Motorcycle-less Diaries

Corrupt Cops and Defiled Corpses

2008-10-05T06:42:00.001-07:00

As all things must come to an end, we finished our trip by spending a week and a bit in the capital, Buenos Aires, a metropolis of roughly three times the population of New Zealand. So this will be our last blog posting, written from the grey drizzley climes of Vancouver where we are staying with my cousin Glyn and currently trying to find jobs and set up a new life.

Needless to say we were pretty busy during our time here exploring the city and getting used to the extreme nocturnal time frame of the Portenyos (folk from Buenos Aires). Our first stop was the Evita Museum, set in a former halfway home that she had set up in a rather plush part of town. On our way we passed the botanical gardens complete with it's large population of contented stray cats which were cared for by the local community, there were little shelters and piles of cat biscuits spread throughout the park. Having not seen either the musical (I cant stand Lloyd Weber) or the movie, neither of us had much idea of what Evita Peron had done or why she was particularly famous, so the museum was an eye opener in terms of the politics of the time, all the social programs she set up, and the wierd corpse napping and defilement of her body after she had died of cancer.

Later in the week we visited the Recoleta Cemetery, which sounds rather morbid but was actually pretty cool. It is basically a small city of crypts for the elite, famous and historical of Buenos Aires dating back to the early days of the city's history. It is filled with crypts in various states, from the brand new which resembled a Prada-ish high fashion store to the deteriorating plaster and bare brick of the neglected. Everywhere there were ornate carvings, grieving marble statues and intricate stained glass messiahs. The key attraction was Evita's grave which was surrounded by punters trying to get a sentimental photo of her modest crypt battling with the nosy types who kept getting in the way by peering in through the heavily tinted glass to try and spy the coffin itself. I was more fascinated by all the gothic carvings and statues, and spent most of my time wishing I was a better photographer with a better camera.

A true South American experience that we had foolishly put off until the end of our trip was to see a live football (soccer) match. When we arrived we started asking how we might get tickets to the upcoming Boca Juniors (one of BA's top club sides) home game but we were consistently told we would need to join a tour group because; A: it wasn't safe for tourists to go to the rowdy games by themselves and B: because there was no way we could get tickets otherwise. These tour group tickets were typically around five times the original price of a ticket, and who needs a guide at a football match anyway? So we figured we would try and buy tickets at the gate on the day with some other folk from our hostel. By the time we finally found the ticket booth we learned that we had just missed out on gate sale tickets and after wandering around hopelessly trying to find a nearby pub that showed the game we thought we may as well try our luck with the dodgy scalpers in the streets surrounding the stadium. We asked a guy who appeared to be quite drunk and who promised us he had tickets and we began to follow him towards the stadium. He soon got "nabbed" by a cop and scarpered while the cop told us of the dangers of buying fake tickets from scalpers. The cop, who was obviously in on it from the start, then offered to sneak us into the game for a price. He handed us dodgy tickets and then led us through all the ticket checks to the turnstile where the ticket guy grabbed our dodgy tickets and helped us jump over the turnstile. We were a few minutes late to the match and stuck right in the "dangerous" supporters zone but we had made it in! The atmosphere of the game was fantastic especially when Boca took the early lead, the stadium was filled with chants and shaking fists but it never even came close to becoming violent or dangerous. Boca eventually lost 2-1 to Estudiantes and the crowd left feeling disappointed, apart from us because we had a good story to tell...

The area surrounding La Boca is meant to be also quite dangerous but also has a quaint arty, working class, area of tango bars and art stalls. Unfortunately I think we arrived there a decade too late because it had been converted into some kind of tourist hell. Although the few streets of the caminito were very colourful, it was packed with naive, middle aged tourists with shorts, sandles and expensive cameras and annoying street hawkers trying out their english and trying to annoy you into going to their restaurants. Outside these few streets (in the "dangerous" working class areas) the streets reverted to a normal city setting. About the only genuine part of this spot was the pungent smell eminating from the 100 year old stagnant water of the old harbour.

The highlight of Buenos Aires for me was our trip to the School of Trapeze Art for a, aerial theatre show that we had seen advertised. Its a little difficult to describe and we weren't able to take any photos but this was possibly one of the coolest shows I have ever seen. The show was done almost entirely with UV light effects and with the performers clad all in black. This took the focus of the show away from amazing acrobatic tricks that the performers were doing and blended to whole thing into one great spectacle. While we sat back in couches below the action, there were dayglo pois and people abseiling down dayglo sheets and crazy visual effects made simply with a huge curtain of fabric. It was all very Cirque du Soleil and very, very cool.

For Tessa the highlight was the weekend designers fair that we stumbled across in the centre of Palermo. Essentially they set up stores with spaces for individual clothing designers to exhibit and sell their wares. Even the bars in the area clear out their dancefloors to pack the place out with racks and racks of trendy, cheap clothes. We were both whipped into a strange shopping frenzy by this discovery and jostled our way through the packed out fair to pick through the endless racks of cheap designer clothes. Tessa says "it had clothes". Insightful...

The central area of town was worth a look around. We walked past the roman parthenon style engineering school and found ourselves at the pink house, the argentine presidential palace. Nearby was the moshpit of Av. Florida, the main shopping street which was so crammed with streams of people that we had to start adopting road rules just to get through the crowd. We wandered up to the congress building past the monolithic obelisco. Outside the congress buildings were packs of professional dog walkers wrangling handfuls of tetchy hounds.

One french guy we met happened to have spent the last three years living in Wellington, just around the corner from our old place in Newtown, and spent a month working at Tessa's old work!

We met some great folk at our hostel and went out on the town in San Telmo on a few occasions. We went out for parillada and wine with our new found crew, and I foolishly ordered the ribs which turned out to be much much bigger than my head. This sheer amount of meat wrote me off for the rest of the night and put me on a week long meat detox but Tessa kept partying till the not-so-wee-hours. We also found a cool jazz bar with delicious platters not far from our hostel which had a live band every night and by the end of the week we were pretty much regulars.

But just as we were getting settled into the groove and grind of the life of a traveller in Buenos Aires, the time came for our flight out to Canada. We were both excited to be starting the next chapter (and to not have to pack our bags again for another arduous bus ride) and also a bit sad that our adventure had come to end...

SO this brings to an end to our story. The blog comes to an end here, I hope you've all enjoyed reading it, your comments and emails have kept it going. I could keep writing about us settling into normal boring lives here in Vancouver but that just wouldn't be as much fun, would it? Sleep tight and don't have too many nightmares about lightning strikes, giant condors, creepy shaman and burning roadblocks. Thanks for joining us through the blogging medium on our adventure. If you want to keep in touch you can reach us through facebook or post a comment on the blog and I'll get back to you.

That is all.

Surreal

2008-10-05T06:33:00.000-07:00

With a day of bus riding, Wilson celebrated his birthday in style. We had planned to catch up with Hannes, a guy we met in Cordoba, at Iguazu so we quickly legged it there to meet him only to find he couldn´t make it. Once we arrived in Iguazu we went out for "parillada" (argentine barbeque) and wine at a fancy restaurant in town. The meat fest was delicious and included all the usual goodies like steaks, blood sausage and intenstines as well as a few unidentified parts that we thought may well be cow anus.

Iguazu is located in the most northern point of Argentina, wedged in between the borders of Paraguay and Brazil. Its famous entirely for the enormous waterfalls. After spending a day relaxing by the pool at our hostel, we got up early hell bent on exploring the trails and tracks around the falls.

Our day turned out to be remarkably surreal in many ways. We were regretting our sunny day by the pool as the dark clouds were increasingly ominous but we hoped that it would clear up. All hopes were dashed shortly after our arrival at the falls park by multiple rolls of deep booming thunder. The good thing about this was though that the weather was keeping the crowds away and for a short time in morning we made the most of exploring the complex with barely another soul in sight. The place felt deserted but it meant that the birds were out in numbers and we saw a wild Toucan up close.

The falls were absolutely astounding. The huge volume of crashing water is spread across hundreds of falls dropping onto plateaus or pounding straight down the 60m drop. Despite the grey clouds I went crazy taking panoramic shots to try and capture the beautiful scenes. As the rain began to spit down we took the boat over to the island between the two main sections of falls only to find the island was chock full of birds of prey. There were dozens in almost every tree eyeing us up and wondering if we were going to die soon and become their lunch. Very spooky.

It was shortly after this that the inevitable happened and the heavens opened completely and let loose an intense tropical downpour. We were almost blasted into the river as we headed along the catwalk towards the enormous Garganta del Diablo and when we arrived we could barely differentiate clouds from waterfall spray. Many of the other tourists wihtout jackets, bought matching white plastic rain ponchos and it seemed as though the place had been invaded by laboratory scientists. The last bizarre thing that happened this day was, as we were soaked and freezing and on our way home to the hostel, we ran into some guys we know from uni, Dave and Spud. After a massive double take we found out they were travelling with four other kiwis around latin america and would also be heading to Canada afterwards... coincidence huh? This encounter also doubled the number of other New Zealanders we have seen on our trip.

The next day we went back to the falls to see what it was like when we weren´t facing a waterblaster. The weather was fantastic and accordingly the tourist hordes were back in full force. The worst thing about guided tours is that all these people who would normally move around to different parts of the park at different paces are all stuck in one place at one time and we got stuck right in the middle of three of them! The guide always walks around with a coloured umbrella and everyone in their party has a little name tag with their guides name, so there were all these old men walking around with name badges saying "Shirley". It was pretty much tourist hell while we were stuck there.

But we managed to get away from the rude, pushing, thronging crowds and found some cracking views of the waterfalls. On the complex of boardwalks it was possible to get really close to the falls and feel the spray and watch the birds flying in and out of the cliffs.

Losing our Memory

2008-10-05T06:28:00.000-07:00

Awright, so we changed scene completely from the idyllic lakes of northern Patagonia for the sunny spring vibe of Rosario, which is a few hours west of Buenos Aires. This only took 26 hours of bus travel, the longest haul of our trip. What I should clear up now is that there are no photos of Rosario as we foolishly left the memory card at the hostel when we left! Rubbish eh?

Anyway, I´ll try and describe it as best I can and maybe you´ll be able to picture it. We happened to arrive on the national "Day of the Student", and being a beautifully sunny Sunday afternoon, the riverfront park area, which stretched for miles along the length of the city, was packed with around 20,000 students sipping maté, shooting the breeze and just generally hanging out and enjoying the weather. This seemed like a pretty good idea to us so we pulled up a patch of grass and soaked up the vibe. We spent the next few days exploring the city on bikes, heading to the sandy river beaches, and shopping for some low-crotch, alladin-type, babucha/hammer pants for Tessa.

Another overnight bus only just brought us to Resistencia in the north (we very almost missed our stop!). We found ourselves in the poorest place we had yet visited in Argentina, (the bus terminal was located next to a sprawling shanty town) and also certainly the least touristy. The folk at the tourist office seemed to think it a real treat to actually get to talk to some tourists and people were constantly asking us where we were from. One kid of about 17 stopped us in the street to try and sell us something or get us to sign up to something; the conversation went a little like this:

Kid: Where are you from?
Us: New Zealand
(Kids eyes get real big and a look of sheer confusion crosses his face)
Kid: What?
Us: New Zealand. It´s a country in the southern hemisphere, near Australia.
Kid: What?
Us: New Zealand. Like the All Blacks and rugby (this often works in these sorts of situations in Argentina)
Kid: I... I don´t understand.
Us: New Zealand. Its a country.
Kid: I don´t... I don´t understand. (He´s getting a little panicky at this stage)
Us: Maybe you can look it up on a map. (And we left it at that)

So Resistencia decided one day that it would be the sculpture capital of Argentina. Its not as though there is a thriving community of sculpturers and artists in Resistencia, they had to get them in from other parts of the country, but its pretty cool all the same. Of the 530 sculptures dotted around the city on every street corner, park, and median strip, we managed to see around 100 of them. They range from tiny wee brass figures on podiums nestled behind trees on the footpath to giant monstrosities that are lit up at night. It definately added some interest to an otherwise fairly quiet town.

From Resistencia we went for a short trip over the river to its twin city, Corrientes. We were a little curious to see what the town was like after reading a particularly unprofessional outburst in the lonely planet guide book that went something along the lines of "F*ck Corrientes!" It was actually a really nice town with a great waterfront area along the river which was busy with people sipping maté, walking dogs and enjoying the sunshine. We arrived at the bridge just in time to catch the very pretty sunset.

We walked into town for some dinner and found out why Resistencia was such a sleepy town. All the young people go to Corrientes and on a Friday night they invade the centre of town. It was a madhouse, we had to try and push our way through hoardes of teenagers loitering about and filling all the restaurant tables to drink soft drinks. After pushing and shoving our way around for an hour, we hadn´t found a single decent place to eat so we gave up on the madness and settled for the quiet life of Resistencia.

Panorama City

2008-09-23T14:03:00.000-07:00

Wow I´ve just been having a flick through the blog from the start. What a ride! But time is steadily ticking on and we are coming close to the end of this wee chapter. I´ll get started with a little observation about business and parties in Argentina. Here it is the overwhelming fashion for guys to always arrange to have their business at the front and their party at the back. If you´re completely lost, I´m talking mullets baby, the hairstyle that was the bane of 80s fashion in NZ which traditionally went hand in hand with short shorts, singlets and a can of DB. We´ve seen all manner from the traditional curly hair mullet, to the tinted twin tail mullet. Fantastic!

We boosted from Mendoza on our longest bus extravaganza to date. It turns out Argentina is actually really really big, and we had only begun to see it. Our initial plan was to head towards Bariloche and the northern part of Patagonia while stopping at a few places along the way, only there wasn´t really anywhere on the way, just miles and miles of flat plains. We arrived at last at the town of San Martin de los Andes, winter haven for the elite and famous. The fancy town houses were built almost entirely of stone and stained timber and the place had the midweek desertion of a holiday home town. While we were there we decided to trek up to a lookout with views of the surrounding mountains and lakes. We got pretty well abysmally lost as the path split into dozens of tracks all over the hills and my theory that "the lookout must be at the top of the hill so we should climb up" only really works when there is only one hill, in this case there wasn´t... We eventually made it to the top just in time for the sunset over a scene very reminiscent of Lake Wanaka.

Our next stop took us to the town of Villa de Angostura, so named for its location on a thin strip of land and the beginning of a peninsula which juts out into the lake. It was a small town and seemed much more relaxed, although just as touristy as San Martin. We were well into panorama country here, pretty well wherever we went there were cracking views of snowy mountains draped with lush pine forests towering over crystal clear lakes. We spent the next few days walking and cycling around to various lookouts for fantastic views of all the mountains, trees and lakes. A few weeks previously, a huge storm had dumped piles of snow in the area and some of the tracks (including the one out on the peninsula) were wrecked and closed by landslides, debris and fallen trees but we didn´t let this slow us down. There was also plenty of time for our new favourite pastime, lazing around by lakes.

In these picturesque resorty towns we discovered something that we hadn´t counted on. From a lookout near Angostura overlooking Lake Nahuel Huapi, we spied a beautiful wee bay with a few bobbing fishing boats and a small boardwalk which looked like the perfect place to stop for lunch. But when we walked down to it we discovered it was private land and we couldn´t access the waterfront. This was the case all over the area, we found that most of the best spots were owned by hotels or private houses and coming from NZ where anyone can lawfully wander the waterfront this was a bit of a surprise.

Our last stop in the Lake District was the ski resort city of Bariloche, famous for having the largest ski field in South America, Cerro Catedral, and just across the lake from Angostura. Bariloche was a strange town in many ways. During our stay there seemed to be an invasion of rich high school kids on organised trips who were staying at fancy hotels and would wander the streets at night in huge packs yelling school chants. Another wierd aspect was the noddy town like city centre, which seemed like some tacky mockery of Swiss architecture, while the rest of the city looked like a pretty normal city. Obviously some resident felt they needed to clear up any confusion because outside the centre was graffitied "Esto no es Barilcohe" (This is not Bariloche).

Our trekking around the Bariloche area took us out on a peninsula on the lake that had another lake within it which was really quite spectacular. We headed away from the road following a track marked on the map which showed a way through the forest to a beach at the head of the peninsula. Unfortunately this track had been nailed by the storm and we spent the next four hours bush bashing our way through debris, snow and thickets of thorns to find ourselves at a lookout far above the coast. It was here that Tessa decided that there must be a track down to the beach shown on the map and we further bush bashed our way down the cliff, through private property and past barking guard dogs, Tessa took a detour through the lake, and finally to a tranquil and nearly deserted beach with the obligatory fantastic vistas of trees, lake and mountains.

Being so close to such an enormous ski field we were obliged to head up and give it a go, despite bad reports of the slushy spring snow. As we have become budget hounds in our travels, we found the cheapest place in town to rent gear and proceeded to get decked out for our retro ski day. Fitted out with our straight skis, space boots, battered red poles and me with toilet paper jammed between my googles to stop them fogging up, we were absolutely the least stylish people on the mountain that day and possibly all season. The ski field was huge and criss crossed with gondolas and lifts of every variety. It took a couple of hours for us to figure out where we were and where we were going. After battling with the shoddy gear, white out conditions and nasty icy snow for a bit in the morning we eventually found our way to some really good runs and went flat out for the afternoon.

Wine and Snow

2008-09-15T15:26:00.000-07:00

One can´t write about Argentina for too long without mentioning the Argentinians obsession with maté. Maté is a particular blend of tea brewed strong and sipped from small cups through a straw with a strainer fitted at the end. The cup is stuffed full of leaves and a small amount of hot water is added. Everywhere you go you see people sipping on their straws, any outing to the park or beach isn´t complete without a thermos of hot water and a couple of maté cups. Che Guevara would sip maté while playing chess as it would "lubricate the mind".

Anyway back to the action....

One thing we had missed out on doing in Cafayate, surrounded my all those vineyards, was to go on a wine tour and we were quite determined to remedy that in Mendoza, the heart of Argentine wine country. We hired some bikes and set off along the Ruta del Vino on a sunny spring day with another NZer, a scot and an irish girl we had met at our hostel. As it turned out, most of the wineries charged for tastings so it was much cheaper for the five of us to go shares in a bottle so this is precisely what we did. By the 3rd winery we became tired of the gruelling cycling part of the day and set up camp on some bean bags in the sun surrounded by vines and almond trees. Over the course of the rest of the afternoon we moved only to avoid the shade cast by the setting sun and we polished off another four bottles, mostly malbecs and a rather nice aged syrah.

Mendoza itself was a bustly town which was all geared up for outdoor adventures. There were streets lined with outdoor stores, ski gear hire shops and tour agencies as well as huge bare deciduous trees which served to remind you of the countryside surrounding the city.

Our other big adventure in Mendoza was going skiing in the Andes. We hired our gear and took off for three days at Los Penitentes, a small field nestled between towering cliffs near the Chilean border. We were at the field mid week so, apart from queues of trucks thundering their way past towards the border and a squad of army guys training on the slopes, the place was very quiet. At times we had the place to ourselves and there was certainly nothing resembling a lift queue but equally things were pretty boring off the field at night.

The highlight of our days on the slopes was on the last day, following some rubbish weather the previous day, we woke up to find a decent covering of fresh powder on the field. We had planned to ski only half the day and go and see a natural bridge in the area but that plan was quickly flagged as we rushed up the mountain to gouge our tracks in the fresh snow. Great time all in all and it was awesome to finally get in some skiing this year.

Poi Polloi

2008-09-07T12:17:00.001-07:00

After our lazy days in the countryside we made a bee line for the big city. After stopping briefly in Tucuman (where the girl at the hostel advised us to move on cause there was nothing to do there!) we made our way to Argentina´s second biggest city, Córdoba. We arrived to find tumbleweeds rolling through the main streets while the sounds of our footsteps echoed from the buildings. Yep you guessed it, we´d arrived at siesta time on a Saturday afternoon and most of the shops wouldn´t open again until Monday morning. That night after I found us a really sweet hostel to stay in, we wandered across a very cool arts market nestled within a block of boutique clothing stores and fancy wine bars. This was pretty much the trendiest place we´d been in South America.

On Sunday we figured we would join the rest of the population in having a chilled out day. We took a picnic lunch (including our giant block of cheese) to the huge San Martín park and lazed about while people peddaled boats in the lake and kids played hide-and-go-seek. It was also a chance to delve into our hippy sides and show off our limited poi skills. Afterwards we went to the beautiful fine arts museum to see a somewhat overrated and small Picasso exhibition as well as the more interesting local permanent displays. Also while in Córdoba we chanced upon a spooky 18th century former Jesuit crypt that had been rediscovered beneath a main road in the 80´s.

We celebrated Tessa´s birthday in Córdoba exploring the mazes of malls and shops in the main shopping district and later went out for a fancy-ish dinner followed by some drinks in the bar district by the river with Hannes, a german guy we met at our sweet hostel.

We did a bunch of day trips from Córdoba to smaller towns in the area. The first of these was to a town called Alta Gracia which had a small museum in the former house of its most famous resident Che Guevara. I wanted to get a picture of us on the famous motorcycle (although I might´ve had to rename the blog) but they had obviously seen us coming and it was rigged to the teeth with alarms. The museum was an interesting run through his life and death (another famous person done in by the Bolivian military) and included some letters he had written to his family showing just what an intense wee commie he was. Che is a bit of a hero in South America, his clichéd face is on t-shirts and backpacks everywhere, there are even simpson knock-offs "Che Homero".

The resort town of Carlos Paz was in fact pretty sleepy and quiet being midweek during the "low season". As on Sunday we just spent time by the, quite pretty lake working on our poi skills and afterwards got icecreams that were as big as our heads (never eat anything bigger than your head!!). We also visited one of the towns premium attractions, a giant cuckoo clock, designed by two engineers (need I say more?). This garish monster had been pulling the crowds for 50 odd years!

Our last mission took us to the town of La Falda and, feeling a bit more active and because there was no lake to laze by (only a grimy duck pond), we hiked up to the top of a hill overlooking the area. We battled high winds at the top to practice pois before heading back to town for a hot Submarino (hot milk with a whole chocolate bar dunked in).

Summery Days

2008-09-07T12:15:00.000-07:00

Factoid: Argentina is a country riddled with an epidemic of broken toilet cisterns. We have not come across a single toilet without some makeshift flushing mechanism utilising everything from electrical wire to used matchsticks. At least all the toilets have had seats though!

Well we came into Cafayate not knowing what to expect and it was full of very pleasant and sometimes wierd surprises. The town itself is small enough to be very relaxed and in the surrounding countryside there was heaps to do. We were lucky enough to experience fantastic weather which was reminiscent of late summer days in Hawkes Bay.

We were able to take full advantage of the weather at our hostel which was slightly out of town and oddly enough, mostly abandoned. The hostel had a huge backyard with gardens and a rambling grapevine which made a great setting for breakfast. Also because there were virtually no staff at the hostel, which was an offshoot of a larger hostel in the centre of town, the place felt like our own.

On our first night we wandered to explore the town a little and aside from dozens of designer mullets, we came across some sort of youth group performance on a huge stage outside the cathedral. After a rendition of "If you´re happy and you know it" in spanish, some of the older kids launched into lipsynching to dreadful love songs. Tessa was transfixed but I managed to pull her away before the kareoke got too much for me.

We went on a few trips from Cafayate. The first was a trip to the Quebrada (gorge (I think!)) north of the town which was a collage of layered rock formations whittled out of protruding cliffs by water and wind. The highlight for me was a formation called the Ampitheatre which was exactly that, a huge circular, acoustically brilliant hollow complete with a guy cranking out tunes on a pan pipe. We cruised around the formations in a spacious tourist van with a few others including a really cool italian couple, Jacobo and Serena, who were staying at our otherwise deserted hostel. These guys were basically our flatmates at the hostel and we shared some good yarns (and chocolate!).

Our other trip saw us renting bikes for the day and cycling past sweeping bare vineyards to a lush green river valley. We hiked up the valley and, losing the track several times, scrabbled over huge rocks and up small waterfalls. I was silly enough to go for a quick dip in a freezing cold pool.

After a few days in Cafayate, soaking up the great weather and cooking delicious food from the local market, we finally managed to force ourselves to move on from our relaxing paradise. Still not wanting to face the bustle of the city, we boosted on to another small town called Tafí del Valle. Here we went on a few big walks on the recommendation of one of the hostel staff. The first of these took us eventually to a local cheese factory where we were hoping for some free samples. We were met however, with an almost hostile attitude when we arrived. After being curtly told there were no tastings, we were taken on a tour of the factory which consisted of the following:

"This is where we make the cheese. That is some cheese we made this morning. This way to the shop."

Because we are suckers and because we had walked for hours to get to the cheese factory we ended up buying a kilo of their cheese! It did last us a good few sandwiches and pasta dishes.

Hitchin' a Ride

2008-08-25T08:24:00.001-07:00

Hello all. Time is ticking and I´m on a shared hostel computer so lets get started. First of all a wee sedgeway, congratulations to Isa and James for the birth of their baby boy Luka. Hooray!

Our second stop in Argentina was originally going to be a transfer to another bus but on the recommendation of a mormon guy we met briefly in Tilcara we thought we ought to stay a night in San Salvador de Jujuy. On our arrival in the middle of the afternoon we discovered a dead quiet city with closed and shuttered shops, empty streets and abandoned cafés. This was our first experience of the strictly adhered argentine custom of "the siesta", where everything is closed from lunch to around 5pm. One flipside of this was that while the banks are closed, everyone queues madly outside waiting for it to reopen. The queue in the photo, which may have been tax return day or something, stretched right to the end of the block, maybe 400m! Once things started to reopen, Jujuy strangely reminded us of Hong Kong, with huge neon signs and banners stretched across the streets.

In Jujuy we went for a mission out of town to some thermal pools which were nestled in a valley overlooking a river. The trip out there on the bus was particularly picturesque, taking us through some of the first green countryside we had seen in months.

As food here in Argentina is a bit pricier, we´ve started preparing our own meals again which means exploring food markets and trying to learn all the multitude of spanish words for cuts of meat (it seems asking for meat of cow doesn't work too well!). In our next stop of Salta, we had a run in with an unexpected problem at the market. While wandering and browsing to find a cheap market restaurant for lunch we found ourselves mobbed by waitresses trying to get us to buy from their restaurant. We were surrounded by almost a dozen all yabbering at us, some laughing, some grabbing us and pulling, none of them listening to our insistence on being left alone. We did the cowardly thing and ran like hell. After regrouping outside we came up with a plan. We hurried back inside with our heads down and sat down at the first tables we could find. Whew!

Other highlights of Salta included walking up San Bernado´s hill with its views over the city. During this we found out what people do in the middle of the day when they´re not working, they exercise! There were all sorts running, walking, puffing and stretching their way up and down the hill.

We decided to have a bit of a night out on our last night in Salta and headed to the bar district to find a peña. We discovered that the big city peña experience was to be quite different from the cozy club in Tilcara. The bands were very professional, the wine was very fancy and the food was completely dominating. It was our first "parillada" or argentine barbeque which is served on a grill stoked with hot coals and for the two of us consisted of 2 steaks; 3 chops; 2 sausages; 5 slices of kidney; 1 slice of liver and a pile of long stringy intestine. We polished it all off, apart from the intestine which tasted a bit too much like I thought intestine would taste like, and at the end of the night we waddled out with stuffed bellies.

Our plan was to take the long way from Salta to our next planned stop at Cafayate in our usual "off the beaten track" search. This involved staying a night in a spanishy small town called Cachi where we hired bikes for the afternoon and pedalled up a pretty valley. The next day we planned to hitch hike to Cafayate as there were no buses that went all the way, unfortunately this was a Sunday morning and like Sunday mornings throughout the continent, nothing was happening. After standing at the outskirts of town for 3 hours, waving our thumbs around and talking to a local goat herder for some time, we gave up and reverted to plan B. Plan B involved taking 2 buses and hiring a private car to arrive wearily in Cafayate.

