The art of being lost - steve_stamp
This blog will hopefully capture some of the most interesting sights, stories and sketches as we wander the Earth in a state of linguistic paralysis and general confusion.
Enjoy.

Newborn Gazelle
London, United Kingdom
I felt like a newborn gazelle as I walked towards the train station with my backpack. I think I may have packed a few too many items... as I wobbled my way down the hill on legs that suddenly felt even skinnier than usual I was trying to work out where I may have gone wrong. After much debate I decided to take a Pacsafe (one of those ridiculous metal nets that goes over your bag) - mainly because I got offered one for a tenner - maybe that was a bad idea? I like to think I have been pretty good in terms of not taking anything unneccessary. Ok, so a few people laughed at the toothbrush cover and its fair to say that pyjama bottoms are not ESSENTIAL items but they don't weigh much... haha I think it's fair to say I am not a proper traveller just yet- I do have a digital watch though.
Off to China in a couple of hours! Woohoo!
written by  steve_stamp on April 1, 2009 from London, United Kingdom
from the travel blog: The art of being lost

Beijing and the art of deception
Beijing, China
We missed our flight. We died a little bit inside. We went home. We came back. We got an upgrade! Upgrades seem to be reserved for the rich or the unlucky - suddenly everything was great and before I'd even had time to finish watching my third film on the (very spacious) plane we were bumbling our way onto a bus in Beijing!
Beijing is fucking busy and a bit intimidating at first. The stream of cars, bikes and buses seemed completely unreasonable and we decided to get a tuctuc to the hostel to avoid adding to the manic roadrage around us. Then we decided to get out of the tuctuc and into a taxi because it became apparent that the driver was completely insane. And he hadn't even started driving! Incidentally, this was not the last crazy tuctuc driver we encountered in our first day in Beijing, we had as funny a near death experience as you could hope for on the way to the Forbidden City, but you will have to watch the video I shot to fully appreciate how driving towards an oncoming bus on the wrong side of the road can be funny.
The funniest part of the day, and the part which reflects what I suspect is an annoyingly large part of the Beijing experience was meeting our first friend! A Chinese art student spotted us looking lost and suggested that we go with him to an art gallery where we could see some of his work (which was very impressive!). It was suspiciously uncomfortable when we decided we weren't going to buy anything, but wasn't until we got back to our hostel that we spotted a large notice stuck to every bathroom door warning travellers not to be fooled by people claiming to be art students and offering to take you to their gallery. What a twat. I thought Alan wasn't a very Chinese name...
written by  steve_stamp on April 2, 2009 from Beijing, China
from the travel blog: The art of being lost

Leaving Beijing
Beijing, China
I really liked Beijing, once you figure out the subway it's not as big as it seems and there are a few amazing places to go. The trouble is that anything ancient or traditional suffers from a swarm of tourists and while high walls attempt to block out the intrusion of industry, the rapidly developing city is difficult to escape.
Waiting in traffic today we had the pleasure of witnessing our driver clear his throat loudly and proceed to open the door, spit, close the door and drive on casually. This is something I am becoming used to now - to be fair they probably think my use of handkerchief is nasty. They'd probably be right.
We have been a bit unlucky with timing which meant that a lot of temples have been closed. I don't really care. The Summer Palace is still by far the most beautiful part of Beijing that we discovered. The huge lake is busy with boats and is surrounded by various temples, halls and palaces which are well worth a look. The gardens are pretty extensive and you may even be lucky enough to stumble onto silence. We found ourselves watching an old man doing tai chi and it was one of the best Beijing moments so far.
We didn't do well with the Bejing nightlife but we did attempt a big night out (on a Monday - bad idea) with a Malaysiuan guy we met at the hostel. He looked about 15 but was actually 30 and went by the wonderfully alliterative name of Tony Ting. We had been joking in the hostel bar that a large Canadian girl who was celebrating her birthday might like to "smash" Tony. In the taxi on the way out, Tony dropped one of the best quotes so far:
"If tonight go well, you will smash!"
You probably had to be there but I was actually crying.
written by  steve_stamp on April 9, 2009 from Beijing, China
from the travel blog: The art of being lost

How not to get a train
Xi'an, China
Here is an interesting tale - the moral is never to do anything with a hangover. Essentially what you need to know is that I bought a ticket first thing one morning (even before my hostel fry up) and that I was told about two different trains, details of which were scribbled on a piece of paper. Realising that the first train was full, the ticket seller turned over the paper and wrote details of the second train on the other side - I bought a ticket and was happy.
Now, I assumed that the earlier train had no space and therefore I was put onto the one after. Logical no? No. I got to the train station at 19.40, well in advance of my 21.04 train, but strangely it seemed to be boarding. More strange was that I seemed to be one of only two people actually getting the train... and the other person was running. So I ran too. I sprprinted in fact. Next thing I hear a bell ringing and realise that I have to get on the train despite being about 4 carriages short of my bed. A few miserable minutes of sweating my way through narrow, crowded corridors and pissing off entire carriages at a time, I found my bed and collapsed onto it spectacularly in front of five evidently amused chinese men. I took the piece of paper out and looked at the other side. 19.45. Oh well, at least there was no waiting around...
I spent the next 14 hours trying to Pacsafe my bag and get a decent nights sleep without offending the guys around me. I think I managed it because the next morning I was well slept and chatting to a couple of guys from Xian (Xianese?) about how bad we were at speaking each others language:
Me: My Chinese very bad.
Xianese man: My English very bad.
We laugh.
written by  steve_stamp on April 11, 2009 from Xi'an, China

Shanghai
Shanghai, China
My first day in Shanghai was the first time I got goosebumps from a city skyline. The hostel was right next to the Bund and as you emerge onto it you come face to face with the Oriental Pearl TV tower and the other spectacular erections (haa) on the other side of the Huangpu river.
I walked around aimlessly and found myself in Peoples Park where I came across one of the most bizarre scenes of the trip so far. Groups of people were gathered in the park looking at lots of pieces of paper. I got talking to some English students (there is a place called English Corner where all the students hang around trying to practice their English) and they explained that these pieces of paper contained detailed descriptions of people who are trying to get married – or more accurately who the parents are trying to get married! Many were already deep in discussion with potential matches (or their parents) and I was completely shocked, not just by the Lonely Hearts pages coming to life in front of my eyes but by the sheer number of people who were involved in the process!
I was invited by my new student friends to a tea ceremony – which I was obviously slightly suspicious of. I told them that I didn’t have much money and some of them even offered to chip in for me, I thought fuck it – this is an opportunity to see a traditional tea ceremony with a group of very funny English translators and even if it was a scam – I supposed that is all part of the experience! So for the next hour or so I drank a few different teas and watched as cups were poured over a little statue of what looked like a frog but was actually the God of tea.
The Old Town in Shanghai sounded too good to miss considering most of it seemed to be a sprawling mass of high rises and cranes on dusty building sites preparing hurriedly for the Expo in 2010. I’d read that there was a Sunday market down there so I got up early and after navigating a few construction sites and busy roads I turned onto a shabby looking street where men were fixing bicycles and colorful washing hung across narrow alleys. This was a bit more like it.
Suddenly I turned onto a street absolutely FILLED with sellers. It was a spectacular site– I held my camera by my waist and took sly (mostly shit) pictures as I strode through. There were live fish flapping around in plastic tubs, chickens being killed and plucked by the side of the road, people haggling irratically and sacks and sacks of teas, vegetables and spices- all of which appeared to have arrived by the many bikes which cluttered the scene further.
Old Street itself is busy and has a slightly disappointing faux-traditional feel to it. I did find a very exciting new snack which is basically a dumpling with soup and meat in the middle. It comes with a straw sticking out of it and is a wonderfully ingenious little thing. I ended up having two. The Yu Garden is by far the most impressive thing around the Old Town – a really amazing example of a traditional Chinese garden.
Re-united with Rago Mark after his Beijing football tournament (they came fourth for those that want to know), and also some friends we’d met in Xian who happened to end up in the same room as me in Shaghai, we decided to go and see an acrobat show. It was an amazing show although I was slightly concerned about the amount of time these youngsters must have spent balancing chandeliers on every limb and unicycling upside down on a tightrope when they should have been out having a good time.
We also led our companions across to the other side of town where I had heard about an Art Street where old factories were being converted into exhibitions for local artists. Also nearby was (supposedly) the Museum of National Security which attracted me with it’s promises of gangster paraphernalia but ultimately disappointed me with it’s not actually existing anymore. Not a good thing to admit to your friends after leading them around in the rain for half an hour but luckily the Art Street was good so I didn’t feel like a complete failure. Inspired, I spent the rest of the day taking black and white photos of bicycles and shop fronts.
The Shanghai nightlife is the best yet and without even trying we found ourselves being given free entry into a club with an open bar. We were there drinking, dancing and playing dice games with the locals until 4am and spent absolutely nothing the whole night! We ended up going back to the same place again a couple of nights later because we’d had such a good time (and because we were to lazy to find anywhere else) and although we had to pay about 8 quid entry this time, the bar was just as free and the drinking, dancing and dice just as fun.
There are some cool places around Shanghai so we decided to do a day trip to Suzhou, famously described by Marco Polo as the “Venice of the East” for its network of picturesque canals. Getting a return ticket was easy and cheap and although we were disappointed with the modern city which Suzhou has become in recent years, the traditional gardens were full of charm and the canals were worth a look. You may also be interested to know that they eat a lot of frogs here (at markets you see them in bags, alive and squashed together into a horrible orgy of squirming green bodies) so to sample the cuisine, and perhaps due to some sort of warped curiosity, I tried a bubbling hot pot of frogs with green peppers and onions. It was actually really nice except that you had to negotiate spines and skins, both of which were slightly disconcerting.
Our next stop was Hong Kong so that morning we decided to go and waste some of our remaining Chinese money on the local watch and dvd sellers. We’d had a lot of fun playing with the sellers, trying to sell them stuff back and asking for things which we knew they would sound funny repeating. Anyway, I ended up buying a pair of fake Ray Bans as my sunglasses were broken (I’ve decided that in Thailand I am going to kit myself out completely in fake designers haha) and I made one beggar very rich. The best line was from one of the sellers, who approach you, by the way, with a piece of laminated card displaying their goods, who said that he had “everything”. When I responded that we had no time he quickly retorted “I HAVE TIME!”. I asked how much and eventually got him down to 1000RMB (about a tenner) for a day which I thought was more than reasonable.
written by  steve_stamp on April 18, 2009 from Shanghai, China

Mickey Mouse and the Chungking Mansion
Hong Kong, Hong Kong
After a 20 hour train journey(!), most of which was spent sleeping, we arrived in Hong Kong! I was immediately struck by how clean everything was and, in contrast to Beijing and Shanghai, that there seemed to be no construction going on anywhere! This city was complete! After taking a trip up Victoria Peak for a full view of the city I realised why - they couldn't have squeezed in another building if they tried! High rises cover the whole area as 7 million people cram into 425 square miles.
Our hostel was an unfortunate reflection of the cities accomodation issues. We were led from the hostel (on the 13th floor of a large block of flats), which we found full in spite of our booking, to another partner hostel (also on the 13th floor in a different block which was still part of the same building..!). We were given a "twin room with ensuite" by way of an apology. What we got was something slightly bizarre. There WAS definitely a bathroom... however, what they seemed to have done is move the toilet into the shower cubical and turn the rest of the bathroom into a bedroom. There was no window and the two beds were joined in an L shape along the walls. When I asked about the internet - which was advetised on the website where I'd made this tragic booking - I was told that I would need to use the computer on the reception desk of the other hostel (in the other block)! To get revenge we decided to do this at 5am.
Anyway, we'd escaped from there and after seeing the unbelievably vast city from the hills we wandered into the Botanical and Zoological Gardens. The climate was noticeably different to that of China and huge trees and tropical plants line the streets. so you can imagine what the botanical gardens there are like. It was like walking through a greenhouse in Kew Gardens but we were outside. And there were animals! First we saw flamingos and crazy little fluorescent birds, then ring tailed lemurs,orangutans, sloths and even a massive python!
In spite of our shoddy hostel I was already slightly in love with the city and when we hit the bar scene later that night I realised this was a city living up to its own hype. There are masses of clubs and bars and although they are pricey (everything in Hong Kong costs around double what you pay in China) there are some really cool places. I ended up pickled staring lovingly out the window of a club on the 28th floor.
It is important to note that our hostel was called the Disney Deluxe (most of the hostels ended in "Deluxe") which was written in marker pen on a piece of paper and stuck outside the lift. I got the feeling that they changed the name every few weeks, probably in order to escape negative reviews. The next day, after a little walk around the Museum of History to escape the tropical rain, we got back to Disney Deluxe and were greeted by a couple of little cockroaches...! We asked for a new room but there were none available.... We'd spoken to a couple that morning who had been asked to remove their bags from their room during the day so that they could be rented out to "lovers" so we decided that settling for an extermination session with our landlord, who will forever be known as Mickey Mouse, was probably not the worst option but vowed to leave and find a better hostel for our final night.
That evening when we got home we found Mickey sleeping in the corridor outside our room! I have no idea what was going on in that 15 storey building but most of it is dodgy - it was full of Indian and African immigrants selling fake electronics and clothes by day and hash and women by night. We had one particularly horrific encounter with one of the big African ladies who sell their more than ample selves in our building. Her approach was as tempting as it was subtle, shaking her bum cheeks and clenching them while looking at us in the mirror and pouting.
After leaving the horrors of the Disney Deluxe hostel we went out into the warm, wet city and had a look around the Art Museum and walked around one of the many shopping districts. We ended up getting one of the best meals of the trip so far in a restaurant overlooking the harbour - 3 courses each and about 5 pints of chinese tea. By the time we had finished it was dark and the city was lit up in all its glory. We headed back to the mainland by ferry and headed up to the Temple Road Night Market. This is my favourite market so far - some pretty good items, very little harrassment and lots of cheap but amazing looking seafood. We didn't have room for anything after our epic feast but it was still fun to watch the huge prawns and crabs squirming around before being flung to their delicious doom.
written by  steve_stamp on April 22, 2009 from Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Bangkok
Bangkok, Thailand
I didn't have high expectations for Bangkok which is probably just as well. The heat is ridiculous and keeps you in a constant state of sticky discomfort while the city itself seems to have very little to get excited about. Until night falls... After dark Bangkok gives birth to seedy clusters of bars and shows which seem to cater mainly for bizarre sexual deviances (Cosmo - they didn't have any shows involving amputees, I checked. Soz.).
More exciting but in a very different way was the arrival of Kalleem Kalleem and Seapa D! Our group was now strong enough to take on even the most heavyhanded of ladyboys and so after another swelteringly hot day we decided to venture into the murky depths of the Bangkok scene. We drank a load of Chang beers (which say that they are 6.4% but apparently vary between 6-11%) and after wandering around being pestered by greasy little characters holding cards reading "sex show" and listing the various oral accomplishments of the girls inside their bars (some involved writing letters, some mentioned opening bottles...) we ventured up a staircase and into one of the infamous shows.
I'd had a naive idea that you bought a ticket and an audience would be sitting watching a little performance - kind of like the circus but funnier and slightly more disturbing. The reality was much more sinister and immediately it felt like we were going to be scammed from every angle. We sat down and ordered a couple of beers; In the meantime a girl had positioned herself on stage in front of us next to a basket of ping pong balls. For some reason (maybe I look like a pervert) I was given a bat... This took me completely by surprise - I had no idea there would be a bat! I assumed she would be firing them into a little basketball hoop or something. Before I had any time to consider where I was expected to be hitting these balls, she aimed and fired!
My natural response to this ridiculous attack was one of self-defence - I hit the balls straight back. At the girl. Now, I used to play table tennis as a kid but I never considered myself to be particularly gifted. Maybe it was the Chang or maybe it was just good luck but I returned each of the three balls fired with unusually devastating precision- all three hitting her in the head! Obviously we were all wetting ourselves at this amazing scene and it only got better when, fuming, she grabbed handfuls of pingpong balls from the basket and started throwing them at me! At this point our drinks arrived so I decided this was the perfect time, and excuse, to leave.
The night ended with us being invited back to the stupidly expensive penthouse apartment of some American girls who had a collection of bongs and Thai weed. They had videos of thai guys getting their names tattooed on their chests which was a bit weird but they were really funny and I left with the promise that I would get one too. I'll probably get a tribal design all over my back or an elephant on my foot or something. Not really mum.
Bored of Bangkok, the next day just felt like a repeat (although I thought I would quit while I was ahead in the ping pong)... we walked around talking in rhyme and investigating propositions with strange and confusing questions. Every bar and club just seems the same after a while and even Kao San Road (where all the travellers go) didn't really have much going on beyond a few buckets and a load of white people with dreadlocks and shell necklaces who look like they could do with going home. The best thing about Bangkok is the food- I am loving all the spicy curries and stir fries. My digestive system doesn't seem to agree but fuck you digestive system - get used to it! Finally on the overnight train down South, I was excited to be going somewhere a bit less intense.
written by  steve_stamp on April 26, 2009 from Bangkok, Thailand

Xi'an
Xi'an, China
As soon as we stepped off our soft sleeper train (which included bunk beds, tea and even slippers which were supposed to be one size fits all but actually were about a size 6) it was clear that Xian was a different world to Beijing. The architecture and markets fill the streets with the charm of traditional China and this picture of Chinese culture is framed within the vast city walls -apparently the last major city walls standing intact dontcha know?
We decided to make the most of our early start and got straight on a tour to see the Terracotta Warriors. They are pretty much as you would imagine them to be (amazing, bit dusty, etc...) but what I was definitely not expecting was to see Mr Wu - the old man who, in 1974, stumbled across the first of the warriors! I gave him my best Ni Hao and got a nod from the legend himself. It was clear that Mr Wu is a bit of an unofficial exhibit himself thesedays - our tour guide was not at all surprised to see him and he had his own chair, table and bucket to spit in. Why not.
We cycled round the city walls on a tandem bike (twas as gay as it sounds) and explored the Muslim quarter at night where lots of barbequed stuff gets eaten. The dumplings are the favourite street food so far. Last night, after a surreal experience of the Xian nightlife which I will come back to, I got 10 steamed dumplings off an old guy with a cart for a 10 rmb (a quid!).
Josh left for Beijing last night so I decided to go to the bar and see what was going on. Our hostel bar is the place to be, lots of locals come and get drunk here too. I ended up going out with an American guy who we'd met the night before and a local Chinese girl who was slightly in love with him, to a nightclub. This was interesting. The Chinese clubs are (from what I could tell) mostly seated and the guys order beers in BULK because it's cheaper. So imagine a club with bars running all around it, all covered with hundreds of bottles of beer. There was even a trough where you can put your beers on ice!
We decided the nightclub scene didn't suit us so we went to a strip of bars near our hostel where the usual kareoke and boybands could be heard. We ended up playing some game with marbles and singing Hey Jude with a guy who didn't know how to play it on the guitar. Good times.
The night train to Shanghai leaves at 9pm and gets there at 11am which means I had one more day to explore Xian. I headed for the popular tourist attractions (maybe I should stop doing that), the Bell Tower and the Drum Tower which are located right in the middle of the city. Guys fly strings of kites and the trees nearby are filled with fluttering tragedies, while the clunking machinery of a nearby contruction site filled the gaps between the "tongs" of the drums as tourists paid to have a go.
Infinitely more tranquil and spectacular is the Great Mosque which I stumbled across while weaving my way through the narrow antique market alleys in the Muslim Quarter. Although, perhaps inevitably, you pay an entrance fee, this is the kind of place that has the power to make people walk very slowly and speak very little.
written by  steve_stamp on April 10, 2009 from Xi'an, China

