Going Home!
Trip Start
Jan 10, 2005
1
12
Trip End
May 21, 2005
Salta, Argentina
Friday, May 20, 2005
Having spent every minute of over 120 days with Mr Davies I strangely found myself missing his presence and this has rather impeded the enjoyment factor of my trip. So, after 2 weeks sans-Dan, I've decided to come back early to spend my second summer of the year in London with him - the lucky bugger!
I think we last left you in Natal with a surfing dog. Shortly after we were joined by Rachel and friends Rupert and Geoff for some hot beach action. We went to a beach resort called Ponta Negra which we lovingly called Puta Negra as it's teeming with prostitutes and sex tourists (just our style)!
The highlight of the week for Dan was finding an all you can eat Prawn Rodizio where waiters circulate the tables offering you 14 different prawn dishes (including prawn crepe and prawn lasagne) and you have a little flag which you put down if you need a prawn rest (uma pausa) or you stick up if you're ready for more prawn action! It was at this restaurant that I learnt that there is no limit to the amount of prawns Dan can eat.
After 5 days of serious sunning and drinking we left the others and headed to Saõ Paulo ,the world's second largest city with 25 million inhabitants. This was Dan's last stop and, on our last day together, we decided it would be fun to finish off with something truley Brazilian - a football match.
We went to see Corinthians (Sao Paulo's biggest club with 17 million followers) play Sao Paulo FC (with a modest 9.2 mil). This match was a league derby so we were expecting things to get a little heated. Some years ago, after a particularly dismal performance by the Corinthians, the fans got so angry that they chased the player's bus after the match and set it on fire! We also heard a few days before the match that the mother of a Corinthians player was kidnapped, possibly by their own supporters as a warning to play well or else..!
The match started well enough and it was great fun to see all the fans dancing and chanting insults at eachothers' teams but then within 2 minutes a penalty was awarded against Corinthians and the SPFC goal keeper (yes, goal keeper) scored. Another 2 minutes later the SP goalkeeper scored again. This time after a foul just outside the Corinthians penalty box.
At 3-0 (to SPFC) the Corinthians fans started shouting insults to the president of the club.
At 4-0 the Corinthians fans started chanting the opposition´s songs and anthems.
At 5-0 there was a pitch invasion and full scale riot. We decided this would be a good time to leave!
The next day Dan and I went our separate ways, he to London, me to Buenos Aires, Argentina.
I spent 3 days in Buenos Aires staying, for the first time in my life, at a youth hostel. The hostel lived up to the stereotype of being a club 18-30 with bunkbeds. Having stayed in fairly nice places with Dan it was quite hard to get used to this downgrading of accommodation (where's my complementary fluffy white dressing gown and 24 hour room service?) but I soon fell into the lifestyle (drinking until 6 in the morning, sleeping all day and smelling slightly funny).
After BA I headed to Salta, in the northwest of the country, in search of some mountains . I met Julia (from Germany), Sam (from Switzerland) and Angel (from Spain) on the first night and we decided to hire a car to explore the region (a VW Gol which is a dodgy South American version of a Polo).
It was a fabulous trip taking us through some very isolated, breathtaking scenery. We had the roads completely to ourselves which meant it was very difficult to prevent Sam (now renamed El Niño) from tearing through mountain roads at over 120K an hour.
There was the obligatory shouting of ¨ROAD TRIP¨ at the tops of our voices every 5 minutes, constant insults about eachothers driving and some serious worries about the size of Julia´s bladder (one morning I think we stopped 3 times in 90 minutes).
Apart from having to dodge suicidal donkeys standing in the middle of the road, rabid dogs chasing the car and the occasional boulder falling from the top of the mountainside, we finished the trip relatively unscathed.
Back in Salta I studied the map of Argentina really long and hard. I decided that there are so many other things that I want to see in this amazing country but it doesn´t mean anything if I can´t see them with Dan (yes, I know, it´s vomit-inducing).
So I´m heading home tomorrow, but Dan and I have decided we´re definitely coming back and it won´t be too long before you´ll be subjected to a brand new journey and travelogue.
So watch this space chicos........
