Tying up loose ends...(or What Do You Mean I Have Too Much Time On My Hands?)

I really thought I was done with posting to this blog but I realised something was missing.

In the last month or more of my holiday, my thoughts turned increasingly to all of the aspects of life in Melbourne that I was missing. So many things. The last few days has been about satisfying those wants. I've been to JB Hi-Fi and bought CD's (like a kid in a candy store!), I've made some great porridge (don't start me on that topic), I've watched a game of footy with my mates, I've had a vegemite sandwich, I've drunk Aussie beer...etc, etc. Today I knocked off one of the items right near the top of my list: Eat a coffee scroll.

How is it possible that this humble baked good cannot be found overseas? Are the great bakers of Europe, China and America(North, Central AND South) ignorant? That's the only conclusion I can draw. Ignoramuses, every single one of them!!! And really, if they can make a cinnamon roll, it's not too much of a stretch to make a coffee scroll. So I'll throw in "incompetent" as well then.
I headed out to Bayswater shops today to pick one up. "Ahh yeah, there's Lee Lee Bakery, I've bought a scroll or two from them in my time." I park, I enter the shop, we exchange greetings, the woman behind the counter greets me slightly distractedly because she's checking on some bread or something, my greeting too is distracted because I'm scanning the shelving in front of me for the elusive scroll... "hang on, where is it?" I think. "Do you sell coffee scrolls?" I ask. "No, sorry." is the reply. I'm gobsmacked. Codswalloped. "Oh, never mind then." is all I can get out as I stumble from the store. Has the world turned it's back on coffee scrolls while I've been away? Did a news report in the Herald Sun claim they contribute more to global warming than a donut or something? Perhaps the smaller bakeries of Bayswater have given up on making them, driven out of the coffee scroll market by the big chain bakeries of Brumbies and Bakers Delight (who I recall do quite a good job).

I had to try another bakery. That was the answer.

Over the other side of Mountain Highway, I found a bakery whose front window claims it is the winner of the best Vanilla Slice in Victoria for 2007. Ok, that's all very well and good for you but how about your coffee scroll skills matey? I walk in, scan the shelves (no time for a hello this time)...EUREKA!!!, there it is! The world shifts back onto it's axis again. I pay my $1.50 and rush it home.
Back at home I cut it in half horizontally and layer it with margarine. You can't be stingy on your margarine/butter application when it comes to the coffee scroll. It's key. And how was the eating you ask (possibly with a slightly bemused expression on your face)? Yeah, real good!!! The makers of this scroll didn't try anything fancy like some people. (Note: I'm not knocking fancy - a sprinkling of cinnamon on top of the icing for instance, works a treat.) It was basically a bog-standard coffee scroll. Just what I wanted. Very bready, with raisins mixed in, a glazed sheen on top and of course, white icing in a circle on top of that. I tried to savour the taste, I really did. I got sweetness, I got the margarine greasiness, I got the bite from the raisins...but mainly I wolfed the thing down like a Labrador who hasn't eaten for a whole hour or so. Then I had that satisfied feeling in my stomach that you get from eating such a large amount of bread. It was all I had remembered and more. If I was a smoker I would probably have lit one up at that point.

So that's my story about my first coffee scroll. I'll try some others over the next few weeks. There are definitely better out there but this one was a fine start. I can now say I am well and truly back from holidays!

Back In Melbourne

Ok, so I arrived back home yesterday and it's definitely good to be back. Wasn't sure I was going to make it at one point. To get to Beijing Airport I had to take a taxi ride to a shuttle bus. Driving in an orderly fashion is not one of the Chinese strong points. My driver for some reason was in a big hurry. Early on he had us driving in the middle of two lanes, both of which were lanes that were going in the wrong direction. Staring down two oncoming cars for a couple of moments, the driver managed to get back in the correct lane with a little time to spare. Good of him. Then as we were driving in the correct lane, a bloody big bus swerved to avoid something in it's way and suddenly was taking up our full lane. So a big swerve and a couple of choice words from me and again we were back on track. Then I think adrenalin caused my driver to decide that the red light we were approaching was only a little bit red so he gunned it through the lights and once again, we were facing down two oncoming cars. At this point I decided our luck couldn't hold and surely this was when the crash would happen yet somehow we just missed both of them and executed a nice turn before anyone hit us. It felt very good to get out of that car.

Then I found out the shuttle bus was going to take two hours to get to the airport which would have been scraping it a bit fine. Some dude I thought was an official for the bus company said in really bad english that a taxi could do it in one hour. The taxi just turned out to be his car. So then mental car ride number two began. To his credit, the guy got us through peak hour traffic, fast, without so much as a scratch. He used the bike lane often (I was so sure he was going to knock down a cyclist), he cut off other cars constantly, he honked his horn like a maniac and he got me to the airport in just over an hour which for peak hour was a top effort.

The rest of the travel home was incident free.

So one more thing before I finish this blog. Wanted to mention my visit to see Chairman Mao's body. He died 31 years ago and although he wanted to be cremated, they embalmed him and now he spends his days in a Mausoleum which obviously has to be called The MAOsoleum where you can view him. The whole thing felt very surreal. In Tiananmen Square I found a large queue of people I thought might be queueing to see him and joined it. Lasted about a minute before some official told me to get out of the queue. Couldn't figure out why straight away but then slowly pieced together that you have to check your backpack including camera into a bag check area over the road. Once that was done I was back in the queue with a bunch of jostling Chinese people. Couldn't see any other tourists. We were then ordered to line up in two lines. There were police and guards everywhere making sure we stood within the special queueing area. We were then ordered to move forward where we walked through some gates while still outside and then around a corner in what felt like military formation, all the while being scrutinised by many guards who barked the odd order which I think was mostly about no cameras etc. Once inside a sign in English said to be quiet and remove your hat. We passed through a couple of rooms and then reached the viewing room. Inside a big glass case, a good 10 or more metres away, was Chairman Mao, lying down and covered in what seemed to be a red flag with the communist hammer and sickle on it. Basically you could only see his head and since the crowd was forced to move along quietly and quickly, I doubt I saw more than about 20 seconds worth. Not long enough to see whether the embalmer had found time to remove that massive mole from near his mouth that he really should have had sliced off before he got into politics. He just looked like an oldish, balding man to me. Then it was all over. We were then in the souvenir area where the guards weren't so interested in hurrying us along. :)
I wish I could have got a photo. There are various rumours suggesting that either the body is decomposing or that it's just a waxwork. I've also heard that sometimes it's the real body and sometimes a fake for when they do restoration work on him. Perhaps he's like Michael Jackson and every once in a while, parts of his face just slide off or something. I also found myself wondering what the other people who were viewing him with me thought of the experience. Were they just satisfying some sort of morbid curiosity like I was? Were they looking at a man they believed was a great leader who helped their country become what it is today? Or perhaps they were quietly wishing he'd rot in hell for all of the deaths he caused in his time at the helm. Not a clue.

Ok, I reckon that must bring this long final blog entry of my holiday to a close. It's great to be back and I look forward to catching up with everyone over the next couple of weeks or so. I guess I now have to go and get myself a job. Yikes!

