Taking the Leap

12000 feet above Queenstown, poised at the door of the plane, my Eastern European skydive instructor tells me we’re going on the count of 3. Vaan, Tooo,.. out I jump. It’s probably a combination of the excitement and a desire to be in control. I’m not going to risk waiting for 3 and being pushed out – I’ll go on my own terms.

In a small town in Colombia, I sign my life away on a waiver form so serious it requires a fingerprint as well as a signature. A band with emergency contact details is rather ominously tied around my wrist. The grade 5+ rapids of the Rio Suarez have plucked many before me from their rafts, but I can’t wait to get out there.

I’m 7 years old and standing in the queues at a themepark on the Gold Coast with dad. Standing as tall as I can, I am able to turn my 119cm into the minimum 120cm requirement to go on the upside down roller coaster. My older brother is too scared to join us, yet my eagerness caused a spontaneous growth spurt.

I’m not afraid of heights, I don’t fear death, I’m un-phased by deadly sharks, snakes and spiders. Heck, I even love public speaking. But at 11am on Friday morning I was trembling.   My fingers shook as I typed 4 simple words on lync to my boss “U got 5 mins?” When he confirmed he did, it was Showtime. I steeled myself for what I was about to do. The butterflies were having a frenzy in my stomach. Why on earth was I so nervous? Because, it turns out, I fear the unknown. And when the stakes are high, and I am doing something for myself, I have an almost paralysing fear of making a bad choice.

Completely unbeknownst to my boss, I was calling him into a room to deliver my resignation. I was resigning from my well-paid, successful career with the leading Australian Bank that I had joined as a fresh young graduate 11 years ago.   I didn’t hate my job, there were some seriously awesome people in my team, and I had, quite possibly, the best boss in the world. Yet here I was calling it quits.   I didn’t even have a new job offer waiting in the wings.   I fought back a swell of emotion and said what I had to say. My boss sat there in shock. Then a smile took hold as said “Good on you” and wished me all the best. So “why did you do it?”, I hear you asking. “Have you completely lost the plot?”

I quit yesterday because I had lost not the plot but the passion. I had progressed as far as I possibly could go in my role – short of someone above me throwing in the towel or getting hit by a bus. And there’s only so long you can wait for that to happen. Even then, a promotion in my exact area of expertise didn’t exist, it would involve a bit of a sideways shift into areas I had less interest in. My job wasn’t easy, but I could almost do it with my eyes closed. And with each new (stupid) question or illogical decision that would interrupt my day, I could feel an extra ounce of cynicism creeping in. I like to be the office optimist. The happy person who greets everyone with an enthusiastic smile, and no matter what obstacles there might be, I will be the person who just gets on with it and gets shit done. When I felt I was at serious risk of losing this, I knew the time had come to exit stage left.

The challenge when leaving a great position in a top team with one of the leading players in the market, is where to go next. This wasn’t a move for money, a move for a promotion, or a move for the sake of moving. This was a move to re-discover my passion. As someone with an actuarial degree, it probably isn’t a huge surprise that my next steps are all about improving the odds. I’m going on a passion hunt, but I’m taking two paths rather than one. To earn my keep and continue to do the work I enjoy – to see if I can enjoy it again once all the limitations and bureaucracy is removed, I’m going to set up my own business and (hopefully) get some consulting work. I’m the numbers nerd who gets the bigger picture and can speak and write about it with panache. I can build a beautiful spreadsheet, but it’s my ability to truly understand the story behind it, and pass this understanding on to others, that I am hoping will set me apart.

But maybe this won’t make me happy either. So my other path involves a bigger shift. A return to lecture halls full of teenagers and the days of slaving away on assignments and exams. In March, I’m heading back to university to study sports science. I have a brain for science and I love sport. The choice seems obvious, but I know the career prospects are more limited in the areas that appeal to me. For some time now, I have had a nagging wonder as to whether I should have gone down a career path that actually involved either my love of sport or travel, or whether my career should just enable me to play the sports and do all the amazing travelling on the side. The time has come to find out once and for all. I’ve faced my fear and taken the first big leap.   I don’t know where I will land, but with each minute that passes, the fear is gradually being replaced with excitement. I’m glad I did it, for as they speculate: “You only live once”

I’m tired of the city life, Summer’s on the run…

The moment I saw the words “blog your way to Cuba” enter my inbox, I was instantly captivated.  For weeks since returning from my South American adventures, I’ve pondered how best I might explore the creative spark that had been reignited with my travel blog, which without the travel, seemed to be missing a natural outlet.  I mean, I could blog about my spreadsheets and the eggs I had for breakfast, but I fear that might create a revolt from even my most loyal readers.  I’ve also always said I wanted to return to Cuba one day – in fact, I’d been talking about it just days earlier.  The combination seemed serendipitous, yet having read the finer details, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I did initially worry whether blatantly using my blog as a competition entry would be somehow feel like I was selling out.  Then the words of a wise friend came to the fore:  “We all sell out” he said, “Just make sure your price is high enough!” And who am I kidding – a return trip for 2 people for 3 weeks to Cuba with what I already know to be a sensational tour company (I think grovelling is permitted in the Ts&Cs), is definitely a high enough price!   So without further ado, the 10 reasons I should go to Cuba:

I owe Roger a salsa dance.  On my last trip to Cuba, I was blessed with an incredible guide.  He was super intelligent, passionate, good humoured and, like most Cubans, a great dancer.  Due to bizarre circumstances – like an entire aircraft being incorrectly informed of the local time in Cuba, and curious intense bouts of illness affecting other tour mates, both the first and last “group dinners” were just Roger and I.  Arriving at one of clubs after dinner, the dance-floor was bursting with what looked like a video clip full of professional dancers.  My eyes widened and my jaw dropped.  To say I was intimidated by the talent and rhythm would be an understatement.  It was clear I was going to be way out of my league anywhere on that dance-floor, but Roger gallantly offered (more than once) to teach me.  But alas, for all my adventurous spirit that had brought me there, I was too shy to take up the invitation.  Too afraid of looking ridiculous… of falling over, of stepping on toes, of heaven forbid, being out of time.    I’ve since overcome all of that.  I’ve salsa’d badly through the classrooms of my Spanish school in Ecuador, Samba’d the streets of Brazil, and weaved some Tango amongst raucous laughter in Buenos Aires.  I’ll still be the worst dancer on that floor, but damn I’ll have fun whilst I’m at it.

Roger fueling up for the dance floor

I want to talk to the kids.  On my first visit, I had only 10 hours of Spanish lessons under my belt.  Enough to exchange pleasantries, have a vague idea of what was on menus, and know how to count, but not much else.   Since then, I’ve studied at night school in Sydney once a week for 18 months, done a week of intensive private tuition in Cuenca, and survived 4 months in South America.  I still can’t keep up nearly enough to chime in on the fast paced conversations of fluent adults, but I’d say I probably now at least have the language skills of a 5 year old.  And what a perfect age group to chat to in a country that has changed so much and will change so much in their lifetimes.  What do they love? What do they dream about?  If they could have one thing, what would it be?   Of course this would all be worded far simpler in Spanish… because my Spanish is simple… but I am excited to find out the answers from the Cubans of tomorrow and to share them.

Kids will be kids

Take me out to the ball game…take me out with the crowd.  Baseball in Cuba is almost as legendary as the cigars.  Banned after the first war of independence against the Spanish, many say that the defiant resurgence of the sport lead to it gaining an even deeper significance, and becoming almost symbolic of freedom itself.  Unfortunately my experience of baseball in Cuba was limited to watching a very drawn out game on a little old tele in Baracoa – ironically cheering on a team named Granma as I rocked back and forth in my rocking chair…like a grandma.  Even the father of the house fell asleep, but I diligently remained awake and alert… waiting for the good bit.  I feel certain there is so much more to it than this.  I want to experience the passion, the crowd, the freedom, the Cuban substitute for hotdawgs… clearly I need to go back to Cuba to see the real baseball.

How will the Cuban game match up to this SF Giants thriller? Will the winning run be caught by a lady jumping out of a boat in the ocean? Will I pour mustard all over myself again? Time will tell..

www.cubahaschanged.com So apparently Cuba has the internet now.  Or more accurately, it seems more Cubans have access to the internet now than ever before.  I think they’re still without the luxuries of a mobile data network (thus relegating smart phones to glorified camera status), but from what I’ve been reading on some blogs, blogs written by Cubans from Cuba, things are really opening up.  And what a fascinating development to go and discover, analyse, and post on the internet about.  The internet is a phenomenon that has arguably changed our world more profoundly than anything in the last 100 years.  But change has happened so rapidly and each development has melded so seamlessly into the next, that rarely do we have the chance to stop and reflect on it all.  A trip to Cuba presents such an incredible opportunity to hit rewind and pause for a little while.  To really have a good look at what has changed between my visits, what the impacts of that change have been, and ponder where it will go from here.

Sometimes it’s nice to not keep up with the pace…

Did someone say diving!?  I’ve been to many of what are considered the world’s best dive sights.  And snorkled.   From the Great Barrier Reef in my backyard, to the stunning archipelago of Fernando de Noronha Brazil, to the wildlife frenzy that is the Galapagos, I’ve repeatedly thought: one day I’ll learn to dive.  That day is finally coming.  I’m learning to dive this summer, and it really would be a super treat to be able to return to one of the countries I’ve wished I could dive, and actually dive there!

The snorkle action was pretty awesome… but the time has come to go a little deeper!

The book.  I have this little green book full of thoughts, observations, ideas and learnings from my last trip to Cuba.  Sitting next to Roger on the flight back from Baracoa he was nudging me incessantly:  “Why are you writing so much? What are you writing about?” he begged.  Back then I was writing for myself.  Mesmorised by what was such a different country to explore, by what felt like the most incredible time travel experience since Doc Emmet Brown’s Delorean, I was determined to capture it then and there.  To not ever forget what it was like.  I had this sense, more so than in any other country I’ve visited, that what I was seeing was temporary, that before too much longer it was going to change markedly.  It’s the only travel diary I’ve ever successfully maintained from the first to the last day of a trip (usually despite best intentions they cease about a third of the way in), so there must be something in that. Returning to Cuba and blogging about it, truly feels like the perfect excuse to re-open the old notes, and finally share them.

An untold story

I studied economics and finance.  (Forgive me, but) I work in Banking.  I got my first proper paid job (delivering advertising material) at 8.  It doesn’t get much more capitalist than that.  And yet, in August I went to a week-long festival in the desert where there was officially no currency, and I fell in love with it.  I love testing the realms of what works and what doesn’t in any system.  How people behave differently when you change the rules of the game.   I think Cuba is on the precipice of the some fascinating changes in how their economy, and indeed their society, actually works.  More and more businesses are being privatised, yet certain aspects of the socialist regime remain – perhaps most visible (and controversial) being the ration system.  Can you really have “free enterprise” when you have such rigid controls on the supply inputs?  Is there a happy medium that can be achieved, or does it need to be all or nothing?  I would relish the opportunity to return to Cuba to further explore these ideas.

A different world

I want to make this interactive – In the spirit of this being an adventure that I’ll blog about on behalf of Cuban adventures, should I win the prize, I’d like to open it up to anyone who has participated in the voting to nominate a particular challenge/activity/social experiment that they’d like me to undertake whilst I’m there.  It’ll then be put to popular vote to determine the best suggestion – and provided it’s even remotely feasible (i.e. not something the Castro’s are going to lock me up for), I will commit to doing it and blogging about it.  So if you can’t make it to Cuba just yet, but there’s something you’re dying to know about or experience vicariously, this would be your chance…

Stilts on cobblestones… no small challenge!

I get to choose a blogging partner!  What a simultaneously amazing honour and gut-wrenching decision that will be.  So many of my adventures I’ve gone on alone because friends couldn’t afford to join me.  And yet a partner in crime can truly enrich an experience and bring out the best.  I’m beyond excited to be able to grant one of my incredible friends the chance to join this adventure at no cost to them.   And I can guarantee blog readers will enjoy this choice too.

Wanted: Someone to put in the window…

I love a good video diary.  I mean who doesn’t?  If I win, there’ll be some (hopefully hilarious) video content on here too.

Vox pop in these streets anyone?

So that’s it.  Just 10 of a myriad of reasons why I’d love to return to Cuba next year….  So don’t try to hold me back.  There aint nothing you can say.  Snake eyes on a pair of dice, And we got to go today!

Big hearts, big hugs, big ideas and big fires – A newbie’s perspective on Burning Man 2014

When I told people I was going to Burning Man, reactions fell into 3 distinct buckets – It was either “Burning what?”, “Awesome!!” or “Isn’t that just a bunch of stoned hippies having an orgy in the desert?”  Truth be told, I wasn’t 100% sure what to expect either, but surely that is what travel is all about? Exploring the unknown, testing boundaries and being open to new ideas and experiences…?

The idea to end my trip there initially came from Adrian who I’d met in Ecuador.  He was going and was able to set me up with access to a ticket, a tent, bedding, water, Aussie shiraz, beers, a dust mask and some fancy dress outfits…. Now how could I say no to an offer like that?  I also couldn’t help but feel that the fact that the last month of my trip was totally unplanned, and that my flight home (which had been picked completely at random) just so happened to depart from San Francisco the night after the festival ended, was the universe’s way of trying to tell me something.  And far be it from me to question the universe!

The Man

So what exactly is Burning Man?  I think the most accurate answer to that question, would be that there is not actually a way of accurately answering that question.  But since that answer would fit more within the realms of a Dr Suess book than the context of this blog, I’ll have a crack at coming up with something more descriptive.  Essentially it’s a week-long festival in the Nevada desert, with no centrally organised line-up of musicians or activities beyond the fact that there’ll be a (wooden) man there and he’ll be burnt at the end of the week.  Oh and a temple that will get burnt the day after.  Sounds amazing doesn’t it?  Well the amazing part is, that what there is to do at the festival, depends entirely on the festival goers themselves.   And what they come up with is absolutely mind-blowing.  There are spectacular art installations and art cars, all kinds of bars, food outlets, DJs, live bands, workshops and interactive structures for you to climb up, swing on, slide down, jump about, skate along and generally marvel at… to name just a few.  In fact there is so much to see and do there, that anyone susceptible to FOMO might just be sent over the edge by it.  An entire city is built, then enjoyed for a week, before being burnt to the ground or completely dismantled such that no trace is left behind.  This city is built by the community and essentially functions on the principals of gifting, self-expression, and radical self-reliance.  The only things that can be purchased are ice and coffee… beyond that there is no currency.  Everything is “free”.  Quite a radical concept for someone who works in banking… but it’s not like I’ve exactly been working lately anyway.

Sunrise over the beautiful Embrace sculpture… just hours before it burned

A roof of fire – enough to keep people entertained for hours…

An awesome band we stumbled across on one of our grilled cheese missions – a collaboration of over 100 brilliant musicians doing all sorts of funky covers

 

So what kind of people go to this quirky festival in a harsh desert environment that is doing its utmost to kill you on every turn, where you have to pay for a ticket to then provide everything yourself?  Yes, there’s definitely some hippies there.  And more naked people strolling the streets than you’d find in a nudist colony.  But it’s also probably the biggest gathering of highly intelligent, insanely creative and genuinely loving people in the one spot that I’ve ever come across.  And yes of course there’s some drugs there, but there’s drugs everywhere in the world.  And it’s not like you actually have to take any to have a mind altering experience here.

So what did I provide to the festival?  I chose to camp with the Costco Soulmate Trading Outlet (CSTO).  Adrian had been camping with them for years and it certainly sounded like a fun group to be a part of.  There were also the added advantages of it being a super well organised camp with a great communal meal system and luxurious facilities (by desert camping standards anyway).  As the name suggests, what we provided to the playa, was soulmates.  Pundits would come in (with a member of the opposite sex to trade), and sit at our lounge or drink in our bar whilst they filled out a 2 page questionnaire about themselves.  After that, they’d be interviewed by a staff member, some proprietary coding would be expertly applied to assist the matching algorithms, and they would be issued with a membership card and asked to return the next day.  Upon their return they would receive the application form of the soul-mate they’d been matched with by our supercomputers – and it was then up to them to locate this person (with the help of the camp directions and descriptions provided).  Chances are they may never even find them – but they’d sure meet a lot of people and have fun trying!  And remaining true to the Costco spirit, a different person would be given their form, so someone else is looking for them at the same time – and thus you actually get 2 soulmates for the price of one – to think some people spend a lifetime just searching for one!

Once I’d been trained up, I did a couple of shifts of interviewing and 1 behind the bar.  For the most part, the interviews were fascinating.  It’s astonishing just how much some people will open up to a complete stranger who is prepared to just listen to them talk about themselves… there are sometimes tears, often some laughs, smart answers, deep answers and breakthrough moments.  We offered soulmates, but it seemed many got a bonus therapy session thrown in – by a totally unqualified professional of course.  The bar work was also fun as our offering was exactly my specialty – pour a whole lot of random spirits and mixers in a blender with ice and hope for the best!  I’ve always said measurements and recipes are for chumps.

So my days generally consisted of spending the mornings waking up slowly/avoiding too much heat/recovering from the previous evening (with the odd bike ride thrown in here and there), then working a shift in the afternoon, then going on random adventures.  The random adventures were my favourite.  Age, Rico and I would just jump on the bikes and take turns “navigating” to the next destination.  Usually it would be a bar of some sort, but we did also stop to appreciate some art, climb up questionable structures, watch games of dodgeball taking place, go “shopping” for clothing (and decorative spiced rum), have a dance, eat some poutine or grilled cheese sandwiches, listen to music, play on the swings… anything that took our fancy really.  For someone who loves random adventures and mucking around like a child, I was in heaven.  All the bright blinky lights once the night fell were also a sight to be seen.  I’d been to Vegas for the first time earlier on my trip, and been wowed by all the very bright excess there, but this seriously rivalled it.  I think it was the contrast of the incredible brightness and activity amidst the nothingness that extended beyond the trash fence that did it.  Extraordinarily eerie really.

Age, Rico and I – on one of our many bar crawls

Blinky lights galore

Fellow camp-mates Jefe and FNG battling it out in the Thunderdome (because why wouldn’t you want the crap beaten out of you on your birthday?)

Doing a spot of “shopping” – much more fun when everything is FREE

 

The burning of the man himself is also quite a spectacle.  I’ve always found watching a fire burn cathartic (provided nothing and no-one is at risk or course), and this certainly was one big fire.  They even had fireworks coming off him.  He’s absolutely huge (I can only assume it’s something that gets bigger and bigger each year) so the time taken for him to properly burn was enough to put most of my group to sleep… but we of course had some spotters who stayed awake to alert us to wake up in time for the good bits.  Once he was down we made our way back home past the burning debris – and almost got into quite an altercation with Satan who was blocking my path over the log.  I don’t care who you’re dressed up as, to lean back on top of a girl who is at least 40kgs lighter than you is not cool.  I gave him a shove (to very limited effect) and a verbal spray and was luckily able to be dragged up around the side of him – because had that gone on much longer, I daresay it would have gotten rather ugly.  There are always dickheads in life, but I think what is more amazing about this particular experience, is that he was the only one I’d encountered in the whole week.  And when you consider you’ve got 70,000 braving it out in the desert, I think those are actually pretty good odds.

Burning Man

 

The day after the burn was mostly spent working on the giant exodus task.  Taking down shade structures, yanking out rebar, having tent folding competitions, eating copious amounts of excess snack supplies, dismantling the kitchen and coiling cords (with my newly learnt under over technique – thanks Rico).  There was lots to be done, but many hands make light work, and Bunj’s continual delivery of Gatorade slushies certainly helped the cause!  That evening we had a bbq dinner and were sitting around discussing heading out to the temple burn, when all of a sudden we saw the flames.  Was that the temple? Was it meant to be burning already?  Bugger! We clambered up on top of our shipping container and watched it burn in the distance.  We were lucky we had the container height, but it was a bit of a shame to have not been closer as the temple is such a special place for so many people.  A beautiful structure in itself, I found it particularly powerful for the fact that it had no specific religious affiliation – it was there equally for everyone to experience and was filled with messages to loved ones and the ashes of loved ones who have passed.  A very meaningful burn for so many.  Of course the advantage of “missing” the burn was that we were then able to waste no time in retiring to our couches to enjoy a very relaxing final evening around our burn barrel sipping red wine and eating chocolate.  Super civilised – well except for the randoms using rebar to heat up old grilled cheese sandwiches in our fire – I’d almost forgotten for a second that we were at burning man…

The beautiful temple

Inside the temple

So to attempt to sum it up, the week really was a fantastic mini adventure to “end” my larger adventure.  I have a disproportionately low number of photos as I think I was too busy processing it in my own head to think to get the camera out half the time, but luckily there were others in camp who did a much better job of this than me, and I’m definitely looking forward to seeing more of their photos! At times the heat, the dust, the lack of sleep and the fact that my hair had pretty much become dreadlocks was challenging, but I think you need challenges in life to make you appreciate the good bits more.  Among the good bits of course, I met some amazing people, saw some fascinating things, and got a lot of good hugs…. And when I return to work tomorrow to play with very big numbers on very big spreadsheets, who knows… perhaps I might just float the gifting economy concept there…

Trying to avoid dying in Bolivia

My intro to Bolivia came in the car on the way from the airport.  Upon passing the 2^nd traffic accident in the space of 5 minutes, I enquired “Hay muchas accidentes?” … “Si si” he replied – and then went on to explain that the van drivers were crazy.   It didn’t take me too long to surmise that it wasn’t just the van drivers though.  It was already mid-afternoon by the time I’d checked into my (filthy) hotel room, so I wasted no time in heading out to Café del Mundo for a delicious sandwich and then across to Hotel Presidente to see about rappelling down its wall dressed as bacon – disappointingly it was closed for renovations and “might be open tomorrow” so instead I looked around a few shops before heading back to the hotel.  Just crossing the roads in La Paz is an adrenaline adventure though.  No concept of lights or crossings or defining who has right of way here.  Just step out with authority and hope for the best.

Day 2 in La Paz I was initially torn between seeing more of the city via the highly recommended red caps walking tour (and trying again to do the rappel) or doing the very popular “Death Road” mountain biking trip.  I suspected the views would be incredible on the latter, however did have a concern or 2 about the “safety” standards in Bolivia – and I’d already heard directly that even the good bikes weren’t anywhere near the standard we’d enjoyed in Colombia.  The death road option was thrown out the window though at the welcome briefing when one of my new tour mates recounted how she’d spent 3 hours of her death road trip that day hauling out the dead body of a 22 year old girl who was riding in the group in front and had gone off the edge.  It sounded like a something out of a horror story, not a holiday.  So, walking tour it was.

Whilst the walking tour confirmed that there wasn’t actually a whole lot of “sights” in La Paz, it was thoroughly interesting to learn about the San Pedro prison (which seems to function more like a hotel than a jail), the current president and some of the crazy things he’s come out with – such as a public announcement that eating too much chicken makes you gay and drinking coke makes you bald…. Or the policy idea he had to tax all women who were over 18 and didn’t have children to give it to those under 18 who did have children… or the revelation he shared after completing one of his first major trips in the job… confirming that “there are more Bolivians in Bolivia than anywhere else”…  Sometimes it’s fun to know there are countries who have people potentially more embarrassing than Tony Abbott in charge.  We also visited the witches market (llama foetus galore) and learnt about the importance of offerings and rituals in their culture.  Homeless people beware – burying someone alive in the foundations of a new building is a practice that is thought to bring good luck to the construction.

Witches market

Backwards clock to pay homage to the sundial traditions of the indigenous people

Where the President would live if it wasn’t such a ridiculously dangerous place for him to live

After the tour, the rappel was unfortunately still closed, so there was time for lunch and a trip up the teleferico for some great city views (and surprisingly cheap due to it being a public transport rather than tourism initiative) before our meeting for the night bus to Sucre.

Pristine football pitch amidst the chaos

Our transport to the terminal was about an hour late, but this was expected as “we are in Bolivia now chicos”.  Once we boarded it became clear that it was our driver’s questionable decision making ability that was the most likely reason for the delay.  Instead of doing a lap around the block, opting to do a 34 point turn in a street that was just 1 lane in each direction with parked cars on either side… as you do.  We made it to the terminal just in the knick of time though, and were delighted to find our night bus had proper beds that reclined to 170 degrees, as the only way to not be completely terrified by the driving antics was to be sound asleep.  Ignorance is bliss.  It was also rather blissful to be ignorant of the on-board toilet situation for the 14 hour journey… at first the driver advised he wasn’t going to open it for the first 4 hours (which seemed to be a rather arbitrary bladder test at best)… and then he decided he wasn’t going to open it at all.  Clearly stopping so people can pee on the side of the road was a much better option than him having to clean the toilet at the end of the journey.

Arriving in Sucre was a pleasing change of pace.  Known as “The White City”, it was certainly a lot calmer and cleaner (and whiter) than La Paz.  We had a traditional breakfast of Saltenas (kind of like an empanada) and Horchata (a sickly sweet strawberry and coconut milk concoction) before Karina attempted to give us a walking tour.  The attempt being somewhat thwarted by all the racket and blockages of the parades owing to the day being a National Day…. I swear every second day in South America seems to be a National Day!

 

There were also some facts dished out at the market about it being some sort of festival of the sausage, so we opted to celebrate said sausage fest by spending the afternoon relaxing in the sunshine over a beer and a sausage on a balcony with a good view of the city.    The only other thing we were required to achieve that day was booking our tours for the next day.  The most interesting, least likely to die choice appeared to be the hike down part of the Inca trail followed by a hike out to see the dinosaur footprints, so 6 of us signed up for that one whilst the majority of the rest of the group opted for a day of chillaxing.

Looking out over Sucre

They clearly love their foosball

Sucre markets

Some like it hot

When we woke for our hike the next day the clouds looked ominous and more than a few of us questioned the sanity of our decision to go out hiking for 7 hours.  The company had cleverly taken full payment in advance though so we were committed.  As we started out, it was cold, wet and foggy – so we were left to imagine what beautiful views there might be – mostly important for the stories we planned to tell the others.  Thankfully it did eventually clear up and the views were pretty awesome.

We stopped by a waterfall for lunch where we had to contest with a bull for the space, before continuing on in the direction of the dinosaur footprints.  Despite the altitude most of us were walking at the same steady pace, except for the Irish duo who kept falling a bit behind.   Then all of a sudden we hear some ferocious barking and see Shane and David running towards us being pursued by a few dogs – “It bit me the f’ing C he screamed (though without the censorship).  And there pretty much ended David’s time on the tour – he would have to fly to Santiago the following day to commence the rabies treatment – turns out the walk wasn’t as low risk as we thought.

When we got to the dinosaur footprints they were quite an impressive site – and strangely untouched and unprotected.  Apparently millions of years ago there had been a river there and then a volcano had erupted creating a layer which preserved the footprints of the dinosaurs who were attempting to escape.  Almost more impressive than the footprints themselves though was our guides ability to draw a picture of each of the different dinosaurs whose footprints we could see using just a couple of rocks as his pen and paper.  We had another sandwich whilst we admired the prints, before setting off back home, this time each armed with a rock to pass the dog house.  No incidents this time around.

In the evening we went to a great steak place for dinner, and buoyed by some horrendous 2-4-1 drinks, we were keen to kick on somewhere.  Only trouble being that Sucre is not exactly a town known for its nightlife.  We had a bit of a dance at joyride before heading back out on to the street to plan our next move.  We heard some music coming from somewhere around the corner and went to investigate.  And what should we luck upon but a huge Jesus concert – what the?  The only thing happening after midnight in Sucre was a Jesus concert?   It was all a bit odd, so I called it a night shortly after.

Next day was a chilled morning in Sucre followed by a bus trip to Potosi.  The high danger activity for that day turned out to be eating the Bolivian specialty for dinner.  Beware steak buried at the bottom of a tomato based soup with chips around the edges and a fried egg on top.  10 hours later, I was tasting it again and again and again.   Vomiting at an altitude of 4060m is not to be taken too lightly either – it was like an extreme sport.  Unfortunately this meant I missed the trip to the silver mine and the chance to purchase dynamite from the miners market.  Though the one positive of food poisoning is it goes as quickly as it comes, so I was feeling much better the next day and able to wander the town a bit before it was time to board the bus to Uyuni.

     

  

A few hours later we pulled up in what looked like a deserted demolition zone, and Karina announced that we were on the main street (oh dear) – and in just 8 or so blocks we’d be in the centre.  We were torn between being grateful that we weren’t too far from the centre, or being concerned by it – there really was nothing to see for miles.  Turns out the town of Uyuni is a sort of failed mining town – construction commenced expecting a boom and then the mines were nationalised and the local companies closed down so the boom never came.  The end result being dishevelled looking buildings and not much to see or do besides inhale dust and purchase more alpaca merchandise.  Thankfully they have a great pizza place run by a Canadian (far and away the most efficient service we encountered in all of Bolivia) so the evening was sorted and the only time we had to kill was the following morning – most of which I used to upload some blog photos on the high speed connection at the internet café – no wifi in this town.

View from the hotel in Uyuni

After lunch we got in the 4WDs that would virtually become our homes for the next 2.5 days adventure through the salt flats.  First stop was at the train cemetery – a bizarre dumping ground for old trains.  We had fun climbing all over them for photographic purposes, and a few split pairs of pants later, it was time to get back in the cars.

Next up we visited a tiny village with a “salt factory”…. Said factory was actually just a little old man scooping up plastic bags full of salt from the pile on the ground beside him, and then melting them shut.  He was very good at it though.

A bit later we stopped at some piles of salt on the outer edges of the flats – stand-in guide Brooke Pachamama Forysth explained to me that this was part of the salt mining process… squares were territorially marked out in the salt, then this was scraped into piles and left there to dry out, before collection and delivery to the old men for bagging.   Rightio then.

As we continued on our journey, we had a less than riveting stop at the salt hotel before we finally got out to a nice big expanse of nothingness which would be perfect for all the funky photos we wanted to take.  However it turns out with modern cameras being so smart, that it is actually quite difficult to trick some of them into taking the shot you’re after.  One day I will properly learn how to actually use the manual functionality on my camera!  In the meantime though, we were blessed to have Karina as our tour leader – she was an expert through years of practice and demonstrated phenomenal patience in taking almost ALL our photos.  Thanks Cray Cray!!

Sunset was next on the agenda and it was absolutely stunning.  Only trouble with it was that it meant that the sun (and with it our warmth) was going for the day.  When the overnight temps get as low as around minus 30, it’s so nice to be able to retreat to your modern hotel with heating and hot showers and plentiful warm blankets….Pity our hotel had none of these things.  It did have walls made of salt though so that was pretty cool to look at (via your head-torch) whilst you sat there shivering.   And it was definitely $5 well spent hiring the sleeping bag!

Blossoming bromance

Road to nowhere

The next morning we set off for an “island” that had some super cool cactuses all around it.  We did a nice hike to the top, took some photos and came back down (again reminded that down is soooo much easier than up at altitude).  We then drove a bit further before it was time for some more photos playing with the perspective…. It was made much easier by the sun being directly overhead, but eventually we ran out of creative steam and jumped back in the 4WDs.

Bolivia giving us the finger

   

It’s worth mentioning that we’d developed quite the relationship with our driver by this point.  Whilst he never uttered a word, nor cracked a smile, he did have a wonderful habit of starting and ending every car trip with the same song – #176 – or “Imillitay”.  We quickly developed an admiration for this dedication (he even did it for car trips that were less than 5 minutes) and enthusiastically sang and “danced” along every time it came on.  We decided he must have a very good sense of humour to behave in such a manner – but was just too shy to say anything (or smile).   After about another hour of bouncing along to the panpipes, the car in front stopped for a toilet break so we pulled up behind them – and it was a good thing we did – turns out we were leaking more than Julian Assange.  Driver Dan must’ve been paying too much attention to the song selection to notice the temperature gauge had gone waaaaay beyond hot.  Sit tight kids, we’re going to be here awhile.

