Blogs from South America - page 5476

I managed to get up at around half past twelve in the afternoon, and was a bit disappointed when Juan explained that breakfast is only available until noon. Luckily, he offered me some bread and cheese instead(well apart from tea and coffee, breakfast only consists of bread, cheese, jam, and butter anyway). As usual it was a nice sunny day, and I went for a short walk in the Botanical Gardens of Palermo before my Spanish lesson. I didn´t see any half naked women as recommended by Monica, but then it turned out she was referring to a different park previously. The lesson again went well, and Monica was again happy to tell me more about Buenos Aires and Argentina. She explained places like San Telmo and La Boca are for tourists and if I want ... read more

Hola mes amigos, Hope that this finds you all well and busy at work - something I´m definitely not missing!! One thing I am missing is agua caliente (hot water)!! No hot showers in the last two days. At the moment I feel like I´d either go into debt or maybe sell my body (joking!!) for some. What I wouldn´t give for a long hot soak in a bath with a lush bathbomb!! Anyway - have a huge confession to make. I ratted on the youngsters today!! After another sleepless night due to them arriving back at the house at 3.30am and installing themselves in the kitchen (right next to my bedroom), a few of us had a word with Rudy (the Ayacucho CCS manager) this morning. We pointed out that the rest of the volunteers ... read more

Funny how things turn out. Three days previously Christie and I had been sitting in Hostal Forestal eating our dinner when a lady called Jenny from England sat down next to us, offered us a beer, and started chatting. When she found out about our cycling ambitions she told us how when she had been at the airport in London she'd met a guy called George who was cycling for two years from the bottom of South America to Alaska. I´d asked for his email, which she promised to give me the next day, but then she got robbed at a cafe over lunch and in the chaos that followed she forgot all about giving me George´s email. Which was fair enough I say. Flash forward to this morning. Christie and I pushed our bikes into ... read more

This morning I was feeling a lot more positive, probably because I slept splendidly. At breakfast I bumped into a fellow traveller called Jon, a pretty cool guy, he´s been in Buenos Aires for about two weeks and apart from joining the gym down the street, and chilling he hasn´t been up to much. This encounter almost made me feel guilty about describing the hostel earlier as empty. Juan (one of the guys working at the hostel) was also in the kitchen and he told us a bit about the culture in Argentina, in particular he introduced us to the country´s obsession with drinking mate, a kind of tea beverage that tastes slightly bitter, made of a herb called ýerba´. He seems to drink mate all the time from a wooden cup and a metal straw. ... read more

Rio without Sun Day 1 After a triple flight voyage from La Paz to Rio with some very tight connections we breathed a huge sigh of relief when Nicola’s bag arrived eventually appeared on the baggage carousel (it was very nearly the last bag to arrive whereas Carl’s bag had arrived first). It had been some time since Venezuela and we had neglected to take our standard precautionary measures against baggage loss: keep camera charger in camera bag, pack a small package of essentials into each others bags and put all the medicines in our hand luggage. We emerged from the airport to be accosted by a number of taxi touts offering rip off prices. After explaining that we were not American we managed to get the price down to a reasonable rate and zoomed ... read more