Windy Wellington

Watch out kids this is going to be one of my stream of consciousness entries...

So...it's a wet and windy Tuesday afternoon in Wellington. It was quite nice when I left the house this morning, MP3 player blasting my little ladylike eardrums with loud rawk music to vent my fury at the D.O.C. for failing to offer me an interview for the job I really wanted (gits), stomping down the road on my way to get my haircut, and then it started to drizzle slightly. No fear, I could handle this. And then it started to chuck it down, and with that kind of rain that goes in all directions at once, so by the time I got to the hairdressers they could have happily forgone the shampooing stage of production. But now my hair is sleek & shiny, as only a professionally trained hairdresser can get it, and I wafted off to meet a friend for coffee. Now I am up at Ann & Len's whilst Jo dyes Ann's hair for her, then we shall wend our way home and stare, goggle-eyed, at our giant tv (which shows up every flaw on tv/film stars' skin - great!).

The last week has mainly been occupied by PE, both participating and viewing. Thanks to the cycle challenge thingy, I have been starting some 'training' mainly cycling round the bays of Wellington, which are gorgeous. I am not really training so much as pootling around admiring the view, but it is 25km at a time so I suppose it kind of counts (I know this cos I bought a cycle computer gadget for my handlebars, what a goober). And I do seem to be getting a bit fitter, in fact I managed to get up one of my more troublesome hills without my bum muscles seizing up yesterday, which was nice. By November 26th I'll be whizzing around Lake Taupo like Lance Armstrong. Maybe. Or maybe not. The veiwing consisted of checking out the World Mountain Running Championships on Sunday afternoon, Jo & I sat on the grassy knoll at the top of Mount Vic (mid-Wellington) and watched some ridiculously fit people pound up and down at high speed...well apart from the Ukrainian bloke who they made stop 'cos he was so knackered. I helpfully offered advice as to which runners I thought were too skinny and needed to eat more pies, but I am not sure they are likely to heed my advice. More fool them.

Aside from that it has been more sorting out the house. I am trying to strip the nasty purple paint off the stairs without gassing myself with noxious fumes and/or setting off the smoke alarm (which I use as a tea-break signal) and with luck will finally paint the hallway this weekend. Gosh, how exciting. Also, it looks as if I might be gainfully employed as of next week by the Ministry of Women's Affairs - back to the world of bureaucracy for me - and Jo starts work tomorrow as a Business Process Analyst for one of the big telecom firms (free cable & internet - hurrah!), so we will have some money coming in, which will be nice seeing as we've spent all ours on things like big tvs.

Sorry I haven't replied to any emails. I promise I will get better once we have our own connection set up at home, but until then -

Catherine - yes we/I would love it if you came over next May & we might be able to do some a-travelling with you.

Julie - yes, you do look pissed in that photo...ha ha ha!! But once we are broadbanded I will post some equally dodgy photos of me for your amusement.

Alphena - just ask yourself "what would Sarah do?"

Dad - yes I have tried PD and its not quite as bad as they say.

Mum - ta!

lots of love to everyone
S

Just a quick update/gloat....

We have just been out and bought a frickin' huge 42in plasma flatscreen tv (because it was cheaper than buying a 33in screen and better for watching ludricrous action movies) and it's being delivered tomorrow!!! Ha ha HAAAAA!!! I'll never have to leave the house again...

On the downside, last night it was extraordinarily windy, and I mean gale force, and we discovered that when hit side on by such southerlies our house sways slightly. Got me thinking it might not be such a good place to be when the big earthquake hits.

And thanks mum for sending me a copy of the new Guardian - I'd like to set a regular Saturday order if that's not too much bother? Or perhaps I should just read it online?

love
S
xxxxx

All moved in!

Yes indeedy, we are now resident in Green Street! We spent the last 10 days furiously cleaning, sanding, paint stripping and painting in readiness for Jo & her dad to fetch our worldly goods from Waikanae, and managed heroically. The lounge/diner/kitchen are all painted except for the ceiling, and the bedrooms are both done - for those of you wanting a colour guide the lounge etc are biege/brown, the main bedroom dusky pink and the second bedroom is the same as the lounge. The hallway will be pale green, but we thought we'd wait until everything was moved in rather than risk trashing our new paintwork. The last 3 days have been mainly spent trying to fight our way through mountains of boxes, finding things we'd forgotten we owned and things that no longer work (like the TV), and lugging them around the house to their new homes.

We stayed over in the house on Saturday night (after I'd almost fallen asleep on Amy's living room floor and decided the furthest I can walk was into our house 10 feet away) and I woke up in the middle of the night and suffered the most shocking attack of missing my friends/family. It wasn't so much that I was homesick, because I think I am a little in love with our new house & neighbourhood, more that having a new home made me realise that none of you would be popping by for a cuppa or a raucous BBQ on a regular basis. So I went back to bed and had a bit of a cry whilst Jo assured me it would all be okay. God, imagine the mess I'll be when anyone comes to visit and I have to say goodbye...oh it'll be embarrassing. I'll email out our new address & phone number ASAP, and once we are settled we'll get broadband installed so I can email more regularly.

Speaking of embarrassing, on Friday night we joined Jules & Harriet at the extravaganza that was 'Ms Gay Downunder'. Actually, it was really Ms Gay Wellington, but they were getting ideas above their station. After a week of painting/moving, Jo & I were both shattered, and I had just been for my massage so was totally zoned out with bags under my eyes big enough to carry home shopping, but we managed to get a second wind and danced the night away fuelled by beer & tequila. I felt about 98 the next day. I won't go into too much detail about the entrants or winner, suffice to say it takes a certain type/mentality to enter. Harriet managed to convince me to join a team to do the Lake Taupo Cycle Challenge (160km around Lake Taupo) in November by using that clever ploy of waiting until I had a couple of drinks in me, but I'm actually quite pleased as it'll give me an excuse to get off my fat arse and do something. As a relay team we only have to do 40km each and I think even in my current state of sloth I should be able to get fit enought to do that in two months.

On the job front Jo has been to a couple of interviews and is being called back for a second interview at one of the telecoms firms over here (which would be a great job as it would give us free phone & internet), and I have been asked to go for psychometric testing by the Ministry of Women's Affairs (right after I finish writing this for it is Monday lunchtime), which I assume means they are thinking of offering me a job. I've also just put in an application for a job working with the NZ World Heritage Team, which I would love but I'm guessing there will be alot of competition so I'm not going to hold my breath. My main priority this week is to try and get rid of the bags under my eyes and get our new home sorted out. Wish us luck. At least our new bed is being delivered today, so I might give that a test run when I get home.

Off for lunch now before I have to go and have my head tested by a computer programme. Great.

love to all

S
xxxxxx

Phew....

Sorry this is a little late

I did mean to write yesterday, but kind of got distracted by life. Apologies if any of you were waiting desperately for the next exciting instalment of our adventures in NZ…not that I think it likely that any of you were…

So last week was a whirl of recruitment agencies and job interviews. Well, calling it a ‘whirl’ might be a little extravagant, but when you’ve been used to doing nowt all day long even thinking about dressing respectably and having to act all grown up is a strain. There I was on Monday ambling down Cuba Street, mooching in and out of shops when my mobile rang/vibrated furiously in my pocket and I had an invitation to ‘meet’ with a recruitment consultant the next day. How exciting! Not half an hour later the same thing happened – oh to be a woman in demand – but they wanted to see me that afternoon…I explained that I was dressed rather skankily, but they weren’t to be put off. Off I trolled to meet Lynley Stanford, big honcho of Stanfords Recruitment, who was very jolly & managed to gain a disturbing level of insight into my work ethics within minutes, but isn’t quite sure what to do with me as far as the job market is concerned. Apparently she’s going to start making some calls this week and will let me know…

The next day’s recruitment consultant, who wore one of the scariest polyester suits I have seen in years (I was slightly concerned that I might be electrocuted by merely shaking her hand), immediately decided to put me forward for a ‘project coordinator’ role (up to $55k!!!!), but it wasn’t to be and I haven’t heard a word since. Bum. Then another consultant phoned and asked if I fancied being a ‘project facilitator’ for the Agricultural ITO, who are the people in charge of all the training in the agricultural industry over here. Turns out this was actually organising and updating their training programmes, which I know sod all about, so that went out the window too. Thoroughly bored with the whole thing I decided I would forget about it all until the weekend, and a damn fine job I was doing too until at 10am on Thursday (yes, I was still in bed) I got a call from the Ministry of Women’s Affairs (remember them?) asking if I would come in for an interview the next day. So I spent a day rummaging through their website for any information I might find that would make me look as if I had at least some idea what the job was about and skipped a meal out with Jo to do some reading, which I was quite fed up about ‘cos she went to some groovy little Maori food place.

The next day I decided I would walk to the Ministry, which took about 45 minutes but by that time the Wellington wind whipped my hair (freshly coiffed that morning into a shining gleaming miracle) into a frenzied Patsy-esque bouffant. Luckily the ministry was on the 3rd floor of the building, giving me a chance to tame the wild beast and make myself presentable whilst hanging out in the lobby. The interview was good, I think, of course I yabbered on for ages and there were some questions that I completely cocked up (what the hell do they expect me to know about establishing women’s networks in Wellington?), but at least it was an interview. They won’t be able to let me know what is going on until next week, and I’d be surprised if I got the first job I went for, but you never know. They seemed very lovely though.

After that I strode purposefully across town to my massage appointment with the very tall and very smiley Leslie, who proceeded to pummel my shoulders into submission to the accompaniment of soft ambient music. Next week she’s decided she is going to sort out my right shoulder once and for all! Yikes…Unfortunately I had missed lunch, thanks to my interview being at 1pm, and my stomach was doing the most incredible rumbling I’ve heard since I was last in an exam hall. I managed to act cool and not snigger by thinking that surely masseurs hear worse than rumbling guts, but this unfortunately put me in mind of what they might hear emanating from their clients and a great deal of willpower was required to remain calm.

Friday night was spent watching tv and making crank calls to the English Heritage blue plaques team.

Saturday saw me heading into town to buy a new bike, one that I had sensibly ordered earlier in the week. After about an hour standing about in the shop waiting to talk to the bloke who had ordered the bike for me and trying to avoid being run down by small girls rampaging about on Barbie tricycles, off he trundled to fetch it from their store only to return with a very large cardboard box. It seems they had forgotten to put the bike together. So I went for a coffee and came back 40 minutes later to find it sparkling and new waiting for me. Huzzah! The only task then was to get it home. For those of you who don’t know, Jo’s parents place is on top of a whopping great hill. And I haven’t ridden a bike for about 5 months. I made it ¾ of the way up – in the lowest gear possible and still suffering – before I decided it was time to walk (although I did get a very cheery ‘well done!’ from some van driver. I think he was taking the piss.). Then I just about had time to stuff a cheese sandwich in my face before we headed off to ‘Real Hot Bitches!’. Jo & her mum returned from their windsock making session (in readiness for the Wearable Art parade at the end of the month) brandishing brightly coloured windsocks – Jo’s is an evening glove & Ann’s is a hat – and we headed to the drama school for a vigorous 2 hours of ‘hip hop’ dance moves to Missy Elliott’s ‘Get Your Freak On’. Again my legwarmers were a triumph.

After a quick warm-down in the local pub, we scooted home, got changed and went out for a night on the tiles with an old mate of Jo’s, Jules, and her girlfriend Harriet. The bar we had selected seemed full of suspiciously young folk and it turned out we had accidentally crashed a 21st birthday party…clearly no one thought I was too old, for just the day before I had been asked how old I was when buying a bottle of wine (though they might just do that to cheer up pissed off looking people). We stayed anyway and sampled some of NZ’s finest sauvignon blanc & pizza, before staggering up Cuba St to some mysterious subterranean bar where Harriet made us drink sparkling feijoa wine. All I can tell you about it is that it gets you really smashed. And I forgot my vow to never mix sparkling wine with any other booze on the grounds that it causes memory lapses. Apparently after that we went to Matterhorn for another drink and then onto Wellington’s premier (and only) gay club, Pound. I vaguely remember Pound being crap and Jo dancing like a fiend before we headed home in Jules’ rather fine boy racer-mobile, complete with blue furry seat covers and uv lighting in the boot, and stumbled into bed. Luckily it would seem that Harriet & Jules had fun and are still talking to us, and that Harriet’s hangover was as bad as mine. Excellent. So we have some new friends.

Today was composed of vicious shopping and we now are the proud owners of a new bed, 2 new sofas and $800 worth of paint vouchers. The tenants are moving out of Green Street next Friday and we will be spending a week decorating and making the place ours before our new gear is delivered. Lovely though it has been to take full advantage of Len & Ann’s hospitality, it will be fabulous to finally get into a place of our own after 3 months of living out of a backpack. I am hugely excited. Hopefully we’ll be able to scam some of our new acquaintances into helping with my promise of payment in beer and pizza (plus it’ll be election weekend over here, so there will be sod all on telly…).

Love to everyone!

S & J
xxxxxx

Bitchin'!

Well, this week has been a blur of activity, but I shall valiantly attempt to recall our various shenanigans over the last seven days.

Monday saw us visiting The Embassy, Wellington’s fully restored ‘heritage’ cinema, to see ‘Kung Fu Hustle’. Nice big seats, leg room a-go-go and a blasty loud sound system created a viewing experience far superior to our previous screening of this film on a very teeny tiny monitor on a bus in South America with Spanish subtitles. ‘Kung Fu Hustle’ was good then and it’s even better when you can see what’s happening and understand the dialogue. We got home to find what I thought was a random piece of fluff outside the bathroom door – it was in fact a very large, but luckily also very dead, spider. Even the sight of it inanimate on a piece of paper made me flinch and wonder whether I should go on one of those conquer your fear type courses so I don’t have to go all girly every time something eight-legged & hairy comes near me. Jo told me it had big pincer-y things too. Great…

Tuesday we headed over to Jo’s sister’s place (in our soon to be back garden) to join her weekly ‘Survivor Night’. This is when Amy & her pal Sal engage in the intensive concentration and tension that is watching ‘Survivor’, an American reality TV thing. After a quick trip to the Indian takeaway, we settled down to observe varying Americans – both in size & accent – get very competitive and backstabbing. Quite fun actually. When we arrived home I proceeded to freak out Jan Phipps by remembering to phone her to wish her “Happy Birthday!” lovely as it was to speak to her it did make me quite homesick.

Wednesday we arranged to meet with Jo’s friends Ingrid and Gerard at Chow, a fancy Asian-ish restaurant to scoff food, make chit-chat and listen to Jo’s mum do her cabaret thang. When we arrived at 7.45pm we were the only people there, but it slowly filled up and Ann ended up playing to an almost full house. There was also a slight worry that her accompanying guitarist wasn’t going to make it, but he arrived only 15 minutes or so late (artists, eh?) and I was saved the indignity of having to provide acapella backing vocals (not that I offered or was asked, but I know its what Ann was hoping for). The food was okay, but to be honest not much more exciting than Wagamama and a bloody sight more expensive ($6 for a small bowl of Asian greens!!!) so I predict they may not still be here when any of you come to visit. You’d be better off going to the Asian place we went to in Warsaw. Of course you’d have to be in Poland and not New Zealand, but that’s a minor issue. On the plus side Wednesday was 2 for 1 cocktail night – hurrah!

Thursday saw an evening of quiet contemplation in front of the TV.

Friday night it was off into town again to meet up with Jo’s mate Radhika who is down in Wellington from Auckland for a week. We started off in Matterhorn, described on one website as ‘the heart of Wellington’ (crikey). It is a very nice bar & restaurant though, with a rather lovely outdoor fireplace, although there was quite a strong smell of fish & chips at the entrance. After a couple of beers, some sparkling conversation with Radhika, her boyfriend Ron and her friend Colleen (if you ever meet her ask her about her trip to the Temple of Hapshetsut in Egypt, its worth the wait) and a trip to their incredibly teeny tiny loo (obviously their own special form of body fascism – if you can’t squeeze through the door to get into the loo you’re too fat for them), we heeded our rumbling tums and, guess what? Surely it can’t be? Yes, we – minus Colleen - headed to a restaurant. This time it was the turn of Floridita, where we stuffed ourselves with antipasti and various Italian delights, along with a lovely bottle of wine (but of course!). After such strenuous activity, and much more chitchat, Jo & I headed home.

Saturday saw a flurry of activity as Jo & I went all domestic and started some serious furniture hunting. Off we zoomed in our little silver car (which, Patti, now sports a rather fetching “Keep Portland Weird” bumper sticker) to Thorndon Quay where many a furniture shop lives and managed, after some debate, to choose a bed and a couple of sofas. We haven’t actually bought them yet, thought that had better wait until we moved into our place and could check that they would fit, but I’m quietly confident that they’ll be fine. After this we realised we needed to kick off or Sunday shoes and headed, on Amy’s recommendation, to ‘Real Hot Bitches’, a truly stupendous dance troupe/class led by Ange (Wellington’s Susie Robinson in gold shoes and knee pads) and Rosie (owner of a mighty fine powder blue visor). The basic philosophy of this group is to relive your youth by learning group formation dance routines to super-duper 80s/90s pop classics. Having ‘felt the fear and done it anyway’ we lurked at the back of the hall slowly working our way through a rather fine routine accompanying ‘Push It’ by Salt ‘n Pepa (any troupe member can volunteer to choreograph – for that is how they spell it – each week) that included kung fu kicks and ‘attitude’. Luckily my confidence was bolstered by the arrival of Amy & Sal and the provision of legwarmers (they really do keep your legs surprisingly toasty!), although Jo’s insistence on pulling faces at me during the robotic segment challenged my professionalism. By the end of the session I was pelvic thrusting with the best of them, but I really do need to work on my running man. Feel free to check out their website www.real-hot-bitches.co.nz for more info! Exhausted though we were, we headed home and had a quick dip in the spa pool before heading back out to eat more food.

