Day 155 - Body clock reassignment in Buenos Aires

There are some things that you take for granted in this diverse world of ours. The sun comes up in the morning. You have breakfast, lunch then dinner. Then you go to bed. Except in Buenos Aires.

We found an apartment four days after we arrived. It was real shame to leave our pokey, cheaply renovated, situated-on-top-of-a-nightclub-that-didn't-close-until-6am hostel-pretending-to-be-a-BnB, but we dealt with it and moved on. We're resilient like that.

We both agreed that the apartment was a steal. It's a big, white open plan apartment that wouldn't look out of place in some Hollywood film, such as Basic Instinct or maybe even Flesh Gordon 6. It was also remarkably good value, as it happens to be located on the border between San Telmo and La Boca, the latter being one of the most notorious neighbourhoods (or barrios) in BA.

The truth is though that it really isn't that dangerous. San Telmo reminds me a bit of Newtown in Sydney. There are a few dodgy characters hanging around, but really nothing to be all that worried about. The history of it is that the citys' oldest barrio used to be home to the city's elite, until various epidemics sent them packing in the 19th century. Ownership then passed to newly arrived poor immigrant families, until it's recent resurgence. As a result, San Telmo has a certain run-down charm to it. It's main street, Defensa, is crowded with overpriced antique shops, similarly-priced designer boutiques and the odd quaint little bars.

It's a nice place to stay, with the benefit of being full of extraordinarily low-priced butchers, greengrocers and supermarkets. Hell, even the corner shops can sell you a freshly cut sirloin for the extortionate price of around AU$4 a kilo.

However, whilst a great place to hang, there's more to Buenos Aires than a single barrio. Which brings me to my first point.

Rach and I have become accustomed to waltzing into a city, quickly establishing the things to see and places to go and being out of there within a week, happy we've got what we came for. Buenos Aires is different.

It's a big place; a very vibrant city. We started our exploration in Palermo - which is a bit like the BA version of Paddington - and there it soon became clear how much there is to get through. Never mind the bars, cafes, restaurants and boutiques you can see, it's the ones hidden behind unmarked doors that you're really looking for.

I remember when I first came back to live in Sydney. I remember the day I came to the conclusion that Sydney was a city that takes at least a year to become acquainted with. Well, BA is the same.

But what makes it especially strange is the hours people keep. The phrase "city that never sleeps" gets banded about all too easily. I've been out in New York at ungodly hours and seen eveything positively closed. Try finding a restaurant open in Mexico City late on a Sunday evening. Realistically, there is nowhere you'd want to be drinking in Sydney after normal closing time. BA, however, turns things on it's head.

I'd read about BA's odd hours, but I didn't believe it. Until I saw it. You can be in a restaurant after midnight and catch people still coming in for dinner. Bars simply don't start to hum until after 1am. Nobody even bothers trying to get to a club before 3am.

It really does take some getting used to. The first few times, we headed out for a late dinner (steak, of course. You kind of feel you have to to begin with) and a bottle of red wine, and next thing you know it's 1am and you're ready for bed.

It's not easy. I'm not even sure I like it yet. I've always been a "safe-and-sound-back-home-before-the-sun-comes-up" kind of guy". As Lily Allen said, being out after sunrise just doesn't feel right.

However, we've slowly got increasingly (though not completely) used to it and discovered that the key lies in making two changes to the way you live.

First secret is; siesta. Now, if there is a practice I would like to bring back with me, it's the concept of getting your head down for three hours every afternoon. Sublime.

The second is a change of pace. The pace here seems a little slower. Sydney, in comparison, seems to embody a "lets race out and do everything as quickly as possible" philosophy. BA is more of a "what's the rush?" place.

No doubt, it would get annoying if you lived here for a while. However, in the here and now, where we don't need to be anywhere or do anything according to a schedule, I kind of like it.

Now, if you'll excuse me. It's time for my afternoon nap. I have a busy evening ahead of me. :)

Day 140 - A big trip from Tupiza to Salta to Buenos Aires

Big. Even the word itself bulges as it exits your mouth. It may not be long, but it sounds phatter than Barry White in a sumo suit.

The city we are in now - Buenos Aires - is big. However, everything has been big for a while now; all the way down from Tupiza. Big, big, big.

Tupiza, as you'll know was like Happy Stepford. Big smiles, big sun and big red wines with more body than a BBW meeting. We weren't far from the Argentine border and the influence was showing.

I never did see the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (then again, Sebastiaan and Yolande had never seen Star Wars, so I'm least to blame), but apparently they died near Tupiza (that's Butch and Sundance, not Sebastiaan and Yolande). They tried to rob a donkey stagecoach carrying money, only it wasn't. Like, dur. Doesn't really seem worthy of a film.

Tupiza is definitely cowboy country. We took a couple of small but very feisty stock horses out for a day. Most of the time, with trail horses, you spend all your time trying to get them to go. We spent most of our time trying to get them to stop. Mine refused to travel at any speed less than a giddy prance (yes, a prance!). Its quite important not to go too fast when you're traveling along train tracks, or so I'm told.

The area around Tupiza is what I imagined Mexico would be like. It's lots of sandstone canyons, windblown arches and dry river beds. Galloping down a river bank on the back of horse with a gallop that sounds like a misfiring machine gun is awesome. More fun than a bum full of smarties.

The Argentine border took a while to get across a few days later. We waited in line for an hour to get our bags checked - missing our bus to Salta in the process - only to have the customs man wave us through without a search when we said we were Australian. Why? Can't Australians be criminals too?

