The end of South America

After Machu Pichu we spent a few more nights at the Point hostal in Cuzco. After staying up all night on our final night the time had finally come for us to move away from the land of the Incas. We hopped on a train South to Puno and Lake Titicaca and found ourselves a nice cheap hostel where we met a cool buddhist guy (about our age) and his 40 year old 'friend' who he had met on his travels. The youing guy was so chilled out he very nearly sent me to sleep while talking to me.
After a few days Lake watching and the like we packed up our various belongings and hopped on a bus for 20 hours to Huacachina via Ica. Huacachina is a beautiful little desert town surrounded by sand dunes big as mountains with a cool oasis in the middle of it. Our hostel, amazingly, had a swimming pool (with attached bar) which we dived into on arrival before we went sandboarding (the pool that is).
Sandboarding, for those who don´t know, is a sport where you either strap your feet to (if you're good) or lie on top of (if you're us) a board and then fly at about a hundred miles an hour, or so it feels, down huge sand dunes. (Max still has a sand burn now). It was amazing fun.
We stayed in Huacachina for a few days, chilled out, climbed some sand, ran down some sand and then left at five in the morning on the 3rd day to go to Paracas, or more accurately Islas Ballestas where we saw pelicans, penguins, sea lions and loads of other birds and whole heap of bird shit that was once Peru´s main export. It was a great morning, topped of nicely with 20p egg sarnies on the waterfront.
After the morning was done we hopped on a Perubus to Lima and found ourselves a nice Israeli run hostel (very friendly) to park ourselves for the last night. Our aim of seeing Lima in a day was slightly inhibited by the Hostel having Pro Evolution Soccer 6 on the playstation, but at least we got better at that.
The next morning we did actually manage to remove ourselves fromt the hostel and see Lima. It´s a really lovely place actually, especially the old colonial centre. We also had a lovely lunch (green rice for me) and some brown lemonade. After a coffee by the sea front and our usually daily debate, this one especially heated, we got ourselves a delicious chinese meal in Miraflores (the posh part of Lima we stayed in) and headed to the airport.
It was at the airport that we faced a dilemma: Leftover currency. So we spent it all on Donuts, i mean who wouldn´t and the problem was solved. The flight to Santiago was quite interesting, we met a lovely columbian woman who was flying to meet her new fiance in Santiago. Once in
Santiago airport at about 6 in the morning and with about one hours sleep, we all felt a bit rough, Benjie still managed another donut however.
About 6 hours later and we were right bang in the middle of the Pacific Ocean in Easter Island. It´s an amaizing place, huge grass covered esxinct volcanoes at each end, woods and desert in the middle, a magnificent coastline and 20ft rock heads all over the place.
We camped right on the sea shore in a campsite and we could hear the Pacific crashing against nearby rocks all night.
Day 1 in Easter Island consisted of:

-Renting bikes
-Cycling to the other side of the Island (20km)
-Max getting a puncture
-Me offering and starting to walk back (stupid me)
-A horrible realisation about 5 hours in that the way we were taking back was actually too long on foot.
-Hitching a lift with a grumpy family
-Arriving back safe and sound after seeing some graceful wild horses roaming the land and experiencing one of the quitest and most naturally beatuiful places i´ve seen combined with a weird and interesting history of creating huge rock faces facing into the Island. It was great.
On day two we climbed a volcanoe and looked into its old crater lake, it was well cool. Me and Benjie sneaked in a drink at a harbourside bar before dinner (same pasta 3 nights in a row on the bloody expenisve island) and a film at a local hotel. It was called Rapa Nui and was produced by Kevin Costner, it was great.
The next day we flew out of Easter Island all happy and content and arrived back in Santiago in the evening in time to find a nice cheap hostal with a slightly mad receptionist.