This time we visited The Last Supper Club under the guidance of Amy and her friend Ange (different from the aforementioned Ange, but she did join us at RHB and came up with our rather fine ‘attitude move’ which included a butt-slap inspired by Caleb Clarke). I was rather hoping the waiting staff would dress like Jesus and the Apostles, but sadly they kept the biblical theme to a minimum. Or perhaps this theme was more active behind the scenes, which could go some way to explaining why it took so bloody long for our wine to arrive. So far, this is my favoured feeding place; their antipasto was bigger & better than Floridita and I had a fabulous warm rabbit salad. Amy’s lamb was good too as, out of sheer politeness because she couldn’t finish it all, I scoffed some of that as well. A quick hop and a step over the street saw us enjoying more wine at the Ponderosa bar (quite swish actually, despite the Western theme), some discussion of potential RHB tunes (I’m favouring “If I could turn back time” by Cher, Sal has some great ideas for the cannon bit) and then back home to rest our tired dancing feet.

Aside from these goings on we’ve been busy doing exciting things like bumping into old pals of Jo’s, getting massages (lovely), window shopping, visiting the fruit & veg market, looking for jobs (Jo is working her way around many recruitment agencies), reading books and contemplating how to decorate our house. Oh and I got a new sim card for my mobile phone…I’ll text the number to relevant folk. All fun and games eh?

Hope all is well with you all…happy dancing!!!

Busting out all over....

Those of you I have emailed will know that this refers to my burgeoning waistline, which has miraculously expanded over the last couple of months. In fact I am pretty sure it did most of its expansion over the last couple of weeks. Perhaps I could try to blame it on cabin pressure? Or perhaps not…so the healthy eating regime has begun and I have taken to walking to & from town. Distance-wise this is not too far and only takes about 20-30 minutes, but the return leg involves trudging up one almighty hill. I’m hoping that a couple of weeks of this will at least go someway to reducing the wobbly load. Stranger things have happened.

Due to limited internet access I have also made the executive decision to make blog entries once a week. We have kindly been loaned Jo’s parent’s laptop, so I can lurk in our basement boudoir and concoct entries in Word that will then be transferred to the blog. It kind of makes sense, you know it does.

So…Wellington in winter. Having been used to dealing with the seasonal & time difference from the UK to NZ angle, I am really struggling with switching it around. My brain just can’t quite compute that the weather will get warmer as we head towards the end of the year, and that I am now ahead of the UK. This hasn’t been helped by the weather here being unseasonably fine for the last week (I have still insisted on wearing my woolly hat, which is slightly greying from Inca Trail filth), although today the southerly chilly breeze appeared and I was required to wear my flouncy denim rock star coat to keep my bum from freezing. It gained lots of what I can only assume were admiring looks from passers by. Either that I had achieved the dreaded ‘geography teacher’ look. If I carry on wearing it I suspect I will become known as ‘the woman in the bloody awful coat’…hooray! Have spent most of the last week acquainting myself with Wellington, demonstrating my natural coolness I accidentally ventured into one of the city’s most fashionable cafés, although this was somewhat negated earlier in the day by getting myself eaten by a lift door (of course the lift was full of people) and then having to athletically leap back out when Jo pointed out it was the wrong lift. I think Jo was actually more humiliated than I was, for I know I am a spaz.

On the plus side (as I am now), I have found a job to apply for. Fingers crossed I’ll have some money heading my way, assuming they actually even want to interview me. Today was spent writing my CV, and desperately trying to remember what I used to do for a living and how I could make it sound impressive. The post requires some knowledge of or desire to learn about Maori issues, language etc, so I have been off to the library and am desperately boning up on subjects like the Treaty of Waitangi. Unfortunately my pronunciation is ludicrous, so I should look and sound fully fresh off the boat. Oh how I look forward to that. I have also been scouring the volunteering positions that are open. So far my eye has been caught by the SPCA, which is quite near where we will be living, and a couple of environmental groups. So you can look forward to tales of my being attacked by dogs and falling onto kiwis. I also considered the Samaritans, but thought that this might not be my best introduction to a new country. I thought a youth group might be fun and get me off my butt and doing something entertaining. Who knows? But I think that will be my task next week – to get out there and meet some people.

Tonight we are off to the cinema to endure the delights of Tom Cruise in “War of the Worlds”. I’ll let you know if he manages to save us all from impending doom. I’m guessing he will, and I’m also guessing that they won’t stick to the original ending. Let’s hope it’s a better conclusion than “Independence Day” where I seem to recall the aliens were defeated by a lack of Norton Anti-virus. I’m also keen to start checking out some of Wellington’s 400 or so nosheries, although may have to start at the cheaper end of the market.

So, Wellington doesn’t seem so bad so far. I’ll keep you updated.

Lots of love
S
xxxx

Sunday 21st August update…
Seeing as I seem to be getting rather rudely heckled by some of you for my tardiness in blogging I thought I’d better add a quick update here, but be warned I will become immune to your abuse!

The redneck hat is being ‘rested’ right now thanks to a combination of it being winter here and it being very windy here, although it does have a rather dashing cord that can be used to stop it flying off your head (presumably whilst sitting in the back of a pick-up truck). It shall be whisked out with a flourish come springtime. But my woolly hat is doing a fine job in its place.

The big news is that Jo & I are now the proud owners of a car! Despite our hopes of being very new age-y and buying a hybrid car we ended up getting a Holden Barina, which as far as I can tell is a Vauxhall Corsa with a different name. The important thing is that I can now start driving lessons, and that it has a CD player. Gotta have priorities. So we whizzed up to the beach house to dig out our insurance documents from the garage, along with some DVDs and some car music CDs drank all of Jo’s parents’ red wine, crashed out then headed back to Wellington earlier today. We stopped on the way for ice cream, but I had manuka honey & fig and manuka honey is meant to be very good for you & figs are v. healthy so I am considering it a part of my healthy eating plan. I then, in a fit of enthusiasm, began to dig what I hope will become a vegetable patch in the garden, but I think I may have chosen a really crappy shaded spot. We shall see.

What else has been going on? Erm, ‘War of the Worlds’ was actually much better than I thought it would be, and they have stuck to the original ending, Amy took us to a very nice Malaysian place afterwards where I proceeded to pig out on a vast plate of stir fry & rice, but the healthy eating plan is still a plan. I managed to finally write my CV and send off my job application, so should hear next week if I’m going to get an interview and I’ve been trying to think of things to do to keep myself occupied. I went to the SPCA to find out about volunteering but it seemed to be mainly staffed by unusual volunteers of the type that ‘prefer animals to people’ and it was all a bit whiffy, so I mumbled some weak excuse about having to check the validity of my tetanus jab and swished out in my rock star denim coat. Then I was going to help with the replanting of natural plants at a local stream, but I should’ve been there at 9.30am on Saturday and I didn’t wake up until 10am. Oops. So, no joy there. Not sure what else I have on my hectic social agenda. I quite fancy going 10 pin bowling to relive some of my Streatham days/nights, but that would involve persuading some other people to go with me, maybe I’ll try my powers of persuasion tonight and lure folk with tales of sweaty miscoloured shoes?

Will endeavour to keep it regular from now on – wouldn’t like to disappoint my fans….

S

'Ere we go

I warn you now, we have consumed a couple of bottles of red wine and I am just doing a quick blog entry before we start our 26 hour trip to NZ.

Canada is still sunny. In fact I think I have gained some sunburn in readiness for the extremely convoluted plane trip ahead of us. Huzzah! Yesterday we spent the afternoon in town, bought some more dvds, and another book, and then headed to the Commodore Ballroom to see Aimee Mann. The Commodore Ballroom is very cool - lots of tables & seating - we found some fine seating and, being 30somethings, bought a bottle of red wine. The support act was crap, presumably a ploy by the main act to make them look good, but Aimee came on and was v. v. good. I won't go into too much detail in case Mrs Clarke gets annoyed, but she rocked. I even caught Jo listen to an Aimee Mann album earlier today (a first).

Today has been spent doing bugger all. I have read 3/4 of a book, we've packed our bags, had dinner, drunk a couple of bottles of Wolf Blass and talked rubbish. Might go and watch some fireworks later. Then its a 4.30am to get to the airport for our delightful trip to NZ via Dallas & LA. Luckily Jo & I have managed to budget well enough to allow money for a slap up meal in LA airport (we have a 5 hour transfer delay), and I have already checked our entertainment/movie options on our flight to Auckland (some half decent movies are promised).

