Perito Moreno

(NB: If you wish to read of my experiences with chronalogical authenticity, ensure you have read the El Chalten Supertrekking blogs first, then read this after...)

So! Francisco Pascacio Moreno (AKA: El Perito Moreno, as perito means “specialist”): Argentine explorer and Pategonian pioneer. A learned explorer who spent what seems to be the majority of his life searching out the last remaining untouched extremities of South America, and seemingly naming them all after himself. He discovered lakes, mountains, glaciers and rivers, and left a his legacy in uncreative titles. He was even taken prisoner by a Pehuelche aboriginal tribe and condemned to death, but managed to escape. A generous benefactor, he donated some land given to him to create the Nahuel Huapi National Park in Bariloche. Director of the anthropological museum of Buenos Aires, chief of the Argentine exploring commission of the southern territories, and member of numerous European scientific societies, he somehow ended up dying a poor man. Which goes to show the benefits of being tight. But his name endures, confusing backpackers as to where exactly this glacier of his is. Cos it ain't in Perito Moreno, or in the Parque National de Perito Moreno.

The Perito Morano Glacier is in fact in the Parque National de los Glaciares, and is pretty much Calafatte's one trick pony (if that's the correct saying). But it is a trick any pimp would flaunt with pride. This glacier, a good hour's taxi away from town, is rather grand.

The stats: at 257km square, 60m high and between 4 and 5km wide at it's front, it's a glacier with girth. I don't mean to patronise but lets get this in real terms: 5km is just over 3 miles and that's how far I lived from town when I was a kid and it took a good 15 minutes on the bus. Not only is it proper wide but 60m high is the hight of ten men or my block of flats in Leeds City Centre.

And if you think Moreno's big, it's actually just a fraction of the same Southern Pategonian Ice field that feeds the El Chalten glacier we never climbed on the Supertrek. This ice field looks vast on a map. Cos it is - it's 13,000km square of heaving blue ice, slowly plaining the valley and turning solid rock to powder.

Moreno itself is one of the world's few advancing glaciers and the blue ice apparently moves down the valley at an astonishing 2m per day. At its end and under it's own weight, massive chunks of ice drop off into the aquamarine Largo Argentino below. Sometimes in blocks as big as a double decker bus, which are so big they seem to fall in slow motion and bob around the lake as giant icebergs.

It's a noisy old beast too. You can hear it crunching and cracking as it moves. It sounds like a factory of heavy machinery. When it breaks off, the sound resembles explosives going off. I read that the glacier has claimed 38 lives from the days when folk on the bank next to the glacier would get sucked in and under by the waves created from falling ice off the glacial face. Not entirely surprisingly you can't get that close now.

Shame.

I bet the pictures would take the piscuit.

B Dog

Supertrekking ii: Blown Out

At 6am on day 2 of the Fitz Roy trek, our guide Loressa sadly traipses around our tents informing us that the glacier stomp & ice climbing have had to be cancelled due to bad winds. In my world I've grown used to battling on with bad wind, but that's me. The weak sliver-linings are a sleep-in and not needing to carry crampons today, but we're all a bit 'winded' by the news (Arf arf - I'm resisting making a 'blown off' joke). 'Super'trekking just became trekking, which doesn't justify the costs so well. Though the weather today is clearer, I can't imagine the sunnies or suncream are gonna be required.

After watching dawn light up one of the clear mountains a fruity pink we huddle together in everything we brought for breaky, huddled round like penguins in't t'ant t'arctic. The glorious spread includes cereal with no milk, powdery squash and stale toast with the omnipresent dolche de leiche (gooey toffee spread from boiled condensed milk) and hard toast tearing butter. Mmm. ''Recommended'' said Mr Coco...

Spirits rather low, we plod on to the glacier for a better view. It's clearer today, and most of the snow-capped mountains wear only a cloud necklace (though Fitz Roy sadly dons a full cloudy balaclava). Wild horses graze, Flamingos paddle and Condors soar loftily above; with their impressive 6 foot wingspans & wattly turkey bonces.

The raging winds have freshly torn several trees across our path, and when we reach the icy glacial lake the wind literally blows our guide and a fellow German lady off their feet. The lashing wind carries a fine gritty sediment that scratched the hell out of my spectacles. It's estimated to be a blowin' at about 100km/hr. Lordy. The gang take to walking like crabs. Watching everyone stumble about for a group photo on the moraine ridge at the end of an icy lake I think it was probably a wise not to have been blown down a crevasse. I've seen 'Touching the Void'...

The day cleared and the wind eventually let up as we leisurely strolled a different trail back to El Chalten, passing through lush valleys on the turn of Autumn. Fitz Roy himself was even kind enough to give us an appearance and tipped his cloudy hat our way. A grey alluvial river churned down deep gorges and rumbled away quietly in the background. I learned the fascinating history of East Germany from Christoph, who'd lived there under the Soviet occupation and at the fall of the wall, and shared witty banter with the gang.

Just outside town we passed a few tethered Guanacos, the local white hairy Llamas, and made the Austin Powers joke 'Well baby, which is it, spits or swallows?' Back in the small town of El Chalten, the springboard for the Parque National de los Glaciares, it's obvious even in sunshine that the place was thrown together with passing thought for the aesthetic. However, being tad heavy on the concrete and corrugated metal, it's redeemed by a fine drinking hole that brews its' own tasty beer.

Inside you'll find the full motley crew of wandering extremes, and everything in between. On the one table will be the cluelessly cheery jeans and flipflop backpacker, who's lumped hired heavy gear and tinned food for 3 days and now sports a bad knee. On the other are the lightweight, gortex, ski-pole & show-shades collective, splitting their time between bitching about 'tourists' and telling grandiose tales of hanging from their fingers on a freeclimb up the north face of Cerro Torre in a hundred KM/hr blizzard. With a few hours to kill awaiting the bus back to El Calafatte, we banter away over 16 pints of cloudy homebrew and a stack of salty popcorn. Aside from the lack of hitting stuff with a sharp axe, it was a super adventure with super folk...


Barnister

Supertrekking i: Pass the Fitz, Roy...

El Chalten Ranger station, Parque National de los Glaciares. The lady Ranger rounds us into Spanish and English speaking rooms. Out of the rain the excitable trekers peruse cheaply framed photos of the local stars, the jagged granite Fitz Roy Mountain Massive, defaced with dotted marker lines to depict routes mental climbers have ascended (or attempted) the various summits. Out comes the flip chart and telescopic pointer and class begins. Todays lesson: National Park and generic treking etiquette...

In short: Stick to the paths, don't burn down the forest and no defacating in the rivers. Short and informative, the way I like my women.

Piled back on the bus for a poin tless 100m shuttle we're suddenly off again in the really rather ugly hamlet of El Chalten. Digging around for jackets and scarves, our trecking collective huddle together against the brisk windy rain awaiting our guide. A long ten minutes later we're rounded up by the gortex-clad Martin and Lorena and shuffled though town for briefing. At this stage, under the gloomy sky, I'm sure more than one of the 8 of us secretly hoped the trip might be cancelled so we could spend two days in a warm bar drinking Chocolate Caliente by a blazing fire.

