Adios Latin America!

A statistic: After fourteen and a half months, we left Latin America and entered El Paso, Texas. In the 444 nights since we landed in Santiago, Chile, we stayed in 148 different hotels and hostels. Some of those hotels we stayed in more than once, and we also spent 20 nights sleeping on buses. Add up other random nights on boats and camping and we come to a total of 211 different sleeping places. So, on average, we moved to a new bed every 2.1 nights.

Lanquin

The main street

The lawn mower in front of our hut

Riverside hammock

San Jose

We stuffed our four backpacks into the back of a taxi and directed our driver to the hostel. His appearance screamed ‘shifty’ but he agreed to take us for a good price. As his silver ringed fingers wheeled us around town, a ‘helpful’ suggestion dribbled from below his thick black moustache; “Let’s just ring them first and make sure they’re not full”. We pulled over, and his hairy sausages mashed in the number. “Not working” he said after putting the phone up to his ear. He ‘tried’ the number again; this time there was someone on the other end. “Pangea Hostel?” he asked, then handed the mobile to Paul, so Paul could ask about a room- and so we could know he wasn’t just going to lie and tell us they were full. Taxi drivers earn commissions by taking tourists to certain hotels, and this was a show of honesty on his part so that we could be sure he wasn’t trying to scam us into staying to his Cousin’s Crappy Hostel. “We’re full” came the answer, followed by a round of raised eyebrows on our part- just a feeling we all got. Paul checked the last dialled numbers, and noting that the number he had just been talking to be different to the advertised one of our hostel, tried the hostel number again. This time he got a new person on the other end, and it turned out that there were plenty of beds available. The driver had someone, somewhere, who he called and would then pose as staff, regretfully informing the caller that their chosen hotel was full- maybe your taxi driver knows somewhere? (and changing the destination of the cab means hiking up the price, too). Realising he had been caught, our driver turned up the stereo, stared straight ahead and didn’t make any other ‘helpful’ suggestions, or indeed, say another word for the entire trip.

David-!!!

Visiting a town named after me was an exciting prospect. David is the third largest city in Panama, but disappointingly, resembles nothing more than a slightly larger Braidwood, hell-hole of my childhood. Apparently, over one hundred thousand people live in David, but I’ve got no idea where they all live, or what they might do, or why they are there.


We stayed in a hostel coloured entirely purple, run by an authoritarian American with a deep love of rules. The walls were plastered with signs describing the proper procedures for living at the Casa Morada (Purple House), even decreeing the correct method for making the coffee from the urn weaker (add water). We went bowling one night, but the alley was a super-modern, highly polished and computerised affair with none of the charm or unpredictability of Twin Lanes in La Paz. I may just be bitter because I lost so convincingly.

Even the horrendously overweight dog had been purple-ised, and seemed suitably depressed about it

Shiny

Day 7- Back to Reality

(Click here to start from the start)

With not enough room available on the first plane, Emma and Marc had to catch the next one

Another small plane

As per usual, we were up with the sun, this time to catch our plane out of the Kuna world and into modern civilisation. Not all of us were really sure if we were ready to go back to modern culture (the Kuna live in paradise and seem unwaveringly happy), but strings had been pulled and the flights had been arranged. As our little plane climbed it became more evident just how lucky we had been to come aground where we did. We’d been told that there were over 300 uninhabited islands along this coast, so for us to come aground an easy hour’s walk from a mainland village was incredible. What people didn’t mention were the countless shallow reefs that lay scattered from the shore to a couple of kilometres out to sea. From the air, we could see random waves breaking in the middle of nowhere; if we’d rammed into one of those rock shelves we would have been in really serious trouble. It was staggering to think that we had silently and unknowingly threaded our way through a minefield of islands and rock outcrops; I’m sure if we tried we could not have crashed anywhere more ideal.

There were plenty of chances for much worse outcomes

Uncrashed ships

We hopped up the coast, at one point picking up the Japanese couple that had elected to fly rather than take an un-air-conditioned yacht where high-heels were forbidden. They were understandably stunned to hear our story, and quite relieved to have flown over the Gap. We passed over the San Blas Islands, where we saw little flocks of successful yachts moored peacefully in bays and inlets- no doubt full of happy people and adept captains. Then overland and into Panama City, where Western Civilisation is in glittering full swing. We had taken off over towns of stick-walled huts and dirt paths, and as we came into land we passed over geometric housing estates and generic clusters of seaside highrises, freeways and shopping malls.

Progress

The airport that we left from was a strip of concrete running through a grassy field. The airport we landed in was disturbingly clean and right-angled, with coffee-shops, uniforms, shiny tiles and huge panes of glass. It was a spectacle that I felt a little strange to be thrust into so suddenly. This final leg of our journey linked the two most contrasting places I’ve been to. The background music and fluorescent lights felt incredibly confronting, and the Kuna ladies scattered about the airport in their traditional clothes added to the weirdness of the whole scene.


We gulped coffee and muffins while we waited for the hostel car to come pick us up; we were back in the real world. Sending un unlicensed driver to somewhere heavily traffic-policed (like an airport pickup point) was not a good move on the part of our hostel, and added another good chunk of waiting time. While the driver was copping it, we jumped into taxis and went to the hostel. With a moderately warm shower and mass submission to the siren song of the TV, the adventure was over.

Memories

Pampas Tour- Day Two. The Annoying Continues.

Bats sleeping on the ceiling

This is our camp. In the wet season, there are even more mosquitoes and the river rises up to floor level.

We awoke to a day with none of the warmth and humidity we had so enjoyed previously. The cool air and grey sky were the aftermath of a storm that meant the pampas would be even further underwater than the usual gumboot depth, so we went piranha fishing instead.

Capybara

Much to the amusement of onlookers, our group descended the muddy bank to the canoe below. The normally simple process of getting down became a convoluted ordeal due to the rain-soaked mud which at once had the consistency of both Perkins Paste and motor oil. After twenty minutes of near-misses with the slick slimedirt we found ourselves aboard and relatively clean. Freddo proceeded to motor us ten metres- literally- down river to the fishing spot. People watching were rolling on the walkways laughing at the sight of us so desperately clambering to get into a boat to get to a place that we could have walked to in thirty seconds. Thankfully, nothing was biting there and we had to move on.

Score!

When we found a good spot, lines went out and the frustrating process of being outsmarted by fish the size of pikelets began (not for me- I just took photos and commentated). The little fish were very adept at eating bait without actually touching the hook, a skill that resulted in much angst amongst the group. Freddo managed to haul a few in, then Angie landed a beast, letting him go minus the Rex Hunt kiss. Once everyone whose sense of worth depended on catching a piranha had caught one, we putted off to lunch. The catch turned up at the end of the meal, deep-fried whole like fishy Pringles-devoid of meat- all head, bones and skin.

Meet Pedro

Following a rest to recover form the morning’s battles, we once again boarded the canoe and motored off to one of the most popular pink dolphin hangouts. We were there to swim with these weird fish, but first we had to be introduced to the resident crocodilian life. Pedro was the main man in these parts, two metres of prehistoric handbag fodder that would come when called like a big, ugly waterborne dog. With a few taps of Pedro’s snout, Freddo introduced us and declared the dull brown water safe to enter.

Getting acquainted.

Look just to the left of Angie's head...

Tentatively, three of us stripped down and edged into the water. The dolphins had a cursory glance, but seemed uninterested in a few pale bipeds, and they quickly got back to the business of floating around being dolphins. At the forefront of our minds were not these examples of river fauna; we were more concerned about the piranhas, alligators and any number of insidious parasites that also inhabited this body of water.

The highly excitable Bird of Paradise. They freak out at everything, squawking and flapping about in a most unprofessional manner.

A much more composed bird

After a few minutes of swimming, there was no sign of malicious gators or urethra invading microfish, so the others joined us. The tranquillity of the scene was interrupted by a series of yelps that rose into a panicky crescendo, climaxing with the sight of a thong surfacing next to Angie’s thigh. It seemed that her footwear had secretly removed itself from her foot, and then repeatedly barged into her leg as it shimmied up to the surface. Angie’s terrified shrieks of ‘ohmygodsomethingjusttouchedmeonthelegwhatisitshititdiditagain!!!’ put everyone on edge, and we retired to a riverside pub soon afterwards.


After looking around the hostel/pub for a while, we decided that the people here got a better deal and returned to our dilapidated mosquito nest. Dinner was served and Freddo deemed tomorrow a 5 a.m. start, so we cocooned ourselves soon after.

Party Hostel

A smoke machine is spewing fog through a strobe light, there's a bunch of drunken Irish yelling abut funny hat night and, of all the god-awful music on offer, Ace of Base is playing. Plus it's only a quarter past seven on a Sunday evening. Yes, you're in a party hostel. This one wasn't so bad though, because I got to wear the best hat.

Hostel has Pool

Hostel Cordoba

La Paloma

La Paloma is a coastal ghost (ghoastal) town clinging to the edge of Uruguay. It has the dehydrated air of a failed experiment in touristifying a naval base- its a place you only go in summer, and the last summer here happened sometime in the sixties. At least that was how it felt on the gusty Autumn afternoon we arrived. Everywhere lay the remains of deserted buildings and aborted construction projects. Concrete bones and bare brick exoskeletons- it seemed fitting that the centrepiece of town was a dilapidated and rotting whale skeleton amid a decorative garden full of dead or overgrown plants. Just in case anyone ever decided to repair the display, there was a cluttered collection of spare bones on the roof of a nearby building.

Typical hotel

We checked into the only hostel open. A depressing lodging at best, at least in these wintery conditions. The bathrooms were a prime example of misconceived pragmatism- I imagine when the various elements arrived, the builder just looked at the white cube that was the bathroom and said something along the lines of: "Just get these things in that room and plumb 'em", and then left the work experience kid in charge. The impractical result was a bathroom with the toilet in one corner, the bidet all the way in the other corner, a little sink in the other corner, and a pipe protruding from the wall, leading to a showerhead which sat precisely in the centre of the room. No shower curtain could be of use- the walls were the shower curtain and everything in that room- your towel, your clothes, the toilet seat and toilet paper- would be soaked by the time you finished up.

The naval base

The one thing the bathroom did have going for it was the door. The door, because it was a normal size door and the only door in the whole place not designed for and built by little people. I named it 'Headache Hostel' because unless I walked with my head tilted to one side I constantly crashed into arches and overhangs. The two redeeming features of the establishment were the breakfast of pastries and fresh fruit, and the charming host, who somehow got the idea that Angie spoke perfect Spanish. The host was so nice that when we checked out of his hostel to move into a hotel down the road, we had to tell a lie and say we were leaving town.

The strange beach

Toilet with the Most Impressive View So Far

1949 Hostel, Punta del Este

San Junin de los Andes

This is fish town

Next stop was San Junin de los Andes. If San Martin was comatose, life support for Junin had been unplugged and the priest was on his way. There was not a trace of the wood-and-stone architecture that we had grown accustomed to, and there were but one tourist attraction in the whole dirt road town. A perfect place to chill out and take a break from the rigours of full-time travel (I know, I know- but this lifestyle does get stressful, honest). We checked into our hotel, note the lack of the letter 's', and enjoyed the privilege of a double bed for the first time since we landed on this big ol' hunk o dirt. The bed was fantastic, but a distinct bore-water smell emanated from the bathroom, the sneaky kind of odour that lingers silently in the background, and as soon as you stop moving, WHOOSH! Its violating your nostrils and you have to do something, anything, just to distract your senses from the assault. For a while you can convince yourself that 'It's not so bad, just a little earthy' but eventually you must get out of there.

Big cross

And get out of there we did, to the one tourist attraction within 60km of the town centre. Via Christi is a sculpture park that illustrates the life of Christ and intertwines that story with the story of the geographic, physical and spiritual conquest of the indigenous Mapuche people. The imagery is graphic and doesn't hold back when it comes to highlighting the way the Spanish really got in there and stamped all over the locals. The chunky, larger than life-size sculpture is admirable in its humility, especially when looking at it from an Australian perspective, where we have our own paralleling story but exist in an official state of denial...

Local wildlife

One night in the stink hole hotel was enough, and we checked out the next day. Our new home in Junin was a beautiful hostel at the backend of town, across the road from a shallow watercourse, perfect for fly fishing. Apparently this town is the Trout Capital- of what I'm not sure (Argentina? South America? The World?)- all the road signs are in the shape of fish here, and our hostel is plastered with photos of the owner holding fish in his hands and a fly rod in his teeth (Angie says this is so you don't think that he just picked them up out of the river with his bare hands). So trout seemed to be the main reason this place was there, the other reason is that it is the gateway to Lanin National Park and Volcan Lanin, which of you remember back to the Pucon post, is right on the border of Chile and within sight of Volcan Villarica.

San Junin trout hangout

Quick update as we move north...

The little falls before Inacayal Falls

Slowly progressing north... we spent two days in Villa de Angostura. We backtracked along the road we came into Bariloche on originally, and ended up in a kind of mini Bariloche- all the same kinds of restaurants and shops, just on a smaller scale. It turned out to be a fairly lazy couple of days in Angostura. We walked one day to Mirador Belvedere and saw some impressive cloud formations hanging over the mountains by the lake, and then cut through the forest to Inacayal Falls, a fifty metre cascada of icy clear water. The next day we walked to a neighbouring village to see if we could hire a boat and get out on the lake. Being a Sunday, everything was shut, and the utilitarian paddleboats tied up on the beach weren't actually in service- just there to look pretty in their own way apparently.


Next stop is San Martin de los Andes, a nearly comatose little hamlet shielding itself from the elements in a small valley. Once again, the imported Swiss aesthetic of stone and lacquered wood dominates the architecture- how many places can there be like this? Apparently the bus ride was pleasant; winding and bumping through lakeside roads for a few hours, but due to an early morning jaunt back to Bariloche to pick up some international mail (vegemite), I slept through most of it. The HI Hostel we stayed at had the air of some kind of YMCA school camp/ boarding school. On arrival we were shown to our separate dorm rooms (one for boys, one for girls thank-you) and informed of the strictly held kitchen hours which ensured we ate at a reasonable hour. No mid afternoon snacks here kids. The 'Your mother doesn't live here, clean up after yourself!' signs plastered on the fridge in multiple languages drove home the point that we were lucky to have kitchen privileges at all.

Walking up a mountain...

Warning: Lots of words ahead, feel free just to look at the pictures.

The weather came back the day after our mountain exploration, but the day after that it seemed to be holding off- just. With our friend Pablo (from London) we decided to walk to a refugio in the mountains (on a scale from cave to Hilton, a refugio is one step up from a hut). Over ten kilometres we climbed 700 metres, and taking it easy meant we took around four and a half hours to get to the top. We set out just after lunch and entered a chameleon landscape that morphed into something new every five minutes. It began as a red dirt wasteland, with heavily sculpted canals muscling their way through the earth. Those soon gave way to an eerie stonescape, populated by the skeletal forms of thousands of dead trees and dominated by a looming, dark, jagged hill. A stream of grey rocks, frozen mid-flow, ran from the top of the hill down through the white and sliver trees. The monochromatic setting was broken up in places by green shrubs that enclosed the trunks, leaving only the spindly branches to reach out, giving the impression that they were trying frantically to escape the new plantlife. The whole scene had a post-apocalyptic air; it felt like we were standing in the middle of the remnants of a disaster.



As we walked on, the environment opened up and we had lake views across to the mountains we had climbed a couple of days before. The yellow scrub stayed low and sparse, but the largest of the twisted trunks remained spread out. The track began to climb slightly, and wet rocks covered in fuzzy green moss stood guard along the track. We rounded a corner and in the distance, through more of those distorted torsos and beyond the mountains we were traversing, giant, vertical columns of rock stood straight up into the grey sky. Orcs were expected to pounce at any moment.

