TravelStream™ news feed for member brabzzz on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/brabzzz en-us Copyright ©2010 TravelPod.com Fri, 11 Dec 2009 11:18:37 -0500 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/brabzzz/1/1260184272/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/brabzzz/1/1260184272/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/brabzzz/1/1260184272/tpod.html Fri, 11 Dec 2009 11:18:37 -0500 The Pan-American ...kind of...

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Ciudad Del Este, Paraguay

The area around Puerto Iguazu is basically a triple-frontier and you can easily and cheaply move between Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil.

Aside from falls, the other remarkable site nearby is the Itaipu Dam, the second biggest (not sure how) after the Three Gorges in China. It supplies 25% of Brazil and 80% of Paraguay. They organise free tours several times day and, well, why not go?

I certainly tried. But what with direction not being signposted, buses not leaving from where i expected and the locals pointing me in every direction under the sun apart from towards the dam, i never made it out of Ciudad del Este! CdeE reminded me of Bolivia. Crazy street markets, hawkers selling everything and anything, dirty, noisy and generally a bit mad. Awesome. Prices were also much lower and it was a refreshing change from Argentina. But no dam. Damn. Next time.

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Rio de Janeiro, State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

I expected Rio to be the land of permanent sun, beaches and party, amongst other things. Which is why i was surprised to see rain on my second day...and shocked that it would continue to do so for the duration of my stay (and, indeed, for 2 weeks afterwards!).

I have reached the conclusion that i don't like visiting cities. Staying for weeks/months is one thing, but a flying 4 day visit like mine is a waste of time. For me. You don't get to really meet locals, you don't get to see anything apart from touristy hotspots...you just don't have time to actually get under the skin of the place.

The hostel, as all city hostel are, was over-run with the international party crowd. They facilitated our attendance of a Favela Funk Party on the edge of town, an interesting though deafening experience.

Wandering around the Copacabana district, i -did- see the beach and i did see a Capoeira group...but i didn't see the "star attractions" - Sugar Loaf and The Christ. Not because i didn't want to...i did...but half the time they were hidden in the cloud, and the rest of the time it was pointless as the surrounding cloud would have obscured the views anyway, the very reason you go up there in the first place.

To be honest i'm done. Time to get a cab to the airport (thankYOU Condor for not specifying which one...).



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Northampton, England, United Kingdom

Yep, it's over.

A slightly convoluted route back (via Salvador do Bahia and Frankfurt) but hey...aside from spending what seemed like half my time bored rigid waiting for flights, i'm home.

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Puerto Montt, Lake District, Chile

Upon returning to Puerto Natales, i found myself in Kawashker Backpackers Hostel...a genuinely friendly and nice little hostel run by Omer.

After the W, the only thing to do was eat, rest, eat, rest...well, you get the idea. Steak, chicken, steak, chicken :-)

Having now come all the way down south, the only was is up. There are four ways to do this...bus east, bus west, fly or boat (Navimag). No, no, expensive and very expensive.

And so it was that i found myself walking down to the port on the day of the Navimag`s departure with Loki and a crowd from his hostel to try a hammer out a bargain deal. Normally the 24 bed dorms are $420 in high season (ie now) and basic C-Class 4 bed cabins are $480. We managed to get the cabins for $227 a person! Whether this was because of the early time in the season, the rumor the Navimag was broken or because of the sh*tty economy i don`t know...and don`t realty care :-) We were taking the Navimag and taking it cheap.

Our crew was Loki (Oz), Jeremy (SA), Kendra (Ger), Tobias (Ger) and we met a load of other Brits, French, Dutch and Ozzies on board.

The Navimag departs very early on Tuesday morning, so they board everyone at 9pm the previous night (free accommodation for a night!). On board there were only 40 of us - a mix of those that had paid the full price when prebooking from abroad (and obeyed the online rules page...namely no outside alcohol on board) and backpackers who had nailed a discount (and were carrying their own bodyweight in booze ;-)

As part of the trip, there were 3 meals a day, all better than i had expected. The food was good and plentiful. There were daily presentations on touristy/natural topics, daily briefings on the day`s route, evening movies and usually a crew member with a karaoke passion in the pub in the evenings.

We spent most of our time in the pub, drinking, playing chess and shooting the sh*t. The weather was unfortunately pretty poor and so we only ventured onto deck for a brief times - and thought the scenery was stunning, gloomy and moody, i can`t help thinking that it would have been better with crystal blue sky. My overall chess results were pretty good, but i didn`t really ever get one over Philipp.

