I arrived in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in the early hours of 30th December after a 7 hour delay from Buenos Aires thanks to Aerolineas Argentinas who really are the worst airline with whom i’ve ever flown. Not only were we so badly delayed, but there wasn’t any level of customer service at any point – not even any water for the passengers.
All was fine until 15mins before departure when the board displayed ‘delayed 1hr’. Then, each hour that passed, the time of delay increased by one more hour. After three hours, the flight dropped completely from the screen, and the plane which had been sat at our gate number 11 pulled away. After five hours, I, along
Continue reading Aerolineas Crap-gentinas
Argentinian Christmas
Happy Christmas to a very snowy Europe! I had an eventful (warm) Christmas in Argentina with a now properly-coupled-up Ray and Julia. I’d originally planned to spend Christmas in Buenos Aires to see the start of the Dakar Rally on Boxing day, but realised shortly before arriving that it didn’t start until New Years day. Nevertheless, BA was busy preparing, with stands going up all over the main 12-lane central street (Av 9th July or 9 de julio), plus a go-kart track around the obelisk. I met Ray and Julia in central America and convinced them to spend Christmas in BA so it was great to meet with them anyway, even if we couldn’t watch rally cars roar around
Continue reading Happy Christmas from Argentina
I’ve been in Sunny Santiago, Chile now for 5 days after only intending to stay for two. It’s just sooo good here! Before I left Bolivia on 12th I booked a hostel through Hostelbookers called Ventana Sur. When I arrived after a long plane journey from La Paz, via a desert airport called Iquique, there was an eery silence on every street. I put it down to the standard south American Sunday – where generally nothing is open bar a handful of internet cafes. However today not even the internet cafes were open. When I arrived at the hostel it turned out that everything was closed because it was election day, and Chileans were busy voting in their
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I’ve been in Peru little over a week now and I have one word to summarise. High!
I spent three days in Miraflores, Lima, which is really pretty and very western. There are big shopping malls, wide roads and nice places to eat. I even managed to find an english speaking hairdresser for my long-needed haircut. The rest of Lima is pretty nasty however.
Miraflores is clearly the affluent tourist area with well dressed people and police everywhere keeping the scum out. The rest of Lima consists of ghetto after ghetto in a city of nearly 10m. Despite the hostel owners warnings of a bus strike, it was easy to travel from Lima down to Pisco, Nasca and Arequipa by public bus
Continue reading The highs of Peru
I’m on the plane from San Jose, Costa Rica to Lima in Peru, 10km above a desert coastline which is presumably Equador. After my last post things changed fairly dramatically. Aoifer couldn’t cross the Costa Rica/Nicaragua border, despite having a photocopy of her old passport, a police report, a document from the Italian (EU) consulate in Granada, Nicaragua and a fax from the Irish embassy in Mexico. Paul and Aoifer therefore left us at the border not to be seen again which was an abrupt way to say goodbye to two great people. Then the following day we decided to leave the tour, despite there still being five days left, we headed off in search of sun rather than the
Continue reading Hello South America
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