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For Cusco I couldn't recommend the Ninos Hotel enough. It's basically an old colonial style house based around a sun trap of courtyard, spotlessness clean and comfortable, great and helpful staff, very central location and best of all it's a non-profit organisation with all proceeds going to run an orphanage and provide meal for children in poverty. If you are feeling more adventurous or want to get away from it all for a day or two, they can organise a pony trek to their 'hacienda'.

Only stayed in Puno the one night in a dodgy enough hotel, so couldn't recommend anything there. My advice would be not to hang around there too long, though the pisco sours are good.

In Arequipa you could do worse than treat yourself to a bit of luxury at the Libertador. They do regular deals on their website. I think they were looking something in the range of $200 a night when we rang them, then checked their website and they had deluxe rooms for $90 a night. Either way, this is five star treatment unseen in so called five star hotels back here. Couldn't recommend it enough though don't use the laundry service. Good shopping in Arequipa  but not as cheap as Cusco. Got myself a beautiful, hand made chess set for about $8.

In La Paz there are a lot of hit and miss hotels. Think we went through two or three before getting a booking in the Wild Rover Hostel. A cosy little spot with a lot of friendly faces and good for recommendations on things to do. For night-life in La Paz you are spoilt for choice but a favourite spot of ours is Diesel Nacional, a bar which seems to be built from recycled aeroplane and car parts. Pretty cool and laid back, jumping at weekends.

You'd think if the Indo was going to quote Marsden they'd at least spell his name properly.

It's Christmas, so time for a poppy story
Andersonstown News Thursday
Squinter

IT MUST be, oh – what? – at least five minutes since we've talked about poppies, so in the knowledge that in West Belfast we traditionally speak of little else at Christmas, Squinter proposes to return to the vexed issue of supporting our boys again.

Squinter has wrung a solemn promise from his friends over the past number of weeks: If you see him at the Continental Market in the city centre, hit him a kick in the derriere and send him home (sorry, this being a piece about poppies and all, that should have been a kick in the Danny Boy, otherwise known as the London-derriere). But there was Squinter at lunchtime on Monday, en famille if not en fete, wandering aimlessly around the market, wondering idly if the Council agrees with people in wooden huts charging too much for everything.

Eventually, even the women and small children tired of the delights of ersatz European food and faux ethnic headwear and strode purposefully in the direction of the gaily-lit shops in the city centre. It was a bridge too far for Squinter, who – spousal and paternal responsibilities fulfilled – agreed a later rendezvous point and headed off to the Central Library in search of vindication.

It has long been Squinter's belief that he cares every bit as much – if not more – for those killed in the two world wars than the most gloriously poppied unionist burgher. How many of them had an uncle killed in the Battle of Caen? Some, no doubt, but not many. How many of them have spent four days walking the battlefields of Picardy – walking, mind you, not minibussing – and how many of them have written extensively of their visit? How many of them have walked the Normandy beachheads, how many of them have visited Amiens, Albert, Bapaume, Thiepval, Beaumont Hamel, Péronne or Arras? How many of them have picnicked where the muddy Ancre joins the lazy Somme? Some, perhaps, but not many. These things are Squinter's nod to the millions who lost their lives, both in and out of uniform. The vast majority of the portly politicians who sit under the union jack in Lisburn, Castlereagh, Craigavon and Newtownabbey prefer to put a pound in a tin in October and wear a poppy for a month. But even that  wasn't always so, as that visit to the library confirmed.

Squinter trawled through back issues of what might broadly be termed the unionist press – carefully turning pages from the 60s and 70s, dry and flaking already even after just three or four decades. The thesis for which Squinter sought vindication is simply this: That the poppy's latter-day unionist ubiquity is part of the cultural war launched by unionists at the time of the Anglo-Irish Agreement of the mid-80s – the "new battlefield", in the unfortunate words of David Trimble, hastily identified after the Anglo-Irish Summit made reference to respecting and promoting Irish language, games and music. And so unionists threw themselves into parades, poppies and, um, Ullans.



Orange State

The parades were nothing new, but the poppies and the Ulster-Scots were traditionally a source of utter indifference to unionists. That the language/dialect was of no interest to unionism throughout the 50-year life of the Orange State is indisputable; that they had no interest in poppies either is a rather more inflammatory statement. Inflammatory, but true.

Don't take Squinter's word for it – go check for yourself. There they are on the pages of the past, the Prime Ministers, the Lord Mayors, the civil servants, the burghers, the men and women on the street. Not a poppy to be seen. Anywhere. Not only in the latter days of October was This Here Pravince a poppy-free environment, but in the very days leading up to Remembrance Sunday, there they are, the unionist great and good, the workers in dunchers and the housewives in headscarves, with not a poppy between them.

