Thursday night in Rio

It's about half ten, we've spent the day wandering around Ipanema, came home, watched some tv, read for a while, had some dinner, drank a glass of wine with a nice English couple. He works in advertising, she had a dream she was going out with Michelle McManus.

Laura and Sinead wanted to go to a Samba nightclub, so around half an hour ago, they had their showers, got changed, got a group of backpackers together and headed off. I decided to get an early night and give my wallet a rest.
But i still fancied a walk, it was a nice evening, so i walked the two blocks to the garage to get some chewing gum. And maybe a can of Coke.
Between the hostel and the garage, there's a roadblock. Police cars block the road, and plainclothes officers dressed in jeans and t-shirts stand around, M-16s cradled in their hands.

I move along past them, on the path. They nod at me, I'm a tourist, one of them smiles. I get to the garage, buy the chewing gum, decide against the Coke, it's late, I could probably do without the caffeine and the sugar.

On the way out, a Taxi passes me. You have to understand just how crazy fast the taxi drivers go here. They run red lights, regularly hit 140kph. This guy's not going especially fast.

I stroll up to the roadblock unwrapping my gum. There's shouting, the Taxi has tried to run the roadblock. The policemen are pointing their guns in the driver's window, screaming in Portugese, the blue lights flashing off their guns. I don't know whether to walk on through the roadblock, or stay where i am.

They open the door, the driver gets out, his hands up. Two machine guns aimed at his chest. The guy who smiled at me now screaming orders at him. One of the policemen reaches in and pops open the boot. I follow the small crowd and walk on, unsure of gawker etiquette here. As I reach the corner, i look back. The driver is on the ground, one of the cops is emptying the boot, the other has his rifle trained on whatever might be in there.

I get home, rabbitting about what I've just seen.

'Oh, that's normal around here'

Palmy & Chile in Chilly. Also, Rio!

Anyway, we spent the last week in sunny -read rainy- Palmerston North, with Kev & Eimear. Great time, great to meet up with them, see how they're, between them running the town. So in between hanging out in Palmy, we took a trip around the North island of New Zealand. Saw lake Taupo, a giant boiling lake at Rotorua (seriously, thermally heated boiling lake in the middle of the forest. it was like something out of Jurassic park)

And - i got the flu. There is nothing more miserable than being sick when you're travelling. Well - maybe not nothing, in fact i'd say there's quite a few things. Genocide comes to mind. fine, i'll rephrase that. The absolute worst time to get the flu is when you're travelling. Y'know when you're antisocial, and all you want is telly and food and sleep and warmth? Yeah...Anyway, thanks again to kev and Eimear for putting up with me in my wojus state. I owe you both more pints than any two people should ever drink.

So, post new zealand, we rolled on into Chile. Where it was...Chilly! (i rule, honestly - good Jokes? come to Andy) Santiago, to be precise, where we suffered from jetlag, spending whole days in bed, and whole nights wondering why we couldn't sleep. Fun times. However, despite all the films - well, one - about jetlag, i still haven't had an odd non-relationship with Scarlett Johannsen. I'm holding out hope for when i hit LA.

Santiago's quite nice in an odd, nondescript way. full of shops...and underground trains...and...uh...y'know...city-like stuff.

3 days of odd Chilean food, drinks with an incontinent politics professor and his wife and a scary night out that ended in a dodgy back alley odd smelling reggae club in Santiago (at which point i called chicken and went home) And we hopped a flight to Rio.

The Most Turbulent Flight Ever. The woman next to me grabbed my arm so hard there's still little white half-moons where her nails dug into me. I was all excited because it hought we were over the Amazon, and we could crash, and have strange adventures in the jungle, where no-one's sure what's real and what's not, and it all could be part of some fat guy's mental illness, or possibly some sort of purgatory, and then Kate and i would have a stormy relationship...ok, sue me, i watch too much lost. Anyway, looked at a map today, we were nowhere near the Amazon so scratch that. But we did fly over the Andes. During which time, i sized up my flying companions and tried to work out who'd be the tastiest. (watch Alive)

Point is, arrived safely in Rio, home to the Copacabana, Ipanema beach and more song puns than any one city should have. Also, apparently, more gun-crime. In fact, it's a wonder i'm still alive, the amount of gun-crime they talk about. GUNCRIME!
you get the point. (also, heard gunshots earlier on tonight) (Mam, don't read that last sentence)

as I write, Laura, sinead and Sam are knocking around the hostel, we're talking about going out to a samba show later, and earlier today we went up to visit that big scary jesus on the rock that overlooks the city.


More soon with less delay.

Christchurch 2. The Christchurchening.

So, ok,I'd spent about 15 minutes in the spooky Japanese Hostel, Sinead got in touch with me, and I hit the road out to riccarton.

(conversation with bus driver:
-I'm looking to get off at riccarton high school
-is that before or after the church?
-i don't know.
-is it near the shopping centre?
-i'm from the other side of the world.
-do you think it'd be near the garage there?
I burst into cold, cold tears.

Anyway, it's still cold here, but i am getting more and more used to it. What did take a little more adjustment, however, was getting used to living in a civilised house rather than...well, the Broadway. For instance, some of the f*cking language that is par for the f*cking course in brisbane might not be appropriate for the dinner table here. F*cking oath.

Either way, thanks very much, Brendan and Trisha, for putting us up. Thanks also, for the go on your playstation. (Awesome!)

This afternoon, it's off to Palmerston North, to hook up with Kev & Eimear (also, Claire -from brisbane, well Cork, but via Brisbane)

Bye Bye Brisbane & Broadway

So I left Brisbane this morning, hopped a plane to Christchurch. Where i am now, with the cold, and the rain.

Anyway, Here's the thing. I've left the place i've lived in and the people i've lived with for the last five months, stuffed all my crap back in my rucksack & hit the road. And I'm a little unhappy about that. So to all of you Broadway folks, hi.

But anyway, we must always look forward. In this case to Christchurch, home to Sinead. It's lovely. But extremely cold and wet. I've checked into the cheapest hostel i can find, the lovely 'kiwi backpackers' only to find that, like the 2nd hand camera i got in tokyo, it's all in Japanese.

Just as the Broadway (i'm not fixating) was mostly irish, (actually, barring 3 welsh guys, entirely irish) and every so often we'd get one poor lonely japanese guy wandering about, wondering why it was necessaly to have a righter for cigalettes to use the cook-ah, This place is Japanese, and there's one bald irishman in a fleece wandering around wondering why there's so many signs in foreign, and what they all say.

(HAIR MUST BE WORN ON SECOND FLOOR!)
(NO HUMMING ON TOILET!)
(FREE COFFEE FOR TIRED IRISHMEN!)
(JAPANESE GIRLS LOVE GUYS WHO PLAY GUITAR! FOR FURTHER INFORMATION ASK AT RECEPTION!)
(WARNING, SECRET TRAPDOOR! YES! RIGHT THERE! WHERE YOU'RE STANDING! HAHAH!)

ok, so i've been knocking around christchurch, waiting to get in touch with sinead, everything's closed, I'm looking to buy some lunch (tea by this stage) and making up signs is just funny to me. what do you want?

Fun conversation at customs:
-Welcome to New Zealand. Do you have any knives or guns?
-yes. I'm a cook, I have a kitchen knife with me.
-that's ok. So how long are you here?
-about ten days. then on to south america.
-gap year?
-yeah, I just finished a masters degree.
-i thought you were a cook
-i am, i mean i was, i mean...AHHH!(runs out into airport concourse, chased by siffer dogs, before being strip searched by giant Samoan)