August 2015 - Worlds!

It's been almost a month since worlds, so I thought I'd share a few photos. Between my mum and I we have over 1800 photos, many are simply scenery – I have put a couple in of those, but just be assured that the landscape was absolutely beautiful everywhere. Instead of boring people with those, I thought I’d go through just a few of my favourite photos from the trip in chronological order.

After about 35 hours of travel, we landed in Peru, greeted by some cubers at Lima airport! I believe that most of the international visitors were met by local cubers, and driven to their accommodation – which was just a taste of the incredible hospitality to come. We got to sleep by about 11:30, and then had to wake up at 3:30am to catch our flight to Arequipa.

Had to get a photo here – Arequipa airport. I don’t think I saw a cloud in the sky for the entire time in Arequipa. I wasn’t sure what to expect from this city, I’d looked at photos on the internet, and it looked beautiful, but actually being there was something else.

So we were picked up from the airport by Natan and the gang, and headed to a small town called Chivay, 3 hours away from Arequipa. This photo is at Colca Ziplining, Natan’s ziplining company just outside of Chivay. The next two days with the group involved ziplining, hot springs, visiting the Colca Canyon, and of course, eating at Peruvian buffets.

Most of the group at Yanque, another small town.

The colca canyon, spectacular.

Non-stop cubing.

Me, Mats, Eduardo, Ernesto & Pedro. Whilst we didn’t travel to Macchu Picchu, Mats and I went to the next best available alternative – a cube competition! Natan was kind enough to organise a competition on a Wednesday in Arequipa, for those not travelling to Macchu Picchu. On the day after the comp, we went mountain bike riding, and then hung out with these guys. Seriously impressive cubers – Ernesto made worlds finals, and beat Mats in a round of 3x3, and Pedro placed 3^rd in 6x6 at worlds. More importantly, they were extremely friendly, and showed us around the streets of Arequipa for the afternoon and evening.

Back to Lima, and another competition awaited us that weekend. This pic is just some of the many competitors. Natan, Alex, and their families, and all the staff, did such a wonderful job hosting not only the international visitors, but the Peruvian community as well. It was a special weekend for everyone.

En route to Sao Paulo, my mum and I stopped off at Iguazu falls for 2 days (the flights actually worked out to be cheaper that way, for some reason). Although it was absolutely pouring rain on the day we visited, the falls were incredible. We were able to literally walk out to the edge of the waterfall, and see the water flowing underneath our feet.

The Iguazu Bird Park, about a 5 minute walk from the falls visitor entrance. The macaw aviary was crazy, hundreds of macaws making so much noise and just flying around everywhere, often narrowly missing our heads.

From there, it was onto worlds – competition time. This was from the 7x7 final. Kevin had a 14 second advantage heading into the final solve, and so we did a head-to-head race for fun. We started inspecting and solving at the exact same time (To within 0.005 seconds!). I beat him on the solve, but he won overall.

Post-final laughs. 

Because Chan Hong Lik is awesome.

Leaving Worlds 2015. Great times had by all. 2017 can't come soon enough!

Not sure what my arm is doing here, but it's a great photo regardless!

After Sao Paulo, we visited Buenos Aires for 5 days. BA was a really nice city, very different to Peru and Brazil. Being a lot further south than Sao Paulo, the temperature wasn't ideal, but the food, sights, and company more than made up for it! This was the last night in South America, dinner with a bunch of the Argentinian cubers. It was certainly one of the best. Happy Birthday Claudio!