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Santiago de Chile

Well, this was my final stop in South America before the long haul home to Hobart, Australia. Undoubtedly this has been the most amazing and fun year of my life, which is hardly surprising, given I was travelling and doing exactly what I wanted every day for a whole year. I have to say though, the highlight for me was definitely meeting and befriending all you amazing people and it would be great to keep in touch.

So, if you're currently living or travelling in Australia: give me a shout, I'll be mainly staying in Hobart this Summer if you want to come to Tassie, but also have trips to Perth and Melbourne planned (with another to Sydney in the pipeline). Also, I'm moving to the UK around mid-January, so if you're one of those couth types that don't much like the prospect of visiting the colonies owing to your rather dreadful prickly heat that is ever so problematic in the tropics, oh gosh, and think of all those accursed reptiles... I'll see you soon (and we can talk about how I might fit in over there).

Oh, and if by chance you were enjoying my blog entries, don't fret - they will be finished off ... one day!

Ecuador

Vilcabamba


Cuenca


Chimborazo


Baños


Quito


Galapagos Islands


Guayaquil

Lima (again) and Mancora

Potosi and Sucre

Potosi


Sucre

Salta & North

Mendoza

Buenos Aires Revisited

So you may well ask, this year long solo voyage of self discovery thing - how was it going? Had I had an epiphany, or was it just giardia? Had I searched my soul, or its homonym with a stick after wading through foot high piles of dog shit lining Chile's streets? Well, neither of the good ones there, but I had met up with my little sister; aunt and uncle; mother and father on a different continent; so even if I'd had the inclination, there wasn't the requisite healing time for my body piercing wounds before the next family gathering for me to find myself spiritually or metallurgically.

Anyway, I'm getting a little ahead of myself; which causes all sorts of problems at passport control and with the chronological accuracy of this narrative. So let's go back to Pucon, or more precisely, the corner shop next to my hostel which was also the bus stop for the trans-Andean and trans-mission-less bus to San Martin de los Andes (de los Argentinians, del mundo, del universo). It was raining. Not that rain could dampen my spirits or punning ability, but it had me a little on edge - rain in Pucon meant snow at the small mountain pass my bus was aiming for. As it turned out, my bus kind of aimed at it in a sideways fishtailing mode; which seemed to do the trick, not that I would have noticed were it not for the Fran Drescher-esque commentary by the larger than petri-dish-of-life American lady behind me. Her hair was quite large. Maybe that was why she spoke loudly - I imagine speech would sound quite muffled on the other side of 14 inches of power perm.

I didn't stick around in San Martin terribly long - long enough to admire the enormous kettle at the bus station and to run - quite improbably - into (and bus to BA with) a particularly sodden pair of Venezuelans I'd met in Torres del Paine. Hmmm: tea, towels, improbability, drives - this story needs a robot with an oversized head.

Another bus montage scene later (Mana unplugged, bus driving off on Miguel and I when we went to the loo in Neuquen) and I was checked straight back into the Milhouse for BA round 2. This time was a little different though, as instead of having in depth conversations with fellow backpackers on the ethics of travelling and our social responibility in the countries we visited; drinking 9 litres of very cheap beer and flipping plastic cups upside down; I went out for the high life and dinner with my Aunt (Viv) and Uncle (Lawson) at Bar 6 in Palermo. It was halfway through my main course of slow cooked lamb shank that I decided my journey of spiritual enlightenment could bugger off and I would be detouring on the gastronomic high road for a little while.


Back in backpacker mode, one of my sorta-must-do things was going to a South American soccer match. Preferably one with flares, stampedes, riot police and no soccer. Unfortunately the match I chose had more opposition players than supporters (which were like caged monkeys, except they were throwing bottles rather than poo, in the main), so the crowd kept themselves busy watching footage of yours truly on the big screen.

I was actually very glad for the second visit to BA, as it meant I could visit some of the more famous tourist attractions I'd missed the first time around: the Recoleta Necropolis, the zoo, Rumi, The Bourne Ultimatum. It was actually after returning from my second viewing of Bourne that I found a curious email from my father along the lines of "we're in BA, we're calling the embassy because we think you've been kidnapped and now you've missed your Mother's birthday - I hope for your sake you've been kidnapped." So just how I managed to get my parents' arrival date wrong was anyone's guess - I'm blaming it on the international date line, eating too much red meat and spending the previous 9 months essentially not knowing what day it was. Not through drunkenness, Mum.

It was not long after checking out of the (Mil)whorehouse and checking into Mama and Papa's plush Palermian pad that I discovered that self discovery was on the Discovery channel all along and I needn't have bothered with the whole trip. I also discovered that parents in holiday mode tend to do about twice as much stuff every day as the average backpacker; they had this interesting concept called "morning" (no I don't know what it really was either - don't worry - I don't think it'll catch on). But like any true homo sapien mobile disco, I quickly adapted to their ways and used this "morning" to do some "stuff". Of this, I would like to tell you of three good bits, none of which are on the normal backpackers to-do list, and only one that you have to do in the morning:

1. Forget El Deznivel, the fun in that places hinges on whether or not you have The Bear as a waiter. The place to go for inter-table fun is El Obrero, in La Boca. OK, so the food's pretty much the same (2kg of kidney for 8 pesos); it's in a shitty part of town under a bridge, but a cab there will cost you about about $1 each and it's definitely worth the trek.

2. Owing to the distinct lack of backpackers out there, I can only surmise that the delta only gets a very brief mention in the pink bible. I reckon it's probably a top three BA attraction (along with a Boca Jnrs match - though I missed out; hanging out in Palermo - food, bars, shopping - just a cool place; and the Bourne Ultimatum - OK, top four). You have to catch a rather naff tourist train out there then jump on a local ferry (which is cool), but then you're off wandering around ship-shaped holiday homes, prodding (presumed dead, presumed incorrectly) snakes with your foot, and generally getting lost in a very different part of BA.

3. One of my favourite hot dinners of the whole trip was at Casa Felix. On the recommendation of a friend I made on the Navimag (Marc), I took my parents out for dinner for the birthdays and parents' days I'd missed throughout the year. Not much to say really; great atmosphere, top notch food and wine, Diego and his wife are lovely (you eat at their home). I guess it was just one of those rare occasions when I felt like I was living in the city, rather than just travelling through it. God that sounded gay

Leaving Patagonia for the Chilean Lake District

This section of my trip was one of those rare ones where I had put in a little bit of effort planning: I shall have one night to rest back in Puerto Natales before boarding the ferry to head North up the coast of Chile (I announced to no-one in particular while standing on a rock with my fist clenched). This was a good plan. There's not a lot to do in Puerto Natales in Winter. I know this because the ferry was delayed by four days and my diary entry for three of those is "same".

In Winter, there are 3 (easy) ways of heading North from Puerto Natales: fly out of Punta Arenas, bus out on the Argentine side of the Andes, or the fery. By far the most expensive and slowest of these options is the ferry, so I was hoping my temporally and financially ill-advised choice would prove to be a good investment, measured in terms of the length of the slide nights I'm bound to unleash upon captive extended family members in my twilight years. I did have high hopes for the scenery - Chile is quite squiggly down the bottom of the map - though it appears the water level's a little too high to see anything particularly glacial these days (global warming!). Maybe the water would drain out a bit if we spun the earth a little quicker. I shall put this idea to the Chilean tourism board post-haste, nay, forthwith!

OK, so in case you hadn't guessed, not much happened on the boat: lots of drinking, lots of games of Uno, lots of spirited discussions about the interpretation of some Uno rules I never knew existed, and a little bit of muffled sobbing from the seasick French guy in the cabin next to me. I think the main thing I took away from the trip was continued confusion as to whether or not Uno has a yodh.

We arrived in Puerto Montt like a ship passing - but, like, stopping - in the night, three days after we set out. This town is a little dead in Winter, so two of us immediately decided to continue our trip North to the Chilean lake country; namely a pretty lake- and volcano-side town called Pucon. My travelling companion was a Swiss cop-but-train-driver-if-anyone-asks (plot for a wacky Vin Diesel movie?) called Roger who didn't speak expressly in the third person or use words like "affirmative", so may well have been a train driver pretending to be a cop pretending to be something else Swiss. Like a banker, or cheese, which I think is more likely.

This part of the google earth is unbelievably beautiful (much like Argentina on the other side of the hills) and Pucon is the type of town that I instantly like because there are obviously lots of things to do in and around the place. The reason I actually came here was a recommendation from Ollie The Bolivian Bomber who I'd met a few months earlier in Peru: there's an active volcano looming over the town and you can climb it. So Roger and I did. Slowly. Although fun, this excursion was one of the biggest rip-offs of the trip so far: we were forced to trudge in single file up the equivalent of a learners' ski slope and later an icy-but-not-that-steep slope, continually stopping so our lard-arse guide could rest. The view from the top was nice, though copping a lung full (lungful? lungfle?) of volcano hole acid belch wasn't. My advice for this activity: hire a taxi to the ski centre, throw caution to the wind, stand upwind of said caution, then walk uphill. Hire some crampons if you're a pansy.

My delay in Puerto Natales rather annoyingly cut into my time in Pucon (I had to get back to B.A. as I had a pressing appointment with my Aunt, Uncle and a 2 kilo steak), so I decided to conquer my long-standing mutual unease with horses and go for a trail ride. The reason for my unease was a rather nasty incident when I was about ten. As all sisters are around that age, both of mine were obsessed with horses. Eschewing generally accepted child-rearing practices, Mum and Dad decided it would be a good idea to fuel this obsession, so we booked on a family trail ride while on our annual summer holiday in Orford. My steed for the outing was a failed racehorse with wind (Danny) who had the particularly endearing trait of doing whatever the hell he wanted, which mainly seemed to be farting. That, and galloping completely out of control on the return journey. Somewhere during this stretch, Danny managed to trip over, sending me over the handlebars and head first into some cutting grass. It has taken nearly 15 years of painful corrective surgery for me to start looking normal again. So, my unease stems from a feeling of being out-of-control, which I assume is a result of being a novice rider and riding obstinate ex-racehorses. In case you were wondering why I dropped the word "mutual" in there a while ago, I don't know why horses feel the way they do, but I've seen the way they look at me.

Anyway, I actually really enjoyed the trail ride - the horse did what I wanted, we went for a gallop, through a stream and up and down some steep muddy trails. If anything, the four thousand barking dogs added to the tranquility. After horseriding I cajoled Roger into coming with me to the thermal pools to ease my aching buttocks. Stop tittering at the back, you're not funny. Fairly standard thermal pools: freaking freezing outside (including an icy river plunge), too hot inside, alcohol banned (obviously ignored); though they did have the attraction of being mostly empty. I found out later that this was because two weeks earlier a had guy carked it and cooked in one for a couple days. Oh well, the pool guy did a good job scooping out all the floaty bits.

Patagonian Adventures

The very mention of the name "Patagonia" stirs vivid and fanciful imaginings in the minds of the world traveller. These imaginings are somewhat drab, however, compared to those held by Northern Argentines, who seem convinced that the entire bottom half of their country is under ten metres of snow and completely inaccessible by bus. Though this may not be entirely true, the mandatory stopover I endured in Comodoro Rivadavia bus terminal is reason enough in itself to believe their tripe and fly. No offence intended to the guy snoring in the adjacent toilet cubicle (after all, a man's cubicle is his castle, even if the front door has been kicked in), but it was one of those places where you'd rather stay on the bus watching recent Wesley Snipes movies. And I don't make that claim lightly.

On the drive South along the dry Eastern plains of Patagonia, you could be forgiven for thinking there is not much of anything there. But scrape below the surface of the non-existant ten metres of snow and you'll find grass. And nodding donkeys. OK, when reciprocating oil production equipment is the most fascinating aspect of the surrounding countryside, you can probably keep your camera stowed. To break the monotony, we did stop at one lonely roadhouse on the way to Rio Gallegos that reminded me a little of Nanutarra, but for the absence of corn jacks, flies and around 40°C. If anything, I think this intensified the desolation. As I'd spent the last five years of my life in Western Australia, I hadn't actually headed to Patagonia to see lots of nothing; so I headed towards El Calafate, on the Andean spine (just above the bum), where there's stuff to see. In such a touristy town, ordinarily my hostel wouldn't rate a mention unless it had particularly bad coffee (it did); or featured a rather nasty dorm-room incident that a) rather annoyingly cut short an otherwise pleasant sleep-in or b) left me so deeply emotionally traumatised that I still can't talk about it. It did, on both accounts. I choose to talk about it now. And often after a few beers.

I'm still not entirely sure why I awoke, though I naturally assumed it was my sixth sense of 'ninja attack' or something. As my other, lesser senses sprung into sloth-like alertness, I realised it wasn't actually my sixth, but just my fifth sense of 'wetness; thigh and abdomen region' that was ringing the neural alarm bells. Owing to the location (and that of my willy - normal spot), my first conclusion was that I'd wet myself during my slumber. Having not done this in a good while, I figured my old excuses (nightmares, still training, drank too much cordial, etc.) weren't going to cut the mustard with the hostel staff and I'd need something fresh and new (a dog did it!). While mulling over the believability of this claim, I realised that I still needed to, erm, go - first with relief (maybe a dog did do it?), then horror: "Oh God! I'm bleeding!" Adding some more firepower to this sensory man-o-war, I opened my eyes, which (along with a lack of pain) quickly dispelled any fears of a leukocytic leak; but that it was in fact, raining. In the bottom bunk.

At this stage I'll admit that it actually took me about ten seconds to figure out why the hell it could be raining in the bottom bunk, but nowhere else in the room. Leaping out of bed and noting the still-growing trail of urine emerging from the torpid Argentine in the top bunk confirmed my third worst fear: I got peed on. At least I had my mouth closed. So, you may ask, why does the hostel rate a mention? Because apparently urinating on someone in your sleep is NOT grounds for being kicked out - so pee freely, my Argentine brothers!

Doing work experience as a urinal lolly wasn't actually the main reason why I came to El Calafate (revised now to just below the bum of the Andean spine). On the other side of Lago Argentino are some of the biggest and most stupidly beautiful glaciers outside of Antarctica. I'll admit that before seeing them, I'd never really thought much about how glaciers are made - I think I just assumed they were frozen rivers left over from the ice age - it's squashed snow sliding down from the snowfields, which is pretty damn obvious at Perito Merino and Spegazzini glaciers. Now you know.

