Uruguay, Brazil, and Northern Argentina

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Having been caught out once already in our quest for serenity, we pre-booked our departure to Uruguay when we arrived in Cordoba. So it’s an early night before we head back to Cordoba in the morning, to catch the bus to Montevideo, Uruguay.

URUGUAY

Whilst looking in to the logistics of travel to Uruguay and then onwards to Brazil, we quickly realised that our budget was going to suffer quite considerably if we included everywhere we wanted to visit. Both countries are expensive at the best of times but unfortunately we’re also currently in high season and with carnival looming, prices can triple. After much deliberation, we decided to cut short our trip to Uruguay and only visit Montevideo en route to Brazil. We were really disappointed to have to do this as we’d only heard good things about the country. Colonia del Sacramento, Punta del Este and Punta del Diablo were all on the original list, but we were hoping that Montevideo, our chosen hot spot would deliver the goods instead. It didn’t disappoint.

MONTEVIDEO

Montevideo is a colonial town full of beautiful architecture and arts galore. Most of the sights are situated in the old town (ciudad vieja) and given that our trip recently has lacked a bit of proper culture, we decided to spend our first day exploring the city and taking lots of pics of all the historical sights.
Plaza Independencia is Montevideo’s main square and home to a large statue of the country’s greatest hero General Artigas. In hindsight we should have made notes as we were clicking away as all the figures and points of interest have blurred in to each other a bit, hence the lack of photo tagging. We’ll save that for a rainy day! We were told that Montevideo also used to have the tallest building in South America, some 26 stories high. We took a picture of 2 very high buildings so hope it’s one of those.

Montevideo is also famous for its beaches so we spent the rest of our time playing in the surf (Don) and working on our tans (Sandy). Unfortunately we missed the Sunday market so were unable to witness the massive steaks on sale at ridiculously cheap prices, but we made up for it by eating at our first all you can eat buffet. Unlimited meat, pasta, Chinese food, veggies, salads, delicious puddings….awesome. Funniest moment was Sandy getting excited over the salad bar and mistakenly pouring what she thought was balsamic vinegar (nope that’ll be soy sauce Sandy…)all over her salad and having to ask the waitress if we could throw away the salad and start again.

We chilled out in the evenings drinking beer and playing cards and managed to offset the high room rates with cooking for ourselves. Frustratingly, a lot of hostels impose a ban on bringing in your own alcohol and instead stock a supply of alcohol on site and mark up the prices. There’s usually ways around it but it’s such bad play when the reason you’re staying at a hostel in the first place is because you’re skint.

Our time in Montevideo passed all too quickly and we were sad to leave.

BRAZIL

BORDER CROSSING

On arrival at the bus station ready to board our bus to Brazil, we were asked to submit our passports. This is pretty standard so we were happy to oblige. However when our tickets were handed over with our passports nowhere to be seen and the booking guy had moved on to the next customer, we started to get a little worried. We calmly expressed our concern and were met with a blank look and garbled Spanish. Luckily a local girl buying a ticket with her mum spoke English and was able to translate (thanks Jazmin!). Turns out the bus company keeps hold of passports for the border crossing and you’re handed back your ID once you’ve crossed the border. Slightly scary. We were assured this was standard practise and we’re happy to confirm that all went without a hitch and our passports have yet another stamp added.

ILHA DE SANTA CATARINA

We decided to head straight up to Ilha de Santa Catarina, renowned for its amazing landscape of rainforest covered mountains, pristine lakes, beautiful beaches and large sand dunes. Florianopolis is the gateway to Santa Catarina and a popular spot on the gringo trail. We decided to say at Lagoa da Conceicao over in the eastern side of the island for 2 nights. Hot and sweaty after nearly 24hrs of travel, we arrived at our hostel and were not disappointed. Lovely gardens, inviting pool, a cool vibe and friendly people. We fitted in straight away and whiled away our short amount of time enjoying the beaches, natural water pools, blaring sun, and hostel buffet dinners. The highlight during our stay was sandboarding down the huge dunes at Joaquina beach. It was really just the same as snowboarding except a lot hotter and sweatier. We had an awesome time racing each other and since there are obviously no tows back up to the top it was a good work out too.

PARATI/ TRINIDADE

Heading up the coast our next stop was the colonial town of Parati, known for its picturesque setting, old churches, colourful stone buildings and cobbled streets. We decided to stay in Trindade, some 25km from Paraty in search of some rainforest living. We should add that the journeys of late have been pretty eventful with poor Donny getting the raw end of the deal on most occasions. The buses in Brazil aren’t up to Argentina standard and most journeys are spent with the person in front pretty much lying on your lap. On the journey from Floripa to Parati, the guy in front of Donny liked to rest his hands over his head, on the back of his chair, inches from Donny’s face. This guy was in serious need of some nail clippers as his finger nails were all about an inch long and Donny has developed a debilitating phobia of finger nails- not good. To add to the misery we were on a tight schedule as we were fast approaching the time that the last bus to Trinidade leaves from Paraty. For reasons unknown to us, the driver was keen to stop every 2hrs for a 20minute feed/fag stop ….after our final rest stop, the driver announced something in Portugese to the bus. One of the passengers shouted something back and in his response he said ‘Trindade’. Not knowing the reason but guessing what he was saying was relevant to us, Sandy put up her hand shouting ‘Trindade, Trindade’. Broken English told us to take our backpacks from the luggage hold and bring them on to the bus. The bus was mega packed so were unpopular gringos dragging our lugguage through the bus. The next hour was spent cramped between our lugguage wondering what would happen next. Finally the bus swerved off road and the lights went off and the driver shouted ‘Trindade’. Sandy got off the bus first and instantly realised that we were in the middle of nowhere when she saw a sign saying ‘Trindade 8km’ and not much else. The words ‘8km, no mapa, mochillas (backpack)’ along with the universal finger movement to motion walking were relayed to the driver with him responding with a shrug of the shoulders and a blank expression. Next thing Sandy was saying ‘Right, back on the bus, we’re going to Parati’. The upshot was an 80Reais (£30) cab journey to Trindade as we missed the last bus (less than £1). At the time it was pretty horrendous but looking back we suppose it makes a good travelling tale.

Next morning after a good night’s sleep and the journey forgotten, we soon realised we had chosen wisely. Surrounded by rainforest and with a soundtrack of chirruping insects and frogs and the nearby stream, we tucked in to breakfast before exploring. We ventured into the rainforest to find a waterfall with a natural swimming pool and soon found ourselves swimming in the middle of the jungle during a thunderstorm. After that we went to the beach and watched hawksbill turtles feeding on the rocks. A good day.

The next day was, for the most part, even better. The hostel arranged a boat trip for all the guests to tour the islands and beaches around Parati, and crucially, the price included all the caipirinhas we could drink. The boat was really cool, as were the people and the surroundings (we’ll let the photos do the talking here). Unfortunately the caipirinhas took their toll on Sandy in more ways than one. First, while climbing up the ladder from to the top deck, and simultaneously waving at Donny in the water, she lost her footing and fell onto the bottom deck, resulting in a twisted knee and several cuts and bruises. An early night was called for but unfortunately Sandy was up all night being sick- the diagnosis was an upset stomach due to caipirinha ice cubes made with dodgy tap water. Several important lessons were learnt that day!

Despite these calamities, we loved Trindade, so much so that we decided to stay an extra day so that we could visit the natural swimming pools (formed by rocks situated in such a way as to create a shallow, sheltered pool) and the surroundings in general.

When we finally did tear ourselves away from Trindade, it was on the local bus to Paraty and it threw up one more adventure. It was on the eve of a Brazilian public holiday so the steep, narrow and twisting road was unusually congested with holiday-makers. Our bus turned one corner and encountered a lorry coming the other way, resulting in a Mexican stand-off which was going to require some skilful manoeuvring. Fortunately our driver was up to the task and with some to-ing and fro-ing we got past the lorry (aided by much vocal encouragement by the locals). Next he had to get us past the enormous traffic jam that had built up behind the lorry and with sometimes less than an inch to spare, he charged up the hill. Along with our Aussie travelling companion for the journey, Patrick, we decided that this skill could not go unrewarded and we greeted his successful emergence from the jam with a huge round of applause.

ILHA GRANDE

We were gutted to be leaving Trindade but it’s amazing what the lure of yet more rainforest and beach action can do to a person. We headed 3 hours north of Paraty to Angra dos Reis to catch a ferry to Ilha Grande. Ilha Grande is well known on the travelling circuit and popular with holiday makers from Rio as it’s only a few hours away. It’s brazil’s 3rd largest island and home to tropical scenery, gorgeous beaches, lush forest and hills. The main town is Vila do Abraao where all the restaurants, bars and hostels are. Ilha Grande really is paradise, in fact all the way up Brazil’s South East coast is. We stayed 3 nights on the island and it’s hard to know what to write without repeating ourselves. Each place on the coast so far has been absolutely stunning and offers its own little special something. Lopes Mendes beach was a highlight. A 3hr hike away from the town, with coconut palms, white sands and crystal blue water. Weirdly, at one point we spotted what appeared to be a large cockroach with legs like paddles striving along the sand towards the sea. Since cockroaches are not, to our knowledge, marine creatures, we would ask any naturalists out there to shed some light on this mystery. We also were lucky enough during our stay in Ilha Grande to swim in more river pools, play with squirrel monkeys and be surprised by large land crabs in the middle of town.

RIO DE JANEIRO

We arrived in Rio a little apprehensive given our experience in BA and having spent the last week living in paradise. We decided to stay in Botofogo, lured in to the hostel blurb advertising a serene stay high up in Rio’s rainforest. We got off to a bad start when we decided to take a legitimate taxi from the bus station since we were once again in the big bad city. However, the driver had no idea where the hostel was and tried to drop us off on random streets numerous times. We stayed strong refusing to get out until we saw our hostel. Eventually we got the lonely planet out and found the hostel street on the map (one of the few times lonely planet has in fact been useful; Bible aye right…) We eventually arrived at the hostel and were somewhat disappointed. The hostel setting was amazing, high up in its own little rainforest surrounded by monkeys a family of squirrel monkeys, but the hostel itself was really grubby and full of ants. It had only been open for a couple of months and was very rough around the edges still. That said, once we got over that, it was the perfect place to explore Rio, a city that we completely fell in love with. Where to start? Rio has everything. Stunning beaches, picturesque hills, green everywhere and the friendliest of people. We rarely felt unsafe and were bowled over by the people in the city. At dinner on our first night, a local started speaking to us because he loved our accent. It turned out he loved Scotland, primarily because he was a massive fan of Donovan (not Jason but Leitch) and he proceeded to croon some heartfelt lyrics in Donny’s ear.

We had limited time in Rio so did all the typical tourist things. Ipanema and Cocacabana were better that we had imagined and not at all dirty and full of nefarious characters as had been described to us. We saw the most stunning sunset while sitting on Ipanema beach and loved it when everyone started clapping and cheering just as the sun dipped below the horizon. We took on the two most famous viewpoints of Rio, Sugarloaf Mountain and Christ the Redeemer, in one day, and while both gave us the most incredible vistas of the city, we only have photo evidence from Sugarloaf since the camera battery decided to die upon reaching the Christ Statue.

Our stay in Rio passed all too quickly. Rio was the first place that we actually imagined ourselves living in. It has everything you could want and more. We’re sure we’ll be returning again sometime in the not too distant future.

When deciding to only visit Montevideo in Uruguay we also took the agonising decision to not travel further than up the coast than Rio. Our budget is really taking a hit in Brazil and with so many other countries to visit, we simply cannot afford to stay in this beautiful country too long. Sandy had been really keen to travel all the way north but alas it will have to wait until we return some day. Instead, we headed inland towards Brazilia, the nation’s capital.

BRASILIA

Brasilia was dreamed up in the 60s as an idealised new capital city, a utopian view of how a modern, futuristic urban space should be… They sort of came up with Cumbernauld; it’s nice if you really like concrete. We never really had high hopes for the place, having listened to other travellers and read the guidebook, so we only stayed for an afternoon between buses. Weirdly, we saw fit to visit not one, but two churches which were very nice indeed. And that’s about it. Sorry…

IGUAZU

Anyway, moving on, we got back on the bus and headed off to Foz do Iguacu, much more our style. Iguazu Falls was one of the priorities of the trip for us, and even though it is a major tourist trap and a firm fixture on the "Gringo Trail", it is unbelievably worth the visit. Our photos can in no way do justice to the awesome scale of the falls; the sheer volume of water dropping over 80metres, and over such a large area, is really overwhelming.

The falls lie between Brazil and Argentina and can be visited from both sides. We started on the Brazilian side, setting ourselves up in a hostel in Foz do Iguacu. We arrived in the pouring rain and made our way to the Greenhouse hostel, persevering in our quest to get there despite the weather and the grim warning from one local that it was in a Favela and therefore unsafe. Happily we ignored him and found ourselves in one of the best hostels we have stayed in so far (it turned out that the local do-gooder ran a rival hostel and was trying to lure us away). Junior was the owner and he had just opened up three weeks earlier so he was incredibly enthusiastic about the whole project. The hostel was more like a very good hotel and we were lucky enough to have the whole place to ourselves on the first night since few people have heard of the place yet. On the second day a bunch of new guest arrived, one of whom had a birthday the following day so Junior and his staff threw a big party for her. It´s not often that we have seen that level of attention from a hostel on the trip so far.

