Phil's Blog

Yay!

2007-04-26T11:13:00.000+10:00

Another long break between posts. There have been a lot percolating in my mind, to do with modelling ants in software, new jobs and secret projects, but the catalyst for this is...

Aura got her visa! So she'll be touching down in Sydney 3-June!

And it only took 1 day. Damn those Chileans are efficient. In a meeting so back to work I go.

Back to School

2007-02-21T18:07:00.000+11:00

Here's something from a few weeks ago... before I had internet and could post from home.

I’ve been back in Sydney for nearly 2 months now. Definitely enough time to get over the culture shock that I was suffering when I last posted and time to catch up with everyone, settle into my new home with my sister and get back to work. Sydney is an amazing city and I’m really happy to be back here. I seem to fall in love with the place a little more every day.

A little back tracking is in order so...

Christmas was lots of fun up at my mum and dad’s place with my crazy nieces and nephew running amuck in true Christmas spirit. Photo frames seemed to be everyone’s gift idea for me this year which was perfect. I’m actually copying my photos, all 39 CDs, onto my computer at the moment so I can go through them all and print out an album. I have the feeling this will take a while.

New Year’s Eve was also great. I went up to the Gold Coast with a group of friends for a week of relaxation after a hard year relaxing. Between enjoying a cold beer, catching the beach and putting on a New Year’s party, we all had a great time and I get the feeling this will become an annual event.

After a few months of being ready to go back to work, I started the freak out in the last weeks, which I’d already pushed back so I could spend more time at the Gold Coast. I finally got back to work and have been having fun since. It was really nice to go back to the same product and group and to be able to contribute, almost, from day one.

Another big thing that’s happened is that I’ve moved in my one of my sisters. I’ve been here a few weeks now, and I have to say, it’s absolutely awesome living with her. She... we have a great house and it’s nice to be hang out her. She’s a total workaholic, like the rest of the family, but we still get to eat together and watch excessive amounts of Battlestar Galactica and Heroes. An added bonus is that she lives in the Portuguese part of Sydney, so I still get the chance to speak Spanish... my Portuguese is terrible, so I just speak Spanish, but people still seem to understand.

Speaking of Spanish, my good friends Ben and Dan, who came and visited in Salvador de Bahia in Brasil, took me to an asado (BBQ) that the South American Society organise every Friday night and it was awesome - great food and then a live band playing Salsa and Meringue. A definite stop for the Spanish club I’m trying to get together... so far we’ve only watched Volver and eaten Japanese.

I have an appointment with an immigration lawyer about Aura’s visa this week, which I hope will go well. It seems ridiculous to me to see a lawyer about a tourist visa, but given the outcome last time, I think it’s worth it. Aura should be out here June and July and I think I’ll go back with her for a little while too. Being apart sucks, but we’re coping pretty well.

Not a lot has changed in the last year and I’ve realised that’s one of the things I like about coming home after time away. The fact that it doesn’t change that much is what makes home home. Everyday away was an adventure in some way, and I loved every minute of it (at least in retrospect), but it’s really great to be home again. I know I’ll be packing up again one day, but for now I’m just happy to sit around with my friends and family and be thankful for their company.

Por Fin!

2007-02-21T18:05:00.000+11:00

I finally have internet at home! This is a good thing.

A Sucker For Punishment

2006-12-11T00:15:00.000+11:00

There's nothing like relaxing after a long day coding with... more coding. Yeah, this is getting a little out of control. The last couple of days I've been working on Elevation while the sun is up and tinkering with XNA when the moon is out. I played a little more tonight and have a simple model for game objects which was a breeze to put together... I truly do love C# (and Java of course).

I have a bunch of models that I bought a while back for a hover tank game called HoverWars ("If ya can't hover, don't bother!"... I mean, can a theme song get any catchier than that?), so I figured I'd use them for something.

It's a super simple game so if I don't go blind from staring at the screen 24 hours a day I might port it across to XNA.

I also dusted of my Nord Lead 3 tonight. I nearly cried I love that keyboard so much. It's like a little piece of red, glowing heaven... which actually sounds more like hell, but that's a minor detail. Even through a guitar amp it sounds amazing.

In between that all I also checked out A Scanner Darkly. Not great, but not bad. I found it a little boring, but fun nonetheless. The animated looking effect was cool but go boring pretty quick. Right now I'm mainly psyched for 300. The new trailer is absolutely amazing and I love the look of the environments. The atmosphere in them is so think you can almost taste it.

Also, Aura has finally got an apartment and is moving in this weekend. Yay! Who would have thought it would be so difficult to rent an apartment in Bogotá?

Elevation Shots

2006-12-09T20:49:00.001+11:00

Iteration 4 - In Game Shot

Click through for some screenshots from iteration 4 fo Elevation.

The two numbers about the passengers heads indicate the floor they want to go to and their current satisfaction.

Updates and Elevators

2006-12-09T18:41:00.000+11:00

Some unfortunate people have to put up with spam about Elevation from me, so I figured I'd share an update here while I'm uploading the latest build.

Greetings Spammees!

Here's the latest and greatest of Elevation.

Lots of stuff in this release. The big ones are:
- Externalised UI definitions... you don't really care about that, but it makes my life much easier :)
- Changed the score mechanism. Instead of an average, the score is now the aggregate of satisfactions.
- Count down, constant spawning of new passengers, score updates, game over dialog... it's almost a real game.
- State machine for passengers - let's me do lots of little things like delay satisfaction updates for a second or two, fade ins and fade outs
- Fixed heaps of memory leaks. There's still some lingering around but, I think they're because of some weird C++ism to do with statics that I don't understand since they seem to be in the PopCap framework.

Coming up in iteration 5:
- Combos! Por Fin! Bonus points for delivering 3 or more people to the same floor or to consecutive floors.
- Some special effects stuff
- Other little graphical niceties
- Less stupid, as oppossed to smarter, AI

Things are going great with Elevation at the moment. I'm not ashamed to say C++ and I haven't in the past been the best of friends, but this time around everything seems to have clicked (it only took 12 years) and I'm not having any problems with the language. I'm doing a couple of things differently, like forward declarations for everything unless I really need the class definition in another header file, and it's working great.

One thing that is a little annoying is VisualStudio 2005. After using Eclipse it's pretty hard to look at another editor without moaning, unless it's vi :) They just got so many things right with Eclipse 3. From "camel case" sensitive word skipping to highlighting all instances of the current variable name, and it's fast. There's a stack of tiny features which I daydream about while waiting for VisualStudio's Intellisense database to update. I know there are guys in the dev studio team at Microsoft that play with Eclipse, so please please please put these features in an upcoming release.

The last iteration took about a month on account of ending my holiday, spending some time in Colombia with Aura and getting back into the swing of things here in Sydney. I'm still having a hard time staying awake and am plagued by headaches, but I think I should be able to get the next iteration done in a week.

As I said above, the main feature this iteration is combos, which I'm excited about. Basically you get bonus points for delivering multiple people to the same floor or to consecutive floors. Having a little delay between when people appear and when you can pick them up should let you plan combo runs a little, which is where the real points (and skill) to the game will come in. They should allow for some fun game play, after that it's "special" passengers that do everything from give bonus points to jam the other elevators.

Oh and I had a tiny play with XNA last night. I had a model exported from 3D Studio and rendering in my app in about 3 minutes thanks to the Content Pipeline. It was great! I can't wait to sink my teeth into XNA with the next game.

Home Is Where The Heart Is

2006-12-05T21:05:00.000+11:00

I've been back home for a few days now and I love it. It's a little weird hearing English all the time and generally not being in South America, but Sydney is absolutely beautiful at the moment and it's impossible not to fall, or re-fall, in love with it.

I consoled (boom-tsk) myself with being back here by buying an Xbox 360 within 3 hours of touching down. Gears of War is simply amazing; the hype around this game is spot on. I also grabbed Viva Pinata (sorry about the spelling, no "enya" on this keyboard), which is also awesome. There are a couple of things that I think are a little sloppy and load times are too long for a 2nd gen "next gen" game, but those little pinatas are just so cute!

Not too much else to report at the moment. I've started catching up with people and working on Elevation again, so I'm keeping busy.

I finally had a look at the latest beta of XNA and the Content Pipeline in particular is great. Being able to add a 3D model, texture or sound file to your Visual Studio project, reference and load it directly is just amazing. Hats off to the XNA team for some truly great work has concrete benefits to game developers. I'm going to do my next game project in XNA for Xbox 360, so I'm very interested in and excited by it.

Freakin' Out

2006-11-29T07:39:00.000+11:00

My wonderful time in South America has finally come to an end.

This morning I got back to Buenos Aires from two great weeks in Colombia hanging out with Aura and her family. We've decided to hold off until June to re-apply for Aura's visa when she's more settled in Bogota and those crazy Australians won't think she'll over stay.

Tomorrow evening I fly out of Buenos Aires with far too much luggage and a heap of great memories. Saludes and thanks to everyone I met alone the way. It's going to be strange going back to Australia, but I'm looking forward to it.

Chau!

¡Que Estupidos los Australianos!

2006-11-15T04:04:00.000+11:00

We'll we found out about Aura's visa yesterday, and she didn't get it, which obviously sucks. The embassy sited insufficient evidence she would return to Colombia but I've not given up and we're going to re-apply. Looking back at the application, I see where they're coming from, but it's pretty hard to prove you have sufficient reasons to return to your own country. Based on property and the like I know I wouldn't be able to do it.

Aura went back to Colombia today as planned but I'm flying out tomorrow and we'll try again from Bogotá once she has sorted out an apartment and university. It'll be good to get back to Bogota and Villavicencio for a while and hang out with Aura's family, including her new nephew Juan-Miguel.

Hasta Colombia!

Fingers Crossed

2006-11-05T06:02:00.000+11:00

We lodged Aura's visa for Australia yesterday. I can't see why there would be any problems with her application, so hopefully she'll be there from 1-Dec-2006 until 8-Jan-2007.

Brendan leaves tomorrow so from Monday it's back to work mode to get something decent together for Elevation 2 together before I get home. I'll bore you all with a nerdy post soon.

Speaking of Taking Photos...

2006-11-05T05:53:00.000+11:00

¡Hay Que Calor!

I far from know what I’m doing with a camera, but I do have a good time taking photos with one. Here are two things that I’ve learnt this year that have helped my photos that everyone else on Earth probably already knew.

“The Focus Thing”
When you take a shot, focus on what/who you want in focus first, then frame it how you want, then shoot it. It seems really obvious when you say it out loud, but I never thought of doing it until I saw one of the guys I went to Mt Roraima in Venezuela with do it. It’s amazing how many photos I’ve seen, and taken, where the background is in focus but the person in the foreground isn’t or they’re not as sharp as they could be.

“The Flash Is Your Friend”
Excessive use of capital letters aside, this is something that occurred to me on the latest trip to Las Cataratas de Iguazu. I just happened to be taking heaps of photos of Aura in front of the falls in a whole lot of sunlight and couldn’t get her as bright as I wanted.

I‘m sure there’s some fancy technical term about white balance or exposure do-hickies or something, but basically I’ve found people appear dark when you take photos of them with a bright background. To fix that, take the photo with the flash to illuminate the foreground as well as having a bright background. You also get a sharper foreground which is an added plus.

In some of the photos from Iguazu, the whites are a bit too strong, so I think I need to play with the flash settings but I can live with them for now.

This photo of Aura at the falls in one I like in particular, the towel is too white, but she's nice and sharp and well lit despite a 1PM sun. Framing could have been better though, I think it's in a little too close.

That’s all I’ve got for now. If you know some other obvious things that I’ve been too slow to figure out please let me know.

Las Cataratas de Iguazu

2006-11-05T05:32:00.000+11:00

Chicos

Brendan and I arrived back in Buenos Aires at 10 in the morning and by 6 were back on a bus heading up to the Brasilian border to see the amazing falls at Iguazu. Aura and Ximena joined us for the trip and we had a great time up there, spending 3 days wandering around the falls, sitting by the pool and listening to fine some Brasilian music - oh Axé, how I love thee. We also met a really cool Spanish girl up there called Zoila who joined us on our Iguazu adventures and then hooked up with in Buenos Aires.

The falls were just as amazing this time, and oddly some areas had more water while others had less. When we went to La Garganta del Diablo (The Devil’s Throat), it felt like it was raining there was so much water in the air.

Salta la Linda

2006-11-05T05:30:00.000+11:00

Felipe y Montañas

I spent a lot of time on buses last week.

I went from Buenos Aires to Santiago de Chile then Santiago de Chile to Salta in the north of Argentina, where Brendan and I did a 14 hour tour, again in a bus, of the surrounding areas, a little under 60 hours in all.

Salta is a great little city and has a really relaxed feel to it. It would have been nice to spend a couple more days there but Brendan was on a pretty tight schedule, so after much changing of plans we decided to fly back to Buenos Aires and take a bus up to the waterfalls at Iguazu. We could have made a 28 hour bus trip from Salta to Iguazu, but the thought of spending almost 90 hours on a bus in one week made me cry, so we decided to swallow the airfare.

It would have been great to get up to Bolivia and Salar de Uyuni, but I think it’s better to spend more time in fewer places then rush through lots of places and not enjoy them. It’s just another thing to pop on the list to do next trip.

Santiago de Chile

2006-11-05T05:11:00.000+11:00

Curvas

Brendan and I met up in Santiago de Chile for a few days before heading to Salta, in the north of Argentina, and Buenos Aires. Santiago was an interesting place. I’ve heard from a lot of people that it’s a boring city, and that was my initial impression as well, but from looking at flyers for parties in little shops, I think if you got to know some locals you could have a really great time here. Speaking of fun loving locals, Santiago feels like much more of a rock city that any other I’ve been to in South America. Or maybe that’s just the fashion at the moment, since I saw heaps of kids in rock apparel.

I didn't actually take any interesting fotos in Santiago, but here's a couple of the border crossing, which was spectacular in it's own right.

Random Pics from Buenos Aires

2006-11-05T05:03:00.000+11:00

Beso de Tango

Assorted pics from my time in Buenos Aires.

Click on the pic to see them all.

Fotos de Cotopaxi

2006-11-05T05:01:00.000+11:00

Felipe y Bike

I've finally sat down and uploaded some new fotos. Click on the pic to go to the ones from Cotopaxi, a Volcano in Ecuador where I visited a glacier then biked down.

Pluggin'

2006-10-21T23:24:00.000+10:00

I thought I'd do a quick site plug quickly for beach-list.com. It a cool site that reviews beaches all around the world. The plug is of course because they're using one on my photos for the Brasil section :)

... in the sentance above, does the full stop (period for American of the northern persuasion) come before or after the hip, trendy, non-31yo smiley? Or should I just get with the times and stop using them all together?

Speaking of plug action, part of my electric shaver fell down the drain of the wash basin in the hostel when I was cleaning it yesterday. I wonder if that means I'll only manage to shave half of my face from now on...

And speaking of action, Brendan had some "Our left engine has died and we're making an emergency landing in Tampa, Florida" action on his way done here. He should get in tonight, just in time for a 26 hour bus trip tomorrow, lucky him.

On The Road Again

2006-10-21T10:05:00.000+10:00

I finally left the house long enough to spend 20 hours on a bus and am currently in Santiago de Chile. I won't get much of a chance to look around, but it seems like a great city. Today I had the best sandwich I've had since I left Sydney and their national softdrink Pap is great though I can't yet put my finger on the flavour. Incidentally, stay tuned for my review of the best softdrinks in each South American country I've visited, it'll be riveting, informative and heavily carbonated.

Brendan gets in tomorrow morning and then I think it's straight to the north of Argentina and Boliviar, he doesn't know this yet of course. It would have been great to checkout the vineyards in Mendoza, but I'm on a course of strong anitbiotics at the moment, and while I'm far from a burgeoning alcholic (though that would make my sister Megan proud), what's the use of going wine tasting if you can't get loaded. That said, I think visiting the world's largest salt plains will be much cooler.

