Rolo on Tour

That title was of course not my idea. I have read that line now already a couple of times from other travellers who spent their last days of their South America trip in Buenos Aires. (It is a common place to fly out.)
I hope you don´t mind if I join them and use it one more time 🙂

And indeed, after spending some time with my girlfriend

quite a sleepy couple

I reached Buenos Aires, the last leg of my travels in South America.

Buenos Aires is the stage for many street artists. Some impressions:

Living the dream of being invisible

Puppet theater in the streets

What else does this city have to offer? Well, for people fond of egyptian architecture there is something:

El obelisco

And of course it is the worldwide capital of Tango. It unfortunately turned into a big tourism spectacle making it hard to experience the real thing. You can even take pictures with Tango dancers in the street for 6 dollars. Not bad for 2 minutes of work!

I guess they earn a lot more than the people who actually dance in the streets like the following couple:

Do you feel the passion?

Another area on the list of every B.A. visitor is the neighborhood La Boca. There you will find a small street called Caminito with pretty colorful houses.

Why so much blue and yellow? Because these are the colors of the local football club, the Boca Juniors!

Speaking of football, yes that is of course a big thing in the country of Diego Maradona. And while I was there the Copa America went into its crucial phase. Sadly for them the Gauchos went out pretty early, but there were enough immigrants to cheer their teams on – watching the games for example on the big screen:

120 minutes and 4 penalty attempts, but still no goal for Brazil!

The first Semifinal I actually got to watch at the airport, because it was my turn to say goodbye to the South American Continent.
And as nobody stopped me like in a Hollywood movie I indeed got on that plane to New Zealand 🙁

Let’s take a quick look back. I have spent half a year in South America and a lot has happened:

I have been to 7 countries, namely Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay.

I was trekking within beautiful areas in Ecuador, Peru and in Chile.
I have been to the Amazon jungle.
I saw the incredible salt flat in Uyuni.
I was walking on the equator.
I went down the world´s most dangerous road on a mountainbike.
I climbed a mountain of 6088 metres of altitude.
For the first time in my life I went skydiving.
I visited the impressive ruins of Machu Picchu.

And these are just some of the things I will remember of the time here and which makes it very hard to leave.
But I do not say Goodbye. I say „See you later“.
Ciao amigos, nos vemos prontito!

——————————————————————————————————————————-

Returning from Rio it was very soon clear that I will not see this type of weather again for a very long time.
The first spot where I had to bear the cold and rain again was Posadas, the capital of a province called Misiones in the Northeast of Argentina. It gets its name of the jesuite missionaries who have been around in that area.
My mission was not convincing anybody to join any religion, but to visit fellow traveller Julio.
A good argentinian host as he was, we of course had a nice asado(barbecue). I gotta say that culinary speaking having a nice piece of argentinian meat is just paradise.
Of the other 2 argentinian specialties, Dulce de Leche and Mate Tea, though I am not really fond of. The latter I just take for the camera:

Hmmm, Mate

That guy crosses too many borders. We should keep an eye on him!

Leaving that place (in the most luxury bus ever, they even offered champagne!) I could soon mark off another country on the list. But this country was not Paraguay, that would have been too easy (You can see it in the background of the last picture ;-)). Instead the next destination was Uruguay, easily accessible crossing the Rio de la Plata from Buenos Aires.

The problem was that I was catching the coldest time of the year there, which makes it hard to enjoy. The country itself is supposed to have very beautiful beaches for example, but what help is that to me in winter?
In general that is a thing which you can avoid with good planning of your trip. You check clima diagrams and so on and you may end up having a plan which enables you to leave your umbrella at home. But then plans can always change, so you might as well save those planning hours and just hope for the best 😉

A highlight the capital, Montevideo, has to offer is the stadium where the very first soccer world cup in 1930 was hosted. They created a soccer museum around it with exposures of some cups, fotographs and newspaper articles regarding all the big soccer events since then.
So If I am not mistaken I have to congratulate the Celestes (as they are called by their supporters) to winning 2 World Cups more than the Netherlands.

The crowd goes crazy

By the way don´t get confused by my outfit as I am wearing just a shirt only for the picture. In reality I also needed a sweater and a rain jacket.

——————————————————————————————————————————-

So it was decided that I was going to Rio de Janeiro, the „marvelous city“. And I certainly cannot argue with that name. Staying next to Copacabana Beach (Named after the little town in Bolivia I have also been to) and enjoying some sun I spent some relaxing days there.

Sun is shining, weather is sweet

Of course I did the usual Rio sightseeing:
First I got up the sugar loaf, setting of another famous James Bond scene. Remarkably the portuguese name for that thing is Pão de Açúcar, which means sugar bread.

View of the Sugar loaf

If you want to save some bucks, you can also reach the top doing rock climbing, but I was not that cheap ;-).

