The Adventures of Hannah and James

New Blog

Sat, 14 Jan 2006 16:04:12 +0100

Well, this is a quick entry to let people know that we have started a new blog. We have used up all of the allowed picture space on this blog, and we can no longer download pictures, so we have started a new blog. It is almost the same address as this one, so it shouldn´t confuse too much!

It is:

http://hannahandjames2.blog.co.uk

We have added some more pictures to our previous entry and some more on the new blog. We took so many piccies in Peru it is hard to pick out just a few!

Hope this is easy to follow, if it isn´t working email us.

Comments

Absolute Peru

Mon, 02 Jan 2006 15:10:30 +0100

Well, we have now finished our Peru tour, and are spending our last few days in Lima, which is a bit of an anticlimax as an end to Peru. Lima seems to be a city which is trying to lose it´s national identity, by becoming too western, with fast food joints, supermarkets and department stores on every corner. Peru is full of so much history, culture and beautiful scenery that it seems a shame that it´s capital has ignored this.

We have been to so many interesting places it is hard to fit it all in, but we shall try.

Our first leg of Peru was the desert. Amazing! We went for a dune buggy ride, and we could have easily have been the only people for miles, we were surrounded by sand dunes for as far as the eye could see. It was incredible, probably the most dramatic landscape we have seen so far.

We went sand boarding, and James was a natural, as you can see in the pictures. I was not so good. Our tour leader Colby assured us that no one had ever fallen off the boards before. Well, theres always a first time! I did a spectacular roll down half of a very high and steep sand dune. Unfortunately no one took a picture! I was safe as sand is quite soft, but if you look at the picture of me with the sand board, you can see my face is covered in sand!

We have also seen lots of wildlife while travelling around Peru. From penguins and sealions on the Ballestas islands, to monkeys and kamans in the rainforest. I even had a monkey come and fall asleep on me while I was swinging on a hammock in our jungle lodge!

The rainforest was incredible. We sailed along the river, with the jungle either side, looking at monkeys, toucans and many other types of birds. We even went to a farm which grew many different exotic fruits, and it was interesting to see how the 80 year old farmer and his wife had to continually battle with the jungle to keep their farm afloat. We went for a night boat ride along the river, and just listening to the different sounds was fantastic, even if you couldn´t see the animals you could definitely hear them. We even tried to catch pirana fish, but they are far too quick and crafty for the likes of us!

We have seen many interesting and dubious sights around Peru. One of them being the Nazca lines. They are a load of lines in a large barren expanse of the desert, which make up pictures. You can only see the lines from an aeroplane, so James had the pleasure of going up in a tiny plane. This is the picture of him before the flight, lucky for James there is no after picture! Lets just say he was a little green at the end. This was our second full day of the tour, so James did not make a good first impression to his fellow group members!

Back to the lines... they are a little bit of a mystery to historians, as they cannot really explain what they are for. They think the Nazca people created them, who were around before the Incas, over 1500 years ago. Now, these lines were only discovered 50 or so years ago. Nazca, the town, is a poor town with little water and money. The only thing that keeps it going are the lines as many tourists visit here. So, some lines which have no purpose turn up in a poor town. The only way to see them is from the air, in a plane. Call me cynical, but does this not all sound a little bit far fetched? People 1500years ago made these lines, but couldn´t actually tell what they were doing because it is impossible to see from the ground. The lines are perfectly organised and straight and it is not just a coincidence that they resemble animals. I think it is just one big con for the tourists, impressive, but a little unbelievable. An art attack on an enormous scale!

