Los Caminos Locos - The Crazy Roads Tour and a Third

Da Da Daaaar!

2012-02-04T04:23:00.002+13:00

So, I've spent this week in Dar es Salaam, relaxing a little more, hanging out with my friend Kara and her friends. There is quite the ex-pat community here in Dar, with lots of the foreigners hanging out together in regular friend-groups, and then bumping into an ever changing selection of non-regular friends at various social events. For example, on Tuesday when I got into town, I was taken to "Dining in Dar" which is a weekly event where "everyone" meets at a different restaurant each week, organised by one particularly efficient guy. In this way, folks get to meet new folks, catch up with folks they don't see that often and try out new places to eat in the city - and there are many places to eat in the city! I felt like a bit of a fraud, as the new folks, including myself, made their various introductions. While everyone else was able to explain their mostly worthy reasons for being in Dar (working for NGOs, volunteering, some other form of employment), I had to boldly state that I was just a tourist - although I spun this so that I was actually "supporting the local economy".

It was a great night, at a superb Indian restaurant, and I met some interesting people and reacquainted myself with some others that I'd met a couple of weeks early. There seems to be a constantly altering flow of people, which makes for interesting times.

One of the new arrivals (another canadian who is based in Denmark of all places) lives just round the corner from Kara, and was not due to start work (other than occasional meetings for a few days), so we have been able to hang out this week - a double bonus for me as it not only gives me a buddy to hang with but also one who is also familiar with the area, as this is her 2nd time back here, so I got a bit of a free tour guide too. Not only have I once again been able to relax and enjoy my local neighbourhood, but I've also been out further afield to, for example, the Welder's World, where local people stricken with polio and other debilitating conditions make their living turning scrap metal into amazing works of art, often on the theme of African wildlife. Imagine a ten foot tall steel giraffe made from re-shaped and burnished steel drums and bicycle chains, or a 5 foot long crocodile with old door hinges making up the armour plating on its back. They are amazing things, and there are many smaller items too, but all sadly too bulky and heavy (and expensive) for me to bring back.

I also went to the Mwenge Craft Market today, which is a whole area of narrow but curiously deep shops full of carvings (wood and stone), bead work, paintings, you name it, if you imagined it might come from Africa, its probably here. It's a strange place to go - there's such competition for the customers that the store owners sit outside and bid any passing Mzungu (the term used by locals for all tourists, and carrying with it maybe a small amount of controversy about its adopted mis-translation of "white person". Its actual translation is more like "wandering person" or some such, but as people tend to do, it has become synonymous with tourists, who are more often than not white, and now some people are choosing to take offense from a word that is not usually used in a derogatory manner) welcome and come and have a look, looking is free. Some of them seem bored, some mercenary, others genuinely lovely, and its hard to resist stepping into the gloomy interiors that seem to stretch deeper and deeper, almost like going back in time, as you are confronted by an amazing array of intricately carved dooby-dads. Some of the work is breath-taking - more giraffes, 8 feet tall and carved out of one piece of wood; others made from palm trunks, hollowed out and then carved to create lamp stands; rhinos, elephants and big cats; Maasai warriors that seem to have had an almost Dali-esque makeover; the imagination is almost endless, but at the same time there is a feeling of mass production in a lot of the work. Don't get me wrong, it is all clearly hand made, but I could almost picture the individual crafts-folk knocking out the same statue over and over again, while their neighbour does the same with another design. Certainly a lot of the paintings give this impression too (pardon the pun). Regardless, it is amazing work and, lost in the moment the urge is there to buy so many different pieces, before the obvious budget issues sober you up, closely followed by the thought of how much more it would cost to freight back to wherever and the realisation that you probably wouldn't have anywhere big enough to display it anyway, and besides, these things always seem to look somewhat out of place once you get them home anyway....Just as well I have neither the funds to purchase nor the house to decorate, so my hands stayed pretty much in my pockets. Although I do have a goddaughter who always appreciates a good giraffe.... I'd have loved to take photos, but it seemed a bit rude to snap away and then not buy anything, so I only managed a couple of hurried shots in a mask shop while the owners back was turned!

Other evening activities this week have included a trip to an excellent Lebanese restaurant and a night hosted by some Canadian diplomats (I move in high circles, you know that), and tonight is bingo night, complete with more fantastic Indian food. Apparently the bingo caller is hilarious, so I'm looking forward to that! Tomorrow is a 5 hour guided bike ride through some of the less frequented areas of Dar, then its off to Zanzibar for my last week, bright and early on Sunday morning. I know, you all feel so sorry for me...

Are you Local?

2012-01-30T22:23:00.005+13:00

So, I seem to be getting into the swing of Arusha now. I think, for me, I tend to feel a little nervous in these crazy places until I have been somewhere long enough to become more familiar with my immediate area, then I can move around and feel a little more relaxed. Having wandered into the markets and come out again unscathed, and having walked up to the bus station and back and gone and done some shopping etc, I am now definitely not so nervous about my surroundings, and starting to enjoy them. Shame I'm leaving tomorrow - I'll have to go through it all again at the next place! But it has been something of reminder to me that this is the process I have to go through. Some people don't need that - they just slot right in from the word go, but for me, it takes a few days before I feel comfortable. It has certainly helped making a few new friends who live locally and showed me around and took me out to a few bars etc. I think I am looking forward more than ever to getting to Zanzibar, where I will be staying for at least a week, which will be plenty of time to settle in once again. But that is jumping the gun a bit, as I haven't left Arusha yet!

Speaking of which, yesterday I went on a local cultural tour up to a village called Ilkiding'a. It was only about 7km out of town, heading up on to the foot hills of Mt Meru, but it really seemed like the city was left miles behind.

I'd been interested in going on one of the cultural village tours since before I arrived in TZ, and while I maybe had in mind something even more traditional (maybe staying in mud hut, going on a hike with a Maasai guide etc), what I got was very enjoyable and pretty interesting too - just not quite as traditional as I'd hoped.

My guide, Salim, was in fact a Maasai, but was one of the 'modern' Maasai, so wore western clothes. His village was pretty large -about 21,000 people - and was split into 6 smaller sub-villages, which they were trying to split further so they could encourage slightly smaller, more intimate communities within the larger village.

A very slow, bumpy drive took me up to the start point, the house of the man who had set up this particular cultural tour, Eliakimu. He explained a bit about traditional Maasai life (for example the men can marry as many wives as they can afford, but have to build each their own house and one for himself, so it gets a bit expensive. There is a man on the way to Lake Manyara, for example, with something like 30 wives, 84 children and 300 odd grandchildren!) and how it has changed (the adoption of Christianity and the understanding that lots of wives is too expensive, resulting in most modern Maasai only marrying once). One of the reason there are so many orphans over here is that if a man with many wives/kids dies, the kids are effectively orphaned, as the mother's struggle to support the family. Many of the locals still live in traditional mud bomas with roofs made of leaves although, as soon as they can afford it, they are building more modern brick houses with sheet metal roofs. If the money runs out, the building stops, so there are many partially finished houses about the place.

There is still the belief among some of the older people that photos steal part of your soul, so many locals don't like to be photographed, although this attitude is changing slowly as the number of visiting tourists increases, and as those who do allow photos seem to stay healthy! I was impressed that Eliakimu discouraged us from offering money for photos, as he said it taught the wrong attitude to both adults and children alike. All the money paid for the tours was handed to a treasurer and used to fund the primary and secondary schools that served the village.

Although I was once again on my own, another group was also doing the tour, so we combined forces and walked out through the fields between the crops. Maasai were originally nomadic cattle drivers, but the village of Ilkiding'a came into being about 200 years ago when a tribe was encouraged to build more permanent houses, clear some forest and start farming. Now they grow all sorts of things from rice, to potatoes, to maize, to coffee and much more. They keep what they need for themselves and the rest goes down the road to be sold in markets. There is also a women's group who make traditional Maasai necklaces and bracelets, carvings and other niknaks for the markets - not all of which is bought by tourists, as the Maasai do genuinely wear the items themselves.

We passed a huge fig tree, which was the traditional place of worship for the Maasi before Christianity introduced churches. When times are tough livestock would be sacrificed under the tree to encourage rain or good harvests. It was unclear if this still happened, but I got the feeling that it might well do.

As we walked the paths through the fields and crops, the local kids would come and watch, calling out greetings in English that they'd learned in shcool. They were pretty shy, but their curiosity often got the better of them, and they follow along at a safe distance for a while, before passing the baton on to the kids from the next boma. If we stopped, some might run away, giggling and screaming, others would cautiously come over and smile shyly. The rest of my group were French, and we'd try our rudimentary Swahili on the kids, and they their equally rudimentary English on us. This generally got shy smiles too (from the tourists this time!), but as soon as the cameras were brought up, they'd run away. Occasionally one would be brave enough to pose for a shot, and then the others would be falling over themselves to see the picture on the tiny screen on the back of the camera. I resorted to sneakily shooting from the hip, resulting in one of my favourite shots of the trip, but also a lot of blurry grass and headless children. The guide said a lot of their nervousness was because they didn't often see - and certainly not interact with - white people, but I guess with the increase of these tours, that will soon change.

Eventually we got to a boma where we were to stop and be invited inside, and where the family were used to tourists and cameras, allowing us to get lots of pictures of the cheeky, giggling children. The round bomas have a kind of square middle section separated off by make-shift walls. The middle section is where the cooking is done, and behind the walls is where the family would sleep or house the livestock, which lived in the same house as the family. Traditionally the women folk do just about everything, from gathering wood, fetching water, grazing cattle, preparing food, sewing and harvesting crops, getting kids ready for school, you name it, they probably did it. The man of the house apparently does very little, although in some of the more modern families - our guides, for example - they will either help with these chores or go out and earn money too. I was impressed that the mother scolded her kids for trying to beg snacks or gifts from us.

Eventually we got back to the starting place, where I was served a delicious lunch of typical local food - a chickpea and kidney bean mash, boiled spinach-like greens, rice and a kind of curried potato stew, all washed down with peppermint tea. It was very filling and very tasty.

So, not quite the back to basics traditional visit I'd imagined having, but a thoroughly interesting one nonetheless. I will be looking out for others as I go, I think.

The evening saw me being adopted by the ex-pat crew again, and being taken to a fantastic Indian restaurant called Big Bites, that specialised in Tandoori and Punjabi food. It was so good, and the company was entertaining too. I think, when I move on tomorrow, I will miss Arusha, and the friends I was beginning to make. Still, there is a good chance many of them will pass through NZ at some point in the future, so we may yet meet again, and I will be able to return the hospitality. For now, though, I will get on with some packing for tomorrow's 10 hour bus trip, followed by lounging in the bar enjoying cold beer. Life's good.

And now, the six o'clock Gnus....

2012-01-28T23:12:00.006+13:00

I was excited about today - I was going into the Ngorongoro Crater, aka The Cradle of Life. This is the place where they found fossil evidence of the earliest ancestors of modern Homo Sapiens, where permanent populations of all manner of endangered wildlife live thanks to the reliable water/food supplies found here. It is the crater left by a collapsed extinct volcano, and is about 19km across and almost circular, giving an approximate floor area of about 400km sq. There is a lake or two in the bottom, and rivers, woodland and grass plains. At this time of year, not long after the rainy season, it is as lush and green as the Lake Manyara Nat Park was, though not quite as lush as Tarangire Nat Park would prove to be tomorrow.

Our first stop was at a look-out point on the crater rim, affording a spectacular view across the whole crater. From 600m up, it was hard to make out any wildlfe per se, although on the lake in the distance there was a definite pink sheen suggesting lots of flamingoes, if nothing else. We followed the rim around to the track that led down to the crater floor, from where the standard operating procedure is to just follow the tracks wherever you please and try and spot wildlife. The various tour groups kept in touch with CB radio, so if one vehicle found something special, it was not long before every other vehicle homed in on their location.

As soon as we got to the floor we were in amongst the zebra and wildebeest, and they kept us company petty much wherever we went all day. There were thousnds of them, totally used to vehicles passing by, and they had right of way when crossing roads too (well, they are zebras crossing, what did you expect?). Once again, the camera was firing off, and once again, as with the elephants at Lake Manyara, I reached saturation point for shots of zebras from the side pretty quickly. One skill they perhaps ought to teach the guides is how to park for best photo ops. Jackson was of the school of thought that a good picture would be taken parked right alongside the animal, so even when I asked him to stop so I had an interesting perspective, he'd eventually pull over as close as possible to the beast, and my angle would be lost. In the end, I tried to limit my self to interesting backgrounds or spot a group fighting/dust bathing/acting up in some way to keep the shots vaguely original. There were lots of buffalo too, and a surprising number of fairly active (they were always wandering about, anyway) hyenas, as well as many storks and cranes. We saw Marabou storks (not to be confused with Malibu storks, that live in expensive coastal houses and drink coconut flavoured liquers), crowned cranes, white and Abdim's storks, as well as various buzzards and eagles, most of which were not easy to identify accurately. The lake, as I'd guessed, was fairly densly populated with flamingoes, but sadly, as I was not part of a TV documentary crew, I was not able to get as close to them as I'd have liked. They made a good back drop though.

We followed the radio messages to a group of 3 female lions, who were more interested in finding some shade under the various safari vehicles than behaving like lions. It was cool, however, being close enough to have been able to open the door and pet one of them, if I'd had a deathwish. The lion's highlighted the commercial nature of the safari business to me. Within minutes of us arriving (maybe 5th on the scene), there were 16 vehicles surrounding the cats, and more heading our way. The lions were very tolerant of us, using, as I've said, the cars for shade, although the occupants of the car they sat under couldn't see the cats, so the driver would carefully move a bit away, forcing the cats to move to find a different car, and so on. They got fed up in the end and went off to some trees to shelter in peace, and the plethora of vehicles dispersed to torment the next unfortunate star of the park. While this harassment of the animals was inevitable and bothered me to some extent, I guess it is inevitable. I was chatting to another visitor to the park who hated it, felt it was making the Crater into little more than a zoo, and would inevitably lead to even greater commercialisation. I agree to some extent, but also feel that maybe the attention given to the crater draws attention away from other areas, leaving them freer of tourists and maybe having this wealth of wildlife pretty much on tap ensures the continued existence of the park and safety of the animals - it is a hell of a golden goose, after all. We both agreed that some kind of more effective regulation of the vehicle numbers would be an improvement - maybe limiting the number in the park at a time, or how long they are allowed to stay, perhaps, but this would be where the golden goose has shot itself in the foot - I suspect the powers that be see little more than dollar signs where the tourists are seeing wildlife. The other issue with Ngorongoro is that, because of the crater, it has a very enclosed feel - probably because it is very enclosed (all 400km sq of it) - while places like the Serengeti and Tarangire are far larger and have no obvious boundaries, so the vehicles stay further away from each other, and there is less of a zoo-like feel to them.

During the course of the day we also encoutered a couple of black rhino, a bunch of elephants, some hippos and a cheetah, just about discernable in the photos, but not being very active. We spent a good 6 hours driving in circles, and it was, all things considered, pretty amazing. I'd grown up watching Sir David on the BBC wildlife docos, and to actually be visiting the kinds of places in which he filmed was a childhood dream come true.

Tarangire National Park, the next day, was a bit of a let down after the crater. There was so much tall grass and so many dense bushes that spottng anything smaller than an elephant was near impossible - and there were no shortages of elephants! I was definitely suffering from Dumbo Fatigue by midday. The park is also famous for its giant Baobob trees, which were truly huge, and often pretty shabby thanks to the roughing up they get from elepahnts in the dry season. There was precious little of anything else for most of the day, apart from a small pride of lions, including a big, maned male, which was nice to see. Try as we might, though, we couldn't find a leopard, no matter how closely we scrutinised the branches of the trees we passed. There were no zebra or wildebeest, very few impalas, and only a couple of bush bucks, and that was about it. There were many, many birds of all sizes, flashing through the trees and across the road like so many feathered jewels, but I had by now pretty much given up trying to identify any of them. They were gone so fast, and if you found a possible page in the book that might include the one you think you just saw, there would be half a dozen others on the page that it could also have been! Very frustrating for me, I have to say.

I have to say that the safari experience was, overall, an excellent one, and I am so glad to have done it. What concerns me about it, and about the Kili treks too, however, is how much income these attractions generate, and how little seems to make it to where it is needed. For example, each safari vehicle pays US$200 to get into the park, plus an extra US$50 per tourist. Using very conservative numbers, this could easily equate, for Ngorongoro alone, to around US$14,000 per day, US$98,000 a week, US$392,000 a month, US$4,000,000 a year. There are many parks, the trails up Kili generate far more (perhaps US$24,000,000 a year for the Machame track alone (which I did), and there are about 5 routes up the mountain). This is a vast amount of money, but most of it seems to get lost in the beaurocracy and red tape that is put in place by the goverment. It is a shame that, while TZ has so much potential for generating income to help improve the infrastructure or education or medical care, corruption seems to get in the way of any of this actually happening. It is the same with the wealth of mining industries that TZ has as well. I guess it's not just TZ that has this problem - and maybe TZ is better off than a lot of African countries, as there is no war here - it is a problem that afflicts many South American countries too. It seems to be the nature of governments in a lot of developing countries to feather their own nests while they are in power, at the expense of the needs of the population. I have no idea what the solution is, but I am glad I am more aware of the problem now, at least. Wow, that bordered on the deep and meaningful for a minute there.

The last couple of days I've been tentatively making myself familiar with Arusha. It's my first time in a bustling town by myelf, so I'm sorry to say I'm slightly nervous about wandering about amongst the locals, especially in a town that is a tourist trap for starters. I can't help feeling that, however hard I try to look like I know what I'm doing and where I'm going, I may as well be stepping out with a large sandwich board sign with the message: "Fresh tourist, ripe for the picking!" I girded my lions this morning and went for a wander in the busy central market and the old colonial part of town too. I think the heat created enough of a disguise that my nervous sweating could be atributed to the ambient temerature, but I'm not sure. To my credit, a couple of times local folk struck up a converstaion with me as I walked (this is quite common and genuinely friendly), and I didn't scream and run off, I actually chatted back. Must be getting into the swing of it at last. Still not totally comfortable though. I think it is the language barrier mostly - it would be nice to be able to do more than just greet people in Swahili. If I come back here, I think I'll have more time to learn it.

Last night I met up with a friend of Kara's who works up here, and got taken to a couple of bars used mostly by ex-pats. I may have scored an invite to a birthday thing tonight as well, so that will be good. It's nice to be getting out and being a bit more sociable at last. Tomorrow I'm going to a Maasai village, so will get a taste of "real culture", or at least what passes for that for the tourists. Incidentally, I've already dropped the kids clothes I brought along into a tiny orphanage we passed on the way back from the safari. I gave them to a woman who had 6 orphans along with her own 4 or 5 kids, and not much else. I figured a tiny place like that might find the clothes more useful than a bigger place. Thanks to the Ruckus whanau who contributed the clothes :-)

And, on that note, I'll sign off for a bit. It's been a mammoth effort to catch everything up, and if you've kept up with the reading, it's been a mammoth effort from you too, so go get yourself a well earned drink. More next week, I dare say.

A Tiger? In Africa?

2012-01-28T21:46:00.002+13:00

So, where was I? About to set off on Safari, I believe. The evening before, I'd had a chat with the MEM Tours rep, Jackson, about what to expect, and deilcately asked advice with regard to how much to tip a safari driver/guide. At this stage, he said he thought the guide would be one of his colleagues, and he suggested US$25 a day. I wasn't sure if this was fair or not, but it didn't see excessive. However, when Jackson showed up in the morning and announced he'd be my driver/guide, I wondered if he'd been totally objective in his suggestion. I think maybe he already knew he would be in the driving seat and set himself up for a generous tip. Still, I didn't have to pay what he said, and could wait and see how it all went and make a decision at the end.

We set off for Arusha by 9am and the trip along what has a reputation of being one of the most dangerous roads in Tanzania went very smoothly. The lunatic overtaking was once again in evidence, but Jackson kept to a very sedate and sensible 80km/h in his huge, twin fuel tank, 7 seater Toyota Landcruiser, complete with fridge and a pop top for all your wild animal viewing needs. Along the road side were the by now familiar village scenes of local folk hawking foreign tat, as well as fruit and veg, some of which was in its prime, some which was well over due. Between the villages were large empty tracts of land, some of which was cultivated in a more professional looking manner than what I'd seen between Dar and Moshi, and some of which was used for grazing. Herds of goats (usually tended by children) and cows (usually tended by adults), all interspersed with donkeys (and even, in one area, camels - the Maasai's new livestock of chioce), seemed to wander pretty much where they liked to find grass. Both children and adults were, more often than not, Maasai people, dressed in traditional Maasai robes, carrying a stick/spear/knife to chivy their wards along. It was slightly incongruous actually, passing through the villages - and even, it turned out, the towns - and seeing locals wearing 'regular' western clothing mixing with Maasai wearing their traditional garb of a wrap-around-the-waist-and-over-one-shoulder robe with extra shawl type robe on top, complete with six foot long stick - probably traditionally this would have been a spear -looking as though they had just arrived from some remote boma (family settlement). It was only when I saw them take out a cell phone, for example, that it became clear that, although their clothing was traditional, many of the Maasai had adapted quite well to modern living. Jackson told me that in the more remote areas, there was still a lot of resistance to modern styles, and these remote Maasai frowned on their city living cousins.

Amusingly, from time to time, we passed traffic police. What I found so funny was that here, in a country where just standing in one place and doing nothing all day can leave you coated in a layer of dust and grime, they choose to give their traffic police a uniform of sparkling white. It seemed to me that no matter what time of day it was, they were immaculately, spotlessly dressed. They clearly took pride in their uniform, but I have no idea how they avoided the dirt that seemed to gravitate to me the moment I stepped outside - and them working by a busy dusty road all day to boot! It was much the same for the school kids that we passed along the road, lots of whom waved excitedly as the tourist passing by in his chauffer driven cruiser. All of them were beautifully turned out in their school uniforms, somehow keeping clean, while those children not dressed for school were definitely struggling to avoid the dirt as much as I was!

The other sight that became all to familiar was that of dangerously overloaded trucks/cars/ motorbikes/bicycles/wheel barrows/heads, all interweaving across the footpaths and roads, almost indescriminately. It was a masterclass in the physics of balance, and a lesson in the correct use of the car horn. In most western countries with road rules and highway codes, the "audible warning" has been highjacked as a form of wordless abuse, employed to let someone know that you think they're a git and a useless driver. In TZ (and most of South America too, in fact) it is still used to alert people to your presence in a friendly way, with no animosity attached. With so little apparent order on the streets, there áre surprisingly few fender benders thanks to correct hornage and people being alert to anything, rather than switching off their attention and relying on the "rules" to keep them safe.

We made it to the lodge at which I'd be staying by around 1pm. I was fairly sure I'd booked a basic, camping safari, but even though there were tents in the grounds, I was shown to a small room with an ensuite, which was a nice surprise. I suspect that, as the 3 others who were supposed to be on my trip had cancelled and paid, I got a free upgrade. I didn't enquire too closely, I just accepted it gratefully. A quick check-in later, and we were straight off to our first destination - Lake Manyara National Park. This was a place I'd not really heard of before, but within minutes of passing through the gates we had encountered a troupe of baboons criss-crossing the road at will, and a family of elephants trashing some acacia trees and enjoying a mid-afternoon wallow, also right by the road. I could almost have reached out and touched some of them as they walked past the vehicle. It was an eerie experience - half a dozen of some of the largest land mammals on the planet and it was as though I was in a sound proofed room. I could hear birds and vehicle engines (before they were shut off) but the elephants themselves were almost silent - perhaps the rustle of a tree branch or clump of grass as it was torn from its natural home and shoved down an impressively large throat, sometimes a barely detectable sub-sonic rumble that sounded like it came from the depths of the earth, but when they moved from place to place, barely a whisper. Spooky.

I'm sorry to say that, suprisingly quickly, I got a little blasee about the elephants. There are only so many photos you can take of an elephant from the side or the front before they all look the same, after all, so while it was very calming to watch them - and I could have happily stopped and watched each family we passed for ages - there were so many of them that it became unnecessry to stop for them all, unless they seemed to be doing something unusual and photo-worthy. It was far more interesting for me to see the far fewer zebra, wildebeest hippos, giraffe and even a lioness and 2 cubs sleeping on a branch of a tree. There was a lot of bird life, too, but my self proclaimed "expert" guide struggled to identify many of them. Fair dos, even with a half good photo and a bird book I didn't have much more luck, but then I never claimed to know what I was on about (not in Africa, anyway). Even the more brightly coloured (and therefore more memorable, maybe?) ones were a challenge to him, and when he named a blatent black kite as an eagle, I began to have serious doubts. He certainly knew some, but I suspect his guiding skills were more focused on the animals rather than the birds. Which is fair enough I guess.

I enjoyed our route through the park from the back of the landcruiser, standing up and holding on and peering out of the pop top. It provided both shade from the sun and a nice breeze, but also left me exposed to the dust that blew in - a particularly bad problem when Jackson was following other vehicles, which he tended to do up close. There was an element of everyone going to the same palces as that is where animals had been sighted, so perhaps there was not always a choice, but I felt he could have hung back a bit or driven on the less dusty, up wind side of the road. I stuck it out though, as the view was far better from up there.

After a very enjoyable afternoon where I saw most of the animals I'd hoped to see, albeit at a distance (apart from the elephants and baboons), we made it back to the lodge, where I was delighted to find a swimming pool! I'd not expected to be staying anywhere so flash, or have access to swimming while I was oop narf in TZ, so this was a fantastic surprise. Togless, I had to rely on the old faithful of swimming in my pants, but I think it was more of a thrill than a fright for the other guests. It was sheer bliss being able to submerge myself in cold clear water and rinse off the dust of the first safari. Also, I found that some of the people I'd met on Kili were also staying at the lodge, so after a brief chat we arranged to meet for a beer later. They got sidetracked with their group though, and in the end I had yet another solo evening. I went looking for them at one point, but couldn't find them. Maybe it was a hint...Ah well, I'll leave this entry hear and finish the other 2 safari days in the next entry - which might be very soon. Pip pip.

Softly Softly Catchee Mountain

2012-01-27T22:23:00.003+13:00

Day 4: 5km, 3 hours, 3900m up to 4200 and back to 3930m. One point of interest from yesterday, by the way, was as we were coming down from the 4600m lunch spot. We (the hoards of porters and trekkers) found a woman who said she had been lost on the mountain for 7 days. She was clearly hungry and thirsty, so various people, myself included, offered water and snacks to give her a boost. She was to be shown back down the mountain by a spare porter, but that night when they stopped in a local hut, she vanished again. My waiter (did I not mention that I had a waiter? he was a porter too, and a trainee guide...) was talking about it on the last night and said she was a wizard (I think he meant witch), as she was clearly lying about having been lost for 7 days (she was not dirty enough apparently) and his theory was that she had been shot out of the air by someone (witches are, of course, bad!) It also explained why she disappeared on the way down the mountain. Abdul the porter was quite superstitious about it, and I think he believed what he was saying. He was a smart guy, a Muslim too, but obviously still held on to some traditional beliefs. Still, it gave us something unusual to talk about.

But I digress. The walking was getting interesting now, with some proper, two hands needed to climb, scaling of the path. The landscape was more barren and rugged, and took us to within just 2 hours of base camp. The 6-day trekkers would be going on to Base camp today as well, then summiting at midnight tonight, but we were keeping all that for tomorrow. At the time, I was feeling pretty good, like I could have done it in 6 days, but when it actually happened, I was glad I had gone for the extra day - it will become clear why later.

After we crossed the 4200m ridge line we had to drop down to the bottom of the Karanga Valley, then climb back out the other side. It was steep in every direction, and the stream at the bottom of the valley was the last water supply before we started the walk off the mountain. This meant that, firstly, all water for tonight would have to be fetched by some poor bugger (not me again) going back down the valley to bring up a 20l bucket of water. It also meant that tomorrow, when we had walked the 2 hours to base camp, someone (not me!) would have to walk back, go down the valley and bring water all the way back to base camp. On the up side (and its only a tiny upside), the porters could do the trail in about an hour, versus my slow 2 hours, but that's small consolation. Incidentally, I asked my guide how long it would take him to do the Machame trail if he didn't have to look after me. He said 3 days, there and back. I tried not to look too impressed.

The problem with such a short day was that once we got to camp, it was a long time until bedtime, and there was not too much to do in camp. I went a-wandering to try and find some of the more familiar faces I'd met on the way up so far, but it was that cold and windy most folks were hiding from the cold and clouds in their anonymous tents, and house calls still seemed a bit 'not on' to me. I mooched about taking some photos, making blog notes and snoozing, breaking all this up with as much food as the crew could provide. The food had been good all the way up, but by now we were off the meat and on to the vegetarian diet - for me anyway. The crew still seemed to have some increasingly smelly meat to tuck into. while the food had been generally excellent, Juma the cook did tend to be a bit heavy handed with the amount of salt he used in the cooking. I found it rather over powering, and was forced to reduce my intake to about half of what he made (this was still a lot, mind you), and he shared out what I left between the other guides. I don't think I offended anyone, and it seemed easier than complaining about the food or giving cooking advice. That wouldn't have been very British of me.

Day 5: 2 1/4 hours, 4km, 3930m up to 4600m. I had to get up in the night at about 3am for a pee. Not an old man pee, you understand (how very dare you!), a diamox induced diuretic pee, and I was glad to see the pattern of the cloud lifting and leaving a crystal clear night once again evident. It was also totally calm and still, so fingers crossed we'd get the same treatment tomorrow night.

Day broke just as still and clear, and we began another short day, this one deliberately so. The plan was to get to camp in time to have an afternoon nap, as we would be up at midnight to tackle the summit. Also, even though I was feeling good with the altitude, I was finding that if I did get out of puff, it was very hard to get it back, so the slow pace was finally paying its dues. We got to camp at about 11am, leaving plenty of time to kick back. This camp site was really a desperate affair this time, with tents being shoved in to any vaguely flat piece of ground. There were so many rocks and boulders it was very hard to find anywhere actually level, so I found myself trying to nap on an incline, which left me sliding down the roll mat into a heap at the bottom of the tent.

I considered my feet for a while - so far so good. No blisters, probably due to the slow pace - they never had a chance to rub up. This was good, because the last big push was to be 11km in the dark to the summit, then 11km back down for a breakfast, then anther 6km to a lower altitude for the last night. I hoped they would hold up for all of that.

As luck would have it, my tent was pitched near the tent of a loud American group. Now, you now how I hate to stereotype and generalise (ha!) but it's a well known fact that Americans like to talk loudly and not listen to what anyone else is saying. These ones also seemed unaware that everybody outside their tent could hear them, as the walls are only made of thin material. It was hardly my fault, then, that I was able to accidentally hear what they were saying (OK, it's a fair cop, I began to deliberately eavesdrop). The first part of the conversation was along the lines of "the wurst leg injury Ah ever had", the winner being the one whose leg was"torn to shreds" and "woodna made it outta there if I hadna had some painkillers". I missed the segue, but the next bit I heard was about "my mammy who came from Alabammy (sic)". I almost had to call out and ask the obvious - did she have a banjo, and was it on her knee? I resisted. The next part of the conversation almost proved too much for my self control, however. They got on to the topic of the poison that is Coca-Cola. Each man had some half remembered stats, and it was, for a moment, quite the stat-off! The first asked "D'you know how many T-spoons of sugar there are in a can?" His friend new it was lots, and was keen to impress. "20?" he hazarded. He'd aimed too high, and burst his friends shock bubble. "Na, it ain't that merch, its, like, 11 or sumpthin". Then we got on to acidity: "If batt'ry acid is, like, a 1 on the pH scale, and water's, like, 7, then coke is, like, 2 or sumpthin. Its pretty acid." I was so tempted to join in with my own stat: "Y'all know what I heard? I heard they use babies' souls to make the bubbles. They put the babies in a press and squeeze that soul right outta there, then they crush it up and chuck it in, and that's the fizzy bit. I dunno how many babies it takes for a can, but I do know they crush the souls right up. That's what I heard. Yup." It was tempting. Maybe it was the altitude playing tricks on my brain...Bloody rednecks.

Day 6: 29km, 4600m up to 5895m and back down to 3100m. So, midnight came, I got up and had popcorn, tea and shortbread biscuits. Breakfast snack of champions, that. We had 11km in the dark to reach the summit, then 11m back down, and a further 6km to the lower camp that night. Best get too it.

When we set off at 1.15am, we were behind most of the other groups, some of whom had set off as early as 11pm. My guide was confident in my ability and speed though, and I had to trust him. He knew I wanted to be at the top for sunrise, and I left it up to him to chose how soon we should go.

I'd not got much sleep before we left - just an hour or so in the afternoon, and not much before midnight, but felt pretty ood. Perhaps the excitement was giving me strength. I focused on my breathing to begin with, as we shuffled our way through the rocks by the light of our head torches. I found, however, that if I thought about my breathing, I soon got out of breath, but if I thought about anything else, my body breathed as much as it needed and I was fine. We plodded on, and it was gratifying to catch and pass most of the people on the way up. My competitive side was kicking in again, and every time we overtook a wheezing, puffing group, I felt a little more pleased with myself. No wussy struggling for me! I had to take a bit of care though, as the overtaking was often slightly off track and required a quick burst of speed to get by, which could easily have left me struggling for air. It was all good though.

It's strange the places your mind goes when all that your eyes have to occupy themselves is a small area of illuminated rock and sand that never seems to change, and your guides legs from the knees down - all that was visible in the cone of light cast by my headtorch. Old demons and new came to visit in turn, as did some great memories of crazy days in South America and Canada. Not all were welcome guests for what they were, but all played a part in distracting me from the monotonous trudging in the dark. The sky had once again cleared for us and was diplaying a stunning array of astral bodies but the wind had decide to howl through with a vengeance, and it was slightly unstable going from time to time, not to mention far colder than it might otherwise have been.

Finally, at 6.15am on the dot (Mahamoud knew his business and my speed, that was for sure), we reached the summit in a slow speed foot race against sun as it just began to crest the horizon. We won, just, and I had enough time to snap a few shots, including the obligatory one beside the summit sign, before the bitter, freezing cold proved too much for my camera battery, and I lost power. It was so frustrating watching the sky lighten and reveal more and more of the amazing vista that was the highest place in Africa, and not having a means to capture it other than my memory. Of course, my photos would have totally failed to do it justice, but the option would have been nice. I was blown away by the ice, glaciers, rock formations, a feeling I get all too infrequently since I overloaded on spectacular in South America. It was nice to be wowed once again. Also impressive was the way everything changed over and over as the light grew stronger, shadows shifting, colours going from purples to oranges to regular, genuine brown. Too soon, it was time to begin the descent. I think I managed 20 minutes on the top before my fingers went numb and my face began to freeze.

The way down was a wonderful surprise - instead of a slow, 11km uphill trudge, we had a crazy-fast downhill scree run! Now, I'm usually pretty sensitive to my environment and not harming it, and scree running isn't the kindest of activities to inflict on the sid of a mountain but, on this occasion, I felt like I'd earned a bit of fun. They say you go up Kili like an old man (I did, every shuffly step of it) and come down like a teenager. Well I was up for some of that. I suspect we cut some corners and shortened the actual distance covered - a few less zigs and not so many zags, perhaps, so it took just an hour to make it down and my legs were burning by the time we got there. It was tiring but heaps of fun and the lure of breakfast at the bottom was certainly encouraging our haste. Of course, one false step and I could easily have stuffed an ankle, but you try not to think of these things at the time. that would be the old man agian, and his job was done. Stand aside, and let the teenager out - if only to prove there was still a bit of that attitude left in me!

