Playing catch-up - Brazil so far!

After posting the video the other day i felt that i ought to write at last a little something, especially considering that we haven't written all the time we've been in brazil! We're actually back in argentina, briefly, for now but that can come later.

Our Brazilian adventure began in Rio, where we arrive to find the city was actually a bit grey, a bit gutting having escaped from very grey Lima, expecting to find a very hot Rio, complete with sexy ladies in bikinis. On our first day, wandering toward the Cristo Redentor statue (that big jesus bloke), we were a bit disappointed to find that we couldn't even see the thing as the whole area was blanketed in cloud, so were forced to settle for a bit of a walk instead, alas bereft of half-naked beauties. The rest of our time in Rio was spent chilling on the beach and only the one instance of near death when i got a bit cocky in the big waves of the Atlantic and got smashed against the bottom a couple of times, hey ho, it happens.

We plucked up the courage to leave rio and headed for a small beach town called Arraial d'Ajuda, near to Porto Seguro (the point at which the Portuguese landed in Brazil) on an over night bus, which seemed to take a 2 hr detour to change a wheel and then do laps of a small car park. all a bit confusing when your half asleep.

There's not much to say about Arraial - it was beautiful, but apart from flo's spending at the fancy boutiques and some fancy dancing by the locals, there wasnt a lot going on but was a fantastic beachy town.

Next on to Salvador where, apparently there is a Church for every day of the year, flo and I werent enamoured with the town so quickly made our way,by rough boat journey, to Morro de Sao Paulo, a beautiful island where the taxis are in fact yellow wheelbarrows that help people take their bags along the sand streets. We ended up killing about a week in this tiny little place doing very little bar sitting on the beach and on the one day we decided to be adventurous and go for a walk we ended up stuck on the other side of the island and needing to hitch a ride in a tractor across the muddy streets in order to get home!

Back in Salvador after another even rougher journey which caused pretty much everyone bar me and Flo to be ill (impressed with flo who normally travels like a 5 yr old!). We spent a bit of time organising where to go next and then booked our flights to Iguasu falls!

More soon!

Nick x

A bit of filler from lazy nick and flo!

More will follow soon - sorry for being rubbish.

love to you all!

ps. yes, we're sorry its very dark too.

Iquitos, the jungle, and Lima... again!

Hello!

As per usual we have been a bit shit with the old blogging but have been having a great few weeks so here goes...

We got a flight from Lima to Iquitos (a town in northern Peru which can only be reached by air or boat it has no connecting roads, an amazing town considering this, anyway it is right on the amazon)which was surprisingly painless, when we arrived it was pissing it down which was a bit of a blow considering a guy at our hostel had told us how hot it was there, turns out he wasn´t yanking our chains it was bloody baking there, humidity levels were at 87% and it rained quite a bit but really really hot and as you would expect near the amazon it was filled with mosquito's! I think my skin naturally has insect honey as part of its constituent cells i get covered in bites instantly! and proved this on day one in Iquitos.

Our hostel (the hobo hideout) was pretty bloody weird with dead animals everywhere on the walls and a weird damp smell, nick and I got ushered into a tiny room with two beds on wooden slats and a fan that did fuck and all but it was so crazily cheap we couldn´t give a shite, and as per usual i was feeling really shitty.

We went in search of a company which would provide us with a jungle tour that was not too touristy and not too pricey. In the end we settled on a company which sounded pretty cool and next thing we knew we were on a boat for 4 hours taking us to our first stop in the jungle. We were introduced to our guide May (pronounced My) and I was a bit apprehensive as a) he spoke pretty ropey english and b) he looked about 12. On the plus side nick and I were the only ones with him, it was not a big tour group or anything like other companies it was a personal tour. We soon found out that May was a bit of a sweety, only 23 and the eldest of 8 kids coming from a small village in the jungle.

We took about 3 boats I think to get us to where were we going to be staying which were cool log cabin things right in the jungle on one of the rivers off the amazon. We immediately met a group of american girls who were doing a shorter tour than us but quite excitingly were taking part in a ritual called Huawaska where a sharman gives you some potion (basically a strong hallucinogenic) and you vom your guts out then supposedly see your spirit animal and have a great time (more on this later) we had lunch with these guys and then were whisked off by May to head into the jungle on a tour, turns out we did this every morning in different parts of the jungle and it was brilliant. We saw monkeys, huge spiders, medicinal plants all around us, dolphins, jaguar prints, alligators, parrots, and we went fishing twice and caught and ate pirannas (nasty fuckers they are too) Every day we were fed like royalty too and went on boat trips to see birds, monkeys, dolphins and alligators. We decided to do a 5 day 4 night tour and on our second and third nights we had to move camp as a larger party were heading our way, May took us to another part of the jungle where we stayed for these nights and he fed us by himself and chatted away to us, and may have sniffed my shoes a few times (long story, bit weird, he tried to crack on to me a few times whilst nick was asleep too which was pretty awkward.)

The amazon and the rivers that we stayed on look beautiful it is really really hard to explain how amazing they look at all times of the day and the noise was unbearable it is so hard to sleep because the frogs, insects,monkeys and birds are constantly making noise, but it was amazing. On our first trip fishing it began to piss it down (the heaviest rain i have ever been in, also the hottest) we took shelter in the jungle and monkeys began to climb down from their trees and one actually climbed onto nick and hugged him half looking for food but desperate for affection and shelter! really amazing. We also went in search of tarantulas on one night, not pleasant i can tell you, and one night we heard May making quite a bit of noise in the kitchen area, we went to see what it was and he had a spider on his Machete (which was used everyday as we made our way through the deep jungle, no walking paths for us!) this spider was not only deadly but could jump 5 meters... great eh! anyway he killed it and then seconds later gleefully said "Flor flor flor look what I have" and thrust a spade in my face, on which was the biggest cockroach i have ever seen, i sat with my legs above the ground the hole night because of that!

I was bitten to shit our days there, I mean bitten to shit too, I remember one night I was getting ready for bed and turned round to face nick and he had a really pained expression on his face and was wincing at me, he looked like he never wanted to come in contact with me again, my arse was literally purple and all down my legs were becoming purple and just a solid mass of bites. I recon I had over 200 bites on me, seriously!

Back to the American girls. The night of the ceremony nick and I began to hear chanting from their room and then there was silence and the lights went out, the chanting continued and then the horror commenced, we had been told that you were sick once and then the hallucinations began, these guys were throwing up for about 5 hours straight and one girl was dry retching all night and they all looked terrible in the morning, poor nick had been awake through it all, thanks to the wonder of ear plugs i slept through everything. Two of them did see their spirit animals, a peacock and a deer as it happens but they all said the experience was horrific and they would never do it again, every time they asked for air or water the shaman just blew smoke (cigarette not mystic stuff) in their faces and told them to be quiet! I recon he was just having a laugh with a group of American girls I think the dose he gave was a little big and it doesn´t sound like the other ceremonies some of our friends have done in South America with a shaman, i´m not even sure he was one!

The tour really was amazing though we saw such amazing things and the amazon is so beautiful it begs belief covered in lilly pads and pink and grey dolphins everywhere it really was a shame to head back to Iquitos on our last day. We said goodbye to May and then made our way back to our hostel where we were upgraded and had an amazing room in a wooden raised bungalow thing, very cool. We then made our way back to Lima the following day.

We have now been in Lima for what feels like forever! Because we are a bit stupid we are having money problems again so have been stuck here for about 5 days when i am fit to burst with excitement about Rio. Anyway we decided to not stay in the same hostel as before but instead go to a different part of town to the Lima version of the hostel we stayed at in Cusco. It is a really nice hostel and we have met some lovely lovely lovely people here and as a result have been drunk as skunks almost every night, but there is really nothing to do in Lima, after the hillarity and excitement of the erotic pot museum and eating our way through the cafes and drinking our way through the bars, we are pretty bored. We have also heard loads of stories about Lima and how unsafe it is for tourists, we haven´t met anybody who has had any trouble what so ever. Yesterday however Nick and I were walking home after a bit of a wander and I was wrestling nick and had him in a headlock (we are pretty romantic sometimes ) when a police man and his partner in their patrol car pulled over, got out and shouted something at us. I thought i was in trouble for breaching the peace or something but he just told us that the area we were walking in (2 minutes from our hostel) was unsafe and that we should never be out later than 5 in the evening, nice eh! any way we have had no problems, we have a lovely hostel and we are heading to Rio tomorrow night!!!!!!! yey!

Oh and I didn´t get an interview for the Newsround job, bit gutted. LEEEEEEEEEZZZZZO!

much love

flossie

xxxxxxxxxx

Sky, sand and shitty weather

We finally managed to drag ourselves away from all that was going on in Cuzco for the small town of Nazca famous for being the home of the Nazca Lines, a collection of enormous images on the surface of the desert area. These images are only really recognisable from the air and so have confused experts as to their intended use and also as to how exactly the Nazcans of around 2000 yrs ago actually managed to make them!

Despite this being the sole reason for our visit to this area, Flo was still a bit reluctant to get her travel-sick-seven-yr-old alike self to sign up for one of the flights which would take us over the lines in a small 6 seater aircraft, but after only a small amount of abuse she relented and we were signed up to go the following day.

After an early breakfast (very light in flo´s case for fear of seeing it again) we jumped into the back of a minibus and headed for the tiny airport on the outskirts of town where we were sat in front of an informative (read boring) documentary from the mid eighties, which basically the lines still remained a bit mystery but in no way was this going to stop a large group of social misfits from spending a lot of time conjecturing wildly.

After watching this, and then sitting patiently whilst another group watched it again, and waiting whilst others who arrived at the same time as us were lead off to their flight, we were too called over to the tarmac, where after a brief welcome we were loaded into the small plane. Flo managed to get the front seat next to the pilot (making her co-pilot? shit thats a scary thought), thankfully not in the back since i reckon she would probably have yommed up the back of whoever was sat in front of her since it was pretty cramped for those who actually ended up there. Anyway, we were soon airborne, and without yommage, and heading for the first of the lines.
The lines themselves were harder to spot than we had been lead to believe! But with a bit of squinting and the pilot rocking the plane from side to side so that everyone got a look i think we managed to spot all of them! Following the route above (on the back of our 'certificates' for having done the flight - flo's is going on her wall next to the one she got for completing the fish trail in hull, a prestigious award if ever there was one) I was able to take photos of where the lines 'should' have been, and even though at our first look at the photos that id taken we wrote them off as being a big pile of shit, if you look at the larger versions you can actually see the lines - hurray! Seeing the lines, when we actually could (the monkey was particularly elusive), was pretty cool and to top it all off flo only felt 'slightly' ill when we were returning to the airport and wasnt sick at all!

That was about it for Nazca so the same day we made arrangements to escape and make our way towards the city of Ica and from there a short 10 minute taxi ride to the tiny town of Huacachina, a small group of mainly hotels and restaurants surrounding a small oasis lake surrounded by enormous sand dunes.

Huacachina was an amazing place but we didnt really get up to much, I went sandboarding, and although i didnt take out the camera for fear of breaking it, i did get a photo taken by and Israeli girl but i havent seen her since. I'm sure she'll treasure the photo and the magical times we spent together. I'm pretty sure that had i taken my camera i would have looked something like this in the photos:

We spent a lot of time enjoying the weather in Huacachina, but one trip we did take was a wine and pisco tour of the area, our first stop was a Pisco distillery, where they make the drink which is an icon of South America. The spirit here tasted fine but on our second stop to a vineyard we tasted what i think was the worst wine i have ever had the misfortune to taste. I could have done better myself! Peruvian wine= BAD. Our last stop however introduced us to the delights of Tejas. We went to a small shop attached to the factory which makes the small chocolatey treats then sends them all over Peru and the rest of the world.

After we dragged ourselves away from the sun of Huacachina it was on to the oppressive greyness of Lima, where we found ourselves slowed down somewhat by the childlike fragility of my travel companion. Illness (like hunger in the shreddies adverts i like to think although maybe not with a spoon) struck. So our time in Miraflores was punctuated by spells in bed for miss page, but we did make it to the sex pots - yay.

Then, off to the Jungle...

Machu Picchu

This is a joint blog from me and flo (me in blue and flo in purple!) Photos to follow when uploaded!

Yesterday we caught the train from Cuzco to Aguas Calientes (aka Machu Picchu Village) at 7 in the morning - ouch! We got here at about midday and quickly found that this was actually a bigger place than we had thought with a load of restaurants and hotels - really geared up to the tourists!

We went about trying to meet up with Lars and Courtie but failed, we watched a huge procession in the street and some interesting dancing (jesus based atire was fetching) and then found ourselves a hostel and settled in. We went out for amazing food last night at a place run by a frenchy and bought our tickets for the bus to machu picchu and got san early night ready for the ten to 5 alarm!

Yeah, that hurt in the morning, but we made it to the bus waiting area well in time for the first bus at half 5 leaving for Machu Picchu. The bus ride up was full and pretty unspectacular given that it was dark and all! I'm sure it would have been more impressive by daylight. Anyway we arrived at the top of the hill and through the ticket office and up to the highest point of Machu Picchu to see the spectacular view of.... fuck all. The whole site was blanketed by clouds.

We sat and waited for about an hour for the clouds to clear in which time we amused ourselves with patience (the card game - well we staged a photo of it anyway). Suddenly the clouds began to clear and all around us were amazing views (may not have made it to full amazing status yet but at least were getting there!)! having the attention span of a 5 year old and being a bit of a history geek (flo is playing the history geek card here but when i was lurking to hear what the guides of other groups were saying she was moaning to move on! child.) (That would be the whole attention span thing already mentioned not a lack of interest per say in my little Incary friends) I was very excited by the huge historical playground and just wanted to run around like a big kid. We walked through living areas, temples, prisons, sacred rocks and work shops, and eventually headed for what we thought was the temple of the moon, but in fact turned out just to be an amazingly steep walk with an amazing view. (The sacred rock was an interesting one as some people took it´s sacred and healing powers very seriously and Nick took the piss a little to loudly) (Yet justifiably so!)

We did a good amount of sitting at the top of the hill and it was amazing to see the whole site slowly appear from behind the clouds as the photos will show. And there are lots of photos. We finally decided that it was about time we scrambled down from the top of the hill and check out the rest of the area, actually getting to hear about some of the items from the guides that others had paid for (chumps).

We spent about 5 hours at the site in the end before heading back to Aquas Calientes. The site really didn´t disappoint (as the video will show). To be honest the pictures should really speak for themselves so I think I am going to leave it at that. I know I know no blog for ages and then 3 at ones, we treat you so well! xxx

Arequipa, Cusco and alcoholic dazes.

Ok this is going to be a pleasantly brief one as we have been decidedly lazy for about two weeks, never the less here goes.

We arrived in Arequipa (where there is a huge canyon, which we didn´t go to, genius!) We found our hostel which turned out to be really really lovely, hammocks no less, and settled ourselves in and met some very sweet Brits, one of whom we met two nights ago whilst very very drunk. Arequipa has a beautiful square which is surrounded by shops and cafes and that sort of thing without being quite so touristy as Cusco. We went out for a meal to an amazing Mexican place with some guys from our hostel and here began our beautiful relationship with Lars and Courtland (a Norwegian who went to university in Sunderland of course so speaks with a fantastic English accent, and a yank) who i thought were both Israeli... they weren´t ... true story! Ok to be honest that is about it, we did lots of wandering, I bought lots of useless tat, we ate really well, drank really well, and lazed about in hammocks on the roof terrace, not bad!

We had been told that the road to Cusco is unsafe to take at night from Arequipa, so we did it. We took a brand of bus that was recommended to us and were amazed when we got on as it looked like a plane twas amazing. Arriving in Cusco we got to our hostel and again were pleasantly surprised, our hostel is massive, has a huge tv room and bar, and everyone is aged between 20=30 and up for having a really good time which is what we both needed after the relative quietness of most of Bolivia and the early stages of Peru. As soon as we arrived at the hostel Lars and Courtie arrived, which was cool and we got chatting to others in our dorm. That night we went out and Nick wasn´t feeling that great so I felt it my duty to drink for the both of us... I felt terrible the next day and Nick and I sat around in the hostel garden eating the practically all day breakfast provided, with occasional moans from me. Next night was a full moon night and apparently this is a huge deal here. Every bar/ club/ and hostel had some kind of event on and our hostel had a DJ and stupid offers on drinks, we drank a reasonable amount here before heading out for the night and here nick and I along with Lars got for want of a better expression , shit faced, Nick also managed to get lost twice and find our friend Mike from our hostel in Arequipa who is a bit of a sweety. Some Peruvians have an interesting way of dancing to say the least and the guys make so much effort and look so camp it is brilliant!!Great night again felt a bit rough the next day but totally worth it, we got back to the hostel that night at about 5 and Lars and Courtie had to get a train to where I am now, the next morning at 7! miraculously they did it.

