July 27-31 From Brazil to Madrid, and its about time for some sunny weather.

To be honest my few days in Rio are barely worth mentioning. It rained pretty much the entire time I was there, making hang gliding impossible and anything outdoors unpleasant. I ended up spending my time arranging flights and accomodation for Spain and Thailand and hanging out with Pils and Melissa (we went and saw Transformers, pretty sweet movie, especially if you like gigantic fighting robots that change into various kick ass vehicles and Megan Fox.
Anyway, after an uneventful few day in Rio, I got on a plane and headed to Madrid, Spain. It turned out to be a good move, sunny and 36 definately beats raining and 15. Madrid is actually a really nice city, I have heard people constantly bag the place, but I like it. Maybe its because I have been in South America for so long now that streets surrounded by nice old buildings without rubbish and gigantic holes in them seem to be abit of a novelty.
Pretty much no one speaks English here, so I have had to use Spanish again, which is now a little bit screwed up with Portuguese after my brief stint in Brazil. I have found myself saying "oi" and "obrigado" far too often.
I caught up with Digger and Fordy last night for a couple of beers and a few tapas. They have just finished a 3 week holiday in Portugal and caught a plane this morning for Menorca(another Balearic island, near Mallorca).
Today I spent most of my time walking around Madrid and looking for a new digital camera. I ended up buying an Olympus water-proof one (you know the one in the ad where the owner feeds his camera to the slobbery dog)
Unfortunately, I only have 2 shots of Madrid on my disposible camera, (which i will hand in for processing when i get to Barcelona, apparently it takes 2 days to put it on CD).
Tomorrow morning, I fly out to Barcelona.

July 26 Illa Grande, blackouts and crappy weather

Illa Grande could possibly be paradise, if it wasn´t raining, overcast and cold during winter. Illa Grande (Big Island) is the 3rd largest island of Brazil and is located about 150 Km south west of Rio de Janeiro. The transfer to the Island was arranged by Dodgy Brothers Inc. It included a 2 hour Combi ride, during which the driver over took 3 cars at a time (exceeding speeds I thought impossible in a Ferrari let alone a Combi) whilst forcing oncoming traffic to swerve off the road. When we arrived at the beach, we found we were to recieve a 10R discount as the speed boat we had been promised was out of commission, as was the pier (it was due for completion in September. Instead we were hearded 4 a time on to a tiny 2 man rubber dingy (that was already half filled with water) and joined by an additional 2 staff who proceeded to row the dingy, Pochahontas style, from the beach to the awaiting fishing boat.
The water around the Island changed colour as we drew closer, it went a dark sort of turqouise under the overcast sky, you could imagine it would be crystal blue under clear skies. The Island itself looked like something out of Jurassic Park, huge jungle covered peaks rising out of the ocean and into the clouds.
I met a few other aussie blokes on the boat, all from Melbourne. Turns out they knew my cousin Nick Owen through Melbourne Uni.
On arrival at the Island, I threw my pack into my tiny room and started to explore the island. I got as far as the town, then saw the aussie blokes I met on the boat and sat down for a beer. A couple of other aussie blokes rocked up and joined us. Turns out one of them is Mat McCutchin, a guy who I went to primary school with. Small world huh?
Anyway, later that night I attended an all you can eat BBQ and what was promised by the hostel owner (a shady character, who looked kinda like Jeff Goldbloom in aviators) to be the biggest party of the millenium. We all suspected he might have been talking it up, except for the two 18 year old pommy guys, who got were hanging on his every word.
For me, it turns out he was exaggerating a little, I went to bed before 12.
The weather was still miserable in the morning and I headed out to do some hiking, I joined forces with my room mates, a girl from ireland and a girl from scotland, and we headed out to explore the island.
The jungle walk was good, got to see some tiny monkeys, an aqueduct and an old abandoned prison.
That night there was a black out over the whole island, so I decided to catch up on some rest and went to bed early.
I´m back in Copacabana now (the weather still looks crap), after the same dodgy transfer.

