On a warm summers evening....

..on a bus that didn't come.

A heap has happened since last we spoke. An my little brain is having trouble trying to fit it all in then spit it back out on the intertubes.

So I'll just start with the day we had to get from Puno to Cusco. We had to be in Cusco by 7 that evening to pay the final part of the money for the Inca Trail trek.

No worries. We had a bus ticket for 8, 7 hour trip, there in plenty of time.

Of course, we had not reckoned on the sometimes exciting political system in Peru. Turns out someone in the Puno department (sort of a state) promised something and didn't deliver, so everyone thought it would be a top idea to go on strike. And strike here doesn't mean 'Great, I can do the washing, some gardening and watch some telly', it means, 'Hey, leats go down and block all the roads out of the state, all the airports, until someone listens.'

Inspiring, I guess, but inconvenient. So the bus station started to fill up with gringos all in the same predicament. Eventually, this dodgy tour company tout that we'd actually bought the ticket through wandered over.

'$50 US each, and we can get you to Cusco', he said. I was a touch reluctant, but K said righto.

So us, a Swiss family of four, and two Spaniards crammed into a van, backpacks on our laps and knees around our ears, and we went.

The van driver had to go around the strikes, so we took some back roads, or back tracks, if you like. It was actually pretty scenic, and as the van driver nodded off once or twice, then snapped awake just as a tour bus came the other way (also trying to get passengers around the strike), it got exciting. The road was only just one car width wide, and the bus was bigger, so our driver slammed on the brakes as we rounded a hairpin. And what happens when you brake suddenly on a dirt road?

So as we went straight ahead towards a two hundred metre drop, I wondered if the couple of hundred bucks we would have lost by waiting for the bus was worth it. Strangely, the rest of the people in the car went quiet, k was asleep.

I reckon he stopped about half a metre from the edge, and he looked quite calm. Then there was a process of parallel parking so he could get closer to the edge to let the bus past.

After that, we quietly asked the Spanish couple to talk to the driver to keep him up.

It was actually a good trip, though.

Memorable was the toilet break and peeing into a gorge deeper than I've ever seen as a local bus drove past and everyone waved at me.

11 hours later, we made it Cusco, and after unfolding my legs we wandered off into the city to find the trekking place and a hotel.

Next time:

the trek.

Salud.

High on a desert plain...

...where the streets have no name...

Or in the case of Cusco, too many.

Previously on Buffy...

Our intrepid viajeros had just arrived in La Paz. One had died from soroche, the other had od´d on cable.

But by the next morning I felt great, so we decided to do the walking tour mentioned in the good old Lonely Planet. Found a really old church, went inside, it looked amazing, but people were actually praying and stuff...so we left quick smart.

After a bit of wandering around, we discovered the part of La Paz we were staying in could be broken up into sections. There was soccer shirt street, toenail clipper lane, stationary alley, jeans quarter, and a whole hardware block. The streets all have actual names like Santa Cruz and San Pedro - sounds musical but I guess in Spanish it's about as imaginative as 42nd street.

We had been going mostly downhill at that point...altitude? Pfft! What were those Brazilian footballers whinging about. Then we went uphill.

After ten steps we had a rest.

Easy, really.

Then...shopping. Mucho silver jewellry, alpaca stuff, Che t-shirts. I bought a charango, muy cool.

K decided she just had to go to the Bolivian version of Wagamama, so we headed off down the hill and found ourselves in the sort of CBD. Flash hotels, government offices.

Happily, after our 45 minute walk, the restaurant was closed. And we had to walk back...uphill.

Eventually we got back, found a place for dinner, went to bed.

Next day was more of a sightseeing day, but k managed to find time to buy stuff anyway.

Early the next morning we got up and walked to the bus station and caught the bus to Puno. Not a bad trip, apart from the annoying group of French people on the bus. Another land border, sort of. We had to walk across a bridge from the Bolivian side to the Peruvian side - across Lake Titicaca, which was suitably impressive.

