The Poison Gardens

Chile - not much happened

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 22:58:08 GMT

We went to Chile, and spent six days on the mainland. For most of that, Mummy was ill with vomitting and fever disease, or drinking large amounts. They came in that order. The drink helped.

Chile was alright, but people speak far too fast and with made-up words. Might give it a miss if I were you.

Greg - Santiago de Chile

Originally published at Where Is Greg?.
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And Now...

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 00:24:43 GMT

As some light relief from all those long words Mummy has been putting up, have a picture of a Siberian huskie:

Greg - Ushuaia, Argentina

Originally published at Where Is Greg?.
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Skanky Travellers

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 22:03:59 GMT

It's time to admit defeat, Mummy! That strange circular bite you picked up in the jungle has been around for nearly three weeks now. Might it be time to accept that it is, in fact, ringworm?

At least medicine here is cheap.

Greg - Buenos Aires, Argentina

Originally published at Where Is Greg?.
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All By Ourselves

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 16:42:32 GMT

The time has come; I'm off by myself! Not everyone wants to go to Iguazu, so I'm being a big brave zebra and heading off on my lonesome.

It's a good job I've got Mummy to keep me company, or I'd feel about as lonely as I look in this Salt Flats picture.

Originally published at Where Is Greg?.
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The Green Lake

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 16:37:54 GMT

We saw a lot of lakes on our trip to the Salt Flats with our utterly atrocious guide. Here is the Red Lake:

Here is the Flamingo Lake:

And here is the Green Lake:

Notice any salient feature which is missing?

Greg - Salar Uyuni, Bolivia

Originally published at Where Is Greg?.
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El Camino de la Muerte

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 12:29:30 GMT

I am writing this in a very grumpy mood, as I am angry at Mummy. Yesterday, she went on a big fun adventure and left me behind! Trapped in a locker for a whole day, just because she didn't think Death Road is a very safe place for a little zebra!

'Death Road', or the Yungas Road if you want to Wikipedia it, as the kids inaccurately bastardise a noun, is a fairly long stretch of road in Bolivia that used to be the most dangerous in the world. Why? Well, have a look at this photograph I stole.*

The drop-offs are "at least 600m", and the road is mostly single carriageway lumps of rock. According to Wikipedia, 200-300 people died a year when it was in use full time. Now the big lorries use the new bypass, but a couple of tourists still drop to their deaths yearly. Back in the good old days, it was the only road in Bolivia where you drove on the left, so left-hand-drive vehicles could get a better view of the wheel perched precariously on the cliff edge. If you want to read more, have a look at a very melodramatic BBC account here.

I think the main reason Mummy was so concerned was that instead of opting for the company recommended by the hostel, which had posh bikes with hydraulic brakes, full face crash helmets and their own mountain rescue equipment, which cost 57, she instead paid 22 to go with some other people. You got free breakfast and a T-shirt though!

She survived, needless to say, although the problematic neck means that she has spent lots of time lying on her back on the floor today. Oh, and drying her cothes, which got soaked by the waterfalls which pound down onto the stones at some points. She is trying to make up for it by taking me to the rainforest soon, so there might be a big break in writing!

Sadly, she couldn't bring herself to tempt fate by wearing her "I survived Death Road" T-shirt from the very start of the trip, preventing the chance of a rather ironic corpse being repatriated.

Greg - La Paz, Bolivia

* _{Mummy's photos will go up at some point, but are currently trapped for complicated reasons. This will do as a placeholder. Sorry to original owner.}

An Unusual Hat

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 22:16:43 GMT

It's the Fiesta de la Virgin del Copacabana! For six days a year the imhabitants of Bolivia and Peru descend on the tiny fishing village of Copacabana to celebrate their Lady and have an enormous party. There are streamers and confetti and bands everywhere, figures of the Virgin processing through the streets as women in rainbow skirts dance and buses covered in rainbow crepe paper get in the way and sond their horns. The whole village is packed and alive and colourful, everything gets blessed and crowds of people swarm up the hill to set fire to countless candles and pools of paraffin and draw pictures of their houses in wax ont eh walls.

But you don't want to see that, do you? What you want to see is a photo of Mummy being blessed by having an armadillo rubbed on her head.

