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One year on….

April 24th, 2009

One year on from my last post and it’s my last day at work before I hit the road again…..

I spent last supper working for Intrepid travel as a Tour Leader accross Europe, from Paris to Warsaw, Helsinki to Dubrovnik! Clearly I was too busy to blog all of that but you can see some photos on Flickr.

I’ve been back in lil’ old Guernsey for the winter and this summer I’m heading off to work for Intrepid again on the Trans Siberian railway routes… so who know’s where I’ll be this time next year!

I’m going to try my best to keep up to date with some blogging as well as uploading my latest photos to Flickr (see the link on the right) – well what else will I be doing with four days at a time on a train? So watch this space for tales of Vodka and fluffy hats (for you Heidi)!

x

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A very rapid update……

April 23rd, 2008

I apologise, I have been quite terrible in my blogging updates… to the point where I would imagine you have all given up on reading this anyway!

But a very rapid update on the end of my travels (hopefully one day I’ll have time to go back and expand – for me more than you) before we move on to the next adventure……

After meeting Pauls parents in Buenos Aires we spent a month with them exploring Argentina and Chile; whale watching at Puerto Madryn, climbed the volcano in Pucon and ate lots of fabulous steak!

After the Tucknott’s left Paul and I spent our last few days in South America in Santiago, Chile, before flying to New Zealand (incredibly sad to leave South America) on 1st December.For a month in New Zealand we hired a camper van and toured north and south Islands, visiting quite a few friends on the way. Sadly the weather was pretty rubbish, but that didn’t stop us skydiving and bungee jumping (well I didn’t bungee but I did jump out of a plane!) Spent Christmas in Nelson and managed to BBQ just before the heavens opened!

From New Zealand we headed to Fiji for New Year, arriving on Vorovoro (Tribewanted Island) just in time for a very messy New Years Eve party. We had planned to spend 10 days on Vorovoro but when the time came to leave I decided to stay until the end of the month, whilst Paul went on to explore Australia.

We met up again in Melbourne at the beginning of February and spent a week with a hire car touring the Great Ocean Road and the wine tasting region around Melbourne.

From Melbourne Paul went on to spend his last 10 days in Hong Kong, whilst I stayed to visit family, and in fact ended up back in Fiji for my last week.

48 crazy hours in Hong Kong on the way back and it was 23rd February again and I was on the plane home to rainy old London and little old Guernsey.

An incredible, indescribable trip.

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Buenos Aires – strike 3!

December 23rd, 2007



Evita Grave

Originally uploaded by kathsmee.

From Colonia, we took the very rapid one hour boat to Buenos Aires where we had a day before we met Paul parents, Ken and Glenda. The day before they arrived, Paul and I visited the antiques market in San Telmo and then enjoyed some well deserved pampering, I had a haircut and waxing – no mean feat in Spanish! and Paul went to the football! The following day we met Pauls parents at the airport, for the start of their three weeks with us in Argentina. They had very kindly put us up in a lovely hotel in Buenos Aires and that night took us out for a lovely meal on the waterfront. They had already been in Argentina for a few weeks visiting many of the sites Paul and I did, so it was lovely to swap travel notes and compare impressions on the sites we’d seen. Whilst in Buenos Aires we also took in a tango show, went for a city tour, Evita museum and all the main touristy things, together with some lovely dinners down on the water front.

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Uruguay and Pies!!

December 23rd, 2007



PB037766

Originally uploaded by kathsmee.

After four smelly dirty tiring days in Pisco it was time for us to move on to make our flight to Montevideo. We decided that we would spend a night in Lima which we hadn’t planned to at first, but we needed a shower and a good nights sleep! Actually, for all the bad things we heard about Lima we really quite liked it, or Miraflores anyway, even though it was really expensive! After a night there we took an overnight flight to Montevideo, arriving inconveniently at 4am and spending a couple of hours reading in the airport until the first bus! But the hostel checked us in early and after sleeping till midday we spent the afternoon exploring the city and a couple of museums. The next day we took a day trip to Punta del Este, only a couple of hours away and enjoyed a day on the beach, surrounded by highrise apartments and flash restaurants, what imagine a mini Miami to be like. We would have liked to go further to Punta del Diablo but four days didn’t allow for that and this was as far down the coast as we could manage. The next day we took a but to Colonia to stay there for a couple of nights. It was a lovely little town, helped by the sunshine of course. We climbed the lighthouse, explored all the cobbled streets and little alleyways and then sat on the river edge with a few beers watching the sunset before heading to a funky restaurant where we sat and had dinner in the back of an old mobster like car! Really sweet little town, and although not as cheap as we’d been led to believe, Uruguy was definitely more like the South American prices we liked in Artgentina rather than expensive Ecuador and Peru!

The following day we took a rediculously long (4hrs each way and we left at 5am!) bus to Fray Bentos to see the famous, now closed, pie factory! (Darren, this was mainly in your honour!) It was, I am sorry to say, very miuch now worth the trip, although it was interesting for about half an hour it was all in spanish so a lot of the detail was lost on us. Still, we managed to get away without paying for the museum or the bus back for some reason so it wasn’t all bad! Arrived back to Colonia at about 9pm, to tired to go out never having even got near to an actual pie!

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Un Techo Para Mi Pais

December 23rd, 2007



PA287644

Originally uploaded by kathsmee.

After leaving the folks on a bus in the middle of Peru (don’t worry they made it home ok) Pual and I headed to the centre of Pisco, the town worst hit by the Peru earthquake. As we drove it the devestation was just incredible, buildings and whole streets just reduced to rubble and lines and lines of emergeny tents along the road together with makeshift shelters. We arrived in Pisco to join a group called Hands on Disaster Response, who were working with volunteers there on all manner of projects from beach cleanup to rubble clearing to working with local kids. We spent the first day with them clearing the beach in the morning and then rubble in the afternoon. The following day, Saturday, since HODR usually don’t work weekends and we were on there for a few days, we joined a party who were going to work for the weekend with a local organisation Un Techo Para Mi Pais (a roof for my country) building emergency houses in remote areas together with groups of students form Lima. It was an interesting experience…. We certainly worked hard, from 7am to gone 1am, together in small groups with the Students building a house per group each day. It was really hard work, especially in Spanish when it got dark, and we were knackered by the time we were finished, but we did at least feel like we were definitely helping. How grateful the people receiving the houses were is a different question, and I’m sure the responses of different individuals varied but on our second day (building houses for poverty releif rather than earthquake damage) the family weren’t interested at the end of the day in seeing the house since they were watching TV! I don’t know, it is a wonderful organisation tho and they do some great things, maybe I missed something in the Spanish. At the end of the days tho we really weren’t interested in the touchy feely, sharing your love, campfire bonding at 2am, when we knew we had to be up again in 5 hours to do it all over again!

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Sorry Mum… but there is an embarrasing shot of Dad too!

December 23rd, 2007



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Originally uploaded by kathsmee.

Back in Arequipa we took an overnight but to Ica on the coast of Peru, from where we took a taxi the five minutes into Huacachina. Ica is the area of Peru where the earthquake hit in August, but Huiacachina, a small desert oasis was pretty undamaged. Whilst we checked into what we were told was the nicest hotel in the resort to spoil ourselves for their last few days, we quickly realised the pool wasn’t filled and the place was under going renovations! So after showering there and a quick walk around the lake we spotted another much nice looking place with a working pool and rooms for half the price! So whilst mum and I quickly repacked the bags we sent the boys to sheepishly check us out after only half an hour and negociate a price for the showers! But it was definitely a good choice, the Hotel Suise was excellent and we had a lovely relaxing four days lying in the sun in the mornings until the wind got up at about 1pm, then we would go for lunch, before an afternoon of sandbuggying and sand-surfing, or a local wine tasting tour! Please, ask my Mum all about the Sand-surfing!! One day my Dad and I also took a trip out to Nazca to fly over the lines in a tiny plane, which was good fun and the lines are pretty impressive.

After four days in Huacachina it was time for the folks to leave, we spent our last night on a dune buggy at sunset with a bottle of local wine, before a lovely evening meal at our favorite café. On the Friday morning we all took the same bus to Lima, where they would fly out that night, although Paul and I stopped in Pisco just an hour up the road where we said our (little bit tearful) goodbyes hurridly on the bus. We had a really busy three weeks (stuffed full of Inca museums and ruins as you can imagine) but we had a fabulous time and saw quite a lot of the country, certainly lots of different things and it was really nice to see my parents again. Peru is a fascuinating country and I wish we had had longer there to visit more places and to spend more time off the beatn track rather than rushing from one tourist spot to another, but I guess you just have to see what you can in the time you have and that for us meant just the highlights, same as all the other tourists. But it is definitely on the list of places to go back to, and our Peru experience wasn’t quite over yet……..

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Mmmmmm Pisco!

December 23rd, 2007



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Originally uploaded by kathsmee.

After Puno we took an overnight bus to Arequipa where we spent a day in the sun exploring the city (another double decker city bus tour!) before heading out to Chivay to see the condors at Colca Canyon. Since we had had enough of organised tours by then we took a local bus to the town and eventually found a decent hostel after being harassed to stay in a couple of cold ones first! Yes, after the nice Cusco hotel my Mum and Dad were hostelling with us like troopers! Arrived at the Canyon the next day at 6:30am (in a taxi) and had to wait until about 10:00am to actually see any condors, even then I think we only saw three in the distance with one close up fly by. In all it was actually a bit disapointing (except for the thermal baths of course and the PIsco – which my Dad claimed to be alergic too but for some reason kept on drinking?), and didn’t work out cheaper at all travelling independantly since we chose to go on census day where there were no busses and we had to get a two hour taxi back to Arequipa (who didn’t incidentally have the correct paper work so we may or may not have had to bribe the police, we’re still not sure!) But it was a travelling adventure for the folks.

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Ritual Cleansing?!

December 23rd, 2007



IMGP5638.JPG

Originally uploaded by kathsmee.

After the trek we spent a few more days in Cusco before moving on to Puno and visiting the floating reed Islands. We spent a night with a family on one of the islands (the more solid ones however), and I still can’t really decide if it was all a bit contrived and touristy or incnocently quaint? We ate with the family but they really didn’t want to talk to us that much, then in the evening they dressed us up in their local dress and took us to a dance where the med made the women dance with everyone which they really weren’t interested in doing. Still it was an experience! The following morning my dad braced the icy waters of Lake Titicaca to take an early morning (skinny)dip! And I’m putting that on here Dad since you were the one who proudly showed us the photographic evidence!

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Prooooo!

December 23rd, 2007



IMGP5381.JPG

Originally uploaded by kathsmee.

Merry Christmas to all my devoted readers….

Once again I’m sorry for the long delay updating the site, and once again I am pleased to point out that I have had much better things to do with my time than sitting in Internet cafes! However, with 2008 fast aproaching, so too is to end of our trip (well this phase at least) and we are starting to think about the world of work again (boo!) albeit in Hong Kong so that’s not too bad. But what have we been up to in the last three months….

After leaving the Galapgos Islands once and for all, we spent a couple of sleepless nights in Quito and Lima airport travelling down to Cusco (during which time we were almost victims of an airport scam – as if we were really about to follow the strange man into a dark car park, and Paul nearly had us thrown off a plane calling the check in girl a liar in his bestest Spanish!). Anyway, only a few hours late we arrived in Peru and checked in with the folks to a much nicer standard of accommodation than we were used to! It was really lovely to see them again (of course, they read this too) and we had a great few weeks travelling around Peru together.

We started off with the Inca Trail which was really great. We went with a really good company called Peru Treks (Andy, Fiona, Sandra and Dave thank you for the recommednation!) They were excellent, good guides, amazing porters (I can’t believe what those guys carry!) and fabulous food, can’t believe they cook it all on a couple of gas burners in a tent. We were even lucky with the weather and the morning we arrived at Machu Pichu there was hardly any cloud and we got to take those iconic photos. All in all it was a really good trip, I thought it might be really crowded and touristy but it was well managed and we had a great group whon all really bonded so we had a great time.

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Photos and the future……

October 7th, 2007



Beach with Belen (2)

Originally uploaded by kathsmee.

We head down to Peru this afternoon spending the night in Lima airport before heading on to Cusco to start the Inca trail on Weds……….. with the parents – should be “an adventure” – to quote Tucky!!

I have uploaded, as you can imagine, what seems like a billion photos from the Galapagos, but there really are some highlights to check out……
1. Animals – If you love animals, then obviously this is the place for you with almost 3 million photos of sea lions being taken in one week! Underwater photos (coming soon) especially cool.
2. Check out Paul looking like my mum, as in the earlier post! In his defence apparently “it was after a dive and the suction does funny things to my face and as for my hair, Kathi cut it, I’m getting it cut by a professional soon……………. “
3. See the life size sand sculpture of a hammer head shark we whittled up one afternoon – yup, another busy day on the beach.
4. Check out Belens birthday party, Galapagos Style!
5. Bartoleme Island, possibly the most picturesque place in the islands and also where one of the scenes of Master and Commander was shot!
……and pictures do tell the story of the Galapagos a million times better than I can with words!

p.s. this is just another picture of Belen because she´s gorgeous!

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