Rio de Janeiro - Delirium tremens with Taio Cruz

Rio de Janeiro (Brasil)
26 Dec - 27 Dec 2011

Europeans first rolled into Rio on the 1st of January 1502. It just goes to show that even back then this place had the reputation of being the very epicentre of the 'good time and good vibe' world. I often think that as the Portuguese made their way up the Brasilian coastline on that New Years day, courting the inevitable mead related hangover, hushed and whispered tales of wild brotherly love surely would have bubbled to the surface from the subterranean depths of the ship, gaining vibrancy and clarity via a new day on the back of sun drenched decks. The leader of the expedition and captain of the vessel, Gaspar de Lemos, who more than likely would have been caught in several compromsing positions the evening before in what would have been a debaucherous night of revelry, excess and 'fast living', would have stood proud and tall on deck. Dehydrated and searching his ruck sack for Nurofen, his enigmatic pronouncement that they had encountered the mouth of a mighty river and that it should be now known as the River of January I'm sure would have been met with the equivalent Portuguese response of 'What a dumbarse!'. Seriously, that's your best captain? The River of January? What about those mountains we passed yesterday? I guess they're the Mountains of December, or that jungle the previous months, the jungle of November! You sir are an idiot! In all honesty the crew weren't all that far off the mark, the river was actually just a bay (Guanabara Bay), but, Rio de Janeiro just sounds so much cooler doesn't it?
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Our crew of three didn't exactly have the luxury of making our way into Rio via the rolling, karmic waters of the Atlantic. We had intelligently opted for the 7hr ride on terra firma from Sao Paulo. Something I was completely fine with as my desire to take to the skies in South America was going to be limited to Emirates flying me out. There's something about South American air crash statistics that don't quite instill me with absolute confidence, nor do I like the idea of lying out on a glacier somewhere calously calculating which of my friends I'd have to eat first (it would have been you Jet, FYI).
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Arriving at the main bus station in Rio several hours after our scheduled time of arrival we were greeted by our driver Jorge. This was a beaten man. His feeble attempts of conviviality however unravelled smartly like the contrived fantasies of a compulsive liar. His face weathered, eyes sunken, sullen by demeanour, this wasn't the warm samba style, free wheeling, free loving welcome I had anticipated! Of course, I think he had been waiting at a mind numbingly boring bus station without notice for three hours, perhaps all the while anticipating his arrival home hours earlier to a lovely wife who had probably prepared him a hearty dish of feijoada. Well, whatever Jorge, the drive into Copacabana was always going to be the end of out association.

But who cared!! There we were, in Rio de Janeiro man!! This is the place that I had anticipated on being in about a year earlier and perhaps would have been but for some light fingered bandits in La Paz, but ok, that story is old hat and the scenario that I found myself in right at this moment was by far the better option. I had JJ and Jetson with me and this place was going to get taken out, like a boss!

Copacabana Beach - Rio de Janeiro - Brasil

Copacabana Beach, overcast and with a 'hint' of rain. Unfortunatelty this was to become a familiar sight over the next few days

Home of the Olympics in 2016 - Welcome to Rio!
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I always feel that those few moments when you arrive in a new place are always filled with mystery and intrigue. Your senses are alert to everything going on around you and your mind, well mine at least, always tries to make sense of location and lock in a familiar landmark. This I found was somewhat easy to do in Rio. Sambadrome on the right,  a minute or two later our first sighting of Cristo Redentor (on and oddly clear evening) then Sugarloaf (Pão de Açúcar) as we rounded the bay in Botafogo,through Tunnel Velho and finally spitting us out into Copacabana itself. The apartment that we were going to call home for the next 10 days was located on Avenida Prado Junior, just over one block from the beach. From memory we had arrived just as the sun was dropping out of sight and after what we had been 'assured' were going to be the last of the days of rain that Rio had scheduled (yeah, I'll get back to that one).

Sugarloaf (Pão de Açúcar) - Rio de Janeiro - Brasil

Copacabana - lesson 1

The Caipirinha - roughly translated to 'country bumpkin'

It's made in the following manner;

Ingredients

1 lime quartered

2 tsp fine sugar

2 oz cachaca (is a distilled spirit from Brazil that is in a class of it's own but it is often associated with rum)

Working it

1.Place the lime wedges and sugar into an old-fashioned glass

2.Muddle well to create a paste

3. Fill the glass with ice cubes

4. Pour in the cachaca

5. Stir well

Now I've been fortunate enough to have acquired some knowledge as to night one proceedings of holidays when travelling with friends, in fact, lets at this point reflect on a few of them for the sake of posterity [Beatles mania in Kuala Lumpur], [Lost Angles - Los Angeles], [KL Streetsmarts in Kuala Lumpur again], and after those classics you can now add to that infamous list, Delirium tremens with Taio Cruz. It was absolutely predestined, it was the rite of passage that needed to be had and the most befitting course of action by which we were to christen night one in Rio. And so it was, that as we exposed ourselves to a relatively balmy evening we took up residence at a small bar overlooking the beach in Copacabana, ordered a first round of caipirinha's and downed the sweet, syrupy, sugary goodness of what a beachside caipirinha is meant to be...but my God, where were the alcohol police when the cachaca was being dosed out so liberally? It reminded me of a few free pouring tequila nights in Mexico City where the simple objective on those evenings was to survive.




