How to dive to 20m on one lungful of air

I took a freediving course this weekend with the very professional and safety-oriented Carlos Correa, an instructor living in Santa Marta. I am now a certified level 1 FII Freediver! As part of the course, you are required to make a constant weight dive to 20m. Here is the video of my attempt:

Freediving is an incredibly intriguing sport and I really hope to learn a lot more about it. We hit the open water in a kayak on Sunday, but Saturday was spent in the pool practicing safety techniques and out of the pool covering theory, which I will share a sample of below.

There is a timeline consisting of many events before drowning actually occurs. It looks something like this:

Commence breathhold-------low oxygen causes muscle convulsions-------blackout-------terminal gasp and drowning.

At the start of the breathhold when you are pumped full of oxygen, obviously there are no problems. As the carbon dioxide levels rise, the urge to breathe rises with it. Imagine the urge to breathe as a red devil sitting in front of you. At the start he is sitting quietly, then as time goes on he stands up and starts whispering "time to breathe now" in your ear. Slowly he gets more and more agitated until he starts jumping on your lap, yanking on your ears, yelling, beating you over the head with a tin pan and trying to pull you out of your seat. Your task if you want any chance at all of staying a long time underwater is to do your best to zen out and ignore him completely. You can do this for a very long time if you have good mental discipline. But it can be extremely difficult and takes MUCHO practice to get good at. I can manage 3:30 on the surface but I haven't ever managed more than 2:30 underwater.

It is possible to withstand the urge to breathe long enough (for example by using calm meditation techniques) that the oxygen level in the blood drops too low to support proper brain function. The result is "the Samba" a kind of spasming which occurs when motor control is lost. Then follows total blackout. Blackout is the body's response to low oxygen. It shuts down all non-essential survival processes (including consciousness) and goes into a kind of hibernation in which it can survive for four to six minutes. Surprisingly, no damage occurs at all during blackout, it is a normal bodily process, and you will revive as soon as your face is exposed to the air.

The terminal gasp is the final panic button, when the body is critically low on oxygen and there is absolutely no time left, you will unconsciously suck in a huge lungful of whatever is around you. If you are underwater, this will lead to drowning and is fatal.

So even with no training at all you probably could survive at least 8 minutes underwater before suffering permanent damage. This is very reassuring. The number one rule is

ALWAYS DIVE WITH A BUDDY


People always recover from a blackout, but ONLY IF they are exposed to air again. You cannot do this yourself if you are passed out. But a buddy has a good few minutes of time to swim down, grab you, and pull you up. Google shallow water blackout for more info on this.

On to theory. Millions of years of evolution have provided the human body with a surprising number of adaptions that allow it to survive for a long time underwater.

• Your brain will not allow you to breathe in while your face or mouth is wet. You will probably suffer diaphragm contractions, where your lungs jerk trying to suck in air that isn't available. I had a few of these on my way down to 20m. But I found my body to be extremely adverse to actually inhaling water. Even in blackout you will not inhale water until the terminal gasp, so you don't have to worry about that.
• At twenty metres the pressure is three atmospheres. That means your lungs are compressed to one third of their normal size. I felt this squeeze, and I have to say it didn't bother me at all. It feels pretty natural actually. Champion freedivers have reached more than 200m or 21 atmospheres of pressure and come up unharmed. At this depth your lungs are smaller than oranges. Nobody knows what the actual limit is but it's probably pretty deep.
• When your face hits cold water, the mammalian diving reflex kicks in. This is an ancient reflex present in all mammals, stemming from our seagoing ancestors. It gives you a variety of advantages, including lowered heart rate and constriction of the outermost capillaries, resulting in decreased blood flow to the muscles and more oxygen for the vital organs.

To get the most out of your dive, I learned three techniques that are absolutely essential.

Firstly, proper breathe-up technique.

This is how you prepare your body for a dive. I have been doing this wrong for years, I used to hyperventilate excessively which does the opposite of what you want. Firstly, it plummets the carbon dioxide levels in your lungs. High carbon dioxide levels are not harmful for short periods, but are the major factor in controlling your urge to breathe. Pushing these too low will remove the alarm bell that tells you when to surface, this is EXTREMELY dangerous and can lead to blackout. The other downside is that heavy, fast breathing primes the body for physical activity. It gets your brain excited and pumps the heart rate. Great for sprinting but absolutely terrible for diving.


NEVER HYPERVENTILATE.

The way you should do it, is slow, relaxed diaphragmatic breathing (ie from the stomach) for a couple of minutes. Then one maximum inhalation right before submerging. With your final inhalation, it helps to relax completely, tilt your head up to open your airway, and lift your shoulders. Try to feel yourself expanding. Do not strain to push more air into your lungs, this will tense your muscles and burn oxygen.

Secondly, ear equalisation.

This is the achilles heel of freedivers. We descend so fast that we must equalise the pressure in our ears very frequently to compensate for the pressure. If you don't do this you will experience a lot of pain, and if you continue descending your eardrums will rupture. Most people need to equalise by holding their nose and blowing, or using their tongue as a piston to force air through the Eustachian tubes into the ears. Apparently some people have the rare ability to open their Eustachian tubes at will. Chances are, if you can move your ears, you can do this. It's a great advantage in freediving because it frees your hands up and makes you more streamlined. Actually I can do this (and move my ears too) but while I was diving I was so busy thinking about everything else I needed to hold my nose at the same time to make sure. With a little practice I'm certain I could do this hands free and equalization will no longer be a problem for me.

Thirdly, RELAX.

This is probably the most important part, and maybe the hardest. Every single tense muscle burns oxygen. Every thought burns oxygen. Every movement burns oxygen. A zen master would make a fantastic freediver because he can control his body and his thoughts.

Try relaxing when you know you have twenty metres of water above your head and the little devil is ringing alarm bells in your ear telling you to breathe. It's not that easy. But panicking underwater is not going to help AT ALL. If you allow yourself to become agitated, or thinking there is any kind of threat, your body responds by pumping heart rate and tensing ready for action. This sucks oxygen like a vacuum cleaner.

You must train yourself with the mental discipline required to look away from the panicked thoughts and be totally calm. Do everything slowly. The biggest reason the master freedivers can reach such depths and you can't is not lung capacity or even swimming technique. It is mental control. It is the ability to focus on happy thoughts, be calm and peaceful under a situation that would make most people immediately panic and start flailing.

This is the aspect I like most about freediving. It is essentially meditation, but with a purpose. It encourages elite levels of self-control and focus. I'd really like to explore more this aspect of the sport.

The ocean is the most relaxing place in the world if you are relaxed as well. The feeling of sitting underwater with no real need to breathe, feeling the ocean holding you in it's warm embrace, watching the fish and the endless deep blue... It's peaceful and beautiful. I can't describe it to you, you would have to do it to experience it.

It's also highly addictive. I will be back for more. Chau from fifteen metres down!

Parque Tayrona

Back in Taganga after a three day sojourn through Parque Tayrona in north Colombia. Wow it was beautiful. I'll let the photos do most of the talking. The first day I spent walking to a beach called Cabo del Sol, then I spent two nights at a "hostel" there. Actually the hostel just consisted of tents and hammocks. The first night I paid for a tent, but it was so warm that the second night I just slept out under the stars on the beach. I didn't even need to buy breakfast because coconuts and mangos could be found everywhere on the ground. Really magical place.

Freediving in Taganga

It's been a little while since my last update, I am now in Colombia, staying in a small fishing village with some of the cheapest scuba diving in the world.

I am also trying my hand at some freediving while I am here. Freediving is diving without any breathing apparatus, just holding your breath. It is a hell of a lot cheaper and more convenient than scuba diving, plus you can do it anywhere.

