Travels with my donkey

Homeware bound - 5th August

2006-08-06T22:38:00.000Z

Well I finally back in the UK. I had a lovely last day in San Francisco and was very sorry to have to get on a plane and fly to Miami. The flight was ok but by the time I arrived in my hotel in Miami it was really late and I was absolutely knackered. Luckily my flight to London wasn't until the evening so I got a nice long lie in before I had to be at the airport. Miami was as hot and humid as ever even in the middle of the night.

The flight home wasn't as bad as I was expecting as I got 2 seats to myself but still didn't manage to get any sleep. Was very glad that the weather was still pretty good when I got to London. I was worried that I would freeze my tits off when I got off the plane. So now I'm back in Leicester with the family which is lovely and I'll head back to Edinburgh at the end of the week.

I can't believe the four months is over so quickly, next time I'll need to go for longer!! Thanks for reading the blog and for all your comments and emails. As for my next trip......watch this space!!

Do you know the way to San Jose? - 31st July

2006-07-30T15:41:00.000Z

We are now in San Francisco but on our way here we stopped at Monterey and San Jose. Monterey was a bit of a disappointment as we thought it was going to be an upmarket coastal town but it turned out to be just like Blackpool!! It was full of English people and every corner seemed to have a British pub on it. The really good thing about Monterey though is we got to go out on a boat with a famous Marine Biologist called Nancy Black to do some whale watching. It was fantastic. I was really pleased as I'd missed the whales when I was in Argentina and thought I wouldn't see any at all on this trip. Luckily we managed to see about 5 Humpbacked whales out of the bay and over the canyon which is about 10 000 ft deep. We had a great time but I was so busy looking out for the whales that I didn't get many photos of them.

I liked San Jose but didn't get to see as much of the downtown area as we would have liked as the Grand Prix was in full swing when we arrived. It's a prettier place than Monterey and has nice wide streets and red tiled roof Spanish style houses. Spent a pleasant day wandering around the museums and historic houses and drove on up to San Francisco.

It's lovely here and a lot cooler especially in the evening when it gets quite chilly. We've spent the last two days walking around the city and looking at all the lovely houses, climbing those bloody steep hills and eating in the lovely restaurants. We are staying in the Mark Hopkins Hotel and have great views of the bay from our 15th floor room. There is a well known restaurant at the top of the hotel on the 19th floor called Top of the Mark but of course Andy the wag has dubbed it Top of the Skid Mark!! You can't take him anywhere!! After walking for miles today Sue and I went to Chinatown and had a great hour long foot massage. It was a bit brutal but you knew it was doing you good. After that we were fully revived and ready for a shopping trip. Imagine our horror when we arrived in Union Square only to find that the shops were shut!!!! It was only 7pm, we were devastated and to make matters worse we had just eaten a really crappy meal in Chinatown as we made the mistake of allowing Andy to choose the restaurant.

Well tomorrow is my last day in San Francisco and I'm planning to walk over the Golden Gate Bridge, visit Coit Tower and Japantown and if there's any time left I'm going to try and go shopping again. I leave here on Wednesday and fly to Miami where I stay for one night before flying home. Sue and Andy are going to travel around California for a little longer before heading north to Oregon and Seattle.

Big Sur

One of the whales we saw off Monterey Bay.

California Dreaming - 27th July

2006-07-28T02:59:00.000Z

So we are finally on the west coast and the weather has even cooled down a little bit for us so it's lovely now, 46C is just too much for me!! We left Las Vegas and drove all the way to San Diego stopping off at Mojave and Joshua Tree Parks. I got to see a couple of coyotes which was great as I think they usually just come out at night. I loved the Joshua trees (see photo's), some people think they are really ugly but for once I agree with the Mormon pioneers who thought they looked very welcoming with their outstretched arms.

We had a couple of nights in San Diego which is a really nice laid back town and then headed up the coast to San Clemente which is a very pretty and very wealthy town with lots of Spanish style red roofed houses. It also has a lovely pier without an amusement arcade, chip shop or fortune teller in sight. We've been driving up the Pacific Highway but haven't managed to see very much as the weirdest sea fog sits just along the coast. I don't know if this is normal for California but you'd be a bit pissed off if you'd spent $10 million on a beach front house in Malibu and couldn't see further than the end of your nose!! Actually we thought Malibu was a bit of a dump and there are much nicer places further up the coast.

Last night we stayed in Santa Barbara which is really lovely. It's a nice size town with lots of lovely bars, restaurants and shops. They are also a lot of tramps which is unusual for a wealthy town as the police normally move them on. We saw two tramps having a bit of a girly fight when we were out for dinner last night. One pushed the other into the bushes demanding his money back and the poor sod that fell in the bushes squealed like a girl!! The next morning we saw them together again and one of them asked Sue for 25C in the most gay voice you ever heard, no wander they were fighting like girls the night before!! Gay tramps!! Only in California!!

Poor old Andy managed to get third degree burns last night when Sue saw a mouse in the street. The poor mouse stopped in it's tracks and then ran straight at Sue, she screamed and jumped about 10 feet in the air, grabbing Andy at the same time. Unfortunately for Andy he was holding Sue's Starbucks coffee cup in his hand and ended up scolding himself with it!! Sue and I were laughing so much we couldn't do anything to help the poor sod.

This morning we walked down to the beach and onto Santa Barbara's pier. There are lots of rules for this pier like no bare feet, no high heels but madly enough they do allow cars onto it. There's even a car park at the end!! How mad are Americans?? This pier wasn't so pretty and we even passed one restaurant which was having it's septic tank emptied at the time, not exactly inviting is it? We visited the Santa Barbara Mision and then drove on up the coast, stopping at Morro Bay for Fish and Chips (which weren't too bad actually) and at Piedras Blancas where a group of Elephant Seals have been living for the last 15 years. There can be up to 7500 of them here at any time which is great as 100 years ago they were nearly extinct.

Well I'm now starting my last week of the trip so there won't be many more posts now. I'm gutted that my trip is nearly over and I really am not ready to come home but my ticket's booked so I'll be back on the 4th August. But before I get home I've still got Carmel, Monterey and San Francisco to see.

I hear you are still having a heatwave at home, bloopdy typical, the summer I go away it's great at home. London even made it onto the California news today when the lights went out in Picadilly Circus. I hope the weather holds out there for a few more weeks so I can enjoy a little bit of it before going back to work.

A lovely Joshua Tree.

Where the fuck are we then???

Having a dip in the Colorado River.

On the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, a little bit too close to the edge for me!!

Viva Las Vegas!!! - 23rd July

2006-07-25T02:44:00.000Z

Yes we had a couple of days in Las Vegas which was a bit of a shock to the system after spending so many days in the National Parks. The parks were fantastic despite temperatures of up to 45C!! We still managed to to go out hiking everyday, we managed to see Arches, Canyonlands, Bryce, Zion, Grand Canyon (North Rim), Mojave and Joshua Tree. They were all beautiful in their own way but my personal favourites were Arches and Bryce as they had the most dramatic and colourful landscapes. We also got to see loads of animals including two coyotes who ran in front of the car. There are also an amazing amount of plants in the deserts which always surprises me. Sue and I were really struggling with the heat but old Stinky never seems to notice it and doesn't even bother wearing a hat most days. By the last park Sue and I were refusing to get out of the car when Stinky went off on his hikes, we made him leave us in the car with the AC on full blast!! Vegas was great as you never need to go outside and can walk from in air conditioned building to the other. We stayed in the Paris hotel which was really nice and Sue and I managed to get our hair done and have a pedicure which was great and I only lost $40.00 on the roulette table.

We are now in San Diego which is much cooler (about 35C) but it has got very humid which is not the normal weather here. I've just heard on the news that there are more forest fires east of San Diego. We have seen a lot of evidence of this, especially in Joshua Tree National Park. It's so hot and dry at the moment that fires are breaking out everywhere. The US is experiencing a heatwave at the moment and there are electricity outages all the time as everyone is using their air conditioning 24 hours a day. A hospital in California has just had to be evacuated because the AC packed up completely.

Today we had a wander around San Diego. It's a nice city of about 1.4 million people and it has a laid back resort feeling to it. It used to have a big fishing industry but that seems to have disappeared, even the kelp processing factory is moving to Scotland!! Tomorrow we are going to San Diego Zoo which is world famous and has panda's so I'm really looking forward to that. After that we make our way up the west coast to San Francisco from where I will start my trip home, boohoo!!!

Some photo's

2006-07-21T04:28:00.000Z

Sue and Stinky in Bryce Canyon, Utah.

The Hoodoo's in Bryce Canyon, Utah.

Canyonlands Park, Utah

Petroglyphs from about 1400 years ago in Sego Canyon, Utah.

This is the Mormon temple in Utah, the one we weren't allowed into!!

This is the nearest we got to dinosaur bones as the museum we went to in Utah had been shut down two days earlier because it was falling down. I wouldn't mind but they were told back in 1957 to get it repaired!! Talk about slow!!

Utah - 18th July

2006-07-19T02:35:00.000Z

Well this is turning into a State with lots of surprises. It has some of the most beautiful scenery and some of the ugliest I've ever seen and the Mormons are certainly a weird bunch!!

First of all I'll tell you all about our visit to Salt Lake City. A 10 acre piece of land in the centre of SLC is taken up with Temple Square. This is where the Latter Day Saints have their headquarters and their main temple. We did the usual tours and were quite shocked at how wealthy the church seems to be. Absolutely no expense has been spared on Temple Square, they even have a 21 000 seater auditorium with state of the art comms systems so they can broadcast via TV and internet!! We were dying to see the inside of the temple but you are only allowed in there if you are a Mormon and have been 'prepared'. Being prepared seems to consist of giving 10% of your earnings to the church, volunteering to work in Temple Sq. and generally being a jolly good mormon.

This mad religion is based on the teachings of a poor farmer's son called Joseph Smith in the 1820's. He reckons that God and Jesus appeared to him on a regular basis and gave him revelations. These revelations lead him to some engraved plates with Eygyptian hieroglyphics which he was miraculously able to translate despite having no education. Apparently God told him to start a new church and marry as many women as he could. Surprisingly he did get loads of people to follow him and they eventually set up and ran the largest town in Illinois.

Eventually other God fearing types decided to drive them out of town and this happened several times before they eventually killed Joseph Smith and a few of his cronies. By this time Joseph had made his mate Brigham Young President of the church and Brigham went on to marry 19 women and father 56 children. They also advocated marriage between siblings, the sick bastards!! Anyway eventually about 130 of them ended up in Utah which at the time had not been settled and was still a territory but they again built it up into a large successful area and wanted Utah to become a State and join the Union. The Federal government wouldn't allow it as they disagreed with the Mormon belief of plural marriage. Luckily their living Prophet (and they always have one of these, today's is called Gordon Hinckey!!) told everyone that he had had a revelation from God who told him that they did not need to practice polygamy anymore, how lucky was that?? So that meant Utah could become a State. I have to confess that I didn't realise that the mormons had actually founded the State, I just thought they all lived there because the State laws allowed them to do their thing. SLC is only 40% Mormon but most other towns in Utah are up to 100%. They are not allowed to drink, smoke, have caffeine although the Mormon church has been one of the biggest investors in Coca Cola, hypocritcal or what?

