Whyte's World Tour

Hey everyone, as always I know its been awhile since I have been talking to ye all. Hope everyone is well and getting excited about Christmas. I mind was in overload the other day when I was in the supermarket trying to find sangria and tortillas. I will explain about the tortillas later!!! Low and behold what did I see in front of me but xmas trees, I came back to the camp suggesting we get a Xmas tree for Doris. Doris is the name of our yellow mercedes truck, which you dare not call a bus although it looks like one. Its funny you can be talking to other travellers and when you mention how we travel, usually they have seen her. Ill put up a photo soon. Ya, ye have a few photos to keep ye going. Alot of the time, most of the computers dont have cd access so you have to wait till we go to the next place.

In the next blog, Ill tell ye all about our gang or family. At this stage we all know each other so well its great and everyone is there for each other through good and bad times and hangover times. I suppose the pace is starting to slow down a little bit because everyone is getting tired but then you find we recharge our batteries really quickly. From the beginning, we were basically out everynight, some managing to see the dawn. Eventually, most of us started to slow it down and actually miss a odd nite or another. Its hit and miss we the early mornings when you have to set off travelling all day on the bus early, so you might as well go out!

at this stage Im way behind with my journal and even further with this blog. Im going to leave describing a few things for another day. But heres a brief description of what I have been up too. But before I do thanks everyone for all the emails, ye do make me smile!!! Quick tale for you. My sister in law Maria was on a course in Dublin and basically a conversation at tea time ibrought up the subject of Halloween and all the work that people put into it now for kids. Anyhow a girl at the table who was also on the course spoke about xmas and mentioned the mummers and (Im so lazy im just going to paste maria´s email from here on in) I said to myself, I have heard of them before and Woodford came to my mind.... Next thing she mentioned that she was from Galway... I asked her by any chance would that be Woodford and she said yes, how do you know it. I told her my husband was from there.... She went to school with Adrian( me brother). As the conversation went on, I discovered her brother is going out with your friend Anne. I told her that I had met him briefly and Ann the night you had your leaving drinks in Portumna. She was able to tell me all about yourself and your travels....... what a small world. Don´t you just love it!!!!!!

It´s funny isnt it, how small the world is. We have had a few moments on tour for both irish and oz people meeting others and it being a small world. I´m not sure if I told ye about Arequipa when we were in the pub and I passed two guys who said hi dee. anyway I had heard felix ( dublin guy) had been chatting to one of these guys and the guy had recognised him from their local in dublin. I was chatting the boys at a later stage but presumed they knew me because felix had said i was from galway. One of the lads got married last year in killkreest , I think in that castle. sheila you might be able to help with that. and the other guy was living in tipperary, who knew me but i didnt know that till the next day. ya ill shut up now.

so at the moment we are in Argentina. Its a beautiful city and some nice shops. I went on a mad shopping spree awhile back so have to be good now. I got ye all presents but ive sent them home so sory yell have to wait till i get home to get them. but ill send ye stuff along the way. Laura and Amanda I havent forgotten yer birthdays and a surprises will be on the way. the postal system over here can be big ordeals especially for me and they take hours to sort out. Ive sent ye all postcards, so will ye let me know if ye got them or not!

Today, I did a canopy zipline. In Banos, I did a zipline after the canonying, and I thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. All you had to do was hold on to two handles and down the wire you went from one side to another, and we were all happy out. So, I presumed this would be similar. Now before we set off this morning we had heard it was the biggest canopy zipline in South America, so naievly( ya I know spellings), we thought it would be one long wire. Ha ha, we set off on a bus and came to a cliff face, what we have to climb that, we didnt know there was rock climbing involved. We got up the steep rock and we came to the first of 9 ziplines, what says all of us and we have to hike to the other 8 as well and the sun is splitting it. ok we can do it. what dont put your hand in front or it will get cut. calmly it will be ok.

did the first one scary, ill put up the photos to try and show you. basically we were in a canyon and the first one went from one cliff face to another slanted. made it only 8 more. the next one was long and across the water with ourselves up i dont know how many feet. made it. third one okish. Fourth one, mel from jersey started spinning. she put her hand in front but moved it and kept spinning, it was scary to watch but she made it. she was fine but just abit shook up. i went after her. the 6th one across was lovely, 7th was just 30 metres with rock and trees underneath. 8th one we all got stuck, and the guys had to come and pull us from 3/4 of the way even one of the guys said he cud never make it accoss. next one was just as long but we all got across and finally the last one we basically sailed into the park in front of the restaurant. some of the lads did a superman where you were attached to the guide they did all the work and you just put out your hands and got to film it. one of the guides wanted me to do it, but there was no way.

honestly i was glad to be back on the ground, i did enjoy parts of it but its alot of work trying to balance your weight hold on in two different places and not spin. so i wont be doin it again.

i gota go now and get dinner, so in the next edition of this blog, ill be filling ye in on " I survived Death Road"´

take care and have fun planning Xmas

love dee

You see auzzie men are mad!

Ya we´r in safe hands. Never bet a driver, Luara!!!!

Hey everyone, its me again. Just had a nice relaxing day today having done a 12 hour bus journey yesterday, we were up at 5.oo to leave so by 9.30 am it felt like a whole day had taken place. When we got to Cuzso, we were wrecked. As usual the scenery had been fantastic on the way down, we even had lightening, it was fantastic to watch. The andes are just so amazing. As we started to come near Cuzco, it was more farming communities which you could see and it seemed like well off people lived in these areas going by the standard of their houses. We had our usual tour of the city, we are staying in a lovely hotel in the old part of the city. The architecture is beautiful and it is such a gorgeous clean city. A few of us went to the Irish pub for some food. We got gorgeous food and then the fireworks started, they were fantastic and they had these structures built which were huge which the fire works went off. We raced home to get ready for a fancy dress party that the group had been invited to. Mike one of the tour leaders had a gay friend who owned a niteclub and he was having a fancy dress party for his birthday. We all had to dress up as a movie character. When we were in Lima we were all running around trying to get outfits. I came up with the idea of Charlie´s angels for myself, Debbie and Brandy. We had great fun trying to explain in Spanish where to get fancy dress outfits. The woman gave us directions but we kinda felt there wouldn´t be anything there. When we had crossed the street she came out again calling us back in, I went in and she had gone to the trouble of asking one of her customers who spoke English to help us. He spoke English and his wife had been to Dublin to learn English. He told us to get a taxi to where we needed to go, I had actually been around the place before when I had been in Lima myself. We were searching for ages for a costume shop and we had been asking people for directions they kept telling us they were straight down the street. Debbie spotted a tailored made shop so she got a cool skirt made for work. We walked all around and as usual we had been passing the shops all along. We found a shop which sold angel wings and had a halo on top, they were perfect and we said we would cover the frame. We were all delighted with ourselves. That evening we went to buy tops and heels. All we had left to get was guns. The second last place we stayed in I found guns in a toy shop and glitter glue. I forgot to say on our very long and windy trip yesterday we sat a table on the bus and made our wings, you can just imagine the situation. The dublin boys were sewing, am very embarrased by the fact the lads can sew and I cant. I dont think any of us every thought we would be sewing and making wings on a bus in south america. We had got white crepe paper and traced out the wings and then stuck them onto the frame, crepe paper was very thin so few holes appeared. I had cotton wool so i stuck clouds on my wings, debbie used the cotton wool thinly all around the frame which looked like a feather boa effect and brandy cut out millions of feather shapes to put all around her frame. I wrote charlies angels on mine. they looked cool and we had such fun during our arts and crafts time. You can imagine the fun having to get our rucksacks bags and sleeping bags and mind our wings when we were had to change buses because Doris the truck was too big to go through the streets of Cuzco in the old part of the city. So our gang were made up of Peter Pan, the Flintstones, Wednesday and Edgar, Fame, Indiana Jones, Grease, Lara Croft, Charlies angels, ok cant remember the rest but ill put up photos, as usual the computer i have got doesnt have a cd disk. It was abit mad when we went to the club it was full of people all dressed up the costumes were fantastic, and the club looked amazing. You had straight, gay people , transvestites there. One part of the club had an open roof and a huge angel. the club was called fallen angels and had fantastic pictures in it. There was a bath, which had a glass top and was used as a table and was also a fish tank underneath. There were two toilets for a full niteclub. One was heaven and the other was hell. Heaven had all broken glass on the wall which looked amazing and hell had beautiful roses and barbed wire structures all over the wall. The night was absolutely fantastic, we had to take our wings off as would have ended up taking out someones eye. We were dancing on the tables and the stage, dancing on tables and bars happens alot over here and no eyebrows are turned. When we got home we went for food and i had the nicest burger bread with egg, onions and tomatoes.

Right the last time I was talking to ye I had to tell ye about the rest of our adventures in Mancora, but I have to run now because we are having a meeting about doing the Inka trail. Tomorrow we head to see the sacred valley and the day after we will be starting the inka trail, i cant wait.

Take care everyone and talk to ye soon.

Hey everyone, I know its been awhile since i´ve written up the blog, time is just going so fast and we have been doing so much. Ill try and fill ye in on whats been going on. The last day on the bus we were talking about how we all say all the good things that we get up to but that we don´t fill ye in on the bad stuff, so to even the score because we are off travelling ill fill you in on the funny things that go hand in hand with travelling.

But before I do that, heres a list of the activities I have done so far.

1. Bridge swing
2. Swung from a vine (tarzan eat your heart out)
3. 4 hr horse riding up mountains
4. Salsa lessons
5. Zip ride
6. White water rafting
7. Canonying
8. Cable car Trip accross a gorge
9. Buggy ride through the desert
10. Sandboarding in the desert.
11. Trip to the Ballestas Islands

When I was last chatting to ye all, I was in Banos, having done canonying and a zip ride which was fantastic. To be honest of all the above sports, the scariest for me was doing a 4 hours of horse riding through the mountains. We set off early in the morning and the horse was way to big for me so they gave me another one during the trek. Just to remind ye all some of the few times I was on a pony at home, myself and sheila got thrown out the back yard near the stones because I think Adrian gave the pony a tap and she didn´t like it. Also at that time you think we would have remember the pony did´nt like having two people on her back, on another occasion I got thrown into nettles with collette. But anyway, the views going up the mountains were something else. I was very happy to be going at a slow pace, but our guide behind who had no English wanted us to go faster. Eventually, after some time I did let the horse gallop but not for too long. The horses were amazing and sure they knew exactly where they were going. As you can probably guess if you go up a mountain you must go down a mountain. Once again I have a new respect for animals, some of the slopes were so narrow and windy and they navigated down them. I was terrified but eventually thought i just have to put my fate in the horses. I have to admit I was glad to get down on solid ground again. I think alot of the activities I do over here they will be a once off for me.

That evening we went to learn Salsa, it was a very funny evening. Eventually we all got the hang of it, I was partnered up with Laura (she´s one of my friends but will be leaving in two weeks), myself and laura wer grand doing it on our own but together we just couldnt do it. But we had a laugh, so we will see how we get on learning the tango in Buenos Aires.

That campside was beautiful. It used to be an open bar with a round bar all wooden seating and tables and swings all around the bar. To the right of the campside you had the hotel and behind that was a huge waterfall and hot springs. It was beautiful. Oh yea that was my first experience putting up a tent, laura who I have mentioned also had never put up a tent before and we were sharing together. Suffice to say, our tent was very recognisable but it stayed standing for two days. Today is the 27th October and I can proudly say myself and laura can put up and take down a tent in record time and it actually looks like a tent when it is standing. The spoons card came has also been passed on with new twists!!!

At 1800 meters, Banos nestles down close next to Mt. Tungurahua, a very active volcano that has caused the complete evacuation of Banos a few times and most recently in August.

From Banos, we continued southward on the 8th October to Cuenca. Cuenca is a beautiful colonial city with a cobbled downtown and awesome architecture. It is also the home to the famously misnamed `Panama Hat'. We went to see how Panama Hats are made at the factory there which was really good. I forgot to say before we went to Cuenca, we stopped off to see the first of the Inca ruins that we will encounter on our travels.

Ingapirca Ruins:
The ruins were fascinating and there were loads of lamas and alpachas lazing around chewing the cud. It was amazing how they designed their architecture so they could tell the seasons and months of the year. For this group it was a princess who ruled and the men stayed at home looking after the children and keeping the home. We saw what a typical house looked like, usually there would be 5 people in a family. Security was a big issue for them and the windows were at the top of the wall in a shape I cant describe. When a princess died they would give human sacrifices, so I think 8 young girls were buried alive, they would be given a halleceunic drink before being buried. There was a very good museum there. I have found I was better when I started the trip at taking down information, so I am going to try to get back into this habit. One thing I noticed around the countryside here was there were very good houses, you have two different sets of people living side by side but the houses are very big and have a huge spanish influence so for this sector they would be well off.

Before I go on to Cuenca, Ill tell ye a little about life on the road. We have alot of early mornings, this morning we were up at 4.55, most of the time it can be leaving a place at 6 or 7 and you could have a few days of this. its grand if your staying in a hotel but if we are camping, you have to get up that bit earlier to pack your tent. When we are camping we have to take it in turns to cook breakfast, dinner and lunch. we were doing this for 27 people now the group is 35. You also have to buy food for all these meals and then you have you normal bus duties, so there is alot to it and it takes up a good bit of your time. You can be travelling all day on the bus and we have alot of all day travellig, its grand if you get into a campside in the evening but theres alot of fun putting up a tent in the dark.

The toilet suitation as any of ye have travelled brings up alot of good stories, suffice to say the bush is sometimes cleaner than toilets over here.

What else can I tell ye oh yea most of the times its cold showers and its great if you have more than a trikle of water, we really appreciate when we do get hot showers, so we wont be taking anything for granted when we go home, but do you know what thats what travelling is about and I dont think any of us would swap any of these moments.

Oh yea time in south america really is south america time, if you are told you are going to do an activity and will be back at 2.00 you will be looky to be back at 9.00 that night hence you dont always get to email.

Cuenca: Cuenca also involved myself and laura doing our shopping for our intended meals in Mancora. We had planned to make chilli con carne as laura could do this dish really well. For lunch we got a load of different types of crackers, ritz biscuits, archichoves olives and we would have the usual tomatoes, ham lettuce and we made coleslaw and egg mayonaise. The reason im going in to this detail was because the two of us got shafted doing the cooking and had to do all these meals twice, which we werent happy about and it took a whole day out of our mancora trip, but we are over it now.

So anyway we left cuenca for Mancora on the 10th October. This meant leaving Ecuador and entering Peru. The bus journey was amazing, I had done parts of it before as I had travelled from Lima to Quito. I have all my photos sorted now, but as typical this computer cant take cds so ye will have to wait another while later for the photos im only hoping they will do the scenery justice. anyway, the contrast from one village to another is something else, you go from desert to greenery to shacks to stone houses to dry earth to the coast, beautiful villages, poverty. You were travelling down these amazing mountains and you could see the sea to the left side ahead of you, it was just fantastic.

Mancora was a nice little town with markets and very much a party scene and layed back atmosphere. When we got there we went for our guided tour and when we arrived at the beach the sun was setting, it was beautiful. A few of us came back later to the house, it was this huge hut with a hammoch beside the patio, some of us camped and the others shared rooms. It was a beautiful setting and you just had a few minutes walk to the beach and town. Anyway when we got back everyone was sitting around and the Simpsons were on, someone made the point that we were the other side of the world and we were watching tv, but it was nice , we also had a fill of stargate as well. We must be all coming to that age when you start reminiscing on programmes cartoons you watched as a child, so there are many of those moments.

