Bryan and Debs

Re: top this!

2005-05-12T16:19:00.000-07:00

hey there everyone!

just a quick circular to update the lot of youse!

things have been really hectic and cos we only just got a base, so we have
been begging borrowing and stealing internet connections where we can!!

Have just got back from a quick one wek trip to the old U S of A and had a
lovely time. Went diving (very brave considering my last misadventures!!)
went to the Everglades and got to go on one of thoese gentle BEn style air
boats, saw lots of 'gators (!) no wrestling mind, only ones in the wild!!
Also lots of BBQ's and swimming at the beach and generally living the
American dream!! had pancakes and went to a dinner - its so wierd thought,
cos its all just like it is in the movies!! we got drink refills and the
waitresses were talking about how they had a night off from the kids and how
they were going out on the town that night! Also went to south beach in
Miami - its was alot of fun! That was like being on a very bad R&B video
set!! lots of guys cruising around in flash cars, girls wearing very little,
boys just videoing "the booty" - it was hilarious!! all very bling, lots of
gold chunky jewellery and big attitude....! there's some amazing art deco
buildings there, kind of like Napier, but all a bit bigger and more
american!! the interiors have been well restored or maintained - very smart!
Went ot a shopping mall that was 2 1/2 miles long - we had to download a map
off the internet before going!! we had a much bigger culture shock in
America than anywhere else on our travels! Had heaps of fun though! Lots and
Sam are well - lotte is 7 months pregnant now, so is getting bigger by the
day!! She looks really well and is very content and quite at peace with
herself!Really nice. I think though, that the American medical system is
pretty baffling and quite harsh on the old funds!! Nightmare! not only do
you pay a monthly premium, but you also have to pay an excess...uggghhh!
Hurrah for the NHS! theres definately more incentive to not want a
caesarian!!

we have just moved into a shared house in Plymouth which is pretty big so
plenty of room for all of us. I think it will be OK. I spent the morning
planting herbs in the garden - very grounding and theapeutic especially
after being on the road for so long!
8 St Hilary Terrace
St Judes
Plymouth
01752 245844
our doors are always open, and the kettle is never far off the boil!!

Bryan has got his old job back and starts on Wednesday, I'm still looking!!

Life is good though and its been great to see everyone, although its been a
bit odd in as much as we've been more in limbo for the last 2 months than we
ever were travelling!! how ironic!!

anyway, just a quick update, hope that you are all aright wherever you are
the world over...may our paths cross again real soon....
lots of love and hugs
Debs and Bry xx

all things must come to an end!!

2005-03-09T19:31:00.000-08:00

hey there everyone

so the van is sold.... a sad day for the hobos!! It was the closest thing to
home for a while!! But there are plans afoot for another model for further
fun perhaps once we get back..!! Well amongst all our other plans...mostly
involving world domination...;) just kidding, we're just looking forward to
hanging out with the "homies" again, missed you all alot!

I did the one module of the celebrants course, which was really interesting.
I won't bore all of you with it too much, but it was basically all about
making a bigger deal of important events and occasions and transitions in
life, alot of which have fallen by the wayside especially for those who
don't have religion to fill those gaps. It was about making occassions more
special and pertinent to the people involved, and them having more of a say
in how they want it to be rather than a prescriptive regimented one style
fits all. We looked at all the traditional celebrations like baby naming,
weddings and funerals along with coming of age, transitions all sorts
really. the really great thing is that it can be really simple stuff. So
the result is I was really inspired, going to see what I can do with it back
home cos the laws and stuff are a bit different to NZ, but watch this space!
the class was a real mixture of people, some of the more wierdy beardy
variety, and some bored housewives and some lost souls, along with the
really normal, religious, inspiring, all sorts really. (not sure which
category I come under!!! definately young cos they were all at least 20
years older than me!!) But I'm really glad I did it!

We have finally had some good weather! Yipee!! The best things come to those
who wait and all that does not refer just to ketchup! Its been really nice.
We rented a camper van for the last 3 weeks - which I know seems crazy
having just sold one!! But its the only way to get around NZ really. Buses
are pretty expensive, and tis just great to be able to go anywhere... We
have been surfing and swimming in the sea, were the support team for a guy
we know doing adventure racing...( basically he was in a team of 4 and they
did non stop exercise for 13 hours, we just fed and watered them and swapped
the kyacks for bikes and drank coffee and played scrabble in between waiting
for them to reach the next check point that we had driven to... the closest
we will ever come to exercise!!) but it was fun!! We went snorkelling in a
marine reserve, where the fish are really huge and unafraid of you, amazing
and definately less scary than diving!!

Went to Waitomo caves to do a really fun caving thing, we abseiled 40m
basically into a black hole (very dark). then walked through the caves, had
to do a zip wire (in the dark), jumped in to the underground river (in the
dark), floated down the river in giant inner tubes (in the dark), did a bit
of wading and saw some very cool glow worms, like a sub terrestrial milky
way, then we had to climb out of the caves up a waterfall (not quite so dark
at this point!). (bring on the certificcate for the brave people!) I was
very pleased with myself, as I haven't been prooving myself to be the
bravest of people recently!! but the truth of the matter was that it wasn't
super scarry, but just enough to feel like you had had an adventure!!

since then we have been doing very little and are waiting for WOMAD (3 day
world music and dance festival) to start tomorrow, last big party before
heading home....28 hour flight....UGH! arriving at Heathrow at 6am!! (just
in time for london rush hour, mmmmm!! welcome home kids!!) roumer has it its
prretty cold there too....hey ho...

hope you are all OK, thanks for the offers of beds and stuff, it is much
appreciated. There is no real plan as yet, but hopefully will see you all
real soon...
lots of love and hugs and stuff
Debs and Bryan xxx

in which Bryan and Debs have a lot of adventures and a change of plan!

2005-01-27T14:27:00.000-08:00

hi there,
how are you all doing? since we last met over a wee computer screen, we have been very busy chickens! Not making babies or planning weddings or anything so exciting, but working out the complexities of bryan's younger brother peter getting married and only having 2 months notice!!! we have since turned our plans on their head and are coming home in March!! probably not for long, as we might go away again for a couple of months and get some sunshine, but hey we shall see, plans are subject to change and all that gubbins!!!! so as a result of this, life has been real hectic and we did a whistle stop tour of the south island (can't really complain though, 3 1/2 weeks ain't so bad really!!) and we are now in Aukland to try and sell the van - pheww, we're not used to this hectic form of travelling, and we herald tim and Kate as our heros and role models when pushing ourselves to the max on the speedy holiday model!! having shared some of their hectic honeymoon, we have taken note and have dubbed the rest of our trip as our hurrymoon!

but I digress..... we left you with Christmas greetings and high hopes for a sunny antipodean Christmas. Well you'll be pleased to know that it wasn't sunny, in fact we've not really been very lucky with the weather at all, and everywhere we go people keep telling us thats its been the worst summer in 60 years!!! but we had a big family christmas dinner with our surrogate family with roast dinner and for the kiwi twist, crayfish!! It was a nice day, but felt a little strange being the other side of the world.

We left the Neslons and went to meet up with tim and kate (the honey moon couple!) it was great to see them again, we laughed alot, (I got all teary hearing about the wedding - what a girl!) and we really did hear about the wedding, it was great, we felt like we were there!! everything form the speeches, to a rendition of their first dance - which was brilliant!!! I'm always on the look out to increase my repotoir of disco moves!! It was very cool to hang out with them! We did the tongaririo crossing with them, which was a 7 hour hike round and about and over 3 big volcanos in the middle of the north island (just south of Taupo). It was very crazy moonscape. All a bit barron and bleak and sci fi which was cool! There were cool coloured lakes and great views. You could see lake Taupo, and cos it is so big it
looks like its the edge of the world! Me and Kate didn't stop talking much to Tim and Bryans amusement, so perhaps we didn't get the most out of the views!! after that the itinery pushed us on, and we headed to the south island, via the beach and the carter observatory. the south island is very different to the north, the scenery is real spectacular, the mountains, the gorges, the rivers, the glaciers, the beaches.... it really is living geography!! We left Tim and Kate after an afternoon (well less than an hour actually!) of canoing. It was exhausting. Any fanciful notions of a 3 day kyack trip were soon dispelled! In fairness to us it was real choppy and windy and rough (honest!). We also went on a flying fox which was fun, first the boys were inside the capsule (that gets hoiked up the hill by a tractor motor, then let go!) and the second time they were strapped to the top!! The
highlight was the real fruit ice cream afterwards, they chuck in real frozen fruit and it gets mixed with vanilla - mmmmmm, v good indeed!

me and bry then went and hung out at the Malbourough sounds (right up north)which is real beautiful, but very very wet! we gave it 2 days of pretty constant rain berfore moving on! We were confined to the van, with the only ventures outside for weeing and getting water!!! It was cool though, we kept finding more space and better ways of utilising the van!

then we headed to Kaikora, which is like marine mammal central!! there were seals all around the coast line, they were really cool to watch! a significantly fishy smell though!! definately halitosis issues there!! they also have a deep water trench that goes to 2 km deep really close to shore, so they have spermwhales all year round. They are huge, they grow to like 18m long!! We thought we would do the whole David Attenborough thing and go see them from a plane! how exciting! but it was called off 3 times cos the weather wasn't too good! so we moved on.

met up with Bryans old school friends who have moved to christchurch. It was cool to see them, and they seem to be loving the whole kiwi lifestyle. Met up with Tim and Kate again and waved them off at the airport, their adventures were to continue to sydney and capetown!

