Mar 2007

We left El Calafate this morning at an unsually comfortable 10 am, after cook group 2 (which includes Gregory - the curry night was an extra performance while on free-style catering schedule) did the shopping for tonight and tomorrow. Each cook group (4 people) have to do one dinner, breakfast and lunch the next day. After the great success in the Torres del Paine, Gregory has been nominated head chef and has decided to go for beef stew with polenta and risotto with pumpkin (ok, I have had some tiny influence on this, I admit). Needless to say that I am looking forward to dinner tonight!!!

Anyways, yesterday it was day trip to the Moreno masterpiece, a huge piece of creased ice 30 km long, 5 km wide and 60 meters high. We took a boat ride to go close to it from the lake and then continued on a mountain path on foot to view it from land. Every few minutes big chunks of ice detach from the ice body and fall down in the water with a very loud roaring, the ice falling disappears quickly with a wave but the sound is soooo dramatic!! it is almost like a gun shot and then a huge cracking, very very impressive.

It was another great day and I could not stop taking pictures. The thing is so incredibly immense that each time one moves a couple of meters, one feels like taking another picture, well I could not stop I must have taken over one hundred till Gregory demanded that I hand over the camera. Call it Peritonitis Fotografica Morenica... ? I have managed to delete a few off and am down to 40 or so, but this is still too much for just one spot. Will upload in a couple of days now.

Here´s a website with a couple of pics to give you an idea in the meantime
http://www.patagonia-argentina.com/e/andina/glaciares/perito.htm

Today we are in El Chalten, a small town 4 hours driving north of El Calafate. Tomorrow half of the group are going to do ice-trekking, Gregory and I have decided to opt out once again and go for a long straightforward hike instead, possibly 9 hours again. We are obviously very optimistic, aren´t we.

On the way to Perito Moreno

Perito Moreno

Here we are - have been off-line for a couple of days, courtesy of the National Park Torres del Paine. To date the best mountains I have seen, I think possibly better than the Dolomites, or competing pretty close!!
We spent 4 nights there, in a camping called Camping Pehoe, which is the best camping site in the Park, at the centre of the scene. Perhaps if we put some website addresses here this will make up for the missing pics? Well only 3 days to go and then we will be able to upload some on the relevant entries, how is that Mr greenegg?

http://www.campingpehoe.com/camping-es.html

Anyways. The park is fantastic, full of blue lakes everywhere and the Cuernos and Torres peaks which are really stunning. Bloody cold and windy as well. Half of the group decided to do the ´W´walk, which is basically a walk of about 4 days which follows a path in the shape of a W. We only had 3.5 days to do it so Gregory and I judged that perhaps it would have not been such a good idea to do it, given our inexperience with mountain trekking as well as my unfit state. However, I decided to join the group for the first day (which is by the way the HARDEST) going up to see the famous PAINE TOWERS. Gregory dissociated himself from the idea as he had a PAINFUL KNEE...right.

So there I went, 8 am ready to go up with another girl who turned from a W -walker into a \ -walker like me. The others left at 3 am - yes, that says THREE AM - because basically we got to the park late the day before and so the W walk had to be shrinked from the already tight 3.5 days to 3!!!! They wanted to be up to the towers for 7 to see them pink, except that it was not a very good day and they weren´t. But they still had 13 hours to cover in total for the day, so it possibly made some sense. I decided that I could miss out the pink and leave at 8 am instead (I did not have to do the 13 hours either, thank goodness) and it was great, as well as wise since there was no pink. Unbelievably, I walked for 9 hours that day (ok, most people do it in 7, I have already admitted that I am totally unfit, ok) and still managed to hop around the next day with only a minor blister on my foot. The towers were great and I will add the glorious pic of myself next to them as soon as feasable. Ironically, on the same day the rest of the group back at base were hitched onto an unplanned glacier trip and so Gregory also ended up walking some 9 hours - there is justice in this world!!! We both had a great day but in different parts of the park. On the way down from the valley I got stuck there another night away from the rest as we missed the last bus - but on day 2 in the late morning I was back at base and we spent it together doing the washing and short walks around base. On the last day the W walkers were coming back, so we prepared a feast and Gregory made his world-famous chicken curry. One of the other trucks broke down (lost a wheel while driving, apparently...) and a group of 8 was stranded with no cooker, so we kindly invited them to join us making the dinner party a grand total of 30 people!!! We had champagne bottles waiting for the grand walkers and had a great evening.

