A Teaching from the Dalai Lama

While we were in McLeod Ganj, the Dalai Lama gave a series of teachings, something he does every now and then around this time of the year. We only went to one session, because I was battling a brutal flu, and it was a struggle just to get out of bed. The security was incredibly tight – we had to pre-register to attend, upon entry we were both given the most thorough frisking either of us had ever enjoyed, and guards armed with machine guns patrolled the crowd while the Dalai Lama talked.

Photos were forbidden on the day, but this is the statue the Dalai Lama sat in front of

There were hundreds of monks there, along with lots of Tibetans, Koreans and Westerners. Everyone sat on the floor, and bands of monks wandered through the crowd pouring butter tea for everyone (butter tea tastes like normal, milky tea, but with half a stick of butter mixed in). Seated atop a small altar, the Dalai Lama delivered his teaching (which focused on effective meditation techniques and the difference between reality and what we perceive) in Tibetan, and every fifteen minutes or so he would stop so the Korean translator could translate over the microphone. There were English and Chinese translations broadcast over the radio at the same time. For those whose view of the Dalai Lama was blocked by a pillar or a tree (the ones the hall had been built around), a scattering of large plasma screens showed his spritely gesticulations as he talked. Like every famous person, he was shorter than I expected, and also quite a bit plumper, but he moved like a man much less than his 73 years.

Prayer wheels behind the temple

The teaching went for about two and a half hours, which was clearly too long for the large group of elderly Tibetan devotees near us – they spent most of the time throwing balls of paper at each other and giggling quietly like naughty schoolkids. At the end, everyone stood up and the Dalai Lama left, encircled by an entourage of monks and serious-looking, swivel-head men in suits.

It was fantastic.

Oaxaca (wah-hah-kah)

So far, Mexico is great. Traveling is easy, people are nice and there's lots of good coffee about, served in minimalist cafes like this one.

Three Clowns. Wrestling is popular entertainment, and the marketing is pretty nifty

We had to get the last of our Hepatitis A/B shots while in Oaxaca. The price was well over $100 per jab. When the doctor told us this, my face resembled the mask of this penguin suit.

VOMITAR: verbo intransitivo. To vomit, be sick.

The success of our ambitious exit plan from Honduras to Flores, in Northern Guatemala depended on us making an unlikely series of closely-timed bus connections. In a land where set timetables don’t exist (except for long distance affairs) and busses only leave ‘when full’, only a miracle of punctuality and demand was going to have us in Flores come nightfall.

In what appeared to be a wonderful omen, we filled the last two seats of our first minibus, meaning we would leave straight away on the 12-kilometre ride to the border. However, ‘when-full’ was being taken to literal extremes, and only when the standing room (this is in a Tarago-style van) was taken up did we leave. On-route to the border, we stopped a couple of times so that the van could be filled to bursting point. There were so many passengers that the door couldn’t be closed and people had to ride hanging onto the roofracks.

At the border, the Honduran official checked our documents and demanded a 20 Lempira (AU$1.15) fee. We watched the notes go straight into a straight into a stationery drawer, making it rather obvious that this was a fee headed straight for the official’s pocket. We demanded a receipt, and after a short disagreement, he huffily returned our money, then shooed us away muttering unintelligible insults.

The Guatemalan official was armed with the same story of an unexpected, unreported fee, but when asked about a receipt, assured us that of course, one would be forthcoming. Our tight schedule didn’t allow for much more argument time, so we paid and ran off to catch the bus. Later, under closer inspection, the receipt turned out to be a deposit slip from the local bank. It was such a cute effort (he even stamped the date on it) that I couldn’t go back for retribution, and besides, antagonising two border guards in one morning is never a good idea for the hurried traveler.

A rather unofficial-looking entry document

Now safely in Guatemala, we had more busses to catch. The van we caught was filled to extremes that made the morning’s earlier effort seem like a hedonistic cruise in a private limousine. Even as passengers were loaded onto each other’s laps forming three high human stacks, the bus stopped for more.

