Remember when I talked about trips?

 I've not talked about places I've been visiting and I though it might be good to do so (or remove the Trip part of my blog name).

So, this past year I've travelled quite a lot. To summarise, I've been to Granada, Berlin, Andorra, Montreal, Tolouse and Edinburgh. To some of these I went with my partner, and others I went with my son too. So I think I'll talk about these trips just a bit each, since most of them were short trips 2-4 days long, apart from the Canada one. 

First, Granada. It's my second time there, but the first time with my son. We didn't plan it like that but we went during Easter, so we managed to be there during processions. We ended up not seeing any because the risk of rain cancelled all the ones we were close to, but still we could experience the atmosphere a bit.

Granada is very beautiful, not too big but with lots of amazing corners, like the small neighbourhood with views to Alhambra or the old centre, or the Alhambra itself of course. We just walked around but we did visit the Science Museum, and have to say it's a very good museum, really worth going there. The food was amazing although way too much, in plenty of places we just ordered drinks and got enough food with tapas that we were full when the main dish arrived. It was curious to live the party atmosphere related to the processions, even if we didn't see any, and honestly it reminded me so much of Blasphemous and how its iconography is all based on living in Andalucia and made me realise how gore is the Catholic church in general. 

Then, in May, my partner and I went to Berlin. It was our first time there, and it's a place I've been curious about for a long time now. The experience was quite good, we had amazing sunny days for Berlin, and we managed to walk around the city quite a lot. The story around the city was very curious, especially everything related with the wall. I have to say I was a bit disappointed with the USA-centric propaganda with the whole thing. I mean, of course what was done there by communist rulers was horrible, but the texts explaining the history behind the wall talked about all the atrocities the USSR had done around the world and then just mentioned like in passing "oh yeah, and there were some little wars in Vietnam and Cambodia and such with Kissinger behind it, plus USA helped these nice freedom fighters in Afghanistan, nothing important related to any of these to talk about". These omissions, I feel, taint the comments about human rights and such, feels very hypocritical, and puts in doubt any historical accuracy of what is presented(if they are not reporting atrocities made by USA in the same period in other places of the world too, who's to tell they're saying anything truthful in general??)

The city felt very nicely connected, very orientated to walking and moving around, and it was curious that most typical food tended to be kebabs and such. We couldn't leave without trying Mustafa's kebab, and it was really amazing, very tasty. We didn't experience the night-life though, and this is something I'm still curious about, I have to say. 

In June we three did a short trip to Andorra. It was the first time there for my partner and my son didn't remember the last time much, he was very little still by then. Andorra has amazing mountains and hikes, but you need to be in very good shape. We were not in very good shape, but still managed to take a nice route that went around several high mountain lakes, very beautiful, although we ended up very tired. We also tried to look at the stars since there are several places in there with very little artificial light, but since it  was summer it was hard to wait till it was pitch black and didn't caught the full milky way view that is so impressive. We also visited a bit a few towns around, but they're very little and we were more interested in the mountain views anyway.

In August we visited Montreal, my partner's brother lives there with his wife and children. We already had been there in 2022. It was a family visit but we managed to do a bit of tourism too. Montreal feels very european for a Canadian city, there are walk-able neighbourhoods and nice corners that reminded me as well of similar streets we found in Berlin, with cute shops and cafes and such. However there's also suburbs, of course, and even if you can live nicely in there and people have lots of money, I cannot help but feel I wouldn't be able to live there comfortably, where going to buy bread requires a 20-minute car drive there and back. Reminds me that this is the result of asshole car companies pushing for this and it makes me mad. 

Apart from that, nature there is amazing and we managed to do a couple of trips to some close mountain ranges, very beautiful. We also went to Ottawa, the capital, and managed to do a short little visit around this other city, that also felt European because of it's old government buildings and the Canadian parliament, resembling a bit the British parliament. Canada in August feels very green and nice, even if it does rain a lot, and it seems like a very nice place to live (till you remember what's the weather like in December). 

In October my partner and I visited Tolouse. The first time we were in Tolouse was in 2023 and it was accidental, we were stranded on our way back to Barcelona from Paris because of a train track issue. They woke us up in the middle of the night, made us go down, and didn't offer any alternatives, so in the end my parents helped and picked us up. We were tired and sleepy and in a bad mood, and even then it felt like the city was very beautiful. So we went back this October to properly visit it, and we really loved it. 

The small streets with the clay bricks, the channels and rivers, the food (omg the food, the streets had an amazing smell of amazing food), the giant Minotaur, Spider and Naked Scorpion-Woman....ah yes, quite by accident we went at the same time they were doing a street opera with giant mechanical monsters moving around the city. It was accidental and amazing. We actually didn't catch them moving much, because they didn't tell you where they were or at what times they moved, you had to walk around and be lucky, but we managed to catch them a few times, and it was an extra-nice detail, also because they had closed street traffic when doing this, so we could walk more freely around the centre. Really loved this city and we ended up so full of amazing food....

Finally in November we went to Edinburgh with my son. My partner's cousin from Hong Kong was visiting family at the time in there, so we arranged to meet. We took the chance to visit it too, and I re-did some of the tours I did before (it was my second time there), but with me telling my partner and my son a bit about the history of the city. Edinburgh is very very beautiful and medieval, very green and humid too of course, and quite cold, but beautiful. I have to say though that the centre feels too tourist and starts to feel very....artificial, very polished for tourists. 

We did visit the cemeteries, the hills and the castle and old-town, although we didn't enter any museum nor guided tour or anything. We ate too much greasy food though and ended up a bit indigested, but we tried the haggis and liked it.

And this is my 2024 trips. I realize I didn't talk yet about my 2023 trips, which includes Paris, Hong Kong and Taiwan, but hopefully in another post soon I can talk about that^^.

Repeating Andorra and Amsterdam

So in December, thanks to the holidays, shifts and vacation days I could not take before, I didn't work at all.

Since December 1st until January 7th I had vacations. So that was very nice.

I spent most of it in Barcelona with a close friend that was visiting, and it was pretty awesome. However, I did a couple of trips worth mentioning.

First, during the first week, we all went to Andorra. Not sure if I mentioned before, but Andorra is this little country on the Pirinees, quite isolated, where people go to ski in winter mostly. Other seasons it has amazing trails and mountains, but in winter it's like a huge ski resort. So we went to spend some time there.

The place was nice and we had fun, but the previous time I had visited was in summer and it was soo much better, because of the lack of people. Andorra is pretty tiny and in the middle of huge mountains, so the cities, the streets, the roads, etc, are rather small. The main road has one lane in plenty of sections. The towns are narrow and steep. So, the moment it's a bit overcrowded, massive lines are formed everywhere and it's really hard to move, to park, to do anything really...

The place we were staying in was really good, and what we visited was nice, but as a driver the feeling I got was that for most of the trip I was stuck in the car or having to keep controlling the gears and waiting for cars to move, in steep narrow roads. It was a bit stressful.

We did manage to ski, and this time I tried skis. The snowboard last time was a bit frustrating, I didn't manage to control it at all, so this time I tried the skis, with no class or anything just to see how it was. After the experience I can say that it's harder to brake, which means it's more dangerous, but at the same time it was easier to grasp some basics and I managed to go down with them as I wanted, so that was really good. I have to say though that the boots were horrible and hurt a lot, but oh well. Actually after this trip I went back to another mountain and finally managed to control better the snowboard, and I think using skis also helped to understand better how to move around snow in general.

The tracks were pretty amazing, and the mountains looked really pretty, but also it was not that cold nor there was a lot of snow, which is normal for the time of the year.

Apart from skiing we visited the towns, went to caldea (the local spa, very nice ) and enjoyed our time there, it's just that we spent a lot of it on the car.

Special mention to the trip back, which was nightmarish thanks to stupid Spanish border control just allowing one lane to go out, which means a big big traffic jam before reaching that point, for kilometers and kilometers.

So, after Andorra, which was more like a family trip, I went to Amsterdam (which was not).

