Cruise Day 1

It is clear that the demographic of the travelling public is changing. Of the 130 people on this cruise there are threecouples under the age of 40. Of these, one is the doctor and her husband, interestingly they don´t tell the passengers that they have a doctor on the cruise as this leads to mass work for the Doc from all of the whinging americans (or so our friendly team member tells us).

After a pleasant night on the boat we awoke to day one of the cruise. Day comprises of two outings. The first is to a beech forest at the base of the Glacier Marinelli. I have never seen a Glacier close up, and this did not change today. The Glacier is retreating at an alarming rate of 1 METRE per DAY! So there area we were in, was completely covered by the Glacier 20 years ago. Now it is a blip in the distance. The mountain range it is from is called the Darwin Cordillera and they are seriously impressive and sporn about 15 of the Glaciers in the region. More on those later.

After the beech forest we motored to the next field trip for the afternoon which was to Tucker Island. It is a tiny little island that is home to a substantial contingent of Magellanic Penguins. We cruised right into the bay on the zodiacs but did not disembark as it is a protected area. There must have been 600 penguins on the beach and as we floated in to them they did not even move a muscle. It was amazing to see. As we sat there in amongst them, there was plenty more swimming into the beach around us bringing food for the kiddies.


The amazing thing about tucker island is that 15 years ago, it didn´t exist. The other thing is that it is the only conglometae island in the whole area. Let me explain. remember I said the glaciers were retreating... the thing about ice is that it is heavy, bloody heavy. It compresses everything else below it and becomes the dominant force.

Well, now that the ice is retreating, all of that ground that was squashed under the ice is now rising up. Its a type of static compensation. the pressure must remain in balance see. So because glaciers contain a lot of rubble from breaking down the mountains and rocks while making valleys, this ends up at the bottom of the glacier. So when it melts, this compressed rock is forced up by the magmatic chamber pressure underneath it and Voila, a new island, that looks a lot like dçsome of the bodgey cement jobs I have done in the past, full of all the rocks and sediment from the glaciers.

It really is amazing stuff.

Tonight is a nice dinner. we are on a table with 4 Scots, one of whom sounds like Sean Connory and another who looks a like like simon groom (for those of you that know him). Tomorrow is when we get to the good stuff with a close in look at one of the advancing glaciers in the range. Also s´posed to be a bit dodgey in the weather stakes. It is patagonia, so i´d be disappointed if we didn´t get at least a few really bad weather days.

toodles

Shiver me timbers....

Thats right. We got onto the boat!

We went to the office at the designated time to see if someone would cancel and we could get a room. This is a pricey trip so it is unlikely anyone would cancel. Nevertheless we were there. We had all of our eggs in one basket as we gave up the day to wait for the opportunity to go on this trip.

We arrived at 5pm and had to wait until 6pm to make sure the final 3 rooms of passengers checked in, if not, one was ours. With Rob giving every single person the detah stare as they walked in and other passengers offering to nobble would be passengers for us, we crossed off the first room at 5:15. Two more to go.

At 5:45 the second room went. Shit!

6pm, no sign of the third room, woohoo!! At 6:01pm they arrived. Shit! So now we were stuffed. Full boat and no accomodation and no trip to torres del paine, all was not good and I went to collect our luggage. As I was leaving Rob was stopped by our booking lady and said to hold on as there may be some hope........ may be.....

The boat sailed at 7pm so we were scraping it still. At 6:26pm we got the nod, they had a spare ro9om they keep on every boat ¨just in case¨and they would sell it to us. YEEHAH! So we headed down to the pier and made it for the last bus to the boat. Last ones to arrive on the bus meant first onto the boat.

We were on our way to see some of the most amazing glacier in the world and to also go down and hopefully if the weather was helping out to land on Cape Horn, the end of the World and the place of myths and legends and a place revered, respected and utterly feared by marines the World over.

We knew it would be cold, and windy and rough and the weather could make or break our trip. we didn´t care, we were on our way. We rang a few of you to let you know we were off then we sailed for the south, the glaciers, the horn, and the adventure of a lifetime.

