Saddlebags

Hola amigos! Hang on, I'm not in South America any more. Old habits die hard... but hooray - no more calling a pepper a cucumber, asking for a lemon biscuit to drink or declaring an undying love for the penis in front of an audience. No more Spanish! But what's this? South Africa's first language is made up of clicking noises and the 'white man's' native tongue is some crazy combination of Dutch and German? The two ugliest languages in the world? Why am I even here? And who is that lanky bastard sitting next to me? I'm pretty sure he wasn't invited. And why is Shrennie still here? I thought I'd shaken him off my tail in Ecuador. Does this mean that Jude is still here? This is all getting very stressful. Ah wait... I ... read more

Hola! 11/3/10 Not much done today apart from walking around and taking in the sights of Cusco, although we do discover a cracking all day English breakfast in an Irish bar called Paddy´s (supposedly the highest Irish bar in the world). 12/3/10 Today is our first day of visiting the Incas ruins. We visit places called Tambomachay, Q´enqo and my personal favourite, Saqsaywaman - where there is a disappointing dearth of good-looking ladies. Dave´s attempts at Spanish are hilarious. The other day he referred to our waitress as the Islamic-sounding ´Sunita´ as opposed to ´Senyorita´. Today, a lot of us want to do the Saqsaywaman tour in a rush because it´s raining, so Dave asks our Spanish-speaking guide, ´Amigo, can we do the... umm... vamos tour of the ruins please.´ We all knew what he meant. ... read more

Hola amigos! Firstly, sorry for the crude title. Will explain more about that later. 25/2/10 Start the salt flats tour rather reluctantly given our recent toilet related problems. Cross the border to Bolivia and visit Laguna Verde, Laguna Blanco and Laguna Colorada. The latter is filled with flamingos and nearby llamas and many photos are taken. Especially by Shrennie. That boy could quite easily be Japanese. Llamas are weird animals. They're kind of like sheep with long necks. They are bloody everywhere in Bolivia and they keep running in front of our 4x4. Stay at a reasonably nice hostel in the middle of nowhere. 26/2/10 Another day in the Toyota Land Cruiser with our guide Ronal and the gang. Stop off at a nice warm hot spring but getting out sure isn´t fun in the near ... read more

Hola Chicos! 11-13/02/10 From Santiago, visit Valparaiso for a few days. It´s a reasonably sizeable city built on a gradient with plenty of quaint housing and artistic graffitti. A lot of it is very pretty but there´s always an undercurrent of danger lurking. It´s very easy to stumble into dodgy looking areas where the locals stare at you and ask for money. But we survived. Didn´t get any real sleep the night before a 7am bus to Mendoza - the capital city of wine tours. Border crossing was a pain in the arse again. Had to wait over 2 hours just to have your passport stamped and bananas confiscated. Those renegade Chilean banana-planters in Argentina ruin it for the rest of us. 13-14/02/10 Clever-Cloggs Shrennie gets confused between what is a hostel and what is a ... read more

3/2/09 The hostel that we¨re staying at in Puerto Natales is right opposite a casino. Very dangerous. Jude and I go 4 times in two days. On one such adventure, played Roulette on a Spanish machine. Don¨t understand a word of what¨s being said on the screen and end up accidently putting $5 US on one number having frantically tried to cancel it. It almost came up as well. Have a cracking night playing Ring of Fire with the lads and John in our hostel room in the evening. John spends most of the evening putting on London and then Scouse accents. We do our best to sound like we¨re from the deep south of America. Go to the casino again afterwards. I told you it¨s location was dangerous. 4/2/09 Get the bus to Punta Arenas ... read more