Rio de Janeiro - a thong way from home

Rio de Janeiro is probably most famous for it´s miles of sandy beaches, tiny costumes, Sugar Loaf Mountain and of course the Statue of Christ the Redeemer on the Corcovado, which is now one of the seven new wonders of the world (definitely not worthy in our humble opinion). For us, the best thing about Rio is it´s unbelievable location, the meeting point of jungle, mountain and coastline.

We have so far spent 3 days seeing the sights. The views from Sugar Loaf are spectacular, Christ the Redeemer is truly impressive (for about 10 minutes) and the beaches are, I must be honest, pretty average. Just in case our male audience is getting jealous I have added an example of the Carioca´s (locals of Rio) beach attire. Yesterday evening 9 of us went off on as sunset cruise from Gloria Marina, which was great, in that it gave us a new perspective and viewpoint of the city.

Today we were going to go off and hang-glide but it´s raining, so don´t panic mom´s, it has been cancelled. Instead we´re sorting out some admin and later will be having a bit of a farewell do. Tomorrow we leave for New Zealand, so bye-bye to South America and to all the mates we´ve made along the way.

The unexpected paradise of PARATY

Our itinerary changed slightly on the way to Rio. Rather than making a detour to Bonito, we decided to spend some extra time at the beach town and UNESCO World Heritage site of Paraty, half way between Sao Paulo and Rio. Boy oh boy were we glad with this change of plans. Paraty turned out to be an absolute beach paradise and we got to ´enjoy´ the Annual Pinga Festival.

Our campsite was just outside of town on a quiet beach with a few local bars. The coast was so beautiful that the first thing we decided to do was go on a kayaking tour of the area. We went off for around 5 hours, to a couple of islands, a wonderful beach restaurant (with quite simply the tastiest calamari we´ve ever eaten) and then back through a mangrove swamp (with quite simply the stinkiest mud we´ve ever smelt). We just couldn´t get enough of the superb coastline. Not that we´ve seen a great deal but we both agreed that it´s better than anything we´ve seen. On our second day we went off on a tour of an area called Trindade which was a beach heaven. Like a mix of the visual splendour of the Seychelles and the rural feel of the east coast of Zanzibar. Possibly with a touch of Jamaican vibe? We walked along a couple of beaches and made our way through a rainforest to some natural rock pools where we did some snorkeling. For the benefit of our female viewers I have posted the picture of the chap in the yellow costume.

The whole of our last day was spent on a schooner, travelling with our exodus group and 2 Dragoman groups (another overland company), making it a total of 34 people (22 of us and 12 of them). A perfect day of swimming, snorkeling and generally just stuffing around. The stuffing around continued into the evening and the next morning with us experiencing all that the Pinga Festival had to offer. Some great music, fantastic fruit drinks and the sugercane spirit of Pinga. When Baz Luhrman did his song about the benefits of suncream and all sorts of other things, he really should have spent a bit of time talking about Pinga. It is evil, please if you are ever invited to have some, say no and run.

The Iguassu Falls

We had 2 days to explore the natural wonder that is the Iguassu Falls. Our first was on the Argentinian side, which began with a 4X4 ride down to the river. Here we were given lifejackets and waterproof bags, the importance of which soon became very clear as we zoomed up 6km of the white water in a jetboat, getting a great close-up view of the falls and absolutely soaked at the same time. The Argentinian´s have really made the falls wonderfully user friendly and have somehow managed to make it feel like there are only a few people there, which is most certainly never the case. There are numerous walkways and many viewpoints and even the included attraction of a short train ride up to the top of the falls. From there, you walk a short distance to a huge flag of Argentina (just in case you happen to forget which side you´re on) and a magnificient viewpoint of the most powerful section of the falls, the Devil´s Throat. To end the day, and to make sure that we had used almost every form of public transport possible, we paddled down a quiet section of the river, taking in a bit of the fauna and flora and processing the whole experience.

The name Iguassu means ´Big Water´ in the Guarani language, which is pretty fitting if you consider that they consist of around 270 falls along almost 3km of the Iguassu River, with most having a height of around 6om and some approaching 90m.

The Brazilian side is essentially a single walkway to various viewpoints. Combine that with a lot of slow-moving, stupid people and you have a serious test of ones patience. They do however offer a more impressive panoramic view of the falls and you definately get a better impression of just how much water is involved.

Football Argentina style

In our 3 days in Buenos Aires we managed to see and experience all of the major tourist attractions. We watched a Tango Show, ate lots of meat, walked the Sunday Market in San Telmo, saw the colours of La Boca, stood in awe of the extravagance of the Recoleta Cemetary and strolled the shops of Florida street. For Jacks and myself, none of these came close to going to a game of football.

We watched the most popular of the Argentinian sides, Boca Juniors, take on Argentinos. The days other game, between River Plate and Newell´s, had been cancelled because of riots and the fact that one of the supporters was killed. These supporters are pretty serious about their allegiance. A few years ago, busses carrying supporters from different teams arrived at toll gates at the same time. They started shooting at each other and a number of people where killed. They weren´t even playing against each other that day.

Our seats were in a ´relatively´ controlled and quieter section of the stadium. The field of play was completely surrounded by 3m fences and barbed wire and the staunch supporters of opposing teams were separated from each other and the rest of the stadium. I´m not sure of how much of the football they actually saw because for most of the game they were jumping around like crazed lunatics under a giant flag. For ´only´ $300 it´s possible to take in the hooligan experience and sit in the middle of the madness, your safety guaranteed by a couple of bodyguards.

