We checked out several toury agencies in Quito, found one with real cheap fares advertised on hand-printed signs in the window, and altho’ cognisant of the old maxim, “more is better”, went in. Nancy, ah Nancy, odd name for an Ecuadoriana but she was pretty (and) helpful, full of info and this was the only place in town with a vacancy at all. At the airline office they had no seats to Galapagos for a week or more, altho’ I suspect the toury agencies book everything in sight then on-sell!. We settled on an 8 day tour on a 20 person [View Full Entry]

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Just a quickie, and don't we love 'em?..things moving fast and a 6am flight mañana to Galapagos...too good to pass up and I'll be away for 8 days...or longer if the boat sinks, hurricanes, passionate affairs, pissed and fall over or all of the above..... and Peru was saved at the last, on the last night in Mancora I met a couple of people who could count past 10 without taking off their sandals... Kia at the Fluid Bar was hospitable, friendly, put in extra chile and gave me hope that Peru has promise!..... And Mancora was a pretty nice place [View Full Entry]

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Leaving Nazca on the Panamerican, the highway with so many stories....OK, how about...it was a dark and stormy night??….out across the desert, now this is serious desert, sandy, dusty, windy, so dry I can feel every drop of moisture in my body being sucked out, doesn’t help to be a little evaporated after another night on the pisco sours, cottonwool mouth, still lingering sinusitis, if I was able to spit it would be a ball of dust, if you sliced a potato here the slices would be chips before they hit the ground, and the dust again…but at least it’s hot, [View Full Entry]

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In this episode I leave Cusco and the Inca Business heading for the coast and no more high altitude - yeah, right!…I kill a dog (but in self defence), have first real prang (see prev), finally get somewhere warm, ponder the Nasca Lines ((sorry, nothing to do with NASCAR), lick stamps and end up in front of the hospital. It was time to leave having achieved both measures of overstay - eating at the same restaurant twice, and being recognised by locals on the street. It was a cold morning but I knew that before long I would be able [View Full Entry]

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Don't know what happened, this should have gone on the 14th of Feb! Bless the technology!...just skip and file maybe! Susques is about 3,200 metres above sea level and I was waking in the night and having to take a few deep breaths to stay alive….but in the morning we were going even higher….this pass is about 4,300 or so…pretty thin air up there…and they say there’s some snow about as well. Hey, lets go! Another mouthful of coca, it does seem to help! And I didn’t inhale! I stop a few times along the 130 kms to the frontera to [View Full Entry]

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Well, the border wasn’t as bad as some - surly, unfriendly, unhelpful - but we got thru’. Bye Bye Bolivia, Hola Peru! I should have taken the black dogs on the road as an omen, having just been thru’ another bout with my own, and having written thru’ it on the last blog. Can you tell? Anyway, most of the dogs along the way, and there have been many, have been the shaggy, fair-haired sheep dog types, (some very Candy-like), but this morning, across the frontera and into Peru, the first half dozen dogs were black! Sometimes mine is a mangy, [View Full Entry]

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They just don’t know when to stop. At least by Tuesday things had somewhat returned o normal (?) in La Paz, just the odd random squirt of water, splash and splatter….here in Copacabana, as if to emulate their more famous namesake in Brasil, they just keep on with it, two groups at opposite corners of the plaza, almost in competition, couple of big bass drums, some small drums and 20 or so square recorder-like things, I hesitate to call them instruments, but no doubt in the sober hands of a musician something musical could come of it. The women, who incidentally, [View Full Entry]

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It’s the 3rd day of the Carnival, no, not Rio, or Salvador, but downtown La Paz, and the energy and excitement and danger are just as full-on. In fact it’s been full-on from Uyuni, thru’ Potosi, Oduro and La Paz…the primary danger being getting soaked as packs of young, and not so young, roam the streets, armed to the teeth with water ‘pistols’, military design, star wars colours and shapes, awfully phallic, giant purple, bulbous headed, red, yellow and green shafts, the pumping action by grown-up boys, sheathed in their plastic condom coveralls, even Siggi [View Full Entry]

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In this episode - the 3-day Tour, The Rasta Llama, Gringo Bingo and the search for the Lost City of the Drinkas….and also getting to Potosi, Carnival in Oduro and La Paz. (mainly due to cyber USB phobia in Potosi and Oduro without which this would have been in long ago!) Well, hasn’t Bolivia turned out to be another gem! Back in the land of cheaper prices and good service. Pity to have missed so much of Chile South but you know…and maybe things were better down south as one has to say that not only was Chile expensive, the service [View Full Entry]

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Strange spending so much time so high, altitudinaly that is, when the highest real estate in Oz, Mt. Kosiusko, is only 2,200 metres or so (I think) and here in San Pedro de Atacama it’s already 2,440 and everywhere else around here is higher. Breathing is always a little laboured but with a mouthful of coca it gets easier! Did a few look-arounds of San Pedro, they really draw a long bow with some of the “famous” features, crikey, but the general scenery is soo fantastic that you can overlook the overblown toury spots general shortcomings. Valley of the Dead, Dry [View Full Entry]

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