Emma
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Emma" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
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12:06 am
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Mexico...
..totally rocks so far. The food is fantastic, they invented all my favourite drinks and it's really hard not to spend every single day drunk as a skunk and eating fajitas!
So far I've only been in Cancun and Playa del Carmen, which is a very nice beach an hour away from Cancun, where you can rent a banana-lounge and an umbrella for $4 for the whole day and they will bring margaritas and food to your chair on request. Mmm. I am very sunburnt today though, which isn't so flash.. I might end up with a tan!
Tomorrow we (me and Mel, a girl from my original tour in Chile) are going to some Mayan ruins and will start making our way slowly up towards Mexico city and maybe beyond. We're here for a month and then we fly to Cuba for 3 weeks.
The hostel I've been staying in is very strange. One of the other girls staying here thinks it's a front for a drug business. All the people that work here are American and aren't allowed back into America for one reason or another. The house cleaner just got out of re-hab for coke, her husband is constantly in and out of jail and there are a bunch of strange older people who just hang around for no particular reason. One of them was trying to get me to do some time-share scam, where you go and listen to time-share presentations and they pay you to be there. It's all very odd.
Current Location: Cancun, Mexico
Current Mood:  hot
Current Music: very loud air cond.
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12:08 am
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Colombia can kiss my shiny metal ass
Obviously I look like a drug mule because today I got pulled aside and fingerprinted and full body X-rayed before leaving Colombia.
I think it was partly to do with being a single female travelling from Colombia to Mexico and partly to do with me getting annoyed at the security people earlier because they wanted me to unpack my entire backpack in the middle of the airport at 6am so they could search it. I know you shouldn't get pissy with airport people otherwise you'll end up being the crazy person yelling at everyone on Border Patrol, but it was 6am, I hadn't had any coffee yet, I'd been waiting in a queue for ages already, they'd just scanned the bloody thing anyway and it was to LEAVE the country.. not enter itl! Grr!
So when I was going through security I got told to go up the stairs into a little room, where I got asked if I was pregnant, finger-printed and slapped on an x-ray conveyer belt. Fun fun. Obviously I was not full of Cocaine.
The guy let me check out my scan on the computer which was pretty cool, other than being able to see my disguting fat rolls! Totally going on a diet now.. one that allows me to still have beer and margaritas though, because I am now in Mexico, home of all my favourite drinks!
So far, Mexico seems a whole lot nicer than Colombia. The people are friendlier at least, which is a huge improvement. Colombians in my experience were mostly really rude, unhelpful and pushy. Although lots of people seemed to think they were great, so maybe I just met jerks.
The only thing that has pissed me off so far is the stupid airport at Cancun, where there are no ATMs in the international arrivals area, so you have to walk all the way through to the departures area (which involves going out of the building and into another one) to get money for a taxi. They had a money changing place, but they would only accept USD, Euros, Pounds or a few other currencies that were completely useless if you'd just come from South America. They also had some bizarre rule where you couldn't take the bag trolley out of the doors, so you had to lug your bag around to the taxi area. It was very very strange.
I haven't made it to the beach yet, I spent the afternoon in the mall buying more clothes for hot weather.. although I'm not entirley sure how I'm going to fit them in my backpack, I might have to sacrifice something for the greater good. Clothes and shoes are really cheap here.. which is a problem!!! I also saw Transformers 2, which was pretty good, although a bit long.
Tomorrow I'm going to hit the beach.
Current Location: Cancun, Mexico
Current Mood:  tired
Current Music: loud airconditioning in the dorm
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11:48 pm
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Peru and Bolivia
Here is my update for Peru and Bolivia..
Cuzco and Surrounds
So as you all know, for the first week in Cuzco I was sick in bed with Bronchitis and missed the Inca Trail, which was quite disappointing.
My friend Sue went on her trail, so I just hung out in the hostel moving between the bed and the couch and watched cable tv and coughed for 4 days.
The doctor came every day to give me a shot of antibiotics in my butt.. very dignified. They obviously worked though, because after about 5 days I was pretty much up to wandering around.
The first thing I did when I was well enough, was do a city tour of Cuzco. Cuzco is a really interesting city, lots of narrow streets and beautiful old buildings and Inca remnants. There are tons of tourists though and people everywhere trying to sell you stuff. It got really annoying, really quickly actually, you couldn’t walk 2 metres without someone hassling you.
There is a very large Inca site just outside of Cuzco called Sacsayhuaman (aka "Sexy Woman"!), which I visited on the city tour, it would have been magnificent in its day, but for centuries people stole the stones to build their houses and other buildings in Cuzco, so it’s now just some walls and not much else. It was still very impressive though given the size of some of the stones they used to build it. The main feature of Inca building was that they didn’t use mortar or anything like that, they cut the stones to fit together, which is amazing given that it was before modern technology and all their sites were on massive hills, so they had to haul the stones around as well.
On the city tour we also visited the Cathedral, which has a painting of the last supper, but instead of a lamb in the middle of the table, there is a guinea pig, which is the local delicacy. We weren’t allowed cameras in the church, otherwise I’d have taken a photo of it for you. I actually ate guinea pig one night, the most common way to buy it is on a skewer with the head still on, but I had mine roasted in the oven (without the head) with garlic and rosemary.. very tasty actually! Quite like rabbit.
As well as the city tour, I did a tour of the Sacred Valley, which is just outside Cuzco and has lots more Inca sites.. all on massive hills. I think the Incas were masochistic! It would have been lots of work moving all those stones around. One of the things I learnt on my tour was that the word Inca actually means king, so it’s really incorrect to call them Incas, the actual group of people were the Quechuas.
Machu Picchu
Because I couldn’t do the Inca trail, I had to go to Machu Picchu on the (very expensive) train. It takes hours, but the scenery is really pretty, lots of huge mountains, forests and little villages. Once you get to the town near Machu Picchu you have to take a bus up to the site. The landscape is amazing, huge mountains and jungle and a massive river running through the middle of it. The bus winds around and around the mountain for about 20mins until you get to the top where the site is.
Machu Picchu is on a mountain that is surrounded by a ring of larger mountains, which is apparently why it was chosen as the location of the city, because the Incas worshipped mountains as gods, so it was a special place. It did actually feel like a powerful place and the day I went it was a bit stormy, so there were cracks of thunder echoing off the mountains every now and then, which just added to the atmosphere.
The site is huge, there are tons of buildings and terraces for farming. All the roofs would have been thatched, so they’ve all disappeared, but a lot of the walls are still in very good condition. You’ll see in the photos how steep it is, it’s just baffling how they managed to create a city of that size, with that amount of stone on such a steep area without any modern technology.
If you get a chance to go, I highly highly recommend it. Words and photos really don’t do it justice. If I went again, I’d stay in the local town and go up at sunrise, which is apparently really special as a lot of the temples and alters were built with the path of the sun in mind.
Lake Titicaca
After Cuzco, we got a bus down to Puno, which is near the border of Bolivia, on Lake Titicaca. We only stayed one night just so that we could visit the floating islands on the lake. They’re quite impressive, but sooooo very touristy! You get harassed to buy “unique hand-made” items that the people on the islands apparently slave over.. it’s such a scam, because you can get the same things everywhere.. even in Bolivia, there is obviously a big factory somewhere churning them out! We did get to wander around on a couple of islands and got to dress up like Peruvian ladies though, which was quite funny.
After visiting the floating islands, we crossed into Bolivia and stayed in Copacobana, which is on the Bolivian side of the lake. The lake is very impressive, it’s so big that it looks like the ocean, it’s just water as far as you can see. The Bolivian side was a lot nicer, there was lots of pollution in the lake near Puno, which was a bit disappointing.