I've been to Amsterdam 2 times before this one. The first one was with my high school and it was a...mind-opening trip, let's say. It was really awesome and we had tons of fun. Also, the high school banned trips to Amsterdam afterwards, a clear sign of a good trip :p . After this one, I went back there with some Erasmus people while I was in Sweden, and at that time it felt weird and not as fun, but it was ok.

Anyway Amsterdam always felt really beautiful, really friendly and with a special magic atmosphere of freedom somehow, so when deciding what to visit someone proposed this city and I loved the idea.

It was my third time and I was not disappointed. The streets and channels, the little houses that cannot be made very tall, the Christmas lights, the atmosphere, it was beautiful. We just walked around without visiting anything special, and just enjoying  the city, and it was pretty awesome. We were staying in a very centric and cosy place, and we ate and drank and just relaxed, without hurries. It was really cold though, but its normal for these dates too.

One of the nights we went out with a local friend and it was one of the best nights I've had in a long time. We first spend time at his place, then a little walk on the red light district (he lives there so we just walked around his house), and then went to a weird club that had an underground area, dark and foggy and with threatening electronic music...the visuals were like something out of Silent Hill, and the music was electronic but dark and heavy and thick. It was spectacular and we had a lot of fun. We left late, and just then it started snowing, adding to this eerie feeling that was great

It was so good that we'd definitely like to go back (but when it's warmer please).

Exploring Buenos Aires

I have some trips in the backlog, so I'll start with this one that I did in September/October. I was in Argentina in the Iguazu area only, so I consider this to be the first time I really visited.

This time I went to Buenos Aires, for a month, to help with the Youth Olympics.

For starters, in this trip I was working, and because there were not enough people I worked a lot. I only had 1 single free day every 4 or 5, which means that this free day you need to do a lot of things together that you could distribute better if you had a full “weekend” or 2 days in a row. Also, this meant I would only visit the city, a trip further away would be complicated. And there was one more thing, one of my best friends was working there and I was going to visit her too and do things together, which means less time overall to do touristic things.

Nevertheless, I managed to get some impressions from this city and country and to see a bit of the things that were around me.

Buenos Aires seems…European. Maybe it´s the architecture or how the streets are organised, but the centre of the city reminded me of Madrid, or Paris a bit maybe, and also some Eastern European cities. It looked very different from Rio, but then again, I did not visit any other big city in Brazil, so maybe it´s not that different. The only thing is that you do notice the poverty, in the fact that buildings and streets look dirtier, more abandoned, less maintained.

I was staying in the centre of the city, in a massive square that contained the parliament, and where there were daily protests for any topic. However, this was the norm, so I never felt the protests were a problem or disturbed me. The hotel itself was like 2 minutes from work, which was great because I had morning shifts starting at 6:30. However at this day and age, there´s a thing that any hotel that wants to be respected must have: good internet coverage while in the room, be it cable or wifi. Sadly, my room didn’t have. The wifi lost signal plenty of times or it was too weak to use, to the point of not being able to send whatsapp messages. Especially when travelling this is a big deal breaker, and even after warning about it they said they could not do anything.

Anyway, being so centric allowed me to be near several nice spots, one of them being the same square I mentioned. It was big and usually sunny and felt quite relaxing. I also was at walking distance from the Obelisk, a big monument in the centre where there was celebrations and protests, and that looked nice too.

Apart from those scenic places, I did the tourism I enjoy more, which is to just randomly walk around and get a feel of the city.

As I said the centre reminded me of certain cities in Europe, but there was a lot more poverty, and you could see clearly homeless people. However, you didn’t feel the insecurity of Rio. Later I learned that this might have been not entirely correct (I heard shootings, twice, once right next to the office while we were on the roof of the building and some coworkers saw the shooter shoot against a house and leave), but in Rio a lot of the homeless people looked like on drugs, while here they just looked homeless.

Close to this hotel there was a big street filled with theatres. A friend that also lived in the city meet with me one day and showed me this area, and it was shocking the amount of shows and actors and events that were on display. I had heard lots of Spanish actors and musicians toured south-america in general a lot more than Spain, but before seeing this I may not have understood the true scope of such things in Argentina at least. Maybe in Barcelona or Madrid there are as many theatres, but in here the way they accumulated so many in such a small area was quite surprising. A bit further there was another beautiful section, Puerto Madero, next to the sea. I saw it at night, and with the lights it had it was very nice. 

My friend lived in an area called Palermo, so when we coincided we walked around there too. This felt more similar to Ipanema actually, had amazing restaurants and bars and was less centric-looking and more relaxed, very nice. We went a couple of times to a nearby restaurant strip that had very nice food and amazing cocktails, and we could see the night atmosphere, with people ready to go out. However, with the limited time we had, we didn’t really go out while in there, or at least no to clubs: It seems most places in Argentina were just playing “cumbia” music, and after seeing some examples we agreed we both despised it, especially her considering she had spent there some months already before me. Only one night we tried to go out, and the place we tried was busy with a private event and told us anyway we had to dress up more nicely, meaning a suit and a dress (and after that we hated it and would not like to go back there).

We worked too much these days to do much more, but we did have the chance to use a bit the fact that we work for such events, and we visited several stadiums around the Sarmiento park and Tecnopolis. This area was used to hold several competitions, and it looked curious. I'm unsure how Tecnopolis is used normally, seemed to me some type of science museum/exposition area, but it had funny statues and structures. Of course we had full access and we skipped queues and restricted areas, which makes you feel a bit special and good^^. This event is smaller than a normal Olympic of course, but it was organised in a way that there were plenty of people following the different competitions and it had a very nice and friendly atmosphere.

All in all, the month passed too fast because of work, and didn't get to see much, but what I saw was nice. It did had its problems though, of bad service sometimes, bad taxi drivers, massification in the centre, poverty, some lack of general maintenance of public things and other issues, but for a visit it felt like a relaxed place and I enjoyed it (when I had free time).

Ah! I cannot finish without mentioning a couple of things: Yes, the food was...weird. The beef they have there is really really good, but the cooking style is a bit weird, a bit too well-done for my taste. And they have a lot of fat food, heavy, with butter and sauces and oil. Or sweet, that's the other thing, they eat a lot of sweet things in the morning (facturas), and the alfajores and dulce de leche are awesome but they're digestive bombs (that didn't stop me from coming back with close to 6kg of the things). And the last thing: Argentina and elevators had a weird relationship. Lots of them are old, badly maintained and fragile-looking. I was stuck in an elevator, twice, in this month. It has never happened before in my life I think and here it happened twice. One of the times we even had to get out forcing the doors open while it was stuck between two floors, which was a bit scary but also a bit funny.

It was a short and busy visit overall, but I'd be curious to see more some other time if there's another chance. 

Relaxing in Gold Coast

After Korea, I worked for a month more or less in Gold Coast, Australia, for the 2018 Commonwealth Games.

Gold Coast is a coastal city in east Australia, close enough to the equator that it has tropical weather and with what is basically a huge continuous beach all along the coast. I went there at the end of "Summer"/beginning of "Autumn", which means it was hot and sunny and also rainy sometimes, but like in brutally intense and short showers.

What I mean is that after a cold long Korean winter, it was paradise. It was warm, calm, beautiful, and also very much occidental. It had it's peculiarities and it was not perfect, but it felt pretty much great.

We were staying in this area of tourist apartments, that had a nice pool and sun. The apartments were quite good and we were close to the tourist going out area, Surfer's Paradise (that's how the neighbourhood is called). This area was also next to the beach, although there were nicer beach sections further away.

Work-wise, we were busy and doing things, but because of the scope of the project and the previous work done for Pyeongchang, it was a lot less tense, the workload was smaller and we didn't have to do night shifts, just afternoon shifts. This means there was a lot of time to visit, enjoy the sun and relax before and after work.

