is where you would go to hide from the world (if you cant afford nearby Mustique). Most of the beaches you can only get to by "water taxi," which is basically a random guy with a boat who stops and gives you a ride. Once you get to the beach, unless is right next to Port Elizabeth and there is a massive cruise ship docked nearby, chances are you might be just about the only person there, for Bequia is a pretty quite place. My father and I find ourselves in this position- we arrive by water taxi on a nearly deserted beach...but even it has something claiming to be a "bar," and as the sun reaches its mid day peak, my father seeks refuge in it. sure enough, a guy appears out of no where and manages to serve a nice cold local beer, while i go and get into the immaculate water. Later we take a walk through Port Elizabeth, which is the main city ("settlement" would be the better word really) on the island, it consists of only a few streets. i make the mistake of leaving my father alone for a few moments whilst changing camera lenses. By the time i got the right lens on and looked for him- he was gone. fortunately an old white man with a cane can only escape so far in a place like Bequia- and i soon find him in deep conversation in an open air food market, where he has in under 2 minutes befriended all the vendors. By the time i spot him, he is able to tell me where the vegetables on the island come from, and how much they all cost. We sit down with Jimmy, the market owner to discuss the island. I have loads of questions about things, but Jimmy is keen to make it clear he is not some provincial island bumpkin, and is soon giving us his views on Obama's foreign policy. it is truly amazing the things that my fathers price comparison obsession can lead to....

Antigua, Barbuda, God and Cricket

i have to confess that i arrived on Antigua and Barbuda with very few preconceptions. it was sort of an afterthought addition to the itinerary. it was on the way, so why not stop, i think went the logic. i suppose that is the way to see it. i certainly would never make it a main destination, of course it has beautiful beaches, but then so does every island in this region. St Johns, the main city, hasnt got much to it, and even the nature doesnt have the sort of jaw dropping attraction that other nearby islands can offer. furthermore, there are clear pockets of serious poverty that my eyes need readjusting to after the obscene wealth of St Barth.

but the island has one redeeming feature, and that is friendly people. Actually, the people I have encountered across the region have generally been open and friendly, but perhaps the lack of other excitement here draws me to them more? or perhaps i just have more time to talk to them, as we have relaxed itinerary? I am actually not sure, but several times my father and i find ourselves striking up conversation with interesting characters. the locals, even the ones who look like teenage hooligans with their trousers half way down their asses in imitation of North American rappers, are polite and well spoken. on an uneven street in St Johns, my father struggles with his cane, and seeing a group of young teenage guys waiting for him to move out of the way, tries to hurry his pace. The boys see this and immediately step up, helping him and saying "easy there pops" and "slow down pops, we're not in any hurry." another time, in the dockyards, he got tired and i left him sitting on a bench under the tree whilst i went along to see the rest of the sights. I came back 30 minutes or so later to find him in the same place, drinking his second or third pint with some local ladies in their 60s. they had just seen him sitting alone and struck up conversation. several people we talk to are very happy to talk about their island and their culture, which seems to pivot around two key topics: God and cricket. this is a God fearing country. People go to church here. In fact, that is precisely what they do on Sundays: they get up and go to church for hours. the rest of the day is spent with the family in a close circle, eating and taking care of the kids in the extended family and so on. all that is of course, utterly foreign to me, but it is the way of life here. it is a deeply religious country where such matters are not for sarcasm or jest as they are in Europe, and even young guys who look like thugs seem convinced by the power of the almighty. But if anything can come close to God in the hearts of the locals, it appears to be that most colonial of English sports- Cricket. i have never understood why anyone would find this game of any interest, to be honest it bores me to tears, but its power is felt throughout the whole Ex-British island area. Everyone i meet bombards me with questions about so and so who played for Nottingham or Leicester. i politely nod and pretend i have a clue what they are talking about when in fact i know nothing on the subject. As the afternoon approaches, the empty fields in the country fill with youths, all dressed in nice colonial cricket whites, batting their hearts out. people come and watch.

