BuggslifePhotography, Homebrew, Canoe, Travel, Nature…

All’s good over here. Had a great time seeing Inca and pre-inca ruins including the awesome Machu Picchu last week. Really impressive countryside too all around the region. Cusco, the main base city for most of the big sites, is so unbelievably touristy. I expected a lot but it’s pretty ridiculous. The thing is that the city is actually stunning, full of quality buildings and cool streets along the lines of Bath or York. Just that touts come up to you all the time selling something or other. Out in the country though it was great – villages just as historical and real friendly.

We flew over the Nazca lines too the other day! Really fascinating figures of animals and shapes. The whole terrain is covered with lines as there’s virtually no rain or anything to wash them away so you’re looking at all these car tracks then suddenly you see a condor figure or a monkey with a spiral tail! Loved it. The plane was a 4 seater – I was damn close to chucking up at points. The other girl in the front seat spewed a fair amount but we managed to keep it all down…

So, as I said, all’s good. Off to see some Penguins tomorrow unless they’re b*ggered off! Quite a few times in this trip so far we planned to see penguins only to miss them or have something come up and stop us…

The extreme laid-back attitude continued from Paraguay up into north-east Bolivia with the most frequent answers to questions being “tranquilo” (easy/no worries), “puede ser” (maybe) and “vamos a ver” (let’s wait and see). In the park, at least at times, it was pretty handy that we had both got used to all this over the past month or so because things like the 4×4 pickup breaking down, push starting, getting up in the morning to see a large part of the engine in the passenger seat and the general open itinerary were all part and parcel of the week in the national park.

We had a really quality week involving some excellent treks such as the one on the first day in the park, where we walked through jungle where we saw our first monkey and trekked up to the Meseta, a table top style ledge with an awesome view and they say was the inspiration for Arthur Conan Doyle’s ‘The Lost World’. On my birthday we woke up in the forest where we had camped and walked 40 mins or so across Pampas to a ‘piscina’ which turned out to be a gorgeous big rock pool with stream running into it. Was great to wash off the sweat (sooo much sweat), have a swim, do some diving from the top rocks and saw our first, very small, snake in the stream. On the way back to the camp we saw a Tapir strolling through the Pampas and soon after I heard a thunder style stampede noise which we soon realised was another Tapir running and getting closer to us. The two guys (locals) at the back of the group of 6 looked well worried and started running for it – the Tapir were massive! So got an excellent view of him as he went for the cover of the forest.

Throughout the whole week we saw loads of cool birds such as hawks, vultures, parrots, various types of jungle turkeys, tucans and even a couple of owls. During some of the off road drives and other hikes through jungle and pampas we saw two separate huge groups of Peccary (the guides said they typically go around in groups of 150 – 500!), the biggest lizard I’ve ever seen, a few Agouti (pic below)…

one rare Tayra (the biggest stoat species in South America), some foxes and even a Puma!

We camped in different places and on the second to last day we drove down to a private small estancia. Getting there we made some use of the chainsaw as well as the routine cutting and hacking with machetes and an axe. That night me, Clare and our guide went up the river in a dugout canoe. Edgar, our guide, did all the work and although there was pretty much no current, I managed to mess it up after a minute of taking over. Never try rowing from the middle, always the back or even the front. The trip was absolutely fantastic. We spent about 2 hours or so, most of the time gliding upstream just before sunset. Real tranquil and we saw plenty more birds (different kingfishers, storks…), loads of fish jumping out of the water around us, a paranha that Edgar caught and put back, some scary huge caiman, capybara and a troop of very cute and very curious monkeys in the trees on the river bank. They spent plenty of time assessing what we were so was ideal to sit back and watch the show.

The insects were mad, as expected. Mini bees that dive bomb for your eye-balls, various wasps and hornets, more ticks, a variety of ants, so many butterflies and standard mozzies. Most of these weren’t too bad after you got used to having every part of your showing skin covered with them licking and sometimes chewing the salt from your sweat.

Quite a hard week, tiring, inspiring, eye-opening but with chilled times such as supping on Cairpirinhas (local rum, wild lemons from the jungle and sugar) on my birthday, eating grapefruits and tamarindos plucked from the trees and munching on some cool fodder including piranhas.

After the Capyguara adventure which involved some trekking through reeds and scrub, the girls (Clare and Jenny) noticed some ticks on their clothes. Well, today we noticed a few half buried into our skin. Nice. They all seem to be gone now but it was grim stuff…

So long as all goes to plan we’ll be off at sunrise to the National Park Noel Kempf Mercado for a week…fingers crossed.

