Getting wet at the falls!

The bus journey was almost as bad as we´d expected. Our seats were quite near the smelly toilets at the back and just 54 minutes (Ad was timing!) into the journey the little girl behind us started being sick all over herself . . .nice! Things didn´t improve and we watched Spanish movie after Spanish movie whilst being served hot slop . . . . definitely no whiskey or Tia Maria!

We eventually arrived at Puerto Iguazu and set off to see the famous waterfalls. Now we had heard great stories about these falls but really, come on, they´re just big waterfalls, how impressive could they really be?

Absolutely amazing . . . seriously, words just can´t describe how awesome the Iguazu falls are, utterly breath taking. After standing at the top and gawking at them for ages whilst jostling for prime photo positions with thousands of Argentinian tourists we decided to take a boat trip to the bottom of the falls. Whilst booking our tickets the boat operator smiled and just said, ´be prepared to get a bit wet´. A bit wet was an understatement to say the least.

We sat in a little speed boat and raced towards the bottom of the falls at high speed. We expected to stop a short distance from the waterfalls and were looking forwards to experiencing their ferociousness close up. However, our captain had other plans, with a wicked little laugh he steered us right up to the bottom of the falls so that the water was falling directly onto us. It was like sitting in a power shower fully clothed . . but worse!

The following day we made our final border crossing of the trip, destination Brazil. As we were pretty hooked on the falls by this point we decided to go and have a look at them from the Brazilian side. The views were even more spectacular and we also got to walk out on a platform above the falls and look down the face, pretty scary. We thought these views were good but apparently in the early days of Latin American tourism you used to be able to hire a mad boatsman who would row you to the top of the falls and then paddle furiously backwards while you happily enjoyed the views and took photos. After a while though the inevitable happened and a boat plummeted over the edge so that was the end of that. Pretty glad it wasn´t still an option as my travel partner would have definitely wanted a go!

And so we boarded yet another night bus (one thing I´m not going to miss!) and continued our journey into Brazil.

Horsing around!

As we boarded the bus that would be our home for the next 14 hours, something felt different. We had had to book the executive class bus as the others were full, but `executive` usually means that you get Spanish films and your own chair. This however was amazing, huge leather chairs with more leg room than you need and the chair reclined in to a horizontal position so that it was actually a bed. Things got better as the film was in English, a 3 course meal was served and then pre sleep drinks of Whiskey and Tia Maria were given. Why the hell aren´t all buses like this? It could have been an advert for Carlsberg.... "if Carlsberg made buses!".

Anyway, we arrived in Mendoza, which is in the heart of the wine region, feeling very refreshed from our luxury bus. As I said Mendoza is the main wine region in Argentina so as you can imagine just a little more wine was enjoyed during our stay here. However there was the added bonus of our hostel being on one of the many grassy plazas the town has. Our Plaza was "Plaza De Chile", the bonus being that as it was Chilean Independence day and there was a 4 day party going on with whole cows being roasted on bonfires and as much drink as you could shake a stick at (so this meant more wine, beer and steak!!! it´s a hard life!).

However we hadn´t come to Mendoza for the wine.... honest! We had come because the town is on the fringe of the spectacular Andean range and we wanted to get into the mountains. We had planned to go hiking but my knee has been hurting recently (probably gout, considering my current diet!) so we had to re-think. How could we get into the mountains without walking, but without sitting on a tour bus. HORSES!!!! One problem Ellie is very scared of them. Still it sounded really cool and if she could get on a motor bike in Vietnam horses should be easy. "Not that many people die in horse accidents El" I said as she climbed onto her horse "No, most of them are paralysed!" This helped her fear massively.

The riding was fantastic and Ellie, much to her relief, had the slowest most docile horse in the world and plodded along happily without risk of death. The scenery was breathtaking, although we were slightly beaten by the clouds again as the highest peaks could not be seen. My horse was called Mr Gaucho, which actually translates into English as "Devil horse!". He hated all the other horses so tried to bite them, spit on them and actually crapped on 2 of them. I liked him a lot and with a kick he liked to gallop, which my bum now doesn´t like much!

After a morning spent with our very different horses it was time to try a very different activity. We had considered spending a few hours abseiling but as the drops were only 18m we decided on canopying. I think that canopying is the official word but I would call it "zip lining". Standing on top of a mountain, connected to a piece of wire that spanned several hundreds meters of jagged rock and river 50m below me, I suddenly really wished that the safety talk had been in English. I Knew that if the instructor at the end of the wire started shouting and waving his arms around frantically I had to slow down. Unfortunately I had missed how to slow down and so had Ellie (our Spanish is still bad!). This however added to the risk of the activity and we just jumped off and decided it would be fine.

