Becka y Mauro; the blog

last tango in Buenos Aires

2010-05-16T15:46:00.000-07:00

OK, we're gonna publish this damn entry cos it's got way past ridiculous! I guess it was just too hard to actually put a full stop on the whole thing, sob... But this is the FINAL entry. xx
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Adios Querido Buenos Aires... in fact, adios querido Suramerica!! We're now back in London, and it's time to wrap this all up. The last few days in Buenos Aires were fairly hard to deal with - in fact you could definitely say that we didn't react too well to the realisation that our adventure was coming to a close!

After a tearful goodbye to Buenos Aires (and the thought hitting me that I never got round to calling a blog entry "San Telmo's Fire", much to my dismay), we also got a chance to - albeit briefly - experience being in Brazil again, as we had a two-hour stopover in Sao Paulo. At our favourite, great value for money airport, Guarulhos! It was nice for us to hear Portuguese again and have a last guarana on the plane. And now... London. Time to readjust, I guess, though not before we have a quick reminisce (if only for ourselves, hehe!) on the high and low points of our trip...

Best place:

It's practically impossible to come up with a definitive list of our favourite places, but we had fun trying (by means of a complex points system and totally inconsistent judging criteria):

joint 1st - Rio de Janeiro AND Buenos Aires (surely no-one's surprised at this)

3rd - Salvador (Brazil)

4th - Salar de Uyuni (Bolivia)

5th - Salta (Argentina)

joint 6th - Mendoza (Argentina) and Cochabamba (Bolivia)

8th - Arequipa (Peru)

9th - Valparaiso (Chile)

10th - San Pedro de Atacama (Chile)

joint 11th - Pipa (Brazil) and Lima (Peru)

13th - Iquique (Chile)

14th - Puerto Octay (Chile)

15th - Olinda (Brazil)

Best ice-cream:

The overall winner is Scannapieco in Buenos Aires - an Italian joint (in our favourite barrio) that's been in the family for generations and hasn't changed a bit. Best dulce de leche ice-cream (and variants) ever! An honourable mention goes to the Brazilian chain Glacial that we discovered in Manaus, with its mind-boggling array of tropical and Amazonian fruit ice-creams (including my other favourite, acai).

Hottest hot sauce:

Accompanying dishes from Patagonia to Bahia, the hottest hot sauce was probably in Lima... no, Salvador... no, in a Bahian restaurant in Rio... No, the hottest was definitely in La Paz! (In a Chinese restaurant, of all things)

Best hostel:

Another tough one, I'd say our favourite lodgings, in no particular order, were in Puerto Octay (Zapato Amarillo), San Pedro de Atacama (La Ruca), Lima (El Patio, Miraflores), Rio (Casa 579), Pipa (Pomar do Pipa), and Huaraz (Albergue Churup).

Best sunset:

It's probably the one that turned our boat-ride through the Amazon river into an impossibly beautiful picture-postcard jungle scene. But then it could be the one in Huanchaco, Peru, minutes after Mauro said "Shall we go and watch the sunset on the beach?". (Though it was slightly marred by a bunch of pissheads trying to hit us up for more drinking money)

Best sunrise:

We didn't see too many of these. The best was supposed to be in the Salar de Uyuni, when we'd got up at 5am to see the sun rise amidst bubbling geezers. But we were so tired and slightly sick from the altitude that we kind of missed the whole thing.

"This next one's for best Christ":

There really are a surprising amount of Christs adorning the hills of Latin America. Clearly the winner is Rio's Christ the Redeemer, although there are some other notably strong Christs., namely Cuzco, just outside Iquique and Santiago.

Worst journey:

Probably would have to say Cochabamba to Sucre, in that it involved the woman with the breast hanging out sitting in the aisle next to me, and talking to the guy behind me through the night. (And then a breakdown before we got to Sucre.) Though for inappropriately high air conditioning when everyone had had a soaking from the rain that afternoon, plus getting stuck in traffic, and then being dropped nowhere near our hotel, the trip from Joao Pessoa to Natal rates quite highly too...

Worst place:

...that we saw and travelled through would have to be El Alto, on the outskirts of La Paz (Bolivia). Grim, filthy and utterly miserable. Made you feel lucky you didn't actually have to get out of your bus (and say, live in a tent like much of the population), though the bus managing to get out of there was quite a challenge! In terms of anywhere we stopped off at and say, had a meal, Trelew was pretty unappealing...

Worst meal:

The culinary disaster in Valdivia (Chile), where we had the toughest machas a la parmesana and the most eye-wateringly salty seafood soup, was never topped. We did throw a considerable amount of my pork chop in Monterrey, Peru, to a nearby dog, but probably still ate more of it than we did that legendary meal in Valdivia...

Best meal:

From the steaks at La Cabrera in Buenos Aires to the ceviche at Chez Wong in Lima, we enjoyed some magnificent meals throughout the six months, as anyone who read this will attest to! Absolutely impossible to choose even a top five, but we should definitely give honourable mentions to the lamb tortelloni in Bariloche, the spicy north-eastern Brazilian highlights in Mangai (Natal) and SENAC (Salvador), Chicha in Arequipa, the one-off, opened-specially-for-us-as-they-were-feeling-kind barreado place in Paranagua, the salteňas in Sucre, the outrageous alpaca steak with five Andean cheeses and quinoa risotto in Cusco, and the seafood extravaganzas at any number of Chilean places, notably the Mercado Central in Santiago.

Best menu translation:

Well, Gaucho's restaurant in Rio took an early lead on this front, with their "rice to the campaign" and "rice to the crazy, crazy rice" (sounds a bit like a Kiss song), but the Cruz del Sur terminal cafe in Lima had "bistec a lo pobre" as "bistec to the poor thing", so that probably wins it the crown!

Best word/phrase:
Between "ruimzinho" ("ropey"), "tudo beleza" ("it's all good", or literally "it's all beuaty") and "bem gelada" ("beer" or literally "a really chilled one") - all in Brazil. We were really seduced by that language and the Brazilians' way with it.

Best beach:

Praia dos Golfinhos (Dolphin Beach) in Pipa is just pipped to the post by the paradisiacal Ilha do Mel (Honey Island). Both in Brazil (obviously).

And that's it. Lovely, lovely memories. Sigh... xx

Dále Bicho!

2010-05-11T07:49:00.000-07:00

We're now back where it all began, in Buenos Aires, which feels a lot like home, frantically trying to squeeze as much into our last few days as we can. Starting with visits to most of our favourite characterful haunts from our time here in November - ice cream at Scannapieco, pizza at Guerrín, coffee at San Bernardo, pasta at Don Chicho, etc. The main charm these places have is that they´ve been going since the ´40s, ´50s (or even earlier), run by the same families usually, and have barely changed over the years, so you feel like you´re going back in time there - a world away from all the soulless chains and overpriced gastropubs awaiting us back home! Ah well, the search for the London equivalents will be on...

Becka managed to fit in a hair appointment (to take advantage of the prices while we can afford stuff like that!), and we're also aiming to cram in a tango lesson as well before we leave - hopefully I won´t make too much of a mug out of myself. The familiar feeling of aching feet from pounding the pavements is back, but the excitement of walking these streets (akin to the feeling I get in NYC) makes it all worthwhile. Also familiar from last time are the dog-walkers - we chortled as we turned a corner and saw this fella walking seven dogs. Believe it or not, around the next corner, we saw another fella walking sixteen!

We were also determined to catch an Argentine footy match this time, and plumped for the crunch match between Argentinos Jrs and Independiente. We were offered "tourist" tickets for an outrageous 600 pesos (over 100 quid), so I thought "sod that" and went to join the queue for tickets at the stadium on Sunday morning - managed to get ´em for a tenth of the price! (And Becka´s was just over half-price as well, as they do "ladies´" ticket prices!) Feeling thoroughly chuffed with ourselves - and slightly nervous, as we were in the terraces, which could have been troublesome - we headed to the Diego Armando Maradona Stadium (named after the club´s most famous son) that afternoon, picking up an empanada on the way in place of a meat pie. We found a spot and squeezed into it to watch the extraordinary ticker-tape and firework reception both sets of fans gave their players. (There are no pictures of all this, sadly, as I was too nervous of being robbed to let Becka take her camera!)

Anyway, the match was something else as well - this being the penultimate game of the season, Argentinos needed a win to stay in contention for their first title since 1985, and having gone a goal up, things looked good, and the crowd were delirious. However, somehow the team switched off and let Independiente (who, to give them their due, had brought half a stadium´s worth of fans, who made an incredible din and were amazing to watch) go 3-1 up with 20 minutes remaining... Cue copious tears from fans of all ages and sexes! Miracles do happen, however, as Argentinos somehow managed to score three times, twice in the last couple of minutes, to win 4-3, to even more tears (it was all too much for several little ´uns in the crowd around us), and massive celebrations. ¡Dále Bicho! ("Bicho" or "creature" being the somewhat unorthodox nickname Argentinos fans have for their team). You could say we chose a good match!

We´ll have a couple of "Best of" lists for you next time (last time?! noooo!!), but for now you can content yourselves with, in no particular order... our Top Five UNESCO World Heritage Sites!

- Cusco, Peru (though I would possibly have chosen Chan Chan instead)

- Olinda, Brazil

- Humberstone, Chile

- Parque Nacional do Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil/Argentina

- Pelourinho, Salvador, Brazil

That will be all for now. Join us again in a few days, and we'll be joining YOU again (well, those of you in London) very soon after that! x

lips of wine

2010-05-07T13:45:00.000-07:00

Following a couple of lovely farewell family dinners, it was sad to be leaving Santiago, not knowing this time when we´d be back. The sadness was alleviated somewhat by the beautiful Andes-in-the-Autumn views en route to Mendoza. I regretted letting Mauro have the window seat, as he persisted in watching a terrible film with Jason Statham in it while I crawled over him to take photos. Here´s one.

This was our fourth time entering Argentina (on our weird route around South America), and I felt happier than usual as I´d managed to dupe the customs officials and smuggle two vegetable-based products across the border. This is serious business over here - Mauro´s uncle´s bandmate got a hefty fine many years ago for not declaring the seeds in his maracas!

Anyway, we arrived at our hostel, nestled between two city-renowned ice-cream parlours, to find that the receptionist had just been robbed. You take the good with the bad! It didn´t take us long to sample the ice-cream. When in Argentina, I tend to opt for variations on a wonderful theme: dulce de leche, dulce de leche with nuts, super dulce de leche. Meanwhile Mauro pretended to enjoy his Malbec and vanilla flavour. It just tasted like heap of frozen wine on a cone. And really strong wine at that. Tonight he´s gonna go for Cabernet Sauvignon and peach.

Mendoza is a really attractive low-rise city with wide avenues. Mauro reckons the key to its beauty is in the huge trees that line all the streets (he thinks Santiago should get in on the tree action). Yet again, we´ve been lucky with the weather, so spent our first day wandering around the city park. Unfortunately our exploration was cut short when Mauro realised the Spurs-Man City game was on earlier than he´d thought, resulting in us sharply exiting the park and jumping in a taxi back to the hostel. Luckily for me, and Spurs fans, they won, which means Mauro was in a brilliant mood all evening. We went and had a celebratory dinner at a classic and classy Mendocino Italian restaurant, where the house wine set us back four quid. I challenge anyone to eat badly in Mendoza - it´s a gourmand´s paradise.

Now, ever since we set off in November, I´ve been harking on about hiring some bikes at some point. Mauro nearly got away with it, mwah ha ha! Seems like cycling from bodega to bodega (to delicatessen to bodega) in the nearby Maipú region is the way to sample the local viniculture backpacker-style. We rented our bikes from "Bikes and Wine" and got going. We had a lovely day, despite the flat tyre and the fact that the chains on our bikes went about three times. I never thought I´d see Mauro sat on the side of the road with an upturned bicycle and grease all over his hands! Anyway, we only visited three bodegas - not only was it slightly pricey, but we didn´t fancy being drunk whilst contending with the main road at rush hour, sans helmet. We also had tastings and lunch at three delicatessens, which, amongst delicious local chutneys and chocolate, included a shot of absinthe if so desired. Always aware of the bike issue, I went for the dulce de leche liqueur instead (quelle surprise). So basically, apart from the mechanics part, it was a perfect day: sunshine, loads of wine and good food (in slightly smaller quantities).

It´s not all been about bacchanalian and epicurean indulgence though. On a less positive note, we´ve been keeping up with the elections at home. And to make matters worse, Mishal Husein from BBC World News was stood outside the Houses of Parliament this morning in a puffa jacket and a hefty scarf, so my unrealistic hopes of returning to a sun-drenched London, where there is no David Cameron, have been dashed. Oh well, still six days in Buenos Aires to enjoy!

santiago latest

2010-05-03T15:10:00.000-07:00

It´s nearly time to bid a final goodbye to Santiago, a place which always arouses all sorts of mixed feelings in me - the place I was born, and where 99% of my family live, yet still a place that I never feel entirely comfortable in. Perhaps it´s something to do with the mind-boggling size of it - the Metro may be excellent and high-tech, and still spotlessly clean after all these years, it´s just we always seem to spend so much bloody time on it!! Anyway, I have to admit it´s more appealing than normal in the autumn, and when we weren´t schlepping about, it was nice as ever to have some time catching up with family again. Getting to see two plays my cousin Ximena is involved with (starring in one), was definitely a highlight as well.

We managed to shoot down to Valparaiso for an overnight stay this time, as another cousin of mine, Marcela, has now moved there. It´s a place that´s always held much more charm for both of us than Santiago - more charm than most places in the country, even, despite its dangerous reputation. (Though everyone´s hearts are in the right place, you do get tired of hearing how dangerous everywhere is over here - Chileans seem particularly fond of doing this. The levels of wariness we employed to keep us out of trouble in Rio, Salvador, La Paz and Lima have generally sufficed here). Our night in Valpo was tremendous fun, although to be honest it really should have finished a couple of hours earlier, before it got as messy as it did, messing up half of the next day into the bargain! I blame the full moon (oh, and mixing pisco with rum - not recommended)...

Back in Santiago, we managed to miss ALL the tremors that are still occurring (the most recent one measured 5.8 apparently!), usually in the middle of the night. Everyone asks us next morning, "Did you feel the tremor?" and we always have to admit that no, we didn´t. Still, shouldn´t hope for too much excitement on that front considering events here a few months back - let alone the crazy and dangerous weather that´s hit other places we´ve visited, like Peru and Brazil, after we´ve left!

After a couple of months with Piñera as President, I can report that he´s shown an unfortunate tendency towards Bush-isms (of the linguistic variety, anyway). We´re both keeping an eye on events back in Britain of course, fingers crossed we don´t get our own embarrassing head of state later this week! I can also report that Chilean males aren´t so much favouring the Argentinian-style mullet at the moment. Terrible though that is, the current trend over here is actually worse - the "normal short hair with one single rat tail, or even dreadlock, hanging from the back". No danger of me coming back with that look, don´t worry...!

In other news, Becka managed to break half a tooth off, while eating maní confitado (caramelised peanuts) - those f**kers are more dangerous than they look!! Thankfully, we managed to find a dentist without too much hassle, thanks to some family connections, and they did the necessary work pretty efficiently and affordably... much better than it would have been back home, Becka tells me. And I got quite an interesting look into her mouth while the dentist was doing the business, as it goes. Anyway, as the anaesthetic started to wear off, I dragged her to the Mercado Central to check out their crazy seafood, and try some unavailable-almost-anywhere-else-on-Earth locos, (yes that is indeed what they´re called) known in English as abalone. I think she enjoyed them, though she couldn´t really speak properly at the time...

Time now to say goodbye to the city and country of my birth, and make one last trip across the Andes - back to Argentina, and Mendoza, where you can get wine-flavoured ice cream, and (allegedly) wine with your Big Mac...

stargazers

2010-04-26T14:05:00.000-07:00

Well, since we left the Norte Grande of Chile and headed south to the Norte Chico, things have calmed down quite a bit - we´re in winding-down mode now, pretty much (trying to get our heads round the idea that we only have a couple of weeks left now!). After some umming and ahhing over whether to head to the area around Copiapó or to La Serena (which we HAD already visited a couple of years back, but liked enough to go back to), the latter won out, partly due to the fact that seeing the attractions around Copiapó would have involved yet more sitting-on-coaches-for-most-of-the-day-type tours, which we´re heartily sick of by now. And the MAIN reason we headed there was to visit the Mamalluca Observatory in nearby Vicuña, and see into space!

