South America

La paz and the Bolivian rainforest

2007-07-04T20:54:34Z

La Paz
La Paz did not do it for me . I am not sure what I was looking for but whatever it was I did not find it in La Paz . I suppose both me and Nikki are becoming a bit bored with cities and we prefer smaller places and nature parks . A couple more months of travelling and we will have turned into treehuggers .
This will probably not interest anyone but I will write about it anyway because it was the most important thing I had to do in La Paz . I went shoeshopping in Bolivia´s capital . That sounds easy enough but let me tell you that when you have size 45 this can prove to be quite difficult . Most of the shop attendants just laughed at me when they saw those two monsters I call feet . One even winked at Nikki and called her a lucky girl . She did not have any shoes in my size though . In the end I was forced to go to a shop which specializes in clowns shoes . So here I was . About to go into the jungle with a pair of oversized clownsshoes which happened to be the only pair I could find that kind of fitted me .
In La Paz we met Rosa Maria . This spirited lady has many interesting stories to tell . When she was young slavery still existed in certain parts of Bolivia . Maybe this knowledge fuelled Rosas need to fight injustice .
I suppose Rosa is a typical child of the sixties . Full of idealism and an urge to make the world a better place . She has been involved in the emancipation of ingeneous people who were not officialy recognised untill the nineteen nineties . But her main concern is the conservation of the rainforest . She helped set up Madidi Park and her new baby is Serrere . This will be our next destination .

Serrere
This may not be the most beautiful place we have been so far but it is the most tranquil and our favourite . The lodge we stay in is build next to a lake . There are a couple of more lakes further away in the forest . The lodge is about three hours by boat from Rurrenabaque , the nearest village .
We spend our days here hiking through the forest watching the birds and monkeys , canoeing on the lakes and fishing for Piranha´s . There are many Caimen in the lakes . At night when you are canoeing through the lakes you can see the millions of stars sparkling in the sky and fire flies sparkling in the foliage on the shore . Sometimes you see red lights in the water . These are the eyes of the Caimen .
Our guide is amazing with recreating the animal sounds . He teaches me some of the sounds . After two days I am an expert on the female mating call of the caiman . When I call out every male caiman in a two mile radius gets a hard on . And that I think is what nature conservation should be all about . Giving the animals a great time .
Back in Rurrenabaque we buy some bananabread from the bananabreadman . The bananabreadmans bicycle has a sign which says ´delicious bananabread´and underneath it ´the DaVinci code is ridiculous´. When you buy something he will tell you a conspiracy story . He has a different one for every day of the year .
On our last night in Rurrenabaque we get totally drunk and I end up almost buying the bar . You heard it right . Yours truly was almost the proud owner of a bar called Pachamama in the jungle in Bolivia . Luckily I have a smart girlfriend who inquired if the bar actualy made money . It did not which looking back does not surprise me as our friend Kitt never paid his tab .

La paz and the Bolivian rainforest remains copyright of the author Bardamu, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Potosi , Uyuni , Southwest Bolivia and Oruro

2007-07-04T18:50:33Z

Potosi
Red coloured mountains loom over worlds highest city , Potosi . Almost five hundred years ago silver was discovered in these mountains and that discovery let to Potosi´s glory and tragedy . At the height of its growth Potosi counted two hundred thousand citizens which was more then Paris or New York . It was also more wealthy then the two cities combined . Rumour has it that with all the silver found around Potosi a bridge could have been built from South America to Spain . Whatever the truth is the excavation took its toll . Over eight million miners died uncovering the richness . There is something intriguing about Potosi . Because it towers 4090 meters above sealevel you are constantly gasping for air . Once is must have been a beautiful city but now the beauty is fading . What is left for you to see are some interesting churches and a museum which used to be the Royal Mint . And of course the famous mines which nowadays mainly produce zinc and lead and where the working conditions hardly have improved in the last five hundred years .

Uyuni
The trip from Potosi to Uyuni is noteworthy for two things . The breathtaking mountain scenery and the numerous ghost towns you travel through . When we were still quite a distance removed from Uyuni the city already announced itself by its litter . That is the way you know in Bolivia that you are approaching a town . The garbage gives it away . For example Uyunin is set in the middle of a sand and plastic bottle desert .

