So we hit the Argentina border running.......

 

After a quick check of financial records, some cost calculations and the realization that travel is so much more difficult without ANY money at all, we reved up our travel engines and rocketed to Buenos Aires in 20 straight hours to try and adjust our flights and shorten our trip. As a result we believe northwestern Argentina is usually framed by a bus window, looks a little blurry and has the back of our feet blocking the view. 

 

Luckily in Buenos Aires we encountered the 2 nicest Argentinian airline workers in the world and within a morning it was all sorted. We were heading back to Aus.....

 

Now, however we only had a couple of weeks to see Argentina and damn it, we were going to make the most of it. Unfortunately a couple of weeks isn't enough to see all of the country so we deceided on BA and the northern parts.

 

Buenos Aires is a beautiful city. We wandered a bit around the waterfront and sang Don't Cry for me Argentina in front of the Casa Rosada or Pink House were Evita made her famous speaches to her adoring public. Spent a lovely afternoon wandering around the historical San Telmo and enjoyed the antique market, street performers and a live tango show. We felt very cultured. We also went out to a bar to watch Argentina play Holland in the Copa Mundial. What an experience!! They were going nuts and within a half hour or so Cheryl and I were singing Argentinian fight songs and really getting into it. Much safer than being a Dutch supporter I think. I ordered a beer (Quilmes) and virtually 2 minutes later a completely plastic woman came over and handed me a scratchy card. I scratched, it said "you won" in spanish of course, and she gave me an Argentinian team jersey and I was having my photo taken with this chicky! Quilmes is apparently the sponser of the Argentinian team and we just wandered into a promotion!!  As it turns out the game was a draw which was enough for Argentina to go through so there was no rioting. Our whole time in BA was really just a caffeine fueled enjoyment of a beautiful city and great food. Just nice.

 

A couple of notes on Argentinians before we continue: they love football, they dress really well and they are the word leaders on canoodleing. You couldn't swing a dead anything in Argentina without hitting some couple intertwined in the form of embrace usually confined to the bedrooms of innocent Canucks or Kiwis. One quickly realizes that parks are prime canoodle locations and after a while you don't even notice swarthy type south american people dry humping in the periphery of your view of some ancient monument. Oh those passionate Latinos.

 

Uruguay is just across the bay from BA so we hopped on a ferry and crossed to the old Portugese colonial town of Colonia del Sacramento. It was originally built by the Portugese to keep an eye on the Spaniards in BA and had changed hands 7 times before Spain took it for good. Very cute little walled seaside town with twisting, narrow streets and nice cafes.

 

After Colonia del Sacramento we spent a day in Uruguays capital, Montevideo and then took a bus up though Uruguay on the way to Iguazu falls in the triborder region where northern Argentina meets Paraguay and Brazil. The falls were fantastic. Larger than Vic falls in Africa or Niagra falls in Canada, Iguazu is stretched out around an escarpment in the jungle. We just hiked around and took thousands of pictures of falling water. As you do.

 

All too soon we were back on a bus heading south to Santa Fe and Rosario, the birthplace of Che Guevera, to test our resistance to buying Che Guevera memorabilia. Then just like that we were bussing back in Buenas Aires to catch our plane to Spain.

 

In a tribute to our stupidity.... the All Blacks were playing the Pumas (the Argentinian national team) really close to the time we were there. So we went to the All Blacks website to find out when the game was because we really wanted to go. It would be so much fun supporting the ABs in BA, or something like that. The website told us that unfortunately the game was on the 25th of June which was a bummer because we flew out that afternoon. Soooooo, on the afternoon of the 24th we wandered around, wasted time on the internet and found a place to go for dinner before heading back to the alojamiento (guesthouse) at around 2000. Once there we flicked on the TV to find live coverage of the Puma/All Black clash!! The AB website gave the date of the game in NZ which is of course the 24th in Argentina!!! Stupid, stupid, stupid. Then, because our flight out of BA with Iberian (the worst airline in the world might I add) was delayed 10 hours the airline put us up in the BA Sheraton for the day-where the all Blacks were staying!! But of course we didn't find this out until we came down to catch the bus back to the airport that night to discover all the team gear in the lobby!!! Cheryl said "lets wait till the last minute to board the bus and maybe we will get to meet some of the boys" I said "we better get on the bus or we'll be standing all the way to the airport".  I won out but we weren't on the bus for 30 seconds before the ABs came down into the lobby just to hang out before slowly wandering off to the bar!!! We weren't allowed off the bus and Cheryl didn't speak nicely to me until Madrid!!! Stupid, stupid, stupid..... Oh well, I guess it just wasn't meant to be on that trip!!!

 

We eventually did get on the plane and left for sunny Spain.

Watch this space.

 

Nos vemos chicos,

Cheryl and Jay 

Wow,

 

We finally escaped the tourist crowds of southern Peru for a breath of fresh air on the shores of Lago Titicaca, the birthplace of the first Inca and the highest navigable lake in the world at 3810m. Unfortunately, at 3810m the air is clean but very, very thin and several nights sleep were interupted with gasping, oxygen starved respirations..... It was, however, very beautiful. We deceided to take a trip on the lake to explore some of the islands and our first stop was the Uros floating islands. Its a whole community built on separate floating reed islands originally built 1200 years ago to escape Incan expansion. The comunities were incredible and the best part was if you don´t like your neighbor you just cut yourself free and float to another location!! Next up was Amantani and Taquile islands, only a couple of kms apart but with different cultures and languages. We stayed on Amantani with a Quechua woman named Francesca, a lovely lady who took us to a local fiesta and taught us a couple of Quechua dances to boot. We looked bad and sweated our butts off in spite of the 5 degree temperatures in the borrowed local Alpaca wool traditional dress. Good times had by all!!

