It's a baby Rodney!

I had a life changing experience a week or so ago. I accompanied Kerry to the Manly radiology unit to have a large growth in her abdomen checked out. Imagine our surprise when we discovered a small person in there. Ultrasound machines are fantastic contraptions. Our first go on one of these allowed us to see out first offspring in it's full glory, wriggling and turning around inside it's Mummy like a goodun. We could see it's heart beating away at 136bpm and even the stomach and kidneys (we were looking to see it there was any liquid in the stomach - this is a good sign, apparently). Default position for a baby Tubby when killing time seems to be lying on it's back, knees in the air, feet crossed with arms waving about all over the place.

we left, clutching out baby photos (which really didn't do the experience justice, BTW...)

Release date, early January.

Salvador, Santiago and the end.

A bunch of Berimbaus

After a few days in Rio, we decided head north to Salvador for a bit of African culture. We were originally going to take a 28 hour bus ride, but incredibly it turned out to be cheaper to fly (with Gol, the new low-cost Braillian carrier), although it was a bit of a challenge to getting the tickets booked - another crappy website that doesn't take international credit cards, and fails to tell you this until the very the of the booking process. moan, moan..

Salvador is a city great for church buffs - it has 136 of them apparently. We decided to stay in Barra (pronounced 'Baha'), a little down the coast from the city but with nice beaches and great surf. The area is famous for it's lighthouse, which marks the spot where the Portuguese first landed in 1580. Its claim-to-fame is that it's first lighthouse built in the Americas. Salvador itself is home to Capoeira, a kind of dancy/fighty type thing created by the African slaves in the 16th Century.


The lighthouse

For our first few nights we stayed at the 'Albergue do Porto' (their best room at 50 bucks/night). We soon realised we were paying well over the odds (we had gone for the LP recommendation) and moved to a fantastic apartment on the sea front for the same price. We spent 7 nights there in total, exploring the city a little (although trying to minimise our trips on the public lift that links the lower and upper halves of the city - it's almost a free-fall drop.) Salvador centre is packed full of 'ribbon kids' - swarms of young blokes trying to tie coloured ribbons (or 'gifts') around the arms of tourists. Nice place but that was a bit of a pain in the arse.

The food in Salvador (and Brazil in general, come to that) was great. We found a pay by weight place - great food with large plates of exotic fruit - I covered mine in what looked like a fantastic raspberry sauce. Turned out to be Tomato Ketchup, which didn't add much to the dish. This set Kerry off as it reminded her of a time in New Zealand walking the Tongariro circuit when all we had to eat after a hard days walking was pasta and ketchup - we had bought a huge carton of it thinking in was pasta sauce.


Buildings, Salvador

After a week or so we flew back to Rio and then back to Santiago for our last few days in South America before our final flights back to Sydney. We took a bus to Valparaiso, a famous port town only 2 hours away for a couple of days of culture.

In Valparaiso we managed to land ourselves some free Spanish lessons taught by a kind of Chilean Borat character (who was also our hostel owner). Among other things we learnt that in South America, when a man changes the colour of his eyes with contact lenses, he is gay. The hand-on teaching method meant that we spent a lot of time wandering around the town and local supermarket learning the Spanish for various fruit items, sanitary pads etc..

Back in Santiago we took a day trip to the San Francisco glacier and 'El Morado', beautiful mountain scenery only an hour away from one of the largest cities on the continent. Halfway up we found a natural spring with naturally carbonated water spewing from it. Fantastic. We had lunch in an ice cave at the base of the glacier before heading back to the city.

The next day we flew back to Sydney. This was the final flight of our trip and the start of our new lives as residents in Australia. Next on the agenda is a job and a place to live!


(No photos accompanying the end part of this post. Yahoo has managed to screw up my account, removing all my access/ability to upload photos to Flickr. Grrrr...)

Lots of fun in Rio

Rio de Janeiro, from the sugarloaf. Big Jesus visible on the right

God created Rio on the 7th day, and to be fair, he did a bloody good job.

Neither of us speak any Portuguese, so we are having to get by with the limited Spanish we have picked up, throwing in lots of "Obrigados". I was initially confused by all the shouts of "Oi", but it turns out this is just the sound of people saying hello to one another...