Most people without any training or practice would struggle to hold their breath longer than about 30 seconds while sitting down on dry land, let alone while swimming underwater. This is fairly normal.  However, professional freedivers can stay under for five minutes or more even while swimming. Frankly I find that seriously inspiring, so over the last couple of days I have been practicing some freediving techniques to gain more bottom time.

For a sneaky glimpse of how tranquil it can be to drift with the fishes in the Caribean sea, watch my underwater video here. Why don't you try holding your breath along with me ;-).

Freediving is very much a mental sport. My current PBs for breath holding are 1:14 while swimming at -3m and 3:40 on dry land, but I'm certain these could be improved hugely by a little practice. I'm convinced 5:00 above water and 2:30 while swimming are easily within reach. I am going to take a two day freediving course this weekend to try and improve this.

Humans actually have a number of built in adaptations that kick in when we submerge ourselves underwater, I won't go into it here but google "mammalian diving reflex" if you are interested. The key to longer times underwater is proper mental control.

Maintaining a relaxed state is the most important thing. You have to keep your heart rate low and move very slowly and as gracefully as possible through the water. Your urge to breathe is like a little fishhook in your brain, it starts by tugging very gently and slowly progresses to a wrenching yank that pulls you almost involuntarily to the surface. Fighting it will agitate you and raise your heartrate, having an opposite from desired effect. You need to disassociate from it and chill out, man. I have had a lot of success by relaxing my mind and using calming visualisation techniques, this alone has pushed my times at depth from 30 seconds to over a minute.

I actually like freediving quite a bit more than scuba diving. Scuba is very relaxing and a really unique experience, but breath hold diving is even more tranquil somehow. I particularly like the mental discipline aspect of the sport, it's almost a form of meditation.

The underwater world here is just mindblowing and incredible. I've been trying to snap some decent underwater photos so I can share it with you, but it doesn't do it justice. And let me tell you, taking good photos underwater is horribly difficult. The light is bad, focussing takes a long time, added to the fact that fish move, you are also moving and as soon as you get in a good position your brain is SCREAMING at you for air, you've got a recipe for a real challenge. I'm pretty proud of some of the photos I've managed to snap, the best of which you can see below.

-5m

So pretty!

Pufferfish

Lionfish

Nailing the summit

Made it

As a brief aside, yesterday I went with my Swedish friend Petter to try and break into San Pedro prison. We didn't succeed but had a fun time trying.

This is probably the most nuts prison in the world, picture a place where prisoners must pay for their own cells, manufacture cocaine and run drug empires from inside. For information (and some photos) about this crazy place, see the wikipedia article. Also a famous book called "Marching Powder" was written by Rusty Young about a British inmate called Thomas Mcfadden who used to give tours of the place, it's a good read, I'd recommend it.

About a year ago the government really cracked down on tours after the BBC published an article exposing the crazy corruption inside. That didn't deter us from trying to get in. We hung outside the entrance for a while trying to figure it out, saw a lot of Bolivians coming in and out of the gates but the guards kept telling us to move on and eventually got pissed so we had to make a bit of a retreat. I started approaching people coming out of the jail and asking if they knew someone inside that could help us get in for some appropriate "compensation". Third time I figured I'd hit the jackpot, a fat shady-looking Mexican guy with a HUGE moustache said he thought he'd be able to help us, and disappeared for about ten minutes. Then he came back and after a shifty look to each side said he could do it and if we would just wait a few minutes he'd come back with a precio (cost). He talked to the guards for a loooong time and seemed to be having an argument with them, then finally he came back with a disapointed look and said it was too hard, he couldn't help us.

Not to be phased, I tried asking yet another likely suspect who had just come out of the prison, but he couldn't help. Then a taxi driver parked up next to us beckoned me over and said I needed to talk to the gobernador (governor) and offer him a little something directly. The governor's office was through a small easy to miss door on the left side of the prison block. So I went and gave it a good bang, it was opened a crack by a surly guard. I asked to see the governor but he said brusquely that he was at lunch and slammed the door in my face. Petter and I went to the markets for a while, then later I came back with a story ready. This time I told the guard we were journalists and had a meeting with the governor at 3, so sorry we were ten minutes late. This time he hesitated, looked a little worried and said with all apologies, the governor was still at lunch, perhaps we could come back later.

After this I gave up. I was fully prepared to bribe the governor to get in there but I was bored of trying at this point. Never thought I'd be putting so much effort to getting INTO prison. Would have been much easier if I'd simply got myself caught smuggling cocaine out of the country. Ah well.

So anyway, onto a little account of my adventures climbing Huaynu Potosi. Apologies, it is pretty raw because it's just typed up straight from my journal and it's more how I write to myself than to anyone else.

17/4

Driving up the rocky road to the mountain. It is dark and forbidding with patchy snow, shrouded by grey cloud. Looks like bad conditions. I hope it allows us to climb it.

At base camp at 4600m. Today we went to a glacier to practice ice climbing with crampons and picks. The air is noticeable thin here. Funny how on a mountain there is arto wind but nada air to goddamn breathe. We practiced climbing some steep slopes and then a vertical ice face with rope support. CHRIST that was exhausting, just five meters of height and my lungs were heaving and I had tunnel vision. Afterwards my arms were so cramped up I couldn't even grab my gloves properly to take them off. We returned to camp through spectacular scenery and will sleep here ready for an uphill hike to high camp tomorrow.

Just went off for a little walk on my own to look at the nearby hydroelectic dam but it is hard to walk fast up here and it was much further than it looked. Halfway there a thick mist rolled up the mountain and enveloped me completely. Despite being barely 500m from camp, I was instantly completely lost. Luckily it cleared again quickly and I was able to find my way back but it shows just how fast things can get dangerous on a mountain like this. I had to brave the icy outhouse after I got back. Shit came out like a firehose, so that's not good news for my impending climb. If I had to place the blame on something, prime suspect is definitely the burger I bought yesterday from a scummy-looking street vendor. Hot, greasy and probably contained more parasites than a starving african child. I hope it clears up before tomorrow.

18/4

So we reached rock camp (high camp at 5130masl) this morning in good time. Rock camp is a grim little stone hut perched on a rocky outcrop and surrounded by snow. The ply boards on the inside are plastered with the scramblings of climbers who previously made the summit (the guides only allow people to write who made it all the way).

It is BITTERLY cold up here. I am shivering in two pairs of trousers, thermal socks, t-shirt, two fleeces, jacket, gloves, scarf and a hat. It is 11am and there is nothing to do for the next thirteen hours until we leave for out summit push at midnight.

The hike up wasn't bad, just a little slow. We spoke to some guys on their way down from the top, most made it but two didn't. They trotted out their excuses (dizziness and sickness) but nobody could look them in the eye and I felt ashamed for them.

I will NOT be one of those guys. Quitting is simply not an option. There has never been a grain of doubt in my mind that I will reach the top, and there never will be.

19/4

Dawn from summit

So I made it to the summit obviously. I would have either managed it or died trying probably. But it turned out to be about the second toughest challenge I've ever attempted.

We left high camp at midnight. I actually managed to sleep quite a bit beforehand despite my excitement, I think that really helped. Pulled on snow shoes and crampons in the dark and left trudging up through the snow with only the light of our headlamps. The stars were out and it was beautiful.

The first couple of hours were fine, then the altitude started to make itself felt. We were walking up 45 degree or steeper snowy slopes, and for every six inches of ground made, the snow would give way and you'd slip down three.

All I was focussing on was my feet, steps and breathing. If I looked up at the unending slope ahead it would have been too demoralising so I just focussed on putting on foot in front of the other. Every step felt like I had a small child clinging to my leg, I had become one giant lung, getting enough oxygen became my entire world.

