HOME | POLITICS | SPORTS | LIFE | SCI/TECH | OPEDS | HELPFUL TIPS
|
Dec. 29, 2008 I've just completed the first four years of my South American wanderings, and I am back where I started, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. I may continue to India in 2009, depending on the general economic situation in the world. If things look bleak, though, I may decide to stay in SA another year or two. Actually this is my second jaunt to South America. I made a preliminary visit in spring of 2004, and returned in December of 2004. The countries that I have visited are Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Chile. I have a year in Argentina, a year in Brazil, nine months in Paraguay and about 3 months each in all the others, except Uruguay, where I spent no more than a week. I have toured most of the major cities of the continent, including Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Bogotá, Lima and Santiago, and I've made stays in quite a number of larger secondary cities, like Caracas, Belém, Manaus, Barranquilla, Cali, Guayaquil, Arequipa and Asunción. There are a few large cities along the Atlantic coast of Brazil that I haven't gotten to, like Recife, Bahia and Fortaleza, but even if I return to Brazil for a thrid visit, I probably will not make a point of traveling to those spots. I sailed the entire length of the Amazon River, in two separate cruises, between Iquitos, Perú and Belém, Brazil. I also visited Iquazú Falls, the Andes Mountains again and again, Machu Picchu, the Atacama Desert, Tierra del Fuego and other sites and landmarks. This has been strictly a budget tour. My average room price has been $15 a day, and I never spend more than $5 for food. I came by plane, from LA to BA, but since then I've traveled almost exclusively by bus and ship. I flew from Manaus to Sao Paulo in 2006 because time-consuiming sailing and busing would have caused me to overstay my visa. My Spanish is good, and my Portuguese is minimal, but I have never had a communications breakdown and I've never had to find an interpreter to make myself understood. Actually, reading Portuguese is fairly easy, but understanding spoken Portuguese can be difficult, especially if you expect it to be pronounced like Sapnish. Some words are quite different, for example: lechuga, alface (lettuce); ventana, janela (window); balcón, sacada (balcony); cucaracha, barata (cockroach), lentes, óticos (eyeglasses); etc. For a while, the dollar kept falling with respect to the local currencies, with the result that I had to spend increasingly more for the same things, but now the trend has reversed itself, and the dollar buys more and more, which has been one welcome feature of the crash, as far as I'm concerned. The most dramatic thing that I have seen was a double murder by motorcycle-mounted assassins who slew two retired policemen in a car with a volley of 30 pistol shots, on May 28, 2008, in Barranquilla, Colombia. I was about 20 to 30 feet away from the attack. Despite that, I enjoyed Colombia, if a little anxiously, and I loved the green, green Colombian Andes. Fairly dramatic also was the outrageous inflation of Venezuela, where you pay $3.50 for a bag of M & M's, and $7.50 for a cheeseburger and fries at McDonald's. There's been noticerable inflation in Argentina in the last four years, too, but nothing like Venezuela. When I first arrived in Argentina, it was South America's biggest bargain. But today, I'd have to say Ecuador is the country where you get the most for your dollar. Cheeseburger and fries at McDonald's go for $2.20 in Guayaquil. The average working soul in South America does not have a very good lot. He or she will be lucky to make $500 a month, and there's no telling how many working hours there'll be in the week, 48, 60 or more. ------------ About the author Thomas Keyes: I have written two books: A SOJOURN IN ASIA (non-fiction) and A TALE OF UNG (fiction), neither published so far. I have studied languages for years and traveled extensively on five continents. Visit my website here. Email: udikeyes@yahoo.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
||||||
|
|
|||||||
|
