We decided to head out of Uyuni the next morning, we needed to get back to a warmer climate before our fingers fell off. That night we headed out to the only generater lit restaurant in town to get us some pizza. An hour of waiting and they finialy gave us menus, another hour and we got drinks, yet another hour and two of the people we were with got some pizza... half an hour on, apparently that was all that we ordered and we wern't getting anymore. Alot of fuss later and two more pizzas arrive, by this point we were so fed up we stayed just long enough to eat it before heading back to the hostel. The next morning we went to the terminal to get our bus to Sucre, a nice one turns up going to the same place but we are told we are not allowed to get on it and have to wait for another one. A clanky old thing arrives and we have to throw our bags up onto the roof before getting on. It's half 9 in the morning and there is a drunk local infront of us... great! 10 mins into our 14 hour journey and he is puking. We drive for about 5 minutes longer and run out of petrol, the bus now rolls down a dodgy mountain road and back to the petrol station before we continue on the journey. About half an hour later pukey is at it again this time all over my shoes and our rucksack, gross!! The little kid who doesn't get a seat is lying on the puke covered floor eating peanuts a la puke.... nice. His mother then proceeds to suffocate him with a plastic bag until he nearly collapses, she finds this hilarious! A little kid sitting a few seats away then craps himself stinking out the whole bus... not the best journey we have ever had.
We get to Potosi, the highest city in the world, pretty cool but we get about a 5minute view of it before we are hearded onto the next bus where we don't get seats... brilliant! Half an hour in and a few people get off so we can sit down, we met some cool english people on the bus called Christian and Richard. We got accomodation together and spent the next few days exploring the city with them, it was a pretty expensive place to stay though so we left after 2 days and arrived in La Paz this morning after a freezing 12 hour bus ride. We did get an all you can eat pancake breakfast at our hostel when we arrived though!
Sunday, 26 July 2009
Riders on the Storm
After Vilazon we got on a bumpy crowded bus to Tupiza, the next town up on the way to Uyuni and the saltflats. After the bus we were pretty knackered and crossed the road from the terminal so the cheapest and most run down hostel we have probably stayed in so far, the whole thing stunk of pee. We were planning to buy a train ticket from there the next morning, but after being about 70th in the queue at the station we got to the front to find that the tickets had all sold out and the next train wasnt for 3 days! There were tours leaving from Tupiza, however, slightly more expensive and for 4days instead of 3 but we decided it was probably worth it as Tupiza wasn't the most exciting of towns to stick around in for so long. We stayed in a really cheap and nice hostel that night with the hottest shower so far, our door didn't have a handle though so when se shut it we realised we couldn't get out of the room and had to shout for a good 20mins before someone came to let us out with a pair of scissors.
The next morning we left on our salt flat tour with two Danish guys who were called, Jon and Peter, they were pretty funny and we were glad not to be put with some stuck up Frenchies who were leaving at the same time in a different jeep. We drove out of the town for about an hour before we came to an amazing canyon about 3500m up, you could see for miles over all the mountains it was really incredable. The roads were pretty sketchy though and there were a few time when we were sure we were going over the edge down a 1000m drop. Next stop was around 4000m up for lunch in a field of llamas, after chasing them and looking at their poo piles (they all crap in the same place then sleep on massive piles of their own shit) we decided to run up a near by hill, half way up and not used to the altitude we had to take a break before reaching the top. Then lunch, sandwiches and tamales (meat and corn mash wraped in corn leaves) was pretty good and definately raised the expectations for the rest of the meals...
