South America and Cuba

Interview Time

2011-04-12T14:58:00.004+01:00

Last year we didn’t manage to fit in our traditional end-of-expedition interviews, but this year we’re going for it big time! We’ve each prepared 20 questions for each other about the trip, to be answered blind and with no-holes-barred.

Jon’s Questions for Simon
Jon: Welcome to my large and intimidating interview panel, of Me, Myself and I. Thanks for coming, but even greater thanks for a brilliant time on this trip and for your invaluable blogging. There was an amazing amount of things to take in with regards to flora, fauna, languages, delicacies, sports, dances, music, and the list goes on. The blog has been a fantastic method of reflecting back on each moment and experience, be it joyful or sad, hilarious or serious, surprising or predictable; it’s kept our minds ticking and the folks at home entertained and in tune with what’s been going on. Now I’d just like us to look back at some of these moments and find out how the trip looked from your perspective, so think fast! What aspect of the whole trip did you find the most physically challenging?
Simon: Well funnily enough, not Roraima! We walked up and down with challenges, yes, but with relative ease. OK I admit that the final hour was punishing, but frankly that was solely from the psychology of receiving the t-shirts the night before and being lulled into the false sense of security that the trek was prematurely over. But all in all, I’m satisfied with my performance on this mountain. The biggest pounding was down in Chile. The hike up to the torres base camp made me just curl up into a little ball when you set of for Campamento Japones, whilst that long, long walk onwards to Italiano turned me into a zombie. But was it worth it? Absolutely!
Jon: Your words are true! Perhaps the Torres del Paine trek was more demanding due to having to carry more luggage for, perhaps when we talk about the most strenuous days, three times the length of each of the Roraima days. Plus, many of the ascents and descents were of similar gradients to the slopes of the Lost World. Now, out of all the things you brought with you from home, which single item could you not have lived without?
Simon: My money-belt. And that’s it! It’s a liberating feeling, walking through the Gran Sabana, knowing that round your waist is strapped your passport, cash and credit-cards, and that this all ALL you need to carry on and get back home. Everything else is superfluous, an added luxury. Even a few spare clothes; what you stand up in is all the traveller really needs.
Jon: How did the various South American cuisines live up to your expectations?
Simon: Complete, total and utter disappointment. I’m sorry, but the solid food was a disaster. But the fruit shakes, particularly in Colombia were amazing. And the Custard Apple we tried in Bolivia, fantastic, up there with our Cambodian Mangosteens and Rambutans.
Jon: Which of all the countries captured you most, and why?
Simon: I think it has to be Brazil. Because we MUST return, a.s.a.p. And then Colombia and Cuba come a close, equal second. But Brazil has made me eager to sample much more, from Salvador de Bahia down to your beloved Rio, and then to Ouro Preto and the rest of Minas Gerais, together with the beaches of Santa Catarina, the jaguars of the Pantanal, and the exciting railway journeys that are possible in Brazil. One of my biggest regrets with this continent is the lack of thrilling train travel. Just remember India!
Jon: When we set out on this adventure, we didn’t really have an understanding of Spanish. Do you feel that you have managed to get to grips with it a little? How much has your comprehension and active communication of Español improved?
Simon: Well, don’t forget that as a composer I was working quite closely with the poetry of Gabriela Mistral, so Latin American Spanish was fairly well established in my recent consciousness. But I certainly wasn’t prepared for the shock of how it sounds colloquially. Thinking back to all my visits to Spain, I was fairly lost even then, so you would expect that I would have been in need of some intensive remedial work. But the total immersion method in target language really does work: my passive vocabulary has expanded dramatically, and just by the very nature of being here for three months and listening to locals bringing me into a conversation, I’ve gained the ability to understand what’s going on. And I can look enthusiastic, pull the correct face and respond with “Si, claro…” So the next stage will be a stroll in the park…oops, losiento, un passeo en el parque…
Jon: If you could create a charity group to improve Latin America, what would it be called and what would it focus on?
Simon: I need to help address the single, most shocking problem of the continent, which is the grinding, pointless poverty of the massive favelas and barrios which radiate outwards from every single urban centre. Only occasionally can they be pretty; more often they are vile adjuncts to graceful plazas, and something needs to be done. Chavez has a building programme of social housing for the poorest sectors of society, but it’s hardly scratching at the surface of this issue; relentless urbanisation has proceeded unchecked, and the tragedy has a knock-on effect on villages and rural communities which have thus haemorrhaged their population and lost valuable traditions and techniques in the process. So my contribution would be in the establishing of tiny businesses with micro loans on minimal interest rates, to aid both urban and rural societies. It’s called Favela Umbrella…
Jon: Did any of the flora or fauna particularly impress you?
Simon: I really loved the bright purple which can be found everywhere: on balconies, behind the metal grilles of tiny, pastel coloured dwellings, and along the roadsides. And talking of purple, do you remember that massive, purple dragonfly we saw hovering just above a tiny stream as we were hiking in Venezuela? And it was in Venezuela that we saw the most impressive birds, from one long, elegant black and yellow, debonair specimen, to the green parrots and blue macaws. But the pumas and jaguars remained elusive, and, thankfully, so did the snakes and creepy-crawlies.
Jon: We’ve seen many wonders of the world on this trip. Which one exceeded your expectations most?
Simon: Interesting…well, here is one natural, and one cultural. If I had to single out just one experience as being more memorable than any other, it would have to be waking up at Campamento Italiano in the Parque Nacional Torres del Paine, in the woodland dappled with sunlight and hearing the sound of gushing water, then immediately stumbling onto the little bridge over a truly spectacular stream slap, bang in the shadow of a beautiful glacier with wisps of snow blowing about it under an electric blue sky on the sheer walls of Paine Grande. This was unforgettable, and the type of moment where you wish for time to stop completely so you can savour it for hours! And the cultural experience? The churches of Cusco, with their massive, golden altarpieces and ornate carvings. These buildings sum up for me the entire ethos of the continent. And now I could continue and talk about Machu Picchu, but that’s not helpful in answering your question as I’ve already cheated by mentioning two things…
Jon: Any important money-saving tips for future travellers to South America?
Simon: Well, first and foremost, it’s important to remember that this is NOT Asia, and so the cheap five dollar rooms of India don’t exist, neither do the platefuls of Thai fried-rice for a few Baht, so budgeting carefully will be key. But we DID it! Virtually everywhere we managed to get a room for ten pounds per night, and by eating basic food, travelling on buses and buying a few, well-chosen souvenirs, we managed to do the whole thing on about £15 each per day. But that’s not including the £1,800 we forked out on flights during the planning stage…
Jon: Are there any moments that stick in your head when you felt threatened by something or someone?
Simon: well only the street boys in Buenos Aires, and I’m still not certain how serious they were, how much of a joke they saw the whole thing, or just how dangerous they might have been. But we were both terrified by Caracas, which turned out to be a fascinating, vibrant and visually engaging city.
Jon: I wasn't thinking of these aspescts, but they were threatening moments indeed. I have heard many bad stories about Caracas and thought it'd be a dive, but driving through it was stunning with the favelas and the cable car that ascended up the mountainside. The scary thing for me, was the risk of having to fight off rabid dogs. Tokirau, our dog on Easter Island, seemed to be a trouble magnet and we were forever standing between fierce groups of territorial hounds who sadistically enjoyed fighting among themselves. Let's continue. On such a huge adventure, what things did you miss most about home?
Simon: My mum! I’ve bought far too many souvenirs with her in my, considering her clear instruction to me was not to buy a single thing. Other than that, I’ve missed making music. But then over in Latin America, we’ve heard tons of the stuff…

Some time later, in Moscow, to be precise, the tables were turned…

Simon: Hello there, Jonathan, and thank you for all your hard work on this little blog over the past three months. It hardly seems like two years since we were finishing our Indian trip with a stopover in Jordan, so how has this stopover in Cuba been for you? Have you managed some deeper insights into Communism?
Jon: I love how your refer to our blog as ‘little’… It’s been the biggest yet! Hahaha! Cuba has been a real eye opener for me. I feel that I’ve managed to see communist ideas in action, but I feel more confused than before I arrived here. The two currency system (the peso nacional and the tourist’s, higher-value, peso convertible) has blown my mind because only those who are affiliated with the tourist industry can get hold of the tourist’s money. We find people in tourism earning far more than doctors or other healthcare professionals, and definite rich and poor divides. I was quite shocked to see poverty existing here, but what was even more astonishing was the ration book that our host family presented to us. I can’t believe that a modern day country is still rationing to this high degree. Very post-World War. Most people who visit Cuba are in resorts, far away from the real life in Havana, and I believe that I have learned an incredible amount about Cuban society (and improved my Spanish) by choosing the Casa Particular family home stay as opposed to a hotel. The day at the beach was a fantastic wind down, but no matter how many times I apply the factor 25, I get burned. Still, not as bad as some of our previous trips, but my legs are currently singed fast-food!
Simon: Good points, well made! Let’s turn now to languages! When we started out in Argentina, our first real experience of the Spanish speaking world, how did you handle the transition between speaking Portuguese and Spanish? Has your fluency increased?
Jon: Well, everyone was telling us that Argentinean Spanish was the most confusing and I understand why. But it helped me to learn Spanish quicker because the two ‘l’s (ll) make the sound of the Portuguese ‘ch’ as opposed to their normal ‘y’ sound. Take the word which means ‘to call’, for example. In Portuguese it’s ‘chamar’ and in Spanish it’s ‘llamar’. In Argentinean Spanish the sound didn’t seem different at all to the Portuguese that I knew already, and so I found myself speaking a lot of Portuguese in Argentina and being understood. However, when we ventured around the other countries, I was sure to pronounce correctly ‘yamar’ instead of ‘chamar’. I had already learned basic words and understood the fundamental differences between Spanish and Portuguese by this point, so I was able to communicate. These days my Spanish seems to be coming along quite well, but I still have lots to learn and I plan to watch films with Spanish subtitles turned on when we’re back home. It would be a shame to forget all what I’ve learned, and I believe that Portuguese and Spanish could be learned side by side, and they compliment each other very well.
Simon: Yes, and that’s precisely what I’m going to do when we get back, with the aid of dictionaries and great literature. Now how about food… On each of our massive expeditions, food has been an important feature of our experiences. What flavours and textures have struck you most this time around?
Jon: The Arepas of the Caribbean coasts of Colombia and Venezuela stick in my mind as a stodgy, tasteless staple, but the Peruvian guinea pig delicacy gets the world’s bitterest meat vote. These flavours indeed struck me, but not in the sense that you’re asking. The foods that I would gladly gobble again include the flimsy, tapioca pancakes filled with soft coconut and condensed milk, which we experienced in Brazil, but also the ‘rodizio de pizza‘ where we could eat all the different flavours of pizza we wanted (traditional savoury flavours plus chocolate, strawberry, coconut and more!); the saucy and spicy ‘hot doubles’ from the barraca in Trinidad; the juicy, succulent, rare steak that was delicately charred for us on one of the many churrascarias in Buenos Aires; the tantalising sauce, with the added crunch from ants, that we added to pizza and spaghetti in the Gran Sabana, Venezuela; but the Chinese restaurant in Lima probably served the best food of all!
Simon: I’m salivating now from all these memories. Seeing our travelling through your eyes, or rather tasting it on your tongue, it doesn’t sound so bad after all! But we always say that often a trip is made by the people we meet along the way. Which characters have made the deepest impressions on you in the last three months?
Jon: Hmmm… Difficult. There are always going to be some who I forget, but I’ll attempt. The entire group on the Roraima trek were just ideal and the best. I felt that I bonded mostly with the Japanese duo, Rachael, Lindsay, Moises, Francisco, Polly, Branni and, of course, Bruno, as conversation was always pumping around with these guys. And those of us who went to the salsa bar in Santa Elena just completely relaxed and I didn’t mind making a fool of myself during my salsa dance with two strangers and Polly… She’s a load of fun! Iuigi from Japan also had a great time with a keen Venezuelan woman, who wore him right out (and he’s used to exercise, what with being a second dan judoka!). Martin from the Salar Uyuni tour, Bolivia, was also very interesting and I hope that we can meet him in London sometime. Shirley from the same tour was actually hilarious and we strangely bumped into each other in the same hostel in Sucre, and at the Ecuador-Colombia border crossing. It was highly entertaining watching Shirley teach another guy from the tour, Christian, some Dutch phrases like “noke in de koke” (however you write it!). During our trek in the Parque Nacional Torres Del Paine, Chile, Robert from Oregon State, USA, was a great hiking companion and was a welcome third member to the team. When times got hard and food supplies scarce, he shared some pasta and ketchup with us. Life saver! And Marta, our Brazilian friend from the hostel in Puerto Natales, is just so cheerful and keen to teach me Portuguese and improve her perfect English. We’ll see her in Brazil, I’m sure!
Finally, the family we are staying with in Cuba at the casa particular is just fantastic: Sandra makes fantastic black bean rice and lobster, and Pablo converses keenly about the ups and downs of his country, in Spanish and English.
Simon: Wow, hasn’t it been a privilege to meet all these fascinating people? For me, the person who stands as an emblem for our wonderful encounters just has to be Bruno! Our local guide in Venezuela was of course the best anybody could wish for, but to be accompanied by a friendly and loquacious anthropologist, skilled in the tribal language of the indigenia, deeply familiar with the ethnography of the area and willing to share his skill, knowledge and wit was a mind-blowing, once-in-a-lifetime week!

Well, sadly, we've come to end end of our biggest ever blog, and longest ever trip. Thank you for following and supporting us, for helping us through the tough bits and laughing with us through the bizarre bits! But our travel plans aren't quite grinding to a halt over the next few years. Watch out for Poland, Germany, Guatemala and more, much more Brazil. But only in bite-sized chunks from now on, from weekends to a week. But by now, you already know just how much we can pack into just seven days. Bye for now...

La Vida Cubana (or, Havana Bad Time...)

2011-04-12T14:56:00.002+01:00

For our final full day in Cuba, we decided to take it easy. The man behind the bar in the Casa del Ron summed up for us the entire ethos of being a tourist in Havana when he tried to get us to open the day’s batting with a mojito: “It’s very nice…” he swooned, making it sound so tempting. But he was so relaxed, unlike the hard-sell girls and boys on Obispo and down in Chinatown. Yes, it IS very nice, but this distorts the reality of existence here so much, it would be obscene to join in the game. Don’t forget, this team reports back to you what we find BEHIND the façade, and we always deliberately try NOT to be tourists, but to immerse in the local culture of the country we’re visiting. And that’s precisely why we’re not staying in a hotel here: we’re living life around the kitchen table and on the front doorstep onto the street with Sandra, Pablo, Luis and Lisandra. It would be ’very nice’ to sip Mojitos all day (and here I’m talking metaphorically, because they taste of mint from the garden, which isn’t quite to everybody’s palette, and I much prefer the Piña Colada…and, come to think of it, we haven’t even tried the Daquiris yet at El Floridita, but it would really go against the grain to walk in Hemmingway’s footsteps…) but life here is grim, unbelievably grim. Odaline de la Martinez once said in an interview that Cuba was Music. Period. Well, sort of. But it’s hardship too, and the music is just the blessed relief.
Simon was here almost exactly three years ago. And since then, it’s changed. Havana has rotted some more, there are fewer gringos on the streets, the jineteros are harder-selling, and the cycle rickshaws are an act of desperation. It’s not so much pulsating to the sound of Son and the beats of Salsa and Reggaeton, as lurching. And when Simon tried (admittedly in an act whiffing of desperation) to point out to Pablo that Raul and Fidel weren’t immortal and that Obama was willing to develop a healthy foreign policy towards Cuba, meaning that change was just around the corner, Pablo reacted with disdain. They always talk about change, but it has never happened. All his life he’s waited for the change, and now, it’s just too late.
So it was Sunday morning, and Simon went to the solemn mass in Havana Cathedral, complete with three priests, incense, twelve acolytes and a full nave. It was great (apart from the lamentable music, a shame in this of all places…) but of course the clergy here are controlled by the government, just as in the old days in Russia, and of course a high percentage of residents of the city are followers of Santeria rather than just Catholicism. But the priest worked hard in his lengthy sermon, and shook hands vigorously at the end. Later that night, our pair of weary travellers, longing for the journey home, feasted on swordfish and Morros y Christianos. Sandra cooks well indeed, and then Pablo came over to join the duo to put the world to rights. We have further, shocking discoveries to reveal. Let’s play a little game: Cuban What’s My Line. Place these three men in order of salary: taxi driver, street cleaner, doctor. Yes, you’ve guessed it correctly, of course the taxi driver is the richest, he makes a fortune driving around the rich gringos and he gets paid over 20cuc for an airport run. So who comes next? Yes, of course, it’s the street cleaner. So how much does the doctor earn? Wait for it… 500 pesos per month. We just did the maths, and that’s $250 per YEAR. Dollars, US. Per y.e.a.r. I don’t think we need to say any more. Over, and out!

Our Man in Havana

2011-04-12T14:54:00.002+01:00

After exploring South America almost in its entirety, on your behalf, of course, over a period of more than three months, it was necessary for just a little R&R. Do you feel we’ve deserved it, scaling mountains, penetrating jungles and hiking national parks, all in the name of research? Well, it’s pay-back time, and what better place to do it than Cuba? We feel that we have earned ourselves a day at the beach!
Picture this: white sand, completely clear water lapping just one metre away from our sun loungers complete with a wind-activated retracting parasol; turquoise blue, warm sea water to splash about in under a tropical, cloudless blue sky, and a beach front lined with gently undulating dunes and palm trees. The beauty of the paradisiacal water cannot be emphasised enough. Imagine a tiger that is neither orange, nor white, but has a stunning body of light blue, aqua, turquoise and dark blue stripes that ripple as the tiger sighs peacefully. The fresh breeze created a fair few white horses on the surface and also thrusted our parasol high out of the ground and up the beach. We found the spontaneity hilarious but judging by the shock on other peoples’ faces, they seemed to think that Mary Poppins had just had a fatal accident.
Such is the environment at Playa del Este, just 20km from Havanna. And in the name of a well deserved one-day vacation, this is exactly where we ended up. Bliss.
Then it was time to head off into the sunset towards Chinatown for a fantastic oriental feast, including a very hot and spicy shredded pork, chicken with peanuts in yellow bean sauce, sweet and sour balls and egg fried rice. To round off the evening we strolled back along Obispo to buy two types of ice cream: Fresa y Chocolate. Writing this, sipping copious amounts of Cuba Libres, it hardly seems possible that we have been away on our gruelling expedition for the whole of this year, and that by this time next week we will be continuing with our own, individual projects, onwards to pastures new. But what a way to go!

Plaza de la Revolucion

2011-04-12T14:53:00.002+01:00

We set off from our home on Aguacate, along Obispo and speedily past the tobacco store, heading for Centro. Just past the Capitolio we spied some rusting old steam locomotives and then headed west along Avenida Bolivar, taking in the astonishing Art Deco buildings which were on the verge of collapse, yet somehow managed to carry on as flats and apartments. Many facades hid cavernous workshops, where maybe, just maybe, sometimes work was to take place. Suddenly the faux gothic white spire of the Jesuit shrine of the Sagrada Corazon swung into view, which inside was resplendent with stained glass, Jugendstil reredos and a massive organ on the tribune. Bearing in mind the geographical associations of Alejo Carpentier, were we now in Cuba or in Paris?

We also stopped at a few small stalls along this wide boulevard specialising in the paraphernalia and souvenirs of Santeria, but somehow we weren’t quite in the mood for voodoo today. There was a wad of Moneda Nacional burning a hole in Simon’s pocket, and so we mingled with the locals (there are no tourists on this strip, nor are there any facilities for them…) by greeting them with the opening gambit “Que bolá?!” which is typical Cuban slang. Result! We started to spend our money on coffee, refrescos and amazingly tasty icecream.

After a left turn and a long hike, our destination suddenly became visible: the Plaza de la Revolucion. We were allowed to proceed right up to the most important seats, and so Jon made himself right at home in Fidel’s marble chair, whilst Simon gave a short speech to everybody in the crowd beneath.

All this hard work caused the famished pair to seek out a tiny restaurant, again working in Moneda Nacional, for a feast of tasty fried fish and black beans. But this was merely a prelude to the succulent, juicy and plump lobsters they devoured back at home that night.

Havana Good Time!

2011-04-12T14:51:00.002+01:00

We popped into the rum store at the end of Obispo for some Romeo y Julietas. It took quite some time to smoke these big fat mommas...

The truth is that smoking is not a part of our daily lives but fortunately everybody, including us, knows not to inhale cigar smoke but that the fumes should be savoured in the mouth only before puffing out clouds of hoops and battleships. I’m sure the real Cubans are able to skilfully exhale smoky Che Guavaras but we’ve not yet witnessed that. As for us, we remained casual and pretended we were enjoying the repulsive experience of pure tobacco. Unable to finish our cigars, we left the rum shop feeling quite ill and woozy (I am sure that tobacco is not supposed to do that to people). Neither of us are in any hurry to go back and do it again.

Cuba: Food Rationing in 2011...

2011-04-12T14:49:00.002+01:00

We were having a heated, rum-fuelled discussion with Pablo about how proud he thinks we should feel about being British in the run-up to a royal wedding, and so we attempted to flatter in return by suggesting that he, too, had a right to feel proud of his country for having the best health care and literacy rates in the world. Proud of his country? It was then that he gave to us as a souvenir the family’s ration book from last year. And suddenly the harsh truth about life in Cuba dawned.
But who is to blame: Fidel Castro or Jimmy Carter?
When you see us back at home, ask us about the ration book, or better still, ask to see it. We need to raise awareness of the plight here, alerting the bourgeois westerners hermetically sealed in the society of high-mass consumption to the sufferings on the paradise island. It’s not Marxism at work here, it’s a society of class distinctions lurching along under Fidelism. The crumbling, rotting Habana Vieja is a life of impossible hardships: Sandra is amazed by just our passports, for she is unable/forbidden ever to leave the country. We took a little stroll around the southern zone of the old city, where the roads crumbled years ago, the aging facades hide empty shells rather than functioning buildings, and the neighbourhood shops are devoid of any viable produce. We linger outside a house full of women adorned in white headscarves, only to move on when the Santero gives us a glance, and we listen to the sacrificial cockerels, blissfully unaware of their impending doom. We weave in and out of small shops selling artesanias, eventually purchasing enough musical instruments to found our very own two-man symphony orchestra. And eventually we arrive back at our family casa to find Pablo sitting in the street, forlornly gazing into the middle distance. What’s wrong? Well, there’s a problem yet again with the water supply: each house has water tanks underground and on the roof, but the mains water only runs for a few hours, every two days. Missing the slot could prove to be disastrous. During the evening, somewhere between 8 or 9pm, government workers allow water to pass from a reservoir to an accessible supply so that every household is able to take water on board through pump systems. As this only happens every other day, plans for evenings with friends or night walks have to go on hold, or life may become miserable. Water is life! The Cubans rely on this water supply for washing clothes, bed linen and the floor of the house from time to time, cooking and drinking. Bottled water is not really an alternative because prices are extortionate for these guys, so the best course of action which our host family have taken is to install a filter that allows them to drink tap water safely.
One of the most dismaying sides of Cuba is that the two-currency system makes it very difficult for locals who haven’t managed, and can’t manage, to get jobs relating to tourism. Builders, for example, receive their wages in Cuban Pesos Nacionales whereas the owners of tourist restaurants or craft shops have a large turnover in Cuban Pesos Convertibles (CUCs). Just to give you an idea, there are currently 24 Cuban Pesos to each single CUC. It has resorted to a fine divide with some restaurants serving food exclusively for tourists and others remaining loyal to their kind. Most Cubans cannot afford to pay 10CUCs (or 240 Pesos Nacionales) for a hearty meal of fish, beans, rice, and half a pizza if they’re really hungry. For a plate of rice tonight we paid 0.75CUCs, call it 75cents because this currency is pegged to the US dollar. In a restaurant we passed by earlier we saw that a portion of rice would cost a Cuban 2 Pesos Nacionales. We’ve done the maths here, so just trust us. We pay nine times more for rice than Cubans do, and just for your interest, 3 times more for beer. We aren’t complaining because, well take the rice again; we are paying nine times as much for it, but we probably earn much more than nine times the amount of money that they do.

Stuck in Caracas?

2011-04-12T14:47:00.001+01:00

Not the most cheerful airport in the world, what with dim lamps hanging from the high, dark ceilings, the plain concrete staircases and, of course, all types of people waiting in utter boredom. The best thing was that we were seven hours early for our check-in! Thank goodness for Church’s Chicken, the best fast-food chicken burgers on the planet! And let’s not forget their awesome crinkle-cut chips with plenty of ketchup! We also requested Coca-Cola in the combo meal and it was delicious, but it was a much cheaper version like the 2l bottles we used to buy for 8p. We also managed a bit of final souvenir shopping, which killed a couple of hours and before long we were rushing to the randomised queue where a few people seemed to be surrounded by an entropy of thousands of suitcases. We, clever detectives, found out that A LOT of Cubans come to Venezuela to buy their expensive electronic goods on the cheap as opposed to paying more for them in their own country. This must be worth it to them somehow but when you consider the price of the tickets from Cuba to and from Caracas, plus the astronomical airport taxes, it’s hard to believe that there’s any point at all. We spent ample time in the queue standing upright until our backs became cranky and we assumed the sitting position for a while before that became uncomfortable also. There was just one more thing for it… Another one of those chicken combo meals each!
At this stage of the game, we had little idea of the true nature of Cubana’s customer service skills: this would only be gradually revealed over the coming days. Yes, days, for we also had scant knowledge of the looming fact that the flight we were about to undertake would, in fact, be lasting three days…
Well, LAN gave us a little bit of a hard time going to Easter Island last month and they didn’t offer us a hotel room and instead made us wait up through the night after which we woke up with our heads inside our empty McDonald’s Mac-litter. I am really looking for good points about Cubana de Aviacion and to give them their due, they paid our night in the hotel on the outer limits of Caracas so that we could descansar before checking in AGAIN about 24 hours later than scheduled. But just as they were redeeming themselves, we found more hurdles to come.
So the flight was postponed until the following day because there was a major technical fault with the fuel lines on the Yakolev-42D. The hotel in Macuto was great, as was the truly spectacular views of the mountains which descend here dramatically to meet the Caribbean. The following day we arrived back at the airport and eventually boarded our Yak. Words cannot fully describe the condition of the aircraft; business class was littered with stray luggage, cattle class resembled a dirty Guatemalan chicken bus, whilst the signs were in Russian, Lithuanian, Arabic and eventually Spanish. The strong whiff of aviation fuel completed the first impressions. We took off, flew for three hours and touched down in a tropical paradise, complete with turquoise water and white, sandy beaches. We bounded down from the plane and over to the tiny terminal building. At some point during this short walk, Simon pointed out to Jon that it didn’t really look much like Havana, the supposed destination of the trip. It wasn’t Havana at all, but Cayo Largo. One hour passed before we were queuing to board the plane again to Havana, hopefully! Up and away we went, right into a tropical storm, complete with lightening and killer turblence. Would our little Yak survive? Wish as we might, but Camagüey turned the next port of call. Our information on this place is rather limited as, by this time, the light of day had completely disappeared and we are only able to comment on the beautiful streetlamp specks! Changing money was successful here though and we were able to tuck into some half-a-job microwave pizza. With a mixture of Tabasco, Lea and Perrin’s, ketchup and ground pepper, the pizza didn’t seem all that bad. Just to be sure, we eradicated the taste with some good value tubs of chocolate and strawberry ice cream. It was about now that Simon discovered just how cheap the local rum was…
Within ten minutes of ingestion, the airline staff gathered the fellow passengers and started issuing tickets for free airport food. If only we had waited a little longer. We were stuffed at this point but, since it was free, we managed to find extra room for the ham and cheese baguette, and the cola. We hadn’t even finished chomping when it was announced that we should be embarking the plane once again!
This time the flight went to Trinidad. Actually, I’m joking, We finally made it to Havana, but I had you there for a second, admit it! Immigration was fairly rigorous, but we got through before waiting five decades for our backpacks. We then queue jumped the passengers who were declaring their TVs, DVDs, computer consoles, microwaves, (you name it!) from Venezuela and strolled right out into the open where we were to meet a large group of dedicated taxi drivers. It turned out we picked the right guy to get a lift with as his car was just the best and all we ever wanted to experience from Cuban automobiles. It was a massive, vintage 1954 Buic. The scarlet red and magnolia stripes on the paintwork were highlighted by the exposed, overheating bulbs of the rear lights, and the whole car seemed to violently vibrate as the engine rumbled during the journey. There was an overpowering whiff of something, like a mixture of engine oil, gasoline, heat on leather and stale sweat. The day after, it became more obvious that this wasn’t just the smell of the Buic, but the odour pervading the streets, dwellings and shops of the city. Let the experience commence!
By this stage it was 3 in the morning, but we didn’t care! Neither did Pablo, who was there to greet us at the casa particular. And what a fantastic house he and his wife, Sandra, have! We were shown to our room, which was immediately up a flight of white, tiled stairs and through a small door. The room is like its own apartment, but without a kitchen and is very cosy with small windows and a couple of tiny Tiffany lights for illumination. This is most definitely the “king of rooms” out of all the ones we have stayed in during the trip, plus the nice family here really enhances the experience! We flung open the tiny shutters the following morning to see one of the many characteristic vintage motors that dominate the city streets!