we then met up with Mat and Kat! yipee! more freinds! They are both in top form, and we had a laugh just hanging out. We did a glacier walk, which was awesome! that was soooo living geography! I felt like a real adventurer, we had crampons on our boots and our guide had a pick axe and had to cut out steps for us!!! It was very cool! Once you get above the morraine (the stony stuff and debris at the bottom) its like got this really cool ice blue translucent colour! It was amazing. the crevices and wierd shapes. it was so much better than I expected, and one of my highlights!

we then headed south to arrowtown, Wanaka and Queenstown. arrowtown was this very quaint and twee goldmining village. It was real pretty and is suppoesed to be awesome in the autumn when all the leaves change colour on the trees. There was this interesting bit about Chinese settlers who came to mine the gold. It was so interesting, and they had quite a hard time, not only the conditions of poverty and cold and hard work, but also the racism and discrimination. It was well interesing.Wanaka was beautiful, the lake is this great bluey turquiose colour, framed by huge mountains and willow trees on the banks. Nice spot, but we were rushing through at this point, the pressure was now on to see what we wanted and then get to Aukland. but we didn't leave before going to the cinema they have there, which is full of sofas!! It was great. It started up as a small basic cinema with plastic chairs, and slowly, the locals would donate their old sofas so they could
have comfier viewing! Brilliant! We hadn't been to the cinema in months, so it was a real novelty! funny isn't it! In Queenstown we opted out of the adrenalin adventures, and sated our curiousity by watching some bungyjumping!! Mmmmmm! what was more mad than the bungy jumping was the men in the ?pacific islands who used to do manhood initiation ceremonies by jumping off these towers they had built with vines attached to their ankles!! The footage of that looked alot more unpleasant, no bouncing, and a thwack to the floor afterwards!!

Milford sound was awesome! It was really really raining, no surprise, they get 7m of rainfall a year, (just for some perspective, rainfall is usually measured in mm!!) but the waterfalls were incredible! There is just water pouring off these mountains. Its unreal! we saw dolphins too, always very exciting! Its a strange old place as well, because there is so much rainfall, in the sounds, there is a layer of freshwater on top of the sea water! this fresh water has lots of tannin in it, just washed off from the vegitation on the mountains. this allows very little light to get through the water, so you get real deep water species living much higher up than is usual! Its a really beautiful and interesting place!

We pressed on, I won't even waste my breath talking about what a shit hole Invercargill is!! I was ill in Dunedin, but Bry went and saw a marine lab - no paid work unfortunately, but hey we were on the move!! Omaru was great, its like no where else in NZ. there are houses built of stone!! Its very beautiful and grand looking. theres this old port that is real victorian looking. Nice! We saw penguins too! yellow eyed penguins which are the rarest in the world - (we only saw 2!) and blue penguins which are the smallest in the world (luckily we hired binoculars!) that was great, I kept expecting them to burst into dance like in Mary poppins! (my dream world is much morre excitng sometimes!!) They were cute and graceful and clumsy and
like little old men and so comical all at the same time time!

We met up with mat and kat again in Kaikoura. that was very chilled, we just pottered around on the beach looking for shells, basically exactly what we would have done were we in Cornwall!!! We managed to see 3 whales from the plane! It was very cool, you got to see the whole whale, but a little disappointing too, cos you are so far away. i think you see such good footage on the TV sometimes, that you can't quite always get the same feel in real life. But it was cool. all over to quick mind!

now we are in Aukland, hoping the van will sell quickly! We stopped off at the Nelsons and gave the van a real clear out. There is a big bag to be posted home, I just can't tke all the drift wood that I want, its all a bit traumatic! Its not easy being a Deb!!

so kids, thats us and our lives and change of plan! May see some of you sooner than we all thought!! looking forward to that, but sad to cut our trip short
must go, lots of boring things to organise!!
lots of love Debs xxx

last one of 2004!

2004-12-22T19:58:00.001-08:00

hey there everyone

thought I'd write the last circular of 2004! hope you all got our Christmas card. I know that we copped out a bit using the computer and that, but it was a home made one at least!! some traditions carry on! so far, our antipodean christmas hasn't been the tropical experiance that we hoped it would be! this is a double bummer, cos the plan was to work until the weather got better, and then bum around in the sunshine!! But where is the sun??!! It doesn't actually feel that Christmassy, I guess largly cos I have big associations with driving rain, dark cold evenings, battling with fellow grumpy christmas shoppers who are sick of the same Christmas music having been playing since before halloween, with the christmas lights offering the glimmer of hope on a dank miserable day!! just kidding, I sound like a christmas humbug, and I'm not, we even have a little tree in the van!! no lights or candles, but tinsel and sweetie wrappers (I\ve eaten the sweets off already!!) Christmas in Nz is far far less commercialised than back home, but it does feel odd to have the same christmas carols with sleigh bells in the background, the smell of peaches and strawberries in the supermarket, and an evergreen christmas tree, when all around the trees are in blossom!!! We did have an english christmas dinner at the weekend with some fellow brits, complete with sausages wrapped in bacon, crackers with
shit jokes shortly followed with a hangover! Actual Christmas day, we will gatecrash our adopted NZ family, (the nelsons's ) party, ham on the bone is THE kiwi thing, and maybe the weather will brighten up to let us have a token dip in the pool! We shall see!!

As mentioned before all the Christmas stuff, we have finished working at Piahia, which whilst it was great, we learnt a heap, and our boss was pretty cool, it was still a job, he was still a boss and it was good to get away!!! Yipee!! Hopefully our money will last for at least a month of bumming around before having to work again!

whilst we were in Pihia though, I had my birthday, which was cool! 29 though, edging ever closer to 30 - gulp!( pause for a quite reflective moment, ponder the future and the past, then get back to normal!) We went out for pudding and cake after a BBQ at home (never ever had a BBQ for my birthday before!) which was ace! The pudding was even better though, I got to have a chocolate fondu, complete with marshmellows and fresh fruit!!
Total party food - brilliant!!

We also saw Vince, nicole and Makaylah (Lottes friends form Oz/ amsterdam, Makaylah was one of Lottes little bridesmaids) We had a lovely time.... we did real holiday stuff, fish and chips on the beach, went to the park, and just hung out!!! It was so cool to see some people we knew and could really just laugh and chilll with - (thank you, it really meant loads to see you!)

went and did our advanced diving course, so that we could see the rainbow warrior wreck (a greenpeace boat bombed in Aukland harbour by the french in 1984 prior to some anti neuclear protests directed at the French in the Pacific). I was really looking forward to it, but it turns out, that I'm not quite as brave as I used to be!!! When I last dived, it was amazing and in Indo, where the visibility was ace (25-30m), the water was warm, the animals and plants awesome, it was just so easy!! In Nz, its all a bit colder, the boat journies a bit longer, the swell a bit higher, the visibility a bit shitter,my sea sickness tolerance is lower than it used to be......
all in alll it turned out to be quite a stressful experience!! the first dive was ok - a bit nerve wracking, but OK. The second dive we had to show that we had reasonable bouancy control, surrounded by sea urchins, I was a little reluctant!! the third dive was navigation over scollop beds. The good news is that we got scollops for our tea, the bad news is that the visibility was 2m. I wasn't wholly cool with that!! hey ho, it was only the first day, tommorrow would be better.... the rainbow warrior!!
I was a little bit nervous and starting to think that really diving wasn't for me. I was fooling myself into thinking that I could like sport I just had to find the right one.... welll here was another one I could cross off my list!! well the next dive, 2 1/2 hours boat ride, and my sea legs had gone to jelly. When we finally stopped, the swell was huge. I was nearly puking, so was another guy. there was a big rush on to get us into the water, as we would feel better once we were under the swell (seems rational) all the good people wemt first, then me and bry got in. We had to hold on to this rope (beacuse of the swell) to get us to the front of the boat to descend down the anchor, again seems rational. Well I jumped in to the
reassuring tones of being told that I could be sick through my regulator (my mouthpiece) if I had to. I got tangled in the rope, gulped down heaps of sea water through my snorkel, and started thinking that i had made the wrong desicion to get in! Bry told me to put in my regulator to stop me swallowing water. Cool only all through out my dive I was worrying about running out of air, cos I had used a load of it up on the surface. I went through the highs and lows of panic of there is no way I am going down, and then the don't be ridiculaous, theres the rainbow warrior down there! anyway, then Bry dropped his weight belt, had to go back to the boat to get another one.... la la la
.... I was holding on to the anchor rope, being pulled up and right out of the water with the swell,(my whole body weight (and I'm no slip of a lass!), full (ish!) tank of oxygen and all my kit and holding on with one arm - amazing the strangth that fear can give you!!!). The instructor was telling me to let go, well although I knew it made sense, there was no way I was going to do that!! The whole thing was just a cross between black comedy and the closest I've ever come to a panic attack!!! The rainbow warrior was actually amazing, the jewel anenomies were such cool colours, the life around it was just heaving - I just wish I had been in a better state of
mind to enjoy it!! I have to say I'm so glad that our last dive was cool, otherwise I might have just left it as a sport for bigger and braver people than myself, and resigned myself to the fact that all the jokes about me being an old woman were actually less of a tease than I originally thought!
our last dive was great though, lots of selp, which are jelly like sci fi creatures floatig around like strings of pearls, with the blue green light you get when you dive just making it look really surreal and cool. We saw some mornay eel (mean looking things with nasty teeth) and some cool fish and heaps of other stuff. It restored my faith! Yeah! not to the point of considering becoming a dive instructor or buying my own kit or anything, but enough to make me think that I may , given the right mood, go for another dive on a sunny calm day, when the world has suffered a nuclear fall out and my only option of survival is a scuba tank and...... but hey its
good to face your fears accassionaly isn't it?
Bryan enjoyed it bit more than I did, and wasn't quite as traumatised as I was!!

got some other bad news, looks like I'm not going to be doing the celebrants course here, they screwed up and I'm really annoyed, and now are telling me that its going to cost me three times as much as before! Grrrrr!
hey ho, obviously not meant to be....I've been a little bit grumpy at them. But hey another time another place....waitressing isn' t so bad!

