2011- Part One

I was planning on doing a big 2011 review of all my travels, but I might split it up into a few posts with a few different photos. 2011 was a pretty big year, although I think 2010 might have to be the "best year of all time", this year certainly had its highlights.

As for the pictures above, we have first of all from the night of our wedding, staying at the Sydney Harbour YHA, with magnificent view over the harbour.

The next shot is from the Australian Footbag Championships, that was a while later in the year, with my good pal Caroline. I was not so pleased with my performances this year, particular compared to my dropless routine the year before. However, it always good to see everyone and catch up with what's happening in the footbag world.

The next two are also Footbag related. First of all a match of Kubb at the Narooma Footbag Jam, next year will be the 5th annual and the first one I won't be able to attend. The next photo down is from my trip to Kuala Lumpur, where I gave Footbag demonstrations and judged the first ever Malaysian Championships- sponsored by Adidas. A very good time, and gave me a lot of ideas, hopefully some of which I can put into action next year.

The final photo from the first installment is Francisca and I at a very well known location, along the Great Ocean Road. We did that for our honeymoon and I think that was an excellent decision.

I hope to do some more similar posts in the next couple of days, this might be the first of four parts to my round up of the year. Still a couple of days to go, we will head down the coast tomorrow for the New Year celebrations and hopefully we will have a good time down there.

So I found out that a Pichanga is a term for a game of pick up soccer. Some are much more organised than others, but anyhow in my browsing one day I came across the website Jogabo, which I have mentioned before.


The basic premise is a social network for players to find games or other players, anywhere in the world. It's a pretty awesome idea really, particularly for, eg, someone who has just arrived in town and doesn't have all that many mates yet (ie: me).

So anyhow- I thought it would be good to arrive a bit early and have a kick around, a good chance to meet some of the other people etc. Little did I know, some guys from the canchas invited me to join into their game.

So by the time I finished up, which was some hours later...you could say I was completely and utterly stuffed. My game where I was a late addition was ok- though it's always hard not knowing anybody, alongside struggling with the language- all you can really do is try and get in a good position and yell SIIIIII, ACA ACA, SIIIIIIIIII. Then wonder why the ball doesn't come to you.

The say "the beautiful game" transcends languages, and to an extent it does, however all the processes are smoother and easier if you have complete grasp of the language. I guess it's just like every other part of the game. If you can kick really well, you'll get a goal most times. If you can't kick that well, you can still play- but you might find yourself frustrated.

So that game was up and then some people arrived for the Jogabo games. It was a charity match, so they went in what's known as the Dutch style, changing teams every 10 minutes or so.

Now before arriving I had dreams of filling the boots of Eduardo Vargas now that he signed a $19 million contract with Napoli, but I think those will have to be put on hold, I never really even game close to scoring a goal. I had a couple of opportunities in the earlier match, including one I belted into the post, but of course as the games went on (and I got more tired), I got more lazy, and found myself using a number of my regular bad habits, which is one of the main reasons my freestyle skills don't transfer that well onto a match situation.

I have to say also, it's 3 days later and I woke up this morning still feeling pretty sore. So I guess I'll have to get in some more match fitness by playing more games!

Getting out of town- Pichilemu

We had the Chilean version of the wedding a couple of weeks ago now. It was a great success and everyone seemed to have a good time. We had 16 of my family come over from Australia, and for the last week Francisca and I have been travelling with Mum, Dad and my sister Alison.

With the help of a set of maps given as a gift from Pablo, we navigated our way through some countryside that I would say not too many Chileans have been to before. The guidebooks were in Spanish, and you might say my Spanish at the moment is "less than reasonable".

Our first stop on the tour was Pichilemu, home to the famous Punta de Lobos surf break. We were joined by Margaret and Mick, my uncle and auntie) and my cousin Bri. They had been living it up in the Explora in Patagonia, which they said was full of American wankers- but I think Pichilemu is much more their style. We actually arrived one day before they did. After a quick surf check we went to check in- the main conversations in the booking were made between Margaret and the bloke that owned the hostel- conveniently neither of them were around...

Apparently we were booked in to another house in the woods above the town, so we drove out that way. This looked very similar to an old neighbouring place back when we lived in Tanja- an ever smaller beach town. Their house was made of mud brick, but this one was a straw-bale house. They had actually done something a bit tricky, and put a picture frame to look through into the straw, so that it looked like a picture frame on the wall. Dad is currently in the process of building a deck, so everywhere we went he was looking for extra ideas, inspiration, and commenting on the types of wood.

We went into the town of Pichilemu itself, and I have to say there was not too much happening there. We had dinner at a restaurant, in which we were the only customers. Of course that meant we had prompt service!

