i'm in london still...

how very waif's... actually, i am in london and i am phenomenally glad to be here. i'm staying with andre at the moment and she and her family have been just absolute god sends. they are warm and have graciously opened their home to me. and let me watch margrita's wedding video 9,000 times (and i still get all mushy every single time).

it's so weird, in a lot of ways it's like i never left, but i wouldn't have missed my six months home for anything. it's also odd being here and knowing that everyone else isn't (except matt, who i'm meeting up with today)... but i keep thinking... "ooh, might just give kat or alex a ring and see if they want to do something". which is fine except one is in sydney and the other new zealand. i do have a new phone number by the way, but i'll forward you all that in a private email... rather than publish my phone number on the internet! i know i'll make more friends, but right now me and andre are hanging out and that's cool and amrina came over last night and it was tops catching up with her (kelly: she and marcus are still together!).

i've done a few kitchy things since i've been here like done the sainsbury and tesco tours (both are supermarkets i particullarly like) and of course the obligatrory stroll down oxford street. but i'm not really a tourist here, i did all that stuff years ago. but i'm certainly enjoying it anyway.

i start work on monday (thank GOD cause i'm broke!), i'm doing two days in bethnal green and one in mile end. they're closer to the city and i chose them because i haven't worked there before. so i'll just have to see how it goes! any work at this juncture is most graciously accepted.

oh there might be a few things you're wondering...

q. how did you get to london?
a. via rio in brazil... stupidist idea ever. cost me way too much and was too much stress. i didn't enjoy it at all.

q. how long are you in london?
a. two months. then andre and i hit asia and new zealand for five months.

q. sooo... do you sound like a pom again yet?
a. yes.

q. going to find yourself a london fella?
a. going to have a look :)

well, that about covers the obvious ones! any more questions feel free to ask them. i do love hearing from you guys. anyway, i'd better check out. meeting matt at 2pm and the way transport is here it means i have to leave andre's at 12.20. so i'd better hurry!

write me hey?

love
simone

iguazu falls...

oh... my... god...

yeah so i went to the iguazu falls (the argentinian side) and it was the MOST COOLEST AWESOMEST BIGGEST BESTEST nature thing i have ever seen! The falls are huge and amazing they gush millions of litres of water into this giant river. the falls are set in a national park that is really lush and tropical. It absolutely bucketed down for half the time we were there but it didn´t matter, it just made everything lush, glossy and gorgeous. there are three walks you can take around the park; the upper curcuit which gives you an overview of the falls and makes you feel as if you could drop over the edge of them any second, the lower curcuit where you stand under the spray of the falls and get absolutely soaking wet (but it is SO exhilerating!) and the thrid is to a section of the falls called the devils throat which is in fact this enormous canyon where about ten huge water falls empty into and with the mist and the distance (you can~t see the bottom) it honestly looks like the hole that is the end of the earth.

unfortuantely for me the second i walked into the park i ran out of camera battery.. isn´t that always the way? so i only have a few photos and a mate of mine ellie that i was hanging out with there is going to send me some fabulous shots we both took. fingers crossed.

anyway, long and the short of it is, it was absolutley phenomenal. definitely the best thing i~ve done in south america. and the place i stayed in was absurd! it used to be a five star hotel and so has a pool, is absolutely lush... and only cost $12 a night. which is rad since i have almost no money left!

oh yeah, here´s a picture of the falls so you can get some idea of what they look like...

photos...

I played in the snow here for ages...in my thongs! It´s actually right next to the international border crossing between Chile and Argentina in the Andes.






B. Aires...

A house in the La Boca area. It´s a realy working class area and quite dangerous. It´s also home of the Boca Juniors, a world famous soccer team. Huge shock, I´d never heard of them. Or their star player Marradona. Oops... the argentines don´t like to hear that!



Over the other end of town is fancy pants Recoletta. It´s home of most of the museums and any high end brand you can think of. It is also home to Recoletta cemetery, which is where Eva Peron is (contraversially) buried. Interesting story, remind me to tell you it sometime.





