More London

My last post was actually on Christmas Eve, and that night we discovered that our les mis tickets were for a show that didnt exist.... we rocked up to the theatre and we were told that they told the sellers the wrong information and they sold 130 tickets to a show that doesnt exist.

That was dissapointing, but the Christmas Dinner the next day more than made up for it. It was my first traditional Christmas dinner and my family certainly delivered. We had roast ham, roast turkey, brussel sprouts with butter, roast potatoes, steamed vegies, yorkshire pudding and trifle. We all left the table absolutely stuffed, and Monica even bought christmas crackers which i lost 4 in a row.

The next day we took on the English Population and went shopping in the boxing day sales. It was like Pitt Street but worse, with a huge mob outside of selfridges and co, largely asian pushing and shoving to get in at 11:30 in the morning.

It was pretty crazy that day, with the whole city packed with shoppers. We all bought stuff except for Andrew, i got a few nice shirts, and im sure alicia and co will approve, i got a ysl shirt, some nice cufflinks, a few nice ties, including a dior which my cousin gave me. Also picked up a really nice suit, all presents from my cousins.

Today i saw the british museum, which was awesome, i spent about 6 hours in there, there was so much to see. It was awesome, the highlights are definitely the egyptian and greek sections, they have pieces of the parthenon and a lot of mummy and egyptian artifacts. I saw the rosetta stone, and the lindow man (peat bog).

There are also extensive european, celtic, near east, chinese, korean, african, american and there was a katana exhibition which i really enjoyed. The museum itself is beautiful, and huge, i definitely didnt see it all but it was amazing just to see all these thousand year old artifacts, the detail and quaility which is not available today. The british take entire rooms from other countries like a the palace walls from nineveh and the giant guardian statues from assyria.

Its weird to see all these things in a sterile environment, they seem slightly out of place.

London is great, best chicks to far in my opinion.
Enjoying myself immensely.

Miles

London - MERRY CHRISTMAS

Firstly, Merry Christmas to all my loyal readers, even those losers who dont comment.

With that out of the way, more about me!

We left rio without incident, driven by a guy who called himself
"Speedy Gonzales" and "Rocketman". Hey but at least he spoke english and was an entertaining man. Nothing i have ever seen will every compare with south american driving but i hear its a latin thing, i'll see the same in spain and italy.

We arrived in London to discover we were almost reported as missing persons. My family here got my arrival date wrong and were expecting us to arrive the day before. Luckily they called my parents and sorted it out before the police were involved...

Its always great to see family and moreso family that you havent seen in such a long time. We were greeted very warmly by my Aunty,Uncle, Cynthia and Thomas. The cost of living in london is ridiculously expensive. You will not find a meal for less than £3 which is about 8 Aussie. A meal at a pub, such as the fish and chips we had today will cost you about £8 which is 20 Aussie.

Cars tho are cheap, walking past the lamborghini dealership, with the aston martin db7 parked outside, we sat that a murcielago was only £206,000. The cars here are cheap cos i think there is no luxury car tax, or very little. Just 2nite, i saw a Porsche GT2, Murcielago and DB7. Carrera 4s are everywhere.

Tonight we are going to Les Miserable, at the west end, and we quickly to harrods before it closed for the night. We also went on the London Eye, but couldnt go to any of the museums or galleries cos it is christmas eve.

Tomorrow will be a write off day interms of going out as everything is closed so we will spend the day bumming with my family.

Uncles Roast Pork was as good as the legends say and im sure the others would agree the hospitality has been spectacular.

Public Transport in London is so easy, especialy since we are able to ask for directions and understand them, unlike the entire south america. I really like London as a city, its not too crowded, transport is good and the city is pretty, with its old buildings and history poring out of every part of it.

The only complaint i have is the cost of living here, but i spose if you were to work here, it would be ok. The price of housing is ridiculous, think sydney prices but in pounds.

Let me now introduce my City Love Rankings
1. London - Culture, History and Class.
1. New York - So Modern, So Busy, So Alive
3. Santiago - A south america sydney
4. Cusco - Nice little city, cheap food, cheap everything
4. Rio - Potential beach chicks, crap climate
5. Lima - Ghetto, only safe areas are tourist ones and there u can get robbed by the shopkeepers who overcharge like crazy
6. Puerto Maldonaldo - Just a Jungle/Dirt Ghetto

Alby's Rio Explosion

Day 2 in Rio:

we had an awesome brazilian bbq lunch buffet which only cost us 15 reals which is about 5 US dollars. Waiters come along with huge skewers of meat and cut it off for you. There is also a decent selection of salads and other food also. We all stuffed ourselves, but alby was weak, only managing a small amount of food. This was the first sign of things to come.