The view from Porto Bay - Copacabana Beach - Rio de Janeiro - Brasil



This is the point in time where the infamous carioca haze of feigned lucidity really did a number on my memory because the vagaries of what happened from drink one to waking up the next morning are punctuated only by snippets of residual images that I'm not quite sure are imagined. What I recall was this. We had many drinks on the beach. We ran into a kind fun loving kid whose 'amor' for the world was all encompassing, he really LOVED everyone, EXCEPT Cristo, why that was I couldn't quite decide but to quote him directly, his take on the all dominating protector of Rio was to say this, 'F**k Cristo, F**k him'. Alright bro, I think your friends should probably get you home huh?

Clouded and shrouded - Cristo on a typical day - Rio de Janeiro - Brasil

Check out this link from The Adventures of Jet Frichot - Copacabana Beach

I believe after this point we bunkered down at a restaurant for a few hours, ordering the national drink on what appeared to be an endless conveyerbelt of caipirinha service. In between that point and getting home at 4am it was actually Janelle who requested that we entertain ourselves for a few hours at a local strip joint!? What THE? Yup, that request makes as much sense to me now as it did on that night. I'm sure there was a comment thrown around about 'Just getting it out of our systems' , although for me in all honesty strip joints have always been kind of lame. I kind of struggle to remember anything that happened in there in any case other than the fact that it was practically across the road from where our apartment was............(fade out, night one)

.....then the morning comes

I woke up somewhere around 8am. My mouth was a little dry but yeah, I was ok. Janelle and Jet were still asleep but they had arrived safely and we had survived. I did the internal audit quite quickly and miracously felt quite reasonable. That self assessment was the only encouragement that I needed to jump up, get changed and hit Copa for a run! Crazy right!? I mean I think I was so pumped about doing this that in the days that followed we could only reason that it was the endorphin rush that had given me a 'delayed onset hangover', although in actual fact don't think it every truly arrived.

That first run on Copacabana was a true highlight for me. Hitting one of the most famous beaches in the world, the breakings waves of the Atlantic setting my rhythm, Cristo adorning the peak of Corcovado, breaking through the morning clouds ever so majestically, the magnificenc of Sugarloaf to the north of the beach , it was hard to imagine a more perfect setting to get out and get active? And IF you did need to resort to any type of additional inspiration then there was plenty of fodder in the form of fellow runners to provide that a spring in your step and an increased turn of speed.

...and if that run was spectacular then my return to the apartment was a lesson in what it is to be triumphant in continued drunken bliss. Assuming on my arrival that my fellow cohorts were merely tired and not in the throws of a monolithic hangover, I jumped up on the bed of one Janelle Jordan and gave a bullocking rendition of the Taio Cruz classic I got a hangover. It was only at the point that I'd completely devastated the chorus that I realised that young Jordan was in a world of cachaca induced anguish because her lack of appreciation for what I was laying down, and paralleling by jumping on the bed, was exactly mirrored by her lack of movement. Then my brain kicked in... 'Whoa, she really did have a hangover and she has been drinking TOO much for SURE' ..and as for Frichot, well that man had retired to the spirit world hours before and there was nothing that could be done at this stage to bring him back into the realm of the living, or perhaps my universe of stupidity

(...to be continued)

Sao Paulo - Hitting up Sampa

Sydney (Australia) - Sao Paulo (Brazil)
24 DEC - 26 DEC 2011

My few days leading up to departure on Christmas Eve had been some of the most surreal of my relatively short existence. By extension, my time in Brazil was going to be characterised by an emotional transgression that for me had always surpassed the limits of what anyone else would consider normal. 'Watcha going to do?', when it comes to emotions I've got to say, I think I'm far removed from your average bear, but I'm OK with that and I was more than OK with the circumstances that had somehow attached themselves to my internal fabric prior departure.