23/24 July Chillin on Ipanema beach then touristy stuff

After a few solid days relaxing on Ipanema beach, I decided to move to the cheaper part of town, Copacabana. It´s pretty good here in Copa, a little bit seedy but cheaper and due to the Pan American games, police are everywhere so its pretty safe.
Didn´t get much sleep last night, the galeforce winds made a huge racket and actually smashed a window in the building nextdoor. Listening to galeforce winds smash windows and the thought of hang gliding in them, or more like, spiraling out of control in them, helped keep me awake nearly the entire night.
I was supposed to go hang gliding yesterday morning, but the pilot got back to me and told me the wind conditions were terrible and it would be too dangerous to fly. So, instead, I decided to do some touristy things around Rio. So I jumped on a bus and headed to Sugar Loaf (Pao de Acucar), which is a massive stone monolith that dominates the south eastern beaches of Rio. The cable car ride was slightly expensive (35R) but well worth it, the views from Pao de Acucar (396 meters high) are amazing.
After that, I headed back to the hostel for lunch and got a tour to Corcovado (the mountain with the big statue of Christ the Redeemer on it). I managed to the resist the urge of posing in front of JC in a crucifixion/embrace pose, but think I might have blinked on the only photo taken of me in front of JC with my disposable camera. The statue is pretty cool, but I found myself spending most of my time checking out the expansive view of Rio. Santa Teresa was my next stop, its the older, more colonial part of Rio, old trams still run through the tiny streets. Then I went to the staircase of Lapa and walked up that, which I really enjoyed taking my time and reading all the tiles.
I would go on, but I have to run right now and get a bus/boat to Illa Grande, where I will be staying for the next 2 nights.

July 21 Nice weather in Rio de Janeiro

Finally some decent weather, its about 23 degrees celsius and sunny in Rio at the moment, great weather for walking and chilling by the beach (which is all I have done for the past couple of days).
Went out last night with a few blokes from the hostel, we ate some mexican food then went out to Lapa and mixed with the locals. Ended up in a real Samba club (cant remember the name) which was full of Brazillians, I am pretty sure we were the only gringos there.
Got back to the hostel and hit the sack straight away, unfortunately I had 5 new very loud tenants who got in about an hour after me and proceeded to turn the light on and have a loud conversation for the next half hour or so. When they finally settled down one of them started snoring, actually it sounded more like someone scraping gravel off the pavement with a shovel. Pretty soon, the snoring woke up everyone in the dorm, and his mates started yelling at him in the middle of the night. He woke up for 2 seconds then fell asleep again, and unfortunately started snoring again for the remainder of the night. I didnt sleep much last night.
Anyway, on a good note, when I got up this morning, I discovered the hang gliding ban had been lifted and that it was possible for me to change rooms.

July 15-19 Florianopolis, Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, snooty french and the latest terrorist weapon of choice, the Hang glider!

