The final countdown

Now some of you are probably concerned as I am about the lack of numbers that have frequented this blog. You all know how much, as a mathematician, I like numbers so here’s a final treat for you…

200 days, 17 flights, 14 countries, 13 US states, 11 islands, 3 cameras (2 broken, one lost), 3 pairs of sunglasses, 4 AK-47 shots, 3 massages (one blind, one fish), 2 elephant rides, a floating bar, 2 thumb wars (one win, one loss), a jellyfish sting, 26 hours spent on a bus in Argentina, 7 days spent with a dodgy stomach, 3 amazing steaks, not enough Boost juices, 5 karaoke songs sung horrendously, 5 bowls of salsa, 24 hour Elvis videos, 47 degree heat, a farting penguin, 2 travelling companions left behind, numerous games of Uno, a hospital visit, Route 36, Route 66, 35 passport stamps, 5 dollar footlongs, Paul’s 14 year old love interest, 3 overnight trains, an angry biker, 43km Inca trail, 5 jumping crocodiles, 2 ruined pairs of shoes, one night in Denham, a peeping tom, 6 marching ducks, 4 dunkin donuts, 2 prison visits, 16 nights in Bunnies, 34 days in Britney (RIP Justin), a wrestling midget, 3 stubbed toes, 33 new Facebook friends, a bit of mud wrestling, some terribly long hair, a bit of skinny dipping, loads of bloody waterfalls, a shed load of beer…

1 trip of a lifetime.

Thanks for reading….see you next time! 

Much love

ROG

See you in the pub!

Thai toe, Thai toe it’s off to hospital we go…

So if ever there was a holiday within a holiday it has been the last 2 weeks lounging around on the islands and beaches of Thailand….recession, what recession?? For this final leg of the tour I was joined by Julie from home and after another dose of Bangkok madness we jetted off to the infamous Koh Samui.

Me Ju starts as she means to go on!

Samui’s neighbouring island Koh Tao was probably the highlight of the east coast where we went kayaking, saw a fire show and went on a snorkelling trip and managed to see another shark!

Paradise found?

We also experienced a full moon party which I am unfortunately still feeling the effects of. After covering ourselves in neon paint the drinks started flowing and before I knew it I was dancing on a table on the beach. Next thing I know I am falling off the table only for it to land smack on my toe. So the rest of the night was spent dancing on one leg…I think people thought I was trying to start a mass Hokey Kokey.

Preparing for full moon

30 second before the table falls

So a trip to hospital was required the following day but luckily the x-ray showed it wasn’t broken. However ten days later it is still hurting a bloody lot so a return trip may be required! I didn’t think I could feel any worse that day until I went back to our beach hut to rest my foot in the hammock only for the whole thing to snap and send me crashing to the floor putting my back out. Full moon has a lot to answer for.

The aftermath of Toe-gate

We decided to leave the east coast behind for fear of any other injuries and headed across to Phuket where thanks to my friend Siri we were treated to 5 star luxury at the Indigo Pearl hotel (sorry about the plug but it’s literally the best hotel in the world…go there!!). We got absolutely drenched by water pistols, buckets, hoses etc during the Songkram New Year festivities but decided to join in the fun by investing in a super soaker…yeah baby!

 

Asta la vista baby

Always look out for the young ones

We took a speedboat over to Phi Phi island home to “The Beach” and the most tourists I’ve ever seen in my life (not quite the tranquil paradise you’d expect!). It was stunning however and we spent more time snorkelling and swimming in the turquoise waters.

 

 

Jack, come back to me Jack....oh right, wrong film

We eventually left the beaches behind and headed back to Bangkok which was in a state of emergency. But we opted against the helmets and bullet proof vests (we’re from Wenvoe don’t you know!) and instead visited floating markets and had an elephant ride. We also visited the Grand Palace and in stifling 35+ degree heat the prospect of having to cover up out of respect was not particularly appealing. Instead of jeans I opted to wear my pyjamas….mmm maybe not the most respect I could have given.

PJs in the Palace

Unfortunately reader (god it’s started to sound a bit Jane Eyre) this is the penultimate blog post of my trip as I sit in a Bangkok internet cafe waiting to get a taxi to the airport for my flight HOME! If this post has not made much sense it is because I have a stinking hangover from consuming one too many of the infamous samsong buckets on my last night…I did however track down the thumb war girl and beat her…RESULT!

But now all I want is a good night’s sleep in my own bed….and maybe a roast dinner with all the trimmings! Too much to ask?

ROG

A taste of Laos

Following Vietnam a whistlestop tour of Laos ensued taking in three of the main places Vientiane, Vang Vieng and Luang Prabang in the space of a week…phew!

The whirlwind visit didn’t start well with me having to be escorted through customs because I didn’t have any local money to pay for the visa I didn’t realise I had to buy. “What do you mean you don’t take card?” doesn’t particularly go down well in many third world countries! Then the ATM in the arrivals hall didn’t work so it was all going very well…. but luckily the exchange place was open so I was saved at the last minute and re-escorted back through immigration. What a tourist!

Vientiane is the most laid back capital city I’ve ever been to which was a welcome relief after the madness of Vietnam. The day or so I spent there mainly consisted of eating, watching the sunset over the Mekong river, eating, visiting temples and then eating more. So a perfect day all in all.

You can't get tired of sunsets...can you??

The worldwide obesity epidemic hits Laos

 It was then onto the tubing capital of the world, Vang Vieng. For those of you who are not familiar with this place it is a must stop destination on the Indochina backpacker trail to basically get drunk, float down a river and try not to drown by either not realising you are under water or getting hit by someone launching themselves off one of the river swings (apparently there are between 3 to 6 drownings a year – this place would be hit hard by Health and Safety Standards back home). But luckily I survive to tell the tale and a great day was had, meeting lots of people, drinking lots of the infamous Beerlao (apparently it’s regarded as one of the world’s best beers) and partaking in the odd spot of mud wrestling with some Swedish girls…as you do.

I was winning at this stage...honestly

Vang Vieng is also known for its Friends phenomenon. Every restaurant in town has old episodes of Friends playing back to back on huge TVs…although this seems to have now been extended to include The Simpsons and Family Guy. So I guess you are now building up an image of Vang Vieng as not the most cultural of destinations. But a lot of fun was had and I also went on a rock climbing day which was also cool – apart from one over vertical bit where I literally froze and started shouting expletives at everyone on the ground…but we won’t mention too much about that.

My final port of call in Laos was Luang Prabang via a 7 hour ‘VIP’ bus service through the mountains. There was nothing VIP about it and despite the incredible views I’ve probably never felt so sick on a bus in my entire life…although having a hangover from tubing the day before probably didn’t help matters too much either. But the trip was definitely worth it with Luang Prabang being a definite highlight of my South East Asia adventures (even despite its 11:30pm curfew where everyone has to be back in their hotels by midnight or else!).

Here me and my new Norwegian travelling companion Bard hired bikes to visit the cultural sites before going on an elephant ride through the Mekong river. Our elephant Mai San was a bit of a moody old girl not wanting to go in the direction our mahout (elephant guide) was telling it to – and all this was going on when I was sat on its neck metres from the water. But luckily she kept her cool and we arrived safely back to the village. We thanked Mai San by feeding her bananas only to be told by another girl on the trip that we’d actually fed the wrong elephant. Oh well…

Unfortunately you’ll notice that the number of photos has waned as this blog post has moved on and that’s because I forgot to mention that there was actually a casualty during my tubing experience: my camera. So that’s two broken and one lost in the 6 months I’ve been away.  I think it’s almost time to come home…

ROG

Courtesy of Karin's photos...me, Karin and Bard are happy to survive the tubing!

Karaoke, cookery and a peeping tom

What I forgot to tell you all about my tour through Vietnam was that it was me, 13 girls and a 50 year old guy called Brian from the North of England. So if Brian was the Hugh Hefner of the tour I was I suppose his apprentice in training.

From the beaches of Nha Trang it was on to find some culture again in Hoiu An via another overnight train. This one had an additonal element of surprise in the form of a 7th carriage companion…Mr Mouse. Needless to say the girls weren’t very happy but I made sure to hide my screams by forcing my head into my pillow. I needed to keep my Playboy apprentice reputation in tact.  

Hoi An is a UNESCO World Heritage site, famous for its architecture as well as its 650 tailors (13 girls. shopping. cheap clothes. mental) I did actually have two suits made but whether I’ll get a job to wear them for when I get back is questionable. We also took part in a cookery course making spring rolls, fish in banana leaf and pork kebabs. I was largely unimpressed however with our teacher who thought I was the father of Charlotte, one of the girls on the tour. She is 22. I am 27. (Note to self: increase use of moisturiser). That night I hit the home brew and at 16p a glass I was soon the life and soul of the party. I showed them who was daddy alright.

Hoi An or the set from Pirates of the Caribbean?

My "daughter" Charlotte enjoying her cookery class

From Hoi An we got a bus to Hue where we toured the crumbling citadel and visited the tomb of the old emperor. It was here I stubbed my toe (cue ‘you need some better flip flops etc’ from the girls in the group) and soon found myself surrounded by 6 or 7 Singaporean women all delving into their handbags to find a plaster. The Playboy reputation was waning fast.

It all got a bit messy on the road to Hue

Charlotte pulls in Hue

It was then time for our last overnight train to Hanoi and boy did we party like it was 1999. There was even a pack of Strawberry Oreos at one point. Hanoi started off in a bit of a haze having arrived at 4.30am and then proceeding to queue up to see the body of Hoi Chi Minh in a mausoleum. Some people claim the body is little more than a wax work (it is even flown to Russia for a few months of the year for “touch-ups”) and I hate to offend any Vietnamese people who are reading this post but yes it did appear to better belong in Madame Tussauds…what was with the orange lighting as well? The bizarrities of Hanoi continued with a trip to a water puppet show.

 

No wonder there were mice about

The finale of the tour was a trip to Halong Bay to see thousands of islands rise up through the waters. The weather let us down a bit but we didn’t let this dampen our spirits and enjoyed some caving, kayaking, some amazing seafood and then the odd spot of karaoke. OK maybe odd spot is not the right word…probably a 2 hour marathon of glass breaking screeching is the better word to describe it. You’ll be pleased to know I absolutely murdered ‘Sex Bomb’ in honour of Tom Jones..the girls absolutely loved it although I’m not sure why they were laughing so much.

Me and my favourite teal T-shirt enjoying Halong bay

 

 

As Bernard Matthews would say..."Bootiful"

Our last night out on tour was spent back in Hanoi where we feasted like kings and also had our own awards ceremony. I was awarded the “Durex Peeping Tom” award. Not because I had been stalking anyone on the tour but because I had ACCIDENTALLY had an underwear malfunction on one of the overnight trains much to the delight of the girls in the carriage of course. Brian on the otherhand (remember he is a 50 year old male from the North of England and the only other guy on tour) was awarded “Sexiest Male” so I really think I may have played it all wrong with the girls on tour. My Playboy apprentice image was in tatters.

(Note to self: buy new pants, dye hair grey and dress up in a Newcastle football kit).

ROG

Vietnam: where porn comes free in every bathroom

Into Nam

Any  tour throughout Cambodia would not be complete with0ut a trip to the Killing Fields and the infamous S21 prison where many Cambodians were tortured and killed in the 1970s. This was a pretty harrowing section of the trip but very interesting to see how even with such a devestating history Cambodian people are focused on making a happier future for themselves.

We spent a couple of days in Phnom Penh (Cambodian’s capital) where we ate some excellent food at restaurants all set up for good causes, treated myself to another massage (foot this time) but by a blind masseuse, and visited the Royal Palace. Unfortunately though I bottled out of trying the tarantulas for sale by the riverside.

Roaring fun at the Royal Palace

Anyone for spider?

 

And so it was into Vietnam with a much more hassle-free border crossing. First stop was Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) where we unfortunately had to say goodbye to two of our tour companions Hayley and Brendon from New Zealand. Needless to say we gave them a good send off in the local watering holes!

Hayley and Brendon say au revoir!

We travelled to the Mekong Delta where we had a homestay on the island and were treated to some wonderfully presented food, got to ride bikes(unfortunately one of our group Jen got a bit excited and ended up in the river!) and also dress up in some traditional hats whilst drinking from coconuts and being punted down the river on longboats (we’re such tourists!). We also visited a brick factory and coffin maker. It seems the Cambodian randomness has also seeped over the border!

Elephant ear fish - strange name, great taste!

Charlotte and I dress to impress!

Back in Ho Chi Minh City we learnt about the Vietnam War with a visit to the War Museum as well as to the Cu Chi tunnels, where hundreds of Vietnamese people lived underground and fought the American soldiers. The tunnels had a surreal Disney theme park feel about them especially with a shooting range set up on site so that as you walked through the forest you felt you were in some strange reconstruction as the guns went off.

I'm going deeper undergound...

Me and the AK-47...it had to be done!

From Saigon we headed to the beach resort of Nha Trang on our first overnight sleeper train. The look on our faces when we first saw how small each of our cabins were was priceless but we soon got comfortable (well as comfortable as you can be with 6 people squashed into a cardboard box!) and devoured the snacks we’d bought!

Sharing a cabin with five girls...the vodka came in handy!

Nha Trang was pure indulgence. A little bit of the Costa Del Sol tucked away on the west coast of Vietnam but without all the British breakfasts and chavs (although actually a couple of fry ups were eaten during our stay there!). We spent our first day on a boat trip with the ‘Funky Monkey’ a Vietnamese guy who has basically set up a booze cruise and called it a ’sightseeing boat trip’. It was absolutely hilarious with a floating free bar, buffet lunch, dancing on the decks and karaoke all for a mere 4 pounds!

Not sure if a free cocktail bar in the middle of the sea is actually such a good idea...oh well, mine's a large one!

We spent the following day nursing a hangover or two and decided to chill out and visit the local mudbaths. In scenes reminiscent of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory we submerged ourselves in the runny mud before making use of the thermal hot pools and waterfalls to rinse off.  Who knows what else Vietnam will have in store…

Augustus Gloop in the making!

ROG

The random country

My South East Asian adventure began in Bangkok desperately arranging a Vietnam visa & trying to master the traffic, whilst not getting myself killed in a tuk tuk pile up, before finally meeting up with my tour group for a 3 week adventure through Cambodia and Vietnam. I was joined by new travelling companion (a la Doctor Who) Emma Jane Stallard (aka ‘Edge’), a  university friend who had come out to SE Asia for a holiday, so my loneliness was short-lived!

Emma Jane…Rose Tyler eat your heart out

The tour began with a night out in Bangkok which saw me lose hopelessly to a 7 year old girl at Thumb War, an elephant randomly walking down the road as well as a few too many shishas and the infamous Bangkok ‘buckets’ (Thai whiskey, red bull and coke all served in a kid’s sand castle bucket). Needless to say the tour started with a few sore heads.

The buckets make you do some silly things

She clearly practises a lot more than I do

But hangovers aside it was onto the Cambodian border. We spent several hours here unfortunately and at one point even thought they may not actually let us in. But in we got and headed to our first point of call, the city of Siam Reap, home to the “world famous” (there’s those words we have heard so many times on this tour) Angkhor Wat temple complex.

In what can only be described as a scene from Indiana Jones, we walked by torchlight through the stone passages of the temples to get to the centre in time for sunrise…and boy did it not disappoint, making up for the “cloud-gate’ debacle at Macchu Picchu.

Sunrise sunrise and I say hey yay

The temple complex was mind blowing covering a vast area with giant faces and elephants carved into the rocks and some parts overrun by giant trees. This was where they actually filmed some Tomb Raider scenes but unfortunately no Angelina Jolie around the day we were there.

Mmm not sure this is entirely appropriate

Back in town we were treated to the delicacies of ‘Pub street’ where I enthusiastically tried snake (bit on the chewy side!) and embarrassingly had a photograph with the local apsara dancers before graffiti-ing my hometown on the wall of a pub!

Why make the name any more complicated!

Rodney you plonker

Proud to be Wenvoe

The action didn’t stop there though and in Siam Reap I experienced my first ever full body massage. It was only after discussing the experience after that  I realised I was the only one in the group whose masseuse had approached the buttock region!

