South America

It has rained all night and now half of today. This is one thing that I am still getting used to, that the rain just keeps coming and then will suddenly stop. It will then not come again for ages, giving me just enough time to forget about this oddness. I am not complaining! I am really enjoying experiencing a winter where we see sun more than clouds, this is a rather revolutionary experience for a girl used to the London winters. And I am lucky to be working on one of the widest avenues in the city, so I actually see the sun. This is another oddity here; a lot of the streets are rather narrow, and the buildings rather tall, so there are often 2 temperatures - the one in areas where the sun shines and the one where the sun never reaches.
I was experiencing this temperature change on Friday when I noticed a building sign that made me laugh - I have discovered that I am working 2 blocks from the British Arts Council Argentina!! The collegue that I was with at the time said that I should try to get a job there, to which I replied that it was nice to know that I was so apreciated in my current job... (I know he didn't mean it like that though!)
I am so lucky with the job I have managed to land myself. I am working for a great company who really look after their staff. And I am working with some great people. My boss is wonderful, really thoughtful and supportive. Every one is in their mid twenties to thirties and we all get on with each other, with almost none of the distructive office politics that makes working in some offices a horrible chore. Friday was my boss' birthday and we all got together in the kitchen (where we have lunch together) to eat cake and give her the presents we had all chipped in to buy. The cakes are bought by the business and are from a cake shop run by an award winning baker here. I can tell you that she knows what she is doing when it comes to making the most delicious cakes ever! This is definately something that Argentina could teach the UK about...
They could also listen to the UK on a lot of things. This is something that I am really having to think about in my brooding about whether to stay longer here: there are so many things that I want to see change here! Starting, I think, with the littering, almost everyone will not think twice about dropping litter in the street. From taxi drivers throwning an empty cigarette packet out of their window, to bus drivers dropping the torn ticket stubs from their window, to your average Joe walking down the street and dropping the rubbish that he finds in his pocket whilst walking past a bin. I didn't realise that I would be so shocked about this, but it really does upset me. I am shocked by the lack of thought given to the environmental issues that are so much in the forefront of many people's minds at home. I really don´t want to know why my apples taste so distgusting if i forget to wash them. Organic eggs are unheard of here I think. I havn't seen anything fairtraid. Buenos Aires is an enigma. I am usettled by the thought that this wonderful city that I starting to know is so fragile. I am coming to this realisation the more time that I spend here. I am not sure how much people believe that things will stay on the up for very long, and this seems to create a sort of misstrust in people, more and more so the less money they have. Very shallowly buried, I think, is the 'every man for himself' mentality that people need to survive when a crisis happens. On the flip side of this is the wonderful attitude porteños have for the friends. Friendship is very important here, the day of the friend is very seriously celebrated here where as valentines day is almost completely ignored. People have a coffee after work, meet for dinner, gather at someone's house in a saturday night.
I am happy to be living in this city. I enjoy going to work every day. I love that I can feel at home here. I think that in 10 years time Buenos Aires might have the same environmental attitude as the UK does. This is, after all, a developing country. There are a lot of internal issues that are more important to most people than the general problem of global warming. So many people are living below the poverty line, with little hope of ever moving above it in their generation. Perhaps this needs to be something worked on before the citizens of Buenos Aires turn their eyes to the outside world.
And I have changed my mind about what I would change first: it would be the tea... and on that note I am going to end this blog and go to collect Alison from the airport; she has, afer all, promised to bring teabags with her.

Well it has finally happened - I wish I was at home at the moment...but only for the weather. Can you believe that I am actually writing this?! I am in the northeast of Brasil on the coast and London is having better weather than me!! This is simply not supposed to happen. And I am really starting to get concerned that I am not going to get a tan worthy of having been in South America for 6 months in time for going home...I have only 6 weeks left :O what a shocking thought. And not one that i am going to spend any time dwelling on. I still have so much to do and see.

But first let me tell you of the amazing things that I have seen and done recently... I am so far behind in recording my adventures that I am not sure where to start!

I am now in Pipa, a little town with beautiful beaches around. The majority of people come here to see and swim with the dolphins that hang out in the bays here all year round. I am lucky enough to also be here at the right time to see baby sea turtles hatching on Madeiro beach and being helped down to the sea by the conservation project here. They are so tiny it is hard to image that they will grow to be as big as the adult ones that I later spotted from the cliff viewpoint in the ecological park. That was yesterday in the sun on the beach and now I am looking out of the window at torrents of rain.

