Nearing the end.....

Blimey it´s been 232 days since I left on my wee jolly around the world and it´s nearly over! I´m literally sitting planning my last 3 weeks and making sure I make it all the way through to Rio to fly home on the 17th! The bloody 17th!!!

What a trip!

Someone asked ´Have I found myself?´ . Not sure I was ever looking!! I do know however that..... I´ve found myself stranded up a 130 foot tree, staring out a wild bull elephant, found myself not more than 2 foot from a toilet for a week, found myself eating an ant´s egg omelet, found myself jumping out of a plane, found myself in snow capped mountains, found myself passed out on a Thailand beach, and finally found myself a lot more chilled out and with a tonne of new friends. Which is nice!

So there we have it, the final few weeks! It puts me in a strange mood thinking about it! On one side I´m scared about returning to all the bills and slipping back into old habits. I´m also in a bit of a sad place with my dream of a south American photography portfolio dashed due to ´technical problems´ but at the same time feeling it´s something I can cope with. After all, I´ve re-awakened my passion and I know it wont fade away when I get back but rather grow into something more fun. There´ll be other opportunities in the future - it´s a big world! Oh and I also have about 3000 other shot which I´ll make sure are ready for the slide shows on my return.

But all that aside, I´m REALLY looking forward to coming home and thoughts of extending my trip are causing some serious deliberations.

Firstly I need to make some money ( let me know if anyone needs a barman, chef, glass washer, photographer, project manager, doorman or pimp). Secondly I cant wait to catch up with friends and family. It´s funny, the minute I left Cardiff I realised how much I was leaving behind and since then I´ve been really looking forward to bumping into you all again soon. Also this strange thing called facebook.com has exploded in my travelling face. Who would of thought I could actually find something which made it easy for my lazy arse to stay in contact with people! And with so many people popping out of the wood work I´m really looking forward to catching up with old friends who I haven´t seen for ages.

So there we go, enough for now. I´ll spare you the details of my voyage and leave that for my blog except for saying I´ve just been through Chile, Peru, Argentina and now a bit of Bolivia before heading to Brazil in a week or two. Tho blog is horribly out of date but give me a day or two and check back (it´s just that I don't want to be stuck in front of a computer in my last months!)

As for the photos! Don't ask! http://www.flickr.com/photos/ade_taylor

Catch you all soon and dont forget to get the Strongbow in the fridge.


Ade

PS... Lessons from this trip...

- Never eat a melted ice cream from Machupicchu
- Who the hell needs more than 3 pairs of pants and socks
- A 23 hour bus trip can be done, but strong over the counter medicines help!
- Donkey poo smells way worse than a llama´s

Flamingo, Atecama Salt Flats

Flamingo, Atecama Salt Flats
Originally uploaded by Big_Ade

Smack bang in the middle of Chile are the Atecama Salt Flats. All those years ago when the Andes decided to pop up they ended up reclaiming some of the sea and when the water evaporated it left behind a tonne of salt.... in a kind of flat way. So when you look out across this 400km sq salty desert all you see are lumpy bits of salt... and some ponds.

Interesting fact is that in these ponds very little can live as it´s so salty. So pretty much all that exists are some specialist plankton and some brine shrimps... which are eaten by flamingos. And it is these shrimps and the keratine in their shells which makes the birds pink. The older the bird, the more shrimp dinners and therefore the pinker it becomes. In fact zoos supplement their birds diets to make them pinker

.... I wonder if you could make a blue flamingo?

Chile was....chilly

Alright Geyser, Chile
Originally uploaded by Big_Ade

After heading over to South America to catch up with Maria we managed to squeeze in a fair few sights and as many night buses before heading to Peru for some cheaper action.

Chile was basically a mad dash north but we stopped at San Pedro de Atecama to check out some Geysers and some pretty spectacular salt flats. Most of the west of South America is volcanic and San Pedro was no exception, sitting next to the Andes it is surrounded by volcanoes with the last eruption being only a few years ago. In the top picture here you can see the Geysers we visited. We had to get up at 4am to get to the site whilst it was still cold as this is when the steam is most obvious because of the temperature difference. It was bloody freezing up there until the sun came up which is why I am still confused as to why we then jumped in a hot spring.... a good idea until we had to get back out of it!

Been a while...

Ok, sorry this has been a while... again!!!

I´m now in Peru having travelled through New Zealand and then Chile. I´ve discovered I have a problem with my camera which means it doesn´t focus properly - quite an important feature!
Anyway all my pics from NZ, Chile and Peru to date are shite!!! Grrr!

Trying to sort that out then I might get on the case with this again!

Anyway in summary......

New Zealand -
Caught up with Carlos and Sharon in Auckland
Flew to South Island
Drove 3000km back up to the North Island stopping for some glaciers and a skydive on the way.

Chile
Met Maria
Lost some bus tickets
Fund them
Saved a llama
Hopped on several night buses to Peru stopping to see some geysers, and some desert on the way

Peru
Altitude sickness
Spanish school
Inti Raymi sun god festival
Inca Trail
Machupichu
Broken Camera

ciao for now

Ade

On the Inca trail, just.

Peru is quite an amazing place what with its mountains, beaches, deserts and jungles around each corner. Maria and I tried our hardest to see as much of possible and nearly died of exhaustion doing it.

I guess on of Peru's greatest treats is Machupicchu, one of the 'modern' wonders of the world. Home of the Incan nobles some 400 years ago the 'lost city' perches eerily on the top of a mountain in central Peru. It is here that the famous Inca trail terminates and here where millions of tourists flock each year - including us!

Having arrived in Cusco to witness the Inti Raymi festival and the sacrificing of a llama to the sun god I hung around for a week of Spanish lessons and we booked onto one of the Machupichu tours. Ideally we would have loved to have done the famous 'Inca Trail' tour but sadly numbers are limited and the tour is booked up about 7 months in advance i.e. there was no chance of us getting on it. There are, as always, a number of other options for the tour operators to charge you for and we opted for the 'Jungle Trail', a 4 day, 3 night adventure.

Day one was a 5 hour mountain bike ride down a mountain. Well if I'm completely honest it was actually down a road on the mountain but as they hadn't finished building the road then I'm going to file it away as a death defying downhill adventure, or something like that. By the time we'd reached the bottom of the oh so steep mountain we were ready for our ice cold shower and our beds.

Oh I nearly forgot, Action Man who I have been carrying around and taking photos of since the start of the trip met a new friend in the form of a cheap Peruvian Barbie doll.

Day two was a nice leisurely stroll through some bloody big mountains. We passed through a deserted town and were lucky enough to be doing the trek during the time of year where fruit was plentiful. It was a lovely hike as all around us were oranges, pineapples and avocados growing everywhere and within easy reach. Before we knew it the fruit was doing a good job of distracting us from the arduous climb we had just started. Well almost.

We were climbing up towards the Inca trail which would take us up to about 2,500m. As we reached the trail we realised how amazing it would have been to do the full trail. Cut into the side of the mountain (a long way up) was the path, all 3 foot of it! It snaked around and rose and fell with quite a scary pitch at times and for some of us it was a little too much. One girl was not quite expecting the path to be so narrow and high and had some big problems getting down it was OK because with her boyfriend on one side and me acting the prat on the other we managed to distract her long enough to get to the next bit. Oh and as you may recall in a previous post I don't like heights either - it's amazing how a distraction helps!

Oh and it was officially my birthday so a few drinks were had and a very naughty action man got caught with his trousers down!


Day 3. More fruit, hot springs and a jump in a river. Oh and a very long walk along a railway track.... with trains on. At times it was a little like the film Stand by Me.

Day 4, and an early start. 5am and we were already walking up the biggest staircase in the world to get up to Machupichu before sunrise. We arrive at the top, get met by our highly annoying new guide and await the sunrise.

'Where is the best place to see it' we asked. He took us to some random part of the city which was strangely away from where everyone else was going at that time in the morning! He then forgot about the sunrise and it was only when I said 'so that must be the sun over there then' he remembered we had all asked him to let us get prepared with our cameras! I realised it was not the best place for the sunrise and stirred up a mutiny within our group.

Before he knew it his group had halved and we had raced off to the other end of the ruins for some better shots. It was a fantastic place with some fantastic views. If anyone gets the chance to go to Peru then book ahead and get on the real Inca Trail, it would be fantastic . Fantastic! Oh and get there early for the sunrise, it's worth it and there are less tourists.

Oh and action man got into trouble with one of the guards for pulling a moonie with Machupicchu in the background.

It was worth it though... we got the picture!

mmmm Scrub that last thought..

Ok, so sometimes I write some stuff on here and then ponder on it and change my mind. ie spur of the moment thoughts which then get further sorted out in my head.

Take the last post for example. I was talking about how nice it is to meet people without history affecting your judgements. True, it´s nice to start fresh with people but then I was again thinking how shallow it can be. People have their bad days and good days and I guess we can all come across as completely different people from one day until the next. It´s only when you know someone for a long period of time do you really get to appreciate someone for the person they are and then you make your judgements. For this reason I´m really looking forward to catching up with everyone back at home, gossiping, laughing and sharing some of the past that we have together..

Going solo......

Action Man meets Max Steel
Originally uploaded by Big_Ade

Ok I may as well digress here a little.... to travel alone or travel with a friend? I´ve done a little of both and and like both!

On your own, you can be whoever you want. More importantly you can 100% be yourself at that point in time without anyone knowing anything about your past. You can be safe in the knowledge that whoever you meet is judging you on who you are at that instant in time and not who you´ve been, what you´ve done or what you´ve said in the past.

We humans are a stubborn bunch and we rarely forget things, for that reason our opinions are normally a culmination of our past interactions with that person. We all know it, if someone stuffs up and says the wrong thing we can remember that moment for 100 years and it sits there forming part of our opinions of that person. It´s easier to forget the good things about a person than the bad things! Can you remember your best takeway in the last month, or just the worst?

So what´s the point? Well I guess people are different people in different situations. Put someone under stress at work and they become a very different person to someone sitting on the beach or at home with friends. Meeting someone whilst travelling away from their stresses means you meet the real person and not someone as a result of external pressures. Realising this is no new thing for me. But being able to see it so clearly in myself is a kick up the arse to maintain a good balance in life.
Stress is a part of our lives but the the question is why do so many of us put ourselves in a situation where we have so much that we become someone we´re not!

So that´s traveling on your own. You can tell someone you´re a photographer, a fireman, a politician and become someone new, or you can just fuzz past those questions and become whoever you are in that moment. I did a lot of fuzzing because as soon as you tell someone you´re an IT project manager then .....zzZZZZZZ!

And then travelling with a friend. Someone to look after your bags whilst you look for a room, someone to sit next to on long bus journeys, someone to play cards with on a cold night, a table for two! It´s lovely being able to share in-jokes with someone and talk about life back in the ´real world´. When travelling alone you have to ask and answer the same questions ever time you meet someone new - Where you from? Where have you been? Have you been to....?? etc etc In other words traveller small talk. Travelling with a friend shields you from that for a while.... at least until you meet the next new person.

Right, which do I prefer? Neither. There is a time and a place for both. Do I wish I had a travel partner for Asia?.... 100% no! I met some great people and probably wouldn´t have had the same experiences with someone from home - After all, who do I know who would sit in a bloody monastery for 2 weeks! Do I wish I travelled South America on my own... again no! Meeting Maria was a great part of the trip and it means we both have something to talk about when in different cities back at home.