      Bary Manilow´s song about falling in love at the Copacabana is a sad song, about a young beautiful dancer who has lost her lover, her youth and her beauty. It seems that the beach itself has lost some of its spark. We stayed at a hostel close to the Ipanema beach. I really prefer "Girl from Ipanema" by Stan Getz. It´s more fun and a happier story. Both beaches are ´ok´. The interesting event while we were in Rio was not the beaches (too cold), not the visit to the huge Maracana stadium (didn´t happen) or the climb to see the big Christ statue (neither), but rather the rains. And floods. LOTS of them. Rio de Janeiro had not known such rains in the past 30 years. It was raining endlessly almost since the moment we got there and for a couple of days. Close to 300 dead of mudslides (why?). As Bary says: "don´t fall in love".. We were waiting for an urgent package to arrive from Israel, with anti-Malaria pills in it, which we had to take if we wanted to go to the jungles later. While waiting, we moved to a nearby island called Ilha Grande, with beautiful beaches. When we got there, we discovered the package was going to be left at the Brazilian customs (how surprising), and so we spent most of the time desperately looking for other travellers with extra pills. Yes. We got them. Goodbye beaches and floods, and welcome to the Jungle!! Photos: Above: Ilha Grande and wildlife, me aside the Ipanema beach. Below: surfers at the Copacabana beach.              Sitting half in Brazil and half in Argentine, the beautiful Iguazu falls are pouring so much water, they could fill Israel´s water source (the Kinneret lake) in less than a minute. Just take a look at the photos and enjoy. We did :) This was our last taste of Argentine, and the first taste of Brazil. No, really, no pun intended here, we had the best lunch on the Brazilian side :) So we took a bus to Rio de Janeiro. Photos: Above: the Iguazu falls, Brazilian and Argentinian side. Below: the bird park on the Brazilian side (adjacent to the Iguazu park).        I don´t really like travelling in big cities, and Buenos Aires is a huge one. I do like seeing many people, absorbing a whole city atmosphere, enjoying markets, events and theatres. However, big city populations have margins, and in these margins live poor and desperate people, desperate enough to hurt you just to get a hand in your wallet. The bigger the city is, the wider the margins and the more dangerous it is to travel at nights. Yes, Buenos is beautiful. We´ve been to several markets of crafts, antiques, souveniers, and saw the most beautiful street shows in several neighborhoods. But what I´m taking from Buenos is a horrific scene we´ve been in. It was between 10 and 11 at night, and we were quite close to our hotel. I wanted to eat a snack (ok, a large pizza), and so we sat in one of the caffe´s, about 100 meters from our hotel. Although the street was dark, you ould see people walking there, the caffe had some guests, and across the street there was a group of about 10 young people, getting ready to sleep among the garbage bags. A sad view. There there was this cute little girl walking on the sidewalk, between the caffe house and its tables and chairs, one of which I was sitting on. I told Jenis "look at her", with a smile that says "what a cute girl". Then her mom just walked by. I don´t know what SHE heard, but she started yelling at me in Spanish. I could only guess it wasn´t sweet talking. She continued walking while shouting, then decided to walk right back towards me. I wasn´t looking at her, but at Jenis. She went past us and crossed the street, still yelling. I thought it was over. But then it happened. I looked across the street and felt cold chills crawling up my spine. Like taken from the movie "Night of the Living Dead", the woman across the street was standing in the middle of the homeless guys, still shouting, and raising her hand to point.. at us!! They all stared at us, and I felt we were the last zombies in Buenos and we´ve just been discovered. I´ll end the story here and just say this: in big cities, be sure to always avoid the margins. The people, the streets and the looks. Otherwise they will find you. We took a flight to the Iguazu falls, and that was a whole different story.. Photos Below: dancing some street tango in La Boca, a socialist poster that says Capitalism has Failed. Go figure..     Bariloche, 7 Lakes and the Proposal :) 04/06/2010
          We departed from Chile with memories of amazing adventures and breathtaking landscapes and views, and landed in Bariloche, a charming city, yet big and touristic. There are plenty things to do in Bariloche, and we did some of them. The 4 main things we did there:
We took a bus to Buenos Aires and from there a flight to the Iguazu falls, only to discover that the most beautiful moment of this trip has just occurred.                              We left the calm and beautiful town of El Chalten up north, driving all night on the Ruta 40 and crossed the border to Chile, to start our Carretera Austral trip. "We" means 3 Israeli couples aged 30-40 and a lunatic Argentinian driver called Martin. The plan: 6 days on the Carretera. The Carretera Austral was built by Chile's dictator Pinoche in 1976 to allow access to remote populated areas in Chile. But make no mistake. This 1,200 kilometers so called "highway" is a dirt track leading to barely populated areas. However, it's a road with beautiful views, which makes it a destination by itself for South American tourists and backpackers. These are my highlights of the Carretera Austral:
Goodbye Chile, you have been an unforgettable adventure. Boaz.                     We met a nice Israeli couple (Michal and Erez), also aged 30+, who were in touch with a second Israeli couple (Nataly and Israel). Both couple were about to rent a van with a driver to ride the Carretera Austral, and were looking for a third couple. We decided to join them, however, the van was only available a couple of days later. So we decided to do something productive with our time, and headed to El Chalten. This small and cute town is a base for trekkers and mountaineers (mountain climbers), and is located in the national park of glaciers called ¨Parque Nacional los Glaciares¨. Among others, this park has the biggest ice cap in the world after the polar ones, and the Perito Moreno is also in it. We arrievd at our hostel at about 11:20. At 12:00 we have already been packed and walking towards a local trek to Laguna De los Tres. It was going to be just another trek, however, two facts made it one of the most significant activities we´ve done so far: 1. The mountain is the holy grail of mountaineers. No, not the himalayan peaks. The everest summit, for example, is stepped on up to a hundred times a day. The Fitz Roy summit is reached only about once a year. It´s a monster, who has claimed many lives. 2. The trek ends with a very steep climb of 450 meters, which should be twice as difficult as the (unfinished) Torres climb. After walking for about 4 hours we arrived at camp Poincenot, named after one of the first explorers to climb this mountain. From this point on, it´s just sweat and blood. Erez and Michal decided to head back to town, as it was becoming too late to climb the hill. However, Jenis and I, in a blink of an eye, decided to ¨just do it¨. I was afraid. I´ve known fears in my life, but this one was different. It was the same fear I had of climbing the Torres mountain. I´ve been in good shape in the late 1990´s, I´ve ran half a marathon and was thin and muscular. However, for the past 10 years or so, I have been losing fitness and gaining fat. I´ve reached rock bottom about 6 months ago, and decided to get in shape. And so I´ve been working out for the past 6 monhts, and have come to some better level of fitness. However, I had no idea where my limits are. What my body is capable of. I was afraid that at some point in the middle of the way I won´t be able to climb up any more.. nor to climb down. At the age of 33 I overcame this fear and reached the top with Jenis. We´ve reached the closes possible point to Fitz Roy without climbing it, with a beautiful crystal lake and still glaciers. The view was magnificent, but the adventure and the achievement was even more. The photos below may start depicting the experience, but do me a favor and multiply everything it makes you feel 20 times more.           We took a bus from Pureto Natales to El Calafate, a 5-6 hours ride north, including yet another border crossing (Chile to Argentine). We arrived at the beautiful town of El Calafate. As opposed to Puerto Natales, this is a lovely and lively town. It´s very touristic, so there are many shops here: good restaurants, trekking gear, supermarkets, etc. I would love to stay here longer, however the town is quite expensive and there are no real reasons to stay here, except for visiting the huge Perito Moreno glacier. We took a bus to see the Perito Moreno. That ice block is huge! We watched it from distance, and every couple of minutes some small ice-crumbs fell off it to the sea. They looked quite small, but the sound the fall made proved otherwise: the ice chunks were as small as a man to as big as a house, making a booming sound when cracking, rolling on the glacier and hitting the water. The site was magnificent. After that, we took a boat to a more quiet side of the glacier, put on some shoe-gear (crampons, or shoe-spikes), covered ourselves and our backpacks against the rain, and headed on to.. walking on the ice. Walking the Perito Moreno was a very different and a really exciting experience. We saw small brooks streaming on the glacier floor, finding their ways to small cracks in the ice. Each such crack is either small, or as deep as reaching the bottom of the glacier and the sea level. That was an awesome experience. We are now looking for different ways to ride through the Carretera Austral and head north to Bariloche.             Southern Patagonia 03/10/2010
Hey guys, Where are we? What is Patagonia? The Patagonian Andes is the south-eastern region of South America, spanned across Chile and Argentine. It´s a land of wild mountains, gushing rivers, thick forests and huge glaciers. People come to Patagonia to see nature at its best. First stop: Barcelona We first spent a day in Barcelona and had a speedy day of tourism around numerous sites there. We used the Metro to get to places, and walked quite a bit through the wide and crowded streets. The beauty of Barcelona to me lies within the huge modern roads with fashion corners, with hidden narrow alleys of gothic cathedrals, combined with out-of-place crazy artworks of Antony Gaudi. South-most inhabitated place in the world: Ushuaia There's no better place to begin our South America journey than the southernmost city in the world: Ushuaia. There's nothing much to do here. The city is a base of Antarctica excursion teams, so everything here is around that. We went to see some penguins, hiked among the lakes and forests of Tierra del Fuego and took an adventure in the woods and swamps to see the hidden Laguna Ezmeralda. Of course, the most significant advneture here was waiting for my backpack to arrive from Spain, after Iberia had decided to lose it, be rude to us, not return calls and of course, have me pay for a taxi to pick up my bag from the airport 4 days late. We then left Ushuaia a bit north (where else) to Puerto Natales, a backpackers town and a base for Patagonian trekkers. Parque Nacional Torres del Paine As we arrived at Puerto Natales, we quickly packed only the basic stuff needed for trekking (weighing about 20kg) and left to the park. There are 4 hotspots in this park: a grey glacier you can get very close to, a viewpoint in the middle of a mountain-circle (called the French Valley, or as I call it "trois valles"), 3 granite towers rising up to 2,000 meters and more, and a "pass", which is the highest point in the area, that as you pass it you see the entire park and the whole glacier at your feet. We, as beginner-trekkers, decided to take it easy. We set up a tent at the bottom of the park, and in the next morning we took only necessities (about 7 kg) and hiked to see the glacier. We reached it after about 4.5 hours of a not-too-easy walk. I took another climb down a rock just to touch some huge floating ice coulders that disconnected from the main glacier. The glacier is really big, not really grey and the view was magnificent. We took some photos and headed back to our base camp. Surrendering to the winds The next day we packed or stuff and headed towards the next resort: the 3 towers (the Torresses). The plan was to climb from the base point to the next camp carrying all our gear, then waking up at night and climbing to the torresses with nohing but cameras and water. But God has his own tiny little plans for us. We started climbing. It was hard. VERY hard. Heavy. My thighs were burning. As we got higher and higher, the winds became stronger. And stronger. And stronger. At some point, we actually had to lie down and hold on to tree roots in order to stay put. The wind got so strong at the top, we were afraid to be thrown off to the chasm below. Jenis fell and hurt her knee. I got boulders stuck in my eyes. It was too much. Too dangerous. After 2.5 kilometers, we headed back down. The descending was even harder than the climbing, even with the wind in our backs. Thank God we arrived safely down. For my birthday, Jenis took us to a luxurious hotel (that's stuck here for some reason), and so we had one of the best showers and beds in history of mankind. The plans We now plan to get back to town and head straight north to see the glacier Perito Moreno, and maybe climb it and do some "ice hiking". If time allows, we may be touring the Fitz Roy mountain and drive the Carratera Austral. Kisses to all, pictures soon, Boaz. | CategoriesAll |
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