So here´s the last few weeks in pictures.
12,000 word essay to follow..
Gaucho works his hill of sheep, between Tierre del Fuego and Patagonia:
Click below for more.. (more…)
Archive for the ‘Argentina’ category
A picture says a thousand words..
April 15, 2007To the end and back – following the rise of the Andes
April 15, 2007The next few posts will be documenting from Tierra del Fuego up through Patagonia, along the Andes, and along Ruta 40.
Much like the jaw aching 12″ ham and cheese baguette I gave up all hope finishing, Patagonia seems endless at times.
It is very palatable and there is much more to come – for many days even – but it is exhausting and can get a little samey. That´s more about the sandwich than Patagonia but holds some truth for both.
Never ending stretches of patchy scrub-land and infinite rubble roads with equally epic stretched skies. Windswept, dusty and for the most part uninhabited and uninhabitable.
This is happily and sporadically interrupted: the majestic mountains of the Andes rising in the West – the occasional roadside guanaco (llama), family of wild horses, roadrunner, flamingos or armadillo – a glimmering, milky lake here and there – quirky isolated outposts, miles from anywhere.
There are also partially paved sections, providing peace and rest for the senses after the bone shaking, nose tickling, noisy rumbling majority. In some ways it is reminiscent of a cheap massage chair – although pleasant enough in small doses, the novelty wears off after a while.
A young child writing with his wrong hand would be justified in mocking the illegible scrawl attempted in my journal on much of this journey!
Originally, the plan had been to fly in and out of Ushuaia, to get a glimpse of the tip of South America. Then the plan changed in order to get a richer experience of Patagonia and more of a feel for the full extent of this section of the enormous continent.
The next part will begin in Ushuaia.
But first…
A brief visit to Buenos Aires
April 3, 2007It is approximately 20 hours by bus from Puerto Iguassu to Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina.
This journey was to take longer, getting off to a slow start by leaving 45 minutes late.
6 or 7 hours into the journey, I had just dozed off when I was abruptly snapped back to reality by a man standing over me, shouting at me in Spanish. It sounded urgent and obviously important but having just risen from slumber, it was difficult to tell exactly what was going on.
A robbery?
A bomb?
War has just broken out?
Iguassu Falls and crossing into Argentina..
March 29, 2007This will be disappointing until I have successfully uploaded my photos, so this is mostly a placeholder until I find a suitable, and ideally high speed internet connection.
Even with pictures to accompany the most descriptive of words, justice wouldn´t be done to this awesome natural wonder.
However, as this is a blog comprised of words and pictures, an absence of these would just be empty space.
There are 275 falls, occupying an area more than 3km wide and 80m high, making them wider than Victoria and higher than Niagara.
Thousands of years before the falls were `discovered´ by whites, the falls were a holy burial place for the Tupi – Guarani and Paraguas tribes. Guarani legend says that Iguassu Falls originated when when a jealous forest god, enraged by a warrior escaping downriver by canoe with a young girl, caused the riverbed to collapse in front of the lovers, producing the falls over which the girl fell and at the base, turned into a rock. The warrior survived as a tree overlooking his fallen lover. The geological origins are not quite so romantic. In southern Brazil, the Rio Iguassu, passes over a basalt plateau that ends just above it´s confluence with the Parana. Where the lava stopped, at least 5000 cubic meters of water per second plunge into the sedimentary terrain below.
Being there is hard to describe, on the train to the mighty Garganta del Diablo (Devil´s throat) streams of butterflies float by like leaves on a windy autumnal day. This, the largest of all the falls here, is immense – it´s constant roaring power, yet almost slow motion appearance, much like a never ending avalanche, is strangely hypnotic. Sprays of mist soak the walkways, a refreshing cool off from the jungle heat.
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