In Summary

I thought for a while about how to end this blog with something profound or revelatory, accompanied with panpipes. I then realised that it would almost certainly come out sounding cringy and fatuous. So in the best traditions of GCSE essay writing I have decided to summarise the entire year in five paragraphs and let you draw your own conclusions.

We have been away for 335 days in total. We spent 521 hours on buses of varying sizes and quality, and every journey was an hour longer than it was meant to be. We have travelled a total of 15, 500 miles by bus through eight countries. We spent the night in 51 different cities, of which seven were capitals. We have 25 new stamps in our passports. I have 103 new friends on Facebook. I have drunk 32 new kinds of beer and approximately the same number of red wines. I recommend the 2007 Malbec. I have experienced several Top Ten hangovers but only vomited once (Panamanian Rum in Ecuador).

I have eaten llama and alpaca, raw fish ceviche, chicken foot soup and barbecued cows intestines. I have had to stop the bus in the middle of a Bolivian town at 3am and leave a cowpat in the middle of the road. We have been nearly mugged on three occasions, twice on the same day, never successfully. I have lost 15lbs, four pairs of sunglasses, a cardigan, two hairbands and a pair of flipflops. I have successfully disintegrated countless numbers of socks. I have darned my pants back together an average of once a week for the last three months. I can remember 5 words in Quechua and none of them is 'beer'. My bra is held together with patches cannibalised from an old sock. My backpack smells like an animal's nest. I have acquired one fiancé, two engagement rings and an excellent set of religious fridge magnets. Chris and I have had two arguments. We agreed last night that the score was 1-1.

I have watched the most boring game of football ever played at the Bombanera in Buenos Aires. I have watched Arsenal on ESPN more than any Fulham fan should have to. I have played 780 hands of gin rummy and won about 50% although I am currently on a four day losing streak. I have been bitten by a toucan, a monkey, a llama and approximately forty thousand mosquitoes. This, incidentally, is the same number of times I have watched the film Stepbrothers.

I have been to eight places which claim to be one of the (new) Seven Wonders of the World. I have swum in three rivers, washed my hair in a waterfall, and paddled in two oceans. To my knowledge I have not picked up a parasite or been eaten by a shark. I have been craving chicken kievs since March. I know who to make pebre (but not how to spell it) and a poultice for snakebite using jungle plants. I have reached an altitude of 5003m and a latitude of 54 degrees south. I have not balanced an egg on the Equator but I can spot the upside down llama in the Milky Way. The Animatronic Resurrection at Tierra Santa is two thirds of the size of the Cristo Redentor in Rio de Janeiro. I have found money in the street in all eight countries- the best return being five bolivianos which I spent on a Toblerone.

I have also written 46 blog posts from South America and you have now reached the end of them. I have had a rather great year. I hope you have too. Thanks for reading xx

Her Name is Rio...

Take a deep breath folks, we are almost at the end of this meandering tale. Our next stop was the Marvellous City itself, Rio de Janeiro. The slight problem being the 24 hour bus ride in between. Since we are now seasoned professionals in the art of long distance bus travel we made some pizza to eat (cold) and downloaded a weeks worth of podcasts to while away the time between the onboard refreshment service and the excellent range of inflight movies.

Tiny hitch: no films. This is an unbelievable oversight in a journey of this magnitude. In Argentina we would have been quickly sedated with an continuous drip of poorly scripted action movies and thus stupefied for travel, like when you have to fly a panda to Edinburgh. I am pretty sure they show films to cows on trucks going to the abbatoir. But not for us. Fortunately the view was monotonous, the air conditioning was temperamental, the seats were too small and no one gave us any biscuits so when the bus turned up four hours late (28 hour journey!) in Rio and we eventually reached the hostel we had booked to be told that we hadnt booked it, I was as you may gather a trifle upset. Fortunately Chris managed to defuse the situation by promising me a beer if I didnt explode. So I didnt explode, although it was a close call.

Rio did not improve upon waking up the next morning. I dont know who runs the marketing campaigns for the city, but I would simultaneously like to shake him by the hand and the scruff of the neck. Any brand managers, sleazy politicians or genocidal dictators reading this: find this guy (it will be a guy) and sign him up at once. This guy is really good. How do I know? Because I have now been to the Marvellous City and I tell you this for free- it blows.

Now I know what you are thinking: she´s tired and a bit homesick, she´s angsty because she cant speak Portugese, she just got off a movie-less 28 hour bus ride, she clearly didnt stop at one beer and has a thumping great hangover thats playing havoc with her judgement- and some of that might be true. I am even prepared to admit that other people may find some charm in Rio that has hitherto passed me by; people with no interest in aesthetically pleasing cities, who dont mind that everything is covered in shit, who are happy to wander around with a permanent unease of being mugged under a lowering grey sky in oppressively humid temperatures. I grant you that some people- lunatics, perhaps, or recently escaped convicts, may be happy to discover that the hostels are charmless and devoid of soul, the people are unfriendly, and everything is heartbreakingly expensive. Some people may not want to hunt down the person who wrote ´Girl from Ipanema´, shakes him until his teeth rattles and shout ´Look at this beach! No one is tall OR tan OR anything even approximating lovely!´ And these people, whoever they may be, can keep Rio. But they will not be getting any Christmas cards from me.

Perhaps I have been a trifle unfair. The beaches are quite nice in themselves. I saw a couple of nice arses and my inner lesbian is prepared to concede a couple of decent pairs but hardly enough to justify all the fuss, I thought. I cross referenced these findings with Chris who confirmed that I was definitely right although obviously he hadnt seen any breasts anywhere at all. The one plus for Rio was that we discovered a new street snack made of chicken and something unknown, in a ball shape. So we named it ´ball´ and enjoyed an afternoon of childish humour about chewing balls. It is the sort of place that puts you in that mood.

So we gave up and went down the coast to Paraty- cobbled streets, lovely beaches, peace and quiet, excellent caipirinhas and all you can eat barbecue. The sun came out, we swam in the sea. Everything was perfect except that all the sand in the ocean ended up somehow in the lining of my swimsuit, and coagulated into a giant mass. It was like growing a pair of street snacks, or turning into one of those baboons with the pink bottoms. However, changing gender and species is a small price to pay for not spending the whole week in Rio.

Wet and Wild

And so to the Itaipu Binational Dam. I had heard a lot of facts about this, and learnt even more which I am happy to regurgitate for you here to save you having to look it up. The dam, shared by Brazil and Paraguay, contains enough steel to build 380 Eiffel Towers, a reservoir that is 120km long, and twenty turbines- ten owned by each country. The Paraguayans generate 90% of their country´s entire energy requirements using two turbines and sell the rest to Brazil- the resulting output of 18 turbines generates around 20% of Brazil´s energy requirements. Quite a disparity in the number of lightbulbs each country uses there. The dam cost US$20 billion and about 150 people died building it. And they keep fish out of the turbines using nets (I asked). The dam also destroyed a number of indigenous settlements and drowned a set of waterfalls called Siete Quedas which were apparently as impressive as Iguazu. I was quite impressed with the dam itself, so this latter fact didnt really hit home, and I was pretty well convinced by the statistics and the lovely renewable hydroelectrics after a short propaganda film. They built a zoo, you see, and give money to charity to make up for uprooting parrots and families, and they did have a lovely airconditioned complex and showed you round for free. My loyalty to environmental issues is easily bought off, it seems.

That is until we reached Iguazu itself a few days later. I had seen plenty of photos before but it really was astoundingly beautiful. Fortunately we arrived early and there were comparitively few people around, so we got some gorgeous views of the rivers thundering over the falls and the mist rising above the trees. Iguazu National Park (Argentine side) is very well done, with a dinky little train to convey you around the different waterfalls and some lovely walkways to get you right up close. They are awfully good at these walkways in Argentina- they had them at Perito Moreno as well- and have managed to blend them into the landscape so that they dont intrude on your pictures, even when they are coverd with fat-bottomed Americans determined to stretch Lycra to the very limits of its capacity and beyond. We wandered around in a sort of awestruck silence for quite a long time, examining the falls from all different angles including right up close into the spray. The park is full of butterflies that land on you (to eat your sweat, romantically. We learnt that in the jungle where the butterflies went crazy for my socks.) There are also all sorts of lizards that pose for photographs and startle you when you walk round a corner.

We shared lunch unwillingly with a coati. This is a sort of poodle-sized raccoon type thingy that hangs around the bins and eating areas. There are big signs telling you not to feed them, and also that they will bite you and steal your food, but Chris didnt believe this negative press and was therefore the only person who was surprised when a coati jumped on the table and made off with our baguette. He (the coati, not Chris) proceeded to retire under a bush within plain view of the two of us, mockingly unwrapped the clingfilm and polished it off. Another big sign nearby said that salami sandwiches would probably kill coatis, but as with most public health and dietary advice in the world these days, the coati chose to ignore it. I hope that sandwich goes straight to its hips.

As if all this Edenic splendour were not enough- a speed boat ride right under the Falls! We had been warned by previous visitors that you got a bit wet, although this turned out to be a slight understatement. It turns out that there is an awful lot of water coming over those waterfalls so when we got within twenty feet the soaking was total. Being such a hot day it was actually quite refreshing although having soaked our pants too it did dry into some very fetching ´look at my crotch´ type patterns.

