Refugio Jakob and out

And finally, in no particular order, the refugio Jakob (aka San Martin), a Nepalese style tea hut in the middle of the Andes. As always, click on the photos to get a decent resolution image.

The view of the lake from our private beach. Yes, we swam in 100 miles of mineral water, yes, it was cold.


The sunset:



The chocolate shops:

Mountains, Mountains by ze millions

Various lagunas and peaks from the Circuito Chico

La Estancia

Moi, avec steak. Steak grande. La Especial, de facto. No hablo espanol.

Isla de San Martin

Igwazu again, from the Isla de San Martin. Reverse order for these videos, now I'm back at home with a solid internet, this is back at the start in Doz de Igwazu

Tilt your head and wonder in amazement as a river falls off a cliff

Cerro Campanario

The view from the top of Cerro Campanario. This is the heart of the Circuito Chico, and the kind of landscape we came to see -lakes and mountains.

Mirador del Valle

This is a viewpoint over mount Tronador. Wrong way up, anyone know any video editing tools that will rotate this video? Doesn't seem like rocket science, but I can't see anything...

Top of the mountain

This is the panorama from the top of the 500m skree slope we'd just climbed. Skree is hard.

Video time

This is refugio Jakob (aka San Martin), deep in the Circuito Chico. It took us a whole day to hike here, all the way up a mountain, down, up and down again. Duke's of york indeed.

More photos

Bariloche

We´re back in Bariloche, having seen the Igwazu falls and hiked round mount Tronador for the last 4 days. There´s a gorgeous hosteria practically under the mountain, expensive by Argentinian standards but cheapish (well, 40gbp) by UK prices.

Today, we´re off to the Circuito Chico where we´ll be chilling out on the big lake. Muchos photos, more to come when (if) I get a fast computer. Enjoy.

Argentina again

We´re back in Argentina, here are some photos

The End

Well, this is it. We're now back at home in London. I'd certainly recommend travelling to anyone, its a completely different feel when you up sticks and actually pretend to be living somewhere abroad rather than on a two week holiday. Its cost about £6000 each, which is a lot, except when compared to rent in England for the same time or a new car.

The things I remember most right now are the unexpected connections. After a while, your eyes glaze over temples, mountains, cities etc. Its striking how similar every city was, we went from Seattle to Kyoto to Hannoi and they all had exactly the same grey concrete buildings. Yes, there were different monuments, but 99% of the people lived in very similar places. The shops had the main differences, from the huge supermarkets of America to the identical pristine air conditioned Japanese 7-11's.
Bolivia had millions of individual stalls, e.g. one for shampoo, one for conditioner that made it hopeless to try and find something but did employ lots of people.

No one, apart from the British (ok, Americans as well), seem to have any sense of personal space or queues.

South America was different in that we could almost talk to the locals as locals - bit more suntan and spanish lessons would have helped. Watching a pirated copy of Star Wars 3 and hearing the Emperor say "Goooooood" in English and seeing the translated "Bieeeeen" was quite funny. Watching a BBC program on Che Guevara's influence in Burma while in Bolivia right next to where he was caught and executed was spooky- is the world really that interconnected? The BBC's Top Gear was shown on every continent. The clear mountain air in the Andes and Himalayas was great, there's a serenity there that is hard to find in super concentrated accelerated condensed London.

Geckos and elephants are cool.

The knack is definitely to see yourself as a local, well, as far as that is possible. So you too think that displaying anger is a hilarious loss of face, or that shrugging your shoulders and saying "what to do?" is a course of action, or siesta-ing every afternoon is how it should be. Air con is evil, it makes you believe the midday sun is ludricously hot when everyone else just thinks its normal; for a 2 week holiday, OK, but for longer periods people will just laugh (maybe silently) at that sweaty westerner.

We thought we'd have lots of time, but it all seemed to disappear. Half the time was spent trying to comprehend and place the things we'd seen in the first half. We attempted to read various classics, the kind of book you like to claim is worth reading but you're far too busy to actually read it, but we got so fed up with the super heavyweight elephant stopping sentances that we gave up. Although after starting Don Quixote, we have noticed every other book in the world seems to quote it.

We had some massive journeys like 24 solid hours from Seattle to Kyoto and 30 hours Goa to Delhi on the train. It wasn't too bad, as the entire point of being out here was to travel.

Anyway, that's it for now. Where next? We'd like to go to China, but for now its time to get money, jobs and a house.

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. ~T.S. Eliot

Nope, same old Britain. ~Me.

The world

These are the last 100 visitors of our site. It feels weird being in India, with lots of package tourists, and thinking, actually we went the long way round. Anyway, the long awaited "Best-of" the world lists:

• Best Food: Vietnam. Every meal was excellent. Best Indian thali so far, best Chinese, best everything except steak. Runners up to Argentina for humongous steaks and India for curries. (Note to American friends - this is for eating out, eating in is purely on the skill of the cook not the nation!)
• Worst Food: Bolivia. Ugh. Closely followed by Peru. Nepal came close, but what do you expect halfway up Everest, and besides, it had good western imitations and tibetan dishes.
  
• Best Transport: Argentina. Buses on time, cheap, lots of legroom, even wine, food and movies on some of them.
  
• Worst Transport: Canada. Come on guys, I hear there are some Bolivian travel agents available for hire.
  
• Most Friendly: We don't know. Argentina, Sherpas, Thailand all about equal.
  
• Least Friendly: Bolivia. They really didn't want you there.
  
• Most Messed up: Nepal. Wins over Bolivia by one actual civil war, several messy coups and complete intimidation of the press. Credit going to India for a state government declaring their solution to a drought was "we have complete faith in the rain god".
  
• Favourite country: Thailand and Argentina - completely different, equally nice.

Goa beach

Goa beach, originally uploaded by matthewharrup.

Yup, we found the deserted beach in Goa. Today is quite busy, there are 6 people on the beach.

Gateway of India

Gateway of India, originally uploaded by matthewharrup.

Not that impressive really.

Thing

What is that, originally uploaded by matthewharrup.

Now, normally when you're approached by a tout you have some idea of what they're selling - a drum, a necklace, shawl etc. But what on earth is this for? Its a 1.5m orange inflatable speckled bouncy thing.

Mumbai sunset

Mumbai sunset, originally uploaded by matthewharrup.

This is Chowpatti beach, in Mumbai. Don't swim. The entire city is hot and muggy, even in winter. Its cheap compared to London, which is code for arrgh its expensive. Thirteen million people try to cram into one peninsula. People sleep on the streets in their hundreds. There's no real tourist attractions, there's the Gateway of India (a 3-storey arch) and a few caves, so there aren't really any touts.

Mumbai university

Tropical hogwarts, originally uploaded by matthewharrup.

Mumbai (Bombay- the name Bombay was judged too colonial and the local Maharastians decided to name it more in their style) has lots of colonial buildings that look a bit strange in tropical settings. Mumbai really isn't like this, its a big, sweltering, expensive city.