Peru

Peru, this is the Huayhuash, looked so good from the plane 2 months earlier flying over decided to go check it out close up. Pretty amazing in real life.

This is an Andean mountain thunderstorm. When one of these rolls in try not to be on a ridge you can only get off by running down a scree slope for a few hundred meters.

And again, camera cant do it justice though, or my photography. Imagine mountains at the top of that photo.

The delicacy of Peru, Guinea pig.

And Macchu Piccu. Nice , but imagine paying 10 times the normal cost of things in a country to visit something and then inspecting it at the same time as 2500 other tourists. Bit of a money spinner as you'd expect. The setting is as stunning as described, unfortunately it's all falling down the hill due to the weight of all the tourists!

Bucaramanga & towards Peru

I just spent 2 weeks learning to Paraglide in Bucaramanga. A great place to learn as its 1/3 of the price of Australia, nice setting and all that, good parties and good times!



Sadly left Colombia and checked out a tourist town called Banos (that's toilet in Spanish) which is 5km from an active volcano. Couldnt ever see the volcano but I got this pic.


I´m expressing it south to Peru to arrive tomorrow which is interesting with no guidebook to tell me where exactly to go and no Spanish but my ability to piece together words like Machala (the place I´m going) and bus (pronounced boos, I learnt that one quick!) eventually manages to get me to the right place.

Colombia Part 1

The South American adventure continues, from Ecuador to Colombia I have managed to bus so far to the north coast of the continent. Its my first long route bussing on the trip and always something interesting is happening. So far one had a flat bald tyre they kept trying to patch all day, one crashed into a truck, one had the air con setting on about 10C and all the drivers seem to like to risk the lives of their passengers every few minutes by overtaking trucks around blind corners.

Colombia is somewhat of a travellers paradise not yet spoilt by the hordes of tourists due to a now undeserved reputation for being a more dangerous place. Below is the so far highlight of the trip, some lost city, lost under the jungle I guess. According to our guide it was founded by Arabs that sailed there after the tower of Babel fell, this was in the time of the Dinosaurs, either that or Noahs ark or the Japanese. I didn´t make that up.


I gotta put in a shot of my mosquito bites.

This is Bogota the capital. A pretty stunning setting and really cool place. I think good football games are restricted to Argentina and Brasil though. Both Ecuador and Colombian football is terrible. I´ve seen more entertaining matches in the backyard!, and all those riot police never seem to have to get into the action.

And for those of you sitting in an office slaving away or freezing to death in Tasmania here is some of the Carribean coast I am currently enjoying. The water is so warm and refreshing you can stay in for as long as you feel like, the evenings are brilliantly mild and breezy at about 25 degrees and the beers are $1 a pop.

Ecuador

Best Volcano pic, that looked 100 times better in real life. 5 Days trekking the Trek de Condor took us past this
beast called Antisana and a couple others just as impressive.


Navigation was often a slow process for us and when we finally hit a bit of road this was the extent of the signs to tell you where to go. Does that mean no trumpet playing? Even more useless is having the sign as its down a dead end road with a little shed at the end of it for the water bureau!

Getting a lift back South American style, safely down the pan-americano.


Next: Colombia..

Santiago

After a great flight with a fever and very cramped seat for 13 hours I arrived in Santiago early morning with the pilot announcing the temperature as -1C

Santiago is all one way streets which I think is a good thing judging on how they drive. Our ski bus driver thought it was cool to pretend he was trying to run over pedestrians. The city is pretty unattractive but it has the amazing backdrop of the Andes which I managed to get this great photo of.

Skiing was amazing compared to Australia. I can also take the oppourtunity to bag Bella Vista Camp www.bellavistacamp.cl (please show that up google) whose ski bus driver stole my mp3 player.




Then the flight to Ecuador gave some amazing views. That red arrow is pointing to Siula Grande, I think.


Am now in Equador at a Spanish school which is a bit of a laugh for me.

