Kazakh AdventuresI couchsurfed in Bogota for just one night. That was last night. I'm flying to London tonight. This morning, I had an adventure with a new Kazakh friend of mine, Aidos. He decided he wanted to walk to the top of a forbidden mountain. I didn't want to go, but he convinced me. Here are some photos of some things. Faris, Ryohei, Nour, Aidos, Yo It was pretty rough going for a while. There were many signs saying we should be there. Aidos is a bit mad. He started hitch hiking in Kazakhstan in October and went all across Europe, flew to Sao Paulo, lived in a favella in Rio, then hitch hiked down to Patagonia then up to here. Next he'll be in Cuba then through the US, Canada, Alaska, Russia and China, to get home within six months, spending 5 USD per day. Mad views. Encore. Walking back down we found a wild zucchini. Aidos wanted it for food. It was delicious, but too oily for my taste.
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The last bit of time in Boraceia was good, but there was an English couple coming to take my place. Fortunately the Spanish girl in Boicucanga bailed, so I moved there for my final week of teaching. It was awesome. There were two Australian broads and a German guy there and we got on well. Maybe too maybe. I got Jennie Bingham levels of familiar with people, becoming an absolute creep and completely removing the brain to mouth filter. The classes were up and down, some of them not too promising but some of them were amazing. My favourite was one with Cecilia and Tomas who knew way too much about the world and were too funny to be 14 years old. “Would you rather have looks, money or brains?” “Brains” “Why?” “If you're hungry you can't eat looks or money.” No more beachAs I was on the bus leaving Boicucanga to go to Sao Paulo, I wrote a bit in my book. I'm not normally sad when I leave places and I thought I had no special connection to this one, so I find myself surprised to be feeling the way I am now. I'm not really sure why I'm sad. The last week has been great. For the first time since Trujillo I've felt like I've had people that I've met on my team. There have been other people on my team at other times, but they've always had someone else even more on their team. Maybe this shouldn't be surprising because they are the first Aussies I've met in a while and I've always loved Germans and Poms. Plus I know there are many good times ahead for them here that I wish I was part of. On top of all this, I love some of the students and see so much potential in them which makes my perspective of the world so much brighter. It's too bumpy on this bus so I'll sleep now and write more later. I can't help but think that all the things I'm good at compared with most people, I'm still not even close to the people in the fields. That is to say that I seem to have chosen to be mediocre at everything useful. I like to seem impressive to people that aren't interested in a particular topic, but when it comes down to it, what am I actually good at? Whether or not this is true, it's definitely why I've done nothing useful with my life so far and why I keep putting off the decision of where to focus my attention. I'm looking forward to going to the US and travelling with my sister. Only 11 days to go. Though for the first time as I leave a place, I'm not super excited about my next few steps AND I don't feel like I'm ready to leave. Well that got depressing, didn't it? I can't believe I wrote that. I guess it just shows what mood I was in, which is the point of writing in a book in the moment. Suffice to say that my current outlook is much more positive. More on that later. Sao PauloI basically saw none of Sao Paulo. At the airport I looked a bit lost and some young fella came up to me to see if I needed help and he got on my train and took me all the way to my station with good chats about the state of things in Brazil. I'm not sure how much it's been in the world news, but some stuff has been has been going down in Sao Paulo. I wasn't there for the stuff happening, but the political situation was interesting to hear about from someone without an idiotic mainstream opinion of it. The kid's name was Luiz and he works in or studies actually I think tourism. He seems to have a great grasp of the real effects of tourism, beyond the cash injection. He was talking a lot about how simply seeing a foreigner subtly reminds people who don't travel of what's out there which ultimately promotes growth. Anyway, my Couchsurfing host wasn't at the station yet and while I was standing around for maybe five minutes, I had another person come up to me and ask if I needed help. People are super friendly here. My host and I basically just hung out for a few days and while he was at work I caught up with House of Cards. Underwood so dark. Ecuador Primera VezThen after flying through Panama and Bogota, I arrived in Quito. I spent a week gardening at a B&B in Tumbaco which to be honest wasn't much fun. Redeeming this experience was the Elon Musk autobiography and Scott Hall telling me that there have been two new seasons of Trailer Park Boys that I haven't watched yet. Elon Musk to Ricky and Lahey. What a contrast. Also, I got in touch with an old friend and made some plans. More on that another time. After gardening I moved to a Couchsurfing place in Tumbaco. Cari, her kids and I went to some thermal baths in Papallacta one night which was amazing, though I had another little altitude experience. I was a bit hungry and dehydrated from the baths and at one point I got out and went to my stuff, then all of a sudden I couldn't see and had to sit down. After that I was fine though. Since then there have been a few other people come to stay here too and we've had good chats about various things. Cari believes in crystals and energy which is clearly idiotic and I tell her that, but we talk about it like it's just a different way of defining some real things. She also taught me how to massage someone using the feet and standing on them and stuff. That was fun. The plan was to wait for my sister (Bub) in Quito until Wednesday the 30th, but she's decided to meet me in Mexico in three weeks instead. Now I've come to Bogota (cheap flight 36 hours in advance) and I'll probably spend the next week between here and Medellin which is hear is fun and also isn't cold. ColombiaI flew to Bogota and ended up in a penthouse couchsurfing which was unexpected. I really only had one full day there, on which I did a bike tour. I still love cycling. It was good to see a lot of Bogota too, and I wish I was there longer. There was lots of cool graffiti on the bike tour. As it transpires, I have flown to Medellin which apparently gringos love. I think it's OK. Apparently the women are better looking here too, but I tend to disagree. I'm going back to Bogota on Tuesday. New Future PlansI got enough advice from enough people from the last post to decide that I shouldn't go back to Uni and I should start with the useful stuff now. My plan is to return to Australia around the middle of June (after the California Primary, GO BERNIE) and get a job. There are three types of jobs I could get:
I think this can work because I currently feel like 168 hours in a week with 40 at work, 50 sleeping and 15 doing things like commuting, showering, shopping and eating leaves me a lot of time to do other useful things instead of playing Dota and drinkin', both of which I won't be doing. That's even if the work is just for work. If the work is something I really love then I can spend way more time on that. I know I should add 20% to everything because that's they way it'll turn out, but I'm demonstrating my current levels of optimism. I've come to the realisation that if you want to do something, you need to do it. So I'm planning on doing that. I'm pretty sure I'll be heading to Melbourne, so if you are from there and reading this and you know of a good social enterprise or something that I'd be interested in (something like cycling), then please let me know. In Other NewsAt the Quito Airport they make you take your shoes off for security. I'm fairly sure that there's only ever been one shoe bomb attempt in history and that failed. Well done South America security. I know, you need to do it all through the US too.