This morning we work up at quarter to 6 and caught to train to Aquas Caliente, a small town right next to Macchu Picchu, I am now writing from the town. Tomorrow we get up stupidly early to go to Machu Pichu, very exciting, might go to some hot springs this afternoon and try not to faint this time. Then we are heading back to Cusco and will probably stay there a while as we like it! despite our dorm mates having interesting sleeping habits which I won´t go in to now.

Told you I would keep it short, this from the girl who had to halve her dissertation length.

Lake Titicaca - ha ha, that sounds like breasts

After a few epic blogs this should be a quicky!

From La Paz we caught a bus to the town of Copacabana as flo said (and were a bit weirded out by being told to get off our bus and then watching it floating away over the lake!). This is NOT the Copacabana in Brazil (which was apparently named after this town) nor the brain-rapingly horrific Barry Manilow song.

This was meant to be a short stop over in order to allow us to see the beautiful Isla del Sol however on arrival all went wrong. We soon realised that this was a town completely lacking a cash machine. Now this would not normally be a problem since in situations like this there is always at least one bank or suchlike ready and willing to give a cash advance on a credit card which would have been great had:

a) i not maxed out my credit card
and
b) flo not been travelling on her debit card - not good enough for the lovely folks at Prodem FFP.

So there we were, at about 7pm in a new town with literally no money (we had wisely delayed getting out money when we could have in La Paz until we got to our next stop). So it was about 7pm and we were getting hungry and yet with no way of securing any foodage. It shames me to say it but we resorted to begging - I found myself knocking on the door of the owner of our hotel (feeling very small especially since the hotel we were staying in was only costing us 10Bolivianos per person per night which is about £1.20 for the 2 of us) asking him to borrow some money to eat until we sorted out our finances the following day. Despite my offers of leaving my iPod as collateral he was having none of it and was quite happy to hand over 100Bs - more than we were likely to need for the evening!

The following day we realised that we were going to need some help and so bit the bullet and called home. Dad, who for those of you who dont know is currently disabled by a torn cruciate ligament (or so i believe) was amazing (thanks dad!) and drove down to town and hobbled both to his bank and my bank to sort out our financial woes.

Alas despite all his hard work we were undone by the ineptitude of the people at the Halifax (fucking Howard) and unfortunately were forced to make the trip back to La Paz (a 3.5hr bus journey) for the sole purpose of finding a cash point. While we were waiting for the bus to leave Copacabana there was a pretty horrific smell emanating from the old cholita sat in front of us but whilst we were gasping for air out of the small bus window we spotted flo's coursemate Jack and his girlfriend Claire, out on a brief stint in Peru and Bolivia! Whilst doing anything then was pretty impossible, we did manage to go out for a meal with them on our return to Copacabana 7hrs later!

With money came the ability to actually do the things that we had come here to do, namely visit the Isla del Sol, an island off the coast and a site of significance for the indigenous people as being the birthplace of both the sun and the moon! We made our way out on the boat (flo travels like a 7 year old, so this was guaranteed to be good!) We spent the night on the island and in the morning we began the walk across it and whilst we didnt really feel the significance afforded to some of the sacred rocks (looked just like rocks to us!) the scenery was staggering.



After we'd done this we had pretty much exhausted Copacabana and so moved on to Peru and the town of Puno!

At the bus station we heard someone touting the hostel that we'd planned on going to anyway and thinking that this could be our route to a free taxi ride we decided to show some interest. Somehow in the mix he managed to persuade us that this hostel (the one that he had been advertising) was too expensive and so had us sold on a different one instead, not really sure how this happened, but we found ourselves being ferried to this new hotel, and then subjected to a long and very persistent sales pitch from the same man who quickly moved from hotel tout to travel agent within seconds!

We eventually got away from him and into the safety of our room where we could decide what it was that WE wanted to do before getting back to him with our decision to do a 1 day tour and not the 2 day one he was pushing for (we´d heard scary things about having to dress up in traditional dress!)


So the following day we had an early start and were ferried to the port where we were put onto a boat headed for the reed islands of the Uros people of Lake Titicaca. These are a large group of artificial floating island manufactured by their inhabitants out of the enormous reeds native to the lake. We were greeted very warmly (more to do with our touristy cash than anything i think, maybe too cynically) but the islands themselves were very impressive and all squishy underfoot! Flo got a bit happy taking photos of all the kids in their brightly coloured clothes, and a bit too happy stalking one particular innocent little girl around the island which you will see if you check my flickr! After a brief talk about the people and their islands we were allowed to wander and see if we wanted to buy any of their wares (all of which completely authentically made on the islands and in no way available in the rest of peru, its just a coincidence that they have similar stuff)

After this we moved on to the next island Taquile which was, well, an island. Yes, it was pretty, and yes, the men did wear silly hats (always a highlight) but after the novelty of the reed islands and the 3hr boat trip it was a bit of a let down really!


So that was about it for Lake Titicaca and on to Arequipa (a journey we booked ourselves and NOT through our new stalker) !

Long overdue post....sorry...

Ok seeing as I have been rubbish and reasonably unwell through most of Bolivia we haven’t been blogging that much, but Horrah! I am now here to make amends! wooooooooooo! enjoy!


