Christmas on the beach!

I made it to the beach for Christmas. I was on Ilha do Mel for a few days which was great as it was muy tranquillo. No cars on the island. We spent our time at the beach and I took my first surf lesson. I could not believe that I managed to stand up on the board on the first lesson! Looking forward to some more surfing!
Now we are on an island off Florinopolis, we have hired a car for christmas day, so we can hit some more beaches. After Christmas Im heading to Rio for new year to PARTY!

!!! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year !!!

5 down, 2 to go.

It seems the American Society of Civil Engineers thought it was in their best interests to compile a list of the 7 wonders of the modern world. Yesterday I went to see Itaipu Dam, which is just next to the Iguazu falls on the border of Argentina, Brasil and Paraguay. Anyway this Dam makes it to number 5 on there list. You can check out all the world wonder lists here and see how you are doing too. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Wonders_of_the_World
So now all I have to do is visit the Panama canal: Easy, as I am heading that way and then finally to complete the list I will need to jet off to Holland to see the "Delta Works". I think thats more dams and stuff.

I will finish with some Dam facts for you that I learnt on the Dam tour:
1) The Itaipu Dam generates 90% of Paraguays energy and 25% er or maybe 15% of Brasils. Sorry I forgot already.
2) The Itaipu Dam has absolutely no negative environmental impact whatsover. Absolutely no animals or fishes were harmed in the making or operating of the Itaipu Dam. Infact the burly construction workers who built the Dam rescued a small deer that had lost its way, during the construction, and nursed him back to health.
3) When constructing the Itaipu Dam, they used enough Iron to build 100 and er something Eiffel towers and enough concrete to build almost 1.3% of Coventry.
4) The light jazz lounge music they play on the Dam bus, underneath the comentary is really, really bad.
5) The Itaipu Dam is the greatest Dam ever, and is even better than the new one they are building in China.

You can find out even more about how great and well marketed the Itaipu Dam is here http://www.itaipu.gov.br/ I just found out that they have there own Dam choir!

Right, I´m off to go and check out the 7 Wonders of the Ancient world. "Yes, 1st class ticket to Baghdad please, I would like to visit your Hanging Gardens of Babylon."
"What do you mean they were destroyed and it wasn´t by the Americans?"

UnBOLIVIAble

Well Im in Brasil now where it is all sophisticated and they have proper shops and stuff and am enjoying the modern world very much. Hey but lets have a few more photos from crazy old Bolivia, one last time. Mostly transport related. Funny that.

Crossing Lake Titicaca, on the way to Copacabana. They unload the passengers and put them on a less precarious boat, before sending your bus across on this wobbly barge.

Yes, the woman in Bolivia do like to wear bowler hats. No, I don´t know why. Although I think it is something to do with some salesman who had a spare shipment of very small hats, and told the woman of Bolivia that it was all the rage to where them in Paris and Milan, and hey presto, a fashion craze was born.

Every Taxi in Cochabamba is right hand drive. Nothing odd about that you might think, except that they rip the steering wheel out of the dashboard and then stick it on the other side! The speedo doesnt work, but the mile-ometer and the clock are fully functioning.not sure why they bother fitting the ignition since there are about 20 loose cables hanging down you could easily bypass the starter.

Not sure if you can make out the spark in the photo, but here is me holding a lit stick of dynamite at the Potosí mines. What other country in the world has a tourist attraction where you get to play with lit dynamite. 5 seconds after this photo was snapped, the trusty guide/psycho grabbed the dynamite ran off 200m and buried it in the sand, so we could stand back and hear it go boom. Fantastic!

It is common for buses to put the destination in the front window. So who knows where this one was going? But hey who cares, I always prefer to take a bus that says. "AIR WOLF, BRYAN ISRAEL" in the front window over one that says "Downtown" or "Croydon"And finally staying on the transport theme, who needs BP garage when you can just pick up your fuel from a woman in a street selling it out of plastic bottles. Cool. Can I get my greenshield stamps with that, thanks.

Death Train

Howdy. Well i have just been travelling East through Bolivia this past week. First Cochabamba where they have a big Christo (bigger than Rio, they claim), then onto Santa Cruz where I stayed at the fantastic Jodanga hostel. http://www.jodanga.com/ You know the kind of thing; newly furnished, big rooms, great tv room, nice swimming pool, 3 quid a night.

