phileasdogg

Tonight Tonight - Smashing Pumpkins

phileasdogg — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Hmm, Saturday really wasn't a good day. Our hotel was right on a busy market street, with most stalls selling costumes and other carnival-related paraphernalia. So we went and joined the throng in the morning to get our outfits and weapons. I had my hand on my wallet in my pocket when some guy squirted foam in my ear while shouting "Carnival". I gave him my best good-natured smile, wiped my ear and continued on my way. Anyway 2 minutes later I reached for my wallet and... yep, you're ahead of me. Git! He played exactly the same trick on another guy in our group and relieved him of his camera. I only had about 7 quid in local currency but it also contained both my credit cards, so getting hold of cash will be tricky for the next few weeks. This is where it really helps to be travelling in a group. Another couple offered me the spare card to their account, so I just needed to transfer money in and I was on my way again. Really good of them.

Anyway, that kind of dampened the carnival spirit, but we decided to go and join in anyway. So we donned our clown outfits, loaded up on water bombs and foam sprays and joined the mob. And I do mean mob. A bunch of gringos in the parade was like a red rag to the locals. There was water and foam raining in from all angles. And completely indiscriminate. Foam in the eyes, water bombs thrown at full force from point blank, it was like a war zone. And as if that wasn't enough, some people had what can only be described as golf balls in socks, which were used to whip victims across the back and legs. Seriously, if this happened in Europe there would be riots. And there was nearly one here, as one of our group took exception to one whipping and piled into his assailants. There were considerably more of them than us, so we dragged him out and bobbed and weaved our way back to the hotel. Needless to say La Paz, and Bolivia in general lost its appeal after that.

Thankfully we're moving on to Peru next with a new tour leader, Jennifer, who appears to be missing the fairly basic tour leader requirement of being able to communicate verbally. Every detail of our future plans so far has had to be painstakingly prised out of her. Oh well, things can only get better as D:REAM once reminded us. Although we then got 10 years of Tony Blair.

Worried About Ray - The Hoosiers

phileasdogg — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Sucre is officially the capital of Bolivia, although unofficially it's La Paz, since that's the main political and commercial commercial centre now. But it's by far the most attractive city we've visited in Bolivia so far, and the nicest hotel too, which is good since we have 3 nights here. Had a cultural tour of the city, taking in a few museums, including the old mint which thanks to its proximity to the silver mines of Potosi, used to produce coins for the majority of the Spanish empire. It's a sign of the country's decline since then that their currency is now produced in France!

And a few of us went mountain biking too. Now I've probably lost a bit of fitness in the past 6 months, but I still don't think I'm in bad shape, but the 3km climb to get out of the city nearly killed me. At 4000m, you just can't seem to get the oxygen into your lungs that your body is begging for. I was reassured to see the local tour guide gasping for breath too, and thankfully the next 20km was downhill, where we met a bus to take us back to the city.

Carnival atmosphere is stepping up, with water pistols and bombs seemingly around every corner now. I think we'll need to arm ourselves for the carnival parade in La Paz.

Perfect Skin - Lloyd Cole

phileasdogg — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 00:00:00 GMT

So the tour rolls into Potosi, allegedly the highest city in the world at 4090m, and once one of the world´s largest and richest cities due to the silver mining that sprang up here in the 1550s. About 45,000 tons of pure silver were mined here between the 1550s and 1780s, but sadly the silver ran out and it´s now a fairly bleak, poor town, with shades of its former glory reflected in some impressive but run-down architecture.

Mining is still the dominant industry in the town, though it´s now lead, tin and other less precious minerals. The conditions in the mines have always been appalling - the Spanish conquistadors initially used indigenous labour to work the mines but as they quickly died they were replaced by imported African slaves who didn´t fare much better - an estimated 8 million miners have died since mining started in Potosi, either in the mines or from silicosis.

We did a tour into one of the mines to see the conditions for ourselves and it was pretty depressing. The miners work in very cramped conditions, chipping away at the rock face with hammer and chisel, with rock dust going into their eyes and mouths (goggles are too expensive and they can´t breathe with masks on). They typically work 12-hour shifts for the equivalent of about US$6. The most depressing sight was kids working down there - we saw one who was 11 years old, dragging a heavy sack of rocks out of the mine shaft. Usually their fathers have died in the mines, so they have to work to support their families. There was a film made about the children miners of Potosi a few years ago called The Devil´s Miner which we watched, but it´s not one to watch if your mood needs improving!

