Sunday 25 September 2011

Salta & Wine

We arrived in Argentina with our camera charger broken and the batteries flat, and just a disposable camera for company. Not a good start. Our first walk into then centre of Salta revealed a parade of some kind going on. We later discovered it was the start of a huge 3 day religious festival, apparently bigger than Christmas, that sees half a million pilgrims march on Salta to give thanks to the Virgin Mary for protection from earthquakes. We watched as the various groups arrived including of course the gauchos, and various other costumed pilgrims, we were later told that many travel by horse or by foot from miles around Salt to arrive into the town square in preparation for the parade, of the virgin and Jesus ephagies ,which takes place on the final day of the celebrations. Quite the spectacle!

 Our hostel in Salta was great. Partly because the weather was great and we had a lovely garden to chill. But more particualy as one of the receptionist, who hearing our story of 'camera problems', offered to lend us her camera. Seriously, what an awesome gal! So that evening we captured some cool pics of the town.
The square itself is full of beautiful whitewashed buildings, and with two of the most ornate churches we've seen anywhere. We took the cable car up the montain at the edge of the city, for a view of the city and mountain biked down, which was good fun! As we travelled back on foot to our hotel we stumbled upon a very interesting grave yard which had vaults with windows so you can see in and there were coffins and urns in each. Very ornate buildings and the whole experience was a bit surreal.

Colonal buildings on the square

Salta Cathedral - site of the festival

Basilica de San Francisco

Our night out at a traditional restaurant was really fun, with live traditional music and dancing. We ate the local speciality called paraillado, which is a huge tray of grilled cow bits - including steak, sausages, ribs, liver, kidney, intestine and some not so recognisable. It was mighty good! Marc also discovered that the Argentinians brew black beer. It's sweeter than Guiness and (whisper it) tastier - result!

This sums up the Argentinian nightlife - music, danding & lots of meat

The following day, with borrowed camera in hand we headed for our excursion to Cafayette, which is famours for its wineries. During the ride to the winery we had our first real experience of 'Mate'. For those who don't know Mate is a specific herbal tea traditional in Argentia served in a very unique 'cup' with a metal curved straw. We discovered that It's quite a social drink so we got to share some with a bunch of Argies. Interesting taste but not exactly gonna rush out and buy it. Love the sentiment though!

There's some really cool scenery on the way to Cafayette including the 'devil's throat' (cue photo) and some other amazing rock formations, landscapes and giant cactus. Liz's first experience of huge cactus, and I must say I was impressed.

Getting to know a gaucho

The big scenery on the way to Cafayette


Marc in the Devil's Throat
Very big and very prickly
 As you'd expect when we got to the winery, we tried the wine! Cafayette produces a white wine called Torrontes which is not produced anywhere else and we both really liked it. We had a tour of the winery and view of the vine yards. Athough not the right season to see the grapes it was pretty cool to see. We also got to walk around Cafeyette town and have lunch, and try some red wine and white wine ice cream from the local gelateria for dessert - strange but good.
Liz waiting for the wine to age

The best bit of the winery tour
 
We'll be back to Argentina - Buenos Aires - at the very end of our trip. There's a ton of other Argentinian places we'd like to visit too, but they'll have to wait until another trip. Before all that, we're off to Bolivia...

Friday 23 September 2011

Santiago, Sand & Salt

We arrived in Chile before we left New Zealand, due to crossing the international dateline, gaining a day! We both had the worst jetlag we've both ever had, so spent the first week in Santiago recovering, planning the next few weeks and seeing as much of the city as we could. We appreciated the chilled out feeling of Santiago with a very European vibe.

A bit of Santiago culture

We did a walking tour of the city, which gave us a great overview of the city. Our guide also explained the history of the city, the German influence on the food, which was a surprise to us! And about the stray dogs roaming the city. Locals viewing them as the owners of the city rather than a nuisance. People feed them, and there are even kennels for them in the parks, threrefore the dogs are very friendly.After that, we spent quite a bit of time in the bohemian area of the city which has some cool bars and restaurants. We took the fernicular railway up to the top of the mountain, which has an enourmous statue of the Virgin Mary and great views of the city, and the snow-capped Andean mountains. The central square was cool, with some lovely old colonial buildings. We also discovered the local drink - Picso Sour - which tastes great but is pretty lethal...

