Wednesday, March 28, 2007

[Guys, this is the first part of the travel post that I promised, written as though I am 12 years old and my homework was to write about my trip to Peru. I'm chopping it up into parts because pictures take up a lot of blog space, and I also ramble a whole lot of shit. Sorry if you think travel posts are a load of arse. Just pretend I didn't post it and go back to the one about the old people Getting It On.]

Getting there was a right royal pain in the arse. Brisbane to LA, LA to Miami, Miami to Lima. I thought it would never bloody end. The meals ranged from ok on the first flight, to chunks of gristle and fat in gravy on the last. Yes, American Airlines. You have excelled. From LA to Miami, we were mildly interested to discover that we were queueing for the plane behind Stifler's Mom.



Woah! Semi-famous! Um.

Lima is full of restaurants and tattoo parlours. When you walk down the main street, people will yell at you in broken English, requesting that you purchase their goods and get a tattoo. I really can't help but wonder what sort of person would get a tattoo in Lima, just because somebody yelled at them.

Peruvian: HELLO! Would you like tattoo? WOULD YOU LIKE TATTOO?
Tourist: Oh, alright then.

The policemen and policewomen wear extremely tight pants. As well as this interesting feature, Lima has this rather nice building with an assault vehicle parked outside.



It never rains there, and when you get out of the shower and take a couple of steps, you discover that your feet are black, because there's a layer of dirt on everything. Turns out that rain is most excellent for keeping the dirt at bay. Hooray for rain!

Peru is the land of half-finished buildings. It is also the land of historical ruins, and we joked that maybe they took their building inspiration from their ruins, but this is in terrible taste because they are poor and all that.



The tour commenced and we met our fellow travel buddies. They were quite ace. Our tour was led by a happy chappy who was amused by my obscene playing cards, and a melancholy-looking chap who taught us about life, the universe and everything, including the following nugget of wisdom:

"If you look at nature, females are always chasing the alpha male. It is the same with this tour guide business. Being a tour guide automatically makes you the alpha male, and it is natural that a girl would want your spunk up them."

Oh. Teach us, wise one.

Our most excellent bus took us out into the desert. There was a lot of desert. There was desert and some little house things.



There was desert and a beach.



There was desert and a valley.



Plus, we went hurtling over the sand dunes in this:



and all got our fair share of sand in our pants. Damn you, sand!

We spent the night in Pisco, which was completely forgettable because we checked in when it was getting dark, drank beer on the roof with the cats, and checked out the next morning shortly after dawn. But mainly because of the beer. It is known for:
  • Having cats on the roof of one of its hotels
  • Sharing its name with the most famous drink in Peru, the Pisco Sour (topped with eggy goodness), and
  • Being the place where I first started spraying my insides out of whichever orifice volunteered first
What did I do with my exceedingly queasy stomach the very next day? That's right, I took a jet boat out on the ocean to look at the Ballestas Islands, and then jumped in a light airplane and flew over the Nazca Lines. If you scooped out my stomach, stuck it in a blender, took it out and jumped on a few times, threw it up into a ceiling fan on high speed and then put it back in my body, it would've been less shaken up than it actually was by the end of that day. No dirtyhands gastro bullshit was going to spoil my holiday, damn it.

I am going to skip out on the pictures of the sea lions and the pingus, because you have all seen them before, but listening to a whole frigging colony (colony?) of sea lions collectively roaring and wailing is something to be experienced. You would not want to be inviting them around to your house for tea. They are really noisy shits. The pingus, on the other hand, were very quiet which was disappointing as I was hoping they would get their groove on and sing songs, like they do in that movie.

When your pilot, who is taking you over the Nazca Lines, decides to take his hands off the steering wheel to point at things, you get a little scared. When he accidentally bumps the steering wheel, making the plane lurch violently in the air, you shit your pants a bit. You're already shitting your pants from the gastro, so you do a bit of a pee instead. By the sixth or seventh bump of the steering wheel, you are starting to get used to it.



Here's a picture of the ground. Oh wait, there's a spacedude engraved there too. To have any chance of actually seeing the lines the pictures need to be a whole lot bigger than the Friendly Blogger Folk allow, so I've put a couple elsewhere. The one they call the hummingbird is here, and the one with the name I can't remember is here. That second one is next to a road so you can sort of get the scale of the bastards. That's if you manage to spot them. Trust me, it's tougher when you're trying not to hurl.

Coming in Part Two: Spiteful condors, watching people order a beer with a side order of cocaine, and getting up close and personal with our llama friends. Ooh, baby.