General China Thoughts

So my tour finished on Sunday and everyone on what was an awesome tour group got straight out of Beijing and went home, leaving me to fend for myself until Wednesday night when my plane flies me to Australia. Just one day left until I get on that plane. Can't wait.
Today I did something I've been fired up to do since I arrived here. I went to see the Mausoleum where Chairman Mao's body rests. I was going to describe it now but perhaps I'll wait until I'm back in Australia to do that.
Instead I'll mention some other things I found interesting about China.
1. The funny stares. I think I mentioned this in my last blog entry but since I can't remember and can't access my blog to read it, I'll mention it briefly here. We kept getting many stares and in some cases laughs and giggles when people saw the 12 westerners walking around in a group. Even yesterday I was just sitting down in some shade outside a big temple resting when some dude who was there with his girlfriend and some other dude, asked if he could have a photo taken of me and him. I didn't mind. I'll never understand this photo thing but it's happened lots to people on the tour.
2. Babies bums. For some reason, young kids who have only just figured out how to walk, get put in clothes with pants that have a whole in the back that shows their bum. I thought it was kind of cute at first but then when some of our group saw a kid backing out one of his best on some nice tiles in the middle of a busy walkway in a train station, I think we all realised that's there are certain drawbacks to this no-nappies idea.
3. One morning, three of us from the tour (Ellisa, Lucy and I) went for a walk in Xi'an at 6.45am to find the main square and the tai-chi that happens there. It was great. So many mostly elderly people out and about before the heat of the day had kicked in. Some did tai-chi, others danced, others did gentle stretching and one crazy old guy was hitting a tennis ball attached to an elastic band and a brick and jogging around a bit hoping that one of us might take his picture. It was an aspect to the people I hadn't seen until then and made me respect that they are so dedicated to their health. I just can't imagine so many people getting up for public exercise in the morning in Australia for instance.
4. The Great Wall was well worth a look and one of the highlights of the trip. Oddly none of the guide books or our own tour guide mentioned that it was built to keep the rabbits out. They tend to go for the reason of keeping the Mongolians out which they so obviously stole from that South Park episode. A cable car took us up to the area where we started walking and after a while it got real steep. Felt a bit like the Inca Trail but without the altitude problems. The most dangerous part of the wall is the path from the cable car to the bus where vendors on both sides of the path try to sell you tourist rubbish you don't want and yell "hello!!" at you in almost accusing voices.
5. Lastly, the tour group was a really good one. We all got along really well which made the whole thing so much more fun. Made some great friends, some of whom I'm going to miss very much.

Finally, cos I've got the time , I've typed out exactly what was on a sign at the start of the great wall. While it's a definitely a Great Wall, they failed to hire a Great Translator.

"Welcome you to visit Mutianyu Great Wall. For your and others' security. Please pay attention to the following items.
1. Please don't carve arbitrarily on the Great Wall. Protect one brick and one stone consciously.
2. For your personal safety. Please don't climb the crenelated wall.
3. Please walk carefully on abrupt slope and dangerous way. Don't run and pushes to pash violently and the laugh and frolic.
4. Please pay attention to your safety in the rain and snow weather.
5. Old people and children must have been accompanied and leaded by their family members when climbing the Great Wall.
6. The fire is forbidden here. Please don't take tinder.
7. ( this was just police contact details so I'm not typing this out)"

Of all the many many examples of bad English I've seen since I've been in China, the one at the Great Wall takes the cake for me. Especially number 3 with the urging not to pash violently. Gold!

Hanging out to get back to Melbourne now and see if I can get back on the merry-go-round of daily life again after getting right out of it for 5 months. So many things I want to do when i get back. And yes, porridge with brown sugar faces in it and coffee scrolls both feature heavily.

In Beijing

I am now in Beijing which is the last stop on our tour. I can't seem to get to read my own blog website at the moment as it seems to be blocked everywhere I go. So I can't read any comments. Somehow it still lets me write a new blog entry though.
I haven't got much time so I'll just say for now that I'm having a great time and am currently in a great mood cos last night I bought a cool watch with a picture of Chairman Mao on it and he's waving his arm to the people as the second hands moves. It's so tacky it's cool!
The tour group is a lot of fun and we've so far seen the Forbidden City (packed with tourists), the Three Gorges Dam, Shanghai, spent two nights on trains and one on a boat plus lots of other stuff. We've been constantly stared at by the Chinese who obviously still find the sight of Westerners quite interesting (some stare blatantly, others walk past us and chuckle to themselves). A few of us have been asked to be in their photos which is kind of weird.
Gotta go. This is costing me too much. Most things are cheap here in China but use of the internet at this hotel is not one of them. Will write more when I get back from holiday in about a weeks time which I'm very much looking forward to.

Off to China

I've gotta leave for Heathrow airport from my brothers place in one hour and yet I'm wasting time on the internet while I drink my coffee.
China is starting out on the back foot with me. In total, over two days I have spent 3 hours and 45 mins in queues in order to get a Chinese visa. When even Londoners are taking photos of the queue, it's clear that's pretty poor form. That said, I'm very confident the place will win me over quick once I get there and start looking around.
I'm very unsure what to expect though. I can't speak or read Chinese so that could be tricky. I'm guessing they don't speak much Spanish either. And what about all the bad things I hear about the place? Can I ask my tour guide his thoughts on their terrible track record on human rights abuses, torture, the Falun Gong etc and get a decent answer? It should be a very interesting place anyway.
Leaving London is sad. I've quite enjoyed my time here and won't see Luke and Theresa until maybe next June at the earliest. My mention in a previous blog entry about Mars Bar Icecreams was taken as a hint to buy more by L & T so between the three of us we've polished off another six-pack of them in the last couple of days. Oh, so good! Might have to start writing letters when I'm back home to get them going again in Australia. Hell, I'm be sitting at home with no job so I've gotta do something with my time!
Alright, now I've really gotta try to cram all of my stuff back into my backpack. This is gonna be tough.

In España

Capital city Madrid was first up. A somewhat typical big city, the thing you do in Madrid is visit the Royal Palace and see museums and big art galleries. The Royal Palace is amazing. They let you walk through about 25 of the roughly 3000 rooms that are there. Decorated with tapestries, old and impressive paintings and extremely detailed frescoes on the ceilings, there is heaps to look at and it oozes richness like ummm, a toads back oozes poison. My favourite room was the one where "the king would perform the daily ceremony of getting dressed". Way to turn everything into a ceremony! I bet the Royal Flossing Of The Teeth ceremony would have been a right royal cracker as well!

My favourite city in Spain is now Cordoba. South of Madrid (in the REGION of Andalucia), on the day I arrived it was still 39 degrees at 7.50pm. The city centre has narrow streets and heaps of plazas where, once the sun goes down and the city cools, everyone emerges to sit around and cool off and look at fountains and stuff. I had a hostel room to myself in Cordoba and took to the traditional afternoon siesta like I was born to do it! To be in a place that views a sleep in the afternoon as a good idea rather than mocking it and calling it a "nanna nap" or "grandpa nap" was a joy. The highlight of Cordoba is The Mezquita which was originally the site of a Christian Cathedral in about the 6th century AD. Then the Arabs took over the city and knocked it down and built a MMM (Massive Muslim Mosque) about a hundred years or so later. Then the Christians in about the 13th century won the city back and converted the Mosque to a Cathedral so it´s got elements of both religions in it and is amazing to look at. This was King Ferdinand III´s doing. Commonly known to his mates as Ferdo or The Ferdmeister, his name seems to pop up heaps in this area of Spain so he must have been pretty busy with all his conquering and other kingly duties.
Now I´m in Granada where The Alhambra is. Rumoured to have been named after an EP that Canadian band The Tea Party released a few years back (I may be wrong about that), it is an area containing, once again, a combination of Muslim and Christian buildings/churches and gardens. Before going, everyone was telling me how wonderful it is, building it up again and again so that when I finally saw it yesterday I was slightly disappointed. It was really nice but too much build up meant it suffered a little. That said, it´s pretty impressive. Gardens full of hedges, flowers and running water are relaxing to sit in and the Muslim buildings converted into Catholic churches with elements of both religions make for a very busy camera.
I´ve got a couple more days here before it´s back to London. Actually, I´ll back in Melbourne in less than a month now. Just in time for the Grand Final!