The city has a region called Surfer's paradise because the whole region is ideal for surfing. There are very strong and big waves all across the coast, and inside the water the current is crazy strong. I swam several times in the sea and it was really funny, I always kept myself in areas where I touched the ground but it was fun to let waves crash against you and push you away, or notice how the current was also almost making you fall. The only thing is that the allowed swimming areas were very small, marked between two special flags. This was to avoid surfers hitting you and have a very clear supervised area, where you could be very safe. However it felt sometimes like a waste, to have so much beach unattended just for surfers.

This area might have sharks and other dangerous animals, and we were told not to swim at dawn nor on sunset, but the reality was that it was pretty safe and most people mentioned it had been decades since last time someone had been bitten. We still didn't swim outside the morning and early afternoon, but also because it was the period when the sun was bright and nice, of course. There were jellyfish and some people that I was with got stung by them, once right next to me, but I was lucky and escaped without touching one^^.

The area had also other curious animals, like ibis, big birds with big curvy beaks, or flying foxes at night (which were quite impressive since it's basically a very very big bat). We visited a local zoo (it's called wildlife sanctuary but it felt like a zoo, which can be pitiful), where you could see kangaroos and koalas (they're from this region) and other local animals. Koalas looked really cute of course, while kangaroos where actually in some open area just sunbathing and you could get close to them and even feed them. I did not see any giant spider, but I did have a green jumping spider in my kitchen for some time (it was brightly green and I checked what could it be. The bite is supposed to be painful like a bee sting but that was it, and this spider was just on my ceiling and not bothering, so I left it there)

One thing I enjoyed very much was the possibility, finally, to have fresh orange juices in bars and cafes, while being for example next to a beach area with sun and some fresh air. I did not drink this in a long time since in Korea fruits are scarce, expensive and not juicy, and then it was not that common to have a good natural juice.

I also tried some local things, like the famous vegemite (which is weird as hell and I'm not sure I like) and I had some burgers and good meat, plus I tried kangaroo sausages (and they were really tasty and apparently rather healthy). Around the city there were some public barbecues and you could cook food in there in a park or next to the beach, which was really really nice, and I ate barbecue a couple of times, even if I'm not that fond of it.

I met with friends and other people and went out or visited different places with them, like Coolangatta (an extremely beautiful and calm beach), Snapper Rocks (natural sea pools made by rocks, quite fun to notice the waves arriving in them), Burleigh Heads (another beautiful beach), Broadbeach and Mermaid Beach, some small natural park north of Surfer's Paradise and other such places. The city had newly-installed bikes that you could get an app to unblock them and use them, like Barcelona's bicing or the Itau bikes in Rio, but available to anyone for quite a low price, and we did several small trips around with them, which was quite a good way to see around and visit nearby places.

Another place that was impressive was the SkyPoint Observation Deck, the tallest building of the city that had a floor where you could check the views from up there and had an activity where you actually went outside with a security belt that tied you to the building. It was really beautiful and I was lucky to do it during a clear day, allowing for great sunny pictures and also letting me see extremely far away all around the building, checking the huge beach and seeing the waves and the currents underneath it, hypnotically moving far below.

We also went out, mostly around Surfer's Paradise. The area has a very British approach to bars and alcohol, and places were asking for an ID where it was clear what was your date of birth, sometimes only allowing it if you had your passport since others were not in english.  The process was very uncomfortable and sometimes ridiculous, because even if you went out for a smoke and they saw you, they had to check again. Related to that, one night in particular got me really really angry: Good Friday, the Friday that is a holiday during Easter. That day, bars and restaurants were only serving alcohol if you were eating, by law, and places that did not serve food (like clubs) were directly closed until the end of the day, 12 at night. I found this to be ridiculous, to implement such a religious law for everybody instead of letting you do whatever you wanted. I knew Australia had problems regarding racism and immigration and that it was a very conservative place, but this stupid limitation forced upon everyone really pissed me off and was a big stain in my opinion of the place, which was rather good with no complaints until that point, even with the ID controls they were implementing.

Of course since it has British culture, it was normal to have dinner early, drink early and go out until rather early, so even when we went out we didn't stay until very late, and then several days we could visit things the next day or even go to work if we had an afternoon shift. There were a few exceptions to closing early though, and one of them was the Casino that we visited last day. Usually I would not go to a casino, but the locals insisted it was a known and common place to go out at night without worrying about closing times since it was always open. The day I visited I saw this was the case, but still felt a bit surreal and strange, to have like a "club" area next to betting and slot machine areas.

All in all, I really enjoyed the experience and loved the place, and it was quite a necessary relaxation after Korea's project. I didn't get to visit places a bit further away from there, like Byron bay or the great barrier reef, but I'm still very happy with the trip^^. 

Last Bit of Korea

So I'm finally out of South Korea and spending some days in Gold Coast, in Australia. The Australian experience deserves another post, but I'd like to talk about Korea a bit more before that...

When I left, I felt relieved. The last period of my stay hasn't been easy, and I've grown pretty tired of the place. I think that's because a number of things that I noticed and I just lost patience over them.

The main problem that currently South Korean society needs to overcome is its deeply racist and sexist roots. Most issues come from this core idea. Not unlike Russia, the Korean men are celebrated and considered more important than women, and you can see that everywhere. Women are not taken as seriously, are not thought as smart as men, and are though to belong taking care of the house most of the time. At the same time men are pampered and protected from birth, and thanks to its good economy a lot of parents are directly buying apartments and houses for their sons. There's also a strong patriotic undercurrent, with the clear feeling that Koreans are superior, especially to people with darker skin complexion. Added to the situation there's also the fact that Korean culture has a very hierarchical structure based on your age, where being old automatically makes you wiser and with more authority, and others needs to serve you.

All this combines into a poisonous mix where there's a lot of men with a self-inflated ego and sense of worth in middle/upper-management positions, that are actually utterly useless when performing the most basic tasks. These people are rude, sexists, discriminate against foreigners and are a perfect example of the Dunning-Kruger effect. If you're familiar with Sense8, Sun's brother would be a perfect example. They're good at misplacing blame and trying to involve others on their own faults, since it's unthinkable that they are the ones that should actually improve, being as they are the culmination of evolution on this planet. Another good example is the train company manager from Train to Busan.

The thing here is that because of the hierarchical nature of society, there's a lot of structures and attitudes that protect this behaviour and these types of people. Other societies, including the occidental one, overprotect their men, but society is more open to discuss and argument and counter comments no matter who says them, while in this society since the one saying it is an older man, he automatically is right and worthy of respect.

In this atmosphere it's not nice to work, or to live for that matter.

I have to say that this also causes that women tend to be 1000 times more competent, since they need to prove themselves time and time again to reach similar positions than men, and it's really noticeable how much better they are at pretty much everything.

Of course not everybody is like this, but enough people fulfil these patterns to be noticeable. In general, you can notice that people more open, that have travelled more, that have learned other languages, are better and don't fit these patterns. However there's a problematic number that still do.

Regarding the patriotism and racism, during the games you could notice one thing: These games were meant for Koreans. That's all good and nice, but these types of event tend to try to include all the world, and a lot of visitors mentioned they felt lost or abandoned when it comes to proper information about transport and timetables, among other things.

In general this situation made things a bit harder and you could notice everybody in this place was being drained because of these issues.

However, I also have to say that I've had really good moments in there of course. It was amazing when you met people more open, and it was really great to interact in these situations. Special mention to places like Malmi, Warehouse, Rush or Bon Voyage, restaurants/bars/clubs where you ended up almost being part of the place, where we could put music, control what happened, organise parties or just ask to cook one last meal for you even when the kitchen was closed. We survived and had fun thanks to such places and the people in there, and I'll miss that part for sure. And I hope my Korean friends forgive my previous comments, but I'd include them in this latter section as the people that made it all better :).

In this period after Japan I should also mention Busan, the second biggest city of South Korea, situated in the cost. I managed to visit it for a few days, and I have to say I really enjoyed the place. It felt more...cohesive, if that's the best way to put it, than Seoul. It felt like a more relaxed place, with beautiful beaches and parks, nice neighbourhoods with plenty of bars and restaurants, and in general a calmer attitude for being still a big city. We stayed next to a going out area purely by accident, but it was a nice addition and it was quite enjoyable overall.

