Donkeys and others

Yes yesterday was a very cultural day. After being lured into the fish restaurant by one of Richards peons and being served by a small batalion of waiters we made our way to the markets. On our way we encountered a gentleman leading a pack of donkeys across the road (in the city) screaming and grinning fanatically at passing traffic, quite a fantastic thing to witness.

So we did this hike...

8 km each way, 16 all up. From the base of one mountain to the base of a second, considerably larger mountain and its glacier. The return walk ruined me a fair bit, and this morning i peeled a healthy (or.... unhealthy?) layer of skin off of the top of my ear but it was a good walk.

Regarding snoring: I'm confident that since ive been sleeping in a room of my own my snoring has ceased and that i am infact a sadist-in-sleep who chooses only to snore when it's going to substantially iritate both robert and steven. ha.

Here are some photos

P.S steven has orange hands

28/11/07

Hola, have been updating photo album more than this space. Just click on the slideshow in the right panel and you can navigate back to other albums.

Here's a shot from just after our dinner last night, we came out of the building to find two people doing the Tango in the street, with professional photographer snapping away. That's them at the very back of the shot.






It's a little blury, took a couple to get it even that 'good'. The dinner was great, $15 meals that would in Australia cost at least $35. Ate at the fish market earlier in the day which was an experience of a very different sort. Each restaurant wanted our business so much, we literally had to pull ourselves away from several enthusiastic waiters. One even spied the 'Yokugawa Australia' label on dads pocket and greeted us with a 'G'day mate!'. We ended up eating at a place called 'Richard, El Rey del Mariscal'.During our meal we were greatly honoured when Richard himself came out! He jumped behind our table and got a waiter to take a group photo, and then gave us a calender with a picture of his shop...personally signed by Richard himself! (...The calender was for 2007)






Shot of a street in Santiago, just north of Universidad de Chile Metro station. Spent today wandering around the streets, had lunch at a vegetarian restaurant (rare find in Chile, land of 6cm thick cuts of steak) and then visited a pre Columbian museum. Great stuff in there, things dating back past 1500BC along with giant Maya, Inca and Aztec stonework, woodwork, metalwork and tapestries. Then attempted to do some money converting which, to our suprise was a lot more difficult than we thought. You'd imagine Chile would carry currency of its neighbour Peru would you not? Well apparently not, at least in the 6 money exchanges we went into before getting annoyed and heading home.



Here's a shot of Catedral De Santiago which I'm told at least matches the detail and scale of any Cathedral in Europe. (Again with the low quality, lighting isn't good in here and really didnt want to attempt a flash)











Hopefully will write something up here soon,
Steven.

Pictures

Lukes going to write something up soon, here's some pictures of the last few days though:
(Formatting for this is horrid, try and figure out captions :P)

- Yellow spiral thing out the front of World Trade Center (Santiago, Dads work)

- San Fransisco Glacier

- Vina Del Mar (Gold Coast ish but with crappy beach!)

- (Blue building)Valparaiso, where we had lunch

- Sea Lions!

Santiago De Chile

Hola!

So that was the longest day of my life. About 35hours or so I think. Spent cursing Aerolineas Argentinas, sleeping, talking to a Columbian farmer and attempting to navigate the maze that is Buenos Aires airport!

We finally arrived in Santiago De Chile after delays a plenty from our friends at Aerolineas. Arrived at 1.30am local time and were amazed to see our taxi driver Lehner awaiting us at the airport! This late flight was due to a three hour wait at Auckland, on a flight already delayed by several hours and then another hour or so at Buenos Aires due to lack of organisation and a quick change in the weather as we were about to take off. Buenos Aires seemed to go on and on, literaly forever. I could see no end to the lights. A city of 13.5million people I'm told.

Started our exploration of Santiago with a trip along the Metro, oh how it puts public transport in Australia to shame. One ticket (about 70c worth) gets you into the underground and you don't pay any more until you get out. This could be the entire length of the city! The amazing thing though, is that a train comes about every minute. We got off at University De Chile and walked up through the mall to Plaza De Armas (City center pretty much). We were confronted by many a street artist and a giant Christmas tree... with Coca-Cola adverts for decoration! In contrast to this tacky seasonal flavor was the amazing Cathedral...incredible architecture and monuments. We then continued to Cerro Santa Lucia, where we were confronted by a 'student' selling poetry for who knows what cause. She had the haggle down pat though, switching to English when we pleaded ignorance to her Spanish. We didn't give in though and continued onto climb the very steep steps that were, toward the top, about a foot high and only 5cm wide. Excellent view of Santiago and the mountains from the top though, so it was well worth the effort! We also found a shop...that sells Ocarinas! Going to buy one next week and see if I can find me Epona.

Camera battery died early on in Santiago exploration so only minimal photos this time around.

Adios,
Steven.

Hello from NZ

So we finally made it abroad. Our flight from Sydney was delayed significantly, in what seems to be a pattern for Aerolineas Argentinas - our flight out of Auckland tomorrow is delayed as well. But yes, we arrived in Auckland at about 7.00pm local time on Tuesday. Our friend Jeremy (Gemstar) met us at the airport and proceeded to give us an unintentional tour of the industrial backstreets of Auckland. Nonetheless we eventually got to his house in the suburbs.

We spent today walking around inner city Auckland, even getting to the top of the Sky Tower - apparently the tallest structure in the Southern Hemisphere (though Steven and Luke think a new tower on the Gold Coast is actually taller). Tonight Gem's cousin Jon is coming over, which should be good - we know him (and Gem, actually) from our old World of Warcraft days. We found out our flight to Buenos Aires, and subsequently Santiago tomorrow has also been delayed - by about 4 hrs, putting it at 10pm. We're having a great time thus far, though we're pretty tired - weird timezone shifts combined with Luke's snoring have worn us out.

I'm trying to upload a few photos, but it's not going well - so hang tight?

- Adios

:3

Aiye! Una mica estola me despe o medicacion! Esto es una locura!

Test

So apparently there's some doubters as to if this actually works or not so. Here's to proving you wrong.

Paqta ratukamalla q'ipikunata saqiyukuykiman kaypi?

Soon...

Rimaykullayki!

So I bought a Quechua phrasebook, very interesting language grammatically but er...letters slammed together that should never be seen next to each other. The five syllable 'Hello' is a great example.

Anywho, two weeks and a day till we leave! And only one day until first exam. Oh dear. I...think we're ready to go? So much to organize.

Huq kutikama