We woke up early enough for our free breakfast on the morning of the 4th and headed into town to see some sights. The centre of Santiago is beautiful, quite similar to Lima in its colonial architecture. We spent some time wondering around the city before we hopped on a funicular railway which stops off at the zoo which hugs one of Santiago's hillsides. The zoo was great, it had a jaguar, lions, tigers, polar bears and loads of other cool creatures. 2 quid well spent we all tought!
And now? I sit alone for the first time. Max, Daniel and Benjie have left for India and i go New Zealand tomorrow.
It´s been an amazing month- sorry the accounts haven´t been more detailed, there is so much to tell and so little time. (especially when an evil woman is sighing at how long you´ve been on the computer...hope she can´t read english...)

From Venezuela to Lake Titicaca

The major difference between Venezuela and Peru (Chavez aside) is that in Peru(this part) it is Cold and wet (which i love) and in Venezuela it is warm and sunny (dangerous for a ginger like me). Otherwise the amount of tourists here in Peru (especially some quite talented Irish drinkers) is pretty staggering. This time i'm going to try and avoid too much text. And you can see my last week or so through some Pictures, the bottom are most recent.

1)Caracas from the worlds highest cable car.
2)Another pretty bad shanty town, Caracas.
3) St Partricks day, Cuzco. (HA ha ha what a mess)
4) Max and Dan leaning on a big rock in Sacsayhuaman (Pronounced Sexy woman) An Inca Remain near Cuzco.
5) Football Match Cuzco, Referee under Police Shield. Lots of flying debri. Pretty funny. Just one arrest.
6) The start of the Inca Trail (Altitude Sickness not pictured)
7) Our Inca Trail Group (Barely alive after 3000ft climb day before)
8) The 4 of us at Machu Pichu.
Brief enough for all i hope.

The Islands and the falls...

Uh oh, this might be a long one. In short: Went to sparkly, lovely, beautiful deserted Caribbean Islands, saw blue green and yellow fish, returned to Caracas, went to hostel where a monkey lives in Southern Venezuela, saw worlds highest waterfall in middle of untouched jungle, returned to Caracas, tired.

Los Roques is a rather special thing to see, long clear stretches of white sand touching on stunning tourqoise sea. Reefs full of fish and residents full of hate for tourists. It really is special. We camped in a mangrove clearing (pictured below) one night, looking onto a lagoon, and on a deserted beach the next night and cooking our dinner on an open fire. It was amazing. The cloudless sky and lack of shade found us in need of anything cold and beery with some shade between about 11 and 3 but this was fine by us. I haven't enough time or space to detail just how perfect it was waking up and watching the sunset from a spit sticking our into the sea as pelicans pick fish into their mouths all around you. Stunning.

We flew back to Caracas on the 6th (Tuesday) and had to plead with a hotel to give us a room for the night as earlier the receptionist had been far to engrossed in a game of virtual pool to book a room over the phone. (Before this we had turned up at Carlos' posh as hell restaurant in swimming trunks sandals and sand all over the place. Quite funny really. )
Next morning at about 5 am we set off by Bus to Ciudad Bolivar in the Southern state of Guyana. Apart from being freezing cold with A/C at like 5 degrees the journey was great. We ploughed through the pretty amazing lowlands and saw political propaganda on every road and at one time an alomost continual pro-chavez rant went on for about 50 miles along an oil pipeline. We (Well Dan as he speaks the lang) chatted at length to a cooperative farm builder who explained how private enterprise and farms are soon to be ´killed´. Interesting.
At the bus station we were met by our Hostel/Posada owner Peter. He had quite clearly had a few too many beers and he stopped off on the way for some more. It was pretty fun roaring down a dirt track at 80km while he looked the wrong way and drank too much. Good fun.

At the Posada we actually met some other tourists shock horror! Iulia and Dan (Jeezus) were probably one of the sweetest things i´ve ever seen, and we got on with them straight away- Matthew: So Daniel what do you do? Jeezus: I'm in gastroporn... you get the picture...well i hope not literally.
We woke at 5 the next day and hopped in a teeny weeny six seater plane (pictured right) over forest plane and jungle to Canaima. It was pretty shaky and pretty fun.
When we arrived we were greeted by a couple of Indiginous folk who are i must say incredibly small, but very lucky with the ladies we here. Before we started the tour properly we had an hour or two to look around the amazing lake and falls in Canaima (pictured below with Dan, Benjie and Max)

At lunch we met a few more people, my faves being Tara and John who had come here after working in Ecuador and were English. We then hopped on a boat, climbed some stunning waterfalls, saw a wicked yellow and black frog walked through jungle swam in the black river water and motored up river (probably not in that order). The jungle is amazing and in the background huge tabletop mountains fill the horizon. After a pretty full day we arrived at a base camp had some dinner. (Pasta...for a change..fucking carnivores) and pretty much passed out.