Monday, March 26, 2007

Yesterday, John and I went to the movies and saw Hot Fuzz. It was very, very funny and John and I spent the whole time laughing at jokes that nobody else seemed to laugh at ("If you want to be a big cop in a small town, go to the model village."). But, aside from this, we witnessed something extremely disturbing in the theatre.

You see, we walked in while the lights were still on and started contemplating where to sit. There were only two other people in there at that time, an elderly couple sitting down the front. We soon became aware that they were wildly PASHING.

So, hey, a couple in their 60's playing tongue hockey isn't something you see every day. I have no problem with it in theory, but I averted my eyes and quickly scoffed my choc-top, lest I lose my appetite and cry, for the choc-top was most excellent.

The pashing stopped, and we all waited for the movie with eager anticipation. Then, Elderly Lady stood up and slid onto Elderly Gent's lap. She started running her fingers through her hair and WRITHING. There were MOANS being emitted as he Felt. Her. Up. She slid off his lap and they both lay down on the seats. There was movement.

My gag reflex started pulsating wildly, threatening to spray choc-top and coke all over the surrounding seats. I am sure that older folk must occasionally, you know, coughshagcough, but it was not something I really wanted to witness at this stage in my life. Perhaps when I am in my 60's myself and am feeling a bit kinky, then sure, I might watch, but 23 and full of choc-top?

No! NO NO NO! Nooooooooooooo!

Several other movie-goers filed in and took their seats. Most looked suspiciously at the frisky grandparents, who sat up and seemingly started paying attention to the advertisements that were flashing on the screen, now that the lights had been dimmed.

So it was dark, and they had stopped, and there were other people there, and that was the end of it.

Or so I thought.

After one ad finished, there was a moment of silence, which was just long enough for us all to hear a loud moan, followed by an "OH MY GODDDDDD" of pleasure. Pleasure!

And then it stopped. And I paid attention to the movie (by the power of Greyskull!). And inwardly sang happyhappy songs because I work in an office, and not as a cleaner at a cinema.

Saturday, March 24, 2007

Today, I managed to stay in bed until 5:15am. Oh my God!

After the last post, I ventured out into the wilds of Brisbane. I managed to do pretty much everything on my list and made some necessary purchases, including:

Smut! And Mr. Darcy!



Jeans! Do you have any idea how difficult it is to take a suitable picture of your new jeans, without coming across as a ho who wants to flash her crotch and arse on the internet? You should try it sometime. It is pretty much imposs. Check my wrinkly kneepit action! Ooh, kinky.



And I had my hair done!



And now I feel almost human again. Almost.

Annoying travel post to come, once I've made it through all of the pics and footage. Trying to find a section of video where I am not making the most stupidly annoying comments ever is near impossible, because it turns out that I am a total knob. Who knew! (Don't answer that.) If any videos show up on here with loud music playing over the original audio, you know why.

Thursday, March 22, 2007

Do you have an insomnia movie?

Mine is Bridget Jones's Diary. Yeah, shut up. Tonight it is my jetlag/insomnia/sleeping pills movie. I should not have slept all day yesterday. This has not helped the Body Clock. But the Mark Darcy action. This helps. Yes, it does.

So. Hi there. I'm back in Brisbane after four (FOUR. FRICKING FOUR.) consecutive flights yesterday, because apparently La Paz is a bloody hard place to get out of. I had a most excellent plan to force sleep upon myself for the final, long-haul flight from LA to Brisbane, which worked wonders before I was jolted awake by my repeated farting, and bolted to the toilet. I then dozed in between my toilet visits, which occurred regularly, i.e. every HALF AN HOUR.

I think it was just my body being a spiteful shit (so to speak), because I cannot work out what I could've eaten to have caused this misery, having only eaten a cheeseburger at LAX (I don't even like Macca's that much, but the craving was unbelievable) and airline food on the many flights.

Right now, I am feeling extremely alert for 5am. I am also feeling:
  • Satisfied after gorging myself on Subway.
  • Puzzled every time I use the toilet, because the water seems too low and I don't have to shove the used paper in the bin.
  • Apologies for all of the toilet talk. I'll stop now.
  • An overwhelming desire to be a girl. After a month of having to skip showers (because they didn't exist, didn't work, or I couldn't handle freezing cold water when it was 5 degrees), having extremely shit hair, and dressing in dirty, bummish clothing that gives me a figure like that of Mr. Blobby, I want nothing more than to put on something pretty out of my own wardrobe, wash my hair with shampoo and conditioner that weren't chosen purely for their space-saving properties, and tart myself up in general.
  • I guarantee that I will be the most overdressed person when I go out to dinner on Friday evening.
  • Regret. At not buying the most expensive shoes in Bolivia (at the exorbitant sum of around $50) and becoming the owner of the tartiest, stiletto FM boots that the world has ever seen. But I think I am quite right in thinking that I will never, ever wear them. Unless I fulfil my long-held desire to become a good girl prostitute with a perm, i.e. Julia Roberts.
  • Woah! People update a LOT in a month. I am glad I have four days off before I have to go back to work, because I am now on full-time blog-reading duty between now and then. Hooray!
I have a stack of bills to pay, a necessary visit to the transport department, a souvenier pack to send to Ireland, a Very Necessary haircut planned, a kitchen to re-stock, a feisty shit of a cockatiel to pick up, a new pair of jeans to buy now that my current favourites are continually falling down, hundreds of photos and hours of video footage to go through, a phone call to make to work telling them that I'm back, many hours to spend gorging myself on food that won't make me vomit, jetlag to get over, a few tears to shed over the realisation that cocktails won't cost $1 any more, and some shitty humidity to get used to.

And then I'll be back on this blogging bandwagon fo' sho', yo.

Friday, March 16, 2007

Some interesting things that you may or may not know about the Inca Trail:
  • The trail is about 45km long.
  • The altitude varies quite a bit throughout the hike, and the highest pass is 4200m above sea level.
  • The weather can vary drastically, and in a day you may be faced with burning hot sun, and freezing cold winds, rain and hail. And sometimes a combo of the options. Hooray!
  • The rain means that the hundreds of steps you have to descend will be bloody slippery, and can/will result in you falling on your arse in the mud. Maybe more than once.
  • If you suffer from vertigo, you are, as we say at home, completely rooted.

Some steps I should've probably taken before attempting the Inca Trail:

  • Perhaps purchased some sort of rainproof clothing, or proper hiking shoes.
  • Maybe taken some sort of medication with me for when The Shits hit with a vengeance on Day Two.
  • Taken at least some emergency clothing, so that I wasn't dressed in the same mud-soaked pants for four fricking days.
  • Packed a Whacky Stick for when the hiking peeps got bitchy.
  • Exercised at some point over the past TWO YEARS.

But, I did it. Dressed in muddy jeans and a singlet, without a walking stick (the only person in my group, I might add. Oh, I am tough.), with the shits and stomach cramping, with permanently aching muscles and a bruised arse, with a freakin' umbrella, for Christ's sake, I did it.

Yes, it was totally worth it, but I am NEVER doing that shit again in my life.

Damn.

(Off to Bolivia tomorrow and I'll be home within the week and whinging about work in no time. Muchos thankskies for comments, peeps, even if I am terribly shite at replying to them right now. Catch you on the flip side. Literally. Get ready for shitty photos and wobbly video footage. Oh yes!)

Friday, March 02, 2007

There is the almighty embarrassment associated with being the whitest girl in the whole of Queensland, and then the God-awful, could somebody please shoot me, sticking out like a sore thumb-esque feeling of being the Whitest Girl in Peru. My legs are so glowingly pasty that I literally stop traffic. My tour guide has commented on it, the other tour members have commented on it, and a complete stranger said to me, after I refused to buy his miscellaneous item for sale, "You are very white! You should go to the beach."

Yes. Thank you.

As well as this, there is the travel sickness. And you don't know whether it's from the tasty lomo saltado you ate last night, or an aversion to the water (even if it is all bottled), or maybe you just don't like the air around here, but all of a sudden you can't toss up between crapping and spewing, and just pray that both don't happen at the same time. I believe it was Baldrick who said something along the lines of, "My stomach feels all squirty."

This is Peru! It is way cool. Mucho bueno and all that.

So hey, I'm not dead, though I'm sick and hot and will probably get altitude sickness tonight after being transported to 2.5kms above sea-level, and I'm hungover in general, but yes. Not dead.

Interesting things discovered include: pretty much nobody speaks English, so I am pretty well screwed, but picking up the important words mucho fast; there's not many (any) llamas around here (so far); and pretty much everyone here is super lovely, except for that punk who made the comment about my blindingly white thighs. Interesting things discovered during my chats with my experienced tour guides include: Danish girls are, and I quote, the "dirtiest bitches in the world"; there barely seems to be enough gay boys in each Peruvian town we visit to keep our main tour guide's sexual appetite fulfilled; and tour guides play really shitty tricks on people (which will surely be covered in more detail at a later time).

But now I am pissing off. It is dinner time and I have to try and digest a meal and hope desperately that it doesn't rapidly spray out of the nearest orifice.

Oh yes. You wanted that much information, didn't you.

Hope all blogfolk are well, am completely ecstatic about having an entire month's worth of blog entries to catch up on once I get home, and I'm bringing home a llama and a colourful poncho for everyone who wants one. Ciao! Or however the hell you spell it.