The train from Cusco to Machu Piccu is officially the most expensive public transport, per Km travelled, on the planet. The only way to get to M.P. is the train - no flights, boats, buses, cars; your only other option is a 4-day hike, booked out 8 months in advance. You COULD go cross-country with a stolen Llama, but if Cusco's anything to go by, you'd have to pry the reins out of the gnarled grip of one of the 100 year-old Peruvian ladies who shuffle around the tourist district extorting money for photos from travellers, who want to pat the [View Full Entry]

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Sucre - the town that cried wolf... You may recall back in November '07 this was the site of the infamous civil unrest that captured the attention of international media and all backpackers with intentions of passing through the Bolivian heartland. And looking around the main square, it still bears the scars of those clashes with police which left 3 dead, one policeman soundly lynched and all the maximum security prisoners on perpetual day-leave. Sucreneans killing Sucreneans, and then in all likelihood, running away yelping from even more Sucreneans! Smashing age-old, heritage-saturated buildings and defacing monuments! Yep, reeeeeal smart. Beat up [View Full Entry]

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The Death Train - Finally! My adventure in South America began to sound like the swashbuckling, whip-cracking, cannibal-outrunning, Llama-sacrificing, poison-dart booby-trap-dodging experience that all those Indiana Jones movies had prepared me for. Quiet my 'still-beating, removed from my body with a dagger and held up for me to see' heart. Unsurprisingly, I was in for some disappointment... While the Lonely Planet left the origins of the Death Train's thrilling moniker as somewhat of an ambiguity, 3 hours into the numbing, smelly, repetitive squeak and clunk of our 5 kilometre per hour journey, it all became clear. We had been sentenced to [View Full Entry]

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Manaus - Heart of the Amazon (dramatic music...) Sounds impressive huh? Conjuring visions of machete-wielding, moustachioed-types wearing short-leg safari suits, pith helmets and smug expressions? It's at the intersection of two rivers, rather impressive in their own right, the Rio Solimoes and the Rio Negro. And it's a monster. The closest you'll get to wildlife in downtown Manaus will be slowly shimmying up one of your pubes after an ill-advised night-in with a Danish girl sporting artificial dreadlocks. Or a hands-on experience with a 6-inch Nematode coughed up by a 4-inch kitten (- that story still to come another time!) We [View Full Entry]

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Carnaval (Language warning - this entry wouldn´t have the same cathartic release without a few adult references. I try not to discriminate, and offend everyone equally) So Carnaval - it´s like the Eurovision Song contest, only choreographed on top of enormous speakers, on the back of a semi-trailer. Singers famous to people I don´t know, wearing spandex, all singing what may as well be the exact same 3-word pop-drivel in a language I don´t understand. The difference is, while Eurovision is equal parts boring, tragic and amusing, I´m not laughing. AND, watching Eurovision usually doesn´t include some fucking lowlife grabbing my [View Full Entry]

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As I type this next sentence, I´m most pleased by the fact that I'm not doing it from prison - my ass will never be the same again. 5000km round-trip on a bus - Buenos Aires to Parque Nacional Torres Del Paine (where ironically, for 4 days I was wishing I could take a bus instead of walking with 15kgs of dried pasta and oatmeal stuffed in my backpack) and back. Yep, travelling by bus is a very serious business in South America, as is all modes of road transport. We´ve in all likelihood spent over a quarter of our whole [View Full Entry]

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I love Buenos Aires. Yep, saw the T-shirt, heard the 200 or so backpackers repeating the mantra. But I still didn't get it. It was with much trepidation then that I fastened my belt buckle and promised the boys from Chilean customs that I´d call them soon, before John Wayne swaggering into the country's capital city in time for Christmas. 'Boring'. 'Ugly'. 'I made a special side-trip away from my historical tour of South American brothels because I thought it was something special, I´m sooo disappointed' Yep, that´s what all the websites say. Don´t waste your time going to Santiago. The [View Full Entry]

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Cordoba. Argentina. Eerily, a little like Brissie... In a quasi-hallucinatory, calorie-induced fever worthy of Bram Stoker and a decent piece of nightmare-fed prose, I pondered last evening this incisive (and quite a bit sanctimonious - I´ll grant you) question... Why do I hate backpackers so much? A simple matter on the face of it - returning pissed to the dorm at 4am and discovering that they´re so paralytic that they´ll be incapable of removing their pants with the lights off (even if they´ve somewhat clumsily proven that to be untrue in some poor uni student´s bedroom not 2 hrs previous, or [View Full Entry]

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Well, we're in Montevideo at the moment (the capital of Uruguay). Yawn. I'm sure they're not kidding when they say it's the second-safest city in the world. At least as far as death by misadventure is concerned. Crawling with police and special tourist police to keep us safe from the homeless people - of which there are a few - but conspicuously lacking in cholesterol and fibre police to keep us safe from the exclusively beef and pastry diet we've been on for the last 7 days (that's not strictly true, there has been beer and ice-cream, and the occasional banana). [View Full Entry]

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