Crap!

2006-10-21T09:38:00.000+10:00

At 8:45am on Thursday a car bomb went off in la Universidad Militar in Bogotá where Aura studies. FARC, the main guerilla group in Colombia, seem to be responsible but I just don't get why. Unfortunately two people were killed and ten hurt, but luckily none of Aura's friends.

Here's a little more information, but it's in Spanish. There are some photos down the bottom.
Article from Terra.

Getting Pushed Around By Short Girls

2006-10-16T14:30:00.000+10:00

I've been pushed around by a lot of short girls in my life, in fact for a while there I seemed to only date short girls... who were vegetarian... and journalists or did something else interesting with words... and very, very bossy - sorry, but you know it's true. Tonight however I found myself lost in a sea of short girls at a Robbie Williams concert tossed to and fro like an old piece of wood or a message in a bottle, well the bottle. Maybe like a riddle wrapped in an enigma... well maybe not, but there were a lot of short girls.

The best thing about going to a Robbie Williams concert in Argentina, especially one where you hear most of his songs for the first time, is that no one cares if you get the words wrong when you sing along. Hell, they have no idea what they're singing but between the lines of broken english everyone was having a great time. There were a couple of moments where he yelled out, "If you blah, blah, blah... give me an Amen!", greeted by complete silence as people tried to figure out what he just said, but it was a great show nonetheless. The lighting and video show was great.

Well with that last nail in the coffin of my once proud techno heritage I'm going to have a shower, jump into bed and listen to Il Divo one more time :)

Quick BA Update

2006-10-16T01:19:00.000+10:00

Just a quick update from a beautiful Sunday here in Buenos Aires.

I've been having lots of fun working on Elevation again and things have been progressing well. I've got simple multiplayer working with ultradumb AI and dynamically generated levels, which is nice because you can specify the number of floors and players and the building gets created on the fly rather than having to draw each combination by hand, which is what the Java version was doing. I should be able to get the current iteration done before I head to Chile on Thursday to meet Brendan and travel with him for a couple of weeks. The current plan is for us to meet in Santiago de Chile, head to Mendoza (Argentinian wine country), north to Salta, down through Cordoba and back to Buenos Aires. It'll be a tight fit to get everything into the two weeks, but it will be fun to travel again.

I'm not exactly sure what I'll be doing after Brendan leaves at this point, but I'll be staying out here until December like I originally planned. I was thinking about going back to Colombia for a while with Aura, but money is getting pretty tight, so I think I'll stay here and work. She's coming back to Argentina and we're going to go to Australia together for a month or so which will be fun.

I rolled the digits another year on Friday and can now say I'm in my thirties rather then just thirty. I'm sure being tired the last few days is just a coincidence and has nothing to do with my being thirty one.

Like A Bat Out Of Hell...

2006-10-08T15:17:00.000+10:00

No that's not amazing high end produced in stunning surround sound by the crappy old stereo, it's a bat flying around the shower. That's what I thought tonight when I heard high (high) pitched sounds coming from the bathroom and then saw a little black blur flying around. I tried to catch the little guy in a towel so I could pop him out the window but he somehow managed to elude me... and now I can't find him. I haven't heard any sounds for a while, so hopefully he just flew out the window by himself.

Aura and Ximena have headed south for a few days to chekout some whales. I'm obviously taking full advantage of this break to explore Buenos Aires alone, getting drunk and cruising for chicks... which is my own special way of saying it's a stunning Saturday night and I'm at home alone coding, or at least trying to code when not distracted by bats. Will this excitement never end?

Biting The Hand That Feeds You

2006-10-01T12:13:00.000+10:00

Today Motas bit me, quite literally as I was feeding him... or at least when I was putting food in his cage. It was a very slow, deliberate bite. He lured me in by looking like he wanted to climb on my hand for a while and then SNAP! The tiny fangs of hamster fury came down on my poor little finger. I even started bleeding! He's now bitten Aura, Xime and I, everyone in the house. I'm worried he might be developing a taste for human blood. If I wake up missing a toe one morning I'll know where to look.

In other hamster related news, we put the running wheel back in the cage and Motas has been giving it a good workout. Of course, he's been running on top of the wheel rather than inside it, but I like to think that's his unique style shining through.

We also moved to the new apartment today and it's great.

New York, New York

2006-09-28T14:12:00.000+10:00

Sometimes I think I'm living with my head in the sand. How else could I have missed that Thom York, of Radiohead fame, has released a solo album called "The Eraser". I heard it in a trendy Buenos Aires restaurant tonight and it's amazing, with more of the electronic sound Kid A had. If you're a Radiohead fan go and buy this now.

Speaking of new, we found a new apartment today. It's just around the corner from where we're staying now in Recoleta and is on the 20th floor, needless to say it's quite a view. Apparently you can see the lights of Uruguay from the balcony, which ain't too shabby.

I Want My MTV... And They Want Me Too!

2006-09-27T13:52:00.000+10:00

It’s been a while since a blog update, but things have been pretty good here in Buenos Aires. Since the last update Aura and I have gotten a pet hamster called Motas (or “Motas!” as I like to call him), I’ve started working on a new version of Elevation (in C++ using the PopCap framework and which is the subject of a future post called “I Love You, I Hate You”), I’d done a lot of thinking and talking about the opportunity I mentioned in the last post and it’s looking more interesting everyday and today Aura, Ximena and I did castings for a show on Latin MTV.

It was another episode of my misadventures with Spanish and while I knew the show was searching for Argentina’s hottest dancer it turns out that by “hot” they meant “HOT” and when I thought Isabella from MTV was saying “Remind the girls it’s just dancing, not a striptease”, she was actually saying “Remind the girls it’s a striptease.” Well, luckily we were the first people to get screened, out of 135, a process that will take six and a half weeks, so everyone was really great, friendly, patient and not bored from the whole thing. Before long I was being interviewed in front of a huge green screen in Spanish about pets, my style of dancing and my favourite country in South America, to which “Colombia” elicited gasps from everyone in the room but Aura and Ximena, who were laughing. The words, “…but I love Argentina too” seemed to fix things up but I’m thinking if I don’t make “the cut” the only possible reason it because of this. Incidentally all this occurred while wearing a silver shiny belt, a black vest, a felt hat, gaudy sunglasses and, most shockingly of all, a tucked in t-shirt. Sean Paul’s “I’m Still In Love With You – feat. Sasha” started up and before I knew it I was dancing, gyrating and losing articles of clothing at an alarming rate. I ended up shirtless, with unbuckled jeans and only resisted dropping my pants because the large “Calvin Klein” printed on them would have given me a pixilated stomach. I have to say, I found the whole experience very enjoyable and feel I now have another option if the time comes for a career change.

The show airs some time in November, so keep an eye out of MTVLatinAmerica for us!

Por Fin

2006-09-10T14:25:00.000+10:00

I’ve been a bit lax with the blog, but I’ve been in Buenos Aires for a week now and have hard a tough time settling in, but am doing ok now. I’m staying in a great apartment in a really nice area of Buenos Aires called Recoleta, have rented a notebook computer to do so work on and even have some company. Aura and a friend of hers, Ximena, have come to Buenos Aires as well and we’re staying together which is really cool.

It’s really nice to have a place to call home, even if it is just for a month, but I’ve been having a hard time deciding what to do next. I took a LAN Chile flight from Quito to Buenos Aires, which is the same airline I used to come out here and will be taking back, and it just felt weird that I was on a plane and not going home. It’s been creeping up for a while now, but I’m completely exhausted from all the traveling… or maybe just from not being at home. I’m usually not the kind to get homesick, but I have to admit I feel bored of not being home. I’m not sure how much sense that makes, it’s not that I’m bored of being in South America in particular; I’m just bored of not being able to hangout with my friends and family.

I’ve been toying with the idea of going home at the end of the month but I’m going to see how work goes. There are a couple of things I’m playing with that are pretty exciting and a very interesting opportunity has come up that is well… very interesting.

Being tired all the time hasn’t helped with my state of mind too much either. Portenos, people that live in Buenos Aires, have a crazy life style, eating dinner at midnight and not going out until 2AM. I still haven’t figured out how the get up the next morning for work, this is a Tuesday night I’m talking about after all, but the trains and buses sure seem busy in the mornings. That said, I’m a bit of a night owl and I’m eating dinner as I write this, its 1:16AM, so I think I’m getting by ok.

Hasta proxima vez,
p.

Oh, and what’s up with all the spam comments I’ve been getting. I have to say, I just don’t get spam. I mean who actually reads or pays attention to any of that crap?

Weeeeee...

2006-08-31T10:41:00.000+10:00

Today I went bike riding. In Ecuador. On a volcano. From 4500m. Downhill. In the rain. And the snow. ...both ways!

Well ok, it only sprinkled at the begining of the ride and was only snowing higher up... and we only went one way, but other than that everything else is true.

I took a little tour from Quito to a volcano called Cotopaxi, climbed a little to 4800m, checked out it's glacier and then rode a bike down it. It was the first time I'd riden a bike for about 17 years, so I was a little shakey at first, but before long I was sliding around gravely corners, doing little jumps off random rocks and enjoying an amazing view. It was too foggy to really see the volcano, but the small glimpses we got were great and the poor visibility and thin air reminded me of diving, so I was still happy.

Tomorrow I say goodbye to Quito, which has been a great city to wander around even though I haven't been doing much. At 9PM I fly to Buenos Aires where I'll spend the month working on some game stuff and enjoying the wonders of Argentinian Steak (yes that's steak with a capital "S"). I'm still trying to track down a laptop to rent after realising I could buy a beefy Duo 2 Core machine in Sydney for the same price as the laptop I found here, plus the Xbox 360 is more than I expected in Australia, so I'm saving my fast disappearing pennies until I get home.

I'm really looking forward to working, relaxing and having a place to call home for a while, so Buenos Aires, here I come!

A Happy, Happy Day for XNA

2006-08-31T10:33:00.000+10:00

Yay, Yah, XNA.

The XNA Framework and XNA Game Studio Express got released today. Just to remind you this is a C# based toolset for developing cross platform games for Windows and the Xbox 360.

For more info checkout Official XNA Site or the XNA Team Blog.

Two posts that are particularly interesting are:
What is the XNA Framework?
The XNA Framework Content Pipeline

It looks like Microsoft are doing some great work here and I can't wait to get to Buenos Aires and play with it.

Las Islas Galapagos - Las Otras Dias

2006-08-30T08:37:00.000+10:00

The group changed halfway through the tour, with only Fabrizio and I staying onboard. The second group was, thankfully, far more interesting and we had four Spaniards, and Italian couple, two Dutch, a Irish girl, an Australian girl and an America girl join. Diving continued to be amazing and we got to see sea lions herding schools of fish, heaps of turtles, rays and sharks, one of who I chased for a while before realizing chasing a shark around probably wasn't a good idea and thousands upon thousands of fish. I'm a massive fan of flock and school behaviours, so watching how the schools of fish behaved was really amazing for me. At one point we were even in a school of tuna, fish everywhere you looked. All up I got in 8 dives all of which were great and really different even if we didn't get to see sharks or turtles every dive. I just love going down, hearing my breath and enjoying the way the ocean carries you around. The other dives we did were Punta Cormorant Reef, Devil's Crown, Rabida, at Cousin's Rock and La Punta de Bartulome. They were the hardest diving I'd done, in currents stronger than I'd experienced and I loved every minute of it.

The other great thing in the Galapagos is snorkeling, and we got to snorkel with fish, turtles and, of course, sea lions. I had both the scariest and most amazing moments in my life snorkel in the Galapagos and I'm hooked on it as well.

One day after a dive we went snorkeling in a small bay where there were some sea lions. There was a huge bull who I was keeping my eye on, but ended up swimming away from where he was and put him out of my mind. I was floating around enjoying the view when he swam directly under me, less than 10cm from my stomach. He was well over 2 metres long and, after having all the talk of how dangerous they can be drummed into me, had a very freaky "Oh Goodness Me!" moment, well actually I thought something else, but my nieces and nephew read this. I was still reeling from this when he came back and did the same thing again before swimming off. His point very well made I swam out a little and waited for my heart to slow down before heading back to shore, the ship and a nice hot shower.

The sixth day found me snorkeling with a sea lion again, this time a pup who swam and darted around a big group of us for 10 or 15 minutes before darting off. That was great, but nothing compared to the seventh day, when Kerri (Ireland), Lucy (Australia) and I went snorkeling after a dive and found some feeding turtles who we swam with for about 15 minutes before swimming with another sea lion for half an hour or so. She was so playful and curious, swimming directly at me, stopping 10cms in front of my mask for a few seconds and then darting off, around, over, under, back in front, under, around and then off for a while. We chased her around, diving up and over her all having a great time. Then another sea lion appeared and joined in the fun, then another and another and before we knew it we were playing with five pups, from half to just over one metre long. I was beyond happy and think it was one of, if not the, most incredible experience of my life. Looking into the sea lions eyes as they hover in front of you, seeing the interest and curious amusement in their eyes is amazing, and watching how gracefully they move in the water, absolutely captivating.

The Galapagos Islands are an absolute treasure of this world and I highly recommend that you visit them if you get the chance. Diving and snorkeling there are amazing, as is just walking around the islands. It's hard to know what else to say about a place so amazing, but I've got plenty of photos to help me do that. You can check them out at the usual place.

Las Islas Galapagos - Dia 3

2006-08-30T08:32:00.000+10:00

During the night we sailed to Isla Española, starting the day at 6:30AM with a dive in Gardener Bay. The 6 of us went down together this time, with the exception of one of the Spanish guys, whose ears were giving him problems, and a a pretty good dive, seeing plenty of fish and some other cool stuff. The dive got off to a good start as a hammerhead shark swam by about 3 metres away. The highlight of the dive for me was watching a school of seven Golden Cowrays make a slow, ghostly march in front of us. They looked completely otherworldly slipping silently through the water that it sent a chill through me and brought a smile to my face.

After the dive we landed on the beach and were met by another big sea lion colony. After a quick sun back, I snorkeled over to some rocks where I found thousands of small fish being chased by a hungry sea lion. It was absolutely amazing watching her dart around and through the fish that I couldn't help but giggle. It was the first of many magical experiences with sea lions that have well and truly placed them in my heart as my favourite animal.

After lunch we made our second dive, again in Gardener Bay, this time seeing lots of Marine Turtles and Galapagos Sharks, and rays of various types.

Unfortunately I started getting sick every time I tried to write down what I'd been doing after that, so this is the abridged, post-cruise version.

Las Islas Galapagos - Dia 2

2006-08-30T08:28:00.000+10:00

The day started with a visit to Isla Santa Fé, a dry, rocky island where we saw more sea lions, this time with suckling pups and some blue footed boobies, which are sea birds the Islands are famous for… plus they allow people to go around saying "I Love Boobies", something that refused to get old no matter how many times you say it. We also saw Land Iguanas and Frigates, which are another type of bird named after the type of pirate ships because they steal everything they can, food, nest and even mates… just like us but they can fly, which is way cooler.

After lunch, we headed to Isla San Cristóbal where 6 of us made our first Galapagos dive. A quick descent ended with 2 Spaniards and I sitting 20 metres below the surface wondering where everyone was, including the dive master. After 10 minutes we went back up and was the others 300 metres away, so much for the introductory dive with a gentle current. A quick ride holding onto the side of the dingy got us over to the others, who had had problems equalizing on the way down. We tired again, this time without any problems, and were taken by a strong current past thousands of beautiful fish.

After the dive we went snorkeling and got to swim with a huge 2 meter bull sea lion. He was totally at ease with us which was good, because the bulls can be very aggressive as they protect their group of 30 or so females.

I felt a little queasy at night, but some fresh air (and a sea sickness tablet) got be back to normal, which was fortunate as there was a dive waiting for me at 6:30 the next morning.

