So that's where pesto genovese comes from!

We spent a day and a half in Rome, a drastically insufficient amount of time to hope to get the feel of the historic city. Having both been there before we decided on a short visit to allow more time checking out other, stranger locales. We strolled the city streets, stumbling upon famous ancient structures and beautiful art and architecture. We lingered at the Trevi Fountain with ten thousand other people and caught unexpected glimpses of the Colosseum down side streets. We hoped to find some decent food for dinner but fell into the trap of a tourist restaurant (first language on the menu: English; we should have known) and after some very mediocre pasta made a pact to only eat in restaurants where Italian was being spoken by the customers. The Lonely Planet guide led us to a superb restaurant the following night, worth an hours wait outside.

We queued for the Vatican museums and found that they contained many many beautiful works of art, most of which we could see easily despite the thousands of other tourists flouting the no flash photography rule (they were, not us; I think I forgot the camera again). The Vatican obviously has an ambivalent attitude to modern art, having awkwardly crammed their 20th century collection between the magnificent Raphael rooms and the Sistine Chapel, so that already exhausted visitors simply rushed through this area. There was some lovely stuff in there but I was afflicted with the rushing virus and will have to visit again (yes, along with the countless other amazing sights and sites that I have rushed by already). The Sistine Chapel was certainly amazing but perhaps too full? Of art, not people, although it was extremely full of people as well. Perhaps this fabled place couldn't live up to expectations because we already knew it was...well, fabled. Having ticked that box we strolled some more before finding the aforementioned restaurant and all was well.

The following day we caught a train to Genoa, home of a friend of Mel's with whom we would be staying for a few days. About half an hour before our scheduled arrival the train stopped and announcements were made in Italian. Our compartment colleagues translated, there was a delay. The delay lasted some time, so much time in fact that people started getting off. We were not near a platform as far as we knew, but a huge number of people went past our rearward position on their way off the train, chattering excitedly. Our compartment colleagues discussed the situation with other passengers and gave us the story: there had been an accident on the tracks and a woman had passed away, so the train would not be moving for some time. Buses had apparently been arranged ("arranged" having a slightly different and less arranged definition in Italian) and everyone was getting off here. We gathered our bags and filed back with the last of the passengers, alighting from the rear end of the train onto the end of a platform at one of Genoa's minor stations. Contrary to our assumptions the woman had not died up the line. She had been hit by our train, and there she was, about 40 yards back, about five yards from the stairwell we were to take to the exit, covered clumsily with a white sheet of plastic. It was hard to look and hard not to, but one horrible detail drew my eye: from an uncovered mangled shoe protruded a foot, an appalling unnatural orange colour. People were standing around, not all obviously officials, and we all just filed off and walked past her, most grumbling about the delay. Couldn't something more have been done to protect this woman's dignity? Did we pay her enough respect? Any respect?

We made it safely into the care of Mel's friend, who was required to stay with another friend who had been having some health problems and wanted company while her husband was away. Thus we had the run of a one bedroom apartment in a picture postcard location on the Genoan coast. This last comment is literal, the building being clearly visible on one of Genoa's most common postcards, an image that takes in the best of Italy: a beach, a coffee shop, and a gelati bar. No further comment is required to describe our mornings and evenings in Genoa. In between this sloth and avarice we strolled through the slinky little streets of the old city of Genoa and between the gorgeous cliff-edge towns of the Cinque Terre. And sometimes we did nothing and just enjoyed not being in a hotel room. I dragged Mel's friends and some others to a bar to watch the disastrous Australia vs Germany World Cup match and spent another (much more enjoyable) evening watching Spain vs Paraguay projected onto a wall on the roof of an apartment building. We left Genoa rested and ready for the final frantic sight-hopping stage of our trip.

The first sight was: beautiful Venice. I had been there before but Mel had not, and we slipped deliciously into two days of languid strolling and turning to each other excitedly as some other cute canal or gorgeous building appeared before our eyes. We were only allowed without paying into the lower section of the magnificent Basilica de San Marco and I mentally agreed with an old English lady outside who complained loudly to her friend "shame, pretty soon you'll have to pay for the whole lot of it, it was free last time I was here". I don't think we had anything else in common. We checked out the Gallerie d'Academia and concluded that it is dire need of a renovation, and also enjoyed the Peggy Guggenheim museum. The latter was in a lovely part of the city, lovely because it was the only place where hardly anyone else was. Having said that, Venice is still superb even with every tourist currently on the continent visiting at once. For the second time, I didn't take a gondola ride. This terribly unromantic omission was endorsed by Mel, and we resolved to spend that 80€ on a Melbourne Football Club membership or something else mutually rewarding. By the time we left we had already spent a fair whack of it on Aperol spritzers.

From Venice we boarded an overnight train to Linz, Austria, home of a former school friend of mine. Our carriage was administered by a nervous Austrian who spoke quite good English but understood none. He was not suited to his position, being slightly socially awkward and timid but massively over-compensating for this when wielding his authority by speaking very loudly and aggressively. His exchange with the American who shared our compartment was pretty amusing (American: do you need to take my Eurail pass as well as my ticket?; Conductor: YES! I MUST HAVE IT! I WILL GIVE IT BACK IN THE MORNING!!!!!!; American: silent, dumbstruck and cowed, whispering complaimts to his wife long after the conductor has left). After this minor entertainment I thought it appropriate to close our door and insert ear plugs upon hearing the following exchange shouted through the corridor in American accents:
Someone (presumably to someone quite close by): Did you see those orange drinks everyone was having? Spritz or something?
Unsolicited voice from far away: OH.MY.GOD! DID YOU TRY THAT!? WORST.DRINK.EVER!!!
Me: zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Adios Espana

After our cynical homage to St James we headed for San Sebastian, to the north east. An 11 hour train ride delivered us to the beach, arriving at 8pm-ish and thus having at least two more hours of daylight in which to "make some party" as our otherwise perfect English speaking hostess put it. San Sebastian is an excellent place to make party, in which you elbow your way through a crowded bar and order various little deliciosas called pintxos and drink beer or the local sweet and slightly fizzy wine called txakoli. This is mostly excellent fun, the occasional burst of loud and unsolicited accordion music right behind you notwithstanding. In this way our three evenings there passed most enjoyably.

San Sebastian is pretty, a pretty town set on a pretty curve of beach with good looking people everywhere. Men wear white or green or purple trousers and designer shirts, almost always with a jumper tied around their necks. Many women go topless on the beach but as they step off the sand they seem to walk through an invisible beam that dresses them in smart but conservative attire and applies all the necessary jewellry and hair styling. No one was seen on the streets in any sort of beach wear or with their appearance otherwise notifying the viewer that they had been on the beach. Except for us. We climbed a pleasant hill on one end of the beach to take in panoramic views of the city and almost crashed a wedding at the top, before being forced into the free museum by an attendant saying "solo quince minutos, vista, vista", and he was right, the vista was lovely from the top deck. We took a day trip to Bilbao to see the Guggenheim and thought about and ate pintxos a lot. On our last night we visited a recommended pintxos bar whose menu angled towards the molecular gastronomy so celebrated in Spain: foams, "coffee" flavoured with ham, wafers, etc. It was exceptional! We ate too much and chatted to an American-Morroccan couple who had been in the wine region of La Rioja just prior. That sounded pretty good, so we resolved to strike out for the town of Laguardia the following day.

We hired a car and Mel was saddled with the driving duties as the only one with an international license. The car was a manual, which was a medium-sized problem, we had no map of San Sebastian (only a small problem), and she'd never driven on the right side of the road in a left-hand-drive car before (two more small problems). Together these problems added up to a very stressful first half an hour in the car. We obtained a Spanish touring map and drove off, immediately going through a red light with pedestrians leaping backwards and yanking their tiny dogs with them. After initially missing the required exit we made it on to the autovia, where all other drivers either merely ignore all the signed speed limits or are so baffled by the unbelievable multitude of signs beside Spanish roads that they just do whatever they want in protest. Indication for lane changes was non-existent and lingering in the left lane without significantly exceeding the speed limit was an offence quickly punished with aggressive beeping.

Thankfully we found our way to the quieter coastal roads where we were rewarded with superb ocean views as we cruised through fishing hamlets. We stopped in at Guernica, site of an horrific German bombing during the Spanish civil war, admiring the pretty town but finding the museum closed, it being a Monday. We rolled on through mountainous regions, Mel by now confidently slipping through the gears as we climbed and descended (if not always releasing the hand brake before taking off), and arrived in Laguardia early in the evening. Laguardia lies in Rioja Alavesa, a magnificently picturesque valley edged by craggy peaks and completely full of grape vines, mostly tempranillo, and beautiful villages. The town (walled, but too small to be called a citadel; a village-adel?) is perched on a rise and completely off limits to cars. I was constantly lost walking the tiny winding streets, even though there are only about five of them. The buildings lie on top of a network of cellars, originally built to store arms but later being found to be an excellent place to make wine. We stayed in a flash hotel recommended by our friends in the bar the night before, owned by a charming older gentleman named Javier, who was kind enough to pre-arrange some visits to wineries for us. Whenever we asked Javier for anything he began his reply by saying "es posible", which always suggested to me that we were working to overcome some enormous obstacle, rather than just ordering a plate of ham and cheese croquettes.

We toured a cellar winery under the town, taking tastings straight from the vats, and then a much bigger winery in a nearby village with flash buildings designed by Frank Gehry of Bilbao Guggenheim fame. We paid 10€ for a tour of the latter concern and had to sit through some propaganda videos ("Marquis de Riscal has been at the forefront of La Rioja wine production for blah blah years and our commitment to quality and blah di blah is unstinting" etc etc) before touring the enormous and impressive facilities. They then had the gall to produce a cheap white from a whole other region during the tasting before finally allowing us each a thimble full of their Reserva and bundling us into the gift shop. Onto the black list.

With one more night before we were due to return the car to Madrid we resolved to explore another wine region (Ribera del Duero) to the south west, and like a man I decided I could guide us there with minimal prior research. We found the region alright, driving into the main town in the early evening. After an annoying and then infuriating and finally desperate search for a car park we galloped through town and arrived at the tourist office five minutes after closing time. I kicked the door and we fled the town, whose name momentarily escapes me, and which was ugly and industrial anyway. I just chose a decent sized town off the road map and thus we ended up in inauspicious Roa, a town with one hotel and, extraordinarily, only one restaurant with a suitable menu del dia. We had a very quiet time there.