Lorena hands us a medical questionnaire (read: liability form) and our packed lunches and we are told a check list of things we should have. Sunglasses, waterproof, suncream, gloves and so forth. I've heard here also the weather also likes to deliver a randomly selected part of all four seasons in a single day - a Patgonian theme. I'm just hoping my grandmothers' leather driving gloves won't let me down. Also, the night previous I also accidently cut my big toe nail painfully short and hope I don't have to amputate.

The questionnaire asks: ''Are you on a diet? Do you need it?'' Oh how we chuckled.

This is the SUPERTREK! The red cape and spandex wearing trek! The Superted of treks! The Supercalafragalistic trek. A two-day trek extravaganza bigged up by the LP & Footprint guides (''highly recommended!''); promising panoramic vistas, a rope bridge river crossing, ice treking and ice climbing, with ropes and manly ICE AXES!! And this is (borderline) luxurious treking! Tents, sleepingbags and hot meals await us and all we have to carry is our lunch... and 7 kilos of photographic equipment.

Without as much time as to introduce ourselves, we're stomping out of town, into the drizzle under a thick bank of cloud. We climb steeply, at an impressive and unrelenting pace up rugged hillside. The old heart ticks over double-time and reminds me where it lives. Apparently, there's an early steep part of the Inca Trail called 'Dead woman's pass', and it seems a bit of training is in order. No respectable male would want 'died on dead woman's pass' on his headstone.

Mist floats about in clearly glacial U-shaped valleys, over trees painted with the first strokes of Autumn. Apparently on a clear day the Fitz Roy would be right in view, up the valley flexing his rock hard muscles. Mr Thrustle, my A-level Geography teacher, would shit his pants here with all this terminal moraine, drumlin action and truncated spur stuff.

Out of breath we start to get to know one other, exchanging tales of Argentinian airline incompetence and stopping sporadically for rainswept photos. Over the crest we pull into a mini campsite marquee for shelter and lunch. Mini cornish pasties, fruit and triple-stacked chocolate-covered biscuits. Choice. Apart from the fruit. So far we'd only seen one season. Winter. Possibly, with a literal splash of April showers.

Back on the trail we plod on, through marsh, scrub and a forest graveyard. It seems this new soil lets trees grow real tall, but only in shallow soil, so the harsh winds just bowl them over. 20% of the trees are white and dead and a good 50% lie on their sides, but yet they keep trying. Silly old trees.

We stroll round varous reedy lakes, all the while being told the hidden location of the mighty Fitz Roy, where occasionally the cloud is blown aside to reveal a fat snowy base. It's cold, in the mid one digits, and a bitter wind whips our cheeks red. My kingdom for a hot cuppa tea... and a sherpa to carry my hefty lenses.

We finally roll into base camp, are fitted for crampons and shown our tents. We cower from the weather in a communal tent over powdered coffee. The excellently named Aussy, Joe Cocco, keeps quoting the Footprint guide: ''Highly recommended'' with more than a trace of irony. His lady, Christian, gelled up with Deep Heat to counter the cold. 'Get the gell on!' became the catchphrase. There's nothing like a bit of adversity to bring a group together. We share a warm meal (still in gloves), good banter and join over a few games of candle-lit 'Tuti-fruti', in which Christoph the witty German (with a bizarre Germanic-Anglo-Irish accent) makes up cheaty German words.

We realise all our decks of cards are back at the hostel, toy with the idea of chopping napkins into 52 handwritten cards, but end up opting to hit the four-seasons sleepingbags for an early start the following day. In the dark I search using mobile phone screen-light for the (apparently) brown-roofed toilet, and sincerely hope I didn't pinch a loaf in the green-roofed store cupboard.

Tonight the temperature is in the low one digits, but factoring in wind chill, it is likely to feel like minus 3 C. Under the patter of the rain I settle into a chilly, lumpy bedbag in combat trousers & T-shirt. I optimistically think to myself that the weather will rain itself out tonight and today's viewless day'll be rendered irrelevant after climbing sheer walls of ice with MAN AXES!


Barnstaple

Contingencies

When I went to collect the bus ticket from the ticket booking place it turned out they hadn't booked them. For all Argentina's strengths, one thing one learns here is that you can plan a logical doable route from A to D, via B & C, and somewhere along the way an Argentinean ticket agency will cock everything reet up. Bus companies cancel your booked bus with no reason, domestic flights traditionally leave late (and sometimes, I've heard, hours early) and other times the tickets given are just wrong. Today though, the ticket agency just straight hadn't booked the bus. And it was now full.

Yey.

You've got to keep contingency plans up the old sleveses. It's a factor of travel world-wide, but seemingly more important here than other places I've mosied through. Apparently, one day recently, of five flights leaving Ushuia three were cancelled. So instead of wait a day for the bus V & I book a flight from Ushuia to El Calafatte the same day.

Having thought Lady Luck had other things on, she glanced on and helped us aboard our flight for a punctual departure. Sat in possibly the nosiest tristar ever (engines attatched just behind my window), I reflected on the fact that for an extra 25 of my meaty sterling poundses, I'd turned an evil 20 hour nightbus into a 1 hour flight. There's the silver line. Plus once airborne, and flying the whole journey at low altitude, Valerie and I get to spy the dark Andean giant mountains turn to crazy red and blue lakeland, then to sea, an odd pockmarked moonscape & finally to open brushy desert. Choice.

Two disappointingly dry queso y jamon sangas and a half cup a coke and we're in a shared taxi to El Calafatte town with two randoms. The taxi has the seemingly compulsory cracked windscreen and an amusing old driver keen on laying out the facts in his breast English. 'El Calafatte is equidistant latitude to London, in the South'. No surprise really, it looks pretty similar. Apart from all the desert, the brush & tumbleweed, the ridiculously big sky and huge lake, the 80km/h winds and the town itself, which on first inspection resembles a makeshift refugee camp. It's a 45 minute ride from the airport to the town, and the less-than-busy tourist information sits alone, slap-bang half-way between. Good tinkin. The place is so unforgiving & desolate, thry could just put up an A-board outside saying 'There's nothing to see here'.

The town itself is completely bent on tourism, dressed in rodeo-chic ('faux-dio'?). Wood-fronted restaurant after souvenir shop after restaurant after bar after souvenir shop line one long and overpriced main strip. You want a stuffed penguin? A cowfoot mug? A 12-inch hunting knife? A full horse hide poncho? You got it.

Though be warned, although possibly twenty ATM's are dotted along the drag, they are merely for show. You'll have to try at least 5 cajeho automatico's before finding one that dispenses wonga. More often than not they'll have a hand-written sheet of A4 taped over the screen saying 'Out of Order' in Espanol. But when you find one that works, you'll be allowed to withdraw a daily maximum of 50 whole quid in crispy 100 Peso notes. Should you have to buy anything with such a denomination, your shop assistant will deliver a look like you just ate their favourite child. Furthermore, should you try and get smart and, after withdrawing cash, duck inside the bank to break the notes (if the bank is even open) they won't have change. I jest not. It's hill-hairy-arse...

El Calafatte is a spendy one track town, pimping the hell out of a massive great glacier called Perito Moreno. We decide to check that on our way back through in a frew days and sign up with a group of 6 to head a few hours North the following morning to got 'SUPERTREKKING' in El Chalten. Before dorming down we hit the supermarket for ravioli & tomato goo and settle in with fellow backpackers over cheap plonk. Valerie has got to know me well enough at this stage to take several steps back before I open any tin, sachet or drink.