Anyway, we took the miners a "gift pack" each, consisting of crackers, cigarettes, coca leaves, dynamite and a detonator. A slightly surreal assortment of gifts but they seemed to be well appreciated.

Cars & Girls - Prefab Sprout

phileasdogg — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 00:00:00 GMT

We´ve just arrived in Uyuni, Bolivia after a fantastic 3-day crossing of the desert and salt flats in Toyota Landcruisers. It was desert and mountains for the first two days, interspersed with mineral-laden lakes filled with flamingos, boiling geysers and a whole lot of brown sand. We were steadily climbing to a maximum altitude of 4000m, where even tying your shoelaces leaves you short of breath. Quite a few of our group suffered from altitude sickness, with migraines and vomiting being the most common complaints. I was one of the lucky few who escaped any symptoms. We´d been told to expect temperatures as low as minus 10 at night, but in fact it was nowhere near as cold as that, and the two places we stopped at were pretty comfortable, albeit showerless, so we didn´t smell too sweet by Day 3!

But the highlight was definitely the salt flat at Salar de Uyuni on Day 3. It´s the world´s largest salt flat at over 10,000 square kilometres and is the remains of a giant prehistoric lake, Lake Minchin, which existed here about 40,000 years ago. Driving across the middle of it where all you can see is white ground and blue sky was a fantastic experience. And our cooks and drivers were brilliant - the food and service was better than most of what I´ve had in South America to date.

Uyuni itself is a fairly humdrum town, and the difference in affluence between Chile and Bolivia was immediately obvious. And with Carnival coming up in a week or so, the local kids took great delight in pelting the gringos with water balloons as we walked down the main street. I think we´re going to have to arm ourselves. It´s a dog eat dog world out there.

Black & White Town - Doves

phileasdogg — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 00:00:00 GMT

A fairly uneventful bus journey thankfully, apart from the expected lack of sleep. We´re starting to climb now. San Pedro is at 2400m, and you can feel yourself breathing a little harder after fairly mundane activities like tying shoelaces! It´s a pretty remote town in the heart of the northern Chilean desert and is completely dominated by tourism. There´s good hiking and biking options here, and it´s also the launchpad for 4WD excursions into the Bolivian desert and salt flats, which we´ll be doing in a couple of days.

But in the meantime it´s a nice chilled-out place to relax for a couple of days. We hired some bikes and went off to some nearby sand dunes to try our hands at sand boarding. It quickly became apparent that snowboarding techniques aren´t so great on sand - there´s too much friction. But after some experimentation I managed to get down the dune in one go, and it was actually really good fun, if a touch painful on landing. Also biked out to see some pre-Columbian ruins, that were little more than a few piles of mud. But then they were 2800 years old (allegedly).

The tour group are a good group all told. Still have some doubts about my roommate, a rock-bothering know-it-all geologist, who seems reticent to flush the toilet and has a penchant for getting up at 6.30am and rustling plastic bags for 20 minutes. Each to their own I guess.

A Boy Named Sue - Johnny Cash

phileasdogg — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Hmm, not the greatest coach ride from Santiago to La Serena, Chile´s third largest city. We arrived at the coach station at Santiago about 8am, and within about 3 minutes Ash, our tour leader, had had her daypack swiped by some thieving sod. It had her laptop, camera, iPod and about US$4000, so she wasn´t happy. And then about 3 hours into the journey, the transmission on our coach, which had been making some strange noises, packed up terminally. So we had to wait for other buses with spare space to come by and pick us up from the side of the highway.

Anyway, made it in the end. There´s not a great deal to do or see in La Serena itself, so a few of us made the 3-hour trek up the coast to do some whale watching. Or as it transpired, whale searching. We went out in a 10-man boat that looked like something out of Moby Dick, but couldn´t find so much as a spurt of water in 2 hours. However, all was not lost as we did get a school of dolphins playing alongside the boat, and also saw sea otters, sealions, an elephant seal, pelicans and penguins. So I reckon we probably got our 28,000 pesos worth there (about 28 quid).