The north of Chile has some of the best conditions in the world for astronomy - as it happens, Chile has just won the right to own the world´s most largest and most amazing telescope (over the Canary Islands, apparently they´re gutted). Anyway, at Mamalluca they gave us a head-spinning prelude to the telescopic action - did you know that the sun (and therefore the Earth) will only be around for another 5,000 million years??! This was news to us! Why had no one told us this before? And how can they be so precise about it? (We were also unaware that Pluto is no longer considered a planet, but that may just be us being behind the times). Following this, we got to see Saturn (ring included), Mars, and as you can see, we managed to get a spectacular view of the Moon as well:

Besides that, we did little in La Serena, unless you count me getting a bit carried away buying Chile World Cup paraphernalia (hey, it´s been 12 years!). It was a bit too cold to relish being out anywhere in the evenings, unfortunately (and there didn´t seem to be any heating anywhere either!)

From there, we headed down to Santiago again for another week or so with my family, and that so far has involved some of this:

(Machas a la parmesana - razor clams topped with cheese and grilled; a Chilean classic)

several toasts drunk to our travels, and hearing everyone´s earthquake tales - and the full realisation of how lucky we really were to miss all that...

Being back in Santiago meant we could also revisit La Fuente Alemana, and have a proper Chilean sandwich-fest (grilled pork, avocado, tomato, mayo - the works), while pondering whether us opening a venture like this in London would ever be a success... I dunno, you´d have to find some of these legendary old ladies to run the place for it to work!

Once we leave Santiago, it´s only Mendoza and the final few days in Buenos Aires to go...

The Norte Grande

2010-04-20T15:56:00.000-07:00

Another city, another brilliant few days! Iquique is the furthest north we'll make it in Chile (there's not much further north you can go - it was part of Peru not so long ago). It was nice to be by the seaside again, having come from the gorgeous gorges of Salta and the Atacama desert. At first we thought we´d done a wrong'un with our accommodation: we arrived after an 18-hr bus ride at 2am and it was well and truly party time at the Backpacker's Hostel. Just when our plugged ears had adjusted to the din, a folk show started up in a club opposite and didn't stop til gone 4am. But the following night it was our turn for some fun, and we stayed up drinking red wine and pisco with some guys from the hostel, no doubt keeping several other poor, tired travellers awake.

Iquique's a big holiday destination for Chileans, but we were there out of season (it's autumn now) so the city was bereft of tourists, and especially foreigners - I don't think it features much on the South American gringo trail. As a result, the vibe is a lot more auténtico (but unfortunately still just as expensive!). The city's full of beautiful turn-of-the-century houses made of timber and painted in bright colours. It gives it a Wild West feel, or of a place that's slightly past its prime.

Speaking of which, the highlight of the area for me was a trip to a nearby ghost town. I'd read up on Humberstone before we left and was more excited about seeing a real-life dead town than going to Iguaçu Falls. There are a few ghost towns in the area that were once a big noise in the nitrate idustry - Humberstone 'died' in 1960. It was incredible and eerie to see the school, theatre, swimming pool - even tho local offy's still there, all extremely well-preserved. I got a bit carried away with my camera (especially as I´d just worked out it has a black and white function). This was one UNESCO World Heritage Site worth seeing!

It had been a few weeks since we´d hit some hot springs, and luckily there are a few to choose from in the area. We went to Mamiña - a tiny village two hours from Iquique famed for the therapeutic properties of its water. We weren't banking on being presented on arrival at the first springs with a bucket of warm mud, gathered fresh from...the mud. We slopped it on and waited for it to dry in the sun before getting into the water. You'd pay a fortune for this at home! That said, this was about as rustic as it gets (and the smell of sulphur took some getting used to). We were all alone in our little corner of radioactive mud and smelly water - it was brilliant. The next baths were just that - four tin baths, filled with water (about 42 degrees). Five minutes in, five minutes out. Apparently the water's so property-laden (not to mention HOT) that people have been known to die for languishing about in it too long. Good job we found that out after we'd gone in. As it was, we set off back to Iquique feeling utterly relaxed, and free from skin complaints, spinal pain and arthritis. In perfect condition for another 18-hour bus ride, heading south towards Santiago. First stop, La Serena.

the desert sessions

2010-04-15T18:32:00.000-07:00

After a few spectacular but often freezing days on the Salar de Uyuni, the warm, dry (VERY dry!) weather in San Pedro de Atacama was definitely what the doctor ordered, even if we did have to stay there a bit longer than we´d wanted to - a long and tedious saga involving Pullman Buses and a malfunctioning computer. Having had enough of 4.30am starts, and seen a few geysers already, we decided against visiting El Tatio (you can have enough of geysers), and basically spent a few relaxing days with Erin and Rebeca, the new friends from Canada who had been in our Salar tour group, and several new chums we made at our hostel - the recent batch of fellow travellers we´ve met have been great, a world away from some of the irritants we had run into previously!

Going to visit the Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley) at sunset was the only trip we took, which was great as it involved no discomfort whatsoever - I cannot emphasise strongly enough how much we´re enjoying being back in countries with PAVED ROADS. It is BLISS! Anyway, here are some pics from there to give you an idea of the mind-blowing scenery:

We hadn´t initially planned on going over to the Salta region in north-west Argentina, but having heard how brilliant it was about a million times, we re-routed and crossed the border again to the land of gauchos, amazing steaks and red wine, and as you can see we were very glad to be back!

We would have loved to have spent more time here, especially as it looks like we´ll be unfortunately missing out on the festivities held on the Day Of Salta (let´s face it, that´s gonna be a good ´un!), but the bus schedules are beyond our control. If we did have any say in the matter, we wouldn´t be leaving on a 7am bus which arrives at its destination (Iquique, back in Chile) at 1.15am!! I mean, which brainiac thought THAT one up?? So no chance to visit the local club which declares itself to be "furiosamente ochentero" ("furiously ´80s"), though seeing as our last night on the town ended early when we were joined at the table by an Anglophile local who started going on about how Becka looks like Lady Di (?!) and demanding photos of her, that may be a good thing...

Conveniently enough, however, as time has been tight here, our bus ride over here took us past some more incredible scenery, notably the amazing striped mountainsides, so that pretty much eliminated the need to go on another exhausting 12-hour tour. AND last night´s meal out turned into an impromptu peña, with much wine, women (well, Becka) and song, which eliminated the need to go and find one of those for the night!

We found time - just - to visit Cafayate, however, which was almost dream-like in its beauty (though maybe it was just because everything was closed for the afternoon?). A local simpleton strumming away, wailing off-key laments to no one in particular, added to the surreal vibe. We´ve also found time (of course!) to try the local specialities - locro, tamales, baby goat stew, and even though there seem to be, somewhat surprisingly, no salteñas in Salta, they do have some top-notch empanadas, which are especially good with the tomato and chilli relish they thoughtfully provide!

So, after that very pleasant interlude, it´s back to the north of Chile now for more desert action, and hopefully some ghost towns and hot springs thrown in. See you all soon!

PS Are you all still reading, by the way? No one has commented in ages... If you don´t want us to get demoralised and think you all hate us now, then please say hello! Lots of love xx

some final thoughts on Bolivia...

2010-04-11T07:52:00.000-07:00

The cholitas you see everywhere, especially in La Paz, are an unbelievably hardworking lot. They may often lack in manners, but you have to take your bowler hat off to them, they seem to do the lion's share of the work in Bolivia (we had to ask ourselves on a few occasions, though, where are their men? They were nowhere to be seen as their womenfolk traverse the country laden with massive sacks of coca leaves, or actually chopping firewood with axes and drilling holes in the road, the kind of jobs you'd never see a Brazilian or Argentinian woman doing!).

The Wiphala (the Aymara flag) now flies proudly alongside the Bolivian flag pretty much everywhere. This seems to have caused some resentment and tension among other communities. The army having to change their war cry to the old revolutionary slogan "Patria o Muerte" ("Our nation or death") also has generated controversy. Bolivia overall came across as highly volatile politically (probably the main reason behind that drinking ban over the election weekend!), especially now with the Evo Morales revolution in full swing. Much as we think it's a great thing that he is the first indigenous President in the country´s history, we couldn't help but feel uncomfortable about some of the recent developments (such as his declaration that he hoped his party won in ALL the different regions, as he "can't work" with the opposition... always easier not to have to worry about an opposition at all, eh?).

The Aymaras on the whole can actually be pretty bloody rude. This unfortunately slightly marred our enjoyment of some parts of Bolivia, mainly the area around Lake Titicaca. This wasn´t just the "reserved" nature of highland people that we´d got used to, this was people being downright ill mannered, and the difference was marked when when we got down to Cochabamba and Sucre (especially the former), where we were overwhelmed by the friendliness we encountered.

Sign language - Subtitles aren't big in Bolivia. Apparently (according to La Razon), this is because a significant proportion of the deaf population can't read. This means that sign language is the communication tool of choice. Two brilliant signs for you - Evo Morales is the sign for the letter "E" plus "coca". And if you make your fingers look like a llama, you're saying "Bolivia".

Chuflay was a bit of a disappointment. For a bevvy with such a great name, the national favourite of singani (the local spirit) and Sprite turned out to taste much like the kind of thing you get given at a house party where the hosts hadn´t made that much effort.

It was a nice treat getting fresh orange juices from the street stalls, though.

There was a general lack of reliable information in Bolivia. (Particularly where transport is concerned!). This did our heads in at times. The locals, who have a lot to put up with as it is, seem to not to mind this kind of thing anything like as much as we did. I guess if you lived there, it would drive you mad if it did!

Much like the Argentines and the Falklands, the Bolivians would like to get some coast back off Chile one day. They still celebrate the "Day of the Sea" every year, and the papers carry surveys asking people if they consider themselves to still have beef with Chileans. During our Salar de Uyuni trip, as well as me enduring a whole lot of ribbing about it from Jimmy the driver, we drove through some places which had been battlegrounds back during the War of the Pacific. (It´s not all been us Chileans either - Bolivia has a pretty poor record in wars with neighbours over the years, losing massive chunks territory to Paraguay and Brazil also, but they seem less fussed about that somehow...)

It was difficult to get worked up about Bolivian football (as it had been about Peruvian football), once you´d been in Brazil and Argentina. That said, if I had to pick a team to back, tempted as I was by The Strongest (or even Blooming), I would have to go for Aurora, in honour of my bandmate, and also cos they were from Cochabamba, our favourite city! (As for Peru, I went for Universitario, partly on the recommendation of a friend, and partly cos I enjoyed the saga about them being thrown out of the league for kit-related reasons).

Salteñas are bloody delicious - even better than empanadas. You have to be on the ball early to get one though, as they tend to have sold out by midday! This was a common sight:

We were pleasantly surprised by the food, on the whole, as Bolivia tends to get a bad rap from travellers on this front. We obviously DID get the odd dodgy tummy, but we ate very well in Bolivia whenever we weren't suffering...

We had previously lumped Peru and Bolivia in together in terms of the standard of tourist infrastructure we had expected, but we were well wrong. Bolivia is clearly a great deal poorer than its neighbour, and nothing made this clearer than the bus travel and the toilets we encountered on the way. (Christ, I hope I never encounter another "ecotoilet" like the one I had to use on my last day ever again!)

The Salar de Uyuni was undoubtedly one of the highlights of whole trip. Despite the country as a whole having some absolutely stunning landscapes to offer, from the lush jungle of the Chapare to the amazing blue of Lake Titicaca, the Salar really was something else. Here's some video footage for you to get the picture...

bye-bye Bolivia

2010-04-10T09:41:00.000-07:00

The good thing about having low expectations is that you´re rarely disappointed, and this proved to be the case in Uyuni - our last stop in Bolivia. I´d been trying to find a good tour company for our visit to the largest salt flats in the world. It turned out that all of them had horror stories featuring drunk drivers and frequent break-downs in the ´inhospitable´ terrain (inhospitable isn´t the word - it can get to below -40). Following a bumpy nine-hour bus ride and a last minute tip-off (thanks, Becky!), we changed companies and felt slightly more optimistic. The tour was reassuringly expensive. Don´t get me wrong - Uyuni itself is pretty awful, but we were only there long enough to buy some alpaca hats, have a cold shower and a good night´s sleep before setting off on our three-day tour.

It´s not the first time on our trip that we´ve struck it lucky with our group, and it made all the difference. Our driver and guide, Jimmy, insisted on playing the songs on his 80s mix-tape on repeat - even after 40 minutes of listening to the Pointer Sisters´"I´m So Excited", the six of us were still remarkably good-humoured (I was so excited, after all).

I won´t even try to fully evoke the scenery that we came across over the two days (because I´d fail), but suffice to say it was absolutely beautiful. And otherworldly. And at times ´inhospitable´. Everytime we wandered around the salt flats or a lagoon we´d be silent apart from the occasional "Amazing!", to the extent that Mauro and I banned ourselves from saying it (and started saying "incredible" instead). We also had some obligatory fun and games with perspective, thanks to the brilliant Jimmy, who also doubled up as a photographer. Here´s some photos...

Elsa, our cook, also came up trumps and whipped up some fantastic food, which exceeded everyone´s expectations. It was lovely, if not slightly surreal, to be sat outside amidst this AMAZING landscape eating llama steaks and quinoa. Surreal is definitely an apt description - one of the areas of the reserve is the ´Salvador Dali Desert´(although Jimmy pointed out that Dali himself hadn´t actually been there).

Whilst the accommodation was basic, and at over 4,500 metres on the second night absolutely (below) freezing, we had good laugh playing cards and drinking average Bolivian wine. The wine didn´t help the 4:30am start on the last day, but the geysers and hot springs were worth the ordeal. Shortly afterwards, Jimmy dropped us off at the border, where we bid Bolivia goodbye and said an enthusiastic hello to Chile. We´ve been in the town of San Pedro de Atacama one night and have already had several pisco sours, a lot of avocados (they´re SO good here) and a handful of empanadas. Mauro put his Chile top back on again at last, and I had a rude reminder that perhaps my Spanish isn´t as good as I thought it was in Peru and Bolivia (why do they speak like that?!). It´s great to be back!

"little people in funny hats"

2010-04-02T10:03:00.000-07:00

(...as I´ve heard Bolivia described recently!)

Much as we enjoyed La Paz, it was good to get away from all the irritating gringos there (often British ones) who were doing our heads in. If anything put the nail in the coffin of doing the "Death Road" trip down to Coroico (which, let´s face it, was never really on the cards - adrenaline junkies we are not!) it was having to listen to one particularly infuriating English girl on Skype banging on about how it was "this thing that, like, everyone does" in between anecdotes about "kerr-azee" coked-up nights out in La Paz (with other gringos, obviously - these aren´t the types to interact with the local populace, unless they´re getting robbed by them).

It´s pretty evident that coca plays a pretty major role in Bolivian life (the man standing for governor of La Paz is even called Cocarico, brilliantly enough). Visiting the Coca Museum in La Paz brought that home - although, again, most of the comments left in the visitors´ book by English speakers made us embarrassed for them, and the fact that they clearly hadn´t taken anything in at all about the pernicious effect the West´s appetite for cocaine has had on this country.

Then of course the journey from La Paz to Cochabamba saw us surrounded by locals transporting enormous sacks of coca leaves across the country, and also joined by a coca preacher, delivering a half-hour sermon at full volume about all the benefits derived from the coca leaf (though it did turn out he was trying to flog some product or other). We were both missing Cruz del Sur at this point - in fact it´s fair to say we still are! Anyway, the preacher did omit to mention the effect coca-chewing has on people´s teeth (dire, from what we´re seeing around us every day!), though apparently this is only if you don´t brush your teeth afterwards! Ah...

I had a feeling we would take to Cochabamba, having heard it was friendly and unpretentious, and known for the "warmth and openness of its population", and I was proved right. In fact, it´s been our favourite place in Bolivia so far, hands down. Barely any other tourists, a large and friendly youthful population seemingly hellbent on having a good time, and to top it all, an excellent local bar whose owner was a dead ringer for a Bolivian version of The Wire´s Prop Joe!

