Salta, Argentina

We didn´t spend very long in Salta, but we did spend a day out on the poor mans version of "Train to the Clouds". "Bus to the Clouds" may not have been as glam, but it was easier on the wallet and our hostel seemed keen that we go, so go we did. We spent the day being ferried around the highlands, stopping at tiny villages to buy identical llama socks, run around on the railway, ooh and ahh over the 7 coloured mountain (this was quite cool), barter over frankly ridiculous hats and stand in awe at the salt plains, which were in fact awesome. I´d probably rather have done the wine tour but it was a nice day out and a chance to catch up with Rachel before travelling to Bolivia for much more stunning (albeit freezing) salt desert action!

Brazil to Argentina, how hard can it be??

Ok, having the hangover from hell did not help, but we did not anticipate how hard it would be to get from Iguaçu in Brazil to Salta in Argentina. It would in fact take 3 buses and 2 days and a lot of confusion. The problems started on arriving in Paraguay in the evening. Who inconveniently placed this appauling country here I don´t know, but someone should have a word? No one spoke English and they all pretended not to understand our Spanish. In fact everyone was in total denial that our next connection existed. Exhausted we decided to check in to a cheap hotel, regroup, and try again in the morning. I went to the cash machine to take out 10 pounds of local currency, which would have more than sufficed for a night in the hotel and some food in the morning. Whether it was the hangover, the lack of sleep, or the fact the ATM conveniently knocked 3 zeros off the end I don´t know, but I found myelf standing there with approximately 150 pounds worth or local currency, some 150,000 in notes. Erroneous. Many expletives later we checked in to the "Royal hotel", expecting, as you would from the name, for some serious luxury. Instead we encountered some kind of concrete prison, with a stone slab for a bed, missing windows, showers that looked like they´d electrocute you given half a chance, and bedsheets originating circa 1900. Thank God for sleeping bags and ear plugs. The next day, by random fluke, we encountered the one friendly Paraguayan in the country who spoke English and furnished ourselves with a bus ticket to Resistencia, Argentina, which contrary to popular opinion, did in fact exist. Unfortunately we were held up so long at the border we arrived at the bus station 7 minutes before our connection to Salta was due to leave. Vicci hauled ass to the ticket office and I rescued the bags. Luckily Argentina is as relaxed as every other South American country and the onward bus was in no danger of leaving anytime soon. We settled down at the front of the bus, thankful our ordeal was over. Until we were hauled off the bus because the incompetent tart at the ticket office had sold us a ticket not for today, but 6 days in the future. We finally got sorted and the bus pulled away with us on it, along with quite a few angry passengers who weren´t loving the fact the bus had been held up to sort out our little problem. Thankfully it soon became dark and the baying masses fell slowly asleep, leaving us to reach Salta in the morning with no further incident!

Foz de Iguaçu

Words can´t do the falls justice so here is a short video, turn the sound up for maximum effect, it was awesome.

Aside from the falls, we did have an interesting experience on Melissa´s last night with us. It rained all day and we headed for a beer house in search of shelter. Here we met some very authentic locals named Fernando, Roberto and... Douglas. With nothing better planned for the evening we agreed to have dinner with them and off they went to make themeslves presentable. In the meantime I had spied Pineapple caipirinhas on the menu, which seemed like a thoroughly good idea. Not only were they one of the roughest drinks I have ever tasted, they were seemingly made of pure alcohol and my the time our dates had returned from their ablutions, I for one was rather wore for wear. The rest of the evening is patchy, though at one point we definately ate, in fact at an all you can eat buffet where my eyes were decidedly larger than my stomach and as a result a lot of my food ended up in places it shouldn´t, especially the vile pink ice cream I chose to decorate everyone elses plates with when they weren´t looking. For this I apologise. Later on that evening it was deemed a good idea to go back to our hostel, fetch our passports and drive across the border to Paraguay to party with the (mostly underage) locals, in possibly the worlds worst dance club. Border control it seems didn´t give 2 hoots that we were either entering or exiting the country, preferring instead to stay inside their cosy booth and watch whatever the Paraguayan Eastenders equivalent is, even though the car was at at least twice its capacity. At some point a headache kicked in, as did sobriety. Unfortunately the same could not be said for Mel or Vicci who didn´t seem to want to return to Brazil half as much as me. At around 2 in the morning when I wondered how the club could possibly top itself in the badness stakes, the world´s worst latin American U2 tribute band hit the stage and murdered every song Bono ever penned. Thankfully Melissa saved the4 day by falling asleep standing up and eventually it was declared enough fun had been had and we could go home. We rocked up at 5.30 and I headed to the toilet for my usual hangover routine. Unfortunately check out was at 10. This involved dragging evrything I owned into the corridor, checking out, then coming back, washing and packing. Then we headed to the bus station and waved Melissa off, sad times :( before tackling the bus journey from hell to Argentina!

The Patanal - Brazil

I knew we were going to have a fun time on our 4 day wetlands trip when, early in the morning, Mr Bean´s long lost brother bounded into the tour office and announced he was in our group. Alex is one of those people to which bad things happen, comedy bad things, but bad all the same. We were half an hour late leaving because he had bought himself a big secure padlock for his backpack... then promptly lost the key. The locksmith was duly dispatched to deal with the problem and eventually we were on our way. Alex was enthusiastic about EVERYTHING! I envied him his cheerful persona, but couldn´t help wondering if it was slightly misguided, given life clearly had it in for him. Anyway fast forward several long hours and we arrived at our 'rustic' wetlands lodge. For rustic read tumbledown, mouse ridden and in severe danger of slipping into the river. Not that I was complaining, we didn´t sign up for 5* luxury and we were not disappointed. Our activity for the afternoon was a boat safari up the River Miranda, so we donned our oh so attractive lifejackets and hopped on board. To say the pilot had a death wish was perhaps an understatement. I don´t know a whole lot about jungle animals, but when mere inches away from a hungry looking caimen, I am pretty sure the appropriate response is flight. I don´t think I have ever been so scared in all my life, mind I did manage to provoke it further by pointing my camera at it. I was at this point rathr surprised to observe that it didn´t chose to at least take a pop at Alex, he seemed a likely target. Back on dry land and I started to feel very odd indeed. The rest of the night is somewhat of a blur, but did see me communing with God on the big white telephone for the most part. I woke in the morning feeling like death and was hauled on to a jeep and forced to walk around the wetlands for several hours in the searing heat, looking for an anaconda. An anaconda that had apparently not been seen for 5 years. Still, when in Rome etc. I did get to see, among other things some awesome black howler monkeys, armadillo, capybara, macaws, deer, otters, more caimen, a lot of birds and a ginger kitten with fleas (bonus wildlife). That night, caimen hunting. Our crazed guide Pepino decided to find a baby caimen, pick it up, make us touch it and then to run away very fast from its rather irritated momma. I am not sure this was very ecofriendly but there was no arguing with him. At this point Melissa decided to develop my exorcist style illness and took over bathroom duties for the night. Guilty feelings abound as I couldn´t remember if I had breathed on her or not.

