Planning Continued

Am currently working out my South American schedule. It's complicated! Will be coming out of winter when I get down there, so it's fairly early to attempt Patagonia - particularly slightly harder treks like the Round Paine Circuit. On the other hand, the books seem to imply that Central Andes (Peru/Bolivia) is best visited May through September, with it getting increasingly rainy from October onwards. Feb - April are supposed to be horribly waterlogged and best avoided! So do I go to Central first? Here's my vague central schedule:

Lima

Huaraz (gateway town for next two treks)
Santa Cruz Trek - 4days
Cordillera Huayhuash Circuit - 12days

Huacachina 1-2day(these three suggested by Ralf)
Nazca/desert 1days
Arequipa 1day

Train to Pisco
Lake Titicaca
Cusco (Q says this is for those who like Crowded House!)
Inca Trail - 4days (or maybe Mollepata to Macchu Picchu Trek - 7days - to avoid forced guide Inca Trail tourist stuff)
Copacabana to Isla del Sol Trek - 3days

La Paz

Still working on Patagonia, but I think it's gonna involve Round Paine Circuit and Fitz Roy. More later...

Post from Gmail

Since I get an enormous disclaimer slapped on my emails out of COLT, I thought I'd try posting from Gmail instead.

VMware

Am at VMware's first conference in UK. And of course I'm bored! It's basically a sales event, which is strange as everyone here is either a partner or customer - preaching to the converted etc. I remember first seeing VMware on a friend's pc at Imperial (Tony W running linux on Windows on linux, yucks!) in 97 or 98! Crikey, at this rate I'll be a veteran, like all those around me who hark back to the 3.51 and Novell days, or worse! Anyway, this event should be focussing more on the latest clever additions to the product, and the 'appliance' movement. I presume that the hypervisors will be moved into hardware very soon, and Infiniband provide the eGenera scale-out capabilities. So when is the next coffee break? :)

Hop Festival in Faversham

Spent the weekend down in Kent, having cycled down early Saturday morning. Started at about 8am (having planned a 7am departure), and whizzed out to SE London via my route into work. Then things became messy! Faced with the choice of the M2 or zig-zagging along backstreets, the latter was obviously preferable, and it was TomTom on my phone that saved the day by allowing us to whizz along through narrow lanes and neighbourhoods until we hit the familiar territory of the A2 through Medway Towns. Obviously it rained all the way down, and was generally completely miserable weather. In terms of a ride, it wasn't especially challenging, a shade under 60miles all told, fairly hilly, but none of the roads were especially quiet, and I wouldn't commend the route to anyone as one to repeat!

DSC06008 Hosted on Zooomr

The hop festival itself was also not the most impressive. Basically it consisted of morris dancers all over town, a punch and judy show, a couple of bad bands, and every pub in town being packed, thereby making it impossible to get to the bar. Particularly bad marks awarded to the Sun Inn, where the young ladies behind the bar managed to serve FOUR people in preference to me, and it was only by waving in their face that I prevented the fifth person from being attended to. Is there no reward for being polite and waiting one's turn these days? Apparently not. But like the Murphys...