Machu Picchu

"No, Vegemite doesn't make up 50% of Australia´s diet, hell, I only eat it twice a day."

The view from an Incan balcony.

Machu Picchu in it's glory, hours before hordes of fat Texans descended on it and helped destroy the ruins a little more. Waynapicchu is the peak visible on the right side that has even more ruins upon it. Whoever the blokes were that made all of it, one thing is certain, they must have had huge legs from all the damn climbing.

The Aussie wanted to be involved in a nutshot, bringing over his patented move from across the ocean, known as "The Double Downunder".

Just Protectin' Machu Picchu

Just Reflectin' Machu Picchu

The heads of Peru's military line up for another Friday morning display of nationalism outside the church.

After our exciting adventure flying over the Nazca lines, we grabbed a night bus to Cusco, oldest inhabited city in the western hemisphere. Awful bus, made worse by the cramped seat, the sub-zero temperature on board, an insanely curving road and the split second where I smashed my head against the onboard TV. Met a cool Aussie onboard named Shane, who we've been hanging out with since. Yesterday the three of us visited Machu Picchu. The frustrating thing about Machu Picchu is that, obviously the government knows it's a huge destination, so they milk every extra dollar they can get out of it, really breaking the back of the average backpacker's budget. Cusco is filled with over 200 travel agencies offering trips to the ruins, all at hugely inflated prices. We weren't able to do the Inca Trail as it requires a month or two or prebooking, and all the other hikes around the area were massive rip offs. In the end, Shane and I walked around town to get to the bottom of it all and just decided to do it ourselves after getting the low down from some taxi drivers. It still cost nearly $100 USD for the day (saved about $100-$300 by doing it ourselves compared to the agencies), but once there it was worth the price. We didn't have a huge amount of time there (compared to most people, mainly because most people just walk so damn slow so take 2 days to see it all), but made great use of what we had by seeing pretty much all the ruins (including accomplishing the grueling Waynapicchu hike in 22 minutes...for those that know what Im talking about, you are no doubt in absolute awe at that time) and spent some extra time just staring out over the cool landscape of the whole area and taking it all in. A number of hours were spent purely on trying to find the mystical monkey face explained to me by my cousin Tamara, but after painstakingly covering all the ground within a 150 kilometre radius of the site, I have determined that no monkey face exists and perhaps she was suffering from extreme altitude sickness, as her lack of pictures of said faces would seem to confirm.

Tonight we make our way out of Peru (sorry Peru, would have loved to stay longer!) to Copacabana on Lake Titicaca, Bolivia. Never thought that I'd be travelling back through south western Bolivia, but it would appear that that is the quickest way to get back to Buenos Aires.

Picking away at Peru

I realized after looking through my pictures, that llamas occupy almost half of them now.

Jas trying on some of the locals garb and terrifying them at the same time.

If only they knew how stupid they looked.

The terrible highs and lows of travelling.

Please get this thing off my arm.

Beautiful Peruvian countryside.

Little did I know the horrible sunburn I was receiving while contemplating the world's problems.

Mmmm...guinea pig head! I ate his left cheek then began to gag.

A random Peruvian girl with her pet llama, moments after receiving a $1 American bill from yours truly and having no idea what it was.

Lil' Jas is all tucked in for another comfortable bus ride.

The hummingbird, as seen from the cockpit of our little suicide plane. Major props to the WWII spitfire boys after experiencing this hellish roller coaster of a ride.

Our one full day in Santiago was spent doing a whirlwind tour of the city. We managed to visit a whole whack load of the old sites around the city plus some little parks that they have sprinkled throughout the smog. The presidential palace was quite nifty, and we were there just in time to see some sort of changing of the guard, composed of a company of infantry, a number of mounted cavalry, a marching band, and a battalion of stray dogs. As this came to a close a man was being rushed out of the palace hounded by media, we're not sure who he was, but after googling the Chilean president it would seem that it is either him or some kind of body double brought out for assassination attempts.

The next morning we got on a 28 hour bus up to Arica. Passed some awesome landscapes as we made our way through the Atacama desert, with the ocean pounding on one side and endless sand dunes on the other. We stayed in the beautiful city of Arica for 25 minutes before crossing the border in some random guy's car and grabbing a 5-6 hour bus to Arequipa, Peru. Arequipa is Peru's second biggest city and a sort of travelling hub for the area. Spent a day there recovering from the buses and trying to get the bellhop's CD player that he had just stolen to work.

