Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?
Eight countries, a thousand buses*, a hundred beds and three lost hats.
[30 October 2024] Hello from 35,000ft in the sky – this newsletter comes to you from the return flight back to South America, after my rather brief and impromptu trip to Europe. We've reached that weird bit during a long daytime flight after lunch when the cabin crew turn all the lights off and insist on everyone closing their windows – even though it's the middle of the day in both arrival and departure country – because it's easier for them if we all just sleep and don't bother them for drinks. I'm travelling Azul airlines, a new one for me, which I'd describe as retro but not in a cool way, like how you’d welcome a mid-century coffee table. Retro like how you wouldn’t want your bathroom carpet to smell (remember when bathrooms had carpets?).
Several lovely things happened during my surprise week spent back in London: I went to the most beautiful wedding, held at the Barbican Conservatory, and saw our Peru travel buddies Zlata and Greg get married. I caught up with a lot of friends in a very short amount of time, all while house-sitting and looking after a very good dog for the week. I saw two friends' respective new homes and met two other friends' relatively new baby. I had bangers and mash and a proper takeaway curry and a fish finger butty and copious amounts of Yorkshire tea. I drained east London of its red wine supplies and suffered the consequences. I lay awake at 4am with terrible jet lag, emerging groggy from said wine and lag most mornings to walk the dog, colliding with schools of joggers around Victoria Park and falling in love with London all over again. I learned how to use a Nespresso machine.
I heard more evidence than I needed to convince me that the journalism industry really is on its knees, that everyone is struggling and to top things off a coffee now costs £5 and a glass of white wine upwards of £8. It was crippling, it was exciting, it was funny and emotional and strange, and I couldn't help but carry with me the feeling that none of it was real, that I'd somehow imagined myself back here in a fever dream – that perhaps the real me lay in a coma somewhere back in Brazil. Or maybe it was the other way round, that my trip had never happened and I was delusional, I'd made Dave up (who?).
In a sense, none of it was real – as I had to keep reminding myself as I swanned around London for brunch dates followed by coffee dates followed by drinks and dinner every day – because this is not a true representation of my life back home. Because in normal life, unfortunately, I do have to work sometimes and I do not meet friends for brunch every day, and, saddest of all, I do not live in a beautiful Georgian town house near Victoria Park. It was a fantasy, it was a holiday; it was hectic, it was hedonistic, and I loved it. But wow, I'm exhausted. And I'm so excited to be on a plane back to Brazil, returning to my other abnormal and equally hectic life with a man I may or may not have invented.
Something else that happened while I was away was the year anniversary of when Dave and I left Europe for the South American continent. A whole year! We've seen and done so much in the last 12 months, but the more we see and do the more I realise just how much there is left to see. And so the show continues for the foreseeable.
We'll be spending the next three months exploring more of Brazil: we travelled up through the very south of the country back in March, working our way up from the Uruguay border to Porto Allegre, Curitiba and Florianopolis, meeting a friend in São Paulo and making our way up the stretch of coast to Rio. There, after a brief pause to recalibrate and make some Airbnb enemies, we had to hit pause on Brazil and zip across to Peru in time to make our date for Machu Picchu with more friends. It goes without saying that Brazil is a bloody big country, so I’m looking forward to seeing more of it. It's just a shame they don't speak Spanish (or English for that matter) because Portuguese is still a bit of a mystery to us both and I’m finding that outside of the bigger cities people have little patience for our strange accents.
When I land I'll be meeting Dave back in Londrina, which I gather he’s more than ready to leave, and we will probably head west, starting with a trip to the Pantanal (finally!) and then working our way north through the centre of the country as much as we can and up to the north-east coast. Then in December we'll loop back down along that coastline to meet my parents in Rio in time for Christmas (yes, they invited themselves). And in the new year, back up again towards Suriname, the Guyanas and Colombia – which I'm most excited for.
So there's still plenty to come. But I do love a list and so I've been entertaining myself on this flight by reflecting on some of the best and worst places, food, journeys and other things experienced over the past year. Perhaps I'll do an extensive version later on, but here are some highlights and lowlights from twelve whole months of backpacking…
Showers
First things first, it’s safe to say my standards and expectations have lowered significantly this year when it comes to bathroom cleanliness and personal hygiene in general. Which means when we do come across a very good shower, it’s an especially momentous occasion.
For the purposes of all my analyses here, I’m excluding the very posh experiences – the shower on the Swan Hellenic ship we travelled to Antarctica on for example, was heavenly, especially after our polar plunge into the sub-zero sea. See also: the beautiful rainfall shower room in our hotel at Machu Picchu, enjoyed after a long day’s hike. But then, a decent shower is hopefully to be expected when a lot of money has been paid for the privilege.
