Monday, March 28, 2011

Argentiiiina

After skipping the boarder over to Argentina from Brazil we spent the day exploring Iguazu (different spelling for different country/language) falls from the Argentinian side. The Argentinians actually own the falls so you can get right up over them and around them and such. We paid a little extra and did a speed boat ride up the river and they take you right in under some of the falls, moist. I definitely believe that theory about waterfalls, negative ions and being in a good mood. We were all so crazy happy all day.

I have decided on this trip that butterflies love waterfalls. I´m not sure how this happens. But at all the waterfalls we have frequented this trip there have been huge amounts of butterflies. Particularly at Iguazu. And they don´t seem afraid of people at all. You can pick them up and they´ll chill out on your hand for 10 mins while you walk around. Love it.

From Iguazu to BA is only about 20 hours on a bus. We decided to splash out and get cama class (read expensive, but awesome) seats. On these buses you can recline about 75% of the way back, watch movies and they serve you food and alcohol. Not bad for approx AUD$105. Its the first time we´ve splashed out on one of those but it was totally worth it.

Buenos Aires appears to be another city where we are experiencing it more during the night than during the day. Although we have it on good authority that this is the way to be while you´re here.
The first two nights we stayed in a hostel that could be adequately described as a meat market. Its the kind of place designed for 18-20 year olds on their gap year who don´t want to meet any of the locals or experience any culture and just want to get drunk and have sex. Totally not our scene. We´ve since moved to a smaller hostel in the bohemian suburb of San Telmo, which is still only a short walk from the centre. Our hostel is awesome, doubly so as we have individual beds!! After being in bunk beds for the last 2 months we´re pretty excited about this.

We started doing Spanish lessons last week and lets just say its proving to be a lot harder for us than we initially thought. But we are persevering - so hopefully by the time our 10 hours of lessons are over we can at least say something. Although we have discovered that Argentinian Spanish is different to all other Spanish. For example.. ll over here is pronounced ´sh´ but everywhere else it is pronounced like a y.  Also people in BA speak very fast, so we´ve had to learn the phrase ¨Mas Lento¨- more slowly!
As seems to happen on the gringo trail, there are lots of people in BA who we had met previously in Brazil. Its been good to meet up with people and hang out.

On Weds we went to a psy gig in the city. It said that it started at midnight, but we forgot that that would mean 1am ´Argentinian time´- you can NEVER rush an Argentinian. So after rocking up at 1230am to find them closed we decided to go to a bar close by for a few cheeky beers while we waited for the club to open. We didn´t realise the significance of its name ´The Dark Bar´until we were well and truly committed to being in the venue (had already ordered beers). Much to our surprise we were in a goth and emo bar...and really stuck out like sore thumbs...hilarity. But as we were already committed to being there until the end of our beer and tried not to draw attention to ourselves...which didn´t go to plan as i dropped the beer bottle (Litre beer bottles are huge! and thus hard to keep a grip on!!). This resulted in the people next to us not so sneakily taking pictures of me and Bianca laughing her head off. Face Palm. The rest of the night was pretty great. The psy gig was lots of fun and for the first few hours the music was great.

Friday night our friend Nacho, who we met in Paraty, who lives in BA. Took us to a house party his friends were having. It was funny because we were expecting to meet a whole bunch of Argentinians, however it turned out that 90% of the party were also foreigners -French, German, Cuban, Bolivian etc.  It was great talking to a whole bunch of people who lived here - even if they were foreign as well.
Yesterday we went to the antique markets around the corner from our house, which are held every Sunday. Soooo many pretty things! There was so many street performances going on as well. Bands, street theatre and artists giving our senses so much delight. I really wish i had an audio recorder so i could keep with me the wonderful mix of sounds i heard. Maybe will need to invest in one of those for the future....

Anyway, i have to do my homework before my next Spanish lessons
¡Hasta Luego!
xxx

Saturday, March 19, 2011

Goodbye Brazil

Since carnival we have been living life at a much slower pace. Our vow to not drink may not have lasted more than a day (damn you English-Rio friends!!) but we did get some well deserved relax time and enjoyed some sea air in our lungs to replace the rio grossness.
Trindade was beautiful as usual and we´re glad Jo was able to come and join us in its paradise before leaving us to go back to Peru.