Due in NZ on 9th August and, once I have recovered from our trip, I will blog from there.

Adios amigos!!!

love
S&J
xxxxxx

Canada, Oh Canada

Whey hey! The sun is still shining! It's been fantastically sunny and warm here, and looks like its going to stay that way until the weekend. Now this may not seem like particularly important information, but it means that we'll be able to arrive in NZ with corking suntans...ho ho ho...Jo & I have both developed a glorious arrangement of strap marks on our shoulders & I still have the whitest legs in Christendom (I have had to stick to long trousers since I foolishly shaved my legs in Mexico and apparently in doing so removed some vital UV protection layer causing immmediate uber-sunburn - foxy). Or it could be that my face is rosy from the gallons of red wine I have consumed whilst travelling. Who knows?

So. Canada. After our compulsory day of mooching about on Tuesday we were whisked off to visit cousin Nick's mum, lured by the promise of fish & chips by the seaside. Familial duty completed we duly headed off to the beach, parked the car and began scanning the menu of each & every fish & chip shop in the area. Eventually we chose one and proceeded to royally piss off the small & brusque Chinese lady who worked there by umming & aahing and then ordering an extremely measley meal between 5 of us. After a brief wait and her barking at us that our order was ready, we headed to the beach only to discover that the tide was in and there was no beach. Oh well. There was a nice sunset though. On the way home Cindy (Nick's wife) insisted we visit a local ice-cream shop where we were faced with the mind-boggling choice between 208 different flavours. Jo gamely tried the chocolate & chili (quite a strong afterburn), whilst I sampled balsamic vinegar (okay, but I couldn't handle a whole scoop full), avocado (suprisingly nice) & tequila & lime (yum). We also tried the durian ice cream. For those of you none the wiser, durian is a legendary Asian fruit that is supposed to taste delicious, but smells so bad (like a rotting corpse) it is banned from public transport. This is backed up by the fact that it is the only ice cream that they keep firmly lidded. Now I can tell you that it is an acquired taste. It is yatch.

Finally I chose peach, plum & jasmine (v. v. nice) & Jo opted for purple yam (v. nice).

The next morning we were awoken by Cindy pummeling on our bedroom door and asking if we wanted to do the Grouse Grind. You may think this sounds like some 60s-esque dance fashion, but it is in fact the trail that runs up the side of Grouse Mountain (approx 1000m), and is similar to day 2 of the Inca Trail but significantly shorter. Of course we said "yes!" and after a hearty breakfast we headed off. 1 hour & 45 minutes later, and extremely sweaty, we reached the top. Once there we rewarded ourselves with burgers, beer & a quick look at some grizzly bears (they are quite big) and caught the cable car back down. The afternoon mainly consisted of lazing about, followed by bbq-ing and then off up the hill with a bottle of home-made seabreeze to watch the fireworks (which were made more entertaining by the teenage boys whose drive we were watching the fireworks from being shoved out of the door in drag - by their babysitter - and then having to beg to be allowed back in).

Today was more lazing about in the back garden (it was way too hot to do much else), interrupted by a quick trip to buy on sale shampoo at a local salon, and then off to Costco to search for bargains. This time we only spent $140 (Jo bought some cheap ski gear), which is quite restrained. Tomorrow we're heading into town with Becky (14 year old cousing kid) to check out the Virgin Megastore, followed by pizza, putting Becky on the bus home & Jo & I going to see Aimee Mann. Great!

Then only Saturday to go before we have to get on the plane to NZ...but you'll be glad to know I have already made the executive decision to carry on blogging from there (presumably I'll have to be nice about the in-laws...or change names to protect the innocent). Bet that cheered you up!

laters gators!
S
xxxxxxx

6 days til NZ

I forgot to mention that my redneck hat wearing in SF was proven to be fabulous by my being leered at by a gang of lesbians in a pick up truck - you can imagine the joy I expressed.

So, Portland. Another overnight bus trip and insight into quite how grumpy old people are in the USA (they seem to think that everyone should pander to their every whim, regardless how insane, and get very shouty if you don't - we encountered 3 on the bus to the Greyhound depot and another 2 in the depot itself), we thought we'd got lucky because there was enough room for Jo & I to get a pair of seats each. Well I was lucky, but at 3am Jo was awoken by being sat on by a gentleman she described as "stinky" and then had to spend the remainder of the trip reminding him to stay in his own seat rather than spreading his legs to a ridiculous degree. But we made it to Portland and were greeted by Patti at the bus station, who promptly whisked us off to her apartment. Portland is lovely and Patti has an apartment that is almost perfectly positioned - right opposite Trader Joe's (my new favourite supermarket), just around the corner from many a funky store, lots of groovy wee bars and restaurants etc etc. And Portland has one of the biggest bookstores in the USA, in fact it may actually be the biggest independent bookstore in the world. Nice.

Tuesday Patti had to work, so Jo & I went and did sensible things like getting haircuts, and then went to watch her play bocce ball (kind of a cross between petanque & lawn bowls) followed by pizza & wine - we even got free bocce ball t-shirts, which are very cool & exclusive. Wednesday we hired a car and headed off into the mountains to visit the Breitenbush spa, taking the scenic route which was beautiful except for the fact that it was ridiculously hot. We got there just in time to dump our stuff in our tent and head into dinner, followed by a soak in the natural hotsprings (great, but a little sulphurous in its aroma) and into the sauna for a very very roasty session. Afterwards we relaxed with complimentary herbal tea and watched shooting stars before crashing out. Jo had decided that she didn't need a sleeping bag as it was so warm, but during the night (as the temperature descended) she proceeded to wrap herself in jumpers, blankets, socks etc until I finally woke up and unzipped my sleeping bag to share with her. The next morning we headed back to the hotsprings only to be informed by a Jennifer Saunders lookeelikee that one of the springs was busy with a 'powerwash'. Being obtuse I assumed that this was some kind of yogic exercise - after all there was some guy playing his crystal bowls outside the dining hall - or perhaps even involved being washed down with a strong jet of water. Of course it actually meant that they were cleaning the spring with a steam cleaner. How dull. The sauna was also being cleaned, so after a soak in the springs we grabbed our packed lunches and went for a short trek in the woods for lunch, then headed back to the car and back to Portland.

Once back in town we showered & changed and headed out to meet Patti's friend Mike at a local martini bar, The Brazen Bean. Nice bar & great for people watching, but they seem to think that lychees are kiwi fruit...and they pronounce lychee as "leechee", which sounds very unappetising. A quick observation before I forget - almost everyone in the USA under the age of 40 has at least one large & complex tattoo, thus making having a large & complex tattoo about as rebellious as having your ears pierced. I know think my small & simplistic tattoo - a moment of 18 year old non-thinking - is quite funky and stylish in comparison. It also proves Ozzy Osbourne's theory that not having a tattoo is more individualistic. After the Brazen Bean we went to Last Thursday, a kind of funky artsy street sale, followed by a trip to Shannon's (Patti bocce ball pal) house for crepes & wine. They were very lovely. Friday was spent mooching about, visiting the park and then stuffiing ourselves with food & wine in readiness for a night at The Egyptian Hall - a local lesbian bar reknowned for its karaoke. I had told Jo I would in fact karaoke, but once I'd heard a couple of the singers (who were stupidly good) I renounced this plan and restricted my activity to being very English when ordering drinks at the bar (I am starting to sound like Emma Thompson) and choosing songs for other people to sing. Alas, we took so long making a decision that by the time Patti, Jo & Jen's request to sing "Take A Chance On Me" came up it was time to leave.

Then it was Saturday & time to leave for Seattle. Portland was fab and seeing Patti was a blast - I'd recommend it to anyone.

The bus trip to Seattle was uneventful. We arrived at our hotel at 2pm to be told our room wasn't ready and could we come back at 3pm (leaving our luggage in their storeroom). So we did...checked in, went to our room and discovered it wasn't clean. Eventually, at about 5pm, we had a clean room and crashed out to watch to crappy tv. Seattle was holding its 'Torchlight Parade' a couple of blocks across, so we went to explore that but after a couple of impressive Chinese & Korean groups it seemed to be mainly marching bands, shoddy majorettes, and pseudo-military marching groups, so I voted for food at a nearby Mexican place, "Mama's". It was pretty good, although the margarita's were not too clever, and we were referred to as 'girls' by our Elvis wannabe waitress (I have got quite used to being a 'lady' and found this a little cheeky). Sunday in Seattle was spent mainly exploring the area around the Space Needle, and mooching about. Plus our first trip to the movies to see "Batman Begins" - quite entertaining. Not really a great deal else to report from Seattle - a nice enough place, but Portland seems to have as much to offer with a lot less pretension.

