Friday, November 04, 2005
"You say tom-a-to, I say tomato..."
...New York, and a very belated blog post! After an epic flight through Miami we arrived at JFK (enormous immigration queues in Miami, and fingerprints & digital photo's for everyone entering the country, followed by our flight being cancelled). The only upside was we got upgraded to 1st class! NY is great, and oddly familiar from watching so many movies and TV shows (Law & Order;). We did some fun tourist stuff - the Empire State, Staten Island ferry, Central Park and the Met. All great fun, but the best thing was just hanging out, visiting bars in different areas (East Village was our favourite), shopping, and trying loads of yummy food (the diners were awesome). I had my belated birthday here (the real one was spent searching for Anacondas in the Amazon), so we went to a really nice Vietnamese restaurant in Chelsea and a couple of cool bars. I also treated myself to a "hot towel shave" at the local Greek barbers to get rid of the travel beard. Best shave i've ever had but a bit nervy (big Greek guy with a cut-throat to your neck). Washington Square Park was funny - the guys playing chess, and two runs for big & small dogs respectively - we wondered what to do if you had a medium sized dog! I also had a toilet emergency and needed to use the "cubicles" only to find there weren't any (cubicles that is, although the toilets were still there). I guess they had too many problems with drugs etc. Anyway, not very British really (just don't make eye contact I kept telling myself...)! A lot of Manhattan is really a bit ra, monied and swanky (Chelsea, Soho etc) but there are also some really cool places. NY is an amazing place and really steals a little bit of your heart...we'll definitely be going back.
# posted by Pete @ 10:46 PM 
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
...El Choro...
So...after the Amazon we were all toured out and needed some independent travel. After much careful thought (Em´s achilles tendon was hurting) we decided to do the Choro trek - a 45km Inca trail which starts at 4600m, heads over a pass in the Cordillera Real and then descends (lots) to 1300m. The adventure began with a cab ride up to the starting point, our cabbie asked us to get out and walk past a policia militar checkpoint to avoid paying a "tourist tax" - you´ve gotta love South America. We started up the 200m ascent to the pass...it was windy, cold and hard work at altitude with big packs on. To make things worse, fat German tourists were getting a lift up in a 4wd...grrrr. Anyway, we made it to the high point (4868m) and the views over the Cordillera Real were stunning.
Now to go down...down...down...down. The path is incredible, almost completely preserved stone Inca trail at this point. The day was long (17km with 1800m of descent),
the scenery gradually changed as the climate got warmer. We passed through some tiny villages, Inca ruins, saw some llama´s and had to pay a 10 Boliviano trail fee (about AUD $1.50 or 60p). The guy filling out the tickets wrote so carefully the numbers, really taking pride in it. We reached eventually our campsite at Challapampa - a tiny village with a patch of grass to camp on. Here we met a 10 year old boy (Broder) who tended the campsite all on his own, his family were in the next village 2 hours walk away. We also chatted to some other trekkers and their guide - a really helpful and friendly guy from one of the local villages. Lots of Spanglish was used as neither of us could speak the others language. 
So, day 2 - the bitch! We were already aching and this was an 18km, 9hr shocker. Another 1000m descent meant it was hot, and slippery, and jungle on either side of the path. There was also lots of uphill much to our horror. Em´s many injuries started to get worse (I called her injury girl), but she did a great job to keep going. At 5.30 she lost the plot, starting shaking and almost vomitting from exhaustion. I offered to carry her pack. When she declined, I uttered the immortal words "it´s no time to be a hero Emma" (I should become a Hollywood actor) and strode off with both packs. Luckily, we were only 1km from the campsite. Ah joy...
The campsite was in the garden of an old Japanese man who had moved here in the 1940´s and hacked a home out of the jungle. It really was incredible - levelled terraces on 
steep hillsides, a beautiful garden and house. As we signed the visitors book, he gave us his life story, showing on a map how he had travelled from Japan to Singapore, across Africa, over the Atlantic to Rio, and ended up somehow in the jungle on the Choro trail (our Spanlgish wasn´t good enough to understand exactly how or why). When we said we were from Melbourne, he kept saying "Olympico, Olympico!" presumably talking about the 1950 Olympics. He was very old and possibly a bit senile, but really interesting.Anyway, at 5.30am the next morning we got up in the rain and the dark, packed up and walked the 8km down to the trailhead to share transport out. This turned out to be run by the dodgy brothers who charge 180 Bolivianos as they have a monopoly, oh and the transport was a pickup where I had to stand up holding the roll bars. This was just the start of a
typical Bolivian transport adventure as we tried to get back to La Paz. In Coroico, the minibus we took had borken suspension and we had to switch, this thing had
15 people packed in like sardines. Then, heading up the "Worlds Most Dangerous Road" in the fog and the rain, we ran into a road rage incident - the downhill bus was supposed to give way to the uphill lorry but neither would budge (the road is single carriageway for most of the way with passing spots, and it hugs the cliffside, there are no barriers, lots of deaths each year, you get the idea). They just sat there. Eventually the lorry backed down. Then, 5 minutes later we saw a guy legging it down the road, closely followed by another guy looking intent on violence. This road is something else...After getting back, we headed out for a major binge - cocktails, 3 course meal. Top drawer...