Unfortunately, when we got back to camp we found the strong winds we'd suffered on the way up had been far worse in camp, and many of the tents had been blown over, including ours - to the point of total destruction! Instead of a rest and a feed, we did a quick pack up and set off straight away to the more sheltered lower levels. With sore, aching knees and feeling the exhaustion and lack of sleep creeping up with every step, we finally made it to the calmer, warmer levels further down, and had a picnic breakfast for half an hour, before continuing down the last bit to the final camp. A long, satisfying day, and it seemed strange to look back and see Kili looming over us once again, so distant and yet, just that morning I'd been standing on the top of her.

Day 7: 2 1/2 hours, 7km, 3100m to about 1800m. The final stretch down to the bottom was to be quick, but jarring to my knees. The descent route was far more direct than the ascent, and after a night spent sleeping soundly (my tent was fine, but my porters had to do a botch job on their tent as it had been so badly broken in the winds - at least they'll get a new one for the next trip...I hope) we set off bright and early. We made it to the exit gate by 10.30am, thanks to the fairly straight forward path. It wound its way through the forest once more, some of the porters were literally running down the hill with their lightened loads, and we saw a family of Colobus monkeys as we neared the end of the trail. What a nice way to end the trek. I was back in Moshi by noon and in the shower about 5 minutes later. I had time in the afternoon to reflect on what my summit trek to the top of Kili had cost me - apart from the financial of course - and figured it was a camera lens cover, and a possible dose of Giardia (false alarm) which provided me with the temporary amusement of attempting various tunes and farmyard animal impressions. My niece would be proud of my efforts, although I only really perfected the "angry duck".

That evening, Mahamoud and Abdul joined me for a celebratory beer or two, and I was flattered when they both said how impressed they'd been with the speed I'd been able to hike the trail, especially the last summit push. I guess they could have been full of it, but as I'd already paid their tip (and it would have been a smaller tip than they'd have been hoping for or would have got if they'd had a larger party to lead) I figured they meant it. Which was nice.not sure whether to credit the altitude simulation or the half-a-diamox-twice-daily-with-food. I suspect they both played their part.

Next up is the safari trip to Lake Manyara, Ngorongoro Crater and Tarangire, starting in the morning at half 8. This is all being written retrospectively though, so I know how it all ends. You'll have to tune in later to find out. Sorry this one has been a bit of a monster. Well done if you stuck with it. See you later, I guess, for the next installment.

The Magnificent 7...Stroll

2012-01-24T03:44:00.012+13:00

OK, here we go: Mount Kilimanjaro, highest peak in Africa, Day 1, 11km, 6hours, walking from the start at 1800m up to the first camp site at 3000m.

I was collected at the hotel about 20 minutes after they'd told me to be ready (African time, you see? Like Islander time in the South pacific, or South American time, only with rhythm) and taken to the tour shop to deposit all the gear I wouldn't be taking. Safe as houses, they promised me. We'll see in 7 days, I guess. We had a 40 minute or so drive to the Machame gate, start of the Machame trail up Mt Kili, where I had to sign in and wait about an hour while the porters got their loads sorted out and weighed - each porter is allowed to carry a maximum of 20kg, according to the Kili park rules, and the loads are weighed at start and end of each days hike to ensure no cheating. Because of this limit, the more luxury companies (who take things like toilet tents and porta-loos) have to use more porters. My crew consisted of a guide, a trainee guide/waiter, a cook/porter and 3 "just" porters. And me. So, the Magnificent 7 of the title, then. Still with me? Not tricky, eh?

My guide was held up at the start due to a power failure that prevented the rangers at the gate from entering important info, so my first day was to be led by the trainee guide, and he set a nice gentle pace up the hard packed, mud track through the lush forest. The mantra for the hike is "Pole Pole" (pronounced pole-ay pole-ay), which means "slowly slowly, and that is exactly how fast we went. In the end, as it was only to 3000m, I got a bit impatient (especially as my guide's English was a bit ropey and conversation a bit slow) so I went off a bit quicker and stopped now and again to rest and let him catch up. Now, I was going at a fairly easy pace, not knowing just how far we had to go or what the track ahead was going to be like, and I remembered a lesson learned a number of years ago on the Cotswold Way Relay in the UK. I was to run the 12 mile long, steep leg and was keen to get in under 2 hours, so was advised to "stick with Liz, she always comes in under 2 hours". Liz was in her late 50's I think, and I was about 30, so figured it would be easy. But she went so slowly! In the end, I went on at my own pace, only to be passed by about 2 miles from the end. She came in at about 1 hour 56 mins, I staggered over the line at about 2 hours 6mins. Shoulda stuck with Liz! Anyhow, far be it from me to tell a Kili guide how fast to walk, so I did my best not to go to much faster than he was. Just a little faster...

Camp the first night was at 3000m, lower than Cusco by quite a bit, so I wasn't bothered about altitude at this point. The camp site was actually fairly discreet, given the hoards of people arriving - there were 7 in my group for example, just to get one person up the hill. Apparently, if there'd been two of me, it would have taken 10 or 11 porters, so I guess for 3 in a group, you're looking at about 15 etc. There were several groups of up to 4, and some for the tour companies were far flasher than mine, with porters having to bring collapsible picnic tables, folding chairs, even the aforementioned porta-loos, so I think my guys were getting off light!

I tried to help set the camp, but was told quite firmly to sit down and rest. All part of the earning of the tips, I guess (at the end of the trek, each member of the party is tipped x amount per day depending on their duties: $5 for porters, $8 for a cook, $10 for a guide - and these are minimum amounts. Please feel free to tip more! For a party of one, I was looking at an extra US$300!).

There were 2 tents: mine, a small typical modern tent with flexi-poles and Mountain Hardware on the side, and theirs, a hexagonal spider-shaped frame with inner and fly combo, about 6feet tall at the apex. This was both sleeping, eating and food prep space all in one. It really was quite funny to watch the dinner being made. Think of all the things you were told never to do in tents by your dad when he was teaching you camping craft. Top of the list was probably "cooking or using naked flames of any description inside the tent". Imagine, then my surprise when the cooking was done on a 9kg calor gas cylinder with stove top attachment, and lighting was via 2 candles, precariously stuck to a small tin of puree balanced on a wobbly camping table and the plastic screw top of a 3l bottle of cooking oil. Yes, later we were going to be deep frying stuff!

Despite these obvious safety hazards, the whole procedure went off without a hitch - well practiced actions allowing Juma the cook to rotate about 4 different metal bowls across the heat and get everything ready pretty much at the same time. Skills! And it wasn't just Juma - the whole crew seemed to work together pretty seamlessly too, although there may have been any number of terse instructions being given under the disguise of cheerful sounding Swahili. How would I ever know? But that's beside the point. The end result was heaps of tasty food, including some deep fried spuds that had moments before been boiling merrily. The hot oil was carefully left on the floor in the middle of the tent until it had cooled just enough to return to the plastic container. Safe.

It was a relaxed atmosphere in the crew's tent - if they weren't helping they were huddling under their ludicrously inadequate looking sleeping bags (they have to buy their own gear and carry it on top of the customers stuff, so most of the porters seem to try and do without), chatting, snoozing or laughing, bright white smiles emerging from the deepening gloom like so many Cheshire Cats disappearing over and over.

By the time I took myself off to my tent, the cloud that had shrouded the camp site had lifted, adn the night sky was remarkable. I couldn't wait to see the view in daylight.

Day 2: 7km, 4-5 hours, 3000m up to 3800m. I got up at about 6am, earlier than necessary but no big deal as I'd slept pretty well in the cooler climate - better than I had in hot ans sultry Dar, anyway. Quick wash in cold water (it would have been warm, but I was up before the porters), and it was off for what I suspected would be the biggest daily challenge of the hike: the daily constitutional, as they say, making use of the squat toilets in the camp site. Not wanting to dwell on things too much, but imagine a large keyhole shaped target being inexpertly used by dozens of inexperienced tourists, many of whom it seems may have been cross-eyed. Not pretty, and not comfortable either - I was dreading the extra effort it would all take once I got to a decent altitude!

Breakfast made up for it though, with "porridge" (more like semolina), fresh fruit (on various days: papaya, pineapple, watermelon), milo, toast and fried eggs, frankfurters. The eggs were transported in a small box full of sawdust, kind of like a lucky dip, and they pretty much all survived the whole trip - at least until they were selected for a meal, that is. It semed like there was to be no shortage of food on this trip.

The camp was being overlooked by the might Mt Kili, as I'd hoped, as the cloud was still gone. It was the first real look at it I'd had, as the cloud had moved in to hide it by the time we started yesterday. This was to be a pattern - clear in the morning, shrouded by 2pm at the latest. We got under way by about 8am for what was a shortish distance, but pretty steep compared to yesterday - more like what I was expecting to be honest. Some rock scrambling was called for on occasion, and and a bit of judicious tippy toe-ing to get by the craggiest bits, and once again all done at a very sedate pace. I started to wonder if the "pole pole" was for the complexity of the path or because the guide was texting as he walked (for a poor country, cell phone coverage is pretty thorough in TZ!).

Once again, the feeling of conquering a mountain was diluted somewhat by the huge number of people on the track. The guides made a mockery of us tourists and our sluggish pace, overtaking at speed with their outsized, precariously balanced loads. It was quite hard not to try and match them for pace, but egos need to be controlled if peaks are to be reached, so I just about managed to restrain myself. Not that I'd have been competitive in the least, you understand, but I'd've tried! Again I was astounded by the mismatched gear the porters used. Some were in trainers, others in walking boots falling apart. Some had shredded thermal tops, others football jerseys. All had to be bought and paid for themselves, so it was understandable why they didn't go for the good stuff. Anything brand-named would have been a gift from a grateful tourist trying to shed baggage after the hike. I kind of wished I'd brought throw away stuff, but I was traveling pretty light myself, so didn't have much to pass on. Every now and then one would pass with a transistor radio strapped to his pack, blasting out hip hop, reggae or whatever trashy pop the local radio station was broadcasting that day. It broke the day up.

Camp was much the same as before. A more scattered, open venue, this, reached by about 1pm. From a short distance away, it looked like a low budget pop festival was being held. tent village and all, just not sign of the performers. A few white-necked ravens lurked on the fringes, keeping an eye out for scraps and carelessly unguarded shiny things. Once again, I wasn't allowed to help so went for a wander to try and find some of the other trekkers I'd met earlier. I was finding it a slightly lonely experience, having been hoping to have people to chat to in my group, but it was hard to pin folks down at the camps. You got a brief chat, maybe, then we were called to our various tents for meals, which is where anyone in a group tended to stay, shooting the breeze with their compadres. I was left on my own somewhat, as it didn't seem right to go house calling a crowded tent. I'd hang with my gang in their tent, but 99% of the conversation was in Swahili, so I just sat and looked pretty in the corner until I got bored enough to go to bed. Every now and then I'd ask something of them, or they of me, but most of them had very little English and of course I have virtually no Swahili, so there was not much to go on .

Day 3: 11km, 6 hours, 3800m up to 4600m for lunch and back to 3900m for the night. Today was to be an acclimatisation day, going up to 4600m but not staying there. the extra strain on the body is supposed to get it prepared for the longer time at altitude still to come. The last time I went anywhere near this high was crossing a border between Argentina and Chile with food poisoning, and had gone from low down to up high in about 3 hours, thus not getting any adjustment time at all. It didn't go well (check the back issues if you care). This time I hoped for better.

Kili was in front of us the whole day today - no cloud, just a looming rock, challenging, taunting, sneering, but finally looking a bit closer than it had done before. We were gaining on it! The main part of the day - about 4 hours worth - took us to Lava Rock, the high spot of the day. It was pretty steep going, and the "pole pole" was definitely needed this time, I think. Once or twice I felt my puff starting to go, so I backed off a bit, as experience has taught me that if you loose your wind, it is very hard to get back. Better to hold on to it at all costs! Still, the 6 hour target for 11km was a b it much, surely? I could run that in under an hour...

We reached the Lava rock, and I was in good shape - surprisingly good actually, no problems at all, which was more than could be said for some of the others, wheezing their way to a lunch break. The lsat 2 hours of the day were downhill, pretty steeply down, and I had a couple of slips on the way, but nothing serious. I was undecided whether to blame altitude, old boots or daydreaming. Probably a combination of the three.

We rolled into camp at around 2.45, with Kili now hiding behind her usual cloak of mist and cloud. Intermittently, it would clear enough for Mahamoud my guide to point out tomorrow's path. It looked steep. Really steep. And what's worse is that its another false peak to acclimatise us - we have to drop back down again after, so don't even get to keep the height gain! Better get a good feed and a good rest. I'll continue the climb in another entry, just to break it up a bit. See you later :-)

The same only different

2012-01-17T05:19:00.003+13:00

Willie Nelson sang it best. Or was it Donkey? "On the road again....". Ring any bells, Smitch? Smitch? Hey Smitch, I'm talking to you! Pay attention! That's better. I mean, really....

Not the smooth, seamless transition I'd been hoping for, thanks to a cock up in the aerial transportation department, courtesy of Emirates breaking their aeroplane and delaying my departure from NZ by 48 hours. Not the kind of stress you need, let me tell you. Still, I got a couple of days to drink beer and be sent off by Rich and Oddette, so thanks for stepping up, guys.

On the down side, I missed out on a day or two acclimatisation in Dar es Salaam, finally arriving on Saturday pm to be met by Kara (thanks so much for that) who also looked after me and showed me around a bit, taking me to a Korean restaurant (?!) one night and a fish restaurant the other, where I met a whole bunch of great people. My jet lag slowed me down a bit unfortunately, so I'm hoping I'll get a chance to give a second first impression when I get back. I eventually jumped a bus to Moshi and Mt kilimanjaro on the Monday morning - a 4am arousal followed by an hour waiting in the dark at a busy bus depot feeling slightly nervous and not entirely sure I was in the right place, until the bus finally arrived and loaded my bag. I figured even if it wasn't the right bus, if I got on it, as least I wouldn't lose my stuff! As it 'appens, it was the right one, and also the wrong one....

First, I had paid a bloke a whole dollar to carry my bag form the taxi to the bus stop. He wanted Tsh 10,000 (about US$7.50), I laughed at his very good joke and offered 500, he looked cross and asked for 5000, we settled on 1500. I knew I'd been had, but i was running the scene from Life of Brian through my head as I haggled, and couldn't keep a straight face any longer ("Hey, Bert, this bloke won't haggle!" "Won't haggle?"). Settled on the bus, I was next approached by a man with a clip[board (always a sign of officiality). who said I had to pay Tsh 10,000 for bag security. Look, he said. I'll even write it on your ticket. Must be fair. To be honest, I thought this might be a ruse too, albeit a very bold one, but paid up nonetheless, as it crossed my mind that it would be easy to "lose" my bag while we waited to leave, and I'd be none the wiser.

Finally, we were off, at least about 200 yards, before we joined the log jam of buses trying to leave the depot all at the same time. Once again, we got moving and, after about half an hour, I got my first look at rural TZ. The similarities with parts of South America were instantly there, and I hope I don't just travel around making those sorts of comparisons, but I guess its unavoidable at times, especially when adjusting to a bit of culture shock. Many of the houses were of a similar mud brick construction, although sturdier looking bricks - must be a better quality mud over here - people lined the roads selling all sorts of stuff from wheelbarrows (if they were lucky), scraping a living any way they can, harvesting meagre looking crops from half-arsed looking plots of vaguely farmed land.

It was to be an 8 - 10 hour jouney to Moshi (depending on oh so many things!). Things went smoothly enough up to lunch time - a truck stop type of place to stretch legs and buy street meat if you dared - but about an hour after setting off again, the bus pulled over and the passenger next to me explained we wouldnt be going any further in this bus as it was broken. Luckily wee were by a string of small houses/stores, so most of the passengers tucked in to fizzy pop. I watched helplessly as a group of locals tried helping the driver fill the engine with first with oil (it leaked out only slightly slower than the tipped it in from the cola bottles they were using), and then the radiator with buckets of water (which fair flooded out the bottom). At last, as a bus from the same company came by and was flagged down, people were shoe-honed in to seats that weren't really there, and the crowd of waiting passengers began to thin out. The funniest thing was that everyone stood about very calmly, making no fuss about the delay, but when a bus arrived, there was a scrum for the empty seats and the last place you wanted to be was the middle of it! I stood out the way a bit, with my bags, until a bloke pointed at me, shoved someone out the way and pushed me onto the bus, stowing my pack in the luggage bins underneath. The only seat left was the ticket collector's, so I got that one, right at the front with all the extra leg room, and she got to stand up. seemed fair to me....

On we went, Dodging scarily large potholes, overtaking in ways that were familiar, although the last time I'd seem them, I'd been outside the bus, heading towards it on a motorbike and fearing form my life. I know where I'd rather be...It rained at one point, and the wipers were duly employed. One of them anyway, and it only wiped in one direction. I have to say there are time when I'd rather not be in the front seat with the best view.

Finally, at about 5 pm, 11 hours after starting, we arrived in Moshi, and i was met by a rep from my tour company, who got me to my hotel safe and sound.

It was nice to get a kind of intro to Tanzania through the window of a bus. So much seemed familiar (with regards to the chaos, the bodge it and scarper stylings of the villages/roads/traffic rules etc) to what I"d seen in South America, although in TZ they seem to be working at the next level up in the world rankings of "Making Do". Comforting, though, in its own funny way.

About an hour after the half way break (the whole trip was due to be 8 hours...or 10...or however many it takes, don't fret it) we stopped for what i took to be another pee stop/ buy some fruit stop, only to be told the bus was knackered and we'd all be getting off to wait for a replacement. No idea how long that would take, but as the oil and water various people were shoving into the poor bus were dripping out the bottom in a kind of perpetual motion, it was clear I had little choice but to wait.

Luckily, there were several buses on a staggered departure time leaving Dar, so each one that came past stopped and took a few passengers from my bus. Its a funny thing. All the locals were behaving so calmly and relaxed about the whole thing, it was totally normal, no aggro at all, until a bus arrived when things dissolved into a scrum of silent shoving and pushing to try and get a place. I was somewhat bemused by the whole thing and starting to worry that I'd end up being the last one left, when a guy pushed me forward and got me on the 3 rd bus. Front row seat too, with the extra leg room, so the hour or so delay was almost worth it!

Things were going well, potholes like craters were being dodged, and then the rain started. So did the wipers, but only one of them, and it only wiped in one direction, so obviously the driver didn't slow down to meet the conditions. Sometimes the front seat with the best view is not the best place to be!

Finally, at about 5pm, 11 hours after we started, I arrived in Moshi. I was met, as promised and despite being either 1 hour or 3 hours late, at the bus depot by my Kili tour company, and dropped to my hotel, for what I'd hoped would be a quick air conditioned rest. No such luck, I had to unpack everything and show them what I intended to take up the mountain. My choices were approved, arrangements for the morning were made, and I was directed to a great wee place across the street to get some dinner. I was also told that the other 3 people that had been booked on my trip had pulled out at the last minute, so I'd be the only one in my group. Good and bad that - I'll get individual treatment I guess, and get to go at my pace, but also I'll have to work harder to find anyone to talk to I expect. Anyhow, we'll see how that all works out when we see how all that works out. Time to relax with a beer and a curry at last! Off up a mountain tomorrow (Obviously, I'm already down but I'm cleverly writing this retrospectively! You're gonna get a 7 day hike shortly. Aren't you lucky?)

Countdown T minus 4 days....

2012-01-07T09:56:00.003+13:00

There is a pile of things on the floor in my bedroom. Correction, there are many piles of most of my things taking up all the floor space in my bedroom, but only one of the piles is ear-marked to get shoved into a back pack and taken to East Africa for a 5 week trip around Tanzania and Zanzibar, departing on 11th January. I am, once again, starting to get a bit nervous while simultaneously the excitement is building about my latest adventure. I have no idea what to expect when I get there.

OK, that's not 100% true. I have read several guide books and talked at length with a friend who is working out there at the moment and who has been giving me lots of advice, tips and reassurance, not to mention a promise of meeting me at the airport to ease my transition into this most mysterious of continents, so I have a theoretical idea at least. There have been lots of warnings (from the guide books) to keep a watchful eye over my belongings, warnings about not going here or there after dark/alone/carrying anything of value in case of muggings, warnings about bugs and parasites that will be queuing up to infest me if I give them even half a chance. But there have also been lots of positive things to look forward to, courtesy of my friend Kara, who can't stop raving about the friendly people, the amazing scenery, the food, the culture. I think she is more excited about my introduction to Africa than I am! I know which camp I am pitching my tent in.

Preparation for the trip has been on several levels. I got all my inoculations from South America updated (only about 4 extra jabs this time), collected my malaria pills and re-stocked my medical kit. I read a book (The Zanzibar Chest by Aiden Hartley) which, though fascinating and inspirational, was also horrifying and disturbing as it was both a biography of his father's life pioneering irrigation and agriculture in remote parts of Tanzania, as well as an autobiography of his own experiences as a front line reporter in the midst of the atrocities that were carried out in Uganda, Rwanda and Somalia. Eye opening might be more accurate. Read it.

Despite packing for the hottest time of the year, I have also had to plan for the extreme cold that will be at the summit of Mt Kilimanjaro, the tallest mountain in Africa at 5895m, and the first big challenge of the trip (after getting out of the airport with all my belongings, obviously). Reading a couple of aid project websites the other day also gave me the idea of packing as much spare children's clothing as I can fit in, which I will be able to donate to any projects I encounter on the way. Once the Kilii trek is done (by no means a guaranteed success by the way - only 40-50% of people manage to get to the top) and the subsequent 3 day safari in the Ngorongoro Crater and Tarangire National Park is in the bag, I will spend a few days in Arusha where I hope to stay in local villages with local people, to get a taste of local life. It's here that I have contacted an organisation that runs volunteer projects throughout the country, and where I hope to deliver the clothes.

I have also prepared by trying to learn a little Kiswahili. Knowing the basic pleases and thank yous goes without saying, but I felt I got so much more from my time in South America because I made an effort to speak Spanish, which the locals clearly appreciated, so I wanted to try and get beyond the stock tourist phrases in Tanzania. I'm not sure how well I'm doing - there are virtually no familiar lingual references so everything has to be committed to memory - but I tried taking some Skype lessons with a chap in Kenya (the connection proved too unreliable to make this successful) and have taken out a "teach yourself Kiswahili" kit from the library (yeah, I know, who'd of thought they'd have one of those, right?) which is not as easy to use as I'd hoped. Still, we shall see, and it'll give me an ice breaker with the locals on the buses anyway.

The final, questionable preparation I have done is to try and acclimatize myself to the altitude of Kili by paying through the nose to take a 3 week course which consists of sitting with a breathing apparatus providing a nitrogen rich (and therefore oxygen poor) mix of air that is the equivalent of being at 7000m. The idea is that 4 x 7 minute cylces over 40 minutes , 5 days a week for 3 weeks will stimulate my body to produce extra red blood cells that will allow me to transport the thin air at the top of Kili more efficiently through my muscles. Could all be a lot of hokum, but if I'm going all that way, why not give myself the best chance? What I haven't been doing as much as I intended, and probably should have (and might have been more useful than some dodgy scientific theories), is exercising and improving my fitness. Oops. Too late now. I haven't been totally sedentary, I've just not been out hiking as much as I'd intended. Still, the mantra is apparently "go up like an old man, come down like a teenager", so I should be able to manage at least one of those....

So now, in the last few days before I leave, I'm dashing about trying to make sure I haven't forgotten some vital bit of kit/clothing/doobydad, trying to decide if I should take my diving fins or not, and making sure all the various rechargeable batteries are recharged. This entry has been your starter for 10. I hope to find reliable enough internet cafes about the place or, failing that, kind enough fellow travelers with laptops who will let me throw some thoughts, impressions and stories up as I move about. Photos will be added to the flickr link (I hope!). Once again, you're welcome to come along for the ride, just no fighting in the back seat, or I'll smack your knees. Tally ho.

The Final Reckoning

2011-08-26T10:50:00.008+12:00

Well, it's all over now. I'm back in NZ trying to adjust back to normality (whatever that's supposed to be) and shake off the melancholy that always seems to follow these big trips away. I say 'always', I've only done this twice, but I can sense a pattern forming...

It was a funny last week. I connected with a new friend in a way I hadn't expected and then, just as things were getting interesting, I had to leave. As it happens, she was due to be leaving Canada too about a week later, for a 6 month job in Tanzania, so we were always going to be up against it, but I will be watching with even more interest than any of you to see what developments may occur.

All this meant was that I had one more reason to be reluctant about leaving, to add to the plethora of others I had been gathering up over the previous 4 months or so. I suspect I will be returning to Canada sooner rather than later, if I can wrangle something through work. Watch this space.

In the meantime, I guess I should record some facts and figures, for my own sake if you're not that interested, in an attempt to freak me out. I have already guessed that I could have saved a small fortune had I flown about the place and rented cars for less time in different places, but we live and learn.

So, what do you want to know - or rather, what do I want to remember?? Let's try this:

Time in Canada	104 days
Time on the road	69 days
Total distance covered, inc local trips	21, 672 km (13466.4 miles)
Distance covered on long haul (approx)	20, 672 km (12845 miles)
Furthest east travelled	Tofino on Vancouver Island
Furthest west travelled	Cape Spear, Newfoundland
Furthest north travelled	Edmonton and the road between there and Jasper
Furthest south travelled	Chicago and then a bit further round the bottom of Lake Michigan
Rental cost for 3 mths, 3 wks, 2 days	About $6500
Number of fuel stops	37
Cost of fuel	$2573
Number of punctures	1 – a giant bolt in the tyre!
Number of breakdowns	0 – but I did have to stop to let the brakes cool down one time
Dents added to the car	0
Different places stayed	54
Times camped out	18 – 10 in the car, 6 canoeing, 2 on a ferry
Hitchhikers picked up	6
Hitchhikers murdered and dumped in the bushes	0
Longest day behind the wheel	13 hours
Largest distance covered in a day (approx)	700 miles (1126.5 km)
Number of moose seen	3
Bears	About a dozen, including 1 grizzly.
Beavers	0
Lynx	1
Buffalo	Hundreds!
New friends made	Lots
Old friends reunited	Even more
Hospitality debts collected	All of them, with unasked-for interest
Hospitality debts now owed	Far too many. I will pay you all back.

And that's about it. If I think of any more interesting stats I will add them in, but I reckon that ought to do it for now (I just thought of another: number of speeding tickets: 0 - and that's despite blatantly disregarding most of the speed limits in north America. Yup, I'm a right rebelly one, me).

Up coming attractions for future entries could include a return to Canada, South America or even Africa, so watch this space. Thanks once again for your company. I feel like its not been quite as exciting for everyone concerned as the South American version, but I hope it brightened your day now and again. If you feel the urge to continue travelling, you could do worse than check out my brother's blog (see the link on my page) Riding in the Tracks of Giants. He is now heading south through the US of A, aiming for Central America. Lucky bugger. Hasta luego, amigos.

Canoe-dling in Temagami

2011-08-16T03:47:00.006+12:00

So, Canoe tripping in the wilderness, eh? I have to say I had been looking forward to this for the whole of my time out here, but I'm not going to lie to you - as the start date drew closer, I was getting a little apprehensive. It was to be an 8 day camping trip with 9 people, some of whom I didn't really know, doing things that my - once again - increasingly fragile back was not going to be too happy about (lifting boats, carrying packs, paddling). I didn't want to be the one slacking off, but I also didn't want to get air-lifted out if I
blew my disc out again, so I was nervous about that. And, even though I knew most of the people on the trip, I was aware that there were a lot of enthusiastic, energetic personalities, and that might become a bit too full on for me for that length of time.

As it happened, I shouldn't have worried about any of that stuff. The group dynamic was as good as you could hope to get it with 9 people, I worked my way into the paddling and carrying in a gradual way that let me judge how much I could get away with, and even though I was uncomfortable with my back for the whole week, it didn't get any worse than it had been before we set off, so I was able to relax about that too. But what about all the energetic folk?

Well, it was girl heavy group, with Mike and I being the only guys. Most of them knew each other well enough to know that they all liked some quiet time, and with so many people it was easy to fade into the background for a bit and not be missed, and then fade back in when you felt like it. Also, I made the effort to be up first everyday (not difficult as I've never been a solid sleeper in a tent, and my back wasn't helping), so I had an hour or two at daybreak every day to just potter about the camp, put tea on to boil, read a book or just enjoy the loons calling to each other over the misty lake. Add to that the fact that everyone was able to drop any 'real world' pretensions and just be themselves, and the banter and conversations rapidly became hilarious

Normally, quantities of booze or pot are needed to get to this level of openness, but we managed it just due to the bonding nature of the experience. I have to say, I had no idea girls could be so rude! I had been brought up to believe they only had pure thoughts and smelled like roses, but my eyes were truly opened last week!

So what was it all about then? Well, we went north from North Bay to an area called Temagami, which is basically a patchwork of lakes and connecting rivers in the middle of nowhere, where we put 4 canoes to work, paddling about 110km over the 8 days and hiking all the gear, including the canoes, about 8km through the woods when there was no connecting river to get us to the next lake we wanted to be on. These portages, as they are called, varied in length from about 100m to about 2km, and everyone had to take a pack, a canoe or an arm-load of paddles to get the gear from one landing point to another. Its hard graft, and I was amazed at one or two of our group who would take, on occasion, 2 packs AND a canoe to get it all across in one trip. As the week went on, the bags got lighter as food got eaten, but it was still a mission and a half.

Speaking of food, I have never been on a camping trip with such a luxurious menu! Each

day was a surprise, anything from salmon fillets cooked over the fire to pad thai curry to quinoa salads to fajitas to chocolate fondues and fresh made brownies was on offer. Mike and Janelle, who organised the food, are incredible in their forethought and planning - especially as each meal had to have both vegetarian and gluten free options! There were snacks during the day, and food organised so we could have fresh veggies early in the week and fresh beet and carrot salads later on. they had dehydrated salsas and hummus and more fresh fruit and veggies so we had a seemingly never ending supply of fresh, tasty food. It was incredible!

The paddling was good too. It's kind of like running a distance race, as your shoulders ache after a bit, but if you keep going you find a place where you could paddle all day and not get tired. The steering, done from the stern of the canoe, was harder, but I found that not only was it not too taxing on my back, but I was something of a natural, with good strength, rhythm and stamina, and I managed to pick up the various sculling strokes for manoevering the canoes just by watching the others. Very satisfying.

Every day provided opportunities to swim, and the lakes were shallow enough that the water

was fantastically warm and welcoming, even first thing in the morning and after dark. We had camp fires every night to create a bit of smoke to keep the mozzies at bay (sort of) and keep us warm and to cook on, and it was just one of those wonderful, peaceful experiences that you hope one day to recreate. It was probably the first bit of real "holiday" that I've had over here, as I was able to relax properly and enjoy the company of my friends and the place I was in without having to think about where I was going the next day or how many hours of driving it was going to take to get there!

There are a bunch of photos on the flickr link, and even more on my facebook page for those that are my 'friends'. Enjoy. I did.

And now, I have about 3 1/2 days left to pack, rest up, unkink my back a bit if possible, make some work exchange contacts and say goodbye to people. So I best be getting on. I'll be doing a facts and figures entry before long, but that may well be the last one for a while. Keep your ear to the ground for that one. Happy paddling!

Just for Laughs

2011-08-06T06:53:00.004+12:00

So, Montreal, eh? Hot. that's the first thing I remember about it. And Humid. Hot and humid. Nice, too, though. I got there about 4pm on the Wednesday which gave me enough time to unpack, grab a shower and dinner and get to my first Just for Laughs stand up show of the visit. I have been a fan of the Just for Laughs Comedy Festival for as long as I can remember, way back when all I ever got to see of it was a half hour compilation on late night TV. To be in the city itself and able to get to some shows was pretty exciting for me.

Jimmy Carr was my first pick. Not a bad show, but he is basically a one-liner wonder, kind of like Bob Monkhouse but ruder. And less orange. He was funny, but after a while I was hoping for something more interesting. He said himself that his show was something like 300 gags in and hour and a bit. Frankly that's too much for me. When you walk out the door, its hard to remember even one of the jokes he told, even though your face hurts a bit from laughing.

Thursday was spent wandering about the new part of the city, checking out the day-time bits and pieces of the festival and trying to sort some extra tickets so some friends of mine who were also in town would be able to join me for Louis CK that night. Sadly, it was sold out, but they got tickets to another, earlier, show, and we had time for a 10 minute catch up as we crossed over at the venue. Plans were made to make plans for Friday.

Louis CK was pretty funny. He was going to be getting the award for Best in Show, I believe, so no wonder he was sold out. His was a more usual, rambling monologue style, telling a short story over a long period of time, due to the tangents he'd go off on. I'd not seen much of his stuff before, but Ricky Gervais thinks he's great, and I still, for the moment, put at least some stock in Ricky's comedic tastes. If his own stand up continues to get worse, however, that may not last, but perhaps he can salvage some respect with his latest sit com that is nearly ready.

Friday came and I headed to the Old city down by the port. Lots of cobbled streets and tacky souvenir shops, but the buildings themselves were pretty cool. I was even able to get my camera cleaned so it no longer puts blobs in the same places in all the photos I take. My friends, it turned out, had tickets to the Cirque du Soleil show 'Totem' at 4pm, so I gate crashed their afternoon and got myself one, and bloody glad I did too.

Cirque du Soleil are based in Montreal (something I didn't know until that day), and I'd seen tasters of what they offered on TV shows and even at the Buskers Festival in Christchurch, where many of the acrobatic performers have history with C d S. The show was unbelievable. A mixture of skillful balancing, amazing acrobatics and pure strength and control, it left us all reeling afterwards. I didn't have long to reflect on it, however as I had to get back up town to see Danny Bhoy, my third show of choice.

I'd seen Danny Bhoy before in NZ, and he is hilarious. Half Indian-Scots he was influenced predictably enough by Billy Connolly, and it shows. He had his prepared material that he was able to add to and stray from at will, and his show was by far the funniest of the 3 I saw. If this guy doesn't become one of the best in the game, something is wrong with the world. If you get the chance, go see him.

I took an extra day on Saturday to just hang out and do laundry etc, then drove back all the way to Waterloo on the Sunday - the last leg of my mammoth journey. I'm glad I've done it, but by god, am I glad it's over, too! Frankly, it was too much driving to cram in to so short a time, but it is a tick on the bucket list, and something I won't have to do again in a hurry.

I spent most of this week relaxing, unwinding, swimming in local lakes and gearing up for the big canoe trip. I gave Flash Harriette back yesterday with an impressive 21,672km notched up for the 2 months, 3 weeks and 2 days that I'd had her for, and it hit somewhat hard in the pocket. Ah well, them's the breaks. You can't take it with you, etc. I'd rather have had some left to spend on next year's project, but there you go. At least I haven't gone over what I brought with me...yet. Still time I guess. At least the next week will be fairly cheap, out in the bush. Hopefully there will be tales to tell and photos to upload from that little caper, and then it'll be all over and back to the grindstone.

I have looked back on some of these blogs and, somewhat understandably, compared them to those of my brother on his motorbike trip. I think its fair to say he has won on interest and originality. I guess it is the nature of the trip. Not so much of the new and unusual for me this time around, I'm afraid.

Ah well, quit your whining and be grateful for what you're given. Keep 'em peeled for the final instalment sometime in about 10 days. All aboard...

Go West, Young Man. Again.

2011-07-27T08:48:00.006+12:00

More photos, by the way. Of the out east part of the trip. May be more to come as well. I'll let you know...

From Fogo we headed south-east some more, to St John's, the largest town in the Newfie province. We spent a night with our friend Mike's sister and family, just outside the city proper, where we were fed the largest spare ribs meal of my life, and bloody good it was too! They certainly know how to put on a spread in Newfoundland, that's for sure!

From there, it was short drive to the main city, and a few nights with Andy and Lori Delaney and family. Andy is Rosemary (from Salt Spring

Island)'s son (and so my cousin-in-law), and they were, simply, awesome. Such a nice family, with 3 lads all about teenage status, and none of the sulky or belligerent or any of the other normal things you'd expect from 3 teenage lads. They were all at the top of whatever chosen pursuits they had (soccer, running and chess), and the home environment created by Andy and Lori was one of the most comfortable, friendly and welcoming I have ever encountered.

While in St John's we went out to Cape Spear, the eastern most point in North America, thus concluding my east-west challenge. OK, so I didn't get to the westerly most point of North America, but Tofino was a pretty good effort. Canada doesn't go much wester than that.

At Cape Spear, we watched from the cliff tops as numerous whales spouted, gannets dived, porpoises dodged, and puffins wheezed out at sea. Then the fog rolled in and hid everything.

It's an interesting place, though, St John's. It has burned down twice in its history, most recently in the late 1800's, and there are only a few original buildings left in a city that was first settled in the early 1700's. Luckily, one of these is now a micro brewery that runs out of a pub called Yellow Bellys and produces fantastic lagers, reds and stouts. Trust me, I did some research.

By this stage in the trip, I was over most stuff, so a trip out on a boat to see whales and puffins - which I had done already else where - was not doing it for me. Neither was walking around the streets for hours at a time. In fact a second brewery tour at the Quidi Vidi brewery was about all I cared to do, and that too was worth the time. I met the Newfie equivalent of a mate from work - Ollie Olsen - giving the tour, with the same exact mannerisms and cheeky patter that Ollie uses on his cruise ship tours. I would have given anything to see Ollie and and his Newfie doppleganger come face to face. Alas, it was not to be. I had another beer instead.

On the Friday morning I dropped Smitch off at the airport, and was sad to see her go. I had enjoyed her company a lot, even allowing for my growing grumpiness at having been on the road so long, and my dwindling energy levels, and I hope she realises how grateful I was for her company and organisation of this leg of the trip.

Without her now, I am high-tailing it to Montreal. So far I have stopped in Moncton to catch up on the Bay of Fundy and the highest tides in the world. It was an interesting place to visit - you have to go twice to see both high and

low tides - but I felt slightly misled by what I had read about the place. I had been expecting the flowerpot rock formations to get nearly drowned in the tide, leaving just the vegetative tops of the rock pillars on view, like a series of small islands, their rocky stalks being revealed at low tide. Instead, they were permanently on display, but sometimes had water around the bottom of them. No matter, it was a nice enough place anyway.

From there, I took the long way, via Fundy National Park, to Fredericton (don't bother, its not worth it), and today ended up back in Quebec for the night, in the middle of a thunder storm. Tomorrow I get to Montreal, where I have 3 nights of comedy shows to occupy me, and who knows what during the days. Sleep most likely. I should be back in Waterloo by Sunday at the latest, and will then have week or so to recover before my 8 day canoe trip. Bit nervous about that - I've never been on an 8 day camping trip before, let alone one that includes carrying boats when the water runs out. I feel a dodgy back coming on again.....

Fogo Island Ate My Kite

2011-07-21T23:26:00.003+12:00

The Ferry to Newfoundland was an over-nighter, boarding at about 11.30 and departing at 1am. The staff on board got very fussy about us trying to stretch out on the floor of the lounge to sleep, so it was not a restful night. Next morning was a fast dash up the coast to the Gros Morne National Park and a little fishing village called Rocky Harbour. It was to prove typical of the many coastal villages on Newfie, and very pleasant it was too. Friendly locals (just as we’d been told

there would be), fishing boats, and lots of scenery. We went on the Western Brook Pond boat trip that took us up a pond formed by the closing off of a fjiord millions of years ago, the fjiord having been formed by glacial excavation even more millions of years ago and rocks that are apparently some of the oldest on the planet. The water in the pond is so pure and ion free that it doesn’t conduct electricity, and it has taken several million years of draining out the sea water and replacing it with glacier melt and rain water to get to that state. It is a truly impressive landscape, and I’d recommend the trip to anyone thinking of coming out this way.

Apparently the land that makes up Newfoundland is actually part of the same bit of land that makes up Scotland, hence the remarkable similarity between the two places. When the original tectonic plates started drifting apart all those years ago, the two bits broke apart, Scotland drifted east and crashed into the rest of what makes up Britain now and the two fused together, and Newfoundland drifted west and settled off the coast of Canada. Not sure who you’d call the winner in that little scenario, but there’s not much we can do about it now.

After a couple of days in Gros Morne, consisting of the boat trip and a couple of extra mini-hikes, making a good 15km day of strange scenery and lookouts, we headed out early on the Sunday to get the short ferry over to Fogo Island.

I agree, it’s not somewhere I’d heard of either, but it was at the top of Smitch’s list of places she wanted to visit, so I guess I owed it to her to tag along. The name Fogo comes from the Portuguese word ‘fuego’, meaning fire. The Portuguese were the first visitors in the late 1600’s and early 1700’s, on account of the good fishing, before the French settled in the 1720’s and the English took over in the 1750’s. Its other main claim to fame is that the Flat Earth Society (who believe the world is indeed flat and the only reason governments don’t agree is because it would bring down society and education as we know them. Go figure….) recognise Brimstone Head in the town of Fogo as one of the four corners of the Earth (the others being…anyone…? The Bermuda Triangle, somewhere in Papua New Guinea and the Greek island of Hydra, of course). It is also the place where some massively rich woman decided to build a number of artist retreat studios for arty types to “get away from it all” and gain inspiration by working in the purpose built, stark and remote studios she built in a few locations on the island. These were another thing Smitch wanted to see, but I couldn’t really see why. The villages closest to where the studios were built were far nicer, and there was nothing to see other than the exterior of the buildings when you got there, but we went and looked nonetheless. In the end, Smitch and I agreed that, though an interesting idea, it was really just encouraging what was already a fairly pretentious group of people to be even more so, by giving them somewhere special to be pretentious. Like buying a drink for an alcoholic I suppose...

I have used the time on the island to try and get some artsy-fartsy photos of fishing boats and coastlines, but I’m not too sure how successful I’ve been. At least they are digital and easily delete-able!

As for the title of the blog…well, I took my kite

out today on a beach on Fogo, and it was AMAZING!! The wind was strong enough that I was forced to lean back into it to avoid being pulled over, and was still dragged along the beach by the pull of the kite, which was, itself, on dynamite form with its swoops and dives. I was holding it together pretty well, getting a workout into the bargain and decided to let Smitch have ago. Sure enough she crashed it (and she wonders why I don’t let her behind the wheel of the car) – although, fair dos, it was her first time flying this beast, and in extreme conditions to boot. I got her air-born again, and before I could cover the 30m sprint to where she was standing, she nearly took my head off with the strings, as she scythed it across the beach and crashed it again. A lesser man, or indeed a child, would have been neatly sliced in to 3 pieces by the cheese-wire effect. I, however, was left with only a couple of nice friction burns across my right cheek and forehead, which have been getting me some peculiar looks over the last few days as they have scabbed up rather more dramatically than the picture shows. I just hope they don’t leave a more permanent mark! I soldiered on, took back control, and 5 minutes later one of the strings broke, pin-wheeling the kite into the sand for the last time that day. Beaten by the wind and eaten by the beach!! I have now fixed the kite, however, and will be back for more somewhere else. Down, but not out. It’s back to the mainland of Newfie tomorrow, then down to St. John’s, so until next time, lets ALL go fly a kite.

New Scotland...a bit like the old one

2011-07-21T23:18:00.000+12:00

Time has passed. It does that, so I’m told, but on this occasion more time has passed than I intended between blog entries. When last we met, I was still up on Gaspé Peninusla, hoping for a good night’s sleep, which I got. It took two more days of driving to get to Halifax, one along the last part of the peninsula, the second done almost entirely in the rain, causing us to bypass the Bay of Fundy (largest tides in the world) and head straight to Halifax and Smitch’s family cottage. I figured I could pop back up and do Fundy during one of the days we would be in Nova Scotia, or failing that, on my way back West from Newfoundland.

Smitch’s ‘cottage’ then…not so much a cottage as a mansion, with 5 bedrooms, several bathrooms, huge decks and lakeside views. It is actually her dad’s retirement home…or rather the second home he will move to when he retires and wants to get away from the rat race of Waterloo. Very nice it is too, and afforded us a few days off driving and just relaxing. There was other members of Smitch’s family to visit (a brother and aunt) nearby, where free meals and beer were on offer, as well as good company, and I took a day to try and get back to Fundy. It was looking to be about a 3-hour-each-way kind of trip though, so I stopped at a tourist info shop after an hour or so and asked if the impressive rock formations for which Fundy is most famous could be found elsewhere – or something similar, at least. I was directed to a small town called Kingsport, much closer and therefore more appealing, and away I went.

Alas, when I got there, the promised rock formations, about which I had been most specific in my request, were sadly missing, and only a red clay tidal bed was visible. Very disappointing, so I left and stopped in a small town called Wolfsville for lunch. A nice quiet lunch, I thought but, within moments of sitting down to eat, I was unexpectedly joined by a lady with fairly severe learning disabilities – meet Terry. She just sat herself down at my table with a big smile, a vacant stare and line of drool, and her carer politely apologised for the intrusion and tried to encourage her to go inside instead. She was having none of it, however, so after about 5 minutes of slightly awkward small talk between me and the carer (Caitlin), I did the chivalrous thing and invited her to join us, and we had lunch together. It went without a hitch, although I had to make sure I was looking anywhere other than at Terry, who had a massive appetite but not a lot of coordination when it came to targeting, or indeed much retention when it came to keeping the food in the required location for swallowing. She put away a double helping nonetheless, and there was far less collateral wastage than I had expected to see. Some how, her system turned out to be pretty efficient.

I got back to the cottage after another 8 hour day in the car, which was the last thing I’d wanted, and I hadn’t even got to see the Fundy rocks for my trouble, so that went to the return-leg list. The rest of the time at the cottage was far more restful, and by the time we set off for Cape Breton, I was feeling a bit more motivated once again.

Aaah, motivation and the lack thereof…The problem I was facing, it transpired, was that everyone who had suggested that so much driving in such a relatively short space of time would be bloody hard had been right, and I (who maintained it would be a breeze, I’d done South America after all, which was much bigger) had been wrong. My blasé attitude to the distances I would have to cover and the time in the car it would take to do so was wearing thin, and I was starting to hate being in the car. I was, however, too close to my goal of getting out to both coasts to be able to stop now, or even share the driving. How could I say I had driven from Tofino to St John’s if someone else had helped out? The outcome of this reality hitting home was that when I was faced with the choice of the long scenic way or the shorter more direct way, I was opting for the shorter way. It didn’t help that I’d used up the last of my free kilometres while in Halifax, so was now paying an additional 12c per kilometre, with about 5000km to go. It also meant that I was pretty exhausted at the end of each day and less willing, therefore, to go out and about and do things. When Smitch threw up the next idea of where we could go and explore, she was getting more and more sullen responses from me, until I eventually explained that I was rapidly “getting over it”. Luckily, Smitch had enthusiasm enough for two, and was usually able to get me out of the hostel and to a bar with a bit of gentle coaxing. I think her energy levels were enhanced by the naps she was able to take in the car, which I always missed out on, but I realised she had put a lot of work into picking places to go, and it would have been churlish of me to just say no and stay grumpily in whatever hostel we ended up in.

Cape Breton was great. We stopped in a tiny French town called Cheticamp and found a super-cheap lobster dinner deal that I tucked into, accompanied by a local fiddle/guitar duo and a dancing waitress getting in on the Irish vibe that is prevalent in these here parts. The restaurant had looked decidedly cheap and dodgy when we’d gone in, on the recommendation of our B&B hostess, but the food was great and it turned into a great evening.

Forgoing the full Cape Trail, we cut back to North Sydney (people – mostly Americans- have actually been to Sydney in Nova Scotia thinking it was the one in Oz. True story.) in time to take the 6 hour ferry to Newfoundland. Which I will talk about in the next entry, as other wise this one will become too long!

On the road again…after a brief interlude.

2011-07-09T10:06:00.003+12:00

First order of business: photos uploaded to flicker, see the link on this page.

So, a week of R & R in Waterloo, catching gigs, going on a date (Ooooooo), celebrating Hana’s birthday, getting enormous bolts removed from tyres and subsequent punctures fixed, trying to not drive too much, celebrating my first Canada Day, the normal kind of stuff, I suppose.

Also, spent some time doing some very minor preparation for the next leg of my trip – Waterloo, Ontario to St. John’s, Newfoundland and back. Luckily, Smitch (Sarah Mitchell to her parents...actually just ‘Sarah’ to her parents, but they gave her the surname too, I imagine), my travelling companion-to-be, had made plans to (and I’m quoting her here) “tour-guide the shit” out the east of Canada on my behalf, and had a lists of places to visit, including friends and family with whom we could stay, thus saving money and hopefully having proper food cooked for us.

In return for this planning, all I had to do was transport an entire Dodge Caravan load of furniture out to Halifax, via the long way round, ready for Smitch’s move there later in August. Oh, and take a bunch of Dani’s stuff too. Suddenly my cavernous vehicle didn’t seem quite so cavernous. Poor Flash Harriette has never had so much shoved in her back door before. There was, in fact, barely room for my small day pack, which was all I could fit in of my own belongings. The suitcase I had been living out of to date had to stay behind. No matter though, no matter.

The first day of the trip was Sunday 3^rd July, getting to Ottawa and Smitch’s sister and brother-in-law’s house by about 5pm. We had a lovely BBQ that evening, then I spent the next day exploring Ottawa, while Smitch caught up with her sister and twin nephews. Seemed like fair exchange to me.

From Ottawa we went north to Quebec, by-passing Montreal to leave it for when I come back later in the month, on my own, to catch some comedy shows at the Just For Laughs Festival.

Quebec is a really cool city. It has a modern CBD somewhere I guess (it must do, surely), but I never saw it. We stayed in a small hostel in the old part of town, which was all narrow streets, tall houses and market places. Very touristy, but in actually quite a tasteful way. Heaps of places to eat and drink, loads to see and watch, and basically a very pleasant place. The only snag was that now we atre in Quebec, everything is in French, and the further away from the border with Ontario you get, the less English is spoken. This required all my high school French to be dredged up from where I had buried it 2 years ago while trying to learn Spanish. I never thought I’d find myself having to take a stepping stone through Spanish to get to a French translation, but I found my default foreign language was Spanish every time!

French is slowly coming back to me by day 3, and its actually quite rewarding remembering some of this stuff, but it will continue to be a struggle, and I’ll be relieved when we finally get back to the English-speaking part of Canada.

The hostel in Quebec was quirky and quaint, the only drawback – and it turned out to be a massive drawback- was that we were sharing our dorm room with 3 elderly (80 years or so old) tourists from France. They seemed nice enough, and even tried to chat in French with us, not having any English between them, but as Smitch and I headed in to town to look around, I joked that they would be trouble later, as I predicted that all of them would snore and the old lady would be the worse of the lot. Little did I know that I was to be right on the money. It was the noisiest night on record, sleep was nigh impossible and, what broken rest we could get, was made more difficult still by the oppressive heat wave we had stumbled upon.

The next morning was a sluggish one, and the drive out to Ste Anne des Monts was all the more difficult for it. Still, Ste Anne was on the Gaspé Peninsula and our next hostel was on the beach and all rustic and palm-frondy. This was more like it. Our accommodation was a yurt, the other guests seemed friendly, what could go wrong here?

Unfortuntely, the ‘what’ that went wrong was the earlier in the evening, conveniently located beachside bar. After about 11pm it turned into a noisy, rowdy beachside bar and stayed that way, just outside our non-sound-proofed, canvas-sided yurt, until about 4.30am. So, that was nice. Strike two for a good night’s sleep.

Today, we continued our drive around the Gaspé, getting as far as Anse-aux-Os, a small villagey type place with, hopefully, a much quieter hostel. Although, I think it would take a small explosion to keep me awake tonight. Not only am I two nights of sleep down, followed by two days driving, but also we went walking along cliffs today and saw maybe half a dozen hump-backed whales between 100m and 300m off shore. It was pretty cool actually, and the extra excitement wore me out just a little bit more.

Gaspé is definitely a nice place. It was sold to us pretty hard before we came here, and maybe that was over-hype, a little bit, but only because I have been all around South America and live in NZ, so have seen more than my share of outstanding natural beauty. This is certainly getting up there, but it’s not going to be taking the belt home just yet. There is still tomorrow, though, so who can say what might happen then?

Stage 1 Complete

2011-06-29T03:22:00.004+12:00

So, Mount Rushmore is a bit of a con. If you were clued in, you’d stop for sure in one of the wee lay-by/passing places on the way up the road and snap a photo from there, because if you go on up the hill further, you get filtered into a u-bend which reveals (a) no way back to the road and (b) a sign saying that the monument is free, but parking is $11. I’d have turned round there, except see point (a). Nothing for it but to get your parking ticket, which if you can believe it is valid for your vehicle for a year. Well that’s useful. I could go back every day if I wanted. But why would you, even if you were staying ne

ar by? There’s only a mountain to photograph and a kind of museum about how it was made, when you’ve seen it once, that should be enough.

Ah well, tourist photo op number-I-don’t-know-how-many accounted for. Maybe I was just too tired to appreciate it. Having spent 4 nights sleeping fitfully in the car by then, waking up about 6am, and having actually hit the road at 5.30 am that morning and driving for about 12 hours to get to Rushmore, I was a bit run down, I’ll be honest. I then spent that night in a truck stop an hour or two further up the road, and then did the same thing the next day – up before 6am, on the road, drive until about 7pm, slept in a Rest Stop area, up again at 5.30 and drove til about 6pm. All to get across the Dakota plains (which were actually very scenic, just never ending) and into Chicago by Saturday.

It almost worked, too, except I’d forgotten to book ahead for accommodation on a Saturday night, so I was left looking for camp sites that the internet swore were there, but when I arrived they weren’t. Except the first one which was full. So once again, sleeping in the car in a suburban street hoping not to get a ticket! Which I didn’t, and I was up early again and in to Chicago for Sunday morning, and a day of walking about, taking photos and enjoying the sunshine

in the Windy City.

Chicago seemed really nice, actually, and its

somewhere I’d go back to for a

better look, given the chance. The CBD buildings are all skyscrapers but still pretty cool architecture, and there is a good park setup by the lake and heaps of places I could have gone to if I’d had more time. As it was, I just walked about enjoying the Taste of Chicago food fair that was on, and revelling in not being stuck in the car for another 12 hours!

I had my first night’s sleep in a bed in a week on Sunday night, but still had to get up early to get back to Waterloo – only 8 hours driving according to Google Maps, but there was a customs stop too, which could add who knew how much extra time. As it turned out it was pretty quick process – just queuing time in the car really, but I got so focused on being in the correct lane that I missed the turning to the duty free area and therefore my chance to buy cheap single malt for my friends. The customs officer seemed quite smug when I said I had nothing to declare, but was hoping to get some duty free on the way out. She pointed out with a satisfied smirk that I had missed my chance. Worse than parking wardens, I tell you.

Anyway, back to Waterloo successfully, and it was good to catch up with Smitch, who is to be my travel buddy for July when I go out east. I now have until Sunday (its Tuesday to day) to go over plans, rest up and get my back attended to some more. It’s behaving itself but I don’t want to ignore the fact that I have been sitting down far too much lately. Oh, and the distance-ometer so far is 12000km or there abouts, which leaves me with about 3,900 free km on my rental agreement. Which won't be enough, I can tell you now!

Smaaaaaarter than the average American

2011-06-27T07:50:00.005+12:00

Just FYI, I added a whole extra photo to the last post, so go take a look before you read on. If you want to of course.

Yah. It rained in Glacier Park. Or at least, it rained all night, and in the morning it looked like it was going to rain again, the reports were

that many of the trails were still snow-blocked, and to get to the hiking trails I was going to have to drive further north, when I needed to be going south, so I decided to flag Glacier National Park. No big loss. I had been hearing good things since I got over here, but I’d never heard of it before arriving, so I didn’t exactly have it on my wish list. Or even have a wish list at all for that matter. But still.

So, south I went, all the way to Yellowstone National Park, home of Yogi and Boo Boo of course, and anther hefty day of driving. I stopped in a roadside camp ground on arrival, just outside the national park, then headed in the next day. This worked ou

t perfectly, as it was mid-summer’s day and President Obama had declared that all National Parks would be free entry. And of course, once you’re in, you’re in, and don’t have to pay the entry fee however long you stay! So, at least 2 nights then. Just the camp site fees to cover, and frankly they are far better than the Canadian Parks fees – only $14 for a night.

Yellowstone is like a big amusement park without any proper rides, and you have to drive everywhere to get to the next interesting thing. They have a road network inside that is pretty much like a digital figure 8, with info buildings at each junction, and each 'segment' of the eight is about 25miles long. Basically, you decide which of the attractions you’d like to visit (waterfalls, geothermal bits and bobs, Old Faithful, of course) and where you’d like to walk etc. As long as you are early enough to the camp sites to get a spot, you are on ea

sy street. I got the last spot in my campground at about 11.30am, so that was lucky. I spent the rest of the day driving and pulling in to see things, much like everyone else. There’s a speed limit of 45mph everywhere, and signs to watch for wildlife, so people displayed mammoth amounts of patience, waiting while folks just stopped in the middle of the road to take photos or watch bison. Or were they buffalo. I think they are the same thing actually…no, hang on…a bison is what you wash your fice in (I heard this on a Saturday morning kids show about 25 years ago and have been just waiting for the perfect time to steal it!)….anyway, they were everywhere.

Of course, you don’t know that when you start out, so the first tiny bison specks in the distance are photographed to the max, in case you don’t see another.

Not long after you’ll find yourself in a walking pace traffic queue because the ranger is escorting one up the road; later you pop in to a parking lot to see a view of a water meadow and get surrounded by them as they wander about the car park getting from grazing area A to grazing area B. Before long you are sick of bison and swear you will never take another photo of one again…unless it does something interesting…like move about….or was that just me?

There were also Elk, many ground squirrels, a mangy old coyote, a few bears (I ticked off yet more Black bears and my first Grizzly on my second day), and views that are really quite spectacular – though not of the grizzly. That was quite a distance away, and even the zoom lens on my camera failed to make more of it than a brown

lump slightly different to the other brown lumps it was mooching about in. That’s how you can tell it’s a bear. Trust me. Heaps of mountains, forests, rivers and thermal stuff too, with geysers and blowholes and colourful springs everywhere. If I were a stirrer, I’d say it’s so much better than New Zealand, as it’s all in one place…but without a coastline….so much more convenient…but I’m no stirrer. To be fair, what Rotorua squeezes into one smallish town, Yellowstone multiplies it and spreads it out to spread out the tourists. The driving could be considered a bit of a nuisance, but it is so picturesque, it’s not a problem. As for the tourists, there are so many of them everywhere, but you only really notice it in the car parks. Of course, if I’d been into some major multi-day hikes, I’d have left everyone behind and got into the back country. I was a total tourist though and stuck to the mainstream bits. Sorry, Rich, I let you down, played the sheep, followed the crowds…elbowed them out the way to get the best photos mind you…

I have one more night here tonight, then I’m off east at full speed. I think I should get to Mount Rushmore tomorrow, but not sure where I’ll stay the night. Not far from there I imagine. Then it’ll be another big day towards Chicago. If I can roll in there on Saturday, I’d be happy. Til then, mind your backs.

Vancouver Island Rocks...and Trees!

2011-06-22T02:38:00.004+12:00

Before I forget, just a little aside to the Whistler entry. It amused me greatly when I realised that the English bloke I hung out with that evening was in fact the youthful reincarnation of a Fast Show character. For those in the know, think of the old bloke who used to sit in his arm chair by the fire and ramble on incoherently, with all sorts of random phrases and noises, concluding each monologue with the phrase “But of course, I was very, very drunk!” Now picture that character as a young man and you have my Whistler buddy. Same slightly bulbous nose (he was much younger remember) which seemed

primed and ready to transform into an alcoholics strawberry nose, even sounded like him a bit. I was unable to take anything he had to say seriously after I noticed it, and he did have a lot to say, so I had to resort to hiding my smirks behind swigs of beer and handfuls of chips. Ah well, you probably had to be there. Little thingplease little minds, as they say.

Anyhow, it’s been a while since I last put finger to keypad, so I guess that means either I’ve been busy or lazy. I think mostly the former, enjoying what tiny Tofino had to offer in the way of wildlife trips and diving outings. The wildlife was a tad sporadic, but my deal to swap a Friday morning dive for a Saturday morning dive paid off in a rather unexpected way, the details of which I will keep deliberately sketchy in a bid to avoid jinxing anything. The dive itself, however, was m

y first cold water experience, and it wasn’t as bad as I’d thought it would be. I actually put on the safety sheet I had to fill in that I had “some” cold water diving experience, specifying 14˚C in Wellington, which made the dive master laugh and mock, with comments along the lines of “that’s damn near tropical compared to what we have today!” Not particularly reassuring.

It actually turned out to be 7˚C for both our dives that morning, which is actually more that twice as cold 14˚C, despite what the numbers might suggest. We dressed up warm (figuratively speaking) in a 7mm wetsuit and hood, with an extra 7mm shortie over the top for added core warmth. Still seeming ominous…

We also had 7mm gloves and boots to complete the ensemble, and once in the gear it was hard to tell anyone apart from anyone else, except the dive guides who were wearing drysuits…but I guess as they were looking after my safety, I’d rather they didn’t succumb to hypothermia along with me, if that was to be the direction the day was to take.

The dives themselves were a little murky…actually close to being very murky – visibility only about 6m - but that was due to a combination of excessive melt water running do

wn the rivers bringing extra silt with it and a minimal rise in surface temperature sparking a slightly later than normal algal growth. Nonetheless, there were plenty of fish, many crabs and a positive abundance of giant starfish nearly a metre across and outsized anemones, which were the star attractions. A totally different dive experience, even to the Galapagos, and thoroughly enjoyable in its own way. After the first, 40 minute dive, things were pretty chilly, but with half an hour or so to warm up a bit, we embarked on the second, 30 minute, one. Somewhat mysteriously, this was not as cold as the first one, which was nice. I was told I should come back in winter when the visibility is 20m or so and the water temperature at depth exactly the same, but it is a long way to go for that, so probably not going to happen.

I made an interesting new friend on the dive trip (this is the deliberately hazy part) who I reluctantly had to leave behind as I was off to Ladysmith that afternoon, but future plans were made and what becomes of them remains to be seen. As for Ladysmith, I was to go and stay with the cousin of the father of Mike from North Bay, so having made the plans it would have been awkward to change them at such short notice.

Over I went, and met a very welcoming family who took me in, fed me, entertained me and invited me back (Mum, you should be proud!), but sadly my pencilled in plans for a few days time were cancelled as I found extra ferries – I’ll explain later.

From Ladysmith I went down to Victoria and explored that city for the afternoon, before heading over to Port Renfrew further down the west coast to Tofino. It actually classifies as

rainforest, so the hazy drizzle that met me on my arrival was more expected than the dry day that greeted me after a night sleeping in the car. The tracks round the coast were gorgeous, and the beaches strewn with drift wood and sickeningly picturesque, but sadly I only had the one night to look around. Anymore would have necessitated attacking the west ccast hiking trail, which was a 3-dayer at minimum, so was never really on the card in any case.

Back across the middle of the island I went to Crofton on the East coast and the small local ferry to Salt Spring Island, to stay with my aunt-in-law (i.e. my brother-in-law’s aunt, if you hadn’t worked it out). Salt Spring Island (SSI) used to be a bit of a hippy commune type set up and is still very popular with arty types who like the quiet, community pace of life and produce some amazing works of art, be they sculptures, jewellery or paintings. It’s not a big place but has some great places to eat, some lovely gentle walks and some historic, First Nation monuments, all of which Rosemary and her house mate Bob, did a first rate job of showing me. I felt thoroughly settled by the end of the first bottle of wine I shared with Rosemary on the afternoon I arrived, and it was a shame to leave on the third day. This is where Ladysmith part two fell apart. I hadn’t realised there was a second ferry to the island that went direct to Victoria on Vancouver Island, thereby saving me a 4 hour drive back down from Crofton, where I’d come across from. Much easier, and it sped up my plans to get to the US quite nicely.

With only 10 days left to get back to Toronto, given that I wanted to be back early enough to rest up before heading out east and also to allow time to follow up on those plans I mentioned before, I opted to drive straight from Port Angeles to Seattle on the day I arrived. Customs was easy – half of the US bits were done on the Canadian side before even getting on the ferry, the other half done as I disembarked, and I was off, arriving by about 6pm. The Saturday was spent with a cousin of Rosemary’s that she had only become aware of a couple of years earlier when he was doing some family tree research and found out that their grandmothers had been sisters. For those who don’t know and are interested, Rosemary’s family was from Glasgow, and she had moved to Canada some 30 or 40 years ago. Her new relative was born and raised in Germany, and moved to the States a similar time ago. He was a very friendly chap called Bernd and, despite a very painful back condition he is waiting to have operated on in July, he took me on a tour of a damp and misty Seattle for the day, for which I am very grateful.

And that brings me up to today, which has been a mammoth day of driving, leaving Seattle at about 6.30am and driving about 900km in 12 hours (OK, it was 11, but I lost an hour as I passed a time zone) to arrive on the outskirts of Glacier National Park. If the weather is good tomorrow I will find a day hike, if not I’ll head straight south to Yellowstone National Park and have an extra day there. Watch this space. Its Sunday evening now, and I’m aiming to be back in Waterloo by Tuesday the 28^th, so I have 9 days to play with. Chicago is on the cards, and I will pass Mount Rushmore (I may even stop for a photo if they aren’t charging body parts to take a look), but mostly it will be driving. With a bit of luck I may be able to fit in a chiropractic appointment. I really know how to live, huh?

Time to Chill

2011-06-10T11:44:00.005+12:00

The Chief, eh? It pretty much lived up to its name. Its a large, abrupt rocky outcrop, with volcanic origins, in the small town of Squamish, about half way between Whistler and Vancouver. There are actually 3 peaks, accesible from a track that splits 3 ways about half way up. They all climb very steeply, and involve re-bar ladders and chain hand rails to help climb/pull your way up various stages of the ascents. the rock itself is about 350m high, so its a fairly substantial scramble. After checking the whereabouts of the trailhead in the information office, I was recommended to give the 2nd peak a bash as it had the best view. This I did, reaching the top in about an hour (1/2 hour faster than the info person suggested, and about an hour quicker than the marker at the bottom), sweated for a bit at the top, and headed down as far as the split in order to go up the first peak as well. Why not? I thought. I'm only here once. I toyed with the idea of doing the 3rd peak as well, but meeting a rather cute local girl at the top and chatting to her seemed more fun, so I invited myself along when she finally headed back down. No harm, no foul as they say.

I carried on to Vancouver and found a rather crowded hostel in the downtown area. I found a pub to watch the 3rd round of the hockey play-offs (the next best thing to the world cup over here) and kept my head down when Vancouver lost 8-1 to American opposition. The next day I went a-walkin' round town, visiting the Musuem of Biodiversity, the Granville Island Market and the Aquarium, by way of large parts of the water front, going mostly by foot but for one long stretch to the museum by bus, and therefore got to see a fair amount of the downtown city. Its a nice place, I think, and located on the doorstep of some amazing mountians and outdoor recreation. Nice.

Wednesday saw me off to the early ferry to Vancouver Island, and involved a little more Satnav horn-locking. The machine was convinced the ferry terminal was a 2 1/2 hour, 34km journey away, and I hoped fervantly that it was wrong, as I'd only allowed an hour to do what I believed to be a 25km journey. Once again, I was right and I arrived with plenty of time. I am losing faith in my guidance system.

Once on Vancouver Island I decided to get an oil change for Flash Harriette, and to get her brakes checked out after the thermal disaster that was narrowly averted. The guy at the garage seemed to think the brakes would do, but conceded that something had got very hot and become bent (hence the shuddering when decelerating from 100km/h or so), but it was going to cost about $450 to fix and wasn't essential, so I left it well enough alone. That's one perk of having a rental I guess - ultimately it's not my problem.., as long as it holds up while I have it. Three hours, one hitch hiker and 2 bears later and I was in Tofino, where I will stay and be a tourist for a few days.

Today I went out early on a nature cruise round the islands of Tofino to see various wild things, and checked off bald eagles, osprey, puffins and sea otters, among others, for the trip. I have a dive planned for Saturday, and will make a decision about going out looking for whales later on. I figure I won't see them as well as I did off Peninsula Valdez, so what's the point? Maybe I'll go fishing instead. Lots of salmon hereabouts, and some halibut too, by all accounts. And hikes, of course. Lots of hikes. It'll be a surprise for us both :-)

Smoke? No Thanks, I'm Trying to Quit...

2011-06-06T12:03:00.003+12:00

So, Jasper was nice. Actually it was pretty spectacular with its snowy mountains and steep sided hills and rivers and whatnot. unfortunately I didn't stay as long as I'd thought I would, as I struggled through a planning meeting in reverse (i.e. I worked backwards from being on Salt Spring Island for the 14th June, fitted in everything I wanted to do on Vancouver Island, tracked back to where I was) and discovered that if I wanted to fit it all in, I'd have to leave after the second night. I also found out that all the camp sites I had picked out in Glacier National Park were still closed due to snow, so the best place to stop between Jasper and Whistler was going to be a tiny town called Field, which was about 200km closer to Jasper than I would have liked - nothing personal, it just meant I was going to have a mammoth day to get from there to Whistler. Still, one thing at a tiime.

I drove out to a couple of places local to Jasper and did a couple fo day hikes - real pathetic stuff, really, but several in a day wasn't bad exercise. I was done in by about 5pm thanks to too much driving, bad sleep thanks to snorers in the dorm, and the remnants of the cold which I can't shake, so I took it easy in the evening.

An early start with a couple of hostellers who wanted a lift to the Columbus Ice Field saw the first part of the days drive done in comapny. We stopped at a couple of waterfalls on the way too, which broke the 2 hour journey up. I took a look round the ice centre, but opted out of an hour long trip on to the bottom edge of the glacier due to cost and the fact I could see the glacier out of the centre window, so didn't feel the need to see it closer up. I continued on and stopped a few more times, before getting to Lake Louise, where I went on a 5km hike up the shore line. Again, nothing challenging in it at all, apart from the new shoes I had bought not half an hour earlier and wanted to break in a bit. After that, it was on to Field.

