Don't all the girls have lovely...

Route:
Puerto Iguazu to Buenos Aires (bus)
Buenos Aires to Tigre (bus, day trip, returned to Buenos Aires)
Buenos Aires to Sydney (747 baby)

• I made it back to Buenos Aires from Iguazu in one piece. I basically ended up staying there for the ten days before heading to Sydney. I wanted to see all of BA so I moved hostels a bit. I stayed centrally when I got back from Iguazu in a place that was pretty dull. I still did the mandatory three nights of clubbing. Cocoliche was on the agenda again and was perhaps better this time, although I did get a dose of the fear towards the end... lack of sleep taking its toll. On the Saturday I went to Crobar with my American and English friends. We had trouble getting in - our tickets were valid until 3am and we pitched up at about 3.15. One of our group smooth talked us in though after a while. Which was a bit of a shame, as this is the type of club I try to avoid at all costs - huge place with lots of bad neon lighting, cheesy trance remixes of bad pop songs and a generally unfriendly crowd. Thankfully I was with some good, good people so ended up having a good laugh on the night.
• I moved down to a part of town called San Telmo. This is a really lovely neighborhood. It's one of those used to be impoverished/taken over by artists/got slowly gentrified areas. It's the central focus of Tango in the city. You can't escape it, there are people tangoing everywhere. Tango, tango, tango... you know when you've been tangoed. I was tangoed several times. It's actually quite a sexy dance but I have strong doubts about my ability to carry out even the basic steps! Other than Tango, San Telmo has a load of decent restaurants and bars, and is a really cool spot to hang out in for a few days. I ended up staying there for the rest of my trip, despite the hostel I was in not being the most exciting place.
• I saw the legendary La Boca. It's famous for being a bit of a shithole. And for being the home of Boca Juniors, who have some of the most batshit insane fans in the world. Apparently. I wouldn't know as the football season was postponed by a week due to "financial difficulties". Why they thought putting off revenue generating games would solve this, I don't know. I was a bit disappointed to not see a game, but them's the breaks. There are parts of La Boca I wouldn't walk through if it was Glasgow or Dublin. Why I found this OK in Buenos Aires, I have no idea. Anyway, there's a part of La Boca called La Caminita (I think, look it up!) famous for buildings made of galvanised metal. Kilcullen, my home town, also has a building made of galvanised metal. It's called The Cattle Mart. It's not painted in pretty colours like those in La Caminita. Which is why it's not famous I guess. Suffice to say I was a little underwhelmed.
• I went to Tigre, about an hour outside BA. It's a town near a river delta. I got the train, which afforded me views of some (very small) slums along the way. You get the impression from central BA, particularly Palermo and Recolata, that it's a wealthy city - by South American standards at least. This is party true. There's a huge flipside though, and I was interested to finally see evidence of it. At Tigre, the main thing to do is get on a big boat and float around the various tributaries of the delta for a couple of hours. Lots of the rich folk of Argentina have some pretty funky riverside houses here. I saw one with a boat-lift, which lifts the boat up to the pier from the water! Buy a fucking ladder people.
• I spent the last couple of days in BA looking for, and finding solitude. I fecked off and sat by the port drinking coffee and reading books. This was actually one of my favourite parts of the entire trip - a bit of peace and quiet! Although I did kind of ruin it all by going out with some folks on my last night, getting shitfaced, having two hours sleep and a terrible hangover just before getting on a fifteen hour plane ride. You'd think I'd have learned by now, eh? That said, I did meet the 24th best mountain biker in the world on the plane...
• This will be my last update for a while folks. I've arrived in Sydney and am jobhunting etc. I'm sure you're not that interested in the day to day details of my life so I won't bore you with them. Sydney is OK so far, I've been taking it relatively easy. First impressions are largely good, although I'm holding it to pretty high standards as it's going to be my home for the next six months. It's the first time I've been in any way homesick, but it's great to see my sister. It's weird being back in the first world again, everything works as advertised and there aren't too many surprises. I'm in Bondi which is full of beautiful people. Obviously I fit right in... not with this beer belly! Not that Argentina isn't, as the title of this episode alludes to :) Thank you Father Ted...
• It's been a hell of a trip, definitely ups and downs but more ups for sure. Not working for two months does wonders for you. It's been a good opportunity to take a break, take stock and learn a few things. Mostly about myself, and mostly known to be already. I've also got a pretty good idea of what I want to do next. Thanks for listening folks!