Cubana de Aviacion

2011-04-05T13:43:00.002+01:00

You will hear all about this little adventure in far more detail when we have the time to write. But an important update is in order:
We are still in Venezuela, in a $200 hotel room in the town of Macuto. Why? The airline did not operate the flight. The plane was firstly meant to be a Tupolev, but then they changed it at the last minute to a Yakolev. The Yak has broken down, so here we remain. Maybe we will make it to Cuba safely sometime, but on an aged Russian Rust-Bucket, somehow I doubt it. Happy Flightings...

Venezuela: Getting Out!

2011-04-04T18:59:00.000+01:00

Well, our Post-Roraima come-down has been a roaring success. The day after the pizza and salsa party, we all met for breakfast at La Panedaria, then onwards for fresh juices with our Brazilian Momma. People began to leave, each with their own immutable itinerary. We had a fantastic Brazilian lunch at Nova Opcão, and because it was Saturday, there was Feijoada. We promised Brani and Polly that we would see them either in Bulgaria or England, and the rest of the time was spent deep in fascinating conversation with Bruno, whom we will most certainly visit next time we’re in Berlin. Frankly, our entire trekking group was the best we could ever have wished for! The following day was a race to get onto the 13.00 Expresso Occidente bus from Santa Elena to Caracas. Twenty-two hours! But it’s a doddle, and nowhere near the longest single journey we have undertaken on this expedition, or, for that matter, on the other two big ones!
Arriving at the Terminal de Oriente in Caracas, we were, to be honest, terrified of negotiating our way to the airport in one of the most dangerous cities of the whole world. But don’t forget, good fortune has certainly been on our side throughout our travels in South America, and today was definitely no exception. Once again, somebody up there really loves us! Simon was quite anxious to go in search of a café negro, grande y fuerte, and so Jon managed to navigate the pair back to the little panaderia they had used on the outward journey, where he had made a good friend of the Portuguese owner. Yes, there he was, and the coffee was enjoyed, together with some sage advice about handling the city. Another man was beckoned over to show us how to catch the bus to get to the metro station to take the train to catch the airport bus. Sounds complicated, doesn’t it? And at precisely this point, as the intrepid duo marched slowly and purposefully past a taxi driver who was pretending to be buried deep inside the daily newspaper, he sprang into life, chasing them with questions about destinations. He must have been having a quiet day, for he agreed to take us to the airport (and this is from a bus terminal 18 km the wrong side of town) for just 150 Bolivars. Deal.
We sped into downtown Caracas past the Teleferico to El Avila, we saw the towers of the Parque Central, we saw the new cable cars ascending to the hill-top barios, we admired all the shanty towns clinging to the mountains and painted in jaunty colours, some with pastel shades, others co-ordinating to make the Venezuelan flag. All along the way we chatted in fluent Spanish with Eduardo as he pointed out the sights, described all the dangers, and gave us his take on Chavez. What a truly fantastic city this appears to be! The autopista sped us through tunnels, over bridges and down to meet the sea at Maiquetia. The airport is here, and we thanked Eduardo, promised to give him a call next time we’re in Caracas, tipped him 20 Bolivars para una cerveza, and headed off to the departure hall. Will we manage to find an internet connection in Cuba? Who knows, but the next seven days are going to be spent exploring La Habana de Cuba: Habana Vieja, Centro, Vedado. All with cigars, rum and Santeria....
Cubana have messed around twice with our flight details, and it’s now a night flight. Check our progress online or on teletext if you can, it’s an old Russian Tupolev aircraft and who knows just what will happen! It’s CU 311 on 4th April, scheduled out of Caracas at 22.30. Wish us luck and keep your fingers crossed!

Venezuelan Salsa!

2011-04-04T18:57:00.000+01:00

Now you just can’t beat a live band, and after a wonderful meal at the ant pizza place with Benet and his entire family, three children plus Susan who had really made a great effort and was in all her finery, together with all the porters, it was suggested by Rainer that we go to a local bar where we could dance. So we went!
The bar area was dark and moodily lit, serving all manner of rum cocktails and countless cans of ‘light’ beer, and in the brighter room behind, a live four-piece were playing their hearts out, with about twenty people observing, swaying or salsa-ing. Now this most certainly isn’t the type of music we came across in Colombia: it’s much faster, more basic, more naïve. The keyboard player elaborates on some simple chords (three, to be precise) and at will lets his right hand jig happily up and down the keys merrily; the bass player lays down a simple riff and sticks to it; the conga drums lend a very Caribbean flavour to the little combo, whilst the star of the show is the vocalist and drummer: he sings, he constantly rat-tat-tats on not one, but two snarly snare drums, and he splashes enthusiastically and frequently upon his massive cymbal. Can you hear this in your head yet? It’s not Salsa because it’s far too fast and frenetic, it’s not Forro either for the same reason, but when two people take to the dance floor (our porter and a prowling cougar) it all becomes clear exactly HOW you respond in dance to this music: it’s fast-forward ballroom.
The gringos give it their all. Yuichi hits it off with a very keen and willing older lady, Rachel moves elegantly and with experience, politely rebuffing the amorous interests of at least two more of the porters, Simon initiates a conga to the pounding of the congas, whilst Jon and Polly bounce and twist around the floor like experts in a whole new style of dance. The locals, many of whom, by this stage of the Friday night, are literally blind drunk, gaze on in amazement, snapping away with their cameras and videoing us with their phones. Happy days indeed!

Monte Roraima: The Descent

2011-04-04T18:56:00.001+01:00

What a day this was! Very costly to our knees, quadriceps and calves I must say! The route to and from the top Roraima was mostly a roughly 60degree incline, with easier pistes and some harder climbing wall ones. We descended in about half the time it took us to hike up the unique monster mountain, but in some ways, ascension was mas facil. One very sketchy slant covered by loose rocks and boulders required great care, especially since it was on the side of a steep mountain drop and was slippery due to the heavy spray from the overhead waterfall. Thankfully there were no accidents, but sooner or later, every one of us stumbled on large stones or exposed tree roots on the easier terrains. Much further down in the Gran Sabana, closer to where we camped on the first night, the strong flow of the river swept nobody downstream whilst wading through knee-deep, remarkably! We set up our final camp here and shared, yet again, delicious food before Beneton and his team supplied us with awesome t-shirts displaying a map of Venezuela and the text “I didit”. We had to love them! They were fantastic souvenirs to receive before turning in for the night.
I guess walking back across the undulations of the Gran Sabana the next day counts as the descent too, in a way, and this was the most difficult day of all. Waking up and putting on our new “I didit” tees placed the psychology into our heads that we had finished the trek and that this was just a light 3 hour walk back to meet the jeeps. We had forgotten about the steep ups and downs and with our legs being slightly done in from the day before, it proved a bit of a challenge. We all came through though and it was so thrilling at the end to see our new friends satisfied with their accomplishment of their dreams. We stopped for a delicious lunch of BBQ chicken (straight from the churrascaria!), rice and salad, in the tiny village of San Francisco de Yuruani. This was delicious, but the cooks on Beneton’s team were also wonderful and they whipped up full-marks food like this every day, so it wasn’t like we had been deprived of good quality food like this, it was just great sitting on a table together back in civilisation. Drinks were in order, but not before a long shower, to spend the evening congratulating each other and exchanging contacts. We’ve formed some great friendships here and we’ll be staying in contact for sure! If any of you are reading this, thanks for a fantastic time on the trek!

Monte Roraima: Exploring the Tepuy

2011-04-04T18:54:00.004+01:00

The Lost World on top of the table mountain was very extraterrestrial and is like nowhere else on Planet Earth. On the big day of grande exploracion, Jon sets his sights on walking through the infinite-looking rock formations, with Michela (the infamous Italian!), Yuichi and Seyha (The jolly Japanese duo) and our great Guyanese guide, Beneton. Without Beneton, we would have got lost very quickly as there are no distinguishing landmarks on the merciless 200+km2 surface. Sure there are some rocky features, such as the ‘Flying Turtle’ and the ‘Maverick’ and do you remember the Moai statues we were observing on Easter Island? There was the odd naturally occurring Moai look-alike here and there, complete with their stone hats. But these few rock formations would no way be enough for us to find our way back to camp later. As well as these marvels, there were entire glittering quartz crystal valleys, which mystically illuminated themselves using the tiny amount of sunlight that was penetrating the thick cloud cover. It was like being on another planet!

Meanwhile, we were heading to Beneton’s country, Guyana, and also to Brazil. To be more precise, we were in search of the ‘Triple Point’ frontier marker, which separates Venezuela, Guyana and Brazil, and we couldn’t help but climb the large bollard just to be in three countries at once!

Venezuelan people don’t really see it that way as on their maps they have a large extra chunk that overlaps with the Guyanese territory which they call the “Zona de Reclamacion”. In fact, they feel so strongly about this that some Venezuelan with a lot of spare time on his hands took the trouble to climb Monte Roraima, just to remove the plaque from the Guyana side of the monument. In the rest of the world, Guyana has the right to this land and that border is officially shared by the three countries. And as Beneton said himself, “It’s not the plaque that’s important, it’s the land.”

Climbing Monte Roraima

2011-04-04T18:52:00.004+01:00

Another story better told in pictures! Admittedly it was easier than we thought, though that may have been facilitated by the continuous stops to take spectacular pictures of the most beautiful mountain that we’ve ever climbed. Most of our team felt the same and the group met up sooner or later along the way, but there was Bruno (from Berlin, who studies the anthropology of the Pemon people in the area of the Gran Sabana) who is ‘der koenig der Roraima’ (the king of Roraima). Since it’s pretty much on his doorstep, he has climbed it four times now and has done the picture taking thing already, so he hikes it fairly regularly to keep fit (and what better way?). He really has the fitness of a young athlete and this is evident by the fact that he ascended it in 2hrs:10mins, as he revealed over our rewarding beers. Go Bruno! The rest of the team were fantastic companeiros all the way up and the interesting conversations we had seemed to take our minds off the gradient!

Why not pop back to this page soon, when we have managed to upload some thrilling shots?
...
And only 2 weeks later, here they are!

Haben Sie na baba si gyza gesehen?

2011-04-04T18:51:00.000+01:00

We didn’t quite expect to hear such an insulting phrase from Brani, the future president of Bulgaria, and at the time we thought that his beautiful wife to be, Polly, was equally shocked. Don’t be fooled! She is just as much of a minx and she wasn’t shy at all, but was only held back by a sore throat or cold. Mr Bulgaria lives in Germany and has done so from a very young age, which explains his brilliant German language skills, but also an amazing standard of English due to the fact that they learn our language from about the age of ten, maybe younger still. Having moved from Bulgaria with his family, he has remained very much in touch with his mother tongue, so basically we had a tri-lingual genius on the team! He couldn’t help but sometimes mix his Bulgarian into his German sentences. Can you help us to decipher the title of this blog, “Haben Sie na baba si gyza gesehen?” We can get some from our German, and of course we know the Bulgarian part too (they are our first Bulgarian words!!!) but maybe it’s best, and more fun if you work this one out on your own. It may be difficult in ‘Google Translator’ though because Bulgarians actually write in Cyrillic. “Haben Sie… gesehen?” means “Have you seen…?”
“… na baba si gyza…” is a completely different kettle of fish!

Treking the Gran Sabana

2011-04-04T18:49:00.000+01:00

Following the tight squeeze into the jeep, our Speedy Gonzalez driver tore through the gentle undulating hills of the Gran Sabana like there was no tomorrow. It would have been more enjoyable had we not been feeling a little queasy. A ride like that should never be undertaken on an empty stomach, and Jon felt a lot better after taking up Francisco’s (an awesome Argentinean from Buenos Aires) offer of a square or two of his chocolate. Each of the “small” blocks were like a whole bar and the milk chocolate taste and silky texture was simply divine! Once in Paraitepuy, we had arrived at our starting point for the trek towards Roraima and were immediately hit by the warm and somewhat dusty air of the surroundings. We had also heard bad stories about hungry swarms of mosquitoes and even smaller and subtler puri-puri, so of course the occasional wasp and small fruit flies weren’t going unnoticed either. Our guide, Beneton, whipped up a light lunch of delicious ham and cheese sandwiches to pump us full of energy for the forward march. The distant view of Monte Roraima and his neighbour, Kukenan Tepuy, was marvellous and clouds blanketed themselves around the mountains and in between, whilst leaving the extensive savannah completely clear. The grassy hills and valleys were varying in shades of greens and light-yellow, and also patches of jet black due to controlled burning like we saw in Burma last year, plus high coppices hid very well the loud insect life and the sharply screeching ducks. The first day was very enjoyable and a bit of a doddle, since crossing the streams merely involved short strides from stone to stone and we ran at the massive, steep hills with determination. In all honesty, however, we hadn’t used up any of our battery power by this time as it was only day one. For even the best of us, this was shortly about to change as the true ascent of the target Tepuy neared.

The Lost World: Monte Roraima

2011-04-04T18:47:00.002+01:00

Well, it must be said that this was to be one of the trip’s greatest highlights. It was at a very young age that Jon became introduced to a film version of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous novel, ‘The Lost World’. He would sit with his brother, Rich, and they would both stare silently into the box, watching in fascination as the team of scientists in the plot, who are in search of the world’s last dinosaurs, become stranded on top of the high Plateau that protrudes gigantically from the dense jungle below. Even more hair-raising for us were the brutal, blood-curdling, roars of the monstrous beasts and the sound of the large trees falling down as they barged through them threateningly. A couple of months ago, a young trekker injured himself on top of the plateau and the emergency helicopter was called to the rescue in order to save him the painful descent on foot. Unlike in the novel, it was the fault of the inexperienced pilot that we could catch a whiff of kerosene, as he crashed into some of the irregular rock formations that dominate the plateau’s moonlike landscape. The dinosaurs that we saw didn’t obliterate any flying machines, but they were larger than we expected and the seemed to roam slowly and in single file on top of the Tepuy (table mountain).

It was only recently that we heard of Roraima and up until this point, we thought that such a film location was entirely fictional. Doyle did get his inspiration from this mountain, and how couldn’t he? This dream of visiting the Lost World became reawakened in Jon’s mind and this resulted in the team being led on an expedition of discovery, with fantastic guides and porters, and an intrepid bunch of interesting international backpackers from a variety of backgrounds. Couldn’t have been better and we shall now reveal!

Pizza Hormiga!

2011-04-04T18:46:00.001+01:00

The night before we set off on our mammoth mountaineering expedition, we went with Bruno, an eminent German anthropologist, for a bite of pizza and plenty of Venezuelan cervezas! He suggested that in order to get into the local spirit of the indigenous Pemon Indians, we try a pizza anointed with their favourite spicy sauce, Cumachi. Have you ever eaten ants before? Well, us neither, but these little critters come in a smoky chilli sauce which is crunchy and packs a mighty punch!

Santa Elena: Enjoying the Views

2011-03-26T13:46:00.007Z

One of the greatest pleasures in life, either when you travel or when you live in Cornwall, is to draw back your curtains in the morning and pause for a few seconds as you take in the wonderful views. Now when you stay in 'budget' accommodation around the world, you're more likely to see concrete, garbage and rusty iron than herds of wilderbeast roaming majestically across the savannah, but this morning, just for once, our hearts missed a beat as we realised what good luck we've been having on this expedition. Take a look!

Can you see the guava tree in this shot?

Sometimes travelling can be one big problem-solving excercise. Take this, for example: Caracas is so dangerous (due to La Inseguridad) and so tricky to negotiate with large backpacks, we were seriously scared as we planned our journey through the city last week. Just imagine our amazement and delight to find out that we had purchased tickets which would deliver us not to the expected bus terminal La Bandera, but to the Terminal Oriente, exactly the place we needed to be for our onward connection. So the problem wasn't just solved, it merely evaporated!
Our next major worry was just how, exactly, were we to find our way safely back across Caracas on our way to the airport and onwards to Cuba. The problem was compounded by money issues: don't forget we can only use the cash we are carrying (to get the best exchange rate) and that there are expensive taxis to consider (the airport is at Maiquetia, 26 km away on the northern coast) and there is a hefty departure tax to pay just to leave the country, but we're not quite sure just how much this is going to be. So the logistics of this problem were, quite frankly, huge. Should we try to arrive on a night bus and then go directly to the airport, or should we try to stay overnight in the city and then travel onwards? All this is further complicated by the fact that muggings, express-kidnappings and fake taxi drivers are commonplace here. What to do?
Well, it turns out that Cubana de Aviacion have changed the time of our flight from midday to an evening departure. Problem solved immediately: night bus, taxi to the airport with plenty of time to spare. Somebody up there loves us! Oh, but wait, just hang on there a cotton-picking minute....
This means that we'll be clearing customs in Havana sometime after midnight, with no airport bus, and nowhere booked to stay. Out of the frying pan.....

Venezuela: Santa Elena de Uairen

2011-03-26T02:15:00.004Z

Before you read much further, go and take a look at the map and find out just exactly where Santa Elena de Uairen is. Roughly speaking, you'll need to be looking at the bottom right-hand corner of Venezuela. Just about on the border with Brazil, and fairly close to the border with Guyana. There's just one road. The rest is pure, pure countryside. This area is called Grand Sabana, and the beautiful, lush, undulating forest and grassland is punctuated by the astonishing and other-worldy tepui which rise up solemnly and vertically from the ground. But being so close to northern Brazil (and only five degrees north of the equator) it's Amazonas. We're in the Parque Nacional de Canaima: there are two main modes of transport; boat and plane. Sometimes the rainforest is just too dense for anything else. But if you're expecting us to visit the Angel Falls, well, humble apologies, for during our planning stage we realised that now it's the dry season and that the famous waterfall would just be a mere trickle. Frustratingly though, do you remember that our Orinoco visit had been thwarted back in January? This was due to unusually high levels of water in the river: this dry season has been exceptionally wet! And we have just heard that the falls have been worth seeing after all. This might well mean another trip to Venezuela!
It's a country that needs a little time to be loved. After Colombia, it came, quite frankly, as a bit of a shock. It's just not the happy playground of the Caribbean that Cartagena turned out to be; it's displaying so many of the 'indicators' of a third world nation. And the growl of the monster sized engines in virtually every vehicle (almost every tiny bus seems to have been re-engined and tuned up to growl like a racing car!) is bordering on the bizarre. But the oil wealth seems not to touch the ordinary citizens, who, quite frankly seem to be struggling very badly.
So our little love affair with this country is fairly on-and-off and very much rollercoaster. The landscapes are fantastic, but Chavez is a disappointment. Yet down here in Santa Elena, we've managed to find something special: a little town that is far more than simply a border post. The surrounding countryside is spectacular, the climate is varied (sometimes unbelievably hot, followed by refreshing breezes) and the town itself is great to spend just a few days.
Remember the food halls of Asia which we raved about last year? Well this afternoon, as we walked along regretting the omnipresent burger stalls and arepas hereabouts, wishing for a Malaysian-style food court, we turned a corner and lo, as manna from heaven, there immediately in front of us was an impressive covered hall of about thirty independent snack bars, cafes and restaurant serving everything from menus del dia, to Brazilian-style Churros and fruit shakes.
The Brazilian influence extends to language here, too: conversations swing between Spanish and Portuguese with ease and fluency.
Here the indigenous people are the Pemon, and yes, of course they have their own, unique language. But this area might be considered somewhat isolated today, in times past it was considered to be the last frontier. Remember the film The Mission, which tells the story of the Jesuits and the Guarani in the 1760s? Well here the Pemon lived completely isolated from the outside world until 1922, when the Capuchins began to set up missions to convert the tribes throughout Southeast Venezuela. And this is exactly the year of the founding of the cathedral of Santa Elena, which we stumbled upon during a walk out of the centre of the town.

Over the Orinoco

2011-03-25T22:01:00.005Z

Well, look up to the subtitle and scroll right down to our first few blog entries. We promised you the Rio Orinoco, and this should have happened sometime back in early January. But, due to water levels in the river delta, it didn't happen at all.
A promise is a promise, and here it is! We crossed over the Orinoco at Ciudad Bolivar on the way to our final goal in Venezuela, Santa Elena de Uairen. Here is the mighty river:

So we left Coro on the value night bus to Caracas, which delivered us direct to the Terminal de Oriente in time for a very early breakfast of hot coffee and pan de manteca, as well as the chance to buy a ticket for the 8.00am day bus straight out again, direct to Ciudad Bolivar. We saw a little of Caracas by night, and a little of the hills surrounding the city. Very beautiful, but the city: very dangerous, no time to linger! The first few hours of bus journey out East delivered magnificent views of the mountians, the mists and the favelas. Magical, but best enjoyed from the safety and comfort of the bus. We arrived in Bolivar around dusk, just in time to secure a ticket on the night bus down to Santa Elena. Dawn was breathtaking, and suddenly, as we reached the village of San Francisco, we glimpsed Monte Roraima from the bus windows. This is going to be the experience of a lifetime!

Coro: Getting Out of Town!

2011-03-22T17:56:00.004Z

Corrrr-o! This was only a little frustrating, but we shall reveal all!
The ticket office was due to open at 7 in the morning; the tickets to Caracas from this office were half the price of everybody else and the advice was to get there early! So we made it to the bus terminal just after 6.30, when all the counters were shrouded in darkness and it appeared that, save for a lone man perusing a broadsheet newspaper, we were the only people around. We positioned ourselves slap bang in front of the office window, and waited. Eventually the newspaper man piped up, in rapid and impenetrable Spanish, which we were tempted to ignore, were it not for the fact that what we did manage to glean from his oration was that he had numbered us seven and eight. It began to dawn on us that he was the ‘marker’, and that other people had arrived earlier than us but weren’t waiting by the window: perhaps they had gone off to do some other chores and would return presently. Now what would you do in this situation? Would you accept your number in a non-existent queue from a stranger, or would you pretend to ignore him and plead ignorance and language barrier, thus ensuring that you had become number one and two?
Well, given the appalling, blatant if not flagrant culture of queue jumping in this continent, we decided upon the latter course of action. And we badly wanted the tickets. Now as soon as the office lights had been turned on by the manager coming in to work, people began to appear as if by magic, from every angle, converging upon the two weary travellers. A peroxide blonde woman of a certain age became the most vocal, especially owing to the fact that she had been appointed queue member “Number One”, or should I say “Numero Uno”?. She ranted. She ranted some more, accompanied by a pretty black girl, who seemed to think she was number two. Now their flimsy argument definitely smelt of number twos, and so the British pair stood their ground, blocking all access to the window and impressively holding down the argument completely in Español. Blonde Number One screamed that she had been here since 4.30 in the morning to buy her ticket, and Simon tried to explain that actually she was in error, because she hadn’t really been here (pointing to the ground beneath him) at all, and that she had been over there (pointing to a distant location in the terminal where she had been loitering. And by her rules, we could have argued that we had been there since 1pm yesterday! But all to little avail, whilst Jon took a slightly different tack, by maintaining until he was blue in the face that we were at the head of the queue because that’s exactly where we were standing, and, furthermore, where we had positioned ourselves twenty minutes previously when there was only Newspaper Man standing some few meters away. He also pointed out to them that they should relax because the number of people in the queue anyway did not exceed the capacity of the omnibus, which is what they were making out of this to be honest. And after all, we were British, the world experts in queue etiquette. As all this was heating up nicely and getting itself into full swing, the manager decided to pitch in with some choice comments. What we picked up from his particular version of Spanish was that if the squabbling didn’t cease immediately, he wouldn’t be selling any tickets at all, and that nobody would be going to Caracas. Ouch. The squabbling continued. The manager continued. What we then managed to pick up was the manager’s entire take on the situation, and suddenly things began to swing dramatically in our favour. It became clear that, in his inflated opinion, in order to secure your position in a queue, you need to be physically present in it. Now this clearly isn’t rocket science, it’s just common sense. To underline our inside triumph but also to shut everyone up, and in perfect Spanish, Jon suggested to the assembled throng that they should all consider growing up. The squabbling continued still. The manager emerged from his office and physically began to arrange the members of the mob into their positions in the queue. Meanwhile Jon Number One and Simon Number Two successfully purchased their cut-price tickets to Caracas.
As they hastily walked away from the crowd, it suddenly dawned upon them that they would be sharing a night bus and a long journey with all these people, later on today. Perhaps they will all have forgotten about it by then? They might even turn out to be fun people…
Caracas was filling us with dread, as we were expecting to arrive at Terminal de la Bandera and then have to schlep a further 18 kilometres out to the eastern edge of the city to the Terminal Oriente to catch a bus to Cuidad Bolivar and beyond. We read our tickets with surprise and glee: this bus would take us direct to the eastern terminal. So no wonder it was a cut-price ticket: for people travelling to central Caracas, it would be a major inconvenience. For two guys hoping to get out of town, it was divine providence and so we celebrated with two piping-hot Venezuelan coffees! And they only(!) cost half of our complete bus journey!

Later, just before leaving, the globe-trotting gastronauts sought out the one and only central restaurant in Coro serving a late almuerzo. Washed down with fresh rasperry juice, Jon had some kind of unidentified fried fish with beetroot and arepa (barely passable) and Simon had the local Caribbean delicacy of goat. It was, without doubt the most revolting, repulsively worst meal he has ever eaten...

Venezuela: Further Impressions

2011-03-22T02:58:00.005Z

Well, following yesterday’s little rant, some much-needed research has been carried out:
Firstly, Chavez has implemented massive programmes of adult education to boost literacy rates, and quality medical care is now available to the poorest sectors of society. So it’s not all doom and gloom here in Venezuela. But somehow the place seems to lack the sheer vibrancy of Colombia, and for all the friendliness of the people we meet, there are far fewer smiles.
Now Coro has some very pleasant facets, but quite frankly, after spending lots of time in Cartagena, there’s just no way it can ever really thrill. But let’s just take a look at face value:

Zamora is the old, cobbled street with the most interesting windows and doorways. We dropped by San Clemente which dates from the sixteenth century, and then proceeded to the cathedral of Coro, which is a Minor Basilica and one of the first sites of Christian worship on the entire continent. There is something about the religious fervour of ordinary people in both Colombia and Venezuela that seems to be on a completely different level to most of the rest of South America, so that’s saying something! Shrines are absolutely everywhere, and treated with the utmost respect. On our first full day in Colombia, we arrived bright and early at the little airport in Pasto. The Avianca crew were just arriving for work, and a smartly uniformed pilot walked purposefully up to a faded wall poster of a famous painting of the Virgen from the shrine near Ipiales, kissed his hand and touched the poster. So all is not lost in the battle with the ‘missionaries’ for the people have their traditions, and hold them dear. And on the subject of mission, this is exactly the word Chavez has used in his crusade for the provision of services to the poor and the outcast.

As we headed back to the sanctuary of the hammocks in El Gallo for a second evening, San Francisco beckoned, with its cloister and soothing lighting. So Coro is a relaxing place to spend a few days, and tomorrow our programme will be an entire twelve hour slot of doing absolutely nothing.

But this lack of action is quite deliberate, for then we are making directly for the very bottom right corner of the country (that’s a technical term, of course) via Caracas. It’s going to involve two consecutive nights on buses, and a transit through one of the most dangerous cities of the world, where La Inseguridad describes the urban terror of opportunistic crime. Once we’ve reached Grande Sabana, there will be Brazilian food to eat and an entire mountain to climb! Wish us luck, keep your fingers crossed, and hope to hear from us by the end of the week.

Coro and the Surroundings!

2011-03-21T22:11:00.007Z

After swatting more mosquitoes than I can count on two hands, our room in Santa Ana de Coro became completely inhabitable, but just in case any more crazy little critters squeezed through the netting in the windows or under the door, we placed, and angled, the two fans carefully so that they blew around the whole room, covering every inch. We learned from our past trips that mosquitoes and other biting bugs don’t do so well in the face of wind, which thereby formed this rationale. Once convinced of our accurate fan precision positioning we headed out of the comfort of the hostel and went in search of a late night bite. Not a soul was out in the streets and everybody’s lights were either off or the shutters had been fastened so that nobody could break in. Should we have really been out? Well, things turned out as we rewarded ourselves with a neopolitano pasta, Coca-Cola and beer from the only visible restaurant, which was well lit up. On a Sunday night, it seems that everybody is inside. Perhaps as a Catholic country, they treasure Sundays as rest days. We’ll find out if Mondays are equally quiet, or not, tonight as we have one more night here before the next stage of the journey. After the meal it was pretty much straight to bed, and when we woke up this morning, low and behold, there were no mosquito bites! One has just managed to stick its needle-like proboscis through my sock at this moment though. NEVER let your guard down!
As for today, what was in store for us was a real treat! Taking a short, ten-minute hop on the frantic local bus just to the outskirts has never been so easy and the prize at the end was sheer brilliance! We disembarked from the vehicle and marched on for ten more minutes along a short avenue, which came to a dead end. Well, most drivers would call it a dead end, but pedestrians would call it something like a ‘live start’. Certainly the start of an awesome day, even though the day was rolling by already! The concrete disappeared beneath a sudden steep slope of sand, where we eagerly continued hiking up to the brow, pleasantly being shaded by the trees’ wide spreading branches and leaves. At the peak of this sand hill, we were stunned that we had truly reached a large desert of both gentle and raised dunes. It appeared like something straight outside of Aladdin’s cave, and although this sounds absolutely magical, meeting forty thieves was not at all high on our agenda. Least of all here in Latin America!
We discovered that we weren’t alone as we heard numerous shrieks from the nearby thorny shrubbery surrounding us, but it was soon revealed that goats and their kids were the culprits! The wild goats roam freely across the windswept dunes, not really seeming too phased by our humanly presence. That being said, one kid was following far behind his mother and she appeared literally frantic as she choked out a large gruff, whilst projecting her grey and off-pink tongue fiercely forwards in the direction of her beloved. The little baby continued scampering through the sand, which slipped away from his hooves on every step, but he made no real effort to obey his ‘madre’ and hurry up. The rebel!
Having visited the dunes making up the Parque Nacional Los Médanos de Coro, in the harsh midday sun, we are fortunate not to have fried today. The only thing that caught us out were the sneaky grains of sand that filled our shoes, but we had fun making sandcastles out of it all, once emptied!

Venezuela: Santa Ana de Coro

2011-03-21T05:38:00.003Z

Well. We’ve made it, down the long (and straight) road into the colonial town of Coro, in the mid-north of Venezuela, on the Caribbean. Tomorrow we’re setting off from the UNESCO heritage town to see the famous, heritage sand dunes, and hopefully, the bright blue Caribbean again…
But first, we’ve got to tell you about how we made it here. We boarded our bus out of historical Cartagena around 6 in the evening yesterday, after completing our visits to all the churches of the city. Earlier in the day, Simon had gone to the midday mass at the Franciscan Tercen Orden, which lies at the boundary of Getsemani, and as we prepared to leave, we took one last spin around the wonderful Plaza Trinidad, where, suddenly, and for the first time this week, the massive, fortress-like wooden doors of this grand old church had been flung open, almost as if they knew it was our last chance to visit. The faded grandeur within was exactly what the façade had promised. And then, as we trundled along Calle Media Luna for one last time, this time heavily laden with our backpacks already groaning with souvenirs and gifts, the doors of the tiny San Roque were open as the lights illuminated the blue east wall for the early evening mass. We were on our way…
The crowded town bus to the terminal took a whole hour, edging slowly through the suburbs of teeming market stalls and tiny, brightly-painted bungalows, each surrounded by bars and fences. Salsa pounded from every angle; the bass lines carry the furthest, with their hypnotic rhythms which make the whole body pulsate. A tasty Menu del Dia refreshed the intrepid travellers as they set off on a fiercely air-conditioned night bus to Maicau, the last town in Colombia before the Venezuelan border. Countless police checkpoints tended to impede the progress, but each little village provided a tropical taste of yet more pounding salsa. Terrific! The road signs were fascinating too, for between Barranquilla and Santa Marta we noticed some large yellow ‘beware’ signs which seemed to be alerting night-time motorists to the presence of large ant-eaters in the road!
And then at 5 am, we were in Maicau. We were bundled into the back of a por puesto. The man said it would cost 20,000 pesos. Yes, yes that’s fine. What’s a por puesto, you ask? Well imagine all the cars in a 1970s cop series set in Los Angeles. We’re talking big, really big, old American cars here. That haven’t been serviced or cleaned since the 1970s. Very Venezuelan, very exciting! Our backpacks go in the trunk, which fails to shut; each time the driver tries, the lid just gently and languidly springs up again. But soon a screwdriver fixes the problem, and we’ll be needing that screwdriver a little later, as it’s the only thing able to open the lid… “What’s that Senor? 25,000 pesos?! Now you know that’s not what we just agreed with the other guy! Right, ok then, we’ll just get right out of this petrol fume-ridden, rusting death trap and wait until you can stop lying. Oh, what’s that, 20,000 would be fine?” And we’re off along the road to Paraguachon, the border controls. Dawn is breaking, and as we walk up to the office, the cock crows.
Our smart visas speed our entry, and soon the automobile is off once more, tearing along the road at a hair-raising speed, with four other small concerns which raise all hairs yet further (and we’re not just talking eyebrows here!) Firstly, the pot-holes (well, craters is a more apt description) mean that we can’t just proceed in a straight line: to avoid these massive depressions in the road surface, we have to weave along. And weave we do, at maximum speed. Next, there is the racing line to consider. Now here in Venezuela, they drive on the right: nominally. But it’s much, much more fun to drive on the left, or in the middle. Well that’s what it seems like at any rate. And then there’s the overtaking. Of course it’s a race, and a pretty whacky one, at that. Overtaking must occur at every available opportunity. Especially when there’s a blind corner coming up, or even better, the brow of a hill. And finally, there’s playing chicken. You just put your headlights on full beam, honk your horn furiously, and drive straight at the oncoming vehicles.
The road to Maracaibo has many fascinating diversions, such as the teeming bird life around the Gulf of Venezuela. The villages have a high indigenous population, and we notice the women in long, flowing, colourful robes. But the garbage, the garbage. The country has no environmental policy to speak of, and especially in the town of San Rafael del Mojan, we become acutely aware of one of the very real problems facing Venezuela. In suburban Colombia it was bad, but here, it’s much more hard-core. We arrive in Maracaibo all in one piece, and even manage to dabble on the black market money exchange within seconds of setting foot in the bus terminal. For those of you who may wish to travel to Venezuela in the future, don’t worry about trying to find the black market: it will, without any doubt, find you. Now let’s not forget that there are two exchange rates: the ludicrously high, artificial, yet official, exchange rate of 2.15 Bolivars to the dollar, and then there’s the black market. We achieved a rate of 6.5 Bolivars to the US $, which we considered great! (Us naïve novices thought we were getting a great deal, but still improved on our exchanges when we changed money with our hostel at 7.8 Bolivars to the dollar.) Now which option would you choose? We met a fellow traveller earlier on in our journey who ranted about how expensive Venezuela was, but it was revealed that she used her ATM card and was receiving less than a quarter of what we’ve been getting!
As if by magic, a bus boy appears in front of us screaming ‘Coro! Coro! Coro! (all bus boys shout everything three times in Latin America) and suddenly we find ourselves on a typically Venezuelan bus, bouncing along the highway. The curtains make it tricky to see out of the front window, but the rosary and picture of the Sagrado Corazon lend a spiritual fervour to the expedition. Wind buffets us from the open side windows, and the salsa is set to maximum decibels. Arriba!

The bridge over the Lago Maracaibo affords amazing views of the oil-rich metropolis with its skyscrapers and super-tankers. Columbus himself was the first European to set foot in Venezuela, on his third voyage in 1498, when he anchored within sight of Trinidad. It was only when he found the mouth of the Orinoco that he realised it was not an island, but an entire continent. But it was Amerigo Vespucci who visited Lago Maracaibo in the following year and noticed the thatched homes on stilts in the lake, calling the land ‘Little Venice’.
And what’s Chavez managing to achieve with all this oil wealth? Well, take it from us, this is our final country in this vast continent, and we’ve been everywhere apart from Guyana (and we might even be setting foot there, next week) and Suriname. This is a continent in a mess, and that mess is perhaps even more shocking than India. Yes there is the rural poverty of the campesiños and the hard life they lead managing to scrape by with basic agriculture. But it’s the urban poverty which is the most shocking, most depressing. This is a continent of favelas, with little cohesion and little in the way of support networks. The Base Urban Communities of the Liberation Theologians are swamped by the sprawl of urban confusion; the North American Pentecostalism which is growing exponentially deliberately attempts to thrive on offering a solution to this municipal nihilism. And yet, and yet. Look around, and everywhere there are shrines to the saints. There are fresh flowers, and there are candles. But why hasn’t Chavez managed to follow the model of Cuba and create a world-class educational system (and I’m not thinking of El Sistema here, more of that when we reach Caracas in a few days’ time) and a world-class national health service? With a socialist agenda AND massive oil revenue, surely it’s possible to create a utopian state? What has gone so badly wrong in Venezuela that has turned this into a country ‘on the edge’? Allende tried in Chile back in the 1970s, but that experiment didn’t even have time to get off the ground. But we’ve just come from Colombia, which of course now has a seriously right-wing regime. But in a very short time that regime has completely erased the drug problem, even turning around the reputation of Medellin from being the world’s most dangerous city to a perfectly peaceful and prosperous place. So if the right can do it, why, oh why, can’t the left? Oh, and feel free to respond to any of this in the comments box.
So we arrived in the small historical heart of Coro with it’s charming multicoloured colonial architecture, windows and doorways, and headed for El Gallo. This enclave is a haven of tranquillity in the streets, which after dark are foreboding and menacing. But where is the threat? A few stray dogs, a few passers-by, but none of the muggers we have been expecting. Maybe everybody is at home, behind the shutters and the bars, just waiting for life here to improve. Even just a little.

Cartagena Memories...

2011-03-19T19:29:00.003Z

Well it’s time to move on, and tonight we’re setting off on an intrepid journey over a land border into Hugo Chavez’s ‘paradise’. If UK citizen’s fly in, no visa is required, but we’ve chosen the more interesting option. And we’re armed with smart, laminated photo-visas in our passports. And we have documentary proof of our onward travel plans out of the continent. It’s another new contry for both of us, and an exciting adventure. There’s some danger on the horizon, too: will it be the snakes, the insects or the urban bandits?
Wish us luck, and whilst you’re doing that, take a swift rifle through some of our favourite moments living in Cartagena de Indias! Oh, and one final acknowlegement: big thanks go to Blanca Zapata, who runs the little Hotel Londres on Calle Media Luna, here in Getsemani, Cartagena de Indias. It's a fantastic, cosy little place, exactly what you might expect from a small, family-run hostel in Caribbean Colombia. Even down to the hammocks! So thanks, Blanca, for your special little place, and for the way you say 'claro' and 'con mucho gusto.' Gustamos mucho!

Cartagena: Full Moon Party!

2011-03-19T19:17:00.003Z

Tonight it’s a full moon, which keeps on appearing through breaks in the moody clouds. When we were in Thailand, we were constantly hearing about ‘full moon parties’, but surely they don’t happen over here in the Caribbean? Well we decided to invent our own, and proceeded directly to the massive town walls, which were built to turn the entire city into a fortress to withstand the onslaught of French and Dutch ships, and indiscriminate British pirates such as Francis Drake… Have a gander at these two Nosferatu-like shots, where we discovered a small opening in the fortifications right next to the massive Teatro de Heredia.

Meanwhile, back in Getsemani, we stumbled into an old, converted mansion; one of those with a massive, central open-air courtyard. But this one came complete with dry-ice, strobe lighting and the loudest, biggest loudspeakers we’ve ever seen. And that’s even by Colombian standards. Almost immediately, a very friendly young woman came over to Simon, full of smiles and small-talk (unintelligible, we’re afraid, due both to the decibel levels of a rocket, and to the densely incomprehensible lilt and speed of the northern Colombian accent) and offered him a sip of a drink. Tempting though it was, this country still has a rather bad reputation for burundanga, a tasteless and odourless spike which renders the victim unconscious for hours, after which they awake, drowsy and minus all their valuable belongings. So we just danced. We danced to Shakira’s latest hit (did you realise she is Colombian?), sang along to a Lady Gaga classic, and whistled to a song where the one and only lyric is the name ‘Barbara Streisand’. As the dry-ice occasionally cleared in synchronisation with gaps in the clouds, whilst the tropical breezes fanned the revellers, the moon beamed down upon the whole fairy-tale scene.

Cartagena de Indias: More Tasty Flavours

2011-03-19T18:57:00.006Z

And talking of fish, how about this splendid specimen, fresh from the Caribbean into the frying pan? He’s called a Mojarra, and comes fried with a spicy sauce of onions and peppers, together with coconut rice (don’t ask us why it’s quite so brown…), a whole banana which has been flattened and fried, and a nice salad. All this was preceded by an inoffensive chicken soup on the Menu del Dia (which here is also known as the Corrientazado) and makes an exceptionally cheap but tasty almuerzo. For 8,000 Pesos (this really isn’t much, the exchange rate is running at 2,990 this week)…

Breakfast just a few hours earlier (ok, hands up, we had a lie-in…) was mainly shakes, at (believe it or not) our new local, which has turned out to be better and even cheaper than the trusty old Bolivar. Can you tell the difference here between raspberry milkshake, orange juice and a carrot shake?

Later in the afternoon it was time to cool off. In this heat, all appetite seems to evaporate and all you want to do is to hydrate. And this is the best method in the world… and the tastiest. Now one of these shakes is the most amazing lemonade we’ve ever tasted, and the other is a mystery flavour, selected from the menu for its fascinating name and the fact that we hadn’t tried it yet. Can you guess what it is? Why not post a comment and get the discussion going?!

Right now Cartagena is staging a massive exhibition of the work of Miguel Morales. We stumbled into his exhibition space as he was hanging his latest canvases; we had a chat and he took a photo of us admiring his massive paintings. Here is a small sample of his work, but sadly we haven’t quite had time to return again to the exhibition.

Cartagena Street Party!

2011-03-17T23:42:00.003Z

Following a filling tea of four different empanadas to share and a fair attempt at the world’s best hotdog each, we sauntered down the street towards the walls of the fortress that enclose Cartagena’s old town. Our ears pricked up as we heard rhythms being busted out on some distant bongos and we couldn’t resist the temptation to get involved. We curiously followed the sounds around the fortress’ turrets and were soon swallowed up by a stampede of circling people, who were virtually all shaking maracas. A small band was generously given one square metre or so in which to play their instruments, including a large melodeon, a clarinet, congas and singers. To be honest, we felt a little out of place. That is until we released THE awesome guiro fish of knowledge, which are made from the pod of some kind of fruit (no idea what fruit, even after being told!), and enhanced the crowds rhythm with our flawless percussion.

Just when we needed her! A bubbly fruit seller in traditional red, blue and yellow, costume (the flag of Colombia) magically appeared with her moreish condensed milk and coconut delights, all balanced on her head! One wasn’t enough, but as we finished scoffing and turned our heads, she had mysteriously disappeared. And in about a further twenty minutes, so did the party!
In a flash, the happening atmosphere left us and it turned out that all the party-goers had crammed into some open buses to escape the police presence. Back we walked across the fort, with only the light evening breeze and the waves of the sea acknowledging us. The fiesta buses rolled past with people inside singing, rattling their maracas and scraping their fish-struments! A few responded enthusiastically when they saw Jon shaking the maracas from the heights of the fort!

Cartagena de Indias: Fiesta and Salsa

2011-03-17T04:25:00.002Z

Can you believe it? In the Plaza San Diego, the massive, red, fortress-like eponymous monastery has been turned into a luxury hotel. Likewise with the convent of Santa Teresa. I mean, eeek! But fortunately, next to the Plaza Fernandez de Madrid is to be found the small and humble façade of the church of Santo Toribio de Mogrovejo. Now this was all closed up when we passed earlier, but suddenly the doors were open and the lights were on! So we popped in, and it’s the run up to his feast day; he sounds quite important, too: Patron of the Bishops of America, Defender of the Indians, Negros and the Poor of America! But this fiesta was fairly low-key, mainly because it’s Lent, but also because it’s going to last nine days, and this is only the first day… But take a look up at the ceiling, and down to the reredos: of all the churches in the historical part of Cartagena, this must surely be the most beautiful.

After that, there was only one thing to do: to pay an extended visit to Don Fidel Leautau, who is always to be found running his bar in the Portal de los Dulces. It’s the best sound system in Cartagena, with the best salsa collection in the whole of Colombia. Wow, was this music loud! But hypnotic, infectious, and, of course, totally addictive! Everybody was out for a good time, and the finger clicking and loud singing around the bar told us so!
Finally, it was time to feast and we went in search of arepas. We will try and find the exact recipe for you.

Palenque

2011-03-17T01:01:00.005Z

Right out of Africa! An Africa away from Africa! Palenque was definitely worth the painfully slow bus ride to Cartagena’s bus terminal (one hour to travel six kilometres?!) and roughly an hour-and-a-half more on another bus, which stopped and advanced frequently causing our ride to be somewhat jolty. Our driver’s visibility was heftily compromised by the beautiful multicoloured textile covering the top half of his windscreen and his side windows. Very nerve wracking if you ask us! What with the speed of the motorcycles filtering in and out and across scattered queues of heavy, clustered traffic! Every so often there would be stray dogs risking their lives just to cross the road and, even more frequently, loud vehicle horns to keep us alert!
Once we arrived in “Palenque” as the driver had told us the bus was going to, we descended and were approached by a few lads with motorbikes telling us that they’d give us a ride. But of course the distance was easily walkable, even in the tropical midday heat, so they were just more people out to scam the tourists! It turns out that being cynical doesn’t always pay off as during the first steps through the even smaller village of Palenquito, Jon asked an old lady who was cooking a delicious smelling broth in the garden the direction and distance to Palenque itself. It was still five kilometres away, which by normal standards is doable but quite a stretch in this heat, but fortunately, one of the guys came by on his motorcycle and on we crammed; the driver, Simon and Jon. We don’t like motorbikes at the best of times, but we warmed to this and the ride towards Palenque was frankly awesome! It was so good that we arranged to meet the same driver later to take us back to the bus stop.
Meanwhile, Palenque. A mixture of brightly coloured buildings and small bamboo huts with walls reinforced with dried out mud, topped with straw roofs plus an immediate sense of Hispanic absence was a lot to take in for a first impression. It was wonderful!

Our faithful Lonely Planet guidebook says that anthropologists have carried out investigations in the village and have found that the African descendents here are most closely related to Africans from around the mouth of the Congo, East Africa.

This was the ‘first free town for black people in the Americas’ and this is still proudly represented by a statue in the tiny village square of Benkos Bioho breaking his chains. Benkos escaped captivity in Cartagena and established Palenque, 70km away, in 1603. It’s easy to see today just how proud the villagers are to be from there and their friendliness is really heart-warming. Most of the people living here are farmers and it’s very amusing to see almost-microscopic piglets scurrying quickly from place to place, in between the feet of donkeys, and around the domesticated dogs.

A beer or two was enjoyed inside a homestead of a local and these nosey parkers were blown away by the way of life inside; chickens running freely in the square foot yard and bedrooms almost like what we saw in Bangladesh - large, probably made for a few people to share, and surrounded with mud walls.

People who weren’t farmers were cooks of some kind and we noticed small cooking fires in the some tiny mud gardens with alien aromas wafting to the street. One lady collected some sweet coconut goods that had just been made and balanced them on her head in a metal bowl, and off she swayed down the street to start selling.

Life here looks hard, but the people look happy and perhaps the only bad part of our day was having to leave the town.

A Taste of Colombian Fruit

2011-03-16T00:32:00.003Z

Well this week, just as in many past places over the last three years, we've found our local! And whilst living in Cartagena we are devoting as much time as is physically possible to trying as many fruit shakes from this menu as we can. Watch out for the results! We're certainly working our way through, and part of the fun is not knowing what the heck we just drank!

A Taste of Colombian Nature

2011-03-16T00:16:00.007Z

Slowly creeping around minding his own business, and very reluctant to be seen was our Sloth friend who sees great joy in eating small pieces of concrete!
I wonder if he's king of the park! Or is he ruled over by the giant, green and orange, stroppy iguanas?!

Cartagena de Indias: Peso de las Brujas

2011-03-16T00:00:00.005Z

Just to begin with, the first two photos here are tortuous methods used brutally on witches to extract a confession. Many of the innocent died through these tortures. There was one really evil one where the chin of the witch was placed on a flattened, metal bar, as a large metal cap was placed over the head, and the vice on top slowly turned. Those who fell victims to this experienced shattering of the alveolar bones and the mandible, and as the vice continued to be tightened, the cranium eventually was crushed and their brains spewed from their eye sockets. This was spine chilling and the thought brought disgust.

From the Palacio del Inquisicion, a typical view of the lively Cartagenan street and the characteristic wooden balconies made us feel much better!
The rest of the museum was slightly dull, and so we spiced up our visit with some fun shots:

Cartagena de Indias: Street Life in Plaza Trinidad

2011-03-14T17:18:00.002Z

El Portal de los Dulces

Just outside the main seventeenth-century fortifications of this mighty city lies the walled suburb of Getsemani, featured by Gabriel Garcia Marquez in his novella Of Love and Other Demons. Even four hundred years ago it was the edgy, alternative and slightly down-at-heel side of town, and nowadays it has the perfect counterpoint of mood to the smart, picture-postcard perfection of the bougainvillea-clad balconies of El Centro and the single-storey central courtyard mansions of San Diego. But the rejas of the windows which reveal the semi-open air life of the homes, shops and hotels are just the same in Getsemani as they are in the historical heart, minus the manicured restorations. But money is pouring into Getsemani rapidly, and the boutique hotels seem to be replacing the brothels. What would Gabo think? Well, one place we keep returning to is the Portal de los Dulces, a significant location in his Love in the Time of Cholera and suddenly the whole world of Magical Realism has come to life. The writers of the Latin American Boom didn’t need to invent Magical Realism at all: it’s simply the wonder of street life in this compelling city. And at the Portal de los Dulces, the shredded shards of coconut ossified in condensed milk provide the quintessential taste of the Spanish Main. Yum…
We’re living in Getsemani this week, and just a short stroll down the Calle Guerrero leads us to the Plaza Trinidad and the fortress-like, unrestored church of the same name. After dark we stumbled upon a massive street party here: countless stalls of hot food being prepared, tropical fruit juice stands, hawkers, loud salsa music, crowds milling around laughing, dancing, feasting, children playing. In fact, the entire neighbourhood had left the confines of the home, and was continuing family life out here in the open air. Grandmothers held court on plastic chairs, whilst preened teenagers chatted in groups, dancing and swaying to the beat. The population here runs from black to mulatto and from mestizo to creolle, with every genetic blending in between, with each person exhibiting their own distinct beauty. And the women proceed around the square gradually, in an elegant swaying motion, like silent music. And this street party we have found, can you guess the best bit? Yes, that’s right, of course. It happens every single day…

Cartagena de Indias: First Impressions

2011-03-14T17:17:00.002Z

After reaching the colonial centre of breezy Cartagena at sunset, we began the search for the next hostel. We had our budget in our heads and we were ready to go. Jon was approached by a dodgy, gypsy-like woman in Calle Media Luna, who mentioned her hostel, The Pirate. That sounded like just what we needed and came in under budget. We knew that the walk would be a backtrack across town, but we didn’t expect such a trek. We followed the woman up to the first floor who seemed a little embarrassed by the tools on the dust-covered steps. We thought the stairs were bad? The room was in a pretty bad state; the floor was covered in black patches of dirt, the floor of the bathroom/shower was covered in a layer of some unidentifiable fluid that we wouldn’t step barefoot in for fear of a foot fungi, and the slats that were supposed to support the matress on one of the beds were virtually non-existent. We aren’t normally snobby when it comes to rooms and we stayed in much, much worse during our first trip to Asia. Do you remember the rock-bottom, mosquito ridden trap where we stayed in Bangladesh that was only £2 per night? But since we are staying in Cartagena for a few nights, we wanted to get somewhere a little better, but for the same price. Simon suggested that we returned to the other side of the square where he saw the Hotel Familiar, which had a stunning façade, but the room revealed itself to be just as bad and with no bathroom. We stopped for one night all the same and Jon went out in search of a better place for the rest of the week, on his way back from getting some money changed. He stumbled upon the Hostel Londres, which was even cheaper than Hotel familiar (and about the same as The Pirate), but a million times better and cleaner than the two of them. This is where we’ll be staying now and at this very moment we’re being cooled by powerful, whirling fan above our heads.
Exploring Cartagena has been fun and it’s quite lively, considering it’s a Sunday. We have dipped in and out of churches, each one very beautiful and different. Simon even explored the Sanctuary of San Pedro Claver; an art and archaeological museum situated in an old nunnery next to the church.

Bautizo de San Pedro Claver: Juan Mallol Pibernat, 2009

Exploring markets and wandering the walls of the fortress, peering out besides cannons towards the sea, made for a wonderful day, but tomorrow we have things to organise when trading for most begins again.

After watching the burning, fluorescent orange sun submerge itself beneath the horizon we prowled for some typical food.

We did not find this instantly however, but we became sidetracked by rolling bongo beats, singing, high-pitched shouting and complex dancing. The music was more African to be honest, which has rubbed off from the slave descendents that reside here. The dancers moved just as fast as the speedy bongo claps sounded; their hands and feet becoming a blur, and the women’s traditional dresses transforming into a hazy whirlwind of colour. We lost ourselves in time, hypnotised by the sheer talent and it may have been the best dancing performance we’ve seen travelling.

Pasto to Cartagena: Avianca Fiesta!

