History A Merry Dance Around the World (Read 315 times)

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Evening everyone!

I recently returned home to England after spending 5 months travelling around South America with my pal Steve. We flew to Quito, Ecuador in July, spent 5 days in the Amazon rainforest, then began slowly moving south through the continent, spending time in Peru, Bolivia, Chile, before reaching the southern-most city in the world at Argentina's tip, just 500 miles from Antartica. From then on, it was north all the way up Argentina's Atlantic coast to Buenos Aires, where we stayed with Shepperd's family, before moving into Uruguay, Paraguay, and finally Brasil, flying home from Rio de Janeiro just before Christmas. We travelled almost exclusively by bus (the exceptions to this were 2 time-saving plane journeys and 4 days we spent on a cargo ship navigating the fjords of southern Chile).

We did an awful lot of stuff on this trip and there are a load of stories to tell. We met a lot of great (and not-so-great) people, visited some incredible places, walked for days, climbed mountains, slid down a volcano on our ass, too much stuff to list... I thought I'd share this stuff with you, but really to just go "here's 5 months of stuff!!" isn't so digestible, and afterall, I don't know if you guys are interested at all. So basically, here are a few photos (from the thousands I've still got to go through and organise) and if you want to know more about my trip I'd love to tell you all about it in detail (as you can guess it's like my favourite thing to talk about), or post more pictures or videos, whatever!




















So there are a few photos I quite like. I haven't gone through my photos of Ecuador and the Amazon yet, nor the majority of anything after Argentina. There are no photos of Rio either, because I got mugged by a couple of motherfuckers with knives. Anyway... :)

Last Edit: January 22, 2010, 02:52:44 am by GaZZwa
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  • Avatar of Brown
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you are one cool dude gaz.

my favourite pic is this http://photos-f.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc3/hs188.snc3/19543_562285939549_223801212_3972888_2630629_n.jpg which beats the rest by a lot!
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Man. You are so lucky.

I really want to do this one day. Like everyone else, haha.
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how much money did you need saved to do this
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i had £5000 for the trip, but could've done things a little cheaper now and then. For example, my flight to Quito was quite expensive. Had I flown to somewhere else, I could've saved some money. Also, I haven't checked my finances at all since I got back, since the money was split up a bit, I don't know if the trip cost pretty much all of what I saved or what
Last Edit: January 22, 2010, 03:49:19 am by GaZZwa
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yeah i could afford approximately one sixth of your trip
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Man that looks amazing, you climbed a mountain! Was hiring a guide and the equipment very expensive?

also tell us about being mugged by guys with knives!
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Climbing a 6000 metre mountain is definitely one of those things I could never have predicted doing. I think it cost us about 50 pounds to hire the guide and equipment (water proof overcoat and over-pants, hard snow boots, crampons, ice picks, rope...) as well as food and use of 2 refuges on the mountain to sleep in  for the 3 days we were there. It was ridiculously difficult as well. In La Paz the altitude meant you got tired just walking up a flight of stairs, so even the base of the mountain was very tiring. Upon reaching the high camp on the second day, we slept through the evening, then woke up at 2.00am so we could start our climb to the summit. Hours and hours of climbing up in the dark was one of the strangest things I've ever done, I had all these random thoughts looping around my head the whole time. At one point we could see the whole of La Paz, all lit up, way off in the distance, surrounded by darkness. The most terrifying thing for me were the numerous caverns and ravines in the ice. You'd be walking in the pitch black with just your head torch to light the way, and this huge gaping hole would just appear and you'd have to jump over it. Nearer the top, things were a bit more tricky, with huge drops on one side and an extremely uneven surface, and I'd be so tired I would keep falling over at random.  On the way down, too, Steve and I would just deck it every few minutes, tripping over our ropes, our icepicks or sometimes just slipping, we were so tired. When we got back to the high camp Steve spent a good 5 minutes vomiting. It really wasnt an easy thing to do, and honestly, until we were nearing the top, I had never entertained the fact that I would be able to do it.

As for being mugged in Rio, well, that's just annoying. I was walking along Ipanema beach, probably a little later than I should've been, but everything seemed ok. These 2 guys came over to me and asked me for some a couple of Reais, I didn't actually have any money on me so in my best (worst) Portuguese I told them sorry I didn't have anything. One of the guys then kind of punches me in the leg, which was weird. So after that exchange I wasn't feeling so comfortable, so I began to head back up to the road. Looking over my shoulder, I noticed the 2 guys were doubling back, and before I knew it one of them was right in front of me. He stood on my foot and began talking quietly and quickly (I didn't understand what he was saying) and then his hand went through my pockets. I was about to push him or hit him or something when I noticed the knife pointed at my stomach. All I had was my camera, so off that went. I didn't feel scared or threatened really, just completely pathetic. I asked if I could have my SD card from my camera back (the answer was "no", by the way), and then off they went, and I was instructed not to follow them. This was 2 days before I flew home, and after 5 months of moving around the continent, this ranked as the time I felt most like a helpless, clueless tourist.
Your Pussy's Glued to a Building on Fire

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Rio is awful
Play Raimond Ex (if you haven't already)


I'll not TAKE ANYTHING you write like this seriously because it looks dumb
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your living the dream  man. well at least my dream.
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fff. i just watched first half an hour of some terrible film called 'bad guy' by kim di-duk where a woman just gets raped over and over after being tricked into becoming a prostitute (or something), and then i come on here and read about gazzwa getting mugged two days before his big nice trip comes to an end. what a bummer of an hour.