Very Late Post of Choro Trail

Hi Everyone,

Well, we are actually back in Australia (got in last night to Sydney), but I had these photos in my phone camera that I never got around to downloading until now, so am finally telling the story of teh Choro Trail about a month and a half late.  So, let me take you back to a time, not in the too distant past (around 10 January 2010), when Anna went to a little place called Oruro (which she told you all about in a blog, I think) and I went back to La Paz in yet another attempt to try to do a walk, and at which time I succeeded (yay), and went on a three day trek from a little town just outside of La Paz, down the mostly pre-columbian (I think meaning before Cristopher Columbus) trail.

First camp

I went with one guide, who, I am sorry to say, stank.  He had been on a five day trek, come back to La Paz, and immediately took me on my trek, so I am sure he did not bathe (pretty cold, anyway, so durign the trek, I didn’t either – but there is a certain stench that someone can get from at least 10 days not bathing, which I am glad to say I have never gotten, but this guy had).  I was kind of happy that he also seamed to be a guide that liked to stay out in front most of the time, and anytime he came close, I created space between us again.

Guide out in front on Choro Trail

Other than the stench, he was a lovely guy and we chatted a bit, but he mostly stayed out in front and I had plenty of time to just wander along the trail, thinking lots of things (none of which I remember anymore of course, but I’m sure they were profound at the time).  It was a bit hard of a walk, but not too difficult, just constant walking every day, starting out at 8am every day and finishing about 4pm every day.

The top of the mountain in the Choro Trail

The trail was pretty, though, from beginning to end, with picturesque camping sites both nights.  We caught up with two other walkers and their guide from the same company that afternoon at the first camp site.  The couple were from Denmark and had just started on their 1 year travels around south and central america.  They were nice, and we were all the type of people that like to walk and walk and walk without really talking much, which was good. The trek was wonderful, except for the last day, in which it started to rain and continued to rain hard for the entire morning until we got to the bus stop to go back to La Paz at about 2pm that day.  I got back to La Paz at about 5pm, to freezing cold and rain and wet everything all throughout my bag as well : ( I had a hot shower at the hostel, met up with Anna and other friends we had met in Sucre who were also in La Paz that night, and had no time to dry my clothes, becasue we were off to Argentina the next morning, so you can imagine what my bag and clothes stunk like when we got to Buenos Aires.  The guy at the security section of the airport was not very impressed with me, as he had to check my bag and I only had my dirty, smelly, wet clothes in it : )

Anyway, now you can go back to all the previous blogs about Anna and I in Argentina for the rest of the trip : )

Iguazu Falls, Argentina and Brazil

I went across to Brazil the other day, twice, but this time it wasn´t a mistake, like the pre-visits to the airports. The first time I went to see the amazing Iguazu falls. These are the largest falls in the world – 2.7km long and a bloody huge volume of water. 2km of this is on the Argentinian side, but you can see it all better from the Brazilian side.  Unfortunately, Jordan wasn´t prepared to pay the Brazilian visa for a 3 hour visit, so I went with my British passport without needing a visa.  Ahhhh…..the joys of having dual citizenship. Speaking of which, my little 8 month old niece just recently got her Australian citizenship to go with her American one for being born in the USA.  

The second time I went across was a for a shopping errand for Jordan! I found some cute cuddly toys and they were exactly what she wanted as presents for children of friends (and one lucky friend, I believe!). It was an eventful journey with the local bus leaving me stranded at the Brazilian border with me with no idea what to do next! I managed to get 2 more buses to go the short way to the border, and got there after the falls closed but before the shop closed. Phew! I had temporarily forgotten that Brazil is 1 hour ahead of Argentina in the summer time. But all was good.  

Care for a bit of water?

So I went to see the panoramic view of the falls.  Wow!! There´s a lot of water moving through those falls. I´d love to be able to show you a short video of it, but I´m technically challenged in that area – hopefully my computer-savvy cousin can help in a few days. As you know, pictures can´t do it justice, but I can always try!  

Iguazu Falls, Argentina

The next day Jordan and I went together to the Argentinian side. You can get up close and personal on this side – there is a spectacular upper walk, where this was taken from. We also went on a boat trip where they take great delight in ensuring you get as wet as possible! Every view was breathtaking and I wanted to take lots and lots of photos, but I let my eyes do a lot of the looking this time.  

Continuous water spray

This shows you the haze of water spray that was ever present at some points of the falls, from the sheer force of the water crashing downwards. Keep an eye on our flickr site – www.flickr.com/travellinganna - for the videos and if you want to see more piccies.  

Coati babies

These little bubs are a relative of the racoon – sorry, I forget the name of them in Spanish (like that will help you recognise them!). They were very bold around people because although it was forbidden to feed them, some tourists did, and petted them too (I admit, they are very cute!). But they really are a nuisance particularly around the cafeteria area. Similar rules to not feeding native animals anywhere – it´s possible that they can bite, and they might attack a small child who doesn´t have food when they really want some.  Fortunately I didn´t see any instances of this, but I really think we should remember that they are wild animals and treat them as such.