We stayed in a really local and sweet little village that night, when we got there we decided to climb up another hill to look over at the surrounding, nearly at the top we found a little cave full of sheep with pink wool tags in their ears, we climbed in passed the poo piles to take some photos before climbing to the top of the hill. Dinner that night was a disappointment, hot-yes, salty-yes, edible-not so much. It gets dark at about 6 30 so after a few rounds of cards we were all in bed at about 9, ready for our 5am start, ouch! The next morning we drove for about an hour until we got to old Spanish ruins dating from about 1500, we stopped there to take photos and watch the sunrise. That day was probably the best of the whole trip, we entered into one of the Bolivian national parks and saw all of the lagoons, there were some hot springs to swim in if we wanted, I didn't but Drew and Peter decided to brave the bitter wind and get into the water. After that lunch and then on to Lagoona Verde, one of the most picturesque sights we have ever seen, the water is so green and behind it is a huge volcano, behind that, Chile. Apparently the water gets to around -55 without freezing. After another couple of hours drive we reached some geezers 5000m up in the mountains. They were increadble but by this point the wind was picking up so it was hard to stay outside for long. That night we stayed in some very rickety accomodation with a straw roof so full of holes that we could see the stars. It was freezing! We didn't realise at the time but we were also in the middle of a hurracane, the wind was so strong that night that all of the jeeps car alarms were set off at various intervals in the night, no sleep for us. The next day we didn't get to see alot as the wind was so strong all of the sand and dust was flying everywhere making it impossible to get out of the car. We did at one point to see some flamingoes braving the cold in a red lagoon, we didn't stay outside long, Peter could lean back into the wind and it would hold him up. After a dusty lunch sheltering behind rocks we were off again through the sand storm and on to our accomodation, that night a hotel made out of salt bricks, the floor was completely covered in salt and it was quite a bit warmer than the previous nights accomodation. However, the food seemed to have been made out of the walls, we got salt with a bit of broccoli and some canned meat. The table next to us had lasagne and red wine, we were seriously unimpressed and went very hungry!
The fourth day was another 5am start to see the sunrise over the saltflats. That was amazing and we spent hours taking some awesome perspective photographs. We had breakfast by an island made of coral and covered in cacti. There were little gray kittens running about and one climbed into my hood and slept there while i ate breakfast. After some more photos of the saltflats, and getting chased by an angry bolivian because we climbed on his salt piles, we had an 11 o'clock salty lunch and were dropped into Uyuni. It had been a good 4days without a shower so we deliberately picked and payed extra for a hotel with hot water. Turns out the hurracane had wiped out all electricity here and there was no hot water, stinky us!
Drew's tainted experience
Well.... Tupiza was really cool, cactisus were cool, hugged a fair few. The Salt flat tour itself was incredible but throwing up during a hurricane was a little bit strange, especially as there was no electricity to work my way to the toilet with a mouthful of regurgitated salt...tasty. Also, in my salty state, a managed to destroy the danes at their own card game rendering Peter an arsehole, reigning as King till the next day when they acted together in an act of treason to reduce me to the arsehole. I hope they feel good, picking on the guy with Hepatitus E. On the plus side, I have an awesome yellowy tan and I've heard people pay a lot for yellow contact lenses. But that aside, the tour was incredible and I managed to get out into the cold enough times, 15 seconds and you're shaking, Abi enjoyed the experience from the jeep most times, a wiser choice. 3 days without food and on a salt flat kind of screws with your perspective, everything looks a few meters away but takes half a days drive to reach, im certain I made it 500 miles before nearly blacking out, maybe a couple of metres, who knows. O yea, we found an Alpacca graveyard which was really cool, thousands of alpacca bones piled together. Too many cool things to write about, definately a life experience!!! A cold, salty, alpaccery life experience!!!
The next morning we left on our salt flat tour with two Danish guys who were called, Jon and Peter, they were pretty funny and we were glad not to be put with some stuck up Frenchies who were leaving at the same time in a different jeep. We drove out of the town for about an hour before we came to an amazing canyon about 3500m up, you could see for miles over all the mountains it was really incredable. The roads were pretty sketchy though and there were a few time when we were sure we were going over the edge down a 1000m drop. Next stop was around 4000m up for lunch in a field of llamas, after chasing them and looking at their poo piles (they all crap in the same place then sleep on massive piles of their own shit) we decided to run up a near by hill, half way up and not used to the altitude we had to take a break before reaching the top. Then lunch, sandwiches and tamales (meat and corn mash wraped in corn leaves) was pretty good and definately raised the expectations for the rest of the meals...
We stayed in a really local and sweet little village that night, when we got there we decided to climb up another hill to look over at the surrounding, nearly at the top we found a little cave full of sheep with pink wool tags in their ears, we climbed in passed the poo piles to take some photos before climbing to the top of the hill. Dinner that night was a disappointment, hot-yes, salty-yes, edible-not so much. It gets dark at about 6 30 so after a few rounds of cards we were all in bed at about 9, ready for our 5am start, ouch! The next morning we drove for about an hour until we got to old Spanish ruins dating from about 1500, we stopped there to take photos and watch the sunrise. That day was probably the best of the whole trip, we entered into one of the Bolivian national parks and saw all of the lagoons, there were some hot springs to swim in if we wanted, I didn't but Drew and Peter decided to brave the bitter wind and get into the water. After that lunch and then on to Lagoona Verde, one of the most picturesque sights we have ever seen, the water is so green and behind it is a huge volcano, behind that, Chile. Apparently the water gets to around -55 without freezing. After another couple of hours drive we reached some geezers 5000m up in the mountains. They were increadble but by this point the wind was picking up so it was hard to stay outside for long. That night we stayed in some very rickety accomodation with a straw roof so full of holes that we could see the stars. It was freezing! We didn't realise at the time but we were also in the middle of a hurracane, the wind was so strong that night that all of the jeeps car alarms were set off at various intervals in the night, no sleep for us. The next day we didn't get to see alot as the wind was so strong all of the sand and dust was flying everywhere making it impossible to get out of the car. We did at one point to see some flamingoes braving the cold in a red lagoon, we didn't stay outside long, Peter could lean back into the wind and it would hold him up. After a dusty lunch sheltering behind rocks we were off again through the sand storm and on to our accomodation, that night a hotel made out of salt bricks, the floor was completely covered in salt and it was quite a bit warmer than the previous nights accomodation. However, the food seemed to have been made out of the walls, we got salt with a bit of broccoli and some canned meat. The table next to us had lasagne and red wine, we were seriously unimpressed and went very hungry!
The fourth day was another 5am start to see the sunrise over the saltflats. That was amazing and we spent hours taking some awesome perspective photographs. We had breakfast by an island made of coral and covered in cacti. There were little gray kittens running about and one climbed into my hood and slept there while i ate breakfast. After some more photos of the saltflats, and getting chased by an angry bolivian because we climbed on his salt piles, we had an 11 o'clock salty lunch and were dropped into Uyuni. It had been a good 4days without a shower so we deliberately picked and payed extra for a hotel with hot water. Turns out the hurracane had wiped out all electricity here and there was no hot water, stinky us!
Drew's tainted experience
Well.... Tupiza was really cool, cactisus were cool, hugged a fair few. The Salt flat tour itself was incredible but throwing up during a hurricane was a little bit strange, especially as there was no electricity to work my way to the toilet with a mouthful of regurgitated salt...tasty. Also, in my salty state, a managed to destroy the danes at their own card game rendering Peter an arsehole, reigning as King till the next day when they acted together in an act of treason to reduce me to the arsehole. I hope they feel good, picking on the guy with Hepatitus E. On the plus side, I have an awesome yellowy tan and I've heard people pay a lot for yellow contact lenses. But that aside, the tour was incredible and I managed to get out into the cold enough times, 15 seconds and you're shaking, Abi enjoyed the experience from the jeep most times, a wiser choice. 3 days without food and on a salt flat kind of screws with your perspective, everything looks a few meters away but takes half a days drive to reach, im certain I made it 500 miles before nearly blacking out, maybe a couple of metres, who knows. O yea, we found an Alpacca graveyard which was really cool, thousands of alpacca bones piled together. Too many cool things to write about, definately a life experience!!! A cold, salty, alpaccery life experience!!!
