Peru and Bolivia update

I’m back!!! I am apparently the worst blogger because I never get around to writing on this thing! So if you’re ready and willing, you’re about to get an overload of Claire travel rambling J

So…which country first? I have had 2 wonderful adventures in Peru and then in Bolivia but first I should tell you how Iguazu Falls went! Remember how I was in a little bit of heaven on the overnight bus, extremely comfortable with hours of sleep ahead of me? Well I woke up to a boot full of orange juice (my bottle had spilt neatly into my boot while I was asleep) and a brief panic attack at finding that my backpack was missing (it had slid down the aisles). I was so embarrassed from both of these morning activities that I couldn’t wait to get off the bus and to my hostel to get un-juiced.  Luckily these were not the bad omens for the day and I enjoyed a full day of marvelling at the waterfalls from the Argentine side. I joined my classmates from Spanish school and some of the friends they had met on their travels which was great. I planned to go to the Brazilian side the next day but was fairly dismayed to hear that I needed a visa to enter Brazil which took a few days to process was a bit $$$, even if it was just for a day. The guy at the hostel suggested I try my luck and feign ignorance which turned out in my favour as I spent the second day seeing the waterfalls from a whole different angle – literally. This only encourages me to continue to not do my research J Iguazu Falls are a magnificent place to take in the wonder of the world and awe at how there could be so much water coming from somewhere, falling and then going somewhere else! The Brazilian side topped the experience as there you can start to grasp how mammoth they really are! Plus the weather was perfect and I caught many a rainbow in my pics. I was also able to fit in a visit to the bird park down the road and saw my first real toucan. I find it hard to say real though because they look SO fake and plastic but then they move and try to nip you and you believe them again. While the bird park was like a zoo, I really enjoyed looking at all of these absurdly coloured birds taken from all over South America. In the butterfly house I could get very close to gorgeous hummingbirds and strange looking butterflies.  So my expensive escape to Iguazu Falls was a great success and you’ll be happy to know that one of my boots has finally stopped smelling of rotten oranges! OH and just quickly, there was a drug bust on my bus on the way back to BA – just a little drama to complete the weekend.

My last night in BA was sad and I really didn’t want to go but luckily I had Peru to look forward to. Wow Peru, you had me at ‘Bienvenidos’. I wish I had had more time in Cuzco cause but it is instantly likeable and my new favourite cocktail ‘Pisco Sour’ is everywhere and super cheap. Unfortunately I didn’t get much time to chill in Cuzco because the next day our tour headed out for a day of Inca ruins sightseeing and handicraft market shopping. The highlight of the tour was to be the big trek. I knew that I wasn’t doing the classic Inca trail but doing the Lares Trek instead as you have to book around 6 months in advance for the Inca trail. In the briefing the night before, the guide welcomed everyone telling us how special and privileged we were to be able to do the classic trail but then quickly followed that up with finger pointing at me and ‘except you – you do the Lares.’ Haha I can laugh now because I know that the Lares trek was spectacular and very special in a different way to the Inca trail but at the time I got a tiny bit shitty! I seemed to be the only one doing the Lares trek and was in a briefing that was completely irrelevant to me! I put my hand up and asked to be excused so that I could be briefed about the actual trek that I was about to do! The guide then decided to let me know that yes my real guide was actually waiting downstairs for me. Oh Peruvians! It was all quite hilarious. So I got to spend the first day with the Inca trail people (dubbed the ‘Sexy Lamas’) who were a fantastic bunch of people. I then got to make more friends when I met my Lares Trek group 2 days later. It was a small group which was nice and we spent the next 3 days hiking through some of the most spectacular mountainous scenery I’ve ever seen. The Lares Trek is no way near as busy as the Inca trail (about 500 people head out on the Inca trail each day whereas we only saw one other group on the Lares trek) and we got to meet lots of Highland children and families along the way, seeing how go about their daily lives in very harsh and cold conditions. The actual hiking was very difficult and tiring especially at such high altitudes but it was extremely satisfying when we made it to 4700 metres on the second day after 5 hours of steady uphill hiking. I had hired a walking pole which you could dig into and use some arm strength when your legs were getting too fatigued. The 3 days of trekking made me regret not having got my skipping rope our for 2 weeks in BA – sorry to disappoint bootcamp girls! Our tour was complete when we made it to Machu Picchu. Nothing prepares you for when the sun first hits the walls of the ancient Incan city. Why on earth did they decide to plonk it there between those mountains? And then again why not? What a beautiful part of the world! My last night in Peru was spent celebrating with both the Sexy Lamas and my Lares Trek group with most people going for a 24 hour challenge (as everyone had been up at 4am that morning). As my flight was at 8am, it seemed the natural decision was to not go to sleep at all, a decision I couldn’t help regret while waiting at the airport the next morning ;)

