It´s beignning to look a lot like Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone. Miss you all heaps, hope you have a fantastic day.

Lots of Love, Ebs and Richo

Panama city - hello sloths

These are a few images from Panama. We left our beloved South America last Monday, and flew into Panama city. From there as per usual we took the 35c bus into town as apposed to the $5 cab into town.. a decision which we question later standing in 35 degree 100% humidity in a bus with no seats left.

We have been in the city for three days and began by having a look at the Panama Canal. Here are some facts for all you keen readers. It is 80km long and conects the Pacific to the Atlantic making it one of the world´s most significant waterways and ¨truly an engineering marvel¨. Ships worldwide are still built with the canals dimensions in mind. It has to raise ships 95m above sea level, and does this some 14,000 times a year. A series of locks, chambers, water and gravity makes all the magic happen.

Besides the canal we went to the zoo which was pretty basic except for the encounter with the baby sloth, which we agreed was by far the coolest creature created.... ever. Panama city has generally been a solid introduction into what we though Central America to be. The streets are full of music and colour, as are the buses, some with decks and dj included.

More boobies than you can shake a stick at!!!

The Machilla National Park is famous for it Isl De Plata aka the Island of Silver. At another time of the year than the one inwhich we are in now the island is surrounded by whales and is very popular for whale watching. However, luckily for us, right now the island is covered in Boobies -and we had many requests to include more South American Boobies in our Blog. That is, Boobies of the Blue footed kind... Yes blue footed ones and Nazca Lined Boobies as well. Richo had a lot of fun on this Island.

Apart from having funny names the Boobie will just about nest anywhere and will release a "nuclear" fart when unsuspecting tourists are close by (the after effects are shown).

Also the Island has zero silver on it, despite the name. Infact it was called Island of Silver because fisherman passing by, back in the day, could see a white shinning island and assumed this must be glissening silver. Poor misinformed fisherman - the island is covered in shit...

You stay classy Santiago. XX

Ebony and Richard

Snorkelling Isla Del Plata

A few snaps of the Isla De Plata from underwater (using Richo´s camera - cheers guys it´s working great) showing our first snorkelling on tour. It was a bit choppy in the water, but still mangaged to get a few good shots of some really colourful fish, and Richo got to see his first turtle underwater. We also saw a family of massive sea wrass´, a moray eal (blue and yellow) and these colourful blue cod things. Instead of including these photo´s we have included such things as Richo´s ass.

The water was about 25 degrees, which was too cold for our mate from Costa Rica - which means it is either great news for us as we head north, or he was just a pussy.

Pt Lopez

Peurto Lopez is a dusty fishing village,
but is the closest place to the coastal national park of Machilla. So we stopped off here fora few days to visit some nice deserted beaches and the Isla Del Plata (see next blog). Met a lot of the locals and an English chick who ended up staying two years after only expecting a two day stop over. Our new friends took us out ot the local bar/disco (made disco by manually flicking the lights on and off) for an impromteau salsa lesson.

If the readers haven´t noticed Ebs has mangaged to fall in love with the gigantic hippi ass dreamcatches and resultently bought three and is shipping them home as we speak.

Land of tounges and Iggy

Another coastal village, similar to Mancora, but with a dash of Cancun and a twist of Nimbin. Full of interesting characters, and strange phenomena. Firstly we´re pretty sure we found a bloke who provided a crystal ball image of what Michael Jackson will look like in twenty years or the estranged brother of Iggy Pop. This guy wore a matching black tracksuit (despite the 30 dgree heat), had a ring on every finger, skin like a mummy, and a solid tatto on his forehead just for good measure. He came and greeted us, as did most of the dealers in Montanita, with a sequenced handshake that we were supposedly meant to know... but for some strange reason didn´t.

Another interesing thing about this place were the little ¨tounges¨that popped up in the sand with the incoming and outgoing waves. Rows and rows of these little things would appear and filter the water, which made walks on the beach interesting.

We had our first beach party, and got to know a couple of the locals, a few poms, and a crazy german kid. Montanita was all and all pretty cool, but suffered from a bit of an image problem, and a few too many Gringo´s were weaving bracelets and juggling in the gutter, neading a serious talk from their mother to ¨Put down the string, get out of the gutter, and make yourself a sandwhich¨. So we headed north to Puento Lopez

Banos Festival

Some shots from the festival
here in Banos. We relise why all these people can dance - they have compulsorarily parade dancing since the age of 3. Please note how cute the kids are. Also, we have included a shot of the delicacy "cuy" -
otherwise known as Guinea Pig... hungry anyone??