Last but not least, I did manage to go back to Seoul other times, and one thing I discovered there is Hongdae, a neighbourhood close to Hongik University.

Same way that I said in previous posts that Seoul felt just like any other city, this region felt special. Maybe it was just the moment when I visited it, but it's true that this area is more "artsy", more underground/alternative, and I really liked it. I spent only 2 weekends/nights in there in this year and a half that I've been in Korea, but they were almost perfect stays and nights. In both cases all the restaurants, all the bars, all the food and drinks and people and music and atmosphere were pretty much perfect. I even found an extremely nice club (Club FF) with live rock music first and then a nice mixture of songs that allowed for a great environment to spend a night out, while at the same time being a place that is not very crowded and leaves you room enough to enjoy it while not feeling you're alone in there. I really loved Hongdae, and it may be extreme to go back to Seoul for just this area, but I would not mind that at all and would consider it.

I also have to say that after the train from Gangneung to Seoul opened, this city felt much closer. For my goodbye, I took advantage of that and escaped to Hongdae for just one night, one of the two I mentioned. I'm really happy that my Seoul goodbye was in there, almost perfect again, making me feel I was leaving a great place and countering some of the issues this stay inflicted on all of us.

Summer in Japan

It´s been some time since then, but this summer we spent 2 weeks in Japan, taking advantage that it was close to South Korea, and before I can get back on track to writing sometimes (work and schedules have been crazy for a very long time now) I wanted to explain a bit about that.

We've never been to Japan before, but it always has been an attractive destination for us, of course. As anime/Manga fans, technology fans and just travel enthusiasts, there's a lot of things that make Japan interesting for us. However, it's an expensive place and quite far, so until now we had not really organised anything to visit it. 

So this summer there was a break between two intense work periods and we booked a flight, and some places to stay. We decided to visit Osaka and Kyoto first, and then decide from there but finish in Tokyo. For Tokyo, when we talked with our friend Sara who lives there, she offered her house (for which we're really grateful, plus it was nice to know we'd see her).

The flight to Osaka had issues becasue of typhoons, and we had to reroute to Tokyo at the last minute. That was annoying, but we managed to grab the Shinkansen (High speed train) to Osaka right after the flight and we were ok. 

The first impressions we got from this arrival was that Japan is a lot more prepared for tourists/non-japanese speakers than China or Korea. It was really easy to get all the necessary information, and at any time there were plenty of indications. That is not to say that it was very very easy, since Tokyo, even just form the airport, seemed to have quite a complex railway map....

The shinkansen is like any other speed train, but it is amazing how often they pass, the one going to Osaka takes 3 hours but there was one every 5-10 minutes. We arrived to Osaka and it was raining,  of course,  but the typhoon felt mild,not sure if it was but it felt just like rain. 

After arriving to the station we had to get to our apartment, but Osaka also had a very well defined subway line and it was easy to get there. The place we got was close to the center and it was quite nice, it had all we needed, plus some touches that are very Japanese, like the sliding doors. We arrived quite late and destroyed from the trip, and we just went to sleep.

Next day we started visiting Osaka and our impressions were good. The city felt very curious, with shopping streets covered with glass/plastic roofs connecting the buildings, protecting us from possible bad weather. There were lots of people of course, and lots of flashy thingies lile giant king crab figures,including movement, in front of restaurants and other shops. The streets were narrow, and not many cars were moving around. Cars in japan are really curious, since there's a surprising amount of very square,box like cars. They looked very strange for us, but they seemed popular. Also there was a lot of people just using bikes or walking.

In this city we visited the aquarium, which was really impressive. Without considering the morality of it, it had whale sharks and other really big types of sharks and rays, and it was quite amazing to see at such close distances. We also visited an owl café,  which was pitiful but the diferent animals that were there were very cute. We also visited some playgrounds for Elay, and some small attractions, and in general he loved it.

We also went for dinner one night to a shabushabu restaurant,and we had special beef. I don't think it was kobe beef,but I have to say it was incredibly delicious. The beef seemed to melt in the mouth, and it had an amazing taste, very noticeable without being too strong,and it was also very tender. In general we also tried different places to eat, it was not always easy but we tried very good Japanese food in there. We didn't eat sushi though,that was harder to find (apart from places that seemed too expensive or touristic).

We really liked our stay in Osaka,and next we would visit Kyoto. It was around this time that,when planning what to do next,we saw that we were visiting things in a vacational period for Japan and it was hard to book places, so we decided to go to Tokyo sooner than we thought and move around from there. Sara had no problem with that, which was perfect for us,plus there is a lot of things to do in and around Tokyo anyway. We also decided to buy aa special train ticket that woild allow us to travel with no limit using most trains,including shinkansen, for a week. After deciding that, we checked what to visit in Kyoto.

Kyoto is pretty close to Osaka,and it had a more traditional feeling to it,being also famous for temple areas and some old streets. We spent only 2 days in there,but we also liked it very much. We went to one of the temples, we're not fans of them but what we visited was nice and had curious details. We also managed to walk around the bamboo forest,that we loved, and through some old districts with very traditional -looking small wooden houses all around. Kyoto felt somehow older than Osaka, with more traditional places,but we enjoyed it. 

All these days we were warned it would rain,and in the end it was sunny and hot and we kept finishing the day totally exhausted, but we kept liking what we were seeing^^.

On our last Kyoto day, that we needed to move to Tokyo at night, we decided to visit the famous deer Park in Nara, also close by. We went by train, and it was again easily indicated since lots of tourists wanted to visit it. I thought we may see some deer or need to walk a bit for them,but quite soon we started seeing grass areas full of them. They were quite calm and quite used to tourist, also clearly asking for food since you could buy special crackers for them. Of course, we bought crackers,and it was quite a funny experience. The deer when they see you have some surround you and try to eat and nibble at your clothes and have no shame whatsoever. It's even scary because they keep surprising you when you don't expect them touching your rear pocket and similar,but it was a funny moment in general. We spent a very nice and calm day feeding the deer and visiting a bit of the park, but we were mostly focused on the deer^^.

After this,we went to Tokyo. Well,actually Sara's house was in Chiba, but Chiba is part of the big metropolitan area that Tokyo is part of. This area is monstrous, full of people and with a big train and subway network that is sometimes hard to navigate. In Tokyo we spent the rest of the days, but travelling around.

On the next days we did several activities. One of the first ones was to visit the Hitachi Seaside Flower Park, which was not in a very colourful season but was really nice and calm, easy to move around with a rental bike, and quite beautiful nevertheless. There were some very funny-looking round plants, for example, that seemed to bounce with the wind. The area had also attractions, and in general we spent a nice day in there. The only problem was to get back, since there was no information in English and in general people didn't speak much of it, so we were not sure exactly about the time we could take the bus, and we used one that took forever to reach the station, since it went all around the place. It was much cheaper than the first one we used to get there though.

Another day we visited a bit of Yokohama, another city in the Tokyo Metropolitan area. Well, Yokohama alone is huge, so we visited just a small coastal area with some shopping malls and other attractions. We used again the Shinkansen to get there, and we had the luck to reach a station where only a few types of them stopped. Because of that, you could see the ones that pass every few minutes going through the central tracks, without stopping, at full speed, and it was hypnotic how fast they went. Yokohama itself looked pretty modern, and we visited the Mitsubishi museum, which had interesting machines and games, like a flight simulator where you needed to take off and land.

We wanted to see mount Fuji, so we used another day to do this very long round trip that used a lot of different trains and transports. However we were unlucky, and all the trip that day there was an intense fog covering everything. We did use plenty of different vehicles and what little we could see looked really nice. It was also eerie sometimes, how little you could see, making this nice effect for example with cable cars, where the cables disappear and it seems you´re floating in the middle of nowhere...

