Monday 28 December 2015

Beach Park!

Cooper. 

Fortaleza, a city of 2 million in north-eastern Brazil, is home to one of the best water parks in the world and the best in Brazil. The whole reason we visited Fortaleza was to see the water park of course (how could we not?) called Beach Park. It has 26 slides and spans 12 city blocks along the beach! One of the 26 slides is the Insano, a slide with a near-vertical drop that gives you a second of free-fall and goes 105 kmph!!!  They also have a massive tube ride called Vaikantudo, made in Canada! It's a HUGE rainbow toilet bowl that flushes you down the drain! 




It was so much fun to be here for four days after Christmas! Here is a picture that I took of my dad going down Insano!  My mom went down, too.  But I was *just* too short :( .  Luckily they have a smaller version of Insano which was also awesome for me. 




Carolyn.

Yes, it was tons of fun here.  The 'best' thrill was the capsule slide, where the floor drops out from under your feet - I'd never done anything like that before...





To see more pictures from our world trip so far, click this link:

Thursday 24 December 2015

Wednesday 16 December 2015

Argentina

Nov 24 - Dec 20.  Time in Buenos Aires, then travel to Mendoza and Salta and surrounding areas, then onward to Iguazu Falls.  Details will follow later.

To see pictures from our world trip so far, click this link:

  

Wednesday 9 December 2015

Foodie Corner: Mate (Ma-Tay)

Vern.

Almost every nation or culture has a trademark food or beverage.   Often these are regional specialties, at other times they are national icons.  When it comes to Argentina and Uruguay, there is no doubt that the national beverage is the ubiquitous mate (pronounced ‘ma-tay’). 
    
Simply, mate is a tea-like drink comprised of loose, crushed leaves from the ‘yerba mate’ plant, mixed with hot water and consumed from a small cup through a ‘bombilla’ -- a metal straw with a filter.  The water cannot be boiling; it must be exactly 85 degrees Celsius.  (There are public hot-water vending machines labelled “85”, where for a few centavos you can fill your thermos.)

There is no ‘buzz’ effect, no chemical high, no hallucinogenic properties. It is a cultural phenomenon, surpassing addiction, drunk by both young and old, and it is everywhere.  At work, at home, in parks, on the beach, on buses; locals are to be found with a thermos in one hand, mate cup in the other, regularly topping up with leaves and water.  We witnessed one man on his bike in downtown Buenos Aires, thermos wedged in the crook of his arm, pouring into his cup and sipping while riding.



Mate thermoses, cups and bombillas come in endless varieties of designs and colours, from plain to ornate to customized, allowing a full range of self-expression.   Mate is often shared, with the pourer offering his/her cup to a friend, who is expected to drink the full cup before handing it back.  (From which I concluded colds and flu must spread very quickly through the country, but was later informed that it is polite to let others know when you are ill and need to stick to your own mate, thank you anyway.)

Always eager to explore culinary highlights, Carolyn and I signed up for “The Argentine Experience”, an evening of immersion and instruction in Argentinian food and drink.  We sampled wines, learned to make popular cocktails, created our own empanadas (a meat- or veggie-filled pastry), and feasted on Argentinian beef.  The evening concluded with a “how-to” session on mate, where we learned the ins and outs of this all-important pillar of Argentinian tradition.

We were cautioned that the first sip is “somewhat bitter”. 

When I stopped coughing and my eyes finished watering, I offered the half-full cup to my wife, eager to have her share in this newfound experience.   With Carolyn subsequently wiping the tears from her cheeks, face stuck in a painful wince, our host suggested that as first-timers it would be permissible to add a little sugar to the mix.   Thanks for coming out.

I believe that something less potent might be more appropriate, such as turpentine or undiluted sulphuric acid.  Apparently, flavoured mates are available, but are strenuously denounced by purists.  These non-lethal, pale substitutes for the real thing are relegated to young children, the socially inept, hapless tourists, or ostracized wimps.


Mate will be added to my list of “must be an acquired taste”; one that I am likely to never, ever acquire.




