appendix - the foot incident

hey all :)

ok....so i wasnt sure about putting this in but as far as im concerned its part of the trip and has been a really interesting experience so im gonna. but not till now after we're home and theres no way of worrying people in england. i got a skin infection from a mosquito bite and ended up in hopsital for a couple of days - this section might not be a fun read for all, so skip if you arent interested or might get upset. it ends well, im totally fine now and i had an AMAZING time :)

part of travelling id assumed was always gonna be about taking the rough with the smooth and this definitely showed to me the dark side of what can happen when overseas. the day we got back to cuzco from macu piccu was wicked, and we had a great night out but my ankle had been feeling a bit odd after a lot of bites to it - it swelled up and was pretty sore. i was told not to worry though so just carried on and elevated it thinking that it was a simple case of a bit of bruising from so many bites in a located area.



but by about 3am on the 23rd (having got home from the town) the pain was unbearable and i was running a fever so tricky (being the star that he is) went and sorted out a doctor who came out and ive been in hospital since (its now 6am thurs 24th) the doctor seems to think that itll take a good few more days before im functional.

this has meant a few things - firstly, calling in the insurance which has (fortunately) seemed to come through ok. theres a nice room and an extra bed for tricky and theyre fine with our bags being in here so that we dont have to pay for a hotel room. we'd already booked the extra night in the hotel with the intention of laying in and getting a 19 hour coach to lima for our flight across but that money (plus a bit more) has now been spent on a flight instead meaning an extra night in hospital at the doctors suggestion. ive apparently gotta rest a good couple more days when i get to salvador too. hopefully it wont eat into our brazil time too much.

its clearly a full-on private place that few of the locals would be able to afford so im seriously bloody glad i got the insurance. bless loads of our tour-buddies for coming in to see me yesterday too - brightened up a dull afternoon! the hospital/nurses and doctor are very nice, though the nurses have this wierd thing of making the bed obsessively with you in it and not leaving the room till its fully tucked in with both your arms under the covers. the language barrier means its often easier to just let them do this, theyre all very sweet :) theyve got me on a consant drip of saline and 2 antibiotics (which leave a wierd taste in the mouth, makes your wee smell wierd and gives you incredibly scary nightmares) to get rid of the infection and seem fairly optimistic that itll be gone in a few days.

personally though, ive not been that scared in a really long time. all i could think about was that i need my foot for my new-found career and the idea of having to do something desk-based or not being able to do certain stuff again had me crying like a baby. the fever wouldve contributed to this and made it feel a lot more serious through the slight delerium but theres an odd humble clarity in feeling like that and i wont forget it in a hurry. i guess its a reminder of how fragile the whole thing really is and one thing can change overnight that alters everything. being reasonably able-bodied for my whole life and not having that much go wrong physically up to now is definitely something i appreciate all the more now.

overall, i think ive been pretty lucky. im an insured, rich foreigner and ive been treated like royalty since i got to the hospital. but as well as the sense of mortality it also makes you think loads about those who arent in my situation who this happens to. specially those around here who live off the land or need to drive or anything like that. ive never been that good with the povery gap when ive travelled and peru is no exception. there are little 6 year old kids in these mountains tending flocks of sheep. wearing sandals. in the snow. mental. but like i said before, this is the stuff i came here to see and to be made more aware of. in a way im definitely glad of the experience. plus, check out the pyjamas - havent worn pyjamas in years!




its also prevalent to say at this point what a star trickys been throughout this entire episode. he kept his head and got me in here, went and sorted out the flights having gone to the bus station to no avail and on no sleep and has now finally managed to get that lie in we both wanted all week - bless him, hes been out for like, 15 hours. im really lucky to be travelling with him and have him as a friend, i knew there was a reason we planned to do this together and this whole blip has really solidified that for me. makes me wonder about travelling on my own though, what would happen? would i be more careful? is that safety net being there affecting how im acting or the precautions im taking? i certainly dont think i couldve done more and i guess if it came down to it i couldve sorted myself out. probably. im really not sure. but ill maybe find out one day i guess.

so yeah, 3 flights starting at 5am tomorrow to get to brazil. interesting times.....

