Brazil Baby!!!!!

so after galapagos we jumped on yet another plane and headed for our most visited city in this trip, thats right.... Santiago!

This was now the 3rd time there and this time was different as my holiday was over and I had to work there for two days. Rob lazed about the hotel recovering from a minor cold and fatigue after such a great trip.

On Tuesday night Rob geared up and headed to the airport for the trip home, she has a few days off still as she doesn't start the new job till Tuesday. Its a shit of a trip home though and it took her around 24 hours.

I jumped on a plane for my flight to Sao Paulo in Brazil to do some work for a couple of days there. The flight out was amazing with a perfect morning, and a crystal clear view as we went over the Andes. It was a really special flight.



Sao Paulo is HUGE, not quite as big as Mexico city but not far off it, about 18 million here. Its a monster. The traffic is terrible and the pollution is much much better than Santiago with 3 million, go figure....


Anyway, work as usual consisted of visiting a lot of shopping centres and a lot of negotiations and discussions, this time in Portuenglish. I will be multilingual after this trip for sure! Brazil is not really what I expected, although I was only here for 4.1 days I don't think I got a good feel of the city or the people.

On Saturday night I hooked up with Silvia Marino, well known to some of you balloonies as the cheif observer for Brazil and a good friend since 1997. It was great to catch up, although I did have one or two too many which may not have been the best idea right before my flight home.

Speaking of that, my trip home, from arriving at Sao paulo Airport will take me 37 hours! Thats a lot of time. Have a guess where I am as I write this...........thats right.... Santiago, again! This is the last time as I am now 7 hours into the return trip, only 30 to go, yeehah :(

WOW!

When you hear people who have been to the Galapagos Islands talk about their experiences you think they must be mad, it couldn't be as good as they say it is. The animals cant be so tame, there cant be such diverse life forms, there cant be stuff to keep you going for 8 days.

Its all true, and not just that, its 100 times better than anyone can explain. There are no words that can convery how amazing a place it is or how it is possible that every new day is better than the last. Swimming with turtles, searching for giant tortises and finding them mating, unbelievable snorkelling, stepping through and around giant marine iguannas, stepping around Blue Footed Booby nests on the trails as the bird just watches you go past, it is an experience you cannot get anywhere else on Earth.

We were on a smaller vessel with only 16 people, 7 crew and our guide, Monica. The pax were mostly Brits, with 2 Canadians, 1 yank, and us. It was a great crowd until mid week when we swapped out the canuks and yank and got 4 more aussies who were complete and utter wankers. The sort of people who give travelling aussies a bad name, noone wanted them in their groups as they were just so rude and stupid. not nice to say about fellow aussies, but true.

Anyway, I am not going to bore you with the trivialities here, instead I will let some pics do the talking. BEST holiday we have ever had.

Galapagos Islands Overview

OK, so it is clear that a number of you have no idea where the Galapagos is or what its significance in the World is. So I will do my best to explain.

The Galapagos Islands sites 1000km off the coast of ecuador and it is made up of about 20 islands and 60 largish rocks. The Galapagos Islands straddle the Equator and they sit directly above one of the Earth's hotspots. It is this hotspot that has created the Galapagos islands. They were not there 2 million years ago. Now I know that sounds like a long time ago, but 2 million years is like a 1 day old baby in geological terms.

The islands site at one of the most amazing ocean locations on the planet. It is the meeting point of 3 of the Worlds major ocean currents, coming from Panama, south America and the west. This brings an extrodinary array of marine life and mamals such as penguins. Penguins.... at the equator... think about that for a sec.

The Islands were the base for the Charles Darwins Theory on Evolution. During a 6 week visit on the Beagle he visited the islands and noticed the islands were very yound geologically and that it was impossible for the animals and plant species on the islands to have been developed there as it was all Lava fields and volcanoes.

He surmised that the animals made it to the islands by a rafting system that drifted them to the islands on the currents mentioned above. The majority of land based animals on the islands such as the Iguanas and the tortises have NO natural predators and this makes them have no fear of being eaten. This makes them very tame. They are not afraid of humans either which makes for an amazing wildlife experience.

He also noticed that the animals differed from those on the mainland and even differed from Island to Island in the chain. 30 years later he publised his origin of Species work which theorised that animals evolved to suit their environment, and as such, changed the World and its understanding of Evolution, which until that time had been driven by Creationism theory. This was 1850 something. A long time ago anyway.

To put it simply, the Galapagos Islands is THE only place in the planet to see these species in their own environments without the interference of humans. A visit to the Galapagos Islands is a singular privelige that is one of the most amazing and special things you can do in your life.

We are visiting 8 of the islands on our 8 day trip and are very fortunate to be visiting the islands of Isabella and Fernandina which are the two most active islands (and the newest) in the area. Most tours do not visit these islands as they are so far away.

