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Hello all! So in true lazy arse Michelle form I am actually writing the final instalment of our South America travels from London! And seeing as I haven’t updated you on events since midway through Bolivia, this blog should keep you occupied (bored) for a couple of weeks. Muchas Perdonas...
Soooooo our 3 day Amazon Basin trip was much fun. Most of the tour involved travelling by wooden boat (with 4 of the most annoying Chileans to walk the earth) in and around the basin spotting various animals, birds and fish along the way. We also went Anaconda hunting but found none, Piranha fishing and caught leaves and as with EVERY trip we do, Sloth spotting for hours and yes, you guessed it....Nada. Despite our failings we (just Faye as I was a scaredy cat) did get to go swim with wild pink dolphins that were very playful and just the cutest. We also got real close up views of humongous Alligators. On one of the evenings we watched an amazing sunset on a night time boat trip and sat and were mesmerised by the star filled sky that could honestly rival the one we saw in Botswana. The main annoyance of the trip – other than the Chilean mofo’s - was the fricken mosquitos. They are 3 times the size of any we have seen elsewhere. For some reason they weren’t too keen on me and pretty much stayed away. Faye however became their prime target (despite wearing socks tucked into trousers and being fully clothed) and woke up on the second day to over 50 bites including on her forehead, both ears and eyelid! She spent the rest of the day looking mostly like the elephant man, a look that I found hilarious. She funnily, did not..
Following our trip we went back to Rurrenbaque, the TOWN THAT CONTAINS NOTHING and astonishingly managed to spend a week there?! For some unknown reason we got drunk on every night previous to our scheduled flight, managing to miss each one. By the time we’d missed the 3rd one I was so overcome with shame that I decided rather than go back to the same flight office, and speak to the same assistant and give the same mortifying excuse (missed alarm) that we would instead go to a new flight centre and book a new ticket with a new airline and throw £120 down the toilet (which funnily Faye did not agree with). Nice. Our drunken shenanigans also involved us taking a motor bike ride around town one night and me not realizing that exhaust pipes are pretty f-ing hot I stupidly placed my leg against it and ended up having about 4 layers of skin stick to the side of the bike. I am now scarred for life (probably) and will remember that stupid town that contains nothing for a lot longer than I wanted to!
Having wasted a week we moved pretty quickly down through Bolivia in an effort to get to the Salt Flats by the end of Feb as we really wanted a month in Argentina and a week in Rio. We spent one more night in La Paz and then took a bus to Oruro for a night and then straight on to a train to Uyuni, the starting point for our tour. Amazingly Uyuni managed to have even less character than Rurrenbaque! Its literally a ghost town and the other than a few restaurants round a tiny square the only other job to exist here is that of Salt flat tour operator. We had heard some horror stories about how dodgy some of the companies were (drunk driving, freezing hostels, s*** food) and so Faye made us visit every tour guide in town, finally going with the one that could speak the most English! It was a good choice and our tour was pretty much hassle free. The salt flats were absolutely out of this world. Like nothing we have ever seen and we managed to get some really good pics. The trip also took us to some amazing looking lakes where we got to see hundreds of flamingos and also to natural hot springs (I got in but Faye wasn’t well for some of the tour). Once we arrived back in Uyuni, most of our bloody evening - before catching the train to the Bolivian border – consisted of trying to find a toilet! Uyuni suffers constant water shortages, so the town’s response is to close access to all toilets. They continue however, to sell alcohol and food so it wasn’t until we had downed 3 beers each that we realized our unfortunate predicament. I eventually convinced the train station to let me use theirs, where I was politely told upon entering to “go pee pee, no caca”. Yes, he actually said those words. Relieved (literally!) to finally get on the train at 10:30pm that night we settled into our first class seats and quickly fell asleep so as not to be tired for our 7am arrival the following morning. About 4 times during the night I woke and thought it such a coincidence that every time I opened my eyes the train had been stopped. It wasn’t until we got up at 6:30am that we found out the train had only actually travelled a couple hours outside of Uyuni and we had been in the exact same position each time I had woken! Apparently the track was broken and seeing as there was only one track in the whole of Bolivia we had to sit and wait for it to be rebuilt. Our 9 hour journey ended up being 19 and a half with 2 more occasions during the trip in which the train actually derailed! Each time that it occurred, all the waiters from the train had to rush off and find boulders in order to steer the train back on to the track, no lie.
Once over the Bolivian border and into Argentina we decided to hop on a bus straight after our 19 hour train journey and head directly to Salta. We were absolutely knackered and so fed up being in the sitting position, but it was totally worth it once we arrived in Salta. The city is beautiful and we spent a couple of days drinking at posh bars and hanging out at the many lovely squares. We also took a cable car up over the city (where I stupidly asked Faye what she would do if the cable snapped. She proceeded not to talk to me for over an hour) and got some great views. Salta was definitely one of our favourite cities. Everything was nice and easy, food was amazing, and the people were lovely. On our final day we went to the neighbouring wealthy town of San Lorenzo, and went horse riding along the surrounding valleys. Faye was a natural and had her horse trotting and obeying her every command. I on the other hand was convinced my horse wanted me dead. After crying like a baby and insisting the guide tie my horse to his, I eventually changed to a smaller horse and ended up having an amazing time. The views were spectacular and our guides were real life gaucho horse riders!
Our trip from Salta to Mendoza meant we finally got to take one of the Argentinian buses that everyone who has ever travelled South America bangs on about. By far it was the best bus we’ve ever been on! We got executive cama which meant we had super sized leather reclining seats. We were served a 3 course meal and given as much wine as we wanted, which was ALOT! We got to watch English speaking movies on flat screen TV’s and they even had a game of bingo mid journey where Faye won a bottle of wine! The 18 hour journey went by so quickly compared to shorter journeys we’ve had on nightmare buses in Peru and Bolivia. Once in Mendoza we checked into a hotel as opposed to a hostel as we hadn’t bother to book anything beforehand. After 3 hours of walking the streets being told no vacancy we took the first place that had a room for fear of strangling each other in the middle of the street. The hotel ended up being lovely and we even had a balcony overlooking the street where we spent the evening doing what is done in Mendoza, getting w***ered on red wine. Everything about Mendoza involves wine. They serve wine in Mc Donalds, they have wine flavoured shower cream and every shop regardless of whether it’s a pharmacy or a shoe shop sells bottles of red wine! One of the evenings we went to a super nice wine tasting venue called The Vines. We were given over 10 different types of regional wines and as we stupidly hadn’t eaten dinner beforehand, we were absolutely sloshed. Later that night we proceeded to go through 5 more bottles and even ended up inviting half the bar back to our hotel for another glass. We woke the next morning to the worst hangover of life. The white top I had been wearing the previous evening was covered and my lips and teeth were the colour of Malbec for at least 24 hours. By this stage we were both red wined out but as its probably the only time we’ll ever be in Mendoza we powered through and spent the following day riding on bicycles to all the vineyards around town drinking yet more... red wine. Literally a bottle of wine away from becoming grubby wino’s we grudgingly left Mendoza and headed to Bariloche. Originally we had travelled to the tiny ski-ing town (which was out of season when we there) as a stopping point on the way to the Glaciers in Patagonia. Unfortunately once we arrived we realised it was gonna be too costly and time consuming to get down so we spent a couple of days just chilling in town eating gorgeous food and salivating (me not Faye) over the hundreds of chocolate stores that line the streets. Bariloche was really stunning with snow capped mountains overlooking a magnificent lake and we stayed in a great little guesthouse run by an elderly Argentinean couple. The final night we had maybe one too many drinks and Faye decided she was some kind of Bariloche dog whisperer and somehow managed to get about 12 dogs to follow her through the streets simply by shouting at them “Vamos Amigos”. It was the weirdest sight ever and i have pictures to prove it!
We left the next Afternoon and took an overnight bus to Buenos Aires. We were both really excited to get here as we have heard so many great things about the place. And it is as good as everyone says! The city is massive and we stayed at a busy hostel called limehouse right on the main avenue in downtown. We had an amazing time there and did loads of sightseeing. We spent an afternoon in the posh Recoleta, visited Evitas grave, went to two amazing Tango shows, had drinks and food down by the river of stunning Puerto Madero, visited the stadium where the Boca Juniors play and so much more I couldn’t possibly write it all! We also did our fair share of drinking (as usual) and even got to spend Paddy’s day at an Irish pub called the Shamrock in town, and Faye even made me a special Irish hat made from her green vest top so I could show off my Irishness! By far my favourite evening there was the steak dinner night we had at La Cabrera in Palermo. I cannot even begin to describe how perfectly the steak was cooked and how tender the meat was. It’s one of the most popular restaurants in all of BA and we were served champagne while waiting on the street for our seat. The steaks are big enough to be shared by 2 people and you get about 13 side dishes along with it! Easily one of, if not THE best meal I’ve ever eaten.
BA was such an easy and enjoyable place to stay that we ended up only giving ourselves 5 days to get to Iguazu falls on the border of Argentina/Brazil and then across to Rio. As much as we wanted to stay longer we finally forced ourselves to take a night bus up to Puerto Iguazu, the Argentinean side of the falls. There isn’t much else other than visit the falls in this town so we spent the our arrival day sitting around absolutely sweating our arses off. We didn’t realize it would be so hot and managed to book into one of about 2 hostels in the whole town without a pool. Fun..We battled through and the following day went and visted Iguazu Falls. Having seen Vic Falls in Zimbabwe and absolutely loving it we were both really excited about this trip and oh my lordy was it good. Vic falls was prettier but Iguazu falls i think was more spectacular. The crevice where the water is rushing through makes it look like the earth is actually imploding and the viewing points made it possible to get really bloody close. We spent the entire day there walking around the different points and waterfall areas even getting soaked at one point where you were able to stand virtually under the waterfall. We would show you the picture but the utter fool that we entrusted our camera with managed to take the worst pictures ever and got our beloved camera soaked in the process..idiot. Regardless we had a really fun day and left late evening to stay another night in Puerto Iguazu. At this point it was March 26th, our flight back to London was scheduled to leave on March 29th and we were still at least a 24 hour journey away from Rio! Panicked was not the word, and after contemplating extending our stay by 3 days (this idea lasted 30 seconds once we realised we couldn’t afford to eat let alone live if we stayed any longer!) we annoyingly had to spend half of our remaining pennies and book a god damn flight from the border of Brazil over to Rio. We arrived into Rio on the evening of the 27th and quickly went about booking as much sightseeing for the remaining 2 days! (2 days in Rio! Faye was not impressed..) We spent some of the day on Copacabana beach which was packed but looked amazing and then went up to Sugar Loaf Mountain and got really amazing views of Rio De Janeiro. The setting for the city is like nothing I’ve ever seen. Beautiful clear beaches surrounded by high rise apartment buildings and fancy hotels. There was also a boat race going on during the day so we got to watch how the other half live for a couple of hours! The following day (day of our departure) we booked a city tour as it was the only way we would be able to see what we wanted before having to take off. The main part of any Rio tour is obviously a visit to the Christ The Redeemer statue. Faye and I had spent many a night looking at pictures of this back in our little flat in London many moons ago so needless to say we were very excited. It was also our final day of South America so wanted to get as many last pics as possible. Unfortunately once every 10 years or so the statue is covered up to be cleaned and repaired and would you believe it if I told you that this very cleaning was occurring on the day we were visiting!!! Which meant the entire (and I mean the ENTIRE) statue was covered from head to toe in scaffolding meaning that not a single picture was possible! We obviously weren’t told of this prior to our tour departing and shockingly we were still charged full whack to go to the top and take pictures.. of nothing. Disappointed to say the least we eventually shrugged it off and looked forward to the second part of the tour, a visit to the Maracana stadium. The stadium is the biggest in the world and during the trip we were allowed to go down the walk of fame and take a tour of the pitch. Well we would have been allowed HAD WE GOTTEN IN!! We arrived to the stadium only to be told that a famous Brazilian footballer had passed away (he was old) and today of all days they were holding a memorial for him inside. Possibly the most disappointing tour ever we headed back to our hostel and finished packing before heading to the airport for our flight home. Despite having beautiful weather for our stay half way to the airport it started thundering and lightning. This is not what you want to see just before a long haul flight and by the time we arrived to check out we were told that our plane had been diverted to another airport because of the bad weather. It ended up with our 10pm flight not taking off until 4am in the morning. Worn out from the day we fell asleep soon after boarding and woke up 1 hour away from London. Since being back we have seen on the news how much worse the Rio weather has gotten with more than 120 people dead due to severe floods around the City, so we are really grateful we managed to get on a flight and get home when we did.
So that’s our Central and South America travels over and done with. We have a few weeks in England with family and friends and I (and you!) have a well earned break from these dreadfully long blogs! Faye and I hope to see lots of you while we are in the UK!
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