Home again!

Got home yesterday. It was a great trip, but any longer would have been too much. Now to tackle the accumulated snail mail & postponed to-do items, organise and post the photos, write the trip report...

I very much enjoy visiting new places, trying new foods and drinks, and so on, but eventually it's soooo good to be back with familiar things... like the tea with real milk that I mentioned before. Now on my second cup this morning.

I'm happy to report that the rum and pisco arrived safely in my checked luggage. Did I mention that shrink-wrapping luggage is popular in South America? Both for theft deterrence and for keeping luggage from being destroyed by baggage-handling equipment.

Auckland, changing planes

On LAN flight from Santiago, skipped full dinner service in favour of "express" service, then to sleep. Flight got into Auckland on time. Good thing my liquor purchases were in my checked luggage, as we had to go through security to change planes (even though we stayed in the "international connections" section of the airport and didn't have to deal with immigration or customs) and they were confiscating liquids as usual.

Now hanging out in Qantas Club waiting for flight to Brisbane. Ah, New Zealand! Back in a land of fresh milk (not that horrid longlife stuff) and proper British tea to put it in.

On way home to Australia

Managed to get a litre of Pisco to take home. Had to put it in my checked bag along with the Venezuelan rum. Hope the bottles arrive intact, or I will have very flavoursome dirty laundry.

Hanging out for a few hours in the LAN Business Class lounge in Santiago airport. Arrived on time from Lima. Had to go through Chilean immigration and customs, then take luggage and check in for next flight, the long one to Auckland. Fortunately I had plenty of time, and knew where to go in the airport.

Colca Canyon

Returned to Arequipa late yesterday after an awesome two-day trip to Colca Valley and Canyon, viewing Andean condors, deep terraced valleys, snow capped volcanos towering over everything. Returned through a 4,910 metre pass (over 16,000 feet). Probably no comparison to Tibet, but impressive nonetheless.

Now back in Lima, going home to Australia tomorrow.

EDIT: Photo album from this part of trip to Peru is here.

Arequipa

Arequipa today was warm and dry, with mostly clear skies though later hazy or perhaps smoggy. This city is situated in a huge desert, with a backdrop of active volcanos. Quite a spectacular view from the airplane. City tour, much walking. Noisy hotel with a so-so restaurant.

EDIT: Photo album from this part of trip to Peru is here.

Lima to Arequipa

At Lima hotel, I was a bit appalled at the prices in the restaurant until I realised they were in the local currency, not in US dollars as all the other hotels have used. Silly me. Three soles to the US$ made the prices more than reasonable.

Gotta keep an eye on the bar & restaurant staff in my hotels. Too often they charge me for a bottle of wine when I've had only a glass. I'm assuming honest mistakes, but still...

In this part of Lima (Miraflores), I saw at least 6 casinos in about 4 blocks.

Lima airport seems to have free wifi, hooray. Also, today is Independence Day. Little traffic, short checkin queue. Off to Arequipa today.

Lima

Back in Lima for 2 nights. Using iPod on hotel wifi. Lousy weather here too. Grumbles from local guide re uncooperative dry season weather. Now doing comparative Pisco Sour tasting aided by free welcome drink here. Hope I can get a bottle to take home with me.

Cusco and Machu Picchu

Cusco: stayed at the Monasterio Hotel. Very nice (also very expensive). Excellent food. Great location. Tour of city. Bus tour of Sacred Valley. Fascinating country.

Machu Picchu yesterday and today. Tour yesterday in rain. Everything vertical, much with steps higher than my knees consider comfortable. Despite that, it's totally AWESOME. A larger area than it looks in typical photos. Definitely a You Have To Be Here experience that photos do not do justice to.

Staying at Sanctuary Lodge, just outside entrance to Machu Picchu. Another very nice, very expensive hotel, with great food. Have discovered the Pisco Sour. YUM!

EDIT: Photo album from this part of Peru is here.

Leaving Venezuela

Leaving Venezuela now, after a most enjoyable but rather exhausting week. On to Peru. Will be writing much longer report when I get home next month.

Caracas, Venezuela

Went to a shopping mall on a hillside near where I'm staying in El Hatillo. Could see Caracas sprawling on the hills below. I was impressed by the mountains. Then the clouds cleared and the REAL mountains appeared above the ones I was admiring. Whoa!! Impressive. And even those probably are dwarfed by the high Andes. Of course, I did not have my camera with me.

EDIT: Photo album from Venezuela is here.