Greg - Copacabana, Bolivia

_{As any good reader of the Lonely Planet will know, it is very bad indeed for tourists to have anything at all to do with the growing trade in dead armadillos, which are cut up or made into mandolins. Ever. So as a discerning reader you will be pleased to know that this particular specimen was alive and wriggling. There's a better picture of it, doing a good bit of shoulder rubbing, in the photos section}

Originally published at Where Is Greg?.
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Not Our Best Border Crossing

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 21:56:20 GMT

Not Our Best Border Crossing

So far, we've been doing quite well for border crossings. Granted, Zambia was shut, and the lady on the Namibian border broke my gin, but it's all been relatively pain-free. It doesn't take a genius to realise that this is not the proper traveller experience. Luckily, the people at the Peruvian-Bolivian border, whilst they are many things, are not idiots.

We were settled down on another of our overnight buses, of which we are so fond, expecting a mere twelve hour journey. It was cold, yes, but I had my sleeping bag with me as we trundled (or, for a large part of our time, simply sat around for no discernible reason) over the mountain passes towards the border with Bolivia.

At 6:00 am, we stopped. At about 6:15, we moved a few metres. Then we stopped. This continued for a full five and a half hours, until the bus finally forced its way up to the border archway. The reason for the delay soon became clear; anyone crossing the border had to have an injection against H1N1. Thankfully we are too foreign for anyone to worry about, so were let through without being jabbed in the arm. Our other bus companions were not so lucky.

The border was a nightmare. There were stalls everywhere, cars and buses crammed into every space and policemen shouting things. We got waved along with a stream of people, inspected by the men in white face masks and coats, then saw a great big queue going into an official-looking building. However, this was not the building with 'immigration' written on it, so we went to that instead.

It took a long time to get forms, but we're now expert at filling them in. Granted, I did misunderstand a question and listed the country I would visit after leaving Bolivia as 'Bolivia', but that's not too great a worry. The man at the desk had other ideas, though. We hadn't succeeded in signing out of Peru.

This often doesn't matter (see our America-Mexico border crossing), but the man was quite insistent. It seemed that the police had pushed us straight past the Leaving Peru office (which wasn't the one with the big queue!). We forced our way back across the border, having to push past the police who really did think the stupid gringas were going the wrong way, and found an office. We filled in lots of forms. Then we had to go to another office, where we got a stamp. I bought some confetti.

Back in the first office, a new man was very baffled as to why his desk already had my immigration form on it, and why it had been half completed by his colleague. We explained that we were idiots, he looked dubious...and gave me a stamp!

We got outside just in time to be told that our bus, having spent 5h30 getting to the border, could not spare 20 minutes at it to wait for its patrons, and had left, taking our rucksacks and whatnots with it. We looked at the empty road. A person offered to chase the bus for us in their combi van, so we got in.

We were left in Copacabana, our final destination, by a random little car park and told that the bus would be there soon. The man who was helping us then disappeared. We waited. Forty minutes later (we still don't know where it had gone since leaving us and arriving in Copacabana) it rocked on up, and we got hold of our stuff! We didn't leave a tip.

We're now debating which country to enter from Bolivia; the one with the guards who confiscate all the "fake" dollars you carry, or the one where the entrance/exit points are 60km from the actual border in either direction.

Saf - Copacabana, Bolivia

Originally published at Where Is Greg?.
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Cocktails

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 22:44:42 GMT

The people of Peru certainly know how to make a good cocktail!

Greg - Miraflores, Peru

Reeds!

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 00:35:40 GMT

Hello everyone!

I went to Laka Titikaka. I have seen a lot of reeds. There are, in fact, whole islands made of reeds, which float about on the surface (although they cheat a bit by anchoring them down) and the people live an almost entirely reed-based existence.

Except for all the tourists, of course.

Have some pictures of some reeds:

P.S. Puno is a shithole. Never go.

Originally published at Where Is Greg?.
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A Plea

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 21:12:48 GMT

Dear Mummy,

It's been three days since you started walking to Machu Picchu, on the hardest route offered by the tour guides. You have climbed 1600m, gasped for breath at altitude, fallen and twisted your ankle. Your legs set solid every time you sit down and if you put your feet down too hard you can feel the blisters shifting. Last night you 'slept' in a tent whilst it was -15 degrees Celsius outside, and your stomach has gone on strike and refuses to digest anything. You are wearing revolting clothes, covered in dust and now monkey poo from that little sod who climbed into your coat to go to sleep earlier. The dirt is ingrained into your hands, and in order to get around at 1:00 am you have to twiddle the knob on your wind-up torch constantly.

So why are you going out clubbing, instead of keeping me warm and cared for? Why? How can that ever be a good idea?