The drivers played around inside the bonnet whilst we played some “football” (on possibly the worst surface you’ve ever seen)…. And then it was eventually decided we might as well have a picnic lunch here.  At least the scenery was nice and the sun was out.  I enthusiastically chowed down on my tuna pasta salad – enhanced by the boatloads of extra tuna from all the non-tuna eaters, and washed it down with a swig of Coke.   Being stranded in the desert actually wasn’t too bad (yet).

With lunch well and truly finished, it was becoming clear that the work on the car wasn’t, so we kept ourselves entertained for a while longer with a game of charades.  Eventually the drivers fessed up that they couldn’t properly fix the car, but had done enough to get it to the next town, where we would be met by a new car that was being sent from Uyuni.  A real blessing that we’d broken down in one of the few parts of the desert with mobile phone reception.

Upon arriving at the town, Matthias was absolutely salivating – and it wasn’t just because Imillitay was playing.  For a 2 horse town that only seemed to have one convenience store, we counted no less than 4 soccer fields!  No prizes for guessing how we were going to fill the time here.  We rounded up enough for a game of 4 on 4, whilst the others procured some beers and took to the sidelines for heckling.  Let’s just say the heckling is much easier than the running at 4400m!  Much to the disgust of the fancy footed duo of Matthias and Zed who were accompanied by the boundless enthusiasm of Cray Cray and the tenacity of Fancy Francy, my team of Lara with the cat-like reflexes, Sneaky Shane with his runs from the back and “Party tonight?” Manu managed to carve out a surprise 5-0 flogging!  Better still, our new car was here (and had our old MP3 hooked up and ready to go).  Given we’d lost a few hours of daylight, there wasn’t time to see the talked about lagoons and volcano viewpoints so we just made our way directly to the hotel instead.

The outside temperature was definitely colder than the previous night, but the 50kgs worth of blankets provided did the trick and we had a nice warm night’s sleep – until the alarms went off at 5:10am ahead of our 6am departure.  The 20 metre walk from the door of the hotel to the cars was bone-shatteringly cold – and we then sat in the freezing vehicles for a further 20minutes or so, before we were fully loaded and ready to go – at which point, thankfully there was some heating that came with the engine being turned on.   This lasted for about 15minutes until car #3 (the rave machine) copped a flat and some engine troubles – and it seemed the chosen method of repair was going to be to just fleece everything from our vehicle.  About 30 minutes of shivering later, Imiillitay was playing and we were on the road again – this time we were last out of the blocks as they wanted the dodgy car to be in the front.  Only trouble was which car they thought to be the dodgy one.  We didn’t last another 10 minutes before our “new” vehicle completely conked out.  Our driver desperately sending his SOS signals to the car(s) infront – but it was to no avail – with the speed demon lead vehicle now in 2^nd place, they were both miles away.

We knew it wasn’t good news.  We’d surmised from the previous 2 break-downs that our driver knew the least about mechanics of the 3 – and we were now on our own in the middle of the desert without any mobile phone reception (seriously, why they don’t invest in some sat phones is beyond me, but that rant is for another day).  DJ Dan opened the bonnet and pretended to do stuff whilst we sat there helplessly.  Matthias dreamt about football, Zed busied himself making video diaries, Julie and I sat there rocking back and forth attempting to maintain a temperature above hypothermic, and Shane decided he needed to take action.  So he set off towards the horizon, in what we could only guess was a quest for the nearest Toyota dealership.  As time bore on, finally we saw another vehicle in the rear-view mirror.  But alas, it stopped a few kilometres short of us.  To dump a passenger out the door.  Wait a minute – that’s Shane!! What was he doing in the car, and more importantly, why were they dropping him off miles away (when clearly they were about to drive straight past the rest of us in a minutes time)?  Despite the rather unusual decision to ditch Shane, they did pull up beside us for a while and possibly offer to help – they didn’t appear to do much mechanically but we were hopeful they might at least be able to get a message to our other vehicles who were presumably stopped somewhere up ahead waiting for us.

Over an hour must have passed by the time we were finally joined by our other vehicles (containing the drivers who we at least held a skerrick of hope about their ability to fix the car).  So they set about playing under the bonnet whilst we continued to shiver.  Matters were only made worse when reports came through about the creature comforts that the “First class” passengers in the lead vehicle with the fancy steering wheel cover were enjoying… not only did they have heating, but they were sitting back enjoying a Robbie Williams DVD… there were even rumours that there was an on-board skittles dispenser catering to their every candy whim.  Oh to be one of the privileged few.

We were alternating between sitting in the car for relative warmth (or at least to exclude the ferocious wind from the equation) and stretching our legs in the sun outside, when every now and then a strange request would come through from the drivers.  Or more accurately, the same strange request would do the rounds again.  They wanted ladies stockings – and seemed surprised the ladies weren’t carrying them.  I would like to know what lady does bring stockings to the desert though!!  Eventually they realised that no amount of asking was going to conjure up a pair of stockings, so the shirt off driver #3’s back was deemed the next best substitute (for replacing a destroyed fan belt I believe).  We felt slightly bad complaining about the cold when this guy has stripped down to almost nothing – but it was hardly our fault they were attempting to cross a harsh desert landscape without spare parts or any means of communicating with people back in the town who would have spare parts.

More and more time passed, more video diaries were made and more charades were played.  People were understandably starting to get increasingly frustrated though.  Eventually a decision was made that Karina would need to hitch a ride with the next random vehicle to pass by in order to get back to the hotel where she had a means of communication to attempt to re-jig the plans.  Among other things, there was no way we were going to be at the Chilean border for our scheduled 2pm transfer.  So off she went, leaving us in the hands of the locals.  About an hour later, the driver of the lead vehicle determined they should also go back – his thinking was to shuttle everyone back to the hotel and start again (with yesterday’s broken car that was magically going to have been fixed).

With the boss of the drivers and Karina now both having abandoned us, young Matthias was deemed to be in charge – not sure if it was the hat or his superior command of the Spanish language that made him such a frontrunner for the role – but there were more than a few fearing the possible outcomes of this decision.  Like all good leaders though, he wasted no time in delegating various responsibilities and I was more than happy to be named as head of food.  My first decision would be that we should consume the entire contents of the esky without further delay, to increase our chances of being able to squeeze everyone into 2 vehicles if it came to that.  I was holding very little hope for the ability of our drivers to get either of our cars moving again (they’d been at it for over 5 hours by this stage)… and I was hungry.   So we tucked into our chicken wings and rice.  For a brief moment at least, it was better to be in cattle class.

And then up pulls another random vehicle and out jumps Cray Cray!  She was back, and she had a plan…. But was distraught to see she was now missing a whole carload of people.  Had the driver not made his own decision to take them back to the hotel, the new plan was going to be to load both “good cars” to maximum capacity and the overflow could travel in the couple of spare seats of another G group who were to be passing by shortly.  This would get us to the red lagoon, at which point there would be many more transport options opening up as it’s a major junction of roads.  It was such a promising plan – but completely thwarted when Romy returned from the hotel sans passengers (as feared he hadn’t gone inside so had never got the message Karina had left there). It was just a comedy of errors, and poor Karina was back to the drawing board – and again without any means of communication.  She sensibly decided that we should all at least get back to the hotel without further delay (the first class passengers were of course there already and expecting everyone else), but again she was overruled by some king size egos who unbelievably thought they might have actually fixed our car enough to drive it to the hotel.   Never mind fixing it though – they’d completely destroyed it.  Our initial problem had never had anything to do with the automatic transmission, but our new one certainly did.  And if you can’t move an automatic into gear, well you’re pretty well screwed – even I know that.  But we needed to waste another 30 minutes confirming this with some pointless pushing first.

Finally they conceded defeat and the 2 working vehicles were cleared to go back to the hotel.  Thrilled to be leaving that square of desert behind, but a shame to have to abandon our driver (and Imillitay) with it.  Realising we weren’t going to see him again, we quickly scrambled together his tip (no doubt inflated due to his music choices) and said our goodbyes.  It was well after 2pm by the time we got back to the hotel (which we’d left 8 hours prior) and we were clearly still miles from the Chilean border and had seen none of the talked about sights – lagoons, hot springs, geysers…. All very beautiful I’m sure.  But becoming increasingly high on everyone’s priority list was just getting the heck out of Bolivia!!  As plan after plan fell through, only one remained feasible if we were still going to attempt to get to Chile. We were going to have to squeeze 8 in one 4WD and 9 in the other and backtrack to the nearest Chilean border in order to get there before it closed.  This was going to be further complicated by the fact that we only had 5 “skinny people” and we also had more than a handful who were refusing to go in the vehicle with 9 because they weren’t comfortable with the crazy driving antics that driver had been displaying so far.  The end result being that the 9 people in the lead vehicle were determined not by size, but by a willingness to actually get in the car… and that’s how I ended up spending the next 2 hours bouncing around the desert balanced on one butt cheek in a row of 4 across the middle.  Needless to say we were all pretty happy to get out of that car and go through the Bolivian immigration.  Even those who’d lost their forms did ok – apparently the going rate for a bribe to get out of there was just US $5 – not bad – I’d have been willing to pay a lot more at that point!

Get me outta here!

The cars then drove us a little further on until we were officially in the middle of no-mans land and would need to await our Chilean transport.  Karina had magically managed to line it up to meet us at 5pm (despite the border being 6 hours further away from our planned border crossing) so we unloaded and waved our Bolivian drivers goodbye.  It really just wasn’t our day though, and 5pm came and went with no sign of a bus.  It turned out the transport had given some other people a lift instead – and we’d have to wait a bit longer.  If only we had some phone reception… At least it was a slightly different middle of nowhere to earlier in the day though.   We could also now see the border as it was just 2kms of flat road ahead of us, so could technically walk there if it came to it – but it was more of a tease than anything else as walking wasn’t a particularly appealing option with all the luggage we had (and bearing in mind we were at an altitude of about 4500m).

As time ticked on and the sun threatened to disappear behind the mountains, there was still no sign of our bus.  It was getting cold and the border would close at 8pm (and we couldn’t have even returned to Bolivia if we wanted to as that one closed at 6pm) so we were left with no option but to walk.  I had 25kgs in my big backpack and about 10kgs in the “small” one, had been carrying a cold/flu/variant of the Sarah virus since Peru, and had been breathing in copious amounts of dust for 3 days straight.  Throw in the altitude and this was looking to be anything but a fun walk.  By the time I stumbled over the finish line I was barely breathing – my nose was completely blocked and I couldn’t stop coughing long enough to get much of a breath in through my mouth.  Brooke kindly came to my aid and filled in all my forms for me – the next challenge though was to be actually getting through immigration.  Whatever was wrong with me, the Chileans were pretty sure they didn’t want it on their soil.   They called Karina over and she had to vouch for me that it was purely altitude and I hadn’t previously been sick – it was far from the truth but I nodded along in agreement.  Never have I been more keen to cross a border.  And thankfully they let me.

First stop in Chile was a health post not far away where the doctor did a few tests, gave me 10 minutes on an oxygen mask and some mystery drugs to clear up my nose.  A pretty good service for free!  Conclusion was the blocked nose, dry air, bad cough, altitude and a potential allergy to the large volumes of sulphur in the dust were behind the problem…. But I had at least managed to avoid dying in Bolivia.  Unfortunately with all that went wrong it hadn’t quite lived up to my expectations, but at least it was a fun group of people who I’d endured it with.

Uno in Puno

Recipe for disaster:  Take the 4 most sleep deprived passengers, all of whom are teetering on the edge of a hangover and/or the full blown Sarah virus, and allocate them the task of preparing and serving an on-board picnic on a bumpy little minibus travelling along the curvy mountainous roads which connect Cusco and Puno.  For extra spice, add a dose of equally sleep deprived but even more frazzled CEO, attempting to direct the proceedings.

The end result:  One of the most hilariously enjoyable bus rides of my life.

How it all unfolded:  The first signs we were in trouble came at the morning chopping meeting.  After placing a series of grocery bags on the counter, Andres calls me up and begs for some assistance:  “Please Nessy, you gotta help me here, I don’t know what needs chopping and what needs washing – can you sort that out and let me know.”  In the bags were crackers, dips, grapes, carrots, granadillas, olives and cheeses – it was hardly rocket science.  Admittedly the washing was complicated by the fact that the filtered water was yet to be purchased, and the carrot peeling/chopping was made more challenging by the absurd size and shape of said carrots, but still…

With the carrots chopped, the fruits pre-washed (in contaminated tap water) and the executive decision made that the cheese should be chopped enroute (as we’d otherwise have no way of storing it), we were ready to board the bus.   Not quite ready to go to Puno yet though, as there were about a thousand stops required on the way out of Cusco.  The raved about salami had not been able to be obtained, so other cold meat was required.  As was the bread (it needed to be fresh), and the ice for our fridge (only one shop in the whole city sells it) and the water.   Further stops were then required to raid the pharmacy and to return the trekking poles.  Almost an hour later we were on our way.  Not quite ready for picnicking though – as the chopping board and knives still needed to be purchased from some small town we’d stop at in a couple of hours.  It is hard to say whether or not this was a deliberate decision…..maybe supermarkets in Cusco don’t sell these things?   At least it gave the kitchen staff a couple of hours of guilt-free napping before they would be put to work though.

Time seemed to fly and before we knew it we were stopping at the town for toilets and chopping boards – the latter able to be purchased from some random store in a little alley that was jam-packed full of everything you’d ever need (and tonnes of things you wouldn’t).  Now that we had all the tools and equipment, Andres came to the “kitchen” at the back of the bus to attempt to provide some instructions.  We nauseously listened to his concept of continuous job rotation (which apparently also required physical seat rotation) before Kel shut it down.  “Look” she said, “I’m happy to sit here chopping until the cows come home, but I aint doing any of this seat swapping sh!t”.   Agreement was unanimous – instead of job diversification, the day called for specialisation.  Kel was Head of the Brains & Knives department (or “B&D” according to Andres) – basically she was in charge of all the thinking and cutting owing to her superior mental faculties demonstrated moments earlier, and her years of gourmet sandwich shop experience, Sarah was Head of Plastics – anything that was plastic or wrapped in plastic that needed to be opened or held could be done by Sarah and only Sarah, Christiane was Head of Customer Experience – poor girl drew the short straw by sitting one row in front of the kitchen so was instantly designated the waitress for the day, I was to be Head of Plating- basically divvying up and making Kellie’s chopped stuff look pretty before it went to Christiane for service, and Andres…. Well I don’t really know what Andres role was.  I suppose you could call him Management.

Management fooling around with our inspirational poster..

First up we needed to work out the menu, or more specifically, in what order we were going to attempt to serve up the random selection of food.  It’s not like we had the luxury of a big table to put everything on for people to just graze over after all.  After some crazy suggestions, the order was determined to be: an appetiser of carrots and dips, followed by a main of mini ham rolls and olives accompanied by a choice of beers or juices, followed (after a decent interval) by a desert of cheese, crackers, grapes and wine, before finishing up with a self-purchased supper of coffee and chocolate.  Granadillas were available for the taking at any time.  My (Bus) Kitchen Rules – eat your heart out.

The next task that required some rather complex thought was how to wash the fruit and knives.  We had a very awkward 7 litre bottle of water, a super bumpy road and a couple of plastic bags that we weren’t sure whether or not had holes in them.  After much discussion about which was the washing bag, which was the emergency bag, and what our contingency plans were, Andres began the pour whilst I nervously held the bag – miraculously it didn’t leak and perhaps even more amazingly it didn’t even spill when the bus jerked and Andres practically fell on top of us, so after a bit of jiggling about for extra cleanliness, the bag was passed over to Head of Plastics for disposal (out the window) of the now dirty water.  I still can’t believe it actually worked and we didn’t spill anything.

The washing achievements turned out to be a good omen for the rest of the restaurant’s performance too.  Incredibly (taking into account both the workers and the working conditions) plate after plate was served up without much of a hitch, and the delight of the patrons echoed all the way to the back of the bus.  Well, there might have been just a few expletives uttered from the sickies in the front of the bus when they were offered course after course of dry crackers – no-one said customer service was easy Christiane.  No-one said pouring wine on a bus was easy either – but she did an absolutely sterling job of that.  In fact, everything was going perfectly until there was an incident surrounding an organic inorganic waste mix-up and the Head of Plastics was promptly fired, with Management assuming a position in the kitchen.  Attempting to put himself on the same level as the workers, Andres excitedly offered to assist with the cheese chopping.   Let’s just say the C in CEO does not stand for cheese though.  The massacre that followed was only made more humourous by his enquiry as to whether the massive “fingers” of cheese were potentially a little too big – and upon unanimous confirmation that they were, his proceeding to “cut” the rest of the block in exactly the same manner.  As Head of Plating I certainly had my work cut out making this look pretty – the only workable strategy being to attempt to hide it under Kellie’s nice cheese.  It definitely all tasted good though!  Meat, bread, cheese, olives and wine – I was in heaven.  Better still, once that course was out, the kitchen staff were free to kick back and enjoy it themselves, free from the pressures of further service.

Getting closer..

Round and round the wheels on the bus went, until CLUNK, scrape, rattle, rattle WTF was that? “PARE Signor!!”  We slowly wobbled to a stop on the side of the busy road whilst the driver & Andres jumped out so he could come back on-board and state the obvious – we had a flat.  The not so obvious next words were that it was only an inside tyre so didn’t really matter all that much – and we’d need to drive on it for at least an hour until we got to the next town with a tyre guy anyway.  Our seats were directly above the flat and it did not feel or sound good – more wine please!! Somehow we managed to make it to the town of Juliaca where we realised getting the tyre fixed might be the least of our concerns here.  Anyone needing to go to the toilet was advised to leave their shoes on the bus – else they might be stolen from their feet.  Whilst it might have been a slightly tongue in cheek warning, none of us were desperate enough to test it out.

After a long but entertaining travel day, we eventually got in to Puno around 7pm.  Everyone was pretty tired, so both the Uno in Puno and the much talked about karaoke were going have to wait.  About all we could muster up the energy for was a nice dinner and some Peru pin purchasing – an important accessory for the next day which was National Day.  We then tucked into bed early as we had another big day ahead of us.

The next morning we were told our limousines would be arriving at 7:30 to take us to the port for our boat trip exploring the islands on Lake Titicaca.  The limos turned out to be the 2 seater pedal powered variety – but you’ve never seen a happier group of kids jump into their chariots and proceed to pressure their drivers into racing them.  Commonwealth Gold was at stake after all… and I’m pleased to report the Aussies came in 1, 2 (and tipped their hyperventilating drivers accordingly).

After about an hour on the boat we came to Uros island – floating about on the surface of the lake and made entirely of reeds.  It looked like something out of a fairy tale. What an incredibly simple life the 6 colourfully clad families who lived here must lead.  We took some time learning a bit about their history and culture and the fish they survive on (though I’ve now heard conflicting reports as to where the trout actually comes from) and then it was time for a relaxing gondola ride amongst the neighbouring reeds, before boarding the boat again – this time bound for Taquile island.

 

On Taquile island we learnt some more about the legend of the lake (something about a puma) and went for a nice walk to where the weavers were.  The island is actually UNESCO recognised for their weaving abilities (mostly done by the men) and there was plenty of fun facts to be shared about how to spot a single guy Vs one who was not married but in love Vs the married ones.  It’s all in the hat it seems.  I really think such a concept would work wonders in Sydney! We then had time for a spot of shopping before a bit more of a walk to get to the beach.  With a water temp of about 8 degrees though, I wasn’t about to jump in – nor was I taking my fleece off for any sun-baking.  Kel did make the obligatory sandcastle so we could tick off beach activities though, then we were keen to get back on the boat as the next stop was a lunch one – and we’d built up quite the appetite by this stage.

 

 

Lunch certainly was a treat.  Cooked by an in-ground “oven”, we watched in awe as the family pulled layer upon layer of food out of the earth.  There was chicken, trout, potatoes, sweet potatoes, beans, bananas and no doubt countless other ingredients that I’ve now forgotten.  A feast fit for a king and we wasted no time devouring it! The windowless lake-front view was pretty special too.   After we’d said our thankyous and goodbyes, it was boat time again – and the 3 hour ride back to Puno had siesta written all over it.

Arriving back at the hotel, we had a little free time before it was PUNO time.  A special version of Uno that is only played when in Puno.  As luck would have it we also had some left over wine and cheese for the occasion.   People took to the new rules like ducks to the water (it really wasn’t all that hard to remember to say Puno instead of Uno) and everything was going swimmingly until it was Andres’ deal.  Actually “deal” is a bit generous – “haphazard allocation of cards” was probably a more fitting description.  The purists yelled out in horror.  The guy would have been shot had he pulled out these antics in a casino.  But we decided to let it slide and play the hand anyway – (almost) anything goes in Puno.  What followed however, was even more shocking than the deal.  Andres winning the game in record time – ably assisted by his 5 wild cards!!! What the?  He claims he couldn’t have done it if he tried – but I maintain the guy is actually a magician just moonlighting as a tour leader.  That is surely the only logical explanation for what we had just witnessed.

What it looks like when Andres doesn’t deal..

Bamboozled by Puno it was time to head out for dinner.  Nice as it was, I decided I’d had my fill of Peruvian fare for the time being, so opted for a woodfired pizza instead.  It was rather tasty, though somewhat small, so I gratefully accepted the offer of Kel’s leftovers after I’d polished off my own meal.  As the day wore on, most of us were feeling more and more under the weather (the altitude really wasn’t helping with the Sarah virus) but we also knew it was our last chance to attempt the much talked about Karaoke session.  One by one members of the group made their excuses and said their goodnights, until all that remained was Andres and the 4 sick youngsters.  Ok ok we’ll do one song each we conceded – and when I say we, I was not including myself in this.  This was going to be far from a long enough or boozy enough session to warrant my contribution – though I would gladly attend for moral support and to help find a suitable duet for Kel and Andres to perform.

It’s always interesting to see how different countries do their karaoke in any event.  The Peru (or at least Puno) version is a bar with a series of couches set up around multiple TV screens. Basically you just sit with your own friends around a table, but everyone has the “pleasure” of hearing (though not necessarily seeing) everyone else singing.  Other than the altitude and sore throats, our first hurdle appeared to be the fact that almost the entire song book was in Spanish – I suppose we should have guessed this might have been the case.  They did have an English section at the back though – only trouble was it was like reading off a list of B sides – they had a lot of the big names – including a “Jhon Lennon”, but almost none of the big songs.

Karaoke Fun

Eventually Christiane chose Smells like Teen Spirit (but left Andres to sing it – with plenty of spirit I might add), Sarah lost her Karaoke virginity with Eye of the Tiger (tough song at altitude) – and backed this up with a rendition of “Hit me baby one more time” that almost brought the house down.  This just left one performance before we could all call it a night.  We still needed the Andres and Kel duet – and about the only choice available was Lionel and Diana’s Endless Love.  Trouble was Andres wasn’t hugely familiar with it.  Not to be deterred by such a minor issue as not knowing the song, he borrowed an ipod and shot out into the street to practice for a while.  And what a special performance it was when he did come back.  Now we could go home to bed.  Well the home part happened in any event – apparently bed wasn’t quite on the cards until some more Endless Love song practice could be done.  They were determined to nail it – for some unknown future performance I suppose.  Kel and Andres sat there on the edge of the bed, teacher and student, pen poised, hands conducting the tone…. While I was kept busy recording the hilarity.  The footage is almost as good as Kel’s secret footage from earlier in the evening – when Andres was telling us about his work as a child model.  Puno really did deal us some funny cards.

Altitude is Attitude – we’ll dance till we drop and sleep when we’re dead in Cusco

From the moment we stepped off the plane, Andres had us moving in an exaggerated slow motion – watching the group file out in front of me I felt like I was watching one of those the super slo-mo replays they have on the tennis (except without the tennis).  Going from sea level to 3400m is not something to be taken too lightly though, and Andres knew better than anyone that prevention was better than any cure for altitude sickness.  Altitude is attitude was our new mantra.  After we’d been allocated our rooms (Presidential suite again for Kel and I of course), the first port of call was lunch.  It was just gone 3pm and I was starvin Marvin.  Unfortunately? Cusco is a ridiculously beautiful city, so our 3 block walk to the lunch place (in slow mo as it was) took even longer with people pausing for photos.

Cool alleys on the way to lunch

After a very quick “this is the plaza” speech, it was time to file up into Greens -the organic restaurant where Andres promised we’d find super delicious salads and juices.  I had a bit of saladaphobia (to be fair it was only 2 days since the Vomizon adventure), but Andres assured us it was safe as houses so I ordered the chicken one and it was absolutely divine.  The best salad I’ve eaten in over 4 months that’s for sure!  Kel and I teamed it up with some shared starters of fried cheese topped with chili mango dressing and asparagus wrapped in prosciutto… Scumdiddilyumptious! Just documenting the memory of this almost has me salivating on the keyboard.

This is (part of) the Plaza

After lunch, our next mission was to obtain some more soles in small denominations.  This involved getting dollars out of the ATM and then managing to find a money changer who had something other than 50s and 100s on offer.  No small order on a Sunday evening!! I was certainly glad I could speak Spanish – and so were Kel, Linda and Peter who came along for the adventure.  It must have almost been an hour later by the time all 4 of us had managed to obtain sufficient amounts of the small stuff.  Just in time to mosey on back to the hotel ahead of our Inca Trail briefing and duffle bag issuance.

One of the churches in the Plaza (we were more interested in the Cambio though)

Huddled around on couches, our Inca guide Angel gave us a bit of a rundown of what to expect over the next 5 days, and then we spent the majority of the rest of the evening doing the re-pack (an overnight bag for Sacred Valley and then our Inca bags) all the while uttering several profanities about how impossible the task of packing only 3kgs of gear for the trail was going to be.  Whilst we were perfectly content to wear the same trek clothes each day, it was the weight of the required fleeces and Uggs for the potential sub-zero temperatures that had us worried.  Finally satisfied with our pack, we grabbed a quick bite of dinner in the hotel restaurant before calling it a night around midnight.  First impressions of Cusco were great and we were looking forward to returning here for a couple of nights at the end of the week.

When we did return to Cusco, we were of course fresh as daisies after completing the Inca Trail – having been up since 3am (and also having completed the 46kms without really sleeping properly at all over the 3 nights on the ground), when we got into town about 7:30, the recommended course of action sounded like a smart one.  The order of operations was as follows: Empty and return duffle bag; acquire delicious sausage for dinner; shower; set alarm; have nap; get up and get ready; meet in foyer at 10pm for a night on the town – it was a Friday after all!  We started our night out at Nortons – a nice pub which Cusco expert Linda was able to lead the way to.   Shots of pisco were prescribed for all who were feeling a bit under the weather – and we chased these with large beers to quench the thirst.   The chat was lively and we all had a great time learning a bit more about the rest of our group.  The pisco truth serum brought out all sorts of fun facts…

Next stop for those with the stamina was Mythology – it was time to get our dance on and we were also hoping for a bit of a rendezvous with some of the other sexy llamas from the Inca trail.   Unfortunately the rendezvous never occurred (apparently we should’ve got there before 1am if we wanted this to happen), but the dancing certainly did!  The music was awesome and we carved up the dance-floor like it was going out of fashion.  No sign of tight muscles or exhausted trekkers here.  After a couple of hours of fun, we moved to the next venue – the male to female ratio was about 20:1, but the 4 of us girls needn’t be intimidated – for Andres had turned into Kevin Costner from The Bodyguard.  We lasted about 30minutes but it was pretty hot and stuffy and Kel hit a wall and sensibly hauled our ar$es out of there. To be fair it was nearly 4am.  Before we could go home for the night though, one last stop was needed – Andres was still a bit thirsty and needed a roadie for the walk home.  As you do.

The following day, not surprisingly, we decided to keep a bit low key.  After a nice lie in, we booked in for a midday massage and then set off for a post office adventure.   My bag was officially bursting at the seams so it was time to send some stuff home.  I didn’t know how exactly the process was going to work, but when I walked in with a confused gringo look on my face and my sack slung over my back, a friendly man with some boxes gestured for me to come over, and before I knew it, it was all beautifully packed with bubble-wrap and paper and a box cut down to size – not a bad service for $1!   It was all going swimmingly, at least until I turned around and saw what the queue had now ballooned into.    Talk about a Far Q.  We waited and waited and waited whilst the one lady on staff took an eternity with each of the seemingly difficult customers ahead of us.   Then it was my turn!  I stepped up to the plate, she took my box, put it on the scales and the verdict came in – not a bad price all things considered, only issue was it was 5 soles more than the combined cash total that Kel and I had on us – and incredibly, it seemed this was a post office who would not accept credit cards.  What the?!  I realised with despair that I was going to have to find an ATM and come back and queue again – suddenly our relaxed paced morning was developing a bit of time pressure – we had an important massage booking to keep!

Thankfully we did manage to make it to our massage just in time, and what a sensational activity that proved to be.  Can’t remember what we paid, but it was worth every penny as the ladies worked their magic for an hour on our overworked muscles.  “Inca Trail?” she asked with a knowing giggle when she got to my quads.  Yep – she certainly had her work cut out for her there.

Feeling rejuvenated, we had just enough time for Kel to do a spot of silver shopping before catching up with a few of the gang for a farewell lunch for Honey and Moon – sadly they weren’t going to be joining us in Puno as they had a flight back to Canada that evening.  Andres kindly put the choice of lunch venue in their court – well, that was until Moon indicated he didn’t really like Sushi – as it seems we were only ever going to end up at the Japanese place anyway because Andres had a craving for Sushi.  Lunch karma came back to bite though when the waitress proceeded to explain that they pretty much weren’t serving any sushi that day.  We made some alternate selections, and after what felt like an eternity, we were served our sushi-less meals which we hungrily devoured before saying our goodbyes.

Beautiful Cusco

Next stop for Kel and I was the big market that everyone had been raving about.  We wandered about bewildered by the variety of items for sale – and the placement of said items within.  Cheese and Fish – together at last.  Llama heads anyone?  One row I couldn’t fault though was the chocolate one – mmmm chocolate.  This certainly was quite the market.  We were getting a bit tired though, so decided to head back in the direction of the hotel via the gift shop we’d been recommended and of course the ice-cream shop.  Once we’d acquired items at both these venues it was time for a power nap ahead of our 6:30 briefing.  Admittedly we might have napped/faffed about a little less had we known the briefing was intended to roll straight into our dinner outing.  Not sure how we’d managed to miss this fact, but we couldn’t possibly go out in our hotel attire of trackies and ugg boots!  All worked out in the end though, as we just met them there instead – and since we’d had the nap, were now in much better shape to have the stamina for another Cusco night out!

chocolate..

Not sure what these are for..

