The end of the line... for now

Sitting in the lobby of this generic business-style hotel in Sao Paulo, it's hard to believe that 24 weeks ago today, we left Australian shores and made our way to LA and Miami. Tonight we leave Brasillian shores and go again to Miami, though this time without Beefa's guidance.

The past weeks since I last posted on Brasil, we have not done all that much in the way of actual travelling. Mostly it has been the sitting still variety of travelling. We are very good at this and ended up spending three weeks in Pipa which was just lovely. The days consisted of: Arise whenever we wanted, eat fresh breakfast of fruit and juices, wax new surfboard, catch minivan to Praia de Madeiros, surf for three hours, catch van back to Pipa, chill out for the afternoon, drink 80 cent beers in hammock while reading book as the sun goes down, find restaurant and eat dinner, drink more beers, go to sleep. And repeat, always repeat.

Mike and Anna told us one day that they'd be flying into Recife rather shortly so we made plans to travel down to Salvador and meet up with them. This worked perfectly and made it our second almost-chance meeting with them after our entirely-chance meeting in Peru three months earlier. We hung out in the Pelhourinho area for a couple of days. During this time I was robbed by some half crazed fuck who's opening salvo was to draw his finger across his throat and say with some degree of menace "I'm going to kill you". I handed over my money and was completely unnerved every time I stepped onto the street. So we decided to leave and go across the high seas to Morro de Sao Paulo, an island two hours south of Salvador.

Morro was ideal: wide beaches, cheap accommodations, good breakfasts, Jeri-style drinks carts, a party almost every night and a nice right hand reef break. Oh, and it had satellite TV which was really good for watching the opening rounds of the Champions League. Six days later though, we had to leave which is why we find ourselves in this generic business-style hotel waiting for a plane that leaves for Miami late tonight.

The best bits, in no particular order:

• surfing with Beto in Jericoacoara
• running into Mike and Anna in Peru, and again in Brasil
• drinks carts in Jeri and Morro
• views of mountains from our hostel rooftop in Huaraz
• attempt on the summit of Nevado Pisco
• hiking in the Cordillera Blanca, Peru
• Morten and Kirsten, our Scandinavian medical connection, in Peru and Bolivia
• mountain biking in Ecuador and Bolivia
• Bellavista hummingbird sanctuary in Ecuador
• getting a tan and not being afraid of an immediate outbreak of melanoma
• Rio de Janeiro
• The Westcotts
• partying in Lapa
• Hamish and Chris
• meeting up with Heather in Cusco
• Jack's Cafe, every single time
• understanding the Spanish language
• Nemo's for breakfast on Easter Sunday in Miami with Beefa and Rusty
• Beefa's MASSIVE boat in Fort Lauderdale
• Beefa and Jillian's house in Fort Lauderdale
• Caribbean cricket
• Barbados rum shops
• reading about England being beaten 0-36 in the Rugby World Cup
• travelling with Rusty for the first time
• turning 30 on an idyllic Brasillian beach
• Rob the Scouser's knowledge of Neighbours
• the falling value of the US dollar
• Culley
• crayfish, crab and white wine at the Coconut Bar
• 27 consecutive Mondays where we didn't have to go to work

I think that's enough of a list for now.

Whoever lives in Brisbane, we'll see you very soon. Some of you even have gifts. Whoever doesn't live in Brisbane, stay in touch on the electric email.

I'm going to continue using this blog, but will not be emailing every time I post something. For me, it's good to have a venue for writing whenever the feeling takes me.

Oh, and if you want to read some funny tales of travels in Thailand and that area, go check out http://doyunchay.blogspot.com/

Bye for now.

Fire

What a stroke of luck. Two weeks before the end of our lengthy journey through south America, a large fire came along and took all of our possessions on one sunny Saturday afternoon in Brisbane. This is what it looked like from the air.

Brasil

I was reading Charles Darwin´s account of his travels on the HMS Beagle from 1831-36 and came across a section early on where he wondered how large a population the abundent land of Brasil would one day support. Sir Charlie was right to wonder as today there are about 190 million of them, and in our past month´s experience here, a happier, more smiling bunch of south Americans you will not find.

We flew from Santa Cruz de la Sierra in Bolivia at some ungodly hour over a month ago to Sao Paulo, where we did not crash on landing. This was a good thing. We hung out for a couple of days there and somehow we ran into Jonathon, the Paulista we met at Paracas National Park in central Peru a couple of months earlier. We still boggle at the likelihood - or unhlikelihood - of running into the sole person you know in a city of 20 million. Still, Jon was his usual helpful self and his missus told us that Brasil was not entirely full of gun-toting banditos waiting for the next unsuspecting tourist to wander down their street. We had no problems in Sao Paulo, but the weather was crap so we hit the bus station and made for the coastal route to Parati.

Parati was an old gold and coffee port on the Costa Verde founded by the Portuguese about 400 years ago. It grew rich and the merchants built fine houses. A little more than a hundred years ago the trade in coffee and gold from the mines in Minas Gerais slowed to a standstill and the town fell into disuse and was eventually abandoned. Thanks to this, the merchant´s houses lay untouched for a little under hundred years until, in the 1960´s, it was ´rediscovered´ and restored. These days it is a truly beautiful piece of colonial Brasil. We spent three days there.

Rio de Janeiro was as it looked in the postcards, but it was far cooler down on the streets. We lobbed at first into Botafogo and were good tourists and checked out the Pao de Azucar (Sugarloaf), Cristo Reventador (Christ the Redeemer) and the neighbourhood of Santa Theresa. We also managed to head out to one of the seediest bars I have been to since a squat party in Hackney and got rather trashed on cheap beer. It was fun. But we decided after visting Ipanema one day that we should move across town, so this we did and began to enjoy our time in Rio even more. Ipanema is an uber cool part of Rio, close to the beach and with loads of things to do every day. I ended up meeting with Mr and Mrs Westcott at the northern end of the beach most afternoons for a chat and a few body waves, initially to plan our assault on Lapa on a Friday night.

We hit the streets of Lapa well after midnight and the scene that greeted my eyes reminded me immediately of the late Sunday session at the Notting Hill Carnival. Every bar was teeming to overflowing, every street was full of people, all with a bottle. Guys walked around like waiters with trays selling shots of tequila complete with fresh lemon while others cooked chicken skewers over hot coals and others still sat on massive eskies containing beer, beer and more beer. I was in my element. Our mate Leo, a local lad, was showing us all the nooks and crannies of Lapa and we finally decided on a club to get into, which we did: 5 Reais for women, 10 Reais for men. While not everyone in our party was overwhelmed with the music, I thought it was ace. The deejay played a mix of garage and dubstep and breaks-that-weren´t-breaks and it sounded top class to my ear. Think Bucky Done Gun and Sergio Mendes and heaps of other Brasillian funk and you´re somewhere close to getting it. But 6:30am rolled around and we made it back to our room. We missed breakfast.

We bought a flight and flew from Rio to Fortaleza on the northern coast a few days after the Lapa episode. Fortaleza gave us both the creeps but we were only there to catch a bus a few hours further north to Jericoacoara. We planned to spend five days in Jeri but ended up spending 10. Jeri is a town with streets made of sand, surrounded by fixed sand dunes and two large beaches. One was a haven for windsurfers and kite surfers while the other was more suited to regular surfng on it´s light, easy wind waves. We did have the pleasure of watching Pepe, the Brasillian national kitesurfing champion, practise his moves in the waves; What that kid can´t do on a kite ain´t worth doing. We also met Beto who taught us to surf. For me, I´d ridden bodyboards from a very young age - about four from my recollection - and petered out at about 20 or so, but for some reason had never tried standup surfing. Amy and never ridden a surfcraft of any kind but was very determined to learn. So we went out every day with Beto on our soft-top mals and surfed surfed surfed. We are getting better.

We left Jeri and travelled down to Canoa Quebrada which was about three hours south of Fortaleza and spent two nights there. The high sand cliffs backing the beach and the profusion of barracas (beach bars and restaurants) combined well with the gentle sea and went spent the day getting some sun and drinking beer. But we decided to move on to another beach further south, this one called Ponta du Mel. Ponta du Mel was hard to reach and when we got there, we discovered that we were the only tourists in town. All of the barracas were closed and there appeared to be nothing to do. So we stayed there for the night and ate the delectable food at our pousada and made tracks the very next day. Only one taxi comes to Ponta du Mel each day so we waited and waited for it and got on board for the journey back to Mossoro. Then we waited some more for the bus to Natal. We spent the night in Natal and caught the short bus to Pipa which is where we are right now.

Pipa is a well developed town (it has cobbles in the streets instead of sand) with loads of places to eat and drink. But better than all that are the three beaches nearby. We spent all of yesterday on our sunchairs at Praia do Madeiro, a coconut palm lined curving bay with a great righthand longboard wave rolling off the point and water filled with dolphins and turtles. Throw the plates of fresh fruit and hand-delivered caipirinhas into the mix and you have what we have been seeking in Brasil: Paradise. And the reason we decided to come here is that I am 30 years old on this 26th day of August. We booked into very a nice pousada and are enjoying ourselves immensely.

The cold land that is Bolivia

Today in Santa Cruz de la Sierra it is 23 degrees and sunny. A decent wind blows and the local punters stroll about the Plaza 24 de Septiembre eating ice cream and looking fabulous. BMWs and Porsches roll along the streets and there is boutique shopping to be had all over the place. We are both finding it hard to believe that we are still in Bolivia. There are no llamas in the streets, no beggars, actual trees grow forth from the ground and the air is sweet and humid. We left La Paz from its El Alto airport at 4,010m yesterday wrapped in our fleeces, thermals and beanies which is basically the way we dressed every day while in Bolivia.

Leaving Peru was not as simple as it should have been. We were aware that strikes were taking place in the general triangular area between Cusco, Arequipa and Puno. We asked around and researched as far as we could and were assured that if we took one particular bus, they would take a slightly different route to avoid the strikes and arrive in Puno for a connection which would take us to the border at Desaguadero and on to La Paz. We thought we'd made a good decision as there were a lot of locals on the bus with us - surely a sign that this time we would not be purposefully lied to by another Peruvian. The bus left at 10:00pm and stopped in sub-zero darkness at around 4:00am. Nobody knew where we were and the locals who had paid for their service to Puno were a tad irate (welcome to our world). We drove a little further until the sun came up, then after the driver and his helper fucked around and failed to make a decision of any kind for an hour, we grabbed our bags and walked for two hours in the freezing post-dawn light across the physical roadblocks, somewhere a long way from Puno.

The remainder of the trip went like this: 11-seat Combi with 23 passengers from that place to Juliaca, 11-seat Combi with between 11 and 20 passengers from Juliaca to Puno, taxi with a girl from the mid-west United States (Greenbay Packers fan) from Puno to Desaguadero, passport control and so forth, taxi with US girl to La Paz. Total expected travel time - 12 hours. Total actual travel time - 18 hours. Thank god we were out of Peru!

We dropped our passports with the requisite paperwork into the Brazillian Embassy as soon as we hit La Paz so that we could plan our route out of the Andes and onto the East Coast of South America. We got them in on a Friday and had to wait for the weekend to pass and pick them up on the following Tuesday. This meant that we couldn't go to either Lake Titicaca or Rurrenabaque as we would need the passport on both of those journeys. So we took Chris and Hamish's advice and booked a day's mountain biking on the 'World's Most Dangerous Road' with B-Side Adventures. These folks were a darn fine outfit: dual suspension bikes, good food and a top guide who made the ride go from feeling like it could be rather dangerous into a thoroughly enjoyable and safe day.

Back to the Embassy and we picked up our visas with no hassles. We're going to Brazil!

Our next stop was to follow Mike's suggestion and go to Rurrenabaque for a visit to the Pampas. We also took his suggestion to avoid the minimum 20-hour bus journey there and to fly instead. Far more expensive, far more enjoyable. We wanted to check out the jungle too, as it would be our only trip to the Amazon.

The pampas was absolutely top shelf. Loads of animals and birds including alligators, caimans, pink dolphins, red pirhana, macaws, monkeys, anaconda, kingfishers and many many more. Cruising up and down the narrow muddy river on a long boat with the alligator-, caiman- and pirhana-infested waters every day was a real treat. We decided not to swim with the dolphins because as with a lot of Australians, we have read accounts of the stupid tourists going for a dip in the cool clear waters in the Daintree and only to be swallowed by a big nasty croc. When there are 'gators and caimans on the banks and flesh eating pirhana in the water, you just don't go swimming. Three days of pampas down, two day of jungle to go.

We jumped back in a larger boat after a night in town at Rurre and went in the opposite direction to the pampas and into the jungle. Our arrival at the lodge in the trees some hours later was not quite as exciting as I had hoped, because the jungle looked very, very similar to the rainforest on Fraser Island. Sure it's pretty, but not the impenetrable stuff that makes the use of a large and sharp machete 100% necessary and that which I had been hoping for. We saw one monkey and one bird in our two days, and both of those were from a large distance away. Our guide was crap too, but it was still nice to get out amongst some trees.

No sooner had we made it back to La Paz for the night than we were on another bus out to Lake Titicaca. It's high up there, 3,810m to be precise. Nadine had said that the views from the Isla del Sol reminded her of the Cyclades in Greece, a place I had visited twice in the past. And fair play to her, but there were echoes of Greece to be found there. Actually the landscape views may have been more impressive with the gigantic range of the Cordillera Real lined up from left to right, though here was no resemblance to be found in the architecture. After two nights on the Isla and with only a few days left before our departure to Brazil, it was time to move on. So this we did and were lucky enough to run into and dine with our Danish pals from the Canon de Colca trek out of Arequipa a few weeks ago.

We have a plane booked to fly us from here in Santa Cruz to Sao Paulo, Brazil tomorrow morning. Any city with a population larger than Australia's should be a genuine blowout. We will try not to get mugged.

Bye-bye Peru

A month is a long time in footy. And a second month in Peru is even longer. Since I last wrote, we have escaped the land of the thief, the liar and the truth-twister and reside at present in the tranquilo city of La Paz, Bolivia. But I won't elaborate on any of our hijinks in Bolivia today as there is plenty to tell of what happened between the descent of Nevado Pisco and our transit to La Paz. Sorry that there are no photos with this post. I've tried many places over the past week that have DVD readers, but have had no joy.

