So, coming home, ain´t all that easy.

First of all, the sleep you get on a trip is little.You need to stay focused and always be there for them. They hav paid a lot to travel, so that responsibility is heavy. Than, even though you have local guides, who lecture and explain, you are the main guide to stitch everything together, you need to have a plan what is going to be said and lectured, so at the end, they feel that they, as in the instance of the last guide job in Peru and Ecuador, that they really have a full picture of the history of the Incas, Conquistadors, Simon Bolivar and the modern era of South America. Plus that they understood the evolution of the Galapagos Islands and their inhabitants.

Secondly, even if I, and many other guides, have the best of families back home, you won´t get the same status as a “God” amongst your own! It is straight to the issue of changing diapers, getting up dead early, doing porridge for breakfast, doing errands, shopping and so on, family life! So, I have realized after talking to other guides, that we all feel some kind of emptiness…but this applies to the travellers as well. I have received an email from all of them, all very happy with the arrangment, but they feel at loss, empty and wanna go back! When I hear this, I know, that I have done a satisfying job!

But, a successful tour isn´t only up to the tour leader, even if he or she, is by ease the most important player of a trip. You also need good backing from the home office, in my case Oktogo, who did a great job again. And you need a well planned and produced trip, which I did by myself. Which is a job based on a long discussion with a local agency, in my case on this trip, Metropolitan Touring. Which was professionally handled by Faride Altamirano in Lima, a superb job and a great friend. She is exactly the opposite part you need on the other end to deal with. A great human, putting the wish of the clients first! (She should really be in charge for the Scandinavian part for Metropolitan, not that “money first, clients second”-guy in Quito)

One of the high lights for me on a trip like this, is of course first of all, the joy of the clients, but second, is the local guides. Not only do they teach you a lot, but they´re great people, with no exception. People who love their job! One of the things I bring up, whilst talking to them, and many other guides globally, local and foreign, is which countries are the easiest and the most difficult to deal with according to them. And I have summarized below:

Top three which are easy:

1. Locals

2. Americans

3. Scandinavians

Top three which they consider difficult (they complain a lot):

1. British

2. Israelis

3. Italians

I have personally only dealt with Swedes, Americans and British and I think they´re all good! But, I only get the groups where people really are interested and know where they´re going! One group I saw on the cruise ship in the Galapagos, was an American group, who had bought a cheap cruise ship tour out of Miami and they had no idea there were such a unique animal and plant life on the Galapagos! However, they were pleasantly surprised and all set in on the lectures on board!

I have started to produce another itinerary for this great group I have had, for the next year. Keep your eyes open!

The long way down south in a kayak

By

Christian Bodegren

I have quit my work to do a trip, adventure, expedition, journey, or which ever name you glitzhammers prefer to use.

Maybe I’m selfish by doing this for myself, but hopefully I can inspiring somebody else to take a bit in this big tasteful cookie we prefer call earth. If I can inspire one person to do and learn more I have a succeeded. I have never been into thinking about to do things first or on record time which seems to occupied many people out there. In my mind I’m always going to be the first to seeing and feel and getting inspired in my one personal way. And therefore, I have planned to start this journey at the very top off Venezuela where the mighty Orinoco delta reaches  the ocean.

In a kayak this time, against the current. I plan to paddle along the river systems for ten months, heading south. the mission is to see how the people live and how the nature survive along the river systems, in this big and interesting continent. I still have plenty off things to do in Venezuela when I arrive before I can put the kayak in the water. And it  always take some time before you get into the routines and start to relax on a journey like this.

Like for example, getting use to the new sounds in the jungle during the night, which keep you awake or getting used to the new climate which makes your body react in different ways. And I cannot plan for everything, but I am just trying to reduce the bigger mistakes, which could be a danger for your health and life. In some way, that is the way I like my outdoor life. Because we humans always try to bring order and control over everything in our life and our surroundings. The nature has always  a different agenda about this subject . An agenda whiteout perfect corners and straight lines which in our minds it’s not what a controlled surrounding should be. But from the smallest thing to the biggest,  it’s a fascinated system, like a puzzle which its perfectly links together, the ecosystem. And everything have purpose in this chain, which we are constantly trying, and succeeds, to break.

I hope we are finding our way back to the reality and stop fighting against the nature and start to living with it. That is what I’m going to try to do it for the next ten months in a kayak cross the South America.

Please follow my trip and stay updated in www.christianbodegren.com

1. Annapurna by Maurice Herzog. This is the way real climbs, real exploration should be done. Before you had set routes and ropes fixed to the mountain. This book presents the enthralling account, by the leader of the French expedition, of the first conquest of Annapurna – at that time, and at more than 8000 metres, the highest mountain ever climbed. It is a story of breathtaking courage and determination against appalling odds. In records of mountaineering, in tales of human endeavour, there is nothing so unforgettable as the account of the descent by the triumphant but frost-bitten men, after the monsoon had broken, through the flooded valleys of Nepal.

