Word / phobia of the day:

Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia

Make Sense of the Financial Meltdown Apocalypse

Head of International Monetary Fund: "I give about this much of a f***."

Ooo... It's all a bit scary isn't it. Financial institutions collapsing. Icelanders viewed as terrorists. Bankers sobbing into the steering wheels of their Ferraris.

See this here site to help make sense of it all: themoneymeltdown

Muxtape

This site is a bit good for listening to some random music and brings a tear to the eye for the lost golden age of the mixtape

www.muxtape.com

Big Fat Hairy Liar

It's all true. Over 6ft tall, too much cerveza and ham and cheese sandwiches while i was away, a big beard and no blog posts for some time.

Ok. So i've been back for a while and modern london life has meant that it does nearly feel like i never went away. the first few weeks back were great. seeing friends, family and broken social scene with muxloe were all great. Going into work was interesting - it felt like i was on an excursion into a western office. Now its all starting to be the routine again.

Not that being back is rubbish. I've been on a stag do for my good friend Jon Barnes and, as best man, i'm preparing a speech for his wedding. Also Beeches are back up and running which is great fun, tho 6 months without singing/shouting much means my voice is back to sounding like pat butcher.

This is surely very very wrong

When the Wildlife Conservation Society discovered a new species of titi monkey in 2004, it decided to forfeit its right to name the animal. Instead, the society auctioned off the naming rights to raise funds for the Bolivian national park where the monkey lives. To a mixture of chuckles and horror, the rights were bought by internet casino company Goldenpalace.com, who festooned the poor animal with their own name.

More details here...or look at the monkey's official website!

la vuelta

Here I am in Sao Paulo a few hours before I fly back. There feels like a bit of symmetry to the start of my trip as i spent my first few days wandering alone through the streets of a big city and i find myself doing the same at the end - but with a much more positive mindset (I was, i´ll admit, pretty anxious at the start of this journey). I also consumed alot of steak in my first weekend and the same can be said now. The whole churrascaria thing they have going on here in brazil is something special - better than any ¨help yourself to the salad bar¨ jibber you get in a Harvester.

So yes - what a trip. Nearly 6 months on the road and river (well, ok, i took three internal flights too) in this fine land. Time has past in a very calm and mellow fashion and not in one of those fast paced living in london 6 months where you blink and the seasons have done a full cycle. For that I am very grateful for it does feel like a large chunk of time has elapased (about a 60th of my life to date).

I´ve been lucky enough to have seen some beautiful and wonderful sights, done some mindblowing stuff, read some good books and chatted to a whole lot of fun and interesting people along the way. Hard to really digest it all really.

That said, i do feel ready to come home. I miss my friends, family and Marmite... and playing football (which i have done but once in Bs As i taught some portenos how to tackle). I understand the team I play for on Sunday has had one of its best seasons of late so I fear for my place in the side. All the moreso that i have put on a little bit of weight...this clip from Alan Partridge might give you an idea.

Big thanks to those of you who have read this blog and a 10 gun salute to all those of you who have left comments and e-mailed me on my adventures - all very much appreciated. Obrigado.

Well- i know i´ve been a bit slack on keeping this updated, but i have a few more tales to tell, so i´ll keep updating this when inspiration strikes. I still haven´t told you about the one eyed guide in the amazon rainforest, how i spent my christmas and how Andy and I got on Peru TV with a local Beauty Queen.

When my esteemed friend Simon Hunt goes away on his travels his correspondence is always peppered with apt and befitting song lyrics that sum things up very nicely. I shall attempt the same here, but the on song I would like to use (I Love You by Lou Reed) i used on my old blog at the end of my last trip. bugger. Instead then, I shall leave three links to songs that i think in all or in part (perhaps out of context with the M.Ward song) sum things up.

Flaming Lips - Do You Realize




M.Ward - To Go Home
¨God its great to be alive,
takes the skin right of my hide,
to know i´ll have to give it all up some day¨


Theme - Littlest Hobo (Gotta love the bit with the rifle in his chops!)

¨The division of labor among nations is that some specialize in winning and others in losing. Latin America, has specialized in losing¨

The quote above is from a fine book (obvioulsy not on the topic of football) Ive been reading the past week or so: The Open Veins of Latin America - Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent

It was written in the 1970s, so obvioulsy things have progressed since then, but its put a lot of what Ive seen, heard and thought into context and perspective. It highlights how these lands have been exploited by first the europeans and then america. Always serving the interests and fuelling the wealth of others and never allowed to look after itself and the people who live there. From the many aboriginal communities who were decimated and destroyed by the blind greed of the spanish and other europeans until the book ends in the midst of many, US backed, cruel dictatorships - the continentents natural resources and peoples have suffered for others.

Basically, your man Eduardo Galeano documents (with a nice line in humour) meticulously the statistics of exploitation and murder - the facts, the numbers, and most importantly the emotions and situations behind the well documented data.

It would have been a boon to have the tome at the start of my trip as it would have informed me of what i was seeing (e.g. abject poverty, political corruption the continent over, etc) and informed me of where to go. For example, i would most certainly have headed to Potosi in Bolivia - once the most important city in the world, but that was before the silver dried up...

Anway, if you´re coming out this way and interested in why things are the way they are, then i highly recommend it.

Guinea Pig

When we (andy and me) finished our Inca Trail we returned to Cusco and had a banquet of Cuy (pronounced coy) which to you and me is Guinea Pig. The first time I saw this dish being served was in my first port of call in Peru - the town of Puno on the shores of lake titikaka. It was basically a whole guineapig - teeth and claws n´all - but it looked like it had been flattened by a rolling pin or a heavy goods vehicle. She tred to maintain her honour and the pride of her host, but the look of disgust and fear on the chinese american girls face was not lost on anyone.

