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Our next destination was to Bonito in the far south west corner of Brazil.  It is not the easiest place on earth to visit, but being this close, we figured it is a hell of a lot easier from here than from Boston.  So we prepared ourselves for the 24 hours of buses.  Joe kindly dropped us off at the bus station at 5pm which made the start of our journey a lot easier had we had to get our own way there.  We got off the first bus at 9pm, having no idea where we were, we only knew we had to wait for 2 hours until our next bus.  So we sat at a “café” in the bus station. The bus station was pretty deserted, with the odd person scattered around.  As Greg and I sat there eating our delicious dinner of bus station empanadas, we felt eyes staring at us.  This is a feeling that we have become accustomed to.  We get it, we are white and blonde.  But for the last few weeks we had been in areas with huge german and swiss heritage that we blended in quite nicely.  Now we were definitely back in the land of “you don’t belong here, gringo”.  I can deal with this in touristy areas, as there are thousands of other gringos to stare at and make feel unwelcome, but when you are in a bus station, in the middle of no where, and where tourists don’t often take the bus route that we were on, well we stood out like there was a flashing sign above our heads saying “stupid gringo here”, with and arrow pointing to us.  This time the stares felt different, they  were coming from 4 pretty scary looking guys that made a few gestures towards us.  It was the kind of stares that you feel burning into the back of your head.  Minute by minute we grew more and more uncomfortable.  We were sitting with a ring of luggage around us, and it seems like only a matter of time that they made a move to rob us blind of all our possessions.  That butterflies were fluttering around our stomachs, and hearts were pounding but we were trying to act as nonchalant as possible as if we hadn’t even noticed them.  Staying put seemed like the best option and at the same time we just wanted to get ourselves out of the situation. A quick getaway with 5 bags isn’t exactly discreet.  45 minutes went by and by some sort of miracle 2 police walked by to do their rounds of the station.   This seemed to reluctantly move the guys along but not before giving us some manipulating waves goodbye.  Doesn’t sound like much, but you weren’t there.  It was the first time on the trip that we thought, yep Brazil was a dumb idea, let’s go home.  Whether they were just taunting us, or whether they had weapons and would have taken everything from us had the police not shown up, who knows.  But we were fine with never finding out and we made a quick getaway to our next bus. Note to self – no more night buses!  

The next  11 hour bus was a treat, with screaming toddlers behind us pulling on our seats the entire way.  We did get handed a note by someone on the bus that said in basic English, you are both invited to come and stay with me at my house.  Turns out her house was not in the same town that we were going to.  And after the night we had, we couldn’t figure out if it was a trick to bring us back to her house, drug us and rob us (we had heard such stories) OR if we had just witnessed one of the kindest acts you can offer to backpackers coming through your country.  A 2 hour layover followed by another 5 hour bus, had us arriving in Bonito, feeling like we had been chewed up and spat out.  When you in are in this condition, you just want peace and quiet, to take a shower and pass out, a little luxury wouldn’t hurt either.  Well we were in for a different kind of welcome.  The hostel was under construction, and I mean it looked like a bomb had gone off.  There goes the peace and quiet.  Our delightful host then handed us bedding.  Really, I just got off a 24 hour bus and you are telling me I have to make our bed?? Adios to the luxury.  And only after avoiding  a close electrocution in the shower, did we get to rest our heads.  It was about this time that had me dreaming of home comforts and a cuddle with our doggie and just a sprinkle of normality.  


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So back to the close electrocution, throughout South America we have become pretty accustomed to the showers.  The heating element is in the head of the shower and heats the water as it passes through.  The lower the pressure, the hotter the shower.  Which means with a cold shower with enough pressure to actually wash the shampoo out of your hair OR a warm shower that will leave you itchy with soap suds for days.  This I can deal with.  But when electric wire are hanging lose and sparks are firing out of the head of the shower, well you have to toss up, keep your layer of brown dirt on your skin or risking your life.  The fun decisions of travel,  eh?  It is always around this time that we keep muttering to ourselves, it is all worth it, it is all worth it…

This fun piece of info may have you thinking otherwise however.  Another bathroom quirk that you has to become part of our daily life, is that no toilet paper can go down the toilet… EVER. Which leaves a delightful treat in a bin for the next person behind you.  Let me add here, open bins, no lids, why would you have a lid?  You need to be able to see into the bin to get the full delight of the south American experience.  And when you have a lazy hostel that doesn’t empty the bins often, well it is gut wrenching! If you were on our shoes, I know what you’d be thinking, surely one little piece of toilet paper won’t hurt, just this once.  Nope, tried it.  You will have a blocked toilet and a bigger mess than possible. It is all worth it, it is all worth it.  The ham and cheese sandwiches for 2 meals every day for 2 weeks, have not helped the situation.  Don’t you think they would come up with a new filling here??

So now that I have had a little rant, and made you all feel glad that you are sitting in your cozy house on your plush sofa with a fridge full of anything you want at your fingertips and a bathroom with a toilet that flushes it’s paper and a shower that doesn’t spark, now I will tell you why it is, in fact, all worth it.   

Bonito translates to beautiful, and the next morning we set out on a tour to see how bonito Bonito was.  The activity that put this place on a map is snorkeling down a river through the jungle in the world’s 3rd clearest water.   (don’t ask where the first 2 are, cause I don’t know).  We got kitted up in wetsuits and then had a 2km hike in the jungle, yes with wetsuits and socks on.  Being 90 degrees and humid, most of us had our wet suits on up until our waist to keep us from passing out in the heat.  Here is the catch though, seeing as Bonito is protected area and they want to keep their clear water ranking and ecosystems in tact, you are forbidden to wear any sunscreen or mosquito repellant.   Did I mention we are in the jungle?  In Brazil? We were eaten alive. 2kms had never seemed so far.  We finally got in the water and submerged ourselves to drown all the mossies- Greg still got bitten with only his forehead sticking out of the water.  


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Once we got out goggles on, we forgot all about them.  If water can get clearer that this, I would like to see it. It was as clear as air!  It was like we had been plopped into an aquarium, it all looked so set up.  Bonito must be where people copy the scenery to create their aquariums.  There were plants, sunken trees and tropical fish that would come within inches of your face.  And just when you think, no this must be fake, you would pop your head above water to see that no, you are in fact drifting through a river in the jungle complete with toucans and monkeys putting on a show at the water’s edge.  We floated with the currant in a single line for a few kms before emerging.  At times the water was so shallow that you would do everything you could to not touch the bottom, which was also frowned upon.   Unfortunately, our underwater camera that we rented had a faulty battery and we had to pick our moment, turn on, take a pic and turn off, asap.  It lasted 10 mins, but the experience will last us a lifetime.  It was amazing.   On the way home on the bus we were talking to a Brazilian girl, who was raving about northern Brazil, so we decided to postponed our plans to head to Rio and made an on the spot decision to fly to Salvador first.

The highlight of the night was our sighting of a cockroach that could and should enter the 2012 guiness book of world records.  It was the size of a rat!

The next day, we had another early start to see the blue cave, in which they charge way too much money to let you walk down slippery rocks, that surely have had many lawsuits to answer for, to a cave.   They wouldn’t let me bring a tripod, despite there being plenty of room to use it.  Which meant no wall worthy photos for me, not a good start. Then the guide left Greg and I, the only non Portuguese speakers, in the cave on our own, with no concern for our safety or if we ever made it out.  In hindsight, just in case you ever make it to Bonito, it is so not worth it.  


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We had found a cheap red eye flight to the Pantanal, which meant leaving straight from the tour of the cave.  It seems sleep is the last thing on our mind when there a country the size of Brazil to explore. So we got a 5 hour bus, a taxi and then waited for a midnight flight, booked our last minute decision of a flight to Salvador, and ordered  a beer.   We were so tired we couldn’t have told you what day it was, what city were we flying out of, where we were flying into, or the name of the guy picking us up at the other end.

The Pantanal is the world’s largest wetland, 3 times the size of the everglades, and home to the allusive jaguar and about 900 species of birds that I had never heard of.  After much research, we decided to do a private tour with a local guide named Julinho.  The pantanal has had an influx of tourism, where tour guides are now feeding the animals to please tourists, let them get their fill of an “encounter” and they then go back to drinking heavily and partying.  We wanted to go to the panantal to see the pantanal, not disturb and distort it, so we picked a guide that lives by these morals.  An hour and a half later had us landing into Cuiaba (I researched the name after).  Julinho was there as promised, despite being 2am.  After blowing every red light so we didn’t get robbed, he dropped us off to the hotel (I say hotel, rooms were a little prison like.)  As he turned to leave he said “I will pick you up at 7”  Wait a minute, you mean like in 4 hours?  I guess sleeping will have to wait.  

By the time we got settled and into bed, it was 3.30.  You know that feeling when you know you have to wake up for something, and you end up waking every 20mins to double check you haven’t slept in, well Greg and I kept waking up at a different 20 mins each to check the watch, meaning all in all, we got about 40 minutes of sleep.



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Day 1

Julinho was early, of course, so we scoffed breakfast down our throats and headed out for an exhausting bumpy and hot 4 hour drive, down dirt roads in his 44 year old land cruiser.  We arrived at the lodge, had lunch were treated to an afternoon nap, the advantages of having a private guide were paying off.  That afternoon we took a canoe out on the river and Julinho impressed us with knowing every bird call, and spotting monkeys from what seemed like a mile away.  It was impressive.  Nature treated us to one of the most beautiful sunsets I have seen followed by a lighting storm without the rain, my favorite kind!  Over dinner, which was always just the 3 of us, we began to recited lines from 40 year old virgin to each other.   This turned into 4 days of us coming up with new lines of, do you know how I know your gay? Example of response - Because your scared of camian (to Greg).  For those who know the movie, you will see the appeal,  we may still be doing this by the time we get home, please do not take offence.  Julinho seemed excited to get up at 5am the next morning to do a hike, and we couldn’t disappoint him. 


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Day 2.

And so we woke at 4.45, our eyes barely able to open or focus.  You know that feeling when you kind of zone out when driving, and arrive home and think, how did I get here?  Or is that just me?  Well that’s what I was feeling.  And when your that tired, your senses aren’t quite so alert.  You maybe think wow, this is stunningly beautiful, but you can only manage a smile and a head nod to the guide.  Julinho got the point, we needed to nap again today.  So after a walk, some camien (crocodile) spotting, monkeys, toucans and many,many mosquitos, it was time for a hearty breakfast and another canoe ride.  I say ride, because I didn’t have to row.  We spotted a family of endanged giant otter’s who were very curious but nervous of our presence.  They quickly retreated back to their den and as we were waiting for them to come back out, it started to rain, and I mean pour, out of nowhere.  Rain was bouncing off the water so hard that you couldn’t tell if the rain drops were falling down or coming up from the water. Greg and Julinho were frantically rowing back while I was trying to get the cameras safely in the dry sack.  How it survived, I don’t know.  We were soaked.  This called for a nice long 2 hour nap.   Once the rain let up, it was back out onto the water with some beers for an afternoon of piranha fishing.  There is a trick to it, and once we got the hang of it, we were pulling them in left, right and center.  Unhooking them was something that I couldn’t bring myself to do.  They are vicious! And you wouldn’t know that they even have teeth until you look down their throat.  Thanks to Bryan for sending me the article on a guy who was attacked by piranhas in Brazil, it was engrained in my head.  We ended the day with a night safari in the jeep with a spot light.  And while it was somewhat successful, crab eating foxes, the worlds largest Gina pig, which is the size of a large dog, caiman, snakes etc  we had lost hope of seeing a jaguar.   We were too early in the season, and it was something that we had prepared ourselves for.  We did get to see the most beautiful stary night however, with no lights for miles, no moon, the sky was as black as could be, that the stars popped, it was unreal!  


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Day 3

Another 7am start had us face to face with the otter family again, this time we were around them for a good 40 mins before they disappeared from sight.  Now if you had asked me before this trip, do you want to see an otter? Well I might have hesitated, but seeing animals in the wild like this makes it a whole different experience.  There is no one else on the river, empty as can be, for the entire 3 days, and you get that feeling like, like you are the only people in the world.  We moved lodges after lunch for a change of scenery.  More hiking, canoeing and fishing followed.  That night we spent an hour before bed killing the flying nagt like insects that seemed to be multiplying in our room.  We fell asleep with the feeling of them bouncing off us and climbing up our noses.  Back to the chanting, It’s all worth it, it’s all worth it….


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Day 4

Why sleep? By 7am we were up, had breakfast and were saddling our horses for a 2 hour ride through the wetlands.  Which was dry, thankfully.  I don’t know how I feel about riding a horse through water with thousands of crocodiles in it.  Seems like a bad idea to me.  And here ends the tour.  On the way home we stopped at a real Brazilian steak house, where I don’t think a tourist has stepped before.  We walked in and all conversations stopped, you could hear a pin drop, as everyone turned to gawk at us.  They soon got distracted by a huge skewer of meat heading their way.  We ate until we couldn’t move.

Now we had been friendly with Julinho, a couple of hiccups, but all round he is a nice guy and the three of us got on pretty well.  But when he told us as he dropped us back to the hotel, that we needed to pay for the whole tour in cash, it dampened the mood a little.  Now this was for meals and all, not just $50 or so.  The limit on banks here sucks and charges stupidly.  How were we going to get the money right away? So Greg now had to go around ATMs and try and get as much cash as he could and ended up at a hairdresser friend of Julinhos, paid him on the credit card, who will pay Julinho.  What a pain in the ass and something that could have been mentioned sometime during our 90 hours together.   When we asked, why, or how come you don’t use paypal or such.  He simply quoted, the Brazilian government taxes too high, and I basically don’t want to pay it.  We thought, you idiot!  The next day we had a bright and early morning flight to the colorful city of Salvador.


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Leaving Uruguay would be a significant event as we would be leaving the last Spanish speaking country we are to visit on this trip and venture into the unknown world of Portuguese.  We would be crossing the border through a small town on the coast that actually straddles both countries (Chuy in Uruguay and Chui in Brazil).  Now every time we crossed a border until this point both countries had their border control personnel either in the same building at the border on in two separate buildings on either side but both with gates that you cannot not cross without your import permit and/or visas.  Seeing as how it was a major hassle for me to acquire my Brazilian visa, I was assuming that they’d be eager to inspect it at the border.  In reality we drove back and forth across the border three times searching out someone who could stamp us out of Uruguay and into Brazil.  We simply just kept driving past a sign welcoming us into Brazil and then welcoming us into Uruguay as we doubled back.  We finally found a border control station about 7 kms into Brazil where they reviewed all our paperwork and gave us our import permit for El Diablo.  Despite all the signs informing us of all the things we had to declare upon our entrance, they didn’t so much as glance at or into our car, we even had to tell them the color because they couldn’t be bothered looking.  We were safely through.  

As we got a late start that day we decided to drive until dark and then find a spot to sleep for the night.  With brazil’s reputation preceding it as a dangerous country for gringos, we promised ourselves that we would never drive past dark.  The thing is that the sun is now setting at about 6:30 leaving us with a lot of time to kill after we’re all parked up.  We found a gas station with restaurant attached and figured this was as good a spot as any.  We had our first Portuguese experience as we sat down in the restaurant and were handed a menu.  Not a chance.  You would think that after spending 3 months speaking Spanish that something would sound familiar in the neighboring country but we were totally lost.  We settled on something cheap that sounded familiar and ate our deep fried steak in disgust and called it a night.

We started early the next day with our destination of a wine valley with an Italian and Swiss history.  The first thing I noticed was just how difficult driving in Brazil was.  In Argentina and Uruguay, towns are separated by hundreds of kms of mostly empty highway.  Southern Brazil, on the other hand is densely populated and all the “highways” are one lane affairs with slow trucks and crazy drivers passing them with a death wish.  As we were heading to wine valley, we obviously now had steep hills and mountains to contend with once again for the first time since Patagonia.  Up and down and up and up we drove.  On one particularly steep hill, El Diablo’s engine developed a ticking noise that kept getting louder and louder.  As we climbed higher and higher and now down shifted into second gear we were going slower and slower.  Down to first gear I shifted and realized she just didn’t have the punch to keep climbing – this wasn’t good.  I pulled over into a gravel parking lot and she stalled – definitely not good.