Went to the Chris the Redeemer Statue. 30 Reals. Worth every cent.
We could not even see the statue from the base of it, it was that foggy. Visibility was about 5 meters and tehre was a decent wind blowing. We had about 1 second glimpses of some parts of rio, but that was about all.

We then headed to ipanema, which seems to be a richer part of rio, more trendy boutiquey shops. After walking around for a while, we decided to catch a taxi home.
It was then that albys promises of explosions came to fruition. We got into the taxi and were in it for about 5 minutes, maybe 5 minutes from our hostel. The taxi had stopped in traffic and suddenly, alby said:

" hey guys u reckon maccas has a toilet?"

the next thing we know we heard the door of the taxi open and close and alby was running accross the street. The driver looked at us , we looked at the driver. Both as stunned as the other. We managed to explain to the driver that alby ran for a toilet, got him to pull over and we got out.

We went to maccas to look for him and calling into the toilet, we heard weak reply that he was in there. All i can say is, im glad he made it, before the explosion overcame him.

The driver must have thought we were gonna do a runner on him, alby just suddenly got up and ran for maccas. I guess u just had to be there.

Miles

The Santiago Intercontinental and Rio

So, we got in at 3am in the morning to santiago airport, which is actually quite nice, and found noone there that knew our situation. We ended up talking to the lady incharge of lost and found, and with her broken english managed to tell us that lan customers stayed at the intercontinental.

So go to the intercontinental we did, with the airport taxi and slept a few shjort hours before getting up to breakfast. the rooms were awesome as was to be expected from a 5 star, huge king sized bed, aircom, huge tvs,hifi.. the works.

definitely recommend it to ppl going to santiago!

the city itself was quiet, but that can be partially attributed to the fat that it was a sunday, but apprently it is a more quiet city. the quality of chicks has also picked up here, but i didnt get a photo, sorry sandy, cos i didnt really have the change, only being there one day.

santiago was great, comparable to sydney in fact, with like a george st pitt street area, which we walked through. The city seemed quite safe and we climbed to several points of the city where we were able to get a nice view of teh landscape. there are very few tall buildings in santiago, and it is nestled in a valley surrounded by mountains, some of which are snow capped and can be seem from teh city centre if you go high enough. it was all very nice.

after we left santiago, we arrivedin rio, where I am writing this from.

Rio has its bad rep, with the highest rate of killings in the world, we walked down to the beach yesterday, but cos it was overcast, there wasnt much "people watching" to be done..... today also looks a bit overcast unfortunately...

we will be leaving for the airport 2morrow, to begin our european adventure, south america has been an eye opener, lima and santiago has been 2 sides ofa coin, i dont think i will ever go to lima again but santiago is a maybe and rio i havent made my mind up as of yet.

in santiago and rio, i have found that girls get inked quite a bit... and in rio u can see tanlines from the string bikinis from all the girls....

anyway this is cositng me quite a bit...

Im outta here

Miles

The Lima Sheraton

Thats right boys and girls, i am currently on the net in the
'business centre' at the sheraton hotel in lima, peru. Yes i am a classy classy man.
Basically what happened is, lan peru screwed up and over booked the flight, kicked us off our plane and put us up in the sheraton for a day till our flight to santiago which is at 8pm.

They will also provide us with 2 nights acommodation in santiago, presumably in a hotel of at least 4 star standard, (this is 5 star btw). We will get a day to explore santiago, but we will lose a day in rio.

The rooms here are awesome, the bed is a king, the mattress is great, toilets are clean, and basically.. its a 5 star hotel room.. nothing to complain about really.

all meals are paid for, including a huge buffet breakfast, and the set menu lunch was also decent. we will leave here at 6pm 2nite so i have a few more hours to enjoy this indulgence.

we also got free tickets are compensation for this screwup. the problem is, the tickets are return from a american or south american city. Basically within the next year, i and a friend can travel say from new york to quito (equador, galapagos), for free, return.. so if any of you are interested in that, make sure u be nice to me next year, and hope that i can get a week or 2 off to use that flight...

but yeah, 5 star is great, i never thought when i started this trip that i would be spending 3 nights in a 5 star hotel... but i aint complaning...

keep in touch, tell me whats happening in sydney..

Miles

The Amazon

There isnt that much to say about the amazon.

The boat ride was ridiculously long to get there, like 5 hours, and we go to the lodge in pretty much darkness. It was interesting for us to drive down the river, not knowing if we were going to hit any logs or anything that would sink our fibreglass motorized canoe...

