Pete's Trip

Deserts & Desserts- The Islamic Republic of Iran

piratepete — Wed, 1 Oct 2014 15:38:00 GMT

It was around 8pm when we got off the bus in Khoor, a small town a few hours north of Yazd- the desert city in Central Iran with an old city centre still made of mud bricks. From there we were met by a taxi driver from the tiny oasis town (max population of 200) of Garmeh, who had enough English to tell us that’s where he’d take us. We’re not sure if he was trying to make us feel at home by driving on the left side of the road but he seemed to know what he was doing.

At blind corners he’d move back to the middle of the road and hover his hand above the horn after flashing his high-beams. The speedo didn’t work but that was probably a good thing because there’s no way we were going less than 100km/hr for most of that trip.

The taxi driver spoke very little English- probably a few phrases more than we knew in Farsi. But we had a great time together. He was crazy. Just after we sped out of town, we flew over a speed bump which made us all come off our seats. This made him throw his head back and laugh hysterically. It was at that point I said my little internal “sorry and goodbye” to my mother before I joined him in laughing. Laughter is definitely a universal language. Basic road safety is not.

A couple of hours later, when my body had had an adrenaline overload, we arrived in the small oasis. We stayed in what could be considered a bed & breakfast. Without the bed. After Quinten and I had eaten enough to feed a small family (a common theme for our time in the country- the food is just so good!), we went to our giant, carpeted (with multiple Persian rugs of varying sizes tessellated to fill the rooms), gas filled room. We were told not to worry about the gas smell though because the heater had been doing that for a few days.

The next day we got to see Garmeh in the light. It was exactly what you would expect from an oasis in the middle of the desert. There was one small lake (pond?) surrounded by date palms and mud brick houses. Where we were staying had a small pen at the front with some goats, chickens and camels.

We climbed the closest mountain for a better view and because there was nothing to do until dinnertime. The oasis seemed even smaller when we only had to climb for a few minutes before being able to see its entirety. Behind the town was a whole not of nothing until the horizon. On the other side of our mountain was a spectacular view of seemingly endless desert and dry mountains. We stayed atop the mountain until just before sunset. We moved around each side and sat admiring the vast emptiness for hours. That and eating fun Iranian candy.

Despite thinking I was going to die because we didn’t take lunch, probably the first meal we’d skipped since the trip began, it was amazing having all that to ourselves.

It was the first time since arriving in Iran that I took my headscarf and butt-covering coat off in public. It was the first time I hadn’t been freezing, and we figured no one could see us. At least we were hoping no one could see us because we had to get the standard photo of Quinten as he stands facing an amazing back drop, butt naked.

Thinking the day/trip/year couldn’t get any better (unless maybe Quinten had’ve brought lunch…) we headed back to Mustafa’s, the carpet and breakfast where we were staying. We were wrong, the day got so much better. It was back at the B&B that we found what really makes Iran one of my favourite places; the people. Shay and Barham were in the main area eating weird nuts we’d never tried and drinking bootleg liquor.

Alcohol is illegal in Iran. Which apparently just means you can’t waste it so when someone pours you a cup of vodka, you drink it all. And I’m not exaggerating when I say cup of vodka, Barham taught me that “coke is for the colour” and is only to be used to disguise what’s making you so red-faced and giggly.

Barham and Shay were a highlight for me. They were the loveliest couple. Originally from Iran, they moved to England after the government got a little crazy (not technically PC but appropriate) and had moved back in the last year to sell off the family real estate. Quinten and I eventually went to stay with them in Esfahan and again ate all their food and drank all their liquor.

A little later in the evening and everyone was enjoying their dinner and liquor and woah, the headscarves start falling off. In Iran, it is now law that women have to wear the hijab in public so when in private company of family and friends, this is not continued. Barham told me I could take it off because they wouldn’t be afraid of my hair but wow did I feel exposed all of a sudden. It’s weird how something like that can change so quickly. A couple weeks prior I was walking around Brisbane in short shorts and a singlet and now I was so uncomfortable having my whole head exposed.

We were told that there was a group coming that night who would be going on a little day trip the next day we could join if we liked. Of course we agreed. The group hadn’t arrived by the time we were stumbling to our carpet bed but we met them at breakfast.

We’re still not entirely sure of the group dynamics but it was primarily a family reunion. There were sisters who hadn’t seen each other in 5 years since they’d all moved away to different countries. And they did what sisters do- there was giggling, dancing, joking and a hell of a lot of laughing. It was amazing to be a part of.

The bus left after breakfast and we sat down quietly before we had ladies cooing all over us. There was so much flirting. Everyone was so friendly and keen to have a great time. Afterall, if you’ve only got a few days together, you have to make the most of it. They were dancing in the corridor of the bus and it wasn’t long until we were joining them. They instructed me on the best way to slowly slip my headscarf back and back until it falls off, as to avoid a sudden change, and cheered when I complied.

The first stop for this family reunion? Jail. We just had to swing by to see if the guy who was arrested last night was doing ok. The reason they were so late getting in the night before was that they’d been stopped by police. The police found a lot of alcohol on board. This meant that someone had to take the fall. The man stayed overnight in jail and had to appear in court to pay a fine the next day. He was released that afternoon and joined us in the desert. He arrived with a few coke bottles full of wine he’d somehow acquired.

We then continued joking, laughing and dancing until we got to the salt flats. The natural beauty of Iran is astounding. It has everything. No matter what part of the country you’re in, there is some incredible show of nature.

The rest of the day is a bit of a blur now (perhaps the coke bottle wine?) but there was camel riding, standing in the back of a 4wd truck, endless sand dunes and sitting around a giant fire listening to the group sing old Persian folk songs.

As we were sitting atop a massive sand dune, laughing at the group rolling, jumping and sliding down the side, singing and just having a great time, Quinten and I reflected on where we were and what we were doing. People back home weren’t all pleased with the idea of us gallivanting around the Islamic Republic but sitting in the middle of the desert, between Iraq and Afghanistan, is one of the happiest moments of my life. It is a very misunderstood destination that I recommend all my friends visit- and not just for the fantastic food!

The country itself is gorgeous, but the people are the most beautiful you will ever meet.

Mongolia by bus

piratepete — Sat, 12 Jul 2014 11:45:00 GMT

We took a bus from Ulaanbaatar to Moron- a town presumably named after the people who catch the bus there. The bus reportedly takes between 15 and 30 hours, that's Mongolian consistency for you. We arrived at 1pm to buy tickets, only to be told the 2pm and 4pm buses were full and we managed to grab the last couple seats on the 6pm bus. We waited around and ate the time away before the driver turned the engine on at five to six. Woah, was the bus about to leave on time? We jumped on and found our seats- we were assigned the very back corner. Our seats sat above the rest of the bus, our knees at the level of the heads in front of us. Everyone's luggage was stored behind our heads and wedged in the gaps between our headrests. The window was shoulder to bum level and even my shoulders were too wide for the seat. As I had the window seat, the roof of the bus had a nice curve meaning I had to sit with my head constantly tilted to the right.
The bus left just before 7, apparently the engine needed to run for a while before we left, and headed straight to the petrol station, had no one thought that they might need to start with a full tank before this big trip?

Before too long we were off along the highway. This route is one of the most popular roads in Mongolia, many locals travelling from the capital to the picturesque lake for their summer holidays. Less than an hour into the main highway trip we hit a bump big enough to make the back row airborne. As I was leaning forward, due to lack of shoulder room, I was thrown into the guy in front of me. He took it pretty well and joked about us getting to know each other better.
Another bumpy hour in and the driver had to slam on the breaks to slow down before a massive pothole (all the others hadn't worried him and had become quite a joke between Kelsey and I as we realised we wouldn't be getting any sleep that night). The sudden change again caused the whole back row to be launched off their seats. I was lucky in the way that I had to constantly lean my head to the right as it meant only my shoulder was thrown against the roof. Kelsey hit her head on the roof above her seat hard enough to leave a 10cm crack (in the roof, not her head, don't worry) and came down with such force that landing on the armrest drew a drop of blood and left an impressive bruise. It was at this point that we all scrounged around to find seat-belts. After every stop I had to help the old Mongolian man in his traditional clothes do his up.

The fun of the bumpiness got old pretty quickly as soon as you wanted to sleep. We had a lot of fun with it though, you just need to get your iPod out and put on some good hip hop and it feels like you're having a great
dance party.
We pulled into a rest stop for dinner at 9pm. The sunset was turning the clouds above endless plains and mountains a beautiful pink and purple. The temperature dropped rapidly and I started to wish I'd brought more than my one thin hoodie. The toilets at the rest stop we just like any other in the world. Except the toilet part. There was a block of six doors and a line of people waiting around. I opened one door to discover a brilliant type of squat compost toilet. There were two planks of wood with a gap the size of another plank of wood between them, and a six metre drop in between. The doors didn't quite close, leaving a gap big enough to let light (and any determined eyes) peep in.
We ordered dinner at the rest stop the same way we'd grown accustomed to over the few days before, we pointed at what looked like good words for a reasonable price. We ended up with what we expected, a variation of mystery meat (generally salty mutton), potatoes and some form of side salad, usually carrot or cabbage.
Somehow everyone knew when they had to start eating quickly and jump back on the bus so we followed suit. Another half hour of enjoying the most amazing views, green fields and mountains as far as you could see, before darkness brought frustration. It was clear our driver was trying to get us there at the 15 hour end of the spectrum and didn't let bumps or other cars slow him down. Nor the absence of a paved road. Kelsey managed to fall asleep around 10pm when the bus left the road and headed along one of the many dirt paths. Around midnight, just after our pee stop, I decided to lay in the aisle of the bus, reasoning that anything would be more comfortable than my seat. I was right. A lady tried to warn me saying the ground was very dirty but not having to bend my neck made laying in the spare metre with my legs curled around someone's cardboard box feel like a luxury hotel bed. After a little while I had to sacrifice my hoodie pillow for warmth.
Laying on the ground was more comfortable but not any easier to sleep. I was directly above the engine and could hear it threaten to fall off with every gear change. The failing suspension provided a loud squeaky soundtrack to the pain each time your head hit something.
Whilst laying against someone's cardboard box, I became a pillow for them. The man laying on top of the box inched his pillow onto my shins before realising his box had ended. He eventually figured out I wasn't made of cardboard but in the darkness couldn't tell what exactly his new bed was. He touched my pants gently to feel the material and when this didn't provide any clarity he poked my calf and gave my thigh a little shove. He seemed ok with the result, deciding to sleep on the bottom half of my legs for the next hour.
When the sun rose (at 4am!) we pulled into a little petrol station on one of the 12 side by side dirt tracks that had replaced the paved road the night before. At every other stop in the wide open plains there seemed to be some unwritten rule about one side of the bus being for men to pee and the other for women. Early on this hadn't been obvious enough for two Spanish travellers who began to follow us from a distance until they saw Kelsey and my pasty white butts squat in the field. Apparently this stop was different. I pulled my pants down behind the little shed of the petrol station only to have a man standing on the roof come and yell some form of "no no no, what are you doing crazy white girl? Do you not know there are toilets just over there?" In Mongolian while gesturing to a little wooden structure 200 metres away. I blushed and pulled up my pants, heading for what was in other peoples eyes obviously a toilet block. This structure had the same wooden plank squatting idea as the ones before but with a few minor changes. Doors, for instance, were a frivolous option they didn't care for. Instead, there were wooden walls up to waist height between the three 'stalls'. Instead of doors they'd built another waist height stack of wood (with ample gaps) a metre in front of the stalls to stop passers by being able to see you squatting. This was a pretty great privacy barrier in theory except that to see if any stalls were empty people had to walk between the wall and look into each stall. This meant that you got to have awkward little 'sorry, I'm still peeing' waves and smiles, making eye contact with people as you were squatting and they peered in.

At 8am we got back onto paved road and Kelsey and I slept for two hours with jumpers between our heads as pillows.

We arrived at 10am, only 16 hours after we left. At the same time as the bus that had left two hour before us.

If the overnight bus in China that we'd taken a week ago, with it's lay flat beds was the most comfortable I've ever taken, this bus was competing for a title at the other end. It was definitely not comfortable but was a great source of type two fun. You know, the type of fun where you look back at it and it's a great laugh but you don't want to have any more of it that day.

I'm catching it back tomorrow...

Slovakia: skiing and eating (mostly the latter)

piratepete — Fri, 8 Feb 2013 07:49:00 GMT

We arrived in Bratislava (the first word I can roll my R's in so I walked around town saying it repeatedly) very early one morning and headed to the hostel to dump our bags before the sun came up. We'd caught the overnight train from Berlin and a guy from Budapest who was in our compartment made us lock the door so the gypsies couldn't get in…

We did the usual get a map and a quick briefing from the hostel girl before she warned us nothing would be open and we could hang around for a couple of hours. We figured this was the case as it was 6am so we asked if things would be open around 8. Her response was "Yes. Or nine…. Or ten" so I decided to have a little nap in a baggage area, on the floor, behind a curtain, while the boys laughed at me and played chess. When the sun had come out and there were a couple of people on the street we decided to go explore.

