Both Sides, Now - Foz de Iguazu/Puerto Iguazu

 We arrived in Foz de Iguazu, our last stop in Brazil, on a sodden Sunday morning. (The 16th of May, for those of you keeping track.) The air was damp, and the town shuttered up for church. We were staying in a hostel rather than a hotel, having cottoned on that these seem to be the best option in SAmerica. We walked through town to the market, where we ate pastries, drank fresh coffee and spoke to the locals. In general, we found Brazilian people incredibly friendly - time after time people went out their way to give us directions, invite us out dancing, or just advise us on what sandwich to order. It is a seriously nice country.

We spent our last day in Brazil visiting the Brazilian side of the Iguazu Falls, pictured right, above and below. The falls actually consists of 270 seperate waterfalls. The highest is 82m, and it is a 3km walk along the length of Iguazu. In terms of annual water flow, it is second only to Niagra. The Brazilian side gives the panoramic overview, allowing a sweeping perspective on the falls. The sheer noise made by the crashing water was incredible. Closer up, you become engulfed in a dense cloud of water vapour, which rises up from the foot of each waterfall. Pictured forming to the right. The national park which surrounds the waterfalls is worth a visit in its own right - we saw racoons scurrying in and out of the jungle and unidentified birds of prey circling overhead.

On the 17th of May, we crossed the border to Argentina. The first big difference we noted was that suddenly living was affordable! The price of food, transport and accomomodation immediately became lower. On our first day in Argentina, we walked around the pleasant town of Puerto Iguazu - a more attractive and safer place than its counterpart over the border. We went out to the Three Frontiers point, where Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina meet in the Iguazu River. At night we tested our rusty cooking muscles by making spag bol in our hostel kitchen, where we met many nice travellers from England, including a BBC producer, who was sharing our room... Who knew that youth hostels were such prime networking sites!

The Argentinian side of the falls was mobbed with tour groups the following day, despite the constant drizzling rain.  It took about five hours to walk the many treks along the length of the falls, which provided innumerable breathtaking close-ups of the falls. The heart of the Iguazu Falls is a gorge called the Devil´s Throat, where the water crashes into an abyss obscured by rising spray and mist. The viewing point here is battered ceaselessly by driving wind and water, a result of the water vapour (or cloud as I thought of it) created by the waterfall. It was a dramatic and unique experience. However after two days of waterfall sight-seeing, we were more than ready to move on to the tango capital - just a twenty hour bus journey away!

Sao Paulo and Curitaba (a whistle-stop tour)

Sao Paulo is a city of twelve million people - roughly double the entire population of Scotland. We stayed there just a night, and experienced none of the city`s museums or even really its legendary nightlife. What we came away with instead were a series of impressions, of a breathtaking and often overwhelming city. Brazil is often talked of in terms of the divide between its rich and its poor citizens, a divide much more evident in Sao Paulo than in Rio. We stayed in the city centre, where the streets are lined with designer shops with homeless people camped outside them. The pedestrianised boulevards of the city centre are marred by graffiti, which inexplicably crawls over the buildings up to the third and fourth storeys. We visited the beautiful art deco Teatro Municipal, and went to see the views from the city´s tallest building, the Edifico Italia - but since our guidebook was published an eight pound charge per person has been introduced for doing so. And you can´t wear flip-flops. We skipped it and snuck a picture from the window below instead.

At night the city´s bars came alive, and stalls selling bbq meat opened on the streets. We couldn´t afford to go out for dinner so it was another night of fried food - the hot dogs and burgers which are everywhere in Brazil and which are infinitely more affordable than healthier fare. The next morning it was on to Curitaba, a city which bore a remarkable resemblance to Aberdeen.

More attractive than Sao Paulo, the paved city centre glinted in the pale sunshine like the town of granite itself. We even found the Brazilian equivalent of the pound shop, complete with obligatory unsavoury element hanging around outside it! There was a nice fountain and large park to walk around, but little else to do in the city. We did however sample some excellent popcorn from a street stall, accidentally get caught up in the ´March for Jesus´ through town on Saturday (about 1000 people, matching t-shirts and loudspeakers) and see two jugglers and three mimes performing in the streets. We also observed that the typical hotel in SAmerica is like a holdover from the Continent circa 1950s - we felt like faded gentry, surrounded by peeling wallpaper, dusty floorboards and furniture that has seen better times...

Always mindful of our bank accounts, and heartily sick of fried goods, we sped on towards the Argentinian border, arriving in Foz de Iguazu on the 16th of May.

Fried cheese and sickbags please (or, the lovely town of Paraty!)

Paraty, our next stop in Brazil, is a beautiful little town four hours south of Rio. It is on the coast, and so is endowed with beautiful beaches backed by stunning mountains. Unfortunately, the bus route into town is also on the coast. The undulating, hilly coast. Can you guess where this is going? The travel sickness which has bothered me my whole life but which was relatively little trouble on the direct highways of SE Asia returned with a vengeance. There was vomit. We had no bags of any kind. A cardigan took on a role it should never be asked to perform. The people around us stared resolutely out their windows, in an attempt to deny the horror surrounding them... The whole situation was extremely unpleasant, and later progressed to a new level of awfulness when we spent two hours walking round town looking for a hotel. If you've ever wondered what it's like to try and haggle over room prices in Portuguese while wearing clothes drenched in your own vomit, go ahead and ask!

