South America 2015

This was a great day, actually and in sarcastic meaning. Let's start with the good things: We spent the day in Iguazu falls national park, enjoying walking in the jungle, rafting down a river and watching the majestetic waterfalls. There was a lot of wildlife around the falls, mainly birds but also monkeys, coatimundis, turtles, lizards... Coatimundis were fun, they were hanging ariound people in hope of stealing something eatable. One bastard bite a hole in my plastic bag where I had my swimming suit,

Just as we exited the park rain started pouring heavily, and we finally got home all wet after having a quick buffet lunch on the way. Then to the bad sides of the day...

First, I have noticed earlier that the Fitbit wristband is a bit loose, and it can fall of your wrist. Guess did the hot day soften the wristband even a bit more, and guess did I have my hand outside the river raft at that moment? Yep.. Almost managed to catch the sinking Fitbit Charge by my toes, but only almost. There it is somewhere in the waterfall now.. Well, at least it is covered by credit card purchase insurance, so no financial loss there. Just extra work and annoyance,

An hour later I put my hand on a handrail in forest while walking down the wooden trail, and something bite my hand. I never saw what it was, but obviously some kind of poisonous insect, maybe a bee. At least it felt like a bee sting and it only left one hole unlike spiders. My hand was burning nicely for half an hour and still hurts a bit multiple hours after the incident. No swelling though, just a small red mark and it doesn't hurt too bad anymore.

Contunuing from that, when returning home I noticed that the hard disk of my laptop obviously died. Guess the heat was too much for the old SSD disk. No much data loss as I already backed up photos a couple of days ago, but.. Getting a new disk and downloading Windows and Photoshop installation medias here will be a different story and a lot of annoying work to do. So, no photos before I get the laptop fixed, maybe tomorrow in the best case,

And as an additional bonus we are all a bit sunburned after spending day in the national park and forgetting to take sunscreen with us.

The missing dog was found. He reported back into service in the morning, looking a bit exhausted and dirty-pawed but happy. :)

Now he is sleeping under car and recovering from his hard night out, while we are preparing to depart to the Iguazu waterfalls.

Arrived to Argentina. :)

We landed to Foz do Iguazu airport in Brazil and performed a slow and complicated process to cross the border to Argentina. First a city bus for a couple of kilometers, then waiting an hour for a bus to the border which was only two kilometers away and to where taxis seemed to have ridiculously high fixed price. The bus dropped us to the Brazilian side of border for border formalities, where we waited almost an hour for the next bus after completing the two-minute formalities. That bus left us at the Argentinian side of the border, and again we were ready to continue in a minute. No more waiting though, the bus generously waited for people to finish the border formalities. In total it took about three hours from the airport to the Argentinian soil.

We walked to our new home, a nice big house which really feels like an upgrade compared to the last two nights in the Rio favela. There is even air conditioning in the entire house, which I have been missing while sweating through the previous nights.

What to do in your first evening in Argentina? Have a steak, of course. We found our way to a local barbeque restauraunt and had some great half a kilo steaks. Actually I think my flank steak for closer to a kilo, and all of excellent meat. Just couldn't finish it all, Timo and Kim were both eating a normal Finnish restauraunt portion of my steak. Mmmh...

Now back in the house, and obviously we already lost one of our house owner's dogs because someone left the gate open.. Well, hope the dog reports back in soon..

By the way, about reporting in: Our last missing crew member Lukasz also arrived and met us at Rio airport today. Now we are a nice bunch of six people from four different nationalities, Finnish, Polish, Ukrainian and Norwegian. :)

Short plane change and continuing towards Foz do Iguacu. :)

It is time to leave Rio and move on. In the morning we were planning to depart the hostel at eight and go to the airport for our flight to Foz do Iguacu via Sao Paolo. Naturally nobody was ready at eight, "nobody told me we are leaving at eight", so the departure was postponed a bit.. With two taxis we still reached the airport perfectly on time, now waiting for the flight to depart.

By the way, it is really reassuring when airline asks for emergency contact information when checking in.. :)

Yesterday evening we had a short walk to Ipanema area to check out the carnival, but didn't find much. Just more excellent banana juice and a lot of people drinking heavily and the city looking a bit like a warzone due to garbage..

Today I woke up feeling even worse than yesterday, and the 38C fever didn't disappear even if I stayed sleeping in the hostel while the others went out in the morning. In the afternoon I decided that it would be better to visit a doctor here in Rio before going to smaller villages, just in case the flu would need antibiotics or something. I looked up a private clinic partnered by my travel insurance company and me and Iryna headed there by taxi.

Couple of hours of waiting, a blood test and an x-ray at a high-class private hospital and I was released from there with prescription for a couple of symptom-relieving medications. Just a viral infection, no signs of bacterial infection so it is just a flu which will heal eventually by itself. By the way, healtcare services seem to be cheaper in here than I was afraid of, around 70€ for that set of examinations. Some of the South American countries are as expensive as the USA, but probably not Brazil then as that clinic (Clínica São Vicente) was definitely one of the most expensive ones in the city.

After being released we were supposed to go to Lapa to check out the carnival near the Sambodrome area and meet up with Lyudmyla somewhere over there. Well.. That didn't exactly go so well. When we approached Lapa by bus the entire sky was lighted by continuos lightning and heavy rain begun. All our cellphones and other navigation devices were out of battery power, and while wondering where we should go out we had already passed Lapa area.

The rain was so heavy that there was no point in going out, and we decided to stay in the bus to return home as most buses in Rio run circular routes. This one obviously did not, the final stop was in northern Rio.. Luckily near the final stop of the metro, so we just took the metro line from end to end to finally be back in the hostel and in our cool "sea-view suite" (check the picture).

Seems like now is my turn to have flu, the heavy travel days of the beginning are requiring payback. Iryna has been ill for a couple of days, Timo and Lyudmyla since yesterday and during the day today I started to feel worse, now obviously having a bit of fever. Well, hope it passes soon.

As nobody is exactly in marathon condition we just walked to nearby beach after having lunch, spent a couple of hours there and returned to the hostel. Now waiting for a speech of Ukrainian president and then probably heading back to the city for the carnival.

We managed to select lovely hostel location, as it's in top of a really high hill. Walking up here is a tiresome exercise. Otherwise the area seems to be okay, even if it is a favela that used to be dangerous years ago. Nowadays Favela do Vidigal is said to be actually much safer area than downtown, Ipanema etc.

We were booking our stays in Rio a bit too close to the Carnival, so options were rather limited. The apartment we had earlier was great, but it was not available for more days and we had to book a hostel.

The only really affordable and available hostel is not the best one, but well.. Guess it's ok for two days and the location is pretty good, just a kilometer to Leblon and Ipanema beaches. It's a hot day again, so I think it's time to go to a beach and then somewhere to see the carnival.

Yesterday was a hot day. The forecast for Rio was 47C, I didn't see a temperature meter during the day but it definitely was a lot hotter than during the previous days. In the late afternoon taxi thermometer said 40C, but at that point it had cooled a couple of degrees already. Urgh.. I'm fine with sub-40C temperatures, but that was a bit too much to walk around.

Anyway, we still went to check out Escadaria Selarón, large steps covered by ceramics by one man alone, the artist Jorge Selarón.

The air temperature required a beach, so we first tried a beach near the steps and the airport, Flamengo beach which was said to be much more peaceful than the famous ones. Well, it was peaceful, but also a bit dirty and not so nice, so we just continue to Copacabana again. As it was a windy day the waves were huge and fun. :)

Rio carnival started yesterday, so the city was already full of carnival-dressed people from the morning and late in the evening there were street parties at Copacabana. The huge parties in Lapa me and Iryna saw only on a taxi TV screen as we totally passed out after returning to home, for a twelve-hour sleep. The long travel days finally required that. The others went to Lapa around midnight and returned late in the night.

This blog entry is just dedicated to fruits. We visited a fruit shop again, shopping a dozen of different fruits to taste them. First, they are delicious.. And there are a lot of different ones. And they are cheap, 10€ for our multiple-kilo tasting set.