Las Islas Galapagos - Dia 1

2006-08-30T08:15:00.000+10:00

A 6AM wake up got me to the airport and onto Isla Baltra in the Galapagos Islands where I met our guide, Andres, and the rest of the passengers for the cruise around the Galapagos, a cool German guy called Tom, an Italian called Fabrizio, 3 Spaniards, an older American couple and a tour group of 8 Dutch, all ready to board the yacht that would be our home for the next 4 or 8 days.

My first glimpse of the Islands came as we were flying over them. Their green-blue waters peeking through the clouds long enough for me to make out waves crashing upon volcanic shores and cliffs. The islands looked surprisingly desolate considering the amount of wildlife they host. I was expecting lush greens but it turned out we'd come during the dry season, when the trees shed their leaves to conserve water. You can see adaptation in every plant and animal here and it's no wonder Darwin conceived his theory of evolution on these islands some 170 years before.

I didn't have to wait long before I was face to face with the Islands fearless wildlife. On the wharf where we boarded the ship there were a few sea lions lazing on wooden benches that I'm sure weren't meant for them. There was an impressive smell of wet dog surrounding them and they didn't bat an eyelid as the latest load of tourists, two planeloads full, staggered past, mouths open and cameras snapping.

Our yacht, the Floreana, was built for 16 passengers plus crew and was a good size for seeing the Islands. Most of the 100 tour boats working here are a similar size, though there are some that handle 80 passengers.

The first day was very relaxed and we went to Black Turtle Cove, where we saw Marine Iguanas, Flamingos, hundreds of bright red crabs and thousands of Boobies in a flock diving into the waters as they fished for… fish. All of the animals displayed the same nonchalant attitude of the sea lions, considering us with a passing interest at best. That is the real beauty of the Galapagos Islands, being so remote the animals weren't really hunted by man and so have no concept of fear. I feel a little sad seeing what animals were like before we started hunting and killing them. As I learnt during the following days, I'm writing this from Quito after the cruise, that that lack of fear, combined with the animals curiosity, gave me some of the most incredible experiences of my life, that I will never forget.

Dis-Connexion-ed

2006-08-18T10:49:00.000+10:00

Well I'll be, Boeing are stopping their Connexion service.

Many years ago I helped start a company called Tenzing who were the pioneers in inflight email and passenger communications. We were all about narrow band and using existing hardware in the aircraft while Boeing were about their big, new and very expensive antennae. Somewhere along the line we grew from 2 to 160 people, moved from Sydney to Seattle and had big investors like Airbus. I laughed, cried and sweated blood from working so hard, having the best time of my life. Crunch time only lasted 3 years and there were many late and crazy nights coding, testing and riding scooters at breakneck speeds; jumping off ramps made from anti-static mats and beanbags over, and inevitabley into, stacks of empty watercooler bottles. Yes, we were all business in the dotcom days.

Seeing an announcement like this is a big shock as Boeing were our main competitor (and boy did they play dirty) and looked like they would be around for ever. It also brings back a lot of good and bad memories. I learnt nearly everything I know about the software development at Tenzing and I was lucky to have a good view of the amazing successes we had and the stupid mistakes we made, of which there were quite a few :)

So... what does this mean for Tenzing or OnBoard or OnAir or what ever they're called now? Mike, Hans, anyone... what's going on?

La Viaje de Cali a Quito

2006-08-18T07:00:00.000+10:00

Montañas 3
Originally uploaded by Phil Chan.

16 hours was plenty of time to enjoy the magnificant landscapes between Cali, Colombia and Quito, Ecuador.

It turns out taking photos through a the dirty window of a bus driving over 100km/h is a great way to get HDR lighting effects :) ... Incidentally I'm not a nerd.

El Parque Zoológico de Cali

2006-08-18T06:52:00.000+10:00

Mono
Originally uploaded by Phil Chan.

More photos, this time from the Zoo in Cali, which despite cramping 3 pumas in a little cage was generally really nice with big cage for the animals.

The monkeys were, as usual, particularly fun.

Los Fotos de Cali

2006-08-18T06:47:00.000+10:00

Bailando Sobre La Calle
Originally uploaded by Phil Chan.

I didn't take many photos in Cali, but there are a few. This one is a rondom street corner when there was a live Salsa band playing and people dancing. Ahh Cali, the home of Colombian Salsa indeed.

A Busy Day

2006-08-17T12:45:00.000+10:00

Phew... What a day. Turns out it's a little hard to find a boat to the Galapagos that leaves the same week during the high season, but I managed to get on a 8 day cruise where I'll be able to do lots of diving on a boat that looks pretty good. It ended up being usd$1300 plus usd$392 airfare to the islands plus usd $100 national park entrance fee which was less that I was expecting to pay, so I'm pretty happy with it. The cruise starts on Sunday but I'm going to get there a day early to wander around a little.

I was also running around organising my flight to Buenos Aires and having more fun looking for apartments. I've found that's available September and October, that I'm in the process of renting, so hopefully tomorrow everything will be sorted and I can relax a bit.

I've also been thinking more about the whole laptop thing and am thinking about getting a lower spec machine as money is getting pretty tight. That or renting one through the real estate agent in Buenos Aires. So far they have successfully ignored that question, but I feel my persistence shall win out in the end.

Not too much else to report. Right now life is great and I'm the happiest I've been for a while, which is saying something as I've been over the moon nearly all year. The Galapagos are going to be great and I can't wait to get to Buenos Aires. Hmm... there must be something in the air.

Have I Finally Found True Love?

2006-08-16T14:28:00.000+10:00

When I was looking at laptops today I came across a 17" monster from Toshiba for about the same price as I was going to pay for the Asus W3J. I had a look at the spec's of the video card tonight, which is my main concern at the moment, and was pleasantly surprised by what I found. It's got an nVidia Go 7900GS in it, which out performs the ATI X1600 I was looking for, being about twice as fast as the 6800GT I have in my desktop machine back home. Speedy indeedy!

Some may say that a 17" laptop is a little excessive for someone backpacking... and I'd totally agree, but I was a nerd long before I was a backpacker :) I'm going to have a closer look tomorrow and run some apps on it to test out the performance. The only concern I have is the speed of the hard disk, at 4200rpm it's pretty slow, but it's not going to kill me.

There's a good review here... and it actually seems a tiny bit cheaper here than in the US! It's strange enough that they use US dollars here in Ecuador, 10 cents never bought so much, but that's just crazy!

Oh, in other nerdy news, it looks like Java is finally going Open Source... Double yah! Pity it's, I think, too late for them in the game arena. C# has a big upper hand there, no surprises though considering it's Microsoft. I wonder what ever happened to Java on the PS2?

Happy, Happy

2006-08-16T12:04:00.000+10:00

The trip from Cali was a little crazy, including a 5 hours wait for the bus due to the drivers being lost in La Zona Cafertera... for 5 HOURS, hassles at the Ecuadorian border since we we 5 hours late and it was closed... though magically open if we paid a measley USD$15, yeah right, they eventually let us cross for free. It was a long trip, we didn't stop for food because we were so late, but I met a cool Colombia family and chatted with them.

I finally left Colombia on the last day of my 90 day visa and am in Quito, the capital of Ecuador. I've wandered around a little and it's an awesome city. I even had Indian food, as in from from India not indeginous, for lunch which was weird but cool. I kept looking for the deep friend banana and yuka but they managed to ellude me. I also took a peek at laptop prices and they look very reasonable, cheaper than Colombia or Argentina, so I think I'm going to buy one when I get back from the Galapagos Islands.

Speaking of which, I booked a flight to the islands for Thursday and am going to organise the dive cruise when I get there.

One strange thing happened during the bus trip. The further away I got from Colombia, the closer I got to Bogotá and by the time I got to Quito I was ready to spend the rest of the year there rather than Buenos Aires. My plans were foiled however when I spoke to Aura and found she's going to Buenos Aires for the rest of the year so... BA it is. The jacuzi, I mean apartment, I had my eye on isn't available so it's back to the drawing board on that front which is a hassle, but not a big deal.

To top things off, there were a string of XNA announcements today, the gist of which is that you'll be able to build games for the XBox 360 in C# and distribute them to other XNA users for the low low price of $99 per year, which is a lot cheaper than the $10,000 you normally need to pay for a dev kit and the $10+ million budget for a game these days. Yah! A "pro" version of XNA Studio comes out next year that lets you build "real" games which I'm equally excited about. Oh, XNA titles run on Windows as well, so porting pains should be a thing of the past and you anyone can run them. Actually, with the first release of XNA Studio Express (August 30) games will only run on WinXP, which is pretty good for free.

I was thinking about doing the rewrite of Elevation in C# and Managed DirectX, to get ready for XNA, but I think good ole C++ and DirectX is the best way to go for what I want to do with the game. I'm still debating whether I should use an existing framework like PopCap or Torque though. Ahh, decisions, decisions.

Chao,
p.

Fairwell Colombia, Hello Brave New World

2006-08-14T06:54:00.000+10:00

Tonight I make the final step of my "Free Me Colombia, Free Me!" program and jump on a bus bound for Quito, Ecudor. The last few days have been really relaxed and I've been wandering around the city, spending lots of time reading on the net, visiting the Zoo and buying lots of music.

Mike, who I went paragliding with in Medellin, has been here with his girl friend as well and it's been nice to have people I know to hang out with. We've hit a few bars, drunk a fair bit of Aguadiente and even got in some salsa which has been fun. It's been great to have a few days in Colombia but not Bogotá to just relax before leaving, which I feel ready for now. I am really looking forward to getting to Quito, the Galapagos and going diving before heading to Buenos Aires. Though there's still a slim possibility of going via Bogotá... well there's not really, but I can't bring myself to say it :)

I've also been having fun looking for apartments in BA and think I've found where I want to stay. It's in split level loft in Recoleta, looks really nice and has a great area to work on the first floor. Oh, and a jacuzi... but that is a complete coincidence and has had absolutely nothing to do with my decision making .

¡Viva Colombia!
Felipe.

¡La Música, La Música!

2006-08-12T10:40:00.000+10:00

As you may have picked up, I love Colombia and South America. One thing I love in particular out here is the music, which is absolutely everywhere. You can't have a drink, grab something to eat or buy a pair of socks without something blaring out. I thought I’d string together a Top 5 while I was going crazy buying CDs before I leave so here it is. These are in no particular order and obviously five becomes six, becomes more pretty quickly, but here’s a shot.

Incidentally, I’m a seasoned techno warrior and while it may not be immediately obvious, mushy pop love songs only serve to make me tougher… honest.

Julio Miranda – Egoismo
(Ego)
Música Llanero, a style of traditional music where the men wear hats and set the harp alight. Many great nights were spent drinking cold Aguila beer, Aguadiente and embarrassing myself dancing to Música Llanero.

Marc Anthony – Tu Amor Me Hace Bien
(Your Love Does Me Good)
Some things just don’t translate well into English, and I think Marc Anthony is one of them.. I also think the name of the song may not translate well, but that's totally my fault. It’s impossible to go a day without hearing this massive salsa hit a few times, twice as I was writing this, and that’s ok by me. My favourite song of the year.

Julieta Venegas – Me Voy
(I’m Going)
Another ballad to swell though militant techno hearts out there.

Juanes – Para Tu Amor
(For Your Love)
Can’t… Stop… Crying… The biggest thing to come out of Medellin since Pablo Escobar.

Sin Banderas – Suelta Mi Mano
A totally manly ballad to make even the most underground of us cry like a little baby… aren’t all babies little?

Il Divo – Regresa A Mi
(Return To Me)
4 Men, 1 Remake… Toni Braxton’s “Unbreak My Herat”. It’s like an all nighter in a dirty warehouse with Surgeon, Oliver Ho and James Ruskin in the height of the Burmingham days of the late 90’s.

Reik – Noviembre Sin Ti
(November Without You)
Admittedly all their songs seem to be “ Sin Ti”, but these Mexicans know how to rock an acoustic six string.

Soda Stereo – La Ciudad De La Furia
(The City Of The Fury)
Great Argentinean rock group from the 80’s and 90’s who released. This is a damn fine song from some damn fine musicians. The version from their farewell concert is my favourite.

¡Que! ¿No Estoy En Bogotá?

2006-08-11T09:59:00.000+10:00

It’s been a long time coming, but I have finally left Bogotá. At the moment I’m enjoying the sun in Cali, where I’ll be for a few days as I make my way to Quito and the Galapagos Islands.

My time in Bogotá was great and it’s one of the few places in the world where I could see myself living. The weather is cool but not cold, perfect for working, there are some amazing mountains surrounding the city, which has a very modern and sophisticated feel to it. Bogotá has amazing nightlife and I had many brilliant nights there, too many of which started at the Bogotá Beer Company on Calle 82 in La Zona Rosa. I was lucky enough to meet some great people through Manuel and Aura and heck, I even felt some tremors in my long dead heart, which felt like the first time in years.

I spent a lot of time with Aura and her family in Bogotá, Funza and Villavicencio and everyone made me feel at home… to the point where I was calling her mum “mami”, which may or may not have been wise considering the direction that our conversation were taking.

Staying with Manuel (from Maracaibo)’s grandma was also really cool and having my own space added to the “at home” feel I had in Bogotá. Somewhere along the way I started thinking about buying an apartment there, so I’ll have to see how that ends up. Considering a nice apartment in a good area in Bogotá costs less than the bathroom in my nice-but-small one bedroom apartment in Sydney, it may not be a bad idea.

The luxury and relaxation of Bogotá has come to an end though, and I’m back on the backpacker circuit, sharing a hostel dorm with 3 other guys, one of whom is playing guitar in thongs and ripped jeans complete with shaggy beard as I write this… Oh the stereotype kills me! I’m not as much as a sourpuss as I make out though and I’m really looking forward to getting to Quito and organizing my trip to the Galapagos. That said I’m equally excited about going to Buenos Aires and working on games again.

Por Fin...

2006-08-10T08:42:00.000+10:00

Well, this is my last day in Bogotá. I'm leaving for Cali tonight, on account of buses for Quito only going Tuesdays and Sundays, where I'll spend the weekend before going to Ecuador.

Time to run and pack my bag!

Chau,
p.

Still in Bogotá... Mas o Menos

2006-08-05T07:04:00.000+10:00

Here's the deal...

I was all ready to leave Bogotá, meet some friends in Cali for the weekend then hit Quito, but... well I'm still here. I spent the last couple of days in a town south of Bogotá called Villavacencio with more of Aura's family and am heading back today for a few more days. Being out of Bogotá could be a good idea since it's the 4th anniversery of El Presidente, Uribe, taking power and there are some problems with guerillas, bombs and major cities at the moment. There were two in Bogotá this week and one in Cali today. It's absolutely crazy to think that these things are going on, but I guess a lot of people live with it every day.

Ironically Villavacencio is in guerilla country, though they're in the mountains, which I should say are beautiful, rather than the town and it's nice and safe there. On my way back to Bogotá today I noticed a big increase in the number of police and soldiers around, and our mini-bus got stopped a few times to check papers and bags, but there were no hassles.

My plan today (today) is to come back to Bogotá on Tuesday, leave for Quito on Wednesday night and fly to Buenos Aires after that. A friend told me it was down to 3C in Buenos Aires, which I'm a little freaked by. I like to work when it's cold and all, but that's just ridiculous!

Chau,
p.

Or...

2006-07-31T07:43:00.000+10:00

The funny thing about life is that it's full of options and the funny thing about plans is as soon as you make them something happens to screw them up.

What I'm getting at is: Why leave Bogota? It's a great city, the weather is a little cool, which I like for working, and I have some great friends here. With 4 days to go before I leave Bogota I'm starting to panic a little bit. I've been here for 5 great weeks and I think I'm a little attached to the place.

Argh!!!

La Candaleria

2006-07-28T09:23:00.000+10:00

Dentro El Monasterio
Originally uploaded by Phil Chan.

After the week relaxing in Villa de Levya, I was ready for a few more days of the good life before heading back to Bogotá and decided to go to a monastery for a couple of nights called El Monastario de La Candaleria, which has a hotel attached to it where you can stay.

