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Published: November 13th 2008
So I finally made it, only took me 28 years but hey, God loves a trier. So far its 5 countries done, and another couple to do, but the remaining ones are Peru and Brazil which will be big enough in their own right, so for the sake of brevity and to save your pert bottoms getting too numb, I am going for the two blog option, I accept your thanks wholeheartedly. This one is fairly long but a lot happened so stick with it! Tucked under the belt so far are Chile, Argentina, Uraguay, Paraguay and Bolivia, some we have merely flirted with and passed on without so much as asking for a phone number, others we have slept with and asked on a second date too, I know! I shall attack this in the order we completed them.
Chile Throughout this blog I shall try to resist ranting at the stupidity and school boy naievty in not booking Machu Picchu sooner. The after effects of this are still being felt as some countries we scamper through in an effort to make the big loop back around to Peru for November 13th to do the trek. Essentially it became
a game of which country did we want to spend more time in, and Argentina won, so we flew into Santiago, checked it out for a few days and then pressed on. Santiago itself was very nice, kinda European and cosmopolitan, it felt very safe and we had some wanders around it, not a load of tourist stuff to do there but it was definetly the best place to ease yourself into South America. I will remember Chile best for the bus trip from Santiago to Buenos Aires, a beast at 23 hours but worth it for the trip through the Andes alone. The border crossing was surrounded by huge snow capped mountains on all sides and glacier carved valleys so it made for quite a sight, and the lush green expanse of countryside throughout Argentina made for a pleasant journey too.
Argentina The bulk of our time here was spent in Buenos Aires,a city often billed as one of the best in the world so it had a lot to live up to, and it tried hard not to dissapoint. It was a massive city itself but nicely spread out, although some of the roads were huge, one
of the main avenues was 14 lanes across! We settled into a great hostel in the heart of things which was good for tours, people and of course partying..I didn´t want to join in that aspect of things but I had my arms twisted, cough. In between getting drunk on ludricously cheap bottles of vodka in our room, dancing until Calum fell over and hitting some clubs, we also took in some Argentinian culture, yup seriously.
First up we just had to go to a fancy restaurant and have a typical Argentinian steak-for this is one of their great claims. Gladly the Argies weren´t lying, for the portions were massive and the steak perfectly done and we drooled on delightedly, although the garnish was missing some big fat chips if you ask me! Classy boy here. If you need proof how much I enjoyed it though look at the stupidly cheesy picture of me at the start! Next up we went on a walking tour around the very fancy neighbourhood of Recoleta, which amongst other things houses the cemetry containing Eva Peron´s grave, she being quite important over here but most of you culture vultures just need to know she´s
the bird who was played by Madonna in Evita, sorted? good. Finally, we all achieved a lifetime amibiton and went to watch an Argentinian(I´ve used that word loads!) football game, not just any team but Boca Juniors, at their famous stadium La Bombonera, oh my. The day was exactly as I expected and hoped, the atmosphere electric throughout and to top it off they won! The stadium holds 57,000 oficially and it looked a sell out to me, the fans were crazy and singing, chanting, throwing streamers and paper throughout, the fact the staidum was all standing only served to help the bouncing throbbing mass and it was a great experience. Sticking with football news, Maradonna was also named the national coach when we were here so that was an added bonus, they all love him here even if they know he´s a few cocaine packets short of a full drug deal(that works on so many levels!) Overall, Buenos Aires gained a big pat on the back from us.
Next up we headed North to the city of Rosario, often given short change due to Beunos being so good but we liked the place. It was a cool little city
with a good layout, nice monuments, river beaches and last but not least, women, god damn beautiful women, forget Quebec this place wins easily, I have a rash on my chin from it rubbing on the floor so much. Of course they all ignored us but thats besides the point, sometimes they actually looked in our direction!!Rosario is also famous for being the birthplace of Ernesto "Che" Guevara, they love him all over Argentina although the simple statue in the middle of nowhere left a lot to be desired. Rosario was also the place we had to say goodbye to the little cherub Calum, after 5 weeks it had practically become second nature to have the smug little Londoner there with us. He had to go elsewhere to meet a friend which was a shame as having him with us led to some great times, its one of the negative points of travelling that you meet so many good people but eventually have to say goodbye, sorry, sniffle, I´m ok honest.