Antigua and Barbuda might not have some of the eye catching exotic sights of the other nearby islands, but it is in its own way most exotic, as the local customs are so familiar, and yet so utterly different to my own. and it is in these moments that i am indeed glad we made this stop on our journey.

Paradise for the few

I would never want to live there, but I really don’t see how anyone could not like, or at least envy St Barth. the place is truly a paradise….provided of course you have obscene amounts of money. the island is incredibly small- some eight hilly square miles are inhabited by only about 8,000 people. from every corner, the view is tremendous. the water is a perfect shade of blue. you can swim out until your feet can no longer touch the sea floor- but you can still look down and see them perfectly. the sand is incredibly soft, so that you can walk comfortably on it barefoot for ages, with out feeling and pricks of jabs from rocks or irregularities. the beaches are massive and everywhere, but they do not feel overcrowded. the cafés and restaurants are all well designed and well supplied. they are filled with beautiful people, and they are priced accordingly. in many, a relatively small lunch can easily set you back €200 if you include alcohol. The one restaurant that is famous for not raising its prices is Le Select, just in the centre of Gustavia, but people tell me it has nonetheless achieved inflation by shrinking the portions, but then it can get away with what it wishes, not only does it have the exclusive privilege of being located in St Barth, it is also supposedly the bar where Jimmy Buffett donated the "cheeseburger in paradise" name in exchange for a lifetime of free beer. Looking at the scenery from the restaurant's terrace, it is easy to envision Buffett's world, not only in that song, but throughout his collected works:

Nibblin' on sponge cake,


watchin' the sun bake;


All of those tourists covered with oil.


Strummin' my six string on my front porch swing.


Smell those shrimp--


They're beginnin' to boil.

many of the regions islands are too edgy to absorb such utopian lyrics, but they can fit in St Barth just as easily as those of part-time celebrity resident Johnny Halliday, whose favourite local dining haunts are also well known. but St Barth is also a strange mix. On the one hand, it is cosmopolitan, filled with luxury European shops ranging from Gucci to Chanel. waiting for my father and my uncle by a parking lot, i wander into a random shop, where i discover a bikini would cost me…..€300. the island is filled with celebrities, we pass the houses of Johnny and Laeticia, Eric Clapton and Roman Abramovich, as well as restaurants where the cost to make a RESERVATION is around €4,800 PER PERSON. yet at the same time, there are serious elements of the provincial French mentality captured so perfectly by Marcel Pagnol's classic novels La Gloire de mon père/ Le Château de ma mere: that of provincial France. The island was first settled by French colonists in the 17^th century, but until the 1970s, the population of the island was only around 2,500. Until the 20^th century, the islands were relatively poor and remote, dependant on salt and limited agriculture for survival. With the influx of the wealthy, the population has now ballooned to 8,000, but those pre 1970s families represent a world somewhat removed from the celebrity scene. I go to the house of a woman who represents the 10^th generation of her family in St Barth. Hers is a small world that until her/my generation consisted of arranged marriages (largely for property purposes) and byzantine laws of who spoke to whom and went where. But she doesn’t live in isolation from her new neighbours- on a walk we pass and are greeted by an older woman dressed in white, I ask if it is another local, but it turns out to be a friend of Jacques Chirac. Over the hill is Johnny’s house, and yet in the little villages by the sea, old French colonial ladies fan themselves on porches. I wonder how long it will stay like this?