We also had a boat trip to a floating island meeting a young girl and her python friend before ending our stay in Siam Rep with a visit to Dr Fish where we had our feet nibbled by 1500 fish from Turkey. Random times.

Something a bit fishy going on here

Only in Cambodia

ROG

2 become 1

So after an emotional goodbye to my remaining travelling companion it was time to go it alone and hit Darwin in the Northern Territory, my last port of call in Oz. Darwin has an interesting feel about it. Lots of hostels with open air bars, some nice gardens, and even an opportunity to feed (and even stroke) hundreds of fish every morning at high tide. But it also had a kind of shady feel about the place – I even witnessed some poor aboriginal guy, drunk off his face, being taunted by some locals whilst a group of backpackers just stood and laughed. Nice…

An interesting experience

But the day after I arrived I left for a 2 day tour of Kakadu National Park with tour company “Kakadu dreams”. It was also the “wet” season so I’ll leave you to decipher the description we came up with of how much fun we had.

The Kakadu crew...innit bra.

Our first port of call was the Adelaide River for a Jumping Crocodile cruise. I was literally almost peeing my pants with excitement. Some of you may be aware that it has always been a dream of mine to see crocodiles in the wild and when I tried to see them 5 years ago on the Daintree river in Queensland there were none of them sodding there. But this time didn’t disappoint as we boarded our boat and watched as one after the other the beastly creatures approached us.

 

Nice of them to let you know

The first one was pretty impressive at just over 3m but then our boat captain (hilarious Mick Dundee-esque Aussie who kept repeating classic lines such as ‘they’re out there, no one knows where’ and ‘you face more danger when you drive your car every day’) spotted a 5m one approaching. Although not as athletic as the first this one looked like he had a history and weirdly he had a black body and white head. Mick informed us his name was ‘Michael Jackson’.

MJ..he's bad, he's bad and he knows it

1,2,3...Jump!

As well as seeing the crocs jump we also had chance to be photographed with a python and feed a dozen or so hawks from the boat as they swooped down almost on our heads . So basically a wildlife enthusiasts wet dream.

The laughing hid the fear...kind of.

So we headed into Kakadu National Park and its beauty was indescribable. Being the wet season as well we were treated to some terrific storms which meant lots of wading through streams and the opportunity to see gushing waterfalls. We also did some rock scrambling, climbing through crevices (felt very Indiana Jones at one point), swimming in crystal clear pools as well as viewing some ancient aboriginal rock drawings.

Oh I do love a good waterfall

Duh Duh Duh Duhhh, Duh Duh Duhh...mmm it's pretty difficult writing what the Indiana Jones theme sounds like

Our accommodation was in a permanent bush camp where we were treated to a meal of kangaroo (Poor skippy) washed down with a few beers and a play (particularly unsuccessful for me and my small mouth) of the didgeridoo. This was after we had tried some bushtucker grub such as bush passionfruit and ants bottoms which weirdly tasted just like a lime.

Jure was a bit more sucessful than I was

The finale of our tour was unexpected when firstly one of our guides Dan stopped the truck and proceeded to clamber up a tree to catch a frilled neck lizard. We then stopped at a roadhouse where we would get to see the infamous waterbuffalo “Charlie” from the Crocodile Dundee films. Yet another pants drenching moment.

Mmm interesting hair Rich

From Darwin I left Oz (after one last Boost Juice and a packet of Red Rock Deli sweet chilli and sour cream crisps…heaven!) and headed to Bangkok via one night in Singapore. The hotel in Singapore was probably the best I’ve ever stayed in with an amazing infinity pool on the roof as well as some interesting design ideas such as a window in the bathroom so you could watch the TV whilst in the bath!! Needless to say I didn’t see much more of Singapore other than the hotel’s interior!

And then onto Bangkok via a flight where I finally got to watch the latest James Bond movie – you wouldn’t believe how much trouble we’ve had trying to see it over the last 5 months! Weirdly after my arrival in Bangkok I got a taxi to the centre and the first song on the radio to play was ‘2 become 1′ by the Spice Girls. I’m not sure whether this was a coincidence or whether it just warns me not to expect much from the Thai music scene. But you’ll be pleased to know that my loneliness will not last much longer as I now await a new travelling companion for my Asian adventure. More details in the next episode…

P.S. For those of you interested in thongs(!), in Australia the word thong is used to describe a flip flop not a G-string. In Oz G-strings are instead known as ‘G-bangers’ and in Canada known as a ‘Whales tails’. It’s amazing what you learn some days.

Probably needs a good wash

 ROG

Pancakes, snorkeling and long goodbyes: Denham to Broome

And the journey up the coast continued! Never again was there another night like Denham, but there was still plenty of fun to be had. The less we say about the day after Denham, the better – though it did involve far too long a drive and about two kilos of cornbeef hash.

Cornbeef hash: food of the Gods?

Coral Bay was the next major stop. The picturesque white sand and turquoise waters were only marred slightly by the incredible number of flies on the beach… oh, and the few bristolians that we managed to find ourselves sat next to. Out came those sexy fly nets again and Rich got another chance to dig out his snorkel gear and venture out in to the open waters. It was also that rainy night in Coral Bay that we met John and Jess, an American couple who we were to see on a number of occasions on our way up the coast. More on them later!

Exmouth brought with it one of the best and worst campsites of the trip up the coast. Described as “the most perfectly located campsite on the west coast of Australia”, by the Lonely Planet, the Lighthouse Caravan Park didn’t quite live up to its reputation.  Not only was it miles from anywhere (even the sea?!), and full of may flies, but the lighthouse was by far the worst one either of us has ever seen. Saying that the rainy weather allowed for us to spend some quality time getting to know Bunny. I believe we sat in her for about five hours that day.

Ningaloo Lighthouse:In need of a paint job and could do with being abiout three times the size

40 degrees centigrade and raining, but still smiling

Beyond that night, Exmouth was pretty incredible. We snorkeled at the most amazing places in Ningaloo National Park, swimming with reef sharks around the Oyster Stacks and letting the tide take us along the beach with turtles at Turquoise Bay. Oyster stacks was also the resting place for another pair of Haviana flip flops… don’t ask.

The following few nights we called Exmouth Holiday Park home. It was here that we cooked many a BBQ, played countless games of Head Plop TM, star gazed with new friends whilst sharing another box of terrible wine, and almost had to take an executive decision to give up hopes of getting to Broome and head back to Perth. At one point about 600km of roads that we planned to drive on were closed due to flooding, but, we stuck to our guns and held out, only for the roads to clear a couple of days later. Exmouth also saw me win the first game of mini golf I’ve played this whole trip. Phew…

Sir Patrick Moore was quaking in his boots

The remainder of the drive up the coast was a little faster paced, with us needing to make up time following the long but relaxing stay in Exmouth. Over those days we relaxed in Honeymoon Cove (Karratha), were adopted by surrogate parents Barry and Brenda (a 60 year-old couple from Halifax), slept through many a thunderstorm, diced with death on 80-Mile Beach (Rich got stung by a jelly fish, only for us to also find out that the beach was also home to Great White Sharks later that evening), had pancakes for every meal on Pancake day, and went to Macdonalds far too many times. Pancake day actually deserves a little more detail. Not only did we have a superb pancake breakfast, cooked on the BBQ, but in the evening Rich managed to cook a pasta dish, sausages and prepare pancakes with one pan on a single hob. Ainsley Harriett, eat your heart out!

Pancake anyone?!

And last but not least Broome. Apparently bombed to the point of abandonment in World War Two, it was a pretty cool place to relax and get ourselves together before the sad day came to say our goodbyes, first to Bunny and then to each other, and go our separate ways. Whilst there we went to Sun Pictures, the oldest open air cinema in the world, sampled some of the best beer we’ve had on the trip at the local brewery and went out to a pub/club which would have looked more at home in Playa De Las Ingles, Tenerife, than it did in sleepy Broome, population 11,000.

And that was that. We spent our last morning together in Macdonalds, waiting for the breakfast to lunch switch (10.30am for those not in the know) and predicting how the staff went about changing the menu signs above the tills. All I can say is that we were both in a very strange place, and finding it a little hard to come to terms with the goodbye that was to follow.

I am now back in Sydney, staying with Pauly T and currently trying to work out where I’ll be in two months. For the record, Pauly T is alive and well, living in a very pleasant flat just outside the city – photos will follow! You never know, a guest appearance on the blog could follow, watch this space!

Great days

So its goodbye from me, for the time being and good luck to Rich ahead of his travels in South East Asia. Speak to you all soon,

RB

The thought of seeing Pauly T again was too much...

One night in Denham

So in our new Playboy wagon we headed north from Perth with our first stop at the weird rock formations that form the Pinnacles. We felt like we were auditioning for a sequel to The Fly when thousands of the things started burying into all our orifices as soon as we stepped out of the van. We didn’t stay round for long and headed straight to our first campsite for a traditional British meal of beans on toast! Bliss.

Mmm...an interesting shaped pinnacle

why don't you fly awwayy..

Over the next few days we spent time on the beach, saw the Satellite dish that transmitted Neil Armstrong’s first words from space, got bullied out of a swimming pool by two gigantic wasps, had a tour of a Fisherman’s Co-operative lobster factory (donning some fabulous hair nets), dodged emus and kangaroos on the road and above all tried to keep cool in the increasing heat.

Russ auditions as the new Hilda Ogden

Anyone see Rod Hull? Oh no...

Unfortunately ‘Bunnies’ wasn’t particularly enjoying the heat (you can’t really blame her without any air-conditioning) and decided to have a moody fit by making some weird shuddering noises from her front right wheel. We managed to drive her (albeit very slowly) to a nearby campsite but literally could not see what the problem was.  It was only after we decided not to worry about the problem until the following morning that we realised the weird site we had arrived at.

Hamelin pool campsite is pretty remote located conveniently near the Stromatolites, ancient organisms in the sea, not quite like coral but more alive than rocks. So that was weird to begin with. The campsite was deserted apart from another Wicked van and so we were looking forward to meeting some other Wickedites. We didn’t see anyone in the van the whole time we were there. Whether they had been dragged into the Outback and brutally murdered by the toothless owner remains to be seen but it definitely had that feel about the place. The bathrooms also played music.

Strange goings on at the Stromatolites

Shell beach. Basically a beach made of shells.

Luckily we survived the night but whether Bunnies was going to get out of there was another question. It was also Friday 13th so things were not looking promising. But out she got (thats’ my girl!) and we managed to drive to the mecca of Monkey Mia campsite with little problem. Phew.

Monkey Mia is home to the “world famous” dolphins – but neither Russ nor I had heard about them before so they can’t be that world famous. Every morning on cue 5 or 6 dolphins come right up to the beach to be fed. This may seem a little Sea World-esque but it was pretty cool and Rich also managed to get picked twice to feed them fish. There were tears from the toddlers who he’d elbowed out the way.

 

Flipper and friends

But why can't I stroke it...?

Next day was Valentine’s Day and the prospect of spending it in the romantic paradise of Monkey Mia was a little stomach churning so we decided to drive back to the town of Denham. Not alot there but we thought we could hit the cask wine and try and a find a local pub for a few beers to drown our singleton sorrows. We may have overdone the wine and beers and before we knew it we were in the back of a van with 2 local guys and an old woman being driven to a “house party”. Needless to stay we were the only other guests at this house party about from this bull dog/rottweiler creature. Hmmm maybe not a great move but we went along with it and really the only thing we both remember was being woken up the following day by the campsite owner saying we were 2 hours past check out time. What really happened in Denham remains a mystery. All we know is that Russ lost another pair of flip flops somewhere and at one point Rich remembers being completely lost in some field near a roundabout. Denham – a Valentine’s night to remember.

 

Rich and his surprise Valentine in Denham

ROG

Go West…life is Playboy there

So from the unbearable heat of Melbourne we eventually took off on a flight to Perth, WA amidst the billowing smoke from the bush fires which have devestated the state. We now have a new found loyalty to Qantas having one of our best flights so far with ice cream on a stick, 4 bottles of wine and the new release Australia on the TV. I think they may be trying to make us stay here…

Perth was a very laid back city with some beautiful parkland and even its own equivalent of the London Eye. I hope the guys back in London know about these copycats. We stayed at a pretty chav backpackers resort, with one of the giantesque girls we have ever met staying there. We nicknamed her Hulk Bogan (bogan being another name for an Aussie chav) and feared for our lives whenever she came stomping through.

What an Eye full

More hilarious signs...not

Unfortunately during our time in the city poor Rich was bitten on the hand by some unknown insect which made his hand swell like one of the chubby trees we discovered in the park. He was not happy with how much Russ took the mick out of him particularly the references to the Elephant man.

Spot the difference

We probably should have stayed longer in Perth but we had a Wicked campervan to pick up to travel the 3500km up to Broome. The day did not get off to a good start with all our debit/credit cards deciding to pack up when we had to pay for the damn thing (still sense the bitterness??) and then we say up on the white board that we had bene assigned the ‘Bunnies’ van. Now for all of you who are familiar with Wicked you will know that all their vans are graffiti-ed on the outside and so ours obviously had a ‘bunnies’ theme. Unfortunately it was not a lovely mural of a scene from Watership Down but was instead emblazoned with about 50 multicoloured Playboy bunnies. You can now imagine the look on our faces….

Everyone loves Bunnies

Camping it up

What a wicked behind

We now find ourselves a couple of  days into our camping experience and you’ll be please to know we have warmed to Bunnies but are still having to deal with weird looks from people in the street! We have also still been finding it difficult to deal without Paul so we have replaced him with a stuffed penguin (small, furry, does as he’s told- so not much difference really). The adventures of the new threesome will be documented in the next edition….

The new Pauly T

ROG

1. The trip begins: Boston

Excitement and pure dread at the airport

 

Divine Brown watch out...

 

Beautiful Boston

We love Wendys

Two days in, the jet lag has just about passed, stomach troubles have come and gone, and Boston, as it turns out, is a pretty cool city. Only got about seven minutes to write due to the extortionate cost of getting online in this hostel (and we can’t upload any pics because the USB is screwed), but here;s a quick summary:

We’ve watched many hours of inflight movies, hailed a cab and tipped far too much, walked the freedom trail, experienced one of the most irritating hostel room-mates that we’re likely to meet (Moany Maloney – moans throughout the night in his sleep, sounds very suspicious, sleeping above Pauly T), climbed aboard the USS Constitution (AKA “Old Iron Sides”) and experienced American patriotism by the bucketload, had a little sleep in the oldest park in Boston, sampled Samuel Adams at the original Cheers bar, drank Hoptimus Prime 9% ale with Wenvoe’s friends from 5 years ago, attended a frap party with a girl who ate far too many meat balls, visited Harvard and been mistaken for students on three occasions, survived a nose bleed, and cooked pasta and sauce.

What a trip so far. Speak soon. Lots of love to all. RB

3. Capes and Falls

Is Russ wearing moose in his hair?

Again, apologies about the length (or lack of it) and photographs (or lack of them) in these here blogs. We’re holed up in a public library in Ann Arbor, about 30 miles outside of Detroit, and hadn’t planned on checking in on the internet today. So, no cables and no cameras. We’ll get better at the photo thing I promise, especially as we have some pretty good ones to upload now.

 

After leaving New England, we meandered toward Ithaca – watching the leaves turn as we went. We’d got a recommendation that Ithaca was a cool place to stay as it’s home to Cornell University. It was a pretty small, hilly town in the ‘Finger Lakes’, completely dominatd by the Uni, and we were knackered. We had a quick look around the town, ate some decent pasta, got a Monkey Head beer and carved our names into the college bar that seemed to be almost entirely made out of wood. But, as it was a Wednesday, the town was dead, and we weren’t exactly in a party mood, it was a bit of an early night while watching some baseball (we’re getting quite up on the rules now).

Spot the vandal

Yesterday we drove the rest of Finger Lakes – they look like fingers, y’see – and motored Britney (our hire car) toward the border with Canada. We crossed in the town of Niagara toward the Canadian side of the falls, which had amazing views of the two waterfalls. The actual town is all amusements, hilariously crap waxwork musuems and casinos, like Blackpool on crack. The falls, however, were magnificent. We had a walk on the promenade to see them from afar, then paid $15 for a trip on the Maid in the Mist riverboat that ran past the one fall and into the mouth of the horseshoe falls. It was windy and the spray all but drowned us, but it was one of the best 10 pounds or so of my life – like a Disney ride but real. At night, they project coloured lights onto the falls, which was also very impressive; before some pruning I think I’d managed to take over 100 photos of the falls.

