Alex’s Travel Blog

(to peeps in the uk, that is)

just a quickie, i expect i´ll be back in edinburgh about midday tomorrow. prepare the banquet now. ar ar ar.

my email is doing bad things, if you want to get in touch, try me on sak_alex at bigpond.com

cool.

Righto, Me and Buenos Airies haven´t had the best of relationships so far.  don´t get me wrong, it´s a great city but i think i am actually looking forward to leaving. i caught up with my friend helen from melbs and have been hanging out with her and other assorted argentines and a bunch of good folk that i met in the hostel. me and helen decided to take a quick jaunt to uruguay to see what there is to see, only to get there to discover that not just nearly every hostel was booked out, but that EVERY hostel, campsite, hotel etc. wass booked out. hmm. so we caught the ferry back and went our seperate ways. i hopped into a taxi with no money, so i asked the taxi driver to stop at a bank. he stopped, i went to the atm, then he fucked off with my bags. bastard. bastard. bastard. everything is sorted now, i had to change my tickets to may the 2nd, but i´m coming home. broke. ah well. shit happens. since then, i have seen some great sights, eaten some brilliant meat (i even put on an asado, argentine bbq, with a friend), had some good fun and inhaled my bodyweight three times over in carbon monoxide. mmmm.

So i´m in el bolson and it´s lovely, beautiful scenery, laid back vibe, cool people. i´m staying in a hostel out in the countryside and there´s plenty of walking etc. to keep me busy. I´m in the perfect spot to chill out and relax before i head to BA. can´t wait! from there, i´m thinking of a quick jaunt to uruguay before heading back to bonnie scotland. over and out.

Barriloché is beautiful. but i kinda feel like i´m in switzerland or the like. even the buildings look like something from a ski resort. so, as the title suggests, i´m heading to a hippy hangout about two hours south called el bolson. had my best espresso in south america today, which made me happy. that and finding a shop called simply, “Mr. Cock” he he he he.

well. i´ve spent the last few days in mendoza which has been lovely. i´ve been doing a bit of sightseeing and general tourist stuff. i went out to a huge club with a couple of tom´s from bristol where we spent our time getting drunk on rum and coke (90% rum, 10% coke. ouch) and ogling the girls. what a night. i went to go to some of the local wineries on sunday only to find they were shut. oops. the bus trip was nice though. tonight i´m going to a town called barraloché which is nestled in the andes on the side of a lake. hello! apparently it´s freezing down there so i´m glad i´ve got a few scottish standard cold weather clothes. can´t wait to get down there and get out of the big cities for a bit! 20 hour bus ride doesn´t sound too fun but hey, easter in a town famous for it´s chocolate, can´t complain.

Well, I´ve been here 5 days now and had a blast! I´ve been doing all the usual, drinking far too much at night, sightseeing during the day. for the first three nights, i stayed in santiago in a hostel run by an aussie guy called “la casa roja”. had fun there but it just didn´t seem south american enough for me. that and the fact that half the clientelle was from melbourne, i had a girl from billanook staying in my dorm. Small world. Santiago is very european and, dare i say, a little boring. a good place to get your bearings though. My spanish is coming along, i can order food and buy things etc. but i still suck when it comes to any conversation past “hello, how are you?”. still time to learn though.
I decided to cancel my flight from santiago to buenos aires and take the bus through the andes instead. Much nicer than a plane! the andes are pretty breath taking, they really tower above you. a bit better than mt. dandenong anyway! I´m in a city called Mendoza now, in the heart of argentina´s wine growing district. you can hire a bike and ride around to all the wineries, eating and drinking all the way. that´s my kind of bike ride!
I´ll probably stick around for a few days here, it´s beautiful and the night life is pretty pumping. Speaking of which, my last night in Santiago was awesome, we went to a student club and danced till about 4 in the morning, we were the only gringos in the club, and everyone loved us! i´m sure alcohol had a fair bit to do with that! any way, i´m off to find another hostel closer to town and cheaper than the one i´m in. beunos dias amigos!

Firstly, sorry for my lack of posts over the last month and a bit. As most of you know, I’ve been back in the wide brown land of oz for the past bit, catching up with friends and family etc.

I had a great time. So what did i do? I went to Wilson’s Prom for a couple of days with nick and jon. Had a great time at Dad’s 60th, They’re the new 21st’s if the hangover the next day was anything to go by. I went to the brunswick (Sydney rd.) festival and caught up with lots of people. Went to a couple of particularly rad parties at Frank, Leonie, Matt and Nishad’s place. Had one of the most hedonistic, debaucherous, fucking fun going away parties since jon left london courtesy of glenno (and alice, cos it was her coming back party too even though we had nothing to do with organising a single thing). i’m still recovering from it. Went on lots of walks, went swimming heaps and generally got all Aussied up again (I’ve got a tan to prove it.)

So that’s what i did in a nutshell. Right now I’m killing time in Auckland waiting for my 4:30 flight to Santiago, Chile. I’ll Report back when i get there! (time is money, in the land of internet cafe’s)

My god arambol is good. I really don’t want to leave! the entire time i’ve been here, i’ve had a huge idiot grin plastered on my face. great food, great company cheap beer. i think i’ve found heaven. I’ve already been trying to work out when i’ll come back. i think i need to spend a good couple of months here. it’s that kind of place. cant wait to get a few photos up!

When I bought my train ticket to Goa, i realised that i had no idea where to go. a guy i met in Mumbai told me he had a friend in Baga, so i thought i’d spend the night there. it didn’t look too bad on the way in and the hotel was not as bad as some,so i checked in and decided to head for a quiet sit on the beach. this is when i had a slight lightbulb moment that this place wasn’t for me. the sight that greeted me when i walked down the narrow sandy path to the beach can only be described as horrific. line after line of tacky sunbeds covered with fat poms in various shades of white and red. i had walked into hell on earth. think of everything you hate about the gold coast, ibiza, hawaii and anywhere that has a club med and roll it into one giant, fleshy, sunburned, loud obnoxious, heaving mass of package tour filth and you have Baga, Goa.
Needless to say, i barricaded myself in my room and prayed for sleep so i could get the fuck out of there at the crack of dawn. my next stop was a quieter town about 10km up the beach called Vagator. It was nice and peaceful but still a bit too touristy.
after a quick sos to people who i knew had gone togoa, i decided to head to my current stop Arambol. Arambol is one of the most beautiful, serene, friendly places i have seen. the trappings of a tourist economy are still here, but most of the locals are as happy for a bit of chat as they are to sell you stuff you don’t need (nahi chieea - ‘i dont need that’ very useful.). i’m staying in a bamboo hut just off the beach. rows of restaurants (bamboo huts) line the beach with a canopy of green stretching above them. Everything here costs about a third what it did in baga and is twice as good! anyway i’ve got a beach to sit on and do nothing, so i’m off.

PS i’ll try and get some photos up, but the internet cafes here are a little slow.