Click here for photos from this day. End of first long day in Argentina. It’s been an interesting one, culminating in me sitting in a bean-bag chair working on my 3.40 peso beer – A delicious 1 liter bottle Quilmes Cristal. That works out to about $1.25 CDN. That’s more like it! In the room, a german, couple Scots, and a Dutch guy, all enjoying a couple bottles of red wine. Flashback to arrival in BsAs. No problem getting through customs. Off to baggage claim. World’s slowest conveyor belt. Time passes. I finally get my backpack. Wait another eternity, no 2nd backpack! Oh shit. Yup, somehow, Jody’s bag never made it. Bad news. Sadly, not a hell of a lot we can do. Report is filed, but I’m not holding my breath. We manage to navigate buses downtown, and check into our hostel. the tiredness doesn’t help. We shower and re-group. Personally, I say it’s all part of the adventure, but with no clothes and toilettries, Jody may not agree. Luckly, stuff is relatively cheap. I think the new plan is to replace and move on. We’ve got the toilettries replaced, which is a good start. We move on to a preliminary exploration. BsAs is a big city. Compared to Lima, Peru, BsAs clearly has more wealth. I’ll reserve additional comparisons between the two nations until I see more of this country, but at first blush, it would appear Argentines are a bit better off. That’s if for now, gotta finish my beer and hit the hay. It’s been a long 29 hours.
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EXTRA
Breaking news story just in this morning of March 5th, 2008. With great crowds of cheering supporters, ActiveSteve climbed the world’s steepest street, Baldwin Street, in Dunedin, atop his trusty bicycle, Epicus, while the Burley Kid watched from below in admiration. This feat caused burning lungs and the taste of blood rising in the throat with the pounding heartrate, but the feat was over almost as quickly as it began. Onlookers were most impressed with this achievement, proclaiming aloud their respect for the task. Several keen eyes were even more impressed by the fact that ActiveSteve remained seated for the duration of the entire climb, and choose to attack almost the entire climb straight on rather than weave. However, in the steepest sections, the traditional alpine style of climbing was adopted for a short section, by weaving left and right to ease the slope. To mark the achievement, a certificate was acquired proclaiming the feat. The onlookers, so impressed, were clamouring to become signed witnesses to the act, even though there was no such place on the certificate. A quick addition to the scroll by ActiveSteve made a fellow from Pensacola, Florida most proud to sign his name proclaiming the validity of the climb. With great smiles and satisfaction, ActiveSteve, Epicus, and the Burley Kid continued back on the road, ready to tackle more hills for the day, albeit at much lesser grades!
Welcome to the final chapter in the story about how Mount Kilimanjaro was conquered on New Year’s Eve by Team Cantrailia. I won’t say it will be the final blog post on Africa, as I will likely write a little post about the final departure as well as some final impressions on the trip, the destinations, and the people I shared the journey with. However, for this post, I owe you all the tale of Day 6 of the Rongai Route. A pretty average day for all intents and purposes, but still one which had quite and effect on my, and stirred up a few emotions here and there. Before I get into all those little details though, I will invite you once again to look at the map of the hike for the day, as well as the set of pictures that are on flickr. I really hope some of you actually look at those damn maps, because I do spend some time on them :-). Anyway, after that, come on back here and read the rest of the post.
So a while back, I promised to blog a bit more about Cuba, and specifically about our snorkelling adventures while we were down there. Well, we finally got around to posting the pictures from the underwater camera, so I guess now is a good time to write about that. Gotta love those little disposable numbers. We took one down with us to Cuba over the holidays to catch us in underwater action. It helps a lot that the water is pretty clear, and that there is cool stuff to be found. The picture to the left is of a piece of brain coral that was in the water in the beach in front of the resort. We took some pictures during our Jeep safari day (see the crazy drunk russian post), volleyball action in the pool, and snorkelling in front of the resort. Overall, they turned out pretty good. The coral in the area we were frequenting weren’t the really colorful stuff, but we’ve definitely decided we’d like to do some more snorkelling elsewhere in the world. I had brought down one nice set of mask / fins / snorkel that I bought at MEC, and we decided we’ll have to buy another set.
14/01/08
Happy Monday to you all! As you’ve probably noticed, I was unable to post anything last night. This wasn’t because my hostel didn’t have the facilities, but rather because according to the manager there, the Internet was down all across New Zealand. That’s too bad, because I was hoping to get you caught up on my exploits. However, as I now find myself in essentially the middle of nowhere (Raukawa Falls), I still won’t be able to post anything. I have high hopes for tomorrow however, as I’ll be in a town of over 40,000, so surely they’ll have fixed the Internet there, right? Hee hee. Well in spite of that, my trip continues, and I have a new post to write for you all. Today Ralph and I bid farewell to Tongariro National Park, and made our way (mostly downhill) to the Raukawa Falls Adventure Centre, which is a YMCA camp, but also has cabins for independent travelers. We got a cabin for 15NZD each. Not bad. The location isn’t too shabby either, with some really cool falls nearby, as well as a flowing river behind our cabin. So, read on for my little story, and don’t forget to check out the day’s map. With the return of reliable power, I can give you an accurate map now 🙂