The next time i saw this ancient Incan delicacy being served up was on Andys first night in cusco and on this occasion time rather that being pancake like, the rotund little Cuy looked liked it had been skinned and dropped in a deep fat fryer - still alive by the look of alarm in its crispy little eyes.

When it was our turn to eat the furry little bugger it was baked, i think. I´ll happily confess that i couldnt eat much. Not only because of the claws, the eyes and the teeth, but because i thaving flashbacks to when i was a kid. My mate Bobby (aka Stephen Baulsom) had a garden full of the furry balls and when they went away i, on occasion, had to clean and feed them. The ungrateful buggers would bite and they stank worse than any farmyard and during one winter one of them froze to death like a furry stinky snowball.

So back in present day - while i picked at what little meat there was, andy wolffed his down merrily as he told stories of the Guinea Pigs he and his sister had known and loved as children.

After seeing the Nazca Lines, the amazing earthquake stricken town of Pisco and having some kick ass fun sand boarding in Huacachino, we had our last enocounter with the beast. On returning to Lima we were riding in a taxi to our hostel as we stopped at some traffic lights. All across South America i had seen people selling the most incredible things at traffic lights from blankets to acoustic guitars via fruits of all kinds. Anyway, the one thing that i had not seen, and that was proffered through the window on Andys side, was a dead guinea pig ready to cook and eat. Thankfully the lights changed and under our urgent shouts of VAMOS the driver wheel spinned away.

A crap pun thats been rattling round my head for a while now is that the song to accompany this posting should be ASK by the Smiths purely for the line : ¨Coyness is nice, but coyness can stop you from blah de blah de blah...¨



made me laugh anyway

Due to hurricanes in Holland Andy Mac was a day late getting to cusco and i'll fess i was worried that he might not have enough time to acclimatise to the altitude and the local conditions. As such, once we met in Hostal Nino it seemed to make sense that we immediatly go to a british cafe that i'd heard stocked marmite - which they did. which was nice (5 months is probably the longest i've been in my life without my beloved yeast extract).

We went to SAS Travel to pay the remaining cash for the Inca Trail and got accused of being "charlies" because we were getting the luxury vista dome train back to cusco post walk and also because we opted for the top of the range walking poles (extendable with lights). The rest of the first day we wandered round cusco, got surnburnt and ate alpaca (yummy) and drank the first of many many cusquenas and pisco sours.

Day two saw us head to our first Inca Ruins - Pisaq. To confirm our status as Charlies we haggled hard with a local lad - Yuri - (who claimed to play for Cuscos football team) to be our chauffer for the day and off we pootled in his tiny little car to Pisaq. A lovely town with a nice big square full of market stalls which we watched as we ate some more local cuisine - llama this time i think and again very tasty. After making some purchases (andy an alpaca hat and i a pair of gloves which i later realised were two right hands...hmm) our man Yuri drove us up to the Inca Citadel sitting above the village.

Spurning the offer of a guide we strove off up the hillside and wandered round the city with Yuri giving us some lowdown in spanish and me doing my best to translate. Incredible and stunning are two words i will use to sum up the walk we had. How the bejesus they built such an intricate city atop a mountain i will never know. The views of the terraces were breathatking and i was blown away by the water system they had going on. (They seemed to have tapped into a stream in the mountain and used it not only for irrigation, but also as ceremonial baths near the temples). All told it was ace.

We rocked back to Cusco and gave Yuri a hefty tip for his troubles before meeting the rest of our "friends" (our guides most used word) we would be doing the inca trail with. These were:
- A couple who lived in Chicago but were from Tanzania and Sweden
- A swedish couple who taught us a brilliant and slightly complicated card game known as, if i recall correctly, old sh1t git.
- Pedro and Rodriguez - a couple of top lads from Portugal who knew their football alright
- Tom, Tom and Arron - three aussie lads who were a good laugh
- Oscar - a chatty, know it all aussie kid.
- Dimitrus - a nice chain smoking greek traveller whose prophesy of group death nearly came true.

After our meeting we then went on a comedic mission for some long sleeved synthetic walking tops where we must have gone into every shop in cusco asking "usted tienes remera sythentico?" before settling on some scratchy knock off North Face clobber.

Inca Trail
Day 1 and we're up crazy early for the van to take us to a place for breakfast and to purchase some coca leaves and the catalyst (a ball of ash and herbs that you add to the leaves before masticating). After this we rocked on to KM 82 for the start of the 4 day "camino Inka" walk to Machu Pichu.

Darn it... out of time on the internet... there might well be a long pause between blogs (alright - nothing new there) as i head back to lima tomorrow and then fly with Aero Condor to Iquitos in the Peruvian rainforest before taking a boat down the amazon to Northern Brazil (via Manaus and Santeram) where i'm gonna hole up on a beach for a week before heading home...gulp.

I hope alls good where ever and who ever you may be.

oh yeah...

... i´ve just discoverd that i´ve lost my camera. the thing was falling apart, but i´ve only gone and lost about 3 weeks worth of snaps...

anyway - i´ve heard stories of somepeople losing several cameras in the one trip so, i guess i´ve not done too badly.........mmm

right off to the shops.

The last few weeks

Hello,
I´ve been very lazy with this blogging lark of late and if you think of a good reason why then mail me.

