Time to go home

Wednesday, October 26, 2016
Rio de Janeiro, State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
That's that then. My tour around South America is done. It's been tiring, surprising, frustrating but above all fantastic!

Including the flight home I've been on 8 planes . Then there's been 2 boats made out of reeds, a catamaran, trains, buses, taxis, cable cars and a horse. I've stayed in 6 hotels - some good some terrible. I've seen mountains, lakes, rivers, glaciers, rain forest, waterfalls, beaches and 2 different oceans. I've experienced altitude, humidity, thunderstorms and blazing sunshine. I've seen tango, gaucho, ruins, a cemetery, a gigantic statue of Jesus, more churches and cathedrals than I can remember.

I've drunk local beer, local wine and exotic cocktails. I've had terrible food, weird food and excellent food. All of that and no hang overs or upset stomach. I did struggle a bit at altitude - pounding heart, shortness of breath and a cough. That cough has now moved on to my chest which seems to be the usual process when I go on holiday but at the moment I'm ignoring it in the hope it will go away.

As for the holiday arrangements well there have been good and bad points. Good points are that everything is taken care of for you so no hassle checking into hotels or on to flights. You don't have to worry about getting from an airport to a hotel, or if you're going to miss anything important because you're taken on various trips that cover everything.

The bad points are that you don't have much free time. Some of the people on this holiday go on tours for precisely that reason. As someone who has travelled extensively independently this was a difficult thing to get used to. I missed 1 trip because I wanted to see things for myself rather than be herded round in a pack.

There were 17 people on this holiday. 3 singles and the rest couples. They were all middle classed, well off and most of them were retired or semi retired. I was the youngest by about 5 years. Most of them had been on this type of holiday before - some had been on loads of this type of holiday. In the main they were OK. 1 bloke was a cross between a grumpy old man and a stroppy teenager who threw a fit if there was even a small delay or something went wrong at a hotel. There were 2 couples travelling together who were very heavy drinkers. There was 1 woman who had an incredibly irritating laugh - but she was very pleasant.

I got friendly with 1 of the other single travellers called Tina who is divorced and from near Leicester. She likes a drink, likes a laugh and has been to loads of places on her own. We got on really well.

As is usual, there is always someone who is an absolute nightmare. In this case it was the other single traveller in the tour. A bloke called Mike - a horrible man. Tina, this Mike and another couple had been on a 3 night trip to the Amazon before joining the main tour and as we got talking Tina warned me about him. He's 79 and makes out he's frail - as time went by it became clear this was just an act. He would pretend he couldn't lift his bag etc. so someone else would do it. He referred to others on the tour as his 'carers'. I am definitely not his carer. I paid many £'s for this holiday and under no circumstances am I spending any time looking afer a creepy old man who is putting on an act. I got lumbered with him on the train up to Machu Pichu and he didn't take it too well when I refused to help him with his bag - I had seen him an hour before manage perfectly OK. By the end of the first week everyone had realised he was vile and left him to it.

We had a different guide for each bit of the holiday. Apart from the drop dead gorgeous one in Argentina they weren't that good. Even the Argentine, aside from being devastatingly handsome, wasn't a great guide. The best one was in Bolivia and the worst by a mile, has to be the one in Rio.

Would I go on this type of holiday again? Probably to China but not to anywhere else. This type of holiday is great if you are somewhere like China or South America here independent travel can be difficult to sort out, particularly if you have limited time. The downsides - lack of time to do things on your own, the cost, the whole pack mentality thing would outweigh any advantages if I went on this type of holiday to say USA or Cambodia.

Would I come back to South America? Most definitely. It's a fantastic place and I only scratched the surface. I enjoyed Peru and Argentina the best. The people in Peru were the most friendly and the Argentine men were the most handsome!

This trip has been all that I hoped for and more. It's going to be hard to beat but that isn't going to stop me trying.
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Auntie
2016-10-27

This has been a pleasure to read and share some of your experiences. Worth every penny I think. Well done for your courage you are a credit to yourself, so brave. You see real life, the good bits and the tough bits. But it's life and you are living it XX

2025-02-06

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