ToBeShaw

I always feel like I´ve left it a tad long between posts, then realise it´s been about a week. The time here is weird. It flies by, but at the same time you get a lot done and a few days can seem like a week. Can´t really explain it better than that.

So, where to pick up. I should probably credit someone at this stage. Mr Ara… my dear friend, tour guide (often against his will!), a ´traductor´ (translator), teacher, incredible talent, film editor, music appreciator, doting father, lots of fun, and I will repeat again a very dear friend indeed. Thank you for showing me Santiago in style.

Post Chile, I buckled on costs over Rio Carnaval. I kept going back and forth as to whether I should fork out or not, and came to the conclusion that as I had made it all the way here, may as well do it properly.

So, thanks to The Australians, I managed to find my way into the parade, joining the samba school Traduçia (I think. We´ve struggled with the pronunciation of pretty much EVERYTHING since getting here. Why did no one warn me how hard Portuguese was?!?!) to take part in the parade on Saturday night. It was AWESOME. The costumes were shockingly made, but looked incredible for about the first hour, I´d lost half of mine and was resorting to staple guns from the guys building the float, safety pins, and the kindness of a homeless lady with a few fingers missing to stitch on one of my plastic turquiose shells to help keep it together. This was BEFORE we´d even paraded. Just read  that back and realised there was a sentence I never thought I´d be writing in this blog!

So, having spent about, ooh, 15 minutes listening to the song (which we couldn´t understand) and looking up ´how to samba in 4 minutes´ on YouTube just before we left the apartment, we obviously well prepared. But we rocked it. Sunday night we went to watch the parade again and having been both participant and spectator I can honestly say I enjoyed them equally.

Missed Fat Boy Slim (we were too tired and had sort feet after parading all night – bloody knackering!), tried determinedly to get to Bob Sinclar on Sunday night, but was a lost cause, and Monday we were going to get tickets to Ritchie Hawtin but decided to let Rio throw fun at us in its own way rather than try and chase it down.

It worked. Had the best nights once we´d stopped trying to find/meet/arrange things with people or places and just go with it.

I´m now heading to Florionapolis tonight to see some beautiful beaches that are less packed and crazy than these.

I bid farewell to my Australians this week who are heading home, luckily managed to meet up with Ella and Kate (from my Arequipa/Titicaca/La Paz stint) last night and ate the most incredible all you can eat buffet. WORLD OF PAIN afterwards but amazing. For about 20 quid. I am turning into a fatty. Just what you want when you´re in a bikini all day.

Ah well. Another churro for me then…

So, where was I?

Oh yes, Sucre, Potosi, Uyuni… twas my birthday. On a bus. Having gained a bitch of a hangover for an old bird, due to losing spectacularly at cards – some game called Chancho, Vas! – the previous night to Tom and a bunch of Argentinians. And Camilo, the Colombian.

Next day, having arrived to the border on a bus that housed the most ANNOYING Austrian girl (sorry Thomas!) who I was about to spend the next 8 hours with, I thought it might have been the journey from hell. It was saved by Janelle, Chris and Chris – hereafter known as The Australians – who I thought instantly would be pretty sound people. And I was right, hence my continuing my journey (and thanked them for rescuing my birthday), with them to San Pedro de Atacama (sandboarding rocks!), Salta (only there a day, but looked pretty nice for a first stop), then down to Mendoza.

Argentina provided a trip around the three wineries – Vistalta, Achaval Ferrer and Septima (esteemed, boutique, huge production), an insight into the semi-ritualistic mate-drinking with the Argentinians, a very odd experience at a nightclub that seemingly looked like it used to be an amusement park (Paul, reminded me a bit of the zoo in Ibiza we went to!), an asado – or BBQ – that provided the best meat I’ve ever tasted (so far!) and some new friends. Oh, and a serious ice cream addiction!! Some Argentine girls on the bus warned me I was about to get very fat, being in Argentina, and I can see why!

So, Santiago. What can I say? Beautiful city. Some gorgeous artsy areas, and very keen to educate myself in the ways of Chilean literature having been to Pablo Neruda’s house – La Chascona, which apparently means ‘crazy hair’ and my latest friends have decided that is my new name (the cheek! ;o) ) – who looks like he was a bit of a nutjob, but a genius one at that. May head over to Valpo or Vina del Mar/Isla Negra at some point before Wed when I head off again.

Met some very cool people at my hostel. A couple of guys, independently of each other, were part way through riding around the world on motorbikes – one from Colorado, one from Widnes, another from Oxford – and had a very cool attitude to things, and rid me of my guilt about following my FOMO and heading to Rio next week, in spite of it being so the opposite of the logical way around!

Have decided just to extend my trip. As people keep reminding me, there are two things that are important when travelling. Time, and money. And having seen how some people are managing their budgets over here, I really could stretch mine a lot further if I wanted/needed to. As Fletch-of-the-cool-tattoos said, ‘It’s only money. You can always find more.’ So I’ll be back later than March 1st. Been here two months and only just scratching the surface really! But now need to start factoring weather into things as well, as summer will be moving out by the end of Feb most likely, especially in the south.

And still not managed my vineyard/horseback adventure, so if I can’t find one this weekend then I’ll need to scratch that from my (rather fluid) To Do list.

That’s pretty much brought things up to date, ‘stuff’-wise. Mind is still open, heart still pure, body still in one piece and all that!

