First day in Bogota

For the final three weeks I'm travelling with friends. It makes a nice change so I've largely let the others make decisions.

This morning we joined the crowds walking up to a church on top of Cerro Montseratte, which sits above the city. About 500m ascent all on stone steps and with the air getting thinner at every stage. We took the funicular railway down.

From there we walked all about the city, seeing the house of independence leader Simon Bolivar, the gold museum and the historic areas. The skill of some of the gold work was incredible, life size insects and flowers.
Failed to see the changing of the guard, which from what I can mak out is off limits to visitors - makes you wonder why they do it.

In the evening we confirmed that eating out in Bogota is near impossible. Most food options are cake shops or takeaways and they close around 4pm. We found one place, which reluctantly did meals. The portions were large but my chicken pasta seemed to be chicken and spaghetti boiled together and served in the cooking water with no seasoning. 

Rio

I took yet another bus to Rio de Janeiro.The bus station was full of warning signs in multiple languages about the dangers of taking unlicensed taxis or public buses so I booked a taxi from a stand to my hostel in Ipanema. The hostel itself was pretty much as expected except for the roommates who took napping to extremes. When I arrived at 6pm they were going to bed. As I went to bed at 11.30 they got up. They then returned about 5am and presumably slept most of the day, though they weren't there when I got back at 4pm.

With only limited time I booked on to a city tour that covered the main sights. The Christ statue, a historic area called Lapa, the cathedral and Sugar Loaf for sunset.

The second evening I made a point of finding the recommended local food, feijoada. This was on the menu for two people but they assured me there was a one person option. I think they mixed it up though because the meal was huge. A giant pot of bean stew, another of the same with six pork chops and a piece of bacon in, crackling, fried manioc, manioc flower, rice and salad. Then desert was included as well. I doubled in size over the hour or so I was in that restaurant.

My second day I was recommended to see the museum of tomorrow. This is in a great location by the sea and a weirdly shaped building, which they seem to love in Brazil. It started with an imax type film, which was completely in Portuguese so I have no idea what it said but there were lots of exploring stars, space scenes and wildlife footage. From there it was a series of interactive screens covering subjects like medicine, climate change and robots. Very well done but I didn't really think it was distinctive to Rio.

Portion sizes continued to defeat me. A 'snack' of cheese and chips came in a foot long oval bowl with chopped pepperoni. Tasty but I must have had about a quarter.

Overall impressions.

• Despite the reputation I never felt unsafe anywhere in Rio.
• The landscape is absolutely stunning but is let down by the buildings, which range from standard commercial box to favella shack.
• They have a huge mountain rainforest around the Christ - right in the city. This alone makes me want to go back sometime. 
• I never saw the famous dance clubs, probably because I was in the wrong place. 

Sao Paulo

This trip seems to be accelerating as I go. Another day on  bus delivered me to Sao Paulo. With a day to see the city I joined a walking tour led by an overenthusiastic guide.
The tour focused on the less obviously tourist areas with lots of street art. One negative was the tendency to stop at a junction and announce that there was something worth seeing ten minutes that way. Only to then lead us in the opposite direction. 

Into Brazil

I crossed the border to the country that inspired a haircut you can't show off at work easily enough. Warned that the buses tend to drop you at passport control and drive off I took a taxi all the way through to the long distance bus station in Foz do Iguaçu and spent 12 hours on a bus to Curitiba. Luckily Brazilian buses turn out to be very comfortable and the roads are good.
Curitiba is something of a show town with lots of grand architecture, although the sheer number of apparently homeless people going through the bins was distressing. There is a local bus service with odd bus stops that are enclosed pod like platforms. When the bus arrives it puts out a kind of ramp to the sliding doors of the pod.
I visited the historic centre, which was largely shut apart from a street market and found the museum. This might have been very good but with signs only in Portuguese I had no idea.