At 5am we arrived at a very high rock. I was cold and completely exhausted, but my heart lifted when I saw it because I thought we were at the top. Not so, the summit was another two hundred meters away. What stood between us and it was this ridge:

The ridge

Less than six inches of packed snow to walk on and almost vertical drops on either side of at least a hundred meters. We arrived in the dark and when we reached it, my head already swimming from altitude, I had serious doubts about whether I could make it to the summit. Our guide Mario told us at this point that if we had vertigo, we couldn't go on. I had MASSIVE vertigo. But I couldn't allow myself to give up after I'd already fought through those five hours of pain, so what came out of my mouth was "si, puedo hacerlo" (I can do it).

It took about twenty minutes to traverse the ridge, dark slopes dropping off to God knows where either side. I spent every single second with the spot of my headlamp fixed on the tiny ledge and continuously repeating to myself on a loop "focus on the ridge, this is your world, one step at a time". I made the mistake of looking over the edge a couple of times and it made me sway dizzily. The snow heaped up to the right was very fluffy and my ice pick just went right through it - it would be no help to lean or step on. This was some of the scaredest I'd ever been, we were connected by ropes but if one of us made a bad slip all the others would be dragged down with them.

Before I had been feeling woozy and lightheaded from the thin air, but I was razor sharp for every step of that final push. When I made it to the top I collapsed in a heap, utterly spent.

The summit was... tranquil. And beautiful. As dawn broke we could see lake Titicaca, La Paz and Mount Illimani. I felt like the highest thing in the world. This was the highest I'd ever been outside of an airplane. It was all over too soon though because once the sun was up, the snow started to melt and we had to get off that ridge fast.

I hated every inch of that fucking ridge on the way back. At one point my foot slipped and I was weightless and sliding for a split second before Mario yanked the rope hard and caught me.

The journey back down the mountain was... pain. I had nothing left after I reached the summit, sucking huge lungs of empty air and with burning lead weights in my leg muscles, yet now we had to trudge back through melting snow for two hours down to high camp, then a further two hours all the way to base camp at the bottom.

To be honest the descent has blurred into a mass of exhaustion and pain in my head, funny how with the summit so fixed in mind, you forget that you have to come down again. But its surprising that, no matter how far you push your body, your limit is always just a little further. Our real limit is about ten times further than where we think it is.

Right now I am unbelievably exhausted. I feel like I got beaten up by a steam roller. It hurts to breathe, stand, sit, lie, talk or move. But I fucking made it. And I wrote on the wall :-). I won't be climbing another mountain for a few weeks or months, but... I'll be back one day. And I'll be higher.

The only two words you need to master a language

You ready for this? Here they are:

TOTAL IMMERSION

 

It should be obvious to everyone that the best way to learn something is just to do it as much as possible but I am amazed at the number of people that don't seem to grasp this.

Contrary to popular belief you do not need a spectacular amount of talent, intelligence, natural ability or anything else to learn a language. If you can talk, you already learned one and you have all the qualifications you need. The hardware to learn a language is there in your brain already and has been honed by millions of years of evolution, your brain is extremely good at it. The ONLY thing you need is sufficient motivation and commitment. Learning a language is hard, check whether it's something you really want to do first.

If I were to learn Spanish again from scratch, here is how I would do it:

1. Book a ticket to Sucre, Bolivia (many other cheap South American cities would do).
2. Stay with a Bolivian family in a homestay.
3. Take four hours of grammar classes at a good school every morning (I recommend "Megusta" Spanish school in Sucre. Very personal, cheap and much better than the academy I went to in Buenos Aires). Get one-on-one classes or, perhaps better, classes with someone that is even more motivated than you are. This will push you.
4. Take up an activity, charity work, job or sport where all the other people speak Spanish all the time and can't understand English. Instead of doing this, I went out into the plaza every afternoon and spoke with random students for three or four hours at a time, but many people may not feel comfortable with this method.
5. Take a dictionary and little workbook with you everywhere and whenever you encounter a word or phrase you don't understand, write it down and then learn it later from flashcards.
6. Watch movies and read books in Spanish. Even if you can't understand most of it, it's subconsciously sinking in.
7. Most importantly, make a conscious and determined effort to distance yourself from English speakers as much as possible.
   
8. Do this for three months. Congratulations, now you are fluent.

The above will certainly cost you under $1000 a month in total and probably closer to $500. That's less than $3000 for fluency. How much does three years of studying Spanish in university cost? Hmm...

How not to do it

Many people try to learn a language like this:

1. Stay in a hostel full of people speaking their native language or English.
2. Take four hours of classes per day and do the homework.
3. Shy away from speaking Spanish outside of classes because they feel they aren't good enough, or it´s embarrassing, or too hard.

You will NEVER make significant progress with this approach because there is no incentive to learn and you will always view speaking/learning the language as something painful and difficult.

Kicking your brain into gear

Here's how it works. Your brain is extremely lazy. It will always take the easiest possible path to get its needs met. You, as a human being, have a natural drive to seek other humans for social contact. If you want to make any real progress, you need to tap into this.

Cut yourself off from native speakers. The first month will be incredibly hard. You will feel like an idiot for not understanding anything. You will feel as if you are making no progress. If you are doing it right you will feel very lonely because you have nobody to talk to properly. This is good! Subconsciously, your brain gets motivated because it knows that to fill your social needs, it has to learn the language, there is no other option.

You will go from subconsciously tuning out the language as meaningless babble, to desperately trying to decode the meaning of every single thing you read or hear. Your brain will take statistics on it and build the appropriate mental structures to decode it. This is what learning feels like. Communication and social contact is essential for humans, it is extremely difficult to survive without it. By putting yourself in the situation where the only way to achieve this is to learn a new language, your brain will fire on all cylinders until it has fixed it.

The language house

Learning a language is a little like building a house. First you need to lay the foundation. This is the initial "hump" of language learning and it sucks. You will see very little measurable progress for the first few weeks but it is an essential part of the building process. This is what happens in the beginning when your brain takes statistics on what it hears.

Second you need a scaffold to build the house around. Grammar rules are that scaffolding. Learning grammar is NOT learning the language itself, it is learning a skeleton of rules upon which to hang the language you learn. Learning grammar alongside practicing the language every day will massively accelerate your progress.

After the main structure of the house is built you can throw the scaffolding away. You don't need grammar rules when you have an intuitive grasp of how the language is constructed. At this point all that remains is interior design and embellishing, that is polishing the language and it just takes time hanging around native speakers.

You need to be motivated

Learning a language fast is difficult, embarrassing, painful and requires a phenomenal number of mistakes, which I am still making every day. You need to make NOT learning the language more painful in your mind than learning it, and the best way to do that is use your natural drive away from loneliness and towards social contact.

Cut yourself off from native speakers. Immerse yourself totally. Ten hours a day of Spanish exposure will have you dreaming and thinking in it within weeks.

Summitting Huayna Potosi

So yesterday I cycled the "Death Road", a forty-three mile road from La Paz to Coroico. It was closed three years ago to normal traffic because it was so dangerous and descends from 4650 to 1200masl (metres above sea level). It is probably one of the best mountain biking routes in the world due to spectacular scenery and the fact that it is downhill all the way. Only about 25 cyclists have died here since 1998 and several of those were because they stepped backwards too far to take a photo and fell off the edge. So unless you were an idiot you would probably be fine. At the start we biked through bitter cold and freezing mists that crept up the mountain, then this slowly gave way to humid jungle and waterfalls crashing hundreds of metres onto the road. My hands are now shattered from rocky pounding of the handlebars and my arse resembles papier mache but well worth the incredible ride.

On to a more exciting adventure, this Tuesday I will be making an expedition up the mountain Huayna Potosi.

La Paz is already the highest capital of the world at 3600masl. This is high enough for the lack of oxygen to cause altitude sickness and in fact many tourists experience this. Headaches, insomnia, nausea and shortness of breath are not uncommon. When I first arrived here I almost passed out a few times after standing up too quickly.

