Random Remarcs
Marc Heggart Joined: January 8th 2010
Logged in: October 15th 2010
Logged in: October 15th 2010
Well, it's more fun than working for a living!
Travel Blog Posts
Geyser in the Morning
Imagine a scene in the Old West. The Iron Horse has just deposited its load of passengers at some dust ridden town along the frontier. As it pulls away you see the greenhorn, or tenderfoot, standing in the middle of an empty street looking around in bemusement as he tries to orientate himself to this new location. Nothing looks the same; everyone is dressed differently and the houses are certainly not a patch on what he encountered in New York. In fact, there is only one building: the train station... So he stands there in bemusement, surrounded by his ornate luggage watching the decidedly un-ornate country folk walking by and ignoring him. Now, instead of the train, imagine an Andesmar coach, and rather than just a single tenderfoot, picture about thirty gringo backpackers, all with the ... read more
Random cactus photo #1
Having been foiled in my attempts to get to Santiago de Chile by the unforseen happenstance of an earthquake, I found myself once more in Argentina, where Luke, Ana, Andreas and I had all booked seats on a bus from Bariloche to Mendoza. For Luke, Ana and Andreas, this got them to within a six hour bus ride of Santiago, from where they had booked flights to Easter Island. I on the other hand was using Mendoza as a waypoint on my journey north to Salta, up in the north west corner of Argentina. Why Salta? I'm glad you asked (even if you hadn't). Salta was close to San Pedro de Atacama, in Chile; one of the starting points for a tour of the Salar de Uyuni (a giant salt flat on the southern edge of ... read more
Antarctic Expedition Ship
When I first decided to travel round the world for a year or so, one of my greatest concerns was how I would manage to get around South America when I didn't really speak the language. The idea of doing it all on my own, and the risk of ending up in the wrong location, or even the wrong country, was a little concerning. So, I booked a three week trip though Patagonia with a tour company known as Tucan, thinking that easing into the solo trips might be a good idea. Of course, after I arrived in Argentina I went off and explored Iguazu and Mendoza by myself, so I was feeling a lot more confident in my abilities to find my way around South America by the time I flew south to Ushuaia to ... read more
Mendoza Wine Cellar
After my flying visit to Iguazu Falls, I was off to Mendoza. If you look on a map (maybe even the one that is hopefully at the top of this post) you'll see that in the course of a week I managed to hit three of the boundaries of Argentina; North at Iguazu (with Brazil), East at Bs As (with Uruguay), and West at Mendoza (with Chile). And of course, in less than another five days I'd be at the South of the country in Ushuaia. Now, if Argentina was the size of Tasmania, or England say, I'd feel confident that I could say I had seen a fair bit of the country during the course of that week. When the country is the size of Argentina (it takes up a fair chunk of a continent) ... read more
February 3rd 2010
More beautiful Falls
Last time I reported in I had just left a hostel and was on my way to the Terminal de Omnibus (hey, I think it sounds a lot better than plain old bus station) so I could board my bus and make a 16 hour journey north to Iguazu falls. For those who have been wondering if this is really a true version of events; after all, so far I haven't gotten ridiculously drunk and ended up: on a pub crawl with the local underbelly mob (a la Galway); in hospital (a la waterpolo presentation nights); or in a strip club (a la a certain grandmother's wake), all I can say is that I'm working on it... If you are like me, you consider yousrelf reasonably well clued about the world and its sites. It turns ... read more
An original rowboat... and rower
So, in the spirit of trying to actually get up to date with my attempts to let everyone know what I'm doing, I'm going to talk about my trip to Tigre and my week of Spanish lessons in the one post. This way I'll only be about a week or two behind where I actually am... and I may finally complete my travel writing sometime in 2012. Having explored the sites of Bs As in the days after I first arrived, I expanded my range and started to look at the city's hinterland. The one thing that was starting to get to me was the lack of large expanses of open water. Now, I may have been spoiled by my place back in Sydney, but the artificial confines of Puerto Maedryn really didn't do much for ... read more
Buenos Aires City Flag
Ok, I can't promise that that will be my last bad pun for the year. In all honesty, given the paucity of my sense of humour, anyone reading this blog should be glad of a few bad puns here and there. (Of course, this being Marc's blog, and with the title Random Remarcs, I feel that I should make note of the fact that Gabriel Garcia Marquez is actually Columbian and I'm currently at least half a continent from his birth nation. Despite the fact that I love his novels, I'll try and refrain from any more Gabe comments...I reserve my right to change this if, in the middle of some pandemic, I do happen to meet my significant other. Ferries may also need to be involved. :-) ) A couple of points; think of them ... read more
The view that I am leaving behind for twelve months.
Welcome one and all. This is my first post to my brand-spanking-new blog. I've decided to keep a blog for the rest of the year as I travel around the world (or at least those parts of the world that I could fit into twelve months). Why a blog? Well, the short ansewer is that I'm lazy. With a blog I can post the address to everyone who might be interested and then they can check back whenever they're interested. It also means that people don't get flooded with random emails from me as I travel, which hopefully means I don't end up on too many friends' spam lists by the end of the year. Of course, knowing me, the reality is that I'd be likely to start writing emails regularly, then gradually trail off as ... read more
