Last day in Lima

Morning all, this will be a quick one as I have to start packing and this computer is unbelieveably slow!  If you are receiving these blog updates via email, you will not be able to see the photos.  You need to head to glenn-no-entiende.blogger.com for the full effect!

Today is our last day in Lima before heading to Pisco.  The tour officially starts today.  We met up with our group yesterday, there are 5 of us in total and one tour guide.  All seem very nice so it should be a lot of fun.

Alice and I have been navigating ourselves around Miraflores for the last two days.  There isn´t a huge amount to see here, but the food is great!

Amazing Seafood
Alice and I went to a restaurant and ordered up the local dish, Cerviche.  It is amazing!  The seafood here can easily rival that of the Great Barrier Reef.  Cerviche is basically a pile of fresh, uncooked, seafood covered in a spicy sauce, served with sweet potatoe, corn, and what we think were deep fried lemons.  Indrek THIS DISH IS FOR YOU! Take a look!

While here we also tried our first Pisco Sour.  These cocktails are DANGEROUS!  So easy to drink, and soon enough its midnight and you´re doing James Bond poses outside one of the 30 or 40 casinos that line the streets of Miraflores!

Once again, before Pisco Sour  -

After -

Raaawwwrrrr
Our budding fashionista Alice made her first purchase.  These authentic Inka pants in stunning blue and slightly different blue stripes are sure to put some whistle up your Peruvian flutes boys!

Once Alice gets these bad boys back to Melbourne, they are sure to be the next must have item for Winter!

And for good measure, some photos of a church, and the coastline.

That´s about it for now.  Other than stumbling my way through more Spanish (in an attempt to tell someone that I didn´t speak Spanish I inadvertantly told them that I was not hungry for Spanish - I think they would have got the message...)

Hasta luega!

Made it at last!

So we have just spent our first night in the Hotel Bueno Vista in Lima.  Here´s the story so far!

Alice and I successfully found each other in Sydney and made our way to the international airport, where we joined our first ``line ride`` of the trip.  Our prize (all line rides have a prize!), boarding passes for two flights with seats 10 rows apart! We asked to have our seats moved, but the plane was oversold by 50 passengers, so no luck there.

Not satisfied with this outcome, we decide it is time to deploy our secret weapon.

The Bastable-Sheedy Method
The Bastable-Sheedy method (the BS method) is a technique for scoring sequential seats on a flight that is oversold.  Follow the steps below to glory

1. Board the plane and take your seats.
2. The person sitting in a centre seat (for convenience, the Sheedy, or the S) strikes up a conversatoin with the warm hearted middle aged lady with a trusting conscience (WHMALWATC).
3. The S explains to the WHMALWATC that he has been separated from his parter, and politely asks if she would consider swapping seats with the other party (the Bastable, or the B). The B, who is ten rows back in the plane, is sitting in a comfortable aisle seat.
4. Have the WHMALWATC turn and look at the B, who will wave from her seat and smile sweetly, but with a tinge of sadness in her eyes.
5. WHMALWATC agrees and the swap takes place. It is essential that the WHMALWATC takes all her carry on luggage with her.
6. No the BS has taken place and you are in your desired location.
7. A pushy fourth passenger enters the plane, late, proudly bearing one board pass to a very comfortable aisle seat.
8. This person arrives at their fortable and highly desireable aisle seat, to find the WHMALWATC already there.
9. An argument should commence, in Spanish, which will require the intervention of the air hostess. At this point, all parties become aware that some BS has taken place!
10. Hostess will scould the B and the S. The MAL (she is no longer warm hearted or has a trusting conscience) is unhappy that she is now in a centre seat, close to the back of the plane.  But because the flight is about to take off and all her luggage is moved, there is no time to switch!

So 20 hours later, including a 4 hour stopover in Tahiti where we were not permitted to leave the plane, we arrive in Santiago.  Alice has booked us a $12 backpackers.  We don´t know where our luggage is as it is supposed to be a connecting flight. So we go to the LAN airways desk where the lady informs us she does not speak much English.

Now I know I said I intended on using charades to communicate, but you try and act out ¨We just entered the country on flight LA804. Do we need to collect our luggage or has it gone on to Lima, and do we need to pay the reciprocity fee if we are flying out in 8 hours.

No luck there.  Fortunately our new friend Vivienes steps in to the rescue!

Vivienes is able to translate for us and let us know that LAN has actually booked us a hotel and there is a bus waiting for us.  Deciding between the 12 dollar backpackers and the LAN sponsored hotel, we decide to risk the hotel.  After several mode line rides, with the prize usually being a lot of stamps and a ticket ot the next line ride, we jump on the bus and head off into Santiago.

Gallantry in the face of defecation
So it turns out we made the right choice, as we are being put up for the night in the Sheraton.  Very nice.  We get checked in about 11pm and head upstairs to have a shower and try and get some sleep.

Alice comes out of the bathroom and informs we that the toilet, despite being very clean and white, will not flush.  I am not sure what she has done in there, but she tells me that perhaps I should urinate in the sink.  Now if someone suggests that to you, then its probably best you obey!

The phone rings at 3am telling us that our bus will be departing in half an hour.  We head down to check out.  I tell Alice that she should inform the desk of the toilet situation.  We approach the desk, check out, and Alice remains silent.

So I must, gallantly, step up and inform them that the toilet wouldn´t flush, and someone should probably look at it soon... The man behind the desk looks at me, accusingly, and says he will send someone right up.  Alice continues to remain silent as we leave the desk awkwardly.

With that road crossed we head back to the airport, and join a few more line rides and finally get on the plane to Lima.  This is not before indulging in some of the local delights!  Wanting to truly get involved in the culture of Santiago in our brief time there, we head for the Chilean institution that is Dunkin Donuts, which is Spanish for ¨Shit Coffee¨.

We board the flight, and 4 hours later we land in Lima.  We choose to take a taxi to the hotel, rather than brave the bus system.  Which, despite being about US25 dollars more expensive than the 50 cent bus, seems like a good way to ease ourselves in.

The drive through Lima was an eye opener.  It is very old and the buildings are of very poor quality, the poverty is shocking, there is dust everywhere, and you cannot see the sky for the pollution.  The traffic is insane, road rules appear to be generally ignored (although Alice informs me it is significantly better than in Vietnam!).

I think that is about all I have time for just now.  Here are some happy snaps from our room and of me enjoying my first cerveza (beer).  Since then we have enjoyed a sandwich from a place called Hot and Cold, and slept for about 18 hours.  Its 830am so we are about to head out for the day!

Quick update

So Alice and I made it as far as Santiago.  Had to really rough it tonight in the Sheraton, paid for by the airline.  Thank you ash cloud!

Stay tuned for stories involving

(1)  How to get seats next to each other when you have not been allocated seats together - its very sneaky.
(2)  First bad toilet experience
(3)  Trying to find out when and where our next flight is, when the person behind the desk says they speak "only small English"....

We fly off to Peru in a few hours time, about to catch the bus from the Sheraton that way.

Peace out!

To be prepared is half the victory

The Spanish poet/novelist Miguel de Cervantes wrote "To be prepared is half the victory".  If this is true then I am almost certainly half way to defeat.  Since "planning" this trip in January (and when I say "planning", what I really mean is agreeing to it and then letting Alice do everything...) I have set and subsequently failed to achieve a number of objectives to prepare myself for this journey.

Objective 1: Getting fit
Goal:  To walk for one hour, three days a week, with an additional two hours on a weekend.  At five hours per week, that would have put me at a total of 120 hours by now.
Actual Performance:  Commenced walking plan last weekend, walked for two hours in total.  That is about 1.67% of target.
Justification:  I walk everyday.  Each morning and evening I brave the treacherous 800 metre journey from Admiralty Towers to Waterfront Place.  The Inca Trail is about 57 kilometres.  So it will just be like walking to work 72 times over four days. Simple.  Stories of "really fat American's" who have made it are encouraging.

Objective 2: Learn Spanish
Goal:  To enrol in, and attend, a course of Spanish lessons, such that I have a basic grasp of the language by the time I land on the South American continent.
Actual Performance:  I enrolled in an 8 week basic Spanish program.  I managed to attend 5 of these 8 lessons.  Certainly some room for improvement here.
Justification: Having attended private speech and drama lessons for several years while at school, I believe I am sufficiently qualified to get by by treating the entire trip as one big game of charades.  From the 5 lessons that I attended, I have managed to remember the following phrases:

• "No tarea" - Each lesson began with the teacher asking us to show our 'tarea' or 'homework'.  I responded with 'no tarea' each week.  I don't even think that makes sense grammatically, but the disappointment on her face suggested she understood.
• "Uno cerveza, por favor." or "One beer please".  I didn't actually learn this at the Spanish classes.  This was more a result of recalling the word 'Cerveza' from being printed on Corona beer labels.
• "Buenos tetas y culo". or "Great tits and arse!".  Once again, not part of the curriculum at 'The Spanish Cat Language School'.  The origins of my knowledge of this phrase are hazy, but I believe they involved Michel Brun translating phrases for us to say to a waitress that we presumed was South American while at Fridays Nightclub.

