Florianopolis to Argentina

We left Submarino hostel and was bid farewell by the DOG.

The owner said goodbye in the most disinterested way ever by asking us if we were on our way to RIO. I just said yeah thats right yeaaaaaah because we coiuldnt be arsed with the awkwardness. She said if we ever wanted to come back we were welcome and I said she`s always welcome in England and she made a face as if to say 'I would never go to England, are you mad?'

As soon as we got in the taxi we felt so liberated. Even the taxi driver seemed like he was the nicest person we had ever met.

We got on our 18 hour bus and slept a bit. Woke up to torrential rain and grey skies . Got off our bus and luckily it had stopped raining because it seemed like we were going to Bath and Stonehenge again.

We had a swift cafe con leche at a greasy spoon cafe in the bus terminal of Foz du Iguazu and got on a local bus going to another place (cant remember was too tired) and then got another bus going to the falls. On the bus an English Elecitrician called Luke and an English Town planner called Mark started chatting to us.

We saw the Brazilian side of the falls, after putting our big bags in lockers, wearing the clothes we were travelling in, with the Electrician and the Town planner. There were raccoons of all sizes everywhere that sprung out of the hedges at us and wanted food. There were signs everywhere say dont feed the raccons because they will bite and scratch you and have rabies. Then a child ran past and gave one a big cuddle and a stroke and I said a small prayer and they all gathered around a man who had a bag of crisps and sat up like meerkats and begged and he made loads of jokes hand and arm movements pointing in the direction in which he would like them to leave but they didn´t understand. We laughed and took loads of photos like Japanese toursists.

The falls were amazing, mindblowing, sensational, overwhelming, humbling, epic and sick all at the same time.

Then we had to go to Argentina so we got on a bus with the Electirician and the Town planner and got off at the side of the road as we were told we had to get another bus from there to cross the border. We got off the bus with an Argentinian family and we all stood by the side of the road trying to communicate while a taxi driver lurched into our faces with a speech about how there is only one bus per hour and its way better to get a ride with him. We went with the Argentinian dad to ask Tourist Information and after ages of waiting (they do customer service when they are ready) they told us there would be a bus in 45 mins so we waited and one came really soon. It was jokes that it was just a shabby old Cornish looking bus with Àrgentina`written on the display. Casual.

We got dropped off at the first part of the border, some small old office, got our exit stamp and then waited at another bus stop while an old man just leisurely cycled straight through border control on his bicycle. We made friends with a guy from Holland who told us he had also been at Florianopolis and some of the same parties. Small Gringo trail world again. Then we got another bus and got our entrance stamp at the next part of the border control and were in!

As soon as we had gone a few more streets the roads were red and everything was different which was hard to believe because we werent even far away from Brazil. We were absolutely shattered from the 18 hour journey and walked up a steep hill to find our hostel, which was a test. We got there and the guy at reception joked that there wasnt any rooms available which was so funny we forgot to laugh.

We finally had a room with air con! the first in the whole of SA! we have been having fan life which is ok but nothing on aircon! The room came with the standard group of Isrealis, who are everywhere at the moment as theyve just finished their National service.

We went out tired and hungry and booked our bus tickets and then had a FAT steak which was about two inches thick and most of a bottle of wine and then went home and slept like babies :)

Farewell Floripa!

So last night we worked our last shift which was a riot. Wondering around doing nothing. No drinks because we are SO over drinkinnnggggg.

Went into town today to get some shopping and souvenirs done like we do just before leaving each place and realised we didnt need anything because we are SO over shopppinnnngggg.

We said goodbye to two more people yesterday, four the day before and 2 the day before that. Harsh times!

The girls who left yesterday were SO funnnnnyy. They were sisters who seemed pretty young and everything they said was said with SUCH DRAMAAAAAAAAAAAA....they were absolutely priceless. Reminded me of Will Johns when he was 20. Everything they said was SO enlongaaaaaaaaaateeeeeeeeeeeed and because they were sisters they were just SO similiaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! we loved them :)

Boris the crazy Dutchman left, our four English crewdem girls left, Jack left, the camp young Aussie boy who had been sent on a South American and North American and European tour by his parents becuase he was TOO MUCH OF A WASTEMAN AT HOME. Good one!

So our stay here has been ok really. It will be filed under ´jokes things that happened in Brazil´. The bitch was on my case right up til the end of my shift last night and I continued to kill it with kindness :)
Had a big cuddle and a dance with Joaquina, the sausage dog, last nightShe lets me pick her up and walk around the hostel with her in my arms like a baby and she is so docile, she doesn´t give a shit.

There were giant ants all over her dog food last night and we also saw a GIANT butterfly the size of a bird. It looked like it was made of leathery old bark and was flapping around like a big, gangly oversized bat. Kerri had a final fight with a cockroach. She had to wake up Rodrigo, latest flatmate, and get him to kill it and put it in the bin. This wet weather brings out the insects. We also saw a crazy hairy yellow caterpillar siding along the street on the way to Bom Jesus.