Seven hours later, in the dead of night, we crash landed in Salta at the best hostel so far; Hostel Inti Huasi. It's more friendly than Peruvian trying to sell you something, only without the nasty aftertaste.

It was here, in this small colonial town that we undertook the operation formerly named "First Steak in Argentina". You see, according to everyone, Argentina has the best beef in the world. Depending on exactly who you ask, it lies somewhere between what happened to Buddha when he went into the forest, and dying of a heart attack whilst bedding with the San Fransisco 49ers cheer squad. And they're not wrong.

Juicy. Succulent. And did I mention big? This is a country with more pastureland than it knows what to do with. Argentinian beef doesn't just melt in your mouth. It tickles your tonsils with crafty fingers, whispers sweet nothings into your ears and slides down your throat like a gravy over baked potatoes. But wait! There's more! Tasty red wines of bloody brilliant quality to accompany. And all for the bargain basement price of $9.99.

No. I'm serious.

The best steak? Awesome wine? Cheap as a box full of baby chickens? I think it was at that point I decided that Argentina and I, we might have a future together.

But we weren't there yet. Onto a big arse bus we went, reclined into our sofa-sized leather armchairs and sat out the 21 hours to make it to Argentina's capital federal.

And now, here we are. And it couldn't be more different from Bolivia if it tried. BA is like Paris, inhabited by Italians, who speak Spanish.

It's all cafes and boutiques and pavement eateries and bakeries and trattorias and Peugeots and Gothic architecture and honking horns and grand parks and people talking at each other using their hands.

Tomorrow, we start looking for an apartment. However, right now, I'm hungry. Hungry to bask in the glow of a dirty, beautiful, big city again. Especially one which looks as big and beautiful as BA does in the evening light.

Might have a big steak and a big red wine too. In fact, it could be a big night.


Photos from Tupiza are here

Day 133 – Into the wilds of Bolivia

It's truly surprising how many songs lend themselves nicely to llama-risation.

For example, there's Llama-Mia (sung to the tune of Abba's Mamma-mia), Llama Poo (sung to the tune of Abba's Waterloo), Walk Like a Llama (sung to the tune of The Bangles' Walk Like an Egyptian) and Llamas a la Playa (sung to the tune of Righeira's Vamos a la Playa).

And that's before we even touch on cross-species hits like You Can Call Me Alpaca (sung to the tune of Paul Simon's You Can Call Me Al).

I think the real point here is that four days in a 4WD, traveling through some of Bolivia's most beautifully rugged and isolated terrain, is a long time. And the quality of your journey really does depend on who you share it with.

Most people choose to base themselves in the town of Uyuni when exploring the Salt Flats of Uyuni- it's the obvious choice. Although it's the cheapest way of doing it, there are one or two downsides to this option.

As Max (the all-knowing barman at Oliver's Travels in La Paz) explained; the problem is, Uyuni is a shithole. And because Uyuni is a shithole, the people who live in Uyuni, such as the guides who run the tours, tend to be somewhat unmotivated, uninterested, unscrupulous, unhappy and just plain drunk. Not really the most comforting ingredients for a great four day trip into a what is, for all intents and purposes, a huge and dangerous desert wasteland.

Instead, Max suggested, better to stay on the southbound train for another six hours and get off at the small town of Tupiza. Whilst we would probably pay more, we'd end up having a much better time, both in the Tupiza itself ('not a shithole') and on the tour.

Whilst he may look like Keith Richards' little brother, there can be no doubt Max is a wise, wise man. Tupiza is to Uyuni what Cameron Diaz is to the ugly guy out of the Goonies.

It's one of those small towns where everybody seems to be terminally happy. The sun always seems to be shining. People seem to be stopping in the street and having conversations. It's like the Bolivian version of Stepford, but without the eerie feeling something strange is going on.

We spent the night at the Hotel La Torre. It's a fantastic place, which at one time would have been an amazing home for someone. Again, Stepford style, everyone there was super-friendly and ready to bleed a stone to help.

Within an hour of arriving, we'd booked our excursion into the wilderness with the hotel's tour company, La Torre Tours. The next morning, we met our travel partners. Not for the first time this trip, we found ourselves partnered with Dutch travel companions; this time Yolanda and Sebastiaan. Making up our group, was our (yet again) two incredibly friendly guide and cook, Juan Carlos and his childhood friend/ lover/ girlfriend/ wife/ ? (we never did find out), Espernaza.

So, off we set into the wild. I'd love to tell you about all the landscape we passed along the way, but the truth is it would take up pages and pages and pages. Every valley was completely different from the last, ranging from rugged spaghetti-western terrain to desolate desert landscape to green mountain tundra. The only consistent throughout was the llamas and vicuñas (wild llamas that look a but like gazelles) that could frequently be seen on the roadside It was beautiful and really brought home how diverse Bolivia really is.

Juan Carlos kept us informed along the way in kindly basic Spanish, enabling us all to add Spanish-practice to the list of tour benefits. Esperanza kept us well fed. And we did the rest.

I can't recall a four day period when I have laughed so much. The kilometers – all 1000 of them – fell to the wayside like confetti. Seb and Yolandi were awesome travel companions and I was genuinely disappointed when we had to part ways at the end.

Then, on the final day, we arrived at the Salt Flats of Uyuni. They really are quite a site. Salt, salt everywhere and not a sight of green. 12,000km2 of brilliant white nothingness, stretching as far as the eye can see, and interrupted only by small islands inhabited by 12m tall cacti.

Scaling one of the islands before breakfast that morning, Rachel pointed out that the rocks we were walking on looked a lot like coral. She was right. It is spooky to think that the whole place used to be a great sea, and the spot we were stood in was previously meters underwater.