After a few days of beach time we headed down to Iguaçu falls (6 hours on a bus from Paraty to Sao Paulo followed by a 17hr bus ride to Foz do Iguaçu) to check out the amazing wonder that are the Igauçu falls. The first day we just chilled out by the pool in our hostel with the only notable event being that a bee decided to claim war on my foot - it won the battle but i won the war - though it has still left its mark on me making walking fun....

Yesterday we went to the Brazilian side of the Iguaçu falls (they are the joining point of Paraguay, Brazil & Argentina), they are absolutely stunning. No picture can replace the experience of actually being there! We were there on a rainy/overcast day so the pitcures we took aren´t a great representation - but google some pics and you´ll see how amazing they are.

Today is officially our last day in Brazil and will also be our first day in Argentina. Today we are crossing the boarder and checking out the Argentinian side of the falls and beginning the next leg of our adventure. Our 6 weeks in Brazil have been sooo much fun. We have met so many amazing, wonderful, kind, hilarious people - both locals and other backpackers, who have made our experience so far incredible. Already we are looking back on our trip with so many happy memories and funny stories. 6 weeks was definitely not enough time - we only saw a tiny tiny part of Brazil when you look on a map of the country - but we need to move to cheaper grounds if we want to stay away for a long time - travelling in Brazil is on par with travelling in Australia money wise.

Until Argentina....

xxxx


Jo and I in Trindade
Finally Leaving Trindade to see other places (again!)



Foz do Iguaçu - trying to use the panorama function on my camera

Foz do Iguaçu - trying to use the panorama function on my camera
Foz do Iguaçu - Devils Throat


Foz do Iguaçu

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Carnival....wow

It´s hard to know where to begin describing this hilarious/epic/fun filled week. I´m tired, sore and fairly sure i have a chest infection but most definitely worth it. This week we had a guest appearance from Jo, a girl Bianca had met on previous travels in Italy. The three of us combined is a deadly combination.... way too much fun. Every afternoon we would wake up and swap battle stories with the other people in our room, always ending in ´that so sooo much fun!´. But looking back over the week as a whole, everything has blurred and i wouldn´t be able to tell you exactly what happened.

Carnival has two major components. The Sambódromo (Samba Parade) and blockos (street parties). The Sambódromo is where the samba schools each do a very elaborate parade, competing against each other for the title of best samba school. We decided to go on one of the smaller nights as tickets for the 2 main nights were reaaaaally expensive. Buying the tickets was an adventure on its own. We couldn´t buy them online as we don´t have a Brazilian ID, so instead a group of us decided we´d go to the Sambódromo to buy them. When we got there we found out that the tickets had sold out (by someone official) so we were advised to talk with people who were standing around (scalpers) and buy tickets off them. Very fortunately the first person we spoke to spoke English, after deciding we didn´t want his tickets he helped us find ones we wanted (acting as a translator). BB had already done research on which sections were good and bad so we were prepared and knew which tickets were a complete rip off (like a man trying to sell us tickets for a section that is so bad people give them to their friends for free!). The whole thing seemed pretty dodgy but worked out fine - the man met us back at the hostel with the tickets and we ended up with a group of about 20 people from the hostel all going together (only being marginally ripped off). The costumes and floats were amazing! So much colour! This will definitely have to wait for pictures to describe (once again when i find better internet), because i´m struggling to find a way to describe how amazing it was.