And now some tragic news. The dousing in the Rio Iguazu did result in one casualty. It is my sad duty to report that my walking boots, yea verily the same walking boots that climbed Cotopaxi (twice, once with my friend Kya in them), traversed the salt flats of Uyuni, scaled the heights of Machu Picchu and pounded the streets of Buenos Aires, even those same walking boots that reached the end of the world in Ushuaia, finally gave up the ghost. By this I mean that the nauseating aroma of rotting feet that had gassed out dormitories in six countries and driven Chris to the very brink of nasal amputation, was so overwhelmingly enhanced by their dip into the churning waters of Iguazu that even I could not ignore their scent for any longer. Birds were falling out of the sky as I passed beneath them. Flowers withered where my feet passed. Reckoning that the Brazilian border police would assume that they were being subjected to some sort of biological attack if I tried to wear them over the frontier, I decided the time had come. My original idea had been to tie them together and throw them into the Falls, until someone pointed out that this might spark a Missing Persons search. So, in a rather ignominious end, I hid them behind the bins in the hostel. This seemed on reflection to have been a poor parting gift to Argentina, a country that has amused and delighted us for nearly three months, until it occured to me that if they took the boots on a pole and pointed them in the direction of the Falkland Islands, the British could be defeated without a shot being fired. I wonder if this is how Oppenheimer felt.

Among the Mennonites

North of the capital and things get really isolated. On a six hour bus ride through the Chaco- a sort of palm savannah with vultures circling overhead (waiting to pick off tourists when the buses break down) we went through perhaps five settlements. These consisted of two or three houses made of logs, a hammock stretched between some trees, a tarpaulin, a few chickens, a ribby cow and a camp fire. Quite what these people do out in this wilderness I am not sure but everyone seemed happy enough staring at the buses from the shade of their trees. Our final destination was the town of Concepción. Stepping off the bus we were surrounded by locals wielding nunchuks- which turned out to be horsewhips. They were taxi drivers- the preferred method of public transport in town being the horse and cart, if you don't own your own scooter. Dumping our bags at the nearest hospedaje we headed off down the street to see what there was to see. Answer: not much- red dust roads, board buildings with tin roofs, and several stalls selling spitroasted chickens. The heat was incredible- like stepping into an oven- and after a short explore it became apparent that there was nothing for it except to order a cold beer and sit in the shade. Once seated, we noted that this is exactly what everyone else in town was doing.

That's pretty much how it worked for our three days there. It's too hot in the middle of the Paraguayan day to leave your little bit of shade, be that under a tree on your bit of pavement, or in our case, the only airconditioned room on the block. In the evening, we strolled down to get some roast chicken and then sat with the locals at a roadside shack and drank all their beer and played cards. On the second night we made friends with a carpenter called Nicholas who taught us some basic Guarani (the local language) and answered all our enquiries on Paraguayan life while encouraging Chris to ogle the breasts of passing local ladies. Five litres in we both agreed that we liked it here- alot. Fortunately we'd already booked our bus out of there or I think we'd still be there. Oh, and there was a crocodile in the river. They showed us mobile phone footage of the locals shotting at it with rifles. Extraordinary.

Having not been put off by the Patagonian 'Welsh' experience we headed even norther to the German Mennonite Colony of Fernheim at Filadelfia. This is even more remote and tricky to get to. Should you visit, may I personally recommend that you don't accidentally nearly leave your fiance in a service station toilet and have to shriek at the driver to stop the bus- it amuses the locals, but makes you feela trifle foolish. The insufferably wrong guidebook dubbed this one ' a suburb of Munich in the middle of a desert' which is stretching it a bit, and on arrival we were a bit nonplussed as to where exactly the Mennonites were. The Mennonites, for those of you who haven't been to Wikipedia yet, are a subgroup of Anabaptists, originally from Germany (or Russia, or Holland, depending who you believe). They eschew violence, speak a german dialect called PlattDeutsch, and are a bit Amish-ish. Expecting something akin to Amishfolk off the telly I was a trifle disappointed that they have all mod cons up here, until I realised this meant a swimming pool at the hotel. Bliss. We spent a happy hour poking around the Mennonite museum, looking at the things they had brought with them from home when the first colonists sailed up the Rio Paraguay and laid the first beachtowels down on the area in the 1929, fleeing from the hyperinflation of Weimar Germany and Bolshevik persecution in Russia. Rather brilliantly the museum included an old man's prosthetic leg (the original shot off by the aforementioned Bolsheviks), a lamp that ran on peanut oil, and Russian winter clothing- all of which was I am sure was deemed essential in the 40 degree heat of a Chaco summer. Upon arrival about 90 of the 500 or so colonists died in a typhus epidemic and were buried in hollow tree trunks. The rest farmed, milked, and sweated their way to what we see today. Some of the group- including the grandparents of the museum curator, went out and established a German Mennonite colony in China. Does anyone know if they are still there? I shall make it my task to find out.

So there you have it- Northern Paraguay is full of blonde, German speaking Germans, eating kuchen and not drinking gluhwein (because most of them don't drink- although you can buy a beer called Kaiser). I'll say it again- extraordinary.

Technicolor Paraguay

I should never have mentioned the heat. I have tempted the thermometer in the worst of all ways. Having left Argentina by way of the world's easiest border control (they do not give a rat's what you bring into Paraguay) we have now spent the week melting. It is not just the heat of the heat, which is mid 30s, but the fantastic humidity of the heat which makes your pants stick to your arse and your legs stick to your chair and your hair turn into a ginger Einstein afro. There is a scene in an episode of Star Trek where Counsellor Troi devolves into some sort of frog-human hybrid and goes to live in a bathtub. That's me this week. It's hot enough to melt both my shoes and my resolve to do anything. It's hot enough for Chris to agree to sit in the shade and drink 4 litres of beer with me. When the wind blows, it's like someone putting the hairdryer on in your face. In short, it's really hot. But there's Christmas decorations everywhere, which is all wrong.

Happily we have managed some short bursts of activity. In Encarnacion, we visited some ruined Jesuit missions. Lots of nice brickwork. No other visitors. I remember once my stepfather got a machine where we could print our own labels and for a few days the whole family went crazy making little stickers that said 'video' and 'biscuit tin' and 'sister' and stuck them everywhere. I mention this because I get the feeling this is what the over-enthusiastic folks who draw up the World Heritage List got up to in South America. EVERYTHING is on the damn list. In this case, although they have managed to provide no information and no context for the ruins, I can see what they were up to. There really isn't much in Paraguay for people to come and look at. Some nice brickwork is pretty much the sum of historical sites.

Neither this nor the heat should stop people from visiting though, because what Paraguay lacks in obvious tourist draws it makes up for with the fact that there are no obvious tourist draws and therefore-brilliantly- no tourists. This is South America at its (almost) unspoilt best. All the fun stuff is found in observing everyday life, especially out in the countryside which is just too picturesque to be true. In fact, I spent ages staring out at very green fields and very red earth, very brown rivers and very blue skies, trying to figure out why it seemed familiar. Then I remembered: it's the opening scenes of Gone with the Wind. Big plantations, old mansion houses, nicely positioned cows, all done in glorious technicolor. We caught a local bus out to a small town and went into the gas station to ask when the connecting bus would arrive. In about an hour, we were told. So we sat by the side of the road playing ball with rolled up socks and watching people take things on and off the buses.On the hour, the man from the gas station came out, got into another crumbling rustbucket and drove us to the next village. He came back especially to pick us up from the ruins. I loved that.

Asuncion, the capital, seems to have been put together with leftover bits from all the other capital cities in South America. It has a nice smattering of old buildings, including some huge colonial mansions on the main road into town, which seem to have been made for verandahs and people wearing linen to drink iced teas in the heat of the early evening. There's a wide, slow river perspiring away in the background, breeding those lovely dengue-carrying mosquitoes, and some nice leafy squares. There's also grinding poverty everywhere- half the local population seem to have no shoes, and in the middle of Plaza Uruguay there's a huge shanty town with tents made of plastic and washing lines hanging between the trees, and filthy kids playing in the roads. It's hard to think of another place where the words 'faded grandeur' are so apt: Asuncion was larger than Buenos Aires for a good few years. Nowadays all the bus companies sell you tickets to BA (a mere 18 hours away) and Asuncion seems to be having a permanent siesta, although there are signs that things are beginning to change. They've switched on to air conditioning, which is a boon- we've spent a lot of time looking at things in shop that we can't afford and don't want in order to avail ourselves of the lovely cool air. Every few days there is a citywide power cut because there's not enough power in the grids to keep all the fans running. Lots of people eat their lunch in cafeterias in the department stores where you can get a buffet style meal paid for by the kilogram. They've even opened a British pub. Visit now, before it's too late.

Hot Stuff

After the delights of the Holy Land theme park, all other earthly activities seem a trifle mundane. Feeling spiritually unclean and leprous we decided to go to Mass in Buenos Aires Cathedral. Happily we were not smited upon entry which I took to be a good sign, although God turned a deaf ear to my pleas regarding the result of Fulham v Spurs. Further evidence of divine displeasure manifested itself in the thwarting of our dinner arrangements. Chris had found a 'Real British Curry House' promising us an actual Lamb Rogan Josh (curry being rarer than hens teeth in this part of the world) but to our dismay it was closed on Mondays. Feeling that we had exhausted our capacity for beautifully cooked steak and fine wines we then trawled the city for inferior chinese food.

I wish to state on record at this point that I loved Buenos Aires deeply and passionately. It is one of the few cities which I have ever seriously considered living in. I would encourage everyone to visit and sample its delights. But of course all cities have one fatal flaw and in BA it is an outrageous, nay, criminal inability to provide crispy duck pancakes on request. The only possible candidate involved a sweating, shirtless kitchen hand who seemed genuinely baffled that we weren't there to close his establishment down and deport him. After two hours of fruitless wandering we were forced to admit defeat and this will tarnish my memory of this great metropolis forever.

On the other hand, there is nothing like arriving anywhere else in Argentina to make you nostalgic for Buenos Aires and happily our next stop was Rosario. We got off the bus into the sort of oppressive heat that makes you visibly wilt. Fortunately there is nothing to do in Rosario at all so I lay around in a listless daze for the first day rallying occasionally to demand that Chris fan me with a towel. Eventually I became delirious, calling weakly for beer (too weakly; he didn't buckle).