Last day. booo!

ello!

so, that time has come. the time for us to come home, we leave BA in an hour for the 20 or so total hours its gonna take us to get back. last few days have been superb - once again we´ve lucked out massively with the hostel that weve ended up in. aussie run place with great staff and plenty of advice on what to do.

we took some of their bikes out for a day to see the city from a bit of a different perspective and also realise that there arent that many cyclists in this city for a reason. not exactly considerate, the motorists.....great day though and i got to ride this



is that the most gorgeous bike youve ever seen or what??

so the bike tour took us first to the cemetery which was very impressive indeed - all the rich families in the city have like, these private crypts for their dead relatives but the levels of opulence are like nothing ive ever seen. some of them were the sizes of small houses! lots more pics of that to follow.



i also discovered that if you say "streetperformer" too quickly then you can sound like youre saying "stripper" to someone who doesnt have english as a first language. with hilarious consequences ;)

onward took us to the japanese gardens which were gorgeous. im a amssive fan of bansai trees and there were loads of them to look at plus gigantic koi carp in the most immaculately maintained setting. not exactly what i expected to see in argentina but completely beautiful. again, lots more pics to follow.



yesterday involved going out with tricky and puddin (guy from the hostel who really wanted to give it a try) to busk a bit and try to flog some origami to passers by. basically, i stood on his shoulders and juggled while tricky made coloured paper models.



seemed like the thing to do and was muchly well received by the people here. didnt exactly make a pile of cash but we definitely raised more than a few smiles. saw a tango streetshow too, theyre quite into it over here...might have to learn to speak spanish properly i think.....

last night was the last night of the trip so we decided that only a proper argentinian steak would do. recommended by the hostel, we found an awesome place. 800g ribeye between the two of us and more sides than you could shake a stick at. just the job.



got mostly very drunk last night while studiously expanding the bar´s collection of origami and playing jenga.


so yeah, thats about it. if you wanna get a link for the rest of the pictures then just drop me a line, ill be whacking them up on some webspace and boring you all to tears about them for the next 6 months or so im sure ;) its been utterly amazing, ill be back here i reckon. massive thanks to anyone who might read this who was part of making this month so awesome. not least tricky - you rock!

iguaçu falls

morning!

so we´re now in argentina - another country, another passport stamp. mines starting to look a little bit less embarassingly empty now. which is nice.

anyhoo, final day in Brazil saw us visiting the Iguaçu Falls, which has two sides to it as the border runs down the middle of the river. day one was the brazillian side and it was a lovely, lovely day to be out.



23 hours on a coach and we were glad to find the hostel and chill out for a couple of hours before heading off to the national park. the falls are utterly spectacular. spread out over a load of space and lots of different actual falls to see.


am very glad that tricky suggested seeing it. plus we found the only hostel ever with an ´honesty policy´ bar which meant i was feeling slightly the worse for wear. plus they had like, 4 types of gin and rasberry bacardi. yum.



the next day was slightly different. itd been raining solidly all night and morning meaning a very different experience. the falls which (on the previous day) were bloody noisy and very cool, had changed to flat out angry and just awe-inspiringly huge.


the noise was unbelievable. overall, im proper glad the weather was so bad. it just made the whole experience that much more intense and you got a really good feel for the utter power of the things. plumes of water 5 feet thick going over the edge. mental.

once again we were lucky enough to meet some very cool people. here´s tricky with mike and yanni from melbourne. lovely couple and were good enough to offer to ping us a couple of pictures when i managed, over the course of the day to completely screw my camera.



must have got steam in the lens or something cos it now looks like all the pictures we take are in the most poorly-vented coffee shop in amsterdam. oops. heres a very cloudy one of us at the junction between argentina, brazil and paraguay.



not sure about tonight - i think its the barmaids birthday at this hostel or theres a full-moon party on at a club in town. only a few days left now - best start checking gumtree for somewhere to live when i get home *gulp!*

on the road again

ello :)

so, we finally managed to leave rio. what a place, such lovely people and an awesome hostel too. cant speak highly enough of it.

so we got some proper touristy stuff in before we left which was nice. it was a bit cloudy on the day we'd set aside for doing those bits and we were both stinking hungover from the beach party the day before (and the fact that we failed miserably to NOT go out that night as well) so we sacked off visiting the christ the redeemer statue and plumped for a dusk visit to sugar loaf mountain instead.



this, my friends, was totally worth it. its a really nice facility outlining the history of the cable car and the conception, design and building of it. whats really interesting is getting out of this space-age capsule then seeing the rickety wooden shed-on-a-string that they first used to go up there in. mental.

stunning views from the top too and we managed to time it just right so that we got to see the city just as the light was going and the mist had cleared a bit by this point too. the sheer scale of it isnt done justice by the photos, even from the very top of the mountain the zona nord stretches as far as the eye can see. proper urban sprawl, ive never been to a city this big and seeing it from high up was quite an experience.



