Let sleeping dogs lie

One of my favourite things in life is seeing a blue door. This is closely followed by seeing a red door. So you can imagine my delight when I noticed this blue door in Humahuaca, in the very north of Argentina. I'd spent many hours on a luxurious bus (seriously, the buses in South America feel more like aeroplanes) to get up to the north, where I'd hoped I could find some condors. When I reached the small town of Humahuaca it was siesta time and it was quite the ghost town. My travelling companion and I wandered around, trying to find some shade, and marvelled at the incredibly tall cacti that dotted the landscape. We managed to find a restaurant that was open and after eating an unsatisfying lunch we strolled around the town. The blue door caught my eye first and then the sleeping doggy in front of it. I was immediately reminded of my canine friend in Nepal.

I never did see any condors, I was easily convinced to carry on into Bolivia, where there were many travel tails to be had. I'll just have to go back one day to track down those condors to share with you.

Cheeky Coati

I wasn't sure I would see anything as unusual as the Machu Picchu critter on the rest of my travels in South America, but that wasn't quite the case. After spending spent many hours on a bus, I made it to Puerto Iguazu, home to the mammoth Iguazu Falls. As I've mentioned before, the falls are breathtaking, and the national park is huge, so walking around and round and up and down really builds up an appetite.

I had a ham roll in my backpack and after spotting some picnic tables, my travel buddies and I took a seat. We'd seen the signs advising not the feed the coatis, and to tell the truth, I didn't know what a coati was (at this point, still not knowing what the Machu Picchu critter had been). I thought it was probably a bird, since there are so many signs at home advising not to feed the ibis. But the signs also proclaimed that coatis can carry rabies, but still, I wasn't sure what to be on the lookout for. As we sat under the shade of the big umbrella enjoying our sandwiches, we spotted something heading towards us. It was dark brown with white stripes and looked like a furry anteater. That was when we realised what a coati was. The critter changed its course and I grabbed my camera and chased after it, at a safe distance of course. I snapped a couple of shots and went back to the table to finish my lunch.

Suddenly, there were four coatis, circling the table like sharks. Now when a sign has told you to be wary of rabid creatures, you don't take that lightly. We'd pulled our feet up onto our chairs, and were waiting for them to get bored and go away.

Then this cute little one approached the table, so much lighter in colour than the others, and not menacing-looking at all. A couple of seconds after I caught this moment, it sprung up on the table, grabbed the remaining half of my sandwich, jumped off the table and sped off, the others hightailing behind it.

Greedy little thing!

La Vultures at La Ventana

I've started avoiding photographs of famous places I plan to go to, so as to not spoil the surprise when I get there. The Iguazu Falls in Argentina were a slightly different case in point, as I really didn't know much about them to begin with, but was told by many other travellers that they were a must see. So I got on a bus in Buenos Aires and travelled for about 20 hours to reach the falls, which span across Brazil and Paraguay as well. It was a lovely warm and sunny day, which was lucky as any package to the falls includes a boat ride in which the pilot takes the boat under a waterfall, saturating everyone. Great fun indeed! Since I had no idead what to expect, I was eagerly awaiting the first waterfall. Well, it was a piddly little thing, and next to it was another small fall and so on. But then suddenly, there were huge waterfalls, stretching as far as the eye could see, and the roar of all that water was astounding.

After the boat ride, it was a short hike up on a nearby island, full of lush greenery and lizards and shade. My Spanish, though rusty, allowed me to translate the directional sign to La Ventana: The Window. The rocks, as you see, form a window that loks into one of the most impressive waterfalls in the area (though this is dwarfed by the incredible Garganta del Diablo - the Devil's Throat fall). And it must have been an excellent feeding ground, as there were many vultures circling around, and smaller birds darting in and out of the water.

These two vultures seemed particularly lazy in comparison to them.