This is a giant flower in the city. It opens itself during the day and closes at night. It´s gorgeous and the best piece of art I´ve seen anywhere. I just liked it is all...

b.a.... still and wishfully forever...

i love b.a. i could live here forever and ever. it is hip, comsmopolitan, jumping with people and irrespective of the fact that no one seems to sleep a great place to be. i've been here two days so far and have just partied the whole time. unfortunately i have to head back out of here tomorrow (but the falls are supposed to be phenomenal!) but i have to admit, i am dragging my feet a little about going. i have met so many cool people here. i'm staying at the hostel called milhouse - http://www.milhousehostel.com/ - and it absolutley rips it up. i'm sharing a room (amongst others) with kat from scotland and she cracks me up. We went out with a group of people last night and got home at about seven am this morning and then i sat around shooting the breeze with some other people for a couple of hours. about eight thirty it seemed like a good ifdea to grab a few hours sleep before my walking tour in boca today. boca was really cool, very vibey and funky, it's also crazy dangerous which is why i opted to do it in a tour with some other cool kids from my hostel. i didn't know anyone when we started but we're all having a hell of a time now. as i type it is one am the beers are flowing one (i admit i'm sipping mine much slower tonight!) and they're all shooting the breeze while the music is pumping. not a bad effort for a tuesday. from what i gather, it's an everyday thing...and all this after my tour today a little kip and then a two hour tango class. dancing with a variety of boys, some of them sizzling and some of them... erm... fizzling. but we all had a bit of a laugh and that's what it's about. tomorrow i'm off to have another look at recoleta (i already went once to check out the MALBA and the andy warhol exibition of silent films) but tomorrow i'm checking out the cemetery which houses eva peron's grave and getting a bit of history about that.

alright guys, the crew are still hanging but i think it's almost time i went to bed... ahh hell, someone just put greenday on... and now they're dancing. somehow i don't think it's going to quiet down for awhile! but i'll have a crack at sleeping and worst comes to worst... i'll come back and join the party.

stay safe guys, londoners... ONE WEEK BABIES!!! aussies, i love you, i miss you... *mwah* and well done chris on another fine australians win... yeah! and kiwi.... i now have comeplete undeniable proof that new zealanders can not tango. but that everyone knows about new zealand and cares about it far more than oz.... oh well, can't win them all! write me ay?

love
s xxx

p.s. rod and tate - i'll do some price lists when i hit london for everywhere i've been. assuming i have any money left to calculate after b.a!

b.a.

hey guys have been transiting all over the place... saw some phenomenal mountains, played in some snow... went back and stayed with jose and sonya in santiago and met a really decent guy called matthew from phillidelphia. so all in all things are going pretty well. i've been busing and flying all over the place so i'm really glad to have two and a half days in b.a. just doing stuff, although it seems dismally short now that i'm here! then the next step from thsi is the iguazu falls, i'm not quite sure how that's going to go!

anyway, i'll check in tomorrow. good to hear from some of you :)
love,
simone

the case of the vanishing backpack...

ok, we all love a mystery story, here´s mine...

i cross the border from bolivia into argentina, no worries. then i buy a ticket to salta, argentina... approximately 10 hours further south in argentina (let us also ponder that i have already been on a bus for 20 hours at this stage). i buy my ticket, hand over my backpack (as is customary) and ask, do i need a receipt? They scoff. "No" the woman in the office says, "this is ARGENTINA". "Ok", I think to myself, "back to toilets that take paper, food that is edible. this is argentina, that makes sense". So i merrily eat some food and jump on the bus. After a ride that wasn´t too chronic, (i mean hey, who doesn´t want to watch dodgeball in spanish, still funny in my book) I arrive in Salta. This is of course after we were stopped and searched for cocaine, where in I didn´t see my bag and i thought, "mmm, that´s a little weird". So i get off the bus and for once don´t make my usual mad rush for the toilet but rather wait patiently for my bag to be unloaded, and wait, and wait. I then explain to the guys that my bag isn´t there. So they point me in the direction of the office. who don´t give a damn. So i do what any girl with a lick of sense who has been wearing the same clothes for three days and who is vaugely starting to smell does. I gathered a posse. So i gathered together this group of about 8 guys who can speak some english and explained to them what had happened, and of course they are suitably upset for me and we got back to the office to find out what happened (because i figure, sure they can ignore me, but can they really ignore me AND 8 spanish speaking blokes... nope.) anyway, after much dilly dallying and arguing the guys in the office say that i have to ring the office in la quincintera (where i left from) gave me the number and showed me the door. THANK GOD for horatio. He rang them, talked to them, then followed up with them again when i was told i had to go back to the bus station an hour and a half later and then chased them down again this morning and then... hero that he is... got my bag back! after a day of "your bag´s not here" from both sides (and one woman at the company´s brilliant suggestion that it was my fault that i didn´t get off the bus at every town we stopped in to check if my bag was still there!) i am so relieved and grateful at this juncture that marraige to a 22 year old argentian who barely speaks english would be a great idea if he thought to ask! i had written off all my stuff and last night was so tired and frustrated i actually burst into tears in front of my posse. (Which i think is what spurred them on to finding the bag).