So the best shower we’ve encountered has got to be the homemade one at Fede’s farm (where everything was homemade of course), the “rustico thrustico” as Dave likes to call it. This shower was enormous (like everything in the house designed for such a tall man), like stepping into a swimming pool rather than a shower tray, and intimidatingly powerful, with the most glorious hot water heated straight from the central kitchen fireplace. And oh my god was it welcome after each day in that sweaty humid heat, mowing grass, collecting wood and herding escapee cows. I bet you’re sweating just thinking about it.
Special mentions also go to the shower in this lovely Airbnb which we stayed in for an absurdly good rate in Bariloche. It must have been good because I remember it from eleven months ago.
There is plenty of competition for the worst shower in Latin America. For me, it might be the one we had during our first stay in Lima, which was directly connected to the boiler, which couldn’t be turned down from boiling, it seemed. Each foray into the water was skin scaldingly painful, to the point where I ended up finishing the job with the cold tap from the kitchen sink.
On the other end of the scale, we’ve had a lot of freezing cold showers, too. Dave and I started the first morning of our Machu Picchu hike in a very cheap hostel in Ollantaytambo, up in the mountains where the air dipped well into single figures at night. That ice-cold 4.30am shower I forced myself under will stay with me for some time. But it probably made that aforementioned rainfall shower all the sweeter later that same day.
Sometimes there’s no hot water because we’re in a hot place and they haven’t bothered to connect up any hot water (fine) – but often it’s just because the home-wired electric heat converter isn’t working very well. And this leads me on to all the times we’ve been electrocuted by dodgy homemade electric showers. One that stands out in my memory was the shower in Nazca, when we accidentally stayed at a spooky abandoned hotel. Both of us were left seeing stars when we touched the metal taps to turn the water off. I remember this one being especially bad because the shower head wasn’t quite high enough, so Dave kept get electric shocks on his head and face.
But for Dave the worst shower has got to be the one with the shower door that smashed on him in Rio. A lot of blood, permanent scarring (physically and emotionally) and a lot of back and forth with Airbnb after we were asked to pay the damages. I was prepared to fight them to the death, but it all worked out ok in the end.
Accommodation
And who can forget, of course, the room we had in San Pedro, in the Chilean Atacama Desert. The shower was terrible, yes, but my main concern was the disintegrating water tank and boiler that sat positioned just outside our bedroom, leaking a long river of fluorescent-looking liquid from its base across the bedroom doorway all day.
I also have a particular anger reserved for the Airbnb we stayed in in Chiloé: advertised as a home for two adults, but with bunk beds and a ceiling so low I cracked my skull every time I turned over in the night. Kind of how I imagine being buried alive in a coffin.
While I do maintain that my expectations of cleanliness have softened, and I’m willing to put up with a lot, a dirty room or apartment still infuriates me. I’m thinking in particular of the Airbnb we went to in Ushuaia immediately after our Swan Hellenic cruise (ok, maybe the contrast didn’t help). This was the only place we’ve ever left early – after a day of no power and dodging suspicious hairs on every surface, I insisted we move around the corner somewhere less furry. When we did, the Airbnb owner asked us to leave a tip for the cleaner on our departure, and suddenly it all made sense. The bastard wasn’t paying her anything, so of course she wasn’t bothering to clean!
But the absolute worst accommodation this year has got to be the second hostel we stayed in during our Uyuni desert tour. One toilet shared between 50 people, no working shower, no hot water anyway and no heating or insulation, despite it being -12 degrees. And then I was up half the night being ill. Just grim.
Fortunately the number of brilliant accommodations far outnumber the bad. Where beds are concerned, our British pound goes far in many places in Latin America, but I particularly enjoyed this Airbnb in Quito (where we survived an earthquake), this pad in Asunción, the Casa de Valentin guest house in San Telmo, Buenos Aires, and our lovely little cabin on the beach in Punta del Diablo, Uruguay, where we spent a week running to the sea and back and building fires to cook on at night. And that also reminds me of the house we stayed in with Anthony on Isla Grande – literally placed on the sand with nothing but the waves out the window at night.
Let’s not forget Fede’s farm, which became our home for two weeks in Uruguay. And more special mentions must be given to the Mbaracayu Lodge in Paraguay, where we recently spent a couple of nights unexpectedly being treated like royalty and sleeping very soundly in the forest. Similarly, I loved falling asleep to the sounds of the jungle at the Hostel Pakay in Tena. And I’ll always remember our little cabin in the Latacunga Valley in Ecuador, where we watched the UK election results come in. Super simple place, but clean and cosy and with a beautiful view. All we could wish for.
A brief mention for three very good hostels: the Nomad hostel in Asunción (beautiful room, cool garden bar and pool, lovely staff and top breakfast); Hostel El Punto in La Serena, Chile (German-owned, and therefore very well organised) and the Buena Vista hostel in Humahuaca, with its incredibly chilled out vibe and clean and classy rooms for an impossibly good price.