I took a bus from Villa de Leyva to a town called Raquirá, which is famous for its arts and crafts, then a dusty cab ride over the mountains to the monastery. The monastery is, you guessed it, a beautiful old building dating back to 1604 set in the mountains. It wasn’t quiet as exciting as I’d hoped - I imagined myself running, well thoughtfully walking, around in monk’s robes having deep conversations about the church, religion and beer brewing, but I found myself alone in the beautiful building eating spaghetti. At least until a bus load of school kids arrived, destroying my thoughtful silence. I retreated back to my room to listen to CDs, finding that one of the CDs I’d bought was a compilation of 80’s hit (the theme to Flash Dance was a happy find), Boys2Men songs (or is that BoysIIMen? Either way I actually listened to the lyrics and they are b-a-d bad!) and pumping Euro-trash techno (who would have thought you could write a techno track about mosquitoes).

I slept late enough to be the butt of the maid’s jokes thanks to wooden window shutters that didn’t let a peep of the 11am light though. The kids from the night before were gone by the time I woke up, but another group arrived from the school in nearby Santa Sofia and we visited the monastery’s museum and a nearby cave where a religious hermit lived. It was great fun hanging out with the kids and talking to the teachers, who were really cool. My desire to be a school teacher was gradually reawakening, but I put it to rest with a few more Boys2Men songs.

I wandered into the hills in the afternoon, taking a walk that followed the story of Christ’s march towards crucifixion and came across lots of native flowers which I went crazy taking photos of. For some reason I just can’t get the macro function of the Canon working properly, but the Panasonic’s macro works great. It focuses really easily and, while the photos aren’t as sharp as the Canon when it decides to work, they come out great. It makes me wonder what the higher end Panasonics are like. I realize I’m not much chop when it comes to photography, but I’ve come to really enjoy it. I find the composition of a shot really fun and hopefully I’ll have time to continue it when I get home, though the way things are already looking it’ll be tough to find any spare time.

That night I was completely alone in the hotel and passed the time listening to Colombian CDs, salsa and a little Boys2Men. The next day I headed back to Bogotá and Señora Dafne’s house, where I’m going to stay until next Wednesday when I have my final eye checkup. Mike, who I met in Medellin, was back in Colombia and we had a cheap, very tasty meal of meat, meat and more meat with a friend of his. They headed to Cali today, which is where I’m going next Wednesday night, so hopefully we can meet up down there too and have a night, or three, on the town. Cali is the heart of salsa in Colombia and, while I still have two left feet, it’ll be fun to go out dancing and embarrass myself.

My goal over the next few days is to find a laptop so I can work in Buenos Aires. I’ve pretty much made up my mind about the Asus W3J, but it may be hard to find here. If I can’t find anything I’ll wait and try my luck in Buenos Aires, which I think will be more expensive, but with the release of Core 2 Duo this month, maybe the prices will balance out.

Oh, I saw Superman Regresa (Returns) last night. Not too bad. There were some terribly cheesy parts, but it was nice to see the man in tights on the big screen again. It was a little weird recognizing all the places in Sydney where it was filmed, but a nice bonus being so far from home. The next few movies should be interesting, though it would be nice if they didn’t fall back on the “let’s kill him with kryptonite” routine in at least one of them. I think they’ve done that in every movie and it’s a little tired.

¡Luego!

Laptop Advice

2006-07-24T07:51:00.000+10:00

Everyday I get a little closer to giving up on the holiday and renting an apartment out here until the end of the year. I was looking at prices for furnished apartments in Buenos Aires today and they're actually not that bad for something nice in a nice area.

One effect of all this crazy thinking is that I'm getting closer and closer to buying a laptop. If I go through with this I'll probably do it when I get back to Bogotá. The dilemma I have now, is what type of laptop to get. I don't want to spend "too much", but there's no point getting one if it's not up to the job. I'll mainly be using it as a development station, running Windows XP with MS Dev Studio 2005, Eclipse, Photoshop and the other usual stuff. I'll probably run a little music stuff as well, but not too much (sorry Patrick).

There's a few options at the moment. I'm basically favouring a Intel Core Duo system with a Radeon X1600. At the moment the Asus W3J is looking pretty good, thought it only has a 14" screen. There's also a HP system that's pretty interesting and the Apple MacBook has me drooling, pity the graphics card is down clocked. I'm just not sure if it's worth the extra cost when I won't be using OSX. There's an interesting Acer as well... oh when will this end?

Does anyone have any recommendations?

Oh... I just got deja vu reading a review of the Asus... I must be on the right path.

Ouch!

2006-07-24T07:47:00.000+10:00

It turns out I did get stung by the scorpion... at least that's what I'm guessing considering the terrible itching and redness I have in one of my left knuckles. I can see the spot where something got me and it weren't no mosquito that's for sure. Hopefully the itching and redness will go down tonight.

Ouchy!

Well... Crap... This Sucks!

2006-07-23T07:47:00.000+10:00

I found out today a good friend from Seattle called Ephraim Alexander passed away in his sleep this week. I'm not sure of the cause, but it seems that he was diabetic and that may have been a factor.

My condolences go out to his family and friends in Seattle and around the World. He'll definitely be missed.

Strange Bed Fellows

2006-07-23T07:41:00.000+10:00

You know how sometimes you get drunk and wake up with someone you didn't expect... yeah me neither. However, last night I had a couple of glasses of crappy red wine and woke to find a scorpion in my bed. It was only a little one, pretty squashed though still wriggling, so I imagine I rolled over during the night and slept on it. Luckily it didn't bite me... or at least I didn't notice.

My mind instantly went back to the good old days in Taganga when Verena was bitten in her sleep. Yeah, they were good days.

Still Kickin',
Phil.

Más De Villa De Veyva

2006-07-22T09:00:00.000+10:00

La Roca
Originally uploaded by Phil Chan.

Villa De Veyva continues to be a great place to hang out. I've been enjoying being a tourist for the first time in ages (maybe the first time), wandering around the cobbled streets, taking lots of fotos of people's houses, buying gifts for people and generally relaxing.

The food festival has created a great atmosphere in the town. During the day food stalls jammed with delicious meals and snacks cover the town's plaza and at night the restaurants fill with people and music. The plaza was host to some great local musicians last night and I grabbed some cool movies of them playing tradional music.

I've had a good chance to think while I've been here and have, obviously since I'm a nerd, gotten stuck into the next version of Elevation. This time focusing on multiplayer mechanics and how to dynamically generate the graphics for the buildings rather than using prebaked images. I'm still entertaining the thought of locking myself up somewhere and working for the rest of the year, so if I still don't feel like traveling after the Galapagos Islands, I'm going to pick up a laptop and hide in the Argentinian countryside somewhere until Brendan comes out in October.

I've also continued my Colombian integration. It started with people asking if I was Colombian rather than automatically assuming I was an extranjero (forgeiner) then, for the last month people have been calling me Felipe rather than Phil (actually Phil sounds a little odd now, but I'm sure I'll get used to it again... someday). Somewhere along the road I ended up with a band in the colours of the Colombian flag wrapped around my wrist and today I bought a woven bag to carry my stuff aroud in rather than using a backpack. The final step will be to start wearing a pair of loose fitting white cotton pants and matching shirt, which I'm actually eyeing out. Depsite all that, and what many people back home seem to be saying or encouraging me to do, I will eventually leave this wonderful country and return home... I have to pick some stuff up before I move here anyway :)

I've also been making good strides with a copy of Cambio, a Colombian political magazine, that I picked up and am very happy about. Who would have thought a magazine would be easier than a 1000 page novel written in the style of magical realism... ok, everyone, but I'm still happy to be able to read so much. So crazy stuff happened out here last week with El Presidente making some changes to ambassadors to various countries without consulting anyone, including the people that were being shuffled around, which I can finally understand and is completely crazy. It seems like pretty much all the politicians out here are corrupt... which is completely different and shocking compared to Australia

Oh, today is my little-big sister Megan's 35th birthday, so Happy Birthday Meg!!! And yes, I did get you a present :)

Bad Timing

2006-07-21T03:56:00.000+10:00

It turns out I have timing my visit to Villa de Leyva at the worst possible time, as the annual food festival is on this weekend, woe is me. So, rather than heading to the surrounding towns I'm going to stay here and sample the fine cuisine.

Speaking of cuisine, I had another lesson on the importance of a larger Spanish vocabulary yesterday when I ordered the "Plate of the Day" for lunch. The soup was comprised of a stange piece of animal I haven't encountered before. It was similar to blood sausage, a favourite out here, but the skin was attached to the insides a little too tightly for it to be a sausage. It wasn't kidney or liver, so I'm at a loss as to what it was. I tried my best to finish it off, but my body started to protest. I had a "Oh no, not again" moment when the main came out and it was my old friend Lungs. I figured I give them another go, but only made it through one. It was rice, planta and salad for me after that.

It only cost AUD$2.50 though and I made up for it with a nice dinner in a fancy restuarant, which was great, and the passionfruit dessert really hit the spot.

Quick Update... Not From Bogotá

2006-07-19T09:23:00.000+10:00

I've finally made it out of Bogotá, though I'll be back there in a week or so for my final eye exam before I head south for Ecuador via Cali and a couple of other stops in Colombia.

Today I arrived in a little colonial town called Villa de Leyva, which is absolutely beautiful. I'll post some pics later, but it's great here. It's a little weird being out in the world again after a month in Bogotá with friends and their families, but it feels pretty good. I'm hoping the travel fatigue I've been feeling with dissipate now that I've got my backpack on again and am looking forward to exploring the area.

¡Luego!

Funza

2006-07-13T04:28:00.000+10:00

La Ingelsia en Funza
Originally uploaded by Phil Chan.

The day after visiting la Catedral de Sal, Aura and I went to see her sister after a dentist’s appointment, ended up visiting her grandma and had a great night hanging out with her uncles and some other folk from the neighbourhood. There was, of course, plenty of beer and dancing and I received a few rounds of applause for successfully navigating the dance floor without breaking any bones. You know, it’s really not fair how naturally everyone here dances, whether it’s salsa, meringue or local flavours of folk music.

We crashed at Aura’s grandma’s place with her sister and niece and then went with them to their home in Funza, a little town that became a suburb of Bogotá as it grew to take consume the surrounding towns, for a couple of relaxing days watching far too many DVDs and eating great food.

Yeah, life in Bogotá is pretty tough but I think I could get used to it.

La Catedral De Sal

2006-07-13T04:26:00.000+10:00

Felipe y Angel
Originally uploaded by Phil Chan.

I’d heard about La Catedral De Sal (Salt Cathedral) from a few people. A cathedral carved out of salt mine in a town called Zipaquirá an hour north of Bogotá. I imaged it like old temples you see in the Middle East, carved into the face of an ancient mountain, but what I found was very different.

I headed up there with Aura, enjoying the scenic trip which went through some of the towns I was planning on visiting when I leave Bogotá. It’s really amazing how close things are that look hours apart on the map. A quick taxi ride took us into the mountains that the town is built around and the queue of tourists waiting the get into the cathedral. We quickly spied a tour group of foreigners, and I amazed Aura by picking their German-ness from 10 metres away.

La Catedral De Sal is a series enormous chambers set in the old section of a salt mine that is still operated today. It’s close to pitch black in many parts, though strategically placed lighting helps you get around and creates a great atmosphere. The passageway to the actual cathedral catalogs the last moments of Christ on his way to his crucifiction (SP?) and there are a lot of places to pray in front of impressive crosses carved from salt or granite. The main chambers of the cathedral are enormous and completely awe inspiring. There are three main chambers, each 15 to 20 metres high with huge columns and various statues spotted around.

Walking into the first chamber, I was filled with an overwhelming feeling that was hard to describe. Far from religious, it was more that we really can do amazing things when we want to… it just seems a pity that we don’t do more good than we do. Oh well…

After spending a couple of hours wandering around, taking far too many pictures, we checked out the town of Zipaquirá and had some lunch. The plaza in Zipaquirá was really beautiful, with a cool church and a number of nice colonial style buildings. After another hour or so strolling around the town we headed back to Bogotá where I hung out with Señora Dafne’s family some more, which was really nice.

Umm... Yeah, Well...

2006-07-12T07:28:00.000+10:00

Sometimes things just don't turn out like you expect. Despite my best intentions to leave Bogotá on Monday, I'm still here. I'm having a really great time hanging out here and to be honest, I'm a little tired of traveling. My plan at the moment is to leave this coming Monday, but I wouldn't be surprised if I'm still here in a month. There are a few little towns that I want to check out, but most of those can be day trips and I might be able to go to the La Zona Cafertera for just a few days.

Last week I visited the Caterdral de Sal (Salt Catherdral), which was absolutely amazing. It's a massive multi-room cathedral built in a salt mine in a mountain. I don't know if the photos Aura and I took do it justice, but I'll post them in a couple of days. It was a good chance to take my new toy, a Panasonic FX-01 digital camera, out for a run. The pictures are nice, though not as good as the I2, and feels great taking snaps in town with a little camera. It really does open up a lot more opportunities to take pics.

While I'm here, I'm going to start working on a new version of Elevation, this time in C++ and a framework from PopCap. I had a very strange experience buying some software on the street here, which felt kind of like a drug deal. I picked what I wanted off a little printed list, then had to wait a few minutes while various people walked past my "dealer", not so subtley slipping her CDs. The whole experience was very amusing and I came away very happy with what I could get. The whole travel fatigue thing has found me checking out laptops in the shops here. I'm not going to buy one, and I am keen (kinda) to travel through Ecuador, Boliviar and Peru, but it would also be nice to spend the next five months living here and in Buenos Aires working on games... oh well, I guess I shouldn't be that much of a nerd on my holiday.

¡Luego!

Quick Bogotá Update

2006-07-07T07:26:00.000+10:00

I'm still here in Bogotá, though I'm planning to leave on Monday, heading north to see more of the country, visiting little towns and some other big cities. I have to be back in Bogotá in a month for the final checkup for my new eyes, and am not sure how I'll spend the month. I may fit the rest of Colombia in and head down to Quito in Ecuador, then fly back for the appointment, spend the entire month looking around Colombia or spend a week or two in a villa somewhere working on a few different ideas I've been toying with.

Everything is going great with my eyes and after checking out the exchange rate again, found that it only cost AUD$650, USD$500 for the operation which is an added bonus.

I'm staying with Señora Dafne at the moment, the grandma of a friend from Maracaibo, Venezuela and having a great time. She's really cool, and I feel really at home staying with her. I had dinner with her sons and some of the grandkids the other night which was really nice. Hopefully I'll get a chance to meet some of the older grandkids this weekend, who all sound cool.

I'm off to buy some toys today, a CD player to replace my beloved iPod and a little camera that I can more easily take around towns and out at night. My main camera is awesome, but a bit too obvious for some places.

Pues, hasta luego!

I've Finally Uploaded More Photos

2006-07-02T07:56:00.000+10:00

Sunset 2
Originally uploaded by Phil Chan.

I finally sat down and spent a few hours in an internet cafe getting photos online.

There are fotos from Cartagena, Medellin and Bogotá.

Click, click, click, click

I'm pretty bummed that Australia, Argentina and Brasil are out of the Mundial, but them's the breaks.

My eyes continue to get better and I'm spending a lot of time freaked out at the fact that I can see but am not wearing glasses. I keep getting the feeling that I'm wearing contacts, which is really weird as well.

My plan for the next week is to check out some of the touristy sites in and around Bogotá then head north to checkout the Coffee Zone and see what else Colombia has to offer before returning to Bogotá for my final eye checkup in a month. Colombia really is the jewel of South America so far and I definitely recommend it to anyone traveling or thinking of traveling in SA.

I Can See!!!

2006-06-30T09:52:00.000+10:00

The operation yesterday went smoothly, I got to wear some cool protective eyewear for the night and I woke up to the weird sensation of things being blurry and clear at the same time. My vision is definitely better and I went back for a quick checkup today and they were amazed at how well my cornea had slotted back together. I have another checkup in a week and then a month which means I'll be spending more time in Colombia, which is perfectly fine by me. The bummer is that I have to wait 2 months before I can go diving again, which messes up my plans for diving in the Galapagos Islands, but maybe I'll pop down to Peru and then back up into Ecuador when my eyes are ready.