Yesterday I left the cheapness of Bolivia and headed to exotic Brazil on the Death Train. So called because... actually I dont know. There seems to be lots of conflicting reasons about its name in the various guide books. I will go with the one that it feels like it might fall off the track. It seemed every 15 minutes that the brakes on our carriage locked up, and then suddenly the train yanked the carriage forward at such alarming force that I almost grazed my knee on the seat in front, on several occasions.
Although about 18 hours into the journey, I developed a new theory that maybe they are simply trying to scare you to death. The head carriage master chap tastefully decided to show the movie ´Under Siege 2` . You know, the Steven Seagull ´Classic´ where by the evil terrorists decide to Hi-jack a train and all its passengers...
Incidently they followed this with Under Siege 1. But as you probably know that is about a boat, so not as scary.

So now I am in Brasil in Corumbá, a sad looking border town at the edge of the Patanal (vast swampy plains type place). So tomorrow I will embark on a 4 day tour of said region getting bitten by mosquitos, er I mean looking at animals and stuff... Ciao!

Leaving La Paz

Hola, well my month of working here in La Paz is over. Its been a lot of fun, but now its time to move on and get some travelling in. So here is a map. The red line is where I have been. The green line is where Im going (probably). So I´m aiming for Christmas on the beach in Brazil... which will be nice! But before then, my next stop is Cochabamba in Bolivia. Oh joy, another Bolivian night bus. I opted for the most luxurious expensive bus I could find. 4 quid. Thats a lot of money here. I could go out for dinner 4 times on that. So hopefully I wont have to sit next to a crate of chickens and maybe the heater will work. But Im not getting my hopes up too much. Ciao for now!

Mi casa es su casa

Since I am here in La Paz for a month, I took an appartment in the centre of down town, at Plaza Estudiantes. After looking around a bunch, I chose this place for the nice view of the mountains, rather than for its lack of double glazing. Im not sure what my facination is with living on main roads. I thought I wouldn´t hear the traffic from the 14th floor. a generous photo of "Plaza" Estudiantes (its actually more of a roundabout) My appartment is next to the big palm tree.arty black and white view at night, of that "oh so quiet" traffic......but I do get this nice view of Illimani... No Im not going to climb it, its over 6000m high.

¡¡¡ LLAMAS !!!

What I can´t believe it! You have been in South America for 4 months and have not posted a single picture of a llama! Time I made up for that...

Fred the Llama, chilling at the lakeDave and Terry Llamas, racing up the hillPhilip the Llama, taking a well earned rest
Bob The Llama, strutting his stuff

La Paz

Hi again, well I have been in and around La Paz for a couple of weeks now and am planning to stay for about another month, as I am now volunteering at a nearby orphanage every afternoon, with 2 to 6 year olds. I am not teaching as such, but organising activites and supervising. Its a lot of fun and is a real diversion from the kind of work i´ve done before. Since Im only at the school in the afternoons, I have the mornings free to play guitar (yep I bought another one) and learn spanish - which does not seem to be improving, except I can now say things like "Stop thowing stones at each other" and "Don´t eat the ants".

Its nice to put down the rucksack for a while and take a break from travelling. So I have rented an appartment downtown for the month, with a cool view! (I need to upload the pictures later)

I seem to remember before I came away that I had 2 definite goals for this trip and that was to go snowboarding and do some volunteering, so with those underway, I need to think up some new ones. Also I need to decide where to go in December - probably Brasil - I like the idea of Christmas on the beach. So if you have a minute drop me an email of what you think I should do and where I should go in December.

Worlds Most Dangerous Road...ever

Hi again. At the moment I am in and around La Paz. There are some photos below of a few excursions. I took a mountian bike down a vertical height of 3600 meters on the fabled "worlds most dangerous road"... and didn´t fall off. Which is lucky because its a long way to fall. Im actually feeling a bit hungry right now, so rather than rabble on about it, you can follow this link if you want to know more... http://www.gravitybolivia.com/view?page=27

Also I took a tour back to Lake Titicaca, to admire the Bolivian Navy... I went there last year on the Peru side, so this time I saw an Island on the Bolivian side - Isle del Sol. Which is the birthplace of the incas. Ok I´m going to have to go for that cheeseburger now, sorry for the rubbish post. I will try and put a better update soon...