Also, I've been booking a lot of flights lately because the buses are super long and sometimes not even cheaper. Anyway, I decided to work out how many flights I will have been on from London in October to my arrival back in Australia in June. If you don't count transfers, it'll be 15. That's a lot. I should think about my environment impact. I'd better start doing something good soon. He's Back!!Hi!! I've been off the old radar lately in terms of updates of what I'm actually doing so I figure it's about time to do at least a brief post. I write best when I'm under time pressure, so I've opened the laptop with 22 minutes before I'm getting a lift to the beach for surfing. I know. A lot has changed. Let us return to Uruguay. Montevideo Part 2As it turned out, the visa was processed the day after I took my documents in. I sent emails stating that time was of the essence and to notify me of any progress, but by the following Monday, I had heard nothing. I was stressed that I would miss my flight from Porto Alegre (PA), so I decided to go back to the consulate and check up on the situation. Literally three minutes after arriving I was walking away with my visa dated the previous Thursday. They just gave it to me as if I should have known earlier to come in. I booked the reasonably long overnight bus to PA for Tuesday from one of the two bus companies which provided the service. The one I didn't choose showed the PA arrival time, and I just assumed that the length of journey would be the same for my bus. I obviously stressed out when we were behind schedule and it looked like I would miss my flight. Cursing myself for not checking, I decided to go to sleep because nothing could be done now. I awoke, departed my bus, jumped on a train then a monorail shuttle to the airport and a few hours later was in Sao Paulo (SP). It was raining pretty hard as we landed and the connection was delayed landing so we were added to another flight. There was obviously no announcement in English about these things so I had no idea what was going on. I subtly morphed in to a sheep and followed the crowd, picking up snippets of information from other travellers. We got a flight to the other airport in Rio de Janeiro (RJ) then free cabs to the airport we were supposed to land at. My couchsurfing host's apartment was on the way, so I abandoned ship, turning back in to a human in the process. Rio de JaneiroDiogo was my host for two nights while I waited for Nicholas, Corin and the mysterious Adam to arrive from their respective nations. We had a good time, I got what organisational stuff I needed done and we saw a bit of the Lapa nightlife. On the Saturday I headed down to Copacabana to grab the AirBnB apartment key and meet the others. Carnaval was insane. It literally could have happened on a completely different planet with a society which had developed variously varied social rules. We had a great time. Nuff said. Workaway FiveAfter 9 days of Carnaval and sight-seeing in RJ, I left my friends and caught a bus to SP, then one on to the bustling little beach town of Boicucanga. My bus arrived at 2am, but the other workawayers were still enjoying the Carnaval spirit of course. It was an interesting first exposure to them and they were reasonably under the weather by that time. I was there for another day with them, then Paulo the top dog and super friendly fellow drove me along the coast to Boraceia where I would be teaching. Boraceia is not a bustling little beach town, it's more of a boring little beach town. The drive there was in torrential rain and at one point we overtook a police car at 100km/h in a 60 zone when I could barely see through the windscreen for the deluge sheeting down upon us. There was pretty much no school that day (a Thursday) because nobody could get here due to the flooding. My little flat type situation is in the same building and adjacent to the school itself, which consists of an office and one classroom. School usually runs Monday to Thursday, but in this case we taught on Friday because of the previous day's damp outcome. Instead of a bell to notify students of the next class, the local high school (100m from where I live/work) plays Bittersweet Symphony. It'll be stuck in my head like Rolling in the Deep after San Fermin. The Teaching MethodWe use the Callan Method to teach English. It's a terrible way to learn a language. If you do a ridiculous amount of practice outside the lesson, then it's a good way to get your accent and verbal comprehension levelled up, but just following the lesson plan is useless on it's own. Basically there are a serious of questions I read from the book and the students (aged 8 to 32) read the responses. There is no real explanation of the meaning of the words, except what I sometimes read out in English using words they don't understand. If I just followed the book exactly, I'm sure nobody would learn anything at all. As it transpires, I'm not a full idiot and I'm a total badass rebel, so I don't just read what it says in the book. This throws off some of the students, but it's better for them to need to think and find it a bit difficult than to have them read from a sheet and have no actual concept of what English is. I think they like it on balance and if they don't I'm happy to play God and say it's better for them to do it my way anyway. Life in BoraceiaThe accommodation in Boicucanga with six people staying there is not as nice as the accommodation here. Humans are social creatures and I'm nearly totally alone here, but because of the things I want to get done (more on this later), I genuinely don't mind it. My normal day starts with surfing in the morning with Daniela (the lady running the school here who LOVES Australians because she lived on the Gold Coast for four years a while back). Breakfast, class from 10-11, reading/duolingoing/reddit/browsing for Democratic nomination predictions and polls, lunch, class again from 2-3, class 3.40-4.30, class 5.30-6.20, class 7.30-8.20, reading/duolingo/etc. Last weekend (13th and 14th) I went to Boicucanga to ill with the others on Ilhabela and at some super rad beach which most of the decent photos are from. Silas took as there and was just the best local host for the day, bringing all sorts of snacks and cool beverages, along with some goggles to see all the little fishes. He was a crazy driver in the kind of way is OK because he clearly knows that road and his car really well, but he was going way too fast along some sections which genuinely could have had kids running out on to the road which is pretty freaking stupid. This weekend I'm just staying in Boraceia and booking flights, surfing, cycling (I borrowed a bike from a student) reading and relaxing. I'm way too in to the US election nomination so right now I'm hating that Nevada is a whole six hours behind Brazil so I need to wait until 5pm for them to even start caucusing. I'm obviously a Bernie Sanders fan and I see HRC for the corrupt p.o.s she really is. People say Old Bern won't be able to get anything through congress, but if you live in a country that needs radical change, the only way to do that is to vote in the once-in-a-generation politician with reasonably radical ideas and show the rest of the government what you really want. He won't be able to get everything done, but if he wins it sure as hell sends a strong message to Congress which will affect American politics for the foreseeable future. I might do a separate post on this, though I know most people (if not all) people who read this blog don't find the topic very interesting. In reality, I'll most likely write a draft post and decide that it's not complete enough so it will sit in my wip folder for all eternity. Changing GoalsI'm sick of travelling. It's not the lack of having a base, the general hassles of taking buses and planes with luggage, any sort of homesickness or longing for people or places, or running out of clothes more and more frequently as things get old, develop holes and eventually (long after the hole development of course) are thrown out. I'm sick of being a passenger, and as I read and learn more about the good and bad things going on in the world, I'm realising that I probably have the potential to make a significant difference to one cause or another. Since finishing school I've spent four years at uni (learning, having fun, but actually making no positive difference in the world), two years in London (having an amazing time, learning, but actually making no positive difference in the world), six months living in France (learning, having fun, but actually making no positive difference in the world), seven months working in Melbourne (but actually making no positive difference in the world), six months cycling across Europe (having fun, learning, but actually making no positive difference in the world) and now nearly five months in South America (having fun, learning, but actually making no positive difference in the world). While I've become a totally different person in that time, with much more potential to make a positive difference in the world, I've not actually done anything useful. It's like saving up a bunch of gold, but until you buy items, it's not really worth anything. It's not that I feel like I should be doing something to help, it's that I just don't get as much of a kick out of doing what I'm doing and I really want to throw