!@#$% Posted June 17, 2012 Share Posted June 17, 2012 I had a lovely 10 days in South America, after the pain and expense of obtaining a Brazilian visa. Argentina just makes you fork over cash at the airport, but the Brazilians want to see you first at their embassy. reciprocity, mofo. I found I got by without a problem on my very limited Spanish, though eating as a vegetarian who is avoiding milk was challenging. And, for the first time I contracted some horrible illness on the long journey home, which was bound to happen to me eventually. It was winter down there but nothing like the winter we get in the mid-atlantic.. quite mild. I'll blame the hideously sick TAM desk agent who coughed all over my passport. Feeling better but no way can I tackle the whole photothread at once. For now I'll go in order; we landed in Buenos Aires after a brief layover in Sao Paulo. i like to take pics from a plane seat but the seats I had on these flights weren't so great for it. Sao Paulo was unbelievably big. I know NYC is ranked up there too, but for some reason it seemed far larger. a megalopolis. more on Sampa later, we would eventually arrive there for a few days stay by bus. Buenos Aires is really a nice place, though I felt it was overhyped. I guess too many people told me over the years it was the best city. I did feel it completely lived up to the 'Paris of the South' moniker though.. and the Argentinian people struck me as very stern. i splurged a little and we stayed at a nice boutique hotel yes, they have a wooden subway that's really old and yes, it's awesome you open the doors with your hands and yeah, you can open them while you are racing down the tracks. this is a good summation of what i like about other countries that we lack in the US. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
!@#$% Posted June 18, 2012 Author Share Posted June 18, 2012 very cool buses great lighting fountains waterfront gorgeous city at night 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shittles..TasteTheAsshole Posted June 18, 2012 Share Posted June 18, 2012 Looks like a nice place. I like the second from the top pic. I've never been anywhere south of N.Y. or Detroit so still have not seen a palm tree. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
!@#$% Posted June 18, 2012 Author Share Posted June 18, 2012 hmm. you should get around. i've been to all 50 states and we've got lots to see in our own backyard. it was cool to see that they have mild enough weather to have palm trees year round.. as you probably know they are primarily in Florida and southern California. someone can correct me.. i think they go up to about South Carolina so. The Recoleta neighborhood has some cool stuff, like an old cemetery for important people and this amazing theater they turned into a bookstore i can dig any place with pedestrian-only streets.. even if they have mcD's i've heard the metro is muy dificil. and they kick your ass pretty hardt. didn't try. lots of ugly unbuffed shit on it 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MedicineCabinet Posted June 18, 2012 Share Posted June 18, 2012 that cemetery looks badass... i wanna walk around there. how big is it, like a city block (or is that wishful thinking, even though im probably never going to get to go there)? mo rap letterz pls Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CALIgula Posted June 18, 2012 Share Posted June 18, 2012 dope thread so far! I went to buenos aires and rio de janeiro in 2005. had a great time! i also went to that cemetary and took pics of eva peron's mausoleum. the argentinian people didn't seem stern as much as they seemed kind of stuck up to me. my half sister's half sister lives in BA, so it was cool having a local taking us around town....got to eat some good steaks and got some leather (not for the vegan friendly i know)..went to a tango show. as for that pedestrian only street it was called "florida st." i think..walked around that entire area solo at night catching slap tags...kinda sad to see the poverty out on that street at night (people were digging through trash at about 3am..maybe people from the ranchos). also went to some argentinian restaurant called "sigue la vaca" (follow the cow)...all you can eat meat ftw! /no homo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
!@#$% Posted June 18, 2012 Author Share Posted June 18, 2012 haha yesss Cali, meat, meat, and would you like some meat with your meat? how sad though, to see so many McDonald's. Brazil was not as overrun, as they have a local,old, fast food chain aptly named Bob's Burgers. stuck up porteños. i could totally see that. maybe in Summer they are more relaxed, hence the snobbery. during winter they have to keep their noses warm so the demeanor becomes icy. haha they did survive a fucking incredibly brutal dictatorship though. they used to kidnap people and drop them alive into remote parts of the Atlantic Ocean, and that was only in the 70s i read this the other day and it seemed, barring sexual violence, like one of the worst things i can imagine happening to someone... to be unknowingly raised by the people that murdered your parents. http://articles.cnn.com/2012-05-25/americas/world_americas_argentina-body-identified_1_real-parents-military-couple-military-regime?_s=PM:AMERICAS Child of Dirty War learns 'parents' part of regime that killed real parents Cabineto de medicine, yukyukyuk, i thihnk i read the cemetery is about 4 square city blocks, but that seems big to me. it has 6400 tombs. it is not Montmarte (of Paris, which is huge) but it is very tightly packed and we ended up going back a second time because we happened to be in the neighborhood and had missed Eva Peron, and the grave of a girl who was buried alive. the place also has no admission fee which is awesome. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BloodyWishes Posted June 18, 2012 Share Posted June 18, 2012 Cool thread! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MedicineCabinet Posted June 18, 2012 Share Posted June 18, 2012 ah i see. cool that you got to walk around there. i was cheesed to hear some of the cemeteries & catacombs were damaged after that shit in new orleans. montmarte cemetery looks bad ass too what would transcend this experience is to visit one of those underground catacombs - the ones in paris that stretch for miles. tourists get lost in them & die, surrounded in darkness & bones after their flashlight runs out. thats all kinds of shitty Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