The Perfect Town?

2008-08-22T10:29:00.002-07:00

We were finally on our way out of Bolivia, excited to be heading to a new place, with all the creature comforts of a more developed country, a little dread about how much more expensive such creature comforts are and a little dissapointment that we couldn´t have made more of our time in Bolivia due to the roadblocks and such. The border crossing at Villazón was pretty uneventful other than waiting for 2 hours in a queue while the immigration office was closed for lunch. However once we got through to the Argentinian side of the border we discovered that there were absolutely no money changers in this side of the town. We were stuck in a country with no money and no access to an ATM, another amateur mistake, always change money when you can! Luckily I was able to simply stroll back through to Bolivia to change money and stroll back again past all the suckers still waiting for entry stamps. Whew!

Our first stop in Argentina was the wee town of Tilcara, and what a wee town it is! We both pretty much fell in love with the place within our first day there thanks mostly to all the friendly people we met. The town is a hub for artists in the northwestern region so it´s packed with interesting people, cool shops and spring blossoms coming into bloom. There seemed to be a really different attitude towards visitors compared to Bolivia, where the people were generally quite shy to talk. We found ourselves staying, by accident, in a hostel which was really just a house full of hippies making crafts and fresh bread. The people were really friendly and made us feel at home.

We very quickly realised that all the rumours we had heard about Argentinian food were true. After our bolivian diet of bland everything, I indulged in two steaks on my first day and they were both really good. We had a meal at a local peña, which is basically a venue for dinner with live folk music. The show had a really warm, small town atmosphere and the musician Carlos held the audience with heaps of jokes, most of which we didn´t get at all. It was a great night with great food, wine and music.

There are ruins of a pre colombian town on the crest of a hill above Tilcara called the Pucará. We hiked up to enjoy the views of the valley and run around in the maze of semi restored buildings.

Tilcara was one of those rare places you find when travelling that you find you don´t really want to leave. After spending a few days soaking up the relaxed vibe and not doing too much else we ventured onward to the big smoke.

Yeee hah

2008-08-22T10:29:00.001-07:00

So I´ll start this one with a little description of some of the roads in Southern Bolivia. Basically, there aren´t really roads as such, just tracks through the sand connecting the main towns. The buses rattle along the tracks at high speed slowly shaking themselves to bits, which is more or less exactly what happened to our bus from Uyuni to our next stop, Tupiza. About halfway there our bus broke down while driving up a shallow stream bed. Luckily we were soon rescued by what seemed to be a former school bus.

Tupiza is a scenic wee town surrounded by a constant sunset of red rock mountains dotted with cactuses. To quote the rather fitting cliché from all the guide books, "it´s just like being in the wild west". I assume this is true anyway, I´ve never been to the wild west, but the wild west has been to Tupiza. The area is infamous as the spot where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid came in order to get their hands on some of the silver pouring out of Potosí but were eventually gunned down by the Bolivian Army. It´s such a big deal that our hostel even had the movie, starring the late, great Paul Newman and Robert Redford on scratchy VHS.

In order to indulge in such a vivid history, we went on a horse trek in the country around the town led by our "16 year old" guide. The tour began ominously as our "16 year old" guide led us through the town rubbish tip past other kids who were scrounging around. After our "16 year old" guide copped some flak from the other kids for bringing tourists through the tip, we continued plodding slowly on into more scenic areas. Our ride on the two slowest horses in Bolivia, took us up into gravelly red canyons that seemed to wind on for eternity and past bizzare formations named things like "The Throat of the Devil". Apart from the times our "16 year old" guide decided to whack our slow horses until they broke into a trot or even a gallop, the trip was quite relaxed. However what was meant to be a 3 hour trek turned into a 5 hour trek and our arses were so sore by the end we could barely walk back to our hostel. Oh yeah the wee guy on the horse in the pic above was our guide who actually managed to tell us with a straight face that he was 16 years old.

We also stumbled onto a rather strange parade in Tupiza which, we were assured was just the start of a weeklong celebration of some local patron saint. Everywhere we went in Tupiza during our few days there we heard various brass bands practicing behind closed doors. The parade itself consisted of several groups of bizarrely dressed people resembling a Disney "Beauty and the Beast" pagent marching out of the cathedral behind one such brass band and through the streets of town stopping to pass below temporary archways. Following this strange procession was a fleet of cars made up to resemble a bolivian Undy 500. The highlight of all this were the guys dressed up like blue tea cups and wearing white 17th century wigs while twirling clackers in their little dance down the road.

Tupiza was a chilled out and pretty little town which was a good way to finish our fast but dramatic tour of Bolivia. Our only real worry here was the classic money management issue where we were trying to be cheap because we only had so many bolivianos left to last until the border. After all our careful calculations we blew a bunch of cash on a nice hostel room which turned out to be 60Bs "per person" NOT in total! Amateur mistakes are made after terrible bus rides.....

On to the border!

More flamingoes than could fit on your front lawn.

2008-08-22T10:28:00.001-07:00

Out we finally set on our tour of the salt flats and surrounding area of south west Bolivia. Our crew of seven, stuffing the four-wheel-drive to capacity, consisted of us, a dutch couple and three italians. This made for a bit of a strange dynamic and throughout the three days of the tour, the group never really gelled which led to silent hours sitting in the jeep. Add to this our driver, Victor, whose "ten years experience in tourism" made him the grumpiest guide to ride the salt flats, and only really spoke to us when he really had to.

Our first day took us through the Salar de Uyuni, the largest salt flat in Bolivia, which is formed by slat deposits washed down from the hills during rainy season and left behind when the collected water evaporates. The remaining landscape is eirie desolation where the constant glaring white light distorts perspectives and warps the horizon. Distances seemed to make little sense here as we drove at top speed across the salar, all the while the distant hills remained unchanged.

Eventually we came to the Isla del Pescado, a cactus studded blip on the perfect white landscape that served as a halfway point for incan travellers as they crossed the expanse. As we pulled up we found we were no longer alone on the salt flat, the island was being invaded by hordes in four-wheel-drives. This would be the way with all the stops on our tour. We soon scaled to the top of the island, past towering 1200 year old cactuses, to watch the other tourists taking wierd perspective photos on the salar. This seemed like fun so we did the same.

The next days drive took us away from the salt flat, higher into the desert altiplano. We passed through a landscape of intermittent tussocks and towering volcanic peaks towards a set of high altitude lakes complete with large sheets of floating ice. We came across a huge colony of pink andean flamingoes, which were very cool. It was like a scene from some african safari only a whole lot colder. We all got camera happy as we piled out of the jeep trying to capture the scene.

The lakes were all different colours, ranging from an ochre red, to a pale green caused by different algaes that thrived in the freezing cold waters. We also passed herds of Vicuña, which look loke a cross between llamas, deer and giraffe. At this stage in the trip I gained a different appreciation for Bolivia, it had been hard work travelling thus far but the unique and beautiful environment here was starting to make it worthwhile.

We continued to climb upwards into the appropriately named desert of Salvador Dali, with its surreal rock forests penetrating through the smooth windswept sand. That night we stayed in very modest acommodations next to the Laguna Colorada, a vast red hued lake complete with a small herd of grazing llamas, and as the temperature plummeted to -20degreesC we huddled near the fire inside wearing as many layers as we could.

The next morning began before it began, at 5am. As we were enveloped in the frozen air and morning darkness, quickly developing chill blanes in the back of the jeep, we trundled off to see the geysers of the volcanic area at the highest point of the trip of 5000m. Perhaps coming from New Zealand took away from this experience, or maybe it was the utterly penetrating cold of dawn, but the geyser field with its man made geyser was less than impressive. I really just wanted to move on as quickly as possible to the thermal pool to thaw out for a while, which luckily we did. Our last stop was the ice covered Laguna Verde which we arrived at just in time to see the ice sheet melting and revealing the hazy green water underneath.

The eight hour haul back to Uyuni was much like the rest of the trip, bumping across sandy desert non-roads while the driver played his one CD of skipping casiotone cumbia music. When we finally arrived back in Uyuni we realised that for the first time, despite the grumpy driver, the odd collection of people, and the worst music ever concieved by man...

We went on a tour in south america and nothing went wrong!!!!

Stuck in a Small Town Montage

2008-08-22T10:27:00.000-07:00

A few more pictures from Uyuni.

Ice Cream Guys

Enormous bolivian flag flying high on referendum day

Candy floss guy was making a killing

There were no cars allowed into or out of town so the streets were left to the people

Even the police were getting to the festive mood

On the way to the train cemetery

Journey to the Centre of the Earth

2008-08-10T15:05:00.003-07:00

Our trip to Potosí had been made largely to escape the increasing political troubles and chaos in La Paz and as we rolled into town, weary and cranky from a disturbed sleep on the bus in the middle of a road block (a couple of old ladies started discussing politics and full volume around 2.30am), we ran into an independence day party blocking all the streets around the centre of town. While we normally would´ve been keen to join in, neither of us were feeling overly cheerful about the state of Bolivia and we wandered about and found some food in a quiet wee pub away from the action. We checked out the plaza after the celebrations were winding down, it looked like a tip with rubbish and empty beer cups everywhere. Many of the surrounding streets stunk of a smell that was starting to become quite familiar from bolivian streets, urine.

Potosí was, in its day, the centre of wealth of the spanish empire with an enormous silver mine pouring money into their pockets and making Potosí a major hub, at the time bigger than Paris or New York. Nowadays all the silver is gone and the miners spend their days trying to make a living scraping out the leftover minerals such as zinc. As a tourist attraction you can visit these mines and see exactly the rubbish conditions in which these guys work, and thats precisely what we did. I was hesitant, watching others misery doesn´t seem like good tourism to me, until I met a few people who claimed it had been the most worthwhile part of their trip. And so we found ourselves donning dusty overalls and heading into the mine with a dozen others from all over the world.

As we headed into the mine I found myself sort of enjoying the experience, it was quite novel and a bit cliched with the metal trolleys filled with rocks being pushed along train tracks and the ladders descending down into darkness. But soon enough we came across a crew working, setting up dynamite for a blast, which involved dusty, loud drilling (our guide supplied us with wads of toilet paper to jam in our ears for noise protection) and air blasting ammonia into the hole to give the dynamite a bigger pop. The dust made it increasingly difficult to breathe and the reality of working 12 hours a day in such a place started to sink in. We left a wee gift of coca leaves with the crew, which they chew round the clock to keep them going, and headed deeper into the mine.

The trip continued downwards, scaling down the descending ladders, and winding through passages, all the while visiting different work crews doing similarly dusty, difficult and crappy jobs. It made me feel a bit like an engineer again, visiting site to take photos of people working, or maybe just like a dorky tourist. After an hour or so down in the mine we were all starting to feel like we had been there long enough, but we waited well away from the action until the dynamite was set off. The sound echoed deeply around the mine, hanging in the air and shaking the rock walls like a monster from the deep.

The next day we awoke in Potosí, which apparently is the highest city in the world, to settling snow. In the plaza Tessa saw soldiers and children alike running about throwing snowballs at each other, the whole scene being quite surreal.

On the way out of Potosí that day we had our next, more indirect run in with the roadblocks. Our bus driver, knowing that the road was blocked, picked a way out of town through the back streets which eventually took us off roading through the desert. This was all well and good, the bus almost tipping only a few times, until we came across the city water supply pipe which ran half a metre off the ground. Out we all jumped and started constructing a stone bridge over the pipe, a successful crossing followed and we made our way bumping along the unpaved desert track to Uyuni.

Uyuni, placed in the middle of a flat desert, is a launching base for trips into the salt flats which is exactly why we were there. Unfortunately the dusty drab little blip of a town has very little else to do, which became a problem as we found ourselves ¡Trapped Again! The day of the referendum, the police closed all roads into and out of all towns in the country and most of the few shops in town were closed. We found ourselves wandering about the main square aimlessly with all the other trapped tourists and taking loads of pics of everyday things. At one stage there was a queue out the door of the internet café and a steady stream wandering past the town dump to the only other sight in town, a train cemetery filled with rusting shells of carriages and engines. For us it was the second day of killing time here as I had been brought down by a case of Bolivian Belly (one of the two of us had a crook gut for most of our time in Bolivia!)

The referendum day came off with very little trouble around the country, the people in Uyuni seemed to treat it as a holiday. Even the police were treating themselves to candy floss from the street vendors. After being stuck in town for a few days we finally headed off for our grand adventure to the salt flats and the high altitude desert areas to the south.

¡Trapped!

2008-08-10T15:05:00.001-07:00

Whew! What a cliff hanger eh? Hope not too many of you are biting your nails in sheer anxiety about what was to come in La Paz....

On our first day in La Paz, as we wandered the city trying to get our bearings, we began to hear loud explosions in the distance and realising that they were getting closer, we cautiously made our way to the main street. There we saw a large protest consisting of many workers groups carrying banners, chanting and shouting, completely blocking off the main street while hecklers yelled angrily at them from the pedestrian bridge above. The explosions were a result of the dynamite the protesters were letting off in the street and firing (like a giant roman candle) into the air and at the hecklers on the pedestrian bridge! People were running from the progress of the protest with their ears blocked while bemused police looked on. We were curious but needless to say a bit freaked (Tessa was reading a book about crowd violence at english football matches at this time). As such we headed away from the protest to find that the police had posted large riot equipped contingents outside all the major ministries and government buildings and at one stage a dozen armed police on motorbikes swarmed past us. And what was all this in aid of? The workers and miners wanted the pension age lowered from 65 to 55....

A little political background that we have learnt in our time since, I´ll try to be brief. As with most politicians, El Presidente had promised the earth in order to get elected, and was failing to deliver and is alienating the rural workers and coca growers he represents. He´s also trying to nationalise everything in sight, alienating the rest of the country. In the week to come there was to be a referendum to decide whether the president could continue doing what he wanted. Every other group decided this would be a good time to try and get what they want (including the city´s disabled who, with a lack of foresight, organised a march a few days later going UP the main road). Throw in the fact that the city was also throwing independance day celebrations all over the show and you´ve got a pile of confused chaos.

