Aussie, Aussie, Aussie! Oi, Oi, Oi!

"How ya goin'?"

The everpresent Australian greeting, "how ya goin'?", is not, as I'd initially thought, an amalgamation of "how's it going?" and "where are you going?"  It is not appropriate to respond with your intended physical destination ("I'm going to the store") or mode of locomotion ("I'm goin' by foot") or with your intended mental destination ("I'm going to get drunk") but can be appropriately responded to with an update of current physical and mental status ("I'm really drunk in this store.  And how ya goin'?").  Normally, however, one just responds with a simple "fine, thanks" or something similarly unenlightening.

So, yeah, that actually is kind of Australia in a nutshell for us.  So familiar and yet so foreign.  I mean, I understand the vast majority of words coming out of Australian mouths to be of the English language.  However, I end up losing the collective meaning of those words at least a third of the time.  It might be our (the ol' US of A) fault.  As a comedian I saw on TV astutely noted, Americans have a tendency to add words on to already obvious phrases.  By way of example, he commented on the phrase "horseback riding" that we commonly use.  Apparently, most of the rest of the English speaking world just says horse riding.  When you think of it, that makes a lot more sense.  I mean, where the hell else are you going to ride a horse?  It's not like Americans would get so confused by the phrase "horse riding" that we'd attempt to mount the horse's face or its ass (lonely Americans from the deep South excepted, of course).

Well we flew out of Bali at midnight, which kind of sucked.  We arrived in Darwin, Australia at three in the morning, which also kind of sucked.  We had to wait a couple sucky hours for our next flight that left at seven.  We arrived in Cairns (pronounced Cans) at nine in the morning and our Australian adventure began.

/complainmodeoff

Cairns is on the northeastern coast of Australia right by the Great Barrier Reef.  We spent a couple nice days there which were highlighted by an awesome snorkel trip out to the Reef itself.  This snorkeling trip was one for the ages.  We saw manta rays, turtles swimming around right next to us, two different kinds of sharks, and some cool batfish that acted like dogs.  The batfish swam right next to the stern (that's "back of the boat" for you landlubbers), begging for food.  They'd even eat food right out of your hand.  Leann squealed like a little schoolgirl when one nibbled on her fingers that were holding food out for them.  Good times.

We also spent a good amount of time wandering around the town and spent a day lounging by the public lagoon, which normal people would refer to as a "pool".  It was pretty much a big saltwater pool right next to the ocean, which is unswimmable due to crocodile and shark infestations.

Cairns Lagoon / Pool thingy

After our Cairns visit, we flew down to the Sunshine Coast town of Brisbane to meet up with the lovely couple Mark and Hayley that we'd befriended during our Inca Trail trek to Machu Picchu.  We spent several days with them and it was just fantastic.  We tried our hand at surfing (I still suck) and got driven around to neat sights in the area.  We also spent a day at the Steve Irwin (he of "crikey!" fame) Zoo.  At the zoo we got to pet roos and koalas.  Don't believe me?  I have the pictures to prove it.

Bitchin', eh?

We really loved our time with Mark and Hayley.  They made us feel at home.  We, in return, attempted to poison them to death by trying to cook up an authentic New Mexican dinner.  That, as we found, is essentially impossible to do in Australia.  All the peppers have names I cannot relate to.  Capsicum is like a bell pepper, despite a name that would mislead one into thinking that it is full of capsaicin (the stuff in hot peppers that makes them hot).  We tried to make chile rellenos, green chile stew, and some guacamole with chips.  The guacamole was fine.  We could not find any black beans to have a side dish and took a pass on cooking up refried beans for them.  The rellenos turned out to be kind of a mess but they were moderately edible.  The green chile stew was also moderately edible but tasted nothing like anything any self-respecting New Mexican would deem to be a real green chile stew.  Of course, there is no green chile in Australia either and our improvisations thereof didn't help matters all that much.  However, in the end, as Hayley noted, they had no idea whether what we'd cooked them was authentic or not.  It didn't, in actuality, kill them.  So that's good.  Hayley and Mark, if you guys ever come to visit us in New Mexico we'll show you just how poorly we represented the delicious food from our state.


At the end of our Brisbane stay, we decided to rent a campervan and drive down the coast to Sydney.  Our campervan was essentially a tricked out minivan with a bed in the back.  We drove around from stellar beach to stellar beach and camped in the back of the thing for the night in several of Australia's many, many caravan parks (I guess more commonly known as RV parks back home).  It was a sweet little rig, complete with DVD player to entertain us as we watched the $1 DVDs we'd purchased back in Bali.


We visited a multitude of little beach towns from Surfer's Paradise to Port Stephens to Byron Bay.  I think I can pretty safely say that Aussies REALLY take good care of their beaches.  Even on the beaches with decent sized crowds, the beaches were pristine.  The sand is a nice off white color, super clean, and makes an amusing little squeaking noise when you walk barefoot on it.  The water was also nice and clean and I finally got some decent sized waves to mess around in, as compared to the relative tranquility of the waves in both Thailand and Bali.  The water was way colder than we were used to but manageable.


After about a week driving down the coast, we checked our campervan back in to the company (amusingly named Spaceships).  Of course, I drove to the wrong dropoff point in Sydney and had to make an hour + detrour to get the thing to the right place.  We then scooted on to meet my mom at the Sydney airport.  It was sooooooo nice to have a familiar face to hang out with for a while.  Now, it's not like I'm sick of Leann (or vice versa, I hope) but having a little piece of home delivered to you in the form of your loving mama is fantastic after months and months on the road.  We all then took a taxi down to our temporary home in Sydney right next to Bondi Beach.  We stayed in an apartment just a couple blocks from the beach.  We did a ton of stuff, from checking out the Sydney Harbor and Opera House, to wandering through the very cool sculpture exhibition set up along the coast in between Bondi and Bronte beaches.

Smoochy poochies from Sydney

After a too-short four days in Sydney, we all flew on to Christchurch, New Zealand.  We've now been in New Zealand for a few days and just bid adieu to my mom today as she flies on her own way slowly back home.  We're set to fly up to the north island of New Zealand later tonight and will be cruising around for several days checking out the amazing landscape in Kiwiland.  New Zealand has rapidly risen to the top, or extremely near the top, of our "must re-visit" list.  But, hey, that's another blog post, now isn't it?

Ciao for now!

Bali, the most wonderfulest place of all time

From now on, you can call me Wayan Chris.  That's my new Balinese name (Wayan means "first born").  I kind of like it.  It also means that Damon Wayans' name really means Damon Firstborns, which I also like.

Bali truly is the most beautifullest, wonderfullest, greatestest and bestest place in the whole world.  Now, I don't mean to get all hyperbolic on your collective asses, but Bali really blew us away. 

The Bali beaches, at least on the mainland, can't really hold a candle to those in Thailand.  But the scenery....oh the scenery!  Bali is rife with both natural and man-made beauty.  Every damn tree, bush, or plant, it seems, is full of some sort of exotic and amazing flower.  Every damn five minutes one can spot a Hindu temple complete with complex and cool carved stone work.  Every damn house, it seems, has a miniature version of a temple right there in the damn back yard.  It's awesome.

Bali, as you may or may not know, is part of Indonesia.  It's 60% Hindu and 100% supersweet.  It's home to delicious food, dangerous drinks, tons of Australian travelers and expatriates, and everything from terraced rice fields to the best snorkeling in the world (well, maybe tied with the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, but we'll get to that in the next installment.)

I'm going to try again to let the pictures speak for themselves but I'll give a quick rundown of some stuff we did in Bali.

We made the southern coastal town of Sanur our home base for the duration of our stay --- about 8 days.  We avoided the craziness of Kuta and Denpasar but were also able to visit some gems along the way thanks, in large part, to the proximity of just about everything as well as the inexpensive nature of hiring a car with driver to drive you wherever you'd like to go.

Quick anecdote:  The night we arrived in Bali we grabbed a taxi to our hotel and walked around looking for food and/or a drink.  It was kind of late and on a weekday so all we could find near our hotel was a tiny bar full of arguing Brits and Kiwis.  The ladies running the bar took a shine to Leann and I (I think they just wanted to escape the arguments for a while) and chatted us up.  They ended up giving us a couple free shots of Arak, the local drink (kind of like a tequila-ish concoction made from coconut).  Apparently people make their own Arak.  I'm not sure if this stuff is like bathtub gin or moonshine or what but it was strong as hell.  We found out later that a whole batch of tourists had died from drinking the stuff.  I guess sometimes it gets mixed with methanol and can burn you from the inside out.  We were fine.  I drank most of Leann's shot.

So, we go to see the following stuff:  A multilevel marketplace that would panic anyone with claustrophobia, the Royal Temple in Ubud, the island of Lembongan, a waterfall at Git Git, snorkeling at Amed, a really old temple somewhere on the road to Ubud, a bat cave temple (no Batmans or Robins, but about a gazillion bats flying around), a temple on a lake, and the holy water gardens.  We also even went to our driver's tiny little village to meet his mother and other family and neighbors!

In the spirit of visual storytelling, I'll try to show you what some of these places were like by the pictures we took there.

Above you can see the rice fields (first two pictures), the fire dance we watched, some monkey action complete with monkey baby, stone carving on the beach, Hindu temple, waterfall, two gargoyle-esque creatures, more monkey action, a Hindu procession, the post-snorkel beach happiness, the holy water temple, and the entrance to the bat cave temple.  Bali is pretty fierce, eh?

If there's one time you absotively, posolutely MUST look at our Flickr pictures, this is it.  Check out Bali here:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisandleann/sets/  There are a few different groups of Bali pictures sorted by location.

Next up will be a recap of Australia!  Aussie, Aussie, Aussie!  Oi, Oi, Oi!

Thailand, aka Tropical Paradise

Thailand, you devilish temptress!  We arrived in Thailand to massive rainfall that wouldn't stop for days.  It was a bit disheartening, to say the least.  Staying in a locale surrounded by such natural beauty but experiencing torrential downpours on a constant basis is tough.  However, the rain stopped (at least for us....Thailand had floods in 61 of 72 provinces when we left and was facing essentially a national disaster).

I'm going to try to let my pictures do more of the talking for the Thailand leg of the journey than my writing.  It's a pretty difficult task for someone like myself that happens to be afflicted with a severe case of diarrhea of the keyboard/fingers.  But I'll give it a go and see what happens....

So, in a nutshell, here's what we did:  Arrived in Bangkok.  Flew to Phuket (pronounced Foo-Ket, not the other way...get your mind out of the gutter).  Stayed in Phuket for around one week.  Took a boat to Phi-Phi island (prounounced like Pee-Pee, not the other way...mind can go right back in the gutter for now).  Stayed in Pee-Pee, err, Phi-Phi for a couple days.  Took another boat to Ko Lanta.  Stayed in Ko Lanta for about four days.  Then back to Phuket for a night, back to Bangkok for a night, and flew on to Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia.

Phuket:  We stayed in a wickedly badass bungalow at a place called Bangtao Beach Chalets.  So, even though it was raining cats and dogs and elephants and sperm whales...wait, what?...we had a nice room to bide our time in and get some reading and relaxin' done.  Like I said, eventually it stopped raining and we did some stuff.  We checked out our mucho-super-mega-kickass beach (Bangtao Beach) which was a 2km  long stretch of amazing white sand and mellow waves.  We also rented a beater Suzuki Jeep, grabbed up some random Chinese folks who happened to be around when we rented the Jeep, and took a drive down to crazy ol' Patong.  Patong is where you can find ladyboys, ladies of the night, massage ladies, maybe ladybugs, probably a malady or two, and all sorts of debauchery (if you were so inclined, of course).  We, being good and responsible tourists, just grabbed some food with the Chinese folk and spent some time at the beach there.  The beach there is crowded but really fun.  Parasailing, jet skiing, and all sorts of other activities predominate the coast line in Patong.  Really, we just chilled at various beaches and relaxed the entire time in Phuket.  It was real nice like.  By way of proving my point, witness:    

So top to bottom, here's what you're seeing:  
Bitchin' dinner at Lotus restaurant on beach
Sunset on Bangtao beach
Our own little beach in Bangtao
BABY ELEPHANT CHILLING ON THE BEACH!  Crazy, eh?  Take that, India beach cows!
Our hotel pool at Bangtao Beach Chalet
Leann at the hotel entrance

After that we motored on, via boat, to Phi-Phi Island.  Now, people freakin' love this place.  In fact, this place was more recommended than anywhere else in Thailand by the folks we talked to before we left.  Uh, I think either things might have changed in the last few years or unbeknownst to me my friends are actually drunken fratboys.  Phi-Phi is a maze of vendors, bars, and clubs all packed into a tiny, dirty little area.  It's the kind of place where you only have to wait outside your hotel room for five minutes to hear the magical mating call of the sorority girl ("Oh my god, I'm sooooo wasted!").  That said, the island, without the people jammed in, is amazingly beautiful.  We took a boating and snorkeling trip out to a couple different islands, including Phi-Phi Leh, where they filmed the movie The Beach with Sir Leo DiCaprio, esq.  This definitely was the highlight of our pee-peeing.  As evidence, I present to you:

           

From left to right and top to bottom:
Mystery Cove
Serious lovin' in Maya Bay (where The Beach was filmed)
Entrance to Maya Bay by way of old rope bridge-like thing
Pretending I'm a scuba diver
Sea urchin
Slayer for mayor
Chillin' in the cove
Angel fish


After Phi-Phi, we went to Ko Lanta.  I'd made reservations with a small place that had a few bungalows on the beach.  I mentioned to them that it would be Leann's birthday when we arrived.  To my surprise, they had a bunch of little cakes ready for us and "Happy Birth Day Leann" spelled out on them!  How cool and kind is that?  The people in Thailand are so incredibly friendly and generous.  Ko Lanta was kind of our tour place, despite having yet another paradise-like beach front about 12 seconds from our front door.  We did a couple tours in a pretty amusing way.  The owner of our beach cabins, Annie, speaks some English but not a ton.  I speak zero Thai, outside of "hello" (Sawadee Kop!) and "thank you" (Kapun Kop!).  So when she asked me where I wanted to go the next day, I replied "well, maybe we'd like to see some islands."  She then proceeded to go ahead and book a full day tour for us.  The problem was, well, we had no idea what islands we were going to, what we'd do on these aforementioned islands, if there were actually multiple islands or just one, what we'd need to take along, or even when we'd get back.  So the driver came and picked us up at 9 the next morning and we were off.  I thought it might be good to ask him some of the questions about our trip, so here's how that discussion went:

Us:  "Excuse me, but where are we going?"
Driver:  "To the pier."
Us:  "Uhh, ok.  What are we doing?"
Driver:  "No worries.  You come back today."
Us:  "...."