Next day we packed for El Calafate, which is the next town to the Perito Moreno Glacier. What a glacier!!! Will blog on that in a short while.

View from the campsite

View that cost me 9 hours

Gregory cooking curry for 30

Exodus - Ushuaia to Santiago

Date From To What´s happening

21-Mar Ushuaia
22-Mar Ushuaia-RC Driving, 2 border crossings
23-Mar RC-T. Del Paine W walkers begin walking!
24-Mar Torres Del Paine Trekking, trekking, trekking
25-Mar Torres Del Paine
26-Mar Torres Del Paine
27-Mar T. Del Paine-El Calafate Moreno Glacier, boat trip
28-Mar El Calafate
29-Mar El Calafate-El Chalten
30-Mar El Chalten Fitz Roy mountain, horse riding
31-Mar El Chalten-Rough Camp Drive day
01-Abr Rough Camp-R. Camp Drive day
02-Abr Rough Camp-Coihaique Lake, the most beautiful drive days
03-Abr Coihaque-Queulat National Park, Carretera Austral
04-Abr Queulat-Futalefu Hanging Glacier at Queulat NP
05-Abr Futalefu White water rafting
06-Abr Futalefu-Bariloche drive to chocolate heaven
07-Abr Bariloche Glacier trek, cable car
08-Abr Bariloche Pucon Optional 3+ hrs drive though 7 lakes
09-Abr Pucon Volcano climb
10-Abr Pucon Thermal springs, NP
11-Abr Pucon Santiago
12-Abr Santiago

Ushuaia has been another good spot. 3 nights here have meant a bit of rest and the chance to recover from the frenetic driving of the past few days.

Day 1 was entirely dedicated to relaxing, laundry, Internet, and a visit to the dentist to finish off the job started in Buenos Aires, where I had a root canal treatment done as the inlay replacement they did in London was hurting like hell when chewing and, believe me, you do not want to have tooth problems with all the Argentinian beef there is around here... The dentist in BA were great, they did a very good job and treated me like an old friend (they were recommended by Miriam, a friend of mine, so fair enough). But the dentist here was picked at random, and treated me like a friend just the same! All ladies dentist, wonderful women!! I had to have the canal root treatment finished off - permanent filling - so I popped in the first place I saw. Miriel saw me immediately and filled up the hole. Since we had spoken about the prices I had paid in London to do the crap job she could see and not believe, when she finished she told me she had a surprise for me and guess what? While she was sealing off the tooth in question she also whitened out another small adjacent filling as it looked like an eye sore and she could not believe that the person who had done the rest of the job had left it there like that!! And she gave me her email address and asked me to email her when I am in Mexico to tell her that the job she did lasted!! Honestly!!

On day 2 we went on a boat trip in the Beagle channel. Very nice, 4 hrs long trip going round to the lighthouse spot and a couple of islands, one with the seals and the other with the emperor cormorants, or something like that. Big birds. It is crazy how all these seals cramp up this tiny island one on top of each other when there are so many other empty islands?? The guide reckoned that it must be due to either security or lots of food around this particular island, seen that they never leave it and all the females have their babies there. Then we went for a walk on an island that was once inhabited by this indigenas that lived there NAKED!!!! Since they lived out of the sea and they were getting constantly wet, they worked out that they were better off not wearing anything and cover themselves with seal´s fat as insulation and dry themselves by the fire!! This is at 0 degress or so. BAH! The sad part is that once the European explorers got here, they wiped them out by poisoning them as they were competing for the seals, can you believe that? Then a British guy called Bridges arrived and he tried to save the last 100 survivals but of course it was too late - so today their island is called Bridges Island.

Day 3 (today) we went to visit the Parque Nacional de Tierra Del Fuego. We walked on itinerary 2 which is the path along the sea - 6,5 km, about 3 hours, and the views were very nice.

I have managed to squeeze a pic in, took me 10 minutes but worth the effort I think!

Seals in the Beagle Channel, boat trip

The minibus that we got was well above expectations - modern, fast, with lots of extra space (24 seats and only 10 of us). And the head rests were white and smellt of fresh washing powder... There is a god!!

