Post 9:

A mass-murdering chef from Manila,
killed at breakfast, but not lunch or dinner.
His M. O. was usually
strychnine in the muesli;
the world’s very first cereal killer.

“She needs shorter skis, because she’s only a journalist”; “I only speak a little Spanish, so please talk more crazily”; “Can I please have two pastries, a coke and a chicken yoghurt”. In the course of murdering their language, these are all phrases we have at some time or other directed at locals in South America. As our time on the continent has progressed, so too has our confidence in the use of the language, but (as is evident) we sometimes get a little too sure of ourselves, resulting in botched attempts at communication. It is interesting how confused a sentence can become if you don’t use quite the correct word for “beginner”, ”slowly”, or ”strawberry”.

In spite of this butchering of their language, the inhabitants of Latin America have as a whole, been very receptive and seem to show a genuine interest in who their visitors are and where they are from. We got the impression that knowing details about a visitor’s own country is seen as a small victory to many of these people and it certainly was flattering that they had all even heard of our small island nation (that is after clearing up any confusion between “Irlanda” and ”Hollanda”, which sound very similar when mumbled quickly in Spanglish). It is to be expected that the information about your country may not quite be up to par thousands of miles away, so when one hostel proprietor started going on about “Braveheart” and “the Irish struggle”, I gently corrected him; kindly throwing him the bone that the film was however shot in Ireland and that we have much in common with the Scots (but that they still don’t know how to spell “whiskey” properly). Curiously, a few weeks later a second local was harping on about “the Irish film, Braveheart” with such pride that I didn’t have the heart to set him straight, and by the time our guide in Machu Picchu was extolling the virtues of the same film and saying what a beautiful Irish name “William” was, all I could muster was a wan smile.

Although the locals have been unwavering in their friendliness in the face of crazy talk from us, we equally have not judged them in spite of their small eccentricities. The street vendor - for instance - is by no means a character unique to South America, but some of the hawkers here peddle merchandise so specialised that it is hard to fathom how they make a living unless they are laundering dirty money. Even in the case of the latter, one would imagine that there are many enterprises that are more conducive to book-cooking than being a wandering shower cap, whiteboard or tipp-ex salesman.

Equally bizarre, albeit less surprising, is the chaotic system of driving over here. Like many other countries outside of the English-speaking world, the most important safety feature of any vehicle here is the horn, and indicators are decorative accessories that only seem to be blinking when they are malfunctioning. In addition however, road markings are used solely as pointers to which way the road is bending, obeying traffic lights is something you do when you see cops, and zebra crossings are little more than areas of road designated for killing pedestrians (possibly because the contrast of blood on black and white makes for more striking newspaper photographs). However, in spite of having grown accustomed to such motorist behaviour, we were still shocked at the driving habits of Rio’s bus drivers, in whom it is fair to say the spirit of Ayrton Senna lives on.

Getting to Rio in the first place was something of an ordeal. After some protracted credit card wrangling with a Brazilian budget airline, it was agreed that we would pay for our flight from Lima to Rio de Janeiro upon arrival at Lima airport. After a 22-hour bus ride to Lima, we went straight to said airport to kill eight more hours on the Peruvian equivalent of St. Patrick’s Day. In order to pay for the tickets, we had to withdraw US$600 from ATMs at one end of the top floor of the airport and then lug our bags over to the other end of the bottom level of the building where the airline in question had their offices. In an elevator en route, all the money somehow went airborne and there ensued a recreation of the gold-ticket chasing final challenge of “The Crystal Maze” as we groped around frantically for all the bills before the elevator doors opened to a lobby full of partying Peruvians. All that was needed to complete the picture was a bald skinny man mincing around in a hideous leopard-print ensemble. After successfully paying for the flight, we went to check our bags in. Prior to reaching the check-in desk, we were met by a placard-wielding attendant who asked us if we were carrying anything in our baggage that was listed on his sign. As a picture of a sword and the phrase “cold steel” was featured, I felt it necessary to inform the guy that I had a large machete in my main bag. This proved much harder here than it would have been in America or Europe. In response to what I had to say, I was not forced to the ground and restrained or strip-searched by burly security guards. Instead, the friendly attendant laughed kindly at my little “joke” and waved me through. After some persistence I successfully conveyed my seriousness and after a little deliberation, he decided that it was acceptable to leave the offending article in my checked-in baggage. After all this, we had to deal with a four hour delay in Lima and a five hour delay to the connecting flight out of Sao Paolo, where our Brazilian fellow passengers were ever so slightly irate, and seriously contemplating forcibly re-boarding our first plane to compel it on to Rio. After finally arriving at our destination, we discovered our baggage had been rifled by light-fingered luggage handlers, so we really were not inclined to think much of Rio. We decided however, to sleep off our annoyance and approach the city with a clean slate the next morning.

Rio is by all accounts an incredible city, and one of incredible contrasts. It is a city of the very poor and the very rich, and the rich wear their wealth on their sleeve so to speak (except when they are on the beach, when they wear as little as possible). It is also a very dangerous yet very friendly city where, if the locals aren’t trying to rob you for all you’re worth, they are trying to walk you to the bus stop you asked about in order to wait for your bus with you, explain to the driver where you want to go and pay your fare out of their own pocket. Add to this the fact that the neighbourhoods are cut off from each other by sporadic jungle-covered outcrops, and that even within neighbourhoods the mood can change drastically over the space of a few blocks, and it is easy to appreciate how visitors (sometimes literally) don’t know where they stand. Having said all this, if it is a party you are after, Rio is certainly the right city to be in; forget coming for Carnaval or New Year’s, you will find massive street parties here every weekend. Life in Rio is one long festival. My only gripe is the way they make their local drink, the caipirinha (having sampled my fair share of them in the trendier bars on the other side of the Atlantic). The cariocas (as natives of Rio are known) spoil perfectly drinkable caipirinhas with a vicious liquid called cachaça. Seriously though, if it were possible to ruin a cocktail by adding too much of the main alcoholic ingredient, then the denizens of Rio come close; not because their drinks taste bad due to all the alcohol (far from it), rather that after 2 or 3 Rio caipirinhas each boasting 17.5 seconds worth of sugar cane spirit, it is nigh on lights out time. After my fair share, I was wandering about asking all my new friends about the new Brazilian player that Manchester United had signed. Sir Alex will doubtless be concerned that only a single drunken partygoer in twenty at 3am on a backstreet in Rio had ever even heard of the guy (and this claim was most likely made simply to stop me talking bad Spanish at residents of a Portuguese-speaking country). After a week spent lying on Ipanema and Copacabana beaches and partying on the streets, we made for the Brazilian-Argentine border and Iguaçu falls. “Poor little Niagara”, Eleanor Roosevelt was supposed to have said upon seeing the falls, and they are indeed nothing short of spectacular (Iguaçu is almost four times the width of Niagara). Whilst in the area, we also visited a highly recommended aviary, and were not disappointed as we had hummingbirds whizzing past our ears and got to share an enclosure with dozens of raucous macaws. The surprising highlight of this trip however, was seeing "the bird formerly known as the Crested Guineafowl", which bears a striking resemblance to one of pop music’s more distinctive looking musicians.

