Easiest country to get into- Uruguay on the ferry from Buenos Aires. You basically just get off the ship and away you go. I'm sure some Uruguayan official checked my docs as we boarded the ship but they all seemed to be Argentinian and I didn't get one question about my intentions in Uruguay.
Hardest country to get into - Canada. And I thought the arsey questions were just when I was going into Calgary on work trips (all time favourite being - "Why can't a Canadian do your job?"), but no they also extend to tourist trips. The woman seemed totally confused with the concept that I could be Scottish, be a permanent resident of Australia and want to travel other places including Canada. "Seems an awfully long way just to come for a week"..... Not quite getting the round the worldness of my trip! She eventually let me into the sacred land of Canada, which was a blessing as my polite responses were running out.
So here I am in Niagara falls having just watched the sunrise over the horseshoe falls from my hotel bed- tough life indeed!
Highlights of the Canada leg of the trip:
1) Knowing you're en route to Canada when the hosties voice on the plane is beyond high pitched.
2) Going up the CN tower in Toronto all the way to the super high bit that's 147 floors up. Great views of the city which was so much smaller than I expected.
3) Being beyond cold on the hop on hop off bus but determined to sit upstairs to see the sights. I am sooooo a warm weather person after 7 years in Oz and what the Scottish would call a complete sissy.
4) Not having to go outside the day it poured down as the hotel in Toronto was attached to a massive shopping mall.
5) The drive out to the falls via a quaint wee village called Niagara on the Lake was beautiful with the fall colours on the trees.
6) Opening the curtains of my Niagara hotel room and being absolutely blown away by the view. Up on the 15th floor looking right over the horseshoe falls with a 180 degree unobstructed view down to the American falls and up the river into the US. Thank you Marriott!
7) Niagara Falls area itself is a tale of 3 cities. The first strip is the amazing falls, gorgeous parklands, promenade along the river and just beautiful nature at its best. The second strip of land is like Disneyland crossed with Las Vegas. Casinos, every chain restaurant going, big hotels with flashing signs, trashy shops, amusement arcades etc. Then out the back there's a normal Canadian town with Tim Hortons coffee shops, supermarkets, gas stations etc. 3 strips of land all so different and although I'm fuelling the hotel part by staying at the big flashy Marriott I still think the middle strip is just a bit wrong.
8) Journey Behind the Falls where you go down the tunnels and can go out of viewing platforms at the bottom of the horseshoe falls was amazing. The sound of the water and the force of it crashing down was breathtaking. I also love that the first person to go over the falls deliberately was a woman in a barrel and that she did a trial run to test the barrel by putting her cat in it and shoving it over the falls. Thankfully the cat and the lady survived.
I'm now 45 days into the Mega Trip and later today will be flying off home to Scotland which I'm very excited about (see you soon Mum!). So far I've been to Santiago, San Andres island, Valparaiso, Cusco, Machu Picchu, Buenos Aires, Colonia, Montevideo, Miami, Key West, Toronto and Niagara Falls. Still to come is Broughty Ferry, Edinburgh, Bath, London, Istanbul, Aviemore and then it'll be homeward bound to Sydney. But that's not until 2014! I've got the rest of this year for more adventures and this next leg I get to do it all with my family. Watch this space for how that unfolds!
