Home, and a mini-exhibition

The Bridge House is a restaurant/cafe/bar/pub here right next to Tower Bridge. The atmosphere is laid back, the food is excellent (good value and large portions), the staff are friendly and the decor is pleasant. Particularly at the moment, where the main bar features a selection of 10 framed A3 prints by myself. If you're in the area pop in, have a pint, and get to see some of my photos looking much better than they do on a computer screen. They're all for sale for £120 framed.

Galapagos

I've wanted to visit the Galapagos islands for years, after hearing other people's tales and seeing their wonderful photos. The group of islands off the west coast of the Equadorian mainland straddles the equator and is famous for its amazing wildlife (both above and below the water). We were fortunate enough to spend a week aboard the excellent Nemo. I say fortunate because at one point, after several weeks without communicaiton after sending them over US$4000, we thought the incompetent Green World Adventures (who trade as Galapagosislands.com) had run off with our money.

The Galapagos islands are better described by photos than words. Until I've had the chance to process over a thousand images from our week there, here are a few tasters:

Highlights of Peru

By the time we got to Peru, the bulk of our trip was behind us. No longer could we linger and take things as they came - military precision was needed to cram in as many of the sights of Peru as possible into the 10 days we had there before jetting off to the Galapagos Islands.



Our first stop, having braved a 6 hour wait in Lima airport, was the beautiful little town of Cuzco. Dodging the brightly coloured old ladies with children on their backs and Llamas in tow trying to sell us dodgy cardigans, we found our way to a little hotel near the main square. The first thing that struck me about Cuzco was how unexpectedly pretty and European it looked. The second thing was extensive altitude sickness which resembled being drunk, hungover, hungry and stuffed all at the same time.



After a couple of days doing touristy stuff in Cuzco and trying to acclimatise to the altitude, we went downhill on a touristy train for about 4 hours to Machu Picchu.



The Inca fortress city of Machu Picchu is truly impressive. Its setting, high in the Andes, would be stunning even without the fifteenth century fortress. Our enthusiastic and knowledgeable guide, Darwin, explained that the Incas had bronze-age technology when they built Machu Picchu. The city was never finished (not that any city ever is) as the Incas retreated into the hills to hide from the technologically superior Spanish invaders.

Visitors from the United States of America were amazed that the Incas had been able to build such an impressive city such a very long, long time ago. As I live near the Tower of London, which is nearly twice as old and still in full working order, the antiquity of the Inca structures was not so remarkable on its own. What was remarkable was watching the clouds disperse to reveal a spectacular view of the fortress from the Sun Gate at the end of the Inca trail.

Santiago and Easter Island (Rapa Nui)

The coach journey from Mendoza in Argentina to Santiago in Chile took a while. First they stopped us at the border and checked everybody´s bags, which took hours. I assume this must have been an unlucky ¨spot check¨ rather than the norm, as it put us a couple of hours behind schedule. Then the coach broke down. We grabbed our bags and hitched a lift with another coach, making it to Santiago only to discover there was a presidential ceremony of some description and the main roads were blocked (so no Taxis). We eventually made it to our pleasant hotel via Santiago´s streamlined underground system and met up with my friend Markus for some attempted waterskiing and successful drinking. I liked Santiago, a ¨proper¨ European/American style city without the third-world look of places like Rio, and it was great to see Markus and just chill for a few days.

I´ve always wanted to go to Easter Island, but when we were planning this trip Sonia told me it was too expensive. Checking the prices again in Chile, and probably with the price of the Navimag ferry in mind, it seemed more reasonable so we took the plunge.



To be honest I wasn´t expecting Easter Island to me much more than a large field with extraordinary stone heads (Moai) dotted around it. We spent a week there, as the flights would be ridiculously costly otherwise, and I was worried it would be too long. It wasn´t. The island has many of the attractions of places like the Cook Islands as well as the unique selling point of the Moai. They have awesome traditional dancing, great beaches, beautiful volcanoes with crater lakes and spectacular volcanic coastline.



It rained a lot, but it was also sunny a lot, and it was lucky we were there for a relatively long time as the rain would have completely spoiled a 3 day trip. Although we visited on the footing that a trip to Easter Island is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, the Moai still beckon and I hope to return someday.

Lake District and Mendoza

Arriving in the pouring rain in Puerto Montt after a super-expenive but drizzly 3 day Navimag trip from the somewhat depressing Puerto Natales was a bit of a low morale moment. Puerto Montt is a thoroughly nasty town, the only place we´ve visited so far where we gave up looking for a restaurant and went to MacDonalds in desperation. The top tourist attraction is a "graffiti stonehenge". The beer is good, though, but I was disappointed to discover that the consistently inaccurate Lonely Planet "South America on a Shoestring" had made another mistake and the local brew was not really called "Kuntsmann" (It´s Kunstmann).