Old & new side by side

Presidential Palace
Keeping watch over the city

Liz wasn't smiling the next morning!

We visited about Pablo Neruda houses, Chile's most important poet and diplomat, who lived in exile for a time before his death, and who is now a national icon. His houses are known as extremely quirky, so we visited both of them to absorb a bit of the local culture. One is in Santiago, and the other one is in Valparaiso, a town a couple of hours outside the city. This was a quaint little place, with old Victorian style houses in all sorts of bright colours perched on the side of a hill overlooking the sea and ancient trolley-buses whizzing around. Like in Santiago, these were in various states of disrepair and many were covered in very artistic graffiti, adding to the character of the place.

Valparaiso main square

Lovely old colonial architecture

...and crazy modern design - Pablo Neruda's house

Liz and Pablo

Typical Valpo graffiti

San Pedro de Atacama was next. We flew to avoid the 18 hour bus ride. It's a small dusty town in the middle of the Atacama desert, but is beautiful nonetheless, with loads of little whitewashed buildings and the bluest sky imagineable. The town the square has a large adobe (mud-built) church, and most of the other buildings are also made of mud - a great place to watch the world go by. There are lovely craft shops and pretty little restaurants serving great food, despite being in the middle of the dessert. It only rains 5 days a year, but due to the altitude, it never gets too hot either - the perfect climate! A true oasis in the middle of the desert!

Lovely adobe church

Main square, San Perdo de Atacama

San Pedro main street

 Our first excursion was to Valley of the Moon, a sandy and barren landscape like it's name sake. We walked through a small canyon, with towering cliffs either side. It's a little scary to hear the cliffs cracking overhead, as the silica in them expands and contracts in the sun. We finished our trip at a view-point overlooking the mountains and volanoes to watch the sun set, which lit up the volcanoes red.

Vally of the Moon

A seat with a view

Full moon rising over Valley of the Moon at Sunset. Very special!

Our next trip was to the salt flats and salt lakes where we saw pink flamingoes feeding and the mountains reflecting perfectly in the still salt water.

Salt flat with flamingoes in background

Salt lake

As we climed highter to the altiplano (high plane) we got our first experience of high altitude at 4,400m (nearly 3 miles) up! We passed above the snowline, reaching a high altitude lake taking in the bright blue lake surrounded by snow capped volcanos. It was a beautiful sight. But we felt like 80 year olds as we tryed to walk back up the hill. Altitude sickness, makes you feel like someones sitting on your chest making us short of breath. We had headaches and our throats felt like a trainee sword-swallower's. What a truly breathtaking experience in more ways than one!

4400m up. Breathtaking!

Our final trip was sand-boarding. Here we witnessed more stunning scenery from the top of the dune. Boarding down was much slower than boarding on snow, but lots of fun. Although, climbing back up following each descent is not for the fait hearted...With no chairlifts, we had to trudge up the dune in the heat, carrying our boards. Our throats felt like we'd been gargling the sand! The beer after the last run down was very well deserved!

Ready for action

Carvin it up

If only it was this easy going up

Sad to leave the Atacama, but excited about Argentina awaiting us across the other side of the Andes we spent an eternity at the dusty border post. On the 10 hour bus ride over the mountains, were we saw llamas, vicunias (like a llama crossed with a deer), giant cactii and more salt flats. Oh it was just like the wild west :) We were slightly disconcerted to see two overturned car transporters by the side of the road in the space of an hour, where they had lost control on the steep, twisty mountain bends. Perhaps the drivers were distracted by the amazing colours of the landscape or dizzy from the height of the mountain passes!

A couple of locals we met

Tuesday 20 September 2011

Mud, Geysers & Maoris

This is the final part of our circuit of New Zealand - the North Island. We'd planned to spend less time here than the south island, so after getting hopelessely lost when we got off the ferry in Wellington, we headed straight to the main attraction - a strange place called Rotorua. This is actually the main town in an area of geo-thermal activity, and is also the centre of Maori-culture.

