Kel & Morg´s South American Adventure

Hell! What can I say about Brazil. We have been having the time of our lives. Colour everywhere, strange and delicious fruit, juice bars ( I am going to need to go into rehab for my addiction) and not to mention loads of scam artists when you least expect it. As if I needed to be more paranoid than I already am!!!!

Probably my favourite part so far was our Amazon adventure. We did a 3 day jungle trip north of Manaus which included lots of what you´d expect + pink dolphins (not hallucinating) and we have not yet established if my malaria tablets caused me to see (or hallucinate) the giant bird spider on top of Morgan´s mosquito net. I screamed and the guide refused to get out of his hammock. Poor Morgan was dead quiet. I still maintain it was real as I can describe it detail for detail.

We took a slow barge for 5 days along the Amazon. We drifted through small communities living in wooden houses on stilts overlooking the Amazon and the jungle was the densest I´ve seen. Little kids in wooden canoes waited close to out boat, and as soon as we got close, the child at the back rowed as quickly as his little arms could manage and the kid at the front produced a giant fish hook that they hooked on our boat to catch a ride. They then proceeded to jump onboard and sell us jungle fruits and giant bags of sun-dried prawns. We also learned to scoff our meals in 5 minutes or risk going hungry as well as meeting loads of friendly Brazilians. For me this fulfilled a life long dream to see the jungle yet I still can´t wait for an opportunity to go back.

Morgan´s 30th Birthday was, well memorable. Morgan expressed a desire to celebrate it at Iguazu Falls in Argentina, surrounded by fat juicy steaks and copious, cheap red wine.
So we set about trying to reserve a nice hotel, only to discover that his birthday fell on Easter Saturday and the city was completely full, except for one shabby looking hostel. We paid a deposit and reserved the hostel to secure our beds, only to arrive and be told there had been a mistake and that we could bugger off. We ended up sleeping in our own hammocks that night. To try and make the most of a bad situation, we went out for a nice dinner. As soon as we were seated, there was a black out! All in all, I think he ended up enjoying himself although he´s looking forward to a belated 30th party with family and friends on our return.

Anyhoo, we are off tomorrow to Bonito to snorkel in a clear river, full of colourful tropical fish. After a short stint in the Panthanal, we are off to Bolivia (thank God as Brazil has been savage to our budget).

Hey all,

As always, apologies for the community email. We´ve been quite active and it´s been harder than I expected to get on the email.

At the moment Morg´s and I are in Bariloche in the Lake District of Patagonia. It´s so incredibly beautiful here, crystal blue lakes framed by white snow capped mountains - not to mention the abundance of adventure sports. So far we have gone cycling around the lakes - they negelcted to mention when we booked the bikes that 20km of the 24km circuit was uphill. We also went rafting a couple of days ago on the Rio Manso which runs into Chile.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=25679&l=1f1c6&id=561432791

We had our first lesson a week ago with booking ahead in high season. We arrived in Argentinian Patagonia at 11pm at night after 2 long days in a bus from Santiago, only to discover that of the hundreds of hostels in Bariloche, there was not a single bed available. After an hour and a half of wandering around, we luckily we found 2 beds. By this stage we were contemplating sleeping on the lake with our sleeping bags so we were quite stoked. Needless to say we have spent a couple of days organising all our hostels and transport for the rest of Patagonia.

We leave for El Calafate in southern Patagonia tomorrow which will be yet another 36 hours on a bus.

Here´s a bit of a catch up on everything else we´ve done over the last few weeks

ARGENTINA -Cordoba - Northern Argentina and cattle country. We went to the biggest Tenedor Libre in Argentina - it must have been the size of a football field. Otherwise Cordoba is a University town and we were there for the end of the university year. Wow!! Morgs and I were Grandpa and Grandma when we went to bed at 2am every night.
Alta Gracia has a Che Guevarra museum which I really enjoyed.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=23640&l=dc942&id=561432791


Mendoza
We caught a local bus out to the bodegas in Maìpu, and in hindsight we should have rented the bikes as it´s not much chop walking around in 40 degree heat. You think we´d have learnt from our experience in Morrocco.

We also went out trekking, abseiling in a little town outside of Mendoza, followed by a relaxing couple of hours in natural hot baths. Check out some of the photos here
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=23641&l=446a2&id=561432791

CHILE

Santiago - People keep telling us that Santiago is not very nice, but we had an amazing time. We stayed in a lovely hostel in Bella Vista called La Chimba were we spent Christmas day. The owner of the place put on a lovely feast. In the evening things degenerated after a few too many drinks and the Aussies started a ´thong slapping´ game.