Caracas, Venezuela

Arrived in Venezuela last Friday. Weekend at beach and driving back to Caracas through mountains Monday. Fascinating country, wish I had time to see more of it. Host family large, loud, enthusiastic, delightful. Way too much to write about now.

Finally got to see a thorough demo of a Wii Fit. In Spanish. Some of it looks quite useful for me, but I think the cutesy graphics would soon annoy me. But at least now I have a much better idea of what so many people are talking about.

On way from Santiago to Caracas

Arrived yesterday in Santiago. Flight from Auckland was almost empty in Buz class and far from full in economy. Beautiful views of snow-capped Andes as we flew up a valley between them and the lower, older coastal range.

No delays at immigration and customs. Struggled through a crowd of taxi touts, saw my name on a sign, and was taken to my hotel by an informative guide. Too tired to walk around sightseeing, and too late to take a tour. Want to return to Chile for a proper visit, instead of just passing through. Nice dinner in hotel.

Santiago airport, LAN VIP lounge, waiting for flight to Caracas. Spanish keyboard is confusing.

On route to South America

Auckland. Qantas Club. iPod Touch not too bad for reading, not so good for typing, so I'm using their computers. Did I mention that I left all the laptops at home, and only brough the iPod Touch for personal use when I can't find a computer to use?

Wifi in Brisbane hotel was flakey, but free. Early flight from Brisbane. Waiting for LAN flight to Santiago.

Speculative fiction prize so far: biz class lunch menu. Caterers delivered different items to aircraft. Better that than the flight schedule being fiction. That may come later in the trip.

Off to South America tomorrow

Tomorrow I set off for South America, sightseeing and attending the wedding of two good friends. I fly to Brisbane tomorrow, then on Thursday from Brisbane to Auckland to Santiago de Chile. After one night there, I go on to Caracas (Venezuela) for 10 days, during which I'll visit various nearby places. Then to Peru for 11 days, visting Lima, Cuzco, Sacred Valley, Macchu Piccu, Arequipa, and Colca Canyon. Then the killer flight home: Lima to Santiago to Auckland to Brisbane to Townsville. Would love to have extended the trip a bit and visit some Chilean vineyards, but I suspect that I'll be exhausted by that point.

I'm going to try to post some blog entries by email as I go, but based on past experience I probably won't get around to it.

Immunisations for South America trip

Today I saw a doctor specialising in immunisations for travellers, and was given shots for several exotic diseases, including yellow fever, typhoid, and hepatitus A. The yellow fever immunisation is a requirement for getting back into Australia. To my surprise, I found my (now very battered) old immunisation record card from the 1960s, when I was going to North Africa... at which time I had yellow fever and cholera shots.

Planning a trip to South America

I've been organising a trip to South America in July: Venezuela and Peru, flying into and out of Santiago de Chile. The Venezuela part (11 days) is being organised by the family of a friend, but I'm putting together the Peru part (another 11 days), tours to Cusco, Macchu Pichu, Arequipa, Colca Canyon. And all the air travel is up to me. I'll be flying on LAN, a Chilean airline. I wanted to book all my flights through the LAN website, so I can track and manage them online. Unfortunately, the website refused to process my credit card most of the time, despite getting it right once. Wanting to be sure to have the trans-Pacific flights locked in (just in case their very favourable business-class fares disappeared without warning), I fought my way through their telephone system to reach a human, who could only accept payment in US dollars... so I got stung with an extra card fee for that. Eventually I gave up trying to book the other flights and got a travel agent to do them, along with the tours I'd selected from the Tempo Holidays brochure. The Tempo website is hopeless.

Back from New Zealand and catching up

Eric and I are home from our 3+ week trip to New Zealand and working on catching up with snail mail, preparations for our move to Townsville, and numerous writing projects (including a report on the trip). I'm trying to find time to sort and select photos for an album illustrating the trip report. Eventually the report will appear on Avalook. Our contact at Carlyle Gardens says the house is ready, so we're planning to drive to Townsville early next week to hand over a cheque for a large sum of money and collect the keys... assuming the house passes inspection.

More travel photo albums now online

I've just uploaded the photo albums for our 2002 trip to Darwin and back in the motorhome. The trip report starts here. Look in the text of each installment for the links to photo albums.