The next day we found the picturesque town of Penafiel only 20 minutes drive away, surrounded by and filled with lovely looking hotels and restaurants. We (I) had chosen the wrong town to stop in. It was too late to arrange any visits to wineries, so we settled for a lunch at a vineyard. We ate lechazo, the local specialty, a roast lamb dish strictly made from unweaned lambs whose quality and provenance are assurred by an official body. The leg of lamb had a little note stuck on it assurring us of it's authenticity, just as an origin controlled wine would have. It was superb if ethically dubious. With that we headed back to Madrid, Mel taking on the freeway and winning, although she had to wrestle the little Seat over the hills. The spaghetti of freeways around Madrid and the airport (where the car was to be dropped off) looked intimidating on the map but was actually signposted very well, albeit in the Spanish "I don't care what order it is in, just get the informatiom on there" style. We travelled back in to the city by train just in time for some shoe shopping and mojitos, the latter necessary to redeem my boredom over the former, and also to calm Mel's excitement over her purchases. A few more tapas and drinks and we were in bed, asleep for the last time in Spain, dreaming of Rome and then conveniently flying there the next morning.

Taking in the Goog (coarse language)

Right, the Bilbao Guggenheim, modern art, I guess we won't be seeing too many "Adoration of the Magi"'s or "David with the head of Goliath"'s here. Bloody hell, how do you think up a building like that? "Inspired by the shapes of fish and boats" the brochure says, it's like a shiny pile of mangled boxes and tin cans. There's a giant puppy made of flowers out the front, that's pretty cool. Don't think I'll bother with the audio tour this time, oh it's included in the price is it, I'll have one then. 13€! Christ that's stiff. Right, in we go, what's this in the entry room, five thin columns scrolling words in LED lights, in red in English on one side and in blue and Basque on the other, it casts a nice light, yeah, this is pretty cool, not sure what it appeals to in me but I like it! Room one then, there's a Rothko over there but I'm not looking at that yet, here is a painting with a cream background about three quarters covered by jagged brown with a rough red line down the left and a splash of blue over there too. A child could have painted this. The brown "seems to quiver" does it audio guide lady? No it doesn't, it doesn't do anything except baffle me, on to the Rothko, a white rectangle on a yellow rectangle on a red rectangle, what a fucking fraud this bloke is, a cheat, "floating rectangles" my arse, how did he ever get any attention? Some critic must have been bored and decided to see just how much power he had, things better improve here or I'm going to miss that 13€. On to a canvas covered in black with a small patch of white down the lower left, I can't quite hear all the audio guide comments through he white noise of my rage and embarrassment but I think the "courage " of the artist is mentioned, yes, it is certainly courageous to produce this and expect to be taken seriously, moving on very quickly now. Another room, here's something I can get behind, a space scene with mangled metal and a part of an American flag, with added mirrored fabric at each end so you can look at a warped reflection of the picture from the side, why on earth do I like this? Here's Warhol, "150 multicoloured Marilyns", you have to hand it to the bloke for getting so much mileage out of one trick, he's a fraud too but he's being honest about it. Robert Rauschenburg's Barge, this is good, again if only because it has some identifiable images in it, maybe that's what I need, just one element I understand, this has plenty, pictures of football players and modes of transport and birds pasted on with fairly random black and white paint, okay. Next is "nine cycles of..." something or other, basically the same destructive looking painting nine times: a cream background, a grid and two bursts of pinky reddy violent stuff, I don't mind this either, it's got moods as you walk along it, up and down, like mine in this gallery. Yves Klein is next, so is is where that band gets its name, Yves Klein Blue! The audio guide says this was painted using Klein's "human brush" technique, where he has naked woman covered in paint roll around on a canvas. Ummmm, should we be commending this perversion? Why not get people of both genders to roll around in the paint, why not roll around yourself, yes yes, he wanted some distance from the work, but this just sounds like an excuse to have someone else do it, and why not naked women? Why not clothed women? It's just pure arse that this canvas ended up with a leaping figure shape in the middle, nice painting actually, but maybe the naked woman's name should be on it?! Perhaps Klein's perversion is the point? Richard Serra's "Matter of Time" now, a long room full of installations you can walk through, spirals and ellipses with the walls closing in and fanning out, walking around this is making me dizzy and fearfulandthen Iget to the centre and can breathe again, the artist's commentary is good too, describing the shapespretty matter of factlyand not crapping on about his message, whatever that is. All the different shapes sound pretty complicated, cambered ellipses and so forth, he must have been thinking about it for a loooong time, if nothing else it's disconcerting, is that enough? Mixed going so far and I fear that Anish Kapoor upstairs isn't going to make things any easier, need lunch first, what? We have to leave the museum and hand in our guide to get to the cafe, Frank Gehry can get this outrageous building up but a conveniently placed cafe is beyond him, down the block for some pintxos, good view back to the museum with a wholly mundane street transformed at the end by the fish scale buildings and the giant flower puppy. Check out these outdoor works, a 12 foot tall jagged metal spider with a pouch underneath containing realistic looking eggs, better step back or be showered by newborn steel spiders, a bunch of colourful steel tulips, oh, they're balloons are they Mel, ha! It's called Tulips! A little Anish Kapoor taster, a column of silver balls, all reflecting the museum and river and each other in different ways, very cool and very susceptible to multiple photographs. Back in and up to Anish's floor, wish I could ditch the audioguide but definitely need it here. Room one has unusal sculptures in bright pigments, and a lump protruding from the wall like a pregnant belly that you can only see from the side, that's extraordinary, it vanishes when you're front on, Anish's commentary is no-nonsense too, good start, into the second room, numerous sculptures made of tubes of concrete, apparently all made using a machine that spews out the concrete based on architectural information provided by a computer, Anish himself is not even sure what this says, but I like it, don't know why, perhaps just for the effort it has taken to build them and get them in here. On we go, here are some oddly bent mirrors, in this one you are the right way up when close to it but as you walk backwards you seem to explode and them reassemble inverted, here is another long curved one, as you walk along it you appear to stay in the same spot while the room moves, again, impenetrable but somehow cool. Finally we're into the room where a cannon fires huge cylinders of wax into the corner, there's a terrible red sloppy mess there, here comes the bloke to set it off, better video this, shit, haven't got much time left on the memory card, will have to wait until the last possible moment, when will I know when it's going to fire, gas is moving, it's charging up, now, no, now? Click record, it's gone off, I missed seeing it because I was preoccupied with the camera, but FUCK! I've missed it on the camera as well, that's fucking brilliant that is, will they fire it again later? Bloody camera, stops you from actually looking at anything. Next, Robert Rauschenburg's Gluts, sculptures made of metal salvaged by the artist from dumps, not much to see here folks, he is commended in the audio guide for not having really done anything except rivet the random pieces of metal together and give them clever names, receiving acclaim for doing nothing, that's a nice trick, here's one with a working fairground scrolling light, that's okay, stick to semi-painted collages Rob. Finally, Henri Rousseau, here's a woman taking a walk but something else is happening, something sinister or uncertain, amazing when you just get the feeling instantaneously when looking at the piece, here are some jungle ones, he never saw a jungle eh audio guide, well, one can tell that just by looking at his jungle pictures, had he seen a jungle these would surely attract grave criticism. A couple of times the audio guide has mentioned how the figures in his paintings "appear to float" (she's right this time, unlike when referring to Rothko's rectangles), but this seems likely to be simply because Rousseau's home made technique is not good enough to paint a figure that actually appears to be standing on a surface. Here is "The Football Players", it's splendidly energetic, they're all floating, and that's Rousseau himself in the foreground eh audio lady? Well, that must be him in the background too because all the men pictured look exactly alike. That's that I guess, time to go home, relief and confusion, 13€ worth?! As we walk off we turn and look back, if there is to be a prize for best piece of art seen today the building wins (although that cannon was pretty fucking cool).

Estamos peregrinos!

And so!  We joined the great pilgrimage, traditionally starting in Roncesvalles in France and stretching across northern Spain to Santiago de Compostela, the site of the burial of St James the Apostle, whose remains were found there around the 9th or 10th centuries after a hermit saw some lights in the sky and led the local bishop to the gravesite.  St James' remains were only of mild (and secular) interest to us, and I could probably fill a whole blog entry speculating on our motivations for following this path, so lets just settle on that we lobbed in Leon and everyone else is doing it but it's too far to walk so how about we ride?

We hired bikes from a Santiago-based mob who sent them to Leon for us.  Obstacle  one: the bikes were delivered to a very inconveniently located satellite town to the south.  We carried our load down there, packed what we needed in the panniers and sent the remainder of our luggage to Santiago by courier.  Our map showed a shortcut from the suburb to the trail but as we approached a freeway entrance we thought better of it and had to go all the way back to Leon.  With only six days before the bikes were due back my mood was pretty dark when we were still in Leon at 12:30pm.  Once on the road the going was easy, with the path well sign-posted and many other pilgrims all along it, mostly on foot.  We lunched in a littel town called Villadangos del Paramo and continued on to our first destination, the city of Astorga, arriving after making our first mistake in choosing the unsealed path over the road for the final few hilly kilometres. We would learn to take the easy way when possible.

The pilgrims (peregrinos) are mostly very supportive of each other and shout a cheerful "buen camino" to each other when crossing paths.  There are so many that there are towns on the route whose existence depends entirely on the pilgrims, and  so the locals are to a man friendly and happy to see you.  We were greeted with "buen camino"'s and other phrases of encouragement at various points by a lady on a bike with a load of flowers, a little girl on her front door step with her grandma, and just about every merchant we did business with on the way.  These short and always pleasant exchanges made this much more than a fitness or sightseeing expedition.    

It was pretty late in the day as we approached Astorga and our minor anxiety was heightened by the sound of crickets, creating a feeling that dusk was imminent even though we knew there were still three or four hours of daylight left.  Arriving in Astorga at 7:30pm we checked in to the local albergue after a few frustrating minutes trying to find the tourism office which of course closed at 7.  Each town on the route has one or more albergues, basically cheap hostels for pilgrims.  Many, many bunks are squeezed into big rooms and everyone just gets the next bed along as they arrive, as long as they show their "pilgrims credentials", a little passport that is stamped at each stop and proves you have made the pilgrimage that you are claiming to have made.  Mercifully, boots are left outside the dorms.  We got beds and strolled briefly around the town, which naturally has a beautiful cathedral and, next door, a palacio designed by the famous Antoni Gaudi.  This building's purpose is obscure and it may have been built solely because Astorga didn't have a Gaudi yet.