Patagonia

54 degress South. Doesn´t probably mean a lot to most of you out there. What it means is wind, and cold. Yeehah! Let me put this in perspective for you:

Sydney: 34 degrees South
Melbourne: 38 degrees South
Hobart: 42 degrees South
Punta Arenas: 54 degrees South! Thats almost Antarctica baby!!

That means we are about 1,400km below the bottom of Tasmania! Think about that for a second..... if that is hard to fathom, just think of it as 2000 return trips to your local shops.

We have been here for two days now and are trying to scrounge our way onto a cruise that goes down to Cape Horn (latitude 55º 58’ 28’’) and lands there so you can stand on the end of the Earth, thats if you can stand from the wind. We are doping to get on at the last minute around 5pm tonight.

Had a pleasant flight down here, well until we started our descent. We had a great view of Perito moreno Glaciar from the topo f descent which was just stunning. We then had the approcah from hell. It was one of the roughest approaches I have ever been in and I love bumps in the flight. It was in Fac. so rouge, that I did not realise we had actually landed. It was 80kph at the airport and the little airbus we were on was protesting vehmently.

Thats the first thing you need to know about down here. Its Windy. I am not talking about a slight breeze you get in Australia, I am talking about the wind that threatens to pick you up, dorothy style, and deposit you in another country. Poor oRob has nearly blown Hawai a couple of times. I have more mass (thats what I am calling it OK!) and am able to stay put a little better.

We have come down here a little unprepared in terms of activities and are trying to wing it on last minute trips. Its proving a little tricky as it is peak season down here so a loto f staff is booked out for a while in advance. The season down here lasts from October to March as alter that is is just too cold or snowed in.The town itself is right on the Magellan straight which was one of the earliest trading routes between the Pacific and the Atlantic that allowed chips to bypass the trecharous Cape Horn and the huge seas found there. Originally called Sandy Point, it took on the spanish equivalant of Punta Arenas about 100 years ago.

It is not at all mountainous down here, in fact, It is quite flat and there is a lot of farming, especially with sheep. In Fact it might interest you to know that there are in fact a lot of Welsh settlers here and the local language is in fact a dialect of Welsh. Quite amazing when you consider its about 12000km from Wales.

No pics yet as I seem to have misplaced my cable for the camera. Hope to get another update in from the boat if we get on, wish us luck!

Santiago de Chile

Well alter the debacle of the airline as mentioned in the previous entry, I made it to Santiago in Chile. I had a couple of hours to wait for Rob as she CAME in from Sydney. It is a 16 hour flight from Sydney via NZ, so its a long haul.

Santiago is an interesting city. It is nestled in a natural basin in the Andes mountain range. This gives it one of the most stunning panoramas of any city in the World. However it also jeans a big problem. Pollution. In Fac. for a small city (about 3 million) is is terrible polluted. It is the 8th most polluted city in the World which seems to stand in Stara contrast to the beautiful snow capped mountains all around.

The problem is that the pollution cant get out as it is trapped in the valley. There have been all shorts of ideas as bandied about to solve the problem, including believe it or not, blowing a hole in the mountains to let the pollution out. The thought of cleaner living has not seemed to enter the thought process.

Santiago is about the same lattitude as Sydney so it is experiencing similar weather (well, without the bucketing rain and storms), it was about 30 degrees during the day which is too hot for a fat bugger like me to be walking around in and a bit of a shock after pleasant high ttens in mexico. Rob of course, being the sunlover she is, was in her element.

We stayed in a small hotel called Hotel Vegas. In the Centro Historico part of town. It was a great little hotel, rooms were pretty Basic but nice enough for our needs. We were both pretty weary after all the travelling so we just lazed about for the first night. We did manage to pop next door for a beer first which may not have been the best idea.

The reason I say this is that we met a french man who was staying around the corner and he had been robbed…… twice….. just outside our hotel. Took his laptop and Iphone and cash and cards. He was wusing his laptop and phone in a back lane in Santiago….. really, that is just stupid. Anyway, on hearing this Rob went into a bit of shock and was very jumpy the rest of the whole time.

Anyway, we cruised around a few of the old sites in the city centre the next day and met up with the guys again for a beer that night. Santiago is a nice enough city in my opinión but there is nothing to make it noteworthy, except from the mountains that you cant see because of the smog. The people were nice enough to us, but you never quite felt safe walking around. I felt less confortable here than in Mexico City and that is saying something!