Anyway they haven't practiced plural marriage for over 100 years but it doesn't stop people on the tours asking about it. The way they 'explain' this part of the church's history is to say that God asked Joseph Smith and his mates to "take care of more than one family" !! Like it was something charitable they were doing!! Joseph Smith even adopted two rich orphan girls and married one of them. He was basically a dirty perv and today 12.5 million people from all over the world think he was the first prophet of the church.

Anyway after all that we decided to go out for a swim at Salt Lake. What a mistake that was!! It stinks like fuck and there are loads of horrible bugs. We lasted about half an hour before Sue and I demanded that Andy take us back to the city!!

We then moved on to a place called Moab in South East Utah which is close to Arches and Canyonlands National Parks. It is really beautiful here. Arches Park is full of the most dramatic red rocks that tower 100's of feet over you. Natural arches and bridges have formed in the rocks that are up to 270 million years old. The average temperature has been 40C since we got here which is not exactly hiking weather but we have done some. We also did a fantastic trek with a Park Ranger yesterday as it covered parts of the park you cannot go to on your own. The ranger had us rock climbing and treking through the huge fins that are so close together at the bottom you can't actually walk between them you have to do a sort of spiderman movement with both hands on one rock and both feet on another rock, it was great and I managed not to fall or injure myself this time!!

Today we went out on the Colorado River in a jet boat and went off roading in the White Rim Canyon in Canyonlands it was great. I love this part of the State there are so many lovely parks to see and tomorrow we move south to see Bryce and Zion National parks but I think we will be staying in a place called Kanab in Arizona. After that we will be at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon where we are hoping to go mule treking.

I've now booked my flight home and will be back in the UK next month. I'm hoping the weather will still be good when I get there as I am starting to get used to these heatwave temperatures!!

Salt Lake City - 13th July

2006-07-14T04:00:00.000Z

Yeah I know I'm not supposed to be here but hey I am so there. I left Mexico on the 10th July (sorry I haven't updated anyone for ages) and flew to Miami for a couple of days. I had a great time there although you certainly see some sights on South Beach and Ocean Drive. Men walking around dressed as women or wearing only their underpants seems to be the norm. I then flew to Chicago and spent a fantastic few days there. It's definitely one of my favourite cities in the States and I could very easily live there. I then headed to Denver to meet up with Sue and Andy. We stayed in Denver, moved onto to Boulder and then travelled through the Rocky Mountain National Park which is unbelieveably beautiful, I think it has the most striking landscape I've seen so far on this trip. I'd love to come back sometime and spend a couple of weeks really seeing more of the park.

So now we have moved onto to Utah, in fact we are in Salt Lake City now. We got here tonight and tomorrow we are going to spend the day doing all the Mormon stuff and of course seeing the Lake itself.

I'm planning on coming back in August (this year) as I am going to run out of money very soon and will need to come home and get a job. I am trying really hard not to think about it at the moment!! Anyway I promise that I will do a better job of keeping this blog updated now that I'm back in the States. Hope everyone at home is well, you must all be starting to go on your hols now so have a great time and I'll see you all next month!!

Who cares about the world cup anyway - 3rd July

2006-07-03T23:51:00.000Z

Well once again England didn´t bring the trophy home. Luckily I was still in the jungle for the Portugal game so I didn´t have to sit through it. They´ve shown enough highlights on TV now so I get the picture. As usual I couldn´t give a toss now who wins.

Anyway here I am in Merida which is the capital of Yucatan. It looks so far to be a lovely city and certainly a lot more civilised than some of the places I´ve been just lately. I had a great time in Chiapas State where I got to see lots of indigenous people and even went to dinner in one of their houses. I started off in San Cristobal de las Casas which is a lovely town with a great market that the indians bring their crafts to everyday.

There´s a place there called Casa Na Bolom (House of the Jaguar) which is a beautiful old colonial style house with fantastic courtyards and gardens. It´s the centre for research and support of the indigenous people of the Chiapas. It was set up by Frans and Trudy Blom. Frans was a Danish Anthroplogist who came to Mexico in the 1920´s and spent the rest of his life there. He died in 1963. His wife Trudy was a Swiss journalist and photographer and came to Mexico in 1940 after she had problems in Europe with her anti-Hitler articles in the newspapers. They both set up the organisation to get money from around the world to make sure the Indians could carry on their traditional life. Casa Na Bolom now houses volunteers and researchers from all over the world who are now carrying on this work. Trudy died in 1993 so the organisation is now struggling to get donations. It seems Trudy was a bit of a fierce old girl and practically bullied large organisations and governments into giving her money. The UN gave her a Humanitarian award of some kind not long before she died but without a character like her around they are really struggling now.

Anyway I spent a couple of days there and got to go out to the villages with one of the volunteers who had spent 16 years working with Trudy. It was an amazing experience. One of the villages was quite wealthy as they have decided to go into the flower business. They grow and sell beautiful exotic flowers to Mexican and US buyers. Their church in the main square was absolutely full of beautiful flowers. This particular village has a mix of catholic and traditional beliefs although the traditional ones seem to be stronger as they only use the Catholic priest to get baptised. Marriages and funerals are held in their traditional God Houses. This is the village where I had dinner which consisted of tortillas and cheese. They cook inside their houses over a small fire so the room is full of smoke which is an absolute killer after 5 minutes. It´s a serious health problem for the indians (particularly the women as they do all the cooking) so Casa Na Bolom is raising money to replace these fires with brick built stoves with a chimney.

The second village we went to was far more traditional and we were not allowed to take any photos there at all. The church was amazing. 200 years ago the Catholic church on the main plaza was taken over by the villagers and they removed all the pews and statues and burnt them in the plaza. The church is now used completely for traditional worship. The floor is covered in pine needles which are replaced everyday. People who want to pray clear a small place on the floor and place candles in a circle where they kneel. If they are ill and looking for help to recover they will tap hard boiled eggs on the floor and leave them as offerings. If they are very sick they will sacrifice a chicken. Whilst I was there one poor lady killed 2 chickens so I think she was very ill. The entire church is full of lighted candles. Families bring in small tables and cover them in all kinds of candles, like beeswax, parafin even bulls fat. They all have different meanings. I think the bulls fat ones were for fertility so I stayed well away from them!! The whole place was boiling hot from the heat of thousands and thousands of candles. How they don´t have regular fires I don´t know.

At Casa Na Bolom we sat down to breakfast with some Lancadon indians. They wear long white dresses and keep their hair long. Lancadons from the north have fringes and from the south they don´t. This seems to me to be the only way to tell them apart. They have a clinic at the house so the indians had come for some treatment. One of them needed a serious operation and was going to be sent to San Francisco for it. I felt sorry for the poor sod as I´m sure he´d never seen a plane let alone flown in one!!

After San Cristobal I went to Palenque which has fantastic pyramids in an ancient Maya city. It was amazing although the heat and humidity now are making walking very unpleasant. After Palenque I moved on to Campeche which is by the sea but is even more humid. It does rain in the afternoons but it never seems to clear the air. From there I visited another Maya city called Edzna which was only rediscovered in the 1960´s. It was abadoned about 1400 years ago so the jungle had grown around it. They still haven´t uncovered it all but if you climb the highest pyramid and look around you can see pyramid shaped mounds everywhere. About 55 000 people used to live there so it must have been huge.

I´ve tried loading some photos but once again it´s not working. I don´t know why it works from some PC´s and not others.

Anyway now I´m in Merida for a few days. As I have had to stay in pretty basic places for the last week I have booked myself into the Hyatt Regency here to have a bit of luxury. No sooner had I arrived than one of my toe nails fell off!! I´m not sure if this is something that I need to worry about. It looks as bit odd now as it is the only toe that doesn´t have bright red nail varnish on it!! Anyway must go as I need to go and have a lovely long soak in the bathroom of my executive suite before ordering room service!! Tomorrow I´m off to Uxmal (pronounced oosh mal) for the day so I need to get an early night.

We´re through!!! - 25 June

2006-06-26T00:47:00.000Z

As I seem to be able to load photos from this PC I thought you would like to see a picture of the Temple of the Sun that I went to see just outside Mexico City.

Ignore everything I said about the football being on the TV all the time. Turns out today´s England game wasn´t shown. I nearly went into melt down trying to find out what the score was. Still all´s well that ends well!! I´ll have to make sure I can definitely watch the game against Portugal next Saturday.

Anyway here I am in Guanajuato which is a couple of hundred miles north of Mexico City. I had a great time in the city but I never did get back to the Museum of Anthropology as I still had to go to the Leon Trotsky museum, which by the way was really good. The thing I really liked about old Leon was that he kept pet rabbits, they still have the hutches in his garden!! He also seemed to love a good picnic. There are loads of photos of him at picnics in the various countries he was exiled to like France, Norway, Turkey and of course Mexico. His house has been kept exactly as it was when he was killed, although they have cleaned up the blood. Apparently he didn´t die straight away but later in hospital. There are lots of photos of the poor man with a banadage around his head. The man who killed him claimed to be Belgian and gave a false name but he was Mexican by all accounts and never explained why he´d done it. Poor old Trotsky also lost a lot of his family during Stalin´s purges including a son. He still has grand children and great grand children living in USA, Mexico and surprisingly Russia.

Here´s his garden, note the watch tower and the rabbit hutches!!

here´s his little study, very modest really...

Anyway Guanajuato is a really pretty colonial town wedged into a tiny ravine. It´s full of tiny streets and alleys leading up and down the hills. Some of the alleys are so narrow that people in balaconies on either side can lean out and kiss eachother!! I got here on Friday just in time for the Feast of San Juan which seems to consist mostly of a fun fair, market stalls and fireworks. The weather has been perfect at about 30C and I´ve walked for miles.

Tomorrow I´m heading south to Chiapas state. I was planning on going to Oaxaca (pronounced wah-ha-ka) next but there´s been a lot of problems there for the last 2 weeks. I think the teachers here must be a very militant bunch as they are protesting over their pay and conditions by creating a tent city in the central plaza, fighting with the police and setting fire to cars. They are also blocking some of the roads in and out of Oaxaca so I don´t know that I´d get through anyway. Apparently this is set to continue right up until the presidential elections on July 2nd.