A meeting of the Craigavon Commission sits to consider the making of the new town with Remembrance Sunday only hours away, all Brylcremed and British, smiling for cameras, bare-naked lapels to a man. Ballymena army officers proudly display their MBEs amidst colleagues and friends one November 9th – only medals and bars on their tunics. A lorry sheds its load in Chichester Street with only hours to go until the two-minute silence and the city centre public stand and gape, utterly poppyless, as are the stern RUC men directing traffic. The Lord Mayor has remembered to wear his chain to the opening of a new building, but unfortunately he has neglected to don a poppy. Even the rotund hero of the Ulster cartoon strip, More Fun With Bunion, neglected to pay tribute on his ample chest to the men who fought for the freedom which made his hilarious antics possible.

These pictures, remember, are of the 60s, when some Somme veterans might still have been working in the shipyard; all of this was in the 70s when some men who fought on D-Day were in their mid-40s. The roar of the Western Front artillery had barely died away; on a still day the drone of the German bombers could still be heard over Belfast Lough; dozing by the fire at night, people snapped awake, swearing they could hear Winston on the wireless. And yet full-page British Legion ads exhorting people to wear poppies were blithely ignored.

So the 60s and 70s were poppy-free years in the city, but Squinter didn't have long enough in the library to form an accurate idea of when they started to bloom on Belfast breasts because that rendezvous with the lady shoppers loomed. The mid-80s is his hypothesis, probably gathering pace as the peace process took hold and gaining more momentum with the signing of the Good Friday Agreement.  Squinter will return to the library shortly and, of course, he'll keep you apprised in a further chapter on the Brief History of the Belfast Poppy. For their part, it's up to unionists to explain why they didn't bother wearing poppies in the 60s and 70s – and why they're calling for the very few people in public positions who don't wear one to be sacked. Plenty of still-active unionists who remember the time well. Or perhaps they've decided to forget. 

Only 7%? They're doing well - I remember when it was 30% and that's not that long ago.

Back on topic, the in-laws were at it a few years ago and were very disappointed. They felt it was all a bit of a con. They'd be regular visitors to Fatima and Lourdes. In saying that I know a priest who goes every few years and gets a lot out of it. 

Fair play... though if it was the 'Ra (Northern Bank) we couldn't really approve...

Haul from Brazil Tunnel Heist Was $15.6 Million

SAO PAULO – The total amount of money stolen last weekend from an armored car company in Brazil's biggest city via a tunnel was 27.7 million reais ($15.6 million), almost three times the amount initially reported, authorities said on Thursday.

A new complaint presented Thursday by the Transnacional Transporte de Valores e Seguranca company to the Sao Paulo police department corrected the initially reported amount, which had been 10 million reais ($5.6 million).

The amount first had been calculated on the basis of information received from employees of the transport firm in their first contacts with police, but the numbers were later revised and corrected by a team of company auditors.

The thieves got into the company through a tunnel 150 meters (488 feet) long and 1 meter (3.25 feet) in diameter, dug from a nearby house in the Vila Jaguara neighborhood.

To avoid awakening suspicion, the thieves told area residents they were doing renovations.

Once the tunnel was finished, they waited until Sunday afternoon, when the attention of virtually all Brazilians was riveted on the national professional soccer championship, to break in and take the money.

One of the firm's security guards later told police that he heard a crash Sunday afternoon, but thought it was fireworks set off by fans after their team scored a goal.

Sao Paulo police on Tuesday announced the arrests of six suspects and the seizure of a briefcase containing cash bearing the logo of the firm that was the target of the heist.

The arrested men have denied their involvement in the robbery, but they tried to flee when they saw the police approaching. EFE

[saw it first I thought it was fiction]

If you want that happy Christmas feeling suppressed, then watch the film on Network Two tonight.

Its called Open Water, and when I saw it first I thought it was fiction.

They both die in the end so who did they tell the story to?

Watched a film called Precious the other week. Black, obese, illiterate, teenager gets raped by her father from the age of three, has two children to him, one with Downs, abused by her mother for 'stealing her man' and then catches HIV.

And there was me expecting the latest Yankie rom-com.

Nah it feels just right after an hour or two but I'm used to using PDAs anyway. It's a lot more configuarble than the iPhone, the processor slaughters the iPhone. Has Windows Mobile 6.5 on it but that's due to go to WM7 early in the new year.

Got myself a HTC HD2 the other day. Must say, it makes the iPhone look like Plunkett Donaghy's mullet.