From Cocha, we visited Villa Tunari, in the Chapare region, which used to be pretty dangerous as it´s prime coca-growing territory. This is where they grow the stuff they turn into cocaine, so straying off the beaten track around here is still very much inadvisable (pah, Death Road indeed - that´s for wusses), and our jeep got stopped by the local drug police for a routine check. Nothing illicit in the car, though our driver´s reckless style (overtaking on all kinds of blind spots as we sped through the clouds, blaring out ´80s classics like "She´s A Maniac") was hardly reassuring. The Chapare region was like a bizarre flashback to Brazil for us as suddenly we were in the sweltering tropics again. We visited the Inti Wara Yassi project there, which rehabilitates animals before restoring them to the wild, so we hung out with some capuchin and spider monkeys, although sadly the jaguars and pumas were off-limits at the time...

On our last night in Cocha, a table of Cochabambinos (for that is what they´re called - yet another thing we loved) asked us to join them, and we spent the rest of the night talking about President Evo Morales and the recent changes in Bolivian society with them, while downing copious amounts of dodgy-looking shooters. As far as Evo goes, you cannot avoid him in Bolivia - his face even adorns the stamps, for Christ´s sake! He is everywhere... This may have something to do with the municipal elections currently going on (more on that later), although to be fair it hardly seemed like Cochabamba was gripped with election fever, unlike La Paz, for example.

We travelled on to Sucre via another "challenging" overnight bus trip, which involved a hygienically-challenged indigenous woman, with her right breast out, frequently sticking her elbow in my head, or just choosing to sit in the aisle right next to me, rather than in her seat, and conducting a conversation with another passenger right by my ear - attempts to get her to shut the f**k up were limited by the fact she didn´t seem to speak Spanish. The bus broke down before it got to its destination, of course. Believe me, we´ve both found ourselves, and our proudly liberal beliefs, challenged in Bolivia on several occasions, much as it´s given us food for thought.

Sucre itself is, technically, also the capital of Bolivia (along with La Paz), so it basically has ideas above its station for a city of its size - it´s undeniably beautiful and Spanish-looking, with its regularly whitewashed buildings (yep, another place nicknamed "White City", aaarghh is there no escape?) although we´ve unfortunately arrived here the weekend of these sodding elections! So it´s forbidden to buy or consume any alcohol for three whole days beforehand! The obvious loophole being that you could buy as much as you wanted before that and then spend the whole weekend battered... though quite what the alcohol/election issue is in this country (and these aren´t even national elections!!), no one has convincingly explained to us. In fact, no one seems to have questioned it, in particular. And most places (except for the local gringo bar, because they had armed police outside, just to make sure) were a bit crap about the whole thing anyway - after a few exasperated/stern words, we managed to get served a couple of Paceñas to help us wash down our pizza last night.

Anyway the next stop on our adventure will be the town of Uyuni (famously awful) and the legendary salt plains. We´re doing our damnedest to save ourselves from being ripped off and scammed - it seems all the tour operators there are lying chancers - I guess we´ll have to let you know next time if we succeed...!

into Bolivia...

2010-03-31T08:31:00.000-07:00

Defying all odds, we made it from Cuzco to Copacabana in one day! Whether it was worth the stress involved is another matter... We arrived in Puno, the Peruvian side of Lake Titicaca, with plenty of time to get to the border control area before Bolivia shut up shop for the day. What we didn´t count on was a local bus taking an hour longer than expected, stopping for every large-skirted lady with a bundle on her back that happened to be near the roadside. In the end, we resorted to paying a few soles extra for the bus to take us right to the border, and with five minutes to spare we literally ran from Peru to Bolivia. But at least we made it to Copacabana for the night!

Copacabana is a laid-back, pretty little town with a nice vibe. It´s also bereft of any ATMs or establishments that accept plastic, which unfortunately wasn´t a priority as we made our sprint to Bolivia with 200 soles in our (Mauro´s) pockets. This wouldn´t have been such a problem had we known how much our trip to the Isla del Sol (Island of the Sun) was going to cost. It´s not that the locals manning the travel agencies lie to you - it´s more that they don´t offer information that could prove to be very useful (or indeed crucial).

I was really excited about spending a night on the Isla del Sol - where, legend has it, the sun, moon AND the Inca dynasty were born. So imagine my disappointment (read: foul mood) when we stepped off the boat only to be accosted by two men charging us for setting foot on their sacred land. Then informing us that the return boat journey costs double. Then finding out that deigning to walk further north of the island would incur another charge (or two, as we found out). Add to this the fact that all foodstuffs were about twice the price and half as good, and that we had about ten dollars on us, and we couldn´t have cared less where the sun and moon were created. Don´t get me wrong - the scenery was incredible, but as Mauro and I sat on top of a hill, sharing a bread roll, with a 360-view around us of snow-capped mountains peeping above the turquoise lake at sunset, we both realised we´d hit natural beauty overload. It was probably the culmination of being ´ruined´in Peru, having a full day´s travelling, barely resting before hopping on a boat to see more of the world´s marvels, AND to top it off, having hardly any funds at our disposal. Either way it was here, watching a beautiful sunset, that we decided that despite what the guidebook said, nothing was ´unmissable´if we weren´t in the mood for it (even if it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site).

With that one resolved, we woke up to a beautiful sunrise and began ´The Incas´Sacred Route of Eternity´ - a stunningly beautiful hike across the whole island. True to its name, it took an eternity and was made only slightly less sacred due to being charged seemingly random amounts twice along the way. It was a great day however and got better when I found a 20 pound note and 12 US dollars in my passport wallet.

As excited as we were at the prospect of going to La Paz and drawing some money out, I wouldn´t have missed seeing the locals bringing their cars to be blessed at the Moorish Cathedral in Copacabana. Apparently this is a weekly occurrence and keeps their vehicles safe from accidents. Luckily the bus drivers we´ve encountered so far haven´t resorted to this (although they´ve often chewed coca leaves to stay awake).

This may come as no surprise, but it really sank in that Mauro and I are urban types at heart, and it was brilliant to be back in the big city. Any barely-thought thoughts of one day moving to the countryside have been banished, and we made the most of browsing the Witches´Market, eating salteñas (spicy empanada-type pastries) and drinking Paceña beer. Bolivia might not have the best infrastructure for tourists (the buses...argh!), but from what we´ve seen so far, it´s a fascinating country. So much so that I´m gonna log off now before the midday salteñas run out and leave Mauro to expand upon our fascination next time.

some final thoughts on Peru

2010-03-28T14:44:00.000-07:00

I found a surprising (and heartening) amount of solidarity shown towards Chile in the wake of the recent earthquakes. Pretty much every time I told a Peruvian that I was a Chilean, they immediately asked if I had had any family affected and expressed their sympathies. They clearly have first-hand knowledge of living through earthquakes and their aftermath...

They´re a taciturn bunch, Peruvians. This may be mainly true of people in the highlands rather than people from the coast (eg Lima) or from the jungle areas, but generally they're polite also - even the guy who tried to nick Becka´s handbag was polite about it!

I didn´t get to decide conclusively whether Peruvian pisco really is better than Chilean pisco (as is claimed). Basically, you get pisco more or less thrown down your throat in Chile, whereas in Peru it's more of a refined thing, more expensive and marketed more as a high-class drink. That said, they both have top-quality brands so I'll declare it a draw. (There, will that do??)

Peru was the first country we hit on our travels where we had the problem of fake currency. Fortunately we never had any problems ourselves, especially as the drill for telling a real note from a fake one was so complicated and frankly difficult, that we would´ve been buggered!

They have a strange relationship with their political leaders. Alan Garcia was practically hounded out of Peru back in the 80s when he left the country bankrupt. He´s now President again. As for his predecessor Alberto Fujimori, he's now been convicted of human rights abuses, although his daughter Keiko is running for President next year so she's likely to pardon him (!). A surprising amount of Peruvians remember Fujimori with fondness, despite the fact he was rumoured to have given his wife electric shocks when she threatened to lift the lid on corruption in his government...

We´ll miss Cruz del Sur and their comfy buses. And of course the strangely flirtatious girl on their onboard video who would tell us, in her saucy way, that the toilets were strictly for urinary purposes, and that for "any other needs" we should let the crew know...!

There's a lot of really terrible Latin pop around. Enrique Iglesias is probably the creme de la creme, as it goes. This of course isn't just related to Peru (in fact I would blame Puerto Rico for most of it - this may be unfair of me, but sod it), it's just that we were subjected to a lot of it, and having come straight from Brazil, we definitely noticed it. We were also subjected to a lot of really poor quality Andean stuff, like the buskers who followed us around Huanchaco bellowing their terrible songs at us while we tried to eat, and then expecting us to pay them for this. Also, far too many easy listening panpipe versions of "Imagine", "Hey Jude" or even "Ze Vind Of Change" played everywhere... Enough already!!

We never got tired of llamas, though.

They have some entertaining celebrities in Peru. On top of metalhead Oscar nominee Magaly Solier, they have Jaime Bayly, who appears to be a cross between Jonathan Ross and Pete Doherty only with Presidential aspirations, if you can imagine such a creature. He's also having some kind of outrageous affair with a taboo-busting 22 year old novelist (whose name escapes me, sorry).

There's no shortage of cab drivers in Peru, and they absolutely love tooting their horns. And in Trujillo, where cabs are the ONLY form of public transport in the city centre (nope, no buses), they will honk at you to try and catch your attention if you even look like you're slowing down your walking pace. Of course this means you can always get a cab, but it can get pretty annoying after a while! We never got to try one of these, sadly (the tricitaxis) - they looked brilliant.

They´re still really into timbales of rice.

"El Peru". This is how Peru seems to be referred to by Peruvians, which seems slightly grand (you don't get "La Argentina" or "El Chile", after all), but fair enough, if it's a national pride thing...?

Talking of which, considering the huge amount of history and culture they have, Peruvians on the whole seemed to have strangely low national self-esteem (compared with the countries we'd been to so far, anyway!). One drinker in Barranco told us that a foreigner is more likely to get hired for a job in Peru than a Peruvian, though I don't know if he was just being drunk and melancholy. That said, his mate did declare that Lake Titicaca meant "Titi for Peru, Caca for Bolivia", so maybe the national self-esteem isn't THAT much of a problem...

Navel of the world

2010-03-22T16:00:00.000-07:00

That's Cusco/Cuzco, by the way, or as it's known in Quechua, Qosq'o (I think I'll refer to it as that from now on cos it's great fun to type!). Anyway it was very nice to have FINALLY acclimatised to the altitude, and been able to enjoy Qosq'o and the Sacred Valley around it without constantly feeling like a lie down. Of course, it's proved impossible to entirely avoid gringos around here, though Lord knows we tried (I told Becka there was about as much chance of getting me into one of the local Irish pubs as going on the World's Most Dangerous Road in Bolivia - that one hasn't been entirely settled yet, by the way). Perhaps only here would you hear over-excited Americans raving about how this is the "fuckin' cultural capital of the Americas, man!" (if you discount the McDonalds and the places where you can get your curry and your Sunday fry-up).

That said, it's a very quiet time to be here, as the massive rains back in January caused such damage that a lot of the area's been closed off since then (Machu Picchu included, of course) and tourists cancelled their trips in droves - good for us, pretty bad for Qosq'o, though. I had expected greater numbers of child beggars, and while there was still a depressing amount, it was mainly street sellers attempting to flog paintings/massages/pictures with llamas, all of whom seemed to have a pretty strong grasp of English (or the phrase ":maybe later?" anyway).

So as far as missing out on Machu Picchu (or "MaKKHHHHchu PiKKHHchu" as our guide back in Chavin de Huantar would have it - either that's the proper pronunciation or he was trying to psych me out), I was pretty much OK with it. Especially having seen Chan Chan, Huaca de la Luna etc, which predate the Incas by hundreds, even thousands, of years! Anyway, it's been tremendous to witness the Inca capital and its amazing walls up close - the more I hear about the Incas, the more incredible they sound. We particularly enjoyed visiting Ollantaytambo yesterday - not just because it remains the hardest place name on our whole trip to pronounce, but because it was where the Incas whupped the Spaniards' asses back in the 16th Century (this ultimately was a false dawn though, and the Spanish were soon back in force). The Incas only had three rules, it seems - "thou shalt not lie", "thou shalt not steal" and "thou shalt not be a lazy bastard", or something, which I guess means they were free to kill and/or shag each other to their hearts' content!

We found out a lot of this today, when we visited Pisac and trekked uphill for what felt like half a day. After a couple of tense moments early on (perhaps when we realised quite how much effort would be entailed) we got into the spirit of it, helped along by the amateur guide, name of Amaru, who we encountered halfway up. We missed out on Sacsahuayman as it would have entailed shelling out even more than we already had to visit it, but at least we found out that the name means "satisfied falcon", which was fantastic news. Anyway, we were both pretty much "ruined" by this point, if you get my meaning. (This is us near the top of the Pisac site, by the way):

Anyway, after a farewell pisco sour, we're leaving Peru tomorrow (sadly), heading for Lake Titicaca and the town of Copacabana - not to be confused with its Brazilian namesake. This is the ORIGINAL Copacabana, apparently! They said it couldn't be done, and it was impossible to get there from Qosq'o on the same day, something to do with Bolivian border guards being a bunch of lazy-asses who only work till 7pm (what kind of border is that?? The Peruvian side is open all day!), but we're damned if we're gonna be stuck in Puno for the night, so we're gonna get there by hook or by crook. Well, that's the intention, anyway... Guess you'll find out next time!

White City

2010-03-20T16:16:00.000-07:00

Arequipa is known as "White City" because of the colour of the volcanic stone found here, though thankfully it bears no resemblance to its London counterpart (it`s actually very attractive). The arequipeños are known for being fond of intellectual debate and for their independence from Lima - they´ve even designed their own flag and passport! It´s true that the locals look just as cool and urban as any limeño we`ve come across. There´s also a lot of very good restaurants and coffee outlets - whether this is to cater for all that intellectual debating I´ve no idea, but we certainly made the most of it. Unfortunately, the cuy (guinea pig) wasn´t the highlight of this gastronomic paradise, but when in Peru....

I´m not too sure about that one, but when in Arequipa, a visit to the Colca Canyon is a must. We took a two-day tour with an overnight stop in Chivay, one of the villages near to the Canyon. It´s a few hours´drive from Arequipa but we were kept entertained on the way by a whole host of camelids - llamas, alpacas and vicuñas. I posted a picture of a llama last time, so here´s a couple of vicuñas (my favourite camelid du jour).

To ease our muscles after the 2-hour trek that never happened (because of a massive ominous cloud ahead), we visited yet more hot springs. They were fantastic - they made up for the brown, tepid, fully-clothed affair in Huaraz. Also enjoyable were the folclorico show in the evening and the company of some fellow travellers in our group. But the highlight of the tour was, unsurprisingly, the Colca Canyon itself. While it´s not the deepest in the world (as the entrance ticket falsely claims), it comes pretty close. We walked along the edge (less vertiginous than it sounds) until we came to the ´Condor Look-out´. It was incredible to see these enormous birds gliding overhead. I recorded some footage on my camera, but to be honest you had to be there.

Back in Arequipa, we had a taste of the lively weekend nightlife but reluctantly retired back to our hostel before midnight as we´d been up since 5:30am seeing all that nature. We celebrated our last day in culinary paradise, and Spurs´win over Stoke (apparently this was an important win) by having lunch at one of Gaston´s restaurants. (Remember Gaston is the Peruvian God of food.) The fact that we´d just seen a preserved Inca child who was sacrificed in the mountains 500 years ago didn´t dent our appetites! And so for the price of a meal at Gourmet Burger Kitchen, we tried an array of top-notch local dishes, like sarsa de patitas, escribano, ocopa, solterito and adobo. It doesn´t matter what it means, it was delicious! The only downpoint was when I mistook a very hot chilli (called rocoto) for your bog-standard red pepper. I put a huge chunk in my mouth and couldn´t taste my seafood pasta for about ten minutes.

So we leave Arequipa satisfied - it definitely didn´t disappoint. Cusco, however, might well disappoint but I eventually decided that I wanted to check out the former capital of the Inca empire, even if we´re confined to Gringo Alley and its environs!

back on the juice

2010-03-15T13:28:00.000-07:00

Much as we loved being high up in the mountains, it was good to get back to sea level again, if only because the headaches were becoming tiresome! We quickly settled into big city life again in Lima, this time staying in the Barranco district, which we soon twigged is the capital´s bohemian/alternative party hot spot. A lot of this partying seemed to go on in our hostel, but fortunately we were up for it again after several days of early nights and no drinking (if it wasn´t the malaria tablets, it was dodgy stomachs, or the altitude), so it was almost like a weekend back in London!