With the smell of urine all but gone, I headed a little way North to the climbers' and trekkers' hideout of El Chalten. The main drawcards of this town are Cerro Torre - a spindly tower that lures rock-climbers, in much the same way as a Venus Fly Trap lures flies - and Mt. Fitz Roy - a similarly spectacular geological and predatory formation. I walked to the lookouts at the base of both with two buddies from Calafate (Clare from Seattle and Rotterdamsel Lindsay), which were quite tough and long hikes in snow, but certainly doable. Owing to a lack of anything else to do in Chalten, we all headed back to Calafate for an amusing night on the tiles with a couple of Korean lads (one of whom inexplicably developed a thick Scottish accent when drunk) before Lindsay and I bussed all the way down to Ushuaia on Tierra del Fuego.

There is a little bit of confusion as to whether Ushuaia (with around 60,000 people) really is the southernmost city in the world. My Lonely Planet notes that: "while Ushuaia claims ... (what I just said) ... Puerto Williams - a Chilean naval settlement of 2,500 - is just a bit further south." Last time I checked, 2,500 men in tight white pants does not a city make - even the Swindon lot (who chime in with over 150,000 people) aren't recognised as a city in the UK and (from all accounts) no-one cares, so I think those Williams-folk have a bit of work ahead of them. I curse the incessant pedantry of Lonely Planet's authors. Besides, I've been to Ushuaia, so that's clearly the people's choice.

As the souvenir passport stamp getting only took about a minute, I had around 2 days, 23 hours and 59 minutes left to kill in Ushuaia; so I ate a king crab dish (apparently famous - not bad), went snowmobiling (cool, scary with Lindsay at the helm - no wonder the clogs managed to crash the Batavia into the side of Australia), dogsledding (super cool doggies, but the experience smells - unexpectedly, when you think about it - a lot like dogs' bums) and for a hike around the national park (I'm apparently going to die soon because I ate some seaweed from a red-tide affected area). This left me 5 minutes with which to run to my bus. I really shouldn't try to pack so much stuff into my holidays.

My next stop in Patagonia was Puerto Natales in Chile - the departure point for all things Torres del Paine (chile's version of Cerro Torre and Fitz Roy al crammed into one weather-permitting photograph). As it was roughly mid-Winter (with only one refuge open), I elected to do the five day (with one extra day for weather) 'W' route in and around the Southern side of the main peaks. In Summer, 500 people walk this track per day. On the day I started, it was just myself and two quality Venezuelan lads (Miguel and Daniel). The first day, we walked together up to the Mirador Las Torres, which was absolutely magic - we saw it at sunset with perfect blue skies, I couldn't understand how we had it to ourselves. Defrosting my socks the next morning at breakfast after fourteen hours in bed with less than four of sleep, I began to understand the seasonal unpopularity.
Unfortunately the weather and sock situation deteriorated over the next five days: camping and hiking through mud, snow, slush, ice and streams necessitated a ghetto wetsuit solution (plastic bags) for my frozen feet; which looked a little like cooked cod fillets after 102km of this treatment. Also resembling a cooked cod fillet was my brain after spending most of five days alone: after spending approximately half a day working out exactly what I was going to say in my press conference after defeating a man-eating puma armed with only a pocket-knife; I realised that maybe my mental wanderings had taken a slight turn for the unsound... think I'd best get back to society.

El Bolsón and Esquel

I normally avoid hippies like the plague, partly because I'm disturbed that they think sitting around singing in high voices and a-rhythmically patting a bongo drum is in some way profound, but mainly because I don't have the immune system for prolonged exposure. Although my Lonely Planet had somewhat skirted around the issue, omitting the term: "basically a captive breeding program for decorative wirebenders and hair lice"; I had a feeling that my successful hippy avoidance program (mainly comprising leaving Tasmania) would come to an end in El Bolson.

Smatterings of wire and other crap craft aside, the El Bolson hippies rather agreeably focused much of their attention on making beer, cheese and uncomfortably scratchy knitwear; so I quite enjoyed myself for the couple of days I spent there (despite the itching). This was helped in no small part by the striking scenery, which reminded me a little of my home town (Hobart), also at 42°S. Despite all this pleasantness, I still felt a general malaise while there - it may have been the hippies, but probably was just an extended hangover from Bariloche - so I decided to head further South and away from the two most probable causes of my ill-health. Arriving in Esquel and booking on a couple of tours that night proved to be the magic bullet. I tend to cheer up when I have plans.

Esquel got a bit of a bad rap from my Lonely Planet and, to be fair, it is a little bit shit. While I wouldn't recommend it as a ski-town over Bariloche (despite it being much cheaper); they have much better empanadas there (pasties without the floury texture - more like a gourmet meat pie) and the scenery out of town is about as nice, so is probably the only reason you'd go there. Though the empanadas are good.

As much as it pains me to do so (because I know this will make Jimbo happy); I have to admit that my first tour in an old Land Rover with cat-tracks wasn't quite as cool as I'd hoped. Our 20km/h rumble over 5cm deep ice and snow was barely enough to keep the blood - let alone get the adrenaline - pumping. Fortunately our host sensed my imminent death and unleased us upon a snow covered (ish) slope armed with toboggans (more like a plastic container lid with a handle designed to remove testicles) and a kids' sized snow bike. After quickly tiring of my ball-jarring lid, I wrested control of the bike from the only suitably sized rider in the group and hammered down the slope. Regardless of the fact that I couldn't navigate my man-hoof amongst the bright red tubulars to apply the brake; I'm convinced that these things are death machines on planks. A word of caution to anyone thinking of riding one of these monsters: Don't. Though if you're like me and don't really listen to advice, try this bit: if you feel like you're maybe starting to get a little sideways, you can't steer out of it. You're screwed.

At least my misfortune gave me the opportunity try out my new-found eh-Spanish skills, though trying to explain that: "I hit an icy patch and tried to ride it out so broke my fall with my head while still vainly gripping the handlebars, providing quite convincing proof that I will never become a forehead model or Nobel Laureate." was a little beyond me, so I settled for "I went in ice and broke my head." I still haven't worked out if my Spanish is more amusing than my English.

The next day I went to Parque Nacional Los Alerces - named after a type of tree that grows at a rate of a coat of paint each year - probably explaining a previous generation's impulse to speed things up a bit by chopping them down, then painting them. The park's other poster boy is the "huemul", which is not - as the name might suggest - the offspring of a human and an emu; but kind of like an ungainly deer with a more ungainly cow's head. They're also every bit as elusive as the out-of-focus poster photos suggested. Perhaps this was because the animals I did see in the park read more like a roll-call at Old McDonald's farm than a national park: cat, dog, horse, cow and fish. This led me to believe that the huemul has been slowly out-competing these animals in their native living rooms, backyards and farms; forcing them up into the highlands to eke out an existence. So sad.

Not one to become overly emotional about the extinction of cats, the next day I headed to a Welsh enclave called Trevelin for high tea. An enclave it may be, but with all the streets still named San Martin or a random date and a decided lack of Englishmen roaming the streets with longbows trying to pick a fight; it just didn't seem particularly Welsh. I did, however, manage to find a Welsh teahouse called Nain Maggie (Grandma Maggie), where I ate two plates of cakes and drank about a litre of very nice tea. My bus back to Esquel was notable because of a rather unusual resonance thing it had with the suspension that caused us all to bounce up and down like the days before the Wonderbra; amusing at first, until my high tea threatened to ascend to loftier heights. Despite irreparable damage to my breast tissue (I believe the ads), I managed to keep it all down and force in one last meal of empanadas; and with that I bade farewell to the Argentine Lake District; next stop, somewhere in Patagonia!

Update from Esquel

I'm in Esquel at the moment - a bit below latitude 42°S (same as home!) and in a really good mood; so it's time to update this little tome. I'm not entirely sure what jolted me out of the post-party-town-downer (thanks Bariloche...) though the following events either contributed or detracted in their own little way:

• I spent two days in the very pretty town of El Bolsón, which has a hippy market and mountain backdrop not totally dissimilar to Salamanca Market and Mt. Wellington.
• I'm onto my 3rd day without a beer and received a lovely postcard from my vacationing liver.
• I think my pack weighs about 20kg now, thanks to the very average pair of snowboarding boots I bought in Bariloche for $250AUD; a hoody I bought in B.A. that makes me look pregnant; a sleeping bag that's too thin to use in Winter; waterproof pants; gloves; goggles; boardies and a host of other crap that I only use one day in twenty.
• I accidentally went potty in the girls communal bathroom at my new hostel. Try telling me that the thingo on the door doesn't look like a boy. A very effeminate boy with boobs, but a boy nonetheless.
  
• I spoke to Dad last night and found out that they arrive in Argentina in September, not August, so I now have an extra month to kill in this great meaty, ($) change famished country after my foray through Patagonia to Tierra del Fuego. No solid plans yet, though spending some time learning Spanish in Buenos Aires or Mendoza is appealing.
• Last night I watched two of my favourite brain-off movies: Bourne Identity and Supremacy, then read a particularly beautiful chapter from Orhan Pamuk's novel Snow, entitled The Difference between Love and the Agony of Waiting (well... the first part anyway; the second part is about porn and dirty sex).
• I picked up some songs from the hostel in El Bolsón which I'd lost along with my iPod (Neil Young, Grateful Dead, David Bowie, Bob Dylan, Lou Reed etc.); I'm very happy to have this music back in my ears (especially for the hundreds of bus-hours I have coming up).
• This morning I spent literally 15 minutes trying to get the shower working. I swear it had some sort of differential feedback system, such that merely resting my hand on the cold tap resulted in a temperature change of 80°C.
• I found out that skiing in Esquel is about half the price of Bariloche ($25AUD/day vs $50AUD/day for a ski pass), and they have better snow here.
• I've booked a tour today in a Land Rover that has cat tracks (instead of tyres) - more like a tank than Jimbo's East German crane.
• I met an American called Randy. It doesn't take much to cheer me up.

So, enjoy the snowboarding photos - I'll try to keep new ones coming in regularly. I hope you are all well and look forward to catching up either when I come home in November or in Europe when I head that way in January (unless you want to come with me around Northern Peru and Columbia in October!). Ciao for now!

Bariloche

So I'm told all the rioting on the day I left Buenos Aires had nothing to do with my departure and everything do with the fact that it snowed there for the first time in eighty something years. Even still, I waved a teary farewell to my people and settled into my very agreeable "cama" for the long haul to Bariloche (inexplicably falling asleep through the mobile premiere of Die Hard 4).

I arrived in Bariloche to a very dim reception - and even darker dorm room - owing to the blackouts that, although quite common in the town, are most definitely not cause for installing enough backup generator capacity to keep the ski lifts running and the resort open. Right then, as long as that's clear.

Hillside havoc aside, the blackouts actually presented an altogether pleasant candlelit dining and drinking atmosphere in Antares (a brewery pub), where I swapped stories, poured out troubles and poured in beers with my more travelled and less troubled mate Babs. So it wasn't all bad news.

I stayed at Marcopolo 'fun' Hostel, which I can probably recommend with the caveat that 'fun' isn't the only piece of descriptive text that should be stuck in their name. If they're going to insist on that one, they should also include:
- Marcopolo 'no running water' Hostel; or
- Marcopolo 'where your female English bunk-mate is too tight-arsed to rent a private room with her boyfriend and is so appalled at the prospect of dorm room sex (particularly the Brazilians going hell-for-latex around us) that I'm sure the poor lad hasn't got any in months' Hostel; or
- Marcopolo 'no, despite running a hostel bar every night, I still haven't learnt that I need change in the off-chance that someone may want to pay for a beer with a denomination larger than the asking price of $6. The fact that I look like a dreadlocked monkey has very little to do with this.' Hostel.

On that note, any economic forecasters out there who say the Argentine peso can only become stronger are discounting the importance of one fundamental principle: that as any denomination greater than 20 pesos is virtually worthless because no-one will have change for it, the peso can only devalue until the ATMs dispense money you can actually use.

Despite all the running water and purchasing beer dramas, Marcopolo was a great laugh, though as usual this was because of the willingness of the resident non-Brazilians to engage in furious drinking activities. Having said that, it did look bleak for a while as the Brazilians outnumbered us roughly two to one. Apparently they come to Bariloche in droves (and buses) for the snow, beef and icecream. They don't call it "Braziloche" for nothing. Exactly who they are, who pays them for saying that and for what purpose, continues to elude me.

Well they're correct on at least two of those three reasons: the icecream is (without casting any aspersions as to the value of a family icecream maker gift) the best I've ever tasted: Jauja's "Chocolate Profundo" is the winner; and I ate the best steak of my life there: Alberto's bife de lomo. The snow, when it snowed, was great. Unfortunately due to a lack of overnight snow maneuvering - each 30cm snowfall only lasted 2 days before it became awful awful moguls, so I spent most of my time on the tracked out (but fantastic) tree runs. On the lone attempt at grooming they attempted while I was there, they actually managed to terrace the hill, which was a rather surprising feature in the bugger-all visibility we had most days. It was actually because of the poor visibility and a chance conversation with an 8 year old Costa Rican kid on a chairlift that prompted me to build a jump and try doing 360s half the time:
"Are you any good at jumps?" he enquired, first in presumably perfect Spanish, then in perfect English.
"Oh... I'm alright." I replied, trying to moderate my enthusiasm having just landed - for the first time - an admittedly rather modest trick on the way down.
"I can do 360s."
In retrospect, I should have just pushed him off the lift.

Aside from the Barilochean's inability to groom or keep the lifts running, there was one other feature of Argentine ski culture where I feel they just didn't get it quite right: apres-ski. Now the actual partying and drinking was fine - god knows I spent enough time and money in Wilkenny's the Irish disco; though because everyone keeps typical Argentine hours (dinner at 11pm, out at 2am, home by 8am), it's more an antes-ski than apres-ski experience, if you want to have any shot of going the next morning.