So instead I´m going on to San Cristobal de las Casas which is the stronghold of the Zapatista rebellion but apparently they don´t bother the tourists. The main attraction there will be the indigenous people. A large majority of Mexico´s 10 million indigenous people live in the south. The people of San Cristobal and the surrounding area keep very strictly to their traditions and are not interested in western ways. Some of them have unfortunately been expelled from their villages for joining evangelical protestant churches are no longer able to farm the land but instead rely on selling crafts to tourists.

I´ll probably spend about 2 or 3 days there before heading off to Palenque. I´ll be working my way around the Yucatan peninsula and when I get to Cancun I´m hoping to be able to get a flight to Havanah for a few days but it really also depends on the weather.

Anyway I´d better stop now as Larkin is complaining that my posts are too long!!

Come on England!! - 21st June

2006-06-22T01:44:00.000Z

Thank God I`m in a country that loves football. All of the matches are played over and over again all day here. It`s impossible to miss any of the action. Unfortunately my spanish isn`t good enough to enjoy all the punditry and believe me there`s lots of it. This morning at breakfast it was all I could do to get a cup of coffee as Mexico were playing Portugal. The restaurant staff had a big screen set up and were too engrossed to care about the customers. My poor waiter was nearly crying by the end of the game so I didn`t like to ask for more melon!!

Anyway I`m having a fantastic time in Mexico City. I `ve decided to stay an extra day as there is so much to do here. I`ve already been out to Teotihuacan where the third largest pyramid in the world is. It`s an amazing site and strangely enough you are allowed to climb to the top of both the Pyramid of the Sun and the Pyramid of the Moon. I climbed both but I paid for it the next day as my legs were killing me. The whole site is huge with a large avenue between the two pyramids flanked by temples. No one really knows who built the pyramids but it seems to have been an important site for a couple of hundred years before the people abandoned and even burnt it.

I hired a driver called Arturo for the day. The tourist policemen who found him for me swore blind Arturo spoke great English but he could barely say hello. Still we seemed to manage ok as he spent the entire day speaking Spanish and laughing at me. He drove me out to Teotihuacan, took me to some other ruins and the second biggest Basilica in the world which is Our Lady of Guadalupe. I wasn`t that fussed about going to the Basilica but I`m glad I did as I`d never have believed it if I hadn`t seen it with my own eyes. The story goes (and it`s a daft story) that a bloke called Juan Diego saw the Virgin Mary in 1531. Apparently she told him to go and have a word with the bishop about building a nice church for her. Anyway he did this but of course the bishop thought he was a bit of a Billy Liar and told him to naff off (I`m paraphrasing here) so poor old Juan goes back to the Virgin Mary and says `bad news love the bishop doesn`t believe I`ve seen you`. Anyway it went on like this a few times but Mary being the pushy old bag that she is insisted he try once more and that she would give him some proof this time. As if by magic she creates a rose bush at his feet and tells him to pluck the roses, hide them in his cape and take them to the bishop. Well blow me if it didn`t work this time!! Old Juan opened his cape up when he got to the bishops gaff and dropped all the roses at his feet. The really amazing thing was that there now appeared a picture of the Virgin Mary on Juan`s cape. Hurrah now everyone believed him so the bishop built the church and old Juan was eventually made a saint so everyone`s a winner. The really bonkers thing about this story is how everyone believes it. They still have Juan`s cape. It`s behind bullet proof glass and has travelling walkways going back and forth in front of it. There are literally thousands of people there praying at it. People even go on their knees across the huge plaza to the church. It got so mad with all the people that they had to build a second church next to it about 25 years ago. There are services going on 24 hours a day and round the back of the church a priest will bless you with holy water if you press his palm with silver!! Arturo tried to push me into the queue to get blessed but I wasn`t having any of it. It`d probably end up like the wicked witch of the west in the Wizzard of Oz.

Anyway that was a very exhausting day and the next one was much the same. This time I got a guide/driver who spoke better english than I did and he took me around the historic district in the centre of town. There are some amazing colonial and 19th century buildings in Mexico City including the Palacio Gobinerio where the Diego Rivera murals are.

Just as we were walking through the centre we saw lots of police cars and people covered in blood, how exciting I thought something`s kicking off but it turned out that some Hollywood crew were making a film and had managed to get most of the streets in the centre closed off for their big action scene. Everywhere you looked there were actors lying on the floor covered in grissly make up. The man shouting out instructions from the back of a van was English but I don`t know who he was. My driver eventually dropped me off at the Museum of Antropology which has a great reputation and deservedly so. It`s worth coming here just for this museum. They say if you see everying in it you will have walked five miles. Well I spent four hours there and saw less than half of it. It has the most amazing collection of pre hispanic works you could imagine. It was great for me as I`ll be seeing a lot of Aztec, Maya and Toltec monuments when I head south. I`m going back there again tomorrow to see the rest of the collection. I took hundreds of photos, I only wish I could post them for you but it still doesn`t work from this pc.

Today I went to the south of the city to see Diego Rivera and Frida Khalo`s houses and museum. Unfortunately the twin houses were closed but I did get to see her house which was fantastic but you weren`t allowed to take any photos. I was going to Leon Trotsky`s house too but ran out of time. Trotsky came to live in Mexico after things went tits up with him and Stalin. Diego Rivera managed to persuade the government to give him sanctuary. Trotsky repaid this kindness by having an affair with Diego`s wife Frida Khalo, nice bloke hey? At first Trotsky stayed in Frida`s house (the one I went to see today) but he was worried that the house next door wasn`t secure enough so Diego bought it and joined the two together. Later Trotsky moved to a house around the corner which was eventually peppered with about 400 bullets in an unsuccessful attempt on his life. It was also where Trotsky eventually got the blunt end of an ice pick embeded in his head. Apparently you can still see the bullet holes!!

I also visited the Museo del Carmen today which is an old convent and not that remarkable except for the 20 mummies they have on display in the crypt!! The bodies are fairly well preserved for reasons I didn`t understand and they are thought to be nuns and monks from the convent. Some of them still have their habits on!! It's really creepy especially as I was the only one down there in the crypt. I didn`t hang around too long I can tell ya.

By the way Dana I don`t want my trip to end either. Do you think I could get sponsorship for my blog and carry on travelling for a few more months? My ticket home is booked for the 16th July but I don`t think I'll have finished Mexico by then, I keep adding new things everyday!! Anyway time to go and plan tomorrow`s activities and watch some more football. Hope everyone is well. I hear you are having great weather at home, even in Scotland!!

Mexico City - 19th June

2006-06-20T02:45:00.000Z

I arrived here yesterday lunchtime and the weather is better already. It was too hot for me in Texas and up in Chihuahua. The temperature was up to 47C which is just bonkers but it didn`t stop me Sue and Stinky from walking in it!!

We had a great time in Texas, I think it was my favourite state and I really liked the people. We finished up in Big Bend National Park which was lovely. It has canyons, the Rio Grande, lots of Cacti, bears and some other lion type big cat things that I can`t remember the name of. The Rio Grande is almost completely dried up in some places which must make it pretty easy for the old illegal immigrants to nip over if they can face the heat.

Sue and Andy dropped me at Presidio which is the only official border crossing between Del Rio and El Paso. It`s a very quiet crossing and mostly people don`t even bother getting their passports stamped if they want to come and go to Ojinaga in Mexico but I think things are going to change very quickly now that all the pressure is on to stop the illegals coming over. It took about an hour to get my exit stamp and my entry stamp. The Mexicans weren`t really sure what to do and it eventually took 3 officials to decide which form I needed to complete!! After that it was straight into a taxi and a stopover in Ojinaga which was a waste of time really as I could have gone straight to Chihuahua instead. Anyway I spent a very dull afternoon and evening there and headed for Chihuahua in the morning. Once I got there I organized my trip to the Copper Canyon on the famous railway.

It took about 90 years to complete this stretch of railroad as the Mexicans kept getting way laid by wars, revolutions, dictatorships and the like. It`s used to transport timber to the coast but they`ve also laid on a few first class carriages and a dining car for the tourists. It`s a lovely trip but not as spectacular as they would have you believe. Although Copper Canyon is supposed to be bigger than the Grand Canyon you never really get the sense of it`s size. Much of the area we passed through was very dry and the only plants for miles were cactus. As we got nearer to the coast it got greener but it also got more humid. I did a couple of overnight stops in the canyon itself which was quite interesting. The Tarahumara indians live in this area and a lot of them build their little wooden huts inside the openings of caves. I got to see a lot of them and frankly I don`t think they keep their houses very clean!! I`ve been trying for the last 45 minutes to load my photos of the dirty rooms in the cave but once again it isn`t working, god knows why. I`m fed up with it now so I`ll try again tomorrow.

The hotels for the most part were fantastic. Although the first one I stopped at in a place called Creel kept 2 Bengal tigers in cages just outside my room. It was a bit worrying as the cages looked very flimsy. Apparently the hotel owner rescued them from someone who didn`t want them anymore. They eat 10kgs of chicken a day!!

Once we got to the end of the line I stopped in a lovely colonial town called El Fuerte. My hotel there was fantastic but at midnight someone tried to get into my room which was a bit off really. Luckily I had the safety catch on so they didn`t get very far but it turned out it was the night manager, he didn`t know anyone was staying in the room and he tried to give it to some other guests!! The next day all the staff were very apologetic and very annoyed with the manager. They kept saying to him "But Alison was in there!!" like he`d know who the fuck I was!! The final stop up North was Los Mochis which is a bit of a dump and I was only there overnight thankfully.

I flew into Mexico City on Sunday and had a bit of a wander around the area where my hotel is. It`s called Zona Rosa and yes it is the gay area. Mexicans can mince with the best of them I can tell ya!! Unfortunately it didn`t stop the old macho men from hassling me in the street. I`m a bit pissed off about that as I haven`t had any hassle up to now. Mexican men seem to think you should be grateful for the attention but as most of them are half my height, have big bellies and moustaches I could really do without it!!

Anyway I`m off to bed now as I`ve got a lot to pack in tomorrow especially as the football is on!! I hope you Scotts are still cheering for us!!

South of the border, down Mexico way!!!

2006-06-14T02:35:00.000Z

Just a quick update to say I´m now in Mexico and tomorrow I start my Copper Canyon Railway trip so I won´t be able to update you for a few days. I´ll give you a proper catch up when I get to Mexico City next week.

Remember the Alamo!!!

2006-06-10T02:59:00.000Z

New Braunfels, the first German town in Texas. It's still almost all German today. This is Andy being a retard and getting a wet arse.

Sue and Andy

We did the Mission Trail in San Antonio, the first of which is of course the Alamo. Americans tend to get very emotional about it and our tour guide kept having to wipe away his big girly tears when he was telling us all about what happened when Jim Bowie (of the knife fame), Davy Crocket (of the silly hat fame) and William Travis (of no fame at all) fought to the death against 6000 Mexicans with less than 200 of their fellow Americans.

and finally a south east Texas road sign....

