Buenos Aires - La Boca, Estancia and Football

On Saturday we visited La Boca, one of the poorer areas of Buenos Aires, but beautiful all the same. The home of Boca Juniors football club, La Boca is very bohemian and very colorful.

On Sunday, we were invited to an Estancia (a house in the country) of an Argentinian friend of ours... we sat by the pool, sunbathed, had an asado (lots of grilled meats) and some wine.

Last night we got to see some Argentinian football at last, at the stadium of River Plate. Argentina 1 - Ecuador 0. Not particularly interesting match, and I think Argentina were quite lucky to score, although they deserved the victory.

Tongue Twister

Betty Botta bought a bit o' butter to make some batter, but the bit o' butter Betty Botta bought was bitter, so Betty Botta bought another bit of butter to make the bitter bit o' batter better...

BUT

the bit o butter betty botta bought to make the bitter batter better was bitter

One one was a race horse, two one was one too. One one won one race, two one won one too.

Juice Bar

Had a conversation with Betty, an ozzy I met on the bus from Iguazu to Buenos Aires, about a good business idea, opening a juice bar with tropical fruits imported from Brazil. Could be worth checking out, a decent juice bar could be a good niche to get into, although in Barcelona there's probably quite a lot of competition (Jugolandia). Maybe a real bar with juices could work.

Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires, the most European of South American cities... it almost seems like being back "home", in Madrid. A mere 16 hour journey from Iguazu, the Argentinian buses are definitely an improvement on the Brazilian ones, full reclining seats, blankets, even dinner. On the down side, they hardly stop at all, so getting off to stretch legs and practice capoeria isn't feasible. Leaving Iguazu, we got stopped by the police, who bought on a sniffer dog to check for drugs. I petted it and fed it some positive energy so it didn't bark at me :)

Last night, I met up with several of my new friends here, and ended going out for dinner just myself and 6 girls (this is a new record for me!). Even the eating hours are like Madrid here, we ended up sitting down at the restaurant at about 23:40, after having an aperitif in a wine-bar nearby. We had some tasty argentinian meats, great wines and ended up going on to a club a bit later on. Again, not so different from back home, although the DJ wasn't really up to scratch.

Good things in Argentina

• Pretty girls
• Good wines
• Good meats
• Comfortable buses

Bad things in Argentina (vs. Brazil)

• Breakfasts
• Juices

I am Sam

The soundtrack from the movie I am Sam features 18 beatles songs performed by various artists including Eddie Vedder, Nick Cave and others I can't remember at the moment. Good for bus journeys.

Chico Science & Nacao Zumbi

Chico Science is a Brazilian musician who died in a car accident. I got a two-CD set, CD1 with original material and CD2 with remixes from many well-known DJ's and musicians, including Goldie, Mad Professor & David Byrne. Some of the remixes are spectacular, and have many interesting rhythms like maracatú. Recommended 8/10.

Smoke City - Flying Away

Smoke City is an international group with a female brasilian singer, very sexy voice. She sings in Portuguese (Brazilian variety), English and French, often all within the same song. If I had to put this one in a genre, it would be chill-out, although it has samba and bossa nova undertones.
The album I have deserves a very cool 8/10 from me.

Pipi says "Smoke City dig. The female vocalist is Nina Miranda. The track 'Underwater Love' springs to mind as one of their more famous ones, which was used in the levis advert a few years ago. What's the name of the album you're listening too? What are your faves?"

To which I reply: "Flying Away is the name of the album, Underwater Love is cute, but there are many other good songs on there... Numbers is good, but strange, and Mr. Gorgeous I like very much."

Brazilian Drum & Bass CD

Currently listening to a groovy Brazilian D&B CD with some interesting mixes of genres, including samba, funk, hip-hop, trance. Notable artists include DJ Marky and DJ Patife (excellent version of the samba classic Só Tinha de Ser com Você).

Table Football Queen

In the hostal in Iguazu, met a french girl called Karima who was the best table football player I have had the pleasure to meet. I played her the first night I was there, and got completely trashed. However, I became quite competitive and played many times over the next couple of days. I still didn't manage to beat her, but I did win a caipirinha by scoring 5 goals against her. I also suffered my first table football injury, by pushing my right thumb into the side of the table I managed to get it to bleed under the corner of the nail. Luckily my friends Sarah and Nadia were on hand to offer medical assistance, after a bit of persuasion they got me some antiseptic and put a plaster on me. The game continued after the injury, but I was robbed of the victory.

Ruben, the DJ and barman at the hostal, was also a keen player, and beat me on my second night. We had a rematch just before I left, "first goal wins" as he couldn't take much time off work. He served and I slammed it into the back of the net with the first touch, his players didn't even get to touch the ball. Sweet!

Alaskan Friends

Met Nick and Ivan, a couple of Alaskan musicians on the bus from Rio to Iguazu... both extremely talented. In the evenings at the hostal we sat around listening to them jamming. Some of Nick's songs are very original (Strangers have the best candy, The Belly Button Song, Paperclip & Candy Girl).

Iguaçu Falls

The eternal bus journeys have improved notably since I discovered a wonderful invention called the "Discman", having previously obtained some CDs with new and interesting music. My record without music was 19 hours from Porto Seguro to Río de Janeiro, and that with a "stomach problem" (probably a parasite I picked up drinking river water during the trek in Chapada Diamantina), for which I decided to take an anti-shit pill. Yes, the life of the traveller is full of paradoxes. "Why would you want to do that?", some might ask. But once in a while he encounters a unique moment, for example, lying on a rock overhanging the edge of "Caçoeira Fumaça", the highest freefalling waterfall in Brazil. 400m below, the natural pool in which we had bathed the previous day looked the size of a 10 centavo coin. The water evaporated into a fine mist about halfway down, answering a question we had asked ourselves the day before, is it possible for a waterfall to evaporate into nothing? The 3-day trek along the river Capibara was one of the highlights of my travels in Brazil.

I'm now in Puerto Iguazu, the Argentinian side of the border, defined by the river Iguaçu. The 22 hour bus journey from Río was no sweat, this time with music. The buses here double as cryogenic freezing units. A new friend from Alaska mentioned that it was becoming fashionable to cryogenically freeze pets and family members in some circles. The next step could be to have them frozen in a familiar pose. "Sis, you got your hand in the cookie jar again?", or "Dad, you still in the John?" (For those of you who don't know, John is an American term for bathroom/toilet.

I'm still awestruck by the visit to the waterfalls here yesterday, vast quantities of water falling all over the place, the splash and spray from the bottom bounces up and creates this kind of upside-down rain effect, and the sunlight in the afternoon refracted to create 360º rainbows. Swifts live behind the thick wall of water in the falls, and towards sunset, they come home to roost, kamikaze style, straight through the falls.

Back at the hostal, met a fellow traveller/new friend photographer of mine with whom we discussed whether a rainbow perceived by two different people is in the same place or not. She reckons it's the same rainbow independent of who's looking at it, I wasn't convinced. Had a look at some interesting sites about rainbows on the web, and discovered I was right, rainbows are an optical illusion -- the sun must always be at your back in order to see one. No two people ever see the same rainbow!

Río de Janeiro

Spent about a week in Río, got to know the city a bit, but I didn't manage to do any of the touristy things (Christ the Redeemer, Sugarloaf, Football). Didn't even spend much time on the beach as the weather was quite overcast and rainy a lot of the time. Of course, on my last day, the weather was beautiful and the beach was heaving, lots of beautiful tanned bodies around. Thought I'd spend a little time on the beach before leaving, and ended up nearly missing my bus!!

Met several people in the hostal, including some french girls. We had a conversation about junk mail... a friend of mine keeps a collection of funny junk mails. I expressed my concern of how my name got on the "small penis" list, but was reassured to find out that the french girl also receives "might aswell go big" emails:

no guy has to settle for an average size penis
Gain 3 inches guaranteed
see our website for more info

I met another American who lives in Río and is training to be the manager of a hostel which caters mainly for israelis (all written material in the hostal seemed to be written in hebrew, no english or portuguese in sight). Strangely, although his portugues is fine, I don't think he speaks any hebrew!

Another first for me in Río was having to negotiate to get out of a bar. They surrepticiously wrote down a 12 real entrance fee on a bit of paper they gave to me, and although I didn't partake of any drinks they were still eager to charge. Managed to excuse myself by telling them I was just looking for some friends who were there.

My Intellectual Classification

Apparently I'm a Visionary Philosopher, according to Tickle.com. My online IQ test result was 146, assisted by Dave on one question.

Lençois, Bahia

This small town in the Chapada Diamantina National Park is really something special. We trekked 3 days up along the side of the river Capibara making our way slowly through forests and scrambling rocks, quite tough terrain with the packs and tents, etc. The most beautiful thing I've done in Brazil however, swimming in natural pools (very fresh) in the river, showering in waterfalls, sleeping in caves (tents when it rained), and seeing the highest free-falling waterfall in Brazil, from below (swimming in the pool at the bottom) and from above, where a rock overhangs the waterfall and lets you see 400m below vertically. Quite scarey, but beautiful all the same. Also sampled some of the best weed I've tried in a long time courtesy of our brazilian guide, who is also an excellent music connoiseur, from whom I got a few good recommendations.

The town itself is just as beatiful as the surrounding countryside, I walked around for about an hour the other day without seeing another tourist (although there are quite a few about), but the locals are very beautiful happy people, the kids play around with kites, there are a few donkeys and frogs around too.

It has been so nice I extended my stay, tried to sell my bus ticket last night unsuccessfully, but will stay for another night at least before heading down to Morro de Sao Paolo, where I'll probably spend a few days on the beach recovering my tan. Got yet another cold, so trying to take it easy and get better AGAIN. Fucking air-conditioned buses I guess.

O'Clock?
Me and Dave, one of my companions on the trek, found an interesting way to bemuse our other friends by asking a simple one-word question in answer to time related questions/statements. It works like this:

It's three pm/seven thirty/sixteen fourty two/midday/...
- O'Clock?

What time shall we meet for dinner?
- O'Clock?