The medical community classes heights above 5500masl as "extreme altitude" and at 6080masl, Hyayna Potosi is a different story. At that altitude, the atmosphere is less than half the pressure than it is at sea level, giving an effective oxygen percentage of only 9%. Lack of oxygen makes breathing laboured and hard, if you are not acclimatised then altitude sickness can be deadly. Thinking becomes confused due to lack of oxygen, hallucinations can occur and have caused the deaths of many high altitude climbers. Permanent human habitation is impossible above this height, you simply start to slowly die where the air is this thin.  I have spent a month and a half at about 2000masl in Sucre and Cochabamba, and a further two weeks in total at around 3500m in Potosi, Uyuni, Tupiza and La Paz. This is not enough time for the body to acclimatise completely but I'm hoping it will be good enough.

I am leaving with a group of climbers on Tuesday to start at base camp of 4650masl. The first day will be spent practicing ice climbing a glacier with crampons and ice picks (I've never used these before, should be fun). The second day is an easy climb to the high camp at 5200masl and the final day is a gruelling 8 hour grind to the summit, starting at 1am. Of the last climbing group to leave, fifteen set out and only two made it to the top, all of the others had to turn back due to sickness, dizziness or cold.

I will be one of those guys that reaches the top. Edmund Hillary said it best:

"It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves."

I am hoping all the mental discipline I learned from doing crossfit will pay off here even though the physical benefits have long since disapeared (I'm a skinny beanpole now). However, I am in good enough physical shape to tackle this and the only reason I could fail is through mental weakness and giving up.

Confidence is faith in oneself. How do you develop faith in yourself? By continuously pushing yourself through incredibly difficult circumstances and realising you can handle it. I want to discover the part of myself that can handle this.

I will keep a journal for the three days and record my experiences. Stay posted.


"The stresses of high-altitude climbing reveal your true character; they unmask who you really are. You no longer have all the social graces to hide behind, to play roles. You are the essence of what you are."
-David Breashears

The mines of Potosi

I grab a filthy wooden beam above me, hauling myself up through the thick dust and murky darkness. My head swims, the altitude makes it very hard to breathe and my shirt sticks to me with sweat. The spot from my headlamp dances over the rocks just centimeters from my face, the odd mineral deposit glints seductively. A sickening crack and a jar as I smash my head on some low hanging pyrite crystals, luckily my helmet takes most of the impact and saves me from concussion.


Emerging from the almost vertical shaft, Ronald my guide urges us quickly onwards. The tunnel is wider here but still not high enough to stand, my group and I slosh forwards, waddling awkwardly in a bent over gait. My wellies slosh through a couple of inches of murky water, slipping occasionally on one of the iron rails. A low rumbling echoes through the tunnel and Ronald becomes more agitated. "Quickly quickly to the next corner!" We squeeze into a hollow and I just barely make it before two wagons and an electric cart trundle past, a dirty miner clings to the back, complete with headlamp and golfball sized wadge of coca leaves in his cheek. According to Ronald the carts don't stop for tourists, so its imperative to get out of the way fast.

This is one of the Potosi silver mines, and if Hell was a real place, this would be it. Forty-five degree heat, thick silica dust and gruelling manual labour combine to ensure that very few of the workers live to over forty years. The health and safety officer here is on permanent vacation, miners shovel ore adjacent to clattering machinery and writhing winch cables. Caveins and runaway mine carts are not uncommon.

The Spanish discovered silver here and founded the city of Potosi in 1546, and it quickly became the richest (and at 4,090m one of the highest) in South America, supplying Europe with silver for hundreds of years, but at a cost. The Spanish forced local indigenous people into slavery to perform the horrific work of hauling the ore through tunnels out of the mountain. Over the centuries, eight million miners have died here from silicosis, overwork or accidents. And while the silver is long gone, thousands of local people still perform backbreaking labour in the dark and heat to extract what little zinc and tin they can from the dead mountain.

Along a dank shaft just barely high enough to crawl through is a small cave. Here works Milton, an eighteen year old whose father died in the mines. He has worked here since he was thirteen and knows no other life, without the aid of modern machinery he spends hours chiselling a hole in the rocks to insert dynamite, hoping to knock loose a few pieces of zinc ore. He explains in Quechua that with nine siblings, he has no choice but to work here to support his family. His salary? Less than 1000 bolivianos ($140) a month.

We continue onwards, and after we emerge from the mountain to brilliant skies and piercing clear air, I realise that I will never have occasion to complain about work again.

So you're thinking about backpacking?

I'd have loved to see a little guide like this before I left on my travels, so I thought I'd write some advice based on my experience if you are thinking about venturing off into the world for six months or more with just a backpack.

First and foremost if you are serious about this, you need to read "Vagabonding" by Rolf Potts. This will cover all the basics in much more detail than I will cover them here.

Equipment

 

What you NEED:

• Small backpack. This is the best investment you can make. 60L is the absolute maximum size you should have, 50L is better. You want a tough, good quality one. Don't skimp on this. I have one by Osprey with a detachable daypack and at 65L it's a little big, but otherwise excellent. Do NOT rush into a decision, try out the bag extensively and make sure it is very comfortable. You will be wearing it a lot.
• Day pack. Some backpacks have detachable daypacks, these are great, but if your backpack doesn't have one, you should get a small, comfortable pack that you can carry valuables around with you in the day time. One with an anti-theft zip is perfect.
• Minimal clothes. I have three T-shirts, one pair of trousers, a belt, another pair of shorts/trousers, seven pairs of boxers, seven pairs of socks, swimming shorts, a fleece, a lightweight raincoat... and that's it.
• Mosquito net (if you are going into an insect infested part of the world).
• Comfortable shoes and flipflops/sandles (that's thongs for our Australian readers)
• Wide brimmed sun hat and sunglasses.
• Small towel. You know it's the right size if it only barely covers your privates when you wrap it around your waist. A large towel is heavy and takes forever to dry, don't waste your time with one.
• Torch (a reliable one with spare batteries), swiss army knife, lighter, plastic bin liners, memory stick (for photos, and a spare one to post home as backup).
• Duct tape.
• Waterproof, shockproof, everythingproof camera. Your camera will be taking some knocks. Get one that can survive anything. Also take spare memory cards, you will use more than you think, and backup regularly onto a USB memory stick. Memory cards are notorious for becoming corrupted and I would have lost all my photos one time if I hadn't made religious backups.
• Guide book. But important to use this as a guide not a bible. See "Vagabonding" for more details on how to properly use a guide book. Lonely planet is a safe bet.
• Medical kit. Extremely important, include lots of anti-diarrhoea meds, plasters, scissors, savlon, antiseptic gel, paracetemol/aspirin, oral rehydration salts, cotton buds, water purification tabs. Anti-malarials optional.
• Wash kit. Shampoo, toothbrush, toothpaste (mouthwash/floss if you use that), razor.
• Money belt for your passport, cash and cards. Get a good one, don't skimp on this.
• Card with an account that doesn't charge fees for withdrawing overseas. There are credit cards that will do this. I used Australian NAB's gold debit account.
• Emergency dollars. $300US in cash hidden somewhere. You never know when you might need it.
• Disposable ear plugs. If you don't take them you will wish you had.
• Sun cream and mosquito repellent.
• Toilet paper.
• Waterproof watch with alarm function, or alarm clock.

