29 August 2006 - St Petersburg, Russia

OK, so this blog has not turned out as we intended: a reliable up-to-date window on our travels complete with dozens of photos. Instead, it is quickly starting to sound like a confessional so we'll end this paragraph right now.

Russia has been an interesting place to visit. All the palaces and museums are fascinating to wonder at and explore. Of all our travels over the past few months this is where we feel the most like tourists - we are conspicuously overcharged and are not always presented with all the relevant information on sites of interest (often the information given is only in Russian). But we refuse to join tour groups, so we often imagine what life was like at a particular time, and occasionally decipher cyrillic signs (very satisfying). The general pleasures of travel are here, of course: friendly, helpful people ready to smile at your mishaps; good local food when you find it after searching across a city; breakthroughs in communicating people who cannot speak English.

9 May 2006 Dublin, Ireland

A big 'hello' to family and friends. So sorry we haven't kept in touch with you all as often as we would have liked, but, well, travel and work has got in the way. Really.

We done quite a bit of travel during November 2005 in South America, traversing several thousand kilometres covering areas of Argentina (mostly), and parts of Chile (yes we went back briefly) and Uruguay.

In this time, we took a small 'holiday' from our travelling and caught a ferry from Buenos Aires to go to the beach in Uruguay, visiting the picturesque town of Colonia del Sacramento amongst a couple of other coastal towns and beaches of Uruguay (had to break up the Buenos Aires city life with a short holiday of sun, sea and sand). November also saw us cross the northern tip of the mountainous Patagonian regions of Chile and Argentina (in a tiny two door Fiat Uno that worked really well in second gear up steep, mountainous dirt roads and struggled in fifth to make 100 km on straight, paved roads) and we have explored the semi-arid northern regions of Argentina near San Juan, Salta and Jujuy, also far inland and close to the Andes. Some select details follow:

22 November (or thereabouts) - 3 December

We mountain biked in the impressive rocky canyons of the National Tampalana Park, near San Juan, Argentina. The canyon consisted of 50-60 metre high walls of orange-red rock and we cycled through the bottom of the corridor to admire nature´s cathedral structures and smooth canyon walls paved by a river that flowed 100 million years ago. This quiet canyon is where we heard one of the best echos you can imagine. You yell from the base of a 50 metre high smooth cylinder, naturally carved into the canyon wall by a swirling vortex of the long-ago river, straight to the opposing canyon wall where it seems another you repeats the yell two seconds later and the sound effect continues clearly four or so more times along the length of the canyon. We, of course, tried a ¨coo-eee¨ which worked really well. We broke up the quietnesss of the canyon a few times. Fortunately not too much as a little while later we were lucky enough to observe two condors gliding majestically above the canyon. These kings of the canyon have a two metre wingspan, midnight black feathers and a few white feathers forming a stripe on the bird´s underside which we observed as they glided effortlessly at the edge of the high canyon top.

We visited a second natural spectacle on the same day. A nearby national park, known as 'Valle de la Luna' (Valley of the Moon, a name dating from an important 1960s event - guess which one), has tersely featured monochrome landscapes, the visual legacies of Andean volcanic activity. Some of the rock shapes remind us of Dali´s rocks in his rock-strewn landscapes. This canyon is light in colour and other-worldy. We could imagine an episode of Dr Who being filmed here. With the daleks emerging from behind one of the rocks to confront the Doctor...

From here we travelled further north to Salta (30 hours on a couple of buses). The region of Salta is beautiful. In fact, the Argentines refer to it as ¨Salta La Linda¨ (Salta the fair). We hired a car for a few days (another Fiat Uno however this time a four door, more recent model) to drive round lush valleys, contrasted with other valleys of semi-arid cactus-spotted landscapes featuring colourful mountains in shades of pinks, blues, reds, and yellows in regions. These high altitude valleys are home to many native peoples. We saw the Salinas Grandes, immense natural salt-flats and we drove as far north with the car to a valley near Tres Cruces (Three Crosses). Amongst a number of adventures, we visited a pre-Incan ruin of stone homes, sites of worship and meeting places in the town of Tilcara, 120km north of Salta. Each drive into a different valley revealed different colours, sights and environments. It was a fantastical road trip across diverse landscapes.

On the return trip to Salta we accidently discovered the scenic way home which added a couple of hours to our journey, but it was a truly breathtaking trip through magnificent rain-forest covered mountains. The amazing thing was that from these heights we could still clearly see the sparse scrub and cactus-coated desert-scapes and multi-coloured mountains from earlier that same day. Amazing contrasts.

In total, we probably only drove around 650kms during three days, a similar distance covered by a Canberra to Melbourne drive though we can safely say that this trip beat the Hume with far more impressive and varying landscapes. To add to the interest of the car journey in Salta, we also drove over the Tropic of Capricorn and, on other occassions, drove through several fast moving clouds at high altitudes. The valleys we visited averaged altitudes of above 3000 metres, the highest peak we crossed was at 4700 metres where there was a lot of fast moving cloud and the thought of being struck by lightning. Fortunately, we came out from the clouds OK.

3-4 December
OK, one bus service was not so great. The service from Salta to Posadas, Argentina had crappy chairs, an unannounced change of buses at 3.30 am (that we would have missed if we had managed to fall asleep on the crappy chairs), no food service with the final added challenge of the second more comfortable bus breaking down four hours outside of Posadas. Fortunately, we were only stuck in the stifling morning heat for about an hour before, unbelievably, the driver´s mechanic work resulted in the smoking engine restarting. However, the bus company´s estimation of a 15 or 16 hour bus trip extended to a travel time of 20 hours. You know what the scouts say.

5 December

We´re now in Posadas, northeast Argentina and it is bucketing down. There is a tropical thunderstorm that has rivers of water flooding the gutters and roads and has given us some internet time while we delay visiting some Jesuit mission ruins closeby. Should be able to visit the ruins tomorrow as we have checked the forecast and it is sunny, 33 degrees celcius and humid around here each day for the rest of the week. This week we are planning to go to the town of Puerto Iguazu to see the Iguazu Falls and National Park for a couple of days on the Ârgentine/Brazilian border then we will go into Brazil. Our first Brazilian stop will probably be Sao Paulo.

Córdoba, Argentina (24th September - 10th October)

Well we arrived in Argentina´s second biggest city after one of the most spectacular airline flights of our lives (scenery-wise) - over the Cordillera of the Andes mountain range - simply an amazing representation of the sublime. (will post photos soon!)

Córdoba is a sweet city with a long history. In parts it reminds us of Melbourne, especially the grouping of barrios known as Nuevo Córdoba, where our hostel is. It has a thriving cafe and restaurant scene and a fairly happening nightlife. However, being an inland city the climate and landscape reminds me a lot of the land surrounding Canberra - out here it is a very Australian-type of dryness to the soil and fauna.

Córdoba is our springboard for visiting some historical Jesuit estancias (like large ranches or stations) in the nearby time of Jésus de Mária. We are also going horseriding in the foothills leading up to the Andes, with our first view of the pampas unfolding out below us, and of trying a traditional parilla (grill) and our first taste of máte (an infusion made from the herb yerba máte and prepared and drunk in a special way). We also see our first polo matches (a big sport in Argentina). Considering the similarities between the agricultural, cattle and horsemanship cultures of rural Argentina and Australia, it is interesting that polo never became a big sport back home.

Valparaiso, Temuco and Pucon

About an hour south of Santiago, we stayed a couple of nights in Valparaiso (Valpo) an old port town with streamers of brighted coloured houses zigzagging and crowding the hills. Very picturesque. This ramshackle town was fun to explore. Lots of alleys, small corners and out of the way little cafes and shops to stumble across. The area is also very poor and we were not given a warm welcome by everyone on the street but this was more than made up by the hospitality of our hosts, Patricia at the hostel we stayed at, and by our wine tour guide.

The wine tour was great. Our guide was hilarious and worked with a local taxi driver who drove us around the Casablanca wine region for the day. The guide was the only one who spoke english and he described their relationship as ´Starsky and Hutch´. Not sure what that meant...haven´t seen the TV show or the movie. They were obviously close buddies and we all had a lot of fun joking around. We had a great time tasting the different wine varieties and buying a couple of bottles to consume later. Chilean wine is excellent and cheap. A lunch at the nearby town centre of Casablanca was delicous - the best empanada we had in Chile. One of many delicious empanadas we have tried. There is no bean and rice diet happening in Chile.

We also met a guy named Joe, who took us out for our first big night of South American nightlife in Valpo and the nearby Vina Del Mar, a resort town. He was great in showing us around, providing historical background to the region and Valpo city. (photos to be added) In Chile we definitely stick out as gringoes (European or North American looking people) in the crowd of the darker complexions. We get a few stares. Therefore, unfortunately there is no way of avoiding being charged the ´gringo´rates for travel expenses. You know all the Chileans around you are probably paying half the price for travel, accommodation and food in a lot of cases but there´s nothing we can do to receive similar discounts short of radical plastic surgery. So we´ll leave that thought right there.

Chile Part 2 - Loving Chile

Where to begin? It is hard to describe all the new and different ways of doing things that make overseas travel interesting.

The first obvious difference encountered in our travels is the language ...Spanish (or Castellano as it is known here to differentiate it from the word describing Spanish people). We love the language and have enjoyed hearing the language and speaking it. But we have to learn more because we are not sure exactly what we are ordering every single time we´re out to dinner. On the other hand, we did understand that one of the kitchen staff at a hotel in Santiago adopted us by greeting us as her children when taking our order for breakfast.

The main highlight of Chile is that the Chilean people are very welcoming, helpful and friendly. This goes a long way toward making Chile a fantastic destination in addition to its spectacular scenery in the mountainous areas, the vineyards, the Andes, the forests.



