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Flights: 39
Continents: 3
Countries: 13
Beds: 114
Photos: 19,543
Marriages: 1
McDonalds: 0

It’s our final night in BA and luckily there’s enough time for one final steak!

It was worth posting this blog post just to write that title!

After a few days in Buenos Aires, we took the one hour ferry ride to Uruguay and spent a day wandering about the beautiful little town of Colonia – the oldest city in the country and a world heritage site. The historical area of the city was a wonderful place to spend the day, with its 17th century cobblestone streets shaded by huge sycamore trees, some great little places for lunch and coffee and a few tourist spots. It was also a place where the locals seemed to love cruising around in old cars, some classics, but mainly just battered old Fiats.

Once we’d done our tourist duty and spent a few (unusually large) Uruguayan Peso notes in the city, we caught a taxi out to a beautiful little posada in the countryside called La Casa de los Limoneros. Where we spent a couple of nights just doing not very much at all.

Refreshed and ready to hit the markets, we headed back to Buenos Aires – with the credit card ready to be hammered – for a weekend of shopping, sorting out our things before our return to chilly London… Oh and eating steak and drinking wine – mustn’t forget those important tasks.

We arrived from Rio at Foz do Iguaçu airport and immediately jumped into a taxi and headed for our last big location of our year off, the Iguazu Falls.

We walked the trail along the Brazilian side of the Iguazu River which takes you along progressively bigger and bigger falls, giving you a great overview of the location, until we finally got to see the spectacular Devil’s Throat – the biggest section of the falls at 82m high. Then we crossed the border into Argentina and the town of Puerto Iguazú. We found our hostel – the final cheap dump of our year – dropped our bags and spent as much of the evening out of the room as we could.

The next day we headed over to the Argentine side of the falls, which has much more intricate trails and platforms and allows you to really see many of the falls up close. The furthest point on the trails on the Argentine side is atop a platform at the very top of the Devil’s Throat. Standing at the edge of the platform and allowing the falls to completely fill your field of view is a simply awesome experience.

After ticking another wonderful thing off our world to-do list, we took our last overnight bus ride (only 19hrs!) to Buenos Aires.

To have a look at some BIG images from our time at the falls click here.

Things got a little more rustic there, with dirt roads and many buildings in need of work although there was a solitary ATM, ominously located right next to the tiny police station. We managed to find a room at a reasonably nice place in the higher part of town. No AC but there was a small pool which was refreshing, and became even more essential once we realised that the beach front wasn’t really all that great for swimming.

We found a tiny coffee shop which claimed to be ‘the best little coffee shop in the southern hemisphere’. We couldn’t resist such a claim and had to try it. It certainly wasn’t the best in the southern hemisphere (we’ve had better coffee in Australia) but it was definitely the best we’ve had outside Australia on our trip so far. Despite coffee being Colombia’s biggest (legal) export there’s a saddeningly huge amount of Nescafé around – and having ‘made in Colombia’ on the label didn’t make it any less disappointing each time we were given some with our breakfast.

Taganga had a very relaxed atmosphere and a nice little beach called Playa Grande in a bay just a 20 minute walk around the cliffside to the north. We also found some great seafood in one of the restaurants on the water front. It was a nice place to hang out for a couple of days before we returned to Santa Marta to stay for a while, sometimes catching the local bus south to El Rodadero for its better beach (although always returning for dinner at a restaurant which served steak that was almost as good as the steak we’d had in BA).

After a couple more days, it was time to leave the coast and travel to Colombia’s capital, Bogotá. We spent 3 days exploring the city – hampered by almost continuous rain – but managed to get quite a few touristy things ticked off the list. The changing of the guard at the Presidential Palace – including a marching band that for some reason played Paint it Black by the Rolling Stones – was an odd little experience to remember. Sadly the rain meant that we had to spend a lot of our time indoors having to sample the many great cake shops and cafés around La Candelaria, including one that served a very popular snack in Bogotá, cheese and bread with hot chocolate – the cheese was there to dip into the hot chocolate before you eat it (pretty awful). Bogotá was a damp but interesting city – certainly not the most beautiful we’ve been to, but has plenty of character if you’re prepared to look for it. We managed to find quite a few great little bars, restaurants and cafés, and the place certainly grew on us over the time we spent there, although it did have to try hard to stand out amidst our growing excitement for our next stop… Rio.

To get to Rio we had to fly through Buenos Aires for an overnight stay. We were lucky enough to have exit row seats and the flight was going perfectly. Then it took a turn for the worse when the head steward managed to drop a full pot of boiling hot coffee on the floor in front of me, scalding my ankles, soaking my shoes, socks and jeans and spraying Alexandra’s coat and the whole emergency exit area with some of Colombia’s finest instant.

After having to call them back with the call button 10 minutes later – because they immediately went to sit down as the seatbelt sign was on, and didn’t come back once it switched off – they apologised (somewhat sarcastically) and offered nothing to help the situation. I was offered another seat in economy once I pointed out that the floor beneath my feet was soaked, but I declined and requested a better, and not a worse seat than my current exit row one. There were none on the plane apparently – a claim which I found to be untrue when I took the short walk over to business class to find it half empty. Despite our suggestions that they should do something – anything in fact – to make our flight a little more comfortable, they responded by saying that it might happen on Qantas or BA, but on their airline it wasn’t their policy. My point that if the pot had fell to the left rather than the right, then there was the potential for a baby or young child to be burnt by the coffee fell on deaf ears. They did provide a little entertainment a short while after the incident though when they wheeled their trolley past us again and politely asked the question I knew they would… ‘Coffee sir?!’

‘No thanks, I’ve already had some’ I replied with a laugh.

Aerolineas Argentinas, the worst airline ever.

Looking at the positives though, at least there was enough time for my socks to completely dry and my shoes now had a lovely, truly Colombian aroma, which would serve to remind me of our trip for years to come (or until I throw them away, which will probably be very soon).

After a short overnight stop in BA where we took the chance to catch up with Hayley, the next morning we flew (unfortunately with Aerolineas Argentinas) to Rio de Janeiro!

We arrived in Cartagena at lunchtime, the first time in a long time that we’d arrived anywhere at a decent hour of the day. I was reminded of the last time we stepped out of the plane into the thick wall of tropical heat and humidity – back in April at Kuala Terrenganu in Malaysia. The fleece went firmly into the bottom of my back pack and we took a taxi to our hostel.

We spent a few days getting to know the city. The old town section is a beautiful area full of historic public squares, cobbled streets and brightly-coloured colonial buildings with ornate overhanging balconies. It has a relaxed feel with lots of great bars and restaurants, galleries and museums. Our path was usually dictated by our hunt for the next cocktail to cool us down (because for some reason, water just wasn’t cutting it). Our location of choice for a few evening sunsets was Café del Mar which is situated on the old city walls, with an uninterrupted view west out into the Caribbean Sea… just perfect.

After a few days in Cartagena checking out most of the city, the lure of nearby beaches was too much and we took a boat for the 45min trip to Playa Blanca where we stayed for a couple of nights. It’s a beautiful long stretch of white beach in a bay on the island of Barú. Once we’d arrived we walked the length of the beach and quickly noticed that there were less tourists at the northern end, and consequently much less hassle there from hawkers selling knick knacks and massages. So that’s where we decided to stay. On this beach acommodation was down to basics, with three options: hammocks, tents and small wooden dorms with thatched roofs. On this occasion we decided to treat ourselves and go midrange! We ended up staying in a tiny tent that barely fit both of us with our day packs. Not so luxurious inside, but being 20 metres from beautifully clear Caribbean water meant that it wasn’t so bad on the outside.

Our new neighbour for the next two nights was an Argentine called Nico who was spending a full month living in a tent on the beach. It was he who helped persuade us to stay where we did. Not simply because he’d already been there for about 3 straight weeks – not a bad advertisement in itself – but he’d also rated the food pretty highly. We had a great couple of days and evenings lazing around, reading and cooling off in the sea. The only problem were the insects! They came out in force during the still evenings and didn’t adhere to the rule that if someone is wearing repellent containing 80% DEET then you’re supposed to move along and bite someone else.

We seemed to have decided to stay at the only place on the beach that had a generator, and therefore light and music. It attracted people from other parts of the beach and we spent the evening chatting to locals and a few other tourists over a few beers. It was a great atmosphere, although the almost rhythmic slapping of hands onto arms, legs and necks was a constant reminder that we weren’t the only living things on the beach.

After an uncomfortable first night sleeping in the tent, Alexandra woke (very early, annoyed and scratching her legs furiously) to find the results of the insect party that had happened the night before. She stopped counting the bites at 200, and we estimated that there were over 500 in total.

I tried to count the bites on me… and stopped at 0. I must’ve dodged them or something.

During the 2nd evening Alexandra spent most of it tightly wrapped in a sarong to protect her from the insects, so it wasn’t quite as bad as the 1st. We sat on the beach, put on some Beatles from Alexandra’s iPod and enjoyed some more beer and a bit of coco loco – piña colada served in a fresh coconut – while watching the entertainment for the evening, some huge spectacular tropical storms on the horizon. Then I had a surprisingly comfortable night sleeping in one of the hammocks so that Alexandra had a little more room in our (barely fits 1 but is called a) 2 person tent.

We returned to Cartagena the following afternoon after another morning of doing not very much at all and arrived at the same hostal we were at a few days before. Having been travelling for a while we’re now able to plan ahead and cleverly reserved a room before we left. Unfortunately the receptionist responded to us informing her that we had a reservation by telling us that they hadn’t had any cancellations so there was no room for us. Our names and the date were in a notebook but that meant nothing. As we hadn’t pre-paid, the reservation didn’t exist. We tried to explain that we hadn’t been asked to pay anything when we made the reservation, but our frustrated words got no reaction other than a roll of the eyes. Hot, sweaty and in need of a shower we grabbed our bags and found another place to stay. We decided that evening that rather than moving on the next day, we’d stay for another to allow Alexandra’s bites to heal in the heaven that was a room with air conditioning.

After another relaxed day enjoying the city (and it’s food, coffee and of course cocktails) we took a bus northeast along the coast the following morning to the city of Santa Marta, where we intended to continue the beach hunt.

Here are some pictures from Cartagena and Playa Blanca.

After a short (1.5 hour) bus ride and an overly convoluted border crossing – involving getting a Peruvian exit stamp miles before the border, crossing the border, getting an entry stamp after travelling 20 minutes past the border into Ecuador, then having to leave our bus and catch a cab back to the border to get a different bus (10 hours this time) – we were on our way to Quito.

After the uncomfortable overnight journey, we were woken by the shouting conductor at 6am – an hour early. In a half-asleep-half-awake daze we managed to persuade the driver that we wouldn’t be able to get our bags out of the luggage compartment under the bus if he persisted with his intention to drive off as soon as possible. Once we managed to drag them onto the street we used our now well-honed ability to act as if all taxi drivers are invisible to buy ourselves a couple of minutes of time to work out which street we were on – and therefore by how much the aforementioned taxi drivers were about to try and con us.

After some successful haggling and a short drive we arrived at our hostel. As we were an hour early, ringing the bell woke the guy on reception and after checking in we immediately headed out for an early breakfast as our room wasn’t ready. For the rest of the day and through the folowing night I was pretty ill with a 24 hour bug from hell. My pain was hammered home by the unbelievable racket coming from all around us that lasted until about 4am. We seemed to have booked into the noisiest hostel in the whole of Quito.