We jumped on the plane and have headed down to Stara one of the key parts of the trip, Patagonia! I just hope we can manager toi fluye a few of the tours in last minute style as we are very late in deciding what we want to do. Stay tuned for the next post.

Check out the flickr link to the right as there are heaps of pics of Santiago up there.

Seriously..... How hard can it be....

I have just aged 10 years in the space of 9 hours. Not something that is easy to do, but let me tell you my story.

I arrived at Mexico City airport 4 hours before my flight so I could make sure I would get on the flight, as American Airlines (AA) now have a habit of overselling their arcraft. No probs, there nice and early and will have a nice bit of time to check out the airport and get some crappy mexico-esque stuff.

So I stood in the AA queue and had a lovely chat to the guy behind me about world politics as the AA line crawled painfully slowly. No probs, I have 4 hours.

I got to the checkin counters and give the guy a big friendly welcome and tell him I am off to Santiago via miami as per my ticket, all normal stuff. He looks at my ticket and tells me that the plane is running late, and will not make my connection to Miami and he could not help me, sorry.

My World collapsed in on me. I tried asking him about my other options and he refused to even look on the computer, just told me that I had to wait until tomorrow for the next flight out. I lost it. I told him exactly what I though of him at about 150 decibels. Loud enough that the manager came over to see what the problem was. Excellent, progress.

The manager understood the problem and managed to get me onto a LAN flight direct to Santiago, and wait for it..... in Business Class. WOOHOO. Still not believing my luck I asked him to make sure it was a proper ticket, not standby, he confirmed, and gave me the ticket and told me to head to LAN, Terminal 2, on the train. I now had 6 hours till the new flight. Sweet!

So I stuffed around till 3 hours before the flight when checkin opened and I was the 3rd to check in. When I got there, presented the ticket, the lady told me that the ticket was a standby ticket and the plane was full. I would not be able to travel and the next day was also full. I am sorry, you cant be fuc&*ng serious! She was serious. There was also apparently 5 other who were in the same boat, booked by AA on LAN but with no chance of riding.

I LOST it again. Robyn was on a plane heading to Santiago already and I was not going to arrive for 3 days by which time we were supposed to be in Patagonia on tours. I have never been so angry in my life. She told me to take it up with AA. They took my bags and told me to come back at 8 to check if anyone had cancelled. Its making me angry again just typing this........

So dart back to the train and head the other way back to AA. Get there and the counters are closed!!!! no-one there. Went and found the AA office, closed!! Went back down to the counters to find a junior guy just finishing some paperwork. I absolutely gave it to him. He was nice enough but could not help me, he called the manager but he was busy and unavailable. If I could have climbed the counter I would have decked him.

Then to my suprise 2 other people turned up, thy were from the other 5 missing seats, a mum with 2 kids under 6, and a husband and wife. So there was now three of us going crazy at this guy, and he spoke to the manager again who agreed to come out and see us.

Turns out it was the same cockhead who checked me in. Once he realised this, we made a little progress. They spoke to Mexicana who spoke to LAN who spoke to AA who spoke to Mexicna who spoke to LAN. you get the idea. After abusing this guy non-stop (3 of us remember) we seemed to have breakthrough and he agreed to send the junior guy with us to get things done at LAN.

So back to terminal 2 on the train. Find the LAN office and then have another heated argument with LAN and AA. The manager then took us down to the counter and spent 1 hour trying to get us on the plane.

The plane was meant to be leaving at 9pm. at 8:55 we did not have seats. We were screwed.

I was wondering how long I would b detained for for punching out an airline employee, when we got waved up and issued with tickets at 8:59pm. Business class still! But we had to bolt to make the plane. I have never run so hard in my life.

I then got to security and they wouldnt let me in as the boarding pass was not the proper one. When she saw me turning red and about to explode, and with 5 others just catching me in the same predicament she decided to let us through before she was hammered.

Bags through screening and at this point, at 9:05 the security guard pulls out miniNICK to investigate. He spoke only spanish. I smiled a srained (you are a fuckwit, give me back the penguin now) smile, pulled ut the cam,waved it to him and he miracusoly understood. I then bolted to the plane and was the very last to board, they had been waiting for me.