The upshot of all this was that not only was it difficult to get around town during all the marches, it was also very difficult to get out of the city. Bolivians love to express themselves politically by blocking main roads and transport routes, grinding the economy to a halt and creating what could be violent and fatal confrontations. Our plans were constantly uprooted by news of fresh roadblocks, which meant we were stuck in La Paz for the immediate future.

La Paz was in fact quite a nice city and not that bad a place to be stuck. In comparison to many cities we have visited La Paz was clean and also had a lot of atmosphere. Once we had realised the balaclava clad packs of roaming youngsters were only shoeshine boys we felt a bit safer. The city was packed with markets (complete with dried llama foetuses), parks and interesting museums including a coca museum and a museum of musical instruments. We walked up to a kids playground which had great views of the city including the river which has basically turned into a giant open sewer.

Many people we had met had recommended that we cycle down the "death road", which I didn´t tell my mum about at the time. The death road earned its name when it was the main route between La Paz and the lowlands, with such high usage along a narrow windy gravel road with perilous sheer drops, that high accident and death rates were almost inevitable. The ride involves biking down from the sierra at about 4600m elevation, straight down the mostly single lane gravel road to the beginnings of the jungle at 1300m taking about four hours. The road is now closed to traffic and is hence filled with tourists zipping down at breakneck speeds. It was a lot of fun and needless to say it turned into a bit of an unofficial race to see who could keep up with our guide.

After being in La Paz for almost a week, we heard that the roads would be open for Independence Day. We rushed down to the bus station and booked a bus that night bound for Potosí, a town that we figured would be less likely to have problems and was also on the way south towards Argentina. Filled with hope by the reassurances of the bus company we hopped on the busand crossed our fingers.

However, we woke up at around midnight to realise that the bus had come to a stop in the middle of nowhere. We were stuck sleeping at the roadblock for eight hours while fires were lit all down the highway. In the morning things at the block began to get heated with the protesters arguing with the bus drivers and passengers while they let off dynamite. A line of buses stretched as far as the eye could see with crowds milling about not knowing whether to stay with the bus or try and cross the block by foot. Eventually we were allowed through after the drivers managed to convince the protesters that we were all starving, and as we drove through the block we discovered it was caused by only a dozen people! This would be our most spectacular run in with the roadblocks...

Copacabana - On a Very Short Shoestring

2008-07-31T13:24:00.003-07:00

Copacabana....hmmmm, sounds like a resort where you lie in hammocks, swim and drink coctails all day. It is actually a small town on Lake Titicaca, close to the Peruvian/Bolivian border. Yes, that´s right we have arrived in Bolivia and you are probably over half way through reading this blog. YAY FINALLY!!

We came through the border with no problems, except for the really stinky french boys sitting behind us on the bus. It is a bit of a problem for Americans to come here these days though, as the bolivian government has decided to put Americans through the same process that Bolivians have to go through to enter the states. Good on them I say!

One of the biggest surprises in crossing a land border is that things are actually different on the other side, even though it´s only separated by an imaginary line. One of the biggest differences we noticed was the sheer number of hippies in Copacabana, selling handmade bracelets in the street, loitering around with their long dreadlocks and cranking out Bob Marley. It seems this place is some sort of hippy centre of South America.

Copacabana is basically one main tourist street, although I do believe that Bolivians actually live there. Tourists go there to visit the islands on lake Titicaca, Isla del Sola and Isla de la Luna.

Wilson and I, instead of taking the boat direct to Isla del Sol from Copacabana, hike 17km to a small town on the peninsula. Upon reaching the town we were asked by a small girl if we would take her picture. Assuming that she wanted to see a picture of herself, I oblidged. Then she says, "Plata?" ("Money?"). Her friends all laughed.....and so did we. They train them young these days!

We were offered 2 options for getting to the Island from the peninsula:

1. 80 bolivianos for a motor boat or...

2. 20 bolivianos each for an old bolivian man to row us there.

Obviously, we chose option 2. Luckily the man had a big wad of coca in his cheek for energy and he was quite pleased when we gave him an extra 10 bolivianos as he dropped us off on a random rock on the island. The other upside of this covert sneaking onto the island was that we avoided the ticket office at the main tourist wharf and hence avoided being cajoled into buying an unneccesary tourist ticket! The reason for our overt cheapness at this point in the trip was the lack of an ATM in Copacabana, hence we only had the left over Peruvian Soles that we had converted at the border to see us through until La Paz.

We quickly discovered shortly after our arrival that, in line with most other Bolivian tourist facilities, all the hostels on the island were fairly much the same and offering fairly much the same food for the same prices in their restaurants, which they all had. We found a nice one with views of the lake, which they all had as we were on an island....

The next day we set off to the northern part of the island which promised such artefacts as an old incan temple and the rock of the puma, which boasts the origin of the incan creation legend. The walk along the ridge of the island was very tranquil with cracking views and very few other people. We looked down on the clear waters and bobbing boats of the little bays and enjoyed fresh breeze coming in from the lake. When we arrived at the ruins we found that it had been overrun by dirty hippies. As we were informed by a "guide", that Wilson foolishly thought might actually know something historical about the site, about the mystical energies of the stone, we saw that his associate in hippyness, had seen fit to spread his "trinkets for sale" all over the sacrificial stone. We were told that he was entitled to do this as he had "great knowledge". The temple ruins were somewhat dissapointing as well with the best part being the lakefront views...

We shot back to the mainland in the afternoon and struggled up the hill overlooking Copacabana, past the pilgrimatic stations of the cross, to watch the sunset dipping into the lake.

The next day we jumped in a van bound for La Paz, which involved a little ferry ride across the lake (they shuttle busses across on tiny barges dragging through the water). Little did we realise what was waiting for us in La Paz.....

The Tardis Bus

2008-07-31T13:24:00.001-07:00

We arrived in Arequipa at 8 in the morning from the most horrible night bus journey to date (I guess that´s what you get when you´re stingy and take the cheapest chicken bus). None of the windows seemed to seal, and being a desert at over 3000m the wind on the bus was freezing!! Even with my down jacket! Needless to say, we didn´t arrive well rested. Coincidentally again, Theresa (the proud owner of Tessa´s hammock) was on James´s bus.

We didn´t waste much time in Arequipa, as our Peruvian visa was about to expire, and we set off for Cabanaconde and the Colca Canyon the next day with our Brittishy mate James (some of us quite hung over at this stage thanks to James and a random Peruvian named Marco Antonio who wanted to practice his english on us all night!!). We arrived late and found a sweet deal at a hotel, with the best shower I´ve had since my arrival on this continent (hot and with plenty of water!). N.B. This shower has been equaled in quality since (this morning actually).

The plan was to spend a few days hiking in the Canyon, which once claimed to be the deepest in the world, but has since been surpassed by some other canyon in Peru. The canyon is also famous for the Andean Condors, which boast a wing span of up to 3 metres. There are no roads into the canyon, but it is dotted with little traditional towns.

The first day we hiked for about 5 hours down into the canyon and along to this town called Malata. On arrival it seemed as though no one lived in this town, but eventually we came across the hostel (a windowless mud brick building with bamboo beds). Surprisingly we were the only tourists there, until some spanish campers arrived a bit later on. The woman who owned the hostal made us a great dinner and brekkie the next day. Her husband helped me out by nailing the sole back onto my tramping boot, as it had almost completely fallen off at this stage. He also gave me some sound advice, to please purchase some new boots as soon as I get out of the canyon!!

The next day we hiked to the other end of the canyon and then back, in the desert heat of the day, after deciding that we didn´t want to stay there after all. Coincidentally Theresa had booked a tour for the same days and we ran into her along the trail. It was hard work and we were glad when we arrived at Oasis, where we, and Theresa (coincidentally), were spending the night. Oasis is a ´town´at the bottom of the canyon. It is made up of tourist accommodation and swimming pools. We did have one reward for all our walking and that was seeing andean condors....soo far away that they were just black dots.....but condors none the less.

The next morning we ascended the 1200 metres back to the top of the canyon and it was damned hard work!! Britishy James was keen to get the next bus back to Arequipa and I was a little bit glad when there wasn´t enough space for Will and I ´cos I was STARVING!! Will and I got seats for the next bus and ate lunch.....But I soon wasn´t soo glad about not getting on the first bus....

By the time Will and I got to the bus there was a line across the plaza, people packing on the bus and the bus was already chocka! All these people had come from a neighbouring town for the independence day parade. Slowly, little by little, the line somehow disappeared onto the bus..... There were about 10 people still outside the bus door and we were yelling at the driver "We can´t fit on, can you please change our tickets for the next bus!?" very exasperated! His response was that we should "Suban!" ("Get on the bus!"). So we got pushed in the doorway with the other 10 people and for the first 10 minutes of our journey the door couldn´t close. A couple of Peruvian men were in danger of becoming road kill. Luckily all these people were not continuing the full 6 hours to Arequipa, but they all got off after about an hour and a half....PHEW!!

We did spent the next few days in Arequipa checking out the city. In comparison to other Peruvian cities we have visited, Arequipa was a really vibrant place, with loads of students and student bars and a centre full of white stone colonial buildings all overlooked by nearby volcanoes. On Sunday, after coincidentally running into Theresa (we weren´t sure who was stalking who at this stage), we walked to a lookout over the city and came across a delicious local treat called Queso Helado (Cheese Ice Cream). There are always plenty of sweet snacks for sale outside the churches on Sundays. We also visited a park in the central town which was crammed with families enjoying the good weather and delicious food. One thing we noticed in Arequipa and everywhere since.... French people everywhere....

As the next day was Peru´s Independence Day, we had fears that our planned trip over the border into Bolivia, a full day before our visas expired, would be thrown into disarray. In fact the whole trip was fairly plain sailing with the only drawback was that we had to stop in Puno for a few hours, complete with it´s open sewers and stinking market. Onward to Bolivia!

Machu Pikachu: The Japanese Anime Version

2008-07-31T13:23:00.001-07:00

Hello Blogworld. Yes it´s been a while since the last entry and we´ve got a whole lot to catch up on. The reason for the resounding blogsilence is that we have been on the run, not literally, but we´ve had to get a rush on to get done what we want. Initially this was because our Peru visa was fast running out and now that we are in Bolivia, we´ve realised our whole trip is fast running out!

We left you hanging at our arrival in Cuzco after some painfully long bus ride. Our plan for Cuzco was that we had no plan. We arrived with our friends from burners who, being more organised than us, jumped straight on the trainto Machu Picchu Pueblo. We wanted to spend a few days sussing out other options for getting up to Machu Picchu including hiking in either solo or with a tour. Wandering about looking at options was pretty well all we did in Cuzco which isn´t very exciting so I´ll just describe a bit about Cuzco itself.

Cuzco at first glance is a city dominated by tourists and the tourist trade, and for good reason as it is a beautiful city with narrow, windy cobbled alleys, massive cathedrals towering over a busy plaza, spanishmeetsincan architecture, all nestled high in an andean valley. The upside to being part of the tourist bustle was an abundance of vibrant crafts markets and tasty food (we even found a place which served flat whites). There was also plenty of people around to meet up with. After much fruitless email organising we ran into Cush and Rich (some friends from Wellington) in the street. We also ran into a few other people from earlier in our trip including Theresa, who Tessa hocked her hammock off to after our 3 day boat ride to Tarapoto.

Of course the downside to the touristyness was the constant hawking. Our hostel was located at the top of a street we later learned was known as "Gringo Alley". This meant we couldn´t leave the hostel without a pack of hawkers descending on us offering everything from restaurants and tours to massages and drugs. One guy in particular had it in for me. I´d see him as we walked down the street and as we approached I saw a glint of recognition in his eye and a sly smirk would cross his face. As soon as we were within pouncing distance of his overpriced restaurant, I´d find a menu thrust in my face and a constant babbling in my ear. It seems taking no for answer, no matter how loud and forceful, apparently wasn´t an option, but I reckon he just loved winding me up.

Another wee story from Cuzco happened when we were checking out the arty scuplture area of town with our pals from Pisco. We noticed a group of people and police arguing and as we drew closer one guy jumped up with long pole and whacked one of the cops. The cops got a couple of hits into his arms with their nightsticks before the guy turned and sprinted... straight towards us of course. We got the hell out of the way and the last we saw of him, he was doing a reasonable job of outrunning 5 cops, as you would with the certainty of a decent beating once caught!

The result of our days of planning and researching a route to Machu Picchu brought us in full circle away from doing any sort of trek, to just doing the cheapest option we could find. This involved taking a bus to a random village around the back of Machu Picchu, transfering to a minivan to another wee village, then walking along a train track for 5 hours. One word, mission. At the end of it, tired and thirsty, we made the mistake of going for a beer in the most touristy town in south america. The 4 for 1 deal sounded like a good way to quench the thirst but it turned out that 4 for 1 in Machu Picchu Pueblo means 4 beers for "one price", which happened to be reasonably expensive. Bastards.

The next morning we agreed between us to join the masses in getting up at 5 in the morning to dash up the steep path to the ruins, dashing past a group of 18 year olds on some sort of organised tour, only to reach the top and join a long queue to get into the complex. Once in we dashed across the ruins to beat the masses to queue once again to climb Waynu Picchu (the peak in the background of the classic Machu Picchu photos). We finally actually finished queuing at around 9.30am by which time a little of the mystique of the ruins had faded.

It was all well worth it though once we reached the precariously perched ruins atop Waynu Picchu which overlooked not only the complex of Machu Picchu, but also the path of our trek along the train lines the day before. The top was crammed full of tourists laughing and chatting like so many gannets on a rock.

