Category: Round The World 2004

I just about made it to the airport on time, and even managed to clear immigration without problems despite my dodgy entry/exit card. Nice flight to Santiago and I got in last night, and it’s not even as cold as I’d imagined. Everyone else seems to think it is, as they’re all wearing massive jackets and scarves and stuff, it looks a bit like you’re in Siberia, but I’m quite happy just walking about in a light sweater.

As everyone said it doesn’t seem to be an overly inspired city, today I’ve been walking around looking for hotel options, but there are some areas worth checking out for sure. I might take a day trip out to the coast tomorrow or the next day, and maybe even venture into the mountains, they are ever so close and are all covered in snow now, which feels weird considering I was on a beach yesterday!

Well, it is my last morning in Rio and I head for the airport and Santiago shortly. It’s been a fairly relaxing few days here for me really, just spending some time on the beach and watching the football in the afternoons. Watched the game yesterday with a German bloke I met in the pub, it was great fun watching him squirm as the Holland goal went in…

After a couple of beers on the beach I wandered back to the hotel to find they had a room, great! That first shower felt good, really good…

I’ve given into temptation and have changed my flight out of here to Wednesday afternoon, just to have a couple more days of hot weather before hitting the Chile winter. Today’s activities obviously revolve around the England/France game, for which I’ve procured a stool in an Irish pub to watch in a little while.

Oh, one little anecdote I forgot from the Amazon. I met this South African guy, and got chatting about me having been there a couple of times last year for work. When he found out I was working on the billing system for Cell C there, he says “Oh, yes, that’s Arbor from Kenan, isn’t it?” It turns out he works for Accenture and has had something to do with it. What a small world it is, you go to the middle of a jungle and meet some guy that’s heard of that crap, you just can’t seem to escape from it anywhere. (For those readers that don’t know, this is the stuff I used to work on with my old job)

Right, off to settle into that stool…

The coin landed on the side of the Amazon, so that’s what happened. Not without incident, of course… Took what I thought was a bus from the centre of Campo Grande to the airport, as the name had “Aero” in it, but I ended up down in some southern suburb, the airport being out to the north west, D’OH!! Not having enough time to get a bus back to the centre, and not being able to find a taxi anywhere, the only option was a “moto taxi” which is where you cling on to the back of a motorbike being driven by a mad Brazilian. After the initial effort of getting him to understand that I wanted to go to the airport (largely involving running around on the pavement with my arms out to each side and singing the Biggles music) he took me with all my luggage hanging off up there. As luck would have it he was a relatively safe driver!

So, the “direct” flight which actually consisted of 5 individual flights and took 13 hours got me to Manaus at 2:30 am, I decided to sit it out in the airport until sunrise at 6:00 and get a bus into town. Found myself a reasonable hotel and tried to get some sleep without much success, then went into town and gathered arm loads of leaflets about the various jungle outfits, and found a street bar to read them over a couple of beers. As I hadn’t slept for 36 hours or whatever the beers knocked me out virtually, and ended up negotiating a deal where the guy was talking in USD and I thought he was talking in Reals, bit of a screw up, and also booked 2 nights when I only really had time for 1. They promised me a refund of the 3rd day but of course it didn’t materialise, so paid a bit over the odds for all that.

Other than that the trip to the lodge was fascinating, very peaceful of course, and high water so you can paddle through the treetops which is an eerie feeling, because the water is so still you get the very deep reflection of the trees in the water, and is sort of feels like you’re flying in the canoe. Very trippy…

I caught a few piranhas which we had for dinner, and an alligator which we decided to pass on. Next day we’re walking on what little dry land there is through the jungle, by which I mean we were cutting our way through thick jungle with a machete. Lovely conditions as well, not too hot, no rain, and very few mosquitoes which surprised me.

After getting back to Manaus a day early, I then had to kill time until the flight left at 3:20 am, but when I got to the airport, the flight was full, so had to take another flight for an extra 200 reais or so, I was starting to think I was having one of those days. Now I am back in Rio, and my favourite hotel I was staying in is full, ARRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!!!! So for now I’m going to cry into my beer for a while and then sit on the beach, it’s 32 and gorgeous here today. Something will sort itself out!

The Falls on the Argentina side are equally as impressive as the view from Brazil, but in a rather different way. Here you get to be much closer to the actual water, and you can spend a good few hours doing all the trails. It was also where the coach loads of wrinklies go, unfortunately, but with a good bit of artful planning you can manage to overtake them on the rather crowded walkways and save some time.