2011-03-14T17:11:00.001Z

Our little Fokker taxiing in Cali...
Why is it that when we have to be up early, we’re always up half an hour before the alarm is due to go off? It was a case of up and out, and we headed directly to the bus terminal on foot. There are no buses that serve the airport, so everybody who has a flight must take a taxi, either on the colectivo system mentioned in the last post (where they wait until the taxi is full) or just pay a more expensive fare and go. We entered one taxi who said that we would look for two more people to join us, and just after this moment, another taxi driver pulled up to the side and a very fast, Spanish dialogue commenced that was way beyond our current linguistic level. We watched as the other taxi driver rolled down to the bottom of the hill, literally fifty metres. When he had stopped, our driver coasted down and parked just behind him and told us that the other man would take us to the airport. But we were first informed that we now owed 3000 Colombian pesos because we had been given a ride to outside of the terminal, even though it was just a few footsteps away. Nice plan to con us helpless tourists! However, we weren’t paying anything for that and we watched as our driver paid the deviant his three (peso) grand. This new taxi driver was a lot nicer and he took us directly to the airport without looking for extra passengers, for a discount rate. And for once the discount was brilliant!
After a revolting airport breakfast of scrambled eggs, laden with chunks of thick, grey bacon, we boarded flight one of three to Cali. This was a little Fokker plane, which bore propellers on each of it’s wings and was considerably smaller than the average modern aircraft. Besides a rough patch of turbulence and no food being served on the plane (OK, we weren’t hungry anyway but come on!) the flight went very smoothly. The next flight from Cali to Bogotá, Colombia’s capital, was equally quick! Our only problem was that towards the last twenty minutes of the flight we were bursting for the toilet, and I mean REALLY bursting, as we had been guzzling this gallon sized bottle of water that we bought all the way back in Otavalo. We thought that we wouldn’t be allowed to take the water through customs back in Pasto so we stood drinking as much as we could, but they don’t seem to have the same rules as in Europe (and the rest of the world). What’s worse is that Bogotá’s airport is huge, with massive runways and we spent another twenty minutes seated in the aeroplane with our legs crossed tightly, as the pilot took his sweet time in finding the gate where we would shortly disembark. The moment we exited the plane we ran to the gents and the only thing you need to know is that WE MADE IT!!!
We made sure that we were where we had to be in plenty of time before our final flight to Cartagena and so we went through security control and into the waiting lounge. Our flight had been delayed slightly so now was a perfect time to get lunch, as by this time we were starving! One snag though! There weren’t any shops in the waiting lounge, just loads of patient, and impatient, people. And occasionally there was the waddling fatty who walked past, taunting us with a large “Dunkin’ Donuts” bag. The only thing we could do was to wait until we arrived in Cartagena since Avianca didn’t serve food on this flight either.
All in all, the day was a fantastic tour of some Colombian airports and was cheaper than a painstaking coach ride would have been! Can’t complain!

Otavalo to Pasto: Venturing across the frontier!

2011-03-14T03:17:00.001Z

Did you know that after dark the Panamericana route between the Colombian border town of Ipiales and the city of Pasto becomes full of ruthless bandits who purposely set out to pull buses over and mug the passengers at gunpoint? Luckily, we do! So instead of a lie in, the team started bright and early to browse the world famous Otavalo market in order to admire the wonderful Andean wares. The hawkers at the market certainly seemed to have had their Cornflakes that morning and were constantly on the prowl to make hard sells to the inquisitive gringos. Our philosophy was that if we were to go to a stall with nobody there, then we could check out the merchandise in complete peace. Nice theory! But within seconds came along the keen hostess who unfolded several large blankets and threw them into our hands. Some of the blankets were, in fact, so large that not even an origami champion could have refolded them. Each one a beautiful work of art, we couldn’t help but start imagining where they would look good at home, and they were made of alpaca wool too. SNAP OUT OF IT! There was much more to see and increasingly less time in which to do things, so we had to hurry. Oooooh! Fluffy little llama things! LET’S NOT GET SIDETRACKED!
After a very short while it was time for our breakfast bite, which may have been the best value nibble in the whole of South America! A soft and delicate, yet moist and flavoursome Ecuadorian cheese came hugged in a small, tasty bap to start, closely followed by huevos revueltos (scrambled eggs) and a glass of a complete mystery of a juice, unidentifiable both by sight and by taste. After hurriedly wolfing all that down we ran to the Hostal Sucre to grab our growing backpacks and legged it to the bus terminal.
It turned out that we were waiting there needlessly as we were eventually directed to wait patiently at the side of the road for our bus to Tulcan, the poorly constructed, somewhat unfinished-looking, Ecuadorian town that’s situated just 6km away from the border. The remaining distance was a short taxi hop (thank goodness the taxi drivers in Ecuador are more cautious than in Peru!) before we were free to cross the border on foot. There were no gruelling bag checks, fortunately. Not because we have smuggled something dodgy into Colombia (We haven’t!), but because our bags are so jammed packed now that every single item, big and small, has it’s own particular place and there wouldn’t be any less free space if we were to vacuum pack the lot! It would be impossible to get everything back in.
A colectivo took us to Ipiales, eventually! The catch is that the service was cheap enough but we had to wait an eternity before another two passengers came to take up the other two free seats. Time was ticking and we were beginning to grow anxious about the road towards Pasto and we had cut it fine as it was. After twenty minutes of clockwatching we finally set off for Ipiales where we did no hanging about, but went straight to the ticket office and bought our onward ticket to Pasto. The loud bus boy yelled out to the world about the remaining vacant seats and managed to lure a couple more people inside. The driver tore it up, down and around the narrow, snake-like roads being very careful of the steep drop that would put us all in the hands of fate should we tip over the edge. This cautiousness compromised the care he had when overtaking slow, smoke-spewing lorries, so much so that he was speeding us beside large vehicles on blind corners. It was like being on an aeroplane as it lands as the bus appeared to be flying, due to the fact that no road was visible, just the deep valley below.
We watched the sun go down as we passed quaint farmhouses, guarded by fierce hounds, all surrounded by a hilly, patchwork landscape of every shade of green. There were the odd terraces where vegetables were being grown, but most of the farming land was sculpted by the rolling hills and was steep. We watched as grazing cattle clung to the edgy face of the Andean foothills and chickens played chicken with our bus. It’s a hard life up there but it’s outbalanced by the beauty.
When we arrived in Pasto, it was pitch dark besides the sparse street lighting but we were relieved that we made it in the nick of time, just before darkness, and avoided having to hand money over to outlaws. We rewarded ourselves with a meal at the bus terminal, consisting of rice, soft beans, grilled chicken and fried banana. Oh! The tongue-tantalising chilli sauce complemented the dish perfectly! Simon’s lemonade tasted like medicine, so Jon stuck with water. Besides our room at the hostel festering of petrol, everything else was just great!

Ecuador: Otavalo

2011-03-11T03:03:00.002Z

We've travelled from Lima all the way into Ecuador, to the market town of Otavalo. Here there is the biggest and best craft market of the entire continent, so if you're lucky, you might just find yourself with a souvenir when we return home!

Lima: Chifa Yiu Tac

2011-03-10T04:57:00.000Z

But the day ended happily, for we decided to seek out a 'Chifa' or Chinese restaurant. Did you know that some of the best Chinese food in the world outside Asia is to be found in the myriad neighbourhood chifas of Lima? And Yiu Tac in Callao must surely count as one of the very best.
Sweet and Sour Chicken in a tamarind sauce; Chicken Curry; Rice and Noodles with vegetables; Deep-fried Prawns in a fragrant five-spice sauce. yum!
Tomorrow we're back at Lima airport on our way to Ecuador, but watch carefully, for by Saturday night we'll be in a Salsa and Cumbia frenzy. It's all go for a few days!

Latin American Honesty

2011-03-10T04:28:00.004Z

Here's our Boeing 767 which flew us from Easter Island to Lima. But meanwhile we have two brief stories for you, to help you understand the psyche of this continent:
Firstly, cast your mind back one week to the time the intrepid duo stood in the Arrivals Hall at the airport on Easter Island. We fully intended to camp for a week, but a friendly and persuasive woman enticed us to stay in her guesthouse. "Ten thousand Pesos per night!" she said, with both Simon and Jon responding "for the room?" to which she replied " for the room." Now the rest you know, until last night, that is. After staying for seven nights, it was time for us to pay, and as if by magic, 'for the room' had, of course, been transformed into 'per person'. Needless to say, the situation quickly turned ugly, and we called the police. Of course we refused to pay double, and pointed out that there seemed to be nothing in writing, and that it was quite wrong deliberately to mislead tourists with false statements and to double the price. What would happen if we stuck to our guns and didn't pay the extra? The police officers turned out to be just as corrupt as the landlady, and faced with the prospect of a large truncheon and a few nights in the cells, we duly paid up. But that's over a hundred quid straight out of the budget!

Next, we needed a taxi from Lima airport just now to get to the safe haven of Hostel Victor. All the streets in this sector of Callao are gated, with police checkpoints... So we agreed with the driver the fare of 25 Nuevo Soles, which is just below the ten US dollar mark. We arrived and the deal had magically turned into 25 US Dollars. Now this frankly isn't on, and the situation again quickly turned ugly.
"Mentira! Usted piensa que nos somos estupidos? Toma 25 Soles o va con nada! se no esta bien todavia, me voy llamar la policia! No puedes cambiar el preco que nos negociamos, especialmente en la ultima hora!"... Rant over. This Spanish may be far from perfect, but it's all we have to argue with and he started to get frustrated as he got the message.
We didn't pay, and we suggested that the police could help us to sort it out. $10 soon sent him on his grimy little way after the lady at the hostel agreed that his new price was way overboard.

As gringos, we're going to get screwed at some point: fact! The secret is: just how much? Well, it pays to be wise and stick to your beliefs, for twice in two days the scam has been to introduce confusion and misinterpretation into the original deal. In all this time travelling though, yesterday was the first time it happened. They can see us coming, but then by now, we can see them...

Isla de Pascua: Anakena

2011-03-08T22:37:00.004Z

Our day was spent cycling to a paradise beach with an electrifyingly blue lagoon, tucked in a bay of brilliant white powdery sand with dark, volcanic boulders dotted around in the surrounding green reeds. The descent from the central highlands to this coastal wonderland was one of the most thrilling bike-rides we’ve ever undertaken! We entered onto the Playa Anakana with caution as we first had to track through a coconut palm forest. People get killed by falling coconuts more regularly than any of us believe and we have no intention of being the next victims. On this success, we emerged from the soothing shade into the blistering beams of the sun, where we stood and marvelled at more Moai statues! Magnifico! And some of these even had their pukara on top of their heads, restored by Thor Heyerdal. After a swim and a paddle, rehydration was absolutely necessary and we indulged in a couple of overpriced cans of pop! “Slurp!”
We decided to take the coastal route back to Hanga Roa to make one complete circle, plus the Ruta Costera was extremely stunning the first time round. Apart from the wind always blowing forcefully against us, we were just fine! Small families of wild horses appeared every so often along the way. Maybe some of them were the ones we saw on our first cycle ride, but who really knows? We watched a large bird of prey swooping into grassy humps in search of dinner whilst listening to the repeatedly large waves as they brutally bashed the cliff side. Its slender body, massive wingspan and elongated tail made it look just like a pterodactyl as it closed in on us… And then we descended once more into Tongariki, and the combination of much better quality mountain bikes, deep blue sea, turquoise surf and the sun glinting on these giant Moai made this sector of the ride one of those moments we’ll cherish forever.

Meanwhile, back in Hanga Roa, we settle into life in the kitchen, which is very much the hub of the household, with comings and goings and plenty of banter. Tonight José gives us a deep lecture about Chilean mining. Simon tries to stop him in full flow with a question about the Thirty Three, but he manages to avoid an answer and completes his conspectus of the mineral deposits of the north of the country. Did you realise that they burrow out deep under the sea to reach the best seams? We know now!

Isla de Pascua: Easter Eggs!

2011-03-08T22:36:00.001Z

This morning, Jon made a very special breakfast, Easter Island style: an onion and banana omelette! Now this may sound slightly strange to you, but believe us, it works. Try it like this: take a large, sweet and juicy onion and sweat it down gently in plenty of butter until translucent, adding three beaten eggs and then at the final stage, a chopped up ripe banana. Rapa Nui food tends to use the banana at every opportunity, sweet or savoury. You should try it, it’s really rather good!

And talking of food, Curry Night was a veritable feast, including another Easter Island staple: pineapple. Somehow, a hot, sweet and sour sauce is really lifted by the powerful red and yellow chillies we can find at each little greengrocers, together with large and juicy chunks of pineapple. We’re writing this on our penultimate night on the island: one week is just not enough to see all the wonderful archaeological sites, take in the stunning landscapes and multicoloured azure seascapes, chill, relax and generally recover from a punishing schedule around the continent. (Incidentally, that schedule is about to be resumed, so get out your maps and prepare to follow us around the northern zone of this expedition: it’s going to be hot and steamy!)
Tonight’s feast has just been Italian. An amazing chilli risotto, a hot Bolognese salsa, our ubiquitous tomato and onion salad, together with our trademark garlic bread. Now take a swift gander at the top of this blog; we did, after all promise you fantastic food. But as we wrote that, back in October, we had no idea that all the fantastic food we were promising would be home cooked. The fact is, this isn’t Asia. It’s certainly not Thailand with the street side woks rustling up heavenly flavours. Our dreams of getting hold of a heaped plate of food for under a dollar were shattered ages ago, but our food never fails! And it’s cheap!

Isla de pascua: Rano Kau and Orongo

2011-03-08T22:33:00.001Z

“Tokirau!”
Well, we don’t want anybody feeling left out, do we? And besides this, our new canine companion from the Miru Hostel has really grown on us and it’s like he’s always been our third musketeer.
We walked towards the upper edge of Hanga Roa where houses and people became few and far as we made our way onto the off-road path towards the magnificent crater lake of Rano Kau and the ancient ceremonial village of Orongo. Tokirau, not deliberately, was always sure to keep us on the ball every so often by attracting other territorial Lupus-like beasts who charged in our direction, snarling. To be honest our quadrapedal amigo isn’t the fighting type and would, more often than not, retreat, hiding behind us for safety. We can assure you that standing between groups of vicious, protective dogs is not at all fun, but we remained remarkably unscathed.
The crater of Rano Kau was beyond our imagination and was not at all disappointing. In fact, it was breathtaking and so large that it seemed to be swallowing a huge chunk of Easter Island. Its dusty, sooty grey interior had collapsed into the well-preserved crater lake itself, which enclosed floating islands of various vegetation and colourful flora. Stopping at the top of this large hill for lunch of bread rolls and pate was doubtlessly the right decision before continuing to Orongo.
The sixteenth century village of Orongo appeared as small, flattened rocks, now with a light dusting of yellow lichens, that had been carefully stacked without any binding material to form wide, but shallow, fortresses looking out to the Pacific Ocean and Motu Nui, the uninhabited island located about one or two hundred metres offshore where the migratory seabirds, namely the Sooty Turns, arrive to lay their eggs. We were fortunate enough to see amazing petroglyphs, symbolic to Make-Make; the Rapa Nui god that revolves around a trinity of the Spring season, fertility rites and migratory seabirds. When one looks closely at these rock carvings, it’s just about possible to make out the Bird Man himself.
Talking of birds, we saw another large bird approaching the island from Santiago who had a tricky job landing in the strong crosswinds.

Isla de Pascua: Rano Raraku & Tongariki

2011-03-06T01:35:00.005Z

We’re back on the bikes! Off we pedalled up the hill and out of Easter Island’s capital, Hanga Roa, with the punishing sun shining down on us. We felt very refreshed, though, by the strong, cooling breeze and the sound of huge, turquoise barrel waves crashing down on the coastline. Wild horses roamed freely in groups; stallions, mares and foals all together. The placid few horses didn’t give us a second look but continued grazing as we passed whereas the warier adults looked at us curiously, whilst their jumpy foals sprung quickly to retreat a pace towards their parents.
The first stop was at Vaihu, where the Moai had been completely untouched since the rediscovery of the Island. The bubbly, slightly decayed, stone heads appeared to have fallen over, but the truth is that they had been pushed over by rival villages many years ago.
The second stop was at Rano Raraku, where there was a crater lake, which served as a water hole for happy herds of horses, and many more Moai statues submerged to varying degrees by the sharply, raised earth on the mountainside. The expressions on their long faces were all quite serious, and where visible, their ears seemed to stretch down forever but were actually proportionately accurate by human standards.

The Moai are considered the ancestors of the Rapa Nui people who live on the island and the finished ones had been constructed so that they look away from the sea and inland in order to protect today’s villagers. However, at this place, we noticed they were gazing out towards the ocean due to the fact that this was once the quarry where the first steps of Moai production took place, but this particular set was never completed and, in effect, the mission was aborted.

Our third and final stop for the day was Tongariki, a magnificent line of no fewer than fifteen Moai statues standing high, right in front of the sea shore. As we were tearing along the muddy path on our bikes, this then distant site appeared like a fine comb as the heads protruded from the flat ahu on which they stand. One of these Moai, unusually, still remained with his hat on. Can you see him?

During the warring period, each village was attacked and all the Moais were toppled. Archaeologists then replaced them upright upon their Ahu, but here they were disastrously toppled again during the 1960s by a tsunami. The Japanese have since worked painstakingly to restore this Ahu to its full ceremonial glory.
The cycle back was just as amazing as the outward journey, apart from two wannabe-fierce hounds annoying us with their empty threat barks. They had us going for a split second though!
We’ve been exceptionally lucky again by being scooped up by Sandra as we transited the Arrivals Hall, and not only have we found some of the cheapest beds on the island (we know, we know, we said we would be camping…) but we’re staying with a lovely family. She’s thrilled we chose to stay with her, and we replied in return that being with a family is always so much better than languishing in an impersonal (and often dirty) set up, shoddily run by underpaid menials. There.
Everything, virtually, is imported, and the prices are sky-high! But that doesn’t stop us from rustling up some tasty feasts! Try this at home to recreate our Easter Island three-courser:
Gently fry plenty of chopped garlic in lots of butter, then quickly add slices of robust bread to soak up the liquid and begin to crisp. Whilst this is sizzling, create a zingy onion salad by finely chopping onion, tomato and fresh chilli (seeds in, don‘t be a wimp!) and adding plenty of lime juice, salt, pepper and sugar together with some oil from a tin of pickled red bell-peppers. This is fresh and invigorating! The capsicums themselves go into a pasta sauce of onion and tomato, livened up by sausages and another chopped chilli. This works ideally with fusilli, but penne would be equally fine. Keep on watching, because tomorrow night is curry night!

Isla de Pascua: Moai and Fish...

2011-03-06T01:33:00.005Z

We seriously need to write to Rick Stein about this one. We return to Ahu Tahai about 6.00 pm with a small picnic and some tasty apple juice, specifically to swim off the ancient boat-launching slipway which the original inhabitants had constructed between the massive and elegant Ahus which lie just north of Hanga Roa. We had been there earlier in the day, admiring the views, the Moais and the wild horses. But now it was time to immerse in the Pacific. There were three of us, Jon, Simon and the loyal and faithful Tokirau, who even became quite concerned as Simon swam out into the bay: he looked like he was contemplating jumping in to save him!
As we paddled and dried ourselves off, an apparition hove into view. At first it was obviously just a young man with snorkel and flippers, but as the water became too shallow, he had to stand up.
Suddenly we had been transported back 500 years, to the original age when men were the hunters. He had been fishing, with his miniature harpoon and about ten fish strapped around his waist on some twine. And twine, complete with a small skull for decoration, was all that he was wearing. He proceeded to de-scale, clean and gut the fish, including one specimen of amazing sword-like proportions, and one large pescatorial creature, the food of kings, which was bright blue!
Afterwards, as he made his way with his wife and tiny baby off the stone platform, back in the direction of the hill behind the ahus, it seemed as if he’d completely forgotten about the sword-like fish, so Jon called to him that it was still lying between the rocks. What was that? Although he looked fierce and terrifying, he’d asked in a very friendly way if we liked eating fish and if we’d like to join them for a barbeque to watch the sun go down. And of course we would.
Off they went first, just as we were drying off following our Pacific dip but we met up with them just in front of a secretive cave, where we saw the occasional tourist walk by obliviously. Jon was first to get there, so eager to see this new culture that he left Simon and Tokirau behind. He found himself running up the grassy verge behind the cavern, aiding our new friends in getting firewood, which consisted of dried out palm fronds and, of course, a few logs.
We chucked the dried leaves on top of an elliptical pile of aerated volcanic rock before adding the wood and setting alight. The next job was to take some of the smaller stones of the same type and shove them into the fiery mess, so that they reached such a high temperature that they began to sizzle. This meant that the moment had come to place the world’s freshest bream-like fish and another unidentifiable sword-like eel onto the smoky rocks and wait, not forgetting to turn the fish every so often.

When the moment of taste came as we tucked into this delicia, we were blown away by the freshness and purity and couldn’t get enough. Plus there were delicious small, sweet bananas to accompany, which made for a beautiful contrast in flavours. Unforgettable!

Isla de Pascua: Better Late Than Never!

2011-03-06T01:31:00.003Z

Our comfortable Boeing 767 gave us a great six-hour flight, and as we were travelling westwards, we had the chance to chase a perfect, orangesunset. The meal was served by the most charming stewardess who plied us with frequent refills of tasty Chilean Chardonnay, and the metal cutlery made the whole thing feel like business class. The latest Harry Potter made the journey fly by, and Simon also found time for an amazing documentary about Vinicius Moraes as well as an arty-but-edgy Chilean film about school days at the time of Salvador Allende, It grew dark and we commenced our descent, nose down and ears going pop.
Bang! No ordinary bang, but a massive one as the entire plane shook, not just with the deafening momentary noise, but with the ripples from the impact. This wasn’t even just violent turbulence: we had surely hit something. And then we realised: it was the ground. We had arrived on Easter Island…
Sandra, motherly and disarmingly kindly, took charge of us immediately we had cleared customs. Finding a room here can be tricky, and to be fair, our original plan had been to erect the tent on the foreshore in order to take in the amazing sunsets. But Sandra’s family home, with its massive kitchen, family comings-and-goings and friendly chats (all in Spanish, except when we are learning our first words in Rapa Nui) win us over immediately. One member of the family, the dog called Tokirau, which means El Aire in Castillian, takes such a shine to us that je takes us for a quick midnight stroll to explore the township of Hanga Roa.
And we have an entire week to explore this magical paradise!

Thwarted in Lima?

2011-03-06T01:29:00.001Z

Of course we made it to Lima airport in time for check in! But one of the features of this city is the Garua, or thick, damp fog. It happens all the time, so surely this major international airport has ways of functioning under these hazardous conditions? Nope, this is Peru: airport, cerrado. Hotel? No Senor...
Scheduled departure, 12.55 in the morning. Actual departure, 5.00 in the afternoon. Now LAN may be a One World alliance member, but don’t expect their ground services to be in any way professional. But to be fair they did give us a free lunch at one of the terminal restaurants. There had also been time earlier in the morning to slip into Lima (Miraflores, to be precise) on the ‘S’ micro. This is a small minibus, packed to the rafters with people, tearing along a busy dual carriageway, honking its horn at every other vehicle and braking furiously to avoid collisions. But at least it was cheap… Roll on Rapa Nui!

The Long Journey From Cusco

2011-03-06T01:27:00.001Z

Cruz del Sur buses are very comfortable and we left Cusco bang on time. We even stopped around 11 pm in Abancay to pick up some more passengers. But around 1 in the morning, as we proceeded through a magical valley, high in the Andes Sierra, we stopped and turned off the engine. Time passed, yes, plenty of time. We worried that something was amiss, but sleep became more pressing and we dozed on and off. About seven hours later, we awoke and stumbled out of the coach to see just what the problem was. There had been a massive landslide in the night and no traffic could pass. The valley was sheer paradise, and we had become stranded within it! Some eight hours late, we started to move once more. The Andean views were stunning, and soon we had descended into a dusty desert-like town. “Where are we, please?”
“Nazca!”
“No, don’t be silly, Nazca is hundreds of kilometers from where we need to be?”
“Nazca.”
The race is on: can we make it to Lima in time for our flight check in? Will we be allowed to fly on to our next big destination?
Well, did we make it? You’ll just have to wait and see and follow the next few blog entries very carefully… See you soon!

Peruvian Cuisine

2011-02-28T20:47:00.003Z

Recipes, descriptions and pictures for you to cook at home. All will be revealed:

Our last meal in Cusco turned out to be our best! If you find yourself in Cusco, you MUST visit El Tronquito, on Choquechaca, nr. 152. This restaurant is fantastic and very evocative and colonial, the husband and wife team chatty, endearing and welcoming, and the food: magnifico!
Try these yourselves:
Sopa Criolla:
Chicken stock with a little cream, onions, garlic and chopped herbs. Small pieces of fried mince and plenty of spaghetti pieces. Poached eggs in the centre topped with a slice of toast and a roasted chilli. Great combinations, melding into a rich flavour.
Lomo Saltado:
This Peruvian classic is a take on sweet and sour, but offers so much more! Fry off your thin strips of fine quality steak, together with red onions and chopped spring onions, adding a sauce of tomato, soy and perhaps pineapple to reduce the whole dish into a rich and thick consistency. At this stage all Peruvians add plenty of chips into the mix, but quite frankly, if I were you, I’d just miss out this part of the recipe. Serve with plenty of rice and garnishes of garlic sauce and picante sauce.

Machu Picchu Vistas!

2011-02-28T20:46:00.003Z

Jon Climbs Huaynapicchu

2011-02-28T20:45:00.005Z

Jon found his climb to Huaynapicchu in a select group of pre-registered trekkers very fulfilling and it allowed for an alternative view of Machu Picchu; Simon remained at base-camp to research the History of Bingham’s discovery… A further six-hundred metre hike to the peak made great way for a photo opportunity as it was almost like a birds-eye view. We had to be extremely careful of our footing as one slip and game over! We had been told that one guy had fallen to his death whilst climbing the peak, but we are still puzzled as to how no more people have had accidents because it seems very hazardous. The most thrilling part, besides the marvellous vista, was the narrow crevasse we had to squeeze through and up towards the peak. There were ungenerously sized, slippery stone steps that were there to assist us a little, and on reaching the upper side of the cave, there were even better views. Scary to see though, were two Chinese guys going carelessly off-route, down some tiny stone steps that were the only things between the side of the mountain and a sharp, roughly half-mile, drop!

We were at the height that the magnificent Andean condors fly at, with a gentle breeze whispering past us, the view beneath was dizzying, but what was really euphoric was the feeling of reaching the top, and in Machu Picchu too!

