Carnaval!

I ended up being stuck in BA for a further week, which wasn´t all bad. Got to hang out with my friends a little longer there and do the last of the tourity things that were on my to do list and which I wouldn´t otherwise have done.

The drama didn´t completely stop - I flew from BA to Rio, from where I was to fly to Colombia for a few days before going back to Rio and then London. But when I went to check in at Rio for my Colombia flight, they had no record of my booking. I wasn´t actually that disappointed - as soon as I´d ¨booked¨my return flight to Colombia at 580 quid, I regretted forking out so much to have only 10 days or so in Colombia, so it was actually kind of a relief. And being stuck in Rio for Carnaval turned out to be absolutely fantastic.

My friend Laura works for a tour company in London and they had a group in Rio as part of their tour around South America. A good 150 of them or so, so a big group and a big party. For 3 days, no sleep. I didn´t think anything could match the fun I had in BA but this was pretty out there. Rio´s a fucked up city and I don´t like it even though I had a great time here. It´s too edgy and there´s too much crime. It´s such a change after the relative safety of BA. On my first night, Laura and I were robbed as one guy stood over us with a broked bottle and his mates went through our pockets and emptied them. We didn´t react though, no point getting sliced or possibly killed for the sake of a hundred quid. In a different city maybe I´d have reacted differently but this is Rio, and they wouldn´t hesitate in using any weapon. A hostel down the road from Laura´s hotel was taken over by a gang with guns and grenades and all the guests were made to open their safes and relieved of all their vaulables. Apparently there were 3 places in Copacabana that had the same thing. Fucked up. So for us it wasn´t so bad. I was robbed of all my valuables in BA, and only took cash out that I was prepared to lose. Not my wallet, thankfully. You kind of expect this stuff in Rio, so we weren´t too fussed about it.

All the neighbourhoods have street parties all day, dancing and drinking and the occasional truck proceeding down the road blaring out music. The thing Rio´s Carnaval´s best known for is the Sambadrome, which is a huge parade involving all different neighbourhoods in costumes and with elaborate floats, some of them staggering in their size.

It´s an incredible spectacle and exceeded anything I thought might be the deal here. So all in all, a great time in Rio. We were sitting in a stand at the very end of where the procession finishes, and at the end of the parade all the performers ditch their costumes, so for the next couple of days and nights you see gringos all over the place in these weird costumes.

Laura´s group headed south to Paraty after Carnaval, I stayed for another day to catch up on some very much needed sleep. I came to Paraty 2 days ago but have been relaxing and not getting on it. I only have another week and it´s back to London, so I will stay here tonight and probably head back to Rio for a few days to finish off. I haven´t replaced my camera since it was robbed (all the pics on this entry were nicked from t´internet) but might get another in Rio so I can have some pics of Sugarloaf, Christ etc. Not sure though, I have a little hesitation about that in Rio!

Stranded!

It had to happen some time, but the timing was pretty bad. I was due to fly to Rio last night and on to Bogota in Colombia this morning. Checked out of my hostel yesterday morning and went to an internet place to write to my brother, and while I was there someone took my bag from under my seat. Inside it were my passports among other things, so I´m stuck in BA until I can get a passport replaced.

Getting a police report was harder than it needed to be - the police stations keep trying to fob you off to another station but eventually I found one that gave me a report. The Embassy were good; looks like I will have a replacement in 4 days which is pretty impressive. So I might get to see some of Colombia after all, and let´s face it, if I could pick any city in the world to be stranded in, BA would probably edge it ahead of Stockholm and Sydney.

My camera wasn´t a big deal as the pictures are all online anyway, the sunnies I can live without, I can get hold of all the music that was on my mp3 player, but my Spanish notes and dictionary are all gone, with US 500 dollars inside. I´m probably more pissed off about those than anything. But like I said, I´d expected something of this nature to happen to me at some point on this trip, and at least it didn´t happen at gunpoint. And at least my wallet wasn´t in my bag, then I really would have been totally screwed...

Iguazu Falls

So finally I struck out on my own again and took a bus for the first time in 7 weeks. It´s weird to be travelling again and being solo again but it´s about time I got on with it. It was around 17 hours north on the bus, and again it was comfortable and easy to sleep (though it would have been easier if I´d taken the trouble to get up and go for a piss when I started needing to).