UYUNI


Uyuni was where we finished the salt flats tour, despite the whole acute mountain sickness thingy, the salt flats were amazing and we arrived in Uyuni in a nice hotel with the Kiwi couple Gav and Alanna. The place was really nice and we probably should have realised that we were going to have to pay far more than we thought, but hey ho you live and you learn and all that, on the plus side the hotel had an amazing pizza restaurant in the back run by a yank and we bumped into travel chum Sophs again. The town was pretty ordinary really and the highlight was Nick and my trip to a weird train cemetery, so yea we moved out pretty fast once myself and Alanna were no longer being weak and feeble.


POTOSI


Potosi is a small mining town where most travellers go down the mines, look at the incredibly poor conditions, and blow up some dynamite! being claustrophobic I didn’t really want to go down the mines (think nick still holds that against me slightly) but the town was a good place to stop between Uyuni and the town of Sucre. The hotel we stayed in in Potosi was weird to the extreme, run by an inordinately smiley hobbley old woman, our rooms looked like ex hospital wards, so again we kind of flew through this city pretty damn fast.


SUCRE


From Potosi Nick and I, along with Gav and Alana got a taxi to the de facto capital Sucre. What a lovely surprise Sucre was after Potosi where everything was cold and dark and the altitude made it hard to breath walking a foot. Sucre was sunny and beautiful with an amazing central park and courtyards galore, full of choccy shops and great restaurants, and what’s more we stayed in a lovely lovely place where there was a sunny "quadrangle" (Nick has been taking the piss ever since I used the word but I think it is perfectly reasonable!) We had a brilliant few days here, relaxing in the sun, drinking lots of beer and wine, and going on a brilliant dinosaur tour to "Cretatious Park" in no way affiliated with Jurassic Park of Course. We took this tiny truck to the dinosaur park which had a fake dino head on the front and Nick and I thought we were fucking hilarious humming and whistling the Jurassic Park tune ad nausea. The park actually has real dino foot prints that are still being excavated near a cement plant, and there are loads of to scale models of dinos around which were cool, but the best bit by far was when our South American guide told us, with no sense of irony that one of the dino´s was distantly related to the Loch Ness Monster of Scotland... BRILLIANT!


COCHABAMBA


In true retard Flo style I was sick again in Cochabamba, a town which was meant to be very interesting and has a huge Rio Style Jesus on a big mountain. Our first day here we arrived at 5 in the morning and had to wait out side a hotel for it to open, so a good start there! we then went to an all you can eat Indian restaurant (of course) which was weird and next to a sex shop and I think I might have got a bit of food poisoning, just to throw that into the mix. Anyway the next few days were spent with me ill in bed and Nick running around town using internet and buying food for us both, most of which I didn´t eat. Anyway as soon as I felt better we moved on to La Paz Horrah!!!


La Paz


Upon arriving in La Paz there is the most amazing view. The City is built in a valley and it just looks stunning, we arrived at our hostal called the Adventure Brew hostel, which has a brewery down stairs and an amazing bar upstairs with free beer for it’s visitors! We got chatting to another couple and went out for Turkish grub with them, as you do in Bolivia, but it was really nice. The next day Nick and I went for an adventure around the city, checking out all the beautiful monuments etc... unfortunately yup you guessed it I got altitude sickness and was in bed for the next three days, so Nick worked his way through most of the hostals DVD selection. As soon as I was being less retarded and unwell Nick and I saw a poster for Cholita wrestling in a nearby district, Cholita´s are traditional Bolivian women, so we thought this would be amazing, we went with a big group and the experience was amazing.



We were basically piled into a sports hall and watched about 6 wrestling matches. the crowd and the wrestlers go mental throwing anything into the ring, chairs, planks of wood, cans of beer, bones, orange peel, and all the time these women are in traditional dress, brilliant! When we got back to the hostel and were recovering from the days proceedings we drank a stupid amount with some Ausies that we met which probably wasn´t a great idea at altitude but it was sooo worth it. The same day we also went to a BBQ where we met some really nice people. Ben and Geordie had managed to get kidnapped two days before we met them and were held at gun point for a couple of days before being released in an alley, so they were understandably still fucking shaken up, and our bar man Ollie had brought Dynamite from Potosi into the capital after it hadn´t been used, and no body would take it off his hands, in la paz it was spotted in his bag and the police were called, he has now been in La Paz for 3 weeks whilst interpol clear his name as a terrorist!


La Paz is a really cool City, it has two completely apposing sides, the really poor district, which has a lot of stuff for tourists and a witches market filled with lama foetus’s, and the really businessy district where the embassy’s are and they are pretty swish with some really nice restaurants. There is also a kind of fake Trafalgar square which is filled with pigeons and the locals seem to love them. Nick and I spent quite a few days just exploring the city and buying you all stupid gifts.


When we fist arrived in La Paz Nick and I saw a poster advertising a mountain bike tour which is world renowned down the allegedly "most dangerous road," where an Israeli guy died a week ago. Anyway I said initially no way, I am shit on a bike and if anyone is going to spas out on a bike it is going to be yours truly, sure enough 5 days later I was there on the top of a mountain geared up to the max shitting myself, within 5 minutes I had fallen off and I managed about 2 hours on the bike before having to give up. Nick absolutely loved it of course, he fell off whilst going faster than he should have done, but I think he thinks the injury was worth it. I spent a good 2 hours in a bus alone with a south American called Marco who spoke no English, I was actually impressed with how much Spanish I knew and we actually got on really well despite his questionable taste in music, and I had to ask him to look at the road more times than I would have liked. Anyway I met up with Nick and the rest of the group at the end of the trip and Nick was a very happy bunny, he kind of had that 5 year old´s face that says "did you see me, did you see me!" we went to an animal sanctuary where we had lunch and were surrounded by parrots and monkeys and donkeys and much more, it was really cool, apart from the fact there are fuckers called sand flies around, whose bites I am still scratching today. We got back to la Paz late that night, ordered another pizza and headed off the next day to Cocacabana on Lake Titikaka!

