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Iguazu!

Foz do Iguaçu, where i arrived by bus from sao paulo, is right on the border of Brazil. It is the location of Iguazu falls, a spectacular set of waterfalls that are located right at the borders of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay.

To see them from the Brazilian side is meant to be spectacular, but from quite a distance away. However, on the Argentinian side (which is called Puerto Iguazu), you not only get up close to all the waterfalls, but you can take a boat ride under the falls. Which i did. And it was awesome. Or as barney would say, ¨legend-... wait for it... and I hope you're not lactose intolerant because the second half of that word is DAIRY! ...¨ Yeah! I´m cool! Aaaanyway, you try desperately to keep your eyes open, so you can remember what it looks like to be under a waterfall, but the pressure of the water is just too insane to manage it.

about to enter the waterfall...amazing

So you just close your eyes against your will and enjoy a once in a lifetime sensation. The falls are set in the middle of a national park, so you can trek for about 8 hours and easily not see all of it. It´s beautiful, but me being me, again, like with the giant jesus statue, i was a bit underwhelmed. It was beautiful, absolutely, but i thought it would be bigger. Still, it was a great day. The header picture on my blog is of one of the main falls, it was gorgeous. Nearly impossible to get photos, you had to whip the camera out from under your hoody or whatever, snap and get it back undercover, before the camera and the lens got wet from all the waterfall spray, rendering the pictures blurry. So be impressed with the picture quality people!

more photos: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=132489&id=222304166&l=d258fa50c9

Since i changed my plan last minute, i just randomly picked a hostel that i´d heard mentioned by someone in rio. I met a swedish girl (another one- i can´t help it, they´re everywhere- scandinavians have such a high cost of living at home, south america´s peanuts for them), Hanna, on the bus across the border to argentina, so we went together. Keeping in mind that in rio, for a tenner a night, u get an 18 bed dorm, with a tiny window and broken airconditioning, that stinks of hostel sex, (yey), this place, was a palacial resort. Inventively called ´Hostel Inn´, it was fuuull of western europeans sunbathing by the, wait for it...POOL! So clean and with it´s own tourist information, inside and outside bars, dance floor cum lounge outside, ping pong tables and dorms as well as cottages, it was riduuunculous.

We played volleyball in the pool, and drank piña coladas on deck chairs. And here, i met lola. The craziest girl from brooklyn, insane really, but intensely likeable and she just doesn´t give a damn about what others think. I imagine she´s pissed off her fair share of the population in her time, but she´s good people and always a good time. Got a world map tattooed on her back. Plays with street kids when she´s wasted, then has a wash in the morning when she´s sober and realises what she did : ) Has a lover in Buenos Aires that she can´t get enough of, and tends bar back in New York. Inexhaustible and a delight and brutally honest. Brutally. I also met the only other indian i´ve encountered on my whole trip so far. Indians as a whole generally don´t do the whole backpacking thing. Even indians brought up abroad like me. I think our parents usually think it´s a GIANT waste of time (not mentioning any names, cough *mum&dad*, ahem.) So this indian i met, he´s from atlanta, and he´s 33. Thirty-three year old Samir, who has worked in investment and consulting and is 33, has told his parents that he has a job volunteering in a hospital in argentina so they won´t worry. He showed me an email his dad sent him;

¨Samir, it has been one whole week and we have not heard from you. Why haven´t you sent us the details of the hospital you are working at yet? We are very worried. Please call us ASAP, so we know you´re OK.

Love, Mum and Dad¨

THIRTY-THREE! Poor Samir...

(and i know you whities were imagining that email in the voice of Apu from the Simpsons, but i forgive you, as he is a beloved character, and frankly, what other reference do you have? )

I met some incredible people at Hostel Inn, (including Max, who got jumped by some guys in buenos aires, and cut his jaw open- it´s that kind of continent unfortunately), and a crazy bunch of belgian and dutch guys. It turned out that they were travelling to Buenos Aires on the same day as me, so we all went together. But first we got drunk on happy hour at the hostel. Obviously. Then we got free wine on the bus. Oh boy. The bus waiter man did not like us by the next morning.

Please note that for this bus journey i took a giant hoard of benelux fellas with me for protection : )
Though not sure they were in any shape to be of any help. Anyway...

On the way out...