In fact, losing the truck and acquiring the bus has meant an overall improvement for all of us. The minibus could travel faster than the truck (120 km/h as opposed to 90), was much more comfortable (2 reclinable seats EACH), 2 drivers meant we could travel for longer and make up for the lost time and, more importantly, we could not take the camping gear with us and therefore hotel rooms instead of tents!!!! OK, the whole point of paying loads of pounds for this trip was to camp. However - camping when travelling 3500 km over 4-5 days including shopping for food and cooking for a group in the Patagonian steppe (= cold and windy) has got to be pretty hard, so we have all been quite happy to miss this one out and move onto the nice bus with hotel lodging.

We stopped at Peninsula Valdes and stayed with a lady called Nora in a fantastic apartment. Exodus sent us on a day tour around the island to see the various animals - we visited sea lion and sea elephant colonies, penguins and saw lots of animals - foxes, armadillos (really ugly with a pink hairy bum and very very fast), guanacos (type of lama with beautiful eyes, also very fast). From Pensinsula Valdes we moved south to Camerones, famous for the penguin colonies, penguins everywhere. They are quite small and ugly though, but still quite fascinating. Then we went to the petrified forest, which is not really a forest, it was one about 150 million years ago but now it is just a few HUGE trees lying across the desert in petrified form - the gases and ashes of some vulcano turned the trees into stone.

After that it was lots of driving again, getting the ferry through the Magellan Strait through Chile (Chile have cut off Tierra del Fuego from the rest of Argentina so you have to cross Chile before you can get to Tierra del Fuego) and finally here we are in Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world, el FIN DEL MUNDO!!! The place is incredibly modern and there are lots of seals and penguins around and a national park which we will visit tomorrow.

Unfortunately we cannot upload any pictures until the end of the month as we have used up all of our monthly space, very sorry!

Greetings to everybody

ITALIAN CORNER

Alla fine la perdita del camion pare sia stata piu´una fortuna che altro!
Exodus ci ha noleggiato un minibus a 24 posti molto molto comodo, specie considerando che siamo solo 10. Il fatto che il minibus fosse molto piu´veloce del camion, che ci abbiano dato 2 autisti e che non ci si poteva mettere dentro tutta l´attrezzatura da campeggio ha significato due punti cruciali a nostro favore: 1) notevole guadagno di tempo sul percorso dei 3500 km che abbiamo percorso negli scorsi 4 giorni 2) permanenza in hotel invece che tenda su di un territorio non proprio ideale (vento, freddo).
Cosi siamo andati di lusso, beh insomma piu´o meno. Alcuni degli hotel erano un po´patetici, ma in generale non possiamo proprio lamentarci. L´hotel migliore e´stato quello che ho prenotato io - ho capito male il prezzo - erm erm - cosi siamo andati di lusso! La nostra guida, che non parla spagnolo e fa una fatica bestia a prenotare gli alberghi per telefono visto che le mettono giu´il telefono quando si rendono conto che non parla spagnolo, mi ha chiesto di aiutarla a telefonare in giro per trovare da dormire. Insomma io ho capito male il prezzo pero´siccome e´abbastanza pieno dappertutto e la categoria dell´hotel era quella giusta, mi sembra che non se la sia menata molto - sicuramente molto meno di me, che ho continuato a menarmela per un bel pezzo per aver capito male il prezzo.

Da Buenos Aires abbiamo fatto tutta la Patagonia e visto nel tragitto varie colonie di pinguini e foche e anche addocchiato un paio di orche - da LONTANO. Abbiamo visto altri animali tra cui il guanaco - una specie di lama dagli occhi bellissimi - armadilli, volpi, struzzi e varie specie di volatili.

Purtroppo non posso caricare piu´foto sul sito fino alla fine del mese perche´ho finito lo spazio!! Accidenti!!

SONO INGRASSATA.

Saluti a tutti

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4th April - adding some pics:
Penguins in Camerones

Armadillo in Peninsula Valdes - really funny ugly fast walkers!!

Bosque Petrificado

Guanaco

Right, it was obviously going too well... 364 km south of Buenos Aires, on our way to Patagonia, our truck decided to pack up.

We will overlook our BA experience for now, it was great but too short anyways.