While the Sambódromo was amazing and we´re very glad we went for one night, the blockos (street parties) are really where the fun is at. Everyone dresses up in fancy dress (whatever theme you want) and comes together to follow a float and procession down the road, dancing and drinking. There are many many blockos on everyday, so luckily some local friends we made last week advised us on which parties they thought would be the best. Every day we would go to a blocko around 4pm then not get home until 5 or 6 the next morning vowing the next night we would sleep more.... we never did. The blockos only go for a few hours (officially) but the party continues for a long time after, once we had enough of the blocko we would head to lapa for more street party time or to Ipanema to listen to psy trance on the beach. The beach parties were funny ´cause they would be playing really hard psytrance one minute and britney speays the next, then more pstrance, then lady gaga...weird! The beach parties were waaay nicer that lapa in the way that you didn´t feel like you were in a public urinal. We have officially coined the term `that's so lapa´ for anything that is disgusting. But lapa was always way to funny and random not to go back again - always providing funny/horror stories to share. For example ´Ewww - did you guys just see that transvestite licking that hookers foot in the middle of the street´ (lapa foot is a bad syndrome where you walk around in thongs and come home with black feet covered in god knows what - which is what makes this vision doubly as gross). I´m not even going to try and explain all the blockos we went to - all i can say is if you like to party - carnival is the place to be.

Our bodies are now going into shut down and all 3 of us took a vow not to drink yesterday and not get suckered into drinking with anyone that wanted to go out. We´re all sounding like pack-a-day smokers from breathing in too much gross rio air and drinking waaaay too much (not at once just very sustained drinking). Today we´re heading back down to our happy place (Trindade) for some R&R before the next leg of our trip.

Rio i love you, but your killing me.

Carnival Fun

Happy Hangover

Enjoying Free Concerts

Sambódromo floats

Sambódromo - sooo colourful

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Hola from Rio!

I am definitely loving the spontaneity of travel. While writing the last post we thought we would head to Ilha Grande the next day. Instead we ended up being invited to join in on a private (9 people) boat trip to the less visited places in the paraty waters - including the beautiful natural fiords - how could we refuse an offer like that? We didn´t end up going to Ilha Grande at all but stayed in Paraty for a few more days and then went straight to Rio so we could get to see the city before carnivale. We´re thinking we might head to Ilha Grande after carnivale for some beach time after all the hectic city partying. Although Brazil is veeeeery expensive so we´re also thinking that after carnivale we might have to hightail it out of here to somewhere we can afford!!

We´ve spent the last week partying it up in rio, getting to know the city more by night than by day. However we did make some time to go see the massive Christ statue up close and enjoy the best views of the city, and also made some time to lay on the beach in Ipanema (sooooo crowded!). We spent our first 2 nights in Lapa, the clubbing district in Rio. The first night we went to a samba club - which was fun but really highlights the fact we can't dance, but hilarity ensued when locals attempted to teach us. Friday is the big night in Lapa and the girls from our hostel insisted that we couldn´t miss it. Everyone goes there and drinks on the streets. It is soooo packed! Imagine squeezing as many drunk people as humanly possible into a square km and you will kinda get the idea. Lots of fun though!

We´ve been enjoying the block parties that have been happening all over Rio as a lead up to carnivale. We went to one in Lapa with some girls from our hostel which tuned out to be a pro-legalisation of marijuana rally....so random! haha.

We´ve been having some issues adjusting to Brazillian men and their way with women since we´ve gotten to Rio. Apparently over here no doesn´t mean no, it means try again in 5 minutes. Highly frustrating! And apparently its entirely normal for them to grab you while you walk through crowded party streets - in really wierd places too (stomach, arm fat etc...weird!). In saying that it only happens in certain places and the rest of the Brazilians we´ve met have been great. I found this article online (http://rioforpartiers.com/english/night/garotos.htm) and thought it sums things up pretty well, its all in jest but definitely has some truth in it. Please note that this is not talking about everyone and definitely doesn´t sum up how i feel about Brazilians.

I love that over here everyone is very into dressing up - especially for carnivale! BB and I have spent the last 2 days shopping in the markets to find/make costumes so we can get into the spirit of things too. Definitely getting very excited for canivale now!

Anyway this has taken me forever to write and i keep getting side tracked so i´m going to leave this very stilted blog here.
xxxxxx

Reggae Boat Trip
Pre-Carnival Bloco past our hostel
The roof in our room at Eco hostel.....



Rio - View from Christ the Redeamer statue