Overnight a tropical storm, the worst in 27 years according to the news, lashed the town, ripping the shutters off the hostel window and with some impressive lightning (or so I am told: I was hiding under the covers). The storm blew away the international food festival in town so we really were left with nothing to do except fight with the world's most incompetent supermarket staff over their inability to make change or work out the barcode on a packet of blueberries. It seems little wonder that Che Guevara and Lionel Messi, both native sons, decided to hightail it out of there as quick as possible.

Currently we're hanging out in Posadas on the Paraguayan border. Up here our biggest concern is mosquitos. Here, dengue fever is all the rage. This nasty little ailment is carried by a different set of mosquitoes to the malarial kind. Dengue mosquitoes hang out during the daytime, making this part of the world a 24 hour bug nightmare. I'm particularly thrilled to report that dengue can lead to a wonderful complication called dengue haemorrhagic fever. As we all know I am exceptionally brave but haemorrhagic fevers are no picnic- not unless you are a vampire. Consequently I am now suffering from psychosomatic mosquito bites of the highest magnitude. Every tiny itch and twinge has now become a sign of impending doom. There's nothing you can do for dengue except drink fluids. Nothing much for malaria either, except drink gin and tonic (for the quinine) so by process of careful study I have concluded that there is no choice other than to be medicinally drunk until December.

Bring it on, Paraguay.

Your own personal (animatronic) Jesus

Several years ago my friend Sully and I decided there was a gap in the market for a religious themed fast food restaurant. Called 'The Fast Supper', the sample menu offered dishes such as Lamb of God with Peas Be With You and Judas IsCarrots, Satan Kidney Pie and Cheeses of Nazareth. We reluctantly abandoned the plan for fears that it would outrage religious sensibilities everywhere and piss off the Big Guy Upstairs.

I mention it now because here in Buenos Aires they have managed to go one better and have opened an entire theme park based on the life and work of Christ. I had heard about this place a few weeks ago from a genuinely scandalised visitor and knowing that the giftshop would be outstanding if nothing else, I looked it up on the internet. It is called Holy Land (Tierra Santa). I know I've told you to look a lot of things up during this blog but trust me, look it up- you won't be disappointed. I'd spent quite a lot of time developing a programme of rides- hoping against hope for a Jonah boat ride with a whale leaping out of the water like the Jaws shark at Universal Studios. This time, my expectations were completely matched and overwhelmed. (In your face, Bolivian Dinosaur Park!)

It's hard to know where to start- at the main entrance I was accosted by a Roman soldier with a walkie- talkie lurking under a plastic palm tree. He steered us towards the Nativity Scene, before informing us that due to weather conditions the Birth of Christ was taking place on a revised timetable. Would we care to wander up to Golgotha a admire the beautifully rendered Plastic Crucifixion scene, complete with mocking Roman centurions gnawing on a chicken leg and Jewish women wailing and beating their breasts? Well, alright then, but try and stick to the script for the rest of this, OK?

We got a little lost looking for the Rivers of Jordan waterfall, having taken a wrong turn at Joseph's carpentry shop (closed, alas! I was hoping to pick up some carved wooden trinkets for the folks back home). So we instead followed a sign to the Resurrection via a grotto in which St George was slaying a poorly rendered dragon and a suggestions box where you could leave your own requests for your Guardian Angel. Plastic Pope John Paul II appeared to have been quarantined (for purposes unknown) in a large glass case, perhaps fearing another plastic assassination attempt. After a while things got a little peevish- "We should have gone left at the Beatitudes". "That is the sixth time you have redirected us to the Wailing Wall". Rounding a corner, we were startled to find Lazarus, covered in what appeared to be string and egg whites, advancing upon an unperturbed Jesus who was signalling for a waiter or possibly attempting a Turn Undead spell.

This was all so far beyond my expectations for tasteless awfulness that I began to feel serious, Catholic levels of guilt for being in the place. Poor Chris, desperately searching for some Methodism in this madness, held up bravely until an inspection of the winter timetable showed that the giant Jesus we had seen on the side of the plastic Gologotha moments before was the long awaited Resurrection, showing hourly at ten to the hour. "He pops up and down" my poor boy fumed, clutching his head in despair "like some sort of ecclesiastical jack-in-the-box".

Fearing a crisis of faith and/or possibly a smiting, we decided to have a sit-down amongst other disciples in the Animatronic Last Supper Spectacular. "Many visitors find this the most moving part of the park" the leaflet trumpeted (the ironic play on words didn't translate into spanish). As the lights dimmed a Spanish Charlton Heston solemnly intoned the narrative from the Gospels as a selection of disco lights played over the tableau. Then, at the breaking of the bread part, the mechanised disciples all turned as Our Animatronic Lord spread his arms wide, turned his head and stared RIGHT at me (bit frightening, that) and then opening and shutting his mouth to resemble talking, he gave thanks and praise (via the voiceover). This was repeated with the wine before the RoboSaviour turned and threw a withering look at Judas and patting St Peter awkwardly on the arm. Finally the music reached a crescendo and the lights came up to enthusiastic applause from the audience of pensioners and schoolchildren. I sat genuinely stunned.

Well, I could go on and on. After a stop at a gift shop (all the staff are obliged to wear Palestinian head towels, including the maintenance men) to stock up on religious tat (buy your Frankincense and Myrrh here! Ooh, how much for that Last Supper keyring?) we snacked on a Holy Hotdog before heading off to see some more treats. Why, here is the Wailing Wall! Apparently if you leave a prayer here we'll post it to the actual wall in Jerusalem. Look, there's Jesus throwing the moneylenders out of the temple! And look, you can buy some hummus over here, because that's what Jesus ate. We enjoyed the delights of the Nativity at last (flying cherubs, crazy party lighting- they stopped just short of a glitterball but it was a close one). At The Creation we were treated to Enya, which is apparently what God listened to while he was making the Garden of Eden out of some green lasers, dry ice and a lot of leftover animatronic animals from another theme park. We poked around the back streets of Jerusalem before stumbling across the Mount of Olives and fetching up in the far corner where, in a sop to other world religions, we found Gandhi, Martin Luther, a small synagogue and a replica plastic mosque. A sign outside the mosque asked visitors to take their shoes off before going inside the plastic mosque. It seemed a bit late in the day to be worried about offending anyone's religious principles, but why the hell not?

By this stage it was becoming really hard to maintain a grip on rising hysteria. But there was one more, the grand finale to end all finales. I refer of course to the Resurrection itself. We sat in a plastic amphitheatre with an expectant throng of guests. Then, acompanied by the soaring strains of the Hallelujah Chorus, the earth split and the 60ft Messiah rose imperiously from the ground. He is risen! Hallelujah! What's he doing now? Ah, he's turning to bless the multitudes. Hallelujah! He is risen! What's this? He is descending! That's not right- wait, come back!! No, show's over. But Fear Not, the Lord will rise again at ten to three and every hour until closing time.

All jokes aside, I honestly can't pass judgement on any of this. Of course it was awful; and unquestioningly, arrestingly bizarre . But it was certainly popular. The schoolchildren were lapping it up, and didn't seem to be doing so in a mocking or disrespectful way. The park genuinely seemed to be serious about bringing Christianity to life for its visitors and, while I am not at all sure about the methodology, I can't really fault the sentiment. And in its own unique way it definitely shed an interestingly light on how people relate to religion here. Which was certainly thought- provoking. I'm still thinking about it.

I leave you with this thought: They may have made some spectacular advances in animatronics these days but I say verily unto you, God still moves in the most mysterious ways.

¿De Donde Son?

¿De donde son?

Seeingly innocuous, those three little words, but what pain they can encompass. For the monoglots out there, ¿de donde son? is spanish for 'look it up'. Just kidding. It of course means "where are you from", and the starting point for all verbal interaction for travellers and natives alike across this vast and diverse continent. We are usually asked three or four times a day. When you're travelling for almost a year, that adds up to quite a lot of repetitions. It looks like a simple question- it is in reality a simple question, but handling it is troublesome.

First, the basics. Let's narrow this down to nationality. We'll be sidestepping the whole English v British issue, merely noting that the debate is particularly vexing to border police in remote areas: or maybe they just want to screw with your mind by holding onto your passport for an eternity while noting the discrepancy between the 'english' on your immigration card and 'british' in your passport. There are distinct times when you really don't want to have to admit to being a denizen of the sceptred isle. Standing in front of the Falklands/Malvinas War memorial when they are changing the guards (who have pointy swords) is one such time. Booking a hostel room anywhere in Argentina the day after England have beaten Los Pumas in the rugby is another one. English, your interrogator will repeat, with a scornful glint in their eye. English, he will say again, pondering the matter gravely- as if unsure whether it would be appropriate to have you arrested on the spot. (this is particularly worrying outside military or government buildings) English, he will repeat again even more slowly, and rather sorrowfully, as if he had been quite prepared to like you, but now of course that is out of the question.

At the other end of the spectrum you may meet a street peddler, drunkard or - most dangerous- lunatic anglophile who will take your admission as an opportunity to regurgitate their entire knowledge of England. 'David Beckham', he will say 'oh, and that fat one whatsisname Rooney. Whine Rooney.YES'. He will then either seize your arm and shake your hand until your elbow is dislocated, or follow you down the road saying 'Big Ben!Bobby Charlton!Prince William's Royal Wedding!'. A rogueish glance, if you happen to still be in Argentina- 'Do you know who Diego Maradona is?' (The appropriate response to that one is to look rueful and make the hand of god gesture). If you are lucky, or patient, they will eventually tire of this game and wander off with a wink and a Cheerio!