We went to Copacobana with the intent of seeing the Sun and Moon islands, however we got scammed into a “half day” tour, which was completely pointless as it turned out because it took an hour and a half on a boat to GET to the islands, so you only had 45mins on the island before you had to turn around and go back again.. which was not even enough time to get to any of the sites .
We also discovered that a guide wasn’t included and neither was entry to the island (they didn’t tell us any of this at the time when we booked it). So we were quite disillusioned and ended up just sitting on the dock for 45mins before getting the boat back again. So we saw nothing of the Sun and Moon islands at all! Luckily the tour cost next to nothing, but it was a complete waste of half a day and the boat made me feel seasick!
La Paz
After Lake Titicaca we got a bus to La Paz, which is the capital of Bolivia. It’s a huge, sprawling city at 3650 metres above sea level. It was a really interesting city with lots of little ladies wearing traditional dress with long plaits and bowler hats everywhere, selling all manner of things. We went to the witches market, where you can buy Llama foetuses.. apparently good for fertility if you put them under your bed (I think).
The main attraction in La Paz is the “death road”, where you can ride a mountain bike down it and try not to die by falling off the sheer drop on one side. Lots of people die or are injured doing it and a guy had died a few weeks before we arrived. All the guys in our hostel were doing it or had done it. Luckily we’re more sensible than that, so we didn’t! We didn’t really do that much in La Paz other than visit markets and wander around out of breath from the altitude and hills!
Salt flats
After a few nights in La Paz, we took an overnight bus to Uyuni so that we could do a 3 day tour of the Salt flats. The roads in Boliviar are shocking and the bus was so incredibly bumpy that we hardly slept at all, I honestly thought we were going to tip right over at some points, it was dark outside so I couldn’t see what terrain we were going over, but it felt like we were going up and down gullies.
We made it all in one piece to Uyuni, where it was absolutely freezing. I’d just sent all my thermal clothing home because I was saving it for the Inca trail but didn’t do it so I figured I wouldn’t need it again as we were heading north. I was so wrong. Luckily the owner of the tour company we’d booked with took pity on us and went home to get some big puffy jackets for both of us. They really didn’t help that much, so we would probably have died of hypothermia if we didn’t have them.
The way the tours of the salt flats works is that you reserve your spot with a certain company but depending on numbers you’ll probably get lumped in with another group from a completely different company, who probably paid a different amount to you and who are expecting different services. For instance we were expecting an English guide, because that was what our company offered, however we were lumped in with a company that only had Spanish speaking guides. It wasn’t too bad actually, I could understand most of what he said, he was careful to speak slowly and not use big words!
Anyway so you all pile into a jeep and all the luggage and food for the next 3 days is piled on the roof. The first stop was a train grave yard, where there are a few old rusting trains. I was expecting more trains actually, but it was alright. Then you drive onto the salt flats and get to do all the silly perspective photography and all that.
The salt flats are there because prior to the Andes being created, that whole area was connected to the ocean, so the salt is sea salt. It’s huge and expanding every year apparently (although I’m unsure how). After mucking around on the salt for as long as we could tolerate in the cold, we had lunch in a hotel made entirely of salt, it was pretty impressive, they form the salt into bricks. I’m not sure what happens when it rains.. obviously they’ve waterproofed the outside somehow!
After that we drove onto Fish Island, which is a huge rocky island in the middle of the salt flats, entirely covered in cactuses. It was really cool but I have no idea how or why it is there. It’s completely surrounded by salt for as far as you can see. That night we stayed in a hotel made of salt, which was freeeeeeeeeezing. The next day it was lots of driving around looking at lagoons, flamingos and rock formations. The landscape is very unreal, it looks like another planet almost. The next day we made our way back to Uyuni and then La Paz.
Sue flew to Aruba a few days later to visit some relatives and I made my way back up north to Arequipa in Peru.
Back to Peru
I went to Arequipa with the intention of going to the Colca canyon, which is the 2nd largest canyon in the world, however I got sick yet again the day before I left La Paz and ended up staying in bed for most of the time I was there, which was disappointing. I’m pretty sure it was being freezing the whole time at the salt flats that did it, as I’d only just recovered from bronchitis. Luckily I did manage to wander around Arequipa a bit, it’s a lovely city, a bit like Cuzco. In one of the museums they have Juanita, which is a child mummy they found in one of the volcanos in the area, she was an Incan child sacrifice to the gods of the mountains. They’ve found lots of child sacrifices in the volcanos around Arequipa, so that museum was really interesting.
I also visited a convent and a monastery, which were also really interesting. The convent has a funny history because the nuns there lived very extravagant lives compared with most nuns, they had lots of possessions and lived in relative luxury.. until some hardnosed bishop came and put an end to that. It was a very beautiful convent.
After Arequipa I took a very plush bus up to Lima and stayed there for 3 days. I decided to just chill out for a while and not do too much seeing as I kept getting sick. I also stayed in a private room and not a dorm, which I think makes a huge difference. I didn’t really do any sightseeing in Lima, I will have to go back at some point because there are a few things there I’d like to see (that I only found out about after I’d left!!) After Lima I flew to Ecuador so that I could go to the Galapagos Islands.. but that is a story for another day!
I think of all the countries, I’ve enjoyed Peru and Bolivia the most, just because they’re so different from back home. Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Brazil are very westernised, but in Peru and Bolivia people still live traditional lives, even in the middle of vast cities, so it’s really interesting to see the contrast.
Anyway, this way too long.. here are the ( photos... )
Current Location: Bogota, Colombia
Current Mood:  blank
Current Music: Passion Pit - Better Things (Ardy they're quite good, sound like MGMT)
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12:38 am
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I have a confession to make...
Since I've been away, I have become quite addicted to Grey's Anatomy. This is a saddens me, because it always used to piss me off when chicks in the office would talk about it like it was the most awesome show on earth... now I'm one of them. The phrase I used to hear floating over the cubicles all the time was "Mc Dreamy".. which luckily seems to be related to an earlier season, cuz I've not heard it yet. It really used to shit me.
I do think Big Bang Theory is far more awewsome though.. but it's just not on cable quite so often.
Current Location: Bogota, Colombia.. the land of no bars
Current Mood: tired
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07:02 pm
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Cuz it's Sunday and I'm bored...
Here is an awesome MsPaint map of my crazy route in South America so far..
Current Location: Bogota, Colombia
Current Mood:  bored
Current Music: Oasis - Wonderwall
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11:41 am
[Link] | Today I am heading to Colombia for 12 days, 5 days in Bogota and the rest in Cartagena, which is on the coast. After that I'm off to Mexico and then Cuba.. and then home!
I only have 2 months left.. this last bit is going really quickly. Part of me is looking forward to coming home and the rest of me is dreading going back to work. I am really looking forward to having all my normal clothes though, I am really over wearing hiking boots or thongs every day.
I just got back from the Galapagos 2 days ago, it was awesome. I saw so many animals and got to snorkel every day. I have waaaay too many photos of Sea Lions, but they're so damn cute.
Yesterday I stood on the Equator, both the fake one (determined before they had GPS) and the real one (they were only 250metres off the first time). I also went to a museum where they demonstrate all these cool tricks you can do because you're on the equator. I failed at balancing an egg on the head of a nail though.
I wish I had more time in Quito actually, it's a really cool city and I only had 2 days here. There are so many places I will have to come back to. This morning at breakfast I met an older guy (probably late 50's - 60's) who is travelling for the rest of his life, sounds pretty cool to me. He's retired, so he can afford it.. I need to find a job that will allow me to travel often... or maybe a rich husband!!
Anyway I think my gate has just changed so I'd better go work out where the hell I'm supposed to be now!
