Team Trev on Tour

Back into it

2010-01-14T13:38:00.000+01:00

<p>And so, after a very long break in transmission, and some interestingness along the way, here we are, back travelling again - this time it's five months in central Asia, with some interesting sidelines along the way. We are both looking forward to it tremendously.</p><span class="shortpost">

Does it get any more Irish?

2006-03-26T20:11:00.000+02:00

I spent most of today strolling around Dublin, looking at lots of churches and generally getting wet in the rain. I then made my way to the Guinness brewery, and sampled some of the local product. On the way back to the hostel, I went past "The Lord Edward", an Irish pub that pretty much takes the cake for the "definitive" Irish pub. Finally, a couple more pints later, I stopped in at an Internet cafe for a quick check of my email. I sit down, and start typing, and they start playing The Proclaimers!

Does it get more Irish? I'm struggling to think of anything that I could add to this scene. Except maybe either Bono or a leprechaun...

"I'm on my way, from misery to happiness indeed...
ah-ha. AH-HA. ah-ha! AH-HA! Yeah...."

Oop, I just think I saw that leprechaun...

Into Exile....

2006-01-28T16:15:00.000+01:00

Having got the working holiday visa, been to lots of interesting museums, and spent the day on nordic skis, there's really only one thing left to do in Norway - leave! I'm flying out of Sandjeford airport here in Torp, which is about 120km south of Oslo. Why such a remote and obscure little airport? Well, as these things go, its where Ryanair flies to, and I was able to get a flight to the UK for the stately sum of NOK 9.00 - thats about US$1.40 for the non-scandinavians. For comparison, the 350mL Fanta that I brought while cross country skiing yesterday cost me NOK 33. Its really quite ridiculous really - it costs nearly 50% more to travel from one side of Copenhagen to the other, and more than double that to go and visit Dorthe's parents. Of course you have to add the taxes etc to that, so that the total cost comes in at around about NOK 200 (US$28) but even that is a ridicuously low price for a two hour flight of roughly a thousand kilometres or more... It just doesn't seem right really - after all, there's basically nothing else can you get in Norway for NOK 9!

TeamTrev 2: TeamTrev, On the Run!

2006-01-23T14:19:00.000+01:00

He's back...

Just when you thought it was safe to starting reading blogs again....

Yes, blog fans, its true, there's a sequel lurking out there in the depths, just off the safe shores that you've become accustomed to over the last three months. The plans have been laid, funding has been secured, locations have been scouted, extras have been enlisted, the stars have been signed up to return and, like all good sequels, the script is being made up completely as we go along - announcing the imminent arrival of the most highly awaited sequel of all time:

TeamTrev 2: TeamTrev, On the Run!

How could this be, you ask? At the end of our last episode, Trev, Mark and Dorthe were all safely at home in Denmark, returning to their normal lives (just like Superman has to take time out as Clark Kent, so too must Trev rest and re-cooperate). Not much travelling action for any of them, you thought. But you were WRONG! Suddenly, and without warning* evil visa-man appears, threatening to throw Mark from the country. What can Mark do? He has no choice, he has to leave before visa-man really starts messing things up. But all is not lost - his trusty yoda-like sidekick, Trev, is with him to provide wisdom, and stupid photo opportunities. And thus begins, TeamTrev 2.....

Alright, enough! Believe the hype though, because it's largely true. Dorthe and I (and Trev) have had a pretty good four or five months here since we've got back. We've got ourselves an apartment, painted and furnished it, and are pretty well set in that department. Dorthe has started her Ph.D., and after taking a bit of time figuring out the topic, is well on her way. And me, well, I've been looking for a job. Denmark is actually quite a good place for the type of work that I am interested in - there have been at least four vacancies advertised doing almost exactly what I want to do, plus quite a lot of other jobs that I am also interested in. The job situation here is really quite healthy.

Unfortunately, that is not the problem - the issue that has caused the biggest problems is just the fact that it is a very slow process - one vacancy I applied to, which shall remain nameless, took six weeks just to send me a "thank you for your application, we are thinking about it." Another place I applied to close to four months ago, and am still awaiting for the first round of interviews to be decided upon. Yup, its slow!

So, when matched against processes of such speeds, it is not surprising that my visa is expiring. The Schengen visa system, which Denmark and most of continental Europe are part of, allows you three months stay in each successive six month period, where the start of the period is defined by the date of your first ever entry to the Schengen region. Fortunately for me, my first entry was in November, meaning that I am allowed three months from November to May, and another three months from May to November. I was thus able to put two periods together, two months in the previous Schengen period and three months in this one to make five in total. But now that time is expiring, and I have to leave until the start of my new period in May - not just Denmark either, but all of the Schengen region.

Fortunately for me, there is a colony of Australian and New Zealand exiles where I can go and hide for a few months - we call it as "England". It's been off doing its own version of the EU for a while now, and is thus not part of Schengen, making it a refuge for types like me (Does anyone else see it as ironic that fugitives from Australasia are now making their way to England?). And even better, NZ being part of the commonwealth, I can also get a working holiday visa, allowing me to work there legally.

And so, this is the plan for the next three months, or until a job offer comes through. The first step starts on Tuesday, when I take the bus to Oslo to get my Working Holiday Visa from the UK Embassy there (Oslo and Stockholm are the only embassies in Europe that will process me, for some strange reason). Then on the following Saturday, I fly from Oslo to London, and the adventure really begins. What I'm going to do, and where I am going to do it, is completely unknown at the moment. The only things that I can really tell you for sure are:

I will be in the UK.
Trev will be with me.
And it will all be blogged, right here on TeamTrev 2: TeamTrev on the run...

* Well, ok, that's a complete lie, but it doesn't sound as good if I tell the truth. It's the movies after all!

Xmas in Paris

2005-12-31T15:15:00.000+01:00

Detail, Arc de Triomphe

Trev, Dorthe, Dorthe's parents Helmer and Gitte, and I all spent Christmas this year in Paris with Dorthe's brother Morten, and his girlfriend Rebecca. We spent about eight or so days down there, and we all had a really good time, doing all the things that you do in Paris - the Eiffel tower, museums, cafes, jambon beurre (a baguette stuffed with heaps of ham and butter - bloody marvellous) etc. Although I've been down there a couple of times before in a previous incarnation, I still really enjoyed the trip. For me, the highlight was midnight mass in Notre Dame cathedral - it was absolutely packed (we had to queue outside for about an hour and a half to get in), and was completely worth the wait, especially once they started ringing the bells, and fired up the big gothic organ. Rebecca also served an outstanding french style xmas dinner (as a follow up to the traditional Danish epic the day before), and the icing on the cake was a light dusting of snow on the last couple of days (which when we returned to Copenhagen turned into a major dump). A very pleasant and enjoyable way to spend christmas. I hope you enjoy the photos as much as we did the trip.

Xmas in Paris Picture Set

Xmas List

2005-11-11T13:01:00.000+01:00

Every year Mum always pesters me with the perennial question:

What do you want for Xmas?

and every single year, she gets the same answer:

Oh, I dunno.

Things are compounded by the fact that 1. my birthday being so close to Xmas doubles the number of ideas needed and 2. I never really have any ideas. And then just to add to the pressure that bit more, I now have Dorthe's mother asking the same question! Arggggghhh!!!!

So this year, I decided to do something about it. Everytime I happened across something that would be cool, I decided to write it down (or, being the computer geek that I am, put it in a txt file on my USB stick, and include it in my regular Mozilla profile backup...). Thus behold, the official Team Trev Xmas list:

All I want for xmas...

Firstly,

Trev's list:

A Toyota Landcruiser

Bet you didn't see that one coming.

Ok, here's my list. Its ordered by where you are going to find it most easily. There's no particular order to any of these - consider them all as having equal weight.

Stuff you can probably get in most places:

A Toyota Landcruiser (A boy can dream)
Something like this (yup, still a computer geek)
The Great War for Civilisation; The Conquest of the Middle East, by Robert Fisk
Forty signs of Rain, by Kim Stanley Robinson
Innocents Abroad, by Mark Twain
Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, by Robert Pape
Factor Four, by Ernst von Weizacker
Postcards, by Annie Proulx
Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, by William McDonough
1984, by George Orwell
"Babylon Five" Season 1 DVD Boxed set (or subsequent seasons..)
Last of the Hunter Gatherers, by Michael Wigan
End of the Line, by Charles Clover
The Wisdom of Crowds, James Surowiecki
Longitude, by Dava Sobel
E=mc2, by David Bodanis
Membership of Forest and Bird Society, NZ, (http://www.forestandbird.org.nz/)

Stuff you can probably only get in NZ:

Great NZ Argument, edited by Russell Brown
David Lange's autobiography
Moriori, by Micheal King
The Penguin History of New Zealand, by Michael King
Sleeping Dogs, by Carl Stead
Making Peoples, by James Belich
Based on a True Story, the new album from Fat Freddy's Drop
Seeds of NZ Natives, especially those that can be kept small indoors in Denmark. eg definitely Kohwai, maybe Rata, some of the alpine plants come to mind also
Black, Icebreaker shearers singlet
Lightweight, packable, waterproof trousers for cycling (eg Macpac Jetstream)
Travel bag for a bike (eg Ground Effect's Tardis)
Waterproof, breathable, packable lightweight rain jacket (eg from Ground Effect, Macpac or Fairydown)
My mountain bike, on THIS side of the world.... (I miss my baby....)

Stuff you can probably only get in Denmark:

CSC Cycling jersey
Denmark National Cycling Jersey

Lots of books (easy to order online), as you see, but generally lots of choice - that's not to say that you're limited to the list though, either.... :-). I'll add stuff to the list as I go, so check back every now and then.

It's the kids I'd worry about

2005-11-11T12:43:00.000+01:00

Forget the bird flu. It's all the little nippers running around that I think we should be worrying about - those critters carry far more dangerous and civilization threatening diseases than anything our avian friends can throw at us!

Dorthe and I went to see Te Waka Nawa perform here on Sunday afternoon. Te Waka Nawa is the local Kapa Haka (Maori cultural performance) group here in Copenhagen, made up of both Kiwi's and their Danish partners. And I have to say, we were both very impressed - it was better than anything I have seen outside NZ, and better than many things I have even seen inside NZ - they were really that good. A very enjoyable afternoon, with lots of classic kiwi cakes for afternoon tea afterwards (yum!)

But, as seems to be the way with all things Danish, there were lots of kids there. LOTS of kids. And one of those little buggers gave me something rather nasty, meaning I spent Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and oh, most of Thursday, at home, in bed, feeling miserable for myself. Grrr.

Things I learnt while I was stuck at home being ill: Fred Flintstone speaks Danish here (and sounds very strange to someone who knows him as speaking with a heavy American accent), Swedish telly has kids programmes in Spanish (I could at least understand them), the two German channels that we get have excitment levels close to that of the tuning signal, watching BBC News for more than two hours in a day gets a little repetitive, and there is far too much soccer on European telly (oh, look, its a team from Lativa playing a team from Bulgaria...)

Homeward Bound

2005-10-24T14:41:00.000+02:00

"Trev you greedy bastard!"

Trev takes in four of the many sucos (fruit juices) at our favourite sucos bar, on the last morning.

And here, to finish it all off, is the last set of photos, tracing our journey from the mouth of the Amazon, back to Denmark. There's plenty of photos of interesting buildings in Brasilia, especially the fascinating Sanctuario Dom Bosco, and the Municipal Cathedral. And then its on to Rio for the last couple of days: lots of pictures of the Copacabana, the sugar loaf, the Maracana stadium, and the little hang gliding adventure that I went on - not to mention Trev getting stuck into the sucos (fruit juices made from all sorts of strange tropical fruits) on the last day, as you can see!

Homeward Bound Photo Set

Coast to Coast

2005-10-19T16:36:00.000+02:00

Captain Trev takes us down the Amazon

Its taken a while, but at long last, I have got around to putting up the last of our photos from South America. The first set is our South America version of the Coast to Coast, travelling from the Pacific to the Atlantic, crossing the high Andes, and sailing down the length of the Amazon, a fantastic and truly memorable journey.

Coast to Coast Photo Set

PS: There's still one more set to go!

Tilykke til Kronprinsen!

2005-10-16T14:47:00.000+02:00

Denmark has a new favourite son, so to speak - Crownprincess Mary gave birth to a baby boy on Saturday night, and as you can imagine, this has caused much excitement in Denmark. All the buses around town are now sporting red and white Danish flags, and the newspapers seem to be printing five editions every day. The tabloids got thrown by it a bit actually, because it all happened in the middle of the night - BT's headline on Saturday morning was "Drama with Mary's baby", saying that she had been rushed to hospitel. Ekstra Bladet, sitting right next to it then had two versions, the second saying that everything is ok. And then next to that, was yet another version of BT, saying that it was all good too!

They haven't announced a name yet, but the tradition says that he will probably be either Christian or Frederik - all of the kings since the 13th Century have alternately been called Christian or Frederick, with the exception of course of the current queen, Margarete II. I think that he'll probably be called Christian, as his father is Frederick. So yes, much excitement in the state of Denmark.

This little piggy....

2005-10-14T14:50:00.000+02:00

Well, I was sitting down in the cafe downstairs here in the Natural Sciences library, eating my lunch. I had just waded my way through two full rybread sandwiches, which I had made with bread that was cut waay too thick, and thus you couldn't taste the filling in the sandwich at all, only dark, heavy rybread. Anyway, the lady who runs the cafe said "we're closing, but those sandwiches there are free to take if you want them". So, I of course had to do what the Danish do, and take advantage of anything free, and so I took one. Bloody hell it was good. Ham. Cheese. Tomato. Nice soft bread. Free. Hmmmm. Of course, this little piggy is now struggling to move anywhere at all.....

C´mon Albania

2005-10-12T13:02:00.000+02:00

I've never cheered for Albania before - its not surprising, they don't really play all that many sports, especially not the ones that I'm interested in, like Rugby and Cricket and League etc etc etc. But this afternoon, I find that I will be cheering for Albania. How so? Well, the last round of Denmark's pool for world cup qualifying is being played today. For Denmark to still retain a chance of going to Germany next year (and thus Dorthe and I going to Germany too), Denmark will have to beat Kazakistan (should be able to be done), and Turkey must not beat Albania at home (a loss or a draw will suffice). And thus, it's c'mon Albania!

Albanian football songs can be posted in the "comments" section!

UPDATE: Denmark did their part, 2-1 over Kazakastan. Unfortunately, Turkey were a bit too strong for Albania, taking it away 1-0, and earning a spot in the world cup playoffs at Denmarks' expense. So, unfortunately, we won't be cheering for Denmark in Germany. That doesn't mean we won't be going though... :-) Hmmmm. How does cheering for Paraguay strike you?

Autumn

2005-10-05T13:56:00.000+02:00

Autumn is here in Denmark. Brown and golden leaves cover the long wet grass. The sun hangs low in the sky, kind of like a tired student getting up in the morning, it just can't quite raise itself fully. The air feels thin and cold, never really catching or keeping the heat that the sun offers. We get 5 mins less of daylight everyday. But there's still hope in the air too - winter isn't here yet. You can still sit in the sun in Fælledparken in short sleeves, eat your lunch, feed the ducks and be happy.

I've been taking a break from blogging, and photography for much of the last six weeks or so. In the last year, between Denmark, New Zealand and South America I have taken over 7000 photographs (that works out at 20 every day), and I have to say, I am feeling a bit burnt out of it all. Plus add the energy that blogging seems to suck out of you, and I just haven't felt the desire.

But today was different. I found a guy here that I really want to work for - I spent the morning here in the library reading some of his articles. He is GOOD! I finished my second job application, which made me feel like I had achieved something. And then I went in sat in the park for an hour or two, ate lunch, and farted around taking more bad pictures to add to my collection. There was a duck there that was splashing around and throwing water up in the air for about half an hour, in some sort of display. The ducks on the other side of the lake thought it was interesting too, and started doing it in response. Then they noticed that somebody was watching, and decided that they should all stop, kind of like guilty children playing a game when an adult walks in. "Oh no, we're mature and good children. Honest". A crow came along, sat on my bike, attacked the handlebars for a while, shit on the brake levers, and then left again. Everybody was happy.

I like Autumn.

The Search for Free Internet

2005-09-16T14:44:00.000+02:00

My internet supply is drying up - we've started painting the apartment, and of course means that we've basically moved out of Dorthe's parents, and are now spending our time in the apartment, (or at work, in Dorthe's case). Unfortunately, that also means that internet access is really limited :-( At least I have found one place where I can get some for free - across the road in the business school library. All I have to do is look studenty, walk straight, and its no wurries. But of course, there is a catch - I can't get access to any web-based email here. Still, their proxy filter doesn't stop me from blogging though... hee hee...

There´s gold in the streets of Denmark

2005-09-13T15:16:00.000+02:00

The story goes something like this: In the 1970s, when the first wave of immigrants starting arriving in Denmark from Turkey, Pakistan, and other developing countries, they were impressed by the prosperity of this country, from the wealth of the average individual, to the impressive welfare system. When, after sometime, they returned to their home countries to visit, they told their friends and relations that there was "gold in the streets of Denmark". Today, Dorthe and I are finding the same thing - although the gold is not so much lying in the streets, as sitting in the second hand markets, the newspapers, and especially, the garbage rooms, of this country.

Having got ourselves an apartment, the main task over the last two weeks has been collecting stuff to put in it - after all, neither of us have accumulated much stuff as we've lived in student dorms for most of our education. And so, we now need to find all those things that make up your standard western residence. We could of course go to Ikea and buy them all new in a massive one afternoon splurge. Or we could do it the fun (cheap) way....

Of course, we're going to do it the cheap way. And thus, the last couple of weekends have been spent on this task. Our first purchase was the biggest - Dorthe found a listing in "Den Blå Avis", the local "Buy, Sell and Exchange" newspaper - a women was getting rid of all her furniture. We went to have a look, and ended up with a very nice sofa (estimated value DKK 6000) and a solid mahogony coffee table for a total of DKK 1500 ($250). After spending so much time in BOlivia and Peru, it was a bit odd bargaining for something in the west - we didn't really know how to do it, and whether we were going to offend her or not. "How much is it? And how much is it for two? I'll take it if you throw in the alpaca gloves as well....." Oh well, we managed to do it without obviously offending her.

The weekend before last was spent in Sweden with Dorthe's parents at their summer house in Ålmhult. It was very nice up there as usual - the highlight was rowing the boat down the nearby lake for a couple of hours to a small town, and tying it up in the back-garden of the local shop, walking in underneath the washing on the clothesline, and getting an icecream, before rowing back home again. But also in Ålmhult is the pensemission, a secondhand market run every saturday morning by a church charity. Dorthe and I spent several hours with all the old grey haired swedish ladies picking through old 70s jackets and used kitchenware in search of what we were after. And we found it too - SEK 75 for about a dozen miscellaneous things - later in the supermarket we saw the samerolling pin that brought being sold for SEK 60 on its own!

But the real discovery came this weekend. Dorthe's parents, who are currently living with, live in one of a series of apartment buildings on the outskirts of Copenhagen - we reckon there are between 700 and 1000 people living here in total. And of course, 1000 people generate quite a lot of rubbish - the six garbage rooms here are all fairly large, and in particular, they have a space for people to put aside stuff that could be reused. on Friday night were putting out some rubbish and there was a nice cane wicker chair sitting there. I asked Dorthe what it was, and she explained how the system worked. We both suddenly realised the potential of this, and thus, on Saturday, we decided to go and have a decent look around and see what we could find. We found some stuff alright - a complete set of crockery - dinner plates, soup plates, and bread plates - for 10, a hallway lamp, pillows, cake tins, and the real find, a working vaccuum cleaner. Bouyed by our success, we went back - on Sunday we added a handbag for Dorthe, some coathangers, some handtowels, duvet covers, a merino wool sweater, a womens dress jacket that fitted Dorthe perfectly, and a nice wooden bookcase - we also left behind two more vaccum cleaners. Monday wasn't quite so successful though - only came back with one thing, although we did leave yet another vaccum cleaner behind. The thing we found though, was a combination Microwave oven and Grill that seems to be working perfectly fine - Dorthe's father reckons its worth about DKK 2000 ($330) new.

"Doing the rounds", as we call going around all the rubbish rooms, has been so successful that its become our nightly ritual. The question that we're both asking now, is where is this going to end? Why do people throw away stuff that seems to be in perfect working order? Is there something that they know that we don't? Will these appliances all spontaneously burst into flame one night? What else can we find? If I wish for a Toyota Land Cruiser, might I find one in the rubbish? And anyway, with four working vaccum cleaners and a microwave oven in three days, if the academic career doesn't work out, I can always go into business selling stuff that I find in the rubbish - after all, there really is gold to be found in the streets of Denmark.

Apartment! Yah!

2005-09-08T11:22:00.000+02:00

Dorthe and I have got an apartment at last. The system is a bit of a funny one - Dorthe is a member of this company that owns and runs many apartment buildings around greater Copenhagen. She has been a member of this organisation for more than 20 years (her grandparents signed her up when she was baptised). you'd think that 20 years on the waiting list would put you at the top for the best apartments, but apparently, it doesn't! We had a look at the types of apartments and locations available before we left in December, but it wasn't until about May while we were still travelling that we staretd looking actively - they would send out an offer, and then Dorthe's parents would go and have a look at it for us - there were many pictures and descriptions of apartments that went back and forth via email while we were away. And even she'd been on the list for so long, it still look us until September to actually get offered a contract. Yikes!

The place is in central Frederiksberg, which is a city inside Copenhagen itself. Back in the old days, it was a separate town outside the city defenses, the closest one to Copenhagen. However, Copehagen has since grown beyond the old defenses, and the town of Frederiksberg is now completely surrounded by Copenhagen - we're about 10 minutres on a bike from Rådhuspladsen and the centre of town though, so its still pretty central. And of course, Frederiks' "berg" has a sister hill (berg), which once belonged to a young fulla named Carl, where he built a brewery and startd making Bavarian style beer more than a 150 years ago - yes, thats right, the massive Carlsberg brewery is a stone's throw down the road from us!

The apartment is four floors up - Copenhagen limits all the buildings here to five floors, so its nearly at the top - meaning that it gets lots of light - it lies in an east-west direction, and so gets morning sun on the balcony and evening sun in the bedroom and kitchen. It has nice wooden floors, and a newly renovated bathroom (a rarity in this town), and comes in at a total of.... 54 sq metres. Massive, I know! Still, its a pretty good place. The main problem though is that the walls are in pretty bad condition - lots of holes in the plaster that need to be filled. Interestingly though, part of the rent goes into a fund for new tenants to repair and paint the apartment - we thus have just over US$1000 to spend on paint and polyfilla etc doing up the apartment when we take it over on the 15th September - it'll give me something to do during the day, I guess, while Dorthe is at work!

Home Again

2005-08-28T23:49:00.000+02:00

Relaxing on the Copacabana on our last morning. "Oi! Where are we going? We're supposed to be going back to the farm! Who's going to mind the sheep?!! Turn this plane around.......!"

Trev wasn't too excited about going home. Neither were we for that matter. But here we are, back in Denmark, at the end of our trip, having completed around about 25,000km of travel in South America, plus another 10,000km in New Zealand, and some very long flights in between. Our trip home was as interesting as long distance flights ever seem to get - British Airways had a catering strike, which meant no food on the plane, our pilot was crap with a landing in Sao Paulo that could be compared to a brick falling out of the sky, and lots of grumpy, rude "service" people along the way. Yup, our experience with BA was pretty mediocre. And then arriving in Denmark to 16°C (the coldest temperature we'd experienced since leaving the altiplano a month ago) and overcast drizzle, after leaving 34°C in Rio, was also a bit of a shock. Oh well, at least there was some Wienerbrød (Danish pastry) and some good Tuborg (Danish beer) waiting at the end of it all, to make it worth while. :-)

One day left

2005-08-23T17:27:00.000+02:00

One day left. :-( Rather sad really, but I guess that it was kind of inevitable. We are currently in Rio - not having enough time to travel south by bu (it is a 60hr bus ride!) we took a flight from Macapá to Brasília, where we spent two days or so having a look around. Then we took our last bus ride from Brasilia to Rio, arriving here yesterday, where we´ve been doing the Rio thing once again, revisiting some of our favourite places etc etc. This afternoon, we´re off hang-gliding (wind permitting), then we spend tomorrow morning sitting on the Copacabana, before heading back to Denmark tomorrow afternoon. First thing I want when we get back? Weinerbroed, and a decent bloody beer (Tuborg) - South American beer has too much in common with its north american counterparts for my liking. Now if you´ll excuse me, I have to spend the last 24hrs in Sth America sitting on the beach and drinking as much Sucos (strange fruit juices from the jungle) as I possibly can!