Christmas Eve was a standard affair in the Elisher household but at an earlier start time to what we were usually accustomed due to our designated Emirates international conduit departing Charles-Kingsford at 9:45pm that evening. Now for anyone that doesn't know, Emirates are based in Dubai, so if you're just now starting to run the logistical app in your mind then don't bother. The Sydney - Dubai - Sao Paulo route IS the LONG way to get to Brazil! I know that, but somehow the price for the long way significantly cheaper than the most direct routes to Rio, by a substantial margin. I thank my research skills for that otherwise this write up could very well have been How we got to St.Petersburg rather then how we ended up finding our way to the River of January. It was going to be a flight option that both Frichot and Jordan would hate me for some 33hrs later when we finally landed in Brasil.

As flight EK413 thundered down highway 1, i.e., the main north-south runway that assists these birds of coordinated aerial mass movement get 'high and wide', the kiddies in the cabin had already commenced their ritualistic wailing. From what I've noted in my recent years of travel this appears to be a time honoured 'altruistic' activity undertaken by the general populous of individuals under 5 years of age whose objective it is to warn all others of the imminent doom that is lurking, or rather just waiting, in a type of suspended animation within the confines of the cabin. Somehow as adults we never quite get around to understanding the fear conveyed in these shrill cries but have always associated them with the pain caused by the pressure adjustments in the inner ear as the plane ascends. From my studies however this is not the case! After listening to these cries, when they commence and the orchestrated symphony, there appear to be complex communications between the bambini that goes something like this;

Wailing kid 1 - 'Whoa, we're traveling really fast! Oh my God, this huge thing is lifting off the ground, I think I'm going to shit myself!!'

Wailing kid 2 - 'Oh man, I think I'm going to shit myself!!!'

Wailing kid 3 - 'Yeah, I know I'm going to shit myself'

Wailing kid 4 - 'I totally shit myself! Man, I shit myself bad, oh I can't believe it!'

Wailing kids 1 & 2 - 'Oh that dude shit himself! We're all going to shit ourselves, we're doomed!'

Frichot or Mr FML when it comes to air travel is just like a mosquito zapper in these situations. Somehow how these little turd busters are always so strategically placed around Frichot that when the chorus commences you just now that the prime position for its appreciation will be in the very seat that Jetson is occupying. Once the head shaking started and once the manic seat rocking intensified I just knew that the next 15hrs to Dubai would have him exiting his right mind somewhere high over the Indian Ocean. I offered my mate a Buddhist like blessing and wished him well in his search for a Zen like state but I knew the realities, I knew the route ahead and I knew that he didn't have any Xanax freely available (not for himself but to hand out to the kids), he was as they say on the slopes of Everest, In the death zone, and nobody can assist you there, not a soul!

I had on the other hand taken what I felt was the more audacious challenge and that was to occupy the seat next to Janelle.......for 15hrs! Now to call JJ a talkaholic would be liking call Charlie Sheen a casual user, we both know that just ain't so. On the other hand I'm more of your counter punching conversationalist, I don't mind listening more than talking but this to me was going to be my own type of moonshot. My masterstroke however, and the key to my defensive arsenal is my ability to sleep on any form of transport. Once there's movement and I'm locked in for a journey them I magically commence my travels through ethereal lands for what ends up being hours, literally hours. I'm uncertain of how I manage this but all I know is that after the supper service had been completed, the lights dimmed and the cabin settled, I was dialed in to what must have been 30+ playings of the Rumours album - I was hostage to my internal air travel zombie.

Dubai International Airport - U.A.E - Frichot in disguise, Speedball is just that big in the U.A.E

 

Just under 15hrs later we were following our glide path into Dubai International. There we were, half the distance to our destination, halfway around the world and in an airport on Christmas morning. You just know that in a situation such as that, with 5hrs between flights and then 15hrs from Dubai to Sao Paulo, the only obligation you have as a traveler is to find a bar and drink. That's realistically the only way that you can rock Christmas Spirit authentically when you're locked away in transit. If there was a Facebook page for 'I Drinking whilst in transit'  then somehow I'd find a way to be giving it two thumbs up!

EK261 - only 14hrs to go - Dubai International Airport - U.A.E

Our ride

I don't remember much of the flight from Dubai down to Sao Paulo, I slept for most of the way, much to the chagrin of my accomplices. Some 14hrs of quite time with Fleetwood Mac and half baked attempts at watching Senna on 'ICE' entertainment, seemed kind of appropriate considering we were going to be landing in his home town.I have it in my mind that I attempted to watch in four times and failed on all occasions. Somehow I had lucid dreams of F1 and grand failure all across the Atlantic, kind of disconcerting when you think back to Air France flight 447 from Rio, and oh yeah, Frichot's premonitions of frolicking in the water after what he imagined to be a plane crash.