Bad news, my trusty old ixus 500 digital camera has bitten the dust, or the sand to be more precise. Whilst taking photos of the dunes in Florianopolis, there was a big gust of wind which clogged my camera with sand, now the camera refuses to work. Ahh well it´s time for a new camera anyway. Unfortunately, Brazil sucks if you want to buy a digital camera, they are overpriced and the range is very poor, so in the meantime i have bought a disposible camera, which i intend to put on CD and upload later this week. In the meantime, check out old mate Italy´s Youtube video of the view of Sao Paulo from the the Edificio Italiano.
Yasmin, Ryan and I arrived in a wet Sao Paulo early in the morning on the 16th after a 10 hour bus ride from Florianopolis. I had heard many stories about the crime in Sao Pàulo and had prepared myself for the worst, but it never came. I walked the streets day or night and felt quite comfortable. It probably had something to do with the area I was staying in. On the 17th I visited the Edificio Italia, which is the second tallest building in Sao Paulo, it was only 41 stories high but the views were spectacular. Sao Paulo is truly massive, it made Manhattan look like a bit of a lightweight.
Later that night, the tragic Sao Paulo plane crash happened.
The next morning, Ryan and Yas got up early and caught a bus to the beach town of Paraty and I headed to Rio de Janeiro by myself.
A 6 hour bus ride later and I found myself surrounded by the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. Arriving in Rio de Janeiro was somewhat disappointing due to the weather. It was overcast and muggy, not really the setting I had expected. I quickly got a cab and headed to Ipanema passing iconic structures like Christ the Redeemer and Sugar Loaf mountain. and settled into my hostel (which was even more disappointing than the weather). After dropping my stuff off I walked up Ipanema beach and got a Maracuya juice (the juices here are really cheap and good).
I went back to the Hostel to have a read, when I got into my dorm, there was a white looking guy sitting on the bunk under mine. I assumed he spoke english and greeted him with a ¨hi, hows it going, my names Ed. Whats yours?¨ he looked at me blankly like he didn´t understand and then said to me in a snotty, thick French accent ¨Pierre, do you speak Spanish?¨ I shook my head and answered ¨porquito, not enough to hold a proper conversation.¨ he sighed and asked almost rhetorically ¨do you speak Portuguese?¨ I shook my head and said ¨no but I can speak a little Cantonese if that helps? Ni hao ma? Bei ngoh sam goh cha siew baos¨ (translated means ¨how are you, could you please give me 3 roast pork buns¨ which is about the extent of my Cantonese) He looked at me blankly again, and went back to reading his book.
After my stupid conversation with Pierre, I headed downstairs and got stuck into a few beers. The bartender was English which was a bit of a relief and we had a brief chat about the crapness of the weather, he assured me it would come good in a day or two. I met a couple of other English folk and an Aussie bloke and had a yarn and a bit of a laugh before calling it a night.
Today I am gonna try and arrange some rock climbing because I have just been told that Hang Gliding has been banned for the rest of my time in Rio de Janeiro due to a ¨clear sky¨ security policy implemented for the Pan American games. Good idea, I can really see Osama getting on a hang glider and launching a 9/11 style kamakazi attack on the beach volley-ball final...
Needless to say, I am pretty pissed off about the hang gliding right now.

July 11-14 Argentina to Brazil

There was a cold snap sometime during our stay in Iguazu and I have come down with a chest infection which is becoming alarmingly normal for me at this time of the year, its no problem though, im self-medicating with the broad spectrum anti-biotics (Doxy) my Dr gave me for Malaria. If anyone with medical qualifications thinks im an idiot please let me know (by the way i mean idiot for taking those specific antibiotics, not in general. Also if you think I show talent for the medical industry, let me know too).
Anyway, I am in Florianopolis now which is actually a really great place for 2 months during the summer. Pity about that considering it is in the middle of winter at the moment. But the locals here are very friendly and helpful here, even though I am pretty rude and speak at them in Spanish (which is still more effective than English) because I do not have a Portuguese phrase book and cannot be arsed trying to learn it in 2 weeks. Had a great time walking around Centro yesterday and even bought myself some new soccer boots.
Also just a side note, someone told me you use a new part of your brain when learning another language (as opposed to the bit of your brain your mother tongue uses). This is really starting to confuse me as I am constantly trying to learn Cantonese to try and speak with my grandmother, and now I am trying to learn Spanish to get around South America. The problem is I called my Chinese grandmother last night and started to speak Spanish to her. She was very confused, and so was I. Everytime i tried to say something in Cantonese it came out in Spanish. I got really annoyed and reverted back to basic English which worked ok. This is another reason why I am hesitant to even try speaking Portuguese.

July 10 Visas and the Brazillian side of the falls

We all got up early to try and get our visas for Brazil, well nearly all of us, Melissa was organized and had hers already so she got to sleep in. We found the funny hole in the wall embassy and paid up our 136 Argentinian pesos for a 30 day visa to Brazil, processing time is only supposed to take 2 hours, but it ended up taking nearly 5. When we got our visas back we jumped into a cab and headed over the border to check out the falls. Luckily there is not as much to see over the Brazillian side (keep in mind, it is well worth checking out for the overall views) so it only took 2 hours to see it all + racoons (we were warned about the racoons in an announcement over the bus radio "dont feed the racoons as they may become aggressive, attack and take all your food from you. They are known to carry diseases such as rabies, have a nice day." obviously the Germans didnt get that message and began feeding/teasing the racoons from their pockets with chips, I was getting extremely excited at the possibilty of one of racoons attacking and rolling the tourist for his chips, it didnt happen though :() After that, we headed out to a local family restaurant and ate meat cooked on swords!