Here's some photo's

2006-06-09T02:22:00.000Z

A baby donkey at Indian City in Oklahoma, how sweet is he????

Here's a cowboy (or was it a cowgirl?) and some Texas long horns!!

Here's some pictures of the Bat's I was telling you about.

Dallas to Austin 2nd June

2006-06-07T03:45:00.000Z

We’re now in Austin having left Dallas this morning. Dallas was very different to Fort Worth. It’s bigger and brasher and has lots of skyscrapers. I quite liked it but preferred Fort Worth as it had far more character.

We did the usual stuff in Dallas, like visiting the Texas Book Depository, the sixth floor of which has been turned into a museum which tells the full story of the JFK assassination. I didn’t realise but there were serious threats to JFK’s life from extremists in Dallas just days before he came on his visit. One of the groups even took out a full page advert in the papers with a wanted poster of JFK saying he should be punished for treason!! They can’t say they weren’t warned!! The good folk of Dallas were immensely proud of Dealy Plaza as it was supposed to be a huge feat of civil engineering and town planning. How ironic that their pride and joy turned into a murder scene. They have painted a white cross in the road at the exact point the car was at when the first shot was fired. Looking out from the Book Depository windows you can see how easily it was done.

The weather is still really hot and humid but we did get some rain yesterday which has helped to cool things down a bit. After we left Dallas we drove to Kilgore in East Texas. Up until they struck oil there in the 1930’s it was a tiny town of a handful of farmers and within 24 hours of the first strike the population rose to 10 000!! Poor sods didn’t know what had hit them. They have a big oil museum there in the College which we had gone along to see. It opened in the 1980’s and was in desperate need of updating. The most interesting thing we saw there was a tour group of about 40 Amish people!! I’d never seen Amish up close and personal so my eyes were nearly popping out of my head!! The women all wore long and very unattractive dresses and little white bonnets and the men all wore braces and extremely bad pudding bowl haircuts. They were very sweet though and one girl of about 17 asked me where I was from. When I told her England she asked me if we spoke English in England!! Fucking hell how dumb can you get??? I guess this is what happens when you aren’t allowed access to TV, radio or computers!! They can’t even have zips on their clothes, it’s buttons only for them. Zips obviously represent far too much progress for them!! I don’t think I could be Amish, the dresses are far too ugly, although they do at least cover all your fat bits!!

Anyway when we arrived in Austin there was a Biker convention going on. 40 000 bikers had descended on the city so we were lucky to get a room. Sue has recently taken to wearing a headband/bandana type of thing so when we checked in at the hotel the receptionist asked her if she was here for the Biker Convention!! Andy said it was because she wore a bandana and had a moustache!!

Austin's a great city, really different fro anywhere else I've been in the States. The have bumper stickers here saying 'Keep Austin weird' which is quite fitting. The big thing to see here believe it or not are the two million bats that fly out from under a bridge in downtown at sunset everyday. It's an believable sight, first a few scout bats fly out then within a minute or two the rest of them fly out and form four or five coloums that eventually join up together over the river before diasappearing over the horizon. The smell is pretty unpleasant and you have to be careful not to get bat poo on you while you're busy looking up at them.

Deep in the heart of Texas!! - 31st May

2006-06-01T01:30:00.000Z

We really are now as we're in Dallas. We stayed on an extra day in Oklahoma in a place called Lawton so we could go to Indian City and the Chisholm Trail museum. Indian City is an outdoor museum about the lifestyles of the various indian tribes in the States. I didn't realise but there are 500 of them!! It was very interesting and ended with a display of some Indian war dances. One of the dancers was particularly good and seemed to be doing a very convincing job of it but the other seemed to think he was in some kind of hip-hop club which rather spoiled the effect. One of the organisers was also singing the songs for the dancers, you know the kind of noises you used to make when you were playing cowboys and indians when you were a kid? Well Andy managed to embarass us by suggesting the lyrics were the same in all the songs!! Sue and I could not stop laughing after that but I blame Andy for showing us up a bucketfull!! Anyway we left a large tip and excused ourselves. Later that evening we met up with Dana who is a friend of Andy's from Virginia. She just happened to be in Lawton the same night as she was working out at Fort Sills organising an Arms fare for the Army, bit sick on memorial day isn't it? Sue suggested they needed to make sure they could still keep having memorial days!! We all went for dinner in a tiny one horse town called Meers. It has a restaurant there which is famous for it's giant burgers and ribs. If you order steak like Andy did they bring a huge slab of raw meat to your table and you cut off the slice you want!! Poor Dana doesn't eat red meat so she ordered chicken only to find that they had run out. She opted for fried corn which she said was 'interesting'. It also had great peach cobbler which I'm becoming addicted to.

Next day we visited Fort Sills ourselves (not to attend the Arms Fare, although I'm sure I could have spotted a bargain or two!!) but to see Geronimo's grave. He was held prisoner and finally died there. They have a cemetery for Apache Indians at the Fort and are still burying them there today, dead ones I mean!!

Next day we were going to the Chisholm Trail Museum but it was closed so we drove on to Texas but not before stopping at the Daybreak Cafe in a small town called Duncan. It was like stepping back in time. We had a great homemade meatloaf and watched all the local weird characters coming and going. The staff were called things like Miss Donna (she was about 80!!) and Mee Mee. The busboy must have been about 90!! Miss Donna was our waitress and she and talked liked she'd been smoking 60 a day since she was 10. Just when we thought we'd seen it all in walked Jackie O. She was about 90, had jet black bouffant hair (well, she was going bald actually) and wore huge white rimmed sunglasses, she looked a sight for sore eyes!!

That just about ended our time in Oklahoma. I really liked it there. There's not a great deal to see in the State but the people are really friendly and kind. Most restaurants have signs outside saying 'Shirt and shoes required' which always made me laugh. They really are simple country folk and most of them live in wooden shacks even if they do have a nodding donkey on the back yard!!

So now we're in Texas which is incredibly hot. Temperatures don't normally get to 100F until July but they'd already hit that in April!! I am very excited about this part of the trip as I a expecting to see lots of cowboys and we're going to a Rodeo too!! I got on a bucking bronco the other day but fortunately it was just a museum exhibit and did not result in me breaking my neck. We've already visited Fort Worth which I really liked. It's smaller than Dallas and has a nice downtown area. We visited the old Stockyards which was really interesting as the area has been turned into a series of museums depicting the life of a cowboy during the famous Chisholm Trails. I got to see a couple of old cowboys and a few men wearing stetsons which looks really weird if you're also wearing a suit. At the moment we are replanning our route around Texas (well Andy is, Sue and I can't be bothered) as there are storms and floods in Houston which was supposed to be our next destination. I think we're going to Austin until the storms die down. Anyway time for me to go. Clare and Karen you're right about the Oklahoma show tunes, I've been driving Andy mad with them!!

Oklahoma!!! - 28th May

2006-05-29T04:17:00.000Z

Well we're in Oklahoma for Memorial weekend. I'd forgotten what a big holiday that is here, we're actually finding it hard to get hotel rooms at the moment but we haven't had to sleep in the car as yet!! We left Arkansas on Thursday after spending our last day there at Hot Springs.

Hot Springs is a small town west of Little Rock where Bill Clinton lived as a child. It's famous for it's victorian bath houses. A lot of the old buildings are still there but only one still operates as a bath house and that's where we headed. We asked for a bath followed by a swedish massage and we got a bit more than we bargained for. First of all they put you into a large roll top bath filled with hot springs water. They also give you a couple of glasses of the water to drink too as this is supposed to help with the detoxification process. Well that lasted for about half an hour and I nodded off a couple of times while I was in there. Next came what they call the Sitz bath which is basically sitting in a sink full of hot water!! It's a bizarre experience sitting there with your legs dangling over the edge whilst your botty is full submerged. I was told it was very good for piles and back pain!! Poor Sue was horrified when she saw it, especially when her bathing assistant told her to "put your booty in there!!" she did as she was told but she didn't like it very much. Then came the steam chamber. Remember those old 50's films when women would sit in a box with just their heads poking out of the top? Well that's what it was. Unfortunately my bathing assistant kept forgetting about me and I think I was in there for about 15 minutes instead of 5!! Luckily I was able to kick the front doors open myself and let in some cool air. Then came the hot packs, basically scalding hot towels applied to certain parts of your body while you lie on a table and get wrapped up in a sheet. Next up was the needle shower, which is powerful thin jets of very hot water sprayed all over you. After that was all over I was very glad to have my swedish massage which was great. In the early part of the last century people would spend up to 3 weeks going through this bathing experience. With the exception of the Sitz bath I could probably do the same. Anyway that was the end of our time in Arkansas and we drove on to Oklahoma next.
Oklahoma is Indian territory. Well at least it's where the so called Five Civilised Tribes were driven out to from the South East once the white settlers decided they needed their land. The poor Indians got driven out again when the land rush happened and the US government opened up the lands west of the Mississippi. I didn't know too much about Indian history or culture before coming here but it's fascinating and very sad for the Indians. I didn't realise how the land rush was done. Basically people came from all over to stake their claims to lot of land that the government had divided up. At 12 noon on the allocated day everyone was allowed to run across the border and stake their claim. Some were on foot, some on horse, some in wagons. In Guthrie alone 10, 000 people took just 6 hours to claim all of the land up for grabs!! I guess it's equivalent to today's supermarket sweep!! If you crossed the border before noon and tried to stake a claim you were called a 'Sooner' which is the States nickname.

Oklahoma is a pretty flat and barren place. You can drive for miles and all you see are fields of nodding donkeys and I don't mean the four legged kind. There was a lot of oil production here and almost everyone seems to have a nodding donkey (drill head) on their land.
Oklahoma also has the longest stretch remaining of Route 66 and we travelled along it for a while stopping at the famous Rock Cafe for lunch where I had the most fantastic peach cobbler.

We also went up to a place called Ponca City which was the home of EW Marland a oil barron who founded the Conoco oil company. He built a fabulous 55 room mansion up there in 1926 when he was the 10th richest man in the world. Unfortunately 2 years later he had lost his wealth and company to JP Morgan in a hostile takeover. He went on to become the Governor of Oklahoma but not before he married his own adopted daughter!! She and her brother had been been living with Marland and his first wife since she was 8 years old and they finally aopted her when she was 16. His wife died, he had the adoption revoked and married Lydie when she was 28. Bit sick really!! Anyway after he died she went off her head and disappeared for 22 years before finally coming back to Ponca City to spend her final years. She lived a fairly reclusive life before finally dying in 1987 aged 87. Apparently Hollywood producers are keen to make a film about Marland but are not sure about how to handle his relationship with Lydie. All seems a bit Woody Allen to me!!

