As soon as a plane lands, a bus stops, or I get off a train, my first impulse is always to go for a walk. Most cities, at least the older ones, were designed that way anyway. Only by walking do you see the place the way its designers did - human scaled. It also forces you to see people. Driving around in a car makes you feel powerful, but it is too hermetic for my tastes. I would rather feel and smell and see something real.

This can be self-defeating, particularly in some of the continent's newer cities, or those particularly scarred by city planners. Huge chunks of our downtowns are inhabited by nothing more than offices. After five p.m. these places are wastelands. There is no one around, and as such they feel sterile, and ultimately more dangerous than the most teeming third-world slum. My desire to keep it real can have other consequences as well. For every time I met someone amazing, encountered some wonder or happened upon a treasure, I have spent hours wondering past hideous strip malls, bored senseless in some dull suburb. At least I got some fresh air. Once in a while though, my efforts to get real just go spectacularly wrong. You don't learn much then, other then 'why didn't I stay home'.

I have written before about Ireland's propensity for disappointment. Like Newfoundlanders, the Irish have a bred a very broad sense of humour, which combined with a general disregard for specificity, and a keen sense of schadenfreude, can both amuse and infuriate. A few years back, myself and my wife were attempting to take a bus from Galway City to Ennis, County Clare, a journey literally of a couple of dozen kilometers. It was to be the start of an expedition into the more musical corners of Clare. Information from the tourist office was spotty, but also wildly optimistic. I should have known better, as it seemed buses were dispatched to Ennis with great frequency, and all we had to do was show up at the central train & bus depot and a luxury coach would be waiting, along with a ballad-singing driver and a buxom stewardess bearing champagne and oysters.

Of course, this was nonsense. When we arrived at the bus station after a leisurely lunch of Beamish and salad, we discovered that the place was a madhouse. Hundreds of teenagers from all over Europe filled every inch of the station, dashing about bent double with their knapsacks, trying to find their camp leaders, cute boys and sandwiches, all shouting across the hall at the top of their lungs. Like Mediterranean people everywhere, they were immune to the concept of a line-up, and it took some time to jostle our way to the ticket window. There we discovered that their was only one bus to Ennis that day, and we had better look sharp as it was leaving any second. We grabbed our over-priced tickets and dashed outside.

In a narrow and crowded parking lot, (also filled with shouting Euro teens), stood six buses, none marked in any way whatsoever. It looked like a scene from a disaster movie, as everyone fought to get their bags and themselves onto one of the buses, shouting and yelling and fighting over the few spaces available. There was a guy with a conductor's hat and vest on directing traffic, so I pushed my way to him and enquired which bus was the one for Ennis.

"It be that far one, yay, that one yonder," he shouted back, gesturing expansively at a big new coach a few spots away. I could hardly understand him, his accent was that thick, and his choice of words seemed a bit Shakespearean for the location, but there was no time to enquire further. I grabbed our bags and literally fought my way through the crowd, shoving all and sundry out of the way. The bus's hold was already filled to the gunnels, and I spent a good five minutes shifting and wiggling heavy bags until I finally made room for ours. I was soaked in sweat, covered in bus grease, my fingers well-mashed, and I looked like I had been in a fight, but we were finally on our way. We climbed on the bus, and as my wife made her way to the back I asked an impatient looking driver how many stops there were to Ennis.

"Ennis? I am not going to Ennis, I am going to Clifden." (Note - the opposite direction entirely). He looked at me as if I was a complete idiot for asking such a question.

"Then which is the bus for Ennis," I asked with some exasperation. He waved at one at the other end of the row.

"Why did that guy tell me to put my bags on this one," I said, already knowing the answer would infuriate, and drawing his attention to the man with the conductor's uniform.

"Him? Sure he doesn't work here, he just hangs about, like. A big child he is." His grim mien broke into an amused smile. "Sent you to the wrong bus, has he? Ho, ho, ho."

While I was sorely tempted to have a debate with him then and there about the difference between his attitude and the merry characters from the 'Ireland of the Welcomes' advertisements, there was no time to waste. Shouting at my wife to stop the Ennis bus, which was looking to pull away, I beat my way back through the crowd around the luggage bay. In the 30 seconds that had elapsed since I put my bags into the hold, they had become thoroughly wedged in the rear of a Rubik's cube of knapsacks. It took much swearing and grunting to extricate them. An insulted tribe of earnest German hippies shouted at me as I dumped their stuff on the pavement, but I was well beyond caring now. Finally I pulled our bags free and sprinted for the bus. No luxury coach this, it was old and tattered, and we had to squeeze down the aisle with our bags and shove them up onto already full overhead wracks, much to the chagrin of the elderly locals we elbowed and battered along the way. Room was made for my wife amongst a flock of old Irishwomen, but me and all the other latecomers had to stand in the aisle, gripping seat backs and each other whenever we braked or went flying around a turn. Thus began an interminable trip down every backroad, boreen and driveway in the west of Ireland. A few minutes into the ride a small lad who had over-enjoyed a sweet tea with his granny began to barf copiously into the center aisle, a process that continued at regular intervals for the whole trip. A Frenchman pressed against me managed to pop open the emergency escape hatch, and despite threats from the driver, we took turns catching a breath by sticking our heads out the roof. The oysters and champagne also failed to arrive. By the time we finally got to Ennis, we had utterly lost interest in that town, going any further, and in fact Ireland itself.

