La Boca

On our first day in Buenos Aires - literally translates to "good air" but is by far the most polluted city we've been to by far? - we went on a walking tour to La Boca.

La Boca is near the port, and it is where The Tango was born. Originally it was a dance between two (male) sailors competing for the lady they so desired. Homophobia obviously kicked in at some point and it turned from an aggressive stand-off between two men into a passionate dance between two lovers.

Tango Dancers

More Tango dancers!

Carlos Gardel, was the most famous Tango singer of all Argentina and there are many pictures and references to him around La Boca. Born in France - allegedy, there is no proof where he came from as he was born out of poverty and there are no records that have been found - he moved here with his mother to make their fortune out of his exceptional singing voice.

Carlos Gardel, Eva Peron & Maradonna

Tango dancer performing a solo dance

La Boca is exceptional for it's Tango dancers and the brightly coloured buildings and murals that cover the area. In the late 1800's thousands of Italian and Spanish immigrants flooded the area but as there was less work there than promised to them the area soon turned from affluent to poor. Corrugated metal buildings sprung up to house the poor, and these were soon decorated with the leftover paint from the shipping barges. The result is the prettiest, poorest tourist trap in Buenos Aires.

Brightly coloured corrugated metal buildings...

...and another...

...and another!

Traditional buildings also adopted the same bright colours...

Murals cover many of La Boca's buildings

Wierd & wonderful 3D dipictions

And of course Jonny would never forgive me if I didn't mention that La Boca is home to (arguably) Argentina's most notorious football club, Boca Juniors. We did a tour around the stadium where there is a massive shrine-like homage to Diego Maradonna when he played for Boca (only for one season it's worth noting!) scoring a momentus goal (apparently). Not that goal thankfully. He has complete God-like status here in Argetina, and has his own box on the halfway line at the stadium. He has been known to postpone many a kick-off from leaning out of his box to greet his rapturous adoration which can go on quite a long time.

Hmmm, not quite the reception you can imagine any English footballer receiving, perhaps Wayne Rooney after we win the world cup? :-)

Montevideo

Although very behind with my blog writing I am ashamed to say I have very little to say about Montevideo!!! It was nice to get back to civilisation after being in La Paloma, Montevideo is a bustling but quite small city for a capital, with beautifal colonial buildings and quite random sculptures dotted around the pedestrianised areas.

Jonny and I enjoyed luxuries missed in La Paloma such as being able to get a beer after 10pm and "other people".

We stayed in a really funky old hotel that looked like it hadn't been changed since the 1930's (inside and out), which probably had the most character of all the places we've stayed in in South America. You can tell I'm really stuck for something to say when I'm talking about architecture!! Anyway, here's a few piccies...

Random sculpture....



...and another

...and another


Mural outside the art gallery that always seemed to be closed,
I think it may be depicting the battle for independence...


Colonial building


The chap who liberated Uraguay...



...and his ashes!!!

Punta Del Este & La Paloma

After soaking up the sun and killing local insect life in Florianapolis we endured another bus journey to Punta del Este in Uraguay. Our stint in Uraguay didn´t exactly get off to the brightest start when arriving in Punta Del Este (still with my backpack on my back) I feel over the curb. Not only did I slam onto my knees but the weight of the backpack sent me crashing onto my head. I was pinned there a good few minutes by the weight of the bag, as Jonny was unable to help me because he was in fits of hysterics. Did I mention that this was on a traffic island in the middle of a busy road? Well that set the tone for Uraguay as it was the beginning of the strangest and probably most frustrating period of our travels.

"Oh Lord, won´t you buy me..." - Punta Del Este


After traipsing around the hostels we realised that we were only going to be able to get a room in a hotel which would cost us US$40 per night which, by South American standards, is an absolute fortune. Also we wouldn´t get to meet people there as there was literally no-one in town. Punta Del Este is a really nice place but only 2 months of the year (which turned out to be the case in most of Uraguay) when the Argentinians go there on holiday. Very few backpackers bother to go to Uraguay because word of this gets out. and it was pratically English prices for beer, food etc.

The beach - Punta Del Este



The hectic highways of Punta Del Este

As I mentioned before Uraguay is strange as well as frustrating. We managed to stumble across one of the coolest things we`ve seen so far in terms of wildlife. There is a seal and sealion colony not far from Punta Del Este, which we didn´t manage to go and see, but down in the habour when the fishermen are filleting their fish they chuck the unwanted bits of fish into the water. About 20 or so massive seals (or sealions we`re not sure which) came right up to the harbour edge. They were massive! Of course the moment was spoiled a few minutes later by a group of Americans with video cameras screeching "Gee" and "Wow" at the top of their voices...

