Being Mr. Kenny

Just remembered. Last night we went to a restaurant where they served all manner of meats, and it was all you can eat. It was much like a carvery, but the waiters just sort of wandered round with loads of meat on the skewer. I highly recommend it; if you want to go, go to Buffalo Branco in Fos, Brazil. Anyway, on the menu, under the title Noble Meats we found the following (amongst many reall tasty meats):

• Heart of rump
• Cup of rump
• Chicken heart

And, to my horror:

• Bull testicles

Alex promised he’d try some, to my further horror, but none arrived, sadly.

Also, just found this site—it’s about a Portugues-English phrasebook with a twist…

Well, it seems like a full eon since I last posted. It was in fact just four days ago, but we’ve done loads since then. Let’s see where was I… Ah yes recovering from alcohol :S

Well, we spent a really nice day, that day, just being in Buenos Aires. Not rushing around, not visiting museums, not hurrying to get on a 49 year bus, it was the best day of the whole thing so far! I have discovered that I am a useless tourist; all I want to do is just wander around for a bit and not do anything in particular. Well, that’s not strictly true, but it’s really nice just to do nothing except sit for a day and not have to worry about missing busses and things. Anyway, on with the show.

We left Buenos Aires, as much as I was loathe to leave, and arrived in Posadas before quickly leaving. Posadas is devoid of things to do except cross the border into Paraguay, which we did. Paraguay held a Jesuit mission, the least visited Unesco site on Earth, apparently! The ruins were lovely in the late afternoon sun, and afterwards we went to a hotel for a drink. Just one this time, though.

This was quite an experience in itself. The barmaid apparently understood no Spanish, so went in to fetch her boyfriend (I assume it was her boyfriend). He didn’t understand anything either (despite the fact we were just repeating the words “Coca Cola” over and over. No communication was possible until Alex started speaking German, at which point we were able to order our drinks, and Alex had a long conversation with the barmaid’s supposed boyfriend. The barmaid’s contribution to the episode was hysterical laughter, at anything we said. It was hilarious.

The next day, or something (it’s all been a blur since Ailis left) we went round a similar ruined Jesuit mission back in Argentina. Me and Claire picked an orange from one of the trees via the method of her sitting on my shoulders, and then we looked round the visitor centre, which was all in Spanish so we didn’t understand any of it. Although, there was a rather funny collection of dummies dressed as crazy priests, which I photographed.

Buses in Paraguay consist of as many human beings stuffed into a metal box as possible. On the journey we encountered Mr Buttocks (named by me) who smelt of onions, and who insisted upon pressing his buttocks (hence the name) into all who would accept them. Claire wondered if they would allow someone to cling onto the open door, screaming “¡Esta bien! ¡Esta bien!” but they didn’t in the end.

In the Argentinina town we stayed for our last night in the beautiful country of Argentina we had banana milkshakes, which were incredible. And the hotel room had a double bed, which I, being the perfect gentleman, took for myself. Hoorah!

Iguazu falls

Iguazu falls are incredible. They are a set of waterfalls which stretch across the Argentine-Brazilian border, and they are definately worth your visit, should you ever visit either country. Words don’t really do them justice (another way of saying I’ve typed loads so far and I’m tired of doing it) so you’ll have to wait for the 130 photos I took of them! Actually, so far, I’ve taken 1447 photos, so many, in fact, that my camera now takes a full ten million years to start up.

Me and Claire took a boat trip to go closer to the falls, and this turned out to be really fun! And wet. We got absolutely drenched. For natives of a sea-faring nation we were pretty pathetic, remarking to each other how wet we were while the Argentines around us screamed their joy. Afterwards, my sandals released all the shampoo that they had absorbed from when the bottle exploded everywhere in Bolivia. I had really foamy feet for the rest of the hike, it was extremely annoying!

Saw literally thousands of butterflies of all colours. They were truly spectacular. Sometimes they’d be resting on the ground in a group consisting of different species, so when you walked by they’d all fly up in a cloud of colour. It was really gorgeous.

Current times

We’re currently in Brazil. Brazilian money is beautiful and colourful, and the language (Portuguese) is impossible. There’s about a million different vowel combinations, and the pronounciation is somewhere between French, German and Spanish.

I’ve noticed loads of blonde Brazilians, which is a bit strange for South America, and Brazil seems to be the most ethnically diverse nation so far. Talking of ethnic diversity, we saw a group of Japanese women on the Brazilian side of the falls. Nothing strange there, except for the fact that they had their hands in the air, singing to their hearts’ content. It was really funny. We kept encountering them all over the place, it was great. Needless to say, they were photographed, and will be appearing in the section of the forthcoming photogallery which I will call “Tourists I have known”. Been taking loads of pictures of the tourists here. I think they’re great. For instance, yesterday on the Argentine side we saw a group of about a hundred middle-aged women, all wearing red “Fuller Cosmetics” t-shirts, caps and ponchos. It was almost as breathtaking as the butterflies. Alex really hates the tourists (he really hates them, all of them, everywhere!) but I actually think they have made the trip for me. They’re so hilariously funny!

Anyway, think I’m all typed-out now, and I’m beginning to get a headache, so I’m gonna sign off now!

This morning we nursed our hangovers in McDonald’s, which was just about the best idea anyone ever had. Nothing like a Big Mac to settle the stomach. Decided thatI’m gonna try to make that the last time I drink so much. It’s a largely pointless activity that results in me being a complete idiot and then feeling bad the next morning, both physically and mentally.

So that’s that. It’s also our last day in beautiful Buenos Aires. Leaving on the bus at 8pm tonight, to go to somewhere else. I will return to Buenos Aires, though, it’s just too gorgeous not to return.

That’s about it for this post. Ailis is leaving shortly, so I’ll say goodbye to her. All in all, today has been a funny old day!

Well, in the words of Macy Gray, “I’m a little drunk.” Today we saw a riot, it was great fun. At one point, the police did something, so we all ran away. Well, Ailis and Claire ran away, me being lightly amused decided to follow them in case it was for the best.

The beautiful man has been displaced by another: a man who was posing for photos with tourists in a tango pose. It was fun!

La Estancia is the best place in Buenos Aires for steaks, they are truly gorgeous, once you get used to the waiters not writing anything down.

Going to stop now before I say anything embarrassing, but right now I am deliriously happy. We are listening to Abba in Spanish.

Buenos Aires is amazing. I absolutely love it. It is my favourite place out of all the places I’ve visited so far. It’s completely gorgeous, and I could live here (if my Spanish were better).

It’s one of the most beautiful cities I have ever been to, and I will be extremely sorry to leave it. This is most probably because it is like a big European city and I’m getting a bit tired of dirt tracks and mud brick houses. (Although these usually accompany the amazing orange juice carts.)

Maybe I’m a shallow traveller, I should appreciate the “rusticness” of it all or something, but I like my comfort and nice architechture :D

Plus (and you knew this was coming) the food is amazing!!! I have been spoilt for the rest of the continent! I can only hope that Brazilian food is just as good…

Since this post is a little bare… I would like to leave you with two sites and a question. The first is exploding dog, with many amazing drawings. They are quite marvellous. And the second is the marmite website. My question is this: why, when you hit a small sample of marmite with a teaspoon, does it go yellow? The first correct answer will receive a prize. And I mean this! There will be a real prize that won’t be crap! (Leave your answer in a comment; answers via e-mail will be ignored).

Firstly, let me explain that the computer place I’m using is really tempramental, so it might explode at any minute, so I’ll have to be concise. I’ll try to get everything in tho…

Uyuni

From La Paz we took the bus to Uyuni. At the station we met an Israeli called Polina (I think that’s the spelling…) who also came on the tour with us. I’m meeting people at last! This was the whole reason for coming on the trip.

On the bus over an elderly lady got on who had the highest pitched voice I’ve ever heard! And then another one got on, who almost jumped over Polina’s bag with startling agility. They were both very sweet, and evidently neither spoke Spanish (or at least didn’t want to) because we could hear the rasping language that is Quechwa (and I’ve so spelt that wrong).

In addition to Polina, we also met a Swedish lady called Sara who was just about the most fun ever. She was at the salt mines, and it was really nice to run into her in Uyuni. She greeted us telling us about the people next door who had just come from a terrible tour where the driver was drunk. She said that they were all crying, and she told us this while laughing. She’s the funniest person I’ve ever met.

On the bus over we saw a tornado. A mini one, but it was about 30 metres high anyway. It was one of the most beautiful and fascinating things I’ve ever seen, and I’m not exaggerating this time. It wound its way alongside the road, going in the opposite direction, before slowing to a halt and disappearing back into the sky. It left a dust cloud which sort of evaporated downwards. I was so amazed to have seen it!

The tour

The first thing we saw were the salt flats of Uyuni. These were about ten minutes, or something, outside Uyuni and they were breathtaking. Vast stretches of thick, crunchy salt crystals as far as you could see. It was like walking on hard snow, it was very strange. There were ridges in the shape of hexagons, formed by some special process of which I know nothing. We took loads of photos, including about a hundred trick ones where the car appeared to be resting on someone’s head, or someone standing in someone’s hand, the usual tourist stuff.

There were small pools of very cold, very salty water in which perfectly square crystals of salt had begun to form, just on the surface. It was exquisite.

We also visited the salt hotel. The salt is hard enough for bricks to be able to be made from it, and this hotel was built from salt bricks. As fascinating as it was, it was pretty basic inside, and it was no longer used as a hotel. It now functioned as an obscure little museum, where the entry fee was having to buy sweets from the desk in the corner.

San Juan

San Juan is a small village built out of adobe bricks (i.e. mud bricks). Nearby was a cemetary filled with mummies from before the Incas. The graves were small caves built out of petrified coral (the place was once underwater, many many years ago). The caves may once have been completely sealed, but today there are small holes which allow you to see their gruesome contents.

Looking at the mummies was a very surreal experience because usually you do it from the other side of a pane of glass. If I had really wanted to, I could have gotten into the graves and touched the mummies (which were hundreds of years old). There were about maybe five or six mummies in total, of which some were children’s. All in all it was a fascinating but eerie experience.

Later that night me and Ailis couldn’t sleep for the thought of them crawling out of their graves and attacking us in the night. It was ridiculous! Both of us are 21 years old, and should have known better! We stayed up until the wee small hours dredging our minds for conversation topics until we were finally able to fall asleep.

Talking of accomodation, throughout the tour it was very basic. Not uncomfortable, though, and it was quite fun, but it was freezing cold! Slept in clothes, in a sleeping bag, under the blankets provided for most of the time. Haven’t changed my clothes since Tuesday the 23rd, and neither have I showered, but I can’t smell anything untoward (from me at least) so maybe I got lucky.

The next morning, the cook and the driver ate our fried eggs while we ate stale bread. Well, at least we think that’s what happened, and in any case I didn’t want to eat eggs after the episode in the hospital in Cusco. The cook insisted on playing somw really awful South American music, with the same beat in every song, and some guy shouting words over a tinny, synthesised score. It was utter torture, but never fear! We had our own supply of music to counter the assault on our ears. This consisted of Claire’s CD of quite nice music, a Rolling Stones compilation (which I have tired of utterly) and—and this is the best part—an Abba CD with half the songs in Spanish. By far, our favourite line was “Darme darme darme amor esta noche” (Give me love tonight — a rough approximation of “Gimme gimme gimme a man after midnight”)

Needless to say, our Swedish companion sang along to everything. Sara really made the trip!

Geysers

We saw geysers the next morning after leaving our accomodation at 5am. They were really beautiful, and we were lucky to see the sunrise through the mist with only one jeepful of tourists (who left quite quickly). After that we saw a lake full of hot water. That’s the best way of describing it, it’s difficult to convey how odd a stream of steaming water looks coursing its way through a frozen landscape. Odd, but beautiful, and many photos of the early rising sun were taken.

Sara and Polina both dived (dove?) right in, which I thought was insane but probably a good idea, as insane ideas go, since the air was terrifyingly cold. Getting out apparently wasn’t too much of a problem, by some miracle they managed to maintain some of the heat as they were drying (although there was ice in their hair within minutes of getting out) which made me wonder if I hadn’t missed out on something wonderful. Then it was back into the Jeep to see endless parades of lagunas. Although one of them had flamingoes, which were incredible. That day lunch was really nice; it was rissoles and they were gorgeous.

In fact the food was really good for the whole trip, which was surprising because it didn’t appear to be stored anywhere. Kept eating meat wondering how they kept it fresh, but none of us are ill, so it must be ok.

The most annoying thing in the world

After the enormous journey, in which my coccyx may have been damaged beyond repair by the bumpy road, we arrived in our lodging for last night. I was utterly delighted to discover that my entire bottle of shampoo had emptied itself all over everything in my bag. I was ever so slightly perturbed.

Slept quite well, despite that incident, and the next morning we ate pancakes, which made a changed from the stale bread. Drank two mugs of powdered milk, which is gross, but it actually tasted quite nice. Anyway, we arrived a few hours ago in Tupiza, which is a bigger town and we’re staying in a nice hotel with showers!!! I will be able to wash the shampoo out of my clothes and have a shower, hopefully, although where I am going to get the money from (there is no ATM, and I have Bs. 3 — about 20p) I don’t know.

The best game ever

In San Juan, Polina introduced us to Taiki (I think that’s the name) which consists of a pack of cards with pictures of animals in 4 different colours. I can’t be bothered to explain the rules, suffice it to say that it’s better than other card games I have played (mainly because it’s easier, but also because you get to make animal noises, unlike in something like poker).

Ailis’ news

Ailis has made the Lernster rugby team, which is an excellent oppurtunity. Unfortunately for me it means she’s going to be flying back to England this coming Saturday. I’m consoling myself with what I’m going to do when I get back home:

• Listen to the two CDs I bought over the internet
• Eat peanut butter on toast for the first time in ages
• Buy a new jacket
• Cook a roast
• Cook, exercise and get up early more often
• Get a job
• Learn Flash animation and/or JavaScript

And that’s just for starters! Well, gonna have to sign off now, because I have to pay. Let’s hope this publishes, cos I’ve spent ages on it.

There area bunch of things I have been meaning to blog about for ages and I keep forgetting to do so, so here they are…

Women on the force

In both Peru and Bolivia, I saw loads of women police officers, which I found really reassuring. Don’t know why, but I trust a country that permits women to join the police force. I suppose it helps relieve some of the tension created by police officers carrying rifles and shotguns around, maybe.

Orange juice people

Again, in both Peru and Bolivia, there are travelling orange juice salespeople. They have a cart with bicycle wheels laden with oranges and grapefruit, and they dispense freshly squeezed juice for absolutely no money (S/. 1 in Peru and Bs. 2 in Bolivia). It’s utterly delicious, especially when thirsty.

Drunken man in La Paz

In one of the cafes we ate at in La Paz (Bolivia’s capital) there was a drunken man with his friend. On their table there were about nine full glasses of red wine, and two bottles. The drunken man was wearing a white coat which had numerous red wine splotches over it, and he spilt loads more as he came over to talk to us. His friend was much better dressed, wearing a cravate and having neat hair and stylish glasses. It was a strange partnership.

Meeting people

One of the main reasons I went on this trip was to meet loads of different people. I don’t think I’ve met enough, it’s reasonably annoying. So far my favourite people have been some Israelis in Cusco, who were really fun and laid-back, and a Swedish lady who we met yesterday on the mines tour. She told us that Heidi and Helga are not Swedish names, but that Inga is (although it is very rare, even in Sweden, and is pronounced “Inya”).

In an interesting sidenote, we met a Slovakian couple crossing the border into Bolivia. Alex, by way of introduction, informed them that he had visited Slovakia and told them that the train station in their capital “smelt of wee” and that their main tourist attraction was boring. Well done, that man…

Sock-Monster

Sock-Monster is a cartoon which I have been enjoying almost daily (we seem to be lucky with the number of times we can access the internet). Sock-Monster can be found at www.sock-monster.com. I like the atmosphere of each cartoon, and Sock-Monster himself is amazing.

The couple we keep bumping into

In Pisco, in a restaurant, we happened to notice a couple at a table, the male half of which Claire dubbed “The Beautiful Man” apparently because of his excessive good looks. Anyway, I think they got a little disturbed by the number of times he received glances from our table. They left, and we thought that would be the end of it, but oh no. We saw them again on the bus to the death trip in the Colca canyon, where Claire learned that the female half was called B. Woods (name changed) and that she was diabetic. This knowledge led to Claire naming her “B. Woods, diabetic”. It’s quite awful, but such is our sense of humour, and this is now the label we know her by. These accidental meetings were followed by a further two: one in Cusco, in the hotel we were staying at, and again here in Potosi. It’s getting a little bit strange. We haven’t seen anyone else we’ve met so far, so it’s like we’re following them… More likely they have a copy of Lonely Planet.

The Weather

The weather here has been unexpected… Firstly, I thought it was going to be boiling hot and really sunny, but it hasn’t been. It’s been alternately hot and freezing cold (in the evenings) and it hasn’t rained once! It’s winter down here, but you wouldn’t know most days. It’s really nice, but I do have a farmer’s tan (it’s not hot enough to go topless, plus I’m too shy to do that anyway).

The vegetarian restaurant in Potosi

Cafe Internet Candelabria is really, really good. They serve vegetarian food (as well as a few meat dishes) which are absolutely delcious. Normally I hate veggie food, so this is high praise! The Omelette de verduras and Pie de verduras are particularly good (vegetable omelette and pie).

Well, that’s it!

So here ends the things I keep fogetting to blog about. Not going to be able to blog for about five days after today, because we’re going on a Jeep-trek thing across the salt flats in Uyuni. Uyuni will be the highest point we’ve been to so far, I’m told, so I shall expect to be out of breath the whole time. Oh, by the way, I’ve added a little piece to the previous post, something I forgot to say yesterday, so check it out.

Also, just have to say a quick hello to Ciar, who’s been reading my blog because Ailis doesn’t ever update hers (although Claire says she wants to add something soon…). See you in five days!