We sat there for a good 15 minutes in disbelief, we both had the “this is as far as she goes feeling” before I even started fishing for clues as to what happened.  As I was under the car admiring the black oil leaking from every orifice of the engine, oil pan and transmission, two guys wandered out of a nearby building to see what we were up to.  This was our first real attempt to communicate in Portuguese and we failed miserably.  I tried to explain to them in Spanish what had happened and after about 10 minutes of poking around themselves I learned that they don’t have a clue about engines either.  A third guy that actually could understand some of our Spanish knew enough to call for a mechanic from Bento Goncalves, which was a mere 2 kms further uphill, before he hopped in a car and drove off. 
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An hour later, an energetic diesel mechanic rolled up on his motorcycle.  The first and seemingly only thing we understood him say over and over was “ISUZU?!?!”  as he seemed to be saying it a lot with either confusion or disgust.  After a short once over and a listen to the engine trying to turn over, he decided that the problem was the fuel pump and that we needed to get the car towed to his garage in town.  Fuel pump?  That’s not so bad, we thought.  So for the third time in our short ownership of El Diablo we watched as she was loaded onto yet another tow truck – poor girl.

Once back at the garage, Valter diagnosed that fuel was in fact getting to the engine which ruled out the fuel pump.  As he was checking for compression in all 4 cylinders, he gave us the bad news…the 4th cylinder wasn’t firing.  That coupled with the fact that water was spewing out of the exhaust only meant one thing…we blew another head gasket.  The words rang in our heads like it was yesterday: Mario, the first mechanic from Mendoza saying “If you’re going to get this fixed it has to be done right or you’ll blow another head gasket.”  Well, he was right.  The “4x4 expert” that replaced the cylinder head back in Santiago failed to let us know that the bolts would need tightening after it reached certain temperatures.  The translation for us, no matter in which language it was stated, was that we would need a new gasket.  Not terrible news, we thought, as with a capable mechanic this would be a one day job.   But the look on Valter’s face was signaling something much different.  It became more clear why he was apprehensive about working on an ISUZU when he explained (mostly in sign language) that Isuzu cars simply don’t exist in Brazil and that finding parts for such an old one would be quite difficult.  The speech went something like this:  “Brazil (palms open facing down), no hay (finger waving side to side), ISUZU (pointing to El Diablo), repuestos (pointing to the engine followed by a flick of his hand under his chin) muyto tiempo (hand palm up bringing all 5 fingers together at the tips multiple times then tapping his wrist), dois o tres semanas (holding up two and then three fingers)”.  We got it…we’re screwed.

With this news now weighing on our minds, and with the help of Valter’s son, we headed out in search of a place to sleep for the night.  The first place he took us offered us a room with two single beds at a handsome price of roughly $160US/night…I think not.  Next we tried to find one of two hotels listed in the Lonely Planet, which we found to be closed down…worst guide book ever.  In search of the other hotel listed, and without the assistance of a map (again worst guide book ever), we wandered into a bakery to ask for directions.  Little did we know at the time that this would be the trigger point of a story we'd probably tell our grandkids one day - "It all started when we walked into a bakery asking for directions".  The woman behind the counter didn’t know where it was but asked a gentleman seated at the counter enjoying his lunch.  When he didn’t know the street he took the guide book and asked the guy sitting next to him.  When he didn’t know either, they thought the two guys besides them might be of some help.  Within 5 minutes of entering the bakery, we now had 3 gentlemen all on their cell phones calling around town trying to find us some accommodation and a 4th that stepped out to visit a nearby B&B to see if he could secure us a room.  The problem was that there was a “furniture fair” in town and all the rooms were completely booked out.  When a 5th gentleman walked in dressed in a suit, he was roped into the search and was on his smartphone searching for phone numbers before we were even introduced to him.  All he knew was that two Australians (now would be a good time to tell everyone that throughout South America I have been introducing us as Australian as Americans aren’t taken kindly to and Australia is seen as a land far away that no one really knows anything about…much easier) were in the need of a room and he was all in to help out.

Right around the time the 4th guy came back to let us know that the B&B only had a room that sleeps 6, the gentleman in the suit informed us that he scored us posada (basically a room in someone’s house that they rent out), or if that didn’t suit us he had a friend with a motel nearby that would only cost us about $70US.  We thought we’d give the posada a try and before we knew it we were in the back of his volkswagon with gentleman #1 sitting shotgun.  Day 2 in Brazil, and already in a stranger’s car.  The place seemed very nice with a very pleasant host but it was about 6 kms from town and didn’t accept credit cards which would make it impossible for us to stay there.  Fine, to the motel we shall go.

Now when everyone reading this blog hears “motel”, you would think the same as what we thought, drab basic accommodation without character, usually fairly clean.  What we found was a horse of a completely different color.  We pulled up to a garage door with no signs on the outside of the building that would distinguish it from an empty warehouse.  Suit guy rings the bell and explains through the intercom that he has two Australians in the car that require accommodation for the evening.  The garage door opens and we drive through and around the corner where we run into another garage door.  Suit guy explains again through a different intercom about how these Australians’ car broke down and now need a place to stay.  He then turned to me and said this was where I had to pay.  When I asked how much, he springs on me that it costs 35 real ($20US) for the first two hours and 7 real for each hour thereafter.  What kind of motel was this?  A bit strange I thought, but went ahead and prepaid for the night.  To pay I would put my credit card in a drawer that opened up below the intercom…again, bit odd.  Once payment was accepted, another garage door (one in a row of about 10 garage doors) opened up behind us (seemed like the start of a horror movie.) This needed some explaining.  Gentleman #1 escorted us into the garage and up a flight of stairs that led into our room.  The room was simple but clean.  He showed us where the shower and bathroom were and the remote for the TV (quite a luxury in South America).  When we asked where some nearby restaurants were that we could have dinner, he quickly shook a finger at us and told us not to leave this room until morning as it was not safe.  But then went on to say they have room service here.  Just pick up the phone and tell reception what we wanted, very civilized.  He showed us the menus, the first had pizzas, the second one with hamburgers, and the third…”well never mind that one” he said.  With that he excused himself and I showed him out the garage, thanked him for all his help and closed the door behind him. 



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When I got back up to the room, Jo confirmed what I was already suspecting, that the third menu he didn’t elaborate on contained an assortment of sex toys and dildos…that’s right, we are staying in a pay by the hour sex motel.  As if we needed more confirmation, we turned on the TV to see if there was anything in English.  Well there was, but it was more moaning than anything else to be honest with you.  Two channels came through clearly: Playboy channel in English and then some Brazilian porn on the other channel – this would be an interesting night.  Once we got settled in and had a lie down on the plastic covered mattress (makes sense), we thought we’d order some dinner.  We opted for a pizza and picked up the phone to let reception know what kind.  She understood my order but I definitely didn’t understand her directions of how to pay or receive our dinner.  So when after 15 a buzzer went off in our room we were completely dumbfounded.  I first opened the room door which I should have known wouldn’t have anyone there as it led to our garage.  When I went down into the garage and tried to push the same button that closed the garage to now open it.  This is the point I realized that we were actually locked into our room.  Without finding a pizza delivery guy I went back up to the room clueless of what the buzzer meant.   It went off again.  Hmmm.   Now the phone started ringing.  The woman from reception was saying something about a box.  Jo pointed me towards a small door about 2 ft. square located above the desk.  I opened up the door and it was empty with another door on the back side of it.  Is the pizza guy on the other side of the door?  Do I leave my money in the box?  Have dildos been passed through this passage way before?

I decided to put money in there and close my side.  I opened it back up 10 seconds later to the surprise of someone on the other side who quickly slammed their side shut.  This was quickly followed by another phone call from reception who I believe scolded me for prematurely opening up my side.  A minute later the buzzer went again and we opened our side of the box to find our dinner waiting inside…what a debacle that was.  We tried to stomach as much of the dinner as possible while being serenaded by what was either screams of a woman being murdered in the next room or just some very vocal orgasms.  We couldn’t wait for the sun to rise.  We counted about a dozen times that we were awoken by the sound of nearby garage doors opening and closing…business was good that tuesday night.
When I got back up to the room, Jo confirmed what I was already suspecting, that the third menu he didn’t elaborate on contained an assortment of sex toys and dildos…that’s right, we are staying in a pay by the hour sex motel.  As if we needed more confirmation, we turned on the TV to see if there was anything in English.  Well there was, but it was more moaning than anything else to be honest with you.  Two channels came through clearly: Playboy channel in English and then some Brazilian porn on the other channel – this would be an interesting night.  Once we got settled in and had a lie down on the plastic covered mattress (makes sense), we thought we’d order some dinner.  We opted for a pizza and picked up the phone to let reception know what kind.  She understood my order but I definitely didn’t understand her directions of how to pay or receive our dinner.  So when after 15 a buzzer went off in our room we were completely dumbfounded.  I first opened the room door which I should have known wouldn’t have anyone there as it led to our garage.  When I went down into the garage and tried to push the same button that closed the garage to now open it.  This is the point I realized that we were actually locked into our room.  Without finding a pizza delivery guy I went back up to the room clueless of what the buzzer meant.   It went off again.  Hmmm.   Now the phone started ringing.  The woman from reception was saying something about a box.  Jo pointed me towards a small door about 2 ft. square located above the desk.  I opened up the door and it was empty with another door on the back side of it.  Is the pizza guy on the other side of the door?  Do I leave my money in the box?  Have dildos been passed through this passage way before?

I decided to put money in there and close my side.  I opened it back up 10 seconds later to the surprise of someone on the other side who quickly slammed their side shut.  This was quickly followed by another phone call from reception who I believe scolded me for prematurely opening up my side.  A minute later the buzzer went again and we opened our side of the box to find our dinner waiting inside…what a debacle that was.  We tried to stomach as much of the dinner as possible while being serenaded by what was either screams of a woman being murdered in the next room or just some very vocal orgasms.  We couldn’t wait for the sun to rise.  We counted about a dozen times that we were awoken by the sound of nearby garage doors opening and closing…business was good that tuesday night.

When morning finally broke we realized that we would have to leave this discreet place where no one sees the others’ faces by means of a taxi – one who would definitely get a good look at the couple he is picking up from the sex motel.  I’m sure the town of Bento Goncalves is still talking about the Aussie couple that stayed at their finest sex motel that night.  We had the taxi take us straight to an internet café where we could plot our next move.  We concocted a “just in case” plan, one that would have us staying someplace where they charge by the night rather than by the hour, that would have us at the beach by the next day should Valter have bad news for us.  And of course, once we returned to his garage, Valter clued us into what he had learned – that not a single one of his suppliers could get him the requisite gasket in less than 2-3 weeks time.


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What I haven’t touched on much prior to this is that with our flight our of South America booked departing from Sao Paulo, Brazil, we had already resigned to the fact that we could not legally sell our car back in Chile and at this point were willing to take what we could get for the car when the time came.  We didn’t realize the time would come this quickly however.  With only 5 weeks left in our trip, waiting 3 weeks wasn’t really an option considering the staggering size of the country we were so desperate to explore.  We looked at each other and were both in agreement that this would be as far as El Diablo would take us.  It would have to be a quick farewell as we had 3 hours to pack up the entire contents of the car and get to the bus station for an overnight bus to Florianopolis.  Valter must have made some calls because we must’ve had a few dozen people that stopped by to see what all the hub-bub was about.  Valter had agreed to “buy” the car from us (for what amounted to be what we would get for scrap metal) even though he would not be able to legally register it in Brazil – he said he had plans to take her on fishing trips and one day push it in the river.  He promised to send photos when he did.

It was bittersweet packing up the car for the last time.  She became our home for our time in South America, a bit of a safe haven from the chaos at time.  Comfy and clean.  On the other hand, she was the one causing most of the chaos.  At one point an elderly man who lived nearby came down while we were filming the packing up and signaled a shooting gun.  Unsure what to make of this I quickly shut the camera off and threw it in the car.  He carried on with his trigger finger and pointing to the car and our bags – was he trying to rob us?  Was he asking if we had a gun? Was he trying to sell us a gun?  Something definitely wasn’t translating.  He wandered off back to his house and returned 5 minutes later with a present – a gas station keychain from the town, “something to remember us by” is what I imagine that he said as he handed it over.  In return I gave him a bottle of mint liqueur we had purchased in Chile, he was ecstatic.  Strange moment, but we were thankful it didn’t end in a shoot out.

After Valter handed over his hard earned pay for our heap of shit, he drove us to the bus station and helped us buy our tickets onward.  One thing we can say is that with all the times El Diablo has broken down, it has definitely led us to some good honest mechanics (outside of Chile that is).  We can’t say enough about how helpful complete strangers have been to us in our numerous times of need.  We were definitely ready to begin the next chapter of our trip though, one that was a bit more predictable.  That night we got an introduction into exploring Brazil by bus – not terrible but just not what we had envisioned when we planned this trip.

We arrived in Florianopolis at 6 am, before the car rental desks had opened.  Florianopolis is a Europeanesque city that is the gateway to an island of the same name containing 43 pristine beaches scattered throughout its coastline.  We would definitely need a car to explore.  We got a good deal for a tiny hatchback for a week once the rental places opened two hours later and headed out on our way.  Our first stop was the beach town of Barra do Lagoa.  About 5 minutes after we checked into our pousada, we were passed out in our bed.  The thing about overnight busses in Brazil is that they stop very frequently to let people on and off at bus stations, gas stations, bakeries, etc. and there is always the fear of someone grabbing one of your bags from under you.  Needless to say we did not sleep very well that night and needed rest, and lots of it.  When we finally ventured out and wandered to the beach, we found what had been missing from our trip – fun in the sun.  We could get used to this!  It wouldn’t be long before we stopped at one of the drink carts passing by and ordered two of their finest Caiprinhas (for those who don’t know, this is Brazil’s signature drink comprising of a crushed lime, two tablespoons of sugar and 5-6 shots of Cachaca – a sort of sugarcane rum that sells for less than bottled water).  We were in heaven.  Our troubles seemed to just melt away into the crashing waves as we were completely relaxed for literally the first time in months.  Suddenly it was que sera sera, whatever will be will be.


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 We were able to fall into a bit of a rhythm in Florianopolis: wake up around 9, have a delicious breakfast, go for a run on the beach, quick shower, work on our tans while trying to decide which cart we’d buy our next caiprinha from, then have a quiet dinner.  Life was good.  We moved to a town further south called Campeche which was the launching point to a tiny island off the coast that we were told that we could not miss by our Buenos Aires hairdresser’s boyfriend.  A daytrip out to the island was not cheap as a few speedboats had the transportation market cornered but it was well worth the cost.  We were limited to 4 hours on the island as it is a national park and they limit the number of daily visitors but as the beach was protected from the open sea, the crystal clear calm waters were as close to the Caribbean as you would find in Southern Brazil.  It was bliss.

Our final stop on Floripa was the biggest town called Lagoa located on inland lagoon.  The main reason for staying there was to spend a few nights at the lively hostel Tucano House which has consistently been rated as one of the best in South America.  It lived up the reviews as we found a great bunch of likeminded backpackers and better yet, two sibling owners that were passionate about their visitors having a good time.  The highlight of our stay there was a hike the hostel organized to a deserted beach.  Twenty of us set out for a “short” hike they said would be about 45 minutes.  Well this trail was barely wide enough for one and snaked through thick jungle up and over a steep mountain.  What made it more difficult for some were the surf boards they were lugging along.  An hour and a half later we scrambled down the final few boulders and we rewarded with a breathtaking beach all to ourselves.  We all quickly jumped into the sea as we were all covered in sweat from the trek in 95 degree heat.  Now I said deserted but that’s not completely true.  There are two full time residents on the beach that have “gotten lost” here and live in huts they constructed in the jungle between dunes just behind the beach…sounded like a good life to us and we briefly contemplated never leaving that spot.  The owner and bartender (who made the trek with us) started a fire and prepared us chorizo bbq right there on the beach.  The food coupled with a few rum and sprites that an Aussie couple brought along made for a perfect afternoon – life just doesn’t get much better than that.

Our week in Florianopolis went by way too quickly but with our daily worries about El Diablo a distant memory by this point and our skin atleast 4 shades darker, a week at the beach is just what the doctor ordered.  Our next destination was one of the 7 natural wonders of the world: Iguazu Falls.  Foz do Iguacu, the Brazilian town that is the gateway to the falls, was a brief 19 hr. bus ride away.  Knowing this, we searched for and found a dirt cheap flight there on a budget airline, the thing is we first had to take a 5 hr bus to the airport – still better than 19.  The tradeoff was well worth it and we arrived in the Foz do Iguacu airport with a reservation at a hostel and no idea how to get there.  This is one of the joys of backpacking.  Our Lonely Planet guidebook always had nice maps of the downtown areas of cities and towns but terrible instructions of how to get there from the airports or bus terminals.  Approximate taxi ride fares aren’t always given and its hard not to get ripped off by greedy taxi drivers.  We opted to get on the public bus that stopped at the airport that would take us down town.  This was a much cheaper option as we paid $2 for the bus vs. the $45 we were quoted by a taxi, but we quickly wished we had just hopped a cab.  The bus was jam packed and with all our possessions on our back (and fronts) at the time, the hour bus ride just wasn’t we needed at the time.  Elbows in our backs and sides, smelly armpits all around us – the joys of backpacking.  We got off at the end of the line but we still didn’t know how to get to our hostel from there.  We broke down and took a $10 taxi ride from there as we were just exhausted.  


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We were greated by Joe and Giselli, the friendly owners of the Hostel Manga Rosa.  It turns out that we arrived on Giselli’s birthday and when night fell, the hostel was packed with all their closest family and friends and we found ourselves reaping the benefits.  Joe’s mom made quite the spread of local fish and salads followed by a half dozen cakes and pies.  We felt like we were just staying at a local families’ house and joining in on the festivities.

Now as we saw it, we had two outings planned for the area: visit the falls from the Brazilian side and visit the falls from the Argentinian side.  We would do the Brazilian side first as it seemed easier and we really didn’t feel like another public transport nightmare that day.  Two public buses and about an hour later we arrived at the entrance to the falls.  Being the day before Easter, this place was jam packed with Brazilians and Argentinians alike.  The way to view the falls is by a single 3 km long walkway that starts at the top of the canyon and slowly works its way down to a mid tier of the falls.  The walkway awards rather frequent vistas of portions of the 275 cumulative waterfalls that make up Iguazu.  At the end, the walkway extends into the water and finishes above one of the waterfalls.  From this vantage point, you are surrounded (260 degrees) by an unbelievable panorama of the entire spectacle.  On this crowded day however, it took Jo and I a good 40 minutes of pushing and shoving and elbowing and squeezing until we finally made it out this prime viewing spot.  I can honestly say that it was well worth the claustrophobia we endured to be able to take in that view, it is something that will always stay with me.

From there we took an elevator back up to the top of the canyon where we enjoyed a well overpriced average buffet overlooking the views before heading back to the hostel.  That night we made friends with a kiwi couple which cooking our omelet dinner (it was delicious if you were wondering) and decided to head to the Argentinian side together with them in the morning.  We pretty much had the route worked out: take public bus #50 from the corner to the central terminal, then change to the “bus to Argentina” somewhere just outside the terminal which would take us across both borders to a central terminal in Puerto Iguassu in Argentina where atleast we could communicate in Spanish to figure out which bus to take from there.  Pretty sound plan we thought.  Well being Easter Sunday, we waited at the corner for the first bus for about an hour before we decided that it wasn’t coming.  Dejected, we contemplating a plan B.  Joe the hostel owner strolled to the bus stop with a new guest that wanted to tag along with us and when we said the bus never came he didn’t hesitate to offer us a ride to the bus station.  5 of us plus Joe crammed into his little VW Gol and we were off.  As we neared the bus station, he said he could might as well take us as far as the border.  When we arrived there, he said he might as well just drive us all the way there.  WOW, now that’s a hostelier that goes the extra mile (or 20 miles in this case).

The Argentinian side of the falls offered many more miles of trails and boardwalks as well as a quaint if not terribly slow train that took you to the trailheads.  Our first stop would be a walkway to the mouth of Devil’s Throat, the iconic U-shaped waterfall.  With all the upward mist created, it meant that raincoats were donned and that photos were difficult to take.  Jo being Jo was able to snap a few keepers with minimal waterdrops on the lens – that’s my girl!  The remainder of the day was spent taking hundreds of more photos and video clips of the immense falls as well as a few other permanent spectators: capuchin monkeys and lots of tropical birds.  As impressive as they were, there’s only so many different angles you can view a waterfall from.  At about 4 o’clock we were ready to head back…this time without a chauffeur.  It started out easy enough, a 20 minute bus to the Argentina side central terminal, followed by a 5 minute wait and a bus change.  Everything going swimmingly.  The bus stopped at the Argentina border where everyone got off, went through all the border formalities and got back on the bus.  3 kms later at the Brazilian border only 7 of us got off as the rest of the passengers were Brazilian.  The bus driver gave us a coupon and told us we’d be picked up by the next bus 30 minutes later.  It took us a whole 3 minutes to get through the Brazilian border and we wondered why he couldn’t just wait for us.  When the next bus pulled up, two Germans were at the front.  When they started boarding they went to hand the coupons to the driver and he gave them a wave of the finger and a shake of his head.  They got off and the bus went off.  What was that all about?  Another hour went by before we saw another bus heading in the right direction.  This time I was first on.  The same thing happened, the bus driver shook his finger no.  Upon asking why he informed me that our coupons were for a different company and we had to wait for the next bus.  I don’t think so.  I simply told him that we were more than willing to pay the additional $1.50 each to get us on the bus and we were on our way.  Stupid Germans – cost us an hour of sitting around.  One more bus change and another hour of sitting on the bus as it snaked around shady backstreets and we were finally back at the hostel.  4 ½ hrs in total or the 20 mile trip – ridiculous.

We had planned to leave the following day but much to our chagrin, the bus we had hoped to take was all booked up which meant we would stay another night.  This wasn’t necessarily bad news as we were the only guests remaining at the hostel and we really did feel like we were just in town visiting our new Brazilian friends.  When Joe returned home from his day job he had the idea of cooking up some fish cakes.  I went with him to the nearby fishing village where he introduced me to Popeye, the old man who ran a quaint little restaurant on a hillside overlooking the river separating Brazil from Paraguay.  While his wife prepared fish cakes from fresh seafood caught that morning, Popeye showed me around his little piece of paradise that I imagine he wouldn’t give up for anything in the world.  Jo and I cooked up steaks with gorgonzola sauce as Giselli fried up the fish cakes and we sat around for hours accompanied by more than a few bottles of Skol beer helping them with their English and them telling us jokes in Portuguese.  It was our experience at the hostel that we will remember more so than the tremendous site of the falls themselves.  We talk frequently of how different our experiences of South America would be if we were to just fly in, spend a few nights at 5 star hotels (which there are a few overlooking the falls) and fly out without ever having so much as a conversation with the people the live there day in and day out.  It’s never the easiest way to see things the way we are (usually the cheapest way possible in hostels and with public transportation) but often times we find that it is the most rewarding and we wouldn’t want to see them any other way.

Next we are off to the hard to get to and seldom visited town of Bonito and then to the wild Pantanal…


Click below to see the gallery

Click below to see the video

 
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As Greg said in the previous blog, arriving into Buenos Aries was my saving grace.  The car and I had completely fallen out by this stage and I was in need of some distance from her.  The previous week had been like taking a long distance flight every day for a week.  It was like flying from LA to Melbourne every day for 6 days, with everything that could possibly go wrong , going wrong.   So a week in one spot was exactly what we needed.  After the football  match, the rest of the week involved eating slabs of juicy meat, drinking masses of malbec, window shopping and getting our hair cut.  The hair cut was long overdue.  Greg was starting to grow a typical Argentine Mullet and for fear of going to a barber and them thinking that must be the style that he is going for, we found a Irish expat and got a trim in her kitchen while watching Ghost on her TV.  $20 for the two of us, can’t go wrong.

So being a city known for pickpocketing, and hearing numerous stories (and knowing our luck), we were extra carful on the subway and where I brought my camera out to.  With the way things have being going for us, we knew getting robbed would be next on the list.  We were just being careful in all the wrong places.  We could see the car parked on the street from our hotel room and thought every day, hmm, well that hasn’t been touched, so it can’t be that, checked our pockets, still have our credit cards and money, that’s weird!  As we went to file our taxes, a thing that is just no fun to do under any circumstances never mind holiday, it all came to light.  Ahhh, it was Greg’s identity that has been stolen.  Well we can check getting robbed off the list I guess.  Now when I hear the term “identity stolen”, I like to think that someone who is 6’ 1” is walking around with Greg’s blonde hair (now non mullet), wearing his clothes, walking his dog and hanging out with his friends, pulling off the best Greg impersonation that he can. But in reality it is nowhere near as fun.  Someone basically already filed taxes for him, using his social security number, and selling it on to others for credit cards.  So there could be 50 Gregs walking around soon.  So to stop any confusion – the real Greg is in Uruguay, has a severely sunburnt back and chest, and one foot twice the size of the other.  Please report any impostures to the Federal Trade Commission.

Our next stop was Uruguay.  We visited punta del Diablo briefly 4 years ago and loved it so we decided to come back and see what the rest of the county had to offer.  But first we had to give a big don’t cry for me Argentina goodbye to Argentina.  We really loved it here, the warmness of people made our trip.  Hopefully we will be back one day.  So to get to Uruguay, we either needed to do an 8 hour drive and a supposedly painfully long border crossing or take a one hour ferry and a zip through boarder.  We chose the latter, and with the free champagne on the boat, we knew we made the right decision.    Arriving in the dark, the patrol officer pulled our car out of the line and told us to follow him, we thought he would have us empty the car for a full inspection, but just needed to give us a piece of paper for the car to be in Uruguay, didn’t even run a flash light over the car and we were on our way.  We camped at the nearest spot we could.  The following day we spent exploring Colonia, a quaint little town that is a UNESCO Heritage site.  It is filled with cobbled streets and vintage cars, it was a little like stepping onto a movie set, or back in time, still not sure which one. 


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Our next stop was Montevideo, which we were going to miss altogether but Greg needed to get a Brazilian visa and seeing as we always seem to arrive everywhere on a Saturday, we would have to wait till Monday.  Being St Paddy’s day though, we only had one thing in mind anyway.  So we checked into a hostel, and into our dark and dingy room, with bunk beds.  Now when we fork out for a hostel, we are looking for some comfort, a private toilet, a double bed etc, not a room where it looks like it was meant to be a storage closet, had stains on the exposed mattress and a smell that I would rather forget, we parted begrudgingly with our $60 and headed to the Irish bar wishing we could just sleep in the comfort of our car.  Turns out we could have slept anywhere that night with the amount of beer that we consumed.  I think I was the only Irish person celebrating in Montevideo amongst the sea of green and people dressed as leprechauns.  We made fast friends with a few local Uruguayans, who gave us such a warm welcome into Uruguay and partied the night away with us.  Ramiro safely escorted us to a taxi around 2.30am and made sure someone in the car, (not Greg or I) knew how to get to the hostel.  We were overwhelmed by such a warm reception from the locals and it definitely wet our appetites to start to explore Uruguay.  We were invited to a bbq the following weekend but would be long gone by then.  Ramiro and Lety will be visiting Ireland and London in a few months, so if anyone wants to return the warm hospitality they showed us, let me know.  

The next day we woke with our bunkbeds separated side by side with throbbing heads. How we managed this is still a mystery as the room was barley big enough to fit a double bed, and now the door was blocked.  Dying for the bathroom after a night out (you can imagine), trying to put the bunkbeds back together so we could open the door, is not an ideal morning.  We figured someone else must have separated them while we were sleeping on them cause we couldn’t see anyway that we could have done this without a massive struggle.  

We spent that day, which was literally the first time this trip in South America, on a beach.  Three months on the road, and we opened our first book, let the sun beat down onto our glowing white skin and watch the waves, all day.  It was exactly what we needed.   It turns out we were going to be provided with some extra entertainment for the day.  Uruguay is a place of mystery, while it is similar to home in many ways, (food, bars, shopping) there are certain things that happen that puzzle us.  First off, we are drifting in and out of sleep on the beach, when a smell of garbage wafts our way.  A homeless guy had parked himself on the beach upwind from us.  Have you ever seen a guy wear his entire wardrobe at once? We have.  As he started to strip off, we realized this was his daily shower.  Not a bad place to be homeless, surely better than the snowy winters of Boston.  But as we watched, off came a sweatshirt, a t-shirt, a longsleeved shirt, another t-shirt, a tank top, they just kept coming.  All in all we counted 9 layers. Then to the trousers, one pair of jeans, another pair of jeans and finally down to a pair of tracksuit bottoms.   So first came the question, while we were laying on the beach in our bathers, what was the need for all these layers?  Then came, how can you wear 2 pairs of jeans at once? So into the water he went, in the trackie bottoms, and after a good wash, came back out and immediately put back on his 2 pairs of jeans, over the sogging wet tracksuit – Why?? The thought of the chaffing and discomfort of wearing two pairs of wet jeans consumed our thoughts for the next few hours.  The next day, we saw him again, and the same routine unfolded.  Off came the t-shirts, but today he seemed to have a new wardrobe on.  He had lost a few layers of t-shirt and had acquired 3 new long sleeves and a woman’s tank top.  This brought up a series of new questions.  Is there a t-shirt swap shop?  Is he anticipating a cold night tonight?   I wonder does he have a thong under his briefs? Is he a former boxer trying to sweat out excess weight?  We were fascinated. 


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The other thing, which I cannot believe we haven’t delved into in more detail yet, is mate.  Mate is a strong “tea-like” beverage, made from tea, herbs, dandelions etc which folks pour into a wooden cup, and drink out of a filtered metal straw.  It is a huge social thing to do, and locals will sit around with their friends for hours, with this one mate cup and one straw and pass it around- like a joint, but it is really like sharing a pot of tea.  We saw this most days in Argentina, mate breaks, and a mate after a siesta etc, but in Uruguay it is like a religion.  I thought the Irish liked their tea! We saw a guy, on a scooter, drinking his Mate while steering through traffic.  People were walking around shopping, sitting on the beach, fishing, at parks, walking their dogs, taking kids to the playground, all with a thermos of hot water nestled under one arm and a mate cup in the other.   On Sunday evening, Greg and I, feeling we needed to sweat out the beer from the night before, went for a run along the water at sunset.  The place was filled, and I mean hundreds, of people with large groups of their friends, of all ages, lining the harbors, docks and beaches watching the sun set with their thermos’s and mate cups.   Not a bad way to spend a Sunday – I think we can take a lesson from the Uruguayans on how life is meant to be lived.  

After two days in the hostel we found out it would take two more for Greg’s visa to come through.  Determined not to spend $60 on another night in a hostel, we drove 50km to the nearest “campsite”, and after 5 mins of being there a thunderstorm rolled in, and it poured.  We spent the next 14 hours huddled in the car, watched the entire season on Angry Boys (Thanks Bryan!) and added up the gas money that we spent to get to this abandoned “campsite”, realizing we should have just stayed in the hostel, paid $60 and had a dry and quiet night’s sleep. Live and learn, live and learn!

On our final night before heading north, we went for a long walk along the waterfront and stopped to  watch a football club in training.  We had only been sitting for 15 seconds before Greg started stamping  his feet and swatting away a swarm of ants that had invaded his left foot.  “The bastards bit me!” So we quickly evacuated their nest and began walking home.  During the walk Greg suddenly said “I feel a bit funny”.  Now, Greg never feels “funny”, he doesn’t get sick, ever.  So I immediately stopped with concern to make sure he was ok.  It was then that I noticed his whole face was becoming redder and redder.   Not wanting to freak him out, I kept quiet about the berry shade of his face and just wanted to get him back to the hostel asap, trying to casually ask him every minute, how do you feel now, are you nauseous, are you dizzy and making some small talk inbetween.  But all the while thinking, oh my god, what bit him?  Is he allergic to ants?  We got back to the hostel and Greg was beginning to return to his normal color, thank God!  We looked up the ants and it turned out to be black fire ants that had bitten him, which are venomous, great!  We counted four bites and took note of what were normal side effects and when we should be rushing to the hospital.  His foot was getting bigger and bigger so we did the old elevation, ice and antihistamines.  By the next morning, big foot (which I lovingly named him after he began to feel better) had a left foot twice the size of his right and couldn’t get his shoe on.  The hits just keep coming! 