We visited several different sites, each of which was more spectacular and weird than the previous one. Neither of us had seen anything like it before. Amazing! We watched 'Lady Knox' geyser, which spouts 20m into the air every morning. We saw pools of bubbling mud, streams of yellow, red and white minerals running through rocky landscapes, creating 'artists palettes'. There were pools of various colours including the 'Champagne Pool' which was steaming and bubbling, like Champagne and a particularly amazing bright yellow pool. The bubbling mud pools were pretty cool too! These other-worldly landscapes were always accompanied by an ever-present stench of sulphur, like rotten eggs.


Trying to pretend it doesn't stink

Amazing colours

Artists Pallete

Mud pools, where are the Hippos :)

Liz at Champagne Pools - shame it's not drinkable!

Lady Knox does her daily routine

Yellow/Green lake

Champagne Pool difficult to show how large it is!

We had a hot mud-bath using mud from the sulphur pools, at Hell's Gate, Wai Ora Spa. It good for the skin and circulation - so they tell us. All I can say (Liz) is that it wiped me out for the rest of the day! We luxuriated in the tub of mud like two pigs in a sty, followed by a cold shower washed the mud off, then it was into a hot pool for a soak in the open air until the heat became too much to bear. It was really good fun though.

Mud packs don't normally smell like this

It's a hard life!

All these geo-thermal places are really difficult to describe, so we'll let the photos speak for themselves.
As well as taking in the landscapes, we really wanted to learn something about the Maori people and their culture. We took a guided tour of an old village at the edge of Rotorua called Whakarewarewa (pronounced fukawakawera or something like that!), where 60 or so Maoris still live. Our guide, who's grandparents lived there and who still bathes in the natural hot sulphur baths there every day, showed us the meeting house, the baths and the 'kitchen'. This consists of several pits dug into the ground, and the food is place inside. Natural steam rises through the ground into the pits, cooking the food faster than a conventional oven. This type of cooking is called Hangi. That evening we would get to try Hangi food for ourselves...

Hangi Meal being cooked via natural steam from geothermals!
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Village on geothermal area. Can you imagine living here :)

Marc and his new friend. Where's Wally?

Protector of the village


We spent that evening at another village. This one was a replica of the way Maoris lived before the Europeans arrived, created specially for tourists. It was carried out really imressively. Before we were allowed to enter the village we had to go through a traditional Maori 'welcome'. I (Marc) was elected chief of our 'tribe' (our coach party). As visiting chief I was welcomed by the host chiefs four best warriors, who performed Haka-like dances right in front of me, complete with spears, chants, and much tongue-waggling in an effort to intimidate me. (I have to say it was pretty intimidating, and also difficult not to smile or laugh, but we'd been told that would be disrespectful, so I kept my best poker-face on.) Once the haka was done, the host chief and I exchanged the traditional greeting of rubbing noses. He had very impressive facial tattoos covering most of his face, and the rest of the Maori's (men and women) had smaller ones befitting their status.

Chief Marc being welcomed with a traditional Hongi


Once I passed the test of 'friend' rather than 'foe' we were invited into the village. There were several Maori's demonstarting some of their traditional skills such as carving, canoe making and making clothes from animal hides. Then we were treated to a show of Maori song and dance, which was incredibly mesmerising and exhilerating!
Maori Poi Balls Dance


Finally it was time for our hangi meal. As chief of our tribe I was shown how to dig through the mound of earth covering the hangi pit, then uncover the many layers of cloth used to protect the food, which was in metal baskets on top of red hot rocks which had been heated earlier by a fire. Chicken, lamb, potatoes and veggies all came out of the same pit, all cooked to perfection and delicious.

The unveiling of the Hangi


The Hangi meal in all its glory! Yum Yum

 The whole evening was fun and not as cheesy as it probably sounds!

We were both sad to leave New Zealand. We could happily have spent much longer there. It has the amazing scenery and the friendliest people we've met, everything works and getting around is a doddle, other than our campervan hicups ;) And having the camper van meant we hadn't had to carry our backpacks the whole time we were there. After such luxuries, the next 11 weeks in South America seemed quite daunting...