20/7/98

Hey there movers, groovers and other furry animals

Well we’ve arrived in Antigua in Guatemala after an absolute whirlwind trip thru Central America full of danger, intrigue and strange mutant animals.

Flying into Panama City was a complete shock to the system… It was sooooo bloody hot!!!! We realized that we’d really been sheltered from the heat and mosquitoes by the altitude…. but other than that, it was a kind of funky place.

The city itself was a huge bustling metropolis where the Afro-caribs outnumber the Latinos and everyone speaks American. Unfortunately it was also really expensive so we ended up staying in the slum area where they tell you not to walk down side streets in the daytime or you’ll get mugged… budget travelling really sucks the big one sometimes.

It actually wasn’t too bad and although the people rarely smile, they were the most helpful people we’ve come across so far… one lady even stopped at the bus stop and took us from the airport and drove us for over an hour to our hotel telling us all about Noriega and how they weren’t real happy about the war with America in 1989… a very touchy topic.

However, the Panama Canal was fantastic… we didn’t think we’d get off on watching big boats, but actually seeing these HUGE boats being lowered to sea level with only 26 inches clearance on each side was amazing. (Patrick you’ll wet yourself if you make it here!) It was so cool that we rate it as almost as much fun as watching your rubber ducky spin down the bath hole!!!! Continue reading →

5/7/98

Hola amigos and amigas

Well here we are in Quito, the capital of Ecuador and only 22km south of the equator, and believe it or not, although they tell us it’s early summer here, we are still wearing our fleece jackets at night since it’s bloody cold due to the altitude!!!

Over the last couple of weeks we’ve been doing the Indiana Jones/Lara Croft/Tomb raider thing and seeing soooooo many archaeological sites that we’re almost completely ruined out… but honestly some of the things we’ve seen have been absolutely amazing.

We started in Lima at the San Francisco cathedral which has catacombs underneath it in which approximately 70 000 people where buried… As you walk thru there are literally bones everywhere from wall to wall and stacked in huge wells. There was also a cute girl there that bent over and gave me a bone too…

Next, we went to Chavin de Huantar a huge underground temple about 3000 years old which is near Huaraz in Northern Peru. It’s a cool place as there are heaps of statues of feline gods all with big boogers hanging out their noses because all the gods were all cocaine addicts.

Then we cruised up to Trujillo in northern Peru and checked out a temple of dragons which has been carved with very Asian looking dragons and we were invited home by a psuedo archaeologist who is currently researching why most of the world’s cultures worshipped dragons…

His belief is that the ancient people around the world probably found dinosaur bones, which were more abundant then and then thought they belonged to some huge monsters or dragons… which actually sounds like a very good theory. He definitely was a very interesting man but he was really quite strange…. Continue reading →