This day is otherwise notable for our consumption of two menus del dia.  Just about Every restaurant in Spain has a menu del dia, where the customer pays a very fair price and receives an entree, main, dessert and drink.  It's usually about 9-12€.  The customer is always served a gigantic amount of food and invariably finishes up feeling sick and uncomfortably full unless he or she has the discipline to refuse some part of it (she sometimes does, he doesn't).  For this reason we never really want to order it but because it is nearly always cheaper than three small plates, and we know that two small plates won't be enough, some tight-arsed, "maybe I might never get another meal" instinct prevails and the enormous primero plato arrives and we look at each other like "we ordered it again!?".  Anyway, as foreshadowed above on this first day of riding we each consumed entire menus del dia for both lunch and dinner, an unheard of and massively guilt-inducing level of consumption.  Hopefully clean toilets would be closely spaced along the second day's route.

Day two was a nightmare.  Our camino guide included small altitude maps of the stages and it was clear that there was some climbing to do.  The morning was straight forward, a mildly uphill run to the town of Rabanal del Camino, the only problem being a little bit of walker vs cyclist rivalry pushing us off the path and onto the nearby road.  After morning tea at Rabanal we commenced a steep climb up to the town of Foncebadon and over to El Acebo.  This is where we discovered that riding in mountains is difficult.  Actually, more specifically what we discovered was that riding in mountains into the wind on luggage packed bikes was damn near impossible, and only stupidity and arrogance would allow two smart arses with four months of holiday and eating out hanging around their waists to even attempt it.  We struggled up the mountain agonisingly slowly, being effortlessly overtaken by other cyclists (how on earth we were in front of them in the first place is a genuine mystery), stopping every 100 yards or so to gasp and gulp water, reaching the top genuinely shattered and rolling exhausted down into El Acebo for lunch.  It took more than two hours to cover about six kms.  Upon arriving in this town we were approached by an elderly cyclist, who despite our "no hablo espanol"'s and "no entiendo"'s spoke rapidly to us in Spanish, apparently explaining that he was 80 years old and had ascended the same mountain in one hour.  I fought off an urge to push his head under the water in a nearby trough.

We lingered over a superb menu del dia and then rolled down the hill to Ponferrada.  Far from improve our moods, if anything this descent deepened our depression because we could see that this city had hills all around.  Looking at our altitude maps closely revealed the worst: the next day contained a much steeper and longer climb, rising 700 metres in only seven kilometres (incline 10%, for those that know about such things; I had to look it up on the internet).  That night we gradually moved ourself with enormous psychological effort from despair and consideration of abandonment to cautious optimism and mutual encouragement.  However, that night we both slept restlessly and the first part of the next day's ride was clouded by worries of what lay ahead.  It was a lovely ride though: we followed the walking path through vineyards in the wine region of Bierzo and stopped for morning tea in Villafranca del Bierzo, a beautiful little hill town with a small castle and slim winding streets.  The road continued on through the valley of the Valcarce River, and we began to remember why we were taking this trip in the first place.  We lunched in Vega de Valcarce where I walked hard into a low hanging part of an outdoor gazebo, an accident that would have cut my head open had my sunglasses not taken the blow.  My unconscious had failed in its attempt to avoid the climb.

As it turned out, we walked up the bastard.  It was just too steep.  Some parts were negotiable with considerable effort but as soon as the slope increased the legs screamed, the lowest gear was engaged and we stepped off the bike just in time to avoid toppling over or rolling backwards.  Two thirds of the way up we had an ice cream in La Laguna de Castilla before walking some more to reach the autonomous region of Galicia and the hilltop town of O Cebreiro.  This is a beautiful tiny village, perched in one of those magnificent spots where a person can see panoramic views of the ground they have just covered and turn around and see the next gorgeous valleys ahead of them.  It was also crawling with tourists in buses and every bed in town was taken.  Onward then!  Another eight or nine kms of ups and downs and we arrived at Alto do Poio where we paid for a private room and sat still for several hours.  There was an extensive menu posted outside the door of our hotel but this proved to be a complete red herring; upon sitting down to dinner we were immediately served soup without recourse to a menu, followed by fish and chips handed out by a gruff waiter with an air of "you're bloody lucky to get that too".  I wanted to ask him "What would St James say about your attitude?" but I didn't because I know what St James would say: "eat as much as you can, you've still got 150kms to go".

The rest of the ride was a comparative picnic, and broke out into an actual picnic on a couple of occasions.  We rolled 14 kms down from Alto do Poio to Triacastela in about 25 minutes, descending through a mist that from above looked like a white sea with the tops of mountains peeking out like islands.  Some of these were covered in wind turbines looking like marooned sailors waiting for rescue.  Once down in the mist the gloom and the crickets combined to make 9:30am seem like 9:30pm, and no amount of intellectual effort could shake the disconcerting feeling.  We effortlessly continued down to the major town of Sarria.  This is the last town from whence a pilgrim can set out and cover enough kms to achieve the Compostela, a certificate awarded in Santiago if one ticks all the boxes.  Suddenly we were surrounded by boisterous groups of pilgrims with brand new walking sticks and their luggage travelling behind them in cars.  They pushed into lines and chattered excitedly and paid no heed to any "genuine pilgrim" hierarchy that I thought might exist.  The effect was negative for lovers of bed rest: we arrived at Portomarin at about 1:30pm and were among the last five or ten to get beds at the 200 bed albergue, having established while we anxiously waited in line that every other hotel in the town was booked out.  While we sat around in cafes all afternoon toasting our luck we observed walkers and riders cruising into town looking for a well earned rest and then cruising straight back out of town again looking perplexed and anxious.  Many looked considerably more frail than me but I couldn't quite bring myself to relinquish my bed.

We called many hotels in the towns ahead but all were full for the next night, so we would just have to take our chances with the albergues again.  After another fairly easy ride we arrived early enough and on the fifth night we stayed in a beautiful albergue converted from an original pilgrims hospital in a riverside village called Ribadiso.  This was full of French people who were somehow able to speak simultaneously to each other all afternoon and then from 5:30am the next morning.  A Spanish woman bedded near to us declared them "loco".  The one cafe in town conducted thriving pilgrim-only business despite their spaghetti bolognese looking absoutely ghastly.

We had booked accommodation well ahead in Santiago and so were able to enjoy our final day of riding free from anxiety re: sleeping rough.  We were excited to finish and wondered about how it must feel for a devout pilgrim who has been walking for more than a month to finally arrive at the fabled cathedral.  The city was full of pilgrims and busloads of tourists who poured in and out of the cathedral in huge numbers, compelling us to quickly flee to our hotel room after the obligatory photos.  It is a lovely cathedral whose spires dominate the town, as most major religious buildings do in the parts of Spain we have seen.  We stopped at the pilgrims' centre to get our Compostelas and as I completed the form I noticed that I was the only pilgrim on the page to tick the "non-religious" box under "reasons for pilgrimage".  The attendant was quite put out, having already written "Samuelen Lloyd" on the religious certificate, and grilled me in such a way as to suggest he expected me to say "sorry, yes, I forgot I was religious".  He then tore up the first certificate but managed to spell my name correctly on the much lamer non-religious certificate (general tone of certificate text: "you rode a bike to Santiago, good on ya").     

At lunch we celebrated by eating our first excellent paella, two weeks into our Spanish visit.  After, we lined up for a glimpse of St James' crypt, where I struck up a conversation with a woman next to us in the line.  She was thrilled to see us and said "It's so wonderful to see young people so devoted, you know they say faith is dying, it's not, it's stronger than ever".  We shuffled our feet for a moment before I deftly turned the topic of conversation to the paella.  She was an absolute non-listener anyway, on a multi-stop religious tour of Spain and Portugal and too excited by her proximity to the Apostle to bother waiting for someone else to finish a sentence before telling them about another place that they "must" go to because the Virgin appeared there in a plate of jamon or something.  Inside, she and her friends were seriously excited, and we almost missed the tomb for watching them whisper reverently and touch every idol in sight.  We glanced at the bejewelled coffin and headed out again.  I was a little confused by the fuss but also strangely envious, not really understanding what it was that others in the line felt so connected to while also thinking, actually, kind of knowing in a snobby way, that whatever it is is absurd and worthy of  derision.  I'll end this metaphysical debate now to avoid making this blog entry even longer and revealing too much about the more uppity elements of my nature.

We returned the bikes and consumed alcohol like people who don't have to ride anywhere the following day.  We ate the local octopus dish and found this a small step too far in embracing the local culture.  What does a pilgrim do when he's not a pilgrim anymore?  Takes advantage of his pilgrim train discount and heads to the beach, that's what.                              

What is the collective noun for walled cities?

From Avila we headed to Segovia, in many ways a very similar place but with a slightly slicker tourism strategy and a 300 yard Roman aqueduct, standing about 30 metres high and looking like it was knocked up yesterday. The lifting of the huge stones must have required some pretty fancy machinery by first century standards and apparently no mortar was used. Aside from our admiration, this edifice also attracted a barrage of Life of Brian quotes ("what have the fuckin' Romans done for us lately anyway?"; "half a dinari for an old ex-leper sah!"; and on to "I have a vewy gweat fwiend in Wome, called Biggus Dickus"). Mel endured this with only slightly gritted teeth.

Segovia also has a magnificent cathedral and a fairy tale castle perched dramatically on it's north-western corner. The audio tour for this latter structure was a dry affair, noting in great detail the "mudejar-style" architecture in just about every room, particularly above the doorways, while also describing how the old castle burned down in the 19th century and the current one is now covered largely by rooves stolen from nearby churches. What the locals worshipping on a rainy Sunday think of that cannot be printed here. Despite the efforts of the excellent English speaker on the guide, I cannot describe mudejar style architecture beyond saying it's name. The cathedral is superb, I suspect even to cathedral afficianados, dominating the town skyline and sitting close to the main square and numerous tapas bars, allowing for a swift transition between religions.