Following on from Iguaçu, we took another long bus to Buenos Aires, where we stayed for a few nights while we arranged our tour of South Argentina and Patagonia. First stop was Bariloche, one of the country’s primary mountain resorts both in summer and winter. As it is currently winter in the Southern Hemisphere, we hoped to rent some ski gear and that Gráinne would be able to add “learning to ski in the Andes” to “learning to swim on the Great Barrier Reef” on her list of notable tour-related achievements. It must be said that she is something of a natural on the slopes and looked very comfortable even on her first day. Over the course of three days, she only had a single minor collision; a tangle with a middle aged man who, along with his self-righteous bitch of an instructor, were hogging as much of the beginners’ slope as possible and moving at a pace that would put a tortoise to sleep. The instructor overreacted to the accident, seemingly forgetting that it had taken place on the beginners’ slope, where people learn to ski and where one is likely to collide with someone else sooner or later, especially if you park yourself two abreast in the middle of said slope, barely moving. It all paled in comparison to the way I learnt to ski when visiting some friends in Vienna a few years back. Learning by means of the unconventional Japanese teaching technique known as the "Kamikaze Method", another total novice and I were brought to the top of the pistes on our first day and effectively told there were two ways down; on skis or on a stretcher. This teaching method, where the student’s main means of reducing momentum is by running out of mountain, in practice necessitated serious utilization of snowdrifts in order to avoid the massacre of schools of 4-year olds winding down the slope and even still resulted in some rather nasty tangles. It was all a far cry from the fairly pedestrian knock in Bariloche, and certainly did not warrant the given response from the instructor. As ski resorts are a slightly newer feature in the Andes than they are in the Alps or the Rockies, playing the arrogant local skier is a relatively newer concept to the Argentines, but to be fair to them they’ve taken to it quite well. Following the skiing, we went to the Atlantic coast of Patagonia to an area where the massive Southern Right Whale spectacularly bursts out of the water then crashes down on its back, and subsequent to that, we went right down to the bottom of the continent to see some incredible ice fields. We are now back in Buenos Aires and our travels are coming to an end.

Over the course of our travels, having met many different types of people and travelled in groups of various sizes, we have come to appreciate some home truths. It is now clear – for instance – that budget travellers come in all shapes, sizes and attitudes, and that voyagers at one end of the backpacker spectrum are just as annoying as those at the other. At one end of the scale, you have those self-satisfied journeymen and women ("I'm a traveller, not a tourist") who regard travelling as a competition and who don’t let a minute go by without aggressively reminding you that they go out of their way to eat dodgy street food (the only way to really get a feel for a culture), that they prefer touring in areas where communication with the locals is difficult, that their entire journey has been conducted alone, sans schedule, plan or guidebook (God forbid) and that no matter how much trekking you have done, they have completed treks that were longer, in colder temperatures, at higher altitudes and while carrying much more equipment (or else they’ll tell you that they “don’t go in for that stuff; people only do it because Lonely Planet tells them to”). Such people claim to be shunning the backpacker “formula”, but the irony is that by refusing to even consider adopting any elements of the more common approach to travelling, they are of course assuming an even stricter blueprint. Quite like Goths who claim to reject the “conformist” fashion of mainstream society’s fools by wearing only black, you are left wondering who the real fool is. The other side of the coin of course, is the (usually young) backpacker whose idea of experiencing a major city is by sitting on their dorm bed all day with their laptop, or else by watching films in the blacked-out hostel video room from dawn till dusk. Having spent a week doing this in Buenos Aires, they will claim to have “done” Argentina, and having spent similar periods in a few other cities such as Rio doe Janeiro, Cuzco or La Paz, they will return home and proudly announce to their friends that they have ”done” South America. In order to get a rounded experience of a place, sometimes it is necessary to go out on a limb and to explore the complete unknown, but equally there should be scope for visiting the highlights listed by the guidebooks or even for spending a little downtime in the hostel. It is a balancing act, but one the majority of visitors manage successfully.

When it comes to travelling in groups, we have noticed a strange social phenomenon that takes place on guided tours (usually of remote or inhospitable areas) which last for a few days or more. In such circumstances, one invariably finds at least one single female traveller (German, English or American more often than not) falling in love with the male tour guide. I feel that this spectacle and the freshman crush on the college professor are the benign cousins of Stockholm Syndrome, and all share the same origin. All three phenomena hark back to a more primitive time when a social group had a set size (be it guide and group, class and lecturer, or kidnappers and kidnappees), where survival is slightly less of a given than in the outside world (due to being in the desert/jungle, having upcoming exams, or being surrounded by nervous gunmen), and where a single male acts as unopposed leader, with a serious responsibility for the well-being of his charges. It is little wonder, given a state of affairs with such primordial undertones that at least one female in such a tour group will feel instinctually drawn to (what is for all intents and purposes) the Alpha Male. Knowing in advance that the conditions are conducive to such a scenario can add an amusing sociological dimension to one’s zoologically/archeologically/geographically-themed expedition. Alternatively, you could take the theory to heart, change job and score lots of chicks.

I wrap up this final post in the travel blog as we have only a few days left before returning home. As D-day approaches we are thinking more and more about the things we have missed from home. Gráinne maintains that it will require some serious self-restraint to prevent her from brushing past her family in the arrivals hall and making a beeline for the fridge in the nearest café or newsagent for a frenzied reunion with good aul Oirish full-fat milk. In keeping with the dairy theme, I am looking forward to a decent selection of cheeses. South America stocks a very limited range of cheeses, and as Bill Bryson pointed out in his book, the fact that Australia’s repertoire of hard cheeses consists of “tasty” and “sharp” doesn’t say much for their variety in that department. To give the Aussies their due, they are broadening their horizons; recently the authorities decided to lift the import ban on unpasteurised cheeses – much to the delight of the public (cynics might say that this is the only culture Australians get excited about).

The time has really flown by (11 months all told), and although everything we’ve done hasn’t sunk in yet, I think we’ll look back on it as a series of discrete, individual holidays rather than one big one. I’d like to thank anyone who has made it this far for reading the blog, and only hope that the posts were as enjoyable to read as they were to write (except when I have been left pondering why the three potential employers who I know each read at least one entry never got back to me). If there’s a silver lining to take from having read these progressively more protracted sermons, it’s that whenever we meet, you won’t have to suffer any boring holiday anecdotes; at the first sign of one, I can be cut off with a curt “that was in the blog”, and I will have no recourse but to converse about something we both want to talk about.

Post 8:

A believer from Utah named Norman,
had five wives but could not stop whorin'.
As pious proclivity
belied sinful activity,
old Norm was dubbed "The Oxymormon".

Along with Jorge Luis Borges and Gabriel Garcia Marques, the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda is regarded as one of the foremost literary figures to come from South America. A winner of the Nobel Prize for literature in 1971, Neruda spent much of his life overseas, initially as a diplomat and later as a leftist exile. Nevertheless, for long periods of his life he lived in Chile, and after his death in 1973 many of the houses in which he had lived were preserved in the public interest. It is not just fans of literature who will be intrigued by a visit to one of the poet’s houses, but also anyone with an interest in design or architecture; Neruda designed many of the houses himself and they are all full of historic curiosities collected from a lifetime scouring auctions and salvage yards. Valparaíso is one of the largest Pacific ports in South America situated on a series of hills 2 hours west of the Chilean capital Santiago and houses more than one of Neruda’s former dwellings. It is not surprising that the poet chose to live here for some of his life given the ramshackle beauty of the place; its multicoloured slums clinging haphazardly to the sides of the hills and its UNESCO listed ascensores - public elevators which consist of little more than garden sheds with wheels, creaking up and down tracks built into the sides of some of the steeper slopes at inclines of 65° and more. Neruda's "La Sebastiana" dwelling sits atop one of the aforementioned hills, boasting enviable views over the city and harbour, and mounted on the wall of the top-floor study is one of the most notable objets d'art: a map of the Americas drawn and annotated in 1690 for the Dauphin of France. On the matter of Chile, the 17th Century writer claims that as the region is sandwiched between the foothills of the Andes and the cold currents of the Pacific, it is prone to coldness so severe that it has been known to kill. The comments on the map go on to report stories of conquistadors on horseback, frozen solid still clinging to their reins, and the reputable reporter concludes by saying that it is little wonder that the European conquerors of the territory christened it "Chile" as this is another word for "cold" in Spanish.

Although the creator of this map confused his Spanish with his English, it is interesting to note that a similar association may still be made more than three centuries later. Since our arrival, we have constantly had to resist the temptation to make predictable jokes utilising the same play on words in what would be a grim and futile attempt to use humour as a source of warmth. It isn’t that Chile is particularly colder than anywhere else in the winter (for the most part), it’s simply that here central heating (or any heating) is a privilege, not a right. As a spoilt suburban kid whose idea of a cold room is one with a plug-in heater instead of a radiator, it took a while to get used to the notion of long johns and multiple blankets as the primary source of warmth at night. Difficulty adapting to this scenario was exacerbated by my inability to manipulate the shower in our hostel in such a way as to produce hot water, resulting in two days of skulking around with greasy hair, grumbling about how it appeared that Chilenos did not grasp the concept of agua caliente. After a five minute conversation with a Kiwi regarding the mysteries of Latin American plumbing however, it transpired that the locals - while perfectly aware of what agua caliente meant - were even more familiar with the phrase gringo estupido.