On returning back to the house, it was fairly imperative to get home before dark as the driveway was a bit of a tight squeeze, particularly in our big van. I was walking in front of everybody and I heard a big thud. I looked back and Dad was lying down clutching at his ankle. Having spent the last months on the comeback trail from a badly sprained ankle, I could only think- oh no, not again. We got some Rest, Ice, Compression and Elevation going, but I honestly thought things weren't looking too good, and that the holiday would have been ruined.

We let him retire while the rest of us had a game of Monopolio, Santiago style. The game never finished but I seem to have made an error when dealing out the money, so nobody really had enough to buy the different places. In the morning Dad was feeling much fresher, the trip was saved!

I also played some Footbag, here is a little video

The next day, of course after an obligatory surf check, we met with the others at our hostel, the Natural Surf Lodge. We had our next two nights here, and it was a pretty nice place. We could walk down to the beach, although it was a bit of a surprise to be greeted with black sand!

We had some lunch at a very highly recommended place- Costa Luna. It actually took us a while to find this place, we had some naviagtional troubles along the backroads, which were dirt, but we got there eventually, and we got a seat for all of us- the place looks out over the water. Even though there was a planed surf in the afternoon, we got ourselves some drinks to wash down the meal. My meal was a sirloin beef with risotto, it was excellent, one of the best meals I'd eaten in Chile.

On the way back we got ourselves some bodyboard hire. I was concerned when looking out in the surf, and in a couple of shops it would be a hard mission to accomplish. With my limited Spanish, I negotiated a lower price for a two day hire, because it was later in the day. Apparently Bri went back to the car very impressed- kids can be sucked into anything...

They suggested we try on the wetsuits. Dad got into his, I opted out of the wet wetsuit and told them "she'll be right". We dropped the girls back at our new home, and we walked up the beach to the point.

About halfway along it wasn't seeming to be such a grand idea to walk along there at all, Dad said he would turn around and get the car. This seemed like he was going to give the surf a miss altogether, and I told him, the whole reason we came here was to surf here- we persisted on.

The surf was ok- nothing really to write home about, with a fair few people out. This year I have really had limited opportunities to get in the water, so this must have only been about the third time I actually was on my tabla body all year. Even though the water was pretty cold, it was good to get in. The key problem was my mismatched flippers- neither of them fit. I had one XL and one L and had the painful problem of one too big and one too small.

Once I got out, I saw a very refreshing sight, Francisca and Margaret were waiting for us, with the car. That was great news. Dad claimed a ripper of a wave on the last one he got, he couldn't stop talking about it later in the night. I don't know if Mick was so happy with the surf, he was lucky to get some big surf in Peru last month, and this definitely would not have matched up to it. Still, it's probably best not to go out when it's 10ft + for your debut.

I will continue the story of our trip in the next post...

Once more unto the breach...

For most people, a wedding is a one time experience. Not for everyone though, plenty of religions seems to have the equivalent of the multiball option in regards to wives, whilst these days it's quite common for re-marriages to occur etc. And, in our situation, when your from two sides of a vast ocean, it really is necessary to have two ceremonies.

So after having our "proper"(according to the law) wedding in Sydney earlier this year, tomorrow is the next Big Day. There will definitely be no more weddings after this one- they're a lot of work!

The bride arrives

I made a little zine for the wedding guests

Champers anyone?

At both events we have been lucky enough to have some incredible garden spaces to use. In Sydney we were at Grandma and Grandpa's house, their gardens lay themselves out over a number of levels, which was a really perfect setup for the ceremony we had, meant we could change the focus point a couple of times throughout.

A good friend of mine, and a long time servant of Footbag in Australia, Ian Pritchard, just so happens to me a wedding videographer for his day job, so he had a bit of fun and took some photos on the day- what a great way to spend one of your only weekends off!

With this ring I give you my love

You may now kiss the bride

The happy couple

Cheers mates

José, a good friend of ours, who is from Brazil cooked up some amazing food.

Here's cheers

Another view of the garden. Grandma planted the Jacaranda when she was young.

A fierce battle for the bouquet

Then time for cake

Grandma and Grandpa- couldn't have happened without them

We were very fortunate with the weather the first time round- after some, very ironic, morning rain, the skies cleared up, and it was a perfect temperature, not too hot either- the next couple of weeks saw almost every day in the 40s, and the previous weeks in Sydney were full of rain, so we did well.

After "official proceedings", a bunch of our good friends joined us to take a water taxi into the city. Originally we had just planned to take a ferry, but in hindsight, it was definitely best to take the water taxi, meaning we had our own boat, I think the maximum capacity was 27. This was a great way to head into the city, as a whole bunch of us were staying at Sydney Harbour YHA.

