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Published: February 2nd 2011
Should not be allowed in the air
You couldn't stand up properly inside-not cool at all!Sooooo much has happened since we last wrote, some great stuff, some not so great, some scary, some funny now that we look back but at the time not so much, some new beginnings, some saying goodbye, all in all its been great but may take me a while to get out so bare with me!!!
La Paz became for us the place to be to set out on new adventures, starting with our trip to Rurrenbaque in the amazon basin which def gave us more than we bargained for. This was def not a trip I was looking forward to but was to be one of Tom's highlights so fear and all it had to be done! So as expected early morning sleep the morning of our big adventure was plagued with dreams of plane crashes and newsheadlines despite that we made it easy enough to a very quiet and surreal international airport and squeezed in a subway sandwich before the tears began...the plane was a shoebox-no other way to describe it, you couldnt stand up in it, only 21 seats including the pilot and his mate, nothing seperating the oh so important pilot from annoying photo taking, chatting tourists,
Obviously not very pleased
Trying for a smile but clearly not feeling it! there only to distract him! Tom had sore hands from holding mine, some crazy Bolivian starrer had a good giggle as I emptied my entire bodies worth of fluids through tears, terrified is not the word. We did however manage to land safely enough and I did my best to shelf any thoughts of a return journey as I focused on the maddness that would be our next few days. Fear as we landed united us and an Austrailian couple who were set to be our travel partners for the next 8 days which was great. The Pampas tour around rurrenbaque was indescribable, I of course was terrifed the majority of the time but am so glad that we did it. We saw so many amazing views and animals from pink dolphins, to tiny monkeys, black caymen and aligators, to red howler monkeys, sloths, thousands of birds and random creatures, parana fish and I'm sure loads more. We chilled out in a wee canoe boat for 3 days, slept in jungle maddness, showered with huge water rats...not of course through choice, hunted for anaconda...again not my personal choice but part of the mandatory tour, went looking for caymen and alligators
Caipibara...or huge water rats!
One of these was the culprit of intruding on my shower...not cool at all at night, paranha fishing (although somewhat unsuccesful, Tom's grand total of 3 tiny sardines was about the height of it and I'm not convinced he wasn't catching the same poor wee thing everytime!), swimming with pink dolphins, something I opted out of as it was in the same murky waters we had spotted hundreds of shining red croc eyes the night before, plus I dont fancy my chances against a load of paranha fish either. Sleeping in wee wooden huts in the middle of the jungle was something I will never forget, the noise was incredible, thousands of animals and creeters singing and chatting the whole night through and I was sure we'd never sleep through deafening sounds or fear of eery silences, we did however all sleep better than we had done in weeks, when I finally relieved my body of paniced tension I drifted off into such a deep sleep that I guess comes with the whole 'being at one with nature thing'...weird but pretty cool. After our 3 days of adventure bags were repacked, mozy bites and sun burn taken care of and we eagerly journeyed back to town life and phone signal, wondering of news from
home about baby Morrell, still nothing! The plane journey back was of course as awful as the way there although my body decided to let me sleep which was such a blessing as the sight of the pilot reading his manual would have done nothing for my fear of flying...even Tom was feeling a little nervous at this point!
So we arrived back in La Paz only long enough to clean our clothes, chill out for a day and get ready for our next adventure to Salar de Uyuni-the Salt flats. What should have been a really relaxing 48 hours turned into one of those things that are 'funny to look back on but not so much at the time'. The time wasn't all bad with Tom mangaging to squeeze in another United game, I bumped into a few lads I recognised from the Beach House back home in Greystones, we of course managed some good food and managed to laugh at ourselves loads. Since a book called Marching Powder has been published about the drug trade and prison system in Bolivia hundreds of tourists have gone in on illegal visits to the prison to look around and meet the
prisioners. This of course didnt interest me in the sligthest but a few people had been telling us that we should at least go to look at the prison from the outside. Fianlly figuring out where it was we realised our hostel was about 100 metres away from the entrance and we'd been walking past it 2 or 3 times a day every day we'd been in La Paz, wondering everytime what it was but never coming to the conclusion it was the infamous San Pedro prison, our best guess had been a food parcel distribution place for poor families in the area...how wrong were we. The way the prison system works here is that you have to pay for your cell, so the more money you have the better the deal, plus you can bring your wife and kids to stay with you hence the hundreds of women and children walking in and out every day. Still no idea how we missed the armed guards on every corner and the firing stations on the roof of the prison walls.
