East Coast Australia

My humble living quarters

The last shot of Sydney Harbour...or as the Aussies say, "Sydna Ahba!"

Not a lot of photos, I had 8 to upload but this connection is expensive and sucks...

After picking Dani up at the airport, we spent the next two nights in Sydney (one of which included visiting Penner's wild BBQ, Dani was extremely jet lagged and I was a few sheets to the wind, so we decided to leave early, sorry ole boy). Danielle's friend Hollie, who lives in Sydney, gave us a wee little tour around the city, checking out all the sites and eating Kangaroo/Crocodile pizza. From Sydney the two of us headed north to Byron Bay. The night bus was a big change, instead of having Jason's ass in my stomach and waking up every 15 minutes to yell "Get the f*ck off my seat" it was quite relaxing to have a wonderful smelling, beautiful little person beside me. Arrived in Byron Bay in the morning and pretty much just sat on the beach all day, followed by a second day of sitting on the beach. Following that we ventured a few hours north to Surfer's Paradise. I expected a quaint little surf town but instead was greeted with sky scrapers and something that felt more like Las Vegas. Cool little city though and yet another damn nice beach. Went to a wildlife sanctuary while there and spent the day feeding kangaroos, petting koalas and being attacked by really colourful little birds. A quick night was spent in Brisbane (like every other city in this country its extremely clean and pleasent) then it was off to Noosa to stay in Becky and Jason's place. Wow...thats really all I have to say. I just finished reading Jason & Ryan's blogs and I love the contrast. Becky, your place is unreal, it's probably the nicest house I've ever been in. Each night I have to spend a good few hours running around trying to find the right combination in which to turn off the 700 light switches scattered throughout. Mornings are spent lounging in the sun and kayaking around the canals until my arms fall off. Not sure where we'll be going from here but I'm sure it will be north and extremely sunny.

Sydney

The vast Pacific, normally I would try to protect it, but I have no backup.

Leave it to me to find the one place in Sydney to get completely lost in for about 5 hours, bad things awaited me at the end of this road, including giant spiders and mounds of explosives.

Sydney at night, despite my pleas the captain of the ferry would not stop, resulting in a blurred opera house, but you get the idea.

Life in Sydney has reached a nice, slow monotony. My intentions of visiting Melbourne for the week were demolished when my wallet mysteriously went missing Sunday night and with it the $300 I had for heading south. So instead I decided to save some money and push Penner to the limits of his hospitality by staying with him for a week. I'm really starting to like Sydney as a city, it's extremely clean and reminds me of Vancouver except without all the bums. Most of my time has been spent working out (until they found Penner and I were using the same gym pass and took corrective measures), walking around the city, hanging out with Penner's friends and accompanying the English and Israeli guys who live with Penner as they watch every season of "24" in 6 days (they're also lazy travellers who have decided to stay still for a few weeks and have since become intimately involved with Jack Bauer). Yesterday I took a ferry over to Manly, on the other side of Sydney harbour. As usual, when left to my own devices, I managed to get completely lost and after climbing through a hole in a wall, somehow found myself on an artillery range in the middle of the woods, something that the local Sydney-ians never even knew existed. Today will be another day of essentially nothing as I wait for Penner to come home and cook yet another gourmet meal. Tonight is my last night at his place, for tomorrow morning I pick up Danielle after her jaunt over the Pacific! And that's about it, it's amazing how little I have to write about once I put my bag down for a week, is this really how boring normal life is? *shudder*

Adios South America! G'Day Australia!

Ryan attempting to sleep while standing, on the Buenos Aires subway en route to the football match.

Through the crowd you can see diligent Argentinian firemen awaiting to quell any soccer rioters with their gigantic hose.

A young Penner readies himself for another busy day of coding downunder. Note the size of his unusually large forearms.

Well, the Super Cama bus from Salta was absolutely amazing, exactly as I had imagined it. We just lay in leather beds that floated over the highway while watching Steven Seagal movies. The sleep was a little less than fantastic, owing to the fact that I was so excited about being in Super Cama, that I couldn't fall asleep. It may sound stupid, but Jason had the same problem and we both arrived into Buenos Aires quite tuckered out. We caught Ry as he headed out for his first rugby game, so joined him for that. Mainly we sat around in the suburbs of BA, drinking some beers, watching rugby and eating giant meat sandwiches, while trying to stay awake.

