Well, here we are, last page of the blog. We´re back home on the 6th August so I´ll finish this off with some nice pics of Iguazu Falls:

Hola,

Moved on now from land of the grumpy-bollocks (Chile) and are now in Argentina. News you already know is that we´re flying home on the 5th August so just under 5 weeks. Here´s some piccies from the last few weeks:

Mendoza Wine Tour

It´s Carnival!

Well, here we are in South America. We hit Chile last Saturday after flying from New Zealand into Santiago. It was a 12 hour flight which took off at 5.30pm and bought us to our destination at 12.00 noon on the same day. So after flying for 12 hours, we arrived 5.5 hours before we left. That was an interesting few days…

Despite buying a couple of Spanish learning books in India, we´ve barely looked at them over the last 7 months so my prior preparation for arriving in a country that speaks no English whatsoever has consisted of:

• Buying a Rough Guide Latin American phrasebook

• Having seen Scarface and Carlito´s Way at least 100 times each

So, while I speak only the most rudimentary phrasebook Spanish, I can do so in a flawless Puerto Rican street accent which seems to be confusing and impressing the locals in equal measure.

Here´s some photos…

Crazy leopard woman set on the streets by a local newspaper somewhere in Santiago every day:

Smog you can eat:

Nice bit of skyline:

Me at dinner last night:

¨You NEED people like ME!”

Queenstown – at the mountain luge:

Chairlift to get up to it:

Climbing Fox Glacier:

Sunset at the Glacier:

Couple of piccies from Lake Mattheson:

Now in Kaikoura:

I am Ming!!

Surfs up at Manly Beach:

View from Jamie’s apartment in Sydney – NOT BAD

Now in Borneo.

Mount Kinabalu:

Meet the locals:

View from Kinabalu Nature Reserve

Still trucking….

Hello!

I have basically decided to put the blog out to pasture – for a while at least. …

After 3 days of Angkor Wat I can’t think of anything to say about it which means it probably wouldn’t be much of a read

Obviously if we hit a leper in a tuk-tuk or something we’ll be straight back in business.

What’s the most embarassingly ignorant thing you’d admit to? I’ve just finished reading Wild Swans and I’d always assumed that the Cultural Revolution (just from it’s name) meant a few people rising up and saying somthing like: “Come on chaps, enough of this tofu-scoffing, oppressive communism – let’s write some poems!”. Followed by an outpouring of literature, paintings and personal expression that bought a totalitarian government to it’s knees and freed the people to make microchips and cheap shoes. Rather than, you know, pupils turning cinemas into torture chambers for their teachers – that sort of thing…

(While I’m in the mood for admitting things, I think ABBA are one of the best bands ever formed, I rate Benny and Bjorn over Lennon and McCartney and a day hasn’t gone by in the last 10 years or so when I haven’t secretly listened to a good chunk of ABBA Gold. Seriously, I fucking love ABBA..)

So, we’re in Phnom Penh now which kind of reminds me of India a litle bit. We hadn’t really planned on doing much on our first day but after lunch we decided to visit The Killing Fields and Tuol Sleng (aka S21, the Khmer Rouge torture/detention centre). Have absolutely nothing to say about either, they’re just indescribable. Watch The Killing Fields or read Voices from S-21 if you’re interested – there’s really not much more to add and I wouldn’t know where to start to be honest.

After the tour we came back to the hotel. From our 5th Floor window, I’ve just watched half a dozen 5-10 year old rubbish scavengers have an all out fist-fight over a crushed plastic bottle someone had thrown in the gutter. The victor kicked the crap out of one of the smaller kids before huffing some petrol/glue out of a plastic bag, staggering triumphantly down the road and then crossing straight into the path of an oncoming car.