I had originally planned to spend a month or so in Bariloche, snowboarding and hopefully gaining employment in a hostel for some free accommodation. Unfortunately this plan was thwarted by the number of Argentines and Brazilians in town (in Argentina of all places!), apparently my retarded level of Spanish wasn't going to be enough to stand behind a bar and say "do you have anything smaller?" in Spanish with a blank look on my face. So, changing plans more rapidly than I ever could clothes before and after Phys. Ed.; I enrolled in La Montaña Spanish School to learn me some eh-Spaneeesh.

Although the highlight of my hardcore 6hrs of lessons per day was finishing every night so I could bathe my aching brain in epsom salts; I did feel some sense of achievement: learning the Spanish for useful words like "godfather", "saltshaker" and "son of a whore" (hijo de puta). And so, with this vocabulary, my conjugational prowess and my legs under my belt; I thought it might all be put to better use exploring Patagonia than asking for change... geez, notice how cocky you become after one week of Spanish lessons?

Buenos Aires

To fly or to bus? A damned difficult question to answer if the sod who asked it hasn't provided any context. Safe answer is "to bus", as apart from probably dying, flying in South America is a false economy of time once you figure in the obligatory 4 - 10 hour delays. Well Claire was sold on this false economy and the tickets were sold on a false credit card, so I guess the numbers worked in our favour. Fortunately the pilot's last announcement wasn't to the tune of "OH GOD! WE'RE GOING DOWN! WE'RE A GLEAMING WHITE COCOON OF DEATH!" and we landed safely, albeit 5 hours late, in Buenos Aires.

My 2.5 hours of Spanish lessons in Lima had been enough to survive for 7 weeks in Peru and Bolivia ("baño", "Imodium", "No gracias", "I said, NO gracias", "they're thongs - you can't polish thongs"); so I thought travelling in Argentina was going to be a cinch. Battling with a BA map that put up at South-West, (for the uninitiated) an unpronounceable street address for our hostel (Hipolito Yrigoyen), a half blind cab driver who couldn't read the map (upside down), followed by a brisk pack-walk the right way down the wrong street and I realised Claire and I might be in a little bit of llit.

As this was my little sister's last week in South America, I was determined to get her to act like a responsible backpacker and do some serious drinking. So we stayed at the Milhouse; where the ugly alternative to drinking is listening to people have sex all night: from the cinema next door (if you're lucky), or in your dorm (if you're unlucky).

We were unlucky.

Thus far I've shied away from recounting sordid stories of dormitory debauchery in this mostly one-way forum; this is not because of my inability or unwillingness to foray into the challenging genre of stylised erotic non-fiction, I've got loads of lines worked out for the juicy bits already: ... her skin was as smooth and white as the congealed fat on a cold steak ... not unlike retrieving a stuck gumboot from a peaty mire ... his breathing became determined and laboured like an asthmatic donkey ... etc.

A simile which quite neatly brings us back to the point that I awoke - though in this case the wheezing and fiddling of the asthmatic donkey was playing second fiddle to the cacophony of metal bunk beds and steel cage lockers reciprocating into alternate walls of our room. Being on the far side of that room, my sleepy eyes first opened to the shocking sight of two fellow backpackers on a top bunk, engaged in one of the least furtive acts of dormitory doing imaginable. My eyes then briefly looked towards my little sister clinging on for dear life - and praying for a swift death - in the lower and adjoining bunk to the ruckus; before closing in the vain hope that all this would go away so I could instantly fall back to sleep. OK, so not that it was likely, what with the equivalent metallic and organic noise of a rhinoceros tipping a car over continuing unabated at my now symbolically - though unnoticed - turned back; but I'm glad I didn't nod off before the drunken post-coital whispering. In an unexpected (though spectacularly unsuccessful) show of modesty; our female principal whispered to her man in a thick Irish lilt:
"I hate it when people can hear me fucking."
"What?" questioned the male lead, in an unspecific continental slur.
"I hate it... when people... can hear me fucking" she repeated, a little louder.
A dramatic pause followed, punctuated only be Claire's and my pillow-muffled giggling.
"... What?" he queried again clearly struggling with her accent and his afunctional synapses.
"I HATE IT... WHEN PEOPLE... CAN HEAR ME... FUCKING!"
(more giggling)
"... What?" he said.
"Oh forget it", she huffed.

The next morning, as far as searching-for-clothes/walks of shame go, our Irish girl's was top notch; helped in no small part by Claire's and my parrot-like renditions of the preceding night's dialogue.

Our first day in Buenos Aires was also the only day that Claire and I had to endure the Argentine equivalent of Vegemite: dulce de leche, which was served for breakfast at Milhouse. For anyone familiar with sweetened condensed milk, it's like that. For anyone familiar with pure evil, it's also like that. After a day of mediocre sight-seeing (La Boca) and plus-sized shopping (for our circa-6ft frames), Claire and I decided that we didn't need the mid-morning gustatory assault (or daylight) to enjoy BA, and entered the twilight zone... (well, mainly the bit after twilight).

Pursuing a nocturnal life in BA is very easy, given the locals' penchant for dining at 1-2am, clubbing til 8am (or more) and not doing very much of anything during the day. We had all three of these nailed by about the third day - though did manage to fit in a bit more plus-sized shopping in the late afternoons. I even managed to stave off Vitamin D deficiency by working in some Time Crisis 3/Daytona to my daily routine.

One of my favourite nights that week was at Club 69, which had a rather interesting and provocative drag (and maybe straight) show on a stage in front of the dance floor. After a solid two-minute "What the fuck?" moment experienced by myself and another Tassie escapee (Nick); we quickly put our agape mouths to use at the bar. We clearly spent a fair bit of time there, because halfway through the night I remember thinking all the feathers, leathers and dry-humping on stage was quite normal and probably in every nightclub these days. In retrospect, my perception of normality may have been somewhat skewed, as I also remember thinking that putting a tequila shot in my pocket was a perfectly acceptable solution to not being able to carry a round of seven back to the dance floor; then drinking five in quick succession after spilling that one down my leg and another down my front on the perilous return trip.

Of course, it wasn't all fast virtual cars and faster cross-dressed women; BA also has a fantastic dining scene, which I very much enjoyed: from eating bife de lomo and riñones with "the bear" in El Desnivel to sushi in Palermo - there are two constants: the food is always going to be great and there's going to be a lot of it. It's actually at the point where going to an all-you-can-eat restaurant is just a waste of time and money - unless you're going to drunkenly and mistakenly insist on tipping 100% on a 100 peso meal - Claire - then you save money.

Ilha Grande and Iguazu Falls

Ever one for spotting a blatant backpacker fleecing exercise, then meekly handing over my money because the Lonely Planet Shoestring alternative would require effort... my little sister Claire and I handed over our pound of flesh each for a three hour ordeal in a hot, confined space with a four-song R&B megamix soundtrack; some drunken Irish people and a chick on the floor. Fortunately this wasn't a Bondi backpacker bar simulator, but out combi-van transport to a port near Ilha Grande. Owing to mechanical failure, though more probably mechanical non-existence, of the advertised speedboat; some time after before we knew it, we were near the island courtesy of a man with a shark tattoo-bedecked torso, monobrow-bedecked brow and deck-bedecked boat. If the final leg of the trip had not been mine, knee deep, following an agonisingly slow shore approach in a rubber dinghy that looked more like a carelessly discarded condom... I may not have felt a little cheated by the "Express Transfer" we paid for.

The tourist office on Ilha Grande can tell you all about the lagoons, beaches and hills you can visit on the island; they will also tell you that you need a guide to walk up Parrot Peak, because a Dutch guy got lost for three days up there. I can only surmise that his inability to walk back down the hill is a result of living his entire life in a country full of Kleins but devoid of -clines. What they won't tell you is how to play seventy three different drinking games and that it only takes one cup of Cachaça for an Irishman to re-enact the HAL9000 shutdown sequence from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Given these serious omissions, Claire and I decided to ignore the tourist office's advice to hire a human-guide for the trek up Parrot Peak; opting instead for the competitively priced (1/2 tin of spam each) canine variety. One of the guides that followed us had a curly tail, so we called him "Curly", because his tail was curly (stop me if I'm going too fast). The other we called "Spot" after the festering ulcerous wound she kept chewing on her flank. Our guides performed admirably, pointing out (and weeing on) all the locations where something had previously crapped or died and (somewhat more helpfully) following my trail of alcohol tinged sweat back down the hill.

As Claire was flying out of Buenos Aires in a week, we could only spend one more day on Ilha Grande, which we spent on a surf beach - with just about every other backpacker on the island - before heading to Iguazu Falls.

Of the travel montages I've had so far, this one would definitely vie for inclusion in the yet-to-be-written feature film of my holiday: the winding coast road in Brazil provided spectacular scenery and falls from the on-board toilet; our manic run around Sao Paulo's enormous bus station (2nd biggest in the world), followed by a more manic taxi ride to Sao Paulo's other less enormous, but more appropriate, bus station provided the excitement; and the old man stepping, seemingly in slow motion, on the unopened mustard sachet I dropped in the bus aisle lended a touch of piquancy to the atmosphere - though not necessarily the wit - of the whole affair.

This visit to Iguazu Falls was the fourth and last of my (admittedly short and ignorant) list of must-see places I had devised before coming to South America (also featuring Machu Picchu, the Death Road and Rio de Janeiro). The probable reason for their inclusion is that I think Catriona Rowntree did a Getaway! feature on them some years ago and she still holds some kind of hypnotic hold over me from her Wonder World days. We stayed at the Hostel Inn, on the Argentine side of the border for reasons of economy and pool ownership; not so a Scandinavian couple could make fun of my sister's array of toiletries (the words sound the same, people!), though that was included.

We visited the Argentine side of the falls first, which is where you get to walk in and out of the falls, take a speed boat ride into the base of a waterfall (similar to being blasted in the face by a water cannon) and get reprimanded for swimming from the island. My co-swimmer was a lad from Melbourne (Rhys) who had cunningly deployed a herd behaviour tactic for confusing pickpocketers, having roughly 16 pockets in his jeans (including pockets in the knees!).

The next day, Claire and I headed to the Brazilian side of the falls along with Derek from Belfast and Babs Boumans from Boechout, Belgium (who quite comprehensively won the alliteration award for the day. The Brazilian side certainly has the "wow" factor (I guess the other factor is 1): numbered butterflies, innumerable bees, receiving lollies instead of change. Oh, and to your right is a bloody big waterfall.

Rio De Janeiro

Waaaay back in December when I was planning my round the world ticket, I agreed to an overnight stopover in Santiago when flying from Lima to Rio de Janeiro. This decision was based on my assumption that the OneWorld lounge would be open so I could wallow peacefully in a baby fur seal recliner while having my exorbitant whimsies of the flesh and mind tended to by fourteen LAN hostesses.

Instead, I was forced to spend the night in squalor with the less frequent flyers: buying a Dunkin Donut for 1,361,894,157,951,369,875,156,972,101,099.99 Chilean Pesos and trying to sleep on a hard bench that, rather interestingly, had the same resonant frequency as Shakira's voice (and hips, I suppose); while Latino pop music videos assaulted my senses all night. Choler is a terrible bedfellow.

Despite the shite overnight respite, I was quite happy to land in Rio, as my little sister Claire (flying from Straya) was coming to meet me at Mellow Yellow hostel (which is considerably less mellow, though more yellow than its potable namesake) in Copacabana. Unfortunately she had been delayed for about 1 year so Aerolineas Argentinas could properly lose her luggage; so the next day I met her out at the airport and took her shopping for a replacement bikini (and came back with two rubber bands).

Copacabana isn't quite as beautiful and relaxing as I had imagined: the cafe culture is quite different to Perth's, for example, as most drinking is performed on the beach with the aid of quite handy but annoying vendors that pace the beach yelling the same three words "Corka... Shkooorl.... Agua..." (that'd be Coke, water flavoured beer and beer flavoured water). Not bad, except it's impossible to doze on the sand with a) their incessant trudging 2 inches from your noggin b) blokes standing 5 metres in front of you, facing you, in tight budgy smugglers, sunning themselves. I was just too aroused.

On the plus side for Copacabana are two things:

1. Mellow Yellow is a great hostel, they have a good bar and the breakfast of pineapple, ham and cheese toasties is kick-bum; though I'm concerned their 24-bed dorm room is a Matrix-like construct designed to harvest heat (or maybe bed bugs) from the interned backpackers (even though they aren't encased in red goo).
2. Churrascaria Palace - an all you can eat restaurant where the dining experience is akin to sitting next to one of those kebab shop rotating meat logs while it's continually carved onto your plate; also the desert menu is a tray of plastic replicas that you can fondle (if you really want to)... AND (oh, that's a big "and") they have a "piano surcharge".

On the down side for Copacabana, Ipanema's better and next to it. Claire and I had a marvellous time on the beach there, which is much nicer (cleaner sand and water); the restaurants are also quite a bit less tawdry (sorry Bob's Burgers). One night we dined in the cafe where (legend has it) "The Girl from Ipanema" was penned (and most probably fed, though they don't advertise that). We had Moqueca, which is a particularly bland local stew, no doubt serving as inspiration for the aforementioned song. Ipanema also has a good market for the girls (jewellery) and legs (pants), though make sure you take enough money with you, otherwise you have to eat quiche for dinner. Claire.

A better market (in my eyes, though my capoeira pants from Ipanema are magnificent), is in Uruguaiana (previously shortened from Uruguaiuaiuaiaiuiauaiuaiauaiauana), where there is a thriving second hand vintage electronic game console market. Unfortunately my cash reserves weren't enough for one of the pristine Game Boys (Games Boy?), as I'd already purchased a rip-off Casio watch and 2GB memory stick pro-duo (for about $50AU!), but imagine: portable gaming in 56 colours!!

Apart from visiting the obligatory Christ the Redeemer and Sugarloaf (pointy hill), Claire and I also went on a tour of the largest favela (shanty town/slum) in Rio de Janeiro: Rocinha, which was awesome. The taxi motorbike ride to the top was a particularly good start; even though my biker absolutely hammered up the hairpins, I didn't have the temptation to disregard our guide's instructions for the guys not to cuddle the rider. Our lack of bonding on the short journey may have been because I was unsure of his connection to the drugs mob ADA (Amigos dos Amigos), which (as explained to us) is apparently providing all the law enforcement, healthcare and schooling for the residents of Rocinha. They also carry fucking big guns.

