Backpacking

After an 8 hour (not 5 hours as stated in the Lonely Liar) we made the trip from Bariloche to Valdivia, Chile. It is defined as, "perhaps the most attractive city in Chile".

Chile must have some pretty ugly cities as this place was hardly that inspiring.

True it is not ugly, it sits on a river and there are one or two reasonable buildings (not to mention the elephant and fur seals that reside here), but Chile´s most attractive city?..... To be continued.

We spent 2 days here with not much to do other than reside and eat at a cheap restaurant called Schopdog that had the tackiest memorabilia since Fatty Arbuckles meets similar American diner. However, that is where the criticism ends.... they had awesome beer on tap and more avocado on their chicken burger than you can poke a stick at. This impressed the wife incredibly, and for Chile is a bargain.

Apart from eat and drink here, take pictures of the seals and meander around the City there was not much else to do here......

We decided to get to Santiago as quickly as we could, basically to get to a big city with big city trappings.....

Enough for now, will keep you updated.....

Jason and Alli

Punta Arenas is a small town 12 hours from Ushuaia. We arrived for a 2 night stay.

As we had already seen the penguins and sea lions this was plenty.

Apart from a duty free zone that offers outdoor equipment (I.e. shoes, tents) at ridiculously cheap prices...... there really aint much else to this small town other than being a gateway to the Beagle Channel.

The weather was horrendously windy 120Km+ and the heavens opened 10 minuites before we left to Puerto Natales.

Another overnight bus delivered us to Montevideo, although this time we went first class and arrived in a bit of style!

Uruguay has been our favourite country to date, and Montevideo is a beautiful city. Quite small after the big city bright lights of Buenos Aires and Rio, and with a lovely, laid back feel. The city itself is attractive, very european feel to the architecture and parks dotted about the city. It is definitely more modern than Brazil, and the fact the temperature has dropped about 10-15 degrees has made walking around exploring so much more comfortable.

A street off the main square is where the nightlife centres - restaurants and bars with live bands every night so far. That being said, Montevideans don´t seem to go out for dinner or drinks until midnight or so, so things are a bit quieter pre-midnight when the bands generally get going. One night we saw a cool little cover band doing songs we both knew, last night [Saturday 3rd] we saw a local band who did more traditional south american music - sounded a bit like the Gypsie Kings!!

Today is our last day in Montevideo and sadly, it has been pouring rain all day so far, so we might not get to see much more of the sights, but tomorrow we´re heading a couple of hours west to Colonia del Sacremento which is a sea-side town for a few days. Hope the rain clears up before we hit the sights and beaches there!

Alli + Jason

We made our trip on the 27/02 to Porto Allegre with the initial intention of staying overnight before we moved on to Montevideo.

From Curitiba we left around 9pm and arrived 10am on an overnight bus again. Once we arrived, we both came to the immediate conclusion perhaps it would be best to get the next bus to Montevideo that left that evening. With a day to kill we dropped our luggage off and ventured into Porto. It was stinking hot and within 1 hour we were so glad we booked our onward journey.

We spent the day looking around at some reasonable architecture and people watching. I obviously overwatched an old lady who basically was absolutely, certifiably insane. She was yelling at me across a park avenue and literally doing the christ cross on her chest. This carried on for about 15 minutes. I don´t know if it was curiosity on my point or morbid enjoyment as I refused to take my eyes off her during the onslaught of which we could not understand a word of the portugese babble.

She made the mistake of laughing at some Uni student when something dropped out of a tree or a swooping bird scared her. She let out a cackle and laughed. The Uni student took great exception and was equally as crazy with this old witch - a very funny 10 minutes followed. After a few more crossings - a gentleman sat next to me got up and walked off saying crazy old woman.

We left her to it and whittled the day away waiting for our bus.....

Jay and Alli

Rio to Curitiba was achieved by a 12 hour overnight bus taking the 900Km trip south. We got there in the morning feeling reasonably good.

We checked in to a basic hotel called Maia and stayed there for 3 nights.

The City itself is about the size of Perth (maybe a little bigger) or somewhere around the size of Oxford for the poms.

We found a delightful neighbourhood that was very European and had a Parisian feel in the main square, maybe an Italian feel. But you get the gist. It had cobbled streets, old colourful buildings and a quaint country market. We will download a few pictures when we get established.

We visited a place called Morrettes via the most spectacular railway in Brazil (if you read Lonely Planet). The LP was bob on as usual speaking about this journey to the coast (the train does not go there but stops short of the place by a bus ride) and we went on Monday the one day according to the LP the train does not run on.

The train is a descent over 3 hours or so through the city of Curitiba then to the countryside and down a valley. It was rather nice with some lovely scenery, but hardly the sell the LP made it. It might have been a tad better if we spoke fluent portuguese as the train tour guide offered none stop commentary on the trip but not in ingles.

We spent our evenings in the delighful neighbourhood eating and drinking in the local pub called Fire Fly which served some darn good grub and drinks and made Curitiba a rather delightful stopover on our way South to Montevideo.

Speak soon
Jay and Alli

We spent