I love that TV show, 'The Amazing Race'. It is in such moments as the above that such races are won or lost. Get on the wrong bus, take the wrong train, or just walk the wrong way. It all adds up, and then you are marooned somewhere hideous, arguing over who's fault it was. During the first Bare Naked Ladies cruise, we decided to walk into Ochos Rios during the boat's brief stop in Jamaica. We had never been there before, and a simple walk seemed more interesting than a hurried tour of some dubious 'attraction'. Wrong call. Exiting the boat was an immediate tangle, we should have turned around then and there. After a very cursory passport check set up at then end of a parking lot, we were dumped into a horde of touts, cabbies and tour operators. By third world standards it was pretty typical, but these people were really aggressive, and good will evaporated quickly. After finally shoving our way through the crowd, we booted it up a sidewalk, a small flock of annoying tourist operators chasing after us. One particularly persistent tout followed us for a good 300 yards. Finally I stopped and yelled at him to go away, at which point he said sheepishly that we were walking in the wrong direction, and that the port was behind us. I apologized for yelling at him, but me and Jamaica were off to a bad start.

Once we were going the right way, we then had to backtrack through the tout horde. Fortunately they were focused on more new arrivals, and we managed to sneak past them unscathed. We could see the port up ahead, a kilometer or two along a winding road. It seemed straightforward enough, there was a decent sidewalk, with about ten or twenty meters of rough bush between the road and the land-wash below. Little did we know - the bush concealed a full blown shantytown, a jerry-built community of peddlers, incomprehensible Rasta-men, free range chickens, and general crazies. It was a stroll to remember. Every few feet another person would emerge from the bush, appearing seemingly from the very trees themselves. They would wave handicrafts at us, beg for change, or offer to sell us some hash. After a few polite 'no thank-yous' they would get annoyed, following us down the road shaking their wares inches from our noses. The lot of them must have had demarcated their territory, as eventually they would stop and let the next guy in line take over, but towards the end of the hike the more persistent just kept going; by the time we got to the port we had collected a half-dozen crazed peddlers, all shouting and dancing around us. I felt like an aging deer surrounded by a pack of coyotes, all waiting to take the first chomp.

Up ahead we saw the 'duty-free' mall, which the ship's pamphlet had described, and we almost ran the last stretch, pursued right to the gates by our entourage. Armed guards protected the mall, which provided a safe and hermetic version of the market scene outside, minus the crazy touts. While we were relieved to make it there, it was the kind of place that any sane tourist hates - segregated from the locals by police and chain-link fences, surrounded by over-priced multi-hued crap, with an invisible dollar sign tattooed on your forehead. "This fucking sucks" was the prevailing sentiment. We wandered about for a bit, un-enticed by the Bob Marley inspired junk. One wonders what that wise and sensitive man would have thought of the utter shit sold in his name. Every so often we glanced at the gates. A couple of dozen eager peddlers waited at the gates, waving at me every time I glanced their way, reminding us of the fate that awaited us for the walk back. Eventually we got fed up with hanging about the mall, and made our way back through the throng.

"Welcome back sir, madam," cried a huge grinning Rasta, who probably would have made great company anywhere else, bowing gallantly as he shoved the others out of our way. "I knew you would return to examine my wares." Indeed, and had I any use for voodoo masks and sea-tortoise shells, he would have been my first stop.

One after the other we revisited the salesman from the outward trip, as each emerged in turn from the bushes. At the mall I had managed to get a handful of Jamaican coins, which I distributed along the way. It seemed a reasonable tax to enjoy the walk in some peace. Even then there were a few surprises left. We were almost back to the ship when the most remarkable dude I have ever seen hopped out of the woods. This unfortunate had somehow lost both legs below the knee. Obviously a resourceful chap, he had somehow carved two wooden legs out of some branches, legs that curved and twisted like something you'd see on one of Tolkien's Ents. He brandished a couple of canes created in a similar vein, which I imagine he hoped we would buy.

"I need money!" he shouted, with a mad grin. It wasn't a threat, really. He could hardly have pursued us if we had run away, but then neither was it the pathetic appeal we had already turned aside thirty times that day. Any man who could carve his own fanciful legs would epitomize the term 'survivor', and was more deserving of our admiration than charity. Still, I gave him the rest of the money I had left in my pocket. Whatever else was true about that walk, that guy surely needed it more than me.