myself at a problem and help some cause significantly. So what to do? On the Wait But Why blog, one post suggests a Venn Diagram to solve this problem. One circle is “what I want to do” and the other is “what I'm capable of”. For me, the first circle contains “humanitarian work for the UN or similar, specifically reducing poverty through practical methods such as increasing migration”, “work for Elon Musk (all his projects are amazing)”, “something to do with what humans will do when jobs are lost to automation in great numbers”, “changing the way politics is in Australia” and “AI”. As I'm old enough to realise that I'm not capable of doing everything, I think a change in the importance of the cause will result a greater positive difference than where I am in the hierarchy within that cause. If I can positively influence the first machine with general intelligence in a tiny way, maybe that's better than being a high level engineer at Tesla or Space X (which I know I am in no way capable of anyway). I came to this conclusion thanks to a line in a song. You'll ever guess which song. Coming in a number 75 in the Triple J Hottest 100 of 2014, 360s “Live It Up” contains the line “truth be told it doesn't matter if you make it the whole way up the ladder”. It actually is a sweet song when you are trying to think about life and happiness. I know that everyone sees themselves (at least I did) as capable of being more than just a regular person in a fairly regular job (I'm the interesting protagonist of my story, because that's how it works in stories because that's what makes stories interesting), but maybe I don't need to be any more than just a cog in an important machine to make a big difference. Anyway, enough with the vague chat, what have I actually done about it? Not much, but not nothing. I've written to a few people asking for advice, and looked up a few degrees that I think would be useful depending on which path I go down. I'm eyeing off a Graduate Diploma of Computing at ANU (one year), then a Masters specialising in Artificial Intelligence (two years). This would purely incidentally put me two days ride from where I think my parents will be living which is kind of nice seeing as by the time I get there I won't have seen them for nearly two years (again). Poor old bears. Anyway, it's juts one of the options, Mum, so cool your warm jets and take Smelly Old Harry for a walk. And now:My immediate future plans are to stay here for about three more weeks, fly to Quito to meet my sister, workaway and travel with her for I think a month (excluding the week in with I'll fly back to London to see old mate Sanj get married which I'm pretty excited for), then I have no idea. I think I'll have enough money to continue travelling and workawaying for a few months more, but I do feel like a change of scenery a bit so I might go to the US (something I said I would never do from about age 8).
It's at this point that I ask for advice. Any advice? All new perspectives are welcome. I have a .22 in my room. Kitten is cute and full of fleas.Day 1: Starting at 7 we went to move cattle. I felt mostly useless, but I think the little bits that I helped made it a lot more efficient (not thanks to my obvious genius, it was just the situation). Estela was on the horse, I was in the ute. She just called her “chicas” at the start “Venga! Venga! Venga!” and 61 out of 84 eventually turned up and went in the place they were supposed to. Then we looked around for the others. If they had wanted to continue hiding, they easily could have done. Lucky she has obedient cattle. We then checked some fences. The electric fences were solar powered. I remember at home that if anything touched the electric fences, like branches or tall grass, it was a problem. During study, the physics behind this was learnt. After “checking” about a kilometre of fence through the bush, we got to a bit where the “wire” (which was actually that very thing wire/plastic combination that is used for temporary fencing) was broken and Estela wouldn't touch it because she thought it might still be live. I know this seems like I'm taking the piss out of someone for not knowing about how electricity works, but really I just thought she would know from experience that it wouldn't be live at that point. Day was done by 11.30am then made lunch, siesta, reading etc. (during mad storms) dinner then bed. Day 2: Didn't need to be up so early but was anyway. Went to town to shop and tried to get a sim working for me but apparently I should have registered my device upon entry for a prepaid local sim to work. Who even does that? But because I didn't know that I bought the sim anyway. Waste of money. Then lunch, then siesta, then the vet came so we rounded up some sheep and cattle. The vet did something with the e-tags of the cattle. We inoculated the sheep and drenched them, using inferior systems. The way we drenched at home was with a backpack full of drench with a tube coming out the bottom so one person could do the job alone reasonable easily. Here we put the drench gun into the bottle of drench, sucked up say 100mL, then it came out in 5mL doses so it was squirted four times in the mouth of each sheep. It had to be reloaded every two sheep. Ridiculously time consuming. The inoculation was similar, but only needed to be reloaded every eight sheep and as the capacity of the race was about 15 sheep, this wasn't so annoying. The yards were well designed. A curved race gets the sheep to run better, but drafting them at the end was somewhat exciting, especially using a heavy comma metal gate. We didn't finish until about 8pm and it was dark. Weirdly I'm fine with being hungry when doing farm work. Pavlov's dogs and all that. Another thing like that, when I was growing up, dad would always listen to 80s and 90s music and now, here, on the farm, they listen to exactly the same music. I'm beginning to think that maybe farmers will always listen to that music. Maybe they always have since the Agricultural Revolution! Day 3: Started work at 7.30am and until 11.30am, all we did was move cattle about 10km down the road. All I needed to do was drive the ute in front. Estela's dad was with me. He old. He would keep telling me to stop so he could put up string and close gates on the side of the road so the cattle wouldn't go in there, but the cattle just caught up with us and Estela would yell at him and he'd slowly walk back to the ute, then we'd get to the next one and he'd do the same thing. At one point I asked if it was really a good idea and he was totally sure it was. The same thing just happened. The cattle didn't even want to go in the other paddocks. Poor old fella. This afternoon I put the kitchen in order. They live like they've just moved out of home and don't know that finding things easily generally requires them being put back somewhere vaguely sensible. There should be a place for everything and everything in it's place. Sanj taught me that. The food is pretty average. I've done all the cooking so far. So you could blame me. Ingredients are not amazing though. Frozen hamburgers? No herbs or spices? Come on. Plenty of fruit which is great. I would like beans though. The last workaway had so many beans and lentils, and I recently learnt that beans are key to having a long life. People in the blue zones all eat beans. Rewind: I can't remember where I left off last time. Shit, gotta check the chicken. It's ok. I'm so hungry. Anyway, I was in Buenos Aires for a few days with Mariana with whom I've been Couchsurfing while I was there. We went to her cousin's place for NYE which was fun. Great asado, great wine, great scotch, great company. We had a good few days there, didn't do anything crazy which was nice. Then I got the boat across to Uruguay, didn't register my device at customs, got a bus up to Cardona, then was picked up by Estela there. Day 8: Holy wow, where have the days gone? I checked my phone the other day wondering if it was Thursday or Friday and it was Saturday. Crazy. Thing that have happened in the past five days include normal farm stuff, me getting incredibly frustrated with the volume (amount and power level) of speech coming from my Workaway and the lack of logic in most of what she does. “Bring me another thing like that from the shed” pointing to a plastic drum. I look in the shed, there are no plastic drums there. I say “Like that?” and point to the drum and make a drum shape in front of me with my hands. She says yes, I say there isn't one there. She looks at me like I'm stupid then walks into the shed and comes back with a bag of wheat. Dafuq? Anyway, Estela and her dad have gone to the beach for the week. They left yesterday (Sunday). The day before we went to town for supplies for me for the week. I bought a bunch of stuff, probably just enough, didn't want her spending heaps of money (money is tight, but it's fine). By the time they left on Sunday, they'd eaten most of the bananas I got, and they took with them most of the oats and a 5kg tub of honey. That doesn't make any sense. So I'm here by myself looking after the plants and animals which takes about 15 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes in the afternoon. It's so hot. So far I've finished one book, watched the remaining movies on my laptop (Southpaw is a terrible movie). I think I'm going to try the gun. Fast ForwardI'm in Montevideo.
