TravelStream™ news feed for member rosiepearson on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/rosiepearson en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Wed, 14 Mar 2007 18:35:18 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/rosiepearson/south_america/1163778300/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/rosiepearson/south_america/1163778300/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/rosiepearson/south_america/1163778300/tpod.html Wed, 14 Mar 2007 18:35:18 -0400 Rio to The Galapagos - Ramblin Rose´s South American Adventure, coast to coast and beyond in the belly of The Turtle

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Coppacabana, Bolivia

We left La Paz and spent a few days in Coppacabana in Bolivia before crossing into Peru. Coppacabana, Bolivia gave its name to the beach in Rio as it has one of South America´s most treasured virgin icons which is a focus for pilgrims as it is thought to hold powers of healing. It is also rumoured that if she is moved on any day other than the 2 recognised fiestas, the town will flood and catastrophy will befall the inhabitants. It is also on the banks of Lake Titicaca, the worlds highest body of water. A 2 hour boat ride from Coppacabana are two islands - Isle del Sol and Isla de Luna - the sun and the moon, thought by the Aymara indians to be the birth place of the gods.

We got up early to spend the day walking the length of Isle del Sol but our plans were initally held up by a two hour wait for breakfast, caused by a combination of burst pipes and incapacitated kitchen staff. This is still Bolivia so rule number one is do not have any pre existing expections or timescales, number two everything is likely to change.

As we sat waiting on the little boat we had hired we watched a Bolivian wedding party making its way across the beach to clamber into the small boat beside us for the obligatory photos. The bride in a big white merangue number and heels looked extremely precarious as she teetered along the slippery gang plank. We got our cameras ready, just in case...

Once we arrived on the sandstone Isle de Sol there were fantastic views out over Lake Titicaca and a number of stone ruins aswell as 3 or 4 indian villages to wander through. We had lunch on the beach before continuing our walk past families ploughing by hand and tending their terraced plots, through narrow alleys between adobe huts, stepping over the occassional sow with litters of piglets clamped to their nipples.

As there are no maps or sign posts on the island it is actually relatively easy to take the wrong paths. I got separated from some of my companions after a couple of us stopped to take out some coca leaves to chew on. All in all though it was a pleasant day. Until we got to the beach where the boat was collecting us....

As we waited it soon became clear that two of the group had obviously got lost. One was an 18 year old girl, Harri, who had only just joined the trip in La Paz, the other was the most accident prone individual I have ever come across who should have had "liability" tatooed on his forehead. After a 2 hour wait during which time several people had retraced steps, shouting the names of the pair, we realised that someone would have to stay overnight on the island and hopefully find them in the morning. For those of us that were to return to Coppacabana though there was the more worrying prospect of a 2hr return boat ride in complete darkness. Normally the boats refuse to sail at night as none of them are equipped with any form of lighting. On this occasion our driver agreed. As we set out the sun had already disappeared behind the horizon and in the direction we were heading we could see ominous black clouds. As we headed out further into the water the tiny boat started to list precariously and we got rolling views below us of the water and then above us of the blackening sky. As it got darker it got colder and the rain started to come in sideways. Just my luck I thought, they´ve probably got a new cleaning lady up at the church and knowing nothing of the myths of damnation and flooding, she´s moved that dusty looking old virgin to give her a good clean and have her sparkling like new in a jiffy.....

As the lightening started to come down around us I began looking out to islands that we passed with distant twinkling lights on their hillsides. My mind was not eased by the dwindling jerry can of diesel that the driver was draining into the outboard and forelornly peering into as if thinking, "Now I´m sure I put more in there than that". I began to calculate how far the huts were from us and the probability of me swimming ashore if we get struck by lightening or ran out of fuel. I kept telling myself that the predominantly wooden structure of the boat would rule out a lightening strike and if I swam ashore the uphill walk to the lights in the cold Bolivian night would mean that hypothermia would probably get to me first. It was the longest boat ride ever and the lights of our destination twinkled tantilisingly in the distance for an interminable amount of time. Most of the group sat in silence on the journey, each of us it later turned out was eying the lights on the islands and making the same calculations that I was. Except for one of the group. John has been to Titicaca before. Except last time he came his boat hit another boat in the dark and sank. He was as he admitted, shitting bricks. I guess all in all were were pretty lucky.

Oh by the way, the couple who got lost turned up the next morning. Tired, fed up and wanting a shower, but with an interesting story and a start to 18 year old Harri´s gap year trip that she wasn´t keen to tell her parents about just yet. We were slightly later leaving Coppacabana that morning than we had planned
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/rosiepearson/south_america/1162312980/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/rosiepearson/south_america/1162312980/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/rosiepearson/south_america/1162312980/tpod.html Wed, 14 Mar 2007 18:00:19 -0400 Rio to The Galapagos - Ramblin Rose´s South American Adventure, coast to coast and beyond in the belly of The Turtle

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Potosi, Bolivia

As I saw Potosi for the first time I started to hope for the first time that it wasn´t where we would be staying - it looked grim. It is the highest city in the world at over 4000m and is a sprawl of tightly packed houses dominated by the mountain Cerro Rico which has been a silver mine since the 1500s. On the outskirts we passed a woman picking through a rubbish pile with a toddler wearing an incongruously bright jesters hat. Once inside the city it is less of a depressing sight but as with so many towns in Bolivia the overriding colours are grey and brown. In the main square there are a couple of trees but elsewhere in some of the smaller squares there are raised beds with green grass in them though they are fenced off and have barbed wire stretched over the top to stop even the birds and animals from standing on the precious green horticultural offering.

Potosi still has 12000 miners working in the mine extracting tin, zinc and silver. They still work in the same way as they did hundreds of years ago with no lifts or machinary, extracting by hand with pick axes. Since it opened it is estimated that between 8 and 9 million people have died in the mine and even now there is an average of one death a week.

Tourists can go down and see the mines in small groups and the money they pay for the tour goes towards the miners co-operative. We got kitted out in waterproof clothing, hard hats, headlights and wellies before visiting the market to buy gifts for the miners. We each buy an assortment of dynamite, coca leaves, 98% proof alcohol. This must be the only place in the world where anyone can buy these in the street - it is a slightly worrying mix to have in the shopping basket.

From the market we drove up the mountain and I was perturbed to hear the voice of one of the people in our group, who happens to be the most accident prone individual I have ever encountered, exclaim "whoops guys I´ve dropped my dynamite and its rolling around in the back here". On top of the mine we pulled up infront of an ominous little chapel where our guide showed us how the miners prepare the pale green nitro glycerin, which resembled playdoh, with the fuse and detonator. It was then put inside a bag containing the more volatile amonium nitrate, the fuse was lit and then the powerful concoction was passed around us. It was like a grown up version of pass the parcel but the participants looked a little more nervous and were keen to forward the package more quickly and definately didn´t want to be holding it when the hissing fuse stopped. Maybe that explained the proximity to the chapel - should anything have gone wrong we would probably have been blown in through the doors without the need even for pall bearers.

As the fuse continued to burn our guide´s slightly older and somewhat overweight assistant took the hissing package and ran some way down the hill before hurredly burying it in the ground. It was a bizarely comical sight to see this rotund figure wobbling down the mountain knowing what he had in his hand and there was that little bit of me that began to wonder what would happen if he tripped ......
When it blew you could feel it all the way through your body

At the entrance to the mine the walls are daubed anually with the blood of a sacrificed llama. This is to give something back to Pachamama or Motherearth, the god from whom they take the minerals. The llama is then buried at the mouth of the mine to feed Pachamama in the hope that she will not feel the need to take the lives of the miners instead. Children as young as 13 work in the mines and life expectancy is 40 years of age - they need all the divine help they can get. The other god that the miners worship and make offerings to is El Diablo - the devil. Inside the mine there are numerous effigies which every friday the miners daub with alcohol and give cigarettes and coca to. They also partake of huge quantities of the alcohol themselves which tends to be when a lot of the accidents happen so they don´t advise doing the mine tours on a friday. In the early days of the mine the spaniards told the enslaved miners that the devil would be watching them if they didn´t work hard. The slave population later realised that the spaniards catholic religion feared and hated the devil so they started to follow the old addage that my enemy´s enemy is my friend and the worship continues to this day.