Southwest Bolivia
All the great painters combined could not have come up with such fantastic colour combinations . Everytime you think the scenery will not get better the 4 wheeldrive turns a corner and you see a mountain which is even more fiery red or a lake which has such strange colours you think the cook has slipped some LSd in the lunch you just ate .
Our guide tells us that NASA sends scientist to this area because it resembles the surface of Mars . From now on Mars is my favourite planet .
After a drive through the worlds biggest salt flat which by the way resembles a polar landscape and a visit to Isla Inca Huasi with its cactusses which seem to be taken from a western movie we travel to a small blue lake where flamingoes are feeding on algae in the freezing cold . From there we make our way through a mountaines landscape to Volcanoe Ollague and Laguna Colorade , a big red lake . We stay the night at the lake . During the night the temperature drops to minus 15 degrees . The next day we go to Laguna Verde near the Chilean border . On the way we pass the Rocas de Dali named after the famous mad painter . We bath in the the Termas de Polques which are pleasantly warm while the outside temperature is around freezing point . Back in Uyuni the five year old son of the hotel owner has to show us how to heat up the water for the shower so we can defrost our butts .

Oruro
Lama fetuses in all kind of sizes and carnival masks . That is what we saw in Oruro

Potosi , Uyuni , Southwest Bolivia and Oruro remains copyright of the author Bardamu, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Che Gueverra and Simon de Bolivar

2007-06-29T00:11:21Z

The main reason we have come to Samaipata is the pre Inca site El Fuerte . It basicly is a huge slab of stone wich is carved up with puma and serpent designs . There are two parallel grooves on top of the 100 meter long stone which made Erich von Daniken believe that this is actually a landing site of alien spaceships . But then this man also believed that human evolution is manipulated by genetic engineering by aliens . So I would not put too much faith in his words .
We are staying in a hostel called Posadas del Sol which is such a nice relaxing place that we decide to stay two days longer then intended .
From Samaipata we take a bus to Vallegrande . Slowly but surely we are making our way up to the highlands , Vallegrande is best known for being the last resting place of Che Guevara . That is till 1997 when what was left of his body was transferred to Cuba . Guevara was executed on 9 october 1967 in a small place called La Higuerra after a long chase by the Bolivian army through the mountains of the Santa Cruz department .
In Vallegrande we visit the hospital where Guevaras dead body was displayed in the laundry room . To get to the hospital we have to follow a street which is lined with funeral parlours . At the hospital itself we have to take a path which leads to the back into the garden . It passes some small buildings in which patients are lying in beds . When we pass their window some of them waive at us. The laundry room is now covered in graffiti done by Che admirers . Behind the laundry room there is another building in which soldiers cut off Guevaras hands so no one could identify him by his fingerprints . When Guevara was marching through this region he was met with mistrust and suspicion by the locals . But when he was dead and his body was displayed in this laundry room local women noticed that he looked a bit like Jesus Christ . It seems ironicly to me that the communist rebel only got the recognition of the local campesinos he craved for in death when he resembled the spearhead of a cult he must have despised .
Near the hospital there is a museum dedicated to Che Guevara . The museum consists of two rooms with dozens of pictures of his dead body . So I can tell you that unlike Elvis Guevara is dead . We learned in the museum that when he was captured Guevara wore three pair of socks . I can see why because it can be awfully cold here and with his asthma he could have caught a terrible cold .
After visiting the place where he was clandestinely buried for 30 years we take a bus to Sucre . We travel by the old trade route . Not many travellers come this way and we soon find out why . At eight in the evening we get dumped in a tiny village and we get told to be at the busstop the next morning at six . Threre is only one hotel in town and when we see it we seriously think about going to the local police station and ask then if we can sleep in a cell . The room we get at the hotel is ensuite . The toilet is covered in brown stains . I cannot determine if it are shit stains or if someone ate a package of tobacco and puked it all out . The bedroom smells like a couple of rats have died here recently . Needless to say we are very relieved when the alarmclock goes off at five .
I liked ´the Athens of the Americas´, Sucre , ´the White City´. Maybe I liked it so much because of the festivities that were in place for the towns birthday . Half the town was marching through the streets while the other half watched them . Apart from the military there were guilds of every profession lifting their feet to sound of the drums . Even the clowns dared to risk their unhealthy white skin to the burning sun .
Sucre is also called ´the Cradle of Liberty´. We visited the Casa de la Libertad to see a copy of the declaration of independence and a portrait of Simon de Bolivar which he claimed was the most life like representation ever done of him . I will now tell you something which you cannot read in any guidebook . Simon de Bolivar looked like the Artist formerly known as Prince . He only has sideburns and a higher forehead . Also he must have been a sexy motherfucker because he had quite a few lovers . Simon de Bolivar is one of South America most charismatic sons . Without setting a foot in Alto Peru its inhabitants named the newly liberated country after him and made him first president . While it was Antonio Jose de Sucre who did the work .
We end our stay in Sucre with a bit of B&B . That is not Big Brother . B&B stands for Bolivian Blues . There cant be too many Blues bands in this country though as one of the three bands performing we already saw in Santa Cruz . The bandmembers recognise us also . After the performance the singer comes over to us and asks me if I am a producer . Because he is buying the drinks I do not deny it .