In my defence, the jetlag somewhat dulls your senses. Leaving Auckland and travelling east to Santiago, you take a ten-hour flight, which passes through eight time zones (losing an hour each time, as the clocks go forward) and also crosses the International Date Line (where you gain a whole day, with the clocks going back 24 hours). The confusing result of gaining a net 16 hours is that you leave New Zealand at dinnertime and arrive in Santiago at lunchtime. On the same day. Although a little involved thought led us to realise that this apparent travelling backward in time had nothing to do with Einstein’s relativity theories, it was still fairly perplexing. At any rate, if the concept plays such havoc with the conscious mind, it is little wonder that the body gets so befuddled as to give rise to what has been called "the worst jetlag in the world". Early efforts to adjust were hampered by a wine tasting in the hostel the day after our arrival, where we were amongst a dozen backpackers who sampled a dozen wines. It wasn’t a "tasting" so much as a "quaffing"; the bottles were all duly polished off along with the jug for collecting the remnants from the glasses after each wine had been tried. Justification for the latter - not hard to come by after the guts of a bottle each - was that only a few people had poured wine into it (if it was a wine they particularly didn’t like), no one had been seen spitting into it, and that the same assemblage of wine was sloshing around in our bellies anyway. The experience left us in high spirits - I was ridiculously pleased with myself, saying que syrah, shiraz to anyone who would listen (as we'd been told they were the same wine, different name) - and we stayed out partying until 3 in the morning. There is little doubt that rising the next day at 3.30 pm had a part to play in the fact that for the next few days we were operating on completely different time zones, neither of us ever asleep at the same time.

All the time we were getting drunk and whinging about the cold and the jetlag, we were also putting what little Spanish we had to good use. A few emergency lessons in Melbourne had us up to speed on the basics, but it wasn’t until the fifth day in the country that I was struck by the significance of the fact that the Spanish word for "name" is "llama". Thus posing the question "what is your name?" in Spanish may just as easily be interpreted as an enquiry as to the identity of one’s wild or domesticated, wool producing, cud-chewing, ruminant mammal indigenous to South America. Surprisingly, this does not appear to be the source of much confusion in Latin America, except perhaps when two Andean shepherds are trying to introduce themselves.

Given the time pressures of trying to cover as much of a substantial continent as possible in two and a half months, it was necessary to head north from Valparaíso and Santiago within a week of our arrival there. A 24 hour bus ride later, and we were in the Atacama Desert on the western slopes of the Andes, where we stopped for a bit of horse riding and sand boarding before jumping in a 4WD for 3 days to take us higher into the Andes and over to the Bolivian Salt Plains. It must be said that a winter night in the Atacama Desert at an elevation of 4,700 metres put a new perspective on the cold experienced in central Chile. Trying to sleep in a stone hut with no source of heat when the temperature was tipping -20°C was understandably sufficient reason to try to wear all one’s clothes at once, and given the well known difficulties associated with adapting to such ridiculous altitudes, it was little surprise that the following morning’s breakfast consisted of panadol and coca leaves.

Chewing coca leaves (the same leaves that cocaine is made from) is said to relieve altitude sickness and act as a stimulant. The practise has a long history in the Andes with evidence that it dates back to pre-Christian times and that it had been cultivated as a crop long before the rise of the Inca Empire in the late Fifteenth Century. The arrival of the Conquistadors in the middle of the Sixteenth Century saw a change in ownership of the vast deposits of gold and silver in the mountains and with it, a change in the working conditions of the miners who relied heavily on coca. The Catholic Church banned use of the plant, declaring it to be the work of Satan (after rigorous research into the issue, one would assume), thereby depriving the mine workers of the most essential of their essentials. Working conditions in the shafts were so appalling and hours so long that miners found coca to be their only means of making life bearable. Deprived of this, it is little surprise that productivity in the mines plummeted. Alarmed by the decrease in the output of Spanish Gold, King Philip II had a polite word with the nice chaps in the church, who at that time - it must be said - made up for their lack of thoroughness with a very pragmatic disposition. 3 years after it was declared a satanic substance, coca was back on the menu in South America; the church bestowing both its blessing and a 10% liturgical levy. As if this does not sufficiently emphasise the central role of this crop in Andean life, it is said that at certain times, demand for coca was so high that it was better to be worth your weight in leaves than in gold or silver. Such cultural insight lends perspective to America's war on drugs; in trying to eradicate a 2000 year-old tradition in Bolivia alone, a 230 year old nation spends more a year than Bolivia's GDP *.

(* The great thing about writing a blog is that using sources such as bar banter for important statistics will not endanger your ability to write future blogs)

Having acquainted ourselves with coca, we continued the high-altitude travel to the largest Salt Plains in the world in Uyuni, Bolivia. The vast expanses of bright white salt, formed into what look like a set of irregular polygonal tiles and set against the bright blue sky gave us the opportunity to take some perspective-skewing pictures. It is bad enough travelling in English-speaking countries like Australia and new Zealand and meeting fellow travellers whose impeccable English is their second language, but it is really too much when - for instance - you meet a Dutch couple on the world's largest Salt Plain who converse together in Dutch, with you in perfect English and with the driver/guide in near fluent Spanish. When it came to mastery of languages, it seemed that some of the abundant substance surrounding us was destined for rubbing in our wounds. Thus we took comfort in the fact that when said couple was interrogating their English language guidebook for places to stay in the next town, they paused and asked us native speakers what "a manatee" was. The question seemed a bit off the wall, but a meandering explanation involving dugongs and sea cows was nonetheless given, followed by an expectant silence. It transpired that our Dutch friends were slightly confused, as their newfound knowledge was inconsistent with the context provided in the book, which inexplicably mentioned "a manatees" in relation to most hotels and was preoccupied with their quality.
On the subject of hostelry facilities, it became clear that the minor jetlag-related issues I had with Chilean plumbing upon our arrival were small-fry. As our journey progressed, it became increasingly obvious to us of the importance of hot water as a selling point to tourists in search of accommodation. This was clear both as a result of our own hygiene/comfort requirements and the fact that it was heavily advertised as a feature of all hostelries. To be fair, every place we stayed that made the claim had made some attempt to feature a hot water shower. However, the majority of these shower heads were suspiciously oversized and loose electrical wires trailed from them into the unfinished concrete wall on which the head was mounted. All told, they looked like they would have been more at home in the armoury of some of the more inquisitive members of the Abu Ghraib military than stuck to the wall of a Latin American lavatory.

One of the must-do experiences for any gringo beating a trail through Bolivia is to mountain-bike down the "world's most dangerous road". Said road departs La Paz (the capital city at the highest elevation in the world) and descends into the valleys outside the city, dropping 3km in altitude over a distance of 60km as it winds around spurs and outcrops. At any point, the road may be as narrow as 3 metres and may have a sheer drop of up to 400 metres to one side. There are no barriers or walls on this road. The reputation of the world's most dangerous (others have suggested thoroughfares in Basra, South Central LA, and Moyross Co. Limerick) is due in part to the marketing of biking companies and in part due to the 200-400 lives claimed every year until a new road was opened in 2006. The death toll has decreased significantly since, due to the current lack of vehicular traffic; the occasional fatality now usually involving mountain-bikers. In fact, in the 9 years that the road has been used by commercial biking companies, only 14 cyclists have been killed. We are obliged to question if it was the perilous road to blame in all cases, given the fact that during some of the inquests, the authorities were considerate enough to accept monetary investigatory assistance from the biking companies in question to help return a verdict of "spectacular suicide" rather than "their brakes were fucked and the guides repeatedly ignored complaints to this effect". In addition to the fact that less people complete the route by bike than once did by automobile, another reason for higher vehicular-related fatalities is that it is much harder to get trapped inside a burning bicycle that someone else was driving which has fallen off a cliff. All told, the jury is still out on whether or not it was a good thing that due to the cloud on the day we did it, we could only see the first 20 metres of any given drop.

Having descended via the bikes to a more sensible altitude, we felt that it would be a good idea to spend some time in the warm Bolivian lowlands of the Amazon basin looking for wildlife. The wetlands are a great place to find nature, and we took a 3-day tour up the Yacuma River to see what we could find. The first day was quite intimidating due to the sheer number of caiman on the banks. Caiman are another member of the crocodilian family, and although not quite as large as their Australian counterparts, nevertheless share the evil countenance. Most disturbing though, was their tendency to slide insidiously into the river en masse as we approached just as they do in the movies as soon as the hero hits the water. With our own personal escort of vultures circling overhead, we were left to wonder if "nature" seemed to know something we didn't about the integrity of our dugout canoe. The second day saw us go in search of pink river dolphins, which Gráinne had a perverse fascination with given the reports in Ché Guevara's "Motorcycle Diaries" regarding how the more lonely locals use them for the same purposes that spring to mind when "Welshman" and "sheep" are mentioned in the same sentence. The gruesome coda to the aquatic version of this "pastime" is that in order to effect his "escape", said lonely local would have to kill the dolphin in question due to some form of post-coital contraction. At any rate, this might have explained why the dolphins remained at a distance of a few metres when I was persuaded to swim with them; swimming only being permitted in the stretches of river where dolphins were to be found, as they kept the caiman and piranhas at bay (although the 2.5m reptilian specimen sunning himself 30 metres from where this tasty morsel was splashing about seemed quite unperturbed by the presence of dolphins). After the swim, we tried our hand at piranha fishing a few bends downstream. I say "fishing", but in reality it was more like "feeding", the little bastards being adept at taking the perfectly good red meat off our lines without getting hooked. We came to the conclusion that if you are considering catching piranhas for dinner, it is more economical to eat your bait.

Preparing to leave Bolivia for Peru, we were given advice we had heard many times from well-travelled friends. The details were different, but the bottom line was the same; when crossing the border, put your money in your socks. One of the upshots of the aforementioned war on drugs is that thorough searches are often conducted on tourists crossing the Bolivian border. Although drugs may not be found, the authorities are adept at locating "counterfeit" currency, especially if it is US. Of course all these bogus bills must be confiscated for the good of the people (certain people in particular). At first, I put this down to the mild corruption of the border guards the way everyone else does. I now realise that this questionable convention represents a clandestine second front on the war on drugs. It is well documented that a high proportion of US currency carries traces of cocaine, suggesting that banknotes are a favoured means of administration of South America's most illicit export. By seeming likely to confiscate any dollars they come across, Bolivian border guards are forcing such currency into the socks of sweaty travellers. It is fair to say that a decent proportion of US money that enters or leaves Bolivia has had at least a few hours' shoe-time. Cut to the yuppie apartment in a nameless American metropolis where the tenant has procured a small quantity of white powder in spite of the best efforts of numerous law-enforcement agencies. As he extracts a banknote and begins to roll it up, his mind goes back to dinner the previous weekend where a friend mentioned how she kept her money in her sock while on holiday. He pauses and looks at the cylinder of currency in front of him, vaguely wondering if it is possible to get Athlete's foot in one's nose. The money promptly goes back into the wallet, and after a brief and fruitless search for a straw (yuppies don't keep straws in their apartments), the powder goes in the bin because this is all way to much hassle. A small victory for the war on drugs; less spectacular than the seizure of a major haul, but a victory that may be repeated many times over with minimum effort.

Having crossed into Peru financially unscathed, the first thing we noticed was how the tourist industry there was so much more developed than in Bolivia. This meant that the quality and cost of service was more in line with Western standards, but also that locals hustled for your gringo dollar a lot more. It became particularly evident on the Isla del Sol on Lake Titicaca - the island on the sacred lake of the Incas that was supposed to be the birthplace of their civilization. The island features a few ruins and some sacrificial altars which are usually surrounded by handicraft vendors engaged in the hard sell. Also knocking about were children of no more than five clad in traditional garb rather persistently requesting that you take their picture (in return for remuneration of course). As we were passing through some ruins these kids appeared, and did not seem to take our refusals particularly well. At the time it was cute, if mildly annoying that one little girl blocked our exit from the site. As we laughed patronisingly at her and reiterated our refusal to give her money, she said something darkly to Gráinne that we didn't quite catch. It was only after we had effected our escape that I realised threats had been made to throw rocks at my girlfriend's head. It seems some Peruvians need lessons in sustainable tourism.

While in Peru, we also visited the Nazca Lines and Machu Picchu (very expensive, but ultimately worth it) and also spent 8 days in search of Paddington Bear in what is supposed to be one of the best protected areas of rainforest in the Amazon basin. Seeing giant otters was an important objective of my visit to South America and it ranks as the highlight of the Peruvian Rainforest visit, along with getting hit on the head by my latest souvenir - an 18 inch machete which fell out of the luggage rack on the bus.

Although it has been enjoyable, we are looking forward to the flight from Lima to Rio since the second leg of our South American tour (taking in Brazil, Argentina and possibly Uruguay) will involve less touristy activities and so should be less demanding on the budget.

Post 7:

An Aucklander by name of Canute,
had romantic liaisons most moot.
As he was never alert,
to a nice piece of skirt,
he became known as the "Kiwi fruit"

If you stop to think about it, there is much to be said in favour of the theory that man is resistant to the powers of natural selection; that we have become so technologically sophisticated as a society that the classical notion of 'survival of the fittest' no longer applies to us. Generally speaking (emphasising this, as I don't wish to be drawn into a sociological argument here), the unfit are just as likely to pass on their genes to the next generation as the Einsteins and Adonises of the world. It is also clear that our success as a species has had a profound effect on the selection process as experienced by coinhabitants of the planet. Although much is made at the moment of how our actions indirectly affect natural selection in the animal kingdom (via habitat loss, food chain disruption etc), we rarely hear about how our more conscious actions mess with Darwin's model.

Take the humble seagull. As any practiced pier promenader knows, seagulls will patiently shadow anyone who looks like they might produce some sustenance. Those identified as food carriers are stalked by large numbers of these seabirds, usually until said carrier gives in and is persuaded to donate some of their fodder to the greater gull good. In the wild, a scenario involving a large number of gulls and a small morsel of food will generally play out in favour of the strongest, fastest or fiercest bird. However where the munchies come from a human hand, this situation is turned on its head. Humans invariably go out of their way to feed the lame gull with one eye and a crooked wing because they 'feel sorry for it'. Thus it is that where humans are involved, the village idiot of the seagull population rises to the top of the pile, turning natural selection upside down.

It must be of some consolation to the avid Darwinian that while his or her fellow humans are pissing in the gene pool of some lesser species, that there are still some mechanisms which can apply the 'survival of the fittest' doctrine to homo sapiens. In Australia's Northern Territory, these mechanisms tend to be dark green in colour, up to 5 metres long, and tend to have oodles of teeth. No one is sure whether the crocodiles in this area have developed an acquired taste for German tourists or whether it is simply that the self preservation instincts imbued in the average hapless Kraut are of a similar calibre to their sense of humour. At any rate, no tourist season in the 'Top End' is complete without a large reptile being introduced to the nuances of central European cuisine. This year, the best case I heard was of a Belgian who lost a hand - in order to get a croc to come closer to his boat for a better photo op, he was leaning over the side, splashing the water. It is interesting to note that of all the lethal creatures in Australia (where seashells have mini-harpoons that kill within the hour, jellyfish have lethal stings initially so painful that you may be still screaming whilst unconscious, where there are snakes and spiders with some of the most potent venom in the world, and where there are sharks that can easily bite you in half), the average Aussie only ever talks about the saltwater crocodile with anything approaching trepidation. All the other murderous animals are acting out of mistaken identity or in self defence, whereas the crocodile will actively hunt you. We found quite a spectacular (if slightly intimidating) way to view these prehistoric killing machines in action was on the 'jumping crocodile cruise', where wild 4 metre specimens were persuaded to propel themselves bodily out of the water for a hunk of buffalo meat on a stick. You may notice the croc in the picture is missing a limb. The story goes that every crocodile in the estuary was missing at least one limb except for the aptly named Hannibal. Coming in at 5 metres. Hannibal was the daddy of the delta and had all his own limbs, along with at least one of everyone else's. Completely ruthless creatures.