London Calling

I´ve just spent a little short of 2 weeks in London, staying with my brother Luke and his fiance Theresa who currently live there in a funny named suburb called Sidcup (sounds like a name for an icecream company). Also in London were my parents who also happened to be visiting at the same time. It was really good to see everyone!

Summer in London is living up to it´s reputation. I had three days when I arrived of nice sunny 21 degree weather. Then for the rest of my time it was at best overcast and at worst, raining and cold. I don´t know how the Poms can stand it! Yesterday I spent an hour and a half standing in a queue outside the Chinese consulate trying to get a visa to visit there and with the rain, wind and cold, it really sucked. Then I reached the front of the queue just before the 2 hour mark and the woman told me I was too late to get a visa processed that day! Why was I late? Because there was a freekin´slow queue! Whose fault? THE CHINESE CONSULATE!!! Who had to pay a kings ransom for a full day pass on the tube only to find it was a waste and will have to go through the same thing again another day? ME!!!! So yeah, still got a bit of anger left over from that one.

But the anger melted away somewhat when I was walking near Charing Cross station later that day and I stopped to pick up a Big Issue from a dude on the corner and he called me "Guv'nor". Twice! First and second time I've ever been called "Guv'nor"! Hopefully not the last.

Basically in my time in London I took it pretty easy. Visited some relatives one day, checked out some museums and galleries on other days, and spent a fair bit of time relaxing, reading the final Harry Potter book and refreshing my mp3 player with lots of new music. I probably should have been heaps more productive but I´ve enjoyed being a bit of a slacker.

Now I´m in Madrid. Just arrived today. All I've done is check in to the hostel and find a tapas bar where I enjoyed being given a small free snack with each beer. I´ve got 12 nights in Spain so am planning to head south in a few days to Andalucia (everytime I see the city´s name I think of The Clash´s "Spanish Bombs" song) where The Alhambra is. It´s a "palace and fortress complex" which I think was built by the Moors who I prefer to call The Moops in honour of George Costanza. Should be fun and I should see lots of sun for the next 12 days.

Oh yeah, I was just about to finish this blog entry and then I remembered... About 10 years ago, it was possible to stroll on in to a supermarket, saunter on down the ice-cream aisle and pick up a six-pack. No, I´m not talking beer, I´m talking a six-pack of Mars Bar Icecreams! An actual improvement on the original chocolate bar, they are melt in your mouth gold! But like Holly Valances singing career, they disappeared virtually overnight. Unlike Holly Valances career, I´ve missed Mars Bar Icecreams. But....THEY STILL SELL MARS BAR ICECREAMS IN LONDON!!!! I´ve eaten two now and I tell ya, they are just as good as I remember them!

So if you add up the fact that I ate two Mars Bar Icecreams, was called Guv'nor, managed to spend a fair bit of time with the family and I refreshed my mp3 player with new music, I´d say that easily cancels out the carp weather I´ve seen and has made for a fun time in London.

San Francisco, Las Vegas - tick 'em off!

Well I've just finished 4 nights in San Francisco and 2 nights in Las Vegas.

San Francisco - A really nice city that feels a lot like Melbourne. When in San Francisco you are supposed to do three things. Ride a cable car, visit Alcatraz and check out the Golden Gate Bridge. Well I only managed one of those. I wandered down to Fishermans Wharf where the boats leave for Alcatraz and found out that the next free space on a tour was in a weeks time at 2.20pm. So no Alcatraz for me. As a replacement, I ended up getting on a cruise for $10 that took us under the Golden Gate Bridge and then AROUND Alcatraz. So I didn't get on the island but at least I saw what it looks like up close. Kind of shabby. A girl in the hostel yesterday told me that going inside is awesome. I choose not to believe that. I reckon it was dingy, cold and probably harbouring bird flu due to the pigeons. :) In short, a health risk! I was wise to avoid the place!
The cable car I didn't do either. The queues to get on one were just ridiculous. So I decided that it was really only a glorified tram except that it goes up hills probably just a bit steeper than going east on a tram on Bourke Street so skipped it. I DID manage to see the Golden Gate Bridge up close when I hired a bicycle and cycled over it. It felt good to get back on a bike after more than 3 months. It was windy up the top and you couldn't see the top of the bridge due to constant cloud but it was well worth it and gave a great view of San Fran. I also walked just about everywhere including some parts of town that felt somewhat dodgy. A tourist with a map and no local knowledge is a danger to himself I reckon.
There were no moonie sightings either. Never even heard of them until today!
I really enjoyed SF but what was a real surprise to me was the homeless situation there. Driving in to the city on the bus we drove through a couple of streets that had heaps of people on them and pretty much everyone was either pushing a shopping trolley with all their possessions in it or wandering around without any real place to go. The bus dropped me about two streets from there at my hostel. I then discovered that it's a fact of life in San Francisco that pretty much wherever you go, there are homeless people everywhere! It's often in the daily newspapers but the last time the mayor did anything about it, he just hired more police which is so obviously a bandaid "fix". It was very disappointing and sad to see really. I did get a laugh at one point when a woman came up to me (one of so many) and jokingly said "Right, all I'm asking for is your credit card, your pin number, and about half an hour." I think that approach was doing quite well for getting her some spare change. I don't know what else to say about it cos I have no answers or anything and there's homelessness everywhere but it was a shock to see it in such public view and in such massive proportions.

Las Vegas - Any city that has the likes of Celine Dion and Barry Manilow singing 5 or 6 nights a week is either pure evil or has a wicked sense of humour. I choose to believe it's the humour option. I really enjoyed Vegas. Neon and bright lights everywhere. The only way I could see so many bright lights in LA is to crawl out of my bottom bunk in my dorm here and smack my head on the iron bar above! I spent most of my short time just walking around looking at what a shipload of money can build. Great water shows, trapeze acts, pyramids, a sphinx, a castle...etc. I ended up spending a while at the Las Vegas Hilton where I found the Star Trek Experience which awakened my inner nerd. It was pretty cool. Out-of-work actors dressed as Klingons and members of the Borg...etc .
I didn't even end up gambling while there. At one point I felt like I should so that I could say I have gambled in Vegas but then decided that i couldn't really give a rats about whether I have or not so just skipped it completely.
And I paid $6.49 for a gelati. Was so suprised when I was told how much it cost that I actually paid it.

Now have one more day in Venice Beach before I catch a plane tomorrow to London where I'll be staying with my brother and his fiance and seeing my parents who are visiting them too. It'll be 4/7ths of Evans family reunion and I'm really looking forward to it.

Los Angeles

Well after a couple of sweltering days in congested and Gold Coast built-up hotel-style ridden Cancun, it was goodbye to Craig and hello LA! In my time in LA I've been called Sir, Dude and Bro. I've seen lots of loud people and have upped my donut consumption in order to more properly assimilate into the culture. They'll make me an LA copper if I keep this up!
Arriving in LA was weird. My major understanding of LA comes from owning too much old-school west-coast hip-hop. Ice-T, Ice Cube, NWA etc have given me a great education in LA street names. I was on a city tour today and I was just hoping the guy would take us down through South Central so I could see what that area looks like. One example of the real tour was comments from the tour leader like "See that tunnel we are driving past now? That's the tunnel where in the movie Independence Day, they blew up 300 cars!". I could have been just as happy if the guy had taken us down to South Central and said "Ok, we are now going to follow the original route driven by Evil E as described by Ice-T in his classic song 'Let's Peel Their Caps Back'". But it wasn't to be. We did get to see lots of interesting stuff un-rap-related though.
We drove past Santa Monica beach which was the home of Baywatch. The driver, after announcing this then hit play on the cassette deck and we got to hear the whole Baywatch theme song. Way corny! We drove up into the Hollywood hills, Beverly Hills, Belle Aire etc and saw what obscene amounts of money can get you in the way of a house these days. Impressive. We went to Hollywood Boulevard and saw the stars on the sidewalk with famous people's names. I couldn't find my name anywhere! We got dropped off at Rodeo Drive and that was boring. I hate shopping. I could walk around the more expensive end of Collins Street and look at stores with stuff I can't afford and don't want so for me to be dumped out of a bus in front of the most expensive stores in California is a waste. Longest 20 mins of my life waiting for the bus to pick us up! :)

San Francisco is tomorrow. For those who don't like or don't know their west coast rap, I hope the above wasn't too confusing. :)

The United States Of Mexico

Well we are now in Playa Del Carmen which is a beach town built for Yanks to visit and feel like they've never left home. Kind of like Cancun but a bit smaller I guess. Maccas, Starbucks, Walmart, it's all here. It's also unbelievably hot. Step outside for 5 mins and you are soaked in sweat. Our hotel room has a small overhead fan that gives little in the way of relief and last night, neither Craig or I got much sleep. It's just too damn hot!!! That said, the beach is very nice. It has very fine grains of sand. An important attribute of a good beach.

