Nice country... shame about the name....

Hello all

Last time we had left the blog we were in Uruguay, after just seeing the amazing iguazzu falls in Argentina and Brasil.

With little time, but much curiosity we ventured down to Montevideo, birthplace of the soccer world cup and capital of Uruguay, with a small stop on the way at the touristy summer beach town of Punte Del Este on the way. Carrie and I were looking forward to sun and beaches but unfortunately we had 10 days straight of rain and antarctic winds, not good for beaches but it did allow us many days of eating in nice restaraunts sampling the best food that Urugauy could muster.

Montevideo is a great city, modern, around the same size of adelaide with a very similar feel, they are still using horse and carts within the city centre (though adelaide did update to the automobile several years ago for those who didnt know) it was quite amusing to see the horsemen doing their best to run the red lights across busy interestections with their trusty steeds.

High on our priority list with our time in Montevideo was to go and see a soccer game at the birthplace of the worldcup. We saw the flagship side of Urugauy football, Nacional, beat their opponents 1-0 with a 80 mintue strike from long range that found the top corner of the net... the celebration from the nacional fans was amazing to watch, their goal celebration nearly rivalling their celebration when the other team missed their penalty shot earlier in the game. Despite no alcohol being allowed into the game the dancing and cheering did not stop for the entire 90 minutes.

The other highlight of our time in Montevideo was a saturday market where restaraunt owners turn their small shops into flaming BBQ pits and serve up massive meat meals and whisky straight to the thronging crowds. The lonely planet stated that you should only go to the market if you want to truly test your carnivore status, happily my carnivore status is intact and to be honest has never been healthier.

From a rainy Montevideo we headed west to the rainy town of Colonia, a UNESCO world heritage city, a beautiful little place where we were able to take a self guided rainy walking tour see some rainy buildings and generally hang out in the rain. With spirits slightly dampened we booked our ferry for Argentina, wandered down to the pier and jumped on board for our trip across the River Plata to Buenos Aires. The boat ride was supposed to take 3 hours, but due to rain and strong wind our 8:00 evening leaving time was postponed. At 10:00 it is fair to say that the crowd started getting a little anxious and by 11:00 a full blown riot was on the cards. It is quite amusing to see the ways different cultures will handle these type of situations, and the latin american tradition of people power and strike action was on full show with a full boat load of people chanting and rallying behind one Che Guevera type wannabe. It wasnt until they marched on the port authority and had his confirmation that the weather was as bad as the captain was saying and the first mate before him that the chant changed from ¨leave the port!¨to ¨we want food!¨ A few free drinks and some crappy sandwiches later and we were informed we wouldnt be leaving until around 9 the next morning. At 9 the next morning, with us unloaded onto a faster better ferry and we arrived in Buenos Aires.

Buenos Aires (or BA for hip traveller types) is a wonderful city, home to around 12 million people, it is busy and noisy and to navigate the piles of dog crap everywhere you need the skill and finesse of a russian ballerina, but its alive at all hours of the day, affordable, design conscious and super friendly. Birthplace of the tango, seeing a show over some dinner was high on our list of priorities, so with little thought on choice of venue we set off. The show basically consists of an emcee who introduces the dances, the other singers, sings a little himself and interacts with sparkling spontenaity with the crowd. Given that the crowd was Carrie and myself and a table of Chilean women and a couple from Brazil there was not a lot to work with, but the red faced fellow certainly did his best, encouraging us all to sing along with the music. With one of the singers (bearing a striking resemblance to Sollazo from the Godfather) singing a tune that brought the entire audience to tears. The singing wasnt too bad so i can only assume that the lyrics had escaped my spanish knowledge and were quite moving. A small moment of embarrasment occured as during one number he thrust the microphone in my face for me to sing along a few words, but with spanish flying out of my brain at rapid speed all i could muster was a ¨whats the words again bro?¨not my finest hour, but im sure other people may have made the same mistakes (hey mat?)

Despite the banter and the redness of the emcee we had come to see the dancing and it was very entertaining, wide sweep kicks small steps and long lunges, it was very romantic to watch, and even worth stopping chowing down on the massive meat servings we were enjoying, wine meat and tango, definitely a recipe for a good night.

The other principle tourist attraction of the city is the Recoletta Cemetry, centred in one of the wealthier areas of town this place has been a family burial place for the wealthy of Buenos Aires for hundreds of years. Each family building a grand crypt to celebrate the life and acheivements of their family. They are collosal things, and a morbid but entertaining afternoon was spent wandering around having a look. The star attraction of the site is the grave of Evita Peron.