Iguazu Falls sits on the border between Brazil and Argentina, on the river Rio Iguazu. You access the falls from Foz do Iguacu in Brazil or Puerto Iguazu in Argentina. My hostel was on the Argentine side. I pulled into town at lunch time and headed straight to the hostel for a swim. I didn´t get up to much for the rest of the day as it was oppressively hot. I put my name down for a pizza night at the hostel but put my head down at around 8pm intending to rest just for an hour and didn´t wake up.



2nd day I woke up early after that mammoth sleep, had a feed and got on a bus to go and see the Brazilian side of the Falls. From that side you get a more panoramic view whereas on the Argentine side there are more walks close up to the Falls. On the way to Brazil there was an Irish lad and his English girlfriend on the bus. We went and got our passports stamped into Brazil but when we came outside the passport control building the bus had gone. No big deal for me, as I heard you have to change buses there anyway. These poor guys though, they´d left their backpacks on the bus as they were pushing onward with their travels and weren´t on a day trip. They were pretty distraught so I stayed with them and helped them in a mission to find the bus and their bags. We jumped in a cab and went in search of the bus, but it was too far ahead. I explained to the taxi driver we needed to find the place where the bus would be going into in Foz do Iguacu and luckily enough we found it, and these guys´bags. A bit of a detour for me but nice to see the relief when they got their stuff back. They headed onwards to Sao Paolo and I took another bus up to the Falls.



I don´t think anything could have prepared me for my first view of the Falls. I´d seen pictures, sure, but there´s something about being there that leaves you in awe. You hear them before you see them and there´s an elevated walkway which comes out right by the Falls (the "Devil´s Throat" or "Garganta del Diablo" part of the Falls) where a further platform juts out to give you a better view close up.



There are 275 waterfalls spread out over a 2.7 km stretch of the river, two thirds of them within Argentina and the Devil´s Throat is the point where Brazil meets Argentina. At the moment Iguazu has the highest average water flow of any waterfall in the world, though at peak flows it´s outdone by Victoria Falls, between Zimbabwe and Zambia. When something combines this much power and beauty, you have to admire it. I´ll be looking forward to getting to the Argentine side in the next couple of days.



Day 3 and I got up at sparrow´s fart to go on a tour styling itself "a day in the jungle". It involves a walk through some jungle, where the guide tells you a little about some of the trees there and shows you some of the traps that the Gurani used to trap animals of various sizes, so that was pretty interesting. Next up we did a rock climb, then a zip-line, then climbed up a rope ladder, then another zip-line, then an abseil to finish the activities. These were fun and would have been fairly taxing anytime, but we did all this in a tropical storm which made it pretty tasty. I remember looking through the rope ladder at the Rio Iguazu as I was climbing up, and wondering what the fuck I was doing. We finished up with a boat trip along the Rio Iguazu to the confluence of that and the Rio Parana. At this point you are in between Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay. It was a shame the weather was so bad; that part of the tour you needed sunshine to make it better. The rain didn´t stop until mid afternoon, so I was glad I got out and did something in the morning.



Yesterday I went to the Argentine side, where you can get up close and personal with the falls. My mate Toby coined a phrase on our roadie in NZ for when you see something words can´t describe: "reach for your thesaurus..." and it was very much a case of "reach for your thesaurus" here. If there was a paradise on earth, it must look a lot like this.

There were a few big lizards knocking around. When one runs it´s got really exaggerated limb movements and looks like a stroppy child who hasn´t learned to run away gracefully yet. There are all sorts of mad butterflies but they don´t sit still long enough to make good models. Bit fidgety.



And weird birds, this one looks really evil...



and generally it´s just a magical place. When you get up close you really get a sense of the volume of water moving through the falls, makes water cannon look like a right pansy. It isn´t just the noise, it´s that you can see how much water is coming through. Have a look at the video clips on here to see what I mean.





Here´s another couple of clips.



Last night I got back on that 17 hour bus and came back to BA for a couple of days. It´s my birthday tomorrow so I wanted to spend that with friends rather than on the road. On Wednesday I´m off to Colombia for 3 weeks before I head back to London.

Here´s a few sights in BA I haven´t put in the blog yet....

This is Casa Rosada (literally translated as "Pink House") or the Presidential Palace. From the balacony here presidents have addressed crowds in the past and it´s also where Eva Peron did likewise. Madonna was warbling away from here on that movie "Evita".



This street - 9 de Julio - is rumoured to be the widest street in the world.



As with any such claim to fame (e.g. "Cranfield Airport handles the most flights per day in the world") this should be taken with a pinch of salt. There´s no doubting it´s wide though. At 16 lanes of traffic it´s even bigger than Lambton Quay in Wellington, and the signs even tell you to run, not walk:



In the middle sits one of BA´s most recognisable and iconic landmarks, the Obelisk ("Obelisco").



It was completed in 1936 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the founding of BA. It sits where the Argentine flag was first driven into the soil of this city. When Boca won the football league just before Christmas it was going mental here. Apparently it´s a bit of a spot to be when people´s teams win big matches, be it club or country.

Whenever you buy a paper, you´d likely buy it from one of these newspaper stands.



You never have to walk far, there must be 3 or 4 on every block of the bigger streets. They also tend to boast such glamorous titles as

Moving on from BA

I´ve been here around 6 weeks now and had a fantastic time. I´ve been lucky enough to meet a good crowd of people and have many, many fun nights out. My liver´s probably not as happy with the place as I´ve been, but such is life. This week I´ve had a couple of quiet nights in to try and get my body clock sorted out so I can be awake in the afternoons to get things sorted. It´s been a complete failure - I´ve been getting to sleep later than I would if I´d been out. My room´s so hot and I´ve had a few things on my mind, like when do I start work again, where do I go after BA, can I afford to go to Rio for Carnaval etc, that I´ve been awake until 10am.



I canned it with Maria last night as well but that is definitely for the best. So for the next few nights I´ll be out again, partly because ironically I´ll get better sleep that way but also because these next few nights will be my last in BA.



It´s been interesting talking to the locals about their city. They´re all relaxed, friendly and fun people, at least the ones I´ve met. But when you talk to them about what it´s like for them living and working here, almost without exception they´re really down on this place. According to them, making a living´s hard, the government´s fucked and the police are corrupt. I can see what they mean and there´s no doubt that life as a gringo traveler here is easier than life as a local, but you could argue that´s the same in any major city in the world. Possibly to a greater degree here than in some places, but still.



Inflation is a big problem here, with prices rising much faster than salaries, which is always a recipe for social unrest if played out over a long period of time. Aregntina had a painful period of military junta rule from 1976 until 1983. During this period aggressive economic reforms were pushed through (as they had been by Pinochet in Chile not much earlier), and Argentina´s "Dirty War" played out, with leftist and opposition groups being "disappeared" - 30,000 people snatched from the streets and tortured, often killed or never heard from again. That kind of relatively recent history is bound to leave traces of mistrust and cynicism among a population. So in a way it´s amazing that people are as friendly as they are, even if just superficially.



Where next for me? Don´t know really. I was going to go to Rio for Carnaval but checked hostel prices yesterday and I won´t be paying that much. In any case I fly back to London from Rio so I´ll get to go see it in a few weeks anyway. I´m not that fussed about Carnaval really. So I´ll go to Iguacu Falls next week, come back for my birthday and take it from there. At this stage looks like I´ll go back to Punta for a party the weekend after my birthday, and from there I´ll probably head to Colombia for a few weeks before heading back to London.



But with me, anything can happen so I´ll probably end up in a float in the Carnaval and wake up with a sore arse and no kidneys.

Punta del Este

After another big night we left BA at the crack of dawn and got a 3 hour ferry to Montevideo, and a 2 hour bus from there to Punta del Este. Having had no sleep to speak of, we were pretty shattered so we got to our luxurious (not) hotel and slept all day.

Our room must be around the smallest twin room in the world. We affectionately called it the match box as it wouldn´t make the grade of a shoe box.



Got up a bit groggy and went in search of a place for eats and drinks before a club. We took advice from the dude at hotel reception and took a map from him to help us on our way. The area we were after was only around 6 blocks away, by the port. So we left the hotel and started walking..... and kept walking..... and walking.... and decided that the map was a bit misleading.... and kept walking..... until we thought we might try and catch a bus. Another guy was waiting for the bus too, so we showed him the map and asked where we were. We were on the completely wrong side of town, half way to an area called La Barra on the end of the peninsula. So we crossed the road to try and catch a taxi or bus, but none came so it was an hour´s walk back the way we´d come.

Eventually we got back to town and had some food and a laugh about our self inflicted misfortune and duly headed to the port. A year ago we´d been to Thailand and happened to be there the same time all the Aussie school kids finish their year and jump on a plane to Thailand to get wasted for a week. This area was strangely reminiscent of that. It was weird, I expected there to only be people around our age here but in the port area we were like granddads. Again. The last bar we went to, we tried to get upstairs but they wouldn´t let us up.



