The Best And The Worst

It wouldn't be a good blog if I didn't review my travels and go through the highlights and lowlights of my trip. So here are the best and worst things under various headings with a reason why. (Not yet finished)

Best:
Country: Argentina
Argentina by a long shot. Its such an amazing country. So European, cultural, vibrant, diverse, big, great fun, great food. Simply somewhere that I think everyone should go at least once. I'm already planning my return trip.

Big City: Buenos Aires
It goes without saying, but Buenos Aires was my favourite big city. It follows from my favourite country, but the city itself, while not perfect is so big, has so much wonderful architecture built on wide tree lined avenues. Being big there is so much to do all the time. I think the title of "The city that never sleeps" should be taken from New York and given to Buenos Aires. I guess its not called the Paris of Latin America for no reason.

Small City: Salta, Argentina

Sight: Salar De Uyuni
Quite simply, they blow you away. The sheer scale of the world's largest salt flats along with the uniqueness of a land made out of salt just blew my mind. Seeing white for as far as the eye can see, and travelling for hours and this not changing is just weird, but in a great way. Even when we left the salt flats, the mountains, lakes and natural landscape on our 3 night/4 day trip was amazing and one of the higlights of my trip.

Food (Non Steak): Mendoza, Argentina

Steak: Cordoba, Argentina

Beer: Quilmes, Argentina

Hostel: The Milhouse Hostel, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Journey: Buenos Aires, Argentina to Iguacu Falls, Brazil

Activity: Abseiling, Mendoza, Argentina

Experience: Everything

Worst:
Country: Chile

Big City: Santiago, Chile

Small City: Corumba, Brazil

Sight: Museo De Cultura, Santiago, Chile

Food: Cake Pizza in Tupiza, Bolivia

Steak: Salta, Argentina

Beer: Potosoni, Bolivia

Hostel: Cordoba Hostel

Journey: Santa Cruz to Potosi, Bolivia

Activity: Wine Tour, Mendoza, Argentina

Experience: Almost missing flight to San Francisco

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Stupidiest Thing I Did: Almost missing a flight
See Above

Luckiest Thing: Being woken at the gate before my flight left

Biggest Mistake: Only spending 1 day at Iguacu Falls

Total Distance Travelled

The total distance that I travelled on planes alone totalled an amazing 44,940km (27,924 miles). Thats excluding all of Bolivia where I travelled exclusively by train, bus and jeep. Thats at least another couple of thousand kilometres.

I arrived at this figure by using Great Circle Mapper which I found on Dave's Rants. You can see another version of my path around the globe and the breakdown of my itinerary here.

Show's Over!

It is with great sadness that my misguided travels are now officially over. Finito. Over. Terminated. Since my last post which was a few weeks ago in Santa Cruz, California nothing major happened. On Saturday 25th June, my friend Kellie and I went to San Francisco and stayed the night because my flight was at 12.20pm the following day and to travel from Santa Cruz that morning wouldnt have been pretty. Besides, we got to be in San Francisco for Gay Pride weekend! We didnt see much gayness around though, well nothing more than usual.

In San Francisco (never to be called San Fran or Frisco by the way) we just wandered around for a few hours and got something to eat. We got absolutly amazing clam chowder in a bread bowl that was just fantastic. We ate it outside in the absolutely freezing weather, but so did many others. Honestly, if it wasnt for the fact its San Francisco, people wouldnt tolerate it and eat outside.

We also hopped on the cable cars, which were actually helpful in where we wanted to go and not just a touristy thing to do. Piece of advice, if you want to go on a cable car, dont queue up for about 2 hours like the other fools at the start or the end of the line, just walk to the first stop and hop on. Why people wait for so long to get on when they can get on straight away is beyond me.

Other than that, it was a fairly uneventful last few days. I made my flight no problem and got an emergency row seat. While the leg room was great, the fact its next to the toilets would make me consider not going for the seat again. People tended to gather around and just bother me while the stretched their legs or waited for the toilets. On American Airlines they say on the PA not to congregate by the toilets, but they dont on United. One particular group of asians, Indian I think just stood around for ages. I mean like an hour. It didnt really bother me as I just kicked them if they got too close as I stretched my legs which gave them the message, but I listened to my iPod too. But for a woman sitting behind me it was too much. She got up and told them to leave, which they did pretty smartly!

I had my luggage checked right through from San Francisco to Cork and thankfully they arrived, although minus my backpack cover. The lady at the check in desk warned me that it will get ripped off, but I decided to leave it on. Guess she was right though.

I didnt manage to sleep any bit on the way home which was annoying, but I made up for it when I got home. I slept for about 7 hours when I got back form 1pm to 8pm. I then went to sleep at about 3am and slept right through until about 10pm the following night. That night I slept nothing which was annoying. For pretty much the next week I alternated from sleeping for 16/18 hours to 1/2 hours.

It took me about a full week to actually unpack my bags. I think I wanted to avoid acknowledging the fact I was home by not unpacking. But its done now, and the show is most definitely over...... for the meantime anyway!