Talk about tiny towns: Field was it! About 3 streets, but many lodges and the tidiest hostel I'd ever stayed at. Couple that to the Truffle Pig - a restaurant that deserved several stars if it didn't already have them - and it turned out to be a top spot. It was in Yoho Natiuonal Park, and the next day I put in 3 shortish hikes, ranging from 3ish to 7ish km in length, for a total of about 15km along and 1.5km of climbing. Much more strenuous, and my shoes rubbed a doozy of a blister on my left foot. Perfect for what I have in store of the trip between Whistler and Vancouver. Bugger. Anyhow, lots of good wildlife, lots of sweating and a feeling of actually enjoying being somewhere for a bit, later and it was another cold beer in the Truffle Pig. Things were looking up.

Today, I have just arrived in Whistler after a mammoth 10hour drive covering about 780km. It was spectacular country, adn half of it was off the main highway - somehting Is hould have been doing more of, but the satnav tends to take me the fastest routes and I don't ahve the maps to argue - apart from this time, when it got in a bother again when I took things into my own hands, and eventually had to re-programme it again to avoid being sent via Vancouver. I had a great time on the winding mountian roads - perhaps too much of a good time, as I found the brakes doiing funny things after a bit. I wondered if I should pull over and see if somethign was wrong (in which case I'd have to stop and try and get help) or just pretend I hadn't noticed and hope I could limp into town and sort it there. I opted for plan A after deciding that if I ignored it and the brakes crapped out altogether, I'd most likely be tipped into a ravine several hundred meters deep. It was a good call. Even to my untrained eye, I couldspot two problems almost immedieatley that I stepped out of the car. The first was the moke pouring out of the front left wheel. The second was the smoke pouring out of the front right wheel. It seems that my enthusiastic (but actually extrememly safe) driving had pushed the brakes past their heat threshold, and they weren't too happy. Still, half an hour later and they had cooled down to the point that the warning light on the dash had gone out again, and I continued on, more sedately this time. the light came on once more on the last part of the down hill, but after that it was level enough to not need the brakes, so they cooled down properlyin the chill mountain air.

So here I sit, in the evening sun, on the balcony of the YHA hostel in Whistler, that not so long ago was built as athlete accommodation for the 2010 Winter Olympics, so you can perhaps imagine the tidy condition of the place. Very nice it is, too.

I shall relax a bit tonight, and hope my raw heel comes a bit righter by tomorrow when I have a trail to hike that sounds very similar to the one I did in Marumbi Park in Brazil, with rocks and ladders and chains to assist in the ascents. Sounds good to me. So, until after then, keep on smiling. I have been.

Rockies and Bullwinkle

2011-06-03T11:53:00.007+12:00

Look what I saw the other day! In one of the road side clearings that I had been scrutinising, more to the point,

so that paid off at least. Its a moose, by the way, for the hard of seeing.

So anyway, I worked out the daylight thing...I think... I have decided it must be to do with the time zones I am crossing that I don't realise I am crossing because they creep up on me over two or three days. As I get closer to the new zone, the days are that much longer, and then I cross into the new zone, lose and hour and everything goes back to normal for a few days. Both times so far I have been caught out in my new location, and have wandered around having dinner far too early or wondering why shops are still open when they should have closed by now. Only one more zone to go, and then I start doing it in reverse. Should be interesting.

The driving has become tedious, I'll be honest. I think I am doing too much of it and not having enough time to stop and smell the flowers, so to speak. It doesn't help that I keep underestimating how far I have to go each day. I've notched up about 4000km so far. Not that there have been that many 'flowers' on the plains, it has mostly been just dull, but I have reached the Rockies now so things should become more interesting, for a while at least.

Also, driving cross-country in a car is not nearly as satisfying as on a bike, and I am the first to be surprised to hear myself say that. At least on the bike you feel like you are doing something with your day, but in the car it is just a surprisingly draining slog to get from A to B. It was draining on the bike too, of course, but there was a reason for that. Also, on the bike, there was a wealth of humourous experiences everyday as I struggled to master my machine - and sometimes even succeeded. And if no humourousness presented itself courtesy of the bike, then there were interesting, 'cultural differences' scenarios to entertain me (and, in the telling of them, you, perhaps). On the bike, as well, you are much more out in the open and part of the

landscape in a way that you never are in the tin box environment of a car. I'd always trotted out this line in the past, but I am fully believing it for the first time. Canada is nice and all, but the people are just 'more of the same' as you'd get in NZ, the UK or any other westernised, wealthy country. Nothing to write home about, in other words.

Still, there is always the SatNav. Now, I am not particularly techno-savvy, but even I thought I'd worked out the budget beast I picked up in Toronto, and it has mostly been invaluable, particularly in and out of cities. However, the other day in Winnipeg, we had words. More accurately, I had words, the SatNav remained calm and irritatingly rational - and, for the record,confused!

I'd performed a clever, round the block U-turn (due to a one-way system) to get on the road it was telling me to be on at the start of a day trip to Oakhammer Marsh, and somehow it got confused and put me on a parallel road to the one I was actually on. I thought this was the case, but followed its instructions anyway, and got rapidly lost as it told me to take lefts and rights that weren't there or were called different things to what it was saying. Somewhat surprisingly, I got a bit sweary at it, and it didn't help itself by steadfastly sticking to its story. Eventually, I was forced to pull over, wipe its route memory and re-program it. Cheered me up though, as you can imagine. That sort of thing hardly bothers me at all. if only other aspects of life could be resolved in the same way...

The other day, on my way to Edmonton, I stopped in at the Ukranian Cultural Experience of Canada. Its exactly where I'd expect to find a Ukranian Cultural experience, naturally, so I wasn't surprised either. Lots of traditional farming techniques and cabbage dishes to try. That evening I checked on Ed's progress and saw that he'd been in Uzbekistan. Alright for some. I was excited at the time - right up to the point of writing this, in fact - as I thought he'd been in the Ukraine on the same day I'd been experiencing their culture. But no, Uzbekistan. Not quite as

funny. Nuts.

Got some hikes coming up in the next couple of days, and I should be on Vancouver Island by

Wednesday next week. So many things I want to fit in and the only way is to keep going. I know I can't do it all, but its hard to pass up the stuff

right in front of you for stuff up the road, so I will continue to drive big distances and hope I am not too wiped to make the most of the places I get to. With scenes like this, can you blame me? More later. Time for dinner.

Heavy on the Seasoning...

2011-05-27T13:25:00.002+12:00

Oh, and by the way, what is up with these seasons? When I got to the UK I had 2 weeks of unbroken, late spring, mostly warm; then I got to Toronto and it was sunny again (mostly) and warm too, but the trees seemed to have stepped back about a month in how leafy they were – late spring, they told me. Then, up in North Bay it was sunny to start with, then cold and wet, still no spring in the leaves. Now, in Thunder Bay, it is light at 10pm, like I’d expect it to be in Summer, the sun has been shining all day (like Summer – it is nearly June after all) but it never got over 7˚C and the trees are still barely out of Winter. I mean I wouldn't mind, except that its like driving about in a greenhouse and then I get out of the car and need to put on Winter clothing. I am confused!!

Water, Water Everywhere

2011-05-27T12:41:00.002+12:00

Did I say fun? I meant hard labour. What was I thinking? I somehow imagined that the kindness and generosity I’d shown Mike and Janelle in Wellington would be repaid when I got to their manor, squire, but instead I was put to work in their new house – a real fixer-upper – within moments of my arrival on Thursday afternoon. OK, so Janelle fed me first, but then she got out her whip and jackboots, and not in a good way!

With a kitchen installation looming on Friday morning, we were on a tight schedule to get a whole, freshly plastered kitchen to undercoat and double top-coat before then. With 4 hours of drying time between coats, we used a fan heater to speed things along but, even still it was quarter to one in the morning before we were done. And then the installation was delayed to Tuesday anyway. Never mind, I thought, it’s the least I could do to earn my keep for a couple of days…and then the landscaping started.

In the end, I spent four days with them, shifting dirt, clearing brush, digging vegetable beds, planting seeds, and having a great time. Their new house is right on the lake side in North Bay, Mike’s parents, grandparents, niece and nephew came up to help and were great, and in a way I see it as earning my whole trip. In South America I did voluntary work with kids and animals to feel like I earned the ride, and this time…well, this time I guess it’s much the same…just not quite for as long…but then neither is the trip.

The worst thing about spending the first two weeks of my trip with friends is that I was sorely tempted to ditch the whole cross country drive thing and just hang out and re-paint Mike and Janelle’s house for three months. Still, that would be cop out, so enough of that kind of talk.

Anyhoo, work done, back still in one piece, just about, and it was time to hit the road properly – at last! I plotted a vague course for a few days and got cracking, aiming on the first day, not for the touristy town of Sault Ste. Marie, but to the Lake Superior Provincial Park a bit further north, for some camping out and an attempt to get into the spirit of the trip.

It was a good call. The road itself was interesting enough…for a while. Then, however picturesque the mixed pines and silver birches were, decoratively interspersed with reflective lakes and creeks as they were, they got a bit samey after a while. Even trying to check each clearing for a glimpse of a bear or moose that might have been wandering past, lost its excitement factor after about 6 hours with not a sniff. Still, thinks I, it won’t last for long…except it did. It lasted for hours…days, in fact as it turned out, as it was still the same at the end of the third day of driving, I was beginning to get an idea of just how large Canada is.

Case in point: I have so far driven along the shores of three of the Great Lakes – Ontario, Huron and Superior – and while they are definitely beautiful to see, they are so unbelievably large that it’s hard to tell them apart from the ocean for a lot of the time. It’s a bit like looking at the pixels that make up a picture, close up. They lose any kind of meaning until you take a step back and they merge into an image. The lakes are like this. You’d need to be able to look at them from a great distance to get any sense that they were, indeed, lakes rather than oceans, and even then it’s not that clear.

There were plenty of spots to pull in and stretch the old legs of course – and more importantly the even older-feeling back – but, rather disappointingly, if they were in a Provincial Park (of which there are many to drive through) the spots all required a hefty parking fee, in cash - of which I didn’t have any. So, I chanced it, parking up and rushing to whatever cliff edge or waterfall this particular stopping point was promoting, taking some quick photos and skidaddling. A bit dishonest, but I tell myself (and you, too, you judgers) that I was quite willing to pay if they’d had a better system in place that took plastic or notes rather than exact change.

The same thing happened at Lake Superior Provincial Park, which was closed up when I arrived at 6pm and still closed when I left conveniently early at 8am, once again being unable to pay the ridiculously high camping fee (C$35 a night!! That’s more than a hostel charges!) . Still, I grabbed myself a spot along the deserted lake front, with a view of the setting sun, where I was able to organise the back of Flash Harriette and cook my first evening meal. No hiccups there…except that the fuel bottle of my Whisperlite stove decided to leak like a geriatrics bladder instead of carefully channelling the fuel to the burner. Luckily, it did this before ignition, but trying to fix fiddly little metal bits with very cold hands indeed was not easy. I was equal to the task however and got it plugged and fired up safely. Dinner was a snap, the sun set over the horizon (not sure where else I’d have expected it to set), and the back of Harriette was fixed up for sleeping. Nice. This was what it was all about!

Next day it was further on round Lake Superior, all the way to Thunder Bay – no, really, that’s its name. A bit ‘Hollywood B-movie’ for my tastes, but a nice enough little town. On the way there, I pulled in to check out another impressive vista, and as I pulled in to the car park I got my first taste of real live bears! A mother and her cub were scavenging around the bins, and my car startled them. The cub scrambled up the nearest tree (so fast that I instantly dropped “climbing a tree” from my list of bear evasion strategies) while the mother stood and stared down Flash Harriette. I got a quick photo before they shuffled off into the bushes, but it was a better sighting than I’d expected to get outside of a rubbish dump. Definitely a highlight of my two days so far. Still, I gotta say that I miss my bike. Its not as challenging, somehow…

Back on Track

2011-05-21T05:44:00.002+12:00

I’m not sure who to thank in particular, so I’m sending out a general thanks to everyone who sent out positive thoughts about my car predicament. After a frustrating Monday spent phoning the Canadian Ministry of Transport to check the licence issue (the insurance guy was right, no joy), I called a number of well known and not so well known car rental companies, and had pretty similar and discouraging responses from all of them.

You choose, from “we don’t let our cars out of Ontario”, to “If you got to the US you’ll have to arrange separate insurance for that time,” to “we’ll only give you 2500km free for 84 days, then its 20c a kilometre after that,”to “by all means take the car, but every month you’ll have to visit one of our distributors and get the car sited before signing a new contract…and we’ll charge you about $1 for every kilometre you are away from our office as we have to swap cars and we’ll have to get that one back here somehow.” All very depressing, until I was put on to Carter’s Car and Truck Rental.

They came good at the last and let me have a brand new (well, 2010 model with 30,000km on the clock) Dodge Caravan – actually a minivan with seats that disappear into the floor leaving a huge sleeping space – with 5333km free each month and I was able to pre-sign 2 extra contracts before I left, so that all I’d have to do every 28 days was phone in a mileage reading. The only down side was that my credit card does not provide automatic insurance on rental cars, so I have to pay an extra $500 odd per month, but even still, the final cost will be just less than if I’d bought a car at the top of my $5k budget and had to fork out for insurance anyway. With a rental I don’t get to recoup anything by selling it at the end…..unlesssss…no, that would be illegal and, besides, they have my credit card number. I’d better give it back.

Incidentally, they had offered a Toyota Sienna minivan first, which I preferred due to Toyota's reputation for reliability, but this vehicle’s alternator caught fire on its way to the service shop just before I picked it up. So, lucky for me, then.

To sum up then: I am now the proud (temporary) owner of a 2010 reddish-coloured Dodge Caravan and I am about to let rip across Canada. It is a far flasher car than I would have bought for myself (hence its temporary name: Flash Harriette), and I can plug my ipod straight into the radio. Perfect. This is where the fun begins. Tomorrow: North Bay and a visit with Mike and Janelle for a few days.

An Early Spanner

2011-05-17T05:13:00.002+12:00

It had all seemed so simple:

1) Arrive in Canada

2) Buy car

3) Drive back and forth across Canada until time to stop

4) Sell car

5) Leave Canada.

To begin with, it was. The arriving bit went very well indeed, including being collected by a friend at the airport, catching up with more old friends that night, as well as making some new ones. There was drinking. Lots of drinking. And lots of eating. Sunshine, even. More old friends – nice ones, too.

But, alas, it turns out that it was all part of a lulling process. I was being lulled. Tricked into a false sense of how easy everything would be. I was further lulled by a couple interesting and useful test drives of various Volvos and Toyotas. I was even on the verge of completing the second part of the plan, i.e. buying a car (even getting as far as obtaining large quantities of hard cash to sweeten the deal). Unfortunately I had underestimated the Canadian – in particular the Ontario-an – love of red tape.

Before I could actually buy a car, I would have to sort out insurance. Fair enough, and easy, right? Wrong. So, so wrong. I was eventually asked by a small town insurance broker (after being ping-ponged between several larger insurance providers, including the all powerful Canadian Automobile Association) whether I had an Ontario driver’s licence. Of course not, I’d replied. I have a NZ one. And an International one, if that’s any help. Nope. No help at all. If I’d had an Ontario licence, I’d have been insured to drive anywhere in Canada and the US, which would have been great. However, it seems that without an Ontario driver’s licence, I can’t get motor insurance in Ontario. Without motor insurance I can’t legally own a car. Without a car, I can’t drive back and forth across Canada. Ah. Bugger. Quite the kick in the plums.

There were options. I could get a friend to buy a car and go on their insurance, but then they’d have to take 6 – 10 weeks off work to accompany me. I could take a driving test and get an Ontario licence, but I’d have to hand over my NZ licence, and probably wait ages for the new licence to come through. I could maybe (still to be investigated) go to the US, buy a car there and start and end my trip in a whole other country. Inconvenient, but last resort do-able. Or, least stressfully, I might be able to rent a car for 3 months…although I still have not had an opportunity to investigate this either, so there may be restrictions on how far from the rental shop I can drive it.

It is now Sunday, so everything is closed or limited, including my access to internet. I will have to get into it on Monday. Wish me luck. It seems like I may be needing some. Incidentally, I received the bad news two days ago...on Friday...the 13th. Coincidence? You decide.

South American Facts and Figures

2011-04-07T15:15:00.011+12:00

Before I set off across Canada, I thought there might be some people out there who would like to know some of the stats from South America. I’m certainly curious myself, having never yet got around to sitting down and doing the sums, so now seems as good a time as any. It’s going to be a bit listy, but I’m sure you’ll be able to manage. To add a bit of comic relief - or perhaps, preferably, some awe and wonder - the photo is of my biggest 'offsie'. Rich is standing where I began to lose control of the bike, and the bike is where it finished cart-wheeling. Cool, huh? (Mother, close your eyes!) So, here goes with some Crazy Roads accounting:

Total distance covered	30,810 km or 19,145 miles
Greatest distance covered in a day (best guess)	660 km or 410 miles (Foz do Iguaçu – Curitiba, Brazil)
Shortest distance covered in a day by choice	158 km or 98 miles (Azul to General la Madrid, Argentina)
(Actual) Longest day in the saddle for the shortest distance traveled:	105 km or 65 miles (Mendoza to Uspallata, Argentina) over 10 hours, in the snow and sunshine.
(Perceived) Longest day in the saddle for shortest distance traveled:	137km (Huanuco – La Union, Peru) over 6 1/2 hours, in the rain and mud.
Top speed (by me)	140km/h (Route 26 between Villa Unión and Villa San Agustin de Vallé Fertil, Argentina – throttle fully open, level ground, straight road, no wind)
Highest altitude ridden (by me – Rich went higher when his girlfriend came to visit in March)	4748m Paso de San Francisco, between Argentina and Chile)
Largest number of ‘offsies’ in a day	Impossible to count, but certainly over 30 (Mendoza to Uspallata, Argentina)
Total number of ‘offsies’ for the trip	You’re kidding, right? How the hell can I remember that? Well over 100, and thankfully ever fewer towards the end of the trip. I think Rich came off about 5 times in total. Git.
Most destructive ‘offsie”	The 60km/h cartwheel I did between Viedma and San Antonio Oeste (photo)
Total number of days on the road	278
Different places stayed at night en route	116
Number of nights camped out	27 (24 different locations)
Most nights stayed in one place	Cusco, Peru (2 months - volunteering)
Least nights stayed in one place	Rafael, Argentina (3 hours)
Number of windscreens broken	2 (3 if you count breaking the repaired one a second time)
Number of times handle bars bent and replaced	3 times bent, 1 time straightened and finally 1 replacement
Number of panniers damaged	2 – both the left and right were held on to the racks by straps by about the 5^th week. They remained 100% waterproof throughout, however. I was impressed!
Number of times of chain/sprockets replaced	1
Number of times tyres replaced	2
Number of punctures	4
Number of breakdowns	1 (in Punta Arenas, Chile)
Number of Injuries	Not many. Coupla cuts and bruises, mostly my own fault!
Number of times food poisoned	2 (Fiambalá, Argentina; Lake Titikaka, Bolivia)
Run ins with the cops/customs	0
Number of tantrums	Too many, all ‘offsie’ or stress related
Approximate cost of whole trip, including shipping and flights	NZ$30,000
Number of unforgettable memories	Countles

There were times during the trip when all I wanted to do was go home. By the end, however, I was left with the certain knowledge that I want to do another motorbike trip some time. “So why not take a bike across Canada, instead of a car?” I hear you ask.

Well, during my time in Cusco and the Bolivian jungle, I was suffering some fairly severe back and sciatic leg pain. I got some treatment in Cusco and, by the time I got back to the UK in May, it seemed to have calmed down. About 3 months after returning to NZ, however, in October 2009 (and probably as a result of visiting chiropractors and massage therapists to ease the pain and tension I was again feeling) the locked muscles that had been doing their best to protect my lower back, were released sufficiently so that I burst a disc in my spine (the L5S1 in the lower back, for those with experience of these things) which inpinged on the sciatic nerve in my right leg. I have never felt pain like it, and suffered a week with only about 6 hours sleep before I was given a cortisone injection to kill the pain. I was off work for 5 ½ months, and have since been advised that long days of riding would be a bad idea at this stage in my recovery. The fact that my baby bro suffered a similar (but surely less severe ;-p) injury to mine several years ago, and is now planning a big bike trip of his own, suggests I just need to be patient and keep doing my exercises, and one day I will be up to another bike trip. That will be the time that I look at riding from Anchorage to Cusco, or some such. Until then, it will be 4 wheels on my wagon, and I’ll keep rolling along. And that's it for today. Thanks for tuning in, and see you next time &:-)

Once more unto the breach, dear friends...

2011-04-05T15:21:00.004+12:00

'Ning.

Well, I'm back after a somewhat extended hiatus. It's as though we've been at a work Christmas party and conversation dried up. We've been standing in awkward silence, swirling our drinks, looking at our shoes and rocking on our heels, desperately trying to think of something interesting to say or, better yet, an excuse to go and talk to someone else ("How about those Hurricanes / Maple Leafs / Harlequins (insert sporting team of choice here)?").

Luckily for you (you be the judge), I have come up with a new topic on which to wax lyrical: I am poised to embark upon an epic road trip across North America. OK, I agree, its not quite as interesting as South America - unwittingly, I set the bar rather high on that one. Very little I ever do again will compare to that, unless I am able to return to finish what I started (Mexico to Peru anyone? Now there's a thought!) but, for now, I have engineered a spare 3 months this year, and this is what I have decided to do.

For those out there who have been outside the cirlce of trust (its your own fault, the door has always been open to you) I was originally gearing up to use May - August as a precursor to working with the Toronto Fire Department for a year on the International Firefighter Exchange Program. I'd calculated that, with a little careful planning, I could spend the summer tripping around out west and then concentrate on the rest of the year out east. Unfortunately, my planning was a little sharper than my exchange partners, and while I was ready to sign contracts in November last year, he wasn't, and by the time he was, there was no longer time to organise the requisite visas without seriously altering my own plans, so the year of work was moved to the back burner. Disappointing, but when life gives you lemons, you say "Bugger the lemonade, I'm going to make a lovely big lemon meringue pie. Now, do I have any eggs?"

So, there it is. Arrival date in TO: 6th May. First order of business: secure a vehicle - at this stage I have been looking at either something my father would be proud of, or alternatively something fun...but ridiculously impractical and asking for trouble. I suspect the Volvo station wagon will prevail. As soon as I have it in my sweaty hands, I will change the front page photo. Thereafter, I will spend a fortnight or so catching up with a few friends around the area before heading west.

I have only a vague idea of what route I will take at this stage, but basically it will involve getting to Vancouver, exploring some of British Columbia and returning via the US of A through the northern states. I'll be aiming to get back to TO by 1st July, where I will collect a travel companion for a month or so of exploring Quebec, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, and getting to North Bay, Ontario for a canoe trip in the first week of August. After that, I should just have time to chill out and do some more local exploring before finally hitting TO and flying back to NZ on August 18th. All these plans have been made, needless to say, with only a minimal understanding of just how large an area I am crossing, so it could turn out to be an altogether different trip. I have already re-jigged it once and dropped Alaska from the itinerary - it'll keep! Watch this space. If it all goes to plan, I will have driven across both Canada and the USA, and will feel very special.

I will begin up dating the blog again once I get underway, which is actually around April 21st, when I head back to the UK for a flying visit. I will be checking up on my niece (at 9 months old, I will be expecting an intelligent conversation from her about the situation in Libya...or at least some pretty solid raspberries), and bidding farewell to my little brother who is about to undertake one of the biggest sibling rivalry one-uppings in history, as he sets off on a motorbike trip of his own, from London to Beijing in a group, then on to Anchorage and down around South America (and maybe Africa after that) on his own. I am, needless to say, rather jealous (particularly about the second part of his trip) and very proud of him. I don't take any credit for inspring him, he was talking about big bike trips way before I even considered my own adventure. I have added a link to his own, far more professional-looking blog for those that are interested, and will be following it closely myself. I just wonder how professional he will be able to keep it when he realises his secretary is not there to do it all for him ;-p It is somewhat galling to find his writing style is very nearly as good as mine.

I have left the charity links in place for the same reasons as before, really: I wish there was some way of earning the amazing experiences I am anticipating on this trip. Maybe this is one way. If you feel inclined at any stage to make a donation on my behalf, as gesture of appreciaton for the blog updates or whyever, that would be fantastic. Helen House is such an incredible set up, and having spent a considerable amount of time working with Bruce Peru, I cannot say enough good things about it, nor stress how much they need help to stay afloat. Do what you can, and thank you.

As for the new look of the blog...well, it has a vaguely Canadian feel (Autumnal , slightly Maple leafish, the best I could do without a secretary or an Applemac). I quite like it. Oh, and I'd like to say thank you at this point to all the people who were kind enough to tell me that they enjoyed reading about my South American trip. Its nice to know I wasn't wasting my time. For those that are interested, since I got back I have been trying to write it all up into a kind of travel book. It is a very slow process and so far has consisted of committing to paper (OK, hard drive) as much detail as I can remember. I have only got as far as Rio, and its been two years. One day it may even be in a state worthy of being read, at which point you will all be welcome to take a look. Now, run along and tell your friends that Steve's blog is open for business again. TTFN.

And now, our main stories again...

2009-05-19T09:17:00.004+12:00

I'm off to the airport in about 2 hours. I'm sitting here trying to think how to do this next bit, wondering if the slight sniffle I seem to have developed is the on-set of swine flu or just second hand germs from the pungent dutch teenagers that have been coughing and hacking around the hostal in their unwashed feet since yesterday afternoon, and whether the slight nausea I'm feeling is due to the reheated chinese noodles I've just eaten, or a physical response to the confused feelings I have about leaving.

Part of me is longing to get home (both to the UK and NZ) and back to some kind of normality, but equally I know that it will be most likely years before I get to do a trip like this again, if ever, and I'm not sure how I feel about that. I can't imagine never coming back to South America, that's for sure, but how and when are baffling me at the moment. I think I will probably shed a tear as the plane takes off. A tough, macho tear, obviously, but a tear nonetheless.

Maybe I should start by remembering the things I won't miss. For example, buttock cramps caused by 11 hours in the saddle; wind so cold in my face that my eyeballs stop working properly and seeing things clearly becomes nigh impossible; the smell of pee in the streets, thanks to the locals' indifference to public urination at any time of the day or night: when you gotta go, you gotta go is their philosophy; suicidal / kamikaze bus drivers - it amounts to the same thing; the moment of complete certainty that I am about to fall off again, and the accompanying knowledge that it is really going to hurt, but the uncertainty of just how much; the anxiousness I always felt in the days leading up to a "new country" and the unknown (although discovering the anxiousness was unfounded was always a plus); and now I'm struggling to think of more. Which is surely a good thing.

On a more positive note, I have so many good memories, many of which I have already shared, and trying to re-cap them all here, whether for my benefit or yours, would be impossible. I guess they fall in to different categories (not sure how many yet), including places, people, activities, and so on. So, in an effort to get things moving and in roughly the order they occured, but certainly not in any order of preference, some of the most memorable moments would have to include the following:

The first crossing of the Andes, in the snow; running out of road and in to the construction crew trying to get to San Agustín; meeting Juan Manuel and his family in Chepes on account of my bent handle bars; Camping at Capilla del Montt; the ride into and then the walk across the river to Salta de Moconá; the waterfalls at Iguacú; the mountain top in Parque Naçional Marumbí; a surreal night out on our way up the coast in Brasil; Rio; Sandro and Ximena in Buenos Aires; Jorje in Azul; General la Madrid and the motorbike rally; Peninsula Valdez and the whales; crossing in to Ushuaia with Rich, and reaching the southern most point of our trip; setting off up Ruta 40 for my first solo mission; the ride from Puerto Ibañez to Coihaique and then on to Puerto Chacabucco; El Bolsón; the ride north from Bariloche to Mendoza; crossing our first high altitude pass; camping on the volcano on the Salar de Uyuni; the mines in Potosi; 2 weeks in the jungle, even with the mozzies; Cusco and Bruce Peru and the kids I got to know there; the solo mission through the Cordillera Blancas; the Galapagos Islands.

What this woefully incomplete list fails to mention, apart from a couple of notable exceptions, are the people I met on the way, tourists and locals alike. Despite my own misgivings, coupled with numerous warnings (largely from people who had never been here, it has to be said), all my fears about the dishonest, dangerous folk who roam the countries of South America robbing and beating foreigners have been proved to be false. Of course, we didn't get into every nook and cranny, but we did pretty well, and in all that time never met a corrupt cop or dicey customs official, were welcomed with smiles and help wherever we went, and I for one have been left with the idea that South America has a reputation it does not deserve. I suspect the victims of all this alledged crime and violence would, in another place, be up for a Darwin award. Common sense keeps you safe, and without that you will fall foul of criminal mindermasts in any place on earth. I have felt far more unsafe in parts of NZ than I did in the vast majority of South America, and that includes Rio!

So, coming back on task a little, a huge thank you to everyone I met here who helped us in some way, with with directions, mechanical assistance, food, beer or fun. If we never meet again, it will be a shame, but if (when) I come back, I will be in touch. And, of course, there is a standing invitation to you, should you make it to NZ at any point.

2 days later...

I'm back in the UK now, and have just re-read the above. I think I'll publish this one now to keep the poor folks happy, and pick up the thread later when I have adjusted back into the real world a bit. In the mean time, I may try and add a few photos to some of the blogs, so feel free to take a look at the back-catalogue. And just in case we don't talk again, its been a pleasure, and thanks for keeping me company along the way.

Getting my Just Deserts, or The End of the Road

2009-05-05T09:33:00.002+12:00

Its nearly all over. Of course, I still have to pack things up and get back to the UK, but the biking part is at an end. I won't have a lot more of much interest to write about (I realise its quite presumptuous of me to suggest its been interesting so far), but I have been considering doing a "nothing but the truth" edition to wrap up with, where those stories considered too traumatic to let the poor parents in on are revealed in all their anticlimactic glory. I may also fill in some of the shady blanks of earlier entries. Or I may forget and not bother. Oh, I can sense the excitment of the unknown building already!

Right now though, I am on day 14 in Lima, and cabin fever is setting in, with still 3 days to go until I fly out. Getting in to Lima was a bit of a trial - there is a major through road that keeps you out of the city centre - but having just lept blindly from it hoping to discover my whereabouts on my feeble Lonely Planet map, I discovered I was lost in the dodgy part of town, so adopted the new strategy (and what a great time for new strategies, I might add) of paying a taxi driver to lead me to where I wanted to go. Not just a hat rack, my friends, not just a hat rack.

The hostal I was hoping to use was full, as were most of the others I approached (it was a holiday weekend after all), but one had spaces for the next night and a garden out back, so the parking was sorted, and I suffered through one night in a private hotel room before setting up camp in a dormitory in one of the 4 Flying Dog Hostals around El Óvalo in Miraflores. Perfick.

I have spent the last 2 weeks mostly avoiding spending money where possible, as I knew that at some point I would be cutting off an arm and a leg to get the bike back to NZ. Therefore, other than the obligatory souvenir shopping that I have now been able to do, on account of not having to transport said goodies around the continent, I have hidden in the TV room or the sun lounge, dismantled and cleaned my bike thoroughly, or walked the streets of Miraflores to fill my days. There are tours I could sign up on, obviously, but having already seen pretty much everything they could hope to show me somewhere else on my travels, I figured there was little point. Also, being on the home straight as it were, I have lost motivation almost completely to sit on buses and be a tourist. If I still had months ahead of me to travel, then I'd be right up for it, don't get me wrong, but I have accepted that its all over for this trip, and am just keen to get home.

On top of all that, there has been the arrangements for the bike to make. In fairness to Pacific Anchor Line, in whom I am entrusting my noble steed, despite the foot dragging that went on at the start of the process, they have been pretty good. Not very on the ball with setting me up with an agent that spoke English, mind you, so struggling through all new shipping vocabulary was rather tricky, but generally efficient in all other respects. I hope. It remains to be seen exactly where / when my bike arrives, and whether I have the appropriate documentation to claim it, but that will be fun and games for when I get back to NZ. Trying to decipher emails that were written in Spanish then translated with Babelfish, or some other inadequate website tool, in to English has been interesting to say the least. It pretty much arrives in my in-box as Gibberish, and an obscure dialect of Gibberish at that, so in the end I asked them to re-send everything in Spanish and got the staff at the hostal to translate it for me.

The up-shot of it all is that I took the bike to the port in the back of a truck (didn't want to get it dirty again, and besides, I had to drain the fuel tank and remove the battery) on Tuesday, got it crated up (well, put inside a wooden frame and wrapped in clingfilm), said a little prayer to the gods of motorcycle transportation, and left it for the Peruvian dock workers to put on the right ship. I was marginally concerned that they didn't feel it was necessary for me to put my name or address anywhere on the finished article, but I insisted, so with a bit of luck....

I also had to hand over my passport for the customs clearance amid assurances that it would be returned to me by Thursday afternoon at the latest. It is now Friday morning, and still no sign, but the latest Enigma code from PAL promises it will be with me this afternoon at 3pm. Lets hope so, its the weekend tomorrow so they won't do anything then, and I fly out on Monday, which would be cutting it a bit fine. But hey, they're professionals, right? Right? Hmmmm.

Richard would no doubt be amused to hear that I actually miss having my bike parked up nearby. Yes, Rich, I have grown, if not to love my bike exactly, then certainly to be very fond of it. Not fond of the rack, mind you, I hate the rack with its fragile breakiness and constant need for repairs and attention, but I can't really fault the bike, with its powers of bounce that were tested to the full, and its ability to run in a virtual vacuum at the top of the mountains.

I think I will call a halt for today, but before I leave Lima I will have a crack at a Golden Moments edition. Another one more for me than for you, but please feel free to look over my e-shoulder as I commit my thoughts to the interweb. And now I'm off to go surfing. Not in the quite-possibly-polluted-and-certainly-very-cold waters off the coast in Lima, but in the lounge with the TV remote. Don't judge me til you've ridden 30,000km in South America. Toodle pip.

Galapa-gosh!

2009-05-02T08:26:00.004+12:00

Oops. Dropped the ball a bit there, sorry. Its now been 3 weeks since my last confession, and I apologise to Ed who has been stuck in his office prison cell waiting (a little impatiently, it has to be said) for me to write some more. He did get a phone call though, so he can blummin' well button his lip..

You know when you are looking forward to something and it gets built up to be this really, really good thing, and you get more and more excited about it, and then it happens, and its all a little disappointing after all that? (you know what I'm talking about, girls). The Galapagos is nothing like that. I have been watching documentaries and nature shows and reading books about the Galapagos Islands for as long as I can remember, and have always wanted to visit but never thought I would, even on this trip. Lets face it after all, had I still been travelling with Rich, we would have driven straight past and up to Colombia, thus missing the best chance yet to go.

However, making the decision to go, and for 12 days at that, was one of the best choices for me in the last 10 months. The Islands lived up to the hype, they were everything that nice Mr Attenborough said they would be, and even though I almost had to mug other tourists to pay for everything due to the rather over inflated costs, it was worth every penny. Almost. But I'll explain that a bit more later.

