Rio

Rio de Janeiro (Eng. river of January) is a stunning location, where rich and poor, black and white, criminal and saint all seem to come together in one place.

I nearly didn't make it there as I sat at the airport waiting for my flight to start boarding, only to find the gate had been changed from the boarding pass. When another flight started boarding I asked if it was mine and they told me to go to another gate. I was just about the last one on board, but hadn't been called up yet. So from now on I wont always believe my boarding pass and keep an eye on the screens.

About 5 hours and two time zones later we were in Rio. Unfortunately some of my luggage didn't make it and I had to fill in some forms to help them find it. We got a taxi to our room which was about 2 blocks back from Copocabana beach. It was pretty posh, with people dressed up in posh uniforms pressing the lift button, to save us the effort. :-S We had a bit of a rest then went down to the beach for a look. It felt a bit weird lately because of the Peter Allen song "At the Copa-Copocabana" ... a bit sad really listening to that song in your head. Later on that night we had a great meal with some really well cooked vegetables which was a welcome change.

In Rio, people speak Portugese, not Spanish, and even though some words are the same in Spanish, most are not apparently, so we were back to being dumb, helpless tourists again with almost no language skills. We did learn 'obrigado' meaning 'thank you', which we used a lot.

The next morning I had a fresh juice from the shop across the road and later we did a tour of the city. The tour cost us about $200 Reals .. $130 Au, with just Kim and I being driven around in a car. Our guide spoke English and he took us to some of the more iconic parts of Rio. The first was the statue of Christ the Redeemer. Unfortunately it was foggy the day we were there, but that added a little spookiness to the photos, so it was still good. Heaps of tourists there as you might imagine. We drove around the city, through historic and commercial areas. Rio seems a bit like Sydney or Hobart, built around hills with lots of water. We also went up to the famous Sugarloaf on a cable car. It is a spectacular up view from the top and a James Bond film made here.

Our hotel was fairly expensive and one of the blokes on the front desk seemed rude and disinterested, so we walked around where we were and asked a bit about prices. In the end we found another hotel in the same street, with a balcony and wifi internet in the rooms for about 50 reals cheaper than where we were. They also had free breakfasts and blokes to push the elevator button for us.

We went to the beach a few times while here and spent some time trying to hire some bikes. It was really hot here when we first got here, say 34-37 degrees so we sad around drinking beer under shade near the beach ... as you do. The sand was too hot to walk on in bare feet. Lots of people were playing volleyball. The water was quite cold though which provided a nice contrast. Where the waves came in the drop off was quite steep and you would be in deep water quickly. One highlight was a bloke that tried to sell me a hammock for $130 initially, in the end I talked him down to $20, because the last thing I wanted was a hammock after already buying 5 in Nicaragua.

One day we took a tour to the Favelas where the famed underclasses of Rio live, right next to the richest people. Our tour guide told us about how everything in Rio is in reverse. The poor live on the hills with the best views, the rich live in the flat areas. People are safe because of the crime. We were told that drug dealers provide security to keep the police out and on one occasion drug dealers captured some police that were robbing a bank! The Favelas don't exist on maps yet house thousands of people. Their houses don't meet any building standards. These people provide the cheap labour in the city. We headed back on the bus and got dropped off near the beach in the rain. We had umbrellas but it was torrential and very windy. We waited for the lights to cross about six lanes on traffic and eventually got back to the shops and got some cover.

Thankfully it was about 28 degrees.

Our last adventure in Rio was the long wait to get on the cruise ship. There were about 5 cruise ships in and there were not enough customs staff to process the people traffic. So we queued up, made small talk with some people, got shifted from one room to another, then after about six hours got on the boat. It was a great feeling settling in to our cabin or "stateroom" and looking forward to two more weeks of sailing around the southern tip of South America.

Guatemala City

I went to Guatemala for a few days while Kim went to San Juan del Sur with Mikayla. I originally wanted to come here to see the Mayan ruins. Also I had booked my return flight from Guatemala City to Rio while in Burnie, so I had locked in coming here. Some of the research I had done in the weeks before I arrived, indicated that Guatemala City was a very dangerous place to be in. In 2008 there were over 6000 murders in Guatemala (in a population of 13 million people). I was reading stories of muggings, car-jackings, indiscriminate violence, lawlessness and ineffective, inexperienced, corrupt police.

