Rio Part II. The end of the road. For now.

I´m back in Rio for a few days before heading back to London, work and the real world. Paraty was relaxed which was just what the medico ordered. I was a bit crook there - maybe my body was telling me something. Maybe it was telling me I shouldn't have gone at it like that in Rio, but maybe it was telling me I shouldn't have stopped....



I decided to treat myself for my last 4 days back in Rio and checked into a sweet hotel with a pool on the roof and waiters that emphasise the bowing. I figured it would be good for me to relax for a few days before heading back to work.

Corcovado has a commanding view over Rio, and since 1931 has been home to the iconic statue of Christ the Redeemer. At 130 feet tall and 98 feet wide, it's almost the biggest of its kind and took 9 years to complete. A cable car takes you to the top and back, full of tour group cameras madly clicking away as if the tour group's life depended on it, each click presumably being barely different from the last.



The views from Corcovado can be a bit hit and miss depending on how hazy it is. And it's usually hazy.



On one side towards the Macarana stadium was really hazy but on the other side, towards Ipanema and Copacabana was clearer.



Sugarloaf also has amazing views of the city and its beaches and hours passed quickly taking it all in. The sun set in a line back towards Corcovado which was pretty special.



The night lights are something too. It must be amazing to be a pilot and see the city lights in a night landing in Rio.



It's a city of contrasts, as cliched as that might sound. Like many big cities all over the world, there's an uncomfortable coexistence of uber wealth and desperate poverty. And with that comes plenty of crime. All of this set among one of the most stunning cities you can imagine.



There are birds with big wingspans that ride the thermal currents all over Rio, and you can spend ages watching them at Corcovado and Sugarloaf. I tried to get all National Geographic on them.





And like one of these I'll be taking to the air tonight back to London. It´s been an amazing few months so I can´t complain. I never made it to Bolivia, Peru or Colombia, but they´ll all be here for next time. I loved Argentina and of course BA. Patagonia was stunning and seeing it with my brother made it even better, and I ended up having a great time in Rio too. I'll miss good cheap steak and wine, the nightlife - la nocturna, being surrounded by different languages and las mujeres. I'll miss the lazy evenings and the big nights too.

But, as you do, I'm already thinking of next time.

Carnaval!

I ended up being stuck in BA for a further week, which wasn´t all bad. Got to see my friends a little longer and do some things I never got round to before.

I flew from BA to Rio, and was supposed to fly to Colombia for a few days but when I went to check in at Rio for my Colombia flight, they had no record of my booking. It was a good thing - as soon as I thought I'd booked my flight to Colombia, it struck me that forking out so much to have only 10 days there was no good idea. So it was a relief. And being stuck in Rio for Carnaval turned out to be fantastic.

To my surprise, I managed to find a hostel online from the airport. To no surprise, they'd crammed the punters in for Carnaval. Lining the walls of my dorm were hazardous looking 4 decker bunks, and air from the overworked and ancient fan in my dorm didn't reach my bed on the bottom level. And if I thought my room in BA was hot..... If you want to lose weight in your sleep, this is the place for you. Sleep wasn't too high on my agenda for the next few days, so no problema. The location was great - Ipanema. I'm not sure whether I saw the legendary Girl From Ipanema, On that section of the beach there were however plenty of Gays From Ipanema.

The word Carnaval is derived from carne (meat) and levare (raise), and owes its origin to the traditional practice (for some) during Lent of giving up meat. Nowadays, from what I gather, it's customary (for some) to give something up for Lent, whether that be a specific meat, red or white meat, meat in general or something totally unrelated to meat. Whatever, when you know you're going without something you're not used to going without, for 40 days, you have a blowout. Rio's is by no means the only festival. Salvador's is said to be better, and it's celebrated all over Brazil and throughout South America.

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 big group and a BIG party. Hard as it was to match the fun I had in BA, this was pretty out there. Rio´s a crazy city during Carnaval and a shock to the system after BA. I had a great time here but I don't know if I'd come back. On my first night, Laura and I were robbed as one guy stood over us with a broken bottle and his mates went through our pockets and emptied them. There was no point getting sliced or worse for the sake of a few bucks, and it happens. This is Rio at Carnaval. A lot of Cariocas get out for Carnaval, while there's a temporary influx of criminals and opportunists from outside the city. 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 valuables. Apparently there were 3 places in Copacabana that had the same thing. Mental. In that context, for us it wasn´t so bad.