We left Paihia after fixing our van windscreen - long story, but someone put their fist through it! Had a heap of rust treatment done too,and what with the burn out of our electrics (my fault, flicked the wrong switch, thought our engine had caught fire...la la la...may the teasing stop one day!!) they say things come in threes so hopefully our trusty vanmobile will take us on to many an adventure in the south island after Christmas! Can't wait to see Tim and Kate when we gatecrash their honey moon!! hopefully mat and kat soon too, and old friends of Bryans from home.....

more good news, me and Bry have quit smoking! Yeah!!!

to those of you whom I owe a personal email.... don't think that its a reflection of my love for you, I will write soon!!

lots of love and christmas cheer to you all, hope that you were all good
enough this year to get lots of presents from santa
missing you, but happy
Debbie and Bryan xxx

north island

2004-11-21T16:49:00.000-08:00

hey there everyone

sorry that its been a while since the last circular. We have stopped off to
do a bit of work, so life isn't quite as exciting and full of adventures as
it has been!!! we managed to get real lucky and found some renovating work
for a bunch of flats for a motel, so we are doing the full monty of ripping
out and destroying a flat (a lot of fun, crowbars and sledghammers and the
like!) through to sanding, cleaning, painting, tiling, putting together
furniture..... all sorts. we've learnt heaps! Maybe enough to renovate a
house ar maybe even build one??! who knows! Its been great! I'm finally over
the nursing thing, and I absolutely love the fact that the biggest
responsibility in my day is to get the tiles in a straight line and make
sure theres food in the fridge for dinner - brilliant!! Our boss is ace,
really laid back, he used to do tours through Europe for kiwi and ozzie
backpackers for 7 years, so has many a story to tell!! he puts on a BBQ for
us every Friday night, and we have a little studio flat there. I kind of
miss sleeping in the van, but it sure is good to be able to get dressed
standing up, and have a kettle and a toaster again! i've made some shell and
driftwood mobiles so they are in a shop and hopefully they will sell soon,
(a bit of extra cash!). there are some hot springs near by wich is ace to
rest our weary faces in after a hard (!) days work!! we're in the bay of
islands which is a beautiful spot north of Aukland, so Bry has been out
fishing, with some sucess! He caught a Kawai (not sure how you spell it) and
it was a good foot and a half long! we went out on a great boat trip in the
bay. it was so good we did a bit of everything, snorkelling (saw loads of
fish and a stingray and starfish) did some fishing, went kyacking (with
dolphins!) That was way cool!! when you swim with them, it can be hard to
keep up with them, but in a kyack.... see me fly!! I have to say it was
really cool to see them just cruising around, swimming and jumping and then
heading off... mmmm! Magical moment! Was feeling a bit like I was missing
people for a little while, i think its just cos we've been away for a while
now, over 7 months and we were kind of semi settled, but things are cool
agina now and we've got heaps to look forward too.... Nicole and Vince,
another party, Mat and Kat, then christmas, then Kate and Tim...!!
Brilliant! I really can't wait to ahng out with familiar faces again!! I
think our plan is to work until the middle of December and then head south
after Christmas, for some campavan chiling and cruising around some cool
spots.
I have applied to do a course to become a celebrant! This is where everone
thinks that I really have gone mad! But I think it will be good. Basically
it trains you to do non denominational ceremonies like marriage and funerals
and baby naming and stuff like that! It feels like a good thing to do,a dn a
run of events kind of strung it together for me, but part of me worries
about the wierd folk that I might meet! But hey I don't have to wear flowing
robes and wonder round the garden barefoot on a full moon waving chrystals
or anything!! (do I ?) we shall see what comes of that!!
hope evryone is cool back home....
lots of love and hugs
Debbie and Bryan xxx

North Island, NZ

2004-10-05T00:49:00.000-07:00

its been a while since we last wrote... I think that we left you with our
fully furnshed finished van ready to go on its maiden voyage!! A-hhhhh! What
a lot of fun, the freedom is just immense, you just get in and go, and then
stop as required! Brilliant! The novely still hasn't quite worn off yet.
sleeping in the van feels like when you slept in dens as a kid! Brilliant!
we set offdriving up the east coast from Napier up to the east cape. A
journey that should have taken us 4 hours took us 4 days!!! There were the
obligatory beach stops and cup of tea stops along the way and before we knew
we hadn't got anywhere!!! We saw some really amazing beaches, and the drift
wood is just to die for! It was like a driftwood cemetary! and they were
such huge chunks too! I had (yet another!) Deb in an equadorian cardi market
crossed with kid in a sweet shop with no money moment!! I just wanted to
pack it all in the van! Luckily at that point the van was still quite tidy
and empty, and bry isvery good at packing lots of things into a small space
and also very good at humouring my little moments of excitement, and we
packed some great bits in (now leaving very little room for anything else!!)
sorry bry, definately no room for a surf board now! Just trying to work out
how feasable it would be to ship a container load of driftwood home to make
furniture and stuff with! We shall see! We moseyed on and our shell and
driftwood collection ever growing - how we ever managed with just a single
rucksack is beyond me! travelling light is just no fun! We stopped off at
some lovely hot springs, and had the whole place to ourselves! Mmmmmm!
hottubs are just not rated highly enough in the British culture!
Then we spent a whole heap of money to get a boat ride to the White island
volcano, the only marine volcano inthe world! I have to say (adopt geek
voice) "it was real living geography!" very cool! and in case you think we
aren't doing enough high adrenalin NZ stuff, I would just like to state that
we had to wear hard hats and had to take gas masks as a precaution and it
was very dangerous, we nearly died, - twice (just kidding!) it was fine!
there are all these vents blowing out steam, and sulphur and there are wierd
chrystals everywhere...............
It was pretty amazing though, it makes you think how little control we have
over some stuff, the magma keeps bubbling away under the earths crust, just
waiting to blow. Loads of people have been killed by this volcano over the
years, an awesome force!
Then we went on to Rotorua, the thermal central of NZ. It smells of eggs
which is the downside, but there are hot pools abound! Bring it on! I even
had a mud bath!! I felt like a cross between a hippopotamos and cleopatra!!
Turned all my silver jewelery black, but left my skin feeling soft! (Can't
have it all I guess!!) We found a hot river and had a bathe - all the more
satisfying as it was out in the open air (and free!!)
then before we had actually thought it through properly we found ourselves
driving to Taupo to fling ourselves out of a plane! hello how did that
happen, a (rare!!) moment of insanity, which I failed to recognise at the
time!! I was feeling kind of fine, got my sexy boiler suit on, was feeling
fine, put the sky gloves on, was feeling fine, put the sexy biggles hat on,
was ready to go, and then we did a quick modeling shoot, under the plane,
leaning on the wing, looking up at the sky... NOw obviously I am not
unfamiliar with the pressures of a photo shoot, you know been there done
that (!) but now they were dragging it out a little bit and I just wanted to
get the jump over and done with. Its not like I thought that I was going to
die or anything, I just knew I would be a little scared for a little time
and I wanted to get it over with! so we getin this little plane and keep
going up, and up and up, things down there are getting smaller and smaller,
its all a bit noisy from the engine, and getting harder to breathe cos of
lack of oxygen (just kidding!), and I'm feeling fine, feeling fine, then the
door opens, and the first guy jumps out, just disappears down, suddenly I'm
not feeling fine! Oh my God! stomach in my mouth, not feeling fine, oh my
God! Bryan disappears, then I feel calm - hey ho, here we go..... shit what
a long way down, and we're falling...I want to swear and scream and shout,
but freefalling is so fast I can't get the words out, my cheeks are
flobbleling in the wind, the wind rushing past my ears is really noisy, and
we are falling towards a lake, that seems to be getting bigger every second,
still falling, and then 45 seconds later, that seems both shorter and longer
at the same time, he pulls the cord, we jolt upwards, and then the whole
thing becomes even more surreal, as it gets really calm and peaceful and
quiet, and you float down looking at the lake and the snow covered
mountains. Its just really serene.....floating, floating, I can see Bry
(momentary releif that his shoot too has opened!) I can see the field that
we're aiming for, floating, floating, then touchdown - (thud!). It was all
over so quickly, did it really happen? but my jelly legs let me know that i
did just jump out of a plane - never ever ever do that again!! But what a
lot of fun!! I have to say that it kind of was scary, but it was kind of OK
too. the fact that you've got someone attatched to you who knows what he is
dong is really cool - his responsibility not mine! I just give the guy a
piggy back!! easy! I imagine though if I had to make myself jump out of a
plane myself on my own I think it might be a different story!! I have only a
limited amount of braveness in my body!! and bungy jumping - I don't think
so!!!
So after all that excitment, we hung around Rotorua a little more, went to a
Maori hangi, basically a roast dinner, that is cooked in a dug out earth
pit. Very tasty, and has a real smoky taste. We were both in 2 minds as to
whether to go or not, whether it ws going to be really touristy and crap,
but the evening was really good. We learnt some maori stuff, saw some Haka
dances, the girls did poi, but it was with really short strings and fat
balls and they hit them aginst their hands and stuff and got this amazing
rhythm going -very cool, I was in awe!
After a week in Rotorua we thought we should leave and move on, we were
getting too settled!! even getting accostomed to the smell of rotton eggs!
We headed up to the coromandel peninsular. Bry went fishing and came home
with 7 red snapper!!! He caught one of them, and the spares got shared out!
I was very proud of my hunter gatherer!! What a catch! We gave some away,
ate one fresh and then got some smoked in the local smokery! Sooooo tasty! I
got quite good at being inventive for things to do with smoked fish, ie
pasta, salad, soup, sandwich filling with yogurt/mayonaise...I have to say,
I was releived when we finished it all!!
Went to a very cool gardens where the theme was water. It was brilliant,
people here are so creative and immaginative. There were bikes, fixed to the
ground, and when you peddaled, you propelled water out of a water pistol at
the handelbars ( the added bonus of being able to direct the massive shoot
of water!!) there was a giant musical box made out of an oil barrel, knives
and water to active the movement! It was brilliant and so much fun! there
were a coulpe of flying foxes, and one of those hamster wheels for people!
leaving both of us with bruises on our legs and sore bellies from laughing!!
then we thoguht we should curb the spending and do some wwoofing (willing
workers on organic farms). thought we might learn a thing or two and might
be nice to hang out with peole who weren't travellers, and you get food and
accomodation! Now our situation was a bit complicated and we were split
between 3 different homes. I was working in a cafe that hadn't yet opend for
the season. We did mud brick building and plastering - a lot of fun! Quite
inspiring, saw some houses that were really works of art, so beautiful!
Glass bottles as windows, and just really unique and special. At the cafe we
made a sand pit and did some other plastrering and painting and digging and
weeding... It was kind of fun, and the other 3 wwoofers I was working with
were american and really lovely. They had a bit of a hard time though,
people would just be rude about to them about America. IT was a bit of an
alternative community and althoughwe met some really nice people, I would
really have expected people to be a little bit nicer and more thoughtful and
considerate really and I felt pretty bad for the Americans. They were so
nice as well! There was alot of people who were so into being alternative,
and talking about balance and flow that it all seemd a litlle unblanced to
me! It was really interesting though for a short while though, but it felt
good to leave when we did, there wasn't nearly enough laughing going on! A
very intersting corner of the world. Chatted to some people about communes
as well as there are quite a few around NZ, and that was really interesting
too. How they work, the finances behind it, the work ethics, the old ideas,
and new blood.... really intersting about how you can live your life like
that, but still within the real world and about investing money and trust
land and retiring... very interesting! I could chat for hours about it
Met a lovely lady form England called Chris who had been here for 2 years
and had given up her job and was wwoofiong full time whilst doing a
celebrants course. She was great and we laughed alot and had some good chats
about the need for rituals for different bits of your life to mark
transitions and acheivements ie weddings, leaving parties, celebrations and
how its someting that we don't do so much in the western world so much any
more... very interesting.
now we are in the north again, and looking for jobs, maybe fruit picking
maybe working on a boat, maybe...?? we shall see.
things are still good here and we are having fun. I occassionally fret about
what will become of us, and then I forget about that again and get caught
up in just loving it!!