I was trying to explain to them in Spanish that we just wanted to get up for a drink, we weren´t out for any trouble. He asked if we were American and when he learned that we were kiwis he was all keen for us to go up after all. Pretty funny, and a good example of why it sometimes helps to come from a country where the travelers have a generally good reputation. Had a couple of beers until the sun came up, dropped into a cafe for breakfast on the way home, and got our heads down.



Next day we headed for a feed at the beach (the right direction this time) and decided we´d try out a club we´d heard about called Crobar, in La Barra, which was supposed to be pretty cool. So we got a bus out to La Barra (or somewhere close to it) and had a few looseners at a quiet bar. We asked the waiter where Crobar was and he told us it had closed for the season. I knew that the high season for parties in Punta only runs from Christmas to the 2nd week of January but it was still a shock to hear we´d missed it altogether. What kind of "party place" only has a 2-3 week window of opportunity? It was a disgrace. So we were totally fed up with Punta at this stage. Nobody our age and no clubs. Great. Full of shit apartment blocks and schoolies.



So we went for an empanada and considered our options, and decided we´d head back to BA a day early. There was another bar we´d heard about, so we decided to head there and see, on the off chance, if it was any good. And it was. Real good. We tucked into the cocktails and the bar staff loved us. The crowd in there was slightly older than the other places we´d been. Still younger than us, but at least not schoolies. We had a pretty good night in there. We invented a cocktail consisting of champagne and coke. In BA a few nights previously, Jason ordered a Jim Beam and Coke and was given a champagne and coke. The bargirl was looking at him kind of funny, on reflection. But anyway, it´s actually an ok drink. So it´s France meets the US, and we called it a Sarkozy Obama. The bar staff were loving it.



Our final day we went and changed our tickets to leave a day earlier, had some food, went to the casino for a bit of a flutter, and headed back to the same bar as the 2nd night to a heroes´welcome. We ordered a Sarkozy Obama and the bar staff were falling about laughing. There were Uruguayan girls dripping off us, must have been something in the water. They were super hot as well. I forgot to get my camera out for the most part because I was just staring open mouthed at the local beauties. I missed Maria in Buenos Aires though, so I didn´t get into anyone, I was just enjoying talking to them.



So Punta came good in the end, but if we hadn´t found that bar I´d have had a very different experience of the place. I´ll try and take some mates from BA over there in a few weeks as that bar has a good looking party happening on Feb 14th, so hopefully I can drum up some support. If I head back there the bar staff will crack up when we walk in. I´m back in BA now, and we had a heroes´welcome last night. We´d only been away for 3 days but I missed my friends and the feeling was mutual. So I guess I´ll be in BA until we go back to Punta for a weekend, then I might go to Iguacu Falls for a few days. But after that I will probably custard pie Rio for Carnavale and come back to BA. Especially if things are working out nicely with Maria. You don´t meet a girl like that and piss off in a hurry.

....and Buenos Aires keeps entertaining...

Man, what a place. I´ve been having a blast here every night since new year. I continued lessons for a couple of weeks, in those afternoon classes, and they were pretty good. I´ve finished now as I have learned all I´d reasonably need to know for the rest of my time here, and just need to practice that. If I was going to be in South America for longer I´d probably take more classes and work a bit harder at it generally, but it´s not necessary and I´ve paid enough out on classes already. I still get complimented a lot on the amount I can speak and understand in the time I´ve been learning, so that´s encouraging.

The apartment continues to entertain. This is the view from my bed......


And this is the view from my balcony.....



I´ve had a pretty unbelieveable run of luck with the girls here too. I wasn´t sure whether it was just a myth that they like westerners but from what I´ve seen it´s true. One in particular I´ve been seeing a fair bit of the last few days and I´ll miss her when I do decide to move on. Sure I´ll live, though.



My mate Jason from NZ is here for a few days, so we´ve been hitting it pretty hard and having plenty of fun. Tomorrow we´re off to Punta del Este, in Uruguay, for 4 days. It´s supposed to be like the Ibiza of South America and it´s where loads of models and generally hot women hang out, so it should be interesting.



After that Jase will head back to the Caymans, where he´s working, and I´ll need to start getting my head and body together for life back on the road. I´ll probably have another 2 weeks in BA and plan a little more. After that I might head to Rosario for a few days, then go check out Iguacu Falls and then push up into Brazil with the aim of being in Rio for Carnaval. Not that that´s gonna be a massive party or anything.....

Christmas and New Year in B.A.

