Archive for the ‘Photos’ Category

For those of you paying attention, you will remember that I have already written about Ruta 40 from my Patagonia trip. On that occasion I travelled on it southwards from Bariloche to El Chalten, a distance of around 1,500km. It wasn’t however, my first time on the 40.

A few weeks before heading to Patagonia I’d been on a week-long roadtrip in a hired 4×4 from Buenos Aires to Argentina’s North West corner, based around the city of Salta. A lot of that trip was done on an unpaved section of Ruta 40, with a reminder every kilometre of the size of the country and the road that runs the length of it.

OK, so two photos today and not of anyone actually tangoing either but two iconic tango places in Buenos Aires.

Carlos Gardel is to Tango what Maradona is to Football. Except more so. And he’s dead. The world’s greatest ever Tango singer, Gardel was killed in a plane crash in Medellin, Colombia in 1935. This is his tomb in La Chacarita cemetery. Recoleta may attract all the tourists, but I like La Chacarita better – it is much more attractive, with much more space and it has Gardel. What more do you need?

Keeping with tango songs, the opening line of the best-loved one is “Sur” an elegy to Lost Love set in the southern barrios of Buenos Aires. The first line namechecks the corner of Boedo & San Juan, which is now known as Esquina Homero Manzi in tribute to the song’s author and, like Gardel’s tomb has become a shrine to all things tango.

This is Matias. He’s a teddy bear. I sat next to him (and his owner Jenny) on a 10 hour bus ride in Bolivia from Sucre to Uyuni. When I first got on, he was actually sitting in my seat but he’s a very well brought up bear so he moved. When Jenny’s Dad died her Mum bought her a parrot to stop her being sad, but the parrot died, which didn’t really help Jenny’s sadness. So her Mum bought her Matias instead, and now she’s much happier. They made a nice couple. I liked them.

If Tayrona is the natural jewel in Colombia’s Caribbean Crown, then Cartagena de Indias is without doubt the City highlight. A major port during Spanish Colonial times, the walled city and fortress were named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1984 and the tourists have been pouring in ever since.


Cartagena is split into 3 main tourist areas, the walled city, Getsemani (where the majority of the backpacker hostels are) and Bocagrande, a beach and high-rise hotel area obviously trying to be Miami, and one of the least inspiring places I’ve been to in South America.


I’ve been to a few Colonial towns in South America (Sucre in Bolivia, Salta in Argentina, Cusco in Peru, Ouro Preto in Brasil, Villa de Leyva in Colombia all spring to mind) and along with Cartagena they all have one thing in common that distinguishes them from similar historical sites in Europe.


Whereas in Europe, a similarly well-preserved historical town would be a Disneyfied site, beautiful, yet devoid of any soul, full of high-rate art galleries, overpriced restaurants and souvenir shops, in South America these places, are alive, they are lived in. This is not to say they don’t cater to (and in some cases obviously rip-off) tourists, but on the whole everyday life continues around, and despite, you.


We spent 2 days in the Old Town, simply wandering around enjoying the atmosphere, the architecture and the sea breeze. It’s a very walkable place, probably the best thing you can do there is just amble. Every corner holds a new surprise, every building is begging to be photographed. Jewel in the Crown indeed.

So this was supposed to be the big one. After leaving Monument Valley I’d driven along virtually deserted country roads to Page, Arizona where I spent the night, and in the morning headed off to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, about 2 hours away. I stopped on the way at a service station where the attendant was having enormous problems trying to understand a 50-something French lady who obviously spoke very little English. I asked the lady (in French) if I could help and without drawing breath she launched into a rant about how she’d been travelling with friends who turned out to be a bunch of arseholes and how she was now travelling alone and wanted to buy some coffee and she was from Clermont Ferrand and it’s not like France here is it?

She continued in this vein for the next 5 minutes, seemingly unaware of the fact that French is not the native tongue in Arizona, seeing nothing unusual in the fact I could understand her. Before too long, I paid for my own coffee and muffin and away I went, her chattering still in the background. She’s probably still there.