Amazingly all the bus connections to get me to Campo Grande worked out, I had a small hiccup with Brazilian immigration and now my entry/exit visa is already stamped to show I’m not in Brazil any more, so what’ll happen when I really try and leave in a week and a half remains to be seen! The bus from Foz to Campo Grande was a bit of a mare, I had a 328 year old Brazilian geezer next to me, who spoke to me for the full 20 hours without realising I don’t speak Portuguese, I swear. It also sounded like he has TB. Then we got dumped at a service station, the bus disappeared down the highway for an hour and a half without us, God knows where that went. Then to cap it all at 2am we got busted for drugs, plods with machine guns came aboard and stripped the bus and it’s luggage bare searching for gear, everything was out from the hold and all over the grass by the side of the road. This took a full 2 hours, and makes me suspicious as to where the drivers had been with the bus for the 1.5 hours previously. Maybe they made a courier stop in Bolivia or something…

Anyway, got myself on a trip into the heart of The Pantanal the same day, and stayed in a Pousada mounted on stilts to clear the flood waters. Nice place, a bit disorganised in Brazilian fashion, and needless to say it pissed with rain for the first day and night. We did a few bits and pieces, fished for piranhas, took boat trips up and down the river, saw a load of alligators, toucans and blue macaws and stuff. The highpoint was without doubt the horse riding, I had a nag that I decided to name “Ayrton Senna” as he only understood one command – “go as fast as I possibly can, no matter what” Great fun at full gallop through 2 foot deep water, desperately trying to hold on to the bastard.

We made it back to the bus to transfer us back to Campo Grande with a minute to spare, after the Pousada’s truck wouldn’t start, then once we push started it, it got buried in a foot of mud after 20 yards, then after pushing it out we got stuck in a herd of about 1,000 cows coming the other way, but we made it and after 4 nights in a mosi-infested pit with nothing but a cold shower and rice to eat I have treated myself to a night in the 5-star Hotel Bristol. Champagne backpacker, or what!?

Now I’m facing a dilemma on what to do next, I can fly to Manaus in the Amazon, but it’s quite a price on the flight, and the jungle trip may work out quite expensive, and I’m pushed for time. Otherwise I may go back to Rio and chill out for a while. I have this evening to decide…

And as if by magic I am in Argentina, in Puerto Iguazzu to be precise, a town just over the border and close to the Argentina side of the waterfalls. What a transformation! The place is clean, the buildings are in good order, and prices make Brazil seem extortionate! I’ve splashed out on a quality 4 star hotel (13 quid, but is does include a la carte dinner and breakfast) Just got back from a lazy afternoon in an alfresco cafe, where a spag bol and the equivalent of 5 pints of Stella just set me back 3 quid, so excuse the quality of this post!

The falls are absolutely incredible, the size and power they possess is amazing. At the moment the water is fairly high, but not high enough to stop you getting onto any of the dodgy catwalks that lead you right up to them, so it is almost perfect timing. That was just on the Brazilian side, the Argentine side is supposed to be even more eye-opening from what I hear, which is tomorrow’s excursion.

Last night I plumped for a Pizza Rodizio for dinner, but something got lost in the translation and I ended up with the Charruscaria option (spelt correctly now, I think). Fantastic! They spit roast all kinds of meat, and bring it to you fresh from the fire still on it’s skewer, and shave you some off there and then. I must have had 12 servings of meat, each one different, whether beef fillets, ribs, chicken breasts, pork with crackling on, then fillets, etc. You cannot stop the guy from serving you meat, which you eat with veggies and salad and so on that you serve yourself from a bar. It’s a bit like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice in that respect. It was of first class quality though, and cost a massive 2 quid (including a huge beer)

So, after tomorrow’s trip out to the falls I have to race back to Puerto Iguazzu, get my bag, get a bus back over the border to Foz, get another bus from there to the long-distance bus station, in time to get the 18:00 bus to Campo Grande up in the tropics. Do you think it’ll work out? Answers on a postcard please…

In Foz do Iguaca, in what must be surely the cheapest internet caff on the planet, at about 35p an hour. Last night’s coach journey was also fine, a bit of an old bone-shaker coach compared with the last one, but strangely with better seats that convert close to being a flat bed. They didn’t show any films this time, but maybe that is a blessing as I don’t have to stomach “The Matrix Reloaded” in badly dubbed Portuguese like I did on the last one.