I still don´t know how they found it, or where it was, there in lies the mystery. But i tell you what, the beers are definitely on me tonight. And before you ask... yes the cost of replacing everything in the bag, including the bag.. would still be cheaper than the travel insurance. Though the beers may not be!

So mystery solved, i have my stuff back (it all still desperately smells and direly needs a wash, but i´m hoping that will take care of itself in b.a.). I´ll probably get a direct bus down there tomorrow. i was planning to leave salta tonight but i think i´ll stick around one more day to show the guys my appreciation. then down to b.a. for a few days, up to the iguazu falls and across to rio.

so what´s news with you? do let me know guys. as one friend said to me "my life is just the same..." doesn´t mean i don´t want to hear about it!

anyway, i´m off to see what´s good in salta, talk to you soon guys,
love
simone

sucre...

ok folks, i'm still in sucre. which by south american standards is really beautiful. i've been here since last i wrote, partly because it's an enormous bus ride to get anywhere else, partly because i've met some really cool people here. i've been spending a lot of time with kate and alice, to girls from oxford, england. these girls are fun, they certainly know how to have a good time. we've been drinking cocktails, hanging out, watching movies and generally just shooting the breeze while we wait for alice and i to get our tummies in order.

sucre is, as i've mentioned previously, the constitutional capital of bolivia. all i take this to mean is that they get a fancy plaza and the people obviously have more money. there just isn't the same density of people, polution and of poverty that there is in la paz. and yet, it's still a lot of fun. we've been spending stupid amounts of time at this cafe called joyriders. fantastic movies, amazing food and great cocktails makes it my kind of place, plus they have a book exchange with things in english (plus the obligatrary german and dutch, who knew these two nations were so well read!), plus every gringo who comes to town inevitably comes to joyriders, the place is always packed and this is low season! i can only imagine what an absolute party it would be in high season. as it is the brits and i went to joyriders on sunday night, got a bit smashed and then headed out to this club called tropical, which was just bloody dire! the girls and i all got up and did some tragic kareoke, which was fine because we were the only people in the place!

anyway, i've had a small change in itinerary. instead of going all the way back to santiago from here i have decided to go straight through argintina and head to B.A. and then stick to the plan and head up to brazil. the reasons are mainly fiscal, it's much cheaper in argintina than chile and for the sake of a flight it will also save me time so i can do some more stuff. so i guess from here i'm heading to the border of bolivia, then changing buses there and heading to salta argintina, which i don't REALLY know anything about yet. but i guess i will by the time i get there!

i have another 13 days in south america, so i'm past the half way mark now and i've seen some cool stuff, but the coolest thing is the people. they're a bit more intent and serious than people travelling through europe (one reason i'll be infinetely glad to get to london) but they are all universally interesting, which of course makes me feel terminally boring! still, there ar esome definte cool characters, like in'bel who i'm hanging out with at the moment, she's 22, just spent the last month playing with a puma up at a nature reserve and has just come out of four years of working intelligence in the israelli army, oh and she has the largest stuffed toy collection known to man. how random! but she's lovely and has quite a quick wit. i went out with her and this dutch couple last night and it's an interesting concept to be sitting around a table conversing in english, knowing you're the only one who a) speaks it fluently
b) has it as a first language
don't get me wrong, they are so good at english, better than i am at dutch and hebrew! so i am eminitntlly grateful for their skills!