So - since andy mac left bound for blighty over two weeks ago my head has been spinning trying to decide where to go and what to do. As such i fled Lima and headed to a town on the north coast of peru called Mancora. However, with easter weekend approaching all the hotels were doubling their prices so i again fled north into Ecuador and a town called Cuenca. A pleasant little cobblestreeted town where they´re famous for making Panama Hats - so i bought one or three.

My plan was then to head north to the equator and quitos then back down to peru for a few days on a beach before heading to Iquitos to head down the Amazon into Northern Brazil. However, that soon went awry when on the spur of the moment i decided instead to join Rodrigo (a belgian lad whom i taught to play backgammon and who nearly gammonned me in the 2nd game we played) to a town called Vilcabamba. The town is famous for people living till ripe old ages and year round good weather. We turned up and it was cloudy for three days. Still, no one died to my knowledge so we couldn´t have brought all the bad luck.

With the weather being a bit poor i basically sat and read the Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell which, depsite a ringing endorsement from Richard and Judy, is actually a fine fine read.

With 4 weeks and one day left of my trip i need to get a wriggle on to get to Sao Paulo (other side of the continent and several 1000km away). As such, i´m heading to a mellow peruvian beach town called Huanchaco to hang for a few days before flying to Iquitos where i begin my boat trip to Brazil.

While i´m in Huanchaco i promise to update this blog on a throughly fun and comedic fortnight with Andy.

I hope alls good where you are, like.

Oh - also I found a cool site where they give away daily downloads of music and as such my Daza has been slighty updated. Thanks to www.largeheartedboy.com I have no more Keane and lots more of coll stuff like this:

My Morning Jacket - the Bear

Unhappy St Patricks Day

Four leaf clovers all round.

Temporary Fault - - -

Ah - yeah. Sorry about the last post. I thought I´d uploaded a video of a crazy masked man doing a crazy dance in a luxury train carriage. I´ll see what i can do....

In the mean time have a 30 minute video of some music by a band called Tortoise. I think the third track they play on this video (9min 20sec in) is a song called "Suspension Bridge at Iguazú Falls" from the excellent album TNT.

So what?

Well, not only is it fine music, but I went to Iguazu Falls a month or two ago and it turns out it´s onle one of Pachamamas most spectactular and powerful settings.

The Surrealest Train Journey Ever

So as mentioend me and andy got the luxury vistadome from machu picchu back to cusco and part of that money went towards one of the members of staff having to do the above. the other two memebers of carriages staff where not let off neither as they had to do a fashion show...

Belated Mothers Day Message

Mothers of the World Press Play:

Machu Picchud

arrrgghhh... i´ve just typed osme stuff that got lost... basically, the inca trail was cloudy and tiring, but incredible and we´re well fed. we had surreal journey back on the vistadome train and now we drink cusquena to celebrate. I´ll write more when i find a computer working properly

ugh

too much typing and not enough blinking....

i'm off and as i'm in Cusco i think i'll go and see if my friend Dick (whom you might recall i met in mendoza while he was having a carne y vino breakfast) is working at the irish pub (this one advertises itself as the highest irish pub in the world...hmmm)

i hope all good with you (yes YOU).

hasta luego.

La Paz, Bolivia

An overnight train ride (where we were woken up at 6.30am by a Pan Pipes DVD on full blast) and a bus ride later and we (me and the nice polish couple, Peter and Asie) arrived in the brilliant city of La Paz. The capital city of the poorest country in South America is built in a valley and as you approach the city my breath was taken away and not just due to the altitude (3640m).

Despite being so amazed I was also fairly nervous as I had heard and read of some horror stories of people being robbed, mugged and drugged in this city and so over the three days I wa fairly on my guard. As it turned out, nothing bad happened to me apart from my loperamide wearing off and being out of breath as i walked up and down the cobbled streets.

Some highlighst of my 5 day stay in the city were...

The Witches Market
See here for more information, but walking round and seeing all the llama fetuses was fairly freaky and fascinating. Lots of old boys were sat around with queues of people waiting to have their fortune read. There were also some comedy potions and spells that people could buy and i nearly did buy a love potion (for a friend of course) but the stall owner laughed and told me i didbnt need i ("but it's for a friend!").

The Zebra Crossings
The city was what i expected all of South America to feel like. Chaotic and crazy. The drivers of La Paz didn;t let me down. They were nuts and all you could hear as you walked about were people hanging out of the millions of minivans trying to shout out destinations above the noise of car horns and police whistles. Anyway, on most major roads at most major crossings they employ people to dress up in Zebra Costumes to make sure that the traffic stops and people can cross. It's comedy to watch as they high five pedestrians and chase after and kick cars that don't stop...
some not very good pictures here

Ollivers Travels
Whil not gettig a good right up Lonley Planet i spent a bit of time here. I changed books (palmed off the unread ed mcbain novel kiss and my argentina lonely planet for some South American Fiction), watched some football and rugby, ate some good old fashioned english food (bangers and mash for tea and a full english breakfast a couple of days later) and generally kept any homesickness at bay for a while.