Cusco, Peru - Greg

Originally published at Where Is Greg?.
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A Bizarre Lack of Patriotism

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 02:26:16 GMT

Mummy's been making a blanket, you know, where she sews on cloth patches of the flags from each country she's taken me so far. But I was getting a little worried as of late; in the whole of America, we couldn't find an America flag!

It all turned out okay in the end though; Mexico is full of them.

Mexico City - Greg

Originally published at Where Is Greg?.
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New Stuff

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 02:28:18 GMT

For reference, and as cross-posting is gone, Where is Greg? will be getting new stuff over the next few days. A few photos already up.

Where is Greg?

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 00:53:04 GMT

Just a head's up that new posts will be appearing there over the next few days, and there are new photos up. Poll results => no more cross-posting, so I'm afraid you're actually going to have to go to the site to read the stuff. Sorry to anyone who finds this inconvenient!

LiveJournal Cross-Posting Problem

Sun, 24 May 2009 19:43:48 GMT

Hello LiveJournal users!

So, I'm sure you've noticed the problem; WhereIsGreg.co.uk isn't cross-posting here sensibly. Sadly, I can't come on very often to put posts up, so I have to write a load whilst on the road then time-lock them so that they appear on the main site days apart. It's not working here though, is it? Oh no, the posts end up floating at the top of your friends' page in a very annoying way.

I've had a damn good go at sorting it, but have clearly failed. So, I'm going to call on you to offer advice/opinions.

1. Anyone got any idea how to fix it? WhereIsGreg has wordpress at the back end of it, with the LJ cross-posting feature. I tried logging onto LJ and clicking the "Date Out of Order" check-box by the posting date, which certainly stops it popping up on your friends' page. Sadly, it stops it appearing for good, so it'll never show up. If there's any wisdom out there as to how to fix it, I would really appreciate it. I need a solution which doesn't involve me having to come online every day, as this is unworkable.

2. If it's not fix-able, please tell me your opinion about what to do about it:

View Poll: Bloody Cross-Post Problem

America- Albuquerque is in It

Sun, 17 May 2009 21:03:12 GMT

I'm in Albuquerque. There is nothing interesting about it aside from the way it is spelt.

Originally published at Where Is Greg?.

America - The Streets are Paved with Gold

Sun, 17 May 2009 21:01:52 GMT

So, we put on our posh frocks and went to Vegas.

Wham! lied; drinks are not free in Club Tropicana. There is, however, enough fun and sunshine for everyone.* Rather a lot of sunshine, in fact. 38 degrees celsius most days. Las Vegas sits like a mirage in the middle of an enormous, hot, dusty desert, and suddenly pops out at you like a brightly-coloured painting when you turn a corner.

But it's wonderful, so very wonderful. Yes, tacky, with a fake Eiffel Tower next to the fake Statue of Liberty by the fake Luxor Temple, but it's all so big and shiny! I really did think I'd hate it, but now I am utterly convinced that there is no better place to go to party.

We arrived at lunchtime and staggered down the Strip (the famous bit with the best clubs in) ducking in and out of casinos to try get some water. The road is bizarre; you have to try really hard to go down it in a straight line. To get across some bits you need to enter a casino and follow the walkways. We'd heard that they hid the exits in the casinos, but thought we'd manage. We were wrong. Once inside, there are no clear walkways, just enormous foyers full of machines and bars and no sense of direction or daylight whatsoever. It took us over 4 hours to get to the other end, and many instances of desperately asking someone the way out.

There's plenty to see on the way. There are those big famous fountains, which are incredibly loud as they shoot water high into the air, a volcano with a good amount of kerosene, and a pirate ship fight where one lifesize ships sails up from somewhere else, there is a huge and very hot battle and it sinks. There were also semi-naked women, but I think they had to be scantily clad to survive the fireballs. Encroyable!

Even better than that, though, I made money. I sit here now as living proof that the house does not always win, with my 600% profit. Okay, so it was one $2, but still I'm rather pleased. Here's a picture of me and Greg holding our winning voucher (you don't get money out of the machines, but a ticket you can either put into other machines or cash. The machines still make the noise of coins clattering when they pay out, though, even though you are only able to put notes in), looking rather hot:

See photos section for other tacky ones.

* ^{Yes, I know they're talking about Ibiza, but after seeing Club Tropicana no one could stop singing the song for days.}

Originally published at Where Is Greg?.

America - There Aren't Any Bogs

Sun, 17 May 2009 20:58:02 GMT

Los Angeles, City of Angels, does indeed have bridges which we have sat under (but not taken any drugs). You might not think it to look at them, but the inhabitants of that fair city are indeed angels. That is to say, they are angels in the Dogma sense of never having to go to the toilet.