A more family-friendly environment in which to view crocs doing their thing was the late Steve Irwin's 'Australia Zoo'. We approached this with some doubts; given how corny and commercial it was supposed to be. For all its failings however, it is quite a stimulating place; a zoo where the emphasis is on interaction, getting the animals to behave in their instinctive ways for the benefit of the audience, but going to great pains to emphasise how it is not a circus show. As it is a 70 (soon to be 500) hectare compound, it is rather remote and so necessary to set aside a whole day for the experience. Arriving early in the morning, the first species we encountered was the mosquito, but the visit got better, with the only other creature as annoying being down by the tiger enclosure, where we ran into a clucking Oirish mammy, authoritatively educating her brood as to the habitat range of the felines behind the glass: "Ah now, dey wouldn't be native to dis country, so they wouldn't". In spite of how engaging the place was, it still felt a little uncomfortable caught in a limbo where too much time had passed for it to be appropriate to actively grieve the loss of their founder, but where too little time had passed for it to seem appropriate to actively celebrate his memory. The awkward result was all the punters seemed to be thinking of what appeared to be a taboo subject (the exception being under one of the stands of the 'crocoseum', where all the tributes from 'gifted' members of the public were gathered). Steve's image was conspicuously absent from all the signage and information points; in his place, his strong-featured wife and his daughter Bindi who looks like Stig of the Dump.

Being, as we were, accustomed to the shorts and t-shirt weather of tropical Queensland, the temperature of New Zealand's south island in autumn was something of a rude awakening. Most travellers from the British Isles who have been to both Australia and New Zealand seem to sing the praises of one country over the other, I'm inclined to believe that of these, the Australophiles prefer a US-style way of life, whereas the pro-NZ faction are satisfied with the anglo/hiberno lifestyle. New Zealand appears to retain closer cultural ties with the old empire, with Australia making more of an effort to distance itself, drawing closer to the US as a result (although this does not stop her majesty from gawking at you from some Ozzie coins). In addition, New Zealand's scenery is much more akin to that at home (as is the weather, alas), the sole exception being their rather more spectacular mountain ranges. These ranges are sufficiently beautiful to be the source of much tourism in their own right, but it appears the NZ tourist industry has found it more effective and profitable to market them in association with Gandalf, Frodo et al.

There is little question that many people who have enjoyed the work of JRR Tolkien regret the fact that the man who dedicated his life to creating such a captivating imaginary world could only find the time to grace it with a handful of stories (and that some of the less popular of this handful read more like history lessons). Like junkies, readers who started off on the soft recreational stuff of The Hobbit often found the more hardcore Lord of the Rings the next logical step. Having come to the end of that story, these users would then be faced with the cruel reality that there was no other material to fuel their need for a further fix of fantasy. Going cold turkey was inevitable. So when Peter 'Pablo Escobar' Jackson decided to make 3 blockbuster films, he awoke a latent hunger in a generation of addicts. Almost everyone suffered a relapse, but this time - thanks to the fact that film is a visual medium - there was an alternative to cold turkey. Now Tolkien fanatics could visit the film locations in New Zealand. Middle Earth methadone had arrived.

It all makes Queenstown, the backpacker and adventure sports mecca set in the Southern Alps of the South Island a rather surreal place. A substantial amount of the trilogy was filmed in this area, and not only is there a dedicated store selling miniatures and various memorabilia from the films, but there are tours that revolve solely around film locations where customers put on costumes from the films and run around chanting gibberish. Furthermore, when you walk into any of the tourist offices (which are more numerous than pubs) you will find that almost every brochure deems it necessary to name check Tolkien's work, regardless of what they are actually plugging. This reaches farcical proportions when you are invited to 'come and experience with us...LORD OF THE RINGS' on a bright yellow powerboat that hurtles suicidally down a narrow gully at 80km/h.

It could be acknowledged, however, that even if the fictitious history associated with this terrain is a smidgen too fantastical, the factual history (of what little there is) is rather staid. The geographical features of much of the lower South Island appear to only have English names. Whether they have no Maori names because the Maori only occasionally passed through this region, because they were less obsessed with categorizing and 'discovering' than their European counterparts or simply because such names were never recorded is something I haven't bothered to find out, but what is certain is that many of the names we are left with leave a lot to be desired. It must have taken a particular breed of nutcase to decide in the first place that he or she wanted to brave Drowning, Freezing, Starvation, Avalanches and Falling From Great Heights just for the privilege of naming a rock or pond, but one would imagine that those who did would at least have taken the trouble to collect a store of decent names to dole out when required. Although many aspects of the landscape have perfectly acceptable titles, further features are designated in such a way as to cast doubt on the imagination, enthusiasm and more seriously, the aptitude of some of the pioneers of this region. Looking at a detailed map arouses suspicions of foolhardy amateur explorers whose most inspired monikers were based on ridiculously mundane descriptions (big creek, blue river, deep creek), random objects they could think of (mount balloon, spoon river), and when all else failed, their mates down the pub (joe creek, jerry river). It could have been that this lack of imagination was due to low morale, and further landmarks certainly hint at an underlying level of incompetence that would have been rather dispiriting (doubtful island, indecision creek, lake unknown, disappointment creek) and sometimes even alarming (mount danger, terror peak, starvation point)

Unbelievably, the spirit of such feckless frontiersmen lives on. Trekking/hiking is a popular national pastime in New Zealand and the country is covered in government-maintained tracks that wind through the wilderness for days on end. These tracks are dotted with huts at 10-15 kilometre intervals, where you can use the gas stove and get a roof over your head for the night. The emphasis along these walks is on self sufficiency; you carry all your own clothing, food, cooking utensils and sleeping bag. You alone are responsible for your own well being. It was in these circumstances that Grainne and I took on the moderately well known Milford Track (60km, 4 days in total, and so popular that it requires booking to use the huts 6 months in advance), and it was here that we found the legacy of reckless self-endangerment persists. 30 independent walkers are allowed to set forth from the Milford trail head each day, and these hikers all head off in their small groups, followed an hour later by a group of guided walkers who have paid a lot more money to do the walk in comfort (staying in fancier huts with central heating, hot water, cooked meals etc). Amongst our group of 30 strong intrepid independents was a 60-something Kiwi woman of small stature with a rattling cough that made the mountains shake. For the first 2 days, she would be one of the earliest to set off yet one of the last to arrive that the hut for that night. Many of her fellow independents expressed concern about her ability to complete the section of the track on day 3, which rose 500m up to a mountain pass and then down the other side. Her frail physical state did not inspire confidence, and the less said about her mental state, the better (when she could no longer force conversations with others, she had them with herself). Sure enough, on day 3 she was quickly overtaken by everyone. The mood in the hut that evening was subdued, with no sign of her and the light rapidly fading. Eventually, the park ranger/caretaker of hut 3 informed us that old Annie was safe and sound, after being found by the trailing guided walkers. In a ditch. It transpired that she was a recently diagnosed diabetic who had decided to try out self-medication using barley sugar sweets, and that a 4 day trek into the completely inaccessible wilderness was the perfect opportunity to give this technique a trial run. It may sound a little cold hearted of the independent walkers that no one did more to help her, but as I said, the emphasis on these walks is on self-reliance and people who set out with unreasonable ideas of their own capabilities are regarded as irresponsible, selfish and stupid. We also knew that if she ran into difficulty, she wouldn't be on her own, given that the guided walkers were bringing up the rear. We look back on those four days in the badlands with much fondness, but the experience has in some ways only become a positive one in retrospect; it says a lot that for me, the most memorable part of the journey was the shower I had back in the hostel, where I spent half an hour in a trance-like state, getting blasted by hot water and listening to 'the End' by the Doors on repeat. Many travellers we met along the way couldn't get enough of this multi-day all-weather trekking, but after a few other 'highly recomended' walks I began to question the logic of paying a lot of money to travel great distances by plane, only to spend our time traveling a tiny bit more by foot. It is great to do it now and again, but spend too much of your holiday doing this sort of thing and you may get hiker's fatigue (see photo below).

