Rhod and Anna's World Adventure

I was thinking the other day that nothing particularly extreme had happened to us in the last few weeks. I was almost pondering that it had become perhaps, dare I say, a little bit easy. I wondered where the next strange event would come from and surprise surprise it turned up when I was least expecting it.

We`ve just been to Mendoza in the West of Argentina. We travelled, as is our want, by luxury sleeper bus. Yesterday evening we had just boarded the bus and set off from Mendoza. The waiter was bringing round the drinks and the sandwiches and I couldn`t have been more comfortable. We were only a stone´s throw away from Mendoza bus station when the unexpected occured.

I`m told that someone at the side of the road threw a rock at the bus. I didn`t see anything because I was concentrating on eating my free sandwich. The first I knew of the incident was when the rock hit the window next to me and shattered the glass with a fairly loud bang. I then got a glass shower all over my head, lap and down the back of my T-shirt. It was a surprise and I would imagine some expletives issued from my mouth in the immediate aftermath. It took me a few moments to work out what had gone on. I then realised that I was sat in a puddle of glass and there was a lot of breeze in the bus. I then became hugely disappointed as I couldn`t eat my sandwhich because it was covered in glass!

The bus drove to the nearest depot, luckily not too far as we hadn´t been going very long. We then spent the next hour and a half shaking glass shards out of my T-shirt and brushing it out of my hair while the mechanics fitted a new window. We finally set off for our overnight trip to Buenos Aires but I found sleeping surprisingly difficult as I woke up regularly to check the window was still in tact.

The good news is I escaped from the whole event with only one small cut on my hand. There were also more sandwiches!

Tango - check, Steak - check, Maradonna - CHECK!

Yesterday contained only 2 of the above. Today the treble has been completed! We have just come back from La Boca, the oldest area of Buenos Aires and home to the Boca Juniors football team. We had been on a stadium tour and were just browsing in the gift shop when who should turn up but Maradonna himself! The stadium tour itself was good enough as we got to go into the press room, the players´ dressing room, in the stands and on the pitch. How convenient that their most famous player ever should make an appearance especially for us!

Yesterday I was fortunate enough to celebrate my 20-something birthday in Buenos Aires, home to Maradonna, tango, and big steaks. The day involved 2 of the above.

We had booked tickets to go to see a tango show in the evening at the famous Cafe Tortoni. When we arrived we were shown to our table...at the very front! As we weren´t sure whether the show would involve crowd participation we were slightly nervous (ok, terrified) at the prospect of being dragged on stage to the amusement of the locals. I didn´t know much about tango at this point but I didn´t think flip flops would be the tango dancer´s shoe of choice.

Luckily we remained in our seats for the entire show. The dancers were absolutely amazing and they moved so fast hence the blurred pictures. For you blokes worried that I had dragged Rhod along for a night of girly dancing, worry not! There was enough to keep the men of the crowd entertained! He did not suffer.

The evening was topped off in a lovely restaurant eating fat steaks. A perfect birthday!

There is less to go than has gone before. That´s a sad thought but the harsh reality is that we are now over halfway through our holiday. Boo!

So if you are missing us you have something to look forward to - we will be home in less than 5 months and have we got some photos and stories for your to endure, sorry, I mean enjoy.

This is a view of the Iguazu Falls from the Brazilian side. The main falls are 70 metres high and deposit at peak flow a massive 1 million litres of water a second! It hasn´t rained for 5 weeks in the area so currently they aren´t flowing at their usual rate. Still, it was pretty impressive sight for a supposedly ´dry´ season.

We are now in Argentina and we have been doing a bit of travelling by bus. We decided to go from Buenos Aires to Iguazu Falls on the 18 hour overnight bus. Sounds pretty horrific but we told the travel agent we wanted to be "hooked up with some crazy heat" (we wanted the best class of seat you could get) and he certainly "blessed it with some mad flavour" (delivered the goods in the form of Cama-Suite seats).

I´ve watched a lot of Pimp My Ride on MTV. That, The Simpsons and American Chopper effectively form my view of life in the States. I hope I´m not disappointed when I get there. Anyway back to the bus. It was nice. We turned down the cama bus because the seats only reclined to a fully supported 120 degrees. The luxury backpackers wouldn´t stand for it so we opted for the fully flat bed option. It was great. Only 20 people on the upstairs section of the coach and the seats were in little cubicles so you wouldn´t be bothered by the other passengers.

We were obviously the only ones who had never travellled on this type of bus before as I spent the first hour putting the seat down, then back up, then back down etc etc. Luckily we were right at the back and no-one could see me messing about from their little cubicles.

We were well looked after by the waiter. In total we managed to consume:
2 glasses of champagne
6 cups of coffee
8 biscuits
2 sweets
4 soft drinks
4 bread rolls
2 dinners
2 breakfasts

The on-board entertainment consisted of:
Compilation of Rock Ballads videos (including 5 Roxette songs!)
Film - The Wedding Crashers
Film - Big Momma´s House 2 (not seen Big Momma´s House 1 therefore not interested)
Compilation of instrumental Christmas Songs to wake us up in the morning.

