tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8233394Fri, 03 Jul 2009 10:53:18 +0000Nathan's round-the-world trip diary 2005, and beyond...http://www.spikydog.com/bigtrip/blog/default.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Nathan)Blogger130125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8233394.post-113797626839660004Mon, 23 Jan 2006 00:31:00 +00002009-07-03T11:53:19.108+01:00A lot of people said that before I went away… ‘you’ll come back a different person’. I’m not sure if this is based on experience, it feels like something you’re supposed to say, or because a lot of people who go away on gap years are younger than twenty and do a bit of growing up while they’re gone. I don’t want to make sweeping generalisations, but the conversation I got out of some younger http://www.spikydog.com/bigtrip/blog/2006/01/youll-come-back-different-person.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Nathan)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8233394.post-113784651221125027Sat, 21 Jan 2006 12:18:00 +00002006-01-30T19:30:37.006ZI know other people's holiday snaps aren't always so appealing... oohh really another sunset, gosh that's lovely and so on, but I've put together a slide show of my photos from India. This one is animated and includes music, so hopefully it's a bit more fun than the usual. I loved India - can you tell?Download the India slide show here (18MB WMV file).I'd suggest right-clicking on the link above http://www.spikydog.com/bigtrip/blog/2006/01/india-slide-show.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Nathan)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8233394.post-113650267822292434Thu, 12 Jan 2006 10:15:00 +00002006-01-13T21:33:35.986ZIt seems like a very long time ago now, but just a few weeks ago I finished the trip in Bolivia. After leaving Puno and hopping over a hectic border crossing, we stopped briefly at Tihuanacu, an archaeological site and home to the Subterranean Temple and the Kalasasaya, pre-Inca ruins of comparable importance in Bolivia to Machu Picchu in Peru. As in Peru, these ruins are being restored as best http://www.spikydog.com/bigtrip/blog/2006/01/bolivia-then-back.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Nathan)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8233394.post-113662864732302775Sat, 07 Jan 2006 10:06:00 +00002006-01-09T15:52:56.656ZI've taken thousands of pictures over the last year, all the good ones and quite a few crap ones making it onto Flickr. The Faves set has the cream of the crop.Now, I've just set up a new online gallery of my best pictures from last year's trip. You can buy prints, have them framed, even get a pack of greetings cards. All proceeds from the sale of photos will be donated to St Elizabeth Hospice, http://www.spikydog.com/bigtrip/blog/2006/01/buy-pictures-donate-to-charity.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Nathan)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8233394.post-113654067225704478Fri, 06 Jan 2006 09:09:00 +00002006-01-06T18:50:27.370ZFriends are away travelling at the moment, and they're blogging like crazy. This is great because I'm getting to travel further, vicariously, through them (and I swear they're all seeing more and having a better time than I did), and it's also great because I'm spared getting those 'biblical epic' e-mails detailing what someone had for breakfast and how hilarious it was when they fell off an http://www.spikydog.com/bigtrip/blog/2006/01/travelling-bloggers-take-over.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Nathan)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8233394.post-113590579458739408Thu, 29 Dec 2005 23:00:00 +00002006-02-12T20:54:21.896ZThe first day of the Inca Trail, and we were all raring to go, kitted up with bamboo walking sticks, bottles of water, waterproofs and cameras charged and at the ready. We'd also bought the corner shop out of every single Snickers bar it had, and most of the biscuits. Snickers bars are surely bought in purely as fuel for Inca Trail walkers - their price compared to anything else in the shop is http://www.spikydog.com/bigtrip/blog/2005/12/hiking-on-soup.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Nathan)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8233394.post-113545142721653612Sat, 24 Dec 2005 18:46:00 +00002005-12-28T17:10:44.046ZI actually left off, before the last few 'try and keep the readers happy and disguise the fact that I've been utterly useless at keeping the blog up to date' type posts, at the point where I left Chile for Peru. I decided to book a tour with Tucan to do the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu, on a friend's recommendation - the Inca Trail is one of the main reasons to go to Peru, the food certainly isn't,http://www.spikydog.com/bigtrip/blog/2005/12/darkest-peru.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Nathan)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8233394.post-113527705919616268Thu, 22 Dec 2005 18:29:00 +00002005-12-22T18:44:19.210ZI arrived home yesterday after taking six flights in four days, starting in La Paz. My biological clock still thinks I'm in New York, my brain gave up somewhere around Miami and my guts haven't got a clue where they are any more so they are protesting loudly. My backpack only just got here today, twenty-four hours after me, because somehow it missed a connection at JFK. Honestly, I got on the http://www.spikydog.com/bigtrip/blog/2005/12/home.