Puno at first seemed really quite crappy, but we found a place to stay. It seemed ok, notwithstanding the knock on the door from the French people (different ones, but they're everywhere) in the room next door that asked if we heard who had stolen all their stuff. K figured that if they'd been ripped off we were safe, and I tended to agree, but we still made sure we carried our important stuff around.

We looked around a bit, and it turns out Puno is quite the tourist town. Dinner was great - I had fillet of Alpaca, k had soup. We picked the place because they were playin old school trance - and just after we ordered, the 2 hour set from the 10 member Andean music band started. It included random dance acts, shrieking girls, blokes with jangly pants, the whole shebang. We bought a CD as we left when the set had finished. I'll burn y'all a copy.

I'll leave it here, and see you in a bit.

We´re off on the Inca trail tomorrow for 4 days.

Oh, and mangoman, your manager should be jealous, she'd love it.

And you really do need a bit of Spanish.

Chao.

Arrancame el carazon...

te pido amor


¡Hola muchachos!

This cool español keyboard has all the upside stuff and cool ñññññññññs!

Question: what is soroche?

It's sort of like the worst hangover you ever had times ten. But I'll get to that.

We spent our last night in San Pedro at this cool little bar place watching the Copa America game between Chile and Ecuador. Had some beers, got into the chant when Chile scored:

Chi Chi Chi
Le Le Le
Viiiiiiivvaaaaaa Chile!

The only bus out of town to Arica left at 8:45 that night, so we toddled off into the cold and stood around with the other gringos waiting.

13 hours later, Arica.

Bus ticket, 2 hour wait, then onto La Paz.

The bus was actually pretty flash, but it didn'stop me feeling like crap as we climbed above 3000m. The view was pretty bloody awesome from the bus, though - llamas (k was beside herself), flamingos, snow capped peaks, lakes.

Then...our first land border crossing. Went through Chilean customs, then a five k drive through...dunno?

Then into Bolivia. The Bolivian cops really look like cops. None of this blue uniform-security-guard look - they look military and have big guns.

Didn't check our bags at all, though, but then, who smuggles drugs into Bolivia?

After a bit, we got to La Paz. I managed to have quite a decent conversation with some weird dude on the bus wearing a leather jacket, one of those hats the Canadian logger types wear, and totin' a massive leather bound bible. I peeked in his briefcase and it was chock full of other god stuff. He was very impressed that we were from Australia and asked if it was a Catholic country. I was tempted to say mainly Islamic, but decided not to rock the boat.

So I said Hindu.

Really though, he then proceeded to tell me how unsafe La PAz was and how someone would steal K if I didn't watch out. Thank's mate - we weren't nervous at all after that.

Down the hill into La Paz (heaps of eucalyptus trees - strangely similar to coming down the Blue Mountains for a moment - but then you remeber the bus is doing a hundred, swerving, and narrowly missing all sorts of shit).

La Paz is mental. Imagine the most mental South East Asian capital (Bangkok, Jakarta, Denpasar, etc) then replace all the mopeds with Hiaces and all the motorbikes with taxis. Then add micros, old buses all painted up. As always, I came up with a theory about the noticable lack of bikes - the cops have Harleys, but a lot of the cars are American, so maybe nobody bothered to import affordable bikes from Japan, and now only a complete psycho would attempt to ride one around.

The bus terminal was sort of a shed and we grabbed our stuff and walked out into the city with no idea where we were. Strangley, I wasn't that worried - maybe my uncertainty avoidance is decreasing, hey mangoes?

Eventually we found the pub the Lonely Plant recommended...and it was booked out. Tops.

Walked around the corner and found another, looked good. We went in, and by that time we had been on buses for 24 hours. Anyway, it turned out to be a top-end type place, quite flash. Hot water, 100 cable channels, internet downstairs, private bathroom, b very exy for La Paz, though - USD$35 a night!

So we booked for three nights :)

And I felt like complete and utter shit. Altitude sickness apparently. Migraine type headache, wanted to throw up, sort of that headache you get when you curl up on the bed into the smallest ball possible and try to block out the entire world and hope like hell you will fall asleep at some point.

Which is what I did, while k happily watched House on the telly without a care in the world!

Whoa, long post.