The rest of the days we stayed in Tokyo per se, and visited a bit of the city, although it's such a huge place it's hard to cover much. We visited Akihabara twice, and it was quite an experience. Akihabara is the "geekiest" neighbourhood, with lots of electronic shops plus also lots of anime/manga shops, weird bars (like maid bars, or gundam bars, or such other things), old arcades, some erotic shops and just a mixture of geeky things and toys of all kinds. The place is frankly overwhelming and full of people, and there's just so many things that are curious or nice that I basically got blocked and didn't really buy anything almost,just a couple of presents for other people and a few practical things. I really enjoyed the retro video-game shops, but again, I ended up not buying anything anywhere, which is a shame but oh well...I was really just blocked from too much choice and things.

We also visited a theme park area in the centre, which was a lot of fun and Elay loved it. It was very nice to go up to rides with him, and the whole day was tiring but nice. It was also good that there were not many people, and we didn't have to queue much (we still had to queue, but considering how many people live in there, it was not much).

We had some nice evenings with Sara, tried good sake (still not a big fan but well, it was definitely different), and ate quite well (although there's not as much sushi as one would thing). Finally during the last day we saw a very old friend, Lisa, one of the first persons I met when I was in the Erasmus in Sweden and that we had not seen in years. It was very nice to have the chance to talk a bit again and spend an afternoon with her.

All in all, it was quite an experience, and we really liked the trip and our stay there. Definitely not ruling out going back some other time^^.

Finally Seoul

In theory part of this blog was to talk about trips, but in the end I keep making rants^^'. Oh well...

I wanted to explain that, finally, after a long time living in South Korea, I have visited Seoul.

Seoul is not that far from Gangneung, but it is at an annoying distance: 3 hours by bus, more or less. 3 hours is enough that going there and back during the same day seems a waste, and therefore it's something to do during a weekend. Thanks to a different number of activities at work, for a long time we didn't have weekends free, and also there was people we knew around here and we didn't feel like organising a trip to Seoul during those moments.

The end result is that my first trip to Seoul happened on May 2017, 7 months after arriving to Korea.

The trip and organisation itself was not as dramatic as it seemed, and it's rather easy. It is a bit expensive, being a big city, but after the initial trauma was over, I´ve been there 2 more times and plan to go back from time to time.

The city itself is huge, and visiting every corner is impossible, but I did manage to see a couple of different neighbourhoods and places. There is a quite wide river that divides it into two sections, connected by bridges but pretty far away form each other. Apart from that, there's lots of hills and little mountains in this terrain. The combined effect is that it feels as if Seoul is just  a combination of little towns linked between themselves with roads and subway.

The subway lines, by the way, are quite good and extensive, and make it easy to move around (which is a great difference from Rio, of course). We didn't use them on our first trip, but we moved around with them on the others.

The city itself has plenty of big streets and buildings, in areas that seem a bit cold, financial-district style....but then you turn a corner a find a small grid of little streets and houses full of bars and restaurants. The result just increases this "island" effect of each city section, the sensation that there are lots of small independent areas interconnected.

One of the most famous places we visited is Itaewon, which is the "tourist" neighbourhood. In there for the first time in South Korea we saw plenty of other foreigners on the streets, and of course lots of clubs and bars. It's a pretty small area for the concentration of locals it has, and since it's on a hill its streets are narrow and very steep. It has a great selection of foods, and after Gangneung we took the chance and ate some occidental things, which were pretty good. Korean food can be nice, but well....

The city also has plenty of shopping malls and shopping streets, and it's populated enough that it does get a bit stressful and crowded in those areas. Still, it is curious to see that between these malls there is still a lot of small food carts and street shops, with very traditional things that seem to clash with the occidental brand shops.

As part of my second visit, I went to a festival called Ultra. It's an electronic music festival, which is not my thing really, but once I was there I loved the atmosphere, and it also allowed me to visit the Olympic Stadium (for 1988 Olympics of course).

It doesn't matter the location, festivals always have this nice feeling around them, of having a big party with lots of people and enjoying the experience. Here it was no different, just with more Koreans and their peculiarities^^. I did see that there is a lot of USA military people around, both in the festival and in Seoul itself, something that is surprising to me (even if it's a known fact). And I can see that USA has a big influence in lots of details, in Seoul and South Korea in general....

All in all, though, Seoul left me with conflicted feelings....

On one side, I feel it lacks a bit of...soul. Identity. I felt it has nothing special to offer, that it's just a city...it's a feeling hard to express, but well, that's my impression. It's not bad at all, it's just...unoriginal? I know, that's too much to ask for to a city, probably. Maybe it's just that it seemed to me, more than a cohesive city, a collection of small towns in a very big area. I'm sorry to my Korean friends for saying that, but that's the impression I got.

On the other side, it is a big international city. After (happily) living in Gangneung for a while, to go back to such a place, full of movement and life and things to do, is refreshing and interesting and exciting. I enjoyed my visits there and I definitely want to go back often while in this project.

Gangneung: Reminiscenses Of Lund

It's been a bit more than a month since I moved to Korea.

I did visit it before, so I already got some ideas about the place, but living here has showed me a bit more of the life here.

And it heavily reminds me of Sweden....or to be fair and more precise, of my particular experiences while in Lund, Sweden.

First of all, most apartments have wooden floors and floor-based heating. This is a small but important detail. Because of this, most apartments also have an entry area where you leave your shoes and jackets. This is rather common in winter areas, but this in Korea is very very similar to the same thing in Sweden, with different tiles and height, to really delimitate that you should not step on the wooden floors with the street shoes. The apartments's style is also familiar, with thick walls and windows, quality details and big living room/kitchen areas, and then one room or more apart, a distribution based on big spaces more than in compartmentalising the floor.

Then of course there's the weather, which is not as cold as north Sweden by far, but it is similar to the weather in the part of Sweden where I lived (although Gangneung is colder than Lund), more temperate but still pretty cold, where it snows during winter. By the way, it snowed already a couple of times, and it was cold enough that it accumulated and lasted for 2-3 days each time, plus in the mornings there were ice layers everywhere. This of course poses problems, especially because I move around with a bike, and I need to be careful about this ice....

Moving around with the bike is also a nice reminder. It's not like I don't move around with a bike in Barcelona, but here in Gangneung the town is small enough to allow using it almost everywhere, while streets and roads are, if not prepared, at least open to the fact that people use bikes around. Adler was also small enough to use a bike, but the reality was that the culture there was unused to this so nobody did it...It is true that Gangneung has way too many cars, and cars are the transport of choice of most people, there's not a lot of bikes going around....but there's some. And again, this is from my point of view, and both here and in Sweden I had similar experiences while using a bike (like going towards some party in a bike, going shopping in a bike, crossing snow with a bike, using a bike while slightly drunk, etc.), in part I guess because it's the two places I've been where it's easy to have your own bike, and it's not stressful.

This brings me to the security thing...I can leave the bike unlocked in the street or just with a locked wheel and I know no one is going to steal it. I love this feeling of security, not even Barcelona has this....here I know I can have my bike to move around and I will probably be fine, and it's not a source of worry. The same applies for using mobiles on the street or having money in the wallet. After Rio, this is incredible and allows me to be a lot more relaxed and calm at any moment.

Internet is also pretty similar, with rather good speeds, although I believe the intercontinental connections and the state censorship that is applied on websites slows traffic down considerably depending on what you're trying to access....

Finally, there's also the social atmosphere. One thing in Korea that is pretty awesome is that all English teachers need to be natives, so from an English-speaking country. This, plus the Olympic travellers, means there's a big group of people from all around the world, even in such a small town. So it feels you're meeting people from lots of places, and because of that there's also a "party" atmosphere, in a way.....I really like this atmosphere, and in other projects there was also a certain feeling like this, but it was usually Olympic-related while here it's more open (well, in the sense that there's also this other group, the English teachers). There's even people who will be happy to meet to play board and card games...

Of course, there's also things that are not similar at all (starting from the population, not many tall and big, blonde, blue-eyed people in the streets here...)