New Zealand!

2004-08-30T06:11:00.000-07:00

hey there everyone

just a quick one really... we are now in NZ!! Yeah! We got to Aukland and immediatley started looking for a van. How soul destroying was that!! We looked round at a heap of overpriced rust buckets, that had been round the island at least three times and were up to 20 years old. What a nightmare!! Got a fed up so started looking at buses - how cool would that have been! Decided though that the prices of an old coach were out of our league, and the thought of changing a tyre on some deserted highway was too amusing to consider as a reality!! Finally found ourselves a 1991 toyota hiace (see attachment, provided courtesy of Debbie Herbert - Thank you Debbie!!) It belonged to a guy who had a nursery (the plant sort not the children sort) so it needed a bit of a clean up and kitting out to be a home! - What a lot of fun!! We now have a bed that folds away a litlle bit, blue denim curtains, a pink kitchen, (with a curtain with funky pink 70's flowers design - I'm very pleased with that!!). we have a work surface witch folds in half, pink lino on the floor, lilac fur on the ceiling, lights running off a 2nd battery, crates with lids to sit on.... how exciting!! Photos to follow!!! We had a real laugh doing it all up. We stayed at Judy and Marks(my sisters ex - boyfriends parents!!) on their farm near Napier. They let us use tools and sewing machines and beds and fed us and all that! It was ace! We came at a bit of a busy time though - lambing season! They were so cute though - i even got to feed one at Judys lamb orphanage!! what a lot of fun for a city girl!! They also got piglets whilst we were there, and there were calves being born as well! it felt like really being in the countryside none of the pretending we do in Cornwall!!!!

anyway, today the adventure starts, we've left the safe and cosy home of Mark and Judy and are flinging ourselves into the cold wide world again!! and we see how me and bryan cope with absolutely no personal space whatsoever!!!!! in about 5m squared!!

before we came to Napier - art deco capital of the world apparantly (earthquake of 1931 would explain that one!) we went to a jazz and blues festival in piahia (bay of Islands - up at the north). that was alot of fun. alot of beards and blue rinses though! obviously having both I fitted in very well!! It was alot of fun, got a boat accross to an island called Russell, and sat in a pub beer garden enjoying the entertainment with a pintin hand... In Aukland we went to the museum which happened to show a microscope photography exibition at the time, which pleased Bryan greatly (!) and they had a seashore /sea life exhibition which also pleased Bryan!!!what perfect timing. I myself was pleased with the fernery and hothouse - everybody happy!!

its been really nice to get to NZ, you ask someone directions and its no problem to understand the answers! I've had cornflakes and roast dinner! The houses here are great they all have veranda, i'm starting a must have listfor our next (semi!) permanent home!! Veranda comes top! The people are soooooo friendly, like really frinedly, everyone will chat to you stopping to look in a shop window, in pubs, at garages... really nice!

anyway better go
sorry I haven't written many individual letters recently, its not a reflection of my love for any of you!!
Debs and Bryan xxx

last days in S America

2004-08-04T10:00:00.000-07:00

hey there kids!

its been a while now....I think last time we wrote, we were nearly moving on from Bolivia. We spent the last few days in La Paz doing serious shopping!! then it was a mega mission to get into Argentina. First a 3 1/2 hr bus trip followed by a 17 hour train journey! ugghh! and that was just to the border! We got to the border town and were then supposed to take a 7 hour bus journey down to Salta, but we screwed up - we didn't realise that there was a time change of an hour, and subsequently missed our bus by yep you guessed it - by an hour!!! What muppets! Not so bad except that there wasn't another bus on until the night bus at midnight. Again not so bad assuming you've got an alright place to pass the time away in! It was one of those border towns that exist only because there is a border there! It was dead as you like, picture one of those scenes with tumble weed being blown down a dusty road! The only place we found for a coffe was a souless hotel restaurant! OK now kick in 2 stomachs, finally protesting about the accumulated maltreatment they had in Bolivia, and you have a very sick Debbie and Bryan, and with out going into too much detail, were both pissing poo!! Nice!! What a way to greet Argentina, the best steaks and great red wine, and all just a little bit unobtainable!! Lucky for us the bus had a toilet on it! (There is no way we could have gone other wise!!)

After a long couple of days we got to Salta at 6 in the morning, and by the time we got to the 4th hostel with no room at the inn, we were desperate to go to bed! Finally found a place, and it was great. Argentina is so different to any where else we had been in S America. The hostels had heating! Yeah - I could finally ditch the peasant woman, seige of Lenningrad look that I was perfecting! The showeres were amazing. Hostels have kitchens. you walk around town, and it feels so european. The women are classy looking, theres lingerie shops and italian ice cream shops... Diferent world! For the first time in nearly 4 months we felt underdressed and scummy!! Apart form the afore mentioned, we didn't stand out as western tourists! Quite nice as a gradual reintroduction to Western life, so we wouldn't have a massive culture shock getting to NZ, I guess!

Anyway despite the improved living conditions, our bellies got worse... Went to the chemist to get some antibiotics, she wouldn't give us standard travelling diarrhoea ciprofloxin she said it was too strong (?) anywayshe gave us some other stuff, which a friend gave us the low down on (thanks Mercedes!) and it would seem the stuff she gave us was pretty strong, used for things like typhoid!! Oh well keeps another nasty desease at bay for a while!!! and we're better now!
decided after our above adventures that we were well over the public transport thing and forked out to fly to Mendoza (wine growing area) had some catching up to do on sampling Argentinien local delights! Went on a great wine tour with tasting and a big feed at the end of it. A lot of fun!

Decided to blow the budget in our last week in S Am and went skiing and snowboarding to Las Lenas! hey we're nearly done, and spent less than we thought! (very easy to justify!) Great, another holiday within a holiday! The snow wasn't great, but it was fine for a short 4 day break. Its great though, so beautiful, and you get the adrenalin thing going down, and then get to chill out between runs on the chair lift! What a lot of fun! Then theres always the after skiing hot choclate and chips...mmmmm! its a bit like surfing, the way that thats an integral part of the experience!!! it was a lot like Cornwall actually, only the skiers/ boarders are waiting for the 40 cm of snow thats coming tomorrow (bit like the 6 foot waves that are coming tomorrow!!)

anyway, it was a great way to end our trip before flying (note the improved form of transport again!) to Santiago in Chile, where we couldn't be arsed to see any more museums or colonial architecture. we were done out!! It felt a bit wierd to think that we were leaving S americca having been here for 4 months. We had no plans for NZ, it always seemed so far away, like it was never going to happen, and now it seemed wierd that we were leaving but not going home! (home, what or where is that anyway!!?) But hey, its another adventure, and it will involve english speakers (yey!) and cornflakes (yey!) and roast dinners (yey!) and seeing some old friends (yey!) and perhaps I can unpack my rucksuck, and not have to pack it again the next day?(yey!).... and many more good things!!

hope thngs are cool with you all back home love you and miss you lots (but not enough to come home just yet!!)

Debs and Bry xxx

much love from Bolivia!

2004-07-13T11:32:00.000-07:00

hey there kids!

(debs) hope you´re all well and happy.... things here are cool. We´ve just had a great couple of weeks! We first got to Bolivia and went to Copacobana (not of Barry Manilow fame - but hey that didn´t stop us from singing! Not publicly of course!!) Its on Lake titicaca, and lots of people rave about it, so our high expectations were naturally dashed!! It was soooooo cold there! We had a huge thunderstorm and no sunshine. Fine you might think if it was standard practice to have heating - but no!! The only buiding in Copacobana that had heating was a really expensive internet cafe!! They´re not stupid definately onto a good thing! they sure spotted the gap in the market!!Us, like all the other travellers were like screw the budget, as long as we can be warm!!! We were really starting to think and dream about flights to hot places, maybe a drastic change of plan and going via Miami after all!! but thats nearly as far as going home! anyway we bailed out of copacobana and as the blood flow returned to our extremities, our brains seemed to start functioning rationally again, and we bought some warmer clothes, Bolivia didn´t seem quite the bad place we initially thought it was!!!

we got a bus out of copacobana towards La Paz, just the minor inconvienience of a stretch of water in the way. we were a little confused when everyone got off the bus, but without their luggage. We followed them and got a little motorboat to the other side, and watched whilst our bus drove onto a rickety wooden barge and lolled from side to side as the barge went across the water! a most bizzarre experience! I so never thought it was going to make it! but hey I should have more faith in the S American transport system!!

got to La Paz whihch is a really nice place, we weren´t hassled by shoe cleaning boys, finger puppet sellers, or children selling chiclets (chewing gum) nearly as much. People just go about their day ignoring the tourists, which was a really nice change. Everyone that is except the hairdressers, who would ask Bryan more than once a day if he wanted a hair cut!! I had the best breakfast in the world, found a cafe that served cornflakes with cold milk!! Oh baby bring it on!!! so good. (That too helped my first impressions of La Paz!) We also found the buy of the century and now we feel like proper travellers... we bought a plug in single cup water heater! tea on demand! I like it! Bought some warm clothes and now we are prepared for anything!

From La Paz we went to the salt flats in S Bolivia.We thought that we knew the meaning of cold? How wrong we were!!! We arrived there and there was washing hanging on the line with icicles hanging off it! Water in the toilet cistern was frozen...unbeleivable! Luckily we could make hot drinks with our new water heater and had some rum to hand - wee night cap! tea with rum!!

the salt falts were really cool. We got a 4 wheel drive for a 4 day tour. now a quick tip for anyone travelling.... if you´re in a country whose economy is largely based around children selling chiclets, then if you´re offered a tour with 4 wheel drive viechles, you might want to stop and consider for a moment the terrain you´ll be covering and why they don´t just use a mini bus? It was really rough terrain, soooo bumpy, and kind of fun for the first couple of hours, but after bumping your head on the jeep roof for the 10th time that minute, the novelty definately wore off!! joking aside, the scenery was amazing! The salt flats just go on for miles... it looks like snow, as far as the eye can see! The whle thing was really quite trippy. We took lots of silly photos! There was a hotel made entirely of salt! Went to an "island" with loads of cacti on it. one was 12m high that they claimed was 1200 years old! Realy cool. the other bits of the trip we saw flamingos in salt lakes, geizers shooting out steam at really high pressure, bubbling mud pools, crazy rock formations, volcanos, vicunas (kind of wild llamas), these rabbits with squirrel tails (!), coloured lakes, and just wide expanse of uninhabitable land. That was dead cool, you just don´t get that kind of wilderness in Europe in the same kind of way! Awesome! A real highlight of the trip too though was this really cool italian dude called Gigi! He was 71 years old, sleeping in the same shit beds that we slept in, in the same cold shacks that we slept in, hanging out with people less than half his age. He was just the dude! He did ski resue (blood wagon stretchers down mountains) his favourite place he had travelled to was the Yemen! He couldn´t speak english, we couldn´t speak italian, but we muddled through with a mixture of french and spanish, and managed to teach him the card game shithead! We were like if only we could be like him when we´re 41 let alone 71! a real gem!

When we got back to La Paz we decided to do the worlds most dangerous bike ride! Bryan loved it, I was too busy being scared to really say that I really enjoyed it!!

(bry) "The worlds most dangerous bike ride".........hmm would they really let tourists do that? It was a 5 hour ride from somewhere above La Paz down to Coroico at a positively balmy 1760m. A downhill mountain bike descent of about 2500m. Needless to say it wasn´t that dangerous, but in fairness there was a distinct lack of any form of barrier and a long vertical drop into jungle. This coupled with a shit load of crazy gringos on bikes going down and loads of huge trucks coming up and down, and ruts, stones, potholes, dust and mud made it "a fairly risky road to descend". I had a great time though Debs was a bit scared and brought up the rear every time!.(debs) better safe than sorry! (Bry) The first hour was really smooth tarmac which meant that you could go at a cracking pace, overtaking shit Bolivian buses and things. At the start though it was so cold that we had to do regular warm up stops to get over the windchill factor! After this it became a little bit bumpier and as we descended into cloud forest it beacame a bit of a mudbath on the dirt road. There are quite a few crosses and things at the side at the side of the road, but it's best just to go past them really fast so you can't read the words! Out of the cloud forest the road became dust. After the dampness of above we became coated in the stuff! (Debs) I hung out at the back and was the only one to get a dust mask! Very pleased about that!! (Bry) It got hot too, and we were down to t-shirts by this stage. It was a great day out and a cold beer at the bottom was like manna from heaven to our parched dusty mouths.

(debs) After that we flew up north of La Paz to the Amazon basin to do a trip. We decided to fly in preference to a 16 bus journey (getting a bit weary of the long bus journies! (especailly tall Bryan with his feet in his pockets and knees in his ears!), and we would have had to drive down the death road again, we thought that might be tempting fate, especially seeing all the memorials at the side of the road!! The flight was beautiful. It was an hours journey in a 20 seater plane, over mountains and then the rainforest, then landing on a grass airstrip, (chickens and all!)

We got there and it was so good to be warm again! and have that general all over clammyness! Oh yeah! We went out for dinner that night, and I had one of the best dinners I have had in S America - shortly followed by the worst guts I´ve had in S America.... I didn´t make it to the toilet in time!! Oh shame!!! Bryan was helpful in the amount that he was laughing!! but then went out to get some washing powder!! 28 years old and no bowel control!!! Oh the shame!!! just glad that we had our own bathroom that night!!! (Please love me and don´t think any less of me!)

(bry) The next day we set off with the tour company for a three hour jeep ride along a really dusty road. Then after a lunch we had a three hour boat ride up the River Yucuma to where we were staying. The boat ride was excellent! We saw alligators, caimons, howler monkeys, squirrel monkeys, capibaras (not sure of the spelling, but it's the largest rodent in the world and looks well funny!), loads of different birds including huge stork like things and funny swimming ones that just stick a scrawny neck and head above the water, big terrepins, pink river dolphins, and a lot of mosquitos. A few of us got in the water for a swim with the dolphins. It was a bit freaky becasue the water was so brown you couldn't see them until they surface beside you! It is a really vunerable feeling! The funniest bit was when one of them slapped Debbie in the face! Did she scream or what!! The alligators were quite small in case you think we are really barmy. (debs) it gave me a real shock! - being a fragile, delicate jumpy creature at the best of times, I had already freaked out when Bryans feet surfaced by my head! It was really funny when only about a minute later one smaked me in the face with its fin!!

(Bry) We got to the camp which was basic but nice. We had good beds and mozzie nets and the food was amazing. There were loads of hammock around so it was a great place to do a bit of chilling. It was so good to be somewhere warm again, and at an altitude where you can move around loads without getting exhausted! It felt like a different country and it felt like we were travelling again!!

The next day we went to the pampas (a sort of wet grassland) to look for anacondas. So our group and another group fan out in a police style search line to try to spot one. Did we arse. If one of the guides hadn't spotted and grabbed one we would never have seen one. It was about two metres long and was worth the search.

The rest of the time was spent riding around in the boat, fishing for pirahnas and chilling in the hammocks. The last night there it rained in a true jungle style and the next day it was hot, humid and steamy. Good for us because we were leaving, but for the new group that arrived it was going to be harder than we had it!!

Definately one of the best trips we have done.

So know we are back in La Paz wondering what to do with ourselves. We have only three weeks left in SA which feels a bit strange. So we are to head south, stop off at a hot tub sauna place we have gotten wind of, head into Argentina, maybe do a bit of snowboarding and then on to Santiago de Chile to fly to Aukland.

(debs) so the next part of the adventure starts soon.... it´ll be great to see kate and tim and mat and kat, and anyone else that finds themselves in the southern hemisphere!!

Mat and Kat have signed up the computer illiterate ones (thanks guys!) to this web site where all our circulars are posted, so if you don´t want the circulars, you can just look there - so just let us know. If you still want the circulars, let us know too. the address is
http://bryan_debs.blogspot.com

we´re working on putting some pictures on a site as well, will let you know when that is!! maybe some time yet!!

love to you all as ever!
Debs and Bry xxx

Last few days of Peru

2004-06-22T23:56:00.000-07:00

Hey there everybody,

(bry)Things are all cool here. We are in our last few days of Peru, as we leave for bolivia this week. When depends on our guts getting back onto a regular pattern! We've picked up an upset from somewhere. Probably on the trek we have just been on, and until we feel tiptop I'm not getting on an overnight bus!!!!
(Deb) I think our bodies have just gone into full time protest after a 4 day trek!! read on...