Machu Picchu

2011-02-28T18:57:00.006Z

Hearing the alarm on Jon’s mobile phone go off at four o’ clock in the morning was not very appreciated! Through our hazy snooze it took a short while of dismissing the alarm in favour of sleep to realise that the alarm was to get us up for one of the first seats on the bus to one of the seven new wonders of the world, Machu Picchu. We knew exactly where everything was, so we were able to crawl out of bed to find our things through bleary eyes, and head off down the road to the bus station. Loud precipitation and darkness tempted us to stay put for a while, but this was our once in a lifetime.
We thought we had been fairly cunning in getting to the bus stop over an hour in advance of departure, but as we proceeded around the corner, it turned out that a large queue of people had the same idea. As it was still raining we couldn’t cover under the shelter quick enough and we saw an indent in the alley where the queue appeared to have finished. Relief! Simon then got a tap on the shoulder and a friendly face said to us, “The queue goes on up there.” At this moment the length of the queue magically doubled and we shuffled our way to the back.
The bus driver called us on as the very first light of dawn began to show itself in a gorgeous sapphire blue light above the almost-vertical, pitch-dark mountains that hides the town of Aguas Calientes from the outside world.
As we drove out of town, the large river on our left was splashing violently at height, and huge, broken waves were banging down on the rocks beneath due to the large amount of rain feed. For those of you extremists, a grade five white water rapid is nothing in comparison! We continued our zigzag up the merciless face of the forested mountain, peering out between the tree cover whenever possible to catch a view, but we saw only a baby-blue sheet of cloud that was succeeding in instantly eliminating visibility past ten centimetres. We were desperately hoping that we’d be able to see the lost Incan city of Machu Picchu, the surrounding mountains and the deep valleys but at this moment we weren’t too convinced.
After hurrying off the bus, we saw another massive queue and our hearts sank. The secret, when visiting Machu Picchu, is to be one of the first people there, not only for better views and photos without tourists in their bright red, blue, pink, yellow, or whatever colour ponchos, but more importantly to have access to Waynapicchu. The name ‘Waynapicchu’ means ‘young mountain’ in the Quechua language, which is spoken widely throughout the Andes, generally between Quito, Ecuador, all the way down to the Rio Bio Bio area, Chile. Out of the huge numbers of curious tourists that visit this archaeological site every day, only four hundred of them are admitted to climb Waynapicchu for the rarer view of the ancient city. More on this part later!
But for the moment, we are at the stage where we have just arrived through the entrance post and are walking towards the lost city. As we reached the brow of the hill and turned the corner, we where stunned by a hypnotic view of Waynapicchu wrapped in whitey blue clouds with a perfect space, like a viewfinder, which revealed to us an extensive mass of the most beautiful ruins on earth. There were a mixture of different types of Incan construction techniques and so many different shades of greens from trees, bushes and grasses that was particularly overwhelming. A sudden spiritual feeling overwhelmed us as we imagined this place full of Incan’s building their city and going about their daily living there. How on earth did we Europeans come to discover this ancient site that’s hidden so well in the mountains? We were due to meet our guide at quarter-to-eight, which gave us just under two hours to explore freely. For some unknown reason, we chose uphill to start and were hiking up another S-shaped trail that led us to some amazing terraces, which the Incans used to cultivate vegetables. In fact, the whole site is covered in terraces where, for example, different species of potatoes grew depending on the altitude of the particular terrace. One other vegetable that they used to grow was the famous purple maize vegetable, which is called ‘Chicha’ here. One fantastic Peruvian beverage, our favourite in fact, is called Chicha Morada and in order to make it, one must boil the chica vegetable and keep back the juice. For enhanced flavour, a squeeze of lemon and some spoonfuls of sugar never hurt anybody, and once left to cool, it’s delicious. The closest taste we can get to describe it right now is undiluted Ribena, though perhaps not quite as strong.
Getting back to the higher terraces where we decided to stop for our sneaky breakfast of cheese and pate sandwiches, we encountered some lovely llamas grazing on the luscious, emerald-green grass. We had seen postcards of llamas in Machu Picchu the day before and we came to the conclusion that the llama had been superimposed onto it. How wrong we turned out to be?!

We continued upwards for a bit to the Machu Picchu mountain itself, which as a matter of fact means ‘old mountain’ in Quechua, but we turned back as time got tight for our guided tour arrangements. We finally met up with our guide, Eddie, who was brilliant and very informative! Perhaps, though, the sites around Machu Picchu are better told in pictures.

You'll have to wait for the next blog entries to see the rest!

A Message from Alfonso the Alpaca

2011-02-25T22:44:00.004Z

Now listen folks, it's come to my attention that you guys aren't leaving enough comments on these two guys' fantastic blog. Naughty, naughty! Please leave more messages for them or they will have me for dinner! They already had one of my other alpaca friends and my little guinea pig buddy that I used hang around with. They said they tasted really good and that they won't resist any temptation to gobble me up and use my wool for sweaters!

COME ON! THIS IS A CRY FOR HELP!

SAAAAAAAAVE.....MEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!

Cusco: San Blas Street Party

2011-02-25T04:28:00.007Z

It all began with a swift whoosh and a large bang! More to follow! These deafening sounds were amplified by the fact that we were right beside the source! Why were there fireworks being set off right beneath our roof terrace? And why do they choose to explode what seems just inches above our heads? Anyway, great fun!
Today is the festival of Compadres, and is just one of the excuses for revelry in the run up to Carnival proper. The band initiated their session with loud keyboards, peculiar percussion, guitars, chimes, and a (very screechy) singer. Not that any of us could do any better! Suddenly the plaza beneath in our temporary San Blas station came to life and a mixture of locals and gringos started to dance with gusto! For a few moments it seemed compulsory to be holding a beer in the left hand whilst your dance partner's hand in the right. A reversal in road domination took place instantly as taxis were beeping and begging to pass, such a change from the usual life-or-death traffic dodging that all of us pedestrians have to do to survive the merciless here!
Everybody was happy, then they were merry. There were two particular guys, one short and middle-aged with a moustache and the other a fair bit taller and in his twenties, who were in dispute over something or other. As the younger man was being held back by two large buddies, the other was taunting him by gesturing and beating the ground; like King Kong or a sumo wrestler. When he became bored of teasing he began to approach the lad, but luckily the motherly figure of their group held him back. She was just as drunk really and when she wasn't breaking up the fight, she was sitting on the plastic stool outside their beer market, with a large grin on her face and her head tilted forwards, letting her long, long Pigtails (they would give Rapunzel a run for her money!) run to the ground.
The street stalls were selling tempting goodies such as fatty kebab skewers with a semi-boiled potato on the end, hamburgers, and rice pudding! Jon so badly wanted to try rice pudding street style, but resisted any urge due to what happened after last time he ate one that seemed a little iffy. You will, of course, know from the very first blog we wrote. Simon had a meaty kebab skewer but admitted that the potato was actually the best part.
As well as a great time at the party, we enjoyed the modest glows of dim streetlights that crawled all the way up into the mountains surrounding Cuzco as well as the illumination of just one of the curches in the Plaza de Armas.

Cusco: Day 2, Jon Visits Incan Sites

2011-02-24T22:56:00.009Z

Well, what a day! From the moment we arrived in Cuzco, Jon was inspired by the surrounding shanty houses that cling to the high Andes that surround the city. They slightly resemble the ones he got to know during his time in Brazil. After a light breakfast of the world's best chocolate milkshake (quality and quantity!) he quickly flicked through the Lonely Planet in order to find his direction of ascent towards the statue of Christ that overlooks Cuzco, like in Rio de Janeiro. How great would it be to make a compariason?
Jon went in search of Calle Resbalosa, the narrow street which is recommended to walk up in order to access Cuzco's Cristo. Well, although he didn't find the street, he wandered a little lost in the general direction and soon found himself marching up some very steep stone steps, that seemed to be swallowed up by the maze of shanty brick huts. He continued cautiously and was relieved to see a fellow backpacker climbing the same route. Jon asked him if he was going the right way to get to his destination and the helpful man, who was also heading for the same terminus, confirmed the uncertainty and decided to join him. This hiker introduced himself as Ivan and was from Uruguay. It was great to be able to converse with him in detail about Colonial del Sacramento, the one place that we visited in Uruguay. He only knew a few phrases in English, so Jon's poor head was pounding after a solid few hours speaking virtually only Spanish!
As they continued up some steps, an old, local inhabitant directed them across a narrow and very slippery, muddy path to a pack of wild-looking dogs. They were happy going about their own business and were, fortunately, not the over-territorial type. Further on though, a fraction of the way up another even steeper stairway, a loud and fierce mutt began barging his head off and making slight snorting sounds, which Jon supposed were meant to be growls. As he hadn't had his rabies shots, Jon wasn't taking any chances and slowly retreated to the path to try the next set of steps along, praying that there would be no other ferocious beast lying in wait of trespassers. Ivan saw sense and followed, also hiding every ounce of fear.
There was another dog lying in wait, but it was just a small, yippy kind; more annoying than scary. It was barking madly, but was only scampering around them with no real intent of clamping its jaws into their ankles.
When Jon and Ivan reached the peak, a much deserved break was needed as the high altitude air is not so rich in oxygen like they are accustomed to. Acclimatisation is definitely a long process! The statue of Christ is very impressive but is much ssmaller than the one in Rio. It was brilliant white, but a fence had been put round it unfortunately, perhaps so that no dim pranksters graffiti it or something. At night the statue glows brightly due to the intense lights that are carefully tilted all around it. Whilst at the feet of the Cristo, an amazing view of the whole city of Cuzco beneath required some photographic attention. It was incredible to observe the terracotta rooftops and even a plane taking off!
Nearby, there was the ancient historical Inca site called Saqsaywamán where grass attempts to cover the tops of the large, grey Inca blocks that hold themselves up through perfect tesselation, as opposed to our conventional cement methods. Plus these bricks are so heavy that I don't doubt for a second that it required several people to lift each of them. It was a real step back in time and was an escape from the feel of the dominant (but beautiful) architecture of the Spanish conquistadores that overide the majority of the city. The Spanish, in fact, took bricks from this site and used them in part of their newer constructions in the centre, although they aren't visible everywhere rather in just a few narrow alleys and small streets.
Jon had found great amusement in watching a young Peruvian boy herding three llamas. For his short, matchstick legs, his ballistic shouting and sprinting methods were probably the most effective possible and they indeed seemed to work.
On the descent of return, Ivan and Jon were fortunate enough to stumble on a midday fiesta that signified the start of a carnaval. People in traditional dress were merrily downing beers whilst one huge collection of sizzled, open-mouthed cuys (ginuea pigs) were waiting to be chomped on. Jon's one last night was enough for him though!
As Jon continued to meet Simon for lunch and find out how his day was, he realised that he was walking down the street that he was trying to find earlier. 'Calle Resbalosa' translates to 'Slippery Street' and he found it obvious why!

Cusco: Day 2, Simon Visits the Colonial Sites

2011-02-24T22:54:00.007Z

Simon set out on a massive undertaking: to explore all the significant churches of central Cusco before lunch! And providing a pictorial record of this marathon turned out to be rather tricky, as photography is entirely prohibited in all these locations. It's amazing what you can achieve, though, by hiding behind a pillar with your Leica stashed under your raincoat. And the dimly-lit interiors throw in just one extra hurdle.
Anyways, seeing as we are living uphill in the fantastic, village-like quarter of San Blas, it was to the small, modest (yet in many ways, retrospectively, the most impressive of all the sites with its devotional atmosphere) church of the same name that Simon turned to first.

The carved, wooden pulpit was astonishing.

The reredos behind the High Altar had been carefully restored and narrates an entire devotional approach to parochial worship.

The Crucifixion in a small side chapel was especially striking. San Blas radiates a very special atmosphere, and of course, it's not a museum, but the living centre of life around the square.

It was then downhill to the Archbishop's Palace, built on a firm foundation of massive Inca stones, including the famous twelve-sided stone, pointed out to all passer-by with enthusiasm (and an outstretched hand...) by all the street children. Here is to be found a collection of sacred art from the Cusco School. Well worth a visit! It was then on to visit the Sagrada Familia, Cathedral and Triunfo. Over an hour of golden retables, silver altars and cedar wood carving. Splendid! The cathedral coro also houses two recently restored seventeenth-century organs, the whole plan being modelled on Toledo!

The church of Santa Clara is still to this day the working convent church of the enclosed order of Clarist nuns. They view this dark and mysterious interior from behind a series of dense, wooden grilles.

Here is La Compania; the Jesuits get everywhere, don't they? This East end is almost identical to the version in Quito which Simon visited almost four years ago. Note the golden grilles to the right which shield the musicians from view. Perhaps the singing floated downwards, mysteriously as if directly from heaven.
Then there was time to pop in to the Convent of Saint Catherine of Siena, where there are thirteen contemplatie Domenican nuns in residence. During the Inca period the site was the location of the Aqllawasi, where beautiful maidens of noble lineage would perform sacred duties and sun worship, never leaving and forever remaining virgins. Some time after 1605, the 25 nuns who had arrived in Cusco from Arequipa selected this site for its significant associations. Today Simon met just two of these elusive women.

Well, the mission wasn't entirely successful: lunch at Gustavo's had to intervene, and magically, Jon and Simon's respective missions were united during the afternoon: a huge buidling which unites both Inca and Spanish architecture. Qorikancha was the high temple of Incan worship to the celestial deities of sun, moon, stars, rainbows and lightening. The conquistadores turned this building into the monastery of Santo Domingo. Can you tell the Incan stones apart from the renaissance Spanish designs? In the next blog you can see how Jon manages to fit through the sacred Incan archway.

Cusco: Day 1

2011-02-24T22:39:00.008Z

Jon in a beautiful narrow street, just after we discovered that the apparent whitewashed walls are partially compiled with straw! Our night bus from Puno had arrived at 5.00am, and with bleary eyes and in trepidation, we swiftly broke Travellers' Rule Number 2: never accept the offer of accomodation from strangers at bus stations... Well, the taxi whisked us through the city and into roads and lanes which became narrower and narrower. The cobbled streets ascended and the atmosphere became more village-like and just like a step back in time. We had arrived!

Peruvian lady dragging her poor alpaca around the winding streets of Cuzco! Jon spent a while pretending he was making a holiday video in order to avoid being charged by this woman for taking the photo! But the whole atmosphere of this place quickly confirmed that it was EXACTLY what we had been searching for on our quest so far through Spanish-speaking Latin America. Most people here speak Quechua as well!
We were hungry, it was lunchtime, and a tiny and narrow cobbled lane leading off the Plaza de Armas beckoned. It was then that we met Gustavo. A fantastic guy and general factotum. He both fed us mind-blowingly great value food in his cosy little restaurant, shouting 'mama!' through the hatch at his chef at regular intervals, and then leading us over the square to his office to aid us in our forthcoming expedition to discover a certain 'lost' city.

Cuy! The local speciality that most of us think of as a pet! Jon chomped his way through most of this little fellow, baked and with a strong, salty flavour. Simon munched on an alpaca steak instead!

Plaza de Armas shining by night!

Half-Way Day!

2011-02-22T15:43:00.003Z

OK! So according to our calculations we have been travelling for fifty days now, which means that we are exactly half-way through! It seems like not even a fortnight ago when we were venturing off on the train towards London, not knowing quite what South America was going to be like, certainly in terms of safety levels.
Well, you've been following! The only "danger" we have experienced is being held at pen-point in the dodgy Retiro bus station! Besides the city-hopping, we have seen the incredible Iguacu Falls from both Brazil and Argentina, we have trekked and camped around marvellous Monte Fitzroy in Argentinean Patagonia and the terrific Torres del Paine on the Chilean side! More recently we stumbled upon quaint, wild west Tupiza where we explored vast Andean desert on horseback before driving through the wilderness of Bolivia, exploring flamboyant lagoons and steamy springs, as well as the awe-inspiring Salar de Uyuni! Currently in Titicaca's tranquil lakeside village of Copacabana, we are waiting to board the bus and cross the frontier into Peru where our first stop is in the oldest, continuously inhabited city of South America: The ancient, Incan city of Cuzco! We'll see you there!

Lake Titicaca and Copacabana

2011-02-22T01:14:00.007Z

We left La Paz in the early morning as the sun broke through the mist and our bus steadily climbed to the heights of El Alto and the jigsaw-like assembly of shanty dwellings densely covering the hillsides, although Illamani was still shrouded in the clouds. Within a short while we had reached Huarina and could see the sapphire blue of Lake Titicaca stretching before us, with the drive and the countryside even being reminiscent of the Sorrento area. This idea was strongly reinforced as we crossed a narrow section of the lake by motor boat between two picturesque towns and looked out over the clear waters.
Copacabana lies between two hills, and predates its namesake in Rio de Janeiro and the Barry Manilow song. The town is the setting for many fiestas and carnivals, many with a strongly religious feel as the cathedral is the setting for the shrine of the Virgen de la Candelaria de Copacabana. Simon even managed to attend an evening mass at the shrine, where the priest blessed a processional rosary which the inquisitive pair had bargained for at the gift stalls lining the cathedral square. Earlier in the day we were sheltering from the rain in a café specializing in chocolate ice cream: when it arrived, we were both stunned! Jon had a cold around him and was freezing enough with the chilling Andean temperatures, but he certainly might give it a go next time!

As we prepared to leave Copacabana and Bolivia, three extraordinary things happened. Firstly, as we walked around the Plaza Major of Copa, we heard the rhythmic booming of a massive bass drum and the gentle wafting of a corpus of reed flutes playing an hypnotic and catchy ostinato. Throngs of Aymara women swarmed around the townhall, all in their traditional dress of pleated skirts, Norah Batty style leggings and shoes, manta and brightly coloured back wrap, all topped off with a rakish Bowler hat. There were far fewer men,and in respect of the ladies´ garments, they were somehow attired in the opposite manner to the animal or bird kingdom! But the music was solely the domain of the men... What kind of festival was this, and should we really be here? Suddenly the enthusicastic throwing of fragrant, red and orange flower petals, and the sudden appearance of a bashful, middle aged couple holding hands and being showered by the petals gives the game away. It´s a wedding, Aymara style!
The second happening suddenly jolted us back to our wonderful time in Bangladesh. Do you remeber the day we walked up Himachari beach as the storm clouds gathered, and we helped the local fishermen haul their boat up out of the water and onto the sandy foreshore? Well of course the special type of sailing craft here on Lake Titicaca is the reed boat, and as the rain commenced (it´s the rainy season here right now...) some local guys shouted at us to lend a hand in a vast tug of war to haul a large reed boat out of the lake. Magical times!
And finally, hunger gnawed at us, so it was time to try the local speciality of fried fillet of lake trout. This is, quite frankly, the best taste sensation we´ve experienced in the whole of Bolivia. Very flavoursome and moreish!

The Hottest Chillies in Bolivia!

2011-02-22T01:00:00.003Z

Here at the Star of India, on Calle Cochabamba just off Sagárnaga, they make the world’s hottest (and most dangerous) Vindaloo. We thought we’d give it a try, and as you can see from the shot, it’s really just a mush of hideously red-hot chillies. Such was the lethal power of this dish, that just after one small probing, experimental mouthful, Jon was unable to focus. Other star turns on the table were a Chicken Korma (nutty, mild and surprisingly robust against the fiery onslaught) and a Llama Tikka Massala. We kid you not!
Anyways, the upshot was that the prize for finishing this hellish Vindaloo was a t-shirt. And here it is… Are the smiles at all forced?

La Paz

2011-02-20T22:48:00.003Z

We have a great night’s sleep on the bus, despite certain inconveniences. Firstly, as the semi-cama luxury (well, by Bolivian standars, at least…) dreamliner pulls out of Sucre, it becomes obvious that the aircon has not been turned on, and that vents passing along each window seat are pumping out enough hot air to warm up a Helsinki sauna. We bake, and our emergency ration of chocolate melts. Layers of clothes are removed. Some time later, Jon discovers that rather than being sealed units, the windows are, in fact, designed to be slid open. We slide, and in the face of numerous complaints from fellow passengers, we battle to keep the ventilation flowing. It flows. An enormous bottle of peach juice is placed between us, and sleep commences. We are, at this stage, blissfully unaware of our route which takes us right into the high Andes. Some hours later, we awake in a state of shivering only previously encountered when we camped at Poincenot in Patagonia. Quickly, layers of clothing were re-donned and the windows slid back into a more manageable state. But where has the peach juice disappeared to? Hmmm, we had been warned about personal security on Latin American buses, particularly when it’s dark. A torch-lit investigation reveals no new evidence.
Around 7 am, the coach begins to trundle through the upper suburbs of La Paz. The urban wasteland is quite horrific, even worse than Kathmandu: again flimsy brick buildings lie unfinished, unloved, and barely lived in. Of course this isn’t living; it’s merely surviving. Aymara women go about their daily business, their babies wrapped around their backs, and the whole beautiful ensemble of their costume evokes the bliss of simple village life. But here in La Paz, in El Alto, there is no bliss, and life is far from simple.
We coast down into the main bus terminal, book our tickets out of here immediately (we’re leaving tomorrow morning to seek a few days’ refuge at a lakeside retreat!) and jump in a taxi to head straight for the action: Calle Sagarnaga. Have you ever been to a witches’ market? No? Well that’s our plan! By 09.00 we are checked into the slightly mouldy and frayed Hotel Alem (but hard to grumble, given the price…) and ready to explore this amazing city, perhaps the most unusual, dare one say ‘exotic’ of the continent. But it’s in the clouds, literally, We look skywards to see the favellas on the steep hillsides, but as yet they are obscured in the mist.
Oh, it’s Sunday! So we should really attend High Mass in the highest capital city in the world! We seek out the ancient, colonial church of San Francisco, where the fortress-like, mighty stonework is made all the more astonishing by each and every altar, from the sides to the east end being decorated right up to the ceiling in shining gold, complete with myriad painted and adorned statues. Halfway through mass, a young La Pazian gets up, lights a cigarette and strolls out of the west doors. The offertory chant, accompanied on the Hammond organ with maximum tremolo is ‘Blowing in the Wind’. We shake hands enthusiastically with all around us at the Peace, and sit patiently as hundreds go up for communion. On the street right outside, we stop as a small Indian women sits at a brazier frying something with a very peculiar odour. It smells like burning tin foil, so we peer down more closely at the contents of her frying pan and the pile of pre-prepared morsels she has already begun to pile up on a plate. Oh: it IS tin foil. She and her husband try to convince us that it’s pure silver she’s frying up (la Plata) and that we should try some: “it’s good for you!” We do double takes, and hurry along in search of a real breakfast.
The Witches’ Market is in full flow by the time we get there, but we decide not to buy llama foetuses (lucy charms to bury under your house) or dired frogs. Incidentally did you know how large a llama foetus actually is? Well these were at least the size of a pretty hefty chicken, and whilst some were emaciated or just skeletal, a few we found were furry. We proceeded onwards to haggle some great deals on typical, hand-woven textiles. La Paz has swiftly worked its magic on us, and it will be a shame to leave so soon!
This city has quickly become one of our favourites, if only for its amazing markets, vibrant feel and dizzying views upwards to the favelas.

Sucre Day 2

2011-02-20T22:46:00.001Z

And here's just what it looked like!
With only one full day in the legal capital of Bolivia, we needed to move fast! The Hostal Amigo had served us well, with a balcony room overlooking one of the beautiful streets in the centre, just a stone’s throw from the Plaza 25 de Mayo. Street life is always wonderful to observe: here the women don’t wear the Bowlers, but a more whacky style of Sombrero. And the bottled gas van rings a bell on the top of the cab!
Our first stop on our rapid trip to Sucre was to the Cal Ork’o cement works. Yes: here there is to be found the Parque Cretácico where we were able to observe dinosaur footprints, preserved intact from the final era of the dinosaurs. If you’d like to see them, move quickly, for geologists estimate that the entire escarpment on which they are to be found will collapse within the next fifteen years. We also learned how following the separation of the Pangea single continent, South America had many more openings for saline waters. In fact, it seemed that on the diagram, a channel from the Atlantic Ocean reached where the salt flats are today before this path closed over to enclose a lake. Another fact for you is that the Andes are the youngest mountain range in the world and tectonic movements caused them to rise dramatically, also much later than the division of Pangea. After the overwhelming information on footprints and geomorphology of Latin America, it was on to the bus terminal, where Jon managed to clinch a deal to La Paz on a very comfortable bus for just 60 Bolivianos, where some other hapless travellers had to pay 100. Happy days!
Although Santa Teresa was closed, on the way up the incline heading from the main Plaza we stopped at the open door of the mighty church of Santo Domingo. The opening times of the churches in Sucre are a moveable feast, so it’s necessary to pounce when you can! The side altars here are fantastic; a riot of gold-leaf. The monasteries and convents in this city are not just reminders of the past age: they are still working, praying for the city, for the world, and for you and me. Two days ago in Potosi we stopped a Franciscan monk in a bright red baseball cap to bless a rosary bought in the gift shoip of the parish church of Tupiza. He blessed the rosary, then he blessed us, too!
The next stop was the working convent of Santa Clara, not just to meet the nuns of this closed order, but to observe the wonderful cloister and astonishing works of art. Simon was just itching to play the baroque organ at the west end of the monastery church, but time was against us! Next we climbed the hill to the viewpoint at La Recoleta, where we could see the entire city spreading out beneath us. The colonial centre is completely surrounded both by hills and by the earthy shanties which tumble down. Travelling by bus through this more authentically Bolivian area was a revelation: street markets selling all manner of goods, and textiles for the locals just exactly the same as the expensive versions in the tourist ghetto.
We’re off now to catch the 19.30 departure to La Paz; see you there!

Sucre: Day 1

2011-02-20T22:45:00.001Z

The bus journey from Potosi to Sucre was an astonishing experience! The favellas of Potosi literally cling to the hillsides, and driving through them was an experience of grinding poverty and grim determination. Whilst the socially deprived of Brazil seem to have a smile and a lust for life (as well as a way of doing everything to loud music), here the Bolivian equivalent seems to reflect the horror and pointlessness of poverty and destitution. Few smiles, and even fewer laughs. But then suddenly a beautiful old women, clad in traditional Andean costume gets on the bus, and looking helpless and lost, asks Simon to show her to her seat. “Gracias!” A tiny boy runs up and down the aisle singing “Si, si, si, la vida en Potosi,” clapping furiously. We tip him the princely sum of one Boliviano.
As we descend towards Sucre, the valleys become greener and lusher: very inviting, in fact, and around every sharp bend in the road, another breathtaking Andes view greets us. We travel through countless villages, many strewn with litter, rubbish and stones, many buildings being unfinished, with the exposed, thin brick-work looking very sorry for itself. Again, many walls and buildings seem to be of mud rather than the smart white-washed walls we were expecting, and the roofing material nowadays seems to be more corrugated iron than terracotta tiling. This country is in a mess, and its people at grass-roots level are severely poorly served. But what can be done?
We travelled slowly through the sprawling shanty towns surrounding Sucre. What a shock, but then this IS part of the Latin America we came to visit. But it seems harsher somehow than the equivalent settlements in Asia; why, we’ll just have to wait and see. And we certainly didn’t expect to see this kind of urban nightmare tagged onto one of the continent’s most elegant and noble cities. So to cleanse ourselves, we set out in the old centre of whitewashed buildings to explore some historical sites: the Cathedral and seat of the Archbishop (the senior church of all Bolivia), with its Cappilla of the Virgin of Guadalupe, encrusted with precious stones, and the church of San Francisco with its massive golden reredos. We were then amazed at the variety of fruit and vegetables available at the Mercado Central. So much so that we bought lots to cook Bolivian style! We ate a juicy, ripe chirimoya (custard apple) and then rustled up a chilli and mango dish with local sausage and spiced quinoa. Yum!

Potosi

2011-02-20T22:44:00.001Z

We arrived in the mighty city of Potosi at around 2 am where all was still in the old town, high above the sprawling favelas of the newer city below. The Cerro Rico was illuminated all the way to the summit with red lights on the left, and green on the right. We stumbled upon the Hostal Maria Victoria, and quickly set about catching up with some sleep. It was only when we arose the following morning that it became obvious we had just spent the night in an antique cell belonging to a Domenican friar, as we emerged into the daylight of a tiny cloister, complete with a carefully trimmed central tree and plenty of rosebushes. This lodging was part of the old monastery attached to the church of Santo Domingo, with its impressive array of bells in the bell tower. What a fantastic way to get under the skin of the city of Potosi: a colonial gem, with the entire upper part of town being designated a UNESCO World Heritage site!
A hearty Bolivian-style breakfast of strong coffee, orange juice, cake, bread and butter with marmelade kick-started the day. Orientation and exploration began with a visit to the San Francisco monastery, where we climbed onto the roof to admire the cityscape beneath and the mountain above. It became obvious that the doorways of the grand, Spanish churches faced the Cerro Rico which made the European inhabitants unbelievably wealthy, whilst the doors of the more modest churches built for the indigenia faced away from the mountain, to avoid glimpsing the place where they would surely die. This city has an horrific past: millions of people died in the mines of this mountain groaning with silver. It is still being worked by cooperatives to this day, and just three weeks ago the left hand side of the summit collapsed due to the mining weakening the entire hillside. We decided with a heavy heart that for humanitarian reasons, as well as our on personal safety, we would not be entering the mine today. But we did descend to the crypt of San Francisco to see the skulls of the nobility who died here centuries ago.
The mighty cathedral is undergoing a huge project of restoration, and after climbing the bell-tower for another vista of the city, we explored the interior of the building, where the pillars have been completely re-gilded and painted.
It was time for a pit stop. Both Jon and Simon were eager to try Maté de Coca: the chewing of Coca leaves or the drinking of Coca tea is a widespread practice here to combat altitude and fatigue. The miners use it to numb their senses in order to persevere down the mine, where, incidentally, they will die within ten years. And just walking around this place at over 4,000m is very demanding, so the tea was a welcome refreshment as we explored the highest city in the world!