For example, the culture here seems a lot more closed to foreigners and changes, and there are social issues that are light-years behind in Korea compared to Spain (and let's not compare it with Sweden which is more advanced that Spain in plenty of those...). There's a big cult for looks in here, and women are still treated really bad in general...also, work follows a very capitalist model, where you cannot get sick and stay at home to rest (which is worse for the company as well because you're less productive at work and you can get other people sick). SIM cards and phone numbers are ridiculous hard to get. The food is evidently completely different, usually spicy even when they say it's not, or very sweet. There's plenty of dishes with lots of green vegetables, mushrooms and leaves(and rice, of course), and meat is common in dishes but not in big quantities outside barbecue places (and in supermarkets it's expensive). And as I already mentioned, traffic is very car-based, even for small trips that with a bike would be 10 minutes or less, and driving is rather aggressive and chaotic (but well, I was in Russia and Brazil, nothing new or worse than that, really) , with plenty of intersections that are rather badly-designed and cause waits for everyone involved. One surprise I got was that, in general, cars do not respect pedestrians, but they do watch out for them, it's just they don't give way to pedestrians unless they're about to hit them or so...

So yeah, plenty of differences actually, and more I have not mentioned...


Still, the atmosphere has a certain similarity for sure... 

Gangneung: First Contact

So, I’m in Gangneung now:


This is situated in South Korea. I’ll be here until this Friday, and then I’ll come back at the end of November.

South Korea is a very interesting place. After Brazil and Russia, I really wanted to try and live in a country more technologically and socially advanced, just to check the differences and enjoy the better level of live.  We lived very well in Russia, but Adler had plenty of issues. In Brazil, we lived adequately but the problems of the city and the country really affected us, and we managed fine but we would not want to live there for long periods again, we would go back just for tourism and in a while….so, South Korea sounded attractive. The only thing is that my son has started school and after considering this and other variables, we decided that this time I would go alone. This is not the best thing in the world, but just for a year and 3 months and with a total of 5 trips back while being there we thought it would be ok after all…

The trip itself was nothing special after having done plenty of other transoceanic flights, but it’s true that Turkish airlines is really good, nice food and nice movies to watch while flying^^.

The first contact I had with the country was of course in Incheon Airport (Seoul). On the passport control, after scanning mine with a machine, an automatic voice told me in Spanish to put my index fingers in two fingerprint readers. IN SPANISH. After that the check lasted 2 minutes, if that much. This is the first thing I loved.

The second thing I loved was free wifi without registering anywhere. Just connect to the open network and use it….after other airports, this was amazing. The third thing I loved was going to the airport shops and seeing signs about leaving the suitcases outside to not bother people…and people doing so, with suitcases in the corridors, unsupervised, while the owners could not see them. Do you know how that feels, especially after Brazil??

At this point I knew. Whatever happened later, and whatever problem I found in the country, culture or in the project, I was going to love this country….

Since Gangneung is actually pretty far from this airport, I went to the information post. I had been told there was a bus that went directly, so I asked about it. They told me its timetable, which exit to use to get there and what to do and wrote everything in Korean, so no problems there^^.

The bus was pretty awesome, its seats were huge, only 3 per row, soft and comfy. The only problem is that the trip was more than 4 hours…the last 2 felt very long, especially because we got a couple of traffic jams.

During the trip I looked around, but I got a bad day for sightseeing since everything was covered by a low cloud and it was raining. I could see it’s a very green country, but not like Brazil (which is green but clearly tropical, with really huge plants and trees), more like France or Germany, but with different vegetation. There was a surprising amount of agriculture going on, I could see plenty of people working in small fields under the rain, even if it was Sunday. And lots of lights and leds in the road indicating different things, I noticed that too, they seem to love leds and lights….

Gangneung is a coastal city after the mountains where the Winter Games will take place. The mountains themselves are rather low, 700-1000m, but I’m told it snows enough in winter to do snow activities in there. The feeling I got was like a big town or small city, with some main roads but afterwards plenty others with no sidewalk, areas with small houses and not much people or traffic. Unlike the airport, nothing was in English and people don’t really speak it apart from at the office and at the stations (and even then, at the office I’m really surprised by the fact that plenty of people working for Olympics do not speak English well enough to communicate without help, which is not ideal….), so I realized it would not be easy to live there without getting the basics of the language…but I had been warned about it, so it was ok.

The first days were very nice and interesting. The area is very calm,  as I said like a small town, with some particular details that you associate with east-asian culture like plenty of neon lights, (k-)pop, cuteness everywhere, typical school uniforms, some big shopping malls (but it's a town so it's shopping streets full of little shops), very well packaged food even if it’s fruits, extreme politeness, face masks, etc…. It has stuff to do around, with bars and clubs, restaurants, bike paths and parks, and a curiously varied expat community, bigger than usual because in this country English teachers need to be native and there’s plenty of people from abroad teaching.
I found a very small apartment for me on the second day, small but ideal for this period, and it even included a bike (well, “included”, it was the bike of someone that lived there before and left it, and the man renting the place said he was going to throw it away, so instead I’m able to keep it^^) I will be using to move around. I also already ordered some furniture online, which is currently travelling towards it, and in general this first contact went very well.

The only thing it may still cause issues is the food. Food is amazing, similar to Chinese and Japanese, really tasty and healthy…but there’s plenty of things that are spicy, very spicy. And I cannot handle that…so unless I’m with a local or an expat with experience, I go to a place I already know and order the same thing, which may make me bored of the thing fast if I don’t manage to get a wider selection of places…

I’ve also heard that some processes of the burocracy are very very slow, and for example getting a simple SIM card will not be easy…but there’s open wifis with really good speeds everywhere, so it’s not a big concern at the moment….

Anyway, all in all I’m very happy with this new place I’m getting the chance to discover^^

Daily Deadlock

Some time ago it rained a bit. When leaving work I had the option to take a taxi, and I did. I will not make the same mistake another time in a rainy day...

To explain, this is Rio:

In this area there are around 15 million people. And every day, we all need to go to work.

Now, we have two main areas, the rich zones in the south(inside the red areas) and the poor zones in the north:

The poor zones tend to start working earlier,  and they basically go to work to provide services in the rich zones:

The rich zones work concentrates in the centre,  where there is a lot of offices. The centre is considered to be only this:

Now, the thing about Rio is that, do you see these green marked areas? Those are mountains.

And I mean mountains. The green right area's highest point is 700m. In the coast there are 350m and 500m mountains. Basically they sprout from the ground and get high fast, giving Rio this peculiar look:

So, if you check the map again, you'll notice that most central and rich areas are actually surrounded by mountains. As in completely surrounded. No chance in hell to make a superhighway connecting them.

So, we get tunnels or "valleys" of two lanes in each direction. Mostly in these points:

Of course, we cannot forget people coming from other cities to work, which have these entry points too:

Now, check what's the subway line available to help move all these people around these very closed areas with very specific and sparse entry points:

(this is an approximation of the subway, but you get the idea)

So basically most people need to take cars or buses. Of course the rich areas use cars, but the poor areas also have plenty of those.

This results in a daily clusterfuck of epic proportions. People in the south zone may take up to two hours to reach the centre, and 2 more to get back. If you do this in the middle of the night the route takes 20 minutes.

When it rains especially, seeing as how people clearly dissolve under the rain, people that maybe would walk a bit and take buses or metro in a clear day takes car or taxi.

The average time to go from the south rich area in the centre and the actual business centre is 2 hours during rush hour. Outside rush hour it's actually 20 minutes. And when it rains, you just better forget to take the car becasue then moving just from the business centre towards Zona Sul, where Copacabana is, can take already more than one hour....

Escape to Iguazú (II)

After the day in the Brazilian side, we reached the border to Argentina.  The border was weird, with two big areas, one for each country, where they could check passports and a shop in the middle. There was a bridge that had the point where the two countries met, and I saw pictures before if that bridge as if there were no barriers between them, when the fact is that the barriers are before that point.