Two hours on the streets, trying to find a public toilet. Tried the malls; nothing. Tried the supermarkets; nothing. Tried the police station; nothing. Tried to buy something in a coffee house to use their restroom; wasn't one. Nowhere, but nowhere, were there any sodding toilets. I should end this by giving would-be travellers advice on exactly where these mythical things are hidden, but I really can't. In the end, I just wee-ed on a grass verge in Beverly Hills. That'll teach 'em.

Originally published at Where Is Greg?.

America - There's a Big Hole in the Middle of It

Sun, 17 May 2009 20:20:32 GMT

The Grand Canyon (which does have a 'D', despite Mummy's insistance for quite some time that it didn't) is a great big hole in the middle of the continent, which is a sod to get round, so we went to look at it. From side to side it is 10 miles as the condor flies, 24 if you walk, and 220 if you drive. We didn't cross it. Here is me next to it.

That's a rather boring picture, though. I wanted something more exciting so got as close as I could to crossing it without breaking every bead in my saggy little body. The National Park people aren't very good at putting up fences, and with a bit of ingenuity, some strong walking boots and a negation of worry about flashing your pants to everyone as you climb, you can get to some really spectacular places.

Here is a picture of Mummy holding me out over the canyon. I'm afraid you can't see me very well, but rest assured that I am there and that many people watched Mummy retrieve me from her cleavage after the climb to get there.

Some Japanese people told Mummy she was "awesome", and some American people took similar photos and said they wanted to use them as their Christmas card this year. They also said it was a shame about the hat, but some people have no taste. It's a great hat. Everyone loves the hat.

Originally published at Where Is Greg?.

America - It's Less Impressive Than You'd Think

Sun, 17 May 2009 20:12:26 GMT

Hello everyone! It's a Hollywood-style zebra here, enjoying the glitz and glamour and lights of stardom!

Or not, as the case may be. Hollywood turns out to be tiny and entirely underwhelming. If you want, go to the photo section to see a shot of me in front of the big Hollywood sign on a cloudy day. It took a long time to drive there, and was about as exciting as it looks. The best bit about the whole venture out there was meeting a man who had a pet wolf, which we got to pet. It made Mummy very allergic, but it was gorgeous.

Central Hollywood was about the same. There's only really one street, which is short and covered in tourists looking at what is frankly not very much. And they really have no standards! Despite the fact that I am non-mobile, in the few hours I was there I ended up with my own star and concrete footprints outside of Graumann's Chinese Theatre (they mean 'cinema'):

That was still rather disappointing, though. The best moment was in Starbucks (we went in so Mummy could wash her hair in the toilets), where a man came in, got a coffee, and proceeded to atrociously and inaccurately recite an audition piece to his friend for a movie he was trying to be in. He then rang his mum to read her a poem he had written in acting class. I had to stuff my (cement-y) hooves into my mouth to stop myself laughing too much.

Originally published at Where Is Greg?.

America - It's Got Spirit!

Sun, 17 May 2009 19:15:01 GMT

Yes, no one thought it would actually ever be done, it may have taken 17 hours of driving and $60 of 'gasoline', she may have turned up at a high school exhausted and stinking from less than 4 hours sleep in a hot car, but Mummy got her cheerleading competition after all!

It was certainly worth it. The cheerleading was actually the start to a whole day of dance competitions in a place called Hemet, CA, which is a no-horse-but-many-car-showrooms kind of town near Los Angeles. I was very excited to be seeing the cheerleading, and not just because of the tiny skirts. The competing teams were actually realy quite good and did all the impressive tricks, such as throwing each other a long way into the air and landing without shattering any bones. Big burly men acted as backstops in case things went wrong then.

But as an avid fan of Bring It On (and the sequels; Here It Is and It's Been Brought), I expected all that. What was really exciting was the Spirit. Now, this concept took me a little while to grasp, but luckily some nice cheerleaders adopted us and explained it all.

Spirit is best translated as 'good karma', but in a more tabulated way. It comes in points. A squad will get Spirit Points if they do something good; cheering on a rival team, showing good sportmanship, having well-behaved family members in the audience, and whatnot. At first, it seems like a bit of a hollow concept introduced solely to stop over excited young girls getting stroppy and trying to balls things up for other teams, but there's more to it than that.