After a night of very little sleep, the hostel cleaner making me a concoction of oregano, salt and hot water with a squeeze of lime didn’t prove to be enough to persuade us to stay and by 10am Alexandra had managed to find a nice quiet alternative. We headed over to our new hostel and had an early siesta. That afternoon we ventured out into La Mariscal with a mission – to find and book a tour to the Galápagos Islands. We surprised ourselves by finding a decent-sounding 8 day tour for a pretty good price at the very first agency we walked into. After confirming it was good by shopping around at a few other agencies, we went ahead and booked it. The last big splurge of our trip was paid for!

After spending the following day walking around the beautiful old town area of Quito we got an early night, ready for our early flight to the Galápagos the next morning.

We arrived by 10am the next day and a were having lunch a couple of hours later on the Galápagos Voyager – the boat that was to be our home for the next 8 days. It was so much better than we expected. A decent sized cabin with comfortable beds and our own bathroom, a nice group of people travelling with us, great food and a very friendly crew.

I’ll let the pictures do most of the talking… there are plenty of them! But to summarise, we spent the next week sailing from island to island – usually at night, and sometimes through some pretty rough seas – doing our best David Attenborough impressions. The volcanic landscapes were beautiful, the land-based wildlife was amazing (especially the giant tortoises, red and blue footed boobies and new-born sea lions) and the sea-based wildlife even more so. Snorkelling with sea lions that were so keen to play with me and bite at my flippers; following sea turtles along a 100 year old underwater lava flow; watching penguins swim past at stunning speed through a separating school of thousands of fish; we had even more memorable experiences in the water than out of it. We were amazed by how fearless the wildlife was, which meant we could get very close to the animals. It’s probably the best cageless zoo in the world!

Here’s a video I shot of one of the sea lions at La Loberia beach having fun with my flippers:

After 8 days of fun on the islands, we returned to Quito and had a couple of days of doing not very much, apart from visiting the incorrect and correct equatorial lines just north of Quito, before we were very happy – after having read recent news reports – to fly over the border into Colombia, for some more beach time!

Here is a huge bunch of pictures from our time in Quito and the Galápagos Islands:

Staying by the beautiful Lake Titicaca is a little deceptive. In many parts, the opposite banks are so far away that they’re invisible and it gives the feeling of being by an ocean, but 3811m high it’s anything but. We spent a couple of days of doing not very much other than exploring the town and climbing the two peaks that straddle either side of it for some lovely views and a great sunset over the lake. On our 3rd day we decided to hop on a boat to Isla del Sol. After a tourist-packed and painfully slow 2hr journey we arrived at the tiny port of Cha’llapampa. As we decided to stay on the island for the night we took the advice of the owner of our hotel and waited for an hour at the port to allow the tourist crowds to head off down the trail we’d be taking. The advice was perfect, we had the whole route to ourselves for the day, with only the odd tourist off on the horizon ahead of us. We wandered the island and had lunch in the middle of the Chincana complex of Inca ruins (on a conveniently placed Inca picnic table) with an amazing view of the lake. After walking the picturesque length of the entire island we had a well deserved beer before spending the night at a lovely little eco lodge near the town of Yumani.

The next morning we popped by another small Inca ruin on the way to a tiny pier where we took a boat – same size but all to ourselves this time – back to the mainland. From the town of Yampupata we walked the 16km back to Copacabana, visiting a small, dusty museum along the way. We had to find the owner to unlock the front door for us but there was a mummified corpse inside – and who wouldn’t want to see that! – so it was worth the hassle.

The following day, after our few days of relaxation, we cought an afternoon bus to the Bolivian/Peruvian border. There we said goodbye to Bolivia and walked across the bridge into Peru which seemed to be pretty lively. For some reason there were bands playing and market stalls all along the 200m walk to the Peruvian immigration office, where we jumped back on our bus to dingy Puno. There we had an overly complicated change of buses and headed on, overnight to Cusco.

Our 7 hour bus ride to La Quiaca on the Argentine border was reasonably comfortable and we arrived at 7.30am. It was freezing cold but we were treated to a spectacular sunrise. We walked with two other travellers, Antoine (French) and Johanna (German) – who we met at the bus station the night before in Salta – to the border which was about 1km from the bus station. We were pretty short of breath during the walk as we’d climbed about 2km in altitude during the bus journey. After getting our exit stamps from the Argentine immigration office we walked across the bridge into Bolivia. After a small queue and some simple checkpoint formalites we headed into the Bolivian town of Villazón. It was the first time I’d ever crossed a border on foot.

We changed our Pesos for some Bolivianos and walked another kilometre to the Villazón bus station. Once we arrived we began hearing rumours from other travellers of protests in the city of Potosí – one of the places on our itinerary. We had other plans before we’d arrive there though so we had some time for it all to die down. We caught another bus along the partly sealed, dusty road to Tupiza, arrived there 3 hours later and had found and checked into a hostel soon after.

After booking ourselves onto a couple of tours, all 4 of us headed out for lunch. It was 2pm, the siesta was well and truly in effect and Tupiza was like a small, dusty old ghost town. After half an hour of searching we found a single open restaurant. The receptionist at our hostel had told us of a place in town to definitely not eat at if we wanted to keep our digestive systems in order. But could any of us remember the name she gave? No. There wasn’t any other option. We had to eat, and we had to be back at the hostel for our first tour at 3pm. It didn’t look too great but we headed in anyway.

Pizza. We all agreed it was a safe bet. We asked what type of pizza they had. ‘Pizza con carne’ was the reply. Could we have it without the meat? ‘No.’ Did they have any other pizzas? ‘No.’ Pizza con carne it was then. After a surprisingly ok starter of vegetable soup (a traditionally Bolivian way to start a meal), the pizza arrived. We immediately realised why we couldn’t have it without the meat. It seemed like an animal (cow/llama/horse?) had been skinned and that skin, with about a centimetre of poorly cooked meat beneath it, formed the ‘base’ of our pizza. After moving it around to figure out what the hell it was, we ate the rice and potatoes it came with, while trying not to look at the rest of the meal on our plates.

Pizza con carne. Of course. Why did I ever expect anything else?

As we headed back to the hostel we were frustrated as we passed numerous decent-looking restaurants that had begun to open after the siesta. But we walked on and at 3pm, went on our first tour – a 3 hour horseride through the red wilderness of dusty quebradas and cacti. It was true cowboy country (think Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid) and our ride went out as far as El Cañón del Inca where we were completely surrounded by the huge red walls of the canyon. It was great fun and after my first ride in La Cumbrecita a week-or-so before it was good to have a horse that would trot on command! That evening, with everything open again, all 4 of us went to a restaurant recommended in our guide book and had a pretty decent meal. This time… vegetarian.

The next morning we were up early to begin our tour around the areas of Bolivia that most people come to the country to see. The tour we had planned was a 1200km, 4 day off-road journey around what’s known as The Southwestern Circuit, through one of the world’s harshest wilderness regions, ending in Uyuni. All 4 of us left Tupiza in a 4WD with our guide and driver Sergio and our cook Emma. Within an hour we were already driving through some of the most beautiful landscapes we’d ever seen, many of the hills had vertical stripes of rock visible on their surface, showing how layers and layers of volcanic rock had cooled then been tipped almost 90 degrees over millions of years of tectonic plate movement. We climbed a huge amount during the morning and with a bit of a headache, had our first lunch break at 3600m served out of the back of the 4WD. We then travelled through some small villages, saw a couple of lagoons and had a distant view of Volcan Uturuncu. That night we stayed in a hostel in a tiny village called Quetena Chico. It was 4200m high and got extremely cold once the sun had set. A short stroll outside away from the light of the village meant that I could see a starry sky that rivalled the one we saw while sleeping on the sand dunes in the Great Thar Desert in Rajasthan. The amazingly dense stripe of stars of the Milky Way stretched across from the north east horizon to the south west horizon. It was only the cold that kept me from staying out there for too long – well, that and the wonderful soup that Emma made that evening. It helped us cope with the cold for a while. Antoine surprised us by bringing along a bottle of red wine, but the heavy increase in altitude that day meant that we didn’t really feel up for drinking and had to decline his offer. We all stayed up playing cards for a few hours before deciding to get an early night.

The next morning we travelled further south west, through the village of Quetena Grande before reaching the entry point of the Reserva Nacional de Fauna Andina Eduardo Avaroa, a 7150 sq km national park in the south western corner of Bolivia. We paid our entry fees and drove on. We were definitely on top of the Bolivian altiplano now as the amount of altitude change was considerably less on the 2nd day. It was a long journey but it certainly wasn’t the sort of journey that got boring. The landscape would change so much over such short distances, both in colour and terrain. We passed the Salar de Chalviri – a small salt flat – and stopped at a few lagoons where we got our first glimpse of the flamingos that breed in the high country.

We then entered the region of Los Lipez and after a few more hours of driving we reached the very south western corner of Bolivia. There we stopped at a ridge of grey rock and got out of the car for a stunning view of Laguna Verde – a massive and vibrantly green lagoon that gets its colour from the huge amounts of lead, sulphur, arsenic and calcium carbonates in the water, it’s basically a big poisonous lake. Behind the lake was the huge Volcan Licancabur which sits on the border between Bolivia and Chile. Sergio told us to just wait for a while, to enjoy the view and to watch the lagoon. As we did the water got progressively greener as the chemicals reacted to the increasing light from the sun as it rose in the sky. From where we were we also got a glimpse of a live (and smoking) volcano!

As this was as far south west as we could go in Bolivia, we turned back and took a slightly different route north. After another hour or so of driving we arrived at the Termas de Polques. A real treat in the heart of such a cold, harsh part of the world. It’s a small 30 degree geo-thermal hot spring pool in the middle of 4200m high nowhere. We all spent half an hour relaxing in the pool surrounded by a magnificent steaming landscape. Refreshed after our dip, we had yet another great lunch that Emma seemed to have created from nothing, and carried on northbound.

The next stop was truly amazing. We took a sudden left turn from the road and within 10 minutes the ground had turned from dusty red to rocky grey and it felt like an odd lunar landscape, only something was missing. Then a short while later we realised what it was… craters. We’d arrived at the 4850m high Sol de Mañana Geyser Basin and all around us were multicoloured craters of bubbling mud and the thick and nauseating aroma of sulphur fumes. There was a freezing cold wind but we could stand near the steaming, bubbling holes in the ground to keep warm. We spent 45 minutes wandering around the craters, trying not to get splattered by boiling mud and being careful not to step on any damp or cracked earth which apparently could cave in quite easily. It really felt like we were walking around on another planet.

Our final stop on our 2nd day was Laguna Colorada. A 60sq km firey red lagoon, only 80cm deep, fringed with bright white minerals, and populated with hundreds more flamingos. After a short walk around part of the coast we drove to our rest stop for the night, slightly inland from the edge of the lagoon. It was only about 4pm and we had a whole evening to kill so we decided to take a walk up to a nearby viewpoint for a high view of the lagoon as the sun set. Yet again Antoine was disappointed when we all declined his offer of wine. Dinner without wine, the Frenchman wasn’t impressed.