The ship ventured right up to a huge glacier to give us a closer look (i observed much of this from the bridge), nudging its was past sheet ice and icebergs. Cool :-) On the final day the sun did venture out and Jeremy, Loki and I played a few games of giant-chess on deck.

The final night was THE party. Lol. It is indeed a strange feeling to find oneself on a cruise, holding a couple of bingo-boards, listening attentively to the numbers...before the age of 60! The karaoke dude was giving his best shot at Punk Floyd, we were gradually getting plastered and there was dancing. Oh there was dancing. Whenever anyone called Bingo they had to dance solo in front of everyone. You would have thought that would be an incentive to pay extra attention and make sure you REALLY had a bingo. But no. A good half dozen strutted their stuff only to find out they should have been listening better! All in all a good night. I woke up in the now-empty pub at 1.30am, next to Jeremy, whose ears had been painted blue.

The following day we were herded off the boat, Loki Ipod-less (thanks cleaners)
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/brabzzz/1/1258299306/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/brabzzz/1/1258299306/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/brabzzz/1/1258299306/tpod.html Mon, 07 Dec 2009 08:18:12 -0500 The Pan-American ...kind of...

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San Carlos de Bariloche, Río Negro, Argentina

Bariloche is down in the Argentinean Lake District, just over the border from Puerto Montt. The drive across is through Andean passes and almost entirely in a national park. Prettiest border crossing ever :-)

Our first night was in the expensive MarcopoloInn, another soulless HI hostel. The next day i went hunting for something cosier and cheaper. The last place i checked was the Punto Sur (ex Nomad) Hostel. Martin, the owner was busy refurbishing it when i arrived. There was flat-pack furniture everywhere, paint cans and dust sheets. It was a bomb site, but at the right price i wouldn´t have minded. He had to repeat the price 3 times before i understood, and even then i didn`t believe it. It was free - he refused to charge us until it was all ready and open!

And true to his word, i left a week later having not paid a penny, despite trying to! Martin was also a first rate host, cooking up monumental (and yummy) asados and comida del disco (veg+mat over open fire in big iron hubcap) almost every night, and letting us use his laptop until the hostel computers were delivered. The people in the hostel were also a more interesting bunch than in the HI...i guess having to walk into a hostel that`s obviously not open filters out most of the flashpackers! I was here with Kendra and Toby (the Germans off the Navimag), a few Israelis and a large group of South Africans that didn`t look the type to be here...but they were! over the course of the week, more and more Israelis arrived. Obviously news of a cheap deal spreads fast in their circles. I suspect Punto Sur will become one of the Israeli hostels in Bariloche, which is a shame really.

I did meet one interesting guy in the HI - a Frenchman that had attempted the length of the Amazon with a friend on a battered $60 canoe (failed - nearly died many times over) in his early days before working as a chef in the States and in tourism in Venezuela.

In Bariloche, we hiked up Cerro Otto (amazing views), cycled Circuito Chico (more amazing views) and hiked 20km to the waterfalls where we tried to spearfish, unsuccessfully, the large trout that were flapping about. It`s reputation for ice cream was well founded - Kendra and I had a field-day in one of the bars...over 60 flavors made on site! And its reputation for speciality beers is equally well founded - after an ordering mistake at the microbrewery, Toby and I had 8 pints of rather strong specialty beers to work through. Tough life, eh? And Kenda was nuts enough to go for a swim in the lake. Rather her than me...Bariloche is still in Patagonia(-ish) and thus is freezing most of the time!


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Mendoza, Argentina

Mendoza is hot, European and has pretty girls.
And there is nothing to do apart from enjoy that, unless you want to do expensive touristy excursions.

I ended up in Campo Base, which hammered home...again...why i don`t like HI Hostels. Corporate, identical and soulless. They want payment up-front and have CCTV and deathly hot dorms with triple-bunks + pillows stitched to mattresses...and they try to offload their overpriced tours onto you. 1100 pesos for 3 days trekking??? C`mmon!!!! Urghhh.