"Worlds Most Dangerous Road"... Notice the 400m vertical drop off. Nice!
So lets take a bike down that road then.
Copacobana (Bolivia)
Isle del Sol (Lake Titicaca)

Mines and Dinosaurs

Hola! It seems I havnt put a post up on the blog for a while. I have tried, but the tinternet always seems to break down. So what have I been up to...
I am still in Bolivia. After the Salt Flats we took a bus to Sucre, where I took the opportunity, to see one of the silliest tourist attractions of the trip so far. "Dinosaur footprints found in a cement factory". No, Im not making this up. You board the 'dinobus' and the guide shows you a vertical wall of limestone (techtonic plates have shifted, etc making the prints vertical) and points out lots of tracks and presumptions, like "see where those two tracks cross? Scientist say, that was two dinosaurs having a fight 6million years ago"

Wooooo, Dinosaurs!

After some days in Sucre, I headed to Potosí where I took the tour of the (very claustrophobic and pelegroso) mines where the miner co-operatives still work with the same methods as colonial times. Before the tour we went to the miners market to buy gifts for the miners, like a local Fanta ripoff and er sticks of dynamite. Not forgetting of course to buy an extra dynamite so we could blow it up after the tour. If you have been down the mine (Rob, Shannon, etc) , or you enjoy depressing documentries, you might be interested that some-one has made a nice docu-movie about it called "The Devils Miner" http://www.thedevilsminer.com/ that is worth seeing.
Cerro Rico (Rich Mountain, mine in Potosí)
Tick, tick, boom (buying dynamite at the market!)

Entering Bolivia

We Left San Pedro and took a jeep tour to Bolivia, via the Salt planes and lagoons of the altiplano. Had a great 3 days, seeing breathtaking scenery, amazing coloured lakes, flamingos, and volcanoes, finishing in the salt flats.
The final afternoon was less fun when our trusty driver managed to fall asleep at the wheel in the salt flats.. Not a big problem because there is nothing to crash into, but then after he woke up we also ran out of diesel and found that we only had 5 litres spare. Running out of fuel miles from anything or anywhere is a bit scary. Luckily we were able to drive back to where the other jeeps were parked up on our 5 litres and buy some more fuel to get us to Uyuni. But at the time it felt like the longest drive of our lives!

Gringos and Lake...

tree made of stone.. Our trusty 4x4 with the hood in the popular "up" position. Theres a lot of salt in the salt flats and not a lot else...

... which means you can take very silly photos. (this is not the best example, hopefully someone will email me a better one to post.)

San Pedro de Atacama

Hola,
I have been travelling around a bit. Most interestingly, staying in Bahía Inglesa, in a giant plastic dome by the beach. Check it out at http://www.changochile.com/

Since then I have been relaxing in the desert for a few days with the cactus and sand around San Pedro de Atacama. Apparently it never rains here, but yesterday up in the mountains nearby I got snowed on! Internet connections are annoyingly slow here, so I can´t upload any new photos.

Tomorrow I head out on a 3 day jeep tour to Bolivia with some Belgian jazz enthusiasts, and I think I will stay one night in a hotel made entirely of salt. Its all getting a little surreal...

Elqui Valley

Hola, I have left Santiago and have been travelling north through Chile, to La Serena and onto the Elqui Valley, where they make Pisco. (local wine brandy) Heres a couple of photos for you...
Bottle nose dolphins at Punta de Choros (very tricky to take photos of dolphins, they keep diving out the way)
Mmmm, Pisco!
Me on a horse (again! I am an expert Gauchio now) in the Elqui valley, with my Aussie Gauchas.

Friday

After Portillo I spent some more time back at Che Legarto hostel in Santiago. Last Friday was a fun day. It started unlikely enough at the post-office. The queue at the postoffice was full of business types ready to send there letters and documents, whilst I chilled out in the queue in my flipflops carrying an enormous snowboard bag. Would you believe it, I kept getting strange looks. So I bid a sad farewell to my snowboard, after 2 and half months carrying it around countless bus stations and hostels to 6 different ski resorts in south america but the snow was melting and its time to move on and do some travelling.