Flo blogs from bed.

Bolovin' it (apologies)

OK, so we've got some catching up to do so this may be epic...

Flo had got us as far as Mendoza and we've come a fair way since then as some of you have pointed out (thanks bob - you suck).

At Mendoza we said goodbye to the majority of the big group of people that we had seemed to collect over the last week hanging onto only sophie the fake kiwi for our journey to Salta, another reasonably sized city in the north of Argentina nicknamed Salta la Linda (or Salta the Beautiful), somewhat of an overstatement in my opinion, it was pretty in parts but maybe im just being picky!

On our first day we took the cable car up to the top of Cerro San Bernardo for a fantastic view of the town and the lovely concrete waterfall which they are inordinately proud of.

Salta is also famous for its beautiful surroundings and so having wandered the town for a bit we decided that to build on our successful vehicle rental experience again (and to lower the A$200 per person cost of the tours) that a car might be a better option. So after an ENORMOUS asado the night before we woke up ready to receive our "VW Gol" (for some reason no 'f' on it out here - answers on a postcard) and soon we were off to explore the surrounding province of Salta.

This, I think, was our first view of what we actually had envisioned before we came out here - miles of red rock and cactus fields stretching for miles with small villages dotted along the dusty dirt roads, so this was what we were treated to for most of the first day of our 2 day moto-trek.

We spent the first night in the smallest little town which had two hospedajes (family run guest houses) and one restaurant which i cant figure out how it still survives since we were the only customers and the food was a wee bit shonky! anyway, day two saw us joining the famous Ruta 40, another rough, dusty/gravelly road along which Flo and Sophs went a bit nuts taking photos of rocks, which may or may not have looked like enormous genitals, whilst i sat patiently behind the wheel.

Our return to Salta lasted only one more night before we booked our passage out of there and towards the border town of La Quiaca where we would walk across the least official looking border crossing into Bolivia (apparently loads of people completely miss it only to find that they have to come back to get the official stamps when they try to book any transport). The town on the other side of the border is called Villazon and here we booked ourselves into a surprisingly nice hotel (we'd heard some shitty things about Bolivia) and then pretty much crashed. The next day was, well, a fucker.

At about 3500m about sea level this was the highest we'd been thus far and it hit me fucking hard! i spent most of this day alternating between restless sleep and a stonking headache. which was nice. i think flo was feeling rough as well but was playing nice and looking after me! So we both spent a couple of days in Villazon, both waiting for the train and trying to acclimatise.

The train from Villazon to a small town called Tupiza, saw us meeting a couple more kiwis (real ones this time). A couple called Gavin and Alana from Auckland were sat infront of us and we quickly got chatting, over the noise of the hideous Bolivian music - seriously, its shocking! On arrival in Tupiza we were quickly hustled and lead to a hotel by a child of about 10.

We decided the next day would be well spent pretending to be coyboys - we the 4 of us (still with the kiwis) bought the silly hats and everything (in fact ive kinda grown attached to mine and i know flo still has hers so who knows) We all felt very cool pretending to be in control of the horses who clearly had no time for the fucking idiots sat on their backs trying to
a) make them go the wrong way
b) make them go at any kind of speed!

But the scenery was amazing and despite the pain in my but cheeks for the next few days I really enjoyed it.

Tupiza was also to be our starting point for a 4 day/3 night 4wd tour taking us on a big circuit past all the beautiful country around Tupiza finishing up in the Salar de Uyuni salt flats. So at 9am on the following morning we waited outside the hotel to meet our driver for the next few days and to see our magnificent carriage (a beat up land cruiser).

We actually ended up with 2 drivers which, you would have thought would be a good and reassuring thing, until we quickly realisied that although Jose (the big boss man) was a experienced pro, Jose-Luis was most definitely a rookie and at times we all felt that we would do a better job driving than him, even flo and she doesnt even have a licence and apparently has "trouble with corners"!

This was at its most apparent when he took us up the narrow winding roads along what I believe is one of the worlds highest motorable roads, practically clipping the edges of the sharp drops as he went along despite leaving a couple of meters between the car and the nice safe safe wall on the other side of the road.


MAP:
This is a map of our route over the 4 days that we were travelling from Tupiza (in the middle on the right) down, along the Argentine and Chilean borders, and then up and towards Uyuni (in the middle) by way of the salt flats.

The first day was spent mainly just getting us into position for the spectacular sights of the next day, not to say that the scenery wasnt amazing nor, as mentioned above, that the ride wasnt interesting to say the least!

Day 2 started EARLY at 4:45 which was pretty rough but at least we go to see the sunrise over the hills. The highlight of this day was set to be the natural hot springs which we were meant to get to about midday so you can see how long we were driving for. The hot spring was lovely with a magnificent view over the nearby hills. The rough part of this experience came after we got out of the warm water again - this change in temperature, coupled with the altitude, caused flo to 'spaz out' (technical term meaning feel light headed and then cause her to faint as we struggled to get her out of the road and into the nearby building) This obviously caught peoples attention since later in our tour we were told by an aussie how "this girl fainted as she came out of the pools" and we had to explain that that was us! The rest of the day was spent admiring lakes and eggy smelling geysers! We spent the night at altitude - 4270m and damn it was cold!

The next morning we started at Laguna Colorada, home to thousands of Flamingos, which was a spectacular sight first thing in the morning. Beyond this this was mostly another day to get us from A to B, but this is not to say that the scenery wasnt amazing, which it was, its just that you get rather blase about beautiful hills when they are all that you can see for 10hrs a day from the back of a 4x4! However, what was exciting was that this would be the night that we were to spend in the Salt Hotel - yes, it is as the name would suggest. When we arrived we decided that it would be cool to make use of the luxury that was the free hot showers of which we had so far been deprived. I was waiting my turn and turned around to see Steve Vance (university friend) walking in to the Hotel! I think I freaked him out a bit. So Flo and I chatted to Steve and his girlfriend Avney for a bit which was cool but that was the last we saw of Flo for the evening for reasons I wont go into for the sake of decency save to say that in trying to demonstrate how she was feeling to our Bolivian driver Jose she utilised a particularly upsetting mime! (ask her about it sometime, preferably when I'm not around). She did miss out on watching me try to play 5-a-side at altitude and some tasty llama steaks though!

The next day we bundled a rough feeling Flo into the back of the car and set off for the highlight of the trip - the salt flats themselves. The salt flats are simply massive. The perfectly flat salt stretches for miles around and are spectacular. Any description would do them a disservice so just look at the pictures! They also allow for the classic comedy perspective shots which seem obligatory for all visiting tourists! enjoy!


After spending a bit too long trying to pefect these we then moved on to Uyuni for a few lazy days in slightly more luxurious surroundings which i will leave for a later, and hopefully more concise blog!

big love, word and peace out.

nick

Haircut

It was a couple of weeks ago now but some of you havent seen/dont believe that ive had my hair cut so here it is!

Sweet Mendoza.. wubwubwubwubwubwubwub (now with 100% more photos)

Just a brief note for parental units before reading this, a) we are fine, b) Nick and I didn't do anything too stupid so please don't stress, c) Dad you would have loved it...Party week!

As soon as we arrived in Mendoza over a week ago it looked pretty cool,we met a fake New Zealander (originally from England) and got a taxi together to our hostel, the hostel was great and had a pool surrounded by beautiful people so we were happy and got into the BBQ spirit instantly. We bumped into a bunch of "gap brats" 18 year old gap year students who had more money than sense, plums in their mouth, and zero charm, anyway they seemed to love Nick and I despite our best attemps to be rude to them whenever possible. After two nights at our hostel we moved on to another down the road and they followed us there!

When Nick and I arrived at the new hostel we bumped into our friends we met in Bariloche! the huge group of Californians, who seemed delighted to see us and vice versa, we instantly agreed to go on a wine tour of Mendoza and I ran down the road to let Sophs know we now had a party of 10 and that she was going to get a party over the next couple of days and quite possibly the sex that she was longing for, (by the way she is 32 looking 25!) So the huge group of us got a bus to where we rented bikes and began the wine tour, it was a brilliant day, really hot, lots of wine and cycling, bearing in mind how un coordinated i can be once pissed it was hillarious and i think we all managed to injure ourselves in one way or another be it going over the handle bars, wearing down our crotches with the bike seats, or falling off our bikes in odd ways.

We arrived home after the tour having got lost several times whilst on it, and drank a stupid amount at the hostel and did more zoidberg impressions than you thought were ever possible.

Another great thing about Mendoza was the fact that Emily was there (old house mate) and Dana the Canadian we had been stalking for a while. Emily bumped into us on a night out with Dana and made us feel loved and we went out twice them which was cool. Mendoza has a beautiful tree lined lake and glowing light display at night which looks like a magic mushroom and a cool night market just to show we did actually step out of the hostel despite our week of hangovers.

Various haircuts took place at the hostel, we got rid of Phil's hair and gave him a hawk and Sarah (skunk) cut nick's hair which was a bit of a disaster and I have just fixed it, he looks hot again now. The American's sure know how to do a BBQ and we had several whilst at the hostel each more impressive than the next with more alcohol than the last, and with a smeg head called Jessie providing members of the group with larger and larger quantities of coke, ending badly for some.

Oh and I fell off a bus... they don't fully stop so you get off whilst they are moving I missed judged it and am a bit bruised but I rolled quite a long way in an Indiana Jones esc fashion which was cool. There were several roberies at the hostel which we managed to avoid but quite a lot of people got hit.

The main event of the week has to be our road trip up into the mountains. We rented a van for ten of us which Nick and Seabass drove. We had the ipod blaring, good food, some wine, and Jeff had a fuck off jar of pot that people slowly made their way through. Unfortunately for us there were random police checks along the road and we got pulled over. Skunk speaks fantastic spanish and is very pretty and sweet which helped, he was furious that the van smelt of Alcohol (luckily this had been thrown out earlier) but also that we didn't have our passpots on us, photocopies apparently were not good enough. We had been swimming in a lake earlier and Lonnie, Skunk and Soph all had tribal style clay faces which he didn't seem impressed by at all. After making us stand outside the van he began to check through it, looking through bags, taking off pannels and generally scaring the shit out of us. Sarah did a great job of looking perplexed and when he asked to check the ipod speakers and Run DMC's "Tricky" came booming out he actually broke a smile and some how we got away without him finding the pot. For some stupid ass reason Jeff decided before we got to another police check to swollow the weed rather than chuck it away or anything, he was not a happy bunny later (nick: methinks he was telling porkies - he would have been even more of a mess had he actually eaten it!) Anyway we got to the mountains saw some beautiful views and had a great time, amazed by the fact we escaped a 2 year jail sentence, but apparently most Argentinians don't know what pot looks like, not that we really want to risk it.

