lunes, 5 de agosto de 2013

The Final Word(s)

It's been a busy few weeks! We've been to 5 countries, seen some of South America's finest sights, and traveled on a whole lot of buses.

Bolivia was fantastic. It was really good fun, and deliciously cheap. We stayed in the world's highest city, ate steak we found barbecuing on the side of the road, cycled down Death Road (Joel came off his bike twice, but the ginger and the giant have clean records!), and supported the winning of the two La Paz rivals in a football stadium of 50,000 Bolivians.
We had three fantastic days bombing through the salt flats in a Jeep, stopping at different-coloured lagoons filled with flamingos, climbing up formations of huge volcanic rock, navigating steaming geysers of boiling mud, and watching our snowballs be shot up into the sky by the pressure, taking forced perspective photos on the seemingly never-ending salt flats, watching incredible sunsets, going for a look at the still-smoking, active volcano, spotting strange rabbit-squirrel creatures called viscachas, and visiting mystery intricate spiderweb/bone marrow-like caves. We drove across a sea of salt to an island of fossilised coral, covered in 10ft cacti, and slept that night in a salt hotel on salt beds. (Dr Seuss, much?) Our second evening was spent watching shooting stars from hot springs, aware that the air temperature had plummeted to well below zero only because Joel's ringlets froze within two minutes of being out of the water.
Before we left Bolivia, we popped to Santa Cruz and dropped in on Ben, a friend from Walsall, which was brilliant. We went on to survive 'the infamous Death Train', which left us questioning whether it causes death by duration (19 hours), frustration (it averages a speed of 18mph), starvation (no food or drink provided, and we'd spent all our Bolivianos), boredom (19 hours with nothing but 3 action films, dubbed into Spanish, for entertainment) or murder (even we were close to sending the man snoring incredibly loudly behind us to prematurely meet his maker).

And then Brazil. As our favourite Ginger put it, "more expensive, but much better pillows and breakfast". We happened to turn up during the coldest week in the last ten years of Brazilian winters, so we had a rather chilly week in the world's largest wetland (the size of the UK!). Although a lot of the wildlife was shivering out of sight, we still had a fantastic time in Pantanal, and spotted a load of toucans, caimans, kingfishers, capybaras, white-collared peccarys (like pigs), macaws, monkeys, japanese storks (bigger than Sarah, remarked the guide), plenty of birds... We took walks through the jungle areas - warnings from the guide included "if the wasps come to sting you- running. Don't stop". We went horseback riding, fished for piranhas, played the old piano we found, made some friends and ate very well.

We saw why Bonito got its name during our days of snorkeling, cycling, spotting toucans and deer, and visiting the crystal-clear lakes. Saz and I finished our stay with a feast of piranha soup and grilled caiman.  The benefit of speaking Spanish in Brazil, as we'd hoped, is that we can make ourselves understood.
The huge disadvantage, however, is that we understand very little of the Portuguese reply. I'm desperately hoping to learn some more key words and phrases for our return in a couple of days. In the meantime I'd say we're at about GCSE standard in Mime...

We finished Brazil with a trip to the Iguazu Falls. I was promised "Niagara Falls on speed" - and, although I have never been to Niagara Falls, and the closest I've got to speed is the card game, I would back that to be about right. 7 kilometers of huge waterfalls, sending 100 metres of spray up into our faces, catching the light to make 270 degree rainbows - and, at times, even double rainbows, all the way across the falls. Poor Niagara indeed! We got some great panoramic views on the Brazilian side, but the Argentinian side was even more incredible - the walkways took us right to the heart of the Devil's Throat, and, at times, pretty much into the falls, so we took the opportunity to have a long-awaited Poncho O'Clock.

While we were there, we dropped over the border, to sing "Para- Para- Paraguay" in the most appropriate country, and then we took on our 20 hour bus journey to Buenos Aires. There, we explored the city, sat in the café that my Argentine hero Borges used to sit in and think deep thoughts, and Saz and I went for a "Fiesta Gaucha", which involved riding horses around the ranch, eating as much delicious Argentine steak and as many empanadas as we could, and some impressive shows. We had an Incident, which shed us of a few of our belongings, but we promptly bounced back, and bought another camera so we can continue to take awkward selfies in hilarious places.

Which brings us to Uruguay. We spent two days in the beautiful old city of Colonia, switching between cycling and running broken bikes along the seafront, and then headed to the capital, Montevideo, where we found a great church and chivitos (Uruguay's favourite sandwich of steak, egg, bacon, ham, lettuce and tomato). We just have one more city stop here before we begin our pilgrimage up the coast of Brazil. We'll be in Rio in 2 weeks, then fly home from there on the 21st.

So this is probably the last of the The Ginger and The Giant writings. A whole lot has happened in these 5 months. Thanks for being part of it by reading and being in touch - we've loved being able to share it with you. We have a lot to look forward to: to not having to calculate time difference when calling home; to having people admit when they don't know, rather than just make up an answer; no more rounds of Dodge Those Rabies; no more stares; having our clothes in an actual wardrobe; soup that doesn't scare us; not having to think about conversion rates; dealing with people who both understand and uphold basic time-keeping principles; Bisto, Cadbury's, hot showers, and proper bacon. Saz can't wait to not have to plaster herself in suncream every morning. But it will be strange to go through a day without a stranger stopping to chat to us, and to live where ordinary tasks aren't ridiculous challenges because of hilarious language barriers, altitude and stray llamas. To live where she's not the Ginger, and I'm not a Giant.
But flip me - we're looking forward to seeing you all again.

¡Hasta pronto!
Lots of love, the Ginger and the Giant.

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