Fisherman feeding the sea(lion)s



"Gimme fish"

We decided we couldn´t afford to stay another night in Punta Del Este, and we´d read about a really cool little surf town in our (ahem) ever-reliable Lonely Planet guide which was only a couple of hours north called La Paloma.

We thought Punta Del Este was quite. I´ve never been anywhere like it. Not in SE Asia, not anywhere. You could hear the squeak of a person´s rusty bicycle from a good mile away. If a car came down the road you found yourself looking out from the balcolny to see who the "strangers" were (nobody owned a car in La Paloma, that would have reduced the population from 10 to 5).

The beach was windy, the sea was brown and there was a small animal decaying because nobody had bothered to remove it becuase, well, no-one went to the beach. Needless to say I wanted to leave the next day. Jonny wanted to stay because it was "cheap" (those of you that know Jonny will not be remotely surprised by this).

La Paloma (I didn´t manage to capture the tumbleweed)



For some reason I agreed to stay another day/night, at least it had an internet cafè (seriously,that was the only thing going for it). The day of our departure we headed for the bus station only to find that the one o´clock bus was full, not a complete surprise, we could hardly wait to leave ourselves, but where had all the people come from? Of course we were there an hour and a half early, as always, and the next bus wasn´t until 4.30.

Still, I was in good spirits, we got the playing cards out and Jonny did a beer run in the torrential downpours. I have to mention about the rain at this point. It hadn´t stopped raining all night. I´d had a thought when I got up that morning that we could be stuck in shitsville by the rain/floods. I instantly dismissed this thought as too horrible to comprehend, and merrily got up and packed my bag looking forward to moving on to the next place.

The 4pm bus arrived, and I noticed that the bus station was really starting to fill up. It didn´t really click why this would be happening when it had been empty all day. And it was still raining. We got on the bus, the bus pulled away, we drove past homes half flooded, we were shocked and felt terrible for the people that lived there but still, I never thought we wouldn´t be able to make it to our destination. Half an hour into our journey the bus turned round and went back to way it came. I got off the bus at the bus station and wanted to cry, or kill Jonny for making us stay, the feelings came in equal measures. So now when you look at the photo Jonny published on his blog of me looking incredibly miserable in the bus station, hopefully you´ll understand why I wasn´t the happiest bunny in all of South America...


Me in the bus station before the bad news

Cockroach Karma

As I’m struggling to catch up with Jonny and his relentless blog writing I’ve decided to miss out writing about Florianopolis, other than to say that it’s a beautiful sunny island with great surf and beaches. That about covers it. You’ve read it all in Jonny’s blog (see the link on the right hand side if not) and there’s not much more to comment on except for the extremely hot men. I plan to cover that topic in a separate "Argentinan vs. Brazillian" blog - and I’m not talking about the football teams here. Anyway, I digress.

I have therefore decided to write an entry about my dearest and most feared(est) friend, the cockroach. The reason being that surprisingly, Florianopolis was the only place we stayed that we had any problems with the little buggers.

The first night we spent in Florianopolis, we went out for dinner like you do and we decided to order the "medium shrimp". Supposedly this was for two people, bearing in mind that Jonny can usually consume enough food in one sitting to feed a family of four. For a week.

There was steamed shrimp, breaded shrimp, garlic shrimp, fried shrimp, shrimp salad, shrimp in shrimp sauce... It was like the Monty Python "Spam" sketch. Try as we might there was really only so much shrimp we could possibly eat and by the time we were at our shrimp breaking point there was still enough food left to feed at least two more people. But we couldn´t carry on despite Jonny´s best gorging efforts and my extreme guilt over wasting food. So we left the restaurant, me feeling incredibly guilty about all the food we´d just wasted and Jonny feeling incredibly full. God only know´s what we´d have got if we´d ordered the "large shrimp"...

So as we got back to the pousada I was feeling a bit bad about of all this. Nevertheless I started to get ready for bed. I was mooching around as you do, when I moved Jonny´s backpack and a masssive brown cockroach shot out from underneath it. I jumped on the bed screaming to Jonny to get it the **** out. I have to say at this point that Jonny and I have a bit of a deal going on that was established very early on in our relationship whilst traveling in Australia. I hate cockroaches. He hates spiders. I get rid of the spiders and he (against my wishes) kills the cockroaches. I would rather he just got them out of the room but he claims they are "too fast". My argument is that spiders are hardly the OAPs of the insect world (I know, they´re arachnids before some smart ass points it out) and that I humanely remove them using the "glass and card" technique. Or in Australia, the "wastebin and the paving slab" technique.

Needless to say, Jonny, killed it. And the baby one that sprinted after it´s mother spraying it´s guts on the end of the bedsheet as a neat reminder of what we´d just done. I didn´t sleep too well that night, plagued by dreams of revengeful cockroaches attacking me for my part in the double-homicide.

The next night we scouted the pousada and the surrounding courtyard for our new found friends. I figured that if we got them out before they got in we wouldn´t have to repeat the brutal scene from the night before. The coast was clear but I was still struggling to sleep so I stayed up a bit later than Jonny and had a couple of beers. I went into our bedroom feeling a quite relaxed. I turned the bathroom light on and that´s when I saw it. It rocketed under Jonny´s bed where he was sleeping. I screamed (again), but I soon realised that Jonny was in no state to deal with the situation. It was down to me. I realised pretty quickly that the cockroach was not going to come out from under the bed willingly, so I was going to have to perform an extreme act of bravery. You have to remember at this point that this is the only thing on earth that I am afraid of. Snakes, spiders, rats etc don´t particularly bother me. But the cockroach is my nemesis.

I looked under the bed, and there he was, Carlito the Cockroach, staring back at me in some sort of Mexican stand-off. He was trying to figure out my next move, as I was his. Unfortunatley for Carlito, I outwitted him (it would be a bit worrying if I didn´t). I daringly threw one of the trainers in my hand at him to make him run out from under the bed, then as soon as he ran out I clobbered him with the other. Unbeknown to me, Carlito had a friend, who decided that this might be the time to make a break for it. Jonny had stirred by this point, and started groaning incomprehensibly and pointing frantically behind me. With my new found bravery and skill I span round and annihilated cockroach number two.

After that incident I slept easier than I had the night before. It didn´t seem to bother me as much that I killed two cockroaches (sort of) unnecessarily. As for Carlito? He learned (a little too late) not to provoke a girl with PMT...

Wipe Your Feet on the Way In (III)

After a rather interesting 16hr bus journey from Sau Paulo to Foz do Iguaçu (see Jonny´s blog for a rather detailed account) we arrived in Foz which is a small town inland which borders Brazil and Paraguay. It is the main place to stay from which to visit both the Brazillian and Argentian sides of the Igauçu falls. The nicest thing I can say about Foz, is that it reminds me of some of the backward little towns we went through in Australia. Yep, that good.

We met two young lads there called Jimmy and Inigo, both London lads on a trip around South America before starting uni in September. They were like a young Chris and Dale, so of course, I took to them instantly (for those of you that don´t know Chris & Dale they´re very good friends of mine from home). More so Inigo was a complete characteristic replica of Dale, laid back to the extreme, he´d completely run out of money and hadn´t actually realised it until the cash machine refused to give him any, so he had to write an email to his dad asking for more cash.

Inigo (Dale´s double)


We visited both the Brazillian and Argentian side of the falls. The approach to the tourists on each side was akin to that of the respective nations. On the Brazillian side you were charged a reasonable entrance fee to the park, then absolutely everything else (except for the falls themselves) was extra. Even the woods were privately owned by a tour company that wanted you to pay a ridiculous fee to walk through "their" land. On the Argentian side however, you were charged a similar entrance fee, and could walk the entirity of the park if you so wished and see the falls. The only extras were activities like rafting etc. In all honesty after doing the three walks to the different view points, you didn´t actually have time (or energy) to go rafting kayaking etc etc.

There were the most bizarre things about crossing over the border from Brazil into Argentina to see the Argentinian side of the falls (I´m sure Jonny´s already covered this but I thought I´d give it a mention...)

1) The bus driver takes your passport to border control and the authorities never come over to check that you are the person in the picture on your passport
2) They never stamp your passport so there´s no record of you entering or leaving either county
3) They make you get out of the bus and wipe your feet on a sponge mat - allegedly to prevent foot & mouth disease from travelling between the two countries. As Jonny pointed out, the mat appears to be bone dry and has no kind of detergent (if that actually kills foot & mouth disease, please excuse my ignorance on the matter).

The falls themselves are absolutely amazing. From the Brazillian side you get a wider persepective of the sheer size of the falls from left to right (see below the platform in the background is where we were stood).