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Once Greg’s visa was firmly in his passport, we made our way north.  Punte del Este attracts the rich and famous and since we are neither, we continued on to the wild and isolated Cabo Polonio.  To get there we had to park the car in a parking lot and jump in a 4x4 retired miltary truck that would take us over the sand dunes to the stunning beach.  This was the first time that we were leaving the car out of sight, a nerve racking feeling came over us as we walked away.  Cabo Polonio only has 80 permanent residents, no cars, no electricity, no running water, and being low season now there were only a handful of tourists, it was exactly what we were looking for.   The pristine beaches stretched for miles, not like a palm tree paradise, more rugged and wild, backed by huge dunes with nothing else around.  It was beautiful.  Lucklily it is a protected area, so no more building can take place, preventing it from becoming yet another beach resort.   We spent our time walking the beaches, hiking the dunes and adopting a different community dog every day and taking him on his daily walk.  We would be in a restaurant eating dinner, and a dog walks in, and gets the warmest reception and takes prime spot in the middle of the restaurant so he gets the most attention.  And when we asked “is this your dog” to the owner, the response was, he is everyones dog .  So basically it is a hippy dog, who wanders from place to place sharing the love. The residents here are the stereotypical hippies.  Bob Marley followers, head of dreadlocks and are always lighting up a joint.   At night cabo Polonio’s specialty comes out.  The pitch black sky littered with stars, the streets only lit by candles and the sound of the crashing waves , we could see how people could get stuck here.  The next morning on our morning walk, we saw what can only be described as surfasize.  A cross between yoga and pretend surfing –makes sense we thought, maybe they are stretching before hitting the waves.  Then we saw a guy, on all fours, pretending to be a lion and making shapes in the sand – ok time to leave before we do get stuck here and become a surfasize instructor. 

We arrived back at the car, which to our surprise was untouched, and made our way up to Punta del Diablo.  We stopped at a few more rasta towns on the way up, which seemed like we had landed in Jamaica.  The babies and toddlers were even little rastas and bob marley was blasting from every doorway.  We arrived in Punta del diablo not recognizing it.  It had blown up!  When we were here four years ago, it was a tiny fishing village, with one, only one, hostel that only opened the same week as our arrival.  To get food, you had to go and knock on the door to someones house and they served you dinner in their living room.  The only bus going that way, had dropped us off on the highway and we had to hitchhike the 4km to town.  NOW there are 32 hostels, 5 star hotels, strips of restaurants, houses for rent.  It was night and day.  It reminded us of how much the world can change and that it is getting harder and harder to find those exotic special places that steal a little piece of your heart.  Well at least we can say, I remember Punta del Diablo back in the day, and that is exactly how we want to remember it. 

All in all, Uruguay has been amazing and we wish we had longer to explore the interior.  It has been the only place thus far that we have woken up with a plan and the plan could be seen through.  The only place that when we pull into a gas station, they always have gas and at no limit.  People have been lovely, food has been delicious and we have felt the safest in South America yet.  I guess it only makes sense that it has become more of a tourist destination over the years.  We took 10 days to slowly explore 500 kms, which has been a nice change of pace.  But with time pressing on and the sheer scale of Brazil sending Diablo into a nervous wreck we know we have to start to cover some ground.  On to Brazil….


Click on the photo below to see the gallery

Video coming as soon as Greg gets his A into G.... :-)

 
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Our next destination after viewing the Perito Moreno Glacier near El Calafate was to double back north to gawk at the towering peaks of the stunning Fitzroy Range.  Travellers come from from all over the world to this sleepy little town geared towards hikers and rock climbers alike.  We thought we were quite equipped with our little Trooper until we laid eyes on some of the mammoth homes on wheels that more resemble dumptrucks than livable domiciles, and they all have EU license plates that were shipped across the Atlantic to tackle South America.  We came here to do some day hikes as amazing views of Mount Fitzroy and Cerro Torre are easily accessible by a short hike (about 11-13 miles round-trip).  The park rangers and just about everyone else we spoke to warned us of the high winds that are omnipresent on these hikes.  We got a very rare stroke of luck on our two hikes as there was hardly a breathe of wind to be felt and nothing but clear skies to allow us the privilege of taking in the views of the towering peaks. 

On our first full day we waited until the afternoon for the heavy clouds to clear and headed out of town on the easier of the two tracks that we would attempt.  The Cerro Torre trail meandered through the foothills with magnificent views of the jagged peaks most of the way there.  They grew bigger and bigger as we approached until we finally made it to the end of the track which was a glacial lagoon which provided for a pretty spectacular lunch spot before we had to head back as we would be cutting it close to sunset.  12+ miles and 2200+ calories according to my GPS and Jo’s heart monitor.  It definitely felt good to get some good exercise after feeling like we were starting to develop sores from sitting in the car for so long recently.  We rewarded ourselves with a nice meal consisting of some of the legendary Argentinian steaks and a bottle of Malbec – can’t beat it.  The following day we started out on a trail that would put us face to face with the Mount Fitzroy.  After a pretty difficult initial 6 miles and qute a bit of elevation change, the real ascent began.  When the pitch of the “trail” approached 45 degrees of loose rocks and the wind started to pick up, we thought it wise to turn back, it wasn’t worth another fall.  Although we weren’t rewarded with the final view that we came for, we got the idea.

All in all our thoughts of this part of Patagonia were pretty positive.  We were very thankful that we got good weather for our hikes as later in the afternoon the wind really started to whip and we found it hard to walk down the street in a straight line.  Other than that, great treks, good food, amazing sunsets – a bit too pricey and definitely no opportunity for authentic argentine experience as the town was erected solely to cater to tourists.

The following afternoon we once again prepared ourselves for a long drive as our plan now was to first head east to the Atlantic coast and turn north towards Buenos Aires.  We first needed a quick stop at the gas station to top off El Diablo’s tank which was about a third full.  Its funny how quickly our plans can change because we were informed that not only did the only pump in town not have any gasoline to dispense, but he couldn’t tell us when the next truck would arrive to replenish the supply.  “No problem” we thought, we’ll just head to Tres Lagos, a town about 100 km east and top up there.

“Tres Lagos doesn’t have any gasoline either” he further informed us. 

Fabulous!  A quick study of the map would confirm that there wasn’t a single gas station before the east coast about 400 kms away.


“El Calafate has gasoline…its only 220 kms away,” the gas man stated.

This would mean that we would have to drive ONLY 220 km back to the south in order to buy gas to drive northeast…makes perfect sense to me. 

To put it into a big of perspective, imagine packing up your car in Philadelphia to drive south to Florida.  First you want to fill up your tank before you jump on Route I-95 but the Exxon is fresh out.  No problem, you can top up in Delaware on the way, you would think. 

“Actually, they’re all out in Delaware as well, not to mention that Maryland and Virginia have run dry, but not to worry, you can fill up in New York City ONLY 150 miles northeast of here” the friendly Exxon attendant quips.

So we took the long detour back to El Calafate again where we filled our tank and decided to spend the night in a campsite before hitting the road bright and early.  The mountains were quickly in our rear view mirrors and the road quickly went from paved to gravel paths.  Here we go again.  The long drive east gave us time to research the towns and other sites up the coast through the Patagonia Steppe towards Buenos Aires.  The one thing you won’t read about in the guide book is the ridiculous wind that blows incessantly.  Not a good thing with a car that is shaped like a box and can only go 50mph without wind.  The other thing is how quickly the temperature rises as you move east.  An ugly demon began to rear its head again in El Diablo’s underbelly and the temperature gage began to rise again.  We had all but forgot about this problem as we were driving for so long in the cold of the Andes.  The first overheating stop was perhaps the scariest as we were at least 100 km from the closest “town” in either direction and hadn’t seen a car in over an hour.  We stopped and turned the ignition off to let our girl cool down as we normally would (this should never be a “normal” occurrence).  When I went to start her up again, I got nothing.  One more time…nothing.  Our hearts stopped.  A panicked glance under the hood and a quick rundown of the essentials and I found that the positive lead on the battery had rattled loose during the drive – pheeew.   She started right back up but the overheating didn’t stop.  Every 30 kms or so we’d take a 5 minute power break and let the powerful winds cool our baby down…as Buenos Aires was still close to 2000 miles away, this was shaping up to be a loooooong drive.  It is never a good feeling waking up every morning and thinking, will today be the day that the car fails us for good??  Jo was pretty much over it by this point, and already looking up bus timetables and preparing to hitchhike. 


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Our first stop along the coast was a short sidetrack off the main road to Parque Nacional Monte Leon where we read of brilliant coastline and abundant penguins roaming about.  The park ranger added pumas to the list of things that roam this park.  We camped at an estancia (ranch) on the water and hoped to do the short 2 km trek to see some penguins early the next morning before continuing north.  What we didn’t read in the guide book was that this trek was closed until 10am due to the pumas hunting in that area in the morning and that the penguins are only worth seeing at high tide which fell at noon on that day. Our host at the estancia promised us we wouldn’t regret giving the penguins a miss as our next stop would put this place to shame.   We enjoyed the setting we camped in and the beautiful coastline before rising at dawn to head out.

The temperature was really starting to rise as we headed up the coast and El Diablo was really suffering.  40 kms between overheating stints turned into 15 kms and we thought we should really have her examined.  The closest town of any size was 30 miles behind us and we thought it wise to double back before she gave out all together before the next town 200 kms further north.  Trying to find a mechanic in these towns is never easy as they work out of little garages with no signs.  We were escorted to one by an oil change guy and were told he’d be open in 3 hours again after siesta – typical.  We grabbed lunch and went back to him to see if he had any magical insight.  He confirmed what we had been thinking for quite some time that the problem was with the radiator and advised us to have it cleaned.  He recommended a place nearby to get this done and it was “only” 360 kms to the north.  The good thing about Argentine mechanics is that if they can not help us, they wouldn’t think of charging us for their diagnosis and would often offer us their matte as well.  We thanked our new friend and limped along to the north.

Puerto Deseado, which our previous host and the Lonely Planet raved about, was a bit underwhelming, we thought.  The major attraction that prompted us to drive the 150 kms out of our way to see was the quirky Rock Hopper penguins.  These are the penguins that the character Lovelace in the movie Happy Feet is caricatured from, with the bright orange wispy eyebrows.  Apparently this was the only place outside of Antartica where they reside.  Three different tour companies take daily trips out to the island where they live so we figured it would be no problem to arrange a tour for the following day.  We arrived into town late as usual as with our overheating stops and the fact that we can only go about 80 km/h on a 120km/h highway turned a 6 hr drive into 15 hours to get there.  We would camp that night then head into town to arrange our tour.  First stop was the tourist office.  The nice lady called around to all three tour companies for us before giving us the news: two of the companies had a minimum of 8 to go out on the tour and currently had 0 signed up and the third company, which required only 6 per tour had two others.  So with the other two and Jo and I, we would only need two more people to sign up over the course of the day and we could head out on the tour the next day.  Now once again, this isn’t some never heard of tour that we stumbled on.  This is well advertised in all the neighboring park and towns and you can’t go anywhere in this town without seeing a Rock Hopper penguin emblazoned on a hotel sign or mini-market window so we thought it wouldn’t be a problem for two other people to rock up to join us on this adventure.

Wrong as usual.  We left the port town without as much as a sniff of a penguin and were really starting to get annoyed.  We made the long drive back out to the highway and headed towards the town where we could get our radiator cleaned.   We reached Commodora Rivadavia about an hour before everything shuts down.  We were able to locate a reputable radiator specialist who told us he’d be glad to clean out our radiator… in the morning.  This was not an attractive option as our tour through this town thus far had convinced us we’d rather deal with the overheating than stay here a single night.  The radiator guy was able to determine that our radiator cap was not holding pressure properly and sold us a new one.  The new radiator cap “seemed” to be just the trick as we sped away north.  We drove a good two hours in the dark without a single overheating incident and foolishly thought all the ails had been cured.  The morning sun would quickly sour our good mood as we would realized the cloak of the brisk night air was the only cure. 

No reason to be moody on this day, however as we would finally get to stroll along with penguins that day.  Ponto Tombo is located down a bumpy dusty road about an hour from the main highway and for $7 each we were able to stroll through about 3kms of the penguins’ rookery.  These Magellanic penguins stood about a foot tall and for the most part were just trying to stay cool in the shade.  Hundreds of penguins were scattered throughout the park and we decided that it was definitely worth all the driving to be able to get this close to the cute little guys.  It was definitely a once in a lifetime kind of experience.


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We thought we would be able to camp at this park but when we viewed the sole parking lot that we were able to sleep in, we thought we’d carry on north.  A good start to the day again gave way to a long annoying day dealing with the overheating engine.  It was getting real old by this point and we were seriously considering torching it and continuing the trip via plane and bus.  We arrived in Puerto Madryn, a vacation spot on the beach, just as the sun was setting.  Now, when you are living out of your car you never like to arrive to places after dark as everything is made more difficult – finding a place to park the car for the night, cooking and eating dinner, etc.  We settled for a gravel campsite on the outskirts of town for the night and called it a night.

We eventually found Radiadores Carlos the next morning after several botched navigating attempts taking directions from locals…derecha (right) and derecho (straight) sound way too similar especially when they are used in succession very rapidly.  Carlos was the guy that would finally set Diablo straight.  He told us that he could remove the radiator from the car, remove the tanks from the radiator exposing the core and clean out all the tiny tubes that water should be passing through all within 24 hours.  We were obviously skeptical as all the car forums we were on basically said that once a radiator gets clogged, there’s basically no way to unclog it…just need to replace it.  Replacing a 1990 Isuzu Trooper radiator in southeastern Argentina is never a possibility so these guys really master their trades here.  We spent the day with honestly our first bit of relaxation in about 3 weeks as we strolled the empty beaches and enjoyed cold beers watching the sun set…this is what we envisioned our trip to be like the entire time.  We spent that night getting Argentine Asado cooking lessons from our host at the HI Hostel.  I definitely think I’ll have to build an outdoor Asado at our next place.

Carlos was good to his word and we left the beach behind us and planned to drive the next 1400 kms over the course of the next two and a half days.  A mammoth feat considering the most we had ever driven in single day to this point was about 560 kms and that was a 15 hr. day.  Carlos’ work was truly magical as the temperature gage rarely strayed from the beloved “C” for cold.  In addition, we could now actually drive 100 km/h for the first time all trip.  Just imagine – we could actually look at a map, see the next town was 200 km away and actually arrive there two hours later, this was a novel concept to us.  The thing that would work against us in this part of the drive was the awful wind.  50 mph winds constantly blowing straight at us.  This didn’t bother most of the aerodynamic smaller cars on the road, but with our flat, vertical windshield, it’s like constantly climbing a mountain.  Fortunately, the freshly cleaned radiator was up to the challenge of keeping the old engine cool as a cucumber.  The two nights we spent on the road were accompanied by torrential rains and thunderous lightning bolts that prevented us from getting our much needed sleep.  I thought a corrugated tin roof was bad during rain storms, but having a metal roof not two feet above your head is 10 times worse.

We passed the days playing stupid games as the landscapes around us were flat and dull.  The last two days we saw the gas prices skyrocket as we finally exited Patagonia – the government here subsidizes the fuel prices in the south.  We left ourselves a short 300 kms to tackle on the final morning and that allowed us to roll into Buenos Aires around lunchtime.  Without a map of the city, Jo skillfully guided us to our hotel using a preloaded map on the iphone.  It’s a good thing too because drivers here are absolutely crazy.  Dotted white lines are merely a suggestion, as are red lights.  Cab drivers fancy themselves as race car drivers as they weave between cars, bikes and motorcycles without regard for either their car or their passengers lives….but they do reach their destination in record time.


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We booked into a cute brand new boutique hotel nestled in a quiet corner of the San Telmo neighborhood.  This was the perfect area for our first planned tourist site – the San Telmo Sunday Antique Fair & Market.  Thousands of tourists and locals alike come to explore the hundreds of stalls set up on the closed off streets in the area.  If you so desired, you could walk away from this fair wearing any countless dodgy soccer jerseys, any jewelry you could imagine, a holster complete with antique gun, spurs, with an antique camera around your neck.  We spent the afternoon perusing the craft and antiques. Jo helped herself to some choice earrings and I got kitted out with a Boca Juniors Jersey for our next activity that night – the Boca Juniors hosting Indepentiente.

