Posted 5:27 PM by Gobbler
I Just Can't BLog Enough

Depeche Mode, which every clear thinking individual on gods green earth will recognise as the finest band they every did see, said that once. its a pretty shite testimony to their music as they didnt even write it and it was a part of their 'we want to be a happy boy band' phase. however, disturbingly, it is their best known song and most peruvian clubs get round to popping it out at some stage in a evenings tuneage. far finer songs are occassionally heard, last night in ekekos bar inPuno, Peru they played a true gem. but i am no music critic and do not claim to be, so i will leave off this (damn funny, like a, like a ) train of thought here. i only mention it because recent attempts to hit the blog to bring myself up to date have been consistently thwarted by various agents of Doctor Octagon. Although, as the bad doctor has been slient the past couple of months i cant help but feel that he may have been deposed and executed by his very evil relative, Evil Uncle, who is not beyond a good dollop of foul play to achieve his own insidious ends.

yesterday for example, there i was, happily wallking along Puno's pedestrian mall (not a very mall like mall. that is to say there isnt really a mall at at all. puno's definition of a mall is that they have tiled the road and dont let in cars. i'd class that more as a pedestrian 'zone' but there you ahve it) when i spotted Nick and Sally, two of the punters on the titicaca trip, and stopped for a quick chat. life, the universe, travelling, living, george bush, the fast show, idiotic musicians, peruvians trying to flog you stuff, towel heads and all that came up and a couple of hours later it was time to do postcards. this brings me to my next subject: Laura

now, laura, as i'm sure she will readily admit herself, is one of gods gentler creatures and not taken to violence even in extreme circumstances. She likes a good cup of tea as well as the next english lady, has never visited and never will visited a toilet, as befitting a lady, had a solid public school education, says ra raaa a lot and generally fulfills the criteria hitherto established by those that know of a lady. imagine my shock, nay incredulity, when i looked at the talkbacks from the last little bit of bloggage to find that she had lowered herself to the depths of using numerous capital letters and question marks in the style of writing i previously outlined, (and i must apologise to any american readers, not least Kat, a new convert, for what i am about to say, although i should add that Kat herself seems to have a sound and solid grasp of the english language - well done kat, all that study clearly has not been wasted (i had a little peek on your site, nice to see, would you like me to chuck on a link?) for the details of which i would refer you to my comments of october 9 2003 posted at 7:22, as the rules of writing usa style. Laura using this kind of language is little short of her hiring a contract killer to off me. she is, to use the american terminology, pissed. but after chatting to sally and nick yesterday, guess what i did? i wrote postcards, adressed them , stuck stamps on and posted them and everything! Actually, lauras and a few others i wrote a month ago in guatemala but never got round to sending, partly because guatemalan post is rubbish and i didnt want to risk it. quite a few are on their way now. the only conspicuous absense is dan and rach. sorry guys, card written stamped and ready to fly bar an address. i know you sent it me but i havent yet copied it down and just now - typically, i cant get access to hotmail so the card will have to wait a little longer. you'll get one one day.

thats that out of the way.
this morning i had a ticket to arequipa at 8 am but i didnt take the bus. i should point out that i didnt miss the bus by accident, i merely decided that i would like to stay in puno for another day. this has nothing to do with the lake, or tracey island or puno itself really, but a few punters i have met here. had some good times with them these last couple of days and so i figured another one wouldnt hurt. ive been going for 4 months now (and am thus getting very old) and my only complaint is taht after a while it becomes a serious hassle to make the effort to socialise, not least because the punters in s. america tend to be older and often in couples and thus like to go to bed early and not have much fun (a friend of mine is quite convinced that at the age of thirty you are basically dead. shes 29 and is therefore getting worried. i dont think thats true of course (how silly!) but there is a point in what she says, the older you get the less inclined you are to get life-threateningly drunk and totter around the place shouting "I'm a warlord! I'm a warlord!" or dribbling the smelly proceeds of your stomach onto the pavement as you wallow in your self induced misery. incidentally and while im on the subject, have you ever wondered why puke always has carrot in it? well, its not because your stomach doubles as a carrot factory. its not because your body takes several months to digest carrot as some nincumpoop once assured me. it is your stomach lining, which gets thrown up along witrh the rest. how pleasant.

All this new found socialising does mean that i again wont be able to blog as much as i had hoped and indeed must stop now. thanks for all the talkbacks, i will respond next time, quite possibly later on tonight. for now and for the first time i will admit to being a bit of a punk myself at the moment. but its just a phase.

Posted 4:12 PM by Gobbler
Blog Titicaca

yesterdays blog was markedly absent because i was on some island on nlake titicaca, peru. lake titicaca is quite high, about 3900m u.s.l. and breathing here is a mission. and the island i was on doesnt have internet. otherwise of course i would have laboured for hours at a terminal. the day before yesterdays blog was never finished because ben and ali and i went for some eatage and then found some mateys and got lost in a bar. so now you know. which is nice. and when this computer loads up my blogspot and i know where i left off, i will begin again. so now you know that too. very educational, this blog.

As i was saying before, this guy paid 3500 pounds, these days about 55oo dollars for his trip, which is a lot, but there is and indisputable and perhaps all conquering plus point to his trip: it is a train tour. they take the train everywhere, even where the passenger train doesnt go. they just fork out loads of dosh and then hook up their passenger carriage onto the end of a freight train. damn funny and special and very much up my street or, perhaps more accurate, my track.

Ahh, now, does anyone remember Thunderbirds? They had a secret base on Tracey Island, the one with the runway and the palm trees that bent over for thunderbird 2 and the swimming pool that moved to the side for thunderbird 1? I have found it. Now, most people think that its probably on some tropical island somewhere but, dont you see that thats part of the whole subterfuge? those palm trees are fake! thats how there are able to move them to the side for thunderbird 2. It all makes sense now. It has proved in the past that Tracey Island was as difficult to locate as Doctor Octagons hideaway in the very heart of Polygon City, the Icy Core! Let me drag out the suspense a little longer... thats about enough.

Tracey Island, hideaway of International Rescue, is in actual fact on lake titicaca. and it looks great. some people claim (including 3 1/2 grand tour bloke) that its a five star hotel, but ive got an eye for these things and know best. though well disguised, the similarity is unmistakeable. Another great mystery of the world solved.

Yesterday was the start of the two day lake titicaca trip which took in the unique reed floating islands and a couple of other islands, one of which we stayed on last night. As we sailed past the newly christened 'Tracey Island', the floating villages came into view. I was sitting on the top deck, starting anew the process of being grilled under the deceptively hot sun that i had started on the inca trail some days ago. at this altitude (3900 odd metres for all you dimwitted peons who have already forgotten) the thin air means that even a light breeze can make you cold and you dont realise (i had been warned but baahh to all that) that your skin is having a seriously hard time of it.

Sorry, ive got to go and meet people again. talkbacks tomorrow, i have the day mostly free. been a bit slack lately, sorry to all, but on the whole i do pretty well, the odd blip is expected. please note that this does not give people a license to not leave a message...

Posted 5:48 PM by Gobbler
The Blogged World

trains are great. and damn funny of course. but, dear reader, the train and the catchment of it, were almost beyond me. you will remember that i spent some time on sunday blogging and did not post that last blog until 1 minute past one oclock in the morning. my train left at eight. i asked the silly punk at the hostel (the same one who previously asked me to translte thing for me into english (such as "our hostel has 24 hr hot water", "would you like a receipt with that?", "i like your breasts" and "you are a f***ing whore!" (like i say, a bit of a punk)) to wake me up at seven am. i had to be at the station at half seven to check in. this would just give me enough time to get abluted, get packed and get out. However, given the nature of the fellow, i set my alarm as well. my alarm is, however, one of the most appalling pieces of technological apparatus and rarely fils to fail to wake me up.

I awoke at 6:45 of my own accord. I figured i could allow myself a 15 minute lie in before punkoid downstairs and my alarm woke me up. fitfully dozing i after a time became convinced that 15 minutes were up, and so checked my clock again. 7:25. bugger. what had happened to my alarm? i had committed the ridiculous but classic error of setting my alarm for 7pm, despite double checking. and what happened to the guy who was supposed to wake me up? well, as established, he is a punk and that pretty much says it all.