So, there I was at the airport, having just paid $100 cash for my National Park entry ticket, waiting for my bags to be delivered to baggage claim on a trolley à la Nelson airport, when a girl comes over and asks me for $100 to pay her Nat Park fee as she didn't have enough cash, they didn't take visa and there was no cash machine in the airport.

"Oh ho", I thought. "The rip-off artists are getting bolder by the minute, I must have "sucker" tattooed on my forehead or something. Like I'd fall for that!" But hey, she was cute, and if she was ripping me off, at least she asked first, rather than just stealing, so I handed it over, and that's how I met Polly. We shared a cab to Puerto Ayuro where she paid me back from a cash machine (eventually - but not her fault), and we started making plans for the next week. Polly had a heap of info she'd been given by a guy she'd met and was sort of dating in Ecuador, so knew all the best places to eat, visit, drink at, and get internet access etc, so was very handy to hang out with.

I had booked a boat trip for the following Friday, so that gave me a week to explore. Day 1 involved a walk to Bahia Tortuga (Turtle Bay for the un-Spanish out there) for a bit of a snorkel, and as luck would have it, my "waterproof to 10m" digital camera decided to go on the fritz the first time I took it in the water. It still took pictures, but the screen on the back stopped working, so I had to guess a bit as to what it was I was actually taking pictures of. Perfect for a week on the Galapagos, obviously. Fortunately my wee video camera also took stills, though of a much poorer quality, so most of the photos on flicker are from that.

The beach was stunning , the water warm, and the marine iguanas and sally light-foot crabs there to be tripped over. Unfortunately, what I didn't know was that the smaller, murkier bay was actually a nursery area for sharks and visited by turtles (hence the name, Einstein), but I didn't actually snorkel there, and very possibly missed out on seeing hammerheads and other things, but there you go. Oh, and I got sunburned a bit. Still, Englishman abroad in a hot country, goes without saying really.

In the pip emma, visited the tortoise farm where they are breeding the giant tortoises for re-introduction programmes. Met Lonesome George, the only one of his kind left, and a few others, so that was cool. Apparently the tortoises have different shaped shells depending on their particular species, as well as long or short necks etc. All very interesting and part of what influenced the evolution of most of the endemic plant species on the islands with regard to height above ground and whether they have spikes or not. All very clever.

Sunday dawned hot and sweaty as was the norm, but I was up with Darwin's finches and off to the island Santa Maria (aka Floreanna) for some diving. An hour and a half each way got us there, we collected a couple of other divers at the island, and had a couple of dives (although neither, rather disappointingly at the Devil's Crown - a partly submerged volcano mouth appaerently very good for sharks). The diving was good, but very different to the other diving I'd done in the Phillipines. Less colour, less coral, fewer flashy fish, but far more in the way of bizarre underwater structures caused by the lava flow, and more big fish. If I'm honest, I was a little disappointed with the diving, but that soon changed.

Next morning I had a wee stroll to Las Grietas, a short, narrow canyon about 10m down to the water, and 12m to the botton of that. The water was crystal clear and a mix of fresh and salty, and given the humidity and heat was the nicest place to swim on the island. In the afternoon, I was off to Isabela Island.

Now, the clever buggers in head office have worked this out very well. In order to share the tourist dollar about a bit, the boats to Isabela leave daily at 2pm and arrive at 4pm, thus meaning you have to stay at least one night. Added to this, the return boat leaves Isabela daily at 6am, meaning you pretty much have to stay a second night if you want to do anything at all while you are there.

I opted for the tour of Sierra Negro (the biggest live volcanic crater in the world, and the 2nd biggest if you include extinct volcanoes) and Volcan Chico (smaller but relatively recently erupted) by horse of all things, followed by some snorkelling at Las Tintoneras (sp?), a group of small islands in the bay. The volcanoes were impressive, as was the amount of discomfort I felt at sitting on a horse for so long. Can somebody please explain to me what you are supposed to do to make trotting comfortable? I feel like I've tried everything and still look like a rag doll on a bucking bronco! Its one of the curuellest things a boy can do to hismarble pouch.

The snorkelling was cool, with sealions to play with, and rays and sharks to look at - something I was getting used to after much of the same experienced from diving.

Next morning was bright and early back to Santa Cruz, where I was able to stow away on another boat off diving to North Seymour Island and Bartolome. Bit further this time, up to 3 hours away, so by the time I got back that night at about half 7, I'd spend about 8 hours of the day riding about on boats, and a couple swimming about under them.

The First dive at North Seymour was very poor, with visibility down to 2m or so thanks to lots of green gunk in the water. Currents or something stirring everything up. The second dive at Bartolome (not much more than a big rock in the sea) was spectacular. A series of volcanic terraces under the sea took us down, then we followed the wall round the rock, which was pretty much like an underwater skyscraper, inhabited by all sorts of critters. Sealions came to investigate and play, and with scuba gear I was able to play back, rather than hurry to the surface gasping for breath, as I tend to do with a snorkel.

Next day was....diving again! I was really getting into it again by now, having got used to what I could expect to see, and learned to appreciate it for what it was rather than comparing it to a tropical coral reef, which it wasn't even trying to be (could that be a thinly veiled life-lesson? hmmm.....) Today was 3 dives, but while I had hoped to go to Gordon's Rocks where the Hammerheads hang out in numbers, we were going back to North Seymour - the site of yesterday's disappointing dive. This was due to the divers, unfortunately. Originally, we were all going to be realtively experienced and up to the challenge of the strong currents at Gordon's that attract the sharks. But the others (person's unknown) cancelled, and the replacements were all rookies, so the dive company took us somewhere safer. As it turned out, this was better than I could have hoped for. The poor visibility from the day before had cleared up, and we had 3 fantastic dives at 3 different locations around North Seymour, including seeing a group of 5 manta rays that drifted past like ghosts. No hammerheads though, despite the guides claim that he saw one within seconds of descending. All lies to keep the punters enthusiastic, if you ask me.

Finally Friday rolled round, and it was time for the tour on the boat. Four days and 3 nights of high seas adventure. Or so I thought...

Ok, so the boat was fine, the crew friendly and good at their jobs (we didn't sink anyway), and the guide seemed to know his stuff, but for $750 I was expecting 4 days and 3 nights. I can't really dispute the 3 nights, I definitely spent 3 nights on the boat, but the days were less clear cut, with day 1 starting at about half 12, and day 4 being all over by 9.15 am.

We visited a bunch of islands and saw all sorts of land iguanas, wild giant tortoises (easy to track - you follow the flattened grass until you meet a big slow moving rock. Not too good at escaping, those tortoises), frigate birds and boobies (stop it. You're better than that), but I felt slightly conned I have to say. I'd have preferred to have visited the places myself on day trips and spent the difference on a couple more dives. Would have been cheaper, but they don't tell you how easy it is to do your own thing when you ask them. Funny that...

Feeling a little let down after the first fantastic week, I stumbled about on San Cristóbal until I bumped into Sanghita from Belgium, who'd been on SC for a while and knew the best beaches to go to, and places to eat at, so for my final 18 hours on the Islands at least I wsa entertained and full.

So, aside from the "mid-range cruise", the Galapagos lived up to the hype, and I feel fairly sure I will get back there one day, if only to dive Gordon's Rocks and see the hammerheads.

So now, I'm back in Trujillo in Peru and about to head to Lima to pack the bike. Wish me luck, this could be the biggest challenge of the trip so far!

This is Getting Beyond a Joke

2009-04-10T08:55:00.003+12:00

Remember that tyre man I was supposed to remember to visit? Well, I forgot. Or at least I based my decision not to visit one on the way out of Huancayo on the fact that the last repair lasted 5000km, more than enough to get to Trujillo and do it there. So I passed all the llanterias and vulcanizadoras by with barely a glance, as I motored the totally tarmac route to Hunaco. Until, that is that my rear end started feeling squishy again. Its no laughing matter, let me tell you, when your rear end starts to feel squishy! I pulled over, peered backwards at my tyre and, lo and behold, it was flat again.

Luckily, a mere 1km at walking-pace-on-a-flat-tyre up the road, was a vulcanizadora who sorted me right out for S/.5 , including fixing the bodged patch on my spare tube as well. Crisis averted, and in only an hour too. Great what you can do quickly when you spend your life doing it, eh?

The rest of the day passed relatively uneventfully, just racking up the miles and getting to Huanaco by evening no worries. Next morning at 0805 I set off again, on what was looking to be a long day of 350km, the first bit all off road. As it turned out it was persisting down, but despite this I decided to give it a go, not least because Hunaco is not a very inspiring place.

The road out of town was bad, the river running alongside was in full flood, and as the road got steeper, it also got pot-holier, muddier and lumpier. The temptation to turn back and sod it was great, but on I soldiered at the remarkably swift rate of 20km/h for the next 6 1/2 hours. Yes, it took me that long to get to La Union, the almost-but-not-quite half-way point, and the only other place to stop for the night before Huaraz. And so I stopped, given that it was at least 4 more hours at best, in the rain, and no guarantee of getting there anyway. Reckon I'll finish it off tomorrow. And this too.

I'm mildly aware, incidentally, that I don't want this to turn into a dull and repetitive day by day acount of me driving places (I hope it hasn't so far). I'll work on it. In the meantime, back straight, shoulders back, head up, take a deep breath and hold iiiitt.......

....Aaaaand relax! Bloody lying hostal owner. It was far closer and nearly all on tarmac from La Union to Huaraz, not gravel and stuff like he said. Still, he probably just needed someone, anyone, to stay in his hostal. It still took about 4 hours as well, so not something I'd have wanted to do yeseterday afternoon in the rain. Huaraz strikes me as a very Quessnstown-y place as far as scenery goes (big mountians with snow on, pine trees and rivers etc), but the town is once again typically run down. It is, however, aware of its potential as a tourist honeypot, and is working on its image. Well done Huaraz! Stayed one night, during which it rained almost continually, and delayed the decision as to whether I go on to Trujillo tomorrow until the morning.

Wow. I've said that before about other things, but wow. Double wow, in fact. Almost a triple wow, come to think about it. Its only not a triple wow because the off road section was only 70km or so, otherwise it would be triple wow for sure. Given that I'm drawing to an end of the motorbiking section of the trip, this was one hell of a way to go out.

Out of Huaraz there is a road. Its a road that begins with tarmac, albeit tarmac with surprise pot-holes around cormers and sections of mud where the cliff collapsed across it one evening having been unable to withstand the rain just a little bit longer. It was raining last night as it happens, so some of these slips were still in the "little man with a spade trying to move several tonnes of mud and tapir-sized rocks off the road" stage (apologies for the similie there, I've worked with a tapir, you see, so I know for a fact the rocks were the same size as one. Go to the zoo if you want a better mental picture). This less-than-pristine tarmac continues for about 100km, maybe a little less, then becomes a gravel-and-other-substances road for 70-odd km, before returning to actually very good tarmac indeed. Its the 70-odd km that deserve a mention here. That's 70-odd km that go by the name of......Duck Canyon (Dah dah daaaahh!!!!).

Ok, its a crap name. Its name is actually Canyon del Pato, and pato in Spanish translates to duck, so I guessed it meant Canyon of the Duck, or Duck Canyon, if you will. I'm hoping, none too secretly as it happens, that "pato" in Quechuan, the local Indian dialect, translates as something like "road that all but the bravest warriors fear to tread" or somesuch, but "pato" just seems a little too short of a word to mean all that.

Anyhow, back to the road, and don't let the name lull you into a false sense of security. Its lucky, I think its fair to say, that I had taken the road less travelled in the preceeding few days, because it was, as it turns out, great training for Duck Canyon. Because of where I had been recently, I had seen nearly everything Duck Canyon had to offer.There was less deep mud in the canyon, and it didn't climb as high as I had expected it to, but that was all that was missing. But its not what was missing that was the significant part; its what it had extra that's important.

Imagine, if you will, a raging torrent, fuelled by heavy rains and a catchment area the size of NZ (OK, that might be an exageration a bit, but it was big and raging, for sure, and it had been raining). Now alongside the river, 'pon a high path barely wide enough for a truck with ne'er a protective barrier to be seen, throw in a cocktail of big rocks, potholes, landslips, loose shale, streams, tunnels chipped from the very rock faces themsleves, a drop to near certain death should even a slight mistake be made...but no, I better stop there, lest you have nightmares for a week, and Mother has kittens.

It was not the best surfaced road in Peru, I'll give it that, and the drop-off was genuine, as were the tunnels and other stuff, and speed was once again limited by these factors to a still fairly hairy feeling 30km/h. I tried, I really did, to take video footage as I went along, and I hope it comes out well enough to make Richard even more sorry he stuffed up his bike visa (sorry mate, but you would have loved this road!).

It was a fine parting shot for the Crazy Roads Tour. Utterly appropriate and, combined with the previous few days, a suitable tribute and swansong for the whole journey. During the days ride, I notched up kilometre number 30,000, dropped the bike a number of times, almost entirely due to overbalancing on the treacherous surface while at a standstill (an old favourite of mine, that), bent the handle bars a little picking the bike up, the chain started to stretch like a rubber band that only stretches one way, probably due to my neglecting it over the last week when it got dusty and wet and muddy many, many times. Serves me right. Oh, and the luggage rack appears to have broken again, in an altogether new and more serious place than ever before. Givi have a lot to answer for, let me tell you.

So, on my arrival in Trujillo where I had a couple of days to gather my wits, a monumental decsion was made. I would leave the bike in Trujillo (where Bruce Peru can keep half an eye on it and my ramaining luggage) and I would take a small bag and a...I can barely bring myself to say it....a bus...to Ecuador and sort out a trip over to the Galapagos Islands for the last couple of weeks left to me before I have to get to Lima for the rather tedious, and no doubt highly complicated, process of crating and shipping the bike back to NZ.

It makes sense really. Why drive an extra 2 - 3000km up long, straight, dusty, tedious desert roads, seeing nothing that I haven't seen before, just to turn around and come back pretty much the same way, with no real certainty of having a safe place to leave my stuff, of getting a flight to the islands or even a tour when I got there? This way, I can save time and money travelling, get longer on the islands, and get back to Trujillo in time for tea and scones, hurrah! Although I won't get to Columbia, which sucks a bit but probably eases the olds' minds a bit. They've had a lot to put up with over the last 10 months or so, bless them.

And that's exactly what has happened. I sit here before you (well, before this computer screen writing to you) in the city of Guayaquil, Ecuador, having just visited a small town park crawling with iguanas that try to steal packed lunches, awaiting my flight in the morning to the island of Santa Cruz, from whence I shall book some scuba diving and day trips as I await my vessel to set sail in Darwin's footprints (oh, you know what I mean) on a 4 day voyage of re-discovery, before docking on the island of San Cristobal in order to return to Guayquil and thence Trujillo, where I shall collect my bike and luggage and delicately, so as not to further damage the rack, proceed to Lima and the last stop on the Crazy Roads Tour. I fully expect to be able to write a little more from the Islands (they have all sorts of modern contraptions you know, including, I believe, a horseless cart that moves under its own power!! Amazing!) so fear ye not (can someone please explain why this entry seems to have gone all medievel in its language?), I shall be in touch before too long. Now, go and powder you codpieces ready for tomorrows jousting, you blaggards.

Flying without my Rear-gunner. So to Speak.

2009-04-06T12:49:00.005+12:00

Blimey. I can tell already that I have lots of long days with short distances ahead of me. I figured I might, but its looking worse than I thought. Or better, come to think of it.

Yesterday was Cusco - Andahuaylas (a name I had enormous trouble remembering for some reason, every time I stopped to ask if this was the road to A...), and I knew before I started that the bit to Abancay would take 3 hours minimum, followed by a second 130km odd stretch that took about 3 1/2 hours.

The first bit was as good as I knew it would be, having ridden it the other way just a week or so before. The second bit was almost entirely gravel, and just as steep and curving as the first bit. Some amazing scenery that left me thinking how much Rich would be enjoying it, and feeling that for almost the first time I was seeing the Peru that I had imagined. Huge, sharp-edged mountains, erupting out of lush, cultivated valleys, in the middle of nowhere. Fantastic.

And today (Sunday) was about the same. 260km in 8 1/2 hours form Andahuaylas to Ayacucho, over every type of off-road you could hope to get (keeping in mind there are some sorts - sand, mud, snow, deep gravel etc - you don't want to get). It started as normal, stoney gravel, became extremely pot-holed, all of which were filled with water, requiring much 1st and 2nd gear dodging in and out (I'm getting very good at potholes - I manage to hit nearly everyone!), immaculate smooth hard pack with light gravel, turning to light sand (bearable) and becoming extremely lumpy without being pothole-y, also requiring 1st and 2nd gear (I'm good at lumps, too). The apparently final stretch was immaculate hard-pack (got a little worried when it showered, as it could have become slippery), and then finished with a lumpy flourish. It was a fantastic day to ride, and perfect training for the road between Ayacucho and Huancayo, which has a reputation, and I'll say no more until afterwards. It was tiring though, and when I got to Ayacucho, I experienced the first major issue of journeying alone. Security.

Normally, one of us would stay with the bikes while the other arranged barracks. Today, even though I parked in sight of the reception desk and was gone barely 5 minutes, when I came out to collect my stuff, one of the front bags had been emptied. I think they only really got a bunch of long johns and shorts etc, but also my English-Spanish dictionary and my bendy tripod, thus making self-photos harder. And to think it was not only a Sunday, but the first day of their holy week Easter celebrations. Godless heathens.

Ok, we're 2 days later, and I'm in Huancayo. 280kmin 11 hours, door to door. All very exciting, and one of the most satisfying days yet. I left Ayacuchu as early as possible, about 0750, not wanting to stay in a town that robbed me, besides which it didn't seem like a welcoming place. every on seemed in a hurry, which is not typical of anywhere in South AMerica really, except some of the major cities.

A quick blat up some tarmac took me about 90km into the day in an hour and a half, and then the good stuff started (Rich maybe slightly surprised and hopefully a little proud to hear me refer to off-road as "good stuff"). Up the curvy roads I went, climbing all the while, checking my progress with nearly every bemused looking local I passed, as road signs wre non-existant, and despite the fact there was only one road marked on my map, there were many more out in the real world.

I was planning to take the high road to Huancayo, rather than the one that followed the river, and in Mayocc where the road split, I checked which was the right one with the local police. After firmly recommending the river road, he conceded and directed me to the mountain road, warning me of the altitude and cold and potholes (hah! he had no idea who he was talking to!) and off I went. It was shaping up to be as good as I'd hoped (video does exist - if the camera was set up OK), and when my back end went spongy, even a puncture didn't dampen my spirits. It ws 1125.

Hmmm. Edge of winding mountain road - outside edge, that is - flat tyre, no mate to help, just my raw wits and hard earned experience. Bike chocked up on side box+rock, wheel off no probs, but how to break the seal to take the tyre off, without a second bike with convenient side stand? Just then, as luck would have it, a massive construction truck came past (actually, as I was in the middle of an area of road construction, several came past, but this one stopped) and the driver kindly suggested that maybe if he drove over the tyre, it might break the seal. It didn't. Either time. But nice try. Only one thing for it, I'd need to use the stand on my own bike. So, with much struggling, lifting, balancing and shuffling with foot, I got the tyre under the stand, leaned on it and off she popped. Shuffled tyre out, lifted bike back on to box (harder than it sounds) and got on with the job. Time 1150-ish.

Tyre off rim very easily, tube out, offending nail removed from 3-day old, brand new tyre, patch applied in 2 places (second was precautionary - I might have damaged the tube taking off the tyre), tube stuffed back in and tyre re-fitted with remarkable ease (be proud, Rich, be proud!). Re-inflation underway, time 1220-ish. No holes (a first for me - replacing tyre without digging more holes in the tube, requiring second removal of tyre), pressure up (hand pump only), bead on one side popped out, but not on the other. Damn. Time 1240. Two choices: stick wheel on bike and hop it pops out as I ride along, or deflate and have another go. Option 2 it was, and given breaks for a snack and rest, by 1310-ish, still not right. Option 1 then. Wheel back on bike and boxes reloaded by 1330, and off I went, with about 5 hours of riding and 5 hours of daylight. It was going to be close if I wanted to get to Huancayo before dark. Which I did. The policeman in Mayocc had said there were bandidos in the hills at night!

Fortune favours the brave, though, and before long a check showed the tyre had popped its bead perfectly (Yes!!), and the riding was still superb. Until I got up in the clouds (about 4500m if the choking sound from my bike were to be believed) and it began to drizzle and rain. Road turned...not slippery exactly (thank god) but not totally trustworthy either, so speed much reduced, and time still ticking past rather quickly. Conditions improved though, as did visibility, and before long I was on the down hill side and moving well again. Made it to Pampas, my emergency-plan town by 5pm, and the police there reckoned it'd be easy to get to Huancayo before dark, showed me the road and waved me away. He was right. More up and curves, great surface, and before I knew it I was on the tarmac stetch in to town, and what a treat that was! For the first time in 3 days I was able to get above 70km/h, and hurtled into town just as it got dimpsey. Picked a hotel from my book and moved in, bugger the cost its on Visa, and decided to have a day off. I figure I'd deserved it. Should be in Trujillo by Friday, giving me Easter weekend at the beach. Fingers crossed, eh? Must remember to take the bike to a proper tyre repair man.....

Cusco-ver Again

2009-04-05T12:14:00.002+12:00

I was right, you know. It did take 2 days to get back to Cusco.

The first was in 2 parts as far as Abancay. Part one, as far as Puquio, was a bit rough with many inconvenient roadworks and roads with top surface removed in readiness for new asphalt. Can't complain about that I guess, and the scenery was stunning nonetheless, and the road as winding as you could have hoped for. From Puquio onwards, the surface was outstanding, the curves went over a stretch of alti-plano, where a vicuña (part of the llama family) nearly took me out for good by crossing the road at almost exactly the wrong moment (luckily my lightening quick reflexes and suprememly safe riding style kept me safe), and then down to follow a river up a valley into Abancay. A truely lovely ride, I have to say.

Day 2 was a short one from Abancay to Cusco, only 180km, and not gravelly as my map suggested, but quality surface again. Still took 3 hours, mind you, so that gives you some idea of how curvy it actually was. Very enjoyable as well, and I got to Cusco about 12ish on Friday.

I was expecting to be staying until about Wednesday, allowing for urgently needed chiropractic appointments, visits to Machu Picchu and catching up with Rich, but in fact left only today, 8 days later.

I got my chiro, visited my badass massage lady (pain like you wouldn't believe. My back's going to take some straightening when I get back to UK/NZ), caught up with everyone I'd met while working in town, got to MP for the day and waited for Rich. And here is where the problem lay. Rich, bless him, asked the customs office in Cusco for an extension on his bike documents as they were about to expire in a couple days. They said "you have to leave the country and come back in to get extensions, but if you ask in the SUNAT office, they'll give you an exemption to give you time to get back to Bolivia". They lied. Well, they didn't lie, exactly, SUNAT wrote a letter for Rich giving him 10 days extra, so he didn't rush to the border, and arrived 3 days after the original documents expired. He showed the customs guys the letter, and then had to wait 10 minutes until they stopped laughing. It turns out SUNAT have no authority to grant extensions, Rich's bike was 3 days over its limit, and was therefore supposed to be impounded, never to be released again, ever. Luckily, the customs people were extremely helpful, gave Rich all sorts of advice about how to avoid impoundage (flee, basically) and actually encouraged him to run the border, by getting his passport stamped and then just driving the bike across and not looking back. Which he did, into Bolivia, then came back to Cusco on the bus to collect his stuff and have an emergency meeting. After much umm-ing and aaah-ing and beer, we came to the difficult decision that I should continue to Ecuador and beyond, and aim for Lima at the end, and he would go back south and explore a bit more in Bolivia and Chile etc, and find an alternative port to ship from. Sad, but true. The team has been disbanded thanks to mis-information, and the final 5 weeks or so will be 2 separate solo missions. On the upside, I can make up all sorts of wild and crazy tales and have no-one to contradict me, but then again, I doubt I'll be needing to make anything up!

But that all aside, I glossed over the Machu Picchu day, which deserves better, quite frankly. I decided, for many reasons, to take the easy option and do MP in a day by train. So, a 7.40 train took me 11okm in 4 hours, to Aguas Calientes, then a bus took me up to the ruins. I did the hard yards then, and went up Wayna Picchu, which, if you've ever seen a photo of MP, is the taller of the 2 mountains usually in the background. Yes, that's right, the hugely, ridiculously, you-can't-be-serious, steep mountain. Its top is about 300m higher than MP, and that's an almost vertical climb up what I guess are the original steps, up to the ruins on the top of the hill. "What were they thinking when they decided to build up here" popped into my head as I huffed and puffed to the top, the huffing and puffing due less to the altitude (which was only 2500m after all) and more to my terrible fitness levels. I made it though, and it was worth the effort. The view was astounding, the ruins were more authentic than in MP on account of looking more aged and less restored, and the satisfaction of a job well done helped with the climb down.

Machu itself was also pretty amazing. Its the sort of place where its possible to wander around for hours getting lost in a kind of time-warp, as long as you can ignore the soudn of the tourist police blowing their whistles if they suspect you of staring at the walls too hard. But, due to my return train, I only had a couple of hours, before jumping on the bus down the hill and hopping the train for the painfully slow trip back to Cusco. Hopefully the photos will paint a better picture than me, when I finally get them on to Flickr, but sadly its one of those over-photograophed places that no matter how hard I try will just seem like all the other photos and postcards out there. Except that I'm in some of them, of course...

The only other occasion of note while back in Cusco was meeting up with David and Judith for dinner one night, which as a huge amount of fun, and we all enjoyed our cholesterol-free alpaca steaks to the max. Looking forward to catching up with them in July.

And that's it for now. I'm in Andahuaylas tonight, but I'll tell you all about that next time. And I guess all that is left to say is something along the lines of "go safely Rich, and thanks for everything. Its time to stand on my own 2 feet. See you in NZ in August". Why do I have all the classic comedy sign offs in my head? Now is the time to say goodbye...its goodbye from me and its goodbye from him...soupy twist...I should probably save them for the last entry at the end of the trip, huh? Sleep tight.

Lines and lines and lines and lines

2009-03-26T13:08:00.008+13:00

Its been a busy few days, then. Having left the jungle last Wednesday and updating you, I have now got as far as Nazca on my way back to Cusco. That'd be 2159km or there abouts in less than a week, with about 600km left to go. Its been through jungle, up mountains (well I'd call 4500m a mountain even if you wouldn't), across alti-planos, back down mountains, along coasts and through deserts.

The fantastic road I took to get to Santa Maria was marginally less fantastic in the low cloud and drizzle, but when I got some moments of clarity I tried to take a couple of photos. Nothing like the real thing, obviously, and my plans to video part of it were thwarted (now there's a word that doesn't get enough use these days) by the rain. I made it to Copacobana and did get some video of the ride into there, and then instead of heading back to Cusco, I went south-ish to Arequipa, finding my way with ease into town thanks to being led by some bloke coming out of a quadbike store next to where I had pulled over to check the town map. I had a rest day, jumping a tourist bus (will Rich ever forgive me?) at 2am (I actually got up for 1am as I'd forgotten to change my watch when I crossed the Bolivia-Chile border. Doh.) out to Colca Canyon. This, as the name suggests, is a canyon, about 3400m deep, making it deeper than the Grand Canyon, though not as wide. It has a view point at its deepest point called Cruce Del Condors (Cross of the Condors) where on a good day you can see double figures of condors at eye level as they are under the impression they are 2000m up a canyon cliff face. Which, I suppose, they are. They just aren't expecting to see people up that high. Although by now I suppose they might be. Anyway, needless to say I didn't get a good day, but did see several nonetheless, albeit further away than I'd have hoped. Impressive and spectacular it was though, so no complaints here.

From there it was up the coast to Nazca. I had been warned that the coast road was a bit on the dull side, but the person doing the warning had obviously done it in a bus, because it was far from dull. Very winding, very dramatic scenery, with coastlines, craggy bits and big wide open spaces, all leading into the typically scruffy desert town of Nazca. Towns this far out in the desert can't help but be scruffy, with winds blowing across open plains, not enough water to go round (but strangely always enough to keep a beautifully lush and well maintained Plaza), and populated by people tough enough to survive here, even given the presumably large amounts of tourist money coming in. The Plaza de Armas was a nice surprise - not because it was especially fantastic in itself, it just had about a dozen nightjars flying around as dusk fell, chasing the flies that were drawn to the lights. Very pleasant surprise, that, although probably only Mother will really appreciate it!

Anyway, I got hijacked (in a good way) as I came into town. I pulled over to try and decipher the inadequate Lonely Planet town map (or maybe the map was fine and it was the inadequate town signage), and a woman trotted over, offered me a room and board in a hotel on the plaza with parking for the bike for only S/.15 a night. Bargain, and her driver led me through the streets to find the place. All very convenient. She also conveniently ran a tour company and could offer me a flight over the lines in the morning, but all the reservations for tomorrow stopped in 10 minutes at 5 o'clock, so better hurry and choose. Good job my brain wasn't at all befuddled by 9 hours of driving through hot deserts and windy coastlines all day. I coughed up probably more than I needed to, but just as probably not by much, and then, due to lack of communication or bad planning on their part, ended up going on the wrong plane. Saw the same stuff though, I expect, and apart from the briefness of the flight, it was all very impressive. The line shapes are huge, and there are far more of them than the tour companies let on, they're just not all of animals and stuff. Many are just shapes and patterns, but the famous ones are easy enough to pick out, although photos are a bit trickier. Hopefully got some of them on film. I mean chip...And that's the last few days. I reckon its a 2 day ride back to Cusco as I don't want to rush the gravelly bits, where I hope to catch up with David and Judith on Sunday, and Rich on Monday. Or something. Plans are flexible, as always.

So, until I get the chance to add some more photos while I'm in Cusco, fare thee well, and mind those dark lanes on the full moon. Stay off the moors!!

Jungle Fever

2009-03-20T13:28:00.006+13:00

Right, some thoughts and stuff. First though, for those interested enough, I forgot to give the park details if you want to check web sites etc. The organisation is called Inti Wara Yassi, and they have 2 working parks and one being set up. The web site is a bit dated (far more animals now, and the info about numbers of volunteers is a bit off - they routinely get 40-50 volunteers in Parque Ambue Ari at peak times of the year, and there were 23 while I was there). I went to Parque Ambue Ari, and I forget the names of the other two.

So, where was I? The park is run by the head vet, Zandro, and he, the other vet and the local women who come in to cook for the volunteers are the only people who get paid. There are a bunch (6 or so) of locals who live at the the park, all quite young, many living there due to being orphans, and Zandro acts as their guardian for school registration etc. They work at the park after school and weekends to earn there keep, and none of them pay to be there. Its a great system, gets them educated, interested in their environment, and safe from harm.

While I was there, there were about 23 other volunteers, but that number changed as people came and went fairly randomly, some staying the minimum 2 weeks (ahem), others several months, or returning for 2nd or 3rd visits. Of the people there, only one was a bit of a tosser, and he was from Australia, so it's only to be expected. The other Australians there redeemed their nation however, so all is not lost. I met some great people there who I hope to see again, either in NZ or else where. My first impression of arriving in the park was of a shabby funeral, with everyone walking about in a variety of hats with black mourning veils and gardening clothes. Or maybe a group of badly dressed bee-keepers. A few moments later as I was crossing the "patio" to my room, Morocha the spider monkey climbed up me and sat on my head. Welcome to Ambue Ari.

And all that leaves to do is jot down some final memories of what the jungle is to me. It's hot. And wet. Very hot (mid-30ºC) and wet (80%+ humidity). When it rains, it doesn't mess about and sticks at it for about 4 days non-stop. It's more mosquitos than I've ever seen before, and more bites than I ever want again. It's 2 pairs of trousers and 2 shirts and mosquito net hat all the time, regardless of how hot it is. Did I mention the Mozzies? let me tell you about the mozzies. When you're in the jungle, all you can hear is the whine of mosquitos as they circle your head, searching for a way in. The camp record for "number of mozzies killed with one slap of one hand", achieved at the peak of the season, is 42. My personal best was 12, but then I was there as the season was dwindling. There is nothing more depressing than sitting at the tables in the comedor in the evenings and seeing a mozzie, so full of blood that it can't actually fly any more, plop on to the table in front of you, and then make its way along in 3 inch hops. They make quite a stain if squashed, let me tell you, and an attractive ornament in trapped in molten wax from a candle. It's monkeys in the compound that giggle when you tickle them. It's not being able to sleep at night due the heat and humidity, the rock hard mattress and the stifling, but vital, mosquito net. It's seeing large snakes, hairy tarantulas and monkeys (but no chickens) crossing the road. It's having your jungle path go from thick mud today to thigh deep water tomorrow thanks to a rain shower. And staying that way. It's walking carefully on the paths to avoid getting water in your boots, even though you know you'll be thigh deep round the next bend. It's seeing cappuchin, howler and squirrel monkeys in the trees as you walk about. It's glimpsing a lizard as it scrambles out of your way. Its millions of ants of all sizes, colours and shapes, many of them off to the races to judge by the head gear they are carrying. or maybe they are off windsurfing, sails hoisted to catch the breeze. It's astonishment at how much some of them carry and how neat and tidy their trails are. It's a cacophany of noise from insects, and frogs that sound like the whine of a firework that forgets to explode (luckily for the frogs), or maybe the zoom sound of a passing Formula 1 racing car. It's walking a short rope length behind a large, partly untamed jaguar, and then playing rough and tumble with it. It's being tackled to the ground before your eyes even realise the cat has moved. It's having your arm licked by the jaguar, with a tongue that will draw blood if you don't rotate your arm fast enough. It's walking across the compound and having your hand taken by Morocha as she walks alongside you, and then scales you to sit on your shoulders, resting her head on yours and draping herself around your neck. Its standing in a group below Faustino who is sat on the roof, and wailing his name full volume at him in order to get him howling in return. It's being woken up at the crack of dawn by the most unearthly of sounds: a troop of howlers doing their thing. It's wishing you had a tail so you could climb as well as Morocha. It's regret that I picked the worst time of year for weather and bugs, and hope that I get back there some day. It's The Jungle: not the most comfortable of places, but one of the most unforgettable. Another golden moment, despite (or maybe because of) the difficulties.

Til next time, then.

More Than a Match for Me

2009-03-19T12:29:00.007+13:00

OK. I'll come clean from the off. I caved. I tried to stay strong, even gave myself options, but when push came to shove, I threw in the towel, after using it to flap about my head to try and keep the bugs at bay.

Here's the scoop. After my last entry (written in Guarayos, mosquito-free haven 50km from the park), I returned to Ambue Ari with renewed hope. Only to find that hope vastly misplaced. I spoke to the volunteer coordinator on the Sunday night and said that if the mozzies didn't quit, I would have to, and that I realised it was letting them down, so I would try to do at least 2 weeks and make a final decision then. If that meant being taken off the jaguar, so be it; the animal's well being came before mine. The decision was then made that I would stay with the jag, and closer to the 2 weeks, if new volunteers had turned up and I still planned to go, a replacement would be trained up then.