!@#$% Posted June 18, 2012 Author Share Posted June 18, 2012 ^catacombs are dope. there are ones in italy where they have reconstructed the skeletons so they stand up, made things like 'clocks' out of bones. it's so awesome but you are not allowed to take pics inside and a priest watches you. i'll try to dig up some photos from it later. i also heard someone complaining about the parisian catacombs, one of the dumbest comments ever made.. 'we went down there expecting something cool and it was nothing but bones' :nope: people! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
!@#$% Posted June 18, 2012 Author Share Posted June 18, 2012 so this is way off topic like, another continent off. but hey, i've been here too so fuck it. this is a picture of the Santa Maria della Concezione Catacombs of Rome Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
!@#$% Posted June 18, 2012 Author Share Posted June 18, 2012 oh btw, yes Cali it is Calle Florida there are a couple others too i think. Buenos Aires and onto Montevideo, Uruguay a really lovely town (after Sampa, Rio and BA, even though it definitely qualifies as a city, the place was downright tiny looking) we had to do site-seeing by car, we only had a 17 hour layover here luckily an old friend of mine is from there and is now raising his family there after working about ten years in the states. (once you travel a lot overseas, you feel like a real ass referring to the USA as 'america' ..or at least, i do.) Montevideo has an amazing beach waterfront, i'd love to go back down south when it's their summer wish i'd gotten some better pictures there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CALIgula Posted June 18, 2012 Share Posted June 18, 2012 Rome has catacombs?...i was in rome last year (March) and didn't even know about it!..same thing as far as taking pictures went in the sistine chapel...there were guards that kept yelling "no photos"...so i had to sneak in a couple covertly, until i got yelled at by some old italian woman....wish i couldve visited uruguay...it looks nice. great thread..keep the pics coming! (and sorry to keep interrupting the thread.) and not to scare you or anything but did you notice the demon head smiling at you in the sky in the night shot of buenos aires from the plane? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
!@#$% Posted June 18, 2012 Author Share Posted June 18, 2012 nice, i haven't seen the sistine chapel. yet. i've gotten a few surreptitious photos here and there are they are usually terrible. please, don't worry about interrupting. the lack of comments makes me think no one is looking i think endless photo listing gets boring after awhile anyway.. this ain't instagram! hahaha! i tried to get as much of the demon head out as i could, why it's soooo dark. the interior of the place was just too bright and the guy across the aisle is in every shot this is the plane we were on. not many airports in the world allow you to walk on the tarmac. i've only done it in Melbourne's extremely tiny second airport, here at Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil and Aswan in South Egypt ............... .. . .. . . . ................ so Iguazu/Iguassu/Iguaçu is at the intersection of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay. I probably would have bothered to walk across the bridge just to be in Paraguay, except the bridge is notorious as a mugging spot (did not find South America to be anywhere near as dangerous as I was ready for or told it was..) ..and it's another $140 visa. so here it is, one of the current world wonders, awe-inspiring, loud, living up to all the hype; Iguaçu Falls there is a helicopter in the center of this shot. regular ol size helicopter good for scalin this bad ass force of nature nearly a 360º (and massive) rainbow the place generates its own vapor clouds, which we could see when the plane was landing 30km away if you've been to Niagara Falls, multiply that by like 25 and you get an idea. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
!@#$% Posted June 18, 2012 Author Share Posted June 18, 2012 after the Falls we walked over to the bird sanctuary sometimes you figure they just put a pigeon in a cage and sell tickets for a bajillion bucks because it's next to this stunning attraction that hundreds if not thousands come to see daily. however, they did not disappoint. there were even some enclosures that one could walk into. an endangered parrot took a dump on my shoulder. i'd say it was lucky, considering all the plane rides and bus trips and crazy neighborhoods, nothing went wrong down there. yeah yeah just a flamingo but follow your nose it always knows where the humingbird feeders are 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CILONE/SK Posted June 18, 2012 Share Posted June 18, 2012 Roughly how much did your trip cost? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
!@#$% Posted June 18, 2012 Author Share Posted June 18, 2012 i would have been happy to spend many hours in that place taking photos. i didn't think it was quite coat weather but everyone else seemed to. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