'Merry Freakin' Christmas Jeston' - photo 1 of the 'Jet sleeps through Brazil' series - Serhs Executive Hotel - Sao Paulo - Brasil

Somehow we all survived the 35hr torture test to Sao Paulo, some better than others. Arriving late on Christmas day we were dishevelled, mentally broken and in need of a place to lay our hats, because for that night, we were going to be calling the Serhs Executive our home. Oddly we all managed to escape the clutches of the hotel in direct pursuit of a good 'ole fashioned Christmas dinner, but where to find one when you're not exactly in the city centre and in one of the most Catholic countries on earth? Certainly it was going to be a somewhat fruitless attempt in the barren wasteland of the burbs of Christmas central? So you would thing in any case. Magically, in charmed, Christmas miracle type of manner we stumbled just a few blocks into a hotel that had majestically set up a buffet for what they anticipated to be hundreds of people.When your three heroes walked into the scene we automatically doubled the attendance, with the other people present being the wait staff. It was odd and amusing, in a way that a Phonsovan hotel room is cavernous and soulless.

Downtown Guarulhos - Sao Paulo -Brasil

The New York of the southern hemisphere - Sao Paulo -Brasil

Sao Paulo -Brasil

Turning the page on Christmas Eve the next morning we headed down to the main bus station in Sao Paulo and jumped ourselves a ride into Rio. Originally the plan had been to fly internally but a few logistical issues had us on a 4hr meander through the back blocks of Brasil. I was good with that failed opportunity, I don't mind losing three hours for the sake of losing my sanity at take off, although, I almost did lose my sanity with Jetson whose attempt to exchange a few dollars into reals nearly had us waving goodbye to our ride! Man, oh man, that would have been entertainment for the whole family to see.

On our way!

In any case, there we were, riding high and on our way to samba central. Rio and I were going to get acquainted, finally.

Brazil - 43

Brasil

43:The tour of awesome
24 DEC 2011 - 15 JAN 2012

I think this makes my point

In the same tradition of other kick-off write ups such as 'Life in a year full of Saturdays', 'The wing and a prayer tour', and Don't call this a comeback, I bring you '43 - The tour of awesome!'

If you remember this write up 'You're worth what you've got' or this one,' Quelle belle morte', then you would more than likely also know that stumps were drawn quite prematurely during that trip due to either an errant gringo or a nubile senor making their way both to and then through my travel bag of treats and lifting my financial lifeline for their own personal gratification. A couple of days after those events I endured a 60hr bus ride south to Buenos Aires by which time I had had enough time of endless gazing to easily convince myself that I’d have to make my way back within a year in order to finish off a significant part of what I unfortunately had to leave behind. This my friends is the return - we welcome you now to Redemption Island!

When my Life in a Year full of Saturdays commenced last year I had placed myself on the road to escapism. I needed a break from everything that my life had become until that point which felt like an endless washing cycle of work, study, exams, coffee and the yearning for sleep. This little sojourn back to Sur America, aside from being a kept promise to myself to be in Rio for NYE, also sees me on the other side of a 6 year tall hurdle of commitment and torment which in common terms is known as the undertaking of a law degree. It also sees me typing ‘THE END’ in bold 72 point Arial at the end of a chapter of my life that has run the course of 17 years, three degrees and numerous hours of midnight madness in the quest for finding creative ways of delivering a pass mark. My favourite and most successful involved playing guitar for several hours, all two of the chords in my repertoire, and magically activating the memory function in my mental E:drive that allowed me to stuff a semester’s worth of monetary policy notes into the empty file prior to the sun lighting up my window on exam day!

So, as I said to a friend of mine the other day, ‘this is a victory lap...this one is for the fans’. The plan as it stands at the moment is to head out with Janelle and Frichot from Sydney on the 24th of December and to make our way to Rio by the 26th. After that, well, the concept is rather simple...let the good times roll!

Bariloche - A magic lantern full of chimeras

San Carlos de Bariloche (Argentina)
19 OCT - 23 OCT 2010

Over the last week or so I've taken to reviewing Patagonian real estate, particularly in Bariloche. Why? Perhaps due to the fact that I was consciously anticipating doing this write up, perhaps due to the fact that aesthetically this was one of the most stunning places that I'd had the fortune of intruding on in my months away, or perhaps because there is a real desire for me to acquire myself a little piece of this Andean dream scape.