From Segovia we took a very fast train to Leon, a bigger city but with a medieval centre and, yes, some old city walls. This is one of the stops on the French Road of the Camino de Santiago, the path from France to Santiago de Compostela in north western Spain taken by thousands of pilgrims each year to visit the cathedral where St James the Apostle is thought to be buried. We hoped to walk or cycle some of this route and so the sights of Leon took a back seat to frantic organising and frustrating attempts to negotiate bike rental and luggage transport and accommodation in Spanglish over the frequently faulty pay phones. After several tantrums, incidents of phone vandalism and near-hurlings of our iPad into lakes we got it all sorted and could stroll the streets without worry. We were right to change our pace; the city walls are old and nice and I'm sure the stones could tell stories if they could speak but they can't and how many city walls can a bloke look at? The cathedral was, as always, partly covered by scaffolding and requesting donations for renovation but it was extremely rich in beautiful stained glass and there was much conjecture over whether it was "better" than the Segovia cathedral. You can vote on this at www.youcan'trankthiskindofthingyouknow.com.

Once all the bicycling was organised we could finally stroll around and enjoy Leon's atmosphere. We dined on morcilla and ensalada rusa at an old town bar, and ordered something called manitas de ministro, basically because we didn't know what it was and it was slightly higher priced than most other dishes, suggesting exoticism or at least some specialness. It turned out to be four bony and meaty chunks smothered in a red sauce. Our inital asumption was chicken, but doubt was cast by the tasting in which we found the meat to be surprisingly jelly-like. Mel was finally able to identify them as pigs trotters, and persuaded me with reference to the numerous hams hanging from the roof with the trotter still attached. Another dish that won't require a second try.

The next part of our trip was to be by bike, 300kms to Santiago de Compostela over six days. We had prepared for this task by doing no exercise for about two months and neither of us had ever ridden a bike with luggage panniers on it before. We didn't even have God on our side like the other pilgrims. Lucky we got that tantrum practice in.

Where is the, uh, the...generalissimo?

I have torn myself away from the hotel room TV, where a morbidly obese woman promises to read my fortune in Spanish for a small fee, to bring you this blog update on Madrid. A city of many domes. A city of many lovely parks. But mainly, a city preoccupied with football. Atletico Madrid played in the Copa Rey final against Seville while we were in town, losing 0-2, and afterwards shirtless lads were everywhere, apparently being ashamed to wear their jerseys. Two days after we headed north the city was to host the UEFA Champions League final, and the volume of advertising for this event was truly breathtaking. MasterCard were the major sponsor, with their tagline being translated from "Priceless" to "no tiene precio": "no it has price" (or, "it has no price" if you're not being a smart arse). At the time of writing the result of this match was unknown, but it is likely that the profits of all involved were ensured.

Madrid has many grand buildings but is apparently not actually that old, so these building are nice and everything but don't really exercise this viewer. They are also very clean, adding to the lack of grit, or character, or some other ethereal quality that I can't quite put my finger on. It is still a lovely place to stroll for a couple of days, and the aforementioned parks are genuinely lovely, decorated with grand royal mausoleums and inexplicable crystal palaces (just the one crystal palace actually). Drinking sherry and nibbling little serves of tasty stuff (blood sausage with cute little fried eggs, chorizo, salmon, jamon, manchego cheese) is another of the tremendously enjoyable activities open to the tourist in Madrid, and we fulfilled our roles in this tradition enthusiastically.

The highlights were the Museo del Prado and an evening spent at a flamenco bar. The Prado took up nearly a whole day and contained more than enough beauty to keep an ignoramus like me entertained for the whole time, despite wobbly legs. It tracked the development of Spanish art and focussed on the three big names of El Greco, Velasquez, and Goya, while perhaps showing a few too many portraits of King Felipe IV, who was obviously terribly vain and looks a right sour bastard. Thanks to Spain's past occupation of Belgium and the Netherlands it also houses a fantastic range of Flemish art. Stolen but beautiful.

The flamenco was in a bar/restaurant called Casa Patas, and though I whinged about the €31 cover charge beforehand I will never mention it again. The show was superb. Three singers and two guitarists performed a brief opening musical number before the two dancers come out to perform together, after which they each did a solo dance in between more singing and strumming. Strumming is a hopelessly inadequate word for what the guitarists were doing, and at times I thought I could hear this style of music's influence over more mainstream rock and pop. The singers sang incredibly high to my ear, but always in control and beautifully. They spasmed and twitched wildly as they sang; I wish I knew what they were singing about but just watching them was emotionally charged enough. The dancers performed alone for about 15 minutes each, and never seemed to be repeating moves and maintained a tremendous energy throughout. Their footwork on the (hopefully strongly reinforced) stage pushed Mel to comment that the quality of the dance could probably be accurately measured with a seismograph. One of the elements I enjoyed most was the intimate interaction between the players; all watched the others for cues but also seemed to enjoy the others' performances and shouted encouragement often, adding to the already engaging energy. The rest of the audience seemed to agree with us and the show ended to wild applause.

We headed north to the province of Castilla y Leon and specifically to the city of Avila, full of 12th to 18th century religious buildings and surrounded by a 30 metre high defensive wall made more charming by the hundreds of swallows constantly flying around it and disappearing into small holes in the sides. Larger birds nested on the tops of the church spires and bell towers, admirably enduring the loud and regular ringing of the bells. The ringing bells provided a pleasant soundtrack while we strolled through the quiet olde world streets.

One night we found ourselves in a tapas bar where we watched the UEFA Champions League final. The walls were lined with photographs of the proprietor with numerous matadors, along with other prints and shots on the bullfighting theme. We had watched some bullfighting on the TV in another bar and had not enjoyed it one bit. On the evening news another night we saw footage of a bull winning, quite horribly injuring the matador by goring him through the face. Bravo bull I say. Back in the Avila bar, the proprietor himself sat at the bar with a younger bloke handling the customer service. Trays of "deliciosos" lined the bar behind glass: prawns, clams, blood sausage, and other things that may or may not have been made of organs. We ate some tiny plates of octopus and tortilla. Some distinguished looking old fellas, some of whom could be recognized from the wall photos, came in to watch the football and yarn conspiratorially with the boys at work. One was served a single mussel on a potato chip as he sat down at the bar. The young guy behind the bar regularly adjusted the contents of the food trays with his bare hands and then blew his nose and wiped some remnants off his chin with the same hands. Internazionale FC (Milan) beat Bayern Munchen in the football, and although we were obviously cheering for Inter the barman asked us as we left if we were German. I grasped the opportunity: "Nein!", I replied. I actually only thought of saying that just now, but it would have been funny huh?

Cardiff in Welsh is Caerdydd

In the middle of our London visit we took a train to Cardiff to stay with a friend of mine, a dentist whose wish to work in diverse locales improbably took him to Alice Springs a few years ago, where we met. After we briefly recapped our famous victory in the Alice indoor soccer competition back in '06 he toured us around Cardiff's sites. This activity being completed within two hours we retired to a licensed premises. On the second day we slept in and then travelled to Big Pit, a former coal mine and now museum, arriving late after having an argument with the satellite navigation lady (she won, she's so infuriatingly assertive and sure of herself). Again connections were made between vague understandings: "Wales" and "mining" existed in my mind quite close to each other but without being explicitly connected until now. This was once the biggest coal exporter in the world. On the way in we saw an old photo of Margaret Thatcher holding a canary with some miners around her; some wag had drawn on a moustache on her that had been carefully but not quite completely subsequently erased. The earnest miner (a great enthusiast of the Welsh Cobb breed of horse; he admonished a school girl in our group who said she had one but didn't take it to jumping competitions, thus wasting it's great talent) that took us down the shaft for the tour told us that the two retired pet canaries upstairs were named Arthur and Maggie, but we weren't to say their surnames because they brought bad luck, their two namesakes having destroyed the British mining industry. He went on to say that all miners should get a day off "when she goes", and that he would be there, "singin' me lungs out".

After the enjoyable and informative tour of the shaft we took in the miners' showers (an unusual thing to tour I thought) and a museum. We headed off to walk up the tallest mountain in South Wales, just as a thick fog descended to obliterate what our host assured us was a lovely view. After taking some photos of the fog we descended and it began to lift. We retired to a licensed premises. I forced our party to stop in at a pub with karaoke, as well as carpet whose pattern had been obliterated everywhere but the very corners of the room and immediately around supportive pillars. Judging by the looks on their faces just being in this venue caused our local friends great pain but I hope my performance of "I Believe In A Thing Called Love" was worth it.

We left Wales for Bath in western England, where our London host was celebrating her 30th birthday at her parent's house. Because we were staying two nights we were given the best guest room in the house (in a house that sleeps 16 comfortably). It is to date the best room of the trip, with private bathroom and a view over a lovely green English valley, with a corner of Georgian Bath visible in the distance. The party was a triumph of complicated catering, and the presence of an Aga oven in the kitchen plunged me into sentimental reflection on my grandmother's former home, while also enabling me to curry favour with the host by asking her about her kitchen renovation. We played croquet on the lawn, which as an Australian I would have obviously won had I not had to be teamed up with English people. I further flew the flag by opening a beer just as everyone else went to bed, although this may have reversed my previous favoritism with the host.

The following day we took in the Roman Baths, a museum built over the site of the remains of a 1st and 2nd century Roman leisure centre, enjoyed lunch in a ye olde pub, and were ferried around the district by our host with a detailed tour of nearby towns and buildings of interest. We returned home where his mood was improved by England spanking Australia in the 20-20 World Cup Final, which he could have rubbed in more but was discouraged by my attitude of indifference, which was only slightly put on. We returned to London for one more night in a dreadfully overpriced hostel and lay awake wondering if we were going to be able to dodge British Airways strikes and Icelandic volcanic ash to get to Spain. We're sick of speaking English.

The great fire of ...; ... Calling; I'm in ... Still; etc.

We arrived in London on a Friday night and caught the train from Heathrow into the city. My maturity was immediately under pressure as the ultimate destination of our train was called Cockfosters. I opened the guide book; Spitalfields leapt off the page. I let Mel handle the planning from there.

As with New York, London is already known to us through place names: I have comprehensively bored our hosts pointing out locations that are also Australian Group 1 winning racehorses (Shaftesbury Avenue, Blackfriars, Kensington Palace, etc). The less said about Monopoly the better. Mel and I have both already visited here, so it wasn't necessarily one of our most anticipated stops. Having now left for Spain, we have both commented on how surprised we've been by how much we enjoyed it.