It is so humid in the jungle, its likke 98% humidity and i hated it. you just sit there and sweat. not to mention you have to wear long pants to guard against the thousands of insects and constant insect repellant has to be worn when not at the lodge.

i think the highlight of the 2 days in the jungle was the quote from alby about his bowel movements...

´i´m pissing outta my ass.´´

gold.

we went on a few hikes and saw some cool trees and a tarantula.. which was friggim huge, a bit bigger than my hand... but besides that, it was a bit of a low light really, just because of the climate...

anyway off to rio 2morrow

i´ll hopefully update from there.

Miles

The Inca Trail Continued..

So after making camp on night 1, with no shower, and not a real toilet in sight, i experienced my first real camping experience. However, it must be mentioned that the food was excellent, and the porters which carried our stuff for us were absolutely amazing. They carried at least 20-25 kgs on their backs, and pretty much ran all the way to each site.

Respect.

I found it hard to sleep on the ground and kept waking up in the middle of the night.

Day 2 brought us a 0530 wakeup call and at 0700 we left the campsite for dead womans pass, which would be the highest part of our hike, so for the next 2 hours, we climbed 400m to reach the pick where unfortunately the wind and fog picked up and we couldnt get a good view from the pass.

We took a quick snap on the pass, and headed down hill, where i discovered the joys of wet stone steps. Going up hill gives you burn in your muscles, but there is little mental concentration required. Going downhill however puts a lot of strain on your joints an requires you to concentrate intensely on each footstep. At this point i need to mention my trusty walking stick i bough for 3 soles. This stick saved me from serious injury on many occasions throughout theese 3 days and helped me pull my self up the steps on the uphill.

We have taken to naming our sticks 'excalibur', thats how good they were. Most likely they wont be able to come with us through customs, but we will carry them as long as we can, as they have now reached extreme sentimental value status.

So down the steps we went, slowly, painfully, slipping, getting rained on, really not a pleasant experience, and so it was for about 1.5 hours, not stop steps, it seemed taht the steps down would never end.

We reached camp for lunch and it was a 'easier' hike from that point on to the next camp site for the night, slight ups and downs, nothing as serious as the first day, but painful nonetheless. We reached camp for the 2nd night without incident, once again with me being the straggler at the end of the line. I learnt to not push as hard on this day, taking it slowly and trying to conserve my energy so that i would have something left at the end of the day and it seemed to work, i stopped much less to catch my breath and to ease the pain, and the rain cleared as the day went on, making for a much more pleasant hike.

At this point, i want to point out that at some points on this hike, the trail is usually about 1.5m wide with a sheer drop on the side and the mountain on the other. My fear of heights really didnt help in these situations. It wasnt a wide flat path, it was literally, a trail where if u were unlucky and slipped on something you could do some serious damage. Infact, a porter coming down to the lunch site on day 2 slipped and broke his kneee, and had to be carried back to the starting site on day 1.

Day 2 camp was also in a nice spot, when we arrived it was nice and warm, but the temperature quickly dropped and that night, not many people got much sleep due to the cold.

Day 3 was a more 'relaxing' day, with only about 6 hours of hiking and our group chose to take a more narrow flat path as opposed to another 2000 slippery stone steps. When the guide said narrow, i didnt realise that she actually meant NARROW. this path was like 1 m wider most of the time, and for parts it was barely a ditch in the ground. The path were a combinations of sections of mud and rock, and vegetation was barely cleared to form a walkway.

but we fought on, and even t hought it decided to rain as we approached lunch , which would also be the same place as dinner, we all made it without incident and prepared for our 0345 wake up call on day 4 and the sprint to the macchu pichu.

And so it was that on the 4th day, we woke up at night, and along with about 6 other groups waiting at the control point to be let through and pushed hard to the sun gate, which was of course at the top of the mountain. We set a blistering pace, a real powerwalk for the next 2 hours, where i really had to push my body to keep up, as our guide had said the night b4, 'dont let anyone pass you, do not stop, do not fall behind.' talk about pressure.

So at 0615 we reached teh sun gate, the and managed to not let anyone pass us, although io was practically dead when igot there. but macchu picchu was in sight and what a sight it was. The rest of the day was spent descending to the site and drinking the gatorade taht i had carried all the way from the starting point.

Heaps of pictures were taken, and macchu pichu was beautiful, but personally, more imporatnt was the achievment that i felt i had achieved in making it the whole 4 day 45 km inca trail. If you are reading this, you all know me, and you know im not the fittest person when i left, but somehow i made it, through the pain and with more than a littel help from above.

i am grateful for the experience, and i recommend anyone to do it, but i do suggest that some preparation is done before hand,just so you dont have to go through the pain and emabarassment of always being the last in line as i was. But i did make it there in the end and taht is what matters...

well that was a huge post, im signing off for now,

Miles

The Inca Trail (Long)

So here i am, returned from 4 day hike from the inca trail.

There is so much to write about these last 4 days and yet, i am kinda lost for words, which you all should know is quite a rarity.

For this trip, it truly was the journey that was important and not just the destination. Machu Pichu was beautiful, of that there is no doubt, but i think the 4 days that it took to get there was much more important.

I knew before i left for this whole trip that i was horribly underprepared to go on a hike, much less one that goes uphill for long periods of time. But i didnt realise how unprepared i was until i actually started the hike.

I think the best way to go through this is to go through each day.

Day 1:
The day started early, at 0530, which would become normal for the next few days. We started off learning to chew coca leaves, whihc are sposed to help with altitude sickness, as we were at 2800m and rising to a peak of 4215m during this trek. Coca leaves are also the raw product used to make cocaine, but anyway...

On this day, I started my hike with my buddy arrogance, and took off at a quick pace for the first part of the day, even on the first 2 initial climbs, which came after about 2 hours of flat hiking. Needless to say, after each hill, i could barely breathe and my legs were burning. But my other friend stubborness insisted that i push on as hard as I could, and i did, right up to lunchtime on day 1.

By lunch time, i was buggered and already hitting the gatorade. Gatorade would become the symbol of success and glory as this trip went on.

After lunch, we began our proper accent to our campsite for the nite, which was at an altitude of 3800m. At this time, i met a new friend, Mr pain. 1 hour after we left the lunch site, i was really struggling. My legs had pretty much died and i had 3 hours of solid climbing to go.

As i dropped further and further behind the group, Ger, an amazing 54 year old woman jono, andrew and alby, all stayed with me to encourage me in my extremely slow progress up the mountain. Literally, i would need a 5 minute break after every 5 minutes of hiking. That day will prolly rank as the most strenuous physical day of my life. It was just a pure mindless ascent with no stop, everytime i looked up, it was more stairs, more steps and more pain.

Somehow, i made it to the campsite, and the sense of achievement and the breathtaking view from the campsite made all the pain worth it. There isnt really much point trying to describe the views taht i saw on these days, but i have to say that being in the middle of the mountains, looking down on the path that you came from, not being able to see where you started, really is a feeling that must be experienced to be understood.

ill post this now incase i lose it...

Cusco

So we left lima, and flew 1 hour to a little city calle cusco which has about 300,000 people. I really like this place. This is the place that all the tourists go before they go off to macchu pichu.

You would think that this place would be a tourist ghetto, and it is to a degree, but there is less big chains here than in lima. No starbucks, pizza, maccas or burger king.

We hit the main plaza today, and it went from sunny to rain in about 1 hour, and i almost froze to death in my singlet. We then hit the markets and got some real nice bargains on some souvenirs, which ill bring back and share with some of you lucky people.

currently jono and andrew are shitting themselves cos it turns out the area for our hostel in rio is quite dangerous and they are desperately looking for alternate accomodation...

really looking forward to the start of the tour of the sacred valley 2morrow, and a mini 1.5 hour hike to test our fitness before we do the serious 8 hour a day 3 day hike.

comment u fools.
holla.

Lima Part 2

Wow, yesterday was quite a day. We took it easy at first and went down to the local plaza/park place where it is quite touristy. After lunch tho, me alby and andrew decided to cab it down to the main cathedral in the main square of lima, and what a ride it was.

There was apparently some kinda parade on and so we ended up stuck in traffic, and the areas taht we went through were the poor areas of lima, which i think is the real lima. all the parks and neat hedges is all a facade by the government to show the tourists a "friendly" lima which can be used as photos on adds. The real lima is quite poor, and got up close and personal to these people in our ride downtown.

Its hard to describe what made it so threatening but i can liken it to driving through harlem. There were a lot of people just standing aroud, and it was obvious that if a tourist walked in that area, and you looked like you had money, it would be very danagerous. In fact, our hotel receptionist told us EXPLICITLY not to walk in these areas.

The taxi driver was quite good tho, he had nice car, a mazda 3, which is about 10000000 times better than any other car in the area. The driving here is worse than i originally thought, cars turn from across 2 lanes in heavy traffic, noone cars about lane markings, and noone has heard of indicating. we had at least 20 close calls by less than 10 cms on the way to the cathedral.