Banos Festival

Some shots from the festival
here in Banos. We relise why all these people can dance - they have compulsorarily parade dancing since the age of 3. Please note how cute the kids are. Also, we have included a shot of the delicacy "cuy" -
otherwise known as Guinea Pig... hungry anyone??

Banos - Rafting n that

Just a couple of shots from our days at Banos where we did a bit of white-water rafting, pretty fun, and a 60km bike ride which almost killed us. The best thing about the white water was our guide who had an uncanny resemblance, both in physical appearance and the way he spoke, to Jake The Muss (Once Were Warriors)- so much so we thought he was going to request that Ebony please prepare him some eggs. A little dodgy when we had to jump out of the van, so we could reduce the weight as they drove across this fairly shabbily constructed Indiana Jones style bridge.

Mitad del Mundo part 1

Mitad del Mundo part 2

22 km out of Quito lies the ¨middle of the earth"
also refered to as the equator. So us ozzys set out to say goodbye to the southern hemisphere and HELLO to the northen hemisphere. The location put down by the spanish and the french as the equator is a park/museum with a giant globe in the middle, surounded by N S E and W lines. You can run from the north to the south - and make calls such as "we are worlds apart" and "you are on the other side of the world to me" - till your hearts content. However, it didn´t take long till we noticed that the toilets on the northen side still flushed anti-clockwise.... questioning our year nine science knowledge of the coriolis effect. We then left the park, only to find an additional sign claming the to have the location of the equator on thier grounds.
It turns out that thanks to GPS technology developed 10 years ago, the spanish "equator" is a massive FUBAR, and the actual equator was a few hundred meters away. Even more interesting, the incas had the exact location which they refered to it as the "sun path".
This place was fairly random, but it was to be expected as it was quite new. The tour here started with a history lesson of indigenous Ecuador (be-heading flow chart instruction included as shown), then a little nature (boa constictor as shown) and then some science. Some interesting things to come out of the science lesson were 1. you weigh less on the equator 2.the coriolis effect!!!! 3. eggs can balance on their ends and 4. your stength is depleted.

Torro Time - Festivites of Quito Week

More photos. The photo of the promo chick has a funny story. Ebs wanted to get a photo of just the 4 of us drinking at the bar and asked the promo chick to take a photo for us. Due to the language barrier, she immediately unzipped her jacket to reveal her pair of nazi´s (they don´t sing, they don´t move, they don´t dance) and jumped in the photo.

Torro Time - Festivities of Quito Week

The first week of December in Quito is Quito Week. The festivities
include daily bullfights, nightly concerts and huge fiestas. So we thought when inb Rome, and headed off to the Plaza Del Toro to see some carnage. Bullfighting over here seems a bit like the Spring Racing Carnival back in Aus - people get dressed up, there´s heaps of fine food and wine, beer (and of course beer promo girls see photo, which are decent spectacle in themselves).

The main event we were there for was of course the bulls. We saw six fights, six deaths and apparently the worlds best Matador (who funnily enough is French). They treat these faily feminie looking fellows like celebs, just as big (if not bigger) than the local soccer/rock/movie stars. As far as we could tell a good matador achieved the following things - dance and play with the bull using his cape (which the crowd responds with an Ole), minimal movement of your feet and legs when the bull charges, and a clean, accurate stab of the bull with the final sword to result swift death of the bull. The matador is then rewarded with either one ear, two ears, the tail, the leg, and if he is really good the whole frickin bull. We got a two earer. It was fairly brutal, and both don´t feel the need to go and see a bull fight again. Ebs found the fight suprisingly entertaining, as it seemed artistic and the matador was talented, graceful and displayed great finesse in what he was doing. She thought even though it was a one sided fight, it´s still symbolically man against beast. We had debates about this point for the rest of the day as Richo thought they were a bunch of fairies dancing around in marty gra gear killing bulls.

The rest of the day was spent as all good race days end, drinking, eating, checking out the promo tents, checking out the promo girls and boys. We had the pleasure of seeing the Latin equivolents of Simply Red, Michael Bolton, Bon Jovi, The Edge, and many Pamela Andersons. Cath and Ebs came away from the day feeling proud that they were two of the few women present who could state that their ¨breasts don´t come with bar codes¨.

Awesome day.