Over the last week and a half or so, we've made our way through Guatemala and Mexico, seeing 3 different Mayan ruins sites. Chichen Itza, Palenque and Tikal all got a look-in. Afterwards, the judges (all 2 of them) conferred, voted and judged Tikal to be the winner! The reason being that it was wedged deep in the jungle and that it's like taking a bushwalk to see the various ruins. We had to get up at 3am in order to catch a bus that would get us there before sunrise. We then climbed up one of the ruins so that we were sitting looking out over the forest canopy. The tour guide made us all shut our mouths for about 10 mins so we could look and listen and watch the clouds float over a couple of other temple/pyramids poking up above the trees and hear the howler and spider monkeys calling out to each other and the birds waking up. It was pretty awesome. It didn't have people trying to sell you a cheap piece of mayan pottery probably made in China and it didn't have massive crowds. So it won hands down. The other two sites were definitely also pretty amazing too though.

The more time we've spent in the heat of Central America, the more I have become aware of a disturbing custom. Most people deal with standing outside in the oppressive heat by telling each other how hot it is, maybe waving a fan or drinking a cold drink etc. However, for middle-aged men with large pot bellies, the custom appears to be to hike your t-shirt up and over your gut in order to air it out. I've seen it time and time again. The t-shirt just sits there, perched above the gut, in no danger of falling down, as the dude proudly displays his so-called "roof above the tool-shed". I HAVE SEEN ENOUGH BIG GUTS PROTRUDING BOLDLY OUT FROM UNDER T-SHIRTS TO LAST ME A LIFETIME!!!!!

Ok, felt good to get that out of my system.

On Saturday, Craig and I go our separate ways. He's off to New York and I'm off to LA. After 3 months of travelling together, I'm not sure if that's enough distance between us but it's a start. ;) Nah, it's been a lot of fun but I think we are both ready for the next part of our holiday. I'm hoping to get to Las Vegas and also San Francisco in the next two weeks before I then head over to London to see my brother and also my parents who will be visiting at the time. It'll be like a mini family reunion and I'm really looking forward to it.

Flores, Guatamala

They are kicking me out of this internet cafe. We are in Flores. It is cool.
I've added some new photos.
http://picasaweb.google.com/damien.evans/Holiday2007

Guatemala City

Yesterday we left Copan and sat in an overcrowded minibus for 6 hours. The bus company was not the most organised. They overbooked which meant someone ended up having to be dumped on a different bus company who didn´t really want her plus about 20 mins into the journey someone´s backpack which was strapped to the top of the bus started falling off and would have gone completely if a couple of people hadn´t stuck their arms out the windows to hang on while the driver pulled over.
Unfortunately we´ve ended up in a bit of a dodgy part of town in Guatemala City. The hotel we are in has it´s front door locked at all times and we take most of our money out of our wallets when we head outside. That said, if we stick together and only head out during daylight hours we should be right. Walking around this morning looking for the bus station was certainly interesting. As well as bus ticket out of here, all we wanted was a place that would serve a cup of coffee with milk. No-one here has milk! I saw enough cows in trucks on the way here so how is it possible they don´t have a milk or even the ever-popular "powdered milk substitute"? Maybe in the nicer parts of town you can get milk. This place feels grimy, old and has many, many people who look like they are barely surviving.
We had hoped to catch Shrek 3 at a cinema somewhere today but it appears that the movie cinema is only open in the morning. Maybe because it´s a Sunday. Hard to say. Anyway, we get out of here tomorrow morning on a hopefully nice bus which will take us to Tikal so we can see some more Mayan ruins.
While I will miss Copan and the family I stayed with, my bowels are celebrating (quietly!) being out of there. The food wasn´t always in agreeance with them. Hopefully they will have a better time of it from now on. :) Yeah, a few notes on bowels had to happen sooner or later. Very much looking forward to being in a place where I can drink the tap water. Only a couple of weeks to go before that´s possible as that´s when I reach LA in the States.

Copan Update

Well we've been in the town of Copan for a week now and it's going well. The family that I'm staying with are very nice, cook me tasty food (anything from pancakes to enchiladas etc) and sometimes I can even understand what they are saying to me. No-one speaks english so it's tricky at times. Actually, the mum of the house, Esmeralda, is very good at speaking slowly and simply so I can usually get the gist of what she's saying. The other person I talk to a bit is young Carlitos who is 4 years old and doesn't seem to mind that I only understand a little of what he's saying. It sure doesn't stop him from saying plenty! I'm sure I got told a fair bit about the new Fantastic Four movie the other day and later he explained in depth to Craig and I how to make a watch out of plasticine but my ability to reply with anything sensible is not great. Listening to me speak in the past tense is at times painful I'm sure as huge delays ensue as I scan the depths of my brain for what tense I am aiming for, how I need to tweak it just right and then I spit it out. You can definitely hear the cogs turning! I need more practice.

The setup here is pretty good. I've got a bedroom of my own with a bathroom and a tv that has a good number of cable tv shows including CNN in english plus Simpsons and Family Guy in either spanish or english. Craig tends to drop by in the evening so that we can watch the soccer as the Copa America competition is on right now. Last night we watched Chile get spanked by Brazil. Carlos, time to barrack for Peru!

The Spanish classes are pretty good and go for four hours in the afternoon. The mornings are free time and are usually spent keeping out of the heat, doing some homework etc. Yesterday, being the weekend, Craig and I went to Macaw Mountain which is a bird sanctuary close to town. We saw awesome coloured macaws, very cool toucans plus owls and other birds who were a notch down on the coolness scale from the macaws and toucans but still worthy of a bit of a look. I took photos but the pc I'm using doesn't seem to have a usb connection so I'll load them up another time.

This morning I went to see the Mayan ruins which are also just outside of town. They were pretty impressive. It's thought that the civilisation died out in the area because the population got too large and the environment they were living in couldn't handle all the deforestation and other general havoc they subjected it to. Crops failed, not enough food was produced etc etc. I guess they didn't have Live Earth concerts back then.

The mosquito population here is looking much healthier than they were when I arrived and I'm taking a fair bit of credit for that. This morning I killed a mozzie dining on a little "liquid Damo" (as they like to call it) and I swear he was as large as Norm from the Life Be In It commercials! They tell me there's no malaria here so it's more of an annoyance then anything. I have two or three small lizard/gecko creatures living in the roof of my bedroom and they come out at night to eat bugs and run along the walls but I think a pep-talk is in order because they really need to lift their game.

I'm hungry. I'm going to try to find some cake.

Red Beans, Rice and the rest...