We have 8 days in this natural wonderland, and it is something Rob has been looking forward to for 10 years and about the same for me.

We are very lucky to be here.

Updates

I am a few days behind with the blog so I will try and get you all up to speed with what’s been happening, there may be a few quick fire blog entrys so I apologise for all the reading in one hit.

We will be out of action for the next week as we will be in the GALAPAGOS ISLANDS.

You, will all be at Work.

P.S - read the updates from the bottom up.

Amazon

A few facts for you

1) It’s winter in Ecuador, despite the fact most of the country is Southern hemisphere.

2) It’s a full moon, but they get 4 days of full moon nights every month

3) The sun goes down at the same time all year around

4) Ecuador does not have any Amazon rainforest

Interesting fact that last one, especially as we signed on for an Amazon rainforest experience. The kicker is in the detail as Ecuador does have a bit of the Amazon “Basin”, i.e, the bits that lead into the Amazon. Not to be phased by this small fact, Robyn and I have decided to call the Ecuadorian rainforest we are in “the Aramazon”, no not a typo, but Adam and Robyns AMAZON.

The place we are staying at is owned by a tour company that gets a lot of government business and does a lot of tourism promotion with overseas Journos. Its is quite a nice spot, about 3 ours drive from Quito the quick way, of 8.5 the long scenic way we came in.

The place is called Los Cascades and as the name would suggest there are a few waterfalls on the place which is why we picked it. The best thing of all is that Robyn and I are the only guests. We feel a bit like Posh and Becks, without the stupid accents and the billions of dollars. But we have the place to ourselves which is awesome.

In the info we saw on the place it shows itself as a C level of difficulty with the worst being E, so we figured it would be fine, given they probably scale for oldies and the like. Well, that may have been a little foolish of us.

Yesterday was a “trek” to the Waterfall with lunch and a swim and then a bit of a stroll back to the lodge for a lazy afternoon. Sounds awesome right. It was pretty amazing. They said it would about 5 hours so we set off with a local guide, Fabian, Rob and Myself. It was really interesting seeing the animals, learning about the jungle and rainforest and we saw some amazing stuff. If you want to know more about that, email Rob, ‘cos that’s not what I am going to talk about…..

I have decide that the C level of difficulty could stand for any of the following:

1) Cant be Serious

2) Cardiac Arrest

3) Climbing Skills required

I kid you not, the walk into this waterfall is something to be believed. We are in the rainforest so naturally everything is wet so we need to wear gumboots (Wellingtons to you poms out there), that instantly relieves you of most of your grip which is bound to make things fun.

Mud, these guys came up with the concept. It is everywhere. No grip, mud, big rocks, tree stumps. This had it all, oh, and that timing, 5 hours. About right. 2.5 hours in to the first waterfall, 1 to the next and 2 back out again.

Have you noticed how waterfalls are always in the bottom of valleys? Hadn’t though of it myself until the way in.

At one point in the descent we rounded a corner to find a mud wall with a 30m staggered drop and a rope on each side to “help” you down. God couldn’t have helped me down smoothly, let alone these ropes. I was covered in mud from top to toe. It was too much for my frayed nerves and I was glad at last to come to the first waterfall. Time for lunch and a swim.

Nope, change of plan, walk another hour to the next waterfall and we would swim there. Good Grief! So off we go again, crossing the river, up mountains down mudslides until finally we arrived. The water was freezing but that was not going to deter Rob and myself after the ordeal I had just been through.

Then, oh dear god, the climb back to the lodge. “2 hours away”, the guide tells me. And with a grin adds, “ and mostly uphill”. NOOOOOOOOOOO!! I though we had made some tricky navigation and ended up closer to the lodge, not so.

So up the hill, not on a gradual increase, oh no, straight up the side of the valley wall, with Rob chirping in with” Amazing how quickly we are going up”. Kill me now. And we are only 30 minutes into the climb.

I was lagging at the back, and Rob was making all sorts of excuses for hovering at the back after being admonished by me several times for undue heckling. She was taking pics and inspecting mysterious animals I never saw, in fact all I saw was the next rock, slippery stone or outcrop in front of me. I never for once doubted I’d make it…. I just wasn’t sure which day.

Needles to say we made it back, but the afternoon was shot and we all hobbled back to our rooms. For our guide, Fabian, it was also his first time at this lodge and on this walk, and he has sworn never to come back again. Maybe that is what the C stands for ………………… Completed – Never Again.

Ecuador

Ecuador, home of the highest density of active volcanoes anywhere on the planet. That’s not a bad claim to fame. Except for the fact, of course, that mosyt of these active volcanoes threaten to wipe out huge volumes of people when the erupt, and its not an IF you’ll notice, its guaranteed that they will erupt. Around once every 100 years, and most of them are at about 110 now!