An Architect´s Dream

2005-08-21T11:22:00.000+02:00

The Municipal Cathedral, Brasilia

Brasilia, the inland capital of this vast country, is an appropriately unique creation. For many, many years, Brazilians dreamed and talked about moving their capital city inland from Rio de Janiero to a more central location, one more appropriate for the country's size and shape, and that would hopefully provide the momentus for the development of the vast untamed areas that Brasil possesses. For years after independence from Portugal this remained merely a dream of the people. It's creation was even prophesised by an Italian monk in 1883. But it wasn't until 1955 that President Juscelino Kubitschek finally took the plunge and committed the country to it. From absolutely nothing, the city was built in three years according to the vision of the Brazilian architect, Oscar Niemeyer. Today, the city is home to over two million people, living and working according to the designs dreamed up by that one man.

Everyone, and everything that we have ever heard about Brasilia has said that it is a love-hate city. You will love it, or you will hate it. Having been there and experienced it, it is clear that author of our Lonely Planet guidebook absolutely hated it. He says: "Brasilia must have looked good on paper, and it still does in photos." We hadn't really planed on visiting the city, mainly because it was out of our way. However, the way that things worked out, we ended up spending two days there exploring Niemeyer's vision of a capital city. The original plan was, from Macapá, to head down the coast through Fortaleza, Natal, Recife, Salvador etc. to Rio, taking a week or more to get down there in time for our flight. Unfortunately, we didn't quite have enough time to start on such an adventure, so we were faced with the choice of a 60hr (!!) bus ride, or taking the plane. We took the plane. But as it worked out, it was the same price to fly from Macapá to Brasilia, have a couple of days touring around there, and then carry on by bus to Rio, as it was to fly direct to Rio. And so, Brasilia, here we are.

So, what's the verdict on this city? Well, inconclusion, we would have to agree with the love-hate prognosis - there are many things that we really like about it, and there are many things that we really don't. From the moment you arrive in Brasilia, Niemeyers overriding vision starts to be revealed. Surrounded by a large artifical lake on three sides, the city takes the form of an aeroplane - yup, that's right, and aeroplane. A very wide, long avenue forms the fusilage, and is mainly filled with monuments and open space. On either side, are the wings of the residential, shopping, and hotel zones - most areas of the town are grouped together according to use. Just in front of the wings (the engines, maybe?) are the embassy sectors. As you move further up towards the front of the plane, along the fusilage, you pass seventeen identical buildings, which contain the individual ministeries. And then, at the very heart of it all, right in the cockpit, is the centre of the Brazilian goverment, the "Plaza of the Three Powers" - a large open square surrounded by the presidential palace, the supreme court, and the congress building. It's an interesting way to lay out a city.

The "JK" Bridge, Brasilia.

I would say that most peoples experiences of Brazilia though come down to what you think of "modern" (ie 1960s) architecture, because if you hate it, you're going to thate Brazilia. It is, after all, an entire city built in that style. Everything, from the fascinating municipal cathedral (see picture) to the hotels, and the ministeries are all built in roughly the same sort of style - lots of concrete pillars curved into very non-traditional lines. Most of these buildings would stick out like a sore thumb in the middle of a normal town, but here, in Brazilia, they blend together beautifully: each of the major buildings was fascinating to explore inside, and walk around the outside, looking at how the perspectives changed as you moved. Particular highlights were the interior of the cathedral, which was only closed in by stained glass, and the exterior of the congress, with its large asymmetric twin towers, shallow reflecting lakes, and two large cuppolas.

The national congress building in Brasilia. Note the reflecting water pools, the two towers, and espeically the two cuppolas on top of the building.

Walking around Brazilia for a couple of days, Niemeyers vision of his city became clear to us. The problem, however, was that as the dream became more apparent, we agreed with it less and less. The work on the city was all done in the late 1950s, and it should be viewed in relation to those times, rather than today. Fuel was cheap (!), cars were big (ok, so that hasn't changed), and people were enamoured by both the car and the aeroplane - they were the future. And this is clearly the future that Niemeyer designed the city for. Distances within the city are vast (its not the most compact beast you'll ever come across), there are magnificant roading systems linking every part of the city via at least two or three lanes, the airport is very central and parking appears to be quite easy. And this is the problem - it feels like the city was built to be inhabited by machines, not people - there are few, or no footpaths, crossing the roads is an absolute nightmare (very few pedestrian crossings), and public transport is both expensive, and bloody difficult to use. And it seems like the city could do with some maintenance as well - footpaths are cracked and broken, there is a lot of graffiti, and even some of the panes of glass in the cathedral were broken.

The You can't help but think that if Brasilia had been built today, it would have been a very different city - one art critic criticised it as being a museum of architectural ideas. This may be a little harsh - after all, it was designed by one man in a short period of time, nearly 50 years ago now. Dorthe and I both loved and hated it. The buildings were beautiful and interesting, but it certaintly was not a city built for people without cars. But for all the criticisms, there is no doubt that exploring a single architects dream of how a capital city should be was a fascinating experience.

Journey´s End

2005-08-20T01:04:00.000+02:00

Monumental do Marco Zero, Macapá, Brazil - the large monument is a sundial - on the equinox, the shadow created by the rising sun falls on the line of the equator.

We arrived on our boat from Santarém in Macapá at dawn this morning with heavy hearts. Macapá marks the end of two journeys for us and as much as we are loath to admit it, our nine months of travelling is coming to an end. As of today, there are four days left until we return to the west, and leave our adventures behind us. From Macapá, all that is left to make our way to the airport, so to speak. having spent all that time getting here, we couldn´t just pass through...

I mentioned that it is the end of two journeys. Confused? You clearly haven´t been paying enough attention! Firstly, Macapá is situated on the equator, as you can see from the picture at right. Being a bit of a map-geek at the best of times (Timaru boys know an old joke about that, but I´m not going to recount it here), the equator was pretty high on my list of destinations in this continent. It marks the end of our journey north through this continent - in Argentina, we reached as far south as 55°S, before travelling overland all the way up here to the equator. But you´d think it´d be easy to find the equator, right? Just walk north, or south, until you cross a line on the ground. Well, we had a few problems finding it, and it wasn´t until we employed the help of four local twelve year olds that we got anywhere. I was a little apprehensive to see what we would discover there, but when we arrived, we were pleased to find a sufficiently large monument marking the spot, and more importantly, the line on the ground that you see in all the best cartoons. What else could we do, but take a photo standing on top of it? Interestingly, there was also a football stadium (it is Brazil, I guess), with the equator being the halfway line - adds a new dimension to north-south matches I guess...

Trev surveys the mouth of the mighty Amazon.

Secondly, Macapá also marks the end of our trip across the continent and down the Amazon as well. We started on the pacific coast in Lima, travelling by train, bus and boat, all the way to Atlantic coast. Macapá is situated on the north side of the mouth of the Amazon, which long ago stopped looking like a river at all - you can barely see a few trees poking over the horizon on the other side - the container ships sailing back and forth also add to the impression of being on the ocean. Having traveled for 4000 km along its length, and watched it widen, deepen and grow, we now understand that this is indeed the mightiest river of them all. It is a fitting end to our journey to see that here in Macapá the river, having grown so big, has finally become indistinguishable from the sea - the water is fresh (not salty at all), and a dirty river brown, but it has waves and rises and falls with the tides: the mother of all estuaries awaiting us at the end of our journey.

Our trip down the last section of the river wasn´t without adventure either. We had the choice of two or three boats in Santarém, and chose one that we thought looked simple, small, and very local. Very local it was indeed - we were the only gringos onboard, and the crew were quite excited to have us - always a nice feeling. However, we also thought that we knew how to do this, and chose what we thought was the best spot on the boat. Nope - little did we know that we had parked our hammocks directly above the engine exhaust, which made for a rather loud night´s sleep (or not!). Then, to add to the interest level, there was the small matter of a swell on the river - the easterly river breeze creates quite decent sized waves at times, up to a metre or more in places. Its not too bad to walk around in - the boat doesn´t bump too much, but ohhh. When you´re in a hammock, and its 1am, and everyone starts swinging wildly (resonance!!!), its not so much fun... There weren´t many people that slept well that night!

And so, now its time to head to the airport, so to speak - the airport being that in Rio, of course. But knowing the way that we work, as you do by now, its not going to be straight forward. Keep reading.....

Hit me baby, one more time

2005-08-17T17:33:00.000+02:00

Locals admire the dawn on the Amazon while others continue to sleep in their hammocks

Our journey down the big river continues - this time, we´re changing boats in Santarém, for our final leg to ocean itself. And for the first time, it feels that the climate is actually improving, rather than getting more opressive and brutal by the day. How´s that you ask? Well, we have finally encountered our first sea breeze. Well, maybe its technically a river breeze, but the mechanism is the same, and when its 35°C and horribly humid, I´ll take any respite from the heat that I can get thank you very much.

The trip down from Manaus over the last two days was a bit of a different one - first of all, we actually had company along the way, in the form of quite a few other gringos. It seems that we have returned to Gringoland, somehow.... D´oh! This was also by far the most crowded boat that we have been on yet - everyone was pretty much hip to hip in their hammocks for the first night - in places (such as my hammock), the air flow became seriously restricted and unplesantly stuffy. For the first time, there were neither live animals nor bananas on the boat either - heaps of toilet paper and soft drinks instead, for a couple of intermediate villages along the way.

We also met a friendly little nipper called Diego, aged three, who was particularly fascinated by both my camera and Trev - he was a great fan of crawling all over me trying to get the camera. Then he started attacking us - I got smacked in the eye twice, for which his punishment was being lifted off the ground by the arms while Dorthe tickled him - he didn´t like that too much, and struck back later - as I was fixing up my hammock, I received a surprise blow to my front as high up as he could reach... which corresponded pretty well to a place where you don´t really want a three year to smack you. Hostilities ceased at this point, with the result being a victory to Diego. Final score: Diego 3, Mark 1.

And finally, a geeky engineering story. Somehow, the length of my hammock was such that it managed to achieve resonance with the motion of the boat i.e. the motion of my hammock and the motion of the boat coincided perfectly so that the net result was greater than the sum of the two individual parts. This lead to a wild and violent swinging of the hammock most of the day, and lots of unnecessary bumps and bruises as the hammock carreened into other punters (mainly an unhappy Dorthe). And yes, before I get blamed for being unable to sit in a hammock safely and demurely, it was genuinely resonance! Honest!

And so, from here, we head off one last time on a boat, bound for the Atlantic and the mouth of the Amazon. After so many days in a hammock, we find that we are still not bored by it - indeed, everytime we set sail, you get that same thrill of excitement as we wave another town goodbye and head out into the river, destined for days of nothing but lounging in the hammock, eating, taking a cold shower to escape the stickiness, and the occasional excitement of a small river port, fist fights with three year olds, or, if you´re lucky, a cooling sea breeze to make it all the more bearable. Ahhhh, yes. Life on the river: Hit me baby, one more time.

Who put a city here?

2005-08-15T18:10:00.000+02:00

This river is getting big - the container port of Manaus

We arrived to a beautiful dawn this morning in Manaus, to discover a city of 1.4 million sweaty Brasilians (yup, its hot here - 35°C or so), parked in the middle of the jungle. What it is doing here, we´re not exactly sure, but there can be no doubt of its impact - 200km of deforestation upstream and downstream, and no virgin jungle for at least 100km in any direction. 1.4 million is a lot of people. And similarly, there is no doubt that this river is getting big either - there was a container ship parked in the port unloading this morning when we arrived, more than 1500km from the ocean! Gives you an idea of what we´re dealing with.

Manaus is where the Brasilian Amazon officially starts. Here, the dark coloured Rio Negro and the milky white coloured Rio Solimonés join to form the mighty river - the slow mixing of the two rivers over many kilometres downstream is quite a sight. And for us, downstream is where we are going as well - there´s a boat with our name on it due to sale at 3pm today. And thus, without further ado, I think I´ll rush off and get some more stuff done before returning to the hammock once again!

Out of the Jungle and Down the River

2005-08-13T18:29:00.000+02:00

Dorthe gets to meet our neighbour, the rather too friendly Black Caiman who liked to live under our floating bungalow.

So, we are back - back from five days in the jungle. Even though we were in the middle of the forest, it was probably our most luxurious accomodation so far: the food was great and we got to see lots of strange animals - so I do not think that we have any complains. Amongst the animals we saw were several sloths, lots of monkeys and caimans (the local form of alligators). The caimans in particular liked to hangout underneath our floating bungalow and make lots of noise during the night. We also saw a lot of exotic birds including parrots and macaws - but unfortunately no toucans. Also of note were Pirhanas, Pink River Dolphins, Pirauçu, (a 4m long, 200 kg fresh water fish!), fish that jump out of the water and hit you in the face, a morning chorus of Red Howler Monkeys, and hundreds of different types of birds. We had five great days sailing on the rivers and hiking in the forest and can definitely recommend the Mamiraua reserve to anyone who wants to go to the Amazonas. Unfortunately we have to run to get on our boat down the river to Manaus, hope all is well with you - take care. (written by Dorthe, edited by Mark, approved by Trev)

Gringos no more

2005-08-09T00:20:00.000+02:00

Sitting on a couch in an internet cafe, reading my Portugese phrasebook, I was surprised when the tall young Brazilian extended his hand to me and, quoting that great modern philosopher, Axel Rose, said with a smile on his face, "Welcome to the Jungle". Welcome to the jungle indeed.....

We are here, deep in the heart of the Amazonian jungle, in the Brazilian town of Tefé, on the banks of the Amazon (known as the Rio Solimonés locally) after taking a flight from the border at Leticia, Colombia, last night. As much as we were loath to do it, there was unfortunately no choice in the matter - the jungle trip that we have booked leaves tomorrow morning, and obviously it wasn´t really going to wait for us. After making many, many enquires in the twin border towns of Leticia, Colombia, and Tabatinga, Brazil, we came to the conclusion that there was simply no other way - the fast boat down the river only runs once a week, and pretty much all the other boats were too slow, taking two days or more that we didn´t have. And so yesterday afternoon we made our way out to the airport and got a standby seat on the only flight out of town...

...which brought us deep into the heart of the Brazilian jungle. Unfortunately, that also means that we have left spanish-speaking latin-america far behind us, and are now in the territory of the portugeuse - yes, it is official, we are no longer "gringos". Its a pity really, we were just starting to come to terms with gringodom - our spanish had reached a level where we could have quite a decent conversation with people, which was very nice indeed. The more spanish we spoke, the easier and more enjoyable the travelling became - in particular, we found that we could do a lot more than just having to rely on the guidebook. In Colombia it was especially good and our two days in Leticia were particularly pleasant: we found the Colombians to be very friendly, honest people, who just like to sit down and have a chat for a while - we spent an hour or more talking to a local tour operator we befriended while we were waiting at the airport for our flight. For all its problems, Colombia certaintly seems like a place that would be fantastic to visit.

But all that is behind us now, and we have to start again from zero with Portugese. Well, not completely from zero - the two languages are related quite closely. We have found that people here generally understand us when we talk to them in Spanish, and on paper Portugese looks pretty similar to Spanish. But wait until someone speaks back to you, and the description in the guidebook comes to mind "portugese sounds like a drunk frenchman trying to speak spanish". Its all just a blur of rhythmic noise to us, the dominant sound of which is the drunken "shhh". Still, we are able to get somewhere, after much speaking slowly on our part, and much repetition on their part......

And so we are now deep in Brazil. The switch of languages aside, things are still quite different from the Peruvian lowlands. First of all, the people look quite different - they seem to be darker and taller (or maybe its just that more women wear heels!) than the peruvians, and definitely dress much more european. There is also a lot more diversity here, with people of european, indigenous and african descent all mixed together in one big continuum of colours, faces, and styles. And culturally it is very different too - we got our first genuine taste of Capoeira, the brazilian martial art/dance form (its sort of a cross between a fight and a dance - you really have to see it to sort of comprehend how it works), last night in the main plaza: at the centre of a circle of people, two sweet drenched coco-skinned locals were wheeling around each other to the accompaning rhythmical african beat. As one person would tire, another would take their place, challenging the victor, and so on for an hour or more in a continuous flow of incredible, acrobatic dance. And of course, then there´s the food - lots of strange fruits from the jungle that you´ve never heard of before. Can anyone tell me what a cupu looks like? All I know is that the juice is quite good.... (Dorthe wishes to point out that she disagrees with that statement!)

Tomorrow we head into the jungle proper - five days in Mamiraua Sustainable Development Ecoreserve, just north of Tefé. We then return to the big river, and head downstream through Manaus on a fast track for the ocean. Where, and when, the next posting will come from, we don´t know. But rest assured, it will talk of lots of strange animals, insects, and plants from the depths of the jungle.

Missed the Boat

2005-08-07T04:35:00.000+02:00

Well, I guess it had to happen eventually - things didn´t quite go according to plan, and as a result, we missed the boat. Thus, we are now stuck here in Colombia, wondering what exactly we´re going to do next....

From Iquitos, we took a fast boat this morning down the river to the triple frontier, where Colombia, Peru and Brasil all converge on the Amazon river. It was a long, hot and tiring day, flying along at about 50kph, in what were not the most comfortable seats on the amazon. Leaving half an hour late (important!) at 6:30am, we arrived at the Peruvian frontier at Santa Rosa at 5:30pm. Knowing we were pushing it, we rushed through peruvian immigration as fast you can do these things, then ran back to the river and jumped in the first little motor boat taxi that there was. Unfortunately, we choose poorly - it was a "peki-peki", not the fastest type of boat in the amazon. We then had a frustratingly slow crossing of the amazon first to Leticia in Colombia, and then on to Tabatinga in Brasil - three countries in fifteen minutes! A fast taxi through town took us to the Brasil federal police to get our entrance visas into Brasil, and for once, something in Sth America was precisely on time - we arrived at 6:01pm, to find them shut, and refusing to deal with us. Bugger.

So, we are now stuck here at the triple frontier, unable to continue further into Brasil until tomorrow morning. However, the problem is that its two days in a boat to our next stop, Tefe, in Brasil, where we have to be on Tuesday morning for a jungle tour that we have booked. And the next boat out of here doesn´t leave until Wednesday. What to do, what to do.....?

There aren´t any roads outta here

2005-08-06T03:06:00.000+02:00

Travel is hard work: Dorthe having an afternoon siesta amongst all our gear on the way to Iquitos

We just arrived in Iquitos, Peru this morning from Pullcalpa, after a sweaty five nights hanging in a hammock on board a cargo ship filled with amazonian hardwood, pigs, chickens, parakites for the pet trade, more than 200 locals swinging away in hammocks as well, and, of course, the ubiquitos bananas (yup, it was a banana boat!). Iquitos is an interesting place - it is the biggest city in the world that has no highways to connect it to the rest of the world. From here, its 3,700km down the river to the mouth, and yet, even this far from the ocean, the amazon is navigable by ocean going vessels - the US used to have a destroyer stationed here as part of the "War" on "Terror", until the Peruvians told them to go home. And just to cap it all off, the city of 400,000 has 22,000 motocycles, (mainly Asian style tricycle-motortaxis), which lends a mad atmosphere to the place.

We weren´t ready for the Amazon - after the altiplano the Amazon just suddenly dumped on us like the phenomenonal tropical rain that you get in these parts. We went to sleep after watching a beautful sunset over the cold, barren heights of the altiplano around Huancayo, and awoke in the hot, humid, green (how long has it beeen since we´ve seen green?) jungles of the Amazon, and the dusty riverside port of Pullcalpa.

Getting a boat down the river wasn´t as bad as we had thought it might be - we had the choice of two, and choose the M/F Tucan, leaving our luggage in the care of a couple of young English hippies, and headed back into town to buy hammocks to sleep in, and supplies. A quick internet posting, and then back to the boat, and we were away, off down the biggest river of them all.

The trip was only supposed to take three days, but in true Sth American style, it ended up taking five nights - we are currently in the dry season, and so the water level is pretty low, meaning that we were unable to sail through the night. That of course didn´t stop us from trying, and the inevitable grounding (with the boat going at full pace) came as quite a shock to most people on board. This created a mad rush for the lifejackets, as, in true titanic form, there were approximately three times as many passengers as lifejackets. Fortunately, they weren´t required, and after about half an hour, we managed to float free of our submerged sandbar. Those people that had managed to score a lifejacket slept with them close by that night!

Life on board the boat was pretty interesting. We were inevitably woken at about 5:45am, shortly before dawn, by the two roosters on board having a crowing contest. Normally, I just rolled over and went back to sleep until breafast (watery porridge) at 6:30am. Then after it started getting hot about 9am, and the birdlife had clamed down (dawn is the best time to see birds here in the Amazon), we would normally nap until lunch at noon. The afternoons were generally too hot to sleep unfortunately - often reaching into the mid thirties in the shade of the boat! The only real relief were the dirty smelly showers of cold river water on board - after an entire day of sweating, they were fantastic! Normally about 4pm the power would come on, and the on board bar would crank up the stereo, much to the delight of pretty much everyone on board - much dancing, yelling and singing normally accompanied the first song played, gringos included. And then after the standard spectacular amazon sunset, and a very plain dinner, we would be treated to two or three pirated DVDs, and then to bed, and try not to get savaged too much by the mosquitos.

But it was pretty much a case of making your own entertainment for the time we were on board - after three to four days, we all got excited about pretty much anything - watching the kids fishing over the sides, for example, often brought great cheers as a fish was hooked out of the water, only to fall off as they tried to haul it up the side of the boat. Of course, coming into a port village along also made for a couple of hours entertainment, watching people loading more bananans on board, and the odd kid or two fall off the gangplank and into the river! Or the really spectacular entertainment was the afternoon tropical rainstorm - fifteen minutes of sheer fury, where it was impossible to tell where the river ended and the sky began. Fantastic!

And eventually, after many games of backgammon, giving the local children a lesson in checkers, several spanish language newspapers (that´s a good solid days reading with a dictionary) and more than catching up on our share of sleep, we arrive in Iquitos. But this was only the start of our journey - tomorrow we get back on the boats again - tomorrow we visit three countries - Peru, Colombia, and Brasil, at the triple frontier. And then on, down the big river, towards the sea......

Lastly, A "It pays to be a gringo sometimes" story: We are in the process of booking a trip with a jungle lodge in Brasil, and needed to fax some documents to them. We went to a call center here to try and do it, and after much trying, we unable to succeed - we reckoned that their phonelines were bung. It was expensive too - 10 Soles. We decided to try another place, and walked back to the centre of Iquitos. On the way, we passed the huge five star hotel here, and Dorthe suggested "If it doesn´t work at this other place, maybe we should try the hotel?" "Lets do the hotel first". We stroll into the hotel, two scummy sweat soaked backpackers, and walk up to reception. Rooms here cost from US$150 - $400 per night. One of the ladies there ignores the five locals waiting in line and asks us how she can help. Disregarding our spanish, we play up the gringo card and ask her if she speaks english, then explain that we´d like to send a fax to Brasil. "Sure. No problem". She takes it to the fax - we then realise that it will probably cost a fortune in such a hotel, run over and ask how much it costs. "Oh, don´t worry about it", she says, assuming that being gringos, we were staying there. She sends the fax, we thank her, and walk straight back out the front door, with ten Soles in our pockets that wouldn´t have had otherwise. After getting charged extra because we are gringos for the last five months, we FINALLY got our own back - that more than makes up for a few overpriced taxi rides!!! :-)

Bloody hell its hot

2005-07-30T21:10:00.000+02:00

It is hot. Bloody hot in fact. The thick jackets, scarfs, woolly hats of the altiplano have been replaced with t-shirts, sandals, and sweat glistened locals. It is a bit of a shock, it has to be said. Oh and humid - did I mention humid as well?

Why the sudden change? Well, we have made a rather substantial change in our location - we now suddenly find ourselves in Pullcalpa, deep in the heart of the amazon basin - all rivers here lead to the atlantic (even if the pacific is far, far closer!).

Pullcalpa is a portal town for us. Just down the road from this hot, sweaty internet cafe is the big river itself - the Amazon. Or at least, the upper tributaries of it, anyway. And waiting there for us, is a boat holding our luggage and two hammocks that is going to take us down the river....

Childhood Dreams

2005-07-29T03:23:00.000+02:00

When I was four, my favourite TV programme was not Mickey Mouse, or any other kiddies programme (although thunderbirds did come close). Rather, it was a BBC series called "Great Railway Journeys of the World", which featured various personalities undertaking train trips in different parts of the world. For my fifth birthday, my grandfather gave me the book of the series - I still have it with me back in Denmark. Well, today, twenty three years later, I finally fulfilled what was only a dream for me as a child, by completing one of those train trips.

The train trip from Lima to Hauncayo, deep in the heart of the andes, is an absolute stunner, and fully deserved to be included in the BBC series. Starting at sea level in Lima´s beautiful old Desamparados Station, in the heart of the city, it first rolls out of the city through poor shanty towns, and across the sandy coastal Peruvian desert. And then suddenly you come to the foothills, and next thing you know you are trundling along at the bottom of a 3000m deep river canyon.

But the first signs that this was not your average train trip came soon after, when the train stopped at a small station in the middle of this deep canyon. The engine unhooked, and moved onto another track, turned around on the turntable, and went to what was formerly the back carriage, and hooked on. And then away we went up, up, up into the mountains. This was the first of many unique features - at times the track would disappear into the hillside, spiral around, and come out in the other direction - a 180 degree turn, inside the hill! In other places, where it got really steep, the train would stop, reverse up a zig-zag to gain more height for a while, and then carry on in the normal direction again. And of course, there was a myriad collection of tunnels and bridges - at times you would explode out of a tunnel into a light, onto to find yourself on a bridge high, high above a deep canyon. Absolutely spectacular.

But the real highlight was the "top" - the station of La Galeria - at 4781m (15,600ft) above sea level, it is the highest train station in the world, and, of course, left us utterly breathless. La Galeria, sitting on the continental divide, represents our highest point. If I was a drop of water, I could either flow to the pacific, 150km to the west, or the Atlantic, 4000km to the east. One famous diginatory once described it as the only place where you could pee in two oceans at the same time!

Being 85% water, I guess we were faced with the same choice - return to the Pacific, from which we had just come four hours earlier, or take the long route to the Atlantic. The choice of course, was easy - its the Atlantic for us! And began our trip down the Amazon, all the way to the sea (hopefully!)

After such a stunning start to the trip, it was kind of inevitable that the rest of it wouldn´t be quite so exciting - a much more mellow descent over about six or eight hours through La Oroya, following the Rio Mantoro down to Huancayo, located in a beautiful open valley, with a couple of nice big snow capped peaks in the background. We arrived shortly after dusk, tired and hungry but happy. The trip was everything that I had hoped for - it certaintly felt very satisfying to have completed a journey that I had read and dreamt about all those years before.

Peruvian Madness

2005-07-27T01:44:00.000+02:00

Dorthe crosses a log bridge deep in the amazonian jungle

The last month has been a crazy mad one. Admittidly the previous months here in South America have also been mad and crazy, but this time we seem to have switched the dynamite throwing protestors for a different type of travelling - Dorthes parents and her brother arrived here at the start of the month, and ever since the five of us have been flying around this country at a great rate of knots, fitting in as much stuff as we canin the four weeks available to them.

And fit in stuff we have indeed. After a couple of days in Lima, we headed south and inland to Arequipa, where we were greeted by a bit of Dejavu - we thought we´d left the blockades behind in Bolivia, but NO! A 13hr trip was turned into 23hr trip, complete with 10km walk through the high desert (with luggage), and a two hour ride with seven people in a stationwagon. Ahhh, I think we´re going to miss travelling in South America when this is all over. Travelling in the west is just so dull by comparison.

Arequipa is a particularly beautiful colonial city, and it was a pity we had to leave so soon. But our destination, Puno, was the shores of Lake Titicaca, was equally picturesque. There we visited ancient incan and pre-incan burial tombs, the famous floating reed islands, and spent the night with some locals on one of the more solid islands. We also crossed back into Bolivia for the day, visiting the religous town of Copacabana (not to be confused with the beach), where the priests come out to bless the buses, cars, trucks and Toyota Land Cruisers of whoever wheels up. An interesting spectacle, suffice to say.

But our ultimate destination was Cusco, the tourist and former Incan capital of Peru. And it is easy to see why this is the case - Incan ruins abound at every turn, from the foundations of many of the cities oldest buildings, to the many abandoned incan stone cities around the town. And every single one of them is impressive. We undertook a rather hot and tiring four day trek through the surrounding hills to one impressive set of ruins called Choquiquiraw, and paid the obligatory visit to Macchu Picchu. And then there were all the other smaller sites along the way, like the agricultural town of Pisac, the incan food research lab (yup, thats right) of Moray, and the salt production facility of Salinas. By the end of it, the brilliance of Incan stonework was starting to appear a little normal to us!

...which is why our foray into the upper reaches of the Amazon jungle was a welcome relief from the ruins. The five of us spent five days along the Rio Madre del Dios, seeing lots and lots of birds, waiting (fruitlessly) for Jaguars to appear in the dark, swinging Machetes, falling in rivers, and keeping the local mosquito popular well feed. And of course, we all enjoyed ourselves immensely.

And so it is rather sad that is chapter of our travels is comming to an end. Travelling with Dorthes family has been very different for us - we ate good food, and stayed in nice hotels with hot water (well, some of the time). Mark even shaved occasionally.

But the rest of our trip is by no means over. What happens from here, and were we go, we have now idea. There is only one underlying theme for the rest of this trip: 28 days to Rio.......

Cuy al Horno. And lots of ruins

2005-07-27T00:52:00.000+02:00

Trev tries on Cuy al Horno (roast Guinea Pig) in Cusco.

More pictures for your viewing pleasure. The Peruvian trip is coming to an end quickly - Dorthe´s parents leave for Denmark the day after tomorrow. It has been a rather hetic affair - far too much stuff to write about here really, at least without making the worlds longest post. Instead, seeing a picture is worth a thousand words, and I could probably write about 80,000 on the last four weeks, here are 80 pictures showing lots of ruins, the jungle, and least one baked guinea pig (yum!). We hope you enjoy them.

Peru Photo Set

Why so Silent?

2005-07-20T18:35:00.000+02:00

We´re in Cusco, Peru at the moment and for most of the month have been travelling with Dorthe´s parents. Things have been pretty hetic - not much chance to sit down and write anything on the blog unfortunately. Suffice to say though, that everyone is happy and well, and are enjoying our time in Peru. Briefly, from Lima, we passed through Arequipa, then on to Puno on the shores of Lake Titicaca, a quick visit to Copacabana in Bolivia, and then on to Cusco. Here we spent four days hikings to visit the Incan ruins at Chooquiquira and paid the obiligatory visit to Macchu Picchu (of course). This afternoon, we head into the jungle (Manu national park) for a five day tour, and then finally back to Lima on the 26th, in time for Dorthe´´s parents to fly out on the 28th. From there we have 28 days to get to Rio. We don´t know how though.

Ancient Art Forms Photo Set

2005-07-02T03:12:00.000+02:00

2500 year old cave drawings created by Llama herders near Oruro, Bolivia

I decided to take advantage of the fast internet connections here in Lima, and there are now a nice stack of pictures sitting up in the photo album of our travels from La Paz, through Oruro to Iquique and Arica in Chile, and then on up into Peru. Hopefully you should be able to get a bit of an idea of what we were looking at. The photos of the Nasca lines leave a lot of be desired unfortunately - maybe a little photoshopping when I get home might help them. Either that, or you´ll just have to come here and see them yourselves!.

Geoglyphomania Photo Set

Geoglyphomania!

2005-07-01T18:21:00.000+02:00

Geoglyphs in the Azapa valley, near Arica, made by grouping stones together on a hillside

July 1st. New month, new country, new food, new culture. And a new spanish accent to deal with (grrrr). The last week or so (four days in Iquique, Chile, two day in Arica, Chile, and then two days in Nasca, Peru) has been focused around ancient art forms - not intentionally really, it just happens that there are lot in this area. Indeed, you could call it Geoglyphomania!

So what´s a geoglyph? Well, you´ve probably seen one, and not known the name for it. Imagine a sandy hillside covered in rocks - if you remove a rock or two, the yellow sand underneath will be visible. Remove sufficient rocks, and you can make a pattern, or draw a shape. Alternatively, you can clear a large area of rocks, and then group them all together in one place, and you have another way to form a shape. A third way, and the most common in the west, is to simply spell something out on a dark hillside with a series of light coloured rocks. All these are forms of Geoglyphs. From up close, they don´t look like much more than a pile of rock, but stand several hundred metres back, and you have yourself a llama, or an eagle, or a message to the gods.

It seems that this form of art was very popular amongst the early peoples of this region. Why, no one knows. Around both Iquique and Arica, there are numerous hillsides covered in large and beautiful geoglyphs, and we visited many of them over the last week. In some places, such as Pintados near Iquique, the entire hillside is covered in hundreds of shapes, ranging from Llamas to arrows to people to Andean crosses, and everything in between. In other places, such as Cerro Unita, there is a single single 100m high depiction of Viracocha, the sun god of Tiahuanaco. Further north near Arica, we saw depictions of vast Llama trains, complete with shepards, covering four hillsides, echoing the trade routes that passed through that area. All of these were very unique, and unlike anything we had seen before - we both enjoyed pottering around in the desert, trying our luck with the somewhat unreliable and infrequent public transport, and looking at these ancient art works.

But the mother of all geoglyphs is to be found further north, at Nasca, Peru. Here, instead of hundreds of metres in size, some of the geoglyphs are measured in kilometres. And the only way to see them is from the air. I remember reading about these as a kid, and I have always wanted to go there ever since. In all of Peru, it was the one thing that we HAD to do. And we were both very glad we did - massive, beautiful designs spread out on the desert floor far below: spiders, parrots, lizards, vast trapezoids and triangles, a killer whale, a tree, a monkey, a condor, a man who kind of looks like an astronaut, and my favourite, a beautiful 200m long hummingbird. How and why these lines exist is really not known - during our time there, we were exposed to several different theories, from UFO landing sites, to astronomical calendars, to pleas to the gods for more water. But without a doubt, flying over these dramatic forms was both a highlight and a childhood dream fulfilled in one experience.

Random story of the day: For some reason, second hand clothes are very cheap in Arica, Chile - indeed, you can sell them for a much higher price across the border in Peru. Thus, all the local women have taken to smuggling clothes across the border - there are of course, restrictions on what they can bring in - one bag and what you´re wearing. And so on the bus, on the way to the border crossing, all these little aymaran women literally doubled in size as they put on all the clothes that they had brought that they couldn´t quite stuff into their bulging bags - typically about two jackets, ten sweaters, half a dozen pairs of trousers and shirts tied around their waists. Dorthe and I were utterly flumoxed trying to figure out what was going on. But somehow these little "Michelin-men" managed to get down the bus aisle, and across the border without too much attention from the customs officals - although the one lady that tried to hide in the back of the bus was chased down the aisle and out of the bus by officers. It was certaintly one of the more interesting and amusing border crossings that we have had!

Chile is different

2005-06-23T01:26:00.000+02:00

With much sadness, we left Bolivia this morning on a cold, cold bus across the altiplano from Oruro, heading for Iquique, Chile - I spent the first four or five hours scratching ice off the inside of the bus window with a credit card, so that I could see what was going on.

And what a beautiful bus ride it was - a golden orange sunrise, followed by one of those clear, cold, crisp days that you only seem to get on the Altiplano. The highlight of the ride for me will also be one of my lasting impressions of Bolivia - three high, snow capped, perfectly formed volcanic cones reflecting in an altiplano lake. Llamas around the outside grazing. Campesinos (Bolivian peasants) working in the fields. And a pink island of flamingos right in the middle of the lake. Beautiful.

But arriving in Chile has been a shock to the system. After nearly two full months in Bolivia, being back in a 2nd world (nearly first world really) country is rather different. These differences can be found on so many different levels, from the obvious signs of the west like McDonalds (the only fast food place we saw in all of Bolivia was one Burger King in La Paz), construction cranes, supermarkets (no supermarkets in Bolivia) and helicopters (didn´t see any of them either) to the way that people dress (everyone dresses in a very western manner in Chile - no awayos or ponchos here) to the way that they look (one side of the border, the guards were all of indigenous descent, whereas on the other, they were all clearly of european descent), to the climate (a hot dry, sandy desert, vs the cold but equally desolate altiplano), the ever presence 80s pop music that the Chileans seem to love, the smell of the sea (haven´t see the ocean for a LONG time!) and of course, the way that they behave as well (yes, we´re back into the full-on making-out on park benches - it is Chile after all!). And for us, the biggest shock of all are the prices - dinner, internet connections, accomdation, everything basically quadrupled in price, literally overnight. We find ourselves thinking of everything in Bolivianos, and thinking how much we could get for that back in Potosi!

But we´ll get over it - it had to come eventually. Meanwhile, we have some exploring of this region to do - there are a series of geoglyphs (ancient rock drawings on the hillsides) that we came here to see in particular.

Random fact of the day:One more difference - here in Iquique, you can actually flush the toilet paper: In Bolivia, as in most other parts of Latin America that we have visited, the toilet systems are pretty old and can´t handle toilet paper. So what do you do with it? Well, used paper goes in a little wastepaper basket next to the toilet. Don´t worry, its not as bad as it sounds.

Everybody put your hands in the air....

2005-06-22T00:36:00.000+02:00

Gringos and locals alike raise their hands in the air to catch the first rays of the new year: Aymara New Year´s celebrations, Tiahuanaco

In case you missed it: Happy New Years everybody! What´s that you say? Happy New Years, in June? Well, it depends who´s calendar we´re talking about, really. In this case, I´m referring to the Aymara calendar, which starts and ends with the winter solstice. And of course, being in the heart of Aymara culture here in Bolivia, we made a point of attending the New Years festivities.

The Aymara are the local indigenous population in northern Bolivia, and make up around about 35% or so of the total population of the country. Whereas the Quechua are more commonly associated with the Incan empire, the Aymara are more closely associated with the Tiahuanacan empire. Which empire? Tiahuanacan - while everyone has heard of the Incan empire, the reality is that it only lasted less than a 100 years before the Spanish wiped it off the map. The Tiahuanacan empire, however, spanned a thousand years, and covered an area from Lake Titicaca through most of Bolivia and south, well into Chile and Argentina. Its capital was the ceremonal centre of Tiahuanaco, near the south shore of Lake Titicaca - today the ruins are still being excavated.

Revellers gather around impromptu fires started by setting brush on fire to keep warm in the pre-dawn, sub-zero temperatures

It is in these ruins that the new years celebrations for the Aymara people take place. In the absence of any easy and reliable way to do it, Dorthe and I joined a tour, and headed out to the ruins at 4am in the morning. As you can imagine, at 4000m, at 4am in the morning, on the longest night of the year, in the middle of winter, it is somewhat cold. Ok, frikkin´ freezing is perhaps a more appropriate phrase! The locals though found the way to keep warm - they put a match to the dry altiplano scrub while waiting in line to get in, and then gathered around the resulting fire. It worked pretty well for a few minutes, until the fire burned out - but of course, there´s always another bush!

The celebrations were very simple but rather elegant. Thousands of people, both gringos in goretex and locals in their beautiful traditional dress, packed into the ruins and stood facing the hill on the other side of the valley. As the sky lightened slowly to the northeast, everyone took their gloves off (not that much fun in the sub-zero temperatures) and raised their hands in their air - the idea being to catch the first rays of the new year. And then everyone just stood there in silence, hands above their heads, watching the dawn. When the sun finally poked its head over the hills, it was greated by a few large horns, and the odd cry of "Viva Bolivia!". And that was about it - rather different to home, and really quite pleasant.

The locals dancing up a storm in Tiahuanaco

Of course, no Bolivian festival is complete without music, dancing, drinking and a little something for Pachamama, and that was what followed - lots of traditional dance, and lots of traditional music. And lots of puro, coca leaves, and llama fetuses headed onto bonfires for Pachamama. It was quite a sight to see many of the local villages parading and dancing their way around these ancient ruins in the same way that things have been done (more or less) for the last two thousand years. We watched them and joined them for a bit (but no more drinking with Bolivians for me!), and then once the crowds had moved on to the town, we toured the ruins. Tiahuanaco is a beautiful ceremonial centre, and we were both especially impressed by the intricate detail and embellishments on their stonework. In addition, the technological achievements of this civilisation clearly parallels that of the incas.

Like New Years in our countries, it was light when we eventually returned home to La Paz - although for a slightly different reason. In all, it was a rather interesting, and somewhat different, New Years to what we are normally used - but we enjoyed ourselves immensely. Everyone was very happy and friendly, and we received more than our share of hugs and "feliz nuevo año" from Bolivian strangers. And we even managed to run into the Bolivian minister of culture (our tour guide knew him personally). But best of all, I have to say, it was quite pleasant starting the first day of the new year without a hangover!

When Civil Engineers have a laugh

2005-06-21T01:04:00.000+02:00

La Cuimbre to Coroico - it doesn´t take much imagination to see how this road earned its title.

You have to keep an eye on the civil engineers. They pretend that they´re civilised over there on the other side of the engineering school, hanging out with all the girrlies and building touchy-feely things like sanitation systems (unlike us chemical engineers who just make profits for large multinationals and generate toxic waste). But underneath it all, they´re still just engineers like the rest of us, and want to build something really cool and interesting, regardless of how stupid it is. And that is exactly what they have done in creating a road from La Cuimbre to Coroico, also known as The Worlds Most Dangerous Road.

La Cuimbre is one of those places that doesn´t even really exist except on a map - not even a house or church, just a road marker really. But then that´s to be expected, considering that it is at 4800m, a high pass on the altiplano to the east of La Paz - cold, windswept, and very barren. But it is also rather spectacular, because it represents the start of the eastern escarpment of the Andes - from La Cuimbre, the road plummets 3600m vertical in around 70km down the hill to Coroico (1200m), on the very edge of the Amazon basin. But this is not any ordinary road. The upper sections, maybe - sealed and just your standard high-mountain road, but the middle. Ooooh, the middle is truly impressive. A narrow, winding, shingle road cut into the side of the hill. And I mean literally into the side of 1000m vertical cliffs. If you go over the edge, you´ll have a good while to think about the fact that maybe you should have used the brakes a little more (or less, for that matter!). Unfortunately, there have been plenty of people in that predicament - the average is 25 deaths per year on the road. And you can understand why - it is extremely narrow (one small lane for 95% of the way), with big drops, and it has a lot of traffic - not your standard passenger vechiles either, but lots of large camiones packed with produce heading to La Paz. A common scenarios seem to involve two camiones trying to pass on a turnout, and the road subsiding underneath one or both of them - one such incident in 1983 killed the driver and 100 passengers in the back. In an attempt to prevent this type of accident, there are set times for going uphill and downhill, so that traffic only flows in one direction - in theory, at least - but it doesnt really work that well, as we discovered. And its not just locals either - there is a monument halfway down, amongst all the other crosses, to an Israeli girl who failed to take a corner on her bike a few years back.

So with all this death and destruction, it is inevitable that the road has come to the attention of western backpackers, and there are now many, many companies in La Paz running cycle tours down the hill to Coroico - "Ride the Death Road" sort of thing. Some of it is a bit borderline when it comes to taste, but to be fair, it is also a fantastic downhill ride (where else can you find 3600m of descent over 70km?), and quite a spectacular one also. My love of cycling eventually overcame my doubts, and so we headed off down the hill with five or six other gringos.

Dorthe takes a bend cut into the cliff at pace and kicks up some serious dust. You´ve gotta feel sorry for the guy behind her!

We were pleased we did - the road is truly spectacular. We started high on the barren, cold altiplano at around 9am in the morning, with lots of clothes on! As we descended over the next four hours, things warmed up considerably, and with it the vegetation changed dramatically - first more ground cover, then trees, and then the hot humid steaming jungle and coca plantations of the Yungas region around Coroico. And as we got lower, the road got worse, and worse, and worse, changing from a nice wide two lane asphalt highway, into the aforementioned one lane shingle track cut into the side of a cliff. Coming around a dusty corner at full pace and riding straight into the hot humid air of the Yungas jungle is a feeling that I will never forget!

We had three guides with us whoose main role was to ride ahead and warn us when there were trucks coming up the hill - there were plenty, and we were thankful for the guides - I can assure you that coming around a corner at pace and seeing your only two options being a 25 tonne camione or a 1000m drop would not be much fun. As it was, even with the guides, there was often very little room for even a bike to squeeze between the truck and the drop! In spite of the odd scare, and the everprescent drop 3m to your left, the ride actually felt quite safe - you have so much control on a bike, and there are so many more options available to you. I remember thinking to myself that I´d much rather do this on a bike than in a car.....

...and so, after negotiating 70km of rutted narrow road, things eventually began to flatten out - although interestingly, they also became much more dusty - several inches deep on the road in places (we were grateful for the dustmasks supplied, even if we were initially a little sceptical!). Waiting for us at the bottom were a big feed, a swimming pool, and the van to carry us back to La Paz. But the one thing that they didn´t tell you in the tour agency was that the return trip was the same way that we came (makes sense, I guess). And so then, just like the locals, we took our chances going back up The Worlds Most Dangerous Road in a car - exactly how I did not want to do it....

...and it was as about as stressful as I can imagine a car trip being. Our crazy bolivian driver (is there any other sort) drives that road twice everyday and he clearly knew it like the back of his hand. And he drove it that way as well - there was no slowing down for corners, which, when you´re you´re sitting in the backseat and can´t actually see the edge, leads you to think "this is it" on pretty much every turn. After a while, I sort of settled into a state of half shock - half resignation, which wasn´t too bad really. It won´t get any worse than this, just get used to it......

...and then it got dark. And then we climbed far enough up to be in the clouds. And being tropical clouds, they were really, really thick - visibility fell to 3m. And then because we were in the clouds it started raining, turning the dust on the windscreen to mud. As this point we were still barrelling up the hill, with rain and mud covering the windscreen, so not only could we not see the size of the drop to our right (although we all knew how large it was), but the driver couldn´t really see out the window either. Our driver might as well have been blind and and driving by feel alone, for all the difference it would have made. Oh well, at least there is no traffic coming the other way...

....At least it was dark, so that we could see their headlights. We came barrelling around one corner and there was a passenger bus coming back the other way towards us. My stress level quadrupled instantly. Oh f**k, what do we do now? Contrary to convention, the driver offered to go around the outside of the bus, taking the side closest to the drop. I was unhappy. But the bus refused, stuck to convention so that we were closest to the cliff, and somehow we managed to negotiate our way past . And then past the truck around the next corner. And then past three more buses, ten camiones and about a dozen light vechiles - it seemed that we had just met the downhill traffic!

Dorthe and Mark, happy to have survived the dusty, dodgy, descent from La Cuimbre. But how do we get home?

Somehow we managed to make it back to La Paz alive, and without witnessing a truck plummet off a cliff. How, we don't actually know. Trying to pass the buses and trucks was very tight in places, with lots of back and forth on the part of both vehicles. But somehow they managed to do it, just like they do it every single day of the year - being patient and trusting your own judgement and equipment goes a long way on that road - as do nerves of steel. All of the gringos in the van that night had nothing but the upmost respect for the way in which the locals tackled what would be an unimaginable task in our own countries. And we also unnaminously agreed that driving that van was a job that none of us would accept, not matter how much they paid us!

The Upside-Down City

2005-06-20T04:16:00.000+02:00

La Paz, Bolivia, as viewed from the autopista on the way into the city

La Paz is an odd-beast of a place: sitting in a canyon high on the Altiplano, nearly 4000m above sea level, the highest capital city in the world doesn´t quite conform to your standard city layout. In most cities, especially in Europe and the States, you find that things generally get better as you go up - the weathly and upper class head for the hills (if there are any), and sit up there with a nice view of all below them. But not here.

When La Paz was founded by the Spanish, some 400 or more years ago, they decided that life on the surrounding altiplano was just too harsh, so they put the city at the bottom of quite substantial canyon. Understandible really - it is pretty frikkin cold up there! Deep in the canyon (and I mean deep - its more than 500m vertical from the top to the bottom in places), the city is sheltered from the biting wind, and gets some benefits from being closed in - even if it doesn´t get quite as much sun. And of course, 500m less altitude means slightly more warmt, and slightly more air to breathe too! The net result is that the skyscrapers of the central city and the wealthy suburbs of corrupt former bolivian politicians (a local´s words, not mine!) are at the bottom of the canyon, whereas the poverty stricken areas are high up on the hill, with a great view, but a rather harsher climate.

Our four days in La Paz started with a walking tiki-tour around the city - its a reasonably nice city, but at the same time its a lot more hetic and touristy than the Bolivia that we have come to know and love during our time in Potosi. The highlight was probably a little visit to the witches market, featuring more Llama fetuses than you can shake a stick at..

We also paid a visit to El Alto, the poorest neighbourhood at the top of the canyon overlooking the rich down below. El Alto is infamous as the source of much of the political protest that has occured recently in Bolivia - it is, after all, in a prize position to hold La Paz to ransom, as there is only one road up out of the canyon, and it passes through El Alto. Mildly ironic, you might say...

We were in El Alto on a sunday, for their weekly market, and it was a truly memorable experience. We have been to plenty of markets here before, but this was by far the largest and most impressive that we have seen. Basically, the entire city of El Alto turned into a market - every street was lined with people with stalls on both sides - there were literally thousands of stalls (and I mean 1000 or more, literally) and tens of thousands of people. And there was everything for sale there - chickens, geese, ducks and ducklings, pets, flashy lights for your car, tools, snake oil, live frogs, fruit, pirated music and videos, clothes, and even a line of Toyota Land Cruisers (Dorthe had to drag me away) in the car section. Dorthe and I spent five or six hours just wandering around, jaws agape, at what we saw. It was like a department store had exploded and covered half the city with crap...

But probably the highlight of the entire market was the man selling homemade potato peelers. Yes, that´s right. Potato peelers. We weren´t all that impressed - Potato peelers are, after all, a little mundane in our part of the world. But not here - here in Bolivia, they peeler veges by scraping the skin off with a knife. The man selling the peelers was surrounded by quite a crowd, and he was demonstrating how to use one - accompanied by the oohs, and aahs , a close examination of how thing the peel was (its very important to conserve as much potato as possible here), and general awe on the part of the crowd. Suffice to say he was doing a roaring business - we saw him sell five (Bs 5 each, US$0.67) in the minute or so that we were standing there. But then, odd little things like that are kind of what you expect in a back-to-front city like La Paz....

The Land of Bolivar

2005-06-19T00:42:00.000+02:00

Local Aymara people in Traditional dress. Tiahuanaco, Bolivia

Our time in Bolivia is coming to a rapid close - from here in La Paz, we soon we head south to Oruro for the day, and then, all going to plan, tomorrow night we head off into Chile. After two months here, amongst the madness of Puro, protestors with Dynamite, and Llama sacrafice, we have had a fantastic time. The link below goes to a small collection of some of our favourite pictures from our time here. We home that you enjoy them too.

The Land of Bolivar Photo Set

Short cut

2005-06-17T01:16:00.000+02:00

Dorthe with her new cut

After much procrastination and debate on the topic, Dorthe finally took the plunge, and as a result, she now has a nice new haircut. It did, however, take two hours in the hairdressers chair, and features such things as colouring stripes, and a length just below the ears. She tells me that it is the shortest she has ever had it since she was four. And what did all this cost? Well, in most western countries, it would cost the GDP of Bolivia, for example. But here, well, it came to a total of Bs 50 (US$6.25)....

We have had a great few days here in Sucre - Sucre is an absolutely beautiful city, probably the most picturesque that we have visited thus far - whitewashed colonial buildings everywhere, some more than 400 years old, set in a rather pleasant, comparatively fertile valley - after the barren, dry, cold terrain of Potosi, it has been a bit of a shock. From here, we now head on towards La Paz, where, hopefully, we will not be blockaded in...

Leaving this town

2005-06-15T04:57:00.000+02:00

Unfortunately, our time with the nuns has come to an end. Tomorrow morning we start travelling again. The nuns are going to Sucre (one of them needs to go to the dentist about her wisdom teeth), so we are catching a ride with them. We´ll have about two or three days there, before heading on to La Paz (blockades and protestors willing). And then into northern Chile for a week or so, and finally to Lima, Peru, where we meet up with Dorthe´s parents on July 2nd.

It has to be said though, that we are both sad to be leaving this town. Potosi is a great little place, and after a month here, we are starting to feel very much like locals - our local shopowners and surrounding restaurants all know "the gringos", and we run into these people on the street - we are starting to feel very much like locals. And then of course, saying goodbye to all the oldies in the nun´s house was hard - after working with them for so long, and getting to know ALL their eccentricities, leaving them behind for the last time is a sad thing. We will miss Potosi.

Two kilometres into the Earth

2005-06-15T03:18:00.000+02:00

The reason this town exists: Cerro Rico, the "rich hill", looming above the town of Potosi.

We came to Potosi with the intention of visiting the mines here. That was more than a month ago, before we were unexpectidly and suddenly abducted by nuns. Then add further delays caused by the recent revolution here in Bolivia (which blockaded many of the mines, as well as the rest of the country), and two bouts of sickness (one each). Thus, it wasn´t until today, the day before we leave, that we FINALLY managed to get around to it. But the wait was worth it, because it was a fascinating experience.

Cerro Rico, "the rich hill", is the reason why Potosi exists, indeed you could go so far as to say it is both Potosi and Bolivia in one. It is everywhere in this town - looming 700m above the city, it often peaks its head out above the two story buildings - like the Golden Gate in San Francisco, it is one of those landmarks that defines the city. But it is also everywhere (literally) in this country - the national coat of arms has Cerro Rico as its centrepiece, and it is thus on all the money, and all official documentation.

When you read a bit about Bolivian history, you start to understand why it is so important - silver was discovered in the hill in about 1544, and for the following three centuries, it supplied a sizeable fraction of the Spanish silver (I have the figure of 40% (!) in my head for some reason). By 1550, Potosi was not only the highest city in the world, but also the largest (160,000 residents) and the richest. This wealth was based largely on slavery (mainly from the surrounding indigenous peoples - african slaves couldn´t handle the high altitude very well) - it is estimated that during the three centuries of Spanish rule, about eight million people died inside the mountain, as a result of the extremeley harsh working conditions. After Bolivian independence in 1825, the large silver deposits began to play out (nice timing by the Spanish, you might say), but even to this day, silver is a major export from Potosi. Tin was important at the end the 19th Century, and has been replaced by Zinc more recently. And although the mines have been running for over 400 years, there is still plenty of wealth coming out of that hillside - indeed, in this town, it is THE source of wealth, for both rich and poor.

Sticks of dynamite for sale in a shop, Potosi, Bolivia

For the poor especially, Cerro Rico is one of the only opportunties out of poverty. A normal weeks work in the mine is sufficient to support a moderate sized family. And of course, like every mine, there is the hope of striking it rich, of finding a large nugget of gold or silver than will set you up for life. But mining Cerro Rico is not without its risks - as I alluded to earlier, the average lifespan of a miner is 15 years in the mine - Silicosis pneuomonia, caused by the inhilation of the fine silica dust ever present in the mine, leaves many families without fathers and husbands, not to mention the inherent risks associated with mining (cave-ins, explosions, arsenic and carbon monoxide gases etc), and the impact of extremely hard physical work, 10 hours a day, 6 days a week. There are approximately 12,000 miners working in the 100km of tunnels inside the hill during the week, which represents about 10% of the total population of Potosi.

Dorthe makes her way deeper into Cerro Rico

Our tour of the mine started with a visit to the miners market. Here, we brought some presents for the miners - the nuns told us that many of the miners suffer from malnutrition, so we made sure that we stocked up on fruit, and fruit juice, as well as the more standard coca leaves and puro. As is perfectly normal in Bolivia, you can also buy dynamite over the counter in most shops in this market - I brought a stick of dynamite, a five minute fuse, detonator, and about 500g of pelleted dry nitroglycerin (to pack around the dynamite and make a RUUUUL good bang) for Bs 15 (US $1.87). No questions asked. Our guide described it as a terrorist´s beginners kit - it was certaintly cable of bringing down an airliner, and here it was on sale to any 10 year old who has the money!

From the market we changed into overalls, donned hardhats and electric headlamps, and headed up the hill, and into the mine. The initial sections of the mine were very cold (and of course dark, but that goes without saying) - there were icicles hanging from the 400 year old stone work near the entrance. However, as we progressed further into the mine, past silver seams, zinc and tin deposits, and red iron ore, it began to warm significantly. Our first visit was to Tio, (the devil), who owns the minerals inside the hill - Tio is very important for the miners, as he not only supplies the minerals, but also protects the miners, much like Pachamama. It was thus natural that we made an offering (puro, coca, and a cigarette) for protection. The life-size clay statue had clearly received its fair share of offerings recently - Tio was knee deep in coca leaves, and was cradling a dried llama fetus in his arms. The llama fetus is offered on a regular basis by the miners, symbolising fertility and the yearly cycle. It is also rumoured amongst the miners that those who have struck it rich have done so by going so far as to offer human fetsuses to Tio - whether there is any substance to this, or whether it is just the rumours of jealous workmates, is unclear.....

The miners take a break from the hard work while waiting for the dust to clear after the explosion.

From Tio, we ventured deeper into the mine, at some points crawling on hands and knees through the ever narrowing spaces, eventually reaching one of the many working faces. There, a team of seven men were working fevoursly with a combination of pneumatic tools and manual labour to bury nine charges of dynamite in the face. We sat, talked with them and watched them work for a good while, before they lite the fuses and everyone retreated to a safe distance. What does dynamite sound like, 2km into the earth? A dull thud really, nothing too exciting - certaintly not as earth-shaking or as stressful as you might imagine. The miners then took a break for half an hour, waiting for the dust to clear, while, Dorthe and I headed out back to the surface, a full three hours after entering the mine.

The tour was a fascinating experience. After hearing so much about the mines, and meeting so many miners, visiting the mines put everything into context. The working conditions are unpleasant, to say the least - dry, cramped, temperatures varying between freezing and as high as 45°C in some places, and extremely dusty - everything and everywhere is covered in the fine silica dust that causes silicosis. Breathing was made ever more difficult by not only the dust and altitude, but also pockets of arsenic gas and natural asbestos deposits. And of course it is extremely physical - lugging sacks containg 50kg of ore on your back through tight, cramped spaces, (in places so small that you have to take your helmet off to fit through) is not easy. It is not a job than many people in the west would voluntarily undertake. Yet, at the same time, these people were clearly happy with their work - the comradeship in such tough and dangerous conditions is undeniable. And most importantly of all in this poverty racked town, it is one of the only opportunities to provide for their loved ones - here, that seems to outweigh the inevitably shortened lifespan associated with mining Cerro Rico.

Don´t Stop the Revolution

2005-06-13T02:19:00.000+02:00

In case you hadn´t noticed (it has barely made the news in NZ, although it seems that the Danish news it much more onto it) there is a revolution going on here in Bolivia. La Paz has been a complete mess - Israel has evacuated 300 of its citizens, and many other countries have been preparing for evacuations. Fortunately, Potosi, where we are, has been pretty tranquil - only a few protests, and certaintly no violence. We have been, however, seriously effected by the road blockades that have paralysed the entire country, and have been unable to leave Potosi for most of the last three weeks or so, even if we wanted to. Things appear to be improving - the blockades lifted nationwide over the weekend for the first time in more than a month, but tomorrow (Monday), it could all be on again. It´s a bit of wait and see. However, if you´re wondering, we are nice and safe in our part of Bolivia - for us, life just goes on as normal - there´s still floors to clean and unfortunately the revolution has yet to spread to making the old men not need their nappies changed.

Of Awayos and Camiones

2005-06-07T03:36:00.000+02:00

Riding the Camione back to Potosi with the locals, and a whole lot of zinc ore

It cost us three days, more than it probably should, two cases of sunburn, two very sore arses, and enough sitting around waiting to test the patience of even the most dedicated buddist monk. But after all the messing around, we achieved what we set out to achieve. We got ourselves an Awayo.

There are many things in Bolivia that are unique to this country - puro, road blockades, and llama sacrafice are definitely amongst them. But also unique is the traditional style of dress still worn by many local women. One of the most characteristic pieces of clothing is the Awayo - a square piece of woven cloth, approximately 1m by 1m, that is worn around the shoulders, kind of like a sling, and is used to carry everything from groceries to coca to babies - we have even seen one of the women volunteers in the nun´s house cleaning the floor with both hands while her baby, slung in front of her in an Awayo, breastfeeds! Impressive to say the least. The vast majority of awayos that you see everyday are of the brightly coloured machine woven variety, and cost about Bs 15 (US$2) in the market. However, traditionally they were woven by hand from naturally dyed wool, typically taking several months to complete. Dorthe and I have been fascinated by the beautiful and intricate patterns that you see, and long ago decided that we were going to buy one as a wall hanging. However, after looking around nearly every shop in town, we couldn´t decide what we wanted. So, instead of buying one off the shelf, once again we made the stupid mistake of deciding to do things our way (you´d think we´d have learnt by now).

Of all the weavings that we saw in town, one particular style struck us the most - that from the village of Calcha. Calcha weaving is renownwed for being extremeley fine - up to 150 threads per inch, by some sources. Although it is quite simple, it is also rather elegant. And most importantly, we really liked it. So, this weekend, we set off for the village of Calcha, 116km to the south of Potosi, determined to buy ourselves a nice Awayo directly from the lady who had made it with no middle man(which also appealed my leftie fair-trade sensibilities). It was supposed to be a 24 hour weekend jaunt, a simple overnight there and back. Of course nothing is ever that simple in this country, and instead it ended up being an epic....

Getting to Calcha is not easy - you won´t find it in any guidebooks, that´s for sure. We asked many people over several weeks - including people from Calcha itself, and everytime we got a different answer - not unheard of here. In the end, the best advice seemed to be coming from the local tourist office - timetables, departure locations, and an assurance that there was a hostal in Calcha. Sweet. Away we go.

And of course, right from the start, they were wrong. The bus, at 3pm Saturday from Mercado Uyuni, never appeared. Some people that we asked in the market said, "No, go two blocks up to the Plaza, it goes from there". At the plaza, they said go back to Mercado Uyuni. Arggghhh. After going round in that circle for a while, we gave up, and tried another option people had suggested - Plaza Minero. And there was no bus to Calcha from there either. But the last bus driver we asked did have an interesting alternative - "I go to Vitichi, from there you can catch a minibus to Calcha mañana (tomorrow)." (Warning: when south americans say mañana, it could mean anytime in the next week!). And of course, after all the false information we had had, we were very wary about believing him. So, after much umming and ahhh, we threw caution to the wind and took the risk...

...which paid off. Sort of. We made the 90km south to Vitichi in three hours (including a half hour break for a flat tire), arriving about 8pm, and found a place to both eat and sleep there without too many problems. The next morning, we got up nice and early to catch the 9am micro (minibus) we had been promised... which of course, didn´t exist. Am I starting to sound like a worn record yet? However, fate was on our side, because Sunday was also market day in Vitichi, which meant that all the local camiones (trucks) from the surrounding villages came in to sell their wares - including people from Calcha. After much asking around, we found three camiones that were returning to Calcha about 1pm. No wurries - we spent the morning wandering around the market and town, attracting a LOT of strange looks from the locals. We also met an american peace corp volunteer who was living there - he said that we were the first gringos in town who weren´t his friends in the two years that he´d been there! That might explain the stares!

Dorthe getting windblown in the back of a camione with the locals on the way to Calcha

1pm came and we got a ride in the back of an empty camione. When I say ride, I am actually meaning in the roller-coaster sense - we bounced around in the back of this empty cattle truck for an hour (standing all the way, there was no point in sitting), getting throughly coated in dust, and attracting more curious looks from the dozen or so locals who were sharing our mode of transport. As rough and dusty as it was, it was also great fun, and eventually got us to Calcha an hour later. And what a beautiful little village it is - set deep in a valley, surrounded by catcus covered badlands, Calcha is a little oasis of life in a barren, dry, remote landscape. When we rolled into town, it seemed that everyone was there to greet us - they were waiting to load up the camione for a return trip I think. Again, we attracted a lot of attention - it seems there were even fewer gringo visitors to this little village.

So, to business - initially we had problems trying to find anyone who had an Awayo to sell. But after a while, the locals figured out that there was money to be made, and we started to make progress. Quite a few people said to go and see "Lucia Cruz, the gringita". What is a gringa (a female gringo) doing way out here? Who know? What we were doing way out there for that matter? Who knows? We walked for about two kilometres towards her house, and on the way met a nice chap with a wheelbarrow, who as it turned out, was her nephew - so he took us to see her directly.... except she wasn´t a gringo. She was, in fact, 100% pure Quechua indian -traditional dress and all. Confused? We certaintly were. But anyway, she had a nice collection of Awayo´s that she was willing to part with, and in the end we choose one, and managed to negotiate a reasonable sort of price. In restrospect, with both of us speaking spanish as a second language (Quechua being her first), that was the easiest part of the entire trip! We´re still not completely sure whether "gringita" was just her nickname, or whether we got scammed, and the real (gringa) Lucia Cruz is out there somewhere waiting for us though.

Lucia Cruz (the gringita), the woman who made our Awayo (currently doing the washing)

Getting home, however, continued in the same vein as the outward trip. Returning to the centre of the village around 5pm (it was getting dark), we found that every camione had left for the night, and probably wasn´t going to be back for several days. "What about the micro the tourist information office promised us daily at 6pm?". "Que?" (eh?). Yeah.... Looks like we´re staying the night in Calcha. "What about the hostal that the tourist information office promised us?" "Que?". Oh excellent. Sleeping in the open, when it freezes overnight, was not appealing. After much asking around, some locals suggested we try the doctor - "There are beds in the hospital that he´ll let you sleep in" "Que?" (that was me that time). So, we went and asked the doctor if we could sleep in the hospital beds. He said that it was fine, but first we should go and ask the priests - we were led to the house of the three trainee priests who are resident in Calcha. All three of them were from Colombia, and were more than willing to offer us a bed in their huge house of 40 beds (don´t ask me why a village of five families (yes five families) has a priests house with 40 beds in it - I don´t know the answer).

And so, we spent the night eating and talking with three Colombian priests, which as you can imagine was a fascinating experience. After dinner, we played dominos with them, and well, let me warn you about Colombian´s and dominos. For those of you who think that dominos is a game of chance (which included Dorthe and I), apparently it´s not - we played about fifteen to twenty games in total throughout the night - I won one, Dorthe won one, and the three priests won the remainder between them. With statistics like that, either God was smiling on the priests (a possibility - they were priests after all) or there are some tactics involved - we just can´t figure what they are....

Monday morning rolled around, and we set off to try and make our way back to Potosi, Awayo in hand. There were still no camiones, and still no micros. A four hour slog through the desert to the main road was a possibility, but a rather unappealing one. In the end, we convinced a local to drive us up to the road for a small fee (ok, so it wasn´t such a small fee by Bolivian standards!) - fortunately, he needed to go into Vitichi for fuel, so we got an extra 10km for nothing. We had already already missed the daily bus back to Potosi (which left at 5am for some reason), so the only other choice was to flag down another camione ....

....except there weren´t any. Not one. We sat in Vitichi, on what is a major road, for four hours, and did not see one vehicle heading north. A few heading south, yes, but not one going north. Why? Well, the road was blockaded by protests about six hours south in Tupiza, and so there was no simply no traffic heading north. So, we sat in the sun for most of the afternoon and baked....

Dorthe on top of our Camione, during a break on the ride back to Potosi.

...and then fortunate smiled on us - a camione, loaded to the brim with zinc ore heading to Potosi for refining, appeared from nowhere. We flagged him down, and climbed on board. This was travel, Bolivian style. Seats? On top of the ore of course. Air conditioning? Free of charge (the truck only averaged about 25kph, so it was quite pleasant.... until it got dark, and REALLY cold). Food service? Bring your own. Reclining seats? Sleeper class infact - all the way back, with plenty of leg room.

I mock it, but in fact, sitting on top of a mining truck, rolling along through the Bolivian countryside is a fantastic way to travel. You see so much, and its not really all that uncomfortable - lots of space to stretch and walk around if need be. The only real problem is the potential that you could bounce off the side and over the edge: but then we weren´t exactly bouncing that much, considering that we had about 15 tonne of ore on the back!

What it was all about - detail of part of our Awayo

We finally arrived in Potosi on dusk: tired, sunburnt, dusty, and with sore arses. The trip, like this posting, was an epic. But my goodness it was fun. Travelling like that is something we both enjoy immensely - it is extremeley challenging, and far beyond anything you could find in a guidebook. You can do all the research you like, but it can often be completely and utterly useless, even when it comes from supposed authories. All you can rely on is your patience, and your ability to get rides/beds using your half-baked spanish, and then try to be prepared for whatever else comes along. In retrospect, we could have brought the Awayo in any old shop in Potosi, or anywhere else in Bolivia - it probably would have been cheaper (all up), and would without a doubt have been faster. But then, we wouldn´t have had such an enjoyable experience, and a great story, to go with our Awayo from Calcha.

Buckets and buckets of Llama Blood

2005-06-01T01:17:00.000+02:00

The gringos in the background (in yellow mining helmets and grey overalls) can´t bear to look as the second llama gets the chop.

On Saturday I attended the annual Fiesta del Espirtu (festival of the spirit), a festival held by the miners here in Potosi. Rather than being a large, centralised festival, it is a relatively small affair (perhaps 50 people) that is held by each individual mining cooperative at their own mine. And what is the basic idea of the festival? Well, there are two main elements - bottles and bottles of puro (96% potable alcohol) and buckets and buckets of llama blood.

The feista is actually relatively simple in concept. The miners have very strong spiritual beliefs - you can understand it when they spend so long underground, constantly exposed to the dangers of arsenic gas, natural asbestos, carbon monoxide poisoning and most importantly of all, a long term destruction of the lungs by fine silica dust known as silicosis pneunomia (not to mention the other inherent dangers of mining, such as cave-ins etc): the average lifespan of a miner is 10-15 years of work in the mines. The most important spiritual character for the miners is Pachamama (the earth mother), who owns the minerals (silver, tin, zinc) that they are taking, and who they actually work inside. The logic of fiesta del espiritu thus goes that by making an offering to Pachamama of Llama blood, she will be satisfied and thus will not need to spill any of the miners blood. As you can imagine, with Dorthe and I living in Potosi as we are, and reading so much about the miners, we were both very interested to learn more about such an important part of the miner´s lives. A number of tour companies here organise Espiritu tours, and so we signed up. Unfortunately, Dorthe was rather ill on the morning and unable to go, leaving me to join about a dozen other gringos on what was to prove to be an unforgetable day.

The day started with a trip to the miners market, where we purchased some gifts for the miners - coca, cigarettes, beer, alcohol, and also a big bag of maderins for the children. Also on sale there, readily available for the amateur terroist, was dynamite, fuses, detonators, and ammonium nitrate to make a bigger, better bang. But the most interesting part was seeing the llamas for sale - people from the surrounding villages brought their prize llamas into town to sell to the miners to be sacrificed. The image of a car driving by with the boot wide-open and a rather confused looking llama sticking its head out is one that I will never forget. Similarly, large trucks with twenty people and a dozen llamas on the back cruised the streets, bringing the unsuspecting victims to the market.

From the market, we made our way to the mine - a 45min crawl in a bus up the side of Cerro Rico, the silver rich hill that is where the mines are located. We arrived at our mine just in time for the main activity of the day - the ritual llama sacrifice at midday. The entrance to the mine was a narrow gully perhaps three metres wide, and thirty metres long, and was absolutely packed with about 50 people and four confused looking llamas. And about 15 gringos who weren´t quite sure what was about to happen, and whether they wanted to watch.

First, the individual animal was captured, and its hind legs tied tightly against its body, so that it was forced to sit, and to stop it from kicking (understandible). The sitting animal was then force-fed coca leaves, beer, and puro (more on that stuff later), and then sprinkled with more beer - all offerings for Pachamama. The animal was then turned around to face the mine, and rolled over on its side - three people sat on the body, and the head was bent back as far as possible, fully exposing the neck. Next, while all of the other gringos stood in the corner and looked the other way, one person held a large plastic bowl underneath the neck, and another swifty cut its throat right the way through to the spine, which was then promptly snapped. And the blood just poured out of it - the plastic bowl collected most of it, but there were also random jets squirting in all directions, all over everyone. Very messy.

And then the action really started - men, children and women with babies on their backs produced large dinner plates and filled them with warm blood from the bowl and started scattering it over everything solid - most importantly above the entrance to the mine, but also above the doorways over all of the buildings and homes, and even over some of the vechiles too I think. And of course, over all the people too - by the end of it, everyone (unwilling gringos included) had Llama blood all over their faces and necks. This incredible process was repeated three more times as each animal was sacrificed - the surreal scene was only enhanced by the miners denonating sticks of dynamite nearby in celebration.

After that, everyone (myself included) needed a beer. Or a puro. Or both. And so we all sat around and had a drink, with four Llama carcasses at our feet. What is puro you ask? Well, it is the drink of choice for the miners - 96% potable alcohol (it is basically meths without the purple stuff that makes you vomit) - they´re serious about their drinking here in Bolivia. And it is dirt cheap too - one litre for about US$1 or so - that´s enough to keep you happy for a while. Its actually not as bad to drink as you´d think - its a lot smoother than straight rum or tequilla for example, mainly because it all evaporates in your mouth, and never reaches your stomach. That doesn´t mean that it doesn´t get absorbed into the bloodstream though, I can assure you.....

Drinking with the miners involves five steps. First, you pour a little on the ground, as an offering to Pachamama (often you pour it over the Llama carcass as well). Then a little for whoever you like (the devil is a common choice). Then you drink. Then, because there is a duality between Pachamama and you, you repeat the process. And then after that, you accept the next drink that is going to be thrust into your hand - I can assure that you that the miners, as poor as they are, are extremely generous with their alcohol, and extremeley exhuberant in their celebration of life.

Two down. Two to go. Note the blood spread above the entrance to the mine in the background.

After an hour or so of relaxing, drinking, chewing coca leaves and talking to the miners, it was back into it. The four carcasses were skinned and gutted. The pelt, stomach, legs, head, and intestines of each animal were placed in a large tray, a deep hole dug at the entrance to the mine, and the trays buried along with some cigarettes, coca, and more puro, as a further offering to Pachamama. The meat from the animal was taken and carved up by the women in a separate room near the mine. I helped them with this for a while, while I helped hand out the presents (my inability to find the right place to cut through the still warm spine of the Llama caused great hilarity amongst the women, and earnt me many shots of some dubious orange coloured liquid that was puro (and orange juice?) based). The women, seemingly innocent dressed in their traditional clothes, were actually the worst drinkers, and got me far more drunk than the men. The meat was then taken out and barbequed over charcoal. The rest of the day dissolved into a mad torrent of feasting on the llama meat, drinking and, in true Bolivian style, lots of dancing to crazy music.

Probably the nicest thing about the day though was the way that we foreigners were treated - even though we were gringos, the five of us that stayed for the barbeque (the others had had enough and took the early bus home) were treated like family, and made to drink, feast and dance like we were Bolivians. Of course, mone of us were, or ever will be, Bolivian miners, and the net result was some very drunken gringos. But then, you might say that was part of the whole thing, a beautiful duality to please Pachamama: Llama slaughter and Gringo Slaughter.

Random fact of the day: Never approach a llama from the front. Like most other members of the camelid (camel) family, they spit. And I can assure you from personal experience, that a pissed off llama is a really good shot....

Can´t beat the real thing

2005-06-01T00:42:00.000+02:00

Coca leaves for sale on a typically large scale, Potosi, Bolivia

Its probably appropriate that we talk a bit about Coca - after all, we are in Bolivia, and we have made numerous oblique references to it, without really going into what its all about. So, for those of you who have their heads completely in the sand, let me start by saying that Coca is to Bolivia what Sheep are to New Zealand, and bacon is to Denmark - unavoidable.

First off, coca is, as you probably know, the base from which cocaine is made. The processing of the leaf is fairly straightforward - basically just a soak in sulphuric acid to produce coca-base, and then a final concentration in ether to produce the real thing, ready for consumption by the wealthy of the western world (and by the odd Argentine soccer god too). Bolivia produces epic amounts of coca - more than 50% of the entire economy is coca by some estimates. As you can imagine, Bolivia was very popular with conservative 1980´s US administrations and the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) has been active here ever since, trying to eradicate crops and destroy (bomb!) production facilities.

But you could argue that it is fighting a battle that it probably will never win. Why? Well, it is such an ingrained part of the culture, that you would probably have to wipe most Andean countries off the map to get rid of all vestiges of it. The leaves of the coca bush are used here in a manner analogous to chewing tabacco (refined cocaine is virtually unheard of here - even though they produce such prodigous amounts of it, it all goes for export) - a stack of leaves (10 for gringo beginners, 40 for the locals) are placed inside the cheek where there are sucked and the juices swallowed. They can also be used in conjuction with an alkaline cataylst, which is supposed to increase the effect. It is particularly common in the high mountains, where it is supposed to be good for altitude sickness, mainly due to its nature as a mild stimulant which overcomes the lethargy caused by altitude. It is also very popular amongst the miners, who use it as an appetite surpressant while they are underground for a twelve hour shift or so. Interestingly, coca was also used as a form of currency amongst the incas, and in many ways it still is - it is common to give gifts of coca when you are visiting a place, or as a tip to someone.

So, I know you´re all wondering, what´s it like? Well, this jury is still out as to its effectiveness, but we can both assure you that we are not going to come back addicted to it - much like chewing tabacco, its pretty smelly and unpleasant. Our first experience with it was crossing from Argentina to Chile, over a 4800m pass - it was obvious to everyone that Dorthe was really suffering from the altitude, and so they gave her some of the local medicine, so to speak. We had a minor panic when we came to the border, not wanting to get busted with an "illegal" substance on us - only to find that the border guards were chewing as well.. Oh well. We´re not exactly sure whether it works or not - its pretty hard to guage these things - if there is any effect, it is pretty minimal, anyway.

Unfortunately, coca also has its bad side - the largest is probably that caused by outside bodies placing political pressure on Bolivia to change what in many ways is an ingrained part of their culture - the coca farmers are generally the poorest members of society here, and feel the brunt of these policies very harshly - but that doesn´t stop them from growing though. The result has been to force the farmers to defend their crops, and there are parts of Bolivia where, as a gringo, it is not wise to be seen. The arguments about this sort of thing, are, as you can imagine, endless. Long term use (people generally use it from their teenage years to the grave here - many of our patients in the house somehow manage to get some past the nuns to have a quiet chew) also seems to be pretty hard on the stomach, as you might expect.

But one side effect that we hadn´t thought of came and greeted us personally on Monday. One of the patients in the house (one who I was particularly fond of) was admitted to hospital suddenly - apparently he was a long term sufferer of tuberculousis, and it had spread into his intenstines, causing a great deal of pain. He was in hospital on Saturday and was improving a bit on Sunday night when the sisters went to see him. On Monday morning he got up and went for a bit of a walk, and, as you do in this country, a chew of coca. He was found dead shortly later - the autopsy revealed that he must have had a coughing fit, and swallowed the coca leaves, which lodged in this throat and suffocated the poor man. A rather tragic way to die for a loverly Bolivian who was just doing his thing.

Variety is the spice....

2005-05-30T03:14:00.000+02:00

In addition to the rose, chief trouble maker Manualita got her fair share of confetti on Mother´s Day here in Bolivia.

Dorthe and I are really enjoying our time working here in Potosi. One of the main reasons for this is the fact that the work is incredibly varied. Although there are days where you spend all day with a mop inhand, cleaning up the mess made by a resident who missed the bedpan, there are other days that are so completely different and varied you wouldn´t think you were in the same place. It is this variety that makes the work so enjoyable, and the icky times bearable.

The last week in Bolivia has seen a series of festivals, which all occur in very close succession. In addition on a couple of local festivals, on Thursday, we had the catholic festival of Corpus Christi (if anyone can tell me what this is all about, please do so). This was then followed by Dia de la Madre - mother´s day - on Friday.

For Corpus Christi, there are a series of traditional foods that the locals just love - tahutahus (finger sized bars of a donut like dough) and sopaypillas (dry baked biscuits coated in syrup and sugar) for breakfast in particular. Dorthe and I spent a couple of days beforehand working with some local volunteers in the kitchen preparing these rather different foods. For lunch that day, I spent an entire morning dicing large chunks of pork fat into small cubes. The fat was then deep fried in, you guessed it, more fat, to produce a small dry crispy cube that was served up to the residents, who absolutely loved it. Dorthe and I weren´t quite so convinced.

Another big revent recently was Mother´s day. In Bolivia, Mother´s day is a much bigger event than Father´s day (which is also known as "dog´s day"). One local explained it to me that you can have lots of different fathers throughout your life, but only one mother, which I thought was an interesting way to look at it. Dorthe and I spent most of a day getting ready for it. First the residents had to be prepared, especially the ladies - in addition to the obvious showers and clean clothes, we also spent an afternoon trimming fingernails and toenails. The fingernails weren´t so bad, but many of the toenails hadn´t been done for months (years?). It was, suffice to say, interesting to see what happens to toenails after that long. Some of them were so big, distorted, dry and discoloured that I felt like I was working on a horse, rather than a little old lady!W e then spent the rest of the afternoon preparing the women´s dining hall - blowing up over a 100 ballons and decorating.

We arrived at work at 7am the next morning to get everyone ready - the ladies in particular all got make up put on (I am hopeless at applying eye-shadow, it has to be said) and put on their finest clothes. The day then started with a mass, followed by a big breakfast - the men also dressed up and came into the women´s dining hall to give them all a hug and a kiss, which was quite cute. There was then lots of Mother´s day cake for everyone, and then lunch was then served a out on the patio in the sun, a special treat. Later in the day, there was a concert for the residents - the brass band from the neighbouring military school came in and played - you can probably imagine that a brass band inside a small dining hall is somewhat defeaning (for those of us that still have our hearing anyway). This was accompanied by lots of dancing on the part of the oldies, and even a visit from Miss Potosi, who handed out roses and sets of gloves. One of the men (who we call "Blender Bob", on account of the fact that all of his food goes in a blender before he eats it) had the job of introducing her - he was very excited about it and even rushed away to put in his false teeth that he only very brings out on special occasions! It was a fascinating day, and everybody there throughly enjoyed themselves, including the rather deafened Dorthe and I.

But its not just the festivals that make it interesting - the more everyday things are also fascinating. A week or so back we paid a visit to a miners village - placed high on the hill overlooking the city, it was absolutely crawling with young children. Unfortunately, the vast majority of them had lost their fathers to the dangers of working in the mines (the miner´s average life expectancy is 10-15 years of work in the mines). Together with two of the nuns, Dorthe and I spent an enjoyable afternoon playing Bolivian childrens games with them.

On yet another day, we paid a visit to a government run collective for poor rural solo-mothers called "Los Pinos". There, they could practice traditional handwork and skills, and sell it back to the public, sustaining both the cooperative and their families. Every day of work in this place seems to bring something different. And that is what we like about it so much.

Random fact of the day: Here in Potosi, we are living at 4100m. At that altitude, water boils at about 85°C, which creates some problems - in particular, you can´t cook rice properly in water at that temperature, as the centre of the grain stays hard. Instead, what the nuns do here is to roast the rice in the oven first for an hour of so, until it turns golden brown. The roasted rice is then boile in the standard manner later.

In a paupers grave....

2005-05-27T19:55:00.000+02:00

Last Thursday one of the patients died - I guess it is kind of inevitable that someone will die when you are working in an old person´s home. But what followed was, for us, anything but a normal burial.

The man who died was called Leonardo - he didn´t have any family, and as he was in the care of the nuns, it was up to them to bury him. Dorthe and I never met him while he was alive, as he was in Potosi hospital for the entire time that we have been here. Although he passed away on the Thursday, due to other things going on, it wasn´t until Saturday that the nuns were able to go and pick up the body, and hold a funeral.

First, there was a very brief memorial service held in the chapel - I hadn´t even finished getting some of the men into the chapel before it was over. Four of us then carried the plain wooden coffin, which was not nailed shut properly as the lid was a little warped, out to the car (a small 4WD), where it was left sticking out the back of the boot as it was too long. Two of the nuns, Roberto the driver, one of the residents of the house, and Dorthe and I then drove to the cementary. The coffin was not tied in, and I was convinced that we were going to loose Leonardo out the back on the way.

At the Potosi cementary, as in many South American cementaries, there are a large number of stalls outside selling flowers. Our car stopped at the gates and while we were waiting for them to open, Sister Mirabella went and got some flowers - the interesting thing was that she didn´t have to pay - seeing the nuns with a coffin, all the stalls gave a handful of flowers for free, so that by the time they were finished, they had two or three huge armfuls. As we were driving off, several more people came running up with flowers - it was very nice how they all gave flowers for the grave of a poor man that they didn´t know.

Next, we drove into the cementary to the section where he was to be buried, in what was basically the poor mans or paupers section. This area was absolutely packed with graves - in New Zealand, it is common practice to leave lots of space between graves, so that you don´t have to walk over someone´s grave. Not here. Roberto and I had an absolute nightmare trying to carry the coffin to the gravesite - it wasn´t so much that we were stressing about standing on graves (that was impossible to avoid), but rather tripping over the gravestones, and dropping the coffin. Somehow we managed to get the very heavy coffin there intact though. With very little ceremony, the cementary workers who had just dug the grave, dropped the casket into the hole - for a while it appeared stuck on an angle, half out of the grave, before they jostled it into position with two pieces of reinforcing steel. As the sisters said the last rights, the three workers then put their back into filling in the grave - dust illuminated by the setting sun flew all around, making people cough.

As they filled in the grave, I noticed that there was a cloth in the pile of dirt, that was getting caught on the shovels. Strange, I guess that they had heaped the dirt on top of it, as they do at burials in the west. Then Dorthe elbowed me - "look at that". There, sticking up out of the dirt was the unmistable outline of a human femur (leg bone). Two of them actually. A quick sweep of the shovel and they were in the grave, in the process revealling more bones - part of a spine. And some ribs. And maybe a collar bone too. I didn´t see it, but Dorthe thought she even saw the skull. All of these went into the grave. Further filling in of the hole revealed some masonry amongst the dirt - the broken remains of the previous headstone - complete with a name - Bernard. Clearly, they had dug up an old grave, to make room for Leonardo. It made perfect sense - after all, the paupers section was completely packed, and there was no more space available - but we were both shocked to see evidence of the previous resident so clearly.

The grave was soon filled in, and the flowers placed around it. There were many, many flowers, enough to completely cover the fresh, dry earth of the grave, and to lend some bright colours to the dull earthern surroundings. The sisters said a few more words about Leonardo, and told us what they knew about him - only that he was from La Paz originally, and that he had been in Potosi for a few years. They did not know if he had any family to inform of his death. Apart from the sisters, and us, I wonder if the passing of this poor man without family influenced anyone else. But even more sobering, as we walked away back to the car, we could clearly see a single rib of Bernard´s sticking out from the earth, amongst the fresh flowers.......

Abducted by Nuns

2005-05-22T00:38:00.000+02:00

You have to be careful with nuns. They look all sweet and innocent, but that`s part of the trap, because underneath it all, if you give them an inch, they'll take a mile. Or at least in our case, if you knock on the door to ask exactly what it is that they're doing, they hand you a broom and tell you to start cleaning the floor....

You`ve probably all been wondering why we have been so quiet for the last week or more. Well, our last post came to you from Potosi, Bolivia, and as it happens we are still here, nearly 10 days later. We have been abducted by nuns.... Well, ok, not exactly abducted - it is voluntary. But working with nuns, yes.

Before we left Denmark, we decided that we wanted to do some volunteer work as part of our travels. We had originally planned on doing this in Ecuador, but we found it particularly difficult to find something - a lot of places have quite complex setups that were expensive in time and/or money. Committing to something in advance from afar is a bit dubious when you don`t really know what exactly you`re going to be doing, or what the city is like etc. Thus, when we arrived in Potosi, the voluntary work idea was still very much up in the air.

But the second day that we were here, we were wandering around town when one of us noticed a car parked on the other side of the square - on the side of it was "Missionaries del Charidad" - the Missionaries of Charity, Mother Theresa`s organisation. Dorthe worked with them in Calcutta when she was 19, and really enjojyed the experience - we had tried to find out some information about them before we left, but were unable to find anything - we weren't even able to find if they were active in South America, let alone where. And yet, here was a car with their name on the side of it, sitting in front of us. There was nothing else to do - we went up and started talking in our appalling spanish. The driver took us two shops up the street, and there were two nuns photocopying their passports. "Yes, yes, come to our house and talk to Sister Superior". Which, of course, was the trap that led to the two of us with aprons on and brooms in our hands...

As it turns out, we are the first non-local volunteers that they have had in the five years that they have been running in Potosi. They have a home for elderly people (30 men, 40 women) from the poorest areas of Potosi and its surrounds who do not have any family to take care of them. In addition, they also prepare lunch for a further 50 very poor families (each with a minimum of 5 members, some up to 12), all of which are missing a parent (usually the father) - yup, that`s mum and eleven kids. There is also plenty of work with other children in the surrounding community.

So what are we doing? Well, Dorthe and I work in separate parts of the building - I work with the men, and Dorthe with the women. We typically start the day at 8am cleaning the dormitories, toilets, and um, the patients who didn`t make it to the toilet during the night. Dorthe spends quite a bit of her time combing and doing the women`s hair, while I often make the beds and drag some of the mattresses out to air. 10:30am is lunchtime for the residents, followed by the epic undertaking of serving up between 300 and 400 servings of food for the 50 poor families. We normally finish at 11:30am, and go and get lunch, followed by a siesta like all the locals - we are often utterly destroyed by lunchtime. Work starts again at 3pm, and thankfully its much more calm in the afternoon - some days we just sit around and try to talk to the residents in Spanish. We`re done at 6pm, and often just go home, have dinner, and go to bed before 9pm - somedays you feel like you should be in a rest home yourself, you`re that tired.

So that is what we have been doing. I`ll write more about it over the next few weeks - as you can imagine, it is an utterly fascinating place to work, and there are many, many, stories to tell. But for the moment, suffice to say that although the work can be extremeley tiring, it is extremeley rewarding, and we are both enjoying ourselves immensely.

Into Bolivia photo set

2005-05-12T21:49:00.000+02:00

Dorthe walking on the Salar de Uyuni

At last, some of the awaited pictures from the trip into the Salar de Uyuni. Unfortunately, internet connections in the more remote parts of Bolivia are not the fastest, as you can probably imagine, so there are only a few - after all, Mark took nearly 200 pictures in the three day trip across the Salar, and we wouldn´t want to bore you all to death. So, instead, just a selection of the best pictures from our trip into Bolivia. Enjoy.

Into Bolivia photo set

It was supposed to be easy

2005-05-12T16:08:00.000+02:00

It was supposed to be easy - just a simple little overnight bus trip from Tupiza to Potosi. 230km, 10 hours, arriving at about 6am in the morning. Simple really. Well, it would have been except for the minor problems of two extremely sore arses, and a miners strike.....

Tupiza, in south west Bolivia, is a fantastic little place. A town of 20,000 set amongst still more red rock canyons, it has a distinct western feel. Western, as in wild west, that is. In fact, 85km to the west, in the tiny pueblo of San Vicente, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid finally met their end after robbing a large payroll shipment just outside Tupiza (ok, how many of you who haven´t seen the Paul Newman film, actually knew that they ended up in Bolivia of all places? I have to admit, I didn´t). So, you can easily imagine the type of countryside that we`re talking about - dry hills, box canyons, and desert. And so, it being the wild west afterall, what better way to see it than from horseback?

We hired a guide and a couple of horses in Tupiza, and set out for a two day horse trek. We spent the night in a small mud house with a traditional agricultural family in the village of Quiriza, about 25km from Tupiza, before heading back the next day. Along the way we passed through some beautiful canyons, and some very bare, barren country. But the real highlight were the traditional campesiños (bolivian peasant class) that you met along the way. In the midst of all this red rock and very dry, arid country, were people eeking out an existence through subsistence agriculture. It was fascinating to see. The river at the bottom of the canyon was diverted into small irrigation schemes that produced maize (and garlic for market). A team of two Donkeys with a single furrow plough and a man walking behind worked the fields. Each morning, you would see women disappearing into the hills to graze their herd of goats, and they would then return again at sunset (note: Bolivian women swear at their livestock that go astray with more ferocity than any New Zealand farmer). The houses were very simple, mud and clay constructions thatched with bamboo, but nonetheless warm and cosy. As you can imagine, it was very, very different to anything either of us had seen before.

But the impact of the trip was not limited to a new appreciation of the campesiños - it also left some rather tangible scars on our bodies as well. After two days in the saddle, my backside was rather, ahhhh, black and blue. And maybe just a tad chafed as well.... Rather painful, it has to be said. Normally that would have been fine, except.... that night we took the overnight bus to Potosi. Now, Bolivian buses are, it has to be said, not quite up to the standard of their southern neighbours. In fact, they are rather crap, actually. Mix that with the roads (10 hours to drive 230km?), and travelling by bus here can be an exercise in endurance. Then mix that with being unable to sit comfortably in the seat for more than five minutes because your arse is so sore, and you´re on the way to the journey from hell...

But of course, it didn`t end there. We woke up about 6am to find the bus parked at the top of a hill. I assumed it had broken down (not unheard of in this country) and eventually went to have a look. We were at the end of a long, long line of buses and trucks, stretching for several kilometres down the road ahead of us. "What on earth is going on?". Well, Potosi is a large mining town, and it turned out that the miners were on strike, and had blockaded all roads into and out of Potosi. Unimpressed by the prospect of repeating the bus ride from hell back to Tupiza, there was only one thing to do - Dorthe and I got our packs and started walking towards Potosi in the brisk sub-zero morning air (the altitude of 4200m didn´t really help much either). Fortunately, they were letting foot passengers cross the barricades, and so we managed to get across - on the other side there were a load of taxis waiting, and so we finally managed to get into Potosi, at last, without any further adventures. It was, after all, supposed to be an easy trip.

The Kingdom of the Land Cruiser

2005-05-09T00:49:00.000+02:00

Bolivia so far can best be summed up by todays experience: twelve people crammed into a Toyota Land Cruiser. Ice on the inside of the windows. The sun rising over the desert. The ice melting, making way for views of deep desert canyons and red rocks. Suffocating heat. Dust in your mouth and unburnt petrol in your nose. Cars careering towards you as your traverse the side of a canyon, and the question of whether there is sufficient space for the two cars to pass. Loud, crazy Bolivian music. And the ever-present smell of someone chewing coca leaves.

We have been in southern Bolivia for four days or so now, and things are somewhat different. But different in a new and exciting way - after spending so long in the european cultures of Chile and Argentina, Bolivia is a shock to the system: kind of like a hit of the local product, if you get my gist....

From Salta, Argentina, we headed west over a 4800m pass into northern Chile - in spite of our previous experiences at altitude, Dorthe did very well, and survived the trip - although a quick sniff of Oxygen at the border crossing together with some coca leaves did do her the world of good, and made the remainder of the day bearable. As for me, well, I was positively loving it - 4800m is far higher than anything I´ve ever climbed, and I found it positively exhilarating.

Our first stop was the town of Calama, in Northern Chile. What´s there? Well, not much apart from a whacking great hole in the ground - the worlds largest open-cast copper mine. Being an engineer, I couldn`t go past such an epic undertaking without stopping to look at the big trucks and diggers... Hmmm, big trucks. Hmmm.... diggers. And epic is the word - a pit 4km long and 2km wide, with an uncountable number of trucks each carrying 360 tonnes of rocks 850m up from the bottom of the excavation. One million tonnes of rock removed every day, to produce 2000 tonnes of copper. As you can imagine, I pretty much stood at the top of the pit in awe for the entire length of the tour. Dorthe wasn´t quite as excited, but was still appropriately impressed.

From Calama, we turned back to San Pedro de Atacama, where we stayed in a beautiful little adobe cabaña and had a relaxing few days exploring the surrounding area. But the main purpose of San Pedro was to organise our adventure into Bolivia - a three day desert crossing in 4WDs, culminating in a crossing of the worlds largest salt flat, the Salar de Uyuni.

The Salar de Uyuni is a large area in southern Bolivia, about 200km wide, and 150km or so long - for about ten months of the year, it is a blindingly white salt flat, while for the remainder it is a lake covered in a couple of inches of water. Together with four others, Dorthe and I first took a shuttle bus from San Pedro to the Bolivian border, where we met our local Bolivian driver/guide/cook Faustino, and his trusty Toyota Land Cruiser. We then headed north through the high altiplano desert, crossing a 4900m pass, passing bright green lakes, beautiful symetrical volcanic cones, and strange rock formations along the way. Our first night was spent on the shores of Laguna Colorada, and it is an experience that will be hard to forget - walking along the shores of an island of pure white borax, the lake a bright pink colour and filled with flamingos, yellow and green deposits on the salt covered beach, the overcast sky almost purple in the fading light, and with the snow coming down. Foreign is a word that does not do it justice - humans simply did not belong to that world.

Our second day was a continuation of the first, with more flamingos, plenty of vicuñas (the wild relative of the alpaca) and beautiful lagunas. But the day that started in a freezing cold wind and ankle deep snow high on the altiplano, ended in the scorching heat of the catcus-covered hills surrounding the Salar. And it was the Salar on the third day was the true highlight - starting before dawn, driving across the white salt flats of the Salar, watching the ground turn from grey to yellow to blinding white. And blindingly white it was - in every direction, all you could see was the white of the almost perfectly smooth salt flat. Stunning.

Our tour ended all too soon in Uyuni, where we stayed last night, before carrying on here to Tupiza. And although we have left the tour and the salar behind us, in many respects things haven´t changed. Our "bus" was actually a Land Cruiser, packed to the brim with people - whereas we had seven people in our vehicle over the Salar, this morning we had twelve. It was tight. But when you see the country that you are passing through - deep canyons, steep hills, red rock, and streams that can quickly turn to torrents - you realise that you have not left the wild, beautiful and remote areas of Southern Bolivia behind just yet - indeed, you are still a subject in the Kingdon of the Land Cruiser.

Bolivia Bound

2005-05-05T01:33:00.000+02:00

A quick little posting from an internet cafe in San Pedro de Atacama. We have a very nice three days here in the desert of Northern Chile - tomorrow morning we head into the high mountains of the andes, bound for the salt deserts of Uyuni, in Bolivia.... Should be fun...

Crossing borders

2005-04-30T23:31:00.000+02:00

The beautiful colonial architecture of Iglesia San Francisco, Salta

New Zealand is surrounded entirely by sea, as I`m sure you know, and so as a result, we don`t have any borders. I have thus, always be fascinated by crossing a frontier into another country - the first time I did it, from the US to Mexico, I was looking for the line on the ground all the time. But what you don`t really realise, growing up in NZ, is that borders are completely arbitrary things. Drawn on maps by a combination of surveyors, diplomats, treaty negotiators, and the ruling elite, they often don`t reflect the reality of the situation on the ground. Our recent experiences have reflected this.

