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Published: March 10th 2007
I´m in Campo Grande in Brazil at the moment, whiling away the 8 hours between checking out of my hotel and getting the bus to Brasilia! (a mere 18 hour journey). So I don´t suppose I have any excuse for my blog not being up to date. I´ve just finished a 4 day trip into the Pantanal, where I saw toucans, very rare hyacinth mccaws, caimans, a tapir and the dreaded anaconda. But don´t think you get to hear about the exciting stuff first, you have to sit through everything else before we get to that.
I think I last got fed up writing my travel blog round about Torres del Paine. While I was there I did a couple of walks of a few hours each - we hadn´t really been prepared enough to do any of the longer walks, as the refuges had to be booked in advance due to it being high season, and we only had 3 full days there, so would have had to do the longer walks at top speed, which would probably have taken a bit of the enjoyment out of it. The area itself is great, but is spoiled a bit by the fact that it seems to revolve around charging a fortune for everything, you can´t help leaving with the feeling that you were well and truly ripped off. It did give me one of my best food experiences though - the only place to eat out near the campsite was a hotel on the lake, so we went there one day for lunch. It was a bit fancy schmantzy, and when we asked if they could do a vegetarian dish, the waiter went to the kitchen and came back saying in Spanish ´rice and lettuce´. We thought to ourselves that must mean something else, like some kind of stir fry or something, nobody would just serve up a plate of rice and lettuce, especially in a fancy schmantzy place. But we assumed too much, because the 3 or 4 of us who had ordered it were rewarded with a plate of....rice and lettuce. We duly had our photos taken with the offending dishes and then chomped away, saved by the fact that Chile does at least have good wine even if it doesn´t do vegetarian.
From Torres del Paine, we had one very long drive day to get to Ushuaia in one go, crossing the Magellan Straits in a ferry on the way (disappointingly calm and didn´t feel like the adventure it sounds like) and reaching Ushuaia late at night, our first sight of the ´end of the world'being the bay from above, with the lights of the town and the ships twinkling away, a good way to arrive. We only had one full day in Ushuaia, and most of us did a boat trip into the Beagle Channel. We were really lucky with the weather, it was very sunny and calm, apparently they only have about 1 week a year like that. We passed the famous lighthouse, saw penguins on the beach of an island, and saw a couple of cruise ships going to or returning from the Antartic. When we left Ushuaia we had another long drive day, going from Argentina to Chile and back again and back across the Magellan Straits. It was a day of waiting about in immigration offices, but it´s the quickest way of driving north, although it does seem a bit strange to go into Chile for an hour! The next couple of days were pretty dull - all day driving through the most monotonous scenery you could imagine - flat, no trees, nothing changing at all for about 3 days. Things got a bit better when we got to Puerto Madryn, a town with a beach where we were based for our trips to see a penguin colony and the Valdes peninsula. The penguins were great, although there was nearly as many tourists, nost of whom seemed to be from cruise ships. The Valdes peninsula had more of the same monotonous scenery, but it did have sea lions and elephant seals. The sea lions were definitely more entertaining, the elephant seals were indeed very big, but they just lay there and did nothing. The sea lions were fighting and causing all sorts of havoc, and I don´t know how I missed this before, but sea lions actually have LEGS, they get up and walk about on their flippers, I got a bit of a shock the first time I saw one!
So from there after a couple more days travel, we arrived in Buenos Aires for a much needed few days in a big city. BA is a great city, it has a very European feel, and there are lots of really nice areas. While there, we went on a city tour which took us to the Boca Juniors stadium amongst other places, but unfortunately the season hadn´t started, so we weren´t able to fit in a game. I also went to the Recoleta cemetery which includes Evita´s grave, saw a tango show, went to a couple of art galleries and just generally spent time wandering about enjoying the city.
From BA we headed up towards a national park, Carlos Pelligrini. On the way there, we camped at a site next to the Rio Uruguay and saw Uruguay on the other side. At Carlos Pelligrini we camped next to where we took a boat trip from into the wetlands. It was a really beautiful trip, the wetlands are covered in waterlilies and there´s a lot of wildlife in the area, most of which doesn´t realise that it´s meant to move when people get close. Caiman and capybara all sat there until the little boat we were on was bumping into their heads before they would eventually move out the way! We also saw deer and loads of different types of birds, but it was just really beautiful cruising about taking it all in. We also had the pleasure of a capybara (the giant guniea pig type thing) wandering round the campsite at night, bit strange to come out of your tent in the middle of the night and find it right outside munching on the grass!
While we were at the campsite there was a storm that only lasted an hour or so, but it had been enough to turn the dirt roads to mud in places. So the next day when we left with two other Dragoman trucks that had been staying at the same campsite we went about half an hour up the road, only to see that the two other trucks had got bogged down in the mud. So we put chains on the wheels and set off to help them out, only for our chains to fall off as we reached the most bogged down truck and for us to end up stuck as well! So there was a lot of pushing, digging and using sand mats until we set off again a mere 3 hours later! We headed for the Iguacu falls, where we went to the Argentinian side first, then the next day went to the Brazilian side. The falls are really amazing, it´s not possible to see them all in one go, because they curve round and go on for a few few hundred metres, so you have to spend a bit of time walking along the trails and seeing them from different vantage points. When we crossed over into Brazil and visited from the Brazilian side, we also went to a great bird park, where we saw toucans, different types of parrots, flamingos etc up close.
From Iguacu, there was a couple of days driving to get to Paraty on the coast, a really nice little colonial town with a great beach. We went on an all day boat trip around some of the islands and bays just off the coast, which are really stunning - beautiful little beaches, really lush vegetation coming down to the coast and clear water. Although it was a bit of a blur to me due to being a bit hungover from ending up in the one and only club in Paraty the previous night! I blame it on the fact they have street stalls which sell capirinhas for about a pound, it wasn´t my fault. You can see a couple of photos on Belinda and Rene´s blog (they were also on the Dragoman trip) http://www.travelblog.org/South-America/Brazil/Paraty/blog-132073.html
So from Paraty it was a 4 hour drive to Rio along some stunning coastline, passing beautiful and sometimes deserted, sometimes busy beaches on the way. And then we arrived in Rio, the end of nearly 5 months travelling overland with Dragoman, and the start of venturing off on my own. But first there was Carnaval! And what no one fully explains to you about the Rio Carnival is that it´s a public holiday for locals which means that nothing is open at all. So our introduction to Rio, after a month of nearly solid camping, was to wander the streets on the day before carnaval officially started searching for a laundry that would return our clothes before the end of carnaval! I eventually found one that only charged me just under 10 pounds to do my washing for the next day, lucky me!
On our first full day in Rio we went on a tour of Corcovado and Sugarloaf. It´s strange being in Rio, because it´s one of these places, like New York or Paris, that you have an expectation of how it should be, and you think that somehow it might not be as good as you want it to be. But when you get to the top of Sugarloaf (by cable car, no physical effort involved) and look down on all the beaches in the sunshine - Copacabana, Botofago, Flamengo, and the mountains going off into the distance and the bay, it really doesn´t disappoint, it´s proper Rio. We also did the big Jesus thing, and I can confirm that it´s a very big Jesus. In the afternoon, we went to the Maracana stadium to see a game between Vasco and Fluminese. It wasn´t a serious game, as they have a Rio cup which is played over Carnaval, so the stadium (which now holds about 90,000 due to being seated and not the 200,000 it once took) was fairly empty when we went in. We quickly realized that we were in the tourist zone, so made a beeline for the Vasco fans who had flags and drums and looked a bit more lively than the section we were in. By the time the game kicked off it had got fairly busy at our end of the stadium and the Vasco fans kept the atmosphere up throughout the game. They were 4-2 down but came back to level it at 4-4 at the very end, so it was a fairly dramatic finish. I also found out from someone I met in a hostel in Sao Paulo who´d been at the same game that Romario, at the age of 41, came on as a sub towards the end. So I´ve seen Romario play at the Maracana, I just didn´t realise it at the time! That evening we went over to Ipanema to see what was happening and found a street party, it was an eye opener, I´ll just leave it at that! So all in all, not a bad day.
The next day was sleepy time, due to having got in fairly late and having to prepare ourselves for the marathon night at the Sambadrome. We had tickets to see the first night of Samba schools in the top league who were competing to be champions. We left the hotel around 6 to get the metro to the Sambadrome, assured that we would be able to get food there at stalls. When we got in (you give your ticket over, you can´t leave and come back in again) we discovered that in our section there was one burger stall sellling...burgers and hot dogs and nothing else. What was going to be a long night, was going to be a VERY long night. The seats we had were the cheap ones, which was good in the sense that most of the people around us were Brazilian, so they danced the whole night long (apparently this didn´t happen in other sections) but the part of the parade we were looking at was after the samba schools had come through the finishing gate, so we got a great view of people peeling off their costumes, fainting, getting on their mobile phones etc. It was great to see the whole thing though, the amount of work and effort that goes into the floats, costumes and dancing is just mindboggling. Each samba school has about 3,000 - 5,000 people involved, it was like 50 Olympic opening ceremonies rolled into one. Although another thing that no one tells you is that the samba song that each school is judged on is played constantly while they´re parading, so by the time they get to the finishing gate, you´ve listened to the same song being played for an hour and a half. Add in food deprivation and sleep deprivation, and it begins to feel like a form of torture, albeit a very strange one. Needless to say, although it was a great experience, by the time it got to 5.30 in the morning, we were ready for beddy bo-bo-s.
The next night we felt the need to stay in and have a quiet night, as we had another big night ahead of us the next night - most of us went to the Gay Ball at the Scala. Rio being the most gay friendly city in South America, this is one of the main events at Carnaval (as in over the top and outrageous) and was definitely an entertaining experience, there were plenty of transvestites and transexuals, who were so proud of their silicone enhancements they felt the need to have them on prominent display! Having been at the street party in Ipanema though, it wasn´t quite as debauched as Rio can manage, and it actually felt a bit more of a touristy event than a local event. Still, it was a good laugh.
