one year ago today

one year ago today tremendo, jer, and i were looking up at the huge mexican flag waving over tijuana as we took the leap over the mexican border and into the adventures of life on the road.
14 countries, 2 and a half continents (NZ=half continent) and heaps of adventures later i find myself standing on some strange goblet statue at the top of a mountain, looking out over lake wakatipu and my home for the last two and a half months: queenstown, new zealand.

aahhh, queenstown. you won't find a better place for such a blend of incredible natural beauty and insane adventure sports. or bar hopping. with everything from paragliding and jet boating to the world's highest bungy, not to mention the 2 casinos and 200+ licensed liquor serving establishments, i could have easily blown my entire travel budget here within a week and a half. but instead of spending all my money on booze i opted for the next best thing and got a job serving it.

this is Chico's, the best place in town to come for a huge steak meal or a drink amd some live music. it was also the place lucky (or dumb?) enough to have me bartending and touting for them. not a bad gig - serving booze and getting paid to chat with people on the street.

for the first few weeks i was in queenstown this is the place i called home - bj's lakeside backpackers. yup bj's. spent about 3 weeks living here for free in exchange for my expert gardening skills so i could save money for skiing. but eventually the snow started to melt and i began to realize that open blisters and serving alcohol doesn't mix so.....

i got a flat with mark, grace and ben (BENTON!). ben likes cereal.

the view from our living room window.

while there was still snow on the ground i took my days off to get in some southern hemisphere skiing at some of the ski fields surrounding queenstown.

coronet peak the day after a dump.
benton. word.
scaling an enourmous rock face on the trecherous queenstown gondola hike.

hockey rink. hadn't played in years but joined the Chico's team en route to our 2nd place finish in queenstown's tuesday night league. yeah!

wow, ben is ecstatic to be at the top of the queenstown hill hike. and i seem to have something delicious stuck to the right side of my face.

mark and fergburger. mark's cool, but fergburger is SCRUMPTULESCENT. one of best burgers i've ever had. and they're ginormous. and they're open til 6 am, which means excellent late night stop after a big night out on the town. although to be honest i'm more partial to the golden brown night 'n day wedges.

the ferg and his burger.

as you can see it's quite large.

just chillin' in my export gold sombrero and red poncho. grace is jealous of my sweet hat.

yeah, workin the bar. BAM!

uh, i don't know. it's late and there are empty wine bottles in the background. 'nuff said.

getting home from work just in time for sunrise is just one of the perks of bartending in queenstown. i'm gonna miss this place and the great people i've met, but i haven't seen tropical waters in a while and southeast asia beckons. next stop, bali!

some lost classics

from the archives...

the blurriness, the huge piece of casi-raw beef, eds look of pure ecstasy... a winner

there seems to be a theme of incredibly cute little kids of late... in contention for the cutest little girl in the world. and what a stylish headlamp. she was convinced that whenever it was off i couldnt see her.
subi meandered up through the andes towards chile but alas, the howling 'white wind' and the pursuing snowstorm would prevent crossing the border for over a week...

kept the subi, my cozy little home, insulated quite well for the long haul

so the border crossing to chile opened up and i stormed for the frontera passing thousands of trucks that were caught in limbo and bouncing off snowbanks to reach the border minutes before closing for the night. i told them a cow had broken the windshield and showed them the beef i had cooked on the front seat and told them it was the last of the tender stuff from that damn cow. judging by the huge crowd that gathered... i think i was officially the craziest person they had ever seen
a moment of tranquility before the dash to the border... that sign marks the base on mt aconcagua at 6959 meters. thats really high. the tallest peak outside of the himalayas and high enough to ignite some colors that a photo could never do justice..

and we're in chile.. a great man once described this place, "There is nothing here. I can't even find a place to buy a towel. I had to walk five blocks uphill to this internet place and it's about 50 degrees in here and the computers wheeze like old men sleeping and they're dusty and the woman who runs the place is missing teeth. Fucking bonita is what it is." bonita in this case means tremendisimo. one of the more tranquil little towns on earth. the boys who you will see below rented a little house with the view you see above... the sun set and lit up the towns smorgasbord of colors and pods of dolphins would churn the water near the point below...

great man

great pirate

a few other usual suspects from the fantastic times of horcon and vina del mar.. dan and ricardo, the one in the middle, happens to run the best damn microbrewery in all of chile and..

stirring up almost 400L of goodness

this sums up alot in latin americathats right kids.. hes a bilingual drugdoga soul still

hasta luego latin america, cheers to 10 months of fantastic-ness