The Falls from the Brazillian Side










From the Argentian side you are literally stood over the falls looking down into the abyss. From both sides it is totally mesmorizing, and I know it sounds wierd but it´s actually quite hard to drag yourself away. You could literally sit there all day and watch the water plummeting over. Although incredibly cheesy, somebody told me before I visited the Argentian side that "you imagine that this is what people thought the edge of the world looked like when they thought the world was flat". I´ve probably got the quote very wrong and as I said, it´s very cheesy - but unbelievably accurate. In the photo below you can see how close we were to the falls hence the very misty photos.

The Falls from the Argentian Side








After Foz do Iguaçu Shane left us to explore pastures new in Argentina (hi Shane if you´re reading I hope Paddy´s day & Sonar were blinding) and the London lads flew off to (amongst other things) mountain biking down the "most dangerous road in the world" in Bolivia. Like I said, think Chris & Dale...

Paradise & Paraty (II)

After the madness of Rio (and the dreaded Sambrodomo burger) we needed some serious chill out time so we headed to the paradise island of Ihla Grande. That was my first encounter with a Brazillian bus driver, and we had prime time seats right at the front. I have to say I´ve never seen anyone drive a bus whilst stood up before.

Conner, Zoe, Colm & Shane (boat trip)


When we were in Rio we met a couple called Zoe and Colm, Zoe´s English and Colm´s Irish. We also met Colm´s friends from home, Frank, Connor and Shane. They were all top people (and of course, being Irish could drink a drop) and they were all heading to Ihla Grande. So we swapped email addresses and managed to all stay in the same hostel. Needless to say, relaxing after Rio was kind of postponed. Although we did the boat trip around the island on the first day, it was Connor´s 30th birthday so of course we had to celebrate...

Sunset on the boat trip



Connor´s birthday kiss!

After a couple of nights, Frank and Connor had to head back to Rio to get their flights, but Shane, Colm & Zoe stayed on with us for a slightly more relaxed and less drunken few days on Ihla Grande - by less drunken I mean 2 or 3 Capirinihas (the local lethal cocktail) rather than 7 or 8...

The whole crew (minus Jonny, the photographer) and aforementioned Capirinihas


Ihla Grande is absolute paradise, tropical beaches surrounded by moutainous rainforests. Our Pousada (the accomodation outside of the big cities, a bit like that in SE Asia) had a balcony with a hammock that backed onto the rainforest, so at dawn and dusk (yes believe it or not we experienced both but only from being up from the night before) you could hear all the mad birds and animals doing their thing. Nice. I´ve put some slightly less sunny, more dramatic pictures of the island on my blog as Jonny´s alreadydoen those on his.

View from the balcony/hammock



Lopes Mendes beach, Ihla Grande

View from a hill we climbed of mainland Brazil from Ihla Grande

The 5 of us left Ihla Grande and got a bus to a really pretty little town called Paraty approx 2 hrs up the coast. It didn´t look like Brazil at all, it felt like we had been transported over to a little town in mainland Italy or Spain. Sadly we only had one day/night there.

Cobbled streets of Paraty


After that we headed to Sau Paulo to get a connecting bus to Foz do Iguaçu to see the waterfalls. Sadly Zoe & Colm had to make the flight home to the UK, so 5 became 3 and off we went.

Big thanks to Zoe, Colm, Frank, Connor & Shane for making the time we spent with you so much fun xxxxxx

Party Brazillian Style (I)

I´ve been so slack at updating my blog that I´ve had to do some mini blogs about the things I´ve done since the last blog. So here is installment one.

Sylvia & Rob
Carnival at the Sambrodromo was great fun, larger than life, and bizarre to say the least. Our Brazillian friend, Syliva´s samba school were competing that night, so she was there with us flag in hand ready to cheer them on. It turned out that everyone else seemed to be supporting the same school, and when they came on a barrage of green & purple flags flooded the crowds. I couldn´t help feeling a bit sorry for the other samba schools...

I don´t know how you imagine the Carnival parades to be, but I imagined it to be procession after procession of samba schools moving slowly past the crowds until every school has passed through. Nope. Everyone has a designated time and at least an hour break between samba schools. Which means we were there for 4 hours and only saw 2 and a half schools go past.

The parades themselves were a mix of bizarre themes from fairy tales to mozart, all with their own unique take. One of the parades we saw had a fire breathing dragon with pictures of famous musicians on it´s head. As you know, there are a lot of drugs in Rio...

I think the most bizarre one was the the parade I´ve pictured below. I have no idea what the concept for this one is, but the heads look really creepy...



But the dancing and the costumes were superb. Although we were in the cheap seats right where the parades would finish, they would be so hyped up at the end that they would look up into the crowd and get their samba groove on as the crowd cheered them on for completing the parade on time/without falling over in their massive costumes/heels. Great fun. How they danced in those costumes in the heat was beyond me, they´re a lot heavier than they look.



















