Howdy all, Steve here, reporting from the Hostel Estoril in Buenos Aires. I’ve made an executive decision as to how I’ll keep you posted while we’re over here. Flash blogs. Meaning, just short little posts filling you in on the basics, and some of my thoughts. Hope you’ll understand my brevity. There are better things to do than write on a machine. But thankfully, for the time being, the hostel has hooked me up with free access to updated the blog. The posts will be pretty much straight translations from my notebook, where I’m organizing my thoughts. When I get back, I’ll update these with pictures too hopefully. On we go…
You may also like
23/01/08
Whew! Well, another day in Wellington has blown by. Hee hee. Like the pun? Actually, the whether today was far better than yesterday, so I have no complaints. It was only a little windy, but apart from first thing in the morning, the day was very sunny, and as a result, there were much more people out milling about today. I essentially retraced my footsteps from yesterday, except that I went up a cable car as well, and didn’t go up Mount Victoria this time. Consequently, I didn’t bother with a GPS map, so you’ll just have to check out the pictures directly on flickr instead. Coincidentally, all of my pictures from the entire trip thus far have been put up now, so do feel free to check them all out. You can just click the link in the right column with the little pictures. It’s already quite late at night, so I’ll keep this post short so that I can post it, along with the remainder of my pictures before I head off tomorrow. Read on for a little more about today.
Hey folks. Nothing much to report for this blog post. I decided to spend an extra day in Paihia, as I wanted to visit Russell, which has some significant history attached to it. What’s the point of touring and biking all the time if you can’t take a day off for yourself every now and again, right? Well, that was what I did for myself. There was only one hitch with my day off. It rained. Scratch that, it poured! When I awoke, it was actually not too bad out, so I got my things together and headed down to the town. I hit an Internet Cafe for an hour and a half, putting up a couple posts and some maps, but of course you already knew that, didn’t you? So what else is new this day? Tune in.
For pictures from Mendoza, click here. Quick final post. I´ve got 20 minutes to wrap up this blog, pick up my laundry at the Bubbles Lavados up the street, and meet the group for supper, and a briefing on tomorrow´s activities. We arrived early in the morning to this beautiful city. Jody and I opted out of any city tours or any responsibilities. Instead, I got some laundry together, and explored the city on my own. Local busses, trolleys, and just plain locals in general. I´m really enjoying practicing communicating down here. I ended up getting a private tour of the city hall by a security guard, who took me to the roof of the building for some very impressive views and chit-chat, even though we were both out of our language comfort zones. It was quite cool. I then went to a very large park honoring San Martin, the man largely responsible for liberating Argentina. There is a mountain-top monument to this, the greatest of National heros. The location is known as Cerro Saint Gloria. It was a nice view, and nice moment. Then, local busses back here, and now I´m writing you. It was a bit funny, because a lot of the tour group opted to take a bus tour of the city, paying a bit of coin for it. My personal city tour, using local busses and my own two feet, was almost the same thing, but cost me 3.5 pesos, instead of 25+ pesos paid by the rest of the group. Of course, I didn’t go quite as far, but I still saw most of the main sights, and even crossed paths with them twice! Well, gotta go. Just realized it´s October 31st. Hope everyone´s having a spooky night, and I guess we´ll see you in less than a week now. Till then, enjoy the week!
14/03/08
Well, after over 4200km on the road, pedaling my little heart out, it’s over. I’ve also managed to realize another one of my dreams, which is to spend the night in jail. In fact, it looks like I’ll be spending 4 nights in jail in total for the crimes I’ve committed! Crimes you ask? Okay, I suppose I didn’t commit any real crimes, in fact, I’m paying to stay in jail. Yup, that’s right, I’m writing this blog post from my own cell at the Addington Jailhouse. This building functioned as a prison until the 1990’s, but is now a hostel. I booked it a few days ago to make sure they’d have room for me, as it is a pretty popular place now. In fact, they got 1st place for a BBH hostel this size in NZ, and were also awarded 2nd overall for all hostels in Oceania! Pretty impressive eh? And yes, it really looks like a jail, although a little more pleasant. They preserved one of the old cells as it was for comparison. I’m duly impressed, and happy to end off my cycling tour here. I booked one of the nicer rooms, a 4-bed share room, no bunks, which is double sized. For the rest of the details, please read on and check out the map.