We had a beer with Mark in Huaraz just before he jumped on a bus to meet with a mate in Lima. We were in a good state of mind after out hikes in the Cordillera Blanca and were in no mood to deal with a teeming city of 8 million, so we caught a bus more or less straight to Ica and spent only two hours in Lima in the hours just prior to sunrise. Ica was nothing to speak of, another dry and featureless city on the central coastal plain of Peru, but the oasis at Huacachina looked in the flesh the same way it does on the back of a 50 sole note. The only oasis in Peru, Huacachina is surrounded by a sea of sand that looks similar in my mind's eye to the Sahara desert. All the tourists who pass through here (and there are many) do so to take a dune buggy trip out into the dunes, try a little sandboarding and drink heaps of booze at the few bars around the lake. We spent three days there and felt very much like Bill Murray did in Groundhog Day. It was good to move along.

We did take a short trip to the Paracas National Park which is a 35 minute speedboat ride out into the Pacific. A variety of birds, sealions and crustacea inhabit these islands that make up Paracas, and we saw them all. We also visited what was an interesting precursor to the Nazca Lines, a giant candelabra imprinted on the side of a hill. Naturally, modern science has no clue as to how or when it was made or by whom. But crusty sea pirates, fishermen and the like have been blowing out to it for centuries. At around 170m high, it was impressive.

Nazca is the capital town of the driest are in Peru. Rain comes to Nazca and its surrounds once every decade. If you look good in brown, this is the place for you. Similar to Huacachina, the tourists come to Nazca for one thing: To catch a morning light-plane flight over the Nazca lines. This we did and we saw all of the main lines as instructed. However, to call these things 'lines' is to misrepresent what they really are. I've seen pottery from other ancient cultures and also from the Nazca, but to see these intricate designs blown up to a size that only allows them to be viewed from 400m in the air is rather impressive. Commercial flights started crossing the Nazca plain in the early 1950's and you could imagine the surprise of those first pilots as they crossed the figure of the monkey or the hummingbird, the whale or the spaceman. Our photos were quite crap, and we should have bought the postcard set.

A note to all of you planning to take the flight as we did - Don't eat breakfast before you go up. It makes concentration on the lines harder than it should be.

Next stop was Arequipa. This town, like EVERY other one in Peru has a main square called Plaza de Armas. Back in the day these squares were typically surrounded by the governmental buildings and a military armoury, hence the adoption of the name Armas. Anyway, the Plaza in Arequipa is beautiful, the best in all of Peru in my opinion. I did not however take a photo of this plaza because I'm stupid.

From Arequipa we took a few days to hike in and out of the Canon de Colca (Colca Canyon), the world's second deepest at 3,126m. Mike had strongly suggested that we go further afield and hike the deepest (by an additional 161m), the Canon de Cotahuasi, but we were lazy and opted for the road more travelled.

Having travelled in India some years ago, I thought that public transport could not possibly be as crowded as it was on local trains in Kolkata. I was wrong. On the six hour journey from Arequipa to Cabanaconde, the Peruvians squeezed nearly 120 people onto a 48 seater bus. It was a fucking joke. Descending a moutain pass of 4,840m with that much extra weight cannot possibly be safe and I had a low, gnawing sense of doom for the majority of the bus ride.

We hiked down the canyon wall, stayed a night in comparitively salubrious accommodations on the canyon floor, met some cool Danish folks, hiked along the floor some more the next day, took a dip in some nice pools and hiked back up that afternoon. During the ascent, we were lucky enough to see four male Condors at very close quarters. The largest bird in the world is impressive when it flies very close overhead.

The following morning, waiting for the bus, Amy spotted someone she used to work with at the Indooroopilly Pig 'n' Whistle about seven years ago. Small world. We all stopped at the Cruz del Condor to, you guessed it, spot Condors, and talked about all sorts of stuff and agreed to drink beer in Arequipa the next day. As it happens, the Condors we did see were a very long way distant and instead I got a shot of the tourists scrambling to see these birds. We'd already seen them the day before as I said, so we left on the earliest bus we could back to Arequipa. We met with Anna and Mike as planned and drank an awful lot of beer in the lovely afternoon sun.

The 'classic' Inca Trail to Machu Picchu is booked out for three or four months ahead, so if you want to hike this trail you need to nominate a date before you leave, pay the money and turn up in Cusco in time to start the hike. With such a flexible itinerary, we did not want to nominate a date as it may have meant that we would have to skip places of interest to make the trek. Besides, it is bloody expensive to hike the classic trail, and we were sure we could save a few bucks by turning up and taking one of the alternative routes.

We had heard a great deal about the Salkantay route to Machu Picchu. It was over twice as long as the classic route (75km instead of 30km), has less people on the trail, goes over a higher pass (4,850m instead of 4,200m) and has two gigantic mountains to view for a few days, Humantay at 5,917m and Salkantay itself at 6,271m. After our efforts in Huaraz we thought that these statistics added up to a more challenging trek, so off we went.

Of course, because all tour operators in Cusco are pathological liars, very little of what they promised us or any of the other 11 people in our party was actually true. Sure if you bent the truth and viewed it from their skewed angle, some of it was kinda true, but mostly we were all sold a pack of lies. Rather than delve into specifics here, let me summarise it by saying that the trek, the guide, the helpers and the overall ambience of the trip was crap. We did however meet a bunch of top people. I guess you'd rather have met good people and shared an ordinary experience with them than have had the best trekking conditions with a pack of assholes.

Machu Picchu itself was an impressive site and I believe it has been voted as one of the New Seven Wonders by anyone who has access to the internet. Around 90 million people voted which is a far more representative sample than the one guy who decided the original seven wonders all those years ago.

Getting out of Cusco was more challenging than it ought have been. People resident in the triangular area between the towns of Puno, Cusco and Arequipa had decided to strike or blockade the roads between these towns to protest against poor social conditions. I have no idea of the specific reason behind these blockades, and neither do the Peruvians or Bolivians we've spoken to. We bought a bus ticket to La Paz via Puno on the assurance that the bus would take an alternative route. When the bus pulled up at 4:00am in sub-zero temperatures at who-knows-where and the driver told us we would have the start walking, I couldn't say I was surprised. Luckily, we stayed on the bus for a while and we drove for another hour. There were indeed physical blockades and at about 7:00am we started walking.

By the time we made it to La Paz our 12 hour direct journey on one bus had turned into 18 hours by way of one bus, one stint on foot, two minivans complete with spewing small children, and two taxis for the final 350km of the journey. Initially I was pissed off, but it actually became kinda fun. We were happiest when we received our stamps from the stern Bolivian border guards. We had ben in Peru for 49 days. That's seven whole weeks. I would say that the scenery in Peru got a grade of A. The people unfortunately got a big old F.

We have a lot of things coming up in Bolivia, with one completed yesterday and the next starting tomorrow, and we plan to get out of the mountains on around July 24 when we'll fly to Sao Paulo, Brazil. We have high hopes for Brazil and rely on Jo and Nadine's assurance that Brazil is all that we hope for and more.