anyhoo, we met a lovely couple on the beach called paul and renata who were celebrating renatas birthday last night. bearing in mind how hungover we both we we had doubts about how worth it an all-you-can-drink free bar would be but (shockingly enough) we went anyway. once we got our heads round getting one of the girls to get the drinks (so that the barmen would actually serve them) it was pretty much plain sailing. the music was the first we've heard out here with an actuall bassline - plus there was UV art! one for you lynette...



met another load of wicked people, such a friendly crowd - treated us like we'd known them for years right from putting us on the guestlist, coming out of the club to help us skip the queue to just being wall-to-wall lovely all evening. we had an absolute blast at that party, happy birthday renata and a genuine thank you to you, paul, lyvia and her fella (whos name ive forgotten but he was a legend) and everyone else for showing us some true brazilian hospitality.



this morning was a bit hectic to say the least. i was shitfaced and forgot to set my alarm and we both slept through trickys. cue him waking me up at the hostel about an hour beofre the coach was due to leave....oops. still, despite the confusing layout of rios bus station we made the coach by the skin of our teeth and we're now a few hours in to a 23 hour journey to iguacu falls - one of the main things we wanted to see on this trip.

rio was pretty full on and im really sad to leave. i will definitely be back, no doubt about it but for now, frankly, i reckon our livers could do with a rest! ;)



thatll do for now, hope all are well and happy xxxx

still in rio....difficult to leave!

hey all!

so yeah, the title says it all. we were supposed to leave yesterday and it just didnt happen. i cant say for a second that im disappointed either, rios amazing, probably the funnest place we've visited thus far in my opinion.

right from the carnival museum where they let you TRY ON the costumes - plus one of them had a piano on it:



to the favela tour, which was pretty heart-renching but well worth doing.



on top of that, it would seem that the vote for who got the 2016 olymipcs was yesterday. rio was one of those cities and guess what? they won!insane party on the beach and an electric atmosphere in town last night. the people down here SERIOUSLY know how to have a good time!

met loads of lovely randoms on the beach and got invited to someones all-you-can-drink birthday party tonight which sounds like a recipie for win if ever there was one!



apparently we're gonna do the touristy stuff today, sugar loaf mountain and the big christ statue n all that. then off to iguacu on another looooooooong coach journey.

be a shame to leave but put it in your diaries now - my 30th, 2013, late February, Carnival. oh yes.

bye for now! xxxx

1st night in rio

evenin!

rio´s great. its official. instead of the football we went on a walkaround tour of the city today (not with any guide, just with some dots on a map) accompanied by louis (a recent graduate from cameroon living in DC) and michelle (some nutty belgian campervan owner who handily enough lives in gent where theres a massive street festival)



tonight was kinda wierd, bit like a swing night...but latino. only couples danced and the band were awesome. they also drink these strange lemony cocktails with what i think was tequila in them. but it couldbt be or else i wouldnt have wanted them. and i did. lots.

wicked chicken-based meal nearby too - heres us:



i think were gonna have to get another coach for the next bit. boo. its like, 170 quid for a flight and i cant justify that for an hours airtime. the alternative is 23 hours on a bus, but if we convince ourselves that we´ll see some nice things out the window and that another day in rio AND the nights acommodation isnt worth that much to us then itll be fine, right?

anyhoo - time for bed. favela tour tomorrow apparently. and we MUST do some laundry, theres only so much a compression sack can contain.

bye!

PS - thanks for the messages from home and from those we met on this trip too, they mean the absolute world xxx

On the busses

ello :)

so....the last few days has been a bus tour of a small section of the coast of brazil. we started off in salvador and got an overnight bus to porto seguro. clearly we needed to pass the time so we armed ourselves with a 4 quid bottle of rum and some coca cola. check out the stereotype branding.....nice.


an overnight coach took us to porto seguro which is basically coastal brazil's answer to bournemouth. proper seaside town that loads of brazilians go to on holiday. lots of shops selling lilos and cheap cafes selling pay-by-weight grub. top.

we had a look around then decided the best thing to do with this day would be to hire this:



cue much hilarity driving up and down the coast and generally feeling like something out of herbie goes to monte carlo. i swear, the thing was a bug with a different shell on it. loadsaloadsa fun! theres a movie file on the way once ive had a chance to edit all the videos we took....seriously fun few hours was had. amazing scenery and a great way to break my driving-on-the-right-hand-side duck.

quite knackered, another coach overnight took us to vitoria which, to be frank, was a bit of a shithole. not much to do and not really a tourist town. was great to see some of the slightly real-er side of brazil but when you have 12 hours till your coach and nothing to do this can prove a problem after the novelty has worn off ;)

luckily, we found a completely gorgeous park to hang out in and catch up on some chilling-out time.