We have had so many great opportunities that we would never have had if we travelled independently around Peru. We have met many locals, and been allowed to experience their way of life and get a snap shot of Peruvian culture and lifestyle. It has certainly opened our eyes, and depite their very basic way of living, it is clear to see that they are happy, and not stuck in any sort of rat race, they are happy to work hard for the essentials, which generally means working on the land and providing for their families. Both husband and wife have equal responsibility for providing this. We stopped with a Peruvian family for a night on one of Lake Titicaca´s Islands, it was interesting, especially playing football at 4000m above sea level! The family had very basic amenities. No electricity, and out door toilet, luckily it was more than a hole in the ground! Their kitchen consisted of a fire and table, the walls were made of mud bricks and we ate by candlelight. It was amazing to be allowed to see this and to dress up in their native dress. The picture of me dressed up with the family, are the clothes that these people wear everyday, they are beautiful clothes and we were privileged to wear them too. James looks rather dashing in a poncho!

We also went to dance with the family and danced the night away in our new clothes with our new family!

Lake Titicaca was enormous, we only saw a fraction of it, about a quarter of the entire lake. It took us three hours to sail to the island we stopped at for the night, this should give you an indication of the size! We went to the reed islands and they are strange. People live on these small islands made of reeds and every few weeks, they have to lay more reeds down as the ones underneath rot away. This means they have to move the houses so that they can put them underneath. The houses are also made out of reeds! As you walk around the islands you squelch underfoot, but stay dry - very strange! I will have to try and put our pictures of the reed island on the blog, because they are a beautiful sight!

Our final leg of Peru was the Inca trail. The one thing we came to Peru for. We had not prepared ourselves for the dramatic effect the altitude would have on us. At the beginning of the tour we were warned about altitude sickness and how to reduce the effects. We were both very lucky and had very few side effects. But at 3500m, you notice the lack of air. It is very difficult to take a deep breath as there is not enough air! We were so high up that water boils at only 85 degrees, as the air is not so dense, so that water can boil at a lower temperature - amazing! It is incredible how a simple task like climbing a flight of stairs can knock you for six! We did do the rise in altitude gradually, so by the time we got to the inca trail, we were accustomed. The trek was the most difficult thing we have ever done. Four days of intense trekking at high altitude, a lot of up hill, but the scenery was breathtaking (literally!). Walking up mountains, where you can touch the clouds and walk through them, hidden inca ruins, seeing the sun set over snow capped mountains. Walking through forests, beneath waterfalls. It was definitely something worth doing. But the most incredible part was the porters who carried our things. The whole group lived like kings (well camping kings!) for the 4 days of the treks. Some of the nicest food we have eaten was on the trek. There were 11 of us in the group and 2 guides. There were 15 porters and 2 chefs. These porters carried everthing and more, on their backs, on the same route that we did, in a shorter time as they had to pack up camp after we left and set up camp at the new location and have food ready before we got there. It is impossible to describe how amazing these men were. They are the same size as me, and probable carried their own body weight on their backs, up the mountainsides! Amazing! If you look carefully at the picture of James and me at the top of the mountain, you can see a porter in the background carrying a huge bundle on his back. We are smiling so much, because we have spent 3 hours climbing constantly up hill to the highest pass we reached of 4300m. We found it exhausting. These porters trot and run past you effortlessly!

Macchu Picchu was well worth the trek, it has a magical air about it and you could spend hours just sitting and thinking, it is very strange! We were there on christmas day, definitely the earliest christmas ever 3:30am start! But it was also the best christmas present ever! The group wore santa hats for the occasion, we were the only festive thing on the whole of Macchu Picchu. Certainly a sight to remember!

Well we spent New Year with two Australian girls we met on the tour, Charlotte and Debbie. The group was a mixed bunch, but we met some great people. New Year in Cusco was extra ordinary. There were fireworks going off everywhere, small children selling them to anyone! Very safe! But a new year to remember, with two new friends who we will hopefully catch up with when we go to Sydney! Hope everyone had a great christmas and new Year!

Next stop Brazil! Just as we get used to Spanish we have to try out Portuguese....

Comments

Adios Mexico

Thu, 08 Dec 2005 00:58:28 +0100

It is our last night in Mexico, and we have had a fantastic time here and can´t wait to come back again.

