Blogs from South America - page 5336

Last Wednesday night, I went out with my friend Dan, his cousin of 27 years, Caito, and his other cousin who is 32, Neno to fish from the shore with these huge fishing poles. I have never been a fan of fishing anywhere but in open sea. In the open sea you get huge fish that bite left and right, but anywhere else it reminds me more of Tom Sawyer sleeping at the river´s edge than of an MTV reality show where the kids pull up fish one clip after the next - no patience involved. So, we planted the fold out chairs on the beach, dug the holes for the rods and cast as far as possible out into the pitch dark where the only notable difference between the sky and the sea is the ... read more

So it's been an eventful last few days. The last entry, I believe, was just before we went to the Parade of Champions, the winners of the formal Parading of the Samba Schools. To sum up, there are no words that come close to appropriately describing the event. (I seem to be saying that alot lately). We arrived at 2100hrs, to see the Sambadrome, the site of the event. This is a really long structure, made entirely of concrete. It was constructed by the famous Oscar Neimayer, the same architect who designed the city of Brasilia. To get an idea of what the Sambadrome is like, imagine the Commonwealth Stadium, stacked about 6 lengths back to back, with a long white stretch of 4-lane pavement in between the 2 sides of the stadium. On one side ... read more

So... we arrived safely in Santiago - I nabbed the window seat to once again compete with the Japanese on tacky photo taking. View of the Andes was spectacular - seemed stranged to see that just an hour after leaving BA. Due to us being on a pretty tight schedule we decided to leave Santiago immediately to go onto Valparaiso as we have to fly back out of Santiago next month and can spend more time there then. Valpo was just a two hour bus ride out of Santiago and just from the airport to the hostel we met lots of lovely Chileans helping us with directions etc. All of us have made a note to ourselves to be more helpful to lost tourists when back in the UK. Picked a random hostel out of the ... read more

We left Lima on Wednesday 1st March and travelled 200km south, down the Panamericana to Pisco. Travelling on a public bus for the first time was interesting; not only was the bus station in one of the poorest parts of Lima, one of the 'friendly' bus company employees tried to rip us off by telling us it cost an additional 20 soles (4 quid) each to put our luggage on the bus (having paid only 19 soles each for the entire journey!!). He even had the cheek to write us a receipt - no way Jose! No wonder the other workers were calling him a monkey! Pisco is situated in one of the many oases (oasi?) which punctuate the desert lying between the Andes and the Pacific. The main reason Gringos stop off at Pisco is ... read more

My friends Jonathan (English) and Maria-Paula (Colombian) got hitched in Bogota on 4th March 2006 and this was the cause for much celebration for all concerned, and a chance for me to meet up with friends and family. A welcome break in the solo travelling, and one of the most impressive weddings I have ever attended (great food, lovely service, lavish reception, free whisky etc). Colombia was in many ways as I expected, but there was still room to be surprised by the level of sophistication of this city (hell, the bars were better than London, and I had the finest restaurant burger that I have ever had). Colombia has a bad rep internationally, and there was much sucking of teeth and anguished expressions from friends when they learned I was travelling there. I knew, of ... read more