played shitloads of backgammon and met a lovely local lad called ezekiel who wants to learn english so we all got some language practice. ive subsequently decided that foreign email-pals are gonna be a really handy way to learn languages for future travelling expeditions. wicked.

they even had those really cool tables with chequers boards built into them. as modelled here by trickys glasses. if neo played chess, i reckon he'd look like this ;)



yet another overnight coach (and stinking to high heaven) we managed to get our hungover arses to rio with plenty to show for it. im REALLY glad we didnt just fly back down - the coaches cost more than the flights but we got to see 2 more places and get a load of new fun things in. plus, the coaches were the plushest ever. one for sophie here - it would seem we no longer have to pity tall people on public transport! well, as long as they only get long-haul coaches in brazil....check out the legroom - as modelled of course by the smallest-legged person in the world:



so yeah, thats about it. in rio now and i reckon a couple of tours today. theres a favela (slum) tour which seems odd but is apparently really good and i do wanna see some of that bit while im here so if theres a way to do it safely....plus, i never thought id say this again but, i think im going to a football match a bit later too. when in rome n all that.

thatll do for now then, much love!

lovely relaxing couple of days

salvador's been lovely. nice food, lovely people, lovely hostel and pancakes made out of powder. never actually making it into the town was a bot of a shame but the nice little suburb has proven a welcome break for a couple of nights.

buffet-by-weight (genius idea) for lunch, hammocks and backgammon today. off on the busses now, time to see what some slightly smaller places down the east coast have to say!

bye!

yo

all's good here in sunny salvador, brazil. it's been about 35 and blue skies since we arrived. in following the tradition of salvador, which is mostly a holiday resort for brazilians from the bigger southern cities, we've been spending our time relaxing and chilling out in hammocks, some book reading, bit of beach action, chatting to fellow travellers, and some bars and restaurants... :)

we're off tonight on a three day road trip to rio, firstly stopping at peurto seugro (sp?) tomorrow, then vitoria the day after, then arriving at rio de janiero on wednesday where we have a nice place booked right on copacabana beach and the cocktails will be awaiting our arrival..

Txx

peru leg over!!!

hi there all!

been a while since the last entry but trust me, we've been busy and away from the internet pretty much cnostantly ;) peru is an amazing country and to be honest im a lickle sad to be leaving such lovely people (both locals and new friends from the trek) and the most amazing scenery ive ever clapped eyes on in my life. totally ticked the box for seeing the andes from the air and land!

so yeah, day 3 was a bus tour of cuzco and the surrounding interesting stuff. highlight for me was the temple of the 3 lightnings which is just unbelievable and was our first proper glimpse of how good the architecture that we came to see really is.



the church in cuzco was also pretty damn impressive



tricky made a friend at the water temple



plus more alpaca sweaters than you can shake a stick at....



randomly, a walk to the bus station led us down a road they were digging up but hadnt bothered barriering off. so people were just walking down it. most odd - wouldnt get that in london! that night found a late expedition into cuzco to find some booze with aiden - top lad from cork who wasnt to be found without a smile on his face at any point.



the next day was a bit of a tour of the sacred valley with guide marselino who again, was so passionate and knowledgeable about the area and its history. no question was left unanswered and we were really lucky i think to get such brilliant guides throughout.

mostly this day was about me cooing over the extensive and impressive terracing on the hillsides plus more gorgeous stonework and getting to know our trail-buddies a bit better. a lovely group and a really interesting cross-section of nationalities and backgrounds. you guys rocked!



the scenery was, of course, stunning...



and my new love/obsession for sinobi origami starts to drift into the photos



the day was capped off with possibly one of the best meals ive ever eaten - a gorgeous and idyllic japanese restaurant out there in the middle of nowhere which was surrounded by interesting stuff and things like the bilingual parrot (who says hello in two languages) giant aloe vera (one for you here mum...)



and (also) giant flowerpots. on their side. well...they didnt leave me much choice did they?



more cool stonework in ollyantambo - i mean, seriously. look at the size of these rocks. that was at the top of a huge sodding hill. the mind boggles as to the manpower involved. plus, you couldnt slide a sheet of paper between them - millimetre perfect.


we spent the night there in order to start the lares trek proper the next day. i test-built my sun-themed origami piece to take to macu piccu too, which was pretty hare-brained but actually worked. very exciting stuff!



so, the next day, up hills we went! pretty tough going at that altitude (i think we got to about 3500m that day) but once again, proper good scenery. i saw my first glacier


and heres one of tricky looking proper knackered at the top of the first big pass we did. i think this is my favourite pic of the trip so far ;)



and heres one of us all looking really rather fresh at the highest point of the first day. little did we know what was to come.....