NiagaraMaids of the mistTrue colours shining through

Today, we left Niagara and headed down through Canada to cross back into the US at Detroit – which is an absolute hole by the look of it. We left pretty sharpish. We’ve now got a slightly dodgy hotel here as a stop off before we hit Chicago tomorrow for a few days.

PT

2. The sea and the odd tree..

Before I begin thi spost I must  first apologise for inappropraitely placed spaces and the terrible spelling – the keyboard I am trying to use has clearly been used by too many Maple Syrup loving Yanks, so much so that every othe rkey is sti cking.

And so from Russ’ delightful prologue, the tour continued from Boston a la the beautiful Kia Rondo which we are driving (from this point onwards we will refer to the car by her nickname ”Britney” – we are hoping she has fewer breakdowns than the real deal). First stop was Plymouth to see the landing place of the Pilgrim Fathers where Russ and Paul tried the local clam chowder and I opted for the unbranded Fillet o Fish. Nice rock to commemorate the landing.

Don't mess with the Plymouth crew

Onto Cape Cod for our full view of the Atlantic and the true start of our Coast to Coast journey. Paul opted for some alone time on the beach – he was very excited with the prospect of a giant sand pit to play in. Stayed the night at our first motel (the whole room nicely cladded in wood to feel more like a sauna) in Provincetown right at the tip of the Cape. What a weird place. A bit like Brighton but, if possible, even more gay! Although we were hoping to try some good seafood, returning stomach troubles and a poor choice of restaurant, meant this may have to wait until the other coast!

Making new friends

From Cape Cod we headed back north into New England for our “Fall experience” and what a sight it was. Literally mile upon mile of nothing but trees all changing colour wih the season. Stopped in a small town called Northampton, not planned to be a particularly exciting stop but just somewhere to stretch our legs. Paul was upset that the Birdwatcher’s store was shut but soon perked up again when we turned the corner to see Mel Gibson! He was randomly filming a new movie (I’m catching on to the American terms as you can tell) called Edge of Darkness or something like that in this tiny town in the middle of Vermont. Although we tried to get into a shot there were too many production assistants, grips or whatever they are called to spoil the fun.

100 mile lookout

Our lodging for the night was just outside Bennington, Vermont and was literally in the middle of nowhere. However this did not matter as, alongside a games room with air hockey, table football, and table tennis, the hostel had its own lake complete with kayaks to keep us occupied! I was too excited to describe and so set off straight away onto the lake on my own (Russ and Paul being in the other kayak) only to experience the shock of a lifetime when a black fin emerged from the water and went back under with a huge splash. I would like to say that we had found the only lake in the USA, if not the world, which was home to a killer shark, but unfortunately it was in fact home to two beavers.

Hunting for beaver

Until the next time

ROG

4. Nuggets along the way

• There are hundreds, literally hundreds, of Dunkin’ Donuts here. Way more than there are McDonalds’
• Beavers seem to slap their tails on the water before they dive only to scare Rich into thinking they’re going to attack him
• Rich has definitely got the hang of the driving
• We’ve got a massively upgraded car to the one we paid for. It’s a Kia Rodno/Roono (?!) for the car geeks
• American radio is obsessed with Billy Joel, and ‘Piano Man’ in particular. Russ obviously loves that
• American people, so far, aren’t particularly fat. How very disappointing
• Baseball games are loooooong. The one we went to watch lasted 5 and a half hours. Ouch
• I am absolutely terrible at table tennis. Shockingly bad
• Mel Gibson is pretty short. Which makes me feel a lot better about myself
• People have been absurdly nice to us so far – one couple even insisted we stay with them in New England and bought us a pitcher of beer. We naturally assumed they wanted to kill us
• Presidential debates are pretty dull it seems

Love and hugs,

PT

5. Thoughts from Russy Barrow AKA America’s #1 British import

• Americans seem to love Billy Joel. I seem to have developed a new found love for Billy Joel. Perhaps I should live here.
• Piano Man is undoubtedly one of the greatest songs of our time.
• Nothing really happens in American sport, yet it remains pretty entertaining and quite difficult to turn away from when it is on TV.
• There is a possibility that the Michigan-ite language/accent is closer to that of individuals from Birmingham than those more upstanding gents from Southern England. Our hotelier in Ann Arbor seems only to respond to Mr Thompson’s Brummie twang. Very odd.
• US motel rooms are really not kitted out for 3 young men. Bed sharing is a very real possibility for the next 30-odd nights. Papers, scissors, stone will need to mastered.
• All Americans aren’t massively obese. But a fair few are – hopefully this will pick up as we travel South.
• It would be a struggle to stay in America for an extended period and not join said obese crowd.
• It is near on impossible to buy fruit here – unless is is covered in syrup, or mashed up with some sugar and surrounded by dough.
• We may be about to experience our first microwave meal of the trip tonight. This is pretty much all that is advertised on American TV, so they are obviously very good at them.I have very high hopes.

RB

6. Chicago rocks!

And so we arrive in the Chicago, Illinois or the ’Windy city’ as it is affectionately known – not exactly sure why as during the two days we spent here we hardly felt a breeze! We experienced our first 20-bed, all male, dorm of the trip which was an interesting experience to say the least – I’m sure at one point the 6 or so snorers in the room synchronised perfectly for a chorus of ’Land of Hope and Glory’.

City lights

Unfortunately we had to leave Britney alone for two nights on the edge of some park but never fear, before you phone the RSPCB, we left her with a mate…a delightful young specimen of a pumpkin called Justin. Having experienced the build up to Halloween in the first 10 days of our trip (literally every house has either an inflatable witch or frankenstein on its doorstep or a plastic graveyard assembled on the lawn) we felt we had to join in somehow – plus it is also something for Paul to talk to in the back seat.

So we hit the town big style in Chicago mingling with the locals in the bars on Division Street as well as taking in a local blues night where the main singer literally spent his first set gyrating with his guitar over some poor woman. We also managed to see the sights, admittedly through glazed vision having such a stinking hangover, but what sights they were. Chicago really does have everything…a giant shiny ‘Bean’ which gives awesome reflections of the cityscape, beaches in the middle of downtown and of course the US’ tallest building, the Sears Tower.

 

Beanz Meanz Chicago

Chicago is where the legendary deep pan was born (and no not like those horrid Chicago Town pizzas you get in the freezer section of Tesco!). Known locally as ‘pies’ (something which excited Paul ‘Fray Bentos boy’ Thompson a great deal) this is one delicacy we were not missing out on and so we headed to the original Pizzeria Uno for a taste of the action.  We opted for the large Original Uno between us piled high with sausage, pepperoni and onions. We barely managed one piece each, narrowly escaping a coronary,  with the rest saved for breakfast the following day. The take-out box we had was so heavy we had to take it in turns to carry it home in a kind of ‘Pizza relay’ stopping at the side of Lake Michigan every now and again to catch our breath. Fitness levels will need to be improved upon before the Inca trail.

Pizza my heart

ROG

8. Mad cab drivers, Heartbreak Hotel and Very Important Ducks

Elvis lives. At least according to our cab driver in Memphis. After enthusiastically insisting that Memphis cabs are the cheapest you’ll find in the US he went on to say that he used to think Elvis was dead until he picked him up in his cab one evening on Beale Street, downtown Memphis. At first this seemed a little unlikely – Beale Street is rammed with tourists, bars and Elvis Souvenir shops – but apparently he looks a lot different now… “If there’s one thing a man can’t change its his walk” (Not good news for Elvis, or Pauly T). He’s picked him up a couple of times since, he now lives in Georgia. Who’d have thought…

Elvis Lives... but not in Graceland

After a wonderful nights sleep in the Heart Break Hotel and a peanut butter and jam bagel we headed to the home of the man himself – Graceland (not Georgia). From down in the jungle room, to Elvis’s pink cadillac, we did the full tour of the Elvis estate, complete with audio tour. In recent years i’ve become quite a fan of a good tour, and this was a good one. We even saw the piano where Elvis played his last song – surprisingly sad to be honest – but we got through it together.

Nice car... wanna show me what it can do?

Once we’d had our fill of Elvis we headed to Little Rock, once home to Mr William Clinton. Not a huge amount there… or so we thought. On arrival we realised the we had about 10 minutes to get to the Peabody Hotel to watch the march of the Peabody ducks. A quick sprint later and we were on the balcony watching trained ducks walk from the fountail in the lobby of the Peabody Hotel, to the elevator, to music. Only in America…

Duck march... bizarre

One of the most bizarre meals of the trip to date was had in a small Mexican, El Chicos, just of the interstate. To begin a small old lady loaded up our table with 3 huge bowls of tortilla chips and FIVE bowls of salsa. Then PT and Rich had black bean soup – which had the appearence and consistency of slurry. Needless to say we had our fill – and once again were served by incredibly nice staff. Everyone is so nice here… thought they are getting a little weightier.

Slurry soup.Mmmm

From Little Rock we headed to Fort Worth, where we are currently all sat updating the blog as this is the first place we’ve been able to since Ann Arbor. Bit of a heavy night last night in Cowboy country and a rodeo to look forward to tonight – yeee haaaa!

From this...

To this.

Finally, we just had all you can eat beef ribs… and about 2 pints of soft drinks. Think I may need a lie down.

Beefy ribs.

Much love. RB

7. The importance of not waving at bikers…

With heavy bellies and sad little hearts we left Chicago, although we still had 3 pieces of deep dish pizza left rattling around in the car. Seriously, that thing is absurd (didn’t stop me eating it cold for breakfast though).

 

Route 66 starts in Chicago. Apparently. Despite walking around the city for hours (hungover, granted), we didn’t see the signs anywhere. So, instead of just getting on the road, we decided to search for the start of it instead. A little while, and one fairly nondescript sign, later, we hit the road, taking in the weird sights on the old road.

On the road

Seriously, who thought it would be a good idea to advertise their business with a 30 foot green fibreglass spaceman or, even weirder, a 35 foot lumberjack holding a hot dog called ‘Tall Paul’?? You can imagine the fun that Russ and Wenvoe had with that one. The buggers.

Tall Paul and slightly shorter Paul

Just a tip, while we’re here. Do not ever, EVER, apologise to a Hell’s Angel biker when you accidentally cut them up on the road. We decided to get some Cozy Dogs (corny battered hot dogs – who says only Wolves knows how to batter stuff??), and Rich pulled across a MASSIVE stereotypical biker, complete with denims, leather, grizzled beard and probably some knife-fighting scars. Being the polite, well-mannered, jovial sort I am, I thought I’d give him a little wave of apology. Unfortunately, he thought I was, in his own words, “flipping him off”. Whatever that means. As we parked up, round he sped and confronted poor Pauly, growling about my attitude. I had to punch him on the chin and knock him out. Well, by “punch him on the chin” I actually mean apologise profusely, and by “knock him out” I mean run off and hide until he’d left. I’m definitely keeping the moral highground though – not often you get shouted at by a biker and live to tell the tale.

 

That night we stayed in a hotel with a pool, free snacks, and 3 free drinks each. This ‘roughing it’ is surprisingly luxurious sometimes!

 

The next day we wandered into St. Louis (pronounced Lewis, apparently), to see the massive Gateway Arch. Russ renamed this the Safeway Arch, as that is what all Gateway’s are called in England now. Obviously they haven’t got this far in the rebranding yet. It looked like a ginormous metal half-McDonalds arch. Lovely.

 

As we’re in America, we also decided to stop by the Anheuser Busch brewery. Yep, as in Budweiser. Did you know 1 in every 2 beers in the world is a Budweiser (or variety thereof)??? Gutted for about half of you out there. It was a hilarious (free) tour, and we got free beer at the end again. Loving this free beer culture they seem to have got out West.

 

That night we got into Memphis, home of the Blues. We decided to stay in the Heartbreak Hotel, on Lonely Street, directly opposite the gates to Graceland. The TVs had 24 hour Elvis videos, and the bar serves grilled peanut butter and banana sandwiches. All the staff wore black (they’re heartbroken, y’see?). We basically HAD to stay there. It’s probably illegal not to.

Well, it

We had a little night out in Memphis, on Beale Street, getting a couple of drinks in BB King’s Blues Bar and perusing the hilarious Elvis tack shops. Elvis coffee is possibly the weirdest thing in there. Unfortunately, I think the pulled pork barbecue dinner we ate, which was amazing by the way, disagreed a bit with me and we had to cut the night relatively short, so back it was to Heartbreak Hotel. I love typing that…

 

 

PT

9. Thoughts again from Russy Barrow AKA America’s #1 British import

What a film

• Die Hard is on all the time here. So far we have seen three out of the four. Brilliant. If only Romancing the Stone and Jewel of the Nile were on all the time too…
• John McCain sounds like John McClain (of Die Hard). Will Americans get confused in to thinking they’re voting Bruce Willis in?
• Baseball is definately one of the most frustrating sports to watch. But boy is it good. Watched Boston come back from 7-0 down the other night to win 7-8. You don’t get that at Upton Park… often…
• If Elvis is alive, what has he been doing for so long? And why does he spend so much time getting cabs?
• Training ducks to walk tto music is one thing, but who trains them? Perhaps you can specialise in duck training at uni here. Be an odd course. Perhaps I should look in to this
• Pulled pork is unbelievable, as are beef ribs. We need to get more of that in the UK
• They must have an abundance of tortilla chips in the US. They couldn’t give us too many in the Mexican restaurant the other night
• Minute Maid lemonade is gross
• JFK is definately dead. Unfortunately
• Americans are not familiar with pay phones at all – a mention of one will undoubtedly recieve a blank stare

10. Thoughts from the littlest hobo

• We watched a 30 minute TV show today advertising a solution for “back rolls”. Unfortunately, that’s not some sort of food, it’s the flab around the back of the fat people here. On a hangover, I have no idea how we weren’t sick
• The first, “Oh my GOD – I LOVE your accent”: petrol station in Memphis
• Black bean soup is possibly the first soup that looks worse on the way in…
• Incidentally, it would make a fine addition to the menu of the soon-to-be world famous soup restaurant, That’s Soup?
• I’m surprised noone famous has sued Louis Tussauds waxworks museum. Their Harrison Ford actually looked more like Freddy Krueger
• We got offered 4 abandoned puppies in Hot Springs. I would have loved them and called them Kightly, Jarvis, Iwelumo and Ebanks-Blake. I still regret not taking them
• American towns are ironically named. Hope was possibly the least hopeful place I’ve ever been. Although, Bill Clinton was born here, something which they seem inordinately proud of
• Budweiser tastes just as horrid in the factory as it does everywhere else in the world
• Budweiser actually has a herd (?) of horses in their brewery. Any link between this and the taste of the beer is apparently entirely coincidental
• Elvis had hilarious taste – anyone who can combine shag carpets on the ceiling, hawaiian tiki chairs, porcelain monkeys and an entire wall that is a waterfall is alright by me
• Zoltar read my fortune. Apparently, my future is bright and my brow (how did he know about my massive unibrow???) will be lightened. A drive-by plucking perhaps?

PT

11. Everything is bigger in Texas

Well, so they like to say anyhow. Given the all-you-can-eat beef ribs that we hunkered down into following a night on the tiles in Fort Worth, I think we can probably safely say that’s pretty true. I was beaten pretty easily by three of the enormo-ribs, but not so our fearless Welsh and Chippenhamian troopers who actually managed to finish their 5 ribs and ask for more. Not many more, obviously, but I think we made our point.

 

Ribbed for your pleasure

That evening we decided to take in the delights of Billy Bob’s – which, if you didn’t already know, is the world’s biggest honkytonk. We were there for a good few hours, taking in an indoor rodeo and some barbecue, and we still have no idea what a honkytonk actually is. We also saw the second living legend of the trip – the one, the only, Joe Nicholls. Now, you might not actually know who he is (if I’m honest, we didn’t either), but it turns out he’s quite a big deal around Texas. His T-Shirts read along the lines of: ‘Joe Nicholls: Made My Clothes Fall Off’, or ‘Joe Nicholls: Let’s Get Drunk and Fight’. We have all changed our names to Joe’s in his honour, and will now only sing country songs and wear denim. Just so you all know.