All the neighbourhoods have street parties ("blocos") all day, dancing and drinking and the occasional truck inching down the street blaring out music. The thing Rio´s Carnaval´s best known for is the Sambadrome, which is a huge competition involving teams from all different samba schools who design costumes and elaborate floats, some of them staggering in size. The samba schools spend months putting these together and working on their outfits and moves.

It´s an incredible spectacle and exceeded anything I thought might be the deal here. Our stand was at the 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.

There is of course more to Rio than Carnaval. I'm getting some much needed sleep, going to Paraty to relax and recover for a few days, and coming back to see the sights before I go back to London.

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 pass you off by claiming it falls just outside their jurisdiction, but eventually I found one that gave me a report thanks to my amiga Valeria, whose Spanish is perfect. The Embassy said I should have a replacement in 4 days which is pretty impressive. So I might get to see some of Colombia after all, and for now if I could pick any city in the world to be stranded in, BA would probably edge it.

Having my valuables stolen was and is an arse, but it's only stuff, and I´m more pissed off about my notes than anything. But I´d expected something like this to happen to me at some point on this trip, and at least I wasn't knifed or anything. 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. 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. Why do we ever think we can win?)



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 too hot to be getting up to much.



I woke up early after a mammoth sleep and took the bus to go and see the Brazilian side of the Falls. From that side you get a more panoramic sight whereas on the Argentine side there are more walks close up. On the way to Brazil there was an Irish lad and his English girlfriend on the bus. You get out to get passports stamped into Brazil, but when we emerged from the passport control building the bus had gone. It was no big deal for me as I thought I had to change buses there for the falls. These guys had left their backpacks on the bus as they were pushing onward with their travels and weren´t on a day trip. We jumped in a cab and went in search of the bus, but it was too far ahead. We pegged it to the city of Foz do Iguacu, where the bus was headed, and somehow found it, and their bags. Luck of the Irish...



I don´t think anything could have prepared me for my first view of the Falls. I´d seen pictures, 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 to one of the heaviest flows of the Falls - the "Devil´s Throat" or "Garganta del Diablo" - 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 loses in a flow-off to Victoria Falls. When something combines this much power and beauty, you have to admire it. I was looking forward to getting to the Argentine side in the next couple of days.



Next day I went 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 and shows you some of the traps that the Gurani used to trap animals of various sizes. Next up we did a rock climb, then a zip-line, climbed up a rope ladder, to another zip-line, then an abseil to finish. It was 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 swinging rope ladder at a raging river as I was climbing up, and wondering what the fuck I was doing. After that they took us on a boat trip along the Rio Iguazu to the confluence of that and the Rio Parana. This is where Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay meet. It was a shame the weather was so bad; that part of the tour you needed sunshine to make it better.



On the Argentine side, you get up close and personal with the falls. My mate Toby introduced me to a phrase on our roadie in NZ for when you see something there aren't enough words to describe: "reach for your thesaurus..." and it was very much a case of "reach for your thesaurus" here. If there were a paradise on earth, it would look a lot like this.

There were a few big lizards running around, with those exaggerated limb movements like a child who hasn´t yet learned to run properly. There are all sorts of mad butterflies but they don´t sit still long enough to make good models.



And some interesting birds, this one looks really evil... Check the eyes...



It´s a magical place. You wouldn't want to lean over too far though. I swear I read recently about a guy falling in and surviving by sheer fluke. When you get up close you really get a sense of the volume of water moving through the falls. It isn´t just the noise, you can see how much water is rushing through. Have a look at the video clips below to see what I mean.








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 balcony here presidents have addressed crowds in the past and it´s where Eva Peron did likewise famously.



This street - Avenida 9 de Julio ("9th of July". being Independence Day) - is said to be the widest street in the world. As with any claim to fame like this (usually it's a city claiming it has the biggest shopping mall, as if that's something to be proud of), this might or might not be true.



Don't get me wrong, it's fricking wide. With 16 lanes to cross, 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! My advice to you if you should find yourself here in January and February is to make air conditioning a Must Have......



So for the next few nights I´ll be out again, partly because (honest) 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 ("Portenos") about their city. They´re intelligent, 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 the place. They tell me making a living´s hard, the government´s fucked and the police are corrupt. I can see what they mean, and some or all of those criticisms apply to many places, but that doesn't help the problem.



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. It reminded me of so many of the eastern European countries I saw which got burned by the IMF and still bear the scars.

Argentina 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, and 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? I was thinking of going to Rio for Carnaval but checked hostel prices yesterday and they're pretty steep. In any case I fly back to London from Rio so I´ll get to get see it. So I´ll go to Iguacu Falls next week, come back for my birthday and take it from there.



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 (not very) luxurious 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. Not that it's on my to-to list, but there wasn't enough room to swing a cat.



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. It was harder to get it that wrong than it would have been to get it right.

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 final 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.



Had a couple of beers until the sun came up, dropped into a cafe for breakfast on the way home. Good eggs.



Next day we decided we´d try out a club we´d heard about called Crobar, in La Barra. 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 heard the best time for parties in Punta runs from Christmas to the 2nd week of January so it was a shock to hear that "best time" was really "only time" and it goes from all on to absolutely nothing overnight. We´d missed it altogether. I think crestfallen's the word. So we were fed up with Punta at this point. Nobody our age and no clubs. 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 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. The crowd was still younger than us, but at least not schoolies. We invented a cocktail consisting of champagne and coke. In BA a few nights before, 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 a tasty beverage. So it´s France meets the US, and we called it a Sarkozy Obama.



I'm not sure if anyone ever told me how beautiful Uruguayans are but that was a well guarded secret. I forgot to get my camera out for the most part because I was just staring open mouthed at the local beauties.



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. Maybe I'll try going during that now-apparent very fixed window...

....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 compliments sometimes on the amount I can speak and understand in the time I´ve been learning, so that´s encouraging.

Buenos Aires (literally, Good or Fair Winds) is the 3rd biggest city in South America, which makes it pretty damn big. In 1536 a port was founded where the district of San Telmo now stands, called Santa María del Buen Aire, which translates as "Our Lady of the Fair Winds"). The indigenous folks, naturally, didn't take kindly to the newcomers and attacked the settlement, which was abandoned by the would-be settlers in 1541. Then in 1580 Juan de Garay sailed down the Parana River from Paraguay and successfully re-established the place. He kind of kept the former name, but opted for the elaborate Ciudad de la Santísima Trinidad y Puerto de Santa María del Buen Aire. Try saying that ten times fast. It translates as "City of the Most Holy Trinity and Port of Saint Mary of the Fair Winds" but inevitably good sense prevailed within 100 years, bringing the more convenient name we use today.

The city's divided into barrios. There's the microcentro, which is far from micro but undoubtedly centro, and is where I live in the heart of BA. To the north is Recoleta, another busy commercial area but not as intense, and with a few tourist attractions, and beyond that Palermo, more affluent with wider streets, bigger parks, nicer bars and beautiful people, in both the positive and negative sense. On the western side of microcentro is artsy San Telmo, where I spend many lazy evenings before the big nights, in Plaza Dorrego sipping the local beer - Quilmes - and sometimes spying on the tango dancers. Puerto Madero is like a big dockside development where lots of office workers go after work to unwind. South of centre is colourful La Boca, home to the famous Boca Juniors that Diego Maradona played for. Those are just a few central ones, there are many more but these are the areas you're more likely to come across. There's areas within areas too, like the street that's got a cluster of Irish bars. The Guinness costs almost double what it does in Dublin or even London but it tastes soooo goooooooood.......

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


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



I´ve had a little luck with the girls here too. I wasn´t sure whether it was just a myth that they like western guys 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.



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 princesses hang out, so it should be, uh, 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 go to Rosario for a few days, then check out Iguazu Falls and then push up into Brazil towards Rio for Carnaval. Not that that´s gonna be a massive party or anything.....