The next day, it started to rain in the late afternoon. Just a shower, but it scared the mozzies off a bit. Then, for the rest of the week it bucketed down, almost non-stop, and the previously muddy paths on the 2km trail to Ru's house became thigh-deep-in-water paths. The bug numbers dwindled to almost acceptable levels, the temperature became almost bearable, the humidty plummeted from about 90% to maybe 85%, and things were looking up. OK, so now we were all soaking all day, but with some careful planning there were dry clothes for the evenings, and its not like it ever got cold along with the wet.

But after 4 days, the rain stopped, the sun came out, the humidity went up again, and even though the frogs had arrived and were doing there best to make tadpoles to eat mozzie larvae, and subsequently adult frogs to eat mozzies, unfortunately the bugs were back. Not as bad as before, certainly livable-with, had I been planning to stay a couple of months, but having mucked the management about already, and having a bunch of new blokes arrive, and because it actually gave me more time to do other things, I stuck with the leaving idea, and skipped town this morning. Leaving was actually far harder than I thought it would be, as every day Ru became friendlier and I enjoyed hanging out with him more, so to have to leave that behind was very difficult. I would love to go back some day, preferably at a better time of year, and do a full month, and see how he's doing. In the meantime, its on the road again, and an extended return trip to Cusco, via Arequipa and Nazcar.

But before that (because I'm not there yet), a little more about the park. Its about 600ha of reclaimed jungle, housing 23 cats (5 jaguars, 13 pumas, 4 ocelots and a mini bolivian wild cat), a bunch of monkeys (howlers and a spider), a tapir called Herbie, 2 deers and some parrots and macaws. All the animals have been rescued from illegal collections, peoples' homes or zoos and circuses, and for some it marks the start of a rehabilitation and release programme. Not for the cats, unfortunately, as the governement requires all sorts of licences and red tape which they almost never grant due to the problems associated with releasing large, dangerous cats into the wild, not to mention the shrinking rainforests and habitats etc. But many of the parrots and macaws are released, and if enough monkeys of the same sort are gathered, they can be encouraged to form a troop, allowing them to be released as well. We actually have a small group of Howler monkeys that visit the camp now and again, as they used to live there, which disturbs the resident Howler no end, and gives the resident spider monkey all sorts of fun.

The camp is very basic, with no electricity or mains water supply (they have a gas run generator that pumps water to the header tank in the trees and a gas run freezer for minimal food storage), long drop toilets that got washed out in the big rain, leaving us with the "poop in the woods" option, or the "large, precarious hole dug on the top of a very muddy hill with a tarp roof" option, both of which left the brave soul rudely exposed (quite literally) to the mercy of the mozzies. And they had no mercy, let me tell you! In camp, we have a resident howler monkey called Faustino (10 years old, ex-hotel owned, and apparently ex-smoker and -alcoholic) and a resident spider monkey called Morocha, who is the funniest creature I have ever met. Highly acrobatic (unlike Faustino, who is very slow about the place, and whose only real trick is to howl like a fury at any invading monkeys or volunteers who wail at him first), very chatty, hugely comical, and very ticklish. It is hilarious to watch her wriggle around and laugh when you tickle her, like a wee kid. Always looking for an opportunity to get into rooms or the comedor (the other day she snuck in via the back door and ran out the front waving two captured bread rolls above her head in the classic monkey fashion), chasing the 3 resident peccaries (pigs) and pulling at their legs, lying flat out, trying to be invisible, or generally crashing about in the trees, defying gravity.

Work is from about 7am to 5.30pm-ish, and for me consisted of camp chores (that's chores around the camp, not mincing about with a duster and a pinnie) followed by a 2km, 40 min walk through the flooded jungle to Ru's house, and taking him out round his paths on a long, double rope lead, one for each person. Ru is 5 years old, and came to the park, aged about 8 months, from a private family who had him as a pet, and were convinced by someone from the park that he would have a better life at Ambue Ari. Which he does. He picks his route, and we follow behind, letting him stop, sleep, turn around or whatever he wants. He has access to the river and often goes for a swim, and generally mooches about until 3, when he goes back to his cage for food. He is generally scared of everything in the jungle, be it snapping sticks, lizards that run across the path or sudden loud stamping behind him (hey, its funny to watch him jump in the air and run off, OK?), but did, on one auspicious day, catch a careless agouti (large rodent) and thoroughly enjoyed eating it as the afternoon wore on. He is wary of new folks at first, not showing them much attention other than trying to jump them for a bit of a dry hump (and you know when you've been humped by a 100kg jaguar, let me tell you!), but as he gets used to you, he gets very house-cat like, with head rubbing, hand licking and generally enjoying hanging with the boys. Jaguars are not noisy cats, and can't purr or yowl or roar (unlike pumas that are like max volume house cats with purrs and meowing), but he does sometimes make groaning and grunting noises when he is having a particularly satisfying belly-rub or nap in the sun. He never fully gives up the humping though, and is always trying to out-flank the walkers so he can get them from behind. If that fails, he hooks a huge paw around the back of one of your knees from in front of you and pretty much hauls you to the ground. He is generally slow moving, however, so it is usually easy to spot when he is making his move, and thus relatively easy to avoid, especially with help from the other walker on the other lead (pumas are again opposite, and move very fast and unexpectedly). His other favourite game is a full on pounce, this time at high speed, when no-one is expecting it. He never jumps high, always to the legs or waist, and again, when 100kg of jaguar hits you in the knees, the only place you're going is to the ground! But he never uses claws, and always lets go when he has you down and has made his point. He's just a big kid, playing and making sure you know whose jungle it is.

So, yes, hard to go in the end but overall the best decision, both for my physical comfort and for the greater good of the trip in general. Only about 7 weeks to go until the bikes get packed away, and we still have to get to Colombia! I want to write a bit more about the jungle in general, but that can have an entry to itself. Its another of those "things I want to remember" efforts, so you can take it or leave it when the time comes. It'll be for me, more than you. Sorry 'bout that.

So beaten by mozzies, but still in the fight, know what I mean, 'Arry? Seconds away, round 2 tomorrow.

Once bitten, twice bitten.

2009-03-08T08:15:00.003+13:00

So there I was, pootling along the deserted Bolivian highways, heading further and further away from the big cities, and closer and closer to the unknown, when a thought drifted into my head. They do that, thoughts, as you ride along by yourself, ipod-less due to previously encountered thieves etc. This particular thought was roughly along the lines of: "aren't the remotest areas of Bolivia supposed to be teeming with drug barons and unscrupulous muggers and stuff? At least there's two of us travelling together, we'll be safe as houses as long as we stic....hang on, Rich is back in Cusco....." I cut that thought off about there, and tried to think of more pleasant things. Like the fact that, thanks to the bus drivers in Copacobana who laughed at me when I asked them whether I could ride my bike along the road to Trinidad, I decided to give "death road" a miss and stick to the tarmac. This was a great decision out of Copacobana, especially when I saw the horrendously black storm clouds ahead and somehow managed to skirt round them on about 3 sides, avoiding a drenching.

Once I turned off the alti plano road and started along the route for Cochabamba, the road turned spectacular, with twists, curves, ups downs and all the good stuff bikers love. I had a night in Cochabamba, then headed on to the sanctuary, or so I hoped. It was going to be a big day if I made it, and it started well, with another great road out of town. Things went well until about 3pm, when the road marked as a main one on the map turned into gravel. Not so bad I thought, but then it ran out altogether, and I had to ask some local villagers who lived in the swamp in which I found myself if I was still on the right road. With difficulty, I understood that I was. I say "with difficulty" because, having boasted to various people that I now understood about 70% of Spanish spoken to me, these locals in the back end of Bolivia spoke the laziest, worst Spanish ever, dropping letters, slurring words, mumbling and mixing in local dialect, I suspect, so I struggled.

Anyhow, on I went, until I got stuck in a deep mud puddle. Luckily a local bloke with no shoes came along and helped pull me out. It was during this stage that I wondered again if it was possible to grow cocaine in the swamps, or not, and whether I'd stumbled upon something best left un-stumbled on. But he was a helpful chap, waved me on, and about 1/2km further on, I was lost in the bushes. I found the river bank (river bank? what river bank?) but the river was way to big and fast to cross - we're talking 400m or so and very muddy and deep looking. I left the bike and went a-wandering, as I had seen what looked like a bridge up river a ways, then heard a bike heading to where I'd left my bike, and tried to rush back, only to find I was nearly lost. Luckily, I stumbled across my bike, and also a bloke keen to lead me to the river crossing.

So, I followed him into the bushes a bit further, with a little voice in my head suggesting following strange Bolivians deeper into marshy bushes might not be the wisest thing to do. Sure enough, though, he led me to the "ferries" that would take me across, and rather nervously I drove up the rickety ramp onto the tiny boat and was taken across. To be met by about 10 other men. Who wanted paying. I think they were honest chaps though, and even though they asked for 50 bolivianos for the ride, the loading and unloading, and holding the bike while I relaoded the boxes, which seemed a bit high, I paid up. And realised I rather foolishly had all my cash in my wallet. No probs, though, and they even had change for a 100! And helped me up when I dropped the bike in the mud on the way off the river bank! Despite their honest dispositions, I have to admit I high-tailed it out of there along the gravel road, watching my mirror carefully for signs of pursuit, in case they had changed their minds, but they were just friendly blokes making a living. Given a choice, however, I'll find a different route back, if only for the mud avoidance!

That night, I never made it to Santa Maria and the animal park, it got dark too early, and I was exhausted, hot, hungry and dehydrated. I stopped in a small town, and noticed my box frame was broken again, so I got that welded, and in the process got more badly bitten by mosquitos, on my shoulders, through my thin top, than I had ever been in my life before. Unfortunately, this was to be a sign of things to come. It was such a small town as well, that I was unable to buy food, so went to bed hungry. In the morning at crack of sparrow's, I was off, and the rest of the way was a breeze, all be it a warm, humid breeze. I rolled into the the sanctuary at about 10am, and was mozzie bitten all over my head by 10.15. And it hasn't gotten any better. At the risk of being a whinging pom, its too hot, too humid, everything is wet, the beds are too hard, there are too many mozzies (like millions too many) and even a mozzie net is not up to the job. If I was to shake hands with a blind man right now, his braille skills would tell a very bizarre story as he felt the bumps on my hands, and if he ran his fingers over my neck or hairline, he would have almost enough words to write War and Peace (or some other lenghty book)! I have to be honest, I'm not gonna lie to you, I'm not sure I can stand a month of this. I'm 4 days in and have nearly been driven insane. Its only the fact that I am walking a real live jaguar through the jungle every day that is keeping me there. And not because its fascinating either, because its not. He just sleeps a lot, usually in areas of maximum mozzie concentration, but its a committment to the animal, and I want to do the right thing by him (Ru, the Jaguar). I will see how the rest of the week goes, and maybe reduce my time to the minimum fortnight, which is still jipping a bit, as I should do a month if I'm with a big cat. But I don't know if I can. We'll see. On the up side - because there is always an up side - we have spider and howler monkeys in the compound, the food is great, and the jungle is an interesting place to go for a walk. It could work, possibly. We'll see.

Until then, I have to go buy meat for a BBQ tonight, and food to supplement my breakfast, and have a cold beer. and maybe some more long sleeved/legged clothes to fight off the bugs. Wish me luck. More than ever I think I'm going to need it for this part of the trip.

On The Road Again

2009-03-02T14:16:00.004+13:00

Wow. And double wow. I have just left Cusco after finishing my 2 months with Bruce Peru, and I have to say that, despite the stress and mental and physical exhaustion, it has been one of the best times I have ever had. A bit emotional towards the end, when we had to say goodbye to the kids, but seeing as most of them didn't really seem to register that we (4 of the volunteers, and all of the kids, as they are of to big school in a week) will never see each other again. Probably. If I've learned anyting on this trip its to never say never, so maybe I'll be back some time. I certanly can't imagine never returning, and could well sign up for a month of voluntary work down the line. Todo es posible en Peru, as they say.

So anyway, the last few weeks were tiring, I got in a power strop just because I was finding it hard to live in a tiny shack with 10 people, and spent part of the time trying to keep myself to myself, but I should make it clear (in case any of them ever read this) that it was entirely me that was having issues, and nothing any of the volunteers had done. They were just far too energetic all of the time for an old fudder like me, who every now and then needs to have a bit of peace and quiet to watch crap on the telly and unwind. Being completely honest, we (Rich and I, temporary Co-Directors) could not have asked for a better, more motivated, friendly bunch of volunteers, and we got so much done in such a short space of time exactly because they were young and energtic. Long may it continue, and I hope the long-stayers enjoy the rest of their time. I'll be back to pick up some stuff in early April, so will see how they're doing then.

The last week was made even more interesting as Bruce himself and Ana Tere his wife, came to town for a visit and a chat. Its not often that you meet truly inspirational people in life (OK, apart from you. And you...and you...), but Bruce would have to up there near the top. The sacrifices he has made in his life to provide funds for his projects; the amount of work he has to do now, at the age of 67 (sorry Bruce, I'm making a point), is truly astounding. He pretty much works with his laptop in bed until he falls asleep in front of it, and when he wakes up later he carries straight on, just to earn enough money through his internet streamlining job (too complicated for a dimble-brain like me to fully understand what he does) that he can keep his centres and schools open. And he's been doing it for abut 40 years. It was a privilege to meet himw, and I hope to pop in to the headquarters in Trujillo on my way north to see how them both again. I imagine I will have my work cut out in NZ trying to raise money to send over, once I get back.

But what for the daring duo now? Well, Rich is hanging out in Cusco for another month, while I am heading back to Bolivia to do a month of voluntary work for an animal rescue centre deep in the jungle. If I score the jack pot for jobs going, I could be spending the month walking a jaguar through the jungle as it recooperates from whatever mistreatment it has suffered. Alternatively, I could be working with monkeys, parrots or any number of other critters, so I am pretty excited about the whole thing. On the down side, there is no internet access at the sanctuary, so I'll be struggling to find opportunities to keep you up to date as things happen. Rest assured, however, that as soon as I get a chance to fill people in, you'll be the first to know.

Anyow, that's just a quick update for you. I rode my bike for about 10 hours door to door today, covering about 520km at 3500-4000m about sea level, so I'm pretty weary and need my bed. And you're looking pretty tired yourself, so how's about we all go and get some shut eye? See you in the morning. Sleep tight. Unfortunately for me, the bedbugs have already bitten. Probably won't be the last time over the next month, either. And don't forget to brush your teeth.

Colourful Cusco

2009-02-09T12:39:00.003+13:00

Hello again, remember me? Give me a moment and I'll see if I can recall how this thing is supposed to work...

Yes, yes, I know its been a while since the last entry, but somehow staying in one place for 2 months has not afforded me more time to keep in touch, but rather it has left me rushed off my feet and almost permanently busy. Still, I'm back now, so make the most of it. After the last post, which was all business, I'll attempt to keep this one a bit more touristy, so you can get an idea of the town a bit more. Hopefully you'll have seen the new photos that have gone up, surprisingly not all of them being taken at school, so you may have got a pictorial idea of what its like over here, at least.

Anyhow, its been a bit crazy. Remember my last post? There's a bit near the end where I suggest it would be safe to send me money to give to Bruce Peru on your behalf, and that you could trust me as no-one could meet these kids and then rip them off. How wrong I was!

One of our little stories so far in Cusco centers around a volunteer we recruited from a seemingly safe source, and being from Ecuador (apparently) he seemed perfect. Not only could he help us out while he was in Cusco, but when he went home to Quito, he could help there too. The fact he'd been robbed at the bus station and had no money just tugged on our heart strings a bit harder, and we offered him accomodation until his dad sent him money, at which time he could pay us. A week passed, he was great with the kids, helped out round the hostel, even got a free rafting trip out us, and no-one felt bad lending him a bit of cash now and again, just til his money came, you understand. But by the end of the week, with problem after problem interferring with the arrival or collection of his money, we told him he'd have to pay up or move out until he could pay, as we couldn't afford to keep him indefinitely. This, it seems, was his cue to sneak off that evening, taking a camera, cellphone and ipod with him (they weren't his, incidentally), and leaving his bill unpaid and his loans un-repaid. The police, it turned out when we showed them a photo, knew him from his many similar cons, and we learned a lesson. Turns out I was wrong, and some people are able to rip off the kids after meeting them.

Other than that, Cusco is great. It is highly policed, so you actually feel very safe in the streets; it has a beautiful main plaza in the historical centre, and many narrow, ancient streets and local markets. If you look carefully enough, you can easily avoid the ones aimed at tourists, and find pretty much the same stuff at half the price in the local sector. If you go with a local too, you certainly won't get ripped off for price. There is plenty of night life, although at this time of year - summer, but also, strangely, the rainy season - there are fewer tourists about, making our fundraising efforts that little bit harder.

Close to town, there are many (and I mean many) ancient ruin sites, although obviously Macchu Picchu is the main one. I think its main draw is both the Inca trail trek needed to walk there in 4 days (you can do it in less without the walk if you want) and its location on the top of mountain (I won't be going until the end of March I think), but the 2 others I have visited at Tipon and Pisaq are spectacular for themselves, just not quite so remote. Hopefully you'll get some idea from the photos.

I have also spent many Saturday mornings in the local farmers market, which is probably my favourite place in Cusco, as it is the most real experience I think you can get in town. I, and the other volunteers brought along to carry the heavy shopping, are ususally the only white folk there, and no one pays us any attention. It is as genuine "local colour" as you could hope to get, and I have been encouraging our cook to make some money on the side by offering tours there to backpackers. I reckon she'd make a killing!

Other than that, we had out day out rafting, and the waterproof camera came into its own as it did for Ed in NZ in Jan '08. Unfortunately, many of the photos have the thief in them , thus rendering them effectively spoiled. Still, its where we got a shot to show the police, so it paid off in one respect, I guess.

And that, my little armchair travellers, is about it for now. The rest of my time is spent working, in one way or another. We have had a school trip to a local fun park (nothing electrical in the place, thank God - Peruvian electrics are not to be trusted. We had a 6th birthday party at Huancaro for one of the wee lads there. It seems I have a natural ability for reading pub quizzes (OK, so its not that hard, but needs someone shouty who doesn't mind drunk people), I have shut my thumb in a taxi door so now the nail looks like a chromatography experiment, and between us, Rich and I seem to be making a pretty good go of running the centre, thanks largely to the fantastic volunteers we are recruiting (and are recruiting each other), often as a result of the aforementioned quiz nights. One bad apple has certainly not ruined the barrel, and as Bruce told us, its not the first time and won't be the last. Live and learn , as they say.

I'll try not to leave it so long for the next one, but there is less exciting stuff happening on a day to day basis right now, as we are effectively back in the workforce, all be it voluntarily. That said, I'll drop in and let youknow if I have visited any other ruins, and hopefully keep a trickle of new photos coming in. And I'll try to refrain from all of them being taken at the schools.

Enjoy your winter snow, or summer BBQs, depending on which hemisphere you are living in, and remember to wash your hands. We have to over here, or we end up very ill indeed. Toodle pip.

What Can You Do When You Can't Do Enough?

2009-01-15T11:44:00.003+13:00

So there we were, in Copacobana just about Christmas time, recovering from a bout of festive food poisoning, when we checked our emails and discovered that we had been asked to step up to the role of Directors and Volunteer Co-ordinators for the Bruce Organisation. Not just volunteers, then, but actually running the joint. Something to do with the previous director having an urgent situation in the States to return to, and no-one else on the horizon to take over.

We took it on the chin, as you'd expect of us by now, and rocked up to Cusco on the 28th, half expecting some kind of introductory note or some such, but only being handed a key to let ourselves into the centre, to find shelves of manuals, cupboards of resources, and not much else. No clues, certainly, but we buckled down, read manuals, dug through resources, and organised meetings with various important local contacts. The teachers, for example, and the social worker, and the owner of the Bruce Centre office-cum-controller of the staff wages. And, slowly but surely (well, not that slowly, we didn't have much time) things fell into place.

Maybe you're wondering what this Bruce Organisation thing is (its all on the link...). If so, in a nutshell of indeterminate size, its basically 13 schools throughout South America, most of them in Peru, that try and take the poorest children in the towns in which they operate and give them sufficient schooling to enable them to be accepted into the national school system. It then continues to offer support to the kids for the next 2 years, ensuring they get a good inital grounding, and hopefully giving them and their parents the motivation to continue to study. Initially, the challenge is getting the kids into school, as their parents often keep them out to work, due to their often extreme level of poverty. Some of the programmes have been extended to include offering a basic business education to the parents, allowing them to maximise their earning potential, thus reducing the families need to have the youngest members out working.

Right now in Cusco, we have 2 schools running in two of the local barrios (poorer areas of the town), with a total of 38 children aged 6 to only-just-turned-8 enrolled, and possibly a few more to come. Every day, between 9am and noon, the kids arrive, wash their hands with soap (not something they often get to do by the looks of things), have a breakfast roll and drink provided by Bruce Peru, then brush their teeth (again, not a common activity for most of them). They then have classes in Maths or Spanish (I'd say English, but its not, its Spanish, but basically its reading and writing) until 11ish, have a bit of play and come back in to finish off until 12, when they head home with a piece of fruit (2 if there is enough and they helped tidy up). And that's it. We are running a summer school programme right now in Cusco, trying to get our kids to first grade level in time for the March intake, and for some of them its the first time they have held a pencil, even if they are able to count to 10.

These kids would bring a tear to the eye of the toughest of characters. They turn up in their poorly fitting hand-me-downs, only not bare-footed due to the under- or over-sized shoes/sandals they have, grubby faces, shy smiles, and by the end of the session they are animated, laughing, happy and excited, and keen to come back tomorrow. Many of their home lives are overshadowed by neglect and possibly other forms of abuse as well, so the positive attention they get for 3 hours a day could be the only affection they get that day. Same goes for the food they are given. The way some of them attack their bread roll with a smear of jam or mashed banana, you'd think they hadn't eaten since the last school breakfast. This is particularly apparent on Monday mornings...

The biggest frustration right now for me is my failing in the language. The kids chatter away and I miss the key words due to gaps in my vocabulary, which they find very funny, and then annoying as the stupid gringo just doesn't get it! Still, for the most part, they are patient and understanding and teach me words in Spanish, as I teach them numbers or colours in English when we have a break.

And so what then? The kids go home and we have an afternoon to kill. Its back to the centre for promotions and fund raising ideas, and while we are here we are concentrating on establishing low cost, high reward systems, hopefully involving local businesses, that can be continued by anyone that comes after us. We have re-established relations with a bar or two that had dropped off the radar for pub quizzes, we are trying to launch an affiliates voucher system that has business owners donating a portion of their bills to BP, and we are trying to link up with the local Fire Service to assist in mutual fund raising activities into the future. Basically, we have to spend as much time as possible raising money just to cover costs for renting classrooms, paying teachers, buying school stationery, paying for the kids breakfasts, etc.

The classrooms are virtually windowless concrete bunkers under someone's house, rented to BP for the princely sum of S/60 a month (about 12 quid), which is, incidentally, what the teachers and social worker are paid. The breakfasts cost S/3.50 a week per child. That's about 70p. And we struggle to raise the money to meet these costs. So far, the lowest cost / hightest reward activity has been bucket shaking in the main Plaza, an activity we were amazed to find had never been tried before, despite the fact it allows us to talk to many people about the work BP does, which also assists in the recruitment of volunteers. I'm proud to say it was my idea, although Richard is better at it than me! I always said he could sell ice to eskimoes (pardon me, Innuits), and now it turns out he can fleece tourists too! Between new year's eve and the following friday, we rasied nearly S/800 just from this activity, and when you add in the nearly S/500 we have made from the two pub quizzes so far organised, we are just about on top of things.

Of course, if anyone out there would like to help by donating cash or stationery (colouring pencils, colouring books, jigsaws, games etc), you can either email me and ask for an address to post stuff, donate on the Bruce Peru site (see the link), or if you want to help Cusco kids specifically and directly, you can transfer your donation to my account and I will instantly withdraw it and use in for our kids. I realise this last option requires a certain amount of trust between us, but I think that after spending the best part of 5 months on the road together, you should know me to be honest and reliable, and a man of my word. Not to mention that no-one could spend a week with these kids and then rip them off. Its just not possible. Its all on you to help if you can, or spread the word if you can't. I'm doing what I can from this end.

Sorry for the lecture-y post, next time will be more tourist orientated. In the mean time, I have some photos I will try and load up tonight, after which I dare you to do nothing. I dare you.

I'm off to our first Real McCoy Quiz now, so wish me luck. I'm reading the questions....

Breaking News!!!!

2008-12-31T16:21:00.002+13:00

For those paying close attention, please be advised 2 (yes, 2!!!) new video clips have been uploaded to youtube. Give it a nudge with the link and search for Bolivian Dynamite Experience Part 1 and Part 2. I wanted to call it Bolivian blow job part 1 and 2, but that understandably got a rather larger search result of a slightly more dubious nature. Gone are the days of a harmless double entendre, it seems. Enjoy. We did.

Farewell to Boliviyeauuuurghhhh!!

2008-12-30T07:15:00.002+13:00

Happy Christmas everyone, and a lively New Year as well. right, now that's over with...

So, we were in Oruro, if you've been paying attention, and about to head in the general direction of La Paz, which we duly managed to do. En route, as is our wont, we decided more precisely where we were going to try and get to, and picked a...suburb, I guess you'd call it, 12km out of La Paz called Mallasa, situated in the Bolivian Valle de la Luna (oh no, not another one, we thought). Unfortunately, we had no map with Mallasa on it, and as we got closer and closer to La Paz, the lack of road signage, though normal, became increasingly confusing.

And then, while stopped at a set of traffic lights in the middle lane of 3, a guiding angel appeared, thinly disguised as a local traffic cop. The cop came over while we waited for the lights, and asked the usual curious questions about where we were from, where we had come from today and where we were going. When we said Mallasa, he started giving ¨easy¨ instructions to find it that would take us off the crowded main streets. We were clearly struggling with his directions, so he suggested we move out of the now moving traffic to the side of the road, and he tried again. Seeing the looks of utter confusion still on our faces (not easy through the helmets...) he grabbed his mate, jumped on his own bike, told us to follow him and sped off through the unpredictable traffic. I dropped visor (there was a lot of both dust and dirty water being sprayed about), indicated left and pulled away from the kerb, with Rich in hot pursuit. Until, that is, my front wheel dislodged a storm water drain cover, and my back wheel dropped neatly in the hole. Rich came back, realising I wasn't on his tail any more, and we managed to lift the back end out of the hole without dropping the bike, but by now our guides had surely gone?

Not a bit of it. They too had realised we hadn't followed them, so had (probably illegally) U-turned and come back to find us. Reunited, we set off again, our wider, slower bikes finding it harder than the lighter cop bike to weave dangerously through the traffic, but we kept them in sight, and eventually got through a maze of streets to the top of a long and winding cobbled street leading into an incredible craggy valley. Hear, the friendly police pulled over, gave us some final directions for Mallasa, told us to ask any other policeman if we needed help and bid us farewell. Slightly dubiously, suspecting some kind of Bolivian rip off scam perhaps, we followed the amazing road into the valley.

After several pauses to check our direction, we were confident we were on the right road to Mallasa. And then, inevitably enough, things became a little pear-shaped. The road was rather unexpectedly blocked by a construction crew, large lorries waiting to take earth away, and a larger JCB type machine in the middle of the road, scooping it into the backs of the trucks in turn. We were assured that if we were ¨tranquilo¨, the road would be clear soon enough, so after one failed attempt at a sneaky detour, we waited it out.

Once clear, the first vehicle, a Toyota Hiace van, tried to come up the relatively steep and by now very muddy and wet road, and unsurprisingly got totally stuck. Lack of air, hot clothing and the nasty mud prevented us from leaping to the van's aid, but others tougher than us stepped in, pushed it through, and the road was open! I launched myself down the chute, throwing caution to a walking pace wind, and promptly lost my front wheel in the slippery deep mud, dropping my bike and blocking Rich and the rather large lorry behind me from being able to get past. A frenzied pick up of the bike threw it on to its other side, before I manfully and totally-out-of-breathedly managed to get it up (so to speak) and successfully out of the muddy slick. And so, on to Mallasa with no further interruptions or issues. Phew.

The Bolivian Valle de la Luna certainly deserved its name, with totally amazing rock formations we totally failed to photograph, as we were by this time just keen to get to the end of the ride. We had a very comfortable night in a fairly luxury hostel, and next day proceeded through La Paz and on to Copacobana.

Now I made that sound easy, but getting through La Paz on a Sunday morning (surely less traffic on a Sunday?) was preceded by a climb up and up and up a crazy winding road (hopefully Rich got good video footage of that), providing a steadily improving view of La Paz below us, a truly stunning location for a city, albeit a rather busy and dirty city. At the top of the hill, we hit real traffic, and had a thoroughly entertaining half our weaving our way with a recklessness surpassed only by the true locals, through the traffic and out of town. A quick, straight spin followed to get us to within sight of Lake Titicaca, and a short hop on a very rickety boat put us across from San Pablo to San Pedro, and on to an absolutely superb, high level, top quality tarmac, contour-following road around the edge of the lake to get to Copacobana.

Here we stopped for about 5 days over Xmas, enjoying a couple of nights out, met some friendly locals, had a crack at high altitude fitness activities (a hill climb and various push-up type things), and on our last night - Xmas night - a bout of food poisoning courtesy of the poshest food we'd eaten in months, and needless to say chicken. We should have known. Never mind, Rich spent the night shouting Huey and Ralph at the roses outside, and my first duty of the morning, under the impression I had escaped his fate despite an uncomfortable night, was to talk to God on the big white telephone. Having not purged myself as early as Rich, I also suffered bonus discomfort, which need not be highlighted, but altogether it did cause us to have a recovery day and mount a pavement protest which in due course got us a refund for the meal.

Which, sadly, had us leaving Bolivia with, quite literally, a sour taste in our mouths, despite having enjoyed every other aspect of the country enormously. It certainly hasn't put me off the notion of going back in March while Rich is otherwise occupied, to do a stint of voluntary work with http://www.intiwarayassi.org/, who work to rescue wild animals form zoos and circuses etc and rehabilitate them for release into the wild. Should be good, as long as I avoid chicken in Copacobana on the way there!

And so we entered Peru, homing in on Cusco at last and our 2 months of voluntary work for Bruce Peru. On the way we stopped at Puno for a night, not having fully regained our strength yet, which was very nice town from what we saw of it, narrow cobbled streets and old Spanish type buildings etc, and arrived in Cusco yesterday afternoon. It was another incredible drive in, totally well above 3000m all the way yet still surrounded by enormous hills and mountains. It really is a very high part of the world, round here! We have settled in to our digs, and found out a day or two before arrival that, rather than just being classroom volunteers as we had expected, we have been asked to take on the role of directors and coordinators for volunteers and fund raising (basically running the joint), as our predecessor was called back to the US rather unexpectedly and urgently. A bigger challenge certainly, but we have had a couple of working liquid lunches already, brainstormed some ideas, and are quietly confident that we will be highly successful! Of course, what else?

So wish us luck, keep an eye out for further updates and photos, and try to keep Auntie Beryl away from the sherry. You know it plays havoc with her plumbing.

Great Mines Think Alike

2008-12-20T10:44:00.002+13:00

You'll no doubt be as relieved to know as I am, that the swelling has gone down (most of the time anyway) and there seems to be no lasting damage as a result of the last bee sting. You can rest easy now. Especially the ladies out there....

So anyway, we left Uyuni for Potosí, the original and richest mining town in Bolivia. The road was about 200km long, and unsealed all the way. After a shakey start with rather more sand than I like, and one or two eye-opening construction sites (a general wave of the flag to skirt round the construction works with the bikes saved us a lot of waiting around for big trucks to finish doing whatever it was they were doing), it calmed down to a really rather good gravel road, and with my confidence at an all time high (but still not at the expense of my caution, I promise), we had a very enjoyable ride to Potosí. Not a very glamourous city at first glance, and the whole place lives in the shadow of the Cerro Rico, the huuuuge mountain that has been the subject of mining operations since 1545 and source of just about every mineral you can think of, from silver and gold to lead and tin, zinc and iron, copper sulphate and who knows what else, and they're still going. currently, 17000 miners work the hill, all as part of various co-operatives, so they fortunes are up and down as dramatically as the world markets that govern their income. last year, for example, there were more Hummers in Potosí than the rest of Bolivia put together, but this year the prices have crashed, and they are back in their crappy trucks.
How do I know so much about the mountain? Why, I went on a tour, of course. And more surprising than that, so did Rich. We went on one of the "Mine Tours", taken underground into the working mines by an ex-miner who is now about 50 years old, but worked there from age 13 to 20. Much as many youngsters do today, in fact. It was an incredible tour, scurrying through tunnels and getting out of the way of classic Indiana Jones style mine trolleys as they were pushed past by groups of local workers. Empty, they are a mere 300kg. Full, they gain an extra 1000kg (that's a ton in old language) of rocks and earth that has to be either pushed to the surface, or to shaft where it is emptied into a heap and then hauled a bag at a time to the surface. Soul destroying stuff. On the up side, we were encouraged to take in a 2 litre bottles of fizzy pop for them each and a bag of coca leaves, the local cure-all that staves off altitude sickness, reduces appetite and gives a bit of an energy kick to boot. All presents gratefully received, not least the stick of dynamite we bought from a street vendor to take down for them. And a spare to get a demonstration outside afterwards from our guide...and another spare to take away secretly and blow up later of course....
Dynamite is loud!! The 2 sticks the guide blew up for us rattled our eardrums, and it was actually very useful to watch him prepare it so we could copy later (now that is a bit of vid I will try my hardest to up load!), and slightly comical to watch this fairly chunky old fella carry the sticks to the detonation site, and then run like hell to a safe distance!
Anyhow, despite the altitude (the mine entrance we used was about 4300m), and the heat underground (yes, it was hot and stuffy), we both managed to keep up and not get too puffed from our exertions. definitely earned teh beers we had later, shared with a group of 3 Canadian bikers we met in town, riding from British Colombia to the south somewhere, on KLR 650s for those that are interested. Potosí actually turned out to be a very pretty city in the centre, with blaconies, narrow streets and the obligatory well-used plaza.
Today, we left Potosí with a view to going to Cochabamba, but only made it to Oruro, due to fatigue (I think the altitude has that effect), the threat of rain and a slightly changed game plan. Suffice to say, on the way to Oruro, we found a suitable cactus, prepared our dynamite, and very carefully (with no risk to our own safety whatsoever, O beloved parents) blew the living whatnots out of it! Highly entertaining, and its probably lucky we only had one bit of dynamite to use, or the next target might well have been a slow moving goat/llama. We are now in Oruro, and likely to head towards, but not into, La Paz tomorrow, with a Christmas goal of getting to Copacobana on the shores of Lake Titikaka for a few (more) days R&R.
So that's all, thanks for tuning in, and for those that pay attention to the details, rest assured I did utter the immortal words "Do you think you used enough dynamite there, Butch?", but regrettably forgot to use the line "You're only supposed to blow the bleeding doors off!". So half marks only for me, I guess.

On the Trail of Butch and Sundance

2008-12-17T10:15:00.004+13:00

Before I tell you about that, I'd just like to say I have added a couple more observations to the end of the last post, so feel free to check that one again, its free after all!