So I'd heard all the stories about dodgy cops and robbers in Rio, with all the pickpockets, drug setups and muggings; I have to say I saw absolutely none of that during my time there. Maybe I was just one of the lucky ones, or maybe it was the piece of toilet paper stuck on my shoe that said "don't fuck with me", but I didn't feel particularly unsafe during my time there. Even the favela tour wasn't particularly dodgy - though I wouldn't try going there without a guide.

So with the touring side out of the way, I can say a little about the nightlife. The rich pickings seem to be in Lapa, where we went for a Friday night street party (cheap streetside Tequila shots, followed by free Tequila shots, fortunately not followed by the guy who Claire nicked the Tequila bottle from). I visited a couple of other bars and clubs around Copacabana and Ipanema, though, to be honest they didn't do too much for me; and I was particularly scared of the enforced bar tab system at a few of these establishments: damn tricky when you are battling with unfamiliar bar prices and drunken currency conversions.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about Rio nightlife for me was noticing that Brasilian men have pulled off the biggest scam in the history of cross-cultural courting: convincing women across the world that they are good dancers. My observations of the Justin Timberlake impersonator in Lapa and the dancing competition at the Favela Funk Party (female stripper moves, but with guys; followed by some strange butt-hopping maneuver) didn't do much for their reputation in my eyes. Of course, I'm not saying that I'm an excellent dancer, I'll let you arrive at that conclusion independently.

Peru: Part Deux

Next stop: Arequipa my semi-cama shaped arse; my widely unanticipated return to Peru (via a border town I never knew the name of) was heralded by a comically awful military and school parade, which was in turn heralded by a comically off-key brass band. As the parade was held in the main road (thereby stopping all traffic for hours) and in full view of the (considerably more decrepit) Bolivian side of the border town, I'm fairly sure the sole purpose of all the flag waving and trumpet sputtering was to convince any potential Bolivian immigrants that this sort of thing happens daily in Peru and that they really are better off where they are. Our bus driver was convinced, so he beat a hasty retreat to find an alternate entry point to the country; stranding two English backpackers in the process (who amazingly embarked on a successful 30 minute long taxi pursuit of our bus).

Arequipa's a nice city, probably. I only stayed one night there before heading off to the second deepest canyon in the world: the Colca Canyon. Actually, one thing I liked there was the 6ft tall Jenga set (with log sized pieces) they had in the bar at The Point Hostel; though it was rather difficult to sleep with the tremendous crash and cries of "Oh my God, he's not moving!" or "I can't feel my legs!" every 20 minutes. They had most of the blood cleaned up by the time I left the next morning.

The walk in and out of the Colca Canyon is one of the toughest walks I've done: about 1000m (vertical), quite steep and on narrow slippery gravel/shale paths. Fortunately the opportunity to walk with a guy who looked like Lloyd Christmas (Dumb and Dumber); the scenery; and the campsite on the second night (with swimming pools!) are ample gain for the pain. The other cool thing about the canyon is that it hosts a sparrow-like population of condors. I have plenty of photos of blurry black blobs to prove it.

As I was on a bit of a tight schedule (flight to Rio), I jumped straight on a night bus to Nazca as soon as I got back to Arequipa. The next day was a bit of a speed-backpacking experience with a cool English lad (Ollie) I met in Nazca: after watching an hour long video about the Nazca lines (dull except for some '70s footage of some seriously tweaked shaman), we took a 30 minute flight around them (interesting, but not a breathtaking experience) then straight on a bus to Ica and taxi to the desert oasis: Huacachina for a dune buggy ride (scary, awesome) and sandboarding (sorta fun, but too slow); then on the next the bus to Lima. I'm not really a fan of tick-the-box tourism, but it was kind of fun to knock all this over in a day.

Not much had changed when I got back to The Point in Lima - a couple of lads had moved on, Steve had been hit by a bus, Nick looked like he had, and the girls were still lovely (and cheeky because of my crap Spanish, ¡pero soy listo ahora para ustedes!). I also met up with Hayley again who - while awaiting her flight to Costa Rica - graciously allowed me to win ten pin bowling and let me play Time Crisis 3 before dinner at Larcomar; in retrospect, I think I may have had the lion's share of fun on that outing...

After a last minute flight change, I managed to squeeze in a four day trip to Huaraz to do a little more trekking. Huaraz is about 7hrs North-East of Lima and sits at the base of the Cordillera Blanca; near the Huayhuash mountain range, which is where Simon cut a rope and Joe touched a void. Huaraz is mainly a mountaineers' and trekkers' hangout and isn't really on the mainstream backpacker circuit, but it really should be (just for these three): the Llanganuco National Park is stunning, my hostel (Churup) had an awesome open fire and views of the mountains, and Cafe Andino has top breaky, coffee and boardgames (Risk!). I was lucky enough to jump on a 3 day trek to the summit of Mt. Pisco (5,752m): 1000m ascent to base camp (4,700m) on day 1; summit and return on day 2, then descend to the road and back to Huaraz on day 3. Our group of 8 was very lucky in that no-one was too altitude affected to summit (we pretty much had to drag a fat German up, cutting the rope did cross my mind - I'm with you, Simon), though it was somewhat humbling to see a group of local Indian men and women skipping past us on the way down (and no Gore-Tex there, the women were all wearing skirts...). The toughest part of the whole walk was actually crossing the scree for a few hours coming back to camp: it was hard enough with sore knees and jelly legs, let alone Touching-The-Void-Joe's broken ones!

Hooning through Bolivia

My journey to Puno on the shore of Lake Titicaca with Charlie and Clarissa was my first experience on a long haul bus in South America (actually, ever) and it was a bloody ordeal. The semi-cama (half-bed) seats didn't recline to anything even resembling half a bed and it was freakin freezing; had Charlie not been farted on by a Peruvian man-lady all night, I would not have been amused.

My mother always said "if you can't say something nice about someone, don't say anything at all" (mother also said I'd go blind if I played with it too much, I bet she didn't foresee the advent of Braille keyboards); fortunately Puno isn't a person, it's a place, and a crap one at that. Unfortunately it's also the only departure point for tours to the floating islands of Lake Titicaca. I know two trivial facts about Lake Titicaca: 1) it's the highest big lake (and biggest high lake - make that three) in the world; and 2) in earlier times it was the primary defence for the inhabitants of man-made islands (buoyant blocks of reed roots covered with reeds) from less buoyant tribes (both in temperament and transport). Given their secondary defence is apparently singing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" off-key in seven sort-of different languages (as unleashed upon our tour group - THWACK!), I understand the historical requirement for this inconvenient postal address.

After hastily ignoring the particularly cheesy pizza we ordered for lunch, we were straight back on the bus to La Paz for our second ordeal of the day. For those who've been lucky enough to avoid the bus journey from Puno to La Paz, there are two bonus-features that make the trip particularly abnormal:

1. The border crossing: not too tricky unless you happened to overstay your tourist residence period, in which case the border guards will demonstrate that they can, given enough time, count to 90 (I guess they're lost without their quipus). During this period, the bus driver will probably leave with your bags because he's bored and run out of coca leaves.
2. The lake crossing: this was the first time in my trip when I was convinced I'd never see my backpack again. Some time during the night, our bus arrived at the edge of a lake; clearly the guys building the road were faced with the same predicament and just gave up (instead of going around, yes, around the lake). So we were herded off the bus and onto a not very lake-worthy dinghy while our bus rolled onto a nearly bus-sized barge to navigate the lake after us. By navigate I mean "succumb to the mercy of", as the bus-barge combination immediately drifted off in the wrong direction; though it was probably just a Captain Haddock wannabe at the helm.

An unfortunate overnight stopover in La Paz later and we were back at the bus station wondering why our bus to Uyuni had knobblies, six spare tyres and was being loaded with parquetry chips (I'm convinced it ran on steam). The three of us had the battery-hen-like run of the back seat to ourselves so we settled in for the 12 hour steam South. Clear skies and a full moon afforded a wonderful view for the passengers of the surrounding countryside, and for the driver of the surrounding road; though when I noted a river and riverbanks on either side of the bus somewhere South of Oruro, I suspected our steambus captain either needed the headlights too, or had simply forgotten he was driving a bus - not a boat.

Had Charlie not at that time orally ejected his most recently consumed Burger King vlue meal out of the window, things may have taken a decided turn for the worse. Twenty minutes, a jammed window and two handfuls of burger #2 later; our fortunes were really heading skyward.
Upon our arrival in Uyuni, we had planned to go straight on a 3 day salt flats (Salar de Uyuni) tour, but with Charlie needing at least 36hrs me-time before brushing his teeth and Clarissa still walking like a Thunderbird (thanks over-the-counter valium!); we elected to have a day off. Fortunately our lodging was super-cheap (US$3/night) and there was an awesome market in the main street where I bought an awesome cardigan (which, despite buttoning up from the left, is most definitely not a woman's cardigan).

Crissa (who had by now regained full control of her limbs), Charlie (with full control of his digestive tract) and I (in my so-awesome-it's-out-of-control cardigan) were joined for the tour by a lovely English couple (Nick and Paula) and our fairly lucid driver/cook: Alejandro. After a cursory tour of a salt harvesting operation (like this, but without those pesky machines to speed things up); Alejandro took off across teh salt flats at a decent clip and promptly nodded off. I did not realise I would be lumped with the responsibilities of driver-reviver/emergency obstacle avoidance when I stuck my hand up for shotgun; but I was more than ready to spring into action lest any object threateningly appear over the horizon.

This long period of dozy driving pretty well set the scene for the next three days - we were in the car for 8-9 hours a day, passing amazing scenery (salt flats, more salt flats, flat salty patches, geysers, vicuñas (like alpacas), alpacas (like llamas), llamas (like vicuñas), multi-coloured steaming lagoons; loads of pink flamingoes and strange rock formations); so you'd think we'd welcome the opportunities to stop and get out for a stretch and a photo once in a while. Not on your bloody life. Freaking freezing temperatures and howling winds have an interesting effect on your need to appreciate nature without a piece of glass between it and you. Even still, I'd thoroughly recommend the tour: Incahuasi (cactus covered island); our salt hotel; the Salvador Dali deser and the train graveyard were all definitely worth the trek.

Our bus back to La Paz was considerably less eventful than the outward journey; the highlight for me was trying the new peanut-butter filled Twix (a victory for chocolatiers). La Paz is a crazy city: where else do they pay people to dress up like zebras at the zebra crossing? Where else can a pensioner crack whore keep a very well known gringo-friendly nightclub-cum-coke den running for months? Where else can you still easily find Casio talking and solar powered watches? Where else do they have seven minute intermissions in the middle of new-release movies? Though, at the time, our debate revolved more around the reasoning for the selected duration of, rather than the necessity for, said interval.

As cool as all this was, by far the best thing about La Paz is its proximity to the World's Most Dangerous Road. Mountain biking down this monster was one of the best days of my holiday so far and I'm ashamed to say I may have done more high-fiving with Charlie that day than in my life to that date. Tearing down a hill at top speed (they gear the bikes low so you can't really peddle downhill) from 4,760m to 1,100m over 64km tends to get the blood pumping a little.

It was a rather fittingly climactic day before I quite sadly bade farewell to my Mexico-bound pals. I'd had a smashing time on our brief whirlwind tour of Bolivia and I may have to go back at least once more (to get me one of them new-fangled watches!). But my holiday keeps on trucking, next-stop: Arequipa!

Cusco, Inca Trail & Machu Picchu

It didn't take long before my observations of the Olympian levels of competition within the Cusco (or maybe Cuzco - I've never been sure) massage and shoe shine industries (shiny thongs anyone?) shattered my earlier assumption that it was the Iquitos trike-taxi industry alone that had a hoof-like grasp of the market concept of "supply and demand". I'm now fairly sure that a ridiculous oversupply of obscure commodities is endemic to Peruvian culture, someone certainly seems to be doing a roaring trade in Inca Kola tshirts (certainly more than the awful beverage itself). I also managed to learn a little about the mating habits of stray Peruvian canines while in Cusco as I'd inadvertently planned my trip to coincide with dog sex season. So, uh, yeah, dogs do it a lot. A lot. I'm pretty sure every time I left or entered the hostel, I was treated to the sight of the same old bastard mongrel pounding the same little white fluff-ball senseless while a group of beta males stood around hoping the old boy would keel over from over-exertion in the altitude. He looked like he had another couple of footy seasons left in him though... I digress, here's my diary:

I gave myself one full day in Cusco to acclimatise to the altitude (3,400m) - which I spent predominantly hungover, hence unable to perceive any symptoms of altitude sickness - before embarking on the classic Inca trail. Due to the trail's worldwide fame, I had incorrectly assumed that it would be a doddle, so didn't piss about with packing lightly. And so with the weight of both a 16kg backpack and the medical evidence against my success; I joined my group on the bus to Ollataytambo and the beginning of our trek.

As I'd booked through an agent of an agent of an agent back in Australia, I had absolutely no idea how the guide/group situation was working until halfway through day one. I was lucky enough to be thrown in with 4 other trekkers (2 frogs, 2 argies) who had 2 guides between them - often the ratio is more like 16:1 - so we were treated to plenty of explanations in Spanish (that I didn't understand) and then English (that I didn't understand either). I did manage to glean that there is a much easier way to get to Machu Picchu but it was reserved exclusively for Incan royalty, and much later, a train; and we were walking along but one of many peasant routes to the sacred city. After hiking up to Dead Woman's Pass (1,250m ascent to 4,215m in one morning), I'm quite convinced that the Windsors aren't really that bad at all compared to the Incan royal family. Utter bastards.

Unfortunately Machu Picchu was shrouded in mist for our dawn arrival at the sun gate, but when the mist cleared mid-morning, the classic view across the city to Huayna Picchu (the pointy hill) was every bit as stunning as I'd imagined. The other things that I was particularly taken with were: the masonry - freaking unbelievably perfect joints between huge stones; the hike up - and view from - Huayna Picchu; and seeing a llama scratch its head with its hind leg (who'd a thunk it?).

