Trell's Travels

13 - Lima My 7:30am flight means I'm up at 4:30 and in an Uber by 5. The drive out to the international airport is long and takes 40 minutes, even at this hour. Astonishingly there's a 20 lane toll booth on the way. Oddly, on landing, most of the people on my flight head to the international connections queue and I make it through customs and immigration quite quickly and am confronted by 100 touts for taxis. Selecting one we head through the industrial and fairly smelly suburbs near the airport. The initial impression of the city isnt helped by the weather here at this time of year, which is grey and a little depressing.  We eventually make it to Miraflores, and unfortunately my cabbie gets lost and we weave through easily 30 streets searching for the street my hotel is on. The cabbie has no change, and I dash into the hotel to break a 50 sole note so I can give him the 60 we agreed. The hotel furnishings make me think of cheap country motels, everything from carpet to

I get the morning ferry across to Uruguay, a little town called Colonia de Sacramento is my first stop. It takes an hour to get there as the River is 50km across at this point and only officially becomes the ocean another 50km downstream. It's apparently a common day-trip for the Portenos, the nickname for people from Buenos Aires, as Carioca is for people from Rio, we must lack imagination to be stuck with Brisbanites as our handle. Anyway, the locals head straight for the onboard duty-free shop, stocking up on discount spirits, chocolate and beauty products. The old town of Colonia is impossibly cute, with old stone buildings next to 19th century buildings laced with wrought iron, located on cobbled streets, some of which are blocked off by al fresco dining. My hotel couldhave been sketched by someone dreaming of a relaxing break, a slight hill leads down from the main street to the hotel and to the River a few buildings beyond.  Deciduous trees that are easily 100 years old shad

The Germans and I head to Argentina together the next day, and I try semi-successfully to put the still broken phone out of my mind. I mentally kick myself for deciding to wait till one of my old kindle or old iPad breaks before replacing both with an iPad mini 4. I had the driver drop me at the hotel, while the guys carried onto the park, I caught them up later. The Argentinian park is bigger, and has both a lot more infrastructure and visitors. Unfortunately, the entry area does bring Disneyland to mind, with a massive rotunda, painted wide concrete paths, and a train taking you most of the way between key points. My late-ish arrival meant I arrived at a similar time to seemingly bus loads of pensioners and their umbrella-carrying guides, which contributed to the impression. I ducked and weaved for a bit and eventually got free of the crowds. By the end of the day I'd walked all four major trails. The first and really the  highlight is the garganta del diablo (devil's thr

In a nod to cliches I'm writing this on the back of a paper-bag, which half an hour ago was holding this mornings breakfast, and will transcribe to email later, I'll get to why... The next day Rio really brought it with the weather, a couple of tiny white clouds to show just how blue the rest of the sky was. I walk the gorgeous beachfront again, heading to the base of Sugarloaf Mountain. This time I take the easy way and pay for a ride on the cable car, ignoring the rock-climbing option. The view from here is breath-taking, and there are little paths to viewing points and cafes around both of the stops on the cars. Quite possibly the tastiest steak I've ever eaten follows, perfectly cooked and spiced Picanha, which they loosely translate as "rump-cap", it comes with a strange little side dish called farofa, a mixture of cassava flour (which looked like breadcrumbs) spices, fried eggs and bacon, which added to the flavour quite nicely. While sitting there I ha

Since I'm up I decide to forego the hotel breakfast, which starts at 7, and start make my way to the farmers market in Gloria. Making my way through the tunnel from Copacabana to Botafogo and beyond, you start to see the difference in wealth between the tourist zones and the local areas. I take the long way there, along the beachfront. There is exercise equipment every 500 metres or so and what's amazing is the frequency with which it is used by men and women of all ages. The guide books tell you  to expect it at crowded beaches during peak hours, with the beautiful people showing off their muscles to the best advantage by using them. At Parque do Flamengo though, a back suburb really, I walk past two men in their seventies doing inclined sit-ups, and a woman maybe in her fifties being encouraged by her husband to do a few more triceps dips.  Turning away from the beach I head to the sound of someone on a loud speaker, it turns out to be a buy scouts and girl guide rally,

I arrived last night, after 26 hours in transit, and wound up on the same flights as about half the Aussie competitors for "Oi Rio Pro", the international surfing competition. It took me a while to work that one out, as if push came to shove I think I'd only recognise 2 current international surfers while not holding a surfboard for context, and Kelly Slater was not on the flight. It took all of them sitting together, and a touch of eavesdropping for me to sort out the disconnect in wardrobe of my fellow passengers, as it was less Kathmandu-autumn-catalog than I was expecting, and more sponsored-by-Billabong.  The flight landed and I was on my way to Leblon, Nobby Beach to the more Surfers Paradise-like Copacabana, and the Burleigh Heads of Ipanema. The driving style of locals is quite like some of their European forebears, with safe braking distance an oxymoron, and occupying only one lane at a time being something my driver only did when there wasn't the slight