On my way back from the hostel I chanced by some Traditional dancing in the plaza and who
should be there, but La Presidente de Chile, joining in the dancing. Shes so famous, she has her own web page here http://www.presidencia.cl/view/homepage.asp

To finish the day, we went to see an American band, some friends in the hostel had met on the plane from BA,´the Ataris´. Before the show we went backstage with the band. Whilst the band manager tried in vein to chat up the girls from the hostel, myself and Shane observed that the bands rider was not Champagne, Cocaine and M&Ms (with all the brown ones removed) but infact Gatorade and some bananas. The band let some more fans backstage, and a young Chilean came over to us and told us how great we were for coming over to play some gigs in South America. We blagged being in the band for some time, despite not having a clue who they were - not sure what the kid thought when he saw us in the crowd rather than onstage later. The gig went great and made a nice change from Regaeton and Shakira (so if you want some new tunes - crawf, mike, janine, etc check http://www.myspace.com/theataris )

..Us, with Tom from the Ataris

the Ataris rockin....

...Pepe at the Che.

The Almost Frozen Lake

I have just returned from a weeks snowboarding in the luxury ski resort of Portillo (which conveniently has a cheaper dormitory too). So after snowboarding every day we could go to the Jacuzzi then kick back in the bar and drink expensive beers whilst the house band played Hotel California again (of course changing the lyrics occasionally to Hotel Portillo).

The photos are from when we decided to have a bit of extra fun(?) one day, we hired some snowshoes and hiked across the almost frozen lake for a few hours, hiked up a mountian, put a run in at the end of the valley, and hiked back. It took so long that we almost missed lunch. But it was a fun, memorable and tiring day out.


The almost frozen lake taken from Hotel Portillo... (small dots on the right are some skiers)The intrepid team: Prof Tim, Yumi and Matt

small dots on the left are some skiers (Matt and Tim) .It would seem skis are a bit more handy than snowboards and snowshoes for this kind of excursion. Notice how my snowboard is held together with ducktape. oops.

The almost frozen lake several hours later from the otherside. You can just make out the yellow hotel Portillo in the background here.

The house band! (A disappointing lack of Stevie Ray Vaughan material, considering the fine headgear)

----
¡Muchas gracias Raul por el viaje a Santiago! ¡No Problem!

Hitchhike Snowboarding

I have been down to another ski resort, Termas de Chillan for a few days. I found when I arrived that I had to hitch hike from the hostel to the ski resort. So now those transfer buses in Austria don't seem so bad after all.
It turned out that, hitchi-hiking with a snowboard is easier than you think when everyone drives a pickup truck. You just jump in the back with other snowboarders, pets or lesser members of the drivers family.

One day though the driver wasn't so local, but a rich city slicker from Santiago. Driving on snow was not his forte. Theres nothing quite like a bit of wheel spinning around corners on snow and ice in the back of a pickup truck, up a twisty mountain road to make the start of your day that little bit more exciting than it should be.

Haggling, South American Style

My Haggling skills have come a long way since China, as I found out when I took the ski bus down the mountain the other day.

Driver "10,000 pesos por cada persona, por favor"
Alan "Que no! Solo 8,000 pesos. El Hostel se dice 8,000"

....Driver telephones Hostel to find out the price, some discussions go on for a minute...

Driver "Ok, 7,000 pesos"
Alan "Er, ok 7,000 pesos. Que bien!"

So thats how to haggle.

Hablo Español

Hey its official, I can speak spanish. Just got my result, grade A GCSE Spanish!

Although despite being in South America for nearly 2 months, it is possible my Spanish has got worse as I hang out with Gringo´s all the time.

Im back in Santiago now after a week of snowboarding nearby, so time to chill out for a few days before heading off to another resort...
Santiago and ski mountains just 45 minutes away.

El Colorado

Hi again. Just a short note... I finally managed to snowboard that Volcano in Pucon! Came up to Santiago, and am now staying at a nice hostel in the mountains, from where I can reach 3 ski resorts. Just had a couple of very sunny days snowboarding, but now the clouds are rolling in, hopefully to bring some fresh snow. sunset snowboarding in El Colorado... after a few Pisco Sour´s...

Still in Pucon

After 5 days of rain, the sun finally put his hat on today. So we got up and rushed out the hostel to see the Volcano (we had not been able to see it due to to clouds and rain) Then we put on our ski wear to head off to the mountain, only to be told that the lifts were closed due to high wind. So Mañana, mañana, mañana.
So to pass the day we took a hike to Huerquehue national park, and took some nice photos of the Villarica volcano instead.
Tommorrow, I will ski down the volcano for sure!