Our travels have taken us here, to Salta, in the northwest of Argentina. Salta is a lovely old colonial city, filled with churchs, adobe mansions, and many other beautiful old buildings dating back 200 or more years. It is located in a fertile basin, right at the base of the Andes, and is surrounded by a combination of foothills and plains covered in sugar cane and oranges - it has to be said, it feels very mediteranean. Dorthe and I have had a great time exploring the city, and its environs.

But Salta feels very different from everywhere else that we have been so far. The climate is far warmer and higher, and the for the first time, the Andes are there, hovering over us all the time, everprescent in the distance. And with the Andres comes the first significant population of the Quechua people, the modern descendents of the Inca. Quechua, being essentially american indians, look very different from most of the rest of european-descended Argentina - they have a dark brown skin, very dark eyes, and are often shorter in stature. The region is thus strongly infuenced by the mixing of the Andean cultures of the north, and the very european cultures of further south. Thus, although you can still get Argentine beef and beer, you can now buy Coca leaves quite openly on the street. Similarly, in the arts and crafts, the unique indigenous designs of the south are starting to be replaced by what one would think of as very Andean designs.

From Salta we made a brief two day trip north further into Quechua territory, to Humahuaca, and the associated Quebrada (Canon). Although we were still in Argentina, it felt like we had ventured far from the familar european cities that we have enjoyed so much over the past six weeks. The green of the Salta basin was replaced with red and brown desert hues. The trees and the plains were replaced with cactus and low scrub. Modern buildings of glass and steel gave way to half completed brick and mortar structures. And with this change came many other challenges - the high altitude (3000m) of Humahuaca made Dorthe quite ill, and gave me quite a whack of sunburn. The punctual, luxury semi-cama sleeping buses of the south have been replaced by run down local buses packed to the brims (not even standing room) that seem to run on their own timetable. Many adults look as you with a look that is almost suspicious, and you certaintly feel much more conspicuous. Children approach you and ask you directly for money, something we have not seen before. It feels much more under-developed than the Argentina we have come to know.

After a surprisingly challenging two days, the return to Salta today has proved to be quite a welcome relief, both for Dorthe`s upset stomach and for the peace of mind as well. From here, we sadly leave Argentine steak behind, heading first to Calama in Chile, and then over into Bolivia. And although we have the actual line on the map ahead of us, the last few days feel like we have crossed the border long ago.

Futbòl

2005-04-24T23:10:00.000+02:00

Boca Junior Fans: loco.

Did we go to the Futbòl? You even had to ask?. Miss out on going to a game in South America? "¿Eres loco?" (Are you crazy?). Of course we went to the Futbòl.

Dorthe and I tried to go to the Futbòl last time we were in Buenos Aires, but decided against it in the end - the game that was on was the final of the South American club championship, and it was sold out - our attempts at buying black market tickets only turned up P$5 (US$2.60) tickets for US$200. Thanks, but, ahhh, no thanks. Part of the problem is that you don`t really know what you`re going to get - not only is there the issue of fake tickets, but also you could well end up in the "zoo", with all the nutters. And if you thought that english soccer fans were crazy, you ain`t seen nothing yet!

We decided that rather that go through all the hassel of trying to buy a ticket ourselves, like last time, we would take a tour with on of the local hostels - it wasn´t all that much more expensive, and we knew what we were getting. The game we went to see was Boca Juniors (Deigo Maradona`s old club, and the most famous in Argentina) play at home against Colòn, from Santa Fe. We didn`t quite anticipate how removed from it all we would be though - we were bussed in the back entrance on our private bus with 30 other gringos, then we had our our allocated season seats, nice and far away from the "zoo". Not quite what I was expecting....

...but then it didn`t matter. When the singing is defeaning, as it was, it reverberates throughout the entire stadium. And when the stadium shakes because everyone is jumping up and down, then the entire stadium shakes. The atmosphere was, as you can imagine, electric, and the crowd sang about how great Boca was from start to finish.

There were two things that I found unusual. The first, was the response to the first Boca goal - loud, but perhaps not as crazy as I had expected. And then the response to the equalizing Colòn goal in the second half - there was no response. The crowd just kept on singing away, as if it hadn`t happened. I perhaps had the loudest reaction of all (it was a pretty sweet goal from a free kick, after all), which earnt me a few evil stares from the locals - whoops! Thankfully, we weren`t in the zoo....

The equalizing goal though did increase the tension amongst the crowd, who were suddenly rather unhappy with their team, and especially the ref, who started to be known as "¡Puta!" (I`ll let you figure that one out). And the final whistle, with the score at 1-1, really only led to the singing dying out. In many ways, it was the same as any other sporting match, anywhere else in the world. Except, maybe a bit more intense.

Luján and the Festival that didn´t exist

2005-04-24T22:08:00.000+02:00

Argentine Idol: Son of God, or Hand of God? "Religious" idols for sale in a stall at Lujàn

Waaaaaaaaaay back in Ushuaia, Dorthe and I made a decision that we were sick of the tourist "production line" that, along with every other gringo in town, we seemed to be on. Neither of us really see much point in going all this distance, just to do, drink and eat the same things that you do at home - we´ve even seen backpackers sitting around watching Beverly Hills 90210. It really doesn´t make much sense to us. Our desire to find stuff off the standard trail lead us, eventually, to Luján, and "the festival that didn´t exist".

The last time we were in Argentina, we were fascinated by Argentine culture of beef and the Gaucho, the local equivalent of the cowboy. Gauchos have a very strong cultural identity, and there is a large body of tradition associated with them. Reading the guide book in Ushuaia, we found that the Gaucho culture is centred on two towns near Buenos Aires: San Antonio de Areco, and Luján. In particular, the book mentioned that there was a large festival on April 21st, celebrating Caballero criollo, the horse of choice for the Gaucho. It sounded exactly like what we were looking for. And so, all the way from Ushuaia, all through El Calafate, and El Chaltén, we had this date of the 21st of April in mind, and planned everything around it. And rather than heading along the spine of the Andes as we had originally planned, we headed out to the coast, to Buenos Aires.

But there was a problem. A rather large one. The problem was that we weren´t completely sure whether this festival actually existed. We asked the locals in Ushuaia and no one knew about it. Neither did the tourist offices in El Calafate or Puerto Madryn. In Puerto Madryn, after many attempts, an internet effort turned up the Luján city webpage, and a reference to the festival - on the 23rd April. Ok, so the book is off by a day or two, no wurries, we´ll just spend some more time in Buenos Aires. But when we got that far, neither the tourist office for either Buenos Aires city, nor that for the greater Buenos Aires area, knew anything about it. We were starting to get stressed. Were we on a wild goose chase?

We decided to go all the same - Luján sounded like a nice city anyway. On the 22nd we went to San Antonio de Areco, two hours outside Buenos Aires - a beautiful old colonial town, with cobbelled streets, old houses, and tonnes of stores selling gaucho related stuff. A really nice, pleasant place to visit, which we enjoyed a lot. But, true to form, the tourist office there didn´t know anything about it either, even though Luján is 40km down the road. Not a good omen.

On the appointed day, we made our way to Luján. Luján is the religious centre of Argentina, and houses the national Basicila, a beautiful French-gothic cathedral that soars above the plaza loaded with stalls selling religious trinkets in front of it. But we wanted men on horses. We made our way to the tourist office. "Do you know where the gaucho festival is today?" "Today? No, there is no festival today, its in December." "December?" "Yes". "There is nothing today?". "No, but you should go to the zoo instead, there are lions there that you can actually touch." "Ahhh, no gracias". Great. We consoled ourselves with a visit to the cathedral. It was impressive, but after coming so far, and making so much effort to see the Gaucho, we were a bit disappointed.

On the way back from the Cathedral, we walked past the tourist office, and there were different people there. "Shall we try again?". "Yeah, why not?". I asked, and recieved the same answer. :-( Then Dorthe noticed a printout of the Luján webpage on the side of the tourist office, saying it was today. She pointed to it. "Oh THAT, its down at the momument at 3pm." Yah, at last, something.

We went down to the monument, and there were about twenty or thirty people there, milling around. A few of them had guitars. There were no horses. It all looked pretty local. We resigned ourselves philosophically to the failure of our quest. It was a nice idea, and we got to see the cathedral.....

Suddenly, from nowhere a marching band appeared. Then, from the other direction, 300 gauchos rode into town on their horses. The procession was endless. Men on horses, boys on horses. Boys on carts. Women riding side saddle on horses. Men herding wild horses through town. Girls on the back of boys horses. There were literally more horses than people. At last, real live, Gaucho. We were positively stoked.

What we came to see - a Gaucho on the main street of Lujàn, with the Lujàn Basillica in the distance

We spent the rest of the day wandering amongst them, photographing them, talking to them as best we could, watching their dance, and listening to their music about Caballero Criollo. That night, we even ate in true Gaucho style, with a Parallada - a massive fry-up of sausage, steak, ribs, sweetbread, blood sausage, whole kidneys, and small intestines. The day was outstanding, and everything we had hoped for - there were no other gringos, there was nobody trying to drag you off on their tours, there were barely even any non-Gaucho locals: just the Gauchos celebrating their beautiful horses. There is no doubt that the story of "Luján and the festival that didn`t exist" will be one of the highlights of this trip.

City of Tango

2005-04-24T21:33:00.000+02:00

Food, Argentine style: Bife de Lomo and a bottle of Mendoza red for Dorthe´s birthday

We´re back in Buenos Aires. And we can unresevedily say that it is good to be back. Last time that we were here (two years ago), we found that Buenos Aires is a different style of city - its not like Rio or Paris or London, where there are a defined set of things that you "must" see - in fact, Buenos Aires doesn´t even really have all that much to see. Rather, its more like Copenhagen, or Dunedin (to use personal examples), its a city that you have to go to, be there, and just soak up, to really appreciate. Realising this from our previous trip, Dorthe and I set about soaking it all up as best we can.

We arrived in Buenos Aires on Tuesday night after a 20 hour bus epic from Puerto Madryn, our last stop in Patagonia. We´ve spent most of the time here revisiting our old haunts from two years ago - we went to our favourite restaurant here for Dorthe´s birthday (see the photo of Bife de Lomo above), and are even staying in the same hotel as last time. Similarly, we have spent our time here filling in a few gaps from the last trip. We paid a visit to Ricoleta Cementary, where Argentina´s rich and ruling elite are buried (including the grave of Evita). The unique thing about Ricoleta is the nature of the graves - each is a marble or stone tomb at least three metres high (and often more), decorated with all manner of angels, statues, and other details. The effect when you get many of these lined up next to each other is a kind of small city, a "City of the Dead", if you like - It is a really quite fascinating to walk around for an afternoon.

We also paid a visit to the beautiful Casa Rosada, Argentina´s presidential palace, from where Eva and Juan Peron used to hold their famous rallies. The exterior of this palace is a rather different shade of pink. The interior, though, is beautiful - everything is in the old spanish colonial style, and is beautifully decorated. Very nice.

But the one thing that Buenos Aires is really associated with is, of course, Tango. It is everywhere, from the Tango shops selling Carlos Gardel memoribilla, to the buskers in the pedestrian malls dancing tango. Last time we were here, we went to a Tango show, and it was impressive. However, this time we wanted to do something a bit more realistic of what Tango is really about (and a bit cheaper) - we thus paid a visit to one of the many Milongas around the city. A Milonga is a tango club, where the locals go to dance the dance. And that is exactly what they did. The place we went was in a beautiful old colonial hotel, and it was absolutely full to the brim. The clientale ranged from the old couple who must have been pushing eighty - not particularly flamboyant, but they were definitely groovers in their day - to the exceedingly smooth 60 year old in the stylish grey suit with slicked hair who sat there smoking his cigarettes, and after much study, choose his partner very carefully - he was, of course, a legend on the dance floor - to the late 30s group who were into the more flamboyant aspects of the dance. Dorthe and I were the only non-locals there, and although we obviously didn´t dance, it was fascinating just to sit there and watch the locals do their thing. It is, after all, what you do, when you visit the City of Tango.

Pictures!

2005-04-21T20:14:00.000+02:00

Lago Hijos, near Mt Fitz Roy

It took a while, but at long last we finally managed to find a decent internet cafe, where we could sit down and upload some pictures. Thus, at last we have some pictures of our first month of travelling up on the web. Just click on the link below, and you´re away laughing.

Patagonia Picture Set

A Whale of a Time

2005-04-20T15:52:00.000+02:00

We always seem to find that its not the sights that are the most memorable, but rather the little adventures that you have along the way. And our adventures in Peninsula Valdés, attempting to see Killer Whales (Orca), will certaintly be amongst some of the more memorable of this trip.

Peninsula Valdés is about 1300km south of Buenos Aires, and sticks about 70km out into the ocean. Its sheltered bays provide a very rich breeding ground for southern right whales, magellanic penguins, orcas, sea lions, seals, and lots of other marine animals - so much so, that it has been recognised as a UNESCO world heritage site. This is a particularly important spot for Orca, because it is one of only two known places in the world where Orca use the "intentional stranding" technique to hunt seals. What´s this, you ask? Well, you make have seen it on telly - its where the 9m Orca comes barelling up the beach in a wave, grabs an unsuspecting seal off the shore, then wriggles its way back down the beach, into the water, and out to sea for a snack. Very unusual behaviour, and if you´re ever seen footage of it, you´ll agree that it would be pretty spectacular to see in person. More info and pictures here. Passing through the area, there was no way we were going to miss this.

From Comodoro Rivadavia (the last posting), we carried on north to Puerto Madryn. One approach to touring the peninsula was to take a guided tour from Madryn, but to have any chance of seeing the stranding behaviour, you need to be there at high tide, which, at the time we were there, was just before sunset. However, the guided tours were all at home in bed by that time, so they were pretty much useless. Instead, we decided to do it ourselves, our way. We took a bus out onto the peninsula to the very small town of Puerto Pirámides, and got a room there. We then spent much of the afternoon haressing the poor unfortunate gringos who drove into town in their rental cars to give us a ride. Didn´t work - it seemed that everyone had rented Fiat Unos, and packed the back seat with kids, motocycle repair kits, luggage, that sort of thing - there was no ride to be had there. After much frustration, with time running out and the supply of gringos drying up, we decided to pay the local taxi driver, Dino, to drive us out there in his car. Not so cheap, about the same price as a tour, but at least it got us to the right place at the right time.

So, Dino took us to Punta Norte - the trip out there, through the arid peninsula was particularly pleasant, and along the way we got to see Magellanic Penguins and Sea Lions on the beach, and guancos (a relative of the llama) and ñandu (a small emu like bird) on land. Also of particular interest were a stick insect, and a very curious Armadillo. But it was Orca we came to see, and we spent about three hours at the beach before the sunset. It was fascinating to watch - the Orca would patrol around in the surf, perhaps 10m off shore, and all the seals would be sitting up on the beach, well away from the water. Well, most of the seals - like most children, the pups ignored their parents warnings and were playing in the surf, having a great time. The scene was set.....

.... and of course, nothing happened. The ranger later told us that conditions were absolutely perfect, they could not have been better, but... the orca obviously weren´t in the mood. Oh well. We at least gave ourselves a chance of seeing this behaviour, and we did get some great views of the Orca. Neither of us were really expecting to see it, so we weren´t too disapointed. Apparently, its just a matter of having the right timing - Dino told us that he saw it on 22 days in March, but that it has slowed down a lot in April. Oh well, it didn´t really matter too much, as we still had a good day.

We slept in Puerto Pirámides that night, and then went to get the bus back to Puerto Madryn the next moring. Except.... there was no bus. It ran every day, except Monday - figure that one out if you can. This left us with a minor problem, as we had already booked the bus tickets on to Buenos Aires for 9pm that night. Ok, so what do we do?

First, we asked Dino what it would cost to go to Puerto Madryn - P$120 (US$45). Arggggh! Not paying that. Ok, so now what? Well, the only way out was to try to bum a ride from some kind person. After having no luck with the gringos around town, we decided to move to a more appropriate spot, 5km out of town. During the two hour walk with packs, we saw three cars. Not looking good. We then sat at the intersection for another three hours. During that time another four cars came by, mostly loaded with people. It was not looking promising. We were stuck in the middle of Patagonian desert, with the wind blowing, and not a car in sight.

Patience is a virtue, and we were eventually rewarded - by the postman. Apparently he only makes one run a week out to Puerto Pirámides, and was quite happy to have a couple of gringos who can´t speak spanish in his mail van with him. It was fun trying though - we were able to have quite an interesting, if rather drawn out, conversation with him, with the aid of a phrasebook and a dictionary. Quite fun.

After doing his mailrun with him, he dropped us at the bus station in Madryn. We were back in civilisation and a 20 hours bus ride got us up here to Buenos Aires. And although we saw Orca, Guanacos, Armadillos, Ñandu, Stick Insects and all sorts of strange animals, I´m sure the most memorable part of the trip will be the five hours we spent stuck in the desert with not a car in sight.

Get yur Patagonia on

2005-04-17T05:33:00.000+02:00

I thought I had it right. I ordered a Hamburger, a plain old Hamburger. Nothing fancy. I even pointed to the thing, and said that I wanted a "Hamburgesa". I was sure the guy understood. He asked if I wanted anything else. I said no, "soloameinto hamburgesa" - just a hamburger. And just a hamburger was what I got - no lettuce, no, tomato, no onion, no sauce, not even a bun. Just a hamburger patty on a plate.

Yeah, must work on the spanish a bit more, it seems. This posting is coming to you from Comodoro Rivadavia, a coastal town in Northern Patagonia. We left Ushuaia about five days ago now, and headed north on the bus back over the barren steppes of Tierra del Fuego, over the Straits of Magellen (it was still stonking, just like the first time we crossed it), up to Rio Gallegos, and then onwards to the inland town of El Calafate. Calafate is a rather touristy town in southern patagonia, and it is centered around one attraction - Perito Moreno Glaciar. And what an attraction it is - from the southern patagonia ice field it descends down to a lake and pushes its way across it, almost slicing it in half (it has done so on six occasions in the last 70 years). The front of the glaciar is about 3km wide and 60-70m high, and it is everything that you expect a glaciar to be - big, white, loud, spectacular. Dorthe and I spent an entire day from 9:30am to 4:30pm sitting at the view point watching it calve ice-bergs off into the lake - in addition to the many small falls and collapses, on we saw a massive hunk of ice simply peel off the top of the glaciar and crash into the lake four separate occasions, creating a suitably large splash and sending a huge wave out across the lake towards us. Absolutely spectacular, and a day well spent.

From El Calafate we then took a bus 225km along a dusty, rutted gravel road to El Chaltén. Chaltén is a mountain town that sprung up recently as part of a terroritorial claim between Argentina and Chile, and it is about as remote as you can possibly get in Patagonia using public transport. And it feels like it - dusty, unsealed streets. Half built houses. Corrugated iron roofs partially blow off. And the incessant Patagonia westerly, stirring up a duststorm like you´ve not seen before. All it needed was a few tumbleweeds and Clint Eastwood, and you´d have yourself a spagetti western. Very frontier. Very cool.

And the real reason it exists? Cerro (Mt) Fitz Roy. The Fitz Roy range is everything you expect of Patagonia - stupendous granite spires soaring 3000m into the sky, with glaciars and snowfields barely clinging to the sides. Below the snowline, the hillsides are again covered in flaming red ñirre (which I now know is called Antarctic Beech, Nothofagus antarctic, in english), and just a smattering of glacial lakes here and there is the iceing on the cake. I have no more superlatives to describe it. For me, this has been the highlight of the trip so far: remote, desolate, windswept, extremeley beautiful and absolutely unforgettable. We spent two days there in total, walking, watching the cloud swirl around the peaks, and trying not to get blown off our feet too many times.

But as I alluded to earlier, that, unfortunately, is about as remote as we can get. It is possible to get more remote, and we tried, we tried very hard actually. Unfortunately though, it didn´t quite work out for us - we looked at renting a car, we looked at hiring a guide, we looked at trying to find a punter to drive us, and unfortunately, they were all beyond our price range - strangely, it was cheaper to hire a 4WD with a driver and english speaking guide than it was to hire the car ourselves! So, as much as I liked the idea of rocking around the most remote parts of Patagonia in a rented Toyota Hilux, we turned back to civilization....

...which brings us to Comodoro Rivadavia. We are basically leaving Patagonia in the next few days after what has been a fantastic trip through this part of the continent. In an hour or so (1:15am), we catch the bus on to Puetro Madryn, where we pay a quick visit to Peninsula Valdés. There, we hope to see some Orca and maybe some Magellanic penguins. Then onwards, northwards to Buenos Aires, and warmer climes. As appealing as the prospect of putting away the fleece and goretex is, I think we are both a bit sad to be leaving cold, windswept, barren Patagonia.

55° S

2005-04-12T09:08:00.000+02:00

The time has come, to leave this town. Its a pity really, because we have had such a good time here. But unfortunately, time and money are limited quantities, and we can´t really afford to spend much of either on Ushuaia any more, so we must head off. From Ushuaia, there is only one way that you can go. North. Well, perhaps two ways - North, and maybe a little bit more South.

Today we went on a bit of a tour around the area - we had been talking about doing this for quite a while, but we sort of waited for a good day, and for a few plans to unfold a bit. After exploring the options, together with an Italian couple, we ended up paying the owner of the Hostel we are staying in, Claudio, P$200 (US$35) to drive us around for the day. The morning dawned to another fresh dusting of snow, but not to worry. We headed off anyway, along the south coast of Tierra del Fuego. We drove through magnificent snow-coated forests of ñire, the antarctice deciduous beech that is currently bright red in colour and about to drop its leaves. The ñire gave way to lenga (evergreen beech) forests in places, and together the two switched back and forth, depending on the local microclimate conditions - this was most evident on the hillsides. The red ñire started right from the treeline - further down the hill, there was a sudden chage of colour from red to green as the lenga took over. And towards the bottom of the hill, the lenga was replaced by a second unknown deciduous forest that was yellow in colour. The striped hillsides, impossible to photograph properly as they are, will be one of the enduring memories of this area.

The forest gave way rapidly to exposed coastline. And talk about exposed - the wind absolutely rips through the beagle channel at times, distorting the coastal trees beyond belief, leaving its image everwhere, even when its not blowing. I have seen trees distorted by the wind before, but not like this. One particular tree was just growing sideways, with branches extending 20m downwind from the trunk, but with nothing on the upwind side. Unique.

Three hours driving took us to the end of the road at Estancia Puerto Rancho. At that point, we had crossed the 55th parallel, and were further south than any settlement, except for those in Antarctica. Our trip south had ended. There was now only one way to go - back to the warmth of the north. And so too our travels in this part of the world - sadly, it is time to leave. We catch the bus north at 5:30am this morning.

Getting there is half the fun

2005-04-10T23:18:00.000+02:00

Getting there is half the fun. We are currently in Ushuaia, Argentina, which, at 54° S is the southern most city in the world - its situated on the southern shore of Tierra del Fuego, just a few hundred kilometres from Cape Horn itself. You can go further south from here, but it gets hard. And more importantly for us, it gets expensive. For us, this is the southern limit of our travels (this time around, at least). But getting here has been a story of its own.

After the previously noted beating administered by a distorted Chilean stereo system in an internet cafe, we headed south. A three hour bus ride from Puerto Natales took us to Punta Arenas, where we stayed the night. There were three very memorable highlights of that day: 1. Dorthe´s new "boyfriend" - the bus drivers assistent (most long distance buses here are manned by two people, one who drives, and the other who serves the driver and passangers tea, coffee, food etc). Well, he took quite a liking to Dorthe, and ended up "talking" (he was actually deaf and mute, and so we had to sort of sign with him as best we could) to us all the way. That was fine, but then he started making the coffee - we thought it was for everyone, but in the end he only served the two of us, and the driver, which was a touch embarressing! 2. Trying to rent a room in a Punta Arenas bed and breakfast (which didn´t serve breakfast) from a 93 year old who was stone deaf and partially blind and didn´t understand our spanish one iota! It took half an hour, but we got there in the end. 3. Cooking dinner that night - we brought some large pinkish steaks called Pollo Ganso from the supermarket that looked quite good. Pollo is spanish for chicken, and Ganso is spanish for goose, so we thought it would just be goose, or maybe emu, something birdlike anyway. We fried it for four minutes on each side, but it turned out that it was pretty damn tough. Like really, really tough. Afterwards, we found out from the son of the 93 year lady (who was the real proprietor of the B&B), that Pollo Ganso comes from young calves (no poultry there, despite name), and that he would normally cook it for about an hour in a steamer.....

From Punta Arenas, we then had a 12hr, 645km bus ride south over Tierra Del Fuego to Ushuaia. Why does it take 12hrs to do 645km, that´s not far? It didn´t take long to figure out - the road was rather, ahhh, dodgy - three quarters of it was corrugated, pot-holed gravel roads - that of course didn´t stop the bus driver from barrelling along as fast as he could though! She was a bit of a, ahhh, bumpy ride.