chasing abramovich

The concept of Russian luxury tourists really tickles my father. Having spent much of the 90s and noughties in Russia, and witnessed the emergence of the oligarchs when I was in my 20s, it surprises me less. By my fathers world is profoundly a Soviet one, formed and stuck in an area when the few Russia tourists you saw abroad were party officials or defectors. Even now, 20 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, he still has difficulty accepting how things have changed. In the early 1990s, as we would badly dressed Russian tourists in places like Helsinki with their dated clothes, shoddy make up and dodgy hair colours, my dad would marvel that such things had become possible, that people were able to travel all of a sudden to “Western” Europe. But at least he could imagine that degree of change. The new kind of Russian traveler, however, he cannot comprehend, even though we keep coming across his long and well heeled shadow here in the Caribbean. As noted above, Richard Branson’s private Necker Island, where rooms start at $54,000 per night has a bilingual website- in English and Russian. that gives some clue as to the Russian presence here. But unlike in other places, like Thailand or Bali where drunk Russians are audible and visible everywhere, here they mysterious hidden, spoken about by locals in hushed terms. They are not the new found wealthy affording there recently possible excursion for some winter sun on a tropical beach- these ones here are the grotesquely over the top natural resource wealthy super elite. Their traces are everywhere, but they are rarely seen. We sail past Necker island, but see next to nothing other than lush vegetation and rooftops. In St Barths, my uncle and I go for a drive, and we pass a brand new football pitch so beautiful it is breath taking and my uncle pulls over so we can get out and have a look. Of course St Barths is rich and can afford all sorts of things, but it also has a population of only 8,000-hardly the numbers to support such a structure. We walk over and it is totally open to the public, but it is unlike any normal pitch. It is maintained like none I have seen, and every aspect reflects the tremendous attention to detail and care that obviously went into building it. my uncle investigates, striking up conversation with one of the numerous care takers, who tells us in reverent tones that the pitch had been built, for $1,300,000 no less, by Roman Abromovich as a gift to the island’s youth. Of course Abamovich has a home on the island (a massive one, taking up a chunk of a hill) where he spends some months of every year. The locals speak of him respectfully, more so than they do of some of their “native” ie francophone celebrities like Johnny Halliday and Laeticia. On another island I see a yacht like none I had ever seen before (and I have seen plenty!). it is both slightly ugly in a vaguely militaristic way, and stunningly beautiful at the same time. I set my telelense zoom to 300 to capture the ship’s details, send them to people who would know and find out some information. The ship is considered to be one of the worlds first “super yachts” and was designed by Norman Foster. I get sent a few images of the interior and it is nothing like I have ever seen on a ship before. I am later told it was being rented out by “a Russian billionaire.” Abramovich? Maybe not. He owns his own, and he is not Russia’s only billionaire by any stretch. News of Russian activity reaches me again in St Lucia where rumours of wealthy Russians arriving on yachts and paying ridiculous sums for guided tours through the rainforest surface, and on Barbados, where cab drivers tell of extravagant parties at the exclusive clubs and resorts. One cab driver proudly proclaims that Abramovich pays them a visit every year, just like Prince Harry. Such, it seems, is the life of Russia’s new aristocracy. My Soviet father shakes his head in disbelief at ever tale. “How did this happen? Where did they all come from?” he ponders as his world view is turned upside down. I am sure he is not the only one asking these questions.

British Virgin Islands

like many current and former British island colonies, BVI is a rather checkered place, or as Somerset Maugham put it, a sunny place for shady people. its GDP is dependant on two forces: tourism and offshore industries, chiefly offshore banking. every tax haven is going to attract certain dodgy types, and BVI has plenty. it has a statistically high GDP per capita, but the cost of living is high and the pockets of poverty noticeable. it also has a fairly intense drug trade, catering not only to wealthy local consumers, but to north american export audiences as well. "Our little slice of paradise" one woman describes it as to me. looking at the views i can see her point. nearly 60 islands, of which only 15 are really inhabited, and all of which have spectacular views and weather. Two are owned exclusively by Richard Branson, one of which he has converted into an exclusive resort where rooms start at $54,000 per night (the website is tellingly available in two languages, English and Russian). From Virgin Gorda I get a good view of this famous island and hear some stories of the supposed antics that go on there. but a few miles away, some people live in fairly basic dwellings, with unpaved dirt driveways and chickens running about in the yard. the houses are the same as you see in poor neighbourhoods across the ex-British Caribbean and the US south, small, normally one story with the exact same shaped windows shielded by white lace curtains, a dilapidated rocking chair on the small front porch, a round water sistine somewhere out the back, and maybe an outhouse too if it is really basic. a front room with carpeting, and behind it a kitchen where things are fried. in the shadow of Branson's Necker Island it seems an odd contrast.