We hiked up Cerro Santa Lucia, took the funicular up to Cerro San Cristobal to see the big Mary statue at the top of Parque Metropolitian and the zoo.

The temporary exhibit at the Museo Chileno de Arte Precolumbino was an eye opener.

Viña del Mar & Valpariso- We spent New Year´s eve in Valpariso, a beach (??) town famous for having the biggest firework display in South America. After the hype up, I must say that Valpariso was a bit of a dissapointment. On our first day, Morgan and I took a bus to Valpariso in search of the local beach. After a while we still couldn´t find the beach and the bus took off up into the mountains. After about 10minutes we decided we were screwed and asked the bus driver when he was returning. He wasn´t and he thought it was hilarious that we thought there was a real beach. We got dropped off and made our way down on another bus.

The fireworks on NY´s Eve were spectacular and we tried pisco sour, a local Chilean drink made of grapes - let´s say it certainly packs a punch.

The beach at Viña del Mar was much nicer.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=25677&l=e4bca&id=561432791

Hope all is well,

Hugs
Kelly

Hi all,

It´s been an eventful and somewhat trying week since I last wrote.

I´ve uploaded more photos so click here if you´re interested http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=27057&l=d4c05&id=561432791

After Bariloche, Morgan and I headed to El Calafate to see the Perito Moreno – the largest advancing glacier in the world.

Getting there was an adventure in itself – Our drivers would randomly stop for an hour to drink mate to stay awake (we had the same 2 drivers for 2 days), we got hit by another bus and ran over a traffic island, our bus was 3 hours late from their mate sessions so we missed our connection and our bus had to leave us on the side of the road at a police check point to hail down our bus to El Calafate.

Finally we reached El Calafate after 2 days of bus travel, with 3 buses to reach our destination. After recovering, we hopped on a bus and drove 80 kms to see Perito Moreno - the only advancing glacier in the world.. .It was amazing seeing this glacier, especially when walls would cascade into the water, creating a thunder noise that reverberated around.

After El Calafate, we caught a bus over to Chile to Puerto Natales so we could trek in the Torres del Paine. Let me tell you that the name of the place sums it up...swollen granny knees and a twisted ankle have led me to realise that I am not as fit as I used to be.

Overall, it was a 4 day, 80km trek (mostly uphill, over boulders and with our backpacks).

Day 1 - We hiked 22km to see a glacier and lots of ice.
Day 2 - 7.5km over varied terrain with our backpacks and daypacks. Set up camp then hiking another 14km (round trip) to see another glacier (this one was cool!) and waterfalls. We could hear ice crashing down the mountains all night from our tent.
Day 3 - Owww!!!! 22km with our backpacks, me falling in freezing cold rapids, swollen knees, a twisted ankle.
Day 4 - Scrambling up boulders (literally) to the pinacle of our trek, The Torres.

After another 2 day bus trip, we´re now in Buenos Aires for a week where we will be enjoying a bit of R&R, seeing some tango and watching futbol.

On Monday we head to Salvador for Carnaval which looks set to be a blast!

It´s been a while since I last wrote, primarily because Uruguay and Argentina have really ancient, slow computers (I´m talking circa early 90s). Apparently some of the poorest countries such as Bolivia and Equador have faster, more modern computers. Ironic isn´t it?

Since I last wrote, we have visited a couple of beaches in Uruguay - Punta del Este and Punta del Diablo. Punta del Este was like a South American Gold Coast - expensive and overcommercialised. We skipped out of there after a night, especially as we were paying US$17 per person to share a dorm room in the 1949 Hotel with 7 smelly boys. UGH! For some reason, even though we specify ´mixed dorm´ there are never any other females in the room. I´ve spoken to a couple of single people since then who loved the place but for a couple, it didn´t feel like anything special.

I have to say that until that point, Uruguay had been a bit of a let down. Don´t get me wrong, the people are so friendly and it´s lovely country - it was just very similar to the landscape at home.

The next day, we caught a bus the next day to Punta del Diablo, a small beachside town in the north of Uruguay with only 700 inhabitants. We were dropped off on the highway more than 5km from the beach so we convinced a local to give us a lift in the back of his ute - problem was that there must of been a dead cow there prior to our lift. Punta del Diablo was breathtaking! We walked down to the beach, which was lined with cabins literally on the beach. Because we arrived on a Monday and it wasn´t quite high season we were able to negotiate a cute little cabin on the beach for only 500 pesos night (US$25). The best bit is that the seafood in Punta del Diablo is fresh, delicious and affordable. So Morgan and I went to the local pescaderia and got a kilo of fresh prawns, some calamari and a 174 kilo of mussels and went and gorged outselves in our cabin with a bottle of the local red, Tannat.