On a sadder note, my USB key is definitely dead which means that, with my iPod gone, I've lost all of the work I did on my game, not to mention my rivetting tales from Cartagena and Medellin, but, well... life goes on. I was going to rewrite the game in C++ anyways and I pretty much summed up Cartagena and Medellin in the earlier post.

Luego!

Wish Me Luck!

2006-06-28T07:37:00.000+10:00

Tomorrow a bunch of strangers who I barely understand are going to cut through my cornea, peel it back and use a "laser" to change the shape of my eye... What fun!

Hopefully I'll be able to complete the rest of my trip sin glasses and won't have to return home to start training with a guide dog.

A Quick Update From Bogotá

2006-06-25T05:16:00.000+10:00

Things have been pretty busy since I left Santa Marta, and I've done a proper blog entry, but it's on my USB key which I don't have with me right now and may or may not be working due to the wonders of static electricity.

After Santa Marta I visited Cartagena which was beautiful, then Medellin where I went paragliding and am now in Bogotá, which I absolutely love. I'm staying with a Columbian guy I met during the Ciudad Perdida hike and he's been great at showing me around and introducing me to his friends. Last weekend and this weekend have been long weekends so there have been plenty of parties, but we haven't been limiting ourselves to weekends, with our best effort lasting from Wednesday to Friday morning. We of course went out last night (Friday), this time to a Brasilian party complete with live Samba, which was amazing and enforced the yearning in my heart to return to Brasil. We're understandabley tired, so I'm looking forward to resting a bit next week.

Next week will definitely be more relaxed as I'm having LASIK surgery on Wednesday. The place I'm going, Optilaser, is nice and clean, the staff and doctors really professional and I'm looking forward to the operation. This time next week I'll either be seeing fine without glasses or blind, so if there aren't any updates after Wednesday you'll know why.

¡Luego!

New Photos!

2006-06-11T05:54:00.000+10:00

Amigos y Sunset
Originally uploaded by Phil Chan.

Here in Cartagena I finally have access to some real internet, so I've been able to upload photos from the last month, including Maracaibo, Ciudad Perdida, Parque Nacional Tayrona and Taganga.

This link takes you there.

Enjoy!

Remeber The Time...

2006-06-09T02:29:00.000+10:00

Today is my last day in Taganga after 3 great weeks. Everyone else left a couple of days ago… with the exception for Gabby, who tried to leave but keeps finding reasons to stay. I’m off for Cartagena, up near Panama, for the start of the World Cup and a mud bath in a volcano before heading down to Bogota via Medellin.

I’ve been doing lots of diving here, and finished the PADI Advanced Open Water course yesterday, which included diving at night, diving to a sunken cocaine traffiking ship (I am in Columbia after all) and getting down to 30 metres where we saw incredible “fish highways” and a baracuda. I think I’ve got the fever and as well as diving in the Galapagos Islands, am thinking about diving in the Barrier Reef over Christmas and Antarctica in November… though Antarctica might be a little too crazy.

The last few weeks have been full of fun mad-capped adventures, so I thought I’d share a couple here, like…

Remember the time… we all got really drunk on rum and fruit cocktails at Parque Nacional Tayrona, went skinny dipping and Gabby lost his glasses to the sea? Sure we searched drunk and ineffective for them for a half hour, but… well, I think there is a fish wearing my thongs and his glasses somewhere having a great old time.

Or remember the time… Verena was sleeping, felt something crawling in her hair, flicked it out, got bitten by it… and then found out it was a scorpion? Ah yeah, those were good times. Gabby and I lept into action of course, catching it and getting ready to take her to the hospital. Somehow we lost Gabby on the way down to get a taxi but we made it ok. Waiting for the taxi, sitting alone on the beach in Taganga, bathed in moonlight with the stars shinning, Verena and I started laughing, realising this was the most romantic setting either of us had been in for a while… despite the fact her arm was going numb and I was sitting with a boxed scorpion. By the way, Verena ended up being fine.

Yeah, remember the time that Gabby and I went to get his new glasses (see above) adjusted at the optometrist? We were, as usual, running a little late, so the optometrist was closed but they opened up for us since the optometrist and receptionist, Cristal del Mar, are completely in love with Gabby. We ended up drinking a few beers with them and having a great time getting the plans in place for Gabby and a blushing Cristal del Mar’s wedding the following day. Odd that he’s still here isn’t it.

There have been loads of great times in the last few weeks, before that in Maracaibo and before that too, so today I look forward to many more as I finally break the spell of Taganga and hit the road.

Hasta Luego!

The Life Aquatic

2006-06-04T07:58:00.000+10:00

The diving course has started and we’re done our first two real dives on a coral reef , in 12 metres of water in the Parque Nacional Tayrona. Needless to say, it was absolutely amazing down there. We saw about 8 Morey Eels, a weird lobstery crab thing, huge "brain" corals and thousands of fish. It really is another world down there, and my first steps into it have been incredible. Breathing with the scuba gear is a lot easier than I thought it would be and it's really relaxing swimming around checking out the world below. The instructors are great as well, and if you’re ever in Taganga, Columbia I highly recommend checking out the Poseidon Dive Centre.

Life hasn’t all been diving though. We've still got the apartment and continue to have a great time together. Jenn left yesterday though and the others are leaving on Monday or Tuesday for home or other countries while I stay a few more days and do the advanced dive course, so I can dive in the Galapagos Islands. It’s been great hanging out with these guys, so it will be sad to see them leave.

I’ll be leaving the day after I finish the course for Cartagena, a busy colonial city in the north which is supposed to be breathtakingly beautiful, before heading to Bogotá for eye surgery and to hangout with a local guy I met on the Ciudad Perdida hike.

Everyone I’ve met during my travels who has visited Columbia raves on about it, and so far they are spot on with how great it is here. If anyone is traveling in South America I heartily recommend coming here, you’ll love it… and Venezuela too... definitely go there :)

Parque Nacional Tayrona

2006-05-31T11:00:00.000+10:00

After six hard days hiking to Ciudad Perdida, 8 of our group decided to head to the beach for a few days to relax. We picked up 2 more on the way and after a frantic morning buying snacks, water and a lot of rum, we headed a half hour of of Santa Marta to Parque Nacional Tayrona, which has heaps of great, tropical beaches on the Caribbean. We hiked for about an hour to the last camp site, rented some hammocks and got down to the serious business of doing absolutely nothing!

We spent the next five days checking out the different beaches, swimming, reading, drinking, playing Plümp and getting some serious tans. I don't think I've been this dark since I lived in Saudi Arabia, and there's still plenty more beach time to be had.

With heavy hearts and light wallets, we headed back to Santa Marta and Taganga, where 6 of us, Jenn (US), Charlotte (UK), Verena (Italia), Gabby (Switzerland), Nev (Au) and I (Au too), hired an awesome villa with a great balcony overlooking the bay. Today Gabby, and American guy we met in Tayrona and I signed up for an open water diving course, and Jenn for her advanced, so I have the feeling we'll become some of “those people” who stay here for weeks on end.

My plans have continued to change, and since I'm not going to Central America anymore, I'm going to check out Cartagena for a few days before heading down to Bogotá and eye salvation. If for some reason there's a problem with getting the operation, I can console myself in the fact that it only costs US$35 for an eye exam, frames and lenses here.

Ciudad Perdida

2006-05-31T10:59:00.000+10:00

It turns out writing these things is a lot harder after the fact, so this will be a bit short.

The trek to Ciudad Perdida, The Lost City, started with a great surprise which was that the irrepressible Jenny Weiss, who I met on the 2nd day of my trip and who started hers on the same day, was going as well. She was the first of many great people in the group, many of whom I'm still with, but that's the next story.

The first and second days were spent marching towards the city up and down through the hills of Columbia in country controlled by the para-military who, along with the military, protect the 100 or so cocaine factories and a lot of coca and marijuana plantations in the area.

On the morning of the second day we visited one of the bigger cocaine factories, which was more or less a shack in the middle of the jungle, where an old man with a croaky voice who loves to pose for photos described the process to us. It takes 100 kilograms of coca leaves to produce just under 1 kilogram of pure cocaine and all of the process, except for the last step, is performed in the small jungle labs. The process involves lots of nasty household chemicals that, ironically, seem to get added in at the end as well, bicarb of soda, Ajax, along with petrol... lots of petrol, and acids. The last step is to neutralise the acid using acetone, but because acetone is highly explosive they do it in more secure locations. Secure because they're worried about guerrilla snipers firing at the acetone and blowing up the labs... yeah, life is a little different here. Another nice touch was that our cocaine factory tour guide is wanted by the police but was totally relaxed and calm. The para-military and the military work with the government and cartels to make sure everyone is happy, and rich, here.

We were supposed to visit an Indian village, descendants of the original inhabitants of Ciudad Perdida, but we got caught in a downpour that lasted a few hours, so we sped ahead to the camp. We arrived soaked and ready to jump into our hammocks, but managed to stay up a few hours entertained by a series of very intense chess matches between two Israeli guys who were far to good to play against.

We started early the next day, crossing chest high rivers, well one river eight times, with our packs on our shoulders and holding on to ropes for dear life, climbing across slick jungle rocks, drinking from waterfalls and generally having a great time. The best part was still to come though, and we had a quick jog up 2000 small, slippery stairs to the actual city. The city was built by the Cobi people to hide from the Spanish during their conquest and was “discovered” in the 70's by 2 guys who pillaged the city, taking nearly all of the gold and other valuables. They were smart though and cataloged everything, showed their photos to the government in Bogotá and were hired to excavate the site. Somewhere along the line one of them was killed and the other spent all his money on women and wine, but the city has been restored very nicely. None of the buildings remain, only their foundations, but you get a great feel for how the city was laid out. Hidden away in the mountains, my imagination was running wild with what life was like in the city during it's heyday.

We spend two nights in the city and I introduced the group to my favourite card game, Plümp. Several of the group became addicted as I am and we played a lot. In fact, we're still playing.

On the way back we visited the village that we skipped on the way up, meeting some of the villagers and giving them some supplies for the school. One more night in the hammocks greeted us at camp and the next day were returned to Santa Marta, planning our next trip... Parque Naciaonal Tayrona.

Quick update

2006-05-25T23:09:00.000+10:00

Ok, just a quick one.

The hike to Ciudad Perdida was great! The city itself is amazing with an almost unreal atmosphere. It would have been amazing to see this city, perched in the mountains in it's glory days. The guide, Rodrigo, was really cool and the group was great too. There were 14 of us in total and 7 of us are leaving today to spend a few days on some tropical beaches in nearby Parque Nacional Tyrona.

I've realised that my stress about not having enough time can b e partially solved by cutting Central America out, so I'm going to give it a miss this time around, since 2 months for all of Central America certainly isn't enough time, and spend the time in Columbia. There are some interesting opportunities here in Columbia that I'll scribble about when I know more, but it could be pretty fun.

I'll do a full write up of the hike, the city, the cocaine factory that we visited plus the hard days sitting in the sun on the beach when we get back.

Tours By William

2006-05-19T10:29:00.000+10:00

William, the guy I stayed with in Maracaibo and all-round great guy, who is studying tourism at the moment, is getting a tourism company started, running tours to different places around Maracaibo. If you want to see some of the most incredible scenery in Venezuela and experience life with locals, I highly recommend getting in contact with him.

His email is williamra76@hotmail.com, just fire him and email and he'll let you know about the different places he can take you.

You can ping me as well for hearty recommendations.

¡Hasta Luego Venezuela, Hola Colombia!

2006-05-19T10:24:00.000+10:00

Venezuela is an interesting place. It's a country where petrol costs 5 cents per litre, where they actively try to stick it to the US and travelers avoid like the plague due to it's reputation as the most dangerous country in South America. It's president, Hugo Chavez, has a weekly talk back show and seems driven by Simon Bolivar's dream of a united Americas. Something that would be far less interesting if Venezuela didn't have one of the World's largest oil reserves. This is the first place I've been where all of the graffiti is pro-government, with “Viva Chavez” plastered everywhere. There are huge problems though, with high levels of unemployment and an increasingly dissatisfied middle class. That said, with the shift to the left here and in the rest of South America, it will be very interesting to see what happens in this part of the World over the next 20 years.

One thing that I love about Venezuela is the food, especially their huge savory bananas called Plantas, which they have with just about every meal. My favourite way of eating these is in Patacone, which is like a hamburger, but instead of a bun you have plantas that have been squashed together and deep fried. Served around shredded pork, avocado and cheese, they are the perfect lunch or dinner. The cheese is great as well. It's white and a bit salty like halumi... and it makes a very satisfying squeak when you eat it.

The other thing I love is the people, which I think I've said that 1000 times now. I was incredibly lucky with everyone I met there, particularly the guys from Maracaibo. My last days were spent drinking huge amounts, taking heaps of photos and spending time with some of the best people I've ever met. Being with them I had one of my first moments of homesickness when, after watching a movie, Lisbette, Gabby, Dixie and Alberto were bagging out William with all of us laughing. Seeing a movie and giving someone a hard time, was such a normal night, like one I would have in Sydney that I realised it was the first time I'd been with a group of good friends since I left home and probably the only time I will be until I go home. I'm having the time of my life, have met and traveled with some great people, but the “Hi, where you From? Where you been? Where you going?” backpack chitchat gets old pretty quick. In fact, I had such a good time in Maracaibo that I'm thinking about going back after Central America, though I'm not sure if I'll be able to fit it in. One year really isn't enough time for a trip like this and there's still the west coast of South America and Argentina to see.

Sunday was Mother's Day here as well as in Australia and I was lucky enough to spend it with William's family. I had a great day drinking, chatting, dancing and being interrogated by his nieces. The music was salsa for the most part, but there were some fine reggaeton moments. Despite my best efforts, I was shown up by William's cousin Nelson, who dropped it lower than any man has dropped it before - truly amazing.

Sad as I am to leave Maracaibo, I think I spent the perfect amount of time there and am ready for my next round of misadventures. Yesterday I arrived in Columbia and so far it seems great. I'm staying near Santa Marta in a little town called Taganga, which is on a bay on the Carribean. When I arrived I bumped into Tamir, one of the Israeli guys I traveled with in the Amazon and we are now checked into a great posada on a hill overlooking the bay and town.

Unlike Venezuela, Santa Marta is full of tourists and it's a real shock to see so many of them. I'm going to try my best to get where there aren't many tourists, but I'm not sure how easy that will be.

From here I'll do Ciudad Perdida, then get down to Bogotá to get my eyes done before heading up to Cartagena and Central America. A friend from Maracaibo's dad is from Bogotá and I'm going to stay with his grandma which will be great.

The internet here is far to slow to upload pictures from Maracaibo, so I'll probably have to wait until Bogotá to do it.

Today I organised my trip to Ciudad Perdida, and leave tomorrow for a week so... hasta luego.

Maracaibo, Mountains and Merry Making

2006-05-11T05:54:00.000+10:00

Townsfolk
Originally uploaded by Phil Chan.

I’m still having a great time here in Maracaibo hanging out with people here, doing some hiking and speaking Spanish, but my time here is drawing to an end and I’ve been getting ready to head into Columbia.

Over the weekend William and I headed north, near the border with Columbia for three days hiking in the mountains of Parque Nacional Pedija, visiting two indigenous towns up there. We headed off on Saturday afternoon, travelling a few hours by car, bus and on the roof of a jeep to the park. We were planning to hike for a 7 hours that night to the first town, but we decided to camp for the night when we could hear a river we had to cross, which is normally only a foot deep, 20 minutes up the mountain.