We had such a great time we have booked ourselves in for some more of the star treatment when we go to a place called Mendoza this weekend. Get that champers on ice!

Today we have been to one of the major tourist attractions in Rio. Cristo Redentor (Christ the Redeemer) is a 30m high 28m wide statue of Christ that sits a top a hill 790m hill and looks down on Rio. As you can see we were extra special visitors as whilst we were there we managed to get the statue to hug us for a photo.

Visitors hoping for any sort of spiritual experience will be sorely disappointed. As with every major tourist attraction there are a lot of tourists so trying to get any photos that haven´t got random people in is difficult. At any one time you can usually guarantee that there will be at least 2 people imitating Christ´s pose in order to make the perfect photo which no doubt they will cringe at in years to come. Shamefully Rhod is one of those people.

The highlight of the trip was the arrival of the Norwegian tourist group who all came wearing the same T-shirts. The plan was obviously to wear a bright colour so they would stand out. Unfortunately for them they had chosen yellow which meant that when they were separated they couldn´t be found because they blended in with the Brazilian crowd!

Please don´t think that we came away on holiday to enjoy ourselves. It was purely for educational purposes to experience different cultures and to broaden our minds. If it means spending time on an unspoilt sun-drenched island to do such research then so be it.

Ilha Grande is a 2 hour bus ride south of Rio followed by a 1 and a half hour boat ride with the locals and their monthly shopping. We spent 4 nights here and did not want to leave. We spent a day snorkelling and lounging on the sun deck of a schooner. The following day we hiked for 2 and a half hours through rainforest over the other side of the island to get to one of the world´s top 100 beaches, Lopes Mendes. The last day was spent kayaking around the bay mooring up on the different beaches and at night the people of the island came together for a street party.

Despite its proximity to Rio, Ilha Grande has managed to retain its simplicity and beauty because it has not let tourism take over. It really blew us away and I believe that no trip to Rio is complete without a visit here.

Whilst in Brazil we have been on two different boat trips each with basically the same idea. Take some tourists on a cruise, let them go swimming, take them somewhere expensive for lunch then drop them off back at the jetty slightly sunburnt.

Ilha Grande and surrounding islands
Vessel: (see photo above right) The Schooner Phoenix I
Capacity: Licensed for 95. Nowhere near that many on board so plenty of space.
Captain: Well-groomed, clean-shaven, uniformed, beverage of choice: coffee
English speaking guide? Yes, Wilson spoke excellent English and told us all about the different bays and beaches that we passed.
Weather: perfect
Lunch: Choice of on-board snacks or lunch in efficiently-run island resturant
Activites: 3 snorkelling stops

Paraty and surrounding islands
Vessel: (see photo above left) The slightly dodgy looking Pilar
Capacity: Difficult to judge. I can´t imagine it´s licensed and could safely hold about 10. We had 13 for most of the day and 15 at one point.
Captain: Slightly sweaty man, no uniform, drinking cans of Skol at 10:30am and smoking a joint by 11:30am
English speaking guide? No. The Captain knew some words from James Blunt´s song "You´re beautiful" The words he knew were..."You´re Beautiful" He used them often. The commentary was non-existent.
Weather: cloudy with light showers
Lunch: On an island restuarant run by the hostel owner´s mate. Over-priced fish.
Activities: Bowling up at a party to celebrate the festival of St Peter and St Paul. Witness the May Queen equivalent lady (above) dancing. The party was odd. It was raining when we arrived and it is possible that it would have been an amazing event in the sunshine but frankly after 45 mins of not having a clue what was going on we were all desperate to get back on board the Pilar (never thought I would have said that) and head for home.

Earlier we watched England lose in the most unfortunate way - Penalties. By way of consolation the Brazilian hostel manager said to me. "It´s ok man. We will beat Portugal for you in the semi-final."

Pride comes before a fall so they say and today it would seem that they are right. As explained previously the Brazilians cannot see the possibility of defeat. You will not find them in the pub chewing their fingers to the bone worrying about extra time or penalties because it couldn´t happen to them.

I had a feeling that there might be tears before bedtime and for once I was right. Sometimes you pay the price for over confidence.

The reaction to the game was incredible. Outside the streets were full of baffled people quietly getting back to normality with no street party to go to. The hostel staff skulked away silently back to their posts. However, as Rhod and I continued to watch the post-match commentary we were suddenly made aware of one Brazilian lady in the corner who was actually sobbing out loud. She recovered pretty well though after the barman thrust a beer into her hand. But we were amazed at the pundits on the TV - two of them were crying and consoling each other with man hugs and back slaps whilst the main man tried to hold the whole thing together but was clearly struggling to find the words. I can´t imagine Gary Linekar and the BBC team breaking down like that (though I guess they are more used to dealing with their country losing than Brazil.)

We have to go now. A street trader needs to use the computer to look up the number of the big yellow self storage unit in Rio. He has some T-shirts with six stars on them that he won´t be needing for at least 4 years!