that night we met our porters and got drunk. it was fun. i couldnt sleep because i was stupid enough to bring my thin sleeping bag and think that i could get away with wearing lots of clothes to make up for it. it did mean that at 3 in the morning i went out for a wee and saw what was apparently the southern lights flickering away in a valley a few miles away. very very pretty, unfortunately id left the camera in the big tent where people were asleep so dont have any photos of that :(

day 2 of the trek was, in short, bloody hard work! we got as high as



and it looked like this on the other side of the pass



but what you cant see from this picture is that tricky is pretty much holding me up. once we got past 4000m i couldnt do much other than try not to pass out or throw up. proper wierd feeling is altitude sickness and not one that i care to repeat if im honest. am extremely proud of the achievement but bugger me, that was difficult.

we also met a lot of little communities of people on this day. there are families up there who still live according to the inca traditions and are completely self-sufficient from the potatoes and livestock they keep/grow. was very odd to see the little kids running around doing all this work and really makes you think about the levels of expectation you have from life through living in a city and having the sort of life you do. the catch 22 of the situation of course, is that i could never figure this out as ive been brought up in the more developed world and would never be able to manage living like that. same im sure is true for these people and london - itd just be too much. this is some of the stuff i came here to see though and im very glad i did. a greater sense of awareness of where my life fits into the world feels good, and the truth of whats out there might not always be comfortable but i feel better knowing it.

went to bed at 3pm that afternoon and slept through till the next morning. luckily, the sun came out for a bit when we got to the campsite so i at least got to go to sleep in the relative warm ;)

heres one of the survivors at the highest bit. felt good that did, really good. its quite cool what going through something like that together does for the speed you get to know people and the unity and camiraderie it breeds - i really enjoyed my time with them and hopefully, ill get to see some of them again someday.



third day was all downhill - woop! so after a bit of breakfast


and a little go with some local farming tools



we got to the place where the coach was picking us up and found some kids to entertain with paper things



then it was a coach and train to macu piccu pueblo. a lovely little town thats basically only there to serve as a hotel/restaurant hub for the site itself. as a result, the atmosphere there was definitely one of excitement id say!

stayed out way too late that night and got proper pissed.....pretty difficult not to when everyones so geared up for the next day. problem was, the hotel forgot to give us our wakeup call so we ended up sprinting for the bus on 3 hours sleep and doing that waking-up-halfway-down-the-road thing that happens when you get up late for an interview or some stupid bloody thing like that.

hey ho, on to macu piccu itself and it delivered in every single possible way. i was completely blown away by the fact that not only had the incas figured out how to make this stonework, they also integrated it with the mountain. the temple of the condor is the best example of this. didnt manage to get any pics but go look it up if youre interested. basically they carved the head out of the floor and the wings are these two outcrops of rock that were just there in the right place, facing east.

the whole philosophy of working with the elements and respecting the mountains and the earth was really evident throughout the whole place. i wont go into the history any more than that cos you guys are more than capable of doing that yourselves if you wanna ;) but its definitely worth seeing. a very humbling experience and one that made it even more blindingly obvious how much we're currently screwing things up as a race.

lovely weather too, which apparently isnt normally the case....this is another of my fave pics :)



the plan was basically to do an origami tour of the place (including a specially designed themed trapezoid modular piece - thanks to jenny for the idea!) taking photos is great, but they have to be a little bit individual i rekcon or else you might as well go get some stock shots from the web taken with a much better camera! so heres a few choice ones:







and the headstand shot - just for you sis!



and yup, proper lovely night out last night with pretty much everyone we've seen at various points in the week which was a great end to this leg of the trip. i really cant say enough how lucky i feel we were with the group of people we had. everyone looked after each other, shared, supported and encouraged to the nth degree. most of you guys wont see this for ages (if at all) but i want to say a genuine thank you to all of you for making it so lovely. the guides too, mario, marselino, johann, jose and all the porters did a brilliant line in combining efficiency with making us feel right at home.

so yeah, in conclusion, i reckon we had a top time this week. we've currently had a couple of days in cuzco to chill out and we are mid catching flight(s) to salvador for the beachy, sunny leg of the tour. its been awesome so far, this travelling thing is proper wicked. looking forward to some less structured time on the next bit, a lie-in or two would be nice! (not that im expecting any sympathy ;))

so to sign off, my best proper-grown-up-with-proper-grown-up-facial-hair impression (including once again failing on the sunscreen front and getting a ridiculous vest line.)



dont worry, its gone now. and it wont be back. clearly one way that i definitely SHOULDNT take after my father....