Thanks to V.

V's suggestion for a playlist:

U2 - Beautiful Day
Lou Reed - Walk on the wild side
Faith no more: I'm easy
Cake: The Distance
Madonna: like a prayer
3Doors Down: Kryptonite
Lenny Kravitz: Believe

Have listened to it and it does go down rather well.

Dear V, you've just won a non-trivial postcard to be posted at some time in the next 3 months from somewhere far away by yours truly ;-)

(I'm so proud of myself for using this bit of subterfuge to drastically reduce the number of postcards I'll be writing!)

Oh and I thought of a few tracks I need to take along by "Die Ärzte":

Langweilig
Junge
Himmelblau
Living Hell
Unrockbar
Mädchen
Die Allerschürfste

Stuffing the stocking

So I'm thinking that taking along my 80Gb iPod is one of the worst things I could do, since I'd have another thing to worry about getting stolen and recharging it regularly.

So, with teeth gritted and muscle spasms, I'll be downgrading to my 1Gb piss-poor MP3-Player which uses regular AAA batteries.

But how do you go BACK to 1GB? It's like bloody "Flowers for Algernon"...

The selection process is going to take me soooo long, so I thought I'd start my shortlist straightaway. By the way, this is something I need suggestions for, so please feel free to add comments with music I should definitely take along.

1st and foremost: The Killers - Sam's Town (the entire album)
2nd: Something from Regina Spektor - Begin to Hope
3rd: A few Tocotronic tracks
4th: Editors - An End has a Start (some)
5th: a bit of Coldplay
6th: ...

I'm out... bugger!

To-Dos

• book hostel for 2-3 days in Buenos Aires
• copy passport, health insurance certificate, vaccination booklet
  
• get Hepatitis A & B refresher shots
• buy a crate of wine for Marie in Buenos Aires and ship it back home (yeah, right!)
  
• get overseas health insurance
• buy backup camera battery
• ... check weather at destination

Chilly at night in La Paz!

I'm looking forward to ... - #2

Bolivia - Parque Nacional Madidi

"...features the greatest biodiversity of the earth's protected regions." Perversely enough, that puts me in a mind to strap on my hiking boots and tread on some rare creepy-crawlies... okay, I'm kidding. But apparently 10% of all the world's known avian species were sighted here - wow that's something.

There's an eco-lodge there that's prohibitively expensive by South American standards (3 days, $280 per Person all inclusive - are you kidding me?) but it's billed as a model of sustainable tourism, the profits going directly to the indigenous community; plus it apparently has "an extensive trail system, excellent meals and night hikes".

So I'm thinking I might just splurge on this, provided I have enough money left by the time I cross the border to Bolivia from Peru,

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Ecuador - Parque Nacional Machalilla

This may actually be the first "big" thing I'll do upon arrival: just chill on the beach in Ecuador for a few days.

"isolated beaches, coral formations, two offshore islands, tropical dry forest, coastal cloud forest, archaeological sites"

May end up camping in the park or staying 5kms away in Puerto Lopez "chipped blue fishing boats bob on a beautiful fishhook bay and cheerful hotels ... slow smiles, happy cafés, and a dirt-road pace of life make it tough to leave." Sounds like a good way to ease into the country and get a final fill of the seaside before it's mountains, mountains and nothing but mountains for weeks thereafter.

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Oh, and I forgot to mention I probably need Malaria prevention meds for both of those destinations. Take Malarone for a day before entering the area all the way up to 7 days after leaving it. Side-effects ought to be bearable...

First Canada Pics

I need to test a few gadgets in the run-up to my trip, so I thought I'd share some pics from Canada with you as a slide show:

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I'm looking forward to ... - #1

Rereading the posts below, I seem to be in a perpetual bad mood, so I've decided to add something about what I'm looking forward to on my trip, to counter-balance (even though I can think of half a dozen things off the top of my head that I could whinge about for a post or two... vaccinations that make you feel like a semi-trailer ran over you etc ... but don't get me started).

*** short interlude while I check whether our cellar has flooded yet due to the buckets of water coming down from above - wow, Zeus is REALLY pissed today ***

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Peru - Ausangate Circuit

6 days, only 70km
BUT "Most of the route, and all of the camp sites, lie above 4400m and four high passes are crossed, two above 5000m"



What do you get for all your toil, sweat and tears?

"varied and spectacular mountain scenery, lots of wildlife and traditionally dressed indigenous inhabitants going on about their lives as they have for centuries." It's a complete circle around the Nevado Ausangate, the highest mountain in the region at 6372m. "In no other part of the peruvian mountains has the indigenous culture survived as unadulterated as here."

Okay, I'm a dreamer, but doesn't this just conjure up incredible scenery: The trek "features varied scenery, including fluted icy peaks, tumbling glaciers and turquoise lakes, rolling brown puna (one of the 8 geophysical regions of Peru - roughly speaking between 3500 and 4100m elevation) and green marshy valleys."

And being a full circle trek, there are hot springs at the beginning and - more importantly - the end of the hike to relax and chill in.

It's only rated as a trek of moderate difficulty on a scale from easy to difficult in my Lonely Planet Trekking guide, so I should be able to convince a few other people to tag along, then find a guide and possibly some burros in the little town at the start of the hike.

Perfect, wouldn't you say?

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Oh, and just to give you an insight into my state of mind at the moment: favourite song right now is (on repeat, because I'm obsessive) Les Wampas - Rimini.
Admittedly, it's about the death of the italian cyclist Marco Pantani in a hotel at the seaside resort of Rimini... but it's a great tune!

Tu allais plus haut plus vite que les autres,
J'espère que tu n'a pas raté le paradis

Joy to the world

Finally some action on the Flickr front: something called Schmap wrote to inform me one of my CC-Licensed photos had been included in their online guide of Frankfurt.

Either way, that doesn't do much for me, especially after I checked their free travel guides and found that they exclusively focus on Europe, Australia and North America. But you should see some of the creepy, sycophantic comments people posted after having their pictures selected. It's that flickr-sickness again, which also makes 99.9% of people post such informative and constructive comments to photos as "great", "good shot", "excellent", "you're one of my favourites".

God forbid anyone come up with a critical albeit constructive comment. That'd mean having to turn on their brains while looking at all the pretty colours.

Who are you calling grumpy?