Arriving in Puerto Varas, everything changed (except the beer). It is a lovely little town next to a lake with views of the Osorno volcano.



We took a very scenic 3 boat, 4 bus tourist day-trip to Bariloche in Argentina, and drove around a bit in a hire car taking in the wonderful scenery.



After a couple of days in the sunshine of the Argentinian lake district, we took a coach to Mendoza. Mendoza is the main wine-producing region of Argentina and a day trip to a couple of wineries with magnificent Argentinian beef and chorizo for lunch was a highlight. The next day in the hot springs was another highlight, reaffirming our love for Argentina.

Chilling in Chile

Puerto Natales is the support-town for trips to the Torres del Paine national park. As we were both suffering with flu at the time, Sonia and I decided to forego the traditional hiking and camping in favour of wilderness travel American Style. So we hired the biggest, fattest, most lumbering and fuel-inefficient SUV we could find (Jeep Grand Cherokee) and pummelled it over the dirt road to the Torres.

Our first day in the national park was a bit drizzly which, combined with our flu, meant we were not experiencing the place at its best. Our acommodation was a basic ´refugio´ where we shared a room with six unfortunates who had to listen to our coughing and spluttering. The refugio was next door to Hosteria Las Torres, near the base of the famous towers themselves - three granite pillars which rise steeply over the park. This area was quite seriously damaged a couple of years ago when some Czech numptie lit a fire and burned down half of the park. The locals seemed quite annoyed about this but I thought the charred remnants of trees looked spectacular surrounded by the fresh growth of daisies. The parts of the park which hadn´t burned looked pretty ordinary in comparison.



Once the sun came out, the park was spectacular and we enjoyed cruising around it in our environmentally-unfriendly American behemoth. Sadly our third night, which was supposed to be a luxury respite from the basic refugio at the astronomically expensive Hosteria Las Torres, turned into another night in Puerto Natales as the Hosteria was double-booked. At first they admitted their mistake but effectively told us it was our problem. Eventually, after someone woke up the extremely professional and courteous (English speaking) manager, we were showered with apologies and given a free breakfast and a room in Natales. Nevertheless this was one of the biggest disappointments of our trip. There are so few hotels in the Park (about 4), and they are so far apart (half a day´s travel over bumpy dirt tracks), that double-booking is a complete nightmare.

From Puerto Natales we took the unfeasibly overpriced Navimag ferry to Puerto Montt. The journey has the potential to be spectacular, and we were lucky to be upgraded from our US$350 standard cabin, which we were going to be sharing with 20 other backpackers, to a private cabin for just Sonia and I, which would normally have cost US$750. The ship we were supposed to be on (the Magallanes) had broken down, or sunk, so we had a different one (the Puerto Eden) instead. The Navimag is a small ferry for sheep, cows and lorries, with some cabins for tourists tacked on to pay for the journey. It is nothing like a cruise ship and not even anywhere near the luxury of a cross-channel ferry. You don´t get the opportunity to disembark anywhere on the 3 day trip through the fjords and the points of interest along the way are reached whenever they´re reached, rather than at a convenient time for tourists (such as during daylight hours!) Sadly the weather was awful so the promised spectacular scenery was largely a view of grey drizzle, and the destination, Puerto Montt, turned out to be considerably less pleasant than Puerto Natales.

Entering Argentina

First, an apology for the lack of new material. I am writing this from an internet cafe in Aguas Calientes in Peru. When the Incas built Machu Picchu a mere 500 years ago they were still in the Bronze age, and things haven´t come along much since then in Aguas Calientes. Despite the name of the town meaning "hot water", our US$80 hotel´s bronze-age plumbing was unable to deliver any. The computers are still in the electronic equivalent of the bronze-age too; the Windows 95 age. Interfacing a 2005 high resolution digital camera with faded beige computers ten years older is a recipe for frustration, and I´ve had plenty of that in internet cafes throughout South America. For anybody reading this and contemplating extended travel with a big digital camera in South America, my advice would be to bring a laptop!