San Pedro Prison
A couple of years back I read a book called Marching Powder about the crazy experiences one brit has during his time inside the San Pedro Prison. Have a little read of the link so you get an idea of what its about....
So having read the book i was curious to see it. Once upon a time the lonely planet was recommending the tours that the aforementioned authour used to run, but even before i found out that they were no longer really possible (due to visitors being robbed and worse) i wasn't really keen to go in. However, we rocked up to have a look at the front gate and a guard passed us a note from the only non latino type - sebastian, a pale and beaten looking dutchman. We called the number on the slip and he told us he was inside for 10 years because they "wouldnt let him take 10kgs of cocaine back to holland". We didn't really chat for long, but he said he was in a bad way and needed some money. We didnt feel too comfortable giving him cash as we didn't want the heavily armed guards to mistake our (perhaps misplaced) sympathy as a transaction for the white powder rumoured to be produced inside. Instead we bought him 3 packs of his favourite smokes (derby reds) and Cassie (an english girl) got him a Toblerone! We handed them across and he looked grateful i think, but i can't really remmeber as it was so surreal looking through the gate at all the prisoners (moving out the way for some wives and children making their way out!) and knowing a bit about what goes on inside....

Death Road
You might have seen the e/mail or pictures about the most dangerous road in the world where trucks fall off as theres only room for one car. Well, it's just outside la paz and i mountain biked down the bugger. It was fairly scary not least because of the thick cloud at the top (4600m) and the wet (especially on the death road proper), but also all the stories you hear of mountain bikers dying. Most of those who have died it turns out have been israeli as many, so i'm told, go for the cheapest firms and ignore all advice so much so that many firms won't take them in groups. I know you shouldn;t laugh, but one corner was called ET corner because one japanese girl flew off over the edge with a 600m drop below and kept on cycling....
Anyway the whole 64km (only 4km uphill) was incredible. once we dropped beneath the clouds the views were some of the best i've sort of seen (i was reluctant to take my eyes off the road too much) and the adrenaline rush of speeding down some fairly dangerous cobbled roads was flippin ace. While two people had a minor crash, no one died and we all got to hang out in the pool at the bottom (1760m) in one peice.

Tiwinaku
Day trip to the oldest and arguably most important ruins of South American Pre Columbian culture was very very interesting and enjoyable. I'll let you read the blurb on the link to get an idea about it. The most intersting theory to come out of the day was that the japanese and chinese and egyptian and indian cultures all seemingly had some influnece and similarities with the Tiwanku lot and there have been some attempts to garner further proof that they could have sailed across the seas on reed boats (i forget the name so no link to the norweigan guy who led it)... instead you can get a link to this Devendra Banhart song which seems kinda apt...


Devendra / Chinese Children

The Great Salt Lake

Despite Jacks efforts I really enjoyed the trip, but the salt on the chips was on day three when we went to the Salar de Uyuni. It was truly mind blowing.

As it was rainy season the great plains were covered in shallow water which caused an incredible mirror effect whereby you couldnt make out the horizon and i was dazzled by it's beauty. My words won't do it justice, but you can have a look at some of these snaps for an idea of how bloody ace it was.

We rode on top of the truck (past loads of people digging up the salt to turn into sculptures for the tourists) to the tacky Salt Hotel which is in the middle of the plain and where the views were spectacular and, when i walked far enough away, there was no noise at all...apart from this songs obvious chorus going through my head...

Band Of Horses / The Great Salt Lake

San Pedro De Atacama to Uyuni, Bolivia with Father Jack.

So, i spent about three days in San Pedro De Atacama with a very dodgy stomach. When i wasn't on the throne i was hanging out with a guy from Barcelona called Agustin and some chilean folk whose names escape me. They spoke very little english so my spanish was tested and despite me not knowing any past or future tense we got along ok and they humoured me by laughing at my jokes.

The only thing that seemed to break the curse of the Incas Revenge were several loperamide tablets, some plain rice and lots of agua. I felt brave enough to take on an excursion and so i signed up for a three day 4x4 tour of southern Bolivia and the Uyuni Salt Flats. In the group were a really nice Polish couple, a dutch couple, two japanese girls who didn't stop giggling, an Argentine girl, an Israeli and two old Polish Men. I drew the short straw and at the Chilean Bolivian border (where i nearly left without my passport) was put in the same van as the two old polish men.

The scenery over the first day was incredible. Lots of amazing lagunas, flamingos and a swim in a thermal pool. All this at over 4000m... i was wheezing like an old man, but thankfully there were no further symptoms of altitude sickness. The last stop of the day was at a Refugio in teh middle nowhere where i was grateful to have taken so many diarrhoea tablets as the non flushing banos looked like they'd had a curry club tour stopping through and no one had cleaned up after them.

This was also where the big fat older Polish man really started to get on everyones nerves. We sat down for lunch and then dinner and both times he took a third of the food which was to feed 11 people. Watching him eat he reminded me both in looks and mannerisms of the "alcholic, lecherous, violent and foul-mouthed elderly priest" Father Jack from Father Ted. He was probably the most selfish, disgusting and rude person I have ever met.

His unpleasant behaviour carried on for the next two days where he would get in the way of photos, eat all the food and snore and fart like a factory in the dorm room to name but a few things. I had a couple of run ins with him when his self centred greed got too much (e.g. when he took all the kosher food at breakfast knowing that Avi was a practicing Jew), but he was unrepentant. However, this brought the rest of the group together and we were never short of material to laugh about or a common thing to gripe at.

On the way back to the drop off point on the final day we stopped back at the Salt Museum as Jack needed the loo. However he refused to pay the 10p or didn't like the look of whole in the ground of a toilet he was ushered to and he got back in the truck with a huff. 10 minutes later the call of nature was too strong and the truck was ordered to stop and he got out. I foolishly turned round to speak to Peter in the back and the image of a very fat and very old nasty polish man crouching down having a poo was burned onto my retina. It was horrible but we all found it funny and were happy that he had his comeuppance I opened the window in the van as soon as he got back in as we were unconfident that he had any toilet paper.

Sadly, however, 15 minutes later he had the last laugh as, with a knowing grin, he shook our hands when we got back to town before any of us could think not too. Thankfully the argentine girl had some strong antiseptic hand wash, but i still took a scouring pad and some bleach into the shower when i got back to the hostel.

Peace out from Peru

Hola Muchachos!

I write this from the dizzying and drizzly heights of Cusco, Peru. I'm very excited to say that in two days my amigo Andy Mac Attac joins me here and we're both gonna attempt the famous Inca Trail upto Machu Picchu before a whistle stop tour of Peru taking in such places as Lima and the Nazca Lines.

I've had a busy couple of weeks since I last blogged on and I shall try and get you upto speed with what I've done since Man Utd thrashed Arsenal in the Cup!

Here are the goals... in Arabic... i think...

Homage to Patagonia

El Chalten, Freaky Roland and San Pedro De Atacama.

The journey to El Chalten was smashing and i had my first taste of the bumpiness of route 40 ahead of me. We arrived in fine weather and had some great views of what the town is famous fo - the Fitz Roy Range.

The town is the newst in Argentina and was built simply to stop the Chileans getting their hands on the land! The town is sat in a lovely valley, is half built and has a wild west new frontier feel to it.

I stayed in a smashing little hostel - Albergue Patagonia. Where I met, and gammoned, Freaky Roland a strange dutchman with bulging eyes and a talent for saying the wrong thing. (For example - I had dinner one night with Freaky Roland, a French guy and an English fella. When Roland found out that the english guy was a Psychotherapist he asked in a seriously freaky way him if he was worried that his clients had all killed themselves in his 3 week absence). The lovely lady on the dek there also taught me more spanish and, in fact, i managed to hold a 30 minute conversation on Football and Holidays with two lads from Barcelona who spoke nada ingles... which was nice.

So... oh...Utd are playing Arsenal in the cup in a minute and I want to find a pub showing it, so i{ll carry this on in a bit.

Btw & fyi- im in the beautiful and bloody hot San Pedro De Atacama at the moment and spent yesterday afternoon seeing the park round the Valle De La Luna... absolutley stunning. Tomorrow I head on a 3-day mission across the Salt and vinegar Plains of Bolivia...

Perito Moreno Glacier

The glacier at Perito Moreno is blinking amazing. Basically the big blue lump of ice moves a few feet everyday and it is INCREDIBLE to watch and hear chunks the size of Morris Minors fall of the damn thing. To hear it all creak and groan is cool.

Sadly I lost my pictures of it, but have a postcard to remind me of its majesty. There are some good pictures at this site (which name rather overstates its quality)

As is the norm for this trip i bumped into yet another familiar face. This time it was the Italian Pietro. This chap has travelled to every continent on earth and seemingly nearly every country. A nice guy, but seemingly goe sto all these places to tick it off the list rather than...ummm... well rather than to enjoy it, maybe... who knows. Certainly not me... as such i shall get out of this blogging cul-de-sac by pointing behind you and shouting "Badgers. Mating!" and hope you don{t notice me logging off...

Getting to Calafate

Tuesday 18th Dec i was back across the border to Argentina heading to El Calafate home of the PERITO MORENO GLACIER (big glacier - big letters). The journey was pretty nice with the usual jib jab and wild dogs of the border stations. I was sat next to an amiable and intelligent New Zealander and we chatted about world economics and conspiracy theories.

I arrived in Calafate to find that the hostel i had reserved three nights at was very much like an open prison and that the town is fairly grim and set up only for tourists. I bumped into a couple of fellas who continue to plague my trip - a very smug german chap who seems to think his opinion is the only one that counts and an english chap (another one) who has the air and self confidence of a man secure in the knowledge of wealthy parents and the certainty of a very well paid job in the city when he returns to blighty. However, I shouldnt talk them down too much as they have continued to provide me with some good advice. On this occasion it was the best and cheapest way to see the glacier and also to get the hell out of this town and instead move to El Chalten up the road.

So, i booked both sets of tickets and set about having a horibble cheese and vegetable sandwich while watching Man City stun Spurs in the cup.

To cut a long walk short...

So... yes... Torres Del Paine.

So, Í`ll spare you the step-by-step account and basically tell you that the 4 days i spent in the park were brilliant. It´s probably the most beautiful place i have ever been to and urge anyone and everyone who comes out this way to go there and see it.

The walking was not always easy - especially the scramble up boulders on the last night to see the Torres themselves - however, the pay off is that you feel like you earn the right to enjoy the park and the views are all the more sweeter when you see them. The landscape and topography in the park is incredibly divers n all - from glaciers and craggy ridges to thick forests where you can here the thunder crack of avalanches high above you. There are rivers to cross - not all with bridges and not all with obvious places to plant your feet in the swirling white water. There`s the incredible tranquil beach near refugio Los Cuernos (where i got drunk on Pisco with the chilean lads who worked there) with black and white pebbles (i think theres a photo of it in the flickr thing) where i skimmed stones on the flat water (i may have set a new PB). My favourite view tho was on the penultimate day walking up the ridge to the final valley and looking down and seeing wild horses running and some condors circling over the lush green land below me. Magic.

However, I think i got lucky with the weather. A bit of wind on day one and some rain in the morning on day 3, but the rest was hot and sunny. Which is in stark contrast to some of the "when good times go bad" horror stories i have since heard from a few other folk.

Nevertheless, as i sat, waiting for the bus to take me back to Puerto Natales, under a tree watching some gauchos rustle up some horses with avalanches tumbling down the far off moutain i too felt sad to be leaving.

Hello From Salta.