(bry)We have been to Nazca to take a plane trip to see the lines. These are the lines that were only "dicovered" in the '20s when commercial flights started going over the area and there they were!

http://www.labyrinthina.com/nazca.htm has some photos

We got in the plane, a Cessna, and it was a very small plane indeed! A 6 seater, and that includes the pilot. We took off and which was quite a laugh in itself. We were cruising along nicely looking at the vista, and the pilot
suddenly wrenches the stick and we went into a tight turn so that the people on one side of the plane could get a good look at the first shape. "Look, Look" went the pilot taking his hands off the controls to turn around and point! We were taken totally by surprise and I was trying to get the camera out, hang on and not be sick all at there same time. He showed one side of the plane, and then went on a crazy turn to show the other side. He did this for all the main formations and it was a bit heavy on the stomach with all there crazy turns and the looking nearly straight down at the ground out of a very small plane. Still, it was a good trip and the lines were really clear, much clearer than I thought they would be.
(deb) glad we took the advice not to have breakfast before hand!! There are many theories on what the deal with the lines is ranging from alien space ship landing runways and alignments with sun solstices to pretty pictures to please the Gods! Take your pick!

(Bry)In the afternoon we went to the Cementerio de Chauchilla near Nazca. This was a burial site for the Incan people of the area a long time ago. Graverobbers have trashed it, and we have been left with a desert covered in human bones and scraps of funeral attire! It was a bit weird. We had a guide and he showed us some tombs that had been restored with mummies and pottery and stuff. A short afternoon trip, but well interesting.

Chilling out in our hostel later, we met Nereiti, and old Californian woman who was in Nazca on the advice of her spirit mother (who has passed to the other side) to interpret the Lines and tell people the advice that they
contain. She was out there but positive and happy - so fair enough.
(Deb) I had some healing done by her on my ailing shoulder - more hippy shit healing, watch this space! didn't pay 30 quid for it this time though so hey!!

(Bry)The next day we went to a planetarium talk on the Nazca lines and how they relate to the stars. It was pretty cool. Some of the animals fit in with constellations, and loads of the straight lines point to the bit of the horizon where stars or planets or the sun makes appearances in some seasons.
There were some cool relations between the sky and the lines, but we weren't bowled over or anything. Afterwards we went out to have a look through a decent telescope at the sky. We saw a star that was actually three in close orbit (we could see two of them though this telescope). And we saw Jupiter which was cool, and we could see two red bands across it. We saw some star clusters too.
(deb) Nazca was really nice in as much as it had no tourists there, as people come to see the lines and move on the same day, so we had our cheapest dinner yet (less than a dollar)! Nice! Bought Bryan a watch for
about a pound! One of those retro casios that we all had when we were about 8!(those of us that were cool that is!!) Turned out later that it wasn't even a real one, they had scraped of the logo and stuck a casio transfer on top! that watch only lasted 3 days before bry jumped in a swimming pool....dramatic overestimation in the quality of purchase me thinks!!

(bry)After Nazca we went to Ica, a couple of hours north by bus. From there we hopped into a taxi and went to Haucachina. Haucachina is an oasis in the desert surrounded by massive sanddunes. Around the oasis has a kind of paint peeling, former past glory, british sea-side decreptitude about it! It was a very popular spot with Peruvians but has been taken over of late by gringos here for the sandbuggying and sand boarding.
We were there on the advice of some Auzzies on our Inca Trail. So we got there and we found a place with about 20 rooms around a big grassy area with a bar and a pool! And it was cheap....nice. There was a good crowd there, and we had been looking out for a good place to kick back for a while. So we did nothing but sit in hammocks reading and chatting for the first day. The evening consisted of a coordinated attack of a few of bottles of rum between about 15 people. We had lots of good chatting and laughing and an american bloke called Marcus kept rummaging in the depths of his i-pod and coming up with funky classics. We didn't do the bar taking any good as me and Marcus took it in turns to play free rum barman to everybody! At about 3am, a couple of locals thought it would be a good idea to go sandboarding pissed in the dark! of course thats a good idea we thought! So they went off to "borrow" a couple of boards and then we started tramping up this massive dune. We gave up about 3/4 of the way up and went sailing down. Woke up with sand everywhere, as happens when you get really drunk in the desert. Debbie missed this the night before as she crashed early - imagine her surprise when the sand appeared the next morning.
(deb) I had a drunk bryan one side of me and a mini sand dune all around me!! I missed out on those fun and frolicks when I decided to crash after too much rum and too much singing of the Brand New Heavies "midnight at the Oasis"! Don;t you just love it when you find a song with lyrics that perfectly fit a situation!! Great!!

(bry) So then was the day of the activities. We all got a sandboard and hopped into a sandbuggy. These sand buggies are enormous and really shift. We got strapped in and roared into the desert in a convoy of three. It was really fast and we were all hanging on for dear life as we went flying up and down these massive dunes.
(deb) got a flat tyre shortly after starting! Great health and safety regs out here! and tried to change the tyre. Who needs a car jack when you have 6 strong young men to do the job! the girls were just getting in the way so were relegated to taking pictures and took on the cheerleading role!
(Bry)There was still a problem with the wheel of our buggy so we got dumped out so they could go and swap the buggy for another. So all the buggies went, and there we were standing in the middle of a desert - great. It wouldn't have been funny had we not one of the sand buggy guys with us. So we farted about practicing boarding on small dunes. When the buggy came back we got into full swing rollercoaster mode as we went zooming around.
Brilliant fun. Then we got dumped off at the top of a big dune and had to try and get down in one piece. It is a lot harder than snowboarding, and I didn't really get the hang of it. Debbie went for the sitting down, straight
down approach which worked really well.
(deb) sledging has always been an underrated passtime in my mind!
(bry)Turning is the difficult bit but these dunes were so big that turning wasn't really nesessary! And we didn't break anything (Will!).

On to Arequipa where we sorted out a trek into Colca Canyon. Apparently it is the deepest canyon in the world, and has been recommended by loads of people we have met. We sorted out a 4 day trek with a tour agency and set off at 2 in the morning. Just me, Debbie, Marcus the American bloke we met in Huacachina, and Elias, our guide. We had a very bumpy 5 hour bus ride to Cobanaconda from where we started walking. It is a really really cool place to go trekking. The scenery is amazing. We spent the whole of the first day (well about 5 hours) descending (a bit harsh on the knees!) and after crossing a couple of rather gammy cable suspenstion footbridges high over the river(debbie crapped it!) we came to Llahuar.
(Deb) I paniced and then got amazingly focused chanting to myself all the way over this gully "don't think, don't look, just walk!" until I got to the other side!
(Bry) Llahuar is essentially a hotel made out of mud, with bamboo beds. We were shattered and we crashed out for an hour waiting for lunch. We awoke to find out that there were in fact hot tubs heated from volcanic springs. So me and Debbie settled into one that was right on the river for a while thinking that life is alright and how glad we were that we didn't let the muggers and thieves chase us out of the continent.
(deb) Marcus found himself a topless french girl in one of the other hot tubs, so he was happy! It was such a beautiful place, totally surrounded by mountains, 2 rivers meeting, and only 3 other tourists there. (french girls
mentioned earlier!) The stars were something else! I remember thinking this is why I have come travelling to see some really beautiful places and not share them with more than a handful of people! The locals must have thought us mad, we were just walking for the sake of it, but they have to walk for 5 hours to get to the nearest village with roads! Crazy Gringos!
(Bry)The next day wasn't so plush but at the end of the 3rd day we came to an oasis. It used to be an Incan village but was abandoned. It is now a lodge for trekkers complete with swimming pool. Nice. The final day was a
real shitter. We had to get up at 2am to make an ascent of the canyon - 800 vertical metres. Thats a lot of footsteps I can tell you. We got to the top and treated ourselves to a mega breakfast! It was a much harder trek than the Inca Trail but really cool, and until we got to the oasis on the third day we only saw 6 other tourists whch makes a nice change, and makes this trip very different!!

Next stop was Cruz del Condor. It is a lookout point to see condors, and the reason we had gotton up so early and trekked in the dark. What a crock of shit! We saw some condors in the distance, but not before an offical relieved us of $6 each (not a lot at home, but it's a lot here!). We were really tired and as a result got a bit grumpy at this particularly naff tourist rip off. Debbie was really grumpy in fact!!!!!So we got back on the
bus and I had to stand all the rest of the way (not what my weary bones neded!).
(deb) I would like to defend myself a little here and say, what a con! (and maybe I was a little grumpy!) The condors had like a 3 meter wing span, so pretty impressive, but not as impressive as it would have been had they been eating raw meat off of Bryans head! But hey, this just ain't Disney!
The above mentioned bus was one of those buses from travelling hell, minus the chickens and twice the people! but we had some fun with some of the kids showing them their pictures on the digital camera! The little kid dressed as a cowboy thought it was really cool!! (I don;'t think it was fancy dress either!)

anyway, Bolivia tomorrow, it feels like we're running out of time as we've done over half of our S america trip!! Crazy really as we still have 6 weeks left!!

Any wa kids, must drink more coke; caffeine and sugar, the ultimate tummy cure!!
take it easy much love
Debs and Bryan xxx

Climbing ever higher in Peru

2004-06-08T10:45:00.000-07:00

I{m so sorry that its been a while, but a couple of days ago I wrote a 2 hour email, and lost the lot!! I was jumping!! But hey these things happen!!