Prior to all this, as our first task in New Zealand, we had to buy a car. It was a rather rushed process, but we thought we'd found a bargain when we agreed to buy a large Mitsubishi sedan for NZ$1000. Two days later, it became clear that we hadn't spent our shrewd money on the car but on our AA membership, as steam was billowing out from the bonnet. What seemed at first to be a minor radiator issue ballooned into a monstrously expensive lesson in engine anatomy and how to deal with mechanics; we spent NZ$1,400 and 2 and a half weeks getting the car back on the road again. One thing this experience did resolve, however, was what we were going to call our car. We christened her 'Britney', as she was prone to expensive breakdowns.

After this initial 'hiccup', Britney behaved herself, taking us around both islands and delivering us on time to do fun stuff like bungee jumps, glacier walking and zorbing (where you get inside a giant plastic ball and roll down a hill). At the end of the road trip, we put up in Auckland for two weeks to palm the car off on some unsuspecting soul. One of the major selling points was supposed to be the full service history, which we were going to provide sans our $1,400 mechanic's bill. We justified this borrowing from the karmic bank as necessary due to our financial status. As it turned out, a young Czech couple fell in love with it as soon as they saw it. All four of us took it to a mechanic for a pre-purchase inspection and hilariously, the assessment was unconditionally damning, diagnosing Britney with the mechanical equivalent of tuberculosis, heart disease, CJD, and 3 types of cancer. She would not pass her next roadworthiness assessment which was due in four months and even if she held together that long, her value would effectively be zero. Not good for the sellers, you might think. Well, this couple had never bought a car before, were in a rush, and as I said, they'd already committed their hearts to Britney before the czech-up. Ahem. In addition, they might have felt some loyalty to us as we saved them from a ruthless mechanic who wanted to charge an extortionate price for the assessment and by bringing them to this pessimistic fella, saved them $65. Thus, after we reduced our asking price from $1650 to $1300, they bought it anyway. As soon as the money changed hands, the hunted expression, the darting, nervous eyes, and the generally stressed out mannerisms I'd assumed since Britney broke down all dissipated only to reappear on our Czech friend. Although we felt a little guilty taking so much money for a terminally ill automobile, we were happy that the buyers knew what they were getting for their money, and so we weren't incurring a karmic deficit. The new owners were even already talking about leaving the latest mechanic's report out of the service history when they try to sell it on.
We're leaving New Zealand behind in four days and are off to Santiago, Chile. As we're due home in the end of August, this should give time for one if not two more (hopefully less protracted) instalments of the travel blog.

Post 6:

A mild-mannered priest named Rodrigo,
had a church by the bay of Montego.
But when he said mass,
he was an arrogant ass,
the reason? 'Twas his Altar Ego.

As serial readers of this blog may have noticed (at this point, a hello to those of you new to it), each post begins with a one-line joke. I would like to clear up any misconceptions some of you may have had and stress that I made these jokes up myself. Perhaps they are not quite the sharp, pithy quips that I have aspired to start my blogs with, but I feel I have a little license to use them given they are the fruits of my own endeavour. However, it struck me recently that much of a joke is in its delivery. Thus (as can be seen from the above) I have decided to try an alternative approach and begin this post on a more poetic note. Let me emphasize that this is a trial period and that feedback from you lot is required in order to determine whether this new format is adhered to or dispensed with in favour of its predecessor. Either way, the point is I know they're cheesy, but both jokes and limericks are the product of my own twisted mind, and as such, it's ok to use them.

Yet again this post is well overdue. Sorry that I haven't replied to emails, but I'll be clearing a backlog once I get this post finished. I had intended to write it immediately before leaving Melbourne, but I let things run on and am writing this having already been on the road again for some time. As a result, this post has to cover the end of our time in Melbourne as well as the beginnings of our adventures across Australia. It may go on for some length, so I'd reccomend reading it in bitesize chunks or going to get a cup of tea before continuing (if, indeed you choose to continue). To cater for the true modern-day men and women reading this, I've tried to include as many pretty pictures as possible; hopefully this will in some way compensate for their inordinately short attention spans.

Being in Melbourne for some of the 6 nations rugby games was a mix of the tragic and the sublime (if you're Irish). Obviously you need to be some sort of deperate character to stay up till 5am on a working Monday morning to watch your team snatch defeat from the jaws of glorious victory (thanks France), but I had plenty of other desperadoes to keep me company (and we were there 2 weeks later for emotions at the other end of the scale courtesy of England).

The end of February saw us wrapping up our stay in Melbourne and preparing for a month on the road in Oz. The box of surplus stuff that we sent home was ridiculously heavy and was chock full of all the stupid things naive travellers initially pack but don't need, along with the odd politically sensitive t-shirt that would be unwise to wear in South America at the best of times let alone in the current Chavez-led socialist climate.

As Australia is a fairly big country, we're actually only touring half of it, going up through the middle and then across and down the east coast. The more sparsely-populated west has to be ignored due to the limited time we have here. The plan - such as there is one - has been to fly to Alice Springs from Melbourne, exploring Ayer's Rock (Uluru to the informed) and then to ride north with a bunch of other paupers up the tropical town of Darwin, taking in Kakadu national park - home of Mick Dundee and 5-metre crocs with a taste for German tourists. From there, we're to fly to the north-eastern coastal town of Cairns - a major jumping-off point for the Great Barrier Reef and then to party and surf our way down the east coast to Sydney. Here's a nice little map of the planned trip that they won't let me copy into this blog.

The Outback

Alice Springs is pretty much in the centre of Australia. "The furthest from any beach but the closest to every beach", the locals are fond of saying. It has a population of ~30,000, making it the second largest town in Australia's Northern Territory (a province that would fit Ireland and the UK into it with plenty of room to spare). It is rather hot. Usually >40°C hot. And it's a little weird. Living in such a hot, bright, desolate place clearly has an effect; the locals all have a certain wild-eyed glint and a particular manner that is best described as "feral". In-keeping with much of the Outback's most successful and populous species such as dingoes, cats, horses and camels (a recent camel census puts the local population at ~300,000), the humans who moved into this area once were domesticated. No longer it seems. The things that go on in Alice can be as strange as the people. There is a hush-hush US military installation known as "Pine Gap" within 10km of the town. Little is known about what goes on there other than it must be a very clean place. As Uncle Sam's boys aren't robots they have need for beer and company. Thus it is inevitable that they have ended up mixing with the good denizens of Alice. The two groups seem to get on rather well, but the locals are left puzzled by the fact that every advocate of mom, baseball and apple pie that they meet from Pine Gap claims to work there as a janitor. A very clean place indeed. As with most things, wikipedia will explode the mystery and nascent conspiracy theories forming around such a place. It reports that Pine Gap is a NSA listening post, eavesdropping on all forms of communication emanating from this corner of the world in an attempt to find bad guys. It was more fun when I thought the yanks were there working on a genetically engineered race of hybrid mole-men which they would use to infiltrate every country in the world...

Anyway, Alice is used as the staging post for visiting what is arguably the most recognizable natural or manmade feature in Australia - Ayer's Rock (or Uluru). A massive piece of rock protruding from the desolate desert. People had told us "nothing anyone can say will prepare you for its sheer enormousness, and its complete isolation". Unfortunately, in saying this those people proved themselves wrong. Having listened to such people perhaps a little too much, we were amply prepared for Uluru's size and were a little surprised to find out that it wasn't all that isolated; there were a number of other huge rock formations sticking out of the desert within a radius of a couple of hundred km. Nevertheless, the range of colours it goes through at sunrise and sunset is quite beautiful and the contrast those colours form with the clear blue sky is very striking.