Backtracking a bit from Puerto Natales, my narrative left us in beautiful Iguassu. We only really dipped into Argentina a few times, spending more time in Brazil and Chile, but we were glad each time we did. Crossing from the Brazilian side of the Iguassu falls at Foz do Iguacu to the Argentinian side (Puerto Iguazu) was like Dorothy´s journey from black-and-white Kansas to technicolour Oz. Miserable grey grids of streets gave way to rustic cobbled roads lined with trees which seemed luminous green growing from Australia-red earth. Suddenly, as if by magic, the air was clearer, the women more beautiful, the food and wine delicious and credit cards started working again. Even the cars, which are the most boring in the world in Brazil, became interesting in the "shabby chique" style of rural France and Italy. What was surprising was how instantly this happened on crossing the border. Surely it´s the same road, so some of these cars should have made it to the "dark" side in Brazil? I can only assume it is illegal to cross into Brazil in an Alfa Romeo, classic American or 40 year old Peugeot 504, or in fact anything which isn´t a nondescript two-year-old Fiat or VW saloon.



From Puerto Iguazu we flew to Buenos Aires, where the technicolour continued. The deep primary colours of El Caminito de la Boca glowed under a clear blue sky. The beers were cold and cheap, the steaks were succulent and lots of dark latin beauties were dressed as prostitutes, pretending they could dance Tango in front of tourists who definitely couldn´t. Faded colonial elegance mixed it with glitzy modern shopping malls. I got the impression of a city with much beauty and history, but at the same time thriving and modern.



We flew from Buenos Aires to El Califate, a tourist town for visits to the nearby Moreno Glacier. As was normal for Argentina, the food and wine was wonderful, plentiful and cheap and the people were friendly. Unusually for our Argentina experience, the weather was rubbish and the Moreno Glacier was less impressive in the drizzle than it would otherwise have been. From El Califate we took a bus to Puerto Natales. On crossing the border, Argentina´s magical colours of Oz quickly faded to the near-monochrome Kansas of Puerto Natales.

Postcards from Puerto Natales

Brazil in a Nutshell

In Buenos Aires (which is a shabbier but slightly less pretentious version of Paris with 50p beers) we met a Brazilian mother and daughter travelling together. Esther, the mother, wondered why she lives in Brazil when she doesn't like Carnival or beaches. This struck a chord with me.

I don´t much like beaches and it was the wrong time of year for Carnival. Having seen Rio, Ihla Grande, Salvador de Bahia, Fernando de Noronha and a bit of Amazon near Manaus, I was wondering why Brazil was on our Itinerary.

I have seen Rio described in some disreputable guidance materials as the most beautiful city in the world. I agree that it has (arguably) the world´s most beautiful location for a city, the only problem being the actual buildings they´ve plonked down on it. I didn´t see one which wouldn´t be scheduled for urgent demolition if it was blighting the face of New York, Hong Kong or even London. Or Slough. From a very long way away, in the dark, they turn into specks of light on Rio´s naturally impressive panorama.

There are only two things you need to know about Ilha Grande. One is that it is an island, and the other is that it is quite big. I didn´t take any pictures.

Salvador is probably one of the best cities in the world for getting mugged or otherwise assaulted in a criminally violent way. It has some quite colourful, although decaying, colonial architecture in the Pelourinho area. When the boys in the streets who have not yet grown to full mugging size take time off from picking pockets, they flap and screech like electrocuted chickens. The Pelourinho also features a musical waterfall, awful Italian restaurants and an almost total absence of places to buy crisps. If you go there, loud music will assault your eardrums constantly, only some of which even pretends to have a tune. I´d feel safer, and probably have more fun, dressed in a Newcastle United shirt at the Sunderland side of the Stadium of Light with "Sunderland are crap" tatooed on my forehead.

Fernando de Noronha is a ¨paradise island¨ in the same vein as Rarotonga, but Rarotonga is better and much cheaper. It is supposed to have good diving but (in our experience) doesn´t. It has what are apparently Brazil´s best beaches, which were fine but made me wish I was on a really pretty beach like Whitehaven on Whitsunday Island, Australia, or somewhere more interesting such as Bamburgh or Tynemouth.

In the Amazon, the most notable wildlife I encountered were mosquitos and a large, ugly, poisonous spider which crawled inside my mosquito net. The weather was grey and damp. I took a few pictures (largely to make sure the camera hadn´t seized up from lack of use in Ihla Grande, Salvador and Noronha) but they were all crap. I guess it could be spectacular in the right light, but the mozzies would probably have sucked all your blood and given you malaria by the time you´d waited for it.