I decided that this was the place to finally tick paragliding off my list. It`s something that i`ve always wanted to learn, and a tandem would be a good way to confirm i actually like the sensation. Rather than going through an agency or the hostel, i contacted instructor Horacio direct. It`s cheaper and i like the idea of leaving out the middle-men. It was exactly as i expected. Nice. Tranquil canopy flight (certainly when compared to skydiving). I like it, but i can`t help thinking that it`s the sort of sport i would enjoy more when i`m too old to do anything more hardcore! So rather than confirm that it`s time to do the full course, i think it pushed it back 40 years! :-)

Once my 70 pesos for 3 nights at CB had expired, I moved to Hostel Independencia. Nice place, although there were a couple of people that justified the reputation of Brits as being drunken mornons when abroad.

Mendoza is famous for wine, and one of the things to do is a tour of the bodegas (wineries) by bike. So I set off with Jeremy (from Dijon, France) to see what was on offer. We took a bus to Maipu where we met Mr. Hugo (wearing a Mr. Hugo t-shirt) of "Mr. Hugo Bike Rentals" fame. A bike for the day + unlimited free wine upon your return for 25 pesos :-)

It is certainly beautiful here...vineyards, blue sky and mountains.

The "wine route" is definitely a tourist attraction, and i suspect most of the wineries make as much money from tours as the sale of wine. Tourist police patrol, helping with directions and punctures. The wineries all have bike stands. They charge for tours and limited tastings.

We started at XXX, a French winery at the very end of the route, owned by a French couple with more interest in astronomy than wine. A hot guide showed us around and we sampled 3 of the cheaper wines before paying extra to sample some of the priciest.

The second that we visited was Di Thomas (Italian). Far more touristy - probably because it is much closer and is also one of the oldest. Whereas it was just us two at the French winery, here we were tasting in groups of 15 with less explanation and from heavy ugly glasses (not really wine glasses, imho). Nice wine too, but this really smacked of tourism...

All in all, worth it.

As we were now tipsy, we thought we`d make a night of it and head of with the 3 English girls we`d met at Di Thomas. We ended up, without the girls, in a disco - with the aim of scoring with some pretty Mendocinas. Wrong type of disco unfortunately...it was full of old, creepy expats of dubious reputation going for local girls of dubious age. Urghhhhhh.

If i had more time, i would have liked to climb Aconcagua...this week the permits are at their cheapest too. Shame i don`t have more time :-(
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Puerto Iguazu, Litoral, Argentina

The weather is hot, humid and sticky. With intermittent hammerings of rain.
Puerto Iguazu itself is a dusty/muddy hole with nothing to do.

However, the Iguazu Falls are -awesome-. Unlike some things that you expect to be amazing but end up being merely ok, they did exceed my expectation.

The Argentine side is developed with variety of trails through the jungle and suspended walkways to give better views of the falls, to the point of being able to stand on the very edge of Garganta del Diablo (Throat of the Devil), the most tumultuous of them.

It pisses all over Niagara. The numerous waterfalls are left, right, ahead...everywhere. There are rocky outcrops and jungle breaking them up and many have several levels, cascading down towards the river.

It`s cool. No point writing much as not even the pics do it justice (nowhere near).



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Torres del Paine, Patagonia, Chile

Initially I was somewhat uncertain as to whether i actually wanted to do the `W` route through Torres el Paine. My concern was then weather - though good, my sleeping bag is only rated to about 0C and my tent is has the aforementioned condensation problem. And, lets face it, hiking sucks when the weather is bad. Especially if it is raining. It was only on the spur of the moment, when Omer (hostel owner) called up the stairs "You going to Torres or not then?" that i decided i was going, ill-equipped or otherwise.

I bought food (170g pasta + can of tuna every day, plus snacks and porridge), packed my gear and caught the bus to Torres early the next morning.

Torres is a bit of a money spinner for the Chileans. The 4 identical bus companies servicing the park all charge the same ($30 return), the park wants $30 entrance and the catamaran that saves a day`s hiking `into` the park costs $20. So that`s $80 for being able to walk for a few days! And that`s the budget way. A couple of Belgian girls i met had pre-booked accommodation and food in the Refugio's and shelled out $850 between them for five days!!!

I set of hiking with the 2 Belgians to Glacier Grey, where i left them and continued to the free campsite one hour further on. Here i hooked up with 3 Israelis that i finished the trek with. We hiked to the French Valley the following day (and saw a huge avalanche) and i did another hike that evening, almost up to Campamento Brittanico at the end of the valley. On the third day we hiked to the campsite under Mirador de las Torres. We did get up at 5am the following day for the 1 hour hike to see Las Torres at sunrise. We knew we wouldn`t see anything as we woke to a snowstorm. but we hiked anyway...and saw nothing :-) That afternoon i ran (don`t ask...5+ hour hike in 2 hours) back to the entrance and hitching a ride for the final 7km to the bus pick-up point. The Israelis had decided to stay for another shot at las Torres.