Having said that, it was undoubtedly friendlier (the Andean reserve we encountered in Huaraz definitely doesn't apply to Lima!), and we made a bunch of new friends, the majority of them gay (Barranco, and our hostel in particular seemed particularly gay-friendly by Latin American standards). A Brazilian guest knocked everyone up feijoada and caipirinhas on the Saturday, as a preamble to the hostel basically mutating into a house party, which the hostel's owners seemed only too happy to join...! This went on for a while, till the party for some reason got moved nearer our room (where Becka had retired for the night), at which point I had a gentle word.

We made our journey to the place which serves the "best ceviche in the world" before leaving Lima, despite the warnings about the neighbourhood - and glad to say, it didn't disappoint. In fact, it was so excellent that I don't think either of us will bother eating ceviche again on this trip, as it would inevitably suffer by comparison. Chef Wong ("El Chino Wong" as he is affectionately known locally) did all the prep in the corner of the dining room, in an extension to his own house, it seems. We spent most of the time watching him and his incredible knives in action, awestruck. The ceviche was sole and octopus, and the "main" (which basically is whatever he feels like cooking that day, and whatever the catch has been) was a superb sole and Chinese mushroom stir fry in black bean sauce. Becka was totally starstruck when he agreed to have this photo taken with us!

It's got to be said - not just at Chez Wong, but in general - that Lima has perhaps the best restaurants of any of the cities we've visited so far on our trip, and will probably end up the overall winner (maybe Cochabamba or Iquique will make a late stab for glory, but I doubt it somehow). The fact that one of the country's biggest celebrities is the portly chef Gastón Acurio probably says something about the importance and prestige placed on gastronomy in Peru. The other biggest name at the moment seems to be the actress Magaly Solier, the star of the film nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars (La Teta Asustada - a big deal here as it´s the first time Peru has ever had a film nominated), who we´ve taken to as she speaks Quechua AND did devil horns on the red carpet for all her metalhead buddies back home!

Having thoroughly enjoyed our time in Lima, we´ve now headed to Arequipa - the town itself is very pleasant and seems more well-to-do than other Peruvian cities we´ve seen, although that doesn't stop it being very noisy, or people hassling you to buy stuff on the street all the time. Still, it's Colca Canyon country, so we'll go and check that out tomorrow, and hopefully not get hassled by any condors. The sharper-eyed among you may have noticed I am currently rocking a beard. Becka is very keen on it, though I´ve told her to enjoy it while it lasts as it may not last much longer...

two miles high

2010-03-11T16:03:00.000-08:00

We had just one night in Trujillo, arguably Peru´s second city, so it was a shame we didn´t get round to trying the local duck or goat stew specialities. Neither did we make it to the cinema, which we were planning on doing because Trujillo´s cinema-goers have quite a reputation for being vocal and participatory. Actually we did make it to the cinema but all the films looked rubbish so we played air hockey instead. What we DID manage to do was visit some more ruins (we're big fans now) and stock up on some Trujillano sweet specialities, like pecado de lucuma (lucuma is apparently called´eggfruit´in English) and the brilliantly-named Kingkong - a brick-sized biscuit filled with fruit and various sugary things, for our overnight bus trip to Huaraz.

We needed more than some Kingkones to make this Movil Tours bus trip bearable. Our favourite, Cruz del Sur, doesn´t offer this route, but we now know better than to casually experiment with different companies. For over an hour we had to endure very off-key religious songs. This was followed by two loud films back-to-back, which didn´t finish until 2am. The bus was due to arrive in Huaraz at 6:30am, which left us with a whole three hours´sleep (the fact that we´d already seen Tears Of The Sun on the bus three nights earlier didn´t help matters).

So imagine our relief on our arrival when we were allowed to check into our room early to sleep. A gorgeous room with a lovely bed at that. Mauro suggested that this was one of the finest moments of our trip so far (in fact he almost wept with gratitude).

Despite a little altitude sickness, we really made the most of the breathtaking scenery around here (Mauro didn´t fare so well initially but felt better after drinking 15 cups of coca tea a day). Huaraz is nestled right beside the Cordillera Blanca, which features the highest mountain in Peru. We got a fine view of all of this from our hostel. It´s a constant reminder not just of the beauty of nature but of its power. This region has had more than its fair share of natural disasters, and the devastation caused by the massive earthquake of 1970 is still very present in people's minds. Understandable seeing as it killed 50,000 people. A couple of days ago we went for a long walk through the countryside to see some ruins, passing various pueblos, and Mauro ended up chatting to a very old lady who´d lost all her children in the 1970 earthquake. Some very sad stories to hear (but we could only understand the gist because she spoke in Quechua half the time).

By this point we´d got used to the local dress that the ladies wear around here - woolly cardigans with large, bright skirts and a taller-than-your-average top hat. They´re usually carrying something, some branches or perhaps a baby, tied on their back in a blanket. We´d also got used to the fact that the locals really do not like having their photograph taken! In fact, we were really struck by how quiet and reserved the people are. I´m not sure if that applies to Peruvians in general or just those from the highlands, but it´s hard to adjust to coming straight from Brazil! I had an uncomfortable half-hour in some hot springs. Not only was I the only gringo (Mauro doesn´t count), I was the only one in a bikini. Some of the women entered the pool fully clothed, in long skirts and blouses. We couldn´t believe it!

That said, everyone´s been really friendly and helpful (just in a reserved way). Yesterday we felt the benefit of another local guide´s in-depth historical knowledge when we visited Chavín de Huántar. It´s a site from the ancient Chavín culture, which predates the Incas by over 2,000 years (one of several reasons why we´re totally over not seeing Machu Picchu...hmmm). It seems the Chavins liked to get off their face a lot on hallucinogenics so they could talk to their gods and predict the future. We saw lots of their brilliant sculptures, like daggers and heads and obelisks, and I also found out that Cruz del Sur is more than just a bus company.

Speaking of which, we´re off in a couple of hours for an overnight bus back to Lima. We had another day full of spectacular scenery and walks at over 3,500 metres, so we´re about ready to get back down to sea-level. Hopefully bohemian Barranco will provide us with inspiration as to where to go next. We've heard that Cuzco has been declared a disaster area after yet more heavy rains, so we're not sure whether to go. Seeing as Mauro was more upset that Cafe Andino in Huaraz was closed than Machu Picchu (it supposedly has the best coffee in Peru but come on..!), he's not too put out by this. I'm much more disappointed, but would rather not go at all than visit a disaster area. At the moment it's in the hands of weather-gods...

ceviche and Inca Kola

2010-03-05T09:04:00.000-08:00

Having spent our last night in Brazil in Sao Paulo airport, trying to grab an hour´s sleep here and there on table tops, it was a massive relief to get to Lima and discover that we had managed to book ourselves amazingly nice and comfortable accommodation! So nice and comfortable, in fact, that we had a hard time tearing ourselves away from Hostal El Patio, though within a day or so, we'd eaten some ceviche and drunk some Inka Kola (OK to try once, probably won´t be bothering again, depends how much you like drinking bubblegum really), and foiled a robbery attempt, so you could say we were straight in there with the full-on Limeño experience!

The robbery was definitely of the "sneaky" variety, as I gather they are here, rather than the "give me your cash or I'll stab you" variety - well-dressed types sitting at the next table in the restaurant and trying to distract you with ostentatious comings and goings, that kinda thing - but Becka's wise to this restaurant lark by now and had her bag strap firmly wrapped round her leg, thankfully.They left pretty sharpish, too sharpish for us to have words, which is probably a good thing, I guess! The food is definitely looking promising here anyway, possibly more exciting than anywhere we've been yet. In fact we were slightly surprised at how much we enjoyed Lima, though we have mainly confined ourselves to the more salubrious neighbourhoods like Barranco and Miraflores.

There's no shortage of cab drivers in Peru, though most of them aren´t actually cab drivers, they´re just chancers who have stuck a "taxi" sign up on their car. It´s more or less a question of choosing a car that looks like making it to its destination, and then haggling over a price before the journey starts, then settling back and relaxing while the driver beeps his horn all the way there. (Peruvian cabbies LOVE beeping their horn)

We´re now up in the north by the coast (it seems just the other day we were gazing out over the Atlantic Ocean, and now we´re looking out over the Pacific). The views on the bus journey from Lima to Trujillo were spectacular. There was onboard bingo - I very nearly won us tickets for another trip with Cruz del Sur (by far the most expensive and best Peruvian bus company, we´re having no truck at all with bus rides from hell with drivers falling asleep at the wheel or random passengers getting on board to rob people so we´re sticking with them wherever we can!!)

We're spending a couple of days by the sea in Huanchaco, which "hasn´t entirely lost its intrinsic fishing village appeal" as our guide book says several times (I liked this quote enough to repeat it to Becka numerous times while wandering around). Lots of surfers, and fishing boats like this (which locals have been using for 4,000 years!):

More importantly, it`s the site of Chan Chan (which we visited yesterday), the biggest city in Peru before the Incas turned up and took over. Our guide gave us a wealth of information about it all, including lots of gruesome stories about human sacrifice, we both enjoyed the visit hugely.

Unfortunately it looks like we won't be able to compare it to Machu Picchu as... it`s closed until at least mid-April. Becka was close to inconsolable when we found out. Still, there's plenty more of Peru to enjoy over the coming weeks. And after getting used to Brazilian prices, it feels like we can actually afford things again, as well, which makes a nice change!!

some final thoughts on Brasil...

2010-02-27T09:05:00.000-08:00

Well, I could tell you all about the last nights in Brazil after the jungle trip, how we were greeted in the main square by Baltimora´s 80s classic "Tarzan Boy" being blared out of the main square upon our return to Manaus, but there just isn´t time. I could even tell you about our extraordinary night of Amazonian Rock at the Opera House, but you´ll have to ask us about that separately if you wanna hear about that!

So, as it´s time to move on now, let´s leave you with a few things we noticed about Brazil, and a few of the MANY things we´ll miss...

In the main, I reckon we'll miss the drinks - guaraná, coco gelado, all the incredible fruit juices and the ice-cold beer... in all my time in Brazil I was never served a crap drink once. Oh how hard will it be to get used to London drinks again! We´ll miss speaking and hearing Portuguese. And the breakfasts! And eating at por kilo places (a genius idea that I can´t believe hasn´t taken off elsewhere)! And açai!

After seven weeks in Brazil, we´ve become able to distinguish a few of the regional accents. Mainly the bizarre one you get round Sao Paulo state and some parts of the south, where, for some reason, they sound like they´re either from the US or from the West Country (ie "Salvadorrr"). This accent wasn´t Becka´s favourite.

And I reckon I could make a good stab at where someone comes from as well. It was fascinating seeing how the looks changed through the country - largely black in Salvador, overwhelmingly white in the south (even Becka got taken for a native of Santa Catarina once), a whole different thing again in Amazonia - I became strangely obsessed in Pernambuco and Paraíba with the look of the locals (wide faces with almost comically rounded eyebrows). It seemed like the ridiculous hotness was mainly a Rio thing, but the obsession with looking good and being healthy certainly seemed nationwide. Brazil also seemed full of older guys who had definitely "done well for themselves" on the partner front...

Everyone seems to know the lyrics to all samba songs. It was a bit of a mystery as to how exactly, but it probably helps that they always seem to be subtitled on telly! Many of these lyrics expressed how brilliant it was being from Brazil, and I can definitely see why they would think that if they´d grown up there.

They´ve definitely got their own thing going on musically. Far from hearing the usual international pop hits everywhere, the music we heard was almost always local, (with the exception of Mariah Carey´s version of "I Want to Know What Love Is", which was ubiquitous) whether it be forró, frevo, brega, choro, samba or axé... Rock didn´t seem that big anywhere except in the Amazon, of all places!

Brazilians aren´t generally too hung up on spelling. Something to do with it being mainly an "oral" culture, or something, but you would get Santa Teresa/Santa Tereza, Rui Barbosa/Ruy Barbosa etc... even Mario Zagalo/Zagallo can´t escape this relaxed attitude to spelling, and he won the World Cup four times! So basically - it doesn´t matter how it´s spelt! It´s pronounced the same, right? Cool! I reckon I´ll take this Brazilian attitude back with me to my job in London! (No?)

Chocolate isn´t that big in Brazil. I guess it´s just too hot! I was excited however to get hold of a bar of Diamante Negro ("Ooooh! Black Diamond!") which was named after Brazil´s legendary striker from the 1938 World Cup, Leonidas. Still going strong... Wonder if people will be eating "Rooney" chocolate bars in 70 years´time? (oh, the name "Wayne Rooney" is very difficult indeed for Brazilians to pronounce, by the way).

The 10% service tax got kind of annoying. Especially as we usually got the WORST service in the places that charged it, and the best service in the places that didn´t!

They need to get over manioc! It´s in everything - and to be honest, in a lot of the more (in our opinion) overrated dishes (actually, we couldn´t quite see what the fuss was about with carne do sol - a bit tough, and tapioca - kind of like getting a crepe, only a worse version)

"Na frente" - aarghhh!!! If we never hear this again, that´s fine by us! Whenever we asked for directions, we would be told this, it seemed to mean anything from "over the road" to "left, then right, then left again, about 15 minutes walk away".

They´re quite happy to go through your dirty laundry in Brazil. (Literally.) It gets pretty embarrassing in the laundries when they open your bag and start sifting through your dirty pants by hand... Still, you can get used to anything!

Religion is a huge part of everyday life. This has obviously been commented on before, but it was noticeable how much Christian graffiti you would see, often around the favelas, and it was unforgettable to get a close up view of the candomblé which is such a big part of the culture in Bahia, in particular...

They´ve started whipping up enthusiasm for the 2016 Olympics already. There are TV spots recounting famous Olympic moments of the past - the question is, are they gonna keep this up for the next six years??

We took some forms of transport we won´t forget in a hurry. Speedboats, beach buggies, canoes, kombis, frequently alarming, though nothing topped being given a lift in a car by a man driving while holding a baby in one hand... Fingers crossed we won´t be doing that again!!

Anyway, that´s quite enough about Brazil now, suffice to say we loved it, were sad to leave and definitely want to return, but we are in PERU now, and from what we´ve seen of Lima so far, we´re quite excited about it! More to follow on that, in the meantime we´ll leave you with this video of Iguazu falls...

Jungle fever

2010-02-25T08:45:00.000-08:00

Reading The Heart of Darkness before going into the Amazon probably wasn't the best idea. It's actually about the Congo and admittedly Marlow didn't have his trip organised through Gero's Tours but still, it doesn't evoke an exotic or exciting image of the jungle! We left Manaus on Sunday morning. Two boats and two vans later, we arrived at our lodge, where we got to meet our group (of fellow tourists) and our guide. Believe it or not, his name was Tarzan. This brilliant fact got us into the jungle spirit in no time.

We'd been told beforehand not to expect to see lots of animals, but we managed to see an impressive array of very un-cute creatures: snakes, scorpions, tarantulas - that kind of thing. On the first evening we went alligator spotting but because it was dark (and we were terrified), none of us got a really close look. Later Tarzan helpfully plucked one from the river and asked if we wanted a hold (I didn't). One of the highlights for Mauro was being the first in our group to catch a piranha fish. The buffet lunch featured fried piranhas too, so we also got to eat the day's catch (tasty but not much meat on them).

A two-hour trek into the jungle was another highlight. Tarzan showed us giant ants that leave you writhing in agony for 24 hours if bitten by them, huge termite mounds and hairy tarantulas, as well as lots of trees (obviously) and leaves with medicinal properties (which would come in handy later). As instructed, we'd all worn long sleeves and long trousers to avoid mosquito bites. Unfortunately my Topshop leggings proved not to be effective jungle-wear, which I realised on my return to our cabin. My legs were absolutely covered in bites.

By this point it'd been a couple of weeks since I'd been ill, so it was about time for a dodgy stomach. Now, I'm not sure if there was a bug going around the lodge, if it was the allergic reaction I experienced from my hundreds of bites or if I had delayed reaction to the Malarone malaria pills (most likely), but I got sick. Vomiting into a bucket, in intense humidity, with a mosquito net tucked in all around you, was not the trip I'd been hoping for. On the plus side, I really got to experience some jungle hospitality. Everyone was extremely kind and attentive, and provided me with a constant supply of jungle lotions and potions (most of which made me vomit even more, but still...).

Luckily I emerged from the heart of Malarone darkness within 24 hours, so was able to enjoy some other excursions. We visited some caboclos (natives), who welcomed us into their homes and had no problems with us taking close-up pictures of their children, as we tourists are wont to do! We got to taste lots of Amazonian fruit straight from the tree and I finally got to see where my favourite energy elixir comes from - the açai tree.

Mauro also got to grips (literally) with rowing through the swampy river, which was tough going at times but worth it when we got to hear the unsettling cry of the howler monkeys. It sounded like a loud bitter wind was blowing - only a lot more evil. The fact that the trees and water were completely still, with not a soul (or monkey) in sight, made it all the more eerie.

And so our four days in the jungle were up and we made our way back to the big city thoroughly satisfied with our jungle experience (and a few pounds lighter). We didn't get to see the pink dolphins as I was vomiting at the time, but we'd seen them off the Ilha do Mel so we weren't too disappointed. Aside from what we learned about the jungle itself, we met some great people and I've become remarkably blasé about a whole host of creatures that made me a nervous wreck a week ago. The frog that lived in our cistern, opposite the enormous unidentified insect on the wall, made me slightly anxious about using the loo at first, but by the last day I barely noticed they were there. What's more, back in Manaus, our low-budget hotel that smells of disinfectant now feels like absolute luxury!

prawns and buggies

2010-02-16T12:47:00.000-08:00

Well, the aftermath of getting drenched on our tour of the far-flung beaches of Paraíba was both of us getting colds - happily for us, Natal has the cleanest air in the WORLD (except Antarctica, apparently - this fact is confirmed by no less an authority than NASA) and what with that, and the usual plethora of fresh fruit and guaraná, before too long we were fighting fit again.

Prawns are big in Natal. So big in fact that one of the biggest restaurants there is called, with brutal simplicity, "Camaroes" ("Prawns"). Although it's next door to a place called "Only Pizza" which advertises itself as selling "salads, fish and chicken", so what's in a name, eh? Talking of names, it looks like the spelling of "Drive Thru" causes one or two problems over here...

The best place we ate was, however, Mangai, where we went for our Valentine's meal (this is us after dinner, with local legends Lampião and Maria Bonita - kind of like Robin Hood/Bonnie & Clyde figures from the early 1900s):

Also big in Natal are dunes, and the beach buggies you need to get on to drive around them. All very exciting, if not cheap - it wasn't till we were fortunate enough to run into a couple of Seventh Day Adventists and could share a buggy with them that we could actually afford the ride! You can either go for com emoçao or sem emoçao, (literally "with emotion" or "without", but "with terror" or "without terror" might have been more accurate), and I think we must have got the former option, as it was more than enough emoçao for the pair of us, much to the Adventists' disappointment. It didn't deter them from insisting on driving us all the way back to our hostel afterwards, though, which reaffirmed our faith in humanity. I also came away with massive respect for the bugueiros, who we had previously had down as cheeky rip-off merchants, as it really did feel at the time as though you put your life in their hands!

Watching Carnaval on TV was hugely enjoyable - not sure who ended up winning the Rio one, but I was glad to see Robinho present and correct (and looking fairly OK about not being in Manchester at the moment), and Paris Hilton adding to the pantheon of legendary quotes to describe this awesome spectacle ("It's beautiful, I love it"). The samba schools each play and dance to a newly-composed song, three or four verses, over and over, for OVER AN HOUR. I'm thinking of suggesting this as the way forward for Jonny Cola & the A-Grades when I get back - after all, no one else is doing that in London, are they?? Though I don't know if we will be able to summon up a cast of thousands in outrageous costumes...

We moved on to Pipa yesterday, only to find a POST-Carnaval Carnaval going on (you really can't avoid Carnaval in Brazil, this much is true), which looked like this:

After a night out trying not to get sucked into a conversation with an incomprehensible local drunk with no teeth, and then finishing off our cans of beer surrounded by hormonal pre-teens trying to cop off with each other, it was a relief to get up today and go for a swim, accompanied by dolphins, no less! (OK, they were a few metres away, but it was still amazing). Also amazing is the pousada we're staying in (Pomar da Pipa) - here's me getting into some hammock action...

I am now in dire need of a haircut - many places in Natal offered "Mega-hair", but I didn't take them up on this. In other news, we have just started taking our malaria tablets!! TOUCH WOOD we don't start suffering any ill effects (vomiting, headaches, nightmares, beating each other up), especially not on the plane tomorrow, we could both do without that. The next time you hear from us we will be in Amazonas...!

Pre-Carnaval in the North East

2010-02-13T06:58:00.001-08:00

Once settled into our pousada in Olinda's old town, far away (enough) from the Skol-fuelled chav-fest that was the pre-Carnaval 'parade' in the new town, we got a chance to experience Olinda proper. There's no disputing that Olinda is gorgeous. It's now a World Heritage Site and has lots of money pouring in for restoration of colonial churches, colourful houses and cobbled streets, so I was surprised at how commercially un-exploited it was. There are no ATMs or supermarkets. What there are loads of, however, are galleries and workshops - which appear to be people's houses - crammed with paintings, wooden carvings and bonecos (puppets for Carnaval). Arts´n´crafts are big in Olinda.

Another thing that struck us was that seemingly every person and property is licensed to sell alcohol (which usually involves a can of Skol being passed through someone's front window). This comes in handy when there are street processions and moving 100 yards to the nearest bar becomes tricky. Mauro was particularly taken by a local brew called Pau do Indio - a heady mixture of aguardiente, honey and 32 herbs (I thought it was undrinkable). It's surprising how good-natured the atmosphere was with all this alcohol doing the rounds.

The Pre-Carnaval street parades themselves were slightly unreal. We discovered one by following the sound of drumming and turning a corner to see 50 women in huge dresses, advancing slowly towards us by means of a brilliantly unsexy dance.

So by the time we came to leave Olinda, we felt we'd already had a taste of Brazilian Carnival. We headed off for some tranquilidade at the beach, two hours north in Joâo Pessoa, the capital of Paraiba (and the eastern-most point of the Americas). The last thing we expected was, 24 hours later, to be in the throng of yet another pre-Carnaval parade in the city centre with some people we'd met in the hostel. This one had a less medieval feel - local popstars atop enormous trucks, blaring out some hectic frevo.

Not to be defeated in our search of some actual tranquilidade, Mauro became fixated with discovering some renowned beaches about 40km away from town, despite there being no public transport and only a dirt road for the last 10km. After a 90-minute ordeal... I mean bus-trip, we managed to find them - with the help of a Peruvian naturist called Jorge. An hour of sunshine later, the heavens opened and we found ourselves stranded in muddy paradise. Eventually Jorge managed to talk his (and our) way into the back of someone's jeep, and we ended up at his house in the middle of the countryside to dry off. Finally, with Mauro wearing Jorge's T-shirt, we weren't distraught to be on the bus out of Joâo Pessoa (which means 'John Person') heading north again towards Natal (which means 'Christmas). And after all that pre-Carnaval activity, I think we've finally found somewhere where we can chill out on the beach and watch the actual Carnaval on telly!

The Most Dangerous City On Our Trip

2010-02-05T12:46:00.000-08:00

Well, our arrival in Salvador wasn't promising - having to wait an hour for our ride to the hotel, only to then be called over the tannoy system and informed that TWO cars had been despatched, but the first had broken down and the second had crashed. And could we find ourselves our own cab instead. And by the time we finally arrived at the hotel, it was impressed upon us that we were under no circumstances to walk anywhere at that time of night (9.30pm), as the area around our hotel was the domain of crackheads and hookers, and that we'd be best off getting another cab even to get a snack! (This pretty much tallied with the stories we'd heard from every friend of ours to have visited Salvador, all of whom had been mugged.)

So when we eventually ventured out into the big bad city the next day, it was with a sense of wariness, which soon turned to excitement - Salvador is basically, one of the most exciting places I've ever been to, and we both felt overwhelmed in much the same way we did when we first arrived in Rio. Our first Bahian meal (acarajé, vatapá, moquecas and all) was again hugely exciting, and dangerous - another of the things we'd been warned about was the dendê (palm oil) used in most of the cooking, which tends to have a dire effect on foreign stomachs.

So surviving that, and our first night out, was heartening - especially as we actually managed to have a fantastic time, wandering into a locals' samba hangout and seeing first-hand how you only need about 10 Bahians to get a party going! Brilliantly good-natured also, which was the general vibe of our stay, interspered with the expected edge as well. That might have got to us a bit if we'd stayed longer, but as it was we were gutted to leave.

The baianas who sit on the street corners selling their exciting and dangerous street snacks all look pretty adorable, but they definitely have a savvy streak -when we asked one if she minded us taking a photo of her, she demanded five reais, so we left it! In fact, photos in general would prove to be a bit of a sore point, but more on that later...

The local cultural identity is strong in Salvador, (much like the pimenta - possibly the hottest pepper sauce in the world!) and it clearly spans the generations. We felt pretty awestruck by it, hearing the ominous polyrhythmic drumming everywhere we went, and even being lucky enough to stumble across a private moonlight candomblé ritual, where we saw women, chanting and ringing bells, fill a boat with offerings for lemanjá, the Goddess of the Sea, and then sail it out to sea... Becka took a couple of photos of this before being informed by a bystander that this wasn't the done thing. Mysteriously, by the end of our stay in Salvador, somehow our memory card with all the photos that had been taken of the ritual just disappeared - with neither of us able to explain how! I blamed it on having offended lemanjá, which was possibly a convenient explanation, but seriously, after a couple of days here, these things start seeming more and more real...!

Later on that night, my Chile top aroused a considerable amount of interest - on our bus ride back, a cachaça-fuelled local maniac felt the need to yell the names of every Chilean team he could think of at me (he got as far as Audax Italiano before hitting a block), and then the results of all our matches in the 1998 World Cup. I wasn't sure how I was supposed to react to this, but noticed to my relief that half the bus was shouting at him to shut up, and the other half falling about laughing... It was all so entertaining that I was oblivious to the fact that the bus driver totally ignored every red light (Becka filled me in on this later)!

So, feeling like perhaps we were missing a trick after all by not staying for Carnaval, and heading for "beautiful, sleepy" Olinda, we were alarmed to arrive and find a pre-Carnaval blowout going on, which was like Sodom and Gomorrah, (only less fun) or perhaps a pissed-up festival in London, with a hundred stag and hen parties converging, gobbing, pissing and vomiting everywhere... Maybe we'd made the right choice after all in sidestepping Carnaval? Thankfully, the next day things in Olinda improved - but more on that next time!

Poor Niagara!

2010-02-03T05:23:00.000-08:00

Giving Florianopolis one more chance was an excellent idea. We stayed in an area called Lagoa, which is an ideal base for restaurants, bars and several lovely beaches. We found a beach we particularly liked - all the way along Mole beach and over some rocks - and spent two days hanging out there; swimming in the sea (or rather, getting bashed about by waves) and eating açai with granola. I get the impression this is what a stay in Florianopolis is really about - even down to the huge cockroach in our room (which I made Mauro dispose of and which he consequently felt guilty about for several hours).

We'd clearly got too assimilated into the Brazilian beachbum way of life, as we (actually Mauro) got the bus-times wrong and so missed our very expensive 15-hour overnight bus to Foz do Iguaçu. Did I mention that was the last one that day? So after a harmonious hour spent together in the bus station, we took the next bus in that direction - five hours away in Curitiba, where we had to stay overnight in a worryingly cheap hotel by the station, before finally heading off to Foz (as I like to call it) the following morning. We managed to convince ourselves this was all part of the crazy adventure of travelling (convincing ourselves of this took several hours).

Luckily, Foz was worth all the hassle! Our hostel was lovely (and not just in comparison to cockroach-hut). It even had a pool, which is necessary in the intense heat of the interior that hits you like a slap in the face. We cooked in both evenings and hung out with a group of Bavarian Jehovah's Witnesses, who'd just visited the rarely-visited Chaco (region in Paraguay), in a bid to get to know some Mennonites. You can't make this stuff up.

We really liked Foz. It had the feel of a frontier town, which we'd not come across so far on our travels. It also had a strong gauchesco vibe - not surprising since it's by the Argentinian border. In true Becka and Mauro tradition, we found a very basic botequim that we liked and had a bem gelada (cold beer) while chatting to the owners about the local culture and the Itaipu dam. Unfortunately we had to pass up the guy's invitation to come back for 30 days (no less), so that he could teach us all the local dances...

And obviously, the waterfalls! Like most travellers, we spent one day on the Argentinian side and one day on the Brazilian side. They were absolutely spectacular (I reckon Eleanor Roosevelt's "Poor Niagara!" quote is about right). To avoid lapsing into clichés, here's a couple of photos instead:

We went straight from Iguaçu falls to the airport, in good time for our flight to Salvador, from where I'm writing now. We got to the hotel quite late and were vehemently advised not to venture out on our own, so the city is yet to be discovered...

Parana

2010-01-25T11:53:00.000-08:00

Since last time, we~ve spent one night in Curitiba, which famously has the "best standard of living in Latin America", we found a surprising amount of edge in amongst the futuristic bus stops, well-planned civic green spaces and impressive cleanliness - at times it felt like we were actually in England. But not in a bad way. A bit shocked to see a couple of policemen laying into a group of teens hanging about drinking in the park (seemingly innocently enough, they didn~t look particularly menacing), smashing their bottles, whacking them with truncheons and - amazingly - pointing a gun to one of their heads!! Never seen that before! I guess the police in Curitiba aren~t quite down with the "progressive" policies of the city in general...

Next day we took the train journey to Paranagua, which went through mountain forests and gorges, all amazingly scenic - here~s an idea of it:

And, once the train had broken down and a replacement bus service (aarghh, even more like home!!) finally arrived, from there it was time to peg it to the ferry - only just making it in time- over to Ilha do Mel, which means "Honey Island". Yeesssssss! It transpired that once again our accommodation was a bit incoveniently located, in fact we would have to get a "nautical taxi" to the other, less populated, side of the island - ah, the nautical taxi is a speedboat! First time I~d ever been on one of those. Exciting, if slightly alarming, but I~m getting used to hair-raising public transport in Brazil by now...

After an inauspicious first night when we got caught in a storm as we took a torchlight stroll along the deserted beach, and then got bitten to f**k by mosquitoes overnight, the sun came out next day and as the water was amazingly clear, and a perfect temperature, we went for a few swims - hadn~t been able to swim much in Rio as the water was too filthy in Copacabana and a bit too wild in Ipanema!

There isn~t, to be fair, much else to do on the Ilha do Mel, and much as it fitted the general idea of a tropical paradise island, we couldn~t bear the mosquito bites any more after three nights and headed back to the mainland.

We~ve come back to "give Florianopolis one more chance", as Jonathan Richman once almost sang, though I should also give Paranagua (seen below) an honourable mention for the fantastic time we had there on our way back here - we managed to sample the local speciality, barreado, (meat stew cooked over 24 hours in a clay pot, served with rice, sauce and slices of banana! Better than feijoada, we both reckon. Especially when you~re allowed to go and help yourself to seconds) and encountered probably the friendliest population of our trip so far.

Lots of love to you all, we~ll be at Iguaçu Falls by the next time you hear from us...

Rain in Florianopolis

2010-01-22T17:33:00.000-08:00

After a surprisngly agreeable overnight bus trip, we arrived in Florianopolis on a bright and sunny Wednesday morning. We'd heard so many good things about this place from other travellers that we were really sure we wouldn't be disappointed (lesson learned: never be sure you won't be disappointed). After checking into our 'central and well-run' hostal and having a bit of lunch, we were ready to take the island by storm. Unfortunately by this point, a storm had taken over the island (slight exaggeration but there's been lots of rain and lots of grey skies). Now Santa Catarina is an island with over 40 beautiful beaches, all relatively easily accessible... We took the Rough Guide's advice and chose to use the capital, Florianopolis, as our base. So you can imagine our delight at discovering that this city is totally unremarkable, and that Santa Catarina sans beaches is not the most thrilling holiday destination.

We were really struck by how different it is here to in Rio (our only other Brazilian point of reference so far). For a start, it's a LOT less mixed racially. There's been a fair bit of German and Italian immigration so there's a surprising amount of blonde hair and blue eyes going on. From what we've seen, (we've only been here three nights), Santa Catarina also seems really safe and efficient - cars actually stop at a red light. On the other hand, walking around town at night felt strangely eerie because the streets are so quiet, aside from the odd dog-walker. It took me 20 minutes to find somewhere to buy a bottle of beer and a Kinder Bueno, and even that was a petrol station called Star Lube. The forecourt was full of over-dressed teenagers drinking vodka and Redbull... In fact it was a bit like Sidcup highstreet on a Saturday night. Although unlike in Sidcup, the locals seem to be quite well-heeled (and the women are more high-heeled and more high maintenance).

The obvious alternative to exploring the beaches was to go drinking, but we really struggled to find much movida here in the evening. I asked a barman where it was at - 'nas praias' (at the beach). Shame we're a 45-minute bus ride from any beach (although on the plus-side, according to Rough Guide, a 45-minute bus ride from most of the beaches on the island). I knew it was bad when the highlight of my day was a very efficient experience in an internet cafe. God I was miserable...

And then the sun came out! Seriously, it was like that bit in The Wizard Of Oz when Dorothy walks out of the house and her world goes from black and white to colour. After an afternoon spent lazing around a couple of beaches, I realised what all the Floripa-fuss was about. This place definitely makes sense in the sunshine.

We were so happy we looked like this:

Come rain or shine, the hostels we've stayed in haven't failed to provide entertainment either. We've cooked in a couple of times to save some reais (see Mauro whipping up a carbonara... The first time that kitchen had seen fresh parsley methinks) and hung out with the other guests, most of whom are Argentinian (The whole island is teeming with 'em!). At the moment, there's a large contingent of prize-winning Argentine cage-fighters staying, as well as a sweet 80-year-old Brazilian lady who sits in the common room watching telenovelas and hovers around the water fountain.

We're off to Curitiba now for the night - apparently it has the highest standard living in the whole country. Let's hope it has some character too! Then tomorrow morning we're off on 'one of the world's most beautiful train journeys' to Paranagua, although that's according to the Rough Guide so I'm ready to be disappointed...

adeus Rio!

2010-01-19T05:08:00.001-08:00

OK, nearly time to head south and wave goodbye to Rio (it's Mauro again this time, by the way, I promise Becka will be back next time!) She's had a few days of being pretty under the weather with a crippling stomach bug - mysteriously, all she could manage to eat in that time was cake! But thankfully she's better now. Personally I reckon the açai (sorbet made from an Amazonian berry) that you can see me consuming in this pic had something to do with her recovery - this stuff is amazing, it can sort anyone out!

There's the odd twinge of regret that we didn't get to do some of the things we'd intended to do, such as revisit our favourite old Copacabana botequim for a goodbye drink, or visit the Sambadrome, but we did manage to catch some live samba action in Lapa at the weekend (great stuff, though not cheap - we had to ration ourselves to one drink while we were in there!). Still amazed at how everyone in the venue seemed to know all the words to all the songs, and managed to dance pretty much on top of each other without anyone getting arsey. A more enthusiastic crowd I have rarely seen. Though strangely, as soon as the final note was played, there was no attempt whatsoever to coax an encore or anything, everyone went their separate ways immediately...

Which, as it turned out, wasn't as easy as all that, as another storm had hit Lapa, and the pavement and road outside the club had disappeared, to be replaced by a river of rank, rubbish-strewn water. The rain showing no signs of abating, we had to join those who removed their footwear and braved sloshing through the filth to try and hail a cab (another mission, but you probably guessed that by now!). My trip to the Vasco da Gama match was another experience, notable for the maniacs and chancers we met outside, one of whom, despite only having one tooth and a face reddened by decades of alcohol abuse, saw fit to slag off my soul patch (muito feo, he reckoned - the nerve!!).

Anyway, it's been an exhilarating couple of weeks here, we'll definitely miss Casa 579 and all the staff here, some of the other guests (such as the particularly entertaining German who kept punctuating all his anecdotes with "Oh my shit!" and referring to Sugar Loaf mountain as "Sugar Head"), though not so much the English girls who never said hello to anyone and just stayed in watching crap romcoms on DVD in the common area. Goodbye to Rio and (an 18-hour coach ride later, more storms are predicted - wish us luck!) hello to Florianopolis tomorrow some time!

oi!

2010-01-13T04:32:00.000-08:00

I'm wondering if maybe everyone back home's sick of reading this by now (enduring as they are the worst winter in however many years), but believe me, if we could've sent some of the heat from over here your way, we definitely would've!! For a few days it was ridiculous - up to 43 degrees at one point, which really isn't conducive to doing very much of anything. Going to the Jardim Botanico to hide under 30-metre high palm trees, taking refuge in some air-conditioned museums, or just sitting in our room under a fan, seemed the only sensible options...

The rain finally came last night with a massive electrical storm that knocked out the electricity in the whole street, so we cooked and dined in the dark - we got lucky and got power back that night (apparently it often takes three to four days!), so headed out for a humid and steamy night out at one of our favourite local haunts (seen below).

After the post-storm night out, I managed to get involved in a row with a taxi driver (there's something new for me!) who let us into his cab only to refuse to take us to our address, whining on about how we might lead him into a favela or something, and then feigning ignorance of the area altogether. Didn't really understand what he shouted at me after I'd slammed the door after getting out in disgust, but it didn't seem especially complimentary. To be fair to him, we have also heard what sounds alarmingly like machine-gun fire (in fact, it sounded like an actual gunfight), from around here, although this could be our over-active imaginations. Rio can do that to you.

That said, we're pretty sure it wasn't our imagination the other night, when a friendly barman started steering the conversation towards how long we'd been going out together, whether we were married, and so on... Then explaining about clubs that couples in relationships can go to (all the while making frequent references to his teenage wife and how attractive she was) for aventura, and how in Brazil things were diferente. Our minds boggling, we told him it was too much aventura for us, and politely declined. I thought this kind of thing was the preserve of bored fortysomethings in Croydon, not (fairly handsome, it has to be said) carioca barmen in their twenties! Did I mention that he also informed us that his wife had had a baby two months previously? Did they not have other things on their mind at the moment?!

Oh yeah, we were going to explain about the local kombis! You grow to love them around Santa Teresa. Basically, they're white VW minivans, which are cheap and can pick you up and drop you off wherever you like, but the door may fly open, you may have to sit on a local's lap, and you may even have to stand up. Seriously, whoever thought up the concept of health and safety was definitely not a Brazilian. The bonde (local tram) which flies over the Lapa arches while various maniacs hang off the sides, sometimes actually performing stunts or hanging upside down, was another experience - they definitely would've been banned in Britain many years ago.

I've decided that Vasco da Gama are the team I'll be supporting in Brazil (for various reasons, I can bore anyone who really wants to know separately as to why) and am endeavouring to catch them in action tomorrow at their home stadium - sadly, no matches are on at the Maracana while we're here. Anyway, their website gave an address to buy tickets, quite local to here, so we wandered over and found the address to be the stadium for Fluminense (local rivals)!! Some kind of practical joke?? I swallowed hard and asked them if they were, by any chance, selling tickets for the Vasco match this weekend (imagine trying to buy tickets to a Spurs match at the Emirates)... naturally enough, they weren't. Oh well, try my luck tomorrow I guess!

PS For any of our work colleagues reading, I can report that TV subtitles are alive and well over here (even live ones). They're frequently on when the TVs are on in the bars, and they seem fairly good as well (though with my sketchy Portuguese, that's probably a bit of a bold claim)...

Rio (Santa Teresa)

2010-01-11T05:28:00.000-08:00

We`re now staying in Santa Teresa, up into the hills and away from the beaches and bustle of Copacabana and Ipanema. The heat also seems to be slightly less intense up here. We`ve been hearing that Santa Teresa is the coolest place in Rio (though Mauro thinks that may just literally refer to the temperature). The hostel here is absolutely beautiful - it`s at the top of a hill, with amazing views of Christ the Redeemer and the twinkling lights of the city below. The downside to this is that these lights are a bit too far away, which makes getting almost anywhere pretty inconvenient. Santa Teresa is supposedly the bohemian part of town where artists and intellectuals live. It`s a world away from Copacabana, but we like it just as much. There`s a rickety tram (the oldest in South America, I think) that hurtles through the cobbled streets, and lots of samba blaring out, artists selling their wares on the streets and, crucially, great bars where lots of locals hang out.

On Saturday we headed to nearby Lapa, which is THE place to go out in Rio. It`s hard to explain how crazy and full-on the nightlife is here - neither Mauro or I have ever seen anything like it. There`s bars and clubs everywhere, with people pouring out onto the street, and live music pouring out into the street after them. Then there are stalls selling street food and drinks, and yet more people sat around on steps, grass - anywhere - drinking. Guys walk around with a tequila-kit on a tray, ready to sell you a shot if you`re flagging a bit. Mauro and I got a bit excited about the caipirinhas and have since agreed to limit ourselves next time. It felt being at a festival, but it`s just a night out in Lapa. And the strange thing is, no-one seemed to be totally wasted. Not a sign of vomit anywhere. Can you imagine this working anywhere in the UK?!

The portions of food here are enormous, so this is helping us manage our daily budget nicely. Whatever we order, we know we will take at least half of it home, de viagem, which sorts us out for a meal the next day. Everything so far in Brazil seems to be really exciting, intense, yet slightly daunting, and the food is no different. In the last few days, we`ve tried some Bahian food and some feijoada. Both delicious. We`re slowly getting to grips with the farofa - toasted manioc flour (cassava? me neither...) that Brazilians sprinkle on almost everything. Mauro got carried away with the hot, hot, hot Bahian pepper sauce and the farofa... Here he is laughing as I called him a manioc maniac.

He won`t be laughing for long if he insists on doing the `OK` sign (thumb and forefinger in a circle) to everyone. We`re not quite sure what it means in Brazil, but we know it`s highly offensive.

Oh, and we got the cable car up to Pao de Acucar (Sugarloaf mountain)! We timed it perfectly and hit sunset on the way up and came down after nightfall. It was spectacular, even if the hordes of tourists vying for the best photo opp marred the magical views slightly.

I`m so glad we`ve got a couple of weeks here in Rio, so we don`t have to rush around to make the most of everything. The heat and humidity really takes it out of you - Rio is definitely a place to take it easy (except maybe in Lapa. And Carnaval). OK, time to head out now and brave the local kombis (VW minivans which operate as buses - but that's another story for next time...)!

Rio (Copacabana)

2010-01-07T04:59:00.000-08:00

Well, the actual business of getting from Santiago to Rio de Janeiro proved eventful enough - at Santiago airport we were offered the tidy sum of $200 EACH to take a later flight instead, doubtless because the airline had overbooked the seats, and were scrambling around desperately to sort out their mess. This seemed like a good idea to us, until we were told the later flight was in fact 12 hours later (not the original 4 hours), and got to Rio after midnight! So we changed our minds back, only to be told it was too late - cue lots of arguing with airline staff, and, thankfully, eventually getting our way... We´ll just have to do without the extra cash!

It´s summer in Rio, which means temperatures between 30-35 degrees at the moment, constant sweating, several showers a day etc (apologies to those back home in Britain, shivering and probably cursing us!). In contrast to Chile and Argentina, I can´t even imagine wanting to drink red wine over here - only ice-cold Antartica beers, coconut water, and LOTS of the incredibly exciting fruit juices that are sold at stalls all over. Passion fruit juice, melon juice, fruit-you´ve never-heard-of-or-seen-before juice... All delicious! Convinced Becka to try some comida mineira with me on the first night - she seemed wary of the tutu and couve, and other unknown quantities, but it proved delicious.

In fact, Rio is a massive contrast to Chile in general. Brazil´s incredibly rich racial diversity in particular stands out - it seems to have created a ludicrously high concentration of highly attractive people (even the shop window dummies have conspicuous curves and much larger bums!). Though before anyone could get too carried away with ideas of racial utopia, an incident in the supermarket yesterday would bring you back down to earth - a black man who´d been accused of stealing and was yelling at the security and the customers, claiming to have been accused on the basis of his skin colour alone.

At the moment we´re staying in Copacabana, which we´re enjoying very much - full of locals just going about their business, not too fancy or geared towards tourists. (Oh, if you´re wondering why there aren´t more photos with this entry, it´s mainly because we´ve been in such a state of paranoia about getting stuff nicked that the camera has been mostly under lock and key back in the hostel!) As it is, the area is apparently much safer than it has been for a while - there are favelas visible from the hostel - though this seems to be mainly due to the heavy presence of police with machine guns...

Schlepped over to the British Embassy (to register our passports, in case of any future problems) over in Flamengo, which closed at 12.30pm, though for some reason I´d lost the plot and decided the address was no.94 rather than no.284... Of course we dashed PAST no.284 just before closing time, only to arrive at no.94 panting and wheezing and find no such Embassy. (Brilliantly enough, the security guard told us we´d be better off going to the beach for the afternoon instead) When we DID get to the Embassy the next day, they told us to register online instead. AARGHH!!

Have been enjoying the local botequims for drinking (basically, a bar in as much as it serves alcohol and food, but often only consisting of a couple of plastic tables and chairs outside, for a handful of punters). We did actually take the bus (a hair-raising experience in itself - it´s no lie that the bus drivers here are living out Formula One fantasies!) over to Leblon last night to check out the nightlife, only to decide that it really wasn´t us and take the bus straight back! Seemed like a bit of a rich kids´playground really...

The hostel (Newton´s Rooftop) is pretty, well, characterful and laid-back, if at times downright hazardous. We´re moving across town to Santa Teresa tomorrow, which is probably a good thing as anyone who stays at Newton´s more than a few days seems to end up working here!

Chile (a few impressions)...

2010-01-03T16:46:00.000-08:00

Stray dogs
A LOT of them over here (though happily, much less actual dogshit than in Buenos Aires!). Seriously, they´re everywhere. It seems this is a problem that cannot be solved without mass sterilisation, which is unlikely to ever get off the ground. The ones that AREN´T strays, strangely, seem the noisiest - there are a couple of particularly appalling yappy shits near my uncle Ricky´s. Dunno what their problem is but as guard dogs I doubt they´d be much use, as they make a racket at pretty much any passer-by, car, bird, whatever...

Change
Nothing like the problems you get in Argentina. The actual money is far cleaner and nicer as well - none of the really skanky peso bills that we did our best to get rid of as quickly as possible over there. In fact, one 5,000 peso note we got was SO NICE that (laugh, you may as well) I managed to avoid spending it for the entire period of our stay here...

Receipts
On the other hand, Jesus Christ, do we really need a receipt for absolutely EVERYTHING?? My pockets are overflowing with em! Even when Becka used the loo at Concepción bus station, she got a receipt for that. And the system of having to queue up and pay at a separate cashier instead of the person who takes your actual ice-cream/beer/sandwich order doesn´t seem like the most efficient or user-friendly. The most infuriating, perhaps. Still, I guess it gives more people jobs...?!

The food
Actually, on the whole, better than in Argentina, we both thought. Certainly more varied. You can get yourself a better sandwich (avocado, tomato and runner beans make a fine addition to the slices of beef or chicken), much better seafood, a nutritious cazuela (stew, often featuring chicken, pumpkin, potato, rice, a small corn on the cob and plenty of coriander) on most menus, and better empanadas also. Sure, the steaks aren´t up to the same standard but there´s not that much in it... (Becka prefers the Argentine dulce de leche to our manjar, tho)

Public transport
Very modern, clean and efficient metro (not one delay at any point), with several very arty stations. Unfortunate that the metro is so rammed at pretty much all times that the people travelling on it have become fairly selfish, and often will blatantly disregard an older person who really should be offered a seat in order to plonk their arses down and then ignore all the cold, hard stares (mainly mine). They play music videos at most stations as well, but for some reason they only seem to ever be by Alicia Keys.

Rock
I think Chileans are even bigger rock fans than Argentines, judging from the T-shirts you see every day. They also seem to be more heavily into reggaeton as well, but I´ll gloss over that one...

Football
Not on the telly as much as in Argentina. Also far less national team shirts worn about the place (even though we arguably have more to shout about at the moment). Confusingly, Cristal beer seem to sponsor pretty much every team in the top flight, so it´s hard to tell who´s wearing which team´s shirt. Seems to be fairly rabid Colo Colo support around my uncle Ricky´s area - including the charming graffiti "traigan madres que balas sobran" ("bring Universidad de Chile fans, we have plenty of bullets") emblazoned down the high street...

Language
Famously the least comprehensible Spanish speakers in the entire Hispanic world, anyone who´s studied Spanish to any level would need a while here to decipher people in the street saying the likes of "cachaste el paco culiaaao, hueón". Becka chastised me when I started talking like this to my cousins after a few jars, deeming it "lazy". She has a point to be honest, though much as it can be impenetrable, I´d say it´s still possibly the most inventive - and witty - of all the Spanish "dialects"...