Bratislava is tiny. We walked around the city rather quickly and had breakfast at the only open cafe we could find. Here we learnt that 'chocolate' in Slovakian is 'kokos' and 'cocos' is 'coconut' when I had my first ever coconut cappuccino. The city is sweet though, it was still snowing and covered in snow when we were there. The people were friendly and best of all, it was cheap.

We went to the biggest pub in Slovakia for dinner. It only had 7 rooms… But woah, the food! I had an amazing garlic soup with goat's cheese in a bowl of bread for a dollar followed by potato dumplings that were less than a centimetre long (I have no idea how they got the potato in them) covered in a creamy sauce. So delicious but so rich that even with the boys' help, I couldn't finish it.

The hostel we stayed in had a creepy bar themed after the horror movie 'Hostel'. There were fake severed limbs and one table was just glass over a bathtub with fake bloody handprints, just what you want in a place that you have to sleep in.

The next day we took two trains and bus to the town that we were going skiing in and arrived at dinnertime. We had again sat somewhere we shouldn't have, apparently it was a compartment for mothers and children but no-one bothered us and I'm getting quite the gut I could pass as pregnant if needed. The train trip was incredibly scenic in a way. For most of it you could see nothing but white which was cool because you couldn't tell where the sky stopped and the ground began until we saw the cutest little bunny rabbits and deer.

Zdiar was a small town and we got off the bus on the side of the road where someone had told us to (they could tell by the backpacks that we were staying in the only hostel in town) and walked down the road, standing in the snow on the edge whenever a car had to pass. The hostel was probably the best I've stayed in. There were a couple of beautiful dogs to greet us and friendly folks. We joined a guy from Melbourne, a guy from USA and a girl from Canada for a fun and funny dinner at a traditional local restaurant where the garlic soup had goats' cheese and an egg, so tasty.

We went skiing the next day after spending almost a whole morning admiring our 90's onsies, Donald having a construction worker yellow one, and me a bright pink masterpiece. I wanted to keep it, I really did. Donald and I had never been skiing so we had a lesson from a young man who kept mixing up his rights and lefts. Despite making Donald fall over once, I got the hang of it pretty quickly and was zigzagging through the obstacle poles by myself in no time.

The most fun of the day however was after we'd dropped our skis off and found a hill on the way back to the hostel. We slid, raced and tackled each other down it for longer than we spent on the mountain skiing. After utterly exhausting ourselves, we watched old Western movies and went out to dinner with the Melbournite to the pizza place we'd heard so much about. It was definitely in the list of best pizzas I've had. So, so amazing and $5.

We spent the next day on a big hill playing in the snow. We had intended to take the dog for a bit of a walk and ended up trudging through knee deep snow up this big hill. The dog loved it though, we took a sled (and after watching the 60's Western Django we sang as we pulled it behind us like a coffin) and every time someone went down the hill, the dog would chase and tackle them. Walking was a lot harder than you'd think; some steps your foot would be on an almost solid surface and then with the next you're knee deep and deciding to roll instead.

We spent the late afternoon playing ice hockey on a frozen tennis court with a 6 year old local girl. The ice had started to melt so I gave up on the skates and even just on sliding around in my shoes after the 4th time ice cracked beneath my feet. I left Donald and Steph (the guy from Melbourne) to play against the 6 year old girl and the game continued for a good half hour before they destroyed the ice.

We were again exhausted and ravenous by dinner time and had decided that the pizza challenge possibly wouldn't be that hard. It was only 50cm in diameter and looking back, I wish I had of done it but because we went out with a few more people, we were being polite and didn't want to look like pigs. So instead, I finished the tastiest 32cm pizza and radler (beer and lemonade), ate half of a giant nutella calzone (which was as amazing as it sounds) and then had a berry sundae. I don't know why I'm getting fat here!

We had to leave the next day but we had time for another amazing meal in this incredible town. I had inch long dumplings filled with goat's cheese and then covered in sour cream and bacon (grandpa, I'll come back just to take you here for the food).

Oh goodness, I've fallen in love with Slovakia.

Behaving in Berlin

piratepete — Fri, 8 Feb 2013 07:44:00 GMT

Donald and I got to Berlin on Monday night after catching two buses, a ferry, two S bahns and a U bahn. Again, people may have doubted our ability to get there (rightfully so) but it only took us a few minutes of being lost before I managed to find the hostel. Of course Lenny had no difficulties when he arrived the next morning but we did it in the dark!

We wandered around the streets covered in funky graffiti and went to a tiki themed Indian restaurant for dinner. They were really surprised that we didn't order any cocktails (as everywhere on that street has 3.50euro cocktails) so they made us a complimentary one anyway.

When Lennox had arrived and we'd had a little catch up, the three of us braved the freezing wind to see the East Side Gallery. We then spent way too long in a supermarket buying a ridiculous amount of food which didn't last until the next day.

That night we had our first Berlin kebab. For 3 euros you get a big triangle of Turkish bread filled with whatever meat that particular shop has. They are the tastiest things and so cheap so we had them for lunch every day for the next week. At our first place, we also got free tea and the boy working there couldn't stop smiling at me so Lennox and Donald keep threatening to sell me to them. But to be honest, if I got a daily kebab out of it, I think it'd be a pretty happy marriage.

We tried to have a kebab from a different place each day, there were about 5 in the same block near where we were staying. Each kebab was slightly different but I managed to get winked at by almost every owner. One day after finishing breakfast, we showered, got ready and went straight to lunch. You think that eating a kebab an hour after finishing breakfast would be enough but it wasn't. Lennox was still hungry so we joked about getting another one. We never saw anyone order two kebabs so we left because we didn't want to look like fatties. And we walked into one across the road.

Trying one from a different place each time only lasted until we found the best one. It was almost always full, and had a steady stream of people coming to get giant plates of kebab goodness. Instead of filling a bit of Turkish bread, a more traditional meal for dinner is doner plate. It's chips covered in tomato sauce and mayo, absolutely covered in shaved meat and salads, smothered in garlic sauce, a chilli one with a bit of spice and another mystery sauce that was delicious. You then get strips of Turkish bread with it and a drink for 5 euros. Why did no one tell me about this? I will have to go to Turkey now. Brisbane kebab places, you need to up your game!

The other thing we were looking forward to in Berlin was the nightlife. We went out for cheap cocktails most nights and you would assume that they would be really watered down but here they did the opposite. Our first night started in Ruby's, a nice Indian man who made deadly cocktails. Lennox bet me the most expensive cocktail in the place if I could eat a mini yellow tomato that came on my first drink (tomato would have to be my least favourite food). I got gypped, all the cocktails were $3.50 but Donald still thinks of it as one of the best moments so it was all worth it. After Ruby had closed the bar, we sat with him and he made us his favourite drink- vodka and lemon juice.

We then headed to a techno club that we'd heard about and somehow found a side entrance without realising and got out of paying the entry fee. It was a cosy little, smoke filled club that resembled a living room.

Another night, after a few cocktails from another bar, we tried to find a big mega club we'd heard about. On the way there, we decided it was too cold and windy to be walking around so we walked into the closest club. It happened to be a gay an lesbian bar but after my haircut which made me look kind of like a little boy, we fit in. A haircut from someone that doesn't speak the same language as you is an interesting experience. She had limited English but it was much better than completely unhelpful German. She told me I "have many, many hairs" which I suppose makes more sense than saying you have thick hair but I giggled nonetheless as she told me that she didn't want to make me cry because of my haircut.

Back to the nightclub, it turned out to be a lot of fun, I could tie my denim jacket (yeah, that happened) around my waist without looking out of place.

We spent most days shopping as Donald needed a jacket and shoes. We never got either of those things but Lennox and I accidentally both ended up with a denim jacket and similar sweaters before we realised what we'd done. I wish I had of taken photos of all the ridiculous jumpers the boys made me try on, I was tempted to buy the bright blue puffy coat and furry orange jumper just to spite them.

Every time we went to do something outside in Berlin we ended up with pretty dodgy weather or bad luck. It took us a couple of days but we finally made it up the tv tower, the highest tower in Germany, but still had pretty low visibility. We skipped most of the tourist things because we did them all when we were here in 2010 but we were asked to be on German tv! I had to refuse because of the whole I don't speak German thing though. Damn, I guess I will have to come home instead of becoming a German superstar.

Danish Dames

piratepete — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 23:43:00 GMT

I know it's been a while since the last entry, sorry mum.

Donald and I set off from Frankfurt to Copenhagen a couple of weeks ago. Lenny headed to his Grandma's place south of Munich and left us to our own devices. If anyone thought that could possibly go off without a hitch, you do not know Donald or I. Neither of us have the best time management or a sense of direction. But we got there! After I'd gotten us to the train station half an hour early because I forgot what time the train left, we managed to find our seats and felt rather smug in our achievements, we didn't need Lenny! Until the ticket guy came. We'd gotten on the second carriage and found our compartment with seats 85 & 86. Turns out we were sitting in first class, whoops! Apparently we were supposed to be on the second carriage from the other end. And every compartment had seats 85 & 86. The ticket master said we could sit in any second class seat that was free and we just had to walk through the train until we found one. We walked through 9 carriages before putting our backpacks down in a compartment with a couple of free seats. We then decided to walk around to see if we could find an empty one. So we walked back through the train and picked up our backpacks and took them to our empty compartment. I then had to walk back as I'd left my hat in a previous carriage, people noticed it was my third time walking through.

The rest of the train trip was uneventful until we got to the ferry. We assumed that we would have to get off the train, catch the ferry and then catch a different train the rest of the way once we'd crossed the sea but somehow the ferry opened up and our train had a spot inside. Crazy European ferries! We had to get off the train whilst inside so we went up to the outside deck to enjoy the view. 5 minutes before the ferry stopped, we got told to get back on the train and for everyone to get back in their cars and whatnot. We raced down the maze of the ship and somehow ended up next to the train but on the opposite side. We managed to race around a minute before the train doors closed.

Our first night in Copenhagen was interesting. We went to grab some dinner in the centre of town and almost everything was closed so we walked into the first pub we saw that had a sign for burgers. Good ol' Sam's karaoke bar. There were only 4 other people in the bar and they were all friends with the barman so apparently dinner and karaoke isn't overly popular on a Thursday night in Denmark. It was very entertaining though, we were serenaded over our rather disappointing but huge burgers.

On Friday we met up with Olly, an old friend from school, to explore the city and find ice cream. I had been looking forward to Copenhagen for the ice cream. They usually have plenty delicious ice-creameries and I hadn't had any for the two weeks I'd been away. 2 weeks without ice cream! We wandered around the city and went to "the green light district" Christiana after going out for a great long brunch and catching up.

For dinner we joined Morgwn, a girl I used to work with who is now studying in Denmark, and Paris, her partner, in a swanky local restaurant. We then kept the evening going by heading to the cheapest bar in town. It had signs painted on the windows advertising 10 kroner ($2) shots and it's safe to say that we took advantage of this with the ultimately tasty 'kangaroo liqueur'. It was great to see everyone again and make some new memories, the boys being told to "keep their women in check" would have to be a favourite.

On Saturday morning Donald and I met Morgwn and Paris in Malmo, Sweden. We were supposed to meet on the train but again, Donald and I aren't the best with time management (he got distracted by talking to our dorm buddy and didn't realise we had to hurry- not my fault!). Malmo is adorable. It's a small town that was covered in snow, still had presents hanging in a tree from Christmas and fairy lights on the streets. It was still asleep when we got there though. Things opened late (and closed ridiculously early) and there was no one walking around yet so we went into a fancy coffee and cake store.

Here I learnt a rather important lesson; when going to the toilet, you have to turn the lock twice or people can still open the door.

We walked around a little more and spent most of our time trying to find a rock to see how frozen the river was. Eventually Morgwn found a cobblestone and threw it down with less than exciting results, the ice was pretty thick it turned out.

We went to TGI Friday's for lunch as it's Morgwn's favourite. I can see why. Oh my goodness, the food. Morgwn and I had the most delicious cocktails I have ever tasted. Hers was a mango and berry daiquiri which is probably worth selling your right leg for and I had what can best be described as heaven. It was basically an oreo milkshake with creme de cocoa in, complete with oreo on top. So delicious. I would have been happy with just that but I also had chicken strips with the best fries and honey mustard sauce, just like back in the states. The others had burgers but we also got a side which is pretty accurately described as potato crisp nachos. I was fulfilled to say the least. As it took us so long to be able to move again, the stores closed and we weren't able to stock up on delicious and cheap cider.

Donald and I had a much needed sleep in on Sunday before exploring the National Gallery of Art and much more notably, the frozen lake outside it. I was so happy when we realised that it was frozen solid (most of it) and we could walk on it. Don't worry, we made some kids go first to make sure it would hold us. We spent an hour walking along the bay to find the Little Mermaid, not realising how far away it was nor how cold. It was minus ten degrees and the whole walk was into the wind but eventually we got to the statue. Yep, it is exactly how they describe it, a little statue of a mermaid.