We spent several hours hurtling down different wires that screamed as you reached top speed. We managed to work out how to stop, in fact Ellie´s breaking was a little to strong on the last zip and she ended up stranded, 50m above the river with the Andean wind blowing her from side to side. After a quick rescue mission she was pulled to the end, much to my amusement. Luckily I had been ready with the camera when this happened!

We´re just about get on a 36 hour bus, Oh what fun! It´s not the executive bus either so we may be sharing our seats with several Argentinian families!

Having a riot in Buenos Aires

After a few days relaxing and getting tear gassed we headed to Buenos Aires (BA) in Argentina. We had heard some really good things about Argentina from friends, when I say good things I actually mean, the steak is amazing, the wine is even better than the steak and they are both dirt cheap, so I was very excited about our visit!

Once we found accommodation we wasted no time in sampling the "good things" ! In fact I went 4 days having steak in different forms for every meal WAHOOO!

While in BA there are several things that you have to do, see a tango show and visit the Evita Museum and graveyard (the others are wine and steak but I had done plenty of those!!). So the first night we were there we went to see a tango show. I wasn´t that excited about it, the thought of spending several hours watching some dancers dressing in different costumes to depict the history of tango didn´t sound that great to me. However I was amazed!!! I´d forgotten that tango started in the brothels of BA, this meant that for the first part of the show the women were wearing hardly anything. Suddenly tango was very interesting!
The next stop on the sights list was the Evita museum. It was very interesting to get a really good insight into Argentina´s political history and Evita appeared to be a very compassionate women who helped millions of impoverished people. However there were no half naked ladies there so it didn´t beat the tango show! The graveyard was a great laugh as you can imagine, but it was impressive, as every family that is buried there has its own crypt and there are thousands of them, all trying to be more elaborate than the next. But again there were no half naked ladies wondering around so the tango show was still the best by far!

Oh, our time in BA was not without a riot incident. While enjoying dinner one evening, watching the world go by outside the cafe, I noticed a small mob of angry looking people heading up the street. I joked that this could be another riot, the laughter soon subsided as the mob threw down a few tyres and set fire to them. They then proceed to attack the building we were eating in (actually it was the hostel above the cafe!). Paint and bricks were thrown at the hostel and the sign was set alight. The police soon arrived and the incident ended with no serious injuries and our dinner was brightened up a little too. It appears that the people were all ex-residents of the building who were evicted so that the hostel could expand.

We decided that as we were so close to Uruguay we should pop there for the day and see what another country had to offer. It takes about an hour on a ferry to hop from BA to the small town of Colonial in Uruguay. Uruguay was very similar to Argentina, everyone speaks Spanish and they like wine and meat. On a serious note the town was used by the Portuguese to smuggle pretty much anything in to BA to avoid Spanish taxes and has a real medieval feel. The cobbled streets, forts and old churches really add to the oldie world feel. We also discovered the worlds strangest plant pot in the form of and old car. Weird!!!!! We had such a nice day wondering around the old place that we decided to stay for the night.

Popping back the next day we headed straight for the bus station to catch our 14 hour bus to Mendoza. I´m thinking that another night on a bus will be slightly less relaxing than an evening in Uruguay!

A 'quiet' few days in Santiago!

So after the action packed time we had had in Bolivia it was time to relax a little in Chile´s capital city Santiago. Getting there proved harder than we thought though as the ground crew damaged our plane and it was cancelled. We can´t complain though as we were bussed to a five star hotel for an evening of luxury and free food. Our room also had sky T.V. (a real treat for us) and it was while watching BBC world news that we saw pictures of the riots in Santiago that had happened that afternoon. Whoops!

So one day later and with the images of riot police and water cannons fresh in our minds we set off again. Landing in Santiago we had no trouble finding somewhere to stay and it felt safe in the city. So we spent the evening enjoying the fine wine of Chile, WOW a bottle of fantastic sauvignon blanc for just 1.70 British pounds, Ellie thinks she has died and gone to heaven!

The next day however while we were taking in a few of the sights of the city, things changed a little. Out of nowhere there were riot vans, trucks with water cannon and lots of riot police in full body armour and all the shop shutters came down in a frantic unison. Feeling a little curios we went to see what was happening. As we got to the main road that leads to the Parliament buildings we found ourselves in the middle of reporters, camera men and photographers (all carrying gas masks!). After having a little chat with the one presenter we discovered that the rioters were expected to surface soon and head to the Parliament building to generally cause trouble. It was at this point that everyone started to cough and sneeze. This was the result of tear gas being blown down the street from where the police were dealing with some of the rioters. After 30 minutes of sneezing and coughing we decided that there was not going to be any action where we were standing so gave up and went to see some more sights. Fact of the day, for anyone thinks that they may be tear gassed by police in the near future. Take some lemons with you. Eating the lemon and the skin makes you less susceptible to the effects of tear gas and according to the photographers works like a charm!