Che Gueverra and Simon de Bolivar remains copyright of the author Bardamu, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Santa Cruz Bolivia

2007-06-01T01:27:06Z

Everyday there is a demonstration in Bolivia . When we arrived at our hotel in Santa Cruz the first thing we saw was a group of disabled people protesting just outside the hotel in front of the social heath services . They had set up camp . There was a outdoor kitchen and they had set up a TV for the children they had brought along .
On our first night in the city we went looking for an evening shop where we could buy some beers . We found a small shop a couple of blocks from the hotel which sold beer which was not kept cold . As it was the only shop we could find we bought some and walked back to the hotel . When we rang the bell of the hotel in order to wake up the concierge a cripple with a crutch walked over to us . He said something in either Quechua or Aymara I am not sure . What I do know is that it was not Spanish . We answered that we did not understand him . He pointed at the plastic bag with beers , said something else , shrugged and walked off . Then the concierge opened the door and we went inside ..
The next day we explored the city . Santa Cruz is not especially beautiful but it is interesting to compare it with the rest of Bolivia as it stands out somewhat . It seems more modern and quick paced . In the evening we went to look for a cinema . Now there is something strange with the cinemas in Santa Cruz . Or at least the two we found .The first socalled cinema we got to was named Universal Pictures . When we got inside there were some young people standing in a badly illuminated hallway . Spiderman , I asked them . No Jesus Christ or lord they replied pointing at a statue I could only faintly make out of a man on a cross . We smiled politely and backed out .
The next cinema was called Olympia . It was closed when we got there . When we walked away from the locked doors a girl came over and pointed at a building across the street . The church is over there , she said . We thanked her politely and walked of wondering what happened to Tinseltown in Bolivia .
We went back to the hotel but not before stopping at the evening shop for some beer . At the hotel a little later the cripple was waiting for us . Again he pointed at the bag and said something . Maybe he would like a beer we thought but when we offered he declined , smiled and walked off muttering to himself .
The third and last day we did not do much . In the afternoon we went for a walk and stopped at our usual shop for some beers . At the hotel the cripple was waiting but this time he had brought a friend . The cripple said something to the young man and he translated for us in English . ¨He says that the shop you always go in the evening is shit . The beer is warm and overpriced . There is a much better shop over there . ¨He pointed behind him towards a small alleyway we had not seen before . Then they both laughed and walked away . I could just hear the young man saying to the cripple ´Gringos ! ´.

Santa Cruz Bolivia remains copyright of the author Bardamu, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Paraguay

2007-05-19T21:06:19Z

In 1537 a crack commando unit of the Spanish crown was threatened by a hostile Indian tribe for crimes they probably did commit . These men prombtly escaped in the Paraguayan underground . Still wanted by the Querandi Indians they survive as soldiers of fortune . If you have a problem , if no one else can help , and if you can find them maybe you can hire the Pedro Mendoza expedition .

As you may have noticed I changed the opening lines of the TV series the A team a bit . The reason I did this is that the some of the surviving stories of the first European conquerors read like boybooks . The Pedro Mendoza expedition did have to flee modern day Buenos Aires and started a settlement in what is now Ascunsion . The local Guarani Indians were quick to employ their gunpowder and in exchange for food and loads of women the Spaniards fought with the Guarani against the Guaycuru who lived in the Chaco . Today 95% of the Praguayans are Mestizo . That is of Guarani and Spanish descent .

Asuncion
I suppose that both me and Nikki were looking for something more challenging after all this time in Argentina . So we decided to go to Paraguay . Our stop at the border already deserves mentioning . The busdriver would not let us get off . Instead he took our passports and went up to the immigration office . In the mean time many people came on the bus to offer their services . We could change money and we got offered watches , radios , maria statues and a half plucked chicken .
Asuncion is a bit disappointing . The palace de Gobierno is quite beautiful though . Luckily for us Francia is not in charge anymore for if he was we would have been shot just looking at the building . Across from the restaurant we used to go for coffee there is the Pantheon de los Heroes . Francisco Solano Lopez is buried here . I cannot help wondering why they gave him such a honourable resting place . This man started the war of the triple alliance . He declared war on Argentina , Brazil and Bolivia at the same time . After five years of fighting Paraguay had lost a quarter of its soil and half of its population .

Conception
We arrive on a sunday afternoon . There is a party going on in town . People on motorcycles race past . Pick up trucks drive by with people on the back and big sound systems blaring eurotrash music . We are in our hotel on the balcony overlooking the street .
After ten minutes we are covered in dust and move back inside .
We have decided to take a boat out on the Rio Paraguay . On monday we get the tickets and some supplies , ie hammocks , food and water . The next day we decide to queu up early . The boat leaves at 11.00 and we decide to be on the docks at 09.30 to secure hammock space . Unfortunately my watch is not working well and we arrive at 10.30 . By that time the boat is packed with people and footstalls where you can buy drinks , fast food , vegetables , fruit , blocks of ice for the mate , meat and half dead chickens . This does not leave much room for us . The only space we can find for our backpacks is under the workbench of the machinist . For ourselves we have to be satisfied with being squashed between some bales of rice and some polystrene boxes which the people use as fridges to keep their drinks cold . This trip is supposed to take three days and God knows why we do not jump straight off the ship . When the ship finally starts to move people start to settle down and surprisingly enough after five hours we manage to find a place to sit on a wooden bench . By this time it is four oclock and we are drenched in sweat . We are sitting right accross from the engine room and the hot exhaustion fumes are blowing past our heads . Our ears are ringing from the sound of the engine . Needless to say there is no way we can find a space for the hammocks . This turns out to be one hell of a journey . We are sharing the bench with some older men who are all carrying a lot of cargo which they will try to sell allong the river . I start a conversation with a young doctor who works in a small hospital in one of the villages we will pass . The Rio Paraguay runs roughly allong the border with Brazil towards Bolivia . This is Paraguays poorest area . Apparently there is no Dengue fever nor Malaria here . The biggest problems the doctor faces are infections . Apparently he has quite a bit of amputating to do .
There are many interesting characters on board . One man has us all in stitches . He keeps offering us cold beers from his polystrene fridge . A bearded man joins our group . It is obvious that everyone is very respectfull towards him . It turns out that he is a Polish priest who has lived here for the last 32 years . And then there is the machinist who has the hairiest back I have ever seen on a man (or woman for that matter) . He has the walls of the engine room decorated with posters of half naked girls advertising Fortin rum .
We get off at Vallemi and backtrack to Conception by bus . When we buy the ticket we get told that that this is el autobus rapido. It takes the bus 8 hours to cover the distance of 180 kms. Altough I have to say that this is including the hour we have to wade through a farmers field to a dryer stretch of road as the bus cannot drive a particular part of muddy road with people inside it .
Back in Concepcion it is almost weekend and a party is about to kick off . People on motorcycles race past . Pick up trucks drive by with people on the back and big sound systems blaring eurotrash music . We are sitting at a roadside restaurant . A kid walkes over to us . He is selling candy . When we tell him that we are not interested he starts to become argumentative and he tries to bully us into buying something . I worked with a guy in Ireland who I suspect used to be a candyseller in his youth and not a very good one at that . I tell the kid that when he keeps this up he will grow into a small , mean old man with a belly and a bald patch . That shuts the kid up .

Filadelfia
Farms , barns and farmhouses that look like barns . You guessed it . Filadelfia is a farming community . Around 15000 Mennonites are living in and around Filadelfia and their first language is German . The Mennonites dont smoke and dont drink . Strangely enough the prizes for cigarettes and booze are lower then in the rest of the country . So we do some shopping in the local supermarket and lock ourselves in our room . One bottle of rum later and I try to write about our adventures . There is a lot of cursing when I cannot find the correct words . In the mean time Nikki is playing a Tom Waits song on her I pod loud enough for me to hear . ´The piano has been drinking . Not me ...´

Apart from the Mennonites there are some other communities worth mentioning in Paraguay . In 1887 Friedrich Nietzsche´s sister Theresa together with her husband and 14 other families start Nueva Germania near the Brazilian border . Their objective is a pure Aryan settlement . The colony is still there . And in the eighties the Moonies bought a whole village near the Bolivian border .

Paraguay remains copyright of the author Bardamu, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Our last weeks in Argentina

2007-05-12T22:19:22Z

Mendoza
At first we think we have hit gold with this hostel . It is cheap and it seems cheerful and quiet . We soon find out how wrong we are with these assumptions. We share our room with three blond girls from Sweden . One night when we come back from dinner we find some white powder on the table and on my jacket which I had put over the chair next to the table . It is not difficult to see what happened . The girls sniffed some coke and not feeling worried about the fact that cocaine is illegal in Argentina and that they are sharing a room they brushed the leftover carelessly from the table over my jacket . After cleaning the jacket we retire to bed . About two in the morning the girls come back . It looks like they are drunk . They put on all the lights in the room and start talking to each other unaware that we are there . One of the girls asks the other two if they are not worried that we may find out about them using cocaine . The other two start to laugh and say that we do not look like the kind of people who would recognise it for what it is ( I am sure some of my old friends may find this quite funny ) . Anyway not being able to sleep my mind starts to work things over . I think these are the kind of girls who would take a package from a stranger and bring it on a plane . It would not surprise me if one day I would open a newspaper and see a picture of them with a caption saying something like ¨caught drugtrafficking¨. Apparently there are some politicians in Holland who want to lock up drug courriers in cages placed in the arrivals hall of the airports for everyone to see . I can picture these girls in one of those cages . But my brains , probably in an effort to get revenge for spilling the coke over my stuff, pictures the girls in a giant hamster cage where they have to run the giant hamster wheels to the amusement of the travellers .

Difunta Correa Easter sunday
During the civil war in the 1840s when general Rosas was in power a woman called Deolinda Correa followed her husbands battalion through the San Juan desert with their infant son . She only carried little supplies and eventually she ran out of water and food . Desperately she tried to reach her husbands battalion but the desert proved a cruel place and the woman died of thirst . A day later her body was found . She was holding the baby in her arms . The child was still nursing from her breast .
Thus a saint was born . Although the church has never acknowledged her the shrine which was build on the place where she died all those years ago attracks many pilgrims from Argentina and Chile . We have made the trip to the Difunat Correa shrine on easter sunday . This day sees the most pilgrims , who come here to bring gifts and ask for favours and blessings . There are seventeen capels which display the gifts people have brought . One chapel stores dozens and dozens of wedding dresses . Gifts from women who want to thank the saint for finding a husband . Another chapel is full with sport trophies . There are a few chapels which display pictures from the devotees . There is one picture which deserves mentioning . Three photos are tied together by a black coloured string . The first photo shows a baby obviously sick as there is a tube sticking up the childs nose . The second picture shows the same baby in a coffin . The third photo shows a different baby . Looking at the photos you can see that the first two are somewhat older than the third one . You can imagine that the parents must have prayed to Difunta after their first child died for another child and that finally their prayers got answered . There is one chapel which contains army uniforms and photos from soldiers who have made it back from whatever mission they were on . Many photos are from the eighties when Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands .
The shrine itself is situated on top of a hill . We have to queu to see the shrine . Now and again we have to make room for a pilgrim who is crawling on hands and knees .

San Juan
I do not have much to say about this place as we did only stay here to catch up on sleep (and drink wine) .
The town is fairly new as the old town was destroyed in the fourties in a eartquake . In a way that disaster was the first step in Perrons rise to power as he made himself a pòpular figure raising money for the rebuild . During that time he also met his future wife Evita .

Cordoba and the road trip
Cordoba`s inner city is quite beautiful but we do not allow ourselves too much time to explore it . On our first morning in Cordaba we meet Chris and Helen , a couple from the UK we have met before in Ushuaia and the four of us decide to rent a car to explore the Central Sierras . What we do see though is the Iglesia Compania de Jesus which ceiling resembles an inverted ships hull and the Crypta Jesuitica which now exposes erotic pictures .
On our road trip our first stop is Alta Gracie . The young Ernesto Gueverra grew up here and there is a museum dedicated to his life . Roaming through this museum I realise that it was a good idea to read Lee Andersons biography on Gueverra before leaving Ireland as now I can correct some of the information plaques in the museum . For example the date on Ernesto Gueverra`s birth certificate shown in the museum is incorrect as the date was changed by a friendly doctor . Ernesto`s mother was pregnant before she married Ernesto`s father and to save face they asked the doctor to falsify the documents . As they were in the North of Argentina away from friends and family nobody noticed this scandalous detail . Funny to think that Che`s life started of with a lie .
Villa General Belgrano is our second stop . Walking through this town you feel like you are in the South of Germany . Survivors of the Graf Spee were stationed here in the WW2 . Ernesto Gueverra used to come here as a kid to spy on them . We spent the night in this place and then head to La Cumbrecita where we climb a mountain called Cerro Wank .
Our fourth stop is Mina Clavero from where we drive to the Parque Nacional Quebrada del Condorito . This is a beautiful wildlife park where you can see young condors which are learning to fly . We run into Jeff again . Jeff is an American guy who always seems to wear a Motorhead T shirt and he has pinguins tatoed on his arms and neck . He knows everything about birds . In fact you only have to describe a bird to him and he can name it . Near Mina Clavero there is a town called Rocsen which houses one of the strangest museums I have ever seen. Museum Rocsen displays basicly everything a museum can display . There are old cars and motorcycles , old clothes , paintings , African trible gear , fossils and minerals , religious curiosa , a butterfly collection , torture machinery , a Peruvian mummy and a shrunken head I cant stop gazing at . From Mina Clavero we drive to Estancia Santa Catalinsa which used to be run by Jesuits . The caretaker who shows us around tells us that he loves religious music . Mozart and the Clash . We stay our fourth and last night in Jesus Maria from where we head back to Cordoba .

After twenty hours of travelling we arrive in style in Puerto Iguazu as the steward serves champagne an hour or so before we arrive . We arrive at noon on sunday and laze the rest of the day away . Monday we go to see the Argentinian site of the waterfalls . To be honoust I dont think I am a good enough writer to describe this natural phenomenon . Near where the Rio Iguazu meets the Rio Parana there is a huge drop in the basaltic rock plateau . The river Iguazu is divided into many different channels and lakes before it reaches this drop . As a consequence there are many different waterfalls to admire . The biggest is the Garganta del Diablo . From afar you may think that the forest is on fire but when you come closer you can see that the waterfall is shrouded in a smokelike mist . When the sun shines you can see rainbows jumping up from the mist like mushrooms from the Autumn ground . And then there are the butterflies . They seem to be everywhere and when you walk around you are covered with them from your head to your toes . The waterfalls lie on the border of Argentina and Brazil . From the Argentinian site you can see all the individual waterfalls . From the Brazilian site you can see the entire falls in one panoramic view . We go to Brazil on tuesday . The view is definately worth the hassle getting there . According to the Guarani indians the falls were created by an enraged forest god . When the hero Caroba rescued a young maiden named Naipar from the house of the god who kept her prisoner he fled with her in a canoe over the Rio Iguazu . The god noticing that she had gone flew in a rage and followed the lovers along the river . He caught up with them and made the riverbed disappear . From the viewpoint you can imagine an enraged godly giant grabbing a huge chunk of the earth and tossing it away . Naipar plunged to her dead and turned into a rock . Caroba turned into a tree forever overlooking the river where his lover sank as a stone to the bottem .

Our last weeks in Argentina remains copyright of the author Bardamu, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Argentina

2007-04-29T23:32:48Z

Basically every town has a Plaza de San Martin , an avenue de San Martin and an avenue Rivadavia . Some towns don´t have anything other than a Plaza de San Martin , an avenue de San Martin and an avenue Rivadavia .
Argentina , like the continent South America itself is shaped like a cone with one site more straight and the other more curved . We start our travels in Buenos Aires which is roughly one third down the curved site and travel to the tip of the cone , the self proclaimed city at the end of the world , Ushaia . We then travel North again (have to because South of us there is a sea and then Antartica) on the more straight site passing through a bit of Chilean Patagonia on the way .

Buenos Aires Cementario de la Recoleta
Among the crypts and statues of the dead there lives a colony of cats . A certain General Rosas is buried here . He originally was one of the Federalists (big cattle farmers and the rural elite) . Apparently he ruled with an iron fist . His mazorca (police forse) was very notorious . After twenty years he had to flee Argentina and he ended up in Great Britain where he became a milk farmer . He died in Hampshire and was buried there . In the 1980's his bones were transferred to Argentina with great ceremony . However rumour has it that Rosas grave was destroyed during the Blitz krieg . Some cows got killed during the same bombardment . The bones transferred to the tomb in Recoletta may well be that of a cow .

Plaza de Mayo Thursday afternoon around four o'clock
It all started in 1977 when during the reign of Videla fourteen women marched into the Plaza de Mayo demanding information about their missing children . The police did not dare to touch them as they carried out the protest as mothers . Thus something was borne which eventually grew into a powerful political movement . Now the mothers are still meeting every thursday on the Plaza de Mayo . Not many more than fourteen women are gathered here today . Courageously marching among the busloads of tourists .

Puert Madryn
I have heard stories about the wind in Patagonia but it is during the bicycle ride to Punta Loma that I experience it first hand . The wind seems to come from every direction in this country . Sometimes it comes from your left and then all in a sudden it comes from your right . Sometimes it pushes you forward and you hardly have to peddle and then when you go downhill it rushes at you and it stops you halfway and you have to put in all your effort to reach the bottom of the hill . The wind materialises itself with a cloak of dust . I am dressed in black trousers and a black jacket but by the time I have reached Punta Loma I am dressed in white like Don Quichotte .

Trelew Paleontologic Museum
The museum displays among other things the bones of the gigantic Argentinosaurus . This animal could grow 40 meters long and 20 meters high . Why this fascination in dinosaurs all in a sudden you may want to ask me . Well where I come from the most ancient of the land animals is the wild rabbit . I am not sure though if fossiled bones have been found .

Reserva Punta Tombo 03 March
Between half a million and a million Magellanic or Jackass penguins nestle here between august and April . In March the first and youngest birds start their 6000 kilometers migration North to Brasil . In April the older ones follow . Punta Lombo lies at the Atlantic on the edge of a thorny desert . The birds dig holes under the bushes to escape the heat . In february and March Penguins lose their feathers . I feel like walking through a pillow factory .

Gaiman Parque El Desafio
Following the yellow flowers cut from plastic bottles you like Dorothy and Toto will be taken through a magical landscape . All you will see is made out of recycled material like soda bottles cans and cable . Joaquin Alonso the creater of the park says that he dreams about his creations and then builds them . Among other things there is a replica of the Tai Mahal , a fairy castle and there is monument in honour of the Tehelchue Indians . The park is in stark contrast with the rest of the town Gaiman . The town is best described as a paradise for old ladies with well kept rosegardens and tea houses .

Comodore Rivadavia
The town smells of petrol . That is the most remarkable thing I can say about this place . The hotel we stay in is owned by an old couple and the tiles floor resembles an Escher drawing .

Rio Gallegos
Another non descript town . If there was a highlight it must have been playing spotting the gaucho . I counted two .

Tierra del Fuego
When Magellan reached these parts he was amazed by the many fires he saw everywhere . The Yamana Indians had always a fire lighted . Even when they paddled out to fish or to hunt seals they would have a small fire going in the middle of the canoe . They made their canoes from the bark of the lenga tree . They would light the fire on top of some clay or a pollen of grass the roots turned upwards . Magellan named the Island land of fire or in Spanish Tierra del Fuego .
there were four different tribes that lived in Tierra del Fuego . Three are now extinct . There are only about a hundred Yamana alive in Southern Chile .
In Museo Yamana I saw some pictures of of these indians . I can see that they must have looked strange to the first European explorers . They would dress in nothing else but a loincloth and a seal cap . They walked steeped over , their feet not pointing forwards but inwards . To me the pictures ion the museum looked haunting as the eyes of the people in the pictures were white without a hint of an iris . The eyes were that of ghosdts or people already dead .

One guy is playing a serenade on his guitar to a girl . The girl smiles tenderly at him . she is making a necklace out of twine and beads . A couple is preparing a vegetarian meal . They are talking about Che Guevarra the way nuns talk about the pope . Four french men are sitting in the middle of te room . They have long hair and beards and they are discussing the lyrics of a Lennon song . That is till we enter the room , sit down at the only empty table left and start butchering our roasted chicken . A deadly silence descends on the room . I open a bottle of Malbec and pour myself a glass . After a drink of the red stuff I face the people in the room and start whisling `Free as a bird . I do love these communal spaces on camping grounds .

Punta Arenas
Famopus explorers like Shackleton and Amundsen walked the streets of Punta Arenas . Shackleton was here to organise a rescue party for his crew . Amundsen was on his way to explore the South pole . We are also on a mission . We have to find a suitable pub because tomorrow is Paddy´s day . We end up taking the bus to Puerta Natales where we find a pub run by a man from Leeds . We spend the night drinking and playing table football . From Puerta Natales we arrange our trip to the Torres del Paine .

Torres del Paine
I cannot get over the fact that this park used to be part of a estancia and that the valleys and mountain slopes were mere breeding grounds for sheep . Today the park is home to many bird species and other animals , guanacos and pumas among them . Ironicly enough most animals we see in those six days we spend in the park is from the bus when we enter the park . While hiking we hardly see any animals apart from sparrows and blackbirds . The park is about a two hour drive from Puerta Natales . As we start at the far end of the park our bus ride takes a bit longer . We get dropped off at one of the many refugios from where we take a catamaran to cross Lake Pehoe . By the time we have settled ourselves on the campground we will spend the first night it is two PM . We decide to hike part of the way up to Lake Grey and Glacier Grey . Lake Grey is actually white , contaminated as it is by tiny fragments of rock , disposed by the Glacier . From a distance it looks like the advance of the Glacier into the Lake is stopped by an island although it may be the case that the presence of the island has made it possible for the glacier to extend this far . I am not sure what the truth is . We do not get much sleep the first night as the wind is fierce and relentless and the camping ground hardly offers any cover .
The second day we take it easy and only hike up Campemento Italiano . Although this camp lacks facilities ( it only has two toilets nothing else ) it is in the middle of a pine forest so we do not feel the wind that badly .
The third day I hike up alone into the Fernch Valley . The word valley made me think that there would not be much climbing to do . How wrong I was . When I reach the view point past Campemento Brittanico I am out of breath . All my efforts are rewarded though as a rainbow appears in the sky over the valley and Lake Nordenskjold with its islands . I take many pictures . When I arrive back at Campemento Italiano we take down the tent and continue to Los Cuernos . We arrive at the campment shivering from the cold as it is windy and the whole time since leaving Campemento Italiano it has been raining .
The fourt day is miserable as it is raining hard and there is so much wind that once or twice we almost get blown of the path . We arrive at Las Torres cold to the bone and in order to recover a bit we have a hot meal in the restaurant of the refugio . A luxury we have not granted ourselves sofar .
On the morning of the fifth day I do some laundry and as we have to wait for the clothes to dry it is one thirty PM when we set off for Campemento Chileno . On our way we meet a man who broke his jaw and split his bottem lip the day before . Bandage and tape keep the jaw in place . His lip still bleeds a bit . Because the man did not want to be a burden to his friends he did continue the hike up to the three Torres del Paine . It is only now that he hikes back to Las Torres from where he can take a bus to civilisation . It will be at least another twelve hours before he will see a doctor .
The sixth day is our last day . We hike up to the three Torres del Paine . As the day is overcast we do not get the views we were hoping for . From the viewpoint we hike back to Las Torres and the bus .
Sitting in a hotelroom in Puerta Natales and reviewing our experiences in the Torres del Paine I think the best bits about that wild land of sparrows and blackbirds are the many stars at night , the fresh air we breathed and the water we could drtink from the streams and rivers . It is only after the experience of walking through such a clean mountain site that you realise the dump we have to live in . I take another sip from the plastic bottle of mineral water ( Vital: clean and pure water fromn a spring in France ) as it is advised not to drink the tap water .

El Calafate
This is our access point to the Perito Moreno Glacier . The glacier , a huge river of ice seems to stem from different sources as two huge icy riverbeds merge and advance slowly into the Canal de los Tempanos . Every so often you can hear something which resembles a gunshot and a chunk of the glacier breaks off and floats away in the channel . In order to see the glacier we have taken a tour from el Calafate . There is a guy from Switzerland on the tour whose laughter sounds like a cross between the sound of a car which will not start on an early wintermorning and the sound a big dog makes when it has eaten too greedily and is coughing up its food . The anticipation for the sound like that of a gunshot is even higher with him around . If only to drown his laughter .

El Chalten
The town is just over twenty years old . It was founded in 1985 in order to make claim to the land around it before Chile could . This was during a period that the politicians both in Argentina and Chile were driven by expansianism . Anyway the reason we are here is not the town itself but the surrounding mountains . During one of our walks in the area we met a parkranger . I tried to tell him a joke which went like this .¨"Once there was a woman who went walking in the forest . At a certain moment she met a parkranger . They started talking and the woman asked the parkranger if it was not lonely living in the forest .¨Yes¨, the parkranger said .¨It can be very lonely . Especially because there are no women in the forest¨.¨But¨, the woman asked him .¨Dont you have sex at all then¨.Well¨,the ranger said .¨I do it with the trees¨.¨That is terrible¨, the woman exclaimed .¨I tell you what¨.¨You are a handsome young man . You can do it with me¨. The parkranger happily agreed . The woman took off her clothes and lay down on the forest ground . The parkranger instead of taking his clothes off kicked the woman hard in the stomach . ¨What did you do that for ¨, the woman cried out . ¨Just making sure there are no squirrels ¨, the ranger replied .
I dont know if it was my Spanish but the parkranger was not laughing .

We fly from El Calafate to Esquel but as the plane gets diverted we end up in Bariloche .

Bariloche and the Lake District
¨We set off again , passing greatly varying lakes , all surrounded by ancient forest , the scent of wilderness caressing our nostrils . ¨
Ernesto Che Gueverra 1952
This description is of the Sieta Lagos Route from Bariloche to San Martin de los Andes . Unfortunately when we travelled this road after filling our bellies with chocolate and icecream in Bariloche we did not catch the scent of wilderness . Without a doubt the lakes and forest are beautiful . But it is the beauty of a well kept garden where when you pass through you are watching every step you take , afraid to step on something .

From San Martin de los Andes we take a bus to Mendoza . We pass a place called Plaza Huincul where on the main square there is a replica skeleton of the Argentinosaurus build from scrap metal . The construction is about 40 metres long and 20 metres high . We play bingo on the bus . The winner gets a bottle wine .

Argentina remains copyright of the author Bardamu, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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