I had only planned to spend maybe a day or two back in Cusco before moving on to La Paz for some death road mountain biking action; but what with the weekend looming, it only made sense to stay for that. This happened twice (though to be fair, the first time I'd planned to go to La Paz, the roads were blockaded). The hostel where I stayed - Loki - also played a big part in my reluctance to journey on, they had it really figured out for backpackers: breakfast served until 1pm; it's easier to stay in bed watching Family Guy and then stay another night, than check out (no booking - you keep your bed!); hammocks in the sun; and freely flowing Sprite. There was also a great crew of fellow travellers there who'd I'd like to thank for providing the compelling but generally poorly structured arguments to stick around ("con gas?", "bungee jumping is fun", "don't be gay, have a beer" etc.) : Alex, Luke, Kim, the clogs, Hayley, Kyla, Charlie, Clarissa, James, Dylan and Jack - I (who is (am?...) about to die) salute you.

When I actually made it out of the hostel, I found that there were quite a few cultural things to do and see in Cusco - I did none of these - opting instead for: sitting in a cafe in my pea green undies with Alex and Luke while my jeans were being mended; loading up on coffee and English breakfasts at Jack's; sing-alongs and pisco shots at km.0 (an excellent little bar); salivating in front of the cow snouts and llama heads at the markets; dangling from a ceiling in a balaclava and bopping around Mama Afrikas in ill-fitting trackpants. If it weren't for the traditional Incan bungee jumping and white-water rafting trips, you could almost say I fell into the gringo trap.

I was quite saddened when it was time to leave Cusco, but I had some unsuspecting travel buddies in Clarissa and Charlie who had flights to catch from Las Pazes to Mexico City; so we picked the closest one and headed that-a-way!

Lima and Iquitos, Peru

South America! An enormous and diverse land of impenetrable jungles, vast deserts and impossibly tall mountains - as viewed from the air. From the ground, it's a land of toilet paper intolerant toilets, water resistant napkins and meals of intestinal parasites that may be disguised as food (but probably just covered with melted cheese).

It's also a place where you can have a metric tonne of fun. My first stop in South America was Peru's capital city: Lima, which is typically not on the gringo (foreigner) backpacker circuit owing to: a) a lack of things to do and b) it's a balls-ugly city. If bucking the trend means eschewing trendiness, then once again I did it, as I really liked Lima; admittedly I spent most of my time between The Point Hostel and Larcomar (a spanking shopping mall on the seaside clifftops) playing Time Crisis 3, going ten pin bowling and seeing (once) Spiderman 3 (AWESOME!), so probably won't be getting any calls from Lonely Planet for reviews, but it's a great place to party and chill out and forget about travelling for a while. Oh, the cerviche - cured trout - is fine, but steer clear of the chifa - chinese food - unless you need some "me time" on the loo.

It was also in the The Point that some new pals (Ross, Tash & Em; bye Bing!) and I hatched a plan to go to Iquitos for an Amazonian jungle experience. So, with a shoebox of Imodium in my carry-on luggage, I boarded a flight to this steamy city in the North-Eastern corner of Peru. I met the others in a hostel I chose (sorry) called the Hobo Hideout, which to be frank (Frank Drebin: "...since I've met you I've noticed things that I never knew were there before; birds singing, dew glistening on a newly formed leaf, stoplights.") - was a bit crap - but I'm fairly sure the other budget options were similarly budgo. Iquitos is a mad city of 500,000 people, right on the Amazon, and holds the title of the largest city in the world without a road going into (or out of) it. It also holds the distinction of being the only city in the world where every working-age male is genetically predisposed to drive an auto-rickshaw (tuk-tuk). Apparently there are 80,000 in town - I've no idea if that number is true, but there were about 20 vying for our 2 soles (60 cents) every time we needed to go somewhere.

There isn't much to do within Iquitos itself, save booking a jungle tour (check. And thanks Emma for asking if it rains in the rainforest) and visiting the Belén markets (check). I believe the name came from the first Western visitor to the markets, who exclaimed "Gee, this place really smells like a bell-end", which it did. The meat section was particularly appealing, I liked the recently de-turtled turtle shells for their shock value; though the others found solace in the shaman's various concoctions of bark water, mud and god-knows-what-else. Our second and last night in Iquitos was a fairly tame and less stomach turning affair - we just went to a nice jungle themed restaurant, which caught fire. Can't wait for some excitement!

We stayed at El Chullachaqui Lodge, which is 2 hours speedboat ride upstream from Iquitos. I've no idea what the rest of the Amazon looks like, but if it gets any wider, browner and flatter downstream then it's not exactly a landscape photographer's paradise.

I can thoroughly recommend the lodge we stayed at, not for the comfortable lodgings, naughty naughty monkey and swivelling-head-from-The Exorcist parrot, but the comedic value of our local guide: Danny. The first day was promising: on our jungle walk he hit his head on a branch and fell over, so went ape-shit with his machete on the offending tree; then showed us how to correctly swing on a vine (like Tarzan), but selected a vine which broke mid-swing, sending him flying off into the jungle somewhere. That afternoon, he took us on an "Amazonian jungle village experience", which turned out to be his soccer practice; then violently crashed the motorboat into the bank when we went piranha fishing. Unfortunately everything after this flying start went flawlessly - we saw a tarantula that night right where they'd left it 5 minutes earlier (guys - it would be more believable if you took the collar off), Ross and I actually caught piranhas (not before I sent one overhead into a tree with an over-exuberant reaction to a nibble) and when we "swam with the dolphins in the Amazon", some actually turned up (though they could hired the Romanian mens synchronised swimming team to do the job, as they look like naked pink people). And with that, I bid adieu to Ross, Em and Tash (who doesn't normally look like Popeye - I think - she got stung by a mosquito on the eyelid) and hauled my Imodium-subdued-butt off to Cuzco.

Barbados - Cricket Final

For our second trip to Barbados, we stayed a little further from the action, at Dover Beach in St. Lawrence Gap. Also staying there were some Tassie boys we'd run into a few times on tour; named Joe, Ray and Me (as introduced). Joe wasn't in fact a deer, a female deer; but Ray was certainly a drop of golden sun.

Counting down the days to the big showdown between Australia and their closest rival: daylight (which didn't even bother showing up for the final), we didn't do anything particularly spectacular, unless you count Ramm's shoreside removal of his forehead dermis by diving into ankle deep water.

Barbados was my favourite among the nations we visited on this tour, the locals are a bit more chilled; transport and good food are cheap and easily accessible; Bridgetown isn't totally ghetto; the beaches really are the best (possible exception was Deep Bay in Antigua) and you can get a decent cup of coffee. Having said that, every island we visited was bloody expensive for a backpacker and not quite the idyllic paradise I had imagined - I think you have to spend some serious cash money on a resort with a private beach to experience that kind of holiday. Still, 30 days in the sun drinking beer, playing beach cricket and watching the Aussies win .. can't complain!

St. Lucia

LIAT showed us their true colours in our transit from Grenada to St. Lucia - the not-very-many-kilometer journey took around 12 hours and the compensatory food and drink voucher was not redeemable for beer. Really reaching out to the Australian crowd there... When we finally arrived in St. Lucia, we were pleasantly surprised to find that our accommodation was located smack bang in the middle of Rodney Bay - a pub, club and restaurant district. After another meal of mac pie and company, we realised the full benefits of our location as we were lulled to sleep by the dulcet tones of Peter Ram Wiggins, then promptly awoken at 3am by the local Fast and the Furious fan club.

St. Lucia must have been short of luxury accommodation options, as both the Australian and Sith Ifrican teams were staying in Rodney Bay as well. I'm sure Gilly and co appreciated us squealing like schoolgirls every time they strode past in their budgie smugglers. Unfortunately my one chance, my one chance, to show the Australian team that I was ready for the call up was ruined by a selfish local kid who wouldn't hand the tennis ball to Brad Hogg to bowl as he was walking past. Little bastard could have cost us the final.

If anyone has ever seen the original Doctor Doolittle, you will be aware that the pitons near Soufriere feature in a rather irrelevant sequence about a mollusc. I have it on good authority (sample size = 4) that nobody except Fenders has seen the original Doctor Doolittle, hence we were amazed every time Fenders told us that the pitons near Soufriere featured in the original version of Doctor Doolittle. Not one to let an opportunity pass me by if I don't have to do anything much, I climbed into a minivan with the boys (Gimme a booossssstop!) to go down to the pitons (of Doctor Doolittle fame!). On the way we were forced to stop at St. Lucia's capital Castries, which is a bit shit to be honest. The second bus ride from Castries to Soufriere was quite an ordeal, not because of the dim local who put his arm around me while eating a tub of fried chicken and tediously read out every road sign we drove past, but because it was the single most nauseating (non-alcohol related) experience of my life. Sitting in the back middle seat of a packed minibus, which was swerving violently around hairpin bends for over and hour, in stifling heat and humidity, pretending to read so the dim local wouldn't talk to me; pretty much craps all over the Zipper for a stomach turning experience. The pitons (from Doctor Doolittle) quite disappointingly didn't look much at all like boobs, just pointy rocks, but they still held my interest for the entire hour long boat tour we chartered.

The cricket was a freaking shambles - the well told story was Australia's absolute decimation of Sith Ifrica - I would like to relay the less well told story (you want the other guy for well told stories). With South Africa batting first and sitting at a handsome 5-27 - doing their utmost to keep Hansie Cronje's legacy alive - the party stand crowd were in trouble with the required rum rate quickly doubling from 1.5/hr to about 3/hr. This is not a challenging target when you can pour rums freely all around the ground, but the local barstaff (who move like Thunderbirds) managed to restrict the rum rate to less than 1/hr. And so, when the game and bar service concluded many hours early and most patrons were left with at least 4 drink tickets; rum fueled riots quickly erupted, during which I managed to nick a bottle of gin and make it home on the back of a truck. Like that wasn't a good story!

Quick update

Hi all, I'm in St Lucia (Caribbean) at the moment. I've finally written the diary entry for skiing in Bulgaria - more to follow. Pics of recent visits are up!

Grenada

We headed down to the cyclone ravaged isle of Grenada (locally pronounced Gre-NAY-dah) for the two biggest games of Australia's Super 8 campaign: Sri Lanka and New Zealand.

Grenada is quite different to Antigua and Barbados, for starters, it's considerably more lush and mountainous. Two standout spots were Grand Anse beach - where we played a lot of beach cricket against cheating, throwing youngsters - and the highlands (particularly Seven Sisters Waterfalls) that we toured with our guide, the Main Man Max (an infinitely cooler self-given nickname than my choice: Bung Eyed Max) and Mumbles the driver.

The other notable difference between Grenada and the other islands is that is is chock full of dickheads. OK, that's a bit unfair - there were two dickheads in Antigua: the crazy angry dreadlocked lunch guy and Nozzle's pimp - but in Grenada I really did notice they tried a bit harder to rip us off and talked a lot more about someone called Charlie. Lonely Planet ascribes this desperation to the cyclone of 2004 (which pretty much wiped out the place), though I'm convinced it's the god-awful Soca music they listen to.

When I came to the Caribbean, I envisaged a tranquil place, full of stoned Bob Marley types listening to reggae and calypso under some coconut palms. The reality is disturbingly somewhat more like a Shaggy music video. I'm not sure if the Soca beat inspired the favoured dance technique: whining (which basically involves dry humping a chick from behind) or vice versa (from the audible clunks of pelvis on pelvis); but they're both bloody awful.

Anyway, Australia flogged both teams, so were happily off to see them play South Africa (chokers) in St. Lucia.

Barbados

Our first flight with LIAT wasn't too bad, granted my camera got smashed and I was stung on the neck by a bee while walking through immigration; but at least the flight left on the advertised date.

Barbados was a bit of a step down in the accommodation stakes from Antigua, we were crammed into an A/C-less shoebox meant for 2 people; but it was streaks ahead in the affordable dining category. Oistins (a nearby suburb) is home to a large and colourful grouping of food shacks that serve up identical meals of dolphin (fish, unfortunately) or marlin, rice and peas, mac pie, salad and Banks beer. The only apparent difference between these shacks was the speed of service, but we didn't stop looking for that hidden (and, as it turned out, absent) gem. There was also a cafe next door to our hotel where I tried to write diary entries for the entirety of my Europe trip, but got as far as Greece before my blood caffeine level went off the chart.

The cricket match we saw in Barbados is worth a mention, if only for its brevity. Australia vs Ireland (one of the surprise teams to make the Super 8 stage) was never going to be a thriller; but we didn't realise that being 15 minutes late would cost us nearly 1/4 of the match (Ireland 4/0 or so after about 5 overs). Everyone in the party stand (by party they mean overpriced tickets, bad location, 8 free drinks, very long queues to the bar and terrible music) realised that something was up by about the 5th over and promptly got smashed. Needless to say the Vegemite and Aeroplane Jelly jingles got a fair old work out (as did every AFL team's song, bar Fremantle).

Antigua

If anyone is wondering why I bought a Round-The-World ticket, headed West, didn't stop anywhere in Asia, then spent a mere 7 weeks in Europe before heading to New York; thereby effectively confining myself to the Americas for a maximum of ten months, as stipulated in the terms and conditions of my ticket; then wonder no longer! Please, just stop.

I had many reasons for not stopping in Asia - by far the most compelling was my inability to comprehend the location of that chick's eyebrows on Grey's Anatomy. OK, the real reason for my lopsided itinerary was the Cricket World Cup being played out in the beating hea... CLEAR! ... beating heart... CLEAR! ... well, it used to beat ... of cricket - the West Indies (Caribbean) - and I (along with 3 buddies) had tickets. This was a pretty big decision, I didn't just pass up on the opportunity to get dysentry on a 17hr long bus ride across India on a whim. For a start, cricket is the best game in the world. If your ears popped just then, it's because you inhaled too sharply in disagreement. It's OK to be wrong sometimes, that was just God punishing you for it. Secondly, the Caribbean and its cricketers have always had a mythical air for me: in the 1980s, the West Indian bowling attack was the single greatest threat to Australian manhood (barring quiche); watching them devastate box after box as a youngster delayed the descent of my testicles until I retired from hard ball cricket at age 23. Also the footage of cricket in the Caribbean is brilliant because the crowds are always going ape - partying and dancing around with drums and horns - behaviour typically rewarded in Australian ovals with eviction.

For those who have not lived in the British Empire in the last 127 years and don't know what the hell I'm on about, cricket is like baseball, but with the following improvements:

1. The game is played in the middle of an oval, which allows the batsmen to hit the ball in any direction.
2. The bowler delivers the ball with a straight arm (excluding those from the subcontinent) and they can legally vary the bounce, swing, spin, pace (~60mph to ~100mph) and trajectory of the ball significantly more, aiming at a roughly 6' (v) x 3' (h) target area, including the batsman's body.
3. Typically a team will score between 200 and 400 runs in an innings, these can be scored by the batsmen running backwards and forwards along the pitch, or more spectacularly by hitting the ball out of the oval. The first team to bat sets the target for the second team to chase down, one innings per team.
4. A one day game lasts about 8 hours, which, for the average catchment, guarantees a beer cup snake length of at least 3m. The spectacle of a snake held aloft to the beer god Boony pleases the contributors and other spectators greatly.
5. The players wear loose pants, though groin adjustment is still a big part of the game.
6. Tobacco is smoked (not chewed), though this has dropped out of the culture somewhat since Warney swapped the durries for patches (and never looked back).
7. Because of the late retirement age of international players and comparitive ease of playing with a tennis ball in the backyard (get the fat kid next door to bowl!), every cricket fan harbours secret and genuine hopes of one day playing for their country until the age of 50 or so. Except perhaps Scott Muller.

Alternately you can just check out these highlight videos to get an idea of why I love the game.

And so Rammstain, Nozzle, Fenders and I (who didn't get a cool nickname) arrived in Antigua at roughly the same time as the Australian team for their third (of seven) Super 8 match. I won't spend any time discussing the results of the cricket - I'll leave that to the chaps at cricinfo/Wisden, who do a pretty good job of it - this frees me up to talk about the other aspects of a Cricket World Cup 2007 spectator's experience. For reasons of familiarity, I'll focus mainly on my own.

We stayed near Dickenson's Bay, which is a very touristy and nice beach North of Antigua's ghetto capital: St John's. Our apartment was right on a quiet beach immediately South of Dickenson's Bay (which was not too bad for beach cricket and wallowing in the tepid water) and was comfortable enough that the hour long walk into town past the swollen dead dog and goat water shop wasn't made too often. I think I managed to watch four episodes of Scrubs and three of Star Trek (well, if you count Deep Space Nine) on the back of a particularly brutal hangover one day. You know you're really on holiday when you don't feel compelled to go to the beach because you're on holiday.

One day we dragged ourselves away from the cable TV to go down to English Harbour. This is an ancient harbour used by a primitive seafaring people known as the "English" who were plagued with scurvy and did not have cable TV. Most of the old sandstone buildings in Nelson's Dockyard (named in honour of the famous British Admiral: Lord Horatio Dockyard) are still standing, though many have now been converted into pubs and restaurants, from pubs and more pubs. English Harbour is full of yachty types, so isn't a bad place to go for a drink and trade stories about life on the high seas. Having led a rather more sedentary and scurvy-free life, I instead regaled the old salts with stories of my life on the vitamin seas; normally people wouldn't find health advice at all amusing, but I've always had an ascorbic wit.

New York City

One of the many benefits of being a jetsetting international rock star (like Rick Astley) is free upgrades on trans-Atlantic flights. The only benefit of being an engineer (aside from an innate and tedious ability to fold maps) is that afforded by flying loads for work and the accompanying mediocre frequent flyer status. Thus I found myself on an overbooked flight from Madrid to New York nursing a hangover and a complimentary glass of champagne in business class.

US immigration was surprisingly easy and rectal trauma free; also surprisingly easy (and similarly kind to my rectum) was the commute on the NYC subway from JFK airport to my hostel in Chelsea (on Manhattan's Wess Si-eeeedah!). I'm a fan of the NYC subway map because it's overlaid on an above-ground map, so you know where you are geographically (unlike the Tube); it's also easy to fold.

I like to think that this Australian tourist's first night in New York was typically American: a slice of pepperoni pizza washed down with a Budweiser, followed by a stroll around Times Square. Considering that the typical Australian day (in the eyes of many Americans) would probably comprise riding across the Sydney Harbour Bridge on a kangaroo while necking a Fosters with Paul Hogan; I may have overdone things a little.

Back when I was black (circa 1995), I loved rapping and playing some ball. Nuttin else to do in the ghetto. In the ghetto. I also loved watching basketball, particularly my local team - the Tasmanian Tatts Devils (go Stiffy!). Aside from my waning ability to lay down some dope lyrics, I thought that nothing had changed in the subsequent 12 years. I certainly hadn't grown any more facial hair. And so I took myself off to a New York Knicks vs Cleveland Cavaliers game at Madison Square Garden. And lo, I was disappointed; my passion for the game had apparently faded along with my skin colour. On paper, the game was a thriller: Knicks up by one with twenty seconds on the clock. Whoever wrote on this piece of paper also conveniently edited out the ten minutes of timeouts crammed TARDIS-like into this tedious epoch. Anyway, the Knicks won; I'm sure this made a little kid happy somewhere. I hope his goldfish dies.

If I wasn't dead set on living in the UK for a while, I would be very happy living in New York. It wasn't the views from the Empire State Building or Brooklyn Bridge; nor Murray's bagels; nor the bustle of downtown; nor the Metropolitan Museum of Art; nor Central Park; nor the Bangladeshi restaurant where I very quietly celebrated Australia's decimation of Bangladesh in a cricket match; though these were all very cool. It was Brooklyn; the Villages (especially around St. Mark's Place) and the nightlife (thanks in great part to Nicole and Justine's cupcakes; and Tatiana and not-her-doorman for showing me around).

Brooklyn scared the crap out of me at first; granted I insensibly wandered into downtown Brooklyn from the bridge and was told "Yo in the wroooong hood" by a helpful fan of the Wu Tang Clan (judging by his Wu Wear). Fortunately my "flight" reflex dominated my "Crocodile Dundee Impersonation" reflex ("That's not a knife. That's a gat.") and I fled on the first subway train to Greenpoint. This was actually a bit of a pilgrimage for me, I had read about a games arcade/bar hybrid in Brooklyn called Barcade in an Australian magazine and had jotted it down in my must-do list. Despite the mysterious origin of the name, this bar was seriously cool: a dazzling array of beers on tap out-dazzled by the array of retro arcade machines lining the walls (Galaga, Frogger, Miss Pacman, Centipede etc.). It was way better than Game On! - less children, more beer. I also found a nightclub in Brooklyn - Studio B - where over two nights and for $20, I saw four wicked live acts: Bonde do Role, DJ Diplo, Datarock (awesome) and The Presets (good to see some familiar faces).

If only the city had some kind of a theme song...

Madrid

As I'd stayed on in Barcelona to not be able to watch the Australia vs South Africa World Cup group match at a bloody un-Australian pub; I only had one full day to live it up in Madrid before going all Christopher Columbus on Europe's arse (uh, going to America).

Fortunately my hostel's name (Cat's Hostel) was not a reference to a weird old lady who keeps 87 disease ridden cats in her bedroom; rather, it was full of cool cats like me. Yes, I'm a cool cat.

Madrid's museums have a weird roster that means they're always going to be shut on the day you visit. Fortunately one of them - the Museo Nacional de Arte Reina Sofia (catchy name) - was open and in fine form. Aside from all the usual suspects (Picasso, Dali, Kevin Spacey), they had a really trippy electronic art display on level 3; think screwed up TV sets, circuit bending and live footage of yourself mashed with lasers and screaming music soundtracks. Weird, and I loved it. There was also another cool little section where I burnt a couple of hours watching amateur documentaries made over the last forty years. I really enjoyed one about the 1969 Altamont Free Concert, that all went a bit wrong, but the music was incredible.

That night I headed with some crew from the hostel (Mark, Courtney and Catherine) out for dinner at a really awesome falafel joint (near Plaza Puerta del Sol, opposite Macca's), where you are given free reign with the fillings. So good. Afterwards we rolled towards a flamenco show two doors down from our hostel. People are always talking about the energy and passion in flamenco dancing, understandable; though I don't understand why they never talk about how much the dancers sweat. Every time the male dancer did a bit of a head flick or a twirl, the first three rows of the audience were left either ducking for cover or covering their sangrias. I'd definitely recommend checking out a show if you get the chance, just remember your wellies.

Barcelona

As appears to be pretty much the norm for my trip thus far, I arrived in Barcelona to exactly zero fanfare. I really should start phoning ahead.

Any visitor to Barcelona (say it with a lisp, it sounds so much more Euro) will have noted the following key points about the place: it's full of Pommy buck's/hen's nights; there's crazy architecture everywhere; and there are loads of friendly guys that like sticking their hands in your pants.

Pickpockets (pickpocketers?) piss me off; though I did hear one amusing/unlucky story from an Aussie guy at the hostel. As he was leaving the un-Australian (more later) Australian themed pub - Hogan's, nay, Bogan's - some friendly local girls pinched his wallet, removed the cash and replaced it without him noticing (he was quite pissed). At the next pub he realised he'd been robbed, went back to remonstrate and was duly pickpocketed again, losing his wallet for good. Funny when it doesn't happen to you. Anyway kiddies, two lessons here: assume that anybody who touches you is trying to rob you; and put your money in your sock if you go out.

There are a lot of cool things to do in Barcelona by day; the ones I did (and recommend) are: the Sagrada Familia (see a church being built!); check out surfing at the beach (and if you're lucky, see fully clothed beach-goers getting nailed by freak waves); the zoo (I have revised my previously negative stance on dolphins, they were really cool, I now have a dolphin tattoo on my hip - it's cute); the Gaudi Park; and the Picasso Museum. Things not to do in Barcelona by day: try watching a game of cricket (Aus vs SAF) at the Australian pub, because they'll just play Scottish football instead; lie around in busy streets shooting up heroin (though it seems to be quite a popular pastime there); and visit the big gherkin shaped building (they don't let tourists in - its purpose is still a mystery).

Barcelona also caters quite well for those who shun the sun; plenty of pubs and clubs, though the hostel crew tends to follow a bit of an ant trail. Most nights started out at the hostel bar (HelloBCN - nice hostel, but the bar was a bit sterile); then we (I followed the cool kids) invariably headed to the Travellers' Bar (just to really get amongst the local tourists). One night I was knocking around there with a couple of Perth boys (Benny and Mikey) and some American girls from the hostel, when one of the girls got talking to a tall, dark and handsome bloke at the bar. Somewhere along the line he told her that he was a Brazilian backpacker and proceeded to astound her with his remarkable command of the English language. Benny and I had actually spoken to him earlier; his name was Gravy and he was from Fremantle. If you ever needed proof that chicks dig foreign guys to Fozzies (farkin' Australians, of the overseas variety), then Gravy is living proof. My other favourite hangout was a wicked little club called Moog (as in the old synth machine) - freaking awesome - if you like a few breaks, it's definitely worth checking out.

Montpellier

To be honest, I only stopped in Montpellier to break up a really long train ride from Nice to Barcelona; consequently I won't write a diary entry for my time here.

OK, maybe just a short one then.

I discovered that Montpellier is like miniature, freaking cold and windy version of Paris; replete with its own mini-Arc de Triomphe. It's got enough obvious sights to see to fill a day (I just walked around) and loads of cool street-clothes shops - which I may have to investigate more thoroughly when I'm not so hindered by financial and luggage weight restrictions.

I had a decent dinner with an American software engineer (not Dilbert) that I met on the train and cut my hair with nail scissors. Both took ages.

Côte D'Azur

I arrived quite late in Nice after a lovely train ride along the coast from Monterosso, honestly, pretty much everyone in Europe lives on the wrong side of those tracks.

My trusty Let's Go pointed me to the relaxed crowd at the Hotel Belle Meuniere, conveniently near the train station. I appeared to be sharing my room with a bloke who had almost no stuff, and a girl (judging by the vast array of Nivea toiletries next to her bed). After dispatching my backpack on the vacant bed, I decided to go for a stroll, mainly because my backpack stank. Returning to the lobby I was dismayed to see a sign forbidding the consumption of alcohol on the premises; not the sort of social constraint I need at the best of times, and especially not when I'm travelling solo.

During my brief amble around the streets surrounding my hostel, I quickly observed an immutable fact of city living - the convenient areas near train stations are also as seedy as a pumpkin. Perturbed, I thought I'd try to at least find an authentic French restaurant in which to dine. Amazingly "le Big Mac" is pretty much identical to a "Big Mac", so no culinary surprises there. And for the benefit of Sammy L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction, it's a "Royale Cheese", not "Royale with Cheese". I can't comment on the beer in the cinema claim, but the whole injection in the heart bit is spot-on.

My earlier detective work regarding the identities of my roomies proved slightly inaccurate - indeed the guy with not much stuff was a guy with not much stuff (he was also a Czech road worker staying there semi-permanently); however, the girl was actually a 35-40 year old male freak who, apart from obsessing over the youthful appearance of his skin, owned a walkman. Not just any walkman, mind you, but one that looked about five years old and he'd bought it because he was astounded by the technology. Music on the move!

Intrepid Traveller Tip #4: Travelling Alone.
People often ask me what it's like travelling on my own; sometimes it really sucks, none more so than when your guidebook fails you. This was one of those times: relaxed crowd actually means hippies, a lack of bar meant that there was no chance of meeting anyone except the two freaks in my room and my hostel was in a dodgy area of town, so venturing out was a little risky.

Unless you're particularly adept at striking up conversations with strangers in bars (I'm not), the only places you're likely to meet people to hang with are on tours or in hostels. Hostel selection can be the difference between having a wicked night out with a good gang, or nervously lying in bed listening to the laboured whir or a serial killer's walkman. My guidebook had failed me dismally on two occasions with regard to hostel selection, so now I only use two methods for picking places to stay: direct word of mouth and internet hostel booking sites (like hostelworld.com). By the way, on the ratings, I pretty much only look at fun % and staff % - dull staff can really screw a party atmosphere.

