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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Click here for pictures from Salta. Wow, time sure flies when you´re trying to both travel a country as well as tell the world about it. I almost decided not to write today, but given that I have the time, and I have a nice cold beer in my hand, I changed my mind. Now, let me rewind to just after the horsey experience. That was to be our last night in Salta, and as such, we were going to see a local show at a restaurant. Well, it was a great show, with an exceptional meal, as well as fine musical entertainment from a local group. I´ve got to admit right off the bat that Argentina is not the country to go to if you intend to lose weight. These people truly love to eat. And eat well! My favourites so far are Milanesa, which is sort of like a battered, fried steak. Of course Argentine meat is delectable, and this is very tasty. My other favourite dish, which is what I had that night is called Matambre, which is a steak from the stomach area I think, and this one was covered in a roquefort cheese sauce. Heaven in meat form I say. If Alix is reading these posts, I have to let her know that she would absolutely love this country. Great shoe shopping (or so it would seem), great steaks, great beer, and great prices. On with the show..
Howdy sports fans. Well, I guess this really isn’t a sports-related post, as my season is sort of over for 2007, but there are sports and games involved. That is, if you consider drinking beer and schnapps a sport! Yup, Jody and I returned to our October tradition of heading to Oktoberfest in Kitchener-Waterloo. In the past 7 years, I’ve been there 5 times, and Jody has been there 4 times. Each year, a different crew of us head down to Alix’s parents place, where we sleep in the basement, have a delicious Turkey dinner on Saturday, and of course head to the local sights and Festhallen for some Bavarian treats. Although there’s not a whole lot to tell you about the weekend (you sorta have to be there to understand it), I’ll still give you a little sense of the fun. Also, you can head over to Flickr to check out some pictures from the weekend. On with the tale.
27/12/07
Hi all. I hope everyone had a good Christmas and Boxing Day. I don’t know about anyone else, but as for me, the day after Boxing day it was basically back to work. I left the comfort of Auckland and hit the high road. My goal was to get up and basically leave as soon as I could, since I had mapped out a fairly long day of biking, clocking in at around 90km including some rather large hills along the way. However, as with the best laid plans, things don’t always go as planned. I was fairly effective the night before in sorting my gear out, but I hadn’t fully packed it, leading to a bit of a delay in getting out the door. Read on for the rest of the day, and check out the map.
One of the great aspects of this trip for me personally was the fact that I lugged a lot of technology with me the entire way. Three of my key pieces of gear were my digital camera (waterproof, shockproof, dustproof Olympus 790SW), my GPS (Garmin Forerunner 305) and my ultramobile PC (ASUS R2H). With these three things, I was able to make the trip come alive for people all around the world. Below is a list of links to all the rides that I did in New Zealand (starting with the last ride and finishing with the first). Also, I’ve put together two ‘mega-maps’; one covering my North Island adventures, and one covering my South Island adventures. All these maps have daily stats, as well as a selection of pictures from the day. (Warning: The mega-maps take a while to load in… be patient!)