After a week of general sight seeing and the best steak i have ever had we have left BA and bussed south. A stop in at Puerto Madryn, principle place for whale watching, had us hopeful of a sighting or two. It didnt take long as the first time we wandered down to the beach we spied several whales around 50m from shore. Confidence high we booked in for a boat trip and were lucky to see many whales so close you could reach out and touch them. They truly are awesome in size and to see them passing under the boat and playing around near was a wonderful experience.

From Puerto Madryn, with a Rachel and English Mick a couple of new travelling buddies in tow we headed further south still to El Calafate, a small town deep within southern patagonia. El Calafate was our jumping of point for seeing the Puerto Mereno glacier, one of the few advancing (growing) glaciers left in the world. It is fair to say that we have seen some pretty speccy spots on our trip, but this one i think has taken the cake, a stunning blue glacier on a milky grey lake with mountains in the background... photos do not do it justice.

The glacier face is around 50m-65m tall and extends 180m deep into the lake and extends back for several kilometres, for an idea of scale on the picture below the boat on the right hand side of picture (the white blurry dot) is a 200 seat ferry.

The glacier is growing in the centre and therefore pushing the glacier down the mountain, this creates enormous pressure on the ice and occasionally forces massive pieces of ice to ´calve´of the face and dump into the water.. With great theatre the ice groans and cracks and you can hear rumblings of ice breaking constantly, but we were lucky enough to see a massive piece of ice fall from the glacier (approximately the size of a 8 story building) and dump into the water, the roar was tremendous, and truly one of the most memorable events on our trip thus far.

The other highlight of El Calafate has been falling snow, for the first time Carrie and i got to experience hiking thru falling snow, snow fights and a pretty decent snow man too sadly the snowman was unable to survive a snow eating dog incident.... and a word from the newly snow experienced... stay clear of the yellow snow....

Anyway long blog, once again, i am currently preparing myself for a 4 day puke-fest boat trip thru rough seas in southern chile by downing truckloads of dramamine. Thoughts go out to the victims of the horrendous tragedy in Melbourne last weekend, and good luck to the Reynella Wineflies in their first forray on the green stuff.... will be thinking of you all, wish i was out there facing that first ball.

Brett and Carrie

We were smiling in Rio, but where was Peter Allen?

Hello all,

Despite some serious flack for the continuing stories on the blog, here comes another installation... for those of you who enjoy reading the blog, thanks for the comments, they are a welcome relief to some of the other emails i have received, not naming any names but one from a sibling of mine rings a bell....

well last time we left the blog we were camping the night in the Santiago airport in Chile... violent protesters and then even more violent police officers had us pretty keen to spend the 12 hour stopover in the relative security of the airport. The flights over the Andes were tuly spectacular though...



From there it was off to Rio De Janiero in Brazil, to catch a few sunrays, a few cheeky sneak peaks at the locals and to catch up with new/old travelling buddies from New Zealand Mat and Caroline.

For our arrival Mat and Caros, in ever organised fashion (they are the ying to our yang) had arranged a wonderful appartment from an American expat who had found the going so good in Rio he couldnt leave. The three bedroom (complete with sat tv, stereo & dvd in every room), kitchen, lounge & laundry, palace was only slighty bigger than the unit Carrie and I had been living in in Adelaide for the past several years. Complete with 12th story views and a 5 minute stroll from Copacabana beach it was a bit of a steal, and i have resolved that any future appartment deals will have to be handled by our savy amigos in future. Having a home base was exactly what was required after 4 months of slogging it out in some pretty awful accomodations, after a week it almost felt as if the travellers funk had been washed off completely.


To celebrate our arrival Mat and Caros took us out immediately to a ´Churassco´ an all you can eat type restaraunt where the waiters bring you cuts of meat that have been stabbed with a skewer and then spitroasted. They shave off juicy portions of meat until you say when, and dont stop coming for the rest of the evening until you meekly tap out wrestling style or burst. The initial bombardment is intense as you try to identify what cut of meat you are eating. To make things a little easier they do have a numbered map of the cow on every table and will quote the number they are carrying as they serve. I had deliberately starved myself of meat for the past several months anticipating the onslauhgt in Argentina, but this was far too good to refuse, and to quote Homer Simpson, i think they were sorrry to ever see the likes of us.



Rio itself, sadly did not turn on the best weather for us, but we still managed all of the highlights, and plenty of time spent on the beaches, and yes boys, they are everything you would hope them to be.... its fair to say that the swimsuits are tiny, tight, usually transparent and leaving nothing to the imagination and that is just the mens.....