I tried the gun, it worked, it was fun. The lamb died. The water ran out. I got really bored. I read another book. I eventually looked up the visa requirements for Brazil, thinking that it would be similar to Argentina in that I would need to pay money and print a thing out, but as it happens I needed to visit the consulate (according to the website). So I fully changed my plans, left the next day to come to Montevideo to do the visa thing. Visa requirements include a ticket in to and out of Brazil, which is stupid by the way because there are so many people who don't plan that far in advance. I was going to book a bus in and out, but I couldn't use my bank card because it wasn't a local on, instead I had to pay a third party but that didn't work either so I ended up booking a flight with a rubbish cancellation policy so I'll end up losing at least $150 on top of the $65 that the visa costs. Also the lady at the consulate said it takes a few minutes to do but regulation requires a five day wait starting the following day. This was on Wednesday and I have a flight next Wednesday from Porto Alegre which is already in Brazil which I won't be able to make if my visa arrives on Wednesday. Also, considering all this rigidity, it becomes even more ridiculous because only people from the US, Canada, Australia and very few other places require visas like this from Brazil. To add to that, nobody needs a visa like this for the second half of this year because of the Olympics. So they really don't give a shit, they are just getting at certain countries because those countries have strict visa policies for them. I understand that, but I don't agree with it. What I would do is say Australians can come without stupid visa requirements for 90 days, then in two years, see if Australia has changed it's policy for people from Brazil and if they haven't, say it costs something stupid like $5000 to get in, or just ban Australians completely. Because why do we have such strict requirements? And maybe the worst thing is that apparently at Iguazu Falls you can get your visa processed in only one day. It's on the border and the website specifically says you can't just turn up and get a visa, but apparently you can. So stupid. So now I'm just waiting in Montevideo for the visa people to do something super easy which will save me hundreds of dollars and much time on a bus. I happened to be looking through one of the two little books that I've been writing it on and off since departing Australia on February the 13th, 2012. I found one entry from about a month ago and one from about 16 months ago. I can't believe how much has changed in my head in that time.. Montpellier to CondomHere's something I found in my journal from the time I moved from Montpellier to Condom on my 50 euro rubbish bike with all my worldly belongings tied to the rack. Sunday 27th Set out from MTP at 6.45am, couldn't even get the bike down the stairs without Boris' help. The first bit I kinda knew and it was OK, chatted to an old guy for a bit (he was from Sété). Google sent me on dirt roads over farms so I switched to car mode. I stopped in Beziers for a snack, then in Montady for lunch. They were having a tapas extravaganza. Got to a place with 51km to go and broke down. Knocked on a door and the guy (Belgian, Michel) sat me down, handed me a beer and we watched the end of the Budapest F1. Riccardo won. Then he drove me to Carcassone where I met Laurent. Laurent was anorexic and weird, but nice. His apartment smelt like cat piss. Slept on boxes on the floor. Was exhausted. If my bike didn't break down, I may have done. Monday 28th Bike shops shut, went out to Decathlonand bought a new wheel and inner tube of 35 euro total. Put it on and cycled to Mélissa's place. It was huge. So was Roger the rabbit, and the cat. Mélissa was incredibly attractive. Two of her friends were in the Algeria plane crash so everyone was pretty devo. Her housemate (Julie) had her parent visiting from Lyon. It rained a bit so I was glad I wasn't riding. Mélissa and I walked around for a bit, then painted some signs for Julie's organic food festival. Had a cheesy mash thing for dinner. Tuesday 29th Set out at 7.45am and stuck to the car route for a bit. Was in Castelnaudry for lunch at 10.30 and ate ½ baguette and a whole roast chicken. Not long after I started up again, I switched to the trail along the Canal du Midi. At first it was dirt but soon was paved and great for riding. Wednesday 30th – Thursday 31st Stayed with Charlotte, we banged on the second night, Toulouse is great, ate delicious food. Friday 1st Rode along the canal, it was great. Once I left it was OK, rack then broke in a thunderstorm, got a lift with a guy with a name like Karim or something. He took me to his place 4km down the road then decided to take me all the way to the workaway place another 30km away. Saturday 2nd These people are so negative. Caroline is always complaining, Paul earns minimum wage (that's what it works out to be) and his business plan is terrible. I mowed grass and scraped a driveway. Hard work and for around 7 hours. They complain about money, I really think there is no chance of me getting paid ever. Tomorrow I will look for new work. They watch TV and movies all the time. The negativity really gets to me. Torres del Paine againHere's a much more recent one I totally forgot that I wrote in my diary while I was in Torres del Paine National Park. Thursday Sitting in Camp Italiano listening to the periodic cracking of a distant glacier seems like a perfect time to write. It's night two of Torres del Paine “W” circuit. I mainly can't be bothered describing my experiences and how I've felt for the last few days. Nothing special. Coffee doesn't make you pee more. There are many bugs trying to drink me. Photos in presumably the following section will prompt memories of my positive experiences. All I have to say now is how much better bushwalking and camping is in Australia. Also I'm not in walking shape AT ALL!!! Sore. Lucky I love my shoes. I want to “speed date” everyone here to find out if anyone is interested in the same stuff as me. I don't want to start a conversation with only one person randomly, just in case they suck. Interestingly there are a lot of people from the US here. This makes me like people from the US more. I think I'm looking forward to the next Workaway already. Mark sounds great. There are people here that I would probably enjoy socialising with but I kind of can't be bothered because what is there to gain? This is a terrible attitude, I know. I think I'm sick of the shit same questions. 1. Where are you from? 2.How long are you travelling for? 3. Where are you going next? 4. Chk chk…. Saturday I need to stop ranting about Elon Musk and going to Mars. I need to stop ranting about me and my shit. Anyone who knows me knows this, but I just prefer to talk about that stuff than most other stuff. New rule: don't mention Musk or anything WBW related unless asked until I meet Mark near Buenos Aires. I need to find some questions which illicit interesting replies from boring people. Anyway, we just set up camp at the base of Torres del Paine. We'll head up in ten minutes because the weather tomorrow is supposed to be rubbish. Getting up early will still be worth it. I'm not sure if this post should be a description of events during this adventure or of insights. Nothing profound is bursting forth, so description it is. I'm getting in to “Panic Switch” by Silversun Pickups lately for some reason. I wish I had my Kindle. There aren't too many opportunities to read, but it would be great at times. ReflectionsFrance