Recommended extras:

• Condoms. Can be hard to find quality ones in some countries.
• Small waterproof bag. You can keep your electronics/valuables in here so in the unlikely event you get caught in a torrential downpour, at least nothing gets permanently broken.
• Padlock for your bag. Get one that is TSA approved if you plan on going to America (otherwise they might slash open your bag).
• Diary/journal, pens and a workbook for writing. Keep a journal. You will learn a lot about yourself.
• Books, or better, a kindle. You will have a lot of spare time waiting around while you are backpacking. You may as well use it to get some serious study in. I cannot recommend the kindle enough especially for travelers, I'm so glad I bought one while I was in Bolivia. Lightweight, and any book is instantly available.
• Dictionary and maybe a grammar book if you are about to start learning a new language. Get a dictionary that can easily fit in your pocket, it will be going with you everywhere. Also a little notebook for writing down vocab when you run into it in everyday conversation. This is the best way to learn.
• Something to learn/study. You will have a lot of spare time and it would be a waste not to be learning something. I have my guitar and Gibson's Learn and Master Guitar course in addition to my Spanish notes and a bunch of philosophical literature. I met a girl who was learning yoga from a book while she traveled. Something like this is a fantastic idea.
• Snorkel and mask if you are planning on spending a lot of time near the ocean and like swimming. It can be hard to find quality ones that don't leak.
• I brought an ipod. I like listening to music on long bus trips and I try to learn songs from it sometimes. This is optional, don't bring something so valuable you can't afford to lose it.
• Sheet sleeping bag. This is just a thin sheet sewed into a sleeping bag shape. I wish I had brought one of these, comes in handy when you have to sleep on a couch, floor or a really disgusting hostel bed, plus it weighs almost nothing.

What you DON'T need:

• Laptop computer, iPad, mobile phone, any other internet connected technology (kindle excepted because it's really a book). If your aim while backpacking is to push your comfort zone, experience new cultures and have a wild and crazy new experience, leave technology, twitter, facebook, phones, texting and mindless internet trawling at home. I see many travelers sitting in their hostel all day on wifi with their laptops, learning nothing and experiencing nothing. If you take one, the temptation will be too great and this is what you will end up doing. Besides, there are internet cafes everywhere and they are cheap.
• A huge backpack. Resist the urge to get a huge backpack. Trust me on this, 60 or 65L is the absolute most you need. I have seen people struggling under huge and heavy backpacks weighing more than 20KG and I shake my head in pity and disbelief. Don't be one of those guys.
• Huge amount of clothes. Honestly, the basics are enough and when they start falling apart, you can just buy new ones, and they will probably be cheaper wherever you are than they were at home.
• The kitchen sink. You can buy almost whatever you need wherever you go, except for some of the essentials I listed above, and probably cheaper than in your home country. You do not need to plan for every eventuality, and it's impossible to foresee anyway.
• Tents, sleeping bag, camping gear etc, unless you are actually going on a camping trip. It usually makes more sense just to hire this stuff when/if you need it.

Tips

 

Travel light, travel light and travel light. You can buy almost all the basics wherever you are in the world. You are not hiking up the Eiger, you just don't need all that much stuff for day to day living.

Seriously, leave the laptop and mobile phone behind. My phone was stolen in Buenos Aires and I'm so glad that it was, because it freed me. Do you ever find yourself logging onto facebook eagerly looking for those little red tags in the top left, then feeling vague disapointment and plummetting self-worth when there aren't any? In my opinion this is as bad a habit as any drug, go cold turkey and try getting your validation from real life for once. Leave the laptop at home.

Don't rely on your guide, or the internet. Learn the language and talk to the people about what you want to do and where you can do it. You will find this enlightening and rewarding. The guide book is always nice to have as a backup when you run out of other ideas, but should not be your bible.

Traveling alone is a very adventurous way to go and I didn't fully appreciate this before I left. It is by no means for everyone.

Pros are that you will mature very fast, you will develop an ironclad sense of self and confidence, you will become extremely good at meeting people and making friends fast, you will meet more people and you will become very self-reliant. You will learn to handle situations where you might be in real trouble and there is absolutely nobody else that you can rely on. You will learn foreign languages much faster when you have nobody to talk to in your native language. Also, you can do whatever you want whenever you want, you never need to wait for anyone or hold a comittee about what to do or where to eat.

Cons are that sometimes it can be devastatingly lonely. If you get in trouble, or fall ill, you are on your own. There is nobody that will help you out. Three days lying feverish in a shitty bed in a damp hostel room on your own is not pleasant.

Don't try to plan everything. Make it up as you go along, you will learn as you go and you will have a lot more fun this way.

Read philosophy. Many people visit exotic and far flung places because they feel an emptiness inside them at home and think that rambling across the globe will fill it. It won't. You only have what you brought with you, wherever you go, and traveling will teach you this. Travel as a supplement to your education and self-discovery, not as an escape.


That's about it, if anybody is planning a trip like this and has any questions, feel free to ask in the comment.

On being paralysed by fear (and some practical advice on how to handle it)

This post has been a long time coming because this is something I've been working on pretty consistently for over a year. During my time travelling I have met a lot of people and seen a few cultures and how people live. After a while some patterns start to emerge.

The problem

Fact: The vast majority of people in life are motivated primarily by fear.

Fear of failure, fear of change, fear of success, fear of rejection, fear of embarrassment, fear of putting yourself in unknown situations, fear of looking bad, fear of expressing yourself honestly, fear of death (most people especially won't admit this one to themselves) fear of pursuing what it is you really want in life in case you don't get it. These are the things that funnel most people into a small channel of comfort for much of their lives and prevent them from ever reaching their true potential.

The absolute first thing to realise if you want to get a handle on this is to face and admit the fact that you are scared. To be scared is to be human. Nobody is fearless. But a person that doesn't admit their fear and analyse exactly what they are afraid of is deluding themselves and this will only allow fear to exert its iron grip all the more forcefully for being disguised as something else.

Let's examine a practical example. Maybe you are an aspiring musician, you play in a small band and you're pretty good at lead guitar. And just maybe you sometimes dream about playing in front of huge crowds, selling albums and being the best at what you do, eventually going on to inspire other young musicians with your unique style of music. This would be a real contribution to culture and music and humanity in general. But you tell yourself "Nah that's probably not gonna happen, I'm not going to chase that dream, I won't bother pushing my band to play in more places, I won't play in front of all those people where there might be that talent scout watching, I'm happy just doing my thing at these local bars and jamming with my friends. I'll probably never get there and besides, what happens if I fail? I might screw up in front of that important person and look bad, then I'll never realise my dream and I'll be unhappy. Best play it safe. Besides none of my friends are doing that well so I don't feel so bad being at the same level as them."

This is motivation by fear. It's just disguised as something else, perhaps being "realistic" or protecting yourself from the hurt of failure, or justifying that it's ok because your friends do it too. This is the reason that most people are disillusioned with life and fail to reach their full potential.

Now fear is a natural emotion, and it has its place. There is nothing wrong with feeling fear sometimes, it is an evolved response that puts us on edge, heightens our emotions and makes sure we think carefully about what we are doing. When primitive man saw the tiger's eyes looking at him through the leaves in the jungle, being scared was probably a fantastic idea. It put him on edge, got him ready to run really fast, and gave him maximum poise and energy if he needed to fight.

One time when I was working as a volunteer here in Bolivia I was working with a jaguar called Ru. Every day we would carefully clip him on to an overhead runner and allow him some freedom to patrol his territory and swim before returning him to his cage. One day I left the door of his cage wide open and unlocked by accident. We put him inside and unclipped him from his runner, and I  immediately realised what I had done. This cat was over a hundred kilos, very boisterous and potentially dangerous. As soon as he was unclipped inside that cage he was essentially free and if he could get access to a person he would almost certainly jump them with considerable force and possibly with teeth and claws. This is an appropriate situation to feel fear. I felt shock run though me and I immediately sprinted for the door before my partner screamed at me to stop because Ru thought it was a game and started running with me. At an extremely heightened sense of awareness, I asked my partner to make noises and jump to distract the jaguar while I walked slowly round and managed to clip the lock safely on the door. Fear in this case was appropriate because it alerted me to the seriousness of the situation and gave me the clarity of mind to deal with it effectively.