Ko Phi Phi
Ko Phi Phi, Thailand
Ko Phi Phi was highly recommended and when I got there it seemed to be the perfect place for a real Thailand beach experience; we were staying in a wooden shack on the beach in a bay surrounded by beautiful hills covered in dense tropical forests. I was happier than a pervert in Phuket. It is not free from the plague of tourism that we had experienced so uncomfortably in Patong and although the nightlife is much cleaner, the ladyboys and prostitutes were replaced by mindless westerners and topless twats gyrating all over everything. In spite of a run-in with a particularly meaty meat-head we had a really good few nights there dancing on the beach to weird remixes and I even went for a drunken semi clothed swim which was amazing - although the next day my trousers smelt like a harbour.
We spent a few more days in this beautiful and slightly surreal environment - one of which was spent on a tour around the two islands. This included kayaking in Maya Bay (of The Beach fame) at sunset, visiting a beach with a load of monkeys on it and some snorkelling. Snorkelling was definitely a highlight for all of us, the other three having never snorkelled before.Tropical fish filled the water with colour and the only sounds under the water were the occassional hum of a longboat going by and the tiny chomps of the bigger fish nibbling algae off rocks. I liked swimming down right next to the coral and watching everything close up as they sense danger. Hugo summed it up perfectly, saying "We had a proper Planet Earth day today."
We'd also been tempted to go and see some Muay Thai fights but had decided against it as most big fights charge a lot of money. On Phi Phi, however, we found a bar with ring in it where fighters from the local training camp would come and fight in front of the enthusiastic, bucket swilling tourists for free. We watched guys being kicked to the floor only to come back and lay out their opponent. Definitely the best fighting I have ever seen live - although I suppose I only have streetfighting outside West Kebab to compare it to...
The incredible scenery and hilarious nightlife was not enough to keep us in this most perfect tourist trap and so with Josh on a mission to Kuala Lumpar to get his credit card(!), we decided to go back to Karon Beach for some more moped adventures. After waking up itchy and looking like rasher of bacon (I assume its heat rash or maybe a reaction to too much heat and deet) I was also looking forward to some air conditioning. Mmmm.
written by  steve_stamp on May 1, 2009 from Ko Phi Phi, Thailand

After Phi Phi
Phuket, Thailand
Our second moped expedition, this time from the Karon Beach (yeah the place that was too nice before haha), was not as fruitful as the first although, with Josh gone, I had to drive one myself. After accelerating spectacularly into a hedge in front of the terrified hostel staff, I got the hang of the whole driving thing and we drove around, stopping at a few nice beaches including an exclusive resort into which we invited ourselves.
We'd spent the whole morning bodyboarding and this alongside the moped excursion did not help my heat rash. By the end of the day it was worse than ever and I knew that the tour to "James Bond Island" that we'd booked for the next day was as stupid as it was exciting. However, I'd started reading The Motorcycle Diaries and decided that physuical pain should be secondary to exploration and new experiences. Che wouldn't let a bit of heat rash get in his way. He probably wouldn't even mention it actually... Maybe I will edit this down if it looks like I might become famous. Throw in a few more intelligent reflections... nah...
Anyway, as it happens I got lucky. It ended up being a cloudy day (which eventually turned into the first thunder storm of the trip) and a large part of the day was also spent in caves, on an air conditioned bus and in the shade. In fact it turned out to be one of the best day trips so far, although obviously I won't tell Josh that. We explored a temple in a cave filled with hundreds of monkeys and bats (it was a big cave) and then got on a longtail boat to skim around Phang Nga Bay National Park which has some of the best scenery I have ever seen.
We stopped for lunch at Koh Panyee, a muslim fishing village built on stilts and were served seafood soup filled with prawns and squid, fried fish with chilli, chicken with vegetables and cashew nuts, tempura prawns... it was a feast! Once we'd eaten our fill and bought some unneccessary souvenirs we were shipped over to James Bond Island. Despite being the main feature of the tour, it was not my favourite part. The whole area is incredible and the island is just the most visited bit, with tourists arriving in a one-in, one-out fashion.
In spite of all the boats and bodies it is hard to feel anything but lucky to be there. This was particularly felt later as we were chauffeured through the Talu Island sea caves in a four person canoe! Our guide paddled us through caves so tiny that we all had to lie flat on our backs and then we would emerge into beautiful hidden lagoons where he would stop and offer us weed! I arrived back home feeling completely spoilt and, continuing the indulgence, used the remainder of the 200ml bottle of aloe vera gel that I had bought just two days before.
written by  steve_stamp on May 2, 2009 from Phuket, Thailand

Ko Tao
Ko Tao, Thailand
The next day was the wettest yet but fortunately we had arranged to spend it travelling across the country from one coast to the other - I say fortunately, actually the wild wet weather meant that our (7 hour) ferry crossing would be rough at best - possibly cancelled. With word that the ferry would be running as usual we took travel sickness tablets and boarded the small boat, lined up like sardines and smelling worse. 7 hours and a suprisingly good sleep later we woke up in Ko Tao. My favourite island in Thailand.
We chose to stay on one of the busier beaches - the white sandy stretch made only the more appealing by the picturesque bungalows and bars with beanbags and low tables that line the shores. I suddenly understood the "Beach Bars" at Big Chill. At night the relaxed pace of the island remained intact - the now familiar site of Thai guys juggling fire on the beach was best viewed from a beanbag with a beer, and later the ravers congregated at one beach bar to dance the night away while the majority of the island slept in preparation for their early morning scuba dives.
Annoyingly, we didn't have enough time to do a scuba course (the full moon party being only a few days away) so we went all out on the first night, downing beers and cocktails before moving onto the devastating buckets - amnesia and shamelessness in liquid form. I woke up lying outside the room I was sharing with Seapa (who had the key) using the tie dyed t-shirts, which we had bought especially for the full moon party, as pillows. Seapa only discovered me after driving around the island for an hour on the back of a drunk Dutch guy's moped. We met this guy, whose name is Tim, on the ferry and found him difficult to shake off - his knack for popping up in random places would become almost absurd.
We spent a very relaxed few days there, renting a quad bike for a tour of the island (didn't take long) which ended at a pool bar, aptly named "Pool Bar", which had a small pool overlooking the beautiful, quiet bay. I was slightly devastated about the missed scuba opportunity (every resort in Koh Tao is a diving school so it was difficult to forget...) - in order to satisfy my urge for marine expoloration (I just wanted to see a turtle basically) we booked a day snorkelling at the various dive sites around the island.
We were told that we could even see sharks, which was enough to convince Seapa that a day at home with his bag of weed was a better option, but at the first site I jumped in eagerly, wanting as much time in the water as possible to maximise my chances of seeing something amazing. I didn't have to wait long. I'd been looking at a card on the boat which identified various species of local fish and had admitted that I was not a big fan of barracuda (too many nature documentaries) - so it seemed slightly ironic that while the others were still donning their flippers and masks I found myself alone behind the boat and face to face with two of them, floating motionless just beneath the surface.
I froze and waited for them to move which they eventually did but as I turned around to relay my encounter to the boat I noticed another one behind me! They were everywhere! I soon got used to these harmless silver streaks and began focusing my attention on the hunt for turtles and sharks. I had been in the water for about two minutes when from the murky shallows, where the dead coral creates a sinister landscape, emerged a large Blacktip Reef Shark which I recognised from the card on the boat! I swam gently behind it, my instincts of self- preservation telling my that aggressively swimming after a shark was probably a bad idea, and gestured to Kaleem to come and see it. He didn't. Within a few moments it had disappeared out into the depths.
The rest of the day was spent in a fruitless search for turtles (sadly Koh Tao, meaning Turtle Island, now has very few turtles as their nesting areas have been turned into the aforementioned bungalows and bars) and studying the spectacular coral reefs. We limped back home exhausted, Josh with a cut on his foot from climbing up the boat after our strange captain decided to abandon us in the water with no ladder to get out and Kaleem and I sunburnt spectacularly on our backs. After almost 5 weeks travelling I am white on one side and pink as a glowstick on the other.
We spent the last night playing the dice drinking game we had learnt in China and dancing until trance music replaced any intelligable sounds from the beach bar speaker system. We would surely have our fill of that at the next stop - the full moon party at Kho Phangan.
written by  steve_stamp on May 12, 2009 from Ko Tao, Thailand

Full Moon Party
Ko Phangan, Thailand
We arrived at Ko Phangan tired and slightly confused - increasingly so after seeing our dorm which was a room full of Thai children playing Nintendo Wii on a load of hard bamboo sofas (our beds, we were told). We were assured that in a few hours the dorm would be made up and sure enough we returned later to find the place transformed from a youth centre/arcade to a more familiar dorm of bunkbeds and bulky backpacks. The bamboo bunks (which were the sofas piled one on top of the other) were an interesting touch, the novelty of which wore off almost immediately.
Marky Mark (aka Josh) and I decided that this was to be our final party on Thailand's southern islands, which had, in spite of their paradise beaches, become slightly repetitive in their offerings, and immediately bought tickets to Chiang Mai where we hoped to see a different side to Thailand. Kaleem and Seapa opted for less travelling and more beaches and although they were not entirely happy to be deprived of their parent figures it was agreed that it was better for us all to get what we wanted out of the last week.
With our plans booked and paid for all that was left was to hit the full moon party hard. There were lots of warnings about possessions being stolen and as my camera had chosen this moment to stop functioning altogether I decided to leave it in the hostel and hope for the best - theft insurance. After kitting ourselves out in our tie dyed tshirts, luminous body paint and wooden bead necklaces (when in Rome...) we made our way to the beach, stopping on the way so that the local police could give us a little cuddle.
The easiest way to describe the party is a festival on a beach. Stalls selling buckets scream at passers by - each with their own innovative sales pitch ("Fuck Bucket" was my favourite) while the bars blast music out to sea. Everywhere thousands of people dance, drink, shout, fall over, sleep. As usual we befriended people by making fools of ourselves (pretending to be on drugs, challenging the most hardcore ravers to dance-offs, etc) and danced the night away in beer fuelled bliss. We bumped into a few familiar faces from Phi Phi and Ko Tao including Tim who, in fact, we had seen in a restaurant within five minutes of arriving (I don't know how he does it) and had some funny drunken reunions.
But beer and buckets can only take you so far and by 5am, like many others, we were feeling fatigued and in need of a lift. At the far end of the beach, where it was more quiet and the sand was littered with bodies (lying down for one reason or another, ahem) we found what we needed. Food.
We all know that drunk people are not the most discerning culinary enthusiasts - as far as I'm concerned a KFC at 3am takes some beating. However, on this occasion we found something that even the Colonel himself could not have outdone. A huge fish straight off a barbeque at 5am IS the most delicious thing ever. Revitalised by this wonderful, and slightly surreal, food, we headed back into the heart of the party and didn't stop dancing until well after the sun had come up.
As it rose, the sleeping masses rose like zombies from the sand and in the light of day the glowing wristbands and bodypaint (worn by blinking, squinting wrecks whose faces expressed something in between anger and confusion) became amusingly out of place. We eventually headed back to our bamboo youth centre and managed three hours of sleep before being woken up by the usual communal commotion.
After a day of recovery, playing Call of Duty on the Wii and looking around the shops, we boarded the ferry back to the mainland and bid a hurried farewell to Seapa and Kaleem as we were gestured immediately onto a coach continuing our journey. This time heading north.
written by  steve_stamp on May 12, 2009 from Ko Phangan, Thailand

Chiang Mai
Chiang Mai, Thailand
The train up to Chaing Mai was very different to the sleeper trains we were used to and after 2 hours I could tell it wasn't going to be fun. It resembled a tram - uncomfortably upright seats, only a few carriages and a clear view of the endless track in front of us. After 5 hours I felt the unwelcome sensation of numb bum setting in. After 7 hours I was trying to sleep by resting my head on the hard plastic of the seat in front. After 12 hours we were supposed to be at Chiang Mai. 14 hours after we'd left Bangkok the tram continued to groan along. We were all aching and hungry to the point of irritation, which we barely suppressed. Worst of all, it was Josh's birthday.
The highlight of this journey was a small Thai girl, around two or three years old who was singing to her mum. For some unknown reason she sung happy birthday, which I felt, in my state of cabin feverish delirium, to be the most beautiful coincidence imaginable and it even raised a small smile and a nod of acknowledgment from Josh. We arrived just before 11pm (we left at 8.30am) and after relieving ourselves of our bags at our cheap and ridiculously nice hostel, we went out in search of all the food, drink and nightlife that we had fantasised about so extensively on the train.
We ate two main courses each and, unable to walk, asked a tuctuc driver to take us to a lively nightspot. As far as tuctucs are concerned this is pretty much the stupidest thing you can do and we found ourselves driven out to a horrific club at the edge of town where we were greeted by a collection of young girls and extortionate drink prices. We left and, somewhat disheartened, headed back to the hostel where we hoped to at least find a bar with some cheap beer (ideally a mojito for Josh as he had become slightly obsessed). This time we got lucky.
A BUCKET of mojito and a few beers later we found ourselves playing pool on a fantastically worn out and lopsided pool table for 100baht per game (to put that into perspective, a pad thai is 25baht and a beer is 50baht) with a group of really friendly Thai guys. They told us they were the house band and we promised to return on the next night at a more reasonable hour. We left drunk and feeling that we'd successfully redeemed the evenings previous failings. After a drunken leap into the pool from our 2nd story balcony (which Josh recorded but has not posted due to it's considerable coverage of my genitals) we had a long and luxurious sleep.
The next day we wandered into a nearby temple and did of bit of life admin. In spite of my best efforts my broken camera was not stolen at Ko Phangan so I decided to see if it could be repaired. I found a man who agreed to fix it for 1500baht which was a lot cheaper than buying a new one but I managed to get him down to 1000baht anyway by explaining that I was a traveler and this would mean sacrificing an almost incalculable amount of pad thais (I may have used slightly more Tarzan-esque language).
Speaking of Tarzan, Chiang Mai is famous for it's proximity to jungles of the North and we signed up immediately for a 3 day trek which would involve elephant riding, bamboo rafting, and staying a night in a village with mountain folk. Happily my camera was fixed and fully functioning by the end of the day (which was lucky because we left the next morning) and, again in my best Tarzan accent, I thanked the indifferent man in the shop with the emotion and enthusiasm you would expect of someone thanking a fireman who has just carried their children from a burning building.
True to our promise of the previous night, we returned to the bar that evening where our friends were already mid set. When we walked in the singer, whose name - like most - eludes me, spotted us and with the packed bar eagerly waiting for the next song, made a point of having a little catch up. He even remembered my name, shame on me. I have to say that the warmth and genuine friendliness of the Thai people are the things I will miss most about Thailand. All the way from north to south, they really are the nicest of people.
We spent the evening listening to our friends playing covers of popular indie bands including Kings of Leon, The White Stripes and, best of all, The Arctic Monkeys - which provided the rare opportunity to see a Thai man singing in a Northern accent. With our trek bags packed and ready to go, we got our heads down for a decent nights sleep.
written by  steve_stamp on May 18, 2009 from Chiang Mai, Thailand

I'm a Jungle Man, That's What I Am
Chiang Mai, Thailand
There is no good time to get diahorrea but the morning which marks the start of a three day jungle trek is definitely one of the least desirable. However, by the time we had driven up north to the National Park I was back to normal; we stopped at a huge staircase and at the top we found a massive golden Buddha and panoramic views of the jungle which we were about to delve into.
We had stopped at a shop along the way and in the excitement I had bought not only a cap with flaps but a camoflage t-shirt. I was ready for the jungle! Except I wasn't. Before long we were trekking through woody jungle, climbing over fallen trees and streams as required and even being attacked by a swarm of MASSIVE wasps which stung me three times! This was not what the pictures on the leaflet looked like! I thought we would be happily marching along a nice wide and well trodden path to a big rushing waterfall where we would all smile and splash around and take photos. Well, actually that came later.
We arrived at our camp tired and with burning, stabbing pains from bleeding wasp stings and were shown a waterfall which would be our shower. This was a lot of fun, the strong current taking one particularly adventurous northern lad on an inadvertent tour downstream while we all looked like a bunch of shivering twats auditioning for a Timotei advert. That night we were cooked a delicious feast of local food before sinking a Changs around the campfire and talking about the days adventures.
Non stop rain throughout the night meant that day two was inevitably going to be a challenge, particularly for those who had not invested in appropriate footwear. Obviously I had been organised enough to buy a nice sturdy pair of walking boots back in England; However, upon packing I realised there was no room for them in my bag and so it was that while my boots sat neglected in the quiet town of Lewes, I found myself scrambling up muddy banks in the Thai jungle - treading paths which due to the unfalteringly precipitous climate had become more like streams - in my trusty Converse All Stars.
The warm rain fell all morning and created a wet, misty jungle which was even more exciting and visually impressive than the day before. I was really enjoying the walk although it was not easy. We would trudge high into the hills and then skid back down again on the slippery paths. The hardest part was staying on your feet and despite my complete lack of grip I was one of the few who managed to avoid spectacular and hilarious slides down the hillsides. We left a trail of uprooted trees and there were skidmarks all round by the time we made it to our camp. We were to stay with a very friendly and sociable hill tribe, who I really enjoyed meeting.
I can not create an account of this trek withoutmentioning our two guides - a pair of brothers who were both (bizarrely) called Noi. Although I believe one was spelt Noy and had a slightly different intonation that only Thai people can hear. The eldest of the pair, Noy, was (and I will be careful to use politically correct language here in order to preserve my job) a midget (I lied) who had a very limited grasp of English but a great sense of humour. He frequently challenged the more boisterous members of the group to Mai Thai fights and encouraged drinking and smoking by setting an impressive example. He came to be known as Rambo and will probably be the part of the trip that most people will look back upon with the most fondness. The younger (but slightly less vertically challenged) Noi spoke excellent English, was well informed and spoke to me at length about his life in Chiang Mai and the positive impacts which he felt the tourist industry could bring to these remote mountain areas.
The final day was, on paper, to be the most exciting although I had a feeling that elephant trekking and bamboo rafting would be a bit of an anti-climax after such an amazing experience clambering through the jungle. It was actually better than I had imagined - our small circuit gave us enough time on the enourmous banana guzzling elephant and I was even afforded the privelage of climbing out of the litle seat on it's back and sitting on his rough prickly neck. Our guide was a twenty-four year old elephant trekking veteran andtook us swerving off away from the others for some off road Jungle Book style trampling. I sang the song accoringly. After 20 minutes , six bags of bananas and a short but worrying dip in the river, we were helped off and driven down to the bamboo rafts.
The group was divided into threes and fours and, each with their own captain, we raced down the river which after all the rain was high and fast enough to warrant life jackets. We were given a long pieve of bamboo which I assumed was to steer the boat and attack the other rafts - it was a good laugh. We were driven back to the hotel soggy and in need of a decent bed. Ot felt like we'd been gone a week and I found myself referring to the hostel as home- which freaked me out.
We'd met a couple during the trek (both attractive girls, much to the enjoyment of the northern lads although I had barely noticed) and when we got back we decided to visit the reggae bars one last time. We left the next day, exchanging sad farewells with the girls while we left Tim sleeping. We were actually glad to be leaving Tim who, after almost 5 days, was beginning to grate. On the plus side we did have a lot of fun mocking his white linen trousers and I can now do a very convincing impression of a socially ignorant Dutch guy.
We passed as uneventful a night as you can hope to have in Bangkok, this time staying on Koh San Road. It was better than where we had stayed before- we had a pool on our roof and I was given the opportunity to have dreadlock hair extensions - but I maintain is a charmless city and a mecca only to prostitutes and perverts. The next day we escaped to Sydney.
written by  steve_stamp on May 31, 2009 from Chiang Mai, Thailand