My stuff was distributed all over my room, but within ten minutes it was all in one bag or the other and i was struggling downstairs to pay. 5 days at 15 soles = 75 soles. not rocket science but prince punk had to get out his calculator. after a couple of minutes i was able to pay. he didnt have enough change, more time wasted. and can i have my passport por favor? Que? My passport. We dont have your passport amigo. yes you bloody do sonny, hand it over! He looked in the 'safe' for it but found nothing, and assured me that he didnt have it. it was 20 to 8 and my chances of making the train were rolling out of view as surely as the train would shortly do. in my desperation i began to question whether he indeed was in possession of my passport, credit card, travellers cheques, medical documents... I scrabbled through my wallet searching for my receipt, to prove my point, but it wasnt there. Prince punk was on the phone time to his mum. "no time for a family call pal" you may say, but in this case fair play to punk because his mum runs the place. She tells him that indeed they do have it, and a couple of seconds later he has found it. i had no time to count my cheques, or make a comprehensive check of the rest of the contents of my security pacsafe thing, it was 14 minutes to 8 and i was in rather a rush. The guy, whose name is william, says, "hey nick, how coime you didnt tell me earlier yesterday you were leaving?" "listen moonbeam, i'd love to stop and chat but i'm a little pushed for time. another time perhaps." "are you coming back? tell your friends about this place." "chow amigo!" I tumbled outside. luckily every private vehicle in peru doubles as a taxi -more chance of making some do- and i had no trouble picking one up. william of punk told the driver to take me to the airport. was he joking, or did he just hate me for some reason? anyway, we dashed off to the train station.

At 8 minutes to 8 we rolled up. the taxi driver didnt have enough change. or, rather, he knew i didnt have enough time and i would crack before he did as he fumbled through his pockets. He got a couple of soles more than he had earned and i ran off in search of the train. I got my rucksack checked in, said hello to a few bewildered and amused staff and got on the train. 4 minutes to 8. the train left at 2 minutes past. plenty of time, i could have stayed in bed longer...

as the loyal reader will know i was on the 19 dollar economy tourist effort. Due to my rush i had not had time to buy either food or water for the journey. what little water i did have i quickly drank. The american breakfast was 6 dollars, the lunch ten, the coke 2, the water 2. I was hungry and thirsty too, but at that kind of money i stayed that way. as the train rolled away i thought about taking my chances with the water from the sink in the toilet. i decided that was a bad idea.

The reason for the title of this blog is that, near me in the coach there was a guy (called ben as it transpired) reading 'the lost world' by arthur conan doyle. I've currently run out of novels, and at a suitable moment, i.e. when he had put it down and did not look asleep, asked to borrow it. Over the next few hours, ben did not trouble me for its return, i read the whole thing. this book is damn funny, especially at the beginning. very witty indeed. there arent any trains in it, (tho i read it on a train as i think i mentioned) but despite this serious shrortcoming i feel obliged to recommend it. there was however an annoying problem that often happens with older classic books...

I had seen the film. or at least i had seen the ending. and i did not realise i had seen the ending til about 3/4 of the way through the book. this meant that the books climax was reduced to an anticlimax, the final entertaining twist to something that the numptys at hollywood had got hold of viz. i knew exactly what was going to happen. well, you cant have everything.

Reading that was a welcome unexpected bonus as i had planned simply to look out the window and sleep. An unexpected bonus that wasnt so welcome was that musicians. The monsters get everywhere! in a restaurant ok, in the street, of course, at historical touristy sites well, if you must, but on the effing train! this is the train i've been waiting for, this is the train ive been commanded to takem this is the train i broke an arm and a leg to catch. i sit down. my seat is comfortable, and is at a table. there is a pink rose and some pretty white flowers on the table, which is tastefully betableclothed. i stretch, relax, the train makes its tracks through the outskirts of cusco. i begin to close my eyes, but out of the corner of one i see a girl in colourful costume and a ridiculous hat. i hear a guitar from behind her, and i know what is going to happen...

