High Beginnings
Trip Start
Aug 26, 2005
1
126
Trip End
May 26, 2008
Buenos Aires,
Argentina
Saturday, August 27, 2005
Thanks so much for visiting. I started this blog in 2005 and in the 3 years its been going there have been over 63,000 visitors!!! Wow!! I put this thing together to help fellow travelers learn from my experience and also help family and friends track my progress on this crazy voyage and also give some useful information about the places I have visited. If you have any questions about anything I would be more than happy to help out and for more information and more blogs, visit my website: www.murrayw.net
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A good place to start
Hello and Welcome to my Travel Blog
Cheetah in Lujan Zoo
. In order to make sense, and put the 'por que?' (why) of this story together, we need to backtrack a few years.
It was January 2002 and a warm summer in Australia I made a decision to travel to Canada and spend a few months snowboarding in the ski town of 'Fernie', in the South Eastern corner of British Colombia.
My 3 month snowboarding trip, turned into a seven month round the world tour. I returned home from Thailand, broke and with a massive addiction to traveling, all I wanted to do was to get back on the scene. I decided on my return home that I would be traveling again, very soon, but this time, I would have the ability to choose when to come home, and not be entirely limited to a meager cash supply and a count down plane ticket.
On the 26th of August 2005, my dream came true and I boarded a plane headed for Buenos Aires in Argentina.
The plan
Beginning in Buenos Aires, I planned to travel South to Ushuaia, the worlds Southern most city and the gateway to Antarctica. I would then travel North, overland all the way to Alaska
Colourful streets of La Boca
. It was a massive journey, which seemed more like a dream than a reality in the early stages of planning. I intended to travel through Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and Columbia. From the North Coast of Columbia I take a boat through the Caribbean arriving in Panama. I would then travel through Central America and Mexico, finally hitting the USA and Canada then traveling even further north to Alaska before returning to Australia on some kind of sea voyage. At least, in August 2005, that was the plan, but as you will see, things changed.
Great beginnings
I had a fascination to start the trip from the doorstep of my Northern Beaches Home. Ideally I would have loved to hitch all the way to the airport, meeting people and starting the whole experience before I was even on the plane. But in reality, I thought I would have enough challenges in South America, so my folks dove me to the airport. We said our tearful goodbyes and with my mum weeping, I disappeared into the terminal.
I checked in early and had a few hours to kill and began filling in the first pages of my Journal. I wrote about my expectations and dreams for the 3 year trip
d
. It was time to board, and I stepped onto the Airbus A340 and found my seat.
We took off and had a short stop in Auckland, where we were told that this leg would be the last for the Captains career. He was retiring when he touched down in Buenos Aires, and as a result, we were saluted by fire trucks when we taxied out of Auckland.
About half way into flight 1185, I was chatting with the flight attendants and asked if it would be at all possible to get into the flight deck. They chuckled and said a straight out 'no'.
I was determined, and asked if I wrote a letter to the captain, would they kindly pass it on for me.
They said they could do that, but not to get my hopes up about anything happening.
I took my seat, and began writing. It was sealed and I called one of them over. She would hand it to the captain as she said.
II was dreaming when she tapped me on the shoulder about an hour later and said the 'The captain would like to meet you'
Wow, surely not. I couldn't believe it when she lead me through the first class lounge and into the open Flight Deck.
I was sitting in the Flight Deck of an Airbus A340 staring out the front windscreen. I sat in the navigator's seat and watched as the captain took us towards Buenos Aires. I had a mountain of questions, asking about auto pilot, which the captain promptly turned off (setting off all kinds of alarms and flashing lights in the Flight Deck) and took manual control of the plane, turning it slightly left, with a small tap on a left handed joystick and then turning the plane right, before leveling off and turning the auto pilot back on, leaving me with a big grin on my face and many photos and maybe with a few fellow passengers wondering what the hell is going on
Dinner in Buenos Aires
. I asked why he let me in and he said he had never received a letter asking with such passion to visit the flight deck, then he added that it was the last flight of his career, so they couldn't exactly fire him.
