South America and America: February 2009

After Salta we went on to Iguazu Falls which were as huge as we thought. We spent a couple of days viewing the falls from both the Brazilian side and the Argentinian side. The Argentinian side is by far the better, as well as getting closer, and having better walk ways we were also able to get a boat, which took us under one of the smaller falls. There should be some video posted to give you an idea.

After Iguazu it was straight to Buenos Aires for 5 days. Unfortunately ´Boca Juniors´ weren´t playing so we had to make do with a stadim tour instead, tickets for previous games on sale at the hostel were over 100 pounds so would have been an expensive do. Speaking of the hostel we had our first problem with bedbugs or at least Joanna and Beadle did. We counted over 50 bites on Joanna and Beadle wasn´t far off, I managed to get away with none, but had to apply the bite cream 4 times a day which wasn´t fun either. The last night we went for one last steak at a place recommended as the best steak house in Argentina, and it was. Expensive by Argentinian standards at 20 pounds each, but that included free champagne whilst you wait for a table (1hr 20mins) a bottle of red and a huge tray of side orders such as quail eggs in ramikins.

The next mornig we caught the ferry to Montevideo (Uruguay) with the intention of travelling up the coast of Uruguay and Brazil to Rio for the carnival. The idea was to take it easy on the beaches before the mayhem of Rio, and that´s what we did. In Uruguay we stayed in La Padrerra, and Punta Del Diablo, doing nothing but relaxing on the beach. In Cabo Polonio in between Padrerra and Diablo we did get metres away from a seal colony but apart from that we just took it easy each day and each night. Brazil was slightly more eventful in that we rented a surf board on Ihla Do Mel (the honey island), but apart from learning to surf it was much the same as Uruguay. The final stop before Rio was Ihla do Grande, but here we couldn´t even relax on the beach as we had our first taste of bad whether, with tropical storms for 3 days before deciding to leave early for Rio.

Above pic: Joanna on the famous steps in Santa Teresa (5 mins from our hostel). You may recognise the steps from either the Snoop Dogg / Pharrel Williams music video for ´Beautiful´ or U2´s, ´Walk On´ music video. Whatever takes your fancy.