Venturing through the Rio Negro province - Patagonia - Argentina

Venturing through the Rio Negro province - Patagonia - Argentina

What's the deal with the chimera then? Well these days the term has come to mean, more generally, an impossible or foolish fantasy. Perhaps my quest to carve out ownership in this little city on the southern shores of Nahuel Huapi lake is just that, but I still like the thought of it. Then there's the fact that a chimera in Greek mythology is a bit of a 'bitsa', a creature made up of the oddest animals parts that just also happens to breathe fire, like all good mythological creatures should do. In my view, San Carlos de Bariloche is a little like that, it suffers from multiple personality disorder. Wholly sitting within the land of Argentina, having close economic ties with the Chilean town of Port Montt, settled by a wandering German and inhabited by a number of his brethren as well a handful of Austrians, Slovenes and Chileans, this is a Spanish speaking multicultural cocktail of people nicely tucked in at the base of one of the greatest mountain ranges on earth. There's all that plus the fact that the mountains made be realise that I hadn't been snowboarding in something close to four years, damn you Andes and your snow capped peaks over a pristine cobalt blue lake, damn you hard!

View from the hostel - San Carlos de Bariloche - Patagonia - Argentina

View from the hostel - San Carlos de Bariloche - Patagonia - Argentina

Arriving in Bariloche via an 18 hour run on our double decker four wheeled Argentinian chariot of backpacking conquest, hermana de la sol (aka Sister Sunshine) woke us from our Mendozon malbec induced haze somewhere on the desolate roads of Patagonia with Señor Hugo somehow still basking fondly in the sunshine of our memories. Bariloche was again one of those places that I had intuitively felt that I needed to see but couldn't quite develop the right 'sell strategy' by which I could convince travelling partner, other than the fact that I assured D that the place looked dynamite and that I had a fondness for mountains which at this point I wanted to indulge in a little. Somewhere inside me I hoped that we'd escape another tragedy of  Montevideo proportions as we'd travelled a significant distance south and it put us much further out of the Parque Ambue Ari range that we'd really intended and our time of arrival to the park was nigh.

Yeah, does this car make my bum look big?

Dude, where's my owner?

Riding into Bariloche beneath a blanket of cloud, irritating rain and a wind that had a familiar mountain style bite to it  I immediately got suckered in by the dynamic surroundings . Dramatic mountains standing tall, over what on this day was a tempestuous lake, little San Carlos already had that familiar atmosphere and a mood that I acquainted to mountainous areas. How strange it was therefore that I was already feeling a sizable slice of  regret on arrival as I knew that our initial schedule would have us moving out of town in under two days time. An issue that would come to a head the following day when D and I had our greatest day of tension in the two months that we spent on the road. With that said though, considering that there wasn't any hand to hand combat, no name calling and that we were quite civil about the whole thing, our moments of anxiety riddled tension were conquered swiftly with margarita chasers the following evening, but I'm getting a little ahead of the game here.

Lake Nahuel Huapi - Bariloche - Argentina

Lake Nahuel Huapi - Bariloche - Argentina

Our abode in Bariloche was a fantastic little hostel that had great views out onto the lake and to the mountains beyond. As much as I knew that when I arrived that I'd find it difficult to leave after just two days, the accommodation that we had acquired kind of sealed the deal for me. Somewhere along the line within the next 36hours, diverging schedules, either real or imagined, were going to come to a head and in turn it was going to force me to actually entertain the idea of be defaulting to the now fabled Plan B. I'm not sure if D and I had actually discussed our respective Plan B's up until this point but somewhere during our time in Bariloche our conversation stumbled onto a bunch of hypotheticals, or more pointendly, what if scenarios. The obvious question being, what if this travelling partnership hadn't worked out? I explained to D that I had formulated a speech in my ahead, akin to a break up speech, something like, 'Yeah, it's been fun, but you know, there's things that I need to do and obviously things that you need to do and perhaps its time for us both to travel solo for a while, maybe we'll catch up along the way' . That was going to be my 'go to' line if I needed it, thankfully there was never a time when it needed to be used because everything worked out swimmingly, but again, that's me getting ahead of the game a little.

Our first night in Bariloche involved a little bit of a foot patrol and discovering a place that Willy Wonker obviously worked over pretty hard in his time off from the chocolate factory. It's like Cadbury and Nestle both had a nuclear meltdown in Bariloche and the fallout manifested itself into a town filled with 101 chocolaterias. It really was kind of nuts in down town Bariloche, it was a cacophany of milk chocolate, white chocolate, dark chocolate, chocolate with dulce de leche, chocolate fountains, rum chocolate,  Kahlua chocolate, hoboken madness chocolate, Spanish oompa loompas, it was simply a chaotic chocolate induced delirium that you could only absolve yourself from by looking out onto the surrounding mountains and convincing yourself that you'd hike it all off, on one of these random days (whenever that day may eventuate). This chocolate mind bend di such a number on us that we almost forgot to drink that night, almost...