The truth is; little is known about this place, officially the worlds' largest salt lake. However, one interesting side effect of the lack of vegetation is the lack of perspective. As a result, photographers flock to the Salar de Uyuni to take trick photos. We spent a good hour and a half mucking around and coming up with ideas for photos, only interrupting events with the occasional game of football in the empty expanses of the Flats.

We arrived back in our little town in Tupiza at around 7:30pm, after a marathon drive from Uyuni, happy, tired and sated.

Funnily enough, its one of the few times I've ever seen Rachel not ask for salt with her dinner.


You can find all the photos from the Salt Flats here

Day 129 – Hitting the wall

At about 6:54pm on Sunday 13 September, Rachel and I both agreed that we had hit the wall. Rachel had a bit of a cry. I looked out at the passing, desolate landscape and felt the same wave of sadness.

Travel is an amazing thing. In the four and a half months since we left Australia's golden shores, we've slowly lowered ourselves into a bubbling pot of new experiences. From the shiny and familiar starting line that was the USA, we now find ourselves in Bolivia.

When I lived in Japan, people used to talk about Culture Shock. The term refers to the psychological and physical side effects a person can experience when immersed in a significantly different cultural environment. It's serious stuff, it can make you sick. I've also heard it best described as; being adrift on an ocean of unfamiliarity.

I'd forgotten all about it until that moment on the train. Then it all came flooding back.
The place we are in now, Bolivia, is very different from home. Great, really great, but very different. Sometimes even something as simple as buying food requires special effort. At those times, I miss the simple things that I used to take for granted. A big weekend with friends. A quiet chat over a beer down the pub. A meat pie and sauce.

We caught the bus down from to Oruro on Sunday. The plan was to head to Tupiza on the overnight train. From there, we would head into the the National Park and the Salt Flats of Uyuni for four days.

Arriving in Oruro was like having eel-infested cold custard poured down your pants. Once a rich tin mining mecca, this is a town fallen on hard times. Dusty and desolate, the whole place reeks of misery. We wandered around, tried to be friendly. However, our “holas” were met only with blank stares, or hushed mutterings. People stared at us as we walked through markets. We stuck out like a marketing manager at a MENSA meeting.

We boarded our train at 6:30pm. It looked quaint from the outside, but smelled of old socks on the inside. A tour group of elderly Germans cacophonied into the carriage, wearing enough expedition gear to climb Everest. Then the videos started.

They were bad, terrible, evil videos. Morbidly uncool 1980s Latin American pop stars in bad clothes. They sung and danced with such effort, but looked and sounded like cats being shorn. Then the train conductor told us we weren't being fed until breakfast, eight hours away. Suddenly, we were both adrift in the ocean.

For a moment, it all got too much. The wall came shooting up in front of us. Unclimbable. Impenetrable. Looming.

We talked. We talked about that fateful day so many months ago we'd decided to commit to our adventure. We talked about why we were here, what we wanted to achieve. We talked about our comfort zones and why it was important to be outside of them. We talked about where we'd been and where we were going; today, tomorrow and in the years to come.

Soon, the sun set. We sunk into our chairs and slept, the clickedy-clack of the train providing the perfect sedative.

I think holidays are about having a good time, all the time. I don't believe traveling, life even, is the same. In order to appreciate the highs, there have to be downs. Sometimes, the deeper the better. Without this, surely any journey would be nothing more than a constantly joyless trudge across even ground. A mind-numbing trip across a featureless fugue plain.

As Kurt Kobain once alluded to, there is comfort in being sad. Sometimes it's healthy to feel that you are a long way from home, well outside your comfort zone and with nothing going right. Sometimes, it's important to be exposed to sorrow. It helps you appreciate the moments of sublime glee when Mr Happy decides ride his sunshine skateboard into your life and sprinkle rainbow dust in your eyes.

Twelve hours later, Rachel and I disembarked the train and emerged into the bright sunshine of Tupiza's small town square. Things looked different. People returned our greetings with a sunny “hola” and bright smiles.

Suddenly, the wall was nowhere to be seen.

Day 128 – La Paz, Bolivia

Just when you though Peru couldn't get any more farcical.

We arrived back from the Inca Trail full of joy and happiness. Sure, there had been a bit of unpleasantness when the topic of tips came up (an expectation vs reward issue), but we were on a high.

Before going on the Inca Trail, we'd bought our bus tickets to Bolivia. We were (easily) persuaded to go for a little luxury. Fully reclining seats and loads of legroom for a few extra Soles, the seemingly lovely Peruvian lady at Nuevo Continental/ CIAL bus company told us.

A week later. we turned up at the bus terminal a week later as required. We waited. The 10pm “standard” service left. We waited for our 10:20pm luxury service to be called.

At 10:10pm, we were herded into a taxi by the CIAL lady's' colleague. Our bus was apparently now leaving from another terminal. I smelled a rat, but kept my cool.

The scam became clear about 30 mins later. After being taken to the edge of town, our taxi driver flagged down the first bus that came our way. We were unceremoniously dumped on board. No fully reclining seats. No luxury service. To add insult to injury, it was the 10pm standard service we had been talked out of paying less for.

Wow. Peruvian company in blatant lies shocker (Once again; CIAL/ Neuvo Continental – take heed dear readers). Who would have thought.

I mention this story to give you some context as to how we could have been so happy to find ourselves in the capital city of Bolivia, La Paz. I introduce it to give you some insight into the chalk-and-cheese contrast between the place we were leaving, and our destination.