About 20 miles after leaving Page (top photo) you are faced with a choice, Grand Canyon North Rim or South Rim. This is the last chance you have to decide – as the crow flies the two are something like 10 miles apart (and visible to each other), by road it’s over 200 miles. So choose carefully young one. I went to the North Rim – to be honest I can’t remember why now, but there was a good reason at the time.

Before too long the scenery began to change dramatically and the rocks and desert began giving way to hills and trees as the road entered the Kaibab National Forest and after an hour or so of this you came to the North Rim itself. I set my tent up (I was getting pretty slick at it by this point) and headed down to the Canyon itself.

Everybody knows that pictures and words cannot do justice to a natural wonder such as the Grand Canyon, so I won’t try. I will say however that it’s breathtaking, there’s no doubt about it, but it doesn’t do much if you know what I mean.

You turn up, you ooh and ahh (and let’s face it, you’ve never seen anything like it before, it is incredible), then you move to another spot to get a slightly different perspective where you ooh and ahh some more. You stay for sunset, you come back for sunrise. Then you leave.

I think maybe I was suffering a little bit from not being able to share this with anyone. I’d spent an hour or so with some very nice people at Old Faithful in Yellowstone, but apart from that I’d barely spoken to a soul (eccentric Frenchies aside) for a week and it was starting to tell.

Slight lonely grumpiness aside however, you’re never going to regret going to the Grand Canyon and it certainly is one of those things you should try to see at least once in your life. My advice – take someone special with you!

Today’s photo was taken the day after Brasilia’s 49th Anniversary celebrations outside the iconic cathedral. I’d already done the tour of the buildings a couple of days before and I just liked the look of this guy taking a break from his work.

Now that we’re back safely in Buenos Aires, looking for work and generally getting back to “normal” (whatever that means) after 4 months on the move, one part of the trip stands out more than any other. I’ve already written about it, but now that I have all the photos and videos ready, I wanted to cover the whole experience in a little more detail.

We had flown from Bogota to Leticia, where we spent a week or so and from there travelled to Santa Rosa in Peru (a 15 minute ride across the Amazon) in order to catch a fast boat to Iquitos. We spent the night in the worst hostel I have ever stayed in but as the boat left at 4 in the morning, so the night was thankfully very short.

The boat to Iquitos was a very functional affair, 10 hours in a cabin, set up like a bus with not very much to see or do. Once in Iquitos we had two options for travelling onwards, plane or boat. I don’t think we even considered a plane – I had wanted to take a slow boat on the Amazon for many years, and here was my chance. [singlepic id=28 w=320 h=240 float=right] We spent 4 days in Iquitos and from asking around discovered that the boats to Pucallapa (where the roads started again) run by a line called Henry were generally considered to be the best and they left Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at around 4 in the afternoon.

So, Friday morning we got a mototaxi to take us to the port where we secured our accomodation which would be home for the next 4 days. We were given the option of either a cabin for $60 each or hammock space (bring your own hammock) for $15. We went for the cabin, neither of us had a hammock and we wanted the security of being able to lock everything up, rather than having to keep hold of valuables throughout the whole trip.

After being presented with the key to the cabin (well, the padlock on the door anyway) [singlepic id=29 w=320 h=240 float=left] we took the same mototaxi to a supermarket where we stocked up on supplies which we took straight back to the boat and stashed in the cabin.

At around 4 we made our way back with the rest of our gear ready for the off which we had been told would be at 5. We set the cabin up, made the beds (we’d bought sheets in Iquitos; the room came with no mod-cons, like bedding) and went upstairs to watch the loading finish and to wait for the off.

The boat, Henry III, was essentially a cargo boat, the entire bottom deck being devoted to cargo. This ranged from huge pallettes of stuff loaded by crane, to chickens, to motorbikes to huge iron pipes. The next deck up was simply an open space used for hammocks with the kitchens at one end. [singlepic id=30 w=320 h=240 float=right] Our deck was a mix of hammocks and 10 cabins and the top deck housed the cockpit. It was all made of metal which, of course turned the cabins into an oven. In fact it turned the whole boat into an oven.