Next was a 10 day tour in Bolivia and this country really blew me away with its diverse landscape. La Paz was a very pretty and enjoyable capital city but I was still finding the altitude a little hard to handle. We had 3 days out on the salt flats where we took lots of fun photos and couldn’t stop wowing at the pure white salt and fantastic blue of the sky. We visited a cacti island where for some reason I kept forgetting that cacti are not very nice to touch or grab onto! We also visited many lakes including a dark red one with huge flocks of flamingos. Again, the colours were mind-blowing. We spent 2 nights in salt hotels that were very cold and basic but lots of fun. On the 3^rd day we were rewarded with a dip in a beautiful hot spring. It was freezing outside so it was very hard to leave the silky hot water to head back to Uyuni. We then headed to Potosi, a famous silver mining city. A few of us went on an afternoon tour into the mines where we took gifts of dynamite, amfo, 96% alcohol (the miners actually drank this stuff!), coca leaves and cigarettes – the apparent essentials for a miner. In the mines it was stuffy, dusty, cramped, rampant with dangerous shafts and full of poisonous minerals that we couldn’t touch. I didn’t ask to see the OH&S report and I do not envy the workers there.  At one point while our guide was explaining the rituals of worshipping El Tio, the lord of the underworld, a miner ran in yelled some Spanish and our guide concluded ‘Ok, we better go – they’re about to set off some dynamite nearby.’ It was extremely interesting to see so I was really glad I did it. I then fell sick for the next few days in Sucre which was very disappointing as Sucre seemed like a lovely city to wind down in. The bonus to our tour was that our tour guide Freddy organised for 3 of us girls to go back to La Paz one day earlier so that we could brave Death Road, a beautiful and very fun mountain bike ride down a mountain. It was not as scary as we expected and we got to experience completely different scenery to the previous week.

So if anyone is thinking of doing tours in South America, I can HIGHLY recommend G Adventures, especially the 2 tours I have just done. I still can’t believe the amazing places and great fun I have had in just 2 weeks!

Now I am in Quito, Ecuador and will start the next chapter of my trip tomorrow – Galapagos Islands!!!

Much love to everyone and I hope this post finds you happy and healthy wherever you are!

Uruguay!

Taking the ferry to Uruguay!

Futbol!

 The gate to the old city in Colonia.

 View from the lighthouse in Colonia.

Dining in Uruguay - you can eat in the car but your bill might get into the thousands!

 Colourful steps in Montevideo.

 Checking out some markets in Montevideo.

 Need to replace your phone screen or a remote anyone?

 Taking a break...

 Some community exercise.

 Amazing rooftop bbq!

 Mate (local pot of tea) artwork in our hostel.

 Warming up the drums for the parade.

Do we look lost?

Tango night

The locals tango-ing it out on the dancefloor!

 Our new housemate Jan and I.

 "The best tango dancers in Argentina!"

Off to Iguazu Falls!

It’s taken an 18 hour bus ride through Northern Argentina up to Iguazu Falls to get me to finally sit down and update this blog. I’m in a little bit of heaven right now as I sit in a very comfortable semi-cama (chair/bed) with 12 hours ahead of me to do nothing i.e catch up on sleep! It’s been another hectic week and I’ve continued to have a ball on this amazing holiday. Since I last wrote, I popped over to Uruguay for the weekend, had my first tango lesson, sipped the famous Malbec at a wine tasting, pulled 2 consecutive all-nighters at the boliches (nightclubs) like a real Argentinean and graduated at Spanish school! haha…woo!

So we spent the long weekend (Monday was Argentina’s Independence Day) in Uruguay and we thoroughly enjoyed our mini vacation from our vacation. Claire (my French housemate) and I nearly missed the ferry, as we had gotten home at 4am that morning and slept through our alarm clocks. Claire’s reaction when I urgently banged on her bedroom door was brilliant – I could see her in bed through the window and as soon as my fist hit the door she seemed to levitate out of the bed and onto her feet in an instant. We were both obviously panicking as it only took us about 5 minutes to pack a bag and get out the door. Showers were not an option. Thankfully we made it and were rewarded with a glass of bubbly in first class. Our first stop was Colonia, a pretty little coastal town. We did all the touristy things and finished the day off in a gorgeous Italian restaurant where you had the choice to dine in vintage cars (unfortunately they didn’t have any vintage cars that could cater for a group of 9). We then went to the capital Montevideo which I have to say wasn’t the most attractive city but luckily I picked an awesome hostel. The guys who owned it were having a BBQ on the rooftop when we arrived and we feasted all afternoon! They took us to a drumming parade that night where heaps of people gathered in the streets to drum, dance and do all things festive. The next night was spent in the common area playing music and practicing our Spanish. I did a LOT of listening but it was great fun.  Before we knew it we were heading back home and back to class. Apparently it doesn’t take me long to get attached to a place because I couldn’t wait to be back in Buenos Aires! I’ll be really sad to leave Argentina and the great group of friends I’ve made here in BA but of course there are so many exciting things ahead!

Another highlight of the week was an evening of music and dancing. My first tango lesson was fun but mainly consisted of learning how to ‘walk to the beat’. I remember saying to Lea “I think we’ve got this move” but I quickly stood corrected as the teachers proceeded to point out how everyone was doing it wrong. Posture seemed to be a big problem amongst the foreigners! After the lesson we watched an awesome 10-piece band play traditional tango music and couples got up now and then to dance. It was lovely to watch locals dance tango naturally rather than a big showy performance. The best tango watching was still to come though when “The best tango partners in all of Argentina!” were announced as the finale – the perfect Wednesday night.