For dinner we had a kebab because that's what the locals do. Copenhagen kebabs were fine until we got to Berlin and tasted the greatest ones on Earth (more on that in the next entry). After an ice-cream-less weekend due to EVERY ice-creamery being closed for Winter (I don't see why, ice cream is always delicious and they wouldn't have to worry about it melting!) I settled for a Toblerone mcflurry. Ice cream in minus five degree temperatures is as cold and uncomfortable as you'd think but somehow more delicious.

That night Donald and I had the dorm room to ourselves so we did what anyone would have, we pushed all the bunk beds together and made a giant fort. Luckily no one checked in late that night because we fell asleep across 4 beds.

The 8 hour bus from Copenhagen to Berlin was filled with a school trip for 14 year olds. It was tempting to not go the whole way. I didn't mind it though, Donald learnt of my special talent of being able to sleep on all forms of transport for a ridiculously long time, before and after a really good nights sleep, while he sat and had to listen to 20 teenagers giggle in Danish.

Oh Copenhagen, we wont miss how expensive you are but we will miss your really good looking people. Phawrrr!

I have been spending too much time with the boys. The word (sound, really) 'phawrrr' gets used in almost every conversation just with a different emphasis to change the meaning.

I'll try not to be so slack on the next couple of entries, Denmark was a lot like home though so not too much to report but I'm currently in Slovakia and have been having snowball fights with local kids, skiing and may attempt the 50cm pizza challenge tonight.

Cheers.

Photos: Europe 2013

piratepete — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 04:18:00 GMT

Czech It Out

piratepete — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 04:15:00 GMT

Prague!

I will try to keep the puns in Czech (ok sorry, no more).

Prague is magical. A medieval city with a castle, beautiful buildings, lots of bridges and ridiculously cheap beer, what more could a girl want?

It has been around negative 4 degrees for the last 4 days. However, snow has a way of making the cold magical too.

We had beautiful blue skies the first full day we had here. We took advantage of them by visiting the old town square, the astronomical clock, Charles bridge and Tyn cathedral. Now I'm not considered a religious person at all but I find something incredibly humbling about old cathedrals and churches. I spent a good half hour inside the Frankfurt cathedral and would have stayed longer in this one had we not been ushered around by the men working there (brothers? Again, not religious but you get the idea). I dont know what it is about them; their huge size, the obvious amounts of dedication and work put into building and maintaining them or just the way they can have such a big effect on people but there is something I find fascinating and Australia being so young is missing out. I lit my first candle in one in Frankfurt. There should be signs around telling you of the process because there were a dozen or so already lit and glowing a soft yellow. I lit mine and the flame was red. I freaked out, Jesus knew I didn't go to church! After finding Lenny and telling him we needed to leave immediately as I was about to go to hell, he explained that they all started red. I'm still alive and not in hell yet so I'm tempted to believe him.

But yes, back to Prague. The blue skies try to trick you. You look out of a window and think it will be a beautiful day and you must rush outside at once. Then you leave and the wind tries to stab you with little tiny knives. Consequently, we try to avoid big open spaces in these circumstances and dont end up being outside for long. We spent a while walking around the castle the next day and visited the old st. Vitus Cathedral with its amazing stained glass windows, unbelievably high ceilings and columns adorned with gold figurines. And of course, we walked the bridge again.

I can't help but love a city with trams either. Those that know me, know my terrible sense of direction and occasional bad luck with public transport. I don't know how but I always seem to pick the exact wrong way to walk to get me back to where I want to be. Luckily, Lennox has some super power that tells him which way the tram really comes from and gives him the ability to read the maps with crazy symbols and words. Apart from them going in every possible direction (except from where I think the station is), catching a tram here is an adventure in itself. It took us a while to find the tram stop. Because there isn't really one. You just wait for the tram to stop at the intersection (there is a little sign on the footpath with a timetable) and then you walk out into the middle of the road and hop on. Brilliant!

Yesterday, whilst coming up from breakfast, we noticed the snow. So much beautiful white goodness coming from the sky. I swear it has magical powers because I didn't care that I wasn't wearing a coat as I went outside into the courtyard and just spun around, giggling like an excited schoolgirl. Suddenly the cold doesn't matter at all and everything is infinitely more beautiful. We went back to the old town square and again I made Lenny walk across the bridge. But this time there were no cobbled stone streets, everything was white and exciting! I think I was probably the happiest person in this country, I couldn't stop grinning and yet everyone (including Lenny, he's really getting very European) was walking around grumbling. Most of the crowds had opted to stay inside so we played a little game of hiding behind groups of strangers as the snow ploughs passed.

Oh and breakfast! The hostel that we're staying in has an all you can eat breakfast for 6 bucks. I think we would be banned from it if we were staying any longer. Instead of stopping after eating a big bowl of muesli and yogurt the way other people did, and the way I would have if I were just eating breakfast at home, we stayed for hours to ensure we got our money's worth. I would also manage to finish a big bread roll, cut in half so I could cover each side with ham, cheese and salami; toast with nutella, a nutella crepe, a few slices of fruit, a couple of glasses of juice and a coffee... Also with nutella in it.

This meant that we only needed (and could physically fit) two meals a day. Which was actually a bit of a pity as food is so tasty and cheap. One of these meals was a delicious creamy pasta with pork and bacon through it. For those times when just one cut of pig isn't enough. Lj got a saucepan of pork and baby potatoes bathed in cream and cheese. It was incredible. Another outing included coffee and cake. We pointed at two different types of cake (as our Czech is terrible) and asked for an espresso and a hot chocolate. All up it cost us 5 bucks. Plus, I'm pretty sure the hot chocolate was made only from melted chocolate and hot thickened cream. It was so unhealthily thick. I will be coming home with diabetes but it was worth it.

Beer too! Unfortunately, I'm not the biggest beer drinker. And being sick has lowered my tolerance even more. But dont worry, I found a solution! I am currently drinking half a litre of a 'radler'. It is half beer and half old-school home made lemonade, full deliciousness. And it cost 75 cents. If only I could speak Czech and handle the cold, I could move here.

Czech yourself before you wreck yourself,

Pete

Oh dear lord, it's cold!

piratepete — Sat, 12 Jan 2013 20:17:00 GMT

Alright folks, it's blog time again! Basically, I'm just too lazy to email everyone so here you go!

Fair warning: I dont go back and proof read anything so it's just in the order that it pops into my head.

I'm in Europe! Cold, cold Europe! Seriously, it's freezing.

Lennox (who may be referred to as Lenny, Lj or idiot from here on out) and I started our adventure on Monday from Brisbane. Our plane was delayed by over 3 hours as soon as we got to the airport so we did what anyone would have done, we headed to the bar. Why not grab an overpriced Aussie beer before going to the land of beer? Besides, 10am in Brisbane is nighttime in Germany so we were just trying to get used to the timezones.

After falling asleep in the airport and only being woken by "the final boarding call" we got on an 8 hour plane to China. We didn't sit together, so when the only communication we had was Lenny passing me his boarding pass with a drawing of stick figures labelled 'you smell' and 'people fleeing', we got funny looks from the people sitting beside us. It was even better when the Chinese customs guys asked to see my boarding pass though.

Oh Chinese immigration, we're sorry. They use thermal imaging to take everyones temperatures as you arrive in China. They had a little video on the plane about not letting sick/diseased people enter... Lennox is quite sick at this stage. Anyway, you walk through the arrivals hall toward customs and a loudspeaker announces that they are about to take your temperature. Everyone just keeps walking and nothing happens, until Lenny and I walk through. Suddenly there is a loud beeping alarm and we turn to see if any officials are going to take us aside. Guess we really are just that hot. No one was close so we just walked briskly and got lost in another crowd.

The Guangzhou airport is not the nicest I've been to. There is one coffee shop where we had a couple of ridiculously priced hot chocolates and I failed to eat noodle soup with chopsticks. People stared. I'm not normally that bad, I swear! But that is all there is to inside so we lay down and had a nap. Luckily we were only there for 3 hours, we have 16 to look forward to on the way home.

We then jumped on the plane to Amsterdam, this one had tv's and tasty food but I couldn't help sleeping through most of it. I knew I was going to freeze when we had to walk to the plane and it was 16 degrees in China. We then got out in Amsterdam and I decided that Europe in Winter was a ridiculous idea as it was 4 degrees. Lennox was still in a t-shirt at this stage. The sun didn't rise until we were well on our way to Frankfurt, at 8:30am. So it looks like I'll just be sleeping for 16 hours a day if even the sun wont come out.

We were only in Frankfurt for a day but that was definitely enough. On the train from the airport, we gave a stranger some money so we could be part of his group ticket and he asked us why we weren't leaving that day. Yep, even the locals don't see why you'd stay so long. But a day was perfect for buying a coat, some gloves and eating a few bratwursts. As soon as I'm not feeling uncomfortably full, it would be time to try the next bakery. So much deliciousness and so little time. My bag is already 5kg heavier, and I'm sure I will be too by the end of the week. Plus we spent a lot of time walking past reflective surfaces admiring how damn good we look in Winter clothes.

The next day, Lennox went to Hamburg and I headed to Nuremberg to meet Zoe. Lenny pointed me in the direction of my platform but I managed to find the right carriage and seat by myself. Here I had my first solo German interaction (as Lennox is fluent, I let him do most of the talking). I could understand 'ticket' and 'mastercard' so I handed them over to the lady without using any English and I'm sure it would have been believable had my ticket not been under the German equivalent of "Mr". So close!

I managed to get off the train in the right town and then catch one to the right suburb where I was meeting Zoe. Zoe works at the Hilton in Brisbane so she gets to stay at any around the world for cheap rates. I wore my nice jeans and t-shirt to be as clean and fancy as possible but nothing looks quite as out of place as walking into the Hilton with a backpack. But oh did we get our money's worth out of the buffet breakfast. One things the Germans and I get along very well with is breakfast. Salami and ham bread rolls, oh I could definitely get used to this.

Zoe and I walked around the cute little town, admiring the adorable bridges and old buildings and generally just trying not to freeze. We spent a few hours at the Nuremberg museum, which was also the house of 3 very well off families at different times, learning a little bit about its history and the beautiful rooms. By early evening we were both sick and the cold convinced us to go to bed at the hotel and watch girly movies.

I'm back with Lenny now in Prague. Once again, I managed to get to a new town all by myself! Zoe and I left each other at the main train station, I figured out that there are two things I can order in German so I went to the store and bought a salami baguette (and yes, in German it's just pronounced as 'salami baguette') and a butter pretzel for the 4 hour bus.

The trip was beautiful. There were open fields covered in snow, amazing pine trees and adorable traditional German villages. But mainly I passed the time by planning my wedding to the gorgeous Ashton Kutcher lookalike sitting next to me. There is a weird phenomenon in Germany that we've noticed; the women are really attractive and yet there are very few good looking men. I must have blushed when the bus attendant man asked me what sort of ticket my sleeping friend had because when I told him we weren't together he gave a childish "oh ok, your acquaintance then..." and smiled playfully at me. He will be invited to our wedding because he got me to wake my neighbour with a gentle nudge. He may not actually speak English, we sat in silence for the 4 hours...

Lennox was waiting for me at the bus stop with a block of Milka chocolate and we managed to get to the hostel where he stayed a couple of years ago by memory. And it snowed lightly as we walked! Snow makes the cold bearable, I sat on the bus with the biggest smile as soon as it started snowing, I was that kid.

We planned on going out for dinner and ridiculously cheap beer last night. We had to wait until 7pm until the pubs opened so we just sat down in bed to wait and we woke up hours later sleeping head to toe. I guess we were a little more tired and still sicker than we thought. Might have to stay here a little longer anyway, they have lots of bridges (my favourite thing) and it's cheap (also a favourite).

Talk soon,

Popsicle Pete.

Falls, Flores and Fruitshakes

piratepete — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 09:33:00 GMT

We took a little speed boat from Belize to Southern Guatemala on New Years Eve. It was ridiculously bumpy and I spilt a cup of soup on the man sitting next to me, I kept apologising and he kept saying it was ok and calling me chica.
We arrived in Livingston around 10am and wandered up the hill (I dont generally like when a country's first impression is a giant hill but a super friendly local guy was having a good chat to us so it was pretty cool) to find immigration almost a block away. Luckily we didn't need a visa because we hadn't planned on even visiting the country until we heard such good things. Livingston is unconnected to the rest of Guatemala by roads and has a different culture in itself. It was full of dreadlocks and laid back bars. Seeing full bars at lunch time gave us hope for a good New Years and after finding a hostel, a palace like building with giant turtles in the moat, we went out to find some Guatemalan food. There was only fried chicken everywhere. That night after dinner we tried to find the big party hostel that supposedly had a good bar and lots of people. We wandered around for hours until it started pouring and we settled on ice cream instead. Unfortunately, despite the rain, it was still ridiculously hot and we tried to devour our double scoop cones covered in chocolate gracefully. I failed. I spent ten minutes leaning into a wall under a bit of cover trying to eat my ice cream while people stared at the ice cream dripping all over the floor. When Jeff came over (he'd been hiding in his own corner) he just laughed and judged me as I cowered guiltily, making a huge mess. We woke up early and hangover free on New Years day and decided to catch the morning boat to the next town and continue into mainland Guatemala. We got there right on time and put our bags in the front of the boat and climbed over people to sit down. Because it was New Years there was no where to grab breakfast on the way and the first thing I ate this year was a stale packet of peanut m&ms. The boat trip was beautiful, we went through the canyon and through a few fishing villages before it started bucketing rain again and everyone was given a tarp to hide under. A couple of hours later we were in Rio Dulce to catch the 8 hour bus to Antigua. Once again, public holidays took us by surprise. The bus wouldn't run until the next day and Guatemala doesn't have collectivos like Mexico. We sat in a cafe out of the rain and had our first proper meal of the year: fried chicken. They seriously loved their fried chicken. A very nice local man had heard us trying to arrange a way to Antigua and gathered the other 8 people headed in a similar direction and convinced a friend with a mini van to drive us all to Guatemala city. This was the first trip where I'd sat in the front seat. Now we've ranked all the seats on the mini buses and you just have to avoid the back row (too bumpy and you get sick), the crappy fold-out half a seat in the middle (sore back) and the middle seat in the front, right next to the driver (it's a lot taller than the other front seats, rock hard and you can only see the rear-view mirror). The front seat is the best. Except that you can see the road and the way everyone drives. After passing a couple of fresh road accidents on the highway, everyone reached for their seatbelts. The front seat actually has one, the others do too but they're tied up in knots under the chairs to save space and people cant use them.

My first impression of Guatemalan roads was actually really good. The scenery was magical, it had everything. Apart from the few road accidents we'd seen, it seemed rather safe. For the start of the journey everyone seemed to drive only one car per lane and overtook for the most part where there weren't double yellow lines and tight corners. One of the most memorable bus trips we had in Mexico was in a big bus driving us mountain ranges. Our driver decided to overtake the big truck in front of us on a one lane each way, double lined road. At the same time, the car behind us started overtaking us while we overtook the truck. And just for good measure, of course there was a car coming in the opposite direction.

About 4 hours into the drive we got pulled over by a police road block. The policeman kept smiling at me while he asked for the driver's papers and then started trying to talk to me. I panicked a little when he came to my window and started talking to just me and I didn't understand a word, apparently he was just asking where I was from and trying to be flirty. We were on our way again after he checked two people's passports.

We stopped off at a roadside restaurant for a break and to grab some food where Jeff and I joked about all the no gun signs. When we got to Guatemala city and saw a lot more of them I was a little more concerned. We pulled up at the bus stop and the driver grabs a big hand gun and hides it in his pants before getting out, again the joys of being in the front seat. It was getting dark and having heard how dangerous Guatemala city is, and now starting to believe it, we went and jumped on a chicken bus to Antigua. The chicken bus name seemed like a big exaggeration when we got on as there were only two other people on the whole bus, they chucked Jeff's bag on the roof and sped off until more people jumped on. The buses are retired American school buses, they are designed to have two children per seat. Turns out you can fit 3 adults and a couple of kids on each one. Jeff had his knees up against the back of the chair in front as he's way too tall for them, I was cramped against the window and we could fit another man that just kept trying to squish us more. I never knew I could take up so little space. The locals were all really friendly and I got a "God bless you" from an old lady for smiling at her. To give you an idea of just how small the seats are, even my legs were too long to avoid crushing them into the seat in front. Jeff's legs were pretty much numb by the time we got off an hour later.

Antigua was beautiful. We arrived at night so just walked around the cobbled stone streets of the Colonial city and found the hostel a friend had recommended. It was beautiful and had nice timber furniture and hammocks outside. Unfortunately, we hadn't booked ahead and had to share the last single bed they had left. But we didn't mind, we were really only there for the breakfast. It didn't disappoint, we had a spinach and mozzarella omelette with roasted baby potatoes with rosemary the first day and I had pancakes with bacon, eggs and a bowl of fruits the other days. The first morning there we walked around town, surprised by how cold it was. When we'd gotten in the night before wed come straight from the beach so I was wearing short shorts and a singlet, we were too tired to get changed though so went to dinner with a German guy we met at the hostel and found a fancy Indian restaurant. You know that feeling when you walk in somewhere and you realise you're completely underdressed? We walked in with me in my short shorts and Jeff in boardies, both of us wearing wife beaters and see everyone in their suits. Didn't care, it was delicious and we were tired. Putting our jeans on after a couple of weeks of super warm weather came as a big surprise but was still an enjoyable novelty for a couple of days until we realised just how unprepared we are for the cold in Seattle.

Antigua used to be the capital of Guatemala but after a few too many earthquakes and constant rebuilding, it changed to Guatemala city. The town is surrounded by active volcanoes and has adorable old buildings, town squares and churches. It is supposed to be one of the best towns in the world to learn Spanish and I'm considering moving there for a couple of months because of how beautiful it was. Oh and there was lots of ice cream.

On our second day in Antigua we went to walk up a big hill with a great view of the city. There are a lot of armed robberies on the way up so you can only go twice a day when they have police scattered up the path. Two girls from our hostel got held up the day before we went because they didn't go at 10am or 3pm when the police are there. So at 10:40 we decided to race up, it was supposed to only be a half hour walk so we figured we could do it quickly. We made it up in less than 7 minutes and enjoyed the view before the police left. As we were about to leave, the police offered us a lift. We couldn't really understand what they said so I assumed they were offering us a lift and we jumped in the back of the ute and had a police escort back to the centre of town.

That afternoon we hiked to the top of an active volcano a couple of hours out of town. They drove us up the first 2000m and you walk for an hour and a half to get to the crater. Most of the walk was just going uphill through a path covered in trees on little rocks, it was not impressive at all and I wondered what I'd gotten myself into. An hour and 15 minutes into it, it changed immensely. The trees disappeared and the small rocks turned into black volcanic rocks and ash. All of a sudden you are standing on a big open plane where you have to lean against the wind to stand up straight and be super careful when you walk so you dont fall off. It was incredibly cold and windy and had the most amazing views. You could see town in the middle of a circle of volcanoes and watch the big one errupting every 10 minutes. During the daylight you can only see smoke coming up but night time apparently gives you the amazing red glow. We watched the sunset and then had to race down in the dark. It only takes about half an hour to get down to where you started if you scramble as quickly as we did. Luckily I'm very good at falling on my butt because I'm not so good at going down volcanoes without falling over. The hole in my shoe had filled with black ash, as had my nose and it had covered my face. My hands were so cold on the way down that moving them slightly or any breeze would sting but I couldn't put them in my pockets because of my likliness to fall. It was a fantastic experience!

We decided to spend an extra night in Antigua because we loved it so much (the breakfasts helped too) and just did a day trip to the lakeside town of Panajachal. We took our first shuttle bus there and it really set the scene for all of them for the next 10 days. The shuttle was supposed to pick us up at 8am and was a two hour trip, we thought that meant we'd be there at 10am. The bus was an hour late to pick us up and took 3 and half hours to get there. Our idea of morning coffee by the lake turned into lunch instead. It was a beautiful spot to have an afternoon nap under a tree and admire the huge lake and surrounding volcanoes. We jumped in another shuttle the next day to get to Semuc Champey.

A few extra hours and going from shuttle bus to standing in the back of a truck to another ute and we were there within 10 hours. It was completely worth it. Semuc Champey is absolutely stunning. There is only one small road down the bumpy mountain and it takes an hour cover the 10km (although apparently it's 9 km up and 11km down using the same road, not sure how that works). We spent a full day exploring the national park and experiencing everything it had to offer. We started that morning by climbing a muddy mountain (which I did in someone else's shoes because the guy insisted it was too slippery for thongs) to get to an amazing lookout of all the natural blue green pools of water that fell into one after another all the way down the slope to the river. After hiking up we made our way down to the pools and swam around and giggled as the little toe biting fish took us by surprise. The guide we went with then asked if we wanted to swim in a couple of other pools, of course we did so we went to get and continue down the path. No, no, he explained and we followed him, jumping off the small rocky edge into the next one. This continued for a while, we slid down baby waterfalls and dived off rocks into the amazing coloured water pools one after another until he stops and askes me sit down infront of where he is. We had to sit down a few times to get over some slimy rocks so I didn't think anything of it until he asked me to cross my arms over my chest and pushed me down a small waterful, hitting my bum on every rock for the 1.5m drop. He called it a natural slide, it really wasn't, it was a lot of rocks that happened to have a little water falling off them and it was not smooth. It was so much fun though. A few more jumps and then we went under a waterfall into a tiny space in the rock and moved under the rocks with 15-20cm of space between the rocks and the water.

After another scenic walk through the rain forrest and by the water pools, we went back to the river and did a little tubing. The water was absolutely freezing. A quick lunch and then we walked to the caves nearby. We'd seen signs for the caving and were looking forward to it. In the pictures everyone has a helmet and a flashlight and a life jacket, it all looks pretty safe and legit. We get there and we meet the guy who will be taking us through, he had a big bandage around one of his fingers where he'd cut it open with a machette. He handed us all a skinny candle and we followed him into the entrance of the black caves. Candles give off a nice amount a light to enhance a romantic dinner or something, they are not really that bright when it is your only lightsource in a pitchblack cave where you stumple around on rocks until the guy tells you to sit down and slide into the water with your candle above your head and start swimming through the caves. It was one of the most amazing things I have ever done. You would climb up ladders and squeeze through openings in the rocks all while trying to protect your candle. We stopped a couple of minutes into it at a small natural pool inside. The guy asks if we want to climb up the rocks on the wall of the cave and jump in. Do not make the mistake of calling us brave, Jeff and I make stupid decisions. He tells me to put my hand here, my foot there and then lift my other foot to there and then hold on here. I got the first hand and foot sorted out ok but then he asked me to put my leg up on a rock at waist height. He had to hang on with one hand and balanced on the edge of the wall while I used his knee as a step. It was no big deal until I put my hand down and accidently crush his finger with the machette cut. He was cowering in pain and I was hanging on to the rocks saying "descupe" (sorry) over and over. Then he said I have to jump because I was up there now. It was only about a 4 metre jump but it was into darkness. Jeff did it after me, I'd forgotten to tell him that it was shallow and I'd hit the bottom so he did too but it was so much fun it made no difference. We did some climbing and swimming until you get to one spot with a hole between a few rocks and water gushing through it. Of course, we had to go down there. The guide asked me to turn around so my back was against the far rocks and I could grab on before slipping through the hole but it was slipperier that I thought and he had to catch me before I fell into the hole. He grabs your hand and lowers it onto a rock on the other side of the gushing waterfall and tells you to slip down and go left and then he passes your candle through. The whole experience was just fantastic.

On our way back to the hostel, still on a bit of an adreniline high from the caving I come up with the idea that we should jump off the bridge. Yep, the bridge is 9 or 10 metres above the fast moving river with freezing cold water and as we stand there and realise what a stupid idea it is, a coupld of locals come along and make the guy we're with move because there are rocks on one side, Yay! A group of people came along and after convincing one of the guys to jump off first to make sure it was fine, we jumped off and swam to the bank so we could do it again. I stood there and realised how stupid it was again for the next 5 minutes but after pushing Jeff off it I figured I had to go. And once again we went back to the bridge and tried to jump off again. I am not good with heights for those of you not aware of my normal response of ridiculous noises. I began to half cry and yelled at Jeff every time he started counting to 3 insisting that I would do it because there was no way he was jumping without me, if we were going to die, we were going to do it at the same time. It took a very long time and a hell of a lot of will power but I once again made the stupid decision to jump off the damn bridge. You have a couple of seconds of free fall and that is when you really believe how stupid it is. All in good fun.

That night we had our first full Spanish conversation. With an 8 year old. Anna came and asked us our names and how old we both were and we knew the answers and what she meant! After a couple of card games with the guy that took us into the natural pools, I danced a bit of meringue with him before heading to bed before the power was turned off at 9pm.

The next morning we'd booked a bus to Flores and started the day with breakfast overlooking the river at the hostel. As we ate we were joined by a little toucan. Of course neither of us had our cameras. We'd been on the lookout for one in Mexico and were told it would happen for sure in Belize but after joking for weeks about carrying Froot Loops around in our pockets, one joined us for breakfast. We then spent an hour standing in the back of an open air truck going up the bumpy dirt path and trying to duck before we got too many stray branches in the face. Despite the cold and how your hands freeze around the bar, it is so much fun! We spent the rest of the day in yet another shuttle bus and after the tour lady (who comes around for the ride to pick everyone up) got out of the front seat and left Jeff and I realised we had fair game over the prized spot. I called shotgun but Jeff preferred his new rule, we wrestle for it. He was sitting closer to the door so I knew I wouldn't be able to race him. Until we pulled up in a petrol station and I dove from my seat through the gap in the top of the seat shocked the driver as I clambered into the front seat. The next 6 hours made the little bump on my head worth it.

We got to Flores, a small island town on a lake connected to the main town by bridge, that night and booked our trip to Tikal for 4:30am the next morning. Tikal was lovely, it is a group of Mayan temples in the forrest and has one main temple that is over 90m tall and is where Star Wars was filmed. Of course we climbed to the top of as many different temples as we were allowed to. I'm pretty sure that if we weren't eating as much or as often as we are, we'd come home fit and skinny for all the stuff we climb. But the night before we went to the main square for dinner and each had a delicious chicken meal... And then another meal from the same place but we're not sure what the meat was that time. We then went and had ice cream sundaes before our after dinner snack of some mystery meat sausage. See, we could be skinny!

Another 4am start the next day and we left Guatemala for a day in Belize that morning. After walking straight though the bag checks (we even tried to get them to have a look) we went outside and waited for our bus to be searched. We spent the day over at San Pedro, the island next to where we'd spent 5 days at Christmas. We headed back to Belize city that afternoon to catch a bus to Cancun that night. Unfortunately when we got there we were told that tickets had just sold out even though we'd tried to reserve a seat. We ended up catching a local bus to a town near the Belize boarder and crossed into Mexico after the official just took a quick look at our passports, no stamps or bag checks and we were in Mexico. Another bus and we made it to Cancun at 5am.

We spent the morning at the beach and stocking up on local tequila before we fly to Seattle tomorrow.

I can't Belize we're here!

piratepete — Tue, 3 Jan 2012 10:27:00 GMT

Feliz Navidad, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
I didn't get to update on Belize because internet was super expensive and we were too busy having wonderful adventures.
We caught a bus from Tulum in Mexico to Belize City on December 23rd and have just left. We took the advice of everyone we'd met and decided not to stay in Belize city, it's incredibly run down and there isn't really anything there to do. We headed straight to Caye Caulker, an island less than a kilometer long and 40m wide where we managed to spend 5 nights and still could have stayed more. We had our own little cabana with two big beds, a bathroom, a fridge and a balcony with a hammock and fairy lights, it was lovely.
To give you an idea of how small (and set out to Peta standards) this place was, I'lll tell you the street names. There were 3 streets going lengthways, they were front street, middle street and back street. Genius.
A couple of hours after arriving we'd been swimming, covered pretty much the whole island (there wasn't really a whole lot on the south side) and were about to get ice cream (we'd been there a few hours afterall!), we heard our names being called and ran into Jip and Niek. We first met Jip in Mexico city over a month ago and we'd bumped into each other a couple of times after that. In 4 nights we racked up multiple hours of table soccer at the sports bar (girls vs boys- the boys won the first few days by one or two points each game but Jip and I had our moment on the last night by beating them 3 games in a row with a best score of 10-3), had Christmas dinner that Niek prepared (he's a chef and did very well with the limited supplies on the island) and went through a few beers here and there.
Jeff and I spent Christmas day tubing and zip-lining in an area west of Belize City on the mainland in limestone caves. I lost a thong on the first river crossing and one of the guides lent me his giant crocs for the rest of the walk (as opposed to wearing crocs as I was, the rocks convinced me to wear them). We met a cool Canadian couple (although, aren't all Canadians cool?) and the girl gave me her thongs, insiting she had another pair so I wouldn't have to walk around Belize barefoot, have I mentioned that I love Canadians? Tubing through caves was amazing, you go into a break in the limestone and float through looking at the crystalisation and cool rocks above you until you end up in the river at the other end and look back to see a patch of pure darkness where you'd just come out. Zip-lining, for those of you not familiar with the concept, is when you put on harness and hook onto a wire and jump off a tall platform and glide to a slightly lower one about 20-50m away. I didn't even scream... Although I may have jumped off the first tall one exclaiming "not gonna scream, not gonna scream!" a little loudly.
After a full day of adventure, we went back to Jip and Niek's place for our Christmas feast where we just had to bring beer and wine. It's odd being in a place where wine is $30Belize ($15 aussie) and a big bottle of rum is less than $10 (yep, $5 Australian). We couldn't have a big night though as Jeff and I were going scuba diving on boxing day. I'd never been scuba diving before and after our recent snorkling adventures where we found out that I'm not very good at the whole breathing thing, I was a little nervous. After going through a little, and I do mean little, of the safety stuff, they pretty much sat us on the edge of the boat, put the tanks on our backs and said "fall backwards". Once again, I wasn't very good at that pesky breathing thing. Besides having a massive coughing fit 10m underwater, I did pretty well. Dont worry, I didn't take the mouthpiece out or die or anything so I'll definitely have to get my open water license so I can dive again.
The next day we went swimming with sharks and sting rays. Well I'm not sure you can consider standing in the water and gritting my teeth everytime one came near me for the first 5 minutes as swimming but I eventually got used to it. There was only one shark that came near us but dozens of sting rays. Those things are freaky. Jeff almost got killed by one. By Jeff almost got killed by one, I mean that as Jeff and I were happily floating on the surface with snorkels, a stingray decided to swim directly underneath me so I grabbed Jeff and pushed him down as I hid on top of him and between him laughing so much and me holding him underwater, he nearly drowned- see, stingray almost killed him. I kept floating along though and just tried to think skinny and boyant thoughts as they continued to swim closer and closer to my stomach. Then they started circling me. Jeff and I were the last people left and he was off not getting eaten by stingrays so I made a few little girly noises and swam away from the evil creepy things.
After spending our days being adventurous and daring, we'd hang out at the bar at the north of the island. A hurricane split it a couple of years back so 50m away is another island but not much on it. We swam to it a few times but mainly just jumped into the water and drank beer and pina coladas.

The people were all super friendly, including the men that would try sweet talking ladies, even if they were clearly with their husband/brother/friends.

There were cool swings at the bars and at the Spit we'd just buy a bucket of 6 beers to share. There were cool tables that were in about a foot of sea water where we sat with our happy hour drinks and tried not to get eaten by the giant hermit crab.

We left Caye Caulker to head to Orange Walk, the town famous for the best street food in Belize. Our first bus trip in Belize was definitely an experience. We got on the old American school bus and the driver turned up the volume of the custom speakers and he blasted clubbing music for hours. Most of the bus sung along to the very popular Cheater's Prayer song. We sat there in shock as the 8 year old girl beside us sung every word of "Oh Lord, dont let me cheat on my girlfriend" and then "But Lord if you cant stop me from cheating, just dont let me get caught". Unfortunately, the song is ridiculously catchy and it keeps finding it's way back into my head. If you're curious, check it out- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDw2fxozj_0

They've played it on a few buses now and its pretty hard to not sing along. Orange Walk was a little disappointing however. It was raining on the day we got there so most of the food stalls had disappeared. The food we did have was about a fifth of the price we'd been paying in Caye Caulker though and delicious to match. The next day we went through the jungle by boat to Lamanai, a group of Mayan temples. There were howler monkeys but we haven't seen any toucans yet- we're going to have to start carrying Froot Loops in our pockets. The High Temple (that's the name of it too, I'm not just being lazy) reaches above all the giant trees and if you climb it (which of course we did) you can see the river and all the other temples. The steps were designed to be so high so that the people who climbed them (usually only priests and royalty) had to climb on their hands and knees and as a result were bowing to the gods they were about to worship. Jeff on the other hand, had no problem casually strolling up them. The town of Orange Walk was also occupied by a lot of Mennonites- a very conservative community of farmers. There are 3 types of Mennonites, one being Amish. So yeah, we got weird looks walking around in our shorts. There were a couple of ladies sitting in the ice cream store, fascinated by Dukes of Hazard on the tv (they do not use electricity unless it is directly related to work) who kept staring at us when we sat at the table near them. They all looked a little too related so of course we looked at them funny too. One of the women just kept staring at us though (socially appropriate behaviour didn't seem as common among them) so Jeff gave her a nice friendly smile and the poor girl almost died of excitement. She kept looking back at him with a smile covering her whole face until we left.

After Orange Walk we spent a day covering the country by bus. We started in the northwest, hit the east coast, went through the center of the country and zig-zagged down to the southeast corner to get to Hopkins. Lots more interesting buses and clubbing music, jumping out of the bus's emergency exit and Jeff's legs not fitting in the seats on any bus and we were there. We had heard that Hopkins had the most beautiful beaches out of anywhere in Belize and after Caye Caulker's amazing clear water we were pretty excited to see them. Whoever came up with the rumour lied. The sand was brown and the water matched. There was less than a meter of sand between the dirty water and the debris from the palm trees. We didn't arrive until nighttime so we got up and watched the sunrise and as the town became lighter, we got more and more disappointed. By 7am we had covered the whole town (only one street in it so it didn't take long) and decided to leave on the next possible bus. We went back to our room and packed and showered. These activities are normally rather uneventful but as I lay on my bed reading, waiting for Jeff to shower, there was a loud bang, a huge flash of light around the bathroom door and a loud "Damn it!" from Jeff. It was just the live wires in the shower almost electrocuting him. Yep, there was a hose sticking out from the wall with cold water coming from it and a couple of wires hanging right above it and Jeff was unlucky enough to get sparked.

We left and caught a 'taxi', a beat up old sedan that a guy offered to give us a lift in, complete with a screw driver to start the car, out of town to the highway so we could flag a bus. The guy ripped us off by claiming that it didn't cost $10 Belize dollars, he meant $10US. This meant that we were 3 bucks short to be able to leave the country. Well, three bucks short for BOTH of us to leave the country. Don't worry mum, we're both in Guatemala now.

Our last few days in the land of the taco

piratepete — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 08:55:00 GMT

It's now our last night in Mexico. So many tacos in the last 3 weeks. So many mouth burning, delicious tacos!

After two nights in Cancún with the most beautiful, clear blue water I've ever seen, we headed to Playa del Carmen. Oh my dear god. It was what I was expecting Cancún to be. There were more Americans than there were Mexicans walking around. Everyone spoke English, it was touristy and trashy. The beach wasnt as nice as Cancún and there wasn't as much of it. In Cancún there are 18kms of beach, here there was about 1 and all the fancy hotels and bars had to put their beach chairs for people to rent out on that 1km.

Dont get me wrong, it was still a great beach and we had a great time swimming there, it was just annoying having people ask us to rent a chair and have a beer at ten in the morning. Although the best offer we got was for cocaine by a guy that shouted 'you can trust me, I'm white!'.

There is one main street in town and it felt more American than walking down Santa Monica in Los Angeles. We made a few hostel friends in the bar on the roof of the hostel where we headed for ladies night. Every night is ladies' night. There was free vodka, tequila and rum for girls in the hostel bar from 10-11pm. I took full advantage of this. I also got to eat the worm from the Mezcal bottle (like tequila) which isn't actually even a worm. Technically, it's the larvae of the beetle that lives in the agavé that mezcal is made from. Instead of going to bed like I should have after all the tequila shots and vodka surprises, we went out to a club that had free drinks for girls from 12-2am. We later found out that pretty much every club has this deal. It was not pretty. I more than got my money's worth of free drinks and shots, enough to last me the rest of the week at least. You walk in and there is a seperate roped off bar for ladies. They have a security guard at this area so no guys can even go to the same bar. I got a rose from an Alaskan boy and the bartender just kept giving me different crazy coloured shots and drinks... It didn't end well. Luckily Jeff helped me stumble home and got me into bed pretty much safe and sound (except the bump when I faceplanted the corner of the bed). Needless to say, the next day was not so fun for us either. We got up nice and early and went to the beach for a swim which normally cures all hangovers. It didn't work. A greasy Maccas breakfast didn't work either so I spent the rest of the morning laying in bed, holding on because the Earth was spinning too fast. We went to the beach again that afternoon and realised that my watch was now wrong and I had somehow changed all the settings so it was saying the 1st of January, my alarm was set for 1am and the day and time were way off too, this is not good on holidays when you need to be able to check the day and date somehow.

That's pretty much all there is to do in Playa. That night, I decided to have a pretty quiet one for obvious reasons but even with only two and a half beers, we still ended up being out until 1am and went to some mega club. We went out with 5 other people so the club gave us the VIP area thinking we would be big spenders. Ha, joke's on them. The club was so American again and ridiculously priced. Everything in Playa was in US dollars, just to give you an idea of how touristy it's become.

Needless to say, it wasn't my favourite town. But now we're in Tulum, a beachside town with some amazing Mayan ruins.

We caught the collectivo (the vans that fill up with people and just drive between small towns) with 3 French guys and an Aussie girl that were in our hostel and we'd hung out with a bit at the bar. They were way too comfortable with being naked in front of other people, too tanned in places that shouldn't be and unfortunately, I'm pretty sure the French guy I thought was cute, thought Jeff was cute (he refused to dance the first night unless Jeff went with him and he mentioned a couple of times that he hoped to run into us again).

Originally, we were going to stay in Tulum for 5 nights and be in a beachside cabaña for Christmas but the $20 places are now $60 places so we decided to skip that, stay in a hostel for a couple nights and see how much we can get done. All the major attractions in the area in two days? Check.

Yesterday we went to a couple of beautiful cenotes. They are so clear and you can see everything below the surface. Besides getting laughed at by the ticket guy and the 3 girls already in the water because we took 10 minutes to finally fully submerge into the what felt like freezing water at the time, we loved it. I caught a little fish in my hands, to be honest though, I'm pretty sure it was just stupid. Then I swung around on the rope swing until we decided to head to the other cenote across the road. That's when I realised my ring had fallen off. The ring that I've been wearing for the last 7 years. We borrowed a snorkel after almost giving up hope and because the water was so clear, I found it again in a bed of moss at the bottom.

The next cenote was deeper and had ledges a couple of meters higher than the water. So we spent the last hour before closing time jumping into the water and then I'd quickly swim to the edge and get out as quickly as I could because of the crocodiles. And no, there weren't crocodiles there. That anyone has seen. I dont want to be the tourist that gets eaten and ruins the cool swimming spots for everyone. I know it's ridiculous to freak out and race to land only to keep jumping back in, especially because we're Australian, we could just wrestle it if there was one right?

The cenote closed at 5pm and we made our way to the exit at 5 past to discover the chain and padlock around the gate that was half covered in barbed wire. Luckily though, they hadn't actually fully closed the padlock and we got out unscaved except for the mozzie bites. Apparently the bus stops coming when the place is closed though so we enjoyed an hour long walk (it probably wouldn't take that long if we weren't doing the ever so graceful chaffing walk) back into town along the highway.

Dinner that night was delicious. At the hostel we ran into a guy we'd met a week ago in Mérida and he recommended a local burrito place that was cheap and had big burritos. They were absolutely delicious and after we'd both had a burrito, we had a couple of empanadas. And a one litre juice each. He musn't have the same idea of 'big' as us. I had a pineapple and green basil leaf looking things juice that the waiter recommended. Yes, this was way too much to eat for one meal after a big late lunch in case you were wondering. And the pineapple and green leaf drink did not taste nearly as good when I threw it up at 2am.

Today, despite me still feeling sick, we went to the popular Tulum beachside ruins. They didn't let us climb to the top of anything but it's probably for the best, I'm sure throwing up on ancient Mayan temples is probably frowned upon. The beach here is wonderful yet again and a swim almost always makes everyone feel better.

This afternoon we headed to Akmul, a beach about 20 minutes away by collectivo. We rented snorkel masks and swam about 30m off the shore until we got to hang around some big sea turtles. There were also stingrays and funky fish. It was amazing. There were at least half a dozen and we swam just above them as they ate the sea grass. The biggest one wasn't fased at all by us and we had to move pretty quickly when it came up for air because it certainly wasn't getting out of our way. Jeff almost choked on the water when he started laughing after looking at me because of how high my bottom floats out of the water.

A pretty good way to spend our last afternoon in Mexico, I think. It was such a beautiful country and we'll have to come back and do more of it one day.

Flamingoes, Frenchies & Field Trips

piratepete — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 15:39:00 GMT

Hola amigos! It's been a while since the last update because we have been too busy doing everything! We're now in Cancun, but I'll get to that later.

Firstly, I think it needs to be said that Australians (and I'm talking incredibly generally here) are terrible at the kiss upon meeting and departing thing. We shake hands, and it has been obvious every time we caught up and said goodbye to our new friends, the French girls and a Mexican boy. The first time we did the awkward hug, oh wait she's going for a kiss fiasco, Jeff ended up putting a shoulder to the girl trying to kiss him. It doesn't get a whole lot better from there, I blush pretty much every time regardless of who I'm sharing an air kiss with.

The other thing Jeff and I are not good at is Spanish. We ended up in the same town as the Frenchies and the Mexican, Carlos, for quite a few days and unfortunately, out of the group of 5, there was not one language we all spoke. Carlos spoke Spanish and English, Sophie mastered French, Spanish and English and Anice was fluent in French and Spanish. It made things pretty interesting. The language barrier didn't stop Anice joking about the man they saw masturbating loudly outside the church though, if anything, it probably added to the humour.

We all hung out for the first time together in Campeche at the hostels for some beers. They didn't have a bottle opener though so every round of drinks we had to go to the restaurant next door to open them. On my round (a concept the French girls weren't overly familiar with), I bought 4 Coronas and went next door to open them. No dramas. I went back and saw Carlos sitting inside with a MacBook so I bought him a beer, asked to use his charger and got him to join us outside. So after just having been next door to open 4 beers, I walk back with another one, promptly slip over in front of everyone (it was wet outside and I was in thongs... and a dress so falling was even more of a show). The looks I got were worth the big bruise on my knee. Of course by the time I got back to the group with the beers, I came back limping, with a laptop charger and a new friend in tow, Jeff is learning how good I am at that sort of thing when left alone for 5 minutes.

Our couple of beers eventuated in spending 5 days together (in 2 towns with a few extras now and then and still no common language).

Beardy got left behind in Campeche. We went to a barber and I sat there twitching out of worry every time the old guy (with one shaky hand might I add) put the straight edge blade on Jeff's neck. Of course right now, it's a week later and Beardy is back.

After Campeche, the adorable little colourful town with the Christmas music fountains that I loved so much, we headed to Merida, a huge, busy city with unforgiving humidity. We ended up loving it so much we stayed for 5 days. We spent most of this time doing trips out of the city to the amazing sites nearby. There was a cenote, a kind of sink hole filled with water, 8 meters underground with crystal clear water that was pretty impressive. It wasn't nearly as cold as we thought it would be (another thing we're not good at- cold water, the Europeans laugh at us- although I would like to point out, I've been swimming in the Antarctic, I have nothing to prove). We also spent a day doing a boat trip around a nearby beach/nature reserve with the Frenchies, Carlos and two sisters from the US we met along the way. THERE WERE FLAMINGOES!! As you can guess, I was pretty excited by this. There were also pelicans but after a few bad childhood experiences of being chased, I wasn't too fussed to go near them. The pelicans here are even creepier than the white and yellow ones we have in Aus, they are grey and black and are just waiting to taste my flesh, I can tell.

This day trip on the boat gave us a bit of an insight into how everyone else travels. Basically, they dont eat nearly as often as us. We didn't get to the beach until after 1 so of course we were starving. We grabbed a sandwich, everyone else thought it was way too early to eat. By 4, we'd gotten off the boat and the group was deciding on whether or not to eat in this town or wait the 2.5 hours until we got back. How is that even a decision we wondered and persuaded them to eat at the earliest sign of food, we couldn't go another couple of hours without eating, how could they? We were ready for dinner pretty much as soon as we got back- not like the 10pm dinners they were used to.

On the bus trip back, I sat next to Carlos and behind the American sisters, who all spent about half an hour teaching me how to say 'banana' in Spanish. At this rate, I'll be able to have a conversation in about 10 years. Pretty sure I still haven't even got it but it's close enough. Not so close that Carlos didn't laugh at me every time I said something in Spanish- he said it wasn't that I was saying it wrong, just that I'm so funny because I cant actually speak Spanish but make it sound like I can with a few words.

Jeff and I spent another whole day with the American sisters (who bicker in a way that only sisters can- it reassured me just how well Jeff and I are still getting along) and went to some Mayan ruins and a cenote nearby. I think we've been spoiled with ruins because we climbed the third largest pyramid in the world in our first week. Now, whilst still incredibly impressive, they are not the same to climb. We sat with our feet in the beautiful clear water of the cenote and had fish come and nibble at them for about an hour.

The hostel we stayed in whilst in Merida was lovely, we spent a couple of hours one afternoon lazing in the hammocks hanging over the pool while reading a book and napping. We went for a quick dip in the freezing (by our standards, lovely and even quite warm by others) water one night after the salsa lesson that was at the hostel. I managed to convince Jeff to come try it twice with me. Well ok the second time he flat out refused until 3 pretty girls asked him to do it. One of which being an incredibly gorgeous, tall, funny and smart German girl with legs that went all the way to the ground. Even I had a bit of a crush on her. Too bad it was our last night there, she convinced us with impossible to refuse puppy dog eyes to go have another beer afterwards even though we were getting up at 5 to leave the next morning.

We left early the next day on 5 hours sleep to head to Chitzen Itza and then on to Cancun. Chitzen Itza was stunning. The main attraction was an incredibly well preserved pyramid and there were amazing ruins and intact temples from over a thousand years ago. It didn't take us all day as we had planned though because we weren't allowed to climb anything. We were very glad we'd gotten there so early as we walked past the multiple bus loads of people that line up to get in at lunch time. We continued on to Cancun that afternoon (even without breakfast or now lunch!- not first or second!) We had a ridiculously overpriced Snickers bar to get us on the bus at 1pm as this was the only tourist attraction that wasn't littered with people selling fruit. We found one banana but the guy wanted more than what you pay for a kilo of them at the expensive supermarket. 4:30pm came and we hadn't eaten any proper food yet, I think we were more surprised how this could happen than we were hungry. But luckily, a man on the bus started selling almost footlong ham and cheese sandwiches that were more like croissants, delicious whatever they were.

We arrived in Cancun, our first swimmable town, at 5:30pm and it was already dark and raining. One dollar beers and the prospect of a hot shower made it still seem like a pretty happy place. We're staying in what is referred to as Downtown, it's 6km from the beach resorts and only a tenth of the price. There are little night markets on in the streets and another big lit up Christmas tree. We headed down to the beach this morning as soon as we'd dropped off a week's worth of dirty washing to the lavendaria (impressed with our Spanish yet?)- and by week's worth, yes I do mean all of our clothes. We met a local guy on the bus who does the marketing for one part of the beach so he showed us around and told us where the cheap food was.

Forget about drunk Americans and Spring break, Cancun is amazing! I'm only talking about the beach here, the rest is just American chain restaurants and nightclubs but the beach was perfection! Sure it's half man made and they have to keep topping up the perfect white sand but wow, just wow. The water was the most amazing turquoise blue imaginable. I have never been to a beach before where you can be neck deep in water and still be able to see your feet and even the sand clearly. It was truly beautiful.

We went to Chili's so we could tell the family if it's changed since we lived in the States. My god I see why we used to go there, the chicken strips with honey mustard were pretty darn good. Good in the I cant finish these or I might throw up way. Terrorists must be coming up with some pretty inventive ways of trying to kill Americans, how else could you explain the deep fried mozzarella sticks we bought?

By the afternoon, Cancun was falling into its stereotype. There were Americans playing football on the sand, a couple of games of beach volleyball going on, including girls in thongs (the underwear, not the Australian word for "flip-flops" as we've had to explain) and people having a few beers on the beach.

We went back to Downtown (via an hour and half long adventure of wrong buses and finding, and then shopping in, Wal-Mart. Side note: sunscreen here is ridiculously expensive and there are so many 2 or 8 SPF ones as well as up to 80SPF which I'd never seen) for dinner. We accidentally found a little market street with the best tacos we've had. For $3 you get a plate full off tacos covered in various meats and onion and chilis, these ones even had a bit of lettuce. Then you cover them in the spicy tabbouleh looking stuff that is half chilis, I then pour over the green sauce that is sometimes a bit of avocado and often I have no idea what it is but it's delicious and not too spicy and use a couple of drops of the red dip that sets your mouth on fire, Jeff liberally uses the red hot chili dip that would burn through a wall if given the opportunity. I wish we were staying another day just so we could eat them again. Desert was heaven. We had Nutella marquistas, a crunchy crepe like thing that is rolled up. The best description would be a footlong ferrero rocher tasting roll of diabetes. Heaven.

I'll leave you with the food envy you all deserve to have to get some sleep so Jeff and I can take a quick trip to the beach in the morning before moving on to Playa de Carmen.

Meet Beardy

piratepete — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 04:42:00 GMT

I would like to introduce everyone to Beardy. Jeff's beard has decided to tag along for a little while. And is apparently a seperate entity to Jeff. When I asked Jeff what he did on the flight to LA, his response was "grew a beard". He also says that he usually spends all day "converting breakfast cereal into facial hair". He's nice on the most part but doesn't like me when I tease him about being half red.

So Jeff, Beardy and I are now in a gorgeous little town on the Mexican Golf called Campeche. The little townhouse style buildings are all painted pink, blue, green, yellow or orange and are wonderful to look at. It has a beautiful old church, like all the towns we've been to, but also has a wall surronding the old part of town, from the old days to protect it against pirates.

Today is a religous public holiday in Mexico. For the past week, we've been seeing dozens of people running between towns with olympic style torches and a support van full of other runners. Basically, there is always one person running with the torch, late at night, up mountains at cloud level, you name it. They are all running to different churches and showing their devotion to the virgen (who's name I cant remember, and no, it's not Mary).