Salar de Uyuni Tour: Day 4, The Salt Flat Itself

2011-02-20T22:42:00.001Z

Another early rise! But this was the important day, the one we had all been waiting for! At half past four the keen few of us had jumped out of bed to see if we were lucky enough not to have rain, and we found that the torrent making the racket throughout the night had turned into a heavy drizzle. About twenty minutes later, the rain had pretty much stopped and the skies were making their best attempt to clear. We were all very tired due to laughing through the night as we heard the loudest cat meow every so often in between the dogs’ constant barks! It sounded like the cat was putting up a very good fight! Not helping with a restful night either was the slight wind that caused our ceiling to creak. Could it have actually fallen down on our heads? Well after checking, all was revealed that it was only made out of polystyrene; hardly worthy of concern after all.
Our twenty-five kilometre drive towards the salt flats seemed very sketchy since the roads were really only one-and-a-half cars wide and had become one stretch of slippery muddy putty due to the night’s precipitous mass. We found our hairs raised as oncoming traffic, such as giant buses and large lorries, came head on competing for the road. Despite all the signs indicating that our jeep was going to skid or roll over, we made it to the salt flats and it was better than what we’d hoped for.
The lake was like a massive mirror of the most powerful reflection. As the clouds began to disperse we were glad of our sunglasses as the sun’s rays were like laser beams that no human eye could tolerate without them. The distant mountains resembled dark diamonds that appeared to be magically floating in the sky, as were some of the piles of salt that we saw every so often.
The hammering rain had turned out to be a bit of a blessing as the Salar de Uyuni only reflects so well when it has been surfaced with rain. Without rain, it would be like going to a never ending beach with brilliant white, but coarse sand. The salt crystals were indeed quite large and some of our friends who removed their shoes to walk on the world’s largest salt flat were in quite a bit of pain due to the coarseness.
One particular mountain with a snowy cap and a mixture of a brown, rocky and green, vegetated body reflected itself beautifully and the clouds in the sky created an amazingly fairytale atmosphere.

Salar de Uyuni Tour: Day 3, Fantastic Flamencos!

2011-02-20T22:39:00.002Z

Another breakdown one hour into the day, but what better location than Árbol de Piedra and the moonscape like surroundings to be stuck for a while. It was magical, being so high in the Andes being dusted lightly with snow. We amused ourselves by climbing up the rocks and exploring around, plus humouring the most remote toilet we’ve ever seen. And a rigorous snowball fight was in order! This beautiful, and unique, setting was incomparable to the wonderful Laguna Colorado where we watched hundreds of pink flamingos: Some were sifting for algae with their long, dodo-like beaks, others were swooping over the surface and revealing their stunning, large black and rosy wings. The baby flamencos had white plumages and created a variety in the setting. And the laguna was topped off by steam produced by more peripheral hot springs.
Later at Laguna Hedionda, we watched on even more flamingos going about their business, this time tucked in a valley of rainbow-coloured mountains. Continuing on our way, we made it to the foot of Volcan Ollagüe, which is still active. The only visual barrier was the huge, low-lying, inky cloud that prevented us from being able to see the smoke that drifts from the peak’s crater.
On the way to our stop in Uyuni, we stopped in San Cristobal for a hearty empanada. It was delicious and resembled very well a Cornish pasty, only the crimping followed the centre, rather than one of the edges. On the way into the village we saw the large, unfriendly-looking Japanese machines that were reaping the value of the Bolivian’s ‘terra madre’.
On arrival to the town of Uyuni, our hostel was a stunning courtyard where all the small, cosy rooms looked out onto each other. Each room was like a small, single-storey terraced house with a straw roof and white walls. Quiet by comparison to the real street outside with Bolivians going about their daily chores and packs of wild dogs roaming and rooting for food.

Salar de Uyuni Tour: Day 2, Reserva Nacional de Fauna Andina Eduardo Avaroa

2011-02-20T22:38:00.001Z

It was minus five degrees when we woke up at five in the morning for an early start. It was indeed difficult but it was worth it!
Pueblo Fantasma is 4690 metres above sea level and it’s been completely abandoned since the 1800s, now only home to curious chinchillas and vicuñas. The village lies in the shadow of Monte Lípez, which although unstable for mining, has massive supplies of gold, sulphur and zinc. In the next ten years the Japanese will begin extracting minerals from there, but not until they have finished up in San Cristobal, near Uyuni. Pueblo Fantasma was inhabited only by indigenous peoples until the Spanish came over in the sixteenth century, making slaves out of them to gather mineral ores. Much interbreeding occurred between the Spanish and the indigenous, and also close inbreeding within families. This lead to malformed children and the Spanish abandoned the settlement, taking the cures for western diseases and medical expertise with them, leaving the helpless remainder for dead. The city itself is currently stone ruins that may be comparable to that of Machu Picchu in Peru, very different to the mud brick settlements that surround the area even though these villages only seemed to occur very rarely.
We stopped at a small shack in the middle of this Andean desert and bought tickets to the Reserva Nacional de Fauna Andina Eduardo Avaroa. Perhaps this would compete with the salt lake finalé? Time will tell.
We proceeded past Laguna Morejon and observed Volcano Uturuncu, which stands at 6,008 metres high. We then passed though two more villages where the mud architecture continued to be the prevalent style. We firstly visited the village of Quetena Chica and then Quetena Grande, both of which have Chilean inhabitants thus also the absence of the Quechua language, unusual for this region of Bolivia. It turned out, however, that Quetena Chica was actually ‘grande’ and Quetena Grande was actually ‘chica’.
It was at our next stop, Laguna Hedionda, where the another group’s jeep decided to break down and keep us there for three hours. Not to worry though as we were plentifully occupied by the two beautiful flamingos that were frightened off by a telltale sparrow that warned them of our presence. It was a shame to have spoilt the flamencos’ dinner of algae but even more of a pity that we haven’t got the best flamingo pictures yet. Talking of dinner, ours were delicious tender steaks of llama, which, in terms of meat, had oodles of flavour and went well with the delicious salad of tomatoes and onions.
We then headed past the Kollpa Laguna and the Salar de Chalviri towards the Laguna Verde. At the Laguna Verde we got a fantastic glimpse of the Volcano Licancabur, who’s shape fits the pointed, conical stereotype and lies in the high Andes on the border with Chile.
The Rocas de Dali were soon to follow and these are named after the artist who painted them in landscapes. The most novel part of this day were the hot springs that are heated to thirty-five degrees by lava far below. Quite a nice contrast to the almost chilling air temperature! We had great fun splashing around with some great friends we made throughout the tour, including Martin, Christian and Shirley. Not only did we manage to dip in the hot springs, but we also managed to gaze at the nearby geysers, which were 5200 metres above sea level and we were sure to remain upwind of the bitter stench of sulphur that leached into the air.
In just over an hour we arrived at Huallajara, which was where we got our heads down that night. Beforehand, we managed to practise a lot of Spanish at the dinner table!

Salar de Uyuni Tour: Day 1, Sierra de Lipez

2011-02-20T22:36:00.002Z

As our trusty four by four carried us out of Tupiza to the surrounding mountains we noticed very much the change in altitude. During a stop for bewildering vistas from roughly the four-thousand metres mark, we were left short of breath just by walking excitedly for just a few seconds to take some pictures. Initially it can be quite worrying when you think that overnight you have suddenly become so unfit, perhaps like a heavy smoker, but the fear dissipates once you realize just how thin the air is at higher altitudes. Besides the views of weathered rock formations and copious cacti in the valley beneath, a strong smell of petrol was also much noticed, probably due to the inordinate quantity of gasoline leaking out from the tank. Our guide, Hugo, thought it best to return to base in Tupiza and swap the jeep for another one, but he seemed to change his mind after a half-mile coast down the hill. We continued forwards; slightly nerve wracking for some! What would happen if we lost all our petrol to the stony track beneath in a remote location such as the central Andean path? Meanwhile, as the stench of petrol loomed both outside and inside the jeep, we prayed that nobody who may happen to smoke would light up.
After another hour had passed we experienced one more mishap, though I must add that this wasn’t Hugo’s fault as he always seemed to drive with caution. A speedy someone emerged from around a blind corner on his motorcycle and despite his great efforts to avoid contact he quickly found himself and his bike beneath our vehicle. Without thinking we jumped jeep to see if the poor guy was all right which luckily he was, and as for his moto, that got off lightly too with only a snapped fender and a broken right-hand mirror. No harm done as after taking such a knock he mounted his motorbike and set off as if nothing had happened.
The most amazing part of the day was our lunch stop in the centre of a huge piece of land hugged by multi-tonal mountains, where inquisitive llamas of all colours enjoy grazing on the luscious, green grass and wading through some of the large ponds.
When we arrived in San Pablo De Lipez for another short break from the painful undulations from the jeep’s rocky trail we were very impressed by the large, well-preserved matt black bell that shone with a dull lustre every so often inside the high, mud-coloured tower. We found ourselves highly amused as we approached the village football pitch that was dominated by the lonesome llama as opposed to a boisterous gang of football fanatics. The old streets were lined with mud brick walls, some of which showed signs of decreasing tolerance against the harsh, forever-changing climate of the Andes. We were informed that the village only had one phone box and a radio for communication but we shortly discovered that the wooden, half-booth had no telephone inside, only two lost looking cables dangling.
On we rode towards our altitudinous accommodation of 4,225 metres in the even quainter farming village of San Antonio de Lipez, which boasted a large snow-capped Andean peak in the near distance. Beneath this mountain, llamas, again, seemed happy to be roaming freely and the very few that weren’t shy even posed for our camera. The pink ribbons that hung from one particular llama’s woolly ears swayed in the calm breeze of the valley as she stood grinning humbly. This village was also built largely from mud bricks and turned into even more of a spectacular setting as the sun went down and the gibbous moon’s glimmering presence enhanced itself amidst uncountable stars. The snow on the white dusted peak in the background reflected the moonlight in an icy, cold blue tone whilst lightning struck repeatedly behind the nearby mountain range.

Tupiza: The Desert Life!

2011-02-12T23:52:00.003Z

We explored on horse back, of course! Jon’s magnificent and head-strong beast was called Capriccio, Simon’s friendly mare was called Esmirelda, and we were shown around the area by a young lad called Jorge. We walked, we cantered, we trotted and we galloped around for five hours exploring the amazing landscapes and cacti around the town of Tupiza: the Canon del Inca, amongst other fantastic sights. Yes, we really bonded with these horses and felt like real gauchos! We even lopped the top off an imposing looking cactus and tasted the fruit within!

Bolivian Immersion

2011-02-12T23:50:00.004Z

No sooner had we arrived in Tupiza we were hassled by two girls trying to sell us a tour, but we decided to put our heavy packs down in our night’s residence before making any decisions. And what decisions were they? You’ll just have to wait and see! After a bit of faffing with our bags in the hotel, we hurried out to check out the place! We were pretty hungry by this time, too, and we would be lying if we told you that we didn’t break every rule in the book!
Rule 1: If you haven’t peeled it yourself then don’t eat it!
Rule 2: Don’t eat salad, as the water that it’s washed in may not be trustworthy.
Rule 3: If you don’t know what it is, keep well away!
Rule 4: Make sure it’s cooked through and through.
Rule 5: Try and pick somewhere to eat with decent enough hygiene levels.
Well, we didn’t peel the onions that were garnishing the dish but they were delicious all the same! The tomatoes were very juicy and we can only hope that the water that it was washed in was bottled. The smiling young lady at the food stall in the main market offered us something to try with our meal but as our Spanish isn’t yet up to speed we failed in understanding, so we simply plumbed for it. These things had the appearance of cooked mushrooms sprinkled with cheese, but had the texture of conchiglie pasta that perhaps requires five minutes more in the boiling pot. We still don’t know what on earth we ate so that’s rule three out of the window! The chicken, beef, rice and potato were all just slightly more than lukewarm, but we think it had been cooked properly nevertheless. The location wasn’t the best either, but we so chose to eat in the upstairs of the grimy market in order to sample the real Bolivia. A sorry looking bulldog with bloodshot eyes made a pest of himself at our table but we were rescued by the sweet waitress who chased him off with a broom. All in all the food was pretty nice, but the best part was the fiery, ground up chilli sauce that we finished off without any problem. Hopefully all of these broken rules won’t have any consequences!!!

Sometimes (well, for us, always) it’s better not to book rooms in advance or make reservations: just show up in a town and take a look around. This method never fails. Here in Tupiza it seems to have worked a treat: the room we have at the Hostel Valle Hermosa is quite possibly one of the best rooms we’ve had anywhere. There’s a limit to the amount of dorm sleeping one can do, so here we went for the penthouse! We have great windows on three sides, all with views out over the rooftops of the town over to the surrounding hills. It’s a quiet hostel in a quiet location, well quiet until the twilight troop of young boys play games on the dark street corners and when savage looking dogs choose to howl. There was a drum beat coming from some mystery location last night and no matter how hard we peered out, the drummer remained invisible.
Our hunt for a filling Friday night supper went in vain; the best we could find which was gringo-free was a small fast food outlet where we enjoyed salchipapas, pique and chilli con carne. Breakfast, however, for BS15 (divide by 11...) was fantastic: a massive cup of fresh coffee or maté, two local bread rolls, a scoop of creamy butter which resembled a rich vanilla ice cream, tasty marmelade and a large glass of freshly squeezed orange juice. For elevenses we enjoyed an empanada filled with chicken, potato, raisins and plenty of spice. Today there is not a cloud in the sky, and the surrounding mountains look very inviting. But how will we get there…?

From the Deep Soth to the Altiplano

2011-02-12T23:48:00.000Z

We’ve decided on a detour from our original itinerary! The basic idea was to head back into Chile, to San Pedro de Atacama. But we’re writing this from 2,950m in the town of Tupiza in southern Bolivia, where Simon is a little breathless but Jon is taking it all in his stride! So what has happened?
We set off on a morning flight with LAN from El Calafate to the Aeroparque in Buenos Aires, where we found what must surely be the world’s best airport bookstore. One entire wall is devoted solely to Latin American novels, with other parts of the shop specialising in poetry, politics or sociology. They have a decent selection of Mario Vargas Llossa, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, together with the entire series of the complete works of Jorge Luis Borges. Quick! Our flight to Salta is boarding; put those books down and hurry along through security! So our second flight of the day catapulted us as far northwest as it is possible to fly in Argentina. The city of Salta didn’t try very hard in persuading us to tarry, however: we needed to obtain some bus tickets, and fast! We were expecting an arid landscape, with weather to match. But it was drizzling in Salta, and the large bus terminus began to offer some alluring alternatives.
There was a late-night departure available to La Quaica, a frontier town which sits in the far north of the country on the border with Bolivia. The price was a bargain, and the otherworldliness of Bolivia was calling loud and clear. A massive Hawaiian pizza and a bottle of local Chardonnay later and the deal was done: we would head for Tupiza. Where? Read on…
The night bus was semi-cama and we awoke around the 07.30 mark as we drove into La Quaica. The rain had been torrential during the night, causing the sand and dirt of the streets and surrounding countryside to turn into thick, coffee-coloured mud. Shopkeepers and stall-holders tried in vain to brush this mess away from their doorways. We found a café and constructed a fantastic breakfast of very strong coffee, media lunas (small croissants brushed with a sweet syrup) and peach milkshake. Then it was onwards on our march over the border into Bolivia. Land border crossings are always great fun, especially if we can get to walk over. This one was almost in the same league as entering into Bangladesh!
Over on the Bolivian side, the town is called Villazon. Here the main street is lined with craft shops and money changers. It seems that the Bolliviano-US Dollar rate is 6.9. Try as we might, it’s impossible to better this rate; the price of everything here is a revelation in comparison to Argentina! The women look stunning in their array of skirts, bowler hats and bright, multicoloured shoulder blankets. In fact, many of these ladies were wearing the shoulder blankets over one shoulder and under the opposite arm in order to carry their young children on their backs. We seem to have entered a truly magical world, and it feels very much like we are back in Asia.
At the bus station we think that we have missed the 08.30 departure for Tupiza…. But wait, there’s a time change we seem to have forgotten about: the clocks go back an hour; plus, the bus was over half an hour late leaving. There’s no semi-cama for us here, thank God! This is a REAL Bolivian bus, with ordinary people going about their daily business and an over-enthusiastic young laxative salesman giving an impassioned oration. Yes, it’s surreal. Yes, it’s wonderful!
The journey to Tupiza began quite steadily, but as the bus climbed to higher reaches the roads faded out into bumpy, muddy tracks. With this, the landscape also changed into what just about everyone would imagine a desert to be like, but with a twist! Sure there were rocks and stones in varying shades of beige as well as sandy patches, but the abundance of prickly cacti really made it. Canyons, gorges, thin and tall towers of rock all complemented the desert landscape, and their multi-coloured strata took us mentally to the Wild West! Perhaps they are trying to complete a new, paved road which winds its way northwards, intertwining with the railway from Villazon. But it looks like this project has ground to a halt, and in any case the most fascinating parts of the journey are when we make a detour down a dirt track into a tiny, mud-brick village. The adobe houses aren’t even finished off with whitewash in this part of the country: the village landscape resembles that of the places we encountered in Rajastan, or perhaps the settlements in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco. After the glitz of Argentina, this jolt into the
Developing World becomes all the more sudden and shocking. But it puts us firmly back where we want to be!

Farewell to Patagonia!

2011-02-09T00:39:00.003Z

Right, it's time to move on again! During the next few days it will be all go, with bus journeys, flights, a brief stop over in an interesting city of the Argentinian northwest, and then a fascinating bus trip right over the Paso de Jama in the Andes. At 4,400m, it's high! This thrill will end at the village of San Pedro de Atacama, from where we'll be communicating with you again. Wish us luck!

Chile with Chillies!

2011-02-09T00:13:00.006Z

We've been cooking again, as you can see! Here in the deep south of Chile there is a feeling of being way out on the periphery with sceenery just like northern Norway and even Greenland: our side trip to Greenland in August 2010 was a great preparation for our glacier and mountain experiences. At Hostel Nataly there are 25 Chilean and Colombian guys staying here whilst working away from home in the petroleum construction industry. Talking to them is a great way to brush up on our Spanish, and a fantastic way to become closely aquainted with the finer points of Chileno pronunciation. And it's tricky, very tricky! Firstly, they talk really rapidly, and the big shocker is that the letter 's' is almost always omitted. Thus a former fisherman who regaled us with his fascinating life story on the seven seas talked to us of 'alakka'..."Aaaaah!" Jon suddenly exclaims, "Alaska!"
And just as Simon is typing this, a number of the guys have seized a guitar and a small penny whistle as a little jam session emerges.

But what about the chillies? We thought that you might like to follow us more closely by reproducing this recipe and thinking of us here in Puerto Natales as you eat it!
Well, think back to our big trip last year: Southeast Asia; and in homage to those happy days, we've created a sort of Asian crossover menu to enjoy in the cosy kitchen here. Jon made a Malaysian beef with pineapple curry, whilst Simon attempted chicken sticky-rice, Laos style! Here's what you should do:
Firstly, in a massive cooking pot, boil up some water, add some lemon slices, throw in plenty of dried chilie flakes, a knob of butter, plenty of rice and a packet of powdered chicken soup. Stir like crazy, don't let the rice stick to the bottom of the pan, and wait for the whole thing to thicken up and the rice to become fluffy.
Next for the main event: Fry off plenty of onion and garlic in butter, adding both jalapeno and yellow chilli peppers, making sure to sprinkle plenty of dried chilli flakes at the same time. We used Merkén de Mapuche, a special Chileno blend which is smooth and inoffensive. If you can't lay your hands on it back home: improvise! Throw in some good quality minced beef (not forgetting that the best in the world grazes in the Southern Cone), some chopped fresh tomatoes and some tinned tomato, making sure that all this comes up to a simmer. Now is the time to sweeten the mix with the juice from a tin of pineapples, and allow the whole sauce to reduce until thick enough to add the pineapple chunks, pour over the sticky rice and enjoy! Simon’s tip would be to wash all this down with some fruity Chilean white wine, say a Sauvignon Blanc. It’s really rather good here, and even cheaper than in the BWS aisles at Bodmin Asda…

Update: the following day, we also created Spaghetti Natalese! Yum!

Torres del Paine: Campamento Las Carretas

2011-02-08T14:45:00.004Z

After such a difficult day yesterday that left us with aching feet and borderline blisters, we only needed to trek for six hours (as opposed to twelve!). We earned ourselves a lie in and eventually set out at about one in the afternoon, after saying our farewells to our American friend, Rob, who incidentally fed us with some pasta with tomato sauce the previous night. Thanks Rob (if you are reading this). It was great to have some hot food! After less than a hundred metres, we crossed the bridge out of the campsite and looked up at the Glacier des Frances, this time in the sunlight. It was spectacular and it’s sheer magnetism kept us there for about twenty minutes. Was this better than the Torres themselves?
We walked through forest before the trees gave way to small shrubs and heathers on the high ground that overlooked Lago Pehoé, where a catamaran sails to transport some of the trekkers who, quite understandably, need a break. The water was a deep blue and the moderate breeze was generating white horses on the lake’s surface and causing the bushes surrounding us to rustle. The became narrower and narrower until it pretty much disappeared, but luckily we saw two Argentinian trekkers ahead and followed their path. For some unknown reason, they stopped and headed back, but all was revealed as we arrived at a sudden, sharp dip in the valley with no paths. We weren’t backtracking! No way! We waded through the shrubbery being careful not to trip over the horizontal branches. We met up with the trail that we were meant to be on eventually and were on our way!
Narrow paths wound up around steep hillsides, and as the massif began to recede into the distance, we were able to apprehend the entire ensemble in one glance: surely there is no mightier, more splendid and impressive view on the planet? On our right lay the Monte Almirante Nieto, and moving to the left we could clearly make out the Valle Bader with its sheer sides and snow-covered floor, the thick Cuerno Este next to the barley-sugared twist of the Cuerno Principal with the shadow of a horseman on the orange-hued rock face beneath, with the entire Paine Grande collection of ice, snow and peaks to the right. As we progressed towards camp, we walked alongside the ice-cold Rio Grey, past burrows which might have been homes to foxes or pumas, and onto a flat grassland that could perhaps have been equally at home on the Serengeti. Suddenly we encountered eerie meadows of gnarled and grey dead tress, and as night began to draw in we were in the camp, clinging to the windswept riverbank with a few tents carefully anchored in the turf. Would we blow away or would we manage to get through the night peacefully? It hardly mattered as the fourth day in this amazing national park drew to a close: it had offered up its secrets, its delights, its mystique to us gradually, and suddenly with a torrent of magnificent vistas and unexpectedly heart-stopping moments.

Torres del Paine: Campamento Italiano

2011-02-08T14:44:00.005Z

Today’s hike was by far the most gruelling, even though we managed to shave off three or four kilometres due to a magically appearing shortcut. The next free campsite was still twenty-five kilometers away and I guess a painful day is one way to pay for free camping. We departed from Campamento Torres and hiked an hour towards Campamento Chileno where we took a rest and stocked up on water from the stream. Horses stood tolerantly as they occasionally whipped their long tails to clear away the small swarms of irritating flies.
“What’s that on the seat?”, Jon queried. He had stumbled upon an almost full packet of spaghetti. Jackpot! Just as we were running out of food we come across an extra meal or two and we took our American friend’s (Rob’s) offer of the use of his camping stove later. However, easy come easy go, as we discovered later during a well earned food break when half the pack of spaghetti turned out to be soggy. Either it had been cooked already and left cold, or maybe a rat had crawled in the night before and done its business. No way of telling as nobody knew how long the packet had been lying on that bench.
As Rob cooked himself some Porridge, we tucked into our giant bag of crisps. It was a huge packet and it took three of us to finish it off in two sittings! On we marched at about the fifteenth kilometre and the terrain began to change from smooth paths, to large and small boulder trails, which wreaked havoc with our feet after ten more kilometres the same. Just about everybody we passed greeted us. “Hola!”. There was one short girl with walking poles that were adjusted highly out of proportion and the moment she acknowledged us, a huge gust of wind blew her right over. She was all right as she stood back up laughing. We continued past lakes with pebbled shores and the wind occasionally picked up for us and caused water to spray from the lake all over us in a heavy drizzle. What really made the difference were the final three or four kilometres where the Glacier del Frances appeared and was gleaming boastfully, even though the rain clouds were fulfilling their duty in blocking out the sun. The forest below was our settlement for the night and the eerie tall trees swayed as the glacier itself sometimes carved, making a distinctive rumble like muffled thunder.

The following morning, we woke fairly late, but totally recovered from the previous day’s ‘yomp’! The leaf litter beneath our portable home helped to cushion our weary backs, and the sound of the wind rustling in the trees had soothed us to sleep. No sooner had we packed away and started walked than we crossed a small bridge over the river, quitting the peaceful tree cover to have revealed for us the full magnificence of Paine Grande with wisps of snow blowing about the summits, all set into stunning relief by the bright blue sky and the enthusiastically gushing river. This was suddenly, almost alarmingly, the most amazing view we’ve ever experienced!
Take a look, the pictures tell our story far, far better than these few words!

Torres del Paine: Campamento Torres

2011-02-08T14:42:00.005Z

We commenced our trek around ten-thirty in the morning from the entry point at Lago Amarga, heading directly towards the mighty Torres. We strode into camp sometime after four-thirty, exhausted, yet fulfilled. During the trail, we were buzzed by two curios condors, observed by some inquisitive guanacos, we crossed the Rio Ascencio countless times by rickety bridges, wondering at the sheer beauty of the amazing, tumbling stream making continuous waterfalls over the boulders. It’s just like the time we spent at the Last Resort in the Himalayas, close to the border between Nepal and China. Supper was smoky pumpkin risotto with rotisserie chicken. Not bad for on the side of the world’s most beautiful mountains! As dusk descended, a crafty but arrogant mountain fox strolled brazenly into camp in search of a tasty morsel.

After breakfast of a bread roll each with chicken paté, we set off on the trail to see the park’s most famed landmarks: The Torres del Paine; three highly protruding stacks that have remained standing following the melting of a once-upon-a-time glacier. The past presence of a glacier became increasingly evident as the trail disappeared and we found ourselves scrambling up and across large rocks, which would have been glacial moraine. Contrary to our belief, pretty much all of these boulders were firmly stuck between one another so the chances of slipping or breaking limbs were minimised. When we eventually reached the viewpoint, the tips of the Torres were completely clouded over leaving only a view of a tranquil turquoise lake beneath. Snow clouds went overhead and sprinkled us with icy flakes, but it was nothing that our fold away rain jackets could not handle. After sitting a little longer, the patience had indeed paid off. The break in the clouds revealed three moody peaks. Voila!
As Simon took a couple of hours nap in the afternoon, Jon went solo and explored another mountain trail towards Campamento Japones and the Valle del Silencio. The trail was the most difficult to follow by far and the large heap of moraine in the bottom of the valley hid well the trail markers. So much so in fact that Jon had to memorise distinct land markings in order to find his way back. After scrambling across boulder after boulder Jon found himself walking through a dark forest and once again, the fold-up waterproof jacket that Jon’s Granny Smith got him for Christmas was put to use and regarded as an ‘inheritance’! Thanks Gran! As light diminished Jon picked up a large stick to walk with, though the secondary use would have been to whack a puma square on the head should one pounce. He stopped and thought for a minute how pathetic he was being since pumas are generally more scared of humans and chucked it away. The valley was so tranquil and the only sounds came from the occasional gust of wind and the trickling of the clear river water over rocks. Luckily the water throughout the park is potable and so Jon stopped at and guzzled from time to time. The Campamento Japones was quiet and morbid, like a scene from a horror film. Scary! There was Jon, alone in the middle of a dark forest, and a poor-quality wooden shed nearby full of sharp tools and a work bench. In the far distance, as far as the eye could see, there were two tents but nobody was around. Jon wasn’t surprised really and he spent a few minutes exploring the site but didn’t really hang around for much longer after that.