The problem is, in the modern world, there just aren't many real dangers any more. Situations like the above that represent a real potential for actual harm pretty much never happen. We have all this leftover fear and nowhere to put it, so it goes into IMAGINARY dangers rather than real ones.

"We are more often frightened than hurt, and we suffer more from imagination than from reality."
-Marcus Annaeus Seneca

Read the above quote again, more slowly, and write it out in front of you in pen on paper at least twice because it is one of the most important things you can ever realise in this life.

If you didn't do this already, stop reading, get a piece of paper and do it goddammit. Lol.

Another example, and a very common one is being scared to talk to members of the opposite sex. In fact this is pretty much universal. When you see a cute girl sitting by herself on a bench in the park, what do you think as you walk past? If you are a normal human male it's probably something like this:

"Wow that girl's hot, I'm gonna try and check her out without her noticing as I walk past. Ah shit she's looking at me, what do I do? Should I say something? God no what if I embarrass myself, what if she's disgusted by me and tells me to get lost, that would make me feel terrible. I wouldn't know what to say to her anyway and I don't really care all that much, she kind of even looks a little fat and there's that old lady sitting next to her, what if she thinks I'm an asshole. I know, I'll just look away and pretend I don't even care that she's there. I can only talk to girls when I'm drunk anyway."

This is another example of motivation by fear. Fear of embarrassment or rejection or failure (or sometimes even fear of success paradoxically, you might be scared to talk to the girl because there's actually a good chance she might like you and this scares you because you aren't used to success). Fear is insidious, it is subtle, it disguises itself in many ways. The technical term for this kind of fear is creative avoidance. Your mind is scared of something so it makes excuses about why it didn't want it anyway, or why doing something else right now is really a much better idea.

These isolated moments by themselves are not a problem, but they represent a pattern in every area of our lives that cumulatively add up to a formidable wall around us that stops us from ever attaining what we are truly capable of in every area, be it work, musicianship, dating, sports, fitness and health or starting a company.

How to beat it

Let's use the example of talking to the cute girl as a practical example and examine some strategies on how we can start to get a handle on this fear.

Step one: Examine the situation logically. What are the ACTUAL repercussions of the worst case scenario. Let's say you walk up to the girl and say hi. She looks at you like you are the scum of the earth and says something like "get lost, loser". Logically and coldly examine, what are the repercussions, really? Are you physically hurt? Are you dead? Did she kick you in the balls and physically mash your masculinity into pieces? No, afterwards you are exactly the same except someone said some words to you and you have a new bit of life experience. Are you ever going to even see that person again? Probably not. (By the way, this almost NEVER happens, I've spoken to well over a thousand girls and I very rarely got a harsh reaction like this, and when it does happen, it's not even that bad, in fact it's kind of a rush, like jumping into a cold swimming pool all in one go.)
Step two: Once you have ascertained logically that even the worst case scenario is something you can handle, you need to dump the excuses and admit you are scared. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this and it is the first step in learning how to handle it. Take a good look at your fear and see it for what it is, realise it is a useful emotion that is just a little misplaced in this situation. Just admitting to yourself that you are prevented from doing this thing you want by fear is over halfway to fixing the problem. If you continue to allow it to disguise itself as something else you will NEVER get a decent handle on it.
Step three: Do this thing you are scared of. This is definitely the hardest part, especially when we are first learning how to cope with it. Fear has a very tight grip on us and shaking that off takes time and a whole heap of practice. I'm not going to lie to you, it will probably take a fair few months of consistent effort every day. It is often easier to start with small things that scare us and work our way up over time and repetition, rather than trying the hardest things first, failing to act and feeling bad. Maybe it's just something like speaking up on your opinion at work, singing in public or engaging in small talk with a shop assistant.
Step four: Repeat these steps on a regular basis in every aspect of your life, whenever you have the opportunity. The more you do it, the easier it gets.

In the start, step three is so difficult as to seem almost impossible. We can recognise our fear but it still paralyses us and we feel all the more useless and dumb for admitting to ourselves that we are prevented from acting solely by a mental block. RELAX. Realise that this is totally natural and human, and just take a deep breath, step back and take the pressure off yourself. Doing the thing you fear requires a kind of mental backflip, a sudden flick of state that causes us to take action. This is sometimes called a state break. Some strategies I have used successfully to initiate a state break are:

• Text a friend you really respect asking him/her to text back the words "DO IT NOW!" This is one of my favourites and works really well if you have a patient friend that understands what you are trying to do. I used this to great success when I first started to learn how to handle this problem.
• Do something ridiculous, sometimes I will stick my finger in my right ear and make a dumb face while sticking my tongue out. Yes, I do this in front of everyone. It invariably makes me laugh and makes everything else seem less serious.
• Count down from three then DO IT.
• Take one deep breath in, then one deep breath out, then DO IT.
• Give a friend a hundred dollars and text him every time before you do something that scares you, asking him to give you one dollar back.

What you must be careful not to do is say to yourself "I'll just do this other thing first thing and then I'll do the thing that scares me." This is our old friend creative avoidance again and he is a subtle and clever enemy. A state break needs to be short, sharp and initiate action in the direction of the thing that scares us. For example, "I'll just get a drink of water before I talk to that girl" is not a state break, it is creative avoidance and will only exacerbate the problem. Find a state break that works for you and stick with it.

I think that fear is NEVER something that truly goes away. But with practice we can build better and better strategies to handle it. In the beginning it is very hard to deal with, you need to find something that regularly presents you with scary situations so you can learn to deal with them. Approaching women is actually one of the best practice situations I can think of because it is naturally something most men are scared of, yet the repercussions are zero and there are women everywhere so practice opportunities are abound, plus you can tap into your sex drive as a source of natural motivation. But you can do it with anything, playing live music, singing or dancing in public, stretching yourself in sports, examinations, whatever. Believe me, it will get easier with practice. Over time you will find yourself having balls and confidence in other situations that used to scare you but aren't even related to what you were working on.

Eventually you will start to realise that fear is a useful emotion, it puts us into a heightened emotional state that readies us to deal with the situation at our best effectiveness.

It also definitely helps to read appropriate literature. History is full of examples of people who have heroically overcome fear and reading about how they did it will help you a lot. A motley collection of authors that helped me are Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Tim Ferris, Howard Marks (Oxford-graduate-turned-drug-dealer who wrote an autobiography) and Tony Robbins, these guys will set you off in the right direction.

A practical exercise

1. Take a sheet of paper and write down something you want to achieve in your life but haven't really worked towards yet. Maybe you are in an unhappy relationship and want a way out, maybe you hate your job and want to quit, maybe you want to start a business but are worried that it will be a lot of work and won't work out, maybe you want to kiss a girl you've been hanging out with for a long time or compete in an event in your favourite sport. It can even be a small thing like "write a song".
2. Write down a bunch of excuses as to why you haven´t done it.
3. Now cross them out and write underneath "I haven't done this yet because I am scared of what will happen if I try."
4. Write down the absolute worst case scenario then realise that you can handle it.
5. DO IT NOW. Do the thing that scares you. Call the girl, start working on a website for your business idea, print off a bunch of CVs and go out handing them into places to look for a new job.

"We always have TWO choices in life. Action or an excuse. Be honest with yourself about which you are choosing."
-Me (rather self-indulgently)

I hope this doesn't come across as preachy. Please realise that these are problems that I also have and try to work on every single day. I am far from conquering my own fears of many things. I am the first to admit my own failings in these areas, and the first to eagerly take advice from anyone who cares to share it with me. I share this because writing clarifies my own thoughts and encourages me to follow my own exercises, and because I want to help other people join me in my journey to realise the best I can be.

First solo flight!