The unforeseen third connection was a welcome relief from the intimate overcrowding, and we were hopeful that the mid-size people mover awaiting us would provide a less distressing journey. Not so. The attendant told Angie to get in, even though all the seats and standing room were taken. ‘Where?’ she asked. The attendant motioned towards the empty space above the seated passengers, implying that she should somehow float in the vast free space below the ceiling. She crawled in, and stood in front of one row of seated passengers, holding onto the bench seat in front of her to prevent landing in their laps. I was shown to a spot behind the rear row of seats where I could stand, the rear door holding me firmly in place.

Slowly, the tinned mass of humanity moved away. Soon after, a child was sick. Unfortunately, the child was seated directly behind Angie, and Angie’s leg was covered in what appeared to be the morning’s intake of breakfast Coca-Cola. While I guiltily battled to suppress laughter at the extreme absurdity of the whole situation, Angie, already on edge thanks to the stresses of such close-quarters travel, went spiraling over the edge of tolerance. Instead of holding back laughter, she battled tears and filled the little remaining space in the cabin with a vicious string of brutal expletives.

The rest of the horrendous journey was filled with the miserable wails of a carsick child, and punctuated by a couple more fabric-staining projectile vomits. Thankfully by then, Angie had found a spot away from the impact zone. When finally, mercifully, the journey ended, we were dropped off in the most disgusting alleyway I’ve ever had the displeasure of smelling. With watering eyes, amid the stench of urine, we unloaded the bags from the roofrack, being careful to dodge the numerous piles of faeces on the ground, most of which were definitely too large to be of canine origin. Breathing through my mouth and running down the alley to fresher air, I couldn’t wait to leave this place. At the bus station, we were abused with heartbreaking news that we had missed the last bus to Flores. Never has the urge to catch a taxi to the airport been so strong.

It took Angie a few days to recover from the ordeal, but I forgot all about it when I saw the hotel pool in Chiquamula, where we were stranded.

Carnaval Panama

Modify the spelling of the word ‘carnival’ into something slightly exotic sounding and all of a sudden it begins conjuring up all sorts of debauched imagery involving sparkly, revealing costumes, enormous street parties and all kinds of delicious, unsavoury phenomena. When we found out Panama’s Carnarval was coming up, we decided to stick around in the densely touristed Bocas del Toro, where, no doubt, there would be some pretty crazy celebrations going on.


The weekend rolled around, and the covetous fantasy of Carnaval went largely unfulfilled. It seemed mainly an excuse for people to gather in the park and drink, while the children were sprayed by water from a firehose all to the sound of some extremely loud, often extremely bad, continuous music spewing from a massive PA just metres from our dorm room. I ate some bad cheese from a broken refrigerator and spent the main night of the celebrations freezing in bed while simultaneously sweating a river.


There were a few feathery ensembles, and a bit of dancing, but the most interesting part of the weekend involved some monster costumes, whips, some anger and lots of pain. I still don’t entirely understand the reasoning, but near the end of the weekend, a ring of people formed on the main street, and inside that ring there were around eight men dressed in black and red costumes brandishing sticks the length of their arms with an equal amount of rope attached to one end. The monsters would stalk around the crowd, occasionally threatening onlookers with a beating, and every so often a man or teenager would burst from the crowd and run around, while the monsters viciously and unmercifully whipped at the guys legs. The only protection the intruder had was a stick, which he would place in front of his legs, hoping to catch the nasty end of the whip there. Most of the time it worked- when it didn’t, there were painful, nasty (sometimes bloody) looking results. I think it was ‘all in good fun’, but from the looks on some of these guys faces, there was some serious venting going on.

Colca Hole

Colca Canyon is located just outside Arequipa, Peru, and is touted by the local tour companies as the second deepest canyon in the world (the deepest is next door and has an extra 130 metres of down). But when I saw it, I realised they were pushing the boundaries of the correct definition of canyon. The hole is clearly a valley, at least to my eyes. But I’m not a geologist, or a tour guide, so I don’t get a say. Anyway, we walked down the thing.


