Eureka Bizzo, photos

I´ll post more when i get the chance. But for now, let me introduce...


The group on salt, check out the ups on the second from the right, still on his way up.



You know what blood looks like on a black and white television... Shadows, shadows! (I understand that this is a very inside reference but for all you John Prine fans out there let it be known that I represent)



Señores Bach y Fowler at Lagoona Verde, Vulcans Latacunga y Huajuasi hover in the background.



Nothing bright or witty for this one. Gives you an idea of what i had to put up with for four days though.



No time to admire the surroundings. Considering my next blog and mulling over whether or not the aussie tatoo was in fact a good idea.



Look whos wearing shoes! Heaps artistic photo like eh.



A rare smile, I hate this place.


All photos are coutesy of Asher Floyd, for his blog visit
http://www.asherfloyd.com

Hey Yo Foto

About time I posted some photos (that aren´t of my new and long overdue tatoo). I still don´t have a photo of any sort of bank card but with that aside I hope these ones will do. They are from a trip I did into the Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia. It was a 4 day trip with lagoons, flamingos, gringos and salt flats. With the risk of this turning into a travel blog I´ll stop there. It is with these pics that I´m tying to turn around this blogs dangerous trajectory toward becoming a ´lame blog´. Alas, as I go to upload my pics none of the Bolivian computers wish to recognise my hard drive. For now, that one of my acne covered patriotic back tatoo will have to suffice.

Memory

I´d love to have a better memory. After losing my first bank card to an atm in Peru, I´ve now lost my remaining canadian atm card, ergo, I´m a dick. I have all these extravagant systems going with making sure passports and wallet are safe, putting them in special and safe pockets in my carry-on bag, this mean bugger all if you lose stuff anyway. I have all my other cards in my wallet apart from the card I need to get money... I wonder if my working with children card can get me some money. Mastt memory.

No Matter How Far Or How Wide I Roam

As one of the great Aussie bands once wrote, “I still call Australia home”. I’ve been the first to criticize those Aussies you meet overseas who over parochialise everything the second they leave the country, but across my travels I have come to realize just how good we have things back home. We really are the lucky country but more of that later.

Since my adventure at the over crowded soccer stadium and after several extended bus journeys, Jimmy and I have found ourselves in La Paz, Bolivia. The highest city in South America. Boonies record impresses me even more now that I have felt the effects of alcohol at over 3700m. Jimmy and I have been out a few times now and after one memorable outing two weeks ago where in my best Spanish I convinced the publican to play us a one day game, Aussie V England. It seems that I may have been a little overexcited and may have made a hasty decision with clouded judgment (pissed) to forever proclaim my love for our country. All of this happened two weeks ago and for the first week I was regretting my decision, but the more I think about it the happier I am, I love Australia, plain and simple and the off the cuff decision to ink that love forever scared the hell out of me for the first week but not any more.

I Tomas Michael Malcolm Bach still call Australia home.

A Dynamic Blog

South American football*, manic as it is, only becomes more scary when a nation´s place in the world cup is at stake.

I´ve only ever been to one soccer game and that was a Melbourne Victory game, in Melbourne, against the might of the Wellington Phoenix. There were maybe 20 thousand there to be generous, and what seemed to be a pretty timid 20 thousand at that.
Considering the recent history between our two nations with regards to football world cups, I understood that an Australian might not be too welcome at Estadio Centennario in Montevideo, Uruguay. Last night I defied this lack of welcome and went to Uruguay´s world cup qualifier against Colombia.

Uruguay needed to win. To encourage a good attendance promoters decided to impliment a 2 for 1 ticketing policy. What this meant wasn´t with every ticket you buy you recieve another ticket for free, intsead it meant that with every ticket you buy you can bring a friend along. So now to go with the tension of Uruguay´s need to win, was an over-sold, overcapacity 80 year old stadium that you could feel bounce when everyone started to jump. They liked to jump.

(As a bizarre side-note to this story, as I´m typing this, right now, one of the lads I´m here with has come in off the street and said he just saw the girls who were sitting behind us at the game last night. They gave him a note, addressed to us which they had written on the off chance that they would run into us the day after. The note is a page long, it starts by introducing themselves and continues to tell us how they thought it was great that we enjoyed ourselves and really got into the spirit of Uruguayan football. It finishes by saying that they hope we remember and love Uruguay. Accompanying the note were some pictures of Uruguay and one of them together at the game last night. The world isn´t as weary as it was on those bus trips with Jeaninne but once again, so shines a good deed).

I´m not sure if my initial blog idea can upstage the weirdness that just happened. Either way it was pretty special. Uruguay won 3-1. There weren´t any riots and the Estadio Centenarrio remained in tact.



*Soccer, sure, but this is what they call it so suck it up.

HI Boycott

Boycott Hostelling International Hostels!

I can´t change things by myself but if you get on board we can do it together. This is my social movement, I feel it calling me.

There are better options, use them instead.

Colonia, Uruguay.

So Precious

I´m really precious with what i write on these blogs and this is probably why I never blog (as I think the only comment to date alludes to, among alluding to various other things). I´ve just re-read my first 2 posts and all I can think is that I sound like a complete wanker. Good for me.

Jeaninne

There is a quote in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that gets me, rather, I remember it. ¨So shines a good deed in a weary world¨. Oh, the wisdom of Wonka.

A couple of days ago I had the worst bus trip in my experience of crappy bus trips. It started well before this, but for the sake of blog-brevity I´ll start at bus number 2. I was put in the front row of the 7 hour overnight bus, there is no seat in front to put your feet under when you are at the front of a bus, there is only a wall. My seat was broken, if I put any weight on the backrest it reclined violently. It reclined violently into a mother and her infant child. The chair squeaked, that irritating creaking, squaking squeak so that every time I failed to maintain complete uprightness squeaked and pissed everyone off. I didn´t sleep a wink that night. Bus number 5 began after the following day was passed sleeplessly in a town called Arica in Northern Chile. Skip to Bus number 5. This was a 30 hour journey to Santiago. I chose the front seat in this trip because I was assured it was a double decker sleeper bus, at the front of these buses you can put your feet up, stretch out and appreciate the view from above the driver. The bus wasn´t a double decker and I was in no state to see the a 30 hour trip (on the back of a day and a half of no sleep, 4 shitty buses and a border crossing) for its character building potential. I was livid but only had the energy to feel defeated and sorry. A weary world was an understatement.

I sat down and the lady next to me spoke to me about putting my bags in the overhead compartment so that we had more space. I translated this to ¨as soon as you go to sleep my accomplice is going to come and steal your passports, your wallet and your ipod¨. I replied in english with ¨spare us masthead, not in the mood¨. She was confused, but sensed my tone as hostile and seemed a little upset. My foul mood continued, she gave up on the bags issue but continued to press my weary mind and dwindling patience with spanish to find out where i was from, what i do, had been doing, why had my parents moved to australia and what was the origin of my strange name... Turbo? Her name was Jeaninne and she was far too pleasant for the situation. I just sat there and started ignoring her questions, pretending i couldn´t hear her, what a dick eh. I noticed her keep on looking sideways at my sultry, miserable face and I got the sense that she was starting to feel how pathetic I had become. There was a spare seat in the front row opposite to us. Jeaninne moved. So shone a good deed and I slept 8 hours.

So much for blog-brevity.