Anyway so we'd enjoyed our last day and a half in La Paz but were really looking forward to our
Black Caymen
Right outside our camp 8am start to head off on our Salt flats tour, we'd packed up what we could but still no washing...9 o'clock came, I asked the guy at our hostel could he ring the laundrette, 'Tranquillo, its fine, later, later'...10 o'clock, 11 o'clock...12 o'clock no clothes and still no phone call. We'd paid $200 each for a tour that may have to be cancelled if our clothes dont turn up, a very apologetic lady came to explain that our clothes weren't coming and allowed me to stutter along in broken spanish for a good 10 mins before she decided to let me know she spoke perfect english-not cool but still no clothes. A very broken nights sleep (on my part Tom of course snoored his head off easily as normal!) later, worrying about clothes, lost money, cancelled tour we woke to the same news, no clothes and we cant get through to the laundrette-our bus was in half an hour. Tom and I took up our usual roles of me panicking and at this stage crying, while Tom was annoyed for about 5 secs then decided it was fine the hostel would have to pay for our lost trip so he
Tom and his catch
Impressive eh?!?!? was then ok, I still wasn't convinced and knew there was no way the hostel was gonna fork out but there was no way we could leave all our clothes either....help finally arrived in the form of our amazing tour operator Maribelle who was totally chilled out and willing to change anything and everything she could, she pushed back our 8 o'clock bus till 10 and said she would come back at 9.30 in the hope our clothes had turned up by then. A very tension filled hour and a half later the clothes turn up with no word of an apology at 9.28...stuffed into our bags, mad dash to the bus station, run to the gate, last two seats filled on the bus, just on, doors shut and off it went...just like that panic over and let the fun begin!!!!
The tour was incredible, helped loads by the fact Karla and Damo from our pampas tour were with us plus a really lovely Bolivian couple who gave us another chance to practise our spanish and do our best as translators for the 3 days. The scenery was amazing, surreal, breathtaking and just all round pretty cool. We had so
much fun taking random pictures on the Salt flats although the vast amount of photos meant a little too long in the sun for all concerned so lots of sun burn to go with it. The tour was pretty intense in terms of travel and we were couped up in a jeep for most of the 3 days but it was completly worth it. Karla and Damo had a pretty rough time with sickness along the way so felt bad for them with long hours in the van, but they coped amazingly well and solidered through. We also managed a fair few games of Uno which saw me as the triumphant champion much to everyones annoyance, that was until we met little Franco at our hostel on the second night. We were busy explaining the game to him really slowly in very loud, basic spainish while he nodded away, only to discover first hand that he was blatantly a pro and managed to wipe the floor with us, so much for letting kids play. All in all the tour was pretty impressive, sunrises and sunsets, active volcanoes, salt flats, huge mountain ranges, flamingos, natural hot springs, lagoons, great company and
hundreds of photos-loved it. The tour finished up with an amazing welcome back as we drove back into phone signal I recieved the amazing news of the safe arrival of beautiful Isaac Morrell and even managed to speak to Andrew and Gemma only a few hours after the big event which was fantastic, well done Gemma huge congratulations from us and welcome to the world wee man, cant wait to meet you.
The end of our wee tour marked the beginning of a mammoth journey and the start of what felt like forever in travel time. The last day of tour included a 4 am wake up call and 11 hours worth of jeep time, we had enough time to squeeze in pizza, a celebration drink for wee Isaac and our goodbyes to Karla and Damo before jumping on our 9 hour overnight train journey, which thanks to a wee bump/crash in the night turned into 10.5 hours. Followed by the worst border crossing of all time...if your ever in Bolivia do not do the land crossing to Argentina at Vizallion. I honestly thought at one point that the ever calm, ever chilled out Mr Callaghan was going to kill
or seriously mame the next person who pushed in or got in his way...he was not a happy man. Hours of standing in queues that weren't moving, watching people pay their way into the front of the line, families pushing children in at the front to save a spot that wasn't there, a distance of about 200 metres which had there been enough staff on and noone pushing in could have been dealt with in half an hour tops took us a grand total of 6 HOURS to make our way through, not a good time for us. Made all the more difficult to handle knowing we still had a long way to go before we were done, 2 more bus journeys and 12 more hours was ahead of us before we finally arrived in salta to our hostel and a bed 47.5 hours after we were last in one-south america is HUGE and takes a long long time to cover. Despite the street party going on outside our hostel we both slept sound that night.
