Posada Barrancas Mirador Copper Canyon

... of my group and a few other Chileans for a couple of hours and then returned to my cabin. We all stayed up chatting and laughing for a while and went to bed fairly early, around 2 AM.

The next morning, Friday, July 17, we made our way down to the restaurant for breakfast at 9:30 AM. For breakfast we had juice and bread with jam, eggs, and avocado of course. From there, we packed our bags, loaded them onto the buses, and met up with the tour guides ...

... anywhere else in my travels and left the wonderful New Zealand to do so. But I made the most of it and relaxed by the pool and hated every second of it.

In fairness check out was a pleasure. For it meant I was getting back on track. I hit the receptionist with the key cards to room 168 and she hit me with a whopping hotel bill which included the outright plundering of the mini-bar. The most interesting thing I discovered on the bill was that ...

... she is with my group so this small town will never be the same after I leave..LOL!!

The Crazy thing is that the sewage system is so bad here that you can't flush the toilet paper in the toilet you have to put it in the trash can. And for NUMBER 2 you still have to put it in the trash, you just have to take the trash out. Don't want to evelope the entire house with the lingering aroma of Lintel Soup gone bad (if you know what ...

Local time: 2PM - my body clock time: 3AM or some such. I am going to repeat May 14 - a good thing really because a lot of the first one was wasted sitting on a plane watching terrible movies. I think I watched 4 films. I slept for maybe 1 hour. No DVT or swine flu to report so far... The stopover in NZ was quite funny though - all these people standing around purely to provide info about the flu ...

... the beginning. To be honest the first week is a little bit of a blur as I threw myself right into the deep end of latino culture....drinking too much ridiculously cheap and ridiculously good red wine, washed down by Pisco Sour, going out at 2am, salsa-ing the remainder of the night away, turnign down wedding proposals (becoming a bit of a habit....come on guys, come up with something a ...

... I mean everywhere each house has at least one dog and at any time there will be at least three strays in the street. I was very circumspect of them at first but they don't bother people .... i still keep my distance. next time big adventure in the city . . .

... position to the surrounding rectangular grid were so devilishly complicated that inexplicably I managed to get lost there every time I tried to go straight out of the Barrio. And that happened many times as I chose the place as my residence for the other two nights in Santiago. But that was later. Meanwhile I passed the pedestrian Ahumada, walked through the old financial district to Palacio de la Moneda and tried to imagine September days of 1973 when the ...

... the nearest cantina(men only) The wall was adorned with a half naked model holding a husquavarna chainsaw. There were about 10 guys in there drinking beer. A mariachi band was busy playing a drunk guy some song, however when they saw me they stopped dead in mid song. The place was instantly silent and all eyes turned to me! Needless to say I got my beer and got out of there! We enjoyed our stay in El Fuerte and had a good sleep before getting up early to catch the CHEPE ...

... nicest place on all of Baja (she is getting her real estate license soon). They spent an extra two hours when their local snorkeling guide got stuck in the sand, but they made the voyage back through the sandy road. Saturday morning we reloaded the van and Marshall and I drove to the ferry, which is a 6 hour boat ride. We got off at 10 pm and drove to a nearby hotel in Los Mochis, previously reserved. Sunday we took a leisurely trip to El Fuerte, in preparation for the train ...