Quito, Bogota (10-17 marzo)

Another Sunday in Quito.  I was going to go straight to Colombia, but I couldn't face more bus time after the 14 hrs of travel the day before.  I went to an artisan market and got my hair wrapped...the artisan was Mapuche from the south of Chile and had been travelling and working as an artisan for 5 years.  He tried to convince me to abandon my life in Canada and become a travelling artisan like himself haha.  Not the life for me, but still a really nice guy.

I then took the Trolebus to the Centro Cultural Metropolitano, but it had closed at 1:30.  I hate Sundays.  I then went to the Basilica and climbed all the way to the top--you can go right onto the roof of it--but just as I got to the top it started to hail!  I then wanted to go to the Museo de Arte Contemporano, but the cabbies wouldn't take me because it was too close and they wanted a bigger fare.  Jerks.  So I went back to the hostel shivering and cold (and the cabbie got lost despite the fact that I gave him a map with my hostel marked on it), and of course the internet went out.  There is absolutely nothing to do on the Jesus-freaks' holiday.  So annoying.  Also, why the fuck is there more on the news about the pope than there is about Chavez or the Colombian strikes??  These people really need to sort out their priorities.

Whoever invented cobblestone streets deserves to be shot.  Monday I took a 40 min cab ride to the bus terminal and from there caught a 6 hr bus ride to Tulcan, which for some reason I had to switch half way through.  From the Tulcan bus terminal I had to cab to the park where I could get a collectivo to the border.  From there I had to walk into both immigration offices, then cab to the Ipiales bus terminal and get an 11hr bus to Cali.  From there I got another 11 hr bus ride to Bogota, and a half hour cab ride to my hostel.  And only 1 military checkpoint along the whole way.

Wednesday I went to the Donacion Botero, an art museum featuring an extensive collection of Colombia's Botero, as well as other national and international artists.  I also headed to the museo de la independencia, the Centro Cultural Gabriel García Marquez (where there was an awesome exhibit on current Cuban artists), the Museo Arqueológico, and then wandered about the neighbourhood Candelaria.  Thursday I ended up going to the Salt Cathedral outside the city.  They built a cathedral in a salt mine, and although the architecture was amazing, there were a few too many crucifixes for me.  They had such an incredible opportunity to have the best artists in the country to come and make beautiful sculptures out of salt, but instead they just made a bunch of crosses.  What a waste.  Also, afterwards there was this weird lights/music show that to me seemed to be aimed at amusing children, but somehow everyone was taken with it.

Friday was rainy.  It's too cold here.  No me gusta la altituda.  Prefiero el calor de la costa.  Andres and I went to the main square where there was this big farmers market which was cool.  We thought that it was a weekly thing, but it turns out that it only happens once a year!  It was supposed to have happened last month, but because of the coffee strikes and road blocks, it was delayed until today.  Andres and I bought a bunch of veggies and he got some lamb or something, and we went back to the hostel and cooked with this american couple.  That night a bunch of us went out to this bar called Candelario...it was alright, but the music was kind of weird.  It couldn't decide if it wanted to be pop, hiphop, or salsa...

Saturday after we all rallied, Andres, Jack, and I went to the Museum of Modern art which had some really cool exhibitions.  We then went to the Museo Nacional which was interesting, but had so much fucking religious iconography.  They're obsessed.  We then went to the Plaza del Toro where they used to have bullfights before they were outlawed in Bogota, but it was closed, so we just saw the outside.  Sunday, Andres and I headed to the airport to go to Santa Marta.  On the bus into town from the airport, I met a Toronto guy, and then at the bar at the hostel, there was a Toronto bartender!  I've barely met any Canadians my whole trip, but it seems like they're all in Colombia...Coe and Aaron in Bogota; David and Carl in Santa Marta; and then I met another guy who used to live in Montreal!  Loco.

Quito and the Amazon (2-9 marzo)

At the Equator

Saturday Marc, Carley, and I moved to a hostel in Quito and then went to Mitad del Mundo--the middle of the earth.  When people originally calculated the equator, they fucked up and built a monument for the equator 200 m south of the real thing.  At the museum, they had some hokey science experiments to prove it was the real equator, but one was cool where they had a sink full of water and when they pulled the plug, the water swirled in different directions, depending on what side of the line you were on.  That night we all went out for dinner, and then said bye to Carley and her boyfriend Johnathon as they were flying to NYC the next morning.

Sunset in the Amazon

Sundays suck because everything was closed.  Marc and I went to an artisan fair in a park, then to the artisan market, and then the Santa Clara market where we wanted to try Cuy (guinea pig), but they only eat it on special religious holidays, so there was none to be had.  We then went to the Teleferico which took us all the way up the cerro, giving us an amazing view of the city, but it was super windy and cold!  When we got back down we ended up going to this giant park with a reptile house in it and there was a show with a boa which was cool.  There were like no restaurant options though because it was Sunday, so we ended up going to this shitty BBQ like texas-style place which made me feel awful.  The nexy day I pretty much spent sleeping off the shitty food, and then hopped on an overnight bus to Lago Agrio.