I'll have to stop now as Sue and Stinky are telling me it's way passed my bedtime!! We're leavig Oklahoma tomorrow so I'll finish the post then. Good night!!

Memphis to Little Rock - 24th May

2006-05-25T02:27:00.000Z

How fab was Memphis??? I loved it there. Spent the morning at Graceland which was fabulously tac-tastic. How green shag pile carpet on the ceiling and walls ever went out of fashion I'll never know!! Poor old Elvis his taste really was up his arse. It's a great tour and you even get to see his planes and cars, believe me there are a lot of them. After that I headed back into town and went to see the Civil Rights Museum and the Lorraine Motel where Martin Luther King Jr was shot. They've kept the motel as it was but thankfully they have cleaned the blood up!! Can you believe they even thought to mention that fact in the museum, I guess people must look for it on the balcony!! They have also kept the boarding house where James Earl Ray shot King from and it's now part of the museum, including the bathroom where the fatal shots were fired from. I have to say that all the Civil Rights Museums we've seen have been excellent even if the stories they tell are difficult to take.
That night we went to Beale Street which is where all the music bars are. We went to BB King's place and saw a band that Sue and Stinky really liked but I thought they were a bit dull, John your band could give them a run for their money!!
Next day I went to see Sun Studios where Elvis recorded his first 5 singles. It's also the label that signed Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Howlin' Wolf and loads of other great artists. It's still a recording studio and you can hire the studio and an engineer for just $75.00 a hour, something you should think about John!!!
So yesterday we left Tennesee and drove to Arkansas. We're staying in Little Rock at the moment which is a really lovely town. Bill Clinton has built his presidential library here down by the Arkansas river and it's a great building with fabulous views along the river.
The first thing we did was go to the visitors centre to pick up some maps but as usual these places are manned by senile old citizens who appear to know nothing about the towns that they were born and grew up in. This one was as bad as the rest and it was painful trying to get away from him, luckily some other poor sucker eventually came in so we left him to it. Why are mad old people allowed access to an unsuspecting public??
Anyway we visited the Bill Clinton library today. Apparently since 1978 all Presidents are required to put money aside to build and maintain their libraries. Prior to 1978 Presidents and their families were allowed to dispose of the presidential archives as they saw fit, something I'm sure Nixon would have preferred!! But now they are responsible for keeping and maintaining it, quite right too!!
When we came out of the Library we got onto the shuttle bus that took us down to the museum store and the street where all the cafes are. As soon as we got onto the bus some senile old guide started handing out very small bits of blank paper to each passenger. This was a slow and painful process as his fingers were obviously knarled and arthritic, we thought perhaps there was going to be some kind of quiz as he also handed out pencils. Well when we got down the road to the museum store everybody had to get off the bus and place their bits of paper into his envelope marked 'Gift Store' he then explained it was to survey the number of people getting off at the 'Gift Store' . As the bus holds no more than a dozen people and only goes to the Gift store this seemed an elaborate way of counting people. Yet another example of old people behaving in a completely irrational manner and getting on everyone's nerves. Why they can't spend their twilight years sitting on their porches and talking to their cats god only knows!!
It's getting really hot now, today the temperature was 93F, I've no idea what that is in centrigrade but I'd hazzard a guess at hot as fuck!! Tomorrow we're off to Hot Springs to take the waters. Actually Sue and I just want to go for a massage and a facial. Andy is starting to wonder how we have time to do any sight seeing as we are spending so much time having beauty treatments!! Believe me I needed them!! I've now been in the States for 2 weeks and in another 2 weeks I'll be in Mexico so I need to start reading up on that leg of the trip. It's hard work all this travelling!!

Some more photos

2006-05-21T18:12:00.000Z

Ury, Elizabet and John in Choquequirao on the left and
Rach and me horse trekking in Peru on the right.

Photos!!

2006-05-21T17:50:00.000Z

Here's donkey........

I finally got the hang of this photo thing.... although it takes about 5 minutes to load each picture so don't expect too many this time. This is me at Choquequirao on the first day of the trek, note the red face!! This is Ringworm Romeo who saved my life on the trek!!

I'm going to Memphis!! - 20th May

2006-05-21T03:59:00.000Z

Yes I'm going to Memphis tomorrow so I'm really excited. We've been travelling around Mississipi from Natchez to Jackson to Tupelo and to Oxford. It's the poorest of all the States and you can really tell, the people here have absolutely nothing especially the blacks. They may not have segregation laws here anymore but the blacks still live separate lives and live in the worsed areas. Having said that it's been hilarious trying to understand what the fuck people down here are saying. They can't even say the name of their own State instead they say 'Missippi' they miss out the bit in the middle altogether!! I usually have to ask people to repeat themselves several times before I get what they are saying.
It's just as bad for them, when I ask anyone a question they just look aghast at me as they obviously don't understand a word I'm saying either.
Yesterday Sue and I were looking for a salon to get our legs waxed, well you wouldn't believe the reaction we got when we started asking around. We couldn't understand why everyone looked so shocked when we asked where we could get waxing done, one girl looked at me like I'd asked her if she knew where I could get my nipples pierced. We eventually found somewhere but apparently down south waxing is highly unusual, most women still shave and can't understand why any beauty treatment should be painful!!
Anyway today we went to Tupelo, Elvis's birthplace. You can go and visit the little 2 room shack he was born in and lived in until he was 3 years old. The family then got thrown out as they couldn't keep up the payments on the money they'd borrowed to build it. They were obviously dirt poor but the shack isn't unlike the houses that most Mississippians still live in today. But tomorrow I'm going to Memphis to see Graceland!! I can't wait. We're also going to stay at the Peabody which is the famous hotel that has the ducks in the lobby and everyday they get in the lift and go back up to the top floor where they live, how cute is that?

Adios South America - 17th May

2006-05-18T02:52:00.000Z

I'm sorry I haven't posted anything for a while but it's going by really quickly and I never seem to have enough time now I've met up with Sue and Stinky. So here's a quick update.
I went on to Bariloche after El Calafate which was up in the Lake district and a very pretty holiday town. I spent a few days visiting more lakes, mountains and forests and had a lovely time. I met some really lovely people including a couple of girls from the States (Terry and Jamie) who were really good company. I had a couple of trips where I was the only non Spanish speaking person there so that proved to be a challenge to my linguistic skills. They were all Argentinian so they spent the day taking the piss out of me for being English. At the end of the day I did get a round of applause for being a good sport.

After Bariloche it was back to B.A. where I tried to see a few things that I missed last time. I also wanted to do some shopping as the clothes are a lot cheaper in Argentinian than the States. The most important things to buy were underwear as most of mine had turned a grubby shade of grey from Peruvian launderettes. Well trying to buy a 34E bra in B.A. is not exactly easy, in fact in most lingerie shops I got chased out into the streets and stoned for not being able to fit into anything smaller than a 32B. Eventually one kind lady persuaded me to try on a D cup which I did and was very happy that it actually fitted ok. Hurrah I thought I must have lost some weight but then I looked down and realised that my tits weren’t really smaller they’d just fallen down to my belly!!

Anyway I eventually headed off to Miami where I then had to get another 2 internal flights to reach Birmingham. Image how pleased I was when I finally arrived there to find that my luggage had gone to New Mexico!! I suppose it was going to happen at some point and at least they knew where it was. It wouldn’t be able to get to Birmingham until the next morning but I did get it back.

Anyway Sue and Andy turned up at the hotel about 10 minutes after I got there and despite Andy and his stinky old ways it was good to see them. We spent the next few days in Birmingham, Montgomery and Selma, towns that are famous for their connections with the Civil Rights movement. Birmingham was where Bull Conner turned the dogs and hoses on the demonstrators (including children) in front of the world’s cameras, Montgomery was where Rose Parks kicked off the bus boycott and Selma was where the famous March on Montgomery started. It was really interesting and very upsetting but was all made worthwhile when I actually got to meet one of the Civil Rights movement’s heroes Reverent Robert Graetz. He was in Montgomery for the 50 year anniversay of the bus boycott and we met him first at the Rosa Parks museum and later at the State Capitol. He was a good friend of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr’s and was actively involved in the bus boycott so he was a pretty amazing person to meet. He was very patient as I was a bit star struck and tongue tied when I spoke to him but I did manage to ask if I could have a photo taken with him. It made my day!!

After Alabama we travelled to Mississippi to visit Mobile. We drove from there along the coast road past Biloxi and Gulfport and eventually into Louisiana. We couldn’t believe the mess of the coastal towns this long after Katrina. It all looks as though the hurricane only happened last week!! I know I’ve seen it on the telly a million times but nothing prepares you for it. For miles and miles along the coast there is complete and utter devastation. The trees that are still standing are strewn with sheets, towels and curtains and there is hardly any evidence of it being cleaned up. Most people that have moved back are living in caravans on their old plots but I doubt if many of the businesses will bother reopening.

It was the same when we got to New Orleans where we heard lots of tales about what happened. Most shocking of all was the behaviour of the New Orleans Police Department. They are apparently the most corrupt in the whole States and were actively looting businesses and homes during Katrina. We asked people about the stories of the police going AWOL but it turns out that they hadn’t gone AWOL they just didn’t work for the police. They were on the payroll but not working!! Anyway poor New Orleans has not recovered at all. Even though the French Quarter was relatively unscathed not all the businesses have been able to re-open as they can’t get any staff. People can’t afford to come back to the city as they have no homes and the rents have gone sky high as landlords took full advantage of the money FEMA were willing to pay to house their people. One girl told us about a friend of hers who was marched at gunpoint out of his flat so that the landlord could rent it a much higher rate to FEMA!! So although New Orleans is a very pretty town with lots of period houses it’s also a den of inequity and probably not a nice place to live!!

We are now in Natchez which is back in Mississippi where we’ll be for the rest of the week I think. I’ll try to do more regular updates now that I’m all caught up. I hope everyone is well, write and tell me all your gossip.

Patagonian Express - 5th May

2006-05-05T12:40:00.000Z

I'm now in Patagonia but it really is a express trip as there is so much to see and I'm starting to run out of time. The distances are too huge to cover in just 10 days so I've had to pick out a few things to do this time and I'll just have to come back again!!