1. I literally (literally) feel like this was five years ago. Since then I've lived in Melbourne, cycled around Europe and bussed around the large island of South America. I can't believe it's only been 16 months (it was the end of August I think). 2. At the Workaway I stuck it out for I think three weeks, then booked a flight home to save money for my cycling trip in Melbourne. Torres del Paine 1. There were plenty of interesting people I could have met. The Germans, Daniel, Tom, the Australia med/law students from Sydney, one of whom was in to AI stuff. 2. I'm full narcissist sometimes right? I find most people interesting for their perspective. I guess I was tired when I wrote that bit, but I also am like that fairly often. 3. What a lesson I learnt with Mark!! Last night, I met the McPoylesWell, well, well. I'm on a farm to the west of Buenos Aires and there are a few things happening here which I imagine are of little interest to anyone, last night I was introduced to the “Twelve Tribes” religion. I realise that this description might seem offensive, but I'll try to keep it to objective observations only. I really wasn't sure what to expect. I heard there was a lot of dancing and no drinking, but great food. As we (four other workawayers split in to two couples and Mark, the erratic/paranoid/insane guy running the show) walked up towards the building I was surprised by how nice it was, considering it is in a fairly shitty area. As soon I passed through the doorway I felt like I was transported to the world of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. There in front of me was the entire family group of the McPoyles. Monobrows. Hair tied back. Grey headbands. Fairly uniformly dressed, in a style you might expect to see in southern US sixty years ago. OK, so I came back to finish this and it sounds like a slightly uncool kid picking on a super uncool kid at school. The end of the story is basically that they mostly have a great outlook on how people should behave, being generous and kind and helping people out, they danced A LOT and were really welcoming, but it was super weird that they are working towards God returning to earth in 55 years so they need to prepare for him. Also they are racist AF, dividing people in to white, black and yellow. Apparently black people loved to serve. I found out about this the following morning which was probably for the best. RewindFrom El Chalten I caught a bus back to El Calafate, couchsurfed a night with a rad overworked dude who told me the WiFi passwords for the airport and gave me essential tips for my movement to the farm. I told him how my workaway host said to get to his place and as I revealed each new part of the plan he laughed ever more drily and finally confirmed that there is no way I should be in those places at night (flight landed 1910). Thanks new workaway host. I found a place to couchsurf in BA and the next day got to the farm. Mark, the host, wasn't to be seen all day because he was hungover from the night before. Not the best first impression. Especially because everyone was telling me about how much of a dick he is and how he was calling them all ignorant idiots when he was drunk. He didn't sound like the kind of guy it's nice to hang out with. Eventually I met him and he's the kind of guy that buys in to every conspiracy theory there is, preaches what he perceives as the truth and anyone who thinks different is an idiot (sound familiar?) and he only a weak grip on reality (often seemed to forget entire days, maybe it could be all the weed you smoke mate). The work generally has been building a storm protection system for parts of the garden, making concrete for the foundation for the new house, building an adobe fireplace and general gardening. Mark is hard to deal with because he'll say one thing and do another and he'll try to join in on what we are doing perfectly well and changing it to be his way until eventually he sees it won't work and he goes back to what we were doing initially as if it was his original idea. He uses flowery language to impress and confuse people, but doesn't seem to know what the words mean and has no real logical thought. That said, a lot of what he said about certain governments being corrupt and counterproductive resonated with me, he always wanted to pick a fight and find something that I thought that was counter to his narrative so he could tell me how wrong I am. For instance he believes that we are devolving from a higher species rather than evolving. Trying to have a logical conversation with someone who can accept that as a legitimate point of view is not possible. You can read my workaway review here (if I remember to come back and put the link in). One brief example of him not actually understanding what he says, is him trying to show that evolution is made up by saying that "first law of thermodynamics, you can't get something from nothing". He then went on to say this shows that you can't get life from nowhere. I exploded in to a rant, overusing the term "ludicrous" as I am want to do, about the fact that life isn't special and everything we are made of is exactly the same as what a rock or the sea is made of, when you take it to the most elementary particles we are aware of. He accepted this, which was obviously a mistake (all he wanted to do was win the argument, he'd never change his opinion, so he should have at least flat out said I was wrong), and then went on to his next point. This acceptance shows he knows that doesn't know what he's on about. The language he uses is seriously impressive though. The redeeming factor here of course, was the company of some of the other workawayers. There was a French couple travelling in a van with their dog, Hyuki who were lots of fun. Aud, the female of the male-female relationship was one of the hardest working people I've worked with. I taught her and Martin some cricket which they weirdly seemed to enjoy. I'm sure they were just pretending. Bernie and Mary, an Irish couple who stayed for five weeks were funny and fun too. If they hadn't stayed as long as they did, I probably would have endeavoured to leave earlier. Now I'm in Buenos Aires until Sunday when I'll catch a bus to Cardona in Uruguay to work on an actual farm near there. There are sheep and cattle, but most importantly horses. For the unenlightened, horses are the most intelligent, most evil animals on the planet, and I think I'll be using them for transport.