We had arranged tickets in advance as our previous attempt to attend a match 4 years ago had a few slip ups that caused us to miss it altogether.  Tickets are very hard to come by as all the tickets are sold to season ticket holders.  To some of the lesser matches, we’ve read that it is possible to show up at the stadium and purchase tickets the day of the match.  We also read that gringo’s should definitely not attempt to do this as the stadium is in the La Boca neighborhood where locals do not take kindly to tourists.  The online company we purchased tickets from provide transport to and from the stadium so we were on the lookout for a mini-van of some sort to pick us up.  When a guy came knocking while on foot we knew this would be interesting.  He handed us tickets and hailed a taxi for us.  There was no way I was about to pay this guy until we were safely in our seats at the stadium.  There was one other taxi load of tourists in our group and we were dropped off about 4 blocks from the stadium.  Our tour guide come bodyguard escorted us into the stadium through 4 different armed security checkpoints.  A few hiccups on the way through but we finally made it to our seats just above the section of crazies the stand behind the home goal.  Now I have camped out for and attended Eagles playoff games in Philly, I’ve seen the Flyers play a home game in the Stanley Cup Finals, I’ve even been to see Manchester United play at Old Trafford, but this was an experience like NO other.  The fans here are passionate to say the least.  The singing, chanting and dancing began hours before the teams were even introduced and when the Boca Juniors came out of the tunnel, confetti littered the field, fireworks went off and flares were lit.  The crew had to use leaf blowers to somewhat clean off the field before the starting kick.  Boca was first in the league going into the game and Independiente was dead last, so everyone was shocked when the visiting team scored just 30 seconds into the match and quickly added a second 8 minutes later.  The fans didn’t quiet down one bit though and if anything they just sang louder to get their team going.  9 goals were scored in all during what our guide stated without hesitation was no doubt the game of the year.  The Boca Juniors were down 3-2 at the half but came out at a blistery pace and were cruising to a 4-3 victory as time was running out.  In the 89th minute, Independiente netted the equalizer and much to the home fans chagrin tallied the winning goal in the 4th minute of injury time.  The result wasn’t what we were hoping for but not being from Boca, we were just excited we got to witness such a thrilling match.  A great start to our time in Buenos Aires…


click on the photo below to see gallery

click below to see the video

 
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Basically there are two roads south to Patagonia.  One in Chile, the Carretera Austral – 1240km of tough dirt road, crisscrossing over mountains down the most beautiful  and unspoilt countryside, with snowcapped peaks and glaciers surrounding you.  The other road, Ruta 40, is in Argentina  and while some parts of the road are still dirt, the scenery is mostly flat which can make for long and boring drives.   We naturally chose the Carretera Austral.  This is the drive we were waiting for - this is what we bought the 4x4 for, we were psyched!  Fate, it seemed, would have a different plan for us.  We have come to realize that no matter what we plan for or what we want to do or see on this trip, it is pretty much out of our hands. 

Here’s how it went…                                                                                                                                       

We did a final stock up of food and supplies before leaving Chiloe – food, wine, water, chocolate, you know the essentials. But when we went to hit the ATM, the only one in town, it was frozen.  Well we thought, there is a ATM when we get off the boat, we can wait.

Went to catch the midnight ferry, was told to be there at 8pm, we didn’t board until 1am, leaving at 2.30am, all the time there is torrential rain.  The ferry was packed, kids drinking, old men snoring, the works.  Greg resorted to sleeping on the floor, only to be stepped on numerous times.  Not the best start, but we just kept dreaming of that open road.  We arrived at 8am to the flooded streets of Chaiten.   A volcano erupted here 4 years ago, destroying the town.  Houses were flattened by mounds of ash and they are only starting to get some infrastructure back.  The ash, mixed with the pouring rain, grey skies and devastation all around, made for a pretty depressing place.   So we thought, we will get money, get gas and get out.  Naturally the only ATM in town wouldn’t take our card and the bank wouldn’t exchange Argentinean money (the only other cash on us).  So now we had a bit of a cash shortage.  Next stop, gas station –

“do you take credit card?”

“Yes!”

“Great! Fill ‘er up.”

“but our machine is down”

“shit!”  

Now we risked being short on gas.  We couldn’t use our only cash, so now we just needed to make it to the next “town”, where we would find the next gas station.   We did have one full jerry can, so knew we could make it. The next town, La Junta, was a 150km away.  Doable.  But on these roads and in the rain, that takes a good 5-6 hours of intense driving, concentrating on every pothole that polka dots the road.  Not something I would advise on very little sleep.  To add to the fun, because, why should it be easy?, our window wipers were sticking in the middle of each wipe, making driving nearly impossible.  Greg would have to stick his arm out of the window and push the wipers back to get a full wipe.  It was ridiculous. 

As our gas gauge was edging toward E, we rolled into the gas station at la junta

“Do you take credit cards?”

“yes”

“great!”

“But there is no gas.”

“double shit!” 

At this point other people rolled in to the station too, coming from the south, and were demoralized when they saw that La Junta had no gas.  It was about this time that our plans went out the window.  We were told by people coming from the south (where we were heading), that locals were protesting, blocking roads, preventing tourists from leaving and gas trucks from entering – ALL the way down the austral Highway.  We were in disbelief.  So we retreated to the car, found a spot by the river and took shelter from the rain. All kinds of thoughts went through our head, just head north and come to terms that Patagonia just may not happen.  Take all of our issues on this trip as a sign, sell the car and fly to somewhere for a less complicated vacation, cut our losses and head home or keep telling ourselves that things can only get better- something that has become a bit of a slogan on our trip.  We drank wine until we could laugh at the situation (it took a lot) and tried to come up with a plan.  Ha, plans, we were so naïve.


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The next morning we woke by the river to a beautiful day and we thought let’s make the best of this situation, head south a little, go to some hot springs, a national park and wait for this thing to blow over.  As we drove through town and past the gas station, we saw cars queuing for gas.  Great!  Problems are over, they have gas!  We were told that there was a limit, and that limit only got us about 20 litres.  But we thought, we can make it to the hot springs, and maybe to the next town and then it will all be over.  The more people we talked to the more we realized that we were dreaming.  Backpackers were stranded as a bus came into town but no buses were leaving, and now they were all trying to hitchhike back north.  Which meant everywhere we went we were hounded by people, “Are you going north?  Can you take us? You shouldn’t go south, north is the only way out, please, please take us.  They are going to block the road north soon.”  Ok now we were getting a little scared.   

We escaped 1km out of town to get away from the madness and to assess the situation.  We needed to know how bad this really is, so we found internet and did some reading.   Protests down south were getting extreme, police were now fighting back with tear gas, water cannons and rubber bullets.  After seeing photos and reading travel advisories, we came to realize that north was really our only option.  We were gutted, it meant back tracking, wasting money and gas but the real kicker was that we wouldn’t get to drive to Carretera Austral.  But continuing was a risk that we couldn’t take.

We needed to head 150km north and cross over into Argentina and go to a gas station 80km from the border.  But we knew with our guzzler of a car, we wouldn’t make it.  With the limit at the gas station, we knew the only thing we could do, would be to do a clothes change, stick on a baseball cap and try our luck at rolling through a second time.  It worked! Although I think he realized as we were paying that we had been through before – hey every man for himself!   Now it was our moral duty to help out some fellow travelers.  Although we knew how unsafe it would be driving these roads with people lying in the back, we couldn’t just leave them stranded.  With the town now having 30 or so people trying to hitch hike out, we found the couple who asked first and who we had been crossing paths with, Jeff and Aggie and said we would give them a lift.  Just in time too, as when we found them, they were gearing up to hike the 150km through tough terrain to get to the next town- crazy!

Next problem – The bridge to go north was now blocked.  Perfect.  So we waited in line for them to open.  At first they told us we could go at 5pm, then 6pm, then 10pm – we were like hostages.  Only when I say the road was blocked, this barricade was pretty pathetic to say the least and there were only about 40 people standing around, 10 of which we tourists.  The “barricade was a couple of logs in the street with one burning tyre.  Nothing like their fellow supporters down south.  


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While we understand and agree with what they were protesting about, it was a huge inconvenience to us, and certainly rubbed tourists up the wrong way.  We would have much preferred for them to kick off in a week or so, when we are well past the area.  The protest were based around many things, general cost of living in the south being 3 times as much in the north, fishermen not getting enough money, fuel being so expensive. The one that was most legitimate was the protest of the government wanting to put dams in Patagonia rivers as well as the world’s longest stretch of high tension power lines to supply energy to the north for mining.  Goodbye beautiful unspoilt Patagonia.  It would be sacrilege.  So we got it, we just didn’t get why they had to bring it up at this very minute.

So 6pm came and went.  We were thinking about just trying to drive over their “barricade”, until we saw a motorbike trying to do the same, and the driver and his wife on the back were pushed off, a few punches thrown, emmm maybe we will just wait.  So we started up our grill, chorizo anyone? The protested were bound to get tired at some point, we had hot food, a bed, we can certainly out last them!

So once their one buring tyre came to a fizzle, they opened the bridge and chaos unfolded as cars made a dash for the exit.  We drove past the bridge, picked up Jeff and Aggie waiting on the other side and drove until it got dark.  Many backpackers were stuck at the side of the road, with a long, cold and wet night ahead of them, including Aggie’s brother and friend. We camped at the side of the road, praying tomorrow would be a better day.  After very little sleep, every time we heard a car go past, we thought, what if the protests are moving north, what if someone tries to siphon out our gas, what if the next bridge is blocked?  So we got up at first light, and hit the road. 

After 4 hours of a bumpy ride, we reached Futaleufu, near the Argentinean border.  It was a beautiful town, surrounded by mountains and lakes, it was the R&R we needed.  So we checked into a b&b and had a much needed shower – hygiene has gone out of the window on this trip.  We spent the day sharing stories with Jeff and Aggie and drinking some much deserved wine.

Our good friends from Boston, Kevin and Dilek are travelling around south America at the moment and we had hoped to meet up in Patagonia in 5 days and although this seemed like a very unlikely task, given our turn of events, we still were determined to try. So we pushed on to Esquel over the border. Everyone seemed to be crossing at the very same time, and the one passport control guy couldn’t handle the influx. 3 hours later, we had left Chile behind us.  It was a relief.   

So drove through the tiny town of Trevelin, where we saw a gas station, but the lines were around the block.  We thought, people must be dry from coming from Chile, the next town should be quieter.  25km to the next town, 4 gas stations- all without any gas, back to Trevelin we go, to an even longer gas line.  90 minutes of waiting we were sure that they would run out as soon as we pulled up, but luck was on our side, for a change, and we now had a full tank. 


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We drove until well after dark, something we never wanted to do, but we had miles to make up. We pulled into a dusty town in the middle of nowhere to catch some shut eye before hitting the road for a long 8 drive the next day.  Useless detours seem to be our thing, so keeping with tradition, we reached lake Buenos Airies, which is on the boarder to Chile.  I had so badly wanted to photograph the amazing marble caves in the middle of the lake , but once we got there we were told you can only do it from the Chilean side.  Things were still shaky in that part of Chile, and there was no gas to be found, so we gave it a miss, again and backtracked to head south down the infamously bumpy route 40 on the Argentinian side.  The gas situation wasn’t much better in Argentina, finding a gas station with gas was like finding a needle in a haystack.  Another painful 8 hour drive, rattling all the way led us to the Perito Moreno National park.   According to the lonely planet it only gets 1200 visitors per year, compared to other national parks that receive 100,000 visitors.  The reason is, no buses go here, and to get there you need to drive down 90km of  a side dirt road and when there are gas shortages on top of that, not many people take the risk.  We did! And wow was it worth it.  We stopped at a house at the edge of the park that said they sold gas.  This is the MIDDLE OF NOWHERE and somehow this guy has wifi (albeit powered by a generator).  Bizarre! So we bought 15 litres at a hugely inflated price and continued on.  We saw 2 cars in 3 days.  The park was so wild, like something from a movie, with wild lamas and horses roaming against the mountainous backdrop.  We saw lots of flamingos, ostriches, foxes and condors circling overhead.  The park had a lot of puma warnings, but to our disappointment we didn’t see any.   

Our car started to give us some jib.  The revs seemed too low, and the car kept stalling out.  It wasn’t Greg’s driving (this time), and while we weren’t going to miss the park, this issue was at the front of our minds.


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We saw a ranch in the distance and bumped down the road to see if we could do a horse ride.  The next day Pedro got us saddled up and without asking about previous experience, we were off.  This was not like a horse tour that you would do in the states where you follow the horse in front of you, everyone in a line, with helmet on. It was also nothing like what I learned at horse riding class as a child.  This was real cowboy stuff.  Climbing up mountains on rough, loose terrain, walking on boulders, jumping rivers, slipping on steep muddy slopes, all the while our horses all having minds of their own and picking their own paths.  It was hard going, nerve wrecking and breathtaking all at the same time.  The scenery was amazing, vast and we felt like we were at the edge of the world.  That is when we would take our eyes off the ground to see where are horses were trying to walk, and fighting them on their poor choices.  Passing wild horses were always a concern, that our horses would start to have a little freak out, as mine seemed scared of his own tail, so much so when he flicked it, I had a bucking bronco experience.  We got in some trots and a canter or two, it was an experience we wouldn’t forget and neither would our back sides. 


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The last thing you want to do the day after something like that is to get into a car for another 13 hour bumpy noisy drive.  But we had one day left to try and meet Kevin and Dilek, which we had been really looking forward to seeing a familiar face, so that is what we were going to do.  

So we slept at the side of the road, up at 6.30am and drove the rough 90km out of the park.   As our gas was low and we had used our jerry can, and we knew that we had a long drive to the next gas station. So we stopped at the little house again for some more gas – and shortly after waking the owner, he told us the news we were dreading, he didn’t have any left.  He pointed to a jerry can that had a measly few liters in it.   We were stranded.  He disappeared for 10 minutes and came back with a full jerry can.  Which at first made us a little suspicious but the joy took over.  We just figured he had more left in the tank than he thought.  So let me first explain the gas terms in South America.  Petrol is called “gasolina”.  Diesel is called “petrolio”.  Our car runs on gasolina.  So we said

“Esta gasolina?”

“si gasolina!”.

“ Bueno!”

 As he was about to syphon it into the car, we asked again, Gasonlia si? Si si! Ok it’s the right stuff.  So we went to pull out and the car started the same problem of stalling again.  Greg tried to fix the revs, with no luck and it kept stalling until it wouldn’t start at all.  We were thinking - Great another tow truck from a town that is 200 km away – another small fortune.  Then just as I said, “it sounds like there is no gas in the car!”  We both simultaneously had a slow mo flash back to watching the gasolina being syphoned into the car – back to the “Esta gasolina??”  We went back into the guys house – Asked one more time –

 “Venden nos gasolina, si?  No petrolio.” (you sold us gasoline, yes?)

” No esta petrolio!!!”. 

“You f**king muppet!” 

Now what?! The nearest gas station is 150km away.  I thought this luck was supposed to change. So we syphoned out the petrolio from the tank and our friend now brought out 2 jerry cans of some blue shit. 

“Esta Nafta”

 “What in the hell is nafta?”

 “gasolina”  

“yep, ok buddy – if you think we are going to put this in our car, you have another thing coming.”

So we got on our iphones, did some research and while nafta was first used in the dry cleaning business and more recently for cleaning grease of metal, it is also used as a gasolina in South America.  We thought, at this point, what is the worst that can happen? We are already stranded, it was Baltic and blowing gale force winds outside and we were willing to give anything a shot.  So in went 40 liters, Greg revved the car, smoke spewed out the exhaust and we were away, it purred like a kitten.  I think we were all surprised!  

So we made it to the next town, which naturally had a limit on gas, so we circled the town and took a second trip through the station – as you would. Now we were set to make it to El Calafate to meet Kevin and Delik, even though they didn’t know it yet.  The next 7 hours, were rough. Real long way round kind of stuff, guys on motorbikes were having a tough time, and we saw quite a few falls.  At 8.30pm we rolled into el Calafate.  We were parked outside of the hotel that Kevin and Dilek were staying at, and as we were unpacking, they came skipping down the street at the surprise of seeing our car. Before celebrating, Greg and I had a much needed shower and scraped 3 days worth of dust off of our skin.  The night was spent exchanging traveling tales over some bottles of Quilmes and Malbec.  It is about now that I would like to formally thank Kevin for telling me back in Boston to bring a thermal to Patagonia.  I have slept in it every single night, with a layer under it! Yeah it’s cold at the end of the world- duh!!  The second person is my big bro, who advised me to bring a hot water bottle.  While I thought it wouldn’t be necessary, I regretted it from the moment we got here, and after a week of searching, we miraculously found the seemingly last one in Patagonia. You are so smart! Thank you!! 


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We spent a day doing car maintenance and laundry before heading out to the biggest attraction of this town – the Perito Moreno glacier.  It is part of the world’s 3rd largest ice mass, after Antarctica and Greenland, and is a spectacular sight.  Since I had survived horse riding with a broken elbow, we decided to do a “mini-trek” tour on the glacier.  Probably not the smartest idea, but so worth it!  We were kitted with crampons and told what to do if we fell, I thought, falling, great! That is all I would need. We spent an hour and a half on the ice, ascending and descending what seemed like waves of ice.  Admiring the glowing blue caves and crevasses.  Being on the ice, gives you the surreal sense of the size of the glacier and made us feel so small and inferior.  Especially when the ice would crack and pieces that looked tiny, but were the size of cars or small houses, broke off the ice wall crashing into the water below.  The sound was thunderous and you could feel the vibrations.  It was amazing and an unforgettable moment.

We spent the rest of the afternoon, staring at the glacier in awe, waiting for the next piece to drop and listening to it creak and split.

It has definitely been a week of highs and lows.  


click on the photo below to see gallery

click below to see the video

 
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The last time we wrote our trip was in jeopardy of ending before it even began.  I can proudly report that our trusty steed  has over to 1,100 miles behind her.  Here’s how it all unfolded from Mendoza.

Our time in Mendoza was twofold.  On  one hand we were in complete disarray in trying to figure out our next move with our immobile car, and on the other hand we were doing our best to enjoy ourselves in a spot we had looked forward to visiting since we first discovered how our palettes danced to the taste of the Mendoza Malbec wines. We stayed with Francisco at TikayKilla lodge for the rest of our time in Mendoza and it felt as if we were staying with a close friend.  He cooked us meals, invited us to join him and his friends for a bbq, drank numerous bottles of wine together and we just really enjoyed spending time hanging out in his company.  With the help of numerous local Argentinians we had arranged to tow the car back to Santiago where we could calculate our next step as we could not replace a Chilean engine with an Argentinian one (not legally anyway) and the cost of parts in Argentina were prohibitively expensive.  By this time, Osvaldo had somehow sorted out fixing our windshield wiper motor by having the copper re-wound and replacing all the resistors – “Argentines can fix anything” as he told us when we first met him.  We were not permitted to leave Mendoza, however without a proper sendoff from the Land Rover Club, who invited us along on an impromptu “asado” (BBQ) in the foothills of the Andes.  Mario, the mechanic, and Hans introduced us to the rest of their gang and treated us to round after round of chorizo and carne.  A great way to end our stay in beautiful Mendoza.

The next morning was the start of the long journey back up and over the Andes.  The trick of this trip would be that we would have to split up for the first, and definitely last time while traveling.  The tow truck only had room for one passenger which meant that Jo would have to make the trip by bus back to Santiago and make her own way to the apartment we had booked.  Francisco, now a dear friend, escorted Jo to the bus station and sent word to me once she was safely on a bus heading west.  My trip wouldn’t be so easy.  The car was loaded on the bed of a tow truck that appeared in worse condition that our car itself.  I said my goodbyes and gave my thanks to Mario and he sent me off with a fine bottle of Mendoza Malbec (once again, everyone has been so generous to us here).  I knew we were in for a long haul when only an hour into the 7-8 hour journey we had to pull over as the truck was overheating (isn’t this the same problem we had with our car?).  The truck driver just added a liter of water to the radiator as he apparently does about every of every day, waited a bit for the engine to cool off and we were back on the road.  Five more hours and five more overheating stops later and we were at the border.  The driver had a quick word with the border patrol and came back to inform me that this was as far as he could tow me….what????

Apparently, Argentinian tow trucks don’t have the authority to work in Chile so this was the end of the line for him.  So he unloaded my car, gave me his best wishes and headed back East.  A quick chat with the border patrol and they had called another tow truck to come pick me up to take me the rest of the way.  30 minutes maximum they promised.  Four and a half hours later there was word that he was close by.  With the help of two border patrolman and one PDI officer, we pushed the car across the border, through customs and into Chile.

The thing I hadn’t mentioned yet was Jo’s progress along the same strip of road over the Andes.  The plan was for her to take the bus to Santiago, hop in a cab and check into the apartment we had booked so we can make contact with each other.  I tried calling the apartment desk for confirmation of her safe arrival.  They said she had not yet arrived but they would give me a call once she did arrive.  Six phone calls later and they still insist she has not arrived.  I had three different border control personnel phoning the apartment, bus company and bus station searching for Jo’s whereabouts.  By the time I was pushed across the border I was just about in panic mode.  A customs officer tried his luck on his cell phone, had a quick word with someone on the other end and soon enough had Jo on the phone for me.  She had been sitting in the apartment watching a big bang theory marathon for the last 3 hours.  Stupid receptionist!  Right, all is well, now to get me and the car back safely.

The second tow truck had me back in Santiago by 11 pm.  What a day!  Now for a car rescue plan.  We reluctantly met with Arturo the next day who informed me that he has a new head to give to us to install into our car.  The problem was that we did not have Mario to install it for us properly.  He introduced us to a “4x4 expert mechanic” who promised he’d have us back on the road and good as new in two days.  At this point we really felt like we were stuck between a rock and a hard place and wanted just to hit the road as soon as possible and this we thought was our best option.




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The new cylinder head arrived the next day and the mechanic got busy putting the engine back together.  The next day I returned to retrieve a “road worthy” vehicle.  On our test drive, once the engine was hot and got into some high revs, something went wrong.  A portion of the vacuum system in the engine had to be cut during disassembly and was not properly reassembled.  The “expert mechanic” explained to me that since this car had been converted from a catalytic to a fuel injected engine that this tube was no longer needed.  He plugged the tube, disconnected suction of the vacuum system and sent me on my way.  It all seemed fine for the first 20 minutes or so until the engine started revving quite high in neutral.  Not cool.  Sure enough when we went back to find the mechanic in the morning he was nowhere to be found and did not answer his phone…big surprise.  Since we were all checked out of our apartment and the car was all packed up to hit the road we went searching for another mechanic, this was mechanic #7 for those of you keeping count.  The mechanic we found turned out to be a welder and not a mechanic but even he could tell us that this tube needed to be replaced and directed us to a mechanic who could do the job.  Unfortunately it was Saturday afternoon at this point and he could not find a replacement part until Monday.  Great! Back to Santaigo!

We promptly checked into our 10th different accommodation in Santiago to wait out the weekend.  Monday morning we headed back to mechanic #8 who told us it would be a half day job.  A simple job became a very difficult job as he soon learned that his muscle was no match for the 22 year old beast.  A one man, half day job turned into a three-man, 9 hour job.  All the while Jo and I pretty much staring at them, willing them forward.  By 8 pm we were finally on the road heading south.  We had planned a 4 hour drive for that day but instead pulled over to sleep at a Copec gas station amongst all the 18-wheelers.  It was at this point that we felt the car needed a new, hopefully luckier, name.  Taking into account everything the car had put us through to this point, we appropriately named her “el diablo”, the devil.

Early to rise, we hit the road to make up some ground.  We hoped to hit the lakes district as quickly as possible, but el diablo had some other thoughts.  Every 40 kms or so the temperature gage would start to creep higher so we would pull over to let her cool down.  The radiator was full of coolant, so no issues there.  It was at this point that el diablo let us in on another one of her little secrets: she likes to drink oil.  Once she was all topped off with high mileage oil she purred like a kitten(or rattled like a coin in a tin can) and stayed cool as the other side of the pillow.  We were now ready to eat up some miles, but at 50mph, it could take some time.



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Our first destination was Parque Nacional Conguillio.  With the time traps the previous day, we made it to a campsite just outside the park where we rested up for the following day.  This was our first night in high altitude and we made a note that we would need to buy additional blankets as sleeping in our -5°C sleeping bags and several layers of clothes just wasn’t going to cut it.  Conguillio’s draw is centered around the active Volcano Llaima which has violently erupted 35 times in recorded history.  The entire park is located on fields of volcanic rock and gravel.  The native trees to this park are reminiscent of scenes from Jurassic Park.  Even the way the dirt roads were carved through the forest and volcanic rock were quite pre-historic.  We were just expecting a pterodactyl to swoop in between the trees at any point.  We gave ourselves a full day and night there to do some short hikes and take in the gorgeous scenery of the magnificent volcano standing tall amongst the surrounding mountains and lakes.

We kept heading south from there to an even grander volcano, Volcan Osorno, and found our first beach camp on the shores of Lago Todos Los Santos in Parque Nacional Vicente Perez Rosales.  We didn’t have a whole lot of time here as the road to the park was more gravel than we expected.  The stillness of the lake was just what the doctor ordered.  Soon after the sun set behind us we watched as the moon rose from the mist on the far side of the lake.  The next morning we got a glimpse of what this trip would be like if we were bussing through this continent.  A quick stop at some waterfalls on the way out of the park found us surrounded by hundreds of camera wielding tourists fresh off the bus.  Somehow the scenery is not so serene when you witness it as part of a mob.  Further south to quieter pastures we headed.

Our next heading was the mythological island of Chiloe, which was recently ranked by National Geographic as a top 5 island destination for its pristine seascapes and proctected forests.  We headed there for the top notch seafood.  We weren’t quite sure how long we would spend there as ferries off the island are hard to come by.  Our first destination was to Panuhuil, the launching point for tours out to view penguins.  We decided to make a night of it as we found some amazing cabanas on a bluff overlooking the beach that we just couldn’t pass up.  A very relaxing night, with our chef at the lodge restaurant cooking by candle light due to the frequent power cuts was followed by a morning boatride out to three small islands inhabited by Magellanic and homboldt penguins.  A tiny fishing boat being thrown around by the pacific ocean was our vessel for viewing the cute little birds.  It was definitely worth the extra hour drive down the gravel path to reach the beach.

The next day we would learn that the next ferry off of Chiloe wasn’t for another 5 days.  With the ferry’s website down and no one answering phones for days, we had to drive 2.5 hours to get this info. This now meant we would have enough time further explore the island.  Being late in the day and unable to find any accommodation in the island’s capital, we had to settle for an overpriced campsite just outside of town.  The one saving grace of this place were the three very young puppies that were wandering between the sites, one of which took a liking to us and settled under our table for the entire eveing…too cute.  Early the next morning we headed to a town called Chonchi which was hosting the Festival Costumbrista that day.  We apparently arrived a bit early as all the food stalls were still in the preparation stage but we were able to snap a few photos anyway.  We thought it best to depart before the copious amounts of alcohol we spotted were consumed by the eager crowds.  We headed back north to visit an even smaller island called Quinchao, accessible by about a 5 minute ferry from Dalcahue.  The first town we came to on the island was called Curaco de Valez which has a small waterfront area whose brightest star is a tiny oyster shack that serves the islands finest and freshest seafood.  We ordered some salmon ceviche followed by some of the largest oysters we have ever seen. I asked Jo how many she wanted, and she answered a dozen, until she saw them, emmm, one? I didn’t even know it was possible for them to grow this large but we ordered one of the large (the shell was about a foot long) and one medium (only about 9 inches).  We’re used to slurping down oysters whole, so it was quite a different experience to have to cut the oyster into 6 pieces just to fit them in your mouth…but they were definitely delicious.



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 The next stop on our extended tour of Chiloe was to double back to the infrequently visited tiny town of Chepu, the lone gateway into the northern portion of Parque Nacional Chiloe.  The draw to this “town” is an eco-camp site called Chepu Adventures.  This is truly an eco-site as the only water they have is collected rainwater, with the showers solar heated and the electricity all generated by their own windmill, which among other things powered a free wifi signal, quite unexpected in this remote area.  They had nice cabanas on offer but we opted just to sleep in el diablo.  Fernando, the visionary and owner of the place welcomed us in to his little slice of paradise.  He and his wife offer a self-guided sunrise kayak trip on the Rio Grande.  We were up at 4:45 to get suited up in our kayaking gear, as it is quite cold in this part of Chile, and were in the water by 6 am with only the moon and stars to guide us.  This was by far the best kayaking experience of both our lives as we found ourselves surrounded by the morning mist in complete darkness as we heard the river birds and sealife wake up around us.  We could definitely see why this island is draped in folklore of mythological creatures.  It’s like nothing we’ve ever seen and find it very hard to describe.  It seemed like a mixture of the start of a horror movie and a fairy tale, eerie and wonderfully peaceful at the same time.  I’m pretty sure Jo got more than a few gallery shots on this magical morning.  

Today was our last full day on Chiloe so we decided to take the long drive south slowly and break it up with a lunch in Castro.  I was finally able to sample one of Chiloe’s signature dishes, a curanta.  This is traditionally prepared similar to a pigroast in that they would heat up a bunch of rocks, stick them in the bottom of a pit, throw down some banana leaves as a base and throw on lots of their fresh shellfish namely mussels and clam and then some chicken, pork and chorizo for good measure, then cover the lot of it and let it cook.  I ordered a plate and was presented with a feast fit for 4.  It was quite good but a bit much for a lunch.  Since there again was no accommodation available in Castro we headed all the way south to the port town of Quellon from which our boat back to the mainland departs tomorrow – what a shithole this town is.  Our hotel has a bum sitting on the front step presumably in case we get lost we can just follow his scent back home.  The saving grace of the town was the little restaurant called Maduro that just served up some surprising delicious moist salmon and exquisitely cooked shrimp – well seasoned food is a rarity in Chiloe and Chile in general so this was quite a find.

Tomorrow we have a midnight ferry ride that will have us in Chaiten by 7 am where we will begin driving the Austral Highway which is the raw bit of Chile that we have been looking forward to exploring.  Hopefully we’ll finally get away from the seemingly hundreds of hitchhikers that we have seen all the way through Chile thus far.  We were expecting to run into lot of tourists in our travels but what we weren’t expecting is for those tourists to be mostly Chilean backpackers. Hopefully the next time we post a blog we will be deep into the heart of Patagonia…   

click on the photo below to see gallery

Click below to see the video

 
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After throwing a coin into the fountain at Santa Lucia and making a wish, our luck seemed to have turned.

  Luck number One.   The next morning we walked to Santa Maria clinic which was a block away from where we were staying.  Let me tell you here, we have moved a lot in the last few weeks, being high season here, everywhere is booked out.  So, we walked into this clean modern and, actually, very fancy clinic, where everyone went out of their way to help us.  They even called the specialist on his cell phone and asked if he could squeeze me in without an appointment.  An hour later, we are sitting across from this specialist who spoke perfect English and loved the Irish, he looked at my xrays, explained everything and had wonderful bedside manner.  Where exactly were we on New Years Eve??  And yet again, Santiago, the city of love, shone through when each doctor or nurse who came on or went off duty spent the time going around kissing and hugging all fellow employees that were in sight.  It was bizarre to watch and at the same time really heartwarming.

So anyway, he took the cast off, ordered more xrays, a CT scan of my hand and basically told me my elbow had a stable fracture, hand was still in one piece, and now I needed to start exercising to regain full extension in my elbow.  3 hours and $400 later and we walked out, I was finally in a comfortable sling, with a brace on my hand, given strong painkillers and was feeling pretty relieved that this wasn’t going to be the be all and end all of our trip.  The last 10 days were a real eye opener, only able to use one hand is pretty exhausting.   Greg was my godsend. He was always there to help me open bottles, tie my hair up, carry bags, be my left hand for supporting my camera,  help me to shower and to dress.  I guess putting a bra back ON was never something a man needed to, nor wanted to, know how to do.  

A call to Greg’s Auntie, who is a physio, gave me strict exercise instructions (thanks again Helena) that will hopefully have me speeding down the road to recovery.

Luck Number 2. The next morning I got a work email to book my first Australian wedding.  Another relief.

Luck Number 3. That afternoon we went back to Hostel Del Barrio, where we had previously spent a few nights in.  The owner Christian, a German expat, said he may know someone to help us find a car.  So we met Arturo at the hostel and it turned out he had a 1990 Isuzu Trooper 4X4 for sale. He is a tour guide and has a company Expedicion Sur de Chile (little name dropping here).   He had 2 troopers for tours and we thought if he used troopers for his 4x4 excursions, it must be a pretty sturdy car.  A little older than we were hoping, but the mileage was good and everything seemed in good condition.  Arturo didn’t seem like the type of guy to screw gringos over.  We just needed to fix the air con, as we have been keeping an eye on weather ahead in Argentina and Brazil and it is over 100 degrees, so it will be needed.  So we slept on it, said yes to the car, and the next day Arturo took us to mechanic town to fix the car.   Literally a neighborhood made up of mechanics and spare parts.  We would have been lost without Arturo and this was something that was going to become common over the next week.   


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The next day we picked up the car, air con blasted out – perfecto.  Arturo and his girlfriend, Claudia, took us to a bar to feast on some of Chileans finest traditional chow.  First up was a drink called the Michelada, an acquired taste, which consisted of:
Porter beer
Lemon juice
Tabasco sauce
Chili flakes to taste
And enough salt to kill you. 

Arturo and Claudia threw theirs back, like they had been stuck in the desert for days.  Greg and I sipped ours a little slower, trying to let the taste grow on us, it didn’t.  So we switched to draft beer, with no trimmings.   Next up was a chorrillana, which was a tower of French fries, topped with chicken, beef and shrimp, topped with fried onion and finally a fried egg.  It was delicious, heart attack worthy, but delicious.