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Nathan)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8233394.post-113489585666993834Sun, 18 Dec 2005 08:50:00 +00002005-12-18T08:50:56.713Z A quiet moment for me Originally uploaded by Big Trippy Nathan. Aaargh, I still have to update the blog with what happened on the Inca Trail, and also the visit to Salar de Uyuni, which I just got back from. Hopeless I know, but if I wasn't off having all these experiences I'd only end up writing about what I had for breakfast, and you don't need to hear that.For the moment, see the http://www.spikydog.com/bigtrip/blog/2005/12/salt-and-dead-trains.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Nathan)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8233394.post-113440767586678152Mon, 12 Dec 2005 16:57:00 +00002005-12-13T15:11:54.846ZI'm in South America, a long way from family and friends, and not entirely sure what I'll be doing for Christmas yet. It's not really important to me - I miss my mates and my family all the time at the moment, Christmas won't change that. I'm pretty glad to be out of the UK and avoiding what I'm sure will be a non-stop barrage of rubbish pop songs, TV advertisements for sales that end boxing day,http://www.spikydog.com/bigtrip/blog/2005/12/christmas-appeal.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Nathan)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8233394.post-113302325981474029Sat, 26 Nov 2005 16:26:00 +00002005-11-26T16:40:59.863ZStandard conversation between backpackers meeting for the first time:"So where have you come from?""Peru.""Oh wow, did you enjoy it? I´m going there next.""Yeah, it was OK, but I much preferred Bolivia.""How so?""Oh, more chilled out, the people are lovely, and it´s so cheap. What about you, how long have you been travelling?""Me? Oh, ten months now""Wow, a big trip then - round the world?""Yeah,http://www.spikydog.com/bigtrip/blog/2005/11/backpacker-tales.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Nathan)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8233394.post-113295832604830905Fri, 25 Nov 2005 22:07:00 +00002005-11-27T00:16:54.446ZI haven´t really given Chile the time I´m sure it deserves. After one night in Santiago I headed into Argentina with Sanita and Camilla who I met on Easter Island, to Mendoza, a hedonistic, relaxed little town (well, I say little, a million people live there but it just feels little) just over the border in Argentina. Mendoza is the wine capital of Argentina, responsible for seventy percent of http://www.spikydog.com/bigtrip/blog/2005/11/food-glorious-food.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Nathan)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8233394.post-113245811955082117Sun, 20 Nov 2005 03:08:00 +00002005-11-21T14:59:48.756ZI included Easter Island on my trip because I was so curious about it, and it turned out to be easy to do on the way to Chile, whereas for most people it´s an expensive flight or two to one of the most remote populated places on Earth. I knew about as much as most people - that it was small, remote, and had a lot of big stone heads on it. There is that movie, Rapa Nui, with Jason Scott Lee in it,http://www.spikydog.com/bigtrip/blog/2005/11/rapa-nui.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Nathan)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8233394.post-113217110854546119Wed, 16 Nov 2005 19:40:00 +00002005-11-20T16:59:20.720ZSome places live up to expectations, some exceed them, and some just plain suck. Sorry for the poor English but you get my drift. I`ve found so far that the places that the guidebooks tell you to go to, the places that are `famous´, the places that come heavy with the weight of expectation, rarely satisfy. What charm they may have had is diluted by aggressive hawkers, greedy taxi drivers, http://www.spikydog.com/bigtrip/blog/2005/11/tahiti.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Nathan)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8233394.post-113131583886565104Sun, 06 Nov 2005 03:30:00 +00002005-11-07T04:43:04.460ZThe first problem I have to tell you about is that I am using a French keyboard, which for some reason quite beyond me has all of the keys in the wrong places; they apparently don't think that QWERTY is a sensible layout. As a result I am typing at the speed of someone who is scared of computers and taps away very slowly as if they are afraid the keyboard will give them an electric shock and a http://www.spikydog.com/bigtrip/blog/2005/11/island-hopping-and-going-doolally.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Nathan)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8233394.post-113091739977844065Wed, 02 Nov 2005 06:49:00 +00002005-11-02T22:12:09.950ZI really have been sloppy with my blogging of late, for which I am very sorry. Nevertheless, as my blog's statistics suggest, people have still been coming to the site through search engines, and invariably being disappointed with what they've found, if what they've been searching for is anything to go by...Search engine queries used to find this site, exactly as they were entered:Gay full body http://www.spikydog.com/bigtrip/blog/2005/11/heading-east.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Nathan)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8233394.post-112977492892061852Thu, 20 Oct 2005 02:07:00 +00002005-12-25T00:52:43.983ZI've recorded a couple of things just recently, thought I'd share one of them, the sound of bell birds singing in the evening (916k MP3).More soon, I know, I'm being rubbish with keeping the blog up to date again.http://www.spikydog.com/bigtrip/blog/2005/10/bell-birds.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Nathan)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8233394.post-112890752310713914Mon, 10 Oct 2005 01:25:00 +00002005-10-10T02:25:23.383+01:00 Dolphin Originally uploaded by Big Trippy Nathan. Extra... extra... lots of new pictures from Doubtful Sound, the Catlins, and other nice bits of New Zealand are now on Flickr.I'm currently esconsed in Wanaka, a very pleasant and relaxed little town towards the West Coast, after spending about two hours in Queenstown, which was definitely not my kind of place. More soon on Doubtful Sound http://www.spikydog.com/bigtrip/blog/2005/10/doubtful-fantastic.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Nathan)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8233394.post-112864250389563819Thu, 06 Oct 2005 23:06:00 +00002005-10-07T01:26:55.050+01:00After I picked up the van from Christchurch about a week and a half ago now, I drove out to Akaroa on the Banks Peninsula, a small town with a Maori name but French street names, something I never quite got to the bottom of.Akaroa set the tone for the standard New Zealand tourist experience - the towns and what they offer are after all playing second fiddle to the landscape, so they don't need tohttp://www.spikydog.com/bigtrip/blog/2005/10/kia-ora-pt-ii.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Nathan)5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8233394.post-112833203413241724Mon, 03 Oct 2005 09:07:00 +00002005-10-03T11:10:22.256+01:00I whinged about the price of Internet access in the last post as many places in New Zealand have coin-operated Internet PCs, which demand you pump in another two dollars every ten minutes or so. It's like playing some greedy arcade game, even more frustrating when I take hours on end carefully uploading and captioning photos and honing these blog entries down from war-and-peace length http://www.spikydog.com/bigtrip/blog/2005/10/kia-ora-pt-i.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Nathan)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8233394.post-112821790831248577Sun, 02 Oct 2005 01:50:00 +00002005-10-02T02:51:48.316+01:00Internet access in New Zealand a rip off. Have 57 seconds left. Aaargh. Will post soon, still alive, New Zealand beautiful, driving a van, cooking on gas. Kisses, N.http://www.spikydog.com/bigtrip/blog/2005/10/shortest-blog-entry-yet.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Nathan)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8233394.post-112735127782405622Thu, 22 Sep 2005 00:05:00 +00002005-09-23T11:05:08.456+01:00OK, so we hardly saw any dingos on Fraser Island, just two skulking about when we ate a picnic on the first day and one on the beach, but I liked the title, and there were a lot of English people around.The four-wheel drive camping safari to Fraser Island was the highlight of my time in Oz - it had some stiff competition against the Red Center and the Whitsundays, but it was fantastic fun, and http://www.spikydog.com/bigtrip/blog/2005/09/mad-dingos-and-englishmen.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Nathan)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8233394.post-112718097703624878Tue, 20 Sep 2005 01:31:00 +00002005-09-20T02:49:37.043+01:00I've written this in an Australian accent mate, so that's the best way to read it.Strayans have some weird words, mate. More than two syllables gets a bit tricky, so fair dinkum, many words that would take too long to say get boiled down to two syllables, sorry, syllies, usually ending in 'o' or 'ie'. Too easy.Mushies are what you can have on your burger along with your beetroot, no, they're not http://www.spikydog.com/bigtrip/blog/2005/09/strayan.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Nathan)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8233394.post-112693332029335971Sat, 17 Sep 2005 04:16:00 +00002005-09-17T08:20:13.660+01:00It was a real relief to leave Cairns - Bohemia was getting to feel just plain strange, and I spent my last evening there in a one-sided drunk conversation (me listening, him talking) with a truck driver called Kevin who had recently crashed his truck and decided to come to Cairns for two weeks to drink himself silly. He was a very friendly bloke with hands like hams and a big red nose from all http://www.spikydog.com/bigtrip/blog/2005/09/island-hopping.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Nathan)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8233394.post-112590216861950687Mon, 05 Sep 2005 05:24:00 +00002005-09-06T02:36:23.083+01:00I'm back in Cairns after a quick and quiet trip to Cape Tribulation. Cape Tribulation was named by Captain Cook after he ran his ship the Endeavour aground here on the Great Barrier Reef. There are also, named by Cook, Mount Sorrow and Weary Bay. He then moved on to name some other less well-known sights such as Cheesed Off Cove, Not Again Bay and Why Does This Keep Happening To Me River.Cape http://www.spikydog.com/bigtrip/blog/2005/09/tribulation-and-sunbathing.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Nathan)4