Hostel Nataly

2011-02-08T14:41:00.001Z

Mine host Willy: The most helpful and welcoming owner we’ve met on our travels across the globe. He’s highly knowledgeable about the area and gives trekking advice as well as renting out equipment. He’s helped to stop us from shivering by providing some essential thermal roll mats. Shortly after our arrival he seems thrilled that two Brits have shown up: he says we’re the first he’s ever had (and hopefully not the last, as we’d like to recommend this place and the genuine welcome). Come to Chile; Be certain to experience the Torres del Paine; do it from the starting point of Puerto Natales; stay at Hostel Nataly!
As the first Brits to stay here, we are honoured to be asked to stick a Union Jack pin flag in Willy’s huge map of the world, which adorns one of the long walls in the communal dining area. Jon plants the Union Jack proudly in Cornwall. Looking at this map, the latitude of where we were in El Chaltén is exactly the corresponding latitude in the Southern hemisphere to where we live at home.

Puerto Natales

2011-02-03T01:40:00.004Z

It was time to move on from El Calafate and the Parque Nacional Los Glaciares. Stunning as both southern and northern sectors of this location may be, the Argentinian side of the deep south of Patagonia has been a bit of a warm up for us. Right now we have just made it into Chile to embark on a lengthy trek around one of the most beautiful places on the entire planet. So please forgive the silence for the next few days, but the wait should be well worth it!
The bus journey south from Argentina into Chile was quite an event, with some dramatic views of our snow capped destination, the Torres del Paine. Here in Puerto Natales, there is very much the air of all towns which find themselves clinging on to the periphery. Just like our experiences in Greenland, the mood of the inhabitants, the dramatic scenery and the biting winds are all identical, including the utilitarian style of architecture which defines these settlement towns which have a continual battle with nature. As we rolled in to town, the Navimag ferry was in dock, and the whole scene could easily have been confused with that of coastal Norway.
But there is something different here, and perhaps it is all about the people. Chileans are most definately NOT like their Argentine neighbours. Oh, no! Or rather, a refreshing yes! For these quiet, gentle, welcoming people are miles apart from the frenetic and full on approach that could be found even in El Calafate. And that false, plastic, almost Disney~like mountain world conjured up in El Calafate, complete with the Swiss style log cabin way of building, along with the monster casino, is completely absent. Here in Puerto Natales, it is a real town, with real inhabitants going about their daily business, almost unaware or even blase about their proximity to the most beautiful national park in the world.
Jon managed to navigate us almost immediately to a fantastic hostel where we are paying just 6,000 Chilean Pesos each for a bunk. It is a family run affair here at the Hostel Nathaly, which presumably is a play on the name of our town rather than the charming mother of the house. They give us free reign in the kitchen, where, over a good few hours we cook up enough food to keep us going for the five days of the trek. Willy and Maria Louise, the landlords, offered us to keep our large backpacks at the hostel to save our shoulders during hard trekking, so we have taken only what we need in Simon's backpack (YES! we will take turns carrying the load!). Our intention was to be taking a light rucksack with us, but it has turned out to be heavy as we are taking five days worth of food! And that's including cooked rice and pasta that has soaked up all the water already! Extra grammes! One solution may be to eat as much food as soon as possible to lighten the load, but future starvation isn't really an option. We'll have to sleep on this one! But as for tomorrow, let the fun begin!

Cerro Torre

2011-02-01T13:39:00.004Z

In the late morning we left camp and headed for El Chaltén, where we bagged some real beds and a hot shower. Then it was off to see the elusive Cerro Torre: not quite as tall as Fitzroy, nor as broad, but this peak resembles a canine tooth, slender, shooting skywards. The top third was shrouded in clouds, but did we mind? Not a bit of it, and the nature trail through all the woodlands more than made up for it; after all, earlier in the morning Jon had seen a red-headed woodpecker (Carpentero Grande)!

Cerro Fitzroy (Chaltén)

2011-02-01T13:32:00.004Z

The next day we took the air-conditioned coach from El Calfate to El Chaltén, gazing out of the windows at vast, rocky desert with foothills and distant mountains making up the horizon. Every so often in this inhospitable environment appeared some aqua blue lakes, which explains how the skipping guanacos we also saw are able to survive. On arrival to the village of El Chaltén, we headed straight to Campamento Poincenot to be certain to have pitched the tent before darkness fell. To our great surprise, the temperature fell rapidly resulting in one freezing cold night, but then nobody ever said to us that camping high in the Andes was going to be warm. After shivering through a very restless night, whilst listening to the howling wind and loud rain droplets dripping from the trees above onto the tent canvas, we finally managed to get a decent 3 hrs sleep from 7am until 10am. From here, the sky was blue and fairly clear as if all that bad weather last night had never happened. After a quick breakfast of dulce de leche on bread we set off on our steep hike to the Lago de los Tres for the best view of Cerro Fitzroy. It was extremely enjoyable to trek through green forests and alongside crystal clear rivers before the enduring steep mountainside climb. We saw condors on the way up that were soaring high above looking for prey. Meanwhile we were treading carefully as to not slip on the loose boulders. As we ascended towards the top, it started to snow and the wind gusted harshly. It was at this point that it hit us: we were high in the Andes.
We walked back, taking much needed drinks from the pure mountain streams, followed by an afternoon siesta in our portable home, after handfuls of ham and cheese sandwiches. The searing, bitter cold of the night at Poincenot forced us to consider moving home for a night to Lago Capri: good call, affording more sandwiches and Kendal Mint Cake. But no sleep for Jon during the night at Campamiento Largo Capri: there was industrial-strength snoring from another, near-by tent. Jon went on a night walk, and found himself face-to-face with the eyes of an unidentified animal. Was it a huemul, a guanacho, a wolf, a puma or one of the many feral dogs of Patagonia? This animal brought him out of his trance where he was captivated by the dreamy, starlit sky where the magical swirls of the Milky Way galaxy were glowing. On the other hand, the daylight delivered to us exactly what we were here for: unimpeded views of Cerro Fitzroy, surrounded by a bright blue sky with a few wispy clouds. Magnificent! Does this view equal that of the Perito Moreno Glacier or the falls at Iguazu? Of course! This is world-class hiking, for there are amazing river valleys, lush forests, snow-capped peaks and glorious skies. Patagonia would seem to have it all!

The Perito Moreno Glacier

2011-02-01T13:24:00.006Z

Almost immediately, it was time for our appointment with Argentina’s largest water-feature, (well, if you leave out Iguazu and count ice as being fairly watery!): Perito Moreno, perhaps one of the world’s most impressive glaciers. The bus journey took us into the Southern zone of the Parque Nacional Los Glaciares, where we boarded a hydrofoil to sail up the Brazo Rico to within 300’ of the massive wall of blue-hued ice and we then explored on foot around the Peninsula Magallanes, which juts into the Largo Argentina, affording many breathtaking vistas of this amazing wonder. As vast chunks of ice calved and plunged thunderously into the freezing, turquoise lake beneath, a gigantic condor swooped on the thermals overhead. Simon had at last fulfilled another of those boyhood ambitions!

Onwards to Patagonia

2011-02-01T13:23:00.001Z

All good things seem to end so quickly, especially with us having to depart from the beautiful Colonia del Sacramento so soon. But there’s still much more to look forward to as this part of the trip could just be one of the most exciting sections. All will be revealed in time! Finalising plans was the main activity on the Buquebus ferry back to Buenos Aires, other than a short nap. On arrival back in Argentina at eleven o’ clock at night, we were a little bit puzzled on what to do about getting to the airport, especially since the number thirty-three bus which we needed seemed to pass us at the bus stop even when we were flapping our arms up and down frantically like penguins just to flag in down. We probably waited for almost an hour before deciding to make way for Retiro, Buenos Aires’ central bus station. It was dodgy as sin! It was fairly lonely and two stray dogs chased cars, again barking mad, and one poor cyclist got the rough end, although it became apparent that they weren’t out to attack but only to scare. After another thirty minutes or so in this dark area we asked a local where to catch the bus to the Aeroparque (the smaller airport in the city that largely operates domestic flights) and he pointed us to a distant section of the bus bay, where there were just two other people waiting for their transport. After they had been picked up we were the only ones there even though there were people talking and lying on benches in a small park across the narrow road.
We had been spotted by a poor, hungry young boy who was definitely undernourished and when he came over asking for some food we took great pity and gave him one of the cheese spread rolls that we made for our midnight snack. A taller boy then came over and he looked in an equally bad state with scruffy clothes and a thick blanket round his shoulders. He was also hungry and Jon put his hand into the supply of cheese rolls and passed him one as well. “Pan de Queso”, he said as he passed it to the lad. The only snag was that Jon had completely forgotten to put cheese in one of the rolls and he looked somewhat miffed and screwed it up in his hand. “Oh! Desculpe!”, said Jon apologetically as he reached and passed him another, this time with cheese in it! Both boys then started getting nasty and got their pens of weapon out in a threatening way shouting, “Money, Camera, Money!”. Since these kids looked high on glue or something, they probably weren’t fully aware of what they were doing so we chose not to thump each one in the ear. “Te matar!”, they continued, which we believe means “I’m going to kill you!”. The two halfwits probably thought that their pens were machine guns of some sort. Anyway we both remained calm and insisted that we had no money. They looked at us confused as to why we weren’t scared and went on their way! However, we didn’t hang around in case they had more of an army round the corner so we bailed and got a taxi. In fact the taxi was that cheap that we really don’t know why we just didn’t get one in the first place.
The sunrise over Buenos Aires as we got on the plane was beautiful, and there were amazing views of Tierra del Fuego as we stopped in Ushuaia (temperature: 5oC!) We arrived in El Calafate, a surprisingly large town in Southern Patagonia, where the temperature was a pleasant 12 degrees. The main street consists almost entirely of gift shops, expensive restaurants (ouch, we were stung for a pizza and ravioli) and a casino. We headed straight for a small camp site on the edge of town to save a few Pesos and to acclimatise for our forthcoming trek into the wilderness.

Colonia del Sacramento: Uruguay

2011-01-26T18:52:00.005Z

There’s a limit to the amount of Buenos Aires any man can take. Our satiation point showed up on the radar after one-and-a-half days… But don’t despair, there’s a fantastic bail-out option available: just imagine a place far enough away to be almost in a different century, but close enough for the tops of the Argentinian sky-scrapers to be just visible, allowing for the curvature of the earth. Another country, another world, another pace of life, another steak!
You can always rely on the good ol’ Buquebus high-speed catamarans to carry you across the broad Rio de la Plata. Due to the phenomenal speed of these vessels, we were able to travel from Argentina to Uruguay in just over an hour. But not just any place in Uruguay! We have really fallen on our feet here, what with the tiny, UNESCO renowned ex-smuggling village having retained the historical scenery and charisma that it’s had since 1682 when it was founded by the Portuguese.
By morning, it’s still fairly sleepy apart from the stray dogs patrolling their marked territories along the narrow cobbled streets and expressing their dominance to other dogs with a few loud barks and the occasional blood-curdling growl. The really keen people are disassembling piles of chairs and setting up their cafés for daily trading whereas the more laid back remain in their doorways drinking ‘yerba mate’, a kind of strong tea where the cup is overflowing with ground up, usually dried and decayed, off-green, tea leaves. This must be drunk through a type of metal straw that sometimes has a coiled end resembling a spring, which acts as a filter so it’s just tea that they drink.
By afternoon, the town earns it’s status of being awake where we see more liveliness in both people and animals alike. The dogs we mentioned have stepped up from chasing their canine neighbours to running along side trespassing cars, barking their heads off as they do so. They don’t seem to have a soft spot for the classic nor the vintage models either and they threaten each automobile relentlessly. The cafés and restaurants start to fill up with locals and tourists, and we notice the interested climbing the lighthouse and scaling the old fortress’ walls.

By evening, nobody starts to eat until the eight o’ clock mark although many don’t start dining until as late as midnight. The restaurants are the only real signs of life at night and as we stray away, we find ourselves in the eerie, yet homely tranquillity of the crazy paved streets that take light from the old, Dickensian-style street lamps. As one walks down these lonely streets, where the only noises emerge from hidden crickets and the gentle breeze from the nearby river, it becomes a real backwards time travel experience as we combine all this with the single storey, stone houses of various colours and the blossoming trees (many of which are bougainvillea) , and even the occasional prickly cactus. In places the pavements are piled high with firewood, and the many quaint, old cars seem to be not just for show, but actually for chugging around in!

As it was time for our evening meal, we decided to get out of the touristy restaurant quarter and stray off down a dimly lit side street where there were only Uruguayan people eating. At ‘El Asador’ the restaurant owner was very welcoming and we chatted, in our improving (but still very broken) Spanish about ‘Argentina’s got Talent’, which was on the television at the time; English football; and finally about how bloody brilliant the meal was! In Argentina and Uruguay, the ‘ll’ sounds as a ‘ssshh’ and so the name of the amazing charcoal or wood barbeque flaming in each restaurant is pronounced “parrrreesshah”. It’s kind-of obligatory to order from it! We ordered the ‘Parrilla para dos personas’, which turned out to be a huge mountain of steaks of various cuts. We both agree that rare steak is the best way to go, but we did forgive him for dishing out medium-rare as it was still award-winning. The various cuts of meat, including various ribs and some flank, arrived with its own charcoal burner to keep it warm as we chomped away. The French fries had been deep-fried in something heavenly-tasting. The cerveza was massive, but it all went down, gradually.

The intense heat of the day was dissipated around dusk by some dramatic thunder and lightening, and a welcome downpour accompanied by deep grey, moody skies. The lush evening felt like a release after the closeness earlier; by morning the rain was in abeyance, yet the clouds remained and a powerful southwesterly wind blasted off the river. At El Torreón, we sat cooling off and staring out across the water, admiring the ancient rafters made from driftwood and the walls of rough-hewn stone.

Buenos Aires: Recoleta and La Boca

2011-01-24T23:23:00.005Z

There are two ‘must sees’ in this city, and the day was profitably spent seeing them! Moving around the city on the bus network and on foot gave us a valuable insight and orientation of the city. It’s vast, and the tree-lined avenues, stylish shops and bars give it a wonderful, almost exhilarating feeling. We headed for the world-famous Recoleta Cemetery, and just before entering made a cooling visit to the monastery and church of Nuestra Senhora de Pilar, the oldest in the city. The summer heat today is relentless, and the shade of the church precincts gave a small amount of welcome release from the torments of the full sun; the city is known as Buenos Aires for good reason too: every so often, a gentle breeze wafts over from the river (Good Air)! The cemetery was smaller and more concentrated than expected, and the tombs (actually, grand mausoleums would be a better term) more built up than expected. We explored in detail, and then went to find the family tomb of the Duarte clan, especially to see the final resting place of their most famous member, Eva. Of course, her married name was Peron, and every Porteño knows of her by her nickname, Evita. Let’s not get Into the debates on Latin American politics just yet, but I’m sure that this trip will not be complete without a full run down of the battle between left and right, socialism and greed. But not today!

It was then time to visit the famous area of the docks where the Italian immigrants set up there quarter: the brightly painted streets of La Boca. At first we were more than dismayed, we were frankly gutted that it has been turned into an almost Disneyfied version of the heyday! Especially where old, beautiful window shutters were lined with postcards and rickety balconies had various other merchandise hanging from them. But slowly and surely, the magic of this zona gradually overtook us by stealth. It is the quintessence of the real Buenos Aires, and for good reason. We actually managed to find some of these Jenga stacked shacks untouched and in their original glory, and the real finishing touches were the beautiful lantern-style street lights and the sounds of accordions and voices accompanying traditional tango dancing. As we explored the futuristic outer contour of La Boca, we found some real talent in masterpieces of all kinds of wall art; from graffiti on the walls of the local’s basketball court to the carefully painted images of tango dancers and joyful scenes. A coffee stop in an authentic, non-tourist café was well deserved!

Off to Buenos Aires!

2011-01-24T04:04:00.003Z

We boarded the Espresso Singer bus to Buenos Aires for a 20 hour, overnight journey in Semi-Cama. The straight roads, forests and lakes of the Misiones province provided an awe-inspiring view as we sped southwards, skirting Paraguay. Singing “One way ticket” helped to pass the time before sleep kicked in! And how appropriate!
Flatter ranch-like countryside, abundant with cattle along the border with Uruguay provided the scenery as we woke at first light. Arrival at Retiro bus station was painless, and we navigated the way to the local bus to San Telmo with surprising ease and good fortune! The Sunday market lining all the streets was a fantastic, but tiring introduction to this vast city, and Liquado milkshakes of apple, along with a banana, honey and cinnamon version provided welcome respite.
We reached the Plaza de Mayo and remembered the “Disappeared” of an earlier regime, and Simon’s rosary that he bought from the San Telmo market was blessed after mass in the Metropolitan Cathedral, and we then reached the famous obelisk: is this the widest street in the world? Past hundreds of Parrilla restaurants, each looking better than the previous and along Calle Defensa we meet three corps of Candombe drummers. These rhythms are mind-blowing and hypnotic. We stood dancing Samba-style with one group for about twenty minutes, and then followed the parade of another along the narrow cobbled streets of San Telmo for quite some distance. And, of course, we just happened to stumble across some open air tango!

This city, at first glance so European and sophisticated, has suddenly come alive, pulsating with the exotic tropical rhythms of a whole, distant world. Finally it was time for a steak, some chips, black pudding and sausage, all washed down with an Argentinian Chardonnay. This Bife de Lomo was frankly the thickest and fattest, most succulent steak we’ve ever tasted!

Puerto Iguazu

2011-01-24T04:01:00.003Z

Crossing between two countries has never been so easy, well, except from our journey from Brazil into Paraguay and back. The half-hourly bus to Puerto Iguazu actually took us to the Brazilian exit point to get our passport stamped, but to our surprise it wasn’t there when we were in the no-man’s land in between the two countries, so we waited another half an hour for the next bus to arrive. However, our tickets showed that we had paid to go straight through to Puerto Iguazu which meant that all we had to do was hop on. At Argentinian immigration the bus waited patiently for us to get stamped in before rolling on.
Suddenly we feel at home: we are quickly befriended by an Argentinian guy called David, who has just completed an important interview with a German singer called Ute Lemper. He talks for hours, especially about his family, and the whole narrative has the makings of a best-selling Latin American novel. He has also taken the trouble to learn Guarani.
Yesterday at the Iguaçu falls in Brazil, it had left us with so many wonderful memories and thrilling moments that we really wished to experience them again. We did exactly this but from the other side of the River Iguaçu this time, in Argentina. How peculiar it was to be looking back over the river to a different country, let alone where we had been standing, open-mouthed at the waters the day before. On the Argentinian side, there is one major difference and that is that our entry tickets came with a free train journey to the important locations around the park. The major stop was the ‘Garganta del Diablo’ where flat, calm river water suddenly appeared to be sucked into a powerful vortex, which was fogged out by the abundant white mist as a result of the mighty thundering mass of water.

Stunning views from the ‘Passeo Inferior’ completed the overwhelming experience along with the large fluttering butterflies and the calm birdlife in the surrounding dense forest, dappled in sunlight. We were sure to keep an eye open for any roaming jaguars that may have been toying with the idea of pouncing on us. The Ministerio del Salud TV crew decided to interview Jon about his opinion on the work that they do around the park against Dengue Fever, amongst other serious threats. Do you remember when Jon was interviewed in the Lost City of Petra by a television crew from São Paulo? He’s starting to feel a bit of a star.

Cataratas do Iguacu

2011-01-22T01:12:00.011Z

That's right! Iguacu, not Iguazu, because we are on the Brazilian side! Pictures really do speak a thousand words and sometimes words just aren't enough. Have a gander!

Our first view of the Iguacu Falls, a natural world wonder.

A humble quati minding his own business.

Somewhere over the rainbow...

Gazing towards the Garganta do Diabo (Devil's Throat).

Up close and personal.

Finishing off with a great panorama.

A gente vai para Paraguay!

2011-01-22T00:48:00.006Z

This translates as 'we are going to Paraguay!' and if you can make a rhyme as classy as that, then why not?! Our flight from Recife to Foz de Iguaçu came with a connection in São Paulo, which made way for a long sleepless night. Being creative with time, we occupied ourselves with a couple of salgados and coconut cakes, and we succeeded in fighting the sandman’s temptation of sleep! With a couple of hours dozing on and off during flight time we managed to get through from being awake from seven-thirty in the morning the day before until a short siesta kicked in at about half past six in the afternoon. We’ll sleep well tonight, that’s for sure! But let’s not forget what happened between the time of our arrival in Foz de Iguaçu and our early evening snooze.
We embarked on a short bus journey to the town centre in search of the cheapest possible hostel. A friendly lady who conjured up a marvellous ‘morango’ milkshake (strawberry) gave us directions to a modest hostel away from the main street, which turned out to be miles better value and had hardly any foreigners. After negotiating our check-in and check-out times we decided that the day was not young enough to venture out to what most people see when they come to this town, so we decided to pop to Paraguay for the afternoon.
From where we are today, the Ciudad del Este is only about thirty minutes away on the bus and it seems to be a very popular destination for the Brazilian people, if only to buy cheap electrical goods. However, we hear that it’s wise to test the product before leaving the shop to make sure that it actually works. The journey there would have probably lasted only fifteen minutes if it wasn’t for the heaving traffic. The bus ride was enjoyable all the same and got really interesting as we saw more and more Paraguayan registration plates and mixed ethnicities during our crossing of the Parana River over the large bridge. After being informed that the bridge is dangerous to cross on foot we remained bus-borne until we reached the crowded market on the other side. We were in Paraguay! Many rainbow-coloured parasols were sheltering grateful Guarani market traders from the intense sun and by comparison with Brazil, the motor madness was much more chaotic. In fact many taxi employees have wised up to this and now the motorbike taxi industry is flourishing just as much as the conventional four-wheel taxi transportation. It was interesting that Portuguese was still being widely spoken but as we wandered much deeper into the market, sounds of Spanish and Guarani became dominant. We squeezed through a mish-mash of people and narrow market stands, most of which were selling cheap sandals, counterfeit watches, undergarments and sports clothes to reach the other side where we made the spontaneous decision of taking a taxi to the Salto del Monday!
Our taxi driver was very amusing and kept us on our toes as we have not yet started going ahead with our good intentions to learn Spanish. He was speaking Spanish to us and we spoke Portuguese back. The best thing was though, that we could understand each other, but when Jon asked him to speak some Guarani in order to get a feel for things, it all went far over our heads. Still, it was great fun trying! The old local buses here are fantastic: painted in a jaunty way to lift the mood of both travellers and passers-by. As we drove out of the city, the whole atmosphere changed abruptly: tiny bungalows, dirty old workshops, non-tarmacked roads, some cobbled, some just unpaved. This was the real Paraguay!
No sooner as we arrived to the Salto del Monday it started to chuck it down with cats and dogs, leaving us completely drenched within the first minute of being outside. The Salto de Monday is a wonderful waterfall located nine kilometres from the Ciudad del Este and the sound of the light brown water crashing onto more water and rocks from these great heights was unbelievably relaxing and filled our brains with endorphins there and then. It fills us with excitement when we hear that what tomorrow has in store for us is supposed to be even more breathtaking, but if you haven’t guessed already, you’ll just have to wait and see!
We lunched very lightly with a small mixed buffet that spoiled us for choice. From this first impression, it seems as though the Paraguayans eat very well! We had a mixture of black beans, curried gnocchi, savoury cakes made entirely of corn, rice (both plain and curried) and a special red beef stew that was almost goulash-like. It was an achievement in itself being able to concentrate on the scrumptiousness of the magnificent feast in front of us as the mixture of people around us was even more fascinating! Who would have thought that we would have been dining where three different languages were being spoken, well, four if you’re including our English!
It was fairly late by the time we had finished our further browsing time in the market and had returned to base in Foz de Iguaçu, so our appetites had to be satisfied yet again. Well, since we had just been to another country, we felt that a celebratory meal was called for. What better than the ‘rodizio de pizza’ just round the corner from our hostel? This entails being seated at the restaurant to chow down on some tasty pizzas, which are brought around non-stop by the waiters and waitresses, and come in all kinds of flavours, from fairly ordinary to outrageously whacky! I hasten to add that I would be awful at that job as there would be no pizza left between taking it out of the oven and passing it the paying customer. Here is a list of the to-die-for toppings that we chomped in order: chicken heart, garlic, ham and spinach, fish stroganoff, chicken and cheese, pepperoni, (very salty) beef and tomato as well as ham and chilli. Oh! And for afters, more pizza followed but the topping were a little different: white chocolate and strawberry, coconut and condensed milk (maybe there was white chocolate in this one too), milk chocolate and coconut, milk chocolate solo and one that resembled a toffee crisp chocolate bar with chocolate pebble dashed with small biscuit balls. It was a great day all round apart from the painful waddle home after the all-you-can-eat pizza frenzy! We might just forget eating now for a few days.

Recife and Olinda

2011-01-22T00:17:00.006Z

Just how do you pronounce the mighty city of Recife? We’ve heard so many versions, mainly from the mouths of non-Portuguese speakers. So Charlie Flesch, our new Brazilian biologist friend was able to oblige with the correct pronunciation, complete with authentic accent: Hair-sea-fee. Got that? Ok, let’s move on. We’re in the state of Pernambuco, a narrow wedge of land which is renowned throughout the vast country of Brazil for its amazing carnival and its infectious Forró music. And there’s one other thing which makes this place so special: it was the home of Dom Helder Câmara, one of the most practically influential liberation theologians of the Latin American continent.
Olinda is so called as a result the Portuguese navigator who discovered the fantastic viewpoint overlooking the wonderful scenery of old Recife exclaimed “Oh! Linda!”. This literally translates to ‘Oh! Beautiful’, which were probably sighed out with all his alveolar capacity as he finished his grand hike up to the peak of the mini-mountain on which the small city sits today. It truly deserves its UNESCO Heritage Site status as it is a huge cauldron of old Portuguese-style churches, cobbled streets and brightly coloured buildings. It later became evident that people living there can paint their houses any colour they like and it’s almost like each of the fluorescent dwellings were trying to outshine their neighbours. There’s Frêvo here, there’s Umbanda and Candomblé and Capoeira: just like Salvador, and the brightly painted buildings look the same too. But here it’s much less frenetic, more peaceful, even more beautiful. And the carnival mannequins are huge! We popped briefly into the Museu do Arte Sacra to take a quick look at some relics from the colonial period just to get into the mood.
We stopped by a luring art gallery, where the artists demonstrated such versatility in their work styles. The two artists practiced oil paints, acrylics, clay modelling, watercolours and probably many other styles all hidden behind layers and layers of exhibits. The man, Senhor Calazans was both flattered and eager to deny any plagiarism when Simon likened his painting of Amazon warriors (the mythical women rather than from the mighty river) to Picasso’s ‘Demoiselles d’Avignon’; he was also proud of his painting of the Apocalypse, with an angel top left, Satan bottom right, and the globe being judged in the centre; we were also startled by his fisherman carrying red fish with a yoke, which was coincidentally reminiscent of Jon’s pastel version of a boy running down the lane with fish in Teknaf, Bangladesh. It is definitely inspirational art, and perhaps we will start getting involved in craft when we get home! When the woman in the shop had finished explaining the works of her ‘aquarela’ (watercolour), Jon started to sing a famous Brazilian song called, believe it or not, ‘aquarela’: Numa folha qualquer eu desenho um sol amarelo… She was over the moon and joined in.
Around Olinda we encountered many statues of St Francis with numerous birds, and as throughout this region of Brazil, countless images, bas-reliefs and statues of São Jorge Guerrero: St George in full warrior mode, slaying the dragon. The devotion to him here is something to do with the syncretic cults, and Simon seems to remember that he is the ‘cover’ for a deity in Candomblé, but can’t quite remember his name… In the Praça da Sé there’s a bar called Preto Velho, named after the old slave character in Umbanda, and in numerous craft workshops we encountered the Carnival figure of a Caboclo with a spear, again something more than just a mere legend.
Our friends who came along, including Donald, Dave and Cecilia, and equally ourselves were all impressed with the place and could have easily spent much more time here, but we had to check out parts of Recife too, so we headed for a Rodizio de Churrasco in Boa Viagem, where we could eat to our hearts content if we wanted. None of us did, however, so three beers went down and a Caipirinha whilst we watched the various meats being dished out. Jon and Cecilia took charge of the situation, both displaying consummate tact, diplomacy and hood humour! We only needed a small snack but it was very much all or nothing; so we only had the option to pay thirty-five Brazilian reais for all we could eat or to leave. We left and proceeded to the Casa Cultura: artisans’ shops in the cells of a converted three-storey, three-winged prison to enjoy some ‘salgados’ (small, savoury pastries/breads with various fillings) and pitanga milkshakes. Pitanga is a fruit found in Brazil, which doesn’t translate into English because we don’t have it at home but it tastes like an acidic raspberry.
We enjoyed views of both new and old parts of Recife and clusters of favelas were noticeable on riverbanks. There were even some being kept above river water on stilts. The blend of old and new, rich and poor, branco e preto is just what makes this part of Brazil so invigorating! To do full justice to Pernambuco, Recife and Olinda would take at least a week. There’s music to tantalise the ear, fruit to tickle the taste buds, ceramics, sculptures and carvings to furnish entire houses without fear of repetition: Hopefully there will be a window in the diary for 2012/3 to make a hop over the Atlantic…

Feliz Natal!