Right - time to flush this blog! Check the shortness! A mere slip at seven hundred words! It's all about your reading pleasure...

Adios muchachos,


Barnacle

20 degrees go South

As we sink though patchy cloud and are thrown teasing glimpses of the Southern Andes, Sebastian (a random, next to me, in 18A) informs me that the ''Ushuia runway very short. Very difficult.'' He smilingly mimes that I should pray. ''After runway, sea! Splash!!'' As we gently touch down and slam on the reverse thrusters, he mockingly touches the four points and kisses his cross necklace. We laugh & when the doors open bid fare well. Valerie, my Swiss traveling comrade and personal translator, & I disembark to a dramatic smokey mountainous sunset. Buenos Aires, 30 degrees C. Ushuia, officially most southerly city in the world, 10 degrees. 20 degrees have disappeared. I'm the only person in a t-shirt. And it's not too bad (the temperature not the T-shirt). Brisk, but fresh. Jolly English, wot. Bravo. Etc.

Ushuia sits at the bottom of the black snow-capped Patagonian Andes, pushing straight out of the sea. The 'Gateway to Antarctica' bordering a fantastically mountainous national park, skirted by the Beagle Channel (containing sealions and penguins a plenty) and in the winter it becomes a ski resort. It is also 'famous' for its changeable weather, proudly claiming that you can enjoy all four seasons weather in a single day. Sometimes twice over.

My first impression from the taxi is that it looks alot like Switzerland, but with no style. Second impression: this is the end of the world and it's warmer than England. Third impression: the town appears to be ruled by dogs (there may even be more dogs that people) Fouth impression: this place has roundabouts! The first I've seen in all South America. The fourth impression should't have been as exciting as it was.

We settle into a dorm head for grub. Our fellow dormies aren't interested in joining us. It seems Zennon, a shy and retiring fellow after an early night, is infinitely duller that his name would suggest. Later we stomp down the hilly town to a recommended restaurant, an Asado buffet, and sample some bbq'd Patagonian lamb with a full bodied Malbec. A chef behind a hatch aranges full, splayed animals around a log fire and over a charcole griddle. You go up and using the international language of pointing, he hacks off and sends you a wedge of succulent, smokey meat roughly the size you'd share with a nuclear family on a Sunday back home. After't bufit I sleep like a full & tired log, irrespective of feeling each and every plank in through the ropey matress.

Originally one of Spain's penal colonies (hands up if you'd prefer to be sent to Australia?) after tut Europeans took over. Sadly when they wandered in, their gift to the underdressed, long-armed Yamana indians was measles, pneumonia and TB. 50 years later the 1000-strong tribe were down to 45. These days the ancient prison makes for a fascinating museum, with info on the prison, local maritime history and crazy local fauna.

All of a sudden we realise we're late for the Beagle Chanel catamarang tour we booked yesterday, so we dash, are given the tickets and hop aboard, seating with a sigh of relief as we cast off. An elderly Argentinian lady (that more than reminded me of my late Nana) informs us we're on the 2 hour non-penguin tour, not the 6 hour penguin tour after all. Pretty gutted and too late to turn back, we settle into the short tour and see a lighthouse, a load of cormorants wot look a bit like penguins but ain't and some impressive sealions that looked a resemble Barry White, my mate Rich Marsh and everything in between. (Fortunately, the cruise company realised their mistake with tickets and we got a free penguin cruise later that week and a free hot chocolate and some vouchers for a glass of Champers each. Happy days...)

Did you know the lucky 300kg Bull Sealion has up to 10 wives? Well you do now. Every day's a school day folks.

The next day we took a national park trek and canoe trip with Ash, a young Brit doctor, and and 4 Argeys. The uninhabited coastal forest was very Lord of the Rings, and I kept expecting a stack of Urukhai to scream past. Our guide, the spitting image of Jude Law (see photo when I get it up, it's uncanny), pointed out crazy trees allergic to mushrooms, how to get your vitamin C off tut land (for when you run out of vitamin pills) and which eidble leaves taste of Salami.

The canadian canoe paddle was ridiculously tranquil. The only people on the still lake, we splashed past big geese and birds under clear blue sunny skies and surrounded by a crystal clear mountain panorama. Apparently, Ushuia only has 10 still, sunny days per year, and it seemed the three we were there were some of them.

Lady luck smiles on again. She and I have got on well thus far.

In other news: My spanish is coming along a little. Today I discovered that tired (cansada) and married (casada) are ironically similar. Arf arf. Forgive the cynicism.

Asta luego amigos,


Barns

BA in BA, foo

My dorm in Hostel Inn Buenos Aires was branded the 'Party Room'. Not really cos it was where the party was at (on the contrary it was dingy and smelt of socks) but because it was immediately adjacent to where the nightly party happened. Restocked daily by the three cheerful 18 year-olds who seemed to run the place, the hostel beer fridge was drunk dry nightly. Backpackers fall into the local habit of getting some meat in, seeing a cover band and/or putting a few litre bottles of Quilmes cervesa away and then after midnight getting dressed up to head out on the town to play.

Between 5 and 9am they fall back in to the hostel, settle down outside my door and noisily empty the fridge of booze, generally accompanied by an unskilled guitarist. For the duration of my stay there were four nocturnal Irish ladies who'd come in daily from a solid night on the sauce at 9am for the free breakfast then hit the fart sack until the following evening, when they'd do exactly the same. Not the most cultural experience, but hey. While they are reinforcing the Irish stereotype, to be sure, there are indeed different courses for different horses. And being in Argentina's capital continually getting pissed ain't the worst course going.

Now while 'If you can't beat them, bite them' is a perfectly sound policy I chose to join them. I generally hooked up with all sorts of fine folk for drinks in squares, drinks in bars, and drinks in hostels. One night we even managed to round up a table of 25 for a 6 course T-bone & vino tinto extravaganza downtown followed by a mass exodus to a square for late night outdoor drinking (all good when it's 20+ degrees C at 2am) and nipple flashing (from Canadian men anyways).

For me though, one of the best evenings in BA was lounging on hostel beanbags with a crew of random travellers. Two most excellent Canadians, a linguistically flamboyant French chica, an attractive (if vacuous) Kiwi and a San Fran Yank. We sat around chugging on dubious Isenbeck beers (punctuated by compulsory shots of Scotch from Forest and Karsten, the Canadians) and exchanged animated and inflated travel tales. Forest and Karsten had impressively travelled overland all the way from Vancouver Island to BA, with many an entertaining anecdote en route. The deceptively mild-mannered looking French lady had got up to all sorts of mentalism, aboard full hammock laden amazonian local boats and camping with Bolivian families when her bus got rained in. And pretty much everyone, including San Fran Jack, seemed to have fallen big time for Nicaragua. Put it on your places to see list peeps.

Buenos Aires, 'the Latin Paris' is a funny old place. A massive city with a European café culture feel, filled with squares, markets and hidden bars and eateries. I found it surprisingly easy to get run down by 'professional' dog walkers, dragging along eight dogs (complete with a small dog literally skidding along behind, leaving a trail of poo). There always feels like there's something cool to do. So even if you're only there to book a ticket out it draws you in. Anyone staying a two days ends up staying a week; a week becomes two and folk staying for a month 'to learn Spanish' (read: get wrecked lots) may as well get an apartment.