Many think this is the best adventure book ever written.....

2. The worst journey in the world by Aspley Cherry-Garrard. This book gave me and Johan Ivarsson great insights into the cold during our Siberian Expedition. One of the youngest members of Scott’s team, Apsley Cherry-Garrard was later part of the rescue party that eventually found the frozen bodies of Scott and three men who had accompanied him on the final push to the Pole. This is his account of an expedition that had gone disastrously wrong. No episode in the history of human endeavour reads more harrowingly than Scott’s last expedition to Antarctica. Scott reached the South Pole in January 1911 to find Roald Amundsen had beaten him to it; then perished with his companions on the way home. ‘Yet, “tragedy”‘, Apsley Cherry-Garrard was to write a decade later, ‘was not our business.’ Cherry-Garrard was just 24, the youngest but one of the team when he joined Scott. Left behind for the final leg, in accordance with Scott’s original plan for a four-man advance, it fell to Cherry-Garrard eight months later to be a member of the search party which discovered their frozen bodies. The experience permanently damaged his mental health. For the rest of his life he was haunted by the fear that, but for what he perceived as an error of judgement on his part, they might have survived. Yet this book, his story of that and earlier expeditions, is in no way self-indulgent or sensationalist. Despite his name, aristocratic birth and classics degree from Oxford, Cherry-Garrard was no arrogant nobleman. Rather, this not especially robust but intelligent man well understood that polar exploration requires a singular fortitude pushing beyond brute strength to what Ranulph Fiennes was later to term mind over matter. Cherry-Garrard’s descriptions of the conditions suffered are rendered all the more diabolical by prose as stark as the landscape traversed. As for hyperbole, the ‘Worst Journey’ of the title in fact refers to an earlier expedition investigating nesting sites of the Emperor penguin. A work of supreme dimension, this masterpiece remains as compelling today as when it was first published 80 years ago.

3. The Heart of the Hunter by Laurens Van der Post. A beautiful book about travels among the Bushmen. In this stirring sequel to “The Lost World” of the Kalahari Laurens van der Post records everything he has learned of the life and lore of Africa’s first inhabitants. He explores the very sources of the Bushmen’s spirit and imagination – their dreams and stories, the legends that guide them and inspire them in their daily battles with that harshest of environments, the Kalahari.

CuChullaine O´Reilly on his famous ride!

4. Arctic dreams by Barry Lopez. An amazingly inspiring account from the northern part of the globe. The European picture of the Arctic is usually of snow and ice: the inhospitability of the terrain and the frigid wastes of the tundra contribute to our incapacity to imagine ordinary life there. In this magisterial book Barry Lopez draws on this hazy understanding of the far north to provide a compelling account of the land and its hold upon the psyche.It is a book which could be compared to Chatwin for its combination of travelogue and poetic vision. Yet the beauty of the prose and the thought-provoking evocations of modern culture’s shifting relationship with the environment are in a league of their own. Here are sparkling descriptions of the lives of caribou, muskoxen, polar bears and narwhals, and extraordinarily moving passages which meditate on the nature of our relationship with the world, the inter-dependence of ideas, desire and science and the possibility of dignity and compassion in the contemporary world.It is a measure of the respect which Lopez has for his subject that his book exemplifies the supreme importance which he ascribes to the ethics of respect in the face of all existential paradox:”There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of a leaning into the light”.

5. Khyber Knights by CuChullaine O´Reilly. A very good friend of mine. It is an account of perilous adventure and forbidden romance in the depths of mystic Asia. A real modern day tale! It is also a book of insights to the human soul. It has everything an adventure book should have!

6. Scott and Amundsen by Roland Huntford. The best book about the race to the South Pole between Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott. It is not much liked by many British, but as somebody who is brought up in snow and cold, and know a bit about polar exploration, I think it is very accurate. Roald Amundsen should have been give much more acclaim for his fantastic life and discoveries. It is a very dramatic book,but gives a very good background on both of them.

Courtesy Robin Davidson. Probably the best account of an adventure I have read written by a female explorer.

7. Tracks by Robyn Davidson. Even though most of my recommended books are about males, most likely because they are described and written in a way that appeals to me and my way to explore, I think that books about adventure and exploration written by women, generally are better as a whole. Women are more honest, lie and brag about themselves much less and are much more emotional. This book as excellent. In every way and should be read by everyone who is thinking about doing adventures and Expeditions. It is a bout her 1700 mile trek with camels across the Western desert of Australia.

8. The voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin. I had no idea that Charles Darwin was such a good writer. The book is a must in many ways, since quite a few of his ideas regarding the evolution of mankind began developing here, but it is also a great travel book full of adventures and insights into all these countries that the Beagle passed on its 5 years journey.

Annapurna - Maurice Herzog classical account of the first 8000 meter mountain to be climbed.