Nevado Pisco

Mark, Amy and I went into a trekking agency and stated our desire to climb Nevado Pisco (5,752m). Pocho the owner pulled out the map of the mountain and with his green highlighter marked Base Camp (4,550m) and Moraine Camp (4,880m) as the two places we could camp before making a summit attempt. We agreed that it would be a better idea to make the attempt from Moraine Camp as it would mean less climbing on the summit day. The glacier and snow started maybe 60 vertical metres from this camp. Of course, we had no idea what all this really meant. We only knew that Pisco was a non-technical summit, that is, there was no ice or rock climbing to do at any point during the climb, walking only was required. This also makes Pisco the most climbed significant (above 5,500m) mountain in Peru.

Mark, Amy and I had met our guide, Richard, the day before on a day's ice climbing excursion to the Pastoruri Glacier. We chose to do this because none of us had worn mountaineering boots and crampons, or used an ice axe before. Similar to your first day on skis, the feel of boots of this type is very awkward to the uninitiated. And as it went, climbing the 20-25m glacier wall was a good craic too.

Richard had brought a lot of gear. Unlike the Santa Cruz trek a week earlier, there were no donkeys planned to help haul this gear to Base Camp. Mark had suffered food poisoning the night before departure, which on the back of the day of ice climbing left him feeling a little fragile. I had eaten very little in the five days prior due to my illness and was definitely below full strength, while Amy generally feels the exertions of hikes in this area due to the altitude. So when we got out of the car at the trailhead, the first things Richard said was, "My proposition is that we hire a donkey to carry the technical equipment". As an investment in our health, we voted unanimously in favour of this proposal.

All the same, the hike to Base Camp was tough. From the start at Cebollapampa (3,900m) to Base Camp (4,550m) was a steep and twisty track with loose stone over a mobile dusty base for the entire length of the trail. This took us four hours of hiking. After a small lunch, we set up our tents and I went to sleep for few hours in an attempt to gain some strength for the days to come. After dinner we were all in bed by about 8:00pm.

We left Base Camp late at 10:00am for the hike up the nearby ridge, down and across the moraine and up again to Moraine Camp. We had to take our personal equipment and some food with us, but this time without the donkey, so our packs were heavier than the walk to Base Camp. The first ridge was extremely steep and we stopped frequently to catch our breath. Fortunately it was also reasonably short and we completed the pitch in about 45 minutes. From the vantage point at the top we looked out at the post-glacial wreckage of the moraine. It resembled a cross between a hapahzardly placed overburden dump and the moon. It, like the previous day's trail, was extremely mobile: rock fall was very common and could occur with a stronger-than-usual gust of the wind. Large granite boulders moved underfoot frequently and parts of the trail, which would have been extremely difficult to follow if not for Richard, fell away underfoot. At one point I said to Mark, "If an earthquake happened now, we'd all be killed".

After crossing the moraine and climbing the ridge we were rewarded with the sight of a large green lake at the base of the Pisco glacier. A good place to stop and have some water. From there it was only a short hike up another mobile spine-like ridge to Moraine Camp (4,880m). This camp was set in a natural drainage area for Pisco's glacier. Again, any earth tremors would have caused a million tonnes of granite boulders to come crashing down on us. A big dump of rain would have washed us all away. There were another nine climbers at Moraine Camp in addition to our party. All were planning to attempt the summit the following morning. We hung out in the sun for the afternoon, checking our equipment and wondering what the climb would bring.

We rose at midnight and left at 12:50am, the first party to leave. Richard guessed that we would take five hours to reach the summit, which would have us arriving on the top at sunrise. We had a breakfast of coca tea only and set out along the smooth granite protrusions below the glacier using headtorches to light to way. The moon had risen and was bright, but it had passed being full and didn't offer enough light to allow us to hike without extra lighting.

We reached the bottom of the glacier in a half hour and waited while Richard prepared the rope. We attached our crampons to our boots and affixed carabiners to our harnesses. Richard then tied us all together at eight meter spacings along the rope. Richard was first, then Amy, then me and Mark was at the end. Everyone had an ice axe which could be used either as a walking stick upside down in the ice (the pick end in your hand) or as an aid if you fell or had to cut a foot hold out of the ice and snow. Because we were climbing in the night, the snow was very crisp and had a heavy ice crust. A skiier or snowboarder would find such snow conditions unpleasant, but for mountain climbers using crampons it provided sure footing.

The first climb was a wall of ice and snow which sat at I would guess a 70 degree angle. Due to the numbers of climbers using the route, there were plenty of footholds to use. And that was a very good thing because no sooner had Amy started to climb the wall than her right crampon fell off. At maybe five metres above the rocks below she panicked. I climbed up and cut a bigger foothold for her and we ultimately had to take both crampons off and change them over as the crampons were on the wrong feet (it is difficult to distinguish with those crampons which was the left and which was the right side, especially under the light of a torch at 1:30am at 5,000m in zero degrees celcius). Then we hiked up and cross rolling snow fields in the dark with huge hollows and formations appearing to the left and right at random. I became very cold and the toes of my left foot began to stick together. I have read enough accounts of mountaineers who have suffered frostbite to begin to worry about losing a digit in the cold myself. In particular, Michael Groom in his book 'Sheer will' told his story of losing all toes on both feet after spending a night on the flank of Kangchenjunga in the mid-80's. Groom's tale was top-of-mind right then and there. I was unlikely to come to that sort of injury, but I did not want to ignore what could be a sign of frostbite. Richard ensured me that this feeling is normal, and not to worry. Still worrying, we continued on.

Mark became tired more quickly than I expected. He told us later that we had not slept at all due to a stabbing feeling in his chest when he tried to breathe. An asthmatic in his youth, we later theorised that the thin and cold mountain air at 4,880m played havoc with his breathing.

The darkness was bearing down on my morale. While the moonlight lit in ghostly contrasts the black rock against the white snow on peaks all around us, we hiked more or less continuously for three hours and there was little to see except the trail in front of you. We were walking up very steep hills of ice, so steep that you had to turn your shoulder to face the trail and walk in a crab-motion using the ice axe to lean into the slope. At 4:06am, I felt defeated: There would be no sunlight for another two hours and I had no idea how far we had come or how far there was to go. I hoped desperately for sun, for the red glow in the sky. And we were getting higher and higher. Richard told us that we had climbed to 5,400m.

Amy began to lean on her ice axe and dry retch into the night. A strong wind was blowing on us from our right. It blew up the near-vertical ridge and over onto where we walked. I yelled to her, suspecting altitude sickness, "Are you sick?" "I'm cold and hungry", she replied. We walked some more and she continued to dry retch. Then, we stopped and I walked behind her to hug warmth into her and form a shield against the wind and I felt her shaking uncontrollably from the cold. Mark selflessly offered his wind breaker and after asking her a couple of times if she wanted to turn back, getting no sensible response, I made the decision to turn back. We had reached 5,500m by 4:33am but had a further one and a half hours to reach the summit. The wind was howling and I later guessed that the ambient air temperature was -2 degrees with maybe a further -10 degrees of wind chill. To illustrate this, I discovered after we had descended that my metal water bottle which was inside my backpack was near to frozen solid.

