It has to be the city destination of the world today. A bottle of very good red wine from mendoza,Gourmet whatever you imagine in a genius sauce delivered with all the new York trimmings in a trendier restaurant this side of any soho for 15 Australian dollars a head. It´s Paris without the prices. Italy without the attitude, london without the weather. Never before have I spent days shopping in a city´s trendiest boutiques followed by meals the equivalent of a small loan in Australia. We are living it up in BA no doubt about it. Even the sidewalks here have carpets.
The dog walkers are truly hilarious. We have seen up to 18 dogs being walked a la New York style. Interestingly they are amazingly well behaved. You never see them fight or hear them bark, despite the fact they are usually tied up in a huge bundle as their walker heads off to another block of units to collect yet another dog.
BA is also the land of the Psychoanalyst. There are more therapists here per capita than anywhere else in the world. Just goes to show that too much good food and excellent boutiques really doesn´t make you happy. Oh well might have to go and console myself with a warm duck confit salad with heirloom tomato bisque topped with caremilised tart tatin and served with grilled gypsy peppers.
Yes it´s true, Kate and I have finally joined the Aussie balmy army. We have gone out of our way, in fact travelled hundreds of mile for the sole purpose of shouting Aussie Aussie Aussie Oi Oi Oi at a bunch of blokes running around in yellow shorts. In fact Kate Browne was even spotted singing the National anthem and with quite a bit of volume I might add. So after securing our tickets along with 250 other fanatics we ventured into the legendry cauldron of Estadio centenario in Montevideo on saturday afternoon. There were all sorts of charming young aussie men there, most of them pissed out of their minds and some of which had travelled all the way from Australia to watch the game and then turn right back around again to head back to Australia for the next leg. Kate and I had our own multicultural contingent which included Dan (English), Chantel (US) and Ezekiel ( Argentina). So armed with our free yellow t shirt kindly handed out by the Australia embassy we trudged off to the stadium ( with the t-shirts hidden of course for fear of attack. 
Once inside the stadium, and with a sudden onset of courage( probably due to the hundred or so riot police protecting us) we donned out t-shirts ready for the onslaught of beer cans, fireworks and other incendiary devices we surely expected to be flung in our general direction. But shock horror...nada... zip...nil. It was all hype. In fact I´ve never met a bunch of better behaved supporters in my life. The closest they got to hurling anything was when they offered us a sip of their mate´tea. The stadium was noisy but not outrageously so and the only badly behaved people there were the aussie yobbos giving the female riot police a hard time. In fact the Uruguayans were considerably more sophisticated than us aussies and there was hardly a drunken one of them in sight
Easter Island, or as the Spanish prefer Isla de Pascua, or as the easter Islanders prefer Rapa Nui, or as my friends from the Lunatic fringe prefer to call The Lost continent of Mu. So what can be said about a place where more than 800 large stone heads populate an Island smaller than the suburb of Bondi? Well the truth about this place is that it is an extra terrestrial sculpture park. 
Nearly one galactic year ago (26,000 Earth years), humanity lived in peace harmony and more importantly prosperity. Unfortunately some really nasty aliens took a wrong turn on the supergalactic highway and landed on the lost continent of the Mu. Of course they found this goddy goody society sickening and set about turning these freaks into stone statues with grumpy faces. Today the only surviving Mu-ite is of course Malcolm Fraser whose likeness to the statues is obvious to anyone.
They go on to say the heads were moved with log sleds. How ridiculous as any idiot can see the heads walked down the hill themselves
In fact so small is the Island that on the electronic map inside the plane showing where exactly we are on the planet, the diagramatic Aeroplane was in fact larger than the Island. But it was well worth the trip. We ended up having 4 days cycling, walking and getting sunburnt around this very beautiful but quite treeless Island. It even had a very tropical looking beach
But on the bright side we did manage to retrace the steps of Butch and Sundance riding the red hills of Tupiza. You couldn´t get more wild west if you tried as we galloped thru passes the duke would be proud of. I´m actually getting better on a horse, and not hanging on for dear life as much anymore. I´ve even perfected the cowboy walk back into town ( probably because of the chafing on the inside of my legs). It was indeed one of tne best rides I´ve ever done and the scenery was truly evocative. Even if Kate was a little too tiny for her horse.