Leaving Uluru behind, we went on a 3 day backpacker bus north to the coastal capital of the northern territory, Darwin (this involved travelling through 1,500km of progressively greener outback). I had hoped that this would be my chance to taste some "bush tucker". Bush tucker is the traditional food of the aborigines, who came up with all sorts of ingenious ways of finding nourishment in such desolate terrain. I was particularly interested in sampling the legendary witchetty grub and although they don't look too appealing, they're supposed to taste of peanuts. Unfortunately I never got the chance to try this most appealing of delicacies, but I instead tried to stomach some even more daunting native cuisine. Waking up on the second day of our road trip, I found most of the breakfast eaten, and I had to make do with Vegemite on toast. There is little to be said for this stuff other than the Aussies identify with it the way the Irish do with Guinness, and that it does a good job of looking and tasting like thick, salty mud. But then the Aussies (like the Irish) are not known for their culinary prowess. Their contribution to international cuisine is chicken cordon bleu in a tomato sauce and on a bed of chips - a dish that goes by the name of "Chicken Parma". For breakfast, many of them eat a rectangular version of Weetabix produced by a company called "Sanitarium". If I'm not mistaken, a sanitarium is a convalescent home for the chronically ill; the thought of a bunch of plague-ridden walking corpses making one's breakfast cereal does not fill one full of confidence. The Aussie penchant for giving things entertaining names a la "wombat", "billabong" and "kangaroo" can also be seen in the food industry. Readers of some cultural awareness will no doubt cry out in objection to this observation. "Most of the so-called 'entertaining' names you're talking about are derived from aboriginal languages", they will say. "The only reason you think these words are funny is because you are ignorant of the Aboriginal culture and languages", they will claim. There may be a modicum of truth to this observation, but it cannot explain why Nestle Australia has chosen to call one of its most popular chocolate bars a "polywaffle". I can picture it now - the Nestle marketing gurus working on the name for their new blockbuster product. They've been working night and day for months on the problem and have narrowed it down to three final candidates. Ultimately - and after much wringing of hands - "polywaffle" wins out over the other two hopefuls; "chuzzwuzzler" and "wallangadoo".

At this point, I take my tounge firmly out of my cheek, make conciliatory gestures to the few Australian readers of this blog, and wish you all the best of health and promise a final post from this fine island/continent before we depart for New Zealand on the 10th of April.

Post 5: Did you know that the Nintendo Corporation ran a puppet government in Latin America for a number of years?

They were pursuing a policy of supermarionation.

A word on Australia. It is rather big. That in itself is no real secret. However, it should reasonably follow that there are a variety of climates on a land mass of such size. Having paid no real attention to the place until quite recently, this quantum leap in deductive logic was beyond me when yuletide plans for 2006 were drawn up. Residents of Melbourne will happily explain to you how the meteorological powers-that-be conspire to create a relatively temperate local climate which is prone to swift changes in conditions. Maybe it's due to the fact that I'd heard these explanations one too many times, but when it came to planning for Christmas I chose to ignore everything the locals had to say and happily operated in simple tourist mode. That train of thought went along the lines "Australia. Sun. Barbeque". As it turned out, the weather on Christmas day was more akin to Ireland in March than anything I had come to expect down here. The turkey, I am ashamed to say, did end up in the oven, but as a small consolation we did manage to get out on the balcony to barbeque a few prawns during a break in the blustery conditions.

However, making unrealistic weather assessments for Christmas day did not serve as the catalyst necessary to usher in the Age of Reason. Unfortunately I only emerged from the Dark Ages after a slightly more painful lesson a number of weeks ago. The problem, I maintain, is that I still don't fully understand the process of sun tanning. And when I don't fully understand a process I tend to ignore what other people have to say on the matter. Here's the thing: you wear sun cream to protect your skin from UV rays. That bit I get. And many people like to sunbathe to darken their skin. OK, still no problem. Now, I think that it's the UV rays which stimulate the production of melanin, the pigment that makes skin darken. If this is the case, then why do would-be tanners lie out in the sun only to go to great lengths to protect themselves from the very source of a tan. I'm not advocating skin cancer here, nor am I saying that tanning is necessarily a good thing, I'm just questioning the logic of spending all day lying in the sun trying to get a tan whilst wearing skin cream that essentially stops you getting a tan. Why not wear no cream and only lie in the sun for a fraction of the time? This was the question I asked myself whilst eyeing up the sun loungers on our balcony when summer finally did arrive in Melbourne in mid-January. You can all see where this is going of course. I'd just like to point out that I knew what I was doing. I'd spent a little time in the sun in the preceding days, and had a fair idea (no pun intended) of how long I could be out in it before reddening. Unfortunately, this fair idea, was not reliable and on the day in question, it turned out that rather too much time was spent in the sun. But there is a silver lining. I discovered that just before you start to peel, doing rigorous exercise can have interesting consequences. I guess because it is dead, the soon-to-be-peeling skin does not seem to accommodate perspiration very well. The result is that once sweating, you begin to look like you are made of bubble-wrap as this outer layer traps the sweat. I think this is the first documented case of radiation (in this case UV) actually conferring super powers. "Bubble-wrap boy with his incredible immunity to stress and worry, chiefly due to his almost inexhaustible supply of bubbles which can be burst in a most soothing and calming way". Unfortunately, bubble-wrap boy's powers are short lived and he soon turns into the much less talented "Incredibly itchy skin man".

The whole episode is reminiscent of Beethoven's reported approach to his progressive deafness. Having been given some medicine, his doctor instructed him to take a certain dosage every day. Ludwig, knowing better, reasoned that this was a waste of time when he could simply take all the medicine at once and reap the rewards immediately.

I would like to say that I have learnt my lesson, and will be open to advice in the future. Thankfully, the sunburn has subsided at this stage – a bonus since we finally did some touristy things this weekend. One of Melbourne's main attractions is a beach about an hour's drive out of the city where you view what is known as the "penguin parade". At sunset every evening, droves of little penguins (their actual species – the "little penguin") emerge from the water and bolt for their burrows. It's quite funny to watch as they're incredibly nervous, and you can't help but feel sorry for the ones that look so bewildered wandering around the carpark of the adjacent interpretive centre. There are even signs telling you to check under your car before you drive off. I have to say I feel less sorry for the clueless Chinese tourists who are oblivious to the fact that people aren't transparent, and that if they stand up for a slightly better view, you can't see through them. I was on the verge of pointing this out when I noticed that some of them were wearing surgical masks. Perhaps it seems like a sensible thing to do from their perspective what with bird flu being a big deal, but it just left me shaking my head, wondering if we were from the same planet. I mean, last I heard, the only instances of humans being infected by this virus were when people came into close (possibly intimate) contact with poultry on a regular basis. And the closest human contact these little penguins probably get is when they're buying their super-strength triple espressos at starbucks to keep them sufficiently jittery for the rest of the day.

In other news, I still haven't seen anyone get caught using Melbourne's "free" public transport. Although my flatmate (and landlord) did have a tram related run-in of a slightly different sort after attending an all-day party a few Sundays ago. The party in question was fancy dress, and Chris decided to go as Die Hard action hero Det. John McClane (a.k.a. Bruce Willis). The costume was pretty good – dirty ripped jeans and wife-beater along with a pistol and holster, just the right amount of fake blood, and an Uzi in case the bad guys really got serious. To Chris's misfortune, it was actually the tram driver on the journey home who got serious, and notified the five-O that there was a lone gun-toting psycho on his tram. With the block sealed, and their real shooters poised for action, the cops persuaded him off the tram and face first onto the tarmac. Apparently his drunken disbelief and insistence that "I'm John McClane!" didn't faze the officers, who informed him afterward that any movement toward his toy guns would most definitely have precipitated a hail of hot lead. He made the local paper. Which was nice.

Finally, the technology section of this blog. I mentioned in the last post how I thought some of the gadgets offered by google were just great, and how I was particularly impressed by their predictive text search bar that slots into the top of your web browser. Another little beaut is their "analytics" feature for e-commerce webmasters and voyeuristic bloggers the world over. When you create a google analytics account, you are provided with 3 lines of custom-made HTML which you can stick into the bottom of your website. These 3 lines of magic code will report back to your analytics account with a whole range of temporal and geographical information about your users. Rest assured if you are part of the diaspora, and are not reading this from anywhere in the British Isles, I will know who you are and when you read this post (it's also a bit of an ego boost to claim a readership that extends from Oakland to Perth, Brooklyn to Vienna – take a bow guys, you know who you are). It also allows you to track how people have arrived at your site – i.e. whether they have navigated directly to it or if they have followed a link from another site. Which leads me to my new google-derived source of concern. Someone out there has found their way to this site from another blog - http://theaurora.blogspot.com/. A blog belonging to a bunch of guys best characterized by the country singer Todd Snider as "Conservative Christian, right wing Republican, straight, white, American males. Gay bashin’, black fearin’, poor fightin’, tree killin’, regional leaders of the South. Frat housin’, keg tappin’, shirt tuckin’, back slappin’ haters of hippies like me. Tree huggin’, peace lovin’, pot smokin’, porn watchin’ lazyass hippies like me."
There appears to be a closet neocon amongst us.