Ah, Argentina

Route:
Mendoza to Buenos Aires (bus)
Buenos Aires to Puerto Iguazu (bus)

• Argentina has been really chilled. I´ve done hardly anything except chill out and go out. And spend time on buses. The buses here are, quite frankly, amazing. You can pay for seats that are like business class in a plane. Love it.
  
• Mendoza was a real blast. I did a wine tour with some Americans, English and a Scotsman. We got on bikes, cycled a leisurely 22km over the course of a day, ate, drank some splendid wine and some average wine. Afterwards, we played drinking games with beer. After that, we drank Jameson until 6am. You might imagine that I didn´t feel too hot the next day. Actually, by some miracle I escaped hangover free. Life is funny sometimes!
  
• I was going to go to Cordoba from there but a chunk of the group I was with were heading to Buenos Aires so on a whim I decided to tag along. I spent two nights in Palermo Viejo which is a beautiful area that reminds me slightly of Notting Hill, or somewhere like that. BA is quite European in parts and Palermo is the perfect example. Lots of boutiques, sushi restaurants and nice cars. I´d go back in a flash. In fact I probably will...
  
• I did a fair bit of walking in BA, exploring the city. It´s a really cool place, the vibe is pretty excellent. After a couple of days in Palermo we moved downtown to the Milhouse, a party hostel. Thus commenced three nights of pretty good clubbing. Thursday was Club 69 which features dancing transvestites on stage and some decent music, and a friendly crowd. Got home at 8am. Friday was Cocoliche which is my type of club - dark, underground, some pretty banging techno (although it got a bit cheesy minimal towards the end - think the dude was called Renato Cohen). Got home at 8am. Saturday was Pacha for hands-in-the-air cheesy minimal and trance in the big room. Thankfully there was a more entertaining room with some more listenable techno upstairs. Got home at... 8am! There´s a fair few sound people of various ages knocking around the hostels. Although I do tend to be in the oldest age range typically... that said most people seem to think I´m 25 which comes in useful at times.
  
• You may have noticed a pattern in the above. BA is a late night city. I´ve been eating at 10pm, drinking at midnight and clubbing at 2 or 3 in the morning. To be honest, I quite like this style of doing things!
  
• I´m in Puerto Iguazu. It took 18 hours to get here on one of the amazing buses. There is little to do here except visit the Iguazu Falls. These are bloody spectacular to say the least. Apparently something like 400,000 gallons PER SECOND flow over these falls. Words and pictures can´t really do it justice, just go there if you´re ever in Argentina.
• Back on the bus shortly for another 18 hours. I´ve only got half a book left and my mp3 player doesn´t seem to be charged, so it could be challenging... I´ll be spending the next ten days in BA then it´s off to Sydney on the 29th. I can´t believe that my time in South America is coming to an end. I´ve loved it!
  
• Ciao for now!
  

Bye to Bolivia, Hola to Argentina

Route:
La Paz - Uyuni (bus)
Uyuni - Villazon (bus)
Villazon - La Quaica (foot, crossing the border to Argentina)
La Quaica - Salta (bus)
Salta - Mendoza (bus)

• I´ve covered a fair bit of ground since the last update. I´m all the way down in central Argentina - I just arrived in a city called Mendoza after an 18 hour bus journey. Thankfully the buses in Argentina are amazing - I got a sleeper bus and spent most of the night comfortably dozing away. They serve you food and I even got a (fairly massive) glass of whisky after the meal, which was unexpected but nice, and helped me sleep!
• There is no comparison between buses and roads in Argentina and Bolivia. Argentina actually has roads. Bolivia has dirt tracks carved into the side of a mountain or the desert. Bolivia also has batshit insane drivers that think they´re Michael Schumacher and that they´re driving his Ferrari when they´re actually most likely drunk and are driving a shitbucket from the 70s. On those bloody dirttracks.
• I loved Bolivia, but it was definitely the most challenging place I´ve been, so I was quite glad to get to Argentina. The infrastructure in Bolivia is pretty awful and the food isn´t the best. But there is so much to see in terms of crazy landscape, excellent tours and the like, and it is ridiculously cheap. Less than a fiver for a decent hostel, and I had a really excellent three course meal, with an Irish Coffee, in one of the nicer places I could find in La Paz for about 8 quid. Try doing that in Edinburgh or Dublin!
• The last week in Bolivia involved one of the highlights of my trip - the Salar de Uyuni. This is basically the dried out remains of an ancient salt lake. It´s an expanse of flat, salty terrain about the size of Northern Ireland. It´s a crazy, surreal place. It´s punctuated by a few odd features - the Isla de Pescada which has living cacti - this looks rather odd right in the middle of what is essentially a desert! There are also the remains of a volcano which were pretty spectacular. Travelling through the south of the country was also pretty special, the desert there is very like the wild west.
  