I feel a lot more comfortable in lima now, i realise taht our area here is the safest its gonna get, and although we stick out like sore thumbs here, i think its best to just take what precautions you can and prepare for the worst, ie, get robbed and lose your money.

so far, this trip has no dissapointed in the slightest, images of that poor area will stay with me my whole life, and the real tour of macchu pichy hasnt even started. I will be out of contact for a few days i think, so take care everyone..

New York - Lima

Our last day in New York was spent doing different things, i went to woodberry common, which is a bigger better homebush factory outlet, alby and andrew going to the met and holding hands in central park, and jono going to a cuban cafe...

I went nuts at woodbery, spending about 300 bucks on timberland, CK, nike and polo... its all getting mailed as obviously i cant carry it around..

trip to the airport was uneventful, as was our flight to lima.

Lima is very different to anything i've seen before. Not soon after we left the airport, we passed the slum area, which is literally buildings made out of whatever is lying around. The 'city' itself was deserted, driving laws were non existant, and there are 3 metre high fences with spikes at the top for nearly every building that we could see. The cost of living here is quite low, andrew has decided we will measure everything against hte price of mangos, which is about 1.70 soles a kilo. 1 USD = 3.26 Soles from the money changer on the street. These guys literally carry wads of cash and stand on street corners changing money for anyone that comes past.

There were also a couple of guards standing at the entrance to a building carrying sub machine guns a block from our hotel. Our hotel is quite nice tho and the people are friendly.

It's a totally differnt world from both sydney and new york, but we are looking forward to the tour and the inca trail, especially macchu pichu.

New York Part 2

Ha, judging by the lack of comments, noone checks this blog at all :D
Thats ok, cos this is mostly for my personal record anyway.

Funny Stories:
We enter espnzone in timesquare, and have a quick browse, and as we leave, one of the store attendents approaches us and says to alby "hey, my friend thinks you are really cute."
Problem was, this friend was shall we say, "no jessica alba" :P
Alby then looked at her in shock, then turned and ran outta the store like a school girl.

Yesterday, we went to see the statue of liberty, and did some major walking through the financial district and lower manhattan. Alby has started his "Hall of Fame" which is where he takes photos of all the best food places that we have eaten at so far.

We ate bagels for breakfast and giant pizza slices for lunch, all traditional New York fare. We met up with some of Jono's friends for dinner at like a hogs breath, kinda restaurant where we had burgers/ribs.

Was absolutely buggered by the end of teh day, and got home in time to see LBJ and the Cavs take Carmelo and the Nuggets to school, blowing out by about 30 points at one stage before i turned it off and went to bed.

Anyway today we hope to check out a American college and also go to empire state.

We also managed to see the WTC site, which was quite sad, such a huge gap where the towers used to be...

New York New York!

So, Its 7am in the morning and i'm getting rorted as we speak, paying $1US for 10 minutes of internet time.

The flight was long, but not unbearably so, and it has really beed great so far.

Funny Stories:
Alby's Dad almost gets the information desk to page him at Sydney Airport.

I dont recognise my own bag at LAX, and tell the flight attendent its lost, only to realise that the bag we saw going around which looks strangely like mine is actually mine. Stuggle.

First impressions of New York:

The moment we collected our bags from JFK, we were approached by a guy of middle eastern appearance offering us a cab into manhattan. We followed for about 5 metres, realised he wasnt a yellow cab driver, and went back to teh cab queue.
It was pretty dodgy i spose, we were approached about 5 times by different people offering us rides to the city, the problem is, we had no idea if they were legit or not.

In the end, we ended up in the cab line behind a couple of other young aussies and was approached by a jamaican driving a limo offering us a ride for $110 US, which would work out cheaper than the yellow cabs. Seeing as there were 7 of us, we all piled into a WHITE STRETCH LIMO, and were dropped off at the door of our hostel.

To be honest, I was quite intimidated by New York. All these people approaching us, and really, it seemed like we were in a movie. You see people dressed like full homie style, baggy pants, the hats with the flat rims, so many african americans and latinos. We met up with my cousin Kitty and her husband Tat, and they took us out for dinner at a nice italian place and we went to see the big tree at the rockefeller centre, which is apparently a new york tradition to see.

They left us soon after, and we went around down 5th, saw trump tower and the playboy enterprises building and had some cheesecake for dessert.

Anyway thats all for now, running outta time. Will prolly blog more than email as this seems easier. Please let everyone know that i am blogging instead of emailing.