Holy Crap! We are going to Colombia!!!

28/6/2005

Click on the above cartoon if you want it bigger to read it

Hey there dudes and dudettes… this is my first ever bloggedy blog on our new website…YAY!!!!!! Avril’s been writing all the other entries but of course hers are nice and polite so it’s time to get down to the nitty gritty…

Man… we are so FREAKED OUT… what the fuck are we doing going overseas and having a big party at the same time…

For those of you who don’t know what we are doing, we are planning 10 days in Argentina and Brazil, 2 weeks in the Galapagos Islands, 3 weeks in COLOMBIA (Holy Crap who’s dumb idea is that), 3 weeks in Nicaragua and then 3 weeks in Cuba before we eventually hit San Francisco for my cousin Lisa’s wedding.

We are then going to base ourselves in Ireland for a year and try and bum around Europe with a side trip to Africa and also Jordan and then we’ll come back via India, Tibet, and Mongolia where we’ll try and catch up with our mate Mick Sharry who is working over in Mongolia somewhere.

About a couple of months ago it really hit us that we are REALLY going to Colombia one of the most dangerous places in the world. Now, last time we were in South America in 1998, we avoided it because there was an election on and we had heard that there was a kidnapping every week.

However, we kept hearing reports about how amazing the country was and how awesome the people are and how most people who came out of Colombia got mugged… BUT still considered it their most favourite country in the whole of South America!!!

Stoopid people… they talked it up so much that now we’re also going there…

Anyhows, we have been bumming around the Lonely Planet thorntree forums and there are still heaps of dangerous areas in Colombia but apparently if you fly between places, then the risk of kidnapping is low. They reckon there are people who are paid to hang out at bus stations who check out who gets on a bus to see whether it is worth hijacking, and of course tourists are prime pickings!!!… stoopid freaky kidnappers…

However, there was a kidnapping last year where a heap of people were kidnapped from a tour group and marched through the jungles for 4 months. The thing that struck us though was that the kidnappers only took tourists with good hiking shoes as they knew that they would have to be walking a lot. So it seems to us that the kidnappers seem to be a bit nice not at all like the nasty chop-your-head-off type kidnappers…

In fact most of the foreign deaths are from when the military mount a rescue and the hostage is caught in the crossfire… stoopid well-meaning Colombian army…

Even seeing that Colombian movie Maria Full Of Grace and the dumbass Schwarzenegger movie Collateral Damage hasn’t made us feel any better about Colombia.

But… we’ve paid our tickets, so we are all booked now and ready to go so there is no turning back now…

Anyway the serious reason for writing this blog is because I really want to document our fear of the unknown and then compare it to what we write once we get out of Colombia…

Fear of the unknown is one of those things that not only stops people from travelling, but also from progressing with anything in their life and I think taking a big scary step in life sometimes helps you defuse that fear.

People often tell us that both of us seem like really confident people, but in actually fact, we are generally over cautious freaked out flower children…

But, the more scary things that we do, the more confident we have become in all aspects of our lives and I reckon it’s because once you can conquer your fear, then you can literally do anything.

Of course, I could be completely wrong so if you see us on TV with guns pointing at our heads, feel free to tell the media that we are complete tossers but then make sure you all give generously so we can get bailed out…!!!!

-Ced