There´s also a big observatory nearby where regular punters can go along and look through a big telescope at Orion´s Belt, the Northern Cross, Saturn etc. Actually more interesting than it sounds, helped by the fact that lack of light pollution means Chile gets some spectacular starscapes.

Hopefully a less stressful trip to San Pedro de Atacama tomorrow, though it´s an overnight bus which doesn´t bode well. A few of our tour group did an overnight bus in Brazil that got hijacked. Fingers crossed...

Getting Away With It - Electronic

phileasdogg — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 00:00:00 GMT

So back to Santiago where the South American adventure started. Met up with my 14 tour buddies for the next 6 weeks who seem a decent enough bunch. Slightly concerned about the Greek guy who thinks he´s too cool for school, and the young Canadian girl who he seems to have partnered up with - she´s very loud and opinionated for a 23-year-old. But I´ll reserve full judgement until later.

There´s really not a great deal to do in Santiago so after making some cursory gestures towards exploring local culture by visiting a couple of museums I took in two movies, which I can justify by claiming they improve my Spanish - they´re English language with Spanish subtitles.

It´s up to La Serena tomorrow, a coastal resort about 6 hours drive from Santiago.

Munich - Maximo Park

phileasdogg — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Arrived in Puerto Varas a few days ago, which is just over the Andes from Bariloche, and is in Chile´s version of the Lake District. Not quite as beautiful as Bariloche, but still very nice. Did the now obligatory bike ride and also took a kayak out on one of the lakes for a day trip which was all very good. But the highlight was definitely the canyoning. It basically involves getting dressed head-to-toe in a rubber suit (yeah, OK, that was the only reason I wanted to do it), then climbing up through a forest to a mountain river, then getting back to the bottom through a combination of jumping into pools, sliding down waterfalls and abseiling. It was cold, but great fun.

I also parted company with Caroline here, so after 5 weeks of having a highly efficient organiser to tell me where to be at what time, I´ve now got a few days of trying to keep myself alive before joining a 6-week tour in Santiago that takes in Chile, Bolivia and Peru.

End of the Line - Travelling Wilburys

phileasdogg — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Last stop on the Argentinian leg is San Carlos de Bariloche in the Argentinian Lake District. We had two days of perfect weather in El Calafate, and have been lucky with another three great days here. It´s absolutely beautiful, and much as it pains me to say it, is probably more impressive than the English Lake District. The mountains are bigger and the lakes are deep blue and very clear. We did a great bike ride round the Circuito Chico - a 25km circuit that offers some fantastic views over the lakes, and also climbed up Cerro Lopez which was a tough climb but worth it for the views from the top.

Argentina has been great - Buenos Aires is a vibrant, cultured city, and the natural and diverse beauty of the glaciers, the Lake District and the Iguazu Falls have got to make it one of the most naturally beautiful countries in the world. And the steaks have been great too! It´s almost enough to make you forgive the Falklands and the Hand of God. But not quite.

Sally Cinnamon - The Stone Roses

phileasdogg — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMT

So after a long and generally very pleasant stay in Buenos Aires, we flew down to El Calafate in Patagonia to see the Glaciers. And it´s been brilliant - one of the most beautiful natural spectacles I´ve ever seen. The landscape around El Calafate is fairly bleak, looking a bit like a lunar landscape, and obviously it´s a lot cooler down here than in BA, but it´s all about the Glaciers. We took a boat ride out yesterday to get up close to three of the Glaciers - Upsala, Spegazzini and the most famous one, Perito Moreno. The ride out to them was fantastic, dodging icebergs in varying shades of white and blue, but getting up close to the Glacier face is the best part. They´re huge, much bigger than the ones in New Zealand and the sound of them creaking and groaning really gets the hairs on the back of the neck going. Then every 20 minutes or so a chunk of ice will shear off and crash into the water below accompanied by a sound like thunder. It´s quite an experience.

Then today we went out for a trek on the Perito Moreno Glacier itself. Clearly it´s in a fairly safe part of the Glacier a long way from the face, but there are still deep crevasses all over it, so it pays to watch your step. There are impossibly blue small lakes and mini-waterfalls all over the Glacier (I think the colour has something to do with the density of the compacted ice) but it was brilliant to be out there on such a vast, constantly shifting ice Field.