Anyway, back to my entry here…..

When we asked a few people, even those in Quito, what to do for a few days when we arrived, all of them said “leave Quito”, so we figured that was the thing to do.

Thanks to our awesome travel agent here in Quito we have managed to get ourselves out of Quito and out to an Amazon Jungle trip for 4 days. All of these trips include days of travel as part of the experience so we are in fact at the lodge for 2.5 days and the rest is travel.

So we were met early in the morning by our guide, Fabian, who speaks excellent English and is quite a funny bloke. The trip took us through a few of the towns south of Quito and oddly they all seem to specialize in something different. There is the town that makes a type of ice cream that is famous all around Ecuador, and another we stopped in that is the blue jeans capital of Ecuador. All of the towns seem to have some sort of claim to fame. Pic below is at the highest waterfall in South America.

We also went through three towns that had been completely destroyed by Volcano eruptions in the last 120 years. Pretty amazing to see the river valley and see 20ft of ash in the soil profile. It is also a bit scarey as we were heading to the Volcano that is currently erupting, Tungurahara. Now T (as I am going to call it to save on typing) is a BIG BIG volcano. 5800m in fact. It started erupting 8 years ago and has been going ever since. But in the last three months it has been going crazy, lava flows, pyroclastic ejections, ash fall, you name it, its doing it.

At the foot of this volcano, no…. more like at the belly button of this volcano is the spa town of Banos. It is in deep deep trouble. If the volcano even slightly moves its crater face to the west, Banos will be annihilated. Experts have predicted that if this were to occur lava flows would reach Banos in 3 minutes. And there is no way out. I am calling it “certain death valley”. And that’s we were headed. Giddyup!

The first thing you notice along the road into Banos is that there is no road anymore, this is because a lava flow destroyed it two years ago, and 4 years ago and 6 years ago and 10 years ago. You get the idea. 4000 m above the town is the smoldering crater and vents of T. Well so we are assured as we couldn’t see jack because of the rain and low cloud.

So we had a lovely lunch in Banos another bit of an ABC episode and a nice wander around the streets, but there is this underlying feeling that noone is at peace here. Everyone is edgy, rob and I were not so much edgy as mortified…… don’t these people know there is a Fuc*&ing great volcano about to destroy them? They have already forcibly evacuated 15000 people from the town edges, but the locals are staying put. We were not.

It was with a great sense of relief that we left the town in one piece, without being engulfed by a red hot lava flow of being obliterated by a pyroclastic boulder. We loved the town, very beautiful and with absolutely no long term future. At least they didn’t have to kid themselves.

On to the Amazon lodge then!

“The Incident”

We just missed the booking agency as they closed at 10pm and we got there about 10:30. too late to make new booking for the grey glacier, but they can book us for the day after if we come back tomorrow. So now, Argentina and Perito Moreno is binned as we can do the same thing here without the 5 hour trip. I am up for this flexibility thing and changing plans as required.

So we book in the next day and we have to be in the park for the 8am ferry. This necessitates a very early departure in the Hyundai, leaving around 5:30am. It’s a long way to the park on some pretty dodgy roads.

Cruising along, enjoying the drive when WHAMMO. A big hare runs in front of the car and unable to avoid it I plough into it head on and the car is not well. The Hare has ripped off most of the wheel guard lining and the front guard has popped most of its anchors and is wobbling loose.

We tried to amble on, but it became painfully clear that we would not make it as we still had 150km to go on some very very rough roads. So I turned us around and rolled gingerly back into Puerto Natales, all hope of Ice Hiking was gone, as was $700 for the trip, as was my enthusiasm for the rest of this leg of the trip.

It was devastating to me, it still is. It was the one thing I wanted to do, and with a series of bad decisions, bad luck and poor planning it had all gone to crap. I vowed that this was not the last time I was going to be here and the rest of the time in and around Patagonia would serve as a Reconnaissance for the next time we come here to do it properly.

The following day we had a trip booked for two days into the park. The first day was a boat trip into the Serrano Glacier with an overnight at a lodge across the river from the Glacier. It was very beautiful, but I had developed a cold so I was quite keen to linger in bed. This was perfect for this lodge as there was little else to do.

The Following day has us on A zodiac up the Serrano river into the Torres Del Paine national park with a trip through the park in a van to see the key highlights. It is a stunning park as the pictures here and on Flickr will show, but as I said before, this is a reconnisance mission and while beautiful, it is not as beautiful as being in the mountains and seeing it all up close.

The following day we had our last night in Patagonia as we made our way to the airport bound for Santiago for a very quick stop over of about 12 hours before boarding our flight and heading to Ecuador and the Galapagos islands.