Following morning we joined a two day tour to see some of the Peruvian country side. Lots of beautiful scenery and culture, reminds me of a mix between Canada and Southeast Asia (from what I've seen of SEA). Each village had scores of traditionally dressed little girls dragging llamas around looking for donations. Also managed to get up to the Colca Canyon, which is apparently the deepest canyon in the world at about 3500 metres or so and home to a flock of massive Andean condors. On the way back from there we stopped briefly on the side of a mountain to take pictures at 4910 metres altitude, my head was spinning by that point but luckily I had Dr. Coca-leaf there to ease my woes.

Coming back from the tour we grabbed another night bus to Nazca, where we are now. Bus arrived early this morning so we entertained ourselves with Argentinian soccer highlights until it was time to make our way out to the airport to see the famous Nazca lines. Nazca lines being the mysterious designs and shapes in the desert that were "discovered" by commercial airliners in the 1920's. No one is positive who made them or exactly for what purpose, the reasons currently range from star constellation maps to alien landing strips. There were 6 of us in this little suped up crop duster and the pilot did a great job of giving us spectacular views of the most popular designs. Unfortunately this also meant that we were almost continously banking at about 75 degrees to the ground, then flipping to the opposite side so that those people could get a clear view. By the 12th figure I was so close to vomitting that I was actually reaching for the little baggy when he said it was time to return home. Three hours later and Im still queezy, but it was worth it.

In an effort to completely tire ourselves out, we booked another 14 hour bus to Cuzco for tonight. Plan is to spend a day figuring out how to get up to Macchu Pichu, then hopefully do it on Wednesday. Still unsure if we're going to hike up or just do the day trip. The hike may sound cool, but we've been told by different people it's actually quite dissapointing, with huge waiting times and a paved trail. Lots of photos, mainly due to us having nothing else to do and a whole day to do it!

Smokey Santiago

Daring Chilean firemen ascend into the fire, previously known as my bunk bed. I like to think that the blurriness of this photo adds to the drama of the situation, but really I just had the shutter speed too low.

Ole Jas is pretty pumped to get on the Santiago subway.

Weaving our way through the Andes, and yes, I got a wee bit carsick.

After leaving Bariloche (Adios Carl & Condorman!) the three of us headed up to Mendoza for a few days. Had a great bus ride there with non-stop hit movies like White Chicks and 40 Year Old Virgin. My constant string of bad luck in contests finally came to a grinding halt when I won the Andesmar (bus company) bingo tournament. I was awarded with a bottle of wine and addressed as "the winner" for the remainder of the ride. I was extremely nervous during the acceptance speech and only managed to mutter out a simple "gracias", but nonetheless it was quite an event and I'd like to thank everyone involved. Mendoza was a little bit different than we expected, tad bit boring. We took a wine tour on our first full day there but were only able to make it to a single winery. The problem being that we have now fully acclimatized ourselves to an Argentina schedule, meaning that its strange to go to bed before 5am and quite normal to wake up at noon. Given this, our wine tour consisted of us walking around Maipu (pronounced My-poo, and yes, no matter how old we get there were plenty of jokes made at this town's expense) for a few hours prior to the places closing, hence only visiting one. Our hostel held an Asado one night, which is an Argentinian BBQ. Pretty good time although something went horribly wrong with Jas's meal and he lay bedridden for the entire following day. Him and I hopped over the Andes this afternoon and are now in Santiago. So far it seems like a decent city, feels similar to Buenos Aires, although the smog here is so thick I can barely see the screen. Went for a coffee at an interesting place today, but other than that we plan to do the majority of sightseeing tomorrow. Following that, on wednesday we'll head north to the Peruvian border!

Interesting note...I was kicked out of the internet cafe (it was closing) as I was finishing this entry up, so I saved it and returned, defeated, to my hostel. Jas and I started watching a few movies, and were half way through Lord of War, when we were told to get out of the hostel because of a fire. I ran upstairs to grab my bag and apparently the fire was in my room, or rather, just underneath my room. Some people were standing at the top of the stairs insisting our things were lost based on the amount of smoke billowing out of there, but after calculating the risk and peeking around the corner I heroically (or stupidly?) entered the inferno (there wasnt actually any visible fire, just a lot of smoke climbing up between the floorboards...) with a shirt wrapped around my head and saved the aforementioned items. Not to worry mother, at no point was my life at risk, except for that one point.... The rest of the evening has been spent watching the firefighters defeat the blaze, finding our new hostel and letting my smoke contaminated gear air out. More of a funny story than an adventure, but it did get the old adrenal glands going for a minute.

Adventures in Bariloche

A cool skiing army guy statue. Taken during the prep for a protectin' shot, moments before one of the soldiers came out with his M-16 and told us kindly to stop taking pictures of their base.

We spent our Monday afternoon having a chocolate taste test. Note the secret ballots and the pallete cleansing fluids.

Endless hours on a bus finally drove me to the point of insanity, where I began conversing with the happy mexican fellow that fell out of my kinder surprise.