View of Rio from the Sugar loaf:
On the left Copacabana beach, on the right background you see the Christ

Of course one of the other highlights of Rio had to be included as well: A visit to the Christ statue, situated on one of the highest spots of Rio. The only problem was that it was so crowded up there, that you could hardly move. Imagine 1000 people around it all doing the same: One guy lying on the floor taking a picture of the other person standing with spreaded arms in front of the Christ.
I saved myself the trouble and just can offer a simple one without me:

Jesus Christ

Another nice area is the neighborhood of Lapa and Santa Teresa.

Show me the sugar loaf

There you will find an interesting piece of art, namely a stairway filled with painted mosaics from all over the world.

Stairway to heaven

The artist Selaron is occupied with that work already for 20 years and is constantly working on it. The stairs are that popular that companies use it for their advertising and singers shoot their video clips here. When I told them I was from Germany they immediately showed me some pictures of German singer Mark Medlock posing on the stairs. It was very hard not to laugh :-).

Also there is a big botanic garden in Rio. I discovered that I do not care too much about the different types of plants shown, but as there were enough animals to spot, it was still a very nice visit:

We like sun and we cannot lie

Nom Nom Nom

——————————————————————————————————————————-

Back on the road the city of Mendoza was the next step. It is known for the wines produced in that area, so doing a bike and wine trip sounded like a good idea. You rent some bikes and go from winery to winery looking at their place and trying their wines. The wine tastings though did not end like in the in Germany well known Loriot scene.

Mendoza

Further east I went to Cordoba, a city cherished by austrian and not-so-cherished by german football fans. In a small town nearby I visited the house, where revolutionary leader Ernesto „Che“ Guevara grew up.

Everybody starts small

What I considered to be very interesting was the following map, which shows an overview of his travels before he went to Cuba to start the revolution there. Of course I was comparing it with my route and I discovered that we share 18 places.

Ernesto Guevara´s travels before becoming the Che

Always looking for Adrenalin I spontaneously decided to go Skydiving. As we all know there is only one cool way to do this, which is doing it like James Bond. I still chose the way most newbies get their first jump, consisting in doing a tandem jump with an experienced guide. I had to wait nearly all day until I could finally get on the plane and 15 minutes of gaining altitude later it was time to jump. My face tells all about what I thought of that idea at that moment:

I´m so excited and I just can´t hide it

Once you lose contact you really start to realize how strong the force of gravitation is. Some seconds (It felt like a minute ;-)) later I was relieved when the parachute finally opened up and the rest was calmly gliding down.

Shortly before landing

Having survived the waterfalls of Iguazu were to be visited. And quite impressive they are indeed:

You actually cannot see the part where the water meets the ground..

I canz make rainbow….

Interestingly the area is crowded with coatis who seem to have no fear of humans:

Aren´t they cute?

In Puerto Iguazu you can also walk to a point where the rivers separate the 3 countries of Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina and of course I had to take a picture of that.
Thinking about that I wondered if there is even a point on earth, where you can take a picture showing territory of maybe 4 or more countries at the same time!? Of course being on a plane, space shuttle or something like that is not allowed and embassies don´t count either. I´ll be awaiting your pictures.

3 countries in one picture

Just out of curiosity I was looking how much a flight to Rio de Janeiro would cost me. The answer surprised me in a way, such that there was no doubt where I would be spending the next days…

——————————————————————————————————————————-

Having relaxed enough I continued my trip and chose the city of Ushuaia as my next destination. It is situated on the island Tierra del Fuego and known as the southernmost city (everything further south they say does not count as a city…) in the world and therefore likes to call itself „Fin del Mundo/The End of the World“. Well it did not feel like that, rather like Christmas, as there was lots of snow (but not enough to go skiing 🙁 ).

Happy because of the snow

Last Christmas, I gave you my heart…

Going further south would have been a little bit complicated, so the direction was north again. As all of the northern part of Tierra del Fuego belongs to Chile that meant crossing 2 borders to stay within Argentina. As a result I had to show my passport 8 times (2+2 times at the borders, twice to buy a bus ticket and 2 police controls in the bus) that day, a new record. But it was worth it in order to visit the impressive Perito Moreno Glaciar nearby the town El Calafate:

Attention: Don’t collude with this iceberg, please

View of the Glaciar from the boat

I guess I just don’t like obeying rules I don’t understand…

Further north lies Bariloche, also known as the Switzerland of Argentina. Well, I did not feel like in Switzerland, but of course that is an absurd statement to make as I have never been there knowingly. Also, interestingly a couple of days later after leaving that place a volcano lying nearby called Puyehue had an eruption causing some problems in that area, so it was good to already have left the place…

Back in the smog of Santiago to meet „old“ (that means, we met 1-2 months ago ;-)) friends we went rock climbing. And it appeared that it was not one of my strengths – I even got the nickname „la gallina“. But more importantly everybody had a good time and that is all that counts.

Moving on up

Flexibility helps 

goooooood

I enjoyed it a lot that between all this rushing from one place to another I could have a kind of „normal“ everyday life for a while . You could call this maybe a holiday from backpacking.
But as always there comes the time to split up again and the most important question is: When do we see each other again?

——————————————————————————————————————————-