Trip to Cairns and Port Douglas

We just got back from our first longish trip in the new car, and the first longish trip in any car since my hip operations 18 months ago. We went up to coast to Cairns and Port Douglas and back again. We been told by a lot of people that good deals on hotels could be had, as the whole region is suffering from lack of tourists (cost of petrol is one reason; cuts in airline services is another), and so it proved when I checked on my favourite online booking site, Wotif. We left on Monday, 28 July, driving only as far as Townsville (300 km). The drive was very good: beautiful weather, and very little traffic on the road. The independent truck drivers are said to be on strike, so instead of the usual steady stream of semi-trailers, we saw about 6 in 4 hours. The main highway is two-lane most of the way (one lane in each direction), and the road surface is often in poor repair, so the lack of trucks was most pleasant. We did a bit of shopping and checked out a retirement resort (Carlyle Gardens) in Townsville that looks much like Panorama City in Lacey, Washington (where my parents lived): about the same size (number of residents), same sort of facilities and activities, and so on. I've been doing some internet research for a couple of years, but this is the first time we've actually gone to inspect one of these resorts. Eric's not keen, but he knows that one of these years we'll probably have to move somewhere for medical reasons, so he's willing to look at places that might suit us. Their website, by the way, is a bit out of date; it doesn't show the large new section that is under construction. We'll be returning for a closer look on their open day in September. We had a great drive up the coast, stopping briefly at Paronella Park, a mostly-ruined place with a fascinating history as a popular tourist destination in the 1930s and 1940s. We really enjoyed our 3 days in Cairns. We stayed three nights in a 5-star hotel (Cairns International) for about the cost of our usual 3.5 star motels. The weather was beautiful, so we walked around quite a lot (more than I've done for two years; very tiring, but definitely good for me). We ate in one of our favourite seafood restaurants (Barnacle Bills), among other places. Trips to the reef and rainforest are no novelty for us, so we didn't do any of that. Goofing off, and not accessing the internet, makes a really great break for us. Then on to Port Douglas, just a hour's drive up the coast from Cairns, where we stayed for 3 days at Le Cher du Monde on Macrossan Street, the main shopping-and-restaurant street. The apartment was quite comfortable and the location was ideal. Ours faced the pool, so if there was any street noise at night, we didn't hear it. More goofing off in beautiful weather, interspersed with long walks around town. We were interested to see that the old place we'd stayed in years and years ago (Coconut Grove) has recently been replaced by a large modern upmarket resort building. On our way back down the coast, we stopped for two nights at Port Hinchinbrook in Cardwell, a resort that turned out to be almost deserted of visitors, with extremely limited food options. We ended up driving the 3 km to Cardwell (a small town strung out along the sea shore) and picking up takeaway food (salads and sandwiches) there. Our cabin was otherwise pleasant, and had its own outdoor spa. Our original plans called for taking a cruise to the resort on Hinchinbrook Island for the day, but we chose not to, preferring to sit around reading our books instead. Then home to Airlie Beach the next day. I'm working on an album of photos of the trip and will post a link here when it's done and uploaded.

On to Wollongong

On Friday we checked out of the hotel, dragged our luggage several blocks to a Europcar rental office, and picked up a car. I had chosen Europcar partly because their office was within a block of easy access to the freeway going south... where we wanted to go. We drove south, checking out the beaches south of the airport and then driving through the Royal National Park on our way to Wollongong. I had never visited most of this stretch of coast, despite having lived in the Sydney area for 10 years. The weather was beautiful. I didn’t find many photo opportunities in the National Park (most of the good views required more walking, or more precarious walking—such as on slippery stones over a creek—than I wanted to indulge in). Just south of the park is a great view towards Wollongong. Along this stretch of coast, part of the old road has been replaced with the Seacliff Bridge, which is just visible as a Z-curve in the photo below. The road is on huge pylons. It opened around 2 years ago. The only way to get good photos is by walking along the pedestrian walkway, but as this involved a much longer walk than I felt up to, we didn’t do it. Eventually we reached the Wollongong area and found the Bed-and-Breakfast place where we were staying for 3 nights. It had only been open for 6 weeks in a newly-built house, so some bits weren’t quite finished. Despite that, it was a comfortable place, the food was good, and the proprietors were interesting to talk with. They have only 3 guest rooms. On 2 of the nights, we were the only guests; on Saturday, another couple was staying there, but we didn’t meet them. Wollongong is a small industrial city with a growing university. It’s been reinventing itself as a tourist destin­ation, taking advantage of good beaches and a beautiful sea view, nice for more people than just those wishing to enjoy the surfing. On Monday we drove south aways to look at other parts of the coast, then back to Sydney, dropping off the rental car in the mid-afternoon. More lunch and dinner visits with Sydney friends followed.