Day 639 (28.12.08) After a pretty uneventful bus ride of sleeping, reading and a bit of Harry Potter, we pulled into the bus station in Puerto Varas by mid afternoon. As a former German Colony, Puerto Varas has maintained a very different look and feel to other towns in South America. The architecture is the first and most obvious difference with coloured shingle clad buildings lining the streets giving it a very 'German Mountain town' feel. Walking into town with no real decision on accomodation having been made we stumbled upon Hospedaje Ellenhaus, a cheap but comfortable option with a [View Full Entry]

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When, after scratching my legs, my nails were black, I realised I spent 4 days without a shower... I didn't care, I thought that, maybe this way people will give me some personal space... when I saw it wasn't working, I made contact with the water... After 16 days with Aimar, he went back to England leaving us totally addicted to soy milk; in a way I was jelaous: he'll see family and friends, sleep in his bed and eat his favourite foods... but I guess he'll miss pad thais... It won't be long before we meet with him, once again, [View Full Entry]

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The crowded and long train left my home, cold Taizhou, Jiangsu, at 6:02pm and 24 hours later arrived in what is known as the "coldest" city of China, bone-chilling HARBIN, the capital of China's most northern province of Hailongjiang. The province of Hailongjiang has its borders with arctic Russian-Siberia, and HARBIN looks more like an Eastern-European or Russian city than a Chinese city. What drives people from around the world, including myself, a tropical Floridian, to visit this deep-freeze, provincial capital in the middle of the harsh winter, where temperatures can reach below -22 [View Full Entry]

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At the risk - or, rather, certainty - of sounding trite, the past number of months saw an odyssey of a different kind. From the casual observer I was at the last entry to a paid up participant in Porteño life, finally I could claim membership of the society I’d shuffled awkwardly around the edges of, like some shy teenager, with a mixture of childish infatuation and graceless mimicry. There followed a journey too intimate and banal to recount here, until the voyaging once more resumed its literal character and I landed up in Peru just in time for the holidays. [View Full Entry]

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We set out this morning from Hella to the Skaftafell Region to visit Seljalandsfoss, our first waterfall of the day. This waterfall of the river Seljalandsá drops 60 meters over the cliffs of the former coastline and it is possible to follow a walkway behind the fall of water. We arrived early and found the place very quiet. Although the waterfall was undoubtedly stunning the whole area proved to be very picturesque with sunlight streaming through the clouds to light the surrounding fields and distant farmhouses. Walking behind the waterfall was a lot of fun, although obviously very wet. We fo [View Full Entry]

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We left Luxor on a late night flight out of the local airport and arrived in Sharm El Shek around 11:30pm. We had arranged for a driver from our hotel to pick us up but he was no where too be found. So here we are, sitting at the local terminal at midnight in Sharm, Egypt trying to figure out how the hell we were going to get to Dahab (which was over an hour away). Luckily I was able to borrow the cell phone of a local, call our hotel and sort out the issue. After another 20 minutes a [View Full Entry]

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Pokhara - Birethanti - Ghandruk - Chhomrong - Dovan - Deurali - Macchupuchhre Base Camp - Annapurna Base Camp - Bamboo - Chhomrong - Tadapani - Ghorepani - Birethanti - Pokhara 1. I Bow to the Linguist in You The creators of the Nepali language were worried that they’d never be able to come up with enough words for a full language so they started doubling up fairly early on. For this reason the Nepali (and Indian) word ‘namaste’ (meaning ‘I bow to the God in you’) is used as both ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’ and may, in certai [View Full Entry]

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I remember watching a lot of late-night local TV programmes during my first trip to China. It was not by choice since local channels were all the hostels (that I stayed in) had. The content of the programmes best remains forgotten, but a particular advertisement has left a lasting impression for the most part because it was on almost every channel! It was an old school montage of scenic videos where in his most mellifluous voice, the narrator rhapsodized over the natural beauty and charm of Hangzhou, particularly, the West Lake. I have no idea how much of the city's immense [View Full Entry]

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