We spent the morning scrambling through the mines. Many of the tunnels are so small that you spend much of the time bent double and still constantly banging your head on the rock. We often had to climb up and down 15ft rockfaces between shafts with no ladders, trying hard to find any kind of hand or foot hold. Elsewhere small rocks would be piled up and as we climbed on them we set off small rockslides onto those climbing behind us. The air is really thin so it is exhausting and we weren´t even doing any work. After a few hours we were all keen to leave and we had the luxury of spending the afternoon lazing in some thermal springs up in the surrounding mountains. The miners have no such release to look forward to at the end of their hard days. You begin to understand why they drink such strong alcohol. Once again I am thankful that my ancestors choice of homeland mean that I have the privelidges that I do and I can only start to guess at how difficult life must be for others.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/rosiepearson/south_america/1162309740/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/rosiepearson/south_america/1162309740/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/rosiepearson/south_america/1162309740/tpod.html Fri, 09 Mar 2007 18:57:36 -0500 Rio to The Galapagos - Ramblin Rose´s South American Adventure, coast to coast and beyond in the belly of The Turtle

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Uyuni, Bolivia

We hired a couple of jeeps from Uyuni to take us to the Salt Flats and on the way we stopped at the Train Cemetary on the edge of town. It is a surreal graveyard in the middle of the desert, full of the rusting hulks of old steam trains. Apparently for some years there has been the intention to turn it into a museum but this is Bolivia and it remains a pipe dream and unfortunately nothing more than another good photo opportunity on the gringo trail.

Back in the jeeps again and the next stop was Calchani, a god forsaken village in the desert on the edge of the salt flats. It exists to process the salt which comes from the dried up lake that created the flats. A few old ladys have stalls selling souvenir pots and ashtrays made from salt which has been filed down and painted and there is a one room "museum" with furniture made from salt. It had one living breathing occupant - a llama which was later encouraged out by the woman with the stall outside. It obediently obliged but then insisted on constantly sticking its nose firmly up her bottom as she tried to continue enticing customers to view her wares, pretending to be nonchalently oblivous to her furry butt plug!

Having seen how they processed the salt we headed out to the flats. Just outside the town the ground starts to resemble dirty snow. As we continued it became whiter and whiter until all you can see ahead is the blinding whiteness of the salt flats meeting the brilliant blue sky. From hideous grey brown desert there is pure brilliant white beauty. It is 12,000sq km of salt flat which was left behind when a massive inland lake dried up thousands of years ago. It is unbelieveably stunning and surreal. We drive across it for an hour or two until we reach Fish Island,a rocky outcrop covered in cacti and a baños where we stop for lunch.

After lunch we head out onto an area of the flats armed with props for our photo session. The flats are an amazing spectacle for which the main draw for tourists is to utilise the nothingness and lack of perspective for silly photos. We spend an hour or two getting some great shots before heading off to the salt hotel. Aside from the straw roof it is built entirely from salt blocks including the tables and chairs outside. We chill some bubbly in the salt pool which is filled with cold salty lake water which has come up from under the salty crust. We were celebrating a birthday in the group so we drank the bubbly whilst watching yet another stunning sunset.

The birthday celebrations that night meant that we all donned fancy dress outfits sourced from the local markets and entailing an eclectic mix of traditional bowler hats, ponchos and other accessories which when worn all together, particularly by the wrong sexes raised quite a few local eyebrows. In Bolivia only the women wear the bowler hats so the sight of our bunch arriving in bars in our collection of outfits drew plenty of giggles from the locals - those locals who had remained conscious. In Bolivian bars people drink simply to get drunk so bars can be quite quiet places as most of the clientele will be snoring. However sleeping is often a better option than listening to the inebriated droneings of the conscious clientele who will try and belt out the lastest Bolivian hits on the unfortunately highly popular Karaoke machine. Thankfully we finished the evening in a bar where we joined the locals in dancing and endless rounds the rarely practised pub game of limbo.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/rosiepearson/south_america/1161627120/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/rosiepearson/south_america/1161627120/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/rosiepearson/south_america/1161627120/tpod.html Fri, 09 Mar 2007 17:39:55 -0500 Rio to The Galapagos - Ramblin Rose´s South American Adventure, coast to coast and beyond in the belly of The Turtle

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The Alti Plano to Tupiza, Bolivia

After leaving Salta we began to climb up into the Alti Plano where we spent our last night bush camping in Argentina at 3600m. The Alti Plano is bleak but stunning. It is quite barren tundra but the mountains have incredible stripes of colour through out them. It looks as if someone has taken several paintbrushes with different colours ranging from reds,violets, greens, yellows and greys and has lined them up alongside each other and made sweeping loops and curls across the rockfaces. There are parrallel lines of strata in every colour interspaced with formations like giant stalagtites worn into the mountains.

We are well practiced now with putting our tents up and we can usually errect them in about 5 minutes but a combination of the rocky tundra which is less than hospitable to tent pegs & gale force winds which blew sand in our eyes left us struggling to control flapping flysheets, meant that we made 3 attempts find suitable ground to errect them. We finally found a spot shielded from the wind but in a type of storm drain. We knew we´d be fine as long as it didn´t rain so the odd flash of lightening in the distance was ominous and disconcerting. After 1hour of struggling we managed to secure our tent pegs with rocks and settled back to watch another incredible sunset behind the mountains, followed by a clear sky full of stars. As the temperature plummeted and I was kept awake by the freezing numbness in my backside, the thought of the sunset and stars here in the middle of nowhere, high up on the Alti Plano made it all worthwhile.

The next morning we headed for the Bolivian border. For the last 50 - 80km in Argentina you can see how the buildings and style of dress change and start to look more Bolivian. You can see the poverty levels increasing and you begin to see herds of llamas and alpachas beside the road.

The Bolivian border was the friendliest so far and a real culture shock. For the first time we were surrounded by women in the traditional Bolivian dress which is worn throughout the country. They wear full skirts, layers of cardigans, thick woolen stockings and either broad rimmed hats or bowler hats. They were bright coloured blankets tied across their backs in which they carry everything from children to the most enormous loads of potatos, palets of huge tins, all sorts. They are bent double and trot in a quick shuffle over the border with their wares.

Once over the border the tarmac on the road lasts for a couple of hundred metres and then gives way to unsurfaced road which covers most of the country. Traveling by road in Bolivia is punishing on the buttocks and we are in luxury compared to the open top trucks that we see everywhere packed full of standing people who can´t afford the bus. Often for hours on end we bump along tracks which at best make it feel like you are sitting on a washing machine on a fast spin, at worst you are thrown clear of your seat and repeatedly slam back down or against the window.

We drive for 2-3 hours through barren mountains which look like a moonscape. The buildings are ramshackle brown hotch potches made from mud bricks with either straw roofs or tin held down by rocks. They often have walls around a dry dusty yard in which livestock stand forlornly or kids play in the dust with the chickens, pigs and goats. Aside from the cacti there is just dry scub everywhere so it is hard to imagine how anything survives.

We arrived in Tupiza and went to have something to eat in a cafe called "El Garage" opposite our hotel. We waited for the lady behind the counter to bring some menus but after a few minutes went over and helped ourselves. We eventually decided what we wanted from a relatively extensive menu. When we went to order she told us that they only had sandwiches or omelettes. There were four of us, we were the only people in the cafe and we waited 2 hours for 4 omelettes. I´m not sure if they were out the back cajolling a scrawny hen to just pop out another one for the gringos, but this was our welcome to Bolivia. Don´t stress, we had no pressing appointments to be late for. Don´t worry about how long things take, just sit back and you might, eventually get something along the lines of what you asked for. Sometimes it bears no resemblance to what you ask for but hey, its pot luck, and most of the time it can be good fun to eat something that you can´t identify and try and work out what it is.

After my experience at the estancia in Argentina I was keen to get back on a horse again so two of us went out riding in the stunning rocky scenery around Tupiza. I was on "Laguna" and like my previous stead,Cheeseface, he wanted to always be at the front. Within 10 minutes of getting on him he was off at full speed. Luckily he managed to find the walking gear aswell and we spent a pleasant morning, riding around the area. The red mountains are streaked with violets and greens and there are huge fin formations where the rocks are like giant stalagtites. One formation we pass is called "Bailar des Machos" - Dance of men. Our spanish may be limited but our guide George in an excided giggle and gesticulating gives us a one word explanation behind the naming of the formation. Peñas! The rocks are all remarkably phalicly shaped. I would have loved to have seen my nervous prim old geography teacher try and explain that to a class of school girls.

From Tupiza we head to Uyuni. Much of the journey is across desert where there isn´t a road to follow as such. For one stretch the traffic uses a dry river bed so I have no idea what happens in the wet season. Elsewhere we try and follow other tyre tracks in the sand. Bolivia you see, not only doesn´t do road surfaces, it also doesn´t do road signs but then when you don´t really do roads then there isn´t much use in wasting time with signs either - its quite logical when you think about it!

We pass bleak villages along the way. In one the only colour in the whole place came from the cemetery up on a hill. Bright flags, ribbons and flowers adorned all of the graves which are above ground. The fact that in death there appeared to be the brightest relief only added to how desolate life seems for the inhabitants. Elsewhere the cacti very occassionally have small pink flowers which show up from a distance. Otherwise the only colour comes from the herds of llama, alpacha and vizcuna (deer like llama relatives) which all have bright coloured wooly tassles or pom poms in their ears and on their backs as a form of Bolivian branding.

