Wow, what an epic adventure! We´re here at The Point Hostel in Arequipa, Peru,
sadly shaking our heads in a confused state of self-imposed
bewilderment and dehydration. We had the most epic day
yesterday/today. In the earlier stages of our trip, we selected on a
given day the winner for an award based on who had done the most
stupid, unlucky or hilarious thing for the day. But after Casey´s
efforts over the last 48 hours, I doubt very much that we´ll be able to
top it. :o) Casey as seriously set a new standard for being a complete and utter retard. It is epic!
The panic began when Casey reached into his bag to grab his
camera and realised that his money belt wasn´t there anymore. We were
at the Colca Canyon, which is bloody amazing - one of the deepest
canyons in the world at 10725 ft (3269 m) more than twice as deep as
the Grand Canyon in
the United States.
We were on a 2 day hike from the top of the canyon to the bottom, where
we stayed the night, then hiked back up to the top. A decent effort, I
must say. Needless to say, there´s no electricity or phone lines down
at the bottom of the canyon, and even where there are phone lines,
Casey could really make any use of them because he has no phone numbers
on him, can´t speak Spanish, and was fairly certain that his money
pouch had been stolen from his bag while he was sleeping on the bus.
So, as you would imagine, Casey was stressing out badly, and unable to do anything useful about it until he got back.
With all that excess nervous energy, he cained it up the canyon to the
point where the guide joked that he was running up it, and felt the
need to catch up with Casey in order to slow him down.
When
we
returned to the hostel, our shit got spread out everywhere in a vain
hope that we could find his money pouch. We had packed before the
Colca Canyon trip in a less than sober state, so none of us could be
sure we didn´t have it. See, he had his passport, credit card and
drivers licence all in the pouch, and so it is the worst thing possible
to loose with the sole exception of maybe your camera with all the
amazing photos of what we´ve done. After looking absolutely
everywhere, we finally gave in to the inevitable - it was gone, most
likely stolen.
So
Casey stresses through the day, and by sometime after about 10pm, he
had received from the tourist police a dodgy piece of paper with some
stamps and signatures on it which we can only assume is a statement
regarding the stolen property. Its a poor quality print, all in
Spanish, and I haven´t
bothered yet to attempt to translate it. Either way, Casey still has
to visit the consulate in Lima to try to get a new passport. Until
then, he can´t leave the country!
So, Casey (as I´m sure you can
understand) proceeds to drown his sorrows with us in the bottom of a
Pisco bottle (a local drink that really isn´t very good - some kind of
bad grape brandy) a whiskey bottle, and many cervezas
(beers). We played a few games of pool, talked shit with some cool
English folk, and played this game called Jenga el Grande.
Jenga is
basically a whole bunch of wooden blocks (large blocks in this case),
initially stacked in a fairly stable manner. The idea is to carefully
remove one block on your turn without toppling the stack, and place
that block on the top of the stack. There´s plenty of rules to catch
you out, and when your caught you have to take a shot of this concoction
they whipped up behind the bar in a bucket, with about 7 different
ingredients and plenty of potency. If anyone thinks the block is too
easy, you take a shot. If you help someone else, you take a shot. If
you use 2 hands, you take a shot. Etc.
So
after much drinking and playing around, we hit the town with some
locals for the second night in a row. The place was just a regular
club - clubs are all the same. But there were some cool people there.
Kim was busy necking an American chick called Kara, who we´d met a few
days prior. We all had a fairly low opinion of Americans in general,
but this chick is the bomb. Great girl, good fun.
So Kim was busy, I had no idea where Casey was, and I found this
really cute, sexy local Peruvian chick and talked with her for a half
hour or so. Finally, she had to go, so I stumbled drunkenly around in
search of Kim & KC. Eventually I ran into Kim & Kara, who said
they´d been looking for KC but couldn´t find him. Kara had asked the
bouncers, who said they hadn´t kicked anyone out, so we eventually came
to the conclusion he´d gone back to the hostel. So we caught a cab.
So far, not so bad.
When I walked into the hostel, I saw Casey passed out against he
wall. He looked as drunk as I felt, which wasn´t surprising given the
copious amount of alcohol we´d all consumed. So I woke him up, and we
all headed upstairs towards bed. Talking to Casey, asking him how he
was going, he says something along the lines of "Yeah, good. I will
need a just two or three stitches though. Who can give me stitches?"
Well, we are dumbfounded, all asking at once why he needs
stitches. Then he tilts his head back and shows us this big gash on
the underside of his chin. Turns out, he´d tripped over some girl and
face-planted on the stairs! No wonder he vanished. Must have killed,
even through the dulled drunken senses. So he´s there trying to talk
us into giving him stitches, which we clearly did not have the
requisites for.
I´d well and truly hit the wall. I was so tired and drunk, I
actually passed out at about this point. Felt so bad when I woke up
this morning to tails of Kim & Kara taking Casey to the hospital,
and watching the doctor give KC stitches. Apparently, there were two
operating tables in the room, but only one light. The other guy in
there was a car accident victim, who was in much worse shape than KC,
so they actually grabbed a torch and did the stitches under the flash
light. Crazy shit!
So Kim was grumpy this morning, KC was comatose for the first half
of the day, Kara had no sleep at all, and I was feeling a bit hung
over, but actually not so bad. I had plenty of laughs with other
hostel folk about KC´s epic night, and watching him passed out with a
hand down his pants. We felt bad for him, of course, but it WAS quite
funny.
We´ve had such a blast during our time so far, and actually have
had a pretty good run (except for the above!) Its quite difficult to
find enough time to write up any stories about what we´ve been doing.
The keyboards are often terrible (like this one - I´m just persevering)
most don´t have burners, some should be in a museum and definitely NOT
be running WinXP, and some don´t have USB access. That part sucks coz
it means I never get to upload photos. Got so many I want to upload
for you all to see. We´ve been in some amazing environments, seen
incredible scenery, met an absolute myriad of fun and interesting
people, and partied like we invented it. We´re definitely holding up
the Aussie reputation for partying and drinking. Everyone seems
seriously impressed with our talents in those regards. It has been so
awesome.
Miss you all, but having an absolute blast. Hope all is well for
you, healthy, happy and having a good time. I look forward to sharing
beers and stories with you all in late November through January, prior
to my next trip through Asia, Europe, and maybe Central America.
I´m still thinking 3 months starting Jan/Feb in Asia (Thailand,
Vietnam, Cambodia, India, Nepal, China, Japan - SO much in only 3
months) then into Europe. Probably spend more time in the expensive
European/British/Scandinavian countries earlier in the year (April -
June), then spend July/August in the cheaper eastern European
countries. I´m planning on being there until at least October, but
I´ll get a British working visa just in case. They only offer the
6-months-in-a-2-year-period-working-visa until the age of 30, so
I´m unlikely to make it back to use it after next year anyway - might
as well just get it and see if I feel like hanging around and working
or just heading home.
Will be interesting to see what I do then. But I am very tempted
to also travel from Mexico through to Colombia then down through Brazil
to Argentina, which we´re sadly missing on this trip. I always knew
travelling would be addictive, coz everyone always says it, but it
suits me so well, I´m quite amazed. Still, missing friends and family
for so long would suck. Meh? Wait and see.
Next we are off to Nazca to see the Nazca Lines - hopefully sky
dive above them. That would be so awesome! If you don´t know what
they are, Google it, coz they´re supposed to be amazing. Then we´ll
hit the Oasis at Huacachina for some dune boarding on the way through
to Lima for a couple of days to sort out Casey´s passport issues and so
I can catch up with Kelly, a Peruvian chick from Lima that I met back
in La Paz, Bolivia. Should be good to hit the town in Lima with a
local. Then we head further north towards Ecuador for the Amazon
jungle & north Colombia for the Caribbean beaches and the Lost City
trek, which is the ruins of a city only found 20 years ago, with treks
only being run in the last 10 years or so. Should be awesome. It´s 4
days of Indiana Jones style jungle trekking to overgrown pyramid
ruins. Then back through Lima to Cuzco for the authentic 4 day Inca
Trail trek, prior to our return to Melbourne.
This has been a good session on the internet, but I´m seriously
sick of this stool and the sun being too warm on me through the window,
so I´m gonna take off now. After all this, I´ve still barely touched
on the experience we´ve been having, but that will just give me more
stories to tell you all when I get back.
Col