So we turned around, with Mark now in the lead and he had taken only 10 steps when his crampon broke in half. We could not fix it, and we were still in the wind with Amy squatting on her heels hugging her knees trying to stay warm and shaking, so Mark and I swapped positions in the line and I took the lead and we moved as quickly as we could to escape the punishing wind. By this time I too was very cold. I had lost all feeling up to the ankle in my right foot and the feeling in the front half of my left foot was also totally lost to me. At last we escaped the wind and Amy began to warm up.

Mark was making tough ground back down with only one crampon. Those same steep hills we ascended in a crab walk were descended in a similar fashion, which is made doubly difficult with only one boot to grip the ice and snow, and for a guy who hadn't slept. Finally though, the sun began to glow in the sky. It was difficult to perceive initially, but as we made further progress down the mountain, so too did the sun make progress into the sky. The multitude of peaks around us began to look like a still life, painted onto the canvas of the sky. They were Kerouac's 'patient Buddhas lookin at us saying nothin'. It was awesome.

We passed all the other climbers on the way down. Mostly they had started at a touch after 3:00am and would reach the summit in full sun at 7:00 or 7:30am. We made it back to Moraine Camp at about 7:00am and got straight into our sleeping bags to warm up. Mark had his first sleep of the day and having been so cold, Amy and I got some needed rest and warmth into ourselves. It is hard work for the body to stay warm in conditions like those we had just encountered.

We had a small meal of chicken noodle soup and packed up camp. We agreed to hike all the way back to the trailhead at Cebollapampa and take a car back to Huaraz via Yungay. We walked back down and across the moraine, that dense cluster of unstable granite boulders and all the way along the dusty trails to the road, a total descent from the mountain heights reached in darkness of 1,600 vertical metres. When we reached the road, we had walked for 11 hours.

We took one car to the town of Yungay. This particular town was completely buried by a 7.2 earthquake in 1970, killing all 18,000 inhabitants (remember my comment in the moraine). We were supposed to take a collectivo back to Huaraz, but that kind of transport is punishing, and we didn't need more punishment, so we paid extra for a private car for the hour long journey. Mark, Amy and I met up for a well-earned meal and beer and discussed what had been a great adventure. I certainly had developed a healthy respect for the mountains, far greater than I had before.

The ascent I have described happened yesterday, Wednesday 6 June 2007. Egoists may say that we failed to climb the mountain. We say that we merely did not make it to the summit of a mountain, having climbed a long way. We learned a lot about ourselves and the Andes. I believe that our greatest learning and experience was in our unity and selflessness. The egoist may have made the summit, but to do so would have endangered the life of one of more in our party (who can say if anyone would have made the summit?). In our unity and selflessness, we shared an amazing experience.

Today my legs are sore and we are leaving Huaraz tomorrow night for the beach and some sandboarding in Ica. After a little more than two weeks here, it has been quite a time.

Peru

We tossed up the options: To go further south and remain in Ecuador, or to head for the coast of northern Peru. We'd spent a full month in the mountains and felt that a few days in flip flops would be just the ticket. So we packed our bags in the delightful town of Cuenca and caught the bus to the Ecuadorian border town of Huaquillas. Entry and exit formalities were straightforward, though the same cannot be said for the navigation of the multiple taxis, touts, money changers and buses. In the process we were both relieved of a good wad of US dollars and charged twice an already expensive cab ride from Huaquillas to the Peruvian town of Tumbes. We did not swear (much) at these misfortunes, rather, we took them as a 'glass half full' occurrences and vowed to be a little more alert to the swindlers in future.


Our super luxury bus to the surfing town of Mancora was stopped en route by the drug squad who has somehow pulled out bags off first and were inspecting them as we disembarked. Amy wondered later if something could have been inserted into our luggage when we had our backs turned iside the Peruvian passport office. It was a good thing we only lost some money then! No damage done, just a little scare.


Mancora was lovely. When the swell is happening, it has one of the finest left-handers in the world. The swell was definitly not happening during our stay, but as a novice surfer, it was just about perfect in the afternoon when the tide came up and the little waves peeled perfectly off the point. Despite having ridden bodyboards for my whole life, the act of riding a longboard for the first time was quite a thrill. Amy suggested we do more of this in our lengthy Brazillian beach stint during August and September. A good idea methinks.



Five days passed quickly in Mancora. The only bad thing to happen there was Chelsea winning the FA Cup. We spent the next couple of days 10 hours south at Trujillo and Huanchaco, where we checked out some significantly pre-Inca ruins at Chan Chan. Interesting stuff that relied somewhat on your imagination due to their busted state. Mud don't last, that's my tip to all of you in the building game.



Ruins are only interesting for a few hours: We had to move on. Another 10 hours on the bus and we had arrived where I write this, in Huaraz. A mate had told us a year or so ago that the mountains in this area were awesome. He was right. After the disappointment of not being able to see any peaks because of the poor weather in Ecuador (with the exception of the morning after the nine hour Quilotoa mission), the first thing we saw upon arival were three huge snow capped mountains. In previous posts I'd used words like 'looming' and 'towering' but these were poor word choices. Those mountains have nothing on these. The following morning, sitting in a rooftop cafe gazing northwards down the valley at Huascaran, Peru's highest mountain at 6,768m, you could see the pale green luminosity of the glacier and thought, 'fuck yeah!'.


We acclimatised for two days and went out for a four day hike along the Santa Cruz route. Our party of nine tourists was larger than we'd been told by our agent, but it worked out really nice as everyone was a cool cat. The peaks were ridiculous and the view from the 4,750m Punta Union pass was spectacular. Mike and I agreed to get up early the morning after crossing the pass so that we could walk back up there as the dawn arrived. Then we would take unobstructed photos in the special morning light that makes everything look soft and beautiful (except anybody's face after a Bethnal Green houseparty circa 2002). Mike was up before me at 4:10, and we both looked up at the pass without the benefit of moonlight and made out the cloudbank sitting exactly where we intended to hike. We agreed to go back to bed.



Some weird sickness got me after we returned. If you believe the health section of the Lonely Planet you might think it was Dengue Fever, but who can say for sure? In any case, we have some more climbs and cool stuff to do before we leave Huaraz and I'll write you about that next time.

The mighty West Ham United FC

I admitted to a few friends after the 6-0 defeat to Reading on New Year's Day that I had resigned myself to West Ham being relegated from the English Premiership, again. We had scored only 20 points in more than a half season of football, had lost a club record nine games in a row and had a huge injury list. There appeared no way back from the punishment of spending the 2007/08 season in the Championship.

I was particularly gutted and baffled by this run of form as it was only one season before that we made it to the FA Cup Final and finished in a creditable position on the Premiership table after two years out of the top flight. And no one, not the BBC pundits, or almost any followers of the game would have predicted the turn around in form we enjoyed after sacking Alan Pardew and appointing Alan Curbishley as the new manager.

