Advertisement
Published: January 3rd 2007
Edit Blog Post
Well here's a turn up for the books, we are no longer in South America as the title may have given away. There are a number of reasons for our early departure from this part of the world but by far the dumbest is the simple fact that we failed to cancel an internal flight and the kind people at Lan airways took it upon themselves to cancel all of our onward flights including the incredibly overbooked leg from Santiago to Auckland. Long story short, we would have been stuck in South America for much longer than planned or budgeted for so we bailed.
Having seen Macchu Pichu and countless other wonderous things I felt satisfied that we had made a decent fist of our first trip to South America. We couldn't afford the Galapagos and didn't have a chance to see the much vaunted Buenos Aries or Southern Argentina so there is definite scope for a return trip. Just a quick trip back through the previous blogs highlighted many things I had clean forgotten about. As with sitting an exam, you only remember the stuff that has gone wrong after the fact- never the good stuff. Not entirely true
in this instance ( take Iguazu falls or Corcovada for example ) but some of the more standout memories from South America involve the unsavoury things I will not miss about the place. I won't miss putting soiled loo roll in a bin, not understanding menus, hunting for places listed in the guide book that have long since ceased to exist, being photographed by school children, bum numbing bus journeys, being a walking tourist dollar, feeling ashamed I was too lazy to learn the language, white bread and jam for breakfast, panpipe music, and... well I could go on but it may give the impression that I didn't enjoy myself. This is simply not true. The harder a place is to get to the more rewarding it is to see and this proved true time and time again. I really enjoyed doing no research and stumbling across places such as the Salar in Uyuni and Huacachina that we visited solely on the strength of tip offs. Your fellow travellers truly are your best form of reference.
Now to catch up on what we really did while trying to fool our parents (whom we didn't tell we were coming home)
that we were headed to Santiago. After the lovely Iquique, well the beach bar anyway, we had to back track to Lima for our flight back to England. No great news here suffice to say we trucked it back to Arequipa and spent a lazy few days there before flying to Lima. Expecting Lima to be a dump, I was keen to get straight to Miraflores which proved to be harmless enough and quite well to do. Wandered to the cliff front to watch the surfers and paragliders and found myself mesmerised by the effortless gliding of these massive wing like parachutes. It didn't take long before I was approached to have a crack and I didn't take much persuading. In no time I was strapped to a Peruvian under a canopy and sailing off the edge of a perfectly good cliff. Can't remeber the guys name but he had all the lines about 'welcome to my office' and so on. These wankers must have to do a cliche course before they get a licence. That said he had great English and, more to the point, knew what he was doing. It was fantastic fun and seemed dead easy. Much
to Em's dismay- I may have found a new hobby.
The next day we thought we'd brave Lima proper and took a taxi to the centre which proved to be more exhillirating than the Paragliding with many near misses and slamming on of brakes. Visited the Monastary San Francisco to gawp at the piles of bones in the Catacombes and then tried in vain to find other places of interest. Our fun was thwarted by a large scale rally about the price of cheese or some other such nonsense so the main squre was shut and the riot police out in force making the place most uncomfortable. Coupled with the fact that the museum we were hunting for had been marked on the wrong place on the map, it was not to be our day. After some nerve racking hunting we finally found an overpriced taxi to get us to the sanctuary of Miraflores.
And so ended our South American leg of the honeymoon as we fly out of Lima. Inevitably, as a parting shot, the plane trip home isn't so straight forward with a 3 hour delay in a place called Bonaire almost certainly causing us to miss our
connection in Amsterdam, thus ruining Christmas. Amazingly our onward flight is also delayed by 3 hours and so we arrive in Heathrow slightly late. Felt quite guilty moaning about our poxy delay as we soon discover that due to freezing fog most people had been kept out of Heathrow for days.
As previously mentioned, we kept the news of our return on a need to know basis and so spent Christmas eve surprising my folks followed by Boxing day surprising Emmas. Christmas day was a lovely traditional family affair although I couldn't resist doling out Andean hats instead of cracker crowns. Boxing day was the most intense with all of the inlaws in one place at one time and our arrival was greeted with much screeching, hugging and crying which just made us realise we had made the right decision.
New years eve in Manchester. For the first time in my life I actually had a clothing issue as another of our party had the exact same shirt as me, easily resolved with the use of a jumper and an agreement not to stand anywhere near each other all night. Fabulous night had by all.
We're now into the
post festive season doldrums but are determined to see as many people as possible before returning to Oz to continue the adventure for as long as possible. The money will run out soon and I suppose I'll have to get a job but I'm going to start playing the lottery to try and make this trip a permenant one!
We are intending to get back in the campervan upon our return to Australia and so the honeymoon continues! If the honeymoon goes on then so will this blog. Happy new year folks and I'll update as soon as I have any new stuff to report!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.115s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 16; qc: 55; dbt: 0.0726s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb