Spotted!

Look who I found on a recent trip to Lyon....











It's Sixie, Mixie's 'purer than thou' twin from Macau.







It would appear that shes been hitting the Slimfast, strayed from the path of righteousness and got tangled up with those naughty Raelian people...



Still no word from Mixie though...

x

Missing In Action...

Friends, I have sad news.
Sunday night Mixie and I had ourselves a little crisis meeting. After 2 days stuck in Cordoba in continuous rain we decided to cut our loses, forgot those dreams of skydiving and landsurfing, and run for the border instead.
A quick check of the weather maps showed Puerto Iguazu, up North on the Brasilian & Paraguian border, to be basking in unbroken 30c sunshine and after 22hrs on a bus we were able to confirm this for ourselves.

Most people come this far north in Argentina for only one of two reasons; they´re skipping the country, or their visiting the amazing Iguazu falls and it was the second that made our itinerary.

The falls themselves are awesome and frankly i´ve no idea why i´d never heard of them before. Lets be honest, they kick Niagra´s arse and even though we saw them during low water their size and capacity was still stunning.
Whats even more amazing is the way the national park has been designed, with a series of catwalks and gangways that literally let you walk out over the lip of the fall, or within meters of the pounding water. Within the park you can also opt for either the ecologically sound tour (row boats, nature trails) or the ´Big fun´ pack involving the 4-wheel drive trucks and powerboats under the falls (guaranteed to come away drenched from head to toe).

On the bus on the way out there Mixie and I metTim, from NZ, and with whom we spent the day trekking. Tim had just entered Argentina from Brazil and Mixie was more than inqisitve about his travels in the rest of South America. Shes already dropped more than casual hints about Equador and Columbia being within spitting distance.

Anyway, to cut a long story short at somepoint during the afternoon I noticed it had been a little too quiet and on searching my backpack pocket (Mixie´s favourite hiding hole) I found her gone!
A quick rumage around in the pack confirmed that she´d not slunk off for a quiet nap or buried deep in order to raid the biscuit bag. yes dear friends, Mixie is officially MIA.

I believe there are a number of possible explanations for her absence:
The trail was rough and at somepoint she may have just bounced out or she may have turned stowaway and scuttled under a lifejacket to hide during one of our river crossings. There is however a 3rd rumour currently swepping the conspiracy theory message boards, that shes not MIA but more AWOL, having decided to make a break for the border and continue her South American adventures.

I grabbed my passport early this morning and crossed over into Brazil to make a quick sweep of the area from that side of the border but was able to pick up no scent of her trail. Mixie dear friends will therefore no longer be continuing this adventure with us, but i´m sure that somewhere out there shes starting her own adventure, and man is it going to rock!


Party on Mixie. We´ll miss you.


xxx

Mixie - Live from South America!


Trixie thinks shes got one up on me with her US trip and now HK but i´m going to whip her arse with this South America trip :-)
It took some persuading but I managed to find a Mixie sized hole in KD´s backpack and have hitched along for the ride. The flight over was cool and I made friends with a big group of Argentinian´s on the plane who were totally up for drinking and partying all night. I had hoped to stay in BA and rock the city for a couple of weeks but KD had booked flights to some tinpot town down South so I didn´t have much say in the matter. I made friends with the crew on the flight down to Ushuaia though so it wan´t so bad.

Much as I was grumpy about having to leave BA, Ushuaia was pretty cool. Here are a few snaps of me out and about in the snow, on a boat and with my new friends and some pengiuns.




We landed in El Calafate last night and are headed up to some glacier or something tomorrow, at least that seems to be the idea, I´m perplexed. At work KD´s like clockwork and I know exactly what to expect when but this backpacking lark is totally freestyle. Guess i´ll just sit back, relax and enjoy the ride!

I´ll post as often as I can and drop all my photos here

Mixie from Macao

Hi there, Mixie here! Kristen's been working too much recently which doesn't make for interesting blogging so i've decided to take over this part of the show.

As my friend Emma needed to leave HK in order to get her visa stamped I suggested we take a trip to Macao to see the sights, and also catch up with my older sister, Sixie who i've not seen in a couple of years. Sixie, and I aren't really very close, shes all religious and 'pure' so we dont share many common interests but still, its good to see her from time to time.

Macao being an old Portugese enclave its got a bit of a Catholic groove going on and has some famous old ruins. We'd arranged to meet Sixie at the steps of the Ruinas se Sao Paulo and there she was, with about 500 other people taking in the sight.





With the obligatory touristy photos out of the way we snuck down the alleys and side streets and found some great little places.

The architecture definitly has a European feel, and as there aren't many high rises and the population is less dense than HK it has a much slower feel to it. Macao also has something that HK doesn't.... sky! Yep, having been hemmed in by buildings i'd forgotten what an expanse of sky looked like!


Down one of the alleys Sixie showed us a temple she goes to an insisted that we meet her spiritual leader.
I don't really understand what his role is. I think hes her Yoda or something, either way he has a cool little house and seemed like a pretty laid back kinda guy.



After the religious dose I needed something a little more lively so we headed down towards the water and the islands famous casinos. As the sun was setting the town turned into Vegas with coloured neon flashing and blinking on every building. Sixie absolutely refused to come into a casino hall with me, refering to them as dens of crime and vice (yeah right) so we went our seperate ways outside - She no doubt had some important Hail Mary's to say or something...

They wont let you take photos inside the casino but the place was packed with people playing roulette, black jack and poker, some of whom looked like they'd been sat at the tables for hours on end.


I came home a couple of dollars up and Emma got her work permit stamped so all in all a very successful days trip. We'll no doubt be heading back there again soon!