But as it wurns out i do not know how. who could have predicted the extraordinary whining noise that came out of the girls mouth. i wont even attempt to describe it further than to say that it reminds me slightly of the worst excesses of indian music. Accompanied by the guitarist, she patrolled up and down th carriage. I laughed a lot. It was damned funny on a train. (one would think that i would get bored of saying that after a while but apparently not. something that is in and of itself damned funny) And it got better. Whiney girl got this guy up to dance. the german or thereabouts guy opposite me. he didnt look to happy about it but the didnt outright refuse to do it unlike the next bloke. because the next bloke refused i was the next target. i daresay i didnt make the best dancing partner because i was laughing the whole time. Not to mention the fact that it was half nine in the morning or whatever it was, i was tired and in a frigging train not a club. i did not give a tip.

The train took us above and beyond 4300 metres. Every reader bar james will understand that this is rather high. the landscape bleak and bare but no less beatiful for that, and the clouds seemed to begin about 100 foot from the ground. it was extraordinary to ride through a plain that stretched to the mountains in the distance at an altitude four and a half times higher than the highest peak in england, and most of those in the Alps too, come to think of it. And the Rockies. 4300 metres is on the whole pretty high. The plain is peppered with mudbrick farmsteads, the barren light brown land riddled by stripped farmland, the vast majority fallow awaiting a slow and unrewarding refertilisation. Almost all the buildings were in some state of decay and, on the whole, nerris (the site of my humble lodgings in england) is a far easier place to live. But it was beautiful for all that.

Puno, my current locale, (I must just say that i've just spent the last twenty minutes trying to work out who 'Kat' is, but to no avail.) is alsao high up and on lake titicaca which orders with bolivia which i cant get to because theyre all killing each other there at the mo and although tourists are invited to join its not really my sort of game. and i met a guy whos spending 3500 grand thats over 5000 dollars in 15 days of holidays. "Its really a very good deal." Is it really? this subject i will discuss after ben, alistair and i have grabbed dinner and possibly enjoyed a restoring restorative. curse the cryptic kat for calling me from my blog. hold on people, the talk backs are coming!

Posted 11:01 PM by Gobbler
where lies the land to which the blog should go? far, far away is all then blogmen know...

thats the first two lines to a poem i did for some award when i was 10. i got a distinction for it. god knows why ive just remembered it, but there you go. another blog entitled.

unfortunately ive just spent a few hours on email etc. its now 12:24, my train (for the taking of which there are many reasons. not sure if that makes sense but i think you more or less get the picture) so i dont know if ive got time to write what i had intended. my train leaves at 8 and ive got to be at the station at 7:30 and so i{m not going to get much sleep tonight, but thats what trains are for (cool it bro, i'm gonna get me some serious view action). i could really do with going for a slash (billy connoly would not be amused at the divulgence of this information) but im afraid that if i leave to go they wont let me back in. im the last one in here.

i'll write what i can. the train. why the train? the train, even the cheapo economy number, is twice the price of the bus. it is slower than the bus. it leaves at an inconvenient time (8 am) whereas the buses leave all day. the train may well be less comfortable than a nice luxury bus. BUT, and it is a big but, (hence the capitals - makes it bigger) the train is a train. trains, as i keep telling you people, are damn funny and like trains. hell, trains ARE trains! the view is supposed to be rather nice, and the bro, taking every care to equip me adequately for this trip, made me promise one thing: "whenever you can, bro" he said, "take the train. Especially from cusco to Puno, youve just got to take the train. trains are damn funny, and this train is the damn funniest of them all." "Ok bro," i said, "im gonna take that train. you can rely on me." "dont forget now punk," he continued, "take the train. its all about the train." And so you see readers, i really had no choice in the matter. it had to be the train. it was meant to be. it is my destiny. i know that sounds damn funny, (like a train) but here you have it. Trains.

i am seriously considering going now. i think the people in here want to go to sleep. actually no theyve just started hitting one of the computers. evidently it is disfunctional in some way. and evidently they are under the impression that hitting it will in some way rectify the problem. And now, instead of doing as i ought, i shall reply to some of the highly entertaining talk backs i have recently received. thats nice of me isnt it?