We didn't get stopped in the Brazilian side, which was a bit strange, but well, we thought that was normal for people going away. In Argentina we had no problem and they just stamped out passports, and then we got to the hotel using a bus to wars the city.

The Argentinian city was similar to Brazil,  but with some differences. It looked as poor in a way, but a little more touristic as well, with plenty of advertisements about hotels, and with streets slightly more pedestrian - friendly than in Brazil. It also looked. .well, red. The terrain had red soil, and there was plenty of red bricks as well.

This hotel was much much worse than the Brazilian one. It was more like a hostel, a small room with lots of dust, almost no electric plugs, no air conditioning, very poor wifi coverage...

I did not do the reservation, so I don't know how many stars the hotel advertised. As long as they indicated 2 or less I guess it's fine, because it definitely was not 3 by far. Still,there were little details that even if you have 1 or 2 stars are shameful, like having to ask them to give toilett paper and towels...

Anyway, we managed to check-in and then go eat to some restaurant nearby. For some reason it was hard to find one open, and we ended up into a kilo place,like in Brazil, where you weight your food and pay for kg, but with some different dishes, more pasta and, of course, bread. In Brazil they don't usually include bread, and it was nice to have some^^.

The place was nothing special though, and we went back to the hotel and finally got a shower, slept and rested.

The next morning turned out to be half-sunny, so it was less likely it would rain, which was good. The breakfast here was not full of options, but it came with dulce de Leche (boiled condensed milk), tipically Argentinian and really tasty^^. It took a while to get ready and then we went to the park area.

We had been told the Argentinian side was bigger, and that's true. It was also much better done and indicated. The area looked more like a theme park, but it was very clear where you were, the paths you needed to take and even the stairs you would find on the way. With sunny weather with some clouds,  everything looked very nice but soon it was really hot too.

Since we had two days to spend here, we decided to take the lower route today and then do the higher one during the next. There was also the devil's gorge, which we would visit if we could at some point. First we had to walk a bit around the forest, and we started seeing plenty of bugs and butterflies, some Quatis (there were also on this side, and they also stole food but seemed more taken care of) and some scarily big ants and insects.

The lower road went between the forest and the river,  but at a very nice level, between the high side of the river and the low side. And while the Brazilian side gave you a view from afar, this side was right next to the waterfalls. The path was an elevated metal platform, which means that in some sections you crossed small streams that formed between two consecutive small waterfalls. It was quite impressive to see them that close, and the whole area was really green and beautiful. There were also some panoramic viewpoints, and in general it was a great path.

After walking for a bit, the path allowed you to go almost under a medium -sized waterfall. It created a big cloud of constant small drops,  and the closer you walked the more soaked you got. It was nice and refreshing, and also quite curious to see everything so close. There is something in watching do much water moving and falling that is hypnotic,  together with the white noise it makes...

We got a bit wet, not as much as other people, and we continued. In the way we also managed to see a lizard that was quite big, at least compared with most lizards we have seen...it was black, and had quite a big head and mouth,  at least as long as my forearm. It seemed to be wild but apparently used to have people around, although it maintained a distance with all the tourists...

In the end we finished this path quite earlier than we thought, after just a couple of hours. Since we still had plenty of time, we decided to also visit the devil's gorge.

To reach the devil's gorge, you had to take a small touristic train that was marginally faster than walking, but they didn't allow you to walk there so we had to use it. When we reached the gorge's station there were a huge number of butterflies flying around, drinking water from the wet floor next to a fountain for the visitors. Elay was very happy about this and "danced" with the butterflies (probably killing some, even if we tried to tell him to be careful ). It was really beautiful, but also very hot. We drank and watered our heads, and we started to walk towards the gorge.

This path was also a metallic platform on top of the higher part of the river. You could not see the waterfalls from there, and we knew it would take a while to reach the gorge. There were some islands from time to time, that offered cover from the sun, which was very bright and hot at that moment. I believe it took us around 20 minutes to reach the end of the path,  and it was very full of people and very hot with no shadows, but was the most impressive place probably.

The gorge was the area of the biggest section of waterfalls, moving the biggest ammount of water. A massive volume of water kept falling down quite a big distance, making a lot of noise and movement, and making big raindrop clouds. There was also plenty of rainbows, and in general it was really beautiful and brutal too.

With that we finished our first day, we went back to the city and had dinner in a nice place next to the hotel. We were tired after the heat (the walking was ok, we didn't do that much distance actually), so we went to sleep early.

The next day was our last, so we had to check out of the hotel. While crappy, it is true that the people managing it were nice enough. After having the same breakfast as the previous day we left one suitcase in the bus station lockers and went back to the park.

If it was your second day visiting, there was a discount, but they asked that you marked the ticket when leaving,  which was stupid since there was no one at the exit to mark it or explain this to you. At least they also accepted photos from the previous day as proof, so we got the discount.

Today we wanted to do the high path of the waterfalls, that went at the level of the river before falling, and that was short enough to let us plenty of time to go back to the Brazilian side and get to the airport. This path was, in our opinion, not as spectacular.  Sure, you could see most waterfalls from above, but it felt nicer to be next to them in the lower path. However, the nature around us was impressive, of course. We even saw a small cocrodile, and probably the biggest wild spider I have ever seen waiting in its web in the middle of the river, between two trees...

Anyway, we finished the day and went back to the bus station to start our trip to the Brazilian airport. After checking times and prices, we decided to get a taxi directly there, since buses just left you at the border and brought you to the Brazilian city center, which means it took twice as much time with any luck, and we didn't have that many hours until out flight.

With the taxi we arrived to the border, and the taxi driver gave us some papers to fill for the Brazilian border. However, we had not been stop at the Brazilian border when going to Argentina. The driver told us we should have been stopped, and that it was best then to just say we didn't have papers and we lived in Brazil.

We passed the Argentinian control without problems, and we were getting ready to lose a lot of time in the Brazilian control so we could explain out situation. However, once again the Brazilian border didn't even stop us. Apparently they do have controls, but because they have agreements with Argentina they just check people from time to time, and private cars and taxis pass without stops plenty or times. So, we visited Argentina with it leaving Brazil, according to our passports.

After this we had no other trouble, we boarded the plane and came back home. It was quite a nice and impressive visit, definitely recommended for anyone that gets the chance to go^^.

Escape to Iguazú(I)

I haven't explained anything about trips for a while..because we haven't visited anything new, that's true..but well, let's explain the latest one...

After working weekends,  we get days off to select afterwards. I usually take them as soon as possible,  but sometimes 2 or 3 accumulate.

Recently I've done this on purpose, so last week I took Tuesday to Thursday as days off, so we could travel to Iguazú on monday night.

Everybody who works here in Rio has traveled or plans to travel to Iguazú. It is a popular destination, and agencies offer packages to get there and sleep, but I didn't really do any research about what is in there, apart from knowing it had big waterfalls. It was also a natural border (the river) between Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil.

We spent one night in the Brazilian side, and two nights in the Argentinian side. Each side has a natural park that you need to pay to enter, and some other stuff to do around.

So, on Monday night we took a 2-hour flight to Foz de Iguazu. The Brazilian hotel was pretty good, with nice enough rooms and nice breakfast, apart from an awesome pool that we didn't have time to use but looked nice. We slept there and on tuesday we grabbed the bus that goes there(if you are not careful you will get scammed with price of transportation ).

This day was all gray and cloudy, and forecast warned about rain and storms. Far away we could see some big black stormy clouds coming our way, but well, nothing we could do about it.

The Brazilian park had another bus to bring you close to the waterfall areas. We stopped in the middle of the way and walked around the forest. First thing we saw was a warning about Quatis. We didn't know what animal was that, but got the point of not trying to feed them. We reached the first observation post, and yes, I can see why it is a popular destination.