When I was about 8 or 9 I tied a whole bunch of plastic bags to myself and ran down the hill next to my house over and over in a vain attempt to achieve liftoff. Devastatingly, the only thing that left the ground was the evaporating cloud of my deflated flying dreams. I returned home dejected and depressed with no hope of ever taking to the skies and flying like the birds.

But the dream never truly died, it was only slumbering. Over the years I took my dreams aloft once in a glider, through radio control with model planes, with powered trainer aircraft in the RAF and once plummeting from 8000 feet under a scrap of cloth in Australia. Today, after thirteen years of looking to the sky and dreaming of gliders and helicopters, the as-til-now dormant butterfly of flight erupted from its cocoon and I am proud to say I truly flew for the first time!

Pulling hard against an immense drag, then a sudden release as the wing takes flight and your instructor is screaming at you, you stupid bastard RUN RUN. Your legs windmill almost involuntarily and you feel first one snatch of lightness, then a second, then the ground falls sharply away leaving your legs wheeling free in the air as you speed into a vast nothingness.

Paragliding is as close as it is possible to come to the ideal of unaided flight. No noise, no cockpit, nobody else and no distractions. Just the gentle swooshing of your wing overhead and the wind in your face as you soar effortlessly over toy houses and bonsai trees. From this lofty lookout you can survey with godlike distance and impunity arching mountains and plains that stretch beyond your line of sight, rivers run like threads and plastic buildings with scootling lego cars. The distractions of life drop far off the radar and are replaced by a tranquil sense of connection with nature and... emptiness.

We never think of the air as something thick but with a wing attached it feels like porridge, almost something you can walk on. Ridges plunge beneath you and as you turn towards the mountain, the sun full in your face, you see a crescent shadow speeding with you up the craggy face. Is that me? A tenuous connection at best between you and the ground, you scoff at this pathetic attempt by nature to remind you of your mortality and continue to soar free and ecstatic as a bird.

Then as you approach the landing area reality hits. Scrub and tree start to speed towards you faster and faster, full speed towards the landing site and BRAKE BRAKE BRAKE as the ground rushes up under your feet then a harsh crunch of your arse on the grass and your wing gracefully flows forward to collapse in a slow motion concertina in front of you.

I have nothing but good things to say for AndesXtremo paragliding school here in Cochabamba. With a real focus on safety, I spent two days on the ground just learning to inflate the wing and another day taking two tandem flights to learn the feel and mechanics in total security. For my first flight alone, they talked me down by radio every step of the way. I have six more flights with them and I can absolutely recommend them 100% if you are looking for a solo paragliding experience.

Inside the head of Christ

So last Monday another devastating night bus journey left me dazed and confused at the terminal in Cochabamba at 3am. I managed to find a hostel that was still open, they charged me through the roof but by that point I didn't care, the bus terminal is not a happy or safe place to be at night and I was so sleep-deprived it's a miracle I managed to avoid being ploughed down by a bus on the way out of the building.

I'm in a much better (and cheaper) hostel now and already had my first paragliding lesson three days ago! Andres from andesXtremo is an extremely competent instructor and very focussed on safety, he insisted on two days just running around on the ground with the wing attached to make sure that the process of inflating and taking off is totally automatic and there is minimal chance on an accident when I take off for real.

Sadly my enthusiasm was rather short-lived because later that day I started feeling very cold and shivery, promptly vomited all over the place and wrapped myself up in bed with a fever for the next two days. Needless to say I did not venture out to continue my training so that has been postponed until next Monday.

Today however I was feeling much better so I climbed the hill in the middle of Cochabamba (yes, in the middle - it's a huge and sprawling city) to look out of the eyes of Christ. He has a pretty forbidding view of the city, better keep your sins inside here. Disregarding the lack of any kind of momentous religious experience, the view through his eyes is pretty cool. Almost expired on the way up the stairs though, he's a tall lad and at 2500m breathing starts to become like sucking air through a garden hose, surprisingly difficult.

The high altitude also makes paragliding a little different to most places, perhaps that explains Andres' emphasis on safety. I'll be in Cochabamba all of this week while I learn, hoping to get some amazing views of the city from up there!

Chau

Leaving Sucre

Today marks one month in Sucre and I am sad to be leaving.

Hoy dia indica que estoy en Sucre mas de un mes y estoy triste de salir.

Enrique, Marlene, Lorena, Ricardo, Andrea and Karina I miss you already. You will always be my family in Bolivia.To my Spanish teachers, Coco and Fernando, thanks SO MUCH for your work, I'll recommend your school to everyone.

Enrique, Marlene, Lorena, Ricardo, Andrea y Karina ya les extraño. Ustedes irán mi familia Boliviana por todo el tiempo. También á mi Professores, Coco y Fernando, MUCHAS gracias para su trabajo, voy a recomendar su escuela a todos!

I leave for Cochabamba on an overnight bus this evening, and start a week-long paragliding course there on Tuesday. Sucre is a beautiful city, my favourite in South America so far and I'm sure I will return one day. My Spanish has gone from almost non-existent to competent in conversation thanks to the excellent teaching from Me Gusta spanish school. If you are serious about wanting to learn Spanish, I cannot recommend this place highly enough. Fernando and Ely are incredibly conscientious and really treat you as a member of their family more than a student. More than that, Sucre is full of students who are very happy to talk to you, I was taking four hours of classes every weekday and in the afternoons I would go out for three or four hours more into the plaza to chat with people in order to apply what I had learned. This has been a very successful approach for me, as with any language, TOTAL immersion is the absolute only way to learn. You will not achieve get very far by taking classes every day then returning to a hostel to speak english. Much better to live with a Spanish-speaking family and try to make friends with absolutely every Spanish speaker you can find, all day every day. I am proud to say I even occasionally dream in Spanish now - total immersion will do that for you.

Salgo para Cochabamba esta noche, y a Martes empezaré con una semana des clases de parapente. Sucre es una ciudad bonita, mi favorita en Sudamerica. Estoy seguro que voy a volver un dia. Mi español cuando llegué fue terrible, ahora tengo competencia en conversaciones normales, gracias a los enseñado excelente de "Me Gusta" escuela. Si quieres aprender español, es imposible recomendar suficiente esta lugar. Fernando y Ely están muy concienzudas y parece que tu estas uno de sus familia. Más, Sucre es lleno de los estudiantes quien están muy feliz a hablar contigo. Estaba tomando cuatro horas des clases cada día y en las tardes salía por tres o cuatro horas mas charlando con la gente para aplicar lo que yo aprendía. Esta ha sido un enfoque exitoso para mi, como con cualquiera idioma, inmersión total es lo mejor manera de aprender. No voy a hacer buen progreso si solo tienes clases y después vuelves a un hostal y hablas ingles todo el tiempo. Mejor es vivir con un familia Boliviana y hacer amigos con cada hablador de español que tu encuentras. Estoy orgulloso que ahora, a veces yo sueño en español - este es lo que hace inmersión total.

Phew that's enough Spanish for now. Hasta luego!

Carnaval en Sucre

Today marks a whole week I've been in Sucre and it's been AWESOME. This weekend is Carnaval and all the people take to the streets with water guns and water balloons to soak each other. I am currently sitting soaking wet at the only open internet cafe in Sucre.

Sucre is a beautiful city, I had an excellent chance to see it from outside today as I went this morning with Coco (my spanish teacher) to learn to ride a motorbike with gears. He is a motorcross competitor when he isn't teaching and allowed me to practice on his bike. I am going to rent/borrow one on Monday and go with him for a tour all around the outside of the city.

I have been staying with a host family, Enrique is the owner of the house, his son, daughter, maid and her two daughters live there as well. They are INCREDIBLY hospitable people, Enrique speaks very clear and comprehensible spanish, and is always willing to help me with whatever I need including driving me to a guitar lesson last week (also in spanish). I took my guitar to a church jam session on Monday and felt humbled in front of all the other guitarists who were much better than me, I have been practicing just as much as ever though and I can see very slow but steady progress which is very encouraging. My command of the language is getting better every day as well and I intend to stay in Sucre at least another two weeks to take advantage of this excellent learning environment.