We set out hopelessly unprepared, deciding along with our friends from the recent pampas trip, Paul and Charlotte plus Chris, that we’d make a camping trip of it. But nine-thirty in the evening is no the ideal time to go out trying to hire tents and other brightly coloured outdoors equipment, so, the next day, after a six hour bus to the starting point, we began walking minus sleeping gear. But that didn’t matter so much, as there were a number of small, roadless towns on our proposed route around the Colca Valley.



The walk down was scenic at first, but soon turned into a punishing, sweaty dust march under an unforgiving Peruvian sun. It was two and a half hours of dry, steep, slowbaking switchback downhill that left a crust of dirt on our teeth and throats and an awful notion wailing loudly in my head- ‘we still have to come back up this thing’. The idea of walking into a valley only to stop, turn around and walk back to again struck me as extremely ridiculous about halfway through the monotonous descent. Walking up a mountain seems genius in comparison, with a clear goal reached after the hardest part, the reward being able to be enjoyed in the knowledge that there is a slightly easier journey back home. Putting the hardest part at the end of the trip just seemed silly, and it played uneasily on my mind the entire time…


We arrived at our revised goal for the day. Originally, we were going to walk to the hotel with a pool on the valley floor, lunch, swim and then continue to a town further up the other side of the valley wall. The next day we would complete a loop back to our starting point. That idea was scratched pretty soon into the piece, after we really started to comprehend just what we’d gotten ourselves into. For the last half of the trudge, we were able to see the lush green grass of the hotel and the shining emerald of the pool, but it seemed like an eternity before they actually started to get closer. Once there it was like a different, less punishing world. We swam and relaxed on the grass, massaged the downhill-induced RSI from our legs, drank 500 litres of water and tried desperately not to think about the next day.


We sat down for dinner, which was spaghetti with a tomato sauce. Earlier in the day, I had caused major panic within our group when, after misinterpreting the cook, returned from the kitchen bearing the news that we would be eating asparagus and tomato sauce for dinner.

After dinner, Chris returned form the bathroom with an awkwardly parted gait and a darkness in his eyes- both sure signs that something had gone terribly awry in the toilet block. Before I go further into this amazing story, it is important to realise that a group of backpackers often resembles a gaggle of new mothers in that there is one topic, universal to all, that is discussed ad-nauseum and which seems completely disgusting and inappropriate to outsiders. Poo stories, they are called- everyone has a couple and after a few of beers they come flooding out as people try to outdo each other with disgusting tales that only a continent with such a poor sewerage system and such lax food safety standards can produce. So, before we go any further, be warned. It’s perfectly acceptable to tell these tales in backpacking circles, but as I remember from the civilised world, these things are usually taboo and tend to stay in (water) closet (I think in New Zealand it’s also accepted dinner party conversation-looking at you, Ben). So the squeamish should steer clear of the following couple of paragraphs and just look at the photos….

Anyway, the toilets at the bottom of the canyon were clean and apparently safe. When Chris returned from this particular ablutionary excursion sporting the emotional and haberdasheric scars so obvious, we knew that in fact it was far from harmless. He then related a story in which the elements of plumbing and timing collaborated in what can only be described as a miracle…

Chris had been sick. Icky in the toilet sick. It happens to everyone here. You don’t feel sick, but a doctor would look in the bowl and whip out a prescription for something, for sure. It had been like this for a few days and Chris had made a courageous effort in leaving civilisation and regular intervals of flushing toilets so far behind. The mens toilet in Paraiso Hotel was situated right next to the pool- the pool that was filled with fresh water that was slowly growing slimy. To clean the pool, the caretaker simply empties the pool through a pair of pipes in the bottom corner of the pool and then puts the plug back in, letting one of the natural creeks refill the pool at it’s own leisure.

It was nightime when trouble struck- we had just finished dinner and Chris had gone off to take care of his business. Halfway through the process- past the point of no return- he noticed through the open door, the curious sight of the attendant tugging at some kind of rope leading into the bottom corner of the pool. When the whole situation clicked- large volume of water about to enter pipes, toilet close enough to pool to be plumbed into the same pipes, toilet full of disgustingness- it was too late to do anything but let out a Hollywood-style, slow motion…nooooooooo!!!! From beneath him Chris felt a violent upsurge of fluids as a pool load of water flooded the system.