And now, to Bolivia! And not without a fair amount of trepidation, I have to admit. The same nerves I have got every time we have gone into a new country so far, and this time the principal worries were the roads and the rain, it being the rainy season, by all accounts. That said, we had been assured by the Canadian couple on the BMW we met in Mendoza that the roads would be no worse than anything we had encountered so far, not that that helped calm my nerves a great deal.
Anyhow, we crossed the border at La Quiaca early in the morning, and threaded our way through the streets of Villazon, past the crazy shouting man and up the main drag and out of town. Straight into a churned up, bulldozer-strewn stretch of sandy "road". Perfect. Fortunately, we picked our way through the road construction work, and onto a reasonable enough unsealed road that took us the 100km or so to Tupiza, the largest town in "Butch and Sundance's Last Stand" area of the country. The road had its share of sand mixed in with gravel, but no deep and difficult patches. The main problem was the corrugations, which were extreme and almost permanent, making for a bone-shaking ride for most of the way. It was, in all other respects, a very enjoyable ride though, and the last part as we approached Tupiza was genuinely spectacular, with more crazy rock formations and impressive scenery.
Unfortunately, it turned out that San Vicente, the actual mining village that Butch and Sundance finally caught the Big Stage Coach to the Sky, was (a) tiny, (2) quite a long way off our route, (iii) didn't actually have anything to show for their efforts, not even identifiable graves and (d) didn't have any petrol to refill on the way. Not to mention the road, if we were even able to find it, was the smallest possible standard marked on the map, suggesting extremely poor quality. So, we made a decision: we would take the road to Uyuni and the salt plains, and when we got to the turning to San Vicente, if we recognised it, we would detour down it a bit to assess its quality and decide if it was worth the risk and extra time.
So, off we went. In the wrong direction, initially, as the diversion sign pointed down a road that actually took us to the front line of the road construction, causing us to turn around, and eventually take the right road. Up to the first un-marked crossroads. Fortunately, we stopped here to find someone to ask, which gave me time to notice that the mysterious squeak I had been hearing was not, as I thought, coming from the front end, but actually from the back, where my luggage frame had broken at the same weld I'd had fixed in Brasil. Why? Because I had lost a securing bolt due to the shake down we had endured on the way in. So we turned round, went back to town and found a welder to fix it and a bolt shop to buy replacement bolts and spares for the next time it would happen. This all took us to midday, by which time I was reluctant to go on, as I suspected it would rain before we got to Uyuni (the word on the street is that however sunny it is, it rains some time mid-afternoon, just as it had done yesterday). This threat of rain, I felt, would put me under pressure to go faster than I wanted to, so I begged woosseyness and we decided to stay in Tupiza one more night.
This gave us a chance to modify our plan and pay homage to a rather old video of the Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid movie, a welcome repeat viewing for me, and a first for Rich, so frankly, very necessary.
Next day, we found our way out of town without a hitch, but completely failed to spot the road to San Vicente, as none of the junctions we met had a sign to anywhere on them, and at nearly every one we had to stop and wait for a passing vehicle to point us in the right direction. More corrugations, but a fantastic, mountainous first 100km, up over 4000m again, and then a much less pleasant sandy second half, though mostly thin sand on a hard under surface, so not too bad. The only event on the journey of any note was my third bee-sting incident, and this time it was very serious indeed, and certainly no laughing matter. We had stopped for a piece of cake, a drink and a pee, and I had just completed the last of these, when I got the nasty feeling I had committed the cardinal schoolboy error of getting caught up in the zip. But wait, I hadn't even pulled the zip up yet, so why the very sharp pain in a very delicate place?? A quick and slightly panicky look revealed a very surprised bee escaping from my pants, and a small stinger left behind in my old fella! Quick as a flash, I picked the stinger out, and hopped around in a lot of pain, while Rich helped by taking a picture. He commented later that I had been lucky it was only one sting, and I pointed out that he was the lucky one, as if it had been worse, he might have had to suck out the poison! Still, despite these high jinx, the 210km took 6 hours, and we stumbled into Uyuni to a very unprepossessing sight of vast amounts of rubbish blown about the desert just outside of town. In fairness to Uyuni, this is not unusual in SA, as many smaller towns only have uncovered landfills for dumping rubbish, and lots of wind, so the end result, though unattractive to look at and smell, is sadly inevitable.
So Uyuni, then. Famous for its massive Salar plain, with freaky mirages, distorted perspective and seemingly endless space. We had a night to recover from the ride in, then a relaxed morning preparing food etc, considering it was only 20km to the salt, and with no shade we didn't want to have to spend the whole day out there before we camped. We found our way out to the plains, and straight away couldn't fail to notice what a weird and wonderful place it was. We stopped briefly at one of the hotels made of salt, near the "edge", then drove for about 100km in a vaguely straight line to the volcano out in the middle somewhere. The salt was very hard, so easy to drive on, and with no obstacles to crash into and no road to run off, it allowed for some interesting on-the-move photo opportunities. The volcano eventually grew larger, although the distance was very hard to judge. When we arrived, it was surprising to see grassy areas all round the "island", with stone walls, grazing llamas, and flamingoes. We pitched our tents, took some crazy photos, and enjoyed the sunset, before settling in for an early and somewhat chilly night.
Next morning, we packed up slowly due to the altitude (about 3500m), took some more whacky photos, and drove off to one of the other islands for a quick look, before heading back to Uyuni and thoroughly cleaning the salt off the bikes.
And that is where I am now. While Rich wiles away the afternoon asleep, I'm have popped out to try and upload photos and update you, but sadly this has been quick and easy, but the photos have been very slow indeed. I can only hope that Potosi has faster internet that Uyuni, or I am going to get very behind with my photos!
A final first impression of Bolivia? I like it. OK, the roads are crap, but the people we have met so far have all been friendly and smiley, despite being easily the poorest folks we have met so far. They also speak a much clearer form of Spanish - slower and better pronounced. That doesn't mean I can understand more of it, mind you, but I can at least tell where one word ends and the next begins now, so maybe that will help!
Well, watch out for bees, and start getting out the decorations for Chrimbo. Our next task is to find some to decorate the bikes with. Til then, chin chin.

Things That Deserve a Mention

2008-12-13T07:48:00.004+13:00

One or two things caught my eye over the last few months, and before they cease to seem strange in any way, I feel I should just give them a mention now. Some are funny, some ridiculous, some just curious, but all are noteworthy to my mind, and almost without exception, none of them will have been photographed, as I'm just not that organised. Sorry about that. So, without anymore ado, and in no particular order of preference or occurrence:
·The bicycle "backy"- from old blokes giving a side saddle backy on the luggage rack to their equally old wife, to the standard, kids-only-rear-footpeg backy, to the side saddle crossbar backy, to the toddler-on-the-handlebars-and-third-person-on-the-back backy, to the highly complicated and very technical passenger-on-the-crossbar-steering-with-driver-seated-and-pedalling, it seems to be the only way to travel.
·The overloaded scooter- maximum load so far witnessed is 4 on a scooter, arranged in order from handlebars to back as: small child, male driver, slightly larger child, female backstop. There have often been examples of mother on the back holding very small baby, and one photo in the album of Dante, Millie and Nadia with full camping gear. Crash helmets optional. The only other way to travel.
·Crash helmets - optional, but if worn, often only perched on the top of the head, no further down than the ears, very possibly back to front. They found the loop hole in the law.
·Dogs. Everywhere. Except (hopefully) on restaurant menus. And cats. Same.
·Cars that in any other place on earth would have been condemned and retired to a "bits" pile at the back of some lost garage. I have no idea how they continue to run, but they do. Often crazily overloaded with people or cargo.
·Pick-ups full to bursting with people in the back, presumably on their way to work or market. Possibly an alternative to buses.
·Buses. And trucks, come to mention it. Big, fast and in total command of the road. Move or be run down.
·Speed limits - there at the side of the road purely for decoration, or possibly as the minimum required speed to be travelled. The aforementioned buses and trucks work on the " as fast as possible" theory, assuming that when they have to slow to 10kmh on the ups, they can make up time at 110kmh on the downs. With no brakes, I suspect.
·Mullets, everywhere. And in some cases swapped for a single dreadlock at the back. Mmmmm.
·Crap breakfasts. The Argies just haven't got a clue when it comes to breakfast. A small quantity of stale bread, possibly toasted but left to go cold before serving if so, and maybe some strange tasting jam, or more likely ham and cheese. If you are very lucky, and for no particular reason, you might get a pastry instead. The Brazilians have a better idea, with lots of tropcial fruits, but still with the ham and cheese and bread.
·Maté, or more accurately yerba maté, the local drink in Argy that supercedes coffee by a country mile. Small maté gourd with silver straw in one hand, packed full of maté leaves. Thermos for hot water held under the armpit of the same hand. Water is added to the mix at regular intervals and sucked up the straw, not in the manner of tea, but more as a damp sludge. Highly social, with the gourd being passed round a group, each particpant taking a refill and total sip from the same straw. The Argies are unable to function without it, and the addition of a flask to their armpits does not seem to hinder their day to day activities too much.
·Town plazas. Even the smallest, dustiest, most remote towns have a plaza, often called after General San Martin, which the try to keep green and full of trees (often with the bottom 5 feet or so of trunk painted white). Regardless of water shortage, the plazas get squirted. Similar, I guess to the village green in the UK, but given more respect by the locals.
·Change in shops. If they don't have the right coins (which often they don't) they either let you off, charge you more, or give you sweeties instead of money. I think everything balances out in the end.
·Electrical wiring. How every building in South America hasn't burned down yet I really don't know. Talk about living on a prayer.
-Buying things in Chile is very complicated. You enter a shop where all the items for sale are behind the counter, select your purchase, point it out to the man behind the counter who writes you a ticket. You take the ticket to another counter to pay. They give you another ticket to take back to the first man, who then hands over the item. Not easy when first encountered with limited Spanish. And following on from this:
-Make sure you address the right person in the shop at the right time: if you try to ask the cash til lady for an item, or even worse try to give your money to the item getting woman, you are likely to start a fight behind the counter. You have never seen mild old ladies snatch things as quickly as the mild looking lady who is in charge of the til when you hand the money to the wrong person!
- The man kiss! My favourite strange sight, and a sign that you have been accepted as a true friend if it is bestowed upon you. Male friends in the street greet each other with a handshake and a kiss to the cheek, and leave each other in the same way. It is not even remotely considered "gay"to do, although often they are generally fairly homophobic, excluding, of course, the Man Kiss. We have been lucky enough to have been considered close enough friends on a couple of occasions to have been sent on our way with a kiss, which is actaully very touching, in a good way! It has become one of our mottos, if you like, when we see it, to comment to each other that they are "taking back the Man Kiss". More power to them!
And while there are no doubt many more, my brain is sleepy so is refusing to voluteer the information. As and when I think of, or witness, more, I will add them in a later entry.
Take care out there, and remember: Keep 'em peeled!

Farewell Chile and Argentina, Hello Bolivia

2008-12-13T07:15:00.006+13:00

So its true then. Firemen the world over, be they volunteers or professional, exist within a brotherhood of support for their colleagues. The boys at Copiapó certainly did their bit to keep us alive, and it was a little sad to have to say goodbye to them, but say goodbye we did, and off up the coast we went.
The first day was an easy one due to recent ailments - only as far as Chañaral, a small grotty town with a great fish restaurant, owned by this old wrinkly fella who stopped us on the street and chatted away in English to us, which he'd learnt 40 years ago as a merchant seaman travelling the world. He also spoke Norwegian, but only really practiced the English with friends in town. Turnd out he was 70 years old, on his second wife, had 6 kids and about 15 grand kids and 3 great grand kids. One of his grand-daughters was older than his youngest daughter, and he was proud to tell us he was still all man, about 5 times a week! He was a real character and despite having no teeth, spoke far clearer Spanish than most people we meet!
From Chañaral we split up, Rich taking a sandy goat track (he was assured it was a firm road in good condition) and me going the main road to Antofogasta. Rich's other mission was to check out a windsurfing spot (only good if you have your own gear apparently), and I went to see 007 at the movies.
We re-convened at San Pedro de Atacama, where we stayed for a couple of nights, it being the Chileño salt flats and impressive Valley of the Moon (all the countries seem to have one of them it seems), before bidding farewell to Chile as we headed over the Paso de Jama (a mere 4200m this one) and on to Salta.
This should have been a straightforward day, all be it with some gravel, but the 500km took 12 hours, as we ended up firstly taking the wrong Ruta 70 (only one road marked on the map, but we went down 70a that wasn't marked on the map at all) which was extremely corrugated, and very sandy, although not deep sand, fortunately. I hated every minute of it, although by the end of the day I had to grudgingly acknowledge that I had got better at riding on the surface. Good practice for Bolivia, I guess. On the up side, we got a stretch of 80km or so of fantastic, smooth, well cambered, curving blacktop to let rip on, and Rich really got to work on his chicken scratches. Unfortunately, they saw fit to take away our reward and stick us back on a very dusty stretch of gravel, just as Rich's bike decided to have a funny turn and cut out every 10km or so. He finally worked out that it only did it on the down hills, and that far from being a mechanical problem, it was user error, and he had run out of fuel. Ha ha. Ha.
A couple of rest days in Salta saw us girding our loins for the final push to Bolivia, and on to the unknown. After arriving in Salta through cactus strewn desert and dry sandy valleys of incredible formations and colours, we drove through town and left on a road that went through grassy farmland and up through dense rainforest on another great, winding, single lane road. Shortly afterwards, it returned to desert, and with rain clouds threatening, we made it to La Quiaca, the last town right on the Argy-Bolivian border, famous for...nothing really, other than being the last town on the Argy-Bolivian. We toasted Argentina, bid her a fond farewell, and prepared for what we both hoped would not be a very rainy rainy season, and roads that, though un-tarmac-ed,would not be mud, or sand, or nasty in any other ways.
And that,dear Reader, is where I shall leave this entry, to be continued afresh with tales of adventure and derring do in the great unknown of Bolivia next time. We are on the trail of Butch and Sundance, so wish us luck. Stay tuned for some final thoughts and observations of the first 21000km of our trip. Soupy twist.

Rather a lot of Up, and Even More Down

2008-12-04T06:25:00.003+13:00

And I'm talking quite literally here, in the gains and losses of altitude kind of way, not in any new age, bunny-hugging emotional way. We're tougher than that out here!
So we left Mendoza with a lot of new ideas, courtesy of Cecilia, a moto-adventurer of pretty much the whole world on a 20 year old BMW something or other, which will disgust all the real bikers out there who won't understnad why I have no idea what kind of bike it was. A pre-cursor of the GS I believe, but maybe only a 1000cc, I'm not sure. Ask Rich if you really care. (Sorry Cecilia, no offence meant, I just struggle to keep that kind of tekkie stuff in my head. Too busy trying not to fall off, I expect!).
Anyhow, she suggested a pass into Chile further north than we'd planned, which meant ditching our return to Valpo, which was a pity, but these things happen. So north we went, blasting up the main roads to save some time, but nonetheless going over some more stunning gravel on the way. We got a night at a thermal spring near a small town called Fiambalá, and as well as a very therapeutic hot soak, we both managed to pick up some kind of lergy, but whether from the tap water or the spa water we'll never know. It hit us in different ways, getting Rich in the belly and appetite, and me a fraction lower down, but at least I could keep my energy levels up with the tasty dry bread and shrivelled fruit we were able to seek out in the town.

So, a little later than planned and with frequent bathroom breaks, we set off over the Paso San Francisco to Chile, certainly our highest road to date, climbing to a, quite literally, breath-taking 4700m. Once again I was slow off the mark with the video camera and missed a chance to film the first valley we went through, so will have to re-live that one with photos, but I pulled myself together enough to get the camera in place and film some of the rest of the ascent and descent, so hopefully that will come out OK.

The poor bikes suffered almost as much as for lack of air at that height, and from about 3000m up we were struggling to get over 60km/h and having to drop gear(s) like a desperate junkie (does that simile work? It'll do). The Argy customs were typically swift and efficient, but for some reason insisted in checking my boxes to see what I might have been taking out of the country, a frustratingly long process now that I have to tie the boxes on with 3m straps. They then told us it didn't matter anyway as it was going out, not in, so I huffed and puffed them back on to the bike. Rich, meanwhile had a 100m chase of his laminated registration document as the wind whisked it away. He gave up the chase, and one of his lungs, at the 100m point, and resorted to the copy rather than high altitude coronary. Wise move.

Eighty kilometres along and 1km vertically down later, at about 5pm, we got to the Chileño customs, and once again, after an incredibly slow processing of the bikes, I had to remove and open my boxes, which were duly barely glanced at, and restowed them, with even more huffing and puffing than before, and set off for more down. It was about 7.30pm by now, and the sun was in our eyes, energy levels were low due to lack of appetites and strenuous packing of bikes with no air, and we still had 176km of gravel to get us to town. Thats about 3 hours on normal gravel, so the prospect of a high altitude camp out was on the cards for sure.

By 8pm with 120km or so still to go, and feeling decidedly cold, achey and sick,we decided to stop at the conveniently placed gold mine. Not a tiny, rustic, western-movies style shaft propped up with wobbly beams type of mine, but a full scal, hard core, modern processing plant with security guards and everything. They wouldn't let us into the compound, but did let us camp outside, gave us food and, most importantly from my point of view, let us use the bathroom facilities. All this at an unknown altitude, but still high enough to make rapid movement put us out of breath.

In the morning, we packed up slowly, still feeling a little ropey from the dodgy water (Rich felt pretty bad, I just still needed the loo too much), and set off down a remarkably smooth un-paved road to Copiapó. This time I remembered the camera early and hopefully got some good footage of parts of the remaining descent. In Copiapó, we struggled to find a hostel as everything was booked up (summer season, of course, hadn't registered with us, and all the previously empty hostels were now full everywhere we went), and while I pestered the tourist info lady to call round for us, Rich got chatted up by a local fireman, who called his captain and they invited us to stay at the station, which we did. Many repeated converstations later and Rich passed out upstairs, and slept for a solid 18 hours. I kept the social end up with tales of daring do, amazingly accurate biro maps of NZ, its fire districts, economic infrastructure and cartoons of whales and shellfish and sailing boats, and was finally persuaded to go for a beer or two at midnight. Four hours and another decidedly dodgy "Ladies only Firestation" later (OK, it was a pole dancing club, but they certainly slid down their poles just like a fireman would) I stumbled into bed and passed out myself.
It is now the next day, I am about to cook lunch for the boys as a thank you (at 3pm), and both Rich and I are feeling a bit better, thank you for asking (although Rich is still off food a bit). We'll have one more night here, and maybe two if he is still not right, and then head north some more, but until then, I'd better get my pinny on and cook up a storm. Good old sausage, eggs, chips and salad, à la the NZFS all round. Now go and brush your teeth and get ready for bed, its far to late to be playing on your computer! See you next time, if you can bare it (or should that be bear it, I never know with that one).

the Day God Lost his Marbles

2008-11-29T06:22:00.003+13:00

Feeling refreshed? Got a bit of Fresh air and stretched your legs? No? Well don't blame me, I gave you the chance, its your own fault if you didn't take it.

So, where was I? In Puerto Varras I believe, back on mainland Chile, and heading for my next crossing of the Andes. Once again, the road over the mountains was everything you could have hoped for, both from the driving perspective and the scenery on offer. And whats more, the sun was out for the what seemed like the first time in forever, so the visibility was spectacular. Once back in Argentina, the road to Bariloche was beautiful, winding through lakes and valleys bringing me to the town by about 3pm. I located my rendez-vous with Hana (oh, did I forget to mention that the friendly Canadian was of the female persuasion? How careless of me...) and so began a fortnight of chocolate and ice cream (its what B'loche is famous for after all, once the skiing has finished for the year, that is), trips to neighbouring towns by bus (El Bolson and Villa Angostura), hikes in the mountains, swims in rivers cold enough to shrink even the most hardy sense of adventure, and of course the obligatory beer, wine and good food.
As the second week drew to a close, Rich re-emerged, my bent and buckled handlebars got replace with straight ones (it was odd not driving in circles for the first time in weeks), and we checked out routes to the north. On the Saturday I bid farewell to Hana, who was heading south to Ushuaia, and Rich and I set off, initially for San Martin de Los Andes about 200km away. We had an evening lesson in making empanadas the traditional way and cooked up a storm, and the next day we headed out of the town for the next section of gravel and ultimately Mendoza.
The roads we took were some of the most spectacular of the trip so far. We avoided the main Ruta 40 which by this stage was more tarmac than gravel and stuck to smaller, winding roads through valleys and mountains, and made reasonable time thanks to my regained confidence on the gravel. Many photos were taken, but sadly all of them failed to capture the scale and colour of the places we went. Even the road would change colour from grey to yellow to white to red and pink, depending on the earth, so you'll have to come and see for yourself if you want a true idea. Until then, we did do our best with the pictures, so enjoy.
The weather through all this was a balmy 36ºC with the wind chill, so pretty draining as you may be able to imagine, but perfect for camping out by a river, so we did that.
And apart from the fantastic scenery it was all pretty uneventful. The day we arrived in Mendoza was a weird one though. Setting off in overcast, cooler weather, assured by locals that it wouldn't rain as it was the sumemr and the desert, we hoped to make good time, and in fact did for a while. Then it did start to rain, so on with the waterproofs. The road was yet another of the long straight flat ones, with nothing but empty flat ground either side of us, so we were able to watch with trepidation as the black, heavy storm clouds built and advanced towards us, stabbing prolonged spears of lightening at the ground as it came at us from the left. With a nervous burst of speed and a small prayer to the god of cowering motorcyclists, we managed to skirt round the leading edge of the storm, into drier weather, allowing us to watch the lightening continue to attack the bushes in our rear view mirrors. Safe, or so we thought, until the next lot of cloud came at us from the right. We made it to a town that looked like it had just been flushed, with water flooding everywhere. I guess we had just missed the storm here, and 5km out of town the road was bone dry again. Unfortunately, barely 20km further on, the weather closed in again, and this time offered a helping of hail. And not just ordinary hail, mind you, but hefty great lumps the size of small eggs. Small eggs would have hurt less I'm sure, and in fact your intrepid author and his trusty sidekick (who am I kidding here?) fled to the rather poor shelter of some poplar trees and waited til it passed. Apparently, Rich had never been forced to stop for weather before, so he was quite impressed. Finally it stopped, we continued to Medoza a mere 40km away, and the temperature over this distance went from a chilly 20º to a rather stuffy 32ºC, so I guess it was definitely a 4 seasons in one day.
And here we stay, changing tyres, sprockets, chains and oil, ready for the last big push to Bolivia, via the Atacama desert in Chile and Salta in Argy, so a couple more crossings of the Andes to come, which no doubt means more photos of spectacular scenery reduced to 4" x 6". Shame, but not much else we can do about that I'm afraid. Enjoy the best you can, spare a thought for us melting in one of the driest places on the planet (second only to a valley in Antarctica I believe - google it if you don't believe me). And now I must away and feed the growling beast within before venturing forth and collecting my trusty steed from a repair shop. Yes, I managed to break something else beyond my limited but growing capabilities. This time it was a stripped thread on the oil filter, which is actually a bad design - fancy using aluminium casings with steel screws.
So off with me, and off with you, and be safe and I'll be back with more tales of road in a while.

Yo Ho Ho and Where's the Rum?

2008-11-29T06:00:00.003+13:00

By crikey, these Chileños could teach the polynesians a thing or two about time keeping! "Island time" has nothing on the Chileño timetable, let me tell you.

So there I was, waiting out the rain in Puerto Aisen til 4pm-ish. Made it to the port at Chacabuco by half past, thinking I may be late (the lady had said 4 after all), but the door didn't open til 5, then I had to wait ages while the locals were processed for tickets before being told I had to go to the port entrance and get a docket for my bike before they could sell me a ticket for the boat. (Side note: in Coyhaique I was under the impression I had been told to go and talk to a woman called Alejandrina at the Chacabuco port. It was only part way through the afternoon that someone in Aisen told me Alejandrina was the name of the boat. Doh!)
Still, tickets bought for the 6pm sailing that actually boarded at 7pm and left at half 7. OK so far, still not certain about the duration of the voyage though. The people in the office had said variously 27 hours or 24 hours (Clive Barrow in NZ had told be 18 - 24 hours as far as he remembered), and people on board (surely the ones who should know, right?) told me 30, 32 and 36 hours depending who I asked and who had seen the most recent weather report. As the time ticked by, I became aware that we were not headed directly to Quellon on Isla de Chiloe, but were meandering through the islands picking up and dropping off locals at remote fishing villages. We were also dropping anchor and waiting quite a bit, which was apparently due to high winds and rough seas. The B-movies were showing thick and fast on the TVs, in a combination of English with Spanish subtitles, or just straight Spanish, and were of a highly dubious quailty, by which I mean even I struggled to watch them, they were so bad (and no, Hugh, sadly no Steven Segal movies, despite crossed fingers. Bad though the movies were, they never got that bad!).
The boat finally docked in Quellon 44 1/2 hours after leaving Chacabuco. On the positive side, it gave me time to dry all my soaking gear, dry the tank bags and patch them with the last of my duct tape. On the negative side, I had just spent 44 1/2 hours on a boat going gradually more insane by the minute.
It was about 3pm by now, so off I set north, stopping briefly in a town called Castro on Isla de Chiloe before heading on to yet another boat to get off the island. This time it was just a half hour shuttle ferry though, and the boat was arriving as I pulled into the port and left 20 mins later, so not such a trial this time. Off at Pargua and on to Puerto Montt, deciding not to stop there and finally getting to Puerto Varras for a well earned sleep in a proper bed. Tomorrow was to see me arrive in Bariloche to have time off until Rich materialised again, and hopefully to catch up with a fellow tourist I had met in Uruguay. Remember the friendly Canadian? I did...
But that chapter can wait for the next entry, otherwise this will break all records for length and probably leave you feeling like you had been on a 44 1/2 hour voyage as well, so go take a breather and then come back for the next bit. Oh, and don't forget to check the latest photos. Theres about another 200 or so. Good luck.

It's Been a Funny Old Day...

2008-11-08T04:41:00.003+13:00

So rang the suitably apt words of Arkwright (prize of a sweetie if anyone can tell me his first name. My mind's gone blank and its bugging me) in my head as I sat waiting for my seafood lasagne last night. I must have been hungry to have eaten seafood lasagne, but boy, what a day! But first the lead up...

Last I wrote, I was in Puerto Natales, awaiting the diagnosis and no doubt astronomical bill for sorting out the bike. I have to say though, that the language barrier ceased to exist for a minute as he sucked in some air and shook his head. I expect what he said was "Oooo, that's gonna cost ya", and my knees began to give out. As it turned out, matey cleaned out the carburettor ("oxido" apparently) and cut a bit off the bottom of my side stand for me, and all for C$25000, so probably quite reasonable, as he was working from half 5 to half 9 at night at the drop of a hat.
Anyhoo, feeling a lot happier about the reliability of my bike for the next few days on my own, I set out for El Calafate. What a great ride! Heaps of scenery as always, and I got to El C by 3pm, checked into a hostel and immediately went off to see the Perito Moreno Glacier. What an incredible sight! The photos, when they make it on to the site just won't capture what it is like in person. It is huge, and noisy, but in a perfecly natural and "as it should be" kind of way. It'll be quite and serene for maybe 10 minutes, then there'll be a crash, or a sound like cannon fire (and I know what I'm talking about there, I've been to a few Royal Tournaments in my time) as some part of it breaks off in the middle somewhere, and then silence again. If you're really lucky, and what all the tourists are waiting around for, is to see a bit of the front break off, and if you're really, really lucky it'll fall into the lake with a splash like a salto-ing southern right whale (see what I did there? I used one holiday experience to draw a mental picture of another. Clever, huh?). I wasn't really, really lucky, so I didn't see that, but I was really lucky, and went away after an hour or more well satisfied.
Back to the hostel, big BBQ dinner, chat with a local Gaucho who totally reminded me of Uncle David in many ways (beard, long hair, mellow as, but the eyes were just the same), and off again in the morning. This was the bit I had been dreading - the start of the dreaded and infamous Ruta 40. Basically its the road that runs the entire length of South America, under different names in different countries, and the section that runs through Patagonia is notoriously un-paved and dodgy.
The first bit out of El C was easy, tarmac all the way except the last 10km, over the border and it began in earnest (note to self: next male bull terrier I own will be called Earnest. Hightly apt, I think).
Rich had emailed me with road conditions and it sounded pretty rough, and after my last nasty off-sy back before Valdez, I was in no hurry. Not having Rich in tow, or leading for that matter, actually made it easier, as I felt under no pressure to move faster than I was comfortable with. That's not to say Rich pressures me, he doesn't, but when he's there, I always feel like I'm holding him up or slowing him down, even though he is quite happy to go at my pace. On my own, fully accepting of the fact that I'd be camping on the roadside whatever happens, I pootled along. Got to Tres Lagos, the last petrol for 340km, dropped the bike in the street (foot slipped on gravel at intersection, not my fault!), got up, got petrol and moved on. Gravel was far better than I thought, wind was almost none existant (Rich said he'd been blown off the road when he went through), sun was shining and the scenery stunning. With no pressure on me, I stopped for a wee Nana-nap when I felt my concentration wavering, and all was well with the world.
A bit later I met a couple of cycling Austrians, who gave me road condition updates, and a heads up that a 50km section was tarmac-ed, so I had that to look forward to. Shortly after th tarmac, I stopped for the night, sheltered by piles of large stones presumable cleared from the road, and and had a calm night with a marvellous sunset over the distant, snowy mountains. It was Bonfire night, I realised.
Next day (the "funny old day" of the title), keen for an early start to get some distance in before the wind got up in the pm, I was on the road by 0715. Made it to the petrol in Bajo Caracoles by 9am, and met a local guide with perfect English, who showed me an alternative route to Coyhaique, that went through mountains and forests instead of wide open desert, and was fully tarmac-ed all the way. Flexibility being the name of the game, off I went, with only a short 127km section of Ruta 40 left to do if my new route was to be followed. By now, I was much happier on the gravel, confidence growing but lessons learned, so no problems at all. Got to Perito Moreno by noon for more gas, dropped the bike again (clumsy U-turn this time. Well, I ask you! The sign said tourist info turn right, so I did, up a one way street!Bloody Chileños! And no tourist info either! Bastards.) and set off to Los Antiguas and the border, and then to Chile Chico and the port.
Got to the port by 2pm, only to find the next passenger boat was in the morning, but the people telling me this were loading a boat for trucks only, so I spoke nicely to the captain, and they squeezed little ole me and my bike on for the 3 hour crossing to the other side. Unfortunately, being a truckers' boat, they all sat in their cabs, nice and warm, and I had to stand about outside getting cold. For 3 hours, in a howling wind. It crossed my mind that I had signed nothing when I got on board, and if they chose to, they could steal my stuff, tip me and the bike over board and the only record of me ever having been anywhere would be my arrival in the customs shed. After that, I'd have disappeared off the face of the earth. But they didn't do that, I only thought they could have if they'd wanted to.
I spent part of the journey looking out for dolphins and albatrosses etc, but then realised that it was a big lake (a very big lake), not the sea, despite the waves, so gave up that search, figuring it to be a bit of a waste of time.
On the other side at Puerto Igniero Ibañez, a bored customs man decided all the documents I'd got at the proper Chilean border needed changing so they looked like they came through his border, so he carefully copied everything from the documents I had on to a new set, just so he could put his stamp on them. I guess it was legit, as there was road access to P I I from Argentina, but I didn't see the need for it. By now it was 7pm, and I figured I could find a bed for the night, as I was bit weary from a long day, and Coyhaique was only 116km away. But, no beds to be found as P I I is a ghost town, so I bit the bullet and decided to move on to Coyhaique, where a bed was guaranteed. It was still light, and would be for the next 2 hours, plenty of time to cover 116km on tarmac.
And this is where it got really surreal. As I left the town, I realised that I was having fun. I was making my own way in my own time with no worries about what anyone else was doing or thinking, and the fact that I was still driving this late in the day didn't bother me at all, even when the serpentine road started climbing into the mountains and it started to snow. Despite the conditions, the road and scenery were possibly the best I had yet encountered, and I only wished I could have seen it in more sunny conditions. The road stayed clear of settled snow, while the trees took on a light frosting, and I just kept thinking that, that morning, I had been in a vast desert flat-land, bordered by distant mountains, and now here I was, a ferry ride and 400km of gravel later, driving through mountain passes with forests on all sides in a different country.
Coyhaique arrived, I stumbled across a Hospedaje for the night, found some food (the seafood lasagna) and just sat with a beer, marvelling at the crazy day I'd had. Possibly one of my favourties of the trip so far. I even managed to check the internet and find out that there was a boat to Quellon on Isla de Chiloe the next day at noon, so all was perfect.
Next day, it turned out the boat to Quellon was only for Chileños, but with a bit of skilfull negotiating, they agreed to take me and the bike, although the sailing was to be at 7pm, check in about 4pm. So here I am now, after a truely stunning ride through the valley to Puerto Chacabuco in the pouring rain, hiding from the rain and waiting for the ferry, and telling you all about it.
Think I'll go and get some lunch now though, and see where this all goes from here. My only regret is that the sun is not out, as I suspect the rumoured spectacular views from the boat may well be a bit hidden in the mist, not to mention the darkness that happens each night about 9ish. Ah well, things are on course, and all is right in the world. Except my feet are a bit cold, and my clothes a bit wet, but those are just temporary things, never fear.
Love and hugs to you all, now go and get some of that ice cream you just know is in the freezer wanting to be eaten up. Off you pop.