Just protectin' the weirdest border I`ve ever seen (Chile & Argentina)

After finally escaping the clutchs of Tierra Del Fuego, we have managed to begin working our way back up the other side of Argentina. Our bus schedule was pretty horid, with one 12 hour day bus, then a 5 hour wait, then a 12 hour night bus, then a 14 hour wait, then finish it off with another 14 hour bus to Bariloche, where we are now. The city we waited in for 14 hours was called Comodorio Riveria (Im actually not sure about that spelling...) but it's basically a working city with very little to do besides visiting their famed Petroleum museum, which we quickly opted out of. Our day was spent walking aimlessly through the city, shopping for a leather jacket (it's retardedly cheap down here so I ended up buying one) and attempting to learn how to walk on our hands (this was one of the original feats we all hoped to be able to accomplish upon returning home, and have so far made little progress). We finally arrived in Bariloche on Sunday morning sometime and are now settled in quite nicely. When picturing Bariloche, just imagine a cross between Whistler village and that chocolate town that Homer Simpson visits from time to time. There are so many chocolate shops here, that yesterday we decided to have a chocolate testing session to determine who makes the best. A single bar of milk chocolate was purchased from each of the 8 major chocolate barons, then painstakingly sampled by the 3 of us back at the hostel (with mandatory pallete cleansing in between). Rapa Nui was declared as the victor by way of secret ballot (sorry Doris, Mamuschke was tied for 3rd...). Anyway, Jason has the full results and will most likely go into far greater detail for this momentous event. Yesterday I also managed to send home the aforementioned leather jacket which I purchased. Everything was fine until the woman discovered I was attempting to send 3 Brasilian soccer jerseys along with it. She made a spectacle of me in front of the entire crowded post office (some booing and hissing aimed at me) and it was all fun and games until she pulled out my Ronaldinho jersey. I boldly stated that Ronaldinho (Ronaldinho being a Brasilian and arguably the best living soccer player on the planet at the moment) was superior to Maradona (being one of the previous best soccer players and of course Argentina's pride and joy) and at that point the workers changed from bored, quiet, government postal employees, to vengeful Argentinian soccer hooligans. I was virtually thrown out of the building and won't be surprised if my package gets mailed directly to the garbage dump. Went for a 20-30km bike ride this afternoon, and somehow didn't make it to either of the places we tried to reach and ended up just watching a bunch of crazy motorcross guys fly off of piles of dirt. We leave for Mendoza on Thursday and following that we'll be off to Santiago. Adios!

Stuck at the bottom

One of the 'pimp' sea lions, surrounded by his flock of women and their
subsequent offspring. Appparently each older male sea lion gets about 8
'wives' to toy with and boss around...not bad.

Out of sheer boredom and a desire to look 15 again, I shaved my
beard. This was taken on our mini excursion yesterday.

The bus drivers trying desperately to fix our bus during a random breakdown in
the middle of Nowhere, Tierra Del Fuego. Using some kind of zooming
technology I'm sure you could see Jason sleeping and Ryan reading aboard.

Well we've reached the bottom of the Americas and now have the painstaking task of going back up north. Normally this wouldn't be a problem, but we've found that leaving Ushuaia (where we are presently located) is a much more difficult task than getting here. After looking for hours into flights, boats, buses and cars and having no luck, the decision has been made to bus out of here Friday morning at 5am for 12 hours back to Rio Gallegos, where we were just prior to meeting my pops and Doris. Given this evidence, it has been concluded that travelling north is going to be a lot more work than travelling south, don't know why this is, but it seems to be the (il?)logical conclusion to draw.

After my dad and Doris left us in Punta Arenas, we stayed one more night living the high life (courtesy of father's departure gift!), then it was an early bus ride towards Ushuaia. It was a 12 hour ride or so, basically entirely during daylight hours, so unlike Ryan, who has the ability to read on buses, and Jason, who has the ability to sleep anywhere, I quite literally stared out the window the entire time, looking at the barren landscape drift by. Highlights include watching sheep run from the bus, llamas hop over fences and a really big fire that a bunch of guys were standing around.

Yesterday Jas & I decided to continue on the whole hiking fever that Doris got us started on, and trekked our way up a local ski mountain. Some pretty nice views and it felt good to have a little snow blowing in our faces. Today we hoped on a boat to go check out the Beagle Channel and some wildlife. Probably wasn't worth the cost, but it was cool to see some sea lions wrestling. No idea what we're going to do with the rest of our time here, hopes of sneaking onto a fishing boat in the middle of the night were quickly dashed by port security sometime early Tuesday morning, leaving us with probably sitting around the hostel playing cards.

Pictures! As you should have already noticed, I've decided to adopt a caption format.