Although we have not directly seen any of the rioting there has apparently been quite a lot of it and we discovered this morning that one of the riot police got killed yesterday afternoon. But don´t worry, we are safe and sound!

DEATH ROAD!!

Apart from the rafting, river zip line and generally taking local transport we had not been risking our lives much recently, so we thought it was time to inject a little fear back into our trip.

What better way to do this than to mountain bike down "DEATH ROAD". Now I know that lots of things have scary names when they really aren´t scary at all, but this is NOT one of them!
On average 1 person died on the 32km stretch of road every 3, yes 3 days. Mountain bikers have been riding down it for several years and on average 1 dies every 4 1/2 months. Being a bit geeky Ells and I did a few calculation on the risk involved with mountain biking down this road (unfortunately this was done when half way down, scaring the crap out El) and the odds of dieing while mountain biking are 6500-1. Thinking about this further we concluded that if you rode down as fast a possible with the lead guide the odds were cut dramatically. Which means that as that was what I was doing I stood a chance of about 500-1 of dieing (and we'd PAID to do this). These odds are the risk of being KILLED not injured. It turns out that if you get away injury free you have done very, very, very well.

So this is what we were going to do and what an amazing day it was. We started at an altitude of 4660m in snow and ended several hours later at 1500m in hot sun. Starting with a new tarmac section of road we wound our way down through the mountains, I was keeping up with the lead guide and was a little shocked when we started to overtake buses and lorries ( I think that this also cuts the odds of dieing even more, sorry Mom!).

Ellie was taking it a bit easier as I think she had already started calculating the risks. After this first section we got onto the real "death road", 32km of narrow dirt track that clings to the sides of mountains with countless hairpin bends and shear drops of 600m+ over the edge (this is Bolivia so of course there are no safety barriers).Every bend or long stretch of road was littered with crosses and shrines for the people who had died. It`s almost like the whole road a long never ending reminder of those who didn´t make it to the end.

As I was hurtling down these roads following the suicidal guide I suddenly thought about doing this in the England. I imagined going to the bank with a business plan. I could even hear the bank manager talking to me "So your business idea is to take people down the most dangerous road in the world on mountain bikes. They don´t have to have any experience and there are no safety barriers anywhere on route. You also say that you would like to go down as fast as you can and that the risk of death is about 500-1" It was at this point I realised that this would never be allowed in the UK and probably for very good reasons!








As if the risk of injury and death was not high enough just completing the "death road" the guide decided that I had proven myself worthy enough to attempt some stunts. The main one being to ride as fast as possible down a small down hill section and off some rocks into a shallow pond. This was actually really cool, although I got soaked through. It was so much fun that it had to be done again. As I waited to go I watched in shock as another biker (Matt) had a go, landed, came off and rammed his face into the rocky bottom of the pond. Luckily we were wearing full face helmets so all he suffered was cut arms, a few bruises and a twisted knee (well I say ALL like it was nothing, but he could hardly walk after!). My final jump ended without any injury, although it did make my back tyre explode, the 4th flat tyre in a week. It also caused Ellie to titter and mutter about too much good food and something about fatso, the cheek!!

So we managed to survive the day in one piece and totally unharmed. If anyone every finds themselves in La Paz with a day to spare and a REAL death wish, it´s definitely the thing to do!

4 x 4 Experience

After a crazy journey which included getting off our bus while it crossed a river on what looked like a huge floating plank we found ourselves in La Paz, the world's highest capital. We set off to explore the Mercado de Hechiceria, otherwise known as the Witches Market where they sell such delights as shrivelled llama fetuses (apparently burying one under your house will ward off evil spirits . . . don't think I'll be testing this myth out) and whole preserved frogs with stones in place of their eyes, I haven't got a clue what they are for . . . in place of an ornament maybe?!

So after an action packed day exploring the city we set off on what looked as though it could be the best night bus yet; lots of leg room, reclining seats far away from the smelly toilet, an english film, dinner provided . . . things were looking positively radiant. That is until we heard a massive bang and the bus came to an abrupt halt. All the passengers, including us, looked at each other with rather worried expressions, however it turned out to just be a flat tyre which the driver fixed and we were soon on our way again. We hadn't gone much further though when we heard an even louder bang, another flat (have I mentioned that our driver was driving like an absolute lunatic on unpaved roads?!) . . slight problem, we only had one spare tyre which we had already used. At this point we were about 60km from our final destination, however, that was obviously too far to drive on a flat tyre so we turned round and drove 40km in the wrong direction to the nearest cluster of homes.