ok kids, i've got to go and sort some stuff and then i'm starting all my bus journeys tomorrow. be good!
love
simone

la paz...

hey folks, still in la paz but feeling a lot better now. turns out that friday night in la paz is the time for mayhem! today i went and checked out the main church in town and it was garishly religious. if they ripped down all the gilded gold maybe then bolivia wouldn´t be in so much debt and poverty! it´s been pretty good this morning though. i had an empanada for breakfast and a tuna sandwitch for lunch.. and it actually looked like it was meant to! believe me, that´s a big deal! the main food here is deep friend chicken and chips and if i have to eat it one more time i will spew. everywhere... that is not a threat, it´s a promise! they have these big chunky deep fried chips with everything here, and a serve of rice. i´m used to it now. i don´t know what my life is going to be like when i order spagetti bolenganse and don´t get chips and rice with it. all on one plate. mmm, tasty. so today i checked out the witch´s market. yes, as in the type that ride on a broomstick. turns out you can buy spells and potions and all sorts of things. maybe i´ll buy a love potion, or a dried llama feotus, apparently it wards bad spirits away from your house. i would bet guests and salesmen too! these things are pretty ugly, i´ll try and get a photo of one, but the last thing i want to do is make a bolivian witch cross! ordinary bolivian women are scary enough! i love the clothes they wear though... they wear flat court shoes, a big foofy skirt (called a polletra or chicken cage), a t-shirt, a cardigan and a bowler hat. yep, like a bowler hat! they also usually wear a big piece of cloth that ties together around their back like a hammock, but they use it to carry stuff in, including their children! every now and again you´ll hear one of the back sacks crying! originally i thought these outfits were just for the tourists, but it´s not true. they do everything in them from the farming to playing football! i want one of the skirts, but at $95 US, i can live with out it! ok, the future... i think i´m going to head to sucre tonight (see if i can get on overnight bus so i don´t have to pay for another night´s accomadation) which is the real capital of bolivia. (la paz is the de facto capital), it´s also home to some mighty fine chocolate. then to salta in argentina, which is supposed to be a swinging little town. anyway, scott has started wandering into the street (which oddly he does whenever he feels it´s time to move on!) so i´d better pay my 1 boliviano and motor. talk to you soon guys, love, simone

bolivia...

hey guys i´m in La Paz, Bolivia at the moment. what can i say, i was in puno and decided that i´d had quite enough of being in peru and that iwasn´t totally enjoying the tourist experience so i decided to take a walk on the wild side and come to bolivia. and the wild side is completely apt. this is the south america that everyone is worried about. it´s poor, it´s dirty, the food isn´t that crash and the traffic is absolutely insane. the shoeshine boys here (and they´re everywhere in south america) wear balakavas and hats to hide their identity. so there are all these young men running around and all you can see are their two eye holes. they do it because they´re working to support their family or to finance their educations and there is a huge social stigmatism attached to it, so they prefer to be totally anonamous. which doesn´t make them look any less ominous! i feel a lot better about being here because i met up with another aussie who is helping me out. he´s called scott is 28, married (so no cracks please guys!) and he´s been travelling around since april. his wife has gone back to london to get them set up again but he´s still cruising around. a fact that i am eminitly grateful for! he speaks spanish and is fun so we spent yesterday hanging out in copacobana (not the brazillian beach or the hottest place north of havana) but rather a quaint little town on the shore of lake titicaca. where life is cheap! and now coming to la paz and having to pay a stack of cash for things again i am not well pleased! i had a really great time in copacobana and i´ve really enjoyed the travelling around bit, rustic buses where your luggage is strapped to the top of the bus, a boat across lake titicaca and more buses and taxis!

anyway, i´m going to stick it out in la paz for a few days and see how it goes. if it gets a bit much here i´ll head back down to argintina and then to santiago in chile, where i have to be by the 17th anyway!