It turned out we made the right decision and when we arrived at the river the next morning it was still running strong. William got in to see how strong it really was, but it was above his waist and, even with a rope tying him to the shore, to strong to chance. We waited awhile for a local to help us across, but eventually decided to head back to Maracaibo. Defeated by the river, we drowned our sorrows (we weren’t really that sad) with some very drunk locals who were great fun to chat with, even though one of them kept bugging me about being American and asking why I wasn’t a Chavista (pro-Chaves). Somewhere between the 8th beer and explaining that I did like Chaves they were calling me by my Chinese name and inviting us back to stay with them. We gave them some food and old clothes and they gave us some necklaces, handmade hats and avocados, which in addition to coffee is their major crop, and we headed home, spending a couple of hours sleeping on the floor of a crammed bus.

I’ve pretty much only been speaking Spanish since I got here, and I think I’ve improved a lot, though there is still a long way to go. In fact, after a few beers I’ve been forgetting how to speak English, which wouldn’t be so bad if I could speak Spanish, but everyone here is being very patient with me :)

I’m thinking about coming back to Maracaibo after I go to Central America, but I’ll have to see how things go. I definitely feel time slipping away and will have to drop some things off the list to do. Unfortunately waking up on Monday morning for the 4:30AM bus to Santa Marta isn’t one of them.

Hot as Hell and Rich with Oil...

2006-05-04T03:42:00.000+10:00

On Isla de Zapara
Originally uploaded by Phil Chan.

“I’m in a car that keeps breaking down, driving through the countryside in Venezuela, I barely speak the language, I don’t know where I’m staying tonight… and I’m having the time of my life.”

That was what I thought as the car I took from Mérida to Maracaibo broke down for the 4th time during our 8 hour trip. I have ended up staying with William, a Venezuelan guy I went camping with in Mérida, and have been having a great time in Maracaibo. Lonely Planet describes Maracaibo as “Hot as Hell and rich in oil”, before blasting the city as boring and to be avoided. They’re definitely right about the first part, but for me, Maracaibo has been a great city and I’m having an awesome time here.

The first night here we checked out a nice little club called Rasta Bar, oddly enough a Reggae bar, where we met up with Lisbette, Gabby and Dixie, who I also met in Mérida, then headed to another of their friends birthday party, complete with live Salsa and Meringue band.

Over the weekend about 30 of us went camping on Isla de Zapara, which is a small fishing community near Maracaibo. The island is on Lake Maracaibo, which is the largest in South America, containing nearly all of the oil in Venezuela. We drank, swam, ate, drank more… then a bit more and had a great time on the Island. It was the first time I’d gone in the surf since Itacaré, and it felt great. I’m not a massive beach person, but there’s something about being carried by the surf and tasting the salt water that makes me smile.

We headed back to Maracaibo on Monday and are going camping again this weekend in some mountains north of Venezuela near the Columbian border. This week I’ve been looking around the city and getting ready to go to Columbia next week.

Venezuela is an amazing country that I’ve only scratched the surface of, and I’m sad to be leaving, but it will be great to get into Columbia, hit some beaches and do more trekking. My first stop is a town called Santa Marta where I’ll do a 6 day hike to Ciudad Perdida, the Lost City… though personally I find it strange that it’s called the “Lost City” when it clearly isn’t.

More Fun and Games

2006-04-24T02:28:00.000+10:00

I started this week by donning a wetsuit and stackhat and abseiling down 5, 10 and 15 metre waterfalls in the mountains around Mérida. My first time canyoning was an absolute blast and I’ll definitely be doing it again. Having spent too much time lately with one foot in a river, it was refreshing to take ownership of my “river problem” and boldly walk through the rivers, soaked to the bone and loving every minute.

We walked through some amazing little bits of jungle, but didn’t have time to take much notice of it between jumping into pools, sliding down rocks and the intermittent whistle blasts from our guide… which became the funniest part of the day.

I was feeling a little lethargic this week, so only spent a day and a half on Elevation, but it has progressed pretty well and I’ve been playing it a bit. It’s a little harder than I anticipated, so there’s definitely some tweaking to do. I’ve also realized that combos, which will give satisfaction bonuses, are desperately needed to make the game more fun and have less of a random feel. All the time spent playing card cards on various boats and in various jungles has had a big impact on how I think about games, and the combos I’m thinking of are essentially a Straight, delivering 3 or more people to consecutive floors, or Triples or Quads, 3 or 4 people to the same floor. In order to add some tactics to how combos can be planned, people will fade in when they spawn and take a while to transition between a floor and the elevator. Moving the elevator while people are transitioning will leave them on the floor. This allows you to effectively cancel a move if someone starts spawning on a different floor that you can use in a combo. The main question for me now is where to build the combo mechanism in. I could just put it into the Level class, which is currently updating the people, elevator and timers but it almost feels like there should be an Observer looking after the combos.

Mérida has been and is great, and I’ve been having a lot of fun working on the game, but I’ve been getting a little anxious here lately, I think because I’ve been here so long. I’m hoping to get the game finished in the next week and move on to Columbia on Friday but who knows, Friday is a long way away at the moment.

Luego!

Damn you Microsoft!

2006-04-20T03:22:00.000+10:00

Far too many people are on Hotmail for me to ignore it anymore, so I now have a Hotmail address... though just for IM.

philchan612 at hotmail dot com

Camping in la Parque Nacional Sierra Nevada

2006-04-18T05:27:00.000+10:00

On Friday night we, Ace, Marcus, Dror and I, met a group of really cool Venezuelan guys and girls in our posada, spent the night drinking with them and then joined them camping the next day.

We didn’t have much stuff for camping, so one of the guys, William, ran around with us getting a tents, sleeping bags, isolation mats and food, and organized a jeep to take the 9 of us 2 hours to la Parque Nacional Sierra Nevada, where we had a short hike to get to a great, quiet camping spot nestled in the mountains and next to a stream where we spent the night.

We were up around 3,500 meters so it was a little chilly but not too bad. There was thick fog on our way up which gave a dreamy feel to the land, added to by little babbling streams and horses grazing in the rolling hills. Given my track record I was a little nervous about slipping in a stream, but luckily there were no incidences for me.

On the way up William gave us the run down on the plants and mountains. Once we’d setup camp, our resident chief, Ace, took care of dinner. After dinner the sky cleared to a perfect night, lit by a moon so full that you didn’t need a torch.

The clear sky lasted until the morning, and we were greeted by incredible views of the fields, streams, lagoon, waterfalls and mountains around the camp. We went on a quick walk into the mountains during which the fog came back in and within 30 minutes visibility was reduced to 10 or 20 meters.

We had a quick breakfast and walked to the main road to get buses to our respective destinations; Ace, Marcus, Dror and I to Mérida; William, Poncho, Dixie, Gabby and Lisbette to Maracaibo.

It was sad to say goodbye, but I’m going to stop off and spend a little time in Maracaibo on my way to Columbia to visit them which will be great, they’re some of the friendliest and coolest people since I’ve been out here.

Fun and Games in Mérida

2006-04-18T05:09:00.000+10:00

It’s been a while since an update, but I’ve been having a great time in Mérida. I came down with a bit of a cold for the first couple of days, but a few extra hours sleep each day got me through it.

Last week was Easter holidays and Mérida is a popular destination for Venezuelans, so the town was packed but, because of Easter, bars and a lot of businesses were closed. Ace and I were unable to find a cheap apartment in a good area, and computer rental is impossible to come by, so I’ve been spending a lot of time in an internet café and we’re still in the posada, which has been cool.

The main thing I’ve been doing in Mérida is working on my game. So far I’ve been spending 8 to 9 hours on it a day and it’s been going really well. I’ve gone with Java, using some SDL bindings for the graphics, input, timer and audio. I’ve got a USB key with Eclipse and all the other tools I need on it, so it’s been really easy to work from the internet café. It would be nice to have Subversion running as well, but I’ve been backing up the code onto my iPod at the end of each day in case I do something stupid.

The graphics have been a bit of a problem, but I had one of Hans’ famous brain farts as I was writing this and it’s ok now. The game is 2D, so the graphics are very simple, but I don’t have Photoshop with me so I’m using GIMP… which I really don’t like but that’s another story, and yes I could use GIMPShop but for some reason every time I try to download it the Win32 binaries are incomplete, so the download fails. Anyway, GIMP has, I think, a defect where when I try to save an image in native GIMP format it looks for a font, which is dumb as I don’t even have any text in the image, can’t find it because the font isn’t installed and then falls back to another font which isn’t installed either. GIMP then aborts the save and exits, so I haven’t been able to save anything from GIMP. Instead I’ve been working in GIMP then taking a screen capture and cropping it in MS Paint, which has to be the clumsiest graphics program ever written. Writing this it occurred to me that I should try and save the image in a different format. Luckily GIMP supports Photoshop format files, so layers are maintained, and saving works perfectly… yah!

The game I’m working on is about as simple an idea as you can get, but will hopefully be fun. The working title is ‘Elevator Game’, though I’m toying with ‘Elevation’ at the name.

I’m far from a nerd but I’ve always been intrigued by elevators and how they could benefit from some learning algorithms to know peak times for different floors in order to provide better service during those times. Writing an elevator simulator would be fun but a little dry, so in this game you control the elevator for a building and have to get people to the floor they want. Waiting for an elevator is always frustrating so the longer it takes you to deliver someone to their floor, the lower their satisfaction with your service and the lower your score. So the idea is basically to get people in the building to the floor they want to go to as quickly as possible in order to get a good score and go on to the next level. I think of it like a real time version of The Traveling Salesman Problem where the cost of each arc in the graph changes with time.

I’ve taken the Module architecture that I’ve used in previous games and expanded it to use this Game State model that Kenny used in a prototype for a game we started working on before things got insane with work. There’s a UI system in sdlJava that I was hoping to use, but for some reason it’s bound to the OpenGL bindings in sdlJava, basically you need to pass a GL context into widget creation, which I don’t have… and seems kinda dumb to me, so I wrote a simple UI framework to drive the menus and game states. This type of dynamic, event driven system is so much easier to write in Java than C++. After only a few hours everything was up and running perfectly.

After 3 days of work, the basic mechanics of the game are in place. Navigating through menus you get to the main game module, where you can move the elevator up and down in the building and if there is room in the elevator people get in. When the elevator stops at a floor that someone wants to go to, the people get out. Next up is to add the satisfaction mechanics, new graphics, music (elevator muzak of course), lots of polish and, depending on time, incorporate the combo system from v2 of the game – even I know moving a box up and down is a bit boring.

Of course, there’s some RealLife to get in as well, I’ve been neglecting my Spanish study, spent a couple of days camping, and tomorrow we’re planning to go canyoning.

Mérida... Finally

2006-04-10T03:32:00.000+10:00

It was a little harder to get to Mérida than I expected, but I'm finally here and feeling more than a little excited.

First, Masa and I had a lot of problems getting a bus from Valencia, a connection on our way from Ciudad Bolivar, to Mérida, so much troube in fact that Masa decided to skip Mérida and go straight to Columbia. I spent the night in Valencia, enjoyed cable TV watching 3 hours of The Batman on Cartoon Network, and went to the movies, to see Firewall, before getting a bus here last night. About 30 minutes after the bus was meant to leave, the conductor told us that the bus wasn't going to Mérida that night for some reason I still can't fathom... I thought it was because there weren't enough people going to Mérida, strange since every bus was full the night before, but nearly the whole bus came to Mérida, so the reason will be an eternal mystery to me.

Anyway, I was hoping to met a Japanese guy called Ace who I met in Bèlem when I got here, but didn't have his email address. Luckily, as I was walking into the dorm to drop off my backs, he walked out :) He's going to spend the month here taking Spanish lessons, hitting the gym and learning Salsa, to which I'll add writing a computer game and talking to people at the university and we're pretty much doing the same thing. Since we're so long, we might share an apartment together, but we'll have a look tomorrow and see how much they cost.

I've been so excited about coming to Mérida for so long that I expected my dreams of a relaxed creative academic paradise set in the Andes to be dashed when I got here, but so far it's perfect. The weather was supposed to be crap, but it's beautiful and sunny today. The cable car to Pico Bolivar, the highest peak in Venezuela, was supposed to be out, but it's working perfectly. I'm sure the rain and cold will come sooner or later, maybe later today, but it wont be so bad if I'm inside working anyway.

I was talking to my big(gest) sister, Vanessa, the other day and she asked me if I'd found anywhere I would like to run away to. I said no, but in the back of my mind I was wondering if Mérida would be the place. So far, it looks like it could be. True, I've only been here for 4 hours, but I'm prone to strongly emotive comments when I'm happy, which I definitely am at the moment.

Could I be in trouble here?

Happily,
p.

Ciudad Bolivar

2006-04-07T03:07:00.000+10:00

It's taken a few days, but I've finally recovered from Mt. Roraima and am in a great little city called Ciudad Bolivar with the 4 Japanese guys at the moment. Tonight we part ways as Masa and I go to Mérida and the others go to Caracas.

I'm going to spend a few weeks in Mérida taking more Spanish classes and writing a game that I started working on before I left Sydney. It's only a little one, so it shouldn't take too long... though those are famous last words aren't they.

Hopefully I'll be able to rent an apartment in Mérida to get some peace and quiet and might even try to rent a computer as well, otherwise I'll be spending a lot of time in internet cafes.

It might seem a little odd to take a holiday from my holiday, but I've been getting pretty excited about doing something nerdy again. I'm even going to start a new blog to document the development. It will, of course, pollute this one with nerdy stuff, but I'm sure there is someway to filter out the computer talk :)

After Mérida I'll be heading into Columbia, which I am incredibley excited about. Everyone I've spoken to about it raves about the country and people, and I'm even going to spoilt myself and get laser eye surgery there. Cali is supposed to be a popular destination for the procedure, along with Sao Paulo, Brasil. It's supposed to be cheap and reliable there, and the thought of seeing properly again without glasses makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Luego.

Mt Roraima - The Descent

2006-04-03T03:03:00.000+10:00

Team Roraima - Before the Descent
Originally uploaded by Phil Chan.

Today’s walk down Mt Roraima to the camp where we’re spending the night didn’t turn out to be as bad as I thought it would be. In fact it was a lot of fun, tiring, but fun nonetheless.

During the walk we had a bit of rain and I, of course, slipped crossing a river and ended up with another wet foot. I slipped crossing a river on the second day as well, so between these two and stumbling into the creek in the Amazon, I think I’m on my way to putting my foot in every river in South America.

We also walked past a small fire that started when a local hunter threw away his cigarette butt. The fire had burnt a few hills and we passed within about 6 meters of the flames. The fire fighters were out there with a helicopter and buzzed us a couple of times which was kinda cool.

The fire plus the dry heat, shrubby grasses, rocks and insects remind me a lot of the bush in Australia, especially out near Condobolin. It really is beautiful here, but I’m looking forward to getting back to town tomorrow. The thought of a hot shower and clean clothes is becoming increasingly appealing… though in reality they’ve always been appealing.

Sunset on Day 4

2006-04-02T03:01:00.000+10:00

Sunset on Day 4 - 1
Originally uploaded by Phil Chan.

Sitting here at the camp, I have, and am, being treated to an absolutely amazing view as the sun sets behind Kukenàn directly in front of me,

As the sun sets though, the clouds and the cold roll in. Yeah, tonight’s going to be a chilly one.

Mt. Roraima - Day 4

2006-04-02T03:00:00.000+10:00

Clouds Wash Over Kukenan
Originally uploaded by Phil Chan.

Last night was cold, C-O-L-D, but I think I have a good strategy for tonight, which involves wrapping a shirt around my head, two pair of socks on my feet and one pair on my hands.

Today we wandered around the top of Mt Roraima, stopping for some amazing fresh spring water, probably the best tasting water I’ve ever had, before checking out some crystals and visiting “La Ventana”, a window formed by some huge rocks where you can see a long, long way down.

The highlight of the day though was the landscape between each of these points. The top of the mountain looks like a set from a sci-fi movie; black blasted rocks are cast everywhere, surrounded by prehistoric looking plants and small ponds with sandy tracks navigating them.