A team will also get Spirit Points (for which there are a range of trophies at the end) if they convince their fans and affiliated audience members to get involved. What better way than to annex three English girls and strongly encourage them to take part in the Audience Show, where audience members learn a routine in 30 minutes and perform it for everyone else during an interval. Turns out you get a lot of spirit points for that. It also turns out that years of CULES teach the skills of learning to approximate a dance very quickly, and to assume that you can pull of moves which normally require training simply by being enthusiastic enough.

But I'm making the cheerleaders sound very self-centred here, in their collection of Spirit. They were actually very nice people, and as a reward for being foreign but having a damn good go anyway, the 'girls from London' were each awarded a Spirit Stick by the judges. A Spirit Stick appears to be a tube of beads that you shake to generate Spirit in the area around you. It must never touch the floor, or all the spirit will get out. L has already dropped hers. But anyway, in the hope that a little bit of feel-good Spirit will rub off on you, here's a picture of me, a cheerleader, and my new Spirit Stick!

Originally published at Where Is Greg?.

America - It's Kinda Racist

Fri, 08 May 2009 15:32:47 GMT

Today, I listened to a radio programme called Savage Nation, where a man called Mark Savage was generally a bit racist and talked a lot about how crap Britain is, but I didn't really understand.

Also, I looked at some redwoods and ran over a tortoise.

America - There Aren't Enough Fences

Sat, 02 May 2009 18:20:49 GMT

After the moss experience it seemed like a good idea to move elsewhere, to a place where there was much less chance of being absorbed into the forest. Bigfoot hunting seemed the ideal thing. Exactly where Bigfoot is meant to live is really rather vague here; there seems to be a commotion about it in California, but every national park boasts the big ape-y thing for its own. Thus, the Ape Cave in Washington seemed like the ideal place to start.

Unfortunately, the park rangers at the information station didn't seem to think that the Ape Cave was a good idea for us. It's still the off-season here, lots of things being covered in heaps of snow, and they told us that we wouldn't be able to even get to the cave without snow shoes. Luckily, we had shoes of our own, and having put a bit of snow on them we began to make the hike.

It was indeed a very snowy place. Ignoring the drifts, the snow in the mountains came up to knee to mid-thigh level. Behold a bench that was:

Still, if Bigfoot could get through, so could we. It was less than a mile to the cave, and although it took us nearly an hour it was well worth it. The cave itself was Really Very Dark, and stank of sulphur (it's really a lava tunnel formed when Mt St Helens erupted in 1980). It was also rather cold. A concerted search failed to reveal Bigfoot, though, or any bears or cougars in the cave. Rubbish. There were, however, some bats, and we were very good and did not throw things at them to make them fly again in case they gave us rabies. Oh, and it's probably not good for them.

Originally published at Where Is Greg?.

America - It Has Moss

Sat, 02 May 2009 18:07:49 GMT

Having failed to see any moose whatsoever in Canada, we have been making a concerted effort to see as many other large mammals as possible. Sadly, although the area is famous for its killer whales we're not in the right season for them, but the Olympic National Park seemed like a promising place. We went elk hunting, in a park covered in warnings about elk charging people who got too close.

Six hours of walking later, we had seen precisely one elk. It was very dead indeed, and festering. No living elk. What we did find, though, was moss. Moss? you say. Why should anyone care about that? You get moss everywhere.

Oh yes, but not moss anything like what we found. In the Hoh rain forest, moss drips from trees in huge clumps. Every horizontal surface is covered in it, dangling and diffusing the light until everything is covered in an eerie green. It's beautiful, and otherworldly in the creepy sense. No good faeries would live in that forest.

We spent hours among the moss, feeling it slowly advancing upon us, ready to grab at a foot and rush up our bodies until we were just another moss-covered miscellaneous forest item. I bet that's where all the elk were.

All expect that lone one, stood right in the middle of the road, which we finally saw on the drive out of the park. I can't show you a picture of that one; I was at the wheel. Bastard elk.

Originally published at Where Is Greg?.

America - It Has Free Stuff!

Sat, 02 May 2009 00:28:19 GMT

The United States are more full of free stuff than Canada! No coffee, sadly, but a wonderful market in Seattle called Pike Place Market, which prides itself on being the home of all those boats in Deadliest Catch, among other things. Whilst simply walking through, we got free salmon jerky, many types of beef jerky, chili pepper jams, real jams, hazelnuts covered in flavoured dusts, almonds in flavoured dusts, lots of honey, dried fruits and soap. That was enough food to last a whole day!

P.S. Apologies to LJ users, for whom the Wordpress upgrade has resulted in a botch in cross-posting time delays from the original Where is Greg? site. I'm trying to sort it.

Originally published at Where Is Greg?.