Firstly, we stayed with friends. Oh! The impossible luxury of a cobbled together bed on a living room floor! To be able to prepare our own breakfast in a private kitchen! To be able to hear the nearby nightclub's thumping beats from the bathroom! Yes, perhaps this latter situation was less desirable, but it tells of the excellent location of our hosts' apartment right in the middle of Soho. We lounged about a bit before remembering we were tourists and taking off to stroll through the city, taking in the magnificent St Pauls Cathedral and Southbank before the inevitable visit to Harrods and Buckingham Palace. On a Saturday night we turned away from the disco below and took advantage of our new domesticity with take-away food and a video (Changeling, starring Angelina Jolie's lips constantly exaggerated by bright red lipstick, even while receiving electro-convulsive therapy in an asylum; it was dreadful). The following night we took a half hour flight on the London Eye, enjoying superb views of the Thames and the city at sunset, including the offices of MI5 and 6 (as pointed out by our sightseeing brochure). Aren't they supposed to be secret organizations?

We headed to the Tower of London and were led around the bloody history of the British crown by a jolly Beefeater with an endless supply of sexist gags and digs at Americans and Australians ("to all Americans, I promise to speak slowly; to all Australians...welcome home"). We saw the spot where Ann Boleyn was romantically proposed to by Henry VIII, and the spot where she was later romantically beheaded. This spot was notable for a totally out-of-place modern glass sculpture of a cushion commemorating Ann and the other unfortunates who were relieved of their heads in the tower, their executions being too sensitive to perform up the street in front of the public. The following day we took in the National Gallery, an endless parade of masterpieces and advertisements for Ovid's Metamorphoses, the inspiration for almost every non-religious painting in there. Except, that is, for the paintings on the most important topic of all: racehorses. I'm not sure galleries and museums figured at all in my original inspiration for taking this trip, but having now had the chance to see multiple masterpieces by names previously only vaguely known to me has been an unexpectedly moving highlight. We also checked out the Tate Modern and picked out some genuine inspiration amongst a heap of impenetrable abstract stuff (although, gasp!, they did have a Jackson Pollock that I actually saw something in), avoiding the videos of people screaming at each other and huge sculptures of piles of mud. At the risk of sounding conservative, give me a bowl of apples and an artfully arranged dead duck on a table any day over that.

London looked pretty flash and confident to me, more than when I last visited five years ago, a few public white elephants (the new Wembley, the O2 Arena, the Millenium Bridge) having since been put right. There were quite a few homeless people sleeping rough near where we were staying but the pubs and shops were full and bloody expensive. We observed someone buying a tiny £1200 dog at Harrods. Perhaps this last observation is not adequate to summarise the state of a whole economy but someone is obviously doing alright.

We were sad to leave but the continent beckons, and I've nearly forgotten how to order a latte in Spanish; to Madrid!

New York cares

What can I say about New York that hasn't already been said?  How can I follow up a sentence like that?  Talk about making a noose for yourself.

I'll try again.  The main thing about New York is, we know it all already.  We know Times Square, the Statue of Liberty, Central Park, the Lower East Side, the Upper West Side (although I was yet to put together the fact that this referred to the western side of upper Manhattan) etc.  Everywhere we went was something somehow familiar.  Walking around provided constant reminders of how this city is represented in and influences popular culture.  This is where the terms "uptown" and "downtown" are literal (in a 2D way).  Is there anyone who doesn't know the words to a song about New York? 

Our accommodation was in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, although a local we met at the Sao Paulo airport said "more like Bedford-Stuyvesant" (a much less desirable suburb) when we showed him on a map where it was.  Williamsburg is touted as a very cool neighborhood with an increasing population of youthful "hipsters", and as has occurred previously on our trip this stereotype proved to be fairly accurate, as long as a hipsters looks like this:

Male: pale complexion, probably a few tatts, a haircut that no money can have been exchanged for, a t-shirt with some clever pop-culture reference, shabby jeans or cut off shorts that could be torn a bit or, much better, paint splattered (paint splattered is really in).

Female: tight jeans or short denim shorts worn over black tights, street shoes (Converse preferred, never new looking), numerous unusual piercings, thick glasses, and a short, angular haircut.

The hipsters seemed perfectly friendly, but one night when lost we were approached by a fashionable trench coat-wearing magazine employee (pointing at her business card "You know this magazine?  It's pretty big in New York.  I used to work at Vogue") named Rebecca Babcock Bradley, and when she said "hipster" it was with sharp disdain and fingers up for inverted commas.  Let's assume this attitude was fashion-related.

We travelled into Manhatan every day for the endless sights.  We took pictures of wind-buffeted pigeons on the Empire State Building.  We looked up admiringly at the lights and signs of Times Square, surprised that we liked it so much when we should have been disgusted by it for various anti-consumerist and pro-environmental reasons (I will be keeping my detailed analysis of these internal conflicts to myself).  We shopped endlessly (my view) but not enough (Mel's).  We went to a Yankees game at their new stadium, marvelling at the impossible multitude of statistics (e.g. if desired, one can easily access a batter's figures solely against left-handed pitchers when runners are in scoring positions after the sixth inning) but scoffing at the price of beer and the lame automated chant prompts and scoreboard animations designed to artificially fire up the crowd.    We stared at Van Gogh's "Starry Night" at the Museum of Modern Art (ignoring the loud statements of the obvious coming from the crowd circled around it) and established that the Metropolitan Museum of Art owns a lot of boring Picassos but has a lot of other stuff to recommend it.  We saw the Lion King on Broadway and Avenue Q (featuring explicit sex scenes with puppets) off Broadway.  We were about four blocks and a clumsy bomb-builder away from getting a terribly close look at a terrorist attack, and afterwards found that New York (hysterical media aside) just takes this kind of thing in it's stride.  It didn't effect our time there at all.  

One night we headed down to the East Village to the Village Vanguard to take in some jazz.  This club is so famous that Jamie Cullum name drops it in the British Airways in-flight magazine, but it was fairly easy for us to get our names on the door to see the Heath brothers, famous as back ups to the big names.  Jimmy Heath at one point said "this song was made famous by Miles Davis, and when I used to play with him we used to play it a lot.  But then Miles left us".  Just prior to the show we had spotted the actor James Spader entering, our first celebrity spotting!  Again, I was surprised by my excitement at this because I'm pretty sure he's not on the A-list (although I'm not willing to speculate on his exact list position).  We were so distracted by Mr Spader that when Jimmy Heath pointed out Tony Bennett about two metres away from us it was quite a shock.  I'm no expert but the the music was wonderful and we returned to the street with a delicious New York buzz through us.     

Late in our stay we attended the world famous (self-acclaimed) Apollo Theatre in Harlem, where Wednesday night is amateur night.  The audience is encouraged to cheer the performers if they are good and to heartily boo them if they are not.  Overwhelming boos bring on a lively fellow dressed as a policeman who will chase the contestant offstage.  Only one performer suffered this fate the night we were there, a woman who bravely attempted a performance of spoken word.  She seemed alright to we spoken word non-initiates.  The most common style of performance was a young woman belting out some soulful ballad in the style of Beyonce or Whitney Houston.  This got tiresome and as a result the winner was a beautiful girl who played a cello and sang an unusual bluesy number while third place went to a lad with significant attitude who could seemingly dislocate his own shoulders in the service of dance.  Second was the best of the crooners.  

The was definitely a lot of amateur talent on display and the host (the modestly named Talent) made a big deal of pumping up the number of legends that have been made on the Apollo stage.  Michael Jackson and his brothers first came to prominence at the Apollo amateur night apparently.  The best moment of the night played off this history.  Talent was interrupted from introducing the next amateur by a message from the side of the stage.  He looked right; his eyes went wide.  He wrote something on a piece of paper and gave it to the band leader, whose eyes went wide.  Talent said "Folks, a brother is in the house and he's going to come on now, a genuine Apollo legend, with too many credits to mention here, you gonna get your money's worth, please give it up for Mr Stevie WONDER!!!!!!!".  And then, holy shit, Stevie Wonder was led on to the stage to a keyboard where he sat down and played "Signed, Sealed, Delivered".  We could not believe it but wanted so much to believe it that we went quite bananas (Tony Bennett who?!), along with most of the rest of the audience.  This was definitely the wildest moment of the night.  He played for just a short time and was led off stage again.  The last three hapless amateurs had to follow that up!  

The highlight for me was the Statue of Liberty.  As well as the admirable anti-slavery and pro-immigration history, she is just a beautiful thing to look at.  We took the ferry from Manhattan to Liberty Island and toured around with the aid of an audio guide, whose commentary by a tiny margin remained just on the acceptable side of the appropriately proud/US-specialty excessive nationalism divide.  I was surprised by how into it I was, and started to say things to people like "Maybe the US will be okay, as long as this is here".  As nation-guiding symbols go, it is hard to think of anything that tops her.  We saw her again from a boat on a night cruise we took that looped around the southern half of the island.  At night with her torch lit she was even more arresting.  The US can be an easy target for derision, but It is much harder to poke fun at while looking at the Statue of Liberty.

And the Americans?  Many fall over themselves to help you.  Tipping troubled me, except when genuinely good service was provided, when it was a pleasure.  Mostly we received excellent service, although perhaps tipping breeds a tendency for waiters to invent tasks for themselves (I ordered poached chicken in a restaurant and the waiter said "That is poached in buttermilk so it's going to have a very silky texture".  Long pause.  Was this supposed to discourage me from ordering it or encourage me or neither?  "Okay", I said, successfully terminating the exchange.  It was indeed very silky).  Perhaps it is a symptom of another oft-observed tendency, that of providing much more information than is necessary.  Overheard in a wine shop: "...and I used to drink a lot of Australian wine but the prices went up so high and sometimes I like South African whites and I think I would like to spend about $50 because it's a special occasion but I don't want to spend $50 just for the sake of it I mean I want it to be a nice bottle that is well worth the $50 because I don't usually spend that much and as I think I said it's for a special occasion and so I want it to impress so do you have anything around that price range or at least a bottle that you think meets up to the expectations that someone might have when drinking a bottle that cost $50 for a special occasion...".  This reproduction may not be perfectly accurate because during the eavesdropping I developed a sharp pain in my temple and required medical attention.

