The Iguassu Falls: Up Close and Personal
By the time I got to Iguassu (or Iguazu, or Iguaçu, depending on which side of the border you are), I was tired. I remember phoning home – my regular ‘Hi Mum, I’m in a new country’ call – and for the first time, I felt a little homesick. I had been travelling for a long time and suddenly, I was jaded by it.
Read More25 Things I Wish I’d Known about South America
Now that I’ve finished my four-month adventure, I’ve had a few moments to reflect on some of the things I’ve learnt about travel in South America. If you’re planning to go, you might just want to bear some of these in mind – enjoy!
Read MoreAn Evening Stroll in Paraty
Just a hop, skip and a jump away from Rio de Janeiro is the seaside town of Paraty. This little place is famous for its historic centre – a few streets of well-kept colonial buildings lining cobbled streets, upon which hallowed ground only the footfall of pedestrians and the click-clack of horses and carts is permitted.
Read MoreA Moment in Rio: Sunset on Sugarloaf Mountain
It was a mad dash to get to the Pão do Açucar before sundown. I had just arrived at my hotel after a flight from the Iguazu Falls and a bus ride into town and spent a few minutes figuring out the route before I realised that to get there on time I had to leave right then.
Read MoreMaking the most of a bad travel situation
I’m finally in Huaraz after 3 days of travelling. I was supposed to have two chilled out days in Lima, but when we got stuck in Sao Paulo, that didn’t happen.
I didn’t have a clue that Sao Paulo airport and TAM airlines were in such a mess until we spent 3 hours on the tarmac in Rio before someone in Sao Paulo gacve us the go-ahead to land. By this point, I had long missed my flight to Lima. Many people. from many different flights, all with missed connections, crowded round the connecting flight desk and we waited. And waited. And waited. Finally, after about an hour, I made it to the desk and was told there were no flights to Lima that day, I would have to wait until tomorrow. I was then directed to another interminable queue where I could get a hotel and dinner voucher. There was another Brit, also trying to get to Lima, and because of this, the woman thought we were together and booked us into the same room. It took another 45 minutes or so to get her to change it.
However, getting seperate rooms turned out to be an entirely academic exercise, because when the police had finally returned our passports, some 8 hours after we arrived at the airport, we went to get onto the transfer bus only to be told that there were no rooms available. So we marched back into the airport to get somewhere else to stay. At this point, the departures hall floor was looking more and more likely. Luckily, a representative of another hotel had mentioned that she had rooms available, so when one of the TAM staff tried to put be in a hotel an hour away from the airport, I told her to book me into the Hotel Bristol. This seemed to work and finally, finally, after 2 days of planes, airports and delays, I climbed into a comfortable bed and slept.
Of course the flight to Lima the next morning was delayed, but only by an hour, which seemed like nothing after the previous day. I have never been more glad to get out of an airport and the thought of returning through Sao Paulo fills me with dread. However. it wasn’t all bad. After aout 4 hours of waiting and waiting, a wonderful camaraderie sprang up between the stranded passengers. 6 hours in, we began to protest for the return of our passports and chattered away to each other, sharing our anger and frustration, becoming bonded by this simple event. There was on Peruvian mother with a small boy and a baby girl in tow, who were the most well-behaved children on the planet, and distracting them kept the rest of us sane. I am now well-informed about Mario Kart. I spoke a garbled but apparently intelligible mixture of Spanish, Portuguese and English – at least one of which was understood by everyone else.
When we finally made it to the hotel, 3 of us had a very civilised and much-needed dinner with a glass of wine and talked about where we were going and what we were doing. I now have contacts in Lima and Paraguay that I otherwise would not have had. In another good stroke of luck, Sindy, who met me at Lima airport, had arrnaged for us to get the bus back on Thursday night, rather than Wednesday, as she had a few things to do in Lima. So arriving on Thursday morning was actually no issue at all.
Still, I was very glad when we finally emerged from the bus onto the frosted, early-morning streets of Huaraz. My adventure here is just beginning.
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