Sandwich Natural

Bom dia everybody!!
It is a sad day for everyone today as this is our last post as a threesome. In a few hours Rebecca will head to the airport to fly back to London and everyone will cry for days and days. Since we last posted we have moved on from Argentina to Brazil, via Iguazu Falls which were, of course, absolutely mind-blowing. The first day, spent looking at the panoramic views of the falls from the Brazilian side, was impressive enough - however on the second day, when we were about 20 metres away from the falls, was absolutely incredible. The mist, many rainbows and rainforest-strewn landscape made us feel as though we were in some kind of Edenic world which was nigh on impossible to capture with a camera.
After spending 3 nights in Iguazu we embarked on our last long bus ride of trip (26 hours!) and, a few bad thriller films later, arrived in Rio. We spent our first few days in Brazil enjoying the sun on Ipanema beach, people watching and attending a football match which was an amazing experience, the crowd being much more entertaining than the game itself. Two Fridays in a row we went to the street party in Lapa, a Rio neighbourhood, which takes place every week and is like a free music festival with cheap drinks, people dancing in the streets and hotboxing the famous Lapa "crazy steps". Last Monday we went to Ilha Grande, a former prison turned tropical paradise, for four days. The incredibly rough boat ride there had us slightly worried but luckily the weather was incredible and we had an amazing time lying on some of the worlds most beautiful beaches, hiking and eating lots of fish, rice and beans.
Maya and Alex will spend the next few days doing the touristy things (Christ the Redeemer, the Sugarloaf) that Rebecca already did when she was here with her family and will (hopefully) spend a lot more time on the beach. It is so weird that such a great trip is coming to an end and we have no doubt that coming home will be an emotional experience for all of us, although we are all super excited for proper towels and beds!
Lots of love (and see everyone soon!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
xxxxxx 

Essex/Australia

Hey everyone,
We are writing to you from Puerto Iguazu, Argentina and we wish to apologise for our absence on the blogosphere. Last time we wrote on here we had just arrived in La Paz and boy have we got some stories to tell you about the time period between then and now. La Paz was a lot of fun and unbelievably cheap but we mostly took advantage of this by eating lots of Western food and drinking cheap alcohol rather than really appreciating the real La Paz which we suspect is quite different. We stayed there for three nights and then got the bumpiest overnight bus ever (the road was literally unpaved; several times we were convinced that our journey was going to end in the back end of Bolivia in a coach full of backpackers) to Uyuni, home of the Salar de Uyuni better known as the Salt Flats. We arrived at about 6am and five hours later we set off in a 4x4 to see what all the fuss was about.
Put simply the Salt Flats are just a deserted plain of salt, 10,582 square metres (thanks wikipedia) but in reality it is the most incredible, beautiful and surreal landscape. Our expedition started with a visit to a train cemetery which felt like the setting for a horror film and made for some great, if slightly spooky, photos. Next we drove onto the Salt Flat itself and spent a couple of hours admirng the amazing scenery, eating lunch and experimenting with perspective based photography (none of which was particularly successful). This is a lot to do with the fact that all the whiteness is absolutely blinding and we couldnt really tell what we were taking pictures of. We were very thankful that our car didnt break down and our driver wasnt drunk as we had pretty much been led to believe this was a given.
After Uyuni we then undertook the most ridiculous mess of a journey that we have ever been on. We got a 6am bus from Uyuni to Villazon (a town on the Bolivia/Argentina border) which took ten hours, was very bumpy and kept picking up random people off the side of the road so eventually the bus was full of old Bolvian ladies carrying huge sackfuls of coca leaves sitting on the floor and being incredibly noisy. This was mostly just amusing and a little uncomfortable - the real fun started later. When we got to Villazon we wandered around the whole bus terminal looking for a good bus and eventually found one that seemed legit. The bus driver told us we would have a stop at 11pm in a town called Jujuy where we would have to get off the bus, wait an hour and then get back on and continue to Buenos Aires. When we got on the bus we found out that our second bus would be with a different bus company, but we still were not worried. However, when we arrived in Jujuy we went looking for the new bus company´s office and found out that they didnt have one. We asked around and a man said "Oh yeah, that bus is leaving tomorrow, probably at around ten, or maybe eleven or twelve". Further enquires to the police in the bus terminal revealed that we had been sold a false bus ticket and that the bus we were waiting to get on did not, in fact, exist. We ended up getting safely to Buenos Aires on a new bus the next day but not before we had spent a night in a cockroach infested hostel. On checking out, Rebecca and the man at reception had the following dialogue:
Man: How was the room?
Rebecca: You know theres loads of bugs in there?
Man: But its fine! They wont do anything to you, no problem! (this last bit was said in English)
Rebecca: You are terr (not really, he probably wouldnt have understood).
When we finally arrived in Buenos Aires after over 50 hours on buses it (thank god) fully lived up to expectations. It is an amazing city, like New York meets Paris/Barcelona/any cool European city but full of super-cool, super-glam South Americans. We spent a lovely week wandering around the different neighbourhoods, seeing all the tourist sights, sampling some BA nightlife (including the school-disco style parties held daily by our hostel) and eating lots of dulce de leche which is the best thing evs. Despite having taking a gap year to broaden our horizons, we ended up dancing with a jewish ex UCS boy who once directed Rebecca´s boyfriend in a school play. We also did a tango lesson but found it hard to master wrapping our legs seductively around total strangers. One highlight of our week was strolling down a street in La Boca talking about how safe we felt in the apparently dangerous neighbourhood, only to walk straight into the path of two policeman who told us in no uncertain terms that it was ´not convenient´ for us to be there, that it ´didn´t look good´ for them if anything happened to us and that there were ´people there looking for "quilombo"´(which roughly translates as trouble, but literally means a brothel). We were then personally escorted into a more touristy area before we found any of that ´quilombo´.
Maya and Rebecca also did what everyone inevitably ends up doing on their gap year (and what Alex had already done in Israel) and got our noses pierced! We love them but we have to constantly apply an orange antibiotic spray which isnt the best look but by the time we are back in London we will be SUPER COOL LIKE ALEX. Our new claim to fame is that we got our piercings done in the same place Maradona once got a tattoo (and also some guy from Guns n Roses who wasnt Slash or Axl Rose) - pretty sweet I think you will all agree. Today we arrived in Iguazu after an extremely comfortable 16 hour bus ride during which we were offered whiskey and champagne before we went to bed! Tomorrow we are doing a trip to the Brazilian side of the falls, the day after we are doing a full day on the Argentinian side and then on Thursday we are heading off to Rio! Dont ask why doing things in that order makes sense, it just does.
Until next time!
xxxxx 