Day 3 saw us fishing for piranha. Alex was up first, so excitd was he to catch something he screamed, yelled, jumped and eventually whacked the poor thing in to the bank where it tolled off the hook and back into the river to continue its fishy journey through life. I caught a modest sized fish after several hours of trying. Ok, it wouldn´t have looked out of place on a maternity ward, but hey, it was my first ever fish! Thankfully both Vicci and the guides were more successful and so our fried piranha lunch was a tasty success, tasting in fact not like chicken, but like a cod supper, mmmm. After the fishing we dangled our bottoms in big rubber rings and went tubing down the river. Yes, the same river from whence lunch had originated, and from which many pairs of caimen eyes followed our every move. Well, all of us in fact, except for Alex, who had half climbed out the boat then changed hi mind and couldn´t get back in, instead choosing to cling like a limpet to the side of the vessel, one leg in and one out, til our guide decided enough was enough and more or less shoved him in. At this point he discovered he was in fact so tall that he could walk parts of the journey and seemed a bit less scared. I think he probably thought that was the worst of the day over, but instead we spent the afternoon horse riding. How the poor horse took his weight I don´t know, but it toiled on. Pepino was basically in total horsey control and they marched to his beat. Being the obvoius sadist that he was, he decided to make the horses run, fast, ignoring Alex´s pleas, first to Pepino "Please Pepino, nooooooo", then directly to the horse "Horse, no, horse, stop" etc. To say I spent the 2 hours wetting myeslf laughing would be an understatement, I nearly died right there upon my ride.

That evening, after a few beers to help the saddle sore, we sat round a campfire with our rater inebriated guides Marcello and Pepe. At some undefined point they decided that what they really wanted to do was swim in the river. The dark, cold, caimen/piranha infested river. At some other unspecified point it was decreed we would join them. In fact I was still making this decision, stood by the side of the river in my underwear, when a naked Marcello came flying at me and Vicci screaming "VAMOS" and shoved us in. It was an experience. A cold, dark one, but quite funny all the same. Thankfully we hauled ourself out the river in time to avoid the biggest storm since October 1987. We had comissioned Alex to take a photo of the momentous occasion, but he just seemed to keep taking pictures of a naked Marcello, who was pleading with him in at least 4 different languages to stop, however Alex had been posessed by the spirit of some papparazzi gone by and would not stop snapping. I got back to the room to find a massive spider had moved in to the spare bunk and was proud to realise I hadn´t run out the door screaming. It was still too big to move though, a cup that size had yet to be invented so I let it on its way.

The next morning we packed our bags, went toucan spotting, watched another group being far worse than us at piranha fishing (of course) and bid a fond farewell to the Pantanal, and Alex, who was last seen being dragged down the river by the very hungry crocodile...

Brasilia

What can I say about Brasilia that hasn´t already been said? Well I could say it is a lovely, green, well thought out, homely kind of place but then I´d be lying. Seemingly the result of a drunken one night stand between Milton Keynes and Swindon, this Brave New World meets Sim city nightmare left us cold. We had originally planned to spend a night here but sanity prevailed and we booked the next bus out. Sadly this still left us 10 hours to kill. We decided to hit the shopping mall as, well, this is about all there is to do unless you are a die hard architecture afficionado. We soon discovered that the pride of Brasilia and the flagship shop in the mall was (drumroll) ...... C&A - says it all really!

Perhaps the highlight of Brasilia was not the place itself, so much as the coach journeys in and out. Long and arduous as they were (23 hours and 18 hours respectively) they did provide us with much toilet humour. Literally. Something seemed wrong in the first toilet, I peered down and felt a breeze on my face. The coach had less a toilet, and more a hole disguised as a toilet, leading to the road. As for the second coach toilet, it was a design triumph. I first headed there in the middle of the night. The coaches aren´t renowned for their suspension and the journey to the toilet and in fact attempting to use the toilet itself can be rickety and perilous to say the least. Still, I reached my destination, pulled the door open, manoevered inside, closed the door (so far, so good), turned round ready to start thinking about toilet procedure, reached for the doorlock, turned. Light goes out. Odd, I think, turn lock open, light comes on. A few repititions of this procedure is enough to confirm that yes, someone has designed a toliet that plummets you in to darkness when you have the audacity to want to actually use it. Genius.

Lencois

Lencois is a small town, once a diamond mining village, in the Chapada Diamantina area of Brazil. No, I had never heard of it either. But we decided to stop off there to break up the hellish 2 day journey accross to the Pantanal. 6 hours away fom Salvador, it seemed like a good place to stay a couple of days and enjoy the countryside. The whole vibe was very different from the coastal places we had been to, still laid back but a bit more down-to-earth. We decided on a pousada recommended in the guide book and set off from the bus station in the midday heat. Confidence in Vicci´s map reading skills was high and although the bags were heavy we were looking forward to the friendly guesthouse we had read all about. Quite what the Lonely Planet writer was on when he drew the map I don´t know, although lack of street names did not help, I am not sure. Add to this Vicci´s determination we reach the very top of the hill and soon we were quite lost, incredibly warm and rapidly losing the will to live. Strangely Vicci however was still bouncing around, as if she hadn´t just climbed the equivalent of the Eiger, with a goat strapped to her back. She expressed her doubts about my ability to complete the Inca trail and I expressed doubts I wasn´t about to shout/cry/fall over. Luckily we asked a local man the way and he ordered his son to take us there. The son did not look too impressed.

Once we settled in we picked our tour for the next day, which turned out to be amazing (note to self - learn some new superlatives). Our sleep that night was somewhat disturbed by a drunken German talking endlessely about Onions, and a rooster crowing all night, but other than that it was all good! In the morning we were given our uber-tasty packed lunch and packed off in a Range Rover with Ayrton Senna at the wheel. First we came to a waterfall, much bigger than the last one I visited, so we all stripped off and swam across the lake to play about in the massive jets. Our guide Carlos was a mentalist, jumping around, singing, pushing us down hills, laughing at everything all day long - we wanted to adopt him, he was ace! After that we visited some caves and went deep underground where they turned the lights off, which was really eerie! We saw lots of phallic shaped rock formations, cue lots of sniggering etc, and made a reinactment of the Titanic on the walls in shadows (you probably had to be there). In the afternoon we went to an azure blue lake and ate lunch, witnessed a mini-tornado, looked in some more caves, then went up a a mountain to watch sunset over the region. As you see I am no good at remembering names of things, so you will just have to make it up, I am not sure it matters anyway. We rounded off the day with a lovely dinner of beef steak, with chef´s special sauce, with some people we´d met in Salvdor, then went home to pack and prepare for ANOTHER bloody coach journey to the nations capital, Brasilia.

Salvador

We arrived in Salvador late in the evening, and from what we had heard and read we had prepared ourselves for the inevitable mugging the second we stepped off the coach. Somewhat perplexed we had managed to rescue our luggage and had all personal belongings in tact, we decided to aid the upcoming theivery by piling in to an unlicenced taxi and heading for a hostel in a dodgy part of town. After arriving and settling in to our hostel, which had echoes of strangeways about the bedrooms, piled as we were in triple decker bunks. Thankfully the check-in lottery had worked in my favour this time and I wasn´t made to sleep up with the Gods. Mel and Vicci were not so lucky, I did not snigger once, honest! We decided to take a wander round the streets and find some dinner, but the area round the hostel (in the historic centre) felt quite imposing and unsafe. We did seem to attract quite a lot of attention from the kids begging on the streets and the local men. After dinner we went back to bed wondering what on earth we were doing there.

Overnight something magic happened and we woke up to bright sunshine, a lovely breakfast and, when we ventured outside, some really lovely buildings and stalls and women wandering around in traditional Bahian costume and the now obligatory bunch of men practising Capoeira in the streets. We spent the day wandering round the markets, buying too much jewelery and eating amazing food at a restaurant overlooking the bay - my Feijoada (kind of bean and beef stew) was the size of my head! Unfortunately the next day the heavens opened but we did spend some quality time in a Cuban cafe downing Cappuchinos - which came as a bit of a surprise as I wasn´t aware I liked them! In the end we didn´t get to see as much of beach life there as we had hoped but we did end up really falling for the place and I´d definately recommend it to anyone on their way up the coast!