Patagonia, Argentina and Chile

The End of the World team

This was our last, all-included-trip, organised through GAP adventures, called the End of the World tour, visiting Patagonia on the Argentinian side and the Chilean side. We finished up in Ushuia, the southern most city in the world. Patagonia is a region rather than a country. We were travelling with 14 other people from Australia, England, Peru, Croatia, Denmark and Hong Kong. Our guide was a Spaniard who has been living in Chile for about 5 years, Anna, and our assistant guide for the 3 days of walking was a Chilean, Rodrigo who comes down to Chilean Patagonia in summer for the tourist season and back up to Santiago for the other 6 or so months.

Ammon and Sharon

Fortunately there were many avid photographers on the trip, and we are most grateful to Ammon and Sharon from Hong Kong who shared some of their photographs with us. But it has got to be said, a lot of what we saw really couldn´t be adequately captured by camera. Many of the views were just too large, an others, like the glaciers, were difficult to photograph because of the contrasts, or lack of contrasts.

Perito Moreno Glacier, Argentina

That said, Ammon got a great photo of the Perito Moreno Glacier, the largest moving glacier in the world. It is 30km in length. The middle part of the glacier moves on average at about 2m per year, but the front part moves only at about 20cm per year (I think that´s right – please correct me if I´m wrong!). This difference creates the cracks and fissures that give the glacier the light blue colour. We visited this glacier by boat and then saw the top from platforms. You can no longer go right up to the base of the glacier as many people have died that way from falling ice. A piece can fall off that´s the equivalent or 10 (or maybe 20?) floors of a building. The above-water height is about 70m and the below-water height is about 170m.

A hanging glacier

Here is a different kind of glacier – a hanging glacier. This is because the glacier is coming down the side of a steep mountain and then it stops short of the base of the mountain. If part of this kind of glacier falls to the bottom of the mountain, it is then called an alpine glacier, I think. The bottom part of this glacier, where you can see a grey area with some white, has collected soil from higher on the mountain where it falls when the ice falls. There are also strong winds around here. And here´s some basic information that I didn´t know – glaciers are formed from snow on the top of the mountain that has an enormous amount of pressure on it from gravity so that all the air is squashed out of the snow and it turns into the ice of a glacier! There´s some useless information for you!

Sheltering from the wind

Wind. Let me tell you about wind in Patagonia. It is very rare for there to be no wind in Patagonia, and the area gets its fair share of rain as well (or maybe more than its fair share!). On our first day walk it rained nearly the whole time, and I´m pretty sure the wind was fairly relentless as well, and some people quickly realised that either their waterproof gear wasn´t very waterproof, or they really did need some of those waterproof pants (that was me)! It´s difficult to describe to you what it is like to be in a place where there are strong winds nearly all the time. It´s quite exhausting, apart from anything else! But in Patagonia you kind of just have to put up with it if you want to see some of the amazing views and glaciers and mountains. I guess it´s understandable that there is so much wind, as there is not much land mass around the very south of the continent. I´m sure there´s a more technical meteorological explanation for the wind, but all I know is that after a few days of constant wind there was a sigh of relief on the odd days or places where there wasn´t much wind. And the sound of the wind from a little tent? Noisy! It was even loud in some of the hotel rooms! So we´re glad we´re up in Buenos Aires again. I love Patagonia, but really, the wind is really a force to be reckoned with and I think it would start wearing away at my sanity.

We are now in our last week of travelling – kind of hard to believe! Our itinerary now is stay in Buenos Aires tonight, fly to Iguazu Falls up near the Brazilian border tomorrow and stay up there a few days. I will go to the Brazilian side of the falls using my British passport, but Jordan´s not prepared to pay for a visa to go to Brazil for 1 day. Damn the Australian Government who now charge Brazilians to visit Australia! Means us travellers have to fork out USD100 to go into Brazil or to fly in to Argentina and Chile. Oh well, I´ll take photos and she´ll go trekking in the National Park near the falls and we´ll both check out the Argentinian side of the falls.

Then we take a long bus trip to Gualeguaychu just north of Buenos Aires where we will spend the weekend enjoying Carnivale before returning to Buenos Aires to catch our flight back to Australia on Monday 8th. Might get to see you soon! Yay!

Oruro, Bolivia

Sadly I won´t be able to give you a sneak preview of Carnivale in Bolivia because we had our biggest loss of the trip – somehow I managed to lose Jordan´s brand new camera, along with photos from the last 3 weeks. Fortunately we had been uploading fairly regularly so it was only 3 weeks worth and not more. So you´ll miss out on a little video of a pre-Carnivale parade, but that´s ok, we´ll post photos of the real thing from Argentina. Unfortunately you will miss the photos of the percussion instruments that they had that were unique to Oruro.

Quirquincho

They were made from the hardened shell of an animal called a Quirquinchu (pron. girginchoo) which is a relative of the armadillo (thanks Wikipedia for the photo!). They had some kind of mechanism inside which you twist to make a percussive sound, and you could swing them around to make a whirring sound.  If only I still had the little video! Never mind. We´re back on track now with another new camera which I will guard very closely.

I´m sure we´ll see more amazing things in Gualeguaychu, Argentina that we can photograph and show you from the Carnivale there.

Oh, and the other photo I can´t show you was of the popcorn-making man who had a little cart where he cooked the popcorn in a little metal tub and sold little bags for 1 Boliviano (a few cents Australian). I became addicted to popcorn ever since Peru, especially when I was sick – salty carbs, mmmmm!