We left for London tired and a little overwhelmed but knowing that we hadn't really scratched the surface.  Vague ideas of the city and the USA had been drawn together, but this new solidity of knowledge really only heightened my awareness of what I didn't and couldn't know, the enigmatic nature of a country with such a rich history of immigration and a reputation for being inward-looking, a country where Sarah Palin and Lady Liberty can co-exist.  I left behind the new world for the old continuing my tiresome game of simultaneously chastising myself for my ignorance and patting myself on the back for being so worldly.  

   

PS     It wasn't really Stevie Wonder.  After he went off doubts formed.  The keyboard was already set up there wasn't it?  And his trademark head movements and claps seemed a little exaggerated to me.  And when he stopped playing he clumsily reached for the microphone and missed by a mile, despite singing into it perfectly accurately for the previous two minutes.  As the crowd calmed down Talent brought him back on and revealed that it was not Stevie Wonder at all but the same bouncy guy that kicks the poor performers off the stage.  Some of the audience were genuinely pissed off; others nonchalantly affected a pose suggesting they were never fooled; your correspondent tried for something in between and looked ridiculous.  The show went on without bloodshed, although it was a near thing.  The minute and a half or so that we thought it was him were worth it! 

Catching up

If I don´t do this I´ll never catch up.

Buenos Aires

The answer to the macchiato question was yes, and thus commenced a furious coffee binge. It was an all-round binge actually: we dined out in lovely restaurants, drank wine with abandon, and shattered our previously well held budget. Buenos Aires is a lovely but hectic modern city with wide avenues punctuated by huge statues of various liberators and fathers of democracy and tall obelisks and columns. We sat in famous cafes staffed efficiently by fleets of jacketed and vested waiters; almost every cafe waiter in the city is a middle-aged male. I am ignorant of the cultural forces creating this situation. We saw a tango show and even took a lesson, and can now tango very slowly for about six seconds without repeating any moves. We took a day trip to the pretty but sleepy Uruguayan town of Colonia de Sacramento and drank coffee there too. The best meal of the trip (opinion not necessarily shared by all participants) was at El Pobre Luis, a restaurant for carnivores with a gigantic grill called a parilla in the middle of it. Blood sausage, then little curly intestiney things with pate or something in them, followed by steak and washed down with malbec. I ordered one serve of steak which turned out to be two steaks, both of which were staggeringly tender. Steak knives weren´t needed. We saw Evita´s grave with a zillion other tourists, and I was moved in the opposite direction to them by the absurdly elaborate mausoleum and the atmosphere of mindless hero-worship.

Iguazu Falls

We travelled to Puerto Iguazu by luxurious bus, the best bus trip of the tour. They showed a decent movie in English and I was served wine with dinner and whisky after. The day after we arrived we headed out to the falls which are extraordinary. They make Niagara look like the contents of a toppled kitchen water jug pouring over the edge of a small table.They are right on the border with Brazil and from the Argentinian side tourists can get right up close to the walls of water and view them from above and below. A waterproof jacket is required. On the Brazilian side the view is more panoramic and we could see the whole wall, from the wild "Garganta del Diablo" horseshoe-shaped cliffs on the left along a white wall of falls that must be more than a kilometre wide. The water crashes down and it is impossible to tell how far due to the explosive spray. Every person (there were many) present looked thrilled except for one child (of at least four years and still sucking a pacifier) who screamed in fear and buried her face into dad´s shoulder. It was a major highlight of our trip (the falls, although the kid's tantrum was pretty amusing).

Seeing the Brazilian side of the falls required intense engagement with public transport. Below is a catalogue of our bus rides on the day of 10 April.

1. Bus from hostel to Puerto Iguazu terminal
2. Bus to Brazilian border, passport stamps etc.
3. Bus from border to Foz do Iguaçu urban terminal
4. Bus from urban terminal to rodoviario (bigger inter-city bus terminal); bus tickets and future tours organised
5. Bus from rodoviario back to urban terminal
6. Bus from urban terminal to falls park
7. Park bus from visitors centre to falls viewing area
8. Park bus back to visitors centre
9. Bus from park to urban terminal
10. Bus from urban terminal to rodoviario
11. Bus from rodoviario to unknown bus hub, where we changed buses
12. Bus from unknown hub to Campo Grande, our next destination

Anyone who has been on more than 12 different buses in a day is invited to make a claim for the title.

Campo Grande/Pantanal

Campo Grande is a city in Brazil´s south west from where one can travel into the Pantanal, a wetland populated by interesting wildlife. We paid for a cheap tour into this region and we paid for it, if you know what I mean. The staff were overworked and sour, the guide a smart arse, and the schedule loose and rarely inspirational. However! We caught piranhas; saw an armadillo, deer, jabiru (slightly different to Australian ones), some rodent called something like acucho, some other enormous rodent called capybara (that is oddly at home in the water), many birds, howler monkeys, and shitloads of caiman (little wimpy crocodiles).

Several Israelis were on our tour including Noy, a 22yo former Israel Army infantry officer enjoying his post-national service travel. Over lunch he confided that he and his travelling companion were a little anxious about crossing from Brazil into Bolivia, having heard rumours of banditry and other anti-tourist shenanigans. Noy said "It's not really a problem if there is just one guy with a gun, but if there is more than one guy it gets a bit complicated". "What will happen if it's just one guy?" I asked. Noy shrugged. "You'd take him down would you?". "Of course" said Noy, and then "And we would probably just shoot him and leave him by the side of the road. I don't think anyone would care about him". I made a mental note not to fuck with Noy.

The other Israelis were a female and a male (whose names escape me; let's say Jack and Jill) travelling together. We assumed they were a couple until we began to observe Jack's behaviour a little more carefully. He spoke Spanish; when Mel asked him about this he said he had learned Spanish so he could go to sell skin care products in Spain. At another point we saw a capybara while on a "jeep safari" (in a ute tray driving from the camp to a boat along a dirt road) and Jack leapt off the truck to photograph it from close up. Mel said "Blow it a kiss" and Jack did so with such a flourish that our doubts were sealed: Jack was not interested in Jill. Just to make sure, we asked Noy if they were a couple; he looked at us as he might look at a Bolivian bandit demanding he hand over his bags and said "Can't you see what is going on here?". I wanted to ask how that kind of thing went over in the Israeli army but had adopted a policy of asking Noy one question at a time.

The final Pantanal insult was the way our driver continually performed calisthenics to avoid falling asleep all the way back to Campo Grande. I spent the whole four hours in a state of cat-like readiness to seize the wheel should we have drifted off course. We made it back alive but I decided to reject the tour agent's request to be my friend on Facebook (hopefully he interprets the subtext correctly and the tours improve; actually I don't care).

Sao Paulo

Well well well, little old me in the world's third biggest city! I guess this is more likely than me turning up in the world's third smallest city. Other tourists and residents we canvassed had provided mixed reviews of Sao Paulo, from "it has great nightlife" to "don't go to Sao Paulo" (actually, the same guy said both those things; our survey was not comprehensive). We went anyway and had a pretty good time. It is genuinely vast: we took the elevator to the viewing platform high on the Empire State Building-imitating Edificio Banespa and could not see the city's limits. It is flat and the viewing platform is in the most interesting building so the view is only memorable for the lack of nature.

This was our first real look at Brazil and it's people and we liked what we saw: they are friendly, energetic and musical. And they drink like fish. Beers are mostly served in long neck bottles in double-size all-around stubby holders and they arrive cold and stay cold. What they lack in variety (the beers, definitely not the people) they make up for in drinkability. The other local drink is the caipirinha, a cocktail made of the sugar cane syrup cachaca shaken with sugar, limes and ice. Research on this drink revealed that it is very potent, so potent that we lost our memories and performed identical research the following night.

Some other stuff about Brazil and Brazilians (the people, not the grooming method):

Many adults have braces on their teeth.
Lots of quite big kids (four, five years old) still suck on pacifiers.
Jeans are worn very tight, usually attractively.
Heels are very, very high.
Portuguese looks a lot like Spanish on paper but sounds like something else altogether; an impossible to understand and pronounce something else.
Porn is prominent in street magazine stands; magazine covers especially feature bottoms in extreme close up.
There are numerous evangelical churches, almost always full of people.


Paraty


If the jeans are tight in Sao Paulo the bikinis are minute to the same magnitude on the beaches around Paraty. Body size and shape have little bearing on the amount of the body left visible while swimming and sunbaking. Aside from this (perhaps in part because of this), Paraty is a lovely old World Heritage town perched on a magnificent series of beaches on rugged tropical coastline south of Rio. The best local dish is the moqueca: fish and other seafood cooked in coconut milk and other stuff in a clay pot. Superb with the near-tasteless beer Skol. We spent three or four days here lying on the beautiful beaches and dipping in the lovely waters and discussing the views, natural and human. We took a beach-hopping boat cruise featuring a live guitarist and a woman whose tiny bikini earned her the nickname "Tiny Triangles". Seriously, the bikinis are small. I could go on about it but it's late.

Rio de Janeiro

We lobbed in Rio excited but perhaps as much about heading to New York in five days as arriving in the "cidade maravilhosa". Our time in Rio was mixed. We stayed in Santa Teresa, a cool arty bohemian neighbourhood perched on a hill high above the city centre. Walking down the hill took us into Lapa, a party neighbourhood where alcoholic drinks were cheap and plentiful and samba music played from nearly every bar. The walk down could be a little fraught: the smallest wrong turn took the foolish tourist from a respectable set of steps into a very unpleasant ghetto with unconscious bodies lining the streets. Another small detour led us to the beautifully decorated steps that some would remember from a Snoop Dogg and Pharell Williams video clip of some years ago (falsetto: "Beautiful, I just want you to know, you're my favourite girl"). Rio's guide book "city of contrasts" reputation is earned.

The favelas are interesting (we took a safe guided tour mum): guarded by heavily armed scouts, they are police no-go zones where a whole other system of law and order exists. The tiny streets are covered in trash but the people mostly looked healthy and happy and (aside from the mountains of cocaine) there is a fairly normal economy operating. The city's beaches are beautiful and probably earn their places in their respective songs, although the high rises behind don't help the situation. The competitive but friendly energy of the Brazilians prevails as they heckle and applaud amateur beach volleyball players and try to out-strut each other in their tiny swimmers. On the beach you can buy beer, iced tea, snacks, sarongs, and even bikinis. has anyone ever arrived at the beach and realised they forgot their bikini?

