It´s raining, it´s pouring and Christmas day wasn´t boring!!

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Hi hi hi! How the bloody hell is everyone?
We are currently in our final week of travels and chilling at the beach in Paraty, Brazil before travelling back to Rio for our flight home. I have a tummy bug, the first of all the travels which is annoying, so am taking the time to catch up on some blogs stuff as we are so far behind. Whoops! I think we are just leaving Bolivia as far as you all know.....and we have been to about 4 countries since then so much apologies! The tour is usually a pretty fast pace and we struggle to find the few hours the blogs need. We promise to catch up and let you know about our final months though......even if we finish it after getting home.

So anyway.....after leaving Bolivia, after what can be described as one of the most raw, interesting countries we have been to, we cross into Argentina and head for a place called Salta. The main reason we go there is for a well known rafting camp called "Salta Rafting" (obviously). As always, our tour guide tells us a little bit about the country and destination on the way to Salta which includes some exciting information about the weather being a lot hotter as we are finally travelling to a lower altitude and how it (and I will quote this) "HARDLY EVER RAINS"!! How exciting!! The night before the rafting camp we pull up to a campsite which is situated around the largest swimming pool in the southern hemisphere. The weather is boiling and we take the time to rest up and sun bathe. The water in the pool left much to be desired but was really good hanging with the locals and just chilling out as the town was a little distance away. The evening soon came round and we had planned a nice meal and a night out as we´d not done that in a while.....so off we headed into the old town of Salta. All very pleasant......until the heavens opened.....a lot....and flooded the whole town!! Never rains in Argentina my arse!! As it was pretty late when we left the club a few of us decided to get a taxi back....and soon realised they weren´t running because of the rain. As we headed back to get our 6ft7", very drunk tour guide for some help with the local language we bumped into some more of the girls who were also ready to leave. To say the least, our tour guide was far from helpful and found the whole thing quite annoying as we were clearly taking up valuable drinking time so we were left to make our own way home. Not an ideal situation and there were a few tears and screaming girls along the way but finally we managed to get the taxi´s we needed and headed back to the campsite. Our ever friendly taxi driver laughed when we told him where we were staying.....quite a lot in fact and in broken Spanglish we soon established that our lovely big swimming pool had also actually flooded.....the whole campsite. NICE! What a treat to go home to after trying to catch a cab for 3 hours. Deep joy and 20 people crammed onto our truck and attempted to sleep......with Rich´s snoring performance taking on new heights! hee hee!! So I guess the moral of the story is not to camp next to the biggest swimming pool you have ever seen and expect it not to rain! Makes a good storey though!

Next day we left for Salta Rafting and the weather was once again sunny so spirits lifted and we all cheered up a bit. Noone quite forgiving the tour leader though.....his days are numbered but more of that later. We arrived at the new camp and to our delight, Moose, another truck load of people were already there. We hadn´t seen them for a while and it´s always nice to catch up. Especially as we would be spending Christmas with them in two days time. We set up camp and then headed off to Rafting or Zip lining. Me and Rich decided on the Zip lines as we would have the chance to raft further down the country and we didn´t regret our decision. We had a great day zipping over canyons and rivers and then eventually into camp a few hours later. Great day.......although the sand flies ate us alive and we would live with the itching and scars for a while. Small price to pay though! The staff at the rafting camp set up a brilliant all you can eat BBQ which was our first real taste or Argentinian Beef and we went on to have a fun night with Moose, heading to bed in high spirits, ready for Christmas eve and our drive to Cafayate. Queue the Heavens again! The first time me and Rich became aware anything was wrong was when we were woken to the others shouting "Oh My God" and "Shit my stuff". We looked out and most of the tents in both groups were sat in about 3inches of water where it had rained over night after we went to bed. Feeling quite smug that we had not only pitched the tent on higher ground but also that we had left our bags on the truck, we got out of the tent and helped the others with they´re stuff......all the to the tune of Christmas Carol´s blasting for all to hear.