Yet an oasis amongst this was our hotel in Uyuni. Run by an American guy and his Bolivian wife it was great mixture of the comforts of home with a Bolivian feel. Chris the proprietor came from a family who run pizza places back in the US. The hotel had its own pizza parlour "Minuteman" which does the best pizza in Bolivia, not much of a claim you may think but it was superb. I can´t think of many places I´ve been to where you can have spicy llama pizza with roasted pepper, sundried tomato and gorgonzola. It was delicious!

I went to sleep on a full stomach with the sounds of Bolivian music gently wafting through my open window from the fiesta down the road. I was woken the next morning by a fog horn followed by a trumpet version of the national anthem! So who needs sleep anyway. The hotel was next to a military garrrison. The sign that I later saw by the front door read "If you hear the Bolivian national anthem whilst you are in the street, remove your hat and stand still to comply with Bolivian law. Alternatively just stay in the hotel"
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/rosiepearson/south_america/1161296820/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/rosiepearson/south_america/1161296820/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/rosiepearson/south_america/1161296820/tpod.html Fri, 09 Mar 2007 17:02:18 -0500 Rio to The Galapagos - Ramblin Rose´s South American Adventure, coast to coast and beyond in the belly of The Turtle

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Quilmes, Cafayette and Salta, Argentina

After a wonderful few days riding with the Gauchos we left Estancia Los Potreros and headed for Cafayette which is the wine region. We spent an uneventful night bushcamping by a road on what turned out to be a giant dusty ants nest. When we awoke at 6.00am we had company from a family with their horse and cart who had stopped and built a fire beside us. We wondered wondered what they were doing but equally as we brought out our usual kettles, stoves chairs etc and started breakfast they must have thought the same of us.

Throughout the morning we started to wind our way up mountain roads, initially they were tree covered foothills with wild yellow lillies and white peace lillies growing everywhere. As we climbed above 3000m the landscape became more barren with giant cactus fields all around us. We caught our first glimpse of a snow covered Andean peak in the distance before we stopped for lunch in the mountain desert at the ruins at Quilmes. All that remains are terraces of walls in the mountainside with giant cacti throughout. We are spoilt in Europe with our architectural history so whilst this site is of major importance to Argentina, to us the giant cacti were more interesting. Sad but true I´m afraid. Throughout our time in Argentina we have been drinking beer called Quilmes so of course we had to have the obligatory Quilmes in Quilmes.

We continued on our way to Cafayette which is a town in a valley in the foothills of the Andes. In the evening I sat writing my diary with a cold beer in my hand. I had just had a swim and was enjoying the warm evening breeze coming off the mountains which were to my left and right. There were a couple of soft pink clouds and several large flocks of squawking parrots flying around above me. If I held my hands out on either side of me I was reminded of the childhood joke and was amazed to be able to look across and actually find the Andies at the ends of my sleevies!

After a heavy nights drinking around the campfire we woke to go winetasting at 9.00am - nothing like hair of the dog to cure any hangover. We were followed throughout our tour of the Bodegas Etchart by a small black dog who came down into the cellars, up onto the rooves of the giant vats and sat under the barrel tables whilst we began to drink. By 11.00 we had topped up the levels from the night before and wobbled out from the cool dark cellars into the blinding sunlight and heat.

After lunch in Cafayete we drove for about 2hrs and stopped at Salta Rafting which is actually about 2hrs outside Salta. We set up tents and relaxed for the evening with another fantastic Argie Barbie thanks to the guys that run the rafting centre. I have done a fair bit of white water rafting around the world and you tend to find the same types of off the wall rafting nutters and the guys at Salta were no exception. Frank a shaven headed German with 8 dogs was the most reserved. Angel, Carlo and Hector mixed charm and humour with apparently no sense of fear, various tatoos or piercings and the same mad twinkle in their eyes. We rafted in the morning with Falcon a golden retriever on board. Rafting with a canine passenger was a first but always safety conscious they ensured that he had his own customised life jacket and he seemed perfectly at ease. I later saw photos of some of the other dogs, on their own in small kayaks going through the rapids - real white water woofers!

In the afternoon we went canopying which was fantastic fun. It was a series of 10 zip wires which are between 300 - 500m long and are set up in the mountains at about 200-250m high above the ground. After some steep climbing over rocks and along ledges we caught sight of our first wire. I had to stop myself from looking down and wondering how far it was to fall if the wire broke. My stomach started to churn as I began thinking about the first moment that you throw yourself off perfectly good terra firma and into the void. You are harnessed into a rock climbing rig with thick leather gloves and you rest,one hand on the wire behind you to act as a stabiliser and a brake.

The first wire is nerve wracking because of the nagging voice at the back of your mind - what if the wire breaks - at this height the travel insurance would be useless because you wouldn´t be going to hospital. Once you have done one though it was an amazing feeling as you are completely confident in the safety and you can admire the views. It was fantastic to go whizzing between mountain tops with nothing between you and the river 250m below. Normally you are in a seated position with your legs stretched infront but on one of the wires I went "Superman" which entailed going face down with my legs wrapped around the waist of one of the guides behind me - I discovered afterwards they also call it "Canopy Karma Sutra" not very ladylike but fun and it provided the boys with plenty of fodder for jokes. Over 2hrs we hiked and zip wired back to the base with the final wire taking us a couple of feet above our tents and within a few feet of the bar and a cold cerveza enjoyed in the comfort of the hammock by the bar.

On to the city of Salta which is Argentinas 8th city. We stayed at a campsite that is advertised as having the biggest pool in South America. On arrival we discovered that it is so big it takes over a week to fill so it remains empty most of the time. We went out for empanadas at lunch surrounded by families who were all out celebrating the Argentinian equivelent of Mothers Day.

The next day I took a bus into town on my own only to miss the stop and stay on board thinking it would come back towards town. The driver informed me he was going home so I got off to wait for another bus when a taxi pulled up with a woman passenger already on board. I accepted the ride and on the way we stopped for another two passengers. They obviously share cabs like that out here. Salta like the other cities is nothing like what a Londoner like me expects from a city. There are incredibly ornate churches and more colonial buildings still survive than in other cities but much of the colonial style is actually still quite plain.

The next morning we had a slightly later start as Ben our driver had to get the oxygen tanks filled as we were heading up towards the Alti plano. The previous day at the campsite we had helped a family push start their crumbling wreck of a car. Most of the cars in Argentina are relics from the 60s and 70s with more missing than intact,held together literally with wire and tapes. We have been in taxis with windows permanently open because they have lost the winders, or doors with no internal handles that have to be opened from the outside. With true Latin chivalry as we pushed the car at the campsite, a male passenger sat inside whilst the woman did the pushing. The next morning we discovered it was our turn as our truck battery was flat. I didn´t think it was possible to push start a 14ton truck but we did it and were on our way. We were heading north as we make our way towards the Bolivian border.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/rosiepearson/south_america/1161281880/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/rosiepearson/south_america/1161281880/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/rosiepearson/south_america/1161281880/tpod.html Fri, 09 Mar 2007 16:36:06 -0500 Rio to The Galapagos - Ramblin Rose´s South American Adventure, coast to coast and beyond in the belly of The Turtle

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Cordoba, Argentina

We spent a 1.5days in Argentina´s second city Cordoba which is a university town and has a good feel to it. We stayed at the Ritz hotel which wasn´t on a par with its namesake in London but a bed for the night was welcome relief. In the evening we headed out and caught a tango show which has to be done when you are in Argentina. The tango was fantastic and they also had 2 singers although towards the end of the evening it began to feel a bit like an Argentinian Butlins as several cakes came out with renditions of Happy Birthday for each.

After a lot of driving through very flat grassland over the last week or so we caught our first glimpses of the mountains the following day just outside Cordoba. We started to climb into the Sierra Grande and at lunchtime pulled up at the locked gates of Estancia Los Potreros. Unable to get the truck through and with no mobile reception a few of us set of as the advance recce party on the 4km "stroll" up the driveway. When we reached the first property there was no one around so 2 waited whilst the remaining three of us headed off in search of other signs of life.

On reaching the next property we had seen the "Beware Guard Dog" sign but thought the coast was clear so went through the gate. Half way between the refuge of the gateway and the house the afore mentioned guard dog came bounding towards us. I was with two professed cat lovers who were slightly nervous around canine company and who immediately decided that I should be the decoy for the Alsation whilst they scattered in opposite directions. Thankfully, though he was excited and boisterous he was more intent on jumping up at me to try and lick and suck me into submitting to rub his stomach rather than being the slavering, wild eyed Cujo that my companions had imagined.