Apart from that Spanish classes went well and I was very sad to be handed my leaving certificate on Friday. However, good news…my teacher is moving to London and I’ve already locked her in for some tutoring! I’ve also seen quite a bit of BA nightlife as well and enjoyed being a chica in the nightclub world – girls usually get in free. On Thursday night we went one of the most famous places Puerta Madera and us girls got a 3-course dinner (that was surprisingly delicious) and a drink for free! The only problem with being a girl in these boliches though is that it takes about an hour to go to the bathroom – not only because there are heaps of girls but because you get stopped every 2 minutes by a guy who wants to dance with you. Fernanda - I finally understand what you mean about South Americans being so complimentary and forward with their advances. Where else do you constantly get wolf whistles, revving engines and winks. Well at least it’s not quite like that in Australia. This week there seemed to be a whole lot of construction sites set up in our neighbourhood and it made an interesting walk to school as they literally stop what they are doing to smile and nod at you while you walk past – kind of ‘How you doing?’ Joey style. I don’t know how they get anything done!

So back to being on the bus…I am currently listening to the safety video on the bus for the 4th time. Should I worry that it plays every hour and that it must date back to the 80s? J

Out and about in BA

Club just around the corner from where we live. The building was designed by Mr Eiffel!

Mafalda, a very famous comic character.

Plaza de Mayo, very close to the school.

The road that our school is on - Hipolito Yrigoye.

Sweets!

First week of classes in BA

Hola mi amigos!

Wow. Wow. Wow. I am a little in love with Buenos Aires and being on holiday. What a good idea it was to go on an exciting detour through South America before the big move to London!

So my first week of classes is over and I wish I could stay here for another month to work on my Spanish. My teacher Andrea is an excellent teacher and so Argentinian which makes it a lot of fun. We are a small group of 3 students so I get to be a massive nerd and ask millions of questions. I have to be careful not to always be the first one to answer all of her questions, it’s just I’m so excited to actually know what she is talking about! Don’t get the wrong idea, I am still very much a beginner but I feel like I’ve learnt a LOT in 1 week. Maybe I do have a knack for languages? Nah…it’s just the cheap but delicious Argentinian wine I just had for afternoon tea that has buoyed my confidence. But immersion is definitely the way for me to learn a language.

We went to a movie night at school last night which was awesome. The director of the school runs it and he very generously brought some delicious snacks and wine for us to feast on while we discussed Argentinian cinema. Well...I didn’t exactly discuss; I listened VERY attentively to what everyone else was saying. I am worried I stare at everyone a little too intensely when they speak Spanish and that I might come across as a little creepy.  It’s just that I have to be so switched on to catch any vocab and I find that blinking disrupts my internal translation process. Half an hour into our mini tutorial the translation switch in my brain turned off without my consent (it does that when I’m tired) so I resigned myself to concentrating on the delicious Argentinian snacks that I was eating. Not such a bad transfer of focus right? After the discussion we watched the film Nueve Reinas (translation: Nine Queens) by Fabian Bielinsky. I highly recommend it if you feel like watching a hilarious Argentinian crime thriller. It’s in the vein of Lock, stock and two smoking barrels and the like. I’ll definitely be going to movie night if it’s on again next week. Another activity from the school’s social calendar was a tour to Palermo, a fairly upmarket barrio (suburb) in BA. Unfortunately I understood about 10 words from the tour guide as she spoke way too fast but it didn’t matter too much as I enjoyed exploring the Botanical Gardens.

Our apartment in San Telmo is great and it feels like home even though I’ve only been here a week. There are four of us at the moment but we might be getting a 5^th housemate soon. There is Paul (Dutch), Christoph (German) and another Claire (French). We have started to create a new language that is a mix of Dutch, French, Spanish and English at the table, especially when it’s tarea (homework) time. All three have a much better level of Spanish than me and I blame Australia’s low emphasis on learning languages. Bloody Europeans speak 3 languages by the time they are 5 years old and are just learning a few extra ones because they feel like it. I’ve decided that one day my children will speak at least 6 languages to make up for all of the times people have asked me how many languages I speak and I have had to answer “one”.

I do seem to have one thing up on my housemates and that is my sense of direction. While Paul is lovely and very good at making sure everyone is ok, he has gotten us lost quite a few times. Perhaps he was just letting me come to the rescue and reveal my one talent. It’s really great to walk around our neighbourhood and the city as there is always so much to look at. BA is super easy to navigate as it is set out in a grid and there are these amazing diagonal streets that help you get exactly to where you need in the shortest amount of time possible. The only problem is, French Claire and I are not that good at following diagonal streets in the opposite direction. For some reason we come back from school a different way each time.

So I’ve ticked a few things of my BA list including watching some tango in a restaurant as you can see in my photos. Amazing to watch. I still haven’t had a tango lesson yet but I’ll try to organise something for next week.

We’re off to Uruguay for the long weekend so I’m sure I'll be back on here with some more news and photos very soon! 

Chao chicos!

Tango