So I found some accommodation not far from the airport that had a reputation for security. Kim booked me a flight from Nicaragua. I decided to fly because there had been a military coup in Honduras recently, and a bus trip would have taken me through there, and that might have put me in still more danger. I didn't feel scared, perhaps more cautious, that I couldn't be bothered by the inconvenience of a robbery. Most people would probably not notice much difference I thought.

The flight was excellent - business class as it turned out. I didn't know that until I checked in. The food was good, the service was just as good. I was the first off the plane and almost the first person to get my luggage. The people from the hostel picked me up at the airport .. all good.

On the way in I asked the driver if this part of Guatemala City was safe and he said no, not really. I had heard of car-jackers targeting tourists in taxis and buses coming from the airport. Anyway, we arrived at the hostel in about 10 minutes and all the houses in the area had high walls with razor wire on top. It looked like some sort of suburban prison.

On the first night I met a bloke from El Salvador that was a travelling salesman. He was a nice bloke. He spoke English well and was really interested in Australia. The next day when I got up for breakfast he was in the TV room looking really worried. Overnight his car had been stolen from out the front. It was not a company car, it was his, and he knew that he would have little prospect of ever seeing it again. He needed it for his work. Pretty sad really.

Another bloke I met here was a huge negro from California. Another nice bloke, a gentle giant. He was a wharfie that handled freight so probably was not easily intimidated. A few days earlier he had been robbed at gunpoint, (two people with guns at once). He had his money, cards and all his documentation stolen including his passport. He couldn't travel anywhere without money or documents, so he was staying here and ringing his Mum in the States, to help him sort it out. Pretty sad really.

The last sad story is about how live bullets came into the hostel a few weeks before I got here. On the office wall inside the hostel is a map of Guatemala with a hole in it. When I asked how it got there the manager told me it was a bullet hole. It came trough the wall, missing the reception desk by about 60 cm. Then the manager showed me the other bullet damage, to the wall outside and the steel door on the front - see picture above. Apparently a few weeks earlier a bride and groom to be were driving around delivering their wedding invites, when they were set upon by a group of armed car-jackers. However, the groom had his own gun and when he produced it there was a gun fight leaving the groom and two car-jackers dead. Stray bullets from the gun fight just 200 meters away came into the hostel. The groom was shot dead in front of his bride to be and son. Pretty sad really.

The people here seem to live in a state of paranoia. The manager tells me that he hits the deck in his own lounge room when he hears a bang outside. You start to get the impression that they wear the danger as a badge of honour and almost brag about it.

Needless to say I became apprehensive about doing much here and mostly stayed inside and I got to catch up on the blog and watch heaps of telly. The ruins were another hour flight away and Antigua, where I had heard was worth a look way about an 8 hour bus ride. So, I am not really in a position to recommend Guatemala City to anyone as a tourist destination.

Nicaragua

The bus ride from San Jose, Costa Rica to Granada, Nicaragua took about 8 hours. Translated into English, Nicaragua means near water. On our second day here we went on a boat tour of Lake Nicaragua, which is a huge and full of fresh water. Interestingly, it is the only place in the world that has fresh water sharks. On the boat tour we saw some local people on the lake's islands going about their every day duties like fishing and washing clothes. These islands were formed by a huge volcanic explosion that blew about 1/3 of a mountain to bits, some of which ended up in the lake. Today these islands are forested, and some have houses on them. The lake has the look and feel of a tropical paradise. We also saw and heard some howler monkeys in the tree tops. There are plenty of birds here too. In the afternoon we got a taxi to the top of an active volcano.

From a distance, as you approach the summit, the volcano looks like a bushfire burning, with light grey smoke coming from the top of the hill. At the summit are a couple of huge, deep craters. The smoke is so thick that you can't the bottom of the craters. The smoke smells sulphury and occasionally you get to taste the sulphur in your throat. The signage warns you to park your car facing the exit, no doubt to help you get away fast, as well as to hide under your car if rocks start hailing down on you. Thankfully, there was no real action when we were here.

We stayed in Granada, which is a beautiful, historic city of about 150 000 people. Most of the buildings are pretty old and painted in contrasting colours which look really good. The streets are narrow and horses and carriages cart tourists around. It reminded us of Cartagena in Colombia.