Current Location: Quito Airport, Ecuador
Current Mood:  cheerful
Current Music: Annoying airport announcements that you can't understand anyway
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11:12 pm
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Jeans in the most unlikely place
I got jeans!!!!!!!!!
It wasn't at all easy. I went to the mall here in Qutio, with the intent of going to the Levis shop. The biggest size they had was a 12, I could do them up, but I had a muffin top from here to eternity.. very very very unattractive. So after that dissapointment, I wandered around for an hour and a half getting more and more depressed when I couldn't even fit my CALVES into some of the jeans. It didn't help that every single shop had a different sizing scale, so I had to start over in every shop, in the end it was easier just to ask for the biggest and they still wouldn't fit. The women here seem to be a completely different shape, very skinny legs with big asses. Completely hot, but useless when it comes to me fitting my fat ass and legs into their jeans. The biggest size in all the shops was 10 or 12.
I was almost going to give up and buy men's Levis, when on the off chance I wandered into some very trendy looking boutique that had very very loud techno and these two ultra cool young guys working there. I wandered around, decided that I probably wouldn't even fit my toe into their clothes and as I was wandering out I stopped to look at something and one of the guys asked me if I needed help, so, expecting nothing, I said "Necessito pantalones muy muy grande para me" (I need very very big pants for me).. expecting him to give me the look that the other shop assistants had, but he rushed off and told me to follow him and handed me this perfect pair of jeans.. exactly my size and the cut I wanted.. flares!!! (Everything here is skinny leg, which looks retarded on me).
The only problem with them is they are very very light blue, which isn't me.. but by that point, I really didn't care. He also ferreted around and found a whole pile of jeans in my size, in the end the first ones were perfect, so I took them. They were only $30 Usd too, which at the currrent excange rate is about $32 aud! I was so happy I could have kissed him on top of his ultra cool, Ricky Martin-esque spikey hair. He was so lovely and helpful and I'd expected "the look". Just goes to show, you can get perfect jeans (and good help) in the most unlikely places!
On another note, Ecuador won the soccor today against Argentina, it's all part of the world cup qualifers, so there are people everywhere tonight, it's crazy town.
I'm off to the Galapagos tomorrow, I think my tour group is me and a bunch of guys.. could be interesting. I am hoping for 1 other girl at least, but I guess if there's not then I get a cabin to myself. No internet for 8 days I don't think.. not sure how I'll survive! Hasta la Vista!
Current Mood:  pleased
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11:41 pm
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Craptacular
I'm currently in Quito, Ecuador. Tomorrow I start my 10 day tour of the Galapagos. We only actually spent 8 days in the Galapagos, so it's a bit misleading but will hopefully still be awesome. We spend 7 nights on a boat travelling between the different islands and going snorkeling and all that. It was a present from my Dad, which is really lovely of him, because it was pretty pricey and I probably wouldn't have been able to afford to go by myself.
Getting into Ecuador was a pain in the ass. There was the usual immigration form and the "do you have any animal semen" form, but on top of that, there was a form which basically asked if you had swine flu. Err no I don't. I was too scared to cough in the airport in case they detained me. Everyone was wandering around in face masks and we had to get thermally scanned to see if we had a temperature. Luckily I've recovered from the Bronchitis and cold that I've had for a while, so they let me in. I also had the immigration guy make fun of my surname and my country of birth and call his friend over to have a look. I cracked it at them and asked them if they were 12. They still let me in. Jerks.
I've had a generally crap day. Yesterday I took my washing a laundry place in Lima, Peru to get it all washed and dried before the tour (there are no self serve laundrettes over here). Once I got it back I sorted it out but obviously wasn't really paying attention, because this morning when I was getting dressed to go to the airport I noticed I was no longer in posession of my jeans. I ran down to the laundry but they had no idea where they were and I poked around and couldn't find them. I was yelling at them in some horrible Spanglish and they reluctantly gave me my money back and I left my mobile number in case they found them and could send them to Ecuador because I'll be here for 2 weeks. So now I'm down to one pair of pants.. some hiking pants no less. Ugh. I was in tears this morning about it all.
Now I'm in Ecuador and believe it or not, this is the one country so far where my mobile won't work. Hurrah. So my awesome grey, flared levis are gone forever. Now I have the difficult task of finding some non horrible jeans that fit me. For some reason in South America, ALL the women wear jeans that have all these sequins and glitter and all sorts of crap all over the ass pockets.. or worse still they have no ass pockets at all, so you just have one giant ass. South American jeans are really awful. When I got to Quito this afternoon I asked at the hostel for a department store, they sent me to one, I was hoping for a Levis section but it was one that only had their own brand.. so sequins galore. I came back and googled and have found a shopping mall that has a Lee store, so hopefully I can get proper jeans tomorrow before I have my tour meeting. The other problem will be finding decent ones that actually fit my currently huge ass. Bah. I loved those Levis.
The one good thing for today is that I have an awesome room. I've gone back to single rooms for the moment cuz I keep getting sick and was also getting tired of the idiotic, incosiderate 20 year olds in the dorms. The room I got today has 2 beds, a tv and an ensuite and is really modern and clean. It's awesome and only $30aud per night. The only problem is that it doesn't have cable and South American tv is just endless, overly dramatic soapies or the Simpsons dubbed into Spanish, which is pointless. Eh, at least I can get wifi in my room.
Current Location: Travellers Inn Quito
Current Mood:  grumpy
Current Music: Kings of Leon - Closer
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06:49 pm
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Brazil
Here is my long overdue post about Brazil...
Pantanal
After the Brazilian side of Iguazu falls Sue and I got a horrendous night bus to Campo Grande so that we could go to the Pantanal, which is a huge wetlands area that covers approximatly 230,000 sq km in central western Brazil.
The night bus was horrendous because it had no tvs, we were stuck right at the back near the toilets, they gave us no food and we had to swap buses in the
middle of the night at some random Brazilian town. Brazilan bus companies really need to check out how Argentina does it, because they're so much better!
Anyway we arrived at Campo Grande at 8am without much sleep and checked into our hostel with the aim of having a quiet day and finding a tour into the Pantanal for the next day. However after talking to the tours guy at the hostel, it was decided that it would be best if we went to the Pantanal that morning as we had limited time... he wanted us to leave in 30 mins but we wanted to have showers and what not, so he said he could sort it out for midday. So instead of a whole day of relaxation we had a couple of hours of frantically re-packing for a trip to the Pantanal and trying to dry some handwashing in the window before we were packed onto a local bus to a lodge in the Pantanal.
At the lodge we had 2 or 3 activities a day, with a long break after lunch due to the heat (mostly spent snoozing in the hammocks). The first day was a boat ride in the morning down one of the rivers with our guide Johnny. We saw Capybara, lots of birds, some monkeys and lots of Caimen (like Crocodiles). Johhny could make all the calls for the monkeys and even the river otters, who we heard crashing around on the bank and calling back, but didn't get to see. After lunch we went for a horse ride around the property.
The next morning we had to get up at 4am to go spotlighting before dawn. We only saw Caimen (there are tons of Caimen in Pantanal) but we did get to have breakfast and watch the sunrise in the middle of the Pantanal, which was beautiful. After that it was a 3hr hike through the bush and across the wetlands. I think Johnny wanted us to see an Anaconda, but luckily he didn't find one! We did see lots of birds, monkeys, Coti (like a Badger) and of course Caimen.
The next day was our final day, in the morning we went Piranha fishing, which was actually really easy. There must have been tons of them in the river, they were very quick to eat our bait, but it was a lot harder to actually get them into the boat! I think we caught about 10 in the end. We got to eat them afterwards for lunch, they were very tasty, but quite bony.