Well I left Calafate last week but only after an 8 hour delay to my flight. I went to check in for the 1pm flight only to be told it wasn´t leaving until 6pm so I headed back to Ushuaia and went to the National Park before it started to rain again. Then I decided to go to the Naval museum to get out of the rain but it was actually really interesting so I spent two hours in there. There was lots of stuff about all the shipwrecks in Tierra del fuego and the museum is also on the site of the old prison. Ushuaia was supposed to be a penal colony but it never quite came off instead they sent a load of prisoners down there at the end of the 19th century and they built their own prison. It mainly housed serial killers and in the 1930's a lot of political prisoners. The cells are all still there and each one tells a story of a different prisoner. I particularly liked the one about the young boy with big ears who was nicknamed the short, fat big eared man (catchy hey?) he apparently killed about 8 childredn in Buenos Aires before finally being caught. At one point they operated on him and reduced the size of his ears as they believed they were the source of his evil ways!! He eventually died when a few other prisoners kicked the crap out of him, so he was obviously a pretty bad egg.

Anyway then I headed back to the airport only to be told the plane wouldn't actually reach Ushuaia until 7.30!! We eventually took off at 9pm so it was a long old day and when I finally got to El Calafate I just went straight to the hotel and crashed out.
El Calfate is a lovely little town by a lake and not far from the National Glacier Park. It was only built in 1927 and has a very strong German and Swiss influence with all of it's little wooden chalet style buildings. It's a bit chocolate box but it is sweet. I spent the next day getting my trips to the Glaciers and parks booked up and on Monday I went to Perito Moreno. This is the most amazing of all the glaciers I've seen here. We drove about an hour out of El Calafate to the National Park and then had a 20 minute boat ride across the lake to reach the glacier. It's an incredible site as you approach it as it's the most wonderful blue colour and is 60 metres high. I didn't quite know what to expect, I think I thought it would be like a big ice berg floating around in the water but it's actually a solid block of ice wedged between mountains. It was only 800 years ago that the mountains surrounding it were actually below the water level of the glacier. It's advancing at a rate of one and a half metres a day which is bloody fast compared with the Antartic Glaciers which apparently advance at a rate of a couple of metres a year. We then got off the boat and walked towards the glacier where we put on our crampons as this was the start of our ice trekking!!
It was great we spent the whole morning walking across the glacier as it's lowest part which was about 200 metres above sea level. The guides showed us a sink hole that went down into the glacier for several metres and we took turns in being suspended over it to get a better look. the part of the glacier we were walking on was about 400 years old so some of us had a drink of the water where it had melted and lived to tell the tale. It tasted fine to me!!
Eventually we had to come back down to the shore and it was the descent that finally did for me and I lost my footing and slid down the glacier on my bum so Clare thanks for asking about my botty but it is now sore again!! I managed to get away with just a few bruises to my right knee and a lot of bruises to my diginity!! The guide then told us we were going to see something you never see on any other glacier so as we came over a ridge and into a crevass what did we see? a bar!! complete with optics and of course ice!! The park rangers had built a little wooden bar and served whisky to everyone at the end of their trek. As I don't like whisky I just had some more 400 year old water.

We then got the boat back to the park rangers hut and had a picnic on the shore whilst watching the glacier and luckily enough we saw it calve. Calving is where great big chunks of the glacier fall off into the water. It's an amazing site and the waves it produces are huge. The bit we saw calving was about the size of a double decker bus!! The glacier constanly creaks and groans in a really eery way so you're never sure when it's going to calve so we were very lucky.

We then headed back to the boat which took us back to our bus. The bus then drove around the park so we could go and see the glacier from the north side and that was even better. On the south side we'd approached it from sea level but on the north you approach it from above and they have built a series of balconies directly in front of it so you can get an even better view. I have to say it's one of the most beautiful sites I have ever seen in my life. It calved again when I was on the balcony but only a little bit. I could easily stand and watch it all day it was great even if it had given me a bruised bum!!

I did another trip to Upsala glacier which is bigger than Perito Moreno but nowhere near as impressive as you don't get to see as much of it. I saw it from a boat about 800 metres away and it's 4km wide at the front but goes back for miles. Some of the top of it is quite flat and up unil the 1960's pilots would use it to practice landings and take offs for their antartic trips. We saw another 5 smaller glaciers that day and walked through a very beautiful forrest in the National Park where I saw a red headed woodpecker and a condor flew right over my head!! In fact he flew so low I thought he was going to land on me!! How mad would that have been???

So yesterday I flew from El Calafate to Bariloche which is up in the Lake district. There are loads of things I want to do here but I only have a few days then I fly back to Buenos Aires on monday. I can't believe I've got less than a week left in South America!!

The one good thing about leaving South America is that I will be able to get a decent meal. I am really sick of eating meat or spaghetti. Actually they call it spaghetti but when it arrives it is always thick glutinous Japanese style soup noodles which is not really what you want with you bolognese sauce is it?? Breakfasts here are also a bit weird. Most Argentinians don't seem to bother much, they'll just have a cup of coffee and a medialuna which is a tiny croissant but in the bigger hotels you usually get a buffet breakfast which mostly consists of cake!! In Brazil our breakfast at the shitty hotel had 13 different kinds of cake, how yukky is that? Luckily the hotel i'm in at the moment does toast although the bread is rather sweet. Anyway that's enough for today I must go and get some trips booked and go for a walk around the lake. I'll probably do one more post before I leave B.A. next Wednesday.

I hope everyone is well, I saw the weather forecase for the UK this weekend and it looks shite, what happened to your spring?
Joe did you get my text on your birthday? Fat 'Ed and Stinky how is your trip going? Graeme, Susan and John I haven't heard from you!! Have you forgotten me already? Or are you busy sorting out all the shite I left behind??? Love to everyone!! XX

The city at the end of the world - 28th April

2006-04-28T22:44:00.000Z

Well I told you I was going to Ushuaia which is the southern most city in the world but when I got here yesterday it was closed!! It`s the end of the season so I was expecting it to be quiet but almost everything has already closed down. I managed to do a boat trip today on the Beagle Channel which was great as we saw Fur Seals and Sea Lions. It was really cute as there were loads of pups. Most of the penguins have gone but we managed to see 2 who must have forgotten to leave when the others went.

Ushuaia is in a beautiful setting with the Beagle Channel in front and snow capped mountains behind. It´s a fantastic sight when the plane comes in to land. The weather was great when I arrived but this afternoon it pissed it down and turned quite cold and windy. I´ve managed to get my onward flight to El Calafate changed to tomorrow so I´m off to see the Glaciers and hopefully do some ice treking. After that I´m probably heading back to Buenos Aires or Bariloche depending on where I can get a flight to. Bill, I did put my Tango partner back before I left B.A. but I might pop back for a final twirl on my way to Miami!!

A night at the Opera - Thursday 27th April

2006-04-27T11:03:00.000Z

Well I`m now at the airport waiting for my flight to Ushuaia. It felt very sad saying goodbye to Rach and Sam this morning. Rach is off to New York tonight and Sam has one more week in B.A. and then heads off to Peru to do some treking.
We have had such a good time in B.A. I`m really going to miss it. Last night we went to the famous Teatro Colon to see an opera (Don Giovanni) it was lovely. We had seats in a box which was great. The theatre is huge, in fact it has one of the biggest stages in the world. It`s very beautiful and makes our West End theatres look a bit naff. I have a really bad cough at the moment although I managed to get through the whole performance without making too much noise. Someone was mad enough to bring a baby and the poor child started crying about half way through. People got really annoyed so they were kicked out pretty swiftly. How bonkers to take a baby to the opera!!
I have also been for a couple of runs whilst we`ve been here. Yes I know it`s hard to believe but it`s true. Sam has been running regularly here so I`ve been out with her for a couple of mornings. There`s a really beautiful park just near Sam`s flat so we run around the lake there. It`s full of dog walkers who have about 10 dogs on leads at a time. I thought at first they must keep them all tied up but they actually let them go, how they don`t loose them I`ll never know. They also have aerobics classes in the park which would be great if I could understand lessons in Spanish, I have a difficult enough time with classes in English let alone Spanish!!
The other thing I have noticed about B.A. is that the women are really thin. Apparently they have the highest rates of anorexia in the world. It`s reflected in the clothes sizes too. Everything in the shops is really tiny, we saw some jeans that started in waist size 20 inches!!!! Needless to say I found it very hard to fit my fat arse into anything here and had to go in search of a Fat Birds shop.
Another thing about Argentinia is the service in restaurants and cafes. I`ve already told you how rude they are here but waiting staff also seem genuinely shocked when you order an item off the menu. Usually they look at you in a completely mystified way. At first you think this is because they can`t understand your Spanish but even when you point to the item that you want they usually take the menu off you and peer at it with great interest as though the item you picked has only just appeared on it. It`s as if they think you`ve added something to the menu yourself. Sometimes they even take the menu away and have a very animated discussion with their colleagues before coming back and saying `Si` . Very weird!! Also the Spanish here is really different from Peru so it`s like learning a new languae. For you Spanish speakers out there the big difference is the pronounciation of the double L. Normally it`s pronounced like a Y but in Argentina it`s like `sh` which is really hard to remember. Anyway I`m off for some breakfast whilst I wait for my flight. When I arrive in Ushuaia this afternoon it will be a lot colder than B.A. but I`m really looking forward to seeing Penguins and Glaciers so it will be worth it. Hope you`re all well. Let me know all the gossip, if you don`t want to post a comment you can email me at alisonhoneyford.hotmail.com

40p trip to Brazil - Monday 24th April

2006-04-25T00:38:00.000Z

Yes it´s hard to believe I know but it cost us just 40p to get to Brazil on a bus today!! But more about that later. My last post was about Arequipa which we left last week after having a great time and seeing an Inca mummy in the museum. They have found several up in the mountains as some of the volcanoes have errupted after hundreds of years and melted the snow on the nearby mountains. The mummies were frozen in the ice but are now practically falling down the mountains. It´s a bit sad really as they were all human sacrifices. Some of them are as young as two years old.
Anyway after Arequipa we got the overnight bus to Nasca. As it was a long journey we decided to go Royal Class and get proper reclining seats to sleep in but when we got to the bus station the bus had broken down and we had to take a business class bus instead which meant the seats didn´t recline fully so we didn´t sleep too well. To add insult to injury the business class bus then broke down and we had to hitch a lift on a shitty economy class bus!! Rachael managed to get a seat next to a nice chatty bloke who didn´t understand a word she was saying but didn´t seem to mind. I got a seat next to the Farting Queen of Peru!! The bloody woman didn´t stop farting for the whole 2 hours I was sitting next to her. She then had the nerve to complain that the windows wouldn´t open!! We eventually arrived late and tired in Nasca where we were supposed to be met by the tour guide and taken to the airfield to do our fly over of the Nasca lines. The guide never showed up so we called the agent in Arequipa where we had booked the tour and I kicked off big time as we were booked on the 2pm bus out of Nasca to Lima. It eventually got sorted out but our flight over the Pampa didn´t start until 1pm so it was a bit tight for getting the bus. Anyway the flight was amazing. The Pampa where the lines and drawings are is huge. It´s just a big flat space amongst the hills and sand dunes of the desert. No one is really sure who did the drawings and lines but different theories range from landing strips for aliens to messages to the Gods. They were first spotted from the air in the 1920´s when pilots first flew over Peru. A German woman called Maria Reike then spent 50 years studying the lines and clearing away the sand and debris to uncover them all. These days you can only fly over them, no one is allowed to walk on them as they are still littered with skeletons and ceramics from the Inca period. Our flight was great. We were in the front of a 12 seater plane which I loved but poor Rach felt quite sick every time the pilot banked the plane for everyone to get a better view of the drawings. You fly really low over them so it can be very bumpy too. I loved it!!