 

A load of bull at the rodeo

After a bit more cowboy rooty-tootin’ we thought we’d make some trails and head on, so we hit Route 66 (no fights with bikers this time - they’ve learnt their lesson) and made a stop in Amarillo. We naturally sang the song to everyone we saw. I don’t think we impressed many people. Amarillo was actually a bit grim, to be honest. Why Tony Christie needed to find the way to it I don’t know, although it did have some nice antique shops. How very geriatric of us. Some kids in our motel said I sounded like Harry Potter as well – not my finest hour.

 

To continue our Wild West theme, we stopped in Santa Fe too. It basically looks like where Luke Skywalker lives at the start of Star Wars – all mud huts and western pueblos. We also stopped in a tiny weeny town in New Mexico confusingly called Las Vegas. We considered asking the one hotel that was there where the Bellagio was, as we’d heard it was quite impressive and thought we’d lke to see it, but chickened out. They probably heard that one all the time.

 

Finally, never EVER sleep in a motel in Espanola, New Mexico. Well, unless you like no shut eye due to arguing mexican couples who probably are banditos with guns and moustaches who shout obscenities and slam doors all night. Unfortunately, as most people know, I like my sleep much more than hearing the ins and outs of a drunken fight. And the diner we ate in had a bullet hole in the window. Don’t go there…

 

PT

12. Canyonlands

Getting out of New Mexico as quickly as we could being chased by some gun wielding maniacs (OK slight exaggeration there) we headed into colourful Colorado staying at a college town called Durango. We were very impressed with the locally brewed beers here not surprisingly given that they were served in one saloon bar by a waitress dressed “traditionally” in a corset and fish net tights complete with garter!

Things got a bit messy in Durango

So mid week merriment aside we headed into red rock country making stops at Mesa Verde National Park where we saw ancient cliff dwellings (and I thought the USA didn’t have much history), Monument Valley where poor Britney had to endure a 17 mile dirt track (she hasn’t spoken to us since) and we got to see the legendary Riders of the Sky shoot their new country music video (and no I haven’t gone crazy yet - we were actually told to stand back whilst four old crooners mimed along to their banjoes) before trips to the amazing Bryce and Zion NPs which have crazily pointed rocks called “hoodoos” and rocks that actually “weep”.

Russ and moody Britney at Monument Valley

 

Stand back, stand back...geriatrics at work

Our canyonland adventure culminated with a trip to the infamous Grand Canyon North Rim where Paul literally was brought to his knees by the view and no, not because it was so breathtaking, but because he had a severe attack of vertigo. This was not further helped by my lack of sympathy or Russ’ requests for photographs of himself in several precarious spots.

Rimming fun

A short mention here must be made to the photo below which was not actually taken by Paul but actually by a lady who we told to look out for our friend on the way back up the path – quite noticeable given he’d be the one sat down hugging a rock for dear life. The lady responded with “Oh of course we’ll give some encouraging words to HER”. Poor PT.

Where's Paul?

 

Oh dear..it was all too much for some

Finally I have some fantastic news for all of you who miss the delights of shopping at Safeway. It is still going out here! Just don’t tell Mr Morrisons.

ROG

P.S. We are slightly concerned Justin is not going to make it to Halloween. He is very wrinkled now and is seeping juice at one or two points. Probably doesn’t help that we keep leaving him unattended in some dangerous spots.

Justin time for Halloween?

13. Vegas… The best place in the whole world? … maybe

We arrived in Vegas to see the fountains at the Bellagio in full swing, little did we know that only two days later we would have had the best culinary experience EVER at that same place. And for just eight pounds, but more on that shortly.

Amazing fountains and food... the Bellagio!

This is actually the second time i’ve written this post. My computer crashed in some odd little motel in Lone Pine last time round. Though rest assured, the last post was hilarious, and my apologies for forgetting many of the wonderful jokes that would have made this the most read one to date.

So, where to begin… Our hotel, the Monte Carlo, was, without doubt, the best place we have frequented so far. Whilst it was nothing like Monte Carlo (how could it be, it was just a building), we had a huge room, an AMAZING shower, a pool, a lazy river, Oceans 11 on the night we arrived and really good shower gell.

It begins...

The first night in Vegas lived up to expectations… and probably surpassed them. We began at Coyote Ugly – expensive drinks, girls dancing on the bar – then went to Shadow Bar – expensive drinks, girls dancing behind a curtain – and ended at Pure – probably the best nightclub in the World. Not only was it huge and had a balcony overlooking the strip, but we managed to avoid the $25 entrance fee by running behind the bouncer. We all lost eachother, but still managed to have one of the best nights so far… not sure what that means…

These people wanted us in there photo... weird.

The second day in Vegas started a little late (about 10am for me, about 2pm for Pauly T). Whilst I’m currently sat in a dreary grey San Francisco, I was, only a few days ago, sat in extreme heat, floating about in a river in which no effort was needed to move. And that’s about all we did… oh, and we sat in the hot tub when the sun went down.

Walking around the casinos was like being in a different world. Before I went to Vegas I didn’t really know what to expect – i guess my mind was set on an elaborate Blackpool, but I was mistaken. In around about three hours we went to Rome, Venice and New York. No wonder Americans never leave the country.

Lazy river for lazy boys

After the first night drinks didn’t flow so fast, but we did see a pirate show, a flair bartender contest and have a drink overlooking the strip (once again) in a bar owned by a very swanky designer whose name now escapes me.

Yo ho ho a a bottle of rum

The final day began with a meal that will never be beaten. Whilst we may have had to q to get in the Bellagio buffet, I can’t say that any q ever has been more worthwhile. It was like Hook (the film), where everyone imagines food and it appears, and any food you want. French toast, eggs benedict, beef weelington, noodles, prawns, smoked salmon, sushi, fresh fruit, leek and potato soup, bread and butter pudding, key lime pie etc etc. We had three sittings and didn’t eat for the rest of the day. Actually Paul and I didn’t eat, Rich had a foot-long meatball sub from Subway… one day that mentabolism will drop and it’ll catch up with him.

The last evening in Vegas was spent watching Crazy Girls, one of the longest running shows on the strip, and playing beer pong (a bit like ten-pin bowling, but with pints of beer and ping pong balls) with a Mancunian and his mate. Getting up the next day was, once again a little tough.

On a hang over there’s nothing quite like dramatically changing elevations, so that’s what we did after leaving Vegas. The drive through Death Valley saw us go from 200 feet below sea level, to 6,000 feet above it. And it was about the hottest day we’ve had so far. I say we, Paul slept through most of it and I did for about half of it. Once again Wenvoe got us through it.

From Vegas to desert in 2 hours!

That day ended with the best burger of the trip so far. What a place. What a post. What a lot of food…

RB

14. Thoughts again from Russy Barrow AKA America’s #1 British import

Don't do it

• The Red Sox got beaten bay the Tampa Bay Ray. SO I supported Tampa Bay. The Tampa Bay got beaten by the Phillies in th final. And West Ham haven’t won since we left. Maybe I’m bad luck…
• I now have a Red Sox cap, which works wonders when it comes to having hair that needs a cut.
• Baby tomatoes are much more expensive here… and i’m not sure why. Perhaps someone could find out?
• Joe Nicholls is undoubtedly the most talented man that has ever lived. And he looks a bit like a cross between Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp, and Charlie Maurice. Dreamy.
• Amarillo should never have had a song written about it. Trowbridge would have been more deserving – it at least has a lot more roundabouts.
• Americans continue to be outrageously friendly. Perceptions have been changed. Still unsure why the loud annoying ones keep coming to the UK.
• Best buy of the trip so far is between the prezels and the re-sealable Oreos.
• America has rubbish bread. But amazing pancakes. Weird.
• Shrimp pot noodles don’t have a lot of shrimp in. In fact, thay have two… and they taste terrible. Perhaps go for chicken next time.
• Taco Bell is undoubtedlt THE BEST fast food place in the US. No wonder that its the only fast food place that survives in the future (in Demolition Man – in about 2012).

RB

NEWS FLASH and it’s not good

Justin is lost. He was last seen at 2.31am this morning cavorting with two blonde, DD-cupped, twenty-somethings dressed as witches. He has not been in touch since. We fear the worse but at same time am happy that he made it to Halloween in one piece. We however are in pieces ourselves and cannot even bear thinking about breaking the news to Britney, who incidentally we have left in a parking lot with a Mexican man who demanded we left our car keys. The road trip may end sooner than we thought.

ROG

15. Yosemite, Frisco & goodbye to Justin

After the boys’ near death hangover experience in Death Valley we continued up the Eastern Sierra to Yosemite National Park. We’d heard a lot of good things about this park and it didn’t disappoint. The best way I can describe it is a “giant Centre Parks” without the screaming kids and extortionate prices. I’m not sure this description really gives it the credit it deserves but hey I haven’t got much time left on this PC to think of anything better. Here we scrambled up rocks to get to waterfalls, marvelled at gigantic rocks, and walked around a grove of giant sequoia trees. So if you like rocks or trees or indeed both in giant form then put Yosemite on the list of your future travel destinations.

Giant rock

From Yosemite we headed to San Francisco via Gold Country. Here we played dressing up games and panned for gold in a ghost town. Good olde fashioned fun.

Scarily pretty or pretty scary?

We also experienced our first storm of the trip. Although Britney was pleased to get a soaking having accumulated about 3 inches of dirt through our desert experience she was less pleased with the lightning bolts striking the ground either side of her.

But we finally made it to San Francisco (or “Frisco” as it is affectionately known by locals which to me really sounds like a milk manufacturer) and took refuge in the Green Tortoise Hostel which quite simply is the best hostel ever! During our two nights there we had free dinner, free breakfast, free sweets, free internet, free pool, free beer and free vodka at a local bar. I didn’t particularly want to leave the place but being Halloween we felt it our duty to join the crowds and hit the streets fully dressed up (not sure whether you should start to be alarmed at the amount of dressing up going on…).

Pre-Justin loss

I would like to try and describe to you our night out but unfortunately the free vodka has clouded my memory somewhat. However as you are probably aware from the last post we unfortunately lost Justin somewhere in the revelry. You will be pleased to know though that he had the night of his life before his disappearance so if there is a silver lining to this horrendous loss then you can take comfort in the fact he went out with a bang!

Sat Nov 1st – Lost day. Got up. Felt terrible. Ate pizza. Went back to bed. Got up. Ate chinese. Went to bed.

We finally got to see San Francisco on the Sunday doing all the things tourists do – taking a trip out to Alcatraz, seeing the hundreds of sea lions at Pier 39, riding a cable car, tasting the infamous Ghiradelli chocolate and seeing a transgender rock band. Oh OK maybe the last one is not something that all tourists in San Francisco do but it was also another free thing the hostel put on. I love that place.

ROG

Token tourist snap

Frisco to Long Beach with a quick stop at the best place in the World

The morning of day 31 brought sorrow and happiness to the travelling boys. Sad to be leaving San Francisco, moods were quickly bolstered by the realisation that we were only moments away from being reunited with Britney and back on the road again. This is not the time or place to go over how difficult it was telling Britney about Justin… needless to say she’ll get over it in time, we hope…

After checking out the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco’s most crooked street (?!) we hit Highway 1 and began the last stretch of our USA road trip. We stopped in a fair few places, but due to time constraints on internet usage (again) I’ll summarise with a few bullets:

They were originally going to paint it grey!?

• Santa Cruz – an eerie surfer town that felt a bit like something from the Twilight Zone to start. Fish and chips, more sea lions, the best game of crazy golf ever (possibly) – despite the fact that Pauly T won it with a flukey hole in one, and some old-school arcade gaming.
• Pigeon Point – another slightly eerie derelict lighthouse. Think ‘Around the Twist’…but a little creepier. Beautiful though.
• Monteray – a motel with a pool and free breakfast – arguably the best of the trip, and a couple of movies including Ice Cube as Tripple X… worst film of the trip so far.
• The Big Sur – Pfeiffer Beach, Partington Cove – Stunning beaches and coves for picturesque walks, games of catch, paddling and the like.
• San Luis Obispo – For election night and microwaved food. Good to see the USA back in the hands of the Democrat, and that terrible Sarah Palin out of a job for the time being.
• Solvang – a mock Danish village on the west coast of the USA. Quite pretty but very odd… especially as on arriving I realised it was the second time I’d been there. A bit Disneyland again, but good pastries.
• Guadalupe sand dunes – lots and lots of sand, and was in Pirates of the Caribbean. Oh, and the film set from Cecil B Demille’s 1923 version of the 10 Commandments was lost under it!

Jonny Depp eat your heart out

• Avila and El Capitan Beach – an afternoon of sunbathing, swimming and seal watching… Wenvoe first thought they were whales… then sea lions… then the binoculars came out.
• Santa Barbara – one of the nicest places we’ve been and without doubt the best accomodation we have stayed in (same price as the hideous hostel up the road!). Santa Rosa itself feels a bit like Beverley Hills, but closer to the see. The town is stunning, the beach and pier were picturesque, and Villa Rosa was the greatest place in the world. Massive rooms on two levels, flat screen TV playing Rocky films on a loop, complimentary wine (a choice from 6 bottles), free cake, a hot tub, a pool and bath robes! An extended bathe in the hot tub with a couple of glasses of red wine was followed by a night out which began with darts and ended with an 80s club. Bliss.

After falling in love with Santa Barbara, it was time to leave, which we did – after stealing about half of the breakfast bagels. And This blog is currently being written from the library in Long Beach, California.

We opted to head down for the coast rather than braving South Central Los Angeles. On that note, however, Paul did have to head downtown yesterday morning – an hour hourney that consisted of sitting next to prostitutes on there way hom, and a guy announcing to his tram carriage that he hoped everyone had said there prayers that day, because they were going to need them – lovely.

Yesterday was spent enjoying the sun (30+ degrees), walking along Long Beach Harbour, admiring the Queen Mary, and stopping briefly in a pub which claims to have more draft beers than any other pub in the world.

Long Beach, a nice last stop

Today we say goodbye to Britney, pack our bags and head in to the unknowns of South America… speak again when we cross the equator. Bring on summer!

Farewell USA...

RB

Justin’s last night: In pictures

Below is a pictorial account of Justin’s last night with us. The night being 31st October 2008 in San Francisco. From initial typical Justin tomfoolery and flirtations with the locals the night drew to a dark close with his disappearance. Suspects have been identified through the SFPD investigation but as yet no leads have been successful.

The night

Tomfoolery with the boys

Fun with Bert and Ernie

 

One too many for everyone's favourite pumpkin?

 

Easy tiger!

Loved by everyone - even the police

The suspects

Suspect no.1 : Pirate girl - killer instinct?

Suspect no.2 : ex-soldier who served in Bosnia - could he not let go of the past and imagined Justion as an enemy target?

 

Suspect no.3: Amy Winehouse - seen here to be almost taking a bite out of him, did hunger lead her to commit the crime?

 

Suspect no. 4: Tommy K - did he smother him to death in ketchup?

 

The conclusion

No one has seen Justin since the last photo of him was taken at 2.31am below.

The last photo

Admittedly he does not look in a good state at this time (probably something to do with the fact he had consumed one too many vodka and cranberries) so who knows what could have happened to him. As mentioned in previous newsflash further fifth suspects identified were two blonde, DD-cupped witches seen to be flying off on their broomsticks soon after 2.31am with, according to an eyewitness, ”a small orange ball in their wart ridden hands”. No photographic evidence of these suspects exist so it seems that we will never know whether this was Justin or not. The case remains unsolved.

If anyone does have any further information on Justin’s disappearance please contact the SFPD on +1 978 568 5068

ROG

Bullets and bullets

* While Rich may be excellent at driving and maths, wildlife identification may not be his strong point. A “big black dog creature” became a squirrel, and ”massive whales” became “seals” and then ultimately dolphins.