I spent over and hour in the flight deck, and had to be pried from my seat and escorted back to my economy cabin a few minutes before we started our descent into Buenos Aires.
What a brilliant start to my adventure.
The flight deck looked like this:
Arriving in Buenos Aires was a massive shock. Seven rubbish language lessons in Sydney didn't prepare me for South America in the slightest.
Somehow I battled my way through the Airport, found a bus and rode for 2 hours towards central Buenos Aires, clinging to my bags while the sneaky Argentineans behind me worked out a way to rip off my stuff (at least that's what I thought at the time). I arrived at my hostel without any problems. Apart from one. The pictures of the place looked great on the Net when I booked online, but I don't know what hostel they took the photos from. I would love to find it because it certainly wasn't the one I checked into
In the Flight Deck!
. I arrived to a stinking hell hole of a hostel, with moldy showers and rooms full of cigarette smoke. The next day I checked straight out as early as possible and found a hostel called the ´Mil House'. It was superb. A massive hostel but incredibly well run. I had a 4 bed dorm on the 3rd floor. Every night there were parties downstairs, and theme nights. I got sucked in and 3 weeks merged into one intense experience. I was trapped with the temptation of parties every night, beautiful women, cheap cervesas and insane trips to the best clubs in BsAs, with a few city tours in between. We called it the 'Mad House'. It´s where the Irish drink day and night, then all day again until they turn yellow with failing livers, Jaundice setting in. All kinds of things go down in this place while the staff turn a blind eye to the goings on upstairs. We don't get to the clubs until 2am, which is the closing time for most places in Australia. By that stage everyone is absolutely foshizzled. We stay out until way after the sun comes up and sleep all day, then repeat again the next night. A sure recipe for good times but after a month, I was destroyed.
I met a whole array of amazing travelers in my time in Buenos Aires. There were loads of Swedish, a surplus of drunk Irish and mad English, the odd occa Australian, and an absolute shit load of horribly rude and obnoxious Israelis
Lion
. For the first month I tried as hard as I could to hang around the native speakers, which included the most spectacular Argentinean women with bodies I didn't think existed. There was a great variety of travelers from all over the world that kept the conversation flowing. I discovered after a few days that the ability to speak Spanish is an absolute necessity. I learnt this after eating the daily specials in a few restaurants, which turned out to be tripe, kidney and tentacles. After putting the above mentioned 'foods' into my mouth, I decided to enroll in Spanish lessons. Even if it was just to learn the names of food.
After 4 weeks I could hold a relatively decent conversation in complete Spanish. I can go to a club and use reflective verbs such as "I am touching myself" which in Spanish is "Yo me tocar" and even use future tenses etc. A Peruvian guy told me that I speak CHINSPANGLISH -Chinese;Spanish;English. i.e. - I hungry, what do now? etc, slowly but surely I am improving and so far am proud of my progress.
Counterfeit money is everywhere in Buenos Aires.I pulled a fake 100 peso note out of a Bank ATM. Worth about 50 Aussie dollars, I was a little upset
Murray and Alan at the River match
. Another time, I stumbled out of a Disco at 8am and hopped in a cab, he took me for an absolute ride, charging me 3 times as much as the ride there, then he gave all my change as fake notes, which I didn't realize until I tried to pay for my ´Super Pancho´ (Hot Dog). They refused to accept my money and old me to beat it, so I went to bed hungry, only to wake up and find that almost everyone in the hostel had been ripped off that night. After 3 weeks in Buenos Aires, my mate from home Alan turned up. We had a few fiestas and decided to leave the big city and visit nearby Uruguay. A 3 hour ferry took us there.
See next entry...
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Random stuff
1.00 Australia Dollar = 2.32844 Argentina Pesos
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