URUGUAY:ACT YOUR AGE!

I'm so loving being 29 again! Really I am. It's so much better the second time round. I'm mean I'm so much more in control and confident and I'm not having a break down because my boyfriend has left me for another woman. Yes! It's so much better. OK, I know what your thinking! "Carly your not 29, your 34!" Well yes I am 34, but I'm in Uruguay, and in Urugauy I'm 29! Why? Well it seems that me and Prue have been reverting back to our youth. Because? Well the story goes a little something like this.

Once upon a time there were two girls called Carly and Prue, who lived in London, but who had become tired working all the hours God sent and dating wankers so they decided to leave it all behind and go on a adventure to South America. After 14 hours worth of flights with Iberia (The easy Jet of long haul: God Dam awful!) they arrived in Latin America. They decided to head straight to beach, so got a ferry to Uruguay. They get to Montevideo and decide to get a bus to La Paloma. The bus is full. So Carly thinks of some others names she has read and the first thing she can think of is Punta del Diablo. The next thing they know, they are standing at the bus staton in Puta del diablo with there bags, thinking "Where the Hell are we?" Luckily some guys come in their car and tell them they work for a hostel and drive them there, and this is kind of the way it all started.
We arrive at the hostel but it's more like some big house where the owner has his friends stay over. It's full of cats, dogs, people passed out on sofas and some guy skateboarding around. It's like a Hippie commune.
"We will take it" we reply.
"OK" says the guy "So there is a bar downstairs and we have bands every night. They usually start at 1am."
1am! Me and Prue look at each other. I guest there is no rest for the wicked.
We decide to explore the town which is a lot bigger than we think. It becomes quite clear that we are the only Gringos in town, which seems quite scary as we will have to inflict our bad Spanish on people. Another thing that is also clear is that everyone seems quite young and beautiful here. The
Latin's as a race, are really quite stunning. Their dark tans and thick black hair make us Anglo Saxons look very ugly in comparison. It's later that night when still surrounded by the beautiful young people, that Prue turns to me and says "I think we should lie about our age a little bit, what do you think?" Now the last time I think I lied about my age was when I was 16 and trying to be 18 so I could get into Mr Smiths nightclub in Warrington (Those were the days)? I'm always saying now, how happy I am in my thirties, why should I lie about my age. It shouldn't really matter! Then second thoughts!
"OK" I reply "What do you think we can get away with?"
"29?"
"29 is good for me?"
"So we are both agreed if anyone asks how old we are, we are both 29" says Prue.
"Deal!"
So that's how I became 29 again.

It wasn't actually that bad being the only Gringas in town as we seem quite a novelty and get lots of attention. Well male attention that is. I once asked a Latin guy why they give western women so much attention when the Latin women were far more beautiful than us.
"Because you are exotic to us" was his response.
"I'm from Warrington! There is nothing exotic about that!" Was my response.
We seem to be surrounded by guys. New men keep appearing and introducing themselves to us. There are two in particular that stick to us, and keep giving us red wine to drink straight from the bottle. They are pretty drunk and so are we, so it kind of works. We can't remember there actual names, so we call them Robert Pattison and Gerald Butler as they look like them, but Latin versions
and only really Like Gerald Butler in 300 as he has the same beard. We play pool, we drink and then we sit by the hippie commune bonfire and then they ask us our age. Me and Prue look at each other.
"29" we say together.
It turns out they are both 29 too. Phew!!!!
The next thing I know we are walking hand in hand (me with Robert Pattison and Prue with Gerald Butler) up the dirt track away from the commune. Not far into that walk I find my self kissing Robert Pattison. I open my eyes and look over my shoulder. A few meters away I can see Prue doing the same with Gerald Butler. I'm on a dirt track kissing some guy I just met after drinking red wine straight from the bottle with him (Whiskey too)! I feel like I'm 18. It's at this moment it occurs to me I'm not 18. I'm not even 29! I'm 34!
"I can't do this! I have to go to bed" I say to Robert Pattison.
"Your going?" he asks a little surprised.
"Yes!" I start walking.
"Prue I'm going to bed!" I shout as I walk past her, still in the throws of a passionate kiss.
About 15 minutes after I'm tucked up in bed, Prue walks in. I guess she had the same realisation too. We giggle like school girls. It's about 5am? It's time to go to bed.
We wake the next morning a little hazy from the night before but decide to hit the beach and get started on our tans. We find Robert Pattison and Gerald Butler asleep on one of the sofas outside. There is a person on a skateboard in the kitchen. Cats and dogs on the stairs. Yes everything seems just like normal in the hippie commune. In fact we have seem to have made a few friends last night as everyone is smiling and saying hello to us. I don't remember talking to half these people never mind
their names, nor does Prue. Well that would be a good first impression night that the drunk English
girls made.