In the distance we heard a truck so headed back to the first house to be met by Jono who explained that a bush fire the previous week had contaminated all of the water supply so we would be staying at one of the other properties on the Estancia. We climbed into the pickup truck and headed over the mountain back to meet the others who had stayed with our truck, Tortuga. They then followed us sitting on the roof of Tortuga as we made our way to where we were staying.

We set up camp in the grounds of the home of one of the Estancia owners. After a relaxing evening my cook group did a BBQ for everyone and then Jono joined us to spend the evening wine tasting some of the Estancia´s own "2B´s" wine label as well as some other local Argentinian vinos. Jono our gaucho / winemaster had grown up on a vineyard back home in Zimbabwe so was a great guide and thankfully believed in big measures rather than the pathetic sip and spit method of wine tasting. Perhaps a late night and several bottles of wine are not the best preparation for spending a couple of days bouncing around on horse back but no one seemed to suffer too much.

After breakfast the next morning our gauchos brought our horses over the mountains and we packed up our saddle bags and headed off. The Estancia is a working cattle ranch covering 7500 hectares owned by two brothers, Kevin and Robin Begg who are half English and half Argentinian. It was one of the first enclosed estancias and is huge. In 2 days of riding we rarely covered the same ground yet never went beyond the boundaries of the Estancia. There are 140 horses and 9 gauchos who are split between horses and cattle. Aside from the working ranch and the Dragoman truck guests, they run it as an exclusive resort for guests to ride and play polo. Therefore all of the horses are working horses and many are also polo ponies so they are incredibly responsive and fantastic to ride.

I was introduced to my trustee stead who was apparently one of the most intelligent horses on the estancia. I guessed that meant he was more likely to argue with me. I was also warned that he liked to always be up at the front as the first horse behind the gaucho. His name was "Cara de Queso" meaning Cheeseface! Quite undignified and as much a derogatory slur in Spanish as in English, yet he was a perfect gentleman.

Our gauchos were fantastic although they made a slightly incongruous couple. Jono is a 6ft 6" blonde Zimbabwean of Greek descent who had left Exeter university a couple of years ago. Little Jo (Jose) is an Argentinian who had worked on the Estancia for 14 years, spoke no English and was 5ft -perhaps 5ft 1" at a push. They were like Little and Large but seemed to have a great working relationship and looked after all of us brilliantly.

We rode for about 5hrs through spectacular scenery of grass covered mountains, though we could see where huge swathes had been burnt by the fire the week before. Around us hawks and eagles soared aswell as parakeets and humming birds. After lunch we had a shooting competition using targets and .22 callibre rifles. Amazingly I came third even beating one of the gaucho´s though I guess it must have been beginers luck - or chivalry, I´m not sure which.

Cimbing back in the saddles we rode out for another couple of hours and everyone´s backsides were more tender than some of Argentinian steaks we have had. We spent a lovely evening being entertained by a guy on a guitar who sang traditional gaucho folk songs. After dinner he was joined by Little Jose who had donned his traditional gaucho belt along with the rest of his gaucho attire that he had been wearing. Whilst I had been riding behind Jose during the day I had noticed that he spent a lot of time singing quitely to himself or as I thought serenading his horse with neither a tune nor words which I could make out. Every now and again I would see him accompany the words with actions - tracing tears down his cheeks or holding out his hands. My initial conclusion that this was his way of entertaining himself on long boring rides with gringos who couldn´t speak to him, was now proved incorrect and he came into his own, proving that with his singing and on a horse Little Jose was a confident giant of a man. As the music played on we danced the night away under the trees by the light of the tilly lamps.

The following morning having all turned out to watch the stiring sight of our horses being led cantering over the hill towards us, we saddled up and rode out to a beautiful spot for lunch. We idled away a couple of hours beside an idylic waterfall that poured over the mountain into a cold, clear pool beneath it. It was picturesque and swimming in the crisp mountain water was refreshing respite from the intense heat. Lying floating on my back in the cold water, looking up at the white waterfall cascading over the red and green mossy rocks with the blue sky behind it I knew that this was one of those days and moments to pull back from my memory and think of when back home and stressed about the banalities that we get so wound up by in London.

That night the gaucho´s cooked us an amazing BBQ Argentinian style with cuts of meat that you never get at home, washed down with more of the Estancia wine. We heard about the fire the week before which had raged for three days over 30km and had pulled 650 people from miles around to try and fight it. Jono told us about one night during the fire, as he looked up into the darkness he saw a grey horse that he recognised as one of the estancia´s, being ridden full pealt over the treacherous rocky mountain top by a gaucho with long hair flowing behind him. Ricardo, the long haired rodeo gaucho who breaks in the horses at Los Proteros came leaping through the flames, picked up the water packs that Jono was holding up as he rode past,turned his horse and leapt back through the walls of flames to continue dousing. It cunjoured an incredible picture which demonstrated wonderfully the skill and connection that these gauchos and their horses have. A perfect end to a perfect couple of days and some wonderful memories which I will keep with me forever.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/rosiepearson/south_america/1160251440/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/rosiepearson/south_america/1160251440/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/rosiepearson/south_america/1160251440/tpod.html Fri, 09 Mar 2007 15:37:50 -0500 Rio to The Galapagos - Ramblin Rose´s South American Adventure, coast to coast and beyond in the belly of The Turtle

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Puerto de Iguazu, Argentina

We crossed into Argentina relatively hastle free and stayed in Puerto de Iguazu. The falls from the Argentinian side are even more breathtaking. We took the train up to Devils Throat which is the biggest and most powerful section of the falls and a long walkway takes you directly over the falls, just a few feet above the torrents of water that are crashing down beneath you.We stood there for over an hour just marveling at the immense power of the water. As you stare downwards into the the mist rainbows appear beneath you and birds flitter in and out of the mist. It was a bizarre experience to look down beneath your feet and the grass underneath you and see birds and rainbows as if everything was strangely inverted. To the left you can see huge gorges and more falls disappearing into the distance.

We spent the day walking through the rainforest to see close up many of the other 275 falls. Everyone took hundreds of photos, some of which i will upload when I can. In the forrest we saw troops of monkeys, iguanas, lizzards and ginuea pigs - I still find the concept of "wild" guinea pigs roaming the forrests slightly bizarre.

We left Iguazu and headed for the Argentinian wetlands. We were stopped three times by the police on our first day of driving. They went through all of our bags and stuff in the main body of the truck and brought a sniffer dog on board. However "Bonita" the dog wasn´t the snarling Alsatian that you expect but an incredibly nervous laborador who kept on hiding behind her handler, quaking everytime one of us jumped off the truck. We are begining to realise that the police checks are a regular occurence but generally tend to be nothing more than an inconvenience from bored policemen trying to push their luck and get some bribes out of the gringos.

After a bush camp by the road overnight where we saw our first gauchos whooping through the grasslands as they rounded up horses, we set off for the second days drive towards Carlos Pelligrini the town at the edge of the wetlands national park. We had initially worried that we wouldn´t be able to make it to the park as the road in is notoriously difficult and often becomes impassable. We set off at 7.30am and travelled until lunchtime covering about 250 k without seeing another vehicle except one poncho clad gaucho on his horse.

It had been raining since 2.30am and the road isn´t tarmaced but has a sand/earth surface which turned to rutted mud in the rain. We drove for hours through grassland and the cows gave us the same quizzical looks that lots of people do when we passed them raising their heads from grazing, all eyes pointing towards us. My nose was suddenly jerked out of my book where it had been buried for some time as the truck started skidding and swerving across the road. It was a long protracted and quite violent snaking skid and we headed almost on two wheels toward a deep ditch at the side of the track. We stopped just in time but the sandy surface had become like wet clay. I remember from pottery lessons at junior school that wet clay is know as "slip" and now I understood why. It had been like hitting a patch of black ice in a 14 ton truck at speed and the tyres were well and truely burried. We all had to get out and start digging and then put sand mats down to help us out. One of the guys was thrilled as it finally felt like a proper adventure, and I have to say secretly I shared his thoughts. After a couple of attempts and lots of skidding around ourselves we got Tortug, our truck, out.

Carlos Pelligrini must be an incredibly dull town to live in. Its sole amenity´s were limited to one public payphone and a tiny bar that had an interesting crazy paving and bamboo construction. We were camped right on the banks of the main lake which covers 53sq km and the majority of the park is made of floating islands in the water. We headed into the forrest on the edge of the lake and heard our first howler monkeys. We found several groups of howlers and another type about 3 metres above us in the canopy. As we stood gaping upwards open mouthed and taking photos they all took aim and showed us exactly what they thought of the stupid gringos beneath by each in turn emptying the contents of both their bowels and bladders on us. Luckily the distance between us and their orrafices meant that you could see the welcome presents starting to fall towards us and we could jump out of the way in time, but otherwise their strike rate would have been spot on.