 

After our island trip we headed around the shores of Lago Titicaca to the Bolivian side of the lake, and spent a couple of days at the lakeside town of Copacabana, the place where a couple of miracles took place and from where the name of the Brazilian Copacabana originated!! After a day relaxing we (Cheryl, me and our French partners in stupidity, David and Anne-Claire) decieded to convince the little man who rents kayaks by the hour in the bay that his craft were seaworthy enough to take on a 4 day voyage to some ancient Incan islands/archeological sites. With some convincing, and a bit of money he let us cover the cargo ports with plastic and away we went!! It was a magical paddle. We covered 67kms in 4 days including a 10km open water crossing. The views were undescribable with snow capped mountains rising out of crystal blue waters and we spent our nights at rooms negotiated from little communities we found along the way. Mornings were blessed with calm (cold) water and when the winds picked up in the afternoons we hiked to the Incan ruins and soaked up the atmosphere. It was David and Anne-Claires first kayak trip and they would ¨tweest and Poosh¨ through to the end each day with a lot of laughs along the way. At the village of Chall´ampampa, on the 2nd night, all the village kids turned out to greet our arrival. For sure they had never seen kayaks before and they all lined up to help carry our stuff up to the house we found to stay at. Later that night we took them for rides in the kayaks, you should have seen the little faces!!! The whole trip turned out to be one of the major highlights of the journey so far, fantastic to say the least!!!

 

When we got back, we rested a couple of days in Copacabana and then headed to La Paz. A surprisingly nice city where you can buy your ¨good luck llama foetus¨ to bury under your house on virtually every corner. Strange. From La Paz we organized to ride the Death Road on MTN Bikes. It´s the worlds most dangerous road with the most deaths per traveller of any road in the world so they say. The trip was amazing, 63 kms straight down with a total drop of 3700m. It was fast and dusty with up to 1000m cliffs on one side at times and buses and trucks coming around one lane corners the other way. Needless to say we made it but the irony of a lunch stop at the memorial to a dead Isreali MTN biker who didn´t make it (the only place on the road wide enough for a comfortable stop) wasn´t lost on us at the end. The trip ended down at the start of the Bolivian jungle at an Eco lodge where we found a couple of cold beers. A hot shower and a swim in the pool soothed any residual hurts and anxiety before they drove us back up the same road back to La Paz, the trip back was almost more nerve racking than the ride down!!!!!

 

 Still sticking with Les Bleu we took a train down to Uyuni, a little settlement in the high altiplano right on the edge of the Uyuni Salar, one of what has to be one of the worlds wonders. Its a salt lake more than 2000 square kms in area with a water depth in places up to 120m. But the incredible thing is that the entire top of the lake is a salt layer up to 2 meters thick that you can drive, walk or bike over. The salt is pure white giiving the impression that the lake is frozen and in places there are little ¨oyos¨ or eyes  that you can see down into the salty depths. All that white is crazy on your perspective and we took some really funny pics that you can check out in the photos. The nights gave us the most unbelievable sunsets as well. and in places where the water lay on the surface a couple of cms deep it created a reflection so that you didn´t know where the sky stopped and the lake started, what a place. Further on that same trip we headed up even higher into the mountains at the Chilean border and saw the most surreal lakes and mountain scenery. In one lake the water was bright bright red and the shores were pure white with mineral deposits, with the towering mountains in the background it was a bit like I imagine an acid trip to be like but less expensive, less dangerous and a hell of a lot colder. The wind howled up there and it snowed all of the last day and night making the unheated National Parque refuge just a little nippy. We said goodbye to David and Anne-Claire and left them waiting to cross the border to Chile while we headed back. It turns out that they did get across but the Chileans closed the border for the winter soon after because of the snow and unsafe conditions.

 

After a few days recovering from our tearful adieu with the Frenchies we took another Bolivian torture bus down to Potosi where there is a silver mine/mountain more than 450 years old that the Spanish sucked a lot of their colonial riches out of. In the sucking process, those kooky conquistadors managed to kill off more than a million slaves and locals!! The mine still functions and we took a trip down into the honeycombed Cerro Rico (Rich Mountain) in mines that to this day are still being worked by hand. The coolest part of the tour was that our first stop was at a market to buy gifts for the miners. No I am not talking about Cadburys Roses, I mean 92% pure alcohol (pure alcohol means pure silver), bags and bags of coca leaves for chewing to tolerate the conditions, and dynamite with a little ammonium nitrate for added punch!!! Mines are cool. We bought couple of sticks of dynamite for ourselves as well and our guide showed us how to rig it all up (with the Ammoniun Nitrate as well of course!) then he lit it up and we quickly passed it around for photos (no shit!!!) Finally our guide, with a massive mouthful of coca leaves, viotated all the remaining Workplace Health and Safety rules that were left to violate and ran across the mountain side with 2 lit sticks of Dymanite yelling Fire in the Hole or at least the spanish equivilent and all the other miners who were just minding their own buisiness scattered. He buried the lit sticks in a shallow hole and then ran like hell. The only people remaining not completely covered at this point was our group (worrying) so we all cowered behind a little wall. BLAM!!!! You should have heard the first blast!!! It knocked us all on our butts screaming incantations to whichever god we favored!! The second one was just as powerfull but at least we were a little prepared! Awesome. If any of you get a chance to blow stuff up I highly recommend it!! After that the tour started and we scrambled down into the ancient mines crawling around, on our hands and knees in places, and holding ropes to descend shafts in others. The whole day was amazing.

 

The next day was a little more cultured as we toured the old mints and museums of Potosi. Then, just like that, Bolivia was finished for us and all that remained was the 20 hour Bolivian torture bus ride to the Argentinian Border. The bus was only slightly more dangerous than the mines but with less explosions, and we made it stiff but safe and sound.

 

The Argentinian border heralded a whole new world of good coffee, fine food, paved roads and safe, domestic animal-less cities. We were like country kids in downtown Toronto and we will tell you all about it later...

 

Hasta Luego Chicos, stay safe.

 

Jay and Cheryl

                          

 

 

 

Hola otra vez Chicos!!!!!!

 

For those of you following this little serial we left our heros in the bowels of Lima Peru.........

 

So there we were, shell shocked from jungle ayauasca and smack dab in the middle of what is supposed to be one of the most dangerous cities in South America. On the first day we poked our heads cautiously out of our hostal to discover.........one of the cleanest and most beautiful South American cities yet. The colonial architecture was amazing, and the city was very clean! (I´m sure that those of you who have experienced the third world you will recognize the novelty of urban cleanliness) There were a lot of machine gun toting coppers and more than a few crowd control type riot police with vicious looking dogs but we didn´t have even the slightest problem. In Lima we checked out the Catacombs under the Monestario De San Francisco where they have the remains of 70 000 people (that´s a lot of bones) and later explored the secret underground cells and torture rooms at the centre of the South American Spanish Inquisition (No one expects the Spanish Inquisition....) . Inexplicably we took no photos of the Inquisition chambers.

From Lima we took the overnight bus to Nasca, home of the famous Nasca lines, desert geographic shapes and figures built in the desert some 1500 years ago by the ancient Nasca people. No one really knows why they built them but the theories range from worshiping rain gods whom they depended on to alien runways built by extraterrestrials. We of course favor the latter interpretation. The lines are so huge that they can´t be appreciated from the ground (some of the lines are up to 10km long!!) so we took a 45 min flight in a 4 seater plane with a guy who looked like he had slept in his pilot uniform. He, at least, did have a ID that said ¨PILOT¨ so we were reassured. The flight turned out to be incredible and the lines were great. We saw designs of Monkeys, Hummingbirds, Whales, other animals and many, many geometric shapes, fantastic. Nasca had a couple of other cool sights as well. The Nasca people had built hundreds of kms of irrigation canals to be able to farm the desert and a large portion are still in use today so we headed down for a look and a drink. Also there was a cemetary that was both amazing and really sad because the entire area, more than 300 graves, had been looted. The amazing thing is that because the surrounding area is so dry, the unwanted items (cotton that was wrapped around the bodies, pieces of 1000 year old textiles, broken pottery and bleached white bones) don´t decompose and just litter the desert like it´s a human garbage dump. There were some really well preserved graves however and some effort is being made now to preserve what is left.

From Nasca we headed blindly to Abancay in the Andes because it seemed like the closest city to a little known Incan site called Choquequirau that we were  determined to try to get to. When we arrived no one in the little pueblo knew anything about getting to the site but while wandering around the market one day we heard ¨Hey, do you speak english?¨ said in quite an incredulous voice. It turns out that the speakers were a fantastic missionary family from Minnesota in the USA. Jeff and Stacey Krohn and their 3 boys Brandon, Jon and Nathan were a fantastic help lending us camping equipment and even organizing their work schedual to take a trip to the little village that we needed to get to in order to hire a guide and a mule for the trek. On the way to Cachora (the little pueblo that is the starting point for the trek) we stopped at a 13000ft pass to indulge Jeff with a little high altitude golf and smacked a few balls around ourselves (good fun) and later they took us to another Inca site called Sawite where there is an amazing ceremonial rock carved to represent the entire Incan empire at it´s height that has 3 resevoirs carved into it. One for Chicha (corn beer), one for water and one for blood. When you poured one of the liquids into the resevoirs the channels it chose to run off the rock helped to divine the future, wild!! To top it off the whole thing had been covered with a giant tupperware lid of pure gold which of course was taken by the friendly Spanish Conquistadors in 1532.

In Cachora we hired a quide (Pedro) and a mule (Tomasa) for whom we paid the ridiculously cheap price of 12 dollars a day. Early the next morning we headed off covering 7200 vertical meters (not a typo) and  33km in 4 days. The path went from the village, up to the lip of Apurimac canyon, down 1500m to the river and then climbed up to the site 1550m above on the other side before returning on the same path: stupid, stupid Incas. It was smart in one way though because the Spanish never found Choquequirau. Choquequirau or ¨Cradle of Gold¨ was magic, nestled in a saddle between 2 peaks at about 2850m. Each morning it is shrouded in mist and the site itself is amazing with temples and incredible stonework. One of the highlights was the agricultural terracing  below the site which was decorated with life sized stone llamas made of pure white quartz. The best part of the whole thing was that we were the only people to visit that day and the site quardian spent 5 1/2 hours showing us every nook and crannie of the site It was great. Back in Abancay after the hike we spent a couple of days with our new friends the Krohns cleaning up and enjoying real home cooking (if you meet Stacey try her cookies!) before heading back to tourist land in Cusco.