Just like the last post I can't really be bothered doing a description of all the things so this time I'm just going to annotate photos. It's Patagonia so enjoy. So many new desktop backgrounds to choose from. Punta ArenasBasketball courts in Punta Arenas. Don't miss the board, it'll go in to the sea and end up in Tasmania. On the long walk back to the hostel in Punta Arenas there was a cemetery. We went for a peek. Roast chicken. Dog. Reminded me a bit of the red train in Perth (Tasmania) which I used to play on, on the way to visit Nan and Pop in Campbelltown. Down by the water in Puerto Natales, one step closer to the National Park. T'was a nice sunset. We started on the second. Great conditions expected. The advice of “get on last to get off first” was spot on. Les Mis fans, this is the number, right? Or was it 34601? (I have since checked, it's 24601.) Ready to go! After the walk up to the first camp site, we set up the tent then walked on to some lookouts, one of which was across this bridge. Glacier Grey. The foray to the lookouts was much less busy than the road to the camp site from the catamaran. I had some time to relax and take timer shots. Apparently this guy is pretty rare. It's a red headed woodpecker. This fella wanted in on the tent action. He'd been kicked out of his home by the missus for drinking too much and always getting in late. I bought him a beer at the bar which cheered him up a bit. He wanted to get straight on his bin bag bitches to drive home, but a quick breath test showed he was over the limit. I didn't report it to the rangers. These flowers were interesting. I like the view from the top. The colour of the water was pretty beut. Bridges in the National Park ranged from ridiculously over-engineered to blatantly unsafe. This was in the middle of the range. This was near the second camp, Camp Italiano. The water was freezing. I spent a lot of time watching this mountain. On the way to the second camp. The amount of time you've spent watching a mountain waiting for a small avalanche will determine how much this photo means to you. EP, Yo and Robin. Walking along the blue lake on the third day. About twenty minutes before the camp site, there was a little beach with a beachfull of skipping rocks. Is this a photo of Tasmania which got mixed up in here? We will never know. The view from the second lookout in the Frances Valley. Jan chillin'. Looking back up the Frances Valley. Some switchbacks down to the lake. I miss switchbacks on my bike. Heading up the final part of the W. Outside the final camp. The Towers! Swim time. Pose time. GTFO time. Destroyed by a rampaging river. “Map made from recycled stone.” Interesting claim. Illing by the towers. Chilling by the towers. Huevo! Breakfast! This is an angry man on a snowmobile chasing a small animal which is about to have a wave crash on it's head. There is a cloud in the sky. Puerto Natales and Punta Arenas are both home to the most well fed street dogs in history. I left Morgan and EP in Chile and headed to El Chalten in Argentina. I couldn't book the bus to El Calafate because it was full, so I hitchhiked to the border, caught up with the bus and asked the driver if I could get on (he made me pay, but that's ok), which wasn't full. He took me to the junction towards El Chalten where I tried to hitchhike for an hour. I gave up and got a lift to El Calafate where I then paid for the bus. Met up with the Germans again. I made Henning spend so long to take this photo as I wanted it. Photo does no justice. This view of Mount Fitzroy was epic. The water here was much clearer and tastier than in Torres del Paine. Nearly as good as Tassie water. Beautiful clear lake. With a nice little beach. Looking back as the sun was setting. A view of El Chalten. Apparently during winters here there are only about 50 people who stay. Pretty epic place for a town.
Getting to Workaway29/11 – Flying to Punta Arenas It is a Sunday. I'm writing this on the plane. I would rather be reading about Tim Urban's experience in Japan then Iraq on the Wait But Why blog, but I haven't written anything for a while and this is some decent downtime. I'm looking out the window at mostly clouds, but occasionally through the clouds I glimpse glaciers ranging in size from barely visible to unfathomably large. Snow covered mountain tops peek out at the sun at various intervals. A plane just flew by in the opposite direction and there's no way it was commercial at the speed it was going. The crew just served sweet cake, dried fruits, beverages of varying temperature and even beer for those who asked. For free. You don't see that too often these days. So let's rewind a bit to my departure from Cusco. I got a bus to Arequipa (ten hours), then another bus to Tacna (seven hours, no toilet), then a taxi to Arica (one hour). Sup Chile. I met up with Morgan, took a shower and ate a whole, horrible pizza. The markets provided me with some ridiculously cheap produce with which to cook a dinner I didn't really need, then it was time to jump on the 28 hour bus to Santiago. It was the first bus which had enough space for me to fully extend my legs and in the end it was nowhere near as bad as I thought it would be. Morgan and I parted ways for a while, her to Jack's house, myself to the west of Santiago to a new Workaway. I had decent instructions on how to get there and everything went to plan until the taxi driver from Curacavi didn't really know where Fundo Lepe was so we just kept driving for a while and he dropped me off somewhere with a locked gate that it might have been but who knows and started his 17km journey back to Curacavi. I yelled a bit and eventually someone responded by approaching and speaking rapidly in Spanish. I pretty much said “Ken?” and was granted access. Within an hour I was picking lemons. That was Friday morning. The OthersI can't be bothered writing about all the things that happened, so I'll just write about the others. There were a lot of other workawayers. I don't want to write profiles for all of them because maybe that's too judgemental to be putting on the internet, but I'll put in a little story trying to capture something about them. Stories are real and require no speculation. If someone is offended by a true story about them, that really means they are offended by themselves. Right? Probably not. Anyway. Anna – Croatian/Australian. Loud. Opinionated. Perceptive. Favourite Anna moment was us trying to beat Ken down with his anti-vax, eugenics, conspiracy theory views on my second night over some vino. She was better at letting it go than me. Anna left on my first Tuesday. Julia – German. Friends with Anna. Had some good chats regarding AI and what happens if we stop being human. She was not in to the idea. Julia left on my first Monday. Francois – Patriarch of the Canadian family. Grew up speaking French and would relatively regularly mess up English sayings. Dana – Matriarch of the Canadian family. Provided a great motherly presence in terms of calling things as they were and trying to make things fair for everyone. Kenya – Canadian daughter, 11 years old. Great kid, good at maths. Seemed keen to do the tangle-tables I gave her. Also I loved her enthusiasm regarding Minecraft and getting the pool clean for her dad's birthday at all costs. Luca – Canadian son, nine years old. Also hooked in to some tangle-tables and loved Minecraft. Luca spent a while showing me his coin collection. I told him that he might live on Mars one day. The Canadian family left at the end of my first week. Ezgi – Turkish girl. My favourite (and first) Ezgi moment was bonding over how constantly loud Anna and Julia were whilst picking lemons. Ezgi left on my second Wednesday. Natasha – English girl. The first time we went to the river to jump off rocks, Natasha spent about an hour umming and ahhing and eventually walked back down. The look on her face the entire time was totes hilair. She was on a two week holiday from work in England. So why not come to Chile to work on a lemon farm. Natasha left at the end of my first week. German couple – I am totally blanking on names. They were German-level practical which was good at work. Everyone from here on arrived while I was there and remained when I left. Florian – Belgian guy. Florian arrived on my second day. He reminded me a bit of Benoit, a friend from Montpellier. We decided to get things done and build a greenhouse instead of pissing around with germination beds. Hopefully I'll meet up with him again in Rio. Elvira – Swedish girl. Elvira was quiet and if you're obnoxious and drill her with questions, very interesting. I enjoyed teasing her about how much fun fixing the irrigation is and trying to get her to say that she prefers one group of people over another. Arya – English guy. Serrrr funny. Reminds me of Godfrey. He was so high on life and just generally having a good time. Loves lighting fires, chainsawing, digging, picking lemons, exploring on bikes, making up songs, percussion, dressing up in outlandish clothing and pretending it's normal, declaring that every meal is the best meal he's ever eaten and me. I'll catch up with him in London fo sho. Becca – English girl. In a great relationship with Arya. Puts up with him and loves it. Didn't like me at first and for some reason changed her mind after a while the fucking bitch (don't worry, that's an in-joke that only some people on this Workaway will get, very relevant to the blog in general obviously). Her assessments of Arya and telling of stories about their adventures