I decided, less by choice and more by the noise of the free breakfast being served outside my door at 9am, to burn the candle at both ends. And why not, by day BA is a fantastic city, embracing both the new and the old, optimistically emerged from a politically turbulent history with plenty to offer. Absolutely potty about footy and so vainly bent on looking good that apparently one in ten adolescent girls suffer from an eating disorder.

From the crumbling colonial grandeur of San Telmo & colourful exuberance of La Boca, to the 19th Century European downtown and flashy harbour development round Puerto Madero, there's a buzz in the air. They love to eat and drink here. The range of tasty Argey wines is wide (though the star is the Mendozan Malbecs), the Quilmes goes down smoothly and champs is cheap. Empenadas make for excellent mini pasty snacks, cheese and ham sarnies are served without crusts and pretty much all other snacks and deserts contain super sweet dolche de leche (boiled condensed milk).

Locals of all ages pull on ornate omnipresent mate cups (local herbal tea cups with a metal straw) irrespective of being on a bus, sat on a street corner or operating heavy machinery. The Portenos (resident Buenos Airians) love that stuff so much (mainly cos it's more addictive than caffeine) that they carry full thermos flasks and massive bags of Yerba Matte everywhere they go. That's a lot of love for the brew.

But in BA it's all about meat. It's the wrong place to be veggie. The smell of BBQing meat wafts from Parrilladas and Cantinas. Asado's have whole lambs and chickens splayed round smoky log fires. Sirloin and rump steaks are cut clearly too big for one and pretty much however you ask for it, it's served bloody. Every bit of the cow is used. A Swiss girl, Valerie and I shared a Parillada Brochettes for lunch one day: a veritable meat injection, featuring some seriously suspect cuts of meat. The chorizo sausage and ribs were great, but the black pudding contained hot runny blood and fatty chunks, the sliced lumpy kidneys were strangely crunchy and the intestines filled will with tripe were just wrong. I'll try anything once, twice if it's nice, but no more ranky mixed grills for me, ta. Praise the guy in the sky for the free bread!

However, bitter stimulants and protein-heavy meals aside, all play and no sleep makes Jack a tired boy. So when I finally board the night train to nod each night my subconscious has been up to most strange things. One night I apparently engaged in a most entertaining bout of sleeptalking. Actually, I'm informed by amused dormies that it was more 'sleep negotiation', as for some time I tried to negotiate a character of my dreams down to $20 cos it clearly wasn't white. Or something. I had a sleep sneezing show on one night, but another evening, less to the dormsters amusement, I took to snoring in a big way. 'Like a man possessed' I'm told. I only remember once, but apparently I was shaken awake several times only to promptly return to a deep contented rumbling snore.

Generally I hate that guy, but when he's you what can you do?

So from Buenos Aires, the city with the most unnecessarily high doorways in the world, I bid thees to fare well,

Barns

City of Angels

Some call Buenos Aires the 'City of Angels' because of the sheer quantity of carved angels in the Cementario De La Recoleta. One of BA's primo tourist attractions, in one of the cities spendiest neighbourhoods, sits this Cementario necropolis (not a cement factory), a walled mini-city for the dead. Everyone who either minted or of significant Argentinean importance has a hugely expensive, ornate sarcophagi here.

After stomping a good few K round 20ft high walls looking for the entrada, I passed under a grand Romanesque pillared entrance into streets of lofty marble-fronted grave-houses. Ornately hewn in various exotic marbles and stone, these houses highlight local persons historic or financial status in life, before their clogs got popped.

Mainly designed in fanciful art nouveaux, there are clean art deco enclaves and minimalist contemporary graves. But Angels are the theme. The more the better. Watching over the deed, possibly for protection or to lend directions to heaven. The other theme here is 'my grave's better than your grave'. Some are 50 feet high, with big ol' domes and spires and ting. It's kind of an old-school version of 'Pimp my Catacomb'. When the posh die here, they go to town.

The weird thing is that these death sheds have room inside for several musty family coffins, which generally sit in full view behind dusty windows, gathering cobwebs while the body inside is reduced to dust. Back home in Blightly buried bodies become food for worms, out of sight and underground. The person beneath becomes abstracted into a headstone. You can't exactly visit a coffin a decade later. So I personally found it conceptually odd, leaving granny and great granddad on a shelf. But there we are.

The other reason Buena Aires is a City of Angels is cos I met one. Martin was his name - a fine name for an Angel. Technically I met him in Brazil, but he's from BA. If you remember, I idiotically came travelling laden with lashings of camera equipment and sans charger. While I'd stretched my three batteries up the Brazilian coast, they died in Salvador. 'Boo' thought B. A photographic 'business trip' without a working camera might be frowned upon by the upstanding folk at Inland Revenue.

So back in Salvador, dancing up a Pelourinho Carnaval street I spotted a gent with the same camera as me, so I jumped him. It turned out he was staying at our friends hostel. A fine coincidence. He became my battery charger and friend in need. After accompanying our gang for a few days he laid down his email address and said to look him up in BA. So I did.

Coincidence numero dos: My main camera lens decided on day one at the Igassu falls, of all places, to pack in. So I had restricted usage until BA, where I hoped to get it mended. Once I'd emailed Senor Martin he informed me that the following day he was going to collect a lens he'd had repaired in town. How jolly convenient! So we met at the Subte station, dropped in my lens (With M on hand to translate the diagnosis) & then he showed me about town. Like a pair of tourists we checked out the pink palace where Juan Peron stood & Evita sang, saw the oldest building in town and took hot chocolate and churros at the Cadillac of BA cafe's, Café Tortoni.

Martin is a legend, and we talk Argentinean history, what it's like to live here and about man stuff. Martin got to practice his English and laugh at (and make attempts at improving) my pathetic Espanol. I believe he thinks it's a wonder I got so far with so little, and without having been ripped off or robbed. Sometimes I wonder the same. When we met he hadn't been back long from his own travels, and was sporting an impressive beard. He says his head's still running on 110v, not the Argey 220V. A nice way to describe a feeling I've known before.

Later, after putting away Mojitos, Cuba Libres and girly yellow daiquiris with BA's after work city crowd at a funky hidden away Cuban Bar, we stumble to the old Tango quarter, San Telmo, for a midnight dinner. Things are done late in BA. People get in from work, have a nap and get ready for dinner at 23:30, then hit the clubs at 2am. We enjoyed a large Picada platter (containing cold meats, olives, country bread, home-made crisps and other fun picky grub - including tongue, but sadly they were out of sliced horse) and washed down the best gooey chorizo tortilla I've ever tasted with a bottle of frio Torrontes. All for under a fiver. Though later, all this late drinking & dining delivered an impressively painful calf cramp several hours into a mid-summer night's dream.