We discovered that Kerry has been blessed with a pattern of freckles on her right thigh in the shape of the southern cross..

Staying in the Botafogo district at a El Misti, until we were kicked out and moved 2 doors down to the Alpha hostel (old rule applied again - much nicer, cheaper place NOT in the guide book). Backpacker accommodation in Rio is relatively expensive (remember, this IS South America). A double room, with shared bathroom is around 20 quid, although some places we tried wanted 50! Botafogo is a nice place, with good views of the sugerloaf across the bay. We took the cable car up to the top for our first taste of what makes Rio so special - the spectacular setting. The mountains and sea remind us a little of Cape Town, although on a much grander scale.


A day on Ipanema beach

We enjoyed some of the beach life Rio has to offer, especially the famous beaches of Copacabana and Ipanema a little further around the coast - areas with some highest population densities in the world. Ipanema is famous for being home to the yearly carnival. All the prices go up by about 500%! So far, I have to award a pretty low score on the tits and bums front. It is winter here, but it is still a good 30 degrees here in the sun. Not a patch on the scenery when we visited the beach town of Florianopolis a few years ago. Kerry is pretty happy with the Brazilian men however (she is at pains to point out).

Sunday seems to be the day to go to the beach if you are a local here. The main road is closed to traffic, and there are people everywhere. Everybody and their dog (complete with knitted doggy boots - very hip in Rio at the moment) descends upon Copacabana beach. It is true what they say about the Brazilians - what they have they like to flaunt, but it is what they haven't got that they flaunt the most - meaning a lot of the old fat ones come to the beach in g-strings and tiny pink speedos. It is great to see such self confidence, but you have to be careful where you rest your eyes.


The sugerloaf


We scouted out the best way to ascent the Corcovada ("hunch back peak"), home to the 38m high status of Christ the Redeemer (or "The Big J") - this turned out to be with our hostels pet taxi driver. Even the public train would have cost us more. We were there on a Saturday morning, and a catholic church service was in full swing at the very top; Even with the swarming Japanese tourists and the fact that we didnt understand a word of it, the service and music, at 710m and overlooking all or the city was very moving. These were certainly many teary faces in the crowd. The statue was completed in 1931 and is pretty special. Its certainly the best art-deco Jesus I have ever seen.



On our last day we saw "Homem Aranha 3" at the local cinema - Peter Parker doing his best Brian Molko impression to much laughter from the audience.

Argentina and the Iguazu Falls

The Iguazu falls - a lot of water

After leaving Mum and Peter, and after a night in Puerto Varas furiously downloading new music, Kerry and I headed back to Pucon for more volcano admiring. We had vague plans to climb volcan Llaima, alitle north of here, but after checking around we were put off by both the bad weather and the huge price tag to get a guide motivated to come with us (US250 each).

We spent an afternoon sliding amongst the trees on a local canopy slide trip, which was good fun. We met a guy who might be able to hook us up with a guide for the Llaima climb when we come back to Chile in a month or so....


Canopy sliding in Pucon

We tried a new hostel - while we were there an Australian couple in the room next door were robbed while they were eating dinner. Some bloke scaled the wall in the rain. We were lucky.

From Pucon we took an overnight bus back to Santiago and the next day we collected our Australian visas from the Santiago embassy (yeah, we are now residents!) and then flight to Buenos Aires, where we visited the tourist sites - the Recoletta, theLa Boca district and we managed to catch the a film, Sunshine, another winner from Danny Boyle.


La Boca district, Buenos Aires


Diego is obviously a bit desperate these days, La Boca

When we had had enough of BA, we booked ourselves onto our first long bus ride up to the Iguazu Falls, right on the border of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. This was another experience we enjoyed so much the first time we were here, and had decided to come back for another visit (not the bus ride, the falls). We stayed at the Hostel Park, close to the bus station and enjoyed the swimming pool there for a couple of days. Then we took a bus across the border into Brazil, checked out their side of the falls and then headed off to Rio de Janeiro on an overnight bus.



The Devils Throat on the Brazilian side of the Falls



Our 22 hour bus ride from Foz du Iguazu to Rio de Janeiro was not very comfortable (no full cama option available this time). Plenty of food and toilet stops though - buffet food sold by the kilo and breaded chicken lollypops, which were surpisingly tasty).