Soggy in Sydney
Sydney, Australia
Sydney was wet and windy when we arrived but neither the adverse weather conditions nor the fact that I had only managed half an hour sleep and consequently felt like my brain was functioning on an even more basic level than usual would stop me from exploring this city. We only had three days to take in as much of Australia as possible so when we stumbled across the Australia Museum just a few blocks from our hostel we wandered in happily.
We were given a brief but informative education in the struggles of the Aborigines, the spectacular array of deadly animals that Australia has to offer (they were kind enough to break them up into groups: "Things that will kill you in the sea", "Things that will kill you in your garden", "Things that will kill you for going anywhere near them" and so on), dinosaurs, woolly mammoths, and various other Australian inhabitants past or present. I wandered from exhibit to exhibit trying to keep myself awake and dreaming up elaborate deaths for the hundreds of schoolchildren who ran around the museum screaming like banshees.
We stopped in Chinatown for a familiar fried rice dish (I later wondered why we did that) and eventually found ourselves at Darling Harbour where we wanted to visit the aquarium. The entrance fee was excessive even for Sydney so we decided to go somewhere else. Maybe it was the tiredness but our next move seemed to be even more ridiculous than looking for a Chinese meal after 2 months in Asia. We went, instead, to the casino. To be fair our losses were minimal, we played a couple of $1 machines, not daring to make the bold saunter over to the card tables. We did quietly sneak up to them though, and spent a fascinating half hour or so watching players throw away hundreds of pounds at a time!
I'm not joking, there were tables in this casino, quite a few of them and all full up, where each game cost a hundred quid! Every now and then a player would be graced with an exciting but altogether inadequate reward for their persistence. It was crazy! And for some reason they were all asian. I assumed this was because asian businessmen went there to waste a bit of their ridiculous salary but the people in there were not businessmen. Many looked younger than me and almost as shabby. A few days after this I overheard a waitress explaining the logic of her gambling addiction. I drew my pad like a cowboy in a showdown and scribbled her exact words:
"We work all week, take money and go to casino. Double money. If we no win, take money home."
This was my first time at such a big and fancy casino but I'm pretty sure when you lose you don't get to take your money back home with you. Anyway, by the time we left the casino it was raining hard and we marched back to the hostel in our anoraks, stopping on the way to get some food.
We found a pub where they offer a steak and a beer for a reasonable price so decided to treat ourselves. I figured it would probably be a Wetherspoons standard - a kind of grisly sliver of something that could be mistaken for beef as long as you drink the beer and ideally a few others first. I was pleasantly surprised. In fact my steak was so beautifully fat, juicy and pink in the middle that I took a photo of it. When it dawned on me that for fifteen minutes I had done nothing but dozily grunt "nice one" a few times and stare at my empty plate, I realised I probably needed to catch up on some sleep.
As often happens in these shared dorm situations, this was an impossibility. Not because we were being kept up by random foreign voices, that was the next day, but because we met a friendly group of Dutch travelers (I refrained from a demonstration of my socially ignorant Dutch guy impression) who invited us to try kangaroo, which they were having for dinner. Obviously after my steak I was not particularly hungry but there is always room for kangaroo on your first night in Oz. I recommend it to anyone.
The second and third days were to be plagued by rain. We had planned to visit Manly and see some of Sydney's beach life but this was not to be. Instead we poked around various exhibitions and tourist sites. Noticing that the rain had stopped we quickly climbed Sydney Tower (actually we were taken up in a lift but that doesn't have the same ring to it) which gave us an amazing panoramic view of the city landscape. Like Hong Kong, Sydney's position on the sea front adds to its beauty, particularly when viewed from above. From the tower we could see the Harbour Bridge and our first glimpse of the iconic Opera House.
Our second glimpse came when we visited Sydney Zoo. The zoo is placed away from the main city and to see it you have to get a ferry out the harbour, which means we got to have a good look at the Opera House as it coasted past... It was a lot smaller than I had imagined but then maybe I am just a giant. Is it me or have Magnums also become quite small? When I was young they were monstrous great ice-creams and now they seem pretty tame. Anyway, I did find myself wondering why it had taken fourteen years to build but at the same time I was quietly moved by being in the company of such a distinguished landmark.
The zoo was the best zoo I have ever seen - it's location gives it a city backdrop so everywhere you turn you find a nice view of Sydney. You can even take photos of giraffes with the Opera House in the background. And I did. For about fifteen minutes until I got a half decent one and realised Josh was long gone. The highlight of the zoo (and here I must apologise to the impressive tigers, hippos, bears, alligators and koalas) was watching and, I confess, filming two tortoises having sex. The awkward, fatigued thrusts of the male and the distant, resigned expression of the female created a scene in the otherwise very restrained reptile house which had me shaking with laughter.
We went out for a burger with a fellow Brit and Brightonian, Cara, who has been living in Sydney for the last year and showed us Newtown, a trendy district in the south of the city that she now called home. Its inhabitants reminded me very much of Brighton and parts of London - skinny jeans, vintage clothes and hats were everywhere. The burger itself also deserves a mention, not only because it was huge and delicious (Sydney seem to be particularly good at burgers, steak, pies and kebabs) but because it comes with an ingenious little cardboard device which you fold into shape and use to hold your burger as you push it into your face. Back in our part of town which, I should mention, was the red light district, we had a wander around and not being in the mood for a fight or a lapdance decided we were better off going to bed.
On our last day we visited the Art Gallery of New South Wales which was really impressive and cast an eye over the market stalls of Chinatown which weren't. With an early flight the next day we decided our last night could be no better spent than watching the new Terminator movie in the Sydney iMax. This idea ultimately failed because, unforgivably, the Sydney residents are presumed to be more interested in the new Star Trek movie (haven't they given up on those yet?!). With sheets of rain cascading down we ate a huge pizza each and, deciding that the cinema was still a good idea, found our way to a nice little art cinema which was showing Gomorrah. It wasn't the iMax, but it was still a big film. Next stop Fiji.
written by  steve_stamp on May 31, 2009 from Sydney, Australia

Fiji Time
Nandi, Fiji
The rain followed us to Fiji which was a bit of a worry because it didn't seem to me that there would be much to do in Fiji when it rained. We spent a slightly surreal night in the family home of a lady called Dee (we didn't actually get to meet Dee but her son was very welcoming) and shared a room with a chirpy German girl who told us that she had been invited to go to church tomorrow with the family. Thankfully we didn't receive the same invitation but they were kind enough to drop us off in town along the way. We were put on a bus which, we were told, would take us to Beach House. This was all uncomfortably spontaneous but we trusted their judgment and decided that seeing a bit of the "Coral Coast" before heading out to the islands couldn't be a bad thing. The drive down south was beautiful - soft mountains covered in leafy green vegetation gradually became a rocky, palm fringed coastline and the sun even came out which I was almost confused by, it had been so long.
We made ourselves comfortable at our small but well equipped resort and I made my way to the beach kitted out in shorts and shades. I climbed into a hammock and opened my book and no sooner had I done so than the sun, who I was barely getting re-acquainted with, rudely disappeared. I looked up and was reminded of that scene from Independence Day when the whole sky goes dark. Before long the palm trees were dancing excitedly and I was swinging wildly in my hammock and starting to feel a bit sick. An irritating drunk man who we'd had the misfortune to meet at Sydney and then again that morning on the bus had been trying to articulate the fact that Fiji was perfect but not perfect. I suggested "paradise with potholes" and I thought of him as minutes later the sky opened into a generous downpour.
More than anywhere else we had been, I found the Fijian people a striking race. Try and imagine a beautiful girl who looks a bit like Laurence Fishburn and you are getting there. A strong bone structure and powerful physique seem to be prevalent from birth and after one day it was clear that I was by far the most physically incapable man on the island. This is not including Josh of course, who possesses merely the illusion of physical strength but is in fact unable to swim or even go to the toilet on his own.
We had been informed the night before that our resort was none other than that which Celebrity Love Island was filmed! With this wonderfully unexpected revelation in mind we left the next day and went back up north to get ourselves on a boat to the Yasawas. We booked everything with a travel agent called Vika who, after we had been subjected to a bizarre Kava drinking ceremony on the travel agency floor (this basically involved lots of clapping and repeating random words while drinking a milky wood flavoured water), invited us to stay the night in her home! This was obviously a way for her to save money paying for our hotel but we accepted because she seemed nice and we thought it would be good experience. It was! After a slightly awkward entrance during the family's evening prayer we ate and played card with Vika's family and Tada, a Japanese student who was studying English in Fiji. Well, why not?
In the morning we took a ferry up to Nacula, one of the most northern islands of the group, and were shown to our bungalow on the beach. It really was amazing. All that stood between our bungalow and the beach were two hammocks. We were two of only five guests so that night we got to know our fellow island inhabitants and also the local rum, Bounty. They were only staying one night and the next day, after a morning spent exploring the colorful coral reefs of our coastline, we dropped them off at the ferry. The island was ours!
Josh was eager to try fishing. I can never seem to get myself beyond remotely curious when it comes to catching fish but in the spirit of our desert island lifestyle I thought it could be fun. It was - eventually. Once I had caught something. I had imagined sitting there for hours waiting for a twitch on the line which would then be followed by a scream and a panicked reeling in of what turns out to be nothing. In actual fact Josh had no sooner dipped his line in the water than he found himself tugging in a (particularly exotic looking) fish!
It took me a bit longer. On two occasions I felt my line grow heavy and a excitedly reeled in my catch. On both occasions I found that I had caught coral. I was becoming a laughing stock but after twenty minutes of persistence I was rewarded with the biggest catch of the day- a great big colourful fish which I was well chuffed with. Suddenly I turned into a fisherman and by the end of the day I had reeled in three more! It turned out to be a really rewarding trip, particularly that evening when we were served a selection of the days catch. We washed it down with Kava and rum and floated to bed happily. I should mention that we were now in the habit of going to bed at 10pm - this is when the generator shuts off and the island is plunged into complete (and rather anti-social) darkness.
We were invited the next day into the local village where an annual church event/ tourist trap was taking place. We were to meet the chief, who required a small donation before we donated another small amount to the local church. To be fair it was a very small amount and we did get to drink Kava with the chief, eat a nice meal of fish and shellfish with some strange potato things, and get a little tour of the village. The kava drinking was actually a bit awkward and it didn't help that we had been kitted out in traditional Fijian dress (a "Bula" shirt and a skirt) which I was suddenly very aware of upon seeing a group of tourists attending in their board shorts and t-shirts. Nevertheless it was unteresting to see the village and the chief - who I had secretly hoped would have a lion skin coat and millions of unlikely piercings. He was in fact disappointingly normal looking, although he did have an impressive moustache.
During another coral reef expedition I cut my toe on a rock and so spent the last afternoon making the most of "Fiji Time" (the Fijians' excuse to not do anything which I picked up very quickly) while Josh went off to explore the island with our boatman and fishing buddy, Joe. We finished the evening in our usual way, with a romantic meal for two in the empty dining room and a few games of cards with the staff before bed at ten. The next day we would be embarking on a two day journey to Santiago, Chile. The final leg of our journey - crossing South America - filled our minds with wonderful pictures and bad Spanish.
We left Nacula after a game of football involving the local boys and a hilariously flat ball. I also had a Motorcycle Diaries moment when I cleaned up and bandaged a young girl who had cut her hand quite badly - much to the appreciation of her family.I was definitely ready for America del Sud now. All there was left to do was learn Spanish pretty much from scratch on the plane using a dictionary. No problemo.
written by  steve_stamp on June 1, 2009 from Nandi, Fiji

Hay alguien que hable ingles?
Santiago, Chile
Looking out of the plane window at the extensive sprawl of Santiago and the rugged mountains which surround it I was already captivated. South America is one of those places that seems very familiar even though you may have never been there and I felt immediately comfortable in our new surroundings. The first thing that happened would prove to be a stark reminder of it´s dangers.
Actually that is a bit dramatic. We weren´t held at gunpoint or bitten by a snake or anything. What happened was we walked out of customs and were led by a smart and official looking man (he even had a walkie-talkie) to a mini-bus. I had asked for a specific type of mini-bus recommended by the hostel which would get us there cheaply and we were assured that this bus was with the same company (although suspiciously it had no markings) and we were asked to pay 20,000 pesos each. This seemed like too much. I had sleepily made a note of the recommended price from the airport to the hostel but this was now in my hand luggage bag which was in my rucksack which was in the back of the bus which wanted to leave.
I was suspicious enough to go to the lengths of retrieving it and found that what I had written down was 5,000 pesos each! We were being mugged off by the very first seemingly helpful people that we had met! It was like Beijing all over again! Anyway, we grabbed our bags and found a taxi who would take us for 5,000 each - I use the word "taxi" loosely here, the guy had a car and charged people to take them places. He was friendly though, and within seconds I had completely exhausted my Spanish vocabulary and our driver had moved on to gesturing wildly and saying the same word louder and louder until I nodded, si. I immediately wished I had done a Spanish course.
We spent the next few days exploring the city, visiting the visual arts museum (which was a load of nonsense) and getting the fenicular up to the virgin Mary statue in the Parque Metropolitano. We also explored Bandero Street which is filled with vintage stores bursting with second hand American clothes. The city is not the most beautiful place we have been but the mountains offer a spectacular backdrop, particularly when you get up high, and it did have it´s charms. Beautiful old churches and intricate, colourful graffiti create an interesting juxtaposition of old and new while numerous universities buzzed with familiar groups of skateboarders, goths and emos.
Our evenings were mostly spent in the hostel where we cooked our own dinners to save money. Eating steak in order to save money seemed like slightly warped logic but I wasn´t complaining. We also had a huge pool table and, for the first time since Thailand, free internet. In an attempt to catch up on this blog, I stayed up late on night and was confused to find, fumbling my way around the pitch black dorm, that a wet patch had appeared on my bed! I sat in the dark trying to work out what it could be. A spilled drink? Maybe I had left a wet towel there earlier? Then I noticed the smell. Piss?! I reached up and felt the bottom of Josh´s matress. Although he has an alarming habit of shouting loudly in his sleep I doubted he had moved on to bed-wetting, particularly on the scale required to soak through a whole mattress. Then I remembered Bob.
Bob is one half of a duo that make up the hostel pets (the other being Sausage the dog but i didn´t think Sausage had it in him). A cat by trade, Bob is (like a lot of travelers) usually found lounging around the communal areas looking for the affection of strangers. Today, it seemed, he had been making himself very comfortable on my bed. I decided I was too tired to resolve this particular issue in the middle of the night so I simply pulled a duvet over the wet patch and slept under a wool blanket on the other side of the bed. With explore Santiago, eat steak and eggs and sleep in piss off my to do list it was time to move on.
written by  steve_stamp on June 3, 2009 from Santiago, Chile

Lima
Lima, Peru
We´d been recommended a hostel in Miraflores, an almost separate city on the coast just outside central Lima, and from the moment we wandered into the busy bar area we were grateful for the tipoff. The hostel offered various social activities (aside from getting drunk and talking to strangers) and optional evening meals (burritos? I think so). Though Miraflores had the best nightlife, central Lima was definitely the place to be during the day. The Plaza de Armas was a spectacular centerpiece, with an impressive palace and cathedral. Outside this well maintained square the streets and buildings were less well looked after but were filled with noise and colourful stalls selling wonderfully pointless goods.
Hoping to get a better understanding of Peru´s history and culture, we ventured into the Museo de Nacion which had some interesting exhibits; we were particularly affected by a photography exhibit which captured the shocking civil war struggles between the government and revolutionary groups such as MRTA and Shining Path. What was most shocking was how recent many of these events were an d that, despite the official end of the Peruvian civil war in 1992, these groups are still active and constantly gaining support – particularly that of the poor.
The museum itself was badly designed and confusing – we spent fifteen minutes wandering staircases and finding dark empty rooms with no apparent function whatsoever. We decided, after emerging back into the actual museum, that we should probably just get out before we all became victims to the treacherous labyrinth that seemed to lurk behind the exhibits. We had also signed up for a five-a –side football match later that day and I wanted to get a few squat thrusts in beforehand. Though we ended up being comprehensively beaten we (mainly Josh) managed to put a few good moves together and we were praised on our performances. I particularly enjoyed the first ten minutes before the dizzying exhaustion kicked in.
That evening we played beer poker in the bar – this involves using beer as the stakes (ie. I´ll raise you two fingers, etc) with a maximum of ten fingers per round. The winner doesn´t drink, everyone else does. Good eh? After obliterating a couple of Americans with my very first four of a kind I was invited by a new mate of ours, Mike, to go to the casino. We´d been hanging out with Mike for a few days, as well as having the indispensable advantage of speaking fluent Spanish he was also by far the funniest guy we had met so far. Therefore, with gambling spirit and a couple of beers buzzing through me, I made my way to the casino. I was actually going to sit at a table this time.
The table which I was destined to sit at was one which I had been assured only cost 5 soles per game. This is about a pound. I was also assured that as long as you played, no matter how slowly (in my case once every couple of games), free drinks would be brought to you! And they were! We stayed until the early hours and by the time we left I had (very slowly) lost 40 soles which I thought was well worth it. It was a surreal but very enjoyable experience to sit at a table and drop the little hand gestures which indicate how you would like to play the game. The pleasure, particularly when playing for small money, is as much in being a part of the game as it is the winning. Or at least that´s what I told myself when I knocked back my eighth whiskey and coke and left with my pockets empty.
We had arranged for an overnight coach to Huancayo, a place I knew very little about although I had recently got my hands on (that is to say stolen from the hostel) a guide book so I intended to read up once we got there. Rather than simply hanging around the hostel all day we finally managed to watch the new Terminator film (which was as action packed as you could possibly have hoped for) and after a final taste of Lima´s delicious restaurant food we bid Mike and our other newly acquired friends farewell. Up until now it had been relatively easy to leave our new friends behind. Everyone is doing it. On this occasion, however, we were really disappointed not to be able to do a bit more travelling together. What we did take with us was a particularly useful expression which he taught us the first day we met him. It involves putting two fingers up to your neck and saying “NO HORA!” which – if used carefully – is a very effective way of saying ´don´t fuck me!´ His first demonstration halved our taxi fare and even got a laugh from the driver. You can understand why I liked the guy so much.
written by  steve_stamp on June 9, 2009 from Lima, Peru