The waterfalls are massive, and really really big. There's lots of green around it (not equatorial jungle, but more like tropical,  still pretty dense and green and humid), and there is lots and lots and lots of waterfalls. From that side, you can see them from far away and it is impressive the ammount of water that they're moving,  and the spray they create. You could literally see the water making "clouds" right there, many tiny little drops floating up towards you or towards the sky. This together with the green of the forest gives an amazing view.

On the next open area, we found Quatis.

Quatis are a type of mammal that is probably related to Raccoons. They move similarly, and act similarly. The ones in this area have adapted quite well to humans,  and are totally shameless, trying to check your bags and making puppy eyes for food. We were shooing them away from our son (who of course was very happy to see them and wanted to touch them, but was so excited it would have resulted in him hitting them), that was in the stroller, but they kept checking it and trying to grab our bags. In the end, while opening one pocket of the stroller they saw a bag of dried apples, and one of them jumped on it and stole the whole bag.

It was actually very funny, because it was not something that would be bad for them (just dried apples) nor anything we needed, but we could see that, while cute, they were shameless and problematic...

We continued our walk and found some stairs. This was very annoying, because we had the stroller with us,and previously there was no indication about them. We even passed areas that had ramps next to some steps, as if this was the norm in all the park. So we had to move through stairs several times during the day...

We passed several nice observation points, and in one of them we saw that the storm clouds we noticed during the morning were moving quite fast. They looked really awesome, as if they were unfolding, and they seemed to have a very liquid texture. There was especially dark sections moving at different speed than the rest...and for a bit we enjoyed the show without realizing their movement.

Then we saw that they were moving towards us at high speed and we had an "oh crap" moment.

We covered ourselves and the stroller with raincoats, and just managed to get ready before it started to pour water in top of us, right after the beautiful clouds passed us overhead...

This put an end to the visit, and we just run through paths and stairs to the restaurant area, which had pretty good views from far away of the top of the waterfalls and one of the main sections called the devil's gorge...

We could also see the Argentinian side from there, and there were platforms on top of the river and next to the waterfalls. It looked curious, we needed to check that next day...

We managed to eat, the rain calmed down, and we went out of the natural park to visit a bird park next to it.

This park was like a zoo, but bird-based and taking advantage of the nature around it. It claimed to be a place to rescue birds, and it is true more cages were rather big, but it is still a zoo, and a touristic one...

Anyway, I don't know if they trained the birds in there, but most of then were very sociable,  with some of them jumping towards us when they saw us. Our son was extremely happy about it and keep making happy noises.

And then we went to one of the cages, since the path entered some of them and let you be around the birds. These were big caged areas, and it was nice to see them close. However, our son was eating a chicken stick at that moment...I thought they would tell us we could not do that,  but nobody said anything...

Anyway, we were in this really big cage, and we saw some pretty big birds walking around, and some tucans. I really like tucans, and we had seen some free ones in Rio, but it was still nice to see different types around.

Then, several things happened. First, we were being followed by a number of walking birds, and we noticed that they were looking at our son's food. We shooed them away, but then a small tucan, for whatever reason, started to harass my wife trying to touch her toes, until it actually bit her a bit.

While trying to send the little tucan away, I turned around to see a big black walking bird stealing the chicken finger from our son (he maybe got scared for a sec but he was also happy that the birds were that close), and ran away followed by other big birds, who started stealing the food from one another....

It was very chaotic for a moment...and apart from the little tucan's attack, what the other birds did was funny but worrying...

After that we passed other cages, but we made sure to not have food around us...

In one of them we also found another tucan(a big one this time), this one apparently sociable and very cute, just sitting in a railing of a bridge that crossed the stream. We took pictures of it, and some people even caressed it...it seemed not to mind, although if some person was too annoying it just took some steps away, indicating that it was enough..I could not resist a gentle tap with one finger, and it just looked at me^^.

After the last tucan, and considering this one had a beak twice as big, my wife just looked at it from a distance, while taking pictures...

During the visit it started to rain again, which was annoying. Most birds at least had a place to cover themselves, but the rest of the visit happened much quicker after this. I will only mention that there was a big cage you could enter that had butterflies and hummingbirds, and it was quite impressive, especially the butterflies, big as my hand....but then they showed you the caterpillars, and they were also that big^^'.

We finished the visit quite wet, and returned to the city to grab a taxi to the Argentinian border, really hoping the hotel in there would also be nice and wanting to eat and take a warm shower after the wet rainy day...

I'll explain the other two days in another post.

Summer in Rio and Buzios

We're reaching the end of Summer in the south hemisphere, and I wanted to comment a few things.

First of all, Rio gets really really hot.

I commented before that in "Winter" we could already reach 30 degrees in the sun. However, that was Winter still.

In Summer, in the sun, it's closer to about 40-45.

However, since humans adapt to everything, we're already rather fine with the situation. When temperature goes back to 32 or around in the street, we can already tell that it's "fresh", or "not so bad today". And at night we consider them "cold" if it is less than 26.

Anyway, it does feels hot. And here the pool comes into action.

Let me tell you: It is fucking awesome.

Elay and my wife enjoy it almost every hot day, and I only go there during the weekends, but when the heat is almost unbearable, when the simplest task makes you sweat, being able to just submerge yourself and cool your body is great. Especially because I go to the pool from my apartment in my swimsuit, without needing to change, and in 2 minutes I can be back taking a shower. We pay more condominio than other people because of the pool, but it's totally worth it.

As a side effect, Elay has learned how to hold his breath underwater and how to swim with floaters (even if he doesn't speak any language that we understand). And we are developing a brownish skin tone as well, which maybe its not the healthiest thing, but it seems better than the nuclear "pc-screen-at-night glow" white that we usually have.

While all this was happening, we reached February, and the city went crazy. We were told, and it feels like this, that the new year only starts after Carnival, and it is a quite accurate description.

Offices closed earlier, and all buildings put extra protection against their glass to avoid accidents. Streets were cut, and crime rised worrisomely.

We missed the worst of it because we went to Buzios for 3 nights.

Buzios is a resort town in the lake  area east of Rio. It is not far in distance, but with the current infrastructure of roads it takes still 3 hours at least, if you do not find traffic jams. We found traffic jams and it took us quite longer to get there.

The place is a tourist area, full of little houses and hotels but with lots of greenery and space between them, and with plenty of Atlantic beaches. It reminded us of plenty of other resort areas we had visited. It had touches of Eivissa (not many people,a few small streets, you can always see a house or hotel around...), Adler (small streets with dirt, tacky souvenir shops, shady tours all around, physics-defying 5D cinemas...) or other typical resort/beach towns.

Our hotel was in a hill, 10 minutes away from a very big and calm beach. We were not very happy with it. It could have been great, but it was advertised as a 4 star hotel with several services, and it was not 4 stars and it didn't have those services. Going with lower expectations, we would have had no problems with it, but you cannot promise what you don't have and expect people to be happy.

It did have great views, an awesome pool and quite a calm atmosphere, that is true. We ended up going to the hotel pool most of the days (it had great views too), and walking for a bit in the centre at night, to have dinner.

We also went to the beach once, to mark it as "done", but we realised we don't enjoy beach that much. Especially a beach with no services like showers or toilets...but also the beach atmosphere was not that good. Tacky is the word to use again, a little bit like in Adler. The sand was awesome, though, very fine grains that felt quite good to step on (although we ended up with sand everywhere, another thing we don't enjoy). The water felt cold after being used to our building pool of 26-30 degrees, thanks to the sun, but we discovered Elay doesn't mind at all (to the point of craziness, because he was clearly cold but still running towards deeper water and getting mad when we had to grab him back and dry him).

Anyway, it was actually quite relaxing, in a "doing nothing" kind of way, having a beer from time to time, swimming and just relaxing far away from the city. The natural aspects of the area are awesome, with lots of exuberant vegetation, clean beaches and little hills and mountains for you to explore.

I don't know if we will return to this area (because with Elay there are not that many things to do for his age there, later on he could actually enjoy it), but we had 3 good nights there, and we managed to avoid the chaos that ensued in Rio during the carnival.

All in all, we're happy with the experience