23rd MARCH 2004 - Ay caramba! Ciao Sudamerica...

Im writing this from Santiago, Chile, a few hours before leaving South America for New Zealand. Its been nearly 4 months, and  not nearly enough – feels really strange to be leaving. But enough introspective bollocks! Have a quick (well, for me) tour of Argentina and Chile instead. Er, starting in Brazil.

RIO DE JANEIRO
Cariocas (its residents) call Rio the “cidade maravilhoso”, and our bible, the Lonely Planet, says that “viewed from the top of Sugar Loaf Mountain at sunset, Rio is without a doubt the most beautiful city in the world”. Which of course completely ruined it, as when we were there I was thinking “But… how can you say its the MOST beautiful? What are the criteria? Has the author seen every damn city in the world, then?” etc, instead of just enjoying the view, which was stunning.
We went to the famous sambodrome and saw the winning samba schools from Carnival parade – visually, it was spectacular, but in a fine example of how personal travelling experiences are,  I was feeling like crap, we were both missing Salvador, and we left after a couple of hours, all costumed-out.
Only staying three days meant we had to rush round all the things Ive dreamed of visiting since childhood – the beaches of Ipanema and Copacabana (beautiful), and Christ the Redeemer on Corcovado (who seemed a bit, well, smaller than Id expected. Perhaps I was unconsciously comparing him with those gigantic statues of the two kings they sail past in the first Lord of the Rings film, which is a bit unfair as they werent real, but Im sure hell forgive me, being Christ and all that).
And we went to see Botafogo vs Fluminense at the Maracana – sadly, it was 0-0, but still excellent – the stadium is old and dilapidated, and wasnt entirely full, but the samba drums and the flags and the silky skills were all present, and they sold beer inside the stadium, so everyone was happy.
On our last night, we went to a discotheque recommended by Lonely Planet, which turned out to be a brothel, basically – I think we were the only people there who werent buying or selling. Wed never seen such a blatant display, so it was interesting at first, but the sight of hordes of repulsive old men, their shirts unbuttoned to display skinny chests, flailing their spindly limbs out of time to the music and fastening lecherous, liver-spotted claws onto pretty young girls, soon ceased to be amusing and became depressing, so we went home, spouting feminist diatribes.

SAO PAULO
Sao Paulo appears to be made entirely of concrete.

IGUAZU FALLS
Arrived here via a bus ride on which also travelled an old lady with the most terrifying cough Ive ever heard. It sounded as if she was doing a sarcastic laugh at top volume, and ended some time later with extended hacking up of what we presumed were bits of her insides into a plastic bottle. She did it all the time, and it turned us ino complete children – not only did we nearly get the giggles the first few times, but when she reeled past us at one point, supported by her daughter, I shrank back into a crouch, petrified of catching her lurgy. After several hours of such deafening death rattles, she got off the bus at one of the stops and didnt return. We assumed shed finally died, but on reflection she may just have lived in that town.
The falls themselves were amazing, but I wont describe them here – youve all seen waterfalls, so just imagine them a lot bigger and youll be about right. Naturally, Ive a million photos anyway. We spent a day there with a pair of British boys whose engagingly moronic humour (mooning in front of monuments, etc) reminded us of home, in both good and bad ways.

BUENOS AIRES
Two things we love about South America: its casualness - wed overstayed our Brazilian visas by two days, but noone seemed to notice or care, and its randomness – the bus ride to BA was just stupidly luxurious, and not even advertised as such. The seats were huge and padded, the dinner stop was at a designated restaurant which contained a pair of nightclub singers of indescribable cheesiness and served us a three-course dinner with champagne without charging us anything, then back on the bus a steward served everyone a whisky nightcap! Beats being rattled and frozen to death, thats for sure.
We were staying with friends in BA, who took us to see River Plate vs Independiente – River triumphed 4-1 via some seriously impressive football, and the stadium was full of pleasingly rabid fans. They also took us to see a bizarrely modernist tango group on the first night, but made the mistake of giving us a spliff beforehand, so our reaction to the strange, disconnected, tuneless music and what appeared to be a horribly maimed guitar (our host informed us that it was a sitar) was to get uncontrollable giggles. Still, the dancing was amazing… one beautifully dressed couple danced for a couple of songs with such quickness of step, such solemnity of face and infinite melancholy of movement that everyone was spellbound.
We saw a slightly more touristy tango show, visited the famous Recoleta cemetery, where Evita rests and where generations of rich Argentinians have chosen to spend millions of dollars on building elaborate monuments to their dead relatives – impressive, exotic, but ultimately wasteful and vainglorious, went to some divine restaurants and went clubbing on our last night with some Canadian boys wed met in Brazil – all great fun.


TIERRA DEL FUEGO
By now it was 11th March, and wed left ourselves ten days to travel down to Patagonia and back up to Santiago. We therefore flew on another quaint little plane straight down to Ushuaia, TdF, which calls itself the southernmost town in the world. We came out of the airport and immediately had to put our jumpers on for the first time in nearly two months, but the air of this remote place is unbelievably clear and fresh, and as drove into the little town we it seemed really pleasant and relaxed.
Ushuaia sits on the Beagle Channel, in a lovely bay thats all steely grey-blues, with sleek, shadowy mountains facing the harbour. We spent the next three days doing a short hike and kayak trip in the national park, an excellent horse ride along the edge of the channel, where we not only got to gallop madly along the shore, but Mischka got to pose in her Bolivian hat (she did look very fetching!), and taking what we thought would be the highlight of the visit, a six-hour boat ride to see colonies of sea lions and penguins. This actually involved five hours and forty minutes of intense boredom, alleviated by extortionately-priced drinks from the bar, and twenty minutes of peering at indifferent wildlife though glass windows and driving rain, but such is life.

MORENO GLACIER
We had to fly again to El Calafate, the nearest town to the famous Moreno Glacier; it is the only moving ice-field in the world, or something, and three days before a big bit had broken off, which caused a lot of excitement and TV repeats because it hadnt happened since 1988. The glacier was indeed totally awe-inspiring, but sadly our trip was a bit of a disaster. Seven of us hired a 4WD and went to see it at sunrise, which was freezing but amazing, but on the way back a tyre blew and the evil hire people ended up charging us twice as much again as the vehicle cost to hire. I was driving, so felt like crap, but everyone was really nice about it and we all shared the cost, so it wasnt the end of the world.

TORRES DEL PAINE
This national park in Chile is another mecca for travellers, but we only had a day to see it – most people trek through for five days. We decided to just take a day-long van tour for time reasons, and also because frankly, weve seen so much beautiful scenery that we were happy to be driven round a bit instead of trudging up more endless hills. I also have to confess that we still moaned like hell whenever we had to get out and walk a bit. The weather was crap too. In fact, I think we may have failed to fully appreciate the park.

SANTIAGO (finally!)
Our travels round the continent ended, fittingly, with a 48-hour bus marathon up through Chile to Santiago, where we were again staying with friends. We arrived to find them incapacitated after a big night out, so we wandered out to see the sights. These consisted of the Parque Bustamante, which after a long walk in the heat turned out to be a grassy space containing no signs to be photographed next to, but instead a statue of some bastard called Rodrigues something. We also went up a hill via a cablecar, from where we could see Santiago in all its smog-blanketed splendour.

The Canadian boys turned up unexpectedly this afternoon, so Im a bit squiffy now and writing this from the airport where were about to miss our flight, but apologies to those who are due emails (will sort it out asap), reminders to those who owe me emails (Laura and Kate in particular, you bastards), and love to all.