were mint. The Workaway I'll be going to near Buenos Aires is one which they were at previously. Apparently I'll get on with Mark like a house on fire. Johanna – Austrian girl. Arrived on my first Wednesday. Rocking cool. Stayed up until 2am one night just chatting shit, mostly listening to me blabbing on about my Higher Being and The Fog and correcting me on stuff. I'd love to have had more time hanging out and travelling together. Ida Maria – Austrian girl. Travelling with Johanna. They've been friends for 20 years. These two hitch-hiked through most of Chile. Favourite moment was probably boxing (hard to pick, there were a few). She used to box Johanna's ex-boyf when they had too much pent up energy and frustration and since he wasn't there, I offered my services. I'm not sure who won. I still am sore. Lawrence – English guy. Looked like Russel Brand. Started crimping in the car at one point. Fairly quiet normally but any comments he made were funny. Favourite moment was one morning discovering that he still had both arms after a terrible dream in which he had an accident followed by an amputation to the shoulder followed by another accident. I guess I was projecting Huey's (the dog who had a front leg amputation) on to Lawrence. Terrible times. Molly – English girl. In a relationship with Lawrence. I got the feeling that she wasn't too keen on me at the start, but I think warmed to me. I need to work on first impressions. Maybe. I'll do a post about that. I didn't have many personal moments with Molly, except maybe the time I was in creep mode and started giving her a head massage in the car without warning, after noticing her disgust at me doing it to someone else. I'm not sure she loved it, but she understood. Anita – The mother of two Kiwi lads. The three of them have been travelling the world for the last 48 weeks after she sold her house. What a cool girl. So many stories about the stuff they've done. My favourite moment was probably when she arrived and started laying down the law about how disorganised things were. Nobody can get a crew in shape like a mum. Oh, and her story about Erriott on the boat. Elliott – Kiwi lad, 25. Son of Anita. Tall, tanned, dreamy blue eyes, great body and amazing smile. We threw poo at each other one time. Reid – Kiwi lad, 16. Son of Anita. If I were to guess his age I would have said 19 or 20. Crazy grown up for a kid, but I guess travelling the world for a year at that age you would be. I just wondered for the first time if he just quit his formal education or what the deal was there. Spent the entire time with a shard of glass in his foot. Ripped out some great shakes for everyone and once cooked me some eggs. Ida – Swedish girl. Friends with Elvira. Well, they met on a travel website for Swedish people which apparently exists and they met for the first time at this Workaway. Generally quite but when she spoke she swore a lot. Wasn't weirded out by things which would often weird people out. I popped a pimple on her back without warning one time, and she just said thanks like it was normal. I understand that she didn't have the weirdest role in that story. Josh – Aussie guy. Didn't have his luggage for the first five days he was there. Honest, straight up guy, fairly typical Aussie who has travelled a bit and sees the bigger picture. We had fun building the greenhouse, combining to make one builder's brain. Jaela – Aussie girl. In a relationship with Josh. Also didn't have luggage for five days. Bit of a tomboy, which was awesome. One of the lads, practical, didn't take any shit. Great cook. Made popcorn and made my day. Anne – French girl. Currently living in French Guyana. Very chilled and open. Loved getting around the fire with the ukulele and ripping some tunes. Also joined us on the building site for the last day to help get things done. Juan – Argentinian guy. Boyfriend of Ann. Made me realise that everyone's story is amazing. Also is hooking me up with a scuba tank filling for scuba course deal. Jodi – Hawaiian girl. Very outgoing, liked to get involved. Didn't take any shit and spoke her mind. I thought she was a bit precious because was coming to the river but not to swim, then she saw the fun everyone was having and just jumped in with her clothes on. Jumped from the high rock too. Ken is the guy that was running the place and you could call Ian his deputy. Their professional relationship was interesting. I think I got along well with them both, but I'm not sure. Ian was like a wise but spoilt child trapped in a man's body. A whole lot of shit went down last year and earlier this year involving fraud and cheating and hostile occupation of the property and theft. If it wasn't for that, the whole place would be a fully functioning lemon farm, organic farm and place people could move to on top of their own little hill. I feel bad for Ken that it's not the case, but I'm sure he'll get it back to better than it would have been.
FridayFriday was a long-awaited dead day, where I did very little except plan from my laptop, make new music playlists and eat. And drink Milo. They have Milo here and while my host lady Koral says it's for kids, we all know it's the most adult drink out there. In the evening I went to meet up with Canadian families generally but only managed to find one. The others had bus problems. I plied my tale of Machu Picchu failure over a beer and food, then it was time to say goodbye until I head north. SaturdayYesterday (Saturday) Koral, Morgan and I went on an adventure. We took a taxi to a bus station, then a bus to Place A and walked up to the main square. On the walk, Koral got us some rice and honey treats. Morgan didn't really like hers and didn't finish it. I didn't really like mine and did finish it. They were like the most basic LCM bar you can imagine. It wasn't even Tasmanian honey. The main square provided welcome shade as the sun had just started to pummel us with it's fury. There were the same markets that I'd seen everywhere on this continent and bought nothing from. I bought two pairs of socks. I've been travelling with only one pair of socks. I think it's too many pairs, some would say it's not enough. On our outing today, there would be three churches to see. In the first one, there was a wedding. We watched for a bit. We wandered down the streets back to the main road. On the way, I poked my zoom through a woodworker's doorway. We stopped by Roger and Chuck at 520 C. San Martin. The had little to say. I witnessed and photographed some factory farming. Guinea pig is Peruvian delicacy. Tommy the Tenderiser was sleeping. We caught a bus to the next town. The church had some nice floor out the front. We found some treats growing wild. I picked some for Frank and Charlie. We walked along the side of the road to the next village. Everyone was growing corn. We slipped and slid down a path to the lake. We trundled past some blue gums. We saw Justin exposing himself. Naughty Justin. We had some absolutely delightful street treats for lunch at the square. Pastry encasing mixed vegetables and spices. Sounded like ricotta something. There was no cheese involved. We passed The House Of The Curious. It's so GoT. We went to the cemetery to visit Koral's aunt, grandfather and grandmother. Then to the lake for a nap. Then to the bus for another nap. Then we moved house. Then we played some stupid German card game which made fewer than no sense. Then dark. Then nothing. SundayMorgan went to a religious gathering on Sunday morning. I unknowingly awaited the arrival of "The Canadians", consisting of one Canadian and one French Person. Brent is taller than me. The Canadians had just flown in and were tired. They left before returning to nap. While they were absent, we ourselves departed for what I thought would be a two hour walk. We were off to visit El Blanco Christ. We had to pay the Troll Toll to get in to the puppy's soul. This puppy's name is Troll. He's not nearly as fierce as he looks. The stairs however, were. There was so much walking up. We were all out of breath. I think Koral slept for a bit here. But the rains were a'coming. Panoramic view, we can make it all manageable. I am finding it difficult to write something that isn't offensively sarcastic regarding the wonder of God and all his creation and how even in his infinite humility and goodness he still requires people to build statues in his name. Oops, there I go. What a dick. After a brief pause to talk rubbish, we increased our velocity in the direction of the Saqsaywaman ruins. It cost S/.70 to get in so we just peeked in from the outside and Koral told us some things. Fact or fiction, who cares, it was interesting. I posed on the way back down. Limby AF. The Gang Moves Next To A Church. MondayMonday was a planning day. Morgan and I went to The Meeting Place in Plaza San Blas which is a volunteer run cafe. It does not have the ambiance of a place local to Cusco, but that's exactly what I needed. I booked a flight from Santiago to Punta Areanas in Patagonia for the 28th of November.. Later, we booked a bus from Arica to Santiago for Wednesday night until Friday morning. I'm doing Workaway near there until the flight. Morgan left to Puno in the evening. It was the first of four nights sleeping on a bus. Also, when I was at The Meeting Place I started reading the Wait But Why post on AI. I'm still freaking out. TuesdayI have a bus booked for tonight to Arequipa (10 hours), then I'll try to get to Arica (5 hours plus 1 hour) tomorrow to catch the bus to Santiago. That's a 28 hour bus.