To focus on the original point of this post - not bodily fluids but the loveliness of Brazil -Paraty has a charming and well-preserved historic quarter, with narrow cobbled streets, white-washed buldings and frangipani flowers draped over lanterns. There seems to be a photo opportunity round every corner. It felt very European - at times it was hard to believe we were in Brazil and not Spain or Italy. The sheer scale of the landscape around was the giveway - everything seems more dramatic, from the acres of blue sky to the towering mountains and crashing sea. The town also reminded us of Hoi An in Vietnam, the difference being that other tourists were virtually non-existent. This is of course different in high season, and at weekends apparently the town fills with Brazilian tourists, but when we were there it was incredibly peaceful. A relief after the frenetic bustle of Rio.  We were the only people staying at our hotel, and ate breakfast alone at a massive colonial-style table, complete with candelabras and classical music in the background.

Paraty has an interesting heritage, involving pirates, slaves and Portuguese explorers. We climbed a dusty hill to an old fort where the pirates used to hoard their gold. There wasn't a lot to see but the views were spectacular. The beaches nearby are meant to be wonderful, but we couldn't afford to get a boat to the more distant ones and in any case we were beached-out after Asia. Instead we just walked to a nearby beach, where the thick jungle actually crept up against the sea, and mangrove trees sprouted amidst the waves.

The main and most enjoyable thing to do in town was wander around the old town and sit in the square with olives and caiprinahas. To cut costs in the still painfully expensive Brazil, we tried to eat mostly at per kilo restaurants, with the locals. These work kind of like buffets, except the cost of your meal is based on how much it weighs. We add some more of the ubiquitous and amazing feijoada (bean stew) with chicken. By this point we were also connoisseurs of salgadoes - fried snacks sold at the lanchonettes (cafe-juice bars) on every corner. The typical salgado is extremely cheap, hot, and involves both dough and cheese somehow. They also include toasted ham and cheese sandwiches and hot dogs. By virtually living off these, and by doing very little, we just about managed to get by in budget in Paraty. However, taking into account the exorbitant price of transport in Brazil, we came to the reluctant conclusion that in order to afford the rest of our trip in SAmerica we would have to hightail it to the border. We did manage a few more stops in between, so updates on Sao Paulo and Curitaba to follow!

River twisting through a dusty land: Rio de Janeiro!

*Apologies about scarcity of photos in this post. All but three of our lovely photos from Rio were deleted in a memory card faux pas by my travelling companion. Yes, words were indeed exchanged... Hopefully we can recover them from the card at a later date though, by some sort of sortware wizardry. *

Part Two of our trip began on the 6th of May, when we arrived in Rio after a 11 hour flight from London. The taxi ride from the airport to our hostel cost us a day´s budget, an incident which was to set the tone for our time in Brazil. Apart from the cost of Brazil, which is comparable to the UK for food and accomodation although higher for transport, other differences from Southeast Asia were immediately apparent. In a lot of ways, Brazil looked and felt quite familiar to Western Europe, while Southeast Asia felt very foreign. But perversely, SAmerica so far has proven harder to travel round than SE Asia, where tourists never have to speak a word of any language that isn´t English. Not so SAmerica, and wow, Portuguese really is not pronounced like it´s spelt!

We stayed at an ultra-modern hostel in Rio, where we were the only foreigners, although there were a lot of Brazilian/SAmerican tourists. The staff were very friendly, and invited us to a Samba party on our first night there - but unfortunately we succumbed to our horrendous jet-lag and were asleep before 9pm. We spent our first full day in Brazil walking the not-so-mean streets of Ipanema.

The beach was stunning - a sensuous curve of powdery sand and tempestuous waves. Rio itself really is a beautiful place - the roads are lined with ancient trees dripping with Spanish moss, there are beaches around every corner, and mountains peek over the skyscarpers. We walked around a large attractive lake in the centre, and discovered that good hot dogs and hamburgers are everywhere in Brazil, and there is a juice bar on every corner. These are perfect for people-watching, and the people are interesting - women in skin-tight animal print, topless men in skimpy shorts - just as well there´s work-out equipment on the beaches! We watched the sunset on the Ponte Copacabana, a rocky outcrop with views of Ipanema and Copacabana beaches.

We ended up spending our second day there with Jose, a Brazilian guy from Sao Paulo, whom we met in our dorm room at the hostel. Having someone who spoke Portuguese and knew how things worked to go round with was really, really great and helped us get over the inevitable culture shock. Jose was a lovely guy, and keen to see Rio too as this was his first visit there. He took us to a juice bar and bought us a bowl of acai berries - they come served like a sorbet, blended with ice and your choice of fruit. Then we all set off to get the bus to Cristo Redentor, which in itself was an interesting journey, through both leafy neighbourhoods and graffitied underpasses. Unfortunately, we found out on arrival that the recent mudslides in Rio had shut down the train to the top of the hill - the only other option was $35 per person. As the statue has scaffolding on it at the moment anyway, we decided to skip it for now and possibly return at the end of our trip.

