Archive for September, 2009

Was in a bookshop today and saw one of those 1000 X to Y Before You Die books. You know the ones, Places to See, Wines to Drink, Products to Boycott, Hotels to Feel Smug In, that sort of thing.

So seeing as I’ve done some pretty cool things in the past few months, and in my life, even if I say so myself here is my Top 10 Things I Have Done (So Far) Before I’m Dead:

10.  Had dinner and been to the house of an astronaut (twice). OK, so it’s the same guy, Jeff Hoffman, but I’ve been to his house in Houston and Paris and been out to dinner with him both times. He’s been up 5 times, including going up with his space spanners to fix the Hubble Telescope back in 1993. Basically, my mum went to school with his wife, that’s how we know him. It’s a very cool thing to tell people, but I kinda wish it had involved more of actually being in space myself rather than talking to somebody who’s done it, if you know what I mean.

9. Seen both sunset and sunrise over the Grand Canyon. Yup, the big one. The BBC got into the Before You Die thing and The Grand Canyon was the Number One place to see. Well, I don’t wish to sound ungrateful but I wasn’t overly impressed. Well, OK, I was. You are, after all, stood on the edge of a 10 mile wide, 1 mile deep, 250 mile long hole. But then that’s all you do. You stand there. Admittedly I could have stayed a little longer and hiked down it, although that would of course entailed hiking back up it which is not so much fun. But I didn’t, I stood there and stared. For well over an hour I promise. Both in the evening to watch the sun go down and again at 515 in the morning to watch it come back up again (I didn’t sleep very well in my tent).

8. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower so drunk I couldn’t remember having done it in the morning. True story. Don’t judge me.

7. Seen the Milky Way. Stars, lots of stars, like a cloud of stars. Seen it twice, both times freezing my bits off, unable to sleep. First time at -20c at 4300m in Bolivia, second time -3c at 2500m in Yellowstone Park. Suitably extreme I feel.

6. When we did the Machu Picchu 4 day “hike”, day 1 was cycling down a mountain. There were 9 of us, 3 Canadians and 6 people in my group. The Canadians seemed OK, all big and outdoorsy, but nice enough. That was until we got onto the bikes and one of them shot off and got all showy, doing little kicks to get rocks out of the way and that sort of showy-off stuff we Brits frown on. Got talking to one of his friends later and turns out he’s the Downhill Freestyle Mountain Bike World Champion. Seriously, he does this, and was a thoroughly nice chap! And I went cycling with him!

5. Seen a 2-metre-long whale’s penis. Well, what do  you want? Pictures?

4. Hitchhiked in the back of a pickup truck. There’s more info and a picture of this in my Tierra del Fuego post, but it was one of the highlights of my trip so far. Nothing beats the feeling of a climbing into bed, dusty and cold after a day trucking across the southernmost landmass in the world. Was fantastic.

3. Stroked a tiger. It was Grrrrrrreat! Sorry.

2. Been fishing for salmon in Alaska. Again, lots more salmon-related stuff in earlier posts, but being out there in a 14ft skiff with newly-found family-members, in Alaska, with a fishing rod and beer in my hand, was  great moment. Made all the greater by the eagle. In fact the eagle is one of the coolest things I have ever seen.

1. But it doesn’t beat…

..What you think I’m going to be able to pick one event from all the fantastic things I’ve seen and done just to bundle it up into a neat Number One in a list? Ain’t gonna happen. 10 months, 20,000 miles, 8 countries, that’s your number One right there ;o)

I’ve already written about the fun and games that trying to figure out the cross-country bus system can entail. Now back in Buenos Aires I realise that this is nothing compared to the shenanigans you have to go through to work out the city bus system. Inasmuch as it is a system, which I am seriously not sure about. Yesterday I started voluntary work helping out at an after-hours school club for kids in the Barracas barrio in the southern part of Buenos Aires, more of which later. However, before I could start I obviously needed to get there. I had an address, I know where I live so that’s the A and B sorted, how hard could figuring out the middle bit be? I know where to start, I needed the trusty Guia “T”, the Buenos Aires version of the A to Z which also contains bus information, so I toddled down to the nearest Kiosco and scored myself one. Here it is:

Open it up and it has a nice plan of the city:

This is where it starts getting interesting. So, you’ve found where you live, Point A and you can find where you need to go, Point B. How to get there. The left hand page gives you the bus lines that pass through the corresponding square on the right hand page. In my case I have buses 12, 29, 39, 68, 92, 111, 128, 152, 188 & 194 going through the square that I live in. Somewhere in that square, containing 10 or so 100 metre square blocks. Those lines stop somewhere in there. not much help, but a start. So then you look at the square you want to go to, for where I need to be we have 10, 12, 17, 22, 24, 39, 46, 51, 60, 70, 74, 93, 98, 102, 129 & 168. So with a bit of cross-referencing I now know that lines 12 and 39 go from where I am to where I want to be. Easy.