For the rest of the gang Ill fill ye in on the nights out!!
On the first night, myself and laura were the assistants for shalini and katie who were cooking. They were cooking garlic nan bread and a beautiful curry. We were all preparing the food and I said I would chop the chillies. Just before the food was ready, my hands really started to pain so I was putting water on them and couldnt figure out what was wrong, eventually I copped my hands were really sensitive to chillies. I kept having to run to the freezer for ice. The pain was unreal and I got a good slagging for it. Eventually one of the lads had cream which calmed them down and I went to bed early with the pain. moral of my story never cutting chillies again unless i have gloves.

im going to end this story now but ill fill ye in on the rest of the adventures of mancora the next day and for the rest of the gang ill fill ye in on all the other sca. take care and please stay in touch, miss ye all

love dee

Hey everyone, hope ye are all keeping well. The days just seem to be flying by, theres so much I want to tell ye but it seems hard to write it all down, I have been neglecting my journal later so have to sort dat out. I´ll try and shorten down all my news. The last time I was chatting to ye, I was still in Lima, i hadn´t told ye about a little restaurant I used to go to for tea and cake, delicious cake and the lads that worked there were there every day morning to night, and they were lovely guys. I really liked Lima, for my last few days I went to the beach again at Miraflores. I have told ye for me that place is paradise, it was the same again. Just watchin the surfers trying to ride the waves was amazing, while I know I will be crap at it I really want to try surfing. Had another adventure getting the buses again both out there and back, but it was great as you just saw so much that way that you wouldnt normally see. The day before I went to this amazing archaelogy, anthropology museum. It was out of this world and really well done. It took hours to go round it and it was just full of artefacts, really enjoyed it. I found at the beginning of that week I had to slow down the pace as I was gettin really tired. On Thursday I got the bus which would bring me to Quito , a 36 hr journey. In SM things run slower , so the bus didnt leave for an hour. It was an amazing journey for a number of reasons in terms of the places you were going through and the people on the bus. There was people from all over south america and they were all ages and just a fantastic group. You had stops where you got to chat them all and have food. It was amazing travelling up through this country. At times there was white soil, poverty, house built from bits of wood, to houses of stone, then when you were leaving Lima it was during the nite and you just had huge mountains all around you. It was out of this world, then travelling up through the amazon was amazing. Fields and fields of banana trees , mountains, trees, the lushness of it all. I´m so glad I did that trip. On Saturday morning at 5.00am I arrived at Quito. I had had dinner with two guys headin to Columba, who I presume hadnt been out of Chile before as they were taking photos at every stop. They actually asked this woman to wait with me until I could get a taxi. the poor woman waited about 10 minutes with me. I got to the hotel and went to sleep for a while then I went off to see the city. Time flew so I didnt get to see much of Quito, but I got to see their cathedral which had amazing views and a wedding was taking place, so I asked the bride could I take her photo, her dress was fantastic. We had to be back at the hotel at 5.00 to meet the tour group.
The group is just amazing. There are people from south africa, england, 5 people from Dublin, sweden, australia and new zealand. It is just an incredible group and the crack, chats and sessions are something else. Its so amazing meeting other people who are so passionate about travelling. We went to an amazing mongolian restaurant the first nite , which had fantastic food and out then for a few drinks to a pub and club. Im drinking pilsener and rum and cokes at the moment.
Our next destination was the amazon jungle. There really isnt words to describe the place, it was another paradise setting. It was a tiny village with a plaza and then you walked down to the waterfront. In the plaza there was actually monkeys. They were abit scary at first and took a shine to me, I had two of them pulling out of my trousers before I knew it, basically they will steal anything, got abit scared when they were glearing their teeth at me. Basically, I had a bottle which was green which they badly wanted, they would actually distract you while another monkey was trying to steal the bottle. One monkey got the bottle off one of the girls and he was trying to open it, I kid you not. It was hilarious to watch them tryin to open it, firstly they tried to crack it like a coconut, they they would chase each other trying to get the bottle a bigger monkey got it off another one and he actually unscreed it before our eyes, we had photos for proof how intelligent is that. That evening we went for food and drinks. I unfortunately made the mistake of challenging one of our truck drivers to drinking, all they had in line of shots was a bottle of whiskey, so neither of us was well the next day. But I have discovered a new hangover cure, do a 6km trek in the jungle and all your ailments will be cured.
Just want to backtrack for a moment, we also went to Otavlo as it has a fantastic market. The craft work over here is just so vibrant and the designs are amazing. Our hotel room had a beautiful view of these mountains. That night we went to a lovel restaurant and the food was fantastic. We then went to a really chilled out pub.
The jungle trek.They brought us on a boat to a section of the amazon jungle, where we then had a 6km trek to do. The trek was amazing, at times it was so steep and difficult to climb. Wilfed was out tour guide, he was brillant and you could see how much he loves the jungle. He works in the university and has set up a conservation section to protect the wildlife. He showed us everything from butterflies, spiders,trees, plants that gave you hives for an hour and then went away to food you could eat. We were all expecting something very different to where we would be staying. The place was out of this world, it had these amazing huts with hammocs out front of each one, there wer amazing flowers and the place was like another paradise, we couldnt get over it as we thought we would be roughing it. There was no electricity in the place and you just had candles, what a sight. Talk about an amazing place to chill out and relax. We had this huge hut where we ate, which had banana leafs as tablecloths and huge parrots in the roof.
That night they brought us out on a boat to see the amazon river, stars,the moon and the sounds of the jungle what more could you ask for. During the boat trip we all thought we started to hear rave music, which was the case, we just laughed. So, I suppose you can go anywhere in the world and life goes on as normal. Tehre was beautiful kids in the village, gave them my beads and a bag. There were these bugs cant remember the name that go from having green eyes to orange to white. Just fantastic the kids had them doing tricks for us. Taht night we had a shaman perform for us and the emptied out the negative energy of a few participants. We had a huge campfire.
Teh next morning, Wilfed the tour guide brought us to see his conservation grounds, it was fantastic with the wildlife, butterfliew, there wer turtles we were supposed to see but they didnt appear. He had us eating all kinds of things. We got to swing from vines, it was amazing.
After lunch we went on three hour boat journey back to the first village. The sounds in the jungle are just something else, it was unbelivable. I forgot to say, I went down a rubber tire over rapids on a river, unbeliveable. We then went on a 7 hour journey to Banos, which is an amazing place. We had our lunch at the most pituresque place i have ever seen. We all take turns to prepare breakfast, dinner and lunch wen we are not on the road, its fantastic. After lunch we took a cable car across this view. the place was called something paradise, which it really was.
10 minutes later we arrived at this huge bridge, where you jumped off attached to a harness and you swung back and forth. like my previous bungee jump it took me ages to do it. but it was just fantastic. the scenery form then on was just out of this world. We went through 3 tunnels through the mountains, the waterfalls, the hights wer something else. The sun came out then and we arrived at our camping ground. As we approached it there was this huge waterfall. We all set up our tents in an enclosure, which is far from ruffing it, there is a pool, this massive pub, which isnt used anymore that has fairylights, swings around the bar tables latterns and the kitchen is attached to it where dinner is cooked. We had great crack setting up the tents, ive never been camping before, so myself and another girl from scotland both had never put up a tent before. As ye can probably guess, our tent is very noticable. Last night then i introduced the spoons game as the lads wer playing poker. So we had a game of truth and dares, by the end of it everone playing it so it got very funny.
This morning we got up to go absailing down these huge waterfalls, there was a 41 foot one, a 30 foot one and then one were you slided down on your back and went into the water. Teh guys organising it was just amazing and were jumping off the waterfalls and into the water. Im trying to conquer my fear of water at the moment i hate being under water and when you got to certain points you had to let go and jump in. Woh.
We then went to this gorge ,where you held onto two bars attached to a line that went accros the gorge, it was brillant and i really enjoyed that. tomorrow i got horseriding for 4 hours.
It was really funny the other night, alot of us love the same music and one of the dublin lads had made this cd of all the tunes off cartoons, hit shows o ver the years it was so funny.
Well dats about all my scandal for the moment, I am having the time of my life. For all those concerned the activities are really safe.
Take care and ill chat ye soon
dee