15/8/98

Hi there funky monkeys and secret squirrels

Well here we are in Mexico City, which is apparently the third biggest city in the world, and it’s pretty fantastic…

However, from the response of our last letter, it sounds like we freaked a few people out about Central America… Well all we can say is… don’t listen to us…

Although Central is a little more dangerous than South America, it is a beautiful place that we’ll go back to one day. We just ran into a lot of hassles in a small amount of time so it jaded our experience…. still watch out for that Chagas disease bug… It’ll definitely bite your balls off!!!!!!…

Since our last letter, we left Antigua in Guatemala and flew to Tikal an absolutely amazing Mayan city in the eastern Guatemalan jungle…

It would have to be one of the most amazing places we’ve been to… Tikal is a huge Mayan city that you can climb to the top of the pyramids and look out over other pyramids that tower above the tree line of a jungle that has more wild life than we’ve seen in any other reserve… including the Amazon.

The pyramids are separated by paths in the thick jungle where you rarely see other people, only spider monkeys swinging in nearby trees and toucans swooping over your head and coatimundis (anteater type things) scurrying past your feet…absolutely splendiferous!!!

At one point we were trying to sneak into an excavation site (templo V for those who’ve been) when all of a sudden a family of howler monkeys started ambling across some branches above our head… Well, they were big black furry things but the male had the biggest white testicles we’d ever seen… needless to say WE HAD TO GET A PHOTO OF THOSE!!!

Anyway, I had just focused in and was happily snapping away some shots of this chappy’s fine gonads when all of a sudden something hit me hard in the shoulder…

Well I think to myself… Holy shit… They’re throwing things at me…. but then I looked up and strewth almighty… the female was actually pissing AND shitting on my head!!!! Continue reading →

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 →

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 →