We have stumbled across a few world wonders on our trip thus far, so were excited to learn that Christo the Redeemer has recently been named in the new 7 wonders of the world. It looms large over the city so a trip to the top was in order. I must say that the experience was a little underwhelming, but the sight affords some great views across the city. Rio is a city divided into parts that sprawl between valleys made out of the forested mountains. You get a true appreciation of the size and beauty of Rio from Christo, he certainly found a good spot to perch himself. From Christo it was off to Sugarloaf, another mountain (presumably looking the same as a loaf of sugar, whatever that is?) to get more spectacular views of the city, and even a few looking back at the big guy. A cable car to the top, made famous by a scene from James Bond, saw me having a pretty good time (if a little nerdy) retracing the steps of the great man. They didnt let me get out and hangglide down the steel cable though.... bastards.





Famed for its amazing nightlife, and New Zealanders and Australians famed for drinking at any place that will combine those two words we struck out for a night of dancing in a samba club in the trendy area of Lapa, suggested as a good thing by some friends we met along the way, we stumbled across this club, which resembles an old school assembly hall but is filled with a 12 piece samba band and full of dancing locals. The Brazillians do not let age, or lack of space stop them from dancing and it is pretty spectacular to watch, typified by one fellow (he must have been pushing 80) who cracked onto any young piece of tail walking past (his eyes must have still been working cause they were all perfect 10´s) dragging them onto the floor and pulling some hip gyrating moves. In experience that can only be learnt from age, he always left them wanting more and was still dancing strong at 3 in the morning when the anzacs were making there way home.

We also took in a soccer game at Maracaña stadium, a 90,000 seat capacity cauldron where we watched a local derby between Vasco De Gama and Flumines. While the result (1-1) was a boring one the Brazillian style of play and the spectators made it a fantastic night. There would have only been around 50,000 people but the noise was more than 5 full football parks could generate (or 10 half full ones if port are playing and they get a big crowd), there was much singing, plenty of flares being let off and even a few good fisticuffs after the game, everything you could want in a match, obviously with the exception of actually seeing a result (doesnt seem to matter too much over here).

To continue in the spirit of participating and seeing the local side of rio the next morning we set out on a favela tour. Mat and Caros had tried to go prior to our arrival in Rio but it was cancelled as a police raid on a drug house that was making 500kg a month. Police raide often lead to gang members shooting at the helicopters circling overhead, and the threat of lost bullets is too great. After a motorbike ride thru the area, where all survived a few near misses with the local buses we were able to walk around the area, and see how people live in the biggest favella in south america. With the movie City of God fresh in my mind, i hung on tight to my camera and was particularly suspicious of the young kids hanging around, but all the kids wanted was for us to take their photo and then see themselves back on the digital camera. We also were able to visit a childcare centre that is funded by tourist donations, where we were able to play with the kids which was a lot of fun. We aurvived the rest of the tour,money and camera intact, it truly is amazing to see how close the favellas are to some of the most wealthy areas in Rio.

So after numerous strolls along copacabana and ipanema beach, and plenty of stops on it for a beer and swim (vendors will patrol the beach and offer beachgoers everything from shrimp sticks, beer, lumps of cheese thru to chairs, bikinis and dicktogs) it was time to say goodbye to Mat and Caros, dine out on an all you can eat meat fest for one last time and then leave Rio ourselves.

Rio was great, and despite the language difficulties (how dos can be pronounced as doiiissschhhh is beyond me) the people were great (and not too bad looking either). We will definitely look forward to coming back to Brazil one day, but sadly it was time to move on.

A casual 24 hour bus ride from Rio to the border with Argentina saw us crossing over to the small town of Puerto Iguazu, jumping off point for visits to the Iguazu waterfalls. Much contention arises in these parts as to who has the best views of the falls, so Carrie and I decided the only fair thing to do would be to have a gander at both sides. The first day we travelled back into Brazil (with full formal border formalities on the way in, and none on the way back) to see them, and while they give a great overall shot of the size of the falls, the massive crowds were a little frustrating. The next days visit to the Argentina side was absolutely spectacular! You are able to get very close, we opted for a quick boat ride that actaully takes you under some of the falls, and the views of the garganta diable (devil´s throat) were an amazing site that i will never forget. Photos will never do it justice, it looks like the whole world falls away from your feet. So unlike the Latin America Cup Argentina come away with a resounding victory (at least in our minds).

From Iguazzu it has ben straight south into the tiny country of Uruguay where we have been stuck with some pretty horrible cold rainy weather which has ruined plans of hanging around on the beach and seeing some sun. Tomorrow it will be off to the soccer to see a game played in the stadium that saw the very first ever world cup game, and then it will be off to Argentina, for more meat!

Take care all

Brett and Carrie