Thursday, 16 July 2009
Wild Wild West
After the skydive we stayed one more day in cordoba before heading north to Salta. The guys we jumped with got our bus up to Salta so we all got a hostel together, big dorm room of 6; it was small, cheap and very cold! They were all lovely and we spent the next 4 days with them. When we had dumped our bags we headed off to climb a hill on the edge of the city, it was pretty hot surprisingly and so we were all wearing a few too many clothes, it got a bit chilly when we were sitting in the cafe at the top though. The view was amazing you could see the whole city below and the mountains in the distance (thats right Dad ive got off my lazy bum and done a bit of walking! 1070 steep steps to the top!) Drew ran the whole thing... silly child. Our camera got stolen at the bus station in Cordoba and we didnt notice until we were on the bus to Salta so couldn´t do anything about it. We spent the next afternoon in the police station trying to get a report for it, luckily the other English people spoke very good spanish and were able to translate. We are terrible and end up reverting to French when we cant find the right words, they dont understand that any better. We went on a wine tour the next day to a sweet little town called Cafayate. The trip there was pretty amazing through the mountains and we got to climp up some rocks on the way there. Bit disappointing because of our lack of camera as the scenery was amazing! We tried all their wine but we wernt too impressed, the red wine especially was not good. However, they did have some pretty awesome wine ice cream, yum. There was a big BBQ at the hostel that night which was fun, good meat and free wine. On our last day in Salta we went on a horse trek, it was really good fun but I was shoved on the biggest, fattest horse and my legs could deffinately feel it the next day. We headed North up to a little town called Tilcara, it was in a valley surrounded by mountains and looked like it had come straight out of a Western. They had an authentic South American market there but everything was a complete rip off and as we were heading to Bolivia the next day we decided to wait and buy alpaca jumpers later. We stayed in a house run by some really cool hippy guys, they gave us loads of beer and taught Drew to play the Charango, Si. Has to have been the coldest night yet though, we slept in all our clothes and loads of blankets, could still feel the cold! Today we left Tilcara to go to another little town called Humahuaca on our way to La Quiera, the border town to Bolivia. We crossed the border at about 2 and realised that my debit card had been stolen! Not been a good week for keeping track of our items. On the plus side there is a huge black market for cameras here and we are going to buy a new one tomorrow before hitting the salt flats on Saturday. (Google the saltflats in Bolivia and you will see the kind of cool pictures we want to take). Bolivia is alot cheaper than Argentina, we have already stocked up on the alpaca gloves and hats in preparation for the salt flats which apparently gets to -15 at night, and we thought it was cold here!!!!
Drew´s Summary
As a professional Charangoist, I feel I can buy a poncho and hippie my way through the cactus mountains surviving on coca alone. I battled many dogs and conquered a weird rock formation thingy, like a kinda massive cave thats kinda all wrong and stuff with funny lines and you get confuzzelled because it looks like you´re looking straight ahead when you looking up. Well the moral of the story is that I defeated it. I also feel I contributed to the problem that is endangered cows of Argentina, luckily Bolivia seems to serve most of their food with a variety of mystery meat, one was chicken and one was definately dodo. I have also set my sighs on a dream camera, for those of you that care, 16x zoom and 10.2 megapixels, sweet. How I love yet hate the black market. Steal my camera but replace it with a more powerful one. Im going to buy a Charango to help me recover from Horse drawn balls. One last piece of information, I´m well on my way to fooling to animal kingdon that I am, myself, an Alpaca - gloves, hat, socks and much more tomorrow.
After all his waffle do you see why I write the blog?
Drew´s Summary
As a professional Charangoist, I feel I can buy a poncho and hippie my way through the cactus mountains surviving on coca alone. I battled many dogs and conquered a weird rock formation thingy, like a kinda massive cave thats kinda all wrong and stuff with funny lines and you get confuzzelled because it looks like you´re looking straight ahead when you looking up. Well the moral of the story is that I defeated it. I also feel I contributed to the problem that is endangered cows of Argentina, luckily Bolivia seems to serve most of their food with a variety of mystery meat, one was chicken and one was definately dodo. I have also set my sighs on a dream camera, for those of you that care, 16x zoom and 10.2 megapixels, sweet. How I love yet hate the black market. Steal my camera but replace it with a more powerful one. Im going to buy a Charango to help me recover from Horse drawn balls. One last piece of information, I´m well on my way to fooling to animal kingdon that I am, myself, an Alpaca - gloves, hat, socks and much more tomorrow.
After all his waffle do you see why I write the blog?
Friday, 10 July 2009
10,400ft, a parachute and a fat man = AWESOME
Wednesday we decided to head to the biggest Tenador Libre in the whole of Arentina, it basically involved as much food as you can eat for a fixed price... including steak. As it was the biggest one in the whole of Argentina you can imagine how much food there was. So much steak, pasta, seafood, fish, all the extras including a load of chinese food, not to mention the puddings! I think Drew got through a good 8 plates worth of food, he probably could have had more but the restaurant started to shut and they closed down the buffet points.