In Europe, it's totally normal to go topless. We love it. Here in South America it's a big no, no! In fact I think it's illegal in most countries here. Me and Prue find this very frustrating as there is no better way to get an even tan than getting your breasts out. It's so liberating as well. The thing in South America is, they may not want to get their breasts out but they have no problems with getting their
asses out. Nearly every woman wears a bikini bottom where the back looks like a piece of dental
floss. Basically it's all about the ass here. Me and Prue look at our modestly cut English bikini bottoms. They totally cover our asses. We feel like an old woman. Actually no, because most of the old women have their crinkly old asses on display. We feel embarrassed because we are not showing our asses! You feel weird if your not, but then the whole concept of feeling weird because you having got your ass on display is just weird too! Me and Prue decide that the only thing to do is push our bikinis up our bottoms to try and create a thong. It feels weird (that word again!)  and you feel the need to pull it back out again, only to push it back up again. I can tell you now it's a very exposing thing to walk into the sea with half your ass hanging out, even though I wouldn't think twice if it's my breasts! The traumas of bikinis in South American style hey!

Latin men! My observations of Latin men are this:
1. I'm extremely attracted to most of them.
2. They are very chauvinistic!
3. They are very arrogant.
4. They like sex a lot. I mean most men do, but Latin men: A lot!
5. I wouldn't trust one as far as you could fling one.
The next night me and Prue find ourselves with a herd of men around us again. One in particular who we call big Nancho has eyes for Prue. He's all over her. We find him good company and he's very intelligent and funny. His friends too. It's such a change from London where guys only look at you if the wasted. They are open and don't hold back. Big Nancho tries his best but doesn't get anywhere with Prue, but we like him and would like to keep hanging out with him. The next day we see him again but his attitude has totally changed towards us. Most of his friends as well. They can't really be bothered to even talk to us. It's such a change from the day before. Me and Prue are totally shocked by this total turn around in their behaviour.  I know they didn't get in to our knickers but a least they could try and be friendly to us instead of pretending we don't exist anymore.
The next night while trying to have an early night me and Prue find ourselves at the bar again as it was impossible to sleep when the band started at 1am again. We kind of thought if you can't beat them, you may as well join them. We are being ignored by the guys still. So me and Prue get talking to a young Argentinean guy. He's sweet but nothing more. Prue leaves and before I know it I am now left with a now very drunk young Argentinean guy who keeps trying to kiss me. I keep turning my face away.
"Why don't you want to kiss?" He pleads
"Because I don't fancy you and your a bit young for me." He is 23 and that's even too old for me at 29!
"Then why are you talking to me?" He responds.
"Because it's nice to talk to people. It's friendly. I can talk to a man without wanting anything. I have lots of male friends in England. I live with 3 guys in London. Do you have no female friends?"
"No!" He seems confused by this concept. I see it's completely lost on him, the thought of being friends with a woman without having anything sexual with her. Impossible! I see things are different here and for once in my life I have a moment where I miss English men. This is for me the problem with Latin men! We leave the next day. It's time to start acting our age again, what ever that is?  Next stop Buenos Aires!

ON THE ROAD AGAIN!

