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!
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As I alluded to in a previous post, Jody and I ran into a few snags on our way home from Cuba over the Christmas Holidays. Namely, we got stuck in Cuba an extra day due to mechanical problems with our Zoom Airlines plane. The picture you see here is at around midnight, when we were told to go back down through customs. Why is everyone standing there you ask? Well, the authorities had no idea why we were sent there, and we all had to go back up to where I was and around the airport another way to get to the baggage. Just one of the ‘little’ snags in this dismal experience. In any case, we’ve sort of waited for almost a month, hoping to receive some sort of explanation or apology for all the problems. However, there was no word from either Zoom or Go Travel Direct. As a result, we ended up writing a strongly worded letter outlining all the shortcomings, and sent it in to their customer relations departments. Now we just need to wait and see what they have to say. We’ll keep you posted. In the meantime, read on to see the full text of the letter we sent.
02/02/08
Hi folks. I hope you’re all doing well, and feeling better than I am at the moment! You know, it really sucks when you get a summer cold, doesn’t it? Right now, I’m feeling absolutely miserable as I write up this post. I have full intentions of finishing it up, grabbing a bite to eat somewhere, and going straight to bed where I may listen to some music for a while before I [hopefully] fall asleep early. Today was actually a really good day on the bike, in spite of the weather, but tomorrow, thanks to some boneheaded mistake by me and some pre-booking, will be my first 100+km day, ending up somewhere to camp hopefully. Yup, I mis-read my guide book, and missed a 30km distance marking. Oops. I got excited, and pre-booked my ice-climbing day on Fox Glacier for Feb. 5th in anticipation of getting there in 2 days, and already paid 50% for it. So, that means I’ll just have to slug it out tomorrow and ride a long day. Hopefully the weather will be similar to today’s, which blessed me with a tailwind. Read on and check out the map for all the gory details!
22/01/08
So, I just had my first full day in Wellington, and I must say, I’m quite cultured now! As this is the capital, there is definitely lots of cultural experiences to have here, so I took advantage of several of them. I’ve been getting late starts here, as it’s just so nice to be able to listen to some music, play on the computer, watch TV, use the Internet, do laundry, etc. Funny how you miss even the domestic things when you’re on the road. Well, the other reason I’ve been a little slow here is that the weather hasn’t been super. Have I mentioned the possibility of a cyclone in Wellington? No? Well, that was yesterday, with winds gusting up to 130 km/hr. Travis, the fellow who’s place I’m staying at, and is a lifelong Wellington resident, says he can’t remember Wellington ever being under a cyclone warning. Crazy isn’t it? This is my second one in 2 months though, so I guess I’m pretty used to them myself. Ha ha. Anyway, read on for a little more about what I did for the day in Wellington and don’t forget to check out the map.
21/02/08
Hello folks, I’m happy to report that I’m safe and sound at Bob and Maxine’s Backpackers in Te Anau. Although there were no major mishaps to report on the way here, and even though most of the route was downhill, that’s not to say that the day wasn’t without its little challenges and frustrations. More specifically, I’d have to say that most of the day was full of challenges and frustrations. I’ve put a map together to show you where I was, but as you can see, there weren’t all that many pictures taken, for the simple fact that the road I was on was utter crap for what I was hauling. Check out the map, and read on for more details. I fear the story won’t be all that long, as it’ll be too painful to recall 🙂