Our beach holiday was great(even though it took a staggering 18hours to get there) it was boiling hot every day, and we got into our routine of getting up, going for breakfast in a cafe overlooking the sea, spending the day on the beach, swimming and catching a few rays: paradise! Puerto Escondido is a great place, very sleepy and relaxed. All of the people are very friendly and welcoming. It was the break we needed after the hectic couple of weeks in the States.

After the beach we caught the bus to a city called Oaxaca (pronounced wohacker). It was a fantastic three days, we met some lovely people from all over the world, and had many cold beers in the communal lounge of the hostel! It is interesting meeting people from all walks of life and from so many different places. We already have a few places to stop on route, it will be great to see places with the help of the locals. Oaxaca is a beautiful place with all of the buildings painted in bright colours and many markets which sell everything from turkeys (still alive being carried by their feet), to little insects covered in chilli, to mexican rugs. We went to a market with 3 people we met at the hostel and took a very sweaty and squashed taxi ride to a market which was 30km away. It was a very hairy ride, and the local bus on the way back was a much safer option! Much of Oaxaca has been destroyed by earthquakes and rebuilt again, but despite this it is still a pretty place.

Another bus journey later and we arrived back in Mexico city. Last night we had a great night out at a salsa club. Before we went, we were upstairs in the hostel where there is a bar and the barman persuaded us to start the night with a shot of tequila, well I am not too good at tequila shots and this timed proved to be no exception, not managing to down it all in one! James was much better, he is becoming a professional tequila drinker. We found out when we had finished our shots that the tequila had a worm in it (eugh!) I am sitting on the terrace bar at the moment while writing this and the barman has already suggested another shot today, well it is only 4:30pm, so I don´t think I am quite ready for another one, the worm is still fresh in my memory! At the salsa club I danced with many Mexican men (most greasy!)and even James managed to be persuaded to go on the dance floor! The salsa classes I did in Coventry were not particularly helpful as the salsa here is much quicker and spontaneous. I managed to keep up in a fashion, and I am sure many toes were squashed! It was a fun night, one we will both remember.

Well, it is time for us to move on, and the next leg of our journey is South America. We have booked an organised tour of Peru to start us off, which begins on the 10th December, we go to many places around Peru and finish off by going to the Lost City of the Incas, Christmas day will be spent watching the Sunrise over the City, it will definitely be a christmas unlike any other. We also spend a few nights in a jungle lodge in the Amazon, it should be an amazing trip with many great pictures. We are not sure how much we will be able to keep in touch in the deep dark depths of Peru, but we shall try. We will also look out for any of Paddington Bears relatives while in Peru!

Anyway we had better be off we have a long day ahead of us tomorrow, flying to Miami and then to Lima, Peru.

Hope you like the pictures.

href="http://data1.blog.de/blog/h/hannahandjames/img/Zocalo.JPG" target="_blank" title="Mexican dancers in the Zocalo">

Comments

Hola!

Mon, 21 Nov 2005 19:09:13 +0100

Our spanish is improving daily, we have managed to book our bus tickets completely in spanish- with the help of our phrase book and lots of hand gestures!

It is our final day in Mexico city today, we are leaving this evening to go on a mammoth 15hr bus journey to the coast. We are going to a coastal town called Puerto Escondido, which is famous for it´s surfing and fishing. So we are taking the opprotunity to use the free internet at the hostel we are in at the moment to download some more pictures. We have had a fantastic week in Mexico city, and can´t wait to get home to learn Spanish properly so we can revisit here.

Yesterday we went on a gondola trip in the south of Mexico city, we braved the metro and took a local train, not too scary! We went to a place called Xochimilco, which is famous for it´s floating gardens, as it is part of the original aztec mexico, with all of the canals which used to run through the city before the spanish arrived and drained them all. Xochimilco is a little town with canals all through it, quite pretty when you are going on the canals, a grubby village if you are walking through it. We saw a market which was selling all sorts of animals, and a pet shop with puppies and kittens crammed into tiny cages, not nice! I wanted to buy them all but James wouldn´t let me!