That weekend Martin invited me to an Asado BBQ with his mates and another night we went out for fat bife steaks, bovine spit glands (great with a squeeze of lemon) and warm oaky Cab Sav. As my man Zesh'd say, '...it's all about getting involved' - in this case with Buenos Aires and an Argey angel. I've not come this far to get pissed with Brits at some generic hostel bar. I wanna get pissed with (preferably English-speaking) locals! Martin was a star, even taking a cd of my digital photos to upload to my site. After dinner we hit Gibraltar, an Irishy San Telmo bar for good craic and good chat and some dubious local spirit called Fernet. Avoid it, it is rather foul.

I dunno if angels exist, or if people are conveniently positioned by a higher power. I like the idea of coincidence, and actively digging it out, but I don't believe in fate. I am happiest thinking I'm the architect of my destiny (though it can seem otherwise when leaving the organisation of travel tickets in the hands of Argentineans). Martin didn't seem to think he was an angel, but he probably didn't want to blow his cover. I'd like to think Martin has disappeared now, back to heaven to get his next assignment, but email contact has suggest otherwise. Perhaps he's emailing from atop a cloud somewhere, back in the wings and halo getup.

Barns

Collecting Stamps

After a linguistically challenging checkout, I figure out I get a free breakfast. So I sit, hand in my voucher and wait. Free breakfasts are a game of Russian Roulette, but this time the chamber's empty and I get croissants, passably jammy jam, coffee and OJ. Then I make the 25 minute return stomp to where I was ejected (fortunately not in a Jesuit sense) from the bus a day previous.

Pretty much as soon as I drop my pack a bus screams up, I'm bundled on, and heading to Posadas on the most local bus you'll ever see. Destined for the scrapheap a decade ago, it's a testament to local 'maintenance'. It's a bit chewy on the gears, you can see through the floor in places and smells like a steam engine, but she still rolls. The driver sits in a strapped down garden chair behind a badly cracked windscreen, reinforced with coins superglued to either side. The drivers glove box was tied shut and tape player taped in. Open windows create a hairdryer version of AC. I'm the only white on the bus and curtains billow and whip my face until I spot window seaters holding them down and follow suit. Double seats, covered in sticky green pleather with chewed armrests, are generally for three and the isle is packed. A clearly agoraphobic 14 year old squeezes through collecting fares. I love it. Culture ain't that shocking, it's fascinating.

From Posadas I mumble enough Spanish words to get aboard the bus to Encarnacion in Paraguay. On the nationally joining bridge I stamp out of Argey (why are the best stamps so badly applied? You could hardly read the thing) and head into Paraguay, reading the LP about Paraguayan Jesuit ruins and the fees incurred when caught at borders without the correct stamps...

It's no surprise when Southern Paraguay appeared much like Northern Argentina - red earth & green grass - but with more horse-pulled carts and car-seat-cover sellers by the roadside. Encarnacion bus depot has an altogether more Asian feel to it than the clean organised Argey Depots I'd thus far seen. Encarnacion buzzes with a throng of money changers, stalls selling battered chicken legs and poor dudes trying to hawk lukecold fanta and pastries to passengers with open bus windows. Lots of atmosphere, lots of holes in the ground and not a tourist in sight. Very travelly (another new word! ©).

I arrange a bus to the Trinidad ruins, dump my rucksack under the bus and wait. And wait. Here they reinforce the Asian theme with their bus filling method too. We leave not to a schedule, or even when it's full, but when it's REAL full. Then we finally set off, a scrum in a can, and stop every 100m & crush in more people. I'm even lucky enough to sit next to the screaming baby. For a moment the baby takes an interest in me and I pull the standard smiley baby faces. Mother looks over to see why her nippers ceased booing. She can only be 22. I pass her a 'Your baby is cute' smile and she throws a 'No, I think you'll find it's a pain in the arse' expression. Actually, when the tot gets bored of me and resumes the wailing, I see what she means.

Once I get droped off at Trinidad around midday I realise, to my elation, that I hadn't seen another tourist for a full half day. I soon convince myself I'm beating new paths, forging routes off the worn LP trail and on the way to the ruins I bump into two cheerful Polish fellows carrying 'The Book'. I pay my several thousand Paraguayan Guarani and wander into the Jesuit ruins. Inside I'm alone. How lyrical.

Paraguayan money is funny. 5 quid gets you 20,000 Guaranies. I had to learn the words for 'thousand'. The problem is, the money is knackered. It all looks like someone swam with it, fed it through their dog and selotaped it back together. I didn't sniff it, cos it looked unwise to do so. One deep sniff and you could pass out and wake up robbed blind on some roadside with a new walk.

Anyhows after the impressive ruins Of Trinidad, I shared a most beat-up taxi (impressively, there was nothing inside that didn't rattle) with a bunch of locals 20km down an almost unpaved road to the ruins of 'Da Jesus'! These ruins were half complete when the Spanish asked the Jesuits to push, so it's still half finished and looks pretty sweet. I was alone again, adding to the mad historical atmosphere and stretching to imagine the Jesuits and indians building the place. It also crossed my mind how much this part of the world looked the spitting image of Norfolk.

Fast forward, through various nefarious buses, to 9pm standing at passport control on my 16-hour nightbus from Encarnacion to Buenos Aires. While my fellow passengers and I wait in the long queue for Paraguay exit stamps, nature gives us a fantastic silent lightening storm to watch, turning the blackness into bolts through electric purple clouds. When I hand over my passport, the border cop flicks through for the entry stamp. Then does the same again. And once more for good measure.

'No entrada!?' he asks, evidently relishing his position. 'No, I got my stamp this morning' I say pointing to the faded stamp I genuinely believed was the Paraguay entry stamp. 'No. Argentinian exit stamp. No Paraguay entry! 50 dollar fine.' 'Shit' I simultaneously said and thought. '50 dollars!' I play poor. I resent paying idiot tax. 'No dollars'. They mumble together, quite a crowd growing on both sides of the glass. 'All money!' I've just bought the bus ticket with my very last local monies. So I pull out my wallet open it up and show the contents. 1000 Guarani. The equivalent of 10p back home. And to add insult to injury, it is an especially battered note I'd decided to keep for comedy value. A poor choice of note for a bribe. They laugh heartily. After further muttering they pass me back my passport and send me on my way. As I count my blessings I realise they never stamped me in or out. I was there illegally! A naughty immigrant for a day. Hardcore. I think I might frame that scratty 1000 note when I get home.

Just don't tell them about the hundred bucks in my moneybelt...

Barn

On a Mission

'Do not sniff' would be a wise turn of phrase to add to my flailing Spanish lexicon, I thought as I sheepisly handed in my dirty washing in at the lavandaria. I pay the pound twenty to breath life back to my dusty combats and mission into town to raise supplies for tomorrow's 0630 bus trip to the Jesuit Ruins of San Ignacio. Lemon biscuits, chocolate milk and pizza doritos - a nutritious breakfast for one - and a litre and a half of Chablis for tonight. Good call. I love this place.

After an evening of wine, queso pasta, tall traveler tales and many games of Table Tennis (where I more than admirably represent England, defeating Sweden and Israel, but being destroyed by Holland) I hit the hay. I spend a few hours turning my immaculately laid bed into a ball of sheets at the foot of my bed and before I know it I am up again, quietly packing away my bundle of clean laundry joy.