We are getting an over night bus from Florianopolis to Iguazu in Argentina. We are well excited. So yeah hardly the send off we got from ITH haha! that was SO goooddddd...

Laura

I have a new friend called Laura.

She let me feel her gastric band - it felt like a bone.

Last night she showed me how she can slap her own face with one of her boobs.

The lake

 

We have a cool crewdem at the moment consisting of 6 English girls including us, a London boy, an Italian boy, a Swiss boy and a nut case Dutch boy called Boris who tries to stand up in the hammock and flips it over so he's hanging onto it from underneath and also claims he can change into any shape (I suggested changing into a hard boiled egg, with a dippy yolk, and get eaten by Hercules the Viking - for a laugh).

Hercules is still so intense. He addressed the group by barking an order at us to relocate around to the other side of the garden because we were near his bedroom window. Everyone was so struck by this direct command that it was just received with silent nods and nervous smiles. I've been trying to sneak a photo of him but a) I'm too scared of being caught and b) his stare, should it actually meet the camera, would no doubt penetrate and destroy the lens. 

The boys were cooking everyone a curry last night when Hercules arrived in the kitchen to prepare his egg feast. I wrote "don't be afraid" on one of the stickers available for labelling your food and stuck it next to the cooker to encourage the boys not to abandon their dinner.

So we ate a blow-your-head-off-hot curry and then everyone decided, since it was raining, to go and sit in the lake and drink. So they all got into their still-wet from the beach swim wear, drank up and left. 

I finished work at midnight and had agreed to meet them in the lake. I got changed and, bottle of wine underarm, went down to the lake in the rain. No sign of them. The plan was to wade out to the boat and sit in it. Couldn't really see the boat but could kind of make out a shape. Already soaked and one or two swigs of wine down I contemplated going home as for all I knew, they could have changed plan and abandoned the lake idea and I would massively gambling by wading out into a completely dark lake, in the pissing rain, sober. 

Gambled.

Well fun.

Rant

I am pretty hungover today. Cachaca is harsh as fuck. Decided I had had a few tame days keeping a low profile and it was time to get lairy again. The owners of this hostel run a night on a Monday called Green Go party at a place called Mustafa´s (no sign of Simba) which is some bullshit night that all the travellers go to. Brazil nightlife is so backwards, its like Brighton in the 90s. Everyone stresses that you MUST bring your ID and when you get there and you don´t have it they´re like, ah no worries just come in anyway. You queue up at one bar and get a wrist band with a barcode on it and then you put money on it. Then you queue up at another bar to get your drink and they scan your wristband to see if you have enough cash. The problem with this is it takes twice a long to get your BOOZE and you have no idea how much drinks are or how much you have left!

I dont want to listen to Nicky Minaj and hear samba music, it´s shit. Someone needs to open a volks here. I want a rum and ginger ale with fresh lime and to hear Ed Solo. We have a boy from London at the hostel at the moment who was blasting some DnB from his Ipad last night so I went and stood right next to it and glued my ear to it. 

So good meeting more English people. I got well anti-social at the last hostel we were at and realised that I didnt actually make the effort to speak to ANYONE except the people in our room haha. I know it´s bad but as soon as I hear broken English I cannot be fucked! I know there won´t be any jokes! except really obvious ones!

So yes, missing jokes from home today. 

Last week we met a Canadian 50yr old dad who has been on the road since November 2012 living off his retirement money. He just drives round in his Jeep and has two surfboards and a skimboard. He let me borrow his 7´2 board which was a dream board and we went surfing at Praia Mole. I got out of the sea because my knee was open and raw and bleeding down my leg haha. I really wanted to go on his 6´4 board (the smaller the boarrd the faster you go) just to see if I could handle it but me knee couldnt handle anymore and trying to pop up with a raw knee on a heavily waxed board was harsh so I got out and let the air sting the fuck out of it. This trip is making me into a rock.... I landed directly on a crab and had to actually pull the crab´s little claw out of my baby toe when I jumped off my board the other day at Joaquina beach! 

We got back and Kerri watched a documentary about a canal with him (riverting Sunday night) whilst i ´worked´ - there is nothing for us to do here! the evening shift is just wondering around an empty hostel doing nothing! waste of time but at least it´s free accomodation!

The Brazilian bitch is still a bitch. She hasn´t been so bad to Kerri and tries to be nice to me sometimes but in my book she has fucked it and I will never like her. For example, she told me she liked my perfume the other day (I wasn´t wearing any) which was odd. She also keeps saying she ´looks like a nigger´ after a day in the sun, we told her she can´t say that and she just says, ´I know, but I look like a nigger´. Racist bitch. The other staff just give us single word responses when we try to make an effort wth them.