High in Huancayo
Huancayo, Peru
I woke up in middle of the night. We were half way through our 8 hour coach ride and though I had managed to fall asleep reasonably quickly I was now woken up by a feeling of nausea which was impossible to ignore. I made my way to the toilet, falling over sleeping travellers as the coach swung along mountain roads and, failing to find a light switch in the toilet, spent some dark moments trying to make myself feel better. When we reached our destination all I wanted was bed.
The next morning I was awoken (after the usual unneccessarily early rustlings and suugestions of breakfast from Josh which I now ignore) by a marching band! I dragged myself up and looked around the museum-like hostel. Rugs, paintings, carvings, blankets - everything wall was covered in Peruvian artwork. Thankfully I had slept off my sickness and only now realised the cause. It was no the cerviche of the day before, we were 3271m up in the Andes! To put that into perspective Machu Picchu is only 2380m, Snowdon is 1085m, Ben Nevis is 1344m. We were stupidly high up. It was the infamous altitude sickness I had heard so much about.
We followed the band down into the town and to the local market which is supposedly the largest in Peru. Ladies in traditional dress, with big skirts, wide brimmed hats and colourful sacks hung across their backs, were everywhere and the market was filled with the usual artwork and outrageous knitwear. There wasn´t a gringo in site. The locals were friendly and clearly in high spirits, the marching band procession formed only part of the fiesta and we would later see people dancing in the Plaza de Armas and supplying beer from the backs of trucks. It was a wonderful scene.
The Mantaro Valley surrounding the town of Huancayo is the reason for the abundant artwork in the hostel and the market. There are a number of villages and each specialise in producing different goods (carving, weaving, jewellery making, etc). I wondered whether you would be evicted if you lived in the carving village and discovered a passion for weaving but I did think it was a very amiable set up and on our second day we rented bikes to go and see the villages for ourselves.
Before we left we poked around the local food market - a staggering collection of stalls trailers and blankets on the floor which were all covered in colourful and fragrant piles of exotic fruit, strange vegetables and bundles of herbs. There was also a section devoted to meat and fish where rows of freshly plucked chickens hung awkwardly by their necks, huge trout stared and giant slabs of beef waited to be hoisted home. I was reminded of the amazing food market I had seen in Shanghai´s old town. This market was larger and more organised but I find that is the disorganised parts which I liked best - they seem to have the most character.
We were given our bikes by Lucho, a Peruvian man whose passion for Huancayo and the surrounding area was particularly contagious. He gave us a series of maps and talked us through the seemingly simple route which would allow us to visit each of the main villages. I say seemingly because within minutes we were puzzling over these hand-drawn things and wondering whether the church was on our left or our right and why the park had a line through it. After a few conversations with locals starting with "Donde esta" and ending in a series of directions which we probably didn´t understand, we found ourselves on a dusty rock strewn track passing through small villages where children stared and animals wandered around casually. Soon we were pushing further into the rugged mountains, geting off every now and then to push up particularly steep sections.
We entered small mountain villages and were called into random homes by artists who carved or weaved and were pleased to demonstrate their talents and techniques. I won´t go into a detailed description of each part of our journey because I know you will probably be far more interested to hear about my fantastically bruised bum and spectacular sunburn but I will say that it was worth all the pain. The colourful locals were visibly amused by the site of two intrepid gringos (especially the bright pink one who kept rubbing his arse) and when we arrived back I was so deleriously hungry that I ate a whole guinea pig. It was like eating someones leftover chicken - all fatty skin and bones with no meat. I ate it all anyway.
If my bum had the ability to communicate I would surely have got an earful the next morning (interesting image...). Despite the abuse inflicted by the previous days adventures, I had signed up for more. This time it involved a horse... Thankfully, however, the saddle was soft sheepswool and as our horses pushed their way up the rocky slopes the surroundings and the fact I was riding a horse in the Peruvian Andes distracted me completely from any aches and pains. The views were indescribably immense and the sun shone brightly in the clear sky (I had coated my face in factor 50 in order to avoid any further embarassment).
Eventually we reached the Huaytapallana Snow Mountain where we sat in awe and ate our sandwiches. On the way down we followed a stream through the valley which soon turned into a shallow, rushing river. We splashed through this a few times, zigzagging our way through the deep valley which hung over us dramatically. By the time we got back to our taxi driver (who not only drove us up along crazy rocky mountain roads but also seemed to magically re-appear 4 hours later just as we emerged back onto the road) my legs were wet, muddy and sore and my bum... well, if my bum had had the ability to communicate it would have been actively not speaking to me.
written by  steve_stamp on June 11, 2009 from Huancayo, Peru

Huancavelica and Pisco
Pisco, Peru
We were heading towards Pisco and broke up the journey in the quaint mountain town of Huancavelica. We chose an "auto" rather than a bus because we´d heard that the cars (an "auto" is basically a long distance taxi) take a more scenic route through the mountains. And it did - we spent three hours glued to the windows and gazing at the patchwork farmland which covered the extensive valleys spectacularly. Huancavelica is not a particularly noteworthy town and therefore attracted few tourists - indeed the charm of the town lay in the lack of tourists.
We stayed there one night and I found myself a local attraction on more than one occasion. During one amusing incident the entire giggling contents of the local girls school emptied out onto the street in front of us. I must confess that I am completely used to this by now and in fact quite enjoy my role as the local freak. I amuse myself by saying hello and conversating with as many embarrassed and giggling people as possible, I even did a few kick ups with a group of local boys who were stunned to see that my remarkable frame was capable of any form of athleticism.
Leaving my fans behind, we climbed aboard an overnight bus to Pisco. This was a rough eight hour journey, the whole bus shook with a deafening rattle and a constant exchange of passengers meant that the lights flicked on and off along with loud music. At 3am someone said something about Pisco and after asleepy and confused exchange with the driver we grabbed our things and jumped off the bus. Everything, that is, but my phrasebook which I discovered had fallen out of my pocket while I had slept. To say I was devastated was an understatement. I felt like I had left my tongue behind.
We checked into a hostel in a run down street and caught up on some sleep. Walking out the next morning I realised it was not simply a bad choice of hostel - the whole of Pisco was in a terrible state. It looked like some sort of apocalyptic nightmare - every building was in a state of disrepair, mangy looking dogs wandered between piles of rubble and bricks in the street. I was amazed that I had not heard anything about this, there was no mention in the guide but I was told that the city had suffered a devastating earthquake two years ago. We wandered around aimlessly (as we tend to do) and booked ourselves on a trip to the nearby Paracas Nature Reserve and Ballestas Islands, which are tiresomely referred to as "the poor mans Galapagos", then we headed back to our hostel and did the only thing there is to do in Pisco - waited to leave.
written by  steve_stamp on June 14, 2009 from Pisco, Peru

Sealions and Sandboarding
Huacachina, Peru
The Ballestas Islands were extremely impressive in spite of the grey foggy day which seemed set to ruin any hope of us seeing anything. After a short speedboat ride, skimming through the mist along soft silver waves, a series of islands began to emerge. As we got closer we could see that they were carpeted with millions of sea birds, who also filled the sky with amazing endless formations. The pelicans were huge with strange voices and clapping beaks and tiny Humbolt penguins hopped and clambered up the rocks. Gangs of squabbling sealions hung out under archways cut into rockfaces and our driver drove us within meters of everything. The squawks of the birds filled our ears and the the islands were topped with a generous white layer of "guano", which was pungent to say the least. We were told that every year this would be collected and exported as fertilizer. And I thought admin work was bad.
We spent the afternoon being shown around the National Park which was, rather strangely, a desert on the coast. In spite of some beautiful cliffs, this was a bit of a disappointment. By the end of the tour it had become a comedy sketch - the guide taking us from one barren expanse of sand to another and struggling to rouse anything close to interest from even the most dedicated members of the group. Typically the museum was in ruins - another victim, we were told, of the earthquake two years ago. It was shocking to see how little the area had recovered, even in it´s prime tourist spots. The final anticlimax was flamingos - or at least that is what we were assured they were. They were so far away they could easily have been grizzly bears for all I knew, nevertheless we amused ourselves by feigning enthusiasm with other members of the tour.
The next part of our journey took us further South into this desert region. Soon the gentle plains became huge mountainous dunes and we arrived in Ica just as the sun disappeared behind the largest of them. It was a spectacular but also slightly disconcerting site - we were here for the sandboarding and I had no idea the dunes would be so imposing. With this in mind we got some boards the next morning (and a tutor who seemed to just want someone to hang out with) and made our way to one of the smaller dunes to practice falling over and see if we could master the art of minimalising oral sand intake. We had signed up for a dune buggy ride and sandboarding later that afternoon and the idea was that we would do all this in private before we started making fools of ourselves in larger groups.
In fact it was fairly simple to stay up while flying down a sandy slope and although neither of us were able to turn, slow down or have any real control over where we were going, by the time the afternoon came we were confidently surfing down with the best of them.The slopes became increasingly large until we were basically sliding down a mountain of sand from top to bottom in a matter of seconds. We lay on our fronts and used our legs to steer or slow down (although no-one seemed to be interested in either) and shot off at ridiculous speeds, screaming into the distance and shrinking to specks as we reached the bottom.
We were driven around the dunes in a dune buggy and although I hadn´t anticipated this part of the experience to be of any great significance, it turned out to be the highlight. Because we had chosen a later excursion the sun had started setting as we were sandboarding and now, as we hurtled around the dunes, the low orange sun cast beautiful shadows across the immense landscape and we could see the lights of the towns which sit comfily nestled in between the dunes. These tranquil images, particularly that of the palm fringed oasis of Huacachina, were juxtaposed wonderfully with the manic roar of the dune buggy which bounced and skidded as it flew up and down the dunes. It was like being on a really fast, really dangerous rollercoaster - which is, I assure you, a good thing, particularly when you make it safely home to the hostel.
The near death experiences continued into the night - an earthquake disturbing the peace of early morning. True to form, I paid it no attention whatsoever. I was only interested in resting up for some more sandboarding and when I finally woke we rented two snowboards - a progressive step as these are larger, faster and have better control than the wooden boards they give you otherwise. We spent the afternoon climbing up the larger dunes and coasting down again. Josh tired quickly - which I suggested was surely a sign that he should stop getting up early - but I could not stop, I pushed myself to go higher and higher. I was completely addicted.
A sandboarding joke was doing the rounds which I liked because you can pretty much apply it to any sport or hobby. It goes:
What is the hardest part of sandboarding?
Telling your parents your gay.
If I was being pedantic I would point out that actually the hardest part is trudging up the steep sand slopes in the baking hot sun - as much as we enjoyed going down the dunes, summoning the energy to climb them was proving difficult and eventually I had exhausted even my deepest reserves. After two days we were bruised and aching for a new setting.
written by  steve_stamp on June 17, 2009 from Huacachina, Peru

Nazca lines
Nazca, Peru
We travelled to Nazca with two girls from Huacachina - a completely insane Korean girl called Mia and a quiet girl called Larissa who did her best to calm her down. We got a taxi to the Nazca lines early in the morning in order to avoid the coachloads of tourists that promised to arrive later and found ourselves the first ones to the mirador, a 20 foot tower which provided a view of some of the lines. We had decided that we didn´t need to spend $60 on a flight. We were wrong.
The tourists were not the only thing lacking in this desert - from the top of the mirador we were afforded a vaguely impressive look at what was apparently a tree (I thought it looked more like an inbred octopus) and something else which was either hands or a lizard but appeared to be neither. Slightly disheartened, we climbed a small hill which also promised a better perspective but in fact delivered the opposite. We were looking at nothing but an endless expanse of desert. I had already done this tour. It was still only 7.30am. Eventually we returned to he hostel for breakfast where we studied the Nazca lines in much more detail on a souvenir sugar bowl.
The city of Nazca is nice enough and seemed particularly well maintained after Pisco. Before our evening bus to Cuzco we hung around the streets drinking mate de coca (which I hoped would help with the impending altitude sickness) and spent an hour in the Museo Antolina. The museum was very informative and managed to arouse the enthusiasm towards archaelogy which had eluded me during my scathing analysis of the lines the day before. They even had a scaled down model of the lines so you can wander around them feeling like Gulliver and finally get a sense of their complexity.
Full of tea and anticipation, we got on our bus. This was to be the most arduous journey so far in spite of our coca consumption which continued on the bus in the form of leaves. When we came finally came over the mountains and looked down upon the huge sprawling Inca capital it was a beautiful site to see, even whilst miserably trying to solve the problem of how to shit and throw up at the same time.
Allow me to interrup that image with a more uplifting diversion. So far I am aware that I have represented the effects of altitude in a rather negative light. However, some of the less hysically devastating effects are actually quite funny. Your spongebag, for example, becomes boobytrapped - full of exciting surprises when you next take a shower or brush your teeth. The pressure is such that when you open a sealed container, the contents are often lavishly ejaculated in whichever direction it happens to be facing. My favourite incident so far was when my roll-on deoderant fired its plastic ball at me. The pop of this fragrant little plastic cannon was one of those comedy noises that you don´t imagine actually exist in real life and it made me very happy. Incidentally- with regard to the aforementioned problem on the bus - I managed, after much soul searching and pre-natal style breathing exercises, to keep my bodily fluids to myself.
written by  steve_stamp on June 22, 2009 from Nazca, Peru

The Navel of the World... haa
Cuzco, Peru
Describing Cuzco in a manner which does the city justice left me staring at a blank page for longer than is probably considered reasonable. It demands a complex level of appreciation that I have neither the time nor the vocabulary to reflect but I will try to paint you a few pictures in my usual disjointed way.
We arrived five days before the start of our Inca trek which we had booked so many months ago (luckily, because the next available trek was in three months time!) and we stayed in a highly recommended hostel called Loki (we had also stayed in Loki, Miraflores) which was on a steep but utterly beautiful cobbled street overlooking the city. The hostel itself is a beautifully converted 450 year old building and the views are unbelievable, especially considering the fact that we were paying six quid a night. Like Loki in Lima (where we played football, beer poker, etc) the hostel offered a range of activities, an optional evening meal and a noisy bar crowded with young travellers all wearing the same alpaca jumper.
Purely by chance our visit to Cuzco coincided with Inti Raymi, the ancient Inca festival of the winter solstice, and we were greeted with excited crowds and colourful parades featuring costumed dances and elaborate floats with giant models representing Inca legends. Even without this wonderful display, the history of the city is reflected spectacularly in the elaborate colonial architecture of the Spaniards and in the resilient Inca walls and arches which seem to be part of almost every street.
Being invaded by the Spanish and then by the tourists has led to a cosmopolitan, if slightly tragic, new South American city where local women sell their wares outside quirky Irish pubs and the Inca ruins indifferently upstage the grandeur and pomp of the invaders that wiped them out. Beyond the terracotta roofed houses which climb up the hillsides around the city there are a number of Inca sites and our most rewarding outing involved visiting a number of these.
We took a public bus (our first in South America!) up to Tambo Machay where ceremonial water fountains flow out of the stone and are fed by a mysterious hidden channel of unknown origin. We then walked down to Puka Pukara, which offered us amazing views of the region, and Quenqo – where I was told off for climbing up to look at some of the more interesting but admittedly dangerous carvings. I was enjoying wandering around these scenic sites in the mountains but I was not blown away until we got to Saqsayhuaman. Here giant rocks weighing up to 130 tons are fitted together perfectly to form imposing and impressive walls – the stonework is so staggering that apparently the Spanish refused to believe that the Incas could possibly have been capable of such construction and even today there are those who have other worldly theories and explanations. These are people whose hobbies include online gaming and tripping off the local cacti and they are probably best ignored but they do underline the unbelievable feats that the Incas achieved.
The view from Saqsayhuaman is probably the best way of seeing Cuzco in its glorious entirety. We walked home along a cobbled pathway gazing lovingly at the city in front of us until we were once again consumed by its narrow stone streets and the buzz of the celebrations grew louder and louder. With the climax of the festivities the next day, an event which I understood involved most of Cuzco making the journey up to Saqsayhuaman to witness a llama having its heart and lungs torn out by a priest, we decided to have a quiet night – taking part (and winning!) the hostel pub quiz. My only useful contribution was our team name, Inca- pacitated, which I had thought of the day before and was, in truth, the only reason I particularly wanted to take part.
I awoke the next day to find that Josh, in his usual way, had got up ridiculously early and disappeared. He had gone up to the ruins (where the parade would eventually be marching and the final ceremony taking place) five hours early. I had no desire to spend ten hours on a hillside so I was pleased to discover a note on my bed from Nicole, a fun loving self proclaimed pothead from Philly, telling me to meet her in the Plaza de Armas. I headed down there with Mia and spotted Greg, a laid back and hilarious American whose first words upon seeing me were “I thought I´d be able to spot your tall white ass.” It seemed he had also received the same message from Nicole and when she appeared we spent a bit of time watching the strange performances in the Plaza de Armas before following the herd up to the ruins.
The crowds were filtering in constantly and the hillsides were covered in hundreds of local families and a sprinkling of tourists wearing suncream and ridiculous paper hats. Well, we were anyway. We found a spacious spot where we had a decent view and could also stretch our legs out and made ourselves comfortable for an hour or so, eating anything and everything that the numerous sellers brought our way and admiring the colourful spectacle of the colourful crowd blanketing the bold ruins.
Eventually music began to echo around the site and the dancers, soldiers, Inca leaders, princesses and flower throwers arrived in flawless formation and began their elaborate performances. This lasted around 3 hours and although I was impressed by the choreography and energy of the dancers, the crowd provided just as much entertainment. Everyone around us seemed to have a plate full of potatoes with a guinea pig balanced on top, ice cream sellers squabbled over turf and as the crowd grew increasingly dense we found ourselves becoming amusingly intimate with our neighbours and our outstretched legs being gradually pushed back towards us by shuffling Peruvian bums.
Disappointingly the slaughter of the llama was carried out in a suspiciously secretive manner – with people huddling over something and then holding up something which was supposed to be heart or lungs - I wasn´t convinced. I was hoping for a much more gruesome climax but being part of the biggest Inca celebration was nevertheless a memorable privelage. After another evening sampling the alcoholic and musical offerings of Cuzco I retired to bed wondering whether Josh´s early ride and five hour wait on the hill had paid off and provided him with a better view of the llama sacrifice. It hadn´t.
The next day we moved to a fancy hotel which was included as part of our trek and rented some walking boots in order to preserve my disintegrating trainers and my stoic feet. They would, after all, soon be facing their greatest challenge. The Inca Trail.
written by  steve_stamp on June 25, 2009 from Cuzco, Peru