Strolling through the streets of Cusco

As we walked into Los Perros, we were greeted by a massive chalkboard headed “News from Australia today”…. Turns out this place had an Aussie ownership connection – the board was blank though so I guess it was a slow news day back home.   The menu had an intriguing variety of dishes and I enjoyed my Asian selection – more so than the Pisco sours which didn’t quite live up to the Lima standards.   Not to worry, we happily switched to other spirits – a few vodka sime and lodas with B52s to wash them down seemed to work a treat.  In another exciting turn of events our sexy llama friends also arrived to join the party! (No small coincidence really with the hardworking matchmakers toying behind the scenes)

Sexy llama reunion

Our expanded group of youngsters (from Australia no less) kept the bar staff busy, before we eventually moved on to Mythology again.  And again it didn’t disappoint – and neither did Kel, finding a dance partner who seemed to want to buy us drinks for the evening.  Don’t mind if I do.  It was probably around 3 when we started to fade again, and this time had to drag Kel outta there.  Tonight’s pre-home stop was at the Falafel King – best Falafel in all of Peru we were assured – and damn it tasted good – if only we didn’t then have to spend the entire next day being reminded of it!  A minor price to pay though for a great few days in an awesome city – blue skies, gorgeous buildings encased in a magnificent mountain backdrop, superb food and funtastic nightlife – hard not to be captured by its charm really.  In the words of Arnie, I reckon, “I’ll be back”

With the Falafel King!

She’s a dead woman for a reason – Conquering the Inca Trail Sexy Llama Style

The Inca Trail.  It’s long been a dream of mine to trek it, and it was definitely the catalyst behind the Peruvian adventure that Kel had come over to join me for.   We’re certainly not alone in this dream though.  Due to the immense popularity of the pilgrimage to Machu Picchu, permits are strictly regulated with only 500 being issued per day (and this only covers about 200 tourists once guides and porters are taken into account), so you need to book many months in advance to secure a spot.  Unfortunately this meant a few of our new friends from our tour group (Canadians Honey and Moon and the un-germanlike German Christiane) couldn’t join us on the trail – they had to do the Lares trek instead.  What it did mean though, was that our group was to be merged with some members from another G adventures tour (who had managed to book sufficiently early to get the Inca permits).  As we set off on the bus from our amazing accommodation in the Sacred Valley to pick them up from their digs in Ollantaytambo, we speculated about the possibility that it might be a group of incredibly hot guys who were joining us.  Never hurts to dream until proven otherwise anyway.    I was looking for a Brad Pitt or maybe a Bradley Cooper, and whilst we didn’t get that, we did get one cast member from the hangover at least – his name was Alan and yes he’d got into some trouble in Vegas a month prior. He was joined by high school mates Jef and Jason and they instantly came across as a few down to earth young Aussie guys who would be good for the group dynamic.  Phew.  In a further stroke of luck, somehow Jef must have known our guide Angel would christen our group “The Sexy Llamas” as he’d (unknowingly?) brought a soft llama toy along for the ride.  Every team needs a mascot after all.

Arriving at the starting line (km 82) the large scale tourist production that this trek has become was immediately apparent.  The queue to get in rivalled Disneyland.  My heart deflated a little – call me a spoilt trekker, but the thought of traipsing along a path with 500 others for 4 days just didn’t really resonate.  I was super happy to discover this wasn’t going to be the case once we got a few hours in though – for one thing the porters were all off like a rocket, and the various other groups all seemed to be going at different paces and stopping at different places too.  It had just been the insanely thorough passport checking to get in that had caused the glut.  Phew again.

Ready set GO!

Our purple porters dominated the track

Day 1 of the hike had been described as an Andean flat – this roughly translates to up and down and up and up and down and up but none of it too steep or strenuous (especially if you’re Andean).  The sun was surprisingly hot, but the stunning scenery helped me keep my cool.  I don’t know what I was really expecting from the trail (besides the obvious wonder of Machu Picchu at the end), but the incredible beauty all around me just blew all my expectations out of the water.  Neither words nor pictures will ever do it justice, but think majestic snow-capped mountains, gushing rivers, lush green valleys and bright blue skies and you’re getting some idea.

Enjoying the scenery from the get go

As we made our way up, I was able to keep well fueled on the awesome snack packs Kel had brought over from Australia (nothing says trekking like a bag of assorted red frogs, snakes, snickers and muesli bars!)  We stopped for a couple of breaks here and there to make sure everyone was doing ok and also for our assistant guide Cliser to give us a run down on the origins and traditions of the Chicha (the corn beer they brew there)… and of course a taste test to go with it.  My mind instantly flashed to Kriegel’s facebook warning that had come through the night before: “Whatever you do, don’t drink the local beer – it did terrible things to me” she’d said.  I’d thought that a very odd warning from one beer lover to another and had no idea why she might have been boozing on the track anyway … until the funny fermented corn “beer” came out that is.  No Gracias.

The brewer?

Cliser’s Chicha pitch

After not too much further and a few Incan sites to give us a bit of a teaser, we arrived at the lunch spot.  Now as I’ve discovered in the past, trekking with a chef and sous chef definitely adds that extra something you’re looking for at the end of a long walk, and these guys were not going to disappoint.  Seated in the shade of the meal tent the porters had erected ahead of our arrival, we were served a delicious 3 course hot lunch.  Not half bad for the middle of no-where and a kitchen which pretty much consisted of a chopping board, a knife and a pot!

The first day was a pretty light one, so after just a couple more hours beyond the fabulous lunch break, we made one last climb before arriving at the evening camp.  Our tents and bags were all meticulously set up awaiting our arrival.  Kel I and looked at each other and immediately knew what to do.  Barely exchanging a word we proceeded to roll out the sleeping bags, change into the night clothes, commence beauty workshop (not forgetting the baby powder for the feet of course), don the ugg boots, put a headlamp around the neck in preparation, grab the uno cards and head to the tea tent.  Practice makes perfect – and we may have done this once or twice before.

The tea tent even had the surprise bonuses of popcorn and crackers to accompany the tea!  In between tea and dinner, we had just enough time for the longest game of Uno ever – the stakes were high though, for it had been declared that the winner should receive the prestigious honour of sleeping with the sexy llama for the night.  Alan was victorious in the end, and Jef nervously handed over his llama.  I can’t remember exactly what dinner was – other than that it was again very tasty – and after spending a few moments marveling at the teabag that Cliser had magically transformed into a football jersey, it was time to clear out of there and head to bed (we felt bad that the hardworking porters were waiting for us to clear out before they could use the tent, and bed was the warmest place for us to be as well in any event).  I lay there happily reading my kindle whilst Kel fidgeted with her radio – visibly jealous that the 6kg packing limit (3 of which was taken up by the sleeping bags we needed to hire) had forced her to leave her book behind.  Honestly, who camps without a book?

Tea bag art

Warnings about day 2 had come in from far and wide.  It seemed to be the unanimous opinion of all who had walked before us that this was the toughest day, so we were under no illusions as to what we might be up against when our human alarm clock made his appearance the next morning.  But when we were woken (at 5:30am) to a the sight of a very chirpy Cliser literally bouncing into our tent “doorway” offering room service (hot Coca tea to help entice us out of our snug sleeping bags) we couldn’t help but smile at his enthusiasm and proceeded to unzip from our cocoons and do the freezing tent dance to put our trekking gear back on.   After porridge (yep, my most dreaded part of the Kokoda mornings reared its ugly head again…. Can’t stand the stuff but knew I had to get the fuel into me) and then pancakes (had no idea these were coming!!) and a bit of faffing about, we set off on our climb.  Today we needed to get from our camp at 3000m, up through dead woman’s pass at 4215m and back down another 800m or so – and all before lunch.  Snickers: check, Snakes: check; Electrolyte drink: check.  Good to go.

Fresh and prepped for a big day at the start of day 2

As old hands at the Altitude game now (and electing to do the trip without the assistance of the Diamox this time) we started off at a slow and steady pace –with Kel warning a few of the other altitude virgins that they might be well placed to do the same.  This very quickly split our group in two – the 3 fit young speed demons at the front and the rest of us bringing up the rear.  It had been agreed that everyone should walk at their own pace anyway though, and weather permitting, the only place anyone needed to wait was at the top – so we could get a family photo before the descent.  And so began the march – one foot in front of the other, focussing on keeping the breathing under control.  I was feeling pretty good and kept finding myself a bit ahead of the pack, but didn’t actually want to leave people behind (or tackle the mountain by myself for that matter), so would pause every 5 minutes or so to let them catch up and/or attempt to muster up some encouragement by telling them lies about how they were nearly there.  I was also pretty keen to keep people at least moving whilst the sun wasn’t as strong – as the only thing worse than a steep ascent in altitude, is a hot steep ascent in altitude.

Steps galore

 

At least this part was nice and shady

We got a couple of shaded hours through the forest in, and then out came the sun.  It was hot.  Damn hot.  Then we looked up into the heavens and thought we could see the finish line in the distance – it sure looked like a pass anyway.  Then who should come running up beside us but Cliser, panting away in a desperate bid to reach the front runners having given them a MASSIVE head start.  A perfect opportunity to get confirmation that it was in fact the finish line… only we wished we hadn’t asked when he shook his head and said “halfway mark” with a smile.   Oh well.  Back to plan A – one foot in front of the other, look up, sip water, take photo, eat lolly… and repeat.

Are we nearly there yet?

Up and up and up we went.  I stayed with the pack for the vast majority of it, only breaking away when the finish line was within spitting distance, as I was still feeling pretty good by that stage and really just couldn’t wait to get there and take my pack off and sit down for a bit.  The view from the top was even more breathtaking than the altitude.   I only had about 30 minutes to wait until the last of the family made it (much less than the 2 hours in the cold that speedster Jason had endured) and after the congratulations were passed around, we took a few money shots and began the climb down.

Family photo – not sure what Alan and Sarah are doing

Voila

Getting some more altitude at the highest point on the trail

 

Down we go

 

Kel and I sped off like women on a mission – eager to feel the increased oxygen levels in our lungs as fast as we possibly could.  At times the steepness was challenging, but nothing quite compares to the energy levels you feel on the descent from altitude – not to mention the fact lunch was calling.  We got there in good time, were given a cordial greeting (literally) and sat down to admire the stunning view of the valley before us.

The other exciting fact was that we were actually finished for the day, so it was ugg boot time!  Once everyone else had arrived, we sat down to another yummy lunch, before retiring to our tents for the afternoon.  It was bloody cold and short of stealing clothes off other people’s backs, that was the only place we knew we were going to be warm.  I did some more reading, whilst Kel did some more frustrated radio listening (and she might have snuck a little nap in there too).  We made sure we were up again in time for tea and Uno hour though – and it was a good thing we did, as I somehow pulled off a hat-trick of Uno victories and was duly rewarded with a night with the sexy llama.  Our evening meal was again enhanced by story time with Wayne (the man definitely tells a good story) and after a few more teabag football jerseys were constructed it was time (again) to hit the tents.

Day 3 had been sold as the beautiful day.  Mostly downhill, multiple Inca sites, a beautiful cloud forest…. It all sounded like bliss to be honest.  We must have only been going about 5 minutes though when the climb began.  And it was a big one.  That wasn’t in the brochure!  We huffed and puffed our way up to the first Inca site and gratefully took a seat on the wall whilst Angel delivered the history lesson.  Some fascinating facts about the speed of communications (which were of course delivered in a human relay) back in the day.  We should really stop complaining about our gradual climb.

We continued up a little further until we got to the point where we were assured it was the last of the uphill, and then down we went – entertained by a sudden burst of Ricky Martin from Cliser at the front – with Kel, Jef and Sarah chipping in some great harmonies.  It was some pretty serious downhill though and I was certainly pleased to have spent the $5 hiring a walking pole to save my knees.After about an hour of sing-alongs and good banter, we arrived at another impressive Inca site and learnt a bit more about their way of life – this time the talk was focused on the rituals and offerings to Pachamama (Mother Earth).

Inca selfie

The track seemed to get easier from that point (which interestingly resulted in the group being super spread out) and I accidentally ended up out of sight of much of the group, but did actually really enjoy the hour or so of walking in solitude that followed.  A great opportunity for reflection and just taking in all the beauty of what was around me.

Until suddenly I was awoken from my daydreaming by an alpaca attack!! Ok, maybe not quite an attack, but when you’re alone on a super narrow path that drops away to a sheer cliff, seeing 2 alpacas and a llama coming towards you around the bend is quite the confronting sight.  I did my best to edge up against the mountain side and let them pass.  My heart was beating pretty fast when they slowed to a stop right beside me.  Whilst I know they’re not a predatory animal towards humans, I also knew that they were bigger than me and that I was severely outnumbered and in a compromised position on a cliff-face.  After what seemed like an eternity, they started on their way again, pausing to turn and spit at me before jogging off into the distance.  Nice.

When Alpacas attack

The scenery continued to amaze and the day 3 lunch spot was fittingly perched upon the most beautiful ridge with magnificent sweeping valleys in every direction.  As we polished off another great lunch, Angel announced that the chef had a surprise for us.  He’d baked us a sexy llama cake!! The decoration was impeccable, the taste out of this world, and the knowledge that he’d done this in his saucepan at over 3000m for us was priceless.

Full of cake euphoria we continued our descent towards camp.   It was beautiful and after almost a solid 4 hours of downhill (including a truckload of steps for people with long legs and tiny feet), we arrived shattered at our 3^rd and final campsite – and only just before nightfall.

    

Kel and I knew we had to get our skates on as we’d been assigned the dubious honour of “President” and “Vice President” of Inca trail tipping and that was all going to culminate tonight.  Andres had singled out the assertive bankers for the task – as it was no easy one.  First step was collecting the right amount of cash from everyone in the group in the smallest denominations possible.  Next we had to apply a complex formula to divvy it up between 24 porters, a head porter, an assistant chef, head chef, assistant guide and chief guide… and no, not all are created equal.  Then we had to sort it all into little bundles labelled by a tiny paper wrap so we wouldn’t get confused when dishing it out.  Got it done just in the knick of time too – the call came that dinner was being served.

At the conclusion of dinner, Angel started his spiel…. The one that talks about what a great time it’s been and thank you thank you yada yada yada and ends in us taking out our wallets.  Only thing was he produced a big lunchbox and suggested we each put something in there (that he’d then divvy up between everyone).  Clearly he’d not met a group as well prepped as us before, but we weren’t going to have a bar of that communal tip suggestion with all the effort we’d put in!  Instead we requested he call up all the staff so we could do a presentation of our own.  As tipping vice president (and the group member with the best Spanish), I stepped forward to make the speech to the porters and chefs – (hopefully) thanking them for everything from carrying our heavy bags, to setting up our tents, to cooking the delicious meals to dishing out the buckets of hot water… I’m not sure how much of it came out right, but to even attempt to make a speech in Spanish to a group of 40 people was quite a proud moment for me.   At the conclusion of which, they all formed an orderly queue and our whole group were able to personally shake hands with a gracias and a tip to a few porters each.  It all came together very nicely actually.  As the crowd dispersed, Angel and Cliser thought it was bed time…. But Kel had a few words to say to them (and their tips to give out) first.  Luckily they’re both fluent English speakers, because Kel’s speeches are always heartfelt and up with the best of them – and this one didn’t disappoint.  Good job el presidente.  Now we can go to bed.

Day 4: Machu Picchu day.  Wake up time: 3am.  Oh how I love mornings.  Couldn’t complain too much though as they’d even gone to the effort of setting up the breakfast tent – because who doesn’t need breakky at 3??  The plan for the day was to walk the 15 minutes down to the checkpoint and hopefully get there early enough to get the seats – because we were going to be waiting there with hundreds of others until it opened at 5:30am after which it would be at least another hour until we reached the sun gate and caught our first glimpse of Machu Picchu. Whilst this might seem like borderline insanity, the reason behind it was that there are only 2 trains per day available to the porters… one at 5am, the other at 9:30pm… and there was no way we wanted our porters to be stuck waiting around until the evening because they weren’t able to pack up the camp and get away in time for the early train.  Besides, the adrenaline of the finish line and the lure of Machu Picchu was sufficient to keep us chirpy at that ungodly hour anyway.