The next morning we spoke to a sweet english girl called Amy who told us she had been skydiving the day before... it didn´t take too much to convince us and before we knew it we were on the bus on the way to the hanger. We were with 3 other english guys and a german, who had come to Cordoba especially to skydive. There was a rickety little plane that could fit 2 comfortably, so in squeezed 6 people... We went up one at a time with our tandom jumper and camera man. They gave us suits to wear which were skintight and unbelievably attractive, especially as mine was bright pink. The camera man wore a blue suit with his camera attached to his white helmet in a smurfesque manner. Olly, one of the other guys, jumped first, he was about 6ft, 105Kg and attached to a guy about Drew´s height, we were all slightly concerned. However, the jump went fine and next thing I was in the tiny little plane attached to a man who rather resembled a large ball. We reached 10000ft they opened the door and the wind hits you, its freezing cold and the ground is a long way below. The camera man climbs out onto the wing and films you while you jump. The fat man rolled me out to the edge of the door and we hung over the 10000ft drop, the camera man is trying to convince you to smile and wave at the camera while the wind is tearing your face off, you can see the videos, we were not at our most attractive. Then he threw us out. We free fell for around 30seconds before the parachute is released and you get pulled upwards and away from the camera man who is still trying to to make you smile and wave, by this point I was finding it awesome so it wasn´t too hard to smile. The parachute ride down is amazing as well, the man does turns and loops and the view is of the mountains and lake in the distance.
Drew´s jump...
So, I didnt quite have the same luxurious safety breif as Abi (who definately looked like a prawn, curled up with her legs and arms folded backwards in a pink suit). Too funny for words. I had my costume shoved on next to plane and jumped on with an extra 2 jumpers who took pleasure in closing my legs together having the effect of a nut cracker. Literally. The flight was cramped but chilled out, yawning, taking a glance at the moutains and lakes, cities and landscape. As my fat little freind started to clip me onto him, the door opened unexpectedly and two other fellas seems to fall out of he plane, controlled is not the expression I would use. Holy poo. I thought I was going to be sucked out, the cold hits you, I fell towards the door with the extra space and then realised i was only half attatched to my buddy. They shut the door and climbed another thousand of or so feet to 10,400, a nice height, a little chilly but you can`t complain...or cry...or stop it the jump. Once the guy strapped me on, we had to take it in turns to breath, everytime his big belly moved I had the air squeezed out of me, we had a system going on. I wasnt afraid of the height, the skydive, the cold, the landing...just my friend, my portly friend struggling to breath. I was certain he was going to have a heart attack, I figured if he was struggling this much now, what about 10 seconds time. Too late. The door burst open and the cold hits again. I found myself willingly shuffling across to the door, its all fine. Then your legs drop off onto, well nothing. Crap. Not so cool. Not cool at all. My weight pulled the guy suddenly to the door as he jolted me down with a jerky stop as he managed to grap the door to stop an early descent. Phewww. I saw the camera man, loving it, happy little fella, a smiley smurf desperately trying to get some cool poses out of me. This was fine until I looked down. The video shows it all, a pathetic excuse for a smile, rippling cheeks that shot up to my forehead. At this point, there was no way I could breath, my lungs being crushed by the big guy and air being sucked out by the wind, for a breif moment I weighed up the chances of me passing out through lack of air and chubby chappy having a heart attacky. It seemed likely. Then the 1,2,3, face down. Freefalling. O no, face up, the wind flipped us back upright and the belly got stuck a couple of hundred feet above me, I thing I saw a steak from the day before his the airplane. That was the rush, not seeing the ground, feeling acceleration. A few seconds later we had regained control and took the classic positioning - tongue out, thumbs up, a few dances (swimming fish, big box small box) although to be honest they turned out to look more like flailing arms of a crying man. I swear I wasnt crying, it was just an illusion. And when i grabbed his arms, it was to calm him down, i could tell he was afraid. Well 35 odd seconds of freefall, 8 minutes and floating down and a few starjumps and supermans later I achieved a sliding bum finish to glory. Skydived, check.
The next morning we spoke to a sweet english girl called Amy who told us she had been skydiving the day before... it didn´t take too much to convince us and before we knew it we were on the bus on the way to the hanger. We were with 3 other english guys and a german, who had come to Cordoba especially to skydive. There was a rickety little plane that could fit 2 comfortably, so in squeezed 6 people... We went up one at a time with our tandom jumper and camera man. They gave us suits to wear which were skintight and unbelievably attractive, especially as mine was bright pink. The camera man wore a blue suit with his camera attached to his white helmet in a smurfesque manner. Olly, one of the other guys, jumped first, he was about 6ft, 105Kg and attached to a guy about Drew´s height, we were all slightly concerned. However, the jump went fine and next thing I was in the tiny little plane attached to a man who rather resembled a large ball. We reached 10000ft they opened the door and the wind hits you, its freezing cold and the ground is a long way below. The camera man climbs out onto the wing and films you while you jump. The fat man rolled me out to the edge of the door and we hung over the 10000ft drop, the camera man is trying to convince you to smile and wave at the camera while the wind is tearing your face off, you can see the videos, we were not at our most attractive. Then he threw us out. We free fell for around 30seconds before the parachute is released and you get pulled upwards and away from the camera man who is still trying to to make you smile and wave, by this point I was finding it awesome so it wasn´t too hard to smile. The parachute ride down is amazing as well, the man does turns and loops and the view is of the mountains and lake in the distance.
