crooksy
Craig Crooks Joined: January 20th 2007
Logged in: June 8th 2009
Logged in: June 8th 2009
Hitting Peru for a month, arizona for a couple of months followed by the big one...cricket world cup in the Caribbean.
I´ll post as often as i can and include pix where possible. Keep me updated with everything that´s going on in your part of the world. Enjoy
Travel Blog Posts
Diving in Tioman
G'day everyone For those of you that didn't know, i've left Australia again. Have arrived back over in Ireland for around a month or two of work. After that the plan is to head over to the U.S for a few months and then work my way home after that. Stopped in to Tioman island off the east coast of Malaysia to do some diving on the way. It was a beautiful island that has managed to avoid mass commercialisation. There are 6 or 7 villages around the shore of the island but nothing but jungle in the middle so the only way to get to the other side of the island is by boat or jungle trek. Plenty of wildlife including monkeys and fairly large (one metre plus) monitor lizards. Had a great time - ... read more
Arizona
My time in Phoenix is just about done. Heading over to miami on Sunday to meet up with the boys for the cricket world cup. Pretty pumped about it although you wouldn't know there's a world cup on over here - yet to see any highlights let alone a game. The last couple of weeks over here have been pretty quiet. My flatmate has played a couple of gigs including the tempe arts festival and a launch party for their new cd, which went well. I've included a link at the bottom of the page to their website where you can listen to all their songs (shameless plug). If anyone wants to buy their album let me know - i'll have some copies over in Ireland with me. I know a few of you have ... read more
Utah
VIDEO ON THE LEFT - SKIM OR SWIM AT THE CANYONS After 4 days of sight seeing i landed in Park City Utah, home of the Sundance film festival and close to the site of the 2002 winter olympic games. I was catching up with Sandy, a mate of mine from uni who i hadn't seen for about 3.5 years as we'd both been travelling in different places at different times - although we worked out that at one stage we were in the same part of Portugal at the same time, which is fairly typical of my organisational skills. I planned on spending 3 nights up there and ended staying for about 12. Most of the time was spent in one of the following activities - skiing, poker or drinking. One of the boys ... read more
Tucson
Began my first proper trip over in the U.S by hiring a car and hitting the road. Have been keen to do a U.S road trip for a long time and Arizona is the perfect place for it. Lots of long, quiet roads. Changeing scenery on a regular basis. Christian rock everywhere you go - what more could a guy ask for. Pumped out 5000km in 2.5 weeks and loved every bit of it. There is still plenty that i would like to see in Arizona but it'll probably have to wait until next time. Got off to a great start when the hire company gave me a V6 Pontiac for the same price as a small economy car. Headed over to Tucson for a couple of nights. The scenery over in this part of ... read more
Trujillo
The final part of out time in Peru was spent visiting some of the towns and cities in the North East of the country. For the remainder of our trip we came across very few tourists and for the most part there was less of a touristy feel to these places, the best thing being less hassle from vendors trying to sell you their goods. While it was great to go to Iquitos it is almost impossible to travel from there to anywhere apart from Lima. So we had to fly south to Lima, sleep in the airport (didn't actually get any sleep), then fly north to Trujillo. We had a night there before cruising on to a little beach town called Huanchaco The fishermen in this town still use the same sort of craft that ... read more
Belen
We caught a bus from from the desert to Lima, and from there we jumped on a plane to the jungle in the north of Peru. Destination - Iquitos. The largest city in the world (population roughly 400,000) that is inaccessible by road. The only ways to get in or out are plane or boat. The main aim was to find ourselves a tour in to the jungle. We spent almost half a day being harassed by people and talking with potential groups before settling on Yarapa river lodge. This lodge has a great reputation and are associated with Cornell uni over in the U.S. As such they are a bit pricey. Due to it being the quiet time of year at the moment we managed to get them down to half price for a 4 ... read more
Aguas Calientas
While the rest of the group headed back to Cusco, Renee and i hung around in Aguas Calientas for a night. During the high season this would be a pumping little town full of trekkers trading war stories. It was fairly quiet while we were there which was ok. Ended up getting 'piscoed' on the peruvian drink pisco sours. Cruised around some local markets the next morning before catching the Vistadome train back to Cusco. The next day we went whitewater rafting on some Class III rapids. I'd always thought it would be boring, and while the heart rate never really got up i can see how on some tougher rapids there would be a real buzz. Going to look into that when i get to the U.S. Met up with the Aussie lads from the ... read more
Inca Trail
I had been wanting to do this trek ever since i saw some pictures of Macchu Picchu (MP) and some other Incan sites as a kid, and again every time (many times) i saw similar images...so my expectations were about as high as they could possibly be. I am happy to say that this is one of those very rare occasions where extremely high expectations are overwhelmingly exceeded. Could not have asked for a better trip. The tour group (SAS) was excellent and our guides, Javi and Juan were top notch. The info they gave us about all aspects of the location and the culture gave you a much greater appreciation of where you were and the path you were walking. Food - think i actually gained weight walking 50km over 4200m passes with a full ... read more
Lima
Have been travelling for 3 weeks but for one reason or another haven't been able to get going with this blog...better late than never right. I'll put up info and photo's for the first 3 weeks as if they were in real time. Just use your imagination. Hopefully from now on i should be ok. Flew in to Lima on the 6th of Jan and met up with Renee, a good friend of mine on the 7th. We were only in Lima a couple of days and managed to see the old colonial section as well as the more upmarket Miraflores. Neither was too impressive, but you don't go to Peru to see Lima. Caught up with Kat and Nicole, some friends of Renee from her time in London and had a couple of good nights ... read more