Being the weekend, we couldn’t officially buy the car until Monday.  Now we had to start stocking up on supplies for the trip and to find tools to convert the car so we could sleep in it.  Greg and I headed off to the BioBio market, which was insane!  It had hundreds of stalls that sold everything, except what we needed.  A few stalls were specialized and trying to target one market – like a stall of screws or of stolen electronic goods or my personal favorite a stall with hundreds of dog leashes with stray dogs hanging around just waiting for someone to take them home.  But the majority of them were selling a mix match of whatever they could find to sell. One stall consisted of dentist tools, a few hubcaps, a machete, a Justin Bieber poster, a rubrics cube, army uniform, a cage with a few rabbits, Mr potato heads, porn, an antique telephone, a few pairs of socks, marshmallows and a Cinderella costume.  You think you go to target or walmart and come back with a bunch of things you didn’t need.  Can you image doing your shopping here?! We didn’t know which way to look.  Now, how were we supposed to find what we were looking for in a maze of this?  It could take days.  So we checked off knives and forks, some bolts, and a notepad off our list and left before I could buy a puppy for the trip.  

Greg and Arturo spent the next 24 hours working hard on the car.  Not too many people who sell you a car would be too willing to drive you all over the city to buy parts and then spend days helping to build a platform bed so you can live in the car.  Arturo is a one of a kind, kinda guy- or so we thought. Christian kindly let us work at the hostel, using his tools and making a lot of noise, despite the fact that we had checked out due to the hostel being fully booked. (Thank you again for your hospitality!) So as they sweated in the sun, designing, sawing and drilling our bed, I started to figure out a route of where we wanted to go.  7 hours went by, and they had created a sturdy platform with three storage compartments underneath, that slid into the car perfectly.  Without stopping to refuel on food, they changed the suspension, fixed a table to the back gate and had a beer to celebrate.  It was now 11pm and they were exhausted. Arturo still had to drive to the airport at 1.30am to pick up a tour of Brazilians.  How he was standing at 8.30am the next day, I don’t know.  The boys went off to do the paper work first thing in the morning, while I guarded the millions of pesos in cash in our room.   A few hours later we were the proud owners of Rojelio (the trooper), Arturo of another trooper and it was Christans’ hostels 2nd birthday, so there was lots to celebrate. A bbq and a few beers was about all we could manage.

The next few days, we spent picking up supplies.  Arturo, again, coming to our rescue, took us to leave the car at the mechanics, a mechanic that he knew, for a check over, new filters, brake pads, and other tweaks (added to our lack of medical Spanish terms, is mechanical Spanish terms).  And then drove us from place to place to pick up a cooker, fridge, a custom sized mattress, jerry cans, etc.  We sorted insurance, made curtains for the car, picked up a mobile phone and were ready to get on the road.  A few delays at the mechanics, the Chilean way of manana manana, caused a few extra nights in Santiago than we had wanted.  In nearly four weeks we feel like we have gotten to know Santiago pretty well.  We have stayed in 8 hostels, b&b’s and apartments, lived in 3 different neighborhoods, experienced the hospitals (the good and bad), police stations and Chilean “FBI” (don’t worry, no arrests) experienced our first earthquake and seen walls of graffiti transform from one work of art to another.  I think it is safe to say we came, we saw and we are ready to move on to quieter pastures.

 


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Saturday morning came, we packed up the car, who still needed a new motor for the window wipers, but we just wanted to get on.  Our gps decided to freeze on us, not allowing us to upload our Chile or Argentina map, but we were determined to let noting stop us from hitting the road.  After a quick goodbye to Arturo, Claudia and Christian we were on the road, Finally!
It was about 20 minutes into the drive that our lucky streak came to an abrupt hault.  
As Greg was teaching me some past and present tense in Spanish, steam and water started spewing out of the hood in its best old faithful geyser impersonation.  What the f**K! Greg lifted the hood and boiling brown water spat out at him, burning his face and arm, missing his eyes by about half an inch.  We were no longer the same two happy, go lucky, people we were that morning.  After pulling out the first aid kit and trying it treat his burns, we were joined by highway assistance to help with the car. The guy poured some more water into the radiator and we were on our way.  5 minutes later, as if on old faithful’s schedule, the geyser kicked off again.  We were beyond angry and frustrated, there were many swear words, in both English and Spanish coming out of our mouths.  We had left the car into the mechanics for 2 days for a “thorough check over” and what we got back was a car whose engine was overheating.  The 3rd time we pulled over, after 2-3 hours sitting at the side of the road, a guy selling soda across the highway called the emergency highway patrol for us and we were towed to the next town.  It is about now that I would like to send a big Thank you out to Arturo, it sure seems to us like he is the kinda guy to screw two gringos over - only time will tell for sure.  I think it’s safe to say, we found the reason that he was selling the car.  (side note to Tim and Steph- told ya!) and it has certainly made us lose a little faith in humanity.

So there we were at a mechanics in a tiny town that quite frankly had me holding on to our pepper spray for dear life.  There were drunk bums hanging around our car that just sat and stared at us gringos, with glazed over eyes, for the first 20 mins.  The mechanic began yelling at us, yes, if you scream it at us, suddenly I will understand what you are saying.  All we could understand is there is “no problem”.  Mmmm, so why can we only drive 5km before our car looks like it’s going to explode.  Once Greg told the mechanic that we were “Australian”, his mood seemed to change and soon we had everyone around our hood – the bums, kids, grandparents all trying to lend a hand  (pepper spray wasn’t needed in the end).  So they emptied the radiator, filled it with new coolant, we paid more money and he said we were good to go. 

It was now 7.30pm and we still had to climb the Andes, with 1 hour of sunlight left, that wasn’t going to happen.  So we pulled over and spent our first night on the road at a luxurious gas station, parked alongside all the truckers.   It was a long and frustrating day and this was not the start that we were hoping for.   The morning came quickly but we had had new hopes today.  We headed off over the Andes in slow mo, like 15miles an hour slow mo.  We only have 3 more months to cover 5 countries, and at this rate, we would be lucky to make it to Patagonia.  Switch back after switch back, and numerous stops to let the engine cool, refill with coolant and we were up and over the towering mountains and at the border.   The scenery was breathtaking, although we couldn’t look up for too long, our eyes were glued to the temperature gauges and oil pressure for the majority of the drive.  1st border crossing went pretty smoothly, and we were even given a hand from an official to suck gas out of the jerry can and into our fuel tank, as you are not allowed to carry excess fuel across the border –border crossing lesson number 1.  Can you imagine a US border patrol officer offering to help and get covered in gasolina? I think not.  Rain clouds were threating above and not having any window wipers could make for another very long day. So taking the drive very slowly but as quickly as possible, we made it to Mendoza.  A 6 hour drive turned into 28 hours.  Next on the agenda was to look for a campsite(not easy without a working gps or a map), but first we needed to pulled over for our routine cool down and coolant top up.  Next thing, a car pulled over to help.  Within 3 minutes Osvaldo told us we didn’t need a campsite and could park our car for the night at his house. We were so grateful for his kindness to just welcome strangers into his home.  And a beautiful home at that, built solely on his own, surrounded by olive trees and deep in the Argentinian countryside.  One word, tranquilo!  After a few hours of chilling on his patio drinking mate tea, having interesting discussions about politics in Spanish (again political Spanish falls in the same category as our medical and mechanical spanish), we went off to buy some steak for dinner.  The malbec was flowing, and steaks were grilling on a rustic open fire, after the last day or so, we were feeling very lucky to have met such a warm and welcoming local. Osvaldo cooked us up the most delicious meal we have had since being here, and I would go as far to say the best steak I have ever had, ever!  Favorite night of the trip yet! 

The next morning after breakfast of bread and his home harvested honey, Osvaldo took us to help us find a new motor for the windscreen wipers.  He came across his son-in-law, Hans, who is from Belgium and jumped right on board to help us out.  We drove to a couple of places with no success of a new motor.  With siesta time nearing (which is 3-4 hours long here), we spilt up.  Osvaldo offered to go and buy us a new wiper motor while we went to a mechanic to finally sort out our engine.  As soon as Hans explained what was going on to the mechanic, he said he  was pretty sure of the problem.  The 1st mechanic who actually knew what he was doing and told it to us straight, we had a big, big problem.  Finally a trustworthy mechanic! We were no longer in Chile, and it was no longer the Chilean way of-  we will get it to work for now, but the problem won’t be solved and it will screw you over again in a day or so.  He was actually going to try and help us to get the car ready to make and survive the trip that we had ahead of us.  But it could take a week.  Hans and Mario (mechanic) drove us from place to place to find us an available hotel. Close to tears, Greg and I unpacked the car, that we had so carefully packed up just 2 days ago, and wished it a speedy recovery.  We were gutted that our trip had stalled yet again and felt very cheated.  But we keep telling ourselves, everything happens for a reason.  On the bright side, we had made it here in one piece, which was surprising to most, we were at least stuck in a place that was surrounded by vineyards and we have been overwhelmed by such outstanding hospitality and generosity of every Argentinian we have met.  Everyone has gone out of their way to drive us places, cook for us, translate for us, and help us drown our sorrows.  If this is a sign of things to come in Argentina, we are going to love it here.  And if our car doesn’t live to see another day, we may just stay here.   

After a few visits to the wineries, we moved to a charming lodge- TikayKilla, in the countryside, to relax.  Francisco, the owner, has been amazing, helping us in every way that he can and has been looking after us so well.  This morning we received the prognosis of our car.  It is not good.  We have been advised to tow the car back to Santiago, back to Arturo and get our money back.  2 months after selling our home, we still haven’t seemed to have started our trip yet.  Broken arm, broken engine, broken banks and broken hearts.



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click  below to see Video

 
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After our first month of travelling in relative safety and normality in Australia and New Zealand we were both ready to venture into the unknown of South America.  Our first destination is Santiago, Chile where our main focus was to first bring in the new year with a bang and then organize buying a car to be our home for the remainder of our travels.

                Our point of arrival into this huge city was the Hostal Plaza de Armas.  This hostal is a converted apartment that in its heyday I could only imagine this would’ve been the place to live in the city.  The penthouse apartment has a balcony overlooking the picturesque plaza de armas.  The first thing we noticed in the plaza were the numerous couples just going at it with reckless abandoned.  We thought we landed on lover’s lane or something.  Apparently we would learn that this would be a common theme in Santiago.  Here’s an example: packed restaurant, tables on top of each other, food getting cold on the tables, guy and gal making out like it’s their final meal together before he ships out to a certain death at war only to come up for air long enough to take a few drags of their cigarettes before diving back in.  Our first thought of Sanitago is, it’s clean but smokey, the people are lovely but horny and the most popular pet dogs, among the thousands of strays, are pugs and beagles.  Maybe that is our money maker, introducing the puggle to Santiago.

Jetlag was a major nuisance throughout our first few days in Chile as we couldn’t sleep past 6 am and then crashed hard for an extended siesta around midday.  We could easily see why siestas are such a part of the culture in Latin America as the heat makes you not want to go outside and just sleep in the shade.  Speaking of which, the 10 day forecast just does not change here: 90 degrees and sunny, every day.  Once we got over the jetlag, our first item on our “to do list” was to acquire a RUT Number.  We knew this was the first thing we had to do to in order to buy a car since all the blogs and literature we read on the topic said so.  The major problem with this is that we had no idea what a RUT Number was or how one goes about acquiring one.  No problem, we’ll just ask the employees at our hostel, they should know.  One after the other the response was similar: “Que?”  Brilliant.  Some more research had us seeking out the “Servicio de Impuestos Internos” (Chilean IRS).  When we finally found the right office , third attempt, we were kindly informed by the information desk to go around the side of the building to the other entrance.  We knew this only because he was and expert at charades as he spoke zero English.  It is at this time that I would like to impress upon everyone reading this that without at least minimal conversational Spanish, there is no chance that you would be able get by in Santiago.  Most of our conversations begin with “Hablas ingles?” and every time the response is simply “No”.  I would take this opportunity to thank Senora Naughton for those three years of Spanish that somehow stuck with me and now allow me to at least formulate coherent sentences in order to get by here.

                Back to the SII.  So we entered the building and saw a big sign simply labeled “RUT”…we have arrived.  After struggling to understand the new information desk woman, we did as we were told and grabbed a number as if we were waiting to order some smoked turkey at the deli counter and took a seat to await our turn.  This place had all the makings of the DMV back home.  Our number was 89, but when the sequence got up to 85, one of the guys behind one of the windows signaled us over.  A nice old man, that could still spot two gringos in need of help through his bifocals. Apparently wanting to practice the few words he spoke in English, he took pity on us and helped us.  Two minutes later, after simply informing him we wanted to buy a car and then handing over my passport, he handed me a piece of paper with my new RUT number – that was easy.

                Gleaming a new found sense of confidence, the next day we thought we’d try our luck finding a suitable car.  As we have yet to determine what our definition of suitable would be for this trip, this was more of a reconnaissance mission.  We found a car lot that was only one subway transfer away and thought we’d start there.  One thing I will say about Santiago is that the metro system is very clean and efficient.  We’ve never waited more than a couple minutes for a train and although crowded, they seem safe and tidy.  Now everything about Santiago has been pretty much the same as we’d expect just a little bit different.  We arrived at Planet Car and walked onto a massive lot of used cars.  Hundreds of cars of all makes and models.  Now back home we’d expect a slick talking used car salesman to quickly become our best friend and put us in a car we don’t want.  Here we wandered around for a good half hour before we had to track someone down to show us a car.  The other thing was this was more of a public lot in which each car salesmen had about 10 cars on display that he personally owned.  All this only came to light when we stumbled across the only English speaking guy in the lot who showed us around a bit.  Anywho, I guess what we really came away with was we don’t know what we want.  4WDs aren’t cheap and cheap cars won’t get us very far.  We thought, “we’ll figure this out after new years”.


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The plan was simple for New Years: start with a few cocktails and a bbq at our hostel, head down towards the Entel Tower to watch the fireworks spectacular, party like rockstars back at our hostel.  Everything started out swell: pisco sours poured all around, Chilean wine a plenty, and even a taste of a Terremoto (concoction comprising wine, pisco, pineapple ice cream and a hint of grenadine) along with some nice ceviche and assorted appetizers.  When the time drew near a group of about 10 of us grabbed our bottles of bubbly and headed down to enjoy the fireworks.  Now this was quite the scene.  I believe the population of Santiago is approximately 6 million and to me it seemed like at least half of them were in attendance in the now pedestrianized streets.  Tinsel wigs were common, faux snow in a can being sprayed everywhere was even more common.  This was our first interaction to the Chilean people and we were very pleasantly surprised.  Chileans are salt of the earth people that are proud of their culture and want to share it with outsiders.  All the locals around us included us in all their chanting and sing-a-longs and when the clock struck midnight and all the corks flew into the air, there was no place else that we would’ve rather been. 

                The fireworks then began to light the night sky as the Chilean songs echoed through the streets.  About a half hours works of brilliant fireworks with men, women and young children looking on in awe would be the final highlight of our evening.  When the crowds began to disperse, we began the short walk back to our hostel.  Something caught our eye down a side alley, As we got closer we heard something rustling behind us.  We turned around quickly only to find ourselves in a stare down with what I believe was Chile’s fiercest bull.  What was a bull doing loose on the street in Santiago?! Not knowing which was to turn, Jo quickly tore a red table cloth off a nearby café table and dared the bull to charge.  It threw her up into the air and… OK, Now that would’ve made for a great story… unfortunately ,it’s all bullshit.  Truth is that Jo slipped  on a bit of litter that covered the ground, left over from all the celebrations, as she ran away from a crazy British girl trying to spray champagne on her and fell.  Point being, Jo was now in a lot of pain and there is no way to get her to the hospital as the entire city is in party mode with no vehicles to be found.  Jo popped a Percocet as we rode out the night in our not so quiet hostel room. Loooooong night.