* Justin’s loss has hit Britney hard. She’s sulked all the way to LA, and is not going to like it when we do finally leave her. Poor Britters

* We can all say with confidence that beer mixed with Monster energy drink, plus wine, plus vodka and cranberry juice leads to the loss of an entire day. Not recommended

* The roads in Yosemite have several signs noting that ‘Speeding Kills Bears’. Having not seen a bear for the duration of our trip, we decided that going slightly above the speed limit may well be the best way to see one. It didn’t work…

* 3 people may have actually escaped Alcatraz – noone ever found their bodies. Therefore, I’m going to confidently surmise that Alcatraz isn’t the unescapable fortress everyone assumes it is. Although, they did tunnel out of a concrete cell with spoons, make fake heads and create rafts out of vulcanised raincoats to do it. I never said it was a walk in the park

* Also on Alcatraz, we heard the worst tour guide in the world. He literally at one point pulled out a photo of a pipe, going on to tell us that this WASN’T the pipe used in the escape. Brilliant, thanks for that

* Lipstick Conspiracy are apparently San Francisco’s first transgender band. They looked more like men in dresses to me, but what do I know???

* I actually feared for my life on the Metro in LA, for the first time in the trip

* Santa Barbara may well be our new favourite place

Hola gringos

Good evening to all of our lovely, handsome readers (we´re over 1,250 views now – surely a publishing deal is awaiting our return??) from Lima, Peru. Which is where Paddington Bear came from, trivia fans.

 

I almost can´t type the words, but – Reader, we abandoned her. Britney is now in the hands of some underserving, probably filthy, scoundrel who doubtless doesn´t even know her name. With tears literally gushing we left her in LAX and made our way in, stealing furtive glances back at where she stood as we went. Unfortunately, we also hadn´t reckoned on LAX being quite so empty of things to do, so for a good 3.5 hours we perused the one book shop, drank coffee and considered spending our remaining dollars on copies of Heat (we didn´t in the end because it had Kerry Katona on the front – one reminder of home that I´m not glad to see).

 

Our last look at Britney

We flew at ten to 1 in the morning and arrived at 5pm the next day (well, 2pm, but we gained a few hours). I think Russ managed about 40 minutes sleep during that time, largely due to the substandard parenting skills of Peruvian mothers and some badly timed, mainly egg-based, dinners. We´d also decided to stay awake until the next evening, so if the things we did or the thoughts we had once we got to Peru are a little delirious, that´s the reason.

 

Lima itself is massive. MASSIVE. Not like Chicago or LA, with tall buildings to let you know it´s massive. But just sprawling and big. There are apparently 10 million people here alone. Our hotel is in the middle, right next to a lovely church, and is a bit like a riyadh. We have hot water, internet as you can see, and there are tortoises upstairs. One nearly bit me.

Evil, EVIL tortoise

 

We have so far tried three different types of cervezas. We have learnt about 3 Spanish words. We visited many squares. We´ve avoided the tanks, riot police with rifles, water cannons, and marching bands that are in front of the Palace. We´ve visited the chruch opposite and the catacombcs beneath it where 25,000 people´s bones are buried. We looked at the bones. We ate a lovely fish meal this evening.

 

Lima´s public transport

Two things to note. First is the driving. If you thought the French were bad at dricing, think again. The drivers here don´t use brakes. Instead, a large beep of the horn is sufficient. Piling two cars into one lane is pretty commonplace, as is aiming for pedestrians and turning without looking. Walkers here are equally hilarious. One old woman walked into oncoming traffic and stopped the (fast) cars by shouting at them and hitting their bonnets. She then proceeded to totter as slowly as you like across a 4 lane road.

 

Secondly, is guinea pigs. I never had one as a pet (we had Jellywobbles, the hamster. My sister named him ok???), but if I did I wouldn´t be too happy. We learnt today that, according to a “renowned Spanish painter”, the last supper didn´t include Jesus serving up bread or fish or chicken or something palatable. No, he gave the disciples Guinea Pig. It´s almost enough to understand Judas´s motivation. We also almost ate it. We were all up for it after a lovely starter of ceviche (raw fish “cooked” in lime juice), but it turned out there was only a quarter of one left. So Russ had it. Turns out a quarter of a guinea pig really isn´t very much at all. And they leave the claw on it as a slightly grim reminder of it´s former pet days. Russ managed less than a mouthful of meat and was pretty upset with his meal. We are very disappointed, though we´ll try again to see if that was just a bad example of a princely delicacy.

 

The G Pig (also Russ´new nickname) - check the claw on the left hand side!

Anyway, we haven´t been mugged, taken hostage or poisoned yet (touch wood), so it´s much love to you all from South America. Where it´s summer and it´s really hot.

 

Just to rub that it

 

PT

Thoughts again from Russy Barrow AKA South America’s #1 British import #

• More glasses should be designed to float in hot tubs
• Slicking hair back is not a style that should be revisited
• The Pacific is freezing, but does seem to have a lot of dolphins in it
• Whilst you can buy anything in Walmart there staff are about as polite as those in Woolies on Clapham high street
• It rains more in San Francisco than it does in Cardiff… possibly
• Even at the age of 26 (27 for Rich) there is fun to be had in making a den out of bunkeds and towels
• Nobody in America likes dollar coins – there is no tray for them in the tills of most retailers – yet they still produce them… odd
• Reading a book about a bus crash in Equador is not a good idea when you´re on your way to South America
• Coloured hair spray should always be applied at a distance when spraying on to a friends head. Paul´s scalp is still sporting specks of orange from Halloween
• Corn dogs might well contain chicken meat all the time… though the meat itself looks like it shouldn´t be
• Guinea pig is a terrible choice when the two course menu only costs about two pounds… although, according to a 400 year-old painting in Lima, it is what Jesus ate at the last supper

RB

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear… (Nazca-Araquipa)

When Paul uttered these lines in the last post – “we haven´t been mugged, taken hostage or poisoned yet (touch wood)” – he must have failed to touch any of said wood.

Fortunately it the last of these possibilities that has struck us all during the last few days.

The day after this post we headed to Nazca, an eight hour coach ride through some pretty incredible scenery on the Peruvian coast. Nazca itself was a delight. We had a private room and the hostel/hotel had a pool, great news as it was once again about 30-35 degrees (memories of Vegas, without the lazy river and the amazing everthing – oh Vegas…)

Whilst in Nazca we tried our hand at sand boarding, down some of the biggest sand dunes in the world. Nazca, in fact, is home to the biggest sand dune in the world, but to board down it you have to get up at 5am… we couldn`t do that to Pauly T. As it turns out sand boarding is pretty hard. Sand is a little less forgiving than snow, causes more cuts and bruises, and is a little less pleasant when you get your mouth and eyes full of it. So we resulted in going down the dunes face first. Not only was it great fun, but our lunatic guide raced around near-on vertical slopes of sand in this dune buggy/roll-cage, which felt like a ride in itself.

Happy as a sand boy...

We then booked a flight over the Nazca lines – various geoglyphs in the Nazca desert believed to have been created in about 200BC. These patterns range from a monkey and a parrot to a strange spaceman-type figure. Quite bizarre, but amazing to see, and we got to each fly as co-pilots in our own small planes, which was also very cool – even despite the various warnings about death and severe injury in the cockpit.

It was after this day that things began to take a turn for the worse. Paul was the first to be hit – we thought it was sun stroke, but a dubious looking egg sandwich may have played its part. The bus journey (another 8 hours) saw Rich go from being a reasonably sane young man to a slightly delirious being that couldn`t keep his eyes open or uphold any sort of conversation.

Day 1 in Araquipa and there was only one man standing. I managed to spend about seven hours wondering around the city, which is stunning. Visited numerous churches, the main cathedral, the central plaza and the impressive monestry – but saved a few things for us all to wonder around the next day. Sadly that next day has yet to come. That evening I went down with something as well (the decision to have a 20p chicken sandwich in the local market may have played its part) and none of us have left the hostel ever since.

The market where the fatefull chicken sandwich was purchased... it all starts to go a bit bleary from here on

Yesterday was spent watching Man United thrash Stoke and Chelsea do the same to West Brom, as well as watching countless films (Romeo Must Die, Die Hard and Beatle Juice to name a few). As I write the other boys are still in bed and I think I`m heading that way.

On the plus side, the antibiotics are out, we have all managed to eat, and things do seem to be getting better. Rich and Paul may still get to see the streets of Araquipa, fingers crossed. If not, i can feel a Lethal Weapon marathon coming on.

Eight days until we begin the Inca Trail… Oh god.

RB

Living like Mowgli the jungle boy

Apologies for the lapse in the blog for the last two weeks, I can only hold recurring sickness and lazy travel companions responsible. Though this is the last blog that should put you completely up to date with where we are. If you have read the previous two, I do hope they were worth waiting for, and we´ll update at more regular intervals in the run up to Christmas.

Praise the Lord, our health has returned... for now

Following the Inca Trail, we had one day chilling out in Cuzco and doing laundry. Not a lot to note bar me having about twice as much washing as the other boys, a few superb games of darts (I think I may go pro once this travelling is over and done with), and Paul performing well over par in a number of games of Inca darts and only winning one of them. On to the jungle…

Inca darts, a game to rival beer pong

A 5am start was followed by about 13 hours of travelling, so a pretty long day, but a successful one. Just a few hours in our legendary guide, David (no surname – too famous… like Madonna), pointed out a lone woolly monkey swinging through the trees. We also witnessed the mating dance of the legendary Cock of the Rock, a bright red bird with a tiny beak that turns up at the same time every morning and afternoon to mate. Lovely.

The Cock of the Rock

During the three days that followed we saw; three types of monkey, macaws, toucans, tree frogs, bamboo rats (one of which nearly fell on Rich´s head), dinosaur-like birds (the name of which escapes me at present, I´m sure Paul will add it at a later date! (Pauly T says: it´s a Hoatzin. My birding knowledge finally comes to the fore!)), army ants, leaf-cutter ants, bullet ants (about the size of your toes), tarantulas and other huge spiders, scorpions and vast amounts of other unidentified over-sized insects. Funnily enough, my dislike of moths was not altered but the ones in Manu, which looked more like birds and seemed to do there utmost to join for dinner or in the shower.

Leaf cutters! The monkeys were a little harder to capture on camera

Beyond the wildlife, we did some white water rafting, zip-wired through the jungle canopy and punted across a beautiful natural lake on a deserted island. All in all a pretty cool few days, marred only by my being sucked under water for about 10 seconds during the rock jumping, when everyone else reappeared after about three. But we all came through unscathed – and only about 10 mosquito bites between us!

Punting on bulsar wood. You don´t get that on the Cam

 

Apparently the zip wire could hold 2,000 KGs. Thank goodness

There were few highlights during the 12 hour trip back to Cuzco. Lots of reading, sleeping and a little land slide that held us up for an hour or so. We now sit in an internet cafe in Cuzco, awaiting our final meal at Jack´s (the best restaurant in the world-watch this space for a Facebook group) before we had off to the unknowns of Bolivia, Copacabana and Lake Titicaca. We don´t have a hostel to stay in yet, and apparently there isn´t a cash point in the whole of Copacabana. And lets not even think about the poor feeling between Bolivia and America and the USA stamps in our passports.

The jungle had different effects on some than others

It could be an interesting 24 hours…

RB

No longer praying at the porcelain church in Cusco…

Ladies and gentlemen, dear readers – we must apologise for our stubborn quietness. We´re currently sat in an internet caff in Cusco watching the Peruvian proprietress snooze and must say sorry for not updating this for the past two weeks. It´s been a busy time, as you´ll find out, but we´ve been bad and not told you about it. We´ll be better, we promise.

 

Our first two days in Cusco were in a grothole called Magnolia 2. We have no idea where Magnolia 1 was or whether it was any better, but we moved pretty sharpish despite the pleading of the owner, Yvonne. At one point she even offered to “be our mama” and give us massages if we got more people to stay in her hotel. Needless to say, we looked around for some people for a while but eventually gave up and checked into the hippy commune that is the Casa de la Gringa. There are about the same number of cats as people, there´s a DVD player, and the shaman wanders about the hostal smoking most of the day. It´s a comparative paradiase. 

 

We´ve also got three new travelling companions. Meet Nobby the llama and Sonny and Cher. As you can see, Sonny is an excitable little fellow, and I think Cher has her hands full most of the time.

Cher, Nobby and Sonny - our new best friends

They are actually little copper idols – Sonny and Cher are Pachamama and Pachapapa (Mother and Father Earth), and Nobby (named after Nolberto Solano, the only Peruvian we could think of) is a llama god. Probably.

 

During our time here in Cusco we´ve mainly done 3 things. We´ve walked about. We´ve played darts-related games, more of which later. And we´ve eaten. So special mention must be made of Jack´s. We´ve so far eaten there 5 times and have sampled much, if not all, of the menu. It´s like a Clapham restaurant that serves amazing food for about two pounds fifty. We´re going to set up a fanclub on Facebook I think. I would absolutely recommend the huevos rancheros, the nachos and the beef stew. Yummy. And I know we should be eating Peruvian food, but our tummies were bad, ok?!?

 

Smily happy people. And llama

We´ve also discovered a new game. It´s hilarious. It´s called Incan Darts, and the aim of the game is to toss 12 heavy golden metal coins onto what looks like a wooden dressing table. The table is full of holes (in which you score points) and crowned with a golden frog. It´s 50 points if you get it in the frog´s mouth, which is almost absurdly difficult. We didn´t manage it. We did, however, beat the local who taught us it, in between some terrible scores of 0 every now and again and some superficial damage to the bar´s back wall. Oops.

 

We have also done a tiny bit of Inca Trail training, walking up to the top of Sacsayhuaman (pronounced “sexy woman”) hill so that we don´t turn into fatties. Too much. Most of our exercise has actually come from avoiding the numerous street people offering us massages (ooh err), popcorn, postcards and trips (both journeys on a bus and of the mind). They´re everywhere. Oh, and we bought silly hats – look! (Well, you can look when my camera isn´t dead. Damn)

 

PT

The trek to end all treks

And so from lazing around in Cusco we thought we better actually do something and at the same time try and shed our bodies of the American puppy fat we had gained. So it was time for the world famous Inca trail, 43km of stunning Andean scenery culminating with an awe inspiring view of Macchu Picchu (more on the latter in a bit)…easy peasy hey????

Well unfortunately things didn´t start well with our tour bus turning up an hour later because the driver had gone out and got wasted the night before. Luckily for us they had found a replacement so it was on with the trip guided by “Jimmy” (not really sure what his actual Peruvian name was but this was what he would be known to us as).

 

Let the trek commence

Day 1 was really good with an undulating 12km walk along the Um Bongo river (real name Urumbamba river) passing Inca sites which Jimmy tried to explain the significance of but most of which really is still a bit up in the air. Treated to a 3 course lunch after expecting some ham roll which, although at first appeared a good thing, meant the walk after lunch was a bit of a struggle. However our first campsite was reached with even beer on sale (!) and so we soon settled down to a peaceful night sleep….only to be awoken a few hours later by a terrific thunderstorm which almost had us running for cover in the toilets. But being men we stuck it out, burying our heads in our pillows and wiping away tears on the sleeping bag.

 

Day 2 was built up to be “tough” and it didn´t disappoint. Apparently we had to climb up 1200m in a couple of hours with no Stannah stairlifts to help us…Thora Hird would be turning in her grave. The scenery helped to a certain degree but soon even 5 steps forward proved too much. But we perservered and once at the top we did feel a bit like Rocky in that famous steps scene…only to be knocked back down when we were told we now had to descend the same distance via some crazily steep staircases to our next campsite. Knees were buckling, ankles were spraining and necks were aching…so a positive end to Day 2!

The smiles were just for the photos

 

Day 2 was too much for some

Day 3 was a godsend even though it began with another climb to the second pass. The walk was back to being undulating and a short walk through the cloud forest and some more Inca settlements fuelled the enthusiasm once more. We even ended up running down to the last campsite…crazy or what?!

 

The fourth and final day started at 3.41am eating pancakes…don´t ask how we managed it. We actually started the walk in the dark in order to get to the Sun gate for our glorious view of Macchu Picchu with the sunrise as a backdrop. And so to that “awe inspiring view” I mentioned earlier…it was cloudy. Not just a bit of a cloud but a whole mass of misty cloud meaning we couldn´t even see a mountain let alone the most important Inca settlement of all time.

And here´s Macchu Picchu...