"Los Venegas"
Much to my horror, this programme (which apparently has been going for 20 years or something) came on when I was contentedly chomping away on a chacarero in Pucón - it seems my family´s name is being taken in vain somewhat, as the cast all seem to be buffoonish arsewits of the highest order...! The rest of the restaurant chortled away merrily enough as I fumed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJteCDIbtWk&feature=related

Obesity
I was slightly alarmed at the amount of clearly overweight kids I saw, that seemed much more noticeable than in Argentina. One kid on the tube relentlessly stuffing his face with chips was particularly alarming. I do hope this is something that they start taking seriously soon! I also get the impression Chileans are far bigger boozers than their neighbours, probably due to the fact that the Argentines are naturally more outgoing and gregarious than us (we tend to have a more reserved temperament, more like the English even!) so need far less alcohol to get the party started and lose their inhibitions...

Anyway, that´s just a few impressions for now - must say by the end of this stay here that I´ve got far more fond of Santiago again, and will both miss my ever-accommodating and welcoming extended family, and look forward to my next visit. Which won´t be too far away! Next stop, Rio...!

Feliz año nuevo!

2010-01-01T15:04:00.000-08:00

I don´t think I could have had a better start to the new decade. Whilst Christmas definitely feels less festive when it´s hot and sunny, the summertime really suits New Year´s Day (probably my least favourite day of the year back home). The start of the year feels positive and sunny and green and full of birdsong and blossoming promise. OK, it´s easy to say that when you´re on an epic holiday but still. We´ve spent the day at Mauro´s cousin´s house, or to be more precise, in her garden; swimming in their pool and eating seafood and an asado (BBQ-style).

Last night, we saw the new year in with another family meal in the garden and stuffed ourselves full of locos (similar to abalone), king crab (definitely the king of all crabs), salmon and trout. We even had ´merquén ´pasta (´merquén´is a smoked red chilli mix produced by Mapuches, apparently). I´ve been trying to rein in the foodfest talk but we´ve eaten really well in Chile, it has to be said. This country´s got a lot of coastline going on, so the seafood is really varied. Also, Los Venegas really know how to cook; I can see where Mauro gets it from.

We´ve kept ourselves busy with a few daytrips in the last few days. One good thing about Santiago is it´s easy to get out of (a bit like Lewisham). Mauro´s uncle Ricky took us to a lovely French restaurant in the Cajón de Maipo, a valley near the mountains about an hour out of the city. Here we are enjoying the view.

Then we took a trip with the other side of Mauro´s family to Pomaire, a tiny pueblo famous for its terracotta craftmanship and enormous empanadas. I don´t really see the charm in a one-kilo empanada but we all shared one anyway. The day after we headed off to the coast, to Valparaíso. Initially we were planning on spending new year´s eve here. It´s the place to be - spectacular fireworks and thousands of people. A bit like new year´s eve everywhere really. In the end we decided not to go. Mauro´s not that into fireworks and I´m not a fan of huge crowds, plus all accommodation and buses were fully booked a while back. I don´t know why we considered it at all actually, ja ja. So we went the day before instead, which was a much better idea. No crowds and no fireworks.

We´d been to Valpo before in 2007 and loved it - it´s one of those cities you can keep discovering. It´s beautiful and charming, if a bit run-down and rough around the edges. It definitely doesn´t have the slightly artificially tinge of the likes of Pucon and Bariloche. This time we got to visit one of Neruda´s houses too, La Sebastiana, which was fantastic - one of the highlights of our trip so far. Perched on top of one of the cerros (hills), it had views of the entire bay. Neruda himself said the sea was "was so big, unruly and blue that it fitted nowhere. That's why they left it in front of my window”.

So just two days remain in Chile Part 1, before we head to Rio. Two days for Barclays to get their act together and send me a replacement card and two days for Mauro to make the most of his family. But Chile Part 2 is only a few months (and three countries) away so it´s "hasta luego" and not "adios". Meanwhile, it´s now time for some dulce de leche action (or ´manjar´as the Chilean calls it...mmmm). Hasta luego and a heartfelt "happy new year!" to all our friends and family.

Christmas in Santiago

2009-12-27T13:03:00.000-08:00

... well, it was pretty different from a UK Christmas! There was still a certain amount of pre-Christmas hysteria (not that much fun in 30-degree heat), but markedly less than there would have been back home, and it was pleasantly surreal to go for a midnight stroll on the 24th - to give Father Christmas a chance to drop by and leave presents for the little´uns - and then to spend most of the 25th outside in the garden.

No one so far has managed to give me an adequate explanation of why everyone calls it "Pascuas" (which also means "Easter", bafflingly), instead of "Navidad" (the actual word for Christmas). The tiramisu never happened in the end (difficulty finding the ingredients) but we managed to rustle up some treats for both sides of the family all the same, and they seemed to go down a storm - the chocolate fudge in particular was scoffed in about two minutes flat (mostly by the same person, it must be said!!)...

Brilliantly enough, my cousin Caíto was playing in an AC/DC tribute band on the 25th as well, (Ballbreaker - who cleverly have two lead singers in the ranks, both a Bon Scott and a Brian Johnson!) so a few of us headed out to catch that. Much to my glee there was also a Kiss tribute band on first, though the Pantera tribute band that followed (and played a seemingly endless set) dampened the mood slightly.

The next morning, after a few hours´sleep, and with the inevitable hangover, I decided it would be a good idea to get up and watch Spurs playing at Fulham, though to be honest I would have been far better off staying in bed - which is where I went straight back to at the end of the match...

There´s an election run-off going on here at the moment, between Frei (centre-left, was in power a few years ago, not very popular) and Piñera (right, multi-millionaire, slick campaign), it seems the latter is going to profit from the "let´s try something new" mindset that will probably see David Cameron as the British PM by the time we get home... That´s one face neither of us have been missing!! Hilariously, the table of six and seven-year-olds at the Xmas party on the 25th were overheard discussing whether they thought Frei or Piñera would emerge victorious - they seem to get into politics early here! (For the record, they don´t fancy Frei´s chances). Though some seem unconvinced - we enjoyed this bit of graffiti the other day ("`Las promesas de Piñera...mas falsas que amigo de Facebook"):

We´ve managed to get to grips with Santiago a bit better now, but still, I must say Buenos Aires tops it in pretty much every way (except of course for the fact that my family is here!). It´s hard for me to have to admit this, but I also reckon that on the whole I prefer Argentinians to Chileans...!! (Shock, horror) It seems I´m not alone in this thinking either, my uncle Ricky has dared to express this contentious opinion as well. It seems now we´ve become "the economic miracle of South America" we´ve become everything we used to slag off the Argentinians for, sadly... And hearing the casual racism towards Peruvians that seems so prevalent has been a bit depressing as well. We have another week left here for me to change my mind on this one...!

Christmas post

2009-12-23T12:45:00.000-08:00

Festive greetings from smoggy Santiago! We´ve had an eventful few days here in Chile. We loved Pucon. It was a beautiful mini-Bariloche - ridiculously scenic with shedloads to do, if slightly artificial and geared towards los turistas. Everyone kayaking and zipping and hiking all over the place. Mauro and I opted for a sedate, moonlit trip to some natural springs (Los Pozones), which turned out to be less sedate than we´d hoped as there were a bunch of rowdy Israelis in the baths with us. We had a suspicion the trip was by night because these springs are the most "rustic", so best not to be able to see them clearly, but we thought they were fantastic. Basically we sat in hot springs 1000 metres above sea-level and drank a bottle of wine, before our minibus took us back to our hostel at about midnight. Doesn´t get better than that.

In fact it was all to get a lot worse in Concepcion, a few hours further north... where I got ROBBED! My purse was taken by some sophisticated opportunists (this makes me feel less stupid) in Mauro´s uncle´s favourite local restaurant. The only place I´d let my guard down so far. We were told to expect more thefts because it´s Christmas time... Goodwill to all men and all that. That´s the Christmas spirit. Anyway, apart from Barclays now being #1 on my hate-list, I´ve got over this mishap and it´s all about the Nationwide. The only thing that made up for this in Concepcion was the fact that we stayed in the YMCA (it was - quite - fun to stay there, as it happens!). Mauro´s uncle Tito works there so let us have free rein of the accommodation area.

So now we´re in Santiago, and it´s a struggle getting Mauro to see its good points, despite the emotional pull of being born here. Buenos Aires it ain´t, but I think our opinion is skewed by the fact we´ve been travelling between his nan´s house and his uncle´s house, totally skipping the centre in the process. This is the equivalent of travelling from Acton to Croydon in a heatwave.

Today we finally managed to get downtown, where we had a lovely lunch and strolled into an exhibition of the Terracotta Army for just over a pound. It was brilliant. I have to go now and find some mascarpone somewhere in this city so I can make some tiramisu for Mauro´s enormous family do on Friday. But we wanted to write today to wish everyone a very happy Christmas. UN BESAZO PARA TODOS!!!!

lakes and volcanoes

2009-12-16T15:51:00.000-08:00

Well, we´re now in the Chilean lake district. The lake crossing was so scenic, we almost got immune to the natural beauty after a while! It´s nice being back in the old country again, with people saying "po" at the end of every sentence. There´s a lot of Germans in this area (Swiss also), they clearly love it, and with good reason. It looks kinda like this:

Chile is proving a lot more expensive than Argentina. Chileans, around here anyway, also seem, controversially perhaps, a good deal chubbier than their neighbours (despite all that steak, it looks like the Chilean appetite for cake and empanadas gives them the edge! ) Becka is struggling to maintain her boycott of Nestle products in Chile, by the way. They even run the bottled water!

In Puerto Octay (population 2,500!), or to be precise, a coupla miles out of town, we stayed at the incredible Zapato Amarillo, in THIS house...

We couldn´t quite get over it. It also featured the most comfortable bed we are likely to encounter on our entire trip (and possibly our lives):

We also had our first ever hitch hiking adventure there - it was only down to the town, and with a cheerful old local lady, so not exactly fraught with danger, but exciting nonetheless!

Oh, here´s a picture of me giving respect to Bernardo O´Higgins, who liberated Chile from the Spanish (not on his own, obviously).

We really didn´t want to leave Puerto Octay for Valdivia at all, but once we got there, we got quite into it, once we found an excellent cafe bar called Moro, which saved us from having to go to Schopp Dog (for a schopp = draught beer). However, we then got careless over our choice of dining establishment and wound up having the WORST MEAL OF OUR TRIP so far... dunno what the restaurant was called (it might not have actually had a name), but we should have smelled a rat when we turned out to be the only people in there all night... Becka´s "mariscal" (seafood broth) was so salty as to be inedible, and my "pollo al jugo" was, frankly, a disgrace. I would rather forget all about our starter...
Would´ve been less infuriating had the waitress been able to grasp the difference between fizzy and still mineral water, or between half bottles and quarter bottles of wine... Maybe we should have gone to Schopp Dog after all. Still, you move on, which is what we did, to Pucon, (again, absurdly attractive), considering going to some thermal spas tomorrow. Then it´s off to Concepcion to meet up with my uncle Tito...

Bariloche

2009-12-13T18:13:00.000-08:00

Thought I´d update this before I pack for more travels tomorrow. We´ve just spent three nights in Bariloche and we could easily spend a few more - it´s absurdly beautiful here. The 12 -hour bus journey from Trelew was like a scenic tour in itself. Bariloche is perched by a beautiful lake and has the snow-capped Andes in the background. It´s a good thing fireworks are illegal here cos there´s so many Swiss chalet-style wooden buildings - and lots and lots of trees. There´s also an abundance of great restaurants (with Patagonian specialities including wild boar, lamb and trout) and a few really nice bars. Just when I thought the place couldn´t get any better, I find out it´s got the best chocolate and ice-cream in Argentina. There are chocolate shops all over the place. Clearly I should´ve come here AFTER the beach part of the trip (ie Brazil).

For the past two days we´ve been taking in the scenery. Yesterday we took una excursion to see the base of a breathtaking mountain that occasionally emits impressive thundery sounds (Monte Tronador). All the usual nature/scenic suspects - waterfalls, lakes, hills, trees, rainbow (just the one)...and also a huge patch of very strange black ice (which I still might not believe is actually ice). We met a lovely couple, Van and Chris, who had a lovely hirecar and who invited us out in it today. We met them up in the hills, a 3k stroll down a dirtpath from where the bus dropped us off. Mauro´s been referring to this as ´our hike´ all day. (Incidentally Van works next door to us in the Media Centre on Media Boulevard, so we might meet up for coffee in Mangiare when Argentina is a distant memory!)

Also, we finally got to try some mate! I was slightly apprehensive after our guide told us it was rude to say you don´t like it, say it´s too hot or make any kind of grimace while swallowing it, but actually it wasn´t too bad at all. It tasted to me like a mixture between green tea and tobacco, both of which I like, so probably a taste I could acquire given a small amount of perseverance. I´m well into the idea of it anyway.

Tomorrow we´re up bright and early for the Cruce de los Lagos - an all-day lake crossing that will take us to Chile. So I´m not spending a minute more of my last night in Argentina in el blogosphere! Hasta Chile...

whale of a time

2009-12-10T14:49:00.000-08:00

... haha couldn´t resist that!!

Anyway we´re now in Patagonia, where they have "four seasons in one day" (as someone once sang). The 18-hr bus ride was fine in the end, managed to get a decent amount of shut-eye (probably more than Becka, who was surrounded by a symphony of snoring), and watched two films involving John Travolta, The Taking of Pelham 123 and Wild Hogs. We actually enjoyed the latter quite a lot - maybe we were just hysterical by that point...

This is also something to bear in mind on these coaches:

No shit.

Yesterday we went to Peninsula Valdes to try and see some whales - as it turned out, the sun shone, and shedloads of whales came out, which was fortunate as it´s by no means guaranteed, plus this is the last week before the end of whale season, apparently! We were going to stick some video up of them, but that may have to wait till we are somewhere with a faster internet connection.

Following that, a visit to see the elephant seals, and the realisation that not much is better than being an elephant seal (well, if they survive attacks by orcas, of course). They just seem to lollop about on the beach, burping occasionally, ALL DAY LONG. Every so often a couple of them seem like they want to start a ruck with each other, but they run out of energy before they move very far, so it doesn´t ever really get off the ground. As our guide (rather enviously) pointed out, the males also have harems of 40-50 females, so that probably keeps em pretty busy anyway.

Today we had the savage Patagonian wind and rain, and saw young dolphins, which we attempted to take pictures of, but they´re the fastest dolphins in the world so they don´t hang about. And then.. penguins in Punta Tombo!! Nearly half a million of them to be exact. We got close enough to hear them sneeze. And watch them waddling about, going about their hilarious business.

Then on to see the "Welsh" region of Patagonia, and visit the village of Gaiman, which I thought would have a more interesting story behind its name than it actually did. We skipped the "traditional Welsh tea" cos, to be honest, it looked crap, and cost an extortionate 45 pesos.

At the hostel and on the trips we´ve encountered a variety of different nationalities - hungover Germans, moaning French, helpful Basques, Israelis who refuse to believe Becka can´t speak Hebrew, and best of all, the Dominican who works the overnight stint at the hostel, who livens up his 12-hour shift by getting a salsa party for one going in reception, disco lights and all...

PS Brilliantly, there´s been very little mention of Christmas over here so far - that´s one thing we´re not missing about home! Esta noche, Bariloche...

san telmo

2009-12-06T15:31:00.000-08:00

Back in Buenos Aires, we´ve been lodging in San Telmo these last few nights, on the other side of town from where we were before... Famed for its cobbled streets and bohemian arty scene, I have to admit it took us (well, me in particular) a while to get the hang of the area - a few too many wasters and down-and-outs staggering about the place in various states of intoxication/lunacy, basically lots more people who you´d cross the road to avoid, looming out of doorways at you. (Characters like these two:)

The place we´re staying in took a bit of adjusting to as well. It´s a beautifully restored 1840s house with just seven rooms, most of which open out onto a lovely little garden with benches and a fig tree. The owners steer well clear of the place, so it tends to be just the guests, the cat, and various unintroduced characters drinking mate in the garden, smoking cigars and cooking in the kitchen.

The guests all seem to be eccentric tango aficionados in their 40s or 50s (Bavarian farmers,

Iranian bon viveurs... all sorts), who come on their own year after year to dance tango. So the first night, we´re trying to figure out where everything is and this Russian lady enters the kitchen dolled up in her tango gear asking us which milonga we were visiting that night. By the next day, we´re fixing the electricity in the place ourselves, after it´d been down for most of the day!