Leann even asked a fellow sitting next to her on the boat where we were headed to.  His reply?  "German."  Uh, yeah.  She asked me to speak to him in German, so I asked if he had any idea which island we were headed to.  His response?  "Keine Ahnung (no idea)."  And off we went.
Screw it, we're in paradise, right?  What could possibly go wrong?  Well, before your mind gets the better of you, let me alleviate your fears by letting you know that not only did nothing go wrong, it actually turned out to be a really outstanding trip.  We stopped at the base of some cliffs.  As I looked around to see where we could actually enter on to this island we'd reached, the boat captain busted out a bunch of snorkeling equipment.  All righty then.  Apparently we were on a snorkeling trip!  It was sweet.  Awesome coral and food to feed the fish, resulting in a feeding frenzy of epic proportions.  It was so thick with fish that if you stuck your hand out, they'd nibble away on your fingers.  Fun, fun.  We snorkeled in another spot or two (sorry, no underwater camera this time) and spent a couple hours eating lunch on a super outstanding beach on some unknown island off the coast of Thailand.

We also took a combo tour that had us riding an elephant and checking out a waterfall.  Our elephant, Bao, is the biggest pachyderm in all of Thailand.  He's a huge feller, checking in at over 11,000 lbs. (I think....translating broken English as well as kilograms to pounds can be rough).  The trek to the waterfall took us by some fossilized snail shells in a limestone cave with bats.  Good stuff.  Seriously.  No, really.  I can prove it:

     

I lost a bunch of the Ko Lanta pictures!!!!  Hopefully it's only temporary, but I'm getting a "cannot use this card" message with the memory card that has a bunch of the awesome pics.  Cross yer fingers.

So that's about it for Thailand.  We're leaving Bali tonight on a brutal flight that takes off at 11 pm and lands in Darwin, Australia at 3 in the morning.  Ouch.  We then wait for several hours and head to Cairs, Australia, arriving at 8:20 am.  Great Barrier Reef, here we come!

Egypt and India (and a little bit of Thailand)

We are now in Phuket, Thailand, a little island off the western coast.  We arrived here a few days ago to buckets and buckets of heavy rain.  It was a pretty huge bummer for me, as Thailand was one of my most looked forward to places of the entire trip.  Thailand has a hefty reputation for having the best beaches in the world.  Tough to explore beaches when it's raining hard enough to drown fish.  The weather forecast was for rain, rain, heavy rain, massive rain, and brutal rain.  Feeling depressed about our prospects in Thailand, I even went so far as to consider rebooking some flights to get us out of here earlier.

Well, teaches me to have any faith in weather forecasts.  After about two days of sucky rain-all-day-you-can't-leave-your-hotel-room action, it cleared up.  Now, don't get me wrong.  We're here in the offseason which means that really nice hotels and resorts are really cheap.  Our place is kind of a bungalow-ish place that looks like the penthouse at the Four Seasons but only costs like $38 a night.  I mean, if it's gonna rain might as well be stuck in a place like this.

So, yeah, it stopped raining and we rented a crappy, beater Suzuki Jeep and started checkin' stuff out.  This place is amazing.  White sand beaches, really cheap and delicious food, not that many people right now (do to it being offseason), and really friendly folks.  We're looking at booking an all day boat trip that goes to a bunch of islands including "James Bond Island" where parts of "The Man with the Golden Gun" were filmed.  We will probably roll on to Phi Phi island soon and perhaps make our way down to Ko Lanta, another island nearby.  Hopefully super-sweet blog updates will apprise you, fair reader, of what we've done.

OK, so here's the quick and dirty about where we've been for the last while.  After departing Greece, we headed to Cairo, Egypt.  We did the whole tour thing there since we were a little a-scared about the political situation.  After that we headed to Goa, India, a former Portugese colony on the southwestern coast by way of Mumbai (formerly Bombay), India.  Mumbai has gotten a bunch of press in recent times for the terrible terrorist murders that took place at high end hotels back in 2008.

So I think I'll start talking about Egypt by presenting a quick fact sheet:

Number of people in greaer Cairo, Egypt area:  Somewhere around 16,000,000
Number of traffic lights in greater Cairo, Egypt area:  Somewhere around 3
Chance of scoring some booze outside of your tourist hotel:  .00001%
Chance of scoring some booze inside your hotel next to a pool while smoking shisha from a huge hookah:  99.9%
Number of huge-ass blocks in The Great Pyramid:  2,000,000
Percent of traditional Muslims that look like ninjas to me:  50%
Amount of time I would survive if I drove the roads of Cairo:  3.2 minutes
Manner of death I would likely suffer on said Cairo roads:  Crushing
Highest number of people seen piled onto one scooter:  Four
Number of dudes observed fistfighting while on camels:  Two
Number of times Leann and Chris got interviewed by Egyptian television:  One
Reason that King Tut is so famous:  Tomb was full when found (others from more important Kings were already looted)

Cairo is crazy.  Crazy cool, but crazy nonetheless.  There are a LOT of people there.  The streets are absolutely insane.  Like I mentioned, there are no traffic lights.  People just go.  All of them all the time.  There are also not really any lanes on the roads.  Cars, trucks, scooters, motorcycles, and everything in between just pack themselves in to one road as closely as possible.  Pedestrians risk life and limb constantly by trying to maneuver across packed roads, often having to stop in the middle of the road at each "lane".

Well, we got picked up at the airport by our Egyptian tour company (Emo Tours --- highly recommended and much less emo than I had feared.  No angst-ridden teenagers cutting themselves the entire time in Egypt, to my knowledge.)  They took us to our hotel and hot damn!!! it was a nice one.  I guess the hotel is only a year old.  We had a choice between three, four, and five star accomodations and picked the four since it was comparable in price to the three and the five was significantly more.  This hotel was bad-motherchuckin' ass.  We spent time in our spacious and exceptionally clean room and puncuated the ends of tour days by relaxing next to the 8th story rooftop pool whilst sipping on a cool Sakara beer and even smoking Egyptian shisha (it's just flavored tobacco....relax) out of a huge hookah.

We spent three days touring and here's what we saw:

The Pyramids and Sphynx:  The pyramids of Giza are right outside of Cairo.  In fact, Giza is a city that's connected to Cairo and you can see the pyramids clearly from the city (when it's not too hazy from pollution).  There is a series of three pyramids right near each other, with the Great Pyramid being the largest by far.  This one, also called the Pyramid of Cheops, is the one with more than 2,000,000 limestone blocks, the largest of which weighed an impressive 80 tons.  This pyramid was finished around 2560 BC and was the tallest structure in the world for over 3,800 years.  If you're not impressed, you should be.  These pyramids are absolutely amazing and the fact that they're so many thousands of years old and have held up so well to the rigors of time should give a person a healthy respect for the engineering skill of the ancient Egyptians.  We also got to see both women vendors fistfighting and dudes on camels fistfighting.  Times are a little tough in Egypt right now because the tourist industry is in shambles due to everyone's fear about the safety situation.  The Sphynx was actually smaller than I'd pictured but still very cool.  It combines a lion's body with a King's head.  The nose was chiseled off by a particularly enraged Muslim fundamentalist who took issue back in the 16th century with Egyptians making offerings to the Sphynx.

Two noses, six eyes, three heads, and one fantastic photo opp.