In the lead-up to the gates opening, we were told stories about a woman who had died because she’d fallen off the edge and been attacked by snakes – moral of the story (besides the fact that we possibly shouldn’t have dismissed the other guide’s fear of the tiny snake on the trail the day before), was that we weren’t meant to attempt to run to the sun gate – and if anyone was trying to pass us, we should let them do so – but they should be cliff-side rather than us.  Once it was open a few of us did still try to set off at a reasonable walking pace – despite the clouds, there was a small chance we might get to see the sun rise over MP if we got there in time – but there was also a large chunk of the group who were not enjoying the trekking by headlamp and kept yelling out for us to slow down.  Poor Cliser who was leading the way, was being yelled at to wait up from behind, whilst also getting instructions from Angel via the radio not to stop.  In the end he opted to let Jason dash ahead (and become our sun rise contender on the group’s behalf), and Cliser and I maintained a steady pace whilst having a great chat at the front with the bulk of the group not too far behind.

I guess I’d had in my mind that this was the super easy day because it was so short, but the walk was actually a little more challenging than expected.   Part of it no doubt due to the extra concentration required to walk by torch light, but the climax was probably when we arrived at the wall known as the “Gringo Killer”… a set of “steps” that were so narrow and so steep that they looked more like a rock-climbing wall.  Cliser came to my rescue though (the advantages of being up the front), offering to take my pole and suggesting it would be much easier to tackle using my hands.  Boy was he right.  Up I scrambled on all fours like a monkey, leaving at least 15 gringos in my wake.  I’d probably still be there now had I attempted to climb it upright!  So on we continued, with anticipation building by the minute… surely we were nearly there.  And then I saw a gate-like structure… “is that it?” I excitedly asked… he nodded in reply, I skipped ahead – eager to catch my first glimpse.  And there it was.  An incredible Inca city unfolding in the mountains before me.  Just magic.  Unfortunately there was a bit of cloud and mist about, but you could still see it proudly standing there.

The magic first glimpse

I took a moment to soak it all in before heading over to Jason to share the joy.  We’d made it, and what a reward it was.  It was then a pretty awesome experience to stand and face the other way – and watch the reactions of our group as they arrived at the gate one by one.  Each creating a memory that will last a lifetime.  We took our photos and then set off again – it was about another 40 minutes of slippery walking until we’d actually be at Macchu Picchu (and reunited with the rest of our friends who hadn’t done the Inca trail).

Machu Picchu in all its glory

The Sexy llamas (look closely for the amazing photo bomb too)

It was smiles and hugs all round when we got to the bottom.  Great to see the non-Inca trailers again – and I’m sure we totally stunk, but they didn’t even flinch nor utter a word about it when we embraced.  And then the next priority – El bano! A real toilet and everything.  We then chilled for about 20 minutes hoping the rain would pass (and jealously watching on as those who’d thought to order pizzas gobbled them up) before putting our packs in a locker (that felt good) and setting off on our tour of MP itself.  Such magnificent architecture perched within the mountain.

Those Incas had thought of everything – from the temples to mark the solstice, to the aqueducts to transport the water, to the gully within the structure that was placed exactly over the fault line (thereby making the entire complex able to resist earthquakes).. In many respects these guys were way ahead of us – and yet it was hundreds and hundreds of years ago.  Just remarkable.  The sun even came out for us too.  We had a good couple of hours of exploration and reflection time before it was time to say goodbye and board the bus to the lunch that awaited us in Aguas Calientes.

My pork ribs were to die for (and we thought we almost might when the bus screeched around the hairy corners to get there) and the beverage went down a treat too.  We even had another delicious cake – this time to celebrate Mark’s upcoming 60^th birthday.  Chocolate on chocolate – good work Andres!  All that remained of the adventure was the long train and bus ride back to Cusco – the perfect opportunity for a well-earned nap.

Spewing all the way to the jungle

It all started at the welcome dinner.  Having experienced no “traveller issues” besides the Great Galapagos Salad Debacle and the Attack of the melting Caipirinha ice in Salvador, I was feeling pretty confident by now with my ability to order a meal that I actually wanted, without having to eliminate half the options due to the potential side-effects.   This confidence was further increased by the fact that I was the only one (of 4) who’d come out of the previous evening’s shared appetisers unscathed, and we were now in the trusted hands of local Lima expert and G adventures Super Guide Andres.  He took us to a restaurant that he frequently takes his new groups to, and went through the menu pointing out some suggestions and explaining the local specialities.  Mmmm spicy seafood and a beer for me please.  Kel immediately shot me a quizzical look: “are you sure that’s a good idea?” she queried as she ordered her plain boiled rice (which should’ve been chicken soup according to Andres) and lemonade.  “Yeah, I’ll be fine – I’ve been travelling for over 3 months you know… and besides, Lima is on the coast and famous for its seafood, I’d be crazy not to”.  It tasted pretty good in any event and we had a fun night getting to know some of our new tour mates.

The next morning I’m not sure if it was the alarm or my stirring stomach that woke me first.   Kel had had a rough night, but was feeling better than the day before, but I certainly couldn’t say the same for myself.  Something just wasn’t right down there.  I was last to board the bus so got the back centre seat and spent the entire trip nervously scanning for potential options should the yellow dragon wish to breath it’s fire.  Then came the music to my ears – “2 minutes to the airport” sung out Andres – it’s like he knew I needed a countdown to focus on.  2 minutes later we all barrelled out of the bus and I giddily hoisted my (increasingly overweight) backpack on to my back…. And proceeded to look on in nauseous disgust as we had to stand around waiting for someone to retrieve their passport from their packed luggage (let’s just say a sick Vanessa does not exactly have the patience of a Saint).  I did do my best though to conceal my thoughts (and potential issues) from the group and “happily” filed in with everyone as we made our way through the express check-in.

Once that was all done, we were told we had 20 minutes to ourselves before we needed to all go to the gates.  At last.  “Donde esta el bano?”  It must’ve been no less than 5 minutes after being given “free time”, that I had my first spew of the day.  Needed that.  After spending the remaining 15minutes sitting doing absolutely nothing, Kel and I made our way to meet up with everyone again, and I sheepishly admitted to Andres how I’d passed the time.  He’d said at the briefing he wanted full disclosure… doubt he thought it would come quite so soon and graphically though!  As I took my assigned window seat on the plane, I anxiously searched for the sick bag in the seat pocket – but the whole row was out.  Air sickness just mustn’t be the rage these days.  Kel asked the friendly flight attendant on my behalf though, and in no time I had 2 bags (just in case) and a rag doused in alcohol to sniff on.  This kept me going at least until just after the seatbelt sign switched off, upon which I raced to the bathroom for a 2^nd vom.  Delightful.  (I’m wondering if anyone is still actually reading this blog post…)

Our flight to the jungle was not a direct one though, so before much longer the lights were on again and we were descending into Cusco.  I sat there in silence trying to think not sick thoughts whilst Kel made friends with the other girl in the row.  I made it through the landing and the other passengers disembarking ok, but just as we were taxiing along the runway ready to take off again, it was time to take off again myself.  Clasping a sick bag in one hand I stumbled towards the back of the plane and the flight attendant, sensing the urgency of the situation, flung the door open and then shut it behind me.  Woop. There it is.  I happened to catch a glimpse of the mirror as I was washing myself up, but it was just a white ghost who stared back at me.  Hardly surprising then that the hostie greeted me with a sympathetic “you look terrible” as I opened the door.  As luck would have it though, the whole back row was free, and she offered it to me to lie down for the duration of the flight.  Bringing me pillows, blankets and ice cold soda water, I felt like I was in first class (well, on my death bed in first class anyway).  I did have to satisfy the cabin supervisor that I was not in fact going to die on the 35 minute flight though, and expended some further energy in explaining that whilst she raised a valid point about there being no hospitals in the jungle, the last thing I wanted to do right now was leave my group behind and be swallowed up in the altitude of Cusco (as nightmares of being fed Hep B through an IV drip flashed across my scattered brain).  I managed to last almost the duration of the flight without further need for the facilities – and lying down certainly felt amazing.  Standing up again was a bit of a head-spin though, so I gratefully accepted the offer of walking close to Andres in case I should suddenly need to grab on – without doubt I must have fast been becoming his favourite person on tour.  We’d only met 15 hours ago, and he’d already had to endure the trials of 5 spews and counting.

Next stop on the tour de hell was to the “office” to do the repack into the jungle friendly duffle bags.  The thought of leaning over a bag was all a bit too much though so I went for a lie down instead – and was peacefully napping when I felt some more of the lovely alcohol being smeared under my nose.   No boundaries here.  Eventually I summoned enough energy to come and instruct Kel about what was needed from where for my re-pack and then we were back on the very cosy bus to go to the pharmacy.  Kel attended with Andres on my behalf and they came out armed with a couple of anti-nausia pills, a very medicinal tasting kids rehydration formula, and a bill for 15 soles.  I had just enough of the rehy drink to swallow the pills and then attempted to let it settle.   That lasted about 3 minutes.  Lucky I still had some sick bags from the plane!  After I’d brought up the pill and whatever else was in me into that little bag (under the watchful lens of Peter’s go-pro), Kel and I just looked at each other and in perfect union uttered “15 soles well spent”… then we spent the next 45 minutes bumping around the wet dirt road on the bus, trying not to spill the bag or need to use it again.  At least that mission was able to be accomplished!  I managed to hold out until the toilets at the dock – and given the state of those, probably wasn’t the only one wanting to vomit in there.

The Vomizon journey wasn’t over yet though.  We still had at least 2.5 hours on a motorised canoe to get to the Eco-lodge (and it would be 3 if we were really lucky and spotted lots of animals along the way).  I nibbled on a few grains of rice to the tunes of everyone immensely enjoying their delicious boxed lunches and through some amazing luck managed to last the 3 hours rolling around in my seat without needing to be sick again.   My stomach did lurch a little every time the engines were cut because our eagle eyed guide Maria had incredibly managed to spot a frog from 300m away, or a Cayman camouflaged on the rocks, or a monkey hiding in a tree somewhere in Ecuador.  Part of me was really happy for the group that they were able to see so much (especially in light of it being bad weather), but there was definitely another part of me thinking “Not another bloody Cayman, please can you just get me home to bed”.  Eventually we got there and were greeted by more steps than a dance concert.  Panting like a first timer at the end of a marathon, I clutched the flimsy rails and dragged myself up.  Please just give me my key to my room and carry me there.  After 7 voms and 3 number 3s in the space of 8 hours I was but a shell of my usual self.   Before they dished out the keys though, I needed to first endure the briefing of all the fantastic activities that I was planning to take no part in… (that’s not sarcasm by the way, the plans did sound amazing and the other guide Julio was full of energy and humour… it’s just that there was no way I was doing anything other than going to bed so I really just wanted to get there).  After what seemed like an eternity we were dismissed and off we stumbled to our room – beautiful huts without electricity and just candles for lights which really gave it that rustic romantic vibe Dr Kel and sickNess were after.  I collapsed under the covers kitted out in my hiking pants and rain jacket (we’d initially been told there was a hike after the boat to get to the lodge – thank god that wasn’t the case) and promptly passed out.

Fair to say some of the others were having more fun on the boat than me!

Capybara

Another bloody Cayman

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A few hours must have passed and Kel had come and gone for dinner, kindly bringing me back a tea in case I should desire anything besides the milk arrowroots she’d thoughtfully packed for these kind of situations.  Apparently there’d been a place set for me at dinner with some chicken soup and Kel had had her work cut out explaining that there was no chance I’d want it (ironically both of us had been issued warnings from several friends about the effects of Peruvian chicken soup before we’d arrived).  That’s what friends are for.  It didn’t stop there though.  Donning her headlamp to give it that real doctor effect (or to just provide a semblance of light in the room) she dished out some Maxillan and made up a gastrolight (which tasted significantly better than the weird raspberry stuff) and I somehow managed to keep it all down – then it was bedtime again.

Charging hour at the ecolodge

The next morning everyone got up early for what I’m told was a terrible hike that I’d have hated (but their smiles and pictures told a different story) and I stayed sleeping – occasionally stirring to read a bit of a trashy magazine and nibble on dry toast.  I was determined to get my strength back to at least attend something of this amazon trip.  I did manage to get myself to the dining room for lunch though where I was able to decline more chicken soup in favour of some deliciously plain rice, and as luck would have it, the afternoon activity was a very low key visit to a farm and well within my capabilities.   Only downside being that the main activity of the farm was sampling all the different fruits that were growing there – and the group unanimously agreed I was not allowed to participate in that.  After the not eating fruit at the fruit farm adventure, there was time for more sleeping before we were due to meet for the night Cayman tour – again a pretty simple one which just involved sitting in the boat.  Was a bit cold but those who managed to stay awake did see a few Caymans, and I was then able to get a pretty early night after I’d eaten another few grains of rice.  The next morning we were up early and it was time to say goodbye to the Amazon.  Whilst I never really felt I’d got to say a proper hello, I was just feeling super grateful that it had happened on this part of the trip and not before or during the Inca Trail (especially as I had already managed some amazon fun in Ecuador in April).

For anyone who’s still reading, I’ll admit this has been a rather disgusting blog post, but travel doesn’t always go the way you plan and it would be remiss of me to not tell this story and give special shout-outs to Doctors Kel and Andres who were both amazingly kind and caring, the Avianca flight attendants for being so awesome, and my whole tour group for showing such genuine sympathy for my state.   Sometimes shit (and spew) has to happen to make you realise how lucky you are.

The trip home

A trifecta of adrenaline in San Gil

I almost didn’t make it to San Gil.   Situated in the Colombian department of Santander, puts it in the “Do not travel” category on the Australian Government traveller site.  Whilst almost every destination I’m exploring in South American comes with an “Exercise a high degree of caution” rating, this was the first time I had to make a conscious decision to ignore the warning – and I’m so glad I did.  This town had my name all over it!

After a big last night out in Bogota with Jenna and Mark’s mate Kevin (which culminated in riding flying cows),  the 8 hour bus ride winding through the mountains to get there was somewhat challenging to say the least.  So when I arrived to an electrical storm, pouring rain, overflowing streets and a sign in the hostel saying the town would be without water for 36 hours (commencing at midnight), a few doubts about the sanity of my decision to ignore the advice and come here anyway did start to creep in.  A mad dash in the rain to the nearest food place, and a spicy burger later, I was ready to call it a night – crossing fingers that the glorious year round weather that the town boasts about, might make a showing in the morning.

I rose reasonably early the next morning as I was conscious of not having any activities booked and wanting to make the most of my days here.   Luckily the hostel I was staying at (well not entirely luck as it’s one of the reasons I’d chosen it) had a folder full of activities to choose from, and a reception staff who were happy to make all the bookings for you.  My top choice was the white-water rafting trip on the River Suarez, so I decided to try to line it up for day 1 – and was again in luck!  The sun was shining and the rafting company were going to pick me up at 9, giving me just enough time to pop out for a delicious breakfast burrito from Gringo Mikes first.  Upon arriving at the shop and signing my life away (the waiver form even required a finger print), I was given a wristband with some emergency contact details (these must be some serious rapids) and shown to the van.   The hour drive out to the starting point gave everyone a good chance to get to know the rest of the rafting crew.  We had a Colombian Diego and a Swiss guy Peter (who were in town for the weekend celebrating Peter’s birthday), an American ski instructor couple (whose names for some reason completely escape me) and honeymooners Andrea and Eliot who live in San Francisco and both sounded very much like Americans, but had Colombian and Dutch backgrounds respectively.  Experience seemed to range from total novice to borderline professional and I was pretty happy to be in the middle of the range with this being my 3^rd outing.