So basically we had walked 43km, almost broken our ankles and survived the worst thunderstorm of all time all for a photo of some mist. Some of you may think me melodramatic but can you actually imagine our three faces sat on some cold, damp step at 6am in the morning looking into the mist (less of the laughs thanks).

 

Luckily there is a happy ending to this story and thankfully as the day went on and we descended to Macchu Picchu the cloud lifted. The scenery was absolutely amazing, the vastness of the site mesmerising and the sense of achievement returned.

At least it didn´t all end in ruins...or did it?!

Before returning to Cusco we spent the day in Agua Calientes (or Macchu Picchu town) and opted for a trip to the hot springs. We had heard these had recently been improved and so were looking forward to soothing our aching limbs. Unfortunately after paying our 10 soles we were presented with 6 spa pools which stank of urine…but once you´ve paid for something you may as well make the most of it..well for half an hour or so anyway!

The trip back to Cusco involved a train ride on which we were surprisingly treated to a fashion show of the latest Alpaca knitwear by the carriage attendants and an extremely enthusiatic traditional Peruvian dance by the porter wearing a scary mask. So next time you are asked for suggested improvements on a First Great Western train to London please note the above. A surreal end to a fantastic trip.

 

Words cannot describe how scary this was

ROG

La Paz – bringing the bizarre

I think it´s fair to say that, despite only being in La Paz for a short period of time, it´s likely to be one of the most downright strange places we visit on this whole trip. We barely made it out of the strange markets and slums, didn´t see one nice building, turned down 3 free beers and covered ourselves in what we think was mango, but that barely scratches the surface.

 

Now, there aren´t many occult emporia in the world, sadly, but the La Paz witches market is one. It´s not a place where they sell
hook nosed crones, but where witches sell llama foetuses. Obviously. None of us were entirely sure what you do with a small, leathery, crinkled llama foetus, but it seems that there´s sufficient demand for several stores of them and a number of varieties and poses. You can get them for as little as a fiver, so now you all know what we´re sending you home for Christmas. Also for sale were armadillo shells, python skins and a whole vulture, but only those of you very close to our hearts will be receiving those.

 

Looks like beef jerky...

 

That unfortunately was the highlight of our first day in La Paz, so we checked into a hostel with a microbrewery on site that offered beer spas – a bath in which you can actually wallow in beer for its restorative properties. Or get pissed. Which we did. A few of our number rolled in at a time more suited to breakfasts than bed, and we spent much of the next day in recovery. We ate terrible food, culminating in a hot dog I order being served smothered in ketchup. Those of you that know me will know how that made me feel. It was a low moment.

 

The last thing we really wanted to do that afternoon was to go and see grown Bolivian women beat each other to a pulp, but that´s exactly what we did. It turns out that cholita wrestling is quite the Bolivian tradition – middle aged women in bowler hats going all WWF on each other, with a typically evil referee and the wrestlers nicking stuff from the crowd (my water bottle at one point) to hit/soak their opponents with. We have a new hero in Jeff Apache, faster than light, and I bought a lovely purple wrestling mask that I will be wearing with pride throughout the trip. The culmination came in a 3 on 3 bout, including one bowler hatted girl, a midget in a pig mask, a nasty general and a Bolivian ninja. Obviously the goodies ultimately won, but not before the poor pig midget had been nearly beaten to smithereens and a couple of wrestlers took an unplanned fall into the crowd. I wouldn´t necessarily recommend terrible wrestling (some punches landed a good 2 seconds before the other guy fell over) for a hangover but, I´ll tell you what, it only bloody worked!

 

Mudbath not in shot...

The final weirdness came as we got carted off to prison. It turns out that, by hanging around in front of San Pedro prison and looking shifty, a large black ex con called Kenny will relieve you of a little money and smuggle you pas the guards and into the jail for a guided tour. Our own visit was compered by a swarthy Portuguese drug trafficker called Luiz Felipe, and we were accompanied by 3 bodyguards for our protection. We took in the cell of a murderer where Rich bought some lovely banana cake, death alley where a prisoner was stabbed to death only 2 weeks ago, and watched a bit of the intersection football match complete with refs and yellow cards. The prison is hilarious – nice cells are bought and sold like houses, there´s cable TV in every cell, and kids and wives mill in and out of the prison mixing with the killers, drug lords and politicians (of course). We were even offered some Class A´s in there – there´s a cocaine factory on site – but we politely declined before being ushered out.

Queueing for ´poison soup´

Things that go bump in Death Alley

Our new cocaine baron friend

That night we ate llama curry and battered Mars Bars and headed out of La Paz. The weirdest city in the world… Probably.

 

PT

Bolivia: A diamond in the rough

On leaving the madness of La Paz and setting off on a tour of South Bolivia, we didnt (excuse lack of punctuation – useless Chilean keyboard) really know what to expect. But Bolivia did not let us down, offering up one of the highlights of the trip so far.

It wasnt looking too good at the outset. The bus journey was undoubtedly the worst transport experience of the trip so far. 13 hours of what felt like being stone washed in a tumble dryer in a coach that was quite literally falling to pieces. After no sleep whatsoever we arrived in Uyuni, which looked like it had been in a war pretty recently. And they had a power cut, so nothing worked. A definite low point. But then we went on probably the most breath taking tour of the trip so far.

First stop, the salt flats. A desert of brilliantly white salt for as far as you can see. We have no idea how it got there and our guide  (Amarillo – we couldnt make out his real name) could not speak English, so if anyone would like to enlighten ius, please feel free. The photos struggle to do it justice…

 

Fish Island was the next weird and wonderful stop. A fish shaped island of coral, covered in cactuses, in the middle of the salt desert. It doesnt get much stranger and more incredible than that. Queue loads more photos of things that you couldnt really do anyhere else in the World.

The accomodation during the trip left little to be desired… memories of San Pedro prison, but the sites more than made up for it. The next two days brought stunning lakes (red and green), volcanoes, hundreds of flamingos, an ugly chinchila (think evil rabbit from Watership Down), a rock that looked like a tree, lots of rocks that looked like rocks, geysers that wipe the floor with anything Newzealand can offer, and boiling hot thermal pools. All very incredible (well, maybe not the chinchilla) and worthy of lots more photos.

 

Laguna Colorada

 

Laguna Verde

 

Tiny Thompson

In contrast to the wonder of Bolivia, our experience of Chile and San Pedro De Aticama has not been good. See list of frustrations to date, below:

•  All bags were searched inside and out at the border. A very long process when youve been up since 4am and are standing in 35 degree heat.
• The plug sockets are different here to the rest of South America.
• We had to put our watches forward, despite going west across a border… eh?!
• We are stuck here for three nights instead of the one we had planned due to the useless bus companies and evil tour operator staff.
• The currency is about 800 to the pound, yet they still have coins in ones and twos.
• Visa bank cards dont work here and nowhere seems to take credit card.
• The place is just full of people who want to leave and are deperate to kill time, thus it is nigh on impossible to get in an internet cafe.
• And finally, there is only one shop in the whole town that sells wine. When we did find it, the bag with the wine in it broke on the way back to the hostal, and the wine itself smelt of eggs.

On the upside, however, the unscheduled stop has given us a chance to get clean and sort out our route across South America, to arrive in Ihla Grande for Christmas. We basically have to travel across two or three countries to get there and will have about nine days to do so. I can feel some more grim bus journeys on the horizon…

Finally, worthy of note, PT and I have decided to name Richs hair. It has come on leaps and bounds during the trip and now has a presence all of its own. Introducing, Rupert the Hair:

 

"Rupert, Rupert the Hair, Rupert youre a wonderful hair..."

Bring on Argentina and cheap steak by the bucket load!

RB

Her name was Lola…

 

Before reaching Bolivia’s Copacabana (unfortunately not Barry Manilow’s “hottest spot north of Havana”) we had to endure a 3 hour break at Puno in Peru where we almost froze to death. Joined on our bus trip by our new travelling companion Hannah “Rambo” Riley from Leeds, we tried to keep ourselves warm in the bus station by sitting next to an electric heater and ordering hot chocolates but the heater broke and the hot chocolates tasted like gone off milk. To add insult to injury they charged us 50p to go to the toilet and for that you only got 5 sheets of toilet paper.

It doesn't get much colder than this

But we eventually got our second bus and after some fun and games with the Bolivian immigration officers (and yes I am being saracstic) we finally made it to Copacabana on the shores of the beautifully blue Lake Titicaca.

Our main activity in Copacabana was a trip to the Isla del Sol – apparently the spiritual birthplace of the Incas. The slowest boat ever took us across to the island literally taking 2 hours to cover about a kilometre and at one point we all had to move up to the front to try and make the vessel go faster! It didn’t, but eventually we reached the north shore and were ushered into a small museum where a Bolivian guy spouted some Spanish at us. We think he may have been our guide for the day but we quickly legged it to start our own tour of the island.

 

Beautiful Lake Titicaca

On the island we visited the usual “rocks and ruins” but it really was the clear blue waters of the lake that was the spectacle of the place. To take full advantage of this we had to walk 8km across the island to the south shore  After improving our fitness levels on the inca trail we thought this would be a doddle but soon the rising temperatures and rising paths proved a bit of a difficulty!

World's strongest man?

However we finally made it to the south shore where our high speed catamaran (note the further sarcasm) took us back to the mainland. En route we stopped at some floating islands refusing to pay the 20p fee to hop on to them (we are stingy backpackers after all!) . Although these were good to see they meant the journey back was even longer and by the time we got back to the mainland a lot of people were looking a bit sick. One guy was so eager to get off he ended up putting his foot through the window on exiting! 

After our ordeal (OK it wasn’t that bad) we treated ourselves in the evening with a trip to the fish kiosks on the beachfront to sample the local trout washed down with a few bottles of wine and crowned with some apple pie! Yum yum!

Interesting offerings!

The boats weren't all that bad

In future our recommendation to anyone wanting to go across to the Isla del Sol is to forget the boat and instead opt for one of the 100 swan pedaloes banked on the beach – you’d get there a lot quicker.

ROG

Thoughts again from Russy Barrow AKA South America’s #1 British import

• Chile seems to have the equivolent of small man sydrome for countries. It is awkward, makes everything difficult, and dislikes everyone from outside. Where else in the world do you travel west and put your clock forward?!
• The idea of change (of the money sort) seems foreign to South American shop keepers. You are expected to have the correct money, or god help you.
• The people of Uyuni looked like something straight out of a horrow film. Never stay there.
• The women of Peru and Bolivia all look the same, whether they are 20 or 80. They also make better wrestlers than the men do.
• Clarks need better PR. Whilst children under 10 wear them and adults appreciate there “comfy and robust” style, they seem to be lost on those in there teenage years. Possibly my calling…
• Milo chocolate cereal is good, but it is no Coco Pops.
• It is worth haggling over 20p, even if only to make a point, walk away a few times and then give in and pay it anyway.
• Cheap chicken sandwiches are not worth it.
• No man should combine a Wolves shirt with alpaca gloves and socks alongside sky blue boxers.
• You should be able to pay to get in to more prisons. That way people would either a) be deterred by the terrible conditions or b) be justifiably disgraced by the life of riley that the Daily Mail would have us believe all British prisoners have. Win win.
• There should be more flats beyond those made of salt. Sugar flats, beer flats or cheese flats would be a good start.
• Not all hot springs are a good idea. If they look and smell like sweat and urine, that`s probably what they are. Stear clear.

Mozzybitten and sunburnt news

• We´ve been wondering what the best animal might be for a pet for a while, and now we know: Coatis. They are like little catpigs and are cute and playful. Although apparently they bite. Fear not, I was going to nick a baby one and call it Kittoink, but got scared off when one almost bit Russ on the arse
• Border crossings are hilarious. They take an age, and the people are horrible. However, when they attempt to search your bags they look at the item on the top, stick a hand in and then say its ok. Could´ve smuggled anything across…
• Putting your head in the spout of a thermal geyser is not a good idea, apparently
• In the Salt Hotel on the salt flats in Uyuni, two of us decided that we should lick the walls. Guess which two…
• They tasted of salt, if you were wondering
• Never ever trust a pirate DVD salesman in the Bolivian deserts. We bought a good 8 DVDs, and all but one is entirely in unintelligible (well, to us) Spanish. We have been left with Toy Story 1 and  2 to entertain us over Christmas
• Coca Cola is everywhere. They even sponsor the jail in San Pedro so that they can advertise inside. It´s harder to buy a Pepsi in that jail than it is to find Class A drugs
• Russ and I now own incredibly bright yellow and green Inca Kola t shirts. It is literally the brightest thing I have ever bought
• Russ´s hair is now almost deserving of a name of its own. I think we should run a competition to name it
• Llama tikka masala is surprisingly good. Like beef. Recommended
• Food on bus journeys here seems to revolve entirely around ham. On our last, and biggest, journey – a 26 hour monster – we were served 9 separate ham sandwiches. One was actually a swiss roll, but instead of sugary buttercream they had decided ham would go nicely. Gross
• We have missed the Argentinian/Brazilian football season, boo, but we´re still looking for cheap football shirts. They´re almost as expensive as at home
• Rich wheeled out a top 10 birds of the trip yesterday. I was so proud
• Despite only ever getting 100 peso notes from a bank machine  noone, no matter how big the town, ever has change. They will look insulted when you ask
• We have now met a suspected terrorist. I wonder if the FBI/MI6 will start monitoring this blog…

The mighty Iguazu

On our second day in Puerto Iguazu we escaped the weird Basque guy and did exactly what everyone does in town and visit the Iguazu falls (apparently the largest in the world). Now we had been pretty impressed by Niagara and so you may think our love of water may sway the vote a bit but we have to say it was one of the highlights of the whole trip so far…hopefully the photos below will help prove our point!

Falling for Iguazu

The falls were set out in a park which had a bit of a Disney feel about it with a ridiculously slow train to take us to the attractions, nicely tended trails and very helpful attendants all dressed the same – at one point I thought I heard “It’s a small world” music coming out of one of the palm trees but I think that was a nightmare I had the previous week. So we walked around, marvelled at the waterfalls (there were 275 in total!), Pauly T got laughed at by a group of 14 year old Argentian girls and we even did a bit of wildlife spotting at the same time.

At the top of one of the falls a group of about 8 monkeys decided to put us on a show (at first they were so close I thought it may have been some Disney-esque animatronic show – how suspicious I am!) We probably took about 50 photos of them each all of which were pretty blurred because they kept jumping from tree to tree (that explains the absence of a photo here)! But we did manage to photograph the local coatis (or their full name ”coatimundis” according to our nature expert Pauly Attenborough).

All together now..."aaaaaaaaah"

What topped off our Iguazu experience was that we were able to take a dip in the river near the falls. The other boys got a bit freaked out by the amount of fish which seemed to taken to our feet (they clearly hadn’t realised we”d been on a 24 hour bus the day before!) but this was an awesome way to end the day.

Niagara was good but Iguazu really kicked some ass.

Speechless

ROG

Oh the weather outside is frightful… Sao Paulo to Ihla Grande

A post in two parts, the first was written in thundery Sao Paulo, the second in the sunny paradise of Ihla Grande…

Some might say we have been a little lucky with the weather so far this trip. That luck may have just run out. As I type we are sat inside during a tropical rain storm. The thunder earlier was probably the loudest I´ve ever heard and we´ve just seen pictures of buses and cars stranded in street floods a couple of miles away. According to the lady in the hostel, we´re OK because we´re up high. Reassuring. A little concerned that the 8 hour bus drive to the coast this evening wont be up high… but we´ll see how that pans out.

So, now we´re in Sao Paulo and close to the last leg of our fleeting trip across South America. Strange when you consider an eight hour coach journey, and a couple of hours on a boat, a short trip. But, that is all we have left to get to our tropical paradise of a Christmas location… Ihla Grande. Granted, we may spend the whole time cowering from thunder indoors and drinking wine, but so be it, we will have made it!

From what we´d heard of Sao Paulo, we were expecting something of a cross between San Pedro Prison and Slough. No one had a kind word to say about it, so we were a little dubious about our decision to stop over here, as opposed to Rio, on our way to the coast. As it turns out, it is a pretty cool city and was just the job for what we needed before heading to a remote road-less island.

