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So I have left this blog rather neglected so here´s what I´ve been up to since the last blog…
After a week and a half in Rio we caught a boat to Ihla Grande to lie on the beach some more on the island. However, the weather had other plans so instead we ended up on a five mile hike through the forest and up a mountain (not the nice coastal path route we thought we had in store) in the humid, hot damp weather. It was all going well until I was stung by a black wasp twice, which then stung Jen! We then sprinted for the next half an hour downhill through the forest to escape the killer wasp, I don´t think I´ve ever moved that quickly . Luckily it was harmless enough, although the owner of our hostel did try to convince us that we only had 6 hours to live…not funny. The walk was worth it in the end though as it took us to a gorgeous beach called Lopez Mendez with squeaky white sand and turquoise sea.
We left the next day as the weather wasn´t great and went to Paraty, which is a small ex-colonial town. We spent our first day there on a ´half hour´ bike ride, which again turned into an unexpected strenuous activity. After 2 hours of riding (and some walking) uphill and being chased by possibly rabid dogs (all the animals of the world appear to have it in for us) we made it to a waterfall which people surf down. It was so dangerous even to slide down, as at the bottom is basically a rock pool. It was fun to watch the mental locals though. I seem to have found myself on an adventure holiday all of a sudden… not quite what I planned.
Paraty was in the middle of a ten day holiday so there were things going on every evening, including some very Eurovision-like dancing and singing by people who reminded me of Tina Turner and Chico!
We next tried to head on to the Iguassu waterfalls but accidentally ended up in Sao Paulo because we missed our connecting bus. I thought it was nice to see the comparison to Rio as Sao Paulo is a lot more focused on work life rather than the beach life of Rio.
Iguassu Falls were magnificent. I went to the Argentinean side first because you get to be right up close to them, which also means you get extremely wet, especially because there was 40% more water going through than usual due to the recent rainfall. The falls were mesmerizing and the reddy colour from the mud, which was more pronounced due to the extra rain, gave the falls an almost life-like quality. I could have stood and watched for ages and it was definitely one of my favourite places so far. Later on in the day we got on a boat for a nautical adventure to go a view the falls up close.... I got soaked through, but it was brilliant!
The next day we booked a tour to go to Itaipu Dam, a huge hydroelectric Dam built by Paraguay and Brazil, which involved flooding about 700 sq km of forest, indigenous villages and destroying a waterfall that rivaled Iguassu. Next we went to an all you can eat restaurant and I ate all I could. I was so hungry I could have eaten half a cow (well almost, and Jen would have shared it with me). In the afternoon we went to visit the Brazilian side of the falls which give you a great panoramic view.
We next headed to Resistencia in North East Argentina. We went to explore the town and had a play at the park we stumbled upon. We all went on the swings and Jen and I went on the slide and Jen somehow managed to end up face down in the dust being laughed at by lots of protesting Argentinians - they are very into their protests here, have seen at least 7. She wasn´t hurt but it did warrant going to buy a huge ice cream for all three of us!
We also went to Corrientes, which is just next to Resistencia and had much greater success finding the tourist office there than we did in Resistencia where they seem to have hidden it out of town for some reason. We managed to find out lots of interesting things about Corrientes the city and the province including that 61% of the economy of the province is cows and that all of Marlboro´s tobacco is all grown there.
Our next stop was Salta, in North West Argentina. It is a lovely town and we have been sightseeing up a hill where you can see all of Salta from the top, really quite impressive. We decided to go horseriding, cowboy style. Having only been on a horse twice before I was a bit uncertain what to do when the guide just rode off without giving us any instructions. However, we soon discovered how to ride one-handed so our other hand would be free if we needed to lasso something. We rode through Wild West scenery and I even got to gallop twice, which was so much fun! I loved it! We also fitted in a couple of all you can eat BBQ´s and all you can drink wine evenings before heading out to a club where we sung along to loads of cheesey English and American songs only to realise they´d had been re-sung in Spanish, which explains the strange looks we got.
We then headed over the border to Bolivia and Tupiza to get ourselves on a 4 day tour of the salt flats. I have been gradually loosing or breaking items on the trip so far including 2 jumpers. We had heard that on the salt flats we would be the coldest we´d ever been in our lives and so I went for a very successful shopping trip to get an alpaca jumper and hat. So with my new purchases and 2 other travelers, Mike and Jared, from ´the north´ i.e. somewhere north of Watford, we headed out on the tour. We spent most of the time in a jeep (covering around 800km in 3 and 1/2 days) with the 5 of us plus our driver, Juan, and our cook who we called ´mama´as she said she was going to be our surrogate mum and look after us during the trip, which she did by feeding us LOTS(especially lollipops)! We went driving through the mountains and saw loads of different coloured lakes and lagoons (blue, white, red and green-which was my fave as it was a bright aqua and there was a giant volcano behind it!) plus we went and saw another volcano and loads of llamas and flamingos and we went up close to some geysers, which were awesome... i do think we were a bit too close to them though considering how much they were bubbling, steaming and spitting up, but hey, there are not exactly health and safety regulations in Bolivia. We also got to go swimming in hot springs with the vast dessert and mountains as a backdrop, which was brilliant, especially since we hadn´t been able to get to a shower for 2 days at that point and so it was like having a bath, outdoors, with 20 other people.... surreal. Talking of which, we also got to see these cool rock formations which were the inspiration for some of Salvador Dali´s paintings. Today we went out onto the salt flats themselves... they are amazing!! We saw the sunrise over them (getting up at 5am was not easy… I am not a morning person!) which was soooo beautiful.We also got to do the customary crazy perspective photos, which was fun but harder than we expected to achieve. There are some good ones of us in a frying pan, balancing on each other's hands, etc. I´ll try and load some of them when I next get a chance. It´s hard to describe how incredible the scenery was and even the pictures don´t do it justice.We also fitted in some star gazing since we were staying in ´towns´which I think could be more accurately described as a few houses in the middle of a dessert, so there was no light pollution. It was stunning and really cool to get to see the Southern Cross, Saturn and parts of the Milky Way stretched out across the sky.
That´s it! We are now heading further north and looking forward to more amazing adventures ahead.
xxx
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