That afternoon it was back to Campo Grande and some sleep before having to get to the airport at 3:30am to catch a flight to Manaus.
Manaus
Sue and I flew to Manaus to meet Mel, another girl from the Tucan trip, so that we could go into the Amazon together. We arranged a 3 night, 4 day trip. The first day we travelled by boat to the meeting of the waters, which is where 2 rivers meet but don't mix. It's something to do with the pH and temperature I think, you can kind of see it in the photo, one is blackish and one is brown. After that we continued to the other side of the rivers and were loaded into a combi van and driven a couple of hours into the jungle, where we got another boat up the river to the lodge.
We got there in time for lunch, after lunch there was a huge storm and it kept raining for a few hours so we couldn't do much until it stopped. Everything in the area was apparently under 12 metres more water than normal, whereas the Pantanal had a lot less water than normal.
Once it stopped raining we went Piranha fishing, which was a lot less successful than at the Pantanal, I think we only caught 5 and most of those were caught by the guide! That night we went Crocodile spotting and our guide actually fell in the water trying to grab a small Crocodile. I think he was a bit scared he was going to get eaten by a bigger one! We all got to hold it and take photos, the poor little thing was scared to death. It was only a young one, but we saw a few huge ones as well.
The next day we went on a tour of the local school and a farm where they process rainforest flowers various products, although they hadn't harvested any yet, but we did get to see the giant fry pan where they roast them to extract the oils.
That night we camped in the jungle, which was horrible! There were soooooo many mosquitos. It might not have been so bad if the water level wasn't so high. It was Sue, Mel, me and a couple from the USA, plus our guide and boat driver. The guide and driver cooked us dinner, which was actually really tasty. Chicken roasted over the fire and rice with onions and peppers. We also had beer and Caiprinhas, which made it slightly more bearable!!
We all had long sleeved clothing and insect repellent and the American couple even had 100% DEET insect repellent, but it made no difference, we got absolutley eaten alive. We had to sleep in hammocks too, with mosquito nets, which didn't help, we were getting bitten through the hammocks. We really didn't get much sleep at all, hammocks are just fundamentally hard to sleep in as well, unless you like sleeping on your back, which I don't!
The only animals we managed to see when we were camping in the jungle was a huge toad and a rat-like creature. I think the guide of the other group was a bit more sensible, as he'd decided not to go out camping that night as he figured all that would happen was his group would be eaten alive and be miserable. He was very correct!
We were all thrilled when it was daybreak and we had to leave to get back to the lodge for breakfast. We were all very grumpy that day and decided just to rest and not do that afternoons activity, which was a walk through the jungle. I think we were a bit jungled out at that point, but we should have done it becuase it ended up raining the whole of the next day and we didn't get to do that activity in the end.
We did a few more trips around in the boat and got to see river dolphins, unfortunatly I don't have any photos becuase as soon as you saw them they were underwater again. That day we also got to see a sloth, which was awesome, they're such strange looking animals! Our guide actually climbed up the tree to get it down so that we could look at it, the poor thing was very sleepy. The next day we left to go back to Manaus.
The area of the jungle we were in had lots of cleared areas for farming, which was a bit dissapointing, I really wanted to see the huge trees that I remember from David Attenborough shows! From what I've learnt since from talking to people, the best place for the huge trees is actually in Peru, but is very remote and expensive ($600USD plus per person for 5 days). I'll probably come back and do that another trip.
We ended up getting stuck in Manaus for way longer than we wanted to becuase we couldn't get any cheap flights out, it's a very remote city and the flights were way overpriced. Manaus is a very boring city to be stuck in as well, the one interesting tourist attraction in town is the huge old theatre, which hails back to when Manaus had money due to rubber plantations. We went to a concert there one night, which was quite civilised!
Salvador
Eventually we found a cheap flight to Salvador, which is on the North East Coast of Brazil. Brazil was one of the last places to abolish slavery and Salvador was a huge slave trading port, so it has a fascinating history and lots of africian influence. There are lots of old crumbling buildings and palm trees and cobbled streets as well.
We'd heard about local religious ceremonies that you could go to where people enter trances and they have animal sacrifices on the walls and things, so obviously we wanted to try and get to one of those, we were out of luck though, there were none on the days we were there. Instead we went to a show which had dances and singing that gave you a bit of an idea about what the religion was about.
It was actually really interesting, they went through all the dances for the spiriits they worshipped. Part of it was a Capoeria show, which was amazing. I wish I'd been able to take video, but they didn't allow cameras at the show. For those of you that don't know, Capoeria is a martial art that evolved in the slave colonies, they disguised it as a dance so that the slave masters wouldn't ban it. It's very fast and skillful and they get so close to kicking and punching each other but they don't. It was a really great experience.
Another night we went to a street party where all these people were just drumming together in the middle of the street, about 20 people at once. There were a few different groups and when one stopped, another started. It was really awesome.
I should explain one of the photos I've attached - the one of the slave bracelet. Our guide told us that if slaves were particularly good or liked by the slave master, they were given a silver trinket which they wore on their belt. Once they had 10 of these trinkets they could trade it for their freedom. Apparently it could take years and years to get 10 trinkets and I'm sure it caused lots of in-fighting amongst the slaves.
Rio de Janerio
After Salvador we flew to Rio. We'd heard lots of bad stories about how dangerous Rio was, so we were prepared for the worst. We were very pleasently suprised though. Rio is an awesome city, it has gorgeous beaches, forests and mountains all close together. We stayed in Impanema, which is a nicer area I think and we had no problems at all. I would definintly go back to Rio and would even consider living there if I spoke Portuguese!
The 2nd day we were there we did a tour which included the Jesus Christ the Redeemer statue, the Lapa steps, the football stadium and some other subburbs around Rio. Unfortunatly our guide decided to do the Christ statue first, which was a bad decision on his part because it was very very overcast and you couldn't actually see that much of Rio. I think he thought it was going to rain, but of course it cleared into a beautiful sunny day (when we were at the bloody football stadium!). The christ statue was still very impressive, it's huuuuuuuuuuuge and would have had an amazing view over Rio if it wasn't so cloudy.
The Lapa steps are these steps in the city that have been covered in ceramic tiles. The artist is a crazy Chilean guy and he lives right next to the steps and you get to meet him. He changes the tiles constantly and requests that anyone who visits the steps sends him a tile from their country.
The football stadium was a football stadium, very exciting. After the tour we went and watched the sunset from Sugarloaf, a mountain behind Rio.
The next day we did a tour of the Flavelas, which are the slum areas of Rio. An extrodinary amount of people live in these areas. They are generally small square houses which the owner then sells the roof of and someone builds on top of it and then sells his roof, and so on and so forth.
The first part of the tour was quite scary, we all had to get on the back of these motocycle taxis (without helmets!) which then zoom up the hills into the midst of the flavelas. My driver was actually really good and kept telling me not to be scared and to hold on with my legs, but it was hard not to be scared when we were whizzing between trucks and buses and around corners! We did all arrive in one piece though and then our guide took us on a walking tour down through the flavela and explained how the people live inside these areas.
One of the rules was that we could take pictures, unless we saw a guy with a machine gun or a walkie talkie.. they're involved in the drug trade and wouldn't really like it!! We didn't see any such people. It was a very interesting tour, the flavelas are just complete labyrinths, but they have their own system that works for them. No one pays for electricity, they all just steal it directly from the power poles, so there are cables going everywhere. Some of the conditions that people were living in were very poor but there are just so many people living in there that the governement can't or won't do anything about it.
That afternoon we went to the beach, which was lovely, although eventually we worked out we were in the gay area of the beach. The surf is quite dangerous there (Impanema actually means dangerous water in the local language apparently) and they have surf life saving towers all along the beach that are numbered and each one is where a certain subsection of the population congregates, like the gay area, the beautiful people, the sporty people etc.
The last night we were in Rio we went to a street party in Lapa, which was crazy. All the bars and clubs just open their doors and play music very loudly into the street and everyone just hangs around on the street drinking and dancing. We had a great time wandering around between the different music styles and drinking very strong cocktails from street vendors. I think we got home about 6am.
Ilha Grande
The next day, nursing hangovers and no sleep, we went south to Ilha Grande, which is an island off the coast between Rio and Sao Paulo. We stayed there for 3 days and didn't really do much other than go to the beach and eat!
There was an old prision there that was origionally used as a quarantine facility for people with Cholera. That was kind of interesting to look at, but other than that there wasn't a lot on the island!
From there we went on a bus to Sao Paulo, where we had one night and then flew to Peru. I would have liked to have had time to wander around Sao Paulo but it wasn't to be.
Brazil was actually quite a difficult country to travel in, firstly because of the huge distances you had to cover, it was very expensive, secondly because of the language, Portuguese is very hard and thirdly because everything just seemed to take ages, nothing was efficient like it was in Argentina, Uruguay or Chile. They just don't seem to have the infrastructure, everything was a struggle. Even Peru is proving to be easier to travel around than Brazil!
Anyway this is massive, here are the ( Photos.. )
Current Location: La Paz, Bolivia
Current Mood:  cold
Current Music: Kings of Leon
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08:10 pm
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No Inca trail for me
So the day after I posted, I got bronchitis and couldn´t do the Inca trail. That sucks cuz it was the one thing I planned my whole trip around and I was aprehensivley looking forward to it (and I also lose my $175USD deposit because they have to buy the trek permits in advance).
Instead I´´m going to Machu Picchu on the train on Saturday, which will be far less rewarding! Although maybe I´ll come back and do it another time.
I spent most of this week in bed or on the couch in the hostel, luckily they have good cable in Cuzco!
The hostel called an English speaking doctor (well, he knew the key words like fever, antibiotics, bronchitis and okay) to come and inject me in the butt with antibiotics 3 days in a row, so today I am finally feeling pretty much 100%.
Not much else to report really, I did a city tour today, which was interesting. We got to see lots of the Inca sites around Cuzco, although for some reason I was picked as the sacrifice for Panchamama (earth spirit). Luckily I am too quick and they couldn´t catch me.
Tomorrow I´m doing a Sacred Valley tour and then welcoming Sue back from her trek with red wine and probably pizza.
Still haven´t tried guinea pig but there´s still time..
Current Mood: cold
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05:26 pm
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Altitude
Wooo I´m in Cusco! The alititude is crazy. I went for a 10mins walk down the street and was slightly out of breath.. and then walking back from the shops with 7 litres of water I had to stop several times because I thought I might faint! Hopefully I will acclimatise somewhat before I start the Inca trail (4 days of hiking, 43kms total, highest alitiude 4200metres) on the 18th. I think Cusco is 3200metres or something like that.
Cusco is really interesting, there are lots of very very narrow cobbled streets and huge old churches and women carrying babies around in multicoloured slings on their backs whilst doing a billion things at once.
I also have tonslitis again, it seems to follow after a particularly fun night out. Luckily in Peru you don´t actually need a prescription to buy medication, so I´ve just gone and got the antibiotics I usually get prescribed for tonsilitis and will hopefully be 100% by the 18th (no lectures on how it´s better to be prescribed stuff please!!! I think it´s better than availing myself to the dodgy medical centres here and I know the correct dossage etc).
I am yet to check whether you also don´t need prescriptions for some of the more regulated drugs back home, I have 5 days here, plenty of time to work this out!
Anyway, I´m glad to be out of Brazil, it was a nightmare of a country! Everything was slow and inefficent and drove me craaaazy. Rio and Salvador were both really cool though and I will definintly be going back to Rio for a holiday. I´m also glad to be back somewhere that I understand enough of the language to get by.
Current Location: Cusco, Peru
Current Mood:  weird
Current Music: Closer - Kings of Leon
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12:52 pm
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Meme
We're waiting for the sun to come out before we can go to the beach and the internet is too slow to upload photos.. so here is a meme stolen from Avril..
( 65 Questions you've probably never been asked... )
OOooh the sun is out! Beach time
Current Location: Ilha Grande, Brazil
Current Mood: bored
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12:33 pm
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I'm currently in Salvador, which is on the East coast of Brazil. It's a very interesting city due to the African influence of the slaves that used to be bought, sold and work here. It's currently pissing down with rain and apparently has been for the last 2 weeks! We got some clear weather yesterday afternoon to wander about in the old city, but today so far just rain.. so here is my update for Uruguay, Mendoza and Iguazu...
Uruguay
After Buenos Aires all 7 of us girls caught the ferry to Montevideo in Uruguay, which took about 2 hours. It was a pretty awesome ferry actually, it had a duty free shop onboard and also Nintendo Wii area for the kids. Once we got to Montevideo we were transferred to a bus and were driven about 2 more hours to Punte del Este, which is kind of like the Surfers Paradise of Uruguay, lots of high rise apartment buildings on a long beach. Apparently it's where all the Argentineans go for their summer holidays.
We had booked a hostel, which we thought was in Punte del Este, but after going to the information desk at the bus terminal we discovered it was about 20mins out of town in another small town called Manantiales, so we caught the public bus out there.
I'm now kind of glad we were out of town, it was really beautiful in Manatiales, gorgeous beaches and dirt roads and lovely houses. There is clearly some money around in Uruguay, there were lots of very modern houses and also some older style, very large houses. Manantales was more of a surf town like Aires Inlet or a tiny version of Lorne, much more chilled out than Punte Del Este would have been.
We stayed there for 3 nights and went to the beach a few times and hired bikes and rode around the coast to the next small town. The bikes were the crappiest bikes in the universe, we had them for the whole day, but after lunch we couldn't physically ride them because our arses hurt so much from the seats!
One of the days we were there we went to see Casa Pueblo, which is the house of an artist, Carlos Paez Vilaró. It took him 30 years to build, I could see why.. it was stunning! Set on the cliffs outside of Punte del Este, it was all curves and no straight lines. It reminded me of the Gaudi buildings I saw in Spain. It was huuuge.. I think it had 6 pools or something like that. It was really gorgeous. Carlos Paez Vilaró's son was in the plane crash that the movie "Alive" was based on, so the house had information on that as well.. it was an interesting place.
Although the weather was great when we were there, it was actually off-season, so nothing much was open. We spent a lot of time drinking red wine at the local pizza restaurant, which was pretty much the only place open. (It also had very cute waiters.. but that's besides the point!)
Manantales and the towns around there are definitley somewhere I would go back to for a summer holiday, the beaches were really beautiful and not that far from a large town so you could go out if you wanted to, and it had lots of local buses running frequently all the way along the coast, so it was really easy to get around.
Punta Del Diablo
After Manantiales, Sue and I said goodbye to the other girls, who were going back to Buenos Aires to start other tours, and we headed further down the coast to another small surfie down called Punta del Diablo. We stayed there for 2 nights and went to the beach and went for a hike in the national park. The National Park had an old fort in it, which seemed a bit strange, given there didn't seem to be anything around there worth protecting!! It was bigger than Manantiales, but not as nice I don't think, the houses weren't as gorgeous but it was very relaxing.
Montevideo
After Punta Del Diablo, we got a bus back to Montevideo for 2 nights. It was Easter though, so nothing was open, which was a bit of a pain. We just kind of wandered around, saw the plaza, walked through the old town and hung out in the hostel most of the time, which had a roof top bar, so it wasn't so bad.