El Capitan: i do seem to remember hearing something like that some time ago, (this metal) but i havent heard anything about it here, and may only think that i heard it because of what you said. i would have thought that, if it were true, all the guides would know about it as it would be quite a famous thing. furthermore, there isnt any metal at all at macchu picchu. the incas only had gold and silver and possibly also bronze. they hadnt twigged how to make other metals (thus helping to explain why they always got twatted by the spanish - stone hatchets never were all that good against metal breastplates and swords and guns) and they carved the stone for their buildings (again, in theory, it might have been a laser) from harder stones. The rock they used to build with is limestone, they used granite or something similar for carving. probably your mate is talking chud, tho it seems perfectly possible that there is some metal there from belgium which they shipped across on the monorail some time ago. because the monorail is still a secret they (the archaeologists) would have some trouble explaining where it came from. theyve obviously got tons of the stuff in belgium, (as belgium is a spaceship and thus comes from another planet and therefore has metals not found on earth) but who would think of looking there? this is part of the secret success of belgium. everyone just thinks its small and rubbish and full of people with funny moustaches, but in fact it holds many secrets, one of which is that it is the central hub for a seriously big monorail. As for the mormons, the founder committed suicide as far as i remember, after wandering around america for ages. cant remember what his name was, something simple like dave. if things get desperate here i may have to try a similar trick. then i can start up the Gouldens and have everyone pay homage to me. not a bad idea in amny ways. and i heard that JC did levitate on top of 50 foot poles. he just had the cunning idea of sticking them in the water first and then walking on them. he was a bright lad you know. Laura: well it does sound like youre having a nice time. do you know, im taking the train tomorrow, which is damn funny, which is nice. Evil Uncle: somethings wrong with those poems, they dont rhyme properly. are you sure youve copied them out right? ive got another one too:

My name is Jack,
I'm a necrophiliac.
I blog dead women,
I do it for a livin'.

And i get frustrated,
When the women get cremated,
Cos a blog is a must,
And you cant blog dust.

sorry rich and the rest, next time. my bladder has got the better of me...

Posted 5:23 PM by Gobbler
Bloooooooooooooog!

It was AWESOME! No it wasnt, but it was highly amusing. As i sat in senor chickens chicken shop (not the real name i should point out but i dont know what the real name is and in any cazse i prefer this one) chomping chicken, and struggling to guzzle down the ridiculous 1 litre coke i had ordered, i watched the telly standing in the corner. There was a footie match on, i think between lima and some bolivian team, in the s. american cup i imagine. The commentary was heated and excited: - ethetheth-lima-etheth-peru!-eheth-bolivia!-etheth-futbol!-lima!-etheth-ecelente!-utbol-lima-peru!-ethethethethetheth!!!

I watched with a, though limited, compelled interest that always occurs when in a room with a telly going, especially when on your own. In due course some unwise defender used the wrong limb to remove the ball from the box, and a penalty resulted. At this point i put down my fork which had a couple of ketchup saturated chips on it, and watched closely. he slotted that ball into the net neatly, and the commentator's response was extraordinary, at least by english standards. A ten second long GGGOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLL!!!!!! it was so long that i thought for a wahile that it might be some kind of recording or background noise, but the undulating tones of the commentator as he announced to the world that a goal had been scored assured me otherwise. He was very happy, and i couldnt help feeling that a little biased commentary was in progress. it was therefore with great interest that i waited in hope for the other team to score, to see what his reaction would be. I hoped that he would launch into a forceful tirade of abuse as impressive as his celebrations. PUTA PUTA PUTA!!! would have been nice, or just "those f'ing bolivians, sod off and die!!" or the spanish equivalent of "BBBBBBBAAAAAAAAAAAAA**************************RRRRRRRDDDDDDSSS!!". Happily i did not have to wait long to see if my hope-laden predictions were correct, as only a few minutes later the ball trickled into the net at the other end. But, the truth be told, he was if anything even happier at this one and let off an even more undulous and reverberating 12 second "GOAL" followed by another stretched out word that i did not comprehend. Why was he so happy at them both? It seems that he just really loves it when goals are scored no matter who scores them and how they are scored. It is not what i would call informative commentary. If all commentators are supposed to do is shout monosyllabic words vbery loudly then fair enough, but in my opinion their job involves more. i appreciate the need to announce that a goal has been scored, but a FIFA 2000 style "oh and thats a great goal" or "scrappy work in the box there but he just about managed to slot it home" are surely more informative to the curious listener. It reminds me of the always highly amusing parlay between commentators in formula one back in the days when that old commentator, ah whats his name now... It clearely isnt Bernard Manning or Gerhard Berger. I think bernard mannings that chap who makes food products or is that Bernard Matthews. whoever the food maker is i seem to remember him claiming that his new turkey burgers were "bootiful". Well, maybe it is Bernard Manning. somebody help me out here. Anyway, its the bald guy who was head commentator for years especially for ITV who retired last year or the year before. his voice and style is as inseperable from motor racing as David Attenborough's is from nature programs. You know the one. His commentary was always great because he always pointed out the plainly obvious (and sometimes he didnt even manage that) in booming, excited tones. his enthusiasm rarely failed to stir similar feelings in the audience (unlike that Yoda lookalike aussie commentator, whose name has similarly left me, (the only name i can think of is yogi bear but clearly that is not it) who has the charisma of a peanut: "yes, hes coming up to bowl now... Too short, too short... he's been punished for that one, he'll have to correct his run-up... I remember in the great game, australia against england, of 1924. That was a fine contest. I was batting at 3, and that famous bowler, thomas floggerty...") even when what he was saying was entirely uniformative ("AND THEYRE OFF! THE AUSTRIAN GRAND PRIX HAS BEGUN!" ). Sometimes he was quite off the ball. one time he said, after a ferrari had stopped in the middle of the track: "There doent seem to be anything actually wrong with the car. Apart from the fact that its on fire." There was always the other commentator who, when he could get a word in, gave the viewers informative comments: "Ferrari has completely reworked the engine just for this race. The carburettor is completely new and affords the car a .78% improvement in the fuel-acceleration performance ratio. While this doesnt sound like much, in fact-" only to be interrupted by: "AND THEYRE GOING ROUND THE CORNER!! RIGHT ROUND! NEEEEEOW! FASTER AND FASTER! I'm sorry to interrupt you there Michael, but they just went round the corner. What did you say?" Always made me chuckle. This peruvian commentator was a bit like that.

I've booked my ticket for Puno, which is the launching point de choix for lake Titicaca and Bolivia. I'm not sure if i can get to bolivia because therre are a lot of political problems there at the moment and numerous strikes. The transport network is a mess and I've heard some intriguing and disturbing tales of the problems that some tourists have had. Some guy who had to travel right through bolivia from Brazil to get to Peru had to have an armed police escort, and some other guy in La Paz (the capital) heard gunshots. Ive heard that the only way into La Paz is by air, which i cant afford, so we will have to see. i need to bolivia it one way or another tho. the prospect of letting off dinamite in Potosi and visiting the extraordinary lunar landscape of the Salt Flats is enticing and will provide much entertainment, as well as probably some chuckle-filled tales. Apparently i can get in via chile so might have to do that.

Tomorrow promises another highlight of my trip. Another train. I'm taking the train to Puno rather than the bus. The train is more expensive, slower and quite possiobly less comfortable (as im travelling super budget economy cheapo class. This is 19 dollars. turismo excelento class is 70, a little beyond my meagre means) so the astute among you may quiz: "Why is this crazy koala taking the train? Surely he'd be better off taking a nice five star bus (for that is what they are;)" they really do have five stars on them. one star for the telly, one for the bog, one for the seat, one for the refreshments, and one for oh i dont know the driver or something. Well, there are many reasons why i am taking the train, but before i go into it i have just remembered that i have to go and pick up my ticket. for the train. it would be a little short sighted of me if i went merrily on here chatting about the train, forgot my ticket, and then turned up at the station tomorrow to be denied access to said train due to the absence of a ticket. this cat is quick.