If you can't sao anything nice, Sao Paulo

Lilly has done a pretty full write-up on Sao Paulo so consider this an addendum, or my side of the coin. We were going to skip the city entirely - people we know don't have too many good things to say about it - but since it was en route we decided to stop off briefly. And yes, there are a few fun things to do. But I wouldn't really recommend it for a longer stay - with the disclaimers that (a) we didn't see much of it, but (b) we did try to see the best bits, and (c) there are things to like and Lilly enjoyed it more than I did.

And frankly, a lot of SP looks poor and run-down - a victim of demolition and rebuilding, and the to-be-expected problems of a huge city in a country that isn't the richest. Centro, or downtown, which allegedly holds most of the few historic buildings not to have been pulled down, is a frankly depressing place (apart from the odd highlight like the Se cathedral and the Mercado Municipal - which is lovely inside, but feels like a different world, and is priced accordingly with some of the world's most pampered and expensive fruit). The streets are busy but nobody looks happy to be here. I really couldn't wait to get away.

Vila Madalena is a bit better, more affluent and low-rise, but mainly residential so not the most interesting (and a complete maze if you're coming from the metro - as a hint, the main concentration of activity seems to be at the west end of Rua Aspicuelta). Av Paulista is also more appealing, in a business-district-with-occasional-mall sense. But there's little or nothing here you couldn't get in any city of any size.

It's a shame because there are highlights - as Lilly noted, MASP in pacrticular was a really well-curated gallery, with nicely arranged and annotated exhibitions on the themes of portaits (yawn!) and
romanticism. But MASP is also a great example of being constrained by your surroundings - in this case, a building with no ground floor, but floors above and below accessed only by lift, and you could very easily go just down, or just up, and not realise there was another half.

Also, we do like to wander around on foot, and getting around is not so easy. A lot of the city is a maze - not many simple grid patterns here. And I don't think there are many neighbourhoods where you'd want to wander after dark: you want to know where you're going.
But a lot of the roads are very long, so it's difficult to work out a location from an address - the taxi drivers' solution to this seems to be to drive out of your way to the far end of a street and work their way down it, which (combined with one way systems) is particularly galling when you do know where you want to go but the taxi driver doesn't and takes you several kilometres out of your way to get there.

You might enjoy yourself here with someone who knows the city, or even if you speak enough Portuguese to get recommendations. Otherwise, maybe worth a quick look in passing, but certainly not a destination. I'm going to be really interested to see how Rio compares. Everyone loves Rio. Sao Paulo is not so loveable. (PS if you should decide to visit a swanky, expensive restaurant here, don't expect it to take Mastercard, like most of the cheap restaurants do - be prepared to ferret around in the various pockets into which you have divided your cash reserves, and hope you don't have to resort to taking your shoes off to extract those last emergency reserves...)

Lilly's Highlights & Recommendations # 24 (Sao Paolo, Brazil)

We spent less than 48 hours in Sao Paulo which is not enough to
scratch the surface of this enormous city (population 19million!!) but
still enough time (with thankfully only one more rain storm!) for a
largely food related top 5!

1. Mercado Municipal - I have written about food market restaurants
before (in the Montevideo entry) but this one definitely deserves a
mention. Despite an insalubrious walk through the old city to get
there once inside the Mercado is a pristine spot. Food stalls, largely
fruit, meat and deli, on the ground floor and a selection of
restaurants on the upper level looking down over the food stalls. The
distinguishing feature of most of the restaurants is that they all
seem to focus on giant Mortadella sandwiches. I don't like Mortadella
so I had a salt beef sandwich and it was delicious and huge (I swear
the meat was 6 times thicker than the lovely French bread it came in).
I washed it down with a Brazilian canned soft drink which I love
called Guarana Antartica (handily available in a no sugar Zero
format). I definitely think there is a market for it in the UK. Yummy!
After lunch we had a wander around the stalls and I decided to try
Acai, which is a N. Brazilian fruit normally served crushed up with
ice. It is really delicious - the only thing I can compare it to is
mushed up sour cherries. An all round excellent lunch.

2. Figureira Rubaiyat - a restaurant in the posh Jardim Paulista area
as recommended by Bailo. By far the most expensive and swanky meal of
our trip so far but it is a really lovely place. It's main feature is
that you eat in a covered courtyard (there is an inside bar which does
nice cocktails while you wait for your table - about 40mins on a
Tuesday with no reservation) which is shaded by an enormous and
beautiful tree. It must be at least 300 years old and is quite a find
in the 'concrete jungle' of SP. Another thing I liked about the place
was despite a reasonably hefty cover charge there are a lot of nice
small touches: canapes while you wait for your table, a platter of
deli style mise en bouches, delicious cheese filled dough balls and
Cachaca to finish the meal off. On the food itself Paul had a very
good steak, I had seafood pasta which was a bit disappointing (too
salty) but overall a lovely (expensive!) experience! Full of
businessmen and Americans of course none of whom were paying for their
own meal I suspect!

We also had another nice, more low key meal in the Jardim Paulista
area (my favourite area in SP - lots of swanky bars, restaurants and
gorgeous houses belonging to wealthy Paulistas) at a place called
Lanchonete da Cidade which did great burgers and an amazing red fruits
Capirinha.

3. Museu Arte de Sao Paulo (MASP) - SP's main art museum on the famous
Avenida Paulista (a ridiculously long road which covers all the bases
from business district to culture to shopping etc.). The museum houses
S America's largest collection of Western Art and has a good selection
of the VIP artists (Degas, Manet, Monet, El Greco, Van Gogh to name a
few). I particularly liked a selection of portraits of the French
Nobility (18th C) by Nattier. There was also a very interesting Max
Ernst exhibition which was more comprehensive than I have ever seen
elsewhere. They have made an effort to theme the musuem and this works
well, but the building is another example of architectural concept
over common sense (see also 5 below and my previous entry on Curitba's
Oscar Niemeyer museum), still -recommended.

4. Vila Madalena - this area reminded me of Palermo in Buenos Aires.
It is predominantly a residential area but with a smattering of bars,
shops and restaurants. It doesn't have the quantity of Palermo
(particularly in terms of shops) but a lot of the bars appeared to
have the quality. Unfortunately because of our tight schedule in SP we
only had time to go there in the afternoon, which is obviously not the
best time to visit a bar area (particularly in S. America where no one
anywhere before 9pm) but I was still impressed by the area and wished
I'd had time to sample it on a weekend evening.

5. Park Ibirapuera - this is a large park not far from where we were
staying in Jardim Paulista. It is a nice park; predominantly greenery
and some bits of water. Perfect for picnicing, jogging, football etc
but nothing special for the horticulturalist. It does stand out
though as a result of the numerous cultural buildings within its
grounds. We only visited two (Museum of Modern Art (MAM) and Museum of
Contemporary Art (MAC)) but there are plenty of other cultural spots.
MAM and particularly MAC were a bit of a disappointment. The
exhibitions were pretty dull and once again the buildings defied
common sense and are not even that attractive with it. We spent about
20mins working out how to get inside MAC! Having said that it is still
worth a trip on the basis that parks almost always are and it is also
interesting to see just how hard SP is trying to incorporate culture
into the city landscape.

Overall I enjoyed SP a lot. The old city was a bit of a disappointment
(scruffy) and it is does feel rough round the edges (especially at
night when the only people on the street are the people who don't have
anywhere else to go) but it does have a lot to see and do and
certainly knows how to have fun.

You will be surprised to hear that I am on yet another bus. This time
on the way to colonial Paraty. I am expecting something very different
from SP in this tiny town with a population of 33,000.

The Curitiba for all Diseases

Curitiba is a city that is often treated as an interchange to pass through on a journey through Brazil, but it's well worth a couple of days in itself. In particular it has some lovely well-preserved buildings in its historic centre (dating from c1700). There are also some decent bars around here, including a better German bar/restaurant than we could find in the deluges of Blumenau (much to my surprise, Brahma brew a very drinkable dunkelbier - watch out for Blumenau's Eisenbahn brewery, by the way, whose 'dunkelbier' is actually a schwarzbier. I realise this warning may not help, or even make sense to, many people, but I consider it my duty to note it.)

A Brazilian friend described Curitiba as a rich city, and 'not like the rest of Brazil'. It certainly feels like a city in decent shape. The streets are wide and it boasts about its bus network. They have bendy buses with 2 bends - what would Boris make of them? - and you can interchange between bus lines in the many tube-shaped shelters around the city.

One option here is a tourist bus tour of the city, which comes tantalisingly close to giving you good views of the main sights (and you can jump on and off). Unfortunately there are only about 8 seats downstairs and upstairs has an open top and for us it is, as it has been for the last 4 days, raining pretty much non-stop. Ah well. On a rainy day, sitting on the bus for a 2.5 hour circuit of the city seems as good as any other way to pass the time. The bus passes through some nice parks and suburbs - you can spot the nice houses because they have electric fences and barbed wire.

We jumped off once, at the Museo Oscar Niemeyer, a crazy building that has recently had a new addition, 'the eye', which looks a bit like the Lord's media centre, added by ON, a famous architect. Fun design of the building itself, although the art spaces here are amazingly badly designed. Didn't enjoy all the art here but some bits were interesting, including Marcello Grassmann's crazy engravings and rubbings, and Carlos Alonso's van Goghs; and some models of ON's own most famous buildings.

Curitiba is also the starting point for possibly Brazil's most scenic train journey - not that it has much competition since there are only about 4 trains in the whole country. The train takes 3 hours to wend its way slowly through Atlantic rainforest (with guided commentary in Portuguese unless you splurge for the expensive top class - still, you can tell when to look left or right by watching the locals. Left side of the train is best, by the way), which for a while is pretty, with just enough colourful flowers to suggest that it's even better in summer. And for a while it's spectacular, as the train clings to a hillside, taking bridges over waterfalls. The sun rarely threatens to shine on us, and mist intermittently blocks some views, but either low cloud or localised mist gathering in patches below us makes for some breathtaking views at times.

The problem with train journeys like this is that they have to go somewhere - in this case Morretes, a cobbled-street village that is too run-down to be charming and clearly entirely dependent on selling underwhelming lunches and knick-knacks to tourists. Put it this way: you shouldn't worry that you won't have enough time here (and we came on a Sunday, when the stopover is an hour longer than any other day). Fortunately any disappointment was shaken off by the return journey - oh yeah, we realised, the views really were that good. So not an unmissable trip but a good one.

Next up for us is Sao Paulo, a huge city (biggest in the southern hemisphere) that we don't hear many fond words about, but fingers crossed. If nothing else, our bus ride to this 'concrete jungle' is a pleasant journey past green hills and blue lakes, with - predictably - the first sun we've seen in a week pouring through the window. We last saw it set beautifully over the lagoon on Santa Catarina, and it seemed to have decided to go out on that high note and not reappear for days. It would be nice if it sticks around a bit...

Lilly's Highlights & Recommendations # 23 (Various parts of Southern Brazil!)

I haven't done a Brazil blog yet, basically because we haven't stayed in one place long enough for a top 5 but here is a run down of my thoughts so far.

Iguacu Falls - nothing much to add to Paul's blog and the videos. These falls are absolutely amazing and are vying with Halong Bay for my vote for the new 7 wonders of the world (www.n7w.com). In my opinion the Argentinian side is better through - more up close so it is a slower reveal with more wow factor.

Parque des Aves (Bird Park opposite the Falls) - S America gets all the most colourful birds and most of them are here! Beautiful parrots and macaus and lots of different types of Toucans. There are a lot of standard type cages but there are also a couple of large aviarys where you can walk with the birds; the toucans in these were a bit too friendly for me though - especially with their scary big beaks! My highlight were the hummingbirds which really are amazing - perfectly proportioned with wings that move so fast that you can barely see them but which gives them a really elegant flying style. I also dared to touch a snake in their 'animals up close' area, but it was small, docile and firmly under the control of a keeper so I don't think my snake phobia (second now to my saltwater croc phobia - thanks Oz!) was cured!

Hostel Natura (a few kilometres outside Fos de Iguacu) - the best hostel of the trip so far. Beautiful lush garden with a pool, a couple of lakes and plenty of lounging space. I loved sitting in one of the hammocks in the garden sipping a delicious Caipirnha from the bar. Friendly staff as well but the crowning glory is the collection of pets including a dog that loves to chase after limes instead of balls and a lovely stripey cat that I wanted to adopt! It is in the middle of nowhere but it only takes about half an hour on the bus to get to the Falls and there is nothing to do in the town itself anyway (allegedly - I didn't move from my hammock long enough to find out!).

Floripa - Floripa is the nickname  for the main beach area on Santa Catarina island (main town Florianopolis, hence the name) and it has a lot of potential, but unfortunately not in the rain! We had one non rainy day here and we spent that on Mole beach, which is a classic holiday beach - sand, sea and beach bars! There are plenty of other beaches to explore but because of the rain we decided to visit the town of Florianopolis instead. It is a fairly affluent town with a smattering of historic buildings but we didn't see it at its best having foolishly chosen to visit not only in the rain but on a national holiday so pretty much everything was closed. Except for one of the main malls :-)

Rather than staying in the centre of Florianopolis we stayed in a suburb called Lagoa which is the bar capital of the area and is basically the place everyone goes in the evenings to party after a day on the beach. Great choice for our hostel location as it meant we could walk to dinner and drinks instead of having to taxi or bus everywhere. There is nothing to do (or even open) in the day if it's raining though. A good place to get a bit of the Brazilian beach party spirit when the sun shines.

Blumenau - this town is Brazil's 'little Germany' and is the unofficial capital of Brazil's substantial German immigration. We were very curious to see what Germazil would be like and it is pretty strange. A few authentic historic German-style buildings from the 19th C but a lot more modern buildings built in an olde German style in particular the Villa Germanica area which is where the annual Oktoberfest is held and definitely feels like Munich, Disney style. Still, despite the rain it was an enjoyable and unusual place to spend a day or so and we managed to educate ourselves about the variety of German style beers available in Brazil which are a definite improvement on the standard lagers: Skol (yuk!!) and Brahma (ok).

Curitiba - our first experience of a Brazilian city of any size. I am told that it is probably the poshest city in Brazil so I guess it is a good place to ease into the urban monsters of Sao Paolo and Rio! Despite yet more rain we managed to see a lot of the place in the 48hours we spent there, largely by hopping on a tourist bus which took us steadily (and more importantly in the dry) around the major sites of the town. We got the impression that there are some lovely big parks and the wire framed opera house looked good from the bus! But the only place that tempted us off the bus was the Oscar Niemeyer Museum which is primarily about the building (the work of Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer of course). It is a quite spectacular example of architectural concept over, well, almost anything else (certainly practicaility and no doubt cost and programme). However, the 'eye' shaped building is pretty striking from the outside (photo to follow one day) and even in the rain it was worth an up close look. The inside is basically an art gallery and although it wasn't amazing there were some good exhibitions on notably by the engraver Marcello Grassman. Strange but intriguing brass rubbings that varied surprisingly little over a 50 year career. There was also some impressive misery art by a S American artist whose name I will need to look up!

We also spent a bit of time wandering around the historic centre, which has some impressive 19th C buildings and a couple of nice squares. There is still a fair amount of miserable modern stuff too though. The best modern innovation here is the bus stop tube. Photo to follow. There are also a couple of nice modern, shopping malls - Mueller and Estacion are recommended. 

Main food and drink mention goes to Schwarzwald - a great German bierhaus with good beers, cheap German food (I do actually love Sauerkraut!) and a very lively atmosphere.

Scenic train journey to Morretes - this is a day trip from Curitiba on one of Brazil's very few mainline trainlines. It is a popular day trip which takes you through the Brazilian rainforest to the colonial town of Morretes. The 3 hour train journey exceeded expectations. I don't know whether it was all the rain we've been having or whether it always  looks like this but the clouds were so low and some of the valleys so deep that you were given the impression of travelling through the clouds on the top of lush green mountains. The photos don't really do it justice but they do give a sense of the atmosphere.

The train arrives in Morretes at 11.15 and picks you up again at 4, which leaves enough time for a wander around the town, a leisurely lunch and a Caipirinha made with the Cachaca which is produced locally. The town was a slightly grubby predominately 19th C town set on a river. Enough to do and see to cover the 11.15am to 4pm timeslot but I suspect it wouldn't be so popular if it wasn't at the end of a stunning train journey. Medium picturesque! The Caipirinha was good though :-)

Currently on another bus on the way to Sao Paolo. The sun is shining which I hope is a good omen for our time in the urban jungle!

ATCITBR # 4

ATCITBR # 3

ATCITBR # 2

Above the clouds in the Brazilian Rainforest # 1

Don't Mention the Warsteiner (or: Blumen Germans)

Brazil is a former Portuguese colony, but it's a big country, and it's seen its share of immigrants from a lot of countries. In the particular bit of south-east Brazil we're travelling through, their heritage is German. Not exactly what you picture in Brazil.

We stopped off for a very wet 24 hours in Blumenau, a town based on an old German settlement and the epicentre of German-style beer brewing in Brazil. It is most famous for attracting thousands of people to its very own Oktoberfest every year, which takes place in its bizarre little 'German village', full of souvenir shops that optimistically stay open all year round.

On our way from the bus station at lunchtime, we discovered that Blumenau also has some of the worst traffic congestion we've ever seen. But the centre of town is quite nice, sitting on the bank of a river (which looked very muddy and high by the time we left) and really feels like it could be somewhere in Europe - quite a few buildings are in the olde white-paint-with-black-beams style, including the old and new town halls, which look attractive if a little false. The former, now a department store, is allegedly the second-most-photographed thing in Brazil (behind the statue of Christ in Rio), which I tend to doubt as this doesn't look like a major tourist destination for most of the year. Still, as I say, a pleasant little stopover to break up our journey.

(It also has a very modern-looking church with three bells in its tower, a rather dry beer museum with very friendly staff who really like their visitors' book signed, and apparently the world's only cat cemetary - with just 7 cats buried there - which we couldn't visit because its parent museum was closed.)

Almost all of the street names and many of the shop names are in German. Unfortunately nobody here seems to speak any German anymore. Too bad, as I speak a lot more German than I do Portuguese, and I'd been mentally polishing it. We had lunch in the German village and were greeted with a "Guten Tag". In my bext GCSE German - which has served me, if not well, at least enough to get me fed in Germany and Austria a few times - I asked for a table for two. I got a blank look and a 'no', which was a bit surprising since the 400-seater restaurant had 3 occupied tables. Once we each clambered over our respective language barriers it turned out that he spoke as much German as I do Portuguese, so we fell back on our usual sign language and tucked into the buffet.

But what about the beer, you ask? A few places in Argentina had Warsteiner on tap, and plenty more had it in bottles. That's a proper German beer. We tried a little Wunder Bier in the German village - I think it may be brewed there. It falls a long way short. If you have time, inclination and preferably a car you can tour a few breweries and check out their tasting rooms. I'm afraid we had none of those, but did get to try some Bierland pils in the unlikely surroundings of a shopping mall foodcourt while sheltering from the rain. And it wasn't bad. Give them another hundred years, maybe they'll get there.

Back on the bus as I write this - and out in the country, it looks more like South East Asia than Europe. Mud and palm trees, small fields with simple irrigation, a mixture of shacks and neat little houses. Still a lot for us to see in Brazil!

The Lagoon Show

First stop in Brazil after Iguacu is the island of Santa Catarina (also known as Floripa, and a major holiday destination for Brazilians). With about 40 beaches and 2 big lagoons, this looks like a great place to spend a week in summer, ideally hiring a car and driving round. We had a great first day here on Mole Beach, a lovely strip of sand with scenic rocks at both ends, some surf and a few beach bars.

Unfortunately it's not the greatest place to be on a wet autumn day like we had on our second day, and as is forecast for the next few, so we're moving on. I would definitely recommend it in better weather, though.

Just to rub in our bad timing, our second day was a national holiday - we headed into Florianopolis, the main city, and everything in the centre was closed. The rain had let up a bit, so we had a wander round to look at a few picturesque old buildings and found a view of the semi-iconic steel bridge that connects to the mainland (currently closed and covered head-to-toe in scaffolding - there is another bridge too, which is functional but dull, in case you were wondering) and, um, found a mall when it started raining again.

It's a fairly hilly place, especially round the coast, which makes walking less practical than a simple map might suggest, but getting around is straightforward by bus. We stayed in Centro do Lagoa, right by the big lagoon, which is mainly a tourist spot but quite fun, with enough bars, restaurants and shops to keep you going. A nice feature is that lampposts and telegraph poles are decorated with charming little mosaics.

Florianopolis itself sits on both sides of the bridge, so you can stand on the west side of the island (carefully, since the coast here is used for an eight-lane highway) and see both city and hills staring back at you from the mainland, like a giant mirror. Some people might even get confused as to whether they were on an island or the mainland...

Brazil is taking a little adjusting to after Argentina. Bearing in mind that Lilly was taught Spanish for a year when she was 12, and I never learned any, we'd done pretty well to get to a stage where we could communicate in restaurants. Of course, that goes out of the window when you get to Brazil, which unlike the rest of the continent speaks Portuguese. It's just similar enough to Spanish to lead you astray.

So in some ways the best kind of restaurant is one where you don't have to read a menu or order, and amongst the locals in Brazil the 'Por kilo' places seem very popular and good value. They just have a buffet, you grab what you like, and then they weigh your plate and charge you by weight. Simple. And just as well, since the one a la carte we've had was ridiculously huge - I think a lot of dishes here are really designed for 2 people (though the ones we had last night explicitly said for 1), which would be fine if Lilly fancied eating grilled chicken every day for the next 3 weeks... In that sense I suspect my ideal holiday partner is Jack Russell.*

* English cricketer who famously ate the same meal every day when on tour to countries whose cuisine he did not trust.

Another local peculiarity is billing - giving you a list of everything on the menu and ticking what you've had so you can pay a cashier on your way out. We've seen this in pubs and even when buying a single muffin from a food stall in a mall...

Finally, although I didn't think much of Argentinian beers (with the notable exception of a brilliant artesan beer called Patagonia that I found in Iguazu, served from a freezing cold bottle even though it wasn't a lager), and the main Brazilian beers seem even less likely to win awards (I was shocked to discover that the main beer seems to be Skol, possibly the worst beer ever brewed), they also have a lot of German-style beers. More on this next time, for reasons I will explain...

A big IF

Iguazu Falls in one word: wow.
Iguazu Falls in two words: just wow.

In today's exciting installment:
* The falls
* The towns
* Why you should pack your goggles
* Where to stay
* How not to book transport in S America

Iguazu Falls is technically a whole series of falls from a very wide stretch of river - to give you an idea how wide, a walkway across most of the river is labelled as 1.1 km long - which forms the border between Argentina and Brazil. Poor old Paraguay just missed out - there's a 3-way border where this river meets another just downstream, but it doesn't get a view of Iguazu.

Each side has a national park and both have done their best to give their many visitors a great view of the falls. If you only do one side, Argentina's your fella. If you do both, and you should*, ideally do Brazil first, I reckon - it gives more of a panoramamic overview, whereas Argentina gives you the up-close-and-personal view. Don't worry, though, you'll get wet on both sides.

* Border control is very simple here so you can easily do a day trip. A good place to be British, though - anyone from the US or various other places that charges Brazilians for visas has to pay a reciprocal visa fee, which is hefty.

We started in Argentina, and rolled up to the park nice and early. First stop: the top of the Devil's Throat, the highest and most powerful section of the falls. As mentioned, you have to walk over a lot of river to get here - the river looks really high and swollen, with no trace of riverbanks, and in places we see bits of old walkways that have been swept away.

Even before we got to the falls, we could see the swell of water vapour rise up in front of us. The Devil's Throat is just immense, a big, curly C-shape of an overhang with water hurtling over the edge down into a cauldron below, which you just cannot see - the falls are so powerful that they constantly throw up spray, and 20 metres or so below is as far as you can ever see. That water is so powerful that every minute or so it throws water up so high that it rains on us. Amazing scenes - by a huge distance the biggest waterfall we've ever seen. (The falls as a whole are a good deal bigger than Niagara - higher and more than twice as wide - though we haven't been there so I can't make a first-hand comparison.) There's a decent-sized viewing platform here with a wire floor, some of which passes directly over the drop-off so you can see some of the relatively tamer bits of fall beneath your feet. It really is enough to make you stop and stare for a good few minutes. Eventually we decided we should move on. We didn't really want to. Even on a slightly overcast and misty morning, they're a great sight.

Away from the Devil's Throat is a much longer stretch of falls, with a smaller 2-stage drop. So they're less powerful, but you can actually see them. There are two good walks, an upper circuit that gives you a great overview and a lower circuit that takes you a bit more up close and personal - you can get seriously wet at one of them. Really enjoyable, great views, and the sun quickly came out to make it a glorious day - I think the early morning was the last cloud we saw in our days here. And as a bonus, the park is full of wildlife - big raccoons, colourful birds and butterflies, and allegedly monkeys (I'm told that you most often see these on an ecological trail, which we skipped).

Normally there is a free boat service to an island at the base of the falls for more views. Unfortunately it's closed due to the high river level, but I don't think we missed too much, and the excess water means that the falls are probably at their best (there is one small waterfall that only flows after a lot of rain). The one thing that struck me about the river below the falls, once you get a short distance from them, is that it feels relatively calm - as if all that water has come thundering over, needs to fit into a much narrower river, but is a bit tired after its exertions so is happy to coast gently downstream for a while.

You can also take a commercial boat ride out on the river, up close to, and in a couple of cases just about under, the falls. This is great fun and highly recommended*, with the caveat that you will get thoroughly soaked - I had a poncho that partly spared me but did a great job of directing water down both the back and front of my neck. Under the falls you cannot see a thing, just feel the force of the water - as a contact lens wearer, even with sunglasses on, I couldn't see a thing for 30 seconds. So I would genuinely recommend slipping on some swimming goggles here and you'll probably get the best view in the house.