When I first brought up the idea of staying in a hostel, I would say my Mum's reaction was one of horror. I worked for the last few years in the YHA in Canberra, and had the benefit, regularly used, of staying almost anywhere else within the (quite expansive) network for free. Plenty of the guests were fellow staff/mates from work, so they had some free rooms too... what I was not expecting though, was to have the best room in the house, and champagne and chocolate in the room- I don't know if you could expect that in a "honeymoon suite" in a flash hotel.

It was a great chance to have everyone together there, though you may say the night become a whole lot less formal as it went on.

Our honeymoon, we didn't want to make it a big, expensive trip at all, as we already had plenty of overseas trips booked for later in the year, so we made our way down to Melbourne and The Great Ocean Road.

I think it worked perfectly for what we were after, it was a chance to just take a laidback trip and see a few sights. Francisca had never been to Victoria at all, and I had not been all that far along the Great Ocean Road, so it was really a good chance to travel along there.

So now it's time to prepare again- the wedding is in Rancagua, it's about an hour and a bit away from Santiago. There has been a big turnout of family- sixteen in total, and my good friend Doug as well. Today the family are out touring down the coast, Doug and I will join them in a bus down south tomorrow. Not sure exactly what's going to be happening to come back, but there's a good chance our "romantic exit" from the wedding, it may also be in a bus with sixteen family.

What I do know is there will be a good spread on at the wedding, that in itself is doubtless. According to the last few days, I think the weather will be good, a little on the hot side, but there are going to be marquees set up. It will also be a good chance to meet some more of Francisca's family and friends that I have not met yet- we can share a mix of my hopeless Spanish (though it's getting better, slowly), and whatever English that they have.

We were incredibly happy with our first wedding, everything went exactly as it was planned, and I definitely hope tomorrow we will be saying the same.

primero semana en Chile

So we have been around for more than a week now, it's time to start getting into the swing of things. I just received my last payment for the work I did while we were back in Australia, so that's the end of the line as for money coming from there.

So it is time to start looking for a job, though I must say I'm not in a huge hurry to get one, I would much prefer to take in the new surroundings than get trapped in the work grind immediately.

Y hoy, por qué no? (and today, why not?)

Within the first week we have been to the beach at Viña del Mar, explored Valparaiso with some new found friends, went up into the mountains and wandered around the city. My good friend Doug, who I lived and studied with back in the early days of the Bruce house has been visiting us, he just left yesterday morning for a surf camp in Peru.

It was a good chance for him to pick up some Spanish for the rest of his trip. He will be back to see us for the second round of our wedding, which is in just a couple of weeks.

The sun sets over Corrierra de la Costa

Bienvenidos

So here we are, in Santiago. I honestly think it's going to take at least a week to get adjusted to the time difference and everything, but we've got plenty of time, we'll be around for two years after all!

Today mi amigo, Doug will arrive in town, pretty soon actually. He has the same combination of Emirates/LAN that I took. Emirates were pretty good, good to know for another flight that you can do things like bring your own USB and watch movies on the screen. I really didn't sleep enough of the flights over, probably only just over an hour in total.

We had a big family lunch upon arrival, and immediately after eating way too much food, I was feeling overly drowsy. Glad there weren't any more courses, I would have fallen asleep with my face straight into the meal. So I snuck off and got some rest for a little while. Will be interesting to see how Doug is feeling after doing the same flight. It was good to get that rest. I was up early this morning, that wasn't too surprising at all.

The photo from the top is the view from the apartment, where Francisca's mum lives. This is where we begin out Chilean life. You can't see it so well in the photos, but you can see the snow on the peaks of the Andes from here.

A bit of a walk

We're into our last week in town in Canberra now, next Tuesday we will take the bus to Sydney, and it's not many more days and we will be bound for Chile. I decided to do some walking. Some time ago Jonathan and I somehow came up with this VM Challenge. The concept of VM came from the German word for World Cup or World Championship, weltmesiterschaft, which the Germans pronounce vee-emm. Our original challenge was to run up 5 mountains, going by bike between each one.

We never made it to any of those mountains running, but I decided the better idea would be to do the full challenge, walking. I told a couple of others about it and they were keen too, especially if the walking challenge was fuelled by beer. Of course, it never happened, but I had most of a day to kill, and didn't want to spend it standing in lines.

So the original plan was to go Mt Majura>Mt Ainslie>Black Mountain>Mt Painter>The Pinnacle. Some may argue that The Pinnacle is not a mountain, but none of them really are, and this run made the best case for not having to travel too far between destinations.

