Aoife arrives in Deepest Darkest Peru and finally her blog title makes sense

Well the original, original plan was to visit Peru and check out where Paddington bear came from. It´s taken me 10 months, 9 different countries, a wee detour home to Ireland, but I´ve finally made it - woo hoooo. And who said I wasn´t good at making up itineraries.

I arrived in Lima last week and found myself back in the chaos of South America and the rotteness of hostels filled with young boozing backpackers ´doing´ Peru. Sigh. Ya visit a country, ya don´t 'do' a country. Yes, I am high and mighty but 'doing' a country just sounds so arrogant to me.

The Peruvians are fierce friendly. I met a friendly Peruvian lad, in Parque de Amour (see above picture of a statue of entwined but very uncomfortable looking lovers) who strolled with me around the city and introduced me to ´cerviche´. It´s the Peruvian version of sushi - raw fish cooked only in lemon juice and the hideousness of onions. I had mine without onions and it was only lovely.

I only spent a couple of days there, unsuccessfully attempting a few tourist activities which all fell through (renovations, mist, etc), before headin´ for the mountains and bit o´ hiking.

Skippedy skip skip skip

I spent 3 lovely weeks driving around the crazy redrocked national parks of Utah and Arizona with my Swiss chocolate. I´ll have to write more but not before I get a rant out of the way.
This is us in the Grand Canyon.

St. Patrick's Day a wee bit late in San Diego

I managed to make it to San Diego too late to celebrate St. Patrick's Day on the 17th, but luckily my tardy college friends have their festivities a week later. June organised a splendid boozy bus tour which did a scenic trip of San Diego taking in a diverse range of pubs and bars. Everyone was marvellously decked out in green with a wonderful range of amn't-I-so-Irish hats. June, looking ever-festive in a green hula skirt, coordinated the days proceedings with her wee whistle which signalled that we should skull out beers or at least think about skulling them.

The tour was only great. After the first pub or two, we were treated to a ride on a very rickety rollercoaster (well planned for the start of the pubcrawl). Then after a couple more pubs, it was on to some nice park with a lovely view where a Mexican lad and his family served us tasty tacos (very Irish, that). Then a couple more pubs, then a boat ride across the harbour and then it gets hazy. I wasn't even drinking the designated one-drink-per-pub as a trip to the bar or the bathroom normally took up a good chunk of time. That, and the fact that were was a keg of tasty pale ale on the bus, meant that I was quite beerful but too beery that I couldn't dance in the bus.

After the last pub, we headed back to June and Steve's were we had a couple more drinks and gorged ourselves on June's Mum's stew. Delicious. Surprisingly my head wasn't too bad the next day but poor wee Stefan, unused to the pace of the drinking Irish, suffered lots. It was a great St. Patrick's day altogether - good work Spoonog.

Old but yet still childish - My 30th Birthday

Here's Stefan with my birthday cake in the morning - then the same cake, 400km later. It didn't look quite as nice but was pretty goddam delicious.

Well after being a good bit homesick the day before my birthday, I celebrated my birthday breakfast eating a tasty tasty birthday cake, complete with candles, that Stefan had ordered especially and surprised me with at 8 in the morning (we were on Nancy-time - this withered auld one, Nancy, who owned the cabin we were staying in, informed us that daylight savings took effect, though they didn't - so we got up one whole hour early by mistake. I'll be double checking that the next time).

We had planned to go see the whales further north, so officially my birthday was being suspended to the next day as we had over 400km to drive that day. So I headed to the internet where I got the most lovely birthday card from my Australian mates -

Click here to see the lovely photos and an awful one of me looking rotten

And then after a lengthy phone conversation with Mum and reading lots of other Happy Birthday emails (thank you everyone), we headed off on a beautiful drive though a mountainy coast with deep deep blue sea. I was allowed to choose the accommodation, seeing as it was my birthday, so I chose the El Dorado Motel, a classy little place (where the owner presented me with a birthday rice pudding). We had a hearty birthday meal consisting of hamburgers and green salad with a most dodgy mayonaise/ketchup 'dressing' before I was treated to a massage and allowed to pick a birthday film to watch. '28 Days Later' is only great, though fierce scary especially if your boy is snoring gently next to you. It was a marvelous 30th Birthday.

