Wet Again

We left Buenos Aires after far too short a period of time and took what was going to be the final of our flights before leaving South America, as we planned to travel by land through Brazil, to Iguazu.

There is only one reason to visit Iguazu and that is the absolutely stunning waterfalls. You can visit the falls from both Argentina and Brazil, as they straddle the border between the two countries. We were flying into Puerto Iguazu first on the Argentinian side and from there were to travel to Foz do Iguazu in Brazil, to see which side offered the best view.

A friendly local called John, who owned a small B&B, had helped organise accommodation for us from Buenos Aires (as his was booked out) and upon our arrival we were met by a taxi driver he had organised for us, someone we were going to become all too familiar with as he took it upon himself to by our designated chauffeur for the subsequent three days.

The accommodation he had organised was not what could be described as the best experience, with an odour somewhat akin to the underside of a compost heap and an air conditioning unit that made my beloved wife fear she was going to contract legionaires disease. This however, was not my cause for complaint, but more that we had unwittingly been booked into a hotel that specialised as a holiday venue for German tourists. We weren’t so much battling them for deck chairs as the usual stereotype would infer, but they did seem to annex the breakfast buffet each morning.

That being said, John was still a more than accommodating host, even though we weren’t stopping at his establishment, inviting us round and plying us with copious quantities of Caiprinhas and introducing us to his guests who we enjoyed a pleasant evening with.

In terms of the two Iguazus there was not much to rave about in either town, although if forced to chose I would say the Argentinian town is nicer. It would be somewhat more difficult to chose between the visit to the falls on each side, with Brazil arguably offering the best views, whilst Argentina offers a better feeling of them as it is from there you can walk directly over them. Having said that unless you’re American you don’t really need to chose as it is easy to get between the two. Our unfortunate trans-Atlantic cousins however, have to pay $120 per person for the privilege of passing into Brazil, which could be a little rich for a different angle of the falls.

On our first visit there on the Argentinian side, we took a boat under the falls, which whilst tremendous fun, did leave us soaked to proportions not seen since biblical times (or our trip to Columbia). Fortunately on this attempt we had seen the likelihood coming and had taken the necessary precautions, so no more electrical equipment needed to suffer an untimely demise. The one thing we hadn’t considered was just how cold it was going to be going under the falls, a phrase involving brass monkeys leaps to mind.

From Brazil, we decided a second ride under the falls may be a little over the top, so instead went white water rafting just downstream of the falls. It wasn’t the most thrilling of white knuckle rides, but fun was definitely had by all, especially Siobhán who went for a little swim in the icy cold river. I’m afraid I have no pictures to enhance this image as taking a camera would not have done it the world of good and the company charged about £40 for the privilege, which we figured was a little on the steep side.

That pretty much covers our time in Iguazu, take a look at the photo gallery if you haven’t already, as there are some fairly stunning photos of the falls for you all to become envious over, as well as hundreds of butterflys that literally flocked together on the Argentinian side and a few little monkeys. Our next stop would take us into the final country of our South American voyage, this time by bus to Curitiba, a journey of ten hours overnight that I think it is fair to say I was not looking forward to. Anyway, I’ll leave the gory details for the next post.

You know when you've been tango'd

There is only really one suitable description for our first impressions of Buenos Aires, and that is massive. Coming from London you think that not a lot is going to take you by surprise, but the pure size of BA is immense, apparently bulging with the best part of thirteen million residents, effectively twice as many as the capital of dear old Blighty.

Our cab from the Airport to our Hotel took about forty minutes, trailing through the sprawling metropolis to San Telmo, the oldest district of BA and home to those of a bohemian persuasion. Whilst our hotel was a lovely converted town house, it was a little nearer to La Boca, an area reknowned for it's high crime levels and general lack of safety, than is perhaps sanguine. A fact probably made evident by the hotel continually keeping it's front door locked.

On our first day we wandered down to the main square and took in a few of the sights, such as the Presidential Palace Casa Rosada. I was feeling fairly scruffy having up to this point failed to get a hair cut and so we marched onwards looking for a barbers. This turned out to be a rather fruitless mission as I rejected venue after venue as being too girly, but I did at least manage to track down some new clothes, although Siobhán talking me into buying a velvet jacket may have been a purchase too far.

It was whilst wearing both my new jeans and jumper on a walk the following day, that an Argentine couple started gesticulting wildly at us. A few dazed moments later the reasoning for their energetic wavings became clear as we realised that we had both just had the misfortune of a pigeon deciding it needed a bathroom break, leaving us both rather the worse for wear, so much so that we needed to immediately head for the nearest mall and buy Siobhán a new pair of jeans, whilst hoping that with a little care and attention, my jeans and jumper may survive.

As you may expect, in a city the size of BA, there was plenty for us to try and fit into our short stay. We had the obligatory long walks around the city, which has become one of our staple activities on our travels, as well as spending time at an enourmous antiques market, partying in Palermo and spending an evening at the obligatory tango show.

It was during a visit to La Boca to see the Caminito that we managed to make one of our now customary cock-ups. Everyone warns visitors to BA that walking to La Boca to see the brightly coloured buildings of Caminito is fine and perfectly safe, but that in no circumstances should you wander anywhere else in La Boca.

We were following the instructions from our guide book, which indicated you could walk along the harbour in safety however, about twenty minutes into a slum we had just about realised that we may not be in the best part of town . . . this thought was confirmed by a taxi that mercifully drove by, slowed, and gave us rather cusory glances, following which I flagged him down.

The driver was so clearly concerned at where we had been walking and his Spanglish mixed with gestures of being shot in the head made his message clear, as did the fact all of his doors were locked and he wouldn't stop anywhere in the area, happily driving on the wrong side of the road if it avoided slowing down, let alone stopping.

Anyway, as you've probably realised, based on the fact we're writing this, we emerged from the slums unscathed and suitably chastised by our taxi driver, ready for the next part of our journey . . . Iguazu!

Tour Map Updated!

Ok, I know it has taken me until the evening before we go, but I have finally added the Chinese destinations onto the tour map, so click on through and see where we're headed in the final leg of our trip.

I'll also do my best to bring the blog up to date this week. Buenos Aires will be up today and I'll try and fill you in on Brazil and Melbourne whilst we're in Beijing.

Good Food, Plentiful Wine & Goats Galore

So we had finally escaped from the maximum security country that is Bolivia and headed into Salta in northern Argentina. Following our usual level of good luck in such matters we arrived at 23:00 and waited nearly 45 minutes for a taxi from the airport as we had managed to fly in at the end of a religious festival and all the taxis were busy in town!

One good nights sleep in Salta and we were off again, taking a bus to Cafayate with a lone ambition of getting free booze as we were heading for wine country and as many free wine tasting tours as you can shake a stick at!

We took a small bus for the four hour trip, with some glorious scenery and beautiful weather to help us make the way. Unfortunately the young lady sitting in-front of me appeared to be under the mistaken apprehension that I had no legs and Siobháns aversion to any road with a bend in it made for a less than pleasant journey. None the less, once we arrived, the accommodation we had booked was just round the corner from the main square and was beautifully decorated, leaving us to while away the afternoon in the sun with very few concerns.

The evening came and we headed for the restaurant in town most recommended for steak and I think it is fair to say we were salivating at the prospect of finally getting a good meal following the gastronomic wasteland that is Bolivia. It is hard to describe how truly happy we were as the side of cow was place in-front of each of us and I started my long awaited recovery from the mere waife of a boy I had become . . . anyway, getting back to reality it is clear to see where Argentina get their reputation for the worlds best steak, so our trip to Cafayate ended its first day on more than happy terms.

The second day brought with it the prime purpose of our little jaunt, and so it was that we came upon renting the worlds most uncomfortable bikes in all of creationdom. The little vineyards were not far apart from each other or town, but this did not prevent my poor behind from becoming more battered than a cod from the local fish shop!

A small trifle such as this was not about to prevent the goal of free wine however, and so it was we made our way to the first vineyard which was . . . shut – damn it! Never mind onto the one next door, definitely open as it had tour buses outside so we set about our quite unsuccessful mission of making ourselves understood to the Spanish speaking employees and spectacularly failed for a second time to get so much of a sniff of the juice of the gods – double damn it!

Feeling somewhat beaten and a little weak at the knees from the dehydration brought on by our lack of liquid sustainance we headed for our third stop, the first proper bodega (they make the wine but don’t have vines). Glory be to God upon high if they weren’t open (if only just as it was approaching lunch) and surely enough they filled our glasses as we nodded sagely and made appropriate gurgling sounds to show our approval. We were clearly getting in the swing of things as we made it to our next bodega within a 50m walk (again just squeezing in before lunch) and worked through our little routine again, nodding to each other and sniffing in a suitable theatrical manner.

The wind had clearly turned in our favour, allowing us to cycle back to the first vineyard we had tried for which we had now figured out the opening times and this time we were met with success, not just more wine, but also a tour around the facilities. We made ourselves sound rather knowledgeable to our lovely hostess by mentioning Napa Valley and Stellenbosch and before you know it we were making our way back into town rather pleased with our days efforts and very much more unsteadily on the bikes, partly I suspect from the wine, but I fear more so from the bruising endowed to my poor bottom!

