Buenos Aires

Hola!

The last post I wrote finished in Buenos Aires, a city which I knew literally nothing about but had booked to stay in for 7 nights. 

My first day there was pretty much taken up by sleeping off the exhaustion of the 22 hour (possibly longer) bus journey it had taken to get there. That evening I met ANOTHER Dutch girl called Dilan and we went for dinner and decided to join the party at the hostel which ended in a huge open air night club. Unfortunately I couldn’t muster the energy to stay for sunrise but was pretty impressed by my effort nonetheless. The next day Dilan and I went to the weekend market in the San Telmo district. I ate an absolutely delicious pizza in the indoor area of the market, which reminded me a lot of markets in London. 

The street market stretched for what seemed like miles and sold everything from shoes to antiques to musical instruments so we spent a couple of hour browsing and enjoying the atmosphere.

That evening I had a bottle of delicious Argentinian Malbec on the roof of the hostel with two English boys who were in my dorm room. We ended up going to the classy Palermo district for drinks and some food, and after accepting that no clubs were open on a Sunday night, decided to come back to the hostel. The next day I spent relaxing and joined others from the hostel that night to watch the famous La Bomba De Tiempo which is another huge open air venue with a 15 person drum band who improvise amazing music to a very lively crowd. The description of this doesn’t do the actual event justice, I had such a brilliant time there and recommend it to anyone going to Buenos Aires! 

One of the best things about it was that it finishes at 10pm, so I got my first decent bedtime since arriving in the city! This early(ish) night meant that I could make the most of the following day and that morning I set off to the Recoleta Cemetery, famous for being very decedent and the final resting place of Eva Perón (more famously known as Evita). I loved peacefully strolling through the lavish vaults but at times there would be something that would send a shiver up your spine, such as a open vault door or an old coffin on show. 

I walked back through the city, through some of the many parks and past gorgeous buildings which reminded me a lot of Paris or London. The city itself has a very European feel to it as many of the inhabitants descend from European immigrants who arrived in the city when the economy was particularly strong, mainly from Italy, France and Spain. That evening the hostel had organised a free Tango class, which I took part in and managed not to step on any toes! 

The next day I went on a walking tour of the Boca area of the city, a completely different side of Buenos Aires. Boca is famous for a few things, being the birthplace of Tango, the many colourful houses and a world famous football team, which counts Tevez and Maradona as some of its past players. We walked around with our guide who told us that the houses may have originally been painted with paint stolen from the boats which came into port here to protect the wood from the elements.

The area itself feels very safe during the day but has a reputation for being dangerous at night and in the less popular streets. We had an incredible sandwich for lunch and then got to go inside the Boca stadium before heading back to the hostel. 

I met my new roommates that evening, two Spanish girls, Carla and Sara, who were living in London and got on with them instantly. The night we all decided to go out on a pub crawl that night with the hostel, which was great to get to know some of the other backpackers.

The next day I took the girls to San Telmo again for round two of that awesome pizza and we stopped off at Cafe Tortoni on the way back, a glamorous high-ceiling-ed coffee house which is famous for being the meeting place for many politicians, writers and artists in the past. 

On my penultimate day in the city I had grown to love I went to the bus terminal to book my bus to Brazil and then walked back to the hostel through more beautiful parks and streets. I met up with the Spanish girls and some others from the hostel in an area that reminded me a lot of London’s Southbank and we had a few beers, some heated but interesting debates and some delicious food. That night we went to Palermo again and found a really cool quirky bar which we stayed in and danced for a while. 

So there we have it, my time in Buenos Aires was full of meeting great people, partying and even fitting in some culture along the way. My next stop was Foz Do Iguazu in Brazil where I would be meeting Grant and starting my final two weeks on the trip, but I’ll fill you in on that next time :)

Thanks for reading!

Emma 

Chile and Northern Argentina

Hola!

I am currently 1,989km from where I wrote my previous post having travelled from the north of Chile to Buenos Aires in Argentina. I'll pick up where I left off, which was in San Pedro De Atacama, one of my absolute favourite towns of this trip. It is a very laid back town, with avenues of one story, Wild West buildings housing restaurants, boutiques, hostels and travel agents.

