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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Welcome back all. I’m sorry if you’re all reading these one after the other, as I know that the text of my narrative can sometimes drag on. Just remember that for every 5 paragraphs you read, there’s probably another 15 paragraphs of memories and thoughts that I’m sparing you. I kid you not when I say that it takes me at least an hour for each of these posts. And that’s only if I sit and write them straight through… This tale revolves around another magnificent adventure that we had in Saudi Arabia. Namely, the visit to the Kingdom’s first, and so far only, Unesco World Heritage site, Mada’in Saleh. Many of you may have heard of a little place called Petra in Jordan, right? Well, Mada’in Saleh, is the 2nd city of the Nebateans, this one carved in to the rock hills very close to Al Ula. The stone in this area is actually harder than in Jordan, and as a result, some of these tombs are even better preserved. However, for reasons beyond the scope of this post, many Muslims have a beef with this site, and so they have tried to deface and damage it, and in many cases have succeeded. Read on for more great information about this place, and what we did there. As usual, make sure you check out all the pictures on flickr before you read on!
Hey gang. Just thought I’d make a quick blog post to let you know that I’m alive and well, but sadly, the blog posts haven’t been uploaded. On the plus side, you can check out the hundreds of photos that I’ve managed to upload while in Queenstown.
Rest assured, I’ve already got 4 posts and 4 maps set to go, but it’ll have to wait. At the moment, I’m in Glenorchy with just my day pack, about to do a 3-4 day tramping track called the Rees-Dart, along with the Cascade Saddle. Normally, they say it takes 4-5 for just Rees-Dart, but my plan is to do the main track in 2 days, and tack on an extra day to do a high alpine pass called the Cascade Saddle.
As you might guess, I have no computer here. When I was trying to upload the latest posts and maps, there was a problem with my server provider’s facilities, so the site was down periodically. Hopefully that’s straightened out, and when I get back to Queenstown, I’ll get the posts up, and maybe have another one for you to enjoy. Till then, enjoy all the pics!
Okay friends and well-wishers, enough messing around with safaris and red bananas and lounging by a pool. It’s high time we got down the business of scaling some of the bigger peaks in Africa. This post will serve as the kick off for the first of our true hiking experiences during out African adventure. On tap first? Mount Meru, which at 4,566m high is Africa’s fifth highest peak. The purpose of us scaling this lesser peak first was primarily to assist us with acclimatization, as well as giving our lead guide for Mount Kilimanjaro a chance to see how we might perform when it came time to the big show. This climb would take us 4 days and 3 nights, although the only real climbing day would come starting at day 2 starting at midnight. On that day, we’d be going for the summit. However, before we get to that day, I’ll write a post for each of the days we spent on the mountain, but try not to make them too long ;-). Also, since we’re on a mountain now, I’ve got a map to share with you, as well as a set of pictures from the first day itself. Enjoy those, then click on back and read the rest of the story.
24/02/08
Well kids, things can really change overnight around here. Yesterday, the riding was seemingly easy, with great weather and good wind. I was in very high spirits for the evening, and decided to stay up a while and have a few beers with all the motorcross people. After all, they were going to be up late and making noise, so there wasn’t much sense in trying to go to sleep early anyway. I also figured that the next day would be a pretty easy day, as I was only heading a little over 85km, and the trip was supposedly pretty much downhill. That meant I could have a somewhat lazy morning, and not have to be on the road right away. However, to add to the issues related to staying up late drinking beers, it also started pouring while we were still all outside on the front deck. Not nice. Luckily, I had the foresight to put my bike, trailer, and most of my gear under a protective roof so that it was kept nice and dry. Anyway, read on, check out the map, pictures, etc.