Although the entire city centre was being ripped up while I was there (probably to provide gainful employment to Czech road workers); Nice is quite a pleasant city to walk around, particularly the older Vieux Nice area and along the beach. This was my first time lying on a proper pebble beach, it was also the first time I'd ever seen someone trying to fuse breakdancing with Enya - I enjoyed the novelty of both. Dinner was also memorable in that I didn't have a "le Big Mac" and because I can still taste the glorious complimentary Roquefort (some fell in my diary).

After a second sleepless night with the whirring walkman (I swear he was listening to whale songs), I transferred to Villa Saint Exupery (VSE) - a top notch hostel in the hills above Nice - awesome staff, food, bar (converted from a chapel!) and free internet. Some quickly digested breakfast and tourist advice later, and I was on the bus with a bunch of fellow VSE crew to Éze and Monaco for some rich people spotting. Éze is a pretty little medievil town perched on a mountain between Nice and Monaco. Grant, Kerry and I went to the perfumery for the free tour, which I didn't find too appalling - it certainly didn't stink as much as the perfume section of your average DJ or Myer. Monaco was everything I probably imagined - loads of awesome cars (Bentleys everywhere), boats, high-rise buildings and F1 ripple strips around the fun corners.

After an enjoyable night at VSE in the dress-up box and on the cans, I jumped on a train to the latter's phonetically singular namesake (Cannes) neither's anything (Antibes) alongside Grant and Kerry (again) and an OK-when-she's-sober redhead Pommy chick. Aside from seeing even bigger boats than in Monaco, the highlight of the day was definitely when a drunk Pole (or thereabouts) offered to buy the ranga from us. Unfortunately the contract sale fell through when he fell over and asleep, so we were lumped with her chick-lit inspired babble for another night. Yay.

P.S. I'm not sure if anyone back home is familiar with the drinking card game Kings (or Circle of Death), but it's a bit of a laugh - one version of the rules here.

Commenting

Hi all, I changed the permissions now so you should be able to leave comments if you wish, e.g. "gee, that photo would have been good if it were in focus"

Cinque Terre

Intrepid traveller trip #3: Never drink the night before you have to leave town.

The reasons are numerous: risk of sleeping in, (motion) sickness, difficulty packing and a general inability to mentally process anything more complex than wearing socks. Not that I've ever used this advice for my own benefit.

So... once again I found myself in a sub-optimal cognitive state, jamming crap into my pack 2hrs before my flight from Athens to Milan. A short version of events that morning:

9:00AM - Woke up, panicked, flight @ 11:10AM.
9:20AM - All packed up and standing at the train station.
9:30AM - Back at the hostel returning my room key.
9:35AM - Back at the train station.
9:45AM - On the train, heading towards airport.
10:00AM - Off the train, stupid pattern terminates halfway to the airport, next train to airport in 20mins. Decide to leg it and find a cab. Realise I'm in some industrial/highway part of Athens where the chances of finding a cab are way too hard for me to calculate, but not good.
10:10AM - Taxi driver gets the most unlikely fare in history.
10:25AM - At the airport, directed to the Olympic check-in desk by a very helpful official.
10:30AM - Told I'd missed the flight, nothing they could do except try changing my ticket at the ticket counter.
10:35AM - The considerably-more-alert-than-I ticket counter girl realises I'm actually flying Aegean, not Olympic.
10:36AM - Arrive at Aegean desk a little sweaty and check-in OK with 4 minutes to cut-off.
10:37AM - Boarding pass in hand, swear never again to drink the night before a travel day.

I spent all of ten minutes in Milan, precisely the amount of time it took me to buy a ticket and board the train to Monterosso. Even though sights like the Duomo interest me, I'd heard Milan is not the cheapest of cities to visit; maybe I'll go back there after not spending a thousand pounds in 10 days in London.

My lack of accommodation in Monterosso (the North-Westernmost of the famed Cinque Terre) did not worry me too much - after all, it was the low season - turns out, the number of accommodation options (particularly cheap ones) is pegged to the number of bumbags in the area, so half the places were shut. After walking around the entire town, up many steep roads, and discovering that I couldn't get a room for less than 50 Euro/night, I ended up staying in a gem of a place, right on the beach. My room was above the Ristorante Il Gabbiano, which is owned by an Olympic oarsman and his wife. If I was still rowing, I'd seriously consider a move to his rowing club - the food and scenery appear to do wonders (his daughter is an Italian sculling champion).

Despite suffering quite miserably from the flu, I hiked to Vernazza and Corniglio the next day along the #2 (seaside) track (map). Even the low track was considerably tougher than I'd expected - loads of steps and handrail-less cliffside patches - but absolutely stunning the whole way. Somewhere along the line I dropped my camera, so my pictures have a strange tilt-shift toy-town look about them.

Dinner again in Ristorante Il Gabbiano was excellent, I also bumped into a couple of stray New Yorkers (Nicole & Justine), who promised a drink in their hometown (in return for lugging their bags up a hill!).

Always eager to overdo things, I decided to walk a bit further on day two. I hiked back to Vernazza then up the #7 trail (which is literally like climbing up a 400m high ladder) to the #01 trail, which follows the ridge behind the five towns. I planned to walk all the way to Riomaggiore, then back along the lover's walk to Manarola and take the train from there. I didn't plan to run out of water 2 hours into what ended up being a 4 1/2 hour walk. The #01 walk is great if you have the time and legs, but if you don't feel like walking much, at least do the walk from Monterosso to Vernazza (best views in my book).

Naxos & Paros

I selected Naxos and Paros as my two Greek islands for the following reasons (I got asked this a lot): Naxos has nice beaches, a mountain, is relatively lush for a Greek island and is a hell of a lot closer to Paros and Piraeus (Athens' port) than my other candidates Santorini and Crete. Paros is the home of the Greek God of sports garters and paper, and Dad rode a donkey there. By fortunate coincidence, my stop in Paros allowed me to meet up with the HISA crew as well (and hopefully snaffle some free accommodation).

I had made tentative plans to meet up with a Canadian guy (Jeff) on Naxos at Pension Sofi (a cheapish hotel/house thingo); things were looking good for our rendezvous when I jumped off the ferry and an old guy with a Pension Sofi sign came limping/jogging up to me.
"Do you have a Canadian guy with you?", I inquired.
"Yes", he quickly affirmed.
"Is his name Jeff?"
"Yes", he replied swiftly with more vigorous head nodding.
Satisfied with my detective work, I jumped in his car and off we sped to the pension. At no time did it occur to me that perhaps the only word he knew in English was "yes". Upon arrival, Jeff's absence quickly established this fact. Sensing my distrust and quite probably my anger, my host served a welcoming snack of cheese and god-awful homemade wine. By now, I was starting to become suspicious that my wine had been drugged or somethin; worryingly if I'd asked my host a question to that effect, his undoubtedly affirmative answer would not have inspired confidence.

Lies, damn lies, aside; Pension Sofi was actually a nice and reasonable (20€ in Winter) place to stay. I had a room with a balcony that overlooked nothing much but it was out of the wind and got the afternoon sun. I have very fond memories of sitting in the sun, reading Catch-22 and consuming ridiculously cheap red wine with loads of feta, olives and dolmades.

On day two, I hired a mountain bike to ride around the island; not really sure why I did this - Naxos is not small, it was really windy and I could have afforded a car. I ended up riding down to Agiassos, which is at the very Southern end of the island; as I ate my lunch on a cliff top, I thought I was doing it pretty easily, despite my seriously undersized bike. I hadn't actually realised that I'd been pedalling with the wind the whole way there. I chose to ride back through the centre of Naxos, rather than re-trace my outbound route down the coast; this served only to prolong the ordeal, as there was no shelter from the wind screaming down the valleys. The interior of Naxos is quite green and, judging by the smell, home to a large number of pig farms. By the time I arrived back at the pension, my John Wayne dismount and swagger gave me the feeling that hiring the bike for two days may have been a little optimistic.

Owing to exceptional pain in the goochal region, I elected to spend the second day in repose, the sun and ebriated. It would have been the perfect Greek island holiday-day, had it not been for my ridiculously poor choice of restaurant for dinner. I remember there was a conscious decision making process (chiefly to do with the absurdly cheap menu), though in retrospect, I prefer to blame my moth-like inability to avoid very bright fluorescent lighting. Compounding matters, the bright lighting and humming, nay, yodelling fridges were entirely commensurate with the quality of the meal. My baked cod was cooked in a manner that rendered the bones edible, but the flesh essentially inedible. All clouds have a silver lining, however, and my lining was not one, but two Schwarzenegger/De Vito films on Greek TV that night. If you thought nothing could top the comedic genius of Arnie's deadpan performance in Twins; then consider his compelling and heartfelt interpretation of male pregnancy in Junior, which earned the film an Oscar nomination. De Vito's brilliance simply shines in both.

My ferry to Paros the next day was everything I expected from Blue Star: comfortable, punctual and buoyant (travel with them if you are doing the Greek islands). Derek very kindly took time out of his admittedly very relaxed schedule to meet me at the wharf and help me find lodging for the rest of the week. HISA came to the rescue with free lodging, which freed up my accommodation funds for many 1.80€ bottles of wine, ouzo and the local lager: Vergina (giggle). Having been out of the uni drinking scene for a good five years proved no obstacle to my continued inability to blend into social situations. Inspired by the improbable success of Dian Fossey (Gorillas in the Mist), with her chosen species of simian, I perched myself in Karen's Bar, where the group learnt to tolerate - and later accept - my presence, Dad jokes and wifebeater bedecked renditions of Down Under.

By day, I'm a big fan of Paros; Parikia (main town) is quite pretty and has loads of coffee, crepe and gyros options. I also visited Naoussa by bus, which features an idyllic little fishing harbour surrounded by stereotypical whitewashed buildings. For the first time in recorded history, I learnt from my mistakes and hired a car (rather than another pushy) to do the long distance sight-seeing. My little Hyundai or Kia thingo seemed eager to stretch its sole malformed leg; I obliged, taking a load of HISA crew (Derek, Pete, Kaitlyn and Sarah) off some of the less beaten and sealed tracks. For the second tour (with Derek, Emily and Lauren), we stopped at one of Paros's more famed tourist attractions: the romantic Valley of the Butterflies. Unfortunately this valley's butterflies only come out for a few months every year, so the tourist attraction is more closed than famed. Instead we went to one of Paros's better beaches: Aliki, which as Derek and I discoved, contains a mother lode of skipping stones.

My last night in Paros was spent in typical fashion with Emily, Sarah and Derek at my favourite Scottish landlord's bar (Karen's) - a fun and fitting end to my time on the island.

Athens

I cued a dramatic tear and bid farewell to my favourite pile of rocks in Northern Greece; a short bus trip montage scene later and I was in the capital city of togas, gyros and mathematical unknowns.

The first night I stayed in my guidebook's favourite hostel - The Student & Travellers Inn - it was crap. No internet, no common room or help from the staff. Don't stay there.

Compounding matters, my Japanese roomy appeared determined to derail my breakfast appointment at the hostel I'd decided to move to. I awoke at about 7am - plenty of time to secure a bunk at the Athens Backpackers - drearily gathered my showering things and trudged towards my en-suite bathroom (3 Euros extra). The inertia of my brain at that time of day did not permit me to appreciate, and not too much later, resent, the ninja-like speed of my roomy's transition from slumber to pole position in the shower. No matter, I thought, and perched myself in a displeased fashion and my underpants on the end of the bed. Ten minutes later, I had thought of enough scathing witticisms to greet him on returning from the bathroom and eagerly awaited his imminent appearance. Twenty minutes gone; irate. Thirty minutes down; irate a rittle bit ronger; then feverishly thump on the door, having now upgraded my witticisms to expletives. Success was mine! My Japanese roomy turned off the shower and poked his head out of the door to an onslaught of terse commentaries covering topics ranging from time management to water conservation (I didn't mention the war). I received a couple of appreciative nods for taking the time to educate him on European bathroom etiquette and he disappeared inside to resume his shower for a further twenty minutes.

The rest of my time in Athens was comparitively expeditious - I strongly recommend travelling there in Winter - warm enough for the beach (though the water was freezing) and I actually managed some tourist-free photos of the Parthenon. I won't say too much about this very famous landmark, other than that I was suitably awed and dressed; also that most of the information plaques were entirely preoccupied with slagging off earlier restoration attempts, rather than giving any useful information.

I stayed in Athens Backpackers - a newish hostel run by a couple of brothers from Perth - I can't recommend this place more highly: great staff, great fun, clean and secure. They also organised tours around Athens and a day trip to Corinth Canal and Nafplio - upon which I booked. The Corinth Canal is an engineering masterpiece, rich in history from ancient times to WWII; but what got me about the place was the old gypsy woman there (trying to sell knick-knacks) who sounded exactly like an Ewok - definitely worth the visit.

The main tourist attraction at Nafplio is a big fort on a hill; designed at the time to be impenetrable to all but the most comprehensive package tours. I befriended an amusingly hungover bloke from Michigan - Derek - on this excursion. Through Derek, I learnt all about Michigan's geography thanks to its famed resemblance to a hand. My attempts at reciprocating the geography lesson with Tasmania's geographical analogue were unfortunately thwarted by a lack of willing, and fleet-of-foot unwilling, volunteers. Derek (along with about 25 other students staying at Athens Backpackers) was en-route to a study abroad program (HISA) on the Greek isle, Paros.

The next day I embarked on a rather meandering stroll around Athens, with the sole aim of counting how many old men approached me and offered to buy me a drink (a common scam in Athens) - I only got one, so felt thoroughly un-touristy. The highlight of my day (obviously after giving myself a shampoo mohawk in the shower) came rather unexpectedly - I got caught up in a student riot protesting the liberalisation of the Greek university system. It was tremendously exciting watching the riot police jogging around in single file; I ducked down a side street away from the approaching front line of students, unfortunately I hadn't realised that the protest had looped around and I found myself in the tail-end of the violent section of the crowd. I must admit I'd always wanted to know what tear gas was like; though after losing about a litre of dignity through my nose, I realised I don't have the sinuses for political activism.

