New start in London

So after seven months of traveling in South America (Argentina, Chile, Bolivia and Peru) and Europe (Spain, Greece, Turkey, Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary, Czech, Slovakia and Poland), Andre and I finally reached the end of our phase one trip, London,  a city that we've heard so many about and where many of our friends have been or come from! It's a place that I've longed for! Many people would prefer New York as the top place they want to live and experience, but for me London has always claimed that special place, partially due to its rich history, its extensive influence on the world, the most powerful empire it once was, its world's most famous royal family, the high quality gentlemen it produces and the happy pub/drinking culture it is renowned for etc. 

Anyway, we got here without too much trouble and luckily missed the riots that shocked the world at the beginning of August. When we first arrived, our university friend Marco kindly received us and kindly shared his home with us until we find our own place. The pub a typical English pub - called Salmon & Ball in Bethnal Green, where we met up with Marco on our first day will always be of special sentimental importance to us :)

So we spent our first two weeks in London relaxing and readjusting ourselves - bringing ourselves back to reality from seven months of roaming around the world without having to worry too much except having fun and seeing the world! Marco, our friend and host, has been tremendously helpful and kind to us. Among many things, he always took us out to meet his friends and to experience the cultural, drinking, gastronomic and fun aspects of living in his city.

We started looking for jobs towards the end of our second week. I've been extremely luck to have found a good job within one week of seeking. It's a similar industry publication as the one I used to work for in Sydney but it is a bigger and more globally recognised brand. I am very grateful that I have the chance to be part of a great team and the publication. It is certainly an important step up for my career!

Andre, less lucky, is still looking for a job in IT/programming. But at least with one income, he has the luxury of taking his time to find a good one.

As I am settling into my new role in a new company, we also have started searching for our own home in London. London's rental market is red hot, especially near where we want to stay near Bethnal Green, the famous East End. There are few properties available for rent, as least during the weeks when we were doing house hunting. Even when there is something become available one morning it will be snapped up by the afternoon.

After a few weeks of house hunting, this Saturday, we finally make an offer after a hard and long collective decision making process. It's a nice 2-bedroom apartment in Bow, with a balcony overlooking the 2010 London Olympic Stadium and only one stop tube away from the newly opened Stratford Westfield shopping centre. We will all look forward to hearing back from the landlord about whether or not our offer has been accepted on Monday.

Also, this Sunday I finally played tennis for the first time in 9 months. Thanks to Gumtree, I found a really nice tennis partner who is from Scotland and is around the same age and at the same level as me in terms of tennis skills.

Because of all the above, this September has been a very eventful, very exciting and a very remarkable month for me. However, I felt sad that I missed out two very good friends birthday since I came to London and a good friend's wedding in China. We all have to make sacrifices sometimes in the course of fulfilling your own personal and career goals.

Lago Titicaca - the world´s highest lake!

After the big carnival in La Paz on Saturday, we took a day trip to Tiwanaku. It's a ruin of an important ceremonial site from pre inca civilisation called Tiwanaku. It was alright but nothing spectacular. From there we went to Copacabana, a small town next to Lake Titicaca., the world´s highest lake located almost 4000m above sea level. The town was beautiful and peaceful, but most people go there to get to the Isal Del Sun island. That's what we did. We went to Copacabana and stayed there for one night in a hostel on the beach front with great lake views. If you love fish, you can find many restaurants serve trout and king fish for only 20bs (under 3AUD). They taste really nice. I ate four fish dishes in just two days. But do not go to the restaurant that has a big palm tree sign on the main road and offers expensive and four different types of menus. We went there and it was a big rip off!

The next morning we took a ferry to the Sun Island. According to the Inca religion, it is the birthplace of the Sun God. We got off at the north side first, visited a museum and the famous archeological sites and later had lunch near the dock. Guess what, we ate trouch again! It was a simple and yummy meal, so we decided to take a walk and let the meal settle with the stunning views on the top of the island. The view is a bit smiliar to the ocrean view from the Greek Islands I guess although I haven´t been there yet but I´ve seen enough from all the photos, postcards and movies.

We walked all the way to the south part of the island and it took us more than three hours to finish the 7km trail due to the high altitude perhaps. We stayed for the night on the top of the hill out of Yumani, the main village on the south. The sunset from Copacabana is beautiful and it's equally great to see the sunrise from he island. Andre and I stayed at Inti Kala hostel, with offers private room with bath and breakfast for 80bs pp (12AUD). It is basic but well functional and we definitely can recommend it. We really enjoyed our time on the island. I also liked the authenticity of all the local villagers, even though there are plenty of restaurants, hotels and pizzerias, most of the farmers (and hundreds of llamas, sheep, donkeys and dogs) there just mind their own business and go on about their daily routines.