Objective 3: Get a passport
Goal: To apply for and receive a valid Australian Passport within 10 days of booking the trip.
Actual Performance: Approximately four months later, and only after an email from our friendly travel agent "Rhys" with the subject "URGENT! URGENT! URGENT!" did I actually achieve this. Rhys has certainly earned his commission on this journey.
Justification: My life is full of clients failing to respond to my requests for them to provide information. Why should Rhys's life be so easy and stress free!

So armed with my language skills, fitness, and appropriate travel documentation, it is time to gear up for the trip.  Being new to the travel game, I was not prepared for how expensive this would be!  Let's take a look at what I have acquired:

Drugs
No, not the illicit kind.  I hear there is already plenty of them where I am going, and with the strength of the Aussie dollar I would be stupid to buy them here.  Best to buy them and use them in the foreign country, it's not like that has gone wrong for any Australian's travelling overseas before has it?

The drugs I refer to are my various potions the travel Doctor assured me were essential to my trip, at a cost of $150.  I must say, that I do feel like that was great value for my money, just look at what came in the pack!

This smorgasbord of drugs includes tablets to stop diarrhoea, start diarrhoea, prevent pain, re-hydrate, stop nausea, prevent travel sickness, prevent altitude sickness.  Along with the several hundred dollars worth of vaccinations germs should beware of coming anywhere near me.

Travel Gear
When I walked into Kathmandu today and told their friendly sales assistant "Courtney" that I needed to buy EVERYTHING for a six week trip to South America, and that I would need it today, it was hard to tell whether the excitement in her voice was her mutual anticipation of the joys my trip would bring, or the fact that with only 1 hour to closing time I was probably about to fill her entire weeks sales quota in one transaction.  Half an hour later, I walked out with $800 worth of goods including a $300 jacket, $200 hiking shoes, money belt, thermals, a sleeping bag liner, and a seemingly endless supply of socks (she really pushed these hard... must be struggling to move them).

So if nothing else, I will certainly look the part on my journey.

Now the question on everybody's lips by now must be "But what are the details of the trip?".  Well, I'll tell you.

The trip
Originally flying to Auckland, and then Santiago de Chile on Tuesday, the presence of a rather persistent ash cloud threatened to completely derail the trip.  Fortunately, it appears we will be able to make it to our destination by first flying to Tahiti.  I am more than happy for the ash cloud to descend on Tahiti and prevent my departure from there!

The first half of my six weeks will be on a tour.  You can read more about it here:  Homeland of the Incas.  The tour will take me from Lima, Peru through to La Paz, Bolivia encompassing the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu, and the hillariously named 'Lake Titticaca'.

From La Paz, we fly over to Buenos Aires in Argentina.  Other than 2 days at Iguazu Falls, this part of the trip is largely unplanned (at least to my knowledge).  The objective here is to consume my own weight in steak, washed down with a lot of red wine!  (I will be sure to report back on my performance at this objective, and suspect I will be a little more successful than in my preparation objectives).

What I am looking forward to

• Not having to go to work for six weeks is an indescribable feeling!  I think travelling to remote parts of the world with limited connectivity may have been a little excessive to get away from it, but you can never be too careful.
• Steak, wine, and beer. Pretty self explanatory.
• The scenery - the photos I have seen so far look amazing. Machu Picchu should be stunning (if I don't collapse during the walk.)
• Not having to go to work

What I am concerned about

• The number of references to 'basic' accommodation in the trip notes, with no showers, hot water, heating, or electricity. Not being known for my willingness to 'rough it', the "mudbrick house" with no showers, or heating and "shared drop toilet" is of particular concern.
• The Department of Foreign Affairs not so rosy assessment of my safety while in Bolivia and Peru. Notes such as "The use of tear gas and force to control disturbances is common." are slightly alarming.  I will be getting KRudd's number on speed dial to fly in and save me.
• Walking 57 kilometres at several thousand feet above sea level.  This may be the stupidest thing I have done in my life, and I have done a lot of stupid things.  Maybe I can pay one of the porters to carry me.

So, that is the end of my first blog post.  It may be overkill for a six week journey, but I've never been known as one to keep my thoughts and opinions to myself, and this will be a good way of letting mum know that I am still alive!