Well we are well into the heart of red beans and rice country now and every time I have a plate of the stuff, I can't help but think of the Michael Franti and Spearhead song of the same name.
"Red beans and rice, I could eat a plate twice". Nice work Mr Franti! That said, in the same song he didn't need to mention that eating a lot of prunes will keep you loose. That was too much information. :)

So we left Samara about a week ago. One thing I forgot to mention about Samara was that the bank was very well protected. For a small bank in a small town, they needed three security guards with pump action shotguns to keep things in order. Not sure if that makes it more or less safe. It felt like a scene from a bad 80's action movie.

Then it was onto Monteverde. It means Green Mountain and although their naming skills lack a little imagination, they make up for it with their truthfulness. Its basically in a cloud forest so it rains a lot but is still kind of warm. We did a canopy tour of the forest where dudes strap you into a harness and you are hooked onto a cable and cruise through the sky over or through the trees, sometimes right through the clouds as well. It was pretty cool. We also did a couple of nature walks in which we saw a couple of sloths very high up in trees, an awesome looking toucan (Imogen, we have photos of both sloth and toucan! Will post some other time), a small tree snake, an agouti which is like a large rat, and then lots of other birds. Monteverde was well worth the visit. I even liked the restaurant that provided Alka Seltzer at the counter! Very thoughtful of them to cater for if their food gives you trouble.

After that it was onto the Arenal Volcano near the city of La Fortuna. It's claim to (in-)fame is that it blew up in 1967 and killed 87 people. We did a tour that took us out to see the lava running down. Naively I kind of thought I would be able to look down and see a stream of lava running past my feet with a guide repeating occasionally not to put our feet in the lava if we like our feet the way they are. Very wrong. We were parked about 2kms from the mountain (there is an exclusion zone to protect people who don't get the dangers of lava like myself) and when it got dark a large mini-van (a three-quarter van?) full of mostly north american tourists stared at a black mountain covered mostly in clouds. Then eventually we saw a red dot roll down the mountain and that was the queue for some "oooohs" and "aaaahhhss". I was a tad underwhelmed but then it got a bit better as more and more large chunks of red hot lava (coincidentally the size of a mini-van) rolled down the hill at 1000 degrees celcius and damn fast. After that we drove away and went to the Baldi Hot Springs which is actually much like going to the swimming pool as it was like a resort except that the water ranges from nicely warm to bloody hot! We found a nice bar that you could sit at while still submerged in the water and we toasted Dave and Annette's "got a baby on the way" news with a couple of beers and a Crazy Monkey cocktail. (Good name for the baby eh Dave? The second name still has to be Damien though. Best man gets middle name naming rights as I've explained!)

Now we are in the town of Copan Ruinas. We arrived today after about three days of bus riding. We passed through Nicaragua and saw some rain, a hotel and some sun. Now we are in Honduras. We start at a spanish school I think tomorrow. We meet our host families in about an hour. Craig and I requested separate families because frankly, two and a bit months of hanging out almost constantly has meant we could do with some time off! As he put it, I'm the first person he sees in the morning and the last person he sees at night and both of us agree that's just not right! So we now have two weeks of spanish tuition and living with a family in Copan. Copan is next door to some supposedly awesome ruins which I plan to check out very soon. This place is really nice actually. The countryside has a very rural feel with rolling hills (some covered in trees, others nude) and lush green pastures with grazing cows atop them. The town itself is old Spanish colonial style with cobble stone streets which look great but can't have done the rickety old bus we rode in on any good. I'd better go get stuck into it now. Time to meet my new family...

Samara Beach

We've had a few days kicking back on Samara Beach now and its been great. People think that I'm a local now because my skin is basically tanned black. Ummm, I don't have any photos of my new tan so I guess you'll just have to believe that it's possible. :)
The basic plan for what happens most days here is as follows:
8am - get up, walk down the road for a breakfast of pancakes and coffee.
9am - put the boardies on, kick back on the beach with a book or mp3 player, have a swim, go for a walk.
11am - morning tea is usually a banana milkshake.
11.30am - more kicking back on the beach with book or mp3 player.
1pm - lunch.
2pm - afternoon nap (tired from the mornings exertions).
3.30pm - afternoon swim, walk, read more book.
5pm - beer o'clock.
6.30pm - dinner
7.30pm - write in diary, read more, relax, listen to music.
10pm at the very latest - asleep.

We leave tomorrow at 2.30pm and that's a good thing because if we keep this up for much longer we're likely to get harpooned next time we go swimming! :) We are off to Monteverde next which is a rainforest area so we can do some hiking and hopefully see a toucan and maybe a sloth or something. We've just found a great place in Honduras too where we are going to both book in for 2 weeks of living with local families in a town called Copan. You get one-on-one spanish tuition, you live with a family who feed you and you eat lots of empanadas. Sounds great! Gotta book that in soon.

Miami Airport

To get from Peru to Costa Rica, we had to fly via Miami, USA. We had heard much about the problems that could arise due to George "Brainiac" Bush's over-the-top rules about getting into and out of his terror besieged country. :) So armed with a large dose of cynicism and its good friend sarcasm, we arrived in Miami expecting it to take hours to get through Homeland Security and Customs. I guess we were lucky because it took only about half an hour. Sure we had to get fingerprinted and have our photos taken like common criminals but in general it was pretty pain free. We were so stunned we had to find a nice little sportsbar where we could kick back with a couple of pints of Guinness while we waited for our flight out of Miami at 6.10pm that night.
It was the flight out where our fun began. After an hour delay as they couldnt find enough staff to work on the plane, we were up in the air. After an hour and bit of flying (more than half way there) we were told that there was a problem with some sort of equipment. In nice calm tones our captain said that it was not a worry because they have three of them, so the other two, umm, thingies were working fine. But, we had to turn back to Miami. We arrived back in Miami at around 11pm and after about 20 mins of the flight crew being unable to attach the bridge thingy to the plane, we were finally able to get back on the ground. We were then told that they had arranged us another plane that would leave at 12:30am. This wasnt really a good option for us because we were then going to be arriving in the city of San Jose at around 2am, without anywhere to stay. We were starving at this stage as we hadnt eaten dinner yet and all of the food joints at the airport had closed for the night. A hungry Damo is a grumpy Damo and I decided to have a word to a dude to see if we could be put up in a hotel and fly out the next day. I figured the chances of this were slim but the growl in my stomach told me to try anyway. Before I had even mentioned the reason for why we should get a free hotel stay, the guy was organising it! Great stuff! We arrived at the Marriott Hotel to find ourselves in a room with a double bed each and about fifteen hundred pillows on each one. This was a damn nice room! In 32 years, I have not slept on a more comfortable bed. This bed is the closest I will get to having a nap on a cloud. I kid you not!
The next morning we ate the biggest pancakes I have ever seen and caught a trouble-free flight to San Jose. So while our experience with Miami airport was interesting, it kind of worked out alright in the end.
Now for a week or so relaxing on the beach of Samara.

In Lima

Well we are back in Lima. Lima is very much just another city. Its got grey cloud hanging over it 24 hours a day and seems to maintain a constant 17 degrees. How the whole population isnt depressed 24/7 I will never know. A very average city that we both look forward to getting out of in a couple of days time when Craig and I head for the beaches of Costa Rica where I will be tanning up like there's no tomorrow. (Ok funny bastards, write your jokes about me and tanning now - come on, I know you wanna!).
Actually, what Lima does have is a nice little Brazilian bar that a few of us from the Peru tour checked out a couple of nights ago. Great tasting drinks and really good music had us all up there dancing with the Brazilians. Those guys have more rhythm in one big toe than all of us whiteys combined but we did our best and had a lot of fun doing it.
The last few days of our tour were spent in a jungle lodge in the Amazon. We went to Monkey Island with lots of monkeys that made Craig and I miss the animal park back in Bolivia, did a freekin huge walk through the jungle to The Lost Lake that was obviously not lost at all, saw an awesome night sky with next to no light pollution to spoil it and got bitten by hopefully non-malarial mozzies.
I've added 5 more photos. Check 'em out:
http://picasaweb.google.com/damien.evans/Holiday2007

Inca Trail and Machu Picchu - Done!