After toweling down with my bedsheet (no-one likes to pack a wet towel) I realise I itch all over. A squadron of bed bugs and Mozzies must be kicking back nearby, feet up & bellies full, celebrating a successful mission. Packed up, I pass the respective hobos en route to the Terminal De Omnibus and watch the night fade and full moon sink beneath broken teal clouds. The last thing I desire at 6am is biscuits, chocolate or crisps. Perhaps not such a good call.

After a 4 hour, 4 sterling bus journey, I'm chucked off on the side of an earthy road in San Ignacio, still in the Missiones Province. The driver points down a long dusty street, says 'San Ignacio, chao!' and tears off in a dusty cloud. Rather bemused I stroll on, 18kgs on my back, 8 on my front, through the red dirt and baking midday sun in search of 'Libre dormis'. After a good few circles and laps I find a place with dorms, by total coincidence, bang in front of the ruins. Lady luck, you treat me real good.

So, a bit of (in my opinion) fascinating history... THE JESUITS: COLONISTS WITH A CONSCIENCE!

Back along, in 1607, the Priests of The Society of Jesus pulled into South America on a mission to evangelise to the native Guarani Indian tribes. They'd had a word with the King of Spain and were granted a chunky region of northern Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia & Paraguay in exchange for regular tributes. They proved rather successful in colonising the area, creating over 30 intricately carved red-stone cities containing up to 5000 indians in each. In a massive contrast to the Spanish / Portuguese 'slave and pillage' colonial managerial style, they adopted a more paternalistic, benevolent governmental method. The Jesuits brought 'civilisation' to the jungle tribes, with stone houses and education for all as well as protection from marauding slave hunters.

Male and female Indians were given defined roles to do during a short working day. Women made food, art and clothes. Men learned carpentry, bookmaking and leather tanning. All received spiritual instruction, education and were allowed to embark on commercial endeavors. The promising even received a classical education. All this in exchange for manual labour and half-baked Catholic devotion.

After a short time the natives became a literate tribe with a defined European influenced architectural style (known as Guarani-Baroque). The sympathetic Jesuits both learned from and used the Guarani and became rich and powerful, with control and trade throughout a large area of Northern South America. Mission complexes followed a set layout, with a large main square, a massive central church, ornate living quarters, hospitals, schools and homes for the widowed. The became larger, more powerful and more fanciful, with an army of Indians to boot. So all of a sudden the Spanish Crown sat up and looked over with a furrowed brow. Hmmm, they thought, 'Not sure about this shit...'

So in 1767, 160 years after their arrival, the Spanish Crown 'expelled' the Jesuits. As though they'd lit a paper aeroplane and thrown it at the teacher.

Expelled meant sending their armies in to kill anything Jesuit and Indian. It seems the Jesuits (used to the odd scuffle from marauders and angry cannibalistic Tribesfolk not down with 'civilisation') and the fierce Guarani warriors put up a reasonably admirable fight. But the Spanish had swords, guns and big cannons. Quite the match for bows and arrows. Even Legolas would've struggled.

Hence the ruins.

Some Jesuits escaped to the North and hid in Brazil, and while Jesuits still fully exist today, that was the end of the Jesuit missions. While the Spanish Crown was making plenty of cash from the creative Jesuits, they feared the power they'd accrued through humanitarian and sympathetic means. Apart from the national tithes, they didn't appear to take from the country for The Crown, they built cities for the Lord and the Indians. Who knows if the Priests became corrupted and lavishly rich, but the stories speak of fatherly Priests who built fantastic churches in celebration of Catholicism. They were one of the only colonists I've heard of who didn't take natural resources and slaves, and actually learned from the locals, integrating their native language and skills into the colonisation.

Crazy stuff eh?

That evening after San Ignacio, watching an amazing stormy sunset over the ruins chewing on dry lemon biscuits from my empty dorm balcony, I reflected on the madness of history and power. I just wish the Spanish didn't have cannons. Cos while attractively overgrown, the ruins are in pretty bad shape. I suppose to stop escapees returning. But strolling around the San Ignacio ruins in Argentina, and the Paraguian ruins of Jesus and Trinidad, I got the same feeling as wandering round Kirkstall or Bolton Abbey in England, and felt an urge to write a strongly worded letter...

”Dear Henry the 8th and the Spanish Crown. Ok, you're pissed off cos they're the 'wrong' religion or they've gotten legitimately powerful, but if you're gonna engage in a spot of genocide please leave their awesome buildings in good nick for me to look at in 400 years. May I suggest keeping the buildings as they were, but turn them into a supermarket or knocking shop or summut, to rub it in. Just don't reduce them to rubble. Otherwise I'll have to employ my imagination in years to come, and that ain't what it was. You see we in the future don't need imaginations when we 'grow up'. Cheers dudes. Barnaby Aldrick, aged 27.”

For more information on the Jesuit story, consult the excellent movie 'The Mission' staring Robert Denero & Liam Neeson as Jesuit Priests, missioning round the Igassu Falls. Not only is it a great watch, but it also has a badass soundtrack.

Adios amigos,


Barns
Beard: Apart from on large baldy patche, beneath my chin is passably beard-like. The rest is still rubbish.

Igassu Falls: The A Side

I pack up singing ''I am the gadget man / I come from far away / What can I play? / I can play with gadgets / Boompah dee boompah boom pah pah...'' and so forth, much to the distaste of my sleeping dormies. It's 0715 and I'm off to Argentina today! Yey! Fat juicy steaks, fine wine, tasty coffee, fat juicy steaks - bring it all on. Specially the steaks. I can more than merrily kiss Brazil's entirely mediocre rice, beans and salty meat goodbye.

Today I'm on an organised border cross, day at the Argey side of the Igassu Falls and a lift to my hostel gig. For a frantic few minutes before we leaving I thought I'd lost my bag of credit cards & dollars. A whiteningly scary thought being stranded without access to the greenbacks. Might have been donning the marigolds for my last 2 months to raise the bus fair to Rio. Turns out I hid the cards from myself down the back of my main pack and sigh with relief as I find em. Oh what fun one can have with no short-term memory.

As our old skip of a bus pulls up onto the bridge that divides Brazil & Argentina, the burly excentric driver stops singing 'Yellow Submarine' to himself, pulls to a halt, turns to us and in his best Engrish says 'Goodbye Brazil!' We wave off Brazil and he sets off again only to stop about two feet later. He turns to us again and deadpan, says 'Hello Argentina!' He pulls out and ties up two giant Argentina and Boca Juniors flags and sets off again, honking his horn and waving his Boca flag at any other vehicle, pedestrian and policeman. Everyone cheerfully returns his waves with a thumbs up.

Yey - a new stamp! Put your hands up if you get pissed off when you get an new, exotic stamp that's all washed out and undecipheable. Join me. Hands up if you also hate having a cool, clensing shower and being dripping with sweat 15 minutes later. Keep your hands up in you hate having some stranger pinch your towel off the washing line early in the morning and finding it wet with some mans wet crack shower juice. Leave your hands up if you smell of wee. Got you.