Cerro Campanario - Bariloche - Argentina

Cerro Campanario - Bariloche - Argentina

View from Cerro Campanario - Bariloche - Argentina

Now the next day in Bariloche was where the tension rating was dialled up to a solid 8 on the 'acceptometer'. It kind of went something like this. D and I had taken to sleeping in during the mornings, I mean a decent sleep in that had us stirring into some sort of movement close to midday. On this day I remember jumping on the net in the reception area of the hostel and hearing this song [Carlos Varela - fotos de familia], it was one of those moments when I really felt present, you know, those rare moments where you kind of feel mildly euphoric and particularly appreciate the situation you're in. I mean here I was in South America, a place that I'd wanted to travel to for years, was in a fantastic town and I was doing it, living the dream so to speak. The problem on this day however was that we needed to find ourselves bus tickets north to Bolivia for the very next day, something which I assumed would be relatively easy. It wasn't. Dina and I battled for 4-5 hours online to try and secure cheap transport up to Sucre and with each passing minute of travel failure the tension rose palpably and in turn each missing minute meant that the light of day dropped away behind the 'hills', a day that would inevitably become one that was lost. Our bus failure for the afternoon then translated into us virtually missing out on only day available that we had to see what Bariloche and the surrounding area had to offer and in turn involved us making our way out to the bus station in order to secure tickets.

View from Cerro Campanario - Bariloche - Argentina

View from Cerro Campanario - Bariloche - Argentina

Jumping in a cab and riding out to the bus station I felt angry, disappointed and just plain dumb. Here we were, planning to leave a fantastic place and all we'd seen was the inside of the hostel virtually, it was simply stupid. I turned over a thousand thoughts in my head on that 10 min drive, all of which caused me to be more than a little introverted. I don't think I said a word to D on the way out to the station other than 'This is really stupid'. At the bus station it was more than obvious that we were ticked with the situation and the schedule that we'd put ourselves on and that translated into a couple terse, curt exchanges. At the point where we were standing in line to purchase tickets and just about to pay I had my little flip out, I took D aside and just said, 'I can't do this'. From there I think the conversation went a little like this;

'You can't do what exactly?'

'I can't leave, it's just stupid. We haven't even seen the place and now we're leaving. I don't think I can leave tomorrow'

'Ok, so when do you think you can go?'

'I need another two days at least'

I think that was close to what we said. At that very instant my mind was racing, trying to reconcile leaving with the fact that I'd simply be having another adventure elsewhere, plus there was also the fact that I'd already committed to walking puma's in Bolivia with D and usually when I make a commitment to do something  I stick to it, even if the other person isn't depending on it. Then the question from D was presented, and man, I think I answered it quickly enough but my mind wavered  and I was scrambling somewhat, it went something like this;

'Ok, then we'll stay another couple of days, no problem, but you're still OK to come up to the park aren't you?' - I think that was pretty close to what D said.

In the second it took me to answer my head raced. I wasn't sure at that point. I really wanted to stay in Bariloche for a while, in fact, in that instant I had it in my mind to travel south and make my way down as far as I could go. There's just something about snow capped peaks that gets me each and every time. I almost defaulted to my Plan B and not through any fault by either of us, just that I felt at that point that my heart was saying something different to my head. Still, my response came out in this form;

'Yes, still OK to go'

And that was it. Crisis resolved, travel itinerary put back in its place. That evening after the tension of the afternoon had sailed away on the breeze we had ourselves a few margaritas and laughed at how absolutely idiotic we'd been. It really hadn't been anywhere near the big deal that we had imagined it to have been a few hours earlier. We settled on a few more days in San Carlos and decided that we'd pull a 60hr + bus ride into Bolivia another day, and that was that. Case closed.

Your explorer on the road - something about 'it' being over there?

Quilmes - synonymous with getting pissed in Argentina

The next few days in Bariloche were outstanding. Picture perfect blue bird days made for some excellent sightseeing. We spent one of those days up on Cerro Campanario with what we were advised were 'world class' views, and of course they were. The other day we spent walking through the town and hanging out by the lake, it was just the tonic that I needed.

Moonrise - Bariloche - Argentina

Two days after we had originally intended to leave we actually did make our way out of Bariloche and I think both of us were satisfied with the outcome. It's a place that I of course have mentally checked on the 'To do again' list, especially knowing the fact that one of the best ski areas in South America, Cerro Catedral, is just a 45 min ride out of town. Who knows though, maybe one day I'll look out onto the lake from my own little joint on one of these hills, you'll all be welcome of course, just look out for the welcome sign that says Chimera.