 

Not only have we shopped until our hearts content, buying supplies for Christmas, home comforts and secret santa presents (gifts to be revealed here, watch this space…), but we´ve also strolled around what is quite a pretty city, ridden bikes for the fist time in about 10 years AND had our first taste of Christmas tunes and festivities. In fact the lowest point of Sao Paulo was the bus station. Felt a bit like we were battery hens. Since then, all has looked up.

Christmas trolley dash

The hostel here is the nicest we´ve stayed in for the trip to date. Amazing breakfast, white linen sheets (pretty unheard of) and a huge flat screen Samsung to enjoy during the terrential downpours. Shopping wise, we´ve managed to replace a few ropey looking t-shirts in the Brazilian equivolent of Primark, and bought incredibly cheap Havianas. We even found stockings and santa hats for the big day, and got to listen a number of Christmas classics whilst doing so. We also went a little bit overboard on food and drink shopping and are now a little concerned about having to pick up our ruck sacks.

Whilst in the UK we have the department stores that go mad on Christmas, in Brazil it seems to be the banks that take it upon themselves to bring Christmas to the high street. None of us expected to be presented with scenes like these whilst trying to get cash out:

Grotto in a bank. Nice...and a bit odd

Santa´s little helper

Sadly, whilst the banks are great for seasonal fun, they are rubbish for getting money out. Visa doesn´t seem to work here and we´re heading to an island with no cash points… could be interesting.

Beyond Christmas, hiring bikes and riding through the park proved to be amoung the remaining highlights of Sao Paulo. Paul falling on his arse whilst attempting a wheelie was certainly one of the funniest things I´ve seen in a while.

Happy times before the wheelie

We also had a rather sophisticated wine and cheese night, followed by a game of dominos. In hindsight, I´m not sure why dominos are so popular. It didn´t take long until the game was abandoned for building towers and then playing football with a coin. But a lovely evening all the same… On to Ihla Grande….

Ihla Grande is without doubt the most idylic place we´ve been and the weather has taken a dramatic turn for the better – the perfect place to spend Christmas.

Sunny Ilha Grande

So far we´ve swam in natural pools, hiked, been snorkeling in a blue lagoon, chilled out on the beach, drank far too many caiprinhas and started and finished/lost a bottle of gin. Now Christmas Eve is here and we´re spending the evening making chocolate rice crispy cakes, watching Disney films, drinking mulled wine and possibly having our hair (Rupert and Joan) cut by a girl that we only met a couple of hours ago.

Natural (freezing cold) pools

Tomorrow, post calls home to parents, we´ll be heading back to the natural pools and the beach to eat cake and drink port. It´s not quite Christmas dinner at home, but it is a pretty good alternative for one year away.

It probably doesn´t get much better than this…

Pre-Christmas treat - the first Maccy D´s in South America...

RB

The long and winding road… to terrorism

From the barren wastegrounds of Northern Chile we took a lovely little 12 hour bus ride to Salta, the first city we’d seen in months. As such, we gorged ourselves on the first real supermarkets and pharmacies we’d seen for an age, although we still haven’t got any more hair products, leading to some increasingly hilarious appearances from Rupert the Hair and Joan (the new name of Russ’s hair, after its started to take on the appearance of a middle-aged woman).

The birth of baby Rupert... I mean, Jesus.

C&A, going strong in Salta. The same cannot be said for Woolies. Damn.

That afternoon we took a wobbly cablecar to the top of a forested mountain and wandered about the top eating lollies, and then two of us took the 1,000 steps back down to the bottom while Russ instead cheated and proceeded to take several shortcuts. Disappointing. Unfortunately it was early to bed before the next day – we knew what was coming.

Surprisingly pretty Salta

From Salta to Puerto Iguazu was our first really big journey. It took one change, two buses, about 3 drivers, 1 Spanish DVD about a failing marriage, 8 ham sandwiches (they don’t seem to serve any other food), one ham cake (you did read that right, and it was as despicable as it sounds), no drinks and 26 hours in total. I have never been so happy we paid about 5 quid extra for a bed seat, or so bored. Hopefully we don’t have to do too many more.

Smiley faces ahead of more bus journeys

When we were finally there we relaxed by our pool and got nicely sunburnt. At one point the next day my arm looked like a neapolitan ice cream – bright pink on top, white in the middle, and brown at the end. We also met a man, and I’ll be careful what I say here as he might be reading (then hunt us down and bomb us), with more-than-strong affiliations to ETA and the IRA who was visiting ‘political refugees’ in Paraguay. As you do.  Now I’m not saying he was definitely a Basque terrorist, but he was definitely a misogynist racist with some interesting lines in pre-1900 opinions. We thought he was nice for about 2 minutes, then spent an hour trying in vain to escape. We resorted to the slightly immature, but extremely effective, pretending to go to bed then sneak out of the hostel without him seeing routine. Thank God.

We ended up FINALLY getting some Argentinian steak. It was about 8 pounds, in weight and in price, and was lovely. Roll on more where that came from…

PT

Merry Christmas from Ilha Grande!

Think of us when you´re tucking in to your turkey and Christmas pudding, we´ll be eating panettone and mangoes…

Miss you all and hope you all have a wonderful day.

Loads of love,

Russ, Paul and Rich (AKA Joan, Pomps and Rupert) x

Happy New Year from Rio!

So after the festivities of Christmas Day the first thing we had to deal with was the hideous Boxing Day hangover with Pauly “Port swigger” Thompson bearing most of the brunt. Luckily the heavens continued to open and the day was pretty much a washout so we chilled out, played cards, watched DVDs  and polished off the rest of the treats we had bought – so pretty much as it would be at home.

Message in a bottle: a cry for help or blatant littering?

 

The rest of our time on Ilha Grande we continued to chill out, dodge torrential downpours, drink caprinhas, dodge massive crabs and one evening even sent out some messages in beer bottles….so we´re hoping one or two may reach the UK shores some time soon!

I´m not sure what was more a surprise. The box of ferreiro rochet, or the love of the new alice band...

Luckily we did manage to see the sun again (if only for an hour or so before it clouded over) and on our penultimate day we were able to take another boat trip to Lopes Mendes beach, apparently one of the world´s most beautiful beaches. Well it didn´t disappoint and with some huge waves crashing onto the sand it was a pretty cool place. We literally ran into the sea with excitement  only to be knocked back spectacularly by the waves. Undeterred by nature´s challenge we spent the next couple of hours literally getting knocked about as if we were in a ring with Frank Bruno.

Ánnie was right...the sun did come out tomorrow

Lopes Mendes - the best beach in the World?

On leaving the beach we felt  like we had hideous bruises all over our bodies but we soon realised that we perhaps had not put on as much suncream as you should when it´s cloudy. Basically we burnt to a cinder and now four days on we are still finding it difficult to deal with any physical contact (Russ is struggling to deal without his morning hugs from Paul!).

So now after our chilling out time  we are back in the city and ready to PARTAY…it´s new year in Rio baby! We´ve been struck dumb by some of the sights already…and I mean the Sugar loaf and not anything we may have come across on Copacabana beach.  We´ve walked through tunnels where afterwards we have read we shouldn´t have walked but now we´re just preparing ourselves for the big night on Copacabana beach.

What is a sugar loaf anyway?

At the Copa, Copacabana

So it remains for me to say, have an awesome New Year´s Eve wherever you are and we´ll see you back here in 2009!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

So here it is, Merry Christmas…

So after the massive madness of Sao Paulo, we made our final bus journey and a fun, bouncy catamaran journey to Ilha Grande, just off the coast of Brasil and reportedly owner of ´the world´s best beach´.

The blue lagoon

Bathed in sunshine and a light covering of sweat we checked into our little green hostel, put on our Santa hats and headed out, dodging little Capuchin monkeys as we went. Our first stop was a natural pool where slaves used to bathe chained to the rocks. The river had created a natural slide into the murky, but more importantly, cold water, and we jumped and slid about to our hearts content. Which, as you can imagine, was quite a bit. 

Nice hat.

We also tried to find a particular waterfall, but failed, so had to make do with a snake. It was red and black and white and long and thin. We have no idea if it was poisonous or not, but I´m going to hazard a guess it was deadly by the height the Rich jumped when he saw it.

SNAKE!!!!????!!!!

We ended up laid out on a picture perfect beach, after bobbing in the cool water surrounded by fish. It was idyllic.

Christmas Eve was spent snorkelling in the blue lagoon. Now, normally I can´t get my head round the idea I can breathe underwater and so start hyperventilating, but this was something different. We were surrounded by fish and jellyfish and things and Rich had an experience with something that sounded like it was from the black lagoon rather than the blue one. After snorkelling we came back to the hostel for the traditional Christmas drinking. I must say we rather excelled ourselves, ending up at midnight having a swim in the ocean in a slightly less than sober state. In our Santa hats once again.

They are noodles, apparently... Finally the big day came and, as you would imagine, it rained. So we did the normal eat-as-much-as-you-can, then drink-as-much-as-you-can Yuletide marathon. This apparently concluded with a certain member of the team swigging generously from a bottle of Port, and getting confused when people told him he´d eaten all of the chicken. It turned out there was no chicken. The buggers. It made me feel full though. Porty Thompson

The full list of presents are as follows:

• Russ received – some sweets, a handheld game that´s like a cheap DS Lite, some horrendous Brasil Y fronts, a bottle of Heineken and a toblerone
• Paul received – an apple, a can of Bad Boy energy drink, some horrendous Polyester tight pirate boxer shorts, and a set of Uno cards
• Rich received – an Alice band for Rupert, hair bands for Rupert, some pretzels and a jar of Nutella, a bottle of Taff Man drink, and a small lego fireman

Could you get any cheesier than this on Christmas morning?

Not a bad haul, I´m sure you´ll agree.

The mother of all parties

And so the big night was upon us… New Year´s Eve 2008 in Rio de Janeiro and we were gonna be in the heart of the action on Copacabana beach. We had a taster of what was to come by hitting the beach in the afternoon where the music acts were warming up and locals were throwing loads of flowers into the sea (apparently NYE is also a pretty important saints day in Brazil too).

After a quick return trip to the hostel for fresh underwear we were then back down on the beach by 6pm and were amazed to see hundreds of stalls/vendors selling everything important for a big party i.e. beer, corn on the cobs and silly glasses which spell out 2009. It is also tradition for people to wear all white on New Year´s Eve and realising I was decked out in grey and blue I treated myself to a white headband to try and look more ´local´- I´m not quite sure I pulled it off.

The evening started off with some quiet drinking which as you can probably guess quickly spiralled out of control once the vodka and Fanta started flowing! The fireworks at midnight were mind blowing with seven separate barges setting them off over the sea with 8 luxury cruise liners as a backdrop….what a sight. Unfortunately due to tourist advice we don´t have any actual photos of the night yet as we took out a disposable camera (actually come to think of it I haven´t actually seen that since the night…mmmmm) but thanks to our old mates getty images here´s what it looked like….

 

Oooh...aaaaah...

The rest of the night involved a cheeky cigar,  flipflop theft (unfortunately Russ´new Haviannas were the target),  a torrential downpour, toilet sharing, a gin-vodka-sparkling wine cocktail concoction, and a tearful strop from Russ at midnight because no one gave him a hug before an attempted mugging as we walked off the beach (he asked for our money, we said no, he asked again, we said no again, I shouted ´Run´and we ran).. so all in all just like any other New Year´s Eve.

ROG

 

Important note: This blog post has been pieced together from some hazy memories so anything you read above may or may not actually have happened. We can therefore take no responsibility if you choose to use the material for any other purpose than your own personal use.

Stick it up your Junta

We love Buenos Aires. Love it to little, itty bitty pieces. The reasons are below:

1. Firstly and most importantly – STEAK. The steak here is immense. Not just immense in size, which it is, but immense in tastiness and it`s practically free. We had an enormous tenderloin last night for about a fiver and it was the best steak I`ve ever had. Once we`d wiped away the tears of joy that we blubbed ever since we smelt the sizzling meat, we ate and drank until we nearly could eat and drink no more. It`s hard to put all this into words, I`m getting all emotional just thinking about it. Nom nom nom.

A big mis-steak?? Not at all...

2. It`s very European. After the favelas and Brixtonesque grit of Rio, this is all a bit more cultured. There`s architecture, and coffeeshops. We`ve described it “as a bit London” more than a few times.

3. We sang “Don´t Cry For Me Argentina” while gazing on Evita´s balcony and then wandered around a necropolis to find her tomb. The cemetary was weird – the tombs were arranged like houses in streets and avenues and feral cats roamed the streets, scaring us witless when jumping out of holes where dead people should be.

Just like Madonna

4. We went to the most colourful place in the world – La Boca. All bright tones and massive football stadiums. We are now proud owners of Boca Juniors shirts, and have seen a fat bald man prance and tango with a stuffed rag doll to incessant samba. Pictures do it more justice than words, though.

Red and yellow and pink and green

Dear God

The new Duncan James and co

5. La Bombasta del Tiempo is drums. Fronted by a conductor, and entirely ad hoc, a troupe of Russell Crowe, Charlie Maurice and David Platt lookalikes pounded drums for a good couple of hours. It was amazing, and unsurprisingly was helped by some generous portions of beer. It was also the hairiest place I`ve ever been, and made me sad that Joan and Rupert have eloped off together never to be seen again.

Little drummer boys

6. There is loads of free street tango making us jealous of the 80 year old lotharios strutting around with young, red-dressed girls. The tango itself is very impressive, all swishes and swirls. Almost makes you wish you didn`t turn off Strictly Come Dancing whenever it came on…

You know when you´ve been tangoed

7. Chilli vodka and Red Bull is surprisingly good. As Russ`s pictures suggest, it turns normally amiable young men into drunken fools.

Just say no, kids

Who´s for another chillibomb???

Beaches, bunks and BBQs: Rio De Janeiro

So, what did we do in Rio other than  drink far too much, with far too many people, on Copacobana and go to Maccy Ds, well…

We woke up each morning to a wonderful breakfast. Sadly, we were split in to seperate rooms for the first time during the trip. Each of us struggled for a while, Rich found it especially hard to start with (there were tears), but we made it through. I was in a room full of noisy Brazialian blokes, and on the middle bunk (yes, middle bukn – three tiered beds?!) between a rather grim German couple who I don´t think made it out of bed for the whole five days. Rich shared a room with three of the fattest men in Rio and the ones always first to lead the charge as soon as any food came in to sight.  And as for Pauly T… Paul became surrogate son to a family of five in Rio. He went to bed when they went to bed, said goodbye to them when we went out, gave them a present when he left, and stole the heart of the middle daughter. She asked for his email (using a language translation tool on the internet) and congratulated him on being “beautiful”. Sadly, we her age is very much up for debate, and it is generally agreed that she is somewhere between 14 – 16 (17 at a push. Maybe she isn´t the one, but it was wonderful while it lasted…

Rio itself is a pretty crazy city of stunning beaches. We enjoyed them all whilst there – Copacobana, Ipanema, and the rather less pleasant Botafogo. Aside from the amazing sand and crashing waves the beaches were all full of people selling pretty much anything you could want for, almost to the point where you couldn´t really go a minute without someone offering you a beer, more places should be like that.

We took a day trip to see Christ the Redeemer, the huge statue of Christ that towers over the city. Oddly it was given to the city by France, like the Statue of Liberty was to the US, but that was not reason enough to not be impressed. On the same trip we visited the national stadium, the largest cathedral in the city and the street where the Carnival  takes place. Despite queuing for the cable car up Sugar Loaf Mountain, we opted not to go up (being tight travellers), choosing instead to spend our cash on ice lollies and sweetcorn. Money well spent.

Perhaps the saddest point of rio were the goodbyes to Rupert and Joan. Despite being loved and admired by all, they were both becoming a little overly cumbersome and the time came to cut them back a bit. Please leave kind comments with regards to our shorter styles below. Paul now nearly has the longest hair in the group – his hair is called Ellen (after the American comic – it looks a bit like a masculine girls haircut). Hilariously both Rich and I went to hairdressers that couldn´t speak English, so communicated our requests using a mixture of pointing at pictures, hand expressions and thumbs up. We made it through though, and can now go out without hats on, so all is well.