During our little adventure, we had bought a bottle of wine from each stop (just to be polite you understand) so we had a cunning plan to drink the first of these in our hotel that evening prior to dinner, but for this we felt we would need a little accompaniment.

Now before I go further, I should warn Joe and Rav that they should perhaps not be reading this at work as the excitement and jealousy they are about to feel may get them some odd looks as they start to perspire and go red (just to clear up any misunderstanding for the rest of my probably limited readership, I should point out that during a previous trip to Croatia we discovered an unhealthy bond between the gentlemen named above and the creatures I am about to mention below).

I have previously promised to Joe that I would provide a picture of a nice Alpaca to make up for the lack of Goat pictures I had managed to get for him (check the comments on previous blog entries) and indeed during one of our wine stops I did indeed get the picture as promised however, someone was clearly thinking Joe and Ravi deserved better than this and so it was we discovered just 1Km out of town a . . . Goat Farm!

Siobhán and I got some pictures for you lads [see the full collection here], but be warned some of those goats pictured are minors (by which I mean young, rather than working under ground) and so should be afforded the appropriate level of respect.

Anyway, now I have the little in-jokes with the gang back in London in print (can you say in print when it’s in a blog?), I will attempt to return back to the details of the day. We had a tour round the farm and purchased some very pleasant cheese to go with our wine, making for the end of a rather successful, if painful day.

One further day was spent in Cafayate, before a further bus journey back to Salta and a second anniversary dinner in Salta, where the extremely nice owner showed us round his wine cellar, we drank champagne and puffed a fine cigar (well I did anyway). I will leave this entry here, next up Buenos Aires . . .

Escape from La Paz

Breaking out is impossible . . . breaking in is insane!




Ok, so as Siobhán may have mentioned in her last post, we had discovered that getting to our intended next destination may be a little more difficult that expected. Political unrest in Bolivia meant that there were a series of strikes taking place and wild fire political action to block roads as the result of disagreement between the newly gas rich states and the rest over President Morales plan to more evenly distribute the wealth to help the indigenous poor.

Never the less, we were not to be deterred and so it was your favourite, daring globe trotters booked their tickets, packed their bags and made their way to the bus office (carrying their own bags and everything, not a porter or concierge in sight!)

Following a 20 minute wait, we were asked to follow the lady from the office to the bus. Now we assumed having been asked to meet at the bus office it may be somewhere near by, at least in the same postal code. This was clearly a foolish assumption on our part as we walked so far across town with our bags, that we were beginning to wonder if the company's cunning plan to get by any road blocks was simply for us to walk the entire way.

Eventually, a bus, or something that at least resembled a bus did appear and we were ushered inside. Now I believe my beloved mentioned in her last post, that the last bus smelt rather unfortunately of the toilet. This little problem was not to be repeated as the bus company had come up with a brilliant solution for the four hour journey, no toilet!
I accept this may not seem like an end of the world situation, but I have yet to mention that we may have been experiencing slightly upset stomachs since we entered Bolivia, possibly related to the world class cuisine we had come to endure.

The journey to La Paz that followed, continued fairly uneventfully, with the only event of note being at a gas station the bus took a 15 minute break at, where a Japanese gentleman travelling on our bus thought it would be a good idea to light up a cigarette whilst wandering around the petrol pumps.

Once arriving at the vast sprawl that was La Paz, the bus company had one final cost saving measure up their sleeves, which consisted finding a more suitable venue to park than the bus station. The chosen venue was a practically vertical hill, which doubled up as one of the busiest roads in La Paz and barely big enough for a car to fit down, let alone squeeze past a parked bus on. Fortunately our bags were quickly off the bus and Siobhán managed to fight her way past the thronging crowd and launch herself into the only cab visible in the entire street, much to the consternation of some of our fellow passengers.

Before long we had made our way to the next hotel, The Ritz (what? we deserved a little luxury after the bus!)

The next 5 days were to be spent in La Paz. We had clearly not thought this entirely through. La Paz doubled up as both gastronomically bleak and something of an entertainment free zone, but it was not done messing with us there! We had a plan to travel through Bolivia and on into Brazil, but had not booked our onward travel. It turns out it's even harder to leave La Paz than to enter it and our options boiled down to a propable combination of several very slow bus and train journeys, likely to total around 30 hours through the eastern states that were currently the centre of the troubles. Indeed by the time we needed to leave 9 people had been murdered and the President was trying to arrest the leaders of the troublesome state.

With all of this in mind we decided to fly out of Bolivia, but even this seemed practically impossible, with no international flights out of La Paz, forcing we either fly all the way back to Peru, or go via Santa Cruz (capital of the problem state) which we were kindly informed by the sales assistant in the travel office was occasionally taken over by the protesters.