Curbs' first game in charge we played Manchester United at Upton Park and beat them 1-0. Amazingly, even with Man U being crowned the Champions a week ago, we beat them again 1-0 at Old Traffod yesterday to ensure our survival, winning eight of our past nine games. I don't know what it is about Manchester United. I think if you were a Man U supporter you'd describe the Hammers as your bogey team. We also took all six points off Arsenal this season as well. And those games as it turned out were the keys to our survival. God knows we couldn't beat our fellow strugglers Charlton, Wigan, Watford or Sheffield United.

But whatever, it's all for the history books now. West Ham United, the pride of the East End live to fight another season in the English Premiership.

Yikes and hikes

The bus to Papallacta was two hours east of Quito in the Cordillera Orientale, on the road to Baeza. All of the teachers at the Spanish school warned us against going to the Terminal Terrestre (bus station) because it was very dangerous to do so. Robbery was common, guns and knives were likely, they said. It was with some hesitation that we packed our bags early and caught a cab to the Terminal on a Saturday morning. The next obstacle was figuring out how to buy a ticket and which bus to catch. There were many ticket sellers and even more busses and nobody was yelling out 'Papallacta! Papallacta! Papallacta!'

We followed the route covered in Trek Six in our book 'Trekking in Ecuador', purchased second hand from a bookstore in Quito earlier that week. We'd gone ahead and purchased the optional maps from the Instituto Geografica Militar atop a steep hill only days earlier to be sure. We had food, we had water, we had all the gear required for a hike of this nature. The carrot at the end of the stick, so to speak, were the natural thermal springs on the valley floor. As we'd set off at an early hour, we walked up the steep unpaved road toward the trout farms and arrived at the trailhead by 9:45. We picked our way past pastures with a few cattle and across small wooden bridges that cris-crossed the Rio Papallacta (Papallacta River) in several places. Cloud forest, both young and old, and large pools of ankle deep mud were prevalent. And the only sound we heard was water rushing over rocks and occasional bird chatter. The clouds were low, the mountains very high on both sides to the north and south and there was only one way forward.

The couldforest was amazing. Irregular shaped branches and trunks grew in all directions, completely coverered with moss and draped with cascading lichens and orchids. The canopy let in a low green light that gave the space underneath an eerie feeling. Amy said, "I feel like I'm in a fairytale", and she was right. It was a kind of Tim-Burton-nightmare-in-green.

We hiked for four hours until we lost the trail. With the clouds so low, it rained on us intermittently for most of the time, but not enough to need a raincoat. It was generally wet, and after four hours on the hoof, we stopped for a rest. We then decided to look for the waterfall which was the point of undertaking this particular walk, but we decided to leave the wet forest walking and hike the rest of the way on the other side of the river on the unpaved road. We climbed to about 3700m, which was as high as either of us had ever been. My previous best was skiing the Stubier Gletscher at 3600m out of Innsbruck, Austria years ago with Bruce and Jo. The great thing about this hike was the at the height we had achieved, we were't even close to the top, or a real view. The mountains rose to 4200m nearby, and the completely cloud-obscured Volcan Antisana stood at the western end of the valley at 5752m was without a doubt the biggest mountain on the area: The Andes are much bigger then the Alps.

So we strolled back down along the road, back to where we started, and we had a choice of three different thermal pools to leap into. The fancy ones at the top of the road wanted $7 for the pleasure, while the municipal baths in the town of Papallacta were a few more kilometres away. We took the third option, and hopped into a nice big pool for only $2. This place didn't have the many different pools at different temperatures angle, but it was warm and good. Ideal for two folks who've just hiked through wet forest for five hours. The steam poured off the top of the pool and we enjoyed the time.

The next day we didn't have to think or worry about negotiating Terminales, getting off at the right place, buying provisions, selecting pools or anything at all. Along with a guide, a Patrol and a pair of Czechs, we hit the road for a day of downhill mountain biking. We had decided days before that we would visit the Mitad del Mundo (Middle of the World) or the equator just north of Quito, and this trip satisfied that goal as well as giving us some time to catch some views of the Andes. The first stretch was a lazy 24km downhill and it passed without incident. It is possible to forget that while mountain roads afford fabulous views of the valley you're travelling through they also have tose mountainous near-vertical drop offs down to the valley floor. I spotted a couple of these on the way down and remembered to concentrate on my cycle.

The Bellavista hummingbird sanctuary was next. Now, we'd never seen a hummingbird before, let alone a few hundred of them, made up of I would guess 6 different species. The largest species were the most numerous and when flying did so with an accuracy and speed that I cannot explain. The smallest of them sounded like a big bee. And if you were fast enough, you cold have reached out and touched them, they were that close.

We rode another 12km downhill and loaded the Bianchi's back on top of the Patrol and drove the coast road along the equator towards the Mitad. Sheer mountains rose up from the valley floor, covered in primary cloudforest, pristine and perfect.

The Mitad by contrast was a commercial weird lame-out so we peeled off the back of a tour group and went for beer with the Czechs.

On the Monday morning we were awakened by an alarm clock. This felt a lot like going to work. It was our last day of Spanish classes though, and finish time was 1:00pm, so it wasn't too dificil. Soon enough though we were back at the Terminal catching a bus south to Latacunga, a one-horse town if ever I saw one. We were delayed briefly by some bug I caught and as a part of my recuperation, we attempted to find a bar to watch AC Milan v Manchester United in the second leg of the Champions League semi-final. This was a big game, and in futbol mad South America we thought that finding a venue would be easy. It certainly wasn't hard in Quito. We asked a lot of people, and they simply did not understand what we were talking about. In the end we managed to catch it by fluke in a dirty almuerzo (lunch) place, and when we couldn't take it any more and left, we found another TV for the second half. That was enough of Latacunga and the next day was caught the bus to Chucchillan via the Saquisili market.

The Lonely Planet claims that 'Ecuadorian ecomonists consider this to be the most important indigenous village market in the country, and many travellers rate it as the most interesting in Ecuador'. While we could see how these markets brough together a large number of rural Campesinos and Quichua speaking indigenous folk, and how that would be good for the economy, they looked extremely similar to a lot of other markets we'd seen elsewhere in the world. Good for photos, good for people watching, good for a bargain and all. In total I think we spent 45 minutes there. We then found the bus to Chucchillan and got on board for the bumpy ride.

The following morning, we packed our bags, ate our breakfast, paid our bill and set off on foot for the Laguna Quilotoa (Lake Quilotoa). Quilotoa is regarded as the 'crowl jewel of the area, part of Parque Nacionale Illinizas'. 800 years ago Quilotoa was an active volcano that blew its top. As the magma chambers emptied after the eruption, the centre of the volcano collapsed leaving a gigantic crater with a green lake at the bottom, 3km across and 300m below the top of the crater rim.

The simple way to reach it would be to take a morning bus ride to the town of Quilotoa which is perched atop the crater rim and gaze across the lake and beyond to the twin peaks of the Illinizas Sur (South) and Norte (North). The hard way is to hike there from Chucchillan. We opted to hike there. Our hiking book listed the hike as 'moderate' and so we thought it wouldn't be too hard.