but nonetheless, even for the relative poor, BVI is seen as a land of opportunity. I speak to one woman about my age, LaShonia, who moved 7 years ago to the island from Guyana. She estimates she will need to put in another 15 years or so of work before she will be able to settle there and get one of those small houses, but compared to life in Guyana it is all worth it. she assures me that even the relative have nots in BVI have enough. wandering down to the Rocks one afternoon, i found it hard to doubt her. after a short 15 minute climb down a trail, i find myself surrounded by breath taking beauty- perfect sea, perfect sand, all shaped by spectacular rock formations. indeed a slice of paradise.

bombonera

whenever i have advance notice that i am going somewhere i always try to contact people i know who have lived there for tips. in such a way, a puerto rican family friend sent through a list of recommends for eating and i found myself sitting in la Bombonera, a San Juan diner that has been running for more than a century. it is great for people watching, serving an odd combination of tourists and locals who look like they have been eating here for decades. The portions are massive but several of the people around me are clearly able to consume everything put in front of them. The omelettes look as though they involve at least 6 eggs each, and they are served with a massive portion of chips- this makes the Scottish diet look healthy. The pastries are divine though, and more manageable in size, so my father and i choose a couple and share them to taste as many things as possible. it is phenomenally cheap. Like everywhere else on the island, this is in many ways over the top americana, but unlike most places here, this one has character.

San Juan

It is amazing how Americans can ruin a place. My mother spent part of the 1960s in boarding school in Hawaii, which had just become the 50th state in 1959. My mother complained that in a relatively short period of time, a rich local culture had been drowned out by the worst aspects of American culture- plastic culture and mindless consumerism. Meanwhile, more positive sides of American culture tend to transfer less readily. Puerto Rico seems an unfortunate example of the phenomenon my mother witness half a century ago in Honolulu, an outpost imitating in an exaggerated way stereotypes of the mainland. Before I went to Puerto Rico, lots of people who had already been there described it to me as "a dump." That is unfair, the place is not a dump, and there is not the squalor that you can find in other parts of the region. The old town is pleasant enough to walk around, and the fort is lovely. But it is utterly Americanized, in the worst way, in the almost desperate way that immigrants sometimes are aggressively nationalistic regarding their adoptive country. The food is very American, complete with ridiculously large portion sizes and dubious ingredients, everything is massive and tastes of nothing. the people, accordingly, are American sized. Even in the supermarket, everything is "extra large". My dad forgot a dress shirt for one of the formal nights on the cruises and we had to go buy one in the old town (at Marshall's, the nasty and cheap American chain). We had difficulty finding one small enough for him, and even when we did find one marked as being his size, it still appeared to be too big on him, but our shopping choices were limited since, as in the US, the centre has been emptied of anything resembling living space. All the shopping is done in the massive malls outside the city, and as in the US, you need a car to get to those. Not surprisingly given all this, the overwhelming mass of tourists on the island are from the mainland US, and they are indeed a scary bunch- fat, loud, rude and aggressive. In the hotel a man pitches a fit over the check out time, banging his fists and threatening people. I was shocked, not anticipating such behaviour, but the staff were clearly quite used to it, and called out the armed guard to deal with it- all this in a 5 star supposedly luxury hotel!

All this stood in sharp contrast to my last trip to the Caribbean, which was to Havana, the antithesis to San Juan in many ways. The two cities no doubt once shared a lot, the architecture and city lay out is very similar, as is the "traditional" cuisine, but Havana has been spared (or rid itself of perhaps I should say) some of the tackiness found in Puerto Rico. After the Revolution, much was relocated from Cuba to Puerto Rico, which now "prides" itself on having the Caribbean's biggest casinos, an honour Havana once claimed. I know Cuba has its problems, but walking around Puerto Rico made me recognise its strengths as well.