After a festive drive day we arrived at our Christmas campsite which had great facilities including a lovely pool (thanksfully, we weren´t camping beside it this time) and a hall that we could prepare our food in and sit......if it rained (hmmm??). Christmas eve was spent exploring and as the town was a small walk away, a few of us even managed to go to church with the locals in the evening. Then on to party the night away until the early hours. Christmas morning we were woke pretty early with Champers and more Carol´s. We were all in very good spirits and couldn´t wait to start our day of partying, eating and drinking. We would prepare breakfast and then Moose had arranged a Spit Pig for the evening meal, which would cook for most of the day. Breakfast od steak and eggs (well we are in Argentina) went well and then we gave out all of our secret Santa presents. We choose Andy (Dad) from our truck to play Santa and although the process took a lot longer than expected, it was great fun......although a little hot as the sun was beating down on us (not raining though so shouldn´t complain). It was so lovely seeing how imaginative everyone had been with the gifts and our ten dollar budget. Fun had by all! Most of the rest of the day was spent laughing and spending time with everyone but it was really hot so a few of us decided to go swimming. Now this would have been fine.....if the owner had opened the swimming pool but unbeknown to me and Rich....he hadn´t. All I know is that the gate was open when we got there.... Now the events that unfold from here in are to make this one of the most unforgettable Christmasses ever and although it wasn´t fun at the time, it makes a good story...again. Now from what I gather from others, our tour leader, remember the one I told you about, was on the phone to his family and this call was interupted by the owner of the campsite telling him that there were people in the pool. We´d cooled off by this stage and were back in the campsite having a few drinks but a few weren´t and experienced and complete over reaction from Mark (tour leader) who accused them, while downing rum, that they had ruined his Christmas!! OK, fair enough he had to cut his call short but so did we all at certain points and it wasn´t something to cry about. So.....he drank more....and got louder......and more arguementative and generally, more abusive to various people. Now I was off having a snooze for most of this but when I woke, the shit had really hit the fan. He had threatened a few passengers on both the trucks, broke a 6ft pot which had been made by the owners father, just before he died.....had a fight with the owner, shouted at some girls, broke a window and generally upset pretty much everyone. I think his worse crime was however, he tried to throw our Christmas spit pig away and was stopped in his tracks but two of the bigger passengers from Moose!! I mean.....how dare he!! Two chickens that we were cooking for Claudia and Emily, who are jewish, weren´t so lucky however and did make the flight over the fence...to say he wasn´t very popular would be an understatement. It had got to a crucuial point in the day where he was crying (as usual.....remember, he is 6ft7) and the owner was deciding what to do. They asked him to leave the campsite and once off the premises, he was picked up by the police in a typical South America way of face to the floor, hands behind back etc. All very dramatic. This all put a bit of a dampener of Christmas as there were people crying and moaning everywhere. Me and Rich were pretty unaffected but was a bit of an anticlimex all the same and we weren´t allowed to leave the campsite in the evening because of all the trouble so Christmas was drawn to a close pretty quickly. Shame really.......but like I say, makes a good story. The tour leader was promptly fired in the morning and although he was there to say goodbye, not many people took the opportunity. We did however....no hard feelings and all that and he obviously has some issues to deal with so we parted on good terms. Just to finish off this whole sarga.....Pete, our driver, reversed into a telegraph pole on the way out of the campsite which was priceless. Needless to say, Tucan (our tour company) won´t be using that camspite again. lol

Onto to Cordoba.....our next stop!

On our drive to Cordoba we had one over night free camp, which usually isn't very inspiring as more often than not we camp next to a service station but on this occasion, Pete and Ellen (our new tour leader) came up trumps. We pulled up to what looked like a bit of a dump but on closer inspection, there was a lovely, shallow flowing river right next to it. The shower facilities were rubbish but who needed them when you had such a wonderful natural water source. The rest of boxing day was spent sitting in the river, which was so warm it could have been a bath and washing, chatting, drinking beers (complementry from Tucan as an apology for the ruined Christmas), and generally washing away the woes from Christmas day. What a lovely treat and we really appreciated it!!

