Hello from Manaus at the top of Brazil! Before this journal entry I have to apologise for the fact that it has taken ages (can~t remember the date of the last one off hand) since I last wrote this up! After Chile I just let things slide, bad I know! Incidentally, I only spent three days in Chile, it was incredibly expensive!

I stayed in the Domo Chango, as recommended to me by Mr Jon White, which was brilliant but as it was out of season it was empty. The only person who kept me company whilst my huge pile of washing was done was an American guy who worked in mining and was doing some business nearby. This man was incredibly proud of the fact that he had been reading the economist and foreign affairs for years so ¨he knew¨ which was all a bit wierd, especially as he drank quite a few beers as he regaled me with stories of how bad American foreign policy is and how different he was to the rest of his country. He did buy me beers (and ask me to join him for a joint), but at ten I had to call it quits. He finally left at midday the next day, having told me i could stay in his suite that night if my bus fell through. My bus didn~t fall through. Thank goodness! So that night I took the bus overnight to Santiago, arriving in the morning and leaving at midday for Mendoza. The bus ride to Mendoza was amazing, the Andes were stunning as we wound our way through until we reached border control. There I met a lovely Australian girl called Elizabeth who came with me to the Damajuana hostel. The hostel was awesome, full of cool people and really laid back with lovely staff. We went for a meal and some wine that night and the next morning whilst I waited for Becca we decided with an odd english girl and an aloof danish girl, to go and do the wine on bikes tour. This involved renting a bike and cycling to wineries, perfect! We got a bit lost, but had a brilliant time, even stopping in a liqueor factory, what a great afternoon! That night we all went out for a meal with Becca who had arrived whilst I was out, and Elizabeth~s friends who we had bumped into at the final winery. It was good fun and we all chatted when we got back and the went to bed.

I can~t really remember the rest of Mendoza, but I did a bit of shopping, and even bought a suit (definately a back up suit!) We had some more wine, did a course thing on learning how to recognise flavours in the wine, and I went horse riding which was pretty cool, though scary as the horses were huuuuge compared to the scrawny Guyanese horses. On the last day, Becca was kind enough to send some stuff home for me when she went shopping, and I went with an english girl an irish girl and the danish girl to go skydiving!

We got the the airfield, the plane was tiny, there was no door on it (for easy access I hope!) and the poor Irish girl was left disappointed as there was no trampoline for training. We saw a video of an english girl mucking it up, and a photo of a deaf girl doing it perfectly. Next thing I knew I was first up, in the plane and motoring off to 3000metres and a perfect view of the Andes. The man kept saying , think about your legs, not the past, and then he~d punch me. I was actually humming the Killers, and Madonna~s get ready to jump which had been on the bus from Chile. When the time came, we rolled out and had about 30 seconds of freefall. It was, without a doubt, one of the best experiences of my life, I just can~t really remember it, a bit like graduation, it went so fast! The guy pulled the shute and next thing I knew we were floating gently down above the vinyards. Perfect stuff! We came into land and it was nice and gentle and I spent the next 15 minutes just buzzing!

That night Becca and I took the bus to Bariloche, a town near the chilean border where we spent one night (I think). We went shopping (I bought a lot, for not very much), ate chocolate (every other shop sells chocolate) and watched a rubbish copy of Superman Returns. The next morning we took a ski lift to a mirador or viewpoint (which was freezing), took some photos and went back to town to find that Spurs had finished 5th, great news! We saw Charlie, who was in Bariloche for a few days, and then left for Rio Gallegos and the south.

What followed was probably the most horrible bus journey ever, a boiling bus, rubbish films and Becca able to sleep like a log like usual! It amounted to about 36 hours in total, not including the night we spent in the bus station in Rio Gallegos. We finally arrived in El Calafate, the Glacier town where there was snow on the ground, and checked our e-mails, took some money out, and had a horrible pizza! We were staying in an amazing hostel, with underfloor heating, and we booked our trip to the glacier for the next day with them. The next morning we woke up early, and headed out to the glacier. We took a boat after about 45 minutes on the bus, and sped across the front of the Pepito Moreno glacier, a famous one because it moves, groans, and pieces fall off! We took some photos, watched some pieces fall off, and then moved onto the glacier with the aid of cramp-ons, scott eat your heart out! We trekked around for a bit, threw some snowballs and looked at the deep pools of water and internal rivers which were exposed. From a distance the glacier looks blue, it~s stunning, but when you~re ontop of it it~s just ice. At the end of the trek we had a sweet and whiskey, you guessed it, on the rocks, with fresh glacier ice! Then we had some lunch and headed over to some viewpoints on the other side of the glacier, as per usual I took far too many photos, but ah well! When we got back to town we booked a flight to Buenos Aires for the next day, had a nice, but garlicy meal in a nice restaurant (they gave us three baskets oif bread, I think they could tell we were starved!) and then headed to be to wait for yet another early morning!