It has been a week full of surprises, on Saturday we went to the Zocola, which is the town square, there was the Mexican equivalent of the Brit awards there, open to the public in the form of an open air concert. We arrived and it was packed, and in usual mexican style there were many women walking amongst the crowds selling all types of strange things. Anyway as we arrived, who appeared on stage to do a set, no other than Robbie Williams! A free open air concert with Robbie Williams as the main act. How chuffed was I!

There is so much art here in Mexico City. We went on a tour of the city during the week and we saw some fabulous Murals in the national Palace, which were painted by a famous Mexican artist called Diego Rivera, who is the husband of Frida Kahlo, another famous artist. These Murals cover all of the walls of the palace and tell the story of the mexicans history. They are really impressive. We also went to the Museum of Antropology which had some lovely artwork which is native to Mexico, and also had some famous artifacts from the Aztecs and Mayans. Those history buffs (Jean) might recognise the aztec calendar!

We must go and make the most of our last day, then spend two weeks lying on a beach catching a few rays. We have heard how cold it is back home, just to make you feel slightly better, it rained the other night and there was a thunder storm! But we hear the weather in Puerto Escondido is lovely at the moment!

Comments

title-315774

Thu, 17 Nov 2005 18:58:56 +0100

We have arrived in Mexico City and what a place. It is even better than we expected! A note for Jackie, this travelling lark is tiring so we take a day off every now and then to do boring stuff like washing and organising the next leg of the journey, we are at the moment planning a two week beach holiday in a mexican resort called Puerto escondido. We need a holiday!!!!
Mexico city is amazing, we have been to the pyramids at teotihuacan, which was incredible, they are an impressive sight, we walked to the top of them, my legs are hurting today!
The whole of Mexico City is sinking, as it was built on the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan, which was a city on a lake, when the Spanish arrived they emptied the lake and built todays city on th bed of this lake, not a stable foundation! Needless to say all of the buildings in the city are gradually sinking and lots of the buildings have an unstable lean to them.
This picture shows the view from the top of the hostel, where the bar is! You can see the bell tower of this church has a lean to it, this is mild compared to some buildings!

WE have managed to find a computer which can download our pictures, so we have added pictures from New York and Vegas to those entries.

We visited the pyramids of Teotihuacan, they are about 1500 years old, and are very impressive. The tallest one is about 70 metres high and in it`s day it would have been painted red with lots of carvings all over it. It is impossible to imagine what it must have looked like.

Comments

LA: Only for the rich and wanna be 's...

Sun, 13 Nov 2005 19:39:46 +0100

Well it is our final day in LA and we are eager to go onto our next adventure Well La has been a lot better than first anticipated, we have seen lots, drunk a lot, and met some nice, and some strange people! We have seen a few famous people - yesterday we saw Bridget Niellson walking her dog,today we saw Nicole Richie who is far too skinny, and yes Jesse off home and away is here, but he doesn't talk much, not that I've gathered the courage to talk too him as he passes! I went to the toilet in the hotel off pretty woman - sad I know, we went to the baywatch beach, saw the hollywood sign... it is endless. LA is such an immense place it is impossible to do it all, but we have done all of the touristy things and walked lots, that we are pretty bored with the place, compared with our first two stops, this place has little to offer it is packed with arrogant people trying to find fame and look good that they have spoiled the place. It is great for film fanatics as there are so many famous film locations here, but it doesn't have much else to offer. LA is worth a visit, but only for a couple of days. We have met all sorts of people all over the world doing the same thing as us, I am sure we will meet many more.

Home seems like such a long time ago- is it really only two weeks since we left? Luckily we aren't quite ready to come home yet! We are having too much fun- James has yet to try enough Milkshakes (does he only think about food?) and I haven't yet met enough famous people (am I really that shallow!)

Any way we must go there is a bar waiting for us!

Will be in Mexico next, lots to look forward to.