Since the last update, we've hung around the pine forest town in San Cristobal with the most VWs I've ever seen. The whole town is ridiculously good at reverse parallel parking and on every street there were at least 5 VWs, most of which were old school beetles. We walked around the adorable streets and went up the biggest hill in town for a better view. Jeff and I decided to seperate for 15 minutes... A few hours later, after accidently wondering into a market with chicken feet and raw meet alongside shoes and dresses, I ended up finding the place we were meant to meet. Silly Jeff, assuming I could find the main square one block from where we left each other! Being alone certainly brings a whole new wave of attention, Jeff got it from other tourist girls and I got an overwhelming amount from local guys wolf whisteling and making a gross lip smacking noice, a quick "no!" shuts them up for the most part.

We then headed to Palenque, a jungle town with some amazing Mayan pyramids and ruins.

The most entertaining part of the trip happened on the bus ride to Palenque. It was a very windy and bumpy trip for the whole 6 hours it took to get through the mountains and into the jungle. With only an hour to go, my bladder wouldn't wait for the next town, I had to use the dodgy bathroom on the bus. I managed to stumble to it and close the door and get my pants down to my knees and as I went to sit down the bus quickly sped around a corner and the door swung open as I fell into the bus.

That was not the only eventful accident that happened in the last hour though. As Jeff sat, concerned he was about to starve to death after not eating for a whole couple of hours and it being at least half an hour past dinner time, he realised perhaps it wasn't that he was starving. He was sick. He grabbed one of our empty chip packets and promptly threw up in it. It was only a little bag so he filled it up and reached for the next one. I won best sister ever award as I sat on a bumpy bus for the next half hour, carrying a chip bag full of his vomit.

Of course he was fine as soon as we got off and food was available again.

While being half naked in the back of a bus in Mexico comes close, it's not our favourite thing to have happened. The time in Mexico city when Jeff and I were racing to eat dinner before having to jump on the bus turned out to be hilarious. We were eating our chilli covered sandwhiches as we often do when Jeff said something that must have been quite funny because we both began to laugh rather hysterically, causing the chilli to go up my nose. He then continued to laugh at me as I began to cry from both the laughter and the pain of having chilli at the back of my nose. At least one full chilli seed, and that stuff hurts. You can imagine how curious we must have looked to the other people there.

Palenque had some amazing ruins which we spent a few hours climbing and exploring. The next day we headed to some waterfalls about an hour out of town. We are very good at getting up things. We walked behind the waterfall and had to climb a few rocks quickly to avoid getting soaked. Unfortunately, we dont spend too long thinking how we'll get down. Rocks are a bit slippery and take longer getting down, which means more time to get wet. Jeff was very helpful though as I stood at the top, genuinly curious as to how I got up seeing as my legs couldnt reach the rock below. And by helpful, I mean Jeff's advice was "jump". "Will you catch me?" I asked, glad he was there, "no" he said before he started to walk away. It was a lot of fun though, we saw lots of people we nicknamed, including the most beautiful girl in the world. No joke, she was stunning. She had definitely settled for her average-by-comparison boyfriend, both of which were a little creeped out by us talking about them when we noticed them come up behind us.

Another couple of hours on a thankfully less eventful bus with more Spanish dubbed movies and we're in Campeche. We're staying in a mansion from the 1500s (for about 8 bucks a night, of course) where we bumped into some French girls who caught the bus from Palenque with us. Their names are Sophie and Anice (pronounced A-nice). They didn't understand Jeff's amazing pun of "that's A-nice name!" We thought it was hilarious but they stood, staring dumbfoundly at us like we're the weird ones!

We headed out last night to explore more of the seemingly sleepy town. The water fountains have been rigged up to do a Christmas show and dance to the music. I have never loved a town more than I did last night. You cant beat a little town, on the water that is only colourful houses and christmas fountains! I danced around Jeff and Beardy and couldnt stop grinning for the half hour we watched them.

It is not often in a third world country that you see fat people. Not fat locals at least. In Mexico, everyone is overweight. The children are chubby and almost every grown man has a gut. The greasy food has already given me a pot belly but hey, do as the locals do, right?

Speaking of food, it's been two hours since we ate so I guess it's time for first lunch!

A little more Mexico city and 13 hours on a bus

piratepete — Wed, 7 Dec 2011 13:26:00 GMT

Forgive any bad spelling, puncuation and excessive letters or spaces, I'm writing this from a pretty dodgy internet cafe where the keyboard hates me (and is Spanish so lighten up) in San Cristobal. Taking a laptop with you is incredibly convienient... until you leave the chrager in a hostel.
We spent a couple more days in Mexico city, exploring museums, aart galleries and the university. It took me aa few days to be able to find my way around, it must be nice to have a sense of direction. And of course the day that I've finally got it figured out, we leave.
We nicknamed all the streets to make it easier for ourselves, for example there was Zara Burger street, it had the Zara store and the big burger place, there was jewlery store street, bookstore street and gun street. The giant christmas tree in the main square helped me out too.
The palace of art was amazing, the architechture absolutely stunning from inside and every direction out. Matty Lee was entirely spot on when he described Mexico as a mix between the cheap and delicous of Asia and the extrordinary buildings of Europe. There are so many beautiful cathederals here, one even has a solid gold alter. The whole district was full of old, spectacular architechture and the streets contrasting with markets and cheap food carts.
We went to the university thinking it would be old and impressive but sadly no. We also wanted to go to their science museum because science museums are fun. You'd think there would be a few maps (mapas in español) considering it was huge and over a few neighbouring capuses. Alas, we found two and tried to ask for directions by using our amazing spanish skills of "dondè esta... ah... that" and pointing.
We never found it in the end but the trip out there was justified by our delicious lunch. Which we ordered all in spanish and had to wait for them to call our number to go pick it up. We struggle greatly with numbers so 136 was a fun guessing game.
As we were lazing around after afternoon beers and nachos and a bit of shopping, Jeff had the brilliant idea of leaving Mexico City last night instead of tonight, why not we figured. So after trying to find the bus ticket place and getting lost, I asked a policeman for directions. I was quickly surrounded by at least 8 of them trying to help me. Turns out the place didn't exist though. We somehow ended up on a bus that night.
We caught the metro to the bus station with our bags, thinking it would be empty at 9:30pm. It was packed. So much so that Jeff had to walk on backwards as the door started closing on him. This was after we had to run to the station and couldn't go to certain platforms because they were female only, Jeff let the team down on that one. We were allowed to get on the women, children and their husbands carriage. I dont think they really thought it through though, because not all the stations had the same conditions so it was just full anyway.

Buses are fun. And I dont mean in the oh yay we're having fun way, I mean in the haha why did we decide that 13 hours on a bus would be a good idea kind of fun. The bus was full and we had a couple with their baby in the seats behind us. You cant put your seat back on a baby! Well not in the first 5 minutes. As soon as I sat down I felt a tiny hand on my shoulder, Jeff and I joked about waiting until it leant forward and then slamming my chair back. Dont worry, we didn't, we're nice people. Jeff put his chair back and the family told me to put mine back too. After a few awkward spanish to english "are you sure?"s and "I dont want to hit the baby" I started putting it back really slowly. I stopped when I thought it was far enough but turns out it only clicks into place in 3 spots. So as I'd finished putting it back, they let the baby sit up again and as I sat back, Whoops!, the seat wasn't clicked into place and went back and hit the baby. I swear I didn't mean to, it was just a hilarious coincidence.

Not many people will agree with me here but, I love overnight buses. There is something wonderful about being trapped on a bus full of strangers, when no one knows who you are and no one you know knows where you are. I can always face the window and gaze at the stars while listening to music that somehow feels more pertinent than ever for a couple of hours while leaving a town late at night. That feeling is one of the best you'll ever have. Unfortunately, it is replaced at about the 3 hour mark when your imagination takes over and you fantasize about how nice the bed that you would trade your first born for at that moment would feel and what you would do to lay down.

The novelty wears off pretty quickly and it takes forever to get to sleep. The best sleep is always in the morning, between 4 and 9. There is something to be said about being woken up by the Spanish dubbed Mamma Mia movie, however that something is not really acceptable to be said here.

We're in San Christobal now, a cute little town in the South. I like it because its small enough that getting lost isnt that big of a deal (I do that a lot) and it's on a grid so it's easier to navigate, a sense of direction would be really helpful but then I wouldn't be so happy and surprised when we magically (following the way Jeff says is the way home) end up back at the hostel.

That's it from me for now, it's taco time!

Mmmmmmmexico City!

piratepete — Sun, 4 Dec 2011 16:03:00 GMT

Mexico!! I'll try to start from the beginning. The plane ride that is. Peta and lack of sleep and food is not a good Peta. Because we had to get up at 3:30am to get to the airport and whatnot, we only got to have about .7 of a breakfast. We'd gotten used to eating about every 1.5-2 hours already. The airline did not appreciate this. Anyway, with this lack of sleep and food I became a little delirious apparently and Jeff had to put up with me giggling and waving my finger at him in the 'no-no' fashion saying over and over again that "fork is not for yogurt" for a good 10 minutes during the inflight breakfast. To be fair though, I must have been pretty darn fun. Customs time: Mexico style. I would describe it as different and entertaining. On the flight they showed a video on what to do to explain the red button. If the light goes red after the button is pressed your bag has to be searched, if it goes green, you're free to go. Seemed logical to us, after being x-rayed the customs official would press the button to red or green to let you know if anything was suss. Not quite. After they x-ray your bag YOU push the button and it's completely random. Jeff got a green light and got to go through no worries, I got the red light. I felt kinda sorry for the guy who had to go through my bag, we were due for a laundry trip and I left all my dirty clothes right on top. He was probably particularly worried after Jeff's quick witted remark to "Do you have any cultures to declare?" in the what are you bringing into the country questions. Of course I said no. Jeff quickly remarked, "well... you didn't have a shower this morning".

We got through no dramas though and realised how bad our Spanish really was when we went to get a cab.

We are very good at standing there for a second and then facing each other with our dumbstruck "what the hell is this?" looks.

I dont know about anyone else but every time I enter a 3rd world country and you're in the cab to your hostel going through ridiculous traffic and worrying the whole time that your car can not possibly fit in that space and praying not to die, you think "what the hell am I doing?". Definitely got that feeling again this time. Until we reached our first set of traffic lights and were entertained by a boy standing on an older boy's shoulders and on top him was a little girl dressed like a dolphin and dancing across the street. Yep, welcome to Mexico.

We went straight out for tacos as soon as we ditched our stuff. My mouth burned for the next hour. There were some markets on the streets outside and wandered around them for a while. We then had a nap before heading out for dinnertime tacos.

You walk down the super crowded streets until you see a turning stick with lots of meat on it, the ones you see in kebab shops, and then you just ask for however many you want (if you order more than 4 each at a time though they look at you a little funny) and if you're like us, you just keep saying yes to everything they offer to put on it and end with mouth burning deliciousness.

On our first full day here we ventured to the Anthropology museum to see the world's oldest tooth restoration. Jeff is doing dentistry proud. It was pretty amazing though, it houses the giant circle that people used to consider the Aztec calendar. Turns out it really isn't a calendar at all, it was their interpretation of life, god and ways of life. Bloody impressive and big.

We went to a restaurant for dinner and decided to order 3 different things so we could figure out what they were. The three dishes arrived and we still dont really know what was what dish but we do know we love those 3 things. My Spanish returned from wherever it had been hiding and multiplied while it was there. I had enough to order and ask for the bill and all those useful things. We can ask how much something is at market stalls but if it costs more than 10 pesos (or sometimes just tricky sounding ones under 10) we lose our pseudo credibility. I do love how some Spanish words seem like they really are just playing with us though. We had to buy a watch with an alarm so we could get up the next morning. Alarm in Spanish is alarm-a. Unfortunately now that we have a watch, it's not constantly "taco time!". Although this watch has a light that I have accidentally set to a disco type theme. So now whenever we want it to be taco time we just press the light button and it seems like the only logical thing to do.

We went to MEXICAN MASKED WRESTLING! Possibly the best Friday night activity around. First we went to a cantina and had some beer and mezcal (like tequila) and I ended up salsa dancing with the Mexican guy who took us. It was pretty amazing, everyone was just sitting down drinking and then a certain song came on and all the people in the place got up and started salsa dancing and then just sat back down when it was over. The wrestling was amazing! There are two teams of 3, the good guys wearing lots of colours and the bad guys wearing black. There are 3 rounds per match and 3 different matches of different teams. I cheered for all of the good guys but also one bad guy, the one who was wearing assless pants and did a sexy dance. He had to take off the assless pants though to fight (lots of them wore capes to enter) and ended up just in a black speedo size costume. I'll admit I did shed a little tear when 3 bad guys kicked my favourite guy's (mr orange and white pants- they did all have real names but this was easier) arse. I yelled at them to stop because they were hurting him but apparently that's not the way wrestling works. My other favourite, gold boots, had to get carried away on a stretcher. And yes, it all looked completely fake and was absolutely amazing. I highly recommend everyone to go. They do the coolest flips and jumps in the cutest outfits! Jeff bought a mask for Nick- I'll put up photos soon. We didn't understand most of the chants so we had a bit of a laugh chanting "No hablas Espanol!" Overall, a fantastic Friday night!