Monday saw our final bus trip, Seattle to Vancouver. Fairly uneventful despite the man who had a recurrent cough that sounded like a cat hawking up a furball, which I managed to block out with my mp3 player. I discovered that Aimee Mann is playing in Vancouver this Friday night, so Jo & I are off to our first gig in a year. We are staying with Jo's cousin and his family, who are ludricrously nice & fun, so it should be a great way to end our trip...only 6 days to go...

lots of love
S & J
xxxxxx

Symphony in the sun

We're having a heatwave...a tropical heatwave...

Those of you who have better things to do with your time than watch old Marilyn Monroe movies will have no idea about that quote, but hey...

Well, I can tell you now that Greyhound buses have alot to learn from South American bus companies. Cramped, smelly and an interesting clientele certainly make a short journey seem long. So, after 7 hours on one of these charabangs we arrived in San Francisco at 5.30am and grabbed a taxi to our hostel/hotel in the supposedly trendy Mission district, where we had a very pleasant room, and went to sleep for 3 hours. After that we began our exploration of the city. I had very fond memories of San Francisco from my trip when I was 19 and was looking forward to see if it still lived up to its status as one of the few US cities I would happily live in. Actually I think its got even cooler. We decided we would wander up to Castro St for breakfast, but unfortunately I chose one of the steepest hilliest streets in the area (which went down quite badly with Jo) and finally reached Castro feeling a bit knackered. Breakfast was in a bar that was joyously advertising it's Thursday night's activities colourfully named "Wank Tank", but the food was okay and I became fascinated by the breakfast of the bloke sitting next to me - fried eggs, bacon, french toast with icing sugar & blueberries swimming in maple syrup - luckily he was clearly a gym junkie who might actually burn some of that off. Then we ambled down Market Street to buy 3 day travel passes and off to the newly tarted up port area to check out their fancy food hall.

That evening we headed a couple of blocks down the road to sample one of San Francisco's finest burritos. Very good it was too! The only drawback was that they made the fiestiest guacamole I've ever eaten and, combined with the rest of the burrito, gave me astounding breath issues. After that we headed to SF's premiere lesbian bar, or so the guide book claimed, The Lexington Room. Now, I was thinking 'this is SF so the main lesbian bar is going to be cool & hip', but it turned out to be very small (just about big enough for a bar, a few tables & a pool table) and strangely less hip than London bars. The 'ladies', for I shall call them that, were standard geezer bird combos (though one was attempting a cowgirl look, alas she clearly was not as adept at the redneck hat as I), and the pool playing was of a standard so appalling that I was tempted to revoke their lesbo status immediately. But I did have a lovely chat with a biker chick about her managerie of dogs as apparently they don't usually like bars but they seemed happy to frolic about in this one. She thought it might be because it was an all female bar & had a different vibe, but I think it may have had more to do with my burrito breath. So after a couple of swift beers we headed back to our hostel.

The next day we hit the vintage shops with gusto by heading up to Haight Ashbury, supposedly the hippy area, but were disapppointed to find that it was quite expensive now and that in fact all the good thrift stores were on Mission. So we headed back to our hotel and went out for dinner instead - Herbivore on Valencia, a most excellent vegetarian restaurant. Bargain of the day = 4 pairs of new Sketchers shoes for $29!

So, we decided to check out the Mission St thrift stores. Jo immediately spotted a rather fine pair of Gap 3/4 trousers for me for $2 and then purchased a fabulous pair of platform shoes for $8. After a couple of hours we headed downtown to catch the cable car to Lombard Street (the zigzag street) and finally, after an hour of queuing we trundled over the hill. After much wandering aboutup and down hills we ended up having dinner in Chinatown and crashing out. Our last day in SF was beautifully sunny so we thought we'd head to the park. We caught the tram all the way to Ocean Beach to have a look at the Pacific, which was cold, misty & grey, and then headed back to Golden Gate Park where it was also cold, misty & grey. So we caught the tram back to the small park behind our hotel only to discover that they were about to start a free concert by the SF symphony - hooray! A very pleasant 3 hours were spent lazing in the sun listening to Spanish influenced classical music, followed by a great burger & fries at The Burger Joint on Valencia, then back to pick up our bags and head to the bus station for our ride to Portland to meet Patti Thompson...

Love to one and all!
S & J
xxxxx

A little bit country, a little bit rock and roll.

Aha! I have my hands on someone's laptop (ooer) and so am free to blog to my heart's content, at least for today (or until Jo's kicks me off to check her emails).

So, where was I? I was a little brusque about Mexico City, so I'll pad that out a bit. As I mentioned, the hostel was a little noisy, but it also had a very strange room arrangement in that instead of regular doors they had mirrored sliding patio style doors. You can imagine what this does to your body image after a few late nights and burritos to constantly be faced with a warts n'all full body shot of yourself. Yikes....so I've been holding my stomach in alot more lately...i don't think my amazing masterplan to become lithe and tanned has quite come to fruition, but I am hoping that I haven't actually gained too much (though there's definitely a bit of a belly there these days!). And LA, irritatingly, doesn't have quite so many fat people to stand next to.

Anyway, we headed off to the airport to catch our flight to New Orleans only to discover that it had been delayed by 2 hours. Kindly they gave us a free breakfast voucher and off we toddled to feast upon delights. We had to go to a particular airport restaurant called 'Freedom', although I was rather intrigued by the elegantly named 'Flaps' bar & grill, where Jo indulged in the 'Hangover Tortilla' which contained vast amounts of chilli and I had something which resembled and tasted of tortilla chips cooked in tar. I will let you imagine the effect on our guts...

Our flight was via Dallas where I encountered the compulsory grumpy immigration officer (I don't think they like the word 'archaeologist') and Jo met grumpy baggage/security men. Somehow they had managed to rip the waist support off my rucksack and the union jack patch from Jo's, but I suppose it could be worse. Finally, several hours after we were due, we made it to New Orleans, found our bags, caught the bus into town, and yomped through the French Quarter to our hotel - 'A Creole House' - which apparently is right next door to Sting's house (he wasn't home, we looked). There we met Shane, our friendly desk man, and spent the next hour trying to help him to get his pc to work. Eventually we checked in, showered and headed around the corner for food. I, predictably, went for a 'Louisiana Sampler' of shrimp creole, jambalaya & rice & beans, whilst Jo chose the more sedate Cobb salad. Of course, when the food arrived Jo's salad was big enough to feed 4 people.

We spent the rest of the evening exploring Bourbon Street, basically it is loud, garish & tacky, had a cocktail each (also loud, garish & tacky) and slunk back to the hotel to sleep in a proper bed. The next day we wandered the French Quarter, nosed in shops, drank alot of water to counteract the heat & humidity, hid from thunderstorms and stuffed ourselves with oyster po'boys & crawfish pie. We also solved our luggage dilemma by buying a fabulous wheelie suitcase made from rather colourful chilli patterned material, which is now packed with our winter clothes from South America. With a free evening ahead of us we asked Shane to recommend a decent gay bar (most of those we'd seen seemed to be blasting 'You make me feel mighty real' or playing drag queen bingo, and it was a little too warm for that) and he directed us to The Golden Lantern. The Goldern Lantern almost epitomises the typical US bar - small, slightly dingy, a barman, half a dozen customers drinking beer & smoking, all watching tv...the main difference was that instead of sport they were watching 'Queer As Folk'. Jo & I were the only women, excepting one woman of indeterminate age who looked as if she'd been drinking continuously for the last 57 years (apart from pauses to do home hairdye jobs). Soon enough I'd bonded with Dave, the barman, who shared a love of Cagney & Lacey and we were then engaged in deep conversation with some of the locals who had been rehearsing their play about the Stonewall Riots, in particular a 74 year old Southern gent called Winston who got to end the play by breaking a beer bottle over a cop's head. How exciting!

We crawled back to the hotel at 4am and slept until 2pm the next day, only to venture out for food and then watch tv until midnight.

Up at 5.30am the next day for our flight to LA, again via Dallas. got to the airport to be informed that our flight had been delayed by 2 hours. Clearly American Airlines have a theme going on. When we finally got to check in we were informed that this meant we would miss our Dallas connection, so, instead of arriving in LA at 11am, we would have to travel via Dallas, then Las Vegas and arrive in LA at 4.30pm. Nice. So that's what we did, but it gave me an opportunity to see Las Vegas airport and decide I didn't really want to stay there, particularly after I noticed a rather rotund lady in a very pink Celine Dion concert t-shirt...