The Inca Trail
Ollantaitambo, Peru
The night before the start of our Inca trek Josh fell ill. I knew it was serious when he announced that he didn´t want any dinner; I left him to sleep and hoped that the early night would sort him out. It didn´t. Early the next morning as we made our way up to the start of the trail his head hung heavily and it was clear that the so called “easy” first day would be anything but.
The path was fairly flat and asked little of the various tourist groups who plodded along cheerfully. I was expecting a fairly large group but our entourage was immense – an army of 30 porters, all heavily laden with oversized packs, joined our group of 22 (not including the 5 or so guides), striding past (sometimes jogging) in order to get ahead and prepare our next rest stop. At first I resented this pampering and I wished we could have had a small group with a couple of tents and a camping stove but from the first meal (cooked by our personal chef and eaten in our dining tent at a long table with stools) I felt nothing but grateful for their efforts. By the end of the trip they would be heroes.
With Josh feeling terrible, our guide took the two of us on a slightly shorter route to see the first of the large ruins. In fact this was the best part of the day as we separated ourselves from the densely populated path and were given very interesting lessons about Inca history and the local flora and fauna. The ruins themselves (Patallacta) were well preserved and set spectacularly at the bottom of the valley alongside the river Wilkamayo (or Uru Riobamba) which we followed for most of the day. That evening we ate well and retired to bed early in preparation for the infamous climb up to Dead Womans Pass the next day. During the night Josh shouted happily to himself and I hoped that the rest was doing him good.
The second day is known as the biggest challenge of the Inca Trail and I couldn’t have been more up for it. After the relaxed pace and frequent stopping of the previous day I couldn´t wait to push myself a bit harder. Thankfully Josh seemed to be back to normal and we set off at an impressive pace, eager to distance ourselves from the crowd. With long strides and measured breathing we climbed steadily through the mossy “Montane Rain Forest” where the exotic looking Unca trees twisted their way up to form a cooling canopy and eventually we emerged onto the steep, sunny steps which led up to the pass. I marched up them, maintaining a steady pace and stopping only for photos and to offer water to the sweating porters- their packs looking impossibly heavy as they trudged up.
Inspired by the strength and pace of the porters I soon reached the top. The views on either side of Dead Womans Pass (so called because the mountains are shaped like a woman lying on her back – nothing sinister) were dramatic and rewarding. I spent some time at the top taking photos and trying to breath normally again. Our guide had suggested that we take two stones – one for Dead Womans Pass and one for Machu Picchu – which we would then leave as a traditional Inca offering to the mountains and to Pachamama, the Inca equivalent to Mother Nature. I liked the idea and I proudly perched my stone at the top of a pile. Josh had fallen behind and, although I had intended to wait for him, after fifteen minutes or so I was getting cold and decided to carry on alone.
I dedicated the journey downward to Michael Jackson, dancing quickly down the rocky stairs to a lively mental megamix of all his hits. I had just completed a complex merging of You Wanna Be Starting Something and Another Part of Me when I realised I had already reached camp! I had even beaten most of the porters down! The camp had incredible views in every direction and I washed in a cold, clear stream while the tents were being put up. Directly in front of the camp was the deep Pacamayo Valley ; The Inca Trail wound up the mountain to the left of the valley and gave an enticing glimpse of tomorrows walk. It was only 11.45am but we were done for the day so I made myself comfortable, watching the clouds floating in and filling the valley and enjoying more of our chefs delicious cooking before a chilly night of llama clad lethargy.
We were woken early with tea (a very nice touch) and after a filling breakfast zigzagged our way up to the first set of ruins. This was to be a very informative day with lots of ruins and although we were eating and sleeping with the large group it had become apparent that we had our own guide, Selsa. This was perhaps because the other group were all part of a larger tour of South America and they were worried we may not fit in. In any case, being able to distance ourselves from the group was a definite advantage as we could walk at our own pace rather than in a frustrating cluster and have interesting discussions about anything we were curious about. On this occasion we were taught about Inca architecture, particularly in relation to the social politics of the time. It was good to be able to see more than just a ruin.
Later, as we continued our trek up the mountain, I found myself in a predicament. We were hours away from the next toilet stop and I sensed that I might not make it. Also the toilets are so bad that waiting for one seemed a bit pointless really. I was far enough in front to sneak off the path and find a suitable rock to hide behind… A miserable pair of boxers told me that I was not the first. Watching my step, I decided to proceed. I was, after all, a man of the mountain now.
Happily relieved, I caught up with Josh and Selsa and made it to the top of the mountain. The views were mind blowing and made even more satisfying by my recent excretory accomplishments. After a short rest we stomped our way down the familiarly steep, rocky paths and stairs until we reached the complex and interesting ruins of Sayaqmarka. Another lesson followed, this time about the Inca kings and the history of the Inca trails themselves. It amazed me how recently a lot of the trails and ruins had been discovered. Feeling well informed, we continued down the mountain side and into the “Cloud Forest”.
Although there were no clouds (at least not at first) the transition as we entered the Cloud Forest was clear. You could feel moisture in the warm air and dense vegetation suddenly appeared on each side of the trail. Soon we were enveloped in trees and bushes which created a beautiful and atmospheric walk. Every now and then the foliage would give way to incredible views of the mountains, the most memorable being from the top of Phuyupatamarka where we got our first glimpse of Machu Picchu . There were also some agricultural ruins visible from this summit. These sites are always spectacular as the farms made use of iconic Inca terracing – huge, perfect steps which climb down the mountain.
The walk back down to our campsite, via the ruins of course, was an endless rocky staircase with more of the same leafy vegetation disguising steep drops on one side and the jagged mountain wall on the other. It was the most scenic walk so far, although the steep steps were cruel to our feet. One of our group, a hilariously competitive guy whose name I never learnt, decided to run all the way down. Knowing that this would be the main topic of conversation at dinner that night I was disappointed not to find him crumpled at the bottom of some of the trickier stairs but when we got back I was pleased to find that, in his haste, he had missed the final ruin, WinayWayna, which had an amazing row of thirteen water fountains and the best looking terraces so far.
That night we had a “ceremony” whereby the porters all came and stood uncomfortably in front of us – telling us their names, ages and whether they were married or single (the main guide, Julio, had an irrepressible sleazy streak and enjoyed playing translator/ cupid for the porters and the younger girls of the group. We then handed out tips. It was a bizarre and uncomfortable ceremony for all concerned and I felt bad that Selsa, our own guide, had not been particularly involved. Afterwards we made sure that he knew how grateful we were for his personal tuition and he in turn expressed how lucky he felt to have such receptive students who he was able to be so open with. I got the impression that he didn´t often reveal his religious side so openly and I was glad that he felt comfortable enough to do so with us, particularly as religion is such a key part of understanding the Incas and the reasoning behind these spectacular mountain constructions.
We were also told the plans for the next day. We would be getting up in the middle of the night and walking the 6km to Machu Picchu for sunrise. We asked whether we would have any chance of climbing Huayna Picchu, the mountain which rises over the lost city affording amazing views, Selsa explained that the number of daily visitors is restricted to 400 and these tickets disappear fast. In order to have we would have to move very quickly. We both agreed it was worth a try.
written by  steve_stamp on July 3, 2009 from Ollantaitambo, Peru

Machu Picchu
Aguas Calientes, Peru
The final day of the Inca Trail was one of such heightened emotions and vivid, surreal moments that I know I will never, ever forget it. We woke at 3.15am and quickly stuffed ourselves with a pancake before making our way to a checkpoint. The large wooden gates were closed and would not be open until 5.30am but it was important to get to the front and we had managed to be the first there. We sat huddled in the cold darkness, looking up at the clear sky and the billions of bright stars which covered its entirety. I could see why the Incas were such passionate astronomers with that over their heads every night.
Eventually a bulb broke the darkness and the wooden gate was opened. Floating head torches filled the path as we marched excitedly along the rugged trail. As we moved, the stars began to disappear and a faint glow crept up from behind the mountains. Josh and I were near the front of the group and I heard Selsa approaching behind us. In a low voice, careful not to excite the rest of the group, he whispered:
“Anda now we are gonna ron.”
It took me a moment in my sleepy state to work out his accent and in that moment he was gone. Running away from the group. The excitement as we ran off in the dark towards Machu Picchu was incredible – it wasn´t an easy path and we ran up and down treacherous steps with our torches flashing across the path in front of us. Gradually the glow from the mountains grew stronger and we were able to see without torches – the path was narrow and to our right hand side a sheer drop fell to the valley below where the early morning train clunked its way up, filled with tourists. This spurred us on.
Then, disaster. From behind me I heard Josh shouting desperately. I looked back to see the contents of his backpack strewn across the path. The zip had worked its way open. But Josh was only interested in one item. The single item which had gone off the edge.
“My fuckin passport..!”
His voice was filled with fear and panic. I felt it rushing through me. It felt like the worst thing that could have happened at the worst possible time. We were all in shock. Selsa repeated our swearwords and it was clear from his expression that he was as traumatized as we were as we peered over the edge into the bushes.
The path was built into the mountain side and was reinforced with a stone wall of around 8 or 9 feet. Below this wall was a small mossy platform around two feet wide which dropped into bushes and trees. The vegetation made it unclear how steep or how far the drop was but it was clear that the slope was far to steep to attempt climbing down. It was almost vertical. The ledge seemed a long way down but Selsa was already starting to lower himself off the Inca trail and down onto it, with the ominous words, “This is my first time.”
He seemed to think he could see it in the bushes. We were all terrified. The longer I saw him down there on his own the more useless I felt and when he asked me if I would come down and help him, I didn´t hesistate. I climbed down, ripping my trousers as I stretched desperately to find the mossy patch where I could secure myself. Adrenaline pumped through my whole body. I was still scared that Selsa would fall as he crept further and further towards the bushes but now at least I had hold of him. I held on to the wall with my other hand and, lying back, dug my heels into the ground.
He reached further and let out a cry. He had it! He pulled it out of the trees and we all shouted with unrestrained relief! It was an amazing feeling. We pulled each other up to safety. There were no words. Strangely no sooner were we back on the Inca trail than I was thinking of the time we had lost and wanting to get going again. Others from the group were catching us up! We dusted ourselves off and the run to Intipunktu continued. With my heart pounding and my head spinning I dragged myself up the last few steps to Intipunktu (The Sun Gate). I sat down heavily, laughing and dizzy with exhaustion. When I looked up I saw Machu Picchu.
Taking photos every few steps, we walked gently down towards the ruins. Along the path Selsa showed us a huge boulder reaching up into the sky like a mountain. Beneath it were piles of stones – offerings left by those who had arrived safely to Machu Picchu before us. We dutifully drew out our stones and created a small pile along with some of Selsa´s coca leaves. He prayed out loud and in English, thanking the Pachamama for helping us to reach Machu Picchu and although neither of us said a word, we both thanked her too. Whatever you want to call those invisible forces of nature which are beyond our control, there was no doubt that they had worked in our favour and we were extremely lucky to be there on that clear morning. Especially the passport.
With more button pressing than an Australian casino, we snapped our way down into the ruins. I will not attempt to describe them as everyone knows what the famous Inca city looks like but I will say that they were more beautiful than I had imagined and in the dim light of the morning they looked calm and undisturbed. For a while. Then I noticed the tourists. I do not mean to sound arrogant but after three days of trekking, sweating, broken sleeps and undesirable toilet experiences you feel a million miles away from the clean and colourful groups with their North Face fleeces and elaborate bumbags who come puffing up the stairs from the bus stop. To rub salt in the wounds which these people- with their confused and pitiful glances towards the flapping crotch of my filthy trousers- had opened up, we were told that the 400 tickets to climb Huayna Picchu were already sold out.
It was 6.50am. We had been up since 3.15am and had RUN along the Inca Trail risking life, limb and passport to get here first – now we find we had been beaten to the ticket office by 400 Americans wearing matching tour group t-shirts who celebrated by jumping or pretending to push the mountains in order to get the ultimate facebook profile picture. Selsa went to get a drink, Josh went to the toilet and, left alone, and I suddenly found myself in a very real state of depression. I stared in disbelief at the extravagantly expensive hotel, built only 100 yards or so from the ruins. I watched more and more tourists climbing complaining off the buses and I found myself in disbelief, hating everything around me.
In retrospect this was clearly the result of a comedown after the massive release of adrenaline that morning combined with the exhaustion of the early starts and I do appreciate that not everyone who wants to see Machu Picchu should have to walk for three days and do chilly, scenic poos. I do think, however, that a small percentage of tickets should be reserved for those who invest time and money in the Inca Trail. And there I will end my beef. Incidentally, my depression didn´t last long. As we climbed back up p the top of the ruins for our first lesson of the day my mood lifted immeasurably. This was no doubt helped by the well timed appearance of the sun which, as it climbed slowly from behind the jagged mountains, cast spectacular beams of light onto Machu Picchu and Huayna Picchu. As Selsa taught us about the history of the city, it lit up slowly behind him.
We toured the various points of interest and significance, waiting patiently for other tour groups to finish taking photos before we moved in to take our own. Luckily the city is interesting enough that the swarms of tourists do not detract too much from your appreciation but after a couple of hours, with more and more groups arriving by the minute, we had seen everything and were ready to leave. We thanked Selsa for all his knowledge and passion and for going, so dramatically, beyond the call of duty as our guide. Our tips seemed pathetic but he seemed moved and genuinely thankful for our time together. It was a sad goodbye but his final words “Look after your passport!” were well chosen.
We got a bus down to Aguas Calientes where we ate well and relaxed in the hot natural springs which give the town its name. Then we hung around waiting for the big group and the three hour train ride home, every now and then reminding each other exactly what had happened that morning. Ironically it had been the expensive Berghaus backpack which had been at fault while my ridiculous Peruvian manbag (I was dressed completely inappropriately as ever) handled the challenge without any complaints. On the long journey home, tired from the days emotions, I thought about my life back home and especially Shion. I had never wanted a bed and a cuddle so much in my life. I couldn´t wait to talk to her and tell her what we´d been doing.
written by  steve_stamp on July 8, 2009 from Aguas Calientes, Peru

Leaving Peru
Cuzco, Peru
After the Inca Trail we spent a few days sorting our lives out. We both did a mountain of washing and I got my trousers repaired, a haircut and a new phrasebook (mainly because I needed one in order to get the trousers repaired and a haircut). Our main task, however, was working out where we were going to go next and, importantly, how we were going to get there. I haven't referred much to news and current affairs because so far we've been lucky enough not to have been affected by anything (a few tedious forms at airports are as close as we seem to have come to the swine flu outbreak, for example). However, now we found ourselves in the middle of protests between the Peruvian working classes and the government.
My (basic) understanding is that areas of land were being privatised and made available to foreign companies. The farmers working the land in these areas were understandably furious and there had been clashes with police resulting in a number of deaths. In a bid to make themselves heard, protests sprung up across Peru - roads were blocked with rocks and bridges burnt. Cuzco was targeted specifically in order to have the most impact. We had met a number of travelers who had come from Arequipa and had only made it to Cuzco by walking or hitchhiking for days over many miles after their coaches had been forced to stop. Some had to postpone their Inca treks because their feet were so badly blistered. So that ruled out Arequipa...
We decided that Puno and La Paz were the two most desirable options but the roads in that direction had also been heavily affected and any bus ride involved a certain level of risk. After much debate and solemn analysis of our shrinking bank accounts we decided to fly to La Paz. It would be worth the extra money just to know that we would actually get there. But my problems didn't end there. I received a text from my mum saying that she'd just collected my yellow fever certificate from the doctors and asking whether I wanted her to post it to Peru. I would need it to get into Bolivia.
This was slightly annoying as the nurse hadn't mentioned this certificate. I thought I had been completely organised - carrying around a print out which she had given me of all my immunisations and assuming that this was all I would need. Now I had to work out what to do. I couldn't hang around in Cuzco until it arrived by post - we had been there for so long the days were already becoming tedious, particularly now because after paying for the flight we had little money to amuse ourselves. Apparently it should be possible to sign a waiver at the border but this involved an airport discussion which I was neither comfortable with nor capable of. Eventually I decided to go to a hospital and get a replacement. It would prove to be a long and difficult morning.
I got up early and, with a list of hospitals torn out of my guidebook, made my way to the first one. The hospitals were crowded and typically confusing. Even with my new phrasebook I struggled to explain my situation and in order to save myself reliving this series of deeply uncomfortable moments I would like to skip to the part where (hours later) I found myself in the right room with the right person and the right certificate in my hand. I was going to get another jab. Then it occurred to me - I had the certificate in my hand! I could just leave! But what if I get stopped at the border? I was unsure. It had taken me three and a half hours to get to this point and I really didn't want it to all be for nothing.
A friendly nurse called me over and for the last time I attempted to explain, in Spanish which was not so much broken as destroyed beyond recognition, that I had already received the jab but did not have the certificate. I gestured to the certificate and then the door, with an expression which I hoped was something in between hopeful and inquisitive. Amazingly, she seemed to understand! She disappeared into another room. A stern looking women in a senior position asked me when I had received the jab. I showed her my print out. She shook her head. She would not be able to give me the vaccine a second time. I pointed hopefully at the certificate - my hopefully inquisitive expression became comically exaggerated. She shook her head; no injection in Peru, no certificate in Peru.
My heart sank. I should have just kept my mouth shut! I pleaded and my Spanglish reached new depths - a mix of English words in a foreign accent and Spanish words which I invented freely. I tried to explain that without this certificate it would be very difficult for me at the border into Bolivia in a couple of days. They might not even let me into the country! This came out "Sunday... Bolivia... difficult... please..." - I was sweating like a sumo in a shell suit and getting increasingly frustrated. Eventually, with a sigh, the stern woman took the certificates and filled it out with details of my previous jab. Yes! I took the certificate and thanked them desperately. Then I got out of there before they could change their minds. I had my certificate. I had my plane ticket. I was going to Bolivia.
written by  steve_stamp on July 9, 2009 from Cuzco, Peru

