December 2003 Archives
... after a lovely lazy Christmas with Phil. The most active day was yesterday, when we took the bus to Holborn and walked eastwards and northwards through WC1 and EC1, getting a better feel for the areas we're going to be flat-hunting in.
We travelled from SW11 to E9 on Saturday by way of the West End, where met up with Manar to see the third and final part of Lord of the Rings - a suitably grande finale for the epic, although the absence of Saurman (sp?) was noted.
And now, I'm facing up to spending the next 3 days sitting in CityPoint, with the rain plunking gloomily down outside. Not inspiring....
During our Chilean travels, Hazel and I spent a couple of great days and nights in Ancud, staying at the Hostal Mundo Nuevo built and run by Silvia and Martin.
I promised to provide comments on www.newworld.cl - and here they are:
Phil's PepysDiary has won the best specialist weblog category in The Guardian's second British blog awards. I'm so proud.
Between them, Phil-and-Tom have installed MT-Blacklist for me. It is "A Movable Type plugin to eradicate comment and trackback spam". So that's the end of pathetic Penis-Enlargement URL type comments here, I hope.
Thank you Jay Allen.
Can't quite believe that the 4 weeks has gone by, but then again looking back we did do loads.... ended up having a lazy last few days - nothing much to do in Punta Arenas apart from visit the penguins in Isla Magdalena, which we did on Tuesday 3rd, and by a total fluke H and I bumped into Nodoka and Chako - or rather they came flying out of Lomit's to catch up with us walking past after an hour in the Swiss style cake/chocolate shop - on the Wednesday so we had a nice final meal, preceded by Patagonian strength pisco sours in La Luna, before leaving the south, flying back upto Santiago on the Thursday.
Santiago was hot hot hot in comparison to Patagonia, and we spent Thursday afternoon seeing the City centre sights, primarily the Museum of Pre-Columbian Art, and people-watching from a pavement cafe whilst struggling through mammoth ice cream sundaes.....
On Friday we headed out to the craftshop village of Pomaire (where I bought a Pomaire Piggy bank each for Barney and Rosa - the type you have to smash to extract your pennies), and returned to Santiago to take the funicular up Cerro San Cristobal where we sat in the shade and wrote post-cum-Christmas cards to all and sundry. For our final dinner we took the metro to Providencia and ate in "Santiago's best veggie restaurant" (Rough Guide) - La Huerta - I had Thai green curry...... not an egg or an omlette in sight.
Saturday, we mooched around the City centre again for a couple of hours in the morning, before many people were up and about, taking in the Plaza de Armas, the Post Office, the Cathedral, La Moneda and the Central Market (cast iron structure made in Birmingham at the end of the 19th century and shipped out to Chile) before returning to the Youth Hostel in Los Heroes. Of all the places we stayed in during the month, this is the only one I'd actively discourage people from going to - rude staff and inexcusably shabby accommodation; relatively expensive too.
Long flight home, involving 5 hour stop over in Sao Paulo where I got my one and only mozzie bite (b*****d), but it was worth it all to see Phil waiting for me at LHR..... and he'd got flowers, lunch and home made mince pies waiting for me when we got back to CJ. Lovely.
So now it's just a question of getting back up to speed with things at work, and sorting out the 500 odd photos on my digital camera....
We've just returned from a great 5 days in Torres del Paine National Park:
Day one saw blizzards, hail and force 12 gales (it felt like force 12 anyhow.... and we both almost got blown over despite large rucksacks) en route to Glaciar Grey, which made it worth the 4 hour hike from the ferry drop off.
Day 2 was better - no wind, and we saw our first condors as we backtracked along the shore of Lago Grey to Lago Pehoe and skirted the north shore of Lake Skotendbild (?) under the vast bulk of Los Cuernos. Stayed 2 great nights in Refugio Los Cuernos, which meant that on day 3 we could walk up the stunning Val de Frances under clear blue skies, getting amazing 360 degree views out over the lakes, of Los Cuernos (from the other side) and the avalanches coming from glaciar Frances. Amazing.
Day 4 we hiked onwards in light drizzle to refugio Chileno, which lies un the valley leading up to Los Torres, and as we whiled away the afternoon under grey skies, the clouds lifted enough for us to see them... and today (day 5) we woke to clear blue skies again and marched off double quick along the 2 hour return path to Los Torres... making it in under 3, including the vertiginous bouldering section to reach the lake at the base fo the Torres. Lovely.
We're now clean and fresh and will be meeting up with Nodoka and Choko and Simon for pisco sours at El Living in the not too distant future! And do you know what.... Puerto Natales isn't too bad in the sunshine.....
Off down to Punta Arenas tomorrow, hopefully to see the penguin colony on Isla Magallena before flying back to Santiago.