Anyway, this is the end of Bolivia, and S.America. Next post from the Big Apple!
# posted by Pete @ 9:03 AM
Friday, September 23, 2005
...Capybara´s, Caiman´s, and Monkey´s...Oh My!
...We took a break from the brassic conditions in 4000m La Paz to enjoy the balmy tropical climate in Rurrenabaque (part of the Amazon basin). The flight was an adventure - a 15 seater plane and the airport at Rurre is a grass strip, very exciting. It was 30 degrees+...lovely! We joined a tour to the Pampas (swampy grasslands) starting with a canoe trip up river. Unfortunately everyone else on our tour was Japanese and members of the Japanese National Eating & Sleeping team, seriously these guys could put it away - you should have seen them gorging on pirahna´s (and then sleep it off). Anyway, enough blathering...here are the photo´s of lots of cool animals...
...in a nutshell, we saw alligator´s, caiman´s (lots sunning themselves on the banks and some around 4m!), capybara´s (so cute), a sloth, an anaconda (2m this one), chichalla monkeys (Pete´s favourite), piranha´s, turtles, howler monkeys, and so many mozzies!
It was Pete´s big 33 whilst on the trip...to be exact we spent most the day in knee deep swamp searching for anaconda...though we did get to celebrate with a nice cold cerveza and sunset...but really not much fun...so it has been officially postponed until New York. By the way, looking for snakes when you´re knee deep in water is a weird activity. On the one hand you really want to find one (exciting), but then your rational brain says whooaaa, I don´t wanna see no snake...
The tour was great, except there were some dodgy moments which we didn´t feel fitted in with the ideal of ´sustainable tourism´. These included photo opportunity with the anaconda round your neck, feeding the monkeys, piranha fishing etc. We did take part in some of these (feeding a banana to the monkeys was one of the funniest things i´ve ever done....pete had them all over his head and giggled about it for days), but i´m not sure whether all of this can keep happening in this place without impact on the environment. Hey ho...
...coming back turned out to be a bigger advenure than getting there. The land ministry were buring some pampas for agricultural land and as a result the visibility was too poor for planes to take off from the grass strip. After a day of waiting, and getting fobbed off by the unhelpful Amazonas staff we decided to get a jeep ride 12hrs back to La Paz as we could see our holiday disappearing day by day. It was pretty uncomortable (9 people jammed in)and we took the ´most dangerous road in the world´, clinging to the side of a canyon for much of the way with only room for one car and some crazy drivers.
Back now in frio La Paz...farewell balmy nights
# posted by Pete @ 1:16 PM
Friday, September 16, 2005
...row, row, row your boat...
For our first trek we decided to check out the famous Lake Titicaca and the ruins on Isla Del Sol, a seemingly easy trek proved to be quite an adventure. First the modes of transport required....catch bus to Copacabana (the original copacabana). We get to the ferry crossing 1/2 way there nice and easy...then are hurded into a motor launch, well if you can call it that...felt like a refugee hurded into a leaky, cramped boat. But better off then being in the bus which was loaded onto an even more leaky barge that in the swell of the lake seemed to want to topple over. Our bags sinking to the bottom and becoming lost treasure to be discovered in years to come.
Finally we hit the road, this time on foot and hiked 18kms along the shore of Lake Titicaca to Yampupata where we hoped to cross by motor launch that evening. Unfortunately the wind was to strong and along the way we had a few strange men making gestures at us and saying manana, manana no
tarde....hmm seemed like we would be camping....on the local football field (with blokes kicking the ball around our solitary tent). Next strange mode of transport.....we wake up to one of those strange men from the previous day carrying two paddles and a bucket...seems we would have to go by man power across the lake as once again the wind was mighty. Hmmm I heeded some caution here but as the walk back to Copacabana did not seem like such a good idea and with Pete the sailor telling me its fine Emma. Just like to point out that there was no life jackets, the water was icy and the swell was around 1 meter and the crossing was 1 km....oh and the best bit...we had to row as well!!!!!!!! What a great way to start a trekking day, and we had to pay 40 Bolivianos for the privilege (should have been about 20 but there was only one crazy boatman willing to take us).