Cusco was an eye opener. Off the bus we were immediately surrounded by blond heads and a dozen different languages. Everybody spoke english if you wanted (which was kinda nice). The city however was beautiful with the entire colonial centre being 15th and 16th century cathedrels ,churches and palaces built on the foundations of Inca palaces. The surrounding hillsides are littered with Inca forts and ruins and we spent a day there riding around exploring. In Cusco we met up with our French jungle buddy, David (how closely have you been paying attention?) and a new arrival to SA his chickita Anne-Claire. With the frenchy to non frenchy ratio thus evened up we headed out to tackle Machu Piccu .

Cusco´s many tourists mean tourist prices so it´s really expensive for backpacker types like us but we have to say that soft white guy sized beds and international cuisine was a nice change. So the four of us taxied and bused as far as we could before we were obliged to take the fascist Perurail train to Aguas Calientes (Hot Waters) that is the town nearest Machu Picchu. At 0500 the next morning we (Frenchies and Jay because Cheryl had hurt her knees climbing around the ergonomically challenging Incan ruins of the past couple of weeks) started out on the climb to the citadel and after a good hour we met Cheryl at the gate before entering the city. Machu Picchu is rightfully one of the premier tourist attractions in the world! The ruins are incredibly intact and the Incan stonework is both beautiful and perfectly constructed! We saw all the site with a guide then did another climb to Wayñu Picchu (the military strongpoint of Machu Picchu) that gave us breathtaking views of the city. We spent the whole day there just wandering around before climbing down to soak our sore bodies in the hot waters of the Aguas Calientes thermal pools.

After the trip back to Cusco we said ¨au revoir¨ to our French amigos and headed to Arequipa, the so called ¨white city¨ where all of the colonial architecture is made out of pure white volcanic rock. Here we checked out an amazing 15th century convent, Monesterio Santa Catalina, that is actually a city in itself that was cloistered for over 250 years before being opened to the public. We also saw ¨Juanita¨ the Ice Maiden. Juanita is a frozen Incan sacrifice found at 6200m who was an offering to the Ampatu mountain. She was only found in 1995. Some of you might remember her because Nat. Geographic did a program on her. She is incredibly well preserved and they even know what she ate as her ceremonial last meal. We got to view here encased in ice in a transparent freezer, cool. No pun intende...

After hanging out a couple of days in Arequipa for some R+R and catching up with our travel buddy from Ecuador, Michael (he´s American but we like him anyway) and his Peruvian girlfriend Evelie, we headed into the Colca Canyon. It´s a canyon that´s twice the size of the Grand Canyon in the USA and that has massive areas of Incan agricultural terracing that is still in use today and is one of the best places in the world to view the Andean Condor. The Condors are amazing and they put on quite a show riding the thermals all around us for an hoiur and a half, fantastic!! 

 

After Colca we headed to the shores of Lake Titicaca and crossed into Bolivia.

 

That´s another adventure yet to unfold. We have however been told there is a place in Bolivia where you can buy dynamite, light it and throw it out into the desert just for kicks.....can´t wait.

 

Later Muchachos

 

Us

Hola Chicos!!

 

So much has happened in Peru so far we deceided to do a post Amazon blog, so here goes...... After our adventures with counterfeiting cops and dead people at the Peru/Ecuador border (see Welcome to Peru Blog) we headed south to the city of Chiclayo and spent a couple of days soaking up the colonial architecture and checking out the local archeological sites. The most impressive of these was Tucume Pyramid Complex and we burned a couple of days wandering around the massive pyramids and checking out the museums, awesome! We found some pottery shards near the base of one pyramid that was probably left over from the work of the many profundadores or grave robbers. It´s really an amazing feeling to hold something in your hands that was made by people thousands of years ago. Unfortunately, profundadoring seems to be a primary industry in some of these beautiful old ruins, kinda sad really. While in Chiclayo we heard there was a religious festival in a local village and so we caught a local shared taxi (a El Camino from the 70s) and spent the day as the honorary gringos watching the procession and amusing the locals. We hitched a ride back after the festival with a church group whose average age was around 60 that was from Chiclayo and they made up songs about the 2 gringos the whole way back, laughs for everybody and they drove us in their big bus right back to our hotel, nice!!

From Chiclayo we took a 16 hour nightmare bustrip through the Andes to the village of Chachapoyas to organize a trip up to the ruins of Kuelap. We hooked up with a English couple to increase our barganing power and found a guide to take us up the flooded barely there road. Kuelap was a Pre Inca fortress perched on a sheer cliff face. Absolutely incredible. So few people get out there that there was still bones in the different tombs. What a magical place, and what a magical view as well. When we left Chachapoyas we headed for the Amazon basin and made a little stop in the foothill town of Tarapoto. Near Tarapoto we met a German guy who had a Monkey named ¨Moni¨ (little monkey in spanish) and imported his own favorite German beer. Needless to say that Cheryl quickly became the monkey´s new best friend whilst I investigated Tomas´s stock of fine beer.

To get to the Amazon from the Andes you need to take a river boat at the end of the road and the end of the road from Tarapoto was Yurimaguas. The 6 hour ¨road¨ to Yurimaguas was beautiful but a little scary as well because as soon as we got into the shared taxi everybody started hiding their money and valuables around the cars because it wasn´t safe with ¨rich gringos¨ in the car: very reassuring let me tell you. This prompted us to stuff money down Cheryls bra and I wrapped the cameras memory card up in my bandana. The ride turned out to be very nice and the driver played lots of 70s rock in English just for us to sing along to. In Yurimaguas we organized a passage on a cargo boat sleeping on the top deck in hammocks and after a day it let us off in the village of Lagunas. It was there that we started our first 6 day trip into the jungle with our guides Marciel and Julio. At this time of year the jungle is completely flooded, in places to a depth of 3 metres! That meant that we had to stay at a park warden platform along with everybody else that needed to be in the park. That was fishermen, local (legal) hunters and park wardens, our guides, me and Cheryl on a small platform with a couple of rooms on one side. Very cosy. When Cheryl needed to pee she had to get someone to take her out to a large tree so she could climb on to pee then be picked up and brought back!! There are a few very small patches of relatively dry ground around at this time and that means that the terrestrial animals are very concentrated and we saw lots!! Monkeys (all kinds) sloths, snakes, wild pigs and big rodent things, lizards and our guides even caught us a baby Caiman one night finding it in the water only by the tiny sound it made. They were incredible. The river was full of fish that the guides caught every day and the local hunters provided us with a couple of meals of animals that I havn´t even seen in zoos. Also in the river were fresh water dolphins, black ones and wicked pink ones as well and we saw them a couple of times every day. There were more birds than you could imagine and their colors were great. Macaws and Tucans and all sorts!! There were tonnes of ants (and they all bite), MASSIVE spiders, real tarantulas straight out of the movies, and scorpions as well but the worse things were the mosquitoes, there were billions of them. When we got out we looked like we had contracted the pox. All in all the hardships were more than worth it and the trip was fantastic.

Back in Lagunas, we caught another riverboat for the remaining couple of days to Iquitos, the largest city in the world without a road access. It´s  in the middle of the Peruvian Amazon. There we met up with a French guy named David (Da Veed) and hired a shaman (medicine man)  to take us out into the jungle for a spirit finding/cleansing ceremony called Ayauasca. We fasted for a couple of days, prepared the Ayuasca all day on the 3rd day and did the ceremony late on the 3rd night. The ceremony involved a lot of chanting and blowing of tobacco around and drinking of the Ayauasca potion we had prepared. After we took the Ayauasca, we all had amazing visions, spirits and animals and lights and stuff (Cheryl had more than either David or me) but we all got very sick as well. It took a few days of ¨what the hell did we just do¨ to get over it but wow, what an experience.

Back in Iquitos, we didn´t think that we could top that so we deceided to leave the Amazon for the time being. We took the luxury package out and caught a flight back to Lima.

So that´s the update. On to the Nasca Lines and the lands of the Inca next.......

 

Bye all,

 

Us

Day one:

 

Arrive at the border, there are no banks amidst the throngs of people so we get a police officer to show us who is the honest money changer. He takes us to a guy and he changes 40 USD in a flurry of hands and haggling in the street. We cross the bridge to the Peruvian customs office and BAM, a guy on a little scooter gets hit by a Semi Trailer and it runs straight over him. Bystanders pick him up by the arms and legs (dead as a doornail) and through him onto the back of a 3 wheel mototaxi and tear off dripping blood. A bit shaken we find our way into the border town where we get a room and promply find out that all the money we changed was counterfeit!! We found an ATM ("go there and come straight back, I´ll send my friend with you") and managed to get a little sleep although the hookers woke us up sometimes coming and going next door.

 

Day two was better but you´ll have to wait.

 

Hasta Luego

 

Us 

Hola Amigos and Buenas Dias from South America!!

 