I collapsed into the seat, and the guy next to me said "left it a bit late huh...." I shot him a look that said "say anything else and you die" and he didn^t say anything else until the end of the trip. I hooked into the champagne, toasted my fellow coconspirators, who were also in business class, and let the steam die out from my ears.

American Airlines, you suck.

Pyramids Baby....Yeah!

On of the Worlds most significant historical sites is approximately 40km North of Mexico City. It is an ancient site about 2500 years old and has the Worlds 3rd largest Pyramid. The place is called Teotihuacan.

As I have been working nights in Mexico it allows me some free time during the day. So I organised a day tour and headed up with a guide to see the site on my own so I can get the most information about this place.

Everything about the place is impressive. The Pyramids (there is two major ones) are what people come to se but its not what the site is all about. The site is a religious ground where the practicioners, did all they could to appease the natural gods. The site is often attributeds to the Aztecs but this is wrong as they didn´t get hold of it until about 15th century. It was built well before them by a local tribe.

The city complex has over 2000 rooms, a lot of which are underground and most are temples. They are still excavating under the Temple of the Sun (the biggest pyramid) and under the Temple of the Moon. Both of which are linked by a prehistoric cave system that has yeilded some of the earlist human remains in the whole of the Americas. The ancient tunnels formed the baseplan for the location of the two temples. It really is an amazing site.

It is also HUGE. make no mistake you will be shattered just from walking the perimiter. The original city complex was 20 square km and contained an estimated 100000 people. Which is amazing for 2000 years ago and would make it one of the largest cities in the World at the time.

The temple of the Sun is the equivilant in height to a 20 storey building and there was a platform on the top used for ritual sacrifice to appease the gods. The main walkway called the avenue of the dead (named by the aztecs as they thought the pyramids contained the remains of ancient kings - they don`t) was originally covered in a white marble flooring, which is remarkable when you realise its 2.5km long!

I have heaps of pics on my flickr site, just follow the link to the left.

If you go to Mexico City and do not go to this site you will be the poorer for it. Mum will kill me when she sees the pics and finds out just how impressive a site is!

Once upon a time

Once upon a time in the high hills there was a group of nomad people who were looking for a new home. They had been given a quest, the quest would lead them to a new home. Their great spiritual lord had given them the task to find a new homeland for their people.

The great leader had said to them you must go out and find a new home (it is unclear what they had done to be kicked out in the first place, but anyway... I digress). The leader told them they would know that they had found the new home when they saw an Eagle eating a snake while perched on a rock with a cactus coming out of it ( I think thats like telling an aprentice to get a can of striped paint, again I digress though).

So off they went for many many years they wandered the lands looking for this mysterious occourence. One day they came across a lake. It was a magnificent lake, in a natural basin with no way for the water to escape, replenisehd all the time by the magnificent snow fields all around. They were thirsty and needed a place to rest so they camped.

From their campsite they saw a very small island in the towards one side of the vast lake. They set out to the island to find food. When the got there, to their amazement, there was a huge Eagle perched on a rock with a cactus coming out of it. In its mouth was a Snake. They had found their home.

Over the next 100 years they set out building floating gardens to grow their food and build bridges to the coast to make transport easier. As their numbers grew, so did the need for food so more gardens were planted and they pumped some of the water out to make more land (some of the earliest land reclamation on the planet). They realsied that they would need to make a drianage system as most of this reclaimed land was below the natural water level. So they built an intricate system of weirs and drains and dams that also allowed them to purify the slightly brackish water.

They were producing so much food that they became very wealthy and took over the whole lake valley. More and more poeple moved in and they needed to reclaim more land, and so the process went.

These people were the Aztecs. Their island home grew into a huge city that is home to 22 million people, built on entirely reclaimed land, with the Worlds most intricate drianage system some of which are 6m wide, and where today there is NO trace of the huge 50km lake that used to be called Lake Texcoco.

every day you can still see the Eagle on the rock with a cactus coming out it, and still with the snake in its mouth. It is on every piece of currency in the city, it is on the flag as well. The Eagle is a symbol of Strength, The rock is the nature, the cactus is food, and the snake is virility. This is one of the most incredible citities I have ever visited.

Its called Mexico CITY.