The area around Roraima is also phenomenal, and we’re treated to one amazing view of Kukenàn and La Gran Sabana after another, when the clouds don’t block the view that is. At this height we’re above the clouds, so looking out sometimes all you can see is a sea of clouds, at night the clouds wash over the mountain drowning us in fog. I always wondered what it would be like inside a cloud, and now I know… it’s cold and it’s wet.

Before lunch we visited the “jacuzi”, which was a series of ponds filled with freezing water. I took a little dip and felt great, after which we walked through still more incredible scenery.

After a lazy lunch we walked to the highest point of Roraima which is 2810 metres above sea level. We had a little taste of La Gran Sabana and Kukenàn, but clouds once again enveloped us. The way the clouds rolled up over the mountain where we were sitting was amazing. It was as if they were playing around us, leaping up over edge, washing over the rocks, then springing up and dancing off over other rocks.

I’ve definitely been going camera crazy this trip, between the Amazon and Roraima I’ve easily taken over one thousand photos, though I wouldn’t say there are that many good ones  As much as anything, the photos make great reference material for my story, which after a long time stagnating it the back of my mind has been revealing itself more and more with every place I go. It’s practically writing itself at the moment, with many of the environments being places I’ve visited in South America.

On a more serious and troubling note, I have become far too comfortable, far too quickly with the hat, which some could say is in the “Cowboy” style, that I bought for this trip. I even had a nap with it covering my face today... truly scary.

Roraima Days 2 and 3 – The Ascent

2006-04-01T03:59:00.000+11:00

Before La Rampa
Originally uploaded by Phil Chan.

The last 2 days have been the most physically exhausting of my life and the only word I can think of to describe how I feel is “aghh”.

Over the 2 days we’ve walked about 25kms with 15kg backpacks, which isn’t that much until you carry it all day… uphill. The only thing missing to make this a true “When I was your age…” story was the snow.

Having never hiked before I wasn’t sure what to expect, but the rolling hills and desolate trails that make this land so beautiful have completely exhausted me to the point where I went from being happy to have time with my own thoughts, spec’ing out version 2 of the game I’m going to work on in Mèrida and fleshing out the book/cartoon that I’ve been quietly working on for the last few years, to the point where it was all I could do to place one foot in front of the other without tripping on the loose rocks of the “trail”.

Today, day 3, I woke with a feeling of dread. The walk ahead wasn’t as long as the second day, but it was a lot harder. We had to literally climb up to the top of the mountain.

During the walk we crossed streams, lunched near a waterfall, climbed through jungle and then met… La Rampa, a 45 degree slope of loose rocks. I don’t think I can describe the climb in anyway that does it justice or convey what I really felt, fear, exhilaration and pure disbelief at the majesty of nature, but I took a few photos to help tell the story. Had I known how difficult the climb would be I’m not sure that I would have done it, but reaching the top and seeing the entire Gran Sabana stretched out below, the tepui Kukenàn to our right and the otherworldly surface of Roraima ahead of us made every single step worth it.

The next two days will be spent exploring the top and, no doubt, taking lots of photos. I’m dreading the trip back down, but that’s two days away, so I’ll worry about it then.

La Gran Sabana

2006-03-30T03:50:00.000+11:00

Waterfall in La Gran Sabana

Today I set out with four Japanese guys on the first real outdoor activity of my holiday, 6 days climbing Mt Roraima, the largest of Venezuela’s tepuis, or tabletop mountains.

We started the trip with a day long visit to La Gran Sabana, the area that Roraima and several other tepuis are in. After a couple of hours in a four wheel drive with our guide Richardo, we arrived at a clearing where we could walk down into a valley where we ventured through some jungle to a beautiful waterfall where we swam in the cold waters and enjoyed an amazing view.

After the waterfall we discarded our clothes and, wearing only swimmers and socks, walked through a hip high river to a smaller waterfall, about 6 metres high. We then climbed the waterfall, the socks helping with our grip as we walked over the slippery surface of the waterfall. Being my first experience actually in a waterfall, I was totally overwhelmed. Seeing the huge waterfalls at Iguazu was one thing, but walking through one, even a little one like this was a great feeling.

Walking through these creeks reminded me a lot of growing up in Wahroonga, playing in the bush near our house, where there was a waterfall that I always loved. Craig and I would ride our bikes down and run around in the bush, chase lizards, collect tadpoles and do the stuff that kids are supposed to do. Of course, the Sydney to Newcastle freeway runs through that particular piece of bushland nowadays, so I imagine things are a little different for kids there now.

After a lot more driving and a couple more stops, we came to the highlight of the day. Walking up the first waterfall was cool, but we now came to a waterfall that was like a little Niagara Falls, about 30 metres wide and 5 or 6 high. We once again got into our swimmers and socks and this time walked behind the sheet of water forming the waterfall… and there was a lot of water. Holding hands to make sure none of us were washed off with the river, we walked around the right side of the waterfall, the water pounding down on us as we moved behind it. There were childlike smiles all around as we got a third of the way across. That’s when Richardo told us we had to get down and crawl through a little passage in half a foot of water to continue. I think my smile got a little bigger when I heard that and I did a military style crawl (just for you Kenny), water splashing into my face and my legs slipping in the dark on the slick rocks. We finally made it to the left side of the waterfall, but not before linking arms again to walk though the main section, where I went blind from all the water crashing down on me. Once we came out of the waterfall, we floated with the current for a little while then made out way back through the waterfall and too the truck.

An hour later we were at the first camp site in the little Indian village of Paraitepui. Approaching the town there were little mud and straw houses and fires burning in the fields to clear them for new crops. As night fell it revealed one of the most beautiful places I have been, the Milky Way stretched out above us and fireflies danced in the fiends around us giving the village a magical feel.

We made camp, ate some dinner and got ready for the following days with an early night.

These early nights really are becoming an unexpected habit.

Not Indecisive... Dynamic

2006-03-28T10:42:00.000+11:00

Well, plans really are meant to be changed. After swearing off the outdoors for a while I’ve decided to do the Mt Roriama hike after all. There were some Japanese guys on my bus to Venezuela that I’d met in Belèm and the mountain really does look amazing, so we’re going to do a 6 day hike on Wednesday.

So far Venezuela is great and I’m thoroughly enjoying speaking Spanish again.

Life in the Jungle - Day 5

2006-03-27T06:27:00.000+11:00

Last Amazon Sunset
Originally uploaded by Phil Chan.

I woke a bit before sunrise to the most amazing sounds I have ever heard, howler monkeys greeting the morning... I have absolutely no idea how to describe it, but luckily Richard, a Swedish guy we camped with, made a recording of it.

We headed back to the lodge about 11am and on the way, Rubins noticed a sloth in the trees. We stopped the canoe and went back for another look when one of the guys in the boat started yelling “Anaconda, anaconda!” There was a 2 metre anaconda making it’s way towards the sloth! Rubin and Charles, proving their mettle as true Jungle Boys, caught the anaconda to take back to the lodge, then nabbed the sloth for more show and tell.

When we got back to the lodge the guides played a great practical joke on the one armed manager of the lodge who they asked to open the bag that the anaconda was in without him knowing what was in it. He was understandablely surprised to see the snake in there.

I have had an incredible time in the jungle, but after 5 days here and 6 on the boat before, I’m ready to leave and head back to “civilisation”. This afternoon I’m going to book my bus ticket to Venezuela, hopefully leaving tomorrow. Enough people have warned me off Caracas that I’m going to skip it this time.

After the last couple of weeks, I’m going to skip the 6 day hike to Mount Roriama. I also decided a few weeks ago to take a little holiday from my holiday in Merida and work on a little computer game while I’m taking Spanish lessons. It should only take a couple of weeks, famous last words, and give me something to do between class and hiking.

Camping in the Jungle

2006-03-27T06:26:00.000+11:00

Jungle Camp - The After Shot
Originally uploaded by Phil Chan.

We woke at sunrise and after breakfast went for a canoe ride in the jungle near Jose’s house. The canoe was pretty leaky, so I spent most of the time emptying water out of the canoe with half a 7UP bottle.

After the canoe trip we went for a walk in the jungle around the house where we plucked some bizarre fruit that looked like an overgrown string bean off a tree and ate it... delicious!

Around 4pm we headed from the lodge back into the jungle to spend the night camping. We arrived at the campsite in the rain and had to fix up the skeleton of a shelter by adding some tarps, cutting down some palm branches to make up more of the roof and collecting firewood. Charles then cooked up some dinner for us and I stupidly walked into a creek. My shoes, socks and jeans were soaked, so I spent an hour or so toasting them on the fire to dry them out. At night, the sounds of the Amazon were phenomenal, with birds, bugs and monkeys chatting all night - we avoided the rain, making it a perfect night.

Three Days into the Jungle

2006-03-27T06:21:00.000+11:00

We woke early to see the sunrise, heading out to an open area where we had a great view of the jungle. It was overcast, so we couldn’t see the sunrise, but there were lots of grey and pink river dolphins feeding around us. The pink river dolphins are a vibrant pink and grow up to 3 metres long. Seeing them however, I could think of nothing but musk lifesavers, my first yearning for something from home.

Afterwards we went to an Indian village which is very modernised, having electricity, provided free by a huge hotel upstream, and a road to Manaus. The people sustain themselves by fishing, hunting and processing manioc, a Brasilian potato, into forofa, a flour that is put on nearly all foods over here.

Some of the guys were a bit disappointed that the village wasn’t more “authentic”, but I don’t think there would be many people living traditional ways here anymore, and they generally don’t allow visitors since they don’t have resistance to our colds and flus. There is a school in the village that teaches kids up to year 3, but after that they go to Manaus for schooling. The city provides accommodation for the kids, since traveling 2 or 3 hours each way would be too much for them - unfortunately many kids just stop school in year 3. It will be interesting to see the effects of the $100 Laptop Project in areas like this.

It started to rain on the way back to the lodge, so I got to break out the “Emergency Ponco” that had been on my desk at work for the last few years. It turned out to just be a yellow plastic bag with some holes for my arms and head, but it kept me dry.

At night we stayed with a local man, Jose, in his house. It was a very simple house and we had our earliest night yet, going to sleep a little after 8pm.

Amazon Adventures - Day 2

2006-03-27T06:20:00.000+11:00

Michael y Sloth
Originally uploaded by Phil Chan.

After a great sleep, we started out for a trek through the jungle during which we saw monekys, lost half of the group, checked out some native cures for the flu and malaria, swung from vines like tarzan and sweated a whole lot.

In the afternoon we paddled out for some sloth hunting. On our way we passed through absolutely breaktaking parts of the forest. Like most of the jungle, the water level had risen so the lower parts of the trees were submerged and the water was perfectly still so there was an awesome reflection of the trees in the water. The sky was a little overcast, so it was fairly dark under the trees, adding to the tranquil feel. After a bit of searching we found a sloth and our guide in training, Charles, climbed up the tree to bring it down. He was having a bit of trouble reaching the sloth, so he shook the tree until it feel into the water. We then moved the canoe so we could reach it and had a cool look and lesson about sloths.

Into the Jungle - Day 1

2006-03-27T06:18:00.000+11:00

Phil y Crocodillo
Originally uploaded by Phil Chan.

Our jungle adventure started early on a Tuesday morning with a visit to the Meeting of the Waters on the boat that would later take us to the Anaconda Lodge, a few hours west of Manaus. The sky was overcast, so the waters weren’t as spectacular as the first time we saw them, and we spent the rest of the journey resting on deck.

Once we got off the main branch of the Rio Negro, Michael commented that the boat trip was already worth doing, and he was right. Cruising up the narrow tributaries, hearing animal calls all around, you feel like you’re in another time, completely removed from civilisation.

Afte a quick lunch, 9 of us headed off in a motorised canoe for some piranha fishing. We’re here in the wet season, and when they say wet, they mean it. The waters have risen 15 metres, so the paths that we take through the jungle are actually above the trees. The waters have risen as high as they will this year and it’s hard to imagine how much rain is necessary to raise the water level of the entire river by that much. We stopped at a couple of spots to fish for white and black piranhas, the “nice ones” that only attack if there is blood in the water and will only grow to half a metre. Our guide, Rubins, who constantly calls us Jungle Boy or Jungle Girl, and Maartje, a Dutch girl from the Belem boat, caught one each, but I was perfectly happy to sit in a canoe in the depths of the Amazon enjoying the scenery. Rubins wasn’t sure how much of the trip he would be our guide for on account of just getting out of hospital after being bitten by a snake on the 6th day of a 9 day hike with some German tourists. He, insanely, finished the hike before heading back to Manaus for treatment. Yep, the guides out here are kind of crazy.

After dinner we headed out under a clear sky to go caiman and alligator spotting. The view of the stars was incredible, with the entire milky way spread out above us. The calls of various animals accompanied us as we went into the trees in a leaky, paddle powered canoe, brushing tree branches aside as we went deeper into the trees, Rubins holding a torch between his teeth looking for the red reflection of alligator eyes, making occasional calls to them and checking the canoe to make sure we hadn’t taken on too much water... which we had. We stopped near shore for a while and he and Bjorn bailed water out of the canoe for about 10 minutes before we were ready again. Rubins instantly walked up to the front of the canoe and snapped his hand down, pulling up a baby spotted crocodile. After passing it around for photo ops we headed back for the first of many early nights.

Manaus

2006-03-21T08:14:00.000+11:00

The trip to Manaus was long, but definitely worth it. It’s beautiful here despite the fact that the city has declined and decayed since it’s hayday in the rubber boom of the 1800’s. The city positioned itself as the Paris of the Amazon, and it certainly succeeded. The buildings here are incredible, with an amazing opera house, where we’re seeing a free performance of Brasilian music tonight, and the glass and iron-wrought markets on the dock were designed by the same guy that designed the Eiffel Tower.

A lot of the people here are of native indian descent and everyone has been really friendly, with none of the dodginess I found in other Brasilian cities. On Saturday night, looking for something to do, we chanced upon the last thing I would have expected to find in the middle of the Amazon, a gay and travestite club. We had a great time and relished the break from local music, forro. Being tired, as usually, I called it a night at 3am.

The main reason people come to Manaus though is to organise trips to the jungle. The group has been slowly thinning out as people head off on their own trips, and today I booked one with the Swiss guys and a couple of Dutch girls. We’re going for 5 days, spending 2 nights in a lodge, 1 in a native house and 1 sleeping in the jungle itself. We’ll be doing the standard jungle trip things during the days, piranha fishing, canoeing up little channels, looking for animals and taking obscene amounts of photos.

It slipped my mind that my Brasilian visa runs out soon, so I’ll have to leave for Venezuela as soon as we get back. It’s a little more rushed than I was hoping, but I think it’s time for me to leave Brasil, so not a bad thing.

Some of the gang in the Teatro de Amazonas

Day 6

2006-03-20T11:36:00.000+11:00

Rather than arriving in Manaus at 6am we learnt, through unsubstantiated rumour of course, that we’re arriving at 10am... no 4pm... 5pm. Given that noone is really sure what day it is anymore, it’s not surprising that we’re not sure when we arrive. I just hope it’s today.

Some hours later...

We finally arrived in Manaus at 4pm, passing through the Meeting of the Waters, which is where the black waters of the Rio Negro and the brown Rio Solimoes meet but don’t mix. The result is spectacular, and there were even a couple of pink river dolphins playing.

The bulk of us decided to try and stay in the same hotel so we made our way, single file and lugging backpacks through the streets of Manaus, which must have looked very funny... just like little gringo ants. We managed to find a hotel for the 17 of us for R$12 per night each.

Belém to Manaus - Day 5

2006-03-20T11:32:00.000+11:00

Sunset on the Amazon

Today we were supposed to arrive in Manaus, but apparently we’re getting in tomorrow instead. It rained most of the day, dampening people’s spirits, so the main topic of conversation was how people are sick of the boat, the boat’s rules and the boat’s music.