Drew´s jump...
So, I didnt quite have the same luxurious safety breif as Abi (who definately looked like a prawn, curled up with her legs and arms folded backwards in a pink suit). Too funny for words. I had my costume shoved on next to plane and jumped on with an extra 2 jumpers who took pleasure in closing my legs together having the effect of a nut cracker. Literally. The flight was cramped but chilled out, yawning, taking a glance at the moutains and lakes, cities and landscape. As my fat little freind started to clip me onto him, the door opened unexpectedly and two other fellas seems to fall out of he plane, controlled is not the expression I would use. Holy poo. I thought I was going to be sucked out, the cold hits you, I fell towards the door with the extra space and then realised i was only half attatched to my buddy. They shut the door and climbed another thousand of or so feet to 10,400, a nice height, a little chilly but you can`t complain...or cry...or stop it the jump. Once the guy strapped me on, we had to take it in turns to breath, everytime his big belly moved I had the air squeezed out of me, we had a system going on. I wasnt afraid of the height, the skydive, the cold, the landing...just my friend, my portly friend struggling to breath. I was certain he was going to have a heart attack, I figured if he was struggling this much now, what about 10 seconds time. Too late. The door burst open and the cold hits again. I found myself willingly shuffling across to the door, its all fine. Then your legs drop off onto, well nothing. Crap. Not so cool. Not cool at all. My weight pulled the guy suddenly to the door as he jolted me down with a jerky stop as he managed to grap the door to stop an early descent. Phewww. I saw the camera man, loving it, happy little fella, a smiley smurf desperately trying to get some cool poses out of me. This was fine until I looked down. The video shows it all, a pathetic excuse for a smile, rippling cheeks that shot up to my forehead. At this point, there was no way I could breath, my lungs being crushed by the big guy and air being sucked out by the wind, for a breif moment I weighed up the chances of me passing out through lack of air and chubby chappy having a heart attacky. It seemed likely. Then the 1,2,3, face down. Freefalling. O no, face up, the wind flipped us back upright and the belly got stuck a couple of hundred feet above me, I thing I saw a steak from the day before his the airplane. That was the rush, not seeing the ground, feeling acceleration. A few seconds later we had regained control and took the classic positioning - tongue out, thumbs up, a few dances (swimming fish, big box small box) although to be honest they turned out to look more like flailing arms of a crying man. I swear I wasnt crying, it was just an illusion. And when i grabbed his arms, it was to calm him down, i could tell he was afraid. Well 35 odd seconds of freefall, 8 minutes and floating down and a few starjumps and supermans later I achieved a sliding bum finish to glory. Skydived, check.
Wednesday, 8 July 2009
Would you like an alpaca empanandas with your nipple tassels?
And so the BBQ, too much meat, some disgusting spirit and alot of flailing nipple tassels, not your normal saturday night! Our BBQ ticket included a brazilian show after everyone had finished eating, to start with it was one man with a tambourine and a bright green silk shirt dancing round the room trying to get people to join in. We were all slightly confused but clapped along... then came the dancers, in true brazilian style they were wearing tiny fringed thongs and nipple tassels that came to the waist. Men were dragged up to dance with them and there wasnt much complaining, despite the fact we spent most of the night deliberating as to whether one of them was a man, we are still not sure. The night ended with all of us being dragged up to dance, we were all paired up and had to follow a routine set by the guy in the shiny shirt and a girl from the hostel.