We spent the rest of the day hiking to various vantage points above the complex and marvelling at the sheer majesty of the place, and also at how much the droves of people looked like worker ants from afar. The ruins themselves are perched high on a saddle surrounded by lush jungle. On either side of the saddle a river winds its way through a deep gorge. the city is a beautiful spectacle and with so many people clamouring everywhere it´s not difficult to imagine, from a distance, what it might have been like as a city in Inca times. I´ve chucked some pictures at the end here because words cant really do justice to the place.

We returned to Cuzco the easy way, on the train and met up with James, Stacy and Jess from burners to check out the markets and to eat delicacies such as Alpaca (it´s a little chewy). After spending another day or so in Cuzco and bidding farewell to Stacy and Jess, we headed on to Arequipa with James for a spot of hiking and a ton of good mexican food.

Whats the Story?

2008-07-17T15:02:00.000-07:00

I´ll start off with a quick story that I forgot to tell in the last blog. It involves the night of the 4th of July, which for the largely US contingent of the burners was a big enough deal for them to travel to the next town to buy sketchy homemade fireworks for an extortionate price. We had a wee shin dig to watch the fireworks and generally wonder why everyone was feeling so patriotic. The british contingent meanwhile had hatched a nasty plot and, while the americans launched into their national anthem and got teary eyed watching the peruvian made explosions, down from the roof came a hail of english eggs, launched by men in red plastic coats. While chaos ensued below, one of the english guys, by the name of Gareth, got too caught up in the moment and stepped off the roof. The only thing that saved him from the 3m drop to concrete below was shoddy peruvian construction. His jeans caught on some exposed reinforcing steel sticking out of the wall. The rest of the night was full of rivalry between both parties, while the rest of us tried to keep out of the way.

Now on with the rest.....

The little town of Huacachina (Wakacheena) has become the get away destination for pisqueñan volunteers. When the piles of rubble in the street become too depressing, you´ve spent way too much money on chocolate from the little shop down the road and you´ll lose you´re sense of taste if you see another meal consisting solely of 3 different carbs, this is when the photogenic wee oasis in the middle of the desert starts to beckon. We were joined in Huacachina on the weekend by about 80% of the Pisco volunteers which meant we pretty much dominated the town for the whole weekend...

OK so here´s the formula that Huacachina, a town consisting almost entirely of hostels, restaurants, tour agencies and a lagoon, has worked out for itself: You roll into town for the weekend, stay at one of the many hostels, go for a rollercoasterish dune buggy ride through the dramatic desert dunes, go hurtling down said desert dunes on makeshift sandboards, and relax by the pool with a Pisco Sour in your hand. It´s not what I would call a genuine peruvian experience but it is a lot of fun.

The dune buggy ride took us speeding up out of the basin of the oasis, racing other buggies up the steep dunes and throwing us against our seatbelts on sharp turns. It was here that we came to appreciate the desert we were in which rolled with magnificence as far as the eye could see. After some more high speed hooning we parked abruptly facing downhill like a parallel park in Mount Vic. This was to be our first sandboarding slope. I´d like to give you a comparison with snowboarding s the boarders out there will know just what its like but I´ve never snowboarded so you´re out of luck! I quickly decided though that turning on the sand was going to be too slow and difficult so I developed my style of gunning it straight down as fast as possible. This worked pretty well for me to start with as I would normally crash out before I got too fast.

On our last day in Huacachina we hired sandboards and hiked up the steep towering dune that separates the town from neighbouring Ica. We warmed up on a gentle slope and admired the sweeping view before we commited to the task at hand. We had a pretty die hard sandboarding crew of about half a dozen, some of whom had even sandboarded prior to this weekend. Unfortunately on my second run down this slope I had gotten skilled enough to stay on my feet long enough to gather up some good speed. The next thing I know, I plough into the ground face first, bending my glasses, while my sandboard flies over and hits me in the head! Sweet crash and I came away unhurt and very slowly scooted my way to the bottom of the dune. I learnt a few days later that the most common sandboarding injury is a torn sphincter.... I count myself lucky.

The rest of the weekend was mostly spent at a place called the Bamboo Hut run by the culinarily gifted Beth. This was the favoured haunt of the burners as Beth made a great thai curry, a killer chocolate brownie, and let us drink BYO without charging us a thing. We had a huge night on Saturday culminating in a mission to a disco in nearby Ica, Tessa was seen busting pretty much every possible shape on the D-floor.

We said goodbye to most of the burners in Huacachina and continued on to Cuzco on a scenic but long bus ride with James (England), Stacy (US) and Jess (US), some of our fellow burners who were also jumping ship. We´re back to travelling and right in the heart of "tourist Peru"!

Tour of a Disaster Zone: Courtesy of "Burners Without Borders"

2008-07-06T13:37:00.000-07:00

Well like it or not, I´m back in control of the blog. Bwahaha. Hope everyone in out there is doing good. Rather than swanning about the place we´ve spent the last couple of weeks doing something a bit different and very worthwhile.

While we were in Quito we decided we would like to do some volunteer work somewhere in South America. Its difficult to pin down our exact motivation for this.... somewhere between wanting to help a worthy cause and wanting a different and more direct experience with people here. After doing a quick google search on volunteer opportunities we discovered that finding a worthy cause would be harder than we thought. Volunteer tourism is a booming industry here in south america, the idea being that you (or more normally mummy and daddy) fork out large piles of cash to some agency to plonk you somewhere nice and sheltered to plant trees or hunt for non existent bears or just generally muck around doing nothing. The most extreme example I have heard of this was a group of 18 year old english girls who sadly died in a bus crash after shelling out 10,000 pounds for a 10 week program! Don´t think that any of that cash is finding its way to local communities!

We cottoned on to an outfit called Burners without Borders who are working here in Pisco helping to rebuild after the 8.0 earthquake that hit in August last year. All they asked for is our time and a few dollars for room and board so we figured we were on to the real deal. We worked in Pisco for two weeks; Tessa worked mainly on the "shitter" project which involves building small seismically strengthened toilet blocks, providing sanitation and seismic protection to new houses; and I worked on a new school building in a slum area that popped up after the earthquake. The work is generally pretty much grunt labour as we don´t really have much in the way of high end tools or services on site. We mostly mixed concrete by hand and dug foundation trenches out with spades and picks. The other day we had to stop work as a flock of goats were herded through our construction site! Tessa was called in to provide structural engineering advice for the shitters but strangley enough no-one approached me for advice on providing low energy ventilation solutions....

Working with the burners was pretty inspirational. The group have put in a lot of hard work, their best ideas and months of their lives in order to build projects to help the community here in Pisco. They have been a great bunch of people to work with. It has certainly opened my eyes to just how difficult it is to rebuild from scratch after a disaster when, even months afterwards, there are few basic services such as power and running water. The other day we spent all day carrying buckets of water from a nearby well to a storage tank for mixing a large batch of concrete in the coming days.

So, whats Pisco like now? Well its a smelly, dirty mess. The streets are still piled with rubble and riddled with holes, there is rubbish pretty much everywhere especially heaped on any vacant land and there are areas of shanty towns where displaced people have been living in makeshift bamboo and tarpaulin houses. The picture to the left is of Nuevo Horizonte, a suburb which was established last August for people who had lost everything in the quake. The bamboo "structures" form their houses and they share water taps and portaloo style toilets in the streets. Crime in such areas is obviously pretty rampant and I don´t recall seeing a single police officer during my time in Pisco. There is heaps of building going on, from the massive school going up over the road to individual people trying to fix their cracked walls and roofs. The net café near the burner house currently has a huge crack in the floor. There are still scores of red cross tents which people are living in, even in the middle of town.

Despite our hopes of interacting more directly with locals, we tended to move around in large groups of gringos, heading in to do our work then going back to our casa at the end of the day. Although we did play a few games of football with some of the local kids on our days off.

Since the earthquake, people are poorer and more desperate and there have previously been a few incidents of muggings of volunteers. Due to this there are areas, such as the beach and the local disco that are off limits. This all gave a somewhat confined feeling to being in Pisco. We worked in our groups, lived and ate with the other volunteers in the house and stayed within certain areas of town. We lived in very close quarters in the dorm rooms at the house but through all this we´ve met some pretty cool people.

On the weekend almost 80% of the burners crew headed out to the small resort town of Huacachina for a bit of R&R. That´ll have to be the next blog I reckon.

What is the difference between a Donkey and a Mule?

2008-06-28T13:13:00.000-07:00

Wilson had stomach issues and a lung infection on this trip (and still does) so he decided that perhaps my perspective on events may be a little more positive than his, hence I have once again been enlisted to write a blog..........sigh

Once again we decided to do another tour, despite our previous experiences. The Santa Cruz Trek is a famous and highly touristed 4 day trek near Hauraz, Peru. It includes a mountain pass of an altitude of 4800m (The highest Wilson and I have been whoop whoop!!) and tons of spectacular scenery. I think I will leave the pics to speak for themselves in this regard. We joined Morgan (Pom), Yo Yo (Germany), Adi (Israel) and our guide Cesar (Peru) for the trip.

We were glad to see at the start of the trek that this time it wasnt us being screwed over by the tour agency. A poor Canadian girl was stuck at the start of the track with her unlicenced guide unable to enter. She was luckily able to join us for the first day of the trek until her agency sorted their shit out (well, sort of). The guide snuck into the park after dark....

The trek took us up into the Andes and through a mountain pass. We camped out at high altitude below the snow line and as soon as the sun went down at night it became freezing. We ended up wearing all our clothes in our sleeping bags to stay warm at night! We took a detour on the second day to a beautiful glacial lake complete with icebergs fit to sink the titanic and avalanches crashing down to the water. The mountain pass itself led us up between jagged, spiking peaks that loomed graciously above us.

During the trip we were enlightened on many facts of life by our guide Cesar. One of the most interesting being the difference between a Donkey and a Mule. We were informed that a Mule is produced when a Donkey is mated with a Horse. A mule is much stronger than either a horse or a donkey, as it can carry 100kg as opposed to the maximum of 60kg that can be carried by a horse or donkey. The downside, however is that mules are both crazy and unable to bear offspring.

The best Mule is produced when the mother is a horse and the father is a donkey. When I asked Cesar how this functions, given that the horse is much taller than the donkey, he said that the donkey simply jumps on up.....I was envisaging that some kind of stool or platform would be required.

Shortly after this conversation Cesar explained to us that a similar phenomenon happens with people. When you mate a Peruvian with a Gringo you get tall, fat offspring. Interesting....there is so much to learn...

We all arrived, on the fourth day, at the end of the trek at midday to find that there was no transportation for the next 4 hours. The agency had organised nothing and we almost ended up paying a ridiculous amount of money to get out of there until I put my foot down. Damned incompetent Peruvian tour agencies!

To make up for this inconvenience the guide snuck us out of the park without paying our park entrance fee. He reinbursed us about a third of our money and in the process tripled the amount of money that he made guiding the trek, provided he doesn´t get caught by the park the next time he goes....

Rogue Chickens and Old Women

2008-06-20T16:09:00.000-07:00

Ha! It´s all action on the blog front now! I´m assuming someone is still reading it.... Did I mention how much I love comments??

Our time in Tarapoto was unfortunately far from action packed due partly to the fact that I had come down with a mystery hand disease which caused my knuckles, thumbs and palms to break out in an itchy, painful rash. In fact, I wrote the blog about the jungle tour in the height of this affliction. This is how dedicated I am too you, the blog readers. We decided to visit a doctor (not the dentist) which made a good test of all of our spanish skills. While I sat there with my mouth open, looking like a dullard, Tessa managed to pick up that the doctor thought I had touched something toxic. While neither of us really believe this diagnosis, the rather expensive creams he prescribed seem to have done the trick and my hands (I´m sure you´ll be glad to know, if you´re still reading) are almost back to normal.

Anyway, back to something vaguely interesting. From Tarapoto we caught to bus to a wee town called Chachapoyas which is known for its preincan ruins and rather nice surrounding landscapes of enormous rolling hills interspersed with cloud forest. The bus ride was somewhat of a calamity (if you´re sensing a theme here... so am I). After we had stopped outside a small town after dark, a lady on the bus with her toddler in tow became upset that her mother, who was "loquita" (a little bit crazy) had locked herself in the toilet. A few passengers who called the driver to stop became frustrated as the driver refused as the road was too dangerous to stop. When we finally stopped half an hour later it was discovered that the old lady (who would have looked quite normal hurling screeching cats at passing strangers) had wandered off the bus in a daze! The whole bus waited and discussed the matter with typical south american intensity, while the daughter went off with the police in search of her vacant mother. You´ll be glad to know as we were, that the old lady was found and returned to the bus to an ovation from the passengers.

In Chachapoyas we soon realised that there were many more sights to see than we had anticipated and with the lure of the landscape, we decided that a tramping (or trekking for those non NZers) tour was in order. I was a little wary of taking another tour after our last debacle and perhaps I should have listened to that nagging inner voice! Overall the tour was a great experience, over five days we headed out to some small agricultural towns from where we trekked out to see ruins of ancient villages and burial sites; we trekked into the beautiful green Belen Valley complete with a glittering, snaking river and out through ambient cloud forest the next day; we rode horses up a steep mountain pass following cascading streams along the way; and visted the mighty ruins of Kuélap fortress, a bastion for the pre-incan Chachapoya people.

Unfortunately, following the seeming fashion of south american tourism, again there were a few issues that really brought the tour down a bit. Firstly the tour agent had promised the earth and had therefore jammed too many sights and activities into the five days which had us madly rushing around and missing many of the things we wanted to see. Secondly our guide was inexperienced and had really quite poor english and more generally poor communication skills (we had trouble enough getting information out of him when we spoke to him in spanish!). This had us on one occasion, after realising that he had forgotten the keys to our accomodation and spending hours in random towns trying to sort it out, wandering about through the marshy paddocks of Belen Valley in the dark convinced that our guide was completely lost! We made the most of these situations though, one of the random towns was having a festival for the patron saint so we joined the locals for some maize beer and watched the local version of the running of the bulls, which involved two panicked bulls being chased through the street by a small brass band!