Anyhow, I had already walked around 10km before I started my "real" walking, which could explain why I didn't get to the end. I stopped in Weetangera for a pie, what a weird combination of shops they have there. No supermarket, but they have a publisher...righto.

From the shops I cut across the backstreets and made my way to The Pinnacle. Up a few steps, no worries, there we go. A fairly easy start. So as to not go through any private property, I took the loop track right back around to the main entrance and went on to Mt Painter. I had been up there once before, but it was a bit more of a climb coming from the bottom end. When you come from Cook, the parking area is already some way uphill. It wasn't too much effort to get up there, however the part that always had me wondering about this trip is where to go between Mt Painter and Black Mountain. I wasn't sure if it would be better to go through the suburb or Aranda, or to cut through the Aranda Bushland area.

I came down the mountain and decided to head for the bush. This turned out to be the right option, as soon enough I was on the Old Weetangera Road. This must have been one of the first roads heading further out of town. There is a little house just behind the stadium, which is called Weetangera Homestead. This old track, though it is now interrupted a few times by major roads, begins there.

In a previous expedition to Black Mountain I had come across that road, so I knew I was on the right trail. Heading up the Black Mountain trail was a lot more strenuous than my previous efforts, and with the sun on my back, I was definitely feeling the effects. I had to stop for a while and this photo shows a pretty accurate description of how I was feeling.

What a looker...

So at the top I contemplated whether I would pay the entrance fee to go in the Telstra Tower. I decided not too, and just sat on a chair and rested for quite some time. Heading back down I was reminded of what must have been the first time I walked up Black Mountain. Coming down, almost back to the road, there was a bloke with a t-shirt, and absolutely nothing underneath. That sure was a weird sight!

I had never been into the Botanical Gardens before, as most of the times I've taken the track has been outside of the garden hours, so I popped through the gate. The Gardens have the largest collection of Australian plants and trees in the world, but in Australia, are gum trees etc all that impressive? The rainforest section I was much more impressed by though, Canberra doesn't really have a climate that produces rainforests.

Whilst I should have carried on to the final two mountains, instead I headed in to the city for a beer stop. What my explorations showed though, is that the challenge is definitely achievable. I guess I won't have time this time around, but maybe some time in the future.

Francisca, Spit Bridge to Manly walk.

May write a bit more on this at a later stage.

Last night in town

Well it was only a bit more than a week ago that I wrote that we were halfway through our trip. Plans have changed slightly, and that's not the case any more. We will be boarding a Qantas flight tomorrow evening and the next morning, not only will we be back in Australia, it will be my birthday and another year will have ticked over. It will be my birthday and I will reach that definitive age, 27.

I have left here a sideshow of our time in Koh Samui. Mainly just some pictures of the beach, it was a perfect place for recovery, just lying down by the beach.

We went on a little tour on our last day in Koh Samui, I quite enjoyed it, even though some may say "it's a bit too touristy", we are on a holiday after all. We got to ride some elephants, just a short way along the river, and then feed them afterwards. We stopped by at a waterfall. There was the option to swim but the water didn't look all that appealing (especially compared with the beach).

The rest of the tour was advertised that we would see traditional thai house, Thai cooking class, monkey show etc. It didn't sound that exciting, but we drove over to the other side of the island, near where we came on with the ferry and pulled up to a place. We didn't actually go inside the house, but this was the traditional home, built on beams with wood, like the Queenslander style of home. It was just us and another couple from Melbourne on the tour, so it was a nice small size of group.

They showed us how to make curry, than demonstrated a monkey getting coconuts from a tree. This monkey, Michael was only a baby, so was pretty disobedient/cute. The guy giving us the demonstration was telling us about the monkey keeper- "he treats him just like a son, so there you have, two monkeys...."

We then got a demonstration of the best way to open the coconut and then to make coconut milk. Although it's probably a lot easier to just buy it in a can if you want to make an actual meal. After this it was home time, I thought it was a good amount of time, about 3 hours. A bit longer and the attention span of people starts to drift a bit too much.

Some pictures from the trip

Jaipur, India

Jaipur, India

Singapore

Yusuf, our driver in Jaipur

Taj Mahal, Agra

Boudah Stupa, Kathmandu, Nepal

Taj again...big crowd (Indian Independence Day weekend)

Udaipur, India

Udaipur, heading up to a temple on a mountain

Footbag at Bukit Bintang, KL, Malaysia

Koh Samui, Thailand. Lamai Beach

Here is a collection of pictures from our trip. Maybe at a later date I will add some long winded descriptions, but this is more like a quick overview of the trip so far. Of course not everywhere we have been is included, but it's a selection of most places we have been.