On our first evening in Carlos Pelligrini we watched the most incredible sunset across the lake. The rays spread upwards lighting the dappled clouds spectacularly as the red sun descended through the orange sky beneath the water on the horizon. Before bed I watched an incredible lightening storm on the opposite side of the lake. Constant flashes reflected in the water gradually coming closer as more of the lake was lit up. I tracked the path of the oncoming lightening as it made its way along the bridge over the lake. As it did so the wind picked up and within a few more minutes was blowing at gale force with the lightening almost directly around me. The power of nature up this close can make you feel electric inside, scared, excited and exhilarated all at once. It really felt like I was in the eye of the storm. Finally the torrential driving rain arrived and around us people emerged from tents that had blown down or had to be helped out of the colapsed tangled mess of material around them. There was an open-sided shelter where we took refuge until the worst of the wind and rain had passed. There was constant "ting, ting ting" sound as tent pegs continued to be hammered back in throughout the night but once again I awoke in the morning floating in my tent with a newly created lake around the outside of it.

The morning after the night before, we all emerged to survey the damage. We spent the morning bailing out tents, rewashing my clothing that I had only finished drying the night before and rigging the shelter with ropes so that it resembled a chinese laundry. The locals said the storm was highly unusual and very strong but I figured that we should expect a bit of water - we were in the wetlands so they were doing exactly what it said on the tin.

I had spent 2.5hrs the previous evening cleaning the floor of the truck (my job on board is Mrs Mop). After digging the truck out of the mud the day before the floor was covered, in places up to an inch thick, in solidified clay. I had to scape it clean with a knife, scrub it dry and wet with a scrubbing brush and then wipe it clean with a jay cloth. I had banned everyone from entering until it was dry but it sparkled cleaner than when we had first picked Tortuga up. Now in the cold light of day I surveyed the brown, wet muddy carnage before me. I felt like someone who had spent 2.5hrs preparing a gourmet meal only for her guests to arrive and say that they weren´t hungry as they had stopped for a Macdonalds on the way. They hadn´t even seen my gleaming floor before it was trashed again. And I´m going to have to do it all over again said poor Cinderella!!

Luckily we were blessed with a glorious afternoon and spent 3-4hrs on a boat going around the wetlands which were teaming with wildlife. It was amazing to see capybara (the largest rodents they are in essence a 65kg giant swimming guinea pig) and caymens from 2-3feet away. There were deer, birds, capybara and caymen all sitting within feet of each other apparently feeling no sense of threat either from each other or us. At one point we got out onto one of the floating islands. It was springy underfoot and close by a cayman and a capybara sat, the later eating and the former observing us open mouthed with its prehistoric eyes. The idea of getting up close and personal with a cayman seemed like bungy jumping - your brain says that it is completely wrong but you ignore your instincts and do it anyway. I figured that if the capybara weren´t purturbed then I shouldn´t be. They could provide a decent rump steak and with shorter legs than mine I fancied my chances more if we had to run for it.

We were blessed with another incredible sunset and thankfully an uneventful evening as far as minor hurricanes went. Happily I awoke on Friday morning at 5.00am not to the now all to regular feeling of floating in my sleeping bag but to loud snuffles and the sound of ripping grass and chewing right beside my head. We had watched the capybara the previous evening around our tents and BBQ so I guessed the source of the unusual dawn chorus. I remember doing my Duke of Edinburgh at school and being pushed out of my tent by frightened tent mates as we had been imagining all sorts of nightmarish Snowdonian creatures that could have made the loud noises we could hear outside our tent. It turned out to be nothing more than a hedgehog making the racket which was amplified in the dead of night. What I would have thought then if I had known that 17 years later I would be lying in a tent in Argentina giggling in the knowledge that a giant swimming guinea pig was having its breakfast beside my head.

On leaving the wetlands we had two days of incredibly dull driving across completely flat grasslands. We covered 1000km on an absolutely dead straight red earth road where the scenery around us didn´t change. Though stunning in its own right the khaki grasslands stretch as far as the eye can see with the odd tree between the grass and the enormous expanse of brilliant blue cloudless sky. For much of the journey we sat on the roof seats of the truck and watched the birds around us, huge hawks soared above and there were big emu type birds along the roadside. We bush camped again last night but in the less than glorious surrounds of a service station. The only benefit being that we had en suite loos shared with the Argentinian truckers as opposed to the bush pits that we normaly make when camping in the wild. I seem to have a great problem finding these bush loos normally and spend ages stumbling around, cursing and twisting my ankles on tree roots in the dark, so the flourescent lightbulb was a beacon in the dark for once. I have already become accustomed to being very thankful for small mercies - waking up dry, finding a loo that is more than a hole in the ground, only being held up for short periods by the regular police checks, making it to our destination without myself or "my" truck floor being caked in mud. And I´m loving every minute of the adventure - you laugh at everything and keep remembering that it all adds to the experience and it sure beats sitting behind my desk at work!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/rosiepearson/south_america/1159648500/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/rosiepearson/south_america/1159648500/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/rosiepearson/south_america/1159648500/tpod.html Fri, 09 Mar 2007 14:02:10 -0500 Rio to The Galapagos - Ramblin Rose´s South American Adventure, coast to coast and beyond in the belly of The Turtle

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Foz De Iguacu, Brazil

Wow, I can´t believe I have been in Brazil for a week now. It has gone so quickly yet it feels like an age as we have already fitted so much in.

I arrived in Rio at 7pm last friday and made it from the airport to the hotel painlessly. It sounds stupid but that was the first hurdle that I was worried about, having heard some horror stories about being ripped off as soon as you step off the plane as a green gringo. I didn´t even know a single word of Portuguese so it had been daunting but hopefully by the end of my adventures simple things like that won´t faze me in the slightest.

I met the other 12 people on the tour with me on saturday morning and they are a really good bunch. Having been worried about the taxi last night the first thing we did on day one in Rio was a tour of the Favellas. Considering that I had been nervous about safety in the city this seemed like a baptism of fire. I had been wrestling with my conscience about the Favella tour as it seemed somewhat voyeuristic but some of the money that we paid goes towards the running of a local school which we visited en route. For anyone who hasn´t heard about the favella´s I really recomend the film "City of Gods" as a realistic portrayl of life inside their boundaries. Rio has 6 million inhabitents and a large number of the poorest people live in these slums. They are the areas of the worst housing and are usually battle grounds for the drugs gangs. Life is really tough.

The houses are built one floor at a time over the years so they are wonky hotch potches of bodged together building. The windows, if there are any tend to be about 6 inches from the neighbouring houses wall but then they don´t really miss out on much of a view. We walked through mazes of alley ways between buildings which were less than 3 feet apart with very little light making it through to the ground. You can see inside the houses which are smaller than garden sheds back home. Boy we have it good back in England.

The favellas are no go areas for tourists on their own but with the organised tours you are safer. The only real concern is that if trouble breaks out such as gun battles etc then you don´t know people to take you inside into safety. The two favellas that we visited though have only one drug lord running each one so there aren´t the open battles and though there is crime and violence related to the drug trade, there is an amazing absence of other crime and infact they were safer places to be than many areas outside their walls. There is a police station inside the favella but the police aren´t allowed outside the office and don´t do anything but watch TV. There was one branch of a bank in one of the favellas which had been robbed once - by the police! Apparently the drug lord had those responsible killed and their body parts distributed around the favella. I guess that is justice Rio style.

Yet despite all of this the overwhelming feeling was that they were actually relatively safe places. The people seemed proud, polite and the kids would smile and say hello. I have felt more vulnerable in parts of London where hoodies hang around menacingly on street corners. We met some amazing market stall holders including a charismatic and talented musician, Ivesco, whose CD I bought and can´t wait to listen to when I get home. There were artists and people who made fantastic belts out of ring pulls, hats out of woven plastic bags and handbags out of woven magazines - like South American wombles they managed to make use out of the stuff that we just throw away without a second thought!

No trip to Rio would be complete without a quick trip to Copacabana beach for some people watching and a visit to Corcorvado - Christ the Redeemer, the statue which is constantly blessing the seething city of sin below. The views from the top of the mountain were stunning as Rio is spread beneath you. It is surrounded by sea with green mountainous islands dotted in the water and of course Sugar Loaf mountain. It was somewhat surreal though as you get to the top of the mountain to find several escalators which transport the hoards of tourists up towards the clouds and Christs feet. Somewhere I imagined that I could hear distant chords of "Stairway to heaven" and expected to see some Monty Pythonesque character standing at the top of the escalator with a fake beard and clip board, checking your entry tickets as you pass through the pearly gates!