I guess I{ll just do a brief run down of what we{ve been doing...
Cusco is a beautiful place. Really touristy as its where all the sacred valley tours start from, so its no problem to get pizzas and burger and even shepherds pie!! All not very peruvian really!! But the main square has 2
cathedrals and is sourrounded by colonial buildings in really good nick with beautiful balconies! Its definately an easyplace to get stuck in and find some drinking buddies and just eat good food! Luckily we got out just before the annual beer fest. I say luckily, as these ozzies we met, well we really couldn{t keep up with them!!

Anyway, we met up with Michelle and her 2 mates, and did some white waterrafting! That was a lot of fun! We nearly fell in, but the threat of submersion into glacial melt water was enough to make anyone paddle!! some of the others in the group that had done it before said that it was a little on the lame side, but I thought that it was ace. Scary enough to be fun, but not so much that I actually feared for my life!! The quiet bits were good too, it was really quiet and calm, and we just floated through this huge gorge with towering mountains either side. We saw hummingbirds and daydreamed until the next rapid fired us into action!! alot of fun!

Machu Picchu was an experience! 4 days of hiking in beautiful mountains, but Will and Pili never said how difficult it would be!! It was great though, the first day was quite a civilised introduction, (to lure us into a false sense of security!). The second day was hellish! We had to climb over 1200m in height to an altitude of 4260m!! Hello! You are all probably have a notion of my level of fitness! Miss Logan in a school PE report gave me a D4 and wrote " Debbie rarely acheives anything!!" Read and weep!! I was slower than most but faster than some!! Mind you it took us 6 1/2 hours to reach the summit, whilst some of them did it in 3 hours! ( bet they never stopped to look at the views or take pictures though!) we hung out with 2 guys, one of whom had a gammy knee and the other had food poisoning! We kept good company and matched each othes´paces!!

The 3rd day was amazing! Probably just out of sheer relief that we had the horrendous uphill bit over with! there was lots of downhill bit, and I tranformed my trusty walking stick that had faithfully helped me heave my
aching hulk up the mountain, from vertical walking aid, to horizontal dancing aid! I started running down the mountainside with uncharacteristic grace and agility with a bit of a Fred and Ginger spring in my step!! It was
so much fun! ( I was on my own at this point, so my unfullfilled childhood dancing dreams are just between you and me!) There was cloud forest iwth lush green vegitation, snow capped mountains, I saw a wild orchid, (which in an old woman way I thought was very cool, humour me!). At night it was coming up to full moon and the reflection of the moon on the low (!) lying clouds (ie 2500m but beneath us!) and the snow sapped mountains was just awesome! one of the most beautiful things I have seen, almost fitting for one of thoses cheesy calendars that you get!
The porters were amazing, they did everything for us, we got to camop and they had put our tents up for us, they cooked 3 course dinners, and when we arrived at camp they had hot drinks and popcorn waiting for us!! Hello! we were thousands of meters up a mountain and everything had to be cariied! We even had stools for all of us to sit on! I couldn´t beleive it! We also had tables to eat from and they carried tablecloths too! We were so well looked after! It felt a little bit kind of colonial having all this done for us, and it felt quite strange, we did help put up tents, the guy who was putting them up was pretty old and putting up about 10 in a row! I don{t know how much they get paid, but i think that the tips help. Strange system though, not everyone in our group wanted to tip.. I could talk for ages, but I have to get on!

Day 4, well we got up at 3am and had to walk in the dark to try and get to Machu Picchu for sunrise! The clear night sky of the night before had transfored into cloud and drizzle! (Its Ok we loved in Cornwall we´re used
to the weather changing our plans!!) No problem, we started walking, and 5 mins into it, our torch gave out on us!! Me and Bryan accidentally took a small detour up some steps to some ruins before realising that noone was
following us, and that there was no one in front of us!! Found some people with tourches and shared! It was realy hard work, what with the inca steps being alll uneven and higgledy piggledy and it bing dark! I really thought
that it would be just my luck to break a leg on the last stretch to MP and never get to see it!! BUt it did get light and the mood visibly lifted. No wonder people have worshopped the sun for years. I felt that I could relate to that, and was so releived to be able to se again! anywaym we got closer and closer. the deal was that we entered MP through "the sun gate " and got to see the sunrise and see the whole of MP in all its glory laid out before us. We reached the summit, 4 days of anticipation, 4 days of pilgrimage, 4 days of pain and exhaustion...... but it would all be worth it..... Cloud cover! Can you beleive it? We could see nada!! Gutted! nothing, no sunrise, no MP, no glory crowning the end! I didn{t know whether to laugh or cry!
What an anticlimax! so we all sat in a lineon the ponchos and watched the mist roll in and out and contemplated our aching faces! No wonder the spanish never found it!!
Anyway we walked down the path towards MPand I lost the plot and couldn{t stop laughing, really innane, but I fell apart, then set Bryan off!!
When we finally walked down the path to MP it was amzing! rally breathtaking! ( the reamains of the mist gave it a slight ethereal , magical mysterious quality. Amazing! its so huge. Its well restored and has a sun
temple, sun dials and windows orientated to the summer and winter soltices. Theres carved figures and water washing ritual sacred places, terraces that draw your eyes to the buildings. Its really amazing! It was definately worth the trek, and we felt infinately superior to the day trippers with their unsensible shoes, fragrant auras and coiffured hair!! We felt that we had earned the magnificence of MP! All aches and pains were forgotten!, but we did get the bus down the hill, we really couldn´t be arsed to walk any more!
The train company really has a good deal. they charge $35 for the 4 hour journey back to Cusco! thats a lot of money in Peru. There were land slides earlier this year and wreked part of the train line. The bit to MP is fine but they haven{t fixed it going the other way to the other towns and villages, less money to be made that way! You know what the worst of it is, its a british owned company!! shocking!

anyway we have a bus to catch. next, is a full moon party, lake titicaca, our new Blogg account! and what ever else we have done....

Peru mishaps

2004-05-25T09:31:00.000-07:00

(Debs)its been a while since the last email.... We left you in Quito (capital of Equador) and were flying to Lima (capital of Peru). Got to Lima what a huge sprawling city, has 8 million people living there! anyway we spent the first night in a beautiful hostel, that was all colonial and huge and airy. It had 2 resident parrots and a 35 year old tortoise, who had a toe biting fettish! do tortoises carry rabies?? anyway we went to a few museums, with a really annoying British girl in tow! Boy does that kind of thing make you miss your friends!! Hey ho! Went to an amazing museo de la nacion: it had loads of ceramics and mummies and textiles and models of ruins, model of the nazca lines, tombs, artwork, and modern photos. It was really cool, and the day we went in it was free!! NICE! always like a bargain!! we also went to the gold museum, agin loads of mummies and jewellery and cloth and stuff. We felt very cultural, 2 museums in one day!!

Next day we headed a bit south to Pisco. got there and put some stuff in the hotal safe, got it out later,$ 700 travellers cheques gone! gulp. We think they were nicked out of the hostel safe, but can´t quite be sure. Anyway we had booked a tour the next day to Paracus national park and a boat ride to some islands, so we thought we´d do that before heading back to Lima to sort it all out, (thereby giving the Nazca lines a miss! Bugger!) That night we slept with one of the beds accross the door just for that extra precaution!!
You´d have laughed if you could have seen us!! We also after that are double locking our doors with an extra padlock and some of Brys poi chain! bought masking tape and a permanent pen as an anti tamper device!!no more shit will happen to us my friends!!! Read on....
Anyway we had a lovely chilled day on the boat to the Ballestas islands, we saw sealions, and pelicans and peruvian boobies and some penguins and flamingos from a distance and loads and loads of birds! We also saw dolphins from a distance! so I was quite excited!and took loads of pictures! Mind you they always tell you that you´ve come at the wrong time, and if only you had been here at high tide/ september/ a week last tuesday, you would have seen loads/ them closer/ seen 3 headed whales - if only!!!! It does make you laugh though!!
At the park it was beautiful and we took LOADS OF PICTURES (do you see where I´m going witrh this!? if not read on....!!!) it was awesome, and the sand dunes were like mountains in this beautiful slightly reddy brown colour with beautiful blue skies - more pictures.. Anyway we had a lovely day and had lunch at a beach and Bryan found lots of shells and was happy. (he´s so easily pleased!!)

Next day we left for Lima to sort out our travellers cheques, having spoken to the nice american lady at AMEX. got to Lima checked into a nice hostel, and went to sort out our TC´s. Apparantly its not enough to have your driving licence and passport and claim no and know the numbers of your cheques that are missing (like the nice lady on the phone told me!) No , you need your original receipt! an emailed copy won´t do! so mum and dad
(thanks guys!) have to send us the receipt. We figured that NZ might be a safer place for receiveing important mail!!! Anyway we went out for the night , not too pissed off, had a few drinks (pisco sours here, pisco, (schnapps made from wine,) with sugar,whisked egg whites and lime. Tastes a bit like an alcoholic liquid lemon merangue pie!! Bring it on!!

The next day we realised the camera was gone! bugger! We think it was in our room in Lima, but the more you try and think about things the less sure you become! but we had our bag with us before that, and we definately had it the day before. ? I don´t know, I´m bored and pissed off with trying to think about it! other travellers, hostel staff, knicked out of our bag don´t know! Went to the tourist police, they have agood job it would seem! one guy was playing games on his mobile phone, the other one was just repeating what the first guy said! hilarious! but in fairness they spoke english which was a relief!

(Bryan) What a palava. We were on the verge of bringing our flight to New Zealand forward and just getting out of here, but of course we were laughing about it soon enough. The hostel we were in the second time around was full of people who didn´t want to be there. There was us who had to come back because of travellers cheques, an american girl who missed her conecting flight, an aussie guy who was waiting for his replacement credit card to show up, another aussie guy who got sent back by USA customs because he had worked there illegally before and was waiting for some emerency money from his mum! Then when we were packing up to leave an english couple turned up with only one of their two rucksacks. The bus company chucked it off early or something

So we felt better, and we were in good company.