Besides the superb entertainment of the supporters activities, the football was top class, with the underdogs beating Boca 3-2. After the game the visiting supporters are allowed to leave 30 minutes before the rest. Quite a nice and hopefully sufficient head start.

This guy made me laugh!

Even with an obviously limited wardrobe and an unfortunate physique he still managed to promote his own style with pride.

Buenos Aires

We´ve spent a few days in Argentina´s capital and have found it to be a pretty vibrant place. The usual contrast of rich and poor with an architectural style that combines the best of italy and france. More cafe´s and taxi´s than any city we´ve ever seen, a fact that for me defines the place. Eating is a extremely important and happens at all hours, with most locals sitting down for dinner at around midnight and enjoying a meal that suffers no haste. The cuisine is obviously predominantly centered around their meat and even for me it was a bit much at times. Restaurants proudly displaying grills of meat in such abundance that would surely be put to better use feeding small African countries.

These folk also dress with raw extravagence and look down on tourists, such as ourselves, who arrive with limited wardrobes. They even ensure that their burial places carry their individual style on for eternity. The Recoleta Cemetary has more sophisticated architectural design than your average city and is probably worth more at the same time. Maybe the last 3 photo´s will give you some idea of what I´m talking about.

Half ton testis but no free willy : Whale watching around the Valdes Peninsular

The Valdes Peninsular is half way up Argentina´s east coast. It´s a place made famous by a National Geographic documentary in which killer whales plucked unsuspecting pray off the beach. It´s a massive area and with us only having a day to explore we made our way to Puerto Piramides, where we hopped onto a zodiac. The powerful boat easily negotiated the surf and within a few minutes we´d found our first whale.

Last season saw 800 Southern Right Whales visiting the peninsular and our guide Nora told us that this number has been rising by around 7% a year for the last few years. Quite good news when you take into account their worldwide population, which once stood at 100,000, is now only about 3,000. We learnt all sorts of interesting stuff but the bit that amazed me was that the 13m long males have testicles that weigh in at half a ton (EACH). The sheer number of whales, that travel to the peninsular both for calmer waters and to calve, was way beyond our expectations. Looking out from the boat at any one time there was always one jumping, waving a fin or proudly holding it´s tail out. Our last encounter on the boat was truly spectacular with a mother and calf playing happily around us for 20 minutes. They were totally at ease and got so close that the skipper actually had to move us out of the way.

The next part of the tour saw us travelling to a beach that dropped away steeply into the ocean, with whales passing only a few metres from the shore. Certainly a better and more natural way of witnessing these magical creatures at play. We left the reserve and drove north for over an hour, pulling off the main road just before sunset and setting up camp. Unbelievably the beach we had found was like the one from earlier in the day with whales in abundance. A dozen or so passed by wanting to have a look at what was going on. Falling asleep to the sound of lapping waves and passing whales was a surreal and fairly unique experience.

How to win friends in Patagonia.

It all began on a chilly afternoon at our campsite in Torres del Paine. I had grabbed the opportunity of securing a whole lamb for our evening meal and was ecstatic when Allahandro (our campsite manager) allowed us the use of their closed lakeside restaurant. As is the case with the majority of South African males, I pride myself on being able to perform in front of the braai. This would be more of a challenge however, cooking in foreign surroundings and for a group of people that included 3 local men (one that was a butcher). With Jackie as my assistant, I set about my task with enthusiasm and confidence and after 5 hours of intensive care the lamb was ready. My audience devoured it like a pack of undernourished wolves and the local boys were shocked that a foreigner, especially one from Africa, could do justice to a lamb. I was promptly knighted an honorary Patagonian, without the sword but rather with a harsh bottle of whisky that lingered in my head long into the next afternoon.

Torres del Paine

We spent 2 days camping in this magnificient national park in Southern Chile. Our campsite was on the shores of Lake Pehoe with postcard views of the surrounding landscape. On our first day we walked to a viewpoint of the famous towers which was a roundtrip of 6 and a half hours. A beautiful but tough walk through quite a lot of snow and fortunately not too much ice at the end, allowing us to scramble up the slope of boulders to the viewpoint.

The weather was unkind the next morning but that failed to deter us from saddling up and spending 2 hours on a couple of damp and long haired horses. After an hour and a half, Trenno (my chosen stallion) became very keen to get back to his stable, so ´we´ decided to up our trot to a fairly unconventional gallop. This sparked fits of laughter from Jackie and a renewed energy in Cheesepuff (her horse). A gap in the weather and the sight of some sun gave us the opportunity to explore nearby Lake Grey, with it´s huge icebergs and glacier.

Torres is a place that is wild in every possible way and we both wished we´d had a bit more time to enjoy it.

The Perito Moreno Glacier

Unlike most of it´s brothers and sisters, the Perito Moreno Glacier is considered stable. It´s advancing at a rate of up to 2m/day, carving out icebergs from it´s front on a regular basis. It is enormous, at 30km long and 5km wide, with it´s face a 60m jagged edged cliff of varying shades of blue. Compared to any of the glaciers we´ve ever seen, this is a monster.

Our full day tour gave us plenty of time to view it from both the nearby peninsular and from a boat that cruised up to the face. Two of the pictures we posted are there to try and give some perspective on the size of this giant. Look at the size of the boat at the face in the last picture.