What a cool past month it’s been. I left Buenos Aires for Asuncion, the capital of Paraguay and had a real good time around the capital, some of the Chaco where the Mennonite colonies live and then took an awesome 3 day boat ride up the river pretty much up to the Brasil/Bolivia border.

There, I got stuck but luckily I wasn’t alone. After seeing virtually not a single gringo in the country, I met 10 on the boat! A great mix of Irish, English, French and a Spanish guy (presidente/rey/Juan the man). We all got stuck in a small village and soon became local celebraties…memories of Bahia Negra! We had a good laugh amongst trying to secure a boat to take us further up the river. At one point we finally made a deal, packed the stuff on the boat, climbed aboard and were off. Three of us layed back on the roof looking at the vivid milky way until we stopped 1km up stream. A few complications, the main one being that we were sinking, meant that we had to abandon ship. We were wondering why everyone below was shreeking and shouting over the noise of the engine!

Anyway, a lot happened including some real fun days including a trek with Travis, our local mate/guide, and his horses, some failed fishing attempts, some boat rides including one where Manon and me went ‘hunting’ with some locals, lots of beer, footy with the local kids (Leandro was legendary and Arturo was quality) and meeting cool people including the local navy military.

Since then we passed into Brasil for a bit and then onto Bolivia where I met up with Clare last week. We just walked out to a lake 6km out of the village where we are to catch the sunset and also saw loads of Capyguara (like mini furry hippos!) and loads of birds.

So all’s good and so far Bolivia seems great!

Well, I was robbed. England managed to fight and struggle and, in the end, whimper their way past Ecuador.

Meanwhile, Friday night my small rucksack was knicked from under my table in quite a posh cafe where I was eating and waiting to move on to another city in Argentina.

A couple of weeks ago Clare and I moved off in separate directions, her North to Bolivia, me back South through part of Chile and into Argentina again. She starts her month volunteer work tomorrow having just done a week’s Spanish course.

I spent some time climbing a mountain, too much time in 2 coastal resort type towns, got temporarily hooked on a gambling pinball type game, saw lots of hummingbirds and forests of wild Chilean palm trees….then in Argy I checked out a nice and leafy Mendoza and experienced the first proper festivities after their 6-0 win. I then b*ggered off to more remote areas again, saw some cool Indigenous rock carvings from around 500AD and Bovedas dated at around 1500AD, which were cool to photo domed buildings but didn’t quite grasp what they really did.

Then spent about 5 days in the mountains looking for snow. I found snow – quite a lot of it – but not on the Argentinian resort. So after a few days at “Puente del Inca”, which is a natural stone bridge with the coolest colours and patterns created by thermal springs and chemicals such as sulphur that have ran down the cliff faces, I crossed back to Chile to spend 2 days snowboarding! Portillo was a cool resort – all in jobby – so used the outdoor thermal pool set by the lake, played some B ball in the gym, some table footy, table tennis, pool and a good and tiring 5-a-side footy match with a mix of Brazilians, Chileans, Argentinians and even a Yank. Also had a quality night out with Alejandro (room-mate), the nut-case Albarita and all her fellow workers from the resort in a proper cool pub across the road.

As for the boarding, the snow was pretty good with some rough hard areas and some lush slightly sticky powder. The 2nd day I went for it properly trying off piste with Alejandro, really hard runs and some jumps – some of which I even landed. However, I also had two proper crashes resulting in aches and whiplash that is just going now about 3 days after.

So, most of what I told you had cool pictures to go with it but the camera along with my passport was stolen. So sorry! Other stuff knicked weren’t too important but will take effort to replace but hey…

Off to Buenos Aires again now to get a new passport!

So, what have we been up to in ‘La region de los lagos’?

Well, we’ve been for some good walks through a variety of forests…

…sat in some trees…

…visited these great rapids
(Los Saltos)…

…kept an eye out for lots of wildlife…

…the sea lions live in the river of a city (Valdivia) and eat scraps from the fish market. They are grumpy, loud, smelly and pretty scary up close…

…seen a load of cool birds (here’s one of the kingfishers we saw).

We leave this region tomorrow (27th) and have loved the countryside.

The cool spiner thing pays dividends!! My investment of maybe 3 quid for a blue bait thing (like a spinner but not metal) and fishing line has helped me to my first catch along with providing some excuses to idle away good time by nice rivers and lakes. After the excitment of the first proper ‘bite’ last week I caught a nice brown trout from a boat in one of my favourite places so far. A tranquil, beautiful setting with a village of 12 houses on the river bank where it seems to rain almost constantly.

idle
adj. idler, idlest
v. intr.
1 a. Pass time without working or while avoiding work.
1 b. Avoiding work or employment; lazy: shiftless, idle youth. (See Synonyms at lazy).
2 a. To move lazily and without purpose.