Post 4: What do trawlers do around Sellafield?

Nuclear fishin'

Being as it is so close to Christmas, this post is first and foremost a joyous Christmas greeting wishing happiness and good fortune upon all who happen to read it. That is except for the one person on the mailing list who I secretly hate. I don't wish YOU a happy Christmas at all! And if you don't realize that it is to you I'm talking to, you will soon - watch those funny tasting mince pies. he he he...

As it happens, I had this blog post half-written for ages and now that it's Christmas time I feel kind of annoyed that I didn't kick it off with a home-made crap joke with a bit more relevance to the time of year. However, I will grace you with one that I (I admit) did not make up, which combines the themes of Christmas and lawyers. These are two of the most topical issues for me right now (working in a law firm and all).

If Santa & Mrs Claus had a baby, what would they call it?

a Subordinate Claus.

Sorry. Just had to get that out of the system.

It will be interesting spending Christmas in Oz. I've maintained that the barbeque must feature prominently on the day, and we've got a whole turkey that I maintain will not see the inside of a conventional oven. Mix these unreasonable convictions with a case of beer, and it should make for an interesting meal. However, as long as plenty of booze gets drank and lots of photos are taken of the event, I'm not sure if I particularly care whether or not we completely cremate the stupid thing.

I have a few weeks off work to enjoy this sunny festive season of course. As I mentioned I'm working in a law firm (more accurately, a patent attorneys). It's great experience, and have come to rely on certain websites an awful lot more due to the nature of the work here. Wikipedia, for instance, is a saving grace as it is a fount of all sorts of knowledge. It is often used in the course of work when I need to educate myself as to the particulars of some technical concept, but it is equally useful for whiling away lunch breaks as a source of completely irrelevant yet strangely captivating military history. I have also used it to improve my knowledge of English punctuation; in particular, how to use semicolons. Of course, even if Wikipedia is my main net destination at work, it is impossible to escape the ubiquity of google. Their little tools are incredibly handy. For instance, the google search toolbar is installed in the top of my browser and now it has predictive text - it will guess what you're typing in the search box before you've finished, based on commonly searched phrases. Which is great. But the other day I wanted to search the phrase "is christmas a paid holiday?". Getting as far as "is c...", google got its own ideas what I had in mind - the first three suggestions being "is ciara really a man", "is ciara a guy" and is "ciara a hermaphrodite". Someone, somewhere, obviously has issues.

Traveling around here is fantastic, I have to say. Melbourne has a very comprehensive tram network, that amongst other things, picks me up right outside our flat, and deposits me on the doorstep of work. A questionable feature of the system however, are the tickets. You buy your blank ticket in any newsagent, get on the tram, and timestamp it in a machine on board. Your ticket is then valid for 2 hours. Of course, it could happen that one 'forgets' to stamp their card when they get on, and are lucky enough to be sitting beside one of the stamping machines when they eventually 'remember'. In this case, by the time the ticket conductor (who just got on and who was the reason such people remember to stamp their ticket) reaches these people, they will have a perfect, valid ticket like any other respectable citizen (or legal alien/tourist). I would like to emphasize that I am not one of these people - as I am an upstanding member of society - and that the culprits are mainly locals.

I'm not sure that even if you were caught that there would be much of a problem. The Aussies just don't seem the officious type. It's interesting comparing the place to the states. Everyone here picks up on the accent straight away, but unlike the US, everyone places it as well. And yes, they are friendly too. The only thing I can't get my head around is how they all use the greeting "How are you going?". It just doesn't sound right. I mean, it's either "How are you DOING?" or else "How is IT going?". Their greeting sounds more like an enquiry into your travel arrangements. To which of course, the answer should be "By your free bloody trams, of course!"

Post 3: Where in the sea are you most likely to get shot?

At the OK coral.

I hear it's getting a bit chilly back home. Before anyone goes getting jealous, it might be worth knowing that the first thing we thought when we got off the plane in Melbourne was "fuck it's cold". What you get for spending the preceding month on the equator, I suppose.


All told, Malaysia was pretty cool - both the Borneo part and the peninsula (map for nerds included). We did about 40km worth of trekking through rainforest and I did one trek that was 2.4 km from end to end and 1.2km from bottom to top. It was possibly the hardest thing I've ever done, and Grainne says she wishes she'd got a photo of me when I got back - something to do with looking like I'd been freed from Dachau etc etc. We also did some hanging around on beaches, and one of us got some fantastic fresian patterning on our face due to the uneven distribution of suncream.

With the amount of monkeys we saw in Borneo, it was only natural to speculate as to the correct collective noun for a group of them. In light of our experience, it is quite obvious that the correct term should be motherfucker. As in "a motherfucker of monkeys". This relates in particular to a mangy species of macaque. Not only do they look inherently evil, but they will climb in through any unsecured windows and rifle through any unguarded bags to steal what they can. More insidiously, they loiter on walkways in large groups pretending to ignore passers-by. That is until you have passed about half of them and they have you surrounded, at which point they stalk up to you from every direction growling and bearing their teeth. I had wondered why these filthy cretins were called macaques, but after that experience, the phrase "soiled macaques" has undertaken an additional dimension of relevance.

Hanging out in rainforest isn't all bad though, and one of the highlights was visiting a 50,000 hectare national park with massive cave systems. It is so big and so remote that the park HQ can only be reached via a 10 hour boat ride or the recently-installed airstrip. I've already mentioned to some that I was reading "Heart of Darkness" again to psyche me up for journeying deep into the wild jungle. As a result, it was a bit jarring to find that the cafe attached to our lodgings had the "greatest hits" of Boney-M on the soundsystem - not exactly the untamed malevolent wilderness I had been hoping for. 5 days later and I was a wiser, older man. I had come in search of forces that could corrupt the soul of the stoutest of men and I had indeed found them. "Daddy Cool" 5 times a day? The Horror, The Horror!

Whenever a few days were spent out in the wilds, we would then devote a few days to taking it easy, and this sometimes meant that when hungry and tired we would sell out and plump for western cuisine in one of the many US franchises that can be found in Malaysia. This was not something we were proud of and as it seemed that the insect population of Malaysia wished to remind us of our guilt. Of all the meals we had there - from the myriad hawker stands and little local restaurants to the occasional US dining experience, the only time we shared our dinner with cockroaches was in Subway and Planet Hollywood. And no, that doesn't mean that Bruce Willis was visiting one of his part-owned establishments. Ha ha. Anyway, lesson learnt: go local.

Although going local is a policy that should be confined to cuisine as our first hotel experience in Kuala Lumpur will bear testament to. Normally when you follow the advice of the guidebook, you find yourself in some sort of hostel with other like-minded foreigners. When this is not the case, and you end up in accommodation frequented by locals, the experience can be spectacularly different. On this occasion, our book told us to expect laundry facilities and free internet. Instead we found a box-sized room reeking of damp and other things with a window onto the corridor and with pillows black from the mildew. Not the worst thing in the world except when the room is in a firetrap-cum-brothel and you have to share one of many floors with 30 neighbours who hang their washing in the hallway and who are mostly amputees, fat weirdos and toothless perverts (usually all of the above). Moving hotels is not an option when you arrive into town bleary-eyed at 2 in the morning so we had to just put the whole thing down to experience. As any moron will tell you (and as we knew, but were too tired to consider), you will not find particularly impressive lodgings adjacent to the main bus terminus of any major city.

That all said, we're now in Melbourne where there are much fewer monkeys and fat, armless old men. We hope to have a flat soon and also look forward to letting you know all about it once the weather hots up. In the meantime, anyone who feels inclined can drop us a mail to let us know they're still alive or alternatively, leave a comment here on the blog.