• I´m feeling a lot bloody healthier. La Paz is pretty polluted, and as I said before, travelling around the country is pretty horrendous. As well as this, people party their way through La Paz repeatedly. This meant that pretty much everyone I met in Bolivia was, or had recently been, ill.
• I went to Salta in Northern Argentina next. There is nothing to do there, apart from chill out. Which suited me fine after at 27 hour journey from Uyuni!
• Mendoza is wine territory. Tomorrow, I´m off to ride a bike between vineyards and get slowly pissed. Life is good!
• Six weeks of crappy South American music have made be crack and buy a new mp3 player today. Thankfully I´ve got a 2Gb keyring with some tunes on it for just such an emergency!
  
• I hope you´re all well and miss you guys! Edinburghers, hope you´re enjoying the festival!
  

Much ado about nothing

Route
La Paz - Coroico (bus)
Coroico - Rurrenabaque (bus)
Rurrenabaque - La Paz (plane)

• La Paz is an odd city. It has that crazed, polluted intensity that I imagine a lot of Asian cities have. There are people everywhere and they´re all trying to get somewhere else, fast. The city is full of tiny micro buses with guys hanging out the side shouting out the route. These will stop and pick you up pretty much anywhere. The city seems to suck in backpackers who are in the mood to party, particularly those on the lookout for the old "Gringo Protein". If that´s your scene, fine, but I´m not really looking for that so I only spent four nights here initially which was plenty - there´s not a tremendous amount to see or do. I soon legged it to Coroico.
• Coroico is billed as a bit of a hippy enclave. It´s about 3 hours north of La Paz and a good couple of thousand metres below in terms of altitude. Most people get here by biking down the Most Dangerous Road In The World, which isn´t all that dangerous by the sounds of it - the bikes they give you are more likely to do the damage rather than the road itself. I´m a big chicken so I got the bus.
• Coroico is really pretty. It´s perched on the side of a hill. The lower altitude means much richer biodiversity. The surrounding countryside is lushly forested and is ideal for hiking, pony trekking and the like. I stayed in a place run by an expat French lady. Six quid a night for a room that overlooked a pristine valley - the most beautiful setting. I teamed up with a Belgian guy called Chris and we spent a day hiking to and along a stretch of river known as the Rio Negro. It was pretty cool, there were tons of butterflies around, some of which were quite impressive. I wish I´d spent more time in Coroico.
• I hadn´t planned on heading to the jungle while in Bolivia, but people had said the Pampas tours from Rurrenebaque were amazing. Chris was heading that way anyway, so I tagged along. This meant the worst bus journey I´ve had so far. Fourteen hours on bumpy dirt track on the back seat of a bus that didn´t appear to have any suspension. For the first two hours, the road had drops of about 600m to the side. This was made worse by the fact that the bus often had to reverse to a passing point when it encountered oncoming traffic- which happened with alarming regularity. This was utterly terrifying, and wasn´t helped by the vast clouds of dust that were thrown up by the frequent traffic along the road. Not fun.
• I got off the bus the following morning to realise I had a healthy fever. A quick stop at the docs and the throat infection I suspected I was carrying was confirmed. I was prescribed some pretty heavy antibiotics. I felt pretty lousy to be honest and decided against doing the tour. So I spent three days in bed in a hostel, sweating it out. I managed to pick up a pretty heavy cold at the same time and coughed so much that I´m pretty convinced I cracked a rib! Again, not fun! Rurre is pretty fucking tiny as well, there are about ten restaurants and I think I ate in most of them. I did meet quite a few people in the hostel though. Most of whom stayed well away from me as I was so obviously ill!
• Apparently the bus journey back to La Paz is better - you get right of way so don´t have to reverse along the death roads, and apparently you´re asleep for that bit anyway. Whatever. I wasn´t prepared to find out, and booked a flight back to La Paz. Flying from Rurrenebaque to La Paz is a bit of a lottery. You book a flight, and your scheduled time means "any time within the next 48 hours, or when the runway is dry". The runway is actually a field. Which isn´t a problem when it hasn´t been raining. But it had been raining. A lot. Which meant a backlog of a couple of days, and another night in Rurre for me! Joy.
• I finally made it back to La Paz about 2 days ago. I feel like I burnt quite a bit of time doing nothing, so I´m raring to go again. I had a Secret Mission to accomplish which meant I needed to stay an extra night. Job done though. To be honest the extra day of hanging around was probably good for me - I was still weak enough after feeling ill. I´m getting the bus down to Uyuni tonight (13 hours, better roads apparently - I´ve bought sleeping tablets though). Then it´s Argentina and civilisation. I´ve enjoyed Bolivia but it´s challenging - things take about 3 times longer than you think they will, and it´s all quite chaotic. But it´s dirt cheap and the locals are friendly (and better looking than the Peruvians, though I´m not sure that´s saying much).
• If you run a broom over the feet of a Bolivian lady, it means she´ll never get married. I found this out the hard way. I seem to be doing things like this with alarming regularity. Just as well I´m such a charming bastard.
• I love South America - the chaos and laid back attitude are endearing. Nevertheless, I´m a European at heart and realise that I like my nice, clean European lifestyle, with it´s paved roads and sanitised foods.
• It´s not necessary to speak much Spanish to survive here - basic restaurant stuff, numbers etc is typically fine. Where it would be of use is when you encounter things and you´re not sure what´s going on. For example, there have been countless demonstrations here, one in practically every town I´ve visited in Peru and Bolivia. I´d have been keen to ask a local about them, but no dice. Ah well, I´m still eating and drinking so I can´t complain too much.
• Speaking of drinking, apart from two nights in Peru and a couple of minor sessions the first time I was in La Paz, I haven´t been this sober in months. It´s a nice feeling!