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At first light we made a move – quite literally as this was the day we were moving hostels as our current one was all booked up, perfect timing.  I packed all the bags as Jo tried to keep her mind off the violent pains in her arm.  Getting dresses, typically a 5 minute task turned into about a half hour operation, especially as Jo kept fainting, from the pain, or the Percocet, or both.  Awake at 6, we were finally heading to the hospital at 9.  Now since it was now new years day, the only hospital open was the Posta Central, which we would quickly learn was Spanish for “old crappy emergency hospital with no English speaking employees or modern equipment”.  Now we’re doing this trip to experience new things and learn about other cultures but this isn’t exactly what we had in mind.  It took a good 15 minutes of the usual half assed Spanish on our part and the ridiculously fast speaking Spanish on the other end of the conversation to figure out that everything must be paid in full before any medical attention is given to the patient. The good news is that in Chile, medical attention is very affordable.  $30 got us as far as a consultation with one of the two doctors that was working this fine morning.  We were escorted to the consultation “box” and seemingly given preferential attention over others who were waiting longer…stupid gringos.  There were also 4 security guards standing at our door, not sure what the purpose of them was as a woman  (a fellow patient) wandered right in to us, mumbled something in Spanish (presumably because we went ahead of her because we were considered a “grave” case), and shuffled off again.  The doctor glanced at Jo’s arm and nodded to the nurse in concurrence of her suggestion that X-rays were in order.  Jo was shown to a bed and I was handed an invoice and pointed back in the direction of the reception desk.  X-rays would cost another $45, the only problem was that this was a cash only hospital and the only cash I had was about $10.  She took my money, stamped the invoice and back I went. 

                This is when the fun began.  While Jo was lying in her room trying to have a conversation with the woman next to her who had a similar new years eve story except it was her ankle, I was waiting just outside the room in the hallway (I wasn’t allowed in the room with her for some reason I wish I could tell you about).  Now the hallway in an emergency room on new years day is quite the scene.  One woman there has the distinguished roll of mopping up all the blood from this particular hallway.  Just as she finished her rounds, a woman was wheeled past in a wheelchair with her leg wrapped in a towel.  This towel must’ve had quite the leak because it seemed there was a faucet underneath with blood spilling out of it.  One nice long trail of blood about 100 meters down the freshly cleaned hallway.  I was also strategically positioned across from the unisex bathroom from which at this time a woman exited seemingly after trying to freshen up from what looked like a beating she took from her pimp.  She exited just in time for another youth to run in her place just as the vomit was projecting from his mouth…lovely.  As the mopping lady started again on the bloody mile, the most disconcerting scene yet was unfolding.  A male in his early 20s strolled down this same corridor.  From the front it appeared an animal rights protester had taken aim at him and poured a bucket of blood on him from head to toe.  He was just casually strolling down the hallway, shirt off, now red boxers exposed as his now red jeans are pulled down quite low, it wasn’t until he passed by me that I realized what he was there for.  He had a few nice fresh stab wounds in his back – good friends he has, I thought.  At this point the gentlemen seated next to me simply said “streetfighter”.  He went on to tell me that he was one of many steetfighters that are frequent visitors to this hospital.  I instinctively looked around to see if Ryu, Ken, the guy with orange hair or any of the other streetfighter members were around as well.  The Screaming and moaning from all the private rooms was like something out of a torture horror movie.

                By this time Jo had learned that the woman lying next to her 1. Couldn’t speak English, 2. Sprained  her toe in a tragic drunken ping pong table incident and 3. Was nice enough to do her best to translate for Jo to the doctors.  The doc came and kindly, with zero bedside manner, twisted and bent Jo’s arm in every direction to just make sure it was actually broken, and if it wasn’t, to make sure it now was.  No painkillers were given during this torture process. The fellow patient in Jo’s room was finally released with just a wrapped ankle,  Jo prayed she would be that lucky.  The girl and her husband said goodbye to us like we were lifelong  friends, hugs and kisses all round, like I said the Chilean people are so warm and friendly (minus the doctors at this hospital). Anyway when the medic finally realized that I had paid for the x-rays, he wheeled Jo off to the radiology ward to take a better look at her wrist/elbow.  15 minutes hadn’t passed when she was back in the same room and an actual doctor came to see us shortly after.  Now, again, my Spanish is good enough to order cocktails and dinner and check into a hotel, it is not good enough to converse with doctors about orthopedics.  This is the extent of what we came away with: Jo had sustained 2 fractures, one to her radial neck (dunno where the other one was), he was for some reason worried about the bone at the base of her thumb, she would require a cast for two weeks and then exercises for one additional week before heading to a different hospital for more x-rays.  His congratulations to me for understanding came in the form of another invoice.


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Same old story with the receptionist lady, she said the cast would cost another $70, I reminded her that I had no money, so she stamped me paid and told me to come back and pay when I had the money…..really?  By the time I returned with the “paid” invoice, Jo was lying flat on her back with her arm in a primevil torture rack in a room that had it’s door marked with “Yeso”.  I would later google yeso translation and have it return as the literal translation for “drywall”.  With her arm suspended by her middle finger in a chinese finger trap, the medic fit her with a sleeve, wrapped her arm in foam padding, and started to spackle the drywall onto her. Squeezing her arm in just the right broken spots.   20 minutes later, Jo had a plaster cast from her bicep to her thumb weighing in at what seemed like about 15 lbs.  This being held up by a piece of 1” wide cheesecloth “sling”.   This would be fun.  Let me remind you, this is Day 3 of being in Chile!

                We knew this meant that our car search would be put on hold for a bit.  Wandering around used car lots in 90 degree heat does not quite agree with a heavy, painful plaster cast.  We took this “opportunity” to slow down and see what Santiago had to offer.  The first thing we did was upgrade to an apartment with air conditioning to get Jo somewhat comfortable.  The second thing was to upgrade her sling to a slight less crappy one, but one that was built for an extra large man (all they had left).The third thing was to upgrade our pain medication stash.  I learned the word for painkiller and headed to the nearest farmacia.  The nice woman quickly sorted me out, gave me a slip and told me to go pay at the cashier.  Now remember when I said that things were pretty much the same but just a little bit different?  Well the cashier was a shared cashier between the pharmacy and the adjacent sex shop.  So here I am paying for my pain killers while surrounded by….i’ll leave that part to your imagination.

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It took a couple of days of catching up on sleep and Jo’s pain to die down.  We first explored the neighborhood of Bellavista.  This neighborhood is pretty much split exactly in half with the west side being grungy with most all the shops and restaurants displaying street art on their facades and the east side a bit more upscale with some of the best restaurants and jazz clubs that Santiago has to offer.  We spent an afternoon just wandering around with our resident photographer snapping away and the amazing street artwork, one handed no less.  Evenings were spent trying to decide between the dozens of restaurants and listening to the numerous wandering musicians.  Whether you’re in a high end restaurant and slumming with a liter of Escudo beer at a sidewalk table, the one thing you’ll always find in common is that smoking is permitted everywhere and everyone in Santiago takes advantage of it.  Places are a cloud of smoke 24/7, maybe if half the city stopped smoking , we would be able to get a view of the amazing Andes surrounding the city!

                Our next area of exploration would be Bellas Artes (translated as “fine arts”).  It truly lived up to its name as it provided for a very European ambiance.  With numerous street cafes, wine bars and upscale shops, we decided that if were ever to move to Santiago that this would be where we would make our home.  One while out for a quiet drink and a cheap meal seated outdoors at a café, masked men and women dressed in traditional garb danced passed handing out flyers for a local festival.  Of course we would have to see what this was all about.  Not 15 minutes later we found ourselves at the start of a night parade where they just took over the usually busy streets and marched and danced through the neighborhood.  Good times.

                We really like Santiago and if we spoke Spanish fluently I’d imagine we’d like it even more.  Tomorrow is the day of reckoning as we stumbled on a very modern looking hospital in Bellavista and our plan is to wander is and see what it would take to get an appointment with an English speaking doctor, preferably one with and orthopedic specialty.edit.

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click below to see the video

 

Apologies for the malfunctions in the video, the netbook can't handle the editing.

 
Merry Christmas from downunder

What a relief it was to land in Melbourne.  The last few weeks have been a mixture of catching up on some much needed sleep, eating lots, drinking more and trying to figure out what needs to be done to make the move across the world.  My brother, Bryan, and Lani kindly put us up in Melbourne for the week, giving us the best bedroom for when you need your sleep, also known as the bat cave, which has no windows and would let us sleep until lunchtime, just what we needed!  Other tasks in Melbourne included the important stuff like applying for visas, looking for work, checking out suburbs to live, nearby dog beaches for our Lebowski and setting up bank accounts and the equally important task of figuring out which aussie beers will be our beer of choice come June.   We did lots of walking around to get the feel of the place and while we still have a lot more to explore, I think we may have found just the spot we were looking for.   20 minute walk to Bryan and Lani’s, a couple of blocks from the beach, walking distance to bars, restaurants, and lots of places to run the dog with a view to boot.  Watch this space…

Bryan and Lani were both in the final push to get their work done before Christmas, so they were pretty flat out, but made time to take us and show us some of their favorite spots.  Some bars, local markets and to the pier where the famous St Kilda fairy penguins come to nest every night.  They were so cute! The water rats, not so much.  Bryan managed to score me a job with his architect firm, photographing a museum that he designed (polly woodside museum) which was a welcomed piece of income and kept me busy for a few days. It was amazing to see something that he worked on for so long come to life.  It is a strange but exciting feeling to know that the next time we fly into Melbourne we will have all of our possessions in tow.  Thank you Bryan and Lani for being our tourguides/headhunters/realtors for the last week.  You are Legends!

Arriving in NZ is always very special and this time was no different.  Having not seen my Kiwi relatives for over 18 months we were eager to get there and catch up with everyone.  We were not so eagar to get back on an overnight flight that only lasted 3.5 hours.  It meant pulling another all-nighter, especially as Greg had some guy next to him that was so sick he sounded like should have been isolated in a hospital. He was snoring both when asleep and when awake and coughing and spluttering all the way.  It seems air transport will not be our friend on this trip. So we arrived to the familiar view of Lake Taupo from Mum and Dad’s house.  Which is both my most comforting and my most photographed view.  After a few days of R&R we drove a couple of hours to Ohope to visit my Auntie Linny and uncle Pete (to-be).   They just built a house that is right on a beautiful wild beach that goes on for miles.  The beach inspired us to go for a morning run (pre-emptive for all the Christmas food) and Greg an afternoon dip (found out about the sharks lurking there a few hours after).  I think we need to just assume that the ocean over here is deadly unless we are told otherwise.  Luckily the water was so cold, Greg was in and out before a fin came into sight.  We had a lovely dinner catching up and picturing how Lin and Pete’s up coming wedding will be.   Bryan, Lani and Merinda flew in the next day and the next week was basically eating and drinking (again), playing family games, our Grandparents out drinking us every time , a bit of golf, bit of tennis, and basking in the sun and catching up with family friends. 

Christmas in New Zealand is like hearing Christmas music in July.   It is always a strange feeling waking up on Christmas morning to a warm sunny day, eating outdoors and listening to walking in a winter wonder land.  But wonderfully strange. 

With so much going on in our lives in the last couple of months and so many huge decisions to make, we haven’t had a minute to think of the epic trip that we have been dreaming about.  And when we only started to think about it the night before we are due to fly out, a surge of emotions overwhelmed us.  A mixture of excitement, fear and the basic feeling of oh Shit, we are not ready to fly out in 24 hours.  So we will repack the backpacks once more and be on our way to Chile.  Fingers crossed this flight goes according to plan, Auckland direct to Santiago, surely that can’t go wrong… can it?

We hope everyone had a lovely Christmas, here is to a fantastic  2012! 

click on the photo below to see gallery

click  below to see Video

 
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What a crazy week.  It has been a complete whirlwind adventure and our adventure has not even yet begun.  To anyone out there who has bold plans to either pack up all their belongings, sell their house, plan a 5 month trip to South America, plan a cross country trip with their dog, relocate their business abroad,  or relocating their dog to the other side of the world, I would definitely NOT recommend trying to do all of them at once.  I’ll skip past the part where we drove 9 hours to get to Philly for Thanksgiving on the Wednesday night and the 6.5 hours we drove to get back to Boston on the following Saturday.  Sunday was a day filled with separating stuff to ship to Melbourne via ocean liner, stuff to bring travelling for the next 6 months, stuff to bring to Melbourne now & stuff to leave in Philly to bring on our road trip with Lebowski.  We also were able to pull away for a few hours to say goodbye to some great friends we’ve made in our 3 years in Boston. 

The real chaos all kicked off on Monday morning when our friendly neighborhood movers came in to package up all our stuff to be shipped out to Melbourne.  I know what you’re thinking…lazy bastards, pack up your own stuff.  The reality is that it wasn’t an option due to all the customs requirement so that’s that.  Anywho, with Jo finishing up editing her final wedding and the movers wrapping away, I was concluding business at work and saying my goodbyes to colleagues at Ranor.  Tuesday was the day the stress level peaked as the movers filled up their truck with our every possession and sure enough the buyer of our house came within the hour for her walk-through.  Of course she was accompanied by her real estate agent.  As far as agents go, she was by far the worst human being I have ever met.  Immediately she began rattling off a list of things that needed to be removed from the premises before she would release our funds to us.  So our Tuesday night into Wednesday morning went something like this:

1.       Made our “bed” to sleep on
2.        Disassembled shelving to dispose of
3.       Started a fire to dispose of shelving
4.       Laid out everything to pack for traveling
5.       Loaded up car of miscellaneous stuff to dump
6.       Poured a glass of wine
7.       Started packing
8.       Brought Lebowski to say goodbye to our awesome neighbors (thanks Bob, Jean, Julie,  John and Ellie for everything)
9.       Made a late night run to deposit said goods into local dumpster
10.   Continued packing
11.   Slept for a few hours
12.   Continued cleaning in the morning
13.   Cursed out horrible real estate lady
14.   Packed up Maxima with whatever possessions we had left
15.   Picked up house check
16.   Dropped off plates at RMV

And finally we were ready to leave Watertown in our rear view mirror.  I’d have to say it was a very sad time locking the door for the final time.  We loved that house, had great neighbors, made some life-long friends and learned a lot about both photography and engineering respectively.  It was a great run but the three of us are looking forward to our next great challenge/adventure: conquering Melbourne.

We drove away that afternoon thinking we would have a nice smooth ride down to Philly that we would break in half and spend the night somewhere in Connecticut so I wasn’t struggling to stay awake while driving.  Our “smooth ride” became rougher and rougher as our rear brake caliper seized and just as we pulled into our luxury accommodation (Motel 6), the piston ruptured and we were spitting brake fluid onto the parking lot.  By 2 pm the following afternoon, we were back on our way south with new calipers, brakes and rotors.  The only stop came 5 miles down the highway when a wicked vibration had me pulled over to tighten lug nuts (apparently not included in their final bill for the brake work).

Our final few days in Philly before flying out were spent as some great quality time with both family and friends.  Tim and Steph graciously put us up while we settled Lebowski into their place (thanks again guys!) The next few days were filled great company, drinks and food. A big group dinner followed by “a few” drinks and a rousing game of Catch Phrase at Tim & Steph’s place had us geared up to repack our things one last time on Sunday afternoon for our Monday flight. 

Monday morning would be the most difficult as it would be the last time we would have a family walk with our Little Dude for a half a year.  We’ll definitely miss his morning licks and goofy ways.  He always puts a smile on our face no matter how loudly he howls or how many socks he steals.  We know he’ll be in great care with Tim, Steph & Charlie watching over him until we return.

My parents were good enough to take Monday off to make the start of our journey to Melbourne as easy as door to door service from Lansdale to JFK airport.  Unfortunately that’s where things stopped being easy and started being pushy – we were flying Air China.  Our itinerary claims that with two flights (JFK to Bejing & Bejing to Melbourne) with a 5 hour layover, we would arrive in Australia after a 30 hour journey.  In actuality our trip went a bit like this:

-          Take off from JFK 3 hours late
-          Sleep for a good 8 hours on the flight
-          Wake up when the plane lands
-          Discover that the plane decided to land in Harbin rather than Beijing, (there was not a single     
            announcement in English, nor did the pilot, air hostess or any airport staff speak English, just to make                   things more interesting! We were dealing with a lot of blank stares.)
-          Find out that we will be staying the night in Harbin due to record fog and smog in Beijing
-          Be the last ones through immigration to receive our one day stay permit as we were kindly shoved aside by hundreds of locals
-          Load onto the last bus from the airport to a hotel as we were shoved aside from loading the previous 4 buses (a bit of a theme developing here)
-          Arrive at hotel 5 hours after diverted landing
-          Get two hours of sleep and a much needed shower
-          Bus back to airport
-          Board plane to Beijing and depart two hours late
-          Arrive in Beijing, collect luggage, and beg three different AirChina employees to rebook our tickets onto   different flight to Melbourne departing in one hour (ticket counter que was about an hour and a half wait)
-          Board plane to Shanghai (don’t ask why)
-          Change planes in Shanghai and depart for Melbourne.

So after all the diversions and confusion, we finally arrived to a smiling Bryan at Melbourne airport after a short 54 hour journey.  I think next time we’ll pay the extra $500 per ticket to fly through L.A.


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