The Puerto Moreno Glacier, El Calafate, Argentina in April, 2010. In the foreground you can see the terminal moraines and beech forrest, in the mid-ground the mightily beautiful Puerto Moreno Glacier and the endless snow capped peaks in the background. If you look close enough in the foreground you can see the station where the climbers stop to put on their crampons, to the lower right a picnic table on the glacier and in the middle of the picture you can make out a group of climbers advancing their way up the icy jagged peaks.

Howdy Folks,

That’s right we’ve been in Vancouver a whole 3 weeks now! Yes, the blog posts of the rest of Chile and Peru are still in writing i’m sure over the next few months we’ll get around to them.

What have we been doing? Exploring and of course, applying for jobs, jobs and more jobs. The job hunting is going ok, last week was particularly busy with interviews and phone interviews. I think in total we had about 8 between us and are now waiting to hear back or get an update. Keep your fingers crossed for us. If anyone has any contacts up here in Canada we’d greatly appreciate if you passed our details on, even if it was just to meet them and take them out for a beer or coffee.

Vancouver is a very beautiful city, the tall glass skyscrapers refelect the greens and blues of the forrests, mountains and water. We’ve been checking out the different areas such as coal harbour, yaletown, north vancouver, gastown etc. There always seems to be some festival or something on. For instance, we woke up one Saturday to music and drums getting louder and louder…turns out there was a Phillipeno parade meandering its way down our street.

To Jess’ great surprise and delight, we found out her favourite band Karnivool were going to be playing at The Venue in Vancouver for $15. Karnivool are a Perth band with a solid following down under but as we found out the rest of the world hasnt found out how great they are. Or they just agree with my summation being that they sound like a cat drowing amongst several garbage trucks. Fortunatley their live show was fantastic for Jesse and the Venue had a bar so i was happy. I even attempted to sing along which was easy when every word is a high pitched meow of varying lengths.

Street concert on the way to watch Karnivool

The Venue – Vancouver Downtown

G’day our finely feathered friends,

Or as the Canadian’s like to say “Hey”! Crazy i know. Cultures, so different and tasty!
Anyhoo this is a take on our first week in Vancouver, Canada. It’s been a busy one! Exciting as well getting to know and look around a new city especially one so beautiful as Vancouver. Exploring a new city is like unwrapping presents every corner you turn or place you visit a new surprise awaits.

We arrived at 12am on Sunday morning and as some of you know the accommodation we booked didnt bother to answer his phone. Plus there was a big fireworks event on that night so all the hotels were fully booked. We finally found somewhere, a cheap motel just outside of the airport that checked us into a comfy enough bed for 7 hours. Previous to that our immigration process was smooth and easy. No hiccups, no real questions. Just Another Aussie – they call us JAFAS over here, you can choose what the “F” stands for – i say Firkingoodlooking!

G’day Everybody,

Most people doing the clockwise trip of South America travel to Pucon, Chile from Bariloche. Most people take a leisurely overnight bus for the 10 or 12 odd hour trip through the Andes. Most people. Not us. Nope, 10+ hours on a bus at this point in our trip was fairly frightening for me at least. 10 hours couped up in a small seat without food and with the person in front reclining their seat all the way no matter how much i press my knees into the back of the seat. Terrifying!

Instead i consult a snowboarding mate i met on the Internet. Yup you’ve got to love the world wide web. He tells us of a quaint little town much better than Bariloche, only 6 hours from Bariloche and has a short route to Pucon. Brilliant! The places name, San Martin De Los Andes.
San Martin De Who?
Yup San Martin for short.

Pretty Trees

We just flew into Iquitos Thailand/Peru, hot humid scooter.motorbikes and tuk tuks fill the roads. Now this town is isolated, coming from Perth i get it but this town cannot be accessed by road and it’s got 500,000 people in it. So it’s all river and air transport. We got to our hotel and was greeted by Hugh Hefner in his robe who told us that there was food but now it’s late. We were amused since it was 7:30pm. We then walked around and there found a tree house that would put robinson crusoe to shame. We really needed food so we climbed into a Tuk Tuk and motored off to a chinese restaurant called Long Dong Fong. Bumped into another political rally and came home.

At home we discovered the place was used to shoot and house the stars/crew of Fitzcarraldo. You know the Beatles right? Ok, so a bit later one there was a band named The Clash, you know The Clash? Ok, no. So you know Rock The Casbah? Ok that year. 1982 was when the film was released but the writers/producers etc stayed in Iquitos for 5 years prior. Mind boggling. Hugh Hefner is really Walter Saxer the executive producer. He co-owns the place and runs it from what i can gather, nice bloke who occasionally gets pulled out of the jungle to produce films.

We wake up the next morning to the sounds of a rooster barking and a dog crowing.

Must dash, i’ve got to have breakfast by the palm covered pool and next to the naked mermaids.

Later

El Hutcho