My bus from Sao Paulo to Foz do Iguazu, took 15 hours. It left at around 8 and was due to arrive around 11 the next morning. At about midnight, we stopped to get food etc, and when we reboarded, some of the bus company´s drivers got on, hitching a lift back to the depot. Everyone saw them get on, and all three were wearing the delightful pink shirt-marroon trousers combo of their uniform. One of them, a huge guy with dark hair, decided to sit in the empty seat next to me, of course. About 10 minutes later, the bus driver switched off all the lights, and everyone settled down to sleep. Except fatty, who started making small talk. At first, it was pretty general, very polite. My portuguese sucks and his english was awful, so it was pretty basic. Brazilian men are incredibly flirty and forward anyway, so i wasn´t bothered. However, it pretty soon devolved into a sweaty fat man telling me he loved me and trying to feel me up in the dark. Eventually, i decided screaming bloody murder was the best policy, i woke everyone up and kept screaming until the bastard finally pegged it to the bus driver´s cabin in the dark.

With every bastard though, there are nice people who don´t want to molest you; Liza and Jeff were the couple sitting across from me and were really nice. I know it sounds cheesy, but quite unselfconsciously and honestly, Liza asked if i wanted her to hold my hand. It sounds odd, and i politely declined, but it was touching. There were other murmers of such encouragement and query as to whether i was ok, and i spent most of the rest of the 11 hour journey, staring out of the window. Jeff spoke excellent portuguese and offered to help me complain to the police in the morning. I guess it was pretty dumb of me to wait till morning, but i was just so relieved that he had left me alone, and didn´t know what we could acomplish so late in the middle of some random highway in the south of Brazil. When we arrived at Foz do Iguazu, the slimebag had gone. He had disembarked the bus at some tiny town in the middle of the night and our bus driver (orizimbo) was being incredibly uncooperative. At first he pretended to know nothing of the incident, as though a heifer of a sleezebag hadn´t burst into his cabin at midnight, preceded by angry yelling from me. Then he realised we weren´t giving up, so he gave up the guys first name- enrique...fucking enrique... and then tried to explain it couldn´t have been him, cos he´s an evangelical...WHAT THE HELL! as though that means anything, read a paper sometime orizimbo! Anyhow, we finally got him to drive us to the bus depot, where i filed a complaint wiuth the manager and he told me that enrique´s gonna get his fat ass fired. booyah! And suddenly, miraculously, i felt all better.

After that, i headed back to town with Jeff, and then Liza, Jeff and I all crossed the border of Brazil into Argentina. It´s awesome, there´s a tiny rusty old bus stop with a little sign swinging in the wind, saying ´argentina´. We took a 10 minute bus to argentina man! Love. It.

I had planned to stay on the brazilian side of the border first, but after the bus incident, i just figured enough was enough, and it was time to leave Brazil, the wonderful country full of good food, kind, friendly people and amazing carnavale. Unfortunately, it was also the place where i; had flu throughout carnavale, got sunburnt and covered in tiny little sunblisters, had food poisoning, nearly got in a fight with locals at the sambodromo, fell asleep in a portaloo, got stung by a jellyfish, fell asleep on the metro, not to mention, my hostel was robbed at gunpoint, i was mugged at knifepoint and, of course, my favourite and newest addition to the list, i was molested. Yey.

These were the many things i did not want to tell my mother, but better out than in i say, and she was surprisingly calm. I guess since i am still alive and they all happened in the past, she wasn´t as incensed. Then again, when i get home she might just slap a gps around my ankle and never let me leave the house again...we´ll wait and see shall we?

..........................

p.s. stung by the jellyfish while i was at aimee´s, after the mugging, but before falling asleep in inappropriate places...ahem. We were mugged weeks ago, in one of rio´s nicest areas, ipanema. It´s fancy and therefore before carnavale, is full of rich, clueless gringos, making them/us, perfect targets. I think i´d mentioned how i usually was left alone in rio, blending into the crowd, but on this particular night, i was with zaza and about 10 other big blonde scandanavians... since we were just going round the corner to a local bar, for the first time in the whole time i was in rio, i took a bag out with me. what a numbnuts. As we were walking down the street, ambling really, from across the street, a gang of roughly 10 or 12 boys quickly strode towards us from their hiding place in the shadows of the park, and tried to grab anything they could. They punched and pushed and grabbed, and yet again, i screamed bloody murder, swearing like a troubador and girl-slapping as hard as i could. I´d like to say i threw a few punches, but mostly i just kicked them in the balls and shins. I think if they´d threatened me with their knives (yes boys and girls, they had knives) and asked for my bag, i hope i would have handed it over, but they just tried to take it... i was pissed goddammit and simply wouldn´t let go. At first i just had one on me, but then he called for reinforcements, since i refused to let go. I don´t think they would have used their knives... but who knows...ahem.

Our group had scattered as soon as the grubbers swarmed on us. People at the front and back had run off instinctively, though one danish guy ran back to help mattie who had three boys raping his pockets. I think i must have been grappling for about 3 or 4 minutes, i can´t really be sure, but i had no idea what was going on around me. The oddest thing was, it seemed to be happening really slowly. I wasn´t in a panic, just trying to hold on to my bag. Which, incidentally hardly had anything valuable inside. Go figure. After few minutes, i guess our friends who had run off decided to come back, and that scared off our muggers. I was punched to the floor and ended up with a giant bruise on my ass, yey, but guesswhat mo fos, i still had my bag, ooooh yeeeah. Suck on that muggers! The girls we were with got pretty badly robbed and were sobbing, understandably, but everyone kept looking at me warily, wondering why i too wasn´t doing the crying thing that obviously all girls must do in a crisis. Instead i told them i was quite hungry after the struggle and wanted a burger and some beer please... so that´s what we did.

the scandies and me, post mugging, wey!

And i swear to god, the next morning our hostel actually did get robbed at gunpoint. Zaza and i missed it by about 2 hours. We came down to the reception, to find everyone rewatching the cctv footage of our tiny hostel owner being bashed about and slammed into a wall, as she refused to fork over the cash. That same week, two other hostels in rio were robbed by guys with guns. It was on the news at home i believe, because some english people were killed...zaza and i had been planning to leave that morning anyway, so we promptly checked out, and headed to aimees... (i have to say, at least 30% of people we met had some kind of mugging story to tell. Especially in Lapa. I heard this guy jamie having ´that´conversation with his mum. He had clearly struggled about telling her, but his girlfriend had persuaded him he had to...

¨no mum, there wasn´t anything i could do about it... yes, they took everything i have...i´m fiiine, honestly... i need some money...can you call the insurance company for me...no, i don´t want to come home, thanks...yes, i´m perfectly safe...no you don´t need to fly over here with dad...¨

All too familiar...

Jorgey Porgey!!!

For those of you who don´t know, I went to university with Jorge in Sheffield. We did the same masters and he lived in the room next to mine. We were the fantastic 4, Jorge, Lillian, Cesar and I. And i hadn´t seen jorge in 2 years! It was so wonderful to see him again, and strange to see him all proffesional in his own appartment. It made me miss my sheffield days and all the people, terribly.

me and jp

As for him, he couldn´t understand why i was enjoying spending the whole day in his flat while he went to work. I was luxuriating in the solitude and cleanliness, (jorge´s one of the cleanest people i know), since I hadn´t had a room to myself in 7 weeks, nevermind a whole flat, and i hadn´t had a shower barefoot for 7 weeks either. it was heaven! i had been sharing a dorm with 17 other people in a room so hot, we had to get drunk just so we could fall asleep. Ergo, i had days in Sao Paulo of doing nothing except going for a coffee in the neighbourhood. His flat was in a lovely area called Moema, and when i did finally leave his flat to explore the city, i liked it a lot.

view from jorge´s window

It´s a business city and very expensive, a lot like london, but with more chance of dying in a mugging : ) And the food was delicious, (did i mention i´m eating beef now? Of course, i can barely digest it, since i haven´t eaten it in 15 years, but the beef in sao paulo was really delicious.) They have these pasties called pastel (pronounced past-a-u) that just melt in ur mouth and are filled with a brazilian cheese called catupiry and every other filling u can wish for. Escondidinho is fisherman´s pie, but with yams and beef instead of potato and fish, and picanha is 700g of sliced tender beef that they bring to you raw and u cook it yourself on a mini sizzling grill that they keep on your table, with all sorts of acompanying bits and bobs; salad, vinagrette, bread etc, mmmmmm... (OK, maybe i need to take a break, cos i think i might be hungry.)

Our own personal table grill, mmmmm

Apart from the food, it´s clearly a cool city. Villa Madelena is a boho type area filled with bars and clubs and all sorts of music, and we went to this ridiculously bling bar on top of a hotel that´s shaped like a ship. You have this amazing view of Sao Paulo, yet you´re nestled in the middle of a lot of trees which hide the houses, and the city skyline lies beyond, as though unreachable. One New Yorker i met, compared it to being high up in the middle of central park. Very cool, veeery expensive, and has to be seen.

sky bar @ hotel unique

Jorge looked after me very well, and i was sad to go, but i had somehow spent 2 whole weeks in Sao Paulo, and needed to push on if wanted to see and do everything i had planned. Don´t know when i´ll be seeing jorge again, but hopefully it won´t be another 2 years...

more photos: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=131656&id=222304166&l=a805a90d79

Goodbye Rio, Hello Paraty!

so... i have now told mum EVERYTHING that´s happened to me in the last month or so, and therefore can now tell you guys all about it. If i had written this post earlier, it would have been filled with the gaps from all the things that i couldn´t tell u, so mum wouldn´t fly out here and try to rescue me... seriously. I suppose the things i left out of my rio adventures will have to slowly trickle out in the course of my story telling... so, i last left you at the end of carnavale, exhausted, but replete. Amy went back to teach and I headed to Paraty (not before some thoughtful bint stole my fleece and my trousers...awesome.)

It´s a pretty colonial town on the coast of Brazil about 6 hours south of rio. Not too many shenanigans there, though i did meet some lovely english fellas and one complete arshole of a kiwi. And the mosquitos, holy hell. I ended up sleeping in a hammock with a litre of mosquito repellent slathered all over me and a towel on my face. Since i have witnessed a bastard mosquito actually landing on my freshly slathered skin, i am confident it´s a huge farce of a product, but anyway... at least the view was nice from the deck of the hostel. The heat was so intense, i was up in time to see the sunset, cos it`s simply impossible to sleep.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=131185&id=222304166&l=3fb0472bb4

There are some gorgeous beaches around Paraty, rather than in Paraty itself, so that´s what i mostly did there. Met a lovely bunch of aussies on the way back from one of these beaches (Trinidade), and spent a bit of time with them. Roly, A-Mac and creggo etc. This whole nickname thing is growing on me. In fact, by the time i reached Paraty, i`d had enough of trying to tell people my name and have them look at me like i`d just made a vomiting sound. At home i guess i`m used to saying my name in an anglecised way, but i`d been pronouncing it properly throughout Brazil and frankly, it was exhausting. So since Paraty, I`ve been Keke and it`s worked a treat. People actually know my name now, and it`s changed the whiole dynamic of conversation for me. Seriously, legions of people weren`t starting conversations with me, or saying hi from a distance, cos they had no clue how to say my name... anyhoo, am loving being Keke, though it turns out ´to throw a keke´in castellano spanish, is to throw someone a sympathy bone...how nice. Better take care NOT to use Keke in spain...ahem.

On my last day in Paraty, I went to these cool waterfalls that flow down the slipperiest rocks in God`s green earth. They`re covered in mossy type stuff i guess, but the locals climb up them as though there were stairs carved into them. (and if i`m honest, the lads seemed to do it much more easily than the girls, which makes me mad, but it is what it is.) The idea is, that you climb to the top and take a running leap (or push off on ur bum if, like me, u absolutely don`t trust ur own balance) and it`s like a waterpark ride, and you splash gleefully at high speed into a shallow rock pool full of broken trees at the bottom.

rocky tree-filled pool aka landing zone for waterfall slide

Then ur supposed to either scamper back up the rock, despite the flow of water raging at you, or you get out and climb up some stairish type things carved into the side of the hill, which takes ages. So of course, not to be outdone by the men, i tried climbing up the slippery torrent and promptly fell onto the rock, straight onto my chin, cracking off a chunk of my tooth... After tentativelly running my tongue over the missing incisor, i actually had anotyher go. This time clinging desperately to roly`s arm, cos he`s a huge fella and has feet like planks, and so had no trouble climbing up, even with my dead weight attached to his arm : ) The third time, i did it by myself...hell yeah!

As for sliding down, i mostly did so on my back and after gingerly testing out a crouching/surfing position, wisely decided that i would rather not die so early on in the trip and was contented with my method. The aussies, what with their surfing and all, had a crack at surfing down the rocks, which all the locals were doing with disgusting ease.

some crazy local surfing down the rock

An aussie girl the previous day had apparently tried it herself, slipped, and cracked her skull on the rock and been rushed to hospital, (such as it is in paraty), but it didn´t stop the aussies from going for it. Roly slid down on his belly and got a cut in his stomach, and seemed completely unperturbed by the persistent bleeding. My kind of guy : )

Creggo, Justin, and Roly

Once we had our fill, bruised, chipped and bleeding, we bussed it back into Paraty, and I got on another bus to Sao Paolo, to see Jorge!