Another long bus journey of 28 hours took me from Brazil into Ciudad Bolivar, a smallish city whose only attraction is being a base for excursions to the Angel Falls. Although Cuidad Bolivar has quite a nice old center, is is basically deserted, and it is a struggle to find a restaurant there. The city, along with the rest of Venezuela, suffers from regular shortages of milk, sugar, or even toilet paper, balanced out with more than enough corruption. I was lucky enough to book a tour to the Angel Falls the day after arriving. The falls are in quite a [View Full Entry]

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I arrived in Belem after a 35 hour bus ride from Natal, planning to spend a day there relaxing before taking a river boat up the Amazon to Manaus. The boats only depart 3 times a week, one departing the same evening, the next one beeing in 4 days. Belem is not the most of inviting of cities, so I decided to leave the same day, and luckily managed to get a space on the boat. The trip to Manaus takes 5 days, and there are two accomodation options onboard: hammock class or cabin. Being a man accustomed to my comforts, [View Full Entry]

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Natal is a pretty big, and not one of the prettiest, cities on the northeast coast of Brazil. Just outside the city though, in Ponte Negro, the beaches are pretty cool, and the nightlife good! The day I arrived there I met a group of 4 Argentinians, which I hung out with most of the time. Time was mostly spent relaxing at the beach, and of course celebrating new years eve (also at the beach). They also have a dune or two in Natal, and of course offer dune tours, which are pretty fun. Our driver must have been on speed, [View Full Entry]

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Rio de Janeiro - you´ve all seen pictures of the city, and it´s just as beautiful in real life. That is when the weather is good. I arrived on a slightly overcast morning after a comfortable 18hr bus journey from Florianopolis, and checked into the Stone of the Beach hostel in Copacabana. Slightly dissapointed that the sun wasn´t out, the staff told me the weather was going to be worse over the next couple of days, so I decided to go see Christ the Redeemer that day, while it was still visible! Christ the Redeemer sits atop Corcovado mountain, is justifiably [View Full Entry]

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Florianopolis is a great town in the South of Brazil. I stayed at a very cool Backpackers in Barra de Lagoa, which overlooked the beach and had a very friendly and relaxed atmosphere. They also provided free surfboards and kayaks, which I made use of. Basically my Florianopolis days where spent either relaxing at the beach, surfing or kayaking. In the evenings we usually had some beers and caipirinhas at the backpackers bar, accompanied by a game of texas hold'em. One of the days the backpackers organised a boat trip / boozecruise. Oh what fun we had! So all in all, [View Full Entry]

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The spectacular Iguazu falls are located on the border of Argentina and Brazil. The Brazilian side gives a good overview of the falls, whilst most of the falls are actually on the Argentinian side and much more up close and personal. After arriving to a rainy Puerto Iguazu (Argentinan side), we where a bit nervous about beeing able to see the falls the next day, but thankfully the weather improved and we were all set to go to explore the falls. The Iguazu Falls quite spread out, and constist of 275 individual falls along 2.7km, some fairly small, some incredibly massive [View Full Entry]

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Buenos Aires, the Paris of South America, is the nicest South American Capital I have visited so far. Very green and a mix of european and modern architecture. So what did I do in BA? We stayed at the Milhouse Hostel, which has quite a well deserved party reputation. So besides doing some sightseeing and eating great steaks, I enjoyed the famous BA nightlife, which usually only gets proberly started around 2am. [View Full Entry]

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Punta del Este is the place where all the rich and famous of Argentina and Uruguay come to party, though only in January. The season was slowly starting in December, but it was still a fairly quiet, which was perfect for relaxing on the beach for a couple of days.. [View Full Entry]

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Ushuaia is the southernmost city of the world, overlooking the Beagle Channel. Many cruises to the Antarctic depart from here, which was also one of my reasons for going there. I was hoping to get a last minute deal, but, alas, even they where too expensive for my budget.. There where plenty of other things to do in Ushaia though, including cruising the Beagle channel for a few hours, seeing sea lions, going on 4x4 drives, Argentinian steak BBQs, and of course celebrating my 30th birthday. We even had a few days with decent weather, though mostly it was cold, and [View Full Entry]

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The main reason to visit El Calafate is the Perito Moreno glacier, which is about 1 hr out of town. And this glacier is definitely worth visiting! The Glacier moves at a speed of about 40cm to 1m a day! This fast movement causes the glacier to calve regularly, and we saw some spectacular calving. Small pieces of ice fall off every few minutes, and even they cause a incredibly loud bang, sounding like thunder! We were lucky enough to see a huge piece break off. What a sight. Check out the video that I posted... After watching the iceberg from [View Full Entry]

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