If you are at a bar or a football game, or anywhere else where the exits are blocked, the next stage of the conversation will attempt further subclassifications . English, your new Argentine friend will say. Do you like Manchester City? You will confess that you don't, because you're from London. Ah, London. A knowing nod. London is Chelsea fans. If, at this stage you manage to refrain from pouring your drink over his head, (perhaps because your fiance is restraining you), you will tell him that actually, the majority of Londoners are not Chelsea fans (and incidentally, that the majority of Chelsea fans aren't Londoners. Or sentient lifeforms.) And your team is... Fool Ham? What is this Fool Ham? They do not have Argentinian players, I think.

Well no, not yet. You smug git.

All this goodwilled quizzing is naturally part of the rich cultural tapestry of travelling and it would smack of rank ingratitude to criticise a nation for taking an interest in the lives of its visitors (Heaven forbid we tried this in London!). The real tedium of ¿dedondeson? comes from the thousand or so times you have to explain to another tourist from the English speaking world. Picture the scene: You are hanging your knickers to dry on the radiator or cutting your toenails in a dorm room and someone new and chatty walks in with a big rucksack. You glance up, fatally, and make eye contact. One of you has to break the awkward silence- they've seen your pants, you have to acknowledge their existence now. Etiquette demands that the invader offers the verbal olive branch. So whereyoufrom has replaced hello as the default conversational opener, backing the victim into a corner from which there is no escape. You simply can't ignore a direct question unless you pretend to be deaf. For this reason you should never drape your freshly scrubbed gussets in public areas unless you have headphones in. Don't say you never learnt anything from me.

Now everyone knows where London is. Two Londoner can dispense with this nonsense pretty rapidly- west?east.borough?tower hamlets. me.too.no,surely notwhatanextraordinarycoincidence which bitwhitechapelextraordinaryi'mwappingwellwellsmallworldnicetomeetyoubyebye. The fun and games start when you take someone earnest with a San Diego zoo baseball cap on and put them next to someone from, well, let's say for the purposes of example, Yeovil.

Hi, I'm Chip. I'm from San Diego, California. Whereyoufrom?

Yeovil, England
(blank look)

It's a very small place.
(blank look)

It's in the southwest of England, in the county of Somerset
(blank look, kind of wishing they hadn't asked now)

Near Stonehenge
Is that near London?

Yes, yes, I live in London.

(then why didn't you say so?)

The heart of the matter is this: No one gives a tiny mouse's fart where you actually live. It's just one of these odd things that backpackers do, like building up collections of plastic bags, and stealing toilet rolls, and growing unsuitable beards. Is it tedious in the extreme? Certainly. Do I secretly want to kick the next person who asks you sharply in the ankle? Indisputably. Or maybe this is all perfectly normal, pleasant human interaction and I'm the one with the problem. Einstein famously said 'Madness is repeating the same action over and over, hoping for a different result'. He was almost right, I think. Madness is repeating the same answer again and again and hoping for a different question.

Capital Times Part Two

You have to feel for Montevideo, really. A stone's throw away across the Rio Plata from Buenos Aires, the result is that almost the entire population moves to Argentina as soon as they are old enough to catch the ferry. Consequently what is left feels a bit like a leftover or an afterthought. The tourist board does their best, but you can't really hide the fact that there's very little to see in the Old Town. A few months ago we were confidently told (by a Canadian) that you can exhaust all Montevideo's possibilities in five hours or less, so we thought we'd put this theory to the test. This also gave us a good opportunity to continue our game 'I Spy Diego Forlan', the Uruguayans paying homage to this particular national patron saint with multiple advertising campaigns and a selection of tasteless crockery*.

If you don't like football, there really is- I must confess- no good reason to visit Montevideo. There's nothing much wrong with it- wide streets, lots of trees, a few good shops- but there doesnt seem to be anythng really right with it either. The one claim to interest is that it houses the Estadio Centenario, the location for the first World Cup in 1930 (or thenabouts-it was a hot day) and a small but interesting Museum of Football which exhibits amongst other trophies, the very shirt worn by Geoff Hurst for England in the 1966 World Cup Final.

Can someone explain this to me? I would have thought such a pivotal item of footballing memorabilia would be residing somewhere in London, with an armed guard, some dimmed lights and an outraegous entrance fee. I made enquiries to this effect and was informed that the British Foreign Office had donated the shirt as a gesture of friendship towards the Uruguayans. Ok, fine- I'm happy to be friendly towards the Uruguayans but surely the Foreign Sec. could have given them some Cornwall fudge and a paperweight instead of a crucial part of the nation's sportng heritage? I was so peeved that I drank almost their entire water cooler (it was a very hot day)

It's possible that I over-reacted slightly due to a lack of sleep. This was caused by a lunatic man in the dormitory who set his alarm clock to go off at 3am and then went to sleep with earplugs in. Happily, he also snored like a rhinoceros on steroids- the sort of snoring that makes the walls vibrate, and was impervious to all my hissed promises to make him eat his own testicles if he did not immediately cease and desist. Eventually I actually got out of my own bed and went and kicked his repeatedly. That didn't work either, but someone else must have said something as he checked out after breakfast. Good riddance.

We left the next day for a dinky little beach town called Punta del Diablo, where I managed to get sunburnt through a thick layer of cloud on the first day, followed by two days of pretty consistently rubbish weather. Not a problem- the bar was well stocked (less so by the time I had finished with it) and all our friends from Buenos Aires and Ushuaia showed up, so we had a jolly old time watching sport and being raucous. The only real downside, apart from a dangerous lurch towards cirrhosis, was the presence of a mosquito in our dorm room, which gorged itself upon my tender flesh. So now I itch like a demon and look like a bubonic plague victim. But I do have the best news to report: The Museum of Corned Beef is back on. We arrived in Fray Bentos just this evening. The Old Pie Factory awaits us tomorrow. And if you're really lucky I won't write a whole blog about it.

* seriously- if you don't know who Diego Forlan is- stop reading my blog. You and I have nothing in common :-)

Capital Times Part One

When we last met, I was in a state of post-cetacean bliss and inner peace. I know where that ends: incense-sniffing, indian print smocks and trying to have sex with a bongo. No thank you! Goodbye, Nature! Hello, Buenos Aires!

To say that the city had a lot to live up to is an understatement- I had lost track of the amount of people who had told me that Buenos Aires is my sort of town, the highlight of the continent, vibrant, sexy, cool, fountains of beer, party all night, art, culture, history, madness- and for this reason it was bound to be a let down. I'd also been warned about the natives- the biggest snobs on the planet (outside of Paris- the perpetual worldwide champions of uppity) Incidentally we'll not be following the crowd and calling it BA for the simple reason that it encourages Chris to do his rather poor Mr T impression.

Happily, it's a wonderful city. The only tosser we met was a travel agent. Hurling ourselves headlong into the action we did a guided city tour, inspected the presidential palace ('The Pink House'), and the balcony where Evita/Madonna did their respective thangs. I resisted the urge to break out into song- the security guards didn't look at all like Lloyd-Webber fans, and there was a feisty looking Falklands/Malvinas demonstration outside, of the sort that didnt inspire extroversion.

All that pent up singing had to go somewhere though, so we headed down to La Bombonera, home of the mighty Boca Juniors. I've wanted to go here for ages: apparently the maddest, most passionate football fans on earth. Craven Cottage it certainly was not- I learnt an awful lot of rude spanish words for lady bits. That said, our neighbouring fans were most obliging, teaching me all the words to the (really quite complicated) football chants and reassuring us that yes, it was normal for the whole stadium to sway because of the jumping and drumming. Later we went to a bar and then another and got hopelessly, horribly drunk, resulting in a World's Top Five Hangover. Happily, despite their fiery reputations not one Boca fan decided to murder us. Happy Days.

A few days breather seemed to be the ticket and so we headed off to Uruguay. Hands up anyone who knows anything about Uruguay that isn't football related? Thought not. Our first stop was Colonia, an old smuggling port directly across the Rio Plata. This is a seriously lovely place to be, with beautiful sunwarmed cobbled streets and colonial buildings, fabulous fish restaurants, a huge expanse of sandy beaches, and smelling bewitchingly of jasmine. Despite being the jewel in the crown of this part of the coast, it is surprisingly unspoilt. They do have an odd fondness for golf carts though. We watched a gorgeous sunset and had some beers, and wondered if it was worth going to Montevideo- billed as 'a smaller, crapper Argentina' by practically everyone else.

To be continued...

Whales and the Welsh

Time for a quick lesson on the history of the Welsh settlement of Patagonia. Several or more years ago the welsh pioneers (who for the purposes of national stereotyping we shall call Dafydd and Llewelyn, along with their sheep, Myfanwy) decided to up sticks and leave Wales- an understandable decision. They chartered a lovespoon and, using leeks for oars, crossed the dangerous and wild Atlantic ocean. Turning their noses up at the tropical beaches of Brazil and the gleaming spires of the Southern Andes, they fetched up upon a grey, flat, rainy and windswept peninsula, whereupon they narrowly bested the natives at rugby and, after an Eistedfodd of Thanksgiving, stuck a daffodil in the ground and claimed the land for the Welsh Empire.

I know all of this because we visited the Museum of All Things Welsh in Puerto Madryn. Actually, that's a lie: we had intended to visit, but it was too far away. Instead we went to the oceanography museum where they had a giant squid in formeldahyde, so I have filled in the gaps in the above historical narrative slightly.