I'll leave it here then write later about La Paz itself.

I'll leave you with this - flicking through channels we found Steve Irwin dubbed into Spanish.

Piss funny.

Imagine ¡Dios! said like crikey, if you will.

Hasta luego, señores y señoras.

From Santiago to San Pedro...

..is 25 hours on a bus.

Sort of like the Paul Kelly song, only in Spanish with more dry ham rolls...when in Chile, catch Tur Bus - you'll know what I mean.

So we're in San Pedro de Atacama at the moment. You'll get no photos because I don't know how to say "USB Port" in Spanish and I can't see one.

Our flight from Brisbane sort of sucked - no more then any other plane, I guess, but 15 hours in one hit is not that comfortable. K's little TV got stuck on the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire game and the cranky Chileno hostie couldn't fix it - I don't think she really tried.

A tip - if you take the flight get a seat on the right hand side of the plane because you'll get a cool view of the Andes on the way in.

Santiago was big and busy, but we made it to the hostel in one piece. Easy really, the Metro is pretty good. The señorita at the hostel was really friendly - she told us in a really nice way that we couldn't stay because she'd double booked.

There was a brief moment of panic - but it turned out that they had another, flasher hotel in a better spot. It was more exy, but they gave it to us for the cheaper price. Hot water, cable, breakfast, a flash room you'd pay well over $100 in Oz - was 33.000 CHP - about $60.

We had a bit of a wander around Barrio Bellavista, found a little square called Patio del Bellavista where we had dinner, Pisco sour and beers. Walked around the corner and found a little bar with a jukebox playing Rammstein.

Very traditional.

I tried my "Dos cervesas, por favor" and the guy brought out two giant tallies of Heineken - about a jug each, really. So we gave one back and he just chuckled.

Proximo dia, we caught a bus to Antofagasta.

19 hours.

Heaps fun.

Antofagasta was a weird sort of place. Not a really friendly place, but we did find a coffee shop serving actual espresso.

Another tip - no such thing as a flat white, just get a black coffee and deal with it. And if you order a "cafe capucino", as K did, they'll give you sort of a hot iced coffee with a big stack of whipped cream on the top.

Another 4 hours on a bus to Calama - a mining town in the middle of the desert. It reminded me of Katherine for some reason.

We just hung out at the bus terminal, then got on our way to San Pedro.

Which is really cool.

It's smack in the middle of the Atacama Desert - which is a real desert. There was a good few hundred k's where there was just rock and sand and us - nothing else, not even cactus or desert grassy stuff.

The bus sort of dropped us off on the side of road, which was disconcerting for a second, but we found a reasonable place to stay very easily.

We then had our first showers for two days, and K took full advantage of the hot water in the Hotel Tambillo. And then I took full advantage of the 30 seconds of hot water left after she finished.

We headed out to dinner and found a really cute little place and had fantastic food. K had a steak with mushrooms and potato - sounds exciting, I know, but it was sort of the traditional food of the area and it was bloody good. I had a steak sandwich with goat's cheese. A steak sandwich?

Yep. By that, I mean they had two small eye fillets sort of baked, with this goats cheese in between. With this super tasty sort of mashed potato thing with a basil based sauce on top.

We had some Chilean wine with dinner - Castilleno del Diablo. A cab sav, and one of the best we've had for ages - not that we're expert, but, again, bloody tops.

Incidentally, Chilenos believe removing the balls from animals is immoral, so there a literally dogs everywhere, and something else I thought mangoman would find interesting - this includes beasts.
So the steak you get is all from young bulls. Would make for an exciting cattle property, I guess.

Anyway, our time's almost up, so we're going to go hav a couple of Escudos as we sit by the plaza.

Salud!

Leads you here...

...despite your destination.

How dare the Catholic Church attack Amnesty International on its record of defending human rights?

And another from the BBC which almost made tears come to my eyes.

My question today is about left and right. I have been reading a few blog posts on the topic here
and there. The one at Lonely Planet, if you can get past the wankery, isn’t bad. It’s actually an old post, but interesting.

My thoughts? Well, as I said at Blogocracy, I don’t have enough big words to post at Lonely Planet, so I’ll wank on here instead.

I do have a problem calling myself left.

I think there are a few reasons for this. The first reason is an inbuilt dislike of calling myself anything – sort of a standard Australian dislike of drawing attention to yourself, just in case someone calls you on it – “Left? You? Hah!”

Another is the increasing inability of traditional Left politics, mainly based on economics and concerned with people (or so I thought), to explain the positions of people we may describe as Right on things such as gay marriage, immigration or the environment, and vice versa. We often forget how straight out racist the union movement was in the beginning – I suppose based on the belief that foreigners take jobs. And the compromises that people like Peter Garrett have to make in their stance on things like logging in Tasmania don’t fit, either. There are many people who economically Right, as selfish as all get out, but are all for gay marriage and saving the whales. Making yourself hardline Left on industrial relations, for example, means these people will bugger off and vote the arseholes in again.

These are the people who are doing okay economically, they have their big tellies and McMansions, but they have the shits with the Conservatives because of the Neanderthal attitude to social and environmental issues. I reckon there’s a few of ‘em that vote, too.

This narrow view of what the Left is brings me to another issue. Calling yourself Left restricts your ability to argue with morons. Granted, this is not normally that much of a problem, but a lot of people have instant associations with the term.

You can never really get away from dealing with generalisations, but unless you want to spend all day ranting loudly against people that rant equally loudly back, sometimes you need to operate in the system.

It’s all well and good to fight the good fight, to never compromise your morals. When I was a teller for a major bank, I could have told the CEO that the company’s overriding focus on profits was a crime against humanity, and that treating staff like crap was really pretty shitty. Then gone and got a new job and felt better about my day.

Pretty bloody selfish, really. Now, obviously I’d be lying if I told you I really stayed to help out the workers, show solidarity, etc – there was a fair amount of self interest involved.

But when I got to management, and my job became protecting the staff from getting shafted by the company, I did so, and I did it well. They all passed their “performance reviews” even if, according to the company rules, they didn’t deserve to. I did make a small bit of difference. That’s pretty small scale, but I’m sure there are many that toe the line for long enough to get to a place they can actually make a difference, even if that means working for a government they don’t like for a while.

It’s always going to be a balancing act, and there will come a point past which you cannot go – a point where you actually compromise a personal belief and not just a superficial position – and at that point you have to have a go.

My point is that labels are useful, but sometimes deceptive, and sometimes unhelpful. Wearing your heart on your sleeve is admirable, but pragmatic passion gets you further.

About some useless information...

...supposed to fire my imagination.

I like to think I know a little more about politics than your average born-in-the-late-70s-year-old, and maybe I do. But I've noticed that most political blogs authored by people my age tend one of two ways - and mine is no exception (probably why I revert to photos from time to time).

They are either flippant to the point of being nonsensical, or wank factor off the charts by trying to be too clever (a certain Latin titled blog springs to mind).

There really is no substitute for having been there, done that, burnt the t-shirt and walked the picket line. This post by mangoman is an instruction to all of us on the south side of 35 on how to discuss politics.

Don't beat people over your head with knowledge, don't wank on and use unnecessarily large words and obscure thinkers to illustrate your point, actually have a point, and listen.

We all have to start somewhere, I suppose.

Television, the drug of the nation..

....

I have a new challenge, based on what has become one of the most annoying TV franchises this side of Big Brother.

Do it at work.

You have to pretend you are on an episode of CSI and explain in great detail exactly what you are doing, step by step, to people who should really already know.

We tried it today.

"A, I'm now pressing the print button on Word, ensuring that the correct print queue is selected, subsequent to which I will walk to the printer, an LXZ5000, and remove my document from the output tray. This will enable me to have an actual physical copy of my Word document I can then peruse whilst seated at my work area."

"Great, R, while you're doing that, I'm going to use insert function contained as part of the Excel program for Windows XP to add an extra column into my financial spreadsheet to provide an extra set of available data..."

And so on.

And, in an amazing coincidence, the world of CSI and blogging have collided.

Eso es todo.

Salud.