We managed to get our 2pm bus to Lima with a few minutes to spare. This time it was a Royal Class bus and had lovely fully reclining seats but yeah you guessed it the bloody thing broke down!! This time we had a flight out of Lima to Buenos Aires at midnight to catch. We should have made it with plenty of time to spare but our bus kept having to stop for the engine to cool down. Eventually we got to Lima airport at 10pm instead of 6pm!! At least we didn´t have to hang around for our flight it went on time but I had a seat next to the Incredible Vomiting man!! Poor sod was really airsick so I managed to move seats and got a little bit of sleep. We arrived in Buenos Aires at about 7 in the morning and got a taxi to Sam´s appartment which is in a really lovely area called Palermo. It was lovely to see her after all this time but she has become a mad party girl whilst she´s been in B.A. and doesn´t usually get home until about 5 or 6 in the morning!! Rachael and I have got used to going to bed at 10pm and getting up at 5am so it´s been a bit of a shock to the system.

We were really knackered when we arrived so we had a quick kip and then went out for lunch and of course shopping!! B.A. is a fantastic city. It´s really lively and colourful. The area Sam lives in has lots of lovely shops, bars, restaurants and cafes in tree lined streets. Rach and I felt like a pair of tramps as everyone in B.A. dresses up. We decided we needed to buy new clothes so we´ve had a bit of a shopping fest since we got here.
Sam has been having Tango lessons so she took us along to her class on Saturday and it was great. Rach and I managed to bag a couple of young Argentinian studs as partners and got right into it. The whole lesson was in Spanish but we managed anyway. Tango is a very sexy and very complicated dance. Just when I´d got the hang of the steps the teacher would introduce even more. The idea is that the man leads the dance so the woman never knows what order the steps will be in. I didn´t like the idea of this much so spent most of the lesson leading my partner. At one point the girls all had to practice pushing their hands into the chest of their partners whilst he pushes back and controls the dance. I got a bit bored at this stage and was going to ask my partner if he wanted to push against my chest instead but I couldn´t work out how to say that in Spanish!! Rach thinks her partner got fed up of her as they were evenly matched at the begining but he suddenly got really good and kept trying to avoid dancing with her!!! Funnily enough no one asked us if we were coming back next week!!

After the Tango lesson we went to Cafe Tortoni to watch a Tango show. It´s a famous cafe that´s been around for over 100 years and is a great place to visit except that the staff are incredibly rude. In fact the service in B.A. in general is terrible. Waiters think nothing of ignoring you when you are trying to order. In one place we tried to order for half an hour. I thought perhaps it was just because we are English but they treat everyone the same. The shop assistants are the worsed. They hate anyone touching the clothes and get visibly annoyed when you don´t fold things up properly. Rach and I have taken to making a mess in every shop we got into just to wind them up!! I left a skirt hanging half off a hanger the other day and I thought the assistant was going to have a coronary!!

The other thing about Argentina is the incredible amount of meat they eat. We went to a restaurant the other day which was basically eat as much meat as you want for $36 pesos which is about 6 quid. This also includes a litre of wine, pudding and if you really must some salad. It was pretty obscene really (Fat Boy you would have thought you´d died and gone to heaven!!) and after a bit of steak and a couple of sausages I gave up and had a pudding instead. Oh yeah that´s another thing about Argentinian food. They have something called Dulce de Leche which is divine and I cannot imagine how I have lived without it before. Basically it tastes like condensed milk with Thorntons toffees melted in it!! It´s lovely and you can get it in cakes, biscuits, ice cream in fact anything!! Fat Éd I´ll try and bring some to the States with me when I come.

Anyway our next trip was to Iguazu Falls. We got a flight from B.A. this morning and spent the day in the National Park on the Argentinian side. It was great. We got a boat trip and they drive you into the falls so you get soaked to the skin. It´s quite scary as you are in an oversized rubber dingy which bumps around like mad. A bit like White Water rafting. We´ve had a great day and the weather has been fantastic, we actually managed to dry out while we walked around. Sam and Rach didn´t have any spare shorts so they put on their PJ´s instead!! The shameless hussies then had the nerve to go to the Sheraton for lunch!! I was no better really as my shorts had started to dry out from the bottom up so I looked as though I´d wet my pants!! God knows what they thought of us in there but we had a fantastic buffet lunch anyway.

Then we caught the bus to Brazil which costs us only 40p. We are staying here the night so we can see the Brazilian side of the Falls tomorrow. Rach and Sam have picked the shittiest hotel they could find and are making me stay in it. Sam tells me that it´s character building but called me old fashioned but I don´t like electrical cables hanging down from the shower head and I like my hotel walls not to be dripping with brown gooey stuff!! Thank God it´s only for one night!!! Rach says we can go back to the Argentinian side tomorrow and have cocktails on the terrace of the Sheraton to make up for this. Anyway that´s enough updates for now. I´ll either post again in B.A. or when I get to Tierra del Fuego.

Puno to Buenos Aires, Friday 21st April 2006

2006-04-21T23:03:00.000Z

Hi, sorry I havent posted an update for a while but I spent an hour updating the blog a few days ago and added photos but when it came to saving it the website went down for maintenance, very annoying. This might not read very well as I cant find the apostrophes and exclaimation marks on this bloody keyboard, so apologies.

I think my last update was just before we had our trip to the islands on Lake Titicaca. We went to the Floating Islands which are made of tortora reeds which get topped up every four or five weeks. The locals also make their houses and boats of these reeds as well as eating them, how weird is that. When you step onto the islands its all soft and springy, a bit like living on a matress really but I suppose plenty of folk at home do that!! I just found the exclaimation mark!!!! Next we went Taquille island which is the one where the men do all the knitting. By the age of 10 they have to be able to knit their famous red and white hats which they wear until they marry and then they have to knit and wear an all red hat. I really like this idea and I am thinking of introducing it to the UK. This would help identify all the single men!! Taquille is a bit of a weird island, its very pretty but it has the ugliest main square you ever saw. It has a handful of restaurants around it but most of them stop serving lunch at lunchtime!! We did eventually get some food but only because I stormed into the kitchen and demanded to bé fed. They probably got a donkey to spit in my soup before they brought it out.
Anyway that was more or less the end of our stay in Puno except on the last night I discovered a new pudding of bananas and condensed milk, I thought I had died and gone to heaven.

We then got an early bus out of Puno the next day and were hoping to be able to sleep for the six hour trip to Arequipa but the locals werent having any of it. First of all this bloke got up and gave a long, long talk about how poor he was and how hard life was for him. He then produced a bag of toffees and waxed lyrical for about half an hour on the three wonderful flavours. He then dishes a few out to each of the passengers and expects payment for them!! Cheeky bastard!! Just as he finished his speil another bloke gets up and starts to talk about the dangers of osteoparosis (I dont think I spelt that correctly but you know what I mean) and goes on and on in a very loud voice for bleeding ages about it. We kept waiting for the catch and eventually it came, he was trying to sell some vitamin tablets after frightening them to death about crumbling bones. So not the peaceful journey we expected.

Our next stop was Arequipa which is a very pretty city in the South West of Peru. Its very different from anywhere else in Peru, for a start it doesnt smell too badly of piss which is always a plus point. We stayed in a lovely 18th century building which the bishop used to live in. We visited the Santa Catalina Convent which until 1970 had been closed to the public for 450 years. Its like a city within a city with small cobbled streets and courtyárds. Very pretty and painted lovely bright reds and blues. Those nuns sure knew how to live!! They also had on display some barbed wired underwear that wás used for penance, makes your eyes water just thinking about it!! We also saw the room where their famous nun Ana died after 10 years of blindness and some illness. She was made a saint after apparently curing people from cancer. Rachael saíd she wasnt so bloody clever if she couldnt cure her own blindness!!

Arequipa was also oúr base for visitng the Colca Canyon. We took a two day trip out there to see the Canyon itself which is deeper than the Grand Canyon but more importantly to see the Andean Condors. It was fantastic, they swoop so low over you it feels as if you can reach out and touch them. They have a wing span of about 3 metres and look absolutely incredible. Which is why they are revered or worshipped by the locals. They only eat carrion that is at least 3 days old, god knows why, sounds gross to me!! Sometime if they get too hungry the locals will sacrifice a poor bloody donkey for them!! I know one that might volunteer this year. From Arequipa we went to Nasca but more about that later this weekend as I am now in Buenos Aires and I need to go and eat an empanda and do a tango!!

Choquequirao on a donkey!!

