Buenos Aires - Auckland - Sydney - Melbourne: 13/11 - 15/11

On the plane we were served a meal at about 330am by a badly dressed and bi-lingual steward, who spoke normally to the Spanish-speakers in Spanish but then to obviously white folk like myself pulled out the most outrageously posh Queen's English accent I've heard in a long time to say, 'Sir, would you care for the beef, or the pasta?'. Bizarre.

Sleep. Wake, Sleep, shit movies, 13 hours across the Pacific, Auckland, up again, cross the Tasman and finally to Sydney. Michelle and I said bye byes; she was heading up to see her family in Brisvegas and I was to stay a night in Sydney before my flight back to Melbourne the following day. I caught the train to Newtown and marvelled at that ultra-clean, ultra-rich and ultra-nice suburb, while trying to avoid being hit by cars on the wrong side of the road and then wondering why they were stopping to let me cross the road at the pedestrian crossings. I made it to my Hospitality Club (like Couchsurfing) connection Jonathan's house inside of which a party was underway to celebrate the annual Newtown Festival and outside of which the Festival itself happened too. I also took a walk down King St, Newtown (otherwise known as The Coolest Place In The World) where I was almost lost without my sunglasses... Man, it's lucky I'm hot and have a wacky hair-cut, otherwise no-one would have taken any notice of me! That evening Jonathan shouted me pizza, we discussed the end of capitalism and I tested out my blog-showing skills - not a bad effort, I think, got through the whole year in about an hour. Thanks for everything, Jon, very generous of you :)

The next morning I set off for the airport and caught the plane back to Melbourne. Everything in that process had gone way too smoothly... surely there shouldve been a breakdown, or a delay, or a roadblock, or a public holiday? But no, everything just (mas o menos) works here... My Mum was waiting for me at the airport! Thanks Mum! x() On the way back to her place in Montmorency I had a chance to reflect on returning to Australia - passing through my mind were thoughts like 'Man I miss chewing coca leaves', 'I'm really going to have to concentrate not to putting my used shit-stained toilet paper into the bathroom waste-paper baskets' and 'Geez, maybe I should become a heroin addict and then I could look kind of gothic/sexy like that girl in the ad'. I was also genuinely scared at our lifestyle and attitude to life. We seem so apathetic towards our consumerism and ourselves, like its the most normal, everyday thing to do what we do and kind of ignore each other at the same time. Kind of sad, really, and quite scary.

So thanks to anyone or everyone who's reading or has read this blog; I know I've rambled somewhat at times but hey, you only go to South America once right? Or maybe twice. Um, anything else to say? .... er... Not really. Bye :)

Puerto Iguazu - Buenos Aires: 04/11 - 13/11

Being Argentina I paid a lot and got a decent bus ride from Puerto Iguazu that evening down to Buenos Aires - a mere 18 hours in a bus. Being hip I got myself to the coolest part of town (San Telmo) as quickly as possible and randomly ran into Tamara and Ilona! We ended up staying at different hostels but caught up along with their countryman Michael again later for bohemian rapsody at a local 'literary cafe' aptly named La Poesia and a much-needed vegetable meal.

I went to a techno club I'd read about on the Interweb called Bahrein, arriving there at around 1230am to a beautifully decorated but basically empty club. The music wasn't great and it was taking a long time to fill up. Not having much cash I wasn't going to buy a drink and I was playing with the idea of leaving until I discovered the downstair section - the place used to be a bank and they had converted the vault into the 'underground' section called Subsuelo.

There the music was much better, and I soon got onto the floor to dance. There I felt old - partly because the average age of the punters was about 20, and partly because my back was so stiff and slow to warm up. But I felt better when I saw the DJ - white, bald and about 45, Sergio Athos (also club owner and Argentinian dance music pioneer) was rocking the house with smooth and sublime tech and crispy rhythms. The floor soon filled up around me and I realised the dancefloor etiquette here is not so polite as in some other places - some people would just come right up to my space and start dancing in it! But a great nights dancing though, all good. Interestingly enough it seems they also have the No Smoking inside rules here but everyone just ignores it and no-one enforces it - $&&^%ers.

I'd decided the photos for my blog for BA were basically going to be of all the great graffiti around San Telmo, so this was my ongoing mission for my week there. My usual city mission of searching out great coffee continued also with some pleasing results - I also realised the rumours of Buenos Aires' women being the most beautiful in South America were true. At one point I sat outside at a cafe in the coolest part of Cooltown next to a table of four young gorgeous women all doing a very good job of looking beautiful without looking liked they'd tried at all. Later that night was the annual Gay Pride march, where mobile floats cranked loud gay anthems like 'When Love Takes Over'. There were of course lots of PDA's, crazy costumes, marijuana and even public nudity. It was a shame though that pretty much every pair of breasts that I saw were fake, whether on transexuals or ladies. It was great to see lots of shiny happy people and a city mas o menos supporting their cause. I had bought a ticket to see a 'big' DJ at supershiny superclub Pacha but decided not to shell out the ridiculous $ to pay for the taxies required to go there at 1am. After super-cheap Bolivia I was quite jaded with expensive and consumptive Buenos Aires.

The next morning I checked out of my arty hostel to an even artier one, The Art Factory, where the Dutchies and I spent a lovely sunny afternoon, then took a basic tango lesson. This also involved watching our smooth instructors strutting their stuff and a stripped down tango band performing great traditional tango music. The next morning I said goodbye to the Dutchies who were off on the 3 hours ferry to Uruguay and settled in for a Melbourne-esque 17 degrees and rain. During my time at The Factory I of course met lots of international folks, like Tara from Ireland, Craig and Angela from Washington, recently arrived for a world tour after 5 years in South Africa as aid workers, Bonny and Tuchi La Flaca de Anana from Colorado, Christoph and Angelique from Switzerland, Jenni from Finland, Brandy from Canada, who along with Wendy and Sara from the States had just spent some time in a Hari Krishna ashram outside of the city. Bonny and I went to the tiny Botanic Gardens in Palermo where the deadliest things were the cactus glasshouse, fresh loquats and nude statues. One morning at the hostel we had a breakfast band.

Michelle had also completed her year-long pilgrimage and was preparing to leave - we were on the same flight back! We drank coffee and cream that she made from coffee that she'd picked, processed and roasted herself at her volunteer stay in Ecuador. It was satisfying that we could catch up in person and hear of all our adventures, there, at the end of all things...

With some other Arty types I went to see La Bomba del Tiempo, a 16-piece orchestrated and multi-cultural percussion band where we danced a little bit. One of my companions was Marty from Perth, an ex progressive DJ who was on a musical pilgrimage north that involved the World Music Conference in Miami and Creamfields in BA that weekend - jealous! I went to visit the new SAE office just down the way in San Telmo where I participated in a Spanish lesson and then, along with members Vincent, Sean and Michael and SAE manager Phil played some racquetball. It's kind of like a cross between tennis and squash, kinda cool but not quite enough running around for me.

On my last evening I went to the famed Desnivel, a busy steak restaurant with delicious meats cooked to order. Along with Marty, Ulysses from Holland, Estefania from Chile and Max from Germany we completed the fulfilled the requirement of all that come to Argentina by quaffing a nice local red while dining on their fine beef. Back at the hostel the evening's live entertainment was muffled by noise sensitive neighbours and we were asked to click as a sign of our appreciation rather than clap. Our next stop was Red Door, a cool bar around the corner where more drinking and glass-smashing was to be had - I saw about 6 smashed in a small room in an hour! One guy managed to make-out with two different girls in the evening. Soon enough it was 5am, and we were thrown to the dogs in the street. But our hostel companion had other ideas. He led us through downtown to a speakeasy: an illicit after-hours venue. A secret knock, a few quick words, open the hobbit-door and in we went. The next few hours in that seedy but kind of uber-cool place were pool and alcohol and being too drunk and talking a lot of shit and laughing with people like Irish pool shark Mick. Finally Jason from England and I stumbled back to the Art Factory and breakfast. Crazy night.

The next day was quite difficult for me - just functioning was hard enough, but I also had to pack and get over to Michelle's hostel from where we were to leave for the train. After sleep finally took over I think I experienced one of the worst hangovers I've ever had. Hot, dry and scratchy, everything was screaming at me and nothing felt anywhere near as good as being horizontal. Urrrrrrrrrrrrrgh. Michelle lent a helping hand to get me through the transfer to the airport process though, where we had a flight at 230am... they sure do like to do things late in Buenos Aires! What a painful process.

Goodbye South America! Lots of love, Tris.

Iguazu National Park: 04/11

The rainforest around the massive hydro-phenomenon of Iguazu Falls and Paraguay River is beautiful, diverse, tall and subtropical. After the brief taxi ride to the park entrance I entered and just kind of followed the other people through the theme-park like manicured lawns and shiny cafe-scapes to a little kids train. This took us out through the rainforest and after alighting onto a series of boardwalks, where we basically crossed a gigantic river delta kilometres wide interspersed with sections of forest. The anticipation was building - of course you could hear a dull hydro-roar getting louder but also from afar you could see the mist of colliding waters rising into the air.

The Garganta del Diablo (Throat of the Devil) is incredible. A vast expanse of water is sucked inexorably towards a relatively small basin before plunging a hundred metres or so, the result being an immense vortex of whitewater violence. Downstream of the Garganta on either side are grandiose curtains of falling water, individually impressive enough to be their own tourist attraction, but in this setting just a sideshow.

After that I needed to re-caffeinate just to calm myself down, where I ran into Blandin and Elo from France who'd accompanied me in the taxi earlier. We set off together into the strong sun to explore the rest of the falls for the day. We walked the upper and lower circuits from where we were able to view the impressive series of waterfalls that flanked the Argentinian side of the park.

Unfortunately power speed boats on the river and richies in helicopters above took further away from the natural ambience - why do you need to fly helicopters over the top of a World Heritage site I wonder? The remaining rainforest was in great condition and provided habitat for a multitude of wildlife both opportunistic and residential - a million butterflies, goanna-sized iguanas, a huge guinea pig/small capybara thing and cafe-scavenging coatis by the tens ('nose-bears' as the Germans called them!). Large swallow-like vencejos actually make their nests behind the cascades and inhabit the saturated air surrounding the waterfalls. Vultures also circled high into the sky and many other birds both predatory and otherwise made themselves known throughout the day.

From river-level we observed the explosion of water that was a culmination of the series of falls we had been exploring from inside, above and below. At one point we could get close enough to the spray to get quite wet, a welcome relief in the midday heat. This heat actually got prohibitve after lunch so we managed to do not much and just relaxed for the rest of the afternoon. Definitely worth it to see this amazing natural phenomenon.

Tarabuco - Sucre - Tarija - Bermejo - Aguas Blancas - Oran - Salta - Puerto Iguazu: 31/10 - 04/11

We all returned to Wasi Masi where I packed and said my goodbyes to Jules and Siobhan and Jenni and Jere - thanks again guys! xx()() I got myself to the overnight bus to Tarija - it felt a bit of a struggle just getting to Potosi for some reason. Then the bus gimps told us ´OK, 10 minute toilet stop´ - 6 minutes later they´d started the bus and taken off, despite being vocally told there were still many people inside the terminal. Some made it on just outside the terminal while others caught up with the bus on the outskirts of town, understandably very upset. But it was good to see some Bolivians really standing up for themselves and voicing their displeasure at this type of situation that often seems to be the norm there.

The trip itself passed OK, I arrived in Tarija and immediately transferred to a shared taxi to border town Bermejo while I chewed away on the last of my coca. Of course we got a flat tyre as I watched it being fixed for $1.50 I finally realised why they were so common - they don´t actually use tubes. At Bermejo I changed moneys and crossed the bridge and border to Argentina involving the usual multi-step process. I eventually made it to Oran where I started to see the change in people to a whiter breed. From there a caught an uncomfortable but speedy shared-taxi to Salta, a large northern Argentinian town where I´d intended to directly transfer to a bus to Iguazu. This didn´t happen, the bus having left a few hours earlier, so I found one of the HI hostels in town and bunked down for a night.

Here I realised the full change of culture that was Bolivia -> Argentina. The people: disinterested in a satiated way (not staring at me like slackjaws so much anymore), ruder, richer, taller, whiter and much fatter. The culture: Western consumerism, lots of bread and wheat products, sugar and meat in the food. The language: lazy "Spanish", they don´t understand what Im saying and have their own variations on many common verb conjugations. The roads: MUCH better, drivers are respectful, vehicles good, buses excellent to the point of over-the-topness. The prices: WTF?¡¡¿ Almost as expensive as Australia for many things...

I need to store my backpack before leaving on the afternoon bus, but instead of my bus company storing it in their office, I had to pay again to the bus terminal storage people - then as I boarded I handed a luggage person my bag, costing me another small fee. WTF? I´d already paid over $100 for the journey, and at every bus in the Andean countries there had been no problem to store my bag before a journey for a few hours. Grrr.

The journey was very comfortable, with great soft bed-seat, reasonable Hollywood films in English and flat bitumen roads - 23 hours on that bus was far better than any 3 hours on a bus in Bolivia! I slept well overnight then woke to watch the countryside go by - incredibly rich countryside of green farmland with lots of crops and the famed Argentinian cattle before passing through agroforestry plots of radiata pine and eucalyptus. On the way we passed through such towns as Resistencia, Corrientes and Posadas, the further north we went the hotter it got. Finally luscious and intact rainforest signified we were arriving to Puerto Iguazu and its surrounding conservation area.

I walked around aimlessly aiming for a hostel, finding for the first time in a while several with no available space. Finally I was roped into staying at Stop!, which served the intended porpoise of accomodation. I did afternoony things like buying the next day`s tickets and meeting Dutch girls Ilona and Tamara. The next morning I woke very early to run through the pretty township to the misty riverside where drunk teenagers congregated to be unintelligent and I found my morning exercise very tough indeed. I returned to Stop! to pack and catch my shared taxi out to the national park and Iguazu Falls.

Samaipata - Sucre - Tarabuco: 20/10 - 31/10

While waiting for my overnight bus to Sucre on the highway in Samai I was accosted by a village person - a village idiot, in fact. He was an overly chatty young man who was carrying his 3 fighting roosters with him back to Valle Grande and was assisted by a smiling but more sedate boy in this process. He talked at me in some kind of language that mildly resembled Castellano. I have taken the liberty of translating it fairly literally into English.

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`Che was a really good man, he was a doctor, he helped everyone all the time because he was a doctor, he helped everyone`

me, thinking but not saying: `Yeah, except for the Nazi-style death camps in Cuba`

Later... - `Cannabis in Australia?`

me:`Yes`

`You do it?`

me:`No, I don`t like it`

`I do, because Im in pain all the time and I can`t eat properly` Lifts his shirt to reveal some kind of football lodged underneath his skin where his stomach should be. He makes me touch it.

`See? It`s hard, isn`t it`

me:`Yes, it`s hard`

Later... - `Fine chickens in Australia?`

me:`What?`

`What are the fine chickens like in Australia?`

me:`I don`t know`

him, surprised:`You`ve never seen them?!`

me:`No`

He lifts up a bound rooster, displays his spur and then makes me touch his cock`This chicken killed another chicken. Yeah, it killed it. Really killed that other chicken. Here, touch it`

me:`Yes, its sharp`
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When out of divine intervention the bus came I thanked whatever Chrisitian gods I still believed in and boarded, but the bus gimps were either lazy or wankers, so made me lug my big backpack up next to me in the bus aisle - there were no toilet stops all night on the dusty and hot journey. Bolivia was back! Despite these negative things, the actual journey that I`d recalled as being so dangerous and uncomfortable was not so - it was far worse.

I met Sergio from Spain sitting next to me and managed to doze a few hours before we arrived in Sucre and I transferred to my HI hostel again. There I ran into Jere and Jenni - yay! We had breakfast together and then caught up with Siobhan and Jules - yay! They showed me through a cosy but very cute apartment they were renting for the week. Nice. That evening at their hostel we all sat around a fire in a nice courtyard along with James and Belle from Melbourne, Mez (Isabel) of Andoriña fame and lots of other nice folk drinking red and having fine conversations. We had bought and prepared some pizza ingredients thinking that we`d be making our own at some stage, but before long someone circulated the space handing out gourmet pizza delight! Awwwwesome crispy thin crust and yummy fresh sauce; great ingredients. OK, thanks then, I guess we`ll get onto making our own in a little bit. But no, more pizza came pretty much every 20 min and we were treated to this great service for a few hours until we were all satisfied! Incredible! The head chef was Coralie, daughter of a French pizza maker. Thanks to Roxan the hostel manager and Coralie and your assistants - great night.

The weather in Sucre is great - cool in the evenings but (at the moment anyway) fine and warmish during the day. Myself, the Finish and the Aussies set about indulging ourselves in the foodiness of Sucre - I particularly loved the salteñas while myself and the other Aussies hammered the Para Ti chocolate cafe a few times. It turns out Jere used to be a tech-house DJ also - he`d recently sold his equipment and 400 pieces of vinyl but kept the excellent Sennheiser headphones - I asked for a little borrow of them to indulge in the ultimate sonic bliss... OMG! I`d actually love to try them with some higher quality sound equipment too... *goes off into a romantic fantasy of a date, just the headphones and myself (and possibly taking things a little further)*

Siobhan joined myself and Kirsty from Melbourne, Mario from Dublin and Heather from London for a nice of nightness and fresh food at the HI hostel. The next morning Kirsty decided to try the local delicacy, food-dyed pink alcoholic chica, which scored almost as high on the make-you-vomit scale as San Pedro. The Finish and I soon moved down to Wasi Masi though to make one big happy family and together with Jeremy from Melbourne we celebrated Jenni´s birthday in (drunk) style with a delicious home-made secret-recipe apple crumble, then later lasagna and Andean licores like coca shots and maca licor and OJ. Before we hit the town though I needed to rehydrate quickly - search for receptacle, ok, this red wine-residue cup looks fine, fill it up and scull away. I had drunk half a glass of the detergent water before I realised that it was so, the result being about an hour of burning throat and cheeks, a sore stomach and consistent spitting and coughing. Recommended.

The fine and dandy days in Sucre were lovely indeed - picnics in the park, double espressos at Florin (including a grand morning in the sunny courtyard with Jere´s headphones), great Chinese stir-fries and of course more salteñas and chocolate. We observed a night of celebrations leading into the Day of the Dead holiday/piss-up with tradicional/Spanish dancer and cool costumes. Amsterdam Marathon veteran Martin and I jogged up a local Jesus mountain three days in a row, including many large steep steps. These were particularly fun on the rock-hopping and at times triple-jumping descent. I didn´t run all the way but kept a good pace anyways. I thought it might start to get easier by the third day but apparently that´s not the way it works - my legs and hips weren´t particularly happy for a following time period. SIobhan and I later went up to that same hill to find the two blossomming wattles there and be reminded of back home - ahhh, I was ready to go home :)

On the Sunday morning of my departure us Australians and the Finish bus-connected it to Tarabuco, a place that reminded me a little of Pisac in how it explodes with tourists on a Sunday morning all searching and buying from the tacky (my personal opinion) souvenir stalls. I went with the intention of ruthlessly doing this myself but failed... the dishonesty and poor quality and general consumerism of it all getting to me and eventually i just gave up. We reconvened for the return trip to Sucre, which I knew was the first of a long segmented journey that would end in Buenos Aires...