The third day was unbelievably windy as we made our way north. We passed odd rock formations and valleys and the rougher terrain was a little more preferable as we could hide from the wind. As the land flattened out and we began to drive along sandy desert, we found ourselves being chased by small tornadoes. At one point we briefly stopped at the side of the road to let a truck past and as we did I looked out of my window to see a tornado about 20m wide raging towards our car. The whole 4WD wobbled and there was a loud hiss as it was pelted with huge amounts of sand as the tornado passed right over us. The landscape turned from bumpy sandy desert to completely flat salt and although the ride was more comfortable, there were a few occasions when we’d have to drive into a wall of completely opaque dust. Visibility was zero and we would just have to proceed at a crawl, in a straight line and hope that when we got out the other side of the dust (if we weren’t hit by an oncoming vehicle) we’d still be able to see the tyre tracks that formed the road. We stopped for supplies at a shop in the dusty, windy town of San Juan. There we heard that the protests were ongoing and road blockades had extended out from Potosí as far as Uyuni, our final destination. We didn’t know whether we’d be able to get into Uyuni but we’d just had to hope that the protests would be over by the next afternoon, when our tour was due to end.

We continued on to our rest stop for the night but worryingly, they didn’t have any water, petrol or electricity. The road blockades had been having a bigger effect than we thought while we had been away from civilisation for the past 3 days. We heard that it was also difficult to get petrol everywhere which, as Sergio told us, could affect our final day on the tour. He decided to drive us on to another hostel he knew, slightly further north. It was in a place called Chuvica, right on the edge of the Salar de Uyuni, our final big destination of the tour and the thing most tourists come to Bolivia to see. We had an amazing view of the Salar from our hostel that evening, but what made it even more interesting was the fact that our hostal was MADE of salt. Apart from obvious things like toilets, taps and windows, pretty much everything was made of the lovely white condiment. The walls, tables, chairs and even beds (there were matresses on top thankfully) were made of it, and everywhere we walked we’d hear the crunch of grit salt beneath our feet.

Over dinner Sergio told us that the blockades meant that we wouldn’t be able to get enough petrol to complete our tour as planned, and that we’d have to miss a drive halfway up Volcan Tunupa for a great view of the Salar. It was a shame but we were all more concerned about being able to get into Uyuni at the end of the tour. Along with another great meal Sergio brought out a bottle of wine and uncorked it for us. We could hardly refuse, but soon realised that it tasted like shit and once Sergio had left us alone, we resorted to finally having Antoine’s bottle instead. We all headed to our salt block beds wandering what the next 24 hours would bring.

If you’ve read this far, well done. You’ve manage to get through almost all of the ‘we did this’ and ‘we saw that’ stuff. Things started to get a little more interesting on the following day…

We woke early to see the sunrise over the Salar de Uyuni – the world’s largest salt flat, 3650m high and covering an amazing 12106 sq km – and drove right to the center of the flat to Isla Incahuasi. We arrived to see 3 4WDs already there. Sergio told us that there would usually be about 30 or so by that time of the morning. The blockades had clearly affected tourism. Our guide book described Isla Incahuasi as an odd cactus-filled island in the middle of an other-worldly sea of bright white nothingness, a place that is enjoyable if you can ignore the hordes of other tourists bustling for the perfect photograph. Today though, other than the 4 of us, there were no tourists at all. We had the whole place to ourselves, which was amazing. We wandered the island with its giant cacti, taking photos and admiring the tourist-free view. When we got back to the car Sergio and Emma told us over breakfast (which included sponge cake – how the hell did she bake a cake?!) that they really weren’t sure what they were going to do. They barely had enough petrol to get us back to Uyuni, and that was IF they could get us back to Uyuni because of the blockades. They had enough to get back to San Juan where there was apparently an unblocked route to Uyuni but they’d heard that there was no petrol to buy there anyway so that was pointless.

We had no idea what we were going to do. There was no phone signal so we couldn’t find out what was happening. We couldn’t figure out which was the best route to take to return to Uyuni. We were stuck, and of all the places in the world to be stuck, we were stuck here:

After a bit of a wait Sergio decided to take the most direct route to Uyuni. He had to get us back there by that afternoon. Firstly because he and Emma don’t live there, they live in Tupiza, so they had to try and find some petrol to get them all home once they’d dropped us off. He also had to pick up his son in Uyuni. Oh, and there was the small matter of Alexandra and I oweing him B$1400 (Bolivianos, about £130) as we’d only paid a portion of the cost of the tour up-front, so he had to get us to the one and only ATM in town as soon as possible. We stopped halfway along the Salar to take some tricky perspective-related photos (as everyone does there), and as on the island, there were no other cars to be seen. It was one of the most tranquil places we’ve ever visited and we realised that not many people get to see it in the way we were.

We drove closer to Uyuni, stopping at a hotel built on the salt to try and get a phone signal – no luck, even with Sergio standing on top of the car – before heading to the edge of the Salar. It was then that we caught a glimpse of a blockade. There were a few trucks and vans waiting to get past what was simply a row of small rocks placed on the road. There were crowds of protesters just hanging around, some with balaclavas on – to hide their faces or to keep warm, we weren’t sure. We couldn’t decide whether it was a threatening situation or not, but as we pulled into the queue of vehicles at the blockade, Sergio told us that as long as we didn’t break the road block, they’d remain peaceful. So we waited, and the playing cards came out once again.

After about 2 hours of sitting at the blockade watching the protesters hanging around, they all grouped together for a meeting. Then someone aproached our car, had a chat with Sergio and Emma and then left. We weren’t sure what was said but Sergio then started the engine and took another route to Uyuni.

Within 20 minutes we’d arrived at another blockade. It seemed every route to Uyuni was blocked and all we could do was wait to be let through. Some other tourist 4WDs arrived and we even saw a couple of 4WDs stuck a few kilometres away in the middle of the Salar. We heard that with only a little fuel left, they had tried to take a path off the designated tracks and the salt collapsed beneath their cars. People were getting stranded out here but everything remained calm and fortunately non-violent towards us. Occasionally we’d see a car approach the blockade at an angle that made it look like it was going to pass the block. Then we saw how the protesters would react. They’d all run towards the car with rocks in hand, shouting and threatening to throw them at the windows until it stopped. It seemed everything would be fine and noone would get hurt, we just had to wait. They just wanted to cause some disruption.

After a couple of hours of waiting Emma served lunch in the 4WD, and we continued with the card playing. Sergio kept getting out of the car to chat to the other guides to try and find out what was going on. Then our day took its most unexpected twist. We were in the middle of what was probably our 50th round of ‘Arsehole’ (the card game) when Sergio decided to jump into the car and turn it around. He’d done this before to park it out of the wind behind another vehicle so it wasn’t so out of the ordinary. Except just as we thought he’d stop the car, he decided to slam his foot down on the accelerator! He drove us over some nearby train tracks that travelled along the road to Uyuni and off-road into some pretty dense bush land north of the road at high speed. The crazy guy was trying to make a run for it, with the 4 of us in the back! The protesters chased after us on foot and were throwing rocks in our direction, while the tourists started cheering and beeping their horns in support. Obviously this was completely unexpected for the 4 of us in the back of the car and we were bouncing around all over the place, each still holding a set of cards in our hands, while trying to come to terms with what Sergio had just done.

As soon as he felt he was far enough away from the road he turned a sharp right to head towards Uyuni about a kilometre north of the actual road. We all looked to our right, towards the road. We could all see a dust cloud that was being kicked up by one of the protesters’ cars that had peeled away from the blockade to give chase. Sergio kept glancing to his right too, he clearly knew they were chasing. I looked out of the rear window, there was plenty of dust from our car too. They’d know exactly where we were, just as we knew where they were, and they were on a road, while we were dodging bushes and ditches and travelling much more slowly. We all started to worry what the consequences would be if they caught us, which was looking likely! I realised that we were all laughing about the situation, but it was a kind of nervous, crazed laughter. This was insane… we were in the middle of an off-road car chase in Bolivia, not something that was part of the itinerary!

Without warning Sergio mumbled something to Emma, stopped the car abruptly and hopped out. I thought there was something wrong with the car. He paced away in a straight line, it was as though he’d given up. We all watched him walk, confused at why he’d give up here after all that effort. He stopped, still facing away from us, stood for a while, then returned to the car. Everybody needs to piss I suppose. He was clearly much more relaxed about the situation that we were.

It seemed that Sergio’s toilet stop was a good move. We could no longer see any dust from the car on the road. Had we lost them by stopping our dust trail? After a few more minutes and a stop at a farmhouse to ask for directions to another road to Uyuni, we were heading in the right direction again, only much faster now. We approached the outskirts of Uyuni, and we could see lots of people walking around. We didn’t know who was a protester and who wasn’t and, if any of them were, whether they knew about our recent escapade only a few kilometres up the road. Sergio kept up the speed as we approached them and luckily noone seemed to care about our presence. As we headed for the safety of the buildings, where we could blend in, we drove by a dusty, rubbish strewn football pitch where there was a game being played. I turned to follow the game as we passed it by and then out of the rear window, I saw 3 more 4WDs speeding towards us from the very bush land we’d just come from! They were obviously tourist 4WDs, as they had backpacks strapped to their roofs. It seemed they’d decided to follow our lead and break the blockade, but they were too late! As we headed into a long street I saw about 20 people running for the 4WDs throwing rocks at them, then a car sped in from the direction of the main road into the town and tried to cut off the tourist convoy. The first 2 4WDs got out of the bush land in time to get away from the car but the 3rd had to take evasive action as the car drove right into its path. It avoided what would’ve been a terrible crash just as we turned a corner and we lost sight of the action that we would’ve been involved in if we were only 30 seconds later.

Sergio calmly slowed down and cruised along the wide dusty streets of Uyuni. I got one more glimpse of a speeding tourist 4WD as it crossed a street in the distance, but noone was following. My heart was still pounding as Sergio stopped across the road from the only ATM in town. I ran across the road to get the cash. We just needed to pay him, take our bags then we could all disperse and noone else would ever know what just happened.

The ATM was out of service. Perfect.

After a long search we ended up getting a cash advance (with a hefty comission) at a restaurant, but they only had enough cash to give us the money to pay Sergio. We paid and said our goodbyes to Sergio and Emma and thanked them for a day we’d never forget, then found ourselves a cheap hostel. Uyuni was heaving with backpackers as noone had been able to get out for the past few days. So as we were lucky to get a room at all, we decided to pay for 2 nights. While standing in the lobby of the hostel that night we heard from other backpackers that the British and Canadian embassies had heard about the trouble in Bolivia and had persuaded the local police to make a deal with the protesters and arrange a police-escorted tourist-only bus service out of Uyuni the next morning. But… we didn’t have enough money to buy the tickets as they were more than double the standard price. I had to lie to the hostel receptionist and say that I didn’t have enough cash left for dinner that night and that I’d need my 2nd night’s payment back, but that I’d rebook the room the next day once the bank opened.

With our newly reclaimed 100 Boliviano note, we had enough to buy tickets AND have dinner, so we queued up outside the police station and bought our tickets to Oruro. Then we all celebrated surviving our action-packed day unscathed with pizza and a few beers.

At 5.15am the next day, all 4 of us were at the front of the queue outside the police station for the 6am bus. We caught one of two buses from there and within 5 minutes of driving were stopped at the blockade at the edge of town. It was dark outside but we could see the blockade which was marked with piles of burning tyres on the edges of the road. Some of the protesters boarded the bus and were surprisingly pleasant to all of us. They just wanted to check that all of the passengers were tourists. They weren’t. There were 3 Bolivians on our bus and even more on the other one. They had somehow managed to buy their tickets on the black market. According to the protesters, the deal had been broken and now noone was going to be leaving Uyuni at all.

After about an hour and lots of persuasion from the police, the Bolivians got off the buses. Thinking that we’d then drive on to the safety and ATMs of Oruro with ease, Alexandra gave the Bolivians most of our remaining cash. Unfortunately it wasn’t that simple and we were left for another hour and a half wondering how we’d survive another night in Uyuni, before the protesters agreed to let us pass the blockade. As the deal had been broken though, the protesters decided that these were to be the only buses to pass the blockade from then until the end of the protest, whenever that may be. They advised the police to go back into town and find enough tourists to fill the empty seats as it would be their last chance to get tourists out of the town. Another hour later more tourists boarded the buses and we all passed though peacefully.

It was a long and arduous journey. We had to take a huge detour to avoid the main roads to Oruro as there were many other blockades along that route. We were driving on real 4WD terrain, only we were on a bus. Within the first hour part of the suspension on our bus broke, and was fixed with a rough and ready bit of rubber strapping. Then a few kilometres further the axel of the other bus broke. After waiting around for another hour watching them remove the wheels and try to dismantle the axel bearings using Coca-Cola as a lubricant, the driver of our bus decided to proceed leaving the other bus behind. It was the last we saw of them.

On the normal roads the journey from Uyuni to Oruro would’ve taken 8 hours. Our journey took nearly 21. We had to cross the entire Salar de Uyuni again, and we noticed that many of the people on the bus were seeing it for the first time, as they never had the chance to get onto a tour because of the protests. We realised how lucky we were to have seen it in the way we did. Once we got to the northern side of the Salar, yet another blockade stopped us as they hadn’t heard about the police agreement and, despite us being a bus of tourists with a policeman sitting at the front, didn’t believe our story. A couple more hours of waiting and negotiation by one of the tourists and the policeman with the protesters and we were on our way again. We finally arrived in Oruro at about 2.45am the next morning and not wanting to stay there, gritted our teeth and bought tickets for the first available bus to La Paz, which left at 3.30am.

We did end up getting to La Paz later that morning. But something unsurprising happened an hour into the 4 hour journey. Our lovely, modern, comfy bus… broke down.

Bolivia, thanks for the memories.

The next time we had Internet access, we checked out how much the British and Australian Governments had changed their warnings…

The fact that it was where Argentina’s independance was declared not only makes it a very important city in Argentina, but also determined much of the sightseeing we’d do during our time there. The most signifigant being the Casa de la Independencia and the cathedral. We also noted during our first stroll through the city that the siesta here was more obvious than any of the other cities we’d visited previously. All of the shops closed and the streets were deserted for a few hours. But considering that the suburbs are only 8 blocks away from the city’s main square – yet another Plaza Independencia – everyone must’ve gone home to sleep.

Randomly it seems to be a city of fitness freaks. We saw even more gyms, yoga, pilates and dance studios than we did in Buenos Aires. On our first afternoon we passed what looked like a standard South American old and slightly tired café – populated mainly with unhealthy men in their 60s smoking and drinking coffee. The big difference between this and most other cafés was that the back wall was made of glass and behind it was a huge gym full of far healthier people working out. The contrast was very strange.

After Córdoba, Tucumán wasn’t quite as attractive – even though there were pretty orange trees everywhere. So a day and a half was about enough for us and we were looking forward to getting back into the countryside for a week-or-so.

I was supposed to be writing the next blog post a week from now about our journey through Tucumán and then through a few of the towns in the hills to the west. We were supposed to leave Tucumán for Tafí del Valle today to then head on to Cafayate, to drink some more wine (Torrontés this time), to visit the Quilmes ruins, and to spend some time trekking in the hills, quad biking and driving around the Quebrada.

That was the plan, but this morning we arrived at Tucumán bus station to be told that the road to Tafí del Valle and onward to Cafayate wasn’t passable because of ice on the road. After a couple of days in Tucumán we didn’t want to stay any longer. We decided to accept that were going to have to miss almost a weeks worth of plans in northern Argentina and that we’d be arriving in Bolivia a little earlier than we thought. Not too much of a problem, as we’ve heard so many great things about it. Within a couple of minutes, we had the guide book out, checked the map, decided that the next stop would now be Salta and bought our tickets. We found the bus and a few minutes later we were on our way.

So, a short post and not so many pictures this time. It’s amazing how quickly plans can change.

It’s been a long time since our last post, and we had a bit of time in Australia before we left to begin the last section of our journey in South America, so I’ll start back then. Here goes… this is going to be a long post!

After our wedding we had a wonderful couple of weeks up in Cairns, where it was a comfortable winter temperature of 28°C. We had enough time to relax after the wedding, to enjoy some post-wedding quiet time with family, and to start to think about a rough plan for South America. At the beginning of June we said goodbye to Cairns and returned to Sydney to catch up with friends for a few days. The World Cup had begun and the forced football fever had temporarily gripped a large enough portion of the nation to warrant a big screen in Darling Harbour and football-themed ads on television. It wasn’t the best place in the world to be, with the tournament taking place in South Africa, and after finding myself as the only person willing to get up at 3am to watch England play the USA, the following night it was a little easier to stay awake. It was the night that the ‘Socceroos’ (an unfortunate nickname) would be playing their opening match against the Germans at 3.30am. After spending the evening out with friends, Janna (an Australian/German friend, and a big F1 fan) and I decided to pop to a bottle shop on the way back to her place in Bondi to buy our fuel for a night/morning of sport – lots of Doritos, a decent sized bottle of vodka and plenty of Red Bull. Alexandra promptly crashed out on the sofa after a single sip of the drink, leaving Janna and I to finish off the rest while watching the Canadian Grand Prix. At 3am, after the race (which Hamilton won, the only English success of this post) we woke Alexandra and all stumbled, red-eyed and weary, to the local pub to watch the football. After the Aussies were comprehensively handed their coats by the Germans, we were surprised to run into some people from Framestore – small world and all that – and at 7am despite us feeling like zombies we went with them for breakfast to have a chat and a catch-up. Afterwards, Alexandra and I decided to try and get a few hours sleep.

After a great few days in Sydney with good food, drink and friends, we didn’t want to put our backpacks on again, knowing that it’d mean the last chapter of our trip was beginning. Despite our reluctance we caught our flight to Buenos Aires excited at all the things we’d be doing there. With a 13 hour flight, and with an awkward time difference from Sydney, we knew we’d be tired when we arrived, but a lucky upgrade to premium economy certainly helped soften the blow. Considering our exhilarating but exhausting time in India, our intention in South America is to spend longer in quite a few places over the few months we’ve got here. BA was one of those places and we were looking to spend at least 4 weeks there to really get to know the place.

We arrived and it was a pretty easy transfer to our first of four different accommodations in BA, a backpackers hostel right in the centre of town. It was immediately obvious that this country was obsessed with football (not that I didn’t know it already), and the hostel was a great place to be for the first of Argentina’s World Cup games. We slept in a little late that morning but were woken by a  massive cheer as Argentina scored their first goal against the Koreans. We quickly got up and watched the rest of the game in the huge tv room which was packed with enthusiastic Argentines. It was great fun to be there with them all. During the tournament I also noticed an awful lot of teenagers playing Shakira’s World Cup song out loud from their phones while walking down the street, something that probably wouldn’t happen in London, not with Shakira anyway.

We stayed for a couple of nights and used the time to hunt down a homely B&B that we could spend a month at. We decided to stay in San Telmo – an area with loads of character, interesting architecture and some great restaurants and bars – and the day we spent walking around the area looking for a place to stay certainly helped us get familiar with it. It was a chilly 10°C or so and combined with the look and feel of the city, made us feel like we were somewhere in Spain, and certainly not as far away from London as we were.

We found a place we liked, negociated a good deal, paid for the first week and moved in. Still feeling jet-lagged, we tried to get an early night. We soon realised that our room was situated right above a night club which played a continuous stream of house music at exactly the same beat from 9pm to about 6am. The whole room vibrated at that beat throughout the night, as did my head, and the next morning we promptly got a refund, arranged a room at our second-choice B&B, and moved out to accommodation number three. It was a little more expensive, but was well worth the extra cash. Finally settled, we felt we could start to get to know BA properly.

We had four weeks of Spanish lessons booked to begin the following week, and we had a weekend to do some touristy things before they began. We soon found that most of the places we wanted to visit were reachable on foot and the streets were amazingly quiet for such a big city. We managed to see quite a lot in those few days including Cementerio de la Recoleta, the Floris Genérica, Casa Rosada and the Museo de la Ciudad. Interspersed with all of these things we started to introduce ourselves to the amazing food and wine that BA had to offer, and there was plenty of it. One morning while walking the quiet streets around the Cathedral, we even heard La Cumparsita – the most famous of all tango melodies – being played from the bells of the Cathedral.

Our first day at Spanish school started the following week and we were happy that the walk we’d be doing every morning was quick and easy without much traffic to get in the way. The first lesson went well and I soon realised that this was a pretty fast-paced course. Lots of the things I’d learnt from a short course at school (13 years ago now, which scares me) came back to me and it all seemed pretty good. Except one thing, homework. It really was like being back at school.

The room at our B&B was set away from the street and on Tuesday morning we opened the front door to head out to our lesson and were shocked to step into the polluted chaos of buses, cars, motorbikes and people. We later found out that the day before was a public holiday and most people had headed to the country for the long weekend. The true face of San Telmo had revealed itself, and there we were, for a few days at least thinking that it was the nice quiet part of the city. Being a Londoner, it didn’t take long to get used to the people and noise, but the pollution from some of the old trucks and buses was pretty hard to bear sometimes. BA is a city with some seriously old vehicles on the streets. I thought I’d seen my last Ford Sierra about 10 years ago, but here they were, battered and bruised but still running, and looking decidedly modern next to some of the 45-or-so year old Ford trucks that were all over the city.

The next week or so didn’t turn out as planned for us. It has to be said that BA is a city for getting up late, eating late and staying out very very late, and we were failing in our self-set task to get to know the city more like a local would. Getting up early, going to study Spanish for 2 hours and then having homework to do, all coupled with the fact that we were still a little jet-lagged, meant that we were struggling to sync our body clocks… not to GMT-4, but to BA time, which is something entirely different. Luckily for me though, most of the World Cup matches were on either in the morning or early afternoon, so that worked out pretty well! We did manage to get to a great evening Tango show and found a San Telmo steak house that served what is still the best steak I’ve ever eaten. It was so good that we ended up going to that restaurant five times while we were there! We also visited a few great bars, but were still struggling to match the Port eños‘ stamina for going out and staying out.

We were getting to know BA by day though, and it definitely felt like we were beginning to settle in to the city after the short time we’d been there. We even started doing less touristy things like going for a few jogs around Puerto Madero and even went to the cinema (where I found out that Eclipse is a pretty shit film).

After two weeks of two hours per day of Spanish, we were booked in for four hours per day for the final two weeks. There were times during the first couple of weeks that I felt like my head just couldn’t take in any more information, and it was going to get even more intense. Maybe, just maybe, increasing the intake of vino tinto (I had remembered the most important words) each night would help me cope. Or maybe not, it was worth a shot though. A night at our favourite restaurant (La Gran Parilla del Plata, on the corner of Chile and Peru) where we managed to wait until 10pm before turning up, highlighted just how late the people in BA eat. We managed to finish our meal at 1am, and even as we were finishing, a couple of guys walked in for dinner. It was an extreme case, but as we clearly still needed to get into the BA groove, we moved the rest of our Spanish lessons into the afternoon to help us adjust.

During that week we headed to a nice little San Telmo café for lunch, a place with a menu written in Spanish. We had the dictionary out and were clearly far too obvious about it because we were approached by an Australian girl who introduced herself as Hayley and kindly offered to help us with the menu. Well, she helped by translating one word for us before pointing at my menu and saying ‘You should just try that!’ So we did. We got chatting while waiting for the food and agreed to get in contact again soon. Hayley left, and the food arrived. It was an excellent recommendation. A huge wooden platter of cold cuts, cheeses and pickles with a bowl of chunky bread. We wondered what other great recommendations Hayley might have for us and we decided to make sure we got back in contact soon.

The next day it was time for England to play Germany. We headed to Gibraltar – an oasis in the desert for British ex-pats and tourists who need their fix of beer battered fish ‘n’ chips served by a fat bloke who speaks English with a northern accent and tells terrible jokes. My day was ruined by the Germans, but at 4-1 neither me, nor the fat barman could argue with the result. It was not the last time the pesky German youngsters would try to ruin my day.

Later we headed to another nice little San Telmo café. The plan was to have a quick lunch and then to find another pub where we could watch Argentina play Mexico in their first knockout game. The café had one tiny tv showing the build-up to the game and while we were eating our lunch the place steadily filled up with all kinds of people, from children to a small group of grannies. The one similarity between them all? Celeste y blanco… light blue and white. They were clearly all there for the game, and the atmosphere was great. We decided to keep our seats, order another couple of coffees and stay. The streets outside were deserted for 45 mins, while inside the café the passion of the people was on full display, with huge cheers of ‘¡Vamos!’ and the grannies with flags wrapped around their heads banging the coffee tables with their fists when the Argentines scored. For 15 minutes the streets returned to normal (other than the beeping horns of cars and cheering from the locals – and it was only half time), and then it was back to the game.

I was hoping that it’d take my mind off of England’s terrible performance, and it certainly did. In the end Argentina won, and in that little café, it was very obvious that they had. Germany were next, and the people were confident.

After a few days during which we managed to surprise ourselves by taking to the extended Spanish lessons fairly well, we also visited a couple of excellent restaruants. Café San Juan was absolute proof that steak isn’t all that BA has to offer, as we had some fantastic pork with shallots wrapped in grilled prosciutto.Then the following evening La Vineria de Gualterio Bolivar provided us with a 16 course experimental degustation menu that included things like a shot glass of roast cauliflour gravy, and a chocolate cloud (chocolate sauce, foamed up and quickly frozen in liquid nitrogen before being served).

Then came Argentina v Germany, it was a big big game, so we headed to Plaza San Martin (a big park) to watch it on a big screen with a big crowd. Unfortunately the only big thing at the end of the game was the Germans’ score. But despite the defeat, the Argentines didn’t seem defeated. Maybe it was the scoreline that made them seem to give a collective shrug of the shoulders and display an ‘Oh well, maybe next time’ attitude. I was ready to be disappointed with them (my nationality prepares me for sporting disappointments) but by the end of the match, I think I ended up being more disappointed than they were. The World Cup party was over in BA, but it was still a great party to have been at.

The day after we had a great Sunday afternoon wandering around and taking photos at the markets on Defensa – a long cobbled street that runs through the length of San Telmo and beyond. Our pub lunch was disturbed when I had to run outside to take some photos of a guy singing and playing a wobbling piano on wheels as it was pushed along the cobblestones by two of his friends, who also doubled as his backing singers.

After getting back in contact with Hayley the week after our first meeting, we ended up going out with her a couple more times over the next week, and were introduced to a few friends, Sam, Ben Lauren and Mike. After an evening in a bar in Palermo – one of the more up-market areas of BA – we had an ‘interesting’ night at a club where a British DJ attempted to convincingly mix mid 90s UK Garage with West Coast Hip Hop. He failed miserably, and needless to say, we left pretty soon after we arrived. Earlier that evening Hayley kindly invited us to stay with her in her new apartment as she had a spare room, and after a little rearranging of dates with our B&B a few days later we happily accepted.

Since they kept annoying me with their excellent football, that week I was happy to see the Germans knocked out by Spain (apologies to Christian and Janna!), and it seemed there were plenty of Argentines who shared my feelings on the matter.

The following Saturday morning we moved into Hayley’s beautiful San Telmo apartment (which simply meant repacking our stuff and walking a few blocks) and we all immediately headed over to the weekend farmers’ market to stock up for the week. We returned to the apartment with bags of great fresh food, looking forward to all of the things we could make now that we had a whole kitchen to use! We spent that afternoon walking around La Boca and watching a little more tango. Then on Sunday we all went to watch Spain beat The Netherlands to win the World Cup.

Being at Hayley’s place for the last week-and-a-half of our time in BA totally changed how we spent that time. She had so many ideas, plans and recommendations that put our guide book to shame. On one of the days not only did we pack our Spanish books before leaving for our lesson, we also packed some steel mixing bowls and a couple of steel ladels. Hayley was going to a gay rights protest later that day as the Senate were due to vote on legalising gay marriage the following evening, and she invited us along. The protest was a response to a large event outside the Palacio del Congresso where people protested against the law being passed, and the small gathering of a few hundred people at Obelisco with their pots, pans and voices (and a few resurrected light blue and white vuvuzelas) was enough to make a lot of noise and even got a mention on the BBC News website. It was a precursor to a much larger gay rights event at the Palacio del Congresso the following day. We went along with Sam, Ben and Hayley and made plenty of noise, and also went to the larger event which had a huge attendance, a great atmosphere and live music. The morning after, we heard that the vote was passed in the early hours after about 14 hours of debating on the issue. It was a great result and we were so happy to have played our small part in the protests.

Our Spanish lesons came to a close at the end of that week and our very basic understanding of the language probably contributed to us feeling like we’d finally ended up getting into the way of life of BA. We weren’t so much living the life of the Porteños, as living the life of the Porteños whilst on holiday. (Hayley was also on a holiday from work, which made that easier.) After a week of nights out, an excellent party at Ben’s apartment was absolute proof that drinking wine, Fernet and vodka until 6am and feeling like it’s only about 1am was now actually pretty easy for us! We softened the blow of the hangovers with yet more wine and some great steak during a visit to La Cabrera with Ben and Hayley the following evening.

After a rainy Sunday kept us indoors for most of the day (recovery time), Hayley made sure we had stuff to do on our last full day in BA by taking us around Abasto and for a huge lunch of high tea at Las Violetas – a totally unnessary purchase after having had a pizza an hour earlier, but great all the same. We then all went to La Bomba de Tiempo for a great purcussion show, and had farewell drinks with Sam, Lauren, Ben and Hayley at Territorio – the same place we first met Hayley at only a few weeks before.

The next evening we left BA on a first class 13 hour overnight bus to Mendoza – flat bed, movies, a meal with wine and even bingo on board! – to try and learn about the amazing wine we’d become so accustomed to drinking over the past few weeks, and to get our first glimpse of the Andes. BA is one of the most fun, vibrant and interesting cities we’ve ever visited and we had no regrets about spending 5 weeks there. In fact we decided to change our itinerary to return to London from BA instead of Lima, so it wasn’t a final goodbye to BA and our friends. We’ll be back there in late October for some more fun, food and Fernet!

Huge thanks to Sam and Lauren for the laughs, Ben and Mike for an amazing party, and especially to Hayley for making our time in BA so much better than it could’ve been!

Here are some pictures from our time in BA.

We had just over a week to spend in Malaysia, after Cambodia had to be culled from the itinerary – sorry again Nino! – and our plan for that week-and-a-bit was shaped by an old uni friend of mine, Lenny. We hadn’t seen each other for over 10 years but after catching up on Facebook and then letting him know about our travels, he insisted that we pop by Malaysia to visit. We did, and quickly realised that it was a great decision.

We were met at Kuala Lumpur airport by a smiling, waving Lenny, who got a parking ticket for his troubles. We offered to pay it but he told us he’d ignore it and responded to our shock by saying ‘Welcome to Malaysia!’ This would not be the last time we’d hear that line.

After stopping on the way for lunch, we arrived at Lenny’s apartment to find that it wasn’t just his apartment. It was also the office for his company, and sitting there to greet us were his two staff members, eagerly working away (as the boss had just walked in). We had a few things to buy so Lenny took us to a nearby shopping mall then returned home to carry on with work. We didn’t realise how much we missed walking around in a mall. After the previous few months shopping in markets and tiny old shops in India, Nepal and Vietnam, this felt like walking around a futuristic space station. But this was no ordinary mall, it was colossal, and apparently it was only one of many in Kuala Lumpur. We spent a few hours wandering around in an air conditioned daze, spending our newly acquired Ringgits just because it felt good to do so. We have no idea how much of the mall we saw, but it was probably less than half. Then, after a quick phone call, we were whisked away by Lenny who had turned up, now accompanied by his girlfriend Siao Ling, to take us to Paris for a fantastic Chinese meal! Well, it wasn’t actually Paris, but the New Paris Restauran (no typo there… the ‘t’ isn’t just silent in Malaysia, it’s also invisible.) On the way we also picked up another friend, Lester, who only days before had a huge rock fall on his head while interviewing for an article on a new tunnel that was being built. Hope the head’s feeling a little better now Lester! Lenny and Siao Ling then took us on a late night guided tour of Kuala Lumpur for a few great photo opportunities, including our first views of the Petronas Towers. Lenny found a good spot for a photo which happened to be at some traffic lights, he spotted it, drove half of his car onto the kerb at the lights and got out to take photos. ‘Is that legal?’ I asked. His response… ‘Welcome to Malaysia!’

The following morning we left Lenny to get on with his mountain of work and flew from Kuala Lumpur to Kuala Terrenganu to spend a few days on the island of Perhentian Besar. We arrived by boat and were greeted by picture-perfect blue skies and had a lovely meal at the restaurant overlooking the beach. Unfortunately that restaurant, and not the beach, turned out to be the place we spent most our time for the following two days. The heavens opened and we were stuck under the restaurant shelter surrounded on all sides by pretty much constant heavy rain. Then, on the day we were due to leave (as if someone was playing a joke on us) the weather suddenly cleared and we caught a few hours of beach time before heading back to Kuala Lumpur. We were kindly met at the airport by Lenny and Siao Ling, who took us back to the apartment via what they claimed to be ‘the world’s best tandoori’. It turned out to be better than any tandoori we had in India, and despite it being a little late at night for a meal, it tasted just perfect.

The next day we decided to explore the city on foot. Lenny dropped us off at the Petronas Towers and we were unsurprised to find another giant mall inside the base of them. After heading to the food court for some dry beef noodles (another Lenny recommendation, yum), we spent a little too long window shopping before walking over to the KL Tower. We took the ear popping lift to the top to admire the view and noted how, despite it’s modern look and feel, Kuala Lumpur is in fact a very sporadically laid out city. There’s no defined CBD, shopping or residential areas – it’s all just a big mix of everything. We continued the tourist theme for the day and strolled over to Chinatown to do a walking tour, before catching the monorail back to meet Lenny, Siao Ling and Lenny’s sister Jeannie. That evening we all went to a Stereophonics gig which was an odd experience.

The band helped make it feel like we were somewhere in Britain and there was a large British contingent present – mainly very fat and drunk, representing their nation with pride. But then there were slightly strange things such as the models wandering around with small glass-fronted cabinets in their hands, each displaying a nicely lit row of cigarette boxes for sale; or the big sign on the back wall of the bar which read ‘Alcohol consumption for non-Muslim only’, which reminded us that this definitely wasn’t Britain. The band were impressive though and we had a really fun night. I had forgotten they had so much material, and they seemed to play every last second of it. At two hours long it must’ve had the cheapest money to minutes ratio of any gig I’ve been to. Afterwards we realised yet again that in Malaysia, if there’s time for ‘supper’ before you head home then it’s only polite to have it!

We spent the next day doing touristy things again, heading to Old KL Train Station and Merdeka Square, before doing another walking tour, this time around Little India – which was quite a lot easier to navigate than its big brother. That evening we met up with a big group of Lenny’s friends and went for a quick bite to eat at an Indonesian chicken restauran(t). Then we all went out to see Iron Man 2 at a special screening which was full of comic book otaku. At the end of the screening and after sitting through all of the credits, the geeks squealed in delight as two unfortunate blokes waddled into the cinema dressed in plastic Iron Man and War Machine suits. I had to have my picture taken with them… how could I possibly refuse such a rare opportunity? Afterwards at Lenny’s apartment we tucked into some rambutans, or ‘wild man’s testicles’ as Lenny called them.

Lenny had arranged for us all to head to Penang the following day, and we left that morning, stopping at the lovely city of Ipoh along the way for yet another amazing meal, which included hot tea which you pour over ice to drink cold, Kai Si Hor Fan – Ipoh’s most famous dish of slices of chicken, semi fat noodles with soup and beansprouts – and the finest pork satay ever! Once we’d arrived in Penang we headed to the Gurney Drive night markets for dinner. Lenny sat us down at one of the tables and proceeded to dart from one food stall to another, delivering us dish after dish of Penang’s finest street food. Amongst other things we had Ma Chee – flour with nuts and sugar, Asam Laksa, Popiah, Rojak, Har Mee – prawns with noodles and some pork slices in spicy soup, and ‘Michael Jackson’ – a mixture of soy milk with black jelly strips known as cincau. It was such an amazing experience and we continued tasting a huge array of dishes and drinks until we were painfully full. The next day we went to the Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion where we tagged onto a guided tour for a group of locals and after being the only people who attempted to answer any of the tour guide’s questions, ended up sticking out like a couple of Westerners in a group of short Asians and got in trouble for sneaking into the group. After visiting the Eastern and Oriental Hotel and popping to the Ghee Hiang biscuit shop for some edible souvenirs, we drove all the way back to Kuala Lumpur. We arrived, tired after the journey, but as there was still time for supper we had to head out to find some. Lenny already had things planned and we went to a small stall run by a guy known as Brother John. There we ordered some of his famous Ramly burgers. As this was my first experience with Brother John’s creations I thought I’d make the most of it, and decided to order the scarily-named ‘Master Burger’ – the biggest burger on the menu. I then stood by and watched Brother John work his magic. He fried a couple of beef patties, split them in two lengthways and flipped them open, put a few sauces and spices inside and closed them up. Then he cracked an egg and skillfuly formed a pancake-like omelette with it by letting the egg drain out of the shell slowly while he drew a spiral on the fryer. The seasoned patties were laid onto the egg, which was then folded up all around the burgers to make a little edible package. This was put in a bun, and finished with yet more sauces. We then all sat on little plastic stools on the street eating our burgers and chatting. What a great night!

Continuing the running theme of food, our last day in Malaysia started with an invite from Lenny’s parents, Tony and Sue, to go out for a Sunday lunch of Dim Sum. They took us to a fantastic restaurant and ordered a stunning range of dishes for us to try. Our reaction as the table was steadily filled with food was met with the usual ‘Welcome to Malaysia!’ from Lenny. There was barely any space left on the big round table for seven at the beginning, and appropriately, barely any space left in our stomachs by the end! Afterwards we drove out to burn off a few of the lunchtime calories by climbing the 272 steps of the Batu Caves, one of the most popular Hindu shrines outside India. Then, after a little more shopping that afternoon, we went to Tony and Sue’s amazing apartment for a night of Premier League football. We watched Chelsea beat Liverpool to almost clinch the title (much to Jeannie’s dismay) and enjoyed some beer and pizza. Thanks to Tony, Sue and Jeannie for being such great hosts.

It turned out to be a late night and although Alexandra got a few hours, I didn’t sleep at all, just staying up until 4.30 to be ready to head to the airport. We said our goodbyes to Lenny, flew to Singapore and had almost a full day there to hang out, so Alexandra took advantage of the gym while I slept in one of the armchairs. We had a decent (online checked-in, emergency exit row, noone sitting next to us) flight to Sydney for which we had accidentally ordered the vegetarian and lacto-ovo meals. It turned out to be some of the best in-flight food we’ve ever had.

We’d like to say a huge thank you to Lenny and Siao Ling for putting us up, driving us about and generally feeding us fantastic food whenever and wherever there was an opportunity to do so. We had such an amazing time, and we will be back!

Despite being slightly worried by the sight of an overturned bus at the side of the road as we wound our way down the Kathmandu Valley, the journey was quite pleasant and we got there on time. Whereas I’d usually have stepped off the bus fully prepared to begin shouting down a barrage of hotel offers and insisting that we’ll be going to the hotel we want to go to, despite their advice that it’s full/burnt down/run by gangsters, I was feeling quite relaxed about the whole thing. Maybe it was just Pokhara’s influence, but it could’ve also been that I’d just woken up after a long snooze on the bus. So we ended up going through the usual tourist charade. We got into an overpriced taxi, the driver’s ‘cousin’ gets in and proceeds to tell us that the hotel we’re intending to stay at has lots of construction going on around it and that we should take a look at his brand new place where it’s nice and quiet. I agreed to have look and after visiting our intended hotel first (nice and quiet, no construction at all), I found that his ‘nice and quiet’ place was so new it wasn’t actually finished and I had to step through the sawdust of the reception desk, which was still being noisily built in the lobby as I walked past. Needless to say, we returned to the first hotel.

We had 5 nights in Pokhara, which is a lovely quiet city by the lake Phewa Tal. The main drag, Lakeside, runs along the east bank on the lake and is simply a huge collection of cafes, restaurants and bars, all interspersed with trekking and travel shops. We spent most of our time relaxing and reading while aimlessly floating from café to restaurant to café, the details of which I won’t bother writing here. It was a great place to be after the trek.

On our second morning we decided to see whether we still had what it takes to walk up a big hill and took an early morning hike up to the World Peace Pagoda which has great views of Pokhara, although the Annapurna mountain range was hidden by a thick haze which was a little disappoining. Later that day I decided to take one of the barbers up on his offer of a shave. Only 50 Rupees, what a bargain! After a great shave with a cut-throat razor, and without any further discussion, the barber then carried on with a head, face, eyeball – surprisingly good – and back and shoulder massage. As I was enjoying what was a fantastic massage (but not as good as the one I had by the womens’ prison inmate in Thailand!), I knew I’d be paying more than 50 Rupees. Sure enough, even as I begun asking him how much the bill was, he was already punching numbers into his calculator. The number punching lasted for a silly amount of time, and consisted of a sequence of exaggerated button poking as he held the calculator close to his chest like a posessive child. I watched with interest and some amusement. I’m sure the number pressing was totally random, and after a more controlled press of A/C, 1, 4, 5, 0 at the end… he showed me the fruits of his apparently extensive calculations. Hmm, 50 Rupees, to 1450 Rupees with no prior agreement? I didn’t think so, gave him 300 and left.

Over the course of the Base Camp trek, our staple diet of mainly Mars and Snickers bars was great for keeping us going. In Pokhara, the milkshakes, pizza, ice cream and beer needed to be burnt off somehow so we decided to go for a jog in the mornings. Jogging up and down Lakeside before 7am was an interesting experience. The first time I was going just fine, I’d ran ahead of Alexandra and had a good rhythmic pace when I spotted a guy crossing the road holding a big tray covered with newspaper. As we got closer I noticed that he was heading to cut me off, he’d obviously spotted me first. He then stepped right in front of me and lifted the nwespaper to uncover a huge pile of pastries. ‘Pastry sir?’ he asked as I dodged him and carried on up the street without answering. As many street sellers do in Asia, he then continued to reel off his full list of available products, as if I’d suddenly hear something I couldn’t resist, turn around and run back to buy it from him. I don’t know… maybe I did look like I wanted a massive chocolate croissant as I was running up the street. On the way back I was asked by a barber if I wanted a shave and a haircut (I probably could have done with the haircut, but I was completely clean shaven!), and yes I was still running. By that point I’d already been approached by two other pastry sellers and I’d started annoying myself by replying with an out of breath ‘no thanks!’, as if they were actually asking me a reasonable question given my situation. Towards the end of my run I noticed in my peripheral vision a car was matching my speed along the road. It stayed there for about 100 metres before the window was wound down, a head poked out and I heard ‘taxi sir?!’ I must have looked like I needed it, and I have to say, I was very tempted. I soon realised during my second morning jog that this was the norm in Pokhara.

A couple of days before we were due to leave our lovely hotel manager decided it’d be a nice thing to do to tell us that he had a large group of trekkers arriving back early and that despite us booking 5 nights, there wouldn’t be room for us on our last night and that we’d have to find another hotel. We argued and after threatening to write to Lonely Planet, TripAdvisor etc. he gave in and agreed to let us stay. It put a bit of a downer on our remaining time at the hotel but it wasn’t too bad. That same day we cheered ourselves up by doing one of the things that Pokhara is famous for in Nepal, Paragliding!

We were driven by jeep to the top of Sarangkot, one of the big hilltops surrounding Pokhara, and assigned our pilots. Alexandra took off first with her Czech pilot and I followed with my French pilot (who oddly had the same name as my mum, Flo, but thankfully short for Florent rather than Florence as he was a bloke). It was a great experience. Flo told me all about how to look for thermals and taught me how to steer into them and stay in their core. We ended up spending most of our time as the highest pair in the air and we were fortunate to see yet another stunning Nepali view. Pokhara and the lake were below us and to the south, and the Annapurna mountain range (which had finally revealed itself from behind the mist for the first time since our arrival) was to the north. Flo finished off the ride by taking us over the lake and making a speedy descent with a bit of aerial acrobatics. He did some swinging from left to right, which was a bit sickening, and then switched into a huge downward spiral which had us flying almost horizontally as we dropped. He then finished the ride with a perfect landing next to the lake!

We left Pokhara without saying much to our silly hotel manager, and headed back to Kathmandu. The following day we returned to the ariport and had a nerve-wracking wait to get out of Nepal. Our next stop will be Hanoi and I’m writing this while sitting on our final flight of the 3 it has taken to get there. Yesterday, while everyone trying to get to Europe was stuck in Kathmandu because of the Icelandic volcano ash, we were yet again delayed by the fog around the airport, and were worryingly close to missing our connecting flight in Delhi. We spent the whole flight stressed that we’d be stuck in Delhi yet again. When we arrived we were so relieved to be met by a member of Air India staff (who happened to be one of the most pleasant Indians we’ve met!), were transited through smoothly and told that the aircraft we were flying to Bangkok on was the same one we’d just arrived on, so it was actually impossible to miss the connection after all! Our transit was completed with us arriving at the gate just as our names were announced over the P.A. system, which was a first for both of us. Oh and we didn’t realise until we boarded that we had been upgraded to business class too, perfect!

After a night in a nice hotel airport in Bangkok, with a pad thai for dinner, we were up this morning at 3.45am to catch our flight to Hanoi. I still can’t believe that we actually managed to get from Kathmandu, to Delhi, to Bangkok and then to Hanoi, in less than 24 hours, with all of our baggage and even with a business class upgrade… hopefully this luck will continue for as long as possible!

Here are some pictures from Pokhara.

The toy train wound its way along Hill Cart Road, the one long road that runs all the way from Siliguri to Darjeeling and beyond. The tracks snaked onto and off the road and sweeped right across it when necessary to get the most convenient path for the tight bends. This often created queues of traffic as it blocked the scores of overly packed Jeeps that were always speeding up and down the well worn road. There were also a few very steep climbs where the train had to zig-zag its way up the hill by going backwards and forwards with stops and junction point changes in-between. As Hill Cart Road is the single main thouroughfare for all of the towns from Siliguri into the mountains, it means that the train rolls along past shops, houses and schools which open out onto the road. It was quite a weird experience being on a train going up a high street, but the local people seem to love it, and all of the children like to stop and wave at the passengers as it travels by. As the train took us up into the mist and clouds the sky turned grey but stayed bright which made the vegetation seem so green against the colourless backdrop. I was even quite happy to see a few drops of rain, something I’d not seen since I was sitting on a Suzuki at Phillip Island Racing Circuit back in January!

Once we’d stepped off the train at Darjeeling Station, something happened that once might have seemed normal to us, but 7 weeks in India made it extra special. We were approached by a taxi driver (as there are no auto-rickshaws in Darjeeing) and were asked where we wanted to go. ‘Dekeling Hotel’ we replied. ‘Ah! You don’t need a taxi, it’s only 5 minutes walk from here’ he said, and proceeded to give us directions. We were stunned. An Indian cabbie had just turned down the opportunity to overcharge some tourists to take them on a very short journey. This place, we thought, was an Indian anomoly. We thanked him and happily walked the 5 minute walk to our hotel.

That walk was the beginning of a realisation that it wasn’t just the cabbie who was a little bit different. There were shops along the way, but not a single shopkeeper shouted at us to come in and buy something; noone cleared their throat loudly and spat as we walked past; we didn’t have to keep an eye out for any cow shit, because there weren’t any cows; there was hardly any staring; I wasn’t sweating carrying my packs because the temperature was comfortably mild; and all along the hilly streets there were inviting tea shops and cake shops, restaurants, bookshops and handicrafts shops that looked distinctively less tacky than we’d become accustomed to. The locals seemed so laid back and happy, and there was a general vibe of relaxation. I liked it a lot.

We arrived at our hotel and the friendly staff welcomed us with a nice pot of local tea brought to our room. We settled in, enjoyed our first taste of Darjeeling tea in Darjeeling, and had a little look around the place. The hotel was great, with wood-panelled walls and stairs at odd heights, the place was really interesting. It had a great lounge with hundreds of books and a wood burner in the middle of all of the couches. This is where the guests tended to congregate in the evenings (as much of Darjeeling closes quite early), while the staff would quietly go about the place putting hot water bottles into all of the beds to get them warmed up before you turned in. We soon decided that it was a good thing to spend 5 nights here.

Our first full day was spent getting to know the town, we visited the local botanic gardens and had a fantastic afternoon having ‘high tea’ at the Windermere Hotel, an old colonial building north of town. It started raining about half an hour before we arrived so it was so great to sit in a nice old lounge with an open fire with the rain and wind shut outside. We read the papers and the old letters framed on the walls, while being plied with fresh local tea, cakes, biscuits and of course little triangles of cucumber and cheese and pickle sandwiches (with the crusts cut off). Despite being painfully full, we had already planned where to have dinner. So with that convenient excuse, and after a little digestion, we went to the guest house restaurant and had our first taste of momos since we were in China a couple of years ago. They were as good as we remembered, and we started to look forward to being in Nepal!

The next morning at breakfast Alexandra was excitedly beckoned into the room of a lady we had ended up chatting to in the hotel lounge the evening before. I followed curiously and found them both leaning out of the window of her room, so I had a look too. We were on the 5th floor of the building so we had a good view across the town and I leaned out to see that above the town was a thick stripe of grey mist, and above that was the huge mountain of Kanchenjunga – the tallest mountain in India and the third highest peak in the world – beautifully lit by the morning sun. We immediately decided to change our plans for the day. We arranged a taxi and headed out to Tiger Hill which is where the best view of the mountain is (and from where you can sometimes even see Mount Everest). Crowds of people usually get up at 4am to see the mountain at dawn so having left at 9.30, by the time we got there it was blissfully empty. We got an odd look from the guy at the ticket desk, which suggested we were wasting our money. But once we got to the top of the hill, there it was poking majestically out of the top of a row of clouds, with Darjeeling sitting on the hillside below. From here we decided to walk all the way back to Darjeeling, passing through a couple of towns and visiting a few monastaries along the way. It was a really beautiful walk, and helped partly set us up for the high altitude trekking we have planned in Nepal. We ended up having a great meal at a little place called Sonam’s Kitchen. It’s a family-run place (they live upstairs), there are only 3 tables and you have to order your food an hour in advance so that they have time to pop over to the local market stalls and buy the fruit and veg needed to make your order. Everything is so fresh and tasted wonderful. It quickly became our favourite place to eat in Darjeeling.

After a day of pretty much doing nothing but eating lovely food and drinking excessive quantities of tea, we spent the next day being a little more active again. We visited the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute and Darjeeling Zoo (the highest altitude zoo in India) and saw, amongst other things, a black bear, an Indian tiger and a snow leopard. Afterwards we walked to the Happy Valley tea plantation where we had a tour of the factory and found out all about the various types of tea and how they’re made. Then we popped into a tiny house on the grounds of the estate and tried and bought some of their best tea. It’s called Super Fine Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Picko One, and it definitely was super. The Happy Valley tea garden is the highest altitude tea garden in Darjeeling and the only one to be completely organic. They only sell their top quality tea to Harrods, and it’s apparently sold there for about US$58 per 100g! So we bought some for the local price of Rs250 per 100g (about £3.50)!

We got up early the next morning for the 3 hour drive to Bagdogra Airport, from where we flew back to Delhi (unfortunately), and then to Kathmandu. So after 8 weeks we’ve finally left India. It’s been full of memories for us, so many more than we could possibly write here. There’s simply no other place quite like it.

On to Nepal!

Here are a few pictures from Darjeeling.

Our journey to Agra started with us being ready for breakfast with plenty of time to eat and get to the station for our train. So we sat in the garden of our guest house in Jaipur and ordered some food. The staff in the kitchen, all 4 of them, then proceeded to take almost 40 minutes to fry two eggs which left us with no option but to take the first auto-rickshaw we could find otherwise we’d miss our train. Being two tourists with huge packs on our backs (and fronts), asking to be taken to the station and looking like we were in a rush, we were prime targets for an absolute ripping off. We decided to take this one on the chin and pass on our frustration with a bad review of the kitchen staff at the hotel on Trip Advisor!

After a problem free train journey, we actually arrived in Agra half an hour early and almost missed getting off at our stop. We got to our guest house to find our room was damp, full of mosquitos and had no hot shower! After finding out that we wouldn’t be able to upgrade to a decent room until the following morning we decided to relax in the lovely communal garden and then head out into the small city to find ourselves some dinner. We ended up having one of the best thalis in India so far at a little place called Taj Cafe, a family run small restaurant which is set up on the two balconies of the family’s house. Two amazing veg thalis, a lovely masala dosa and teas all for about £2.40. Such good value, that we decided to come back on our last evening in Agra. After that meal we headed back to the room, charged the camera batteries, set up our mosquito net and had an early night to make sure we’d be ready to be up well before dawn for the main event, the Taj Mahal!

We had intentionally booked ourselves a room at a guest house that is situated right next door to the east gate of the grounds of the Taj Mahal. It’s apparently the least busy of the three gates and we intended to be at the front of the queue before 6am to be able to get inside the grounds first. We were up at 5.30am and everything went to plan, except for two things. Firstly, we arrived at the gate to find 6 people already queueing. Secondly, we joined the queue at positions 7 and 8 and were promptly told that the ticket office was a kilometre away – even further up the road than our guest house was! It had been moved there from just outside the gate since the publication of our guide book so we had no idea about the new position. I had a nice 2km morning jog to wake me up and by the time I returned with the tickets the queue of 6 had turned to about 60. Shit.

It didn’t matter too much, we realised that by the time we turned the corner to see the Taj in all of its glory, we wouldn’t have got that elusive photograph that’s completely void of people anyway. It was very busy with tourists, but it didn’t matter. There’s just something about walking around the grounds while the sun is rising with the beautiful Taj always in view that just makes everyone that little bit more relaxed. Except around one little spot… that single bench where Diana had her photo taken in front of the Taj. Now that was a spot with a queue and there were certainly a few people getting pissed off with tour guides who seemed to love taking photos of every single member of their tour group, one at a time, in various positions, sitting on that bench. We moved on.

The Taj Mahal is simply awe inspiring and is by far the most impressive building I’ve ever seen, not only for its skilful level of construction but for its sheer artistic quality. It was a pleasure to wander around it as the sun rose and appreciate how the sunlight bounced around and lit up areas of its surface to made them look almost unreal. The way the light is scattered within the milky marble makes the mausoleum’s interior feel appropriately ghostly and beautiful. I’m sure everyone thinks this, but the building is much bigger than I thought and its scale makes it so much more impressive as a structure when you try and comprehend the techniques that must’ve been employed to build it using marble, such a heavy and expensive material for the time. Once you get up close you can see the amount of intricate detail that adorns its surfaces all around. It was built by the Mughal emporer Shah Jahan as a memorial to his 2nd wife Mumtaz. As a building at that time its scale serves to highlight how obsessively in love he must’ve been with her to have ordered its construction when she died giving birth to their 14th child in 1631, and to see it through to completion in 1653.

After our morning hanging out at the Taj, we headed back to our guest house for breakfast and to upgrade to a non mosquito infested room. Once we’d moved, we left for the 2km walk through Shah Jahan Park to Agra Fort, one of the finest Mughal forts in India. Including the section, built by Shah Jahan, in which he was imprisoned by his own son Aurangzeb and left to gaze out at his own creation, the Taj Mahal, for the rest of his life.

The following morning after breakfast we hired an auto-rickshaw for the day (which was such an easy haggle after Delhi!) to take us to some of the more distant but less visited sights in Agra. We spent the next few hours at Mehtab Bagh – the lovely floral park across the river from the back of the Taj Mahal, Chini-Ka-Rauza – a Persian-style riverside tomb, and Itimad-Ud-Daulah – a marble tomb known as ‘The Baby Taj’ which, while not as impressive as its big brother in terms of scale, is arguably more delicate in appearance thanks to its intricatly carved marble lattice screens and colourful inlays.

That evening we chilled out at a rooftop restaurant with a beer and some pakoras while we wrote a few cheesy Taj postcards that we picked up earlier in the day and watched the shadows climb up the Taj as the sun set over Agra. The kite flyers came out in force to fly their little paper kites from the rooftops of their homes which was pretty entertaining, especially when they flew close by and the string threatened to knock over a beer or two. We had the best seat on the rooftop with nothing blocking our view to the Taj, which was beautiful. After that we moved restaurants to return to Taj Cafe for our final thali in Agra, and to watch the Taj finally disappear into the darkness.

Later that night, we caught our 11.30pm sleeper train for the 12 hour journey to Varanasi.

Here are a few pictures from our time in Agra.

Up until our arrival in Delhi, India had been amazing. Of course, before we left to come to India we had read about how challenging and frustrating it can be, but we’d also read that the rewards for coping with the challenges are greater than at most places a traveller can go. Up until Delhi we’d had the energy to cope with the frustrations and setbacks it had thrown at us. But we’d never come up against The Delhi Evil Army of Auto-rickshaw Drivers (probably their official title). Sometimes in our 5 days in the capital these people made us angry enough to hate everything about Delhi and made the thought of heading right to the international terminal at the city’s airport oh-so-attractive.

The train journey to Delhi was surprisingly easy for us – I think we’re getting used to the long journeys now. It was pretty depressing to see the state of the suburbs of the city as we rolled past. They are totally strewn with rubbish and some of the houses of the residents back directly onto, or are even built on top of, huge mounds of rubbish. We also had an unexpected guest in our carriage that morning. Across from our beds, as we sat waiting to pull into the station, one of the snoring guys (there are always lots of them) across from us jumped up from his bed rubbing his face. Yes indeed, the poor chap had a small rat perched on his face while he was asleep! We were grateful that this was at the end of our journey and I kept an eye on where it was for the rest of the trip.

Our introduction to the city was to find that despite having booked a train that arrived at New Delhi Station (and consequently booked a hotel within walking distance of that station), it arrived at Old Delhi Station. Fantastic. So our next task was to check the map, figure out how much we thought we should be paying to get to the hotel, and find ourselves an auto-rickshaw driver to start the haggling. Little did we know that the first one that approached us would set the tone for our dealings with the rest of them in Delhi. We knew that the journey should’ve cost about Rs30 but we were expecting him to offer Rs80-100 and we’d haggle him down to about Rs50. We had to laugh in his face when he suggested a price of Rs250! It wasn’t the value of the money – a small amount in GBP, it was the principle of the situation that bothered us. I realised after I shouted ‘do you think I’m stupid?!’ back at him as we walked away that yes, he probably thought I was. Luckily for us Old Delhi Station was one of the few places in Delhi which had a pre-pay booth for auto-rickshaws (still overpriced at Rs50, but no haggling required). We didn’t venture far from the hotel on our first afternoon other than to head to Main Bazaar, a very touristy road full of tacky market stalls, to look for a restaurant for dinner.

Our second day in Delhi was on the day of Holi, when we spent the morning out and about getting pelted with colour, and the afternoon hiding out in our hotel with the rest of the tourists who weren’t brave enough to head out into the vibrant war zone. You can read more about our Holi experience and look at some photos here.

By the next day we felt like we hadn’t seen much of Delhi at all, and rightly so. So we planned to head over to the Old City and then to see Connaught Place. We left the hotel and hailed an auto-rickshaw, only to be hit once more with an outrageous fee to take us there. We politely refused and decided that the way to not be completely ripped off by these guys was to try not to be touristy – as it was understandable that they charge these inflated prices because there are so many tourists who are stupid enough to pay them. We had already been doing our part by trying to dress appropriately, something which we were disappointed to see that many tourists don’t even consider. We also put the guide book away, tried to catch rickshaws well away from train stations, and avoided going directly to or from major tourist spots or hotels. Did any of this help at all? No, of course it didn’t. In every small town and city so far where we’ve been able to get to places on foot, we’ve walked. It’s meant seeing things, eating foods and meeting people we’d otherwise have missed, and we’re convinced that it’s absolutely the best way to get to know a place. We even covered a huge amount of Mumbai on foot. But the difference between Delhi and Mumbai is that in Mumbai, when we did need to catch a taxi, the driver would happily put the meter on if you asked him to (and we’d be happy to give a tip), no hassle, no stress. Anyway… we stubbornly ended up walking to the Old City, walked up Chandni Chowk to the Red Fort and paid the biggest Indian World Heritage Site entry fee so far to see the most disappointing Indian World Heritage Site so far. So, already exhausted and disappointed, another haggling battle for yet another ultimately overpriced ride to Connaught Place (to have a look around the more modern end of Delhi) didn’t help things, and we arrived there to find the area was predominantly under construction for the Commonwealth Games in October. Good luck to them for getting the place finished in time, because most of the pavements and buildings were dangerously unfinished. We managed to find a decent goverment-run handicrafts emporium for some shoppng, but our preferred dinner option had disappeared in the construction work and we ended up having to find an alternative by traversing the incomplete rocky dust tracks that were supposed to be pavements, mostly in the dark. Yes… by the end of our third day in Delhi, I wanted to be anywhere else and as far as I could tell, Delhi didn’t want us to be there anyway.

A good night’s sleep meant that we felt a little more prepared for another day of being overcharged for being taken to overpriced and unimpressive sights on noisy roads while breathing smoggy air. Hmm, yes we were just a little more prepared, but not much, as we walked out of the hotel doors and straight past the shouting auto-rickshaw drivers waiting outside. ‘Hello! Hello! Where you going?’ I heard… ‘Fuck off!’ I thought.

We were happy to have managed to get a Rs40 ride for Rs100 after about 10 minutes of walking about and haggling with quite a few different drivers away from our hotel (argh… were we actually beginning to accept this shit?!), and we went to Humayun’s Tomb. We had a really pleasant morning wandering about the gardens and exploring the beautiful early Mughal architecture, and I actually started to think that the city might have had something to offer that made all of the other crap worth putting up with after all. After too much curry, we thought we’d treat ourselves to lunch at the ‘All American Diner’ and after the the long walk there (yes of course we walked!) we were very pleased to see a really convincing 50s diner complete with black and white floor tiles, neon lights, red seats and lots of chrome. We had some excellent milkshakes, then I went for the french toast breakfast and Alexandra ordered a cheeseburger. Unfortunately we seemed to be at the only ‘All American Diner’ in the world where a standard cheeseburger comes with a processed, minced chicken patty instead of minced beef. Having had a beefburger at a very good restaurant in Mumbai, we thought this place would have had no problem serving one up. After the burger was left aside, it turned out that my french toast didn’t stretch too far once it had to be shared between us, so some huge desserts were in order, and they weren’t too bad at all. (Although that lunchtime, we really wanted to be back in New York!) We spent the afternoon, visiting Safdarjung’s Tomb and Gandhi Smriti – in the gardens of which, Gandhi took his final steps before being assassinated in 1948 – and did a bit more shopping, including buying some snacks to eat back at the hotel. Although we were severely overcharged yet again to get back to the hotel from south Delhi we overlooked the annoyance because our time in Delhi finally had some positive things to look back on.

Our last day started with a visit to New Delhi Station to confirm which station our train to Jaipur left from the following morning. Yes of course, the booking said New Delhi, but the train would leave from Old Delhi. Glad we checked. Then we walked back to the Old City to visit Jama Masjid, the largest mosque in India which can hold a massive 25,000 people. Then after catching a cycle rickshaw towards Connaught Place (and having to get off because 10 minutes into the journey the driver just stopped because he didn’t actually know where it was), we were pointed towards the metro. Aaah! The Delhi metro! This is what will save the city from critical tourist eyes if they can get it finished in time for the Commonwealth Games. It’s almost as good as Shanghai’s metro and although nowhere near as comprehensive, puts the London Underground to shame. Not least because it cost us an amazing Rs8 (11p!) for our trip to Connaught Place. Leaving the metro station we were approached by a guy who after a friendly chat during which we told him we were shopping and how much we hate the Delhi auto-rickshaw drivers he responded by asking us which shop we wanted to go to, grabbed a driver and ordered him to turn on his meter before telling him to take us to the shop. Thinking that they’re not all bad after all turned out to be a silly thing to do as this driver ended up taking us to a different shop, one presumably connected to the guy outside the station. Another scam… We were starting to learn to assume that no-one approaches you in India unles they want something from you. Which is a shame for the few who just want a genuine chat. Frustrated again, we managed to find the shops we wanted to visit about an hour later because yet another driver tried to take us to a shop where he could get an extra bit of commission. After a little more shopping and a rush to get to the post office to get stuff posted out to friends before it closed, we visited a Muslim shrine called Harzat Nizam-Ud-Din Dargargh. We handed in our shoes (and the shoe bearer handed me a taqiyah to wear) and headed into the shrine which was packed with people. We sat amongst them and at sunset the Sufis began singing qawwali. It was hugely atmospheric and a really great experience.

We finished our last night with an awesome dinner at a restaurant in Lodi Garden, and on the walk back to the hotel we started to be followed by a friendly dog. It seemed to be happy to accompany us for about 15 minutes until we had to cross a major road. Once Alexandra and I had managed to cross the dual carriageway I looked back at the very moment that the dog was hit by a skidding car. It bounced and rolled away down the road but surprisingly managed to clamber to its feet and run, clearly shocked, back across the road, almost causing another pile up on the other side. We couldn’t help feeling a bit guilty after that as we made our way back to the hotel.

The next morning we were up at 3.15am for our train and our final hours in Delhi were punctuated in the same way as our first had been, with a huge rip off from a taxi driver. Only this time it was by the driver of the very hotel that we’d been staying with (and spending plenty of money with), taking advantage of our need for a taxi so early in the morning and not giving a shit about sending their customers away unhappy. Hopefully Jaipur is a little more welcoming!

Goodbye Delhi… you’ve got a few positives, and I can see that you might improve in the years to come, but I don’t think I’ll be coming back.

After making our way along Main Bazaar we headed back towards our hotel via some back alleys, thinking that less crowds meant less paint and water. We were proved very wrong as the local kids seemed to enjoy pouring buckets of water from the rooftops down into the narrow alleys where we couldn’t escape!

We made it back to our hotel where the reception staff, as well as quite a few other tourists who weren’t brave enough to leave the place found our entrance pretty amusing and asked to take our photo. We finally got to see the state we’d got ourselves into when we got into the lift, and then we had a tense hour trying to get ourselves looking human again without staining our hotel room pink and blue!

Here are a few more photos.

Outstanding Supporting Visual Effects in a Feature Motion Picture

Congratulations to all of the crew at Framestore and Double Negative who worked on it, and a special mention to Kate Windibank, Sam Osborne and Jan Adamczyk who attended the ceremony and accepted the award on the nominees behalf. You guys look like you do this stuff every day!

Photo from neonmarg‘s Flickr photostream

For the full list of winners head over to FX Guide.