Well it came to pass that on the 5th of February we touched down in Quito, Equador after a short stint in the US of A with Bryan and family. Our pathetic attempt to fill out the customs forms confirmed our suspicions that spanish classes were going to be important and so we spent our first 10 days in Latin America studying like a first year med student. Our teacher was Santiago "Santi", a really nice guy with the patience of a saint. Quito is a big city with some really beautiful Colonial plazas and churches but unfortunately like many big cities in the 3rd world it has a bit of a dark side as well so we had to watch our backs and in the end we were ready to start exploring the countryside. All that hard work must have done some good however, because after we were done in Quito we were able to make our way north to the town of Otavalo where they have a huge Andean indigenous craft market. As credit to my fortitude and vigilance, Cheryl only managed to purchace two things, a "tapiz" and a "bolsa", a hanging and a handbag, both of which are very nice. After relaxing in the tranquil surroundings of Otavalo we headed to a place called Chugchilan. We hiked around Volcano Cotopaxi in blinding cloud (at least the guide said we were on Cotopaxi) where we saw ferocious wild Llamas (with ropes around their necks that you could feed by hand) and a poor kid who had to stay up on the mountain in a little refuge on the off chance that someone wanted to stay up there. The poor kid had no food so our guide gave him all that we had left over. He hadn´t been down to the town (had been all alone) for 3 weeks: lonley.... Also around Chugchilan is an amazing loop road way out in the Andes. We got stuck on the way in with the guy we hitched a ride with at about 10pm in the middle of a river crossing in what had to be the quicksand from the movies. Luckily there were 3 little kids there that ran up to their houses and brought down tools for us to dig out. We also got  stuck on the bus on the way out by the way, and we all had to get out while the driver tied a rope to the front and we pulled the bus up the mountainside!!! That never happens in the prairies. We stayed out there with "Mama Hilda" for 3 days and did an great hike from an exctinct volcano crater lake along a centuries old trail back to the hostal. On the way back there had been a landslide and the trail was gone. We had to pick our way accross the cliff face to get accross, really hairy I can tell you!! When Cheryl calmed down I told her how well she did. After all that remote mountain stuff it was time to get back to partying and as luck would have it was time for Carnival!! We went to Guaranda and paid 15$ a nite for rooms with words written in a brown substance on the walls, enough said. It could have been worse though because many people coming into town had nowhere to go and were sleeping in the parks and streets. Guaranda apparently has the biggest Carnival outside of Brazil and we believe it!! Carnival was crazy!!! Water, flour, egg and silly string fights in the day combined with the loudest music you can imagine and nights filled with drinking dancing and generally more shenanigans. It was so crazy that after 3 days we could take no more and we retreated to Baños, a old colonial centre with natural hot pools nestled in an Andean valley. The hostal we ended up in had its resident crazies and the guys spent their days building rockets and home made explosives and at night on the roof were competitions to see which was best. It was safe though, the owner was in on it too and it was actually one of his rockets that landed in the courtyard and burned a huge mark into the courtyard wall while he ran down and we all laughed!! We did some nice hiking in Baños and a little mountain biking as well out to some Trout farms where you can catch your fish and they cook it up with all the fixin´s for 2.50$: sweet. We actually cycled down into the first reaches of the Amazon but we took a bus back up, that would have to wait for another day!! Now that we had been in the Andes for a couple of weeks we needed a little beach so we went down to the surf village of Montañita on the coast and I spent a couple of days proving that I still suck while Cheryl soaked up the sun. Further up the coast we stopped at a place called Puerto Lopez where we met "Winston Churchill" who took us fishing and showed us a colony of Blue Footed Boobies (I sang the song in my head the whole time Phil), Frigates and an Iguana.  I don´t think that Winston was his real name though, just a hunch. Burned and full of fresh fish we headed back to the mountains to Cuenca which is a 400 year old Spanish colonial center surrounding a river that had also been the site of the Incan Capital City Tomebamba which of course was destroyed. Not by the spanish though, other Incas had smashed it just before the arrival of the spanish in a civil war. In Cuenca we hiked and studied some more spanish while staying with the nicest family in thier old converted colonial villa. Luis and Marie Elena and family were so nice that we were going to stay 2 days but ended up staying a week to take 3 more days of spanish with their friend and practicing with the family. It was sad to say goodbye but political turmoil had closed down the highway both north and south with protests so we took the opportunity to escape west to the coast and continued on into Peru, but that is another story...... Just as an after thought, the road was cut west the day we left as well and people we had met just couldn´t get out of the city at all!!

 

Buen Viajes to all and we´ll be in touch!!

 

Us

 

And so it was written that the prodigal son would return....

 

And so I did.

 

And it was good.

 

Limped into Vancouver on the 15th of January for a little visit with our friends out west. Stayed with Nick and GiGi and their new baby Meela in North Van. Spent a couple of days snoeshoeing and MTBing (finally rode the North Shore but no pics to prove it) and just generally had good times. Caught up with our friends Mark and Gabby (and new baby Rhys) and Lisa Gambalambalino, our friends from the Queen Charlotte Islands and all the Vancouver crew surprised us with dinner and sweet seats at the Canucks game as a belated wedding pressie. It was awesome and the mighty Canucks smashed the hapless Sabres much to our delight.

After Vancouver it was back home to visit the fam in Winnipeg and catch up with all our old buddies. Took  our nephews to thier first hockey game but to be honest I think they enjoyed the food, intermissions and chasing Mickey the Moose around more than the actual hockey. The Manitoba Moose won by the way, it must be our presence. Later, we dusted off the old toboggans for a trip down memory lane and I discovered that I still got it. Mike, Nate, Cheryl all put in reasonable performances but Auntie Val got stuck half way down on her last run so we to deduct some points.

Because the weather was so nice (only about -5 to -10!!) we had a chance to head out to Grandma's cabin on Lake Winnipeg at Sandy Bay. Since nobody usually gets out there in the winter we had a little digging out to do but after an hour or so and with a big fire roaring in the fireplace it was really great. Lots of memories stashed around that old place (note to self: remind grandma to throw out pictures of old girlfriends....) Stumbled through the snow down to the beach but a sharp wind drove us back to the warmth of cabin after a couple of pictures.

We had our Winnipeg wedding party on January 28th and about 50 people showed up from far and wide for the shindig. Suffice it to say that much drunkeness ensued culminating with a bit of a food fight and a wrestling match (between Roley and Phil, result: draw) that resulted in a spilled bottle of red wine and the sacrifice of a VCR to the beer gods. Thank you again mom and dad for your patience toward my friends, I tried to stop them, really I did. Errr, anyway....

Cheryl had a chance to catch up with one of her friends from Rotorua here in the Peg. WHAT??? It just so happens that an old school chum (who is in the NZ Air Force) had been posted here in Winnipeg. Angela and Anton (also a flying Kiwi) and their little boy Nikau came to our wedding dealy and then we had a nice night out with them at their place. Imagine, 2 girls from Rotovegas meeting up in the frozen Canadian prairies....strange things are afoot in the great white north. 

Mr Christian and his (about time) fiance and Mom (Chris's mom) had us out to the cabin at Lac Du Bonnet for a couple of days of snowmobiling and good old fashioned home cooking then it was back home for some sad goodbyes as we packed up for Equador after a brief stop in Minneapolis for a visit down in Muellerland. Keep your eyes peeled for a Hola from South America in the near future.

 

Chow

 

Us

Anyeong Haseo everybody!!!

So we left sunny warm Aus on the 29th of December to hang out in cold Korea with Philly and his little girly Jung In. Just barely made it to the airport leaving Aus due to some rather extreme drunkeness the night before in combination with getting ourselves dropped off at the wrong terminal in Brisbane at 0300, but that is another story.  We spent most of the first week hanging out in Yeosu (Phil's home town) and day tripping from there checking out some of the surrounding cities like Gwangju and Jinju and some of the fantastic temples and historical stuff like Bulguksa and Jinju Fortress. Had quite a few struggles with Korean language and korean writing (Koreans have their own written script called Hangeul) but the people were really friendly and helpful and we always made it or ate it in the end. Korean food is 50/50. 50% fantastic with the at your table barbeques and some of the traditional soups and stews. We ate Black Chicken soup in Cheongju. It's local whole chicken (whose flesh and bones are black) cooked in soup with ginseng and spices. Delicious!! There is however another 50% of stuff that just wasn't quite our thing with lots of fish stocks and tiny little dried fishes you ate bones and all as well as some stuff you had to see to believe. (see the pictures for evidence) Regardless if the main course was your deal or not you could always rely on the 10 or so banchan (side dishes) that would accompany every meal. Kim Chee is the local favorite and you'ld be in heaven if you liked Cabbage fermented in Red Beans and Chili. Local brew was good though and when you really wanted to write yourself off you could always turn to Soju, a kind of local rice moonshine-deadly!!

Starting week 2 Philly and Jung In were off work and we all headed out up the eastern coast of the Korean Peninsula. Note to self, travelling in Korea is much easier with someone who speaks Korean... Spent a day in Busan (pronounced Pusan-don't ask) and then went to the capital of the Silla Dynasty circa 57BC, Gyeongju. Tonnes of historical relics and buildings and museums. Quite an amazing place, the whole city is dotted with these 2000 year old burial mounds which are apparently unlootable!! While in Gyeonju we stayed in a 120 year old guest house called Sarangchae. Traditional heated floors, paper doors and an owner that spoke english!! It was surprisingly warm sleeping on the floor considering it was -10c outside!! When we got sick of museums we headed into the mountains and stayed a night in Cheongju where we ate the black chicken and Phil rode in the sex chair!! We went to this fairy tale castle looking hotel that had free porn, condoms, male desensitizing jelly and a dental apparatus looking sex chair that you had to feed money into!! Of course we had to try it and Phil took a bit of a ride that we have on video file for anyone who would like to see it. Well worth the price of the room I assure you.

After the sex chair there was really nothing left that could top it, so we all went back to Seoul and spent a couple of days shopping, drinking and poking around.

Korea was great, but we were bound for the Great White North and left for Vancouver on the 15th of January.

 

See you when we see you

 

Jay and Chery   

Well we were alone again, so with our washing done we were off to Tasmania. We landed in Hobart on the 17th of November. 2 things right away, it's not 35C and it's raining!!! It was actually really nice to have a break from the heat and the desert. We hung around Hobart for a couple of days and checked out the beautiful historic waterfront and ate in these cool floating fish and chip shops. They unload the days catches and cook them up right there! Awesome. With our bellies full of good fish it was time to head to the bush and we spent a magical 3 days on the Freycinet Peninsula. The days were beautiful and sunnie and the water was perfect but don't even think about swimming, it's about 7C!! The wildlife on the island was so tame!! We had Wallabies with Joeys, Pademelons and Roos in our campsite. One nite we even had a possum try to get into the tent to get our food. I unzipped the tent and told him to piss off and he reared up and hissed at me!! Cheeky bugger. From Freycinet we went down to the ruins of the Port Arthur Penal Colony. That's also the place where that guy went nuts and shot 35 people in the late 90s. Port Arthur was great, we liked it so much that we came back at nite and did  lamplight ghost tour complete with tales of horror and photographic evidence. It was all really well done. With just a couple of days left in Tassie we shot up to Lake St Claire National Park where we say our first Platypus and had our first run in with the weather. During the nite a big storm blew a tree over right accross from our tent! It got down to around zero that nite so between the cold and the falling timber we didn't get a lot of sleeping done. That was our Tassie send off and a couple of days later we were back in Melbourne with Brad and Michelle (Cheryl's Brother and his girlfriend) and then off to the Snowy Mountains of "the Man from Snowy River" fame. We stayed in a little town called Buchan on the first nite and met some local wildlife rescuers. Cheryl talked them into letting her look after their 2 month old Wombat named Willfull for the day. The thing spent all day inside Cheryl's jumper sleeping and took his 4 hourly bottle feeds just like a baby! I don't know who enjoyed it more, Willfull or Cheryl!! We did a lot of hiking and exploring in the Snowy's, and saw a lot of snakes!! Big black ugly snakes but they always just slithered away as soon as we got close. We scrambled around some caves too and just generally got messy. On the way out of the Snowy's we got caught in a Tornado!! Yes the "there's no place like home" variety. We could see the funnel forming accross the lake we were driving around so we parked up next to the rocks in the deep part of a blasted out roadway. The win was unreal but we were really sheltered. The big surprise came when we drove out of our hiding place and the road was covered in massive trees and there were trees down on farm houses and even a huge water tank that had blown down onto the road. All the traffic was stuck so we all mucked in and started clearing the roads. It took us hours to get through but it was pretty exciting looking back. Next stop was the Hunter Valley where we did some wine and beer tasting and met up with Cheryl's dad who happened to be in the area on business. Only 700km to go from there so it was drive, beach, drive up the coast and home again in Brisbane.!!!!! Check out the photos and let us know what you think.

