Travelling with Buttons - Part 2

So to continue my travelling with buttons, when I set off on my big travelling trip of 2009/2010, I made sure that I had plenty of buttons in my bag, along with a selection of thread colours and some needles.

I just can't believe the amount of people that I met who didn't know how to sew on a button. I met a few guys who looked like the epitome of  'scruffy backpacker' as they were wandering around with only 1 or 2 buttons left on their shirts.

My first big mend of the trip didn't actually involve buttons, but it was very successful. This amazing fixing effort was Taj's walking boot when we were climbing up Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. On the second day, I think it was, the sole was very much falling off the rest of the boot and so something needed to be done. At the time, I was walking with Mark, Taj, Barbara and Mark (there were 2, I'm not just confused). Using a combined effort of skills and donated thread, gaffer tape, elastic and string, we managed to fix Taj's boot so well that he still made it to the summit of Kili. Even though the porters all told him that because he's 'Indian' (he's not but the porters wouldn't listen otherwise) he wouldn't make it past 'Indian Point' (where all the Indians give up - apparently) we made it to the top! And back down!

And so Taj's boot became the symbol of international togetherness and teamwork (English/Bangladeshi/Swiss/American unitedness)....

I then replaced the buttons on a few shirts in Fiji, earning me free coconuts....(I was ripped off - you could just pick them up off the beach) and then much more excitedly at Beachouse, a free cocktail in exchange for each button sewn on.

I thought this was an amazing deal....but the recipients of my buttons were surprisingly grateful...and seemed to think that they'd got a good deal, as I'd saved them from buying a new shirt...

So on to South America and I ran out of buttons! But then round an amazing market in Pisac in Peru which had beautiful ceramic beads, and a shop selling plastic buttons.

And so I continued my travels around South America, and wherever I met someone who needed a button, I would replace it...and normally receive a drink in return. A very good way to travel, I very much recommend it. 

.....and then I found a vintage button market in Buenos Aires....I had to leave some of my clothes behind, but they had a charity clothes donation box in the hostel....and then I got buttons!

(I definitely do not class this as button addiction - just normal human behaviour!)