Rancho Relaxo and the Travel Trials

Been hanging out at cousin Gill's place since my return from Sydney for about a week now. It's a really cool house that looks like the hotel from The Shining inside, long shadowy halls and paved floors keeping it cool but making it ever so slightly freaky to walk around at night. I thiNk it might have been built in the late 70's because of the style of the place, which is all the more rad. They have a built in bar, a pool table, a table tennis table, a swimming pool, a few acres and a couple of horses, a dog and a cat (Aussies are way fond of their animals, especially in the more rural parts; my cousin Rikki asked me if I have a dog at home and when I said no she was like, 'why???' - it's written in to the contract if you rent in London that you can't have pets, and it would be stupid if you are in a flat four floors up like I usually am, so it was interesting to see how weirded out Rikkie was by that idea. Rikki says, and it seems to be true, that EVERYONE HERE has at least one big dog, and usually at least one horse, I've found. You should see the pet food area in the stores here - they're always the most well kept and well stocked parts. The rolls of dogfood look good enough to eat, stacked up in the chilled cabinet like a pyramid of promise. But I digress from this long parentheses...)

Gill's place is far away from everything so I can't really leave without a lift from Sammy, who is currently on holidays from uni and is working flat out starting at 5am, so I don't feel right asking her when she comes home knackered, poor thing. Gill and her other half Adrian are away for two weeks lording it in Dubai at their latest racing car rally (yes they drive! and take photos) and Gill's probably depleting the city's stock of designer handbags, so there's no one to ferry the english princess around. But that's actually cool because I've been relaxing and hanging loose with my cousins (when Sammy and Rikki aren't working - Ryan's too young to work but he sure keeps himself busy as the man of the house), playing ryan at Music Buzz (and winning - LOSER) on the Playstation, swimming, sunbathing, getting up at lunchtime, watching copious movies together, and getting to know my little cousins. Only they aren't so little at 21, 17 and 15, but you know what I mean. Their mam Gill only turns the wee 4-0 in June - so there's not that much time between us, which is cool. I try to help them out when I can with stuff that feels more like my natural big sister role - helping Ryan write his first resumee, talking about what course to apply for at uni with Rik, hearing about Sammy's plans for the next few years with uni and beyond. But they're all so mature and responsible, they are really good friends with each other and they help each other to keep the house tidy and cook - Sammy takes Rik to work and picks her up, and they rarely get into a fight over who does what - and they're fun to be around. Now and again they break into copying my English accent and ask me stuff about the English and how we do things. Even though they're just our convict rejects ;) and even though this country is just a little outpost of our own sceptred isle (ok I am just kidding), there are lots of big cultural differences between Australia and the UK. This country is its own place and the people are their own people. It isn't perfect, like anywhere, but Australia does have a character that goes beyond the whole Crocodile Dundee and Kath & Kim cliches. (Though Kath & Kim can be found in real life...) Not to be patronising or sound surprised, but often you hear that Australia isn't the place for a cultural holiday - but so far I have found plenty evidence the other way. You just need to pay attention and spend time with actual Australians. I don't think you'll find that in Byron Bay or Airlie Beach. Then again, there are some similarities that make me feel at home, like how Little Britain is big here; maybe it's because this is a British-blooded house, but the comedy dvd collection here is made up of things like Men Behaving Badly - the Box Set, Ali G, Not the Nine O Clock News, and other quintessentially Engerlish things. English music is obviusly big here, as to be frank, most Ozzie bands suck. The other day, Ryan asked me if we have The Proclaimers in England....... bless the child.

While I have access to free T'internet (no Peter Kay in this house collection - yet) I have been planning and researching the last half of my Oz trip. Trust me to pick a route that doesn't appear to exist. My idea is to go from Sydney at the end of February overland to a place called Broken Hill, on the Western fringes of New South Wales where it meets the state of South Australia, and then west onto Coober Pedy, a remote outback town on the way to Alice Springs, not so far from the Northern Territory and Ayers Rock, where it is so hot and arid that most of its tiny collection of obviously very, very hard residents live in caves underground - and it is near a mysterious desert site which has some connections to nuclear arms testing, and some other shadowy business that sounds very exciting. I wanted to then go south to Adelaide, down the Great Ocean Road (another of the 'see before you die' experiences) and into Melbourne for late March, giving myself 3 weeks there. Sonia and Rosie are coming back for a wedding then so I'll meet them there. Now my maths is worse than ever so I don't knnow how I will make it across that expanse of roughly 3 and a half thousand kilometers to reach Melbourne for like, March 20th, if I stay in Sydney until nearly the end of Feb. A month is pushing it, I feel. So as always, if time is money, I'm fuckin skint as.

I'm also short on conventional logic, as usual. All those destinations are on travel routes, but the Sydney - Coober part via Broken Hill seems to not be the done way, because I can get the Greyhound to Broken Hill, but then I have to go to Adelaide to get to Coober. I don't want to do that; I want to go to Coober and then Adelaide so I don't cover the Coober-Adelaide trip twice. Also, the Greyhound doesn't seem to stop at Coober on its way to Darwin, and no trains go that route - they all go via Adelaide. I reckon I just haven't found the way but that it is there. Otherwise I probably have to go clockwise - Sydney-Melbourne-Adelaide-Coober- then back to Adelaide or Port Augusta to make Broken Hill - then Broken Hill to Melbourne which is probably covered by the Greyhound. But I bloody want what I bloody want, not that! So the search continues tomorrow. I also looked at light aircraft transfers from Adelaide, which is about $130 one way (thats about UK Pounds 60-70 I think), and there is the famous Ghan railway which stops there but costs about $300 one way in cattle class. It all takes about 17 hours but I feel like I'm hardcore enough with the overnighter buses now that that isn't a problem - actually it's exciting. And there are a couple other things to sort to make this trip possible; my flight to Chile is booked for middle of March so it needs changing to around the first week of April, but it involves two flights as I go to Sydney from Melbourne and lan hour later I have to be on the Melbourne-Santiago flight, which was bad planning on the part of STA Travel, cuz who could be sure to get through passport control and baggage reclaim, and onto the next flight, in that time? That also pushes my flight from Rio to London out - I decided to stay for anther month in South America to make four and a half months, which is still not much really to see like, seven countries, but I have to come home sometime...and then that pushes my Bolivian newspaper thing out from beginning May to June, giving me a much more comfortable two months to get there via Chile and Peru. Then there are charges to change each flight, but I don't yet know what. You're probably thinking now (and so am I...) 'er this is a holiday, feckin' relax'. So excuse me while I pop my jugular vein back in.

Anyway it's actually very exciting, all this juggling plans and trains, planes and automobiles. Plenty of time to be sat in front of Channel 4 and reading Heat when I get home. Oh, and I am looking for free Spanish lessons in Brisbane and Sydney on Gumtree....I have to get started, muchachos.

Oh AND I was also researching for some freelance job I have for back home - while firing off a few introductory 'gizza job' emails to some of the better business publishers based in Sydney, just in case they need a pommie chick who can string a sentence together. Once it all falls into place I'll be happy and ready to get back on the road.

I'll leave you with a nice bedtime story about Death Road in Bolivia. I am still chewing over whether I'll take it or not. If it's good enough for the average Bolivian...

The world's most dangerous road
By Mark Whitaker
BBC News, Bolivia
It seems perverse that one of the main roads out of one of the highest cities on Earth should actually climb as it leaves town.
"Every year it is estimated 200 to 300 people die on a stretch of road less than 50 miles long."
But climb it does - just short of a lung-sapping five kilometres (three miles) above sea level, where even the internal combustion engine is forced to toil and splutter.
Then it pauses for a while on the snow-flecked crest of the Andes before pitching - like a giant white knuckle ride - into the abyss.
The road from Bolivia's main city, La Paz, to a region known as the Yungas was built by Paraguayan prisoners of war back in the 1930s.
Many of them perished in the effort. Now it is mainly Bolivians who die on the road - in their thousands.
In 1995, the Inter American Development Bank christened it the most dangerous road in the world. And, as you start your descent, and your driver whispers a prayer, you begin to see why.
The bird's eye view is on the left, on the front seat passenger's side, where the Earth itself seems to open up.
Crosses at the roadside mark the locations of fatal accidents.
A gigantic vertical crack appears. Way below, more than half a mile beneath your passenger window, you can see - cradled between canyon walls - a thin silver thread: the Coroico River rushing to join the Amazon.
On the driver's side there is a sheer rock wall rising to the heavens. There is no margin of error. The road itself is barely three metres wide. That is if you can call it a road.
After the initial stretch to the top of the mountain it is just dirt track. And yet - incredibly - it is a major route for trucks and buses.
Drivers stop to pour libations of beer into the earth - to beseech the goddess Pachamama for safe passage.
Then, chewing coca leaves to keep themselves awake, they are off at break-neck speeds in vehicles which should not be on any road, let alone this one.
Perched on hairpin bends over dizzying precipices, crosses and stone cairns mark the places where travellers' prayers went unheeded. Where, for someone - the road ended.
But even these stark warnings are all too often ignored. As first one - and then a second impatient motorist - overtook our car on the ravine side of the road, my own driver - who hardly ever spoke a word and only then in his native Aymara - intoned loudly, eerily and in perfect English..."You will die."
It is not a rash prediction to make.
Every year it is estimated 200 to 300 people die on a stretch of road less than 50 miles long. In one year alone, 25 vehicles plunged off the road and into the ravine. That is one every two weeks.
It is the end of the dry season in Bolivia. Soon the rains will come - cascading down the walls of the chasm. Huge waterfalls will drench the road - turning its surface to slime.
Then will come those heart-stopping moments when wheels skid and brakes fail to grip. There are stories told of truckers too tired - or too afraid - to continue, who pull over for the night, hoping to see out an Andean storm. But they have parked too close to the edge. And as they sleep in their cabs, the road is washed away around them.
This is not the place to drop off.
But for now the road is a ribbon of dust. Every vehicle passing along it churns up a sandstorm in its wake.
Choking, blinding clouds obscure the way ahead. Around one hairpin, a cloud of debris was beginning to clear.
Further down the road we passed a spot where a set of fresh tyre tracks headed out into the void
As it did, I could see people milling around in the road. Passengers from one of the overloaded and decrepit buses which run the gauntlet of this road.
It seemed at first that they had got off to stretch their legs, while their driver argued with another vehicle coming in the other direction about who should give way. (Reversing is not something you undertake lightly on a cliff edge.)
It transpired instead though, that the bus driver was dying. Blinded by the dust, he had run into the back of a truck. The bus's steering column had gone through him - severing his legs.
There was nothing anyone could do. Mobile phones do not work here. In any case, who would you call? There are no emergency services.
And no way of getting help through, even if any were to be found. The bus driver bled to death.
We edged past the crumpled bus, and headed on.
Further down the road we passed a spot where a set of fresh tyre tracks headed out into the void. They told their own story.
High in the Andes, they are building a new road. A by-pass, to replace the old one. But this is Bolivia, and already it has been 20 years in the making.
Who knows when it will be complete? Until it is, people will have to continue offering up their prayers, and taking their lives in their hands on the most dangerous road in the world.

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