Us

Hello Everybody!!!

Well we're off again officially. In mid November we took off from Brissy with our friends Fraser and Sherese from Winnipeg to do the epic round Australia road trip. It all started in sleepy Charleville on Melbourne cup day and the local Charleville races. Check out our hats (best in show for sure) and us as we show our winning tickets. We took home about 170$ and drank it all at the after races party. What a great day! From there we took off up through the land of the Jolly Swagman where they wrote Waltzing Matilda and saw a lot of space, sheep and flies. So many that you just couldn't keep them off of you and eventually just gave up trying. Fraser tried his hand at "fly whispering" but I don't think it really helped. The little bastards stayed with us all the way to Melbourne.... Next stop: Mount Isa,a big mining centre where we tried our hands at the life underground. We played with some of the equipment and we all had a go with the pneumatic drills. Tough work, they can have it. After the Isa we were into the Northern Territory, the Big Red Centre, and it was big and red and I believe geographically in the centre. We're still finding the red dust in stuff now. The NT had Road Trains. Massive scary trucks with up to 4 semi trailers behind the prime mover (aussie speak). They have complete right of way on the roads and can take up to a Km to stop so when they're coming you get off the road and fast!! The NT was beautiful. Lots of great scenery and cool rock formations like the Devils Marbles where Fra and I did a little rock remodelling with our brute strenghth. We did a little off roading and there was even a little rain and the occasoinal wild camel to make things interesting. We spent some time in Alice Springs and Kings Canyon. On the day we took this photo there it was 41C!! We drank a bloody lot of water and even splurged on an aircon room for a couple of nights. On the way to Uluru (Ayers Rock) we snapped this picture of a dingo. We saw quite a few but people still shoot them on site so they don't exactly pose for pictures!! Uluru was amazing. Hard to describe it. On the downside there were so many people it lost some of it's spiritual wonder but it was a great experience none the less. We climbed it and had a bottle of Moet at the summit after the girls did a little calender photo shoot for us. Nice. On the way out of the Territory Fra and Reese showed their true colors in Kulgera on the South Australia border. Just into SA we stopped in Cober Pedy, it's an opal mining town in a truly desolate landscape. It's so bad that over 75% of the town is built into the old mines!! What a place. We stayed in an underground campground (no flies) and checked out the Serbian church and a couple of the show homes. Very cool.  Then we heard about this old charachter named Crocodile Harry. He's a Latvian Baron who came to Aus after the war and made a living hunting Crocs and Opal mining. Then he deceided to hunt virgins!! No kidding. He advertises for backpackers or who ever to hang out and live/party/whatever at his place for free and then leave a piece of lingerie as a momento!!! He lives in his old mine that had been the set for many movies including Mad Max III and Pitch Black. His house is FULL of lingerie, what a guy. The girls posed for this shot on his knee and the cheeky bugger snuck a little titty sidewall kiss as they were getting off on him!! Further south we left the desert behind along with the heat and the dust (the flies stayed with us though). We say lots of Koalas in SA and quite a few had little ones. There were also ugly spiders like this massive Red Back (a baddy) in one of the public toilets we became so well accustomed to. We did a day of wine tasting in the Barossa Valley but for some reason nobody took any pictures, hmmmmmm. When we'ld recovered we left SA and snuck across into Victoria and Great Ocean Road. GOR was another of the "must sees" that really lived up to it's reputation. The coastline was gorgeous. Sadly that was it for Part 1 of the Great Aussie Road Trip. We limped into Melbourne for some much needed showers and washing at Cheryl's bro's house. Brad took us down to the airport the next day for our flights to Tasmania, but that's another story..............................

Hey this thing actually works!!

 

So here's the most recent deal. Cheryl and I head back to New Zealand on the 17th of September for a little post wedding celebration Kiwi style (piss up). When we recover from that we are finishing work at the end of October. We're taking a month to travel around Australia and then heading to South Korea to visit Philly who so graciously came down to the wedding (see attached photos). Bit of a tiki tour around SK and then back to Canada probably getting there in Late December (hmmm, christmas presents) or early January. From there a cross country trek to sunny Vancouver visiting (read staying with people) along the way. After that we're off to South America until the money runs out (6 years if we're lucky but more likely 6 months).  Following Tequila rehab, we''ll be back in that great cosmic mass known as the nursing labour pool floating along to where ever the jobs will take us just like our ancient ancesters (er.. you know what I mean)

 

Hope we catch you all in our travel net when we get home(s).

 

Jay and Cheryl         

Hi Everybody

 

As you probably all know we just got married!! We wanted to share some of our wedding photos with you all so we're trying this out. Hope you enjoy them!

 

Fingers Crossed,

 

Jay and Cheryl