Granada used to be one of the biggest cities in Central America, because it was once a major stop-over on a freight route through Lake Nicaragua in transit from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. This is how freight was moved before the Panamá Canal opened. There are many American tourists here too, some of which are looking to buy properties to retire in.

We went out a few times and had our meals in a street dining restaurants. While eating you get approached by people trying to sell you stuff. We have been looking for hammocks for a while and one night we were approached by a bloke selling hammocks for about $7. He was a nice bloke so we ended buying two for $10. Later he came back and showed us his deluxe model, which was more like solid material than stringy like the ones we already had. So we reluctantly bought a third hammock. I offered to buy him a beer and he sat with us for a while. He said that he made the hammocks himself and it was his only job. Later in the night another bloke came along selling hammocks only these were much stronger looking than the stringy ones we had purchased. We ended up buying one of these as well, so that now meant we now had four hammocks. Next thing the first bloke came back and offered us one of the stronger hammocks. We told him that five hammocks would really be overdoing it but he persisted. Finally I made a deal with him to swap his deluxe model with one of the stronger stringy ones. So in the end we went came home with four hammocks, more than enough. It is so hard to say no to people sometimes.

After Granada we headed to an large island in Lake Nicaragua called Ometepe. Ometepe is big enough to support a population of 40 000 people and has two volcanoes on it, one of them is active. Even though there are so many people living there it still feels pretty rural and small, so the island is pretty big. That puts the size of the lake into some perspective.

When we arrived at the wharf where the ferries were, it appeared that we would have to wait for a few hours for the next boat, or chance taking an old wooden hulk across the lake to the island. With all our luggage and the heat it wasn't worth waiting so we got on the old boat. That was a bit of an experience. As the boat lurched through the waves water was coming inside and splashing up on our legs. Kim and Mikayla were not that impressed.

When we arrived at the island we were hounded by people wanting us to get a taxi and we kept telling them that we were OK, but one of these people persisted and kept following us and talking to us. He turned out to be a self-employed tourist operator and was really helpful. We had to use his phone to contact our accommodation that somehow had lost our booking, so our new friend recommended another place which was really good, drove us there, carried our bags and was really nice to us. I thought at first that this might have been a scam of some sort, but it turns out his only hidden agenda was that he did tours for $50 US so we took him up on it the next day. The tour itself was pretty average, visiting a pretty dodgy museum, a swimming pool built into a river and a restaurant on a beach. We drove around in his old, beaten up 4 wd over some really rough roads, but still, it was an interesting experience.

After 3 days we headed back to the 'mainland'. I went back to Granada and Kim and Mikayla went to San Juan del Sur. In Granada I managed to go on one of those horse-driven coach tours and took a few photos.

Nicaragua has had some issues with political instability, and these continue today. Possibly you might remember hearing of the Sandanistas and the Contra Rebels from news stories back in the 1980s. Even while were we here there were massive protests in Managua the capital city (we weren't there). The protests are basically the about the old communist-capitalist debate, where both sides hold very strong views. There was a civil war in Nicaragua over these issues in the 1980s and many people died defending these views. Today, other than the protests and some graffiti, there aren't any obvious signs of this conflict and Nicaragua feels like a safe place, if not, a tropical paradise.

Cruising

We have been on our cruise around the south of South America for about 8 days now, still with another week to go. We saw some fantastic glaciers yesterday, and went around Cape Horn the day before. Got some great photos too.

The Internet on the boat is ridiculously expensive (40-70 cents per minute) as well as ridiculously slow. Just to load the gmail inbox takes about two minutes then another two just to open one email.

So the updates have been almost impossible.

But we are going well. We have a great cabin (stateroom :-) ) and there is plenty to do on the boat, and probably too much to eat.

We'll be home in about 3 weeks now, unbelievable how fast the time has gone looking back.

Costa Rica

We caught the bus out of Panama and into Costa Rica. At the border was a big bridge going across a river. Up until the border, the bus had been travelling along a sealed road, when suddenly it climbed up a hill and onto a dirt road. The bus struggled with the ups and downs of the dirt road then stopped just before the bridge where we all had to get off and walk across. The one lane bridge was in a similar condition to the road, greatly in need of some form of maintenance. On the bridge we were met by a few beggars asking for money. On the other side was the immigration office where we had to get our passports stamped. After that, back on the bus and along a dodgy road with sealed sections separated by rough potholed bits causing us to slow down to about 7 kmh. The contrast between the 1st/2nd world and the 3rd world couldn't have been any more stark.

