lost and found

LIKE SUPERMAN, we have returned. When we left you, we were in Chile, about to get on a cargo ship heading north. After two months lost at sea, we were finally rescued last night by a group of Welsh Boy Scouts on an outward bound week in the South Pacific. Jenny and I were the only ones to survive. The cargo of cows was the first to be eaten. Then the other passengers. In the end, the crew blockaded themselves in the Captain’s cabin, but Jenny squeezed through a porthole during the night and by morning there was nothing left but hair and bones…

I write this on the Welsh Boy Scouts’ explorer ship, a refitted mine sweeper called The Burnished Woggle. There’s plenty to eat - devilled eggs, pork pies. But Jenny has that wild look in her eyes again. She’s tasted flesh, and I fear for the safety of our hosts…

Or so it could have been. But in fact the cargo ship was pretty ordinary. In fact, it was luxurious compared to the conditions we were used to. We had out own cabin – sort of, with a porthole to sick out of when the water was rough. The food was great. But the cargo stank. After a few days it was hard to go out on deck because of the smell from the livestock. There was not a lot to do except sit around reading. Five days. I read many rubbish books. We ate a lot of food and played poker with the other passengers. On the final night I bought in three times and lost everything, $50 or so, which was a lot to us back then. Jenny knocked out two Brits and was left heads-up with a huge American man who was studying International Relations at Harvard. Jenny took him to the cleaners and won back all the money I’d lost, totally enraging him in the meantime. She bluffed consistently, and he knew it, but he couldn’t bring himself to challenge her. It was magic. At the end he grabbed her and said: ‘You made my lip quiver.’ He was huge. About 25 stone.

And so we made our way up through Chile to Santiago. On the way we went back into Argentina, where everything costs a quarter of what it does in Chile. We spent a week on bicycles cycling around the Argentinean wine district, camping out at night. As usual we hadn’t done much planning, and most of the wineries we arrived at saw two dusty, bedraggled cyclists coming and pulled up the drawbridge. But we did find a few little Bodegas where we drank free wine and hung around abusing the hospitality. At one place, we turned up and the owner was showing round two Italians. We tried all the young wines, then lots of dusty bottles came out. After a quiet word with the security guard we found out the Italians were European distributors for the Bodega, and the owner was laying it on thick for them in the hope of upping next year’s order. At the end of the day, we bought the rest of the best bottle of wine they’d opened that day and took it back to our campsite to drink out of tin cups.

Santiago was nice, but we were already steeling ourselves for a return to the English-speaking world. No, neither of us wanted to leave, but at the same time we were ready for it. I think if we had more time we’d have gone back to Argentina, stayed there for as long as we could, because it really is blissful there, and then headed back up the west coast of the continent to Colombia – which everyone says is very safe and crammed with beautiful things – before crossing into Central America and going up to Mexico.

But we needed to put some money back in the bank, so we each swallowed condoms full of cocaine and headed for New Zealand. Joke. We just packed up our ugly, huge backpacks for the last time, took a deep breath and left.

In New Zealand we missed South America. Being in a country where everyone understood us was boring. We could buy a newspaper and read it without a dictionary. We could turn on the TV and see English programmes. Consequently, the place didn’t have much edge. Auckland has more backpackers than atomic particles. Every hotel is a hostel. Every shop is an internet café and international call centre.
It’s the law that everyone there must be a transient Israeli or Swede. Everyone has to carry 90kilo packs on their backs at all times and preface every statement with the words: When I was Bungy Zorbing in Mai Lao…

We hired a car and spent two weeks driving around. Out of Auckland, everywhere was a bit like a faded English seaside town, with the weather to go with it.

It was fun, but not very.

We did, however, visit one of the national parks, where things started to get more silly. The weather was atrocious. Constant rain and gales. As we set off to do a three-day walk, we pooh-poohed the wardens’ warnings with tales of our South American feats.

But half way up the volcano on the weather turned angry and attacked. We made it to a hut on the mountain and stayed there for two days with a Canadian called Emile and a park warden. Various people arrived and stayed, including an Australian who told us he was in the SAS. We cooked and ate. Jenny and I had brought wine. Outside, Thor and Zeus battled it out.

On the third day we went up the volcano. To the right of us, the crater opened up into a verdant lake while below the landscape swept off in valleys and craters for hundreds of miles. But we couldn’t see any of it, because visibility was about six inches. I couldn’t even see Jenny. It was very funny. And cold. And wet. And funny. Our improvised survival gear came out again. My feet in plastic bags. Jenny with a coke bottle Sellotaped to her ankle.

We drove back to Auckland not long after that and came to Sydney, which is where we are now.

We’ve rented a house in Surry Hills, which is a leafy suburb full of little terrace houses. Everyone says it’s full of dodgy people – the headquarters of Murdoch’s News Ltd is a few streets away so I suppose they have a point – but it seems very peaceful to us. We have a little garden and a balcony, and lots of mosquitoes to call our own.

Various bar jobs when we got here. Some restaurant work. I scored a career high by working in a Wagamama for two weeks. Now I’m working at the Sunday Telegraph, my first Murdoch paper. Jenny’s doing some child minding, working in a really nice bar and waitressing in a hotel. But most of the time we just wander around looking at the big buildings and boats and seeing a city with fresh eyes.

The plan is to stay here until we’ve got some money together and then head somewhere else, either to Central America or to Asia, to go bungy-zorbing in Mai Pao. Or back home if we miss you guys too much. If anyone wants to visit us, here’s where to come:

72 Sophia Street, Surry Hills, Sydney, NSW 2010
This is Jenny’s number: 0420 397 966
This is mine: 0420 384 824

Just so you know, it’s 40 degrees here.

If we get a camera, we’ll put some shots up of the house and the area. The only ones we’ve got are these, taken by a friend who some of you will know - Amanda Morrow – when we were in the Blue Mountains over Christmas.

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DSCN2105Originally uploaded by usblog2.