It´s definitely been a highlight of the trip so far, and it´s a shame we´ve got a non-changeable flight to Bariloche tomorrow as I´d have like to spent a couple of days trekking in Torres del Paine, but hey ho...

Coffee & TV - Blur

phileasdogg — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMT

It may have come to your attention that I´ve been running out of interesting entry titles for my blog posts for a while now, so I´m now going to headline them with whatever song is in my head, usually the last one that I listened to on my iPod!

Decided to get out of the hustle and bustle of BA for a couple of days, so took a one-hour ferry ride over to Colonia del Sacramento in Uruguay. It´s an attractive seaside town that apparently used to be a key base for the Portuguese to smuggle goods into the Spanish colonies. Or something like that. Anyway, it has the feel of a Greek island with it s cobbled streets, green plazas with pavement cafes and Mediterranean-influenced architecture. For some reason there are also a lot of very old cars parked along the streets that don´t look like they´ve been moved for many years. But it´s a town with a lot of character and is a welcome refuge from the heat and crowds of BA. We haven´t done much here apart from take a bike ride out to some of the beaches nearby (on possibly the worst bike I´ve ridden since I was 10 - no gears, steel frame and a saddle that might as well have not been there).

No hablo espanol

phileasdogg — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMT

So we´ve had a full week in Buenos Aires now, and apart from the searing heat, it´s been great. Strangely it seems to be hottest at around 4pm in the afternoon, and got up to 38 degrees the other day. The city reminds me a bit of Paris, with its wide boulevards and beautiful architecture (in places). In order to improve the old espanol I registered for beginners Spanish classes from 9am to 1pm Monday to Friday, and they were good fun. It was a good group of students (including Dolly Parton´s cousin!) and although I couldn´t be called fluent at the end of the week, I can probably now make myself understood in a restaurant which lessens the likelihood of ordering an intestine and anchovy pizza.

Spent one evening down at Cafe Tortoni, an Argentinian institution incorporating a restaurant upstairs and a tango show downstairs. I´m not sure where it stood on the tourist vs authentic axis, but it was an entertaining night out nonetheless. The body clock needs adjusting a bit out here. It seems nobody goes out before 10pm, and when we went for a night out on Saturday in Palermo, there was virtually nobody in the bar we were in until 1am. We were being escorted round by a guy from Buenos Aires, and by the time it got to 4am he told us we should go to this bar that would just be getting going! He seemed surprised when I explained that back home people would normally be passed out on their sofas with pieces of kebab stuck to their shirts.

There are some great street markets here, with impromptu entertainers performing all over the place (a higher quality variety than their South Bank equivalents) and the food has been good too. Although it´s difficult to get what you´d call a balanced meal here. If you order meat, you get a plate of meat, and if you order salad you get a huge bowl of salad. It doesn´t seem possible to get a steak and chips with a side salad. It´s one thing or the other. But the steaks are great! We went out for a day to a town in the Pampas which is Argentinian gaucho (cowboy) territory. Hoped to see poncho-clad gauchos on horseback lassoing errant cows, but sadly it was a bit tamer than that. But enough to get a sense of Argentinian history prior to the importing of culture from Europe in the 19th century.

Impressive city though it is, it is still a city with all the dirt and noise that goes with that, so it´ll be good to get down to Patagonia in a few days and get back to a bit of nature.

El otro, erm, side

phileasdogg — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Apparently you've got to see the Falls from both sides to really appreciate them, so we hopped over the border into Argentina yesterday and took a boat ride out to the bottom of the Falls. Obviously got completely soaked but it's a great perspective. However, nothing else to do here, so straight on to Buenos Aires tomorrow courtesy of, yep, you guessed it, an overnight bus. The Argentinian buses are allegedly very comfortable. We'll see...

Muchos agua

phileasdogg — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Another overnight bus trip, this one taking 18 hours. I actually slept pretty well, probably because I was so knackered from the night before. Anyway, reached the Brazilian side of the Iguazu Falls, where Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay all meet on a baking hot day. They're spectacular for their range rather than their height or water flow. They stretch like one long curtain for what must have been well over a kilometre. Really very impressive. Couldn't hang around too long because it was so hot, but thankfully the place we were staying had a swimming pool. Also good to be able to sleep in a horizontal position for a change!