* We misread a sign and accidentally signed up for a combined boat-trip-and-jungle-tour-by-truck. The latter half is really not worth bothering with - we saw some trees (one of which, Lilly discovered, she had been eating and enjoying the previous day (palmitos)) and a brief glimpse of biggish spiders.

And just to prove how good the Devil's Throat was, we went all the way back to the top to see it in proper sunlight. Still great, and even wetter.

I should add that April seems a good time to visit - our weather was great but we're out of peak season so the parks aren't too crowded - occasionally you have to wait a couple of minutes to pose for a specific photo - and prices are lower.

Two days later we were in Brazil and went to the Brazilian park. Brazil has drawn the shorter straw, since it has one side of the Devil's Throat and a good from-distance panoramic view of the rest of the falls, but not so much close-up (don't worry, you can still get wet). As I understand it, if you take a boat from here you can only go up to the DT and not the other falls (I believe even tourist helicopters from the Brazil side are not allowed to overfly the Argie bits - very churlish if true). It tries a bit harder to make up for it with a variety of commercial add-ons - rafting, abseiling, canoeing - but the falls themselves can easily be covered in a couple of hours, whereas we spent about 7 in the Argie park. Here we found a good trail for great views of the whole falls, again with various wildlife, and as you get towards the DT there's a big walkway over the river below the falls, where you will get wet from the spray, and an observation tower. Both give good views in their way, though to be honest you never get as clear a view of the DT as I'd like. Still, there are plenty of aerial photos around. So I'd say the Brazilian side is definitely worthwhile but not strictly essential. My advice, on my previously-espoused Peter Jackson theory (see Angkor Wat entry), would be to do Brazil first so that it isn't an anti-climax. Lilly disagrees - she thinks that would diminish the wow factor of the Argie side. Your choice. But given the chance, do come. It's going to stay with us for while.

Other things are decidedly secondary, but I have time for a quick round-up. Next to the Brazilian park is a bird park, which was surprisingly good. It wisely sticks mainly to glamorously colourful birds, of which there are many in South America. There are lots of beautiful parrots, and a great range of toucans, some of which appear to have stuck-on plastic beaks - they look completely fake - and an affinity for Lilly's feet. They also have some token snakes, caimans and a couple of random monkeys. Recommended if you like this sort of thing.

The local town on the Argentinian side is Puerto Iguazu. It's supposed to have a bit a bit of small-town character; we didn't think so and we weren't too fond of our town-centre hostel. The best thing to do in town is to get out of it, and walk up Three Frontiers Road to a point where you can stand in Argentina and see both Paraguay and Brazil, which makes for a photo that is improved by a caption, since it's a pleasant view rather than a great one. All 3 countries have a similar marker.

On the Brazilian side is Foz do Iguacu, a big city by most standards (over a million people) with, by unanimous assent, zero tourist appeal, which was certainly my view of the 20 minutes I spent in it.

So where's the best place to stay? We hardly ever do recommendations on here, so believe me when I say that Hostel Natura is probably the best place we've stayed (and certainly the best value). Safely outside Foz, it feels like a little country farm, with a small pool and two big ponds for swimming, a bar, decent-to-good food, hammocks and loungers, a pool table* and table football, satellite TV and internet, and very friendly staff... oh, and cats and dogs, as you may have seen on the blog already. I had to stop Lilly from cat-napping the stripey cat. We would completely recommend staying here as your base for both sides, as you won't really miss anything in either town.** In fact, we arrived here intending to head straight for the falls and stay 1 night - when we arrived we immediately signed up for a second night and lazed around all afternoon; and spent most of our third day relaxing there too, waiting for an evening bus. Thanks to Rich & Suze for the recommendation.

* Bizarrely the balls are numbered but do not have spots and stripes - instead you are either low numbers or high numbers. The bartender taught me the subtly different local rules, but even under those it's a pain not being able to easily ID which balls are yours.

** Although I had to make one trip in to book our onward bus... Booking travel in S America is a bit of a pain as they seem to have a phobia of credit cards transactions over web or phone. Apparently when they get down to 7 available seats they won't take reservations over the phone. Of course, when they're running out of seats, that's exactly when you really want them to take your reservation... We should really have got the hint after booking our flights from BA to Iguazu with the local airline, Aerolineas, online at about 24 hours' notice. Rather than take payment, they e-mailed us their UK call centre number for us to arrange payment and delivery of tickets... And of course it had closed for the day. We ended up taking the underground out to the end of the line to pay at their offices, where they duly noted our payment in their hand-written ledgers. So I would highly recommend buying air tickets through the major international travel websites...

As I write this we're on a 14-hour bus journey to Florianopolis. You can get high-class coach travel here with (almost) fully reclining seats and (at least in Argentina) something akin to first-class air travel service. Sadly we didn't get round to trying this in Argentina, where it's properly cheap and allegedly more comfortable than this particular bus. An island of beautiful beaches awaits to make the journey worthwhile (hopefully)...

Hostel Dog (aka Rasta)

Hostel Cat (aka Tiger Cat)

Incredible Iguazu Video 2 (The Devil's Throat)

The biggest and best!

Incredible Iguazu Video 1

Paul will most likely write a complete Iguazu blog in the fullness of time but I wanted to get these videos up. It really is an amazing place. The number of waterfalls, the size of them, the noise...just so awesome!

PS. Keep an eye out for the rainbows :-)

Lilly's Highlights & Recommendations # 22 (Buenos Aires [2], Argentina)

A couple of extra days in Buenos Aires and more bars and restaurants
to recommend. We stayed in Palermo this time and it has now firmly
established itself as my number one 'barrio'. All the recommendations
below are in the Palermo Soho or Palermo Hollywood areas.

1. Bars - interspersed in what until fairly recently must have been a
purely residential area are hundreds of bars, restaurants and clubs.
Very few chains and most have made a real effort in creating a unique
interior. A couple of specific recommendations are Unico and Akabar.
Unico is dingy but cool and Akabar is very Boho with crazy
decorations, good cocktails and loads of board games to play (note to
self: stop playing boardgames with Paul. You never win despite how
drunk you try and get him!)

There are also plenty of middle of the range places to go, which have
long (normally 7pm to 11pm) and cheap happy hours e.g. Sullivans and
Cronico both of which are near a square with lots more drinking options.

2. Restaurants - despite the hipness of the area the predominant
cuisine is still Argentinian parilla which Paul is loving but is going
to wear very thin with me soon! Having said that we did have some good
meals in some mid-range very local restaurants. Specific
recommendations:

El 22 Parilla - very local place with a very cheap long list of
grilled meats. Will stick in my memory for Paul falling off his seat
while demonstrating a football move. Everyone in the restaurant
assumed he was drunk even though he wasn't (although the most
economical way to buy beer is in 1L bottles) and seemed to think it
was a typical gringo move. Hilarious and definitely one for Undignified.com
!

El Trapiche - amazing home made pasta with Roquefort sauce. Probably
about 1000kcals a plate though!

Gardelito - cute local place with lots of football memorabilia
scattered about. And they had seafood, thank god!

Oui Oui - cute French cafe.

One thing to beware when eating and drinking in BA is that service is
mostly rubbish. Don't be surprised if they take their time serving you
even if the place is empty and if it takes half an hour for your
drinks to arrive with no word of apology. Generally service is very
friendly but slow.

3. Shopping - I was a bit unimpressed by the shopping last time I
wrote about BA but staying in Palermo gave me time to do a proper
recce of the area and the shopping here is top notch. The best
shopping streets are around Gurruchaga, El Salvador and Costa Rica.
The international brands are pretty pricey but there are a lot of
local boutiques selling clothes etc. They are also very into design so
there are a lot of cool homewares and graphics of all kinds to buy.
This also means that the stores in this area have really cool interiors.

The best thing I have found to buy is leather which is a massive
homegrown industry and therefore cheap. I bought a beautiful leather
jacket from Doma (El Salvador y Gurruchaga) but there are leather
shops everywhere. Hope I can get it home in one piece!

There is also a beautiful bookshop called Libros Pasaje in Palermo. It
is a chain but the nicest one has a wooden interior complete with book
ladders as per an English stately home library.

And finally...

We got a bit of rain this time, so we also went to the cinema and saw
'Date Night'. Considering the calibre of its two stars it is
unfortunately pretty lame but passed a couple of rainy hours.

We also watched our second Arsenal match (in a decent little bar
called PorteZuelo in Recoleta) and they have lost both. Jinxed.
Confusingly there is a local Argentinian side called Arsenal. We
watched them play on TV in Sullivans and they lost too. Bah!

Currently waiting for a delayed flight to Iguazu. Hopefully worth
waiting for!

We interrupt this blog for an important announcement

This morning we woke up in Buenos Aires to the news that my sister had given birth to her second daughter, Phoebe Faith Watts. Congratulations to Morna and Chris. If her big sister Esther is anything to go by, she'll be an absolute treasure.

So Morna's got emerged from a painful period of labour... Just in time for the general election. How appropriate.

Love, Lilly & Paul

Lilly's Highlights & Recommendations # 21 (Colonia del Sacramento/Montevideo, Uruguay)

We only spent 72 hours in Uruguay, one of the lesser visited South
American Nations but there was still enough to do for a quick top 5.

1. Eating at markets - this is another big Spanish thing popular in
Montevideo. Old wrought iron buildings, which once housed produce
markets, converted into a selection of restaurants. The food choice
was as per Argentina with grilled meats (and fish too if you're lucky
and sick of meat!) the main offering. But it is almost always tasty
and the atmosphere in these places is great: smoky, historic and
authentic (by which I mean very popular with locals not just tourists.
There were so many large families of all generations eating together
in the one we went to on Friday night that I felt like we were dining
with the mafia!). To be more specific the largest and best example is
the Puerta Mercado (Sunday lunch - apparently Sat lunch is best) but
the smaller Mercado de Los Artisanos (Saturday dinner) was good too.
The PM also houses the Carnavale museum which is all in Spanish but
gives you a feel for it and the wacky costumes.

2. Tristan Narvaja flea market - held on Sunday mornings covering 7
blocks of the new town in Montevideo this is a classic flea market.
You can buy everything from kittens to knives to knitwear and the
prices are cheap. We didn't buy much but it is a great experience -
lots of sights, smells and bustle.

3. Football at Parque Central - emboldened by our success at Boca we
decided to try a football match without a tour guide (gasp!). It
turned out to be more than easy and very cheap. Bus to the ground was
easily picked up by spotting supporters in their team colours and we
got there an hour before to ensure that we could just pick up tickets
on the door. The tickets got us space on the concrete steps as per
Boca. However, it was not at all same same. For a start the area was
absolutely rammed with people even blocking the stairs and also for
most of the match people sat rather than stood (apart from at the
exciting points of course). It is also a smaller ground with a
capacity of only 22,000. However, despite the differences what was the
same was the amazing atmosphere - easily as good as Boca. An amazing
range of complex songs but everyone knows all the words and at some
points 80% of the crowd was joining in. The quality of the football
was not great but the atmosphere makes up for that and I think even a
dull 0-0 would be fun to watch here.

4. Colonia El Sacramento - a popular weeked spot for residents of
Buenos Aires, being only an hour away on the quick ferry and you can
see why. It is a picturesque little town in a very European mould
(Spanish/Portugese influence). The historic centre (19th C) can be
comfortably viewed in 24 hours but it is worth it. There are pretty
houses, Uruguay's oldest church, a lighthouse and plenty of lovely
cafes/restaurants to rest at. It is particularly nice to sit at one of
the places on the seafront and watch the sunset. There was one
particular cafe which must be owned by a couple of anglophiles
containing a large picture of 30 St. Mary Axe, a book edited by a
colleague of my Dad's and a pile of old Observers. Cute cats too!

5. Teatro Solis - a beautiful renovation project has just been
completed on this 19th C theatre in Montevideo, turning it into a top
class cultural venue. Unfortunately all the shows were in Spanish but
you can just wander off the street into the sleek cafe/bar. I had a
yerba mate here. This is a common S. American drink the origins of
which are claimed by both the Argentinians and the Uruguayans. The
Uruguayans edge it for me though as we saw many more people consuming
it here. It is no easy business either as it involves carrying around
your own personal mate mug with straw/spoon and a thermos of hot
water. You can buy special mate set bags to make it easier. As to the
drink itself you fill the mug with the yerba leaves (not just a few as
in tea), pour on boiling water and then drink the resulting flavoured
liquid from a special straw which has a spoon shaped filter on the
bottom to stop you getting a mouthful of leaves. It tastes very bitter
but it doesn't get drunk with milk or sugar. It does contain caffeine
so that may explain its popularity.

Major downside of S. America - I seem to be allergic to it!! I suspect
it is the pollution as I have a cough and a permanently runny nose.
The antihistamines seem to be kicking in now though so hopefully
things will improve.

Back on the ferry to BA now. Not sure where next....

Uruguay not?

Three days in Uruguay...

The ferry to Colonia del Sacramento was very efficient - checked baggage was coming round the conveyor as we got to it, which is a good start.

Colonia is a quiet, fairly picturesque little town, apparently a popular local weekend break destination. It makes for a relaxing afternoon and evening - you can see the whole place in 24 hours, including its many cobbled streets, pleasingly spartan church and a lighthouse you can climb (unusually set a little way back from the coast, should you ever be sailing around here...). It has a few missable little local museums containing ceramic tiles, how Portuguese settlers used to live, etc - the best things we saw were some old maps and the skeleton of a giant cross between an armadillo and a turtle.

It's a very quiet place on a Friday night (one or two spots might get busy late on), but there are a few fun restaurants, including Drugstore where you can eat in an old car (or have red wine spilled on you :() and Viejo Barrio where the personable waiter changes his silly hat every time he appears. He even did this for us when we were the only people there, having an early Saturday lunch.

The bus to Montevideo takes 2-1/2 hours and seems comfy and efficient, even offering free wifi. I was a bit surprised to see a few people standing, but that was only until people got off at local stops.

Montevideo itself feels a bit like a quiet version of BA. We arrived on Saturday afternoon and just had time to get to the Carneval museum - turns out 20 minutes is ample, but it has a few fun costumes and photos. This is at the
Mercado del Puerto, a lovely indoor market which is mainly places to eat and feels authetically old. It really buzzes on Saturday lunchtimes (lunch lasts a long time here!) but is closed for dinner - we came back for Sunday lunch, which was quieter but still recommended.

But MV is probably the quietest place I have ever seen at 5:30 on a Saturday - shops are closed, bars haven't opened... We tried to find a bar to watch Real-Barca, but no luck, so we chilled out in the great indoor courtyard at our hostel.

Dinner at Mercado de los Artesanos - another marketplace with restaurants, on a smaller scale and promising a show, but we gave up when it hadn't started by 10:30. Still can't get used to how late people eat here.

There is a huge flea market here on Sundays at Tristan Narvaja, so we went there in the morning. I believe you could buy almost anything here. One guy was trying to sell just 3 things: 4 castors he'd taken off an armchair or table, a pair of shoes and a bucket of creosote (I think). I had to make sure Lilly didn't buy any kittens...

Ideally in Montevideo you'd want to take in a football match at Estadio Centenario, the national stadium and home of the first World Cup final. Penarol play here, but they're away, so we decided to go to see MV's other big club, Nacional. They occasionally use the national stadium for big matches but today they're at their usual home, Gran Parque Central, against Danubio. Emboldened by the Boca game, we just hopped on a bus to the stadium an hour before kick-off, bought a couple of tickets and picked out a concrete step to sit on.

Good job we were early - it's a 22,000 capacity ground and it gets very full. Health and safety would have a field day as even the aisles are packed. We were on one side which is all concrete seating (there are plastic seats on the far side - luxury!). Surprisingly, not only does everyone sit, if they stand for an exciting moment they sit down again promptly without being told by stewards (if there are any), at least until the last few minutes when everyone stands - and nobody leaves early. Probably because they can't get out until the police ease open the outer gates a good 5 minutes after the match has finished.

If you do turn up late, by the way, the best way to get some space is to carry a little girl on your shoulders and another on your arm, and then just stand in front of someone - by which I mean me - so several people can't see a thing. They will soon shuffle up and let you sit down.

But the bonus to arriving early is the pre-match entertainment - you get to watch the reserves of both teams play. This happened at Boca, too - it took us a while to realise they were the reserves, they were so bad. Here the Nacional reserves played some lovely soft-shoe stuff on the edge of the box and could have had 6 in 10 minutes if their shooting wasn't woeful - entertaining stuff though. I can't tell you the score because there is no scoreboard in the ground, but no goals while we watched.

At Boca, before the game the ground launched millions of bits of foil paper, and then some guys with leafblowers spent 5 minutes half-heartedly blowing them off the pitch before kick-off. It's a bit more budget here, so a few people in the crowd have brought their own little squares of paper for key moments. But as at Boca, there's a great atmosphere, with drums and a grand wave of singing.

All that's missing is some quality football, and it stays missing. I guess anyone good here gets snapped up by the Argentine league fairly quickly. After 40 minutes I said I couldn't see where a goal was coming from, but before I could add 'unless a defender miss-kicks from a corner in his own 6-yard box' Nacional were 1-0 up. Soon after the break it was 1-1, another corner and a more conventional unmarked-attacker-5-yards-out, and I wondered if we had jinxed another home team. Maybe we would be able to hire ourselves out to jinx teams all over South America.

The second half was a bit more exciting, though still low on quality, and Nacional eventually turned their upper hand into a goal in the closing moments, before spurning the best chance of the match and seeing a visiting player sent off for, um, not sure what - possibly retaliation since the free kick also went Danubio's way and a Nacional player was writhing on the floor.

Which reminds me - from the Boca match, I didn't have much cause to write about S American stereotypes like diving, feigning injury and time-wasting. Sadly this was a masterclass. Much to my surprise, the ref booked a Nacional player for a dive in the box quite early. That didn't deter several repeats and the ref didn't bother getting his card out for that again.

It may sound as if we didn't enjoy the game, but we did really! The atmosphere was good, flagging only slightly during flatter patches of the game, and the match itself was ok - a bargain for less than 7 quid.

Other things we saw at the game were fireworks (3) and a lot of people carrying thermos flasks and yerba mate mugs (see Lilly's post).

We finished with an excellent dinner at Locos de Asar, which specialises in 'parilla* and sushi'. Mad combo and we didn't chance the sushi. Nice place though.

* Don't think I've mentioned it but parilla is their word for giant wood-fired grills, which are brilliant.

And that's it for our flying visit to Uruguay. We didn't have time to visit the big stadium/football musuem, go up the former tallest building in South America*, hit the beach or walk/cycle the extensive 'rambla' (coastline walk)... Not a bad place to visit next time you're in the area.

* We tried wandering in one evening and calling the lift, but got turfed out. Apparently you can go up but I don't know the details.

Lilly's Highlights & Recommendations # 21 (Buenos Aires, Argentina)

Buenos Aires in not really a city of sights. It is a city for staying
out late, getting up late and soaking in the atmosphere. Very much
like Madrid it is the most European city we have been to so far and
less rough around the edges than you might expect (pollution and the
worst litter problem I have ever seen are definitely more of a problem
than the personal safety issues which you hear about but haven't been
a problem so far (touch wood!).)

Anyway, let's cut to the Top 5 chase. In view of my statement about BA
not being a city of sights this top 5 is going to be about the best
places to soak up the atmosphere; my favourite 'barrios' (districts)
in descending order of preference.

1. Palermo - probably the coolest district we went to. The heart of
all the nightlife and with some cool boutique shops (not cheap though)
and excellent bars and restaurants. My favourite bar was definitely a
graffiti bar called Post. La Cabrera in Palermo has the best steak in
BA apparently but I may have had a few too many at Post and it didn't
seem that great to me!

The thing that really pushed Palermo to number one though was a tour
we took through Graffitimundo (www.graffitimundo.com) of the local
street art. Apparently BA is the least restricted and safest place in
the world for street art so you see it everywhere and especially in
Palermo. The tour was interesting and we saw some great art as you can
see from the photos already on the blog. Some of the skill involved in
the detailed graffiti writing would blow your mind and some of it
really is art of the kind you see in contemporary art galleries all of
the time.

We also visited the Eva Peron (Evita) museum (or should I say shrine
despite her dubious reputation with some people), which was
interesting to me. I'm not sure Paul relished seeing a collection of
her clothes and shoes though and not a mention of Madonna anywhere!

The only disappointing thing in Palermo was the supposedly unmissable
Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires (Malba). Personally, I
didn't like most of the art on show and there are better museums in
BA, unless you are a real fan of modern Cuban art!

2. San Telmo - apart from one night in Palermo this district was our
base (in the excellent America del Sur hostel) so we got to be fairly
familiar with its excellent collection of bars and restaurants. There
really aren't any must see sights in San Telmo but it is a really fun
place to be. A few specific recommendations:

Bar Krakow - we went in for a quick one at 11pm and left at 3am having
got sucked into the Wii Sports, board games and 10+ different
Argentinian beers!

Bar Seddon - we gave this one a try on the basis that we have been
following Hania's surname around the world (very common in New
Zealand) but it was a great find. Lovely atmosphere of the wood,
smoke, dim lighting and candles kind with good cocktails and a genial
host who proceeded to get drunker as the night wore on!

La Poesia - a great lunch spot. An old fashioned Parisian vibe with a
brilliant sandwich menu. I loved it!

Gran Parilla/Desnivel - 2 local style steak restaurants in San Telmo.
Enormous portions and cheap! Gran Parilla slightly posher.

It is worth noting that although food in BA is great (steaks are more
tender than you would get in France but slightly over cooked to my
bloody tastes!) and cheap you have to like your grilled meats or pizza
and pasta. The least gastronomically cosmopolitan place we have been.
I haven't gone for 5 days without an curry anywhere else!

3. Puerto Madero - the result of massive regeneration project to the
defunct industrial port. This is BA's newest district and although it
does have the predictable collection of ordinary high rise buildings,
they have also made excellent use of the old warehouse buildings which
now house restaurants and bars along the riverfront. A lovely place
for a lunch or dinner by the water. There is also a beautiful modern
pedestrian suspension bridge, a couple of 19th century boats, and most
of the crane lifts have been retained and beautifully maintained. Put
all together the area is a great mix of modern, old and industrial.

We also visited the Colleccioni de Arte Amelia Lacroz de Fortabat
which is in a very nice purpose built space and has an interesting and
eclectic collection (better than Malba!)

Another quick recommendation in PM is a restuarant called Siga La
Vaca. It is not the classiest restaurant in BA but for £10 you can
have an all you can eat meat feast, which includes unlimited cold
meats, unlimited grilled meats from a big selection on a barbeque, a
large salad bar, one drink (jug of beer!) and a dessert of your choice
from the menu. Warning: you will be stuffed!

4. Recoleta - the poshest district in BA and home to a couple of must
see sights.

The Recoleta Cemetary - contains the Duarte family tomb although you
would never know it had anyone else in it apart from Eva Peron.
Atmospheric and lovely. Not quite Pere Lachaise in Paris but close!

Basilica de Pilar - next to the Cemetary. The best bit about it is the
outside which could be described as minimalist Moorish! A decent small
museum inside if you like Catholic bric a brac!

Museo Nacionale de Bellas Artes - the best art gallery in BA. A
treasure trove of minor works by major European artists including a
lot of Spanish ones (unsurprisingly) like El Greco, some fab Goyas and
a couple of Velazquez's! The Latinamerican art is probably the best we
have seen too. An additional bonus is that it is free! In a nearby
square there is an enormous steel flower sculpture called Floralis
Generalis. Worth a visit. It's cool.

Would also recommend a lunch stop at La Rambla on Posada. Not that
cheap but lovely steak sandwiches. Dinner was in a restaurant whose
name I forget but where I embarrassingly ordered a Calzone pizza big
enough for 4!

Slightly off kilter with the posh side of Recoleta is the Forex
Cultural Centre which hosts various trendy music events in a big
converted warehouse space. We went to see Bomba de Tiempo, which is a
percussion band (mostly drums). It was great and the most Latin
American (as opposed to Spanish) experience we have had since we got
here.

5. La Boca - the 'roughest' district we visited it didn't show much
sign of its bad reputation when we were there. Even when we went to
see Boca Jrs play Rosaria Central and despite the losing scoreline of
1-2. The atmoshere in the ground (which is painted in the teams
colours) is amazing. The most loyal fans known as La Boce start
singing about 10mins before the game starts and don't let up
regardless of the on pitch action. We were told we might get a glimpse
of Maradona who often comes to watch them but no such luck (maybe he
hasn't recovered yet from being bit on the face by his dog!!!) The
game was lively to watch and it made a change to be on standing
terraces. We paid over the odds for the ticket having been sucked into
going on a tour because it is apparently not safe to travel to and
from the ground on public transport. As I said we didn't really see
any trouble but maybe that is because we were on a tour so who knows.

The other fun thing to do in La Boca is to wander round the area known
as the Caminito (once again you are advised to go during the day and
stay in the tourist areas but it seemed friendly enough to me). The
Caminito is the old artists enclave and is typified by streets full of
buildings painted in bright primary colours. It really is a colourful
place - I can't think of anything to compare it too so will add a
photo one day. It doesn't take long to wander round and pop into the
souvenir shops and restuarants (it is probably the most touristy area
in BA) but it is definitely worth doing. There is also a gallery in
the Caminito called Fundacion Proa which specialises in the Futurist
movement (we are unsure whether this was a temporary or permanent
exhibition). Not usually a fan of Futurist art it had some good stuff,
a very interesting short film on the movement and is in a lovely
building with a gorgeous roof cafe. Worth a trip.

A few other things to note:

Microcentre - the city centre has the least atmosphere of any district
we went to but it is still worth dedicating half a day to wandering
around. There are a lot of nice buildings and one must see is the Casa
Rosada (Presidential Palace with the infamous balcony where both Evita
and Madonna have stood!)

'The Secret of Their Eyes' - the Oscar winner for best foreign film
and Argentinian. It is original, well plotted and with some great
performances. Recommended.

Shopping - not a great shopping destination despite the cheap exchange
rate (a pleasant change after Oz). If there are any exciting BA
designers I couldn't find them and only bought 2 things in 5 days!!!!!!

A final good thing about BA is its proximity to Uruguay (1 hour on the
ferry) so off we go....

(South) American Graffiti

If it's Tuesday it must be Puerto Madero, a relatively new barrio along the river, complete with stylish modern bridge and old ships. (And branches of TGI Fridays and Hooters, which we did not visit.) It's a nice area for a daytime stroll, especially in this balmy weather. We did go to the Colleccioni de Arte Amalia Lacroze de Fortabat, a private art gallery. On first appearances its owner likes art that is (a) of her (including a Warhol) or (b) splodgey paintwork* around very dull compositions, but it improves a bit - there are a few minor works by well-known European artists, but generally it didn't add much to my opinion of South American art.

* Sorry for the technical terminology, Lilly tells me that laymen call this style 'impressionist'.

Back to our hostel for a screening of El Secreto de sus Ojos, an Argentinian film that won this year's foreign language Oscar, and it's a very solid effort.

Then back to the riverside for dinner at Siga la Vaca (Follow the Cow) - for the princely sum of ten English pounds each, we received unlimited grilled meat, salad and appetisers, plus chips, a dessert and a drink - 'a drink' being half a bottle of wine or a 2-pint jug of beer of soft drink. There's a grill area with a couple of chefs cooking many joints, and they'll hack you a chunk off on request - normally a very large chunk, and then they'll toss you a large chunk of something else for good measure. I had some pork, lamb and chicken, as well as two types of steak. Lilly had more Sprite Zero than any human is meant to drink.

On Wednesday we took a bus back to La Boca. Strange area - there are a few streets aimed entirely at tourists in an otherwise unsavoury dockside neighbourhood, home to Boca Juniors. The eye-catching detail is the houses, which sport a rainbow of colours, often on a single building. But you can also watch tango dancers, have your photo take with a Maradona lookalike, buy souvenirs, etc. Shame we didn't escape from the clutches of our group when we came to the football, because you can see it all pretty quickly. We also popped into the PROA contemporary art gallery and watched a video about Futurists. It was alright - a nice-looking but expensive cafe on the roof.

In the afternoon we headed back to Palermo. On our first night we went in a graffiti-covered bar, the Post Street Bar, which was advertising a graffiti tour - Graffitimundo. We signed up for it and came back to do it.

As I mentioned previously, there is a lot of graffiti in BA, and some of it is just tags (people squiggling their names with aerosols) but a lot is illustrative, sometimes on a huge scale. It seems that sometimes businesses or homeowners will permit, or even commission, large-scale graffiti because it tends to keep the taggers away - public walls are more of a free-for-all, but graffiti is not only tolerated, it is used by politicians, who pay people to go around with aerosols (and guns), spray-painting their slogans on every accessible wall at election time.

The tour is unexpectedly run by an English girl - my first impression* is that there's a judge in Hampstead wondering whether to be disappointed or proud that his daughter has followed up an Oxbridge degree by heading to South America, meeting a load of graffiti artists and organising tours/otherwise promoting them. If so, he should be proud, because it's an interesting tour and something genuinely different. Having found the tour's starting place - no easy task - we walk for a while in a well-graffitied area, then hop on a minibus to see some other highlights and visit a couple of very small galleries/shops (there is no hard sell) and she even buys everyone a beer to finish back at Post Street. Her enthusiasm and personal knowledge make it something worth doing, though I fear she hasn't quite come to terms with the impermanence of graffiti as an art form. One of the local artists also tagged** along - it turned out that a big cat we'd admired a few days earlier was his work.

* I should point out that this is a private joke in case it sounds incredibly harsh.
** No pun intended. Much.

In Dunedin, NZ (of all places) I read an article about craft beers in Argentina. Sadly I failed to note any details at the time, and we largely failed to find any here. I must single out the Breoghan Brew Bar - of its 5 home brews, including one being promoted on a blackboard as NEW, only the cream stout was available, and it had no red wine left whatsoever. FAIL.

We had much more fun at Bar Seddon, partly because its owner was several sheets to the wind but a very nice guy. At one point I saw him pouring beer into very small glasses. And then he poured in some blue liquid. Boy, somebody's ordered something weird, I thought. And then he handed them to us as a bonus drink.* If Barrie opened a bar in Buenos Aires...

* Don't fret, loving parents, there was nothing underhand going on, the blue stuff came out of a proper bottle and we weren't drugged.

On Thursday we went to Recolata, the most up-market barrio, full of fancy buildings (lots of mansions for the 19th century super-rich) and posh shops. Our amigo Gaz has been kind enough to give us a few tips from his time here, and when he said that La Rambla serves the best steak sandwich in BA (and therefore possibly the world) he wasn't even joking: I have never had such a tender piece of cow. You could eat this steak with your teeth out. Thanks Gaz.

Recoleta is also home to Our Lady of Pilar Basilica, an attractive white church with a few inessential religious oddments in its cloister, and a cemetary of the landed gentry - it caused some controversy when Eva Peron was added to the roster - probably upset their Aires and graces. We saw one guy who had procured a map from somewhere, but I don't think it's full of memorable names, so we saw Eva, then had a quick scoot around the brooding mausoleums (to give you an idea of the typical shape and size, the TARDIS could land here and fit right in) and large cockroaches.

The Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes is definitely the 'if you only visit one art gallery' gallery, and it's free. A fairly impressive range of European art on the ground floor, with plenty of minor works by big names, sets up a large collection of South American art, in a vast range of styles and enough to make us revise our opinion slightly upwards, upstairs. It's also well laid out to lead you around, apart from two rooms at the back which appear to have had an entire collection crammed into them - you could make an entire gallery in Japan out of those two rooms.

In nearby United Nations Square is a giant metal flower, Floralis Generica, whose petals open in the morning and close in the evening. Very cool.

For dinner Lilly managed to order - but not finish - a calzone as big as her head. I'm amazed there aren't more fat portenos*.

* Local term for BA natives.

Despite not knowing what to expect, we've enjoyed BA - it's got a good sense of energy about it and although it's by no means a tick-off-the-sights place, it's an enjoyable place to stay for a few days (I would spend a few in Palermo and a few in San Telmo).

A few random thoughts - it has a bit of a litter problem - the binmen made a fantastic mess outside our hostel one night! Public transport is very cheap and efficient, although a bus map wouldn't go astray. The subway seems permanently busy but is quick and some stations are nice decorated, with painted tiles and the like. It feels safe in the main tourist areas. And free wifi is pleasingly ubiquitous - the inverse relationship between how 'developed' a country is and the availability of free wifi continues to hold.

Now we're off for a flying - well, boating - visit to Uruguay. There are frequent ferry services with a modern terminal and a painless immigration process. Partly we're killing time because we're not sure where to go next - we're in no rush to get to flooded Rio - but it's an easy trip and seems worth seeing. We will, as always, report back.

Amazing Street Art in BA # 6

Amazing Street Art in BA # 5

Amazing Street Art in BA # 4

Amazing Street Art in BA # 3

Amazing Street Art in BA # 2

Amazing Street Art in BA # 1

La Vida Boca

I feel very behind in blogging - usually a sign that we're having a good time and adjusting to local customs like eating late and staying up later! (The one about putting toilet paper in a bin rather than the toilet takes a bit more getting used to.)

On Sunday we fancied football - Boca Juniors vs Rosario Central at La Bombonera. Boca are the Man Utd of Argentina, but having a season more like Liverpool.

The Bombonera is painted bright blue and yellow, and it has 3 3-tier concrete sides giving it a 49,000 capacity - not bad for a stadium whose fourth side looks more like a narrow block of flats. It's not beautiful, but the 35-40,000 odd fans give it some welly. The perpetual drumbeat powers a wave of singing that continues throughout the 90 minutes.

I feel as if we've cheated a bit by signing up for a guided visit, and also as if I've been ripped off a bit (although we paid safely less than a match at the Emirates), but given the very short notice, the fact that it was promoted at our hostel and the bad reputation of the ground it seemed the sensible thing to do. So we went along with GreenGoal - which I like to think is a pun on 'gringo' - who promised us transport, a ticket, and a tour of something or other. The tour turns out to be walking through a few streets in the La Boca area to the back of a restaurant where we could drink overpriced beer bottles out of a barrel and we're told it's 'better' not to go back into the tourist-filled streets (I'll report on them when we've been back anyway), and means that the whole matchday experience takes nearly 8 hours. So what we get out of the tour is a 600% premium on the tickets, a disinterested guide who tells us nothing, entry into a shirt raffle at the restaurant and transport - but to be fair, getting out of La Boca at night is probably worth paying for, as it's not the most salubrious neighbourhood. But the stadium itself felt perfectly safe - we stood in the middle tier at one end, and the far end was 'la dolce' with the most devoted fans, which really buzzed and jumped at times. The long side in between was all seated, which would be even safer.

Decent match and a great atmosphere - it's a bonus to see a classic Argentinean No.10, Juan Roman Riquelme, back from Spain. Every moment of real class comes from him, apart from a couple of decent touches by 36-year-old striker Martin Palermo (best know for missing 3 penalties in a single match). Goals are exchanged towards the end of the first half, and Boca completely dominate the second before, inevitably, losing 2-1 to a sloppy goal from a late free kick, and Riquelme is sent off for complaining (reports suggest that he had a case). The away fans above us finally make themselves heard but the Boca drumbeat goes on. The away team celebrate as if they've just won the league. (According to our leaflet, here the away fans leave first and have half an hour to get clear before the home fans are allowed to leave. In reality it's a bit quicker than that, and they only hold the home fans in the stands - the seats empty out straight away.)

We also had a brief 'conversation' about football with a taxi driver who spoke as much English as we do Spanish. We did manage to agree that Maradona is a 'disaster', and the two England players he felt moved to comment on were Rooney, who is 'loco', and - believe it or not - Peter Crouch, who 'scores a lot of goals for the national team'. I nearly ventured that he had 'Un touch bueno por un hombre grande' but thought better of it.

As we'd missed out on seeing Barcelona play at Arsenal, this felt an appropriate place to see Messi put 4 past Lilly's team in the return leg. I get the sense that the locals think this is all well and good, but it would be nice if he showed the same form for Argentina...

On Monday we had a good lunch in a lovely wood-panelled cafe that could be in Paris or Madrid, wandered around the 'microcentro', bought nothing from the many, many sports shops, and popped into Cafe Tortoni, the oldest cafe in BA (I would believe you if you told me that some people went for the opening and are still waiting to be given their menus, but it has a rather grand feel to it).

In the evening, following a suggestion from our hostel desk, we headed out into the wilds to see La Bomba Del Tiempo, a collection of drummers playing a whole bunch of different types of drums. I almost felt like a proper traveller, not just someone who gets dragged to shopping malls all around the world. I think every backpacker in BA must have been there. Good fun, although it wears out its welcome eventually, as you realise why most bands also have other instruments too, and maybe some vocals. We finished the evening playing Trivial Pursuit in a fun bar called Krakow. Incidentally, if you've been there and stolen all the organs from its Operation game, please bring them back.

Buenos Dias, Tardes, Aires

Vworp! Vworp! With a wheezing, groaning sound, Lilly and Paul arrive in Argentina... before they left Australia! Unfortunately, our bags are still bigger on the outside than the inside, so it seems likely that we've crossed the international date line.*
* This concept confuses Lilly no end - I think she thought it was something like all those ads you see for Match dot com.
Anyway, taking off and landing at lunchtime was a bit confusing but gave us chance to have a little nap on the plane and power through the day to beat jetlag, which we just about pulled off.
We stayed in the Palermo district on our first evening, so spent the day in that neighborhood. BA gives off a European vibe in both climate and energy - there's a lot of graffiti about, for example, but it's almost a local artform rather than just squiggles and tags. And a clear cafe culture, with lots of people in cafes on laptops. If it were a European city, you might accuse it of being a little run-down, but it feels right here.
Lilly immediately sniffed out a few trendy clothes shops but a pressing need for lunch rescued me. After lunch we visited the Eva Peron museum, which I found as interesting as I would expect - it has a sewing machine *similar to that used by Eva's mother!*, and the English content is sporadic, but apparently she had some beautiful shoes and it's a nice building - and MALBA, the contemporary South American art gallery, which was disappointing: it's pretty rare for neither of us to see anything worthwhile in a gallery, but that happened here. The special exhibition of Cuban art deserves a lack of mention of its own.
On to dinner. BA is cheap generally, but the food especially. The most common form of cooking seems to be to take a piece of meat and grill it nicely, no fuss. Perfect. Although I've memorised the two most important words in any language - 'without butter' - that seems to be the default here in sandwiches. What civilised people. We had a steak dinner at a classic location, La Cabrera {while we were eating, a friend emailed us to advise us to eat there). Bit of a wait, but they give drinks and nibbles to the crowd waiting in the street. Enjoying BA so far - not a city of sights, but a nice place to be.

Rainy days and Whitsundays

Don't worry, we're not really down. Just pondering the best way to see the Whitsundays, because I don't think we found it.

The Whitsundays are a group of 22 islands (and part of a wider group of 74) off the Queensland coast. Some of them are quite large and have permanent residents and/or resorts, some are fairly small. They have a reputation as being a real highlight of Australia. I'm not sure I see it. They are scenic, but we've been spoiled by Halong Bay and various other bits of coast. And I had a mental picture of them being all tropical sand and beaches, whereas they're mostly rocks and greenery. The most famous beach, Whitehaven, is a long, gentle, narrow curve of very pure sand (nearly 99% silica, which is apparently how you measure purity, at least if you like to big up your local Whitsunday beach), which is nice enough - and hard enough to make for good beach cricket - but nothing unique.

Access is via Airlie Beach, a little town with hardly any beach to speak of but a very nice, big, free outdoor pool to swim in or lounge around. I suspect if you roll up here - or even down in Hervey Bay near Fraser Island - you can pick from dozens if not hundreds of ocean-going tours and get a decent last-minute discount.
We took a 2-night cruise on the British Defender, a 44-foot maxiyacht - a former racing ship that has completed a round-the-world race and won a couple over shorter distances. The good thing about this is that we did a bit of fairly serious sailing, with the boat tipping over at angles of up to about 55 degrees to sail into the wind (yes, really - apparently it can go as far as 110 degrees without capsizing, and yes, that does mean its mast would be underwater). The downside of this is that the novelty of clinging on to one side of the boat and being splashed wears off after a while. And although it's been refitted, it's not designed for comfort - the bunks are hot at night and not for the claustrophobic.

But I think the biggest shame is that we didn't really get to grips with the Whitsundays. We did sail right around the group, but saw most of it at a distance - we only landed once, and came up close to one island to snorkel. The first and third day were taken up with going from A to B (3 to 4 hours sailing/motoring), so only the middle day had any 'activities'.

Quite enjoyed my first time snorkelling - the worst things about swimming for me are my breathing and getting water up my nose, and snorkelling generally helps with these, particular if you borrow a little aide de flotation. It's not the best of conditions because last week's cyclone has stirred everything up a lot and visibility is fairly poor (a few guys went scuba diving and said they couldn't see more than a metre), but when you lie still and drift, your eyes quickly adjust and the fish swim up. This is on the fringing reef, a mere 4 million years old, so there's also some interesting coral formations. We saw quite a lot of various colourful and zebra-striped fish and, on a second trip, a brief glimpse of a 4-foot-long fish which fortunately does not try to eat people. (A much smaller fish tried to eat Lilly's finger. It didn't get very far.) We had to wear stinger suits - basically wetsuits - in case of jellyfish, which as a bonus make the sea feel pretty warm.

 

 

We had a fairly full range of weather, but the rain came at good times - i.e. times we could go below deck or pull the covers on - and didn't quite get sunburned when the sun came out, though we are both a fair bit darker than we were a week ago!

So: we enjoyed the Whitsundays well enough, but didn't see anything to make them a must-visit, unfortunately.

That's pretty much it for us and Australia - flying back to Sydney today and around the world in the morning. In many ways it's exceeded expectations. The major cities are far more interesting than I'd expected, most of nature lived up to expectations and there were some good surprises (such as Kings Canyon). Rather than being eaten by exotic creatures, they were mostly a pleasant backdrop. We've only dipped our toes in the traditional backpackers' route up the east coast, so take this with a pinch of salt, but it does seem to be mainly jumping-off points for islands and aquatic adventures, and the small towns we've seen have limited charm in their own right. We spent 2 nights and about 2.5 days in Airlie Beach, which felt like a very long time. I guess my tip is to keep on moving... That's what we're going to do. I'd come back... But I'll wait until the exchange rate gets a lot better.