We partied in Lapa with some other Aussies from the hostel and their local friend. It was a long and heavy night, really the first bender of the trip, and I paid the next day with a headache and the horror of hearing about how I behaved. I will leave the details out as my fiance's mum might read this. The next day we tried to take the cable car up the Sugarloaf mountain for the magnificent city views but it was broken down. We were successful the next day and the views were worth two trips as the sun set over the city and it's surrounding mountains.

The breakdown of the cable car, the hectic and hot city streets, the high price of everything, the apparently rife alcoholism; all these things got in the way of our total enjoyment of the great energy of the people, the football (see Maracana entry), the music, the beaches, and the physical beauty of the city (from a distance). Adding insult to injury, Spain and Netherlands-themed Havainanas were widely available but no Australia version could be found. It was a sweet and sour bite of the Rio apple. The Big Apple awaits.

Maracana

For the benefit of the uninitiated (e.g. those that know as much as I did a week ago), Maracana is a bloody big football (futebol here) stadium in Rio de Janeiro, allegedly one of the most famous in the world. Last night we attended a match there and it is, indeed, something else.

Via Google I had found a chap named Sergio who runs tours to matches. Via e-mail we confirmed that we would meet and go to the Flamengo (Sergio´s team) vs Caracas (a Venezuelan club) game, part of the Libertadores Cup, the South American club championship. Sergio arranged to meet us in Lapa, a funky suburb down the hill from our accommodation in Santa Teresa. We strolled down the windy Santa Teresa streets and had a warm up drink in Antonio´s Bar while waiting for Sergio, who was late due to traffic. Soon he arrived accompanied by another tourist, JP, a Canadian on a short holiday after travelling for work. We drove to the stadium with every other car in Rio and Sergio used his local knowledge to find fairly convenient parking without too much queuing. Despite running late he assured us we had time for a beer but we had to walk a couple of blocks to get it, as licensed premises within two blocks of the stadium had been banned from selling grog before matches.

We didn´t go to a bar so much as a bloke´s house; our host was named Luiz. While others waited outside (Luiz was selling beer illegally and worried that the authorities might come by) we were afforded the luxury of entering the house and sitting on the couches. Sergio explained that Luiz was a Flamengo fan who opened his house like this before each Flamengo match. The house was very simple, bare walls decorated only with a small picture of the last supper, a close up of a statue of Jesus, and two Flamengo-themed hangings, providing a glimpse of just how highly the club figured in Luiz´s spiritual life. The furnishings were also very simple: when Sergio took a picture of Mel and I on the couch, JP said it looked like the photo that would be released to announce our kidnapping by Al Qaeda. A couple of fantastically cold beers passed easily and we drilled Sergio with Rio and futebol related questions. JP was pretty clueless about soccer and an elaborate demonstration of the offside rule using empty beer cans was required.

We left so as to arrive at the game about half an hour before kick off. Luiz farewelled us at the door in such a manner as to make clear that he would not be attending the game or even leaving his house on foot for some time. We filed up the ramp with the black and red clad supporters, pausing only to have our photograph taken with the Flamengo mascot, a vulture. Every man wore a team jersey except Sergio, important for keeping track of him. There was a definite hum of excitement in the air and we finally burst into the stadium proper with about 20 minutes to go.

The noise was incredible. The stadium was about a third full, nearly all down our end. Because Caracas are Venezuelan their fans were either absent (and would have been hiding anyway), and a sea of black and red greeted the eye. Several groups played very loud drums without a moment´s rest. At least 20 enormous flags of various (black and red) designs waved vigorously, and close inspections of each waver revealed a careful technique of wide sweeps and sequential jiggles. A youth sat watching his older colleague wave their flag, and when he was handed it his engagement with his task was total. A very large group to our right sang songs constantly, including one to the tune of Frankie Valli´s "Can´t Take My Eyes Off You". Sergio explained that the large group to our left didn´t like the group to our right, and sure enough each group would often start a chant or song immediately after the other, attempting to drown them out. This was the first glimpse of Flamengo´s internal politics.

While we took in the atmosphere Sergio set the scene. Flamengo had been beaten for the Rio state championship the Sunday prior, 2-1 by hated rival Botafogo. In that match Flamengo hadn´t played very well but still had their chances, including a penalty missed by Adriano late in the game. Adriano is a champion national player whom has returned to Brazil from a big European club apparently because of becoming "depressed". Sergio explained this before he had asked what my profession was and he twirled his finger around his ear while saying "depressed". He had accepted a pay cut and contract with Flamengo but lacked discipline, enjoying the nightlife a little too much and perhaps not applying himself to training as he should. Fans were beginning to get frustrated with him and other players thought to be under-performing. Caracas, Sergio went on, were the worst team in the group and Flamengo needed to beat them by two goals to smooth their own path through to the next round. He further denounced Venezuela as the worst futebol-playing country in South America and boldly predicted a 3-0 win for Flamengo. He said a 1-0 win would invite boos from the crowd.

Thus, the teams took the field. As in Ecuador, the away team was greeted with wolf whistles, although this time it was a piercing cacophony that would surely have crushed any slightly fragile soul on the receiving end. The home players were serenaded as they warmed up with personalised songs and chants that Sergio translated ("The number one goalkeeper in Brazil....Bruno!" etc.). Each greeted his song with a grateful wave. The game began with Caracas in possession but Flamengo´s pressure was immense and they very quickly took the ball away. The change in possession was greeted with a huge roar and fervid instructions from the fans to attack down the middle and NOW!!!!!! The players, admirably I thought, maintained their discipline and passed the ball around looking for good attacking opportunities. We began to understand the double-edged sword of such passion: while good play was wildly celebrated, each minute error and even any slightly conservative decision making was met with exasperated grunts and grasping of foreheads. The drummers drummed and the singer´s sang endlessly, and the opposition were booed and whistled relentlessly. It seemed to work: a Caracas player standing seemingly free of injury on the far wing suddenly went down on his haunches and then lay down on the ground. Play stopped and the stretcher buggy drove out, and if it was a "heart muscle" problem then any remaining flickers of ego would have been obliterated by the send off he was given.

Flamengo controlled possession but lacked directness in attack, passing it around looking for the perfect opportunity. In contrast, the underdog Caracans (I haven´t verified if this is an appropriate term, don´t drop it into conversation with your Venezuelan friends without further research) attacked with flair on the few occasions they had the ball in their half. The Flamengo crowd seemed to be feeling positive and the run of play suggested that the floodgates would open soon. Caracas won a corner which was deflected away but out off a Flamengo player, providing another corner. The kick bounced around the players in the box and fell to a visitor with a little time and he put it into the net. Something like silence fell on the stadium. Not a peaceful silence, but a silence laden with fury and threat, the kind of sound that I imagine is made by the eye of a cyclone. Or the not immediately identifiable sound you might hear walking down an oddly deserted city street as a wild, murderous rioting mob approaches the same intersection you do but down a perpendicular street, obstructed by the buildings. I wasn´t worried for our safety but for the well being of the supporters, whose wonderful energy had been suddenly aqueezed out of them. Sergio leaned across to me: "Very bad" he said.

They recovered (the fans). The singing and chanting recommenced, the drums went on, and Flamengo got the ball back. The score had kicked them into action and now they attacked with abandon. They won a sequence of corners and eventually a defender headed the ball past the exhausted keeper. Now, I will admit that when Kevin Muscat scored against Uruguay at the MCG in the first leg of the 2002 World Cup qualifiers I hugged a man (who will remain nameless), quite wantonly I thought. That was nothing. This goal triggered an outburst of aggressive man love all around us. We were physically buffeted by ricocheting pods of tangled screaming men, eventually exploding apart to sing another chant with elaborate arm movements. Flares were lit, the drums crescendoed, somehow the incredible noise got louder. Flamengo´s players were inspired and surged forward again. Only one or two minutes later they scored again, and we ducked for cover as the boys around us really went for it. Many would have woken up this morning with significant bruising but they didn´t notice it at the time. To a man they took off their jerseys and waved them above their heads, Kevin Sheedy style. A brief survey revealed that Sheeds was unknown here.

Halftime arrived and everyone had a rest. An appropriate scoreline had been achieved, imperfect but acceptable. We sat down for the first time. I think the drummers might even have gone to the toilet. There was no half time entertainment or dreadful music played over the loudspeakers, and no gormless just-below-TV-standard host ran any long kick contest. We just had the game to discuss and it was more than enough.

The second half began before the chanters and drummers properly hit stride, so was a little subdued. The play was no different, Flamengo dominating possession again and creating a few opportunities, the ultimate failure of each being greeted with a collective deep "ooo" and more thrusting of hands to temples. Then, again totally against the run of play, Caracas went forward and scored on a superb individual effort by one of their forwards, possibly called Gomez. The just-prior-to-the-nuclear-blast atmosphere fell again, and when the chanting restarted it was angry. The tone definitely changed from supportive to aggressively expectant, with a hint of the possible repercussions should the players fail. Predictably the Flamengo players again responded strongly and scored soon after after creating numerous opportunities. Everyone hugged again but the affection was brief because another score was expected, no, demanded, soon.

I began to watch Adriano. He was clearly the physically biggest player on the field and his body language did indeed suggest that he could have been depressed. He only moved with urgency when the ball was within ten yards and often wasn´t even watching the play, standing with his head down. However, he was suddenly in everything as Flamengo attacked and attacked. He got his head the highest at every corner kick, but was always just out of position, heading over the bar and wide or straight down. The crowd´s mood shifted from suppressed anger to anxiety as time ticked by without a score and more chances were squandered. Injury time was announced, three minutes, and it was still 3-2, not enough of an advantage to ensure their advance to the next round. They went forward again and again, tired players spraying shots from the deep and the Caracas defenders desperately clearing anything that came close to the line. A grown man in front of us hurled himself to the ground at one wasted opportunity as if the redeemer had just walked in front of him. You might think this exaggeration but I am not embellishing.