Yep, we are now back in Cusco after completing the Inca Trail and seeing Machu Picchu. The Inca Trail itself was just amazing. 45 kilometres in 3 and a bit days seemed like a big ask but in the end it was tough but quite do-able. The hardest day was day 2 when we had to hike 16 kms including a steep climb up many rocky steps to what is known as Dead Womans Pass which is at 4200 metres above sea level. So not only was it a long walk but the altitude meant that it was very slow going. Every now and then i would look up and see the top of the mountain that I was aiming for but it didn't seem to be getting much closer. One guy on my tour got through it by listening to angry music on his iPod. I got through it but trying to remember as much as I could about the Smurfs, Fraggle Rock, Star Blazers and Astroboy. Cartoons got me there in the end although trying to remember the name of Gargamel's cat from The Smurfs (Azriel) was too much for me. I had to ask an Irish couple for the answer to that one!
What amazed me was the porters. For 12 tourists and 2 guides, we had 18 porters carrying up to 20kgs each on their backs, cooking awesome meals, putting up tents etc. Those guys are so fit. We all got to try on one of their heavy backpacks during day 3 for a photo and then 4 of us guys decided to just walk up a small hill while wearing them and it nearly killed us! I reached the top and was really struggling for air!
Day 4 was just a two hour hike before the sun came up in order to reach Machu Picchu. The sun illuminated an awesome view of the Incan city ruins, surrounded on all sides by mountains. The tour around the ruins itself was great too. You get to walk amongst them, climb the steps as the Incas would have etc. A few of us finished it off with a hike up a mountain next to it called Wayña Picchu which was a very steep climb of about 50 mins which ended with us (and so many other tourists) jostling for a position at the top of the mountain and looking at an awesome 360 degree view of the area. It was quite dangerous up there with very little in the way of ropes or anything to stop you falling off the side. There is no way it would be allowed in Australia. The only safety precaution they really had was a limit of 400 people per day and a system where you sign in when you start and sign out when you finish. I guess at the end of the day if someone hasn't signed back out, they go looking for bodies or something. Crazy. Still, it was well worth the climb and we didn't die so that was pretty cool.
Back in Cusco for a free day it has been both entertaining and frustrating. An ATM machine has confiscated my bank card cos it reckons incorrectly that the card has expired but today is a public holiday so i cant retrieve it. We fly out to the amazon jungle tomorrow and hopefully I can do something about it tomorrow before we leave. It's a concern although i have a visa card i can use in the interim. The public holiday is for the feast day Corpus Christi. The whole city is celebrating with music, massive crowds converging on the city centre etc. There are lots of stalls too where you can buy the local delicacy - roast guinea pig. Not just a slice of meat, it looks like a charred rat. I guess you just gnaw away at the meatier parts. Every time I see them I think of the guinea pigs we used to own as kids. Poor little Tweedle-Dee, Tweedle-Dum and Alice! (Geez, those names were bad! :) )
I have heaps of photos of the hike and of mountains and Machu Picchu etc and will upload a few when i get a chance but right now i dont have the right cable on me so it will have to be some other time.

The Yak turns 40

Yep, today is a little bit special because it´s Craigs birthday and he's turned the big 40! Three cheers for the old fella! I probably shouldnt make jokes about his age because I would say that he's probably the fittest person on the tour. I expect that on the first day of the Inca Trail hike, we'll just see a blur of metal as his old man walking frame zooms right past us! Tonight there will be a beer or two to celebrate. Probably no more than that because we've got so much hiking to come in the next few days that a couple of beers at the altitude we are at now should be more than enough. We will celebrate more later.
We are now in Cusco. In the last few days we've been to Lake Titicaca (I think I still have a mental age of about 5 because i still chuckle a little each time I say the name) where we visited the Uros islands which are made of floating reeds and made by locals who live on them and then we visited a rocky island where we stayed the night with local families. The island was at 3800 metres above sea level and we then had to hike up to 4000 metres to where our house for the night would be. This was our first serious bit of exercise since arriving at high altitude and it was a bit of a concern as we all huffed and puffed while walking really slowly. We later hiked to the top of the island which was at 4200 metres and again it was very difficult. Still, it will have helped to acclimatise us to the altitude for the Inca Trail. The Inca Trail starts in two days and is often now the topic of conversation as we all hope we can actually manage to walk about 40 kms over 3 and a bit days. Everyone keeps saying "its not a race, as long as you make it eventually" to help themselves feel better. I like it. :) I'm a bit nervous myself because its a blo0dy long way. Walking through Cusco before, we could see massage places everywhere so i will have to keep that in mind when the going gets tough. Anyway, should be a great experience!

Start Of Peru tour

So today Craig and I start our 15 day tour of Peru which includes the Inca Trail. We've had a rough couple of days with two overnight buses in a row. One that was so cold we almost froze overnight and another that was about 26.5 hours of sitting only made slightly better by a bollywood film that went for about 3.5 hours. We arrived in Lima, Peru yesterday morning to discover we had both picked up a little food poisoning so yesterday was basically all about sleeping, the toilet and watching tv. Both of us are feeling better today than yesterday so hopefully by tomorrow we'll be back on top of things.
Our last day at the animal park was a good one. We didnt work so just walked around. Saw three of the pumas that are kept at the park, saw some birds, got peed on one last time by a baby spider monkey called Alfito... it was a fun day.

Last Day at Inti Wara Yassi

Today was our last day at Inti Wara Yassi. Sad to be leaving but exciting to be moving onto something else and getting away from being used as a toilet all day by monkeys and used as a smorgasbord for the sand flies and mozzies.
Tomorrow Craig and I will walk around and take photos of one of the pumas who our roommate walks on a daily basis so we should be able to get somewhat close to it. Then in the arvo we take a bus and then another bus to get to La Paz in Bolivia and from there we somehow have to get to Lima, Peru for our Peru tour. Again, the plans are a bit unclear at the moment but it'll work out.

I took heaps of photos today of the monkeys. I have posted three of the best on the website that I linked to last time. The rest I can bore you all with when i get back from holidays.

Couple of photos

Its getting late and i have no monkey photos but here are two photos i took from earlier on in the holiday. Mainly just for me to see if it works ok or not. I could paste them here i guess but the photos are 1 mb each and might eventually make this web page slow to load.

I hope to take monkey photos tomorrow if the weather will come good.
Go here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/damien.evans/Holiday2007

Only 3 days left with the spider monkeys. The one that bit me died today of internal injuries from his fall after being attacked by the monkeys the other day. So that was sad.
Last night I slept the night in the jungle, under a hammock in the area that Craig is currently working in during the day. The idea behind this is that a little while back, some capuchin monkeys went missing overnight. Possibly poachers took them. So now every second night two people have to sleep in hammocks in the area where they live in the jungle. The idea is you should go to sleep but if you hear monkeys making a racket, then look into it. There was no action. I slept very little last night though because the hammocks werent comfortable at all. It was also cold even though i had the polar fleece on, a Magpies beanie, a sleeping bag draped over me and a capuchin monkey sleeping on my chest. I slept for the first half of today back at the hostal before working after lunch. A few beers after work and i am ready for bed.

Got Bit

Ok, its pouring down outside today but luckily both Craig and i had already planned to take a day off to organise further travel and just take it easy. A much better option than sitting under a small shelter with about 20 wet and cold monkeys all slowly getting on each others nerves because they are bored which is what took place yesterday afternoon.