We got to San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica, in the late afternoon then had to catch another bus to Las Juntas where Mikayla has been living. So after a few more hours we were at our destination, a small country town, then had to wheel our luggage about 1/2 a kilometer through the street to get to where we were staying. The room was a small 'dog box' with bunk beds. It was really hot and humid, the bedding felt damp and there was no air conditioning, just a fan, also no TV or Internet. But it was better than sleeping outside .. I suppose. The next day the owners of the accommodation offered us a bigger, better room with air conditioning and TV for just another $3. At $15 per night instead of $12 it was hard to resist.

While we were here Mikayla turned 18. Kim bought her an iPod touch and I bought her an electronic photo frame. The iPod has been getting a good hard workout ever since. On the night of Mikayla's 18th, after we had tea together, she went out with her friends and had a big night out. A couple of nights later we went out for tea with her host family from Costa Rica. The highlight of the night was Mikayla getting her face pushed into a cake, which apparently is a big tradition in Costa Rica. Another tradition apparently is getting pelted with eggs!!

I sat next to the host father, and managed to have a reasonable conversation with him in Spanish. Among other things, we discussed the temperature, the price of fuel, I found out that he had lived his whole life in Las Juntas. Pretty basic I know, but last time I was in South America all I could say was yes, no and thank you in Spanish.

We spent a few days in Las Juntas before heading off to Manuel Antonio which is a more tropical location near the sea. Our accommodation was owned and managed by an expat Polish-American. His name was Andy, he was an alcoholic and proud of it and he had very strong right-wing political views. He thought that Barack Obama was a socialist and that all socialists were stupid. Kim and I had a few drinks with him the first night we were there. I asked him if he thought the Scandinavian counties were dumb given their socialist systems and high standards of living. This is not a political statement, just an observation, particularly when capitalism, especially in the USA, seems to be going so badly at the moment anyway.

While we were here Kim celebrated her 40th birthday. Kim got some silver jewelry that we picked up in Bolivia, some really nice Costa Rican timber (rainforest) jewelry boxes and got shouted out for tea.

During the day we went out to one of the local beaches, where we were treated to drinks service on the beach by a local person that bordered on having a manic personality disorder. He kept referring to Skippy when talking to us, so at least he knew something about Australia. While on the beach we were constantly being asked to buy things like drinks, ceramics and towels. The towel bloke would have asked us at least four times, on different occasions, each time getting the same answer.

After Manuel Antonio we headed back to San Jose on our way to Nicaragua. We had to stay one night at the bus terminal which was excellent accommodation and good value. While here we went for a walk up into the San Jose shopping district. Here we discovered bingo machines which are a bit like poker machines, only better. Kim went really well and won some money while Mikayla and I probably lost a couple of dollars each. It filled in some time for us while we waited for our next bus to Nicaragua.

Panamá

After Colombia almost anywhere would have been a bit of a let down. So no surprises, Panamá was pretty ordinary.

Panamá is famous for the Panamá canal, a narrow stretch of water cut through the isthmus between North and South America to connect the Atlantic with the Pacific ocean. It was built around 1914 by engineers from the United States and imported labour other countries. Today it carries about 5% of the world's shipping and about 20% of the sea freight to the United States. What you see as you fly in is about 100 ships anchored in the bay waiting to come through the canal. The bay has skyscrapers built right to the water's edge. At the canal, acres of containers are stacked up about 4 or 5 high with massive cranes for loading these onto the ships. The Panamá canal area was leased to the United States for about 90 years. The USA invaded here militarily in 1989 to protect its own interests.

Panama used to be a part of Colombia and when we were here they were celebrating their independence day. The price of independence from Colombia was paid for by a new dependence on the United States it seems.

Panamanians are a very relaxed bunch of people. Nothing seems to matter much to them. When we arrived at the airport we were told that we could not go through immigration because we needed to fill out another form. So we asked where the forms were and were told "over there". So we went around looking for the forms, up some stairs, and still had no idea. A couple of other tourists we met got the same treatment. After about 10 minutes of unproductive searching I went back and asked again, only to be told again that they were "over there". Welcome to Panamá!