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And ours is a road that is strewn with goodbyes " David Gray-Shine
Finally in Argentina we visited the mighty Iguazu Falls, which basically urinated lordily over
Niagara in my opinion. It consists of 275 falls along 1.7 miles giving a great panorama, The Garganta del Diablo (Devil's Throat in English for those not fluent Spanish like me..)was the highlight, an 82m high, 150m wide and 700m long cliff, also marking the border between Argentina and Brazil. The National Park was brilliantly set out too, with gantries allowing you to walk across the river and stand right above the actual mouth itself and feel the force of the thing. The other waterfalls were impressive too, and they had a ´maid of the mist´style boat to take you underneath which was brilliant. The wildlife surrounding the park and falls was to be admired as well,although we didn´t encounter anything deadly sadly. The only shame of the day was that the water was a nasty colour brown due to a lot of rain and soil erosion, but other than that it was an amazing thing to see. The hostel in Puerto Iguazu was also very cool and we met some great people there, overall Argentina was top class and earned rave reviews from us, which I´m guessing its pleased with.
Uraguay Going back in time slightly, just a
brief mention for the fact that whilst in Beunos Aires we nipped across the water to visit Uraguay. I know it sounds like I popped to the local for a quick half, but essentially that´s what it was. We spent two days there, visiting the capital Montevideo and the coastal town Colonia. As you would expect from a country that produced ex Man-United player Diego Forlan it was OK, pretty pricey, and did some basics quite well without every being overly impressive.. There wasn´t an abundance of stuff to do there but we wandered both places and found it agreeable, but you know its not amazing when the highlight is Calum eating a bad meal. At lunch he ordered a tomato salad, which when it turned up was quite literally one tomato sliced up on a plate, no salad, nada. Feeling sorry for the young un´ I donated a bit of my omlette, which he promptly dropped on the floor when trying to put it on his place, no longer Sir Smug-a-lot, he was broken, a highlight indeed.
Paraguay It was in Paraguay that I had to tell some little white lies, so apologies Mother but I was avoiding
the heart palpatations for you. Not sure if I have mentioned, but Chris´girl friend (seperate words) is doing Machu with us, flying in on the 13th and Chris wanted to be there on time for her arrival, nice boy that he is. We had heard through the travelling grapevine that there were protests, road blocks and general menacing things happening in Bolivia and to avoid it. Chris therefore dutifully headed through Argentina and Chile in order to be safe and be there for her, travelling through with Holly (a girl we met in Iguazu) and reuniting with Calum. I chose to go alone, having missed out on places like Colombia and also the Amazon I was determined not to miss Bolivia as well, a place I have wanted to see since planning my travels, even more so than Argentina etc. Therefore, I travelled Paraguay and Bolivia on my own and took the risk and it paid off with no problems, the irony being that although Chris went the safe way it was he who ran into trouble and had to fly over the Peru border to avoid some trouble! I think the moral of the story is never do nice
things for women, or something like that. Therfore folks at times when you asked I had to pretend he was close by but it was for your own benefit, and whilst I´m coming clean over that I may as well admit it was actually me who killed the cat... Paraguay was merely in the way of Bolivia though so I blitzed through it on 3 buses, taking 48hours solid and a dubious 3am border crossing. I am glad I did though as there wasn´t much to see, its the poorest of South American countries and to be fair it showed, some nice countryside though!
