Her name was Lola...

....she was a showgirl....With yellow feathers in her hair and a dress cut down to there....At the Copa (CO!), Copacabana (Copacabana)....=)

The Barry Manilow song isn´t really written about the beach but since we landed in Copacabana beach here in Rio de Janiero its been hard to keep the song out of our heads. The ´Girl from Ipanema´ song is the other song we know of which is actually written about the other famous Rio beach but we don´t know any of the words so ´Copa...Copacabanaaaaaa!´ it will remain.

We got into Rio two days ago after a fairly hectic 24 hours of travelling from Buenos Aires. We flew from Buenos Aires into Sao Paulo (the most populated city in Brazil if not South America i think with 14 million in the city and 18 million if you include the surrounding areas)...spent a night in Sao Paulo (we had had enough of big cities i think) before flying to Rio de Janiero...in between the flights (which weren´t actually that long) we spent a lot of time waiting in the airports, catching extremely crowded buses from the airports to the city and practicing portuguese with the taxi drivers (namely haggling over fares!).

Exhausted and a bit sick from the colds we both caught, Rio has been a very welcome break from the travelling. We managed to get lucky and got a really really nice hotel room on the main stretch overlooking the beach. I think because its not peak season some of the hotels do special rates and we ended up paying about 40% less than what the usual room price is. The beach itself is absolutely magnificient and quite clean considering the amount of usage and number of beach-goers. They have an army of cleaners who just go through the beach constantly picking up rubbish. The beach is not unlike Manly in Sydney....a gentle crescent shaped beach with very consistent waves....the afternoon dips have been very relaxing and waking up to a fresh sea breeze after spending the last few weeks in exhaust fumes has been a welcome change!

We´re probably going to spend the next few days chilling out at the beach....perhaps a few beach runs in preparation for the Inca Trail...but apart from the Rio tour (Christ the Redeemer, Sugar Loaf, Historical City Center and some nature reserves) tomorrow to knock out the tourist thing we definitely intend to keep a low profile. We´re even talking about going alcohol free...which means giving up the icy cold Chopps which they serve on tap at about A$1.5 per half pint....tough i know but that´s the sort of ´intestinal fortitude´ you´ve come to expect from the PJWT team! =)

More pictures to come once we find an internet place with USB ports and which doesn´t charge like a wounded bull!


View from our room...nice i know! =)


Copacabana beach during the day...


The beach at dusk...even better view in the surf watching the sun set through the buildings!


The crowd...they love the sunbaking but don't seem to go into the water much...probably know something we tourists don't!


This is the gym on the beach directly below us....on which your beloved PJWT explorers tried a few feeble chin-ups in an attempt to train for the hike...we didn't last long...and we also had the funny feeling that we weren't quite welcome from the dirty looks and comments (in portuguese of course). It really is quite amazing that you don't really need to say "step in my hood again and i'll pop a cap in your ass" for someone to understand you. Being the brave travellers that we are...we quickly left. Checking it out from the safety of our hotel across the road (and using the zoom lens on the camera) we came to the conclusion that these 'homies' did 'business' here! 'Homies' meaning gentlemen and 'business' meaning illegal sale of narcotics.

Iguazu Falls...Breath taking

Following on from yesterday´s posting we arrived in Puerto Iguazu on the Argentine side of the falls. Puerto Iguazu looks very much like what you would expect a small mexican town to look like only the place isn´t in Mexico and the locals don´t wear somberos. Very humid and hot we ended up getting a hotel for two nights at the airport since it would save us the cost of transfers to and from the airport (around 35 pesos one way and the hotel only cost around 112 pesos a night). Alas whilst the hotel looked good in the brochures it turned out to be a bit of an older crowd...a much older crowd. The moment we walk into the lobby it felt like we were walking on to the set of ¨Cocoon¨ and while we don´t know what the name of the hotel means (El Liberatore) we think it may mean something along the lines of ¨The Retirement Village¨...at least we can laugh at it. =) We´ve only seen two other young people...two girls by the pool...who we think might have been checking us out...but then it may have been because we were the only two males in the hotel not on pension yet!

Today we went to the Iguazu National Park to visit the Iguazu falls....absolutely breath-taking...words cannot do it proper justice so i´ll just leave you with a few snaps from today...enjoy!


Little non-mexican mexican looking town...


The falls....


We didn't do this...but it sure looks like fun!


We did do this though....the force of the falls is incredible up close


One of a few other falls surrounding the main one


Shot of the valley from the top of the main falls


Top of the falls...just wall to wall tourists!


It's very peaceful walking to the main falls through the waterways that feed into Iguazu


Your favourite PJWT explorers at the top of the falls...=)

Hola from ´barbaro´ Buenos Aires

Hi guys! Its official, the Pat and Jas World Tour blog site is world famous! I was checking the comments today and i saw one in spanish! I think it said some thing along the lines of the author doesn´t know what he´s talking about (after i bagged Santiago as being a dump)...either that or it said he loves it and reads it every night before he goes to bed (and twice on sundays)! I´m thinking it might be the former but then my spanish is still muchos ´bado´...although we did figure out what cool was in spanish (we think it might be barbaro)!

Back to the main topic of this post...buenos aires! Very cool place...a very big place with lots of stuff to do and see...the pollution is what you would expect from a city with 13 million population but still surprisingly clean, lots of parkland, regularly cleaning of the streets and we even see birds (something we didn´t really see too much of in Santiago except on top of the hill where the virgin mary statue was).

We spent the first two nights near the main street (Ave de Mayo) where most of the older traditional buildings are...one end has the ´government house´ and the other end (Plaza de Mayo - towards the wharf) appears to be predominantly occupied by the banks.


A shot from Ave de Mayo.


Government house.


Plaza de Mayo - near the wharf.

The last two nights we thought we would spend with fellow backpackers and stayed in a couple of places in San Telmo...very artsy crowd not unlike Leederville/Subi with a fantastic sunday market selling antiques and nick-nacks....this is known as the tango area with a lot restaurants and bars putting on shows and live bands...a lot of backpackers stay here because its cheap (20 to 30 pesos a night or around 9 to 12 dollars aussie) and it is one of the oldest parts of BA with cobble stone streets through the heart of it!


Sunday markets in San Telmo - we stayed in a hostel on this alley just on the left-hand side.


A free tango show at the San Telmo sunday markets - apparently home of Tango in BA. For some reason the male tango dancers in the street shows are always older gentlemen and the female dancers are usually young and quite attractive (usually!).


Sunday markets again - just wall to wall!

Other places we´ve been to include:

Barrio Chinos (or Chinatown) where we decided to check out due to an insane craving for rice (arrozo)...chinese food is pretty bad in BA with everything either too salty or too oily...i´ll never complain about sweet and sour pork in Australia again!

Palermo which is divided by locals into Soho and Hollywood and is where the local yuppies go to hang out for a drink, food and shopping. We thought we´ld check it out and have a sunday session there but we´ve realised that times we go out are the same times as the families and oldies...the ´young´ and barbaros crowds START at 2am...much too late for these two oldies!

Florida Ave is the longest street shopping mall i´ve ever seen...i lost count of how many mcdonalds and leather good stores we saw.....just packed with people during the day and night you sort of just need to go with the flow and not make any sudden turns (especially with a backpack on)...apologies to all the argentines i took out!

Recoleta is where the cemetery and museum is. The cemetery is a pretty popular tourist attraction as morbid as that sounds but the cemetery is full of family crypts for the who´s who of argentina. The most popular resident is none other than Evita Peron, perhaps one of the most famous women in the world. We ended up taking a few snaps, said a quick prayer and high tailed it out of there. Not even the bravest PJWT traveller can avoid getting the heebie-jeebies! =)


One of many beautifully crafted crypts in the Recoleta cemetery.


Evita Peron´s final resting place - which interestingly enough isn´t in the Peron family crypt.

After seeing all these places in BA we thought it might be nice to get out of the city for a while and go some where in the country. Which in all fairness to our much maligned Chilean readers is probably where the continent´s true beauty lies. So in a slight detour to the PJWT itinerary we decided to take off to see the majestic Iguazu falls where this post is proudly brought to you from. A one and a half hour flight from BA, Puerto Iguazu is the Argentine side of the falls which is also bordered by Brazil and Paraguay!

Hope you are all doing well and catch you next time amigos (same PJWT time, same PJWT channel)!

Jetlagged in Santiago

Hola everybody! This is the first post on the world tour after a very tiring flight from Sydney. If we were in a better state of mind i`ld actually try and attempt to calculate exactly how long it took for us to get to Santiago from Sydney. After a very long flight and a few delays we`re currently still getting over the effects of jetlag two days after arriving. So lets just say 24hours of travel between friends...

Santiago is definitely a lot different to what we expected. In summary, a lot of pollution (a thick layer of smog can be seen trapped over the city surrounded by mountains), very dirty streets and not much english spoken. However, the people were relatively friendly, even after we `butchered` their native language with a mixed of badly spoken phrase book spanish and words we made up using a system not unlike pig latin. For example, we couldn`t work out what `cool` was so we thought adding an `o` to the end would make it sound sort of like spanish (yes and i can hear all you die-hard language buffs cringing). So far our spanish vocab includes `si senor`, `por favor` (or as Denning would say `Denny Chong, Poor Favorrr`), `gracias` and my personal favourite `no hablo espanol`.

This post is proudly brought to you by the letters P and J of the PJWT in a Santiago International Airport near you! Stay tune for further updates and maybe even some pics when we get to Buenos Aires!

Here are a few pics from Santiago:


Polluted river running through Santiago


A view of the very populated Santiago from the top of the hill. Note the thick layer of smog.


Statue of the Virgin Mary from the top of the hill.

The List

I'm not normally a person to put together a list but with all the things everyone has told me to take (from a kettle for two minute noodles to travel sewing kits) I thought it might be a good idea to make a list of all the things i'll need to take. That way i can cross the things i don't absolutely need off.

So with out further ado, here is my list:

1 x Backpack (won't get very far without one of these, so i finally took the plunge and got one today) - $359 for a Gemini MacPack - 70lt (inc 25lt day pack). I tried it out straight after i got it by using it to carry the week's groceries. I have a feeling i'm going to grow to hate it...

1 x hiking shoes - $200 for a pair of G5 XCR Raichle, complete with Gore-Tek (a waterproofing technology) and Vibram grip.

One week supply of "jocks and socks" and 3 x t-shirts

1 x soft shell top and waterproof jacket - soft shell hooks into the waterproof jacket when it gets cold AND wet, otherwise i can just wear the jacket when its not cold but wet or just wear the soft shell when its not wet but cold...

1 x zip-off pants - will be wearing these for the whole trip i think so you'll see plenty of the pants in the photos i'll upload

One pair of jeans and a collared button up shirt - for those "classier" occasions such as dropping money in Las Vegas. Was going to take a pair of leather shoes as well but i'll buy a pair in Argentina since it will be relatively cheap and save me from carrying a little bit of weight for a week or so.

1 x one litre bottle - very light water bottle made of some sort of alloy. I picked a one litre bottle because the iodine tablets for purifying water clean one litre of water per tablet.

2 x combination locks approved by US customs - to lock up the backpack going thru the US. Allows the US customs people to check inside the bag without cutting the bag open (which i've been told happens)

1 x cable combination lock - to lock up the backpack around poles in hotels/hostels.

1 x beanie and 1 x gloves

1 x medicine pack - between the two of us

1 x tolietries caddy - to hang behind the door or off the shower

1 x soft folder - to put accommodation and entertainment vouchers in

1 x south america lonely planet guide - minus the content for countries we're not going to (every gram counts)

1 x mp3 player - important when you can't be bothered talking to your travelling companion (which i'ld imagine might happen sooner rather than later...sorry jas!)

Other things to get (which i haven't got yet) are:

1 x Digital SLR camera - looking at getting the new Sony Alpha - 10 megapixel for photos you can blow up to poster size. I'm thinking a shot of machu pichu at dawn in my room might be a nice scene to wake up to.

1 x compact flash to USB converter - so that i can upload some pics to blog via the "latte system"