So, at 7.30am about 35 westerners descended onto this tiny town in the middle of nowhere in search of toilets and water, much to the surprise of the local community. Meanwhile our bus driver started to attempt to fix the tyre. He pulled and pushed but couldn't get the tyre off the rim. He tried using long iron rods, he even tried lubricating it with cooking oil, but nothing happened. The minutes turned into hours and the sun started to beat down on the dusty little town. We were all getting hot, smelly and pretty irritated. The driver roped in some of the locals to help him in his impossible mission and even some of the passengers gave it a go but to no avail. We were starting to get a bit fed up, we had after all been sitting on the side of the road for about four hours by this point when suddenly a spare tyre arrived, the bus was fixed and we were finally on our way. Not quite the perfect journey we had expected.

We eventually arrived at our destination and jumped into a 4x4 . . .we were off to explore the Bolivian countryside. And what a countryside it is . . .we spent three days driving through some of the most amazing scenery I have ever seen. From the enormous salt flats; a dazzling whiteness spreading out as far as the eye can see in every direction to the dusty desert with Dali style rocks appearing in the middle of nowhere to explosive geysers and boiling, popping mud pools. It was all simply stunning.

The highlight of the trip was still to come though. On our final morning we were to visit the thermal pools in an attempt to warm up our chilly bones (the temperature dropped to about -20C at night, brrrrrr!). Arriving at the thermal pools we found about 6 other car loads of people had had the same idea and were already warming up in the hot water. We were just about to jump out of the car and join them when our driver muttered something to us in Spanish and continued driving. None of us spoke Spanish so feeling a little disappointed we just settled back to continue enjoying the amazing scenery.

Our driver stopped the car in the middle of nowhere and getting out we discovered that he had brought us to our very own private thermal pool. So, while he got down to cooking our breakfast we relaxed in the hot water whilst admiring the splendid views. Perfect! Wasn´t quite as much fun getting out of the lovely hot water and trying to dry ourselves as quickly as is humanly possible in the freezing cold air. It was so cold that our swimming stuff actually froze during the time it took us to eat our breakfast!

The thermal pool was definitely the highlight of my trip, however, Adam preferred a different section. We arrived at our first accomodation late in the afternoon and our guide (who spoke no English) muttered something about a cemetry and pointed to a spot in the distance saying 5 minutes and doing a miming walking action. Having nothing better to do we decided to go and find out what he was going on about. To my horror and Ad´s delight we stumbled across as ancient burial ground. The term burial ground might be a bit misleading here as the people hadn´t actually been buried at all but rather put into hollowed out rocks. Peering inside we could clearly see the skeletons which were crouched over in foetal positions, in the clothes they had been buried in hundreds of years before. It was far too real for my liking however Ad loved it.

Floating in your sleep.

Waking early in the morning after 5 days of hardship and quite a few beers to celebrate our survival, we wished that we had planned to spend the day sleeping and relaxing in the little bars and cafes of Cuzco. However we had decided to catch an early morning bus to Puno, a little town on the edge of Lake Titicaca which is the largest lake over 2000m in the world at a staggering 3820m. Puno itself is not a very remarkable place but it´s the only place to get boats out to the islands on the lake. We had decided that we were going to try and stay on one of the islands if we could.

So with no information about where we could stay or how we could stay there we jumped on a boat and sailed off. We spent several hours visiting the remarkable floating islands. These are islands that are made out of thousands of tons of water reeds and actually float on the lake. The locals put new reeds on top all the time to replace the reeds at the bottom of the island that rot and fall off. The texture resembles a soggy mattress and it feels like you're walking on the moon, very strange.



We liked the islands so much that we decided that we would stay there for the evening. With our Spanish skills (or lack of them) we managed to get ourselves a tee pee like hut for the night, made from guess what.....more reeds! We had a lovely afternoon relaxing and "talking" to the locals. My famous "screwing the finger off" trick (thanks for that one Uncle Mick, it scares children all around the world. Just like it used to scare me!!) came out again to astonish / scare the children and I think it almost got me burned for witchcraft!! After an evening of miming and getting very confused it was time to get our first good nights sleep for ages. As you can imagine we were so happy to find that the mattress was made of......... REEDS arggggggg! However we were surprised to find that it was very comfy and warm and we had an amazing nights sleep (it may have just been that we were exhausted though!).



The next morning we boarded another boat and sailed for 3 hours further into the lake (yes 3 hours, the lake is bloody massive!) to the island of Tequili. There we were treated to a demonstration of local dancing and informed of local customs. Men on the island always wear hats. If the hat is white they are not married and if it´s red and white then they are. Not very interesting but the hats are made by the men themselves. Walking around the island you see men going about their normal daily duties but knitting ferociously as they go. If they get married they also get to make a scarf out of their wife's hair, NICE!! It brings a whole new meaning to my wife is a pain in the neck! Apart from the strange local customs the island was beautiful and the views were amazing.