The Law of La Paz
La Paz, Bolivia
Customs didn’t seem to have a problem with my “replicado” certificate. I´m not even sure that they checked it. Anyway, we passed into Bolivia easily and soon we were being driven to Loki La Paz (yes, another Loki – we had now earnt free t-shirts for being such loyal disciples). My first glimpse of the city blew me away. It looked like an enormous Lego set – faded colourful blocks covered the valley and crowded the slopes of the surrounding hills. Rising up behind them were huge snow capped mountains which stretched into the distance.
As usual we wandered out into the streets to get a feel for the place. It seemed a very poor city, families of beggars sat on the dirty pavements and most of the shops and buildings seemed very run down or abandoned. We would later find out that beneath the surface of La Paz lies a surreal, and often strangely accessible, underworld. Wandering breathlessly up the steep streets we stumbled across our first interesting site. I began to suspect that the cluttered stalls were part of the infamous Witches Market when I noticed a pile of dead llamas. They were small – babies – and while many were still covered in fluffy hair most were dried out like prunes. Among the other things available at the stalls were herbs, statues and skulls. I had read that llama fetuses are buried under houses for good luck and I assumed these other offerings would be used in similar rituals. Disappointingly the women who looked after the stalls looked no different than those who sold alpaca slippers – there wasn’t a warty nose or a pointy hat to be seen. I decided to save the souvenir shopping for another day.
Back at the hostel we bumped into Niall, a guy who we had met in Cusco. We had only spoken briefly as he was about to catch a bus but during that short time we had hatched a plan to buy a car and drive it to Brazil. We’d decided that a VW Beetle with a novelty horn would be most appropriate. We headed ou to a bar with a few of his room mates and it soon became apparent that this was not your usual gringo bar. For a start it had no visible sign or even lights to indicate where it was. It appeared simply to be a house with large metal gates. After pushing the buzzer and waiting for a while a small, seedy looking man appeared who eyed us for a moment before letting us through. It was all very sinister and I soon realized why. A waiter carried a tray over to the table next to us and delivered two beers and a small square slate with a couple of straws and a neat wrap of cocaine. We were in a coke bar!
I was excited to see such a novel approach to customer service but soon I felt like I was having a Hunter S Thompson moment. Around the group young, pretty girls and boys were randomly kissing each other and the conversation became frantic and strange. I had been around people on coke before but they had never freaked me out like this. A blonde Irish girl was offering me a reflexology massage. I don’t even know what that is but my reflexes told me to get out of there.
In the spirit of the fascinatingly corrupt world which we now seemed to be a part of, our sites became set on the local prison – San Pedro – made famous by the book Marching Powder and by stories of tourist tours where gringos have, in the past, been able to see inside the grounds, seen prisoners openly manufacturing cocaine and even sampled the prison wares. Since CNN conducted undercover investigations these tours have been made illegal but rumors still flew around about tourists successfully bribing guards. We decided to have a look at least.
After hanging around uncomfortably for a while (the prison guards with their huge shotguns are not the most approachable of fellows) Niall and I walked up to the gate. Josh had decided that visiting a prison was not for him. From the main entrance we could see into the prison courtyard – a mix of women, children and prisoners made it only slightly less intimidating. Then we heard someone shouting to us in English. A Dutch guy, who we later found out was named Sebastian, called out to us and asked if we wanted to talk to him. He could tell us all about the prison and what goes on! We said yes. The guards said no. We were ushered away (by which I mean they looked at us and we quickly made ourselves scarce) but not before Sebastian gave us a number to call him on. It was an exciting breakthrough and a few minutes later we had another. This time an opportunity presented itself in the bizarre form of a five foot American called Dave, a prisoner with only nine days of his sentence left, who could now leave the prison for short periods of time.
Dave was genuine, there was no doubt. Barefoot and disheveled in a crusty fleece, years of dirt seemed engrained into his feet and hands. Underneath, however, was a normal guy. I had just finished reading Midnight Express and I really felt for these convicts locked away in strange and corrupt foreign surroundings. When he asked if we were interested in seeing inside the prison we said yes. We had spent an hour shuffling suspiciously outside it, it was hard to say that we weren’t. Dave told us that for twenty Bolivianos (about two pounds) he could bribe the guard and we would be allowed in as visitors. He would also want five for himself. Compared to the hundreds we were expecting to have to pay the guards this seemed a stroke of luck. We had seen lots of visitors going in and out the prison so we were confident it could be arranged. Nevertheless, it was all very dodgy…
As we followed this haggard little man towards the prison, the sense that we were doing something stupid, actually illegal, was inescapable. He took the money and disappeared into the police station to get us our visitors stickers but eventually re-emerged shaking his head and in a hurry. He explained that there were no stickers left and we would have to travel seven blocks away to get them. We only had an hour or so until the last visiting hour and we didn´t fancy a night in the prison so as Dave hurried off we hurried with him, keeping a safe distance in order to avoid the attention of the police. We grew more anxious. He asked us to buy him some chicken as he hadn´t eaten all day. He was doing us a favour so, reluctantly, we did. By now it was too late to go back – we had followed him around for about twenty minutes. Eventually we came to the place and he told us to wait for him. Then, predictably, he disappeared. We never saw Dave again. We probably deserved it. Neither of us were particularly surprised and we both knew it was always going to be a risky operation but the fact he left us holding his leftover chicken did seem an unnecessary insult.
As we stood in the middle of the busy Bolivian market I reminisced about the very first scam I had experienced on my travels. The art student from Beijing – also known as Dave. In spite of the irritating loss of money and pride, part of me was relieved. It would have been a lot more painful to be done over by a prison warden, especially if we were inside the place! We headed back and called Sebastian – he knew Dave but confirmed that we had been had – tere was no way of getting people into the prison now. We could visit a certain area, however, and talk through the bars. We vowed to do this as long as we survived the Death Road, which Niall and I were cycling the next day.
written by  steve_stamp on July 17, 2009 from La Paz, Bolivia

Death Road and Drug Dealing Mothers
La Paz, Bolivia
I had initially decided not to bother with Death Road. The thought of doing something purely because it was dangerous didn’t make much sense to me. During the course of our travels we had heard more and more good things about it though, and after a quiet few days in Cusco I decided I would do it. I was in need of adventure and although Dave, bless him, had given us a thorough adrenaline-fuelled run around La Paz the day before I was glad to find myself in the cold heights of the Andes that sunny morning dressed like a waterproof stuntman along with my new partner in crime and general stupidity, Niall. If you haven’t figured it out by now, Niall was a terrifically bad influence.
Our group of around ten or twelve set off at speed, gliding down the mountain on smooth, curving roads. The whole ride was completely effortless; the pedals were merely footrests as we coasted along. The only thing which concerned me slightly was my front wheel, which rattled excitedly, even on the tarmac… I reported this ominous sound to our guide and was immediately given a new bike with better suspension and wheels which sounded a lot healthier. It was a well timed upgrade because the next part was the infamous Death Road.
Unlike Dead Woman’s Pass on the Inca trail, Death Road has earned its name with an extensive collection of tragic tales. Essentially it is a narrow, rocky road on the side of a mountain with dizzying drops and awkward bends – in the days when the road was used by buses and coaches in both directions, wheels would simply slide off the loose road and coach loads would be lost. Graves along some of the trickier curves serve as very real reminders. Now, however, a new road has been built and the traffic along Death Road consists only of tour groups rattling down on mountain bikes to earn a free t-shirt. As if insisting on giving the riders a challenge, our guide explained that the rules for this road were different and that now we would be riding on the left in the event of traffic. This, combined with the fact that the brakes were the wrong way round, added a wonderfully confusing new dimension to the ride.
I had decided to take it slowly but gravity and increasing confidence gently spurred me on. By the end we were flying down the dusty, uneven roads, our whole bodies vibrating, aching hands locked onto the handlebars and teasing the brakes. It was an intense experience made all the more epic thanks to the views of the valley. Dense cloud forest like we had seen along the Inca trail lay all around us and we rode through streams and even under a large trickling waterfall. When we came to the end I couldn’t believe we had already covered 64km! We had only one minor casualty, a lady who had had a slight disagreement with her bike and got a couple of scrapes but she looked as happy as the rest of us as we ravenously destroyed the buffet at the end of the day.
The next day the three of us attempted a more standard prison visit, citing Sebastians name as we entered the side door and looking as close to casual as one can hope to look when confronted by large men with oversized guns. They were not interested in letting us in but we were helped by a kind woman whose husband was also a prisoner and, she said, a friend of Sebastians. She offered us the use of her room in the family/visitor section of the prison and Niall took her number gratefully. As we left the woman, in a manner not quite befitting one with her baby in her arms, started offering strangers cocaine. We had met one of the prisoners outlets. It was strange to think that she was paying for a room in a prison by selling the cocaine manufactured there by her husband. I had to admit that at this point I was ready to call it a day and read Marching Powder instead.
We spent the rest of the day and much of the next admiring the alpaca jumpers of the local stalls and also checked out one of the museums which had a hilarious collection of fiesta outfits among other less bizarre exhibits. We also bought tickets to Rurrenabaque, the jungle region up North which we were all excited about seeing. For our last night we treated ourselves to an “Interminable” pizza from the famous pizzeria nearby – it was a 24 inch monster which we struggled to eat even half of. More difficult and uncomfortable than the consumption itself was the guilty journey back to the hostel trying to avoid the hungry eyes of begging families. It was worth it though, with ample cold pizza and a collection of games to keep us entertained, we boarded our bus for the longest journey so far, a bum numbing twenty hours. And they didn’t even have a toilet on board.
written by  steve_stamp on July 21, 2009 from La Paz, Bolivia

Messy Pampas
Rurrenabaque, Bolivia
The longest bus journey so far proved one of the most painless (they let us off to wee and stuff) and, as we had arrived early in the morning, we decided to start our trek straight away. An hour or so later we were rattling along a ridiculously battered road in a matching jeep. The landscape had completely changed, bringing back memories of Thailand and Fiji – it didn´t seem like we were in Bolivia at all. Soon we came to a wide brown river and boarded a long boat which would be our taxi for the next few days.
We were to explore the pampas – a wetland region which supposedly teems with wildlife. No sooner had we climbed into the boat than we saw our first alligator. We all pulled our cameras out and went crazy. They were everywhere! There were so many that soon our reptile induced hysteria wore off and we stopped taking photos. But it seemed that the moment you lowered your camera some new and exotic creature would poke its head out for an unbearably fleeting and photogenic moment. I sat at the front of the boat, my fingers carefully poised above the camera buttons so that I could turn it on and take a photo in a matter of milliseconds.
Families of turtles basked lazily in the sun and pink dolphins emerged looking pale and alien but the most charming visitors of the day were definitely the squirrel monkeys. We pulled right up to their tree and soon we were covered in tiny fury creatures who chattered happily and scampered along our arms, backs and heads in an outrageously sociable manner. Eventually we arrived at our “eco-lodge” which was large and could only have been more comfortable had it not been placed on the bank of the river whose deadly contents we had spent much of the day admiring.
Day two. I woke up confused in a wooden shack in the Bolivian pampas. Vivid dreams lingered in my head and I was pleased to see that the malaria tablets I had started taking were doing something. After breakfast we crossed the river and I found myself recalling that the side effects of malaria tablets could also include suicidal tendencies. I was stamping through soggy marshland in a pair of Converse and rolled up trousers looking for dangerous snakes – could this be considered suicidal? Reassuringly everyone else was doing it too. I couldn´t help noticing that they all had wellies on though. Josh and I had not been surprised to find that the boot collection could not cater for our unreasonably large feet but suddenly we were becoming very conscious of our vulnerable ankles.
The more we searched the more we all wanted to find something. We were all spread out searching different areas, it was a strange feeling, being on your own with your thoughts while looking for something which terrifies you. Like when I was snorkelling for a shark in Thailand , I began to lose my fear and just really want to see something. Suddenly there were shouts – Emmanuelle, a French girl, had found something. We all gathered round excitedly but it turned out to be a disappointingly small and harmless snake. After a few photos and some tentative touching we continued our search. It was hot and the marsh sucked our feet into the water.
Soon Emmanuelle was shouting again! She had seen something BIG. We scattered around the area, trampling carefully, everyone focused on any rustle or strange shape. Then our guide shouted, t was on the move! It came close by me- I could see thelong grass parting and giving away his position. It was fast though! We were running after it – I decided to let the guide go first and soon he was standing on its tail. It was huge! He carefully pinned the head down with a stick and then slowly picked it up. It was, he announced, a cobra. I HAD JUST BEEN RUNNING AFTER A FIVE FOOT COBRA!
Our guide, Oscar, allowed us to hold it briefly and I am not going to pretend I wasn´t scared but we´d searched for so long that I felt I needed to have it in my hands. It was heavy and thick with muscle. Its scaly skin was smooth and surreal. After letting it go we spent a few more hours searching and eventually found what we were after – an anaconda, albeit a very small one. I wasn´t complaining when we headed back to the lodge. I hoped that the afternoon wouldn´t consist of stomping around in the shallows of the river looking for alligators.
It didn´t, although we did keep the hunting theme going – now we were catching piranhas! We drove our boat to a quiet spot where trees grew out of the water scattering the sunlight and creating a scenic and atmospheric environment. The setting had attracted a lot of fish too; as soon as we dipped our lines in the water the red meat on our hooks was attacked furiously. The problem was there were all so small! Their little mouths would not go over the hook, they just happily nibbled away until the meat was gone. When someone did manage to pull in a little flapping carnivore we were often told to put it back in as it would be too small to eat. It was frustrating for the others but I managed to avoid the problem by not catching anything at all. We kept at it for a couple of hours and although Josh was doing well we both pined for the richly rewarding waters for Fiji. In the end I managed to catch one piranha.
That night we got to eat our catch – they were small and bony without much meat and although, to be honest, we would have been better off eating the meat we had spent so long feeding them, there was a strange pleasure in devouring something dangerous. Still, an alligator steak would have been more filling.
The sounds of the Amazonian pampas create a fascinating and endless chorus which Oscar was eager for us to appreciate. So it was that we found ourselves floating down the river that night with the engine turned off and only the clear star lit sky illuminating our way. Fireflies flickered in the trees and birds shrieked strangely. After a while we started singing “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”. It just felt like the right thing to do.
The next morning we got up early to listen to the morning medleys. I have to confess that I wasn´t particularly interested but the howler monkeys woke me out of my sleepy stupor with their crazy banter and seeing the sun rise from the river was worth getting up for. It was our last day. We had stomped the marshlands looking for snakes, fished for piranhas in the river and driven the boat up and down admiring its diverse contents. There was only one thing left to do – swim in it.
Even with my newly acquired suicidal tendencies this part of the trip was not something I was deeply enthusiastic about but to have swum in an Amazonian river did seem something to be proud of. Besides, all we needed was to find a few pink dolphins and none of the other (more worrying) creatures would come anywhere near us. So we searched. It was the first grey morning we had seen for a while, slightly cold with the sun hidden in cloud. The banks of the river were bare and we didn´t need Oscar to tell us that the hundreds of alligators and camen were all stealthily enjoying the warmth of the river. After almost an hour of searching we had only managed to find a couple of baby dolphins who, Oscar said, were not enough protection. He had explained on the first day that if we failed to find dolphins to swim with, it wouldn´t be safe. Now, seeing our restlessness and growing impatience, he seemed to change his mind. There were after all only three people (guess who) who were stupid enough to want to go in anyway. We were in a wide part of the river where the banks were reasurringly far away but as we got undressed I couldn´t help thinking about how many dangerous reptiles must be lurking in that murky water.
Meh. This was no time for logical thought. We stood on the side of the boat and dived into the brown water. It was warm and much nicer than it looked – when I came up Josh was still standing there hugging himself. He finally managed a feeble and effeminate jump into the water, which would have probably caused me to drown with laughter had I not already been climbing back into the boat. We splashed around, laughing the kind of laugh that comes out after you get hit in the face with a football or fall over in the street, before eventually deciding we had endangered our lives enough for the day. Ironically, as we towelled ourselves down a pink dolphin made a belated appearance but disappeared again as soon as we got back in the water. They really are useless. And they look like penises.
written by  steve_stamp on July 22, 2009 from Rurrenabaque, Bolivia

Tear Gas and Trucha
Copacabana, Bolivia
We spent a final couple of days in La Paz and for our last night invested in a bottle of rum which we got for just over a pound. It was a good night although, despite four separate attempts, we failed to find a decent club in La Paz. I´d heard that some of the rival clubs in La Paz tear gas each other (this also happened in Cusco while we were there) and after a few minutes waiting for the music to divert from its monotonous pounding I would find myself painting pictures of pandemonium and planning my escape route.
Clearly I was ready for a change of scene and after eating away our hangovers the next morning we said our farewells and took the (nice and short) bus ride to Copacabana. It was a fascinating and beautiful trip through miles of arid mountain farmland until we came to the calm expanse of Lake Titicaca. Along the shore cars and coaches were being loaded onto flimsy wooden rafts and ferried across. We joined this surreal traffic and Josh and I decided to remain on the bus as we crossed rather than take a separate boat. Safely on the other side we continued our journey around the lake
When we reached Copacabana the sun had begun its slow descent into the lake which stretched as far as you could see. The golden light cast spectacular shadows as we came down into the town and I couldn’t help but think that this was one of the most beautiful places I had ever seen. I dribbled to think that there would also be fresh trout in every restaurant. I´m really very easily pleased sometimes.
The ferry to Isla del Sol, a scenic island on Lake Titicaca, left early the next morning and we headed to the Northern part which was supposedly the most spectacular. The lake looked even bigger and in the light of day snow capped mountains were visible on distant shores. The day was sunny with a cold breeze and we made the most of it by walking up into the dusty hills where we found a maze of Inca ruins and striking views in every direction. Challapampa, where we were staying, was sandwiched beautifully between two sandy beaches and we spent the rest of the day relaxing and eating more trout.
Aside from the incredible surroundings, one incident stood out for me that day. We had just finished eating when a pair of local kids appeared mischievously as the window. The smaller of them, a little boy with a dry face and a wonderfully snotty nose, was particularly excited to meet us and let out an incredible fart – way beyond his yeas – which we all found genuinely hilarious. I rewarded him and his slightly less controversial sister with a couple of sweets I found in the bottom of my bag. I also decided to demonstrate my own abilities when we got outside (by now Josh was unimpressed with even my most creative morning expulsions) but, disappointingly, little Snotface was gone.
We explored the south of the island the next day – more Inca ruins and scenic trout consumption – before heading back to Copacabana for a final night next to Titicaca. By the time we were delivered back, the sky had clouded over. As we got off the boat, huge clouds of dust blew across the town. Then, for the first time in South America, it rained. Actually it was more like hail and it didn’t last long but I couldn’t help noticing that Copacabana didn’t look quite as attractive this time around as we power-walked to our hostel, making strange faces into the gritty wind.
written by  steve_stamp on July 24, 2009 from Copacabana, Bolivia

On the Road (and a bit on the lake)
Oruro, Bolivia
We left Copacabana and headed for Oruro . The journey was not without incident - first our back tyre appeared to burst and our driver appeared to ignore it. The rest of us struggled to match his indifference and we sweated along mountain roads uncomfortably. When we miraculously arrived at the lake crossing, we were told that it was too choppy and we would have to wait because there were fears that our coach would topple off the feeble raft. It was partly a blessing, as our driver decided he might aswell fix the tyre while we were waiting. It hadn´t actually burst but the thing had completely fallen apart; the flapping we had heard was half of the grip coming off and the bald tyre would not have lasted much longer.
We eventually were permitted to cross and made it to La Paz where we got a bus to Oruro. I hoped it would be a nice, uneventful journey but no… A young boy selling biscuits got on (which is not unusual) and, in what I can only assume was a desperate marketing ploy, started singing loudly (which is). And I use the word “singing” loosely. It was so loud not even my headphones could block out the sound. I suppose the idea was to subject the helpless passengers to ear shattering renditions until someone bought something just to shut him up. Eventually, it seemed that someone had.
Oruro is a busy, modern market town with good street food and a distinct lack of gringos. The latter was underlined when, after a meal, our waitress start taking photos of us on her camera phone. We were planning on getting a train to Ururo but decided that a stop at Potosi along the way would be worthwhile. After another bus, from which we watched the amazing changing hazy layers of another desert sunset, we were there – checking into the kind of hotel room you normally only see in the movies when someone is on the run. Breakfast wasn’t included but we did find some chicken bones in the corner. Still, a bed is a bed, even when it is creakier than an old people’s home and partly constructed out of flattened cardboard boxes.
written by  steve_stamp on July 25, 2009 from Oruro, Bolivia

