South America to Europe

Argentina

You know you are in Argentina, when you go to a restaurant, and the 'small' steaks on the menu weigh in at 400g.  Notwithstanding that 400g is a rather large steak, no self respecting red blooded male could possibly go to the steak eating capital of the world and order a 'small'.  It took me the best part of an hour to get through the large rib eye, served rare with a selection of condiments, and a bottle of Argentine red,  but was it worth it, you betcha. 

Florida Street, Buenos Aires, and one of my favorite photos yet.

Argentina didn't only deliver on the steaks though, Buenos Aires would have to be my favourite large city visited in South America.  As with any large city, it is very difficult to put your finger squarely on what makes it such a good city.   Maybe it was the cheap wine, the delicious beer, the best hostel we have stayed in yet, the street music & food, art, parks, or the people.  But if I had to reduce it to one thing, it would be the vibe (by implication including Mabo & the Constitution).  Everywhere we went, there were things happening, interesting things, things that made you laugh, things that amazed you, and things that made you happy (like eating chorizo sausage for breakfast lunch and dinner one day).

Playing beer pong at our hostel

BA was also the first time couchsufing on the trip yet.  Couchsurfing, for those that don't know about it is a massive community (almost 2million people around the world) of people willing to host a visitor for a couple days, share some stories, show them round town, and generally have a pretty good time.  Maria was our host, and within a couple of hours of meeting her, we were having a three person party in her apartment, dancing away to the Beatles and Buddy Holly.  Unfortunately the ticking clock had us leaving Maria's place after a couple of days and heading up to Iguazu Falls on the border of Brazil.

A couple of the hundreds of waterfalls at Iguazu

Iguazu is simply overwhelming, with close to 300 waterfalls in the area.  The Iguazu River bed literally drops between 60 and 80m over a semi-circular 2.7km sending twice the water volume of Niagra falls off the edge.  The awesome thing is that you can walk below, above, behind and around most of the falls thanks to the extensive walkway system through the park.  My camera has been previously covered in sand, and mud, dropped, baked, frozen, but this was the first time it has been fully saturated in water.  

Brazil

What a time to head to Brazil.   The largest, most passionate, and successful football nation on the globe, and we rocked up into Rio 2 days before the world cup started.  Justice.  You couldn't possibly miss any of the action, as every second shop, on every single street had a tv in their window, hanging above the counter, or otherwise, showing every second of every single game.  But there were a couple days to go before the cup started, which meant time to hit the beaches and the city, and check the place out.

View from under Christ the Redeemer

We were staying about 3 blocks from Ipanema beach, and you can quite easily lose yourself for a day or two wandering along Ipanema, and the adjoining Copacabana, having a caprahina or chop on the beach front, and doing a good deal of people watching.  All of these make for some pretty good photo opportunities, so will share a couple of my favourites below.

Dude got balls.

Pretty good form for a 7 year old

7 year olds are also take their body boarding pretty serious in Rio

Surfers.  Although I probably didn't need to point that out to you.

Ipanema Beach

Rio is one of those crazy paradoxical cities, where you have the amazingly rich mixed with the dirt poor.  2 minutes from one of the most famous beaches in the world, you find yourself in the very heart of slum town favelas.  Well I didn't exactly find myself in the heart of the favela, as you would be pretty stupid to walk in to one with your camera, or to walk in by yourself fullstop.  But there were plenty of other areas of the city that you can get to, and although less sketchy, still have a good level of sketch to them.  Certain areas of Lapa are exactly that way, so which is why I took substantially less photos there.

Lapa

Well, back to the World Cup.  Fifa had set up a huge huge huge screen in the middle of Copacabana beach, and sitting in front of it watching England play the USA you felt like you were in the middle of a massive festival, surrounded by stalls, merchandise, food, people and atmosphere.  Pity the game stank, and it wasn't until Australia were trounced by Germany that you finally had something to cheer for.  But there was only really one day that really counted in the immediate future, 15 June.  15 June was to kick off with the All Whites playing Slovakia at 8.00am, followed by Brazil's first game of the tournament at 3.30pm.  To say the Brazillians get into their football is an understatement.  From first light at dawn the streets were buzzing.  Cars tooting their horns, people blowing their horns, yellow and green hanging from every single building, shop and public space, and yellow jerseys all over the place.  After watching New Zealand's famous 1-1 victory, the atmosphere continued to build.  The noise, the colour, the excitement, all were phenomenal gearing up for the 3.30pm kick off.  As for the game?  I wouldn't know, my flight to the UK boarded at 3.20.  Terrible timing.

London Town

It doesn't get much better really.  Meeting up with one of your best mates (Owain P), in their new home town, in a city, and a continent you have never been to, over a year since you last met, and with a full couple of weeks of good times ahead.  Well, I would have been happy if the whole trip ended after the first night, because what a night.  It is easy to get blase about sights and attractions if you have seen them before, but walking through Westminster, to Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, and over the Thames, I was actually blown away.  First imagine the setting, evening sun streaming in some awesome golden light from a perfectly blue sky, and walking through and around maaaaassive ancient buildings, castles, and parks, for long periods of time not seeing a single manifestation of modern day living (no convenience stores, advertising signs, noise).  You almost felt like you were Marty McFly, and the flux capacitor had just taken you back to the 1700s.  It was a great evening.  

Owain & London Town.

The evening also brought back a famous tradition, called 'eats town', that has been a long standing, and much loved activity of both Owain and myself.  It involves an excessive amount of walking, while stopping every half an hour or so to re-fuel with a tasty beverage or morsel of food.  Eats-town sessions in the past have been known to stretch for as far as 18km.  This was up there, in both distance, and delicious food eaten, not to mention being in London.  Everything seemed to just work out, eg. simply by chance, when we were walking past Queenies palace, they were changing the guards.  Awesome.

Eat in Eats-Town.

I made Owain make this gesture, it is not in his character to do so, but for the good of the photo, and to produce a 2010 representation of British punk/rock photography it had to be done.  This photo has not been edited (nor have any in the entire blog for that matter).

Owain getting his photo skills on.

I really like subways, I don't know why, but they seem to combine all walks of those above ground into a compacted, concentrated sub city, complete with trains.  I also really enjoy taking photos in subways (they call it the tube over here though).

Mirror shot

Double trains comin' atcha

Ciaran

Well, its almost been a week now since arriving in London, and there really hasn't been any down time.  Along with taking in a lot of the sights, and catching up with more friends, have also managed to get along to the Royal Ascot Races (thanks Helen and Aidan!) and to Wimbledon (thanks Kevin!)  

Betting at Ascot

Happy punter at Ascot

Poser at Ascot

Fat guy outside Ascot

That?  Oh, that's just Federer playing on Centre Court, day 1, Wimbledon 2010.

As always, there are a couple of photos that don't really fit anywhere else, so will tack them on the bottom as follows.

A bit of Warhol at the Tate

A bit of Street, by the Thames

How to Frosbury Flop the Sun: Owain demonstrates.

More messing around.

See you next time, from where, not sure yet!

Mark

North South America

In and Out of Equador

Having been travellers of leisure for the past two months, we suddenly realised that we had to get our ass into gear if we were to make it up to Cartagena in Columbia before time ran out.  We were in Peru at the time, and to get to Cartagena we had 2500 kilometers to travel over three countries in 13 days.  Cue Equadorian lightning strike mission.  In our 4 days in Equador, we decided on stopping in two places, Banos and Quito.

Banos, literally means toilet in Spanish

Banos is one of those places that has jumped on the tourist bandwagon big time.  The city is jam packed with hostels, tour companies and gringo hangouts, but somewhat surprisingly, the city does not suffer from it at all.  It is compact, alive and smack bang in the middle of some impressive country.  To make our way around, we decided to hire a vehicle to get loose in the country side.

It looked quicker than it was, but definately had character.

After choosing the best looking jeep in the fleet, we headed west.  Before we left, the guy renting the jeep to us told us that the brakes were a bit slow.  What I think he meant to say to us, was that the jeep, for all intensive purposes did not have brakes.  This didn't matter so much though, and wasn't as apparant, going uphill.  Where a lack of brakes becomes a problem is going back down the steep windy road with a significant drop off that you just went up.

Tour operators will tell you anything to get your dollars.

Quito sits on the equator, therefore you would expect it to be hot.  It isn't though, due to the fact that it sits at 2,700m in the middle of a big mountain range.  It is billed as a city with exceptional old archetecture, but really one old building is the same as another old building, and the coolest thing about Quito for me was the airport.  Because of the mountain range, the airport is planted square in the centre of town.  The planes pretty much buzz the buildings as they fly in, which made for an entertaining afternoon of photo taking.

Rivals the drop into Okiwi Airport, GBI

Columbia

Just over the border from Equador you get into Cali.  We spent 0 nights in Cali, but a full on day, including a trip to the Cali Zoo.  It got me thinking, how many zoos does one really get to in their lifetime.  I could think of three previous zoos that I had been to, so was rather excited that this zoo would become one of an elite club of 4 zoos that I can say I have visited.  I can say that the zoo therefore ranks in the top 5 zoos that I have been to, but sadly doesn't quite make the top three.

Most of the animals really didn't want to be there

The emu did its best though to put on a charm offensive, just look at those seductive eyes.

Two overnight busses in a row, means three days in the same clothes.  3 days in the same clothes means you start to smell.  3 days in the same clothes in hot, humid conditions, means you start to smell really badly.  Lucky the third day saw us arrive at a coffee plantation in central Columbia that had a pool next to its guest house.  I now know why most public pools have signs directing you to have a shower before you jump into them.  There was no such sign here though, which meant that we were in the pool literally minutes after arriving. 

Columbian coffee; the best.

Now I have to say that I was somewhat sceptical about spending a couple days at a coffee plantation, primarily due to the fact that I don't drink coffee.  Counting back, over the last year, I can recall having one cup of coffee, with Chantelle Zemba, before both of us realised that neither of us actually drink coffee.  One cup of coffee per year equates to a daily consumption of approximately 0.003 cups.  In the first day at Venecia I went through 12 cups of expresso.  A modest daily intake increase of 4,000 fold.  Our guide that took us around the farm couldn't have been better.  Juan Pablo was the 4th generation owner of the farm, and as much as he loves his coffee, the day we got there he was even more excited about his brand new 1951 Jeep that he was about to drive for the first time.  Needless to say, we got an extended tour of his coffee plantation, riding in style.

Juan and his Jeep

A couple more days, a couple more cities, and a couple more night busses, we were in Cartagena.  Here the plan was to meet up with Stephen and Cel (uncle and auntie), who were in town for one of their good friends weddings.  Unfortunately an untimely dance floor accident meant that we never got to meet up, and Cel, if you are reading, hope you are getting better. What it did mean though, was that there was a spare room going on the 15th floor of the Torres Del Lago, so for the next 5 days we were the stand in Russells at the wedding party (we being Brett, Scott and myself).

View from our balcony by day.

View at night, having some fun with long exposures.

Again, its that stage of the blog that things are getting quite long, and still with a few photos left to share, i'll try be a bit more economical on the words.  But I will say a huge thanks to Mark & Laura (including congratulations on the wedding), and all of the rest of the crew, you guys really looked after us well, and we had a great time.

The old city of Cartagena is surrounded by huge stone walls, and is overlooked by a giant fort.  All of these were to protect the cities huge gold treasures from pirates in the Carribean in the 1600s.  The fort was huge, extremely well designed for slaughtering attackers, and alot of fun to spend an afternoon in.

Cannon balls.

Inside the hundreds of kilometers of tunnels under the fort.

Representing Columbia

On top of the city walls

Outside the city walls.

We also had a few good nights out and about with Hayden and Nicole, consisting of running around the city and beach dressed in left over costumes from the wedding, after having some of the left over bottles of whiskey from the wedding.

I can't explain.

Boxes, not just fun for little children.

Longish exposure with single flash = mid air ghosts

Just a couple more photos before I sign off, these taken while rock climbing in Peru, I forgot to include them in the last blog.

Its not quite as easy as it was when you were 16

Watkins, this one is for you, a complement to your sideways surfer shot, although yours kicks more ass.

Next blog will probably be the last one from South America, got some choice snaps to shares from Buenos Aires, and about to head upto Rio, Brasil overnight tonight.  See you then.