Flying at last

Hola bloggers,

At last I have a flight booked to Buenos Aires. Yippee. System malfunctions are over! Weather malfunctions are not over though - its raining AGAIN and I am not impressed.

The last couple of days have been spent visitng a beautiful botanical garden and the Christ the Redeemer statue. Jo and I had lots of fun taking silly photos from behind trees and making silly videos on our cameras. Jo took some beautiful shots of orchids and various other flowers. I don't have the patience for that sort of malarky. I've got her photos anyway so I just let her get on with it and lay on the floor like a fool under plants and do a David Bailey.

I had visited the Chris the Redeemer statue before with Jose Ramon but I went there again yesterday to take Jo up. We took the train up the mountain and then walked back down. The walk backdown was lovely .........until we got about halfway down and realised that if we walked any further we would have to walk through the middle of a Favela (slum area). We knew that we shouldn't go any further because we would be like a red rag to a bull - two foreign girls in mini skirts with cameras and cash! So what could we do?

We hung around waiting for a taxi to come by but had no luck there. Then we noticed a local family sitting on a corner a bit further down selling water to passers by. I figured that locals trying to make a business for themselves were porbably safe to approach - well safer than anyone we might come across further down the hill in the Favela.

I went to speak to the family of water sellers and explained our predicament. They confirmed that we should not go further down the hill under any circumstances as we wouldn't last two minutes. However, they helpfully showed us a path in the opposite direction which would lead to a junction where there would be a bus waiting which would safely take us down the mountain avoiding the Favela. This sounded a bit too good to be true but what were our options? The man explained exactly where the bus would be and I could see the path and the end of it and worked out the distance in my head. I knew I could sprint that distance with no trouble in a matter of minutes - so I was game. The family did seem honest enough so we had to just trust them that the path was safe.

We tiptoed along in silence so as not to alert anyone that we were there (or that we were foreign) - I was ready to sprint at the speed of light at any moment! Anyway, we didn't need to sprint and sure enough the bus was there. The driver was sat on a wall waiting for his next passengers. We jumped on, he set off and we breathed a sigh of relief.

Jo said that this was the one time when she was so thankful for my Spanish language skills. If we hadn't been able to communicate properly with the family then we might have been in serious trouble. Well actually we wouldn't have been because we knew damn well that we couldn't walk down that hill so without the advice of the family we would have just had to walk all the way back up the mountain and get back on the train. So, if my Spanish didn't save our lives ......it certainly saved our legs!

By the way, the guide book does say that it is a lovely walk to walk down the mountain so we didn't just decide to do this of our own accord. Blame the guide books (or maybe we took a wrong turn??).

Lots of love

S xx