But we didn’t really get to find this out until the next day when the sun hit us full-on. For the time being we had been waiting for the boat to leave for 3 hours and it was showing no sign of imminent departure. Eventually we moved away from the river’s edge, bumping and scraping the adjacent boats as we went, only to stop 400 metres downriver at another dock. Where we sat for an hour, before moving away and returning to the exact spot we’d started from. At this point it was nearly midnight so we went to bed.

What felt like not long afterward, but which in reality was 7 in the morning, [singlepic id=32 w=320 h=240 float=left] we were awakened by a thumping on the door, which was breakfast. Breakfast consisted of rice, chicken, beans and patacones (fried platano chips). As did lunch. As did dinner. Every day. For 4 days. Now, I like to think I’m open to new experiences, and I’m a pretty easy-going type of guy, but this got a little bit much, even for me. By dinner on day one, the majority of the food was going into the river. I think even the fish got a bit fed up after a while.

After the first couple of hours, the rest of the trip settled into a routine. [singlepic id=31 w=320 h=240 float=left]Well, if you can call nothing a routine. When we were moving we sat and watched the river slide past (for the majority of the journey we were actually on the river Ucayali, not the Amazon itself which starts somewhere around Iquitos – you’ve never heard of it but it’s 5 times longer than the Thames) . When we stopped to load or unload (which we did a lot) we watched. There wasn’t much else. The video below shows one of the stops, unloading dried leafy branches (used as roofing all over the Amazon) that they had spent over an hour loading the day before.

The one time of day that the routine was broken up was at dusk, when we would gather on the top of the boat to watch the sunset, which was stunning every time. It was an amazing feeling to be slowly making our way through the middle of nowhere, with jungle and water surrounding us everywhere we looked, watching the most incredible yellow and orange bursts of colour on the horizon.

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As an added bonus the first sunset we saw on the move also featured an all-star cast of thousands of parakeets which obviously flew in to this spot every evening in huge numbers. The video below shows some of the flocks flying overhead, and you can see the swarm of birds in the distance. The whole thing went on for 30 minutes, and when the parakeets had calmed down for the evening, they were replaced by hundreds of bats skimming across the water, starting their working day.

And so it went for four days. If you asked me what we did for four days, I couldn’t actually [singlepic id=35 w=320 h=240 float=right] tell you. We talked to some people, we stopped long enough at one place for us to get off, we watched the locals doing what they do. We visited the cargo deck where you had to watch out for the chickens, and you could buy turtles. Live turtles – we spoke to one lady who bought one every time she made this trip. She intended to eat it. Turtles live a long time so she believed that by eating it then she too would get to live a long time.

When I look back, I feel privileged to have been able to make such a unique trip. At times it was tough, the heat and the facilities didn’t make for a comfortable journey, but then this was no cruise, no tourist trip.

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The boat is the only contact tiny, isolated villages have with the outside world. What I found incredible were the places we stopped – there was no sign of life, just a small scrubby break in the trees and this huge boat would nose into shore, a plank laid down and men and boys would swarm from the [singlepic id=36 w=320 h=240 float=right] trees carrying huge sacks on their shoulders to dump on the foredeck. This was repeated maybe 30 times during the day and night, with not a single sign of any record being made of who was doing what. Yet, as alien as this seems to my European eyes, as so often in South America, it just got done. Slowly and slightly chaotically, but it got done.

The same can be said of the journey from Iquitos to Pucallpa too. After more than 100 hot, sweaty and long hours we pulled into our port of call. We got off as soon as we could, away to the comfort of a hotel with a  real shower (no black river water showers here) and a real bed. As we left the port, I looked back and could see the crates just sitting there waiting to go to Iquitos. I didn’t envy them, but at least I now know how they get there.

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Bife de Lomo, La Brigada, Buenos Aires, 26th June 2009. Bon Apetit as they don’t say here!

A dead whale on the beach at Cabo Polonio, Uruguay, December 2008. Click on the photo for full-size and just count yourselves lucky you’re only seeing, not smelling…