To see more pictures from the trip, click here:  Trip Photo Album

Monday 7 December 2015

Carolyn in Buenos Aires & Uruguay

Carolyn.  We all landed in Buenos Aires, Argentina on November 23 – and two days later, Vern and Cooper left for Antarctica.  Brrr!  I decided many months ago when they booked this 10-day voyage that I was not going to join them for this - I would rather enjoy the heat of the southern hemisphere summer instead of donning my winter weather gear.  (see their fantastic Antarctica updates below)



So I spent 7 days in Buenos Aires (population 11 million) enjoying many things it has to offer:  tango lessons, milongas (tango dance halls both small and large), polo match, bike rental to explore city parks and neighbourhoods, late dinners with new friends from the B&B where I stayed (the Argentina lifestyle is for restaurants to open at 9pm, and it’s totally normal to still be out eating dinner with friends at midnight), and visiting museums (which we tend to avoid or rush through with Cooper, so it was admittedly nice to be on my own adult schedule) and a tour of the famous Teatro Colon (#1 in the world for opera acoustics)…and nice summer weather…temperatures every day around 30 degrees.

This is a big, beautiful city, with excellent public transit, amazing architecture, and ample green parks and huge tree-lined streets.  They say it’s the ‘Paris of South America’.  I loved it.  Everything except that there are LOTS of smokers here.  Also like Europe, apparently.  Cough.  One challenge is that the Spanish they speak here is a little different from the Spanish we have been learning and using in Ecuador and Peru for the past 3 months.

After a week in Buenos Aires, I decided to explore the neighbouring country of Uruguay for 3 days – easily accessible by a 1-hour ferry across the river.  I loved the small town of Colonia, it was very quaint for 1 day & night;  and then a 2-hour bus ride took me to the capital of Montevideo for the other 2 days.  This city has many beautiful white-sand beaches, and I enjoyed renting a bike and riding the 20 km of beach-front trails all along the coast.


But my #1 mission in Montevideo was to bring back US cash to Argentina.  There’s a crazy “alternate” economy in Argentina called the “Blue Market”.  I don’t fully understand the economics at work here, but it’s something about residents trying to hoard US dollars, in anticipation of a looming collapse of the Argentinian peso (apparently something like this happened in Venezuela in recent years too).  Practically, what it means for tourists is that you can increase your purchasing power by 50% if you have US cash:  instead of getting the ‘real’ exchange rate at a bank which is about 9.75% in the international market, you can go to a Blue Rate vendor and get between 13.5% and 14.8%, depending on the quality and size of your bills, and the amount you want to exchange.  If you come here on a typical vacation, just bring as much US cash, in new & large bills, as you need and you’re comfortable carrying.  But if you’re a long term traveller like we are, you simply don’t arrive with lots of cash in your pockets – usually we just use our debit cards in the local ATM and withdraw whatever we need in the local currency, which will automatically convert to CAD and debit our Canadian bank accounts at home, easy.  But in this case, it makes a lot more financial sense to take advantage of the USD.  Anyway – mission successful, I was able to visit the National Bank in Montevideo (the hugest retail bank location I have ever seen, with many hundreds of people queued in dozens of places for their different banking tasks – very overwhelming!), and I withdrew a large sum of US dollars as a cash advance on our US credit card (did you know if you move $ onto your credit card and keep it at a credit balance, you can take cash advance withdrawals with no fees, no interest – it’s a good way to access larger amounts than an ATM will allow you to withdraw).

So with Vern and Cooper soon returning from Antarctica, and us planning another 3 weeks of travel through Argentina together, I returned from Uruguay appropriately equipped with enough $ to finance our upcoming Argentina destinations optimally.  The trick is to not convert more USD to pesos than you need, because it is impossible to convert pesos back to dollars later.  And by the time you read this, the cash will all be gone, because we will be on our way to Brazil, where we will return to “normal” travel financing with ATM withdrawals and credit card purchases!

If you want to know more about all this, feel free to email us with questions – especially if you plan to travel to Argentina soon, we will happily share what we have learned in greater detail.



To see more pictures from our world trip so far, click this link:

  

Sunday 6 December 2015

ANTARCTICA

Cooper. It’s the end of the world! Antarctica really is the end of the world. In Canada, it is winter now, but down here in the southern hemisphere, it is summer. However, when you usually think of summer, you think of a nice warm day, t-shirts and shorts, but in Antarctica, you’re wearing all of your layers to keep warm. My dad and I took a boat down to Antarctica, while my mom stayed back in Buenos Aires, Argentina, because she made a promise that she would go nowhere near winter during our year of travel, and Antarctica in the summer still counts as winter.