That´s all for now folks, Ciao!

Bueno Estente from La Paz

Instead of a blow by blow account of what I´ve been up to, here are some of the interesting things that have happened me over the last week or so.

Where I´ve been since last time: Puno to Cusco (taxi and plane instead of bus), Inca Trail to Machu Piccu (foot), Aquas Calientes to Cusco (train and taxit), Cusco to La Paz (plane).

• Food poisoning is rarely fun, much less so when you are trapped at altitude in a cold hotel room in Puno. We blamed the freshly made soup from the vegetarian restaurant which obviously hadn´t been boiled enough - we could hear them blending it just before serving. Not good.
• Altitude can be a real bitch. I had a four day headache when we ascended to Puno (3800 metres up). I had nausea and breathing difficulties and a high heart rate. I´ve been at altitude for about 10 days now and I´m still quite short of breath if I exert myself. The altituded sickness tablets they sell over the counter seems to help, as does chewing coca leaves.
• Peruvian drivers are obviously instructed that the other side of the road should be used as often as possible. Particularly on the blind corners of small mountain roads that have massive drops to the side. While driving a massive bus. At night time. The horn is also to be used liberally. I´m sure there´s a linguisitcs PhD waiting to be written about the subtle use of the horn in South American driving.
• As mentioned we needed to change our plans to get from Puno to Cusco due to the strikes. We got a taxi at 3am - the roadblocks were cleared in the middle of the night so folk could get by them. We arrived at Juliaca airport at 4.30am, whereupon the driver announced that we were all going to sleep in the car until 6am when the airport opened! Thankfully he´d brought blankets. This was perhaps the most amusing location I´ve ever had for an impromptu nap.
• Cusco is a cool town but we didn´t really make the most of it due to still feeing shitty from the food poisoning and the altitude. Due to the strikes the taxi driver had to drop us a few blocks from our hotel, which was located at the top of a massive hill that got steeper and steeper the further up you went. Nice practice for the Inca Trail, particularly with full backpacks.
• The Inca Trail is pretty special. The scenery is breathtaking, stunning Andean valley after stunning Andean valley. I´ve put some photos on Facebook. It´s hard enough work but I was expecting worse to be honest. Everyone says that the second day is the toughest, what with climbing 1000 metres up over the course of the day, and they are right. Day three is tough as well - it´s mostly downhill which means different sets of muscles. The weather was good on the first day but overcast and a bit wet for the remainder of the treck, but I don´t think that this detracted from the experience - in fact I can imagine it being a hell of a lot tougher in the heat.
• You can see the stars properly at nighttime when you are in the middle of the Andes. It´s unbelievable how much we miss out on when in our light-polluted cities. I´ve not seen a sky like that since I was a child. Amazing.
• Macchu Picchu is one of the most amazing things I´ve ever seen. Words and pictures can´t do it justice. The Incas were a pretty clever lot to manage to build a city of this size in such an efficient manner right up a big mountain.
• Aquas Calientes is a town near Macchu Pichu that consists entirely of restaurants and hotels. It´s like being in a bad part of the Costa del Sol.
  