!@#$% Posted June 18, 2012 Author Share Posted June 18, 2012 i waited for a deal on tickets, and i went to nyc by bus (took a slightly more expensive train home) in order to get the best price. it went like this: nyc to buenos aires rio de janeiro to nyc $875 round trip (per person) then i got another set of plane tickets that was just serendipity or something. buenos aires to montevideo 17 hour layover (10pm to 3pm the next day) montevideo to iguazu falls $209 one way (per person) after a lot of indecision, i decided to just buy bus tickets while we were down there. we almost missed one of the buses but hey. a bird shit on my shoulder. there is a great company, green toad bus, that will set it all up for you in advance, they seemed to have decent prices and all that but we just did it. a bus ticket from iguazu to sao paulo was $65pp and the bus was better than greyhound ..maybe like your grandma's casino bus. (17 hours, several road stops, overnight. i could sleep) the bus ticket from sao paulo to rio was also about $60pp (5 hours, one stop, daytime but we hit traffic and it was about 7 hours in the end. we arrived at night in a sketchy neighborhood, got a cab to the metro) because i'm older and i can't stand hostels anymore (and i paid for it when we stayed in one for one damn night at iguazu; the power kept going out..) it was about 1k worth of hotels. that said, a lot of money could be saved there by lowering one's standards. i could have found a place to sleep on the street in all of these cities. i spent about $300 because i bought a sweet fuckin 'brasil' hoody' for almost $90. i couldn't believe i did that but fuck it. i also usually buy a few pieces of jewelry on trips as souveneirs. we had to pay for a couple of attractions like the sugar loaf cable car and all the sanctuary admission etc etc. i will usually only go to a couple of restaurants a wekk, which means i do some grocery shopping on the trip and eat a lot of pb&j or tomato sandwiches and juice. i don't drink at all. i had one free capirinha at one of the hotels. all in all one of my more expensive trips, i guess about 2000 after you consider the two visas, and splitting some of the expense with another person.. but those visas are good for 10 years. was that too much information? i just smoked some weed. i blame that 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CILONE/SK Posted June 19, 2012 Share Posted June 19, 2012 Right on. I am planning a trip to Chicago next month and it is going to cost more then that because I have three kids. I would rather do what you did, but wife is from there and insisting on going back to visit family. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
!@#$% Posted June 19, 2012 Author Share Posted June 19, 2012 3 kids. wow. at least you are travelling at all. lots of people i know with kids pretty much check out of doing everything. meh. chicago isn't bad. considering she's only going for family, you could probably do a helluva lot worse. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CILONE/SK Posted June 19, 2012 Share Posted June 19, 2012 Chicago is alright. Just do not want to make the 2-3 day drive, which is alot cheaper then air fare. If I wait until October, work will pay for me to go, up till the amount they pay on airfare. But she wants to see her sisters beach house in lake geneva. Cil = rich inlaws, poor Cil I would so much rather do your trip, then my trip. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schnitzel Posted June 19, 2012 Share Posted June 19, 2012 Can we see some more BA metro shots pls? or can you post them in the passenger trains thread? my sister went to BA with my aunt and they took about 100 shots between them but never actually managed to get the shots they'd taken to me. Loving the thread it looks great down there. That book store would be so cool imagine all the reading you could done on a higher level of the store like the two parrots telling the dirty joke "Did you hear what the hummingbird said to the flamingo" The other one is like "Whhhhhaaaaaaaaat aw man that's gross!" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fist 666 Posted June 19, 2012 Share Posted June 19, 2012 awesome stuff, symbols. thank you for sharing. jealous. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CILONE/SK Posted June 19, 2012 Share Posted June 19, 2012 ^werd Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
!@#$% Posted June 19, 2012 Author Share Posted June 19, 2012 word. glad you all are enjoying it. i'll post more metro shots. do you specifically want to see ones with graffiti? i have a lot without. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CILONE/SK Posted June 19, 2012 Share Posted June 19, 2012 Post both. The everyday life shots are the best for me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
!@#$% Posted June 19, 2012 Author Share Posted June 19, 2012 this was cool i have to admit,i usually only care about taking good flicks of graffiti i like, and i can be picky. these shots were primarily about the photo, the station, the atmosphere.. or whatever. sowwy for the shit quality of the panels themselves if that's what you're after, Schnitzel Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
!@#$% Posted June 19, 2012 Author Share Posted June 19, 2012 i thought this was some of the most interesting throwups i've seen.. in sao paulo i loved sao paulo. love love loved i'd move there. the city stretches in every direction. on and on and on 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CALIgula Posted June 19, 2012 Share Posted June 19, 2012 my visa to brazil was only good for 5 years :( did you try mate? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schnitzel Posted June 19, 2012 Share Posted June 19, 2012 Thanks for posting them I'm a big fan of grilled subway systems so whatever shots you have look good to me. painted or un painted it's all good. just figured if you had heaps of painted one the passenger trains thread could use some help if you didn't wanna derail the thread.. boy I keep looking for a gap in the travel threads I've got india and vietnam to put up when the heat dies down! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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