Sunday 15th October. Caracas, Venezuela.

Today I will leave Venezuela to join our partner school in Lima, Peru and to re-join the planned itinerary.

It has been fascinating in the Business Class lounge and like always I am observing my surroundings.

On Friday there was a flood of children who arrived to spend a few days with their fathers.

For me this seems such a strange concept, that the only quality time you get with your Dad is the odd snatched weekend in a hotel.

When I was growing up my Dad was always around, and I would not have wanted it any other way.

The people in the lounge are all very successful (in a materialistic way) yet I wonder how successful they are in life.

As a teacher I have seen too many children long for quality time with their absentee parents. In talking with one family, the parents are explaining the difficulties they are having with their teenagers. I am thinking that many of the problems they note are due to absence when the children were growing up.

I am not however, keen to start counselling the family. I gave up my newspaper column on child development some months ago now but I cannot help but feel that there are so many young people today who need the guidance of a loving and not an absent family.

What has been fascinating to observe is the obsession with money and profit.

I have enjoyed this environment for a few days. However, I could not tolerate living in such an environment for too long. One young couple from Argentina are living in the hotel for 6 months. They have just returned from 6 months in a similar hotel in Boston, USA.

I have felt here in business class the same way that I felt when I worked in New York. It is ok for a time, but I am not obsessed with the almighty dollar. Maybe that is why I teach business students rather than practice business.

I simply cannot understand the obsession we have in the world with money. As my Mum always says, you only need enough money to enjoy life.
Money after all is nothing special...they print more of it every day.

I am saddened by one lady from Colombia who tells me her dream is to take time out of life and travel the world. She is a company chief executive dripping in gold and yet she claims she will never be satified that she has made enough money to give herself this break.

We never know what tomorrow will bring and yet we never let ourselves live for today.

All of this reminds me of a saying I used to have displayed in my office...

One hundred years from now,
it will not matter what kind of car I drove,
how big my house was
or how much money I had in the bank.
WHAT WILL MATTER IS THAT I WAS IMPORTANT IN THE LIFE OF A CHILD!

I am also very pleased that I continue to collect project participants as I travel.
Jonas Vera, one of the waiters in business class, is trying to improve his English to enhance his job prospects. I am pleased that he has asked to participate in the project and I have agreed to act as an on-line tutor to support his learning.

The flight from Caracas to Bogota was simply an experience.

On the aircraft it was all a little Blue Peter. Think sticky back plastic and then imagine that the plastic trimming around the over head lockers is hanging off just across from you. Not an essential piece of flying equipment I agree, but it took the engineers forty minutes to decide to glue it up and hope for the best.

Take off was just as spectacular. Overhead lockers open and people lying horizontal in their seats, I have only once before experienced such a flight and that was a decade ago in Italy.

Later in my journey I am to become one of those infuriating individuals when I am boarding the flight in Bogota for Lima.

The man infront of me (well at least he was when he began his walk down the jetway initially) was drunk as a skunk. He demolished the sign at the boarding gate and then fell over four times on the jetway.

Being a nervous flyer, and aware of the problems we could have at 36,000ft with an uncontrollable drunk, I swung into action. Everyone else was staring at the guy but no-one was doing anything. So muggins here decides to report the guy to the purser and I end up helping her remove the man from the flight.

I don’t like to cause trouble for people but it was safer all round that he slept it off and travelled tomorrow.

On my journey down to Lima I shared the trip with a cool dude from Spain on his first visit to the continent.

Lima Arrival…

I must admit to being a little frightened when I got to Lima airport; with so many taxis wanting your business and trying to direct you here and there. I am busy looking for my driver but, as I later discover, he is not displaying his placard.

Never mind, we eventually find each other and head off into the early hours of the city´s day.

On my journey out to Surco I am amazed at how modern Lima appears to be. The feeling I am experiencing is one of safety and cleanliness, there simply is not the same threat in the air that I felt in either Ecuador or Venezuela.