Bolivia And so it was on to Bolivia, and I will be eternally grateful that I took the risk as the place was amazing. When I think of this country in the future, two things will spring to mind, long bus journies and amazing things to see. For I was only in the country for 10 days, and a good few of them were spent travelling to sights on buses, but the reward was always worth it and I did some great things. The buses themselves were rewarding too, I´ve said it before but they
are a great way to see a culture and country as you pass through and see their way of life and the people, it beats flying everytime.
The first stop was the capital, La Paz, and this city in itself was a sight to behold. It had an amazing layout, nestled into the mountains and hills around and it looked especially great at night when it was beautifully lit up. The fact that the city stands at 3640metres up added to it, thats 3600m above sea level people, it was quite something. This did lead to some altitude sickness and a cracking headache but luckily that faded within a day. The city itself was a large sprawling array of tiny cobbled streets, busy with people, traffic and market stalls and was eay to get around and like.
Seeing as I hadn´t done anything life threatening or dangerous for a while I decided to mountain bike down the ´worlds most dangerous road´, well, when in Rome. Its official name is The North Yungas Road, a massivly steep and bumpy road from La Paz to Coroico, which plunges down almost 3,600 meters on its spectacular 64-km journey, starting at 4700metres!!
It got its name because when it's narrow, the road is barely wide enough for one vehicle to pass, let alone two. 14 cyclists alone have died since the craze started in 1998, and because of the extreme dropoffs of at least 600 meters, single lane width-most of the road no wider than 3.2 meters and lack of guard rails, the road is not surprisngly extremely dangerous. In 1995 the Inter-American Development Bank christened it as the "world's most dangerous road", one of their estimates was that 200-300 people were killed yearly along the road! So it seemed quite natuaral to hop on a bike with a helmet and orange vest for safety...The road includes crosses marking many of the spots where vehicles have fallen or cyclists have dropped off the edge etc, so that was always a nice reminder too! It was along this that I spent 3 hours plunging head first, the experience was up there with one of the best things I have ever done. I would still say skydiving and bungee are above it on the list, but the fact that it was a 3 hour stint of non stop adrenaline rush, fast speeds, inches from
cliffs and massive drops and being constantly on edge-literally-made it an enthralling time, and I didn´t die, which is always a bonus. The group I did with were great too, and I even got a complimentary t-shirt so that made nearly dying worth it of course.
Next up I found myself heading 12 hours south on an overnight bus, arriving at 7am, to start a tour at 10am, to be taken into the middle of a salt desert to get horrenous sunburn, and I don´t even like salt. I don´t like drugs either so logically my next trip has to be to a Glasgow council estate to hang out with some junkies. Luckily it turned out to be worth it, the Salar de Uyuni is the world's largest salt flat at 4,085 square miles near the crest of the Andes, and amazingly is 3,650 meters high. It was once a lake but when that dried up this thing was left, and it made quite a sight. It was basically a huge desert as far as the eye could see, but white and made up of salt, it was a bit reminiscent of Antartica or something. The effects of the
desert though are part of its main attraction, the never ending white horizon makes images appear different and is very deceiving, meaning you can do lots of crazy cheesy pictures as you can see on this blog somewhere. It was slighty surrreal, as the clouds were directly in line with the floor due to the effect, and mountains looked tiny. Other things to do were visit the houses and hotel made entirely of salt, visit an island in the middle of it covered with cacti(note the grammar there people), see the bubbling geysers and bizarely a train graveyard.
Finally in Bolivia I visisted Lake Titicaca, and once I had stopped giggling at the name I did some activites. The Lake actually borders both Bolivia and Peru, and I will cheat a little by writing about both sides now instead of in the Peru blog, ommmm! Surreal seems to strike me a lot, and it reared its weird head again when staring at this lake. Essentially its just a lake, very pretty and huge,but you could argue its merely a lake. The mind boggling fact of it for me was that it sits 3812metres above sea level. At one stage
I was walking along an island, in the middle of a lake, in the middle of South America, and I was over 4000metres high. Well it made me wonder anyway. Titicaca itself is the highest navigable lake in the world and by volume is the biggest in South America, its 190km long and 80km wide, in short, its massive. I stayed in Copacabana (not the beach in Brazil or club in NY-but imagine how many times I sang the song, Barry Manilow I hate you, and your nose) and also a place called Puno, whilst visisting 3 islands.