Hosts
Shifting sideways in the category to name some of our best ever hosts: Kathy and Valentín at the Casa de Valentín in Buenos Aires were the sweetest. Kathy even made me lemon and honey tea when she heard me coughing. Some months later in Peru, we ended up staying with Kathy’s mum Doris in her family home in Huaraz, Peru.
Fede, of Fede’s farm fame, undoubtedly was a brilliant host. He fed and watered us so well and trusted us completely to look after the house and dogs (and cows and snakes and all the rest) while he went away for a weekend. There was a power cut and it was momentarily terrifying, but we were hugely grateful and happy all the same to be making ourselves at home in his big comfortable farmhouse.
When we stayed in a room in Maru’s house in Cordoba, she ended up becoming an interviewee for my coverage of the Argentinian election and was very generous with her time and anger.
And finally, not forgetting Sebastian, whose flat we stayed in in Bahía Blanca, the first Airbnb of the trip. Not only did Sebastian share maté with us and take us to his favourite bar, he became a good friend and we ended up hanging out together twice more in Buenos Aires and Bariloche. We’re even planning to meet up in northern Brazil in a few weeks’ time.
We’ve had a couple of bad hosts, but only a couple. I can neither forgive nor forget the rainbow-obsessed, passive aggressive note-leaving host in Valdivia. I was uncharacteristically terrified of our Airbnb host in Rosario, Maria, who threatened to leave us on the street all night when our bus arrived in late. I’m still not sure what the hell was going on with Ata the artist and his all-night 3D printing workshops and olive-oil making alarms (a strange homestay in Curitiba). And let’s not forget the Airbnb host who attempted to charge us more than £500 for showergate. But that’s about it in terms of negative experiences. Which considering how many places we’ve stayed over the past year and the number of people we’ve met, is pretty awesome going.
Food and drink
A brief run through of some of the best, conscious of not making this a book in itself: A fantastic tasting menu at Bodega Roberto Bonfanti for Dave’s birthday last year in Mendoza; lots of tasting menus in Bolivia but especially at El Solar restaurant in Sucre. I also loved the meal we had at Manq’a in La Paz.
We had a wonderful afternoon wine tasting and eating some delicious steak and other things at Pueblo Tannat in Uruguay; in Peru there was endlessly brilliant seafood at Osaka Japanese restaurant and La Picanteria, where we had an obscene lunch with Zlata and Greg. And speaking of fish, I can’t stop thinking about the meal that Dave, Anthony and I had at Christiano’s on Provetá beach on Isla Grande.
I’m particularly scarred by the bizarre service we had at the restaurant in Isla del Sol, but generally the worst meals often tie-in with the worst hostels and hotels. In Paraguay we had no choice but to eat the world’s saddest burger in the world’s saddest restaurant attached to the grossest hotel room in Ygatimi before our trip into the Mbaracayu nature reserve. I bet Dave also regrets those lamb empanadas he purchased in the Patagonia Salta taproom that reappeared a couple of hours later all over the Airbnb floor.
Transport
The funniest, longest, cheapest and most basic means of transport we’ve taken this year has got to be the four-day cargo ship down the river to the Peruvian Amazon – in many ways also the best journey we’ve taken because it was so unique and memorable.
Of course it goes without saying that the Swan Hellenic cruise ship we stayed on in Antarctica was the most fancy. But we also felt fancy AF on the much smaller boat we stayed on for a week while cruising around the Galapagos.
And finally, the award for the worst bus goes to the journey from Nazca to Cusco, where everyone shat themselves, cried and/or vomited all over themselves and the floor as we climbed and then descended almost 5,000m over one cruel night. In close second was the overnight bus that after 20 hours never did get us to La Paz. Never forget.
Our year in stats
Countries visited: 8
Places stayed in (cities/towns/villages/farms, etc… excluding repeat visits): 89
(20 in Argentina, 9 in Chile, 6 in Uruguay, 9 in Brazil (so far), 15 in Peru, 10 in Ecuador, 11 in Bolivia, 8 in Paraguay, and I’m counting Antarctica as 1).
Airbnbs: 78
Hotels/ hostels: More than 40
Total beds slept in: More than 120.
Hammocks: 1
Flights taken (since on the continent): 6 (Ushuaia to Buenos Aires one-way; São Paulo to Lima one-way; one 30-minute Nazca Lines tour in Peru, Iquitos to Lima in Peru, and from Quito to the Galapagos and back!).
Buses: We estimate 140.
Trains: 6 (to and from Aguas Calientes, Machu Picchu; two overland train in Buenos Aires; a train up and down to see Christ the Redeemer in Rio).
Cable cars: 5
Trams: At least 1 (in Rio).
Boats: 13
Illnesses: 2 of significance.
Hats lost: 3
Money Spent: Not exactly sure… but a whole lot less than our rent and living costs in London!