Thessaloniki and Meteora, Greece

Hey, there were plenty of clouds in sight;
it was cold, windy and shite;
and it rained;
the day Rhiny went away.

Anyone who's ever been on a cracking ski holiday will understand the day-after downer that hits when you drive away from the slopes. I'll simply say that Bulgarian weather and pizza don't do too much to lift the spirits. It wasn't all doom and gloom though - this day marked the start of my month-long trek across Europe, from Bulgaria to Spain. After waving goodbye to Rhiny, my snowboard and the last shred of a well planned holiday; I hopped on the night bus to Thessaloniki (a.k.a. Salonica, in Northern Greece), buoyant with confidence and anticipation of waking up in a new city the next day.

My buoyant mood went down like most of my jokes, however, when at 2am we were turfed out at a very closed and dark bus station in a very cold, closed and dark street in Thessaloniki.

Intrepid traveller trip #1: Check bus travel times.
Intrepid traveller trip #2: Book accommodation if you're arriving at a strange city at 2am in winter.

The taxi driver I wearily selected did not seem at all perturbed by our inability to communicate with each other. My appreciation of his entrepreneurial optimism was only strengthened when it became apparent that he did not know where any of the budget hotels in my guidebook were located; and dropped me near none of them anyway.

Luckily, I stumbled across the Tourist Hotel - a friendly, expensive and spartan (technically Macedonian) hotel that I'd recommend were it not for the city it was located in. After a brief (though generous) morning seeing the sight...s, I went about organising the next leg of my hastily assembled, then revised, itinerary.

I had initially planned to knock on the door of the gods at Number 1, Mt. Olympus St. until I found out that casual climbers can only trek to the top in Summer (and the only hotel in my guidebook was closed for reno's). A hasty re-read of my guidebook saw me instead on the bus to Trikala - en-route to Meteora.

Any romantic notions I had previously held about buying a moped and riding around Greece were quickly shelved while observing our bus driver's contempt for our mopedal brethren. To take my mind off the blood splattered windscreen, I chatted to an affable university student named, of all the names one could be named, Aphrodite. For those a little rusty on Greek deities, Aphrodite was the goddess of love; though now, through a controversial Dodekatheonial reshuffle, is now the goddess of Tourism, Public Transport and Translating for Australian Backpackers - a challenging portfolio.

I stayed in Also's House, Kalampaka; which is at the base of Meteora, the first album photo is the view from my room. Meteora is a region of enormous vertical sandstone rocks carved out of the side of a valley by giant monks in the 11th Century, who then hid their special collection of miniature monasteries on top of them for safe keeping... or something.

The next morning I awoke to see pretty much nothing except drizzle and mist - not the best weather for seeing high altitude sights. Disregarding my guidebook's advice (take the bus to the monastries), I set out with a pack of McVitie's Digestives up the narrow valley behind my guest house. Fortunately (and improbably) this decision to hike up was a good one; I spent about 8 hours scrambling up and down muddy goat tracks between the monasteries and smaller peaks - watching the clouds drift between the cliffs and tour buses. This was probably the only way to get part of the place to yourself. Oh, and the Digestives were a winner.

Borovets, Bulgaria

With Rhiny, a hangover and - as it turned out - not my merino scarf in tow (the last two attributable to one too many glasses of the hostel nightshift guy's homemade rakia); we set off in a taxi towards the Sofia Southern bus terminal, our first leg of the trip to the ski fields of Borovets. The taxi ride was only memorable for two reasons: the temporal lobe resonating Turkish house music and a quote from the taxi driver in a discussion with Rhiny:
Taxi man: "Bulgaria is a great place, but not the people"
Rhiny: "Why's that?"
Taxi man: "No fair play."
Those three words quite neatly summarised the behaviour of the most prominent feature of tourism in Bulgaria (read: street hawkers for pubs/restaurants), though everyone else was very faire about trying to bleed every last leva ($) out of us.

Our first bus ride dropped us at the wholly unremarkable and unavoidable town of Camokob (pron: Samokov); a very long 15 minute wait in subzero weather later and we were onboard the local bus to the ski resort town of Borovets.

Rhiny and I stayed in the bribed-someone-for-that-third-star three star Hotel Olymp, which was alone alittle way up a ski run. The Olymp is actually an ex-Bulgarian Ministry of Defence facility, a previous life that was no merely a footnote; the only modification I could nail down since its MoD days was the big neon Olymp sign. Our room was big, comfortable and just ugly enough that I'm sure extended stays there were used as a form of psychological endurance testing by the MoD.

Thanks to generous Cold War defense budgets, the hotel had a plethora of 80's era apres-ski entertainment options: a maybe-Olympic-sized indoor swimming pool, indoor tennis court, indoor table tennis table court, arcade machines, foosball table and Jason Donovan music. Yes, not since my sister last spun the steel wheel bedecked with her favourite record single - Too Many Broken Hearts - way back in '89, had I heard one of JD's greatest hits; yet Rhiny and I were treated to a free and awful musical smorgasbord every night we endured the free and awful culinary smorgasbord. As if it could get no better, JD's hits were served up among a platter of Bulgarian pop-folk and other 80's tracks by a crooner that Boris - the affable and tanked barman - described as a Neanderthal. Words failed me.

There are two main areas of the Borovets resort: Borovets (older and a bit smaller) and Yastrebetz (slightly higher and larger); they're joined by a sort-of-snow-but-mainly-horse crap covered track, or taking the Yastrebetz gondola downhill to town. On day one, Rhiny and I awoke to glorious sunshine and about 20-30cm of fresh-ish squeaky powder - absolutely magic. We skied down from Olymp into town to get our passes from our Bulgaria Ski rep and boarded the scarily early Communist-era Yastrebetz gondola. Fortunately our late-ish start didn't matter, as the top of the mountain was closed for fog in the morning - we ended up being two of the first to ski/board the highest part of the mountain that day. After last winter in Perisher/Thredbo, I was just about wetting my exceedingly large snowboarding pants on that first ride. Unfortunately, that section of the mountain is only serviced by butt-buttons , so by the end of the day I had a bruise of my left thigh that bore a striking resemblance to Van Gogh's Starry Night.

That night we jumped on a pub crawl organised partly by our travel agents, the only notable memories from that night were singing Winds of Change (Scorpion) with some Welsh from Olymp; and the fact that about 70% of the clientele were English and probably underage.

We spent most of our nights sinking a few in Titanic Bar (boom-ching); mainly because the bar staff were cool and they didn't have an annoying hawker outside luring us in with irresistible chants of "English Football on TV!" and "Free shot, free shot!". Bogan Pommy soccer fans have almost single-handedly wrecked the night life for that reason, though the locals' belief that hawking is a necessary part of business goes some way to re-apportioning the blame. The other reason we drank at Titanic was their awesome method of serving "After Shock" (40%, red and cinnamon flavoured), involving napkins, straws, glasses and lots of fire. I rediscovered the reason why I'm no longer employed in the hospitality industry, however, when I quite spectacularly and painfully set fire to my thumbs when preparing (what turned out to be) my last After Shock for the week.

On the snowboarding side, the rest of the holiday was OK, the days were all quite warm and the nights were freezing; so we were skiing on (sometimes groomed) icy snow in the mornings and slush in the afternoons. By day five, it wasn't too good - lots of bare patches - though there were lots of paths, tree-skiing and unpopular red runs out of the way that were still fine. The most annoying part about Borovets is that it really is a skiers' resort - we spent quite a while skating around flat green runs to get across the mountains.

Sofia and Rila Monastery, Bulgaria

Apparently the correct pronunciation is Sofia, not Sofeea. So start reading it that way from now on, unless you want the KGB knocking on your door. They know.

The fanfare and ticker-tape parade I had expected upon my arrival in Sofia - as the first Westerner to visit the country in 127 years - did not go ahead as planned. Not entirely sure what happened there; though I'm pinning it on either the awful weather or the rowdy English stag party that was on my plane. Alas, Bulgaria is not (as I'd imagined) a haven of '50s Communist technology and architecture garnished with a small pinch of perestroika; rather it's just another country on the fast advancing Eastern front of favourable exchange rates, cheap flights and cheaper "entertainment". This was the case in Krakow (Southern Poland) two years ago; I fear this (predominantly English) bogan blitzkrieg will outpace my travel plans for the rest of my life, so us Aussies are going to have to remain in the one place the English hate: England.

My airport pickup was the first thing to start the alarm bells: getting in an unmarked dodgy old car with a dodgy old driver who shouted at me in very broken English. Fortunately he dropped me off at the correct dodgy old alley outside my Hostel Mostel. Quite a pleasant hostel by all accounts: free breakfast, free dinner, free beer (one), free internet, and free pervading smell of cheese; though the clientele were a little hit and miss: (the miss) the big girl in our room who kept sitting up in bed and shouting at the window; (the hit) the Kiwi and Pommy couple who I played darts with in one of the ubiquitous Irish pubs. Also the bed linen felt like you were sandwiched between a waffle and a coir door mat; one-nil to the silk sleeping bag liner.

Sofia is not overflowing with sights, so you can pretty much see the city between free breakfast and free dinner. The highlights for me were the Ministry of Silly Walks (photo in my album) and a decrepit monument (I didn't have my camera) that one free local guide book (this one, I think) described as the "seven sided thing with five pricks".

Having seen the city, I decided to take the hostel's organised tour to Rila monastery. This is an amazing old building high up in a valley in the Rila mountains (same mountain range as our ski resort). I'll let the photos do the talking...

To be honest, the highlight of the car ride for me was seeing all the ramshackle houses and flats on the outskirts of Sofia. The building techniques in Bulgaria are such, that for the first part of the ride, I really couldn't work out whether or not the houses had been shelled or were still nearing completion (while people lived there).

My very good friend Ryan arrived the next day quite grumpily, owing to a 3 hour wait at the Sofia airport in the courtesy car; we soon fixed that up with some traditional Bulgarian pizza (it's everywhere) and a visit to a traditional Bulgarian night club. The club we went to was split into a bunch of rooms: techno, p-diddy, retro and Bulgarian folk overlaid with dance beats (yes it's god-awful in case you were wondering, but they love it). The techno room reminded me of the Russian dance club scene from Syphon Filter 2 (who's with me!!) - crazy loud synth music, dancers on podiums, silver flying saucers hanging from the roof, and everything was glowing red. The clientele were stereotypically modern Eastern bloc too: tall bored looking models dancing beside stolid, solid men in black leather jackets that kinda gave you the impression that you should look at the spaceships instead of the tall bored looking models. Aside from a few big-name shops (mostly empty) and even fewer Mercedes around town, this was the first sign of real money we'd seen in Bulgaria.

Londinium Calling

Ah, the Motherland. Could Shaun Micallef have put it any better?

As it turns out, Micallef's depiction is not entirely true for the vast majority of the West End (not that I saw the inside any of those houses). My week and a bit in London was a bit of a whirlwind, what with all the sights seen and tiles got on, but a whirlwind that reaffirmed my love for the place. I'm looking forward to working there at the end of the year. Of course the highlight of London was seeing, dining and dining with Jane, Ed, Breyden and Lucy and seeing/meeting all their pals abroad - though two events are worth mentioning as they appeal to the opposite ends of my nerd/jock personality.

Game On
Explore the history, technology and culture of computer games in this new special exhibition. From the PDP-1 of the 1960s to the latest consoles (oh, yeah, this is the nerdy bit) - by all normal social yardsticks this was an uncool thing to go to; by my diminuitive social yardstick, on the other (joystick) hand, this was hella cool. Most of my favourite retro arcade games were there - notably my favourite of all time: Galaga - and every console you could think of (NES, SNES, Sega Master System and Megadrive/Genesis, Game Boy, Atari Lynx, Atari 7800, C64, PS1, PS2, PS3, N64, GameCube, Wii etc.) and probably twice as many that didn't make the mainstream.

But like most nerdly gatherings, I left dissatisfied and alone. The organisers neglected to mention in the blurb that children would be admitted to this holy shrine of imbalanced upbringing. Many times I would stride (well, nerdily limp - it's my club foot) over to a particular gaming machine only to be thwarted at the last hobble by a nimble youth; a creature that appears to respond to the stimuli of complex patterns of light and noises by manically pounding anything within striking range. Creationists rejoice, human children haven't evolved since at least the time of Bamm-Bamm Rubble.

"But... but they can't even appreciate it!" I protested to the parent of the offender; never quite finding the nerve to verbalise this protestation. Though I am fairly sure my strangled wheezes and pathetic grin adequately conveyed my indignation as I retreated back to the 8-bit security of Galaga.

Lord's/MCC Tour
Through an improbable sequence of recruitment, expansion and further recruitment, followed by an offer of alternative employment, my father is an old (he's sixty something) colleague and friend of the present Secretary and Chief Executive of Marylebone Cricket Club - Keith Bradshaw. Keith generously invited Jane and I to a personal tour around Lord's: the players' dressing rooms, balconies, the Long Room and members' areas, Media Centre (spaceship) and all the training areas. I remember being a cricket fan even before I could tell the difference between Boony's and Merv's moustaches (Merv's is rougher on the skin); so to visit the home of cricket and see the ground and the Ashes urn was even better than driving (quickly) through Ricky's Mowbray.

Leaving on a jet plane

Hobart -> Sydney -> Hong Kong -> London

After managing to lose my phone (and principally the phone numbers of pretty much anyone I've ever known) about 30hrs before leaving Hobart; things were shaping up like an unset jelly, much as I have become accustomed to expect.

Not so, however, for the first 24-odd hours; the flight over was about as good as it could have been: empty planes from Sydney -> Hong Kong and Hong Kong -> London. I managed to blag a row of 4 chairs all to myself on both legs (of the flight), probably more comfy than business class (especially as the compressed width of the largest accommodable buttock multiplied by 4, plus 3 stowed armrests, is approximately 6'4"; meaning I could stretch out). Suffer in your caviar, business boys.

Perhaps one area where the business boys may have been one up on me is that of movie selection. To satiate Dale Kerrigan's appetite for these details, I watched The Guardian (featuring Kevin Costner, much as a teenager may feature a pimple) and Babel, both of them utter rubbish. I would have walked out, had the doors not been secured and cross-checked.

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