Blairs
Nick Blair Joined: July 9th 2008
Logged in: December 16th 2008
Logged in: December 16th 2008
Travel Blog Posts
The Succesful Mountaineer
Having endured the pains of big bus journeys, Pucon was time for some serious R and R. But what a place to do it in! Stunning scenery, a lake (warm enough to swim in) with a nice beach, and a big, bad volcano looming over the landscape! The town itself reminds me somewhat of Center Parks, all wood buildings and big wide streets. Except Center Parks with a volcano alarm! Which got tested every couple of days, and had an interesting rating system where green actually meant a few things were happening with the volcano (no light was the best!). The main draw of the town is, indeed, climbing said volcano, and my friendly hostel owner was very keen for me to do this (he has scaled it over 1500 times, but since retiring with a ... read more
Cloudy Florenopolis
Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeelllll. Following on from the thrilling chapter above... I probably don´t have much else to say! After Brazil I headed over to a beach in Uruguay, aptly titled Punta Del Diablo - Devils End! With a little stop over in Montevideo for a spot of the casino life!!! This was quite amusing, it was impossible to get on the black jack tables due to the whole of korea seemingly being there... still it whiled away a few hours and i didn´t lose much money so all good. As for Montevideo, it is like a mini-Buenos Aires, so not much point to it really. As for Punta, it was a very relaxing week of doing very, very little. The bonus being that there was hardly anyone there, and the one hostel in town was lovely. I whiled ... read more
The Infamous Motley Crue Night
Well, I realised I am back on the backpacking circuit after 7 weeks working in Cusco, Peru. Which happened to be some of the happiest weeks of my travels, if not my life. It was a hell of a lot of fun working in a hostel bar for 2 months, I met so many awesome people, partied almost every night, and spent pretty much no money. Can´t complain at all. It spurred too many stories for me to recount really, but I think I covered almost every base of travel stories which I´m sure will be recounted numerous times upon my return to England, so let´s just leave it at that! So, I guess I´ll cover the first month or so after leaving Cusco. I set off back to La Paz, Bolivia, to see if I ... read more
A monkey and me
Having been on a trek to Macchu Picchu, I decided it was pretty much eventful enough for it to have it's own blog. Plus I've done nothing else but drink in Cusco, so describing that could be a little boring. We signed up for a four day trek to the ancient inca ruins, which involved 1 day of cycling and 3 days of walking. Also tagging along was a northern lass named Sally, who turned out to be a disaster area! DAY ONE Wake up at 7.30, on a bus for 8, on bikes at the top of a fook off mountain by about midday. Load up on water and sunscreen, then it was off for 1 hour of cruising down a road with more twists and turns than I'd like to think about. Sanjay went ... read more
So, having left shitty La Paz, ventured through Copacobana (really not much to say, I discovered I like trout, which is a bonus), we arrived in Cusco, Peru, on Friday. And wow, what a place! Lovely weather, guinea pig to eat, kids trying to sell me puppies for 3 pounds, and more partying til 6AM! Two nights in a row in fact, both of which have involved some form of face painting and varying degrees of degradation. Disclaimer: Mother, you may not want to read this bit! Last night produced THE story of the trip so far for me! Although Sanjay comes a close second with his having to relieve his dodgy bowels off the side of a boat, but thats another story... Having been out saturday night, and met a very lovely (if tiny and ... read more
Chilling in the hot springs
Well it has been an entertaining week or so! With probably far too much non-interesting stuff and all the good bits forgotten, but I will try and run through. Despite an epic attempt at getting a bus to Salta which arrived 30 minutes before the bus we wanted to get to Chile, we failed in our mission and got holed up in Salta for a few days! All good though, because we busted out some extreme fun and went rafting and canope touring. I say extreme fun, the rafting was about as extreme as a wet fart - level 3 is for girls, but the canope was awesome, zip lining 600m high over a big canyon! Then on Sunday it was on to the madness of San Pedro in Chile, and the Salt Flats of Uyuni... ... read more
Che
Well... I tried to upload some photos, but without titting around re-sizing them, it would take a while. So you will have to wait. Been in Cordoba (the biggest uni town in SA) for a few days, and it has been fairly random. In our hostel I am sleeping in what can only be described as a corridor, but it´s comfy enough and the people here are funny fuckers. Everyone just sits about in the evening, eats together, plays some cards and then heads out to clubs at about 1.30AM. Last night was a Reggae club, which involved me and two aussies downing Tequila. Unfortunately, I forgot that shots out here are 3 times as big and this lead to slight over-consumption and an early night (4AM) for Nicholas. I also had the most random day ... read more
Horsing about
So having checked weather reports, we decided to cancel plans to go South (gonna do that on our return to argentina in about 5 weeks), and have instead headed west to mendoza near the Chilean border, and wow... what can I say? Beautiful chilled out city with the andes in sight, cool, crisp mountain air and a chance to chill the fuck out. Which is just the remedy for the mayhem that was BA! It seems like for the first time in ages I am totally relaxed, and when I put my head down at night my brain feels peaceful in the knowledge I can get up and do whatever the next day. The downside to this, is that I am having some weirdo dreams. The worst of which involved me somehow getting rabies and then ... read more
Brazillians...
I am waiting for Sanjay to wake and beautify himself, so part 2 of Buenos Aires can be told... This involves mainly drinking. And some shopping. Had a full day hitting the shops with the Brazillian trio (Marcus, Patricia and Tereza) on Wednesday. Recited the lyrics to 'shopping with girls' to Tereza (do you like my dress? Do you think it goes with my blonde hair?) which made her laugh, whilst I was crying inside a little bit and being all gentlemanly carrying bags and what not. That night we went out for drinks in Palermo (an area quite like Call Lane in Leeds I Guess) and then to a late night bar near our hostel, all good fun. Friday night was probably the best night I've had so far, after 2 hours sleep on Thursday ... read more
Sanjay, Buenos Aires - Buenos Aires, Sanjay
Having had one massive fuck about finding a hostel (the one we were booked in fucked us over...) we have now been enjoying the delights of buenos aires. To summarise so far it has gone like this: 12PM - I wake up, and go for a wander 4PM - Sanjay wakes up, wonders where I am 7PM - I return, meet up with sanjay and we eat 11PM - go out, get taxis all over the city and drink / feel bemused at the fact no where gets busy until about 2AM Inbetween this there has been much hanging about with Brazillians. A couple of guys who gave us instructions on where to go in Brazil on the following criteria: - number of girls (pronounced gerlez) - number of homosexuals (pronounced poof-es). Although this was not ... read more