The first hour or so was spent walking down perilously steep tracks through and past farming houses. A landslide had made the final descent to the Rio Sigui very difficult and we were pleased to have made it across. We asked a family who were walking the other way if the village of Guayama was ahead after the switchbacks. They replied in the affirmative, but indicated that it was a steep ascent. The canyon walls to my eye looked to be too steep to walk up. Climbing gear and ropes may have been necessary, but certainly they could not be walked. I wondered where the trail led, as from our vantage point at the riverbed it was not clear. This is normal though, as you ascend the trail becomes clear.

So we walked, and walked and walked. And indeed, the trail did become clear and it was straight up those canyon walls which were about 250 vertical metres high. The vertical height gained in each one of the switchbacks was immense, and because of this it was also incredibly tiring. The trail was so deeply cut into the canyon walls that in places it became 6 feet, then 12 feet then 30 feet deep, a mini slot canyon where the floor was only just wider than our feet and only just wide enough to scrape our backpacks through. You cold not turn around, and the air had a stillness that made breathing seem difficult. The only progress you could make was to move forward. After two hours of this punishing ascent, we made it to the plateau at the top. Our book told us it would take half of this time, so we were behind schedule.

Some welcome flat stuff through more farming areas was next, but after the previous hour's descent and two hour's ascent, we were becoming a spent pair. There was an 'extremely basic' hostel at Guyama, but it was only lunch time and there would be nothing to do for the afternoon if we stayed in Guayama. Besides, we could clearly see our target, which was the lowest sandiest point of the crater rim straight ahead. We pressed on.

We walked the unpaved road out of Guayama and passed the ruined Hacienda in the time prescribed by our book and as the mountain ahead was not even close to as steep as that we'd just ascended, we were of the mind that we could make it to the top in the two hours also prescribed. So we walked and I felt the lactic acid build up to the point where I could only walk for 10-14 steps at a time before I was forced to stop for a 20 seconds, then walk again, then stop. And on like this for three hours. We were consistently doubled over gasping for breath with lactic acid burning our legs and a lack of food making our vision wobble. Then the rain came, sweeping up from the valley below.

The clouds in this part of the world move very fast. In the space of only five minutes the sky overhead can go from perfectly clear to full cloud with lashing wind and rain. As the equator is close by however, it was not cold, at least not yet. Due to our elevation, maybe 3800m, the clouds did not come in from overhead, but from below us, so that when they arrived we were inside the cloud rather than under it.

We at last made it to the final chute before the summit of the crater rim. It was made of a coarse sand with fine gravel, like a big sand dune, and at the summit of a 4000m mountain no less. Just what we needed after seven hours of the most punishing climbing we had ever experienced. But we made it over the top, and what a sight!

The crater was colossal and the water was indeed an emerald green some 300 vertical metres below us. We spent 10 minutes with our 16kg and 20kg packs off (too heavy), taking a few photos and generally enjoying our achievement. But as we stood there, a cold strong wind blew up the inner wall of the crater, chilling our sweat and rain soaked bodies. We had been in the elements for a long time now, and we had eaten very little. Illness threatened if we did not keep moving, as hard as that was. So we pressed on around the crater rim bound for the village of Quilotoa for two more hours with the wind whipping over us from the left while the clouds draped over us like a muted blanket from the right. There was some relief with flatter sections of trail, but we negotiated five more ridges on the home stretch. In some places these were like climbing a staircase without the steps, and in others like climbing a ladder with no rungs. It was wet, and windy and cold and at last we made it along the final stretch to a hostel where it was wonderful to have a roof over our heads. We had hiked for nine straight hours, with only a few remnant crackers from our hike in Papallacta nearly a week before and some water, and with packs that were simply too heavy. Eight of those hours were straight up. According to our guidebook we descended 200 vertical metres and ascended 1100 vertical metres.

Our hosts fixed us a fine yet simple meal which we ate with ferocity. And the room temperature bottle of coke was the best soft drink I've ever had in my life. After dinner we sat next to the fire and warmed ourselves through. Then at maybe 8:00pm - to bed.

The following morning was a perfectly clear day, and in the crystal rural air at 4000m we had views over many many kilometres. Quilotoa shined like light from a mirror and the Illinizas were perfect in their majesty far beyond the crater rim. I was pleased: we'd been in Ecuador for two weeks and had not seen a single mountain because of the consistently bad weather. And sitting in a bus later that morning descending from our high ridge back down to Latacunga for a bus change en route to Banos, we also had magnificent views of both Cotopaxi and the erupting Tungurahua.

We're in Riobamba now for the night, as tomorrow we go to Cuenca, Ecuador's third largest city with around 600,000 people. Amy's birthday is on Saturday so we thought we'd go to a bigger place in the hope of finding a nice gaff to stay in for the weekend. Hopefully the clouds go away too. If not, we're hoping for better viewing weather in Peru, and we should be there in a week or two.

Until next time.

Bikini Rave

For the past two years my man Marto has hosted an annual party named 'The Bikini Rave'. The first edition in 2005 was a pearler, but the 2006 version was the best party I've ever had the pleasure of playing records at. Rusty and I spun the wheels o' steel from 2:00pm until 1:00am, which is a big set in anyone's estimation.

Frazer Bailey from Play TV lent his formidable skills to the 2006 event by shooting and editing a short film which you can download by following this link: www.playtv.com.au/Bikini_Rave.mov

It's platinum.

Quality!

"America is one massive piece of infrastructure", said Rusty, and he was right, as we cruised north along Interstate 95, bound for Fort Lauderdale, boggling at the number of lanes on the highway, the quantity of elevated fly-overs and the swarms of V10 pick-ups plying their way across it all. One huge American flag and a hundred others flew proudly all over some local car yard and in similar quantities all the way along the highway. Bumper stickers proclaimed the patriotism of the driver: 'Freedom isn't free'; 'Support our troops'; or my favourite, 'Life, liberty and the pursuit of all those who threaten it - US Navy' .

Taking a break from the frenetic traffic, the average punter gorges themselves on massive plates of fare that reduce the amount of chewing required and maximise the daily salt and fat intake at each sitting. We ate this food and spent some time either fighting off sleep or waddling like penguins for some time after the meal was over. Gore is right: America has to change its ways with regard to energy consumption - both in terms of transportation fuel and the energy required to produce all of their food - or we're all fucked. It's plain to see the need for more cheap oil to sustain the lifestyle to which they've become accustomed. But how anyone in the world could go hungry while so many Americans get around on electric wheelchairs (mobility carts) due to hyper-obesity is both a mystery and a scandal. I'm pretty sure that I am not a whole lot better that these Americans, so please forgive me if I am cutting the figure of a self-righteous preacher. If we could all just get out of the car and walk maybe things would be a little different?

-------

The flight across the Pacific was alright. Thanks be to ye lord for on-demand video and all-you-can-handle video games, television and sports documentaries. Hordes of US Customs officials stood at every level of their comprehensive security screening systems upon arrival, on the lookout for the next shoe bomber. They weren't as manical as I'd envisioned, but they were thorough. If your boarding pass gets the special stamp SSSS in the bottom right hand corner, you get an extra once-over from security. Russ was the lucky recipient at LAX, but we all got it a couple of times before our four trips in and out of the US over the next two weeks.