The boatman put us ashore on the southern tip of the Island on some rocks - no wharf, no buildings, no paths. Hmmm...time for some map reading. The South part of the island has no tourists to speak of but as we walked we gradually started to meet day trippers visiting the ruins. The walking was exposed on a ridge and the weather was changeable but amazing views. We bumped into a fully Ocker Aussie who ordered a beer from the snack bar (after checking it was cold of course), and kept saying the walk had ´bullshit views´. We think he meant good 
views. We reached the Chincalla pre-Inca site after 12km or so (with at least one detour from the intended route!). This is a maze like complex of buildings and 
quite impressive. We found our campsite on the shores of the lake in a beautiful Mediterranean cove. We were all alone apart from the local fisherman checking his nets and Vernon (or Raymond?), a local kid who wouldn´t leave us alone after we gave him some biscuits. He watched fascinated as I cleaned the MSR. We ended up getting in the tent and zipping it up so he would go away!Next day, a nice 10km stroll back down the populated side of the Island to Yumani, the Inca steps and a chartered motor launch back to Copacabana. We found a nice Melbourne-style bar and played scrabble with Spanish letters )these guys have a lot of vowels!), and drank a pisco sour to celebrate.
...oh, and saving the best til last, here is a photo of Em trying to smile and freaking out as we headed down the face of another swell in our little row boat...hee hee!
# posted by Pete @ 2:50 PM
Monday, September 12, 2005
Viva la Insurrecion Popular!!
La Paz is known for it´s protests, they can happen at anytime and last from days to weeks, the roads get blocked with large rocks and nothing moves, the airport shuts. There were large protests earlier this year, over regional autonomy for the South- East and the nationalisation of the gas industry, which led to the resignation of the president. It´s now peaceful and elections have been called for the end of the year but there are still plenty of signs on the streets of the troubles. This sign reads ´new elections, new constitution, long live the popular revolution´ I think.
This is nothing new in Bolivian politics. I´ve been reading a book on the history here, and the last 200 years has had so many regime changes - it reads something like this (many times over)...republic, military coup, peasant revolt, dictatorship, elections, miners revolt, junta, revolution, more elections etc etc. You get the idea. Politics is a dangerous game here, there´s a tradition of political assassinations, Villaroel (president at the time of the revolution in 1946) was dragged from the palace and hung from a lamppost by the populace. The military seem to be very politicised, on both left and right wing at different times, and have put down workers revolts in the past by shooting the protesters. It´s easy to see why the country has made so little progress economically and socially (it´s the poorest in S.America) with so many regime changes. The US and China / the USSR also both made heavy invesments here in the cold war to attempt to prevent the country turning to communism / capitalism respectively. Because of the dependency on foreign investment a lot of money from mining has gone overseas to mutli-nationals which is partly the reason for the call to nationalise the gas fields.
As in other Latin American countries, corruption is endemic. A small example of this happened today when we had to go to the Instituto Geografico Militar to buy a map for the trek (a mission in itself to find it up some blind back alley in downtown La Paz). The guy found the map sheet we needed. We were supposed to pay at a cashier desk and bring the receipt back to collect the map, but the guy said it cost 35 Bolivianos and asked us for the money. We found 30 and were fumbling for the other 5 but he just grabbed the 30 and pocketed it and said it was OK. Nice little earner. Unforunately our Spanish wasn´t good enough to ask for an explanation and anyway it´s best not to argue with the military here.
The Coca museum was fascinating. Coca here is used in it´s leaf form and chewed to form a cud. This releases the proteins which have anaesthetic and stimulant effects and can help with acclimatisation (speeds up breathing). We tried it and it´s not really nice (chewing dry leaves). The miners use it to work up to 48 hours straight in some cases. As an aside, work here is really really
hard - we saw these guys digging up the road with hammers and chisels. Anyway, back to coca...the information we read likened it more to alcohol in western terms. Coca is integral to traditional Andean society, it´s used in every religious and social occasion (like wine or beer in the west). The UN said that Coca was the cause of poverty in Bolivia in the 1960´s and declared war on it, which seems hypocritical since Coca-Cola still use it to flavour coke (by the way they only stopped putting cocaine in coke in the 1930´s). It´s only with western chemicals, skills, and financial institutions (to launder the cash) that it´s possible to make cocaine from the leaves so it´s hard to see Bolivia (or other countries) here as the root of this problem. The peasant farmers are just regular people producing a cash crop like any other. The drug problem itself is created by the demand (largely in the US). The farmers here also don´t get a price which reflects the street price - all this goes to the drug cartels. Bolivia is cracking down on illegal coca growing and jungle chemical factories though it´s hard to know how effective it´s being.Anyway, sorry this is all so unstructured - just wanted to get some of it down while it´s in my head. I´d be interested to get some comments on this if anyone has any views.