There is a super nice Thai girl who acts like a child, who´s fucking the owner but he treats her like shit. The owner is a big beefcake Brazilian guy who thinks he is the dogs bollocks and he runs it with his sister, who has black teeth from smoking twenty fags a minute. Then there is a lesbian couple. One has a shit, mullety hair cut who we were referring to as ´shit haircut´ for ages because we couldnt remember her name. She is the one who called me ´the English girl´ so the name learning thing is mutual, love. Her girlfriend has hardly any English so she is mostly a silent witness and when she asks you do something she gesticulates and you have to guess what it is she wants you to do, like a game of charades, haha. Then there is a new Argentinian guy who has no English at all either so speaking to him is short and sweet. He started pissing himself when I told him my knee cut was from surfing so he can fuck off as well.

We are waiting for some post and as soon as it comes we might do one because we just feel a bit unecessary here, which is a shit feeling - you can probably tell from my ranting tone today haha. Also it´s a really quiet hostel with really quiet people. Two german girls last night were diluting their caiparinhas last night with water. Who DOES that?! and then there is the crew of blonde guys from Finland or Denmark or somewhere viking-y and they just go on their laptops and then cook meat.

Some super posh sounding, super rich, gap yar 19 year old girls from Kent turned up too last week. They were really sweet but so naive! They are 2 weeks into their 5 month trip and have clearly had a lot of it sorted out for them by parents. They were like, `yar we booked our Inka trail with STA (so overpriced and expensive!) because it would have just been sooooo much hassle to sort out ourselves!´ Then they asked if they should take their kindles to the beach. One of them was puking her guts up from some sort of food poisioning. Then she had a mouthful of toast and was like ´oh my god I am literaaaarly fit to baarsting´. Liam if you are reading this, you know exactly what voice that is!

They saw Yogi the viking fucked off his nut at the pool party, floating around the pool on his back staring straight up at the sky with really intense, wide, focused eyes, bumping into the side of the pool with his head.

We went for late night swim in the lake the other night after a few bevs. Just stripped off to our bikinis and ran straight into it. We ran over to a boat, about 500 metres away and it didnt get any deeper than above the knee! so strange! Yogi the viking asked if we wanted to do it naked and we were like NO.

We are now living in a small apartment which is across the road from the hostel. It´s so nice having our own space AND we have a kitten from next door who always comes to play. We are sharing with a Brazilian guy called Gustafa but he is hardly ever there. The bitch is moving in on Friday though so watch this space.....

In other news I got a magnum last night on the way home, hardly a kebab but it was good! furthermore, I have so much love for the sausage dog! At least she´s safe :)

Hercules

So there is a guy here who looks like Hercules. He has chin length wet blonde hair and is always topless. He is from Norway so he speaks like a Viking and loudly. He only eats 12 boiled eggs a day. He goes for power walks with an intense focus on the road. His name is Yogi. It´s scary when he says your name when you didn't even know he knew it because you've been too scared to talk to him.

Making the most

So as some of you know, the ability to switch off in the presence of a relentless nag and deliver the single 'yes sir, no sir three bags full sir' is a virtue and one that we have decided to practice. After five days of working, we've got roughly three days off together so it's time to explore the island!

Yesterday we went up to the sand dunes to try sandboarding. Kerri hired a board while I shot some photos and then I had a go once she was knackered. (Climbing back up the hill in 35 degree heat at midday is harsh).

 She skates goofy and I skate/surf (I don't skate) regular so her board was a test for me, like writing with the wrong hand but it was so much fun! You have to wax the underside of the board each time with this little nobbin of candle wax they give you that everyone loses in the vast white dunes. It was so windy we felt like we were in the actual Sahara. The wind was whipping the sand against our legs and you could see the sand blowing down the dunes. So cool. We will be going back for more and hiring a board each. 

I went to a pool party on Saturday which was incredible but more like a wasp party  as there were so many wasps swarming about, crawling down straws in drinks, in people's mouths, all over everything to the point where you couldn't move away and had to just relax and be at one with them (easier when drunk!) The music was pumping and it was like being in an R n B music video with Latino girls in thong bikinis sipping cocktails on white beds around the pool. 

Saw someone who was at our hostel in Rio but he didn't remember me as he was so fucked he didn't even know his own name when I asked him - and then I met someone from Brighton! Represent! 

Small word again - no it's the Gringo trail! People all do the same route here. We've spotted the same three guys (who look like Brighton trendies with beards and train driver hats) in Rio first at Christ the redeemer, then on Ipanema beach and now walking down the street in Florionopolis! And Brazil is hardly a small country. 

Yesterday I got a discount on my acai because I spoke in portguese to the vendor (guessed what small talk he was going for - name, country etc) Kerri got charged 10 for hers and I got charged 6 so I got grilled cheese on a stick too. lOVE the beach snacks! 

Then yesterday evening the whip cracker summoned me to reception to her laptop an was like "come here I use you" and made me write the hostels policies in English whilst she gave me a brief idea of each one in portguese, it was tough!

Her: "ok, here we need make put if guests make book with other person no can change book information only guest"

Me: " err..information provided at time of reservation cannot be altered by third parties unless previously authorized?" 

Both of us staring at a screen of Portuguese, her popping off to smoke blunts and me trying to think back to all the PR writing I've never done! Haha!