To get to Antarctica we flew to Ushuaia, which is the southernmost city in the Americas, so that was already cool (both types of cool). From Ushuaia, we then took a ship two days across a stretch of ocean called the Drake Passage, which is known to have horrible conditions at certain periods of the year.  Luckily it was good for us on the way there. And then we were in Antarctica!

While we were in Antarctica, we set foot on land six times.  At other times we cruised around in a small boat called a Zodiac to get up close to water wildlife and icebergs. Each time was fantastic. We were guaranteed to see two types of penguins: Chinstrap penguins (my personal favourite), and Gentoo penguins. But we were lucky and saw two more types of penguins: a Macaroni penguin, and an Adelie penguin. Here is a picture of the Macaroni penguin (which the staff on our boat have named Kevin) 


Along with the different types of penguins, we also saw many different types of seals (no, not sea lions). One type was the Elephant seal, and the baby ones are so cute with their big eyes. 


On the last day of our Antarctic stay, before we went on the Drake Passage, we visited Danco Island, which had a very long, and very steep hill on it, and we all hiked to the top. After we spent some time up there, we had to come down, which would take about 10 minutes to walk, so my dad and I took the quickest, most direct, and awesomest way down the snowy hill: on our bellies like a penguin! It was so much fun!

After sliding like penguins, we got back on board and set off to a bay where we anchored the ship. With icebergs all around, the bitter cold air, a thin amount of ice covering the surface of the water, and lots of snow falling from the sky, it was the perfect place to go jumping into the freezing cold water. My dad and I did it of course, along with about 60 others (with a total of 170 passengers, lots of them were chickens for not doing it). The water was COLD, only 1 degree above freezing! Here is a picture of me jumping into the bitterly cold Antarctic Ocean!!! 


The Drake Passage was not nice to us on the way back, and my dad, being prone to seasickness (along with 100 other people) really didn’t feel that great. I even got seasick, and it’s rare for me to get seasick. After our survival of the two days across the Passage, it felt really good to be back on solid ground in Ushuaia.


To see more pictures from our world trip so far, click this link:




Vern.  Our voyage to the 7th Continent aboard a Quark Expeditions ship was outstanding.  The Antarctica landscape is amongst the most stunning I have ever visited.   We saw dozens of glaciers, hundreds of icebergs, and thousands of penguins and not once did I tire of the sights.  (Well, OK – a lot of the penguins do look alike.) The Quark staff were truly phenomenal, and they all paid special attention to Cooper (the only minor on board).  The food and service were top notch.  Our waiter, Vlodomyr, performed a different magic trick for Coop almost every day.  The expedition staff (and most of the passengers) all knew Cooper by name and on the last night he was brought up on stage to be a part of the nightly entertainment, participating in “The Ice Show”.

Yes, travelling aboard the Ocean Endeavour in cruise ship cabins is a long way removed from the forays of Amundsen, Scott and Shackleton.   Plenty of smoked salmon and fresh-made omelettes; no need to consider eating sled dogs, staff or other passengers.
The only (slightly) negative part of the trip was the crossing of the Drake Passage; that dreaded stretch of sea between the tip of South America and the Antarctic Peninsula.  As I wrote parts of this entry, my chair often slid away from the table and I had to fight my way back to the keyboard.  Despite the seasickness pill and my wristbands, I was still a bit off.  The laptop was facing the window, where I could type while staring at the horizon; it helped.  The ship was very quiet and few people were in the lounge, which was telling.  Even Cooper was feeling ill and laid down in our cabin, barf bag on hand, waiting for the seasickness tablet to kick in. 

We had several good whale sightings of humpbacks; well worth getting geared up and braving the wind and cold on deck.  We’d also been very lucky with penguin species – we saw four out of the eight species in the Antarctic:  Gentoo, Adelie, Chinstrap and Marconi.   Plenty of Gentoo (i.e. thousands), same for Chinstraps (though their colonies are only in the north), and a single confused Marconi along with a single Adelie spotting.  Happily, I have pictures of all.  The tall and colourful Emperor and King penguins live further south than we’d travelled.

Cooper and I partook of the “Polar Plunge”.   Staff and passengers alike were once again impressed with Coop; however, there was no question that we were going to do it.  And yes, the water was very cold.  For safety reasons, jumpers are harnessed should they need to be pulled out of the ocean.

I would do this trip again and go down to the South Georgia islands.  A longer trip, but the scenery and history are worth it.  And the food isn’t half bad either! :)



To see more pictures from our world trip so far, click this link: