Miss Maps Goes Solo

Everybody complained as we boarded the overnight bus to Iguazu falls from Rio.  Apparently the bus wasn`t up to scratch.  I obviously had low expectations after Peru and Bolivia.  I was just glad not to be stuck next to a family of 4 squeezed into one seat.

The Iguazu falls was one of the few things I knew I wanted to do on this trip before I left home.  It`s a huge cack in the earth with 230 waterfalls cashing into it.  One side is part of Brazil and the other is Argentina.  Paraguay bordes it too.  Foz do Iguazu, the town on the Brazilian side, is about as exciting as Camborne.  The hostel seemed to be a holidlay destination for mosquitoes and fleas.  We were scared to reach out fom under our mozzy nets to grab the mozzy spray!  The falls made up for it though, apparently they make the niagra falls look like a stream.  They seem to go for miles.  The most powerful bit at the top of the crack (called the devil`s throat) is unbelievable.  You can hear it from miles away.  The less poweful ones are more beautiful though, you can see the rocks and bright green moss through the water.  It`s a bit mind blowing to think that`s been thundeing away for thousands of years.  Of course there`s the obligitory legend that someone pissed off a god back in the day and he made the earth split and water fly everywhere.  Loads of pics under the my photos link.

10 minutes over the border into Argentina we were at the town of Puerto Iguazu.  The much nicer Argentine version.  Oh the bliss of Spanish!  Having been mute for the last week in Brazil it was great to talk again.  I was busting to get to Buenos Aires so we booked another overnight bus for that night and headed off to see the falls from another angle.  Actually thee`s only so much staring at gushing water you can do so we decided to go for a more interactive approach.  We stripped to bikinis and boarded the speed boat ready for a soaking.  The boat whipped us around and dunked us underneath a few fairly mild falls, they felt kind of like a power shower, a cold one.  Then we headed for a big thundering torrant and screamed as hundreds of buckets of freezing cold water were dumped on our heads, so much fun.  We then sped off down river, the sun and wind drying us off almost instantly.  A speed boat on Rio Dulce, the Galapagos cruise, white water rafting and now this.  I`ve discovered that I love being on water, maybe I should get a house boat.

This overnight bus was pure luxury, better than any plane I`ve ever been on.  Super comfy seats that recline to horizontal, meals, wine, films, even a pillow and a blanket.  It was a pretty nice 18 hours.

Only just getting over the loss that was leaving Rio, we arrived in Buenos Aires.  I`m so fickle, I`m now also in love with this city!  It feels like Paris, only without the Parisiens.  Huge ornate buildings with little balconies and canopies ove the windows, everyone sitting outside cafes watching everyone else.  It`s totally different to Rio.  It feels very European and more sophisticated and less liberated, more uptight somehow.  The antique shops, art galleries and boutiques ae wonderful.  Bev and I found a hostel in San Telmo, an area known for tango, which is my mission here.  Whilst wandeing around window shopping we bumped into a couple of girls Bev had previously travelled with and we spent most of our time hanging out with them.  That night we went out for a few drinks in some trendy bars.  I tried at sophistication and ordered a strawberry daquari, is that sophisticated?  It was a pretty cool night.

I spent the following morning scowering the streets for tango classes and found a group class fo that night and private classes starting the following day.  It`s been about 8 years since I did Argentine tango but I think I`m a bit bored of salsa so I was keen to try it again.

In the afternoon we visited Recoleta cemetery, it`s a super exclusive place to be buried, full of the famous, rich, politicians and military.  The tombs are more like houses and you can see all of the families` coffins through the doors, quite strange.  A funeral took place while we were there, luckily the cemetery was big enough that we managed to avoid it.  We did take a look at Eva Perron`s grave though, more about her later.

The group tango class turned out to be just me to start with, then 2 others later on.  It was ok, group classes are always a bit slow though.  That night we went to a tango show in Cafe Tortoni, one of the oldest and most famous tango cafes in Buenos Aies.  I was absolutely enthralled.  On a very small stage, in a tiny dark room filled with tables, a singer, double bass player, accordian player, pianist and two dancers entertained us.  It was a great show, lots of super fast leg kicks and over emotional singing, brilliant.

When I arrived here all I knew was that Evita was some chick played by Madonna in a film  I didn`t even know she was the same person as Eva Perron!  I blame the education system.  To get it all straight we went to the Eva Perron museum.  Interesting, quite biased but at least I now know that she was the Prime Minister`s wife and a bit of a feminist and all round do-gooder.  She died when she was 33 and had a 14 day funeral.  I think she was a bit like an Argentinian Princess Di.

Back to tango.  I donned my heels and flouncy skirt for my first private and quite expensive lesson with Ricardo.  He`s surly and a bit scary and an absolutely brilliant teacher.  We just got up and danced, some of it came back to me after all this time.  After an hour I was scooting across the floor, leg flicking and spinning around.  It`s a very intense class, just what I wanted.

I`d heard that shopping in Buenos Aires is excellent and I hit the shops hard.  It felt great to go home with 10 shopping bags and a new haircut.  It`s a funny thing about this place.  It`s the most sophisticated city I`ve ever seen.  It looks and feels rich and expensive but the economy collapsed overnight 5 years ago (how does that happen?) so it`s incredibly cheap.

Tango lesson number 2 was much harder.  A different girl tore apart my technique, I learnt a lot though…bitch.

Bev and Fiona (one of our new travelling buddies) were off to Southern Argentina the following day so we went out on the lash.  We started at about 1am in true Argentinian style and headed for Palermo, the trendy bar district.  We started off well, sitting in a nice bar chatting with two super friendly Argentinian girls.  Then we moved on and Fiona and I hit the bubbly (at 8GBP a bottle we had to).  An extremely posh group of very English people came in.  One of them, Indy, started talking to us.  He was wearing a Hackett shirt, corduroy jacket slung over his shoulder (probably Dickens and Jones) and super expensive jeans…in an attempt to look casual.  We talked for about 10 minutes and covered polo, how many languages him and his father (a Dubai businessman) spoke, a recent visit to the Sheritan hotel in New York, Tokyo and his graduation as a lawyer.  He wandered off and we discussed whether we were being prejudiced and anti-posh or whether he was actually a tosser.  Nevertheless we joined their table.  Thee was another boy, we`ll call him Prince William, and a bunch of girls who were lovely and had really good hair.  They all just became fully qualified lawyers.  At 3am we thought it high time we found a club and jumped into 2 cabs.  Prince William insisted on paying for ours, I began to feel uncomfortable.

Sorry, this long story has nothing to do with Argentina but it was a new experience for me and I have to write it down.

There was a queue outside the club.  Fiona and I started chatting to some locals, not at all fussed about waiting.  Next thing I know Indy herds us to the front of the queue and we walk straight in!  Turns out they told the bouncers how much they were going to spend and bought our way in.  I was mortified.  Prince William then nastily said to a security guy (in Spanish), I`ve paid for a table, I want an f`ing good table.  I went from mortified to livid, who did these people think they were?  Locals were turfed out of their seats to let these arrogant spoilt children and their newly bought friends park their expensively clad arses and order vodka by the bottle.  Surely it`s cringeworthy enough to flaunt cash like that in England, but in Argentina?

I was absolutely jumping, Indy put his arm around me, he never came on to me, he was just shmoosing his new friends.  I had to work hard not to smack him one.  I sat at a seperate table, bought my own drinks and bored this poor local guy stupid as I ranted about them.  Oh dear, I`ll never make it as an it girl.  Ironically, it was a very naff club (they played Vanilla Ice at one point) and within an hour or so thee were loads of spare tables.  It was all so unnecessary.

I think we got home at about 7am.  I hadn`t felt too drunk but the next day told me otherwise.  I was wrecked, a dodgy milanese chicken the night before added to my pain and I didn`t make it to tango, oops!

So now it`s my last day.  I`ve had a couple more tango lessons, seen another show and done even more shopping.  At 7pm I have to get a cab to the airport.  I arrive at about 5pm on Monday afternoon, UK time.  I feel funny.  All apprehensive but excited at the same time.  Wish I could just be there now and skip the whole 17 hour journey bit.

I won`t do a big emotional sum up of the trip and how it`s changed me because I have no idea what to say.  Maybe I won`t know until I get home.  I think it`s pretty obvious from this blog that it`s been a wonderful time though, I`ll leave it at that.

But thanks so much for reading everyone, your comments and emails have really meant a lot.

See most of you on Saturday and if not, very soon.

Maps
xxx

Sorry, this is going to be a long one.

I spent a couple of days getting to know my way around, doing laundry, all that stuff. They have a metro system here which makes me feel like I´m in London. I got on in rush hour one day and rushed along at top speed like everyone else, not quite sure why. I visited the famous Copacabana beach, where the Stones played only a week ago. It´s vast and lined with a mixture of posh and ugly hotels behind which stand sugar loaf mountain and Christ the Redeemer. It was overwhelming to stand there in the heat, staring at the huge waves and seeing all those famous Rio landmarks. Then Bev arrived, yay! I haven´t seen Bev since I left London, she´s been travelling through Central America for 3 months and flew down to Rio for carnival. We didn´t do much on her first day here but ended up in an Irish bar (they´re bloody everywhere) until the early hours.

Friday 24th February

Officially the first day of the carnival. Beautiful Rio is surrounded by 300 favelas (slums), one of which was the subject of the film City of God. The slums are a mess of concrete structures like badly fitted together tetris blocks climbing up the sides of the mountains. Some are dangerous but some aren´t and we decided to take a tour into one of the safest - Rocinha. Before I continue, this is not dangerous. 20 odd tourists go in each day. The locals are used to it, they know the guide and it brings them money. The dealers have no interest in shooting up tourists. So, we drove to what seemed like a perfectly normal area at the bottom of the mountain which the favela clings to. From there we each hopped on to the back of a motorbike and sped up the hill, that was pretty cool, although a bit hairy at times with the traffic. When we hopped off at the top it seemed just like any poor neighbourhood in a South American city. I must admit from the film I´d expected the kind of slums you might see in South Africa or India. This was the business centre of it though, it got worse. 300,000 people live here. No-one pays tax or rent because you buy a piece of land (or someones rooftop as there´s no space left) and build. The property is yours and there´s nothing to tax you on. They don´t pay water rates because they knick it from the forest. The electricity poles have hundreds of cables coming out because they attach their own and steal the electric. This area is run by the ADA group of drug dealers. ADA stands for Friends of Friends (in Portuguese of course). With only one group managing the area there isn´t much fighting. Last October though the main guy was killed by the police. 9 of his main guys were then all killed within the favela, I guess as part of the power struggle. There is a photo of a little boy who´s dad was one of those men under the my photos link. Now things are stable and a new guy is set to take over. It´s generally a safe place to live because the guys who run it don´t want bad things to happen. If they do the police come and that´s bad for them. As we walked, our guide told us not to take pictures of certain things. One was a big black tank type thing, apparently the police. Another was a guy with a gun down his trousers! Seeing how they live was really interesting but it did feel a bit voyeuristic. Especially visiting the community centre with the kids, that felt like a zoo. But everyone was very friendly and it certainly changed my idea of what a favela is like.

That night we headed to a bloc party. These are unofficial parades organised by the locals. 6 of us walked there from the hostel, all uphill. By the time we got there I was awash with sweat. Actually, I´m always awash with sweat here, it´s boiling. We hit a wall of people and culture shock. There wasn´t really any music and the parade was just one truck with some guys on top singing the same song over and over. We couldn´t move, it was really claustrophobic and men grab you and try to kiss you. On top of all this we were tired and not in a drinking mood, the carnival spirit evaded us that night.

Saturday 25th February

Well, nice to wake up without a hangover at least. I should say something about the food here. Everywhere you turn cafes sell beer and salgados. They´re like little snacks, pasties and balls of stodgy potato type stuff filled with chicken or beef. They´re absolutely delicious and I´ve eaten nothing else. I don´t know how everyone isn´t obese here.

Today we did something I wouldn´t dream of doing in England, went to a football match! A local derby between Flamengo and Botafogo, neighbouring districts. The astmosphere was great. Some of the chants I recognised but most of them are more like samba music, complete with drums. The drums start, they sing a couple of lines, then they all jump around and dance. It seems less agro than English matches, they even sell beer. The match was great, I got much more into it than I´d expected to. I even shouted ¨hoof it¨ at one point and I nearly wet myself whenever they scored. We were sitting in the Flamengo side so obviously we supported them, they won 3-2.

Our night out was much more successful, maybe something to do with the alcohol we drank before leaving the hostel. Some local brew that tasted like (and had the effect of) prune juice. We headed to a gorgeous area called Santa Teresa and this time the carnival was in full swing. We danced with some locals to live music from the stage. The people here are unbelievably friendly, more so than anywhere else I´ve been. When I told the lady we couldn´t speak Portuguese she had her little girl translate into Spanish for us. In another area we stopped to dance with an impromptu samba band. Great fun but slightly ruined by the unbelievable stench of wee. No-one bothers to stop partying long enough to find a toilet. I saw some real sights here, one lady/man wearing a sequin thong and nothing else who had the most amazing boobs kind of sticks in my mind! We followed the sound of drums again, this time into a warehouse. Another band were playing and beautiful girls shook parts of their bodies in total isolation to the rest of them. We just watched in awe. A great night.

Sunday 26th February

After a lie in we headed to Copacabana beach for a couple of hours of sun. It was definitely enough to turn me quite pink on one side. Beaches at the weekends are full of locals. They set up bars all the way along and play beach volleyball in speedos and tiny bikinis. Such an amazing culture here, these people really love life. I´ve slightly fallen in love with their language too. I don´t know about Portuguese in Portugal but here it´s gorgeous. I like speaking Spanish but I much prefer the sound of Portuguese, wish I could speak that too.

In the afternoon we were booked to go hang-gliding. I was so excited and nervous that when the call came to cancel due to weather conditions I was gutted. All that adrenalin for nothing. We were re-booked for Tuesday though. Instead we went up to Christ the Redeemer, the statue of Jesus with his arms out standing high above the city. The view is unbelievable, the city seems to have squeezed itself inbetween the mountains and the sea with a man made lake in the middle which is apparently meant to be in the shape of a heart. The statue is amazing too, he looks very serene standing there with his arms outstretched. I hope pigeons don´t land on him. We saw sunset from Ipanema beach, by far the most beautiful one, and went home for a night in. Tomorrow night is the big one, the all night parade so we needed some kip.

Monday 27th February

I tried to do some official things today, not realising that everything shuts for carnival. With no-one getting any sleep I suppose they don´t bother going to work in the morning, fair enough. In the afternoon we headed to Sugar Loaf mountain. Because of it´s shape it was named after the ceramic mould that was used in the process of sugar refining back in the day. Anyway, it´s pretty cool looking and you can get a cable car up to the top for another fantastic view over Rio. This time we did it for sunset, great to be up there while the sun goes down and the lights start to come on. I must admit the cable car freaked me out a little bit though, it´s as big as a pod on the London eye and it sways around a bit too much, I started to have doubts about hang-gliding at this point!

During carnival there are the un-official parties going on everywhere which I´ve already talked about. The stuff you see on TV is the big parade in the purpose built sambadrome. The samba schools parade for about 45 minutes each, with all the floats and amazing costumes, it´s a competition with first and second division schools and they take it very seriously. Most schools have around 5,000 people in the parade! We´d booked tickets months ago back in England and managed to get fantastic seats right near the front. The sambadrome is like a grandstand which goes up really high, kind of reminds me of a quidditch match. The parade runs from 9pm to 7am, watching all those sequins for that amount of time is impossible so we showed up at 11pm and saw it through to the end, very surreal to be there while the sun comes up. The parade was absolutely spectacular, some of the floats are unbelievable. There´s all the traditional stuff with the bikini clad girls and all the feathers and glitz on totally over the top floats but there´s also some really clever stuff with the way they use the floats too. One of them had a giant UFO which came in to land and dancers dressed as aliens poured out of it. Another one had a stage with curtains on all 4 sides. The curtains would open to reveal 20 Elvis Presleys dancing away, then close and open again to reveal 20 Michael Jacksons or 20 James Browns, very clever. It was an amazing night that I´ll never forget.

Tuesday 28th February

After rolling in at 8am in the morning, we weren´t up to much during the day. Just sitting around getting more and more nervous about hang-gliding! Oh my god, this was absolutely mind blowing. We actually ended up para-gliding rather than hang-gliding because there were so many people flying that day we would´ve had to wait ages. Hang-gliding is when you lie down and hang on to a triangular metal frame with the wings attached to the top. Para-gliding is sitting down attached to a parashoot. It actually worked out for the best as you get more time para-gliding. There was a lot of waiting around while they got everything ready for us, that didn´t help the nerves. We drove up to the top of a cliff which overlooks mountains, a beach and the favela we´d visited earlier. Bev was to go first, she got strapped into the harness and walked to the edge of the ramp to be attached to our instructor, obviously it´s a tandem flight! The ramp is actually angled down instead of up so you literally feel like you´re walking off the edge of a cliff, which is infact exactly what you have to do. I watched Bev as she took off, screaming, and whizzed off into the air, terrifying. When it came to my turn the sun was starting to set and I was pretty much the last one to go. I stood on the edge of the ramp, feeling seriously uncomfortable and unsafe in the harness and walked two steps forward waiting for the shoot to yank us off the ground. Unfortunately the wind was too strong at first and we had 3 missed attemps at take off. I´ve never been more scared, it would kind of pull us but then not so I´d end up sitting on my bum on the edge of this cliff not knowing if we were going to be dragged forward or up or what. I almost couldn´t go through with it, but you don´t have much choice by that point. Eventually we got away, wow, what an amazing feeling. You just seem to float in mid-air, hundreds of metres above the city, looking out over the sea at the sunset. I could´ve cried. We stayed up for about 20 minutes, it felt like a lot longer. We twisted and turned and did some spirals, that thing where the pilot flys in circles and seems to be spiraling out of control towards the ground, wasn´t so keen on that bit. Then he let me drive it for a bit, very strange to be holding these two bits of string knowing that if you let go you´ll be plummeting to the ground. We landed right next to the beach, landing is much nicer than taking off, you just kind of stand up and start running as you reach the ground. I think my legs started peddling quite a way before that though!

After such an adrenalin rush I was ready for a big night out. It was the last night of carnival so everyone in the hostel was up for a party. We went to Lapa, an area of Rio where there is always a big party going on. I had a great time, dancing around, drinking capirihnas, soaking up the carnival atmosphere. I even had an hour long conversation with a local who had absolutely no English. I don´t know how we managed it with the language barrier but I feel like I know her pretty well! As the sun came up and our hostel started to serve breakfast, we trudged home. A really great end to carnival.

Now I´ve got another day or two here (I don´t want to leave, might throw a tantrum) before heading down to Iguazu falls, a massive set of waterfalls on the Argentinian and Brazilian borders. Then I´ll be spending my last week in Buenos Aires learning tango, I hope I´m better at that than I am at samba!

There´s loads of new photos of the carnival and Rio, I´m afraid my camera couldn´t cope with the parade too well but there are some good ones.

See you all in a couple of weeks!