The scenery though, was fantastic - barren, vast, windswept country. First we paralleled the straits of magallen, passing old ships beached on the sore, and rusted warehouses. Then we crossed the straights - a 30 min ferry trip in big seas, spray, and STRONG winds that was absolutely spectacular, then 9 more hours of windswept tundra over Tierra del Fuego, punctuated only by the border crossing. And finally into the mountains for a spectacular alpine crossing down into Ushuaia - a relatively small tourist town on the Beagle channel. Appropriately enough for the "end of the world", it was snowing and minus 2°C when we arrived.

Ushuaia is a picturesque, if overly touristy, little town. It is surrounded by snow capped mountains, and fronts out on the Beagle channel. The hills are covered with ñirre, a beech species that at the moment is bright red, and just stunning. We have spent the last two days here exploring around, and dealing with the rather changable weather - if its not raining, its snowing. We spent the first day exploring the local national park, walking through beech forests, spagnum peat bogs, and past beaver dams. Then yesterday we climbed up to a glaciar behind the town, which involved walking most of the way through fresh snow that was up to waist deep in places!!!

Its a long way from anywhere, it was quite expensive to get here, and was certaintly quite a substantial detour from our general direction of travel. And although getting here was half the fun, being here is even better.

Why we love Argentina

2005-04-10T00:54:00.000+02:00

Bife de Lomo: 600g of beef tenderloin. Argentine P$16 (US$5.30). Vegetables are an optional extra.

Are you really sure you want to do this?

2005-04-06T02:13:00.000+02:00

This is where travelling gets you - a small town (19,000 people) in Chilean Patagonia, in an internet cafe with a single 128kbps connection shared by 10 other gringos, trying to think over the stereo which is blaring out a heavily distorted (I tell you, that speaker is working its arse off!) version of a tired old Lenny Kravitz CD. Oh no, wait! The Lenny Kravitz has just stopped. And its being replaced with...... Shania Twain. Bugger.

From Santiago, we headed south at full power. An overnight sleeper bus took us 1000km south to Puerto Montt, at about latitude 42°S. We then farted around most of the day, waiting for our ferry to be ready to set sail. It finally did, about 8pm that night (only six hours late), and then we headed south. 1500km further south. "Ferry" is perhaps an optimistic description of the vessel - she was actually a roll-on-roll-off cargo ferry, with a few tourist cabins added as a bit of extra business. Basic, but more than sufficient for two broke backpackers. (Shania Twain just turned into Bon Jovi, and this has to be the slowest paragraph I´ve ever written). We spent the next four days sailing south through what I guess you would call the "inside passage" of the chilean fiords - if you look at a map of Chile, you´ll notice that the west coast is extremeley broken and fiorded. Well, believe it or not, there is a passage down between the fiords that takes you right to Cape Horn, if you´re keen enough, with only a minimal exposure (in our case about 12 hours) to the open, rolling, seak-sickness inducing Pacific Ocean. The width of these channels is highly variable, from many kilometres in places, down to 80m at the narrowest point (being on a 19m wide ferry barrelling through an 80m wide gap with a bend in the middle of it at close to full pace was rather exciting, it has to be said). And all the way along, the mountains came right down to the water. Postively outstanding. In addition, we got to see our fair share of wildlife (Orcas, Dolphins, lots of sea birds). It was also particularly interesting watching the vegetation change over the week - from the arid deserts around Santiago, to the lush sub-tropical rainforest of Puerto Montt and the northern region of the fiords, and then a gradually lowering bushline, which finally met the water on the last day, and was replaced by the sub-antarctic tundra of Patagonia.

Yes, Patagonia. On the last day of the ferry trip, we woke up and we knew that we had arrive in Patagonia. Everything was different - the mountains were bigger, the plains were wider, glaciers reached down the sides of vertical cliffs, clawing their way towards the ocean (but not quite making it). Puerto Natales, our final destination and where I am writing this from, is a windswept town plonked down in seemingly the middle of nowhere - it looks like it could be the steppes of Mongolia, or somewhere in Alaska. But here, we find it at 52°S - well on the way to Antarctica. And undeniably remote.

After a brief stop in Puerto Natales for food, camping supplies, and to let one punters tummy recover from the food on the boat (ok, so it was me), we left the sea and headed overland to Torres del Paine National Park. This park is impressive - its centered around a very large granite massive that has been sculpted by glaciation to produce a series of impressive towers. The crowning jewel though, is a layer of black sedimentary rock that caps most of the towers. Surround it with jade-green glacial lakes, and you have something competely unlike anything I have ever seen anywhere else in the world. Spectacular. I´d post piccies, but maybe not on this dodgy connection!

Dorthe and I spent five days in the park - we did a partial loop around the base of the towers, which was simply magnificent. The first two days were spent around the largest glacier I have ever seen - Glacier Grey, and the lake where it dumps its icebergs - maybe three to five times the size of the Tasman Glacier. We then climbed up into the centre of the Torres del Paine massive, into the "French Valley" - a glacial cirque of granite towers, with a coating of stunted (by the cold and wind) beech trees that had started to change colour from green to their autumnal yellows, oranges, and reds. Luverly. Then finally, two more days working our way around the base to a couple more granite towers (the actual Torres del Paine). Unfortunately, our plans to climb to the base of them were thwarted by the weather - the four good days prior finally ended last night, with the onset of the great Patagonia westerly. This is a wind that you have to experience to appreciate - consistent it most certaintly is not. Relatively calm conditions would suddenly be shattered by a loud roar slowly working its was down the valley - when it finally hit, it was like a freight train coming in through the back door. I have sailed in strong winds, with gusts up to perhaps 40 knots. But I have never see wind whip spray off the surface of the lakes like it was doing today - its hard to estiamte such things without an instrument, but I´d put the strongest of the gusts at perhaps 60 knots (100-110kph). Neither Dorthe and I slept much last night, being kept awake by either the wind or stressing about whether the tent was going to survive. Fortunately it did (the Macpac Olympus: Patagonian tested), but climbing up a narrow alpine valley in those winds was not very appealing unfortunately, so we headed back to town.

Leaving the torres behind I found hard - we had a fantastic five days, with very little sign of other people. We saw guanacos (wild llamas), ñandú (small emu like birds), and spent our lunch hours on our backs watching the condors soar high, high above on the thermals. The weather was both beautiful, and stupendous at the same time. And the scenery was just magic. It was sad to leave such a wonderful place.

So, where to from where? Where to go when you are so far south? Where else, of course? Further South.

¡Adios! to Santiago

2005-03-28T00:09:00.000+02:00

We're done with Santiago, its time to head south. We're off to catch the bus in a few minutes: Patagonia, here we come!!!

Valparaiso

2005-03-27T05:33:00.000+02:00

Today we made a little excursion to the town of Valparaiso (pop 270,000), which is the traditional port city for Santiago and the surrounding region, about two hours away on the coast. Valparaiso was a major city in international trade at the turn of the last century, but it faded into obscurity as soon as the Panama canal was opened and trade stopped going around Cape Horn. The entire town is thus still pretty much comprised of old turn-of-the-century-port buildings that range from absolutely stunning villas to rusted corrugated iron shacks that would look shabby in the slums of Calcutta. Many of these have been taken over by artists, and some of the areas have quite a bohemian feel to them, with artists and street performers all round the place. The real beauty of the place, though, is the setting - a large sheltered bay with a small flat downtown and then steep hills behind just covered in beautiful houses. The houses are very brightly coloured, painted in bright blues and yellows and reds, and everything is just a patchwork of angular lines and colour coating the rolling hills.

There were four highlights of the day. The first was the drive out to Valparaiso, through part of the Chilean wine growing area - the sheer scale of the vineyards was incredible - massive valleys just coated from wall to wall with vines - some of those vineyards must have more grapes than all of Marlborough (NZ's best wine growing area) put together!. Next, riding the "funiculars" - because there are so many cliffs and steep hills, they have installed cable drawn carriages everywhere that just go straight up onto the top of the hills. They are a little rickety, being built at the turn of the centry, but fun to ride. Secondly, we visited the house of the Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda, which housed his odd but fascatinating collection of random objects, and featured a stunning view of the pacific and the town. Thirdly, exploring the incredibly complex maze of streets, alleyways, staircases, and funiculars in the city - lets just say that they didn't try to impose a square grid of streets on this city! In all, we had a great day in Valparaiso.

That's about it for Santiago. Tomorrow we go to church (it is Easter Sunday after all), meet up with Andrea one last time, and then tomorrow night we head south - 16 hrs in a bus to Puerto Montt, then four days by ferry to Puerto Natales, right in the heart of Patagonia. I'm looking forward to it.

A good friday on Good Friday

2005-03-26T04:50:00.000+01:00

Today was a night mellow day exploring Santiago. The highlight of the day was Mercado Central, which is the main fish market - lots of little stalls under one big roof, with just huge stacks of fresh fish everywhere. Lots of strange species that I'd never seen before too. Then we headed to the Santiago Zoo, to meet up with Andrea (where she works), which was fun - we got the behind the scenes tour, including the birds of prey! A ride on the gondola above the city gave us some loverly sunset views, and then we headed out for a few drinks and pizza. Quite a nice day exploring the city really.

Sleepless in Santiago

2005-03-25T08:56:00.000+01:00

Santiago - jetlag city. Both Dorthe and I have got it really bad - not surprising since we've only been here two days, and it is an eight hour time difference from NZ. Still, waking up at 2am and going "I'm AWAKE" is a touch annoying, so I thought I'd try and pass the time by scribbling something here. Yesterday was spent just cruising around Santiago, looking around some of the little neighbourhoods, before having dinner with Andrea Caiozzi (who we know from Berkeley) and her fiancee (yup, she's engaged to a nice Chilean man who works at the Santiago zoo with her) - it was nice to see her again, and will spend a bit more time with her over the next few days.

Random cultural observation of the day: Kissing in the streets and parks. It seems to be quite the norm here to sneak off into the park for a little kiss. Ok, maybe that should be a full-on face-suck. After NZ, where NOBODY is even seen holding hands in public, Dorthe and I have found it quite funny. Walking back past one of the big parks tonight, there were probably a dozen benches in a row in one place, and every-one of them had a couple on it, snogging away without a care who saw them...

¡Hola! from Santiago

2005-03-24T08:13:00.000+01:00

Well, we arrived safely in Santiago - we even managed to get our cooker here without it being confiscated by Qantas, which was a definite bonus. First impressions of Santiago - hot (26 C), dry (its in a desert afterall), rather polluted (first time I've ever seen the smog sitting in the streets like it does here. Both Dorthe and I are suffering from cronic itchy throats and runny noses as a result of the pollution), surrounded by epic mountains (except you can't see them due to the pollution), and it has a mangnificent collection of cathedrals and churchs, which we've been exploring. Its fun being back in the South American madness though - people everywhere, buses roaring back and forth, all sorts of strange foods, and prices that don't make much sense ($1100 for a bus ride? How much exactly is that in NZ$??). We have a few more days here, and then we head south to Patagonia.

NZ in Retrospect

2005-03-23T15:36:00.000+01:00

Hey Everyone

So, here we are, after spending 3 months and driving 10.000 km, at the end of our trip around New Zealand.

It has been great and I can recommend all of you to come here and have a look at the beautiful nature they have. Yes, nature has been the big thing and the highlight of our trip. For the first time of my life I have been standing on the top of a steaming volcano, seen boiling mud and walked through rainforest. But that is not all, when it comes to animals we have also had some amazing experiences: Dolphins, penguins, sea lions and last but not least Royal Albatrosses. The Dolphins must be my favorite and we have been lucky to see three species in the wild: the quite small hector Dolphins playing in the surf in the south of the South Island, swimming with the Dusky Dolphins and finally seen the big Bottlenose Dolphins in Milford Sound. Though, I must say that penguins are pretty cool too. It has all been about being outdoor and we have had the weather to really enjoy it, lots of sun which was great for tramping, canoeing and kayaking, but also appreciated when we were spending time on the beach.

Besides our trips all over the country we have enjoyed spending time with Marks family, after such a long time in America there has been lots of catching up to do. We both enjoyed Owen (Marks brother) and Tracey’s wedding where everybody seemed to be in the same place at once.

Tomorrow we will be on the plane heading to South America, Chile. After 5 days in Santiago we have booked a four day cruise down the west coast of Chile, which will take us to Patagonia. After a bit of hiking we will make our way back up north, and the rough plan is to be in Bolivia in May, Ecuador in June, Peru in July and then through Brazil in August to finally return to Denmark at the end of August (25th). Even though we are both very excited about what is to come, it is a bit sad to say goodbye to NZ cause we have really had a good time, but luckily it probably will not be long before we are back.

The Good
· Hokey pokey ice cream
· Driver reviver (or should that be passenger reviver?) – free coffee at rest stops along the road
· Meat pies
· Fish and chips
· $1 “day old” specials in the bakeries!
· Sleeping in the car –we’re buying a VW Combi when we get back to Europe!!

The Bad
· The car breaking down – Avimore, Ahipara, Reinga, Kaikoura, Christchurch. Grrrrr.

The Ugly
· Mark’s left knee, after the physiotherapist shaved the hair off it so that it could be strapped properly.

Cheers Mark and Dorthe

The Southern Drop

2005-03-21T14:32:00.000+01:00

Driving into the southerly cloud near Burke's pass, just on sunset.

Having done the north island, and the top of the south, it was now time to get into rest of the South Island, into the real good stuff. The bottom half of the south island is the real tourist trail of New Zealand, as it has some of the best scenery. I'm pleased to report, however, that it hasn't all been taken over by tour buses, or subdivided and sold off to rich foreigners. At least not yet.

Mum, Owen, Tracey, and Dad, outside the church

First, though, there was the matter of my brother's wedding to attend to. Owen is my younger brother by three years, and on the 5th of March he got married to Tracey, a fine young lass from Christchurch. Owen asked me to be his best man, which was both a surprise and an honour. The wedding, and everything associated with it, went about as smoothly as these things do, it was really quite remarkible really. Dorthe and I were really quite amazed about how relaxed Owen and Tracey were in the months and weeks leading into it - obviously, they were fully on top of it, because it just cruised along under its own power. The wedding was fantastic, and we both enjoyed ourselves a lot - as best man, I also got to embaress my brother one last time, which was also rather enjoyable. Yup, a really enjoyable time.

Dorthe and I spent about two weeks or so in Timaru and Christchurch before the wedding, helping with the preparations, and generally doing farmwork etc etc. But as soon as the wedding was done, we took off to complete our tour of New Zealand. From Christchurch we headed back over Arthur's Pass, and down the west coast to Fox Glacier, a region famed for two glaciers. Our plans to explore and walk on them were unfortunately ruined by a classic west coast torrential downpour, which lead to rising rivers and access to the glaciers being cut off. D'oh!!! Oh well. We waited a bit for the weather to clear, and were rewarded with a couple of nice glimpses of the ice through the cloud, but we decided that it was best to cut our losses, and head further south.

Mark feeling at home on the Routeburn

We worked our way south for the next two days, passing over the beautiful Haast pass, and through the tourist towns of first Wanaka, then Queenstown, and then Te Anau. They're nice places to visit - if you have money, which we don't. Neither of us were too excited about $140 for a bungy jump! Instead, we headed for the Routeburn track, a classic New Zealand walking track that crosses the Southern Alps right in the heart of Fiordland. As well as being specactular, this area is also one of the wettest places on earth - in the six days prior to our arrival, they had had 935mm of rain. For comparison, Christchurch, Copenhagen, and San Francisco all get about 600mm of rain - in a YEAR!!! True to form, the first day of the trip, it was bucketing down - so we went anyway - it's not Fiordland if you don't get wet. I have to say, it took a while to muster up the courage to pack up the gear and step out of the car into torrential rain though, but once we did, it was worth it - the native bush of New Zealand (and especially Fiordland) is incredibly well adapted to rain, and it seemed to be at its most brilliant when it was raining. Even though we didn't break the bushline at all on the first day, the rain made it the most spectacular - every single tree was dripping with wet moss and lichen, every little bank turned into a waterfall, every stream into a roaring torrent, and the major waterfalls... Well, you couldn't even approach them! I absolutely loved it.

The Routeburn track, in its full glory.

The Routeburn is an alpine crossing - the first day you walk along the side of the glacially carved Hollyford valley, right at the bushline. We stayed in Lake McKenzie hut that night, with 40 other sodden trampers all fighting for space around the stove to dry things out! The second day you continue along the side of the valley, and then jump up out of it, over the saddle, and then have a long descent down into the Routeburn valley. This descent was particularly spectactular, but unfortunately, one particular member of our party wasn't enjoying it very much - my left knee. By the time we got to Routeburn flats huts, she was pretty well buggered - it'd locked tight, and was really rather sore to walk on. Not what you want with another three days of tramping left to get back to the car.

Routeburn flats hut was surrounded by wild raspberry bushes, and of course Dorthe got very excited about this, and spent an hour out there raiding them - she got enough to completely fill two dessert bowls, and so for dessert that night we had raspberrys with brown sugar - all the other hikers were very jealous. The next morning we headed off, down to the end of the Routeburn track, from where we then planned to take a shuttle about 20km down the road to the start of the Caples track, which two days later would bring us back to the car. But it was fairly quickly became obvious that my knee was poked, s no way it was going to hold up to another two days of hard tramping. What to do, what to do?

Dorthe admires the view of Routeburn Flats, from just above the Routeburn Falls hut

One of the interesting things about tramping in NZ is that you can walk a short distance (in our case 50km) and be a very long way from your car by road (in our case more than 330km). Being poor broke backpackers, there was only one option - hitchhike. And what a hitch we got - we talked the shuttle man into dropping us at Glenorchy, and about three cars later, we got a ride with a very friendly Dutch couple. We were only expecting to go to Queenstown, but they were going all the way to Te Anau, so we had a very pleasant four hour ride to Te Anau - we arrived there at 6:30pm, with 130km and 90 mins of daylight left. Would we make it? No wurries - four cars later we got picked up by a german couple in a campervan - we were at the car by 7:45pm, and off again, dodgy knee and all. My climbing partner, Matt and I did an analogous hitch about three years ago - it took us six rides, a night squatting in a farmers paddock, and a paid bus ride to get back to the car. Suffice to say, I was very excited about how well it went this time!

Milford Sound, with Mitre peak to the left and The Lion to the right.

That night was spent in Milford Sound, and early the next morning we headed out on a boat for a tour around. Milford Sound is a large glacial fiord, and it really is quite impressive - every time I go there I forget about the sheer scale of things. Very nice. But then it was time to continue back South, with the aim of getting home to Timaru ASAP to get my knee fixed up. We were treated to a spectacular sunset that night at Manapouri, and then worked our way to the very south coast, before turning east through Invercargill, Bluff, into the Catlans, and then up to Dunedin. This area is rather scenic, but the highlight for me was running into the Sheep Dog trials near Blackmount - yes, that's right, competitive sheep herding. They even show it on TV here. I'm not sure what Dorthe through of it, but I quite enjoyed introducing her to this little bit of kiwiana. We spent the night that night in the Catlans at Waipapa point, with the car parked underneath a lighthouse, looking out to sea, with the faint green glow of Aurora australias hovering over Antarctica, 3000km to the south. Very nice.

Dorthe prepares breakfast in Mt Cook national park, with the legendary east face of Mt Sefton in the background.

In Dunedin we paid a flying visit to the Royal Albatross Colony (sorry, bad pun), a quick blat up Baldwin street (the worlds steepest street), and then headed north for the grand finale - Mt Cook. We parked the car about 20km back from the base that night, and were greeted with a spectacular alpenglow on the mountain the next morning. I have a poster at home showing that exact scene, and waking up in the middle of it was a very memorable end to our south island tour - after exploring the area for the rest of that day we reluctantly headed home to Timaru.

Dorthe trys her hand at driving cattle back on the farm.

When we arrived back on the farm, the speedo on the car said 76,599km. When we started, three months ago, it read 66,200km. We have been to the very north of the North Island, and the very south of the South Island. We got rained on, and we got sunburnt. We ate far too much fish and chips, and cultured our mutual addiction to Hokey Pokey ice cream. New Zealand, one could say, is done.

The Southern Drop Photo Album

Back Home on the Farm

2005-03-02T08:37:00.000+01:00

Dr Mark Payne, Ph.D: Tractor Driver

Top of the South

2005-03-01T15:17:00.000+01:00

Dorthe putting her back into it, kayaking in Able Tasman National Park.

Right. Now, to finally fill in the gaps, and bring this blog fully up to date, we need to talk a bit about our trip around the top half of the south island. For me, this has been a rather interesting and surprising part of the trip - as a born and bred south islander, I thought I had seen pretty much all there was to see down here. However, it was a really pleasant surprise to find some new and exciting corners I hadn't visited before.

Dinner at Kaiterieri: fresh green-lipped mussels in a white wine sauce cooking over my MSR stove.

After our brief sortie to Wellington for the weekend (to see Jeff and Patty and Ant - see below) we headed back to Blenheim, where we stayed the night we family friends. From there we then headed across the very top of the South Island, passing through the Marlborough Sounds and Nelson, ending up at the beachfront town of Kaiteriteri, in Able Tasman National Park. One particularly rewarding stop that we made along the way was at Havelock, where we brought two dozen live green-lipped mussels (NZ$7 - cheap!) - we cooked them up that night on the beach in a white wine sauce over my camp stove. Hmmmmm.....

Dorthe at Observation Beach, our campsite on the first night in Able Tasman National Park.

The reason for heading to Able Tasman NP was to go sea kayaking. We hired a double touring sea-kayak, filled it up with food and camping gear, and then spent four days paddling in the beautiful clear waters of the national park. Each night, we would camp at a site on of the beach - often it was only accessible by water. The coastline in that area is littered with tidal lagoons which we would dash into at high tide, explore and play around in, and then dash out before the tide receeded too much leaving us stranded (we got caught by the receeding tide badly on one occasion, leaving us to drag the 60kg kayak 250m to the water!)! Further, all of the beaches are composed of a rich golden sand that is especally beautiful in the morning and evening light - bare feet and swimming togs were definitely the order of the day. We saw and paddled with fur seals, and ate mussels that we had picked off the rocks ourselves (yup, more mussels. Hmmmmmm.....). The weather was even accomodating - we got a light drizzle on the third day, but the other three were warm and clear, with even a sea breeze to blow us back home on the last day. You couldn't really ask for much more. They were four throughly enjoyable and relaxing days.

Crossing the dual-use one lane bridge on State Highway 6 over the Taramakau river, near Kumara, on the West Coast. Hang on, isn't that a railway line down the middle of the road?

From Kaiteriteri, we headed even further north to the very north-western corner of the south island - Farewell Spit. I had never been to this area before, and I really enjoyed both it's remoteness and beauty - large limestone cliffs, topped by rolling green pasture and (of course) lots of sheep. The Farewell spit itself is immense, stretching over 30 km out to sea, and separating the Tasman Sea from the Pacific - the cafe at the base of the spit made an idea spot to relax and watch the birds from, and we spent quite a bit of time there getting stuck into their outstanding carrot cake. We were both quite disappointed to leave that area, and have marked it as a "must return" area, but unfortuantely we had deadlines to make. Returning from the spit, we also visited Pupu springs, the source of worlds clearest freshwater, which looked decepively shallow - rocks 4m down looked like they were just under the surface - the water tastes great too!

Woodpecker bay, on the rugged West Coast.

From the northwest, we headed south, down the rugged west coast of the South Island, taking two days to get to Hokitika. Along the way we were treated to spectacular scenery, reminiscent of Big Sur in California, only with lush green hills covered in dense native bush (rather than dry, brown California scrub). People always told me that it reminded them of Big Sur - having been to both now, I can really understand the comparison. From the greenstone (jade) and gold rich town of Hokitika, we turned inland, back towards Christchurch, over Arthur's Pass - the rest of the South Island will have to wait until after my brother's wedding. However, on the way we were able to spend some time hiking amongst the mountains of Arthur's Pass National Park - the foray into the alpine zone was a welcome relief from the native bush where the air was dark with sandflies (a unique NZ species - like mosquitos, only worse) - it seems that they like Dorthe's danish blood a lot more than my boring old kiwi blood - she was brutalised by them all the way down the West Coast, and yet, we haven't even got to the "bad" sandfly areas yet!

Looking into the backcountry from the top of Castle Hill

Finally, we made our way back to Christchurch, passing through the Castle Hill area - a series of natural limestone outcroppings that were featured in Lord of the Rings, and are quite spectacular. We arrived in Christchurch just in time for the cricket match against Australia. I'm not completely sure how much of it Dorthe understood, but I did my best to explain what is a rather complex game at the best of times. Still, she did understand enough to give me shit about how badly we did - Australia won by 107 runs..... Grrrr.......

Dorthe trying to figure out the cricket: New Zealand vs Australia at Lancaster Park, Christchurch. Australia won by, um, 107 runs.