Some Rather Blustery Daze

2008-11-04T11:33:00.003+13:00

D'you know, I thought we'd had it bad in the wind heading south. Not a patch on what we had to deal with the day we left Ushuaia. Even Rich thought it was a struggle, which means it must have been, but for me, it was very nearly the single most unpleasant day on the bike yet. At least in the snow and the sand it was just frustrating and slow, and my own incompetence was largely (if not totally) to blame. Thursday, though was all down to Mother Nature, and I rather think someone must have walked across her clean floor, or maybe put one too many coffee mugs down on her nice table without a coaster, because she was not a happy lady!
We left in a bit of a shower, requiring the interruption of our departure for the donning of water-proofs (always a pain in the arse), but the rain quickly cleared - like by the time we got through the mountain pass it had stayed behind in Ushuaia - so we had to stop again and remove the unnecessary outer wear. It then started to get windy. And when I say windy, I'm talking headwinds that prevented us going faster than 60kmh with fully open throttles, side winds that had the bikes on what felt like 45º angles, and gusts that had us weaving across the fortunately empty roads pretty much from kerb to kerb in a futile effort to hold a straight line and stay out of the roadside gravel. Frightening was not the word, but it will have to do.
Rich's advice of "hate to say it mate, but think 'playing a piano' with your grips" fell on terrified and deaf ears, as I was not going to release my beartrap grip for anyone, regardless of how tired and pumped out my forearms and shoulders were getting. Talk about full upperbody work out for pretty much a full day. Shocking!
On the up side, we did make it to the border and into Chile again with no problems, and set out along the road to Porvenir and the ferry to Punta Arenas, fully intending to stop by the road and camp again, as we had done on the way in. We eventually found a nicely sheltered corner, out of the still howling gales, pitched camp and cooked up some more pasta. Not a bad night, and up for a reasonable start to get us to the ferry for 1pm check in.
By now you know how much I enjoy riding in the rain, not to mention the wind, and on gravel, so imagine my poorly disguised delight at being presented with all three in large quantities for most of the morning. Trying to keep out of the deeper gravel while being blinded by rain and gusted by hurricanes was so much fun, and I just had to pull over at one point and share my joy and enthusiasm with Rich. Poor bugger, I think he has learned that every now and again I just need to vent at the forces of nature or the road, or both in this case, and he just stays in his helmet and lets it pass. Anyhow, the rain stopped, the wind died off a little tiny bit, and we got to Porvenir by 11am, reached the port and were told by a ferry worker that the 2pm boat wouldn't be sailing, and we'd need to check back at 5pm in case it was going to go at 6. The reason? Why, that'd be the wind again. Blowing at 125knots (you do the maths, I have no idea, but it sounds a bit choppy to me) in the straits of Magellan. Fair call, and Rich was relieved, what with being a rather reluctant sailor at the best of times.
Fortunately we had earlier found a café at which to fill our bellies, and although it was now clsoed, we did manage to seek refuge in the Croat Club of Porvenir for an hour or two, recover over a couple of cheeky ales, and kill some time. When they turfed us out, we bumped into a couple of Irish cylclists we'd seen at the border crossing. The wind had been too much for them altogether, and they had paid some bloke US$100 to take them and their bikes to Porvenir. He'd now broken down with a leaky fuel pipe, so we (and by we, I mean Rich. I think its no secret that my mechanical skills are rudimnentary at best) helped sort that, and then made it to the ferry for the 6pm crossing. All well and good, bikes on board, sort of tied down, and good to go.
Two hours later. Docking at Punta Arenas. My bike was again on its side, again due, albeit indirectly, to the vandals in Florianopolis. The stand had finally given out a second time, thanks to fatigued metal and rolling seas, and so for presumably a substantial part of the crossing it had lain on its side while waves crashed over the bow and doused it with sea water. Well, I ask you, would you want to start if it was you? Exactly. And with the stand bent back into place but nearly fully snapped through, it was with a small amount of delicacy that I balanced my bike against a trailor in the carpark and wailed my anguish at the new moon.
The Irish stepped up, and with 4 of us on the job, we totally failed to push start the bike round the car park about 5 times. A selection of the Chilean armies finest stood by watching and not helping at all. I´d like to think a group of similar British squaddies might have stepped up, or at least laughed at us, but nothing from this lot. So plan B: drain carburetor, remove and check spark plug. Nothing. Battery now tired too. All getting a bit much for yours truely, and then the cavelry arrive, in the form of 3 dock workers about to go home. They had jumper leads (didnt work, but at least kept hope alive) and one of them rushed the spark plug off to heat it up and rushed it back so I could return it to its slot, and with that little effort, we had lift off!
It got me to the hostel, and the next morning I felt confident, but I got nothing from the bike. Just a lot of turn over and no spark (sounds a bit like my dating record actually). And of course, now it was not only Saturday, but also a religious holiday weekend, so nothing was going to happen. And the battery was once again drained from my efforts to start the engine. We had agreed that Rich and I would make our own way up Ruta 40 as I would be so painfully slow, and we'd touch base on the way via email and rendez-vous in hostels on the way, so I had to manage on my own. I did this by sulking for a day (actually I was waiting for a bloke to turn up that the hostel person had organised. Didnt show. Not surprised). On Sunday, I tried to drain things again, and in the process noticed the local Fireys up the street cleaning their trucks. "Hello", I thought. "Funny". So over I went, pressed some flesh, plugged into their battery charger, and things started to look up. Went back at 11pm for the now fully chartged battery and, as it turned out, a few glasses of Chateau Cardboard vino tinto. Next morning, with battery now reconnected and raring to go, the old war horse fired up first time, and I was off. Sort of.
I made it about 190km, just into a remote-ish sort of area and a rainy part of the day, and the engine sarted to cough and shudder and die on me. Pulled over. Tried to restart, no luck. Waited, swore, and tried again. Success! For about 3km, then it did it again. Same process, but with more swearing, and I was off again. It seemed to go better if I kept the revs high, so I was tootling along in 3rd gear, 6000rpm, 60kph, trying to keep the bike alive. Something about that combo was agreeable to the suddenly temperamental machine, and I limped into Puerto Natales and scored a hostel. Luckily it was the hostel furthest from the motorbike repair shop I was able to find, thus allowing me a calming walk back in the rain once bike had been delivered to the workshop, so that was good. So now, at 2020 in the pip emma, I am about to enjoy the long rainy walk back, hopefully via some food, to collect my freshly cleaned carburetor and the rest of the bike, pay a no doubt heinous bill, and be ready for the next leg to El Calefate in the morning. Might leave early for this one, to allow for....incidences.
Well that will do for now, consider yourselves lucky you were safely at home and not here in the flesh to see all this unfold. It was not a pretty sight.
Off you pop, then, to feed the plants, change the dog or water the children, whatever it is you crazy cats get up to when I´m not there, and I´ll be in touch anon. Caio, my lovelies.

More Fun than you can Shake a Stick at!

2008-10-28T07:39:00.004+13:00

Crikey! Twelve days and not a peep. Sorry about that, but there were reasons, the nature of which I am about to divulge, and as you may have guessed by now, that means you're in for another long one. Not that I feel sorry for you, you just have to read it. I'm the poor bugger that has to wrestle with the sticky keyboards and abnormally positioned keys. And today, the keyboard is positioned about 3" under my chin so by the time I finish I'll be walking around like a Tyranosaurus Rex. And you think you've got problems? Pah! say I.
So, there we were, with Sacramento disappearing slowly into the gloom as we headed over the ditch on 3 hour ferry to Buenos Aires. We were to be met at the port by Sandro, the guy we first met in Uspallata at the end of the snowy day at the start of the trip. He and his girlfriend, Ximena, had insisted we contact them when we got to BA, and a little reluctantly we did. I say reluctantly, because we'd only met them for a few hours a couple of months ago, and we weren't sure how serious they were about the invitation, or whether they were actually as nice as they had seemed back then.
We needn't have been concerned. Sandro greeted as though we were old friends, led us through the streets to his appartment, cracked a bottle of wine, mixed it with coke (the fizzy drink not the drug...I know, that doesn't make it any better, but its strangely drinkable) and we chatted til the wee small hours before leaving for Ximena's place. All very normal until you remember Sandro has almost no English, but it worked well. Between our dictionaries and him phoning Ximena every 15 minutes or so despite the fact it was about 2am, we had a blast, and soon felt like the old friends I mentioned earlier.
The next day I took my bike to Nico's work shop. Nico was the other guy we met in Uspallata, who helped me straighten out my luggage rack. He and his mechanic mate spent the day turning an old set of handle bars into a reinforcing strut for the rack, and added another support bar and generally greased things up, all for the princely sum of Ar$50. For a full days work. Fantastico! Rich, meanwhile, had gone off exploring, and, I later found out, fully adopting the hooligan scooter culture that exists in BA. As in all of SA, speed limits are for decoration only, and the 50km/h in town is for mothers with pushchairs only it seems, so he was soon hooning up and down trying to keep up with the locals.
That evening, Nico joined us at Sandro's appartment, as did Ximena, and we had another great evening chatting and watching Chile beat Argy in the soccer. If they had been paying more attention to the match our hosts might have cared more, but as it was, the booze was in full flow, and it passed pretty much unnoticed.
Sandro convinced us to stay another night after that, so we went for a bit of a wander the next day and saw shops and people and stuff, and took a couple of touristy photos, and spent the evening chilling with more wine and talk. Sandro's grasp of English went from 5 words the first night to a few dozen by the end of the third, and as with us and our Spanish, it was vastly improved with the judicial application of alcohol. It was actaully quite sad to leave the next day, as I feel we have made some friends for life there, but with promises that they will work on a plan to visit NZ in the next year or so, we are hoping to be able to return the favour soon.
So where next? Just a short 300km or so to Azul and La Posta del Viajero en Motos, a place mentioned on the Horizons Unlimited site for bikers in Argy. Its run by a guy called Jorge, aka Pollo (pronounced Posho but with more j than sh, if you can follow that) which means 'chicken' in spanish, and is free, barring donations. What a great guy - another bloke who treats complete strangers as though they are old and welcome friends, and what a great place. Garaging for the bikes, a workshop if needed, two bunks inside and plenty of space to camp outside, and so much memorabilia from past visitors that you could be reading the walls for days. I had kind of been hoping to run into some other folks doing the same as us while we were there to compare notes, but we were the only visitors for that friday night. Nonetheless, Pollo got on the blower and rustled up his usual Friday night crowd of mates, who come round for an asado (that's BBQ, remember?) and large amounts of wine and beer. What a great evening, again largely in Spanish, but a couple of his mates spoke pretty good English, so it went very well.
Next day, sad as it was again, we had to leave, and were planning along day to Viedma, but at the first petrol station (which I didn't need to stop at, but opted to anyway - fate again? Who knows?) the petrol pump guy told us about a motorbike rally in a town 30km away called General La Madrid, so we decided to stop in there instead. And what a reception we got! We were instantly raised to the level of celebrities, being the only foreigners there, and it being the inaugural rally for the town. Within minutes of arriving, Rich was giving a telephone interview in Spanish live on local radio and I was being filmed by a bloke from Buenos Aires for his motorsports TV show. By the time we had set up our tents, we'd done two more interviews and a much longer piece for the TV show, including showing our maps off, pushing our charity message and generally being really very cool. Our mission now is to try and get hold of a DVD of the final cut of the recording, so stand by for that! In the meantime, every man and his dog had come by to see our bikes and take pictures and talk, and we were introduced to the local fire brigade (all volunteers, as it is throughout Argentina, apart form BA).
Later that afternoon we joined the convoy through town, which was totally hilarious! The bikes ranged from a 1300cc Hyabusa sports monster (apparently the fastest production bike in existence, limited to a mere 200mph) to the shittiest little clapped out scooter with removed muffler you can imagine, and all 300 or more of us revved and hooted our way round the town and stopped in the main square, before returning a bit more gracefully to the camp site.
The evening was filled with bad junk food, large plastic glasses of beer and dodgy local bands, culminating in a presentation ceremony, where I was called up on stage as one of the NZ visitors (Rich was asleep in his tent at this point. It was about 9pm after all, and even though I tried to wake him, he never showed until later), and later presented with a trophy for the category of "who travelled the furthest to be here". And yes, I had to give an acceptance speech. In Spanish. Funny how the mind can go blank sometimes, but I managed something along the lines of 'beautiful Argy, wonderful people, great party', and that seemed to do it.
On the road again the next day, down to Viedma at last, and then along the gravel coast road, where, once again, I came a cropper, and this was the least fun one to date. Sparing the details, except to say I was being very careful and sensible, the monotony of a long, straight road got to me at the same time as the heaps of gravel in the middle of the road, leading to the disintegration of the other back indicator and the second windscreen. The photos of the aftermath show everyone in good spirits, although it did shake my confidence a wee bit. Not to worry, we got to the next town, sorted things out, and headed to Puerto Madryn and Peninsula Valdez the next day. This marked the first of the long, straight, windy days we didn't know we were about to endure, but first we had a couple of days to explore the peninsula.
Unfortunately, wires got crossed somewhere, and the orcas we were hoping to see had only just started to arrive for the season, rather than being at the peak of it like we had hoped. On the up side, the Southern Right Whales were in top form, and the elephant seals and sea lions were all out and about too, so there was lots to see. I opted for the hire car with people from the hostel option, rather than the bike on the gravel, as I was still sore from my fall, and knew I would never get round in a day. Worked for me, and the whale watching was far better than anything I had done in NZ, mostly due to the small size of the boat and the fact there were so many whales knocking about the place.
The peninsula was a strange place. Very flat and barren, usually pretty windswept but with an ethereal beauty to it that I could have sat and stared at for hours, had I had the time. I could hear echoes of curlews in my head. Even though they weren't there, they almost should have been. It was rather sad to think that I'd probably never get back to see it again, although given the chance, I think I would like to.
But enough of the deep and meaningfuls, we had ground to cover! A lot of ground, all of it very flat, very straight and very windy. About 1700km of it. Let me just say it wasn't fun, it wasn't big and it wasn't clever. I will never be able to look directly in front of me again, having had to sit with the wind blowing my head to a 45 degree angle to the left for about 10 hours a day for 3 days. Also, I now have a hunch, so please don't stare when you next see me. Its possible that, with extensive physio, I may return to normal, but the excessively large neck muscles on the right side should first be recorded for scientific interest.
At last, we eventually got to Tierra Del Fuego (Land of fire my arse, nothing hot about it! Tierra del Bloody Cold would have been a better name), and the roads got far more interesting, winding and scenic like you normally only see on postcards. We are now having a couple of days off before heading north, being as there is no more south to look for. So far I have been out to the end of Ruta 3 and posed in my Rio budgie smuggler at the end of the road sign, despite the coach loads of tourists and the bitingly cold wind. It takes all sorts, it really does. We shall be heading up along side the Andes next, with a bit of luck, so despite the gravel that is lurking in the not too distant future, I am excited about getting started.
And now, after 2 1/2 hours at the computer, I have only a few photos to arrange and I should be done in a few hours! So that's me. Sorry for the volume, but I did warn you! And now, back to work with you, before your boss comes in and catches you not working.
Peace, love and understanding to you all.

Uruguay - an Interlude

2008-10-15T03:26:00.004+13:00

So the bike´s fixed then. I spent an hour or so gluing the back left indicator back together for the second or third time and got all sorts of arrangements from the hostel to find a Yamaha dealer and pay though the nose for a new stand, got fleeced for the price of a gate (only fair I suppose), and luckily enough pulled over to check the map to find the dealer right outside a motor workshop, so got the stand straightend for R$10, thus improving the day no end. From there we continued out of Florianopolis and went south some more, stopping to camp over night in a town called Torres, followed by a lake side town called Sao Laurenço I think, and then made it to the border. Nothing much to note inbetween apart form yet another tumble, this time in a petrol station forecourt, as I pulled in a little too quickly, hit the large pothole, bounced into the carefully positioned sandy bit, over the deliberately uneven cobblestones and over the unsecured kerbstones onto the freshly turned soil and turf. Bit of a heap, and the poor indicator needed another patch job, but otherwispretty much unscathed. I seem to be getting the hang of the landings. AS they say, any landing you can walk away from is a good one....
So on to the border it was, after that. Slightly odd system here, as we got the bikes cleared at the customs office at Chuí, then got directed 20km back the way we had come to the passport control in the pevious town. Passports get stamped, then back the 20km to where we started and straight through no problems.
Uruguay customs was a breeze, and so we made it to Punta del Diablo with virtually no money at all. When we left Brasil, it was 5pm, but as we stepped over the border, it became (as if by magic) 6pm and all the banks closed. Luckily the shrewd and canny money changers crawl out form under their rocks at this time, so we swapped some US$ for Uruguay Pesos and had just enough for accommodation and beer.
Punta del Diablo is one of many seasonal towns we've come across in Uruguay. We are assured by the locals that in the summer they are teeming with people, but at the end of the winter, they are like ghost towns - and none more so than P del D. Crazy houses, run down shacks, windswept coast, totally cool, it just seems to be waiting. And the locals were waiting too, and were very laid back and welcoming. Its quite a 'hippy' place to go apparently, just far enough away from the main cities to discourage most of the rat race, leaving it for the surfer dudes and the kind of people you normally find in Nelson or Glastonbury. Which, incidentally isn't necessarily a bad thing!
We'd almost have liked to stay and chill, but with no money we had to move on and find a bank, so we followed the coast road, stopping at La Paloma, another ghost town but with a camp site designed to fit seemingly thousands. Thank God we got there off season - nice though it was, it would have been a nightmare in the high summer.
And so finally to Colonia de Sacremento (a World Heritage Site), arriving on the Saturday of a long weekend, but still we found room in a a lovely little hostel, where we became trapped for 3 days due to solidly booked out ferries to Buenos Aires. It seems the Argies like to hope over the ditch to Uruguay for their holidays, so we weren't able to book places until 8pm Tuesday. Frustrating though this was (we are very keen to get to Peninsula Valdes as soon as possible, as the Orcas are lining up to start tucking into the seal pups as they start learning how to swim any time now) it gave us a chance to do the second oil change of the trip and replace the now useless fuel filters. It seems the poor quality of the Brasilian petrol turns solid plastic into squidgy plastic in just under 4 weeks. Not ideal, so re-fits all round and away we go. I also managed to put my foot in it with an American tourist by trying to guess if she was from the US or Canada. I said probably the US but hopefully Canada cos they're much nicer. Lost points there, but then her Canadian mate turned up a day later and proved my point. She was much nicer....
And so to now, Tuesday, with time to kill before our 8pm boat, I find myself catching you up to date while I wait for the painfully slow up load of photos to Flicker. An hour of typing and still only 16%; so I may have to can it for now and finish later. Apologies in advance for the low number of photos for Brasil and Uruguay compared to Argy - maybe the novelty is wearing off for us. Also, although the beaches were all amazing, they all look the same in a photo, so it seemed pointless taking pictures of them all. And of course we were only in Uruguay for less than a week, so....tough, really.
Well, that'll do me for now which means that'll do you for now too, so run along and stay out of mischief.

Her Name was Rio and I Danced upon her Sands...

2008-10-06T03:37:00.007+13:00

Rio, eh? Don't go there, its so dangerous! Muggers in the streets, murderers around every corner, you'll never get out alive, I tell you, NEVER!
Pah! Tosh and tummy rubbish to that. Don't judge me til you know me and all that. We got to Rio expecting to stay a week, and the folks in the hostel said "Nah, you'll stay longer, everyone does", and of course we replied "no, we will want to get going after a week for sure." Score 1 for the hostel, none for us. In the end, we stayed a fortnight, and to be honest, I wanted to stay longer, but it was time to go.
So what was so great? Well, the hostel for a start was a fantastic place to stay (Stone of a Beach, if anyone is heading that way), with great staff, and a great atmosphere to just hang out and relax, which was exactly what was needed after so long on the road. We met some good people to hang out with, found some good places to drink, and of course the weather and the beaches were great too. Rich went off to Cabo Frio about 200km away to find some windsurfing for a few days, and I stayed in town and did the tourist thing and met some locals and other travelers and had a great time. Visited Christ the Redeemer, of course (according to one of the Irish girls I went with, he has a great arse- she's going straight to hell for that one!), and went up Sugar Loaf mountain as well, so ticked those boxes, but also got a very real look at the other side of the city.
Each Friday, a local Capoeira group comes to the hostel and put on a demonstration for the tourists, who then pay into the hat. The group all live in one of the Favelas in town. Favelas are the 'slums' for want of a better word, but they aren't really slums, just where the more hard up locals and crime lords live. They are probably more crime free than the rest of the city, as there is a code amongst the inhabitants that you don't rob from your own, but at the same time, a lot of folks seem to go around carrying guns and selling drugs. However, if you are escorted in by locals, you are pretty much safe as houses, so after the 2nd Friday's demonstration, at about midnight or later, Rich and I and a couple of other friends were taken to a Favela party (just a massive rave really) by the guys from the Capoeira group.
I think it helped that we were a bit drunk - it relaxed us and stopped us looking too jumpy - but it was a huge amount of fun. People were walking round with automatic hand guns and large rifles that could easily have been AK47s, but I don't know enough about these things, and didn't like to ask! The party was full on, make your body vibrate with the bass, favela funk, with a highly entertaining contest on the main stage where half a dozen girls were vying for the title of "who has the best butt and is best at moving it around". We also stopped in a local bar and played some local rules pool with some guys, chatted away, and again were amazed at how friendly folks were if you just take time to talk to them. I have no doubt that, had we gone up there by ourselves, we'd have been in all sorts of trouble, but it just goes to show its who you know in this world, and once again we fell in with a good crowd.
In the interests of free and open press I should also mention that all those in NZ and UK who predicted I would meet some South American beauty and fall in love and not want to come home, very nearly turned out to be right! Without going into details because its none of you business, I did meet someone that I would have loved to have been able to get to know more, but a whole host of circumstances reared their ugly and unwelcome heads and put the Kibosh on yet another potential love match. It is becoming a pattern for me, and not one I like, but there seems to be nothing I can do to stop it. And in the words of Forrest Gump, "That's all I want to say about that."
I arrived in Rio expecting to hate the place and wanting to leave as soon as possible, but left 2 weeks later with all sorts of ideas in my head about how easy it would be to stay there - something I never expected. Definitely a highlight of the trip to date, and maybe still an open chapter. Who knows? Not I, that's for sure. And as for the danger? Probably the most frightening moment of the 2 weeks was the 10 minutes on the beach in my birthday budgie-smuggler, courtesy of Richard needless to say, but fulfilling a promise I made to myself that I would walk the beaches of Rio like a local. Mmmmm, tight!
So now we have begun the long road south, and so far it has proven a good idea. The roads, as we suspected, are superb without the rain, with specatcular scenery and excellent riding. We had 2 nights at Paraty, allowing me to go island hopping on a boat for a day, then carried on to Mareis, then back to Antonina, and finally, yesterday, in the pouring rain, to Florianopolis and new territory. We found a great hostel on Ilha Santa Catarina, but had to leave the bikes parked on the road, and for the first time on the trip, they got interfered with. We chained them together for safety, but some clown managed to push them over anyway, which caused my side stand to bend to a position where it is too vertical to properly support the bike, and rubs on the chain when I try to drive it. Because its sunday, nothing can be done today, so we'll have to try and sort it tomorrow. A pain in the arse, but hopefully not fatal. Unfortunately, when we tried to move the bikes to a safer place, involving a stupidly steep narrow alley way up to the hostel on the other side of a pedestrian-only foot bridge (no one looking? great, hurry!), I managed to drop my bike through a garden gate, smashing the rear-view mirror (and half the gate). Had I not been so exhausted from the days riding, I might have cared, But as it happens, I just shrugged, and moved the bike somewhere else. I guess it had been long enough without me breaking something, right?
Anyhow, that's all to tell for now, sorry it took so long in coming, and wish me luck. Just generally. Nothing specific. I just feel like I need a bit at the moment. Now off you pop and go and do something crazy. Lord knows I am, everyday!

At the Copa, Copacabana...

2008-09-19T05:01:00.002+12:00

Few. Done some miles in the last few days then (up to 7000km now), and got a bit wet and soggy in the process, but thanks to the sub-tropical conditions, not too cold, which is a relief.
So, where were we? I think we´d just driven from Foz do Iguaçu in Brasil, 700km or so to Curitiba in one day, which was a good thing to have done as it was all pretty dull country we had to cross, and we wanted to get it out of the way and get somewhere more interesting. We had wanted to stop in a place just short of Curitiba, but, true to form, the Brasilian sign posts were sadly lacking and we couldn´t find where we were looking for. The whole road network here is pretty random, actually. There are plenty of signs, but as far as I can tell, no-one takes any notice of them if they are highway code signs, and the ones telling you which town or exit you need are mostly right at the exit, so you have almost no time to take them. I think someone in the local council went on holiday to a country with road signs, thought they looked nice and suggested them for Brasil, without explaining to the population at large that they actually meant something. They seem to be more for decoration than anything else. Speed limits are ignored or taken to be a minimum, unless you are driving a truck, in which case the limit is as fast as your truck will go (about 10km/h up hill, and 120km/h down hill). And as for the (no) overtaking ones...well, perhaps they misunderstand them and assume they are an invitation instead of a suggestion not to do so.
So, Curitiba it was; a large city, and we had no real idea of where to stay or how to find it, so in the end we stayed at what turned out to be a ´Love Hotel´where the local couples who still live with their families can go for some quiet time. Not so quiet for us, unfortunately, but it was only for one night.
Next day was off to Morretes, a small town, very Portugese-y, near a UNESCO park of Atlantic Coastal rainforest, which is apparently quite rare. We had a day to wander about there as it was so close to Curitiba and we got there nice and early, and the next day we went up to the park to camp.
This was my first refusal at a road for the trip, as we were heading into the park. We´d just passed the ranger station and signed in, and the road got just plain silly, with steepness and lumpyness which hasn´t come out in the photos or the video, but I´ll try to post both in the next couple of days when the rain starts again. Anyhow, Rich made it up, not with out some difficulty, and I figured that even if I made it to the top in one piece, I´d be fairly likely to fall off on the way down, so I went back to the ranger station, left the bike there and hiked what I needed back up the 4 or 5km track through the jungle to meet rich at the camp site. I enjoyed it far more that way, as I didn´t have the stress of trying to steer the bike, and was able to make the most of the jungle, and I´m glad I made the effort as the camp site was amazing and we were able to walk up mountian too. I say walk, it was as much of a vertical climb as a walk, with steel hoops drilled into the rock face in places to climb up, and lengths of rope and chain to hold on to as you walk 1960´s Batman-stlye up the side of a rockface. It was so ridiculously dangerous that there is no way it could ever have been allowed anywhere other than the depths of a remote rainforest in Brazil, but it was more than worth the effort, given the views at the top - and we didn´t even do the big mountain because we didn´t have time. Maybe on the way back we can stop in again and knock the bastard off, as Ed Hilary once said.
Anyhoo, after that we were off to Antonino, a little fishing town just down the road, and while it was a lovely spot, it marked the start of the rain for us. After only two days of rain in nearly 5 weeks, we were about to make up for lost time.
We spent the next few days coninuing to ride north up the east coast of Brasil, stopping at Iguape, Ubatuba, Itacuruça (where a man who looked like a shaved bear insisted on taking us out for `one beer´which turned out to be at possibly the seediest bar in Brasil. Still, when huge scary shaved bears offer to buy you beer, its very hard to refuse...) and finally Copacobana in Rio, with only one rainfree day which was spent in Iguape instead of making ground, and unfortunately seeing almost nothing of the stunning coastline we were following. We could see enough of the mist-shrouded bays and hills to know just how beautiful it is, and we will follow the same road south in a few days, so will hopefully be able to stop off and properly appreciate it then. In the meantime, we are going to spend a few days in Rio, or nearby at least, soaking up the sun if it comes out, and not riding the bikes for a bit. With a bit of luck, if rain does stop play, I´ll be able to get some video on line and finish organising my photos - which, incidentally, I have put on the map on Flickr, so if you haven´t already, check that out.
So, for now, I´m, off to meet a girl. Her name is Lola, she was a showgirl....

A Moment of Reflection

2008-09-11T04:07:00.002+12:00

Wow look at that, twice in almost as many days! After finishing the other day, I realised I had omitted one or two bits (which I have since added) and felt I wanted to say something about the country we have just been through before it goes fuggy in my brain. This is more for my benefit than yours, so feel free to read on or wait for the next installment, whatever butters your muffin.

4800km in just under 4 weeks through northern Argentina. We didn´t get to the far north west, but may get to do that on the way past after Chile. We did see a huge range of land though, from the snowy, craggy Andes to dry, barren desert bordered by snowy craggy mountains, to dry barren desert bordered by more dry barren desert, to wide open spaces full of farm land that looked like Norfolk, to tropical jungle. And we haven´t even gone near Patagonia yet.
I´ve visited the tops of high hills, crazy old geological rock formations, the middle of big lakes and the depths of unspoiled jungle, and been lucky enough to have been told a little about them by people who know. We´ve stayed in cities with populations greater than the whole of NZ and villages with little more than a bus stop to their name, and met the most fantastically kind, generous, friendly people in them all.
The language barrier was always more of a source of entertainment and amusement for us all than any kind of hinderance to conversation, and I have talked with people (mostly in Spanish) on a range of subjects from raising problem children, to conservation, to the plight of Argentinian rugby, to the fact that the wilds of Argentina will never be safe as long as there are countries out there waving fistfuls of money at the Argy governement in an effort to buy sole access to resources that would be better held onto, if only the government would see the long term view and the potential of the tourist dollar (eg Sly Stallone buying a mineral water spring to bottle and sell in the US, and mining issues), to the similarities and differences between NZ and Argy. And nearly always with a beer in hand and a smile and a laugh in place.
I´ve seen places and things that will stay with me forever, and some that I would prefer to forget, and already been challenged on my motorbike more than I really wanted to be, but on I roll, wondering what the next chapter will bring.
We are now in a small town called Moretes near Paranagua, some 700km or so from where we started yesterday (a mammoth day riding the roads to cover some ground), on the doorstep of a rare Atlantic coast rainforest national park, and we have an interesting route up the coast to São Paulo and Rio planned over the next few days, so we shall see.
That´s all for now, unless something else occurs to me, so until the next one,Keep ém Peeled!

Farewell Argentina - for Now.

2008-09-09T08:18:00.004+12:00

Welcome back - sorry its been a while since the last one, but not much happened for ages, then it got very busy, so I should be able to catch you up pretty quick smart. I´ll try not to procrastinate too much, but you know me, once I get the creative juices flowing, its hard to hold it all in.

When last we spoke, I had just fallen hard down a rocky track, digging a hole in my knee cap. That´s much better now, thank you for asking, but it was a number of days before it became comfortable to ride, I just had to suck it up and take an extra toughen-up pill. Still, the photo was in glorious technicolour, so you got an idea.
We stayed an extra day at Capilla on account of my ow-ie, then set off across the long flat, gusty roads to the Corrientes region. Not much to report other than long, dull, hot (30°C+) days wishing the damn lorries would go away, and a night spent sleeping at the side of the road outside a police station, as our attempts to find somewhere to stay in Rafaela were met with enormous bills. In the end we mistakenly stopped at a place, unpacked, showered, went to reception to settle up in advance, and were told a price twice what we thought, (which was twice what we´d normally hope to pay, but were making an exception). In the end, we coughed up 50 pesos for a shower and moved on. To give you some idea, we´d normally hope to pay 50 for both of us for a night. I also got bee-stung for the first time on a bike, on my collar bone, due to riding with my coat half unzipped to let some air flow in. Bee-stung is kind of like snake-bit in a western, but with less cutting of the wound and sucking out the poison. Still, catches you by surprise a bit and hurts like a bastard! Had to stop and pull out the stinger obviously
Still, next day was short and to Paraná, to regroup and move on, again long and dreary roads but to Parque Naçional El Palmar. We didn´t get the most out of the area in my opinion, but did have a nice horse trek in the evening and an entertaining night chatting to a group of school kids from Buenos Aires.
From there we went north to Yapeyú and got our first glimpse of Uruguay, and from where the sunrise photos were taken. It was after this that things started getting interesting again.
I was keen to visit a unique wetland area called Esteros del Iberá, and our map showed 3 routes to get there. The first was a long back track followed by an earth road, the second was a more direct route but more earth than asphalt, and the 3rd was to head on up the road and then back track. We took option 2, and at about 1130, with the end in sight and a relaxing afternoon awaiting us (and about 5 minutes abfter getting bee-stung again - on teh throat this time!), we met some gauchos who told us the road no longer existed up ahead, and we´d have to go back. So back we went, along the very reasonable earth road, hit the tarmac and went for option 3. Wasn´t much further, the earth roads so far had been fine, it should be no trouble. True enough for the first hour, then it all turned to custard. Or more accurately, to sand, as the road degenerated to mostly quite deep sand, and things slowed right down. By 1800, with about an hour and a bit of daylight left, having been on the road for 9 hours, I fell off again (and once again it was at slow speed - its actually impossible for me to get any speed up on these nasty surfaces). After that, the sun started to set, and the road alternated between sand and puddles and good hard mud. Unfortunately in the failing light, it was very hard to tell one from t´other until it was too late, so a couple of extra spills later, I was down to walking pace with a broken windscreen (I put my foot through it as I stepped clear of the falling bike), riding in my snow style, with feet out as out-riggers, and the sun gone for good. We had about an hour in full dark after that, eventually finding Colonia Carlos Pelligrini and collapsing in heap.
Next day was good for me, as I had a morning out on the big laguna and saw all kinds of SA fauna and birdlife, right up my ally, but sadly I only got spanish names for them all. This is not helpful, as my poor brain struggles to hold the useful conversational words in its grasp, so has no room at all for bird names that can´t be used for anything else. Still, hopefully some video will make its way on to the site soon-ish, and you can see for yourselves. Rich took the time to clean his bike and grease it up, so time well spent for us both, I think.
Next day was back to civilisation, with a patched up screen that lasted all of half an hour until I went down again, and it broke in a different place than my mend, which was satisfying from that perspective if none other. Rude words were said, obviously, as the remains of the screen were biffed in to the roadside and on we went, eventually making it to Posadas, where I was able to buy a new window and feel happy again. Posadas was a lovely town on the edge of the Misiones region, and we had a pleasant couple of days there, just recovering from the heavy going of the previous couple.
From here it was to be straight to Foz de Iguaçu, stopping on the way to make for shorter days, but after having a night camping in San Pedro, we decided to head back a bit and visit Saltos Del Moconá, a little visited waterfall a bit south of where we were. This took us down a proper dirt road, just like I´d imagined before arriving, and because it was dry, it was a great road to ride. If it hadn´t been for a 2nd puncture, caused by the first patch coming off, it would have been a perfect day. As it was, the ride was great and we found a lovely wee camp site 2km up the road from the falls, which we decided to visit in the morning on account of it taking 2 hours to walk out into the river and back - a whole 1km or so into the river, in fact. These falls are pretty much unique, as they run in line with the river for 3km rather than across the current, due to a land shift along what is now the Argy-Brasil border.
Unfortunately, the early morning brought the threat of rain, so we hurried out to the falls at 7am, making it back by 9 and packing to leave by 10. Just as the rain started. And unfortunately for us, even the merest hint of damp on the mud of the road turns it into a perfect slick, so needless to say it was only 10 minutes in before muggins hit the deck again, this time as I was picking my way carefully and slowly up a steep, rocky hill. One wrong move and a wet rock saw me undone, and I managed to break the other side box (oh, did I not mention I broke the mounting clip on one of them already, in the sand? Well I did.). That was the only off of the day though, mostly because I slowed down even more after that. The rain kept going though, and the 30°C we´d had not 2 days before was now a bitter and wet 8°C, but we picked a road out that was being improved, so it wasn´t long before we hit the tarmac and picked up speed. Good in one respect, cold in another. We stopped in San Vicente in a great little hotel that was far cheaper than the con-artist in Rafaela and far better too, dried off a bit and got set to go to Iguaçu the next day.
Which is what we did, arriving about 3pm, too late for the falls that day, but nice and early to relax with a beer and unwind a bit. Next day (7th Sept by now) we did the falls visit which was outstanding. Almost as amazing was the fact that Rich came along, as he tries to avoid tourist attractions like the plague, but even he was impressed, for about 3 hours, then had to leave before he went mad. I stayed on and went on a tour into the jungle and had an interesting couple of hours at the end of the day learning a bit about the forest, and saw a toucan, which made my day!
So now, at 1755 on 8th September 2008, I am in Brazil, about to start for Rio De Janeiro in the morning, and beginning to feel the strain in my shoulders from battling the cold and covering about 4800km in 4 weeks. Hopefully the tropical climate we´re heading to, and a well earned break in Rio, will sort that out.
With Brazil being Portugese speaking, language will begin to be interesting, but I´m not worried. You see, Hablo bueno español. Lo apprendo desde un libro. Thank you Manuel, and good night.