As we prepared to leave Rio we met our truck for the first time. She´s called Tortuga which means "turtle", she´s huge, orange and was quite a sight in down town Rio. She´s a heavy duty Mama and as the name suggests she ain´t the fastest beast on the road. But she´s comfortable, secure , carries everything we need and is home for the next few months. Wherever we go she attracts a lot of bemused stares though so far we have only been pulled over once by the police which apparently is pretty good going. One week in to the trip and so far we have stopped to have her exhaust welded back on, the gear box has had some attention, the speedo has broken, the fuel guage is never relied on as a piece of string with a nut attached apparently does a better job and the roof leaks slightly through one of the lights in heavy rain. She´s a real old work horse though and has been patched up and trundles onwards.

We headed off down the Emerald Coast towards Paraty which is a stunning drive. All along the way there were lush forest covered islands with white beaches, interspaced in the azur water. Paraty itself is quite a pretty town, built by the Portuguese, it has a mediteranean feel with the older whitewashed buildings and cobbled streets which demand that you look where you walk. Stumbling around the town I couldn´t help thinking that they can´t sell many stilettos in Paraty. We took a boat out for the day and sailed around the islands, pulling up on deserted beaches and swimming in beatiful coves. We also watched the barman on board and have mastered the art of making Caipirinhas which have been going down rather too well. They haven´t helped my attempts to learn how to play poker though. Thankfully we have only gambled with pasta so far.

The weather on the whole has been good with warm sunny days though there have been a couple of overnight storms and on 2 mornings I have woken up with soaking clothes and water in my tent. Once it was thanks to my fellow traveling companions removing my tent pegs and turning my fly sheet back to front. After an evening of drinking games I apparently sat outside my tent bemused for sometime trying to work out how to get in it and whether in fact it was my tent.

We had about 30 hours of driving over 3 days from Paraty to Foz De Iguacu where we are now. The landscape changed as we headed inland, going from rainforest covered mountains to rolling hills which were remeniscent of the Peak District and then later reminded me of so many of the walks around home in the Chilterns. We had our first bush camp experience en route, basicly pulling off the road where we could and camping on the edge of a forest. We pitched on a disused track - disused except for the one truck that came past at 10pm and meant we had to take the tents down so it could get past before re erecting them.

We are staying for a few days at Foz de Iguacu which is the largest waterfall in the world and is awesomely impressive. In the jungle around the falls I saw my first Toucans and some very tame and inquisitive creatures called Cuartis which look like a cross between a racoon and a badger with a long pointed nose which they have become adept at sticking in the bags of the tourists as they seek out the food inside.

Last night the thunder storms started at about 3am which was when my nights sleep stopped. My mind turned instead to the two metal poles at my head and feet and the lightening that kept flashing outside. I wondered whether my thermarest sleeping mat would offer much protection if my tent was struck or whether my rubber flip flops might be of any use.... It has been raining solidly all day now which apparently is the worst weather our driver Ben has seen in a year of traveling across South America. We are hoping it clears up soon but we are packing up in an hour or so to try and cross the border into Argentina. The border has been shut a fair bit over the last month as there have been protests about fuel prices. Hopefully the rain and the fact that today is election day in Brazil mean that any protesters will be otherwise occupied so we can cross, otherwise its a long detour through Paraguay. Its probably best to get out before the election results come out aswell, just incase they provide another reason for a protest. Tomorrow we are visiting Iguacu falls from the Argentinian side though for today I think I´ve seen enough water to last me for a while.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/rosiepearson/south_america/1165790880/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/rosiepearson/south_america/1165790880/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/rosiepearson/south_america/1165790880/tpod.html Mon, 11 Dec 2006 14:16:31 -0500 Rio to The Galapagos - Ramblin Rose´s South American Adventure, coast to coast and beyond in the belly of The Turtle

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Napo River - Amazonia, Ecuador