July something, Argentinian side of Iguazu falls and videos from the trip

After a 17 hour bus ride we arrived in the warm Argentinian jungle town of Puerto Iguazu. We stayed at the Hostel Inn, where I met a cool bunch of Argentinian chicas from Cordoba, they showed me around the town, taught me some Spanish and even invited me to drink mate with them over a game of chess.
After that Ryan and I played pool against Melbournian brothers Dion and Adrian, we were losing badly until we challenged them to a best of 13 where we finally beat them 7-6 (to be fair they won best out of 3,5,7,9 and 11)
The next day, we went to the falls early in the morning, we took a boat ride into the falls and got soaked (well i didnt get totally soaked thanks to the poncho loan from Holly, an English backpacker friend of mine who I met in NY at a Hostel in the east village, then freakishly met again halfway across the planet)
We spent the rest of the day walking around admiring the spectacular Argentinian side of the falls, but the highlight was easily the Devils Throat (Garganta del Diablo) the huge amounts of water falling into a white void was mesmerising. I´ll let the photos and videos tell the rest of the story.


Video of the Devils Throat, Iguazu Falls



Video of another part of the Iguazu Falls



Video of the small jungle monkey from the amazon which i forgot to upload before



Video of riots from soccer match which i also forgot to upload



Video of the ferry ride in Patagonia which i forgot as well

Early July still, return to BA, get Yasmin´s Ipod and get on a bus for Iguazu

After a brief stint in Montevideo, we headed back to BA to pickup Yasmin´s Ipod and catch a bus to Iguazu falls. This would also be our 4th visit to the evil Argentinian Post office. After waiting for about an hour my number was finally called and I presented myself and the pickup slip to the counter, the woman at the counter started talking to me in Spanish at a million miles an hour and got very upset when I said "mas dispacio porfavor" which means "slower please". Luckily enough there were some other patrons who happened to be translators and they were able to tell me what was going on. In the end Yasmin received her Ipod and the Argentinian post officers didn't seem so bad considering they dropped the mysterious 600 peso pickup fee (we think the courier may have been trying to scam us).
After that, we all jumped on a bus which had hot meals served and seats that turned into beds! except for Pils, who took one for the team and travelled semi-cama (seat not fully reclinable) as the super-camas were booked out.

Early July, caught a boat to Montevideo, Uruguay

Just for fun, we all thought it would be a good idea to see what Montevideo was like. Well if you ask me, keep in mind I was only here for a couple of days, its alot like BA, except there are more public displays of mate drinking. It seems everyone here walks around with a thermos and a cup of mate with a metal straw sticking out, but the weird and mysterious thing is, no one sells it, its like a private club for locals only.
My first impression of the people at the hostel was strange, the woman behind the counter spoke English with a thick almost eastern European accent, and had a similar eastern block attitude (or what I imagine an eastern block attitude would be like). For example, I asked her about Mate (as the sign said Mate is included in breakfast) and she said with disdain in her thick eastern European accent "OK, but, what if you don't like it?" I looked at her blankly and said "well, maybe if i don't like it my friends will", she then replied again with disdain "you´re just like a chicky, you see and you want" then she smiled at me which, combined with a few other things, led me to believe she was flirting with me in a strange, rough eastern European kind of way. Anyway, I don't recommend the Red hostel for asthmatics as they light a fire inside which doesn´t have a chimney (well it has a chimney but i think its blocked because smoke visible pours straight out of the fireplace and into the hostel).

