On The Road

Louis here. Firstly I´d like to thank Cosmo for his brilliantly disguised yet undeniably implicit suggestion that I´m hogging the blogspace. To all those from Malta and across the pond, I do apologise and promise I will zealously strive towards a world of greater equality in this particular section of the blogosphere from now on. Having said that, there is a lot to talk about, so forgive me if I ramble. Tell you what; if you´re in a rush or just get bored of my writing then I´ll try to tailor this post to a scan-readable version using the invaluable feature of bold type.

Iguazu was not exactly what we expected it to be. There I was thinking it would be a perfect week of solitude to recover from the socially blazing streets of Rio de Janeiro, and we ended up drinking and meeting just as many, if not more, people in this little gateway between Brazil and Argentina (by the way, can somebody please correct me if I´m supposed to spell it "Brasil" - i still don´t really know). The town itself (on the Argentinian side, at least) is tiny and it would be very hard to scrape a night out in the centre. Completely contradicting this first impression, however, our hostel seemed to be jampacked full of the hustle and bustle of passing travellers from all over the place. We reckoned there were actually more people in the hostel than in the town - no, seriously. So anyway, with a pool, some snooker tables and a bar, there were plenty of good times to be had.

The other side of the otherwise shiny coin was that we did NOT spend any time ´digging into the roots´of anywhere. Iguazu is meant for travellers who pass through in a few days. You go; you see what there is to see while having a great time with others who are doing the same; you leave. So it was brilliant fun for a few days, but I´d beware of being tempted to spend too long there. After all, pools and bars exist elsewhere in the world.

Cosmo told you all about the Falls, so I´ll keep the description as light as I can, which should be quite easy because they inspire speechlessness. They really are incredible and a must for anyone travelling through the right-ish part of South America. Only advice to give is prepare to be amazed, prepare to get wet and if, like me, you turn into a little girl around spiders, prepare for a shock or two as well.

We´ve been bus-ing like four-wheeled vagabonds for the past week or so, and we´ve finally reached our destination in the form of one of the coolest-looking cities I´ve ever visited. This is hugely precipitous of me (having only been in the place for the best part of three hours) but Buenos Aires looks and feels absolutely incredible. The streets are lined with beautiful early modern architecture which give off a sort of well-preserved faded grandeur. At the same time, it feels a like a rich culture has grown from the roots of a once-golden city (did you know it was the ninth richest city in the world in 1910?!) and there´s a fabulous blend between a Manhattan-like grid layout with the chaos (i mean that in a good way) of a developing country. All meshed together, it means you get the beauty of an old powerhouse without the "museum" feel of a city that´s so attached to its roots that it´s stubbornly refuses to move away from them. It´s hard to describe, but after reading what I´ve read and seeing what I´ve seen, I can´t wait to spend the next ten days diving in head first.

So, here´s hoping that Buenos Aires is worth the 6 hours to Parati, 16 hours to Iguazu and 20 hours to the capital. The coaches here make National Express seem about as comfortable as bamboo torture, but they´re still coaches all the same. We´re in one piece, though, and we have yet to run out of funds, so we´re doing a hell of a lot better than I thought as I was biting my nails on the plane-ride to Rio.

I know I promised pictures and videos, but it turns out that this un-exploding PC we´ve been looking for is a sneaky bugger and has thus far avoided our attention. However, I promise we´ll keep looking and I know for a fact we´ll be in a real home (Hallelujah!) when we get to Mexico, so they´ll all be up by the end of March at the latest. Hold your breath!

Love to everyone from the Madman and the Englishman. I think I definitely drew the short straw in the nick name raffle. Sigh...

xx