• I´m in La Paz in Bolivia now. It´s pretty cool, it´s built in the caldera (crater) of an extinct volcano. The suburbs are built up the side of the crater and the city centre is along the deepest part. I´m in my first backpacker type hostel - rooms for six pounds a night. I´m across the road from the Wild Rover hostel where I went for a few drinks and games of pool with some Aussie folks last night. It´s about 1.40 for a rum and coke or a beer. Nice! Quite a young crowd, lots of folks on gap years and the like. I´m not sure how much of that I can take! Although there are folk of all ages around. I´m enjoying being on my own though, it´s nice to be able to set my own schedule and do what I like. I´m going to chill here for a day or two and figure out how best to spend my time in Bolivia. I think I´m going to go up north to Coroico for a few days, then come back to La Paz and figure out how to see the Salar de Uyuni. No plan is the best plan!

That´s all for now, questions and comments to the usual address please! Still missing you all tons, let me know all the Edinburgh/Ireland gossip!! Catch you soon, D x

Hola from Peru

Hope you´re all well! I´m in good form, I´ve had a great first week in
Peru. Some of this might be a bit long but this is a record for me
too... also this keyboard is crazy so apologies for the punctuation.
For any of you who have been to Peru before, I am sure you will find
this all familiar...

We arrived in Lima last Monday after an epic journey - door to door
for me was 24 hours with three flights involved. The journey didn´t
start well with me leaving my mp3 player on the plane from Edinburgh
to London - I realised this as I was queueing for my flight to Miami
and it was too late to go back. So no decent tunes for the next couple
of months - not a good situation! I have actually been having dreams
with techno soundtracks... Anyway, I decided to not stress out about
it, in a way it was good to get the "losing something" part of the
trip over and done with. I got into Lima airport about 10.30 in the
evening local time and thankfully there was a guy with a sign with my
name on it to bring me to my hotel. He sorted me out with a taxi. By
this time I was sleep deprived and had The Fear and started to freak
out a little when the taxi driver pulled on some fingerless leather
gloves and drove me down a deserted street - but it turns out he was
just on the way to the highway to Lima, phew. Second minor disaster
there - a bottle of shower gel exploded in the bottom of my rucksack.
Ah well, lessons were learned etc.

Lima is nuts, we only spent a night and half a day there, and in the
nicest area at that. Which to be honest wasn´t very nice. We had
occasion to eat in a Swiss restaurant that was holding a risotto
festival - I hear its a Peruvian tradition.

We soon high-tailed it down the coast. The scenery in this part of the
world is desert, desert and more desert. Well, after the slums on the
outskirts of Lima. Our first stop was the village of Paracas. The bus
had to drive over the sand to get to the stop. Mental. We were only in
Paracas one night - the reason being that we wanted to take the early
morning boat trip to the Islas Ballestas. These are known as the poor
mans Galapogos but they were worth a trip - got to see lots of
birdlife including pelicans, as well as sealions.