We spent about ten days in Chile. A few days were spent exploring Santiago. A lovely old city, although crumbling in parts, it is very cosmopolitan. We learnt more about indigenous history at the excellent precolumbian museum of indigenous art, and viewed the work of local artists at the Museum of Fine Arts (Museo de Bellas Artes; which is housed in a very elegant old building currently undergoing renovatin but which isn´t very big). Not too much time was spent in the museums or galleries. We found Santiago a great city just to loose yourself in a crowd, people watch and visit parks. A lot of lovely old colonial buildings are overshadowed by the skyscrapers that tower over them (some are really ugly 70s-style cement monoliths). We enjoyed looking through the courtyards of the imposing presidential palace and watching a changing of the guard at the palace. They are big on security here. Armed Carbinieri are on every street corner and in every park. They seem to be very friendly. Mostly, they seem to help the people of Santiago with street directions. We just asked to a take a photo with one of them.



Santiago, given its cosmopolitan nature, hasn´t yet discovered a cafe culture as we have done in Australia. There are a lot of small eateries, patisseries, small bars, and loads of restaurants but none are dedicated to serving excellent, expresso style coffee. Unbelievably, Nescafe dried instant coffee has a tight grip on the market here and Chileans love it. It is often the default coffee served when out and about. Only a couple of expresso-style bars called ´Haiti´ have recently been opened in Santiago but these are a novelty and have a Pacific theme underlying the use of fresh coffee beans. Attractive women in short black maid-style dresses bring you the coffee straight from the barrista and to you at a bar where you stand to drink the coffee. The cafes are popular with men but Santiago women are slowly turning up in increasing numbers. There are a few things we think they need to change about this set up to market good, fresh coffee to the general public. The coffee, at least, was good in Haiti.

First Stop: Santiago de Chile (Part 1)

Wow. It is hard to believe that at about this time tomorrow Andrea and I will have been in South America for one week. It seems like we´ve fit in so much in already -- we´ve seen different and fascinating cities and people, made new friends, learned how to use a digital camera, made sense of the Chilean dinero, and worked out how to order coffee (very important!).

But first things first. Leaving Australia was a slightly surreal experience for both of us. We both had only two hours sleep the night before our flight from Australia on Saturday 24th September -- against all advice from airlines, doctors and friends regarding lessening jet-lag from long-haul flights; especially ones that cross as many time zones as our´s was to -- oh well. After thinking and planning for this trip for so long, the mundane reality of simple tasks like filing onto a big jet, stowing our luggage and taking our seats was sort of underwhelming. Didn´t the aircrew and other passengers realise what a big adventure we were embarking upon? Well, I guess it was only a flight to New Zealand - practically domestic.

Here we are about to walk through the departure gate at Melbourne airport. (When I find a computer with a USB port I will attempt to upload some of the photos we´ve taken of things we have seen and done in Chile this week. In the meantime I have uploaded one of the photos that Diana e-mailed us - thanks Diana!)

The goodbyes at Melbourne airport from Andrea´s family and our friends (hello everyone!) was very sweet, and a little sad. Just as a big goodbye should be. It was really wonderful that so many people trudged out so early on a Saturday morning to see us off. Thanks guys! Andrea and I had already said our goodbyes to my family the weekend before, when we spent a wonderful few days in Cairns for my sister´s wedding - it was a really great day. We love you all!

All in all, the quiet goodbyes at the airport and the underwhelming first flight were kind of perfect - anything more exciting would have been a bit too much for the old adrenal glands I think, which we had already been using in top gear to get us through the previous four weeks.

And we survived the long plane flights from Melbourne to Santiago via Auckland, with remarkably little-to-none jet-lag - just a bit tired really. Our original three-hour stop in Auckland international airport became a 12 hour stop in that city, so we took the opportunity to catch a shuttle into the city and stretch our legs for a couple of hours. This made our whole Saturday a very long day at about 29 hours duration. And that wasn´t the only way we managed to bend time. We left Auckland at 1:40am New Zealand time on Sunday morning, but managed to arrive in Santiago at about 9pm back on Saturday night - crazy.

Leaving Santiago airport took a bit longer than expected as I had to pay a ´reciprocal´entrance fee to the country of US$30 (I already knew this and was prepared. It applies to Australians, Canadians and Americans (the USA type). Each national has a different fee). However, only one of four windows was open to deal with 200 people. Andrea and I were really tired and a bit concerned that we´d miss our airport pick-up to the hotel we´d booked. However, at long last we got through Customs and Immigration and Sergio was waiting to take us to the Hotel Plaza Londres (holding a little sign with our names on it) - but I think he had been about to give up.

Hotel Plaza Londres, Santiago

I will leave this post here, and leave it to Part 2 for us to go over some our experiences and observations from the past week. But the short version is this: beautiful country, very developed but with some deteriorating older areas of some cities and most people are quite poor or exist on low salaries; there is a lot of history here and the Chileans are a very patriotic people; Andrea and I are both proud of our use of Spanish and are getting by
quite well - we haven´t even used a phrase book at any point while speaking to someone; we have already made one really good friend (Joe) who has taken us out in Valparaisio and Viña del Mar; and finally, we both stick out from miles away as gringo turistas (hair, skin, eyes, clothes etc)!

Last day at work; nearly ready to leave Canberra. I think we are excited but very tired. It´s been a hectic two weeks. This is just a quick little post for now to test everything´s working on this Blog.