Arriving at the launch spot, Cesar gave us a super thorough safety briefing (something I’m always grateful for with these kinds of activities) and we were ready to go.  Apparently the river was 40cm higher than the day before (thought that rain when I arrived was heavy!!) and the rapids were ranging from class 2 to class 5 (5 being the maximum you can actually raft on within the 6 point scale, as 6 is purely kayak territory).  We all jumped aboard and were ready to get started, but it seems the safety briefing wasn’t quite over yet – as Cesar was now calling for a volunteer to go overboard and be rescued.  All 7 of us simultaneously looked the other way.  The water was cold, the rapids were very close, and none of us wanted to chance being out of the boat, even if it was just for a demo.  So our biggest strongest crew member Eliot was volunteered and in he went – demonstrating the safety position, a kayak rescue and how to be pulled back into the boat – the thoroughness of this briefing giving us a bit of a clue as to what we might expect from the severity of the rapids.

 

Suarez River

Once we got started it was straight into some 3+ action, then a brief strategic wedging between rocks to have another chat before we launched into the 5s.  The rapids were MASSIVE! It was like some kind of awesome journey through a giant washing machine.  I wasn’t hugely happy with Diego sitting in front of me though as it was pretty clear he wasn’t too sure what was going on, and in no way was able to keep to the same timing of our front man – despite repeated pleas from the back.  And sure enough, at the start of the next class 5 set, in he fell.  We weren’t quick enough to get him back in before he was swept away (and he hadn’t managed to grab the rope) so we paddled on and focussed on keeping the rest of us and the raft in good shape whilst he had a horrific journey a few hundred metres down the super rough part of the river clutching just his life jacket and a paddle.   The safety kayak finally managed to pick him up though and returned him to us at the next available calm part – pretty shaken up, but otherwise not harmed.  We continued on the rest of the journey through some more awesome sets without further incident – my favourite being the last ones which were called “sorpresa” (surprise) and certainly lived up to their name.  We also had some opportunity for “swimming” in the calm parts which was super relaxing – just laying on your back in a life jacket whilst the river carries you down-stream – all I needed was a pina colada in one hand and it would have been perfect.  We ended the trip with some beers and some fruit though – so got pretty close to literally “living the dream”.  After a refreshing (albeit cold) shower, I then went and sampled the delicious vege burgers and the amazing house juice from Elementals for a late lunch, before chilling out in front of the 3^rd place playoff of the football.  A fantastic first day in San Gil.

The following day I opted for the waterfall rappelling activity – as well as sounding like fun, it met my key criteria of being able to definitely be finished before the 2pm kick-off of the World Cup Final.  The first part of the adventure involved finding my way to the local bus terminal and boarding the bus to Charala – hoping the driver would stop and let me know when we were actually passing “las cascadas”.  Each bus journey over here is a new adventure – never quite sure whether to pay in advance, or the driver or wait for a conductor – whether to get on at the front or the back and whether the seats are reserved or free to take.  Thankfully that all went smoothly though and about 45 minutes later, the bus pulled up next to a farm with a waterfall sign and off I got.  First step was to sign my life away on a waiver form written entirely in Spanish, then we were kitted up with our harnesses and helmets and off we went.  It was a pretty, and at times challenging hike up through the farm and into the muddy forest.  Up and up we climbed, grateful for the ropes strung up along the side that we could grasp on to when our footing failed.  Then we arrived at the clearing.  Holy cr@p is that the waterfall???  A beautiful (but huge) waterfall stood before us…. Suddenly signing that waiver that I couldn’t actually read isn’t seeming like the smartest move… then after a few photos we realise that that’s of course not the waterfall we’re rappelling down – there’s actually one behind us (that more logically, we are at the top of).

The waterfall we didn’t go down

I’m not sure whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing, but the actual waterfall we’re going to rappel down is not able to be seen from the top – it’s just a super sheer drop into an abyss – and there’s no way they’re going to let anyone close enough to have a sticky beak without being properly attached to the ropes.  We can certainly hear the water thundering down though.  So the 5 of us sit down for a briefing – it’s again, entirely in Spanish, but this seems to suit the other 2 couples and I’m hoping to just get by on the hand gestures and my previous experience.  The only thing that has me worried though is it’s looking to be a slightly different technique to the one I’m used to – instead of using your right hand as a break and keeping it behind your back, it looks like this might involve some kind of pulling action.  The first cab off the rank is a girl who’s clearly sh!t scared and has been dragged here by her boyfriend.  I’m not so sure how things are going to go in that relationship, as at no point did she look like she even remotely lost her terror and started to enjoy it.  Unfortunately for me, it was clear she also not going to be providing the demo I was hoping for.  I don’t think grabbing on to the ropes of the guide who offers to go down beside you is exactly a textbook manoeuvre.  The boyfriend then wasted no time in scaling down the cliff after her (to attempt a reconciliation no doubt), so I was up.  Once I was clipped in and ready to go, never have I been more grateful for the phrase “Hablas Espanol o Ingles?”   Turns out he could speak English after all and had read into my blank looks earlier that I might need a bit of a translation, so he repeated the key bits and off I went, much more confident than I had been 5 minutes prior.  It was still pretty hairy though as it was a huge drop, there was a metal bar to climb over to get things started, the rock-face was very slippery and it was a new technique for me to get used to.  I got the hang of it about 10m in though and was then able to enjoy the remaining 50m – a truly exhilarating feeling to be bouncing off the rocks with the ice-cold water gushing in your face.  Safely at the bottom, there was time for a bit of a sun-bake before I started the walk back – alone this time, so I was really able to enjoy the peacefulness and beauty of the place.  Miraculously a bus pulled up moments after I got back out to the street, so I was back in town in good time and able to shower before setting out in my Aussie jersey in search of the sports bar.

The actual waterfall

 

Scenery on the hike back down

Unfortunately I wasn’t really able to find a place exactly heaving with people, so settled for the Cuban bar that was decked out with some massive screens – almost enough for one screen each for the crowd which swelled to about 20 people at the height of the match.    I was able to acquire a yummy burger though (yes, this town is all about the burgers and juices), and even had some friends to chat to when Andrea and Eliot showed up at half time! We were all going for the Germans for various reasons (mine being that I just thought they deserved it more with the quality of football they’d been displaying throughout the tournament) so were very happy when they scored late in the match to seal the victory.   After the presentations and beers were finished, it was time to head back to the hostel to try to line up my activity for the next day, and also my bus out of there at the crack of dawn the morning after.  I was keen to do the mountain biking adventure with Colombian Bike Junkies as it had some awesome reviews on trip advisor and sounded like a great way of combining adrenaline with some sight-seeing, however getting a confirmation from the company that the activity had enough numbers to go ahead was proving challenging to say the least.  It was 10pm by the time I got the exciting news that it was all systems go, so I filled out the comprehensive rego form and went to bed.

The town of San Gil

I got up early and set off for Gringo Mikes where I’d been told we were due to meet at 8:15.  Unfortunately though, it turned out everyone else had been told 9 – so I sat there on my lonesome enjoying another amazing breakfast burrito and several cups of coffee – not all bad really.  As the rest of the group started to roll in, I was excited to see Andrea and Eliot again – practically besties we’d seen each other so many times – and we also had a kiwi (Gareth) and a Dutch guy (Bart).  Everyone seemed really nice, we just needed the guides to actually arrive so we could get started.  Turns out the delayed start (which was to become significantly more delayed) was due to “problems with the truck” ….. or more accurately, the problem of the truck having been driven into a ditch 2 days prior.  The guide’s girlfriend kept us entertained and filled up on delicious juices though, so we were still in good spirts by the time the truck came to collect us at 11.  Up and up and up we went (glad we didn’t have to ride this part) until we reached the top (just shy of 2000 metres) and it was time to get out and get started (after a bike test and safety briefing of course).  What was super impressive about these guys was that they’d used the height/weight/size info we’d filled out to fully customise the bikes and gear in advance.  It was definitely the best bike I’ve ever sat on too – felt like I was riding a lounge chair down the mountain!

As we sped off down the road (thankfully free from too many cars), front of mind were the statistics the guide had dished out around 90% of accidents occurring in the first 20 minutes.  The surface kept switching between dirt, gravel, sand and asphalt, so it was easy to see how people could become unstuck.  There was also the other factor of the jaw-droppingly beautiful scenery we were riding though – making it very easy to get distracted from actually looking at the road.  Everyone went at their own pace with the guide stopping at the occasional fork in the road to wait for us to all catch up (ironically it was the Dutch guy who was the most experienced of all of us – must be all those mountains Holland is famous for…) We rode on through plenty of awesome downhill before the guide pulled us up again and warned us to adjust the gears as the longest climb of the trip was about to be upon us.  And he wasn’t joking.  It was a few hundred metres of serious uphill to get into the town of Barichara and we were sweating like pigs by the time we reached the top.  All was made worthwhile though when we were rewarded with a sit down in the shade of the beautiful main plaza of Colombia’s most expensive town and a serving of scrumptious home-made cookies and fruit.

After our rest and a bit of a history lesson (it seems just about the entire town are descendants of one very busy man), we set off again and before long were rewarded with some more incredible views of the Suarez canyon.  We were blown away – ‘but wait till you see it from the other side” says the guide.  After a bit of a photo sesh off we went for some more downhill – plan was to ride to the bottom of the canyon, then jump in the truck to drive up the other side for a picturesque lunch spot before riding back down again.  Definitely a good amount of downhill on this trip!

As time wore on I got more and more confident with the feel of the bike and relied less and less on the breaks.  By the time we reached the bottom, I was pretty ravenous and excited about the impending lunchbreak.  So they loaded up the truck and we all clambered up to ride on the roof for the promised better view.  We must have travelled a good 10metres before there was an almighty clunk and we stopped in our tracks.  That didn’t sound good.  Try again.  Woop there it is…. again.  Third time lucky – nope this truck is going nowhere.  The part of the truck to shift into 4wd mode had all but fallen off.  Straight away they were on the phone to the office and the mechanic – but realistically we all knew the score – we were already running later than the usual schedule, and there was no way it was going to be able to be fixed in time for us to complete the original planned route.  If only the guide hadn’t sold the view and the last bit of downhill so well!

Moments before the truck broke down..

As luck would have it though, our group were all super easy going, and we were able to quickly make the collective decision to skip straight to the 15km cross country section to the finish line.  Given the heat and the impending exertion, we also decided it was best to not eat a full lunch now, instead deciding to have a few more cookies and save our giant gourmet sandwiches to have with the beers at the end.   Despite my stomach growling in protest, this was definitely a good call – as the 15ks was almost entirely uphill or flat – and when I say flat, I mean, a crazily rough surface but just without any slope.  I was determined to get through it though, as this was some of the only serious exercise I’d managed to get in in ages.  So huffing and puffing (and sweating like a pig) with every last inch of willpower I rode on….Eliot, Andrea and Bart had all sped ahead and Gareth was miles behind, so it was just me, my tires on the dirt, some cows, the occasional truck and my thoughts.  It was about an hour and 10 minutes in when I knew I must be getting close that I suddenly spotted the other 3 – not at the arranged meeting point after the bridge, but sprawled on the ground at the corner in the only downhill bit of the entire cross country section.  I was happy but confused to see them there, so came to a stop to find out the score.

Turns out Eliot had hit a sand patch and spun out on the downhill and was sporting some very nasty cuts and grazes (if only we’d not taken off all the padding for this last section), while Bart had managed to get a completely flat tire right before the finish line.  Andrea, not realising at first had gone on to finish, but had retreated when she realised neither of the guys was behind her.  Ordinarily the combination of the lead guide and the support truck would’ve sorted both of them out much sooner, but due to the bizarre circumstances of the day, we were unfortunately without either.  At their suggestion I rode on, enjoying the last bit of downhill and the chance to crack open the beer and sandwich, while they slowly walked the bikes down.  About 30 minutes later we were all together once more, enjoying the refreshments and watching the locals play their crazy game – essentially it’s very similar to the game most countries have where you need to throw a stone-like object at a target, only they add gunpowder and metal to their target – so it explodes if you hit it! Nice.  Definitely no room for argument here.  An appropriately thrilling end to an adrenaline filled long weekend in San Gil.

The end…. (of our World Cup Adventure in Brazil)

Days 13-15 – Belo Horizonte – surviving the favela with the help of some amazing new friends

It’s the morning of our most exciting airport arrival yet.  We actually have someone meeting us at the gate!!  Granted, we have never met Wagner’s brother Leo, nor do we have any idea what he looks like (beyond dark skinned male approximately 50 years old – a description fitting about 90% of the people waiting at the arrivals section), but we’ve given him a very easy task of spotting us… 2 white 30 something females, one blond, one brunette, both wearing England jerseys.  His recognition is instant and ours follows seconds later.  The other pleasing fact is his English is a whole lot better than we had incorrectly assumed it might be, so the car chat for the rather long journey from the airport flows easily.  Turns out he spent a couple of years playing football in Australia in the late 80s, hence his excellent English – and no doubt, fondness of Australians 🙂  He has a great sense of humour and keeps us laughing most of the way.  He’s also a retired police chief, so definitely a helpful guy to know in town.  He’s not entirely familiar with the area where we’ve booked our apartment on airbnb though, so frequently has his friend on the line (and presumably on google maps) lending a hand.  Once we get within spitting distance, we revert to the Brazilian way – stopping every hundred meters or so to ask an amigo on the street for some directions.  This method has its pros and cons – people are generally very helpful, but the more you ask, the more conflicting the directions seem to become!  Our best source of info turns out to be the guy who actually stops to load up the address on his ipad and show us exactly where we are and where we need to go – now that’s a friendly random!  When we finally arrive in our street, there are mixed emotions.  We are of course happy to have found it on the one hand, but on the other there’s the realisation that this location looks decidedly sketchy – and it’s pretty obvious that Leo is nervous to be leaving us there.

Things start to look up when we enter the front door and there’s an English guy, Alex, sitting at the breakfast table.  Turns out he’s renting the other room in the apartment for the duration of the tournament – and having been there for over a week already, is well in the know on the route to the stadium, buses to town and things to do.  We breathe a collective sigh of relief.  Not only is there an English speaker who actually knows what’s going on (and hasn’t been mugged or murdered yet), but we’ve now got a guy who is also going to the game, who can effectively escort us to the stadium.  Leo seems relieved about this too, and we say our thank yous and goodbyes and make arrangements to see him again for dinner.

The walk to the stadium takes about half an hour.  Of course we could have shaved off 5 minutes had we been prepared to walk through the favela that bordered our block of units, but the unanimous decision is sensibly made to walk around it.  Alex wonders if he’s been over-cautious by doing this each time, but I’d say it’s far from it.  *Favela 101: Any old random is not welcome to just traipse through them.* The weather is surprisingly warm (we’ve been told to not necessarily expect it to be hot here, and it was certainly fresh when we arrived at the airport, so we’ve followed Alex’s lead in wearing jeans – ROOKIE ERROR!) By the time the game kicks off, we’re dripping in sweat from our sun drenched spot in amongst all the English fans.

Even though, like Australia, England are also already out of the tournament before the match has even commenced, the fans are in good spirits, jovially singing “England’s going home” in full voice amongst other songs.  We are excited to see Frankie Lampard has made the starting line-up, but less than thrilled with a few of the omissions – it smells a little of waving the white flag before the match has begun, but on the flip-side, it’s not like the more traditional starting 11 had exactly achieved much this tournament, so what was there to lose by blooding more youngsters and trying something different?  It’ll also be interesting to see this Costa Rica team who have surprised everyone by being the group front-runners rather than the wooden spooners.  Throughout the match, as we strain to see past the giant guy in the row in front (the key disadvantage to being in a section where people stand-up), both teams have their chances but neither are really able to put it away.  England look frustrated and Costa Rica look like they’ll just be happy with a draw – and you can’t really blame them for that, as that’s all they actually need.  Perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised then when the final whistle blows and the scores are still at 0-0.

We’ve tentatively arranged to attempt to meet up with Alex again after the match at the spot where he thinks he might be meeting up with some other English guys he’s met at earlier games.  Before you know it, we have a group of about 16 with varying degrees of people actually knowing each other.  We do have a local with us though, so he leads us to a little shop to purchase a traditional snack, before we head off to nice hostel bar nearby.  This plan suits us to a tee, as the city is not actually particularly close to the stadium, and our apartment is close to the stadium.  We enjoy some drinks and chat and the match, before excusing ourselves to head back in time for our dinner date.  They seem a little disappointed that the only girls in the group are leaving, but what can we do – sometimes it’s tough to be popular.