The border between Peru and Equador is a weird one. There is quite a long stretch of no mans land between the exit border for Peru and the entry point of Equador - there is a sizeable town which you drive through between the two countries. The sign above the Equadorian checkpoint ominously was riddled with bullet holes like some wild west gunslingers haunt.
After getting our passports stamped and filling in the entry cards several of us thought we would utilise the stop and find a baños. We were duly pointed in the direction of a small outhouse behind a kiosk next to the checkpoint. I had been aware of some shrieking and as I ventured around the corner of the kiosk I spotted one of the girls in our group looking out from behind the toilet door with a panic striken expression on her face as she surveyed the yard infront of the toilet. Her relief on seeing us was shortlived as the biggest turkey I have ever seen paced threateningly infront of her toilet door like a caged tiger before spotting a chicken to torment a few feet away.. On tiptoes from behind the wooden door she explained that the turkey had attacked her as she crossed the yard, chasing her into the loo and she had had to bang the door on its head to stop it completing its strike maneuver with her standing on the toilet seat. She was now to scared to come back over the yard so she stayed where she was whilst two of us ran over to her. We used the loo in turn before the two other girls, holding hands ran one way across the yard, and I ran the other, hoping that two opposedly moving tagets would prove to much of a diversionary confusion for the turkey brain. It did momentarily. Then he was hot on my heels and striking out for my legs as I hurtled past a forlorn and harassed looking pig that shared the same yard as Tyson the turkey. Having made our get away there was relieved laughter and back at the truck tales of similar attacks emerged from other companions.
Our first night in Equador was spent bush camping on a dusty school playing field up in the cloud forrest. We then headed to the town of Baños. Though this is the word used for toilets across South America its litteral translation is Bath and similar to its namesake in the UK it is famed for its healing waters. It also lies at the foot of an active volcano and has thermal springs which people, including us, flock to. In fact we were surprised that we were able to drive into Baños. The foreign office has only just said that it is safe to go to the town as the volcano last errupted in August of this year killing several people and creating a lot of destruction with the lava flow and ash. In turn the people of the town had been blockading the road until about a week before we arrived in protest at their taxes. I still struggle with the South American logic sometimes but the argument went something along the lines of the people of Baños should pay lower taxes to compensate them for living with this grumbling belching lava beast - hey any excuse for a good old blockade.
We hooked up with another Drago truck with 2 drivers and 4 passengers.After an evening spent alternating between the hotsprings and freezing plunge pools, getting increasingly light headed, we headed for bar owned by a close friend of one of the drivers where we continued to get even more light headed learning several new drinking games. One of these, "The Statue of Liberty" entailed dipping your index finger in a flamable alcoholic beverage of dubious origins, setting fire to your alcohol covered finger and holding it aloft (hence the statue reference) whilst downing the shot and then setting it on fire in your mouth with your still flaming fingers. Some people ended up almost literally getting light headed as the rounds of the game progressed and the evening finishing with everyone, including the owner dancing on the bar.
Some people spent more time in the baños of Baños than others but we left slightly sore headed next morning and headed for the rainforest. The nearest place of consequence was the town of Mishualli but we had several hours of driving deeper into the lush green jungle eventually arriving at the banks of the Napo River where we left the truck and caught a small, low set, narrow boat down river to Anaconda Lodge where we would be staying for the next 4 nights.
The lodge was basic but wonderful. It is run by a guy called Adonis {his mother must have had high hopes for him when naming him but he was certainly pretty big. The wooden huts on stilts were scattered amongst the trees and have no electricity so by night they had the flickering warm glow of candle light. The shower has only cold water though in the heat of the jungle you don´t need anything else. The toilet clearly appeared to use pumped up river water and I had my suspicions that so did the taps, judging by the dubious murkyness of the emanating liquid. But still I loved it from the start.
On our first day we had breakfast, donned our issued wellington boots and then took the boats down river to go on our first jungle walk. We trekked for about 2 or 3 hours whilst Fausto, our guide, pointed out flora and fauna along the way as we went deeper into the lush green surrounds. My first surprise of the day came when Fausto picked a young giant millipede up from the leaves on the forrest floor. He explained about how you sex a giant millipede before passing the writhing critter around. Whilst I am not squeemish about spiders, something with that many legs I wouldn´t normally choose to pick up. Even at home if I find the smaller cousins of these beasts in the garden the most I could do is flick them away from behind the protection of a gardening glove with an accompanying shudder of disgust. Yet here I was, quite happily volunteering my hands and actually allowing this creature, which took up most of one palm at a time, to ride roughshod over my bare skin. I didn´t shudder and even poked it into action when it curled up into "South American blockade position" and ceased moving.
We continued on climbing up hills to vantage points where we could look out over the top of the tree canopy and up the river. Fausto fashioned traditional ceremonial hats out of palm leaves so their wearers looked like jungle princes and princesses. The only other person we saw during our walk was a lady accompanied by two young children, all three clad also in their wellingtons. Slung around her chest was a blanket and nestling amongst her cargo of limes was another young baby, which intermitently fidgeted, sending limes scuttling out and across the floor for the other two children to chase after and reclaim. As Fausto talked to her, he interpreted back to us that apparently she had 11 other children. Compared to the weather beaten women I had seen in remote areas of Bolivia who prematurely aged at an alarming rate, it was unbelievable to think that this sprightly, smooth skinned smiling lady had already born a sizable sporting team of her own.
My second surprise of the morning came when Fausto stopped and pointed out a particular tree. As he broke off a branch and began to open it up with his machete he explained about the symbiotic relationship between the tree and the ants that lived in its core. As he opened the branch up to reveal its centre which was a black teeming mass of small ants, he proceeded to put his tongue into the black core, licking up some of the ants, before offering the branch around. Whilst I don´t know anyone that is squimish about ants, I have never felt the slightest inclanation to eat them before. Though I accept that maybe in my life there could have been occassions when I unknowingly ingested them on some unwashed lettuce leaf as an unintended protein addition to a salad, I didn´t ever see them as a culinary entity in their own right. Yet here I was again without the slightest doubt, happily following the actions of our jungle guide and licking up a tongue full of black scurrying ants. Wow! They tasted amazing. They were lemon ants and tasted like little citrus lemon bursts on your tongue. They were actually refreshing and even more amazingly I was going back for second and third helpings. Please sir, I want some more sir - Oliver had the short straw with his gruel, he should have asked for ants.
Another slightly less tasty edible offering was in the form of a lichen that came from a particular tree. Fausto scraped it off and told us to chew a little bit and rest it on our lips which duly started to go numb. He explained how the hunters use the lichen on their traps to paralyse prey.
Every now and again we came across vines and following Fausto scrambled up banks to swing through the trees in Tarzan fashion several feet above the heads of our companions like over grown children fulfilling a playground fantasy.We finished the trek with a 45 minute river walk which at times was waist deep. It was refreshing to walk through the cool water. In the banks we spotted a couple of snakes and we watched as we sent huge water spiders bouncing across the surface in their rush to get out of our way.
We took the boats to another lodge to have some lunch. As we were finishing eating Fausto reached into the rafters and pulled down a huge tarantula spider which had been watching us. He explained that they are relatively safe to handle but you just need to make sure you don't scare them, before passing it around to those who wanted to hold it. It was surprisingly heavy as it crawled over my hands and having held it I was slightly less worried about stumbling across one of these in my hut. Having said which one of the guys the following morning had put his underwear on and was cleaning his teeth before he looked down and noticed a very large arachnid of some kind makeing its way casually towards his crotch. There are close encounters and then there are close encounters.
We spent the rest of the afternoon at a local village where we saw all the different types of trap that are used to kill various animals. We also had some blowpipe practice using pipes which people use for killing birds and monkeys in the trees. They were about 6ft long and though I'm glad we weren't relying on them for providing dinner, even a gringo like me managed to be remarkably accurate, hitting the outer edge of the small bird target which we were aiming at on a narrow tree trunk. We also visited an animal sanctuary where all sorts of creatures that are seized by customs and the police are rehabilitated with the aim of rereleasing back into the wild.
After dinner Adonis had arranged for a local shamen to come and carry out some cleansing rituals on a few people. We all sat around a huge campfire whilst the shamen, stripped to the waist wearing strings of beads across his chest like bullet belts, chanted in the firelight, waving a bunch of leaves over the participants heads whilst blowing smoke from a cigarette over them and then sucking the bad spirits out of the tops of their heads. If the setting had been different {say Kilburn High Road} and someone had said that an old bloke who spends his days pretty much whacked out on halucenogenics was going to blow fag smoke over you whilst mumbling an incoherent song and shaking a bunch of dry leaves over you, people might have been less willing volunteers. However it was evocative to sit by the crackling fire under the jungle canopy and once attuned to the song it was really melodic as it wafted through the darkness. Whilst those being cleansed said they felt relaxed though at times somewhat itchy, which we put down to bugs dropping from the leaves, several of them claimed to have bizarre nightmares that night. Maybe it was the bad spirits clambouring to evacuate their skulls afterall?
Day two took us to a local village school where we watched the lessons in the two school rooms before the kids sang us a song, first in their local dialect, then spanish and then english. In turn we were asked to sing a typical English song for the kids. For many of us karoke is symbolic of hell so the idea of singing in public sent shudders down spines. Not being a particularly musicly talented bunch and realising that there would be a limited number of songs which we all knew the words to, I suggested a rendition of "Heads, shoulders, knees and toes". So, we performed our song, complete with actions, to a rather non plussed bunch of five year olds. On completion of our rendition which had remarkably been almost word perfect and as much in tune as possible, the teacher explained that the children already knew that number. So she suggested we all joined in for another round and duly the bunch of gringo's accompanied the 5 year olds, in English, in the jungle for a very animated and loud rendition.
Further up river we visited the house of Fausto's grandmother. He took us around the small holding explaining the uses of all of the different plants she grew from ginger which is used for stomach complaints, through to casava and even datura which is used for its hightly hallucenogenic properties. Though my own grandmother in Spain used to grow datura I don't think she was ever aware of its hallucenogic power, she was more a gin and tonic woman. Faustos grandmother was an amazingly sprightly 88 year old with jet black hair. She trotted down from her house and proceeded to show us how she makes chicha, the local alcoholic drink, out of ground casava and sweetened carrot juice. Maker of alcohol and hullucenegic drugs, jees, just imagine if everyones grannies back home were such open minded
liberals...

After having our faces painted with red paint from a spiky fruit, we crossed to the opposite bank of the river where we made rafts by lashing together bolsa wood logs and spent a couple of hours floating down river, intermitently diving off and swimming in the cool water. We also visited another village to see some handicrafts being made before returning to the lodge where a few of us continued our shooting practice with our blowpipes. Our target from 20 paces was a pink fruit hanging from a tree which looked like a pair of monkey testicles, not to be confused with the real testicles belonging to the monkeys which were continually playing around the lodge and unkowingly even jumped within range of our realistic looking target.
Our final full day in the jungle was spent white water rafting. We had a 1.5hr journey sitting on the metal corrugated floor in the backs of pickups over unsurfaced potholed tracks at the end of which my backside felt like a piece of tenderised meat. When we arrived at the river I chose to leave my flipflops in the pickup, not realising the walk down to the bank involved walking through undergrowth which contained huge bullet ants. The safety briefing in the sand took ages and the ants continued to bite my feet, drawing blood as they did so despite my continual dashes to stand in cooling rock pools.
We chose a low streamlined raft which was offered to those looking for more adventure. In the biggest rapids of the day we all fell out and were dragged along through the crashing rapids. There was one cut lip and we all swallowed loads of water but once the spluttering and fear of drowning had passed it was exhilerating. We spent most of the day in the glacial waters until we joined up with the warmer waters of the Napo river. Along the way we swam, mutinied, stormed each others boats and even found delightful ammunition in dead birds floating downriver.
Back at the lodge that evening 5 of us skipped dinner on our last night in favour of taking the hallucenegenic drug, AyaHuasca, a jungle plant extract which the shamen all take. The shamen start taking it in their teens and drink it everyday, living in a permanently trip thus generating their "powers" to see the past and the future. We drank a small cup full of the white liquid which tasted bitter with a flavor that combined leather with the smell of band aids. We washed it down with firewater which is a local form of raw alcohol before taking mats out to lie under the jungle canopy. It made you feel in an altered state, a bit like being stoned. It was also incredibly relaxing, lying out in the darkness staring up at the stars twinkling through the the odd breaks in the canopy, whilst listening to the unique jungle sounds of cicadas, monkeys, frogs and insects. We had another couple of cups of the AyaHuasca throughout the evening and watched the "visions" that the lodge staff kept refering to as the trip played out its course. All in all it was an interesting evening and a good way to finish an amazing jungle experience.


