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 →

22/6/98

Hi there chicos and chicatitas

Well we left Cusco with a bad taste in our bottoms…

I had the guinea pig for dinner and yes it tastes like chicken although they could have given me a roasted rat and I wouldn’t have known the difference… It looked the same as a rat and was served whole with heart, intestines etc hanging out!!! …and yes there was a horrible expression on its face!

Anyway, I got diarrhea big time… (wasn’t sure if it was the jalapenos but we’ll blame the guinea pig for anecdotal sake). Pooed my pants for the first time since I was a kid, so I was very impressed. They say that your sense of smell is the most powerful way to trigger your memory, but a warm gooshy feeling does the trick just as well!!!

For those of you in the know… that explains why Avril did Operation Shit-Scared and not me.

Anyway after Cusco we went to Arequipa in southern Peru. Around Arepquipa is the Colca Canyon which is supposed to be the deepest Canyon in the world, but really it wasn’t that impressive… however, there are big condors there which are as big as a very big thing that looks very big, and that fly less than 5m over your head… very impressive.

Also from Arequipa we went to Toro Muerto a field of huge rocks over 3km which are covered in over 2000 petroglyph drawings up to 3000 years old. It was very very impressive as several generations of people over 1000 years had added to the drawings so walking along the line of rocks was like stepping back into several different time periods. It was also way cool since the desert was very spooky and looked exactly like Tatooine on Star Wars just before Luke met Obi-wan Kenobi. Continue reading →

11/6/98

Re: Operation Shit Scared…

Yes it’s all true for all you doubting Thomases.

Sometimes even sweet little old hamsters like us have to resort to desperate measures.

And unfortunately when we arrived in Lima we found a beautiful cheap hostal, but the SAME Israelis had beat us to it and once again they filled the place… To make things worse the hostal was dorm rooms so we actually had to share a room with some of the same people.

It was pretty funny as we shat ourselves in case they recognised us.

We were preparing for retaliation and spent a few bowel motions in underground bunkers firing off the odd missile test or two… but in the end we opted to leave for a more expensive hostal.

We were however very pissed off so we decided to plant some mines… Continue reading →

5/6/98

OPERATION SHIT SCARED

BACKGROUND……

Last week agent Ced and agent Avril found themselves staying at a certain hostal in Cusco… unfortunately they also found themselves to be the only non-israeli tourists there… the whole place was full of israeli tourists, in fact the whole of cusco was like little Tel Aviv.

Now those of you travelling in South America will know all about them, but for the rest a quick explanation…

Israelis travel en-mass through-out South America after finishing army service and most of them are about 22 and after 3 years of carrying guns are extremely arrogant and treat the whole of South America like their after-college party… hence they are extremely rude and obnoxious in the large groups in which they travel and unfortunately outnumber all other tourists by about 10 to 1…

On their own they are fine, but in big groups all other tourists hate them and try and avoid staying at the same hostals as them…

THE SITUATION….

Agents Ced and Avril had to catch a 0600hrs bus to Arequipa which is 13 hours and very bumpy…. they were trying to get a good nights sleep when all of a sudden a large group of Israeli tourists arrived in a taxi at 0400hrs… as expected they were yelling at the top of their voices and laughing at each other.

After about 30 minutes agent Avril yelled for them to “shut the fuck up!” To which they laughed at us and continued loudly until 0530hrs… a whole hour and a half….

Such impunity could not go unpunished and hence agents Ced and Avril unanimously agreed to initiate OPERATION SHIT-SCARED…. Continue reading →

29/5/98

Buenos amigos

Well here we are finally in Cusco in Peru and resting our bones after doing the Inca trail…

Peru is an amazing place and much more civilised and organised than Bolivia and the streets are generally cleaner and everything is nice and happy…. so far anyway!

The only drawback so far is that even though they are a much richer country than Bolivia, and even though they obviously spent heaps of money on nice bathrooms… for some stupid reason they don’t believe in toilet seats and there is nothing worse than plonking your bum on a cold altitude chilled toilet rim!! We’re actually considering buying a toilet seat and strapping it to the outside of our backpack… with the wok of course!

Ok now that that is out of my system here’s what we’ve been up to….

We crossed into Peru via Copacobana (where music and fashion were always the passion) …which is a small resort village on Lake Titicaca.

The lake itself is huge about 350km across and all at about 3600m in altitude. It’s surrounded by fantastic Inca terraced hills and is dwarfed by snow-capped mountains and the waters are the most amazing blue colour…. all very tranquil…

From Copacobana (where music and fashion were always the passion), we went to Isla del Sol, which is also known as the Island of the Sun, and the birthplace of many of the Inca legends… Continue reading →

12/5/98

Hi boys and girls

Well believe it or not we are STILL in La Paz, Bolivia after almost 2 months! It’s our home away from home now, but we are just getting ready to move on.

We finished up our 3 week language course and now can at least have decent conversations in spanish, pero nosotros hablamos muy lento!

Actually if anyone is keen we can recommend Maria Daza as recommended in the South America handbook (Bs22/$US4/hr) for one on one teaching, and also we are staying at El Carretera on Calle Catacora between Calle Junin and Yanacocha (Bs13/$US2/person) …all up La Paz has been one of the cheapest places to learn spanish.

Other than that we’ve spent our time festering on the internet, watching all the recent release movies and pigging out on ice cream… serious hard core travelling!

Avril and I unfortunately caught Bolivian exploding bum disorder, but we’re happy to say that our bowel motions are back to normal. We’re so happy that they are solid that we could just pick them up and juggle them!!! Continue reading →