Hola,

Well, i´ve spent the last week travelling about with a cool swiss girl, Emilie, and, now, after 24 hrs of travelling on three buses from Asunción, Paraguay (not my favourite city), I find myself alone and in Salta, Argentina. A fine looking town. Already I have seen a very old incan mummy of a very young girl - which was incredible. Sadly for this blogger his level of spanish is poor so he couldnt understand all the detailed jib jab on them in the museum. However, it looked interesting and he stroked his beard and smiled thoughtfully (whilst tipping his beret) at the girl on the desk on his way out - about 2 mins after he paid 1o pesos to go in. Anyway - so - i´m behind and im determined to get upto date... First tho:

Trash MC State asked "who is mike and what does he do?" - the answer ye seek can be found over at IMDB with this here link (btw - i saw a trailer for Alien vs Predator 2 the other day and that looked really shoddy too)

Who should I be? Thanks to those who have submitted entries. I shall work on them all and report back as to how i get on. The problem I´m now facing is that nearly every where i go now i bump into someone i recognise (today was Dale the chinese american from California) and so it makes it problematic to take up a new personna when people know me... If my friend Jon Barnes were here im sure he would advocate adopting the alta ego anyway and blaming Francios my evil twin brother (he`ll be in Rio by now)...

Ipod - word has reached me that my ipod is back on british soil. While in Bs As i replaced it with a DAZA MP3 player. I can assure you that mine in no way resembles the one in the picture as is much more basic and cheap plasticy looking. However, a british fella called Ben Hayes took pity on his fellow man who may also have once lived near an enclosure (haeg) or (heye), an area of forest fenced off for hunting and let me pillage his computer for music. It works fine (if a little clunky to move between songs and albums) and I´m happy to have some music back in my life, but you can work through 1gb of music pretty quickly. Worst of all tho i foolishy put the first Keane album on there. I foolishly thought their chubby chopped brand of plinky plonk watered down indie would be soothing for the bus journey, but that naive belief was very quickly dispelled.

Sit through this if you dare:

Very f****** Un-f******-Dude

very un-dude warning - explicit language

RIP Ipod

Well, the i-pod is dead.

They never mentioned the whole sharepod thing so i think I kinda got away with that. What i didn´t get away with, tho, was another Ipod as they claimed it would take 15 days to order. hmmph. I´m gonna phone round the other official apple stockists in Bs As before giving up and sending my fallen comrade back in a pody bag for a proper burial.

I guess a trip to the latin american eqivalent of Argos for a cheap mp3 player is next on my todo list then...

Requiem - M.Ward

The ´W´

The ´W´ I am referring to is not the third studio album by the Wu Tang Clan, rather it is the famous walk you can do in the Torres Del Paine National Park.

You see a crap map of it here:

Day -1 - The bus out there broke down and we were stuck in the middle of no-where with some llamas staring at us quizically. I kinda had my fingers crossed we would miss the Catarmaran that was taking us to the bottom of the left part of the W, but we made it on time and it was nice too as the view was first class. So this first day i walked upto the 1 on the map with a tiny irish couple. It must have looked like Gandalf and the Hobbits. The scenery was incredible and despite 20 mins of strong wind the journey up there was dandy. The hobbit folk were staying at the refugio up there and so i turned round and tramped back to the refugio where i started the day. It was awesome. The sun was out for the evening and simply walking alone through the park enjoying the view was just fantastic. It was getting dark and i was getting tired as i reached the camp and fell asleep.

Day 2 - I bumped into a couple of people from Erratic rock... ah... this will have to wait as i am in only my second messenger chit chat of my trip - with Mr Simon Hunt...

Journey to Torres Del Paine National Park

Alrighty... lets get back on track then... where was I? Cripes! nearly 6 weeks behind. Ok. deep breath.

So... at about 4am on Dec 11th I left Ushuaia bound back for the Argentinian Andover that is Rio Gallegos. The scenery overland through Tierra Del Fuego was even more amazing than the view from the plane and, goddamnit, i wish i had spent more time down there. Cest la vie. Another time, eh?

The only other two things I´ll mention about my two day mission to Puerto Natales is that a) in the view out of the window was incredible - especially the wing whipped sea as we hugged th ebeagle channel - and b) in the space of 18hrs i went through 6 frickin border crossings and all the stamps and paper work that that brings. aye yae yae. Every cloud has a silver lining and I suppose for this tale it´s that there was not one cavity search.

So, Puerto Natales is a lovely little town full of cool little tin houses and, as it´s the gateway town to the Torres del Paine National Park, a lot of serious looking people in gore-tex. I stayed at a fine and friendly hostel called Erratic Rock (it´s not a spelling error - i checked and there was no-one overly amourous on the team called Rick) where there speciallity was fine breakfasts and scaring the bejesus out of me.

Every day they do a ´three o´clock talk´ telling you what you need and what you should expect from your excursion to the park. Basically it sounded like you needed to be prepared for gale force 12 winds, arctic rain and possibly locust and rivers of blood...or at least thats how i heard it. Just before i went to sleep that night after booking my refugios (campsite things) and buying provisions I was properly bricking it as i had not yet found someone to walk with and felt completely un-prepared physically, mentally and equipmentally. An english chap (and he was a ´Chap´ - what what) told me how bloody sad he was to be leaving the bloody park as it was so bloody beuatiful. This talk sounded insane to my ears as i fell into a short and restless sleep...

