A Grey May Day of Riotous calm

---

Oi!
Or should I say hello (in Portuguese) from Sao Paulo. The language here is very strange like a cross between Spanish and Dutch and South-East Asian. I keep saying gracias and other words it took me ten weeks to get on top of and now its all changed and how so. Since my last blog, we caught the overnight bus up to Iguazu Falls on the Argentine and Brasilian border. Here Walter and his wife Yolanda took great care of us and were very informative of the local area and the tour guides. We managed to secure a flight to Sao Paulo from the Brasilian side for two days time for $110, not bad when the bus took 18 hours and cost $75!

Saturday 26th - I felt sad to be leaving Buenos Aires so early, but it was sucking our money dry and Laura fancied a few days on a Brasilian beach before we went home, so i didn´t need too much persuading! We arrived around midday and checked in. Walter told me about the area of Puerto Iguazu and how 50 years ago it was just jungle when his dad arrived like a Cowboy Bandito with guns and bullets strapped across his chest like Rambo! Walter was a funny man, with 3 sons and 6 chihuahuas. they had been running the hostel for 1 year and it was one of the cheapest, cleanest places we have stayed. We even had our own table and kitchen in our room, almost like a really nice bedsit! The only thing it lacked was a bath tub. He told us how he had spent 4 years travelling around Europe, Israel, and North Africa in 1986 and how he got thrown back on a boat at Dover to France, as they wouldn´t let him in. Making and selling necklaces and growing his hair he lived the hippy lifestyle until he yearned for home and Yolanda, who had waited for him. A month later they were married. It was a nice story and they made an interesting couple, mainly because she was a Spanish literature teacher and he still walked around in short sleeve shirt and shorts, smoking and fiddling with his gold pirate hoop earrings!

We spent the rest of Saturday relaxing despite having fully reclining (like 1st class in airplane) seats on the bus and champagne) and buying in groceries for the next few days meals. We also booked a our flight for the 28th, my overdraft straining at the seams. After a few beers and dinner, I chatted to a woman from Bonnair, in the Dutch carribean, who had recently been on a ten day trip to Antarctica. She said it was indescribable, something everyone should see before they die, like the rest of Patagonia i thought. She said she send postcards from there which took only 2 months to arrive to Europe. I was flabbergasted. Amongst all the ice and penguins they had also seen a humpback whale ten feet from the ship, cruised through icebergs the size of buildings and had a welcome barbecue the day they arrived.

We watched a film with Danne, a Swedish financial analyst from Stockholm, whom we met on the bus and chatted about Europe and South America over wine and snuss (tobacco snuff). We also collected our lovely frewsh smelling laundry, which the hostel in BA had charged us for but not done (don´t worry i got me 8 pesos back alright!); oh the joys of clean clothes.

Sunday 27th April - because everything is shut on Sunday, we had used the day to visit the falls. How can one describe such a sight. it was breathtaking. Eleanor Roosevelt once commented Í"t makes poor Niagara look like a dripping tap" and how! Walkways allows close view of the falls and The waterfall system consists of 275 falls along 2.7 kilometres (1.67 miles) of the Iguazu River. Position is at Latitude (DMS): 25° 40' 60 S ,Longitude (DMS): 54° 25' 60 W . Some of the individual falls are up to 82 metres (269 ft) in height, though the majority are about 64 metres (210 ft). The Garganta del Diablo (Devil's Throat in English; Garganta do Diabo in Portuguese), a U-shaped 150-metre-wide and 700-metre-long (490 by 2300 feet) cliff, is the most impressive of all, and marks the border between Argentina and Brazil. Two thirds of the falls are within Argentine territory. About 900 metres of the 2.7-kilometre length does not have water flowing over it. The edge of the basalt cap recedes only 3 mm per year.

The water of the lower Iguazu collects in a canyon that drains into the Rio Parana in Argentina. We walked everywhere, caught a train, got a small boat across to San Martin Island, where we watched hundreds of condors taking to the thermals, saw many different butterflies including the highly toxic red and black ones whose name escapes me. Luckily saw no snakes and it was a bit touristy, but hey I jumped into the water for a swim and then it was just as well as a speed boat took us underneath the falls, all 1000 horsepwer fighting against the current. Amazing! As we were wet through by this point and it was nearing 4pm (Laura had no dry clothes) we caught the bus back to town and the hostel. We had a hot shower and watched a movie and before we knew it, it was dinner time and we sat around chatting with Danne. I read some of my book - the Road to Lake Titicaca about 3 english lads who cycled 6500 miles from Tierra Del Fuego to Lake Titicaca up the spine of the Andes and it was a great read as it didn´t take itself too seriously and it was for leukaemia charity.

Monday 28th - we caught a taxi, chatting all the way with driver Julio about Argentina. the people here were so friendly, I would say the friendliest so far overall, I was sad to be leaving. We picked up Juli~´s wife, who had a toddler in her arms and drove over the Brasil border to Foz de Iguacu, a town ten times the size of Puerto Iguassu. I think it was some kind of national holiday as the town was dead. We sat around on the internet and in cafes drinking coffee we didn´t want wasting time, which is more tiring than it sounds while Danne left us to catch the final tour to Itaipu dam, which I wanted to do (but couldn´t timewise) as it straddles te Paraguay border and gives it 80%!o(MISSING)f its electricity. 25%!o(MISSING)f Brasils too, which is incredible. Anyway we caught a bus to the airport 20km away and checked in wiothin minutes and ate a couple of pastries while we waited for the plane, trying to get used to this new alien language. We landed in Sao Paulo at 5.30pm but had to wait an hour for a bus which dropped us to our hostel. It took 2 hours extra and cost $20 (ouch!) through a city of 22 million people a mere three times the size of Paris! , finally lying on the bed at 8.30pm, over 12 hours after we left Walter and Yolanda behind in Argentina.

Laura rang her friend karina, an estate agent who lived in the city and she agreed to come take us out for dinner. I finished my book (ten in ten weeks) and she arrived about 10.30pm and drove us to this amazing Charrascuria. It had real Southern cowboys as waiters with funny blooming Russian pantalones on who just kept bringing you more and more meat, barbecued perfectlyon huge metal spikes, they then carved in front of you and the servic was unbelieable. almost anything you put on the cemetary plate - a side dish for discarded grissle, salad, etc - was cleared and replaced witha fresh one. this went on for over an hour, and if you refused some sirloin or rump, or Lamp chop, its like they took it seriously even when it was an all you can eat. maybe they get a bonus for flogging more, but economically that doesn~t really make sense. After I had upturned my green circular card to its red opposite side (which means you are physically unable to eat any more meat, welkl it does in my case) finally the barrage ends. Karina was a friendly trilingual hald Honduran, half Brasilian 31 year old, who has been seeing Max ( a third generation Brazilian Chinaman) for 3 years. and she refused to let us pay for the meal. She also offered to pick us up at 10.30am upon checkout (no aearlier as she is unable to drive for pollution purposes before 10am on Tuesdays and must be aftr 8pm also - everyone in the city has one day from five where this is the case) so we could stay in her spare room in her apartment.

Tuesday 29th - This was music to the ears as we were missing the luxuries of home comforts and how happy we were when we saw the flat. It was not real, nicer than one from friends or other sitcoms, European in design, American in terms of service. Car Park, security men, swimming pool, gym, 4 bathrooms, balcony, kitchen, washroom, lounge, dining room, study and two bedrooms (one for her dad when he stays). She went off to work as an estate agent and we dossed around watching the football (theres like ten games a day hre) on a flat screen TV and bought ingredients for dinner and spoke to my sister for 20 minutes on skype. I was cooking to say thanks and made a killer chicken curry (top 3) for us and Max. Then they took us to a bar in Villa Mariejo or something and we drank creamy headed Chopp Brahma beer and went home tired at 1am. It was officially my birthday now, but we were all too tired to celebrate.

Wednesday 30th - we wlaked around downtown Sao Paulo but it was raining (I later put on Sao Paulo Rain by Tom McRae on the ipod as it sheeted down into the pool, overlooked by the balcony, and a sudden pulse of happiness washed over me. We found a pub selling Guiness but had only one as it was $6 a pint. It was nice not having to pay accommodation though so we stayed a night longer than we had planned and watched the Liverpool lose to Chelscum in the chaampions league. Then Laura made me a birthday stirfry and we drank a bottle of Barcadi mojitoes to celebrate the passing of my 28th birthday, the 20th anniversairy of my first ever QPR game, vs Forest in 88 (scorers Simon Barker and Andy Sinton!) Wow, lets hope the next 20 are not quite so painful snd we can get back in the Premier Laegue next year. Sorry about the typos, I am very hungover from the rium and lime, despite a plunge in the freezing pool this morning. (Thursday 1st May)

We have only a week to go. In places it seems like a year ago that we were in Quito, Ecuador, but in other ways 3 months has flown by. I only hope the memories stay and the photographs reflect to a degree the amazing things and people we have encounteredf in this mysterious and proud land.

Ok, gotta go pack, the apartment dream is coming to an end and we must catch an overnight bus to Angra Dos Reis, a town some 8 hours down the Green Coast. We will arrive at 5.30am tomorrow (May 2nd) and will catch a boat to Ihla Grande to lounge on a beach for 3 days before the final stretch at Rio, where a Flamengo game at the Maracana is a distincy possibility to end the trip in style. I only hope is that the weather is better in the next few days, as it feels like we are in Birmingham at the moment...and no one wants that! Cheers and speak to you in a week x Tom

---