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Published: June 12th 2010
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Hello all,
I left the tango, clubs and sophistication of Buenos Aires behind and have headed up country, first to Iguazu Falls, thence to Salta. I was a little sad to leave, having made some great friends, none of whom, sadly were coming this way, but also excited to hit the road again.
It's been wonderful so far, it feels like I've only just arrived I'm so excited by everything. You may not have heard of Iguazu Falls, but I don't know how they aren't more famous. Higher than Niagara they aren't one cascade but 150 stretched across nearly 3 kilometres of sub-tropical rainforest, divided by small islands, with trees hanging precariously onto the edges. They are beautiful, but also tremendous- easily the most awesome thing I've ever seen. There are walkways to allow you into certain parts, the most spectacuar of which is a horse shoe shape, 80m high where water plunges from all sides, creating a column of mist (which soaks you!) that you can see for miles around.
I went to both the Brazilian and Argentine sides (adding to my now pretty impressive and much loved (by me) passport stamp collection- it shouldn't excite me so much but
it does). You can take a boat ride, where you go underneath one of the smaller ones and get really close to some of the larger ones, yet another spectacular perspective.
After Iguazu (18 hours from BA) it was to Salta, in the North, another 26 hours on a bus. I've actually come to find a certain fondness for these monster trips. The trick is to never really expect to arrive and certainly not to check the time. It's quite funny, there's a steward who brings round these airplane-esque meals, except in Argentina all they seem to eat are biscuits and these tea-cake things. They have the most unhealthy diet imaginable! It's all steak, chips, sugar, salt, zero vegetables (even though they are cheap, plentiful and delicious), dulce de leche,which is this sort of caramel stuff that seems to turnup everywhere. Anyway, the bus is kinda fun, you even get a night cap on some.
I went on a trip today through this brilliantly beautiful valley, that looked like Utah. One of those places where they point out rocks named after things to which they bear no resemblance whatsoever ('Can't you see it looks like the Virgin Mary?' err...) The man in the hostel was being slightly misleading when he said loadsof young people from the hostel were going, what in fact was the case was that loads were going- on another, full, bus, leaving me with two cool women in their thirties and otherwise what I think is Argentina's answer to SAGA. Nice valley and town but a bit of a let down in a way. I'm undeterred however and heading further north, stopping at a few small towns before Bolivia. It's amazing here, much more Andean- the people are more obviously of indiginous decent, the architecture is colonial Spanish and the sky seems to be an outrageous blue in contrast to the red mountains around us.
Having a wicked time and can scarcely believe I'm over half way through!
Keep well etc.
PS There will be more photos in future, I've only just learned how to upload them. Between my own incompetence, the speed of the internet and my camera's habit of turning itself off I've managed one so far and have nearly lost the will to live, certainly to upload any more.
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