The Egyptian Museum:  A modern, if perhaps a little overpacked, museum that has probably the most wonderful collection of archaeological artifacts in the whole world.  That statue you're looking at over there?  Yeah, that's 5,000 years old and in perfect condition.  That chair over there?  That's King Tut's real chair.  This place is incredible.  Everything is so old and everything is so incredibly well preserved.  It's like an archaeologist's wet dream.  Don't worry, I kept all my fluids to myself while there.

Khan el-Khalili Market:  A huge, sprawling bazaar with every kind of offering you can imagine.  We were given a pep talk by our awesome guide, Mamdouh, before entering into the market.  Yes, you need to haggle prices.  No, you shouldn't tell anyone you're from the United States.  "Tell them you're from Holland.  People from Holland are famous around here for never buying anything or paying too much."  Who knew?  So, yeah, I inevitably ended up in negotiations with some dude named Hassan in his "brother's" shop over a soccer jersey and a shawl for Leann.  Negotiations actually got pretty heated, mainly because he was trying to tell me that his initial offer of well over $100 US was a good deal and that my jersey was "authentic, not polyester" despite the tag on the jersey itself that said "100% polyester".  Leann and the pseudo-brother guy were pretty amused during the whole affair.  The brother even suggested that Leann take a picture (she didn't, but it probably would have been funny).  Well, I got the stuff for under $20 and we shook hands and everyone was happy.  I think I still probably paid too much but the experience was pretty memorable and fun.

Bizarre?  No.  Bazaar?  Yes.

Mosque / Temple / Church / Citadel tour:  Our last day we toured one temple (it sadly got damaged during the revolution by some overzealous jerks), one church in Coptic Cairo, and a couple different mosques.  During this time we asked our guide various things about Islam that we didn't know.  He told us the world to the call to prayer that everyone in the whole city of Cairo hears through loudspeakers multiple times a day.  He told us cool stories about his family and life as a Muslim man in Egypt and allowed us to witness both the washing ritual, including feet washing, and actual prayer at a mosque.  Very cool.  We also toured the Saladin Citadel in Cairo.  The place was built at the end of the 12th century to protect from Crusaders (who never ended up coming).

I feel like I could write for days just about Egypt even though we were there such a short time.  Know this, though:  Egypt is absolutely safe (unless you're a camel ride operator, apparently).  The people there are kind and giving and extremely and deservedly proud about their revolution.  Things are all up and running.

However, it's also crazy in Cairo, like I mentioned.  40% or more in the city live in poverty.  Some of it is really extreme poverty.  A particularly shocking example of this is that the huge Cairo graveyard, named "City of the Dead", has now been somewhat renamed to "City of the Living."  Why is that?  Well, a huge population of people has taken to living in the actual graveyard.  There is a whole microeconomy happening in there --- shops, restaurants, everything.  It's apparently very dangerous to go to and most Cairo locals avoid it.

Still, I'd advise anyone interested in one of the world's oldest cultures to go visit.  Probably a good idea to book a tour, unless you're extremely adventurous, but don't feel afraid to go.  We had a wonderful time.

After departing Cairo in the middle of the night (our flight left at midnight), we rolled on to Mumbai, India for a night before heading to Goa.  Mumbai is even bigger than Cairo in terms of population.  There are over 20 million people in Mumbai.  The first thing we noticed as our plane landed early in the morning was the vast spread of shanties built up around the airport.  These shacks are constructed from, well, pretty much whatever.  Most of them have corrugated metal roofs but the walls are built from bricks, tires, and everything else you can imagine.  There are a million people per square mile in Mumbai.

The second thing we noticed upon exiting the plane in Mumbai was the smell.  It was terrible, like raw sewage.  Leann had known about this in advance but I wasn't prepared.  This initial experience set the table for what turned out to be an experience in a place of extremes.  The India leg of the journey is one with which I reflect on with the most mixed emotions.  Don't worry, though....India gets significantly better after the initial shock.  But before it gets better, it stays pretty bad.  Let me explain.

We, through a series of poor planning and failure to understand date changes correctly, ended up canceling our hotel booking in Mumbai for the night before we flew to Goa.  So we needed a hotel upon exiting the airport.  We found a very helpful young lady at a hotel stand and she found a hotel near the airport that would come and pick us up and was pretty reasonably priced.  Side note:  Mumbai is, unbelievably, one of the most expensive cities in the world to own property.  More than 50% of the city lives in one huge slum but it's also the capital for India's elite.  A distressing study in juxtaposition and contrast and serves to heighten one's feelings of the extremes that I mentioned earlier.

So, yeah, we got picked up and headed through the smell to the hotel, driven by a nice young kid and his sidekick that work at the hotel.  Sidekick offered us a driven tour of the city.  We deferred until later as we were dead tired.  Upon arrival at the hotel, everyone was mega nice and extremely helpful.  They took our bags up to the room.  The room.....ugh, the terrible fucking room.  This place was dirty.  Now, normally I'm not really all that sensitive to hygiene of a hotel.  I mean, I can stand a lot of stuff....probably much more than the average traveler.  But this room was grody to the max.  It smelled, there was trash on the floor and in the bathroom, and (and this is the worst part by far) the shower that I unwisely chose to take made me smell like open sewer myself.  I had never had a shower that left me dirtier than when I'd entered.  It was bad.  The restaurant I ate at, that Leann smartly chose to skip, was also disgusting.  Again, the people were very nice and some of the food was just fine.  However, I ordered steamed rice to go with my masala (spicy red sauce Indian food).  I spooned up a mouthful of rice, brought it to my lips, and..... stopped dead in my tracks.  The rice was obviously cooked in the same nasty water that I ended up showering in.

Not to be a wuss, but this was a pretty tough start to our India adventure.

Anyways, we took off from Mumbai and flew to Goa.  In Goa we'd rented a small studio apartment.  We were picked up at the airport (which, I'm extremely delighted to report, smelled just fine) and driven to our abode.  This abode abides (crappy Big Lebowski reference, sorry).  It was slightly musty due to the massive amount of humidity but comfortable and large.  We rented a scooter, scooted all over town and to nearby beaches, and spent some serious beach time at Vagator Beach alongside the cows.  Yes, you read that correctly.  Cows.  On the beach.  Beach cows.  Lots of them.  In fact, there are cows all over the place around Goa.  No one messes with them and they pretty much just cruise down the street at a leisurely pace, ignoring protestations and honking from blocked drivers.  In a particularly humorous instance, a couple cows got real aggressive with some tourists on the beach we were lying on.  The cows saw that the people had brought some food and essentially just started to help themselves to it.  One guy in the group grabbed up the food and moved away from the cows with it.  The cows gave chase, running after the guy.  He ended up emptying the contents of the food package on the ground in an effort to escape the attack of the herbivores.  Pretty classic stuff and pretty sure you won't get a scene like this on many other beaches in the world.

Our time in Goa really eased our fears that our entire time in India would be similar to our time in Mumbai.  Goa and surrounding areas operates at a relaxed pace.  We were just in a beach town, like most others in the world.  There were open-air beach bars with delicious food (Indian food is my favorite type of food in the whole world and the fare there didn't disappoint) and cold beverages.  We were also impressed and awed by the incredible Indian culture.  There are gazillions of religions, although Hindu predominates the country everywhere else but Goa.  Goa has maintained its Portuguese roots by having a significant amount of Roman Catholicism, as evidenced by the many roadside Christian shrines and churches.  The clothing is colorful and fantastic.  I could really dig Leann in a sari, for sure.  One particular scooter ride we took might have afforded us the most beautiful scenery on our entire trip so far, no small feat.  We scooted over a bridge to another beach town and the entirety of the bay and ocean spread out before us, complete with palm trees (ones with coconuts in India...the ones in Egypt had dates) and beautiful jungle scenery.  The place is like a postcard on steroids in just about every location.  Oh, and the bounty of vendor ladies that approach you near the beach all use English-sounding names like Julie and Sue and stuff.  This is supposedly done because Americans and others cannot remember Indian names.  Probably right.  We're not an attentive people all the time.

Things in India are CHEAP!!!  This was by far the cheapest place we'd visited.  A beer in the bar is about 60 cents.  A meal is a buck or two.  I got a pair of swim trunks and a t-shirt for about $3.50.  There are a ton of expatriates from all over the world in coastal India and I know why.  You can essentially save up for a flight to India, rent a room or an apartment by the month, buy a scooter, and live there indefinitely.  I'd say that after you got there you could live very nicely, apartment and scooter included, for six months for $5,000.  Shoot, probably less than that.

Most of our time was spent relaxing in India on the beach or at our apartment complex pool.  We ate, we drank, we slept, we beached it up, and we generally just refueled the soul for a while.  Overall, a very positive time in India despite the rough start.  In retrospect, maybe we should have spent more time in India to see more of the country.  However, like Egypt, it was one of those "big unknown" kind of places.  I can see why India is often referred to as a place that people either love or hate.  Hell, we loved AND hated it all in one short trip.  I have to say, it's tough to see the kinds of conditions that the most impoverished people live in.  Yes, it's an eye opener and, yes, it's probably important to see things first hand rather than just hear about them on Fox News, but it's not easy.  India is famous for both some of the most amazing and beautiful things in the world but also for incredible poverty and poor quality of life.  I understand just a little bit better now that both reputations are deserved.

So I'm having some upload issues yet again with the pictures.  I really want to add some shots in here from our Egypt and India stints as they were so cool.  I will either do a separate blog entry just with some pictures or will edit this post and add some in later.  In the meantime, wish us luck here in Thailand and much love from your itinerant traveler friends / family, Chris and Leann!

Italy and Greece

So we're actually in Goa, India currently but there is such a huge divide between Italy/Greece and Egypt/India that I've decided to split those locations into two separate blog posts.

So, without further ado, here's the lowdown on Italy and Greece!

We started our Italian adventure in the canal-rific city of Venice.  Let me talk for just a minute about Venice.  It's a weird place.  Undeniably beautiful and certainly romantic and all that.  However, the town has become so incredibly mega-touristic that, apparently, soon there may not be any actual Venetians there.  That's right, a city wholly composed of restauranteurs, street hawkers, and clean up crews that come in from their homes outside the city to serve the whims of the hordes of tourists.  Now, this information I'm imparting to you was derived from a second-hand source, so do your due diligence and go check it out.  Regardless of whether it's specifically true or not, it's obvious that Venice is totally geared to tourism.  That in itself is little surprise, given the city's (warranted) awesome international reputation and the great sights.

We arrived in Venice from Vienna via a train/bus combo.  The train trip was frickin' sweet.  Beautiful landscape everywhere as we made our way through the Austrian and Italian Alps.  It was like watching The Sound of Music through the window of our train car.  We switched to a bus with about 3 hours to go in the journey (a nice, new double-decker tourist bus, I might add) and rolled into the Venice bus station as the sun was beginning to set.  We had booked a hotel in advance, so spent most of our time wandering the streets, looking for good Italian eats and checking out the super cool canals.  In a nutshell, we saw St. Mark's square and accompanying cathedral, we dined on the best damn gelatto ice cream money can buy (Italians make a damn fine ice cream, I tell you what) in a secluded park, walked around the various canals, and strolled via beach boardwalk halfway around the island. 

We debated long and hard about whether we wanted to take a gondola ride.  Well, the desire was unquestioned.  Of course we wanted to take a gondola ride.  I mean, when you go to New York you check out Times Square, when you go to Sydney you go to the Opera House, when you go to New Mexico you eat the green chile, when you go to Mexico you get murdered by drug lords......wait, what?  Anyways, we decided that $100+ per person for a 40 minute ride wasn't right for our budget.  We had some consternation about that decision but haven't really had any active heartache about it since, so apparently it was fine.

After Venice, we flew on a short flight to Rome.  As a quick side note, flying was cheaper and easier than pretty much any other mode of transportation, usually at least, in Europe.  Everyone seems to be under the (mistaken) notion that trains are cheap in Europe, or at least cheaper than planes.  Not true.  There are some Eurail Passes available that could provide decent bang for the buck but they are either very restrictive (3 adjoining countries, for example) or very expensive.  It sucks because not only are planes far worse for the environment, we also really wanted to experience more train action in Europe!  When last I was there, trains were easily the most affordable and flexible method of travel.  This is no longer the case.  Probably doesn't help that I'm a decade past qualifying for a student discount, either.

So, yeah, Rome.  Rome, Rome, Rome.  Rome was INCREDIBLE.  I had no idea what to expect other than more art action.  I just didn't know that Rome was this amazing.  It's like a massive city built around the most beautiful archaeological sites and monuments in the world.  On your left is a nightclub, on your right is a bar, and in front of you is ---- The Pantheon!  We tried to build in as much tourist stuff as we could during our Rome stint, but it's just not possible.  Rome has all the luxury and frills of a modern city, except that some of the world's most beautiful places are sprinkled right in the middle of downtown.  We checked out the Pantheon, the Colosseum, and Vatican City, among some other things.

Pantheon ---  This used to be a temple to the old Roman gods but has since been converted into a pseudo-Catholic church.  In reality, it's a tourist destination but a wonderful one.  Some very famous Italian artists are buried there, including Raphael (remember him from the Prado?) and Caracci.  Most striking to me was the incredible dome, also called the rotunda.  The center of the dome is open to the air, allowing for a ray of sunlight to beam down into the middle of the structure like some sort of beacon from Gawd.  Amazing stuff.

Colosseum ---  Have you seen Gladiator?  Yeah, well we just saw the real thing so hah!  All kidding aside, this structure is where the blood-crazed ancients carried out gladiatorial bouts with bears and lions and such and even reenacted naval battles using a sophisticated water tunnel system with levers and gates.  The thing is incredibly advanced for when it was built.  There is an entire, now exposed, underground system beneath the floor of the arena where the participants were made to wait and also where, again if you remember the tigers in Gladiator, other surprises awaited the victim/hero/fighting dude.  This place is HUGE and also houses an impressive collection of old Italian artifacts and stories about the history of the structure and surrounding Rome.  Again, this is pretty much right downtown.