2006-04-14T02:08:00.000Z

Well I've finally arrived back from my mad trek to Chocquequirao. It was the most amazing and the most harrowing experience of my entire life and I still can't quite believe that I did not die up on that mountain. My arms, legs and face are covered in mosquito bites. I'm badly sunburnt, I've twisted my ankle and I'm covered in bruises. Other than that it was great!!
Anyway this is what happened. On day one they collected me from the hotel at 6am along with a really nice couple from Belgium called Ury and Elizabet. They took us to the bus station but our private bus did not seem to have been arranged so they put us on a public bus where everyone else stank of piss. Our seats were double booked and poor Elizabet spent most of the four bumpy hours throwing up out of the window. We arrived in Cachora only to find that we did not have a cook for the trek but our guide John said not to worry as he would do the cooking for us. What a mistake that was!! The man was a worse cook than me, we had rice or spaghetti at almost every meal including breakfast!! The first day we went downhill for about 1500 metres on rocky or muddy tracks which zig zagged down the mountain. The path was cut into the mountain a year ago and has been hit by continuous landslides eversince so it was a bloody nightmare. My knees and feet felt really battered at the end of the day as we had walked for 7 hours only stopping long enough to eat a Snickers bar!!
Our guide told me that day one was the easiest day!! The next morning we crossed a bridge to another mountain and zig zagged our way up to 3300 metres. I was dying by now as the altitude was killing me. John (our guide) managed to get me a donkey for about 3km of the 20km walk so that helped a little but I was not in good shape at this point. One day three we got to Chocquequirao and it was absolutely beautiful. I don't really know how to describe other that it's a pre Inca settlement on top of an incredibly remote mountain. I was really glad I'd made it up there especially when I heard that lots of people give up half way as it's so tough. On the way up we had seen adders, tarantulas, been charged by a bull and chased by rabid dogs. The scenery was probably the most stunning I have ever seen with beautfiul green mountains, waterfalls, trpoical vegetation and the most colourful birds and insects you can imagine. It's right up in the cloud forest so it has a really eery feel to it. John, Elizabet and myself were the only people up there which made it even more amazing when you think that Machu Pichu has over 2000 people on it a day.
The real problem for me and my guide was how to get my fat arse back down the mountain and up the first mountain to go home. We managed to get the same donkey from the day before from a 10 year old boy. His name was something long and complicated in Quecha that sounded like Romeo something or other. Anyway I nicknamed him Ringworm Romeo as he was covered in dirt from head to foot and his head was full of lice. He was my hero at the end of the trip as I basically rented him and his donkey for the two days it was going to take to get back to Cachora. Anyway day three was all downhill but I felt quite confident now that I had a donkey to do all the hard work, how wrong I was!! First of all Ringworm Romeo's older sister wanted me to have this mad looking black donkey but as soon as I got onto him he tore off down the mountain at a mad gallop to cries from my guide and Romeo of "Change the Donkey, Change the Donkey!!". Eventually big sis agreed to let me have the donkey from the day before. His name was Trechera which apparently translates to drunken donkey in Quecha!! Anyway I tried to mount the poor bloody donkey but he obviously had painful memories from the day before and moved at the last minute so I went flying in the air and landed on my back much to the amusement of the rest of the village. (I laughingly call it a village as it only has 3 houses).
Eventually we set off but it wasn't long before I was begging to get off again. The donkey did not have a proper saddle, instead he had a wooden cross frame across which we had slung my mattress roll. He also did not have any reins or stirrups which meant that going down the incredibly steep path was absolutely terrifying. The path is at the edge of the mountain so the drop down is only inches away at any time. Donkey's are very sure footed and very confident about where to step but each time Trechera got too close to the edge and the soil crumbled away because of the landslide I would crap myself. At one point an adder (yes a bloody snake!!) crossed our path and my guide was busy killing it so Trechera decided to walk straight down the side of the mountain instead of taking the path. This meant he was almost vertical going down and I had nothing other than his mane to hold onto. The top half of my body was basically hanging over his head and staring into the abyss!! I tried to attract the guide's attention but he was too busy being Indiana Jones to notice that I was hanging off the edge of the cliff. Anyway I refused to stay on the donkey as long as we were going downhill which meant that it was a very long day and we didn't get back to camp until after dark. Day four was a lot better as we crossed the bridge and just had a long uphill journey. I managed to stay on the donkey for most of the day as it wasn't as scary going up the mountain unless I looked down too often. A couple of times the donkey took a short cut as he knew the route so well. Ringworm Romeo camped with us on the third night and even helped with the cooking. When we eventually rode into Cachora I could have kissed the ground. A local family who lived in a small adobe house made dinner for us and looked after me until the bus turned up. They also made some Chica which is the Inca corn beer and tastes like shite but I thought it would be rude to refuse. As soon as a fresh brew is ready the Chica maker raises a flag outside the house and before you know it the whole village is in the house and it's turned into a bar, neat idea hey??
Anyway I eventually got back to my hotel in Cusco at about 6pm on day four. I had not had a shower for four days so I could not wait to get cleaned up. My clothes were in a bad way as my tent had leaked on the first and second nights and everything got soaked in the rain. This meant that I had to wear the same clothes for the whole four days, how gross is that??
Having said all that I really loved the camping part of it. It was wonderful to wake up every morning and look at at mountains and cloud forest. I'm even thinking of buying a tent when I get back!!
Anyway while all this was going on Rachael was doing the Inka trail to Machu Pichu. She had a fabulous time and really loved it but she had terrible altitude sickness and had to be given oxygen. At one point her guide and porters were talking about carrying her down on a stretcher. So we've both been through the wars a bit now.

We are now in Puno after a beautiful train jounrney from Cusco which took 10 hours but was thoroughly enjoyable as we had seat in first class.

It's time you saw some pictures of all this but there is not a USB port at this place so I'll post them up as soon as I can.
Thanks for your comments. Yes Colin and Sue I do know the difference between a horse and a donkey, at least my arse does now!! You should see the bruises!! Tomorrow we are going out on a boat to the Island on Lake Titicaca. Firsy we go to the floating islands made of Tortora reed and then we are going to an island called Taquille where the men do all the knitting, how mad is that??? We're tehn off to Arequipa to see the Colca Canyon and hopefully spot some condors. We actually saw one today which was a great treat and a really amazing sight. Will post again within a week. Ali

Friday 8th April - London to Cusco

2006-04-07T15:44:00.000Z

Hi, I know it's only been 3 days but I thought you might like to know that we arrived safe and well in Peru. The flight to Miami was pretty awful, the food was crap, you had to pay for your alcoholic drinks and the cabin crew were all chewing gum and hiding from the passengers. It took 2 hours to transfer to our Lima flight once we got there but the Lima leg of the journey was much better and we arrived on time on Tuesday night. We were so knackered by then that we just crashed out at 11:30. Next morning we were up at 5 which was a bit of a bummer but it gave us time to have a wander around Lima before our 13:30 flight to Cusco.

We had a stroll around the historic district and went to the Cathedral which is a fine example of Colonial Spanish bling!! Lots of gold and silver and a penchant for using real hair on their statues!! We had a guide called Jesus and he was great, told us loads about the history of Peru and also a lot about the Presidential elections which are taking place this Sunday. Apparently lots of Peruvians are getting their passports and American visas up to date as they are planning to leave the country if a certain candidate wins. Apparently he wants to take Peru back to pre colonial times!! Bonkers hey? Whilst we were in the cathedral a Japanese documentary crew were filming in there as they have dug up the remains of Pizarro to examine them. It was a bit a ghoulish to see but very interesting.

We arrived in Cusco on time the flight there was great as we had fantastic views flying over the Andes. As soon as we got there we both felt the altitude and I got breathless and poor Rach felt dizzy and sick. We've had a few days to get used to it now so it's not so bad but I have to walk very slowly (yes even slower than I normally do) to avoid sounding like I smoke 20 fags a day.

Cusco is lovely and the weather was great when we arrived although we have had a couple of showers too. On our first night we got caught in a shower and decided to buy plastic rain ponchos. Rach chose a yellow one and I had a red one but when Rach opened hers up it had a red hood. She was not happy with her purchase but as we'd bought them for cash off a six year old girl on a street corner we did not think that the Consumer Protection Act would apply!!

Yesterday we went horse trekking to some Inca ruins around Cusco. Rach got a nice lively young horse called Junior and I got a grisly old mare with the unlikely name of William Wallace!! We had a great day out but when we came back I smelt of horse so bought myself a silver and turquoise bracelet to make myself feel better. In fact we have already done so much shopping that we have to go out today and buy a new bag to carry all the extra stuff!!

Tomorrow Rach is off to Machu Pichu and I'm off to Choquequirao. My trek has been cut short by one day because of the elections but the good news is that I can do the hardest part of it on the back of a horse. We get back on Tuesday night and then we are off to Lake Titicaca (great name hey? Tits and Pooh!!) on Wednesday morning. Apparently it is the highest navigable lake in the world. Why you would distinguish between navigable and non navigable is a mystery to me. Graeme and Andy it's the kind of stuff you would know so please enlighten me.

Anyway hope everyone is ok. Not that I give a shit of course!!

Introducing Donkey...

2006-04-03T14:00:00.000Z

Having spent so much of my life with asses it's only right and fitting that they should join me on my new adventure in South America. My brother has very cruelly suggested that all Peruvian donkeys should be given steriod injections as one of the poor sods is going to have to haul my fat arse up a mountain when I get there. So I'm waving goodbye to Billing Projects and my Manolo Blahniks and saying hello to backpacks, irregular showers and ugly shoes. What the fuck was I thinking!!!!

Here's the itinerary...

2006-04-03T13:00:00.000Z

Date	Transport	From	To
4/4/2006	Flight	London	Miami
	Flight	Miami	Lima
5/4/2006	Flight	Lima	Cusco
7/4/2006	Trek	Cusco	Choquequirau
12/4/2006	Train	Cusco	Puno
	Bus	Puno	Arequipa
	Bus	Arequipa	Colca Canyon
	Bus	Colca Canyon	Cotahuasi Canyon
	Bus	Arequipa	Nasca
	Bus	Nasca	Lima
23/4/2006	Flight	Lima	Buenos Aires
		Buenos Aires	Iguazu Falls
		Iguazu Falls	Buenos Aires
27/4/2006	Flight	Buenos Aires	London
27/4/2006	Flight	Buenos Aires	Ushuaia
1/5/2006	?	Ushuaia	El Calafate
		El Calafate	Bariloche
		Bariloche	Mendoza
		Mendoza	Buenos Aires
10/5/2006	Flight	Buenos Aires	Miami
11/5/2006	Flight	Miami	Birmingham, Al
		Montgomery	AL
		Selma	AL
		Mobile	AL
		Waynesboro	MS
		Jackson	MS
		Tupelo	MS
		Oxford	MS
		Clarksdale	MS
		Helena	AR
		Pine Bluff	AR
		Hotsprings	AR
		Little Rock	AR
		Russellville	AR
		Harrison	AR
		Fayetteville	AR
		Muskogee	OK
		Tulsa	OK
		Chandler	OK
		Guthrie	OK
		Arcadia	OK
		Oklahoma City	OK
		Anadarko	OK
		Clinton	OK
		Elk City	OK
		Borger	TX
		Amarillo	TX
		Lubbock	TX
		Abilene	TX
		Dallas	TX
		Kilgore	TX
		Galverston	TX
		San Antonio	TX
		Austin	TX
		Frederickburg	TX
		San Angelo	TX
		Alpine	TX
12/6/2006	Bus	Presidio	Ojinga
12/6/2006	Bus	Ojinga	Chihuahua
14/6/2006	Train	Chihuahua	Los Mochis
18/6/2006	Flight	Los Mochis	Mexico City
23/6/2006	Bus	Mexico City	Puebla
	Bus	Puebla	Oaxaca
	Bus	Oaxaca	San Cristobal de las Casas
	Bus	San Cristobal de las Casas	Palenque
	Bus	Palenque	Campeche
	Bus	Campeche	Merida
	Bus	Merida	Uxmal
	Bus	Merida	Chichen Itza
	Bus	Chichen Itza	Tulum
	Bus	Tulum	Cozumel
	Bus	Cozumel	Cancun
15/7/2005	Bus	Cancun	Miami
16/7/2005	Flight	Miami	London

The world atlas(s)...

2006-03-29T09:16:00.000Z