Rainforest

Tuesday I arrived, and met a couple from Australia who were going to the same ecolodge as me, so we grabbed breakfast together before we got picked up.  It was a 2 hour vanride to the launch point in Reserva Cuyabeno from Lago Agrio, and then another 2 hours in a motorized canoe to our lodge.  On the way we saw snakes, butterflies, monkeys, sloths, and birds!  Once we got to the lodge we had a bit of time to chill out before hopping back in the boat to go to the lake for a sunset swim.  That night we went Caiman hunting after dark--their eyes reflect light, so they're easier to find at night with a flashlight, as they camouflage quite well in the day.  We saw a baby that was 2m, and we learned that caimans and anacondas are both really territorial and fight each other--our guide once saw a fight last for hours that the anaconda eventually won!

Pirannha teeth!

Wednesday in the morning we went for a hike in the forest and saw all these super cool species--lemon ants taste like lemons because of the citrus in the tree that they live in.  All the trees that house these ants have like a 1m clearing surrounding them due to the symbiotic relationship between the tree and ants--the ants keep other trees away, thereby giving the tree more nutrients in exchange for living there.  We also saw lianas that grow down from the top of trees from birds shitting seeds out, and the plants suck the moisture from the tree they are growing down and their roots grow around the tree eventually killing it and taking over.  We also got to swing on the lianas tarzan style!  Also, if you find a house of termites and rub them over your skin, they're a natural insect repellant, and the bark from one of the trees when boiled in water can be drunk as a tea to prevent malaria.  Our guide also caught a poisonous frog, and we saw some red ants that the indigenous people used to use as torture--their nickname translated from spanish is "take off your underpants," as the only way to get them off you is to strip down naked.  There was also this tree that could move--the roots grew above ground and would keep moving like a tripod (multipod?) until it was far enough away from other trees to get more sunlight.  Also, the leaf cutter ants we saw are the strongest animals in the world--they can carry 3-5X their weight bringing leaves to their home.  They don´t actually eat the leaves--just the fungus that grows on them; and after one year, the queen flies to a new location to lay fresh eggs and start the process all over again.  We also saw military ants; their soldier is called the surgery ant, because their pincers are so strong, you can use them to sutcher close a wound--you just get the ant to sting on either side of the wound and then you cut it's head off and the pincers stay there as a stitch.  After the walk, we paddled back to the lake, stopping for a swim along the way.  I was the only one that went in though other than the guide...I don't understand how you can go to the rainforest and NOT want to spend as much time in the water as possible!

During the nightwalk

That afternoon we went pirannha fishing which was super cool--their teeth are huge!  The fish are are quite small (max size 30 cm), and we used leftover raw meat as bait.  Luis, our skip was the only one with any luck; he caught two!  But we're not allowed to keep them to cook up unless they are at least 20cm and badly injured, so we didn't get to try pirannha for dinner that night.  We spotted another caiman on the way back to the lodge; this time it was an adult and it was huge!  It had one blind eye, and was 4.7m long.  Loco.

Me and my guide in the Simona community

Thursday we started with a visit to an indigenous community a 2 hour boat ride away, and we spotted a number of cool animals along the way, including black saky monkeys, night monkeys, and yellow-footed monkeys!  There are 3 Simona communities in the region, consisting of 6, 8, and 12 families.  We visited the medium-sized one, where we met Ester, the wife of one of our boat drivers, Pedro.  She took us into the field where I got to pull up Yuca and peel it.  We then went back to a hut where we grated the yuca; Ester then put it into a woven case and squeezed all the juices out--saving them for soup--creating a yuca flour.  Ester then sifted it a few times to make a finer before finally cooking it.  She made the first yuca bread, and I got to make one after her--you simply sprinkle the flour on the pan directly on the fire, spread it around, flatten it, and then flip it.  And it was delicious!  We ate it with tuna mixed with this black chilli paste and it was so yum.  After lunch we went down the river to visit a shaman--they used to live within the communities, but after the arrival of the spaniards and christianity, the shamans were forced out of their communities and now all live alone.  The shaman we met had studied to be a shaman from tha ge of 8 to 22 with his grandfather (a shaman), and then from 22-40 with his father (also a shaman), before he graduated.  Shamanism doesn't have to be passed down familialy though--most shamans have upto 8 pupils, but it is rare for more than one to ever graduate.  When finally ready to graduate, the ceremony involves taking Peji in the forest alone, giving him 24 hours of halluciantion and made from the white trumpet flowers.  Women can be shamans as well, and are actually considered to be more powerful than male shamans, but cannot practice as a shaman during their period each month.  After the the half bowl of peji the shaman must take to graduate, they then have to take a full bowl of Ayahuasca, which is a much less strong hallucinogenic that they use more regularly to connect to the spiritual world when looking for answers to heal the ailments of their patients.  After Tomás told us his story on how he became a shaman, he did a demonstration ritual on me to show how he would treat a patient.  He started by brushing all my bad spirits away, and then sang a chant.  He then would have drank the ayuhuasca and waited for his visions to guide him had it been a proper ceremony.  If in his vision, the shaman sees that he cannot help his patient, he will send them to a western doctor to seek a cure.  Once a shaman from the lowlands had a vision to use plants from the highlands--as place he had never been before in his life--to cure his patient (a well-known politician), which is very rare, but he was able to cure him!  Also, for quite rare cases, the shaman will consult all the other shamans in the area for guidance on as how to proceed.  Tómas currently has 6 students, including his 12 year old son, however the majority of his students will not graduate, as the training is quite rigorous, and being a shaman requires one to devote their entire lives to their studies and their community.  After the shaman visit, we went back to the lodge and after dinner we went for a night walk in the forest and saw so many cool creatures!

Making yuca bread

Friday we woke at 5:30 to go bird watching, but about 20 minutes after getting out onto the water it started to pour, so we went back.  I was displeased.  We saw a few varieties, but definitely not worth the early morning.  Our guide and most of our group left that day, but the family from Guayaquil and Daniel stayed and we got a new guide to take us on a paddle to this protected aread where motor boats can't go.  We went for another forest walk and learned about water lianas, palm trees, and many of the other species spotted on the previous walk.  And my spanish vocabulary improved immensly as the guide did not speak english, and he was talking about a lot of species I had never heard about before in spanish.  We had lunch on the lake, and our guide gave me a wheto tattoo on my face--the juice of this fruit found in the amazon turns black when dry and lasts for upto 2 weeks!  We had a long paddle back then (in the rain), and saw some woolly monkeys, whose call can bhe heard 2.5 km away!  We went caiman spotting again after dinner and this time saw a white caiman, which only grow up to 3 m long.  The caiman find abandoned termite nests to lay their eggs in and then cover them with leaves and guard their nests for 3 months.  Most of the eggs hatch, but only 60% of them survive their first year.  Like the iguanas in the galapagos, the sex of the caiman is determined by the temperature of the eggs.

Shaman brushing my bad spirits away

My last day in Cuyabeno, I decided to skip the bird-watching repeat, as it had been pretty lacklustre the day before.  After breakfast we had a 2 hour boat ride back to the start of the reserve, had lunch and then an hour and a half van back to lago agrio.  Our bus from there to Quito left at 3:30 and was supposed to be 6 hours, but we ended up arriving at 11:30 pm--we were stopped by the military, the bus broke down for a bit, and the driver kept letting people off in the middle3 of nowhere.  The entire time back the bus felt so rickety and was working so hard to keep going, I was convinced it was going to flip.  Luckily though, we made it back safe and sound, albeit quite delayed.  

Las Islas Galápagos! (23 feb - 1 marzo)

Sea Lion posing for me

The Galápagos was unreal! On the 23rd, we were supposed to get up at 5 to get to the new airport, but because they still hadn't gotten their shit together, the flight was postponed by 4 hours.  Then when we got to the airport it was delayed for another 2, but finally in lare afternoon we arrived on Isla San Cristobal.  We met our host families and went to the beach.  It was covered with Sea Lions--they even had a pier built out in the water for the sea lions to lounge on, because they used to go on fisherman's boats and overload them them til they'd capsize.  I swam out to it, and it was sick!  You can get like half a metre away from them and they remain unbothered.  After we watched the sunset on the beach, we went out for a delicious seafood dinner, and on the way back to the host family houses we saw hundreds of sea lions lounging about, sleeping, nursing, playing, and crawling on top of each other by the pier.  The state of the host family's house was disgusting--there was this gross stuff in the corner of the shower, and it didn't drain properly so after each of us showered it was getting more and more full of water.  And in the morning for breakfast, the other 3 got like half a scrambled egg each, and I got a plate with a slice of cheese on it.  And they were so unfriendly!  I tried chatting with the mother about her kids, and she would just answer the questions and not engage in any kind of conversation beyond that.  4 of us were with that family and the other 2 were with this wonderful family that gave them an amazing fruit spread in the morning and they just seemed lovely.

Snorkelling around this with sharks = sick!

Sunday we got up early and went on a boat to go snorkelling!  There were these 2 giant rock formations jutting out of the sea that were actually made from the ashes of a volcanoe errupting under the sea.  We swam with fish, iguanas, sea lions, and even SHARKS!!  It was super cool.  In the afternoon we went to the interpretation centre on the island where we learned about the formation of, and the history of the islands.  That night everything was closed as it was Sunday, and these catholic countries decide that they want to make like as inconvenient for you as possible, so we went to this overpriced gringo pizzeria.  After dinner we went to this illegal bar (alcohol can't be sold on Sundays in Ecuador), but it was closed, so we went to the corner store where they were all to happy to sell us a few beers as long as we kept them in the black bag until we were at least a block away from the shop haha.

Just your average fish market...with pelicans and sea lions

Monday we went to Isla Santa Cruz, and went to the Charles Darwin Centre were we saw lots of tortoises, and our guide told us the dramatic story of Lonesome George.  We learned that the lizards on this island can regrow their lost tails and limbs!  And that if tortoises flip over once they're adults, they will die from heat exposure, as they can't flip back over on their own.  The baby tortoises in the breeding centre though were constantly falling onto their backs, and then their oblivious buddies would accidently flip them back over.  After this, we went to Tortuga Beach which was BEAUTIFUL!  I spent the whole afternoon body-surfing, wishing I had a board.  It was like paradise.

It's mating season!

Tuesday we went to some lava tunnels inland on Santa Cruz which were really cool--as the lava flowed the parts exposed to the air would cool and harden, while the parts below sould stay liquid and keep flowing, creating these super cool tunnels.  I totally bailed though and gashed my knee open of course.  After this we went to a farm and saw some giant tortoises in the wild, and we got to try on a real tortoise shell!  After the farm we hopped on a boat to go to Isla Isabella, and then went up to this beautiful ranch were we camped the night and did star gazing.

Victoria and I at Tortuga Bay

Wednesday morning we hiked up to the crest of Volcán Sierra Negra which is still active and 7x10 km!!  We walked around the rim, and then hiked to Volcán Chico, the views were unreal!  It looked otherworldly.  We then went to a bredding centre for giant tortoises  and learned that the temperature of the eggs determines the sex--if the egg is 29C it will be a female, and if it's 28C it will be male.  The females dig a hole to lay their eggs, and the ones at the bottom end up getting less heat so turn out to be male, or die from not enough warmth, while the eggs on top hatch as females.  They have a 4:1 ratio of females to males, as the tortoises are not monogomous, and this allows the strongest survivors to fertilize as many females as possible thus strengthening the species.  Also, after the baby tortoises hatch, they hold onto their placenta and remain buried underground for a month before they emerge.  And we learned that the male lizards are bigger, but the females are more colourful, which is surprising, as usually in nature the males get the cool colours to help them out in mating season.

Lifting up a real tortoise shell--they're heavy!                                Me and some crazy German... 

           

Thursday we went on a boat to an island where all the female lizards were laying their eggs.  They spend 7-10 days laying their eggs and are extremely malnourished by the end, but they can't venture far for food, or another lizard will pull the eggs out and steal the nest.  Also, these lizards can't regenerate lost body parts, and only use their tails to swim, so if they lose their tail, they are pretty limited in hunting for food and usually die within a couple of years.  Also, crabs shed their entire shells periodically, and we found an abandoned shell on the island.  When the crabs mate, the males have to crab the female's pincers to stop her from killing him, he fertilizes her eggs, and then he throws her away to avoid her attacking him.  We went snorkelling and I went swimming with some sea turtles which was super cool, and with some rays.  The female sea turtles are much bigger than the males, as during mating season, the males will search for a female and mount her; if another male finds her, he will get  on the back of the first male forming a line...sometimes as many as 4 males will be on top of the female and once, and they will fight each other for a spot in line.  And if there are too many, sometimes the female drowns as she cannot handle the weight to come up for air.  We also saw blue-footed boobies!  Their feet turn blue from the food they eat, so the better hunter they are, the bluer their feet which signals to the females who is the strongest and best to mate with.

Crawling through the lava caverns

In the afternoon, Marc, Victoria, and I went surfing!  I had forgotten most of what I learned last time I did surf lessons like 4+ years ago, but I picked it up pretty quickly again.  It was super fun, and then for our last night we made coco locos!  You take a coconut, and chop the top off, drink a third of the juice, and then fill it up with caña, an alochol made from sugar cane.  They were delicious.  Then half of us went to this salsa bar on the pier, where we ran into our surf instructor!  He tried to teach me salsa, but he was better at teaching surfing.  Despite our early start the next morning, we decided to shut the bar down, and were pretty much hating life the next morning...

Over 100 year old tortoise!

Friday we had to wake at like 5 am, so running off of about and hour and a half of sleep we had to make the following journey back to Quito:
1. Truck to the pier
2. Water taxi to the speedboat
3. 2 hr Speedboat to Isla Santa Cruz
4. Water taxi to the pier
5. 1.5 hr van ride to the ferry
6. Ferry to the next island
7. Public bus to the airport
8. very very delayed flight.
9. Bus transfer from plane to terminal
10. Shuttle van to the hotel.  But they had switched our hotel, and we had left stuff in storage at the other one...
11. Pickup truck to other hotel to pick up our bags before returning to the new hotel.

Iguana!

It was an exhausting day of travel, But Carley, Marc, Victoria, and I went out for a lovely final dinner back in Quito.

Blue-footed Booby!

Brasil (14-21 feb)

Once carnaval was over, I finally got a chance to actually explore Rio. Thursday I met up with Sam and his friends to go on a favela tour in Santa Marta. I was surprised how self-contained it was. There is a school, a community centre, little shops, and even a wall separating it from the next favela. Santa Marta is one of the safest favelas, having been pacified over 5 years ago. There are community outreach police officers that work there, but none carry weapons. Rio is really trying to clean the city up before the world cup and the olympics, and apparently in some of the most violent favelas they have forced the druglords to move out. There were also a lot of community projects going on such as free martial arts classes got kids if they participated in a sustainability education project. Santa Marta has 991 steps to the top, but luckily they built a fernicular in 2005; only 4 or 5 favelas have them- the rest have to face the sweltering steps everyday. There were a 91 and 89 yr old women who still refused to use it though, and walked up and down every time they went into the city!

 

Favela Santa Marta

Before going into the favela, I assumed that everyone would be living in tiny shacks, but there were some shantys that were like 7 stories high with the front half of them built in stilts...the structural integrity did not look so sound... The tour was good and really eyeopening, but I felt like we were trying to get sold on Brazil's new image. At the bottom when we were finished the tour, we got açai which is pretty much the greatest thing in the world. They sell it from stands all over the city and it's frozen açai berries from the amazon sweetened with guarana juice. You can add granola or sprinkles, and if you want it as a dessert there are flavour syrups you can add. Not only is it the most delicious food ever, it's also the perfect hangover cure which made it pretty clutch during carnaval. I'm like obsessed and wish we could get it in Canada!  I had it pretty much every day.

In front of the Lapa Arches outside Sgt Pepper

That night I had the most hilarious dinner experience with Colin, Kyle, and this new guy at our hostel Joe. So we all went out and Colin being the only one that speaks Portuguese did the ordering for the table and gets something to share. About 45 minutes go by (because good service is a concept that doesn't exist in south America), and then the waiter brings one single portion of food to Colin and no one else. At that point we didn't want to wait another 45 minutes, so we all shared his one plate and then got a few slices of pizza down the road. So ridiculous.

 

Sgt Pepper

That night Sgt Pepper was playing yet again, so we went for the third time.  There was this awesome girl group that opened for them.  The show was at a venue beside the lapa arches, which get quite sketchy late at night as we cam to know... When we left the show around 3 or 4 there were all these hookers hanging out there who kept harassing all the boys I was with and wouldn't leave them alone.  There was even one pregnant hooker who was drinking beer.  It was really sad.  The cab ride home we took was terrifying.  There were 5 of us, but we decided to all cram into one cab, and since I was the smallest I was sitting on Kyle's lap and had no seat belt, and this crazy cabby was going into turns at like 70km/hr in the city.  I thought I was going to die.  I hate the drivers here.

 

Friday Maria and I went to the centro and went into a free centro cultural with a bunch of great exhibits--it was like 3 floors of mixed medium art, and the best part was that there was no religious iconography!  We also went into the legislature, which used to be a prison.  Before this we headed to the National History Museum which was in an amazing building, and taught us the really interesting history of Brazil.  Women got the right to vote in 1933!  And their second King was just a baby when his father returned to Portugal; aides ruled for him until he was 14 at which point he took control of the throne!  And he instituted a bunch of reforms to make education accessible, and to eventually lead to democracy...not your average king.  Maria and I also went to 2 more cultural centres in the afternoon...Rio is full of all these free art exhibits all over the city--it's amazing!

 

National Library Foyer

On Saturday Joe and I went into the centro again and did a tour of the National Library.  It was all in Portuguese, but Joe was translating some of it for me, and I could pick out a few of the sentences.  The library is HUGE and so grand, and they are getting thousands of new arrivals every single day.  The stacks aren't public, and there's a dumbwaiter to send books up and down from the stacks to the desk.  After that we went to the Museo de Bela Artes which was also huge and free!  They had a few awesome temporary exhibits, and a really extensive permanent collection...a giant room of religious iconography which I practically ran through, and some really great contemporary art as well.  We didn't get through the whole place though, because we were getting hungry for lunch.  Practically everything was closed in the centre, as it's the business centre, so it's dead on the weekends, but we managed to find a nice place with an outdoor patio, and Joe ordered some delicious Bahian dishes.  After lunch we went to the Modern Art Museum which was amazing!  It was also huge, and after completing 2 and a half giant floors, we didn't have the energy to finish the last exhibit.  I could spend a month easily just going to museums and cultural centres here in Rio--they're all so interesting, but you can only cram so much into a day.  We had been planning on going to Scenarium that night--apparently it regularly ranks in the top ten of the world's best bars, but it was expensive, and I was tired so I figured I'd give my liver a rest.