Then we went to the Iguassu falls. This is one of the most amazing places I´ve ever been, and singlehandedly made up for a month trawling around stressful and mediocre sights in the rest of Brazil. On arriving, Sonia and I were both startled by the beauty of our first glimpse. The falls were huge, the mist from their crashing flow painting a perfect rainbow from which a black bird of prey flew toward us. I took hundreds of photos, only to realise there was an even more impressive view around the next corner. And the next. It is impossible to take satisfactory photos of the falls, as whatever you leave out of the frame is generally just as magnificent as what you include. The falls mark the border between Brazil and Argentina, and the Argentinian side was bigger and in some ways even more impressive than the Brazilian one. Wildlife was teeming - we encountered giant lizards, toucans, a snake, small racoon-like creatures, some little unidentified rodents and even my boss from London. The huge numbers of tourists was the only downside, but the falls were so spectacular we hardly noticed them.

Brazilian Cuisine

Brazilian Cuisine is not what I expected. Not that I did a lot of research before arriving here in the world's fifth-largest country (I prefer to preserve the suspense and also couldn't be arsed). But even if I had done my homework I wouldn't have been prepared.

Generally, countries which don't have a particularly strong indigenous cuisine are taken care of by the Chinese, the Italians and (perhaps to a lesser extent) the Indians. The better the local fare, the fewer imports and vice versa. Being somewhat renowned for its bland national dishes, England benefits from the best the rest of the world has to offer, anglicised to taste. On the other hand, Greece has wonderful food, so Peking Duck and Chicken Tikkas are thinner on the ground, but a Pizza Quatro Staggioni is never too far away.

Thailand, and particularly Chiang Mai, struck us as the exception which proves this rule. There, not only are the local dishes varied, fresh, delicious, plentiful and cheap, but you can get pizza, pasta, chinese, Mexican and anything else your tastebuds crave, often all from the same restaurant, and invariably perfectly cooked. They are culinary geniuses in Chiang Mai, where it is seemingly impossible to get a less-than-excellent meal.

Brazil, on the other hand, does not appear to have much in the way of local cuisine. Sticking big chunks of meat on a barbeque is a Brazilian tradition, but not a particularly unique one (although the meat is generally excellent). Other than that, the only specially Brazillian food I can think of is Manioc sauce, which Sonia and I refer to as maniac sauce by reference to the level of mental disfunction required to order it more than once.

Having established that their home-grown recipes are rubbish, you would expect the normal tides of immigration to sort things out for Brazil. Not so. Whilst Italian restaurants are plentiful, the Brazilians insist on attempting to cook Italian dishes themselves, rather than leaving it to actual Italians like the rest of the world does. They are so bad at it that Pizza Hut is considered a gourmet restaurant here, and Jamie Oliver is probably already working on an exposé documentary in the interests of world health.

Despite having lived in England all my life, the worst meal I've ever had in a restaurant was a Brazilian pasta at the Lord Manaus Hotel in Manaus. It consisted of just dry spaghetti sprinkled with the charred remains of what was advertised as garlic. The pungent aroma of burnt garlic made me cough involuntarily and almost gag. Meanwhile Sonia was eating the worst meal she's ever had in her life, which was just spaghetti with putrid-smelling prawns mashed into a rancid tomato sauce. As she was upwind of my foul-smelling dish, Sonia foolishly assumed that it couldn't possibly be worse than hers and suggested a swap. Hoping for some relief from my bottle of Brazilian beer, I was disappointed to discover that it was frozen solid.

Bizarrely, apart from steaks which are always cooked very well, the only decent food we've had in Brazil has been Sushi. I would never have even guessed that Sushi would be available here, but it seems very popular. The explanation seems to be that any meal with two or less ingredients is generally fine, but any more than that is risky. A barbequed steak only has one ingredient, so it's fine. Similarly Sashimi. Sushi only has fish and rice, so is no problem. But once you get something as complicated as a pizza, which requires at least a base, cheese and tomato, things go downhill. I had one pizza which had a base and cheese but no tomato, and even saw a man eating a 'pizza' from a metal plate which had cheese and tomato but lacked a base!

The other confusing thing about Brazilian food is that the portions feed between one and six people, with traditionally no clues given as to which it will be. We took to ordering one item between us, and ordering another once it arrived if we got a one-man portion. The only problem with this is that it takes so long for the Brazilians to cook their food that when time is limited, for example on a tortuous 12 hour flight with the truly appalling (and bankrupt) Varig airline, you have to make do with a series of spam sandwiches.

More Wilderness Shots

I have spared no expense, consumed innumerable burgers and other meat-like substances (often coated with luke-warm near-solid gravy) and braved the world's worst computers (in Brazil where we are now travelling) in order to bring you more photos of the American Southwest before we disappear into the Amazon. Check back soon for the ultimate guide to Brazilian cuisine!


Red Canyon, near Bryce Canyon National Park.


Lower Antelope Slot Canyon.


Zion National Park, near Emerald Pools.


The Eye, Monument Valley.