La Paz is a strange city. Everything about it is odd. Firstly, it's located at considerable altitude, between 3600m and 4100m. I say between, because the second strange thing about La Paz is that it is built inside a huge natural bowl in the earth. The whole place looks like it should be on Mars.

Now in Sydney (or most other cities for that matter), you tend to pay more for a view. Not so in La Paz. The higher up the side of the crater, the poorer the community tends to be. Therefore, sitting in the bottom of the whole city are the richer areas and the city centre. Whilst clinging for dear life upon the barren crater walls are all manner of ramshackle homes and businesses.

Possibly as a result of the bowl it sits in, the city is very polluted, fueled in no small way by the hordes of smoke-belching buses and minivans that race up and down the tiny, colonial streets. Crossing the road is an exercise in split-second timing.La Paz has a manic pace about it. People are absolutely everywhere. Suits on mobiles mix with little old ladies in traditional costumes. Street stalls stand next to swanky restaurants. It's like someone bought a build-your-own city kit and simply poured it onto a table. It's fabulous.

From the moment we arrived, we were engulfed in a wave of friendliness that, after the trials of Peru, was like being coated in natural yoghurt. Everyone is happy to chat. They don't want anything, they are just happy to talk. Phil, the bar manager at the Adventure Brew Hostel where we stayed, took us under his wing from Day 1. He told us where to go, what to see and introduced us along the way to all manner of denizens of this fine city.

Within the space of 9 days in Bolivia's finest, we'd seen the best her nightlife has to offer. We ate great meals at great restaurants. We checked out the weird and weirder still at the Witches Market (Llama foetus anyone?). I played futsal against the hostel's security guards team at altitude (which, for the record, hurts like hell). And then, on the Friday, we rode the World's Most Dangerous Road.

I won't go into the details of what the World's Most Dangerous Road is exactly – I'll leave that to the very capable people at B-Side, with whom we rode. I'll simply say this. The experience of racing downhill for 63km on that road, on the back of a $2,500 mountain bike, is awesome. Do it.

I'd recommend La Paz to anyone who asks. However, I was happy to leave. It's a crazy, unique, buzzy, brilliant city, but it's not a place to relax. Anyone can simply blend in, do your thing and go about your business undisturbed. However, one thing La Paz doesn't offer a high standard of living. It takes ages to go places; get things done. The pollution and altitude make you feel like you are constantly slightly fluey. Simply, life in La Paz isn't easy.

But here's the icing on the cake. The cherry on top that brought home for me why we enjoyed being in La Paz so very much. Why we both reckon Bolivia and Bolivians rock.

Upon going to the bus station to buy our ticket to head south, we asked the lady behind the counter about the bus we'd be traveling on. Her response?

“It's comfortable enough, but the toilets won't work. They never work”

And you know what? Once the truth be told, we didn't really mind.


La Paz photos can be sampled here

Day 115 – The Inca Trail and Machu Pichu

It's a bit hard to know what to write about the Inca Trail. It feels a bit like writing about Lindsey Lohan's sex life; everyone seems to know quite a bit already.

In the interests of avoiding the same old, cliched trustafarian travelogue descriptions (“Machu Pichu is a spiritual experience blah blah blah”), I'll get to the point.

It was harder than I thought. Day 1 of the trail is a gentle toddle along a river before a slightly more challenging hour and a half uphill. Nothing too taxing. Then comes Day 2.

Day 2, quite frankly, is a bitch. It's the bastard son of a swift kick in the nuts and finding poo in your sundae. Rachel and I had make the decision to carry our own equipment, rather than give it to the porters (more on them later). Whilst I don't regret it in hindsight, at the time it did not seem like a great decision.

Day 2 sees you trudge your way (very) slowly up from about 3100m altitude to 4200m. Then, once you reach the top, you look down and realise that you have to walk down another 700m along some of the most rocky and uneven path I've ever seen.

Then, after lunch, it's up the other side of another mountain of giddying heights before yet another bone shattering descent to camp for an early night in bed.

After that, Day 3, whilst having a rather charming 1km vertical descent down the worlds' longest staircase, is a bit of a walk in the park. Whilst, Day 4 is little more than an early-morning stroll up a mountain to the final location that this whole bloody walk in the countryside is about.

In all honesty, it's not a physically taxing proposition. The two middle-aged Australian gents who we shared a group with were, by their own admission, not fitness nuts. They completed it in good time. It's tough, but at the end of the day it's one of those things that. if you get it in your mind you're going to do, you will end up doing.

The other thing that keeps you going is the porters.

When a good part of your day is spent standing to one side on the track, to let men carrying half their bodyweight in camping equipment run ahead of you to set up camp, it's kind of hard to claim the trail is in the “too hard” basket.

The porters are supermen. Their ability to lug gear up inclines most of us would struggle unladen is astounding. I genuinely felt embarrassed walking into camp two hours behind them and having them clap us. Amazing.

So, as you can imagine, when we arrived at the Sun Gate to Machu Pichu on the morning of Day 4, we were well rested, well fed and well educated on the Inca Empire. And we were greeted by....cloud.

Luckily, it didn't last long. We dropped down a few hundred meters to lay eyes on the picture postcard view the world knows. Beautifully set against the mountains in the background and teeming with people.

I still find it strange to this day that despite walking four days to arrive at the crown in the jewel of Peru's grand historical past, people on tour buses were allowed to enter the site a good hour before us. Call me a meritocrat, but it seems topsy-turvy.

So, what's it like? Well, it's beautiful. A lot of effort has gone into restoring the site, and it shows. Sure, it's an incredibly touristy place, complete with $5 cans of Coke. However, standing on the edge of the highest temple looking down into the valley below is a giddy feeling, and you can't take that away.