Feels like it´s been a busy time. And it has. And it gets harder to update this the longer I leave it. The other weekend I moved into the apartment, in the city centre. I´m sharing with Paula from Colombia, Christian from Germany and Paul from Newcastle. It´s been fun from the get-go here. I had a quiet one on the Sunday when I moved in but that was ok as I was starting my course on Monday. The course was ok, I had group lessons the first week but there were only 2 of us in the beginners class. The first couple of days we were going over stuff I already knew from my time traveling here so that was pretty slow. Next night I was out with Christian and a mate of his from Germany. That somehow turned into a 5am finish without there being much going on.

The next night I went to the final of the football playoffs here. In Argentina, at the end of the season if there´s more than one team on the same points at the top of the league, they have a playoff to determine the champions - goal difference doesn´t come into it. This year, for the first time ever, there were 3 teams on the same points, so there were 3 playoffs between Boca, Tigre and San Lorenzo, all held on neutral ground at Racing´s stadium. I didn´t go to either of the first to but this was the final, between Boca and Tigre. And what an experience.

I never thought I´d find myself at a championship final in South America, but it´s everything I´d have wanted to see. For safety reasons they didn´t sell the ground out, and there were only 30,000 or so in the crowd, but they made the noise of a full crowd. Especially the Tigre fans, who were far outnumbered by the Boca section but who sometimes drowned the Boca support out. It was their first time challenging for the title and you could see (and hear) how much it meant to them. They were up against it - following the other playoff results, Tigre needed to beat Boca by 2 goals to be champions. Boca could draw or lose by 1 goal and still win the title. So the game needed a Tigre goal to make things interesting.

And it came, but with only 25 minutes remaining. It was a frenetic finish to the game but Tigre couldn´t add another, and Boca took the title. We wanted Tigre to win, as their fans were better and Boca get all the kudos anyway, but being in the Boca section when they won the league was amazing.

After the football we went to a party way out in the sticks, some place Paula´s cousin knew of. We didn´t get back until 5 again and I slept through my alarm, so missed my classes on the Wednesday. I was pretty pissed off with myself so needed to find a way to go to bed earlier last week. It didn´t happen. It´s a pain in the arse that classes start at 9. When you´re in BA, it´s a late night city and you want to get out and experience it, so afternoon classes would have been a way better idea.

We had no classes on Christmas Day, so Wednesday we went round to some Colombian friends of Paulas apartment in the San Telmo neighbourhood. They cooked us some awesome Cololmbian food and we had a few drinks. Their apartment was amazing, on the top floor of a converted old mansion block, with a big balcony overlooking the city. At midnight there were fireworks going off all over the city, so you could sometimes see some splashes of colour in the sky and the noise was like downdown Baghdad on a bad day. In BA, people don´t usually go out to late bars and clubs until 2am, but on Christmas that gets even later. We went out at 4 to a club and it was heaving with the people there to see a live band. I called stumps early and was home by 8.

Boxing Day I had classes again and think I made them. I can´t remember. Then was the weekend so we met up with a big crowd and went to Palermo to a bar, club and after party til 10 on Sunday. All good fun. Had another night out in San Telmo on the Sunday which again was something like 7am finish but somehow managed to make my class on the Monday. Last week I was the only person in my class. It would have been a good opportunity to make a lot of progress on my Spanish but, you know how it is, period between xmas and new year was amazing here. Again out every night until 5, 6, 7. We were going to try to have a quiet night on the 30th to save it for new years eve but after my class I met up with a bunch of people and we ended up going for a walk around some tourist attractions in Recoleta and having a big night again.

So I missed classes again on Wednesday and slept most of the day. That night we went to my old hostel in Palermo for an asado (barbeque) til around 1 or 2 then headed to a loft party which was really good and reminded me a lot of some Sunday parties I´ve been to in London. From there to some people´s apartment in the Puerto Madero area for more party til the following evening.

I´ve been lucky enough to meet maybe more people in the last 3 weeks than I have done in any 3 week period of my life. A real variety, travellers and locals alike. Most places I´ve been to, I can´t really be bothered that much with travelers, but here they are different. I guess they´re maybe a bit older on average than travelers from other places, and most people have something about them. The locals have really surprised me too. After liking Santiago so much, I thought they might be a bit cold here but it´s the opposite. They want to know your story and they´re supportive when you´re trying to speak Spanish and making a hash of it. I haven´t been working so hard on my Spanish the last week because of all the parties, but a lot of people I met are on the road again for a few weeks so I´ll change school to afternoon lessons closer to home and hopefully get back on track again. And I´ll continue going out and chatting to locals, as that is a good way to let things become habit.

Pictures to follow, and more about the city, the language, and a potted history of Argentina.

Happy New Year!