Travel Blog

Our trip has come to an end. The months of working shitty jobs and dreaming about travelling only seem like yesterday, it's all gone so fast! The last time I wrote we'd just moved out of Alex's lovely apartment in Buenos Aires and into a hostel on the wrong side of the 16-lane highway separating the city. Each walk into San Telmo (the picturesque old district) involved a dice with death as drivers in Argentina seem to regard pedestrians as points to be won rather than humans to be avoided. Every Sunday a huge antiques market swamps the streets, so we spent the day looking at beautiful things we can't afford and buying snacks to numb the pain of being poor. On clear Sunday nights the square is turned into a tango arena, full of couples of all ages dancing to music blaring from rigged up speakers. We were with Alex and his friends Kelley and Emma, spectating a safe distance away. Inevitably I smiled at someone and was coerced into dancing.. I say dancing, but staring at the floor and following his feet woodenly can barely qualify! Each of the girls had their turn on the floor, and I had an old man's phone number by the end of the night. No, I don't know how I get myself in these situations either. Claire is trying to teach me the 'no, I don't want to talk to you' face, but I'm a bad student. We spent the rest of the night watching jazz and drinking Malbec, then Claire and I braved the walk home across the scary road, dodging the tramps colluding under the overpass.
Exhausted by a hectic week in the big city, we took a minibreak to Mendoza; home of Malbec and.. erm.. I'm sure they do other stuff there too. It was snowing as we disembarked from our overnight bus, so we dug out even more layers from our ever-growing rucksacks and set off for a day of exploring. Mendoza isn't particularly pretty; nice parks and wide streets but it's got nothing on the old colonial towns of Ecuador and Colombia. But we weren't here for the buildings, we were here for the wine. In our usual well-organised precision-travel way we realised we had no change for the bus, ran around fruitlessly asking shopkeepers for half an hour (no one EVER has change in South America), grabbed the first bus that came along which obviously ended up being the wrong one and ended up outside the police station looking lost. Once pointed in the right direction we eventually found Mr. Hugo, renter of bikes and pusher of wine. We rented our bikes (no helmets of course) and pedalled off along the road to our first winery. They're all located conveniently along a 12km stretch of the same road, so it's a simple case of cycle.. wine.. cycle.. wine. Easy! Even we couldn't get lost! We visited old wineries in converted barns, new wineries made of blonde wood and aluminum, family wineries with Grandma on the bottle and even a winery with each blend named after a different constellation. The vineyards look eerily barren in winter, and it continued to snow sporadically but the tastings and the fifteen jumpers we were each wearing kept us warm. Wobbling back from our final winery we noticed a policeman on a bike flashing his lights at us. Uh oh. Worried that we were about to get done for drinking and driving, we pulled over to the side of the road. Fortunately, it was just that I had dropped a glove and hadn't noticed.. the sole job of the tourist police is to follow drunk tourists on their bikes and make sure they don't get in any trouble! Quite drunk by now, we managed to get safely home on the bus after yet another glass of wine with Mr. Hugo and got tucked up into bed nice and early.
The next day saw us fulfilling my mum's wishes and finally going horseriding. We drove into the mountains and drank maté (herbs and hot water drunk through a weird metal straw.. ubiquitous in Argentina but definitely an aquired taste) to keep warm then mounted our shaggy ponies cowboy style, reins in one hand. Claire had a comically tiny pony. The countryside was beautiful; huge snowy mountains, wide plains covered in cacti and little rushing streams. We walked, trotted and begrudgingly cantered along the rocky trail, faithfully followed by the requisite pack of dogs. The ride successfully knackered us out for our night bus back to Buenos Aires, lucky, as it was one of the cheap 'semicama' buses with no leg room and overactive air conditioning.
Our final weekend in B.A. was a flurry of finding friends we'd made previously on the trip and meeting their new travel buddies. Mothers, spoilt daddies' girls, sexually predatory groups of men... we met them all. parties in Buenos Aires don't get started until after midnight and rarely finish before 6am, so we were thoroughly knackered by the end of our blowout 'goodbye Argentina' weekend. Always eager to make the most of every available second, we spent our days doing amazing graffitti tours of the city, visiting modern art museums and watching the group aerobics in the park, then spent our final day exploring the antiques market again with our ever glamorous and disdainful French friend Ornella.
After our best overnight bus experience yet (free whisky anyone?!) we pulled up in Puerto Iguazu to visit the huge Iguazu Falls. It was warm. More than warm, balmy! We immediately changed into shorts and flipflops and paraded our white, pudgy legs around the town. I blame the breaded goods. The next day Alex and Emma turned up, our hilarious friends from Georgia and Alabama who have the best accents ever and taught us how to play dominoes properly. We visited the falls two days in a row, once just lying on the beach and taking in their awesomeness, and once to ride the speedboat directly into the falls. Seriously. We were soaking, freezing and slightly shellshocked afterwards. The falls are incredibly massive, stretching from Argentina to Brazil. Rainbows decorate the spray to unbelievably paradisical effect. The park is also dominated by very cute and terrifyingly brave little animals called coaties (somewhere between a raccoon and a ferret) who will literally jump onto you to claim your cookies, as happened to Emma. Perfectly timed, just as the tourist train chugged past, turning us into a shrieking spectacle of hilarity. It was scary AND we lost our Chips Ahoy! Undefeated, we continued our picnic by the waterfalls, but on cautious lookout for furry little thieves.