• From there I walked up past some kind of cycle race to the Oscar Niemayer museum, which the man at the hostel said was one of the top 20 in the world. The numerous rooms of abstract art were largely wasted on me but I can't deny the eye on a stalk building was a landmark - just a shame it was empty. The most distinctive thing was the foyer was full of groups of teenagers each of which had brought a small radio and we're practicing various dance moves.

Iguazu falls

The first thing to say is wow!
The area around the falls may be a bit of a theme park but that is completely lost in the sheer scale of them.

Two huge horseshoes of waterfalls, one above the other then further back a third waterfall called the Devil's throat.

I got a shared taxi from the hostel then explored as many paths as possible. There were there broad areas. Round the entrance,  with little view, the lower path and upper paths and the Devil's throat walkway, which went out across the river.

Walking between these seemed to be forbidden but there was a little train included in the entrance price.

I saw everything by 3.30 and spent an hour establishing there were boat trips in my price range before waiting for the pick up at 5, which turned out to be 5.30 as two of the passengers went awol.

Tomorrow, I should cro

Esters de Ibera

The Esteros de Ibera are the second largest wetlands I'm south America after the Pantanal in Brazil and not the easiest place to visit.

First you need to get to a small town called Mercedes. Coming from Buenos Aires the only buses run overnight. Then wait.

At about 12 a dirty yellow bus marked Crucero del Norte leaves for Colonia Carlos Pellegrini in the wetlands. After 30 minutes the tarmac stops and for the next three hours the road is made of sand. Eventually the road crosses a wooden bridge and arrives at Carlos Pellegrini, where I was dropped at my guesthouse.

Very little of the wetlands is accessible to the public. There are a series of walkways that take 2-3 hours and boat tours of the one lake nearest the town. Even in this small area I saw lots of capybara, caiman and some marsh deer, which if I understood correctly are endemic to the Ibera wetlands.

Getting out was a stroke of luck. The only way by public transport is back to Mercedes, which for my plan to get to Iguazu falls would have meant at least four different buses and 18 hours on the road. Instead it turned out a Belgian couple were going the same way so we split the cost and paid the guesthouse owner to drive us to Posadas to the north. Again this was a long, straight sand road. This time for five hours. The landscape gradually changed and we came out of the wetlands and passed huge farms and stands of woodland that seemed to be pine.

Then quite suddenly we came to a junction with a busy surfaced road running into the suburbs of Posadas. From there it was easy to get a bus through to Puerto Iguazu. As I walked out of the bus station there was a place called Tango Inn opposite so I checked into a dorm.

Buenos Aires and on

I landed in Buenos Aires four and a half hours before taking off, which is a useful trick if I could work out how to use it.
The immigration officer decided to question me about the design of my passport, which had me wondering if there was "must know obscure shit to enter" rule but eventually he let me go.
Once through I headed for the official taxi desk and was accosted by a man offering to take me to the city centre for US$45. I waved him away and booked at the desk, where they gave me a slip of paper with the cost in various currencies, it was $14!

The hostel struggled to find my booking at first but eventually decided I was the Matteo Leban someone had put in their system and I was shown to a bed on a kind of mezzanine reached by a ladder. I promptly went to sleep for an hour, got up to have a pizza then went back to bed.

Food portions are often ridiculous, I ordered what was on the menu as café con leche, tostadas, y jamon. Apparently it wasn't worth mentioning that the ham came with two fried eggs, or that I also got a glass of orange juice, a fruit salad and a slice of cheesecake.

I was pleased to discover I did remember enough Spanish to navigate the subway to the bus station and book an overnight bus to Mercedes.
Less pleased to find that Monday is when every museum and tourist site in the city closes so I spent a long time wandering the streets. The city seems very European, if I didn't know and was told I was in a suburb of Madrid or Barcelona I would have accepted it.
My bus seat was what they call suite meaning it could be laid flat and I had the best sleep I have ever had on a form of transport and got to Mercedes at 7am. Now waiting for the onwards bus to Colonia Carlos Pellegrini, which might be at 8.15,  8.50 or indeed 12.30 depending on who I ask.