The ship is run like we’re in the navy or something. We get called to meals by the sound of a whistle, only 12 people at a time mind you, and while the food is better than the other ship, because everyone is waiting for you to finish... actually all 12 of you to finish, before they get called to sit down, you have to wolf the food down and I’m sure I haven’t been chewing the correct number of times before swallowing. One guy was even told to take his hat off when he sat down to eat and I’m a little surprised I haven’t been reprimanded when I only use a fork to eat.

After dinner, I was chatting to an American girl, Camellia, when a cute 4 year old Brasilian girl came up and started playing with us. Apparently we were pretty good at it because she was still there 4 hours later, fueled by lollies and Fanta that her mum was feeding her. The night finished up, as usual, with card games.

I had a rough night’s sleep with a new person next to me, or more correctly below me, who took up heaps of room so I was literally squashed and, because I was squashing other people they were shoving me all night. Being the patient and understanding person that I am, I let it slide... for a while, then started pushing back and, I’ll admit, maliciously trying to squash the woman underneath me... even though at the time I thought it was an old woman. That’s right, you heard me, I tried to squash an old woman... and then I yelled at her in Portuguese. .. ... well it was like 4am! In the morning I realised she was about 30 anyway, so I think it’s all good.

Day 4

2006-03-20T11:29:00.000+11:00

Our new ship, the Com Te Paiva III

We arrived in Santarém around 9am and changed to our new ship, which is much bigger and nicer, having 2 decks for hammocks and the top deck as a bar, blaring out the latest and greatest Brasilian pop hits. We had a few hours at dock and I spent them walking around the town with some English girls before a stressful pizza lunch being bugged by bees.

There are much more people on this leg of the trip and I’m nicely squeezed between two Brasilians with my feet in a Frenchman’s face. Despite the intimate sleeping arrangements, the boat trip has been really fun and is flying by. I have to admit, I wasn’t a fan of everyone in our group when I started, but everyone is really cool and we all get along great.

Day 3

2006-03-20T11:25:00.000+11:00

The 3rd day on the boat was far calmer and we spent a slow day traveling up river. The landscape changed a lot, with hills and marsh land replacing the lush jungle. The jungle was, of course, still amazing.

Standing on the bow of the ship I was treated to an amazing sunset today as we cruised west through a huge channel. It was quite overcast, with rain breaking in the distance to the right and a storm brewing to the left, with lightning occasionally striking. Between the two, where the sun was setting was a bit clearer, and the sky had a nice orange tone and the sky arcing above us with beautiful cloud formations. All I could see was the sky and the river, and it was one of the calmest moments I’ve ever experienced – a perfect Amazon memory.

At night we pulled into a big town for a few hours, our longest stop so far, and kicked a soccer ball around, much to the amusement of the on looking locals.

After a few whiskeys and some beers, one of the guys decided he needed a hair cut, so we headed back to the boat where the closest we could come to a pair of scissors was a machette. After sharpening it up, a couple of the guys got to work... probably not a great idea considering how drunk everyone was, but amuzing nonetheless.

Before leaving there was a bit of drama when an old lady lost her ID documents, which is a big deal in Brasil as you have to carry them at all times. She thought they’d been stolen, so the police came onboard and started searching people’s bags, but it turned out they’d just slipped between some boards. Then, much to everyone’s surprise, we found we had to switch boats the following day.

Belém to Manaus - Day 2

2006-03-20T11:15:00.000+11:00

After a 5-star breakfast of 4 crackers, I spent the day playing cards, chatting and feeling tired.

The river and jungle are absolutely amazing. In some places the river is no more than 10 metres wide and in others itÂs hard to see the other shore. Small wooden houses dot the river bank some, oddly enough, with satellite dishes. Alex knows a lot about people and their life on the river and was saying that the people here just sustain themselves growing açai and some other fruits and vegetables, and by fishing in the river. It is such a different way of life that I don't feel I can relate to it.

As the boat passes these houses, kids from them wait in their canoes for packages of biscuits or clothes that passengers throw to them. Life is so different here than for me it's hard to know whether or not to feel sad for these kids. Even if no one throws anything out to them, the kids' faces light up as they ride the waves caused by the boat in their canoes. Seeing them, I'm not convinced that our way of life is any more enlightened that theirs, or that everyone needs our way of life.

As night came to HMAS Gringo, so did the alcohol, and as happens with drunken boys, things started to get out of hand. One of the guys had the great idea to start a "fight club", which resulted in two of the loudest in our group drunk and shirtless punching one another in the common area of the boat. About half the gringos were out there as well as older Brasilian guys who were somewhere between amused and really Hassling some of the Israeli guys, who've all done 3 years military service in a war zone, to get involved was dumb enough, but then asking some of the Brasilians to join was plain stupid. It ended peacefully enough, though an American and a Brasilian ended up on the floor. I have the feeling it pushed some of the Brasilian guys who have little kids on board too far. Hopefully the guys from our group will wise up before something bad happens.

To escape the insanity I chatted with Alex some more. incrediblynreligiousy religous and is tired of "civilisation" to the point where he has decided to leave it behind to spend the rest of his life with a Christian community deep in the jungle. The religion here Catholicism Catholocism, African and tribal religions and at monthly cleansing rituals they drink halucenagenic tea while praying for 15 hours to be closer to God. We talked for a while about life, religion and the jungle and he invited me to drink the tea with him, but it's not really my cup of tea... boom tsk!

Phil's Amazon Adventure - Belém to Manaus - Day 1

2006-03-20T11:08:00.000+11:00

The day started early, running around town to buy a hammock, reserve space for the hammock on the boat and stocking up on some provisions (water, tang and biscuits). The old 2-deck river boat takes 200 people, and there are about 120 on this voyage. The top deck has a small common area with a few seats and tables out the back, the cabin up front and a whole lots of hammocks in between. There are hammocks of all colours and sizes, some big enough for couples or parents with their children. There are hammocks high and low and some people are sleeping above one another as well as right next to people... like me for instance.

There are about 25 of us from the hotel in Belém, so we make up a big chunk on the passengers. A German guy called Alex, whose hammock is under me on the boat, commented that the captain said he’d never seen some many gringos on the boat before. Having a huge group is good and bad. There are always people around to watch the bags and chat to, but there are lots of excuses not to speak Spanish or Portuguese, I managed to have a good chat with a guy from Venezuela though.

Sleeping in the hammock, a life long dream, was anything but dreamy. I didn’t get much sleep and my back was killing me when I woke up, but my first glimpse of the river when I woke up made up for it.

Belém

2006-03-13T11:37:00.000+11:00

The last couple of days in Belém have been fun, meeting people and getting a group together before heading up to Manaus. Nearly everyone in the hotel is taking tomorrow's boat, so there will be 15 or so of us enjoying the hammock lifestyle. In addition to cramming hammocks onto the deck, it turns out they stack them 3 high, so it's going to be very cosy. The trip takes 6 days, so we're all going to know one another very well by the end of it. Tomorrow we have to get to the boat at 7am to hang up our hammocks then we go back in the afternoon to depart. I'm guessing there wont be internet access on the boat (they need Tenzing!) so hopefully I wont have a nervous breakdown. Though after the last couple of days a break might be good. Internet is really cheap here, so I've been spending a couple of hours a day on it.

Today I went to the Botanical Gardens with a couple of people from the hotel including a horticulturalist, which turned the visit into a very interesting and educational one... lots of fun. The gardens have a lot of plants and animals from the Amazon region, including crocodiles, amazing parrots, monkeys and a few jaguars. There are a few animals roaming free in the gardens as well and we even saw a sloth climbing in the trees which was really cool. Hopefully we'll get to see some animals other than mosquitoes and ants on our voyage.

Catch you in a week!

Back in Salvador and into the Amazon

2006-03-11T10:48:00.000+11:00

After leaving Itacaré, I traveled back to Salvador by bus for a couple of nights before heading up to Belém at the mouth of the Amazon.

I have to say, my stay in Salvador this time was far less pleasant than last. It started fairly simple, leaving the bus station I asked a cab driver how much it was to Pelougrinho, which he said was R$15. When we got in the cab he turned on the meter, which I found a bit weird, but figured he’d meant it was around R$15, so I was fine. When we got to Pelougrinho the fair was $R13 at which point he said, “Ok, that’s R$15.” So he had basically put on the meter hoping it would be more than R$15, and charge me whichever was higher - I ended up paying R$14. Not a big deal, but annoying nonetheless.

As soon as I got out of the cab, a young guy came up and, after assuring me he was legit because he was with a capoeira school, started asking if I had accommodation… which I didn’t, but that’s beside the point. I asked him repeatedly to go away and that I was fine, but I was too tired and too hungry to really care. Obviously we ended up at a hotel where he hit me up for a tip then bugged me for more, which I ignored. Again, not a big deal, but annoying.

It was getting pretty late and I was tired so I headed out to get some food. Immediately a guy came up and tied a wish ribbon from Carnaval around my wrist and then proceeded to tell me about his hungry children and asking me to buy some milk for them. I was starting to get a bad feeling about this situation but agreed. He said the store was just on the other side of the plaza, so we started walking across it - yeah, I know, stupid. At that point an older woman who we were walking past tapped me on the arm and gave me the Brasilian no-no sign (shaking her finger) and I knew something dodgy was going on with the guy. I apologized for not being able to help and started walking back to the hotel, still hungry, with the guy asking what was going on, hassling me to buy the milk and yelling at the woman for interfering. As we got closer to the hotel, the guy got more agitated and starting to ask for money for food, at which point the woman said, “You better just buy him some food.” We went into a kilograma, which is a buffet where they weight the food, and I gave the guy R$5 for the “milk” and started to walk out. As I turned around the waiters in the kilograma went up to the guy, started saying something to him and pushed him out the door. He followed me for a little while longer, yelling that he needed more money then walked off.

By this time I was a little shaken and just wanted something to eat so I thanked the woman who had helped me out and started back into the hotel, where they was a restaurant. At that point she said, “Let’s jut sit here and talk.” We sat on a ledge in front of the hotel and straight away she started hassling me to go to a bar and buy her a drink… I’d stumbled from one scam into another. Fortunately this was the expensive kind more than the violent kind, so I said thanks but goodnight and went back into the hostel. She followed me in, but thankfully the girl at reception asked her to leave when I was clear she wasn’t with me.

Exhausted, I ended up in the hotel restaurant and had a great meal and got some sleep… phew.

It was the non-stop nature of the hassling rather than the actual events that bugged me the most. You can see how bad the situations of people here are, but, well… just leave me alone. In a way it was good, as I usually avoid bad situations by being polite, but here you really can’t do that, you have to be blunt, something I better understand now.

The next day I got out, wandered around and had a great time. I didn’t want to take my camera out with me, so I took my sketch pad instead. It’s been many years since I did anything, but I’ve had a few chances so far this trip which has been great. Here’s one of a decaying building in Pelougrinho. The others are, of course, on my Flickr page

The next day I got out, wandered around and had a great time. I didn’t want to take my camera out with me, so I took my sketch pad instead. It’s been many years since I did anything, but I’ve had a few chances so far this trip which has been great. Here’s one of a decaying building in Pelougrinho. The others are, of course, on my Flickr page.

Pelougrinho, Salvador

Today I flew up to Belém, at the mouth of the Amazon River. One second we were in the clouds, nothing but white out the window and the next, the brown waters of the Amazon lay out beneath us. I had to do a double take to realize I was actually in the Amazon. This is somewhere I’ve wanted to go since I was little and constantly read about piranhas (and tigers) in a book about predators from Hornsby library. To actually be here is… really cool.

Belém seems pretty cool so far. I did a tour of the opera house this afternoon then walked around the dock area and caught some traditional dances before heading back to the R$8 per night hotel, which has both character and characters. I’m not sure what the name of the dance was, but it was absolutely beautiful. Many of the dances displayed men and women courting and were much gentler and more graceful than other dances I’ve seen in South America so far... I’m far too cool to have teared up. Little kids were also dancing around, which is always cool.

Tomorrow I have to sort out when and how I get to Manaus. I have to decide whether I can spend 6 days in a hammock on deck crammed in with 300 other people, or if I choose the luxurious option and spend 6 days in a hammock in an air conditioned room with 3 other people. Either way I have to buy a hammock and snacks which will be fun. I also need long pants to keep to mosquitoes away.

Hasta luego!

Gone Today, Hair Tomorrow?

2006-03-08T07:55:00.000+11:00

I was sitting having quiet dinner with friends, listening to a live band play some Joe Jobim last night when all of a sudden some random little kid ran up and, making a noise similar to a lawn mower, ran his hands through my hair shouting "cero, cero". It's strange how the world has ways of telling you things (like when I wanted to type "strange" and my fingers typed "string"... oddly enough it just happened again, but when i tried to type "string", I misspelt it... twice. Yes, that's nerdy stuff :)).

So after blogging this I'm off to get it off. A number 2 to ease in and get a little colour on my cranium. It's almost like a symbolic act (admittedly cheap symbolism, but if you skwint your eyes...) since tonight is the last night with Danny and Nic as tomorrow I head up to Salvador again before Belém and the next leg of my trip, the Amazonian adventure :)

Speaking of nerdy stuff, if you're so inclined you should check out the D Programming Language and Java 7. Both look fun. It'll be interesting to see how the desktop integration in Java 7 goes. They're basically putting native calls under Swing and AWT so Java doesn't look and perform like crap for client apps. Yes, I know you can get Swing to perform well if you design your app right and know all the tricks in Swing, but you really shouldn't have to try that hard. There was also talk of versioned JARs a while back, but I'm not sure if that's in the latest plans.

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow?

2006-03-07T10:05:00.000+11:00

Ok, I have a bit of a dilemma. My hair is the longest it’s ever been and I’m quite enjoying it, but I’m not sure it’s particularly practical for traveling. I’ve been tempted for a while to shave my head again, but I’ve grown quite attached to my hair... and it to me. It’s about 2.5 years since I started growing it, after 10 years of shavedness, and I’m at the age where, well... it might not come back.

What to do, what to do...

Itacaré, Bahia, Brasil

2006-03-07T09:54:00.000+11:00

I have to admit, I’ve never been a big fan of beach holidays. There’s not much to do besides sit on the beach all day and occasionally going for a swim between eating. That’s exactly what the last few days in Itacaré have been like and I have to say, it’s absolutely perfect.

Itacaré is the quintessential beach town with a very chilled mood, lots of Bob Marley and breath taking beaches. It’s also the last stop for Hamish and Kiera, who leave tomorrow, and the scene of Danny’s 31st birthday, also tomorrow.

The days have been taken up with a quick breakfast at Mary’s Aloha café, comprising of an egg sandwich and an acai, which is an icy treat made with berries and guarana, that I usually get on fruit salad and topped with muesli. After breakfast it’s down to the beach for a swim before lunch at a great falafel place then back to the beach before a shower, surfing the net and dinner. Yeah, life’s pretty tough here.

Overlooking Praia da Tiririca

More photos from Itacaré on my Flickr page.

Life is so tough in fact that I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about my next move. My current plan is to travel to Belém at the mouth of the Amazon and spend a week on a boat to Manaus, which is about halfway up the Amazon. From there I’ll do a jungle trip, possibly taking it as far as the Venezuelan border where I will, oddly enough, cross over into Venezuela. From there it’s Angel Falls, Caracas and then a drive to Mérida, where I’ll spend a couple of weeks doing hikes and taking more Spanish classes. Of course, plans are only good for breaking, so I might change my mind completely in the next couple of days. The main problem for me at the moment is how I get to Belém. It’s about 45 hours away by bus and about AUD$500 away by plane. I would like to avoid both, but think I'll have to swallow one. It’s certainly nice that that’s the biggest problem in my life right now.

Nearly 2 months into my trip, I know that I’m not going to have long enough to do and see everything that I would like, but have been having an absolutely wonderful time. I’ve met lots of great people and seen some incredible things, both uplifting, depressing and violent. I’ve only visited 2 countries so far, but the feel of South America is amazing and I really feel at home here. I can’t recommend a holiday here enough, be it for 2 weeks or 2 years.

Luego!