There are no cars in the centre of the small town and lots of people on bikes and strolling around enjoying the atmosphere. There is also a beautiful little plaza with lots of trees and flowers, where the sound of birds fill the air. My second day there I met up with the Swiss couple I had done the jeep tour with and, after one of the best (if not THE best) croissant I had ever had in the towns chic French bakery, we rented bicycles and rode to the Valle De Luna, which is a huge expanse of desert land with many impressive rock formations, caves, volcanoes and sand dunes. 

The desert here is said to be the driest in the world and as we cycled in the midday sun there we could certainly believe that! The landscape was worth the effort though and really did feel like the surface of the moon at points. 

We came back to the town to relax in the plaza and have a well deserved ice cream before setting off again to watch the sunset on our bikes. By the time we returned the bikes at the end of the day we were really tired but managed to stay awake for a delicious pizza, a bottle of red wine and some live music that evening. 

The following day I left San Pedro, even though I could have happily spent a week there, and made my way across the border in Argentina and to a town called Purmamarca. The bus ride there was incredible. I was lucky enough to book the seat above the driver and so was treated to panoramic views the entire way. We past salt lake, salt flats, volcanoes, desert and wound up and down a jaw dropping mountain range full of colourful mineral deposits. 

When we arrived at Purmamarca we got our first view of what the town is famous for, the mountains of 7 colours, a glorious collection of mountains right behind the town which are vividly colourful and almost defy belief! I found a cute little family run hostel and took a stroll around the tiny town before grabbing an empanada for dinner and hitting the hay. 

I had been told that the best time to see the mountains of 7 colours was at around 10am so the next morning I decided to try and find a place where I could get the best view without having to pay $10, like you did for the viewpoint in town. I had read online that there was a spot across the road and up a hill so I set off. After a bit of searching I managed to find the path and climbed up until I had a completely uninterrupted and brilliant view. The best thing about it was that I had the whole spot to myself and so could sit in silence and try to take in what I was seeing. I even managed to catch the moon setting behind the mountain, magical! (The following pictures have NOT been photoshopped, this is really what this place looks like!)

After sitting for half an hour I made my way back into town where I had a quick lunch before catching a bus to my next stop, Tilcara. 

Another stunning bus ride later I arrived and walked through the relaxed, bohemian town to my hostel. The hostel itself was awesome, possibly the best hostel I have ever stayed in. It really felt like home and everyone was so welcoming, not to mention the place itself was very cool, with lots of interesting things hung on the walls, a vegetable patch, hammocks and a cool bar area where we had a BBQ and drinks that night. 

That afternoon I walked to the nearby pre-Incan ruins and admired the mountain ranges which surround the town. Back at the hostel I met a British girl called Anna and we enjoyed a bottle of Argentinian red wine (only £3!) before the BBQ. 

The next day I had a very relaxed day at the hostel. Anna had met a tattoo artist the day before and organised to have a tattoo done at the hostel, so I watched and gave some moral support in the morning. I then spent the rest of the day chilling in the hammock until it was time to head to the bus terminal for my bus to Salta with Anna. I could have stayed much longer in Tilcara but I still had a long way to go.

Salta is a beautiful city, and after saying goodbye to Anna the morning after we arrived I decided to take a walk around and book some excursions. The first one was a city tour which took us up to the viewpoint for the city, through the centre and through the suburbs. The following day I set off on the other excursion, a full day tour to Cafayate, the wine making district near Salta.

The scenery on the way to the valley where the wine is made was once again mind blowing. Loads of crazy mountains and rock formations created millions of years ago when this area was under water (you can still find seashells in the rocks).

 We visited two vineyards in Cafayate and tried white, rose and the famous Argentinian Malbec at both as well as learning about the wine making process and enjoying the beautiful surroundings. 

We had lunch in the town of Cafayate, which was a peaceful place with a huge plaza surrounded by restaurants and independent artisan shops. After lunch we started to make our way back to Salta, stopping at the most impressive viewpoints and natural formations on the way back. 

The following day I took the bus I had been dreading my entire trip, from Salta down to Buenos Aires. The trip took at total of 22 hours!! If I am completely honest, it really didn’t well that long, I slept pretty well and had either nice views or programmes downloaded on Netflix to pass the time. 

Right, I think I’ll leave it there and fill you in on what I’ve been doing in Buenos Aires in the next post :)

Thanks again for reading!

Emma x

Highs and lows (and not just the altitude)

Hola!

Since I last wrote I have had the lowest and possibly the highest points of the trip so far in a very short period of time. I'm now in Chile in a charming town called San Pedro De Atacama but my last week in Bolivia is one I'll never forget. 

Marjolein and I arrived in Sucre, the previous capital of Bolivia, after a very stressful experience of getting on the wrong bus at La Paz although, as always happens when you travel, things worked out in the end. Our first day in the city was a very relaxed one as we tried to recover from the night bus and we explored some of the area near our hostel. The city is known as the white city as a lot of the buildings bear the signature white exteriors of Spanish colonial architecture, making it a very beautiful place. 

The next morning we signed up for the walking tour and learned about the rich history of Sucre, which was where the first rebellion against the Spanish in South America began, where the national courts of Bolivia are held and where the richest man in Bolivia once built a park complete with Parisian statues and a miniature eiffel tower just to propose to his wife. 

That afternoon I had heard of a dinosaur museum in the town which had hundreds of dinosaur footprints in situ so we jumped on a (very slow) local bus to visit it. When we arrived we were disappointed to find that the only times they do tours to the footprints was at 12 or 1pm, which we had missed. Instead of paying the entrance fee we stood outside where we could get a view of the footprints from a distance, well at least we can say we saw them. 

The next day I woke up feeling really ill, I must have picked up a stomach bug somewhere because even getting out of bed was a struggle. This was esepcially disappointing because Marjolein, another dutch girl called Erna and I had decided to take the night bus to Tupiza in the south of the country that evening. As the day went on I realised that there was no way getting a bus was a good idea so I booked another two nights to rest at the hostel. Luckily, as Marjolein left, Sara (the other girl I had been to the amazon with) arrived and we spent the day doing nothing, which is always better to do with some company. The following day I woke up feeling somewhat better and decided to try and eat and do something besides lying horizontally. That afternoon, we took the bus to a castle on the outskirts of the city which the same man who had built the park had built for his beloved wife and their 200 adopted children. The special thing about this castle is that it is nearly completely pink, so we spent some time exploring its halls pretending to be princesses (because who wouldn't want a pink castle). 

That evening I felt well enough to get the bus to Tupiza, and arrived very early the next morning. After a nap I went and booked to go horse riding in the area around the town which is famous for being where Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid apparently met their grisly end. The horse riding was amazing, I really felt like I was in a cowboy film, riding through the dramatic orange rocky landscape. 

The next day I set off, with Torre Tours, on what is considered the highlight of any trip to Bolivia, a four day jeep tour, ending at the world famous salt flats of Uyuni, which are the largest on earth. My jeep was made up of a Swiss couple called Marc and Sarah, a woman from Denmark called Mette and our tour guide Pancheato and his wife Philamena, our cook. Pancheato was a tiny, big-hearted, and excitable indigenous man and although Philamena started off being quite shy, she ended up being very outgoing and funny. As everyone spoke some level of Spanglish we managed to understand each other most of the time and Pancheato was great at telling us all about the incredible nature we saw along the way. On the first day we visited a huge sand rock structure that looked like a natural cathedral, the ruins of a Spanish colonial town and saw countless beautiful views from the car. 

On day two we visited a huge white lake, which we had completely to ourselves. We then stopped in a mini salt flat where Pancheato explained how the mineral borax formed under the layer of sodium. 

We then drove to the green lake, where you could see a huge volcano in the background. 

Just before lunch we had a dip in the natural hot springs with views of a lake full of flamingos and then in the afternoon we got to visit a thermal area, where there was a geyser producing huge plumes of smoke and lots of bubbling and spitting hot pools.

The final activity of the day was to see the red lake, where we were able to get closer to the flamingos and appreciate the vivid colours of the lake. 

Day three was a day full of amazing rock formations. We started at a huge rock that looked like the world cup trophy, then one which looked like a giant camel. Pancheato took us to a really impressive rocky valley where we all climbed to the top to get a breathtaking panoramic view. We were quite surprised when we saw Philamena climbing up too, in her ballet pumps and traditional layered skirt, but she did it like a pro and sang us a song at the top. 

Our next stop was a serene lake, where we sat for a while in silence enjoying the sounds of ducks and watching the occasional llama grazing in the nearby marshy fields.

Next we stopped at a viewpoint where you could gaze down on the 'anaconda' river far below before we having a picnic lunch in an incredibly peaceful valley, which once again we had to ourselves (apart from the numerous sheep and their old Bolivian shepard).

 That evening we stayed in a hotel just on the outskirts of the salt flats which was built entirely of salt. We got our first experience of the salt flats that night when we drove onto it to watch the sunset.

We woke up at 4:30am the following day and drove once again onto the salt flats to watch the sun rising from one of the 32 islands that can be found there. This island is made partially of coral which formed when the slat flats were a huge lake hundreds of thousands of years ago. The coral was the perfect host for cacti and so the island was completely covered in these HUGE plants.

After some breakfast at the island we set off across the impossibly vast salt flats and and found a perfect place to take the obligatory salt flat optical illusion pictures (see below). 

We then continued to drive across the flats and briefly visited the now illegal salt hotel on the flats themselves before heading off the salt and into Uyuni the nearest town. Uyuni itself is a very ugly and dirty town with nothing much to do and I was very glad I had decided to start my tour from Tupiza rather than Uyuni like many tourists do. After visiting the overly touristy 'train cemetery' we stopped for our final meal together before bidding a very very fond farewell to Pancheato and Philamena and killing some time in Uyuni before boarding a bus to Chile.

The border crossing to Chile was very intense, with drug dogs, top to bottom searches of the coach and a full check of the contents of everyones bags but eventually we got through and made it to San Pedro De Atacama. 

And so that is Bolivia finished. I highly recommend a trip here to anyone who loves outstanding nature and a healthy dose of adventure (on an amazingly small budget)! 

Thanks for reading :) 

Emma x

Lovely Lakes, Crazy Cities and The Amazing Amazon!

  Hola!

So, I’ve been REAAAALLY bad at keeping up to date with this and I apologise. So I am promise I am going to keep this brief but still tell you about all the awesome stuff I’ve been up to since I arrived in Bolivia. 

My first stop was Copacabana, a sleepy town the other side of Lake Titicaca from Peru. I spent a few days here relaxing at an awesome hostel called Joshua Eco hostel whose mission was to be completely self-sustainable and had incredible vegetarian food, very comfy hammocks and free yoga classes! 

One day I took the boat over to Isla Del Sol, an island the Incas believed was the birthplace of the sun! On the boat I met two Dutch girls (yes more Dutch people!) Marjolein and Sara. We spent the night on the island and had a brilliant dinner at a restaurant called Las Velas which was in the middle of a forest and had no electricity, so everything was by candlelight. 

I returned to copacabana the next day and travelled to La Paz that evening where I met up with Sara and Marjolien again in the Wild Rover hostel. We had a few drinks at the bar that night and ended up in one of La Paz’s infamous clubs. The next day I had a much needed lie-in and we explored a little of the local area however the following day I got to see much more during a walking tour, which took us to the witches market, a couple of churches, plazas and taught us a lot about the culture of the city.

The next day was full of food and finished off with a trip on the Telefonica, a huge network of ski-lifts that the president has built to connect the sprawling districts of the city. It was beautiful seeing the city from above and being able to see the sunset and the millions of twinkling lights as far as the eyes could see. 

In the morning we caught a flight into the Amazon rainforest for the exciting activity I booked a while ago, a three day wildlife tour on the Amazon river! The flight there was beautiful, over the Andes and the incredible jungle. Getting off the plane was a bit of a shock, as we had come from the colder weather in La Paz to the hot and crazily humid climate of Rurrenabaque. We relaxed by the pool at the hostel trying to escape the heat and prepared for our excursion the next day with Fluvial Travel. We left the hostel at 9:30 the following morning and zoomed into the jungle on a very dusty and bumpy road in a rickety Toyota. After three hours of driving and the occasional stop to view some road-side wildlife, we reached the river where our little boats were waiting for us. 

We travelled along the river for 2 hours in our boats. The first alligator and capybara we saw we took tons of photos and stopped to watch for a while, however by the end of the 2 hours we had seen countless numbers of both and it had almost become normal. 

Our camp was basic but charming and the food was delicious! We woke up with the sounds of talapoin monkeys scuttling over our heads and sometimes even poking their heads into our room to see if there was some stray food they could cheekily grab lying around. 

That morning we got suited and booted for our first activity, anaconda hunting. Yep, really. Our guide wasn’t the most talkative guy so we followed him through snake infested fields with not much of an idea of what we were about to do. Soon the fields turned to a marsh which got deeper and deeper until we all had swamp water in our boots. 

Trudging through a swamp where you know anacondas, rattlesnakes, and alligators are living is a strange experience, but to be honest my biggest concern was trying not to get my wellies stuck in the thick mud. We were all getting tired and a bit frustrated with the lack of information when we heard that another group had found a snake. I was desperate for all my effort not to be in vain and so marched straight through a VERY deep part to get to where the snake had been spotted. Luckily we all got there in one piece and got the chance to see this beautiful animal up close. 

That afternoon we all had lunch and a siesta before jumping back in our trusty boat for a spot of fishing, piranha fishing. We tried a few spots with little luck but at our third area we managed to catch 11 of the fish using fresh meat as our bait. When I say ‘we’ managed to catch I really mean that our guide managed to catch, the rest of the group were all pretty awful at it. We are the piranhas for dinner that night and they were actually delicious, an Amazonian version of fish&chips! 

I woke up the next day to a very strange sound and it took me a while to realise that it was a howler monkey. The noise was unbelievably loud and like nothing I have ever heard before, almost alien! The howling went on for about 40 mins and after snoozing for a while afterwards in relative silence we started the day. And what an amazing day it was! We took the boat for about 20 mins past the alligators we had become accustomed to and got to a wider and deeper area of the river. Here the guide stopped the boat and told us to jump in. Yep, jump into the water that we were all too aware was teeming with alligators and piranhas (and who knows what else)! Nevertheless, I did it. It may seem crazy, and looking back it probably was, but the reasoning behind it was that in that part of the river lived the beautiful and elusive pink Amazonian dolphins! 

We swam close to a pod of them for a while, which was absolutely magical! We then got back in the boat and went slightly downstream and just watched them making bubbles and giving us a glimpse of their fins and noses every so often. We returned pretty chuffed, showered, had our final delicious meal and rode the boat back to where our cars were waiting to pick us up to take us back to Rurrenabaque. During the car journey we got one final wildlife wonder, when the driver stopped the car and guided us to see a sloth and her baby chilling out in a tree, which was just the cherry on top for me! 

Those three days were seriously some of the most surreal, exciting and adventurous days I’ve experienced and I highly recommend to anyone who is thinking of visiting Bolivia (just remember your suncream and insect repellant!)

The next day in Rurrenabaque Marjolein, Sara and I went on a hike next to the river in the morning and in the afternoon took a quick boat ride to the other side of the river, where you can find an abandoned 5-star hotel, which it’s rumoured that Brad Pitt once stayed in. I don’t know the full history (you’ve got google for that) but the reason it was abandoned has something to do with one of the preset dents of the country being killed, apparently. It’s been unused since 2010 and the buildings are really starting to crumble, we walked through old hotel suites, still with beds and working taps, under roofs now habituated by bats, past a kitchen with cutlery and pans still on the drying rack, and to the natural waterfall pool which must have been the centre point of the once lavish hotel. 

We left Rurrenabaque with a head full of new memories and returned to the now stormy La Paz, where we got ripped off by the taxi driver straight away (classic) and spent the rest of the day relaxing and eating. I’m now on a bus in the main terminal at La Paz, having said a fond goodbye to Sara, waiting to leave with Marjolein for our next stop Sucre. 

Wow, I’m quite proud of how relatively concise that post was, I hope you enjoyed!

Emma x