Anyway our last few days were spent relaxing and having more BBQ's and more alcohol, we have some great pictures which we can't upload at the moment but I will do so when possible (nick - done!)

Soph has now come with us up north to Salta and we are basically bumming here until we can get to Bolivia in a few days wooohoooo! and there we will hopefully run into someold friends again.

Take care

Flossie

x

Chileno Dancing

Just a short video of some silly dancing in Santiago from a few days ago, keep an eye out for the guy that is:

a) too old
and,
b) waaaay too keen!

Pucon and Santiago

After a brilliant time in Bariloche we arrived in Pucon in Chile. Basically we went there just because they had a big volcano and we thought it would be cool. When we arrived in the town we got a bit lost as the "lonely liar" had an old address for the hostel we were in search of, the hostels owner then came up to us in a pick up van, baring in mind it was pitch black at night and we didnt know who he was, and offered to take us to the right hostel. I instantly said that he must be fucking joking and I wasnt going to get into his creepy van, it transpires that he and his funny looking wife were lovely and being full up for that night, booked us another hostel and took us to it agreeing that they would have room the following night. The other hostel we stayed in had three tiny kittens so i was sold and reasonably annoying as i gulped down my food so I could play with them whilst nick was eating his food in the evening and in the morning, and pined as we had to leave them.

The next day we returned to lovely Herman and Marias hostel, Herman owned an activity store in town so we set about organising our trip for the following day up the big fuck off volcano.

The volcano trip was hillarious for several reasons...

Luckily there were only 4 of us in our group as well as our guide which was great, and one girl had a bad ankle so had to go back down the volcano near the beggining so i was stuck with three boys, Rodrego our guide who loved the ladies lets put it that way, Daniel a yank, and Nick and myself, we each had our strengths and weaknesses and took our turns at being a bit shit at different things. Baring in mind that it took over 5 hours to get to the summit and only an hour to get down you can take a guess just how steep it was. We had to climb on ice using our ice picks to steady ourselves, it was bloody scary at times, and i am so greatful that i dont suffer from vertigo otherwise you would be screwed. Even with factor 60 on we caught the sun and climbing on the ice took ages and was very hard going and a bit demorilising as it took about 30 mins to cross what looked like 15 meters. Other groups were allowed to use crampons but oh no Rodrego would have non of it. I was nearly dead by the time we reached the top and I could have hit Rodrego the amount of times he said Vamos vamos vamos but the view from the summit was amazing and we were right over the clouds.

The smell of sulphur at the top was really strong and Nick did some good gagging and an Isreali girl from another group had a bit of an asthma attack slash panic attack whereby Rodrego leapt up and carried her to higher ground asap... loving the ladies. I got to see some lava though so thats all that mattered really and i threw some volcanic rocks over the side like a stupid big kid, oh and we bumped into Nicks god sisters ex boyfriend, my god that is tenuous, but he is lovely and let me have some ketchup so i recon she should probably ditch her current boyfriend and get back with tiny bearded lovely ketchup dude.

After we had been at the top for about 40 mins I asked Rodrego how the hell we were getting down to which he replied, we slide down, of course you do stupid flo. so we put on our crazy yellow jump suits that were sexy and were instructed how to slide down the volcano. Half of this was done on our asses literally sliding down, and the rest was basically sking without skiis. I loved the sliding but could not stay upright when we were meant to be, after me shouting back at Rodrego several times he just held my hand on the way down basically pulling me allong like a toboggan, a glowing yellow stupid toboggan, which was cool.

It was really good fun and a real achievement and when we got back home Rodrego cracked open a couple of beers for us and some fake non descript pringle things and we were happy chappies.

The next day was recovery day, the boots we had been made to wear the previous day were snow boots and looked and felt ridiculous and my legs felt like jelly. I managed to fall asleep and loose nick for a couple of hours this day but finding him again we agreed to relieve our weary limbs at the natural hot springs the next night.

We were picked up for the hot springs at 8pm and guess who should be in the van but mr lover lover himself Rodrego, who I had already bumped into earlier that day in search of nick and he had expressed his interest in all things ladies, British, and bikinis. Fearing a reasonably embarrassing night we met loads of really nice people whilst wearing next to nothing and had a really good time, to state the obvious the hot springs were really hot but really really nice kind of like really deep rock pools, there were 7 in total of varying heats, probably not at all naturally heated it was dark after all, but i like to believe they were.

After lots of lazing around enjoying the sun we decided to head for Santiago...

We are now at a really nice hostel called Chilli hostel. Our first night was a bit of a challenge as a BBQ was organised and no body there seemed to speak much English but we attempted to speak to them, got ourselves understood, and by way of reward an irish girl arrived at the end of the evening, yey, by the way I cant use any punctuation on this computer as the keys are fucked so image where I would have put things please. Any way Santiago is a bit weird, we have visited itçs beautiful parks and yesterday we went to the poet Pablo Nerudas house which was really really cool he collected anything and everything and his house his like an amzing flo dream world. But the city is covered in smog from polution and makes my eyes sting he he brilliant stuff huh. As it is easter weekend the whole city has shut down and hardly anything is open, crowds are accumilating round a huge statue of Mary in the middle of the city and there seems to be a big live baned rehearsing ready to play on easter sunday. No chocolate eggs for me this year booooo, the chocolate in Santiago is shite, any way we are heading to wine capital Mendoza back in Argentina on Monday and meeting up with Emily so that is something to look forward to, and we may be meeting up with a canadian we met a couple of weeks back to.

Love to all

flossy

xxx