2011-01-19T03:13:00.001Z

Well we’ve made it to the state of Rio Grande do Norte, to the far eastern tip of Brazil, jutting out into the Atlantic and just a short hop over to Senegal! Here in the city of Natal there is an historic, colonial core with some brightly painted and well-preserved churches. We stumbled upon an oasis of calm in a Franciscan monastery, exploring the small church and secluded cloisters, and then on to the Metropolitan cathedral, a concrete barn thrown up in a hurry and on a tight budget, where the roof didn’t quite meet up with the walls: in this heat, it’s not such a problem. We checked out two shopping malls, the first totally modern, massive and smart with fierce air-conditioning; the second more laid back with expensive fast food joints.
Meanwhile, back in the old part of the city, on the higher ground and known as the Cidade Alta, we halted on a street corner at a tiny café for a quick pit stop: salgados (fried savouries such as empanadas and pasteis) fresh pineapple juice and an avocado vitamina. One of our goals was to locate a Terreiro do Candomblé, but the address was far out of town and time was against us. But round the next corner was some consolation, for down an atmospheric side-street we found the Casa do Orixas, a small shop devoted to statues of saints, religious artefacts and all the paraphernalia associated with the cult of Umbanda. Here the statues were of dancers, old slaves and nestling on a lower shelf was Exu. But isn’t he a Candomblé deity rather than Umbanda? Syncretic cults can be confusing, and it’s not really possible to do anything more than just scratch the surface. But at least we’ve managed to make contact!
Wandering lost through narrow streets proved to be a great decision to round the day off as little did we know that we were shortly wandering alongside notorious favela territories, where the inhabitants gave us a mixture of looks; some smiling beside others that were dubiously straight-faced. To see the favelas close up was intriguing! Narrow paths winding up through no-go dwellings which locals had built from the basic bricks that they could find, the vast majority being terracotta except from the few houses that brightened up the scene with their brilliantly bright paint colour schemes. We were sure to stop and overlook the river where the fishermen were balancing on the thin, broken concrete ledges of the harbour side, forcibly hauling in their nets using all reserve muscle power. The multicoloured fishing boats with their unique names painted on their sides and rims tended to bob gently as a gentle breeze created weak rippling movements on the water’s surface.

Fortaleza

2011-01-18T03:34:00.001Z

We’ve arrived in a city of 2.4 million people; the capital of the Brazilian state of
Ceará. As first impressions go, it was quite breathtaking to see the golden coastline hugged by rather futuristic high-rise blocks. Once on the ground it was a completely different story and from this aspect we became aware of the deceptive beach front and the underlying real life that many of the locals enjoy simultaneously with endurance. As it was Sunday when we arrived in Fortaleza, the city was comparatively silent by Brazilian standards and everybody seemed to have headed out of town to enjoy the idealistic lifestyle of a beach bum.
The local bus ride into the city centre was bewildering! We saw beauty and happiness in the street children, some of who were playing futebol whilst others were ‘soltando pipa’ (flying single-stringed kites). When Jon was living in the Zona Norte of Rio de Janeiro, he became involved in the joyful pipa game. Onto the roof of his house he climbed to set up for the contest, taking in an unforgettable view of the local Carioca neighbourhoods and favelas at the same time but also trying to spy out other peoples’ kites with whom he would play. To start playing, one has to fly their kite and if they are the only one doing so, somebody is guaranteed to eagerly join them within seconds. Once there are one or more kites high overhead, the aim of the game is to cut each others kite strings. The one remaining with their kite still flying is the winner (though some cheaters roll their cords in glass shards to give them that extra boost).
After disembarking the bus we admired an aqua blue and brilliant white colonial building before wandering up to the Mercado Central to admire some local handicrafts and re-hydrate. Curios stray cats and optimistic dogs scoured through clusters of rubbish that seemed to appear every so often along the way and we were always sure to cross to the opposite side of the street for fear of potential rabies transmission. The occasional street child looked at us imploringly, and the level of malnourishment was startling: perhaps even worse than the children we came across in Bangladesh. The market itself had many cheap t-shirts with humorous phrases printed on, plenty of clay figurines holding drums or accordions to illustrate the Forró music culture, and finely detailed wooden carvings of religious scenes, wildlife, architecture, you name it! We could have easily blown our life savings in that place but with a little discipline and willpower, we wandered across to the Cathedral without looking back. It was rather plain and was all white apart from the numerous beautiful stained glass windows and the crucifix which was illuminated with electric-blue lights from behind. Attentive church-goers watched as the bishop of Fortaleza was enthusiastically running the service, and a couple of needy street children walked by with open palms. Then it was off to a small street market with cobblestones covered with sand, plenty of beachwear for sale, and a coconut vendor who was able to quench our thirst handsomely!
The district of Iracema is slightly down-at-heel, and so we moved onwards via a supermarket, where we bought a variety of local chilled drinks, to a beach-side bar for ice-cold Chopp and chicken hearts. Yes, chicken hearts, and they were extremely tasty! Sundays in central Fortaleza are slightly tricky: our visit to the Centro Cultural Dragão do Mar proved to be fruitless as everything was closed! So what to do…hang on, this is Brazil, so off to the beach! The local buses are fantastic, and the journey past favellas and tiny streets with colourfully painted houses with red-tiled roofs and ad-hoc games of futebol captured the mood perfectly. The Praia do Futuro was packed: many thousands of people doing one of the things that Brazilians do best of all! This is the life! Had we been hungry here, vendors plied their trade in lollipops of cheese to whack upon their tiny, portable barbeques, almost like thuribles containing hot charcoal and swinging from a chain.
Meanwhile, back on the trail, we hit the Meireles strip just as the sun was setting. This can be best described as a cross between Miami beach and Benidorm. Past the tiny fishing beach, off which jangada fishing boats with their curved masts were anchored and accessible only from the tiny rowing boats piled up on the beach, and on to the large craft fair which commences each day at dusk. Fortaleza was gradually springing into life, and the promenade became highly animated with passers-by, street artists and circus acts. Suitably fortified with a fat tapioca, condensed milk and coconut delicacy from two elderly women pushing a street-vendor’s cart, we pushed onwards along the strip, taking in the vacation atmosphere of this massive resort, and enjoying the balmy, tropical evening.

Santarem and Alter do Chão

2011-01-13T02:11:00.004Z

The city of Santarem is sited at the confluence of two mighty rivers: the Amazon and the Tapajós. The Amazon water is dense and muddy, laden with alluvial deposits and vegetable matter, whilst the Tapajós runs almost clear, and appears much darker to the eye. Just to the east of Santarem it’s possible to see the Ilha Grande do Tapartu and the place where the two rivers meet, flowing side-by-side for many miles, but refusing to mingle! Our goal is to travel further upstream of the Tapajós to the small village of Alter do Chão in search of a little slice of fluvial paradise. But will we find it?
Pink river dolphins were a great start to the nature of the Amazon. The numbers of this freshwater dolphin species have unfortunately been diminishing and they are such beautiful creatures. As the name suggests, they really are pink and most have grey markings on them too.
We made a visit to the large blue cathedral of Santarem founded by the Jesuits, and then straight to the fish market to check out some amazing varieties of Amazon river fish, one of which seems to have eyes decorating its tail fins! This may possibly be to deter predators. For one, these eyes appear much larger than the fish’s real eyes and an attacking predator may be fooled into thinking it’s much larger than it actually is and therefore may have consequences to pay should it decide to move in for the kill. Another reason that’s just as likely is that these spots are actually to mimic an animal’s head, thus disguising it as a tail. As predators are likely to attack the head/body regions, the advantage to this would be to grant the fish one final chance to escape. A small tear in the tail is certainly better than a wound to the head. In this case, these adaptations didn’t seem to outsmart the fishermen. The food hall within the market provides a few aromas to savour and salivate over.
As the noon heat began to scorch, we decided to crack on with things. We waited patiently for our bus to stop on Avenida Rui Barbosa. The time flew as we were also busy taking in the daily grind and awing over the ‘sorvete’ stands. So many ice-creams in so many flavours. Oh Yeah! Must keep an eye out for the bus! It was sometimes very unclear where some of the buses were headed for, be it small writing or no writing! A couple of times Jon held his arm out to flag down a bus and shouted “Isto onibus vai para Alter do Chão?”, but on both occasions they were going elsewhere. Moments after a bus approached speedily with “Alter do Chão” written boldly across the sign on the front. This was it! We were starting our hour long journey to a small oasis within the thick of the tropical rainforest. The journey was a little hair-raising as the driver seemed to be ignoring the speed limit signs and dust flew in through the windows when the good quality road transformed itself to a red dirt track. Travelling past the dense topical rainforest gave us the rare opportunity to compare it with our experiences in the Taman Negara of Malaysia and the slice of the Lowacherra rainforest we visited in Bangladesh.
We paid our bus fare at the end of the journey, exiting through a turnstile just like at a football ground and clambering down from the bus onto an intersection of the village laden with bars, cafes, small restaurants, pousadas and gift shops. All seemed to be closed for siesta time, and perhaps made this village seem rather more touristy than we had been led to expect. But the main praça revealed the magnificent vista of the river and the inviting Ilha do Amor, with its pristine white sandy beaches and glistening, blue water. The praça also contained plenty of small stalls which looked like they could spring into life at dusk, as well as a pretty colonial church.
We headed down a sandy dirt-track road, past the vultures waddling around, in search of our intended lodgings for the night: the Albergue do Floresta. Through a gateway in a fence made entirely from dried palm fronds, we entered into a small haven of tranquillity away from the bustle of village life, a world of brightly coloured hammocks and tiny blue wooden cabins, where only the chirp of a few insects could be heard. They assured us that there were no mosquitoes here, and that nets were unnecessary. So we bagged a hammock each and decided to swing around for a good few minutes to get used to this new, tropical method of relaxing, chilling, and later (much later…) sleeping.
Right then, let’s explore around the praça of Alter do Chão! We settle down for a quick pit stop of Frango Empanado (large chunks of chicken breast deep-fried in breadcrumbs) which arrive together with lashings of mayonaise jazzed up with plenty of ketchup, and an orange coloured Brazilian chilli sauce which, when poured liberally over the chicken, makes it sing in the mouth! Back down at the water’s edge, the time came to cool off with a small ice-lolly (picolé) before we paddled over to the waterside bar. Well actually, it’s more IN the water than beside it. You could easily swim right up to your table! Here we cool down once more with an amazingly flavoured refrigerated soft drink called Guarana.
By early evening we had managed to find an almost deserted beach to enjoy an astonishing sunset over the Rio Tapajós. The sun descended as a massive flaming ball, even penetrating through the cloud cover as it began to dip beneath the horizon of virgin rainforest miles away beyond the still river. The water in Amazonia right now is at a very low level, so the beaches stretch quite some distance and the floating pontoons stand marooned on the sand. Later in the year it will be a very different story. We start to explore once more around the centre of the village, ultimately seeking food but stumbling upon some amazing shops specialising in colourful local handicrafts, from brightly painted wooden macaws, to small latex armadillos amidst countless tribal spears, blowpipes and drums. Fantastic!
We opt for food local-style, not gringo style; you should know us by now from the last two years worth of blogs! A small stall with a roadside barbeque of magnificent skewers of roast chicken on the churrasquinho proves to be exactly the right choice. These kebabs can then be sprinkled liberally with crunchy corn-flower (farinha) and plenty of chilli sauce. This might just be the best BBQ chicken we’ve ever tasted! They asked us to try some passion fruit juice (maracuja) to wash it down with, and it would have been silly not to accept! And yes, mais dois se faz favor! Just a few paces away is a terrific ice-cream stall with a bewildering array of flavours to choose from. Jon finds tapioca ice-cream, which has a lush, rich flavour and an astonishing texture from the little pearls of tapioca hidden in each lick. The passion fruit ice cream was equally delectable, too!

The night in the hammock was quite frankly magical! All the insects of the forest had struck up their nocturnal symphony, which would continue until dawn. There would seem to be an infinite number of positions you can adopt when lying in your hammock, and it was fun trying out as many as possible until sleep would eventually intervene, but then at various points throughout the night you would re-adjust and then nod off again. A soothing tropical rain shower had helped lower the temperature around midnight, and whilst it was still pitch-black at 6 am, a rooster made sure that we stirred to great the coming day. Breakfast started for us along the river front with a fried tapioca pancake laden with condensed milk and coconut, progressing to a table at a tiny café on the square with a batida de abacate (avocado milkshake), a café preto and a cafezinho. As we chilled out here for a while we admired the bird life. One delightful specimen that caught our eyes had a shimmering mustard yellow belly and head, and was gliding through the air showing off its black wing and tail feathers. It was the size of a small blackbird but it’s ego was the size of an albatross!

This is what Brazil is all about; the friendly people, the awesome food and the spectacular wildlife.

Sailing up the Amazon

2011-01-11T03:02:00.000Z

The sea was blue, the tropical Atlantic, as we travelled Southwest from French Guiana along the Brazilian seaboard. And then it was green, and perhaps grey, as the storm clouds gathered, as is the norm during the afternoons. But then something rather strange happened: the water started to change colour, and it gradually became quite a murky brown. As the shadows started to lengthen, we spied a procession of tiny white boats with green sails: a family flotilla of Brazilian fishing boats! As night drew on the water became calmer and much browner, becoming just like milky-white coffee. The scent of tropical rainforest humidity wafted on the night airs, as cicadas and bioluminescent insects flew round our heads, and up above the stars twinkled in the spacious firmament. We had crossed over the ‘bar’…
By morning it all became clear: we were slowly penetrating the heart of the Floresta Amazonica, past Macapa and along mangrove swamps, loose water hyacinths, floating grasses and magnificently tall, towering trees with the occasional cluster of vultures circling above. But as if this wasn’t quite enough, we were shortly to be greeted by friendly natives on their shallow, carved wooden rowing boats, waving excitedly at us. They had emerged from tiny river tributaries that had small, wooden huts (just like the Malaysian kampongs we discovered last year). We took no notice of a ghostly cloud of what appeared to be a thick mist which approached us from behind, give or take the twenty minutes of its stealthy approach. We were soon enjoying a thorough drenching of cool tropical rain, a soothing respite from the intense equatorial heat of noon. We also became acquainted with a hawk moth, many large beetles and a bee which landed on Jon’s arm, but resisted the temptation to sting him!

Guyene Francaise - French Guiana

2011-01-09T01:26:00.002Z

We’re in one of the most sparsely populated countries of the world, exploring the paradise of Ile Royale, 10 miles off the coast! Well, almost paradise: the dense and varied vegetation, the undulations of the small hilly island and the fascinating animal and bird inhabitants make the place feel very special indeed. In fact, without even trying, Ile Royale has given even the Seychelles a run for their money in terms of atmosphere and experience. Our visit to the Iles du Salut have coincided with a massive tropical downpour (it’s the rainy season right now) and getting thoroughly drenched by cool rain in this incessant heat only adds to the magical experience. But here there are one or two things which detract from that first impression of paradise.
Firstly, there are no real beaches so to speak of, and the coastline is rocky and dramatic, which churns up the waves as they approach the shore. Swimming here would be impossible, the sea is so violent, and it’s far from that enticing turquoise blue of just a few days ago; it’s more green which reflects the dense palm forests which tumble down to the rocky water’s edge. But swimming would be a bad idea for the other obvious reason: these are shark-infested waters!
Perhaps that’s why the French established a prison colony here over 160 years ago. Nobody would ever be able to escape…
The tropical rain beats down as we explore overgrown paths, careful to avoid the falling coconuts, and weave in and out of the derelict buildings that remain from the prison. It was such a curious experience to be trekking both off and on road with the few gingerbread-like sandstone paths that actually exist probably having been built for the prison guards by the convicts that had been banished from France.
Ile Royale has a fantastic array of wildlife including the green-winged ara macaw, capuchin monkeys, even pheasants and cats (that had probably been introduced from France), but most of all, agoutis. Not to be missed! This is a species of rodent that resembles a slightly oversized ginuea pig with short front legs and disproportionately large hind legs. Goodness knows how they scamper so bleeding quickly! Their bristly pelage merges from a slate colour at the front to an almost ferric orange behind. In fact, one of us did comment on how it looked as if these agoutis had coconuts permanently capped over their hides. We were also fortunate enough to get a close up of an iguana, and just as fortunate not to have got so close to the lake below that caimans inhabit!. Anyway, it was the greenest iguana either of us had ever seen! Sadly we couldn’t get a picture as Jon stopping Simon in his tracks and almost winding him, just centimetres from where the iguana was perched, caused the iguana to twitch and she fell to her watery bed. The poor creature will have to spend a very long time climbing up again! Deepest apologies.
Out of the three Islands that make up Iles du Salut, the Ile du Diable (Devil’s Island) is the most difficult to access and is notorious for being the primary prison for French criminals of the past. The prisoners were often subjected to a lonesome stretch of time in small and uncomfortable individual brick huts, where they had a sea view from a window comparable to that of an artist’s viewfinder, if they were lucky. Not even a criminal deserves to be cooped up with barely any space to move around, with no escape from the intense tropical heat and humidity, nor from the invasive insects that no doubt caused intense aggravation from their bites, stings and just simply crawling over them. There couldn’t have been a moments peace.
Despite this inhumanity of the past, Devil’s Island remains very beautiful and untouched with coconut palms and rocks being it’s only inhabitants, although rumour has it that there are swarms of irritable bees there these days. We were fortunate enough to get a phenomenal glimpse of this Island from the Ile Royale, where we were. Our time there was just too short, but now we’re moving onwards to explore a sandy beach over 400 miles from the sea…

Trinidad: Port-of-Spain

2011-01-06T20:25:00.004Z

The very first experience we have of this city is a steel pan band. It’s deafeningly loud, and exceptionally good! Then in the crowds around Frederick St, a local guy called Marcus strikes up a conversation with us about Manchester United. Immediately, Jon senses a ploy which might prove costly in terms of finance and time-management, so we quickly disengage. We walk right up to the north of town, up towards the hills which seem to look like the ridges in northern Venezuela. Well, geologically, they must be pretty much identical, for mainland Venezuela lies just 7 miles to the south of Trinidad.
At the Botanical Gardens we meet Lewis, who offers to drive us up into the mountains, but taxis are frankly a bit more expensive than converse and pavement, so we move onwards, drenched to the skin by a tropical storm, and happy to have found Jonny’s Coconut stall.
We arrive in Independence Square tired and hungry. How about trying the most important and famous street food of Trinidad and Tobago, ’Hot Doubles’? These consist of layers of fluffy pancakes upon which is spooned plenty of chickpeas in a fiery pepper sauce. Wow! There’s a strong chance that these might just be THE taste sensation of our entire expedition, and it’s only the second full day… Hot Doubles are in fact SO tasty that we return to the same stall an hour later for a repeat prescription. Back in Frederick St we manage to stumble upon a food hall where we try Callaloo, a very thick soupy dish made with okra. There’s a distinctive Indian presence here on the island, which extends from the shop owners to the local delicacies. But more of this later.
“Hey London guys!” Well it’s a small city centre, and Marcus had found us again.
“What you lookin’ for?” he drawled, and somewhat foolishly Simon started to answer the question: “Roti”
“Ok, come on!” and with that Marcus had already shot off, parting the crowd and beckoning us to follow. Slowly it began to dawn upon the travelling duo that at some point in this new friendship, money would be changing hands, and not necessarily in the credit column of team Jon and Simon. But what can you do? And after all, part of this trip will be ALL about the people we meet down on the street, and wow, this guys is being greeted by just about everybody he passes, so he must be a very familiar face around these parts. As the walk with Marcus progresses, the questions Jon is asking him start to illicit quite detailed information about his background. Yes, of course he’s a ’guide’ but not an ordinary sort of guide, he is part of an organisation which specialises in connecting tourists in Port-of-Spain with real Trinidadian life. So clearly Marcus had identified us in the crowd earlier and picked us as likely dudes for his services, but then this is a good thing, because what he knows and what he wants to show us is pretty much what we want to know and experience.
He’s served in the US Navy on the Alamo, and now he works with the underprivileged sectors of urban society and builds bridges between life in the ghetto and visitors to the city. But aren’t we on a sophisticated island, maybe part of the developed world, rich in bourgeois western values and lifestyles? Well lets just walk a few blocks east and take a hike down Charlotte St and down into George St. Woosh! We’re back where we love life best, it’s the street scene of the developing world, with its frenetic pace, distinctive aromas (not least of peeled lemons wafting on the breeze), pumping music, market stalls and the hardships of lives lead permanently in the shadow of poverty. And to the east of George St. lies a series of tenements riddled with barbed wire on every balcony. Marcus tells us that here is the no-go area, with gangland warfare, drug deals, gun-point robberies and high speed chases. We’re safe here with Marcus, they all know him, and he has an instinctive feeling for where we can go and when. We even pass a large workshop devoted to the production of steel pans. All this exploration has worked up some pretty strong hunger pangs, and so back in Independence Square we manage to track down a Roti shop, where we ask for the works. This is a whole meal wrapped up in a massive chapati, complete with some tasty pickled mango still on its stone and some chicken with many, many bones…
It’s time to buy some rum before we leave the Caribbean (until April, that is!) and we meet a wonderful elderly couple who run a liquor store: a sophisticated Indian gentleman, who, just like Simon’s dad, had spent his career working for ICI and his wife who is also the Philippino Consul to Trinidad. They have a great framed photograph of the time they met Prince Charles, and it turns out that she had even worked with Mother Teresa when they lived in Calcutta. We exchanged stories for quite some time!

Woah! We're going to Barbados!

2011-01-06T20:00:00.004Z

It’s almost two years since we flew on Virgin Atlantic, first time around to Mauritius. Well, their version to Barbados was every bit as good! In fact, it was just like the song, and it felt as if we really were on Coconut Airways… Before we set off, there was time in the early hours of the morning to stop by Rockies in West Hounslow for a mind-blowing pizza laden with bird’s eye chillis just to get in the mood: this place is a great find and a must-visit whenever you are travelling from LHR, it’s run by a Sikh family and everybody speaks Punjabi, including all but two of the customers…
During the aircraft’s final approach to Grantly Adams International Airport, it was clear to see below us the turquoise blue sea, the white powder sand, the palm trees and the chattel houses lining the narrow roads. What a perfect image of the REAL Barbados; and pretty soon our task will be to connect with some real Bajan people and experience the way of life on the island rather than the enclaves of the all inclusive resorts…
We touched down at Bridgetown just as the sun was setting, and decided to hit the ground running and explore the capital of Barbados in-depth as night drew on. “’Sup, big man” was the greeting offered to us from a tall and imposing guy on the main street, and he went on “Is there anything I can get you?” Now that was kind, wasn’t it? He gave us the creeps but ’m sure he was just in need a little extra cash or a cigar. Within seconds we were fighting off offers from taxi drivers and well meaning chaps who offered us all manner of diversions and entertainments. But this wasn’t quite what we had in mind. But one thing was very refreshing: here there was no hard-sell, no obvious hassling or hustling; it’s all completely laid-back, chilled out and matter-of-fact. We located a great little row of rum stalls, doing a slow trade with just a few languid hangers-on, but two Polish guys were enjoying the local lager of the island, ‘Banks’ and seemed intent on finding a party. They wondered if we could help them, and the offer of a bottle of Banks seemed like quite a good idea under the circumstances. So we learned that Arek and Daniel were engineer cadets on a large cargo ship bound for Grenada.
Luckily for us another Bajan man had previously directed us to a party that was located just around the corner, down a side street which had a few people walking and cycling, and the occasional loner sitting on an empty plastic beer crate, dwelling on times past. A pool table caught the eye of Arek and so we ended up having a round of that before trundling away in search of the Heineken Bar that was apparently close by, according to the Polish men. They were pretty merry so to say, so I guess they can be forgiven for dragging us far to the outskirts of town to bar that didn’t exist. In fact, had it not been for this wild goose chase, we would never have stumbled upon a tiny, wooden shack that sold fish by day and beer by night, complete with two local Barbadians to pass some time with. The Polish guys didn’t seem to want to stay and hang so they wandered off into the distance in the search of another bar.
Meanwhile, we were invited to pull up one of the metal chairs each and exchange stories of our past trips with one of the Bajan guys who was casually sipping on a beer. This man had certainly been places! He was born in Barbados, but lived in the Bahamas, Canada and France, where he practised and sold his impressive artwork. He used to play football, but these days I think he prefers to chill, since experiencing the agony of a dislocated shoulder and another injury to the collarbone. He mentioned that when in France, the pain returns to where he was injured and stays, but when in Barbados or elsewhere in the Caribbean, the pain magically disappears. Maybe it’s a sign that Barbados is his true home and it’s where he’s meant to be.
The next morning, we headed straight into town to catch a glimpse of Bridgetown by day before checking out some of Barbados’ coastline. We followed some routes along the busy coastal roads, but crossing the roads was no hard task as every driver was so polite that they stopped in their tracks just to facilitate us in traversing the street. We found ourselves strolling along a beach where we found many weird and wonderful things, from sapphire blue and turquoise waters to a sand-smothered motor boat that seemed to have made some sort of emergency crash landing on the shore… Photo opportunity!

As we continued in our strides we noticed that this strip of beach was coming to an end and so we had to return to the road for a short while before getting back to some sand and sea. This section of beach wasn’t so large either and before we knew it we found ourselves scaling the historic walls of a characteristic fortress complete with rusty cannons. Perhaps we were following in the footsteps of pirates some 300 years before? Climbing up over the fence to where the cannons were was definitely our best and only option, since we were approaching a sharp cliff. Little did we know that by this time we had successfully trespassed into the Hilton Hotel’s swimming pool complex and their private beach. I must admit that I had started to feel a little guilty, but the sheer bliss of the beach took me to a whole new level! We stopped for a refreshing dip in the sea after walking a little further in the fine, talcum powder sand.
On the way back to base, it suddenly became compulsory to taste a ‘roti’, this being a mild chicken and potato curry all wrapped in a chapatti. It was really tasty, but it’s in Barbados, so we won’t be stopping there for a while.
This first Island-hop is slowly getting us used to the tropical heat, and it’s almost impossible to remember that cold winter that we just came from. Right now, some of that cold weather would be welcome, I say as drops of sweat from my forehead pounds the keyboard in front of me!