Our guide had a frustrating habit that when he didn´t understand a question, he would take a wild guess at what you´d asked and just starting answering something completely off topic. While I wouldn´t normally tease someone for their lack of language skills, some of the results were quite funny....

ME "Can I get a towel?"

AGOSTO "You want to go out drinking?"

TESSA "The bags are there Agosto"

AGOSTO "No! Wait here please. I will ask the lady where the bags are!"

Other slips of the ol´english included:

"It makes me hungry to see rubbish on the side of the road"

"The native people are always angry!"

"Tonight we are having soup of kitten" - we were relieved to recieve rather bland chicken soup after this announcement!

The highlight of the trip was seeing hundreds of mummies, bundled and crushed up to the size of a child´s backpack in the museum in Leymebamba. The mummies were collected from a former settlement in the area and the mummies had been well preserved due to the local microclimate. It was a fairly gruesome sight which I'm not able to share as my camera battery ran out just as I was lining up the exposed teeth of the first grisely mummy. I did get a shot of a similar mummified baby in a jar later in a museum in Cajamarca which will give you an idea....

After the tour ended we stayed in the quiet wee town of Leymebamba, which like small towns everywhere was full of friendly people and good food cooked by someones grandma. We once again indulged our appetite for adventures "off that beautiful beaten trail" and jumped on the bus to Cajamarca, a short distance on the map, but equivalent in hours to going back the way we came, around the mountains to the coast and back up the the other side of the mountains! We spent the best part of 11 hours in first gear grinding over a goat track of a road and peering through the cloud and over the precipice below. The very peruvian highlight of this wee trip was when the bus stopped for lunch and a chicken escaped from its sack in the baggage hold. It took 20 peruvians about 15 minutes to catch the rogue chicken!

-> PERU REAL (Blog Signposting)

2008-06-20T16:00:00.000-07:00

There is a new post but due to our collective computer incompetence it has appeared below the last one!

That is all. Read on.

Selva! Part Two - Interview with the Shaman

2008-06-09T19:25:00.000-07:00

The long awaited second part. A story of how things can start well and end badly.

Our border formalities were taken care of at the small frontier towns of Nuevo Rocafuerte on the Ecuadorian side and Pantoja on the Peruvian side. The one thing these towns had in common aside from the obvious was an abundance of giant handsome chickens. We were led past delapidated machinery rusting into overgrown grass to the police station, with its smashed windows and peeled paint. A shirtless man inside awoke from his slumber as we approached and donning a not so fresh tee shirt labelled "Policia", he led us to a small office to run the paperwork. Pantoja on the other hand contains a Peruvian army base and as we approached the passport office we were overtaken by a troop of sixteen year old soldiers carrying heavy firearms, grenade launchers, logs and a small monkey.

In Pantoja we bid Adios to our qualified guides and jumped in the canoe with Fernando the dentist, which is where things started to go wrong. Fernando was really just a boat driver and was only concerned with getting us to where we needed to go which involved manycontinuous hours of sitting in his canoe watching the trees go by.

Next on the agenda was to stop at a shaman´s house for some magical displays, supposedly popular among tourists. When we arrived at the intended town the people told us that the shaman had died a year and a half ago. While we were trying to figure out what sort of plague could have wiped out all the local shamen, Fernando took us further downriver to a lone thatched roof hut. We entered the hut and, with not so much as an introduction, Fernando left us to unload the boat. As it was, the four of us were left there with the shaman and his family, none of us knowing what was going on and all of us staring at each other in silence. Different people deal with these situations in different ways and Buddy, keen to change out of his smelly jungle clothes, dropped trou and waved his bare ass at the shaman who, laughing to himself, put a little more distance between himself and Buddy´s ass. The situation having lightened a little by blatant nudity, I tried with my broken spanish to introduce myself and the shaman in his broken spanish tried to reply, as to make this little cultural exchange more difficult the family spoke mostly Quechua and not spanish.

To this day I´m dubious as to whether he was a real shaman as they just seemed like a really poor family living in the middle of nowhere. The shaman himself wore only pants with a broken zipper and he had only two plants which he claimed to cure everything. As we were staying there, when we asked about the toilet, we were told it was anywhere and Tessa watched as a baby peed on its mother who didn´t so much as care to wipe it up. As we feasted on our dinner of cold beans, cold sardines and rice (the food had gone downhill by this stage) the family sat in the other hut with no food. We watched the next morning as the son licked the remains from the sardine can he had fetched from the rubbish.

Despite the difficult scene, I was intrigued to know more about the shaman´s family and how they lived and survived but our guide was not up to the task to tell us anything about them. After a short shaman cleansing ritual we put up our tents inside the hut to keep the mozzies at bay, and for all I know showing the family that we considered ourselves too superior to sleep in their company. In the morning we packed up as quickly as possible and after gifting some of our remaining food to the family, we got the hell out of there. I only hope that Fernando paid them decently for our incursion into their lives.

After an uneventful journey downriver we arrived in Santa Clotilde, the last stop before Iquitos and this was the point where the tour went sour. We were to take a public boat the next day to Iquitos, however Fernando calmly told us that there was no boat and that we were to be stuck in Santa Clotilde for at least another day. This didn´t bode too well for Elias and Buddy who had both booked flights from Iquitos and it showed us that no planning had gone into this stage of the journeyby the tour agency. To make matters worse, when we pressed Fernando further, he claimed that his contract with the agency had finshed when he delivered us to Sta Clotilde and he had no responsibility, but he could take us for an extra $400!! A three hour arguement ensued which had us traipsing around looking for other boats, ringing the owner of the tour agency who claimed equally no responsibility and generally embarrassing ourselves in front of the easy going townsfolk! On top of this we had to pay all our own food and lodgings despite the fact we were still on the tour. We had pretty well been ditched by the tour agency, a days travel from our destination. We eventually bargained with the misely Fernando and in the morning set off again in his canoe for a very tense and awkward trip to Iquitos.

PERU REÁL

2008-06-09T16:15:00.000-07:00

We are in Tarapoto, Peru and it´s soooo hot. My butt cheeks are sticking to the seat and my fingers to the keys (hmmm but that could be mandarin juice) and it´s 7 at night.

You may wonder why I am writing more of this blog, this is so out of character for me. This is a good question. Sorry Jean, but this time it is not because you asked. Actually Will had quite the tantrum the other day (he is taking this bog very seriously) and said I was being very ´difficult´ not helping and we were getting very far behind. So to keep our travelling situation amicable I am attempting to relieve some of this emmense pressure he is feeling.

We finally arrived in Iquitos, Peru after 4-5 days in canoe experiencing the natural elements the amazon has to offer (in other words getting drenched by tropical downpours). We arrived at this crazy port of floating houses and 4 x 2 boardwalks, across which we teetered with our bulging packs. It was a bit zoo meets pub meets market, with most people carrying 5 times the weight we were (and OSH was nowhere to be seen!!). We eventually made it to the street with only a few near misses of going in the ´drink´. Here's a couple of pics of what it was like:

We were struck suddenly, after 8 days of only the canoe engine and jungle sounds, by the deafening noise of 400,000 motorcycle-rickshaws (moto-carros) without mufflers. Apparently muffler-less-ness makes you cooler here too, much like the boy-racers back home. You couldn´t hear in the city without being within a foot of the person speaking (even at night). This made group conversations difficult and understanding spanish near impossible. The reason for all of the moto-carros and motorbikes is that Iquitos is only reachable by river or plane, hence getting cars to the city is a bit of an expensive debacle, although there are a few.

Iquitos is blessed with the area of Belén. When the river is high the stilt houses appear to float on the river and the locals reach their front doors by canoe rather than on foot. At this time of year I understand that it is quite and enchanting place, but when the river is not there to take the rubbish away it is another story altogether. The rubbish was a couple of feet thick in places, with the vultures swooping overhead and the areas without rubbish were compsed of a thick greenish mud, which I can only assume was bio-degrading effluent (it squelched between my toes at one stage). As you can probably imagine, the smells were interesting, the kind that make you lose your appetite.

We went to an animal refuge run by this German Hippie (you´d love her Jean, she definately didn´t shave her legs, no bra and she´s probably a vego to boot). We saw some pretty cool animals up close like a jaguar, anteater, sloth and loads of monkies that had been trained as thieves by the street kids in neighbouring towns.

To get from Iquitos to Peru we had to take a 3 day `Lancha` or slow boat down the river. The boat was packed full of people in hammocks and there is pretty much nowhere to go for 3 days. A little cabin fever to say the least. Food was cooked by gay chefs in the back by the toilets and was not the 5-star affair that I was expecting. We ended up chatting to this dude Juan Carlos a bit on the boat and managed to get this sexy pic of him.

Needless to say, we are glad to be off the boat and in Tarapoto!

Selva! Part One

2008-06-09T15:19:00.000-07:00

The following blog is far too long and as such I have had to split it into two blogs. Two for the price of one, thats a good deal. It´ll save a bit of looking over the shoulder for those of you who read blogs at work when you shouldn´t be.

So it appears that both Tessa and I have romantic notions of travelling "off the beaten track" and having "unique experiences" during our adventures. As such we decided to throw in our lot with a tour agency offering a trip from Coca, Ecuador through the jungle and down the Rio Napo, to Iquitos, Peru. A trip that done solo, would take many weeks of agonising slow boat travel. Hence, after following the oil pipeline by bus from Quito, we arrived in the choking humid heat of Coca on Sunday 25th May, ready for our big adventure.

The trip began with a long boat ride, the type to which in the following weeks we would become well accustomed. As we slowly sauntered along the brown, muddy, wide river, a slowly changing vista unfolded of jungle forest occasionally interspersed with with banana plantations. Occasional but common sights of the river were; bamboo, thatched roofed houses; locals paddling dugout canoes; and lone children staring at us from the river bank. On the river I was struck by the immense scale of the jungle area we were passing through. Even the sky seemed somehow bigger and we were able to hear cacophanous thunder storms passing miles away. On occasion the storms would roll right over us and we would be pelted by intense rain usually for no more than 30 mintutes, after which it would continue past us. The highlight of this first twelve hour boat ride was, late in the trip, when the boat became stuck on a sand bar in the shallow river bed. After some deliberation it was decided that all the men ought to get out in the knee deep water and push. After more deliberation and general confusion as to which way we should push, which managed to shift the boat and we were on our way again. Small distractions on an otherwise uneventful trip.

I ought to stop at this stage for a short description of our crew. We were four tourists and in the beginning we were lucky enough to have three guides. We were joined by Buddy Levy from Idaho, a loud, brash and funny american whose running jokes kept us in good spirits. He is also an absolute gear head, the height of which was his Hennessey Hammock a perfect companion for the jungle explorer. http://hennessyhammock.com/ Buddy is a writer of "popular history" and was researching his next book on Francisco de Orellana who had taken the same route at the start of his famous descent of the Amazon. We were joined also by Elias, a well travelled Swiss man. As he was at the end of many months of travelling, he was keen to make the most of this final experience. As a tourism professional, he had some good advice about what to expect from travelling. Our guides were; Jose, a very knowledgable and humourous Quechua native who grew up in the area we visited; Sandro, the generally well organised master camp chef and boat driver and; Javier whose role was as translator for Buddy but as Jose spoke good english, this role was somewhat redundant. On the Peruvian side Jose and Sandro were unfortunately replaced by Fernando, the boat driving dentist...

Buddy: "Are you sure this Fernando guy knows what he´s doing?"

Jose: "Sure, he´s a dentist!"

Much of our four days in the jungle were spent in foraying missions in the canoe out on the lakes and rivers. We would set about trying to spot the numerous bird species endemic to the area, the highlight of which was an enormous blue heron breeding area where we were abused by hundreds of the birds for disturbing their mojo. During such trips we were lucky enough to see pink river dolphins, caimen (alligators) and a small group of fluffy Saki monkeys. As we visited in the rainy season, the waters were so high as to create a flooded forest so it was hard to tell where the river ended and the forest began. In one of these secluded forest/lake/bog inlets Sandro found an old dugout canoe. We were planning on swimming in the lake at the time but had been caught by a tropical downpour. We piled into the small dugout canoe, wearing only togs, as the pelting rain stung our skin and started to paddle around with our hands. The combination of heavy rain, our overzealous paddling and our fat asses caused the boat to sink right out from under us and left us to swim back to the other canoe.

We also went on several treks through the jungle which usually consisted of learning about the traditional uses of many plants, seeing an abundance of creepy crawlies and, at times, walking neck deep through flooded bogs that our guide assured us was perfect anaconda territory. Once we were on Terra Firma the jungle reminded me of the bush back in NZ except with thousands more plant species all battling to survive and dominate. As we pulled up in the canoe for the first of these treks, Jose spotting the danger of of the loose bark of a spiky palm as we passed, knocked off the bark. As it fell away, a small swarm of "banana spiders", with thick hairy legs and abdomen the size of squash balls were revealed inches from our faces. The look on Jose´s face was enough to tell us how poisonous they are. Another spot we visited on one of these treks was the former house of a shaman who, as legend has it, got too drunk one night and fell in the river.

To demonstrate the uses of some of the plants in the jungle our good guide got us to consume some wierd stuff. On the menu were lemon ants which live symbiotically in a particular small tree, the vine used for blowdart poison which at low concentrations is meant to be good for the stomach (which was not Tessa´s experience) and the hallucenogenic Ayahuasca vine. The latter is used by shamen to induce visions and cure basically everything and causes the patient to vomit and shake uncontrollably before seeing visions of wild animals, sometimes causing them to freak out and flee into the jungle. While for me, this didn´t sound like heaps of fun, and Tessa was still suffering from blowdart stomach problems, Elias and Javier indulged in Ayahuasca that night. Unfortunately the vine was young and the effects were limited to vomiting and feeling a bit drunk, leaving us all disappointed at the lack of entertainment. We made use of some small fruit, the juice of which is used for temporary tattoos. We spent the next few days looking real tough round the jungle with roughly drawn anaconda tattoos on our arms.