Vatican City ---  I am thinking of renaming our blog to "Chasing the Pope".  We Poped it up once again in Vatican City, even getting to witness (via huge screen TV in St. Peter's Square) a live Pope-cast.  We tried to get to the window where he was speaking live but had a hard time finding it among the seven hundred gazillion gawkers.  Vatican City is home to one hell of a museum, creatively called the Vatican Museum.  This place houses works by Caravaggio, Da Vinci (heard of that dude?), Raphael, and Fra Angelico, among many others.  The tour that we took of the museum ended up in --- drum roll, please --- the Sistine Chapel!  Not the Sixteenth Chapel, as it is so fondly referred to by the, uh, uninitiated.  So I'm sure most of you know that Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel.  What you might not have known is that he didn't know how to paint when the job was commissioned.  He was a sculptor.  So, yeah, he got offered the most massive job in the history of the painting world and took four years off in order to learn technique, particularly that of fresco painting.  This painting was meant to last for centuries and it has.  It got cleaned not too long ago (1999) and looks as bright as the day it was done, one can cheerfully assume.  Pictures are not allowed in the Chapel itself, so I can't show you what I'm talking about here, but the place is almost overwhelming.  There are six huge fresco paintings on each side.  One side is the story of Moses and the other the story of Jesus.  The front wall where the altar is located displays The Last Judgment where there's a cool part where sinners are being dragged down to hell (I dig that kind of stuff....sue me).  The ceiling, probably the most famous part of the chapel, shows just about everything Biblical that you can think of.  Yes, there's the amazing part where God is reaching for Adam's finger (The Creation of Adam) that you've seen a zillion times before. 

"Dude, pull my finger!"

Ah, one last thing about Rome.  We stayed in an apartment that we rented for a few days online.  The apartment, I kid you not, had a section of the old Roman wall in it.  It was encased behind glass right in the living room behind the couch.  If that's not cool to you, you need to get your coolness detector adjusted.

After Rome we flew on to Athens, Greece.  Greece, if you've been even passingly checking the news, is going through some pretty serious economic troubles right now.  The government has responded to the poor economy by pissing everyone off through austerity measures.  Once again disaster capitalism is in full effect, with international corporations benefiting from Greece's troubles once Greece denationalized industries and sold off national interests to private companies.  The Shock Doctrine, which everyone should read, is now being enacted in Greece.  Massive protests have been happening in Greece for quite some time about these measures and we were affected a little ourselves when a 24 hour strike took place in the public transportation sector.  No buses, no trains, no taxis, no nothing.  We had to take a taxi to our early flight leaving Greece (taxis came off strike even though the rest did not).  Expensive, but not a huge deal.

So while in Greece we stayed in another apartment and spent our time eating the great food (hot damn, do I love gyros....plus, Leann had some ice cream that almost gave her an orgasm) and checking out the sites.  Now, Italy was very cool and I thought that the stuff there was old.  That stuff was practically out-of-the-box new compared to what Greece had to offer.  Most of our couple days was spent doing two things --- going to the Acropolis and surrounding archaeological stuff, and going to the island of Aegina.

Acropolis ---  The Acropolis is actually a whole series of badass buildings and sites situated on a hill overlooking the city of Athens.  The most famous of these buildings is, of course, the Parthenon.  Also up on top are The Erechtheum and The Propylaea and a bunch of other awesome, old buildings.  The earliest of the buildings were begun to be built in the 6th century BC.  Crazy, right?  There are also a whole host of archaeological sites surrounding the Acropolis hill, including the Agora theater and a Temple of the Sun.

Aegina ---  An hour long ferry ride will take you from the the port area of Athens called Piraeus to the island of Aegina.  We shopped, ate lunch, soaked in some rays, and took a dip in the water.  We wanted to roll on to the tiny island of Agrisi but storm clouds thwarted us.

OK, I'm running out of time in this Internet cafe here.  Today is a national holiday celebrating Mahatma Ghandi's birthday (yay!) and is also a dry day in the whole country (boo!).  No booze for you, India!  We are excited to fill you in on Egypt and India but will have to try and make that happen elsewhere.  We'll also try to get some more pictures up on Flickr as well.

Another quick shout out to my brothers at Bataan Park, who are now three time defending national Guts champions and will be heading to Kyoto, Japan to represent the United States at worlds next year.  You guys rule.

Hope all my New Mexico brethren enjoyed the fair and are enjoying the balloon fiesta!  It sucks to miss Autumn in New Mexico, but we're making do out here in tropical paradise.  

Check in with ya soon!

Europe, pt. 1 (aka Gettin´ Cultured Up)

We have now hit up four different countries in Europe (Spain, Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Austria). We´re just about done with our stint in Vienna and will be moving on to Venice the day after tomorrow. Before I reallz start, forgive me if I switch the "y" and "z" letters in this blog post....thez´re backwards on kezboards here in Europe, zou know? Makes tzping the words yebra, yipper, yig yag, and Yanyabar interesting.

I´d like to start by saying that I have successfully transitioned from dirty backpacking hippy to well-cultured man of the world. Mostly I accomplished this through showering, but also by immersing myself in cultural stuff. Operas, museums, cultural tours, art exhibits, you name it....we´ve now done it all in Europe. Hell, I even shaved and cut my hair (thanks for the clippers, Cousin Marcos!). Of course, this was a near necessity after being pulled out of the crowd in Cusco, Peru and searched thoroughly by the airport police for drugs. I was pretty up in arms about that event until I looked in the bathroom mirror afterwards.....yeah, I probably would have profiled myself as a drug runner, too.

So, zeah, (ok I´ll stop doing that now) here we are sitting in an Internet cafe in beautiful Vienna, Austria. Vienna was actually my home for the best part of a year, but it was WAY back in the day.....17 years ago. When I was last here, the Internet was a brand new thing for most people, no one had ever heard of a digital camera, you still usually got cash by cashing in traveller´s checks instead of going to an ATM, they still hadn´t invented sliced bread, and the "horseless carriage" was just a wistful dream in the mind of some Ford guy. Nah, maybe not that long ago, but holy damn has everything changed around here. I thought I knew where stuff was in this town. Everything is dramatically different. It could have been the copious amounts of booze I consumed when last I was here, but I had a hard time remembering where even the basic stuff downtown was. But here I am, jumping ahead of myself. Let´s just start off with a recap of Spain first, shall we?

We arrived in Madrid after an all-night flight from Peru after the harsh ol´ Inca Trail, the tale of which I´ve already regaled you all with. I´m lucky enough to have family in Spain. We were met at the airport by my cousin Martha who kindly allowed us to stay in her house for the duration of our Spain visit. We were like orphans in from the cold. A couch? More than just a tiny hotel room????? A refrigerator?!?!?!?! It was like a little slice of heaven for us. We spent time catching up with my family. Martha´s son Marcos also lives in Madrid. Rather than the young punk I remember getting in trouble with oh so many years ago when I last visited, Marc is now a successful professional, complete with wonderful wife and the cutest baby that side of the Danube. We did our share of catching up and hanging out but, like I insinuated earlier, we were ridin´ the cultural train big time. Check out some uber-fancy cultural stuff that we did:

- 7 hours (swear to god) in the Prado Museum in Madrid. This is perhaps the second most famous museum in the world behind the Louvre. We saw Goya, Raphael, Titian, Velasquez, you name it. The place is amazing.
- The Reina Sophia museum. This one houses many Dali paintings and is probably most famous for housing Picasso´s famous "Guernica" painting

That sucker is mighty, mighty impressive in person. It´s HUGE...probably 25 feet wide.

- Visited the towns of Avila (we saw a very cultural severed finger of a sainted nun in a glass case) and Toldeo (where they make a lot of swords which, violent things they are, are now far beneath our cultured selves). Awesome churches and really, really old architecture.
- We also did some shopping, ate fantastic food, replaced our camera (damn thing broke on the last day of the Inca Trail), had a meal with a Spanish couple we befriended on the Inca Trail (Lucia and Guillermo, part of our new Inca Trail family), and saw a couple movies. We´ll gloss over that movie part since we are trying to be culturally superior. Still, it´s good to mingle with the unwashed masses every once in a while, is it not?