We said a sad farewell to Alex and Emma before leaving for our final destination: Rio. We crossed the border with no hassle and were an hour early for our bus. We began to be slightly worried as we noted that Brazilian buses are not as plush as Argentinian ones. We'd got used to the 160 degree recline, the little meals on trays, the free wine, the good films. Our horrible single-decker bus pulled up and it dawned on us that we had just spent 78 pounds.. our most expensive ticket ever.. on our worst bus so far. I plaintively questioned the bus attendant 'no food?', 'no movies?' He chuckled, patted me indulgently on the head, and spent the next twenty four hours smiling at me patronisingly and chucking me under the chin each time he passed.
Once in Rio we found the cheapest hostel we could and settled down to write an emergency plea for somewhere to stay on couchsurfing.org. The cheeky utilisation of a misleadingly attractive photo ensured many replies and we were staying at the lovely Arlindo's house by 8pm the next night! We'd spent the day walking on the beach trying to ignore the rain, and walking around the centre trying to escape the prostitutes, so were glad to crash his houseparty. We didn't get to bed 'til 5, then spent the entirety of the next day eating junkfood, playing on the wii and playing uno. Ah, laziness. ten days in one city is a luxury, so we can waste a day or two if we want! Claire and I are incapable of sitting still for too long, however, so the next day was spent proactively visiting the beautiful old district of Santa Teresa, set on a hill and reached by jumping on a cute yellow tram which travels at breakneck speed. We imagined ourselves living in the ornate crumbling houses and stopped for lunch at a tiny restaurant overlooking the city. From our hilltop vantage point we could see the bay, Christ, the sugarloaf.. everything of note in Rio! We met Arlindo at his college after sunset and he took us to a favela, one which has been liberated by the police so is no longer controlled by drug lords. It even has a funicular! We rode to the top of the hill, then wandered the winding streets through the houses varying in completion from shacks to proper blocks of flats, led by little boys in oversized tshirts who chanted 'money, money' at us. We found the golden statue of Michael Jackson who overlooks the city in true Godly fashion (he filmed 'They Don't Care About Us' here) and took photos with him. Then, we followed the winding steps all the way to the bottom of the hill, avoiding the open drains and trying not to be nosey and look through people's windows. I am my mother's daughter. I cannot avoid snooping. Arlindo showed us how to do lots of the touristy things without paying, the best being the back trail up the Sugar Loaf (big rocky outcrop with awesome views over the city) then the cable car down for freeee. We had a few lazy beach days perving on the impossibly beautiful men in their teeny tiny spanky pants and moved to our next CouchSurfing host, who lived up a huge hill. Convenient.
After making a sweaty and disgusting first impression with Pedro we all went out for beers and snacks, then had an awful night's sleep on his sofa. His surname is Botafogo, one of the areas in Rio, which means that his family used to be one of the richest and most influential in the city! Unfortunately that is no longer, but he does have a lovely apartment. We spent the day with him at a nature photography exhibit and wandering around the botanical gardens, taking it easy after too many drinks the night before. That night we lugged all our stuff to the CouchSurfing weekly meeting-slash-party and drank caipirinhas at a bar opposite the beach while meeting all of the lovely people who open up their houses to travellers. We went home with our third and final host Tato, who is 6ft 5 at least and really quite scary the first time you meet him!  After another beach day we went out for the last time with Arlindo (even though we weren't staying with him, we liked him so much that he couldn't get rid of us!) to Lapa, where they close off the roads, set up millions of cocktails stalls and have a huge party in the streets. We danced to samba underneath a viaduct, drank passion fruit caipirinhas and learned a few choice Portuguese phrases to make the overly affectionate Brazilian men go away. SAI!
After getting home some time after 4am we woke with raging hangovers and Tato took us hiking in the Tijuca forest, the biggest urban forest in the world. In exchange for our little beds in the laundry room we made him bloody marys and a slap up meal, then had a few beers and cachaça chasers with his friend before hitting our beds hard. His dogs are the cutest little pug and Brazilian terrier called Lila and Cacao, which we dressed up in bow ties and designer jumpers and took to the bar with us!
Today we caught some last-minute rays on the beach, tomorrow we plan on hitting downtown and buying some choice tat for souvenirs, then tuesday afternoon we fly home! It's been an incredible trip but I'm excited to come home.. can't wait for my first trip around the world via the medium of wine with dad!