Upon hitting Miami after a standard cross country flight from LA , the Man of the Moment, the King of the High Seas, Mr Beefer was waiting at baggage collection to pick us up. A short drive to downtown Miami, a change of clothes and we were out at a tequila bar in South Beach at midnight, smashing buckets of Corona and feeding on quesadillas, with the odd shot of fine, fine tequila to mix it up. After a few more smoky bars and pints of lager, and thanks to the International Date Line, by the time bed beckoned, we'd been up for 44 hours.

Fast forward a little while and we found ourselves about 25 miles up the coast in Fort Lauderdale visiting on Beef's megayacht. If you've never seen 'Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous', the scale and luxury of water craft in this category may elude you: Think 50m long with a 9m beam and four levels of the most sumptuous luxury we could have imagined. The twin CAT diesel engines at 3500kW a piece, the 8m tender, the two jet skis with electric pivot crane to drop them into the water, the 8 sets of diving gear, sail boats, jacuzzi on the top deck, dual sunning areas, 12 person dining room, drawing rooms, master suite with hs and hers mirrored bathrooms... all finished in the finest woods, laquers and steels. Excessive yes, but amazing too.

Beef is the chef for this fine craft, and for a chef he makes a pretty good tour guide as well. Word on the street is that this boat sells for around the US$36 million mark, second hand, complete with 11 member crew. And if you don't have the spare dineros in your skyrocket, you can charter it for US$225,000 a week. Happy days.

We left Fort Lauderdale bound for Cape Canaveral but were waylaid by a torrential downpour out of the Gulf of Mexico. Damn rain. I belted the Pontiac into a gutter that looked like a ramp but didn't sustain any damage. And so we dodged minor flooding for the next hour or two and, upon seeing a port in the storm, we pulled into the Vero Beach Hotel, in Vero Beach, FL.

The Vero Beach Hotel in 1963 would have held some serious swingin' parties where you could drink and dance and jitterbug all night long. Right on the beach with a 'lagoon' pool, hot damn it would have been the place! But hey, when a place don't get no maintainence for 40 years, it accumulates a certain funk that sticks to the inside of your nostrils which can't be removed even with sustained scrubbing, scratching and digging. But at $99 a night, it served us well.

Cape Canaveral: NASA space port, rocket launching centre, tourist attraction. A theme park and a working space port combined. We got straight on the bus that drives you to all of the places of interest, and you do need that bus as the various areas housing the mission control centre, the launch pads, the Saturn V rocket centre and so on are literally miles apart. Alas, the tour was very passive and used videos to explain things instead of people and in some parts was quite dumbed down. But it was packed, absolutely overflowing with fellow tourists, most of whom were good ole patriotic Americans. Heaps of those hyper-obese types too, some with their own mobility chairs, some who took advantage of the free wheelchair service, munching on giant pretzels, litre buckets of Pepsi and assorted candy and ice-cream.

The highlight was the Saturn V rocket centre. This is the rocket used to launch Apollo 8 and subsequent Apollo moon missions. It is huge: 36 stories high, maybe 18m diameter and hanging there above your head in its multiple stages. Russ grabbed a hamburger there which was one of the poorest excuses for food he had ever seen. To peel back the bun and reveal what was not inside the burger was humorous indeed.

Back on the road again, like Willie Nelson, we bee-lined it for Miami and the flight to Barbados. I got the SSSS stamp and the guy checking out my carry on bag said, "Sir, can you please explain what this is". I replied, "Yes, that's a sleeping bag". "Well I've never seen one of those before".

Quality!

We got right on the Samuel Adams bottles at the bar waiting for our plane. It was three hours delayed, and we were quite hammered by the time it left. No harm done though, and we checked into Ella Fitzgerald with no hassles, at 2:00am. Straight out of bed the following morning and into Kensington Oval for the Australia v Ireland clash. We agreed to stay off the drink until lunch, but as Punter chose to bowl first, actually getting to lunch with play remaining seemed far-fetched. It was 1-1, then 2-2 and then a score I've never seen in a lifetime of watching cricket: 3-3 off 3.3 overs. The Irish battled on to reach 4-9 and 5-13 and finally the middle order hit a few runs and the band of red bearded Leprechauns in the party stand had something to cheer about. We bowled them out for 91 I think, and Haydos and Gilly beat the schizer out of their attack and the whole thing was over by the scheduled 1:00pm lunch break. Welcome to Barbados.

Our place on the south coast's Maxwell Beach was really nice. A little self contained unit at the end of a rocky lane with a pool across the way and the beach a five minute stroll away. We stocked the cupboards with breakfast essentials and the fridge with Mt Gay rum and cola. Friday night was the traditional fish fry up at Oistins, so we caught the Dub Bus down there grabbed a bench and ordered up. Swordfish, Mahi Mahi (or Dolphin, as the Barbadians call it), macaroni pie, Barbadian rice and bottles of Banks Beer. Fabulous stuff and all for small money.

Strolling back from the fry up, we found a few rum shacks on the roadside, so we pulled into one and started drinking with the locals. 300mL bottles of Mt Gay, a bowl of ice and a bottle of cola, three glasses and a Rastaman playing pounding reggae out of a stack of bassbins, all inside a room 5m wide by 2.5m deep. Farkin' orrrrsome! We sipped on a few of those bottles and called it quits. It was only the first day in the Caribbean after all.

We checked out loads of Barbados over the week. It's about 420 square kilometers in all, and takes about 30 minutes to drive clear across it, at the widest point. Places like Holetown, the Soup Bowl at Bathsheba, Rockley and Hastings were all wicked. The locals are the friendliest, nicest and stone coolest people we'd ever met. There was never a hint of unease or feeling that our safety was at risk. The food commonly used a combinaton of spices and chilli that tasted great but paid you back with interest on the porcelain chair. We recommend Barbados highly.

I write all this in Quito, Ecuador, elevation 2900m. With the Cordillera Occidental and Orientale to the West and East respectively and Volcan Pichincha towering over the city at 4800m or thereabouts, it's a city like I've never seen before. We started a week long, four hours per day Spanish class today, which frankly has broken my little head. I had to come here and write something in English to make the synapses fire again. When we've done something more interesting than school, I'll let you know.

First post

Howdy all,

My man Vincent sent me a link to his blog page and I thought it a fine thing indeed, despite my recognition of Dutch being rather shady. Check his at http://vincentlodder.blogspot.com/

7 April of this fine year of our lord sees me heading off from Australian shores to enjoy the next chapter of my travels. This trip - six months in South America - has been 13 months so far in the making. I continue to save and in doing so the anticipation grows. The brief, rough itinerary goes like this:

• 07 April - Fly to Miami via LA
• 13 April - Fly to Barbados for the ICC Cricket World Cup
• 20 April - Fly back to Miami for the night
• 21 April - Fly to Quito, Ecuador
• 27 September - Fly from Sao Paulo, Brazil to Brisbane via Miami and LA

What happens in the big middle bit is anyone's guess, though I predict three months of hiking and wandering about Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia followed by two months of Amazon jungle and beach action in Brazil. I also have the enjoyable task of turning 30 whilst over there. Should be a good party, methinks.

I won't prattle on any more as I still have 11 weeks of work to go, and 12 weeks of waiting before Amy, Rusty and I crack a cold can on the flight to the US and begin the trip proper.

Cheers, Lee