Bus boredom

phileasdogg — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMT

So the first overnight bus trip deposited us into Sao Paulo at 5am. And the next one isn´t until 8.30pm. Hmm, what to do? The bus was actually fairly comfortable, with seats that reclined 45 degrees, enough to make you think you should be able to sleep, but not quite enough to convince the brain that it´s a bed. So not much sleep was had.

Anyway, refreshed with a juice/granola breakfast snack (not quite up to Rio´s standards) we ventured forth to see the sights of Sao Paulo. And 15 hours was more than enough to see them! It´s not that it´s a particularly unattractive or unpleasant city, it just doesn´t seem to have much in the way of sights. There´s a lot of churches. And a lot of slab-sided skyscrapers that would get Prince Charles´s aesthetic radar twitching. But there´s no discernible centre to the city, just a bunch of areas loosely strung together. In the end it was quite a relief to get back on a bus, and I didn´t think I´d be saying that 15 hours earlier. Although the previous journey was only 5 hours, and this one is 16. Sooo glad we´ve booked a couple of flights for later on in the trip. I´ve had my fill of long-distance bus and train journeys on this trip!

More precipitation

phileasdogg — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMT

It seems my weather luck has followed me from NZ to South America! Arrived into Paraty yesterday afternoon to glorious sunshine, so went straight down to book up a day´s sailing for the following day. Needless to say the following morning produced grey clouds, which finally deposited their load mid-afternoon. The snorkelling and lazing on beaches just weren´t quite so appealing as they´d been 24 hours earlier!

So having decided that we might be better on land than water, we hired some bikes the following day and ventured a few kilometres out of town to see some waterfalls nearby. Again, having reached the furthest point out from town, the heavens opened. So got thoroughly soaked on the homeward journey. Hey ho. The waterfalls were lovely!

Paraty itself is an attractive old colonial town, with some beautiful old buildings arranged on a grid system along cobbled, traffic-free streets in the old town area. It´s a major tourist resort, so is fairly easy to get by without speaking Portuguese here. And although the weather has been a let-down, it´s been a relaxing few days here, just what was needed before the next leg of the journey - two successive overnight buses, one from Paraty to Sao Paulo and one from Sao Paulo to Foz de Iguazu. Not good.

As a slight aside, I´ve noticed South Americans make the French look positively uptight when it comes to PDAs (public displays of affection). Everywhere you go there are couples draped all over each other, engaging in most acts of affection bar actually stripping off and getting down to it. I can assure you that there´s nothing that ruins an appetite quite so much as seeing a pair of septuagenarians nibbling each other´s ears at the neighbouring table!

At the Copa, Copacabana...

phileasdogg — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Ever since arriving in Rio I haven´t been able to get that damn Barry Manilow song out of my head. I thought they´d be playing it everywhere, but for some reason it´s all samba and rumba. Unbelievable!

Anyway, Rio is a naturally beautiful city with its mountains and beaches, but there´s been some fairly unsympathetic urban planning over the past 100 years or so, so the urban sprawl does detract a bit from the natural beauty in a way that it doesn´t in Cape Town, a similarly-sited city. Admittedly Rio´s population is much bigger than Cape Town´s. And Copacabana, where we´re staying, may have the reputation but as with Bondi in Australia, that doesn´t necessarily make it the best area. It´s choked with traffic, the beach is really crowded and it has a bit of a seedy feel to it. Ipanema, the next beach along is a much nicer area.

But anyway, Copacabana is where it all goes down on New Year´s Eve, so that´s where we headed, along with a couple of Caroline´s friends who are also out here on holiday. And it was a great night. There were about a million people down there, and all along the beach front there were street vendors selling all types of food and drink, including copious quantites of caipirinha, a drink that´s more likely to cause you to collapse through sugar OD rather than alcohol! And there was some great Latino live music going on too. The fireworks display at midnight was incredible, made even more spectacular by the presence of 7 ocean liners lined up off the coast, all lit up themselves.

In spite of the jet lag, we pushed through until 3am, then called it a night. Needless to say the following day was activity-free, though in the few days I´ve been here I´ve managed to get up the Sugar Loaf, and Corcovado which is home to the statue of Christ, and more importantly, affords a great view over the city. But perhaps the greatest thing about Rio is the juice bars which are all over Copacabana and Ipanema. They sell all manner of freshly made juices and smoothies for not much more than a pound each. I´ve come to the conclusion that a freshly squeezed mango juice with ice on a muggy afternoon in the tropics is an even better rehydrator than a cold beer, or dare I say it, a cup of English Breakfast tea!

