Christmas on the beach!

I made it to the beach for Christmas. I was on Ilha do Mel for a few days which was great as it was muy tranquillo. No cars on the island. We spent our time at the beach and I took my first surf lesson. I could not believe that I managed to stand up on the board on the first lesson! Looking forward to some more surfing!
Now we are on an island off Florinopolis, we have hired a car for christmas day, so we can hit some more beaches. After Christmas Im heading to Rio for new year to PARTY!

!!! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year !!!

5 down, 2 to go.

It seems the American Society of Civil Engineers thought it was in their best interests to compile a list of the 7 wonders of the modern world. Yesterday I went to see Itaipu Dam, which is just next to the Iguazu falls on the border of Argentina, Brasil and Paraguay. Anyway this Dam makes it to number 5 on there list. You can check out all the world wonder lists here and see how you are doing too. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Wonders_of_the_World
So now all I have to do is visit the Panama canal: Easy, as I am heading that way and then finally to complete the list I will need to jet off to Holland to see the "Delta Works". I think thats more dams and stuff.

I will finish with some Dam facts for you that I learnt on the Dam tour:
1) The Itaipu Dam generates 90% of Paraguays energy and 25% er or maybe 15% of Brasils. Sorry I forgot already.
2) The Itaipu Dam has absolutely no negative environmental impact whatsover. Absolutely no animals or fishes were harmed in the making or operating of the Itaipu Dam. Infact the burly construction workers who built the Dam rescued a small deer that had lost its way, during the construction, and nursed him back to health.
3) When constructing the Itaipu Dam, they used enough Iron to build 100 and er something Eiffel towers and enough concrete to build almost 1.3% of Coventry.
4) The light jazz lounge music they play on the Dam bus, underneath the comentary is really, really bad.
5) The Itaipu Dam is the greatest Dam ever, and is even better than the new one they are building in China.

You can find out even more about how great and well marketed the Itaipu Dam is here http://www.itaipu.gov.br/ I just found out that they have there own Dam choir!

Right, I´m off to go and check out the 7 Wonders of the Ancient world. "Yes, 1st class ticket to Baghdad please, I would like to visit your Hanging Gardens of Babylon."
"What do you mean they were destroyed and it wasn´t by the Americans?"

UnBOLIVIAble

Well Im in Brasil now where it is all sophisticated and they have proper shops and stuff and am enjoying the modern world very much. Hey but lets have a few more photos from crazy old Bolivia, one last time. Mostly transport related. Funny that.

Crossing Lake Titicaca, on the way to Copacabana. They unload the passengers and put them on a less precarious boat, before sending your bus across on this wobbly barge.

Yes, the woman in Bolivia do like to wear bowler hats. No, I don´t know why. Although I think it is something to do with some salesman who had a spare shipment of very small hats, and told the woman of Bolivia that it was all the rage to where them in Paris and Milan, and hey presto, a fashion craze was born.

Every Taxi in Cochabamba is right hand drive. Nothing odd about that you might think, except that they rip the steering wheel out of the dashboard and then stick it on the other side! The speedo doesnt work, but the mile-ometer and the clock are fully functioning.not sure why they bother fitting the ignition since there are about 20 loose cables hanging down you could easily bypass the starter.

Not sure if you can make out the spark in the photo, but here is me holding a lit stick of dynamite at the Potosí mines. What other country in the world has a tourist attraction where you get to play with lit dynamite. 5 seconds after this photo was snapped, the trusty guide/psycho grabbed the dynamite ran off 200m and buried it in the sand, so we could stand back and hear it go boom. Fantastic!

It is common for buses to put the destination in the front window. So who knows where this one was going? But hey who cares, I always prefer to take a bus that says. "AIR WOLF, BRYAN ISRAEL" in the front window over one that says "Downtown" or "Croydon"And finally staying on the transport theme, who needs BP garage when you can just pick up your fuel from a woman in a street selling it out of plastic bottles. Cool. Can I get my greenshield stamps with that, thanks.

Death Train

Howdy. Well i have just been travelling East through Bolivia this past week. First Cochabamba where they have a big Christo (bigger than Rio, they claim), then onto Santa Cruz where I stayed at the fantastic Jodanga hostel. http://www.jodanga.com/ You know the kind of thing; newly furnished, big rooms, great tv room, nice swimming pool, 3 quid a night.

Yesterday I left the cheapness of Bolivia and headed to exotic Brazil on the Death Train. So called because... actually I dont know. There seems to be lots of conflicting reasons about its name in the various guide books. I will go with the one that it feels like it might fall off the track. It seemed every 15 minutes that the brakes on our carriage locked up, and then suddenly the train yanked the carriage forward at such alarming force that I almost grazed my knee on the seat in front, on several occasions.
Although about 18 hours into the journey, I developed a new theory that maybe they are simply trying to scare you to death. The head carriage master chap tastefully decided to show the movie ´Under Siege 2` . You know, the Steven Seagull ´Classic´ where by the evil terrorists decide to Hi-jack a train and all its passengers...
Incidently they followed this with Under Siege 1. But as you probably know that is about a boat, so not as scary.

So now I am in Brasil in Corumbá, a sad looking border town at the edge of the Patanal (vast swampy plains type place). So tomorrow I will embark on a 4 day tour of said region getting bitten by mosquitos, er I mean looking at animals and stuff... Ciao!

Leaving La Paz

Hola, well my month of working here in La Paz is over. Its been a lot of fun, but now its time to move on and get some travelling in. So here is a map. The red line is where I have been. The green line is where Im going (probably). So I´m aiming for Christmas on the beach in Brazil... which will be nice! But before then, my next stop is Cochabamba in Bolivia. Oh joy, another Bolivian night bus. I opted for the most luxurious expensive bus I could find. 4 quid. Thats a lot of money here. I could go out for dinner 4 times on that. So hopefully I wont have to sit next to a crate of chickens and maybe the heater will work. But Im not getting my hopes up too much. Ciao for now!