It's a world of blueness and whiteness, of extreme cold and extreme brightness and a challenge to any cameraman looking to do a white balance. Active volcanos, Islands in a sea of salt, red coloured lakes, noisy geysers, and basically the setting of the movie Dune. There is also over 10 billion tons of salt some of which has been used to make a hotel. Yes we did indeed opt for the salt hotel option and yes the bed, walls, roof, table were made out of soduim chloride aka salt. (quite tasty actually)
The other rea problem is getting stuck in a water bottle. Unforunately i used up all three wishes to ge tout of the damn thing
Our group ended up being 4 aussies, and 2 whinging poms one of which was very funny and did really good magic tricks and the other being the bane of our experience making 4 days in the jeep more uncomfortable than they needed to be. So to the sounds of The Final countdown, Flashdance and The walk of life we cruised through the land that time forgot.
Among the many highlights perhaps the best was the Isla de Pescadores ( Island of fish) which was a very bizarre oasis amongst the sea of salt. Studded over it was over 4000 very strange look cactuses, some of which appeared to be applauding when we landed. The Incas used to stop here on their way to wherever they were going and after visiting it´s not hard to understand how they created their very bizarre view of the world. 
We also managed to get to the world´s strangest hot springs. At 4800 metres it was very cold and very high but under the water it was just what the doctor ordered. Great for resting those jeep shaken limbs.
Once we arrived back in Tupiza ( co-incidentally the scene of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid´s final stand), we found ourselves blockaded. Very regularly here in Bolivia it seems to be the thing to whack a pile of stones across the road and stop all traffic in and out of town. We arrived at the blockade about 8.30 at night and under the cover of darkness, with our headlights off attempted the sneak back into town. By now we really did feel like Butch and Sundance as we all had to keep quiet while our driver off roaded thru streams, football fields, farms, and sidewalks around the blockade of angry protesters. We made it thru luckily as the Bolivians have a nasty habit of throwing sharp stones at anyone trying to get around the blockade. 
So here we are in wild west country and the blockade is still on. All the shops are shut and the roads are closed. At the moment we´re not panicking as we still have 12 days to fast track it to Santiago for our flight to Easter Island. (although we do have about 2500 km of travel thru Argentina to get there). Blockades can last months here too. Lucky we´ve got CNN I say.
Today the mine is still going albeit working conditions are pretty much the same as the middle ages. There is no machinery inside the mine. Miners use picks and smash a hole in the rock which takes about 1 to three hours and then shove some dynamite inside it which makes a one metre square hole. Then some lucky buggers get to break up the rock, throw it into some Indian Jones trolly's and push the thing in 40 degree heat a few kilometres in arsenic laden air. Of course the miners can´t eat anything all day as the arsenic would poison their food. About 40 miners die due to collapsed mines a year, There are no mining regulations here other than a please don´t build a tunnel within 10 metres of my one, and the real killer is the fumes which limits a miners life to about 42 years where they usually die a painful death of siliocosis. 
Where they got the inspiration for the shoes though is one of those great travel mysteries. I´ll put this one down to the side effect of chewing too much coca leaves 
It was also the longest and shortest month I have ever experienced. After 7 days a week for a month volunteering at Inti Yara Wasi, our stay is finally over. I won´t miss the wet clothes, the tired limbs, the threat of puma attack, monkey bites, torrential rain, unbearable heat, insects the size of hats and wearing the same smelly clothes for an entire month. What I will miss is the company from people all over the world doing the most bizarre job in South America. We´ve been gone 3 days and already we miss the place, intensive experience that it was. The place was a story feast and here were some of the classics.
Of course, working in an animal park is not just about tramping thru the rainforest waiting to be attacked by some semi tamed beast. It´s about doing the above with a hangover because some idiot decided to organise another going away party. 
We´ve had a bad taste party, a pool party, an M party, a fabulous headwear party, a shabat dinner, football games, basketball, bad quality movie nights, and chinese dinners. All of which usually involve far too much cheap Bolivian 1 dollar a bottle rum. 
By the way prize to the biggest idiot goes to a Tasmanian guy called Scott who was last heard shouting ¨look at me I´m a puma¨ before jumping off a huge rock at 3 in the morning and breaking his ankle.
Kate and I were at these events mainly to supervise that things didnt get too out of control. Being some of the elder members of the volunteer group, it´s been important to set an example of how to behave.