Comments

Vegas!

Tue, 08 Nov 2005 23:11:46 +0100

Well we left Las Vegas yesterday and have arrived in Los Angeles. We have spent the day wandering around 'West Hollywood'where the hostel is, but we have yet to see anything impressive, it is a dirty, traffic filled place, that we won't be eager to return to. After Vegas this is a little disappointing, unfortunately for some we have not tied the knot in a chapel; we didn't even see any! Vegas is definitely worth a visit, but you can only do it for a short time, James was useless in the gambling department, but I had a knack for the one armed bandits and we manged to leave without making a loss.
The casinos in Vegas are incredible, completely over the top and extravagant, there was one casino we went to called the Venetian, which is famous for it's gondolas, we went there in the evening when it was dark, but as we walked into the shopping plaza inside, it was as though you had just walked into a sunny day in Venice, with a lovely blue sky, and the canal running through it. It was just like the Great Hall in Harry Potter (those who have read it will know!). The ceiling was painted like a sky and the whole experience was so realistic, we actually thought it was daytime.

We spent a day at the Hoover Dam which is near to Vegas, it was nice to escape for the day, the surrounding landscape is beautiful, lots of mountains and rivers winding through. The Hoover Dam is very impressive and lots of nice photos were taken. Unfortunately we seem to be unable to put our pictures online as internet cafes don't have the facilities, so you will just have to wait for them!

Hopefully LA will improve over the next few days, we are going to go on an organised trip for the day which will take us to the sights, this city is so enormous (1000 square miles)that we can't possibly do it on foot plus it would be too dangerous anyway!

For anyone who is interested, Jesse from Home and Away is apparently stopping in the same hostel as us, I'll keep people posted, we haven't seen him yet, maybe it is just rumour, I will make it my mission to find out.

Anyway, we will let you know how things are, we hope to go overland to Mexico next, so we shall probably write again when we are safely there.

Bye Bye

Let us know of any gossip!
Lots of Love

Hannah and James

Comments

Time to move on...

Fri, 04 Nov 2005 01:36:11 +0100

We have both had two fantastic days in New York. Anyone who hasn't been here should put it on the top of their must do lists. It is very touristy, but at this time of the year it doesn't feel too over the top. It is such an amazing city, you feel as if you know the place so well, especially when there are so many famous landmarks.

We have walked through Central park, what a lovely tranquil place to escape the hustle and bustle of New York, it is easy to forget where you are, until you spy the skyline of the city in the distance.

We have certainly made the most of our two days, James is sitting beside me yawning as I speak! But it is such a shame we have to leave tomorrow, we'll save the rest until we come again!

Onto the next leg of our journey - Vegas, we have splashed out on a flash hotel, which is also a casino, lets hope we don't get carried away and make a stop at that little white chapel! We'll keep you posted...

If all of the trip is like the first few days, we can't wait, New York was definitely a good starting point.

Comments

New York New York!

Wed, 02 Nov 2005 00:33:06 +0100

Well, we have arrived on the first leg of our trip. We have had a good flight and just checked into our hostel- a bit cramped but we can manage three days. We've already experienced the New York subway, not as scary as we thought, it's just like the tube, but a bit grubbier!

It still hasn't sunk in yet that we won't be getting any home comforts for the next 10 months. Maybe tomorrow morning when we have to wake up with a bunch of strangers and shower in public, it will become a little more real!

Well we must go and explore the big apple. Will keep you posted...

Comments

Nearly There!

Thu, 06 Oct 2005 14:10:41 +0200

We now have less than a month to go, both working hard and wondering if we will ever manage to get everything sorted in time.

This blog will be one of our main ways of communicating with everyone, showing you pictures and retelling our (hopefully) exciting adventures around the world.

There isn't much more to tell at the moment, hopefully the next time we write here we will be on the first leg of our journey.

We will try to get to see everyone before we go- party on the 22nd October! Put it in the diary...

Hannah and James
xxx

Comments