Madrid

I went to Madrid for a few days of art galleries, palaces and fancy gates. Really I don't have any complaints from these 3 days apart from the shops and restaurants being open and closed at strange times. The city seems like a ghost town until about 11pm when I guess the Spaniards all crawl out of bed. Then at about 2pm everyone dissapears again and seems to come out at 5 or so and the entire evening and night is very lively, seems kinda lazy. I can see why people like Spain so much.

Morocco

After another brief visit to London that cost way too much money and off to Morocco. There are a lot of hustlers in Morocco all trying to rip off tourists for anything and everything, eventually bringing them to their knees and driving them out of their country destroying their main export in the process!! I have to give my #1 scam to the Taxi driver driver who I finally haggled a reasonable fair from (2 hours bartering with various hustlers, I´m not kidding!) who then proceeded to drive me out of the city to some rubbish dump posing as a taxi station and tell me its suddenly more expensive. After lots of yelling and screaming some random offers me my origional price and I try to get out of the taxi but he just starts driving off. Eventually I decided to pay the guy $3 to get out of his taxi and continue on my journey, he then asked me for a tip, fn lol.

I managed to put up with this for 9 days, here is what I did.

Above is the main square of Marrakesh, try and watch from a distance.

Somewhere over there is a mountain I was trying to climb.

Eventually I got to the top

But seeing as its Africa and a desert it started to rain

And rain more

And I got Diarrhoea

Getting quite sick of the rain this trip so I decided to go to the desert. This was my Camel. The only problem with the camel riding experience was Camels have humps, and they also have spines, and they only have a blanket to fold over a few times for sitting on its back.

This is the desert, no rain. One night was spent here, its like sleeping on the beach but with no ocean.

I actaully think the average Moroccan is generally pretty nice, just as long as you´re not buying things from them. They really should stop having so many kids tho. 33 million people in, from what I saw, is a country as fertile as north west Australia!

Iceland

Trying to go to different places I had booked a flight to Iceland for a week. The first thing I noticed were Subway rolls were $13-$18 AU, cheapest block of cheese $7, half loaf of bread $4, pint of cheapest beer at bar $12 etc. Those salads below are $6, about 2 spoonfuls of fruit salad.

Crazy.

So I go to the mountains as its going to be cheap there except the bus cost $130 return for the equiv of going from Launceston - Hobart, 2 hours! Very interesting but it rains a bit too much. I ran out of food again and had to catch the bus back 2 days early but wasn't caught in the dark again as in summer it's too far north to get dark. Following are some bad photos making some pretty spectacular scenery look average due to rubbish camera and, rubbish photographer.

Icelandics try to avoid saying as little as possible in conversation, usually just yes or no unless you structure your questions well. There were loads of nice blonde haired girls around though.

I filled out my trip with swimming in this naturally heated pool, half naturally heated.

Quite nice 37C in the pool, 10C out so u gotta run from the pool to the change rooms and back real quick.

England

Catch some trains and planes again and eventually get to London. Caught up with some old friends the highlight being lost in a small town called Colchester with all my gear at friends place. I did manage to get out of Colchester in the end (with my gear) and then Iceland.

Rare photo of the sun out in England.

Interlaken

Interlaken is an adventure town so I decided I would do some adventuring. After being annoyed at the price of everything and getting sick of waiting for it to stop raining I packed my rucksack and headed off into the mountains for a couple of days of average weather and wet feet.

I got to this hut where I planned to buy some food but it was locked and empty which was annoying as I only had 1 bun left and it was a long walk to anywhere.

So raced down to nearest the train station half in the dark and managed to get the last train getting these for the effort.

Of course the next day was beautiful weather, in fact the next 5 or 6 were. I decided to try this ..

It was pretty hard for me as other than Tennis I don't think I'd really used my arms for 4 or 5 years, great experience tho to walk on a glacier and all.

Rounded out the trip with a paraglide which was way overpriced and a complete waste of money unless you learn to do it yourself, and another hike, this time on a sunny day! These are the Bernese Alps, the Eiger to the left of the middle, I think.