Conversational fluency is a nebulous goal. To fully master Spanish such that I could speak it as well as English would probably take a good few thousand hours of practice and multiple years in a Spanish speaking country, reading Spanish literature. However, to learn it well enough to have a conversation with someone is much easier. Thursday marked a milestone for me, I met a Bolivian girl out and about in the city and brought her back to my house, the first time I've picked up speaking only Spanish. Now of course it is possible to pick up without saying much at all IF you are a pickup god but this is a pretty good accomplishment for me and an excellent incentive for me to continue learning the language. I don't think it marks practical conversational fluency just yet but I can't be far off.

I met a very interesting fellow student from my spanish school the other day. He is a 38 year old American physics graduate who wants to set up a luxury resort in a snall Peruvian town. I spent about three hours in a bar with him discussing his beliefs and how he thinks he has achieved some of the best moments in his life. In the spirit of my recent venture into practical philosophy as an operating system for life, I tried to apply some of his beliefs into my existing framework. This has resulted in an interesting theory that I want to apply to my life and see if I can't use it to get some results:

I made some notes in my notebook after I spoke with him, they are roughly as follows:

A human is:
The universe come alive
An eddy current in the universal flow of entropy
An atom's way of looking at itself
The universe's attempt to save itself from entropy death
A tool for making thought real
A knot in time - the body in the past, emotions in the present and thought in the future
A meta-consciousness having a human experience


After I graduated in physics I thought I understood the world. This was so far from the truth as to be laughable. Truth is not physics, it is not black and white, it is what you apply to get results, nothing more and nothing less.

The world you experience is a reflected reality. It is NOT an absolute. What you experience is defined by a complex mixture of your sensory input, your beliefs about who you are, your beliefs about other people and your current emotional state. Your brain likes to maintain a congruent reality at all costs, such that if there is something that does not fit into your reality your brain will do whatever it can to make that reality congruent again, either by ignoring input or trying to output action to change the input into something closer to the ideal.

The upshot of this is that if you want to have something in your life, whatever it is, start acting as if you already have it. In fact, start believing that you already have it right now even (especially) if it doesn't seem to be true within your current reality framework (note the emphasis on current).

If you to continue to operate with the belief that you don't have this thing that you want, and it is hard to obtain, your brain will constantly look for references to support this in order to maintain a congruent reality.  I theorise that if you flick the switch and start believing that what you want is everywhere, easy to obtain, and you could always just take it if you wanted, your brain will start subconsciously leaning in a direction that takes you closer and closer to this new reality in many tiny ways.

Over time your mindset will adjust such that the reality is congruent again and you really do have whatever it is that you wanted. Although this approach could take years to really work especially with big things, I am certain it will work better than focussing on what you DON'T have, which will only entrench you further into your current reality.

One thing I have learned through learning guitar and continuously putting myself in unknown and unpredictable situations is that your brain is far more powerful than you think it is and you should trust it more.

Sucre, spanish classes and Buddhist philosophy

Samiapata was beautiful. Picture a sleepy mountain village surrounded by secluded waterfalls and you're halfway there. I stayed in a hippie camp for a few days and had a very relaxed time playing guitar and trying to climb waterfalls (it is on my bucket list to climb a waterfall and I STILL haven't done it! They were all too high and slippery. I almost managed one but the trees were too thick at the top). From Samaipata I took an overnight bus to Sucre, totally unprepared for the bone-smashing 14 hour marathon I was in for.

There is no real route from Santa Cruz to Sucre. Some Bolivian has driven a bulldozer through the jungle and the government labelled the subsequent swathe of destruction a "road". In wet season half of it is flooded, at one point we drove up what I can only describe as a river for an hour. The bus was full of diesel fumes, a screaming baby, people sleeping in the aisles and the seat behind me had at least five kids in it who would take it in turns to kick my chair despite repeated "no empuje mi silla, en serio"s. To top it all off I had food poisoning so I was hanging my head out of the window most of the night trying not to vomit and simultaneously not to projectile shit all over the seat. The constant shaking and jarring did nothing to help the situation.

Anyway I got here alive this morning and am now feeling much better after a sleep and a salad and several immodiums. I spoke to a Dutch girl in a bar here who pointed me at Fenix spanish school. They are a non-profit with a focus on giving back to the local Bolivian community, plus they organise charity work and home-stays so it looks like a good option. I am going to go take a look tomorrow and perhaps stay here for a month to really get my Spanish up to par. Seven weeks of speaking mostly English in the park has put my Spanish learning backwards a bit, with one-on-one lessons and daily study on top of total immersion I think I can finally approach conversational fluency by the end of the month. Looking forward to staying with a Bolivian family as well, seems like a great way to really learn something about the culture rather than just pass through as another tourist.

I have become more and more interested in Eastern philosophy recently, particularly the Buddhist concepts of "right thinking" and Dukkha. I believe that we should pick our beliefs carefully and choose ones that have the most positive impact on our life. It would be foolish and naiive (not to mention lazy) to take all of the beliefs from ONE religion or philosophy and just live by those while ignoring others. But I do think there are some truths in Buddhist thinking that can benefit all of us.

Firstly and most importantly is the truth that:
Life is Dukkha

Now wikipedia defines Dukkha as Pali; meaning "suffering", "anxiety", "stress", "unsatisfactoriness". Buddhism states that life contains a lot of this, it's a fact and the first step to enlightenment is acknowledging it. We must be very careful with translations here because different words carry different connotations and what the original Buddha said can be easily twisted.

I take from this that Dukkha is similar to pain, and freedom from Dukkha comes with a total detachment from the outcome of our actions. It is essentially, the gap between what you want and what you have. Everyone will experience emotional pain in their lives, it is unavoidable. Some people try to escape it with heavy drinking and drugs. Some try by burying themselves in work. Some just get very lazy and are still unhappy without really realising why. Some travel the world looking for answers. Putting aside for a moment my arrogance in imposing my own interpretation on this belief in this way, what can we take from this?

Everyone is in pain a lot of the time. But once we acknowledge that everyone suffers, we respond to other humans with far more compassion and humanity. And I think escape from Dukkha lies down this path, along with realising that while we will always have Dukkha, if we live in the right way we can learn to CHOOSE whether we suffer from it or simply acknowledge it as part of life. The "right way" is outlined in something called the eight-fold path of Buddhism and includes concepts such as compassion, integrity and a high degree of control over your own thoughts. It is somewhat cryptic but I think there is some value in it.

Eliminating distractions, choosing what to focus on, these are the things that will take us forward in life. I truly believe that we can accomplish whatever we can imagine if we would just truly put our minds to it and take consistent, massive action in this direction. Pursuit of perfection in this manner demands an extremely high degree of self-discipline, as the Buddha said:

"As the Fletcher whittles and makes straight his arrows, so the master directs his straying thoughts."

But sitting around thinking these thoughts will not give you any gain. We must LIVE these thoughts and that means applying them through our actions. Only through application of beliefs and study of the resulting reality can we hope to learn anything.

If this whole diatribe seems somewhat confused, that's because I am very confused about it myself. But I do know that my opinions are changing. I look back on my view of the villagers who I gave shoes to and realise that my interpretation of this event has changed. These people are not to be scorned simply because their STRATEGY towards escaping suffering is different from mine. They are merely a product of their environment and it is a more enlightening approach to understand that they suffer pain and desire escape from it in the same way as you or I. By viewing other people with this compassionate eye, our approach becomes clearer.

This is just my sketchy and poor interpretation of these ideas. I encourage anyone who is interested to research these concepts more thoroughly and experiment with APPLYING them to their lives, remember there can be no learning without APPLICATION.