JJ bombed once again - random Italian restaurant - Bariloche - Argentina

Mendoza - The smoking gun theory

Mendoza (Argentina)
16th-18th OCT 2010

So let me run this by you, if there's a person holding a smoking gun, standing over the body of someone that has just at that moment, coincidentally, been shot and killed, then could you reasonably deduce that the person holding the gun, with a vortex of smoke rising from their outstretched hand and now invading the inner sanctum of their nasal cavity, is in fact the guilty party? Circumstantial evidence would in fact allow you to make a strong case in that situation. It may not be correct but deductive reasoning would make for a pretty damn good guess I'd say. In much the same manner, the hostel that D and I were staying at in Mendoza was in the middle of Argentinian wine country. An area that in fact produces 75% of all wine in this country, and one that has a climate that's just perfect for producing an elegant, complex and wonderous malbec. Now just to provide a little more detail. The kitchen of the hostel was occupied with the carcasses of many empty wine bottles and thus my reasonable conclusion was that it was 101% certain that there was a bottle opener hiding somewhere within a 3.5 metre radius of where we were standing. It was only about an hour later that we realised that the smoking gun was in fact just a damn fancy lighter, so no bottle opener to be found in the heartland of Argentinian wine country my friends! It would be like going to Amsterdam and not finding a single backpacker in your hostel that had a bit of the 'ole domestic Don Juan stashed in their pockets.

Ciudad de Mendoza - Argentina

I think it translates to something close to, 'and still they continue to suck' - Mendoza - Argentina

Mendoza - Argentina

Two bottles of malbec in our hands, hours to kill and a collective stubbornness borne out of alcoholic unity, we ripped into the plastic cork with any utensil we could find. Forks, spoons and knives at the ready as we poked, prodded and carved our way further into the brick wall that was preventing us from having a chilled evening in Mendoza.

Now I'm sure there are successful  methods that you can readily utilise in order to remove the cork from a bottle without having a bottle opener at your disposal. Ways that have been shown on YouTube for centuries no doubt, but  methodologies we were completely oblivious to. With our worldly sensibilities we decided that cutting into the cork and then pushing it back into the bottle would eventually serve us well. Dina also suggested that we hold a plastic bag over the bottle, just in case the pressure of the event manifested into some type of UB40 red wine explosion. So as I forced the cork down with the back end of a fork something miraculous happened, the room was instantaneously painted red. The explosion had caught the both of us off guard and placed us directly in the middle of a red wine shower that would have done any splatter house production proud. With the hostel kitchen now playing host to the final scenes of the movie by the same name (please see Hostel (2005) written and directed by Eli Roth), we were forced to clean up rather quickly or be put in the position where Aldo, the hostel owner, would more than likely have suffered a heart attack if he were to walk in at that instant.

Tango on the streets - Mendoza - Argentina

This guy had the moves

Rolling back a day, we had met Aldo, the owner of the Oasis hostel, approximately 15 mins after we arrived in Mendoza on an overnight bus from Buenos Aires. I use the word overnight extremely loosely as the whole ride was in the 18hr range and being on a bus for that amount of time is never pleasant. So walking into the hostel, eyelids drooping, faculties lost and the comfortable oasis of an Oasis hostel bed only steps away, the last thing that we needed to listen to was Aldo tell us in minute detail of all the tours, restaurants, extra-activities that he could hook us up with at that very moment. Aldo couldn't resist the temptation to provide us with a blow by blow account or process methodology of how we should walk from his establishment to the city centre of his fabulous city, going into such insignificant detail that he even recommended the best side of the street that we should walk on.

Aldo didn't know it at the time but he was lucky to have survived a lynching right there and then. A little part of me actually wishes that he had walked into the hostel kitchen once we had destroyed it, just for the sake of a little pay back. Aldo, I hated you with all of my being at that moment!

As for Mendoza itself? It's nice enough but not a place that you would stay in just for the sake of visiting the city itself. It's distinctly used as a launching point for attacking the bodegas (wineries) that make their residence a few kilometres out of town. Something that we intended to do whilst in Mendoza and had in actual fact lined up for our last day. I was also kind of hoping that this would turn out to be half decent as our escapade to Montevideo had been made on a whim, my own unfortunately, and Mendoza had been shaping up us a little bittle of a fail also. I was sincerely hoping that the wine could pull us out of the mire.

Somehow the advice that we'd received regarding wine tours in Mendoza, received through the friends of friends directory, had placed Mr Hugo's Wineries and Bikes (Mr Hugo's W&B) at the top of the list of things to do whilst in the town of Maipu, the gateway to the wine region just outside of Mendoza. Now, for the few of you that may have done the maths already, whilst the concept of visiting wineries and riding push bikes might sound ever so quaint, even if it's undertaken within the shadows of those mountainous marvels called the Andes, you don't have to be a genious to at least figure out the potential consequences when you get the point where you're biking under the influence. So hold that thought for a few paragraphs.