Next stop is Paraty, a coastal resort about 250km south of Rio. Although now that it´s Brazilian holiday time, it might resemble the Costa del Sol in mid-August. Just without the fried egg and chips, or copies of the Mirror.

Travel lethargy

phileasdogg — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Well I managed to negotiate my way on to the correct bus to Mendoza, and it was a spectacular ride up over the Andes. Although on some of the narrower roads with sheer drops on one side, it was a bit disconcerting to see small memorials erected seemingly every 500 metres or so!

I´ve been here for 3 nights, and although it´s been good to find some other English speakers, I actually haven´t done that much apart from reading and watching DVDs. Been suffering from jet lag, and have woken up at 3am every morning since arriving in South America, so been pretty tired during the day. And on top of that, I seem to have picked up some sort of infection on my lower back, with a swelling under the skin that´s quite painful to sit or lie on. I got a doctor to come out and he prescribed some antibiotics (that was a fun conversation with the chemist!) so hopefully it should sort itself out in a few days. So all in all not the greatest start to the great South American adventure!

Mendoza is Argentinian wine country, so I did manage to get out on a wine tour for half a day, but a shame to miss out on some of the hiking opportunities around here. Still, plenty of those opportunities later in the trip. And I did manage to get my first (of many) Argentinian steaks. And when you order steak, that´s just what you get - a big lump of meat on a plate. And very tasty it was too. Anyway, it´s back to Santiago today, then a flight to Rio tomorrow where I meet up with Caroline, a friend from London who I´m travelling with for the next 5 weeks. And another language to learn - my Portuguese makes me look fluent in Spanish!

Christmas. Again.

phileasdogg — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMT

So because I crossed the international date line, I had the strange experience of leaving Auckland at 5pm on Xmas Day, and arriving in Santiago at midday on Xmas Day. And it was a bit of a chalk and cheese experience. NZ - nice brunch with KP, Brad and his family; Chile - in a bedroom that resembled a jail cell, no shops open so nothing to eat, and seemingly nobody who could speak English! Sniff, sniff.

It´s clear straight away that my Spanish is going to have to improve. Very quickly. Which shouldn´t be difficult seeing as I´m starting from a base of three words - Hola, Gracias and Que (and the third one is only thanks to Fawlty Towers). It´s not like being in Europe where you can be fairly sure that most people will know a bit of English, at least in the cities. Here, they don´t know any. So even the British method of just talking in English slower and louder is going to present problems. So I spent most of the second half of Christmas listening to Michel Thomas language tapes on my iPod and poring over the Lonely Planet Spanish phrasebook. Not necessarily one of my most memorable Christmas days, but needs must. And on the plus side, I´d learned enough after a few hours to book myself a bus journey over the Andes into Mendoza in Argentina tomorrow. At least I think I did. If no more blog posts follow this one then I obviously buggered it up!

End of chapter 3

phileasdogg — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMT

As if to rub my nose in it, Christmas Day in Auckland was an absolute blinder, in the high 20s. Went round to Brad´s place in the morning for a top-drawer Xmas brunch, then KP dropped me at the airport for the flight to Santiago.

New Zealand has been good. The scenery is undeniably spectacular, Auckland and Wellington are both friendly, unintimidating cities, and the people are very friendly too. But I think my expectations of NZ might have been a bit high - everyone I know who´s been has loved it, and it didn´t quite hit those heights for me. The weather hasn´t helped - frankly it´s no better than the English climate, but I think the bigger thing for me is that, with only 150 years of history since Europeans arrived, there´s just not much character or soul to any of the places we visited - most towns seemed carbon copies of each other - just a bunch of prefabricated, box-shaped houses and shops set along a thoroughly practical street layout. And with only 4 million people in the whole country, a lot of the places I stayed at seemed virtually deserted. It´s that more than its geography that gives it a sense (for me) of overwhelming remoteness.

But in spite of that I´ve had a good time here, especially the north island with KP. But I´m ready to move on to the final, and longest leg of the expedition, South America, with stops in Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia and Peru. Now there´s a place that shouldn´t be short on character. Where´s that Spanish phrasebook?