But, you know what? It's not the site itself that amazes. Sure, the brickwork is good, but to my layman eyes it doesn't look any more impressive than European castles of the same era, The societal structure and agricultural achievements seem amazing, but then again, think of India or China.

What really blew me away about Machu Pichu and the Incas was; where they built their empire. This is a land of impossibly high mountains, deep crevice-like valleys and inclines so steep it makes you wonder if you'd ever stop falling. This is a landscape that most civilizations would not even consider exploring. The Incas made this their domain and built an empire, which at it's height, had more people in it than the whole of Europe.

The thing is; I think the only reason I came to appreciate it is because we walked four days to get there. We experienced first hand how hard it must have been to travel between cities. How hard it must have been to transport food and raw materials (remembering the Incas did not have horses). We saw other sites along the way, each with their own exacting purpose and character. It all provided essential parts to a story that only became complete at the grand finale.

Sat there on the top of Old Mountain, watching the throngs pour off their buses, I came to this conclusion. For all the beauty of Machu Pichu, it's the walk along the Inca Trail itself that was most worthwhile.



You can have a squizz at all the Inca Trail photos by clicking here

Stevie Aird is coming to town!

Ladies and gentlemen; citizens of Buenos Aires.

It is my great pleasure to announce the imminent arrival of Mr Stephen Aird to your fine, fair and previously untainted city.

Stephen is a man who needs little introduction. As you will be no doubt be aware, He is a legend in his own lifetime. He is a man of awesome stature in numerous fields, including erotic fiction, naked all-in Turkish wrestling and, of course, horse husbandry. The fact that He is so modest in refusing to talk about these, or His collection of Swedish penis pumps, merely adds to his allure. Men want to be Him, women want to be with Him.

In little over a week, He will be here, in this very country. However, the very concept of Stephen Aird should not be taken lightly. Prepare for the best, prepare for the worst.

I make no apologies in saying; this could get messy. This is a man who thinks nothing of dousing Himself in honey and throwing Himself to the lesbians. This is a man who can go out at night wearing a pink t-shirt and novelty oversize sunglasses and still turn up for work next day morning with His head held high. If He were a mammoth, they would not be extinct.

I will admit it to you, fellow citizens; I invited Him. Further, I admit to you; He is my friend. I like His style! Yes, it will probably end it tears. There may be some casualties. Hell, it may even be worse than we could possibly imagine. However, bear this is mind.

One day in the distant future, when your hair is grey and your eyes are dim. When Spurs have won the Premiership, England have won the world cup and Scotland have qualified. When cricket is no more and Ricky Ponting is just a distant, slightly horrid memory. When your children's children sit at your knees and beg you to tell them a story, you will smile and quietly tell them where you were when Stephen Aird came to Buenos Aires.

God save us all.

Day 111 - Lima, Huacachina and Cash Cow (Cusco), Peru

I like Peru. It's a beautiful place. However, in the spirit of not sugar-coating my words; it's a large proportion of the locals I'm having problem with.

We arrived in Lima the evening of the 10 August. A couple of nights staying near the airport to organise things, and we headed to the chic coastal suburb of Miraflores. It was there the trouble slowly began.

Peru seems to be rather packed in August. Trying to find a double room in Miraflores was a bit like trying to find an adult female with a good word to say about Posh Spice. However, we managed to find one which came slightly recommended.

Alas, on arriving at the pre-booked hotel, we were told that despite accepting our deposit, they were full. We were to be transferred to a completely different building on the other side of town. Which happened to be someone's house. Complete with very, very smelly dog. And despite being $10 cheaper, we were expected to pay the same rate (which obviously wasn't ever going to happen).

Still, you make best of a situation. Lima is a modern, mildly chic and very large city which doesn't really look too different to any other similarly-sized city on the planet. It does however have some top places to eat.

Rach and I made a decision to treat ourselves to a fancy meal. We'd been given a recommendation from Ian's (see LA entry) cousin, Karen. She gave one special piece of advice; don't have more than two Pisco Sours.

So, the wife and I donned our fanciest livery and made our way to La Mar Cebicheria for a long, boozy lunch. We started with a Pisco Sour at the bar each. A warm buzz enveloped the both of us. We were led to our table.

With the help of our waiter, beautiful examples of Peruvian fare were soon being consumed. Yummy. A bottle of white wine soon disappeared. Rachel, enjoying her first taste of the high life in three months, ordered another. More food turned up. The wine did one. The restaurant began to take on a fuzzy quality.

By the end of the meal, it would be an understatement to say we were in good form.

“Another Pisco Sour to round things off?” suggested Rachel.

“Why the hell not”, agreed Stewart.

“Ummm, I theenk eeet would be dangeroos to have otra cocktail, senora”, proferred our waiter.

We considered his advice, weighed up the pros and cons. We compromised with a Pisco Sour for Stu, and a Pisco Sweet for Rachel.

In the end he was right. The rest of the afternoon was spent snoozing it all off back at the “hotel”. I'm glad to report that although Rachel had the hangover from hell next day and swore off Pisco Sours for life (which lasted about 48 hours), I was right as rain.

Ironically, the drunken ride back from the restaurant was the only time in Lima a taxi driver didn't try to rip us off.

Nice as Lima was, I believe it's best not to hang around in big cities too long. They tend to all be rather similar (with some notable exceptions), and they drain your finances faster than an 18 year old mistress. Rachel recommended we visit a “desert oasis” 5 hours south, called Huacachina.

We bid goodbye to the “hotel” staff and made our way to the bus station. There we discovered that civil strife in Pisco meant buses were only going halfway to where we needed to be. Still, it's better to be on the way to somewhere than standing still. So, we boarded a bus anyway in the hope the situation would improve en route. Luckily it did, we carried on straight through and arrived well after dark.