We broke down some 20 km after the last service station. After 2 hours of waiting around for help from the Exodus UK helpline, which did not materialise, a couple of Argentinian road controllers came to our rescue - probably called out because we had stopped in an hazardous position and someone had already hit and disintegrated our red hazard triangle. We were advised to drive back to the previous town (the truck could still move, only at 20 km an hour, and we had exactly 20 of them to drive back...) so we did. Our tour leader found accomodation through the mechanic in this place with lots of rooms and a kitchen which turned out to be very very old and mouldy and full of guess what? Mosquitos - of course!!! Bloody mosquitos again, this time in a civilised town and no swamps, but they were millions all the same and all came to feed on us while preparing dinner. The place was pretty grim, damp with a damp smell, the showers an hazard with electric cables running underneath the water, dim light and pathetic dirty crockery and pots to the point that we decided to go all the way back to the truck to fetch our good old utensils and forks. The bed was the worse, but thankfully we had bought 2 very nice pillows in BA (best investment ever) and stolen a couple of pillow-cases along the way, so, together with our beautiful cotton sheet that is meant to be our sleeping bag liner, we could sleep almost decently despite the damp stench.

In the evening it was diagnosed that the truck needed a new engine altogether, and therefore we should abandon the vessel along with ALL our possessions. Argghhh!! Now, that was a very big problem , considering that we are overloaded, we have just bought a huge bag full of warm clothes for Patagonia and the pillows and the sleeping bags and sleeping mats.. erm erm.

But we managed! We actually managed to pack the rucksacks back together and since we are not expected to be able to walk for miles with the possesions, we can manage.

Next, Kim our tour leader informed us that another truck was coming down the same route the next morning and it was half empty. So all we needed to do was to be by the road side by 8 am and look out for a big yellow truck and get rescued - the idea being that trucks rescue each other in case of trouble as they could easily be next. So there we were this morning, waiting for 5 hours and no bloody yellow truck in sight.. till Gregory convinced Kim to go and make contact via email and she found out that in fact our saviours had actually set off the night before!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So ... here we are, with plenty of time to do some Internet for once, stuck in this small town called 9 de Julio now waiting for a minibus that is going to replace our truck, of which we know only that it seats 24 and has reclinable seats, but Kim has not seen it so god knows what it´s like. On the bright side, this means that we have lost all of our camping and cooking equipment and that we will therefore have to stay in hotels rather than tents. Maybe a stroke of luck after all??

We will let you know once we see the minibus...

From Iguassu we had some 1,500 Km to cover till Buenos Aires, including stopping somewhere to camp rough.

The nightmare!!! We could only stop when dark in order not to be seen (obviously it is illegal to plant tents onto somebody´s land without asking), the drawback being that choosing somewhere where to camp when it´s dark means that you do not quite see where you are going.... But we have a great leader - Jim - he´s been doing this for years and is really smart, so full trust in his judgement... JIM ARE YOU READING??!! Well Jim picked this very well hidden side road into the pine woods - surrounded by pools of water - and actually got off the truck to go and inspect the chosen spot, and then told us it was ´good´. Right. We got off and planted the tents in all haste with the last remaining day light - this is under the trees in this tree-logging area. About 2 minutes into the tent planting, though covered with insect repellent, I made the immediate and extremely smart decision to go and cover up arms and feet (Gregory was even smarter and covered up before he even ventured ouside the truck, given that Ed the doctor had shouted Jim, are you aware this looks like a swamp??...) Got the first item of clothing with long sleeves I could find (Gregory´s thick shirt that Simona and Franco gave him as a present) put my boots on, and back to the tent... While the others started cooking. Well, by the time all tents were up and the lights inside and outside the truck were lighted, the raid attack started: flocks of insects of all sorts - black beetles, green beetles, flies, mosquitos, bugs small and big, mites, you name it!! They all came out onto us and the pots, falling in them whenever someone tried to stir the contents. We managed to eat and then retired as soon as possible to our tents. Departure time in the morning, 5 o´clock - someone suggested 3 am but was rejected... At 3 minutes to 5 we were all sat down ready to go, Jim shouting let´s get the hell out of here!!! Some of us did better than others - Carl ended up looking like he´s got chicken pox, Gregory with 35 bites on his neck and face, and me with about 15 on my rear side (collected at 4:45 during a 30-seconds wee that I could not avoid having...).

Yes, we are still talking to Jim by the way, he´s a great guy, really!!

Erm... did not quite have the presence of spirit to take any pictures...

From Bonito we took a 15-hour drive to Iguassu - yes, 15 hours!! Quite gruelling, but this then gave us an extra day at the falls on the Brazilian border and the chance to pop over to Paraguay for duty free shopping.

Iguassu was absolutely melting - 43 degrees!!!! the camping site was quite bad. Full of overland trucks (Kumuka, Oasis, Budget, Tucan Travels, you name it), a swimming pool full of young Westeners drinking beer in the very murky water, loud music and, just to make it the ultimate nightmare, only 2 toilets for all of us!
While the camping site was quite crap, the falls were really impressive. Before we entering the park we took an helicopter ride over them. First time in a helicopter for both, I must say very nice!! We ended up in the helicopter with someone who was scared of flying and kept stretching her arms around to hold on tight, perfectly in the path of my camera!!! Arghh! I would have killed her, but refrained victoriously!! Anyways, the falls were great. Too hot still - steady on 42 degrees, but the place stunning. Full of butterflies everywhere, and water and the sound of the falling water...

The day after we crossed over to Argentina, where the waterfall area is much larger. The park is also much bigger and better organised, they have a small 'green jungle train' which takes you all the way to the top of the falls, where you have a really close view of the Garganta del Diablo gorge from the top (from the Brasilian side we could see them from kind of below, though it was more panoramic). We bought a green pass, which meant we had a boat ride at the top on a dinghy - where we saw an awesome caiman in the water covered in orange butterflies - needless to say we all thought it was a rock until the boat guide pointed it out to us - and then the 'great nautical adventure' which consisted in sitting in a VERY POWERFUL motor dinghy and then drive almost under one of the falls, getting absolutely soaked - I mean, completely soaked. It was like being at the rides and really good fun. From the motor boat we were then transferred onto a huge tourist jeep for a jungle 'safari' with nothing to see, if it wasn't that a family of capuchinas monkeys decided to show up above us and keep us company for a few very enjoyable minutes. Some of the monkeys had babies on their backs, really sweet.

So Iguassu was impressive. Between the 2 countries I popped over to Paraguay to look for a new laptop battery, while Gregory went to visit the world's largest dam Itaipu. Popping to Paraguay means walking over this long bridge where you can enter without having passports checked. As soon as you reach the other side it is full of electronic shops. I went in the first one and showed our old battery (which is meant to be fairly difficult to find, given the age of the laptop) so the guy started phoning around till they found it. I had to wait in the shop for an hour while they went to collect it, in the meantime 2 of our fellow travellers turned up in the shop too. Finally the battery turned up and our friends decided to buy a camera, and here the story of the weirdest money transaction started. They guy took us to another shop where they could charge the cards (a shop friend of theirs). He starts taking my friends' card and none of them are accepted. So I offer them to pay for them with mine. Mine is accepted, but they need to do this over the telephone and record the transaction with one of those manual machines that carbon copy the card number. The amount of course is in Paraguayan currency, and I have no idea of the exchange rate. So I end up signing the receipt for 24.xxx.xxx of their currency - that is 24 something million something - but then by then it was too late to withdraw. In all this, they have taken my passport as a guarantee for the Visa card, not noticing that I have signed for a card that is not in my name!!! I was in fact using Gregory's card, so in practice could not really use it myself or sign for it. That gave me the confidence to go ahead with the risky business as Gregory could easily report the card stolen and get the money back in case of major trouble. Anyways, after the whole thing was concluded, I went into another shop and asked how much the amount corresponded to in $, and the amount seemed to be about $100 more than I had agreed with the guy!! So I walked back into the shop and told him what I had found out and the guy trying to give me weird explanations, anyways end of the story is that he probably overcharged me (still need to check online) but, since the battery fits and works fine and we really needed it, we will let this go and let them get away with it - though I might email him a little message if I decide to spare the time.

Anyways! Here are some pics

The Iguassu falls


Caiman with butterflies

The butterflies truly loved Gregory, this one stayed for 5 minutes...

Bonito means beautiful, and indeed we had a really nice time here. The town itself is quite dull (apart from the colourful phone boxes, see tucan box below) but the surroundings are great. We went on a day trip to the Rio Prata - see www.riodaprata.com.br and www.estanciamimosa.com.br - which involved lunch on the estate and then a 2-hour floating downstream with snorkel in the rio Prata, where you are surrounded by hundreds of colourful fish. The waters are absolutely clear and the fish are very abundant - we hired an underwater camera and that was a really good idea, check the pics below!! Unfortunately I took all the photos outside of the water on the wrong setting as movies, so I do not have any of those, some of which are quite good. Basically, the current downstream is quite strong (very hard to stay on the same spot or swim against the current) so for 2 hours you just float down amongst all this fish. Very nice. We camped on the grounds of the local Youth Hostel, which was pretty good with excellent breakfast and the tents were under a shelter, so that we could keep the waterproof cap off the tent and breathe a lot better. Temperature here quite high, at least 35 degrees, but it was just about comfortable. On the second day we took an escursion to the 'Blue Cave', basically a very large cave with a very deep blue lake which is quite beautiful, but not much can be explored and considering the heat, an optional trip. We spent the rest of the time on the camping site in the swimming pool and that was great.

Camping in Bonito

Rio Prata snorkelling

Rio Prata underwater

Toucan phone

The Pantanal is an area the size of half of France which contains lots of wildlife. After a few hours on the road, including about two on a very bumpy dirt road, we got to a spot where we were transfered onto a tiny motor boat which took us to our 'lodge'. The lodge was really great: swimming pool, big rooms with all comforts, big social area with pool table and lots of sofas and armchairs to chill out in the evening and enjoy the caipirinhas...and only 20 of us plus 4 nice Germans. During the one full day we have had there, we were taken out on a horse ride in the swamps and then a kayaking outing. Gregory managed to overturn the kayak as soon as he climbed into it (!!!!), which was very funny if it wasn't that another passenger had a camera on him and that camera got soaked in dirty water... We later found out that the kayak had a hole on a side and could not take heavy people and so this was the reason why it overturned - so it wasn't Gregory's fault after all. The best part was that half way through the outing the guide asked my boat to swap with Greg's as we were lighter (despite me being on it!!!), so we inherited the crap boat that was filling with water (it had overturned a second time in the meantime...). The guide asked for my bottle of water and then used it throughout the trip to scoop water out of the boat till we got back. It was an extremely relaxing kayak outing as you can imagine...None of the events brought us to see much wildlife unfortunately, as we are here in the wrong season. The pantanal is swamped at the moment, which means that most territory is under water and there is plenty to eat, so the caimans are all spread in the water and cannot really be seen, and nobody comes out as they have enough food. We saw a few capybaras, a few sparse caimans here and there,a lot of colourful birds including macaws and tucans, and that was it! Then of course we had Shika, the howler monkey resident at the lodge. She is 5 years old and only likes men, though she lets ladies approach her if there are no men available!!! Shika was the highlight of our Pantanal experience, she was incredibly affectionate and always looking for people´s company.

From the Pantanal we have travelled to Bonito, which is a few hundred KM south and a place with lots of stuff to do, including swimming down a river with mask and snorkel in totally clear water and millions of big fish. Will upload the fish pictures later as we have not uploaded onto the laptop yet.

I am actually very tired at the moment, this blogger is turning out to be very time-consuming and one has to make the time to select the pictures, transfer them to USB stick, then upload them and considering that we have no battery on the laptop and so we can only do stuff when we have electricity, and then upload from Internet cafes, well it all gets like a big task. But hey! We do want to do this and it is great to receive your comments and news, so we will keep struggling for time like back home!!! Nothing changes, does it...

NOTA ITALIANA
Mi rendo conto che non tutti parlano inglese, ma realisticamente non posso tradurre tutto il blogger in 2 versioni. Cerchero´magari di fare dei piccoli riassunti o di mettere certi commenti in italiano alla fine della sezione e vediamo come va... beh il ´riassunto´per il momento e´che sta andando tutto veramente molto bene. Rio e il carnevale sono stati bellissimi, il carnevale e´uno spettacolo della madonna che non mi aspettavo di tale livello, quasi inimmaginabile. Poi il tour e´bello, il gruppo e´molto simpatico, siamo 17 e cé un po di tutto, giovani e meno giovani, ma tutti con un ottimo spirito. Nei posti che ci hanno portato ci hanno sempre incluso delle gite veramente buone - la gita in barca a Paraty, la lodge lussuosa del Pantanal (proprio un pantanaio, come dice la parola) con passeggiata a cavallo e canoa, poi a Bonito una gita/ nuotata nel fiume dal miliardo di pesci, insomma benone!! domani si parte alle 5 (si, alle 5 di mattina) e si pedala per 16 ore fino alle cascate Iguassu. 16 ore in camion, aiuto!! pero´poi stiamo fermi 5 notti grazie a dio...
ok ora vado, saluti a tutti

Road to the Pantanal

Shika

2 scimmie, una piccola e una grossa...

Horse trekking in the Pantanal