The island of Chiloe was good fun. Real nice people, great seafood, lots of coast and plenty of rain but also sun….hence we saw loads of rainbows whilst there! There are also a load of legends and mythical creatures which were fun to learn about. Trauco is a bit of a Geezer. Good summary about him on wikipedia here.

We wanted a better view of the houses on stilts (Palafitos) and so I chatted to some guys who were unloading their boat and managed to borrow it (well, he wanted a couple of quid) for a bit. So I rowed us up the channel and got up close to the houses which was cool.

By the way, to everyone in England enjoying the beginning of summer, it’s damn cold over here!

We met Michelle, a kiwi traveller, on Chiloe so just added a link to her blog on the right. Weird to see our names appear in another blog (16th & 17th May).

Also linked Paula’s Spanish lessons she does in Buenos Aires. We only had 1 day in the end but was cool to be given tasks and split up in such a crazy place.

Talking food. Our diet for the past 2-3 weeks or so has been made up of a fair bit of fish. It started of in south southern Chile, where we went through maybe 4 great Salmon dishes and also a quality HUGE smoked salmon which gave us a couple of great dinners and a few tasty lunches.

Since working our way further north (including an epic period – the tale can wait – of about 4 days hitching through some purely stunning scenery of rivers, valleys, lakes, mountains and temperate rain forest) we started to try more seafood including a great sea bass.

Most of this has been very recently on the island of Chiloe where they have local dishes similar to soups, stews and paella full of mussels, clams, different fish, octopus, oysters and plenty of things we didn’t recognise and also couldn’t work out after asking. Pretty much all of it has been really quality. The only worry was the other day when my swordfish, which was amazingly thick, had an uncooked patch in the middle. There’s only one thing worse than over cooked fish…uncooked fish. Although how does Sushi work?? Anyway, after I’d eaten a lot of it, it was re-cooked although I still left a tiny patch from the middle and so, technically, didn’t polish off the plate which is very very unlike me.

Finally, a word on Alfajores. These are sweet things made in Argentina and consist of two layers sandwiched together with a filling of Dulce de Leche and usually finished off with coconut shavings. The 2 layers are usually like shortbread but vary from soft donut type stuff, to more cakey to simply hard bread layers.

The chileans sell them too but try as they may, they rarely make them as well. You also get some dodgy packaged ones but the only great ones are fresh from the bakery. This has been the basis of our snacking diet for ages now and they deserve a mention. Bananas (often not great quality) and chocolate milk have played a lesser role than expected.

By the way, Dulce de Leche is a thick, very sweet caramel type thing of marmite texture but somewhere between chocolate paste and treacle in flavour (that’s round here anyway; the rest of South America have their own versions).

P.S. Had my first attempt at fishing with my newly purchased cool spinner thing in a river the other day and, although nothing caught, had a dramatic ‘bite’ when a fish followed the bate towards the surface but missed it when lunging and jumped out of the water!

Note: for only the 2nd time so far, I borrowed these pics on this entry.

We’ve covered a hell of a lot of ground now having passed back up through Argentinian Patagonia and just crossed into Chile the other day.

This picture says a few things about Patagonia…

Long straight roads, vastness and broken windscreens! I only noticed one which wasn’t broken so far. Most are so knackered up it’s mad. This one is typical and is from the top deck of a bus we took.

What the pic doesn’t say is how incredibly big and deep blue the skies here have been.

Oh yeah, a new hitch-hiking experience. We had some more success last week hitchin from Perito Moreno to the nearest town 60km away. On the way there Clare got the comfort and warmth of a front seat and I got the open bit of a big pick up. Twas cool to have 360 degrees views. I loved it but was lucky I had my hardcore snowboard jacket and snowboard gloves on me as the Patagonian wind was icy as!

Nice town too – Los Antiguos – on a river and huge lake.

On the way back a cool well chilled dude gave us a lift in his car, chatting about clubbing in England and stuff.

Since then we left the comfort of our own pad and are in fantastic surroundings in Chile. This current town – Coyhaique – has mountainess views on all sides which are cool as they all have patches of forest of different autumnal colours.

I’m in Perito Moreno (the town rather than the glacier) at the moment and have just had a great week.

First of all, we managed to blag the coolest pad to stay. It’s a cabin (kind of flat/apartment) all to ourselves! With 3 double bedrooms and a spare single, bathroom, big hallway room, a cool kitchen with 2 tables and even our own garden! You can’t appreciate your own time and space until you’ve been staying in other people’s for 6 weeks. And all of this at a rate cheaper if not the same as hostels we’ve been staying at. Sweeeeet.

From here we made a 2 day trip with a local guide (Daniel – a big, friendly bloke with a big beard and a gaucho hat). We drove for ages in his huge pick-up (with loads of features including a snorkel for the engine so it can keep going when submerged), maybe 3-4 hours, to a lake I read about before Xmas – Lago Posadas. It was really cool as the landscpae is full of loads of different colours, deep reds, sandy yellows, turquoise everywhere you look.

Two lakes are divided by a narrow bit of land (an isthmus I´m told) but the lakes are both quite different colours themselves. We spent time fascinated by the different stones and pebbles, setting up camp on the isthmus, walking, a little bit of fishing (spinning) and, of course, making a fire. Later we cooked up a feast on the fire including Daniel’s freshly caught trout! Mmmmmmmmm.

During the evening it was real peaceful being 30km from the nearest village – population 290.

The next day, after our routine transport problems that seem to happen every Weds (the motorbike at the horse trek and the miserable hitch hiking) of the pick-up’s battery being dead and not being able to push start it due to thick mud from the all night rain (luck came from a jump start later), we made our way towards the cave of the hands. The journey away from the lake was classic pushing the pick-up to the limit; slipping and skidding through the thick mud and deep puddles.

A few hours later we were passing through the awesome valley and started seeing a lot of guanacos (similar ish to llamas) and ostriches (local name choique). The caves are mostly overhanging cliffs but also one big cave that were used by idigenous indians (Telheulche) who painted the images using the different earth colours mixed with water and fat from guanacos. It was fantastic to see them all, mostly pairs of hands but also maps of guanaco trails, an iguana, guanaco figures, hunting scenes, even an ostrich hoof print and dots made by dipping animal droppings in the paint and throwing them up at the overhangs! The oldest paintings are dated at 9,300 years old.

We also walked along the river in the canyon basin and saw cool tucu tucus (rodents that look like big gerbils – kind of), a condor and an eagle.

A cool 2 day venture getting us back to our pad late the 2nd day.

We spent some time at Ushuaia on (the island) Tierra del Fuego – have a look at a map, it’s mad when you look at how south it is. Often referred to as the End of the World it’s the last stop before Antartica.

We had a good time here. The town is reasonably touristy, nice shops and good atmosphere. It’s on a slope starting from the bay so you get good little views around town with the mountains rising up to the north.


We did 2 separate day treks; the first up one of the mountains with the whole scenery plastered with deep snow. So some great, tranquil sights and landscape…but…some damn hard, icy, wet terrain. The view from the top was worth it and the sliding down slopes and the immense snowball fights on the way down were great fun. Although the last half hour was a bit of a race for a heated room to prevent frostbite.

The second trek took us through some of my favourite surroudings with a few different forests and a general path following a river up another mountain, so we had some cool rope bridges to cross. One well scary, high up but luckily quite short. All this led to a small glacier at the top that was kind of stuck in the highest cliffs.

After the stay here we had our first taste of hitch hiking in South America…

We did well to get 3 separate lifts, the first a quick one to the police check point on the edge of town, 2nd to nowhere – just nothing there – the third was the life saver. It was probably the most miserable day so far weather-wise – drizzly, cold and WINDY. The 3rd car was 2 Spanish guys who had rented it for the day, they were cool and took us to the next town. From there we cornered a minibus cab thing and paid a bit to get to the next town where, at least, there was accommodation. Rio Grande.

This horse trek was great fun! We got picked up by Luciano early and drove out to an Estancia (farm estate) way out towards a lake (Lago Roca). A slow start; after finding out there were no horses in the stable, failing to get the motorbike started after push starts down a hill, wondering about the Estancia getting headbutted by a resident sheep and exploring with the local pair of cool dogs, Luciano returned with a small horse from a few fields away. He saddled him up and then rode off again with the dogs and returned with a herd of horses!

So, we eventually had a horse each, Remanco (calm) for me, Caballito (little horse) for Clare and Montana for Luciano. We then spent the rest of the day trekking up hills (stopping occasionally for another swig of Cognac!) and around a lake and saw a couple of cool foxes, flamingos, loads of birds of prey and a couple of huge hares.


We also saw fantastic cave paintings from the indigenous indians who used to live in the area.

A great day out finished off with a BBQ, Argentinian style, of the best steak we have had so far and plenty of wine.

Perito Moreno is an awesome Glacier and one of the most active in the world. It advances at a rate of 2m per day! The first echoing crack was a shock and we heard plenty more throughout the day and saw chunks break off.

I took loads of photos but can’t seem to get them onto the blog (managed this one!)but they’ll have their own album on Snapfish soon(ish).

A quick overview (by someone else) of the glacier with photos can be read here…