We now have a couple of weeks rest, before a start travelling again. In particular, we are getting ready for my brother's wedding on the 5th March - his stag party was on Saturday night, and was a suitably drunken affair, involving mountain biking, go-karting, and of course, lots of drinking. After the wedding, we then complete our grand tour of NZ with two more weeks in the south of the south island. Then, on the 23rd March, the real fun begins - South America! There'll be a post or two more before then, so keep reading. Until then, here are the links to the photo albums for this section of the trip.

Dolphin Swimming and Wellington
Kayaking and the West Coast

Wellywood

2005-02-13T23:40:00.000+01:00

Ant and his trusty van in Wellington.

We have just got back from a weekend in Wellington visiting Ant, Jeff and Patty, old friends from Berkeley, and thought that it was time to make a little posting from an internet cafe in Blenheim. It was a nice relaxing weekend, and a chance to enjoy some of the Cafes and good food that Wellington has to offer.

Our trip North has been quite interesting so far. We got stranded for most of the day in Kaikoura due to the car failing to start - grrrr. It is starting to get to be a bit of a stress - so far we haven't been stranded too badly, but I suspect its only a matter of time. Swimming with the dolphins in Kaikoura was a fantastic experience - although not being able to swim made it a little stressful for me! It is quite phenomenonal how fast and maneuvarable they are in the water, you literally cannot keep up with them. They would circle around you, but they could literally swim two circles around you, looking at you all the time, in the time it took me to turn about half a circle! Made me look a bit stupid

Vhere is zee ship zat vee shall blow up? Dorthe about to get in the water, swimming with dolphins, Kaikoura

From Kaikoura we headed north to Blenheim, the major wine region of New Zealand, where we stayed with family friends, the Brunsdens. Thursday was spent touring around the vineyards, tasting wine, and buying a few bottles. That was quite fun, and I think we both learnt a lot about wine. I was trying very hard not to drink too much though, seeing I was driving, but Dorthe took full advantage of the free "tastings"... )

Waihopai spy base, hidden amongst some of classic Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc vines near Bleheim, is New Zealand's contribution to Project Echelon.

On Friday we crossed over to Wellington to see Jeff and Patty. Most of the weekend was spent touring cafes and the like. On Saturday we had a picnic at Kaitoke regional park, which is where the Rivendell set from Lord of the Rings was filmed. On sunday I went mountain biking with Ant, while Dorthe toured the pedestrian malls of wellington. And then we headed back here to Blenheim last night.

From here we now head west, across the top of the south island, through Nelson, to Able Tasman National Park. There we are going sea kayaking for about four days or so, camping along the beach, and hopefully, seeing lots of seals at one of the big seal colonies there. Then its down the West Coast for a few days, before heading back to Christchurch for the One-day cricket international against Australia on the 22nd Feb. Should be good.

Kia ora from Kaikoura

2005-02-09T01:09:00.000+01:00

Dusky dolphins are one of the most aerobatic dolphin species

Hello. Just a quick little posting from Kaikoura, in the upper half of the south island. We've beem a bit lax with the posting as of late, mainly because we spent ages putting all the photos up instead! We've finished our north island trip, and we had a great time up there, as you can probably tell from the piccies. After a few days off in Timaru, we are back into it again - this morning we were swimming with Dolphins, which was great fun. Hopefully we might get around to writing a posting sometime soon. In the meantime, have a look at these pictures...

Auckland
Northland
Back to Wellington

Top of the North

2005-02-08T14:37:00.000+01:00

Sunset at Cape Reinga

Finally it is my turn at the keyboard. Mark is helping his father with a tractor, so my job for the day is to write a bit about our trip, so you can follow where we have been. Unfortunately I am not as fast at the keys as Mark and therefore I will probably skip a few details you would have gotten if it had been Mark, but I guess little is better than nothing.

Spirits Bay

Amazing, we have already been here for two months; time is flying so fast. Well since we wrote last time on the homepage we have seen lots of things; finished our trip in the North Island, catched up with Jeff, Patty and Ant from San Francisco and been around the top of the South Island. Now we are back in Timaru at Marks Parents place. We will be here till Thursday next week where we are heading up to Christchurch for Owen and Tracey’s wedding (5/3) and sometime early in the following week we will be heading south. This will be the last trip and cover as much of the southern part of the south Island as possible; it should be a trip dominated by glaciers, mountains and hiking :-)

Spirits bay "sand"

After leaving Auckland we went north to have a look at the big and impressive Kauri trees, once very common in NZ, but now quite rare due to the great timber and beautiful gum they provide. A few major once are easily accessible in the Waipoua Kauri Forrest and a very good museum describes the history of the trees in NZ. How lucky the redwoods in California are being useless as timber and therefore still existing in such large numbers. We continued up to and along the Hokianga Harbour and crossed on the Rawene ferry, drove through farmland and arrived at the southern end of Ninety Mile Beach (Ahipara). After spending the night and having great problems getting the car started (not first time) we headed for the very northern point of NZ. Ninety Mile beach stretches almost all the way to the top, it is a wide golden sandy beach that just seems to go forever – very cool. A stop in spirits bay turned out to be a nice surprise – the beach is actually not filled with sand but with small pieces of shells that have been polished by the water, mainly in pink and purple colours, an extra treat that probably makes spirits bay our favourite bay. In the afternoon we got to Cape Reinga (the most northern point in NZ for tourists) where we enjoyed the view of the Tasman Sea and the Pacific Ocean while the sun was setting. As our car was not cooperating we decided to head back to more populated areas, and therefore our stay in the very north became shorter than expected.

Dorthe gets into the Fish and Chips at the Mangonui Fish and Chip shop.

The next week of our trip was dominated by beaches and bays. Heading south from Doubtless Bay, through Bay of Islands to Leigh we saw one lovely bay after the other. All very exotic with green water, white sand and a few Palms. A holiday paradise where we managed to become suntanned, have fresh fish and chips on the beach and be invited for breakfast by an old couple that camped next to us, both 82 years old.

The Champagne Pool in Rotorua. This hot pool is at 72 °C, and bubbles from natural CO2 effervescence.

After a quick stop in Auckland at Janette and Steves place, we were on the way to Rotorua, a geothermally active area. Boiling mud, steaming pools, geysers, and lots of iron and sulphur to colour it all – a very interesting area created by a volcanic zone running through NZ. Last stop in the North Island was Napier where we stayed with Matt Nicoll, unfortunately the weather was not as one could have hoped, lots of rain, which took a way a bit of the charm of the town located right at the water front. Napier is famous for Art deco (an architectural style) and we went on an interesting tour around town. The large amount of houses all in the same style is due to an earthquake in 1931 which destroyed most of the existing houses and the centre of town was completely rebuild creating a hole city centre presenting the building style of that specific time period.

The rest of the trip mainly consisted of driving, only broken by a ferry crossing, before we were back in Timaru at Marks parents place. I think this will be enough for now - you are tired of reading and I am tired of typing, so I will finish here :-).

Photo Albums
Northland
Central North Island

(Post published Feb 27th 2005 and backdated)

Cows, Volcanoes, Rivers, and Glow Worms

2005-01-19T13:15:00.000+01:00

Dorthe paddling down the lower sections of the Whanganui River Gorge.

The north island trip is fully underway - we are currently in Auckland, after about 10 days or so working our way up from Timaru and Christchurch. The voyage north has been quite an interesting experience, featuring hiking, canoeing, beautiful new zealand backcountry, and, um, lots of cows.

Dorthe and I left Christchurch on the 7th January when my parents picked us up. They were going to look at some cows in the North Island, and so we decided that we would come along, and then stay in the North Island for a while after that, thus starting our North Island trip. First, we headed north along the east coast of the south island, crossing across cook strait over to Wellington, the capital. We stayed there for a couple of days with Mums cousin, Jennifer, for a relaxing weekend - one day spent collecting shells along the beach, and the other visiting Te Papa, the Museum of New Zealand. Then from there we ventured north into Tarankai for a further three days of looking at cattle. This was a particularly interesting experience for Dorthe, as she got to see some of the real rural back country of New Zealand that few kiwis and even less tourists get to see. Very rough land with very steep hills interspersed with native bush. We were also able to ride horses at one of the farms, and even got to sample "Whitebait" (the larvae of four different species of fish that is caught in New Zealand river mouths and sold at a great price), a classic New Zealand delicacy.

Dorthe on a purebreed Arabian stallon.

Soon after we returned back to Wellington briefly to drop Mum and Dad off, so that they could head back to Timaru, leaving Dorthe and I with the car. We headed north once again, initially over the "Desert Road" to Tongariro National Park in the centre of the North Island. This park features three large volcanos: Ruapehu, Ngaurohoe, and Tongariro. There is a rather famous track in this area known as the "Tongariro crossing" that can be completed in a single day which we walked the following day. We were picked up at 6:15am by the shuttle service (having slept in the car in the carpark at the end of the track) and dropped off at the start of the track. The walk then proceeds up over a saddle between Tongariro and Ngaurohoe, passing through a desolate moonscape of volcanic lava flows, pumice, red iron deposits, yellow sulphur deposits, and vivid blue lakes. The air was rich with the smell of sulphur, and the entire enviroment was extremely dry. It really was a hostile place, the type of place that you felt that animals and plants didn't belong.

Sunset on Mt Ngaurohoe (aka Mt Doom, from Lord of the Rings)

From the saddle between Tongariro and Ngaurohoe, we were able to climb Ngaurohoe (2278m) itself. Ngaurohoe was used as the template for Mt Doom in Lord of the Rings, and it basically looks exactly like it does in the movie (minus the lava, gollum, sauron etc) - steep and covered in loose scoria. However, the climb rewarded us with spectacular views of the surrounding countryside, and was in many ways the highlight of the trip. Two hours of climb up was rapidily undone in 20 mins of scree running, we continued through the rest of the landscape, descended through beautiful alpine zones, and classic New Zealand bush, to arrive back at the car at 8pm, a long tiring but brilliant day's walk.

Tongariro was followed immediately by the start of the Whanganui River journey, three days canoeing (in Canadian style canoes) down the Whanganui river, through some of the most remote and inaccessible parts of the north island. This was a spectacular trip - for most of the 70km, the river is surrounded on each side by ~8-10m cliffs, with pristine native bush covering the steep, rugged hills behind it. For three days we barely saw another person on the river, and there were only a few other canoes in the huts we stayed in. A particular highlight was the second hut we stayed in, which was a Maori marae. We were both welcomed onto the Marae with a Powhiri (a traditional welcome) and thus became whanau (part of the extended family). We then shared the evening people with the family that was there, and talked until we ran out of light. we both enjoyed the experience a lot. The whanganui journey has been the highlight of the trip thus far - three days of floating down a beautiful river, with the only stress being the prospect of being "blessed" by the river (ie going for a swim!) at some of the rather challenging rapids along the way!

Finally, we headed to Waitomo to see the famous glowworm caves there. These pitch black limestome caves are famous for their beautiful stalagtites and stalagmite formations, and for the small larvae that inhabit them - the luminescent lures they use to attract prey literally lights up the roof of the caves with a constellation of cool blue-green stars. We have both seen a few glowworms around in small clusters, but certaintly nothing on this scale before. We both enjoyed it a lot, even if the trip was a little on the short side.

We are now in Auckland, where we spend a few days, before heading to the very north of the island at Cape Reinga. There are also some new photo albums up online for you too! Ka kite!

Timaru to Tongariro
Tongariro Crossing
Whanganui River Journey

New Years Greetings

2005-01-06T23:47:00.000+01:00

Owen, Mark and Dorthe with "our" helicopter.

Hello and Happy New Year from New Zealand everyone!

Dorthe and I have been having a nice relaxing break down here away from the Northern Hemisphere winter... (not that the weather has been all that summery though, but that's another story). It seems that the Xmas and New Years break has been very busy, with lots of people to meet, and lots of things to do.

The highlight of our trip so far, however, was today. Owen (Mark's brother) works as a hydrological officer for the local regional council. He spends most of his days up in the backcountry standing in the middle of rivers measuring their flows, and how much it has been raining. It's a pretty cool job - I'm very jealous of it. Some of the monitoring stations that they have are very remote, waaaay up in the backcountry, and the only way to access them (apart from a three day hike) is via helicopter. Today, he did the run around the most remote stations, and, as there were two spare seats in the helicopter, we got to go with him.

The flight started in Christchurch, and initally headed out over the Canterbury plains, covered with seemingly endless fields of sheep (and cattle too!). Then it headed up through the narrow Waimakariri gorge, past the filmset for the new movie "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrode", and then deep into the backcountry, flying down narrow river valleys covered in thick native bush, with imposing walls on either side being capped only by the low cloud layer. Very few people ever see some of those areas, and we were very lucky to be able to get up there today. Dorthe was especially excited about spending five hours buzzing around in a Helicopter - she certaintly didn't want to go to sleep last night, I can assure you! We had lunch at one of the gauging stations in the middle of a river gorge, just the three of us, the pilot, a dozen wild pigs, and of course, the sandflies (Nz's native mosquito). Very nice. Then it was on to a couple more stations, before heading back to Christchurch. And of course, there were lots of photos, the best of which can be found here.

Dorthe descends after pioneering the first ascent of "Dorthesberg" on New Years day.

We spent two days either side of New Years eve having what is a semi-traditional NZ New Years - camping beside a lake somewhere, with lots of toys to play with - kayaks, climbing gear, mountain bikes, cars, that sort of thing... Unfortunately, the weather wasn't completely perfect, and a couple of evenings were spent in the tent sheltering from the rain, rather than out sitting around a campfire. Still, it was a nice relaxing new years - no snow, or crazy danes running around with fireworks like last year.

We have spent the last couple of days since New Years in Christchurch with Owen and his fiancee Tracey - one day was spent in Hanmer Springs mountain biking and then soaking in the thermal pools there. Very nice. And Dorthe has also got to look around Christchurch a bit as well - I'm sure I remember it being bigger than this though....

Tomorrow we start our North Island tour i.e. we become serious tourists, rather than locals... Oh well, it'll be good to see that part of the country anyway.

Dorthe gets to meet some of the locals....

We have posted some of the best photos from the trip in our photo album hosted by flickr.com. You can always get to it by clicking at the top right (where it says photo album), or alternatively, using the following links below to see those albums. We'll be updating the album as we go (internet service permitting, of course), so keep an eye on them.

New Years trips
Helicopter Flight in Canterbury Backcountry
All Photo Albums

And happy new year everyone!

Dorthe and Mark

Nytaarshilsen

2005-01-06T11:28:00.000+01:00

Hej Hej,
Lige en nytaars hilsen paa dansk. Som vi har skrevet overfor har der vaeret masser at lave indtil nu, vi har besoegt en lang raekke af onkler og tanter, holdt jul og nytaar (dog uden sne og fyrvaerkery), tilbragt de sidste tre dage i Christchurch hos Marks bror og imorgen tager vi afsted til nordoen.

Juhu, 5 timers helikopter tur idag i bjergene omkring christchurch, tag et kig paa billederne. Haaber alle har det godt, vi nyder vores tur. Masser af sommerhilsener til jer alle :-)

December 24th Home Again

2004-12-24T05:54:00.000+01:00

Stafford St, the main street of Timaru, all lit up for Xmas.

Merry Xmas everyone!

December 23rd My (non) birthday

2004-12-23T09:10:00.000+01:00

How I spent my birthday. Staring at the inflight map... Yah....

This year's birthday was a bit of a non-event - I pretty much slept through it. I got on the plane in LA on the evening of the 21st, and basically passed out, and slept all the way to NZ (right through the standard collection of bad movies). When I arrived here in NZ, it was the morning of the 23rd. Where did my birthday go? Does that mean I am still 27 then? Yes, I think it does........

Not too happy with my birthday present from United: lost luggate. Geee, thanks guys. You shouldn't have. No REALLY, you shouldn't have.....

December 21st Xmas Cable Car

2004-12-21T13:20:00.000+01:00

The last day in the US: San Francisco Cable Car. The cable cars are, of course, one of the icons of San Francisco. Quite a few of them are decked out in Christmas lights at the moment, which looks quite cool....

December 20th That's Dr Payne to you.....

2004-12-20T16:00:00.000+01:00

Six and a half years. $250,000 of uncle sams money. 297 pages of thesis. And all I get is a lollipop, with PhinisheD stuck on it. I was at least expecting a band, a triumphal fanfare, maybe some dancing girls. Damn! Perhaps they're trying to tell me I'm a sucker......

All done. You shall now refer to me as Dr Payne. Muh ha ha ha ha!!!

PS. BTW, if you're interested, bored, or masochistic, there is a copy of my thesis here. In particular, check out the fourth line from the bottom on Page 22 of the PDF (Page 4 of the thesis). :-)

December 19th Xmas MTBing

2004-12-19T13:54:00.000+01:00

Xmas mountain biking in California. Jeff cross a decorated bridge at Camp Tamarancho in the Marin Headlands.

December 18th Xmas on Telegraph Ave

2004-12-18T07:44:00.000+01:00

Christmas lights on Telegraph ave in Berkeley.

Yup, back in Berkeley, and talk about busy. The thesis is 296 pages long, and it takes forever to print one copy - I need approximately 10! It's going to be a big job, and I am sick of the smell of ozone from the printer already... Arggghh.....

December 17th Kalenderpilsner

2004-12-17T10:12:00.000+01:00

Unexpected bonus: Tuborg Kalenderpilsner. The greatest of all danish inventions, it's an advent calendar of beer. 24 days leading up to Xmas. 24 different versions of the bottle. 24 bottles in a crate. A coincidence? I think not.....

I didn't think I was going to be able to get the Kalenderpilsner in, but I have to spend an extra (unplanned) day in Demark - the flight that I was originally supposed to go to SF on was completely full, and due to an error on the part of United (not SAS) I ended up loosing my seat. Grrrrrrr.... Still, it does look like I might get €600 in flight vouchers for my troubles, so you can't complain about that too much.... And another day in Copenhagen isn't all that bad either...

December 16th Xmas on Strøget

2004-12-16T23:41:00.000+01:00

The last picture of Denmark: Xmas on Strøget. Strøget is the main pedestrian walkway in the centre of Copenhagen, and it really is the heart of the city. The christmas lights run the entire length of it. The red lights to the left are the outside of Illum.

Today I'm off back to America. I've had a fantastic time in Denmark - its a great place to live, and I am really looking forward to coming back. But first........

December 15th Magasin du Nord

2004-12-15T23:39:00.000+01:00

Back in Copenhagen: the cousin of Illum pictured below is Magasin du Nord, the second of the big department stores in the centre of town. During christmas it also gets decorated with lights, and looks really nice. We can also see the spire of lights at the top from our room

We had a lovely relaxing trip back from Oslo today on the Linx, another fast train that rocks along at 200kph. Very enjoyable flying along the side of Norweigan fiords, and through the Swedish fields. But now its time to pack, and head to the states. Busy, busy!

December 14th Nissertrær

2004-12-14T22:51:00.000+01:00

A xmas tree (trær) of elves (Nisser) outside a florest in Oslo - hence, a Nissertræer - I'm not sure if I made that up or not, but it sounds good anyway. Note the ballerina xmas moose at bottom right - the scandinavians have something about mooses it seems..... (Helmer, that one's for you!)

Today was spent touring around Oslo. It was a grey overcast sort of day, but we got to have a good look at the city. Its quite an open sort of city, quite different to Copenhagen - someone described it to me as a big small city, whereas Copenhagen is a small big city. Quite adapt I think.

December 13th Karl Johans Gate, Oslo

2004-12-13T19:50:00.000+01:00

Karl Johans Gate all lit up for Christmas. Karl Johans Gate is the Strøget of Oslo, if you like - a loverly big pedestrian walkway that runs through the centre of town, past the parliament all the way up to the royal palace. At the moment, it's all it up for christmas, and looks really nice.

Dorthe and I spent the day today touring around Oslo with Live. The highlight was a visit to Holmenkollen, a skijumping facility in the forest near town. I have to say, having seen an actual skijump, you have to be mad to try that sport on. It is a long way down a very, very steep hill! We also spent the evening walking around the centre of town. Oslo is a very nice city, quite a bit more open and spacious than Copenhagen. And with lots of snow and ice around too - I spent most of the day trying very hard not to fall on my arse!!

December 12th Carls Jule

2004-12-12T23:32:00.000+01:00

Carls jul. Another of the christmas beers (Julebryg is not the only one!), this time made by Carlsberg itself. It's not as good as Tuborg Julebryg though.....

Currently in Oslo at the moment, visiting a friend of Dorthe's. Cold and icy, but very nice.... Back on Wednesday....

December 11th Tillykke Dorthe!

2004-12-11T22:44:00.000+01:00

And this is what happens when you pass your masters - you get congratulatory posters in the form of bad pictures of you put on your mailbox, your room, in the elevators. Pretty much everywhere really! It's kind of nice walking around this place at the moment seeing silly pictures of Dorthe!

December 10th Graduation Dinner

2004-12-10T22:45:00.000+01:00

Friday night's epic effort. Dinner for 31, to celebrate Dorthe's graduation, and the start of our trip. The main course was stuffed turkey and smoked lamb with two types of potatoes and tomato and mozarella salad, followed by raspeberry and blackberry tortes for dessert. We started cooking at 11am on Friday morning, and didn't go to bed until 9am on Saturday morning. It was a BIG night, but I think everyone really enjoyed it.

December 9th Dorthe's Thesis Defense

2004-12-09T22:42:00.000+01:00

Dorthe defending her thesis. If you can understand what that title means, you're doing better than I am!.

Dorthe's thesis defense was today, and it went really well. We've been working on the presentation now for the past couple of weeks, and she just nailed it this time. As soon as the examiners started talking, I could tell that they were impressed, and yes, they were. She not only passed, but she got a superb grade for it as well. So, we now have a "Biolog" (biologist) in the family. Yah!! Now maybe we can relax! :-)

December 8th Risengrød

2004-12-08T19:27:00.000+01:00

Risengrød is a classic Danish chrismas food. You basically take 125g of rice and boil it in 1L of full cream milk for an hour, then add cinnamon, sugar, and butter on top of it. It's pretty good. But its not, as you'd think, a desert (it tastes pretty similar to rice pudding). Rather, its actually eaten before the meal - my danish teacher told me that in the old days, they fed it to the children at xmas so that they wouldn't each too much of the expensive main meal!

December 7th Illums Bolighus

2004-12-07T10:09:00.000+01:00

Interior of Illums Bolighus. Illum is one of the two big department stores here in Copenhagen, and sits right in the heart of the town. It is a pretty classy place, with lots of very nice clothes and interestingly designed danish kitchenware. The interior is a large atrium that spans about seven or eight floors, and at the moment is all decorated for xmas. I especially like the lighting in the ceiling. Click on it for a medium sized view, or click here to really see the detail.

December 6th Tuborg Julebryg!

2004-12-06T17:11:00.000+01:00

It wouldn't be christmas in Denmark without Tuborg Julebryg, the christmas beer made by Tuborg (a brand owned by Carlsberg). They have adverts around town for a couple of weeks beforehand saying when it is going to "snow" (i.e. Julebryg is launched). Then on J-day (Julebryg-dagen, of course) they have big parties and the Tuborg girls give away lots of free stuff. There's even the Julebryg song! Oh, and it tastes bloody good too!

Yes, as you can probably tell, I get very excited about Julebryg!

December 5th Our Christmas Tree

2004-12-05T10:56:00.000+01:00

Our little chrismas tree. A candle wreath from Dorthe's mum, with two more advent presents sitting around it, waiting for us. Hmmmm, today is the second sunday in Advent. Time to open them!

December 4th Rigshospitalet Juletræt

2004-12-04T13:56:00.000+01:00

Rigshospitalet at chrismas: not to be confused with the Danish space programme. Rigshospitalet is one of the biggest hospitals in Copenhagen, and is known especially as a research hospital (it's associated closely with the med school across the road). The lights on top of it are it's christmas tree: not so much a tree as a tree of lights forming a beacon that can be seen for miles around. This is how it looks from our window.

December 3rd Advent Scratchie

2004-12-03T15:48:00.000+01:00

Our present from Dorthe's mum for the first Sunday in Advent - an advent scratchie!! First prize, DKK 1,000,000 (which at the moment is worth about US $150,000, but increasing all the time!!!). So far we have two out of the three we have scratched are julemand (santa). We just need another seven more to win DKK 10,000. Cross your fingers.

Congratulations to the user of the computer known affectionately as "t-31-51.athome.tue.nl" at "Technische Universiteit Eindhoven" in the Netherlands. You were my 500th visitor to the site. Yah!! Loes, was that you? Congratulations. Your prize is a lifetime supply of... ahhhh... blog posts?

December 2nd Advent Calendar

2004-12-02T17:26:00.000+01:00

Dorthe's advent calendar that her brother, Morten, made for her. It's a bit different from what you'd expect - there are no little boxes in a calendar here. Instead, you have 24 individually wrapped presents, attached to a wallhanger, and you open one present each day. There's no hanging this baby on the wall though, it's THAT big: instead, it lies on the table. The chair at the end of the table gives you some idea of scale. The candle was the first present.