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

-Mark Twain

I was twenty five when I first went back packing. I was a pretty late starter, but I have been with most things in life. Though I believe when you find things later than most, you tend to have a deeper love for it, as you have a better understanding. Nearly ten years on my love for travel has not faded. It's as bad as ever. I find some people skeptical of me going off still with my back pack at my age. "She should be settling down by now! What's wrong with her? She's flighty? What's she running away from?" they think. The truth is there is nothing wrong with me. I just love traveling that's all. It makes me feel alive. It makes me happy. There is a big world out there full of amazing things and I want to see it all. When I'm an old woman sat there in my chair withering away I want to say I have lived. There is plenty of time to settle down, if I want to, if I ever met anyone that would make me want to that, but I don't like the word settled. It sounds boring. Maybe a fellow adventurer sounds better to me, in what ever that maybe be?
So here I go again. This time I'm going back to South America. I have a flight into Buenos Aires and a flight out of Lima, what I do in between is always subject to change, but the plan is to head to Uruguay and up through Brazil to the Amazon and eventually to Peru! But who the Hell knows. On this trip I will be accompanied by my good friends Prue and Becky for part of the way (God help South America) and in parts I will be hooking up with my hard done to old traveling pal from India, the wonderful Lauren (God help her)! So if you want to know if I crash a moped; get attacked by monkeys; get felt up on a train while I'm asleep; have a drunk naked German roaming my dormitory at night; get caught in dynamite riots; throw up a lot on a dangerous boat journey; don't wash for over a week; or simply get E. coli again, tune into this blog. If you don't care one bit, go and read fifty shades of grey or X Factor or something. South America here I come!!!!!!!!

ISTANBUL: WHAT A RIOT!

What I like about my job is you never know what is going to happen next. One minute your sat at your friends, having dinner,unemployed, wondering where the next job is coming from, when you get a phone call like this:
"Hi. Is that Carly?" A voice asks. She continues, "Becky gave me your number. She said you were very good. I need some one to come and help me do costume on a promo in Istanbul!"
The conversation continues for a couple of minutes before I hang up and looking a bit shell shocked look at my friend and say "I think I'm going to Istanbul in 3 days!"
Alex my friend looks at me and says
"Isn't that where all those riots are?"
"Oh balls!"

The next day I've arranged to meet my boss at her studio. She's late as she has had a run in with TFL for not swiping her Oyster card and has been fined on the spot for it. She is frazzled by it all, as I'm trying to find out the details of the job, but she is still annoyed about her morning and doesn't really relate to what I'm asking her. When she does calm down she asks if I have my laptop?
"No" I reply feeling really unprofessional. I rush back to my flat. This is not a great start.
Finally we sit down, lap top in hand and talk about the job at hand.
"So we have to do 150 costumes. All different teams representing their country in the Olympics" my boss continues "And we need to take them all out to Istanbul with us."
"OK" I smile. "So how many do you have together so far?"
"None!"
My face drops.
"I have only just had my designs signed off" she says.
"When are we going to Istanbul again?" I ask.
"I go Friday morning. Your flight is at 4.30pm from Heathrow, the same day."
"OK" I say still smiling, "Do we have any sizes for people?"
"Not really! We have a few but they don't really make any sense!"
I look down at the piece of paper with the few measures on it. She is right! They don't make any sense!
"OK" I say still managing to smile and look calm.
"I just need you to get on with it and start sourcing costumes" she says.
"OK!" Still smiling.
"Oh! And we are on a type budget as well! She says finally.
"OK!" I think my smile is actually frozen to my face now as I'm in shock. It's Wednesday morning. I have two and a half days to get 150 costumes together, to fly to Istanbul. I have not really got any sizes and I have a tight budget. I feel like I'm going to be sick. "This is impossible" I think to myself, "I can't do this." I must admit I sit on my laptop for the first half an hour, just kind of looking at the screen in shock, pressing some keys, every now and again, to make it look like I'm doing something. Then I remembered my GCSE's exams where you have that sudden freak out when you look at the paper and realise you haven't revised any of the questions, but then something kicks in and your like "I can do this! I can do it! I can do anything (Ok that last bit isn't quite true)!" Then you are just writing down the answers. My GCSE head comes into play. "I can do this!!!!!"