The day after I wrote my last blog update about how i hadn't been bitten yet, I went and got bitten. I was holding the lead on a male spider monkey called Frodo who is fairly new to the park and still getting used to things. He can be fairly jumpy but had given me no trouble. His lead was a bit tied up around a branch so I deftly let go of his lead with one hand and grabbed at the lead closer to his neck with the other. Well my lightning quick movement scared the living carp out of Frodo and before I've known it he's gone the bite on my hand before jumping back and making scared and excited noises. I then had to calm him down before handing him to someone else and heading off to the clinic. Luckily it didn't need stitches or anything, just some betadine stuff to keep the germs out. Fortunately it was just a bite done out of fear rather than an attack which i really can't see him doing.

Later that day Frodo got attacked by 5 other monkeys. Being new I guess they were testing him out. I promise i didn't organise the attack as payback! :) Anyway, he was even more freaked out than usual so i took him for a walk and we sat in the middle of what is a kind of stable landslide in the jungle and soaked up some sun. Very relaxing actually.

I still don't have any photos to post of the monkeys but i might take the camera along tomorrow if the weather is nice. The danger is having a capuchin monkey steal it so its tricky.

Itchy, tired but enjoying da monkeys

Well we've done about a week worth of animal park work now. It's going well. In fact i will keep this quick cos i am tired and its now 10.20pm and i want to go to bed. I get up at 7am every day, eat brekky at 7.30am and am working by 8am. Work finishes at 6.30pm and then usually its a shower to wash the monkey off the body, down to a local restaurant where we drink a couple of beers, eat a large meal and sometimes the three of us sharing a room at the hostel are all in our beds by 10pm. We are so tired by the end of the day. We have decided to pay to rent at a hostel nearby rather than living in either of the two hostels that the park provides as part of the 'cover charge'. Apparently the standard of the two places is pretty bad. A guy today was telling me how his feet are itchy due to bug bites while at work but its ok because the bed he's sleeping in probably hasnt had the sheets changed for two or three of its last occupants so he can just rub his feet on the sand on the sheets and that makes them feel better. Gross. So many people get sick too. Yet for the equivalent of about $3 australian a night we are in a hostel that mostly has hot water and is mostly clean and the sheets do get changed. Yet some people are still so tight about it! Its worth the extra money to stay healthy i reckon.

We are basically healthy apart from my hands. The sandflies and mozzies seem to hang around the spider monkeys and since using bug repellant isnt good for the monkeys, we cant wear any so i wear long sleeves even on the warmest days and just get bitten on my hands. My hands look like i've got smallpox or something. A dude told me that today actually. I have got to get to the tourist centre where apparently they have something that is 'natural' and that i can wear around the monkeys. Otherwise i will just have to put up with it. Its not a big deal, just a bit annoying. And itchy. At least no monkeys have bitten me yet. Two girls in the group of 5 people who look after the spider monkeys today copped a bite. One from a capuchin monkey when a girl tried to scare it away from the spider monkeys food (three stitches to the back of the head for her trouble) and one from a slightly nervous new male spider monkey who just got a fright from another monkey and decided to turn on the poor girl sitting next to him. It was just a couple of quick bites before he calmed down. He almost seemed to realise he had done wrong too cos he was going up to the girl afterwards and making cooing noises like he felt bad or something. She just needed a bandage to the arm. It reinforced for me that even though most of the time they are really gentle animals, they can go a bit nuts at a moments notice. But generally they are fine and fun to be around. :)

Ok, dead tired so gotta go.
Cannot believe the Pies are still winning! I should definitely go away more often...
And yeah, tasmanian tiger, tasmanian devil, whatever!

Monkey Business

Hi there. Well we've now spent two full days of working at the animal park and it's so cool! I've been assigned to being in the group of 5 people who look after the spider monkeys. Yesterday being my first day i was hanging out and helping with the capuchin monkeys just to get used to the whole thing. Capuchin monkeys are small and smart. Today I was standing next to where a capuchin monkey was feeding and it put two pieces of mandarin in my hand and was trying to close my hand over the mandarin to let me know that my job was to squeeze it really hard so it could drink the juice. Clever stuff! Then it was picking up my hand and trying to make me bash it on the mandarin to soften it up. Their brains are always ticking over. I can't carry a wallet or anything in my pockets either. They are expert pick-pockets and I gather that some were trained in the art before being rescued and sent to the park. Today i had every single pocket on my parka thoroughly searched. I had a 10 bolivian dollar note in one pocket and had to be really quick to get it out and stash it in my shoe before it was seen.

While yesterday was like a hot day in Queensland with the muggy heat, today was cold and rained a lot. After we had fed them lunch none of them had much energy so i was sitting down with two spider monkeys on each leg trying to keep warm and a capuchin monkey curled up around my shoulders. It easily makes up for having to clean out the cages where some of them have to sleep at night. It also makes up for coming home filthy due to muddy ground and a complete lack of interest in toilet training (so yeah, covered in urine and worse!) and then finding the shower is freezing cold. Mostly the monkeys we have most to do with are those that are new to the park so are on a leash until they can be trusted not to run away and to make sure they will be accepted by the group. There are a few of those. The older monkeys tend to be much more independent and don't seem to have much interest in us which is a good thing. I gather there is a plan to release some back into the wild at some point which is good because there are about 30 spider monkeys now and that's a little too large a group.

Other animals in the park are coatis ( weird raccoon-like creatures which are really only dangerous to your sense of smell cos they pong bad), howler monkeys, a couple of large local tortoises I saw ambling along a walking track, a few pumas, three ocelots (I haven't seen any of the cats yet as they are generally kept out of the way of the general public for obvious reasons), birds like toucans, parrots etc and various small animals like some sort of really vile weasel like creature that gets walked on a leash that has a stiff pipe in the middle so it can't attack the person walking it because they would happily rip your hand to shreds if they could. I saw two being walked today and they were angry little beasts. Tasmanian Tiger angry!

Ok, I've gushed about the animals for long enough. Time for sleep. I hope all is well back in Melbourne!

A couple of Pedro's in San Pedro

With both Craig and i having a middle name of Peter, it´s kind of apt that we've enjoyed the best part of our travel so far in a small town named after Saint Peter - San Pedro De Atacama. It's still in Chile near the Bolivian border and is about 2400 metres above sea level so we were taking the odd deep breath when we arrived due to the thinner than usual air.
We arrived after another gruelling bus ride, this one of 22 hours plus a connecting bus of about an hour and a half. So it was back to walking around like zombies for a while after that.

In fact, we were lucky we didn't do enough research really because we'd been hoping that we could travel straight from San Pedro through to Bolivia but it turns out that's not the case. Fortunately we ended up at the best town so far. It's got dusty roads, small white buildings, is extremely small and has a very relaxed atmosphere. There is not a cash register to be seen (it´s all paper receipts) and the food is good. Like a beachside resort in the middle of the Atacama Desert. We experienced the desert up close yesterday when we got stranded in it...

We had taken a tour that had us swiming/floating in some salt lakes, we then had a dip in another lake that was great for washing off all the salt and nearly froze us to the bone and then we were driven to a great expanse of salt that was a very dry lake in order to get photos of the sunset. It wasn't the best organised tour and there were only four of us on it but it was worth the money until on the way back our driver got bogged. Everywhere surrounding the area is just dry mud. Very dry and kind of pocked a bit like the top of a pavlova when you try to make those curls on it. Well that´s how it looked to me! Anyway, there are flatter bits that the 4 wheel drive uses as roads but our driver seemed a little too distracted by the very easy on the eye young lass in the passenger seat and suddenly our road had run out. He decided to keep going but we then got bogged in dry mud. It was dark at this point and cold, we were in bathers and thongs and he told us to walk back to the road! Not wise but the four of us stumbled and tripped along by the light of a full moon until we got tired of doing that and stopped. Eventually help came and we had to walk back to the 4 wheel drive where we tried a few tricks to get it out but it was stuck good and proper! At that point the 4 wheel drive was written off as a No Wheel Drive and we piled into a larger 4 wheel drive that got us back home safely. So yeah, the Atacama Desert is very nice but freakin' cold at night. I guess that's deserts for ya. (Not so with desserts however which come in both hot and cold varieties.)