Next stop was Huacachina. This is basically a holiday resort in the
desert which is based round a lagoon - proper oasis style. Huachachina
is good for chilling out by the pool, sandboarding and going on tours
to local wineries. Some chilling out by the pool lead to us meeting a
Dutch couple and a couple of Canadian girls who were all good fun. We
went sandboarding with them - basically a crazy Pervian driver pelts
you around sand dunes on a buggy contraption at about 40 miles an
hour, the higher the angle on the dune and the more chance of rolling
over the buggy the better. Think roller coasters without ANY of the
safety features and you are nearly there. They let you out
periodically to get belly down on a sandboard and hurtle face first
down a dune - again the higher and steeper the better. This is
ridiculously good fun and I heartily recommend it. Actually, funnily
enough our driver got stuck in a dune on the way back due to some
Canadian dude getting motion sickness - loser - which was quite
amusing - we had to be rescued and the driver was slagged off big time
by his amigos. Me and Mark also went on a 10am tour around a couple of
wineries where they make Pisco, the local brandy. Drunk by lunchtime,
I'm sure you are all surprised by that carry on.

I also did my first bit of solo adventuring in Huacachina when I
taxied it into the nearby town of Ica to purchase tickets for The Bus
Journey From Hell, more of which later. I should point out that most
of the west coast of Peru was flattened by an earthquake in 2007,
which explains why most of the buildings are half built or in rubble.
Not pretty.

Onwards from Huacachina to Nazca where we went on an overflight of the
Nazca lines, which are basically these giant carvings of unknown
origin in the desert. Pretty impressive, but I was concentrating quite
hard on not dying or throwing up in the little 4 seater rust bucket
they sent us up in...

Yesterday and the day before were spent on a marathon trek across
country to get to Puno where we are now. Saturday saw us take a nine
hour journey from Nazca to Arequipa, the second city of Peru. This
wasn't too bad, we knew what to expect, they fed us and kept us going
with movies including a second viewing of PS I Love You, which I was
happy about as I had missed the last hour on the Paracas to Huacachina
journey. Cruz del Sur, the bus company, are your best friend in Peru.
We stayed overnight in Arequipa, with the intention of boarding a
10am, four hour bus to Puno. Instead, it turned into The Bus Journey
From Hell. Four hours late departing, it turned out that they had lied
to us and it actually took six hours, one movie which they showed at
the start of the journey and no reading lights - it got dark at 6pm.
Thankfully the altitude sickness was kicking in at this point and my
hallucinations were keeping me amused. Mind you the delay did mean we
got to go back in and have a look around Arequipa, where we saw a
mental parade that seemed to consist of police, military, chefs and
air hostesses, so it wasn't all bad.

So here we are in Puno, about 3800 metres above sea level. I was
suffering pretty bad with the altitude this morning, headaches and
nausea, but I feel better now. I think it is kicking in for Mark just
now. Today we had a wander round Puno in the morning - there were tons
of riot police about, in preparation for some sort of massive protest,
which we had a good look at. Nuts. This afternoon we visited the
Sillustani, which are ancient burial towers where they buried Inca and
pre-Inca rulers. Pretty awesome and about 4k up in the most beatiful
mountain terrain. Tomorrow we are taking a boat trip out on the
amusingly named Lake Titicaca.

The plan then was to take a bus up to Cusco for the Inca Trail.
Unfortunately we found out today that there is a three day national
strike on in Peru starting tomorrow. Now, the bus companies are mostly
willing to keep running, but the problem is the mad bastards who set
up roadblocks on the roads, consisting mostly of boulders and other
heavy things. So we have booked a flight from Juliaca, which is about
an hour away, and have organised a very, very early taxi, which will
be taking "alternative routes" to the airport. Fingers crossed. In a
way, I am glad not to have to face the inside of a Peruvian bus ever
again. The drivers are all crazy - think overtaking trucks on blind
corners and you have the gist of it - and the erattic timing leaves
something to be desired.

It wouldn't be like me not to mention the food. So far, its been
decent enough. Actually the food here in Puno is very good, we had a
really good two course meal last night for under a tenner.

Overall I am having a great time. You just have to be accepting of the
fact that this is Peru and that things work differently here... I am
looking forward to Cusco and the Inca Trail. After which, into the
great unknown of Bolivia, which should be interesting... Missing you
all - hope JPs is kicking along without me. Stephen and Graham, send
my love to Matt and tell him I said thank you. Ciara, you might want
to forward this to your ma, she said she would be interested in
hearing how I am getting on. Susie B, hope the replacement flatmate is
adequate. I have actually been significantly detoxing since leaving
that flat, coincidence I am sure... thanks for reading folks, I will
do another update when I get to Bolivia.

Love to you all,

Daragh xx