Salta as some of you know was one of the places I lived in Argentina before I went to Uni and was set to
be in my head one of the best parts of our trip, getting to revisit old haunts, seeing the work that we took part in completed and working within the community. Finally getting to show someone in my life the place that meant so much to me and one of the first places I fell in love with besides Ireland. Getting to experience with Tom a city that taught me alot about myself, about life and about how the world works-I was super excited for this part of the trip...Salta however had other plans for us...well for Tom anyway. Pretty much the whole time we were there Tom suffered really badly with good old fashioned gut rot, he didn't eat for 4 out of 5 days which is some feat for Tom-he really wasn't in a good way. We managed one or two trips out to see small parts of the city but for one reason or another we didn't manage to make it back to Solidaridad were I had worked. Poor Tom was exhausted the whole time and really needed to not do anything but sleep. So not quite how I pictured the start of my return journey to
Argentina but we still had lots of time left to see some other parts of this amazing country. Which brings us onto Iguazu falls, 23 hours on a bus with a still quite fragile Tom was a gamble but it paid off thanks to some uber strong pills and lots of prayer!
Iguazu falls is like nothing I've ever seen before, it was incredible, without a doubt one of the most amazing things I've ever seen in my life. It literally took my breath away when we first saw it-Amazing. Thankfully Tom by this stage was feeling alot better and had managed to hold down one full meal so had some energy back for walking around the park for the day which was needed as it was SO hot. The falls gave some welcome heat relief as the sheer force of the water drenched anyone within 50-100 metres of them. The photos dont do it justice and I honestly cant descibe how amazing it was to see, made all the more exciting by a speed boat trip right underneath one of the waterfalls-AMAZING, def one of our best days yet, so thankful we managed to do it as it was
def touch and go with such long journeys to and from I had no idea if Tom would be able for it, but he was such a trooper and knew how much it meant to me to go and made it happen-love it!
Our second last South american bus journey was to be another 20 hour epic down to Buenos Aires. Really really looking forward to New zealand that from top to bottom can be covered in about a day, Argentina will have given us 75 hours worth of bus journeys in only 2 weeks which by anyones standards is ALOT of travel. Being back in Buenos Aires has been fantastic, it is such a great city with so much to see and do and the atmosphere is great just about everywhere plus it has steak! Tom was gonna make sure he made up for lack of food in Salta in a big way...little did I know he planned to do that in one sitting and found 'Siga la Vaca'...'Follow the Cow'. An all you can eat barbeque buffet with salad bar and pitcher of beer included for the grand total of 13 pounds-Tom meant business. It was a amazing
effort and he managed to polish of a plate of salad, a few chips (no bread...too much of a filler apparently!) 6 steaks, 2 pork slabs, 2 huge ribs, 3 sausages, 1 black pudding, 1 kidney, 1 gross intestine thingy and 2 desserts to top it off, and yet he is still losing weight here-not quite sure how that works!!! Still haven't done a top of the range steak house but I think tonight might be the night for that along with a long awaited promise of a tango lesson, fly on the wall cameras at the ready! Which will pretty much bring us to the end of our Latin American journey a quick pitstop in Santiago Chile for one night before our flight onto pastures new in New Zealand which we are both SO excited for. Cant believe nearly 5 months has been and gone we'll be home before we know it, still lots to see and do and hundreds of photos still to be taken so I best get back to it. Love to everyone x
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amanda
non-member comment
Hi
Dont know how you manage it Anna but your blogs are amazing. Photos are fab and feel like im there with you guys. Glad Toms tummys better and he has his appetite back. Your so funny and make me p... Your so lucky and no way have you been travelling for 5 months, its gone so quick. Love Tom for still watching the matches. Howard did the same in Goa, must be a man thing. You both look so well. Keep up the good work anna love to both amanda xxxxxxxxx