Swords at the ready

A little further on, the scenery became much more Zen, as we entered a bamboo forest, the kind normally frequented by panda bears and water wheels. This environment soon intermingled with a kind of Japanese garden plant theme, complete with precarious wooden bridges and gentle waterfalls. Plenty of babbling brooks too. Much less intimidating. It was also at this point that we saw two of the four animals that we came across during the whole two days. A pair of the punk rockers of the avian universe, woodpeckers, banged their mohawked heads up and down some trees about 5 metres above our heads. (if you're wondering what the other two animals we saw were, one was a sparrow, and the other was the refugio kitty, Tormenta, which is Spanish for storm).

Pretty soon the trees got all European on us, and a carpet of brown leaves covered the bare forest floor. This was Robin Hood's turf, and Little John would not have looked out of place on any of the tree trunk bridges that spanned the increasing number of rapids. The log cabin built into the side of a huge stone and enormous wooden cross really drove home the olde-English vibe.

Angie and Pablo on yet another perilous bridge

Then the climb really began. As we got higher, the plant life changed again, this time into stunted and squat shrubs. We were in the middle of a forest of bonsais, getting closer and closer the snow line. When the enormous mini-trees momentarily parted, we had the chance to look out across the valley we were climbing up the side of. What we saw was a fire-red oil-painting of tree tops firmly carpeting the bottom of the valley, and halting abruptly where the snow had now begun to sit in patches. 'HUGE' was the first word that came to mind when we found rock to raise ourselves above the leafy roof. 'Prehistoric' was another one, and the longer we stood still in awe of the whole landscape, the word 'cold' seemed more and more suitable. Then 'wet' and 'windy' came to the fore, as rain began to fall, and a gale whipped right through us.



A final, brutal, uphill trudge began. Packs very heavy now, knees getting extremely wobbly. A final dodgy crossing of rapids and the refugio came into view. The cold was momentarily forgotten when trying to take in just what we were seeing. A crown of mountains, patchy with snow, encircle a hilltop lake, and on the edge of it all sat the little stone cubic form of Refugio Frey. Then, swooooooshh- there's that word 'cold' chattering out of my lips again, plus my arms felt really strange and....tingly. Did I mention I was still in a t-shirt? I dragged my pack and myself inside the refugio and glorious electric bar heaters began the job of thawing out the blood that had frozen next to the surface of my bare arms.

1700 metres

Angie tumbled in soon after, followed by a very disheveled Pablo. Apparently the cold had infected the core of his mind, and still not quite thawed, he states he is considering pitching his tent in the arctic conditions beyond. I tell him he is mad, but he explains that he bought the tent, carried it up this mountain and there is now a principle at stake. Principle or no principle, the idea is revolting, and he soon comes around. He slightly tempted soon after when he learns there is a girl out there who has already put up her tent and will sleep out there tonight. 'If she can do it why can't I' is what I see written on his face, but common sense prevails. We eat pizza for dinner and crash early in the 18 bed dorm (no space between mattresses at all-very cosy when full I'm sure).

View from the bedroom window

See the refugio on the left-hand side? It doesn't have a phone. Sorry I couldn't call for your birthday, Dad!

Day 2

Breakfast on day 2

It is raining. It is windy. I think we are in the middle of a very thick cloud. It looks like we are inside a giant fluorescent tube. It is far less then suitable for us to be in nature. But we have to go somewhere. Rather than pushing on six hours through the sub-zero elements to the next refugio, we decide to descend the mountain and eat apple strudel in the carpark at the bottom. We layered up, and ventured out looking like waterproof marshmallows. At that point the snow started. Another milestone for Angie, as she had never been snowed on before. But it was more like we were being snowed at, as ice flakes weren't really falling, they were moving sideways trough the air at tremendous speeds, really slicing into any exposed skin or eyeballs. Next time I will take sunglasses and gloves...


The descent was much wetter, but much quicker than the climb yesterday. Powered on by the freshest water I've ever drunk (collected from the very first rapid after that mountaintop lake), it takes two and half hours to cover the ten kilometres, and the strudel at the bottom was most deserved. A short bus ride later, we back in Bariloche, where there is running hot water and no snow. I think I still may prefer it up there in the clouds though.