the make or break tour

Gallery: JAMAICA maaaaaan

derekandcarla — Sat, 9 May 2009 04:30:00 GMT

Kylie and Carla`s Jamaican getaway

Gallery: central america

derekandcarla — Sat, 9 May 2009 02:36:00 GMT

Post make or break tour

Gallery: BRAZIL:CARNAVAL:FIESTAS:BEACHES

derekandcarla — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 08:21:00 GMT

Brazil Part 2

Gallery: Brazil (Paradise)

derekandcarla — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 00:48:00 GMT

1st month in Brazil

Gallery: Feliz Navidad + Ano Nuevo

derekandcarla — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 10:35:00 GMT

ARGENTINA + ATLANTIC COAST AND A BIT OF URUGUAY

Buenos Aires + the Atlantic Coast

derekandcarla — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 05:05:00 GMT

A week of partying, eating, music, people and ... exhaustion. Wholly moley what a freaking cool huuuuggge city. This place seems to have everything except coins and a good public transport system. The parks are huge, green and everywhere. Carla is in her element if you know how much she loves parks. We stayed in a pretty cool hostel in Palermo - an area that oozes charisma, history and art.
Argentinians are stunning, if you are an ugly argentine you´ve definitely drawn the short straw. Long legs, unblemished brown skin, shiny thick hair and bodies that make you want to cry - a little out of awe, a little out of desire but mostly out of jeolousy.

We met up with Dan (a mate from oz) who lives here in B.A and has become our unpaid chaperon to bars, restaurants and house parties. We also finally got to meet Picu - gorgeous argentine family friend and her flat mate Veronica equally as wonderful. They took us to another house party - and the argentines know how to party. And it´s crazy how late everything starts here. People don´t have dinner until 10/11/12 at night, shops close after midnight and clubs don´t open until 2am, even these house parties didn´t start til after 1am.
We managed to fit a few sight seeing outings in there - La Boca for the tango, football and colour, Recolletta for the markets and cemetry, etc it is hard to fathom how much money the rich spend our their tombs. We are returning for another 9 days for more music (carla is aching for some jazz), new years, museums and some tango chicos!

Derek´s foot was stil pretty painful and swollen. We had 1 visit from the doctor and 3 trips to this grimey, run down public hospital jam packed with the queing sick. It looked strangely similar to a music festival - endless lines of ppl, unforgiving heat (no ventilation) and unhappy over worked, underpaid staff but no music...just screaming babies. It was really difficult to find help and the staff were less than willing to speak more slowly so we could attempt to understand where we had to go and who we had to see. We were momentarily assisted by a nice old maintence man fixing the elevator...which was a lost cause but none the less lovely and so we hired a crutch from a chemist. Now Derek gets around with a backpack on his back, a smaller bag on his front, a surfboard under one arm and a crutch clung to the other. He definitely gets some looks.

Headed to the coast for 10 days. We had met an Argentinian guy a month ago who insisted we go to a little coastal village called Chapadmalal for good surf and gave us his friends details (Cholo) to look up. Caught a bus there from Buenos Aires and got dropped off around 9:30 in the night at what kinda resembled a bus stop. There was nothing around, the wind whistled and the spinafex rolled past. Where the hell did this guy send us? We approached two locals who luckily happened to know this friend Cholo. In minutes they had arranged this lovely toothless little man hidden under a weeks worth of motor oil to pick us up in his held together with some sticky tape car and take us to Cholo´s house. Cholo and his mum were great. The mum talked at a million miles an hour and in turn we did alot of feined comprehending head nods. I´m pretty sure we got away with it. We had a little unit to ourselves which was relieving after weeks in hostels. But this little coast village was really pretty disappointing, the beaches were not very nice and the weather was pretty bad. We decided to move on to the most popular beach destination in Argentina for Derek´s birthday, Mar del Plata (5 hours from B.A.). Dan met us here and we hired a unit for 4 days.

Derek´s birthday consisted mainling of drinking, watching a football match and a little more drinking out and about in Mar del Plata. We did also hit the local casino to try our luck on roulette. We lost 100 pesos (AUD50) within 10 minutes and pissed off the security guard. Dan the instigator. Dan the photographer. Bad Dan.

The water at these beaches is very cold but the air temperature is around 30 degrees. You get so over heated but still you have to psyche yourself up to dip your toe in the water. Even so, derek wetsuit clad braved the water to go surfing each day and Carla braved it for 5 minutes.

For 4 days including Xmas we stayed in another beach town Miramar - which we have just left to return to B.A. These were 4 great, great days. For xmas Carla made rumballs and her world renowned trifle. We ate all day, went to the beach to kick the ball around and managed to get quite drunk while battling it out in ping pong for hours. Derek was hands down champion but in Carla´s defense they were close matches. We finished off the night with a huge alsado (an extremelly cool argentinian bbq) which was cooked to perfection by Andreas - a new found friend and miramar local.Andreas, his wife Valeria and 2 sons Dedaeo and Casper were amazingly hospitable - took us for another alsado, to some local sights and good nearby beaches. It was sad to say goodbye to them.

Miramar is now another favourite of ours. The relaxed, gentle atmosphere of this place was wonderful and the beaches were alot nicer here. Because this was a tourist town primarily for argentinians everyone was so intrigued by this ´exotic´ country we come from and bent over backwards to make us feel welcome.

Now we head back to Buenos Aires. Mel arrives tomorrow which is really exciting!!

Hope everyone has a great xmas and new years! Feliz Navidad and Año Nuevo chicos! We are definitely adding a more consistent blogging approach to our new years resolutions.

peace out homies, more photos are soon to follow.

Gallery: PPPPPATAGONIA

derekandcarla — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 07:58:00 GMT

Patagonia (Chile/Argentina) + a little Buenos Aires

Life after the ferry and Patagonia

derekandcarla — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 00:53:00 GMT

The air seemed crisper, food tasted better, life in general was looking up - the ferry ride had made us stronger people. We had a bbq by the river in Coyhaique, Chile with our fellow 48 hour ferry survivers. Headed south with our new convoy of travellers to a tiny village Villa Cerra Castillo. Here we had an unfortunate trekking adventure where instead of finding views of a beautiful glacier we were backed into a river by angry cows and bad weather. 6 hours later we returned to our cottage drenched, freezing and having lost all faith in following directions from canadians (thanks jeff).

The 4 days that followed provided us with a series of comical events (good and bad). So we are in the middle of nowhere, near one of the Chile/Argentina border crossing. No one in these areas had any type of information on how the hell to get out of town, let alone bus schedules. Few seemed to know anything. To get from ´A´to ´E´we had to catch a collectivo from village A to village B... So you think a ferry comes here tomorrow but maybe in the morning but could be between 8 and 10 next tuesday night?? Great thank you. Catch a ferry from B to C hoping that in village C there would be information to get to village D. Village C did have a timetable in one of the old chests out the back but found there wasn´t anything for 1.5 days. Got to village D, and apparently the guy up the road selling pineapples had a sister that once took a bus to village E he might know something. But aren´t you the tourism officer for this town? Yes but we don´t know anything about transport. Of course you don´t, ha ha. Finally got on a 12 hour unairconditioned bus packed with people across hot barron land and at last we got to village E. It was all and all pretty funny with a twinge of a tooth ache.

Within these 4 days we picked up two americans on our convoy to endure the many hours of waiting around. Amongst these slowly passed days was the sleep walking american Os who (after a big night of drinking) got up in the early hours of the morning, walked over to Jeff´s bed and pissed on him - inches away from Derek´s head. Poor Jeff.

Took Route 40 - made famous by the travels of Che Guevara to El Chalten a sleepy village at the bottom of Mt Fitzroy (hiking mecca of Argentina). Here we trekked and camped for a couple of days around the beautiful snow capped mountains, rainforest and blue lagoons, aaaaahhhh. One of our favourite spots so far on this trip. One of the afternoons it was hot so we decided to stroll from our camp to the next lagoon for a swim, Derek wearing only a singlet, thongs, bordies and a towel. It ended up being a 2 hr hike up rocky dry mountains to a lagoon that had frozen over and was covered in snow. It killed us. The air was so hot that we had no idea we were so close to knee deep snow. So instead of a swim Derek tip toed through the snow in bare feet. Oh so brave.

Our next stop was El Calafate for the Perito Merino Glacier. Oh maaaan - this was like nothing we had seen before. We did wee ourselves a litle when we took a boat right up close to it. We just sat for ages watching large pieces of the glacier break off and fall into the water. Only draw back is there were so many god damned tourists (although we are also) that their ´fat kid on a cupcake´ like behaviour became a specticle in itself. Photos agogo.

Crossed back in to Chile to hike the ´W trail´in Torres del Paine for 3 days. Again this was gorgeous landscape - lush forest, blue lagoons, tall snow capped peaks and of course a big bloody glacier. On the 1st night it was a little strange to catch ourselves hiking at 10pm on a friday night with some other backpackers. Its pretty foreign to our ´its a friday night lets hit the booze and go dancing´ lifestyle back in oz. We camped meters away from the glacier and lived off rice and pea soup for a few days. The last day of Torres del Paine Derek had to return early to the town nearby because he had hurt his foot. I continued to hike for another day. I hitch hiked it back to meet Derek in Puerto Natales with an old local who could barely see past the massive crack in his windscreen, i think he mainly guessed which way to steer because he had driven on these roads many a times before. I was on the edge of my seat.

The last few days in Patagonia were quite uneventful and a well needed rest after weeks of hiking and buses and our hectic backpacking lifestyle (ha). We stopped in Punta Arenas crossing back over to Rio Galligos, Argentina.

We flew out of Patagonia on the 11th of December heading fo the capital. Pataqonia done and dusted.

sorry for our tardy blogging!

Chapter 2: a little bit of Argentina, a little bit of Chile and a whollotta love

derekandcarla — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 07:48:00 GMT

we swung over to Argentina for a week settling in Mendoza for its wine and meeeeaatt. Hired bikes to ride around the wine country stopping all stations..vineyards first, sampling the local culture by the glass full. It was a great feeling to ride between the vineyards with an after wine buzz, the setting sun settling down to sleep soundly behind the slopey scales of the snowy scenic mountains...(derek is a poetic genius...yesssss!) Had our first taste of intestine, by accident. Derek has now got a taste for human flesh, we´re pretty sure it was human. Made tracks to Bariloche, again the setting sun and all that shit ...but around lakes. It was actually really beautiful. I think it made Derek cry. (it did). Day tripped it out to see a black glacier that closely resembled a large black crocodile,check out the photo.

Crossed back over to Chile to Pucon, the activity centre of Chile (although it only has 20,000 residents). Anddddd we climbed the biggest volcano in the whole world! This isn´t really factual, the truth maybe stretched a little. But we swear it sure isn´t far off being the biggest, it took us 5 hours just to hike to the top. The result was worth it. It stunk of sulfur, which we unfortunately took a big gasp of when we finally reached the top. It burnt all the way down...similar to tear gas. The views were amazing. Volcanoes all over this country, just like the people dry humping in parks here..they are everywhere. Ooh and on the way day, we put these nappy like underpants on our ass and slid down the whole volcano like a waterslide. Shit it was fun. But still we managed to stab ourselves in the leg with our ice picks. Derek managed to do this twice...on the same leg.Within minutes after the other. What an idiot.

We went hydrospeeding - whitewater rafting without the raft or lifejackets, but on idividual foam tampon-like contraptions. Yes, yes we are crazy. look at us go mum.woooohooo. Ha ha that´s right, Derek pissed in his wetsuit. But the wetsuits were not infact wetsuits, they were dry suits. And in turn, Derek smelt of piss as did the drysuit which he had hired and of course his underpants. Class.

Ooh one other thing which was a hoot, the thermal baths. Gorgeous setting, 5 natural out door thermal springs surrounded by nothing but mountains and trees. Took some wine, cheese and crackers one night and sat under the stars. If only we weren´t there together it could have been romantic. Derek nearly ate a slug.

From Pucon, we headed further down south to an island called Chiloe. Here we stayed in the main town Castro and down in a smaller port town Quellan.

On our way there we broke all of our rules and ate fish at a cafe that had no locals eating there, let alone customers. There were flies, heaps of flies. A cat, that walked over every surface. It was a little touch and go there for a while. We survived it.

In Chiloe we stood out like dogs balls. You don´t see too many tourists here. They had these amazing colourful stilt houses made of fibro, corregated iron stuck together with saliva, (quite possibly). Each year when the water level is high the community move their houses around, and so if a neighbour has pissed you off at some point, it´s ok. You are not stuck with them. You just pray for rain and just shift yourself away the next time the water level is high. The world would be a happier place if all countries took on this system.

Now in Coyhaique (still Chile) after a dodgy ferry ride that went for 48hours, 12 hours longer than it should have, after being delayed for 12 hours. It ran out of food, water and kind people. The boat had a hustle on it that will outlast time itself. We contributed to the smell, so we´re not pointing fingers.

We can´t put into words how god damned beautiful this country is, we´ve spent alot longer here than what we thought or than our bank balance can carry. Crystal clear lakes and river, snow capped volcanoes everywhere, green rolling hills and pastures and amazing friendly locals, and warm weather.

we´ve dribbled on enough. hope all is well with everyone. please send us an email, photos or anything. We need other interaction than ourselves, our stories are making their 3rd or 4th round, its getting boring, please help.

muchas love

Gallery: yeeeee haaaaa

derekandcarla — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 03:45:00 GMT

A bit of Argentina but mostly Chile

The first month in Chile...

derekandcarla — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 10:22:00 GMT

Our first month is pretty much done...we have survived.

The first 2 weeks in Santiago were bloody exhausting. We signed up for spanish school, which left our brains in a state that closely resembled over cooked pasta. Met a great crew of people from all over.

Overwhelmed with the lack of dignity many young lovers have here, dry humping is definitely the most popular of sports.

2nd night into our trip - Chile beat Argentina in football for the first time in 76 years in Santiago. The Chileans lost their shit.. the streets filled with thousands of crazy football fans, honking horns, screaming, dancing...and so we joined in. We made a quick pit stop at a diner and all of a sudden we were locked in with other customers. The doors were shut. Then water began to gush under the doorway. By the time we had eaten and were let out side the streets were deserted and really wet. And all that was left were police in tanks with water canons. It was crazy stuff. So we walked home. But then Derek notices one of the armoured trucks releases what we thought was water...it was tear gas. And in turn, we were tear gassed. Crazy onion thick air filled our lungs and stung the hell out of our eyes.

Climbed Pochoko (or Pokocho still under debate with locals) with Anders and his ambassador crew...it´s about 30 minutes from Santiago. Mountain nearly killed us, ran out of water but the views were second to none..unless you climbed the bigger mountain next to it.We couldn´t be bothered. Saw a fuck off big condor.

We stayed most of our time in a share house that was meant to be a home stay. Met some interesting people again. Pretty nice house and neighbourhood, but the god damned dogs wouldn´t shut the fuck up. Derek had evil intentions for a few of them.

After 2 weeks we headed to the coast to Valaparaiso. Hung out here for about a week. Taking the local bus up to one of the surfing breaks - Reñaca. Stayed in a crazy party hostel called Yoyo´s. Much to Derek´s delight, he got felt up by Gorge, the resident gay..the only gay in the village.

Just been taking it easy, meeting shitloads of people from all over the world, hanging out with alot of people from different walks of life.

Trying not to eat too much, or at all we have to cut costs somewhere. Derek pines for peanut butter...and his girlfriend.

Now crossed the border over to Argentina, steak and wine central. you beauty!!

Gallery: CHILE

derekandcarla — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 09:23:00 GMT

1st month away