9. The incredible voyage by Tristan Jones. Amazing book by an amazing fella. His passage with his boat through South-America is just unbelievable. He is a very good writer and this will be a classic in the future. With a singleness of purpose as ferocious as any hazard he encountered, Tristan Jones would not give up – even after dodging snipers on the Red Sea, capsizing off the Cape of Good Hope, starving on the Amazon, struggling for 3,000 miles against the mightiest sea current in the world, and hauling his boat over the rugged Andes three miles above sea level to find at last the legendary Island of the Sun. And beyond lay the most awesome challenge of all – the tortuous trek through 6,000 miles of uncharted rivers to find his way back to the ocean.

10  Arabian Sands by Wilfried Thesiger. By now, I have read the book many times. It is part poetry, part the meaning of life, but most a great read about his amazing explorations in the Arabian desert, and most of all, in Rub Al-Khali. Thesiger himself sums it up himself, by saying in his foreword:

No man can live this life and emerge unchanged. He will carry, however faint, the imprint of the desert, the brand which marks the nomad; and he will have within him the yearning to return, weak or insistent according to his nature. For this cruel land can cast a spell which no temperate clime can hope to match.

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]]> http://www.mikaelstrandberg.com/2009/12/25/10-best-books/feed/ 4 http://www.mikaelstrandberg.com/2008/12/07/after-six-weeks-of-guiding-in-south-america/ http://www.mikaelstrandberg.com/2008/12/07/after-six-weeks-of-guiding-in-south-america/#comments Sun, 07 Dec 2008 11:12:00 +0000 admin http://www.mikaelstrandberg.com/?p=417
Well, I thought I would get lots of time to write, but being a guide takes all your energy. But I love it! But, see this letter below written a day ago in Rapa Nui:

It is once again time for me to return back to Sweden. This time after six fantastic weeks as a guide in South-America. At the same time, last year, also after guiding a group through Patagonia, I felt the biggest worry of my life. I had no idea at all what was waiting for me back home. And the time that followed, turned out to be some of the worst moments of my life. This time however, even though I still don´t have an idea what life has in store for me, I look forward to whatever, a lot! I have healed well during these six weeks and a genuine return to life again, it is. Well, as healed a complicated personality like me can feel…..

I have once again had the privilege to return to Patagonia, so during the last three weeks, I have heard the thunder from the great Iguazu Falls, I´ve seen the gigantic southern right whale starring at me from a yards distance, been to the end of the world, had some great seafood in Ushuaia, ridden over the dry Patagonian Steppe with a great group of clients, but most of all, I have had the uttermost privilege to visit Rapa Nui, or Easter Island. This very mystic island located, really, in the middle of nowhere, so far from any other land, around 4000 km from the Chilean Mainland and as far away from Tahiti. Before arriving to the island, I´ve heard quite a few positive comments about the Island, but also, far more, negative comments about Rapa Nui. Man has really changed the face of the Island, there´s hardly any trees left on this piece of volcanic rock that once, before the arrival of man, was entirely covered by a native palmforest. Personally, after having been a professional explorer for the last 25 years, I thought I had seen pretty much everything. I was wrong. I wasn´t prepared at all for Rapa Nui. It is, no doubt, a highlight of my life. There´s definitely something very special with this odd island, surrounded by this vast ocean called the Pacific. It is a tiny spot in a vast ocean of blue. It is indeed the statues, or the Moais, as they´re called who has made me full of awe. They´re put there by the local Polynesians, facing the land and its people, with its backs towards the Ocean, so free of worry that other people would arrive, but they´re still doing what they were set there to do. To inspire people, to give people the strength of their forefathers. It is called mana in the local Polynesian tongue. And, even though, we, me and my group of 16 people, have encountered and experienced some of the most spectacular scenes made by nature on this trip, the Iguazu Falls, the glaciers and icebergs of southern Patagonia, still, we all feel knocked over by the sight of the moai. Maybe because they´re man made. However, personally, the most intriguing discovery is that these Polynesians who arrived here, forget the Heyerdahl theory, about 1200 years ago from, well, maybe as far away as New Zealand on the other side of the Pacific, they did start to navigate this gigantic part of the earth, around 40 000 years ago. Now, this is far before the arrival of man to the Americas…..It has given me ideas….

One of the things on my wishlist before leaving Sweden, was that these 6 weeks in South-America would pave the way for a new Expedition, since after doing the Kolyma expedition, well, I felt, what more can I do? It felt like an end, an enormous emptiness. Well, things are once again beginning to develop….

Another thing which I have had in my thoughts, is that I´ve spent a lot of time thinking about emigration. Patagonia in itself is made up of pioneers and emigrants, people who have left their countries of birth to begin a new life. It sounds like a great prospect. Something worth trying. I am getting fed up with the foreseeable.

Finally, being and working as a guide is pure joy. It seems that I am very lucky with just having great clients all the time. They teach me so much about life and things, and for me, to share my experience of life and my travels and perspective of life, well, it is an honor.