]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/rosiepearson/south_america/1165781640/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/rosiepearson/south_america/1165781640/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/rosiepearson/south_america/1165781640/tpod.html Sun, 10 Dec 2006 17:48:10 -0500 Rio to The Galapagos - Ramblin Rose´s South American Adventure, coast to coast and beyond in the belly of The Turtle

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Huaraz, Peru

We drove through the desert all day before heading inland, back into the mountains and the town of Huaraz. We were meant to be staying in a hostal called "Joe´s Place" belonging to a a bumbling, excentric English expat. When we arrived Joe greeted us in his tartan slippers which he never seemed to be without, later claiming that he even climbed mountains in his trusty toe warmers. Unfortunately his place which was aptly described in the guidebook as "charmingly chaotic" much like its owner, was fully booked so Joe had booked us into a hotel around the corner, Hotel Independent, which it soon became clear didn´t run the risk of stealing repeat business away from Joe with future Dragoman trips.
It took about 40 minutes to check in as the poter/handyman kept trying to insist on putting all of us in different rooms to the keys the receptionist had assigned us. We had asked for a triple room and got keys to a quadruple but he kept taking our bags out of the quadruple and putting them into a double. After several trips backwards and forwards to reclaim our luggage and restake our territory, explaining that we weren´t enamoured with the three in the bed option he proceeded to cram another bed into the smaller room and pointed grinning at the new sleeping arrangements, oblivious to the fact that the door was no longer able to shut and there wasn´t enough floor space for three people to stand, let alone once we were reunited with our luggage which was languishing in the comparably echoing cavern of the quadruple upstairs. Meanwhile our driver Ben had asked for a single room and had been assigned a quadruple with no attempt to downsize him. We hadn´t got off to the best of starts and chose to ignore the porter and reassign ourselves another quadruple room which he had insisted on giving to a married couple of our companions who were about to start their own furniture rearranging by pushing the single beds together. This was Peru´s answer to Fawlty Towers only worse run. By comparison Manuel would have been a star employee worthy of rapid promotion on a glittering career path.

That night we sampled the delights of Huaraz´s nightlife where I spent an interesting time in one of the local nightclubs acting as a piggy in the middle translator. On one side I had a somewhat slimey looking local in a leather jacket and slicked back hair, repeatedly insisting that Harri one of the girls in our group was "Muy linda, muy bonita" (very pretty, very beautiful). However his fixed stare and theatrical hand gestures made it accutely obvious that it was Harri´s curvacious frame and ample boosom in particular which he was attracted to. On my other side was another local that I had briefly danced with who was insisting that his sister, whom he pointed out and was watching our interaction closely, apparently really wanted to dance with one of the guys in our group. I pointed to the chosen friend´s wife who was sitting beside him but the matchmaker was unperturbed and insisted that his sister wouldn´t mind about him being married although the sister shortly afterwards disappeared into the loo where she remained for the rest of the night.

The next morning we were woken at 5.30am by the hotels other occupants - a large number of very noisy and exuberant Peruvian school children of about 10 or 11years old. They obviously didn´t understand the finer points of the English language as several hungover voices took it in turn to bellow "Shut the f**k up" at them though it did little to impinge their football games against our doors or attempts to open our doors and run into our rooms which they found highly amusing.

My next encounter of the day equally had me wanting to resort to violence. Ben, our driver and I had wanted to get some stuff off our truck which was locked behind some gates at the back of the hotel. We asked for the key to unlock it and the bumbling incompetent porter rummaged expressively through drawers whilst simultaneously informing us that the hotel only had one key to the gates and the guy with the key was out all day until 4.00. Ben, through gritted teeth, pointed out in slight condescention that surely it would be very easy for the hotel to perhaps hold 2 keys, wouldn´t it? Ben arranged to return later by which stage apparently the chap with the key still hadn´t returned but miraculously the key had appeared at the back of the drawer which had previously been so thoroughly rummaged through.

At 7.00am we started the 2 hour drive out of Huaraz and further up into the mountains and the glacier that we were going to be walking on. As more of the stunning peaks became snow capped I started to feel the increase in altitude. Though we had spent a lot of time at altitude on the trip, the last few weeks had been at lower levels again and it takes a while to reacclimatise. Every so often, even on the bus, I got the reflex to take a big breath in as you feel the lack of oxygen.

We had about an hours climb to the start of the glacier where we donned very uncomfortable solid plastic snow boots. Lower down on the glacier were loads of teenage school parties having snowball fights but as we climbed we were walking on virgin snow, a bright blue sky and fierce sun glistening off the whiteness. We walked in each others footsteps only sullying the crisp white blanket with one solitary set of tracks. Several of the party were feeling the effects of the previous nights excesses and dropped out, regretting their liberal abuse of the all night happy hour. Those of us that continued cleared the glacier and continued over the rocks to the summit at 5250m. The boots we were wearing were meant for snow and not rocks as they had no flexibility so they made the going really difficult. The view from the top made it all worthwhile though. Straight ahead of us was Peru´s second highest peak and for 360 degrees as far as the eye could see were massive mountains, many of which had white snow caps which looked like they had been painted on.

Everyone had lunch at the summit - I had a banana as I hadn´t had a chance to stop and buy lunch. Combined with the previous nights antics which hadn´t concluded until 2.30am, and my limited calorie intake, I was knackered and started to dose off in the sun, resting on my backpack with the awesome serenity around me. After a short break we descended back to the glacier and the vertical ice wall which was a naturally occuring 30m high formation slicing through the thickness of the glacier. I was the first to climb and put on crampons, a harness and was given two ice axes. You only need the tip of the axe in the ice to support your weight and infact it was often harder to get the axes out than into the ice. The last third had been agony on my wrists and forearms and I was so focussed on making it to the top that I didn´t hear the others at the bottom shouting at me that I had completed it and should abseil down. I thought I had to hoist myself over the top and was attempting to do so when their shouts penetrated my thoughts. As I abseiled down my wrists and forearms, which had been so unused to taking so much of my bodyweight and the repeated attempts to insert and remove the axes, continued to burn and at the bottom I had to remove my gloves with my teeth. After those of us that wanted to had all made attempts at the ice wall, we continued back down the mountain to the waiting ride home. Needless to say we were all in bed before 2.30am that night.

I was woken the next morning by squaking as hundreds of white chickens were being squashed into wooden crates and loaded into a lorry opposite my hotel window. The chickens in turn woke the Peruvian school children who resumed their inter-floor football contest. We were then delayed for over an hour thanks to Manuel´s incompetent subordinate and his equally inept compatriots. They produced the one key they possessed to the gate behind which our truck was locked. Ben noticed that it was cracked and showed the woman telling her that it shouldn´t be inserted into the lock as it would break. She examined it, shook her head and put it in the lock. At which point it snapped off in the lock. For the first hour they appeared to do nothing but after Ben started to politely lose his temper they showed signs of activity and after 2 hours the truck was out. We took a little longer to extricate ourselves from the foyer as the floor was waist deep with bags and the small Peruvian children who owned them. The temptation was to throw both bags and owners forcefully out of the door whilst glaring at the teachers who seemed oblivious both to their charges sprawling nature and their early morning alarm call antics.

Eventually we got underway and started to climb up into the mountains behind the town, only to find the road blocked. A lorry full of gravel intended for the nearby roadworks had gone off the winding road and was residing on its side perilously close to the drop at the edge with a team of guys working to clear its load from the roadway. Meanwhile the inhabitants of the nearby houses had pulled up chairs and were settled back watching the mornings entertainment. In a tiny second story window a large woman and an even larger dog both stuck their heads out, competing for space as they craned their necks for a better view. With the aid of some wooden planks over a ditch to widen the road for us and guidance over the creaking planks Tortuga was on her way.

As we climbed the road wound through eucalyptus and aloe with snow capped peaks in the background and even after 2hours of meandering upwards climbing, the sight of Huaraz was inescapably still present beneath us until we passed over the summit. We spent most of the day then on the downhill drive through glorious scenery but along what could be described as a road from hell. As it wound down through the mountains it was unsurfaced as so many are, but it was excessively potholed and exceedingly winding so it was stomach churningly neauseating as you were thrown around tight bends, contemplating the drop whilst bouncing out of your seat as we went through streams, over holes, rocks and even tree stumps. At one point we started to slid and the truck listed from side to side dramaticly implying that she might contemplate venturing over the edge. Whilst there were a couple of shrieks from people fearing they were coming slightly to close to their maker for comfort, the stereo was playing a version of "Stairway to heaven" and several of us hoped that the road from hell wasn´t destined to become our very own stairway to heaven. I never would have thought that the desert would be a welcoming sight but we were all pleased to make it down in one piece and return to the monotonous sands below.
We headed initially to Huanchaco where we visited the ruins at Chan Chan and the Rainbow Temple and the Temples of the Sun and Moon. We were pleased to be back on the coast and also did a bit of surfing though between battling the riptide and the sharp rocks which cut our feet to pieces it wasn´t the most enjoyable surfing ever. In the evening we joined some firejugglers on the beach before retiring to hammocks at our campsite where we were in turn joined by several harmless rats scurrying around us on the ground and in the branches above us.
A further drive day to Punta Sol where we spent our final few days on the coast. We had a wonderful couple of days camping on the beach again, this time just infront of a small hotel and beachfronted bar where we spent the days swimming and playing beach volleyball within close range of cold cervezas. In the evening we cooked a dinner of fish that we had caught during the day over the open campfire. We also had an hour long salsa lesson on the beach before settling back to look at the stars and the reflection of the moon on the waves whilst the fire crackled and the cerveza flowed. I love going to sleep listening to the sound of the waves outside my tent. How much better does it get?

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