The next day we flew out of El Calafate with Aerolinas Argentinas, Nelson was stowed safely in the overhead compartment! We made it to Buenos Aires, drove along the crazy main road, which has four -6 different sections, some six lanes wide, and ended up in the Garden House, a hostel in St Elmo, just the bad side of St Elmo where we had he-she ¨cats of the night¨ who looked like the could lift laurel and hardy with their little finger! We met a couple of english girls and chatted to them for a while and then I crashed out in bed. In the morning I got up early, took my clothes to the laundry, and aided by my pocket map, walked all the way to the Boca district and did the Boca tour and passion museum. For those of you who don~t know, Boca Juniors, Maradonna~s club, are the most famous (And most commercial) football club in South America. Their museum is incredibly impressive, their stadium is very scary. The fans can almost sit on the pitch it~s so intimate, and the building is so old that when all of the fans jump up and down it can be felt five blocks away, and the away fans who sit at the top, are moved up to 45 cms! The away team change and prepare underneath the fans in the cheap seats and emerge from a tunnel easily reached by missiles from ¨The Twelve¨ the hooligans! Crazy stuff! We saw Maradonna~s box, the fome team dressing room, and the coca cola signs which have to be black and white instead of red and white because their main rivals have those colours!

I then walked into the city centre where there was (an apparently regular) strike going on, and then along a shopping street, up the arty theatre road, past congress and back to the hostel, I was exhausted! We went out that night with a guy calle David from the UK, who made my spanish look impressive, we met some nice argentinians and I headed to bed about two leaving Becca and a handsome tall one called Manuel chatting away in the corner! In Argentina the night doesn~t start till two, you eat at 11, go out at two and then go home at 5, very hard to adjust to! The next morning was a Sunday so we went to the Recoleta (no idea how it~s spelt) cemetary which is like a small village of huge mausoeums, statues and crypts. All very creepy, especially as the place was crawling with cats, but we got to see Eva Peron~s crypt, and then we went into the city for lunch and met Charlie (Who we~d bumped into in Recoleta) for a tango lesson which turned out to be just for locals. To cut a long story short we spent the rest of the day window shopping on Florida (a huge shopping avenue), and looking for tango shows (I never got to see one:() which resulted in me following a woman promising a show down some stairs and then deciding to turn back as I asked her what kind of show it was, and she said ¨free to look, chicas¨ Definately not a good idea! Becca went to meet Manuel and Charlie and I walked to an english style place in St Elmo. From there on the night went downhill, we each had a bottle of Malbec (the wine from Mendoza), we all went tangoing - which was brilliant, and I managed somehow to get it - and then we failed to get into a succession of places and crashed out whilst Becca went to a party with a guy from our hostel. The next morning I felt horrible, vowed to leave red wine alone, and went to the market where the sold antiques and oddities and had occasional tango in the streets! I left the girls there with David and headed to watch River Plate play Independiente (I think that might be wrong) at their stadium. It was a match which River mostly dominated, but went on to lose in the 91st minute 1-0, gutting, but good fun! Having endured a dry German man who was like a library of football facts on the way home, I met up with Becca and Charlie and went to Charlie~s hostel for take away and to watch a dvd. I went to bed early and then moved the next day to another hostel which was more central, really nice, but pretty empty. I spent my last two nights there catching up on some sleep and trying to shake off a cold I had picked up. I had one more tango lesson with two others in the hostel, which was great fun, watched the Full Monty, made a cracking pasta dinner, and somehow manage to have my three year old boots stolen. I had worn them for the whole trip and they stank to high heaven but apparently i left them somewhere and someone pinched them! So I bought some replacements for 25 pounds and went to watch Liverpool lose to Milan in the champions league final. After that it was a dash to the bus station for a bus that we missed for Iguazu, and so we had a truncated bus journey to the falls the next day.

Our hostel was nice but very cold and a bit crazy, with this wierd Brazilian guy who kept rolling joints and kept thinking Nelson was real. i got up at 7.30 the next day and went to the falls which were just stunning. I saw them first from a speedboat which I took with some very crazy Spanish people from Bahia Blance, and they all screamed as we went bouncing up and down on the rapids and asked for more! We went so close to some of the falls it was awesome, we got soaked with spray and really cold, but it was worth it! Then I did the top of the falls, had some lunch and saw them from bellow. They are just so powerful it~s amazing, and there are so many! But much of the park was closed due to high waters which was a shame, and I didn~t do the Brazilian side (guess I have something to come back to do!) which I kind of regret, but I had a brilliant day and bumped into a couple i~d met in Buenos Aires and a couple on their gap year who were good fun. I took the bus back at about threeish and then got straight onto a bus for Brazil as apparently the buses might finish early as it was a national holiday. I got to Foz de Iguazu and took the bus to the airport, bought a ticket to Manaus and settled in to sleep for the night, looking my luggage in a locker at great expense. Then I met a South African, my first young south african traveller, and decided to go with him to a hostel, ok it cost me about 25 dollars taxi in the morning and all, but I had some company and some good food, unfortunately I just had no jacket so I was freezing as I was wearing just my Brazil (fake) shirt. This morning I took the plane, flew to Sao Paulo and then changed flights to Manaus and sat next to a nice American girl on a college trip. We arrived and I realised I~d tried to change my flights too late and so I can~t make it up to Guyana again, but i~ve settled into a hotel in Manaus. Yes you read that right, Hotel! Brazil is ridiculously expensive, i am paying 25 dollars a night for a pretty poor hotel, but it seems safe and seeing as Manaus has a bit of a bad stench and rats in the streets I~m pretty happy where I am!

The map doesn~t quite show it because of my rubbish updating but I have now been to the very bottom of south america (almost) and i~m back to within 12 hours of Boa Vista, where I went to carnival, so i~ve almost done the full loop (granted with a few flights!).  I am going to make sure to update this sooner now, because i know i~ve missed out a day trip to Uruguay and probably loads more, but hopefully this updates you all a bit better! Pictures to follow sometime soon! All the best from Brazil, see you all soon....