What I like to think happened is something akin to one of those cartoons where the character is spat up into the air, somersaulting on top of a column of water or newly discovered oil. Or maybe the character is pinned to the ceiling by the uprush, leaving a hilarious silhouette above the source of liquid. Chris assured me it was nothing as funny as this, but his body and jeans were covered with the contents of the toilet bowl as it erupted beneath him. Of course Chris let out a string of brutal expletives, sending the caretaker scarpering, never to be seen again for the length of our stay.

The devastating scene

Chris performed the best cleanup he could, and rejoined us at the dinner table, gloomy and uncomfortable although smelling surprisingly fresh. The mens toilet was now out of bounds.


The next day we woke up and procrastinated for as long as we could, but there was no way out of this hole except for up. We plodded off, again under a brutal sun, trying hard not think about what the next few hours had in store. Our included breakfast of two bread rolls and jam hadn’t really fortified us for this journey, and it was a convoluted hike upwards as we had to constantly stop and regain our breath in the ever-thinning air. After about four hours- four disgusting hours- we reached the top. I’d felt like passing out for the last hour, and everyone else was in varying states of sun-dried exhaustion. We tried to celebrate reaching the top, but nobody had the energy, and also we had a bus to catch in fifteen minutes. It was the last one of the day, and the edge of the valley was about twenty minutes from town. We hurriedly navigated through rice paddies and irrigation ditches, getting lost and taking a shortcut through someone’s backyard. After a frantic, Amazing Race style bolt to the bus stop, the driver informed us that we had juuuuust made it. The bus left twenty minutes later.

More unmentionable mishaps on the bus home.

Accidentally , Utterly Trashed in La Paz

Upstairs in the hostel bar, we bumped into Sam and E-J, two friends we’d met while experiencing the out-of-place luxury of the Inca Trail. The four of us went out for dinner, and by 9 or so we’d finished eating and were grimly staring down the prospect of going home too early and too sober. Seeing as Sam and E-J had the Death Road bike ride beginning the next morning, we decided that just a quiet drink was in order, and on a quiet city street, beckoned by upstairs strobes, we soon found what we thought was the perfect place.

The ancient stairs bowed and squeaked under our weight as we ascended to what was now turning out to be some very loud, very Bolivian music. Had there been a real band playing when we entered, I’m sure they would have stopped and joined the other three hundred Bolivians staring coldly at us as we crabbed through the doorway. The place had the all the charm and thoughtful aesthetics of a fifties discount hardware store, complemented only by a few coloured lights, dangerous levels of decibels, a stage and a mob of hostile short people.

A little unnerved, we stole to the bar to order our couple of quiet drinks while the room returned to bouncing along to some panpipe rock. With no table available, we elected to stand in the darkest available corner of this unreceptive upstairs den. After a little while, curiosity got the better of some of the other patrons, and we were called over so they could get a closer look (mainly at Angie and E-J). The first friend I made introduced himself as Fidel Castro- when I laughed he produced an ID card and the name was there- Fidel Castro Rodriguez. He didn’t have the cigar or the beard or the new shell suit, but he spoke Spanish and seemed friendly, so I introduced him to Sam, who was in conversation with someone known only as ‘El Presidente’. We all shared a drink- a shot of orange juice and sangani (the Bolivian national spirit- a clear fluid that tastes as though it may be useful for cleaning purposes).

The band restarted and the room gradually released some of it’s tension, and Sam and I were soon sat down at a table while the girls were passed around the room to new dance partners, much to the disgust of many girlfriends but no doubt fuelling many incredible day-after stories of how “I danced with TWO gringas last night!!!” The drink of the night seemed to be a cola type beverage poured from a jug and consumed from shot glasses. There was supposed to be rum in it, but neither Sam nor I could taste it. Among the noise and multitudes of tiny drinks we shared many private jokes about this being ‘The purest coke I’ve ever had!’ while the locals looked on admiringly.

At least I thought they were looking on admiringly while we downed copious amounts of this brew, and I didn’t notice myself getting rowdier by the shot and toasting Bolivia and Australia, Australia and Bolivia! Bolivia Bolivia Bolivia!!! Fidel and me were starting a whole new brand of diplomatic relations based on soft drink and saying our respective countries’ names. What’s that they say about alcohol increasing one’s confidence? Who cares? I was totally killing it, impressing with each skolled shot. All of a sudden, hometime came, which meant standing up. Curiously, things were very wobbly and a little out of focus. ‘Maybe there was some rum in that coke after all!’ I blurted hysterically at anything that moved.

Cut to half an hour later and I’m in my undies, head planted on the blown plastic toilet seat I’m trying desperately not to look down into the bowl, which is rapidly filling with the night’s excesses. Flopped there on the tiles, between convulsions, I cursed Fidel, cursed Bolivia and cursed my tastebuds for not informing me that those jugs of rum and coke actually contained rum. I also cursed whoever it was that mixed that magic tasteless rum and coke, cursed the bouncer who let us in and finally cursed myself and climbed into bed. The one upside (for me at least) was that I wasn’t Sam, who had been drinking just as much as me, but he had to get up in three hours to ride a mountain bike down the World’s Most Dangerous Road.

Isla del Sol

The Island of the Sun is a baked and terraced mountain sitting in the glorious blue of Lake Titicaca. According to Inca legend, the Sun was born on the island, and the moon was born on nearby Isla Luna. We stayed a night on the evilly steep Island and began a running battle with a messy stomach bug that leapt between the four of us causing untold amounts of digestive system chaos.

Our boat has just passed trough the small gap in the background. You can see the captain steering with his foot.

The hotel

This is the moon rising over The Island of the Moon

Atacames

View from the hotel room

Atacames is another coastal town, where a pleasant little swell was unfolding itself onto the beach. I had some fun little waves, but on our last day I emerged from the sea covered in brutal bites from obviously mutated sea lice. I looked truly freakish, with a coating of bright red raised bumps everywhere, and with a pith helmet and moustache I could have passed for an early English jungle explorer in the days before insect repellent. Some hardcore Ecuadorian skin lotion, possibly also useful for stripping paint, took care of things, but even as I write this five days later, the bumps and intense itching return periodically to haunt me.

Cheap Paris- The City not the Heiress

19 hours on a bus? Surely no amount of money saved can be worth that brand of prolonged stationary torture. In most countries, this is true. Not in Argentina. In Argentina time on a bus is time to unwind, be still and glow the same way you do when you've just done something really clever.

The seats are generous, three to a row and they recline 180 degrees with the grace of a timelapse flower blooming. Wine, coffee, champagne and whiskey served on takeoff, hot food, and from our seats at the very front of the upper level, a view over everything else on the road to where this elegant machine is taking its payload of 24 passengers, 1 driver and 1 attendant. Yes, this is first class travel, comparable to 1st class air travel (at least I assume it is), and for just $80AUD. (Shot taken during one of the multitude of hair-raising overtaking manoeuvres we witnessed from on high. I am convinced that Argentinian bus drivers possess eagle vision and can see around corners)

After I had a relaxing and luxurious 19 hour bus ride we arrived in Buenos Aires. Angie's 19 hours was less enjoyable than mine, due to a second assault by suspected food poisoning. BA is a huge city, 30 million people live there. We jumped in a cab to take us to our hostel right in the middle of the nest. Angie was still recovering, so I went out and had I minor explore of this new city.


The feeling of arriving in a new city is something that you only get and can only keep for perhaps a few hours, maybe a day. Its the precious first impression, the intensity of meeting a city for the first time which is unique. Everything is brand new, there is no point of reference and you can't rely on anything being familiar to centre yourself. Its a magnificent sensation of new, and you have to drink it in, because as soon as you turn a full block and end up back where you started, the brief moment of pure virgin experience is diluted, and you start to know the place.

This pigeon slept outside our room every night

Of course, the more you try to extend this moment of newness (by not concentrating too hard on where you're going of where you've been) the more likely you are to have set yourself up for a royal case of 'I'm lost and have no idea where home is'. Which of course a got an acute case of. After deciding that I had wandered the streets long enough and it was now getting too cold and too dark for me to be out here, I tried to turn back and experienced the downside of new. A really good way to extend that feeling of being new is to go walking around at night, because then your points of reference tend to be much fewer. But by all accounts, Buenos Aires is not a good place to be doing this sort of accidental exploring at night, because there are places which you just don't go (dangerous places). With the sun now down and a rising sense of paranoid tourist panic now bubbling away below, I quickened my step and thankfully, found a map outside the 'Subte' station (subway). After returning to it a couple of times I managed to find my way back to the hostel, inches of daylight remaining.

20 lanes of pure urgency

Now it was tourist time. Over the next few days we wandered around the city (Angie calls it Cheap Paris), feeling a little overwhelmed by the size of the whole thing. Our hostel was on Avenue 9 de Julio, the widest street in the world. It's 20 jam packed lanes wide, full of motorists keen to beat everyone else to the end of the road, wherever that is. They're so keen that they tend to squeeeeeze in between cars next to each other at the lights, so often there'll be two lanes painted on the road, but three vehicle nestled together inside those lanes, engines revving like dragsters in anticipation.

Acres of trinkets

At San Telmo, we went and saw the largest markets I have ever been to. It was a combination of street stalls, show halls and blankets on roads, selling every kind of tourist trinket imaginable (with a brutally heavily emphasis on tango-themed souvenirs) along with really fascinating antique treasures. In the four hours we spent walking the market, we backtracked once to buy some vintage postcards, but that was the only time we doubled up on seeing anything.

Bye bye Lakes District...

Next was a few more days of relaxing, sleeping in and thinking about our next move...

Hmmm....what to do? What to do?

A couple of days turned into several, one because Junin was such a pleasant little place to hang around, and two, because Angie ate something suspect, and fell victim to a violent and shambolic case of food poisoning, possibly a result from malicious lettuce, which kept her housebound for a couple of days.

Junin Hostel

Eventually, the time came to leave, so we mangled a goodbye to our hosts Marita and Aldo and set off back to San Martin where our bus options were greater. We had to decide whether to head North to Mendoza, East to Buenos Aires or to the coast region just South of Buenos Aires. BA, as it is abbreviated to by English speakers around here, was chosen because to was the easiest to get to, and for practical reasons, such as the necessity for another hearty round of inoculations and my need for smaller pants (good shopping there apparently). A bus was booked and we spent two days inside, hiding from incessant drizzle, venturing outside only once or twice when the weather momentarily ceased. On a grey Wednesday afternoon we left the Lakes District behind us as set off on the 19 hour bus ride to the Eastern side of Argentina.

Angie and Dave VS Bariloche, round 2

Back in Bariloche, a different looking Bariloche to a week ago. The weather had closed right in and the rain clouds were sitting heavy just above the lake. We checked into the hostel, ate at a VEGETARIAN restaurant. Then the weather really closed in...

Colder than it looks...

...For almost a week wind slammed Bariloche, producing surfable waves on Lago Nahuel Haupi. If I hadn't left my surfing gear in Santiago to pick up later, I might have some photos of me riding choppy little waves with snowy mountains far in the background. Back in the hostel, when the wind whipped around the windows and walls, it really sounded like the roof was about to be lifted off into the night. Visions of tiles launching, clouds rushing past my face and angie being picked up and swirled away in the gale filled my sleepy mind as I was woken every few hours each night. Eventually it all became too much for the roof, and wet patches started to appear on the floor in the bedroom. The brutal weather basically ruled out any outdoor activity, Angie fell ill for a few days and was confined to bed, I ventured out one day to climb a mountain, but the gods sent me straight back inside after moving the mountain (or i got lost) and then drenching me by horizontal rain so it would appear that I had been lying face down in ten centimetres of water. Movies filled most of the days, and on one outing to the chocolate supermarket, Angie got trapped inside a cubicle and, wait for it, had to crawl out underneath the door- disinfectant!! STAT! Apart from that, not much to report, but the lake did throw up some nasty looking photo opportunities, and snow has begun to appear on the mountains where last week laid sunshine.

A rare moment of calm on Lago Nahuel Haupi, this view is from our bedroom window.