One night we went out clubbing, which was pretty fun, we went to a club called the Pony Pisador.. which reminded me of Pony back home. It had a grungy band playing and just had the same feel. Across the road it had another section, which was completely packed.. the music was very random though, they played dance music, salsa music, and even The Village People. I think we got home about 5am and I had the worst hangover the next day, not helped by all these young Argentinian girls squeeling and giggling in the kitchen all morning. They can be very very loud!
Colonia
From Montevideo we took a bus to Colonia, which is a small ex smuggling port just across the water from Buenos Aires. I wanted to go there because of the thought of Pirates,.. but of course they're long gone. It has tiny cobbled streets and an old town wall and drawbridge. It was really pretty, but because it was Easter it was fully of tourists! We only stayed a few hours and then headed back to Buenos Aires on the ferry because we were getting a night bus to Mendoza in the north of Argentina.
We caught our first night bus to Mendoza, which took about 12 hours. It was actually really good, it had comfortable seats that recline almost flat, movies in English and food.. and was half the price of flying! They really should introduce buses like that back home.
Mr Hugo
Mendoza is the wine growing region of Argentina, and the popular thing to do is to go on a tour of the wineries.. on a bike. Some kiwis we'd met had told us about "Mr Hugo's" wine tours, which they said was awesome and at the end of the day Mr Hugo would lock the gates and then give everyone as much wine as they could drink and then load them onto the bus to get home.
We thought that sounded pretty good, so we took the bus out to Mr Hugo. Mr Hugo was a lovely man, he gave us a bike each, a map, a phone number to call if we got into trouble and a bottle of water each and sent us on our way.
There were 8 stops on the map, I think we made it to about 5 of them. It was 12kms cycling all together and we spent way too long at the first stop, which was a wine museum. We got stuck doing the tour and thought it would be a bit rude to just walk out on them to get to the wineries and drink!
All the wine we had was very tasty. The local grape variety is Malbec, which is very easy to drink! It was a pity we were riding around and couldn't take some bottles back with us.
It was a very fun day, miraculously we didn't have any crashes and made it back to Mr Hugo in time for the free wine and home made Empanadas (kind of like a meat pie).
We found out later that they have these special tourist police that go around and pick you and your bike up and drop you back if you're riding too dangerously or fall off!! It's a pretty good idea, if it wasn't for the whole don't drink and drive thing back home it would be an awewsome idea in the Yarra Valley.. other than the hills maybe!
Altitude
Also in Mendoza we went on a tour up into the Andes right near the border with Chile. We got driven up to 4200 metres to see a statue of Jesus. The altitude was crazy, I felt dizzy the whole time we were up there. I'm a bit worried about doing the Inca trail now, but I guess I'll be acclimatized before I set out and not just driven up for an afternoon!!
Iguazu Falls
From Mendoza we did a huge 22 hour bus ride to Puerto Iguazu, in the north east of Argentina, which also wasn't so bad. We were right up the front of the 2 story bus and had a panoramic view of our surroundings, which was awesome, other than the slightly hair raising way our driver was over taking people on blind corners!
Puerto Iguazu was very humid, luckily we were staying in a hostel that had a huuuuge pool and a pool side bar.. backpacking is a hard life.. it was also very cheap.. about $17 aud per night for a 4 bed dorm.
We spent a whole day at the Argentinian side of the falls. First we did a 4x4 jeep tour through the jungle, which was lame.. all we saw was a massive spider.. and then we did a river boat cruise.. which was great fun, except that as part of it they drive you right under the falls and you get completely soaked.. which was awesome, but they hadn't really told us this when we booked it, so we didn't have a towel or a change of clothes or anything. We spent most of the day trying to dry off.. luckily it was hot, so it didn't take that long. Some people on the boat were wearing jeans, so they would have been very uncomfortable!
The falls were amazing. There isn't just one, there were more than half a dozen. The biggest being the Devil's throat, which is mind blowing. There is just so much water! I could have stayed there for hours staring at it, there was so much water and spray that you couldn't even see the bottom of the falls. It was one of the most amazing things I've seen over here.. second only to the glaciers in Patagonia. If you get a chance, go and see it!
The park is very well organised, they have walking trails and a little train to take you to all the sights. There were tons of butterflies and also some toucans, which are something I've always wanted to see. Apparently there were monkeys, but we didn't see any.
I think we were there for about 7 hours all up. It was specacular, words can't really do it justice!
Brazil
The next day we went into Brazil to see the Brazilian side of the falls. I was a bit worried about trying to get a Visa (Australia is one of the only countries that need a visa!) but it was so easy. I got it in Puerto Iguazu, which is right near the border, it took 2hrs and only cost me $50 Australian. If I'd gotten it before I left Australia it would have taken 2 weeks and cost me $90!!
The Brazilian side of the falls is supposed to be the less impressive side of the falls.. and it is less impressive than standing on the edge of the Devil's throat like you do in Argentina.. but you do get to see the panoramic view of all of the falls, which is still pretty amazing. There are just so many waterfalls in a small space,. it's such a beautiful place. If you get the chance to go, GO!
After almost getting the hang of Spanish, we're now struggling with Portugues.. which is VERY hard.. we really have no idea what people are saying at all, even though the words look similar to the Spanish versions.. the pronounciation is so strange! We've bought a phrase book, so hopefully we can work out the key phrases in the next 3 weeks!!
Soon I'll update you with the Panatal, the Amazon and Salvador.. if it doesn't stop raining it might even be this afternoon!
Anyway.. here are the ( photos.. )
and some ( videos... )
Current Location: Salvador, Brazil
Current Mood: chipper
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12:33 am
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Mendoza
I´m currently in Mendoza, which is north eastern Argentina. It´s the wine growing region of Argentina (mmm Malbec), so tomorrow morning Sue and I are getting a bus out to a place called ¨Mr Hugo´s Bikes¨, where we´ll be given a bike each, a map and a bottle of water and then sent our on our way to do a bike tour of the local wineries..
I forsee trouble!
Current Location: Mendoza
Current Mood: tired
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06:18 pm
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Buenos Aires
It's Easter and everything here is shut, so I finally have some time to write this. We're actually in Uruguay, but here is the Buenos Aires update..
After Ushuia me and 6 other girls from my tour flew up to Buenos Aires and stayed in a hostel together for about 10 days. Buenos Aires is beautiful, it has gorgeous old buildings, huge parks and lots of cafes and good shopping. It reminds me of Barcelona and other people say it's quite like Paris, although I've never been, so I have no idea how true that is!
The hostel we were staying in was massive and organised lots of activities, which was good because we got to do a lot of things we probably wouldn't have organised by ourselves.
Tango
I had one free tango lesson at the hostel and then went for a private lesson, which was fun but hard. I went with another girl and for part of it we had to shut our eyes and both put one hand on the teacher's (a guy) chest and then had to try and feel him leading us, my friend was giggling like a school girl, but the teacher was fine with it, he probably gets it all the time!! It was a bit overwhelming though, shutting your eyes and putting your hand on some sexy Argentinian man's chest! We were in his flat too, so it was extra strange!
Despite the sexy men, I think I prefer salsa, although maybe with more lessons I'd get into Tango.
Football
We went to see Argentina play Venezuala in a world cup qualifying match. It was the first match with Maradona as coach or something like that and he's god over here so everyone was very excited. Argentina thrashed Venezuala 4 - 0, so all the fans were happy but they didn't go totally nuts like I'd expected, there was still lots of jumping and chanting though.
Getting into the stadium was crazy, it's all standing room and when one section fills up they make everyone go to the next section, however for some strange reason they wouldn't let us just walk around to the next gate, we had to go on a massive detour through all the backstreets near the staduim, so it took about an hour to get in.
Polo
The next day the hostel was organising tickets to the Polo, so we all got dressed up and weredriven out to the countryside to see a match. I have no idea how the wrangled tickets for us dirty backpackers, it seemed to be full of people that knew each other. They weren't dressed up but they were all very stylish and rich.
The polo game was very quick, I wouldn't want to be one of the horses! Argentina is one of the best polo countries in the world and the best player in the world was actually playing.
We also got to stay for the after party which had free wine, which we made the most of. All the polo players were partying too, so it was quite cool to go and mix in amongst them after the match. We even got invited to a party with them the next night but some of the other girls had Spanish class, so we missed them.
La Boca
I also went on a walking tour to La Boca, which is an old colourful (and dangerous) neighbourhood down by the docks. The soccor team there has a huge following (Maradona played for them) and we got to walk around in the stadium and go to the soccor museum (woo). Soccor is like a religion over here, so it was interesting to go and see it, even though I'm not a massive sports fan. Although I really didn't spend much time in the museum.
We also got a history lesson on how tango started, it was basically a dance between the prostitutes and the saliors who came into the port there. It was banned for a long time and has only recently become more popular because of American movies. La Boca is a bit of a tourist trap though, people trying to sell you things everywhere and hassling you non stop to go into their restuarant.
Hospital
I also had my first South American hospital experience in Buenos Aires. I came down with tonsilitis on the last day in Ushuia (the plane ride up here was hell) and when we got here me and one of the other girls (she had an allergic reaction to something) asked where the best place to go for treatment was and they told us to go to the german hospital. It was so quick and easy, we were in and out in half an hour!! No appointment or anything. It puts all the public hosptials at home to shame. I'm completely better now, so that's good :) Hopefully I won't have to test out the hospitals in Bolivia or Peru.. I don't think they'd be so awesome!
Cemetery
We went and visited Eva Peron (Evita)'s grave. The cemetery here is amazing, it's like a town. All the tombs are huge and you can see the coffins in most of them. Eva Peron's grave wasn't that impressive, although it had a massive crowd around it! I think there were some other famous people burried there but we didn't find them. You could spend hours in there just wandering around.
Clubbing
Buenos Aires has a huge nightclub scene and when we were on our tour we had these grand plans of going out every night in BA and seeing all the best clubs. When we got there though we hardly went anywhere! In all fairness I was sick for the first few days and went to bed early. After that though I think we were all just too tired from the tour. The hostel we were staying in was a big party hostel and had a very very loud bar downstairs, so I think that might have also put us off a bit. It was also constantly full of loud 18 year olds. I am feeling very old and unnattractive over here!!
We did manage to go out one night though, first to club 69, which is supposed to be one of the best clubs in town. It was a drag night, so seeing all the drag queens all dressed up was pretty good but the music was really shit. Very boring, repetitive house music. We only stayed for an hour and then left to find something a bit more interesting. Apparently we missed the live show though, which got really raunchy.
We ended up at a club called Esperanto (after a recommendation from some random locals on the street), which played all latin music like salsa and reggaeton, it was a lot more fun and we stayed there til about 5am. That was our only night out in BA! We've all since decided that we really were quite lame and could have made more of an effort given that most people in the hostel were out until 6am every day.
What now
Most of the other girls have left and started other tours, so I'm now just travelling with an English girl from my tour called Sue and her friend Caroline. They've been travelling together for 7 months already and have been to Africa, Asia and Australia. Sue is awesome and seceretly arranged for her friend Caroline to bring me some Vegemite from Sydney (she flew in from there), I was so thrilled!!!
All they have here on toast is jam and this incredibly sweet spread made of condensed milk called Dulce de leche, so I've been missing vegemite the whole time and have probably been driving Sue mad whinging about it at breakfast. It's now one of my most prized possessions in my pack.
We're currently in Uruguay but are heading back into Argentina tomorrow and heading north to the wine regions and then to Igazu falls and into Brazil. Yesterday I had the fun of trying to book bus tickets over the phone with someone who spoke no English, I THINK I have the right tickets booked, although who knows what we'll get. Trying to spell my surname to the guy in Spanish was impossible and I'll probably be listed as Inkleborton or something. I guess it was good practice!
This is very long, so I'll do the Uruguay update soon.
Here are the ( Photos )
Current Location: Red hostel Montevideo
Current Mood:  restless
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10:41 am
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Mini Update
I know I'm behind on updating so here is a mini update. I'll post photos later when it's not so sunny outside!! I'm currently in Uruguay in a small beach town near Punte Del Este, which is kind of like the surfers of Uruguay. This town is tiny though, it has 3 restaurants and one supermarket and because we're here in off season there's hardly anyone around. We arrived from Buenos Aires yestserday on a ferry and the weather was crap, but today it's actually sunny so we're about to go to the beach.
Bueons Aires was a cool city but we were all glad to move on, we'd been there for over a week and it was time for a change. I'm currently travelling with 6 girls from my tour but 4 of them go onto other tours in a couple of days and then I'll just be travelling with 2 English girls. We're going to go along the coast here, as long as the weather stays fine and then go up to Mendoza in northern Argentina to go to some wineries and then to Iguazu falls and into Brazil. It's good having travelling companions.
Okay it's beach time. I'll write later.
Current Location: Uruguay
Current Mood:  calm
Current Music: Latin stuff on tv
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03:08 am
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Glaciers, the Tour of Pain and Extreme Drunkeness
Hey guys, sorry it's taken so long for an update, trying to find fast internet and enough time to post was challenging last week!
I am currenty in Ushuia, Southern Argentina in Tierra del Fuego (land of fire).. aka the end of the world. It's supposed to be cold here but we had good weather today and no wind, so it was nice.
Last time I posted I was in Bariloche, which wasn't a very interesting city. Since then I;ve spent lots of time driving around in the truck, staying in some dodgy hotels where the bathroom flooded every time we took a shower and eating lots of steak (Argentina is steak capital of the world).
Glaciers
One of the best things I;ve done so far though was in El Chalten, where we got to walk on the Viedma Glacier, which is the largest Glacier in the area. It was amazing! Gigantic and so deep blue in places, which is apparently where the ice has compressed a lot and there is not much oxygen. A lot of it was covered in rocks and dirt as well, which have been dragged into it as it flows down. Apparently it´s receeding 12 metres a year. You could actually hear it moving as we stood on it. We got to trek around a bit with crampons and take photos of ice caves. Once we got to the top of the section of glacier the guides hacked off some of the ice and gave us plastic cups and then pulled out 2 bottles of baileys.. so I have now drunk Baileys with 400 year old ice! It was completley worth the hours and hours of driving through nothingness! Then we went onto El Calafate where we went to another glacier, the Perito Mareno Glacier.. this one is smaller than Viedma but was way more impressive because of the size of the glacier front. It was 60 metres above the water (which is only 20% of the entire height). We got to walk around on these viewing platforms level with the glacier and you could occasionally see bits of it crashing into the lake below. We then got a boat right up close, which was stunning!
That night some of us younger ones went out dancing for someone's birthday. It was lots of fun, although in Chile at lots of clubs they have this weird thing where they play the first 1minute of a song and then change to a new song.. so you never hear the whole thing. It's quite annoying! All the music was 80's and 90's as well, which they looove here. We ended up staying out til 4am and then had to be up again at 7 to get on the truck. We were all very hung over and tried to sleep most of the way.
Tour of Pain
After El Calafate we drove some more and crossed the border a few more times and then arrived in Torres del Paine national park for the camping segment (aka the Tour of Pain) of the tour. The first day we arrived we went on an 8hour hike to Torres lookout. Fuck it was hard work!!! It was so steep. Lots of people gave up and I was so close to doing so as well but all the people coming back from the top were very encouraging and kept telling me it wasn't so far and was completely worth it at the top.
