Tikal and Turtles

Did i mention Tikal? Pryamids and monkeys in the jungle. The steepest longest ladder i've ever seen. Lucia freaked out a little bit and managed to freak out this American guy at the top. She had to sit very still by the wall, clinging desperately to a prefunctory rock outcrop, laughing so manically. It was quite funny.

Monkeys swing and jump like mad things. Weird parrots, lizards and four million million ants. The ground was an unduating black sea of minature orks.

Turtles in Guatemala. Giant ones baby ones. The baby ones had a race to the sea. Only 1% will survive. So cute. Exactly like finding Nemo. No joke at all. Exactly like it.

Nazca

In the middle of the desert some people made some drawings Art Attack style in the rocks. These are very important to some other people, more recently who believe they were made by Aliens. Or maybe it's they were made for aliens. The guy who worked at the weird tower we went to view them from, who had been fully asleep seconds before explained the shapes. We were right by the "hands," "tree" and "the lizard". Some Americans had built a road through the Lizard. Whoops. It's not like it wasn't visible. The longest was about 100m long formed simply from a trench, which is now only about 5cm deep.

These aliens were very busy. A level headed documentry i saw once attributed the lines to worship of some water gods who lived in the mountains. Flip did they need them. The place is a as dry as the Gobi desert. Interesting place, but as is a bit typical our interactions with the sleepy guide were a bit more fun than the lines themselves.

Miami to Lima Peru

If you get the chance you should meet Becky, Summer and our friend Jeremy. Some excellent people who gave us an amazing one night stop over in Miami. Then you should go to Lima, where on a half hour walk six or seven people talk to you in a really friendly way and you can get a baked potato, a boiled egg and some spicey sauce for about 18p.

Lucia has a sore tummy pray for her.

The Rich Young Ruler and People Who Steal Things

The rich young ruler thought he had it made because he was such a good boy. He never smoked or cursed and he looked after his old mum. But Jesus told him it wasn´t enough, he'd have to sell all his possessions and give them to the poor. The rich young ruler left, dejected because he was, as i said, rich.

Then he was on a bus last night from Nazca (where there are many lines, which he saw from a tall tower) to somwhere else in southern Peru and something happened which made him think. His bag was stolen. It contained his most valuable possession: A diamond emulate given to him as a dowery from his fiancee's family. The emulate was gone, along with his toothbrush and a set of postcards he bought of the many lines.

It was an odd set of events because in many ways it mirrored my recent experiences. My CD player got nicked last night from a bus. Some vague prophetic arrogance prompts me to believe i saw it coming (or going). It makes you feel a bit weird when something of yours is now someone elses and you know they don't care half as much about it as you did. It was my most valuable possession, given to me by Lucia.

It does, really helpfully make you think about the value of stuff. I told the police. They were very nice about it all. Easy come easy go. Life lesson is that you have to forgive people a lot for stealing from you. Banks, ATM machine's, Taxi drivers, Bus conductors, they all take their little share. But if you don't forgive them you go crazy and get really annoyed at beggars.

Volcano

And then we went up a volcano.

My trip isn't entirely about the Lord of the Rings. The film was really long, yeah, and it didn't even show all the in between bits. They made it look way easy to climb an active volcano. Towards the top the rock is at once crumbily and razor sharp, so it feels great in your socks. It is kind of like climbing an infinite sand dune made of tiny razors, which occasionally exudes plumes of sulphurous gas, in the suspciously warm areas. These warm areas are a little worrying on rubber shoes where you kind of think the thing is just going to melt stuck somewhere. And you'd be left having a bit of a Terminator Two moment.

The gale force wind doesn't help much either. But it lessens the searing heat as you try to steal glances into the crater.

In short it was flipping amazing. So weird

bye

The Contents of My Backpack

Three sections:

The Top Pocket
Bible
Small black notebook
Larger silver notebook
Travel Scrabble
AW80 song book
"Let The Nations Be Glad," by John Piper
"The Invisible Man," by H. G. Wells
Occassionally some food, my contact lens stuff, toothbrush and toothpaste
A pack of cards

The Middle Section, wow this is big
(for the sake of this entry I´m assuming I´m naked)
One pair jeans
One pair light trousers (lovingly refered to as my emergency trousers)
One pair shorts
Two T-shirts, one white, one navy
One long sleeved T-shirt, white
Three shirts
One hoodie
One thinner stripey jumper
One coat (which is too big)
One cap
One broken camcorder with tapes etc in a hemp bag
One snorkel with mask
One sleeping bag liner
One sleeping bag
One Lonely Planet New Zealand
One Tuperware, containing first aid kit.
One washbag containing: razor, toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, shampoo from a Mexican hotel, contact lens and case.
Two cups
Two plastic plates, green
Knife, fork , spoon set
Torch, headlamp style
Jasmine Tea
Swiss Army knife
Pen
Day sack, or Timmy.

Side pockets:
Five pairs of boxers, typically three clean
Four pairs of socks, typically all dirty

Things lost since the beginning of the trip:
One shirt, Philadelphia
One hoodie, Guatemala
One hat, Guatemala
One bottle of tomato ketcup and some oats, unknown

Things temporarily lost:
Money belt
Keys to Hotel room