Instead, we walked around Botafogo beach in the heart of the city, and then to Sugarloaf Mountain, where Dave and I got the cable car to the top. This again was heartbreakingly expensive but the views were definitely worth it. All the photos we now have left were taken from there! Later that night, Dave went out with Jose for beer and traditional Brazilian food, (rice and feijoada/bean stew, with a fried egg and chicken fillet on top) while I gave in to jet-lag and went to bed.


On our last day in Rio, it was still warm but raining torrentially. Nevertheless, being good Scots we wrapped up and walked along to Copacabana beach. It was deserted but still beautiful. We sheltered in a cafe and nibbled olives, while drinking caipirinahas (Brazilian national drink - made with sugarcane rum, sugar and lime) and Brazilian beer. The next day, we headed down the coast to the little town of Paraty - a journey which was to be the worst of my life! (So far....)

Koh Phangan

We arrived on Koh Phangan on the 24th of April, and checked into the posh resort we'd booked in advance. After skimping on Koh Tao, we could just about afford their cheapest bungalow. The resort really couldn't have been much better - it was a five minute walk from town, and had a swimming pool and private beach, complete with sunloungers and hammocks. To the left - the resort´s restaurant - right on the beach! The staff here were lovely and embarrassingly enough soon learned that I would order the same thing for brunch every single day, and stopped asking. (Fried potatoes with onion and a fruit shake.)

The town of Haad Rin, the biggest on the island, suffered slightly from what I now think of Vang Vieng syndrome. (If this means nothing to you go back and read about Laos in the archives!) However, taking into account the sheer number of Brits on the island, it was by no means as bad as it could have been, and it was still possible to find nice bars and restaurants. We quickly found a really good Indian restaurant in town, and  a bakery which we went to every day.

Most of our days though we spent on the beach or by the pool. There was a lot to do on the island, but I have to say we did none of it! A lot of my time was spent observing the other guests at the resort, and trying to glean as much info as possible on them. One of my favourites I dubbed Leonardo Dicaprio guy, due to an unmistakeable similarity to the actor. This became awkward later on, when we ended up eating dinner with him and his friend. It´s hard to look someone in the eye and converse about spring rolls when a few hours earlier you were imagining them specualting on parallel universes with you under the stars... By the by, he turned out to be German and incredibly morose - he was unsure for most of the meal whether to come to the Full Moon Party or go home and sleep. Which depending on your perspective eitehr demonstrates the folly of spying on strangers or that human beings are infinitely more complex and contradictory than they first appear. Choose your own adventure!

The 28th of April was the Full Moon Party - for the uninitiated, this is a massive rave on the beach which in high season sees up to 30,000 people attending. It was a pretty unique experience, although the best part for me was lying on the reggae part of the beach just chilling out and watching the madness unfold!


We flew out of Bangkok on the 3rd of May, and arrived in London after a 46 hour journey. Two short days later, Part Two of our trip began - South America!

Koh Tao

We left Chiang Mai on the night bus on the 15th of April, and arrived in Bangkok the following morning. The protests of course were still fully underway, and our plan to get a train south was scuppered when taxi driver after taxi driver laughed in our faces when we requested to go to the railway station, located a few km from the red shirts' barricades. We instead took a bus south, and avoided the city centre entirely.

From Chumphon, it was a ferry to Koh Tao, and then a taxi boat to a secluded resort we'd chosen from our guidebook. Koh Tao in appearance seemed far more jungly and wild-looking than our last tropical island, in Vietnam. The coast of the island is cluttered with gigantic boulders and lush vegetation - the  half-moon shapes of sandy beaches appear like an afterthought.

Our bungalow was perched on a rock over-looking a tiny private bay with impossibly clear water. The coral reefs close to shore meant many different types of fish swam around our toes, including barracuda, clown fish and sea cucumbers. It was a lovely place to spend a few days, although so remote we had to get a boat to get to a shop or restaurant. We did attempt to walk along the coast line of the island to the town in the south - the 6km walk along a dirt track was so steep and rocky t took us over an hour. Inland the breeze died down and we sweated buckets in the afternoon sun. A coconut landed at our feet and Dave spent another hour trying to prise it open. (He succeeded but we lost most of the juice and had to kind of gnaw at the fleshy bit.) On the way home we got lost in the dark even with the assistance of my head-lamp.

The serenity was great at first, but after a few days the need for eating options, access to 7-11 and internet cafes took over and we moved to the main town on the island, Sairee. Our guidebook had represented it as overcrowded, and it may well be just after the Full Moon Party when tourists flock to Koh Tao, but when we were there it seemed surprisingly quiet.

The long sandy beach in town had very shallow water, which was invariably hotter than the average bath. We spent a few days as beach bums, living in a cheap bungalow and spending all our time on the sand or in the water. We adopted a bakery in town with great pastries and sandwiches and went there every morning for brunch. At night we would choose between one of the beachside restaurants, and eat curry or bbq kebabs or Mexican food, while watching the flame jugglers on the deserted beach. It was really quite perfect.

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