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.