However or whyever the Welsh arrived, apparently they did and their lasting legacy is a number of Welsh teahouses selling 'torta galesa' at ludicrous prices and an unshakeable devotion to Diana, Princess of Wales (you see what they did there). The tourist blurb promises an authentic welsh village experience. I suspect the tourist board were rather banking on no-one from Real Wales ever coming to check the veracity of this claim. Although I suppose there is a passing resemblance to the outlying buildings of the power station at Port Talbot. Anyway, there was little of the Pembrokeshire villages to coo over on the rainlashed Friday morning we visited. No one was speaking welsh either, although there was a school in which people were taught in both welsh and spanish. In vain we searched for alumni- imagine the accent!- but there was no one about. Even the tearooms were shut;they don't open until 3pm when the tourist horde arrives- another fact carelessly overlooked by the guidebook. Reasoning that we weren't going to pay for these anyway, since we required all our arms and legs, and since we were becoming dangerously hysterical at the underwhelming nature of the trip we had embarked on, we bought a welshcake from the supermarket and determined to get as much value from the experience as possible we conducted it around town doing an impromptu photoshoot before we caught the next bus home. Supplemented with wine, the welsh cake was rather good. Later the Welsh won the rugby and we didn't, which seemed reasonable revenge for all my sniping.

From Wales to Whales, the other reason that people flock to the Valdes Peninsula. This is a breeding and feeding ground for the Southern Right Whale (look it up). They spend half the year here having babies and congregating offshore. On a clear day you can walk out from puerto Madryn to a beach where they come in close to the shoreline and watch them gliding around like friendly submarines, or you can go out on a boat to get a bit nearer. We did the walk first and were rewarded with several wonderful whales. We were close enough to hear them breathing. They make a weird sound when they do- like someone with a deep voice saying 'whoooooooorrrrr' down a metal dranpipe. For all I know, there could be someone hiding in the dunes with a metal drainppe, but the sound seemed to go with the whale. Later one followed us along the beach waving his flippers at us.

If this was as far as we got with the whales it would have been pretty damn cool but of course it got much better than this when we finally made it out onto the water for a close up encounter. The weather had been crap for several days prior to our trip, sending us slowly mad with cabin fever, and we had decided that come hell or high water we were going on Monday. Fortunately the sun came out although the sea was choppy enough to make Chris distinctly queasy and green. Fortunately as we all know I am exceptionally brave and was wearing a Captain Birdseye rubber cape so I managed to hold onto my sea legs.

If you ever get a chance to do whale watching, just do it. It is quite simply one of the most extraordinary things you will ever see. Southern Right Whales win no prizes for beauty, being knobbly all over and covered in patches of what look like barnacles, but the majesty and elegance with which they glide through the water is utterly compelling. You can feel your heart rate slowly down and all your muscles relaxing as you watch them. Whales are, it turns out, giant floating tranquilisers for the soul. I couldn't take my eyes off them. Eventually after some jumps and tail flicks we were rewarded for our patience when an inquisitive calf the size of a family car and its gigantic mother swam right alongside the boat. I could just about have touched them, if I was willing to fall in the ocean. I think I would have been.

Later we walked along the coast path to a look out point where you can see over the entire bay. From here you can watch distant waterspouts of twenty or thirty different whales and watching them rolling over in the sun and waving their fins in a slow salute. Argentina has declared the whales a natural wonderand part of the patrimony of humanity. Quite right too, and it quite made up for the tearooms.

Land of Fire and Ice

I was a bit angry at the end of my last post. I’ve calmed down now. Having left the monstrous carbuncle behind and passed a not-altogether uncomfortable night on the bus station floor, we finally arrived at El Calafate and let out a huge collective sigh of relief. We were back in Patagonia again. There were the lakes and mountains . There was the melting snow and the cheerful streets. There were the souvenir spoons. And best of all, there at the bus station was a backpacker type with a flyer offering us a cosy logfire in a cabin for a reasonable price. We were back on track.

El Calafate is a smallish town perched on the shoreline of Lago Argentino and within striking distance of Los Glaciares national park. It positively screams for you to spend the days doing wholesome rosy-cheeked outdoor activities before settling in with a good book in front of a fire. We took some bicycles and cycled for miles round the lake on one of those afternoons where the sun dances on the water and makes your heart sing. Later we ate a barbecue. As previously noted south Americans do this quite differently. On the menu for this one, marinated beef intestines (“it’s alright! they clean all the shit out of them!”) and kidneys (bleurgh). The more conventional meat was very tasty although it transpires there is an awful lot of meat on a cow and it is really best not to try to eat it all in one go.

The real reason to come to El Calafate is of course to visit the glaciars. On the way we pooled our combined knowledge: to wit, glaciers (not sure whether you pronounce with long ‘a’ or not) make U-shaped valleys. And are cold. And quite powerful. Erm… that’s it. We had decided against a guided tour which would have answered these questions, on grounds of cost. Fortunately it doesn’t matter whether you know how the things are made or why or what they do because the Perito Moreno glaciar is just awesome. We had been given varying reviews ranging from ‘the best thing ever’ to ‘it’s just a big block of ice’. It IS a big block of ice- bigger than the city of Buenos Aires. It does some wicked shades of blue. And it makes the most incredible noises because it is still advancing and bits crack off it with a gunshot noise). It is enormous and immense and you can stare at it for hours. Then you can look it up on Wikipedia if you wish to become enlightened. If you are not a big girly weed frightened of falling into a crevasse and having to gnaw off your arm you can walk on the thing, and drink it (they mix it with whisky. Fortunately that's about the one drink I won't walk on ice for). Or you can wander around its perimeter on ten kilometers of metal walkway constructed for the purpose examining it from different angles and in different lights and listening to it creak and groan. There is even a bit shaped like a dragon’s face on one side. Cracking day out.

There was nothing left now except to start the long, long run into Tierra del Fuego. Feeling like we had earned another break from gorgeous scenery and reasonable prices we broke the thrity hour journey in an irritatingly expensive hotel in Rio Gallegos, mainly because the other choices were a bit too reminiscent of Chernobyl. The next part of the bus journey- they don't seem to mention this in the guidebooks- involves crossing into Chile and back out again. This means four tiresome bag checks searching for apples and/or kidnapped children. Fortunately the second fifteen hours of journey through Tierra del Fuego itself involves some of the flattest, most non-descript scenery on the continent, enlivened by one miserable ham and cheese sandwich with the crusts cut off and an endless loop of Vin Diesel films. Against the odds, we made it to Ushuaia. We looked and smelt like corpses, but we had finally reached the southernmost city in the world.

We made a lot of friends in Ushuaia, although I tried my best to ruin their goodwill by spending half the week in advanced states of obnoxious drunkenness. Five of us hired a car and got up very early on a tip-off that if we got to the national park before the park rangers, we could avoid paying the park entrance fee. of course this is morally reprehensible and very bad indeed because everyone should pay park fees but we reasoned that the Argentine government had had enough of our money by this point. The cunning plan worked beautifully and we had the place to ourselves for hours until the fee-paying daytrippers turned up and we smugly left them to it. We then spent all our savings for the day on beer and sweets and I learned to make sushi and craft wasabi leaves from an Argentine chef in the hostel while also preparing the ingredients for a Top Five hangover the next morning. Bleurgh.

There's another glaciar in the mountains that overlook Ushuaia and over the course of the next few days we visited it a couple of times, trying to decide whether the weather was good enough to pay the 55 peso fee to go on the flying chairs up into the mountain. Eventually, it was, so we did. Fourteen minutes of rather scary chairlift later Chris and I were standing on the top of the world at the end of the world in the most amazing snowscape I have ever seen, looking down at the Beagle Channel miles below. The silence was incredible. If you listened hard enough you could hear the snow melting and trickling away.

Of course, what we had really come all this way to do was to slide down the glaciar sitting on plastic bags. I believe I may have actual approached the landspeed record on my first go, shredding the plastic bag and most of my arse before wiping out and fetching up in a heap a mere foot from a patch of exposed rock. Figuring that this was about the funnest way to die I had another go and it was even more brilliant. We ran out of plastic bags long before we ran out of enthusiasm. If I lived here, I would do it three times every day before breakfast. Reluctantly we set off back down to civilisation through the forest with the icicles glinting in the sun. It was like Narnia up there, I tell you.

So, unforeseen trips to Antarctic research stations notwithstanding, we will never be more south than here. We're officially on the return leg of the trip. Cry me an icicle.

Postcard from Patagonia

One thing I have noticed on this trip is that generally when confronted by a spectacular landscape, the Argentinians like to mess with it. In most places this means stringing telephone wires across nice views, but occasionally they find a place so arrestingly beautiful that they really have to go for it. Bariloche is one of these places, with gorgeous sapphire lakes ringed with snow-topped mountains and dappled forests. How can we naff this up, then? you can imagine the town planners of yore debating amongst themselves. Fortunately they called in the Disney corporation and the 1980s, so the resulting effect is all faux swiss chalets, stone cladding and triangular Smurf houses. The town is a heady mixture of ski shops and souvenir shops selling novelty items made of wood-, huge curly handled spoons, cute hanging signs for the bathroom showing winsome children with their sweet little buttocks sticking out, and that sort of thing. There is also a bewildering array of local collectible goblin-gnomes. I hate goblin-gnomes, and these ones are particularly toothy and malevolent, causing me to yelp and leap backwards when I find one peering at me from a shop corner. Added to this for some insane reason the shop mannequins have labrador heads where there should be human faces. This is really, really scary.

Currently Bariloche is suffering from the after-effects of a nearby volcanic eruption over the border in Chile, which tipped piles of ash everywhere, rather as if someone had up-ended the contents of a hoover bag over the whole area. This weird gritty stuff, combined with freezing temperatures and all those ski lodges, gives Bariloche a sort of perma-Christmas après-ski vibe. At night everything is lit up with warm golden lights and becomes rather lovely. Of particular note are the chocolate shops which are like little jeweled palaces crammed to the ceilings with every possible size, shape and flavour of the good stuff. These, and the hot chocolate served in the tea parlour at Rapa Nui Chocolate, which came in a cup and saucer with pink roses on it, are worth the journey to Bariloche on their own. Throw in some excellent hiking in the surrounding area and you can forgive the town itself for its fondness for fondue and kitsch.