From left to right:  cousin Martha, cousin Marcos, baby Emma, Marcos´ wife Carmina, Leann, Chris

We then rolled on to Amsterdam. What happens in Amsterdam stays in Amsterdam. Nah, I kid only. Amsterdam, as you may know, is famous for having a TON of one thing. That´s right. Bicycles. What, did you think I was going to say something else? Who´s the hippy now? Seriously, there are eleven gajillion bicycles for every one car there. We rented a couple bicycles but Leann got so freaked out by the massive bike traffic in the city center that we had to park outside of downtown and walk in. Still, we got our culture on once again in Amsterdam. Even though we were there only a couple days, we saw:

- The Van Gogh museum. No severed ears to be found, but an extremely impressive collection of his work as well as cool "behind the scenes" stories about his life.
- The Rijksmuseum. Home to a bunch of Rembrandts, Degases (uh, what´s the possessive of Degas?), and Vermeers, this place was smaller than the Prado but had a similar feel. Instead of Spanish masterpieces, this one had mainly Dutch masterpieces. Very cool.
- Leann wanted to go to Den Haag (The Hague) to see the museum there that has "The Girl With One Pearl Earring" by Vermeer, but I put my foot down for no apparent reason. Gotta love traveling with a pig-headed husband, eh?

We then took a quick flight on over to Prague. I´d also been to Prague before but, again, it was so long ago that I´d forgotten a lot of it. We cultured the hell out of Prague for a couple days and saw:

- The Prague Castle. Oddly, the thing I most remembered about this place was that someone got thrown out of one of the windows back in the day. There is actually a verb for "getting thrown out of a window" - defenestration. Gotta love them middle ages. Well, there´s a lot more to the castle than exit-only windows. Beautiful architecture, to be sure.
- The Prague Astronomical Clock. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Astronomical_Clock This clock is in the middle of a square that, when last I visited, had vendors selling bootlegged cassette tapes. I bought the "new" Alice in Chains tape when I was there. Yeah, I´m old. Shut up.
- The Saint Charles bridge. Halfway across the bridge there´s a statue of a martyr named St. John of Nepomunk who refused to tell King Wenceslas what his wife had confessed. Ol´ Wenceslas rewarded his confidentiality by throwing his ass off the bridge. Nowadays you can bring yourself good luck by touching the reproduction of the priest on the plaque underneath the statue. I got lucky that night so it must have worked. (Leann is at my side shaking her head with a disapproving frown on her face.) You can also touch the other side of the plaque to get a little boost in fertility. Leann is now pregnant with twins. (Just jokin´, y´all).

Yeah, we did some other shit in Prague. Can´t remember what. Some guy yelled at me. Pretty sure it was his fault. Maybe. Anyways, we took a 5 hour bus on to the old homeland of Austria.

Quick side note: FINALLY we encounter a country with a foreign language that I can speak passably. Nothing against Spanish, but it really gets old having no goddamn idea what anyone is saying after a while. I´m actually decent with German, even after all these years. "Gezundheit." "Dankeschoen." See what I mean? German IN YO FACE!

We booked an apartment here in Vienna through a very cool website called AirBnB.com (thanks to my super bro Kate Ater for the recommendation). We essentially have our own one bedroom apartment, complete with kitchen and all, for about the same price as a hotel. It kicks ass. We´ve celebrated both my birthday (37 years young!) and our anniversary here. Of course, we have cultured the hell out of Vienna as well:

- Saw a Dali exhibition at the Kunsthalle Wien. Actually, it was a surrealist exhibition featuring a filmmaker named Jan Svankmajer as well as other Dali-influenced artists. Dali was pretty full of himself, kind of like Andy Warhol, but a pretty impressive artist nonetheless.
- Saw a Mozart and Strauss orchestral performance, complete with singing and dancing. It was like a Greatest Hits night. The first half was Mozart and the second Strauss. For me, it was like two hours of "hey, I´ve heard that song before!" Like I said, I´m just recently initiated into the whole cultured thing.
- Went to the Vienna State Opera House for our anniversary to see The Barber of Seville. Now, that name sure sounded familiar but damned if I had any idea what the music for the thing was. Well, for those of you as culture-free as me, it can accurately be described as "the Figaro, Figaro, Figaro opera." Many, many more opportunities to say "hey, I´ve heard that before", although most of my Barber of Seville experiences came through Woody the Woodpecker renditions or commercials.

Lucky guy and his beautiful wife on their first anniversary!

- Went to the Belvedere Museum. This one is probably best known for "The Kiss" by Gustav Klimt.

Smoochy Poochies

Many other famous artists represented here. There´s even a Van Gogh and some Munch, although not "The Scream".
- Checked out eleventeen churches and cathedrals. Vienna is teeming with gothic and baroque architecture and religious iconography. The place is old and it´s incredible. Even the apartment buildings are hundreds of years old.

Anyhoo, looks like our time in Austria is heading to an end. We visit Venice then Rome then Athens and then we´re Audi 5000 as far as Europe is concerned. After that it´s a brief stay in Egypt. I´ll try and update everyone sometime in the next week or two, but no promises.

Machu Picchu, the Inca Trail, and some pain

A couple things right off the bat. I´ve been misspelling Machu (one c) Picchu (two) for quite some time now. I blame society for that one. Thanks a lot, all my teachers ever. My wifey, aka BWE (Best Wife Ever), filled me in on my egregious error. Another thing, I am about to do some seriously whiny bitch writing. I apologize in advance for that. My wuss muscle is about to flex mightily. Oh, and one final thing: I was told that my last post was a weighty 10 pages long. I´ll put out my best attempt at brevity this time around, though it´s not my strong suit.

OK, when last we visited in Blogsville we were about to embark on a 4 day hike through the Andes mountains, ending up in MaChu Picchu on the last day. Obviously we survived the journey (or perhaps this is a ghost writer), but holy goddamn crapfest it was a tough hike. Let the wussery commence...

As a possible foreshadowing of things to come, we had a couple dubious encounters with our travel agency (Andina Travel, for anyone who´s thinking of heading to Peru...). We met the staff once to pay the balance of our trip and, suffice to say, they knew pretty close to jack shit about what was going to happen on our hike. Us: ¨How many people are going?¨ Them: ¨Uh...err....umm....duh....let me....err....well....¨ Us: ¨Yeah, ok, forget about that. What, specifically, do we need to bring in terms of cold weather gear?¨ Them: ¨Well, some clothes.¨ Us: ¨...uh, WTF?¨ Them: ¨Yeah, here´s a list of stuff to bring.¨ (They rummage through their office to find us a pamphlet that repeats the same extremely vague information on their website.) Us: ¨Well, we were hoping for something a little more specific and maybe you could just......ah, screw it, we´ll just talk to some other folks who´ve done the trek.¨

So after arranging for them to come to our hostel the night before the trek, we are on our kinda-sorta-a-little-less-than-merry way. A guy comes to ¨brief¨ us nearly an hour late and less than 10 hours before we´re to leave the next morning. The briefing consisted of two (2) maps of the hike and one (1) tersely voiced ¨Any questions?¨ Well, yes, we still had the same questions as before, namely what the hell we needed to bring. We end up having to purchase a couple last items at the last minute that we had no idea we needed, which was fine but left us a little low on the sleep-o-meter.

