A headline for all the red top readers out there.
I have a new camera – a shiny Canon Powershot S3 iS!
It is different to the one I had before, hopefully better and longer lasting..
The following photo was not taken with this camera, but with my old one.
Here we have Mike – trying, with near success, to remain unseen:
This is my own watery version of the Rorschach inkblot test, commonly used for forensic assessment and by psychologists to examine their patients´ personality characteristics and emotional functioning.
Top Tip:
If you ever have to do one of these for real, give responses along the lines of “Flowers”, “Butterflies” and “Happiness”.. This will probably land you in the “non-psychotic” thoughts category.
Answers similar to “Insects burrowing through flesh”, “Immeasurable suffering” and “Bryan Adams and Celine Dion performing an epic duet” are sure fire ways to let yourself not see the light of day again. Or at least get a slap, especially in the case of the Adams and Dion combo. As a doctor, such delusions of bad taste should not be encouraged and must be nipped in the bud as soon as identified.*
* – this is probably true. If it isn´t it should be. I actually have no idea.
Say what you see..
I see water demons, not dead people.
4 new photo galleries added and an old gallery altered.
New:
Ushuaia to ElCalfate and El Chalten
Florianopolis and Isla Santa Catarina
Altered:
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.. Read the rest of this post »
The 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…
From Buenos Aires, my next major destination was to be Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world.
Due to certain constraints imposed on my round the world ticket, rather than flying direct, the route involved going via Santiago, the capital of Chile.
This was a one night stopover – the plane landed at 6pm and I was due to fly out the next day at 8am.
Leaving the airport, I made my first real rookie mistake.
It 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?
This 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.
On 13th March 2007, I arose at 5am and caught the bus to the giant megatropolis that is Sao Paulo. This was swiftly followed by an airport transfer to Guarhulos airport where I buy a ticket and almost immediately get on a plane to Florianopolis, saving myself a 14 hour bus journey.
The flight is actually to Chapeco, wherever that is, but goes via Florianopolis – home of tennis player Gustavo Kuertan, 3 times French Open winner and the largest steel suspension bridge in Brazil.
As I didn´t know too much about the area, other than it is the capital of Santa Catarina state, I decide to spend the night in downtown Centro, get my bearings and work out what to do from there.
Like any other Centro in the world, this one was unsurprisingly uninspiring – comprising mostly of streets filled with shops, 2 bus terminals and the predictably shady characters that lurk around them.
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