Pete
# posted by Pete @ 12:38 PM
...What noise does a Llama make ?
...so, we´ve been in La Paz for 3 days now. We didn´t do much at the start due to illness & altitude, but we´re both feeling much better now. Yesterday we visited a bunch of museums, the best being the musical instruments museum and the Coca museum. At the music museum, you could play everything from percussion instruments made from armadillo to a yamaha organ...great fun. Today, we visited the Valle de La Luna which is a crazy
landscape of mud pillars and canyons. We went in a micro which is a colourful, bus which will stop anywhere. It´s amazing they make it up the hills at all. The one we went in had a gear stick with a skull on the top covered in white fur...nice.But the best thing to do here is just wandering through the streets looking at the colourful women in their traditional dress & bowler hats, the craft markets and the witches market. Here they sell Llama foetus´s which are
buried in the cornerstone of a new business or house to provide prosperity apparently. If you´re rich though, you´re expected to sacrifice the real thing. This place is really poor. We went downtown last night (the rich bit), and saw a number of people going through garbage bins, and a couple working together to break wood of small trees lining a road. The man climbed the tree and snapped off twigs then threw them down to the woman to collect. There are hardly any trees here - the valley has been totally deforested in the last 70 years. La Paz has a crazy layout - set in a canyon, the poorest area is El Alto (the 
plateau above the city), the richest is right down the valley where it´s warmer, and the houses cover the canyon walls....and what noise does a Llama make ? We´ll let you know in a few days, as we´re going trekking to Isla del Sol tomorrow.
# posted by Pete @ 12:12 PM
Sunday, September 11, 2005
...A Travellers Woe...
hmmm...about that great Brazilian food. I seem to have picked up something or got a mild case of food poisoning (pick your street vendors with care!). Not so much fun when flying for 2 days to Bolivia and then arriving @ 4000m in La Paz. Immodium & Gastrolyte rule. Em also has a bit of altitude brainache. Anyways, we´re here and loving La Paz, although we didn´t do anything yesterday and just been doing short sorties from the hostel today (need a toilet nearby if you know what I mean). Post on La Paz proper soon...
Adios Amigos!
Adios Amigos!
# posted by Pete @ 8:50 AM
Monday, September 05, 2005
...Cheese on a stick...
Here are our favourite Brazilian foods (mostly Pete´s as the vego food here isnt that great ;) (1) Coxina (Ko-shee-na)...spiced chicken wrapped in potato, shaped like a pointy egg and deep-fried (like most things here)...yum yum.
(2) Acaraje (errr...not sure)...bean & shrimp fritter balls (you guessed it, deep fried), cut open and served with chilli pepper sauce, veggies & Prawn tails. Mmmmm...tasty.
(3) ...saving the best til last....Cheese on a stick! The cheese dudes roam the streets of the Pelo with a saucepan full of hot coals and grill a big lump of cheese on request. Served with oregano and honey...yeah.
# posted by Pete @ 3:03 PM
...Bridge Over Troubled Waters...
...we made a quick overnight trip to Cachoeira in the interior. This place is sleepy (in total contrast to Salvador) but was a nice change. We stayed in a converted convent. There isn´t much to do here...the locals seem to party and drink all the time in the town square. We saw some Brazilian cowboys riding bareback through town...yeehah! There is some great wood sculpture and famous Danneman cigars here (none of it was open on a Sunday :(... We drank quite a lot of local brew and listened to Brazilian reggae being blasted from the most awesome car boot speaker setup i´ve ever seen. The most interesting thing about this place is the bridge which was built by the Brits in 1885. I think it still has the original wooden planks, it´s 1 lane and everything including cargo trains, cars, buses, donkeys, and pedestrians cross it. The planks are all loose and when a car drives across it makes an incredible cacophany of sounds. At least 1 pedestrian has died recently apparently due to breaking planks...Em wasn´t too keen on crossing it carrying her rucsac ;)
# posted by Pete @ 2:37 PM
...Nao, Obrigado...