Bikes and Wine

So - as I am musicless I have taken to spending long periods of time listening to videos on You Tube. Two songs that i were inspired by my wine tour of Mendoza are here (note: I can´t vouch for the videos, mind):

Iron and Wine - Passing Afternoon



Ben Folds Five - Sports and Wine

I-pod v2 Update

Thanks to Sam Strudwick who has set up a Facebook appeal pleading with folk to donate music to a needy cause. Much appreciated. What is not appreciated is my Sister who insists on bringing up some of my past musical mistakes (I genuinely thought she liked TLC) and proferring up a gay slur which should in fact be directed towards Darren Low who loves to stand naked in the purple rain.

Anyhow - I have dropped my Ipod off at the Mac Station in Bs As and have a nervous 72 hr wait to see if they can fix it. I am also a little nervous that they might discover that the problem may have been of my own making as (on the advice on a lanky haired irish youth) i put sharepod on the damn thing and this may well vioalate the T&C´s of the guarentee...eek...

All will be revealed on Wednesday...

"I´m headed back to Bs As. I do believe I have had enough"

Had enough of boozing that is... so, it makes the most sense to try and detox in one of the party capitals of the world, no?

No. Probably not.

I´ve spent the last week in the company of two fine fellows. A Geordie called Dick (who works in Peru) and a chap from the west country called Mike (whose name can be seen on the credits of such films as Harry Potter 5, Alien vs Predator and another few films whose names I will probably only rememebr when drunk) . Much fun has been had in and around the cities of Mendoza and Cordoba. This has included a paraglide flight (I can see why my esteemed amigo, Tom Moreton, is so hooked), a wine tour on bikes (they don´t mix too well... or too well perhaps), and, well, a lot of hangovers and as many hairs of dogs that bit me (in my head I think).

You see, those two drink like bloody monsters. To explain their approach to the booze i think its suffice to say that three of us met as we were getting som breakfast at about 10.30am - Mike and Dick both ended up having a fat steak and a bottle of fine wine. Oh, and a couple of cups of coffee...with cognac.

I´ve been fairly reserved with my imbibing and am pleased with my ability to say ´No´to a morning cerveza or a mid afternoon 5 litre bottle of vino. However, despite this the past week has been a drunken blur my liver is threatening to walk out on me. Therefore, I´m glugging down a litre of naranja and boarding a bus back to the fine city where all this fun began.

I´ll get things upto speed on this hear blog asap.

ARGGGHHH!!!

My ipod has only gone and knackered itself requiring me to "reset" the settings.This means that I have to lose all the music and videos on there...

Breath in through the nose...

"I´m too much with myself, I want to be someone else" - Lemonheads, Drug Buddy

So, this travelling lark is great fun and I´ve met some very interesting people along the way with a handful of irritating types thrown in for balance. Travelling alone it´s very interesting to see and experience how groups form and how you can quickly form bonds and friendship with folk that vanish as quick as they come. Bee-tsar.


I must confess I haven´t always tried as hard as I might to chinwag with other folk. However, this trip has once again proved my belief that often times it doesn´t really matter what you´re doing or where you´re doing it, it´s the people you meet and the interactions you have that make an experience.


Anyway - the point of this posting is that I have met a lot of people and when you meet these new people there is a standard list of questions that you MUST ask and answer before you can progess and have a conversation. These include:
- name
- where you´re from
- what you do when you´re where you´re from
- how long you are a) here for b) away from home for
- where you have come from
- where you will go to


Anyway - i´m tiring a little bit of my spiel and i have even got to the point where i can´t be arsed trying to say it differently to make it interesting for me. As such, I would like your help in inventing a persona that I might use when I´m bored.


If you have the time and inclination please shove your suggestions down in the comments on this posting and in a week or so I´ll create a poll (like the example in the Right Hand Column) and you the public can vote on who i become. The winner will get a southamerican themed prize.

Look Ma, I´m at the bottom of the World!

I spoke to a German chap who said that he didn´t like Ushuaia as it reminded him of Austria. Miserable git. Last time I looked Austria was landlocked and didn´t have the meeting point of two mighty oceans just below it:

I on the otherhand very much liked the ´Most Southerly City In The World´and, truth be told, wish i had spent more than my 4 nights there. Living in London its not everyday that you can walk along the street and look up and see snow capped mountains.

I stayed at a Hostel called Yakush which was very nice indeed and there were some good people there and also two people who were a bit freaky. One was an english chap in his early 50s who was the spitting image of Little Britain character Denver Mills (can´t find a photo anywhere) and the other a strange young german full of fantastical stories and a bizarre know-it-all attitude. You´ll have to take my word for it that they were weird... the only evidence i can offer is that they had both been staying in the hostel for about 6 weeks and while travelling independent of each other they had seemingly not paid to eat as they simply took turns to get up early and raid the kitchen and fridge for food that had become "free for all". (in fact, their plan cocked up one day as the kraut had mistakenly/ deliberalty drunk the very special Polish Beer that Denver had bought).

I also met a lot of people who were either going to Antartica, had come back from Antartica, we´re trying to get a deal to Antartica or we´re due to goto Antartica but their boat, the EXPLORER, had sunk a few weeks before. The tales I heard, the books i read and the photos i saw all point to the fact that Antartica would be an amazing place to visit and i toyed with the idea of blowing a cool two grand on a weeks cruise. However, I figured i would have to cut short my trip significanlty which might equate having to be in a place of work again so figured that perhaps it´s one for the future.

Instead of Antartica, Marcello from Napoli and I headed out for a sail boat trip on the Beagle Channel which was as brilliant as it was wet and windy. I also walked up the hill / mountain behind the city and was humbled by the view over Ushuaia, the beagle channel and down onto Chile.

Over a beer in the ´Most Southerly Irish Bar in the World´ (across the street - due south - was unsurpisingly another Irish Bar), Marcello and I swapped tales and discussed what we where doing next. He was headed to Bs As and I was, as advised by Darren Low, headed north, but where? Having never really been sure if I´m the outdoor type it made sense to put it to the test in some style and follow Marcellos advice to head to Chiles very own Parque Nacional Torres del Paine for a 4 day walk full of wind, rain and pain(e).

Munich and The Dashwood

The week before I came away on my little jaunt Team Beeches had a weekend away break in the fine city of Munchen where we played a show. It was a fun weekend apart from the fact that like an idiot I left my Ipod (that i had spent over 6 months filling up with my favourite tunes) on the BA plane out there...


Nevertheless, we had a fine old time. The gig went.... well. Yes - It went well. We all enjoyed it anyway. As is our way, we made a few mistakes but managed to gloss over them and i think the crowd left thinking it was deliberate anyway. The best thing about the night was that we got our first ever rider: they gave us free beer and free food - a trend that I hope catches on in English venues.


Our hosts - Clem and Tini - were smashing and showed us around town. We saw lots of cool things - including a very ace scale model of the solar system at the musuem - and we got drunk in some cool bars where it was very weird to see people smoking (the smoking ban only started on Jan 1st this year).


We spent most of energy that weekend searching the city for some Appel Strudel for Tom. The look of pure joy on his face when he finally, and unexpectedly, tucked into a slice at the airport before our flight back would have made Popes weep and will live with me for a long time.


Sadly, I seem to have lost the photographs of the weekend while I was transferring the pictures to CD. I´m gutted as there were some classic snaps on there such as: the aformentioned "Drooling drummer grins over steaming apple pudding", "Folically challenged drummer and guitarist show off their slaps underneath the sign for ´baldstrasse´", "Look Lucy! a green a roof!" and "Me and a german midget girl share a smile and a post show pilsner".


This talk of lost pictures reminds me of the greatest lost photograph of all time - The Dashwood. Mr Ian Clark and myself were celebrating finding a twenty pound note at Reading Music festival in the late 90´s by slurrping some warm lager and talking in American accents when we bumped into DC Mike Dashwood (from televisions cop series The Bill) who was leaving the dance tent. Through a simple blend of conversation and lies we convinced him we were americans and that we were big fans of his show. The elation of his spreading fame was clear in his eyes (or at least his pupils were very wide) and he eagerly agreed to have a photo taken with us. Now, I´m not sure if it was Karma balancing out the discovery of the twenty squid, a vengeful god who - being a fan of the Bill - punished us for mocking the dashing dashwood, or simply that we were drunk as lords, but the bag containing the camera was stolen/misplaced and the greatest picture ever taken was for ever lost.

I like to imagine that the bastard thief who stole the bag developed the film and has "The Dashwood" pinned up on the corkboard in his / her kitchen and has a little chuckle in the morning while making (and hopefully choking on) their cornflakes.

Red Postcarded

Yes - my main man from the Holloway Tyre Service is correct, I am taking my sweet time about this blogging lark and currently over a month behind in letting you know where i am (Pucon, Chile) and what i´m doing (being hungover after getting drunk with a chap from Derby who is cycling from Alaska to Ushuaia)... as such i will try and blitz you through a few weeks in an effort to get you upto speed... but first...

Journey To Ushuaia

I was booked to leave P. Madryn on an Andesmar bus bound for Rio Gallegos (16hrs) where I would have 2.5hrs to sit around for my bus to Ushuaia - the ´Southern Most City In The World´(tm) (12hrs).

It didn´t start off too well as my bus was two hours late into P. Madryn. Things got worse as I didn´t even get a number on my card during the Bingo game on board the bus, they showed the Will Smith vehicle "The Pursuit of Happyness" twice (Awful) and we somehow clocked up another 40 minutes of delay - meaning I missed the connecting bus by 10 mins.

I wandered around a bit dazed and confused trying to figure out if I could litigate against Andesmar, and happened across a Swedish girl, two Slovakians and an Israeli who were in the same pickle. There were no more buses that day, the only flight was in Business Class and costed a fortune and so we had to accept that we were due to spend the night in this bland and windy town. We booked ourselves on a flight with the Argentine Airforce (LADE) the next afternoon and did what seemed like the only sensible thing to do when stuck in a crap town - get drunk in an irish bar. (Again, no irish people, but the people were friendly and they played some good old indie classics which warmed my belly).

The next day the wind howled around outside and nearly blew me off my feet as I walked out to get facturas (delicious sweet croissants) and orange juice. When I returned the slovakian girl asked the very short owner of this surreal little hostel if she thought the flight would be delayed or cancelled due to the wind. The tiny woman gave a big belly laugh and declared, with a wagging finger in the air, that "this is not wind!".

We made our way to the very modern airport - perhaps the nicest thing about Rio Gallegos - with every tree and lamp post looking like it might be uprooted and sent flying into the air. While we waited for the flight I taught the others how to play the card game sh1thead. The Slovaks told me that in their culture it was considered very lucky to get a bird poo on your head... this might explain whey they were not so upset at losing the three games we played.

The time came and we boarded the plane. It was old and rickety and I thought the wind we experienced just sitting on the tarmac might be enough to tear the wings from the plane. However, my prayers to every known god were answered and we took off without problem. The views of Tierra Del Fuego were almost as amazing as the monk outfits the LADE stewardesses were wearing... 50 minutes later we landed in the cold and snow of Ushuaia airport.