So we started the Falls on the Brazilian side and aside from the spectacular falls we were particularly taken by the amazing wildlife on offer. On one short stretch of walkway we saw lizards of all shapes and sizes (including enormous iguanas), hundreds of butterflies, hummingbirds, a gigantic grasshopper and equally huge spiders. The weirdest of all was a wasp which had stung one of the large spiders on its own web and has happily sucking it dry! We were able to get views of the falls in their entirety as well as getting up close on the walkways which had been built right in the middle of the torrent (getting soaked to the skin in the process).

We stayed in Foz for more nights than originally planned, mainly due to our love for the hostel, but also so that we could visit the bird park which was right next to the falls. It is a really good place and an example of how a wildlife park, if done well, can be good for the paying public but more importantly excellent in their treatment of the animals. Highlights included the parrots, some of whom seemed intent on inflicting bodily harm to us both by pecking our fingers to peices and by crapping all over us, the toucans, which were so intelligent and inquisitive, pecking at our watches and unashamedly showing off their admittedly impressive beaks, and the harpy eagle which didn´t really do anything but was very big and imperious looking.

Everyone says that Iguazu Falls needs to be visited from both sides to do it justice so we eventually upped sticks and headed over the border to Puerto Iguazu in Argentina, happy to be back among Spanish speakers finally. The Argentine side was really cool but slightly lost its magic as we didn´t have the same wow factor, having seen it already. Still, we were able to get right up close to the most powerful part of the falls, the Garganta del Diablo (Devil´s Throat), and also to meet some wild but friendly coatis, members of the racoon family, who inhabit the park and scrounge food from the visitors.

Iguazu was well and truly done, one of the undoubted stars of the trip so far, and we were off to Salta next, our last stop in Argentina before Bolivia.

SALTA

Salta is in the north of Argentina and is a beautiful city which sits at over 1000m above sea level in a hilly landscape and contains yet more colonial architecture (we´ve just about worked out what that actually means by now- yes we are pig ignorant). The main reason for visiting, aside from the fact that it is on the way to Bolivia, was to partake in a spot of bungee jumping 80km out of town. At the time of writing Donny has just about calmed down from the experience and is about to have a major adrenaline crash. It was quite a small jump, only about 40m off a bridge over a river, but the freefall is terrifying and exhilirating and the dunk in the water at the bottom was an extra surprise. Needless to say Donny has got the bug and plans to go higher and more hardcore next time in Peru.

We head off to Bolivia next, leaving the civilisation of Argentina and venturing into the unknown.....

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Photos

Statue in Montevideo
Sandy's buddy- Buddha.

Statue in Montevideo
Don't know who he is but he looks like a harry potter character.

Statue in Montevideo
Sandy got thrown off this one by a park ranger.

Photo of us on Sugarloaf
Courtesy of cool Argentine guy.

Sandy and Dog Statue, Salta
Must have been a very good boy.

Comments

[Alex]

Bolivia
Awesome stuff guys. Uber jealous. Good luck in Bolivia..........................Let's hope for no blockades/strikes!

[Alex]

Is that a C&A bag on the chair next to you?? If it is, qudos. So retro.

[Lauren]

AWESOME
LOVE this blog entry! Very entertaining on my lazy Sat morning without the usual actual entertainments of your hungover chat! :) Sandy....not gonna lie....are you kidding with the bikini bod! Top notch and Don very happy that the tan has broken through the red...doing us Scots proud you too.....carry on with the shananigans :) lots of love

[WhyteyandDobertson]

Dude, hellish times getting into Bolivia- big blockade just before the border. Missed our train so had to get the worst bus ever to Uyuni. Cold, leaking, terrifying road, no food. Then in Uyuni at 2am in the freezing pissing rain the hostel wouldn´t let us in. Salt flats tour also a nightmare due to extreme illness for me and Sandy. Much better in Sucre now, love it!

[WhyteyandDobertson]

Lauren
Cheers for the complements Lauren- you must be hungover! We´re having a blast and finally learning to love Bolivia- Sucre is really cool. Look forward to boring you about the travels when we´re back.