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Hola Viajero! 
Jun 24, 2008 06:00 PM Close to the Magnetic North Pole, but finished my money. Vado retro.
So easy to get to the Magnetic North Pole from Baffin island. It is located in Nunavut, the canadian procvince wjhere I am now, not far from where I live. But.... I need over 1000 canadian dollars to a flight to Resolute Bay, and then to rent a motorboat to the magnetic north pole (to the geographic north pole you need an icebreaker, and for a man alone is impossible, but to the magnetic north pole, anyone can go), but I am alone, no other foreigner or tourist around, and can't afford more expenses. Here, in Iqaluit, all the hotels charge 210 canadian dolalrs for a simple room, if 2 persons, then you have to pay 420 dollars, plus tax...! everything is very expensive, except the Salvation Army (food and acommodation for free), and internet for free in the Public Library. One kilo bananas in the supermarket costs 15 dollars. They sell fruits by units, about 20 times more expensive than in Spain. Everything has to ber brought from Canada mainland. Inuit people are becoming lazy, they do not fish or hunt anymore.
So, tomorrow I will head from Iqaluit to Labrador peninsula.
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Jun 17, 2008 06:00 PM Iqaluit, Nunavut, Baffin island. Heading to the North Pole
After trying to get further north from Yukon (i reached Whitehorse, then Inuvik), headed back to Dawson Creek, in British Columbia, then PeaCE rIVER IN NORTH aLBERTA, AND WENT TO yELLOWKNIFE, BUT NO WAY UPwards. sO i DECIDED TO COME TO nUNAVUT, TO bAffin Island. This time I think I c an get further north, very close to the North pole, by own means, without expeditions, but walking, hitchking.
Canada is too expensive, so I sleep in Salvation Armies, where I eat and sleep for free together with local aborigines. They are nice people. At the beginning they did not like me, taking me for a white canadian, I mean, from an european canadian. They hate them because they think that they arrived from Europe, hungry, desperate, to kill them and rob their lands in Canada. But when I explained that I was from Spain and that my parents did not migrate to America to invade indian and aborigines lands, but stayed in Spain, then they start considering me a friend, a visitor, but not an invader. I said I came to Canada to admire their country. I have been accepted by them.
I keep waiting. On 21st june it will be a celebnration, Aboriginal celebration coinciding with the entry of summer. then many people from up Nunavut will go back home to the north. I am making friendship with them to get a ride.
I will keep you informed if I can get to the North Pole on the cheap, I mean, for free.
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Apr 24, 2008 06:00 PM Working as a waiter in a cruise around the Mediterranean Sea
I found a job in a cruise for rich tourists around the Mediterranean Sea. I am a waiter and I serve pastis to rich French tourists, and also take them out in the calls to the restaurants, with live music and very good food.
In this picture I am in Papa Rex Restaurant, in the Vatican premises, in Via Aurelia 87. You can see the Vatican from the restaurant. I brought to that restaurant 60 French from Lourdes and at the same time I made them a panoramic excursion around rome before take them back to Civitavecchia, where our cruise boat was waiting. During our dinner there was live music, two tenors and a man at the piano.
It is very tiring work, but the salary is OK and the tourists give me generous tips. I also eat for free in expensive restaurants that otherwise I could not afford.
I hope that soon I will save enough money to visit my daughter and jump to forbidden Chukotka, the Russian Alaska. There, in the Bering Strait, there are two islands, called Diomedes; one belongs to USA and the other one to Russia. I will try to get, at least, to the Russian Diomedes. I will visit Chukchi people and the colonies of walrus, and fantastic landscapes.
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Mar 20, 2008 09:00 PM Back in Barcelona, washing dishes in a restaurant
I came back from the Camino de Santiago.
Found a job, washing dishes. They feed me with vegetarian food, so all the salary I save for my flight to Moscow, soon.
Every time when I come back to Barcelona and see this contemporary “modern” building, called SGAB (Sociedad General de Aguas de Barcelona) I feel sick, how the so called “modernists” are spoiling my town.
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Mar 02, 2008 09:00 PM No money, no job. I am making the Camino, once more!
Until Easter Holidays I will not work in a hotel in the Costa Brava, washing dishes. I spend more money at home than travelling, so I decided to make the Camino again, this time from Irun, at the border with France, along the Mar Cantábrico (Bay of Biscay), in Euskadi.
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Feb 03, 2008 09:00 PM I made the Camino !
Just arrived from Santiago. I am very satisfied; I feel fulfilled.
The Camino was hard, with high mountains between Castilla Leon and Galicia; it was cold in January, and some days it was rain, but after walking 500 kilometres in 16 days, I made it and came back home safely.
Herewith I show you the Compostela Document written in Latin language (my name in Latin is Georgium Ioannem).
In the past, this document exempted you from paying in the boats crossing the rivers, and merely by showing it you had right to receive accommodation and attention for free in the Templars castles and Order of Malta hospitals and shelters along the Camino when going back home, to your country, walking.
Today there are bridges everywhere and most pilgrims fly back home after finishing the Camino, but in the past there were not trains, buses or airplanes.
Showing this Compostela to the Spanish airline Iberia, you will be granted 50 % discount on your airplane ticket.
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Jan 13, 2008 09:00 PM El Camino Mozárabe to Santiago
I am travelling today, 14th January 2008, to Salamanca, to start tomorrow, 15th January, my ninth Camino de Santiago, walking.