Pleased with Patagonia we caught an overnight bus to Comodoro Rivadavia, 15 hours south, where we hoped to break up the epic journey to the Perito Moreno Glaciar at El Calafate, 1000km to the south. The minor pleasantries of welcoming Bariloche had left us completely unprepared for this horrible little hell-mouth attached like a veruca to the atlantic coastline. I have seldom experienced such an instant and violent hatred for a place. It wasn’t just the setting- a gruesome parody of the alpine setting we had just left, with the mountains replaced by a wind-whipped, petrol stained sandbar strewn with plastic bags and dirty nappies. It wasn’t even the fact that there was a huge concrete car park squatting like a toad in the middle of town, where everywhere else has a leafy tree lined plaza. What really took our breath away was the prices. Without even the slightest embarrassment the patrons of various hostelries asked us the most ludicrous prices for their shabby accommodations, perhaps 3 or 4 times the going rate anywhere else in the country. Comodoro Rivadavia- let’s be clear on this fact, in case you are ever in the vicinity, is an unrepentant shitsack of a location. It makes even-tempered people (Chris) laugh mirthlessly at each new thoughtless oversight or carefully contrived rip-off. It made not exactly even- tempered people (me) positively psychotic. Had it been in my power I would have called in an airstrike. And the people! Why don’t fat people realize that leggings are not for them? Why do people with a huge trolley full of shopping push in front of you in supermarket queues when they can see you only want to buy a packet of crisps? Do you so lack even a drop of human kindness that you cannot put a left luggage area in your capacious bus station so people don’t have to lug their backpacks around? Why yes, you do! By this point I was actually hurling expletives at passing cars and crossing the road on purpose to kick locals and dogs. Even the murals on the playground wall at the kindergarten looked like they had been painted by demons instead of normal human children.

‘We are LEAVING!’ I stormed at Chris ‘Why aren’t you taking better care of me? Take me to a pub at once!’ (It was 8.30am). Instead, we decided to go to the bus stop and buy the first ticket out of there. The choice we were given was to stay until 9.45pm and then catch the overnight bus, or to leave at 3pm and spend the night on the bus station floor at Rio Gallegos. No contest. I childishly flicked V signs at passersby as we glided out of town on the 3pm bus. And I say to the municipality of Comodoro Rivadavia and its inhabitants and I have never meant this sentence more sincerely- FUCK YOU.

Teargas before bedtime

"...So, you need to take a scarf for your nose and a lemon for your eyes"

"And tell me again, how do I know if I'm about to be teargassed?"

"Well, you'll see a big tank coming, and lots of people running the other way".

I am sitting in the upstairs room of a pub in Barrio Lastarrias, Santiago, picking up survival tips from my friend Liz, who is married to a Chilean guy and who has rather wonderfully invited us to stay with them and their crazy dog Mousetta. Santiago looks and feels like the last place on earth which is likely to be the scene of a riot, but the students are protesting again- the cheapest university entrance is twice as expensive as the minimum wage, and they want cheaper and better education. Sound familiar?

Staying with locals is a completely different experience to the guidebook route and we were totally and utterly spoit, with wine and cheese every night and beautiful food. We were also given an insight into the real Santiago, where people live and work, as well as all those secret little places that no one from the guidebooks ever finds out about. And steak. And wine. Did I mention the wine? My God, the wine. It practically comes out of the bathroom taps in this country. Many times I have wandered off in the supermarket and had to be fetched out of a dreamy reverie in the booze aisle.

In between slugs of wine we visited the house of Pablo Neruda, the Chilean Nobel prize winning poet (look him up). In between admiring his furniture and art (with me mentally cataloguing which pieces I would have stolen and put in my own house) we learnt about the Pinochet regime and the purges and disappearances of the intellectual class in the 70s and 80s. Recent South American history really is quite disturbing, especially when you think that it happened while you were in primary school. The national football stadium was used as a torture centre for twenty years under the regime, and is now the football stadium again. Chileans believe it is cursed and that is why national team keeps losing there.

Bit depressing, no? The next thing we did was a four hour walking tour led by a chain smoking maniac. Despite giving the impression of being an inveterate glue sniffer he gave a surprisingly lucid and thoughtful tour of the city, helpfully pointing out earthquake damage and points of historical interest, as well as the odd bit of social commentary or insider knowledge. For example, ever heard of cafe con piernas? It means 'coffee with legs'. I thought this meant take away coffee, but apparently it's more literal than that- it's the men-only stand up cofee bars all over town where businessmen go for a midmorning caffeine hit and 20 minutes of flirting. The waitresses wear tiny little tight skirts and high heels- hence the legs bit. In the olden days they used to pull down the shutters for 'happy minute' and strip on the tables although apparently this is now frowned upon. Sort of a cross between Starbucks and Spearmint Rhino. Naturally this offends my feminist principles, or would if I had any, but it makes a good story nevertheless. The tour thoughtfully included a break for sandwiches and a large glas of SauvignonBlanc so of course gets a very high rating here. No sign of the student rioters in town, which was a bit disappointing. Although we later realised we had no idea what to do with the lemons. Over a perfect afternoon of Chilean asado/South African braai- in short, the best woodsmoke barbecue in the world- we debated whether you suck on lemons for teargas or squeeze them in your eyes (yikes). We also discovered that the weird, throat burning and runny nose 'chemical spill' we had walked through on a street in Valparaiso had (probably) BEEN remnants of teargas! As you all know I am exceptionally brave, and had apparently been so without even realising it. Obviously this called for more wine.

So that's Santiago for me: rich, full-bodied, sophisticated, great with red meats and cheese, and with a slight indefinable aftertaste. Definitely worth a visit, people.


P.S We also went to a chavtastic tacky theme park called Fantasilandia and went on loads of roller coasters- but this was such a guilty pleasure that I am typing it very small...

Homes from Homes

Good news folks. I didn't fall off the bicycle. I did dink a parked car but only ever so slightly. The wine tour was wonderful, especially when it was discovered that in addition to the lovely wine there was also jam, oil, liqueurs, chocolate and a stop in a beer garden for some home made lager. Add to this a crisp spring morning and some blossoming trees and it was altogether a grand day out. I had hitherto been perfectly happy to consume wine with no idea how it works, but now know everything there is to know about oak aging and Argentinian grapes. Who knew alcoholism could be so educational?

We stayed in Mendoza for almost a week, which is probably more than it needed, but we had met some nice people in our hostel and the laundry was a bargain, and more problematically, the border to Chile was closed due to some freak weather. This meant we said goodbye for several people each morning, only to greet them again at lunchtime as they threw their backpacks back down in the hallway, cursing under their breaths and grappling with a fold out map of south america before they decided, every time, to screw Chile and go to Buenos Aires. We really wanted to go to Chile so we decided to wait it out. By the time we left, our hostel felt like we had lived there forever. Chris had even started referring to it plaintively as -home-.

Fortunately Chile is definitely worth the wait. We had some more fun at the border while they searched for contraband. This time we had been handed a long, long list of things you had to declare before you entered the country. This turned out to include the cheese and butter in my sandwich-but not the bread- and some interestingly shaped seedpods from Bolivia which I had been carrying in my wash bag. Failure to declare, it was stated, was punishable by thumbscrews and racking. So I dropped the seedpods onto the bus floor, with a pang of regret, and fessed up to the ownership of the sandwich, but the only real scare is when Chris=s backpack went through the X-ray and they thought his sandwich was an apple. Apparently these draconian anti-fruit controls are to stop the pernicious spread of fruitfly. Although one might assume from the name that fruitfly have evolved measures to evade border patrol. Still, it was nice to wait in a snowy mountain pass in sub zero temperatures in case a rogue Coxs Orange Pippin had attempted an infiltration.

First stop in Chile was Valparaiso, a higgledy piggledy town set across about 40 hillsides. UNESCO has declared this one part of the Patrimony of Humanity too. In fact, why they havent saved an awful lot of trouble by declaring the entire continent a world heritage site, I don-t know. We have been to literally a hundred. But I digress. Valpo is universally described as charming, bohemian and hip. It is in short the Brighton of South America. The top half of town, on the hills, is full of vegetarian cafes, interesting street art, and a preponderance of shops selling olive dishes. The words artesan and boutique appeared an awful lot. Naturally I love all this but cant afford or carry any more decorative spoons or wolf dreamcatchers at present so we came back down in an ascensor. These Valpo institutions are ancient crumbly funiculars and there are maybe twenty around town. You sit in a sort of shack on wheels and they inch you up to hill level. Brilliant. We found very cheap accommodation in a haunted mansion in the suburbs which was an added bonus. We also did a harbour tour and saw a sealion, which thrilled us, and stumbled across a VW beetle show called Valpowagen which thrilled us too. Further along the beach at Vina Del Mar we strolled along the Pacific coastline in the winter sunshine on a boardwalk and ate the best barbecue ribs ever. For added fun we checked on the weather reports back home. How we laughed.

We are now in Santiago for a week, seeing the sights. Santiago looks and feels a lot like London to me. This makes me wonder if I havent actually just started gravitating towards the places that remind me of home, or some sort of romantic ideal of home. I've developed a pressing need to watch the Muppet Christmas Carol while drinking mead in front of a log fire. Even the thought of going back to work doesnt seem as dreadful as it once did. Eight months of travelling certainly warps reality.