They were right, it was pretty awesome getting to the top and you got a great view of the Torres. Coming back down again was horrible, my knees were killing me and I just wanted to be down. The only thing that kept me going was the lure of beer in the cafe down the bottom!
I made it down and even went for another hike the next day.. even though my legs were pretty sore. We thought we were doing a 45min hike to another look out point, but after 2hrs of walking we still hadn't reached the look out and were in the middle of no where and it was incredibly windy so we decided just to turn back otherwise they;d have to send out a search party for us. When we got back to the camp we realised we'd gone completely the wrong way from the beginning so who knows where we would have ended up if we'd kept going!! It was a pretty walk at least.
That afternoon we discovered the hotel down the road with cable tv and a bar and so we spent most of the next two afternoons down there watching tv and drinking wine (lame I know). The 3rd day was a wildlife drive in the truck, we saw Guanacos, Condors and Foxes.
The tents weren't too bad, quite roomy and there was even hot water and good toilets!! Kind of luxury camping I guess. We were also lucky with the weather and it only rained on the last night, which was a bit of a pain the next morning trying to pack up all the wet tents, but it could have been worse.
After the Tour of Pain we drove some more and are now here in Ushuia for 3 more nights. Today we went on a boat cruise around the Beagle Channel and saw Sea Lions, Seals, lots of birds and I think even a penguin.. although it might have been something else. We did see Penguins the day before though.
Extreme Drunkeness
Last night we went out dancing again. This was by far the messiest night of all. We started off in a bar and then went to a club that was recommended to us by the bar tender. We were already quite drunk by that stage and then ordered these huge blue cocktails which were verrry strong. We talked to people and I think I danced a bit.. but honestly I don't remember much of the night. The last bit I remember was leaving, thinking the other 2 girls were following me, but they weren't and I sat outside for about half an hour and then just started staggering back to the hotel, which was a bit problematic, given I didn't actually remember where the hotel was in relation to the club.
I staggered around for a while and then obviously worked out where I was because I got woken up this morning in the hotel by my room mate telling me I had 4mins before the truck departed. I was still completely drunk and had to try and pack everything up and drag my bag downstairs. I made it though. One of the other girls I'd been out with arrived back at that point in a taxi, not having slept at all and had ended up at some guy's house and had met his mother! I think she'd tried to bring him to the hotel and they'd refused to let him in.
The other girl had lost her jacket and then gotten completely lost on the way home and had ended up crying and being driven around in a taxi with a policeman and a friendly local trying to work out where the hotel was. She made it home okay though, which was lucky. We were entertaining the possibility that we'd had our drinks spiked, but we were already pretty drunk after dinner so maybe not. We will just have to be more careful I think and make sure we don't lose each other.
We got a fair bit of shit from everyone today for our sad state. Once we got to Ushuia we all went to sleep for a few hours. Tonight we're having a quiet night in!
On Wednesday 7 of us single girls are flying up to Buenos Aeries to party there for a week or so, then I'm going to Uruguy and Brazil with one of them after that, which is awesome, much better than doing it solo!
Anyway this is massive, sorry! Here are the( Photos.. )( Read more... )</div>
Current Location: Ushuia - end of the world
Current Mood: tired
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03:28 am
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Volcano
So.. I managed to climb 2hrs from the top of the Volcano.. might not sound so flash but it took 4 fucking hours to get to that point!!!!! We were then told the weather was too bad to get to the top, so we started to go down and then they said the weather had cleared.. but by that point we were totally over it. The wind was so strong that we were almost being blown off the mountain and another 2 hours of that, plus walking back down might have killed me, so me and another guy from my group decided to go back down at that point. Only 1 person from our entire group made it to the top, an awesome German chick. called Kaitcha.. now called Super Kaitcha.
I managed to get into the ice section at the top, which was pretty good I thought, given how unfit I thought I was! I would have kept going to the top if the wind had been less full on. It was so strong that it was making my eyes water and I couldn´t see hardly anything.
Going down was also really hard work and my knees have been sore for a few days.
After the volcano, the guides (young chilean guys) took a group of us out to the hot springs and then dancing at the local disco... lots of fun! They know how to party over here.
Currently I´m in Argentina.. in a place called Barliloche. We spent 11hours on the truck today and have 13 hours not tomorrow but the day after. Very tiring!!! Tomorrow we´re going out partying again, although we need to find some locals to show us the sights.
Anyway it´s 3:35am and I should go to bed!
Photos are on my facebook, I couldn´t get them to upload to photobucket on this crappy computer.. but tomorrow I´ll give it another shot!!!
Current Mood:  drunk
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10:50 pm
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Pucon
I just started my tour, which is lots of fun, we have a great group of people. Way more older people than I thought, but also a good group of people around 30ish. We are currently in Pucon.. which is south of Santiago.. about 5 mins from Villarrica on this map:
We spent 11 hours on the Peggy the truck (we´re not allowed to call her a bus) today, but it was fun and worth it.
It´s so beautiful here. There´s a huge lake and tomorrow we are getting up at 6am to climb the Villarrica Volcano.. which is active (no, not the one that errupted recently).. here is a picture:
We´re all a bit scared! Although we do get to slide down it once we get to the top!!
Wish me luck!!!!
Current Mood: tired
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03:52 pm
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Valparaiso and Viña del Mar
I´m currently in Valparaiso, which is a beach side town about an hour and a half from Santiago. I´ve been here for 2 days and I have another 1 and a half to go. Valparaiso is a UNESCO world heritage site and you can see why, it´s a very interesting and beautiful place, with thousands of brightly coloured houses perched precariously on hills going down to the ocean.
Because the hills are so steep, they have ascensores (elevator type things) going up a lot of them. I went up in the oldest one yesterday, which was built in 1883 or something like that. It was very rickety and old! Apparently most of the time a lot are broken and as soon as they fix one, another one breaks. One strange thing they have here is count down timers for crossing the road that let you know how long until you get a green walking man!!! Very strange. Not sure why they bother, seeing as most people just wander across the road whenever they like. There is a giant cruise ship docked at the port here and yesterday some of the people from the ship were getting guided tours around town, I kind of tagged along and pretended I was in the group and got a bit of a free tour, which was awesome!! I learnt more than if I´d just been wandering around blindly by myself, although I did kind of feel like the Japanese tourists in Melbourne, taking photos of everything. Nearby is Viña del Mar, which is a resort town, where lots of people from Santiago spend their summer holidays. It´s like a cross between Lorne and Surfers Paradise, although much nicer!! It has lovely beaches and lots of interesting buildings as well, although not as interesting or unique as Valparaiso, It´s quite modern and there is a very modern metro (train) that runs between all the towns along the coast there. It´s far more punctual and clean than the trains in Melbourne!!! When I was wandering along the beach yesterday I saw a penguin! It was all by itself, just swimming around, I have no idea what it was doing so far from other penguins but that was pretty cool. That´s pretty much the only wildlife I´ve seen so far, other than all the stray dogs and cats. Tomorrow I go back to Santiago and start my tour... 11 hours on a bus on Thursday!!!!! Here are some photos.. sorry they´re not behind a cut, I can´t find the button!
The tracks for the ascensor
Colourful houses in Valpo
View from the hills in Valpo
View through a fallen down house
More houses
And more
The Chilean Armada guys
Waves at Viña
The penguin! Although in this photo it kind of looks like a seal..
Beach at Viña
Me at the beach getting sunburnt
Disused pier at Viña
The timer for crossing the lights
Me at Valpo
Delapidated house that people were living in at Valpo
More photos soon :)
Current Mood:  sleepy
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