The food in the hostel saw highs and lows. One night we had pretty good pizza, but literally raced to eat it all before the fat guys in Rich´s room, and now may well have put ourselves of pizza for a few weeks. The BBQ on the last night, in comparison, was pretty incredible. More steak than you could eat and loads and loads of really good salad. Made us all feel better after the takeaway extravaganza of the previous day (I had beef, chicken and fish burgers all withinabout an hour of eachother. Grim.)

Our last day in Rio was spent shopping, doing some much needed replacing of hideous old t-shirts and buying more Havianas in my case. I now have three pairs… possibly a little obsessive. Sadly, the one thing that remains unreplaced are Pauly T´s shorts, which have been without a working fly zipper for about a month.

 

Some things never change.

Onward to Buenos Aires!

RB x

P.S. RIP Rupert and Joan :*(

Ciao amigos!

And so from the lovely BA we struggled with ‘beef depression’ and continued to head west to our last stop of our South American adventure, Santiago in Chile. We’d already tocuhed down in Chile before in San Pedro de Atacama but this time we swapped deserts for the seaside.

Pauly T spots the bird he wants

We had a whistlestop tour of Santiago with a highlight being the best street mime performer we’ve ever seen – at one point he even stopped some passer by with long brown hair and a beard and made him pretend to be Jesus on the crucifix! Unfortunately it was only after we’d left the city and hit the coast that we found out Santiago’s most famous attractions are the ‘coffee with legs’ – coffee shops where you are served your favourite frappucino by girls not wearing much more than a bikini. Damn that Rough Guide for not informing us of these highly cultural activities….

Our coast stops were at the ramshackle, colourful port of Valpraiso and the beach resort of Vina del Mar. The latter was nothing short of the Costa Del Sol and we actually forgot at one point we were in South America! Valparaiso on the other hand was very unique with lots of brightly coloured cafes and cool bars. We also treated ourselves to a meal at an amazing restaurant looking out over the bay with a la carte service, apperitifs, dessert, amazing Chilean wine and an amazing view but best of all… the bill coming in at less than 20 quid each!

Ramshackle but colourful Valparaiso

 

What a little poser

 

Backpacking ain't so bad...

Strangely we were also in town at the same time the famous Paris-Dakar rally was arriving having moved to South America this year because of trouble in Africa. More strange however was that the public weren’t allowed any access. Weird motorbike truck people.

We had our last night out in South America, notable for a couple of things. Paul decided that he´d cut his hair into a very Spanish gypsy-esque mohican, an entire bar decided to laugh at us in Spanish (not very fair methinks, at least let us know what you´re laughing at us for), and one of our number decided to celebrate by drinking excessive amounts and dancing in what may have been a gay bar (it probably wasn´t. Probably) with his top off most of the night. Nice work RB.

Who's a pretty boy...

And that was pretty much that. We´ve all got some interesting sunburn in different places from a couple of large beach sessions, and we´ve all eaten far too much cheese than is necessary for the year.

 

Now comes the hard part. Richard has been crying for nearly 2 weeks about us going our separate ways, and today is the day. This evening, while Russy B and Rich jet off to Sydney, little Paul is flying off to New York for a quick jaunt around the Big Apple with his Little Sister. Then there will be tear-filled reunion in Australia before we all say our adios´s. Oh God.

 

Of course, we´ll try and keep the blog as up to date as possible about both Sydney and New York,  so don´t leave us now.

Love and hugs,

The Boys

The Awards: South America

It didn´t seem right to leave South America without paying homage to some of our bets and worst moments of the place we have called home for the last two (and a bit) months.

Best place: Buenos Aires – As fun as La Paz and Rio, and with more culture and style than anywhere else we went in South America.

Worst place: Uyuni – Nothing there apart from shopkeepers and hostel staff that looked like evil characters from the Lord of the Rings.

Craziest place: La Paz, Bolivia. No other place could combine an open prison that produces cocaine and women and midget wrestling and get away with it.

Best country: Argentina.

Best day: Christmas Eve – Snorkeling in a blue lagoon followed by mulled wine and late night swimming in Santa hats stole it from Christmas day, just.

Worst day: The 26 hour bus journey – We´re not quite sure which day this was, only that it was horrid, and we´d like to forget it.

Funniest moment: Skinning dipping in Christmas hats at 12pm on Christmas Eve in Ilha Grande. Got a lot of dodgy looks… hmm.

Best night out: New Year – Copacabana was incredible but only just pipped the madness of La Paz for best night… and that was mainly because we lost Pauly T.

Best attraction: Iguazu Falls – Poor Niagra.

Best trip: The Salt Flats – Always an underdog, Bolivia threw up what was to be the most incredible four days in the whole of South America.

Best view: Machu Pichu – Once the mist had settled it was pretty breath taking.

Best meal: Steak at Desrivel in Buenos Aires – Would give the Gaucho Grill a run for its money and cost about a 10th of the price.

Worst meal: Sweet cheese scones in La Paz – The most disappointing baked snack to grace Bolivia and disgusting enought to beat the guinea pig in Lima.

Best restaurant: Jack´s, Cuzco – Missed out on best meal but the only restaurant on the whole trip that we went back to more than twice (about 6 times in total.)

Best takeaway: MacDonalds, Rio – Deservedly winning the crown from Subway after saving the lives of three poorly young gents on New Year´s Day.

Best shop: Ice cream shack in Ilha Grande – Surely it is only a matter of time before one of these takes Borough Market by storm. Second place went to the amazing chemist in Salta, a place where we spent about 45 minutes just buying things we hadn´t seen in about a month.

Best accomodation: Sao Paulo Hostel – Everyone said we´d hate it but it came up trumps with the best place we stayed in the whole of South America.

Worst accomodation: Magnolia 2, Cuzco – Such a great city, such a terrible terrible hostel.

Best person: Hannah “Rambo” Riley – Closely followed by David, jungle expert and all round nice guy restaurant owner.

Worst person: Blanco – ETA/IRA sympathies and 16th century values made him the only person that we lied to and hid from to avoid going to dinner with.

Best wildlife: The monkeys in Iguazu – Rich nearly cryed with happiness.

Best drink: Caiprinhas – Got us through an emotional Christmas without friends and family back home. Faced stiff competition from Gato Negro (probably the best boxed wine in the world) and Chilli Bombs ( a drink that finally made us see the point of chilli vodka.)

 Best bar: Red Door in Buenos Aires – The home of the chilli bomb, so cool it didn´t need a sign, and we all remember it. Great night.

Best club: Route 36 – Everyone who has been to La Paz has heard of it, only taxi drivers know where it is, and its probably not long before the police shut it down… except they probably love it just as much as everyone else.

And last but not least…

Best game: Choose or lose (otherwise known as Dance or France) – A very simple game, based in rhyme, that has been played for more hours and with more peaople than we care to try and remember. The glorious Inca Darts came a close second, but was always going to lose out to a game we invented.

And that is that!

Onward to Sydney… where we will have to say goodbye to Pauly T for the forseeable future… oh god

RB x

Land Down Under

OK firstly a massive apology about our blog absence over the last few weeks but these have been turbulent and emotional times…but more about that in a minute. Previously on Friends…from South America the three amigos took a temporary split with Paul off to New York for a few days (see separate blog entry) and Russ and Rich heading straight to the land of kangaroos and didgeridoos.

The flight to Sydney was long with Russ having to change seats about 14 times due to his Video on demand screen breaking down continuously and Rich not knowing whether to tilt his head to the left at a Japanese man who was snoring profusely or to the right at a Kiwi man who was coughing profusely…he chose instead to put his head between his legs.

But we eventually arrived to some of the hottest weather we have experienced in a while (peaking at 43 degrees!) staying in downtown Sydney for just about 2 weeks. So much happened in that amount of time we’ve condensed our experiences into a top nine list of highlights (it’s nine as couldn’t think of a tenth)….

9. The great Aussie BBQ – ridiculously we were invited to someone’s house for a BBQ one Saturday night. Needless to say we scoffed loads of their food washed down with a cheap box of cask wine and long neck beers which we had brought with us. Everyone else at the party was drinking from nice looking wine bottles and small bottles of beer. We did not look out of place and Rich did not skip down the road after the party had ended.

8. Sydney festival – we were lucky enough to be in the city when the annual festival was in full swing. We packed a picnic (we even had hommous…how posh!) and went along to listen to Tchaikovsky’s 1812 overture at Sydney Symphony’s free concert (see we can be cultured when we want to be) and also attended some outdoor cinemas, one of which we had to walk out of because it simply got too weird.

They love a good outdoor concert in Sydney

7. Rich’s homecoming in the Botanic Gardens – for all of you who knew about Rich’s train driving in the Botanic Gardens you’ll understand the emotional breakdown he suffered when he realised the train was still running…damn those people who told him it had stopped.

6. Pauly T’s first day in work – Yep, you read it correctly someone has actually offered the man from Wolverhampton a job. Unfortunately he has been told to wear a shirt and trousers to work  something he last did when he was in court. Watching him walk out the door on his first day was like watching a child walking to school on their first day - I guess that’s largely due to the fact he’s not grown any taller since that day.

5. Boost Juices and Slurpees – largely unheard of in the UK these two drinks are a better version of our Innocent smoothie and Slush puppy. These soon became a hangover must with the All Berry Bang proving the most effective remedy.

4. Australia Day – after spending a week in tropical heat we were shell shocked when the heavens opened in time for Australia’s national holiday. We went to see a ferry race that didn’t seem to contain any ferries, went to see the Red Berets jump out of planes over Sydney harbour which was cancelled due to the weather  and proceeded to spend much of the afternoon sat under a table out of the rain. Sound fun? Luckily the fireworks at the end of the day in Darling Harbour were amazing even if we were all cowering under a picnic blanket.

At least there was something bright about Australia Day!

 

It's a cracker

3. The main sights – who cannot be impressed with the Sydney Opera House, Rocks, Botanic Gardens, Bondi and Manly beach and Darling Harbour. These make Sydney one of the most picturesque cities in the world and by gum we were gobsmacked.

Sail away sail away sail away

2. Pie, mash, mushy peas and gravy from Harry’s Cafe de Wheels – a Sydney institution, this was our top culinary delight in Sydney and coming in at only $5 we wonder why Aussies eat anything else.

1. Pauly T’s return – the little man was away for 3 days. These were hard times but his overly smiley face and jaunty walk made this the highlight of our Sydney experience….just.

But unfortunately all these highlights were followed by the low point of the trip…the Pauly T farewell. Yep you may think us cruel but we have since left the littlest hobo in Sydney and moved onwards to Melbourne. We tried to make him stay at one point even handcuffing Russ to him.

It just wasn't enough to make him stay

The good news is that he already has a flat and has made friends with the staff at the local fish and chip shop. The bad news is that we will never see that smile again or have to listen to girls say ‘Oh he’s got such a lovely smile/eyes/dimples etc’ whilst completely ignoring us. Oh…. But seriously the trip will not be the same without him and we already miss him so much.

But the show does go on and although it has been a difficult decision we will be continuing the blog for our remaining Australian adventures. However we will understand completely if you find it too emotionally distressing to continue reading it with the knowledge that it will not contain anything about your favourite trip member. But as a sneak peak at what’s coming up I have already read the next draft blog entry and it’s a cracker…it even includes a farting penguin.

Dare you miss it?

ROG

P.S. RIP Pauly T.

Such a cutey

Goodbye Pauly T, Hello Melbourne! :*(

Melbourne eh… where to begin!

Our first hurdle was overcoming the emotional farewell to Pauly T. I think I actually said goodbye on about five seperate occasions: the hostel corridor the night before, the hostel showers on the morning, the elevator, and then finally in Mr Thompson’s new place of work. Each was sadder than the last, but we survived it. And it was time to start afresh in Melbourne.

And, as it turns out, Melbourne is awesome. BOILING HOT, but an incredible city with far too many highlights to do justice to in a single blog. So, once again, it might be time for a bullet summary of the great things we did and a few introductions to people that joined us along the way:

• The Australian Open – After a lengthy overnight bus journey we headed straight to the tennis on what was to be Melbourne’s hottest day of the summer (at that point.. wait for it…) Due to the blistering 44 degree heat, we spent the majority of the day going in and out of the air conditioned arenas. We saw loads of games, many unknowns, but we were lucky enough to see the (huge) Williams sisters obliterate some regular sized female tennis players, and watch a rather moody Nadal warming up. Oh, and we spent about 30 minutes queing up to get Loreal goody bag. It was worth it…

Nadal was pretty moody

• The Hottest Hostel Ever - Despite marching the length and breadth of Melbourne we found ourselves staying in a very busy hostel, in upwards of 40 degrees, with no air conditioning, a kitchen about the size of ours in Hubert Grove, and with a strange policy whereby you had to check out every morning at 10am and then move to a new room at 2pm later that day. That happened every day. Little bit irritating.
• In And Around Melbourne – We went to museums, hit the market, did a boat trip down the river, walked through parks, travelled out to St Kildas (missing a gay pride march by inches), drank in Federation Square and chilled out on the beach. Melbourne seemed to pretty much have everything we asked of it, and we had pretty sensational weather the whole time.
• Bars, Bins, Boost Juice And Lovely Lovely Parmas – First guest mention goes to Rich’s mate from uni, Mike. Mike did a sterling job of making us feel welcome in Melbourne, introducing us to various culinary delights, and leading us down smelly bin-filled alleyways to some of the coolest bars we’ve ever seen. We had kebabs to rival Bath’s Marmaris at Stalactites, the best fruit smoothies ever from Boost, a Parma (chicken covered in ham, napolitana sauce and cheese and served with chips and salad: AMAZING) from the famous Mrs Parmas, and drank in bars that looked like mental asylums and made out of ship freight containers, to mention a couple.

Not quite a red carpet...

We heart Parmas

• The Woman Of Many Cities – Second guest mention goes to Danni, a friend that we have now had photos with in three very different countries: San Francisco – USA (one of many young ladies to be pictured with Justin on the night of his disappearence), Ihla Grande – Brazil (where we actually met Danni and her mate Lil for Christmas, and now Melbourne – Australia, the place she actually calls home. She lives in Williamstown, home of numerous fish and chip shops and a place that seems to have an odd obsession with the Titanic. No one seems to know why?!
• The Great Ocean Road And The Grampians – The open road beconed again, and we couldn’t be in Melbourne without visiting the Great Ocean Road. We hired a car for a couple of days and spent one night on the coast and one in the mountains. Lots of wonderful beaches, a trip to the lighthouse made famous by ‘Around the Twist’ and ‘Mad Max’, stunning views and Aboriginal history in the Grampians, and the most persistant flys you could ever imagine. We now have nets to cover ou faces, they really are that bad.

Have you ever, ever felt like this...

Pauly?!

• The Penguin Parade - Australia’s most popular natural attraction… apparently. Believe it or not, more people go to see the smallest penguins in the world crawl out of the sea and meander to there burrows than go and see the Great Barrier Reef or Ayers Rock!? We were among the thousands to do it every year, and it was… an experience. The night prior to our arrival 381 penguins trecked across the beach for all to see. The night we did it, we saw about 20… apparently they were afraid of the sea mist?! Still, it was quite a hilarious experience. The three of us (Wendy, myself, and Beth Fernon – see below) sat through rain, cheering everytime we saw one of the bizarre little birds, and even had the pleasure of hearing one break wind as he ran back to his burrow. You don’t get thta on the Barrier Reef!

Rich wept shortly after this was taken. Nature seems to do that to him...

• The Burbs – Our final guest mentions go to Beth and Deanne Fernon and their family, probably the most welcoming family in Australia. Not only were we invited to stay in the lovely suburban town of Glen Waverley, but they even had a BBQ in our honour. Beyond the amazing hospitality we were taken to Ramsey Street, provided with breakfast and freshly squeezed juice and kept alive on the hottest day Melbourne has ever seen – 47 degrees centigrade. The only downside was that Deanne had the tendency to be a little bit moody every now and then, but we got used to it….

New family on Ramsey Street

All in all another incredible city and one we are sorry to see the back of as we travel across the coast to Perth. Bring on more beaches, road trips and boxed wine!

RB

P.s. Oh, and there were a couple of hideous games of mini golf, from which I have now retired at the early age of 26. At one point a red golf ball was kicked across the green in fury. The less said about these times, the better.