Almost done I swear!

Today we went on a day tour of some ruins near Mexico city. Wow. Pyramids are cool. There was so much history and cool stories I learnt and got to wander around amazing churches. We went to the second most important Catholic church (first being the Vatican, obviously), and quickly learnt to say that yes, we are Catholic because well there have been a few too many people killed for saying no in the recent years. Apart from being on a lean (which we didn't point out because we are good Catholics), it was the most amazing church I've ever been in. There is something about huge, muralled ceilings and stone carvings on big hills that makes you feel pretty small in the world. Jeff had never been in a church before, not to worry though, he didn't burst into flames. There were so many people carrying Virgin Mary statues and pictures, it was pretty cool to observe. We did lots of walking to the top of hills to see the top of the church and get a good view of a smoggy Mexico city before heading to the pyramids just outside of town. And by town I do mean one of the biggest cities in the world. It is seriously massive. And full of history and amazing architecture as well as slum like neighbourhoods.

We climbed the world's third tallest pyramid. Twice. There was an amazing view of the surrounding, smaller pyramids and ruins. Again, really makes you feel pretty small. We climbed the 'sun' and 'moon' pyramids, the two most famous in the region. I use the word climb, Jeff walked. He had no trouble almost running up some of the stairs while I was on my hands and feet trying to pull myself up the giant steps. I considered pushing him and writing "being cocky" or "tall" as the reason of death. He got what was coming to him on the way back on the bus as every bump we went over he hit his stupid, tall head.

It was one of the most amazing experiences in the world. I recommend it incredibly highly. Although if you decide to do it, my pro tip is dont wear tight jeans that dont let you lift your legs.

I promise I wont write too much more!

Right now outside the hostel in the main square of historico centro (yep, the historic centre), there is a giant Christmas celebration happening. And you know how much I love Christmas! There is a giant christ-pepsi-mas tree (it is covered in pepsi logos as Christmas decorations) and there are lights and pictures all over the surrounding buildings. There is an ice-skating rink for goodness' sake! There were ice skating dancers performing and then a game of ice hockey and heaps of people down there dressed as if it's actually cold. There are stalls selling so much deliciousness and cool inflatable toys that children are throwing around. It was magical.

Jeff being so tall and me being blonde means we are receiving quite a bit of extra attention. Mainly from children, they point at us and tell stories to people nearby about us. We've had quite a few kids come up to us and start talking, mainly about where we're from etc. Grown men have tried to touch Jeff as he walks past and I recently learnt that the phrase I have been hearing is a way to ask someone out. Tonight we discovered a new game. Jeff smiled at a girl and she immediately started giggling and showing her friend. Of course I had to try this. I smiled at the next boy who made eye contact and yep, instant blushing.

Ok that's it for now, my watch just lit up so it's taco time!

Buses, Blackouts & Boobies

piratepete — Sat, 3 Dec 2011 10:31:00 GMT

Here we go again, Los Angeles.

Have I mentioned how much I love this place? Because I do. And it's not just the food stalls which have a normal price and then the deepfried price for their foods like pizza and oreos. Coming into the middle of winter and and we were walking around in t-shirts for most of our stay, although the last day got a bit windy and we got to put on our coats and walk through the fairy light lit trees down the main shopping street in Santa Monica. If you know me, you know there is nothing I love more than fairy lights in trees.

The stigma around catching buses definitely comes from the US. No where else does a man carrying a bag bigger than me full of used cans get on a bus. My favourite character though was the guy who gets on the bus in a wheelchair, a process that takes 2 minutes for the driver to lower the ramp etc, and then stands up, folds his wheelchair up and walks to a seat. When he wants to get off again he pushes his wheelchair to the front of the bus and sits back down in it. Yep, that's America.

The first full day we had we went to Hollywood (an hour and a half on the bus with some different characters and interesting smells). We thought it would take us a whole day to explore there but turns out there really isn't anything to do. We walked down Hollywood blvd and looked at all the stars, I dont think you have to do a whole lot to get one, there are hundreds. Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen have to share one, ha. We stepped on Godzilla's star a few times too; you're welcome, Tokyo. That was pretty much all there was to do in Hollywood. Well that and go to Hooters. Don't worry, we didn't go more than once a day. This time we shared the chicken burgers and the entree called 'lots of tots'. Chelley (pronounced 'Shelley'), our Hooters girl (they dont call themselves waitresses- although to be fair, that's a pretty hard word, I'll explain my theory soon) looked stunned we didn't order more food. We couldn't finish either. Now, 'lots of tots' in case you're wondering is potato gems/ tater tots (the deep fried hardly counts as potato bits of deliciousness) which they then liberally applied salt, melted cheese (the orange kind that comes out of a pump bottle), bacon and sour cream. It is truly even more disgusting than it sounds. We had a pretty good go at it and only gave up when our arteries begged us to.

I've been to Hooters enough to figure out the trend. My theory is that if you name your daughter something ridiculous like Chevy, Carthy or Elnetta or spell a usual name Britianny, Chelsy, Ericka, you can be nothing other than proud when she features in the Hooters calendar. These are your actual 2012 Hooters calendar girls. Yes, I got the calendar. It was out of order. Not kidding, it went August, December, July, March etc. Sorry boys, I left it in the bin in the hostel.

So after our 2nd Hooters experience, we went back to Santa Monica and did a bit of shopping. Jeff went out with Neil that night, a guy from Toowoomba who is mates with someone doing Dentistry with Jeff in Cairns. This is where he had his first taco from a van. I stayed in and slept for 15 hours.

The next day we hung out with Neil and went to the Getty museum. It was pretty spectacular. The irony of the no camera signs in the photography exhibit and our own wittiness of like a Bauhaus jokes kept us entertained enough to not groan audibly at the plain white canvasses in the modern art sections.

That took pretty much all day, a few stops for breakfast, lunch, second lunch, and snacks of course.

What better to do for dinner than introduce another Australian to the wonderful place that is Hooters? Don't judge me, it's hard to stay away, the girls there have such big hearts. We stopped for a beer while waiting for the bus, we all handed in our IDs and ordered. About a minute later they come and check my ID again and ask if I'm 21. According to my birth date: no. But next time I'm pulling the 'yes, in Australia we put the year you turn one' and see what happens.

Neil lost his wallet on the bus. He has now lost his iphone, ipad, about 5 bank cards and now wallet. Unlucky. Unlike us though, he had a spare card hidden away so it was not a complete disaster.

The power had gone out all over the neighbourhood while we were at dinner so the stop lights were out and the bottle-o wouldn't let us in or sell beer through the gates. The whole dont stay out at dark is actually applicable in LA too. When we got back to the hostel a bit upset about the lack of beer we had, the girl that worked there was to the rescue. She handed us a 3 litre flaggen of wine (for free that is) and told us to join in on the game of kings that the other guests had started. Don't worry, it didn't end as disastrously as it could have, Jeff and I headed to bed pretty soon after we started as we had to get up at 3:30am to get to the airport for our flight to Mexico. We were awake well before then though as the new guy in the room woke us all up with his incredible snoring. To be fair, it must be pretty hard to sleep quietly when you have a steam train trying to escape from your nose. In the haste of our 3:30am packing, I left my laptop charger there. This may be the last update I write for a few days until they post it here (hoping that it arrives before we leave in the next few days that is).

That was LA.

We plan to go back to the US for our last two weeks and hire a nice muscle car and go for a roadtrip to Vegas (if we can get me an ID), the Grand Canyon and Seattle. Look at us, making plans, mum would be proud (maybe not about the driving a big car and the Vegas idea but still, plans!)

Photos: LA

piratepete — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 16:52:00 GMT

Plane, Plans & Pretty People

piratepete — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 15:52:00 GMT

Hi Folks,

That's right, we're blogging. And I'm going to skip all the formal stuff and just tell you what we did today, probably in no particular order, because I'm tired.

Jeff and Peta are in LA!! The city of beautiful people. Firstly, it's amazing and I may never come home. But we'll get to that later. Once again, do not expect this to be logical or make any sense. Just go with it.

Mum and Smell dropped us off at the Brisbane airport on Monday morning. Thanks to time zones, we arrived here 5 hours before we left. As we stood in the line waiting we wondered just how long we'd been there. Lucky guess for what I forgot? A watch might have been helpful. But no need to worry, that wasn't our first laughable forgetful moment. The next came as we were told we needed a street address on our departure cards to be able to leave the county. This one I'd actually reminded Jeff to do the night before. Needless to say, we had a giggle and hoped that they didn't check to see if 7 2nd street existed. Before we decided to forge official documents, we had the brilliant idea of calling mum and asking her to look it up for us. If one of us had a phone, this probably would have been more successful. It was all fine.

The plane ride was like most others. I slept for 2 hours at the start and then we both had a 90 minute nap at the end. We got lunch 2 hours after takeoff... followed by breakfast 2 hours before we landed. So in one day, before 6am LA time, we'd had breakfast, lunch and breakfast again. Of course we then had another breakfast at around 10:30 on the way to the hostel (guessing of course, no watch). Customs here took forever to get through. We lined up for a couple of hours before being allowed in the country. Of course it was a little more entertaining than that though. The address thing came up again on the arrivals card. The lady came to everyone in line and made a big deal about having a valid street address and that a hostel name was not enough. Panic faces. We stood there quietly chuckling to each other about how we would spend our holiday in an American jail. That was until the girl behind me asked to borrow my pen. My response? Sure... Can we borrow your address? Ok we looked a little weird but she needed my pen so who was she to judge. Yes mother, your children are smart, we swear.

Next stop, border security. After being stared up and down by the creepy baby for 5 minutes in line that is. We went through all the questions and Jeff had to get all his finger and thumbprints scanned. Me? My right four fingers were enough. I must look trustworthy. So if we are committing any crimes, we'll just do it with my left hand.

We walked outside, surprised by how warm it was. Found our way onto a bus and train station, caught a bus to Santa Monica beach, a nice few blocks from Venice beach, where we're staying. So we thought. The map also made it look close to the airport so the 40 minute bus ride there probably should have been a heads up. Figured we'd grab second breakfast on the walk to Venice. You know how in Australia there are dozens of cafes by the beach and generally lots on the street behind that too? Well not here. We walked out of Santa Monica and couldn't find anything. It was just the burbs.

We gave up after it got hot and sweaty and seemed like we'd been walking for hours (turns out to be about 40 minutes). And by gave up, I mean we found Subway. $5 footlong on cool flatbread? Yes please. Would you like a drink? Sure. What size? He holds up a paper cup and it looks like a good size to share... It was the small. I got the "what hell are you talking about look" from the poor boy after I asked for capsicum. He kept asking me to repeat, I kept repeating capsicum until Jeff looked at the sign and had to explain that we meant "bell peppers". After our deliciousness we continue our adventure and get there 15 minutes later. We only know this because we have to ask the time. We decided to have a quick nap and get up for lunch. For the first time ever, I didn't just sleep for the next ten hours. We had another 90 minute nap and showered and all the rest of that responsible stuff.

There was one other boy in our dorm room at this time. Jakob, a 20 year old boy on his way to South America who came from Sydney. We convinced him to come to Hooters for lunch. I love that place so much! Our waitress was Haydee, a cute little brunette with great big double D personalities. Jeff and Jakob got the $6 Monday cheeseburger special. Both were dumbstruck when asked how they wanted this cooked. The both replied with "cooked". I got the chicken strips, they were so greasy they made an actual puddle in the tray. Mmm, heart-attack-alicious. Haydee kept trying to convince us to get cocktails and beer so after lunch we finally agree. After pushing us, she then asked if we had ID. Well, no. Not ones that say we're over 21 anyway.

We walked back from Santa Monica, which was much nicer without the backpacks, along the beach (and by that I mean the concrete path next it). There were funky market stands and shops along this beach path and very weird people. Although (and this is a side note from what happened on the walk to Hooters, along the same funky road), we were walking along and a big black man walking the other way looks at us and asks if I'm Jeff's girlfriend. The quickest "No!" you've heard comes from us which made him tell us that I am "a black man's dream". Why does this never happen to me, ever, in Australia? But yes, this road had some very interesting things. There are all these little shops with doctors in them. And the smell of pot everywhere. Guess where medicinal marijuana is legal? And apparently there are lots of sick people here. Yep, you can go in to one of the many doctor's shops and get some medicinal marijuana.

A short while after returning from lunch, and it's almost dark by this point but only 4pm, it's time to go downstairs to the sports bar to watch the football game between New York and New Orleans. We drank Budweiser and ate chilli cheese chips. Pretty Americaned up.

And that leads us to now, bed time on our first day in LA. I love this town already and if I had any self control over the disgustingly/deliciously greasy food they have, I would move here. Tomorrow we're off to Hollywood.

I will apologise now for not proof reading but dont take that to mean that I will proof read or write in a logical order any further updates.

Safe, sound and sleepy,

Peta