Once at LAX we were met by Jo's friend Chris who had very kindly offered us a room at his apartment. So we've spent the last 3 days exploring Los Angeles and doing vast amounts of walking. Walking is a fairly alien concept in LA, so this means we often have the pavements to ourselves, and the car drivers seem so astonished to see you they very politely let you cross the road ahead of them. Sunday Chris drove us to Santa Monica to do some shopping and walk along the pier, then on Sunday night we went to Hollywood to check out the Walk of Fame & Mann's Chinese Theatre (where they have all the famous foot & hand prints). Monday Chris drove us to Beverley Hills and we proceeded to mooch for 8 hours along Sunset & Hollywood, where I spent quite alot of money on clothes, bought our bus tickets for the rest of our USA travels and then headed home for dinner with Chris & his mum. Tuesday was back to Beverley Hills and then a wander along Melrose Avenue, checking out all the vintage clothes shops, down to the farmer's market (where I, on the weak excuse of having a sunburnt nose, bought a rather fine straw "redneck" hat - I'm pretty sure I'll look back on it in a few months and cringe, but right now I love it) & The Grove (fancy new shopping area), a quick look at the Holocaust Memorial, down to Le Brea tarpits to enjoy the wafts of liquid asphalt & admire the model mammoths, and then back to Chris's office (a mere 8 hours again). Out for dinner & a DVD last night. All very civilised.

Today I think Chris is taking us to the Hollywood Hills, and tonight we have our first Greyhound bus trip to San Francisco. I'll blog again from there!

love to one and all...
S & J
xxxxxx

Bet you were wondering where we were...

Sorry for the gap between posts. This has been caused by a variety of factors (including incredibly expensive internet cafes in the USA), but now I have a few minutes on a free public library pc so will attempt to give you a brief resume of our last few days.

You last heard from us in Ecuador, where we spent a couple of days before having to head back to Lima to catch a plane to Mexico. Well, we got back to our hostel in Lima at about midnight and promptly decided to celebrate my birthday by drinking half a bottle of some $3 Ecuadorian moonshine. As you can imagine it got fairly raucous, but a good time was had by all. Until we had to get up at 7am to get the taxi to the airport. Then Mexico City...

Our hostel, though in a great location for sightseeing, was also right behind several bars that prided themselves on their nightly live bands. Trust me, until you've heard The Smiths covered by a Spanish speaking band, you haven't lived. Luckily Jo & I still had our earplugs and managed to get some sleep, despite our mattresses being inflatable & our pillows giving us coughing and sneezing fits. And we discovered that you cannot get a decent margarita for love nor money in Mexico, although we did have the most fantastic meal to celebrate my birthday properly (but of course!).

Gotta dash 'cos you only get a few minutes on these machines, but will try to update soon with tales of New Orleans...

lots of love
S & J
xxxxx

And the day started so well...

This morning Jo & I both woke up feeling some serious travel fatigue - Jo was very grumpy and wishing celestial vegeance upon the Lima cab driver who ripped us off yesterday, whilst I simply had a rotten cold. So we decided we would head out for breakfast and then spend the morning at the Turkish baths advertised at out hostel. Breakfast was great, although a cheeses toastie, milky coffee & a huge omlette are probably not too good for the arteries, and the baths turned out to be very close by. It was fantastic - we had the whole place to ourselves and spent a very relaxing 3 hours flitting between the swimming pool, sauna, steam room and the spa pool, ending with a hot shower and a bowl of soup, all for the grand price of US$13.50. I am seriously considering building a sauna when we get to NZ, it is just so ludricrously relaxing...and my skin now feels as soft as a baby's bum! It certainly compensated for yesterday's exposure to very loud Andean music.

Last night we had elected, through sheer laziness, to eat on the roof terrace at our hostel - a 3 course meal for US$4.50 each can't be bad we thought. But we forgot about the live music they had promised. So at about 8.00pm, just as my beer was starting to kick in, up popped a bunch of geezers in ponchos who proceeded to blast our ears with panpipes, drums, flutes & guitars of varying sizes. As if that wasn't traumatic enough (although not as traumatic as hearing a panpipe cover version of 'Hotel California' in Cusco), we were then emotionally scarred further by the compulsory middle-aged, geography teacher-esque American women (tapered jeans, dangly earrings & walking sandals styleee) who started jiggy like banshees with the Ecuadorian musicians. At one point I was almost certain that a conga was on the cards! Luckily my finest death stare seemed to keep that at bay, although the insistent bugger with the hat demanded a dollar from us for the 'entertainment'. I promptly went to bed and passed out.

Following our trip to the sauna Jo & I decided to surf the internet for a while, as we calculated our pennypinching spending so far had left us enough dosh for a fancy trip to one of the glitzier hotels in Vegas (we're thinking the Luxor...that's how relaxed I am getting!) and wanted to check out our options, only to be faced with the news of the London bombings. Luckily I think everyone we know who may have been commuting through that part of London is okay. Guess those gits were waiting to see if we got the Olympics...fuckers...Don't really know what else to say about it except that I hope no one has had a loved one involved and I wish these Al Qaeda blokes would get the hang of the fact that bombing does not work. Arseholes.

On that un-cheery note, I will end this entry. Off to Lima for the night tomorrow, then Mexico City for 4 days before we finally hit the USA.

Love to one & all
S & J

A short walk part 2

Sunday July 3rd: Deep joy - a 4am wake up call, and not even coca tea to lure us out of bed. So in the pitch black we stumbled off to use the facilities and eat our final hearty breakfast. Luckily the mysterious critter that Jo had caught in her torch beam the night before (no idea what it was but it was in the undergrowth right behind our tent and it's eyes were about 4 inches apart, which was enough to drive me straight into the tent) had decided to spare us, and we were ready for the off at 5.15am. A quick queue at the checkpoint and we were back on the trail and yomping towards Macchu Picchu at high speed, using torches to see where the hell we were going (Jo tells me I was better off not being able to see as she reckons some bits were a bit dodgy). The morning's hiking was pretty straightforward, the only hassle was a bunch of ridiculously steep steps quite near MP itself, and we were at the site after a couple of hours. After a quick break to get our passports stamped we were taken on a guided tour of the whole site, which is very pretty, including sharing a staircase with a passing llama (not attractive from behind at close quarters). Then, absolutely knackered & hungry we headed into Aguas Calientes for food and a quick mooch about before collecting our kit from the porters and heading back to Cusco on the train.

For some unknown reason the train journey back to Cusco takes 4.5 hours, and the seating is arranged with Peruvians in mind, ie sod all leg room. And to say that the "backpacker train" smells more than a little ripe would be quite an understatement...but luck would have it we overheard someone saying that you could get off the train at the penultimate stop and catch a bus for 5 soles (about US$1.75) which only took 15 minutes to get to the centre of Cusco, as opposed to another hour on the train. Guess which option we went for?

So we were back at our hostel by 7.30pm, and I was in the shower by 7.45pm. Bliss. A good night's sleep was only marred by the odd positioning of a skylight right above my bed...interesting.

As Catherine told me, I loved the Inca Trail. I'd do it again like a shot. If you like the outdoors, exercise and lots of fresh air in a gorgeous environment, then you should do it. It is great!!!

Then we headed to Lima, another overnight bus trip, for a quick stop over and a visit to the NZ honorary consul to sort out some very tedious paperwork that would allow Jo's folks to recieve our worldly goods when they arrive in NZ next week. He was a very nice man called Alfonso who used to work for the NZ dairy board and was very proud of his medal from the Queen for services to NZ. That accomplished I insisted on visiting a local fancy supermarket to examine their range of condiments, where we happened to buy crisps, cakes and wine, and headed back to our hostel for a room disco (the joy of mp3 players!) and I got a bit squiffy. Lima is okay, but not terribly exciting, so it was no hardship when we left this morning. Except that we got ripped off by the taxi driver that took us to the airport...and when we checked in we discovered that Lan Airlines had generously cancelled all our bookings because we skipped the flight to La Paz (again, we had been told this in Cusco but rebooked them all - let's hope they don't repeat the process on Friday). So we rebooked and reconfirmed them all over again. The flight to Quito was uneventful, except for the spectacular views of snowcapped mountains & volcanoes, and the fact that I seem to have developed a cold. Also the Peruvian ground staff at Lima Airport seemed to be fascinated by my height and kept telling me I was very tall (Jo was told she was very beautiful by the passport man...ooer).

So now we are in Ecuador, Jo is tired and I am snotty, but aside from that its all good. Only a week left in South/Central America then its off to the good ole US of A. Cool...

Bye for now!
S

A short walk in the Peruvian Andes...

