Blog

Dear visitors,

As of today, this site has received a number of minor enhancements, in order to improve the ease of browsing through my numerous blog entries. I hope that you will find the following new features on the site convenient:

1. There is now a monthly archive of all blog entries. You can view all blog entries for each month (grouped by day) on a single page! Should make it much easier to catch up on older blog entries, and to keep track of which entries you have and haven't read. Also provides fixed pages from which you can access all the entries, rather than the reverse chronological listing, where the entries on each page number change constantly.
2. At the bottom of each blog entry (the full entry, not the summary), there is now a link to the previous and next entries (according to date and time). So you can now "cruise" from one blog entry to the next, without having to keep going back to the index pages.

Went and had a look at Monasterio de Santa Catalina today, a 400-year-old monastery and convent in the middle of Arequipa. Apparently, it's the only monastery in the world that's considered to be "a city inside a city". It's also still fully functioning, and inhabited by the same order of nuns that began it in Renaissance times. Interesting to see the antique sleeping rooms, the beautiful architecture, and — bizarrely — the ingenious laundry system that they have inside. Worth a wander, if you're in Arequipa and have an hour or so to spare.

For our first day in Arequipa, Chris and I awoke to find the city overrun by protestors. Seems that there's a teachers' strike going on here: staff in the city's pre-schools, primary schools and high schools are off work, and have taken to the streets, (presumably) demanding the usual things such as higher wages and better conditions. The demonstrations are fairly peaceful, but they're disrupting traffic really badly, and they're resulting in numerous road closures.

Crossed back into Peru today, from Arica in northern Chile; and I must say, it's good to be back! Almost feels like coming home again. The money looks familiar. The food looks familiar. And the people look familiar (and they have that familiar Peruvian friendliness). Got a shared taxi across the border this morning, from Arica to Tacna; and then it was a long evening's bus ride, from Tacna to Arequipa.

It's been a quick whizz through the northern reaches of Chile, in between my mad time in Bolivia, and Peru Take Two. I didn't stay anywhere around here for longer than two days; and my whole time in Chile has been less than a week. But it was a good introduction to this very long country, and it was certainly a big, contrasting change from Peru and Bolivia. Anyway, I'll be back here in about six weeks' time; second time round to see Santiago and the Lake District, which I imagine will be very different to the deserts of the north.

Maria (known as "Meli") is a lady who lived in Sydney for quite a number of years, and who worked (as a nurse) taking care of my mother's partner's father a few years back. She's now returned to her home of Arica, Chile, where she's living with a crazy Pommy ex-pat called Phillip, and his family, and where she's retired. Today, I dragged Chris along for a Sunday lunch with these people, and we had a great day of eating, chatting, and hanging out.

When we arrived in Sunny Days hostel this evening, Chris and I decided to immediately take advantage of the great kitchen on offer there, and to cook something up for dinner. Somehow, when we actually started cooking, I ended up being in charge of it. We ended up with a weird kind of risotto slash omelette slash stir-fry thing, of fried rice, fried chicken, fried egg, and fried carrot and onion. All fried together. Looked like prison food. Smelled a bit burnt. But tasted good: at least, I thought so! Anyway, we're still in Chile, so at least the ingredients didn't give me food poisoning.

This place is one of the best hostels I've been to, so far on my trip. Definitely up there with Amigo, as a contender for numero uno in my good hostels book. At the moment, the owners are away, and it's being run by a super-friendly 6-foot-tall Kiwi guy, and his German girlfriend. These two are bending over backwards for their guests 24/7, offering us free food constantly (way above and beyond the complementary breakfast, which alone is the most gawdamn outstanding brekky I've seen this side of the Pacific), providing little luxuries everywhere (like soap, hand towels, and free local phone calls), and hanging out with the guests each night, and entertaining us with their lively company. And it's not in Lonely Planet yet, so just be sure to remember it!

So many farewells these days; ah, mais c'est la vie, such is the life of a traveller. This afternoon, Chris and I caught a bus north, from Iquique to Arica; while Leila and Christina, our fine, female, central European travelling companions for the past week, caught a different bus south, to Antofagasta. It's sad to see them go; although I must say, their crazy German ways (e.g. saying "Schultz" after burping — anyone who forgets to say this is liable to be slapped on the head), and their obsession with the card game Yaniv, were getting a bit much. Can't really say I'll miss Iquique, however; as we didn't really do much there, and as there ain't much there to miss, truth be told.

For the past few days, myself, Chris, Leila and Christina have been playing a card game called Yaniv quite a lot. Leila and Christina learned it from some Israelis a few months back (it's an Israeli-invented game — hence the name). It's quite a fun game, although Chris and I seem to lose at it most of the time. Great way to pass the time, and always good to learn new card games.