The weather was very changeable, but Torres itself was beautiful regardless. The highlight is definitely the French Valley...you stand there surrounded by awesome rock formations, towers and cliffs, a mountain with constant avalanches and a stunning view of the lakes. The weather could have been better, obviously, and it`s good that we saw the towers on the first day - on the last day we couldn`t see our hands in front of our faces, nevermind the towers!

I managed to complete the W without even opening my tent. I slept in the 3 sided sheds that serve as cooking huts. A bit windy and lots of mice, but so much less effort than making/breaking camp. I lost a bun to the mice and they chewed through the tent case to get to some food that was wrapped inside. Bastards! In 3 seconds of stupidity, i decided to tighten the stove whilst lit (=burn hand) and, in that moment of pain, turned and put my arm on the stove...thus burning a hole though my down jacket. Fuuuuuuckit. Apart from that, all good :-)

It`s a small world...at various points in the park, i probably met a dozen people that i would be sailing north on the Navimag with.

]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/brabzzz/1/1257010724/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/brabzzz/1/1257010724/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/brabzzz/1/1257010724/tpod.html Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:21:31 -0500 The Pan-American ...kind of...

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Punta Arenas, Patagonia, Chile

So, having flown from Ushuaia up to El Calafate, why am i almost all the way back down again, in Punta Arenas?

1) To buy some new shoes (again) because Chile`s Zona Franka (tax free trading zone) is in town.
2) To try an hitch a lift with the Chilean navy to Antarctica.

How did it go?

1) Failed. The Zona Franka is full of tech toys, white goods, booze and a handful of places selling tents and outdoors gear. Boots? Crap, expensive and in short supply in large sizes. I ended up buying a hot glue gun for 50p and attempting a repair job instead.

2) Failed. I assumed that it would like in the more Northern countries...money can buy you anything...ie i would show up with $1000 cash and they would get me on the next month`s boat whilst grinning madly at the extra pocket money. Not so. The front desk simply pointed at a photo of the portly station chief and said i need to apply in writing outlining all my reasons for going (etc). I`m sure with some planning, more time and some pre-prepared BS (letters with some impressive `borrowed` letterheads) it would be very possible. Not this time, unfortunately, no time.

And how was Punta Arenas? What a sh*thole.

Oh, and the penguins. As I stupidly arrived on a Friday evening and the Navy is only open short Mon-Fri hours, i was stuck there for 4 days....so i decided to visit the penguin colony to justify my time there. Hmmmm. $30 later i was standing in a viewing shelter by the beach looking at a group of 30 or so penguins. They are pretty cool, but on the basic tour you cannot walk amongst them and there are only a few about. C`mmmmmmmon....$30???? For penguins???? Yeah, why not, i guess. Apparently you can see them in Puerto Madryn for free if you go for a walk along the beach :-(

Not impressed with this one.
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Puerto Natales, Patagonia, Chile

Yep, i`m in Chile!

The bus down from El Calafate went through barren, flat Patagonia (most of the time there really is NOTHING for as far as the eye can see) until we hit the border. Pretty painless. The Chileans have a total ban on meat/veg and their derivatives entering, thus we (and our baggage) were all searched before being admitted. I`m sure they really were after the contraband carrot rather than drugs or guns....

Puerto Natales. Is nice. Small, by the sea, touristy and the jumping-off point for Torres del Paine and the Navimag ferry. Not much more to the place. Really. Nothing.

I met Loki (tall Ozzie with dreads) on the bus, and upon leaving the bus we bumped into a totally batty girl trying to get us to stay in her hostel. We ended up at here hostel. I can`t remember it`s name (or hers) but it was distinctly average and she was indeed a complete fruitloop. She gave us a whirlwind tour of town, took us for the best king cab cannelloni in town (yep, restaurateur and her on best terms ;-) and 2nd hand clothes shopping. After fruitlessly trying to convince Loki that the sh*tty cotton Coleman sleeping bag they wanted $20 for was perfect for a week`s trekking in Torres del Paine, she went back to the hostel and we grabbed a much needed beer.

The following day Loki set out for the Full Circuit route in Torres del Paine and i headed down to Punta Arenas.







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