View from the hostel bar

Leo and his wife arrive a little late due to some washing machine dramas, so we’re quite ravenous by the time we get to the restaurant strip.  Alex also joins us for the evening – a bit hard to communicate he’d actually already eaten some leftovers after Leo very kindly extended the invitation for him to join us.  Leticia takes care of the ordering and we have a delicious Brazilian feast of varying meats and even the occasional vegetable.  Throw in a couple of Caipirinhas and it’s a very pleasant evening all round.

Dinner with our new friends

The next morning Wagner’s friend Marco picks us up to take us for a day trip to Ouro Preto.  It’s a couple of hours drive out of Belo Horizonte so we’re feeling extremely lucky and grateful that he’s making such an effort.  He’s a trumpet player and teacher – and is currently on holidays from the teaching aspect, so has free time in the day which works out perfectly for us.  Ouro Preto was the original capital of Brazil and is simply stunning.  The photos really don’t do it justice. You have to walk throughout the super steep streets to really soak up the magic of this place.  And that’s exactly what we do.  Marco is conscious that his English isn’t very good, but we continually assure him that its waaaaay better than our Portuguese, and besides, we manage to work everything out in the end – and it’s not like any of us are in a pressing hurry!  We are enjoying meandering about and also take the time to go inside a super unique church and check out a museum before enjoying a delicious traditional lunch. After lunch we go on a bit more of a cruise about town, this time with the aid of the vehicle – those steep streets sure can get pretty tiring.  The toll they have taken is evidenced by Jenna and I falling asleep in the car on the way home – it’s a good thing at least Marco manages to stay awake.  Arriving back at our favela, we’re sure he must be sick of us by now (not that we’re not great company of course, but having to play tour guide in a language you’re not comfortable with must be rather taxing), but instead he insists on coming back later to pick us up to head out to some bars in the Santa Teresa area.  And we’re certainly not going to say no to that!

Santa Teresa is a cool area of town with a good vibe and some live music on offer most nights.  We settle on one of Marco and his wife’s favourite spots – a place with a sort of Argentinean theme to the menu – and what a funky menu it is!  One of the waitress’ kindly explains the menu to us in English and it all sounds delicious.  We order an appetiser to share and eagerly await the arrival of Marco’s wife Renata before ordering some mains.  The beers here are going down pretty well too.  Well for the beer appreciator amongst us, it’s a very welcome change from the Brahma anyway.  Renata’s wife arrives and is a bubble of positive energy.  She doesn’t speak any English, but does speak Spanish.  What follows is a couple of hours of ludicrous communication between 4 people speaking 3 languages.  I speak to Jenna in English, we combine this with some charades to speak to Marco, who speaks in Portuguese to Renata who then responds to me in Spanish… and so it continues.  A great night, with some truly lovely people and very scrumptious food.  On the way home they even give us a bit of a night tour, telling us all the things we should come back and try to see the next day.

The multilingual dinner crew

It’s a good thing we’ve had the tour, and sucked some information out of Alex, as for our 3^rd and final day in Belo we’re left to our own resources.  We pack up our gear and get the bus into town, stopping first at the municipal gardens so a bird can poo on us.  We don’t have a whole lot of time, so pick a walking route to traverse across the city that takes in a few touristy sites and gets us to Savassi – a place we’ve been told has a lot of bars and is good for watching the football.  Today’s games are USA V Germany and Portugal V Ghana.  It’s a very open group, with the potential for any 2 of the teams to progress depending on results, which makes for some pretty fascinating dual screen viewing.  In the end Portugal and Germany are victors, though goal difference sees the US go through ahead of Portugal – never have you seen fans so passionately celebrate a loss, but given the circumstances, I can hardly blame them.

At the conclusion of the match it’s time for us to head back to the apartment and jump in a taxi to the airport.  Only trouble is we’ve not been able to get in touch with the apartment owner at all, and we were hoping she’d do the taxi ordering for us (there’s no way I could direct someone to that apartment confidently in English let alone Portuguese!)  So again, Marco comes to the rescue, coming to meet us at the apartment with a taxi driver in tow.  We feel bad that we’re nearly 30 minutes late – owing mostly to the bus stopping to let someone off every 50m, but have sprinted the few hundred metres from the bus stop to the apartment to try to make up for it (only pausing briefly to get by the scary dogs).  He’s super relaxed about it though, and even the cabbie doesn’t seem phased – that would NOT be the case in Sydney!  All in all, we’ve had a great experience in BH, definitely enriched by our interactions with the lovely locals (kindly set up by Wagner, whose partner Clare I used to play soccer with) and equally importantly, we’ve managed to survive the favela.  Next stop Rio!

Days 16-19 – Rio de Janeiro – Order and Progress (and celebrating a hat-trick of world cups with my favourite Elvi)

Rio is another airbnb experiment, but this time it’s looking a lot more promising.  It’s in a good location nice and close to Copacabana beach, the room is very large and well presented, the shower the best I’ve had in months, and the host is hilarious.  She speaks at the rate of knots in Portuguese, but having originally grown up in Italy, is an expert on the hand gestures too – so somehow I understand almost everything she has to say, and even manage to be understood when I respond in my new language of portugish (or maybe its spaniguese?)  The only downside to this apartment is the lack of breakfast, as finding breakky spots in Rio is a whole lot more challenging than we could ever have imagined.  This is partly why we are so late in getting a proper start to our first day there, and consequently getting stuck in the most insane queue-athon of a Christ the Redeemer excursion.  Despite buying a ticket and a spot in the queue from someone who had already queued for 2 hours, it’s still another 2 hours before we even get on the vans, which then take a good 45minutes before we’re dropped at the next queue.  The volume of people there is borderline insane.  Shoulder to shoulder we creep out.  Then attempt the photo… then creep some more in a mission to get to the edge and actually see the view.  It takes what feels like an eternity, but we’ve already queued for so long that it seems ridiculous to leave without properly seeing it all.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s an incredible statue perched in a remarkable spot, but there’s just way too many people here to properly appreciate it.

is this meant to be the view?

Just a bit crowded

On the plus side, the crazy amount of time this has all taken does mean we get to experience the sunset up there.  In the end, we actually get full nightfall too – the buses back down seem even more hopelessly organised than the buses up.  They have 3 lines going to different destinations, yet what is clearly the most popular destination, has by far the least buses allocated.  It’s absurd.  And to make matters worse, every 3^rd bus or so that comes up, leaves completely empty.  There are literally thousands of people stranded up here, and buses are departing empty.  Order and Progress my ar$e – these guys couldn’t organise a p!ss up in a brewery!    The crowd starts to get increasingly agitated.  People are chanting COPA  CABANA COPA  CABANA…. but it’s making no difference.  Others take matters into their own hands and skip over the fences and launch themselves on the buses.  And you can imagine what the thousands of people who’ve been queuing for over an hour for said buses make of this!   It’s almost at riot level by the time we finally get on the bus – eventually getting back to our apartment around 8pm – 7.5 hours after we’d started out.

I’m a bit tired from the whole ordeal, but super excited to shower and head out for tonight’s dinner.  Dinner has been booked by Mark and Scoots – the American friends Sam and I made at the World Cup in Germany in 2006.  Unfortunately Sam wasn’t able to make Brazil, but for the 3 of us, we’re celebrating seeing each other at a 3^rd world cup!  We also each have someone new to introduce –I bring Jenna into the fray, and they have a good friend from back home Adam travelling with them this time.  Dinner is at an awesome treehouse restaurant in Santa Teresa.  It would seem Mark is suffering from the plague – Rio has definitely broken him (to think he’d looked like such a healthy Elvis on the Today show earlier in the tourney), but boy has he made an effort coming out tonight, so we certainly can’t hold it against him.  Having spent the entire day trying to get to Christ, I opt for the “sacred lamb” on the menu and it’s a blessed choice.  The wine, cheese bread, heart of the palm and chocolate ganache are also all delightful here.  Mark does his best but in the end has to excuse himself and head back home before we’ve finished – this probably constituting the most sensible decision he’s made throughout the entire tournament… as only more damage was going to be done from this point.

Delicious Dinner in the treehouse

For the 3 “healthy” ones amongst us, the plans are to hit up the street party in Lapa.  Wow.  Talk about mental.  Music is blaring and people are drinking everywhere… in the streets, in the pubs, in the gas station, on the footpaths.  To make things even more insane, cars are still attempting to drive through.  13 year old kids are mixing up toxic cocktails on their little carts.  And we thought the Sao Paulo street party was wild.  Time flies when you’re having fun, and I reckon it must be about 4am by the time we decide to head out of there.  Not to go home of course – there’s more drinking to be done at the beach bars on Copacabana….the sun is just about rising by the time we’re tucking into bed.

Partying it up in the petrol station.. as you do

Lapa street party

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s no surprise that we’re a little slow moving the next day.  We do have an important day of football watching planned though – it’s a packed schedule of South American round of 16 clashes – first up Brazil are playing Chile, and then Colombia are playing Uruguay in Rio.  We don ourselves in the Brazilian attire that we’ve accumulated, and head off in search of a place nearby to watch the match – given we’ve managed to miss kick-off, time is of the essence.  But first a quick stop enroute to pick up a manky pizza slice and get shat on by another bird.

The first place we come across that has a spot for us in view of a tele is one of the beach bars…. But we only give that until half time before deciding we need to move to the backstreets if we want to actually enjoy this one with some locals.  The next place we chance upon has plenty of locals and a very large screen.  It’s not until we are inside the fenced off area though that we realise everyone there is wearing the same t-shirt.  And it seems like some kind of Christian convention.  On the plus side, I don’t think they have it in them to actually ask us to leave… however when the scores are still locked at the end of regular time, we kick ourselves out and pull up a chair outside a bar close by instead.  Tension is building but still no-one can break the deadlock.  This one is going to go all the way to penalties.  When the shootout begins, it suddenly becomes apparent that the take-away place next door is a second or 2 ahead of the TV at the bar, so everyone shifts over to huddle around that one.  The roar of the crowd that reverberates around the entire city when Brazil scores, is only matched in intensity by the silence when Chile do.  We’re really hoping for a Brazil victory here… not only for the obvious partying that will follow, but we’re also not sure what kind of mayhem will result if they don’t go through.  They certainly weren’t too happy about the disallowed goal from the handball call earlier in the match.  Thankfully they do get up though, so the party can continue.

After popping back to the apartment for a quick wardrobe change (there’s only so long one can tolerate bird poo fashions), we decide we’ll head to the Fanfest for the Colombia Uruguay match.  Even just the walk along Copacabana beach to get there is incredible… there are literally thousands upon thousands of people EVERYWHERE.  Singing, dancing, blowing horns, the works.  It’s a good thing they’ve closed the street to traffic as there’s certainly no room for any cars here.  The Fanfest here is a huge screen literally on the beach – quintessential Rio really.  There are plenty of people so the atmosphere is great, but not so many that it’s claustrophobic.  Jenna picks up an admirer who tries to plant a kiss 3 or 4 times in the space of 10 minutes – after which we strategically exit stage left.  Colombia score 2 awesome goals (and do their funky celebration dance) to send the Uruguayans packing.

At the conclusion of the match Jenna is starving (she hadn’t indulged in a dodgy burger from Bob’s at lunchtime like I had), so we set off in search of anywhere nearby that has a table.  With literally millions of people out and about, we figure we can’t be too fussy.  A random Asian restaurant is the lucky winner of our custom.  I let Jenna choose as she’s the hungry one, and we go for a chicken curry, some rice, mixed vegetables and some pork dumplings.  After about half an hour the curry and dumplings come out, the latter of which we hoe into, before looking over expectantly at the wait-staff for our rice and vegetables.   Surely they realise we want this with the curry?  They’re hardly desert items…  Despite several requests for the arroz (we’re prepared to forgive the late arrival of the vegetables on the grounds that we are in Brazil), it’s about another 30 minutes before our waitress comes over to inform us that they don’t have any rice left.  Well, apparently they don’t have any white rice, but we can order the $15 rice with veges if we’re prepared to wait another 30 minutes.   Order and progress. Order and progress.  Of course we agree to this, because there’s more salt in the curry than Uyuni, so we need SOMETHING to help get it down.  Hours later, we’ve finally received and eaten all that we ordered so it’s time to get outta there.  This is the first and only time we subtract the optional tip that has been added to the bottom of the bill… and that’s really saying something.   Whilst we’d originally had plans of meeting up again with Mark, Scoots and Adam, all 5 of us are pretty shattered so we make plans to rendezvous at lunch the next day instead.

Sunday morning we’ve decided is time for an excursion to Ipanema.  We’ll go for a stroll, source some breakky, have a little dip and do some people watching on the beach.  I just love how much is happening on the beaches here – from the football, to the volleyball, to the girls prancing around in their insane bikinis, to the vendors flogging their wares – there really is never a dull moment.  I think I could spend a week just sitting there soaking it all up, but alas, there is not enough time for that on this trip.  The sourcing breakky part of the day again providing way more of a challenge than it should do. Put some cafés here guys!  We eventually come across a juice bar that is serving some food, and order a couple of juices and some bacon and egg sandwiches – simple fare to put a dent in the hunger so we can get on with the morning, or so we think.  Unfortunately this egg turns out to be the beginning of the end for Jenna’s health for the rest of the week.  Iron-guts up to this point, we suspect salmonella poisoning is the likely culprit here.

But she bravely soldiers on and we make it to Arab to meet the boys for lunch and watch the Netherlands Mexico match.  The middle eastern buffet is a nice change up from the usual food, and the beers are going down well (for me at least). We have to crane our necks past the big headed guy to try to see the screen (what is it with big people always being at the front?) but manage to catch most of the key moments in a match that the Netherlands really just scrape through by the skin of their teeth.  We have just enough time for one last drink with the boys at a beach bar before saying goodbye and sit there watching the parade of sad faced Mexicans hiding under their sombreros walk by.  Jenna is also looking a little sad though – her stomach is not having a good time of it at all, so after we’ve said our goodbyes we don’t waste too much more time in heading home for the night (initial plans of a slap up fancy meal to spend the rest of our BRL are shelved, and instead I get pizza delivery for 1 and save the cash for some new sunnies at the airport).

Enjoying the last beverage together (of this world cup)

For our last day in Rio, we intend to do a little souvenier shopping in the morning before being picked up and taken out to Chez de Cox for the remainder of the day.  They have rented an amazingly large house in Barra, complete with a MASSIVE screen in the home theatre room, a 5-a-side football pitch and a swimming pool – what more could you want?!  The kids have been prepped that we’re footballers and are super keen to get out on the pitch from the moment we arrive.  We promise them we’ll get out there later, and first sit back to watch France Nigeria, with a dash of Wimbledon at half time.  Once France have sealed victory, it’s time to put on the proper shoes and get out there ourselves.  The teams are split into boys vs girls – it’s 4 on 3 and they do have North Sydney’s leading goal scorer on the squad (6 year old Ashton), but we’re quietly confident all the same.  It’s great fun to be back out there playing, and true to the world cup style, this is also a very open match – with scores being locked at 11 apiece on full time.  The cool headed girls victory in the penalty shootout causing a bit of a dummy spit from little Neymar – it’s been a big day though.  After cooling off in the pool it’s time to head around to the local restaurant for some dinner and the next match.  It’s Germany up against Algeria and we’re expecting a boring one-sided affair, but it turns out to be yet another great match.  Once concluded, there’s just enough time for ice-creams, charades and Neil’s mojitos before our taxi arrives to take us to the airport and we say goodbye to Brazil.   I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my 5 weeks here – a beautiful country, full of beautiful people (inside and out) – and I feel certain that one day I’ll be back (with some better Portuguese!