Blogs from South America - page 5458

Now I diffently couldn´t leave Bolivia with running around in the Land of Butch Cassidy and good old Sundance. So I arrived in Tupiza with the plan to follow there last few fateful days. Tupiza is the site of the bank they intended to rob. Now it is just a sleepy little town with tourists going to the salar, or here for what I am.... read more

Day 16,17 & 18 We left Bonito and headed for the wilderness - The Pantanal. It's basically a massive swampland the size of France in the middle of South America. We arrived after a very bumpy ride - 4 hours of dirt track, only to be attacked by a swarm of mosquitos. We're pleased to say things got better as on our way to our room we saw monkeys and an aligator. We dumped our stuff and went piranah fishing (didn't catch anything unfortunately) but some of our gang were more fortunate and fed their catches to the hungry aligators sitting a couple of metres away!! An early breakfast then we headed for a ranch. On the way we saw a giant anteater which was the size of a two seater sofa! We then went for ... read more

Hola! Spent yesterday over the border in Uruguay, taking in the sights. I'm not sure if it was because I had come from Buenos Aires, but Uruguay seemed very relaxed and laid back; maybe a little too laid back, it seemed a little off-kilter simehow. Anyway, it was full of cobbled streets, old spanish and portuguese buildings, lots of bougainvillea and people zippig around on scooters. Not having sealegs, the three hour ferry ride was mostly spent on the upper decks in the fresh air, and within running distance of the lee-side of the boat (just in case). The view on the way back to Buenos Aires was much better, getting to see the sun set over the river, and then the city lights as we came into port after dark. It seems very strange to ... read more

Ahh, another of the biggest cities in the world and this is big...everything is big.....and its also pretty cool...We are at 22,000 and something kms and about day 150!...luckily guided in from the coast by Felipé with a bit of blue material sticking out the back of his car as its identical to 50 million other small black chevvies on this road...we pushed on from wherever we stopped in the last episode..its getting harder and harder to remember names of places...we play games with each other by asking..(and theres no parentheses on this keyboard!) :what was the name of the place we stayed 2 (or 3 or 4 or even 1) night ago?:..crazy..so many fantastic places here in Brasil, still knocked out by the friendliness of everyone...and the beauty of the scenery..boom boom. We rode nearly ... read more

It would be nice to have statisticians around sometimes to tell me the probability of my life's happenings. I'm pretty sure they would would say that what happened to Jacob's camera was imposible. One of the last things Jacob did before he left Yanayacu was paint a column at the station. His design was beautiful, but he got paint all over himself and his things in the process. Once he was finished with his column he left for Quito. While there he took a day trip to Otavalo, the famous market. And on the bus ride there he had his camera stolen. By the time I got to Quito Jacob had decided that he was going to go to the black market to find his camera. He had talked with some people and he had some ... read more