Forget About!

Hello everybody,
When we last left you we were just about to leave Cuzco, and today we find ourselves in sunny La Paz, Bolivia, the highest seat of government in the world. A week ago we left Cuzco for Puno, the small town on the Peruvian side of Lake Titikaka. We started out by taking a boat tour to the floating islands, Los Uros (anybody reading look them up, they are amazing!). They are made entirely of reeds, as are the houses on them and it was almost unfathomable to think that people actually live there. We also got to try on some traditional Peruvian clothing (which, it has to be said, is almost identical to traditional Bolivian clothing but with different headwear) which for women consists of lots of bright colours and long skirts, much of which would not look out of place in Topshop. We spent that night staying with a family on the beautiful island of Taquille. The family were absolutely lovely and the husband Selso showed us all around the island and made us amazing food. The lack of electricity and running water went almost unnoticed. After supper that night the family treated us to a musical performance on the panpipes, drum and a maraca-type instrument made out of sheeps nail. It was very charming but after about the seventh number we had lost track of how many songs they had dedicated to us and were getting a little tired of spinning in circles with the women, all of whom were about half our sizes.
The next day, after having walked up to the highest point of Taquille (4,100 feet!!!) to see their place of worship, we took a boat back to Puno and took a bus over the border to Copacabana, a town on the Bolivian side of Lake Titicaca. We spent the next two and a half days on the North side of Isla Del Sol in a hostel run completely by an 8 year old girl. The island was absolutely beautiful, so hot and full of hippies and we spent our days soaking up the extremely hot sun on the beach and our evenings eating soup, trout, rice and chips, the only food available in any of the 3 local restaurants in the tiny village. A highlight of the island was the constant presence of pigs, donkeys, cows and guinea pigs running wild on the beach. You haven`t lived until you´ve seen a pig making its way across the sand on Isla Del Sol.
Yesterday we took the bus from Copacabana to La Paz and upon arriving at the outskirts were greeted by the amazing, sprawling view of the city and the mountains. Contrary to what we had been led to believe it is actually very sunny here and everything costs about 2p so that´s pretty great. Last night Rebecca and Maya had their first Bolivian night out in what was apparently a "cocaine club" - we only found this out as we were about to leave and are still not quite sure what it means. Today we visited the witches market where we saw dried llama foetuses which are THE MOST DISGUSTING THING IN THE WORLD EVER and dried toads which come a close second (they were decorated with glitter so looked a bit nicer). We also finally managed to track down some falafel which was pretty exciting. Tonight the plan is karaoke so watch this space for more exciting details!
Till next time
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx