Well, another South American experience, which lives up to the description on the tin, the falls at Iguazu, set in a Raiders of the Lost Arc setting are, physically overwhelming. I have never seen such a massive display of power, with endless torrentsof water pouring over cliffs and down crevices, blinding white foam contrasting with blue skies, rainbows and bucolic landscapes. I like to think I can reasonably capture what I am seeing with words , here I am struggling not to resort to cliche (I've failed on two counts in this paragraph alone). Poor Niagra, Eleanor Rosevelt is supposed to have said when presented with this natural wonder. You're not kidding, is the only appropriate response. If you're into the power of nature then this is a must see. Ps if you come here you're going to get wet.
As I've said there isn't one fall, but scores of them, of various power being fed by a confluence of rivers and streams, which straddle the Brazilian and Argentine borders, Paraguay being a couple of miles down the road, as befits its historical luck, misses out on the oportunity to make money out of the local scenery.
Its two South American neighbours, however don't miss a trick, both have set up national parks on each side of the border, and both have to be visited to get a real appreciation of this marvel. Unfortunately it means crossing borders getting stamps two enterance fees and a thirty kilometer detour to get to either side of the falls. This is such a pain that some seek to minimise it by ignoring border formalities on the Brazilian side, thats risky: I've seen a few people being invited for a chat with the local officials for doing that, dont know what the result of the conversation was but it could easily be a financial loss.
As a bonus the national parks dont just supply you with opportunities to look at fast moving water there is also, especially on the Argentine side, lots of trails providing opportunities to see lots of jungle and wildlife: (should that be flora and fauna?) weird plants, strange trees, monkeys, ant eater like creatures, multi coloured birds and butterflies. Unfortunately you also have plenty of opportunities to donate your blood to the local insects.
After a natural wonder a man made one sitting on the border of Paraguay and Brazil supplying 90% of the former's electrcity and 20% of the latters: the Itiapu damm. This edifice, 8 kilometers long and almost 100 meters high is like a Soviet wet dream, nature being forced to submit to mans supremacy, improving the lives of millions. Another view is its an environmental abomination, submerging miles of jungle, displacing long standing communities and destroying a waterfall bigger than Iguazu. Now its not like me to give the eco warriors position a hearing but if you listen to the message your given at the damm's visitor centre you would be forgiven for thinking you had entered a Greenpeace seminar. The list of things they were doing for the environment was endless and the hypocrisy was rank: eight kilometers of concrete, while impressive, is just that, no matter how you pretty up its surroundings. Why dont they just say on balance we placed greater value on connecting millions of poor people to the power system through this dam than we did on maintaining the local environment as it was? Why bend the knee to the green orthodoxy? They're never going to get the environmentalists to accept the damm. Is helping millions of poor people not a pretty powerful justification for the changes to the local environment?
The Fact is what you think of the dam is influenced by your politics: on the whole the middle classes are upset at the loss of some natural wonders, while the local poor are grateful they now have electricity. One thing' for sure its not a zero sum game.
Monday 6 June 2011
Saturday 21 May 2011
Ciduad del Este
This place is in Paraguay, on the border with Brazil and Argentina. The whole city is a tax free zone, which is visited by every nationality in Latin America. City isn´t really the word to describe this place it is more a giant bazzar in the sun, a bizzarre, noisy and smelly one at that, with every nationality, language and shade of skin under the sun. The streets of this free market Nirvana consist of miles and miles of street traders selling everything from lighters, watches duvets, clothing, knocked off goods and counterfiet items through to coal sack sized bags of Cheezy Watsits (honest). In front of the stalls are roads chronically jammed with traffic, behind them seperated by public walkways are shopping malls of various sizes and types.
These walkways are feral: you can´t move without people accosting you either to provide you with a mugging experience, or to you to try and sell you whatever they can. On the sales front, one guy tried to sell me a pair of socks for two peso´s; I said no and walked on; two pairs of socks then, same price; no I said and walked some more. This went on until he was offering me 8 pairs of socks and I was halfway up the street.
On the mugging front? Well to avoid partaking of this experience I took in some of the malls. The contrast was incredible: the public walkways stunk of shit and piss, with flies congregating around piles of waste. On passing the large security type gentlemen, who held the doors open for me, I entered a world of luxury: marble floors, air conditioning, gold leaf, mahogony sales displays, comlimentary drinks and stunning female sales staff, wearing very short skirts. On sale was every type of expensive item and brand you can think of, and food from restaurants where Gordon Ramsey couldn´t get a job. Figuring it wouldn´t be long before my lack of purchases resulted in somebody making a decision to cast me back to Hades I took the oppotunity to use the bathroom. It´s not often going to the loo can be called an event but this one was a chamber, which would challenge Versaille, all marble and mirrors and manned by a uniformed attendant.
I repeated this exercise with two other malls with pretty much the same experience.Methinks, if the divide between the malls I visited , amazing where a white skin gets you in, and the streets is the norm, then there may be trouble ahead down Paraguay way.
These walkways are feral: you can´t move without people accosting you either to provide you with a mugging experience, or to you to try and sell you whatever they can. On the sales front, one guy tried to sell me a pair of socks for two peso´s; I said no and walked on; two pairs of socks then, same price; no I said and walked some more. This went on until he was offering me 8 pairs of socks and I was halfway up the street.
On the mugging front? Well to avoid partaking of this experience I took in some of the malls. The contrast was incredible: the public walkways stunk of shit and piss, with flies congregating around piles of waste. On passing the large security type gentlemen, who held the doors open for me, I entered a world of luxury: marble floors, air conditioning, gold leaf, mahogony sales displays, comlimentary drinks and stunning female sales staff, wearing very short skirts. On sale was every type of expensive item and brand you can think of, and food from restaurants where Gordon Ramsey couldn´t get a job. Figuring it wouldn´t be long before my lack of purchases resulted in somebody making a decision to cast me back to Hades I took the oppotunity to use the bathroom. It´s not often going to the loo can be called an event but this one was a chamber, which would challenge Versaille, all marble and mirrors and manned by a uniformed attendant.
I repeated this exercise with two other malls with pretty much the same experience.Methinks, if the divide between the malls I visited , amazing where a white skin gets you in, and the streets is the norm, then there may be trouble ahead down Paraguay way.
Friday 20 May 2011
No Mercy for the master race in Misssiones Province
Corrientes? Well there is a reason that Graham Greene set his novel the Honourary Consel here: his novels are about alienation, loss of faith and an abrupt change of circumstance. Well I was alienated from, and lost my faith in my Lonely planet guide for suggesting I stop here. Unfortunately there was no abrupt change of circumstances, so I created one and got out of there asap. Posanda ditto, except to say the bridge across to Paraguay revealed some rather good Japanese restuarants. Why is there great sushi 1500 miles inland and why did so many Japanese immigrate to Paraguay?
On to Iguazu falls and, well the only word to describe them is, incredible: 3km of falls in a dense jungle, with all sorts of weird wildlife. So other worldly was this that I was looking for dinosaurs, thankfully I didn´t find any. As in so many previous instances I have magnificent photographs but can´t share them with you due to my technical incompetence.
The falls themself straddle the Argentine Brazil border and getting to see both sides of them means crossing two borders andtravelling about thirty miles either side of a river about a 100 yards in width and paying to get into tweo different national parks. So much for Mercosur.
As I had to cross into Brazil I thought I would visit the Itiapu dam, currently the biggest hydroelectric works on the planet. As you would expect with such an introduction, it is absolutely massive. Its like something out of Star Wars: it supplies 90% of Paraguay´s electricity and 20% of Brazils´. As an example of public works it would have Albert Speer creaming himself.
So now that I have introduced the National Socialists, why do I think there is no mercy for the master race in Missiones province? Well, from Corrientes to Iguazu, I have never seen so many blonde, blue eyed beggars in my life. Anybody wanting to enter the nature nurture debate would do well to visit here. There were schools of these young predators each watched by, and I love the irony, a Tuetonic Fagan. Their heritage reflected in the names that dominate hereabouts: Schmidt, Kreutzfeld, Schumaker etc, etc. If Adolf had been alive he´d have a hard job persuading Jesse Owen to allow for circumstance before judging them. Needless to say they approached me for money, and in the great Scottish tradition of generosity I told them to fuck off.
A propos of nothing, I have noticed in the bookshops in every country I have been in, that a best seller in Latino Americo is a book by somone called Craig Russell: " A Besom de Glasgow". Now initially I thought Besom might have met Tits and thought if knowing tits from Glasgow can make you money round here then I know scores of them. But no, it turns out the novel is about Glasgow in the fifities and was titled a Glasgow Kiss in English. Ah well. So near yet so far.
Next post is Ciduad del Este in Paraguay a town which can only bhe described as the free market gone mental.
On to Iguazu falls and, well the only word to describe them is, incredible: 3km of falls in a dense jungle, with all sorts of weird wildlife. So other worldly was this that I was looking for dinosaurs, thankfully I didn´t find any. As in so many previous instances I have magnificent photographs but can´t share them with you due to my technical incompetence.
The falls themself straddle the Argentine Brazil border and getting to see both sides of them means crossing two borders andtravelling about thirty miles either side of a river about a 100 yards in width and paying to get into tweo different national parks. So much for Mercosur.
As I had to cross into Brazil I thought I would visit the Itiapu dam, currently the biggest hydroelectric works on the planet. As you would expect with such an introduction, it is absolutely massive. Its like something out of Star Wars: it supplies 90% of Paraguay´s electricity and 20% of Brazils´. As an example of public works it would have Albert Speer creaming himself.
So now that I have introduced the National Socialists, why do I think there is no mercy for the master race in Missiones province? Well, from Corrientes to Iguazu, I have never seen so many blonde, blue eyed beggars in my life. Anybody wanting to enter the nature nurture debate would do well to visit here. There were schools of these young predators each watched by, and I love the irony, a Tuetonic Fagan. Their heritage reflected in the names that dominate hereabouts: Schmidt, Kreutzfeld, Schumaker etc, etc. If Adolf had been alive he´d have a hard job persuading Jesse Owen to allow for circumstance before judging them. Needless to say they approached me for money, and in the great Scottish tradition of generosity I told them to fuck off.
A propos of nothing, I have noticed in the bookshops in every country I have been in, that a best seller in Latino Americo is a book by somone called Craig Russell: " A Besom de Glasgow". Now initially I thought Besom might have met Tits and thought if knowing tits from Glasgow can make you money round here then I know scores of them. But no, it turns out the novel is about Glasgow in the fifities and was titled a Glasgow Kiss in English. Ah well. So near yet so far.
Next post is Ciduad del Este in Paraguay a town which can only bhe described as the free market gone mental.
Sunday 15 May 2011
I dont do dormitories: Salty in Salta
Well it had to happen the first full and frank discussion with a fellow traveller. And honest it wasn´t my fault.
But before going on to describe this vicious attempt to cower me into subnission. I´ll give a brief description of Salta. A pleasant town, about the size of Edinburgh, with great weather, numerous squares with fountains and palm trees; surrounded by low hills, which are covered in trees. A really terrific setting. One of the hills has a cable car to the top where you can see some of the high Andes. It is also a base for treks into the Argentine Alto Plata. But as you can imagine I have had enough of high altitude, so there was none of that.
Where Salta really excelled for me was the grub: I have had the best empenadas so far, stuffed with chicken, egg, mince, cheese, onion and grilled fish and as for the ice cream? Absolutely marvellous. But even these were topped by the bif de chorizo, a pound and a half of fillet steak, cooked rare and piping hot with a side dish of mashed spuds, all for less than a tenner. Bliss.
As for the full and frank discussion, well that came about on the last night of my stay in Salta when the management in the hostel I was staying in told me they had double booked my room, well as I was already in the room my view was it wasn´t my problem. They got quite persistant saying that this was a regular and they didn´t want to let him down. Still not my problem. They then suggested that I move to one of their dormitories. Nope was my reply, they then offered to let me stay for nothing for the three nights I was booked with them, if I moved to the dorm. This was strange who was this person that they would make such a suggestion? But I figured how bad could one night in a dorm be?
Well I should have known better. There is a reason I dont do dorms: six beds in a room usually means people turning up pissed at four in the morning and other people leaving on trips at five in the morning, while the other guests would be subjecting me to burps farts and snoring´, but for three nights free acconodation I foolishly made an exception.
Things started well enough, two of the other guests were aussies who seemed ok, there was a third absent `room mate´ who I was told went out on a bender each night and came back in the early hours and snored like a pig for the rest of the morning. Great, I thought, but its only one night. I did wonder hy they didn´t dig the snorer up about his behaviour but put little weight on it. Any way, three in the morning in comes the person in question, Chinese in appearance, a big boy, and pissed out of his head as described he collapsed onto his bunk and snored the rest of the night away.
I was patient: I didn´t do anything, or say a word. That will teach me, I thought. Anyway I was leaving to get a bus at 7.30 I could catch up on my sleep then. I get up and go for a shower in the on suite bathroom . When I return I am faced with one irate oriental fellow, who shouts at me, in an American accent, `could I not keep the noise down as people are trying to sleep`.
At this point I should say some of you have commented on my frequent use of sweary words so I´ll paraphrase what followed. You can use your imagination to figure out what was really said.
´Sorry´ I repled.
` You heard me`.
`You´ve got a nerve` I said, `given you´ve kept everybody awake, banging in here in the middle of the night and then snoring like a pig for the rest of it `.
He then told me to `go fornicate with my self you scottish fellatist`.
I responded to this request by calling him an oriental vagina.
For some reason this upset him even more and he made a move towards me.
If he expected me to withdraw he was dissapointed. I shortened the distance between us even more, and shoved my face into his, informing him that if he wished to discuss this matter further I would be more than happy to comply.
By this time the two antipodeans had risen , increasing the noise even further causing the the night porter to visit us.
Amazingly Charlie Chan´s bigger brother ( is that racist?) said to the porter I had threatened him because he had asked me to reduce the noise I was making as it was stopping people from sleeping. At this point the two Aussies showed more testes than they had previously, by saying to the porter that it was the large oriental fellow who had started the debate and that he had been insufferable for several nights previous.
All the eastern aggressor could say to this was `why didn´t you guys say something earlier?`
Anyway it didn´t come to blows though it came close. I got ready to leave and my correspondent chuntered away under his breath, though I got the feeling he wasn´t used to rigorous debates.
As I say, I don´t do dorms. This one almost spoiled my bif de chorizo.
I´m now on my way to Iguazu falls, via Corrientes, the setting for Graham Greene´s ``The Honourary Consul`. Ah´m as literate as fuck me, eh? Or I would be if this Argentine keyboard let me punctate properly.
But before going on to describe this vicious attempt to cower me into subnission. I´ll give a brief description of Salta. A pleasant town, about the size of Edinburgh, with great weather, numerous squares with fountains and palm trees; surrounded by low hills, which are covered in trees. A really terrific setting. One of the hills has a cable car to the top where you can see some of the high Andes. It is also a base for treks into the Argentine Alto Plata. But as you can imagine I have had enough of high altitude, so there was none of that.
Where Salta really excelled for me was the grub: I have had the best empenadas so far, stuffed with chicken, egg, mince, cheese, onion and grilled fish and as for the ice cream? Absolutely marvellous. But even these were topped by the bif de chorizo, a pound and a half of fillet steak, cooked rare and piping hot with a side dish of mashed spuds, all for less than a tenner. Bliss.
As for the full and frank discussion, well that came about on the last night of my stay in Salta when the management in the hostel I was staying in told me they had double booked my room, well as I was already in the room my view was it wasn´t my problem. They got quite persistant saying that this was a regular and they didn´t want to let him down. Still not my problem. They then suggested that I move to one of their dormitories. Nope was my reply, they then offered to let me stay for nothing for the three nights I was booked with them, if I moved to the dorm. This was strange who was this person that they would make such a suggestion? But I figured how bad could one night in a dorm be?
Well I should have known better. There is a reason I dont do dorms: six beds in a room usually means people turning up pissed at four in the morning and other people leaving on trips at five in the morning, while the other guests would be subjecting me to burps farts and snoring´, but for three nights free acconodation I foolishly made an exception.
Things started well enough, two of the other guests were aussies who seemed ok, there was a third absent `room mate´ who I was told went out on a bender each night and came back in the early hours and snored like a pig for the rest of the morning. Great, I thought, but its only one night. I did wonder hy they didn´t dig the snorer up about his behaviour but put little weight on it. Any way, three in the morning in comes the person in question, Chinese in appearance, a big boy, and pissed out of his head as described he collapsed onto his bunk and snored the rest of the night away.
I was patient: I didn´t do anything, or say a word. That will teach me, I thought. Anyway I was leaving to get a bus at 7.30 I could catch up on my sleep then. I get up and go for a shower in the on suite bathroom . When I return I am faced with one irate oriental fellow, who shouts at me, in an American accent, `could I not keep the noise down as people are trying to sleep`.
At this point I should say some of you have commented on my frequent use of sweary words so I´ll paraphrase what followed. You can use your imagination to figure out what was really said.
´Sorry´ I repled.
` You heard me`.
`You´ve got a nerve` I said, `given you´ve kept everybody awake, banging in here in the middle of the night and then snoring like a pig for the rest of it `.
He then told me to `go fornicate with my self you scottish fellatist`.
I responded to this request by calling him an oriental vagina.
For some reason this upset him even more and he made a move towards me.
If he expected me to withdraw he was dissapointed. I shortened the distance between us even more, and shoved my face into his, informing him that if he wished to discuss this matter further I would be more than happy to comply.
By this time the two antipodeans had risen , increasing the noise even further causing the the night porter to visit us.
Amazingly Charlie Chan´s bigger brother ( is that racist?) said to the porter I had threatened him because he had asked me to reduce the noise I was making as it was stopping people from sleeping. At this point the two Aussies showed more testes than they had previously, by saying to the porter that it was the large oriental fellow who had started the debate and that he had been insufferable for several nights previous.
All the eastern aggressor could say to this was `why didn´t you guys say something earlier?`
Anyway it didn´t come to blows though it came close. I got ready to leave and my correspondent chuntered away under his breath, though I got the feeling he wasn´t used to rigorous debates.
As I say, I don´t do dorms. This one almost spoiled my bif de chorizo.
I´m now on my way to Iguazu falls, via Corrientes, the setting for Graham Greene´s ``The Honourary Consul`. Ah´m as literate as fuck me, eh? Or I would be if this Argentine keyboard let me punctate properly.
Wednesday 11 May 2011
frozen and burnt at the same time
Travelled from San Pedro in Chile to Uyuni in Bolivia, which took four days.
The sun was scorching, the air was bone dry and at night the wind was howling and at night it was down around minus 15. All this with accomodation that was to say the least basic, forget about electricity, internet, mobile phones air conditioning or heating. Oh and the altitude varied from 4300 to 4900 meters ( thats 14,700 to 15,300 feet in old money). To say I was gubbed at the end of it was an understatment. Fortunately other than tiredness and my skin drying up and scabbing, I dealt with the altitude ok, unfortunately this wasnt the case with some others. God knows what I would have been like if I hadnt spent three days acclimatising to the altitude at San Pedro.
I cant comlain about the organisers of the trip, as they warned me about the nature of the accomodation, and the potential effects of the altitude and the trip delivered everything they said it would: unbelievable scenery comprising salt lakes, snow capped mountains, multi coloured lakes and weird wildlife. But there is only so much scenery you can take before the misery inflicted by the environment starts to undermine it. I am glad I went onto the Alto Plano but there wont be a second go. Oh and I dont want to see or eat another llama in my lifetime, it tasted ok, but I now associate it with purgatory.
First impressios of Bolivia to follow at a later date.
The sun was scorching, the air was bone dry and at night the wind was howling and at night it was down around minus 15. All this with accomodation that was to say the least basic, forget about electricity, internet, mobile phones air conditioning or heating. Oh and the altitude varied from 4300 to 4900 meters ( thats 14,700 to 15,300 feet in old money). To say I was gubbed at the end of it was an understatment. Fortunately other than tiredness and my skin drying up and scabbing, I dealt with the altitude ok, unfortunately this wasnt the case with some others. God knows what I would have been like if I hadnt spent three days acclimatising to the altitude at San Pedro.
I cant comlain about the organisers of the trip, as they warned me about the nature of the accomodation, and the potential effects of the altitude and the trip delivered everything they said it would: unbelievable scenery comprising salt lakes, snow capped mountains, multi coloured lakes and weird wildlife. But there is only so much scenery you can take before the misery inflicted by the environment starts to undermine it. I am glad I went onto the Alto Plano but there wont be a second go. Oh and I dont want to see or eat another llama in my lifetime, it tasted ok, but I now associate it with purgatory.
First impressios of Bolivia to follow at a later date.
Friday 6 May 2011
More Atacama
Well late evening in San Pedro de Atacama is very pleasant about 7 celsius, no wind and plenty of eating and drinking places not to mention a backdrop of a whole pile of 6000 metre mountains. This looks not bad thinks me.
Well it isn´t bad, technically it isn´t that warm, about 18 to 20 degrees, but the intensity of the sun is unbelievable: it feels like forty degrees out of the shade. I now know what it feels like to be a meal for one in the microwave, and this is with sun factor fifty cream liberally applied . As if that isn´t bad enough when you step in the shade it becomes cold. As a result I am darting to and from different sides of the street like some obsessive jaywalker.
As for what I am going to do here sun allowing, well I am going on a tour of the salt flats, geysers and at night, when there is a uniformity to the suns influence,to an astronomical institute. Then on Sunday its on to Bolivia, where I am reliably informed I will be spending my first night in a byre, I can´t wait.
There has been a gap in this epistle and that is the town of Iquique, near the Peruvian border, where I stayed a few nights, but there wasn´t anything to report there except 600 metre sand dunes, massive waves, a city centre with sidewalks (and I do mean sidewalks) made of wood, lorries that deliver liquid gas like like ice cream vans in Scotland (yes to music), beautiful one storey wooden buildings, tsunami evacuation signs in the streets and a giant multi storey department store called Ripley´s, which believe it or not was quite Alien to everything around it.
Well it isn´t bad, technically it isn´t that warm, about 18 to 20 degrees, but the intensity of the sun is unbelievable: it feels like forty degrees out of the shade. I now know what it feels like to be a meal for one in the microwave, and this is with sun factor fifty cream liberally applied . As if that isn´t bad enough when you step in the shade it becomes cold. As a result I am darting to and from different sides of the street like some obsessive jaywalker.
As for what I am going to do here sun allowing, well I am going on a tour of the salt flats, geysers and at night, when there is a uniformity to the suns influence,to an astronomical institute. Then on Sunday its on to Bolivia, where I am reliably informed I will be spending my first night in a byre, I can´t wait.
There has been a gap in this epistle and that is the town of Iquique, near the Peruvian border, where I stayed a few nights, but there wasn´t anything to report there except 600 metre sand dunes, massive waves, a city centre with sidewalks (and I do mean sidewalks) made of wood, lorries that deliver liquid gas like like ice cream vans in Scotland (yes to music), beautiful one storey wooden buildings, tsunami evacuation signs in the streets and a giant multi storey department store called Ripley´s, which believe it or not was quite Alien to everything around it.
Thursday 5 May 2011
Atacama desert
On my way up to Iquique, which has taken me through the Atacama to calma, the town which does schopp con piernes this takes me through the town of Calma, a mining town, which does schopp con piernes. How well it does it I will investigate later.
Going through the Atacama is to the least strange, initially there is a desert spilling onto the sea, with a backdrop of quite high mountains. At this point there is some flora and fauna especially on the coast. Strangely enough its totally overcast, despite the fact it hasn´t rained in years. When the road starts to climb the signs of life decrease until you are through the cloud cover and there is no signs of life at all other than the tarmacadam and the power cables that fringe it. As the road gets higher the desert changes form in that hundreds of little volcanoe like mounds appears appear, shaped like upturned scallop shells. It instead of the earth being a mucky brown the power of the sun makes the surface appear almost white. This goes on for hours until I arrive at Calma. Without a doubt this is the harshest landscape I´ve ever seen.
Next stop naked women and beer.
Going through the Atacama is to the least strange, initially there is a desert spilling onto the sea, with a backdrop of quite high mountains. At this point there is some flora and fauna especially on the coast. Strangely enough its totally overcast, despite the fact it hasn´t rained in years. When the road starts to climb the signs of life decrease until you are through the cloud cover and there is no signs of life at all other than the tarmacadam and the power cables that fringe it. As the road gets higher the desert changes form in that hundreds of little volcanoe like mounds appears appear, shaped like upturned scallop shells. It instead of the earth being a mucky brown the power of the sun makes the surface appear almost white. This goes on for hours until I arrive at Calma. Without a doubt this is the harshest landscape I´ve ever seen.
Next stop naked women and beer.
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