ok, i´m out guys.. talk to you soon,
love,
simone x

machu pichu and puno...

so i went to machu pichu, clambered around it at six in the morning, and it was breath taking and beautiful. we were the first people there and nilo our guide was just fantastic telling us stories about the site and the people who lived there. it was so serene and beautiful. the fact that the whole site was built by hand is just amazing.

anyway, i spent two hours just walking around inside the site being absolutely awestruck and then the colarado girls announce that they´re going to hike up Huayna Picchu, this mountain at the back of the site which leads to the temple of the moon. I decide to do it too (only not with them because they´re all incredibly good hikers!) so set out on my own, the 23rd person on the mountain. This thing was so damn hard! The mountain summit comes in at just under 3000m, at some stages it is just bare arse rock and you have to climb up with your hands, sometimes there´s a rope to help you. Right up the top you have to climb these stairs that are about 15cms wide and there´s nothing there to help you. If you fall, that´s it, you go right off the mountain. I was so genuinely scared at that point that i wondered what the hell I was doing and knew intrinsicly this was by far the stupidest thing i had ever done! Three people died on Huayna Picchu last year, one woman got bitten by a poisonous snake, one woman fell off the mountain (i took a few slides i totally see how that happened!) and one guy had a heart attack getting to the summit. It took me two hours to reach the summit and it was phenomenally scary! i kept passing all these people who had to stop because they were suffering from vertigo. I´m glad i didn´t go with the girls because they made it to the top in an hour... i´d have died for sure!

Anyway, i got to the top and was monumentally proud of myself and then realised something that hadn´t occured to me before... how the hell was i going to get down again. Now i´m not going to lie to you, i did consider just staying up there and becoming the wise woman of Huayna Picchu, but considering that all i had to sustain me was three vegemite rolls and a handfull of lollies, i thought i´d better work out how to get down. It was so frightening! Coming up you don´t realise how steep, narrow and slippery it is. You bloody do coming down! So that took, me two hours too... i am nothing if not consistent!

Yesterday i caught the six hour bus to Puno, which is on the shore of Lake Titicaca (go on, get your giggles out now, i´m going to be saying it quite a lot in the next few days!). For those in the know, Puno is just like Padang. If the people here didn´t speak Spanish and spoke Bahasa instead you´d think it was the same town. Very weird. But it´s more like the South America I thought i was going to encounter than anything else so far. It´s poor, dirty and politically aware, but happy all the same. So I tried to walk around Puno yesterady and realise i physically couldn´t, so ihad a rest day in Puno today. I also got bitten by heaps of sandflys in Machu Pichu, so that coupled with the cold, soreness and the fact that my discman has mysteriously stopped working, i needed a day to just be quiet and do nothing! So, i´m ok now, and i´ll head off to the lake tomorrow.

Oh, some other things...
Slater: Congrats! When´s the wedding?
Kelly and Shane: Thanks for reading the blog, i miss you guys :)
Alex: I´m glad you have nothing better to do than mess about on the internet, reading my blog. At least it´s consistant with every other job i´ve known you to have :P
Andre: You´re mad bird, check your inbox.

I miss you guys heaps. Being away has made me think a few things through and I think this might be my last big trip for awhile and i´m going to join the landed gentry in a year or so. With a bit of luck. OK, a last few photos and i´ll talk to you guys soon...


Part of Machu Pichu as seen from Huayna Picchu.











Me, on top of a mountain. I was sitting where the guy in the green t-shirt is, quickly realised i didn´t have a death wish and so got down!








I saw this at Machu Pichu while i was hiking around. Is it a rabbit? Is it a squirel? Is it a possum? A dollar to the genius who works it out!

some photos...

This is the Moreno Glacier...

And me sitting on a log in front of it. The thing about traveling alone is that everyone seems to want to take your photo, especially the Sth Americans!

This one´s for you Zac... a llama! Actually it´s a gunaco, which is another breed of camelid. For more information about the difference try this link...

http://www.llama.co.uk/guanaco.htm

This is coca tea... mate´de coca.

i love coca tea...

i love coca tea, basically for three reasons:

1) it tastes good
2) it´s the same leaf they make cocaine from (and that´s a cool claim to fame)
3) it beats altitude sickness

what´s not to love?

i´ve been suffering really badly from altitude sickness lately, in essence because cuzco sits 4000 miles above sea level. but gee it´s a hell of a town. i´ve met so many trippy people in cuzco. most of them americans!
the boston boys; jason, tom and blair... so funny! we went out for tea and drinks in cuzco and they were so laid back and a lot of fun. they just got back from exploring easter island. the lucky things. wish i´d thought of that! it was just really nice to sit down to dinner and shoot the breeze and have a couple of beers and take it easy. i´ve been pushing really hard lately because there´s so much to do here, but now i´ve had a few days to take it easy i feel much better. (except for my cold, i blow my nose about 850 times a day. at least!)
anyway...

jason from washington d.c; jason is 21 and this is his first trip o-s. he´s been reading all these books about mythology and he said something really profound to me the other night. he told me that he´s look for his animal skin, a la´ hercules. he told me flat out that he´s on a quest. i love that. so i had a think about what i´m questing for... i came up with it. i know this is the thing my likfe has been missing. paddington bear! he´s from deepest darkest peru but i can´t find him or his relatives anywhere! so i will find him, he is my fleece :) ok maybe not, but i´ll find something i hope...

and then...
the colarado girls;
i actually met them not in cuzco but where i am now. we´re heading up to machu pichu tomorrow and we´ve spent some time chilling and stuff today. they´re a lot of fun, it´s good to hang out with girls. although i am suprised by the number of chicks my age traveling south america, some of them alone like me and they haven´t had any trouble either. south america is awesome. it´s much easier to manage than i had anticipated and i´ve really enjoyed everything so far.

there are only three things that really anren´t so crash about south america, particullarly peru.

the poverty: is absolutely heart breaking. particullarly in cuzco, kids who are hawking things in the street to make enough money to pay for somewhere to sleep and the money to pay their school fees. a lot of them live in a local orphanage, but they have to pay their own keep there, so they have no choice but to work. i´ve donated a lot of money to various kids over the last few days, but it makes e so frustrated that i can´t do anything else about it.

the showers: i have had two hot showers the whole time i´ve been gone. this is not good for my soul as anyone who has lived with me can attest, i shower about three times a day. not so in south america.

the toilets: peruvians use toilet paper... HOORAY! however the surage system can´t handle the paper, so it goes into a handy dandy little bin next to the toilets. and they smell! bad... really bad kid!

other than that everything is peachy keen. the people here gringos and peruvians alike are lovely, warm, friendly and fun. the scenery is amazing! i went to the hot springs this afternoon (ok, spade a shovel, the tepid springs) and just layed there looking at the mountains and the clouds rolling in and hearing the river crashing over the rocks. very zen. there is a lot to love about this place.

anyway, i´d better motor. i have a meeting with my tour guide for tomorrow in an hour and i have to work up the nerve for a much needed cold shower. and of course a cup of coca tea never goes astray ;)

let me know if you´re reading this hey guys? and mum, did you post my police check thing? isit back? did you send it to andre? (a, my mum´s sending you something for me.. ok? thanks bird :P)

talk to you soon,
love
simone xxx

cuzco...

i´ve now been awake for 36 hours. i´m light headed and naeusas from the altitude. i´ve got to get some mate´del coca into me to beat the altitude sickness. i feel like i´ve got the worst hang over ever. this is not OK! but on the up side, i am in cuzco which is the kick off point to machu pichu and the sacred valley. i´m heading to machu pichu on sunday, and it´s costing a big old stack of cash. am slightly startingto worry about my finances. i seem to be about $300 short, i think there may have been a problem with my last bit of pay from bellarine, hopefully it´s just still being transfered. but i somehowsense this might be a bit of an idle dream. anyway, if things start to look a bit too skint i´ll head down to santiago and crash out with sonya and vanessa. i know they´d be wrapped by that.

anyway, i´ve got to hit the hay,just thought i´dlet you know i´m alive and well(ish!),

talk you you soon ay?
love,
simone x