The next 2 days are a blur of phone calls, internet searching, and shopping, and when I say shopping, I mean shopping. Rolling suitcases round shops, bulk buying shirts, trousers and shoes, to which I get funny looks and comments, like I have some kind of weird fetish. It's on one of these occasions while buying 50 pairs of the same white shoes in Primark and throwing them into a suitcase, the cashier goes:
"You must really like these shoes hey?"
Now I don't whether she is being funny or serious, but I'm stressed and tired and not really in the mood for it.
"What! Do you really think I would be buying myself 50 pairs of white Primark shoes for myself? Really? What kind of person do you think I am?" I retort.
"Should I put the receipt in the suitcase?" Is all she can reply.

It's Friday morning. 3am to be precise! I'm still at my bosses studio working. We are surrounded by the remains of a Chinese take away which was ordered with great difficulty at 12am as nearly every take away was shut. I'm exhausted! My boss on the other hand is still going strong! This girl isn't normal. She just doesn't get tired! I think we could of been there all night if I hadn't told her that she was actually being picked up to go to the airport in 2 hours and still hadn't packed. She left for the airport not having been to sleep.

Later that afternoon it's my turn to leave for the airport. I'm with two of the trainees; Jenifer and Isabella who will be coming with me to Istanbul. Isabella is so calm, if she was anymore laid back she'd be dead! I'm feeling pretty calm myself for once. I just have to pick up some jackets from the tailor on the way to Heathrow and I'm just waiting on a order of missing trousers, but that left ages ago and should be here any moment? I wait! I wait some more! Nothing. I ring the supplier.
"They were delivered ages ago!"
"They weren't! I have been here and nothing had arrived!" I say in a panic tone "I need them now. I'm leaving for the airport!"
"Well I have a note to say they were signed for" he says. He starts to reel off the address and my face turns white.
"No! No! No!" I scream down the phone, "That's the wrong address! That's the production office! I haven't got time to argue about this!" I slam down the phone.
I throw a load of money at Jenifer.
"Right get to soho to the production office and get those clothes and meet me at the airport" I yell at her.
"Isabella! Let's get in a taxi and get to the tailors!"
I think I might of aged about 10 years in the 2 hours that proceeded this. We were always cutting it fine, but with the added London traffic I feel sick. Luckily we make it and to my relief at Heathrow Jenifer is waiting for us with the parcel, looking at bit worn. Then me and Isabella entertain a group of onlooking Indian tourists by her sitting calmly on the already bulging suitcase while I try to shove more clothes into it. I sit in the airport feeling like some one has run me over and I'm not even in Istanbul yet!

The Istanbul riots started first on May 28th as a sit down protest for future plans for Istanbul's Taksim Gezi park. The peaceful protest was met with brutal violence and a forced eviction that caused outrage nationally and internationally. Due to this, protests became wide spread throughout Turkey, but were met with more brutal force by the police and Army which caused huge conflict. This was most widely seen in Taksim in Istanbul, which became the heart of the protests and conflict.
"Where is are hotel?"
"Taksim!"
"Shit!"
Me and Isabella are being driven to are hotel, by one if the production drivers who speaks bad English but has managed to tell us that our hotel is right in the middle of the riots! I have no idea what we are driving into: A war zone? In fact it was actually completely the opposite. It's calm, dead in fact! "There is nothing to worry about here" I thought, as I closed my eyes that night "The press blow everything out of proportion!

