The Amazon

So after arguing the toss about exchange rates, and before heading south to Bolivia, we decided to blow the budget by heading to the Amazon. We’d read about this place called Inkaterra in the Indie travel section, so, Malaria pills in hand, we decided to hop over to Puerto Maldonado, on the Madre de Dios river in the Amazon basin, for a few days of luxury. There are two ways to get there from Cusco.…

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Cusco: Postscript

After the Inca Trail, we spent a few more days in Cusco. Tennille and Matt were in town, for one thing, so we spent a few days just hanging around with them. Cusco starts to drag you down after a while, though. On the one hand, at least while we were there it was a town permanently in the middle of some kind of celebration. You could barely move for dancing kids in traditional costume…

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Cusco and the Inca Trail

We had better seats on our night bus to Cusco, and so I was fast asleep in the morning when one of the other passengers tapped me on the shoulder to let me know that we’d arrived. We stumbled out of the bus into a particularly dusty yard where a guy from the bus company was throwing bags from the bus towards a crowd of people. We eventually got ours, and then a taxi and…

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La Altituda

We made it out of Huacachina alive, though, surviving a tough hour’s slog up the sand dune directly behind our hotel to watch the sunset, as well as a bad lunch in a restaurant down the street that featured not only a fly in my coffee but also hairs on Sal’s straw and in my burger. Oh and the small matter of the taxi ride back to the bus station in the company of a…

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Just Fancy That…

Lonely Planet: South America on a Shoestring (10th Edition): pp864 (Peru Chapter): “Lake Titicaca: South America’s largest lake is also the world’s highest navigable lake…” pp205 (Bolivia Chapter): “Lake Titicaca is deservedly awash with gushing clichés. Although it is often wrongly described as the highest navigable lake in the world (both Peru and Chile have higher navigable bodies of water)…” Still, it could be worse, the Venezuela chapter (which is not one of the destinations…

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Sand

The problem with doing an amazing trip like this, is that you spend so long doing exciting things that you never have any time to write about them. And when you do, you’re so far behind that you can’t write about the exciting things you’ve just done, but only the ones that happened ages ago that you’ve almost forgotten about. For example, we’ve just come back from the Inca Trail, but if I started writing…

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On The Way

And so that’s it. After finishing up at work last week, then cleaning the house and leaving London on Sunday, and a few days back in Southport with the family that passed all too quickly, we’re finally off on our big South American adventure. I feel moderately underprepared, but we’ve got a wallet full of plastic, a flight ticket home in September (we just have to get several thousand miles across the continent to Sao…

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We are committed to protecting your privacy

So I occasionally get these marketing emails from Tesco. I’m sure I’ve tried to unsubscribe before, but they just keep coming. The “unsubscribe” link takes you to this page. I can’t help thinking that there might be a teeny flaw in their system there. Can you tell what it is? [Clue: In case you haven’t got it yet, why not try typing (say) “terry.leahy@tesco.com” into the box that says “Existing Customers Sign In Here”. He…

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Mine Of Comic Potential

As part of my tireless work for my soon to be ex-company’s social committee, I happened upon an email yesterday advertising the services of this company. It’s good to know that if we ever need to book Chas n’ Dave for an event you can get them playing live for just three grand (although perhaps that figure should be taken with a tiny pinch of salt given that they are also quoting £5,000 – £6,000…

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How Politics Works (Part 247)

Monday 21st April: Conservative leader David Cameron has vowed to “stop the government in its tracks” and make them think again over the axing of the 10p income tax band. He said he would fight in Parliament for compensation for those affected by the “disgraceful” move. Wednesday 23rd April: The prime minister has defended moves to compensate pensioners, young people and childless people on low incomes who lost out from the 10p tax rate’s axing.…

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