hammrocks

Blame Canada! For holding an awesome Star Trek convention and making me spend money on it. Our brief stay in Canada was preceded by a 23 hour journey from Rio de Janeiro. All things considered, it wasn't so bad - flight to Panama, then a 7 hour wait (filled with electronics ogling), flight to Toronto and entertainment on arrival. A drunk guy two rows behind us decided he would like to have another drink as the plane was making its approach; the attendant declined. Now, I couldn't hear much of their exchange, but I did hear the word "cabron" from the passanger, which loosley translates into English as bastard. The attendant mentioned the police. A few minutes later, the drunk ambled down the aisle - as we were landing - presumably to apologise and avoid the ... read more

Ate too much Chipa Guasu...now I'm Paraguayzed. Or, if you prefer: Now that I've been there, I'm the Para-guy. For some reason, not many people include Paraguay on a South American itinerary. It may be down to its relatively nascent tourist industry, and the fact that there is very little information available online about what to do there and how to get around. Paraguay is on the way up, though, and for me, the lack of detail was an incentive to visit. Officially, Paaguay is the second poorest country in South America, which is the second poorest region in the world after Africa. Unofficially, it is nothing like that in appearance. The distribution of wealth is pretty limited, true, but much of Paraguay is quite up-market and modern. The countryside away from the important routes is ... read more

It's a little bit chilly, so you need to eat chilli in Chile. A-ha-ha. Now, it is something of an oddity when booking flights that, occasionally, you will get a cheaper return flight than a one-way. And when booking our flight to Santiago de Chile, we found something even odder: to fly from La Paz to Santiago through Iquique (desert city in northern Chile) cost over 200 euro more than to take the exact same flights, with another one to Mendoza in Argentina the following day. One extra flight, 200 euro cheaper. Peculiar. Funny thing happened, then, too...when we landed in Santiago, we suddenly felt ill and couldn't take the Argentina flight the next morning. Forced us to stay in Chile for 8 days, and have a really nice time. Hate those random illnesses... Convenient convalescences ... read more

Not only will I matchyou, I'll beatyou. Machu Picchu...geddit? It is barely worth mentioning the beginning of our Machu Picchu day. We got up at 05:00, took the train, pulled in at Aguas Calientes and took the bus to the top. As we ascended, the view grew ever better. The valley floor is at 2,000m, and Machu Picchu sits at 2,400m. It looks much higher than 400m; the river is a thin streak amongst the green trees below. I don't have, as you may have fathomed, a spiritual bent. I can see why the Inca thought of it as a powerful place, however. Mountain tops are where they believed some of their gods lived, and there are plenty of those around. Further, the heights are literally closer to their chief god: the sun. Our first view ... read more

Let's Galapa-go to Ecuador. I don't know, I'm out of funny titles, ok?? The flights to Ecuador were a little unpleasant, again due to the staggering persistence of American airlines in breaking all standing stupidity records. For starters, the woman at the check-in desk reckoned we wouldn't get into Ecuador without an ongoing flight. At no point during booking was this mentioned, besides which it is only the US that is block-headed enough to actually enforce that rule. Despite her advice, she gave us our 3 boarding passes, New Orleans to Miami, Miami to Guayaquil, and Guayaquil to Quito. She said, very clearly, that our bags were checked through to Quito, and we would collect them there. We went ahead with the flights without booking an onward; we intended to leave Ecuador over land, and hang ... read more