P.S. If anyone is wondering, I am typing this blog on a computer whose punctuation keys have gone to hell in a handcart. Sure, I can do upside down question marks ¿¿¿¿ but what use is that without the apostrophe?

Judge Not (yet)...

I must stop doing this. We arrive in a new city after a ten hour night-bus ride, feeling hungry and anxious because even though we've never been so comfortable, we can't sleep on those buses. Invariably we arrive at 6am on a Sunday, and in a bus station which is situated in one of the less salubrious areas of town. If I had any sense I would know that a bus station at 6am on a sunday doesn't figure highly in most city's promotional literature. But I have no sense. So I get fractious and ball my fists and flounce a bit 'I hate it here!' And then I fire an email off to one of my parents, barking 'this town is a dump!'. And then later I put down the rucksack and wash my face and look around and realise I've done it again. I've maligned a perfectly pleasant place and now I have to backpedal.
So, pedalling at the ready. We went to Cordoba and I got in a huff because we had to walk for- oh, about a year- to get to the youth hostel. And then they put us in separate dormitories for the night! Goodness, I was so angry I ate all the biscuits. Over the next few days I gradually noted that Cordoba- the Cultural Capital of the Americas 2006 (how I had scoffed!) - had many pleasing aspects. It has millions of bookshops, for one thing. It is in fact the oldest university town in Argentina- a sort of Argentine Oxford, if you will, only with fewer bicycles and pillocks. It also has a lot of nice old buildings, including a church called 'the Jesuit Apple'. Why, I know not. It also has several well appointed small museums including a really thought-provoking and scary one on the Disappeared, thousands of people who went missing or were murdered by the military dictatorship in the 70s and 80s. There was a room with scrapbooks made of some of the victims by the relatives, showing their childhood photos and old school diplomas. It was a terrifying place, and really well done. I would definitely recommend it. For once we can't blame the guidebook for not knowing about this one, it only opened a few years ago. Well worth a visit.

The only thing to do, once you've been somewhere sobering and thought provoking, is to counteract the sombreness with a trip to a giant cuckoo clock, so this is what we did the nextday. The guidebook had promised us 'Vegas-like' levels of tat and tackiness so obviously I couldn't wait. Unfortunately I misread the book, so I was expecting a ten storey high cuckoo clock. It actually read two storeys. And this I feel was stretching it a bit. We had travelled for an hour to get there and there were TOUR BUSES parked by it so I really was expecting something massive and overwhelming. It wasn't. Don't go. If you are ever invited to see the Giant Cu-Cu in Villa Carlos Paz, politely decline.

If, however, you are invited to go to Che Guevara's childhood home in Alta Gracia, go at once (preferably on a Wednesday because all the museums are free). Alta Gracia is a delightful place, with a lovely Jesuit mansion to visit and then a really good Che museum detailing his childhood and showing pictures of him as a kid, and with his bedroom and toys and the bathtub the young revolutionary took his baths in. The gift shop was on the whole disappointingly tasteful, and the Che themed Cuban-Argentinian fusion snack bar was closed, but this minor setbacks aside, it was a grand day out.

We are now in Mendoza, the Argentine wine capital, and tomorrow morning we shall be embarking on the long expected bicycle wineries tour. Quite how the combination of a hot sun, cycling and wine tasting will affect us is not precisely known- I had a bottle of beer two days ago that made me distinctly wobbly- but since I cannot cycle very well perhaps an inebriated wobbling will act as a corrective. We shall see. I may have plenty of time to practise, as the Argentine-Chilean bordercrossing is currently shut due to snow. This is causing a bit of a headache in the scheduling and planning department. Fortunately Lovely Chris is on hand with map and spreadsheet and will doubtless save the day while I am guzzling the wine we buy on the tour. Que sera sera. I have finally noticed that's Spanish.

Screwing the System

Goodbye Bolivia. Good Morning Argentina. More accurately, Good evening Bolivia, Good evening three hour wait at the border while they riffled through my knickers and feminine hygiene products in search of cocaine, and then good evening Argentina. It was too dark by the time they'd decided there weren't any narcobarons in the queue to see if there was an appreciable difference in scenery although Chris was adopted by a dog as soon as we set food in the land of Steak and Wine so it didn't seem to be so very different.

The first sign we had that we really weren't in Bolivia anymore Toto was that they had a free coffee maker on the bus and invited the passengers to partake of it -quite why you would want coffee on an overnight bus is anyones guess but the gesture was appreciated- and a real life working toilet that wasn't hermetically sealed off. Such is the contrary natureof my bladder that I didn't actually use it but by all reports it was marvellous.

Upon arrival in Salta we discovered how Argentina pays for these neat contrivances and that is with the sort of inflated bus prices that makes Chris emit frightened squeaks like a bat trapped under a saucepan. Suffice to say the Diminutive Red Guidebook is totally and hopelesly out of date on this matter. A thorough examination of finances concluded that if would be all but impossible to eat, sleep and travel comfortably. Something had to give; the question was what.

Fortunately Chris and I have become masters of a principle called Screwing the System (It's actually called ****ing the system but there may be children present). Screwing (ahem) the System involves making financial savings where none should be possible. For example, by walking round town for an hour to find the crummiest, scuzziest hostel not mentioned in the guidebook and then haggling the price down, by filling water bottles up from water jugs in restaurant, and by never leaving a dining establishment without an assortment of sachets in one pocket and the toilet roll in the other. It had been a sort of guilty game in the Andean nations, where everything is so cheap anyway that it takes a special sort of financial pedant (yes fiance, I'm talking about you) to thieve mayonnaise and napkins, but in Argentina we are grateful for the practice for we are now in deadly earnest.

The latest STS wizard wheeze is to stay in hostels with kitchens. Anyone who went to university with me, I know what you're thinking, but the trick here isn't to steal asparagus risotto from the communal fridges (Honorable Mention here to Mr Stephen Molloy wherever he may be, who was the creator of said risotto which at one point was feeding at least 8 undergraduates on the sly). The trick is to go to the supermarket, buya load of potatoes, and then feast on them. I went a bit crazy in the supermarket, having not seen a proper one for months, and cooked a feast which promptly poisoned Chris (future wife FAIL)- this turned out to be an even more cunning plan as he ate nothing at all the next day which saved a FORTUNE.

This set me to thinking about how you could create a conglomerate of all the South american countries and theoretically live for free if you incorporated certain national characteristics across the board. For example, you could save tens of pounds a week if you didn't go to the bathroom anywhere except for Argentina (no toilet tax and as much toilet paper as you can stuff into your jumper), if you only drank wine in Bolivia (one quid a bottle- there's no pound sign on these keyboard by the way) but only drank beer in the cloud forest of ecuador (60p a litre); if you only went clubbing in Cusco (entrance free, rum and cokes free), if you stayed in the hotel in Puno (six dollars between us) or preferably were adopted by a Quitenan family - and bought all llama based souvenirs and pan pipes in La Paz- if you did all these things, it is theoretically possible to live in south america for nothing. And this being the case, I am increasingly tempted to try another year.

Hidden Gem

Next stop: Tarija. For a lot of this trip we've been on the established gringo trail and for some reason Traija doesn't seem to have made it onto the list. This is fantastic news for us because it means we don't have to compete for hotel rooms like jackals around a carcass, and furthermore they have to charge realistic prices without adding on a 30% tourist tax.
After the ice encrusted trip to the south west in only took the brief guidebook promise of an 'idyllic springlike climate' for us to book the tickets. This and the fact that for som reason there are no cash machines in southern bolivia except in this one place. So Tarija it was by default.

As with everywhere we have been to without expectations, Tarija has turned out to be brilliant in lots of small ways. The ability to sleep in less than ten layers of clothes has been a definite plus, although in the contrary nature of english travellers we were immediately complaining of being too hot. The town is the capital of Bolivia's winegrowing area, and is full of cafes, parks and wine shops. The wine tastes fine to me, being red, warm and wet, although Chris thinks it tastes of dribble, and they do delightful little saltenas for lunch. They even have some magic ingredient in the pizza sauce that makes it taste better than all the other pizzas in Bolivia. And a real shower, with real hot water. And since we are about to go to Argentina with a budget that may necessitate us eating bin scraps for three months, we decided what the hell, got a room with cable and have spent a week eating steak and biscuits and watching the baseball. I have also been researching theme parks. This is the thing about Bolivia. It's sucha wonderful place to do nothing in.

Oh, and Chris proposed. Like I said, this is a bloody great place.

Salty Goodness

And so to the Salar de Uyuni. This is billed by the guidebook as THE must-see sight of Bolivia. After the Cretassic Park fiasco we were less inclined to trust said book 100% but as there is really remarkably little else to do in this part of the world and everyone we had met had raved about it we decided what the hell and booked a three day trip.

It should be apparent to anyone who has been further than Dover on an organised tour that the agency will tell whatever lies they deem fit in order to get you to hand over money. These lies range from the mildly inconvenient - telling you the bus will take five hours when it will take seven; the severely inconvenient- telling you there is a toilet on the bus but neglecting to tell you that it will remain locked for the duration and you will have to pay five bolivianos to a toothless crone so you can pee in her vegetable patch; and the downright criminally negligent lies- in this case, telling you that the temperature in Uyuni is the same as in Potosi (5 degrees at night) when in actual fact it is TWENTY FIVE WHOLE DEGREES LOWER.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. First we must get to the Salar. If you've ever seen pictures, you 'll know that this great white expanse of saltiness is the place where you can do trick photography that makes you look the same size as your stuffed toys, or enables you to sit on the palm of someone elses hand. It is interestingly the remnants of a dried up ocean, but no one really cares about that when there are trick shots involving coca cola bottles to be done. So, it's a big white salt desert. It's very cool, but i'm not sure what else I can tell you about it really. It looks like the sort of place you would expect to see mammoths, if there were any left. It should have penguins. I think if it hadn't felt cold enough to be the Arctic, the fact that it looked like the arctic but was warm would have been notable. But it looked and felt like the north pole.