Mr Hugo - Wineries and Bikes is a family run business located in the center of Los Caminos del Vino (The roads of the wine), and the crux of happens is that you walk in, get yourself a map, have a bike thrust into your hands and then you get sent away with waves and Argentinian smiles bidding you a buenos dias, or a buenas tardes, as the case may be when we actually started our Los Caminos del Vino adventure.

Somehow Dina and I missed the traditional cellars when we commenced our ride and took a dusty side trip down calle Montecaseros to a place that was termed on our guide map as a high quality olive oil and chocolate manufacturer. In actual fact it looked like someone had just set up olive oil production facilities in their back yard and you could see the confusion on peoples faces as they departed the place, just like they had paid someone the pleasure of having their wallet stolen. I know, doesn't make sense right? Thus the sense of confusion. It was at this point that I had it my head that the very next stop for us was going to be a winery and that we were going to be drinking, no matter what eventuated.

View of the Andes - over Bodega Trapiche - Maipu - Argentina

Malbec in hand, bike parked out front - Trapiche vineyard - Maipu - Argentina

Our first stop was Bodega Trapiche , apparently one of the largest vineyards in the world, something that I'd heard on the grapevine (oooh, crowd groans). We rolled into the car park of Trapiche on our pimped out Mr.Hugo rides, a little hot and bothered from the heat and in desperate need of a drink. We stole ourselves a bottle of malbec and enjoyed the environment of the back deck of the bodega with it's outlook onto the vineyard and its wonderful views of the  Andes. It took a little while to get our groove on but three quarters of the way through the bottle we were feeling a lot better for our biking cause and beginning to think that our afternoon in Maipu might not suck that hard after all.

JJ, guest book bombed once again - this time in Argentina!

Trapiche vineyard - Maipu - Argentina

Trapiche vineyard - Maipu - Argentina

As we headed out back into the afternoon sun we rode for about 30 mins before finally settling onto a wonderful tree lined road that took us to the Bodega Familia de Tomaso. Now that was a cool place. D and I took up residence at one of several tables that fronted the vineyards and settled into a late afternoon antipasto lunch with a couple of additional bottles of wine to accompany the food. By the third bottle of the day even the irritating Australians sitting at the table next to us couldn't dampen our spirits. In fact the afternoon turned out to be a real highlight, probably not too surprising with a few bottles of red under the belt but sometimes that's all it takes. Now however came the dose of reality, the ride back to base camp!

Bodega Familia de Tomaso - bikes parked out front - Maipu - Argentina

Bodega Familia de Tomaso - Maipu - Argentina

We were anything from 6-8kms from Mr Hugo's and as the bodega's started closing down on sunset, around 6pm, we had it in our minds that Mr Hugo would be shutting up shop somewhere close to 6:30pm. Now I don't know if you've ever biked under the influence, but riding at a rate of knots on a particularly average bike and trying to cover that distance in what felt like 20 mins was just a little bit of a challenge. Thankfully we did make it back to Hugo's in time only to find  Mr.Hugo was in the process of cheerfully filling up the glasses of the riding masses with wonderful red wine, free of charge. Something that apparently Mr Hugo did everyday for the riders as part of his service and something which of course made him extremely popular with all visitors, thus the recommendation that we had initially received. So what to do? In situations such as these you can't very well be rude can you? D and I just had to accept several glasses of wine for the sake of being well mannered and also thanking Mr Hugo for his quality bikes before leaving Maipu territory.

An hour or so later, feeling particularly cheery and in high spirits after what had turned out to be a fantastic day, I ran into a strange sort of feeling, I couldn't quite pinpoint it but it was like I somehow was on the brink of forgetting to do something quite important...oh yeah, then I kind of remembered, something about a bus to Bariloche...something about it being booked for later that evening? I walked over to D and asked, 'You know that bus that we're meant to be catching tonight, what time is it leaving?', '8:45pm' came the response. 'Aha, so is it a problem that it's now 7:30!?'. You don't even have to know the answer to that other than IT WAS a problem. So we scrambled!

Somehow we managed to jump a taxi that Mr.Hugo had called in for our immediate assistance, quite fortunate actually because every backpacker in the joint (20-30 of them) realised at the same moment (or so it seemed) that they needed to be somewhere else at that very instant also. With some skillful driving we made it back to the Oasis hostel at 8:15pm, dodged Aldo successfully, picked up our bags and hailed another cab down all within a 10min turn around time! Now that really was very skillful. I really don't know how we even managed it so successfully, especially on the back of several litres of wine, but we virtually walked straight onto a waiting bus once we made it to the bus station. I'd say we wouldn't have waited any more than 7-8 minutes and the bus was on its way, bound south on a 16hr journey to Bariloche.