Igassu is the 3rd largest falls in't world. But like Rocky Balboa, while it ain't the tallest or the biggest, it's clearly the best (COME ON ROCKO!). Each side offers a different perspective on this mind stretching watery phenomenon. The Brazil side has infinite panoramical possibilities (or tight as close ups if you've got my 'big gun' paparazzi lens) and a crazy walkway up to the edge of the falls. The Argey side is all about close ups, with endless catwalks above and below the falls, getting one close enough to soak and render useless any electrical equipment on your person. Waves of tourbusses pile en masse along the narrow pathways, making it a bit agey bargey, but it's hard to take your eyes off the falls. Unless you're looking at the crazy butterflies that land on peeps to drink their salty sweat. It's butterflytastic (New word: ©). Being a sweatbox I end up covered in the badboys.

The electric blue butterflies that flutter by apparently turn that colour when they have five days to find a mate, chat em up & get it on, before they pop their colourful clogs. Tell you what, if I were on that kind of time frame I wouldn't waste my time drinking an englishmans sweat. One giant browny-orange butterfly the size of a small bird 'befriends' me for a good half hour on the stomp over to the giant 'Devils Throat' falls. I call her Mary (check the photosof her when I get round to putting em up). It was a wonderful relationship while it lasted. She hungrily gobbled up my bodily fluids, looked great to passers by and then pissed off when she'd had her fill. Much akin, I assume, to dating a model. I felt used. But in a good way. I can't put my finger on it, but there's something about Mary.

On the fairly lengthable (also ©) catwalk stomp out to the Devils Throat, the major mistmaker at the start of the falls, I pass a knackered bit of runway off to the side. There's a sign saying 'catwalk destoyed by a flood in 1993'. The old catwalk and the one I'm walking on look surprisingly similar. It seems Argentina and Brazil have more in common than they like to think. Health and safety being one.

While the superior and inferior trails are amazing for seeing the falls up close, The Devils Throat is the moneyshot. Depending on the wind direction, the mist created by the volumous (© ?), thundering falls can be like being caught in a monsoon storm. Spending a while watching the pulsing waves drop over the edge actually tires the motor neurons in your eyes, so that the next thing you look at appears to float upwards. Fortunately the wind is in my favour and I crack off a few storming photos looking down the misty backlit valley.

You cats have got to put this place on your 'places to visit one day' list. Seriously. Photos can't fit it all in. It takes the pisscuit. The surrounding forest harbours crocs, toucans, kidnapping jaguars, poisonous inch-long tiger ants, giddy monkeys and a feck load of butterflies. But you ony really see the butterflieses. Plus, for a whopping 15 quid, you can have the honour of having some fella with a speed boat drive you fully under a big old waterfall.

After all this overheated excitement I get dropped at my argey hostel, complete with the standard issue puppy learning to anklebite, meet a witty brit called Dave and head to a reccomended eatery for some cow. First impressions are that this digs is above our station (folded linen, free bread and multiple wine glasses laid up rig), but hey - screw it. My medium-rare 'Bife de Chorizo' (not the spanish sausage, a local name for a bovine cut as big as a guinea pig) is as fantastic as I'd hoped. Veggies must have nightmares about smaller steaks. And Black pepper... oh how I've missed you. Je t'aime le poivre. Brazilian's are strangers to the stuff, instead doubling up on salt. Ugh. Peppery steak, fries, half bottle of Chablis and good company, all in, for under seven quid each.

I might just get used to this...


Barns
MJ: 'I am the music man'
Beard: Close to an embarrassing abortion, but persevering. Fortunately no photgraphic evidence exists yet

Igassu Falls: The B Side

Two waters, a coke, a figgy biscuit and a bit of a snooze and all of a sudden we're flying over the Igassu Falls, preparing to land on the Brazilian side. Even from high in the sky you can take the magnitude of the falls, churning that wide chocolate river of into frothy mist. Ain't gravity brilliant?

The airport tourist info geezer couldn't have been more helpful and before I know it I'm on a bus bounding down red roads, past lush cow filled fields to hostel Paldimar, a pack mule in need of a shower. The hostel is more an 18-30s resort than a hostel - set in a lush oasis filled with green grass, hedges & yellow flowers - The opposite of Salvador. The place isn't short on facilities either; there's a swimming pool, pool table, table tennis, basketball court, joggin area & footie pitch. There's a TV room complete with shady pirate movies, free tinterweb access, free breaky buffet and lockers to ferret away your gadgets. In the clean 'mozzy proof' dorms are bunks and a wall mounted fan larger than you'd see on the front of most carribean planes. Plus, at night they have the largest toads I've ever seen, slapping about in the dark waiting to get stepped on. A quality place indeedy.

When the bell goes I jump on the dinner buffet, along with the rest of the hostel guests, like a pack of slavering Pavlovian canines. I have a few beers by the pool with an amusing pwopper saaavan english couple, Si & Morena, and hit the haystack early doors. Turns out the rooms ain't mozzy proof, they do like my blood here and this is the only place I'm visiting that might have malaria. Should probably have got those pills... Either that or look up the symptoms on google.

The next morning I wake on a bare mattress to find all my sheets in a ball by my feet. I shower up, grab the camera rig (now complete with charger from home) and jump on the bus to the falls. The saaavners are along for the ride too, on a tour that later includes a boat ride under the falls.

Once inside the falls the first thing I do is step on a butterfly. Nicely done. There are millions of em around the falls, and over 400 species. One of the fools flew into my mouth. You'd think evolution would have trimmed these guys years back. Apparently one species of butterfly here is poisonous. Feck knows which. Hopefully not the one in my mouth. And I can't imagine it's malicious. Ever seen the documentary: 'When butterflies attack!'? Me either. Cos they don't. I hope.

So - The falls! I could go on about them, as they are one of the most mental beautiful natural sights I've ever seen, but I'll try not to waffle on. But you should all put these falls on your places to see before you cark it list. The National Park is a bit like the log flume at Alton Towers, on drugs, and crossed with Jurassic Park (sans monsters). It's a massive jungle park, with free buses and loads of trails that offer panoramic vistas and up close views from the Brazilian side. Today was the day my wide angle zoom lens decided to play up, but even that didn't detract from the breathtaking spectacle. The falls are incredible, thundering away across the landscape, pretty much as far as you can see.

A whole day was spent a wandering under blue skies in perfect sunshine. I met a fellow shutterbug called Trey from the US when photographing a huge spider. Together with our spendy camera toys we burnt through memory snapping everything we could see while exchanging witty banter along the way. Always nice to meet a smart goatee'd Texan surfer slash professional hacker. He joined the Southeners and I on the boat trip and we ragged up the river to the 'devils throat' and got gang raped by a waterfall. After an excellent day out, Dr Trey joined us for dinner, caipirinias and table tennis.

While I'd managed to spot a distant wild tucan on a tree at the falls, the following day El Trey Guevara an I went to blitz off a few more digital rolls in the bird park outside Igassu. Crazy colourful parrots and every strain of toucans were loose amongst crocodiles, anacondas and humming birds. We passed hours using our big guns to capture all sorts of sweet close-ups of mad stuff. On the way out I got to hold a python and a massive parrot for a cheesy photo. Snakes feel cool. On the bus back I wonder if I can get a toucan for a pet back in Blighty, but suspect the bill would be too large.

Arf arf.


Barnaby 'International master traveller and ignorant linguist' Aldrick

Ramble in The Jungle

The Salvador to Lencois nightbus started well, with me falling asleep in some short-tempered Israeli lady's seat. I didn't know we had seat numbers. It turned out neither did the person sat in my seat. But like a good english gent I simply find another empty seat and park in that, like the israeli chick should've done in the first place.