So Cordoba, there´s not much to write about this place really. It´s a large city in Argentina and we stayed for a couple of days in a cool hostel and explored for a day and chilled for a day. There was a really cool cathedral though and Rich went out for a great all you can eat buffet while I stayed back and had a few drinks with some of the guys off both trucks. All good though.....and then onto Mendoza for New Year...

Mendoza was a great campsite with a pool (again, no camping by it), set about 14km out of town. The plan was that we would see the new year in with our lot in the campsite and then head into town to spend time with the locals. The plan started to unravel slightly when we realised there was actually a transport stike in Mendoza every new year so there was no risk of drink driving and also drunk passengers. Regardless of this....after a lovely day by the pool in the sun (for most but I had to go food shopping, which sucked), we got all dolled up and enjoyed an amazing BBQ cooked by our driver Pete. Yum Yum......Lamb.....my favourite so I was happy! We then enjoyed our time in the campsite and had a few drinks in to celebrate the new year. Everyone huddled and counted down, it was cool and we felt like a family. Not the same as being at home with friends though and this was playing on both of our minds a bit. We decided not to go into town as was so far away and although a lift had been arranged to go in.....we would have to find our own ways back.....no thanks! Luckily....a few of us stayed back so we had a few more drinks and were in bed by a very reasonable 3am. Just as well as we had a long drive day on the 1st Jan and a border crossing into Chile.

So, this takes us to Santiago. This didn´t really imspire us much to be honest. When we got there everything was shut for new years day and we were all feeling a little bummed out because we would be saying goodbye to 13 of the lovely people we had been travelling with for 6 weeks. All very sad. We would also be getting 15 new people but we couldn´t think about that at the time. We had all got along so well we just could´t imagine getting on with another group as well. Very depressing!! It is so weird how well you get to know people in such a close environment of a truck and 23 people all travelling together, doing the same things, sharing the same experiences etc. To say they would be missed would be an understatement and it was a glimpse of what was to come when we said goodbye to the others too. By which time we would have been with them for 95 days. Crazy. Anyway, enough of the depressing stuff, we did have an absolutly lovely last meal with them all where a few of us made speeches (me obviously) and the food was pretty special too which was cool. We had a great night out.....down a place which we called Bar Street.....due to the amount of....yes you´ve guessed it, bars. A great night was had by all.....even me considering I had to take one of the girls home who had enjoyed herself a little bit too much and passed out under the table. God I love Cheese (her nickname). The next day was mostly spent catching up on blogs and photo updates, taking advantage of free wireless, which we do love to do! I spent most of the day in the hotel tv room and along the way met up with a few of the newbies we had joining us the next day. A group of Welsh girls and a girl from Sydney. All seemed nice enough.....but just couldn´t shift the feeling of being a little bummed out at loosing the oldies! Snap out of it!!! That night was had a lovely meet and greet with all the new guys. Everyone seems lovely and there are a few that are shining through already which was cool. Everyone was making a real effort to make sure things got off to a good start too which was really nice to see. Some of the newbies realised our situation at having to say goodbye and were really nice about it. Good effort.....points scored there!
After drinks and meeting everyone, a bunch of us headed off to a nearby hostel to say goodbye to a few of the oldies and have drinks before heading off first thing in the morning. Two of the girls, Claudia and Emily would be following a similar route to us so we would see them quite a bit which was cool but the aussie girls are leaving, along with Dune and a few others. We had a good old drink up with them though and one of the new guys, Andrew from Sheffield, came along so we got to know him well too. All good. I enjoyed the night so much I got a little carried away and didn´t make it back until 06.30 the next morning......oops as the truck was leaving at 07.00 and I wasn´t packed! All good though.....woke Rich up and packed like the wind and even managed a quick shower ha ha ha.

So, here I will leave you guys. We leave Santiago for a place called Pucon and a new adventure with our new passengers. Rich is picking up from here and I will be back soon with my next installment!
Thanks for reading and enjoy the pictures!
Love to all
Carol and Richie Rodrigues xxxxxx

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