Our nights in the camp usually involved trying to avoid the mosquitos, talking a fair amount of smack and indulging in "Jungle Juice", a sort of mulled wine made with a red jungle vine, cane alcohol, herbs and honey. This indulgence culminated with some disaster on the last night as some of us had been hitting the juice since noon. That night while we trekked near the camp to spot some nocturnal creatures, Sandro was meant to meet us in the canoe further around the lake. Our path though, was blocked by a large bog and we turned back. Sandro, after a few too many and believing we were lost, crashed the canoe into the reeds, losing a paddle and then swam about trying to find us. Later Buddy, which attempting to show off his chef skills, sliced off half his fingernail. The night ended with Sandro, after sincerely asking Buddy if he loves Fidel Castro, fell asleep in a hammock with a cigarette in his hand.

With the short but torrential rains everyday, our camp quickly bacame a mud pit. Gumboots were compulsary fashion and on the third morning we had to quickly move our tents as the lake had risen sufficiently that we were about to get very wet!

Tres, Dos, Uno....

2008-06-05T10:00:00.000-07:00

Ok - I have a lot of catching up to do. As promised, I´ll start with where we left off in Baños.

We left Cuenca last Tuesday after a somewhat unsuccessful stay and made our way to Baños which can be accurately described as the centre of Ecuador for the tourist. Everyone we met in our travels had either been to Baños or were planning to go. But Baños is a pretty switched on place, it´s easy to get around on rented bikes, there are plenty of outdoorsy things to do and there are little signs pointing out attractions or activities all through town. The town is also crammed with tourist agencies trying to sell trips to tourists wandering the street which got to the point of being downright annoying. We couldn´t walk around the corner without being harrassed by 3 guys all trying to sell us the same deal. We had plenty of things to do to fill our time here which was a welcomely stark contrast to sauntering about Cuenca.

On the Wednesday we hired bikes and rode out of town along the Ruta de las Cascadas (Route of Waterfalls) towards the town of Puyo. It´s a nice downhill road that winds through tunnels and follows the river past the hydrodam and many waterfalls plummetting from the hills above the river. The final and most spectacular waterfall was Pailón del Diablo and we were able to grab a bus back to town and continued our explorations there. It was a nice way to sightsee as we were free to go our own pace and stop wherever we pleased. After about an hours ride we came to another Baños attraction, a bridge swing, and I decided that I ought to take the plunge... ahem, sorry.

The bridge passed 20m above a rocky, roaring little river and as I was harnessed up I realised that I hadn´t really thought much about just how freaky it would be but as I stood on the bridge rail with traffic storming past behind me, I had to concentrate to stop my legs shaking me off the bridge. I knew I had to jump at the end of the countdown or I wouldn´t at all, and as I plummetted down towards the rocks the only clear thought in my head was that I had lost my mind. What a rush! It wasn´t until the rope had swung back twice that I was able to think about screaming. Needless to say I was buzzing for the rest of the day. Tessa took a bunch of photos but because she was so nervous they all came out blurry!

We spent the night soaking in the rather skodey public hot pools next to the Cascada de la Virgen. Noone seems to have told the Ecuadorians about not putting your head under the water in the hot pools, although by the browny green colour of the water, I´m surprised they don´t make the connection. It was a relaxing way to end the day though and we both managed to avoid contracting anything from the water.

We had organised a rafting trip for Thursday which was further down the same river towards Puyo. We had a solid team of 5 in our rafting comprised of us, our guide and an Alaskan couple who had come to Baños for an adventure get-away. After practicing some moves on shore that we never used, we hit the water. The river was quite high and wide so it was an easy trip but a lot of fun, our guide had a knack for angling the raft through rapids just right to make us as wet as possible. That night we hiked up the hill overlooking Baños to watch the sunset and were lucky enough to see the very nearby Volcano, Turungahua, spitting out sparks and clouds of ash. Baños has had a dificult time in the shadow of the volcano with eruptions in the past wiping out large chunks of the city.

We spent the next few uneventful days back in Quito organising things for our trip through the jungle which will have to be the next post...

"Fish Don´t Get Sick"

2008-05-21T15:29:00.000-07:00

We´ve been on the run through Ecuador for almost a week and half now and are currently in Baños, which literally means bath or bathroom. Needless to say there are many hot pools here which we are going to head to as soon as I finish this blog (jealous?). I´ll write more about our adventures here in Baños at a later date, let me first start at the start which was last Saturday when we left Quito for the sunny locale of Canoa.

We began by catching a 9 hour bus to the town of Bahia de Caraças located on the thin peninsular on the pacific coast. Labelled as an "ecocity" we expected big things but unfortunately we didn´t get much chance to explore. We got in late on Saturday night and as we have discovered, apart from a few rickshaws doing the laps nothing happens anywhere in Ecuador on Sunday mornings. We made our way via ferry, moto-rickshaw and ute (I was jammed on the back with 12 others as we swerved round potholes and passed busses at high speed) to sunny little Canoa. A very chilled out and easy place to visit, many tourists seem to get "trapped" in Canoa and spend the rest of their travel time lying in hammocks, surfing and eating delicious fresh seafood. Almost every building in town was made of bamboo, the dirt streets were full of sand and fishing boats lined the near end of the beach. There seemed to be a strong contingent of "gringos" who had married locals and settled down, which made it quite an easy tourist destination. Unfortunately it also made me forget at times that I was in Ecuador.

Tessa and I had a surf lesson which was a lot of fun if not terribly successful. We both got up on our giant floaty surfboards on a few occasions but after an hour or so we were beat and headed for some hammock time. The highlight of our stay in Canoa was hiking through coastal forest (complete with the racket of nearby howler monkeys) to a beach north of Canoa with some folk from our hostel. The beach was beautiful and deserted save for a group of fishermen camped up halfway down the beach. They spend a week at a time camping out at the beach and fishing from their boat in the mornings. They shared some freshly caught crab with us as we sat with them under a tree sheltering from the sweltering sun. We spent the rest of the day exploring the rock pools at the end of the beach and swimming in the sea. A very relaxed day.

I should mention at this stage that two days after we began our travels in earnest, we were subject to our first theft. I had (foolishly) left my beloved Vans shoes outside our room in Canoa along with everyone elses swim gear and shoes. When we returned from the pub that night someone had carefully removed my smelly socks and had swiped my shoes, but everything else was strangely untouched. More of an inconvenience than anything else, I think I´ll be glad if that is the worst thing that happens to us on this trip.

Unlike many we managed to break free from the wierd vibe that traps so many travellers and we took three buses and a ferry to Puerto Lopez. Despite what we had heard from other travellers, when we arrived in Puerto Lopez, we found a vibrant, if a little dirty, beach town complete with intense beach football, hordes of bobbing blue fishing boats and streets packed with motorbike rickshaws. Its common for visitors here to take the rickshaws out to one of two sights out of town, so whenever we walked anywhere near the centre of town we would be harangued by multitudes of rickshaws offering to take us there.

On Thursday morning we met some folks from our hostel who were heading out on a tour to Isla Salango. We had planned to do a similar but more expensive tour to Isla de la Plata (the poor man´s Galapagos) but had decided we were too cheap even for that. The tour to Isla Salango was heaps of fun, we went out on a small fishing boat with a couple of local fishermen and caught a pile of fish, the smaller ones were made into cerviche (a tasty lemony raw fish soup) on the boat and the bigger ones we took home for dinner.

After a spell of snorkling around the island we spotted a huge fish flapping and floating among the rocks and we hauled it aboard. We asked the captain if the fish would be safe to eat as it might be sick, the captain replied "Fish don´t get sick". Apparently... Anyway, it seemed as though the fish had been bashed against the rocks and was now ultimately destined for our bellies.

Saturday saw us leave the coast and return to the highlands in Cuenca, a city which we quickly fell in love with but with which we ultimately had some poor travellers luck. Cuenca is a maze of cobbled streets, colonial buildings, and busy markets which give the city a lively atmosphere. It is also the cleanest city we have seen in Ecuador. Unfortunately when we got up early on Sunday morning to explore some nearby Inca ruins, we discovered they had been closed by a protest for the last week and because it was Sunday, everything else in the city was closed... all day. Hence we wandered a somewhat deserted city peering through fences at museums for most of the day.

On Monday we resolved to get out and about and head to the nearby Cajas National Park with a Swiss couple we had met at the school. The park is a highland moor with beautiful lakes and dramatic cliffs. Unfortunately after about 20 mins of walking we started to get well and truly rained out and had to abandon our planned hike after only two hours. This was topped off the next day by our bus trip to Baños taking two and a half hours longer than we expected. Yikes. So despite loving Cuenca, I left feeling a little like our stay there had been less than successful.

I´ll write a bit about our time here in Baños soon. Stay tuned.

If it´s good enough for me, it´s good enough for FIFA

2008-05-05T12:54:00.000-07:00

So a quick bit of background. As most of you probably don´t know, FIFA (the international football association) is introducing a rule to prohibit international matches above 2600m in altitude. This has obviously proved pretty unpopular here in Quito (at 2850m) and countries like Bolivia and Peru.

As an aside I thought it appropriate at this point to chuck in a sneaky long exposure night shot of Quito from the roof of our house. This has nothing to do with football. Ahem, please continue.

So last night I was invited to play my first game of football in South America. At first I thought it was just going to be a quiet kick about at the park but when we arrived at the indoor football arena and I fronted up in my Vans, I knew I was gonna be outta my depth. The stereotype that all South Americans are good at football is completely accurate and I soon realised that the only way I was going to hold my own was to run around frantically in defense and just generally try and get in the way as much as possible. I think I managed to mostly succeed in these endevours but after madly running around at high altitude with my baggy shorts, skate shoes and red face and after diving in for some ridiculous tackles I earned the nickname ¨loco¨. Seems I´ve brought down the bright reputation of NZ soccer and reversed all the good work of the 1982 All Whites.

Last week Tessa and I visited La Capilla del Hombre (the Chapel of Man), another Guayasumin museum which was designed by the artist himself with construction completed shortly after his death. His premise was to design a space for art dedicated to the struggles of man as opposed to one dedicated to a deity, as he had travelled through much of central and south america during some of the worst times in their history, his artwork strongly reflects this idea. The museum itself was enormous, the proportions of which made us feel dwarfed. There was an interesting area showing pictures of Guayasumin rubbing shoulders with such luminaries as Fidel Castro and Chairman Mao. The whole area of the complex was peaceful but felt somewhat out of place in a reasonably working class neighbourhood. Just over the fence from this fancy museum were rows of concrete block houses complete with washing hung on every available space.

We were just out to lunch at a spot near the university which serves delicious empanadas and giant menestras (a huge plate of rice, meat, fried banana and beans). Unfortunately a Canadian girl who we were with got her bag swiped from the back of her chair while we ate! It really sucks because she only had spanish notes and her glasses in the bag, nothing of any value to anyone else. The owners of the restaurant were really helpful and drove round trying to spot the people who had done the deed but to no avail. We have to try to be careful with our stuff all the time here, very different to back home.

We were invited to a BBQ for couch surfers on Saturday, in fact we didnt have to go very far cause it was at our house. It was a good chance to meet some new folks and to try out our spanish on poor unsuspecting locals. It happened that the BBQ coincided with the birthday of one of the ladies and her husband had organised a very traditional Ecuadorian surprise for her, Mexican Mariachi Singers. Before we knew what was happening they had bowled up the stairs and had us dancing, singing, clapping and stamping our feet. Very fun and very random. After downing many more drinks we bowled into town for some Schwarma (kebabs for those back home) and a bit of a boogie. All in all a pretty good night.

We have 4 more days of lessons left! Hoorah. Not that we are sick of learning spanish or feel that we have in any way mastered the language but our feet are getting itchy and its not athelete´s foot this time. On Saturday we head for the coast for some new adventures.

JUST WHAT YOU¨VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR

2008-05-01T13:49:00.000-07:00

HELLO WORLD!! I promised my younger, blonder sister that I would write some of this blog thing as a special birthady present to her. She turns 23 today. HAPPY BIRTHDAY!! So finally you will all get a much awaited piece of my mind (can I hear groaning.....).

Hmmmmm........so a few things about Ecuador that you may or may not know that we have discovered since our arrival:

There are 100´s of weird and wonderful fruits here that we had never heard of before. My personal favourite is this thing that looks like a strawberry that needs a good wax job. I´ll try and post a picture of one soon.

You can buy an almuerzo (set lunch) here for $1.50 - $2.00 US. This includes fresh juice, soup, a main (rice, random unidentifiable meat and salad - which consists of a slice of tomato or a slither of lettue) and dessert! That´s a bloody bargain of you ask me.

Bottled beer is cheaper than bottled water....this is a good excuse.

People will give you directions to places regardless of whether or not they actually know where it is.

Regardless of trip length, there is still space for more passengers on a bus if the door can close (note: the floor above the motor really burns your arse).

Wilson and I have just completed our 6th week at the Spanish school here and now have only one more week to go. We are itching to hit the road. We have discovered that it isn´t possible to become fluent at a language in 6 weeks, but are hoping that one more week of lessons should iron out any remaining creases... I have also noticed that it is very important to use the correct person when speaking. My host mother was both slightly offended and amused when I said, "You need to buy deodorant" instead of "I need to buy deodorant".. Ooops, I think she forgave me.

Since this could quite likely be all that I ever write in this blog (due to my sheer laziness) I hope that you have savoured every last morsel. I will tell Wilson to write some more interesting stuff once we hit the road.

I hear that cheese in NZ is now $15 a block...!! Is it true?

Just what you need after a hard days mule ride

2008-04-23T11:32:00.000-07:00

Hi Blog

So its been a while since the last post, we have been busy this week moving to some new digs to the north. We are now staying in a self catered flat more to style of living to which we are accustomed. I´ll miss having someone to do my washing and cooking but independence is a sweet dish. We share the new house with 7 others, who are mostly travellers staying for a few months. Its a nice big house with a sunny roof area.