Today I went to the Itaipu dam, it’s the largest hydro-electric plant in the world I think. In the process I unwittingly entered Paraguay for a short while, as their tour bus drives you over the dam and back, the border being halfway along. All being well tomorrow I will go to the allegedly spectacular waterfalls, visiting them on the Brazilian side first, then try to move across into Argentina tomorrow night for something different. Reason – I fancy a decent steak 🙂 Then after that I can visit the falls on the Argentine side, then if all works out and with a following wind I’ll get a bus to Campo Grande, which is on the south edge of The Pantanal wetland area in the west of Brazil, and puts me safely back in the tropics and at the mercy of plenty of mosquitoes.

Tossing up on what to do for dinner, my options are torn between a Characuzza (I have spelt this wrong for sure) where they give you a token thing, red on one side, green on the other. You put it green side up and they bring more food to your table, red side up when you’re stuffed. Or there’s a tempting looking Pizza Rodizio, which is along the lines of help yourself to as much pizza as you can cope with and then go outside and puke.

The coach journey was actually pretty decent, on time and quite comfortable. The seats are very similar to the old-style British Airways club class seats for anyone that used them, i.e. they recline back a long way and have decent legroom. The bus was only about 1/5th full anyway, so there was plenty of room to spread onto other seats. It would stop about every 4 – 6 hours for you to get off and get some food, stretch your legs etc, the only problem being that you have to guess the length of time that the steward tells you when you get off, as it varies from stop to stop. There was one heart-stopping moment when the coach disappeared off the stand after a few minutes (with me not on it….), but it came back, PHEW! Presumably they took it for fueling or something. Only once did they hit the brakes so hard that everybody ended up sitting one row forwards from where we were, my guess is this is not bad by Brazilian driving standards!

The weather here in Florianopolis is absolutely gorgeous, bright sunshine in cloudless skies, and the beaches are beautiful and bright blue, the only problem is it gets a little cool down here in the evenings, so there’s nobody about at the beaches really. So I decided to stay in town in the end, in a quality hotel that the owner proudly has had in his possession for 44 years (and not touched a thing in that time, evidently, paintwork included. The lift is one where someone has to come in and crank a handle for you to get it to move). The town is nothing that special really, as such I’ve decided to move on and tonight’s bus is just 16 hours to get me to Foz do Iguaca on the Argentinian border. Today I played the “catch a random bus game” and ended up God knows where, but ran into some nice old lady in a bar who told me I needed to eat more (or at least I think that’s what she was trying to say)

I’ve also updated my itinerary – the new details are on the web site. On reflection I’ve decided to cut some time out of Oz and put more of it into SE Asia, I only had 4 weeks there after Bali, and have decided that may be too much of a rush. Now I’ve got closer to 7 I think, which should give me time to do all the countries with ease.

Taking off tomorrow, hopefully I have a ticket for a bus to Florianopolis, down to the south of here. It’s an 18 hour journey, but is in semi-leito which is somewhere between second class and first class, so hopefully it’ll be OK. Needless to say, it’s CHEAP! 🙂 I say hopefully, as the travel agent could speak virtually no English, so maybe I am actually on a flight to Calcutta. I suppose I will find out tomorrow.

So my last day is going to be spent doing chores, laundry, reorganising the back pack, etc. Tonight I will go up the Pao de Acucar, or the Sugar Loaf, another bizarre mountain which is supposed to be a great spot to watch the sunset from. Then I suppose tonight I will have to go out and party for my last night in town, oh nooooooo!…

Been lead astray my a mate of Morten’s, and living the Rio nightlife. At one point I (English) was with him (Uruguayan) in a club (Mexican) in Rio (Brazilian) drinking Miller (American) and listening to the Cranberies (Irish), so I can say I’ve had a truly international experience. It was also an experience when we crawled out of there at 6:45 am and got a taxi home in broad daylight, but that’s another story!

Yesterday I went up the Corcovado which means “hunchback”, one of these weird tall mountain things, which has the Christ the Redeemer statue on top. You get up there by taking a rack and pinion train which takes you all the way to the top which is remarkable in itself, a journey so steep at times that it’s hard to even stay on your seat. From here you get an awesome view over the city, and I stayed up there to watch the sunset and the city lights come on. Other than that, and a little lying on the beach, most of the days have been taken up with sleeping. Tomorrow I’m aiming to get out of bed by 1pm and get some transportation organised for the next port of call, but we’ll see…

Today’s short day was taken up getting sent from one part of town to another visiting various hospitals and clinics, trying to get these sodding malaria tablets. I’ve decided to give up and rely on the paint-stripping 100% DEET insect repellent that I’ve got. It keeps everything else that lives away, and kills plants that you get too close to, so hopefully that should do the trick.

Dinner time. Curry in my local Irish bar sounds good tonight, I think..