But after a couple of days, we got used to the anarchic and fiercely independent spirit of the area, and today (Sunday) San Telmo seemed to come into its own. Bands playing in the street, spontaneous tango dancing (as spontaneous as it can be when it´s geared towards tourists) and a lively street market. Feels a lot safer!

Today we visited the Mataderos fair in a faraway part of town hardly any tourists go to these days, in search of some gaucho action...

Our taxi driver put the fear of God into us about venturing a block too far in any direction - but we not only had nothing nicked (hooray!), we actually had an excellent day out. Scoffed some locro and a couple of empanadas for lunch with a glass of vino patero, watched this fella sing some stirring odes to gaucho life...

Next stop... Patagonia!! (after the 18-hour coach journey! Let´s hope the "cama ejecutiva" service is as comfortable as advertised...)

some impressions of Argentina thus far

2009-12-05T15:44:00.000-08:00

Friendliness
I always thought porteños were gonna be like Londoners or Parisiens or any other inhabitants of a major capital - always in a rush and with no time for foreigners. But in fact they´ve been much, much friendlier and more helpful than I ever expected. I´ve even walked around town in my Chile top and no one´s had a go, or even batted an eyelid, hehe...

Beef

Well, it´s true - they do eat as much of it as you´d think! Amusingly, el Che himself would never touch chicken, lamb or pork because he couldn´t bear the animals to be killed, however he had no problem with beef, which was apparently "different"...! And yes, the vast majority of the stuff we´ve had has been superb.

The Malvinas aka Falklands
They still want ´em! Actually, it´s probably worth them having another go, what with the British being pretty busy fighting in lots of other places at the moment... (joke!!!!) On a serious note, it seems like the war vets from that conflict (who had mostly been under-equipped teenage conscripts, from what I gather) have had a pretty raw deal - you can see them in the Plaza de Mayo demanding recognition, seems like they´ve been pretty marginalised by successive governments...

Crossing the road
Really don´t know how more people aren´t run over here! You more or less have to take the plunge and battle your way across the road when you get the green light. Pedestrians really aren´t a priority, it seems.

Dogshit

There´s a hell of a lot of it about in the streets here. They could do with sorting that out.

Queues at banks
There´s been a lot of this - have still to figure out quite why they´re so huge (Jesus, the one in Cordoba the other day was MASSIVE! It was like a queue for Shakira tickets or something.) We thought to our horror that it was the queue for the cashpoint, but thankfully it wasn´t.

Rubbish

Also have yet to figure out what the deal is with all the people sorting through it in the streets all night long.

Graffiti

It´s striking how much of it there is of the political variety - support for political movements and parties (especially Peronist ones) is emblazoned all over the place, even expressions of support for movements as far away as Honduras and Colombia... this is something you don´t see much of in the UK! You get the sense this is a highly politicised country still.

Football
Matches are on ALL THE TIME on TV. Any day of the week, any time of day, seemingly, a match will be on - in the bars, in restaurants, bus stations, wherever. (I have no problem with this of course!) It seems you don´t specifically have to go to a pub which has rights to show football and have the obligatory pint to watch your team in action over here. (By the by, they seem very pleased over here with their World Cup draw.)

Schoolgirl uniforms
Surprisingly short skirts! I mean, I know it´s a hot country, but come on, it´s verging on Britney Spears territory...

Begging
You get used to people (often little kids) coming up to you while you´re eating, or on the tube, but generally they´re at least trying to get you to part with a few pesos for SOMETHING, be it a token cutesy card or a cheap notebook or some household item... It also seems to be the norm here for people to actually dig into their pockets and help out, rather than ignore them - even those who don´t look that well-off themselves. It´s a bit of an eye-opener.

Coffee
...has been surprisingly good. I wasn´t expecting much, probably because it´s generally so crappy in Chile!

Change
No one seems to have much of it. Retailers look pretty anguished if you ever try and pay for anything with a 100 peso note. And if you give them any coins, they seem absolutely delighted. Totally love it.

Climate change
EVERYONE is obsessed with it over here - apparently the weather really has changed drastically in the last couple of years. Is this a Southern Hemisphere thing perhaps? We´ll see if there´s as much talk about it in the next countries we visit...

Accent
Thought it was gonna be a lot harder to understand, but it´s been OK, as it goes. As for the language, it seems the particular Argentine way of distorting verbs (eg "vos tenés" instead of "tu tienes") is actually official - they get taught to speak this way at school! Should the Chileans get in on the action too and make their way of speaking "official" as well??

2009-12-02T15:48:00.000-08:00

Hello from sunny Cordoba (it´s Becka). I know we´re updating this quite often but it´s crazy how many new and noteworthy things you do when you´re not at work. One of my favourite noteworthy things we did the night before we left Bs As was go to La Viruta - another milonga-ish dance venue in Palermo. As well as dancing tango, lots of people were having lessons to 50s rock´n´roll and then it turned into a proper jive-fest. An elderly but energetic Argentinian man ended up showing me the ropes on the dancefloor to ´Rock around the Clock´. Luckily I´ve always been partial to a bit of jiving.

One of the not-so-good noteworthy things was the realisation that my 20-odd mosquito bites were in fact from...BED BUGS! Mauro had guessed this several days ago but didn´t tell me cos he rightly guessed that I wouldn´t sleep properly in that bed again. They´re revolting and hopefully that´ll be our last encounter with Latino bed bugs.

Anyway now we´ve just had a couple of days in Cordoba. It´s got a really studenty laid-back feel here and obviously we´ve eaten really well (apart from the ham and anchovy pizza...doesn´t work). Today we went to the nearby town of Alta Gracia near the Sierras. Che Guevara grew up here (cos of his asthma) so we went and saw his house, which is now a museum. It was fab (here´s a picture of me arm in arm with Ernestito outside).

We also saw a huge Jesuit estancia which was muy impressive but not quite as fab cos we´d been walking around in the sunshine all day. The guys at the hostel are having a BBQ on the rooftop tonight so we´re gonna pop up for a beer or two (and no doubt hear some more date-rape/bag snatching horror stories which tend to do the rounds). Back to Buenos Aires again tomorrow (we will go to other places soon, ha ha).

2009-11-29T15:27:00.001-08:00

It´s been a pretty stormy few days - when it rains here, it REALLY rains! Undaunted, we´ve been to see lots of live music - some Argentine indie, Argentine rock, and intended to see some rabble-rousing, foot-stomping north-west Argentinian stuff at a local "peña" last night, but instead got lots of mournful Chilean ballads!! (Which, of course, was amazing...)

Also attempted to meet up with some locals, friends of friends, but failed dismally - despite me asking various bemused punters whether they were Lucas. None of them were. At least the bar (Le Cigale) was cool - within five minutes they´d played Bowie, the Cars and the heavily tattooed barman had complimented me on my Cheap Trick T shirt so it was definitely my kinda place!

Finally got to the rock bar, Salon Pueyrredon, last night (the key is turning up AFTER midnight!) which was great - amusingly I noticed they advertised themselves as being in "Palermo Bronx", to set themselves apart from "Palermo Soho", "Palermo Hollywood" and even the more recent, and controversial, "Palermo Queens" (which is basically our own neighbourhood, Villa Crespo). But only tossers and estate agents call it that, apparently. Dunno if I approve of "Palermo Bronx" either, really...

Will miss Villa Crespo - even managed to vaguely get the hang of the local bus system! - but looking forward to heading over to Cordoba tomorrow for a coupla nights!

PS I went for Chacarita in the end, for those who are interested - they are the most local to us, after all! Though they also look to be in relegation trouble, argh!!

conoces el fenomeno Susan Boyle?

2009-11-27T08:27:00.000-08:00

A bit quieter these last couple of days, mainly due to Becka getting a bad tummy, not sure if it was the keppe crudo (raw meat with onion) we ate at Sarkis, the legendary local Armenian restaurant, though I had it too and have suffered no ill effects... In the meantime, I kept myself busy trying to decide which Argentinian team to support, I´m going for either Velez Sarsfield or Chacarita. Any suggestions?? I´m also considering getting some blonde highlights, I´ve seen this on several of the guys round here and it looks really cool. Or a semi mullet maybe. (this is Mauro by the way)

The good news is that Becka´s better now - we managed to head out for our "anniversary" dinner last night at Gran Bar Danzon, which was all very swanky (they certainly do swank here with the best of em), but a few too many business types in suits flashing the cash to make me feel entirely comfortable. Becka had to keep reassuring me that there were others in jeans there too. Anyway, it made me realise that really, I´m more of a Guerrin (Maradona´s favourite pizza bar) kinda guy at heart...

Had a try of Fernet, the national Argentine spirit - it got better after the first few sips, very herby, but basically it´s not a patch on pisco!

Saw the Plaza de Mayo mothers, some of which must be over 80, making their slow and sombre trek around the Plaza, which they´ve been doing every Thursday afternoon for over 30 years, holding up pictures of their lost family members, a very moving and sobering reminder of the grim, and not too distant, history of this country... This kind of trip would have been pretty much impossible a couple of decades ago.

Also visited the MALBA (Latin American art) museum, which featured an Andy Warhol exhibition, slightly incongruously, and this:

(this was a surreptitious snap Becka managed to take before being publicly humiliated by a member of staff there for daring to take a picture - expressly forbidden, apparently!)

So we are squeezing some culture in between mealtimes!! xx

noisy neighbours

2009-11-24T16:28:00.001-08:00

Got out of town today, took a day trip to Tigre (about an hour on the train) then a boat trip to Tres Bocas, where we had a taste of life on the river delta, and imagined being in "True Blood". all very peaceful and relaxing...

Tango is very much all around in this city, it´s no cliche - you can´t go anywhere without a picture of the old legend Carlos Gardel smiling down at you - we´re gonna go check out a "milonga", where the locals do their business, later on tonight, hopefully stay out of the way otherwise we´ll be obliged to strut our stuff too! lots of entertaining tube journeys, either featuring buskers playing heartrending violin or live comedy shows... probably wouldn´t get so far doing that in rush hour in London, but the locals seem quite amenable to it all.

Must say, much as we´re loving our flat - we´re not loving our neighbours in our apartment tho - this dreadlocked and probably highly stoned Argentinian with a penchant for blaring out reggae at 2am so loudly you´d think he was actually in the room with you, holding his speakers over your head. have been downstairs to ring the buzzer a coupla times and he fortunately seems to take the hint, but God help me (or him?!) if he does it again tonight... Had our meal out with the Brazilian couple last night, to be fair the steak wasn´t quite up to the standard of previous ones we´d had (and this was in swanky Puerto Madero - which is a bit of a tourist trap perhaps), but we now have offers of somewhere to stay in Sao Paulo (well, Americana, about an hour away, to be exact) if we can make time in our busy Brazilian schedule. But that´s a coupla months away yet...!

lots of love to you all - say hi so we know you´re out there!! xx

moved into our apartment now!

2009-11-22T16:41:00.000-08:00

Here´s a few photos from the last couple of days. We´ve moved into our flat now. It´s lovely and ramshackle with muy autentico old-skool furniture and a slight musty smell. We were greeted by a lovely lady called Alicia and a massive dead cockroach but I realised we´re gonna have to get used to the old exotic insects.

Last night we went to Maradona´s fave pizza joint (allegedly), Guerrin, in the centre of town. It was brilliant and cheap as chips (or pizza). We had a few slices washed down with sweet moscato wine and chatted to the waiters (conversation largely consisting of me saying "que es esto? y eso?"). On the way to get some churros in a fab 50s style cafe, we stumbled across a Socialist Party demonstration on one of the main streets. Loads of youngsters at midnight on a Saturday waving banners and chanting rousing slogans - so young and so politically engaged! Makes you proud to be British...hmm..

And to prove that eating is not all we´re doing... Today we wandered into La Boca (see photo of Caminito balcony). It turned out Boca Juniors were at home so there were hordes of slighly intimidating fans all over the place. Much as Palermo Viejo is leafy and stylish, it was good to get a different perspective of the city... and then get the hell out of there before it got dark!!

We also had a fab lunch (ha ha ha) in San Telmo - sweetbreads and meat from the parrilla. We met a nice couple from Sao Paulo and somehow arranged to meet for dinner again tomorrow night, despite the fact that our Portuguese is very poor and their English and Spanish much the same! So hopefully they´re nice but who knows...

The Cocina Discreta turned out to be just the two of us, so it was about as as "discreta" as you can get, but it was a great evening, and we´re looking forward to checking out some more of these "behind closed doors" joints. We´re settling nicely into our local barrio, have found a few less chi-chi bars (one of them played Devo until Becka started singing along loudly, at which point the barman promptly replaced it with some latin jazz), where they either give you free pizza, popcorn or monkey nuts (see photo of cool bar and Becka).

(PS have just heard that Spurs scored nine goals today. NINE GOALS!!! i think celebration may be in order...!!)

love to you all xx

2009-11-20T15:41:00.001-08:00

Got out of Palermo properly for the first time today... visited the Plaza de Mayo, Casa Rosada and wandered over to San Telmo which looks very promising - looking forward to staying there for a few days soon! As it is, will be sad to leave "Chelulu Trendy Hotel" as they've been unfailingly helpful and polite, and our room is lovely, but it's an exciting step to move into our rented flat tomorrow, even if I have a certain amount of trepidation about negotiating the stairs (apparently you ring the bell and wait five minutes till someone gets down them to let you in, so that'll be fun with our rucksacks!!)

By the way, forgot to mention the ice-cream we had the other night at Scannapieco (I think it's called) which was incredible - dulce de leche and pistachio flavours - certainly the best I can remember having! (Becka agrees)

Here's some photos to give you a flavour of things... including yesterday's legendary steak, me getting well into a book about Russia under the Czars in this 200-year old bookshop often frequented by leftist intellectuals, and us in the rose garden in the Parque 3 de Febrero... Becka has taken about 3,000 photos of street art/graffiti/stencilling, here's just one to be getting on with!

On our way out now to 'la cocina discreta', one of those supper clubs in someone's house that we read about in the Guardian travel section about a year ago. Mmm, spontaneous. It's breaking the budget but we're looking forward to it. (Becka: As long as there's no olives, sun-dried tomatoes or raisins on the menu. it'll be all good.)

bye xxxx

PS wore my Spurs top out today, but any fantasies I had about people slapping me on the back and talking to me about Ossie and Ricky Villa disappeared sharpish - in fact pretty much the first thing that happened was I walked right past an Argentine in an old Spurs top, I pointed at his shirt and mine in an attempt to bond but he seemed to have no idea whatsoever what the hell I was doing...

2009-11-19T16:17:00.000-08:00

had our first steak today... worth waiting for!! (At La Cabrera, in case anyone's taking notes) A massive rib-eye, it was actually too much for the two of us, what with the numerous (16) condiments and extras plonked onto the table as well! All that plus a very fine glass of red indeed and we were pretty much knocked out after lunch, Becka proceeding to knock the complimentary glass of fizzy wine over onto the next table. Had a wander in the Parque Tres de Febrero, Becka slept it off by the pond, then staggerered back to the hotel room to try and get some energy for the evening's activities - still don't know how the Portenos do this staying up till 7am all the time business! Probably not by tramping all over town first, I guess. Going to check out Ocho Siete Ocho in Villa Crespo tonight... and looking forward to a session soon at Salon Pueyrredon, the local punk rock bar ("for those who don't actually enjoy being spat on") - Mazliah's map is getting very well-thumbed indeed, I hope he doesn't want it back, hehe!

Just sinking in today that it is actually going to be SIX MONTHS. Freaked me out very slightly, but didn't take long to get over it, haha!

Oh yeah, did see some of the Uruguay-Costa Rica match, no one seemed remotely arsed anywhere we went, in fact they mostly didn't seem to know it was on. I see Ireland got cheated, very sad for them. And no Russia either, well at least Pav can relax now and get back to warming the bench without harassing everyone. See you all later!! xxx

dull first post

2009-11-18T13:40:00.000-08:00

Just to let those of you who care know, we've arrived safe and sound at Chelulu Trendy Hotel. It's not especially trendy but it's really nice. Journey went surprisingly smoothly. Off now to explore Palermo, and if I can get away with it, watch the Uruguay-Costa Rica game hehehe (this is the first Becka has heard of this). The weather is very nice - we will write again soon when we're less jetlagged and have more to say! xx

2009-11-15T16:34:00.001-08:00

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