Apologies to the people that requested some pictures of scantily clad women, as I said, we were in the cheap seats and the zoom on my camera wasn´t that good :-). If you look very, very closely you might be able to see her in this photo!!!!




My parting gift from carnival was brought about by foolish error from the massive hunger I had on at the end after dancing on a concrete step for 4 hours. I went and bought a burger from the stall in the Sambrodromo (those of you that know me know I never eat burgers, that´s how hungry I was). I didn´t realise until afterwards that a friend of mine had been told that if you eat a burger from the Sambrodromo you´ll samba all the way to the toilet, and back again, and again and again... We left Rio a couple of days later than we evisaged, Jonny foolishly had one too...

Como Esta?

Apologies for the late blog entry, Rio's been absolutely fabulous but hectic and late nights have prevented me from getting my ass out of bed in the morning to get to an internet cafe...

Well what can I say about Rio and Brazil so far? The Brazillians are fantastic, friendly, warm people that have made our stay here so enjoyable. The Brazillian women are stunning, the Brazillian men, well, you've seen Ronaldo and Ronaldinho... It's true what you hear, they love wearing tight pants and thongs on the beach (men included), and also lots of tight lycra cycle shorts and cut off denim shorts. As I said before, the Brazillian women are stunning, the Brazillian men...
(Desculpe minhas amigos de Brasil, esta a piada - and my Brazillian is shocking so if that didn't translate properly it was supposed to be "I'm only joking!")

So far we have managed to see a fair bit of Rio, the first trip we went up to the sugar loaf mountain and watched the sun go down over the city, which was spectacular as we watched a storm come over the JC statue. Rio is probably the most beautiful city I've been to, including the favelas which climb the mountains that surround the city.

View from the sugar loaf over Rio at dusk


The next day we went on a favela tour which I think was probably the best thing we've done so far. It sounds a little scary walking around a slum ruled by guns and drug dealing gangs and the images of BBC documentaries spring to mind, but you're taken there by a guide who knows all the local people there, and the thing that immediately strikes you when you get there is the sense of community that exists within the favela. You get taken by motorbike to the top of the favella, then you make your way down through the favela to the bottom. The further you go down, the poorer the people are, but they are all happy friendly people, and you don't feel at all threatened. You have to put your camera away when there are drug dealers around (as you can imagine there not too keen on having their photo taken by the gringos), but the guide Luiz is on constant watch and tells you when to put your camera away and when you can happily snap away. It was an eye opener, but an important one, after all the glam and bright lights of carnival there is another, poorer side to Rio. And after all, most of the samba schools are from the favelas.

Favela Kids

Favela

The day after the favela tour we went up to the Christ the Redeemer stature which you all know as the most famous symbol of Rio de Janeiro. Everyone says that he doesn't look so big up close, but he looked pretty big to me! There were great views of Rio from up there, but too many stupid tourists sticking their arms out "Christ fashion"for that ultimate"I look like an idiot at one the most beautiful sights in the world"photo. Nice.

Christ

See what I mean?!

The last thing to report is probably the most surreal, the day before yesterday we went to the Maracana, which is the massive footbal stadium in Rio. We watched Botafogo play Flamengo, the latter being the underdogs, and that's who we were supporting for the day (lucky for us as the Brazillian girl we are staying with is a Flamengo fan and we would never have lived it down if we'd sat in the other end as they actually won 3-2). Nothing strange about that? Well, not apart from the fact that the couple we were at the game with were from Staple Hill and Kingswood (that's where I'm from, and I rarely meet people in Bristol from Staple Hill). I never anticpated I'd be stitting on a bus on the way the Maracana in Rio de Janeiro singing "drink up ye cider". Only problem was, he's a bloody gas head. If you're reading this Richard Hughes I imagine you're laughing very loudly right now. Bloody gas heads get everywhere. But, the game was fantastic, and considering this wasn't even a league game, just a friendly, it was the best atmosphere at a footy game I've ever experienced. The fans are behind the players 100% the whole game, singing and dancing, it really was out of this world - (Bristol) city fans, you could learn a thing or two...

Gas head & Jonny Boy

The crowd

And finally...

Tonight we're off to the Sambodromo which is where all the samba schools compete to be the best school in carnival. Basically, it is carnival. It's going to be camp, glam, bright and sparkly, and there'll be lots of Brazillian women gyrating dressed in little more than a tiny rhinestone studded g-string and matching nipple studs. You can definitely see why the Brazillian wax was born here (completely out of necessity). Jonny won't know where to look...