Chile, Pucon

Hola Chicos y Chicas.
I arrived in Chile last night and it is indeed very Chilly. I am thinking that the fake O´Neill beanie hat I bought from the market and wear constantly, may look very stylish, but has all the thermal head warming properties of a damp sock.

I am kicking around downtown Pucon- http://www.skipucon.cl/ awaiting for the mountain to open which seems to be closed because of too much snow or something like that. But the forecast is looking good for Monday, so soon enough I should be snowboarding down the side of an active volcano. Andean skiing has many drawbacks - like slow skilifts, inconsiderate weather, dodgy bus services. But it makes up for it with dramatic resorts. So if an avalanche doesn´t get me, the lava will. Nice!

Bariloche

Hello again.

I have been in Bariloche for about a week now staying at the 1004 hostel. A hostel on the 10th floor of the ugliest office building you have ever seen. Think Bracknell, Coventry, etc. Some say the only good view of Bariloche is from this building, such that you cannot see the builiding itself. Anyway the view across the lake is fantastic. Check out http://www.lamoradahostel.com/1004_english.html . The place appears to be run by hippys, and the only reason really I have to change hostels soon is the endless playlist of French Folk music and Enya on the stereo.

Got 3 good days of Snowboarding in this week in the nearbny resort of Cerro Catedral, amongst a few weather issues. Fair-weather only ´boarding for me remember. So that brings my amount of snowboarding up to 7 days in 5 weeks. Result!

Backside 180 to fakey tailgrab or something...

finally got some pictures burnt to CD. Here I am in Las Leñas...

Heading off to Bariloche tonight instead of Chile, cos some friends from hostel are heading that way. A luxurious 21 hour bus ride awaits.

I have to suffer for my art you know.

Well Driven?

Yesterday we took an excursion to the natural thermal baths of Cachuagua which in Spanish probably translates to tepid waters. The springs were a bit disappointing and didnt live up to the picture in the brochure, but never mind, the highlight of the day was the bus journey. Our Uspallta coach took a detour off the highway down a bumpy track to pick up some school kids, then tried to negotiate the track back to the main road assisted by an official chap in an orange jacket, who waved our bus enthusiastically forward. The driver obliged and promptly drove into a ditch, leaving the bus tilting over at 20 degrees. The driver revved the engine hard to try and make an escape, but there was no escaping, and no disguising his poor driving, or perhaps over reliance on the official in the orange jacket. The official whose only response was to laugh, perhaps because he thought he may had lost his job so may as well enjoy the moment.

The gringos heroically lept out of the bus, well squeezed through the jammed half open door and did the best we could to help the situation... by taking loads of photos. Well thats not quite true, Rob the mechanic who we were travelling with, did get his hands dirty and tried to help out, but it was all in vein, so we found a cafe at the side of the main road, sat down for some great Pollo Asado, and waited an hour for the next bus.

Tomorrow I am going to Chile or Bariloche. The road to Chile opened this morning it turns out, but as I was so busy playing a guitar I found, I had neglected to ask the hostel staff if the road had re-opened. So manaña I will go to the bus station and try and get to Chile if not, to Bariloche, another Argentine resort. I have had a great time in Mendoza, but the snowboard under my bed is gathering dust, so its about time I hit the slopes again.

Super Pancho con Poncho

Still passing time in Mendoza, waiting for the road to Chile to open. Incredibly I have managed to get out of the hostel and do some stuff. A few days ago we went out to a ranch for a day of horse riding, Maté drinking and of course BBQ and wine for lunch. We were disappointed not to be given ponchos and cowboy hats, but still we got to be Gaucho´s for a day. We got back to the hostel and signed up for the evening Parilla (all you can eat BBQ) which was commencing at 10pm. Naturally around 12.30 we sat down to eat. Having been here 3 weeks, I am well accustomed to Argentine timing now.

For lunch yesterday I found a new Argentine ´delicacy´. Super Pancho con Poncho. A regular super pancho is just a hot dog, but the added twist is an added slice of ham and cheese - the poncho - on the top. Mmmm healthy as well as tasty.

Oops this entire entry seems to be about food again. Time for another Bife de Lomo...