Miner
Potosi, Bolivia
Potosi is famous for its mines. Once a wealthy city with rich mineral resources, its former glories now exist as souvenirs, in museums and the impressive buildings of the Central Plaza . Much has changed since the days of slavery when the mines were forcibly constructed under the Spanish; now the miners are free to use the government owned mine as they please (paying a certain percentage in taxes of course) and the tunnels are invaded twice daily by tourists bearing gifts if soft drink, coca leaves and dynamite in exchange for being put up with. It sounded a pretty good set up to me and after kitting ourselves out in wellies, waterproofs and rather fetching helmets, our small group each bought gifts and we headed up there to see what was going on.
Along the way we stopped off at the processing factory where lots of complicated separating procedures take place, eventually producing silver, lead and… something else. Obviously I was listening, taking in and fully understanding the science involved but I won’t bore you with the details. The machines were a lot louder than our guide. Basically they crushed up rocks and then took all the nice shiny bits out using machines that went round and made lots of noise. Really though, it was a pretty elaborate looking process and I just enjoyed the crowded collection of machines busily spinning, whirring, grinding and stirring.
Our next stop was the entrance of the mine. We switched on our headlamps and stooped carefully through the tunnels, trying not to hit our heads too many times and listening to the strange hissing of the pipes along the walls. We stopped at a point where the air suddenly turned warm and sickly. A young boy and (I assumed) his father pushed a big metal cart full of rubble along the metal tracks. It was hard to imagine children working in mines despite the prominence of working children across Bolivia . We had been served by children in restaurants, seen them shining shoes in the towns and cities, even been told off in a hostel by one for trying to use the wrong shower! There was a certain charm about it at times- like if a chubby four year old with a chocolatey face brought you your change or something – but this was a bit more disturbing.
We became used to the smells and sensations of the tunnels and soon found ourselves crawling on our bellies through the dust. Josh had been unsure about going into the claustrophobic mines but he didn’t seem too phased now that we were in there – even less so after a drinking session with some miners who we found relaxing at the end of their working day. With dust tickling our throats we climbed up and down spinning trap-like stairs and crawled shuffled and squeezed our way around the rocky tunnels, their wonky wooden beams looking set to collapse.
Eventually we felt a welcome rush of fresh air. We filled our lungs and moved excitedly through the well ventilated corridor to freedom, my helmet rattling happily along the ceiling. Once outside we were given a dynamite demonstration. We all stood silently as the bomb was constructed – it looked pretty harmless at first, like a little round plastic bag full of sweets, but the fuse gave it a menacing touch and, once lit, a sense of imminent destructive power. Oblivious to this, the guide passed the fizzing explosive to Josh who jokingly accepted and then quickly attempted to hand it back. But he wouldn’t take it! He managed to pass it on to an Irish girl whose fleeting moment of enthusiasm was quickly replaced with genuine concern as she failed to find a willing recipient. Eventually the guide took it and ran off onto some wasteland where he planted it before returning to safety. We waited until we started thinking it may not have worked when suddenly a bang shook the ground beneath us. I would not like to be in a mine when one of those goes off. No sir.
Potosi had introduced us to a harsher climate. Although sunny, the wind was bitter and patches of ice testified to freezing nights. We had come prepared – layers of long johns, fleece and alpaca kept us toasty – but as we set of towards Uyuni on a colourful little bus I noticed that we were practically naked compared to the bulky, blanket clad locals who shuffled onto the bus and shuffled sideways down the inadequate aisle.
written by  steve_stamp on July 28, 2009 from Potosi, Bolivia

Cold in the Desert
Uyuni, Bolivia
Uyuni is surrounded by some of the most spectacular and surreal scenery in Bolivia so, like every other gringo who visits the tumbleweed town, we hopped in a jeep for a tour of the nearby salt flats and National Park. We set off on a cloudy Sunday, our first stop was to pay our respects at the train “cemetery” which lies on the outskirts of town. Rows of rusty old trains create an amazing spectacle – abandoned in the baron wasteland, the tired brown relics lean passively, resigned to the slow erosion of the desert. We took photos and climbed all over them before being ferried off to the salt flats.
Both salty and flat, the salt flats were everything I was expecting. The endless white desert was fascinating and, above all, provided the opportunity to take vaguely amusing photos of us treading on each other and swinging on Josh’s beard. Josh’s beard really does deserve a mention. Cultivated since our departure and affectionately known as “The Wedge”, it has received praise and extended stares the world over. It has become a tourist attraction in itself. Now, after almost four months, Josh’s meticulous beauty regime has been extended to include a daily combing of The Wedge, which is habitually twisted and tangled in times of reflection.
Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, in the middle of a salty nowhere getting back into our jeep. The roads were thin smudges across the landscape and we gazed out of the windows at the blankness until we reached our lunch stop, the Isla Inchahuasi. An island upon the salt covered in cacti, Inchahuasis claim to fame seemed to be the fact that it is so spectacularly out of place. Nevertheless, it is a good place to climb up for a view of the flats and the distant mountains. After lunch and some more time dedicated to the perfect photographic illusion (it’s actually really hard to do if your camera is clever enough to have auto focus) we headed towards these mountains.
Our hotel was located on the edge of the salt flat where the terrain suddenly turned brown and rough. It was fairly comfortable, with hot water and a dining area from which we could see the colourful beams of the sun setting behind the mountains. Its most notable feature however was that it was constructed almost entirely out of salt! The walls, the tables, the chairs, even the beds were carved out of the stuff! If your chips were a bit bland you could simply scratch a bit of table onto them! It was a beautiful looking building, with salt crystal chandeliers illuminating the white uniformity of the rooms. In one corner they had a huge pile of salt and a stack of salt blocks – I like to think they just make anything they find lacking: “No, sorry we don´t have a bar but if you just give me a few minutes…” etc.
That night we got to know the other half of our group, a trio of flatulent Frenchmen who had a mysterious collection of cuts and bruises. They told us that they had just come from La Paz they had been robbed on two separate occasions, once by a fake taxi driver and then again at the hands of some Bolivians they had befriended who had drugged their drinks and beaten them before taking (what was left of) their valuables. To add injury to insult, one of them had also fallen off his bike on the Death Road. It was fair to say that these were an unlucky bunch but it did make me realise how fortunate we were to get out of that place unscathed – particularly considering the risky nature of our adventures. Anyway, we played some poker, drank some palpably cheap wine and retired to our salty beds for a good nights sleep. The pillows, mattresses and sheets were made of more familiar materials.
We set off as the sun came up the next morning. Our first stop, after an hour or so, was unplanned. Our jeep suddenly went quiet and we found ourselves watching hopefully as our driver tinkered with the engine. His toolkit consisted of a screwdriver and a knife, it wasn´t very convincing, but after a helping hand from the driver of another jeep (there were loads, breaking down in this desert was not as dramatic as you may imagine) we continued on our way to see Volcano Ollague, an active volcano which I had heard smokes like a Feltham housewife.
Due to the somewhat dangerous nature of active volcanoes we viewed this one from a distance – the “mirador” an interesting set of rock formations which I found almost as impressive as the distant smoke-tipped spectacle. The rest of the day was spent driving between picturesque lakes where the high mineral content means not only a welcome collection of flamingos but also spectacular variations in colour from deep reds to rich greens and streaks of yellow. Around the edges the lakes were framed with thick ice, this and the icy wind gave us a taste of the freezing night which we had been frequently warned to prepare for. We also visited the surreal and other-worldly landscape known as Salvador Dali Desert because the strange rocks are set to have inspired Dali when he visited the region.
It was an indescribable day of sights and I am well aware that my descriptive language fails to deliver the necessary images – even my photos don’t do the places justice – but to attempt to describe the constant, often baffling, changes in landscape would probably mean me dedicating the remainder of the trip to sitting hunched in various internet cafés across Argentina and Brazil. Thankfully, the hotel we were staying in requires very little description. It was basic and cold. We huddled around a small iron oven for warmth, played cards and the Frenchmen attempted to play the Beverly Hills Cop theme tune on panpipes (their Ipods had, after all, been robbed) – eventually the bitter cold of the night began to set in and we retreated to the warmth of our beds wearing as much as possible. It was the kind of night where you wake up to find an arm has fallen out of your sleeping bag and started collecting icicles but I slept well and, at 5am when we had to get up, was even fairly chirpy.
We set off in darkness, with stars scattered generously across the sky and our bodies still clinging to the warmth of our beds. I joked that breaking down now would be the worst thing ever. Then we did. Our driver tried to restart it but the engine gave nothing but a pained groan and a clangy rattle. We shivered patiently in the back. He tried the screwdriver, then the knife but nothing seemed to work! We tried to roll back to the hotel but we had driven too far and down too many hills – eventually the driver told us to wait while he walked back and got another jeep. By the time we watched the sun rise from the icy windows of our jeep, my chirpy mood had frozen over. We had been sitting in the cold for an hour and my feet were so cold they hurt. Our driver returned in a new and improved jeep and, happily abandoning the frozen corpse of that which had taken us so far, we continued on to the steaming land of the geysers.
Pools of thick, muddy water bubbled furiously and everywhere cracks in the ground shot streams of warm mist which drifted over us and filled our nostrils with its horrifically pungent sulphuric odour. I was amazed at how active the geysers were – there was a constant hissing and bubbling – and we were told that this was the case 24 hours a day. In an attempt to thaw my frozen feet, I stood nonchalantly on one of the smaller holes and immediately hopped off as the scolding steam burnt through my thin shoe! My feet half numb and half burnt, I got back into the jeep. I wasn´t particularly enjoying our last day.
We had breakfast at the nearby hot springs where we were also able to revive our feet. While Josh and I sat on the edge watching our toes come back to life, Niall and the Frenchmen braved partial nudity and went in fully. I was tempted, the water was nice and hot, until I considered that one has also to get out of the springs at some point. I decided to devote all my energy to eating as much breakfast as possible.
Fully defrosted and revitalized, the mornings mishaps were actively repressed and we proceeded to our final stop, Laguna Verde. This was a huge, deserted lake surrounded by red rocky mountains where the sulphur content repels flamingos but demands photography with its brilliant green water. Our driver said something in Spanish about the landscape being similar to Mars and that it is used by NASA for training purposes. That is at least what I decided he was saying – it could have been anything really. I have to confess that despite a tenfold increase in my vocabulary I probably only know about ten words of Spanish and most of them are only of any use when bargaining for alpaca jumpers or looking for a train station which is on the right hand side (I don’t know the word for left).
Anyway, so began our epic drive back to civilisation. It really was epic too; once we had bounced over the surface of Mars we crossed vast stretches of sand, slate, rubble and rock, splashed our way through icy frozen streams which trickled down through the valley from frosted mountaintops and eventually watched the sky changing colour as we roared across the flat, limitless landscapes before Uyuni.
written by  steve_stamp on July 31, 2009 from Uyuni, Bolivia

Tupiza
Tupiza, Bolivia
We had planned to catch a train to Tupiza that night but the tickets were sold out and we were forced into yet another early start in order to catch the 6am bus the next morning. It was a no frills affair – the bus was filled with the frost of morning and people wearing an unreasonable amount of blankets. We were forced to sit apart as it was already so crowded and we both found ourselves next to bulky Bolivians enveloped in hundreds of warm, enviable layers. I waited until my guy had fallen asleep before I considered cuddling him but eventually decided against it. In between broken sleeps I noticed a great deal of banter around a guy getting on with a huge wheelbarrow. It was a strange morning but when I did finally rouse myself somewhere towards consciousness we slowed and stopped off at a small mountain town for breakfast.
The landscape had changed once again and now we were in the presence of cows and goats who grazed in dry fields- I took this to be a sign that we were no longer so uninhabitably high in the mountains. Soon the sun drove all the cold from the bus, I was sweating now (you really can’t win with these Bolivian bus rides) and shedding layers as I looked out onto cactus strewn hills and immense, towers of layered rock. The landscape was that of a Western film. By the time we reached Tupiza I was wearing a t-shirt and feeling suitably smug to be able to do so.
The following three days were dedicated to hot showers and lie-ins. After the hotels of Potosi and Uyuni, our new abode seemed extravagantly comfortable. It even had a kitchen so we could make our own breakfasts and lunches and then consume unhealthy amounts of burgers and fried chicken from the street stalls by night. Relaxation and cholesterol aside, there wasn´t a great deal of anything in Tupiza and soon we were restless and eager to get to Argentina, our first stop being the capital of culture, Cordoba.
written by  steve_stamp on August 6, 2009 from Tupiza, Bolivia

Cordoba
Cordoba, Argentina
Apart from the straightforward jump over the border and the troubling jump in ticket prices once in Argentina, our journey to Cordoba was pretty uneventful. The Argentinian buses feel more like trains, particularly after so much time spent on the rattling deathtraps that cloud up the crazy roads of Bolivia. I was careful not to mention, while we still used the Bolivian deathroads, Niall´s accident- but now that we have escaped them I think I can relay the story without raising my mums blood pressure too much (she is, after all, pretty much the only person who reads this blog). Niall was on his way to Sucre from La Paz. He has a habit of taking diazepam before a long journey and was just easing himself into a drug induced sleep when his bus swerved off the road. Apparently a lorry or bus was driving on the wrong side of the road and the driver was forced off the road in order to avoid a head on collision. The bus turned on its side and although there was not (as there often is) a steep drop off the side of the road, the crash resulted in a number of small injuries and two fatalities. This could have been any bus in Bolivia. Niall escaped, with the other passengers, through the windscreen and was forced to return to La Paz. Shaken and understandably not wishing to relive the experience, he headed to Potosi instead, where we found him still in shock and nursing a rather pathetic bruise on the nail of his little finger.
It was, therefore, with understandable relief that we were able to bid farewell to the Bolivia buses and welcome the long, straight roads and the smooth, spacious new buses of Argentina, with their unlimited free tea and generous supply of films. The lavish luxury of these new buses was extended once we got off to the galleries, restaurants, cafes and museums of Cordoba. The streets were smart and lined with orderly rows of tall trees, the roads were wide and busy, the shops had shiny shelves filled with rows of goods. We hadn´t seen anything like this for a while. The dusty shelves of a typical shop in Bolivia would contain a scattering of products, most of which look like they belong in a museum. Suddenly we were surrounded by supermarkets, statues, electric buses and more tight jeans than Reading festival. Smart old men wore tweed jackets and cravats and everywhere seemed to me to have a sophisticated European feel to it.
This is all very nice on one level but when you are a traveller with little money such a transition is also a bit of a worry. We had come up with a few money saving ideas, one of which was to invest in hip flasks (secretly I had been looking for an excuse to buy one for a while) and when we got to Cordoba we were eager to try them out in the local bars. We filled them with frenet, the local spirit of choice although I´m not sure why because a) it is Italian and b) it tastes like leaves and medicine. Anyway, our experiment was a success - we topped up cokes in dark smoky corners while listening to reggaeton and hanging out with our room mates - a pair of quirky Finnish vegetarians. Niall, who had found his way down to Cordoba after being seperated from and then reunited with his bags (he really wasn´t having much luck with buses) topped off the night in characteristic style by vomitting a lomito out of the cab, which then refused to go on.
In case you are wondering, a lomito - meaning a small steak – is a kind of steak sandwich popular in Argentina. My first lomito also contained two eggs, ham, a slab of cheese, salad and mayonnaise. By the time I had finished my head hurt and I was pretty sure that if I listened closely enough I would be able to hear my heart faintly sobbing. It did taste pretty good but was nothing compared to my second Argentinian steak experience in one of the citys more credible establishments. It was the best steak I have ever had in my life. Over an inch thick and the most mouth wateringly juicy and tender piece of meat imaginable, I vowed to eat as many of these as possible before Brazil. No more ice-creams, no more snacks, I would even cut down on water if it meant that I could feasibly have one of these every night. It is a strange feeling to at once devote your life to the consumption of meat but there was no doubt in my mind - I needed to make the most of these.
Before we left Cordoba we visited the house in which Che spent most of his childhood - it is now a museum with some rooms still "intact" and some devoted to various articals and exhibits, my favourite being a a 500cc Norton motorbike identical to 'La Poderosa'- the Powerful One- which famously carried Che and Alberto across South America in The Motorcycle Diaries. Our own (only slightly less epic) journey continued the next day to the place of Che´s birth, Rosario.
written by  steve_stamp on August 12, 2009 from Cordoba, Argentina

Robbed in Rosario
Rosario, Argentina
Rosario is divided by a web of wide, crisscrossing one way roads which at first seem very dangerous. Of course once you realise that there is no right of way and the nonchalant drivers simply slow down when a collision course appears imminent you just sit back and enjoy the tension of every crossing.
The tree-lined streets are dotted with fragrant shops selling smart leather goods and we meandered through the city getting a feel for the place and finding the city’s few attractions – including Rio Parana which I hear (and can easily believe) is the widest river in the world – to be fairly uninspiring. The most laughably anticlimactic attraction was the place where Che was born – a big office-looking building where a little sign on a lamp post outside quietly announces the city’s feeble claim to fame. Nevertheless Rosario was a very comfortable place to stay and our hostel, an intimate reggae themed place, had a great atmosphere and a good crowd.
Rosario has a large student population which promised live music, clubs and bars and delivered them happily in no particular order. I liked the bars, which were loud and filled with the entertaining banter of the well dressed Argentinean scenesters, but the live bands that we saw were of a disappointingly bland, generic variety – made up for young guys who were more interested in attracting women than playing music. Which is fair enough I suppose, Argentinian women are inarguably the most attractive we had seen in South America.
It was after one of these nights out that we found we had been robbed. At first I couldn’t believe it but we looked and rummaged and looked again and realised it was definitely not there. Someone had stolen our pie out of the fridge. Normally I would not relay such a marvellously unremarkable tale but in this case I feel that my whole view of Rosario was slightly tainted by this rare moment of heightened emotion. So please take absolutely no notice of my scathing review of Rosario, I was just hungry.
Aside from spinach pie, Rosario left me hungry for some real music, some decent places to explore and a bit more of an interesting art scene. We had not planned to go to Buenos Aires when we first set off in April but the more you hear about Argentina the more you realise it can not be skipped. By the time we reached South America we knew it would be one of the highlights and now, finally on our way there, I was sure it would not disappoint.
written by  steve_stamp on August 17, 2009 from Rosario, Argentina

Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires, Argentina
The first place to go in Buenos Aires for anyone who is serious about devoting their life to beef is La Cabrera, a cosily candlelit restaurant beautifully decorated with hanging model planes, teacups and other vintage bits and bobs. More impressive than the décor was the menu – a long list of meaty delights which I probably would have mulled over for hours if the waiter had not tipped us off about the rump steak. We ordered one each despite being told one was big enough for two and when they were brought over they were followed by every pair of eyes in the restaurant. These were the most outrageously generous slabs of meat I had ever seen, looking more like joints of beef you would pick up back home for a Sunday roast than individual steaks.
When I finally finished it off my plate was covered in blood – it looked like a tiny massacre had taken place and the bodies cleared away. I suppose with the size of the portions in that place that is pretty much what is happening every day. We walked out of the restaurant breathing heavily and toddled slowly to our bar where we could sit down and rub our bellies. We found a place with a live jazz band and didn’t move for the rest of the night. Mostly because we couldn’t.
We spent the next day exploring La Boca, a poor area of the city where colourfully painted streets filled with artists and Tango dancers underline the city’s unique character. It is also home to La Bombonera, the home stadium of football team Boca Juniors where Maradona made a name for himself. He is so idolised in fact that when we took a tour of the stadium we were shown a special box from which the Maradona family has the privilege of watching every game. The stadium itself is not particularly grand but on match days it would be filled with 80,000 Boca fans who passionately (and easily) drown out the 3,000 away fans who are squeezed into one end of the stadium.
Unfortunately, due to some familiar sounding issues around TV stations and money, the Argentinean league was on strike and we were not able to watch the first game of the season – initially scheduled for that week. Instead we found our own game, in a small cage on the corner of some multi-coloured streets, where we held our own against some typically skilful Argentinean and Spanish youngsters. Although my trainers now greet me every day with a wide, frayed smile, it was worth it to get a genuine feel for the area and its people beyond the insincere friendliness of the bar touts and the irritating tango dancers who think you want to have your photo taken wearing their hat.
During the day in Buenos Aires the most common way to pass the time seems to be shopping and the vintage shops of San Telmo caught my eye as I flicked through Time Out Buenos Aires (which would, for the duration of our stay, replace Lonely Planet as our Bible). We walked down a long stretch of road filled with huge white mansions, most of which seemed to be gracefully falling apart. Antique shops sprung up regularly, filled with old, intricate furniture, brass lamps, black and white photographs and costume jewellery. The best finds were a collection of clothes shops where you could get amazing items for a fraction of the boutique prices. I decided I had accumulated enough gaudy cardigans from Bolivia so managed to resist the temptation. I would later come to regret this decision when my hoody disappeared from a club but we can come back to thievery later.
The nightlife of Buenos Aires was the best we’d seen in South America by a long way and after a few days you realise that the most interesting time to explore the city is an intoxicated tour of the various bars, clubs and shows. During our stay we saw live jazz and indie bands, went to a massive hiphop club, a funky little drum and bass club, a bar with a VJ(!) playing 80s music videos and an amazing bar covered entirely in stencil graffiti. Every night there would be something to keep you entertained until the early hours.
One of these messy nights caused us to miss checkout – we were planning to move to another place because we were finding our current hostel, based in the city centre and inundated with trustafarians (middle-class white guys with long hair and beards who come travelling with their trust fund), slightly tedious. Luckily me standing in reception in my pyjamas, pleading ignorance in the voice of a pubescent chain smoker and with one eyelid securely stuck down, was enough to evoke what was either sympathy or fear in the hostel staff and they decided to let us leave. We moved to Palermo where boutiques and pretty streets are fused with a vibrant art scene which seems to spill out of the shops and colour their walls with bold and elaborate designs.
It is very difficult, when writing about a place, to describe the things which reflect the true character – beyond the buildings, parks and museums. One particularly fascinating scene which I saw on numerous occasions in Buenos Aires, was the lunchtime barbeque of the local workmen. The coals would be fired up and by lunchtime a nice collection of meat would be sizzling away ready for the hungry dozens. It was a very sociable set up, with all the workers gathering round to cook and take their share of the meat; it always made me smile. And hungry.
The week disappeared in a blur of late nights and lazy exploration. On the last day we made sure we stopped by the cemetery in Recoleta where Evita and various other famous, eminent and necessarily wealthy figures have their final resting places. The extravagant tombs form beautiful and spooky corridors of stone and statue where cats wander creepily as if they are waiting for their owners to wake from an eternal slumber. Nearby was also an interesting sculpture – a huge aluminium flower which opens every morning and closes every night.
With Buenos Aires suitably sampled and thoroughly photographed we got on our night bus to the Iguazu Falls. Knowing that this would be our final opportunity to experience the luxury of Argentinean buses we decided that only the very best would do. The “suite” ticket was not much more expensive but promised some deliciously unnecessary perks. We had a steak dinner with red wine, champagne and best of all, fully reclining seats with a foot rest that came up to create a completely flat bed! It was better than a plane. In fact, it was better than a lot of the hostels we’d stayed in! But I suppose that isn’t saying much.
written by  steve_stamp on August 30, 2009 from Buenos Aires, Argentina

Iguazu Falls
Foz do Iguacu, Brazil
Arriving at Puerto Iguazzu I was slightly devastated to see that it was grey and miserable outside. We were only going to be around for two days so we just had to hope it would clear up quickly, in the meantime we headed into town for our final Argentinean dinner – a mixed grill which arrived sizzling and answered any questions about what they do with the rest of the cow.
The night was wild and stormy and the next morning we set out feeling glad that at least the rain had relented. The Iguazu Falls (which I will spell like that despite all the different spellings I saw – Iguacu, Iguassu, etc) are surrounded by a network of metal walkways and when you enter from the Argentinean side there is also a little train to take you to the furthest points. It feels a lot like a theme park which could very easily be depressing but actually the train does save a lot of time and the walkways allow people of all shapes and sizes to get right up to the edge of the waterfalls without risking their lives or getting into a boat.
If getting into a boat does take your fancy there are also a range of additional tours – we couldn’t resist being taken under the waterfalls. It was a spectacular and hilarious ride, the huge waterfalls loomed over us and the roaring of the water grew louder and louder until it was thudding onto the boat and then us. I believe I would have wet myself had the waterfall not been doing such a good job- we were all completely hysterical by the end.
We squelched along pathways afterwards feeling utterly immune to the sprays of the waterfalls and not at all troubled by the presence of dark, heavy clouds in the sky. Although the bad weather prevented us from seeing the falls in all their outrageously photogenic glory, the contrast of the dark, moody sky and the white clouds of mist rising from the waterfalls created stunning and atmospheric views and I couldn’t wait to see the Brazilian side the next day.
We wasted no time when we got back to the hostel. After a much needed hot shower and change of clothes we got in a taxi and, with the help of a friendly and alarmingly bug-eyed taxi driver, headed across the border. Foz de Iguazu, the town on the Brazilian side, was to be the penultimate stop on our world tour. We now had only nine days left.
The Iguazu experience in Brazil was very different. It was a bit less like a theme park, more like a National Park, and the visitors didn’t have the same sense of excitement. They day before we had literally seen grown men screaming and running for the train, it was like they were trying to be the first up Space Mountain in Disneyland. However, this more subdued atmosphere could also be blamed on the weather – a white mistiness had descended on the area and our first glimpse of the falls was comically bad. You could barely make them out!
As we got closer the landscape began to emerge out of the mist and we were thankful for it – miles of immense waterfalls which cut through the green forests and crashed down cliffs. The views were less varied but more extensive than the Argentinean side, and equally beautiful. Even awful weather couldn’t take anything away from such an awe inspiring landscape. After taking a few hazy pictures and immersing ourselves in the wet sprays of the Devils Throat, the most violently powerful of the falls, we were soggy and pretty well acquainted with the place. Warmer climates beckoned and dreams of defrosting on the beach in Rio.
written by  steve_stamp on August 31, 2009 from Foz do Iguacu, Brazil

Vamos a la Playa
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Our final bus ride was also the longest yet, an arduous twenty five hour journey via Sao Paulo. It was cruel to have such a city, particularly with their football team and striker Ronaldo on form, dangled so temptingly in front of our eyes. However, what we did see out of our misted windows (the rain followed us all the way) was not particularly inviting and as we came closer to Rio the green, tropical mountains were blanketed with lazy clouds and it promised a much more spectacular introduction. I scanned the horizon waiting for the moment when the hills would part and the glorious city would reveal itself but it never happened. Gradually it got dark and we were introduced to the city slowly, with dark suburban streets and seedy hostels with neon signs – the most memorable of which was medieval themed.
Our hostel was reassuringly devoid of neon advertising and although I would have welcomed being a knight for a night, our simple room up a small, winding staircase had a very Brazilian character and was more than adequate. I slung my bag down and was ready to go and get my first decent Brazilian meal when we were introduced to a Brazilian guy who was on his way to watch one of the local sides, Flamengo. One fleeting moment of hungry hesitation later and we were on the bus to the Maracana stadium.
The stadium was amazing – a huge, circular structure with the pitch only a few yards from where we stood – but disappointingly the fans formed only patchy groups in the wet stands and the noise came mostly from above our heads where the “real” fans seemed to have arranged to congregate. Still, it was a good game. Flamengo, with a heavy footed Adriano (actually he was pretty heavy everywhere else too) struggled against a lively Cruziero side who, after conceding an early goal, came back to win 2-1. We got a metro back and at midnight I couldn’t quite believe I was wandering the dark streets of Rio de Janeiro but it seemed we had chosen a good area (Ipanema) and I found my paranoia easing with every mugging-free minute.
My carefully staggered storytelling style leads me back to Buenos Aires where you will remember La Boca – the colourful streets, the football stadium, the football match inside the cage. We actually visited this area twice – the second time with Niall so that he could see what Josh and I agreed was one of the best parts of town. We left him at the football stadium, having already done the tour ourselves, and arranged to meet him at the cage for a kickaround. To pass the time we went to an art gallery, which had been closed the last time we were there, and looked at some huge but otherwise fairly unremarkable photographs.
When we got to the cage we found Niall wide-eyed and with his shirt torn. He had been targeted by two guys who had tackled him to the floor, held him down and raided his pockets, stripping him of his camera. None of us could believe it – only a few days before we had been wandering around with phones, cameras and money with no real sense that we were in any danger of being robbed. We had even left our jumpers lying around while we played football.
We reported it at the police station and, feeling responsible, bought Niall a steak. If he hadn’t been on his own it wouldn’t have happened. It was a well-timed warning for Rio, particularly alongside the numerous stories we’d heard about robberies there, and it underlined the importance of moving in groups. Josh likes to point out that without him I would have been robbed by now, and this is probably true but I’m also pretty sure he would have been targeted too had it not been for my, admittedly less convincing, back up.
We were still being plagued by rain and our first trip to a deserted and windy Ipanema beach was not what I had imagined when I dreamt of Rio all those months before. Huge waves crashed heavily onto us as Niall and I, red with cold, struggled to stay upright. The tide sucked our legs from under us and even with a hazy glimpse of the green mountains at the end of the long white beach we all agreed it was a bit of an anticlimax.
It was Niall’s birthday on the Saturday after we arrived and with the “Favela Funk Party” on the Sunday (yep, a party in the favela…gulp) it promised to be a good weekend. We started the celebrations on the Friday with the Brazilian favourite, caipirinhas. These basically consist of cachaca, a spirit made from sugar cane, mixed with sugar, crushed lime and ice. They were so good we drank all of our cachaca and ended up too pickled to do anything beyond a local bar. On the Saturday we started things a bit more tentatively with just a few beers but once we got to Lapa where a busy street party was ill full swing we were tempted by offers of caipirinha by the pint.
When we eventually reached the club, Niall was picked out by the bouncers as being too drunk. A few minutes later any argument to the contrary was vomited along the busy street and the birthday boy ended up in a taxi with a plastic bag. Our association with such a spectacular wreck was enough to see us blacklisted from the club and we ended the night a few hours later after spending a while watching a ten piece band playing samba music and wishing that we could dance. The night was pretty bad and this coupled with the constant spells of rain and the windy beach amounted to a really disappointing first few days.
Bitterly hungover, the next morning should really have been a low point. Instead I was woken by excited shouting; bright sunshine filled the room. It was a miracle! The weather forecast predicted cloud and rain for the whole week and yet there wasn’t a cloud in the sky! It was hot! I dragged my physical remains out of bed and after a hurried breakfast, wasted no time in heading up to Christ to thank him for his part in the glorious day. Seeing Rio in all its sun drenched glory was amazing, the city is spread across such a stunning coastline and surrounded by towering green hills – from every angle it is a spectacular location.
Conscious that this may be our only day of sun, we headed to the beach which was buzzing with the bronzed and beautiful crowds who until now we had only seen in tacky postcards. I must say that surrounded by these pumped up thong clad beach types my own luminescent loins seemed deeply inexperienced and comically out of place. Being self-conscious is what travelling is all about though isn’t it?! Anyway, the sun eventually disappeared but our spirits were lifted and we approached the favela funk party with renewed vigour and enthusiasm.
Josh and I dressed down but soon realised we were the only ones that had and that any attempt to blend in was hopelessly futile. After being delivered to the door in minivans (which I assume were bullet proof) we, the gringos, were gathered in a separate line to enter. Once inside we were no more inconspicuous; it wasn’t a problem though. The crowd was mixed and friendly and although there was a lot of testosterone on display it tended to take the form of topless gyrating men rather than the embarrassing fistfights which are the mating cry of the Brits.
There was no hostility whatsoever and when we arrived the club was already crowded with an unmistakably Brazilian party atmosphere. Guys danced synchronised routines and the girls threw their ample posteriors around energetically. Typically of South America, drinks were paid for in one part of the club and collected in another but as they were priced at four beers for £2 I had little cause to complain. My favourite part of the night was a dance off which involved some of the more confident dancers getting up on stage and showing of their most impressive, or most sexual, moves. It was hilarious; I’m pretty sure their mothers wouldn’t have approved but then what do I know? This is Brazil.
It was an experience I will never forget and gave me the sense that there is a lot more to life in the favela than the prevalent drugs and violence. I had always been curious about life in the shantytowns but now my curiousity was heightened. The hostels always offer overpriced tours which are best avoided as most of the time you can go without them for a fraction of the price. For example, when we went to see Flamengo play the tour group who left before us were paying 75 reals. We went on the bus and got a ticket on the door for 20 reals! It was ridiculous. Still, when it came to the “Favela Tour” I didn’t feel so confident. Although I resented paying a lot of money just to walk around an area of the city, we both agreed it would be worthwhile – if only for the privelage of being able to take your camera without any worries.
It turned out to be a really exciting tour. First we were driven up to the top of the favela on the back of motorbikes driven by teenagers – an interesting shuttle which, as far as I could tell, has been set up specifically to taxi people in and out of the favela. Once at the top we left the main streets – busy with shops and stalls – and entered the more familiar narrow concrete alleys that I had seen so often in films like City of God. I had seen and heard so much about favelas at school and in the media that now wandering through one seemed almost as absurd as snorkelling after sharks or stamping around looking for snakes. I had always seen them as completely unapproachable places but, as our guide explained, the politics of the area creates a tightly controlled environment where drug dealers rule and where less lucrative crimes (ie. theft) is not tolerated.
To put it simply, robbing gringos in the favela will get you killed. The drug gangs make a horrendous amount of money– the business is highly organised, an integral part of the favelas, and they are careful not to attract unnecessary attention from the police. Everyone who enters and leaves the area is monitored by young guys with walkie-talkies - they are paid around 2,000 reals per week (this amounts to £35,000 a year) so it is easy to see how people get into this dangerous line of work. It is a fascinating but deeply worrying set up – anyone who knows anything about favelas will probably not find this a shock but it struck me harder than ever when I actually saw the scale of Rocinha – the population is estimated to be anywhere from 60000 to 150000 and the whole area is controlled by a 23 year old drug dealer.
It was a gloomy, wet day and the alleys were empty. Rain flows through them, carrying rubbish down into the lower favelas. The filth builds up the lower you get and at the bottom, fittingly, the drug dealers process and sell their product. A few open doors along the way gave me a sneaky peek into small but well furnished homes where small kids watched cable TV. Most of the houses have electricity, cable, even the internet – all of which is hi-jacked from pylons struggling under an amusing tangle of wires. Young women padded around barefoot doing washing. In spite of the rain, a number of small bars and shops were open with music blaring out of little radios. A number of locals stood around drinking and smoking, seemingly indifferent to our tentative invasion.
Approximately 10% of the favela population are involved in the drug trade. Most work in the city and it was good to see that part of our money was going towards a youth centre/ crèche where parents could leave their children for the day. One of the kids, who was white with light brown hair, had been nicknamed “gringo baby”. The tour guides (who inevitably make the same jokes day after day) had made so many jokes about gringo visitors being the child’s father that he had started calling any white people “father”. The tour operator agreed that these jokes must be stopped in order to prevent any lasting psychological damage to the poor guy.
Our trip was coming to an end. Although I was vaguely aware of the depressing situation I would find myself in when I got home I was also excited to be putting a full stop on the end of such a well executed adventure. It was pretty amazing, considering all the stories we’d heard, that we hadn’t suffered any serious physical, financial or psychological damage ourselves. Niall had a catalogue of catastrophes to take home with him – even as he got on the bus to the airport he stepped nonchalantly into a cycle lane and was almost run over by a bike. Still, there was time...
On our last night the two local teams, Flamengo and Fuminense were playing the second leg of their Copa Sud America match – an irresistible local derby which we hoped would be louder and more exciting than the game we had seen on the first night. We went with Raphael, a Fluminense fan who worked at our hostel (and who provided me with a shirt for the game!) and Declan, a charismatic Irishman who we had met a few days before. Before the game I found myself alone in the stadium toilets and considering that perhaps wearing a Fluminense shirt was not a particularly good idea. Unlike English stadiums, you see, the home and away fans are not kept separate in the Maracana. At the last game we had seen police holding back crazed Cruziero fans who seemed to have an aversion to the Flamengo supporters that surrounded them. This suddenly came to mind as I stood entirely vulnerable and I hoped that I wouldn’t turn around to see a wall of black and red (Flamengo) shirts between me and the door. I don’t ever want to die in a toilet.
Thankfully no such incident occurred and I was particularly glad to be alive when we walked out into the stands. We were now in the higher section where all the noise gets made and we sat down among a large group of Fluminense fans banging drums, holding huge balloons and waving incredibly large flags – something which I noticed requires considerable skill. These were the real fans. When we arrived I was given a massive balloon and I can not express my childlike joy. This balloon was everything. It meant I was one of them! In this group I was invincible! If I needed the toilet again I would just hold it in…
At the players came out onto the pitch we all released our balloons and the fans really got going. The chants were filled with music and dancing, the smoky air with flags and flares. The players gave them plenty to shout about too – each team scored and had a goal disallowed and by the end, with the scores level and Fluminense looking set to win with an away goal, two Flamengo defenders were sent off for desperate last ditch tackles! We danced and clapped when we were supposed to and even joined in a few of the more basic chants. It was such a good night that I bought the shirt off Raphael when we got back.
And so came our last day. Pachamamas parting gift was a full day of magnificent sunshine and we spent most of the day on the beach, drinking coconut milk and being flung around happily in the crashing Ipanema waves. We had meant to move to Copacabana but our little room in Ipanema – which we had to ourselves the whole week – was too good to give up and a couple of trips to Copacabana confirmed it as a larger, more touristy version of what we already had.
In a generous, if slightly undignified, gesture, Josh gave away his camera to a small child who was selling chewing gum on the beach. I saw undignified because moments later every beggar, salesman and prostitute within a five mile radius was to be found lounging alongside us on the beach, gesturing towards what was left of our possessions. Josh left the beach in just a pair of shorts.
Before our flight we treated ourselves to one last slap up meal. I loved the Brazilian food and an all you can eat buffet seemed like the best way to say goodbye to each and every dish. I said goodbye to rump steaks, to roasted spring chickens, grilled sausages, lasagne, baked fish, beans, rice and roasted vegetables. Then I said goodbye to the fruit. I always joke, when I go to all you can eat places, that I might do a poo halfway through to make some room. This time I actually did it and I can tell you that it doesn’t work. There you go, I’ve taught you something. And on that bombshell I will bloatedly bid you farewell.
written by  steve_stamp on September 2, 2009 from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Master of the Nets Garden