We made it! Now safely esconced in a hostel in Lima for the night (off to Ecuador tomorrow) I am suitably refreshed and able to tell tall tales of our 4 days yomping the Inca Trail -

Thursday 30th June: Although the trek company weren´t due to collect us until 5.30am I managed to wake up at about 3am with an attack of nerves. When we went to pay the remainder of our trek fees they gave us a copy of their advisory notes and my eyes refused to see anything except the section concerning 'steep drops', and so I became convinced that at some point I would have to edge my way across very dubious precipices or cliff edges. At almost exactly 5.30am we were collected, whizzed about Cusco picking up our fellow trekkers, and headed off to the start of the trail at Ollantaytambo (where, as sagely advised by Mrs Funnell, we bought ourselves walking sticks). Once across the river some introductions were made and our group consisted of Jo & I, Mo & Amanda (USA), Gonneke - pronounced like Monica - & Bart (Holland), Jo & Tom (UK), Kirsten & Anka (Germany), Louis & Jessica (Canada) and Steph (Australia), plus Leo & Emilio (our guides) and 22 porters. The first day of trekking was fairly straightforward, a gentle stroll along the river with the occassional uphill bit, the odd Inca ruin and alot of chit chat amongst the group. The first surprise came in the form of lunch. Most of us were expecting a sandwich, a piece of fruit and a swig of pop, but instead we got a full 3 course sit down lunch with tea (including the seeming Peruvian standard of rice, potato & bread). Having stuffed ourselves we staggered onwards until we reached our overnight campsite about 15km along the track, where we discovered that the porters had already set up the tents and were getting an afternoon tea ready of bread, popcorn, biscuits & more tea...and were then told dinner would be served at 7pm! This was another 3 course extravaganza, after which we drifted off to our tents and bed (but not before admiring the stunning night sky & shooting stars).

Friday 1st July: Wake up call at 6am, having slept surprisingly well by developing a technique of entirely disappearing inside my sleeping bag so that no part of me was exposed to chill air and by using very sturdy earplugs (Jo, despite the same brand of earplug was awoken by a donkey grazing right behind the tent), a hot cup of tea and then off to use the 'facilities' as Leo insisted on calling them. Unfortunately, during the night almost all the facilities had been used by people with loose bowels and very poor aim, so the whole group ended up using the same loo. After a big breakfast of pancakes, tea & toast, we headed off to start the infamous day 2 - 9km up hill to a height of 4200m, followed by 3km down steps to our campsite. An indicator of the harshness of day 2 is that the day´s walking is due to finish at 2.30pm! It was horrible. Jo´s legs decided they´d had enough at about 10.30am (we started at 7.30am), and a slow painful slog up the remainder of the hill/mountain ensued. Mo & I decided to keep Jo company - starting a trend of slow & chatty hiking - and thanks to Emilio, our assistant guide, we all made it. Emilio devised a great tactic of catching up with us, checking we were okay, having a doze in the sunshine for 30mins, and then repeating the process all over again, and again...the man was a genius. When we got to the summit, after a mere 5 hours (including a break for elevenses) there was an obligatory group photo and the realisation that Kirsten was having trouble with the altitude and feeling extremely unwell - luckily Emilio came to the rescue again and got her down the 3km of steps to camp. The rest of us just had to slog it out ourselves, but again chit chat helped. As you can imagine the evening consisted of food (accompanied by pisco tea - yum) and sleep, and not much else. But we had the most fabulous view of the mountains in front of us, and a rather unnerving view of the hill behind the campsite we had to climb the next morning.

Saturday 2nd July: Another 6am start, breakfast of omelettes, hot chocolate, bread & jam, and then the walking started at 7.30am. Considering the previous day´s exertions I felt surprisingly okay and the 2 hour trek up the steep hill and steps went by fairly easily. The rest of the day was up hill and down dale, visiting ruins & walking through beautiful cloud forest until we reached our lunch tent and stuffed ourselves once again. I also used one of the world´s most spectacular loos with a terrific view across the Andes, although the loo itself was simply a rectangle cut into a wooden floor. We had been told that the afternoon would consist of approximately 3 hours of stomping down 2000 rough cut stone steps and through cloud forest and the reputation of our chatting and trekking technique was becoming legend. So the afternoon was spent forming the 'Ladies Who Trek' society - Mo, Amanda, Gonneke, Jo, Steph, Jo & I spent a very fun few hours gossiping, sniggering and guffawing our way along the trail, stopping as often as we felt to admire the views, muttering about the boy racers who insisted on jogging past, and holding my hand on the scary steep bits (ie when some dumbass tour group decides to stop on the very dodgy stone stairs with no railings). Leo I think got a little impatient as he ended up backtracking to find us and kept giving us very peculiar looks every time we stopped to chat. But we all decided it was the best day of the trek and vowed friendship thereafter. When we finally reached camp I went on a beer run at the nearby youth hostel, and it was probably one of the best beers I have ever had! By this point my boots had to be double bagged as they smelt sooo bad....

Anyway, I´ve used up all my internet time, so I´ll continue tomorrow.

Adios!

Make yourselves comfortable, this may take some time

As long as I can bear this keyboard, I am in a very basic internet cafe in Cusco, Peru, and most of the keys are so worn I can't see alot of the letters, I'm going to make a valiant effort to recall our adventures since Santiago (and maybe some flashbacks from before). So it may be a long blog today - hope you don't mind.

A quick aside - if in Buenos Aires visit the "Casa de Empanadas" on Hipolyte Yrigoyen - it's only open during the day, but does every variety of empanada you could hope for and you order in quantity!

So, we left a slightly damp Santiago and headed down to the bus station to hop on the bus to Arica on the Chile-Peru border. The bus trip itself was fairly uneventful, 30 hours of strange 'in-flight' food (cold chicken & rice, bread rolls, biscuits, tepid beef with rice etc) videos, mainly in Spanish, but it's surprising how little of the dialogue you actually have to understand when you are watching most of them, horrible music (eg the Grease soundtrack) and dodgy heavy metal blokes taking our photos with their phone cameras - doubtless they wanted to send my death stare to their pals. Some of the videos were of Chilean comedy, no doubt very amusing, but if it was anything like the sketch of the man who had to take all his clothes off to get a picture on his new tv, maybe it wasn´t. Anyway, we arrived in Arica at about 2pm and headed off to the hostel we had emailed to reserve a room. This was pleasant enough little place run by a French-Chilean couple quite near the centre of town, who cheerfully told us that they had no rooms available because there was a conference on. In fact there were no rooms available anywhere in Arica. I guess we must have looked a little distraught because they took pity on us and let us stay in one of their 'spare' rooms. We celebrated by going out and scoffing ice-cream, pizza, beer & pisco sours (local brew combined with lemon juice & sugar), suffice to say we both were a little merry - on our return to the hotel Jo cheerfully announced her pisco consumption to the hoteliers and they were most concerned for her welfare the next morning!

We left Arica and headed across the border to Tacna, having been sold a ticket that would take us to Arequipa and then onto Cusco, and got on yet another bus. This time we had movies, snacks & on bus bingo (?!?!). Of course we arrived in Arequipa a little late, 2 hours over schedule, but that left us 30 minutes before our bus to Cusco. Or so we thought...Turns out we, along with 12 other passengers, had been told there was no bus to Cusco because the road was closed, or that was the story the man from the bus company was sticking to. After much argument he gave us all our money back and we booked ourselves on a different bus that was leaving for Cusco at 8.45am the next morning, which would get us there in time for the Inca festival of Inti Raymi. This meant we all spent the night in the hostel that was built into the bus station. I´ll keep it brief - no hot water, station announcements starting at 6am, and windows that looked over the ticket desks...and to make it worse they played 'Lady in Red´twice in a row - once in English & then in Spanish! Thanks.

But we made it onto the Cusco bus. Jo & I had seats that seemed to have some kind of suspension system that involved them being not quite attached to the floor, not that anyone else had. We then discovered that the reason our previous bus had been cancelled was because the main road to Cusco had been blocked (literally, with big rocks) by local strikers, so we took the 'other' road. This consisted of 8 hours on a dirt road full of potholes, and was possibly one of the most bone-shaking experiences of my life. Let´s hope it works like one of those slendertone machines eh? We were also sitting behind a Peruvian American family whose kids didn´t stop whining the whole way, had a dad who insisted on waving at everyone we went past (they generally stared at him like he was a bit simple), and, when he took off his baseball cap, gave us a close up of his scabby sunburnt baldy head. And I developed a cracker of a headache thanks to the altitude, constant jiggling and diesel fumes. At least I didn´t barf like one of our fellow strandees, Sven, but that may have been caused by him sitting next to one of the annoying kids. We saw him this morning and he seems alot better. Oh and the on board loo turned into something like "The Perfect Storm" on the bumpy road, providing a serious risk of a backwash bidet if you were fool enough to use it. It really was a test of the thigh muscles!