Firstly was Isla del Sol, pretty unremarkable ruins really but a good physical walk that took 4 hours so it got me out in the open if nothing else, and the views were spectacular. Next up was Taquile, a small island that to be honest had nothing on it, you only went there to see some nice views of the lake but watching the locals was more interesting. The winner was Uros, and its not often I´m fascinated but I definetly was at this. Uros is basically a group of 42 atrificial islands made of floating reeds, the story goes that
they didn´t want anything to do with those pesky Inca´s and their fighting so they bottled it and fled, built an island out of reeds and floated around Titicaca where they coudn´t be troubled and could remain neutral, a bit like Switzerland then, only more reedy. It was bizarre, they basically tie a load of roots together to form a shape, whack a load of reeds on top, and then some more, etc, until they have a 2metre thick island, then they build homes on it-yep out of more reeds. Underneath the reeds rot away but they simply keep chucking fresh ones on top, they also eat the reeds (bland but edible, I tried) make boats out of it and ornaments etc. When they find a place the like, they stick an anchor down and stay there a while. The whole time you walk around you sink a few inches and its all spongy and soft underneath, I loved it! I may try something similar with the River Taff. Its a shame they ruined it right at the end, the commercialism and tourist effect was well and truly felt. The women in the village sang to us as we left,
nice traditional one to start..aww thats great..then a Spanish song for those in the crowd, OK I can get that..then French..this was getting silly now..then German..and the English?Twinkle twinkle little star, and what did they chant goodbye?Hasta la vista Baby..I felt dirty and used.
So anyway that´s it so far, next up is Machu Picchu and are we stupidly excited for that, to be followed by Brazil:Sao Paulo and Rio de Janiero, lions and tigers and bears, oh my! (Sorry, camp Wizard of Oz moment there) Scarily that means the next blog could well be my last, deep breaths Michael, deep breaths. South America so far has lived up to the hype and I´ve loved it, I am also now reunited with Chris and the happy tears have dried so all is good, it was firm handshakes and grunts all around honest. It was weird being on my own again despite 18months solo but like Gloria I survived and now we are the terrible two again to be joined at the hip, only my hip will be in line with his knee, but you get the gist.
Quick mention to some people back home, Happy Birthday
to my nan and brother, 25 now and all grown up, that´s my brother obviously I´m not from Liverpool. Also a huge congratulations to my dad, who at the tender age of umm well lets say over 50, popped out in the morning, ran the half marathon in Cardiff without telling anybody, then drove himself home, legend. He also did it in a time of 2hours 15, which for an oldie is obviously hugely impressive, congrats Pops. Finally, siiiiigh, also congratulations to more of the Barry Massive, I´ve lost count of the 53 engagements, 26 weddings, 12 pregnancies etc. But in case they missed out on the party, me old mate Atkins and Toria have announced a baby(can´t remember if thats in an old blog)due in January, plus Rich and Kath are intent on joining the club too although I forget the month! Congrats to all, I know you´ll be amazing parent type people, and at least this way I can´t be blamed for any of the kids..
Blog you soon people, love, hugs and the handing out of condoms to all.
P.S. I have loads of pictures on this blog(and have missed loads out!) but only 21
are shown, if you want to bore yourself with the rest then click on the second page of them below..there are also 2 videos above, watch the first and the second appears. Comments page is bottom left, cough..
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Sarah-Jane
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bowler hats
I told you they wore bowler hats!! LOL Bolivia has now rocketed to the top of my "to do" list, i may give the llama foetus' a miss though. Ten out of ten for the seriously awesome geographical features but you need to notch up some more wildlife, snakes, spiders, tigers etc. But enough is enough now, time to come home!! xxx