So much else has happened but this has blog entry rambled on long enough. To summarise somewhat... we spent some time in Valparaiso which is a town on the west coast of Chile above Santiago. The main standout there was the poverty. So many people running street stalls where they seemed to be just selling bits of pieces of junk from their homes in order to get by. Very sad.
Today we got up at 3.30am to catch a bus that drove us to see some geysers that were up at 4400 metres. Because we were gained so much altitude so quickly we were told not to exert ourselves too much and were even given some coca leaf to chew which is quite legal in Chile as long as you don´t go around turning it into cocaine. They frown on that. :) The leaf is supposed to help with altitude sickness. Not sure it did as i didn´t feel much at all from it. Anyway, the geyser was pretty cool and i love they way they pronounce it as 'geezer' as it sounds straight out of The Bill. We then saw some alpacas, ate an empanada, saw some sort of ostrich variant and came back to San Pedro where we both had a well earned afternoon nap.

It´s now time for a couple of beers before dinner. Not sure when i will write next. We are trying to get to a place in Bolivia called Inti Wara Yassi which is an animal shelter where we plan to volunteer for about three weeks. The thought of getting to hang out with monkeys, pumas and other animals that have been rescued from dodgy owners sounds fantastic and I can't wait! The only tricky bit is getting there. We want a train but a bus is again looking like the best option! We'll figure it out as we go i guess. Seems to be working for us so far!
Cheers, D

Chillin´ in Santiago, Chile

Right, someone get the word out to Bruce Mcavaney cos I´m redefining the word 'special'. I´ve decided that the definition of¨'special' for me now is- standing in the confined toilet area of a moving bus, sleep deprived, while trying to balance and aim at the same time and then looking up out of the window (who needs a window in a toilet anyway!!!) and seeing the magnificent Andes mountain range scrolling past. Gold!

Oh wow, a taxi driver just rammed into a bus right outside this internet cafe! It was slow speed at an intersection, they rammed, stopped and then kept going like it never happened! Crazy!

Of course, one could also use the word 'special' to define the efforts of the pies in defeating the dons on anzac day. Go Didak!

So now we´re in Santiago, Chile. We arrived yesterday after an overnight bus ride from Buenos Aires to Mendoza (still in Argentina) and then a bus ride during the day from Mendoza, through the Andes and into Santiago. Neither of us slept much at all on the overnight bus ride so we were like zombies by last night. The Andes were awesome. Snow capped peaks, massive mountains, an occasional great lake, quite cold and at the top, a little hard to breathe due to the thin air. The customs people at the chilean border were cheeky. They had all the people on the bus lined up with our bags ready for scanning and who knew what else and yet they had the nerve to pass the hat around asking for tips! I reckon I gave them about 20 cents but in coinage so it sounded like more.

Today we are taking things pretty easy. I´ve got a very annoying cold i'm trying to get rid of and sleepless nights on buses and getting over jetlag is not helping it so hopefully a day of kicking back, arranging the next part of our trip and perhaps even finding a park to hang out in and get the diary up to date will do the trick.

Santiago is pretty cool. While Buenos Aires was packed with people and seemed to be 'go, go, go', santiago seems more laid back. In both places the common thing we've noticed is how nice everyone is. A friendly dude helped us work out how to catch the train yesterday and people have been great at helping us when our spanish has let us down. I did notice a smile yesterday at the chemist when i was asking for cold and flu medication of the night and day variety and i tried to say i have a cold. Somehow i combined the word for 'cold' with the word for 'sick' so just made up a word and the woman only let out a small smile before she grabbed the packet from the shelf that I was after. We do seem to get the odd look here and there from people as they walk by though. Craig likes to think that every glance his way is because they are admiring the tatts on his arms (or 'guns' as he likes to call them, often) but i'm thinking it's probably because we stand out as the gringos we are. :)

One last thing. You would think it would be easy to get a good dose of local food. I'm talking beans and rice and some vegies wrapped in a taco or tortilla. That's what i'd like however it's eluded us so far. Pizza places are everywhere plus a maccas on every corner but trying to get local food in a restaurant is tough. We are heading to a restaurant area tonight where we should do better though. I never thought I could get sick of pizza but it's happening! As for the vegetarianism, it's tough. Concessions are being made on occasion just because getting protein from non-animal sources is proving too tricky at times. So the odd portion of beef has been consumed and it's gone down alright just quietly. :)

Still in Buenos Aires

The hotel we are staying at has a free internet connection! Good stuff. Since I last wrote, we´ve managed to find a new hotel to stay at that is cheaper than the first one without too much trouble. We´ve then spent time exploring the city. Yesterday we walked basically all day. Very tiring stuff but well worth it to get an idea of the city. It´s massive. Goes on forever. Today we visited La Boca which is a poorer area where Maradona (the soccer dude)grew up. At some point they decided that painting their town really bright and contrasting colours would be a good thing to do. It looks fantastic. All the restaurants seem to have a guy and girl dancing the tango out the front and the one we went to also had an old man playing the accordion. I had a dance with a very nice tango dancing woman who basically just pushed me around into doing what was a horrible mangling of dance moves that looks very nice when it´s done correctly and like a new born giraffe finding it´s feet for the first time when i do it. Still, it was fun. I´ve got a photo but this pc is nowhere near ready to accept photos being uploaded.
Tomorrow we are heading west to Mendoza which is still part of Argentina. It´s something like 15 hours on a bus. Comfy semi-reclining seats but still, i suspect it´ll be tough going. We are still getting over the jetlag really but hopefully we both sleep very well tonight in preparation for it. From there we head into Chile to spend some time there.
Ok, it´s almost dinner time so time to go.

In Buenos Aires

Hola amigos, we are now in buenos aires and the shift key is already giving me trouble on this pc. after waking up at 6.45am on sunday to get to the airport, i think we finally arrived and got a proper sleep about 27-28 hours later. We were like zombies by then. instead of a shuttle bus to the city from the airport like all the "tourists" we caught a local bus that was less than a dollar and took us just about everywhere before we found the city centre. Interesting things to note: i saw a bloke who looks just like carlos (a mate) working at santiago airport. i think its his twin. Also had a flight attendant dude who looks like clark kent from superman and of course, have seen many lovely women. Really we´ve just arrived, slept and eaten so far so that´s all to tell. It´s now morning and we are going to explore the city. Weather is like Melbourne´s - wet and cool so now bragging to be done there.

Photo Request

I know I should be heading out for some last minute shopping and just generally panicking over all the things I haven't remembered to buy/pack but I gotta put up this list. Imogen emailed me with the following list of photos that she wants taken by myself or Craig:

1. A toucan
2. A paranha (preferably with teeth bared)
3. A sloth (are these found in South America? Not sure - try to get one anyway!!!)
4. Damien after a heavy night out on the town (this one gets extra points!)
5. A tantrum (this would be a rare occurrence from either of you!)
6. Che

We'll try to rise to the challenge. A couple of them may require acting. The Che photo is apparently not allowed to be one of a dude in a t-shirt so a look-alike will have to suffice. I'll start growing my hair long and see how it goes...

First Post

Ok, the deal here is that I will make the occasional post about my adventures in South America, London, China and wherever else I end up and your job will be to check this website every now and again and have a bit of a read. The way I see it, if I can get on the plane on April 22nd 2007 and arrive back home about 5 or so months later basically intact and without too many new foreign forms of bacteria inhabiting my lower bowel then that's MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!