Guess what? We woke up at 5 the next morning. All raring to go...as i´m sure you can imagine. We hopped in the motorised dugout canoes and rapped and sung all the way to the next camp. From there we walked for about an hour and were suddenly contfronted with one of the most spectacular things i´ve ever seen. Angel falls seems to rise from nowhere and has itś top aboce the clouds. Thin white water cascades into a pool on the bottom and another small waterfall in which we sat and swam follows. Only 12 people saw it that day and being one of them was breathtaking.

After lunch (rice and potatoe) we headed back and relaxed and swam in the river until evening. I fell asleep under the stars in a field next to the camp before later trudging onto one of the hammocks.

The trip was amazing: The views were spectacular and the ride exciting and the people we met truly made it special. Sorry if this seems rushed...too much to write, too little time...

Caracas

Caracas is an amazing city. It is huge and yet feels small compàred to the massive mountains that box it in on all sides. On the plain on the way over we were politely informed by some venezuelans that we were crazy to be doing this trip at all considering we had no tour group and only one spanglish speaker in the group. After an hour waiting in line for a visa we emerged into the hot busy airport and immediately set upon by a policeman. A contact of Daniel´s had booked a Cab and the policemen insisted he escorted us to meet him, obviously some travellers have never made it past the airport! The cab journey in was fascinating, a long winding road around the coastal mountains connects Caracas to the airport as the original bridge the old road was on collapsed. Add to this the winding road being half closed because of a mud slide and you get a long journey. The cab driver told us, reasuringly, that visitors are put off caracas because of the huge gun crime rate. As we apprached the glowing metropolis shanty towns began to crowd around the road, it was quite someting.

We finally arrived at the hotel (view from room pictured) at about 9, after flying in at half 4 and Dan spoke to Carlos, his contact and we were invited for dinner at his rather plush restaurant. The fact that vegetarianism is laughed at did not stop me having a delicious meat-free meal at a fantastic restaurant. It was a very strange end to a a long day as we ate delicious food and drank free beer and laughed off the fact that none of us hadslept for 24 hours.
Today we have booked ourselves a flight to some Caribbean Islands, eaten strange cheese dishes in a cafe and experienced the local buses. The people here are lovely and without loads of help from total strangers we could easily be one of those gun crime statistics. The city is fantastic as long as you are told where to go and are careful. The gap between rich and poor is immense but you get no hassle from anyone, a testimant to the people of this proud nation perhaps. It feels as though we have been dropped in at the deep end but what a great place to start the trip.

The Beginning...

Sitting here in the basement of City and Islington College in North London, in my lunch hour of course, it is quite hard to imagine that in 9 days time i will be on a plane headed for Caracas, the notorious capital city of Venezuela. The last 6 months months seem to have flown by and i'm beginning to wish that I had given a little more time to the planning of the trip. Here I am however, bag bought, Jabs had and nerves tingling waiting for a journey that will take me further from home than I have ever been or will probably ever go again.

Carbon guilt apart I do feel that what I am about to do is the right thing. The idea of not seeing my girlfriend Alice for 2 and a half months and my family and friends for five months fills me with fear. I am afterall a rather sheltered well nourished and cared for young man who has always had everything and is soon to have literally nothing but what is on his back.

I don't expect the trip to change me and I certainly don't expect to return a 'Man' but I do hope that the value of seeing other cultures and experiencing independence outweighs the inevitable cost that the fragile Earth will pay for my numerous international flights.

Thanks to everyone who I leave behind. I'll probably be missing you if you're someone who is bothering to read this.

I'm hoping the next time you read this I'll be in Venezuela enjoying hot sunshine and anti-malarial induced photosensitivity.