CheekyPee

Ummm, where did the year go? One minute I’m swinging an all-too-indolent backside in a hammock, next thing I know I’m home and dry. So what about the last two weeks? Well with little under a fortnight left, finally I flew out of Colombia - with virtually no doubt, the most phenomenal place I will ever go - and flew straight to Buenos Aires for one last stab at becoming the youngest man in history ever to contract gout. Truth is, my outlook unexpectedly changed after the flight; following 11½ months travelling, under two weeks from home and already having started missing Colombia I found myself idling, just readying myself for my return. In a bid to minimise this final blog entry’s waffle - and at the expense of any coherent, eloquent justification, check out this ... read more

Hello, me again. I feel that today, as our numbers continue to grow, perhaps I should start by welcoming all new bloggers from across the world into the family. Worthy of special mention must be Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, although I can't deny feeling a hint of jealousy; I have to make do with writing mundane entries about cleaning sand from my orifices and embarrassingly located mosquito bites and I won't have some bearded fundamentalist pissing on my chips with all his talk of exercising his fundamental right as a sovereign nation to cruise into the nuclear age! (All's fair in love and war though, Mazza. Just get in touch if you lose your camera and need me to draw you some pics...) So moving on. I left you somewhere along ... read more

Woah, what a title! So many different levels! What? Have I been abducted? No, I just thought, you know... sometimes along comes something that's pithy, terse and succinct, and that's too damn good not to use. Oh come on! You'd have done the same. Anyway, it's better than this entry's working title "Colombia, Backpack, Graham". Hmmm, is it too late to start again? Colombia! Crash! Backpack! Bang! Graham! Wallop! No, wait... too much explosive energy in the first six words methinks. This entry's in danger of climaxing too soon. Peaks and troughs, dear boy, that's what people want... OK, one last try... On 17th June 2006, my mother's dreams came true when her little boy grabbed a rucksack and went for a stroll around Colombia. Oh, you should have seen her face when I told her ... read more

What do you mean I told you all to read my blog and then didn't touch it for months? I've been busy... Right, let's see what I can do here then. After all the fun of freezing to death in the middle of a Patagonian winter, I jumped straight on a three hour flight back to Buenos Aires, and stayed there just long enough to go to SouthFest, a house festival for 20,000 people down by the docks. The line-up included Plump DJ's and LCD Soundsystem and was headlined by Deep Dish. Now I've got enough of Deep Dish's CD's to know I can no longer stand them but I thought I'd give them one last chance. On the whole the night wasn't too bad. I rocked up with about 15 Argies and we had a ... read more

Know what the unluckiest thing to do in South America is? Bump into travellers fresh out of Argentina. Invariably they'll bore the arse off you about the place. They'll have you believe it's full of supermodels, the food's world-class and everything's so cheap you'll be left wondering why their worthless currency even bothers changing hands. The country famously spent many years sliding into economic meltdown culminating with an unpegging of the currency from the US dollar in 2002 that led to most of the population effectively losing two-thirds of their wealth overnight. Things have settled down now, but in reality, the weakness of the Argentine economy means the people here really don't have much. Yet in the 1950's the place had one of the biggest economies in the world. I mean, there are cheaper places in ... read more