Although Pipa is nice I have to leave tomorrow as I stayed far too long in Jericoacoara and so gave myself no time to stop in Fortelaza or Natal on the way here. I turned up in Jeri expecting to stay about 3 or 4 days and left 3 weeks later! But I had the most wonderful time and met some awesome people. When all the boxes get ticked for enjoying a place it then becomes increadibly hard to move on. Wonderful place, wonderful travelling friends, kind and friendly locals, interesting things to do, a beach, good food and a great place to stay. I met 2 dutch girls on the beach on my first day there who I had met previously in Sao Luis. They were really nice and it was good to see familiar faces. When they saw me ill the next day (nothing serious - just a fever and a cold) they rescued me and took me to their amazing pousada. The rooms there are little buildings on their own set around a beautiful garden, one side of which was the kitchen and room where we had breakfast (this was completely open on two sides so looked straight out into the garden). Each room had a little porch with a hammock, garden chair and table and chairs. Every morning they gave us a most delicious breakfast of fresh fruit, cake, bread, egg, fried banana, coffee and fruit juice. I woke up each morning with a smile on my face.

So what did I do with the 3 weeks I had in Jeri? To be honest I am not entirely sure, but each day really felt as if I had filled it! I practiced capoeira (a very brasillian marshal art/dance from African roots) on the beach every day, had lunch and supper with friends, went to a bar with pool tables and played an odd brasillian version of pool, learnt (tried!) to dance forrô, walked to the top of the large sand dune on the edge of the town to see the sun set and rise, watched a few films in the sittingroom of the video shop on rainy days, and spent a lot of time in the hammock on my porch. I have to say that life really couldn´t get much better

The journey to Jeri was a lot of effort - I have never made so much effort to get anywhere! It took 2 days, 2 buses and 4 4x4s. A great experience though, and shared with a group of cool people - Matt (San Fran), Joán (Barcelona), and 2 German girls who I am having big problems remembering the names of (sorry girls but I guess this is an occupational hazard of the traveller). Matt was getting really pissed off on the 2nd day because a promised '2' hour rough 4x4 ride was actually 5 hours but it was a laugh or cry moment (well in 5 hours several moments!) and I had to laugh, especially when an increadibly old indiginous woman climbed into the back of the ´jeep´ with a long thin smoking pipe in her mouth and dribbled all over us in the process of sitting. Let me take a minute here to try to describe to you the 4x4 travelling experience. They are normally toyotas. I think that a lot of people would call them jeeps as they have a cabin at the front and then an open back, normally used by farmers and people who transport small amounts of stuff. These have been converted by the brasilians to also hold people. In order to get into one you have to either scramble up using a wheel to stand on or a wooden ladder supplied by the driver and then swing a leg over the side. There are wooden benches either along the edges or about 3 or 4 rows across the width. If you are lucky these benches have a cushion, but more often than not you, the lucky traveller, are transported along rough roads for hours on a hard bench with no padding sitting closer to the people around you than you ever thought would be possible. One of the roads that we travelled, I have just noticed, is described in my guide book as 'a very bad road'. It was fun though!

I travelled to Jeri from Barreirinhas, a small fishing town where people stay to visit the incredibly beautiful Lençóis National Park. This park is a landscape of white sand dunes interspersed with blue-green lakes of rain water in the wet season. It is one of those places that makes one emit an involuntary 'wow' when first glimpsed. The lakes of rain water were delicious to swim in and the dunes created beautiful vistas. Along with the Uyni salt flats this has to be one of the most beautiful places on Earth.

Before the Lençóis national park I was in the UNESCO World Heritage site of Sao Luis. This is where I met Matt and Joán and Johanna and Wille and the german girls.. and another couple i have just remembered about! (Finally I am having the travelling experience of bumping into the same people again and again ) Sao Luis is a beautiful crumbling town of old colonial architecture, incredible thunder storms, delicious pizza and too many caipirinhas.

Without going as far back as my Amazon adventure (I hope to find time to write about this in the next week!) this gets me up to date I think. Next I am going to Olinda and then Salvador, and from there I will fly back to Buenos Aires for 2 weeks to see friends made in my travels through Argentina. I am incredibly excited about going back to BA, which is helping to distract me from the awful thought that after this I will only have 2 weeks before I fly home. But let´s not think or talk of these things yet.

It has now stopped raining I am going to go and eat a papaya for lunch and hope that the sun has come out by then so I can go to the beach and work on that tan!

See you soonish London!

I am being very brave...I am on my own again and am not feeling too stressed about it. I waved goodbye to the majority of the Dragoman group on Wednesday as they drove off on the next leg of the tour (up to Caracas), and said the final goodbye last night to my tent buddy Usch. I was, for the first time, not pleased to be on my own again. I really enjoyed being part of the Dragoman team, they were all cool interesting people (ok so there were some prats, but I´m trying to be sentimental here) who I will miss.

Today I caught a plane from Manaus to Belém, which is still in the north of Brasil but a lot further east (the fact that I had to get up at 2:45 this morning to get the plane may be contributing to my sentimental and slighly melencholy mood). I arrived here feeling rather tired and shell shocked and made the mistake of letting a taxi driver talk me out of getting a bus into town. When we got to my desired destination (the bus station) he charged me R$15 instead of the originally quoted R$5. This really pissed me off and encouraged me to decide that Belém was horrid and I was going to get out of here as soon as possible. I am therefore now booked on a bus leaving tonight at 8 for Sao Luis, a UNESCO world heritage site. I have spent the last 7 hours killing time before this bus and have, so far; spent over an hour in the post office, wondered aimlessly looking for lunch, bought a pineapple (for 25p) and had a manicure, pedicure and hair wash and blow dry (for GBP2.50). I now feel rather pampered and, as a bonus, only have one and a half hours left before my bus and what better way to spend it than sheltering from the threat of a huge thunderstorm telling you all about my current mental state

The people that I have met since the horrid taxi driver have all been really nice (just like almost every other Brasilian I have met) so now I feel that I should re-adjust my first impression of Belém. However the parts of it that I have seen make me think that it has even less charm than Manaus and this is not helpful to readjustment. It is really hard to describe what this city is like in a way that will suitably sum up it's character, I'll give it a go though. It is chaotic, dirty (ingrained dirt rather than floating rubbish), polluted, humid, hot, friendly and threatening. And I need a bigger vocabulary.

Last night I met a guy who has just come from this direction and he complained about so many people coming up to him all day asking for money. This was a surprise as I have not experienced this really in the month or so I have been in Brasil. I have decided that this is probably because the bloke has been hanging out in westerner's hangout spots and I have been travelling through parts of Brasil that see very few tourists (please note a hint of smugness here). I haven't experienced it today either, but maybe this has had something to do with the 'fuck-off-i'm-in-a-bad-mood' aura I was giving off earlier. Needless to say I am interested to see what the coast of Brasil will be like in comparison to the centre.

As you may have guessed I am not sorry to be leaving this interesting city...and getting some sleep on the bus. Fingers crossed that the dengue fever outbreak doesn't get me and I'll be able to tell you all about the fantastic tan I'm getting on the best beaches in South America...

I have just had the most amazing week of my life! Rio carnival is madness!

I arrived in Rio on Friday afternoon after 25hours on the bus from Iguazu Falls. There is one massive bus station in Rio and I have to tell you that I have never felt more vulnerable as I did there. It was 1 pm by the time I got off the bus and the station was absolutely heaving with people. I had absolutely no idea how to get to the joining hotel of the Dragoman carnival tour that I was joining, and the tourist information desk had a sign up that read ´back in 10 mins´ with a queue about 10 people deep. The friends that I had made on the bus had disapeared and I was starting to dispare when I bumped into a british guy that had also been on the bus. He turned out to be my saviour as he was staying in the same area as me and spoke considerably better spanish, so we negotiated a rate with the taxi company (as instructed my his friend who told him that this would ensure that we wouldn´t get robbed by the taxi driver!) and off we went. I am telling you all this because I want to give you an idea of the first impressions that I had of Rio as I really don´t think that they were that far wrong.

But I did make it to the hotel in one piece, checked in and wallowed in the luxury of staying in a proper hotel! The afternoon consisted of meeting a few of the 90 people on the carnival tour, checking out the local beach and being overwhelmed the the humid heat of Rio.

Carnival wasn´t officially until Tuesday, but there were many types of parties (official and unofficial) to join over the weekend leading up to this as carnival has become a week long party that shuts down the centre of the city for 4 days. That Friday I went into the city to check out all the preparations and soak up the atmosphere

I have spent the best part of a week here in El Bolson and have had an inspirational time. I have discovered more things about myself in the last 6 days than in all the time that I spent travelling before. And my Spanish is improving a little!