Oh, and Finally getting a tan, but sadly it’s limited to my arms, chest and upper back! Need some beach action!

Big love xx

… as I was saying!

I realised two things last night. One, I missed out mentioning Salta. We were only there a day as a stopover, as it sounds like more of a party place than a daytime hangout. Seemed nice enough, but Mendoza was the priority. Two, my brain is obviously starting to switch off, as I meant, when describing my freakish punctuation marks, a cedilla, not a circumflex. So apologies to all my French friends. *hangsheadinshame*

Getting Those Looks again. And need to catch my bus. Laters…

What a few weeks it has been

After Sucre, where I met a sweet guy from Leeds to hang out with a week or so, met the loveliest man Omar ¿say no moreª? who ran both the hostel and the Spanish school next door. Highly recommend the Travellers Guesthouse and Bolivian Spanish school there, really nice and chilled and homely, the complete antithesis to Loki and all it brings with itª

FYI, a superscript A is an exclamation mark, a c with a circumflex is an apostrophe, and my brackets are question marks. Of course…

Anyway, after a week hanging in Sucre, I decided to head down to Potosi, to check out the mine tour. I was geared up for something pretty traumatic, having heard so much about the way the mines are run, the conditions under which they work, and the potential for my freaking out due to clautrophobia, but I figured this trip is about new experiences and facing fears, so thought, sod it.

As it happened, I was building it up in my head, as usual. Donçt et me wrong, it was possibly the weirdest, most out=of=comfort zone thing Içve ever really done, but not to the extent I expected. I had watched a film called the Devilçs Miner the night before, which was due to give me some insight into the experience. It was positioned as a documentary, but I found out afterwards it was just a film. So that tainted my expectations somewhat. I had also heard that this particular mine was reserved for the tours, and that most working mines have far superior, more modern conditions than we were witnessing. But Içve learned that everything = ESPECIALLY in Bolivia = is to be taken with a certain amount of salt ¿pardon the pun, for when I start talking about Uyuniª? and it certainly didnçt take away from the tripp, more that it helped me appease my guilt about exploiting levels of poverty and danger to see something really cool.

Uyuni was next, and Içm GUTTED I cançt post photos from my camera on this computer as it was one of the most dazzling things Içve ever seen. We were really lucky as, being wet season, the entire salt flat became a giant mirror, and my group ¿had a cool bunch? spent a couple of hours larking about on the salt, taking the usual cliched photos of people jumping ¿or attempting toª?, doing yoga, running about etc. AWESOME trip.

Next stop = which was my birthday, incidentally, and I have to keep saying it out loud that yes, I am 36 now. Jesus when did that all happen+++ = was San Pedro de Atacama, in Chile. ONly stayed a couple of days but went sandboarding in the desert. Amazing funª And met three cool Aussies who adopted me for a few days, and theyçve all just left for BA.

Then thought Içd join them in Mendoza, where we visited three wineries = cançt remember the names right now = and had a briliant tour with guide on the region, had a spectacular lunch, with pairings, and has inspired me to become more knowledgable on wines when I get home. AM now being glared at for being on here too long, so will sign off and pick up later.

Habla pronto…

So, I ran away from La Paz yesterday. After two weeks over festive season, at altitude, it was about as much as my health could handle!

Met some amazing and gorgeous people. Some less so!

Now, it´s onwards and upwards. Or downwards, geographically (or am I now higher than I was yesterday… who knows anymore?).

Now arrived in Sucre for some calm, culture and loveliness, after a long and arduous final day in La Paz. The sun´s out today, which was very welcome. Not worn a pair of shorts since I´ve been here.

May stick around and take some Spanish lessons, but if not, I´ll be here three or four days and then head to Potosi to throw myself into a silver mine (don´t worry mum, I will be neither the first nor the last!).

Was sitting a beauticians the other day trying to make myself look relatively more human than I had been looking, and during four hours of being buffed, painted and polished – all for about 15 quid (I know!) – I had a lot of thinking time. Sadly, now I have forgotten many of my more profound thoughts I thought I might share (worst blog post EVER!?).

But there´s a very common perception here, amongst the people I´ve been meeting, and I´ve had it a lot this week. A lot of people are putting pressure on themselves, as in they should see this place, or ´DO´ this country, and at the end of the day, every day is a different day, and we make choices. And each of those choices will be for a different reason, and will have different outcomes, some known, and some less known.

Anyway, the point of this ramble was that I needed to stop feeling guilty about moving on, or not doing something on The List, and relax. So I may change my originally planned route, or may extend by a while, as it´s FLYING by. I even thought about staying and working for a brief stint, but that didn´t quite work out.

I know to everyone who´s done these kinds of things before, this is a very typical thought process, but it´s new for me.

Also major events seem to be hindrances rather than helpers over here. For instance, there was the whole thing about Christmas and New Year and where to be. Now there´s the whole birthday thing, but I am inclined to forget about this one if I´m honest and stop here (not met so many 18-25 year olds since I was, well, probably 18-25)!

Now I feel like in wanting to be in Rio for Carnaval, I may have painted myself into a bit of a corner, as I seem to have underestimated the time needed for my original plan. So it could all change, in terms of going there first and then coming back in towards Argentina, or skipping it altogether, but I need to do some research into logistics first (not exactly my preferred forte!).

All good either way.