Getting there 06/11 – Cusco Day 6 It is a Friday. By Tuesday afternoon, Morgan and I were ruined after basically two days of shopping around for Machu Picchu (MP) tours and treks. We ended up settling on a small tour which included a round bus trip from Cusco (C) to Hidroelectrica (H) (which is 2.5hrs walk along train tracks to Aguas Calientes (AC) which is the place everyone stays near Machu Picchu), three meals, one night at a hostel in AC, MP ticket, MP mountain ticket and MP tour. To ensure we had enough time to climb the mountain and still get back to H before the bus left, we also got a train ticket from AC to H at 1.35pm. We were picked up from our place at 7.30am, then we tooled around C, picking up other people on the tour. The bus ride to Ollantaytambo (O) wasn't too bad, but we were suspiciously close to AC despite apparently having five hours of bus to go. Queue mayhem. Between O and AC, the road is rough and the driving is rougher. I didn't think it was stupid dangerous, but most other people seemed to. I'll admit it wasn't 100% safe. So for five hours we were thrown around the back of a van with no possibility of sleep or rest, before pulling in to Santa Teresa for an absolutely rubbish lunch. I had been warned that if food was included on a tour, it was going to be average. Eventually we made it to H and expelled ourselves from the bus worse for wear. The two and a half hour walk to AC along the train tracks was actually really pleasant. By the time we got to AC, Morgan, two Brazilians we had befriended and I had decided to get the train all the way back to C, because eff that bus ride again and we wanted to have more time up the mountain. So we went to the station. I can't remember how many times we were told different numbers of seat remaining on different trains as different prices and different times, but it was a lot. So we made a decision which wasn't ideal because there weren't many seats left (which is obviously our fault), but we were at least set. Then we went back to the Customer Service Representatives (CSRs) and despite no customers arriving, everything seemed to have changed. So we made a new decision and the same thing happened when returning to the CSRs. Finally we determined that we could get three tickets for one train and one ticket for another at a similar time, but all were only to O, so we needed to book a taxi back to C. Needless to say, we were all pretty over everything by this stage in the day. I was remaining a little upbeat because we would still all get to see Machu Picchu for the day tomorrow, it was just going to end up costing a little bit more (or so I thought). The Brazilians went back to the group meeting place to make sure the others wouldn't leave to the hostel (at a location which was apparently secret) without us while we bought our tickets. By the time we got to the square, there was no sight of anyone familiar, so we bought some beers and tried to relax. Eventually a little man walked in to the square calling “Morgan, Morgan”, rolling his r's hard. He took us up to the hostel. We'd negotiated a private three person room with an Irish girl who Morgan had met the week before, but by the time we got there, the Irish lass had negotiated us out of that deal. Morgan put her foot down in an American I'm-not-taking-your-bullshit way which I immediately resolved to do more often myself. We got our private room. I had the warmest shower I've had in the world in a month, in the southern hemisphere in six months and in South America ever. And I didn't even get electrocuted. At 8pm we went to meet the tour guide at the square so he could give us cash to buy our own tickets, even though we had paid him to do that. We were incredulous. We were whisked away to a poor dinner. We mentioned that we no longer needed our train tickets from AC to H on the following day because we were getting the train back. Despite previously having wads of cash, he suddenly had no money and would leave the money at the restaurant the following afternoon. We returned to the hostel to find that the lights switch in our room was broken in a sense. Sort of. Flicking on and off did nothing because it was midday Uluru bright the entire time. Thanks amazing curtains and brilliant window positioning. You made my day. The Wondrous DayWe awoke early and had a tiny bit to eat (mistake one). Then we walked to the gate to cross the river to climb up to Machu Picchu. I hadn't had much to drink (mistake two). Once we got across, I decided I felt good climbing and push on quite quickly (mistake three). I was one of the first at the gates and won the honour of waiting fifteen minutes for an American tour group to push their way up and proclaim loudly in to their iPhones that they were at the front of the line, whaddya know. Morgan wasn't far behind and also got to spend time having people push past her. A Chinese group pushed past everyone, even the guys on the gate and got in ten minutes before anyone else. Eventually we were in. It was very foggy. We walked up a bit and had a some trail mix nibbles (food technically isn't allowed in). I had a little bit of water. We worked out what path we wanted to take amongst the fog and took a few photos along the way. I started to feel faint and my vision wasn't doing too well. I asked for a little rest for a bit. I tried to push on. I couldn't see clearly and was starting to behave as one behaves when they have seventeen beers and just look at their feet to make sure they stay upright and moving. I called it and Morgan led me down to the entrance. I sat on a bench. Head between knees. A strange lady had some liquid in a vial. She put some in my water bottle and told me to drink. I drank. I was being led away by a man with a cardboard box I knew I could trust. The cardboard box took me to a room and lay me on a bed. Morgan was there. A needle was in my arm. Pills in my mouth. Liquids at my lips. I slept. Though various stages of the day, people were checking I was OK and asking if I felt better. My mouth was working in the same way as Big Jim's when he's had too much to drink. There were words, but they weren't human. After a while I started to regain sense of my surroundings. Morgan returned with the Brazilians, one of whom (Luciana) was a doctor. She assessed the situation and told me to drink more. I drank more. They left for one last look around and returned at around 3.40pm. I heard them talking before they entered the room, preparing to insist I catch the bus down. Not likely. We left the medical room. S/. 216 which Morgan covered for me. She was an angel the entire day. I convinced the others that I didn't need a bus and we returned to the valley on foot. I spent the descent being regaled of the wonders of the ancient ruins that I missed. Lessons?We saw the initial Canadian family as we re-entered AC, and we met them for pizza dinner before heading to the station. The train back was lush. Number one piece of advice for MP: if you aren't doing a cool trek (Lares, Salcantay, Inca), just get the bloody train. It's worth the money.
From O back to C we had a crazy taxi driver, but nobody gave a shit at that point. What a day! Oh and we never did go back and get our refund money. But hey, it was a lesson and I've now made two friends who live in Salvador who I will probably actually visit after Rio. My chin is so far up. |
Chris JonesJust a guy going for a bit of a documented ride. Archives
May 2018
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