Every year I carry out a new Camino on foot. I have made, so far, the following Caminos:
- the French from Saint Jean Pied de Port - Roncesvalles
- the Aragonese from Jaca, in the Pyrenees
- the Ruta de la Plata from Sevilla
- the Primitive from Oviedo (Asturias)
- the Portuguese from Oporto
- the Finisterre until the Atlantic Ocean
- and so on…
This time I will initiate the Camino Mozárabe, beginning in historical Salamanca, crossing lovely towns along the way, such as Zamora, Santa Marta, Orense, etc and will sleep in millenary monasteries eating frugal food and listening Gregorian chants.
I plan to arrive to Santiago de Compostela the 30th of January.
I will ask God to help me giving health and love to my mother and my daughters.
You can’t imagine how many thousands of foreigners make the Camino every year! They come, not only from Italy, Holland, Germany and other European countries, but also from Brazil (thanks to Paulo Coelho books), USA (thanks to Shirley MacLaine book called The Camino), Argentina, Israel, Japan…
Next year (2009) I will make the Camino del Norte, along the Mar Cantábrico.
Buen Camino a todos!
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Dec 07, 2007 09:00 PM MM. SS. Trinità
I discovered my vocation in this Church, in the centre of Rome, in Via Condotti, while sleeping in the Vatican premises (on the floor under the columns).
The Trinitarians is a XII century Order whose members (mainly monks) travel to liberate slaves around the world. Their Head Quarters are in Madrid.
I hope that they will accept the application that I am preparing today 8th of December 2007, festivity in Spain; we celebrate The Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary. If accepted I will travel, not for silly and egoistical purposes, like a tourist, spending precious money which better use would be to help to improve the conditions of the poor in the, so called, “third world” countries, but for a noble reason: to set free slaves in Sudan and other countries where slavery still exists (Mauritania, Chad, Colombia, and many other countries suffering the social cancer called war).
The Trinitarians liberated our national writer Miguel de Cervantes from the jail in Alger after paying 500 escudos.
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Nov 23, 2007 09:00 PM Hadramaut Valley
Alter spending a lovely week in Socotra Island I flew to Sana’a, in the Arabian Peninsula, in order to pay respect to seven Spanish tourists who were killed in Ma’rib by the terrorists of Al-Qaeda in a suicide car bomb, on the 2nd July 2007. In that coward attack, six more Spaniards were severely injured and two Yemeni guides were also killed.
The terrorist also died in the attack, and I hope that Allah will not have pity on him...
That was a group of tourists coming from the Spanish cities of Madrid, Barcelona and Bilbao; two of them were friends of two good friends of mine.
I felt that I had to visit the place.
Since oil deposits were found around Ma’rib, the town has become a dangerous place and a terrorist nest. Tourists, on order to get there, needed in the past a special permit, and always had to travel there with military escort because the danger of death and kidnapping. But since the July 2nd 2007 terrorists attack the Yemeni authorities do not allow you to go there anymore, only to the Hadramaut Valley via Al Mukalla.
How to get to Ma’rib, then?
I risked and went to the bus station to buy a ticket to Shibam, in the Hadramaut Valley, that has to cross Ma’rib on its way.
In the bus office I was informed that I had to get to Shibam via Al Mukalla to avoid Ma’rib, and was refused the ticket; they said to me in Arabic: Matar, matar, taira, taira! (Airport, airport, airplane, airplane!). I tried in another bus company and received the same result. Then I tried a third one, near Bab el Yemen and… I bought the ticket for only 1600 rials (about 8 US Dollars).
The journey was beautiful. When I reached Ma’rib it was already dark and decided to visit it in my way back to Sanaa, since going to a hotel would mean being discovered by the Police. In all the hotels in Yemen you have to leave your passport in the reception every night, not exception, even in cheap places to stay such as dormitories in bus stations.
In Ma’rib I saw soldiers wearing weapons and ordinary men armed to the teeth.
After spending several days visiting Shibam (UNESCO wonder, considered the Manhattan of the desert) plus Seyun and Tarim, I bought another ticket bus to Sanaa via Ma’rib.
This time the scenery was infinitely more stunning because it was day time. I saw canyons and rocks in the middle of the desert with a beauty beyond imagination. The journey remembered me the one I made hitchhiking many years ago from Denver, in Colorado, to Taos via Santa Fe, in New Mexico. But the one in Hadramaut was much more magnificent for it was unexpected to me.
Reaching again Ma’rib I went to the terrorist attack place, in the asphalted road, and tried to buy seven flowers or seven candles, one per tourist killed, but, of course, in the middle of the desert you do not find these items. Instead, I stayed in the place and kept silent during seven minutes, meditating and praying. After that I, instinctively, made the christian sign of the cross. Some young men passing by saw my gesture and started to talk about me for what I did. That was enough, I thought, time to leave, and decided to quit the town at once. I walked rapidly to the bus station (in fact there is not bus station in Ma’rib, but a cafeteria where the buses stop for half and hour for toilet and food) and waited for the first available bus back to peaceful and wonderful Sanaa.
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Nov 12, 2007 09:00 PM Qalansiya beach
See the picture. That was our “dormitory”. Instead of having five stars in a good hotel, we had millions of stars! We did not need anymore, just a white sand beach with crystalline water, some lobsters for dinner, and exciting conversation.
Andre is a master telling anecdotes of his travels. Once, in Margarita Island, he noticed on the top of a hill a swimming pool empty, no tourists or locals, so he decided to spend the night there inside his sleeping bag, but before he resolved to have a bath, he jumped inside the swimming pool, cleaned his body and hair with soap and shampoo, then he swam for about half an hour… and suddenly appeared several Venezuelan soldiers pointing their rifles to him. He had been taken by a Cuban guerrillero! After the explanations, he was given a free place to sleep in the local jail for just one night. The “swimming pool” was in fact the Margarita island water deposit!
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