I awoke more by luck than by the driver letting us know we'd arrived. If you sleep any less light than a feather you can easily awake in some bus station in the deepest Amazon. It was 5am and I stumbled off the bus, in an odd cold sweat. Night bus drivers have zero conceptual understanding of Air Conditioning. At the start of every hot journey they crank up the AC to sub zero max, until someone complains of frostbite, then it is turned off until everyone has sunk back into another sweaty mess. Then the cycle is repeated. I've met travellers who take sleepingbags on Brazilian nightbuses to combat the cold. Weird when you pass temperature displays en route saying it's 25 degrees outside.

I spotted a fella from the hostel I'd prebooked holding a sign with my name on. As it doesn't happen often I do like seeing my name on a board. He got my pack and I got dirty looks from grumpy Israelis & we push on through the empty colourful colonial town. It's deserted but for the occasional stray dogs and the odd street traders setting up stalls.

Lencois, formerly a diamond prospector town, is bang in the middle of the Chapata Diamantia national park, 5 hours west of Salvador in Bahia. It is encircled by lush forest, which when I arrive is swirling with mist as the sun starts to lift. By the time my pack carrier & I make it to the hostel, passing a lady hanging her washing on next doors barbed wire, the sun has backlit the forest in smokey orange. The dusty shaded trees look magic.

After firing off a few digital rolls I duck into my dorm to relax and catch a few mozzy bites. Aparently mozzies avoid peeps with too much alcohol or garlic in their veins. One could argue, why get spendy deet spray when one can piss the same money up the wall, feel happy and be protected? But I decided it's about high time I took at lest a minor detox, and we'll see if these mozzies just flat out don't like my blood. I'm starting to get insecure about not having tasty blood, as I've still pretty much not bin bit yet.

The hostel foolish enough to put me up is the Pousada Dos Duendes, nestled in the quiet backstreets on the edge of Lencois. It could well be the best hostel I've ever stayed in. Good peeps hang there, it's got a giant chessboard, a dopey dog and an inquisitive kitten learning to use it's claws on peoples legs and clothes. It serves cheap, tasty traditional home-cooked grub nightly and a free breakfast with a bizarre selection of fresh fruit, cheese, cake and tuna pizza. 10 hammocks dot about the sociably laid out grounds and a top selection of MP3s play softly to speakers all round (though the Wurzels pop up a bit regularly...) The place was set up by a top chica, Olivia, who's all over the pages of the LP as the person in the know in Lencois. She's sound and her Belgian support staff are equally mellow & efficient. It's the perfect antidote to the carnaval madness. As the Brazilians say when you mention Lencois: Muito tranquilo. Though Lencois internet speeds are of an equally tranquilo bahian speed.

During day one, when not testing the load-bearing capacity of the hammocks, my quality new dutch partner in crime (Johan) and I stomp off into the jungle to find a natural waterslide. Equal measures of immature banter, travel philosophy and business advice is passed about, and I'm again reminded why the dutch are so cool. We're of a kindred mindset (eternally optimistic, cheerful and a bit silly) and I start to think that perhaps I'm a dutchman trapped inside an englishmans body. But then I realise I can only speak one language. It is a prerequisit that to be a proper dutchy you've got to be able to speak a minimum of ten languages fluently.

The following day a group of ten or so fine folk take a day hike slash 4x4 mission to the fumaca falls. We stomp 13km to the falls over yellow mud, lakey swamps, rocks and a marshy terrain that looks supiciously like Wales. We survive on water and salt crackers alone. Oh, and buscuits. And peanut bars. And some yummy freshly pulped frozen fruit juice. And two sandwiches. [All in all, not a bad packed lunch]. The steep uphill start sets my heart a racing and I the last of the Salvador cachassa ended up dampening my shirt. When we reach the top I was temped to play who's got the fastest heartbeat – but that is also known as a game called 'who's the most unfit' and I may just win. On finally reaching the Fumaca falls, a waterfall plummeting 450m out into a ravine, it quite literally took my breath away. Fumaca means 'smoking', and has been so titled because the water falls so far that it ends up evapourating to mist before reaching the ground. To view the falls you have to lie down over a protruding rock ledge, have someone hold your ankles and army crawl forwards. It brings forth all sorts of exciting / terrifying primal insticts about not hanging off cliffs what can real kill you.

A dip in another waterfall en route home, a stop outside a petrol station to take in a firey red sunset over a strange valley and we roll home for a party, thrown by the hosel in celebration of three staff birthdays. Free super strong punch (which tastes of medicine) and stronger still caipirinia are served to all, while the locals dance the 'forhal'. It is a strange sensusous hipshaking scottish country-dancing hybrid, mutated from the colonists and diamond prospectors in the area, who occasionally put on dance 'for all', hence the name. Loads of caipirinia, beer and sticky cake later we're all on and off the floor dancing to the live band and demonstarting to the local contingent just how little natural hipgrooving, leg-shagging rhythm the brits have. The band play funky, cowbell-heavy, 15-minute long tunes which could quite easily be replicated on a dustbin lid, 3 milkbottles and a wheezy accordian. The Brazilian men, clearly in heat, make every effort to jump female flesh. Two of the waterfall ramblers, Belgian Sarah and the excellent Israeli Itay, end up making out so aggressively they look like they are trying to eat each others heads. We finally laugh our asses to the hay after a long and entertaining day.

The next day, in a cachassa fug, I cut my hair with a pair of childrens paper scissors found in reception (see flickr photos for a photo). I louge for another day, evaluating photos and reading bookses, and that night our gange visit one of the many excellent tiny colourful restaurants in town. Excellent international cuisine at a place with 5 tables and the kitchen stove in full view. I had a fabulous coconut chicken curry. Others had Hungarian goulash and Pad Thai. Like a proper traveling snob, I refuse to become a 3 minute supernoodle eating backpacker. That stuff'll make you sterile.

My time in Lencois blurred into a nice comfy, er, blur. I took aimless evening meanders around the streets, wishing I'd carried my camera to photograph the locals perched on doorsteps, hanging their colourful washing on barbed wire, or riding old bikes about the hilly cobbles. Old colourful one-story buildings, in various states of repair, fill the welcoming streets as the low sun throws soft golden evening rays. Arriving back at the hostel I meet a cheerful Itay, wearing his long sleved Argey footy shirt. Brazil & Argentina are arch enemies and wearing a) long sleves in 30 degrees C and b) and argey top in deepest Brazil shows that the man has a full pack of washing to do.

Not long later I find myself becoming late for the night bus, skip the shower, bid new good friends good bye, sling on the pack and clatter through the quaint streets in a bootcamp jog. Locals sat on doorsteps or leaning out of their one-bed windows regard me with bemused 'good evenings'. From open doors waft the ever present bob marley tracks and the smells of good food.

I arrive in the nick of time in an even sweatier mess, wishing I'd been more organised and more showered. Then I sit with a bunch of backpackers in the rain for twenty-five minutes while we wait for the bus. You gotta love Brazilian time.

Until next time y'all. Thanks for reading.

Barns

MJ – PJ & Duncan's 'Lets get ready to Rumble' – though that damn cachassa song was still rolling round in my head.