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Time is passing so quickly! Applogies again for the lateness of this blog and therefore the length of it!!
So after Uruguay we headed back into Argentina and to Cordoba to celebrate Rhiannons birthday. Cordoba was a bust town but it was a good base to do some day trips from. We visited the Che Guevara museum to learn all about his life and everything he believed in, which was very interesting indeed. We went out for a nice meal in one of the cobbled streets of Cordoba for a birthday meal, only to be joined by one of the local street sellers who got himself a cup of coffee and proceeded to chat to us until we had finished our meal!! After that we headed out to a local pub with some of the people in the hostel. It was very laid back and here you don´t que at the bar, a waitress attends to you whether you are sitting at a table or just standing outside!! Very nice!!
After that we headed to Puerto Iguazu to see the amazing Iguazu falls. They were fantastic and we got soaked! They are so powerful that at one of
the viewing platforms you can look down into the mist caused by the crashing water. You can´t see the River at the bottom but you can see lots of birds diving down to catch some fish. The falls are keen to be advertised as environmentally friendly and so the only way to get round them is by a train powered by natural gas. They did however overlook the 4x4 trips into the jungle that surrounds the falls and the high speed jet boating on the River it´s self. Not so green afterall! At the falls we took one of the paths into the jungle. A kid was once eaten by a jaguar there and half way along the path, as the jungle started to become more dense and we still hadn´t seen a single other person, Rhiannon and I began to wonder if we should have left our names at the visitors centre just incase!! Sadly though, no jaguar spottings for us!
The falls lie right on the border of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay so we decided to cross the border into Paraguay. The guide book advises that you have to ask the bus to stop at the border
crossing as the locals don´t need to have their passports stamped. In our best Spanish we asked politely for the bus to stop. We got a stamp out of Argentina but as the bus trundled past the entrance post for Paraguay the bus boy told us...nah it is ok. You don´t need one. We explained " esta nessisito" but no, we were not allowed to get of the bus!! So we arrived at the bus station in Ciudad de Este with no Paraguayan money, no passport stamp and no map (the lonely planet map only covers the city centre)! With no money to get a bus back into the town where the ATM was and no clue as to where the local hotel was I began to get a sinking feeling. We wandered out of the bus station wondering how on earth we could find our hotel....a few minutes passed as just as I rolled my eyes to the sky in utter defeat, I saw the illuminous sign of our Hotel Nancy glowing in across the street! How is that for good luck! After a lot of faffing with the local "cambio¨men (the men who exchange currency in the bus
station for notoriously bad rates, we were able to check into our hotel and walk back into town to get the stamp. The customs men were very laid back and didn´t even seem to care whether we had just crossed the border on the latest bus or been illegally wandering their country for the past 3 hours!!
The next day we quickly took the bus to Asuncion to find out if we could get a boat up through the jungle. With tourists being quite scarce in Paraguay, we had to once again get used to being stared at all the time! They don´t mean to be rude but it does take a bit of getting used to! In Asuncion we were gutted to find out that our boat didn´t leave for another 4 days! It took us quite some time to find out about the infamous boat as even the port officials couldn´t tell us what day it left or how much it cost. Asuncion is a little bit dodgy to wander round at night and on Sundays or local holidays. Unfortunately our stay encompassed a Sunday and a local holiday so we spent a lot of time in
our grotty hotel room!!
At long last the day to catch the boat came!! We headed down to the pier to at 6am to allow us plenty of time to buy a ticket for the 7am boat. We waited patiently as crates of eggs and flour and beer and oranges and tomatoes were loaded onto the boat, with the locals tying pieces of string to the sides of the boat to prevent their produce from falling off. Two other tourists also appeared on the boat - Kev and Jimmy - and we were all very surprised but quite excited at having met each other. Kev is publishing a book about his travels so we are officially famous now! 7am came and left, 10am came and left. 2pm came and left, 5pm came and we were still in the harbour! We asked when the boat would leave, only to be told "we don´t know!". Finally at 5pm a local TV crew came round to film the boat! Apparently there had been protests by the fishermen in Conçeption (where we were heading) and so the boat couldn´t leave. They told us it would leave at 10am the next day but then
10 minutes later we weer told 9am. The locals settled down to spend a night on the boat and they told us to go and get a hotel and come back. Not convinced by the info we had received and having now waited 5 days to get this cargo boat, we decided to sleep on the boat. We took turns in going for dinner, with the boys watching our bags first. We returned and let them go for dinner. The locals hooked up a TV on the boat (!) and we watched the local news report of our boat...we could see Kev walking about in the background, it was very funny! Then one of the local men played his guitar for us and we showed them our cameras and mp3 players. We started to settle down for the night but all of a sudden the locals asked us "where are your boyfriends...the boat is leaving!!" WHAT ON EARTH!! It was only 9pm!! We ran off the boat and hoped that the boys would return soon. The locals started getting annoyed and threatened to take off the boys bags so that we could go. We just kept pleading for them to wait, all the locals and us waited by the boat at luckily the boys appered at last.. I ran up to them yelling the boat is leaving, the boat is leaving.....all the locals were shouting in Spanish too and they just thought that we were all drunk!! Finally they believed me and we ran back to the boat much to the delight of the locals. 15 mins later we were moving but still laughing about how lucky we had been and how silly it was!!
The boat trip was about 30 hours and was really pleasant...unlike the toilet mind you!! That night we slept on the floor with the locals but the next nght we slept out on deck with the boys watching the amazing sunset. As night drew in, fireflies sparkled all along the banks of the river and we were lucky enough to see some sort of meteor shower with about 20 shooting stars flying high abouve our heads. As you can imagine, there is very little light pollution in the jungle so the stars were just fantastic!! We arrived at Conçeption in the middle of the night and glad to be with 2 boys we headed out to find a hotel and find out about buses. We decided to spend a night there and checked into what turned out to be an amazing hotel with a swimming pool, hot shower and the best buffet breakfast you can imagine!! (That may also have had something to do with eating bread and biscuits for 3 days!!)
Enjoying the boys company, we all headed to Rio and crossed the most annoying border we have ever come across. We got the 7am bus to the border as it closed at 1pm. We were told the journey would take 3 hours but we finally got there at about 12pm. The bus station was about 5km from the exit border so we jumped in a taxi. They took ages stamping us out of the country...but luckily we discovered the guide book was wrong and the border was open until 4pm. This very strange town was arranged so that along the main street, which was about 10km long, one side was in Paraguay and the other was in Brasil. Once bring stamped out of the country we had to walk for about 5km to find the border control for entering Brasil. We finally arrived only to find that the border was closed!! They didn´t open on weekends!! Grrrr. Thankfullly though, we managed to convince a police officer to stamp us in. It took alot of patience and we were only given 15days but it did the trick! Next stop Campo Grande and a tour of the Pantanal Jungle.
Upon arriving at the jungle, we were very excited as from our past trips, it is rare to see lots of wildlife on the access road in. The high density of animals in the pantanal makes it very different though, we spotted Camens, hawks and storks on the way in. We spent the first night in hammocks, with a friendly tiny kitten keeping us company. There was also tree frogs to keep you company in the toilets!! We spent three days in the jungle, spotting wildife on horseback (eek!), hiking through the jungle and fishing for pirahnas! To fish for them, we had to wade into the water up to above our knees with no shoes on and try and catch them with raw meat. It was a horrible feeling when you felt one swim past you, epecially after catching your first one and seeing the size of their teeth! But everyone seems to remember one part of the trip, the day I accidently sat on the teeny tiny kitten!! Rest assured it was ok, despite some bogus claims of it having a limp!
After there we headed to the huge city of Rio where we stayed as long as our visa allowed....we really would have liked to have stayed longer. We visited all the tourist sites, got mugged again...this time a bit more aggressively and visited one of the largest favelas on foot. The favelas are the poorest areas, the shanty towns, which are controlled by drug lords that carry huge automatic guns. It really was an eye opener. This shanty town only got electricity in the 1970s. Crazy. One of the other big favelas in Rio is currently locked in gun battle and has been for about 50 days now. I think it has made the news back home. Approximatley 40 people have died each day. The favela used to be at war with another favela across the city. They had missile launchers to shoot across the city and into the other favela. Unbelievable.
So from Rio we headed back to the falls, this time staying on the Brazilian side and visiting the huge Itaipu Dam which destroyed huge areas of land when being constructed. We got the special tourist ticket and toured both the inside and the outside of the dam..it was amazing! While on the top of the dam, we witnessed the handing over of the olympic tourch for the start of the Pan-American games as it was passed from Paraguay and into Brasil...couldn´t have planned that!
From the falls we headed back into Paraguay to visit Asuncion once more as it was the cheapest place to buy a new camera. We spent the whole day wondering the tiny shops and searching out the best deals. We now both have swanky new cameras which we are protecting with our lives!! Funnily enough we met another tourist who had also travelled to Paraguay with the sole function of replacing a stolen camera! From there we took the bus to Bolivia and what a trip that was. Our bus broke down twice, once it took over 6 hours for them to find held and fix the wheel. The locals hitchhiked out of the area as it was a dangergerous area for bandits!! Thankfullly the bus was fixed just as the sun was setting and so we made it to Santa Cruz safely, which is where we still are at the moment! We planned only to spend one day here but the city is nice and relaxed that we decided to rest for a few more days and pick up some cheap souvenirs. Bolivia is by far the cheapest place we have visited so far with our accomodation costing 2 pounds and a chicken sandwhich and chips costing approximately one quid. Ahhh...we like these prices after the expense of Rio!!
Next stop, the city of La Paz where we plan to meet up with one of our friends we made in Chile and hope we don´t get altitude sickness from the super thin air!
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Audrey B
non-member comment
Hi
Great to hear about all your adventures Angela! I'm so jealous, you seem to be having an amazing time....sorry to hear you were mugged though, can't have been nice! The weather in B of A is awful, don't think we're going to have any summer at all, but looking forward to going with your Mum to Our Chalet in Switzerland in 3 weeks! Anyway take care, and maybe see you when you finally come home??