Order a Ferrari, then step across the street and buy a weed wacker. This is diversity. Everything you need or want in walking distance. At home in Alaska I have to get on a small plane just to browse a bookstore or visit a bakery. In Buenos Aires it´s all here, at your toe-tips. Lets take a walk around one city block, four sides of a square - a single block on Avenue Uruguay, and a rather small one at that. The hardware store across from the Ferrari dealership has it all, we can buy a weed wacker or an ax [View Full Entry]

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Off to Lake Myvatn today - midge and mosquito capital of Iceland! In fact that's what the word 'Myvatn' actually means. Strange to name a place after its most annoying inhabitant - hardly the best advertising campaign! Lake Myvatn is also apparently a bird watcher's paradise although we saw surpisingly few - perhaps the cold was keeping everyone but the crazy English people indoors! The lake is Iceland's fourth largest and apparently the world's most fertile spot on a similar latitude. It was created after the ice age ended in Iceland some 10,000 years ago. However, it was reall [View Full Entry]

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Day 603 (21.11.08) Today we were making the trip out to one of Lake Titicaca´s southern islands, Isla del Sol, according to Incan legend, the birthplace of the sun. We planned to stopover for the night so made our way down to the lake´s edge with a bag packed and plenty of snacks. It turned out that we were on the same boat as Geoff and Sian who we´d met on the hill the night before so we braved the chill of the top deck to make the most of the views on the 2 hour journey. Grateful to arrive and [View Full Entry]

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As our most incredible year draws to a slighty premature close we thought we´d share some of the world´s oddities and idiots that we´ve met along the way. Did you know There is a town in New Zealand called ´Clive´. Now we´re sure it´s probably pronounced ´clee-vay´ or something equally stupid, but knowing the Kiwis and their simple honest nature it´s just possible that it´s named after a bloke called Clive. Ah yes, Clive just down the road from 'Dave' if you hit 'Phil' you´ve gone too far - priceless. There is a god. Yes once and for all there are [View Full Entry]

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Last time I came to France I ran away. Literally. At least from the luggage dropoff point to the departure gate at Charles de Gaulle Airport, not even stopping to retie the shoelaces flapping in all directions. Two days earlier I had arrived back at the hotel to find my passports and wallet hadn't. The next day was spent doing the rounds of embassy/police/lost and found (or as in my case, lost and not found). True to their word the staff at the New Zealand embassy had my emergency passport waiting for me the next morning, which I signed for before [View Full Entry]

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The '80s and '90s were a tough time for the Medellin tourist board, with the city's murder and kidnapping rates during that period being some of the highest in the world. Pablo Escobar's cocaine cartel, engaged in a bloody war with both its main rival in Cali and the Colombian government, had made their leader's name synonymous with the city. $10 assassins riding on the backs of motorbikes were so common at one stage that the government banned pillion passengers. Foreigners on the streets were likely to be assumed to be DEA. A decade later, though, Medellin has made determined efforts [View Full Entry]

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Our Thanksgiving holidays were spent in Germany, totally immersed in the advent of Christmas! The three of us, Kate, (colleague, not daughter) Keith and myself, headed out of Poland to see what the Christkindlsmarkt was all about. Kate and I have been looking forward to shopping the traditional markets, tasting the "gluhwein", and eating hearty German food! And I think Keith was ready to get on the autobahn. I can hear some of you snickering! Yep, he was speeding down the highway! Well, speeding for him, we were getting passed left and right! The recommended speed limit is 130 km/h (81 [View Full Entry]

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When we start the nightly game drive, Jaco tells us that conditions are still muddy which means we’ll be staying on the main roads again. But, we’re lucky that a giraffe has chosen to eat dinner very close to the road. Jaco stops the Land Rover so that we can watch as the gangly animal stretches his long neck to taste the leafy branches of a treetop. He moves gracefully from tree to tree as the Land Rover follows along. Later, we see wildebeest and cape buffalo with rhino in the distance. Soon, Jaco drives up a steep incline to a [View Full Entry]

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