Last week we splashed out on a fancy dinner in town at a restaurante called Mama Clorindas. The famous local dish served here is deep fried cuy (known elsewhere as guinea pig) and after I realised no one else would order it, I stepped up. It came on a plate in sections complete with stubby little legs and a whole deep fied head. He was a bit scrawny and I had a mission to chew through the bones but he made for quite a delectible treat. I didn´t chew the ears off the head though, that seemed to be taking it a bit far.

We got a reasonably fine day last week and took the opportunity with Tessa´s housemate Douglas, to scoot up the teleferico (gondola) which climbs Volcan Pichincha to overlook Quito. It was a pretty cruisy trip topped off with a few sneak glimpses of some of the surrounding volcanoes.

On the weekend we headed out with Tessa´s host mum to her home town of Chantel. Chantel is a tiny wee town located about 3 hours north west of Quito. We had little idea of what we would be doing, all we knew was that we needed gumboots. The road out passes through a highland forest park and several rural towns on a sketchy gravel road. We pulled into a farm, chucked on our gummies and piled onto the back of a tractor-trailer. We soon found ourselves trekking down through the forest towards a set of waterfalls that had carved a cave into the earth. As we walked, we discovered Rosa´s bushman side as she pointed out local flora and its medicinal uses. We descended cane ladders down the waterfalls to find nests of Tuyo birds peering at us.

After returning from the caves we piled back into the Jeep and completed our journey to Chantel. We were told that we would spend the night in some cabañas that belong to Rosa´s friend. We met up with our hosts and had started the arduous walk up the hill when we were ushered towards a pack of mules tied to the fence. It seemed that this would be no ordinary trip. As we mounted the wooden saddles of our mules we were wondering how it is one actually controls a mule. The trip took about two hours for which our asses (no OUR asses not the animals) were not appreciative. It began to rain about 30 minutes into the trip and we got soaked. The cabañas were located overlooking a smallish river and waterfall in the forest and miles from any other civilisation, a very tranquil spot.

The evening was passed in true ecuadorian style with a huge dinner of soup, meat and rice and finished up with cane alcohol. While a local played ecuadorian folk songs on the guitar, our host attempted to teach us a dance from Otavalo, which I think was quite funny for everyone who was watching. We were the only non ecuadorians at the cabaña which made me realise that this would probably be one of the least touristy experiences of our trip.

The next day, after a hearty breakfast of smoked cachama (river fish), we mounted our trusty mules for another foray into the forest. It turns out the mules have done the trip so many times that they know (or think they know) where they are going. There were a few instances where the mules decided that they knew best and we discovered the true meaning of the saying about stubborn mules.

Our trip took us to another much larger waterfall which was truly magnificent. We scaled down a rope for a closer look and some cheesy photos. After we returned to the cabañas we went for a dip in the river and climbed under the small waterfall for a natural massage to ease our aching, mule inflicted bones. Theres nothing quite like being pummelled by litres of water to wear away the worries of the day.

At the moment we are trying to decide where the next part of our trip will take us. There are a few options on the table but as always it comes down to how much we are able to spend this early in the trip. Anyway I´ll let you know what we decide to do as it happens.

Lets NOT Stop and Admire the View

2008-04-15T12:56:00.000-07:00

On Saturday we joined a hike organised by the school to the volcanic crater lake of Quilotoa. We got up pretty early to wait outside the school on a rainy, grey morning. I copped a few jests as I was sporting my purple stripey long johns instead of the in-vogue zipoff pants. Our ride to Quilotoa was a school bus that was branching out for the weekend. As the clouds clung to the hills and the stereo provided soothing/annoying "pan pipe classic hits", we wound our way out of the city, detouring around the massive sinkhole that has appeared in the middle of Quito´s southern highway.

The weather started to lift as we got closer to our destination and those of us who were still awake were treated to some amazing views of the rolling highlands patched with fields and dotted with shelters made of straw. Perhaps all these shelters should have given us an indication of what was to come...

We arrived at the small township of Quilotoa as a few locals stopped to stare. The township is located on a plateau above the crater and a short walk from the carpark provided us with a stunning view of the eerie green lake sunken into the landscape. Those of us who were keen, set about the walk that circumnavigates the lake along the high ridges. After a short while the sun came out and the weather was perfect.

As we neared the half way mark an ominous dark grey cloud began to accumulate on the far side of the lake. Soon enough we found ourselves walking straight into an electrical storm complete with rain, thunder and sheet lightning.

We were prepared for rain of course but as we walked along one of the higher ridges, we were all struck by a flash of sheet lightening! The first strike was like a small pat on the head, but the second strike was like simultaneously grabbing an electric fence with your hand, foot and head. Tessa saw an arc from her foot to the ground which lit up like a lightbulb. I hit the ground for fear of another stronger strike and after making sure everyone was still alive, we dashed frantically for lower ground. We spent the next hour nervously rushing over any remotely high ground.

Our next life threatening challenge (Mum maybe you shouldn´t read this blog) was when we discovered that parts of the track had been washed away by the persistent rain of the last few weeks. Our guide was quite cavalier and charged ahead over tenuous soft earth precariously perched 400m above the lake edge below.

Along this precarious, life threatening route we passed a local on his way home after the Saturday markets in the town. He was carrying a 40kg sack of produce on his back and was quite obviously well boozed, stumbling along the track and slurring incomprehensible spanish. As market day is pay day for the locals, many of them head to the pub afterwards and get on the turps, literally as the spirits they drink are around 80%!

We made it safely back to the township tired and incredibly wet and headed straight for the nearby hostel for some hot drinks. Once we had recounted our story to the others and recovered mentally, we piled back in the van for the four hour drive home complete with mexican reggae music.

"Ok ok but this really is my final offer"

2008-04-08T14:10:00.000-07:00

After spending the last couple of weeks couped up in the city we thought we ought to venture out and see some more of Ecuador. On Friday afternoon we hopped on a bus to Otavalo, a medium sized town about 2 hours from Quito. We had the sincere displeasure of watching Van-Damme´s "Inferno" dubbed over in spanish on the bus. I can honestly say that it is one of the worst movies I have seen in any language.

Otavalo is famous for it´s artesanal markets where locals flog a colourful range of goods, handmade and otherwise, to a circling gaggle of tourists. I was dubious as to how good it would be. We piled out of bed on the Saturday morning and decided we would do a quick scout of the market only to find that it spread across the streets of a dozen city blocks. I was the first to be targeted for sale as I was quite keen to get a genuine ecuadorian panama hat. The guy in the stall spotted me a mile off and beckoned me over. After some sharp haggling on my part (I still want to believe I paid a fair price) I joined the throngs of dumb gringos wearing new hats.

The market was full of beautiful things, colourful people and raucous sounds. The handmade crafts, particularly the fabrics, were amazing. Tessa picked up a nice bag from the joker in the photo and also a scarf. We ventured into the fruit and meat part of the market where the locals of Otavalo did their shopping for the week. There were crowds of local indigenous people mostly wearing traditional dress and going about their business.

After cruising the markets we stopped for a well deserved almuerzo (a giant and very cheap lunch special) and went for a walk out of town to Parque Condor. On the way we walked through the open coutryside and got fantastic views of the city and surrounding mountains and lakes as well as walking past people working in fields. It was refeshing to be out of the city and we started to feel as though we were seeing a very different side of Ecuador.

The Parque Condor is a sort of zoo for endagered birds of prey that have been injured or are unable to live in the wild. It was a bit sad to see these graceful birds kept behind fences but apparently they try to rehabilitate them and release them back into the wild. The highlight was definately the condors that seemed to be strutting about their enclosure for the cameras. They would really freak you out if you were afraid of birds...

On Sunday we met up with Markus and Jane, a couple of other students from our school and went for a hike up Mount Fue Fue, just out of Otavalo. Mt Fue Fue is about 4200m above sea level and the altitude (and maybe lack of fitness) made it really hard work. Our guide was an american who had married a local Otavaleño and had moved back about 10 years ago. We had some good yarns with him on the way up while we stopped to catch our breath. From the top we had some sweet views of the nearby Mojanda Lakes despite the ever present clouds.

We´re back in Quito now and back to the reality of everyday classes. We are already planning our next trip out of town for this weekend!

And You Thought That You Lived in Middle Earth....

2008-04-03T11:40:00.000-07:00

Ok so on Sunday we did, by far the most toursitastic thing yet. We journeyed, with Erica, a housemate of Tessa´s, to the centre of the earth. i.e the cenotaph marking the line of the equator. We took a bus which passed through the outskirts of Quito which seemed like some sort of inhabited wasteland of scrub and concrete. The official monument marking the line of the equator is actually a different place altogether. Surrounding the monument is a small noddy-like town of overpriced arts and crafts, overpriced cafés and restaurants, and overpriced museums. We took the obligatory photo on the line and had a wee look around.

For lunch we fronted up to a one of the cheaper looking cafés. Erica was keen to try an ecuadorian specialty called cuy, which is more commonly known as barbequed guinea pig. Unfortunately the restaurant was all out of the popular dish and we settled for dried goat instead (we really need to learn the spanish names for food!). After lunch we checked out some local dancers in the central square.

Our guidebook recommended a museum which is located down the road from the main facility on the actual equator (proved recently by GPS). The museum included remarkably unscientific experiments to prove the strange forces of the equator. Apparently its easier to balance an egg on the head of a nail there as the gravity falls straight down (I think this means that in antarctica everything falls sideways). Also it seems water really does go down the sink the other way either side of the equator!

On Tuesday we braved the rain and a steep hill to check out the Guayasamin museum. Guayasamin was a local artist who championed the plight of indigenous people through very dark and powerful paintings. The museum included some of his amazing and moving works as well as his collection of pre colombian artefacts and colonial art (i.e more crucified Jesus's than you can shake a crown of thorns at)

Spanish continues to be a struggle but we seem to making some sort of progress. Who would´ve thought learning a language would be so difficult??

The Highest Bathroom in the World

2008-03-28T13:29:00.000-07:00

We´ve gotten to the end of our first week of spanish classes here in Quito, Ecuador. The people here are much easier to understand! Especially the tutors who are used to speaking slow for dumb gringos like ourselves. We are staying with host families here, separate families so that we don´t just speak in english to each other all the time. My ecuadorian mum is called Maria and she spoils me by making me delicious food and cleaning up after me. I´ve tried to insist on helping with the dishes but she called me "loco". Despite my poor language skills, we´ve had some interesting yarns including one last night where I managed to explain the workings of the NZ student loan system!

Quito is an interesting place. We are living in the Mariscal area of town known to locals as Gringolandia for the abundance of flashy bars and restaurants serving the tourist trade. Its meant to be quite unsafe late at night and many of the houses have huge concrete walls with broken glass of spikes atop. The neighbourhood has a strange vibe to it, during the day everyone goes about their business but as soon as it gets dark people seem very nervous. It seems as though something bad went down here recently and people are still quite wary.

Yesterday we went for a cruise to the "old town" which is like going to a completely different city. Our trip coincided with a protest by local indigenous people so the city was jammed with colourful tradition. We wandered about a bit before finding our way to the Basillica de Voto Nacional and this is where my day got a bit frantic....

Something about our new diet hasn´t been agreeing with me at all and as such, like clockwork everyday I have to find a toilet in fairly short order. I figured we could safely find a loo in the basillica and go about checking out the church. When we entered, I asked where the baño is, the answer was "arriba". I found myself frantically scaling the stairs to the top of the basillica towers trying to find what I firmly believe is the highest bathroom in the world. Yikes.

Judas in the Alleyway

2008-03-22T15:45:00.000-07:00

Hola

We arrived in Chile to met by one hundred and twenty seven taxi drivers but eventually found the family that we had arranged to stay with. They are the Pino family and theyhave been very generous and patient with our terrible spanish. We´ve been on a few trips into the city and taken the fenicular (cable car) up to the top of San Cristobal where there are good views and an open air church with a statue of the Virgin, we´ve been to O´Higgins park and seen the new uni students on the booze and done a whirlwind tour of Central Santiago.

Santiago is a huge sprawling dry splurge of a city with chaotic traffic. There is a serious problem with stray dogs and noone can agree what to do about it. There are times though when partsof the city remind me of NZ, NZ in spanish that is.... We went out on Wed night with Katyta, one of the family, and wound up dancing and drinking Pisco to the wee hours.

We have spent the last two days in Valparaiso which is out on the coast from Santiago. The area we stayed in is called "Bohemian" by Lonely Planet which seems to mean its pretty grotty and grungey. There is some really wicked street art through a maze of steep windy streets. There are delapidated cable cars all through town which allow you to head up and explore the hills.

While we were searching for our hostel at night down some sketchy looking alleys, we turned a corner to find a man slumped asleep\unconscious in a window sill with what looked like a white scarf across his face. This quite rightly put the willies up both of us and we scarpered away from there pretty quickly. BUT, as it turns out there is an easter tradition here of making "Judas", i.e stuffing old clothes full of paper and using a plastic bag for a head, and burning him. Turns out Judas was just biding his time in the alley before his ultimate fate.

I liked Valpo for its diversity. Along with old sketchyness, was a hectic naval port and a vibrant town centre. Everyone we have met here seem friendly and happy to help us out.

Anyways, we be catching a plane to Ecuador tomorrow so I better be off to bed with me then. Hasta Luego.

The Start of Something

2008-03-16T13:38:00.000-07:00

Well, we leave tomorrow on our wee trip. A quick run down.... we are staying five days in Chile before heading up to Ecuador. We'll be studying spanish in Ecuador for about 3 months. After we become real awesome at spanish, it'll be off to travel about South America until Octoberish, then on to Canada.

What do people eat for breakfast in Ecuador?

The last week has been a bizarre mix of panic and relaxation. Today I think will be more on the panic side ("Have you double checked the date of our flights?") It's been really awesome/sad to see people off before we go. I can already tell that we'll really miss everyone back here once we're on the road.

I hope to keep this blog pretty up to date with what we're doing. The picture is courtesy of Mat Wilson and some film, I cant remember the name of it though. I don't know how to say "copyright infringement" in Spanish... Happy reading!