Tired, sick and ready to move on

We haven't written a blog for awhile as there's not been much to say.  After Uyuni we took a bumpy bus ride to Tupiza where we had ideas about horse riding through canyons, but Jason's stomach had other ideas and he spent a night sleeping on the bathroom floor and still only just making it to the toilet in time.  After a couple of days of recovery we decided to leave Bolivia and go to Argentina where hopefully the hygiene would be a bit better and our stomachs would thank us.  Three more hours on a bumpy, dusty bus got us to the border where we were incredibly grateful to board an Argentinian bus.  Only semi-cama, but in Argentina that still means a very comfortable trip and the road was sealed - a great improvement from Bolivia where we went off road as often as on!!   Arriving in Salta we discovered Jason hadn't had food poisoning as we'd assumed, but a bug and it was now my turn to get comfortable in the bathroom.  After a full week in one spot we splurged on the fanciest bus imaginable with a flat bed, hot meals and champagne on tap.   After a surprisingly good nights sleep we arrived in Buenos Aires where we're currently relaxing before flying to England!

Child mummies

Salta is one of the last cities before the Andes and as such is the base for archeological expeditions into the mountains.  One of the biggest finds was in 1999 when 3 children were excavated in nearly perfect condition from the Llullaillaco volcano.  One of the children had been struck by lightening sometime in the last 500 years, but the other two are scarily well preserved.  They don’t look alive, but very much in the way taxidermied animals don’t look alive.  Their skin, clothes and teeth are all in excellent condition (none of them had any cavities and the oldest was 15 years old).  Even scans of the internal organs showed them to be perfectly preserved down to what was in their stomachs on the day they died.    The volcano where they were found is over 6739m and it is thought that the cold combined with lack of oxygen, low atmospheric pressure and low humidity all contributed to their amazing preservation.  This is now being maintained in the museum, and the children are kept at -20C permanently.  The children were all sacrifices, but it was never stated how they died (at least in English), it seems they were just left there and expected to stay until they died.  The only abnormal finding on tests was lung shrinkage possibly from dehydration.   Our only gripe with the museum was that as it was charging 3 times the price for foreigners as locals the text (of which there was a lot) could have been translated into English.  My Spanish regarding sacrifices and religious practices of the Incas is just not good enough!! 

More bus journeys

We weren’t planning on writing about every bus journey, but each one is its own unique form of torture.  By starting in Buenos Aires we have started with the best and will slowly be making our way down (we hope not to get to buses as those found in Ethiopia, but you never know).  The first bus we basically had beds, were served a hot dinner complete with wine and snuggled under the provided blankets resting our weary heads on the pillow.  That is coche cama/total cama or a myriad of other names.  Next we took a cama class bus to Resistencia.  Gone was our ability to recline fully, but it still came close and the seats were again wide and comfortable.  We didn’t receive blankets or pillows but there again it was during the day not at night.  Meals were no longer hot, but still existed.  It was a fascinating journey though as the bus also acted as a local normal bus picking up passengers every few minutes.  In this way we got to see our first ‘gauchos’ cowboys – the clothes were amazing! If the situation had been different you would have assumed they were dressed up for tourists to take photos of them.  Hat, boots, belts, silver chains the whole full bit.  Anyway.  The next bus was semi cama class and we’re now back to something closer to a greyhound bus in Australia or Canada… ok, not quite that bad, but close!  Mostly upright seats, food that the airlines rejected 10 years ago, but worst of all no blankets.  We had stupidly assumed these would be provided and spent the entire night shivering away (occasionally sharing one seat for warmth, but that wasn’t exactly comfortable) whilst every joint in the bus seemed to blow in cold air.  Of course we are also reminded of how quickly your expectations can change.  In Africa if a bus came even close to the level of Greyhound we were ecstatic... more often it was a school bus with 6 people squished in each row.

Of course it’s not just the buses that have gone down in quality, we also seem to be staying in grottier and grottier accommodation.  This is the first place we’ve stayed in South America with a share bathroom (yes, I know we’ve been living the high life up until now).  That is fine with me.  The problem is that we have two choices for showers.  Option 1 is a full bathroom (shower, toilet, locked door) but only cold water.  Option 2 is a hot shower but only a curtain between you and the corridor.  And it’s cold enough that we are going for option 2!

 

We are now in Salta, but I suppose I should quickly mention Resistencia.  It was Sunday, so everything was shut which was stupid planning on our part.  We planned to spend the day sitting in the park, but then I got stung by a bee (it got inside my shoe somehow and then stung me when it couldn’t get out) so we spent the day avoiding bees, looking at statues and drinking gallons of liquid.  

Vote for us!!

It seems whenever you go to a great natural wonder of the world these days you are asked to go online and vote for it to become one of the seven natural wonders of the world.  So, why are we restricted to seven… there are lots of natural wonders to see!  Iguassu falls was something special though.   It was everything you would expect – flowing rivers, deafening waterfalls, drenching spray – but also something we did not – a butterfly sanctuary.  Everywhere you went you were surrounded by butterflies, frequently landing on you to drink your sweat (I did mention it was hot, didn’t I?).  And everywhere you looked you saw tourists taking photos of butterflies. And along many of the paths if you sat at the benches lizards, small ones and ones the size of your arm would often appear at a discreate distance (although their thunderous approach was anything but subtle) to see if you would leave any morsels of food.

  

The wheels on the bus go round and round

I thought that our first bus trip in South America deserved a quick mention.  These will quickly become routine I’m  sure but it was the first time we’ve ever sat on a bus for 16 hours straight, with no stops at all.  It was however, amazingly comfortable!!  There were only three seats across and only 7 rows on the top floor (only about 4 rows underneath) with each seat being able to go totally flat.  Ah bliss, particularly when compared to the 6 people across and about 40 rows that was squeezed onto Ethiopian buses.  They also showed a couple of movies on the bus, we only watched one and it seemed an odd choice for a bus trip being an anti-travel movie.  Two girls head to France and share a taxi with a guy who proceeds to kidnap them.  Ex-government agent paranoid father who had never wanted his daughter to leave safe America for dangerous France immediately sets off to rescue them.  It was an entertaining movie and once it was over gave us plenty of fodder for further conversations regarding the many and numerous holes in the plotline.

The belief that wherever you don’t live has to be dangerous was reinforced by a very nice guy we met who was having dinner with his mother.  On hearing that we had travelled to Africa he started saying how much he would like to go there but that his mother was too frightened and wouldn’t let him go (he was our age, so not a child).  He had spent 2  years in Brisbane studying and was currently travelling a bit before going back home to Columbia.  His mother who was kept trying to shush us as we were telling him how safe Africa was and how much we loved it. 

 

Hablas Espanol?

One of our goals is to learn enough Spanish to at least get by comfortably.  So we planned to do a weeks worth of lessons in Buenos Aires to get us started on our way.  Luckily we didn’t pay for the whole lot up front.  We did a two hour private lesson just to test it out and see how it went.  It was useless!!   Even for private lessons they seemed to categorise you into beginner/internediate/advanced.  So despite the fact that we already knew a few basics the teacher started right from ‘Hola’.  Fair enough, I could cope with that.  But the teaching style seemed to be give us a script to read.  Read it.  Explain what all the words mean.  Alright, next script.  Reading is definitely a good skill to have, but not the way to teach a one week crash course in a language.  In two hours the only thing we learnt was that ll is pronounced more like ‘sh’ in Argentina, whereas we were saying it as a ‘y’ sound which is correct for other parts of South America.  Even worse rather than being a good way to boost our confidence and help us have the courage to speak to people in Spanish she made us feel like complete idiots who knew nothing.  Needless to say we decided not to continue with the lessons.  

Will you tango?

We had four more days in Buenos Aires during which time we tangoed, demonstrated and ate meat.  The tango show was in the basement of a lovely old café called “Café Tortoni”.  We were led through the actual dining room which was all high ceilings, crown moulding and crystal chandeliers down a narrow winding staircase to a small room in the basment with exposed brick and about 20 tables set facing the stage.  The show was nothing like what we had expected, being much more of a show rather than just a tango dance.  I’m sure we would have got a lot more out of it if we could actually speak Spanish, but not much of what they said had to do with ordering dinner or booking hotel rooms.   The lighting, however, seemed to have been purposefully designed to make taking a decent photo impossible as it changed about twice every second. 

The demonstrations were daily, but that is just part of life in Buenos Aires and we learnt to pay them no mind.   Although it was interesting to see how quickly the police could block off a street. 

The meat in question, was a traditional pasillo or grill… basically all the meat you can imagine and that’s basically your dinner.  We managed to identify beef, chicken, pork, kidney, spicy sausage, blood sausage and there were a couple of other things that defied identification.  It was an incredibly nice dinner though and more than even Jason could eat!!  (At least here in Argentina.  But he is eating about a third of what he was eating in Canada.  When we first arrived in Canada we were eating similarly to what we would eat in Australia, always a little hungry but not that worried about it until we realised that Jason was down to skin and bone weighing less than he ever had as an adult.  So, we started eating more.  We were mildly worried we had just become gluttonous pigs, but on arrival in South America we reverted to more normal eating habits – or eating even less as the heat seems to suppress the appetite, so the conclusion is that being cold burns calories like there is no tomorrow, “The new fad – the freezer diet!”) 

We also explored the Sunday San Telmo market which went and went and went, it was about 10 blocks in length and a three wide in places.  There were street performers and tango music giving a wonderful atmosphere.  The other thing of note was the Evita museum which gave us the incredibly saintly history of Eva Peron.  Finding the other side of the story... now, that's not in any museum.  

We also had our first pick pocketing incident in South America, and only the second for the whole trip.  We had gone to buy our bus tickets and while ducking into the train station which was quieter to consult the map Jason felt someone brush against him but thought nothing of it.  It wasn’t until I went to get out a bottle of water that we realised two of the pockets on the daypack were open.  The first has the USB drive in it, which luckily she didn’t find.  The second had the ipod in it, which luckily she didn’t find.  What she did take was our medication pouch, so she made off with a couple of immodium and a packet of zyrtec.  Whilst we learnt to lock the pockets on the daypack, because even apparently blind pickpockets can take worthless items and it's a pain. 

Ah, so that's what it was all about.

Today we decided to take the free walking tour offered by our hostel and learn a bit about the city.  In the process we found out what the demonstration was about yesterday.  Yesterday was memorial day (March 24th, it was declared such only in 2006).  This is the date that the "Dirty War" started back in 1976.  The government that reigned from 1976-83 was the last military government of Argentina and reportedly quite keen on disappearing any opposition or supposed opposition - about 30,000 people.  But of course we also learnt about the Perons and how big the Peronistic movement was and the equal divide between love and hate for them.  More recently we learnt about the 2001 revolution and heard one perspective from a local, as well as being shown the newspaper articles about the presidents that followed.  5 in one month, and then a photo of an empty chair as they looked for anyone who was willing to take on the job.  

As you can tell there's certainly been a lot of upheaval here in the past and there continues to be plenty of protests and demonstrations in the present.  In fact demonstrations are a daily part of life and all around the city there are barricades that can be quickly drawn across the roads to block demonstrators from particular areas.  Many buildings, such as the town hall, have an obvious paintline as demonstrators throw paint at the buildings daily and every now and then it is painted over.  One particularly demonstration has been happening every Thursday since 1977.  The mothers and grandmothers of children taken during the "Dirty War" march in a circle around the Plaza de Mayo.  At first it was to find out where their children were, now it is to get justice for their deaths.  On Tuesdays another group marches who disagree with the mothers message.  Every week this goes on and each group paints messages on the ground for the other group to paint over.  

Tomorrow we will go and march on a Spanish school and demand some lessons.

Hello, Buenos Aires

Singing “Hello Buenos Aires”, not that I’ve done any singing yet.  The journey over here was the worst and longest plane trip I have ever taken.  The longest having a lot to do with it being categorised as the worst.  The first leg of the trip was the shuttle to Calgary airport.  Unfortunately there was about 3 hours between the two appropriate shuttles and as the second would have cut it fine we were advised to take the 1:30, particularly as snow was predicted for that day.  The snow came.  The previous day had been 12 degrees and sunny, but that morning there was a foot of new snow in the driveway and it just kept falling.  It was quite  a send off we received.  After 1 and three quarter hours on the shuttle we were just coming into Calgary when we saw a pack of wolves!!! Wow!  Unfortunately there were a few people on the shuttle who were cutting it fine timewise so no chance for even a quick photo. 

We then waited around at Calgary airport for 4 hours.  Followed by an 8 hour flight to Heathrow on Air Canada.  Surely the most cramped economy class seats in existence, not to mention the worst in flight entertainment.  We arrived at Heathrow without any sleep, tired and cranky.  11 hours later we were finally on our Tam Airlines flight to Buenos Aires.  This flight was pretty empty... but we were still cramped thanks to the person who completed our three being the only person in existence who didn't see the value in moving to have 2 seats to himself and leaving Jason and I with 3 between us.  Surprisingly the food was really quite good and the in-flight entertainment beat Air Canada hands down.  

This flight took us as far as Sao Paulo, Brazil in a tedious 12 and a half hours.  Where we were supposed to have a fairly quick 2 and a half hours to wait around before the final leg to Buenos Aires.  Of course we weren't counting on the fog.  All in all we made it to our hostel at 2:30pm Tuesday 24th March, having left Banff at 1:30pm Sunday 22nd March.  The time difference of 3 hours leaves us with a total travel time of 46 hours.  Phew!  I'm exhausted just thinking about it.  

But I really should mention What we've been doing for the 2 hours we've been in this part of the world.  Why, marching in a typical Argentine protest of course.  We tried not to.  But everytime we turned a corner the protest was continuing.  It seemed to go in every direction.  At one point we gave up trying to get away from it and just went with the flow, the sound of the drum forcing your heart to beat, the chanting and crying.  It just felt like what you hope Buenos Aires might feel like.  Alive.  Then there was that one point where we reached another section of the protest where all the participants had their faces covered and were walking with baseball bats, needless to say we were out of that area pretty fast.  Tomorrow I will have to find a street to dance down singing "Hello, Buenos Aires"  and if you don't get the reference go watch Evita.