I knew the next day when I woke up it was going to be one of those days. We had an impossible task of dressing extras that had never been fitted or that we even had sizes for, but I put my fighting head on and got on with it. This involved stealing on iron board and iron from the hotel; trying to work a Victorian sewing machine; spray painting hats on football stadium pitch; screaming a lot at the Turkish production; and cutting up, sewing and stuffing shoes with tissue to make them fit! As I stood there in the middle of a football stadium in Istanbul watching them finally perform in the 150 costumes that 3 days ago did not exist, I felt a great sense of achievement! "We did it! We bloody well did!" I thought. With this sudden sense of relief I started to be aware of things again. Outside the stadium, there was noise, like nothing I had heard before. The sound of thousands of people and cars, shouting and beeping. As the hours passed the noise became louder. Soon the news spread that there where riots all over the city and by the early hours of the morning when it came time for us to leave, we were told that it might be impossible for us to get back to Taksim as the government had gone in that night to liquidate the square and had shut off the area. There was talk of us sleeping in the stadium but it was decided we should try. What followed was one of the craziest journeys of my life. It was like something out of a film! Our mini bus driver sped high speed through the streets, passing protesters and riot police who fired gas at them and tried to hit them with batons. I saw one guy get hit in the chest with a tear gas canister which knocked him off his perch and he fell down next to our vehicle. Our driver spun round fast sending most of us flying and the bottle of water I had been drinking fell all over my lap, so I looked like I had wet myself. After running the mind field for what felt like hours, we finally made it back to Taksim. It was a mass of riot police, and the remains of a battle. Every now and again a bang would go off in one direction and a mass of police would move. We parked in front of our hotel. As the "Good" costume girl I am, I started taking out all our costumes from the bus, but then a man from our hotel started to try and usher me inside.
"Miss! Get inside now! It is dangerous here!"
"But I have to get the costumes out!" I shouted in response.
The next thing I know there is a mist and something catches the back of my throat and I start to cough so much it's like I can't breath. Then my eyes start to stream with tears, so much I can't see. Someone drags me to the hotel as I can't really see. As I enter some one starts to throw water in my eyes and gives me water to drink to clear my throat. It takes a couple of minutes to recover and go "what the Hell happened there?"
"Shit! I've just been tear gassed!" I think to myself. We are beyond tired as we drag our costumes to the lift. The lift doors open and there seems to be a load of quite drunk men in it, all dressed in white. They cheer as we enter. Me and my boss are less impressed! The lift stops at the next floor and more drunk men dressed in white get in,but this time one is wearing a bra. I realise they are Swedish and it seems like some sort of stag do. The lift stops at each floor and more drunk men get in and out, or stand blocking the doors talking. My boss keeps asking them to get out of the doors so that the lift can move, but no one is really listening, so she just starts pushing them. The lift starts moving again and the swedes start to break into song, singing 'I had the time of my life."
The lift stops again and they are still singing while more swedes in white try to get in the lift. This is all too much for my boss!
"Get out! Get out!" She screams "I want to go to my floor!"
It's at this point I have a funny moment. It's 5.30am. I haven't slept in over 24 hours. In fact I've hardly had any sleep for he last 5 days. I have worked to myself to the bone. I've just been tear gassed and now I'm stuck in a lift with a Swedish stag party singing "I've had the time of my life" from Dirty dancing! For a moment I think that the tear gas must of killed me, for surely this is Hell! It's then, I just break down in hysterical laughter, still while my boss is screaming at the Swedes. I just couldn't stop. I guess it could of been worse. They could of been singing Abba. As I went to bed, I looked out the window to see riot police chasing and firing at people in the street. I had never seen anything like it in my life. It was a war zone. I closed the curtain. I was too tired to see anymore. It had been one of the craziest days of my life.

The next days that followed, I saw more violence. I got tear gassed again. I was stopped from going to taskim square. I saw people water cannoned, and beaten. Tanks roamed the streets and it was impossible to go outside with out a gas mask on, and then all of a sudden it stopped. The city which had been a war zone returned to normal, like nothing had happened. I could walk the streets freely and see the city and it's sights in all its glory and believe me Istanbul is a glorious city, one of the most beautiful I have seen. On my last day in the city, I took a bus to Taksim Square. The police and army were there, busy cleaning up the aftermath. Washing away the evidence, that anything had ever happened at all, but it did happen. 11 people died. 8,163 were injured. 4,900 people were arrested, all because they wanted the right to have freedom of speech. I suddenly realised how lucky I was and that my freedom was something I would never take for granted again. Istanbul and this job was something I would not forget, not in a long time. In fact never!