That night we decided to celebrate my 'last' night in South America by visiting Opera Bay, one of the biggest nightclubs in Buenos Aires and seemed to be some kind of a sign as it looked to be fashioned after the Sydney Opera house. Had a great night there and stumbled out sometime around 7am. From there ole Jas had a nap, then we were off to a Riverplate vs. Racing football match. Great game (including the play that I would later see on CNN's sports highlight of the week), great crowd, great atmosphere. Was great watching mobs of angry Riverplate fans hunt down Racing fans throughout the city after the game.

Following this, I went to the airport and was kindly told that my flight had been cancelled a week ago, but because I had no contact information, they weren't able to inform me (much to my excitement, I was actually listed as a 'Transient'). Luckily the woman took pity on me and got me return transportation to/from the airport, two nights at a hotshot hotel and all my meals paid for. Needless to say much of my last two days in BA would be spent as a dirty backpacker amongst some of Argentina's most upstanding citizens, eating all their food and never shutting off my blaring TV, according to Mr. Lush, a classic fish-out-of-water situation.

I surprised Jas and Ry the next morning and we decided to make the best of the situation by going to see Creedence Clearwater Revisited that night. Not knowing much about any recent news from CCR, we didn't realize that John Fogarty had been replaced with another guy named John who sounds exactly like him, hence the revisited and not the revival. Regardless, the other members of the band are still there and whoever that guy was, they all put on a great show.

I was given another scare when I attempted to catch the next flight to Sydney on May 9th. Arriving at the checkin counter, the woman furiously typed away in her computer and talked on the phone before announcing in broken english that the Australian government had a problem with my name. The only thing I could think of was maybe a guy named Blanchet was on some kind of watch list, but after about 25 minutes with three more people coming over and contacting the Australian embassy, I was let through, later to find she was just concerned because I didn't have an Australian visa, which I obviously don't need.

Flight to Ozland was good, Jason and I spent a considerable amount of time debating the affects on my future after essentially just missing the 10th of May. The end conclusion was that although we don't know what kind of cascading temporal turmoil this will cause, something bad is sure to come of it.

Arriving into Sydney, I somehow managed to navigate their monstrous underground train/bus network and found myself outside of Penner's door (a buddy from school/work who now lives in Bondi Beach), where I am now. I have yet to see any kangaroos, crocs or dingos, but I have noticed that almost no one speaks Spanish and they drive on the left side of the road.

Bolivia - Round 2

The view from our zero star hotel, overlooking Lake Titicaca. The bathroom of this place looked like something out of a Bolivian prison.

Visiting the celebrity chef for the second time in Oruro, Bolivia. Not sure what his secret is, but he makes the best damn lamb spine in the world (or at least in Oruro, Bolivia)

What we look at each day as we rot away on buses. Somewhere in northern Argentina.

Once leaving Cusco, we headed to Copacabana, Bolivia. Situated on the shores of Lake Titicaca, it was a nice little town and luckily we got there during one of their biggest festivals of the year...no idea what they were celebrating but the town was absolutely packed with drunken revelery any hour of the day. First night there we (Jason, Shane and I) wandered into the main party and were surprised to find ourselves the only gringos there. We were soon accosted by locals who wanted to talk to us and by the end of the night found ourselves in a drunken conversation with the mayor and his cronnies on how to improve Canada/Copacabana relations. The guys that are in charge of the fireworks carry these metal poles around with explosives attached to them that seem to randomly explode. Im not sure how more people aren't killed, but at one point he basically attacked us with it (out of fun..yay!) and managed to burn holes in all our clothes.

After discovering we couldn't see the reed islands (main reason we went to lake Titicaca) from the Bolivian side, we decided to hop on over to La Paz two days later. Given that this was my third time to La Paz, I was less than thrilled to be going, but decided to make the best of it. We had a tearful goodbye with the Australian guy who kept following us (hope you made it down the road ole boy), then set about buying a bus ticket to Villazon, which is at the bottom of Bolivia and one step closer to Buenos Aires. Unfortunately the buses decided to go on strike, leaving us with fewer options. Spent the rest of the day wandering around town buying weird things to send home and visiting one of the local barbers to get a shave and a haircut.

We managed to get a bus to Oruro (where we enjoyed a second meal from celebrity chef Don Roberto - http://wayfaring05.blogspot.com/2006/01/prior-to-salt.html) and from there a quick 17 hour train to Villazon, where we crossed the border and caught another 9 hour bus to Salta, where I sit now. It was really bizarre travelling the whole area for a second time, and a lot of people were wondering why the hell we were doing it, to which we would just shrug and tell them we're retarded. Tonight we finally treated ourselves to a 'Super-Cama' bus to Buenos Aires, for those that don't know the South American bus system, Super-Cama is the best of the best and essentially involves us lying in beds, watching movies, while whisking along at 120 km/h.