Faithful readers, when last I left you mi esposo y yo were about to journey to the most unknown, most undiscovered (for us at least) continent on our trip - South America. I know my parents are super terrified that I'm here because danger supposedly lurks at every corner but somehow we have made it through the last five weeks with all our limbs and internal organs intact. Off to a flying start!
The trip to Rio de Janeiro from Athens is no picnic, it's basically 24 hours of flying and stopovers, the equivalent of flying from Melbourne to London. As luck would have it we were well prepared for the flight, with hangovers and sleep deprivation. Our one stopover was in Qatar and let me tell you, if you ever need to sleep overnight in an airport you could do a lot worse than the lounges at Doha International Terminal. They have a whole 'quiet' area where the seats are all reclined past the perpendicular (I'm no mathematician but I'm guessing around 120 degrees - that's a serious obtuse angle right there.). You could wrap yourself up and sleep like a baby if you needed to. Unfortunately we only had an hour here but at least I know for next time, if it's sleep I need I can find it here.
Our hostel in Copacabana (yes, we are well and truly back into hostelling - joy) was the cheapest hostel in the nicest area. Pretty good trade off for me. Being low season in Brazil there were not a lot of guests there, except for a massive group of Brazilian MMA fighters. Lots of muscles and facial tattoos amongst that squad. In their entourage was also the cutest baby of all time who we communicated with solely through smiles (it's the universal language!).
Rio was definitely an interesting first stop in South America, it's a city of stark contrasts. Staying in Copacabana and walking through nearby Ipanema you saw lots of expensive apartments with beach views, lots of super hot people exercising by the beach, nice bars and restaurants (highlight of our bar visits was when a table of girls asked Dave [in Portuguese obviously] to take a photo of them. Dave totally panicked because they were so attractive and sat there like a stunned mullet until I stepped in and took the photo like a normal human being) and plenty of boutique shops. But a stones throw away you have favelas which until recently were ruled by drug cartels, and where there are still a lot of problems and a lot of people living on the poverty line, despite the government's attempts to clean them up (the sceptic in me has to think these attempts are purely driven by the attention that the World Cup and the 2016 Olympics has cast upon Brazil). However, I felt more or less safe in Rio except for that one time when we witnessed a knife fight in broad daylight on a busy street. Dave maintains it was not a knife fight BUT I ask you, if two men are arguing and then one of them pulls out a knife how does this not qualify as a knife fight? You say tomato...
One of my favourite things about Rio was how active the locals are, exercising outdoors at all hours of the day and night. Copacabana beach was always full of people running, walking, cycling, playing volleyball and soccer (they call it football here... weird), or using the free outdoor exercise equipment. There was something incredibly unpretentious about it. No need for an expensive gym membership or the latest fashionable active wear, just a desire to keep fit and healthy no matter what social class you belonged to. We were even inspired to go for a couple of morning runs along the famous Copacabana promenade.
Rio as a city doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. There are massive mountains EVERYWHERE that they have just built around and up and tunnelled through, and the ocean is all over the place, meaning that half the city is located on separate islands. Very strange but it's part of what makes the city so fascinating. We got a birds eye view of it from the top of Corcovado mountain when we hiked up to see Christ the Redeemer. This was a somewhat challenging walk, made easier by the resident monkeys we saw and the immensely rewarding experience at the top. This Jesus statue is fucking massive. The scale of it and the fact that they managed to build it on top of this mountain is just incredible. After spending some time admiring it all and laughing at everyone taking selfies (then taking our own selfie) we headed to the train ticket seller to buy tickets for the train to the bottom. Obviously we weren't keen to walk back down! Turns out the train tickets are really expensive, more than what we were carrying, and the buses that also ferry people down will NOT sell you a ticket at the top, only at the bottom. Sooooo, it was a walk back down (via the road this time) for these weary travellers. About half an hour into it the umpteenth taxi stopped beside us and offered us a lift. 'No, obrigado' we said, like a broken record by this stage. 'You're walking?' he asked. 'Si, si'. 'No, don't walk. I'll take you down. $10 reais.' Sir, you have a deal! We jumped in the cab and he drove us down. And drove, and drove, and drove. Turns out it was much further than we were anticipating and it would have been getting dark by the time we finished. Best $10 reais I ever spent.
We were super keen to see Foals in Rio, they were playing a couple of shows that matched up perfectly with our visit. As the story goes, we bought tickets, their singer got sick, they cancelled the shows, we missed out, consoled ourselves by watching a brilliant busking band called the Beach Combers, notable for their psychedelic 70s rock sound and the fact that the bass guitarist was wearing a skirt. My kind of band!
São Paulo was the next stop in Brazil. We weren't really keen to visit this city, but it was a decent stopover to break up what would have otherwise been an excruciatingly long bus trip from Rio to Florianopolis. Not much to say really, seemed like a pretty soulless city, a concrete jungle with little to set it apart from any other sprawling metropolis in the world. We found a great craft beer bar (of course) but nothing else really sticks in the memory, except for a couple we met who lived in São Paulo but were staying in the hostel (thankfully in a private room) just to bang. As you do.
We had however, heard great things about Florianopolis which was our next port of call. We had heard about a fabulous beach, great opportunities for hiking, supping, surfing and just general relaxing in the sun. Perfecto. Problem was, the four days we were there it never reached temperatures above 15 degrees and we copped two days of solid rain. All our hiking plans went out the window which left plenty of time to drink caipirinhas at the hostel and get to know our fellow travellers. We met some great people in Florianopolis, including a few people who had lived in Australia, for the purpose of learning English. Apparently it's becoming a pretty popular thing to do, and man can you pick the foreigners who have learned English in Australia. Not only are they missing that awful fake American sounding accent that you so often hear they also litter their speech with constant profanity. Ah, Australian English, how I miss you!
The hostel we stayed in was on the opposite side of the island to the main town of Florianopolis, where all the main services are. This caused us huge problems when we arrived on the bus at 6am, spent our last reais on a taxi to the hostel, and then found out that the only ATMs on the whole island were way back over the other side. There is a bus that runs regularly, but we had literally no money so we couldn't even afford to catch it. So, for the hundredth time on this trip we were faced with a long trek because of our poor planning. 10kms (mostly uphill) into town, running on no sleep, no breakfast, and no water. At least we were able to laugh about it. Top tip: when a hostel sends through important info about how to get there, are there any ATMs nearby etc actually read it...
Having definitely not experienced the best of Brazil, we then jumped over the border into Uruguay. We did not spend much time here, only visiting the capital Montevideo. I have zero notes written in my journal about Montevideo because I spent most of my time there asleep. Yes, that cold snap we had in Florianopolis totally messed with my body which had been used to temperatures consistently hovering between 30 and 40 degrees for the past four months and I got super sick. So, I can tell you that there is some beautiful architecture in Montevideo. I can also tell you that the streets, even in the centre are weirdly deserted of people all the time. There are also a whole bunch of abandoned buildings all over the place and it looks run down as hell. Definitely very different to any city I've been to before and I wish I'd been well enough to really get the feel of it. Instead I drank pumpkin soup in the hostel wearing literally all the clothes I own to stay warm, venturing out for like an hour each day before I had to go home for a nap. Good times.
Luckily luckily luckily, spending so much time at the hostel gave me the opportunity to talk to fellow travellers who had already been to Argentina. They gave us the most important advice we've received so far - take only US dollars into Argentina. The fucked up monetary system in Argentina means that the peso is super devalued and there is a huge demand for USD. So if I were to go to any ATM in Argentina and withdraw pesos I would get about 6.7 pesos for every $1AUD. However, there exists an illegal 'Blue Market' where you can exchange US dollars for much much more than the official exchange. I'm talking 16 pesos for every $1USD. Huge difference. Therefore, even though the exchange from AUD to USD is terrible at the moment we were still going to come out waaaaay in front if we exchanged on the Blue Market. So every day in Montevideo we went to the ATM to withdraw $300USD on each of our bank cards (they have a daily limit of $300 to stop Argentinians travelling to Uruguay and withdrawing a ton of USD.). There is an entire street in Buenos Aires, Calle Florida, where you walk past shady looking characters and they call out 'cambio, cambio' (change, change) and if you approach them they will take you to what's known as a 'cueva' which might be inside a restaurant or a jewellery store where they will exchange your dollars for an agreed upon rate. There's even a Twitter account you can follow so that you always know what the current Blue Dollar rate is to reduce your risk of getting ripped off. We never used one of these cambio guys, it's all a bit seedy and it's easy to find Argentinian people who want your dollars or exchange offices that seem much more above board. Given that we are going to be in Argentina for close to two months being prepared for the Blue Dollar has made our bank balance look a lot healthier than it would have if we exchanged at the official rate.
So, armed and dangerous with our USD we arrived in Buenos Aires. We had been here for exactly 20 minutes when I knew I was completely in love with this city. Up until this point I had not enjoyed South America as much as I had expected to. I'd found the transition from Europe quite difficult, I never felt 100% safe (stupid overactive imagination and paranoia rather than actual threat. Please don't worry Mum, everything is fine.) and we had visited a few places that I guess I felt like we could have probably skipped. I was also desperate to get to Buenos Aires because I had a sneaking suspicion it was going to be my kind of city, so I may not have been 'living in the moment' enough, rather I felt like we were just killing time until we got to the place I really wanted to be. Luckily BA was as fantastic as I imagined it was going to be. Being here has really helped me to feel settled in South America and has renewed my enthusiasm for travelling this amazing continent. Positive vibes everywhere!
We had our first Couchsurfing experience in BA which was a great way to start our time here, as on our first night we were able to try Fernet (this weird alcohol they drink) and maté (this weird herbal thing they drink [parenthesis in parenthesis: everybody has their own special maté mug and they drink the maté from a silver straw. You can get them in every colour and design you can imagine. Importantly though, everybody has one. Just their own special one. And they invite friends over to drink maté together. All super normal. EXCEPT that they all drink from the same cup and straw! Your mates don't bring their own maté cups and everybody gets their own drink. Oh no, you pass around this one cup and everybody drinks from the one straw. When our Spanish teacher told us this like it was totally normal Dave almost fell off his chair laughing. He quickly got used to the idea though, and when we get home he has vowed to only ever crack one stubby at parties, stick a straw in it and share it with all his mates. We're referring to it as 'Five guys, one cup'.]) as well as having our very first asado (fabulous barbecued meat, this is good by me). We quickly learned that the nightlife here is very different to back home. We went to a party with our hosts on Saturday night, which began at midnight. Midnight. Some clubs don't even open until 3am. Don't people know that nothing good ever happens after 2am? Well actually, at this party after 2am everybody was in fine form because it was still early in the night for them. Gosh, Argentinians are hilarious. It was just like being back home hanging out with all of Dave's mates, people making offensive jokes, that one dreadlocked guy who looks like a hippy but is actually a massive capitalist, everyone talking over the top of each other and then the inevitable bottle-o run at 3am. Lots of fun.
Dave and I both thought it would be a good idea to learn some Spanish while we were travelling to make getting around this continent easier. We had heard that a lot of people don't speak English so we felt that even having some basic knowledge of the language would be useful. We had been listening to a Spanish language podcast as we travelled through Europe but we decided to do some formal lessons to give us a better understanding. So our two weeks in Buenos Aires included four hours of intensive Spanish classes each weekday morning. We were in small group of just five students all of whom were super lovely and friendly people which was a huge bonus. The teachers were young and fun and shared much more than just verbs and grammar with us. We also talked about our cultures and swapped stories of amazing places we've been to. We learned a lot in the two weeks and hopefully now we will be able to sit down and review everything and really try to absorb it (difficult to do on a daily basis when you're visiting a city and want to be out and about doing stuff everyday). I am genuinely sad to be finished the classes.
So, onto the part where I bang on about how fucking great Buenos Aires is. It is now firmly placed in my top three cities I've ever visited (the other two are NYC and the love of my life Melbourne, obvs). A good city has to have a good bar scene and we certainly made the most of the different suburbs we stayed in by sampling all the best craft beer spots in Buenos Aires. The national beer is Quilmes which is pretty shit, but there's a massive craft beer scene happening now (like everywhere in the world I guess) and we drank some very good beers while we were here. Hora feliz (happy hour) is generally a 2 for 1 deal so if you plan your evening wisely, moving from one place to the next according to their happy hour times you can drink pretty cheaply.
The food was fantastic, if you're carnivorous like us. Meat, meat, meat and more meat, always cooked over hot coals until it was smoky and scorched and delicious. Choripan was my favourite, it's essentially just a fancy version of a hot dog with a super smoky chorizo covered in chimichurri (garlicky salsa deliciousness) inside a bread roll. As much as I love a Bunnings sausage sizzle and can never walk past one without buying a snag I have to say that this BBQ trumps that. The steaks were more on the well done side than I prefer but cooking them in this method means that they're still tender and juicy. Also, ice cream. The best ice cream in the world? Quite possibly. You can buy it in weird amounts too, not just a cone or a cup but in quarter or half kilos (which you can take home but we also saw people eating them right then and there).
Everywhere we go our favourite thing is to just wander around the city taking everything in. It's a very cheap day out but it's also the best way to get to know a place. We walked a lot of kilometres in BA and with each new place we stumbled across we learned something new about the city. It's a super easy city to get around, the buses go everywhere that isn't walking distance and there's a great app that tells you which one to catch. It's also really well laid out, the blocks are all pretty much square, with 100 house numbers between intersections. Very much like the Hoddle grid but on a larger scale. There's a lot of great green spaces, parks and gardens and monuments and fountains everywhere, especially in the older suburbs.
There really is such a fascinating mix of Europe and South America here. The gorgeous contrast of architecture styles is the first thing you notice when you arrive here. The second thing is the dog shit. People in Buenos Aires love their pet dogs. Apparently there's like a rule here that dogs need to spend a certain amount of time outside each day so there are a heap of people employed as dog walkers and you'll see them walking massive packs of dogs around. It is super cute and of course I love a dog filled city. Problem is, nobody ever cleans up after their dog (apparently there's a rule that you're supposed to do that too, but nobody adheres to it). The smart visitor learns early on that you always need to walk with your head down looking at the ground, otherwise you will definitely step in something. On the whole, I would actually say it's the dirtiest city I have ever visited, in terms of physically dirty, rubbish and shit all over the streets etc. It's one of those things that reminds you that you're in South America. Just when you're comparing it to Paris or Rome you'll see something that brings you right back to where you are - people blatantly throwing rubbish on the ground even though there are bins everywhere, men pulling carts full of cardboard down the main roads in amongst the cars and buses like it's no big deal, the guys who drive around with a loudspeaker calling for people to bring out their old furniture and appliances (it's basically a hard rubbish collection every single day, but also very much like 'bring out your dead' from Monty Python), and of course seeing people carrying around the most common accessory of all - their maté cup and a thermos to refill it from.
Some of the 'sights' I really enjoyed were La Recoleta Cemetery (until my claustrophobia kicked in and I had a minor panic attack - every single day I wonder why Dave continues to travel with me), the San Telmo market, Floralis Genérica, Teatro Colón (spewing we didn't get to see a show here), Al Ateneo Grand Splendid which is an old theatre that has been converted into the most beautiful bookstore you've ever seen, Caminito en La Boca (super touristy though, more so than anywhere else in BA), MNBA, Jardin Botanico, watching our friends dance tango in the beautiful Confitería Ideal, the list seriously goes on and on. If you are visiting Buenos Aires (and you definitely should) please hit me up for recommendations, I have a lot.
Most of all, I actually really enjoyed having a full two weeks to really experience this city, and I even appreciated having some sort of routine again. Every morning we would walk to class, stopping for a cafe con leche and medialunas along the way, study for our four hours then spend the afternoon and evening exploring the city and eating and drinking. That's a pretty awesome routine. We also met a whole bunch of brilliant people and I temporarily fell in love walking down the street every single day - seriously, Argentinian men are all tall, dark, handsome, bearded, and lean. Single ladies, I highly recommend you visit. We leave today, and I desperately wish we could stay for longer but new adventures await. I will look back on our time in Buenos Aires with the fondest of memories, and if the rest of our time in South America is even half as enjoyable then we are going to have an amazing next 6 months.
Today we catch a 25 hour bus down south to Patagonia where we will be staying on a farm for the next four weeks. They only have electricity for 5 hours a day so wifi looks like it's going to be pretty sketchy. Please please please continue to message me and fill me in on what is happening in your lives, I love hearing from all of you and whenever I can I will be checking for stories from home. I just may be a bit crap at responding in a timely fashion. But I miss you all and I really wish I could squeeze all your stupid faces.
So much love, as always. Barbecue some meat this weekend and think of us. Love Mel and Dave. xox