Finally reached Cusco at 9pm last night, found our hostel (who have accidentally given us a big room with double bed as they thought I was going to be a bloke - don't even bother with the obvious jokes), had some coca tea & crashed out. This morning it was up & at 'em for Inti Raymi, a huge festival of dancers etc pretending to be Incas, which starts in the main square & then heads up to the nearby Inca ruins (apparently pronounced "sexywoman", I kid you not) where they do much of the same except they also light some fires and sacrifice a llama (guess what they´ll be having for tea tonight? BBq´d llama anyone?). The place was absolutely heaving and we stood on some stone steps for free rather than cough up the US$120 they wanted for a crappy plastic seat. This also meant we got to leave when we´d had enough of their llama frolicking and head back into town for tea & a piece of lemon pie (which tasted strangely of seafood). So the rest of tonight will be spent having a decent meal, dealing with our pink sunburnt faces and drinking more coca tea to get rid of the headaches.

But I´d still rather be here than at work! Ho ho ho!

Hope you are all okay, and you in the UK are enjoying the sunny weather. Thank you for all the emails!

S & J

Feliz Dia del Papa

So today we leave Santiago having spent father's day wandering the street markets.

Having been told not to expect much from Santiago, I have been pleasantly surprised. The people seem friendly (except for the man from LAN at the airport) and we've had a pretty good time! The weather was good yesterday so that helped too.

It's been one of those classics where your accomodation is so rough that you go out and about just to not be in your room (which smells of a combination of damp, bleach, stinky feet and the various things we've been trying to cover the smell with). Furnished, in this case, means that there is a bed in the room and in spite of booking ahead, they still didn't seem to be expecting us so we appear to have received the worst mattress in the world. In fact it might have been better on the floor but for the damp - no roll together.

The shower is a work of patience, you have to turn the hot tap approximately half way and leave it to run for 5-10 minutes for the "24 hr hot water" to appear. The art of mixing is best left to aspiring DJ's so my shower consisted of either boiling hot or freezing cold alternately every 3-4 minutes. Apparently you do get used to it... I'd just rather smell, at least it covers the bedroom stench! One of the hostel workers kindly informs me that ths is his preferred method - eeewwwww yuk!

Father's day certainly seems to be a treat here. There were Oohmpah bands (the local police force) and all variety of street entertainers including a family of one man drummers, you knoiw the ones where they flick their legs and it crashes the cymbals, with a big drum on their backs. To add to their show, they have a habit of spinning furiously. The youngest member (all of about 5 yrs) put on the best show however when he did a strip tease in front of a teenage girl. You could see the jealously in his older brothers' faces!

The museums were pretty cool too. We visited 2: the Pre-Colombian art which has a great gold exhibition and one we stumbled across whilst walking home, combined Art and Archaeology.

Soo we're off to Arica now, 30 hours by bus, where we'll spend the night and head over the border into Peru on the 22nd for another 20 hours to Cusco... At least it's warm in Arica eh?

Ciao!

J & S XXX

A slight change of plan

Just a quick update as I think we will be incommunicado for the next few days...how very mysterious!

We attempted to cut our flight to La Paz (via Arica) short by asking the airline if we could simply get off in Arica instead of carrying on to La Paz. Yes, of course you can, but it'll cost you US$75 each. Thanks. Thanks alot. So, after some rather frantic investigation we have discovered that it will be cheaper for us to catch a bus to Arica, stay a night there, and then catch another bus to Cusco. So LanChile can shove their flight.

Should be in Cusco on the 23rd.

Santiago is small and not very exciting, and our hostel is a bit basic (no heating and our room smells of a heady combination of disinfectant & mould), but the museum is free today and I've spotted a funky looking French restaurant called 'Les Assassins', so that's that sorted. Off for breakfast now.

love
S & J

Anyone got a spare artery?

I wrote a witty and concise entry for this blog this morning, but under pressure to get off the internet so one of the other guests could use it I managed to delete it. So, if this entry is shoddy, you'll know it's because the muse has left me. Then again it might have improved over the course of the day.

A couple of quick asides -

1. We did not book a private room on the bus to Buenos Aires, we had a private room booked when we got here. And very lovely it is too, I can heartily recommend the Portal del Sur hotel-hostel if you are ever visiting Buenos Aires.
2. In my previous post I meant to say "the water in the toilet going the wrong way round", as it does in the southern hemisphere.

So... we packed up our rucksacks and headed to the bus station in Foz do Iguacu, some of our belongings still distinctly damp, and bought ourselves a couple of $40 tickets to Buenos Aires. Little did we know that this got us onto the luxury bus. If you ever head this way I would recommend these buses - huge business class size fully reclining seats, 3 free movies, dinner with a glass of champagne, after dinner brandy and breakfast! The only drawback was that breakfast consisted of incredibly sweet biscuits and coffee that tasted of tar tempered with liquorice (Jo discreetly flushed ours down the sink). I also managed to almost lose my passport in the loo, luckily Jo found it and returned it to me safe and sound. Anyway, we arrived in BA at 7am and hopped in a taxi to our hotel, which turns out to be a very tastefully converted old colonial house (marble staircase, beautiful art deco ironwork etc), and our room which is up in the attic & positively luxurious compared to our last couple of hostels, where we promptly fell asleep for 3 hours.

Our exploration of Buenos Aires so far has been slightly limited thanks to the very wintery weather - horizontal driving rain, a bit like November in Amsterdam or Liverpool - but, of course I have managed to eat vast amounts. Argentina, being known for its steak & thanks to a very healthy exchange rate between the peso & the US dollar, is a very cheap place to eat. Last night Jo & I took advantage of a 39 peso set meal for two offer (approximately US$15) that provided us with water, wine, empanadas (sort of cornish pasty thing), bread, salad, 2 steaks, 2 hunks of chicken, black pudding, chorizo, sweetbread (strangely a bit like liver), tripe (ugh...and chewy), chips & dessert. We didn't manage dessert. And everything is seasoned with salt, heavily. So, if any of you do have any spare arteries I think I may need one. Today we went for something vegetarian instead (and a couple of bottles of wine that I picked up from the local supermarket). Another alternative are the local 'Aphrodisiac Restaurants' where they serve suggestively named meals in an atmosphere of red lighting, soft music, erotic sculpture and live recitals of saucy poetry - I am not making this up, I found it in a guide book (admittedly the same guide book that lists swingers clubs!?!?) - I can't imagine anything less appetising. In fact it's making me a little queasy now...

Hopefully over the next couple of days the weather will improve and we'll get out a bit more. I particularly want to visit the Evita Museum, which sounds immenely camp, and the cemetery at Recoleta. Jo is taking some Spanish lessons, so with luck I can let her do all the hard stuff on the talking front. Oh, and some tango of course.

Going to skeddadle now and let someone else use the internet. love to one and all.

S

Today we have been mostly wearing waterproof ponchos

Having escaped the smog and sheer sweatiness of Rio, Jo & I headed south to Foz do Iguaçu and the UNESCO protected waterfalls and national park. We passed a surprisingly comfortable 24 hour bus trip to get here (despite various seat changes & my nifty trick of dropping almost all our cash and our credit cards down the side of my seat - much wide eyed panic and swearing ensued until it was found and recovered, plus I did hear someone mutter something about "tourists"). But we made it to the youth hostel just outside town, which Jo dislikes and I must say it does smell slightly of damp, dropped off our stuff and headed off to the Brazilian side of the waterfalls for a spot of sightseeing.

By gum, they are impressive! A definite recommendation to anyone heading out this way. Foolishly I wore my glasses, but now we have many amusing photos of me squinting through very foggy lenses, alongside a few of racoons and various critters. Back at the hostel I sampled the local brew and we partook of the cheapo cheapo buffet (I managed to drop some chips in the gravy, but no one seemed to care) and took ourselves away to bed. Alas, we are having to endure our only stint of dormitory accommodation and I can confirm that I am definitely getting too old for this. Listening to someone else breathe who isn´t your significant other is just weird. But it has its advantages in the form of Josephine, our dutch room mate, who has travelled fairly extensively and is a font of information.

So, this morning, despite the thunderstorm, we headed off to the Argentinian side of the waterfalls (they are on the border of Paraguay, Brazil & Argentina), stopping off to buy waterproff raincapes on the way. Fabulous! You can spend the whole day getting seriously up close & personal with huge waterfalls. Great stuff. We´d also booked onto the 40 minute boat trip, but had been warned that it was soggy, so we put our waterproofs to the test & put our shoes in plastic bags and set off. Some unsuspecting folk seemed to be completely unaware that the joy of this boat trip is that they actually go into the waterfalls. Basically it has a similar effect as being hosed down by the fire brigade - I confess I laughed maniacally throughout the whole thing, but I can now testify to the water repellent abilities of Hema´s waterproof trousers! Delightful though the waterfalls are, after 6 hours in the pouring rain perhaps next time we´ll visit during summer.

Oh yeah, I also water going the round way round in the loo for the first time. Jo wasn´t quite as excited by this as me - strange girl.

Tomorrow it´s the bus to Buenos Aires - only 17 hours, easy!

keep on truckin´

S