After that we went to Puno and from there we saw the Peru side of Titicaca. The day we visited the floating island of the Uros tribe coincided with my birthday. It was a special experience as our kind tour guide who found out that it was my birthday from the hotel staff got the local Uro ladies on the island to sing the happy birthday song to me in Spanish. It was a good surprise to me and I really enjoyed all the attention as other tourists in our group as joined in the singing. Also, it was the first time that people have sung the happy birthday sone to me in Spanish. But although Puno is only three hours away by bus from Copacabana, it was much colder than Copacabana and it actually rained and hailed heavily at that night. Luckily, our tour finished just early enough to avoid the bad weather.

After three relaxing days in Puno we headed to Cusco, the historic capital of the Inca Empire, that is going to be the defining point of our trip. it's a very beautiful city! Andre and I will probably stay here for a week and are very tempted to do the inca trail!!

Carnival in La Paz

Today we were lucky enough to witness the Carnival in La Paz. It is to celebrate the Tawacu de la Jisk'a Anata 2011. There are full of vivid colours, beautiful costumes and more than 40 different indigenous folk music and dances, each represent a different region of the country. We really enjoyed it and hope that you will like the photos.

Punta Arenas - a day of unexpected events

After Torres Del Paine and Puerto Natales, Andre and I decided to head north to Santiago De Chile and cross the border to Mendoza for the annual National Grape Harvest Festival (Fiesta Nacional de la Vendimia), which takes place in the first weekend of March every year. The locals in Mendoza province, Argentina’s best wine region, see this festival as the most important event each year and a number of people we met during the trip have mentioned it and recommended it.

The only flight we could book was from Punta Arenas (known as the Capital of Patagonia) to Santiago on 3 March at a weird hour - 5:40 in the morning. Buses to Punta Arenas from Puerto Natales usually depart at 9am, 2pm or 7pm and the trip usually takes about three hours. So we took the 7pm bus on the 2 March and stayed up at the airport all night in order to catch the flight the following morning.

When we checked in at 1am, the LAN staff offered to put us on the earlier flight which departs at 3:30am. So we gladly accepted the offer, thinking it would be better to sleep in the airplane seats than on the chairs at the airport. We waited at the boarding gate for an hour, and had a quick nap and did some internet surfing (luckily the airport provides free WI-FI). But we sensed that something was not right when nothing happened half an hour after the scheduled boarding time. Not long after that, there was some announcement from the loudspeakers, but it was all in Spanish, a language still so foreign to us even after spending one month in South America. With some investigation we found out that our flight was delayed for one hour due to technical problems. So we went back to sleep on the chairs…In my sleep I vaguely remembered that the flight after us (our original flight at 5:40am) took off on time. But I was too tired to wake up fully.

A LAN staff finally woke us both up, and the time was 5:30am. We went into a panic status for the first few minutes having no idea what’s going on and worrying that we had missed our flight. An English-speaking local kindly informed us that our flight was cancelled and we need to go to the check in counter and rebook a next available flight!

We were very upset and angry to hear the news and get even angrier when we saw the 30 meter-long line in front of the check in counter. It’s a mix of feelings, anger, regret, exhaustion and so on. We couldn’t help thinking how unlucky we were: if we hadn’t checked in for the 3:30am flight we would have arrived Santiago as planned. We couldn’t really blame the staff either because they booked us in the earlier flight with good intention. We were so tired, sleepy and naturally grumpy in this early hour.

It was not until 8:00am when we finally reached the front of the line (as a matter of fact, we were the last few people on the line, because we don’t understand the announcement so we came last). The staff told us the next available flight was 11:30pm the same day, or 5:40am the next day. We didn’t want to take the 11:30pm flight because we didn’t want to arrive in Santiago at 3:30am, nor the 5:40am one as we were sick of this odd hour flight. So we insisted (aggressively) that they put us on a normal hour flight which is 11am the next day. Without too much hassle, they agreed to do that and, in addition, offered to provide us with one night accommodation at ‘Dreams Hotel’, breakfast and dinner and transportation from and to the airport. It’s a nice offer so we took it, but we were very skeptical about the standards of this ‘dreams hotel’ judging by its name. 

