Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
and i present you with the last blog entry from Miss. Harriet Stewart [for this trip at least…]
As expected, the pleasure derived from a good cup of English tea doesn't quite compare to sipping Caipirinhas on a coconut-strewn beach in Brazil. Nor does a hearty bowl of cereal gained make up for the loss of moqueca or Suzie's lovingly prepared beetroot salads. And a big comfy bed struggles to compensate for a sweaty spot on a three-storey bunk bed with your best friend on the bunk below. In short, home is lovely, but travelling is truly wonderful. In our last two weeks in South America Suzie and I pulled out all the stops, and seemed always to be treating ourselves to another cocktail, another day of shopping, another concert or another fabulous meal...
We arrived in Buenos Aires and made our way to the 'bohemian' barrio of San Telmo. Unfortunately, BA at this time of year is in the middle of winter, so our mission for the first few days was to scour the shops to find ourselves coats and boots. Said task completed, we set about exploring the rest of the city. BA is very, very European. It looks a lot like London with sweeping green parks, busy shopping streets and a café on every corner. One sight however was nothing like anything either Suzie or I had ever seen before: Recoleta cemetry, where the rich and powerful families of Argentina come to take their final rest in gothic grandeur, in black marble tombs that wouldn't look out of place next to Cartier on New Bond street. The cemetry is like a miniture city, with a central plaza and streets lined with benches and lamposts. It's here that Eva Peron is buried, in a surprisingly modest tomb.
Going to shows seems to have been the theme of Buenos Aires: we saw a tango show and admired the drama, intensity and intricacy of the quintessentially Argentinian dance. However we probably spent more time mourning the lack of attractive male dancers, having heard that BA is a city famed for its good-looking inhabitants. We also saw "Fuerza Bruta", which we'd missed in Edinburgh a few years ago. It translates as 'brute force' and was a really wonderful, but surprisingly hard-to-describe, experience. Champagne at a stylish bar complemented an evening of artistic sophistication, until it dawned on us that a magnum is probably a bit too much champagne for two.
In another warehouse across the city we saw a fantastic samba band called 'La Bomba del Tiempo': it was then I fell in love with samba music. It's basically drum music with a really raw, primal and sexual vibe that i'd never experienced before. It was a love affair I continued in Brazil and then on YouTube once back in not-quite-so-sexy Blighty.
We did the standard run of museums and tourist attractions such as the Casa Rosa where Evita addressed the crowds, but really the stand-out experience of Buenos Aires was culinary (hardly surprising: if Suzie and I were to make a list of what makes us most happy in life, food would be very high on it). The restaurant was called ´La Cabrera´, and we were treated to the most mouth-wateringly delicious steak we have ever, ever, ever eaten. Customers have to wait for a table, but are served champagne and sausages in the street whilst peering into the jam-packed restaurant and drooling at the food on the tables (which is probably somewhat unsettling for the diners). We had an ojo de bife and a lomo, and about a hundred billion sauces and mini sides to accompany them. And a gorgeous bottle of Septima Malbec. Then dessert. I am confident to say that it was the perfect meal, and probably the best date I've ever been on.
Having shopped and eaten until we couldn't fit much more in our backpacks or our stomachs, we bid a sad farewell to that glorious city and made our way to Iguazu Falls. The falls were utterly breathtaking. I think it's hard to imagine just how beautiful and how powerful all that water is from pictures (although Suzie gave it a go - taking about a million!) We took a boat right up to the falls, sporting fetching ponchos and screaming our heads off. We also visited 'The Devil's Throat', which is the point at which the highest volumen of water thunders down, attracting thousands of awestruck tourists. That was the Argentinian side. Via extremely temperamental public transport we visited the Brazilian side as well, where we were able to see panoramic views of the falls and all the walks along the top of the falls we'd done the previous day.
That was a fairly spectacular introduction to Brazil, and the wonderful first impression proved itself accurate when we found ourselves on a beach in Salvador, watching a sunset so beautiful that it warranted applause from the locals. Desperately searching for a tan, we made our way via bus, boat, bus, bus and another boat to the idyllic island of Morro de São Paulo. There are no motorised vehicles on the island, and the roads are all sand. Unfortunately, it pelted down with rain on our first day. How did Suze and I try to make ourselves feel better? With a fabulous meal of course. Upon recommendation we made our way across the beach, through the sea, across a log bridge, in the dark, to a restaurant about a km from our pousada. The restaurant appeared to be someone's beach hut, and we interrupted a family telenovela session to request some food. Request denied, we were to return the following day. Back across the bridge, through the sea and over the beach, now even more plunged in darkness than on our way. Luckily we found a restaurant in town where we sampled the local dish of moqueca. It's the Bahian speciality, and is a sort of fish stew served with salad, beans, and other less readily identifiable but equally delicious side orders. The following evening we made our way back to the beach hut restaurant, this time through an even higher tide as it was earlier in the evening, which sadly meant I lost a flipflop to the sea. However, once there the lady of the house opened up her gorgeous seaside restaurant, decked out in rough wooden furniture and sheltered by reed shutters from the sea breeze. The food? Wonderful, luckily.
Our last night in Salvador we had to catch a flight to Rio at 4am. However, before that we spent the day watching capoeira in the town centre over cool beers and street food. That evening was the famous street party, where we watched reggae bands in the plaza and joined a phenomenal samba procession through the streets of the city, making a valiant attempt to copy the moves of the lead dancers. After probably the best night out we've had in South America, perhaps ever, we boarded our flight to the capital.
Rio was fairly rainy and grey, it being mid winter, but still warm. We saw the normal sights nevertheless: the view from Sugar Loaf over the city is still impressive even on a cloudy day. 3 all-you-can-eat buffets and about 50 pairs of Havaianas later, Suze and I bid each other an emotional farewell. We've been up mountains and under seas, from sub zero temperatures in a tent in Huaraz to stifling heat on the beach in Taganga; we've danced to salsa, to tango, to samba, to reggaeton, and drank everything from pisco sours in Peru, to fine wines in Argentina, to caipirinhas in Brazil. It's been a crazy, wonderful, life-changing 6 months and it couldn't have been any of that without Suzie. I think about her all the time, spooning a puma in Bolivia, and wish her all the luck and love in the world. Hurry back though...
and to those kind words i´ll add a few of my own by means of explanation. with some luck i will, indeed, be spooning a puma in a couple of days. i´m heading to a volunteer project in the Bolivian jungle, where I will be helping with the care and rehabilitation of big cats that have been caught up in the [unfortunately popular] trend for ´jungle pets´. yes, very ´gap yah´, but hopefully rewarding also. i will be living pretty rustically - without electricty or hot water, and therefore, of course, without internet, so i´ll have to love you and leave you all for three weeks. but then i´ll be back and blog-tastic, hopefully with spooning pictures to boot.
until then, then...
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- comments