The next day it was raining so we spent most of the day at the hostel playing table tennis and watching films. In the afternoon we decided to cross the border into brasil as its only a 20min bus ride to the border. The bus drops you off at the border but drives off while you are going through passport control. The distance between the borders of Argentina and Brasil is about 8km and as the bus had gone we decided to walk it, this lasted about half an hour before we decided to flag down the next bus that passed and head back into Argentina. The people at passport control were slightly confused as to why we had only spent half an hour in their country. We got the bus to Cordoba on Monday, a 22 hour journey which wasn´t too bad. There was a storm that lasted most of the night with lightning that lit up the whole sky and torrential rain. The journey was mainly on one road, really long and straight that took us right into Cordoba. We arrived about 12 on Tuesday and walked around trying to find a hostel reccomended to us by people who had just come from here, its actually really nice, clean and the people are friendly but its quite quiet. We are in a dorm for 6 with only the two of us in it. Yesterday we bought empanandas from a tiny little shop with about 20 varieties including alpaca, we are still yet to try that one...
The next day it was raining so we spent most of the day at the hostel playing table tennis and watching films. In the afternoon we decided to cross the border into brasil as its only a 20min bus ride to the border. The bus drops you off at the border but drives off while you are going through passport control. The distance between the borders of Argentina and Brasil is about 8km and as the bus had gone we decided to walk it, this lasted about half an hour before we decided to flag down the next bus that passed and head back into Argentina. The people at passport control were slightly confused as to why we had only spent half an hour in their country. We got the bus to Cordoba on Monday, a 22 hour journey which wasn´t too bad. There was a storm that lasted most of the night with lightning that lit up the whole sky and torrential rain. The journey was mainly on one road, really long and straight that took us right into Cordoba. We arrived about 12 on Tuesday and walked around trying to find a hostel reccomended to us by people who had just come from here, its actually really nice, clean and the people are friendly but its quite quiet. We are in a dorm for 6 with only the two of us in it. Yesterday we bought empanandas from a tiny little shop with about 20 varieties including alpaca, we are still yet to try that one...
Saturday, 4 July 2009
And then she stole my biscuit....
Buenos Aires was quite cool, we spent 3days there overall just working our way around the city. We stayed in a quiet area called San Telmo, decided to pay a little bit extra for our own room instead of dorms but still ended up with a rickety old bunkbed. There were mainly Argentinians staying there as well as a group of Mexicans, the place was nice and you got a free breakfast of coffee and pastries. We tried to find a Jesus based theme park one of the days but ended up getting a bit lost and giving up. We did visit Evita´s grave though, it was in the middle of a huge cemetry full of rich Argentinian families who built their own temples and statues and buried generations and generations of their dead in underground sections accessed by stairs. The most common snack food in Argentina are called empanandas which we have eaten alot of.... they are their version of a cornish pasty and really good! On our last day in Buenos Aires we went to the shopping street of the city called Florida, it was full of shops selling leather bags, boots and jackets as well as homemade traditional South American items. We decided to splash out on a 4pound buffet meal which included steak in the price, Drew preceeded to eat half a raw cow! That night we got a 20 hour bus up to Iguazu where the waterfalls are, they gave us a meal on the bus but after the buffet neither of us were particularly hungry so we left it for later. At one of the stops we decided to get off for a minute to stretch our legs, when we got back on the bus the fat lady sitting opposite had stolen my biscuits... what a fatty!!!
Iguazu is alot warmer and quite a sweet little town, we are staying in a backpacker hostel called Hostel Inn, and its full of other english speaking travellers. Today we visited the waterfall which was incredable, we spent the whole day in the park looking at it from all different angles, the force of the water is immense and you get soaked when you walk up to the edge. They have a little train that takes you to the different points and a boat that takes you across to an island where you can get another view. There are lots of racoon like animals called coaties walking around the park desperate for your food, they are really tame and let you stroke them. There were 150m worth of vertical steps that take you around to the different views which Drew decided to run up!?!!! Apparently it was easier that way???Tonight we are having a BBQ at the hostel, more steak for Drew...
Iguazu is alot warmer and quite a sweet little town, we are staying in a backpacker hostel called Hostel Inn, and its full of other english speaking travellers. Today we visited the waterfall which was incredable, we spent the whole day in the park looking at it from all different angles, the force of the water is immense and you get soaked when you walk up to the edge. They have a little train that takes you to the different points and a boat that takes you across to an island where you can get another view. There are lots of racoon like animals called coaties walking around the park desperate for your food, they are really tame and let you stroke them. There were 150m worth of vertical steps that take you around to the different views which Drew decided to run up!?!!! Apparently it was easier that way???Tonight we are having a BBQ at the hostel, more steak for Drew...
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