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...