So that hopefully is it for disasters, they come in threes apparently!

(Debs )we´ve bought a new camera! out with the old in with the new!! Same model but slight upgrade andhalf the price!! We coldn´t go up to Macchu Picchu with out one now could we!! and we will also be downloading our photos more frequently!! having lost 3 weeks worth!

(Bry)Now we are in Cusco hopefully meeting up with Michelle tomorrow, and we are just kicking around getting used to the altitude (3310m) before we launch ourselves up to Machu Picchu (peak 2nd day at 4250m) Hopefully our legs and lungs will cope!

Jungle and knitwear

2004-05-17T10:27:00.000-07:00

(Bry) We are back in Quito after surviving the jungle/spanish lessons. All good fun if a little hard on the brain! 4 hours a day of solid one to one spanish and conversation.Not great if you´ve been out of education for 6 years! Oh aching face!! Pero es muy bien, y nuestros español es mejor hoy de ayer!! (ish!!). We did some river trips in the jungle (the amazon, don´t you know!) saw some monkeys and taranctulas and even had a baby one in our bathroom - harmless apparently!

(Deb) Saw this huge moth with a bulging head, really wierd looking! Us quite unperterbed were looking at it closely (you know what Bryan is like!!) then one of the guys working at the lodge very swiftly disposed of this highly peligrosso (dangerous) beast from a healthy brooms length away! Especiallly as the nearest hospital was a significant distance away! Now a moth isn´t really what you imagine of dangerous encounters! Not so glamorous really!! But our man Lenny knows what he´s talking about and the drama was over before it started.

(Deb) We met some irish girls who seemed to be laughing their way around the world, falling in rivers, freaking out about the wildlife! Had a fun evening learning to salsa and irish dance. Our contribution was solely our eagreness to learn and impressive dancing ability, as opposed to anything cultural to be proud of and share!! But hey, our country is just very cosmopolitan and varied, its not our fault if we have no unique singular culture of our own!!
Went and saw a village, which felt a little intrusive and colonial looking to see how someone cooks on a wood fire... but then they get an income from having tourists visit, and there were new buildings and roofs and toilet block around the place, so its a tricky one to judge on the ethics of it really.... hhhmmmm

Got back to Quito and spent the whole day trying to sort stuff out. My legs were so sore walking up and down streets, Bry then pointed out the irony of it being flat and paved when what we were trying to sort out was a 4 day hike up mountains at altitude to Macchu Picchu. I´m sooooo gong to have a hard time of it!!

(Bry) Those of you who know Michelle Perkins (debbies school mate) we aren´t meeting them to do Macchu Picchu after all, all booked up, and they have run out of time.....so we are going later.
Those of you who were my fellow comrades in 49 Gordon Ave (my uni house for the rest of you) you will never guess who Michelles travelling companion is.
A girl called Rachel who when we were chatting to in Quito a while ago turned out to be a 49 resident the year before us! Strange enough, but I have also cleared up the mystery of the spooky UV writing in the kitchen - She did it!! She did it for a ledgendary 49 party to stop people sitting on that rickedy worktop in the corner! Small world.... She was pleased that we had a couple of ledgedary parties too!

(Deb)We went to a place called Otavalo yesterday (north of quito). its has a huge handicraft market on a Saturday. I was beside my self.... fat jumpers, knitted socks and gloves, and sooo little room in my rucksack!! SIGH!! It was like a really bitter sweet experience, sooo good, but just slightly unable to realise the full potential of having a fat jumper in evry colour....sigh! we´ll have to come back with an empty rucksack one day!!

(Bry)So tomorrow we leave Equador to fly to Lima in Peru, cruise around the coast for a week, (looking at shells and rock pools most like!! the trials and tribulations of hanging out with a marine biologist -D) before we fly to Cuzco for Macchu Picchu - fingers crossed for the weather and that our legs hold out!!

Cuba to Quito

2004-05-08T06:00:00.000-07:00

We ended up doing loads of stuff, went to Baracoa, right in the east, adn it rained for 4 days! Hey ho, not so different from Cornwall!! But we went for a walk in the rain (cos we´re hard core!!) along a beach to some coconut plantations and stuff, and we saw a manatee! How cool that really made our day! We went to some cool waterfalls and plunge pools near trinidad, but we never thought that we would make it. It was a jalopy that George would have been proud of! A huge big blue beast of a thing, we nearly took out a horse and cart, cyclist and 4 domino players! that was just on the way to get some
petrol!! The car needed push starting everytime, and we were only 5 mins down the road when they engine got a tweak with the obligatory screwdriver in everycar! Sounded better afterwards though! We hired mopeds which was good fun, its such a holiday thing! Went to the beach, and drove through these limestonehills and cave in Vinales. Beautiful! We thought it would be good to do a preliminary horse trek before committing ourselves toi a 4 day trek in the Andes. We now have realised that that was an absurd romantic notion, Bry´s bony arse didn´t cope too well!!

No my boney arse doidn´t like it, but these saddles weren´t the most forgiving. Both of us had really sore knees afterwards which was a bit surprising. We were limping around for a while dismissing Andean trekking as a psychotic thing to do, and we´d do well to hire a jeep in the Andes.
All of this was in Viñales a few hours west of Havana and was our last stop before leaving. We stayed there for a whole week in the same place which is really nice after a load of shorter stays around the place.

The first of May is a big old event in Cuba. It´s the anniversary of the revolution and it is a holiday. everywhere has big marches, so we rocked out of bed at 7.00am to go and see it, and it didn´t get going until about 8.00, and it was all over by nine. It was all rousing revolutionary stuff, with the children holding banners leading the way followed by everybody else who gets bigged up in Cuba. So there was a big group of bakers waving loaves, all the medical staff, loads of tourism staff, farmers, cigar makers and other less identifyable groups. Speechs kicked in with songs and a lot of
flag waving, and shouting ¡VIVA! when certain things were said from the stage. Everyone seemed well into it, which doesn´t fit with the american propaganda that the people hate Fidel. Who knows what people think. we were expecting partying all day and there wasn´t. It was a big deal and at the same time it wasn´t! Bizzare!

We are done and dusted with Cuba, and are now sat in Equador.

It was a bit weird to leave cuba, it´s just a matter of getting your head around a place and people and just when you do you´re sat in an airport about to go somewhere that you know nothing about! But by the end of the 3 1/2 weeks when we came back to Havana, we must have looked more at home because people stopped trying to sell us cigars, and moved on to trying to sell us drugs! It´s nice to know an bit more spanish "hemos comida, gracias" gets rid of someone trying to hassle you into a restuarant better than "we´ve eaten thanks". It also makes you think that we´re not going home for quite a while, which is a bit wierd!

So we head of to the airport and find out that there is a connection that we didn´t know about. To El Salvador of all places! --going to el salvador, don´t know why and we don´t know what for--(as the song goes). Then we had an overnight stop in Costa Rica, so we got out of the airport got somewhere to stay, and headed out to a restaurant. It was a massive menu and we could have whatever we wanted. we took ages to decide, because in cuba, you look at a menu, ask for something, no, try something else, no, this? no. What
have you got? Fried chicken, beans and rice. Right two of those thanks! So we stuffed our faces!

Back to the airport in the morning and find out that we have to pay departure tax even though we have benn in the country less than 24 hours!
Cheeky bastards. Another $50 down the pan!

Finally got ourselves installed in a hostel in Quito which is brilliant.
There is no system of accomadation like this in cuba where you can pay 4 or 5 dollars and stay with other travellers. Divide and conquer is the attitude to tourists in cuba!

So we are trying to figure out what we are doing in Equador. We are booked on a one week spanish course leaving tomorrow for the Amazon. You get one to one teaching for two hours, then the group for two hours, and then in the afternoon, head out for a jungle trek, or a river raft ride and other such activities. The teachers all come along, and there is supposed to be spanish spoken for the whole week, even amongst ourselves. It´s quite expensive but should be really good.

We quite fancy getting out Quito becasue we have already been mugged once. A school mate of debbies´s, Michelle is in Quito at the moment, and she and her mate were over at our hostel drinking. So when they were going home me and Debbie said we´d walk them to a taxi, because it´s a bit rough late at night apparently. So they said not to bother and left. Me and then started tailing them for a laugh. Next thing you know a guy crosses the street thumps me right in the chest sending me flying against a shutter. He the starts shout about money and rummaging around my pocket. Meanwhile a girl appears to frisk debbie and the backup guy with a knife was standing behind them in case of trouble. Funny thing was that they´d picked two tourists with no money!! All they found on debbie was some used tissues, and less than a dollars worth of change, and all they got from me was a watch that can´t tell the date that was free anyway! Gutted. As a last attempt to redeem the situation the girl went for my necklace, and sehe appeared quite
disgusted to find a bit bit of a cornish cockle shell on a scrappy bit of leather! You win some you lose some! It was a bit scary, but hey, it could of been alot worse!

The adventure begins

2004-04-16T10:58:00.000-07:00

wére having a great time and it really feels like we´re travelling now...we spent a whole day playing shit head (current score 14 debbie, 11 bryan!) chess, and draughts!( if anyone can give us a synopsis on the rules of draughts it would be much appreciated!) I´m longing for a picture perfect poo, we´ve been diving, caught the sun, seen some funky cars, bought the obligatry cuban cigars, been swimming bysome waterfalls, been cycling (34 kms, didn´t think that one through!) seen some amazing salsa (wow!) eaten great food, and life is great at day 7 out of 534ish! that will do for now, theres fun to be had (well dinner to be eaten more like!)