We spent the next couple of days lazily exploring desserted beaches, (we saw a dead seal washed up on the sand) and visiting some of the local cafes. Despite my desire to set down roots then and there, we knew we had come to travel so we headed to Montevideo where we took an overnight bus to Cordoba, Argentina.

The bus itself from Montevideo was an experience. I asked about 5 different companies how much a ticket would cost for the overnight trip, a 15 hour journey. Despite the lonely planet suggesting it should cost US40, the best price I was given was $US80 which was a huge blow to our budget but as we didn´t really enjoy Montevideo, we were keen not to spend any more nights there. Defeated, we paid the money to Flechabus and with our tails between our legs, bought some food supplies for the trip. Well!!!! We obviously had not taken a night bus in that part of the world before! First, we eyed the baggage porter almost falling over under the weight of his tips, then the attendant insisted that we give him our passports so we could sleep across the Argentinian/ Uruguayan border crossing. We boarded and realised that we were taking a first class bus to Argentina. The seats, or ´armchairs´ were extremely plush and reclined back to almost 180 degrees and we even had a leg rest that supported our legs and feet to make us comfy. We ate the dinner we had brought for ourselves, only to be presented with a hot dinner straight afterwards, followed by wine, whisky and dessert as we watched Angelina Jolie´s new movie ´Bewolf´. Breakfast in the morning was equally as impressive. So much for the concept of a struggling backpacker! It was first class all the way.

It´s been a week now since we landed in Buenos Aires and countless steaks later, we still want more.

We left BA on Wednesday - we wanted to stay in BA for another couple of days but our hostel was overtaken by a team of 8 year old footballers so we made the decision to move on to Uruguay.

First stop was Colonia de Sacramento, a pretty little town that used to be a smugglers port. To get from BA to Colonia, we took a 3 hour cruise across the bay - the water is a dirty brown which I assume is contamination, you definitely wouldn't´t want to go swimming in it. Last week Argentina closed the border to Uruguay (by land) due to an ongoing fight between the two countries. Apparently the Uruguayan government has built two paper mills which will be operational in a month or two. The problem is that these paper mills are built on the water close to the Argentina order and threaten to contaminate the water even more. Uruguay is arguing that it is their right to make money from this industry but Argentina has taken the environmental stance. I´m really hoping they don´t close the water crossing also, which would mean it will be a pain in the neck to get out of Uruguay.

In colonia, we stayed two nights in a local´s house, ¨La casa de Teresa¨ with our own room which had a lovely little courtyard outside and where we were woken to the sound of birds each morning. Food has been an interesting topic for us here. The steak is incredible We´ve enjoyed a number of chivitos in Uruguay which are basically steak sandwiches with the works - absolutely delicious!! Our big mistake has been trying to economise by self-catering. We bought some fresh pasta for only $31 Uruguayan pesos, (US$ 1.25) which we thought would be ace with a bottle of local wine and some fresh fruit and vegetables. There is a reason that Uruguay is not renowned for it´s produce - the pasta was slimy and the wine really knocked our socks off. Breakfast has also become a sticking point for us - they have a mouth watering array of pastries, biscuits and bread with ´dulce de leche ´condensed milk that´s been boiled in a tin - Delicious but I´m not sure what the long term health effects will be.

After that we took a bus to Montevideo which has been our home for the last two days. Today we headed out to the Mercado Del Puerto an treated ourselves to yet another massive steak at ¨"La Estancia del Puerto". Morgan had a ´vacio´which I think was just a simple rump steak and I had a ´pulpa´which translates to half a cow. Seriously, the steak was 15cm x 15cm and ´bien jugoso´(rare) of course. Morgan and I love our steak still mooooing and we have been getting some very odd reactions from the waiters when we order a rare steak with no salad. I think the rest of the world have been so caught up with foot in mouth disease that they insist on having it well done. It was a bit expensive $650 Uruguayan pesos which is about $35 Australian dollars, but we´re determined to enjoy the red meat while it lasts.

Montevideo in my opinion is not remarkable. It seems very quiet and there is not really too much to see and do. Maybe it´s because it´s December and everyone´s starting to go on holiday. We walked around town yesterday, down to the port and the cuidad vieja - which appeared to be the slum of Montevideo. We´re staying in Red Hostel and I think the place is the biggest rip off ever - $13 US dollars per person a night to share a room with 9 smelly boys, grotty toilets, unapproachable staff and they are stingy with breakfast.

We´re off to sample some beaches tomorrow which we´ve heard Uruguay is famous for - Punta del Este is our first pit stop which I´ve been told is like a mini Gold Coast. So expect tales of us frolicking in the waves shortly