Sunday was the very last Bloko and it was so much fun!  Kyle, Colin, Fiona, Brett, Maria, and I headed down to the city centre at like 10am for the start decked out in feathers, leis, facepaint, devil horns, and festive spirits.  Even though Carnaval officially ended on Mardi Gras, there were final celebrations until the end of the weekend.  There was a huge float with musicians on it slowly making it's way through the thousands of people filling the streets.  When it was over Colin, Kyle, and I had the most ridiculous lunch ever.  We were all decked out in our gear, me with a huge feather sticking off me sitting on this patio surrounded by normal looking people.  Colin did the ordering and redeemed himself from the one-man dinner debacle--he got this really yum rice dish to go with the fish and meat.  We later found out that one of Colin's friends saw us lunching, but didn't want to come say hi because we were too ridiculous looking.

 

When we got back to the hostal after lunch we started to get ready for the futbol match that night!  A vancab picked up Fiona, Brett, and I from the hostal and again drove so terrifyingly that I was sure my death was imminent.  To curb violence in the stands, there is no drinking allowed in the stadium, so the driver dropped us off in a gas station parking lot a block from the stadium and told us we had half an hour to chug beer before heading to the entrance...um ok.  The match was super fun--the stands were full and the crowds were insane!  And we had really good seats.  But there were these super creepy guys who kept like staring me down which was really uncomfortable, so I ended up moving to a higher seat.  When we got back to the hostel, everyone was pre-ing for an apparent beach party in Ipanema.  So Colin, Kyle, a couple Norweigan girls, and I set off for the beach, but when we got there it was completely empty.  No DJ, no people, no party.  We found a little bar on the beach to hang out at, and then super randomly out of the blue Pedro shows up!  He had been working when we left, but he decided to join us when he got off and just turned up.  Then some of them decided that swimming in the ocean at night, in the dark, while drunk was a good idea.  And despite my protests they did, so I became neurotic staring at them and getting angry convinced they were going to go out too far and get caught in the current.  They were all fine, but one of the Norweigans had left her purse alone on the beach at one point, and Colin saw some guys steal it: he chased them down and got the purse back, but they had already stolen the phone out of it, and we had no way to prove it/get it back.  Despite the drunken swimming and stolen phone, it was still a really fun last night in Rio.

 

Brett, Fiona, and I at the Futbol match  

Monday our little crew went out for Acai in the morning before they headed off for the beach and I hopped on a bus to Paraty.  I did nothing other than lie on the beach and swim while in Paraty--my hostel was across the street from the beach, and although it wasn't the nicest beach in the area, it was empty, and conveniant.  I also ran into Sam and Sophie and my last day there--they were staying in Trinidade, but had come to Paraty for the day for a boat trip, so that afternoon we met up for some drinks on the beach, and then they came to my hostal for one of those all-you-can-eat meat BBQs that seem to be so popular on this continent.  It was really nice to see them again, but they had to catch the last bus back to Trinidade, so it was an early night.

 

Last night in Brasil!

I got back to Rio on Thursday, went to Copocabana and walked around for a bit, and then was convinced by Kyle and Colin that if I tried to sleep and wake up for my 4am pickup for the airport, I would probably sleep through my alarm and miss the flight, so the more responsible thing to do would be to stay up all night and just sleep on the plane.  Seemed reasonable.  So we all went for dinner, and then headed to Lapa to see some local bands play.  Even Pedro and Maria were there!  So it was really nice to hang out with everyone one last time before I headed to Ecuador.  And after staying up til my flight, I slept for the entirety of both flights.  The line though in Lima for security for flight transfers took 50 minutes.  So all connecting flights were delayed to ensure all passengers would make their connections.  I don't quite understand why you need to go through security again if you literally just stepped off the plane, but Lima needs to get its shit together.  And then after waiting that long in line, there were idiots who hadn't taken off their belts, or had stuff in their pockets and were setting off the sensor.  Unimpressed.  And then in Quito, they had opened their new airport the day before I arrived, so obviously nothing was running smoothly, and it was a 2 hour cabride into town.

CARNAVAL (10-13 feb)

 

Ipanema Beach!

Carnaval was INSANE!  I arrived in Rio on Sunday in like no sleep and was a few hours early for checkin, so I literally just passed out on a couch in the lobby of my hostal haha.  I then realized that Rio is sweltering, so I should probably buy a pair of shorts.  In the mall there were musicians playing and all these kids with their parents were dancing and singing along, wearing costumes--it was so cute!  That night I went to Ipanema beach with Eddy, Tim, and Pedro who worked at the hostel, as well as a group of aussies from the hostel, and this Scottish guy Colin I met who's teaching english in Rio.  There were thousands of people, and a DJ...it was nuts.  Colin and I met this Chilean girl who had found this amazing pair of angel wings just casually on the street haha.  We had all kicked off our flipflops into the centre of where we were dancing, and at one point when I was going to the street to get beer, I realized that one of my shoes was missing.  I was looking all over for it, when this guy who had been trying to hit on me before came over and said he had "found" it like 2 m away.  And then we wanted a kiss essentially for stealing my shoe and then bringing it over.  Loco.  That night though when me and one of the aussies were heading back to the hostel, we stopped to ask someone on the street for directions when suddenly she like grabbed our arms and started running and we were just like wtf...  Then when we're a block away she casually tells us that there was a dude under the tunnel near where we were with a gun, and that you can't just stop on a street corner in rio at night.  Super sketch.  But other than that minor detail it was a really fun evening.

 

Chilean Angel at Ipanema

Monday I went to the tail end of of Sgt Pepper Bloko with Maria and Colin. Blokos are just giant street parties with live samba music (different bands play in the neighbourhoods), and you can just buy cheap beer on the street, and you're surrounded by hourdes of other sweaty people loving life with facepaint and barely any clothes.  They're really fun.  Sgt Pepper is this band that plays beatles music to a samba beat, and they are SICK!  There was a sea of people for as far as the eye could see in every direction, and at one point a police car was trying to get through the crowd and then like turn around which was just hilarious, as it was moving like a snail as people were trying to squish together to create room for it.  That night was the most amazing night of my life...I went to the SAMBADROMO!!!  Colin, Maria, Marcos, Tim, and I all got dressed up and headed down to see the final night of competition between the samba schools.  It was unreal!  Each school has 1 hour (although from the start to end of the sambadromo each dancer has to go for an hour and a half!), with a fifteen minute break in between each one, meaning we were dancing in the stands til almost 6am!  Each school has their own song, and like at least 10 floats, with thousands of dancers, and a constant samba beat.  The stands were so full of energy, we were all just dancing along for the entirety of the like 8 hours.

 

Float on fire at the Sambadromo

Also, ridiculousness: I met my future mother-in-law in the stands.  This woman who didn't speak any english asked her son how to tell me that I was "sooo beautiful."  But then she kept translating through her son asking me if I had a boyfriend and then telling me all about how amazing her son was...all translated by him!  And then at one point, the guy asks Marcos (who is from Puerto Alegre in the south of Brazil and had better english than the dude), to tell him how to say that I "conquered his heart."  And then the guy keeps going on about how it's always been his dream to kiss a canadian girl, and how disappointed he is that I won't make his dream come true.  This family was clearly crazy, because who tries to set their son up with a stranger they just met in the stands, and who tries to get with the girl their mom is pushing on them?  While this was all happening, Tim had met some turkish girl and her mother, who were also trying the same thing.  We moved to a new spot in the stands after that...

 

Float in the Sambadromo

 

Dragonly getting stuck

It was really cool having Marcos there, because he could explain to us all the politics behind each school.  One for example was essentially doing propaganda for the rights dispute in Brazil regarding the oil found off the coast.  Also, craziness--One float caught on fire!  We were right at the end of the parade, and it happened just in front of us as it was finishing.  Officials had to run onto the float and evacuate all the dancers while ripping off their elaborate costumes.  Also, one of the floats had a dragonly that extended up above and behind it, and it didn't rotate when they got to the press overpass, so the whole parade had to stop as the float backed up to turn it so that they could get through to the end.  When we were walking home, we found all the floats from the earlier schools in the night, just casually on the street.  And on the metro we ran into some dancers from the sambadromo who were carrying their costumes and let Colin and Tim try them on.

 

Wannabe mother-in-law

 

Amazing costume!  Don't know how he could even stand up though with all those feathers...

 

Me, Marcos, Maria, and Tim exhausted after 8 hours of dancing

Tuesday I went to a bloko at Ipanema in the day, and it was alright, but the energy was not nearly as high as at some of the others. There was a great brass band playing though, and there must have been over a million people on the beach.  It was completely packed, and the beach stretches for kms!  Everyone was just dancing on the streets and loving life.  That night we went to Sgt Peppers again in Lapa because they were so good the last time, and we had only caught the last like half hour before.  They were amazing again--Maria and I had just gone, but we ran into Tim and some of his friends there which was cool.  After that I met up with Sam from Mexico!  We had been trying to meet up all week, but making plans by email is not very efficient.  Anyways, all his mates and his girlfriend had flown up from Australia, so I got to meet all them which was pretty cool!  We went back to the Lapa stage, and then decided we were all going to go to the beach.  But then somehow, Me and 3 of Sam's friends lost Sam and the others... We went to Ipanema anyways, hoping we'd find them there, but when we got there it was kinda dead, and they were nowhere to be found.  But then just as we were about to leave and give up hope, we ran into them on the street!  And then music started playing!  So we danced on the beach all night, and one of Sam's friends even had feathers from one of the costumes in the smabodromo that she gave me!  It was an insane last night of carnaval, and so much fun!

 

Maria and I at Sgt Peppers in Lapa

 

Sam's mate's from Aussieland at Ipanema on the last night of Carnaval!

Wednesday was a complete writeoff--just sleeping to recover from my lack of it the previous week, but I met Kyle who moved into my room who I ended up befriending which was pretty cool.  Carnaval is like if you combined Pride, a music festival, and halloween; add cops who want you to party instead of just being dicks; and then make it like 10 times better.  It is probably the most amazing party in the world.

Buenos Aires (Feb 6-9)

BA was sick.  So much fun!!  I met this awesome British girl there named Sarah, and these 2 crazy cool Tazzies names Yuri and Finn.  They were like besties and adorable together.  When I first got in, I took them to the street with all the black market money changers on it and traded their US$ for them as they didn´t speak a word of spanish.  It´s insane--because of the 25% inflation rate a year, and the new ban on foreign money being available in the country, USD were exchanging at 7.2, when the official rate is 4.9, as all the Argentines want to convert their savings into a hard currency.  I was getting 6 for the CAD which was still pretty good, but not nearly as good as the american rate.  That night we went to Don Julio for restuarant which is some famous steak place, and it was delicious.  Massive portions though--none of us even got through like half of what was on our plate.  After our like midnight dinner, we headed to this club called Brooke at like 2am, because that´s what time Argentines go out, and met up with Alejandro there!  It was so cool to see him again since travelling together, and one of the guys from our hostel when we had stayed in San Pedro de Atacama was also there visiting.  BA´s nightlife is insane...I didn´t go to bed earlier than 6am the entire time I was there.  And while the boys were sleeping off their hangovers each day, Sarah and I were rallying at like 10am to explore the city.

Sarah and I in San Telmo

 

My second day Sarah and I went to San Telmo where we wandered about for a bit and then went to the Museo Nacional de la Historia, which was kind of small and disappointing--it only really talked about the anglo-franco embargo on the BA port, and not too much other history.  We also went to the Mercado Central de San Telmo which had the most random and ridiculous collection of antique jewellery, electronics, clothing, weird creepy dolls, and food.  And then that night we went to Club 69 which was insane!  It was Carnaval themed, so there were people dressed up in these sick costumes everywhere, and then there was this awesome drag show going on onstage.  The guys though were insufferable!  Like creepy and annoying guys kept coming up to hit on Sarah and me, and didn´t get the message to fuck off when we weren´t responding to anything they were saying.  The machismo culture here is just the worst.  But in our flee from these douches, Sarah and I found a secret room in the back with another DJ who was playing a mix of like swing, electro, tango, and hiphop.  Unreal.  It was so much fun and so much less crowded and we got left alone by the guys there, so we hung out there for awhile before heading back to the main room, where there was a door that led right in front of the stage.  The show was so much fun and we just danced undisturbed there watching the drag show for the rest of the night.  So much fun...

Learning how to tango.

Somehow Sarah and I rallied on my third day and went to La Boca where we saw the Bombadero--the BA fútbol stadium; la caminata--this cute pedestrian walkway with artisan stalls; and the Museo Proa de Arte Contemporano, which had an amazing view of the harbour from the top, and had some really cool exhibitons.  The building was also gorgeous.  Sarah had moved hostels that day, so that night the boys and I walked over to pick her up and went to this bar/club called Bahrain close to her new place.  We just danced til like 5 in the morning and it was amazing.  Great DJ, and such an awesome last night with the BA crew.

Club 69!

My final day there I went to Recoleta, and met up with Alejandro again!  We went to the Feria Artisanale, and cemetary (where I saw Evita´s grave among others).  It´s insance how elaborate some of the grave stones things are.  And for members of the church...do people not give a shit that their collection plate money is going towards paying for massive tombstones in the most expensive cemetary in the country?  Ridiculousness...  We then went to the Museo de Bellas Artes, which was alright, but barely had any argentine painters...I didn´t need to come all the way to Argentina to see some french renaissance painters.  But afterwards we headed to the Museo de Latinoamericano de BA, which was amazing!  It was modern art, and there were some really cool exhibitions.  One by this feminist artist named Tracy something, and one of her pieces was a video of her describing her experience with her abortion.  So anyways, Alejandro and I were discussing this afterwards, and he told me that abortion is illegal in the entire continent!  And women go into really dangerous situations to terminate their pregnancies illegally...I knew the country was catholic, but I had no idea it was still so conservative and oppressive towards women!

Alejandro on a cool bench in the Latinamerican Museum.

After Recoleta I went back to the hostel, but had checked out that morning, so just hung out with Yuri and Finn in their room where they let me have a nap, as I had to leave for the airport at like 230am.  It was so sad leaving the boys, especially because they get into Rio like 2 days after I leave.  But now I have an excuse to visit Tazmania.  And I´m going to be meeting up with Sarah again in Brazil!  Pretty much BA is just super fun, but I´m not quite sure how I survived on like 10 hours sleep over the course of 3 days.  Defs need to return to Argentina as my time got cut short there--I want to see the rest of the country, and spend heaps more time in BA!