Wednesday, 7 April 2010
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.
Monday, 5 April 2010
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.
* 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.
Friday, 2 April 2010
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.
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.
Monday, 29 March 2010
Fraser Jolly Good Island
I can't think of many better ways to spend 3 days than throwing a 4x4 around the mud tracks and 70km of uninterrupted beach of Fraser Island, stopping off to swim in beautiful lakes and take in 72 different colours of sand (apparently) and all manner of wildlife.
You can join a group and share a big Landrover, or get a guided tour in a rover or a bus, but if you're going to be jolted around the bumpiest 'roads' I've ever seen, you're going to want to be the driver as much as possible because that's the fun bit, so Lilly and I hired a little 2-seater Suzuki Jimny for 3 days (you can get a package with everything thrown in including ferry, accommodation or camping gear, which saves you from having to work out lots of details). Then it's onto the ferry and off you go.
At c125km long, Fraser is the world's largest sand island. It has lots of forests, a whole bunch of freshwater lakes, an east coach that is almost nothing but beach, and every so often you see a big chunk of island that is still just a sand dune.
The lakes are fantastic. We got our first view of Lake Wabby from a lookout on day 1, and went back to it for a swim on day 2. It's a lake that's being encroached on by a huge, steep sanddune (see picture above).
On the beach is the shipwreck of the Mahena - it was being hauled to Japan to be scrapped when it was caught in a storm and ran aground here. It was later used for live bombing practice in 1944. Now's it a picturesque rusty feature, half covered by sand and slapped around by the tide every day.
At the north end of the beach are Champagne Pools, large tidal pools of seawater that are shark-free and so the only safe saltwater swimming - the water is wonderfully clear and there are lots of colourful fish swimming around the rocks. The pools aren't big enough to swim for exercise but drifting around spotting fish in surprisingly warm water is good fun.
Just south of this is Indian Heads, a big outcrop that marks the northern end of the main beach, an easy climb with good views of the island and the sea. Allegedly you can often see all kinds of marine life in the water below because it's so clear. I think we saw a stingray.
Further down the beach is Eli Creek - you can walk up a boardwalk, get into the creek which is slightly chilly and a foot or two deep, and float down to the beach letting the current carry you. At the bottom of the creek lots of little stones mark the edge of the water and closer inspection reveals that they have washed up here because they float. Floating rocks. This place is crazy.
Getting around the beach isn't easy because of a lack of signs - you navigate by zeroing distance travelled when you reach the beach and using a map with distances marked. At the third attempt we found the walk to Rainbow Gorge - they've changes its name, confusingly, to Sandblow something. This takes you to a sand valley with many different colours of sand, though hardly a full rainbow.
On the third day we made it to Lake McKenzie, apparently the most beautiful on the island (it's going to be closed soon for some kind of works, so we were just in time). The whitest sand and clearest water you could ask for, framed by forest - it is lovely, and warm even in the morning. Not far away is Lake Birrabeen, which is 95% as lovely and much quieter.
Finally we headed up to Central Station, which has a few old buildings and information about the history of the island, and a range of walks - we just had time to walk along Wangoolba Creek Walk.
You could probably spend your whole time here wildlife watching if you don't fancy bouncing around.
We saw several dingos (not great news since FI is the one place in Australia where they have overcome their fear of humans and occasionally get aggressive - so to see a couple near our tent was not ideal, but we didn't have any trouble); a wide range of birds, from a flock of 80 or so green and red parrots doing a flyover of our tent on the second evening to birds of prey; and lizards ranging from tidgers a couple of inches long to three goannas (big black lizards with white markings, the last of which was at least 3 feet long - fortunately we'd seen a video of Steve Irwin chasing one up a tree and telling us how bee-a-youtiful and amazing it was, so we knew we didn't have anything to worry about). A couple of times we were driving inland and just spotted a goanna on the road, heading for a tree, where it would generously hang around long enough to be photographed.
Even camping was quite fun. You can stay in resorts, or big campsites, or just camp along various designated stretched of beach. We opted for the latter. Driving is strongly discouraged after dark, so it's nice and peaceful just back from the beach itself. Of course it rained as we were putting our tent up the first night, but the next day's weather was beautiful, until we left our tent to get dinner - it started to drizzle and we saw the most perfect rainbow imaginable over the sea. Just one of dozens of reasons we knew we'd come to a special place.
We had a great time here and would recommend it to anyone. The only sting in the tail is more of a bite - sandflies, or their close relatives, swarm around the ferry terminal (er, muddy ramp into the sea) as you wait to get on the ferry, and they made mincemeat of us.
You can join a group and share a big Landrover, or get a guided tour in a rover or a bus, but if you're going to be jolted around the bumpiest 'roads' I've ever seen, you're going to want to be the driver as much as possible because that's the fun bit, so Lilly and I hired a little 2-seater Suzuki Jimny for 3 days (you can get a package with everything thrown in including ferry, accommodation or camping gear, which saves you from having to work out lots of details). Then it's onto the ferry and off you go.
This is probably the best stretch of road on the island. Still, you can always drive on the beach
At c125km long, Fraser is the world's largest sand island. It has lots of forests, a whole bunch of freshwater lakes, an east coach that is almost nothing but beach, and every so often you see a big chunk of island that is still just a sand dune.
The lakes are fantastic. We got our first view of Lake Wabby from a lookout on day 1, and went back to it for a swim on day 2. It's a lake that's being encroached on by a huge, steep sanddune (see picture above).
On the beach is the shipwreck of the Mahena - it was being hauled to Japan to be scrapped when it was caught in a storm and ran aground here. It was later used for live bombing practice in 1944. Now's it a picturesque rusty feature, half covered by sand and slapped around by the tide every day.
A bit of ship, with Lilly and Jimny in the background
At the north end of the beach are Champagne Pools, large tidal pools of seawater that are shark-free and so the only safe saltwater swimming - the water is wonderfully clear and there are lots of colourful fish swimming around the rocks. The pools aren't big enough to swim for exercise but drifting around spotting fish in surprisingly warm water is good fun.
Just south of this is Indian Heads, a big outcrop that marks the northern end of the main beach, an easy climb with good views of the island and the sea. Allegedly you can often see all kinds of marine life in the water below because it's so clear. I think we saw a stingray.
Further down the beach is Eli Creek - you can walk up a boardwalk, get into the creek which is slightly chilly and a foot or two deep, and float down to the beach letting the current carry you. At the bottom of the creek lots of little stones mark the edge of the water and closer inspection reveals that they have washed up here because they float. Floating rocks. This place is crazy.
Getting around the beach isn't easy because of a lack of signs - you navigate by zeroing distance travelled when you reach the beach and using a map with distances marked. At the third attempt we found the walk to Rainbow Gorge - they've changes its name, confusingly, to Sandblow something. This takes you to a sand valley with many different colours of sand, though hardly a full rainbow.
On the third day we made it to Lake McKenzie, apparently the most beautiful on the island (it's going to be closed soon for some kind of works, so we were just in time). The whitest sand and clearest water you could ask for, framed by forest - it is lovely, and warm even in the morning. Not far away is Lake Birrabeen, which is 95% as lovely and much quieter.
Finally we headed up to Central Station, which has a few old buildings and information about the history of the island, and a range of walks - we just had time to walk along Wangoolba Creek Walk.
You could probably spend your whole time here wildlife watching if you don't fancy bouncing around.
We saw several dingos (not great news since FI is the one place in Australia where they have overcome their fear of humans and occasionally get aggressive - so to see a couple near our tent was not ideal, but we didn't have any trouble); a wide range of birds, from a flock of 80 or so green and red parrots doing a flyover of our tent on the second evening to birds of prey; and lizards ranging from tidgers a couple of inches long to three goannas (big black lizards with white markings, the last of which was at least 3 feet long - fortunately we'd seen a video of Steve Irwin chasing one up a tree and telling us how bee-a-youtiful and amazing it was, so we knew we didn't have anything to worry about). A couple of times we were driving inland and just spotted a goanna on the road, heading for a tree, where it would generously hang around long enough to be photographed.
Even camping was quite fun. You can stay in resorts, or big campsites, or just camp along various designated stretched of beach. We opted for the latter. Driving is strongly discouraged after dark, so it's nice and peaceful just back from the beach itself. Of course it rained as we were putting our tent up the first night, but the next day's weather was beautiful, until we left our tent to get dinner - it started to drizzle and we saw the most perfect rainbow imaginable over the sea. Just one of dozens of reasons we knew we'd come to a special place.
Actually a double rainbow if you look carefully
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