We went to an island in the middle of the salar and had a bracing picnic in a hurricane at a table made of salt. The island, a former coral reef back when this was an ocean, is covered in huge enormous cacti, about twenty metres tall. The tallest one was over 1200 years old. Impressive eh? The wonder of it all is what would possess a cactus to settle on a coral island in a salt desert in a hurricane and then stay there for a millenium, but then I know remarkably little about the psychology of cacti.

We stayed the night in a hotel made of salt bricks. The beds were salt, and the floor was salt, so it felt like it had snowed in the house. There was an agreeable santa's grotto type feel to the place, and exceptionally good biscuits. We drove into town through a dust storm and 60mph winds to buy beer, and passed the night listening to a gale force wind trying to scrape the roof off. Fortunately we hit upon the idea of wearing all the clothes we had brought with us all at once and so a hat, scarf, gloves, three pairs of socks, two pairs of trousers, five t-shirts, two jumpers, a fleece, six blankets and a sleeping bag later we were ready for bed, although unable to bend any of our limbs.

Somewhat to our surprise we actually survived the night although our toothpaste had frozen in its tube. Our next stop was Laguna Colorada. It is a lake which is red, because of the microorganisms in it, and these same little critters turn the flamingos that live in the lake pink. Frankly I am surprised that the flamingos were not blue as I have never ever been in such a frigid and hostile environment, not even the time I got drunk and booked a holiday in Poland in January. Unbelievably there are people who live full time on the altiplano, growing quinua and running salt hotels. If NASA ever need to find people to colonise Mars, this is the place. The landscape was distinctly Martian too, with reddish soil and weird rock formations and some of the weirdest light I have ever encountered. All in all it was a good introduction to interplanetary travel and I'm not sure someone didn't put LSD in my breakfast, but it was beautiful. Beautiful, and of course, unbelievably fricking cold.

The second night's accomodation made the first night's look like the Hilton. Having driven for an age across an enormous wide windy space we pulled up at what could charitably be described as a shack. We were in a dormitory with the other four people in our jeep, who by this stage we were bonding with nicely. As the temperature plummeted after sunset I tried to have a can of beer but it was frozen (of course I surmounted this obstacle eventually). They lit a woodfire which gave out all the heat and light of a candle. We went outside to look at the stars: more stars than I would ever have thought possible, in the widest sky I have ever seen. We stayed outside for as long as possible without risk of an icy death, about four minutes. Some germans arrived, we played cards. It was as convivial a way as we could think of to pass the last night of our lives, as we were all convinced we would be found dead in our sleeping bags in the morning, six gringo icicles who should not have listened to their tour agencies. At one point it was suggested (by me) that we should draw lots to see which one of the group we should burn as firewood. In the end we burnt the bread from dinner, said our farewells, climbed into our bunks and waited for death's sweet kiss.

We were stunned to wake up the next morning suffering from nothing more than mild nasal frostbite although all agreed it was the most uncomfortable night we had ever spent. The itinerary for the day involved us driving to a hotspring, where we could, for no additional charge, take our clothes off and jump into hot water. The hot water part sounded great, but the part where we had to strip down to our swimming costumes sounded impossible. However, when we arrived the lure of the steamy water was too great after three days without a shower. And it was glorious. By general consensus we agreed that the best thing to do would be just to never get out of the water. We stayed in as long as we could, watching absently as our socks were blown away by the wind, until finally we were coaxed out with pancakes. We were then told that due to adverse weather conditions (ha! what the hell had this been?) the laguna verde was closed (frozen solid) as was the chilean border. Our guide tried to frighten us with tales of jeeps being blown away in the desert. needlessly, because by this point we were all ready to go home, if only to have another crack at the one hot shower in Bolivia, located in the hotel/prison in Uyuni where we had shacked up before the tour started. They had pizza there too, and heaters.

So the verdict is as follows: go to Uyuni, and do this trip, because the scenery is unforgettably beautiful. But for God's sake, pack thermal knickers.

Cretassic Park

I believe it was Saint Francis of Assisi, (later covered by The Byrds) who said 'To everything there is a season', and quite right he was too. A time for war, a time for peace, (turn turn turn) a time for menu del dia, a time for McDonalds; a time to blend in, and a time to put on a global hypercolour T-shirt and a bumbag and get on a truck with a papier mache dinosaur head on the front and go to Cretassic Park.

It's not called Cretassic Park, of course. It is called something similar though, and promised, in addition to the largest collection of dinosaur 'printfoots' (sic) in the world, 'a collection of lifesize dinosaur models created with the greatest cientific (sic) rigour'. Naturally I would have paid any price in the world to see this and had been clamouring for a ride on the dinotruck since our arrival in Sucre.

Sucre had been slightly disappointing up to that point. I am suspicious of towns in general which have more lawyers than restaurants. It is all very pretty, but it also all designed to part the tourist from his money and even at rock bottom Bolivian prices this attitude does not endear a place to me. But Cretassic Park promised to be so mind boggling underwhelming and rubbish, after the hype in the guidebooks, that i couldn't wait to get there.

I wasn't disappointed. The DinoTruck (TM) bounced and jounced its way out to a quarry out of down and deposited us at the gates under the large plastic head of a T-rex. We were given an hour, or four. Not wanting to miss a precious moment I grabbed a ticket and scrambled through the turnstile.

The dinosaur footprints were not on the floor. They were on the quarry wall at a distance of three hundred metres away, which gave the impression of beetle tracks. I wasnt even sure I could see them until we went to the gift shop and looked at a poster which had them coloured in. Chris took a picture and we went back aagin. There, on the ridge. That indistinct splat was definitely either a sauropod footprint preserved in cement, or a tuft of grass. Who cares? The expression on Chris's face when he realised we had paid real life money for this was beyond priceless. I spent a few minutes wondering why the footprints were on a vertical surface (suction cups seemed the most entertaining answer), reluctant to find out the truth from the worlds tiniest and dullest on site museum. So I turned my attention instead to the real life cientifically rigorous dinosaur models. They were awful- huge, but awful. There was also a cretassic rat and a cretassic platypus lurking in a pond, for no reaosn. The whole site must have covered 200 square metres. The 'mirador' was the roof of the restaurant. It was so stunningly bad that it was brilliant. When they turned the sound effects on while I was passing under the belly of the (female) titanosaur I nearly cried with joy.

There came a point ten minutes later where there was nothign left to do except watch the BBC walking with dinosaurs DVD that someone had thoughtfully purchased and put on in a cool room. Then we realised that if we didn't hurry, the return dinotruck would leave and strand us there for another three hours. So we ran for it.

Waste of money? Certainly. But to everything there is a season- including plastic dinosaurs.

Bathing and Bolivia

Here's something you can all try at home. Go out into your garden shed early in the morning and remove all of your clothes. Then use a hairdryer to heat up an eggcup full of water and throw it over your head. Repeat. Once you are very wet and very cold, have someone open up a nearby sulphurous drain. Now here's the most important part: as soon as you have put the shampoo on your hair and committed yourself, allow the hairdryer that is providing the heat to the water to explode, filling your shed with smoke, your eyes with shampoo and covering you in water that has been piped directly from the Arctic.
Fun, eh? You've now experienced a Bolivian shower. If we've never shared a shower before, dear reader, I think you'll agree that this was an experience.
Notwithstanding the grievous state of the nation's plumbing, Bolivia has so far exceeded all expectations. Partly this is due to our expectations being no higher than being kidnapped at the border and then again in the capital. Low expectations are a very good thing when travelling, as almost everywhere turns out to be nicer than the guidebooks indicate. Copacabana, the border town on the Bolivian side of Lake Titicaca, was an enjoyable pitstop while we sampled the delights of the Isla del Sol. And whereas in Peru the street vendors and purveyors of tat will attach themselves round your ankles and let you drag them several yards down the street, in Bolivia you have to actually express an interest in the merchandise. Now that is progress.

We have spent the last week in La Paz throughly enjoying ourselves. La Paz itself is an extraordinary city and a full on sensory assault after the gilded cage that is Cusco. La Paz is noisy, dirty, smelly, chaotic, vibrant, schizophrenic, sprawling, vibrant, thrilling, colourful and above all MAD. It is geographically steep and ridiculously cheap. A three course meal costs 90p. For the first few hours we mainly kept moving to avoid being run over by people, cars, buses, dogs, carts, policeman and everything else living. Cusco was a beautiful, elegant and contrived city. La Paz has none of its beauty but beats the crap out of it for character. And so in spite of all our expectations we fell in love with the place and stayed for a week when we meant to stay for a day.
There aren't a great many tourist sights (the Valley of the Moon, which is in the books, was a bit of a let-down, but the zoo down the road let us in for 35p and we saw jaguars, which quite made up for it) so we've sort of been roaming the streets. Our hostal is located in the witches market, which involves a lot of bunches of herbs, amulets, incense and dried llama foetuses. I'm tempted to bring some of the latter home but am unclear how I would explain them to Customs so I am having to limit my spending sprees to buying up tacky religious objects, which Bolivian seems to specialise in. I am particularly pleased with my glow in the dark Holy Family figurine, although Chris is less enamoured.

We were also fortunate enough to run into the lovely frenchies (vive!) that we met at Machu Picchu so spent a very nice evening quaffing the local beer and eating satay. In fact we are able to live like kings here on our meagre budget and are somewhat reluctant to move on. I assume this must be a common feeling as the streets of La Paz have a good sprinkling of dreadlocked gringos selling bracelets who clearly have never left either, and for the first time I am more than a little bit envious.