I arrived here from Puerto Madryn which is a small town on the coast about 20 hours by coach from Buenos Aires. This was my first stop from Ushuaia and the continuation of my travels alone after my tour through Patagonia. This welcome start to my independant travels again began well. I met a nice guy from Austria, Groij, while waiting for the bus to Rio Gallegos from Ushuia at 6am and discovered that we were both headed for Puerto Madryn (19hrs from Rio Gallegos), and so could rush around together in Rio Gallegos hoping to make a fast connection. First though we had to get through a 12 hour bus journey, 2 boarder crossings, and another 3 stamps in my passport. Luckily I was sat next to a really nice Dutch guy. I think that we were both suprised by how much we told each other about our lives and ideas on life. I love this about travelling. I can sit next to a guy on the bus and because we are both in a country other than our own we start talking, and can have really intense and interesting conversations. This one really helped me to clarify some of the thoughts about life that has been simmering at the back of my mind for a while. I wish that we could have spent more time together as I think that we could have been good friends.

Puerto Madryn was a nice (but dusty!) little town, and was HOT so a very welcome change from the 8oC cold of Ushuaia, but not the blasted wind! I took 2 excursions there to see the local wildlife reserves of Peninsula Valdes and Punto Tombo, and saw Maguellanic Penguins (second largest penguin colony in the world!) and sea lions, elephant seals and numerous sea birds, and the most exciting of all; some live and wild armadillos!! These are amazingly cute and curious creatures and were very willing to wonder around the car park of the sanctuary while tourists clustered round taking photos. One of these trips also took in the delights of a 'traditional' Welsh teahouse in Gaiman. The Welsh settled here in the mid 1800s and this heritage is still visible today in some of the buildings and in the people. Although the 'traditional tea' would probabaly not be readily recognised in any welsh town and the teahouse itself looked more like a roman villa!

I stayed in a hostel in Puerto Madryn with Groij, and we came to a mutually helpful exchange of spanish lessons for debates about the finer points of the english language. I'm finding myself thinking more about the structure of English than I have ever before! However I seem to be forgetting an English word for every new spanish word I learn! Apparently this is rather like Homer Simpson's experience of learning how to make wine and so forgetting how to drive...

It was sad to say goodbye to my new friend, but I was looking forward to going on to El Bolson, which I had heard only good things about. I arrived there after a 13 hour night bus and took a taxi my hostel El Pueblito. It is 4 km outside of the town and has beautiful vistas of the Andes with a river running past outside the front door. The atmosphere is amost hippy with the staff greating every guest with an argentinian kiss on one cheek and friendly laidback attitude towards running a hostel! All the guests are Argentinian on holiday (and all seem to be from Buenos Aires!) and are very friendly too. It is a very interesting experience to be staying in a place full of Argentinians rather than international tourists, and has given me a wonderful insight into the Argentine ways, with the sharing of maté and rhythms of life.

A typical day here for me is getting up at about 9.30, eating breakfast on the back door step looking at the mountains and marveling that it is so hot here, but still there is snow on the mountain tops. I will then get the bus into the town and wander around for a bit, have an icecream, go to the supermarket, chat to a mate from the hostel. Then in the afternoon return for a siesta, then go to the river, or a walk and then have a shower before hanging around chatting to Lilen, who cooks a delicious meal for us in the evenings. (She has shown me how to make the very South American empanada I will then eat supper at about 10.30 with some wine shared with Lilen and a few of the other guests and the guys that run the hostel and then go outside to watch the stars. The milkyway is increadibly clear here, as well as the southern cross which is like seeing a friend again after I looked for it every night in Australia and NZ. I have seen so many shooting stars that I have almost lost count, but I have not lost my childish sense of excitement everytime I see one more!

My first day here I went to the supermarket to get food for the night and stood infront of the meat section. The choice was between some huge and obviously modified chicken breasts or very fresh steak, and for the first time in my life I decided on the red meat; it just looked so much tastier and more healthy! And it was delicious. This, as anyone who knows me will agree, is a massive change for me. I feel like I am a different person! And this sums up the feeling that I have about this place. I have found a second home. I think that I would be very happy to stay here and run my own hostel and live a life that could not be more different to the life that is in London. This feeling has become stronger after talking to Lilen and one of the guys staying here, Sebastian, about life in Argentina. I just identify so much with the Argentinian outlook on life here. It will be hard to leave, but also a welcome chance to see if the thoughts that I am having here are real, because they are so different but so welcome. My whole perspective on life seems to be changing, and I am finding it hard to work out what feelings are for real and what thoughts will seem silly after I am back in London.

So the next stop is Mendoza, and the continuation of my journey north. I will spend a few days there, tasting the famous wine from the region, before going on to Buenos Aires and probably staying with Sebastian and his family. I am very excited about this oportunity to experience real Argentinian life in the capital. But first a taste of the wine of central Argentina