Day one of the Inca Trail - We were picked up at 5 in the morning and boarded a bus that picked up the rest of our group. We drove a total of about 2.5 hours and grabbed a quick breakfast at the coldest open-air restaurant in the world. Judging by the way my boogers were freezing under my nose, it was going to be witch-titty cold in the Andes. We met our guide on the bus, a nice fella named Rolando, and a couple other of the crew members and porters. We ended up at our starting point, the beautifully named ¨Kilometer 82¨. It has some other name that is something like Ollyantambo, but that´s its scientific name or something. After queueing up and giving the folks at the checkpoint our passes, we collectively roll on and up through the Andes. The first day starts off pretty easily but also has some pretty hard uphill climbs that take their toll.

Let me pause briefly to explain what an ¨Inca Trail¨ really is. It´s not your normal, average, run-of-the-mill dirt path that winds through stuff on its way to other stuff. It´s mainly big ol´ cobblestones. There is no such thing as flat ground for the Inca people. ¨Flat¨ means ¨not as soul-crushingly steep as some other parts.¨ Also, the Inca people averaged about 3.2 feet tall. This fact belies the other fact that most of the uphill climbs were actually stairs that, coincidentally, averaged about 3.2 feet high each. Seriously, the stairs are big ol´ m´fers. I have no idea how these people climbed these things. (Told you the wuss factor would be turned up to 11. You were warned!)

So, yeah, we´re climbing the equivalent of cobblestone ladders built for 8 foot people. The first day was hard. It was hella hard. (¨How hard was it?¨) So hard that....nah, I´m exaggerating. It was difficult because it was strenuous and it was difficult because the day was very long, but it was doable. I mean, we did it, right? We ended the day at our first campsite after 10-ish miles and around 8 hours of hiking. Food was delicious (really fresh and delicious stuff the whole trip long, honestly) and our tents were solid. Slept on some mattress pads and inside some North Face sleeping bags we´d rented. Oh, another thing that ramped up my wussification was the fact that I had to carry my stuff with me and it was heavy. It was heavy for me despite the fact that we had porters, the oldest of whom was an impressive 59 years, who carried more weight than any of us and literally RAN up and down the trek in order to set up camp before us. These dudes, Quechua locals all, are crazy freaks of nature with apparently no need to consume oxygen or anything. They were carrying bags bigger than their bodies and they do this run every single week. I bow in wonderous admiration to you, Inca Trail porters of the world.

Day two of the Inca Trail - We´d been warned repeatedly, both by trek-finishers that we´d met and by Internet postings, that Day 2 was the ¨hard¨ day. Saying day two is kind of hard is like saying that Rick James kind of liked cocaine. It was really long and had two serious uphill treks, the first of which started right at the beginning of the day and lasted for 4 straight hours. The initial ascent up to ¨Dead Woman´s Pass¨, so named because of a rock formation that looks a little like a female body, was rigorous to the max. At the top our group celebrated a bit and took some pictures together, which was pretty cool and allowed for an awesome, awesome view, and then began the descent (La Bajada, for you New Mexicans out there). The descents are like rock meat grinders for human knees. They´re steep and they´re incessant. Making me feel like an even bigger tool was the fact that hordes of tiny little porters were RUNNING down the descents at near full speed with their body-sized packs on their backs. One more tip of the cap to these amazing guys (and, impressively, one girl porter who is also a cook). Toward the middle of the second big ascent, we got hit with some serious rain for a while, increasing my personal wuss factor tenfold and making the path a little more slippery and treacherous than it already was. However, eventually we all made it and bunked up for the night.

Day three of the Inca Trail - This day was the ¨easy¨ day, something I could not take issue with even though my calves were essentially useless lumps of painful meat hanging off the backs of my legs. The day wasn´t very long and had some really spectacular views of the Andean mountains, some great ruins, and generally breathtaking nature everywehere. Leann and I both had pretty beat up legs at this point which made, strangely I guess, it even tougher to descend than ascend. Jeebus as my witness, I actually preferred trekking uphill. Day three was only a few hours (like five instead of the usual 8-9) and we covered a lot of ground. We hit the sack early so that we could wake up at the ungodly hour of 3:00 AM the next morning to prepare for the final jaunt into Machu Picchu.

Day four of the Inca Trail - We started our hike in the absolute dark, using head lamps to guide our way. The sun rose in the mountains and gave off a very neat mist on the forest for a little while. We had to wait in a queue for the final checkpoint, still in the dark, but once we got moving it was only about a two hour hike to the deservedly famous Sun Gate. At this point, you´ve pretty much sealed the deal and completed the Inca Trail. The Sun Gate´s vantage point looks right down on the big city of Machu Picchu, which has around 140 stone buildings, along with expansive rock terracing for farming, and the coolest big ol´ prayer rock you´ll ever see (if you look at our pictures, look for the picture of the hands nearly touching a big ass rock). A small 40 minute hike down to the city itself and WE´D DONE IT! WE FINISHED! WOOO!!!!!

Some hippy and his woman standing at the Sun Gate with Machu Picchu in the background.

Here´s our whole group just about to walk into Machu Picchu.

A couple notes that I thought I´d pass along. First, if you really want to enjoy Machu Picchu without the bother of corpse-like exhaustion, I´d suggest arriving via train instead of via 4 day hike. Once we got there, we were collectively almost too tired to take the whole huge place in. Second, and this one is crucial, make sure you acclimate yourself to the high altitude first. It´s really high up there. How well you deal with the altitude has very little to do with fitness level (case in point was a barfalicious French Canadian kid who looked to be in pretty good shape....he, sadly for him, had to turn all the way back an hour or two into the second day....bummer) and very much to do with how much you´re used to it. Also, you can chew on coca leaves and drink coca tea to help deal with the altitude. It does help. Chocolate also helps, to the delight of chocolate lovers like my sweet wife.

Our joy at finishing was slightly tempered by the insistent fuck-uppery of our travel agency, who didn´t make changes to our train departure as promised, leaving us to stay the night in Aguas Calientes (small tourist town next to Machu Picchu accessible ONLY by train). We had to haul ass in order to make our overnight flight to Madrid, Spain but we made it. We even got a little laundry done the night before so we didn´t have to smell like the walking dead on the long, long flight.

We´re now happily hanging out with my wonderful cousins in Madrid, Spain. We´ve seen a cool flamenco show starring Joaquin Cortes, the mega superstar of the flamenco world. We even saw the Pope. Yes, THE Pope, not one of those lesser popes or demi-popes or whatever. He was in Madrid for World Youth Day. (Insert joke about Youth and Catholic here.) There were seriously two million people in town. I´ve never seen anything like it. The believers weren´t as stoic as one might expect. I even saw a spontaneous conga line looking thing that had multiple nuns in full habit get-up conga-ing the afternoon away.

We also went to The Prado Museum the other day and spent something like 7 hours there. It wasn´t even enough to see all the stuff. That place is awe inspiring. From Raphael to Velasquez to Goya, The Prado has it all.

We´ve had some great food and drink here so far and look forward to grubbing on some paella tomorrow (finally!).

I have also now shaved off my beard and no longer look like a serial killer / hobo.

Like I said, some more pictures are posted, so please go to and check out what we´ve got!

Hope this entry hasn´t been too long and tedious. Feel free to berate me with your con(de)structive criticisms and let me know what you think!

Til then, hasta luego! Good luck to all of you that are about to deal with Hurricane Irene. Stay safe and check you soon.