In the morning, we saw first-hand why Huacahina is so recommended. I've never been anywhere like it. It's about ten minutes drive from the town of Ica, has a population of around 115 and is surrounded on two sides by 300ft tall sand dunes - and on all the sides by desert.

Now, I'm not talking mild, scrubby, pseudo-desert either. I'm talking Laurence-of-Arabia, Bedouin traders, sands of the Nile, cartoon bloke-in-a-loin-cloth-crawling-along-for-days desert. In other words; Proper desert.

We ate lunch at a different restaurant that the taxi driver had recommended the night before, and discovered that it was about 50% cheaper and 100 times better. Then we booked onto a dune buggy ride with a man called Chupon.

Chupon had been recommended to us by a guy called Jon Green at Huacachina.com. Jon had assured us that Chupon was the craziest dune buggy driver in town, and would give us a ride to remember. He wasn't bloody wrong.

Chupon treated us to a journey into the sandy wastes that can only be described as a freestyle rollercoaster ride. We hurtled down giant dunes and up the other side, occasionally leaving the ground as we came over the crest, before hurtling down again at what seemed like near-vertical angles. Occasionally, we took a moments' breather to sand-board down the very same giant dunes on our bellies, achieving break-neck speeds. In a phrase; it were brilliant.

A couple of days of sunbathing and it was time to head to Cusco. We boarded an overnight bus (which turned up quite late), ate our now-cold food and headed to Cusco, arriving only five hours late. And this was supposed to be the most-punctual service in the country.

Upon arriving, we resisted the obligatory attempt by a taxi driver to rip us off, before settling into our hostel which, despite advertising to the contrary, had no consistently-hot water.

Heading into town, we soon discovered why Cusco is so popular. It's beautiful. However, it also has a major PR problem.

Imagine meeting the girl of your dreams. She's beautiful. Tall. She has a face that simply sparkles and she makes you feel at home. However, imagine you lean in close and suddenly realise that her hair is infested with lice. Well, that's Cusco/ Cash Cow.

The simple fact as far as I can see, is the vast majority of people in Cusco are interested in one thing; your money. They wish to separate you from it. To do so, they will promise the earth. Paint shiny, sparkling pictures about what you will experience. Make you feel like you are in the Abode of the Gods and the world is your lobster.

Of course, once said money and you are separated, you'll soon discover that it was all a pack of lies. That the very same people have no intention of doing anything but the very minimum. That they will cut any corners possible – for example, turning off hotel electricity to save money (“Perdon. No funciona ahora. Talvez, manana?”) – in order to maximise profit.

It's been exhausting, to be honest. Its not a situation I particularly enjoy; not being able to trust people. But, the simple observable facts from my perspective suggest that outright lying, in morality terms, is widely accepted here.

For example; I'd love to tell you about the magnificent jungle tour we went on to El Manu for four days. I'd love to tell you that it was well organised, professionally run and we saw all the wildlife we were told we would see. I'd love to tell you it was all it was promised to be. But I can't.

The reality is; that the tour Manu Adventures (steer clear – you have been warned) sold us had to be postponed for a day because the bus that turned up to collect us two and half hours late wasn't fit for human habitation, let alone a 12 hour trip into the jungle. That it wasn't a maximum of 8 people, as we'd been told, but instead 23. That the lodges we stayed in were dirty and smelly and generally in a state of serious disrepair. That although the owners said the hot water and electricity had only been out-of service for two days, other guests established that it had been far longer. That we didn't see anything except for a bunch of birds (which our guide seemed to love more than anyone). That at one point he tried to convince us that the oinking sound coming from the nesting cormorants 30 metres up a tree was, in fact, wild pigs.

Then, upon arriving back in Cusco, I discovered that an employee at an Internet cafe we had used, had decided to use our Skype account to phone her friends in Uruguay. By the time we managed to speak to the Tourist Police, the very same girls' boss had doctored the shops' time logs, and lied outright to the police to cover the crime.

Which brings me back to my opening line. Peru is a beautiful place, very different from Central America. I should be, by rights, gushing about the place and recommending it to all and sundry.

But I'm not. And I have to be honest why. I'm not because it's too tiring having to deal with the shit that so many of the locals insist upon dishing out. The taxi drivers trying to rip you off. The street peddlars following you up the street with a guilt trip, trying to sell you all sorts of crap so “I can eet my deener”. The dual pricing. The pickpockets constantly scoping you out as you walk the street. The massage girls who simply won't take no for an answer. The shoddy tour companies. The constant lies.

I don't want to end on a down note, so I won't. So far, we have been lucky with altitude sickness, although I've had my share of “food acclimatisation”. We've yet again met some great people, and been lucky enough to meet up with Vicky and Lee (see Utila) again. We are still having a lot of fun and enjoying the new experiences every day brings. We head to the Inca Trail on Saturday. Life's not all bad.

If only someone could make some of the people here understand the damage they are doing to themselves, and to beautiful Peru.

Photos from Lima, Huacachina and El Manu are here.

Whatever you do, steer cleer of Manu Adventures

Central America: the Epilogue

Perdón. Hay algo extraño en mi bolsa que debe saber sobre. Es un regalo. Es una cabeza humana.

Before you read any further - assuming you don't speak Spanish - pop that into Google Translator. I doubt you´ll find it in a Spanish text book. I certainly didn't rote learn it anywhere.

Nonetheless, I thought it prudent to let the Guatemalan customs official know exactly what she would see in her little X-ray machine before it went through. Rachel pissed herself laughing. Mort, my new pet skull (photo to come), smiled his pearly smile, as per usual.

In the end, the customs official batted not an eyelid. Instead, she confiscated Rachels hand sanitizer; didn't even open my bag. Apparently, carrying human skulls in carry-on luggage is just fine. Go figure.

So, Central America. Done. Dusted. Stamped, catalogued and placed into the Indiana Jones warehouse that is human memory. How do you sum it up? This was the question flirting between the the newly-pierced Rachel and I as we sat in our hotel room in Guatemala City, the night before our flight to Peru, South America.

Central America is like a long night at a cocktail bar. The sheer number of flavours is bewildering, no two particularly similar. Each country - nay, each region - has its' own very unique flavour. Each is a different kind of drunk. Three months on, as we stumble out, intoxicated, it's hard to know where the time has gone. Is it closing time already? One more tune?

Mexico was a bewildering surprise. From the overplayed danger of Mexico City to the quaintness of Oaxaca, it went against everything we'd ever read, seen or heard about the country. Mexico gets a bad rap. It´s an incredible place. Amazing food. Oh, and nobody parties like a Mexican.

The spectre of the swine flu "epidemic" made it even more special. Some days, we would be the only Caucasian faces we'd see. Many a conversation were had about the timing of the media frenzy around swine flu; the economic benefits of having the worlds' most ailing economy keeping all its' citizens at home, spending money in the USA rather than abroad.

Me, I love conspiracy theories. I'll leave you to judge the merit of that one.

Then came Cancun, Playa del Carmen and Tulum. Enjoyable as these Caribbean destinations were, the odour of bland brand Global Tourism hangs over them like a fug. One of my new pet hates has to be seeing prices for things listed in a currency not native to a country (ie. $US instead of Mexican Pesos). Grrr.

Thing is; how can you rightfully stop people from getting maximum value for their skills and services? If the holidaying majority, with only two weeks relaxation to pack in, want to pay obscene money for a sanitized, safe and fake experience - the kind they could receive in any tourist mecca from here to Bombay - then opposition is folly. I can't understand it though. I'm just not the kind of person who wants bacon and eggs for breakfast, AFL on the telly or a Burger King on every corner when I'm miles from home. Each to their own.

Belize on the other hand was a total surprise. Firstly, English. Everyone speaks it! Who would have thought? Secondly, expensive. No doubt related to the fact that the currency is locked into the $US to the tune of 2:1.

Enjoyable though. We never did make it to Caye Caulker, though others told of an amazing little Caribbean island akin to paradise. San Ignacio was very cool, though insanely hot. In the search for global business opportunities, it shone out as a place I could stay for a bit. With the ATM cave but a stones throw away, it could do with a seriously well-organised hostel operation.

Leaving Belize, we both believed that the trip to Honduras would take but a few days. The reality - influenced mainly by the military coup - was a nine day hiatus through the eastern side of Guatemala. Flores was cute. Tikal breathtaking. Our swamp in Rio Dulce was amusing. Livingston was a flea-infested dump, with La Casa de la Iguana hostel offering a solitary shining light. That part of the trip offered no clue to the brilliance of our second trip to Guatemala.

Then Honduras. Utila. The Bay Islands. What a little island. A place of such contradictions. Cheap, cheap diving with, when compared to places like Australia and Thailand, so very little to actually see under the water. Sandflies that eat you alive, but water so warm taking a bath means getting colder. Add to the mix a 12pm curfew every bloody night curtailing (but not stopping!) shenanigans in their tracks. Not even the chance to practice Spanish. Every bugger speaks English, in some form or another.

Still, we well loved every minute of it. We got qualified as Advanced Adventurer, then Stress & Rescue divers for starters. Meanwhile, island life is something else. Utila is another place in this beautiful world I could so very easily live, albeit for two or three months a year at most. It's a place where a lot of people get caught.

However, of all the places in Central America, my heart was captured most by Guatemala. Busing our way up toward Guatemala City and Antigua, it first became apparent how beautiful the country was. Lush, green mountains plunging up and down into the distance. Guatemala is an unspoilt paradise. Is it coincidence that it's also one of the poorest countries in the world?

Really, it doesn't matter what I write here about Guatemala. Neither words nor photos will do it justice. I could whittle on forever about the merits of the country. We both loved it. It's a magical place that would be very very easy to live in.

But the real thing is; it's not the landscape, or the food, or the culture that makes these place so amazing. I'm going to sound like Katrina Rowntree with nothing better say on this one, but it's the local people that make Central America so amazing.

Theirs seems like a very, very different world to ours. They may not have the the airconditioned homes, big cars, designer clothes and cutting-edge technology that counts for the norm in the West, but they do seem to have a full, happy and rich lives. They seem to live in a simpler world, and they seem more connected to their own human communities.

It makes me wonder about life back in Oz sometimes. How healthy is our "Western" lifestyle? Have we been lulled a little onto a false quest, heading for a goal we don't really know is good for us, ending in a destination which might just be a little foolish?

I know how that must sound to you reading this back home. I´d probably think the same if I were in your shoes, bloody hippy talk. I don´t particularly count myself as an anti-capitalist or anything like that. However, this is the question that Central America has stirred up in me. Read into that whatever you will.

It's too heavy note to end on. So I think I should reminisce on the people we've met. Viktor the mad Swede in Mexico City, and the energizer bunny that is Gerraldo. Darcy, an Irish lass without compare. Matt, and his American tourist suit. Bryce and Laura in San Ignacio and, later, Rio Dulce - an American couple on a two-person mission to improve the worldwide image on the US of A. Crazy Thea in Flores and her Irish insultee, Joe. Sophia and her crew, who so kindly allowed Froukje, Bryce and I to crash their party. English Anna, bitten to hell but still standing and ready for more. Vicki and Lee in Utila; Vicki being the only divemaster to formerly be scared of water. Matt and his legendary phallus. Pru and Alice and Tex/Kate and Damo. Danish Anna and all who sail upon her. Pedro and Dean and even Meme and all that he stood for. We salute you all. Through thicker and thinner. Through sober and schozzled. We salute the conversations, the capers and even the codshit. May we meet again, soon. God speed and good luck.

This wasn't the end. It wasn't even the beginning of the end. It's the end of the beginning. Next: Peru. Bolivia. Argentina. Brazil. Machu Pichu. La Paz. Mendoza. Iguazu. Stevie and Jenni. Tom and (hopefully) Irenne. Maybe even Esther?

Here we come. Ready or not.

Day 93 - A big fat Lake (Atitlan) in the sky

There are things that are quite nice to look at. Like a gaggle of playful puppies, an icy cold, frothy beer or a sparkling pool on a hot day.

Then, there are things that grab you by the eyeballs and scream, Kath and Kim vs Muriel's Wedding style "Look at moi, LOOK AT MOI, Oi'm beautiful!" Things like this, or this, or - at a stretch - even this.

Then there are things that make you feel like someone has kicked you in the stomach, stolen your breath, yet delivered a sight that changes your perception of beautiful forever.

Let's get it out of the way early. Lake Atitlan is very beautiful. In a very awesome way. It's virtually impossible to catch it from a bad angle. It doesn't look scruffy first thing in the morning, all misty and millpond flat. Nor does it suck during the day, when the sun glistens off the swell like P-Diddy entering a nightclub. And at night, it provides a silhouetted reminder of the awesome power that surrounds you, in the form of three fat volcanoes; Atitlan, Toliman and San Pedro.

We climbed the latter, named after the town that nestles at it's foot. For the record, it's a bitch of a climb and a lot higher at the top (3,000m) than it looks from the bottom. You see, the obvious but easily overlooked (by me anyway) thing about volcanoes is they get steeper the further up you go. Plus, above 2,500m the thin air gives you the respiratory system of a 95 year old man. I'm glad I did it once. I truly believe only a masochist would do it twice. Still, it was good practice for Machu Pichu in three weeks time.

The other little known fact about Atitlan (other than it's awesome volcanic past, which I'm not going to bore you with - if you're interested you can read about it here) is that (according to me) it sits in the middle of a huge gravity anti-well. What is a gravity anti-well I hear you ask? et me explain.

As we all know, a clever chap called Einstein devised a theory called General Relativity. One of the attributes of this theory is that gravity affects time. It slows it down. A watch at sea level will run slower than an identical one atop Everest, where gravity is weaker (because it's further away from the massive weight of the earths' core). Basically, the stronger the gravity, the slower time supposedly moves. Physics lesson over.

Well, although you wouldn't know it from walking about, Atitlan has much less gravity than everywhere else on the planet. Time moves very fast here. Very fast indeed. Three hours of Spanish lessons a day, a couple of meals and a few drinks in a bar or two at night and...BOOM!...next thing you know, two weeks have whizzed by like a Robin Williams monologue.

In trying to work out how it happened, you look down at your hands. You're both wearing beautifully hand-crafted rings that you kinda recall buying from a dreadlocked Argentinian artisan in San Pedro. You realise that you can now speak pretty decent Spanish. There's an ornamental skull packed in paper in your backpack (you both know his name is Mort). You've been offered a job working at an awesome restaurant called D'Noz. You know the names and histories of a whole bunch of very cool people with names like Danish Anna, Matt, Henry, Chloe, Jake, Pedro, Alex and Dean. Rachel has a hole in her nose filled with a small, sparkly pin. There are vague and shameful memories of being dressed in drag one night at a place called La Iguana Perdida.

Not to mention the fact you've managed to bump into about seven people you've met at other places along the way. Why-hullo-there Thea from Flores! Oi Pru and Alice from Utila! G'day Tex and Damo, also from Utila! 'Sup Canadian chick from Oaxaca whose name I should know but too much time has passed for me to ask what it is!

Yeh, yeh, I know everyone is traveling similar routes and it's inevitable. But the "Wow, what a small world" moment is a buzz nonetheless.

I really liked Atitlan. It's the kind of place that I can see myself living. It's the kind of place I could see myself bringing children to live for a year or two.

I'd do it to teach them more than they can learn from just being at school. That outside of our econo-clyptic Western World, where "rich" and "wealthy" are assumed to be interchangeable, there is another world. A place where life is simpler. Where everyone always stops to say hi. Where are great meal costs $5. Where you can swim in the lake without worrying about mercury levels. A place where kids walk home from school on their own.

The Atitlan we experienced probably won't be there in ten years. Guatemala is a poor country and her people - so very friendly, so very open - deserve much more than their hard work currently receives. I guess that's a part of what makes Atitlan so wonderful too. It's a place where two communities - foreigners and locals - exist in a mutually beneficial, symbiotic relationship to improve everyone's lot, whilst protecting the beauty that exists. Can you say the same thing about Cancun? Ibiza? The Great Barrier Reef?

Oh, we also went to Antigua too. It's the city equivalent of Heather Graham. It's really nice to look at, but there doesn't seem to be a whole lot going on.

I'd also be lying if I said that spending time with so many cool people, in a great place, around a beautiful body of water didn't make me a little homesick...


Pics from Atitlan and Antigua are here...