Eventually someone came and helped us out so we got through and got a taxi to our accommodation. It was in a 5 storey building and the reception was on the top floor. The lift was out so we had to lug our 21 kg packs all the way up the stairs. The temperature would have been about 30 degrees and the humidity probably about 95%. It was pouring with rain outside. Welcome to Panamá!

While here we met another Tasmanian (from Launceston) who was on one year's leave from the Army, on a $5000 round-the-world airfare that gave him 20 stopovers ... not bad. He had been serving in Afganistan in infantry. He seemed like a good bloke but bragged a bit about all the blinders he'd been on. You get that I suppose if you have served in a war.

After a day or so we headed out of the capital city, into the countryside, to an area called El Valle (the valley). El Valle is a small village sitting inside an extinct volcano. It is surrounded by steep sided mountains covered in tropical forest. Many wealthy Panamanians come here for their holidays. We got off the bus where we were supposed to stop and tried ringing our accommodation from the public phone but it wasn't working. So we felt a bit stuck. In the end we went into a nearby restaurant and paid them $1 and got through, and were then picked up and taken to our room. The place we stayed at was called the Golden Frog named after the local amphibian species. It was really nice, good rooms, great garden, good service, no complaints really, except that it was about 3 km out of town, and they didn't serve meals, only breakfast.

In Panamá, at this time of the year it rains heavily each day. One day we went and visited a serpentarium (snake enclosure) that was only about 1 km from where we were staying. Unfortunately we got lost walking back and caught in the rain. It *really* poured and we got so wet so quickly that it wasn't worth trying to shelter in the end. We ended up walking past a bunch of locals in a bus shelter 3 times and I can only guess how stupid they must of thought we were. In the end we paid them $1 to use their phone to ring the people at our accommodation to come and get us.

We also went on a canopy tour in the forest that involved a guided walk up a steep hill on a muddy track in very humid weather then coming back down on a series of flying foxes. This was pretty good but expensive, just over $US50 each for about an hour.

After a few days we headed back to Panamá City to our dodgy hostel. There was no evidence that it had ever been cleaned at least when we were there. One good thing though it had air conditioning. Here we met up with Mikayla who arrived about 4 hours late from Costa Rica. Kim was getting a bit worried.

Our next destination in Panamá was Bocas del Toro (Mouths of Bull) which involved staying on a remote tropical island. We had to catch a bus at night and arrived a our destination feeling a little delirious at about 6 am. The air conditioner on the bus was going flat out all night and it ended up feeling really cold on the bus. It isn't normal to feel cold here.

After we arrived we were whisked off in a taxi to where the boat left from. Then we had about a half hour boat trip to the island followed by another taxi ride on a very rough and wet, muddy road to our accommodation. We were lucky to make it, the road was that bad. Apparently the taxi got stuck heading back. We had cabins built into the hill right beside and above the beach. It was quite hot here most of the time and even more humid. Everything felt damp from the humidity. Interestingly, there were hardly any mosquitoes.

While we were here we went snorkeling. You could see some small colourful fish swimming around the rocks. Its a long time since I've been snorkeling, it was great, it made me think about getting a diver's license when I get back. The thought of sharks did enter my mind a few times. Another time I did a short walk through the bush here. About four dogs followed me. The bush was really tropical with bananas and coconuts growing wild.

We saw a family of locals, possibly indigenous people, arrive on the beach to harvest a heap of coconuts and some bananas. One bloke sat out in a long skinny boat while the rest of the family were on shore. One of the girls would swim out with bags of the coconuts. The kids were having fun playing on the beach. An idyllic setting really, at least until they chucked their plastic coke bottle into the water as they left.

Before we left we did a tour of the Panamá Canal interpretation centre and watched some ships coming through. The water is on different levels and you see large doors opening after the sections are filled or emptied. The whole system is gravity fed and works really quickly.

Another highlight was a visit to a huge shopping mall near the bus terminal. It was absolutely massive and would take more than a day to see it all. We both lashed out a bit here and knocked the budget around a bit, but oh well. This photo is of just a part of the food court section.

Catching up from Nicaragua

Since the last post we have travelled through Panama and Costa Rica. We are now in Nicaragua. This place is amazing - huge inland freshwater lakes and active volcanoes. It has been hard to get near a fast and reliable Internet connection for a couple of weeks now, so it is difficult to update the blog. But I will get around to it. We are still alive and well. It is very hot and I am even getting a suntan. I reluctantly admit that I have had to wear shorts for the first time in years!!!!