Late June or early July, bikeride to Boca followed by a night at the symphony with someguy who was really good on the old squeezebox

So much booze and gigantic steaks can leave you feeling pretty unhealthy, so Yas, Ryan and I decided to get some exercise on the old pushies. BA is not really a bicycle friendly city (Portenos drive like maniacs), and the bikes we rented were not exactly human friendly either (Ryan´s bike´s gears kept slipping in the traffic and Yasmin´s bike´s brakes hardly worked at all). Despite the obvious threat to our lives, we continued through the heart of BA on our pushies. We eventually made it to a long boardwalk with no traffic but humans and pigeons. Unfortunately, one of the pigeons did not move quick enough and Ryan ran over it on his bike (Ryan screamed like a girl as his bike produced a cloud of feathers).
Eventually, we made it to Boca, (home of Maradonna and his club Boca Juniors) there was a heavy police presence in the tourist zone which comprised of a small market, colourful buildings and some tango dancers. According to the LP, Boca is a pretty dangerous neighbourhood, but while I was there I didn´t feel threatened at all.
After returning our bikes we went to the symphony for some culture. A guy came out with an accordian and really ripped it up, he was great. After the intermission they brought out another conductor who, I thought, sucked balls. He didn´t seem to command the respect of the orchestra and at the end when he asked the MVP´s to stand up, he pointed to people then told them to sit down when the wrong people got up. There was no encore.

June 30 May Ann heads over to the UK and its time to smash cans on a Friday night

May Ann and I headed out to see abit more of BA today so we went for a stroll through the major sights including Congress, pictured above. After grabbing a Choripan (spanish hot dog) for lunch we went to watch Los Cuatros Fantasticos which turned out to be really good. It was then time for May Ann to jump on a plane and join her friends in the UK for a wedding.
After a long farewell, I headed to Milhouse and attempted to catch up with the others. The others had a plan to smash cans until early in the morning at a nightclub somewhere on the fringes of Buenos Aires. I really had no choice but to accept and smash cans to the best of my ability.
The bus to the nightclub, called Sunset, didnt leave until 1:30 AM (by this time our bodyclocks had already adjusted to the Argentinian nocturnal way of life, so we had no problems) so we smashed cans at the hostel until the bus arrived.
The bus ride took about half an hour, and took us far from anywhere recognisable. We disembarked the bus and entered a club which was full of hot latin women shaking their bon bons. After much drinking and attempted dancing, I called it a night.

June 27-29 5 Star comfort, a graveyard, a post office and a tango show

May Ann has been working pretty damn hard this year and with all the work she has been doing abroad she was able to save up a heap of starpoints and book us some luxury accommodation at the Park Tower Hotel.
I have to admit, I felt pretty silly walking into the plush lobby a 5 star hotel in backpacker style clothes that hadn't been washed in a week, unshaven carrying my backpack and a torn plastic garbage bag full of smelly washing. So I quickly put my bags onto the bellboys trolley and walked a slight distance behind May Ann trying to avoid bringing down her image too much. It worked, May Ann was instantly upgraded to one of the best rooms in the hotel.
This room rocked, big bed, 2 TVs, cable, great views of Buenos Aires from the 19th Floor and a huge bathroom complete with Spa bath, great shower and not 1 but 2 sinks! Yeah I know, prime!
The next day we visited the cemetery in Recoleta kind of like a small city for the dead, I thought it seemed very pleasant (some of the Mausoleums even had little lounge rooms with seats next to the coffins) May Ann thought it was all very creepy. After checking out Evita's modest grave, we caught up with the others for a buffet lunch in Recoleta which was a pretty cheap all you can eat ($5).
We then headed with poor old Yasmin to the post office to help her collect her Ipod (which had been stolen in Cusco, so her family had gone to all the trouble of buying another, loading her music onto it and sending it to us in Argentina, unfortunately the courier had dropped around to our hotel while we were out and the concierge could not pay the mysterious pickup fee of 600 pesos (200 USD) so we decided to try our luck picking it up from the post office only 200 meters away from our hotel) which turned out to be difficult. To cut a long story short, massive queues, Argentinian bureaucracy and a language barrier can make any simple task take forever, and in the end they told us they did not know where it was and we needed to come back later.
That evening May Ann and I attended dinner and a Tango show. The food was abit ordinary (my steak was supposed to be medium-rare but it was blue) but the company and the performances were spectacular.