Well, to be honest things weren't as bad as I enjoy making them sound and we decided that our best route of escape would be to add Argentina into our itinerary and we made the necessary arrangements to fly into Salta, followed by Buenos Aires, which would make it straight forward to carry onto one of our intended destinations of Iguazu.

The day to leave came and in the mean time we had bought a painting. We needed to visit the art gallery on the morning we were to leave and so headed back to the gallery to finish the paper work and organise shipping. Upon nearing the gallery it turned out we were walking straight into an organised rally against the gas rich states. To make things more fun it transpired that the march was to continue straight past our hotel and so it became a race to see who would make it there first, us or the march. It turns out it was pretty much a tie, leading to us being escorted from the hotel to a back street where they had organised for a taxi ready to make it out to the airport.

Alright, if I'm honest I'm making it all sound far more exciting and dangerous than it really way, but after all you wouldn't want to read a dull blog!

[btw click here if you don't understand the picture / tag line]

The Orient Express, Puno and Cobacabana.

Hi all, Siobhán here, as this is my first entry I hope you'll forgive me if it is not up to Matts usual high standard.

After our triumphant completion of the Inca trail, we spent a night in Aguas Calientes before heading back to Cusco. The train from Aguas Calientes to Cusco was an experience all by itself - the mountain is so steep that the train goes back and forth across the mountain to get down. Each switch is done manually with flashlights by guys in the last carriage of the train and guys on the tracks switching the points on the track. Eventually however (only after Matt and Greg had drunk the on-board bar out of beer) we reached Cusco and said good-bye to Greg and Melissa as we were heading to Puno on The Orient Express (yes there is one in South America apparently) to Puno the next morning.

After nearly missing the train we settled down to a full day of sitting on a comfortable train and being brought food and drinks (a welcome change from long days spent hiking up and down mountains). We were definitely mixing with Peruvian high society as there was a couple of models on board doing some sort of publicity piece (possibly for the Peruvian equivalent of Hello). The view from the train was amazing, the vast altiplano stretching off into the distance, populated mostly by llamas.

On arrival in Puno it appeared that the entire pre-teen population of the town wanted to clean Matt and my boots, to be fair this was a theme thoughout Peru however the Puno bootcleaners were the most persistent. The first order on business in Puno was to organise a bus to Copacabana in Bolivia the next day. With that done we explored the town a little before heading to bed.

The bus to Copacabana was a less than pleasant experience (travelling isn't all fun and games you know). Suffice it to say that the whole bus smelled of toilet and we were stuck on it for 3.5 hours. Still though we felt like proper back backers carrying our packs off the bus and heading into town.

Copacabana is right on the banks of Lake Titicaca and we had a fabulous little house shaped a bit like a cone. The plan for our stay was to head over to Isla de Sol and do some hiking. The more famous Copacabana beach in Rio (the one from the song) is actually called after this little Bolivian town as it has been a pilgrimage town since Inca times - The incas believed that their civilization began here and that the sun was born here. While from colonial times to the present day there are pilgrimages to worship the Virgin of Copacabana - and icon carved by a priest of Inca decent in 1576.

Somehow the hike around Isla de Sol seemed incredibly difficult (even for seasoned hikers like ourselves :-) Its starts at about 3,800m and climbs about 100m - 200m which isn't that different from the altitude that we were used to on The Inca Trail but for whatever reason we both seemed much more effected by the altitude here than in Peru. I put it down to the lack of Coca tea, which I had consumed gallons of in Peru. I was slightly worried that I might be suffering withdrawal symtoms. However the lake is stunningly beautiful, incredibly blue and clear and huge - going on for as far as the eye can see. Unfortunately we don't have any pictures of our day on Lake Titicaca as I forgot the camera.

It was only on trying to organise a bus from Copacabana to La Paz that we realised that there was some Political unrest in Bolivia - it appeared that on previous days buses were unable to travel due to rocks and other blocks being strewn on the road. However luckily it seemed that on the particular day that we had chosento travel there were no strikes planned. So off to La Paz we headed.

Quick update

I'll make this quick, as we've only just got into Curitiba at 06:30 this morning following an all night bus journey (hard core travelling or what! - ok it had flat beds, air conditioning and a toilet, but still!)

I've been getting abused by my younger sister in-law for being lazy and not updating the blog, so I promise posts on Bolivia and Argenitina will be making their way onto the blog very soon (probably once we hit Sao Paulo tomorrow). I'll also post the Argentina photos as soon as we have a good enough Internet connection, hopefully some of the photos from Iguazu falls will make you all jealous ;)

In the mean time be pleased to know we're still alive and I've updated the tour map as we finally decided how we're getting to Rio.