I left some of Mexico out

(2 whole months, that is). But I fully intend to update it when I get a chance.

Home for Christmas

We arrived into Dublin airport on Christmas Eve with the parents waiting for us, very very happy to be home. It was pretty nice driving home and being met by Grandpa and Muirs and a fire. The house was lookin´only gorgeous - christmassed up to the max.

The first week was spent purely relaxing. The internet wasn´t working at home, I didn´t have a mobile phone and Mum has disabled calls to mobiles cos the little ones spend to long talkin´ to boyz. So, as a result, I couldn´t contact my friends easily, so I hung out drinking tea and having baths until I realised I only had 3 weeks left and should get my ass in gear and see everyone.

There were a few boozy nights out in town which were quite fun and a couple more in Dalkey. I also made it down to see Vicks and John in Kildare for a sumptuous dinner with old school mates followed by a bit o´ karaoke. And the next morning we headed into town to shop for bridemaids dress shopping. There wasn´t much as the sales were on, but we had lots of fun looking.

Christmas dinner was great. It was Micheal´s first Christmas, so he was the centre of attention, though he had a fierce snotty nose and a cough (which I managed to acquire a couple of days later). Grandpa was over from Manchester and Granny and Uncle Pat were also there for Christmas dinner.

Aislinn had me, Mum and Emma over for lunch. She made lovely quiche.

Yeh, it was deadly to be home and I was a wee bit sad to be leaving but seeing as I planned to return in July, it was all good. And of course, I was all excited about meeting up with Stefan, who had finally left 'his friend' to meet up with me.

I need to get a very cute photo of Micheal wearing a ridiculous llama hat for here.

Hanging out in Buenos Aires

Well I have to say that I was a wee bit disappointed with Buenos Aires though I can imagine lovin´it in different circumstances. I had notions that I was going to stay there at some point in my travels and teach English but yeh, the Buenos Airians seemed to have a problem with my marvellous Spanish. Now I know pronounciation isn´t my forte, but seriously, they weren´t even trying to understand me, the rude feckers. I´m sure there´s some lovely ones, but on the whole, they´d walk over you in the street and look blankly at you when you attempted conversation with them. Admittedly, Buenos Aires wasn´t that much fun from the start as it consisted of visits to the hospitals and angry phonecalls with the hugely incompetent insurance company, so maybe I wasn´t in the right frame of mind. But there was an awful lot of rude feckers.

Once Emma was released from hospital (after running up a hefty 500 euro phone bill in a week), we moved into a hotel nearby while Emma convalesced. She convalesced quite quickly and was out shopping the next day and most days after that. I must say, Emma and Sarah are the best shoppers I´ve ever met - they could shop for Ireland. Though there´s only so much shopping I can do before I get grumpy and require tea.

The last week before heading home was much better fun though. We decided to have a few outings to sample the Argentinian food. There was an excellent place called Olsen which had an super 4 course brunch served by the rudest staff ever, but it was marvellous, as was afternoon tea in the hyatt. Little did the Hyatt know that any McDonnell can eat their bodyweight in dessert in a single sitting, when they showed us to the dessert buffet. We also caused a few epileptic fits due to the amount of photos we took. It´s safe to say that I´m the most unphotogenic person in the world.

Anyway, the insurance company after arsing us around, finally agreed to fly Emma, Sarah and I home with a medical escort(to ensure that Emma didn´t explode on the flight) after some gentle persuasion from Dad. I was pretty damn glad to be getting on the plane even if it was the day before Christmas though Sarah and I were relegated to peasant class while Emma and the sunburnt doctor enjoyed the luxury of a space bed. Two space beds, that is, not just the one.