...out of the blue we decided to head to the North-East of Brazil for a few days. Salvador in Bahia has the highest of back population outside of Africa, mainly due to the history of the slave trade in the area. Black slaves were shipped here from Africa (around 5 million people) in shocking conditions. We visited the old slave market in the docks where new arrivals were kept in the basement in a watery black hole.
There also used to be a whipping post in the main square here - the Pelourinho. Today, the central area has been restored thanks to lots of money from UNESCO (it´s a world heritage site due to the colonial architecture). It is beautiful but is also full of people trying to part tourists from their cashola (legit and not so legit). If you can make it from one side of the square to another without 3 assorted street vendors and a couple of beggars accosting you you´re lucky. Very quickly you learn to say ´Nao obrigado´(no thanks) and avoid catching peoples eye. We´ve also been pickpocketed and almost scammed in the Pelo so it´s not for the light hearted. Having said all that, the night life, vibrancy, music, colourful people, drumming, and traditional Bahian costumes are all amazing. Walking through the Pelo you´ll hear drumming, jazz, singing drifting from upstairs windows and see Capoeira (cross between martial art and dance). The atmosphere is great.
A lot of people here practise Candomble - a weird mix of African cult and Catholicism. We went to a service which was an experience. The women dance around to drums and the aim is for them to enter a trance state (without chemical assistance as far as we know), the men play a supporting role. Some spectators also enter a trance (imagine your gran freaking out, shaking and crying out in guttural tones). Really interesting...although we didn´t understand much.
# posted by Pete @ 1:58 PM
Thursday, September 01, 2005
...Shaken not stirred...
We visited the Sugarloaf (Pao do Sucar), which you might remember from Moonraker (Roger Moore in the cable car while Jaws chews through the steel cable with his teeth) ? Anyway, great experience and awesome sunset.
# posted by Pete @ 9:50 AM
...The 3 Rules...
Only 10% of people in Brazil pay income tax...the other 90% don´t earn enough money. So may people flock to the industrial South-East seeking a better life. In addition to this, the land prices in Rio are incredibly expensive (we saw penthouses worth $5 million US). So many people can´t afford to buy or rent a place to live. The solution is to live on public land...if you don´t get moved on after 5 years the rights to the land are yours. To start with people use cardboard shelters, only building with brick after 4 years or so. These areas are called shanty towns or favellas.
Em & I went on a tour of a favella (we werent sure about this but it turned out to be really informative). The ones we saw were fairly established and had utilities (electricity and sewage). In the earlier stages raw sewage runs down the street and electicity poles catch on fire from overloading. They were also a bit safer. The favellas are run by the drug lords. Police there have nothing to do because noone will report anything to them. Occasionally the police make incursions but they are few. On one street we visited the guide told us he had to hide a group in the back of a bakery while the policy and a drug gang had a gun fight outside. We didn´t see this - mostly it´s normal people living normal lives, but in really poor conditions. The people we met were friendly and we visited a community project to help kids with schooling (partly funded by the tour).
...the 3 rules set down by the drug dealers for life in the favella. #1 Do not steal, #2 Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil, #3 Don´t mess with drug dealers and they won´t mess with you. The penalty for breaking these rules are a shot through the hand (if you´re a kid you may deserve another chance) or execution. The people in favella hate the police (who treat them with contempt) but have a love / hate relationship with the drug lords - they do some things to make life better eg: installing water tanks in one of the favellas we went to.
Brazilians don´t really talk about favellas much and the people are discriminated against. Anyway, a really interesting and harrowing experience, and a stark contrast to downtown Rio.
# posted by Pete @ 9:35 AM
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
...The Beautiful Game...
We went to see a game of footie in Rio, it´s so big over here like rugby in New Zealand - everyone is into it. Maracana stadium was closed for refurbishment so we went to Luso-Brasileiro stadium (a long way out from the city). The stadium was basically an enormous scaffold structure but all the seats were good. The local side was Flamengo and they were playing Figueirense. One of the opposition team had apparently killed 2 girls in a drink-driving incident so there was lots of chanting `murderer´etc. The fans really go crazy...drums, enormous flags, chants and stamping feet. The atmposhere was electric.
Flamengo went good in the first half leading 2-0 (lots of happy chanting etc). Just like the NAB touch team they threw it all away and Figueirense scored 3 in the second half (not so happy terraces). I can´t imagine there are many 0-0 draws in Brazil - the style of football is so attacking and makes for good watching.# posted by Pete @ 5:53 PM