Around 9 o’clock we arrived at Dreams, and gladly found out that it was one of the luxuries hotels in town with a Casino on the ground floor and a sky bar on the top. Our room, although was on the 3rd floor, was big and designed in contemporary style, with a sofa, coffee table, desk, king-size bed, minibar, ipod dock/digital clock and 46’ LCD cable TV. Everything is color-coordinated with dark brown being the main theme. The ambiance of the room was further elevated by the nice shadow-set ceiling and cozy lighting from the down lights and lamps. The bathroom is also new, modern and enormous with shower and bathtub. One of the walls was purely of ceiling-to-floor windows, overlooking the beautiful Straits of Magellan.

We ate some breakfast in the hotel’s waterfront restaurant called "Doña Inés Grill & Wines"and had a very comfortable 3-hour sleep. We woke up refreshed and in a good mood. The next thing we did is to go for a stroll in the town that we never planned to be.

As we were walking along the avenue Costanera Del Estrecho, amazed by the cute clouds floating on the blue sky, the blue water against the backdrop of snow-tipped mountains, many penguin-like birds resting on the abandoned jetties, and various boats and ship decking in the nearby port and international terminal, we didn’t know we were going to have another surprise soon.

When we stopped by to take some photos of the birds, we saw two people standing just 10 meters away from us. The guy looked very familiar and as a few glances I recognized that he is Ron from Israel, a friend we made in Torres Del Paine who we played cards with, had drinks with and camped together for two nights. When we left Torres Del Paine we didn’t get his contact details and was sad about it. We were so happy to meet him again in coincidence, especially neither of us knew where each other was going next. What are the odds?!

So we chatted, exchanged emails and arranged to have some drinks that night at Olijoe pub as recommended by Lonely Planet. Things went as planned that night and it was a relaxing and fun night with responsible drinking as Andre and I had to got up early to go to the airport.

Before I end this post, I must add one last thing about the dinner we had that night. The restaurant Doña Inés offers upper class wine & dine. We were not so sure how the free dinner deal works and expected the hotel to offer us a plain, boring and cheap set menu. However, when we asked, the restaurant staff told us we can basically order any food and drinks from the normal A La Carte menu and there is no limit to the total bill. We were overjoyed about this fancy free dinner and greedily indulged ourselves with a three-course dinner each as well as expensive Chilean red wine, top-quality coffee and tea. Each course was one of the most expensive one from its category. Here is a list of dishes we had:
For Andre: Entrée king crab salad; Main roasted Magellanic lamb; and dessert Apple Struddle with rosemary icecream. For me: seafood ceviche, roasted Magellanic lamb (the most expensive one on the menu) and mixed berry crepes with ice cream.

It was a great feast; food was delectable, wine divine, services top-class, not to mention the view of the sunset from the restaurant window. The total bill was about 49,000 Chilean Pesos (just over 100 AUD). It’s very expensive in local terms but great value and price to Australian standards. But we went a bit overboard, we were very full half way through the main already. Guess when LAN sees the bill they will probably call us two pigs.

The next day everything went well. Our flight departed as scheduled, after a four-hour smooth fly with amazing views of the endless mountains, the glaciers, lakes, the Andes, the volcanos we landed in Santiago safely.


I guess the morale of the story is that one bad thing sometimes can lead to something good :) Every cloud has a silver lining (in Chinese: 一波三折，好事多磨)! So don’t be so upset or self-pity if something bad happens to you, because you never know when your fortune will take a turn for the best!

At last, a big thanks to LAN's generosity!

The first blog post after a month of travels

We've been travelling in Argentina and Chile for a month now and finally I’ve written the first post of our travel blog. A Swiss couple who stayed at the same hostel as us in Puerto Natales last night gave me the final spur. They came to this small, peaceful, once famous fishing town in Southern Chile from a 14-day Antarctica expedition and told us many fascinating tales about their trip to the extreme part of the earth. This morning, they posted all the trip details and stories to their blog. As they were uploading, I told them I always wanted to start a travel blog for our trip but was always too busy or too slack to really get around to it. In respond, they said that it’s indeed hard to keep a journal while traveling you just have to get it done, otherwise the trip would be over too soon if you keep postponing it. Simple and easily overlooked truth! So here I am, finally started writing my first post a month after we left Australia. It’s a bit sad to realize that we are already one month into our travels. Trust me it felt like the shortest month we’ve ever lived, yet it’s probably the most interesting and most adventurous month yet in our lives. It just proves how fast time flies, especially when you are having fun!

Also, need to thanks Elisa, who suggested me to set up a blog in several of her emails so everyone at home knows exactly what we were up to :)

It’s probably too time-consuming to give full details on what we’ve done in the past month, so in the next few days I will provide a summery so you can get a brief idea of our travels so far. So stay tuned!

 Gastronomic parrilla in BA (Famous Argentina BBQ)

Tango on Florida Avenue, Buenos Aires