But each square on the map is roughly 1 square kilometre. So where does the bus go from? To figure that out more investigation is needed.

Each bus line has an entry in the back which lists the streets it goes down on both the out and return legs. Out and return from where? That’s a good question one which I haven’t really figured out yet, particularly as the start and finish points are usually areas I have never heard of. So you have to scan the roads looking for one you recognise. Which can take a while, and I’ve  lived here 4 months, God knows what you would do if you were new to the place. So you have to check that the line goes down the right roads, otherwise you may end up having a 10 minute walk either side of the journey. And you’d better hope that the line you need doesn’t have different routes. The page on the left in the  picture above is for one bus line, the 60 which has something like 15 different routes, luckily I don’t have to catch that one as I do not have the degree in astrophysics and geometry that I would need to work that one out.

So, in the end I figured out that I could walk to Avenida Santa Fe and take the 12 there, but not back as it takes a different route, but the 102 would drop me outside my house (but doesn’t take me there). A worthwhile half hour spent.
However, that’s not all of course. Next you have to figure out exactly where the stop on Santa Fe is, and that’s simply a question of walking down the street till you see the  miniscule P12 sign hidden in a tree. And once you’ve done that, how much the trip will cost you is a different issue altogether. Not to mention actually having the right change (only coins accepted) to pay for it, which is harder than it sounds as shops jealously guard their stocks of coins and will avoid giving you them in your change at all costs.

And then of course, there’s the small matter of actually surviving the bus ride (to this day I have not worked out how one minute you’re 5 lanes from the pavement in solid traffic and 20 seconds later the bus stops at the pavement to let people off without seeming to change lanes) and figuring out exactly where you need to get off once you get there..

Slightly off-topic from my normal stuff but easy to forget what that day felt like.

After my run-in with the law on I-90 I decided to leave it after 600 miles and headed across Montana the 100 miles or so to Yellowstone. I wanted to get there as early as I could as I was planning on camping and I didn’t have a reservation. I stopped for breakfast in Ennis, MT which was a real little Wild West place, the waitress called me Honey as she refilled my coffee. Although I did manage to find (steal?) a Wi-Fi network so I could update my Facebook status, very important for today’s traveller.

I stopped briefly at the nicely rhyming Earthquake Lake, formed after a massive earthquake blocked the Madison River, a reminder of the geological instability of the area. It all looked very benign, but the dead trees still sticking out of the water were a bit erie.

So onto Yellowstone proper. I had heard about the huge crowds and sure enough about 10 minutes past the gate (free entry day, yay!) the traffice ground to a halt. Having a huge camper van thing in front of me I couldn’t see what was holding us up, so I was just calmly sitting there when, from behind the camper van, two bloody enormous great buffaloes lumbered past the car. As you can imagine, frightened the living hell out of me. They looked at me with their big crazy staring eyes and carried on their merry way past the traffic jam. Very Yellowstone.

My first night was not a great success. In order to keep costs down, I had bought a cheap sleeping bag when I purchased the tent in Ketchikan, thinking, it’s Summer, it’ll do. I’ll let you into a little secret, it didn’t do. Not by a long chalk. Yes, the calendar read August, but I hadn’t really taken into consideration that Yellowstone is over 2000m above sea level. I have never been so cold in all my life. At 3am I had to get into the car and turn the heating on. I ended up sleeping the rest of the night in the car. Not a happy camper. I did get to see the stars though – I’ve only seen the Milky Way twice and both times I was absolutely freezing and high up, the first time being at 4300m in Bolivia.

I liked Yellowstone, the landscape was on the pretty side, rather than stunning, and every couple of miles you see clouds of steam appearing above the trees, making it look kind of other-worldly. I joined 15000 other tourists and watched Old Faithful do its old, faithful thing and then I went for a walk (all the while singing out loud as recommended in my Bear Aware pamphlet) to the Lone Star Geyser which erupts every 3 hours or so. I timed it nicely and got there about 30 minutes before it erupted. Whereas Old Faithful shoots high, it only goes for about a minute, this one went on for nearly 20 minutes, very cool.

After this, I went to West Yellowstone to buy a proper sleeping bag and watched the sunset over the Madison River, and very beautiful it was too.

A nice little factoid I found out yesterday, in Argentina, the film Grease is called Vaselina.