The final whistle was blown with this unacceptable scoreline standing. New chants began, Sergio translated. One said roughly "Hey Adriano, fuck you"; another was "Bruno, we don´t need you", quite a meteoric fall from "the number one goal keeper in Brazil". The only positively greeted player was named Petkovic, and Sergio explained that other players were targeted by hate chants just because of their disputes with this player. The hate chants each sounded unique, and the player´s names fitted perfectly no matter how many syllables they contained, suggesting they had been prepared in advance. I didn´t see how this was going to inspire them to better performances in the near future, especially given the supposed mental health problems of their star.

We headed back to the car and the usual waiting for car park queues (problems not unique to Brazil) ensued. Sergio´s mood had changed and he didn´t want to discuss the game too much. Any comment on Caracas style or quality of play was met with the deadest of bats. Eventually we were on our way, and Sergio rather clumsily explained why he didn´t want to drive up into Santa Teresa to pick us up. It was dangerous, he said; sometime drivers get mugged at red lights. Taxis won´t take people up there either. With that he dropped us off in Lapa to make our own way, really the only major blot on his copybook for the night.

Other results went in Flamengo´s favour and they went through anyway. They play next week, and I advise all appropriately placed tourists to attend but to carefully check the opposition team´s colours and wear something far removed.

Developed economies ahoy!

One word in bold leapt off the guide book pages regarding northern Chile: scallops. The towns of Caldera and Bahia Inglesa are small beach resorts about halfway between San Pedro de Atacama and Santiago, and are given only a brief treatment in the Rough Guide (no gratuities were accepted for mentioning this guide book by name), enough to say that they are small resorts in the location noted and are famous for scallops. It was enough for us, and we broke away from the backpacker trail to head to Caldera. There were only two other tourists in the town, sturdy young women with short haircuts, who stayed where we stayed, dined where we dined, walked where we walked. We only managed to shake them off when we strolled to Bahia Inglesa on our second day.



Upon arrival, we had one small but important problem: how do Chileños say scallops? Careful examination of restaurant boards revealed the answer: ostiones! So, lunch was ostiones and papas fritas, exceptional. Caldera otherwise had little in the way of attractions. It was too cold to swim and the beach was unappealing anyway. Many fishing boats lay dormant in the small bay and enormous pelicans swooped between them and sat on large buoys discussing whatever pelicans discuss in the tourist off-season. The waters were occasionally broken by a diving bird and further out seals frolicked, breaking the water and enticing quick grabs at the camera and then diving before a picture could be taken.



On the second day we strolled to Bahia Inglesa, six kms away across sandy dunes. There was no one there but a few stray dogs and several small groups of desperadoes assumedly seeking ostiones. It must be quite a place in summer, all beautiful curving virgin beach with calm deep blue water covered in hundreds of people. Luckily, ostiones were still available, and when eaten with a garlic sauce along with ceviche and cold beer they unleashed a tremendous feeling of well being and freedom from petty worries. We lay on the beach for a while and one of the stray dogs joined us. I went for an ice cream and entertained the stall proprietor by correctly but clumsily ordering an ice cream in Spanish, and returned to find the dog had sneakily shifted over to lie against Mel´s body. He had manipulated his weight like a sulky child and Mel couldn´t move him. After a short scuffle he slumped down about a metre away and gazed longingly at our ice cream. He got none.

That evening Mel ditched the ostiones for something lame and I ordered ostiones parmesana. Alas, this was a terrible error, the ostiones smothered in a sauce flavoured vaguely cheesily but bearing no relationship to anything you could call parmesan. Mel had a lot of trouble hiding her amusement at my chagrin and we agreed never to speak of this meal again. Mel cruelly spoke of it again several times.

We proceeded to Santiago and stayed at the Eco Hostel, where the constantly running toilets, very generous shower heads and regular mega-meaty barbecues cast significant doubt over their eco-credentials. We wandered aimlessly for a day before catching a plane to the "Paris of the South", Buenos Aires, Argentina. As the plane banked away from Chile to cross the Andes, one important question repeated in my mind: would I be able to get a decent macchiato there? What a tool.

Desolation

On a Wednesday in a remote locale of Bolivia an elite group was assembled (el mejor grupo). Vinicius, a Brazilian named after the composer of "Girl From Ipanema"; Jimeno and Hernan, friendly Argentinians with limited English; Leslie, a camp Englishman; Sam and Mel, friendly Australians with limited Spanish; and Miguel, fearless tour guide and cook. We were to travel together in a Toyota Landcruiser across the Salar de Uyuni and into the Eduardo Avaroa reserve in the deep south east of Bolivia, where your correspondents were to leave the group and cross into Chile. Although we were heading into an empty wasteland we didn´t fear isolation, as fifty other full Landcruisers were doing the same thing.

Uyuni is salty even before you get to the Salar. Our first stop was a town built of salt, literally. Each house was made of salt bricks and you could buy little models of the Eiffel Tower made of salt. After 20 wasted minutes there we drove onto the Salar de Uyuni itself. I can´t give you too much technical information about the Salar´s provenance or composition because Miguel only spoke Spanish, so I´ll just say that it is a bloody big salt flat. But a special salt flat because it is the most brilliant and perfect white that you can imagine almost as far as the eye can see. It is surrounded by craggy brown mountains that are partially obscured by the reflective haze from the white surface, so they appear much further away than they are and loom in ghostly partial obscurity. Our vehicle drove straight across the white surface to the cactus-covered "island" of Incahuana, where we could climb up for panoramic views. I had seen it in photos but must have suspected that they had been touched up, because the view was stunning.

Sunglasses were necessary almost at all times. It was a clear day and the white lake stretched out interminably, almost meeting the brilliant and enormous blue sky. It hurt to look at with naked eyes but when I did the view was probably the most brilliant I have ever seen, only two shades but both as vivid as I can imagine. Later I read a story by Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges, who wrote of a boy thrown from a horse, knocked unconscious and paralysed. When he awoke, he found "the present was almost intolerable in it´s richness and sharpness". I immediately thought of the Salar when I read this.

Others celebrated their astonishment by contriving clever photos using the flat lake surface, snapping their friends appearing to stand on giant Pringles tins or standing on another´s upturned palms. I poured scorn on this practice and then cemented my hypocrisy by taking a photo of myself on the Salar surface reflected in Mel´s sunglasses. Coldplay blared from one of the cars and I wished we could just enjoy this sight without plastering something of ourselves all over it.

Miguel prepared lunch (washed down with a swig of whisky courtesy of Vinicius) and then we continued across the lake. We left it behind after an hour and I was depressed; although there wasn´t anything to do there except look and think I wanted to stay longer, perhaps believing that such an otherworldy and previously unimaginable place might help me unlock some other secrets of the world. Alas, it was gone, and we drove across desert to the hamlet of San Jaun, where some Poms embarrassed a motley crew of Aussies and yanks on the dusty football pitch as dusk fell. It is impossible to know what industry sustains San Juan, it´s presence in the middle of a vast desert a mystery, except for the Landcruiser loads of backpackers arriving every night. Some were ready for bed early (most of those in el grupo mejor) but some located the San Juan discoteca, apparently creating a "fiesta del chorizo" on the dance floor and then returning to the hostel where one of their number rendered one of the only two toilets unusable with a poorly aimed spew. Breakfast was therefore quiet, although was notable for the first appearance of the absurdly sweet Argentinian delicacy dulce de leche, a runny caramel spread apparently eaten at any hour and with anything. Hernan spread it so thickly on his toast that those that care for him would be well advised to seek him out and tell him how they feel as soon as possible.

We continued across the desert. And this was genuine desert, the road cutting through rocky valleys surrounded by craggy mountains without a single piece of vegetation visible. At one stage we drove through a slim canyon (shallow, but with vertical walls) and Hernan accurately likened it to the landscape of Tattooine in the first Star Wars movie. Mel saw a viscacha (a rodent a bit like a possum) but we couldn´t see what it could possibly be living on; perhaps it was a recent plant for the benefit of tourists. Miguel drove fast and Mel asked me what the speedo said; I looked but it was broken, stuck forever on zero. Perfect.

We crossed another, lamer salt flat and stopped for lunch at a shallow salty lake populated by flamingoes. Again, the guide book had said there would be flamingoes, we´d seen photos*, but I hadn´t really believed it and was a little shocked to see them gracefully walking around feeding, brightly pink and beautiful. We dined while Miguel split a tyre rim and changed the tube, it was a tough three days for him.

The afternoon consisted of a long drive across more and more desert. Christ it was desolate. The afternoon´s highlight was an Andean fox approaching the car out of nowhere. We gave it a little bread but it was otherwise soon going to have to eat the viscacha seen earlier or it was stuffed. It was cute, someone** said "I want one". The empty, rocky, unfriendly mountains stood over us, sometimes emitting small tufts of smoke from their unstable insides. We stayed in a similar hostel to the previous night, next to a lake with waters stained red by algae and full of flamingoes. Vinicius shared his wine and continued to very openly discuss his previous three marriages and general inability to maintain a relationship for more than five years. He was a fireman, a "bombero", and so currently leads the coolest job title award, as well as coolest name.

The third day began very early, too early for Vinicius who had continued to entertain me with a panic attack during the night. Leslie was also very grumpy this morning. We drove through the desert in the half light and saw smoke rising above a hill. When we crested it we saw that it was steam, and this was a small region of significant thermal activity. Steam rose from the ground quickly or slowly depending upon the size of the hole it was released from and dark boiling fluid was visible in depressions in the earth. We warmed our hands in the steam before continuing to another lake where a man made pool caught natural warm water. It was freezing outside but Mel, Lesie and I stripped and climbed in, being labelled "crazy" by the Argentinians but believing the reverse (e.g. that they were crazy) to be true. The warm waters gave us an enormous filip.

Rather than spend two hours in the morning seeing new stuff, and then eight hours seeing nothing on the way back to Uyuni, after the two morning hours we were dropped at the Chilean border where we farewelled our group ( we were a little emotional and so were they, but not for the same reasons) and boarded another bus into Chile. The instant we crossed the border the rutted dirt road transformed into a sealed dual lane highway and numerous road signs and elaborate downhill emergency stop lanes appeared. Bolivia haven´t mentally recovered from losing their coast to Chile in the late 19th century and their roads haven´t recovered either. Only 47kms from the frontier we checked in to Hostal Sonchek, enjoying solar hot water and various other benefits of a developed economy. Beer-branded deck chairs for instance. There´s a cause for the Bolivian government.

* Why does "flamingoes" get an e but "photos" doesn´t?

** It was the author