Had another quiet day the next day and then went out with everyone for a final meal at night. I got up the next morning to wave off the people who were carrying on up to the Amazon and leaving on the truck and then transferred to my hostel in Ipanema, where I´d got a bit lucky as it turned out it had only been opened for 2 weeks, so everything was nice and new, and it has a really great courtyard area where you can relax and recover from the journey of one block from Ipanema beach! I spent 6 days there, and did some more touristy things, going to the zoo and the botanical gardens, and also just relaxing and going to the beach, which is an entertainment in itself. I really enjoyed Rio, I don´t think there´s many places like it - people wander the streets in their swimwear, and it´s not unusual to see men in the metro wearing nothing but a pair of speedos (which does make you wonder where they keep their fare)
From Rio I took the 6 hour bus journey to Sao Paulo. After you´ve been in Rio for a few days, arriving in Sao Paulo is a bit odd, it seems as if everyone´s really ugly and they´ve got too many clothes on. Then you remember that this is normal. Sao Paulo is mammoth - something like 27million people living in the metropolitan area. Which does make it a bit strange that all the shops close on a Saturday afternoon, it has the air of Kilmarnock in the 70s. Luckily it has a great metro system, which makes getting about very easy, although it did take me a whole day of getting about to find a tourist information office which had a map so I could start my adventures. I visited a few museums and galleries and explored the city for a few days. I spent 4 nights there, but by the time I left, I was definitely ready to leave, I don´t think I could have spent much more time there, it´s not the most picturesque of cities.
From Sao Paulo I had a 14 hour bus journey to Campo Grande in Matto Grosso del Sul, a starting point for going on trips to the Pantanal. I´d already decided which company to book with as it was cheap, so the next day set off for the Pantanal with a guy from London, Rich, who had booked with the same company. We got a bus for 4 hours to a place called Buraco and then got picked up by a transfer vehicle along with some people from another company and bumped down the road for another 2 hours to reach the small farm we were to stay at. (Are you getting an idea yet how big Brazil is?! The town where you go to start a trip is actually 6 hours away from what you´re visiting!) When we arrived it was dark, so we just had something to eat and then hit the hammocks. This was to be the pattern while we were there, as the place we were staying didn´t have electricity, so we quickly worked out there was nothing to do at night! The whole time ended up being great because we got to see amazing wildlife, but it was hard work at times because we had a guide who basically just didn´t speak unless you asked him a question, and even then he would usually give you a one word answer. Not really what you´re looking for in a guide, but what he was good at was finding wildlife - on the first day we went into the forest and saw wild pigs, a tapir (which he said he hadn´t seen for about a year) and a tayra, a kind of cat, although it also might have been a kind of otter, we couldn´t really get a definitive answer out of him! We did a few walks while we were there, and some of the most amazing things we saw from just walking along the road, like howler monkeys, toucans and hyacinth mccaws, a really rare type of mccaw, which are pretty big. There were caiman (the alligator type things) everywhere, and you just got used to the splash of them heading into the water as you approached. In fact, we could stand next to our hammocks in the morning and look out to the pool next to the hut and see a caiman maybe 5 metres away - although they´re not meant to be aggressive towards people, it was still a wee bit too close for comfort!
We also saw the famed anaconda, although when the guide who was walking at the front shouted at us 'Guys, guys, an anaconda!'we didn´t know what to be more amazed at - the snake or the fact that he was animated about something. It was across the path we were walking on, and as we came up to it , we were just seeing it´s tail, so he picked it up by the tail, it kind of turned round and squirmed about and he lost grip of it and it went off into the water next to the path. So unfortunately no photos, we were slightly more concerned about where it was going to go next than taking a photo of it! The whole time we were on the trip it was only me and Rich, so I was really glad of his company, as it would have been a bit intense if it had just been me and the guide! I got the impression that we probably booked with a company on the slide, but when we met up with the people who´d been with the other company again, they hadn´t seen a lot of the things that we had, so I suppose if I had to chose between someone who could find the wildlife in silence and someone who was chatty but wasn´t as good at finding the wildlife, I ´d choose being able to see the wildlife - I think!
So here I am in Campo Grande, heading for Brasilia, city of the future in the 60s. Will probably only spend a couple of nights there, as it´s not set up for backpackers at all, and hotels aren´t that cheap. But looking forward to seeing it.
The story of the photos getting scanned continues - I thought I had agreed in the photo shop today to get my photos from Carlos Pelligrini up to the Pantanal put on to CD at the same time I got them developed, but it appears my strange hybrid Spanish / Portuguese ´scorchio´hit and miss language did not get the point across. Please stay tuned for the next exciting installment of Why I Was Not Able to Get My Photos Scanned.
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john Ferry
non-member comment
Hi Mo
Just got out of bed as our side gate was making a racket in the wind. Checked my e mail later and have just enjoyed a whistle stop tour of your travels. Wow! Think I'll need to stay up as I'll probably have nightmares about anaconda if I go back to bed! Seriously though, it's great that you are keepting a record of your travels. I've read a few of your travel blogs so far and really enjoy them. Look after yourself - don't get too close to the wildlife. Mind you if you could survive Nitshill . . . best wishes John xx