Walking with the Minoans

When we moved to Kavousi, we were aware that there were a number of archaeological sites in the area and that it was closely associated with the Minoans in particular, but little did we know just how many there are!

Vince and Rosy arrived two weeks ago from London. Vince is an old friend from university days – meaning that I have known him for fifty years (scary!) and Rosy is an artist with a long-standing interest in the Minoans. So, it should come as no surprise that their stay should take in a number of the sites in the area. Indeed, over the ten days they were here, we managed to tick off nine sites in all, of which six were within a few kilometers of Kavousi and three within walking distance of our house!

As they are also keen walkers, this meant we could combine walking with viewing and during their stay, we had two particularly good walks, one of which must rate as one of the great classic walks in Crete, although compared with the Samarian Gorge, it is comparatively ignored in the guide books.  Anyway, more of this walk later.

On their first day, we allowed them some time to get their bearings but in the afternoon visited the coastal community of Mochlos which about five miles away, having looked across to the island of Pseira on the way – itself having been an important community in Minoan times. Most of the archaeological remains in Mochlos are on an island opposite the village which in Minoan times was joined to the mainland by a causeway, so mostly we could only look from afar. However, there are a few sites of interest in the village itself which got Vince and Rosy into the swing of things.

The next day, we took them along the NE coast and showed them the monastery at Toplou, which, it being Sunday, was unfortunately closed and from there to the Doric (ie largely post-Minoan) site at Itanos, which we had first been to last year.

To complete the day, we stopped off at Paleokastro and found what for us was a new site at Rousolako. This was obviously a large town in its heyday and supports the view that the Minaons were sophisticated urban dwellers, some 3,500 years ago.

Over the next few days, we took our visitors to Pyrgos, near Myrtos on the south coast and to Vasiliki which is just a few miles from Kavousi.

Vasiliki is a small site but important because it gives its name to a form of pottery which is found all over eastern Crete. And towards the end of their stay with us, we dropped them one morning at Gournia, one of the best preserved Minoan town sites, which is just a few miles down the road, while we went into Ierapetra to do a few chores.

But what of these walks? The weather had been overcast for the first few days of Vince and Rosy’s visit but it gradually improved to the point where we felt a longer walk was possible, so one fine day we decided to take them up the gorge here in Kavousi to visit the Minoan site of Azorias, which sits above our village.

We have written about our gorge walk and visits to Azorias before but we had never before done the complete ’round’ and what a great walk it was, starting and finishing at our front door.

A couple of days later, we headed for the hills again, although we shortened the trip by an hour or so by driving up to the ancient olive tree and leaving the car there.

We then re-traced our steps from the earlier walk, nearly to Azorias and then headed up the mountain to locate a ‘lavada’ or concrete water channel (those who have been to Madeira will know all about these). Eventually, we found it and took the small path running alongside.

It gently climbed the side of a steep hill but soon turned a corner into the opening to the gorge, which we had seen from the other side of the valley on the previously. Still, the gradient was very easy and we made good progress accompanied by the gentle sound of the water burbling down the channel beside us.

 

Bonnie led the way but as usual was keen to ensure that we all kept together but the path was so narrow in places that it was difficult for her to round up her flock!

Suddenly, the path steepened and for half an hour or so, we climbed sharply up the side of a small side gorge which we were to see from the top later in the day.

Eventually, we came out to a place which seemed to be the top. This proved a false dawn as the lavada crossed to the other side and we had to do the same. This involved clinging to some rickety metal handrails and scrambling up the rock face. At this point, poor Bonnie had to be rather unceremoniously lifted bodily upwards to enable us to continue!

After another half an hour or so, we did finally reach the top and eventually found the dirt road leading to the Kastro – a slab of rock sitting high above Kavousi on which there once was a Minoan settlement.

They were allegedly a peaceful race but there must have been some dangerous folk about to have required living at such a height for the purpose of security or perhaps they just wanted to be nearer to their God!

It was an inspiring place and most suitable to take our lunch and rest awhile and of course to pose for the photographer!

The route down was uncertain and we definitely did not want to retrace our steps so we headed down in the general direction of the E4 path, walks on which, we have described in previous postings. It was steep but the path was mostly clear although obviously not in regular use. However, finally, after a couple of hiccups, we reached the E4 at a place we recognised and from there it was a relatively easy descent back to the car via a further archaeological site at Vrondas.

I think Vrondas is my favourite among all these sites, not because it is large or the buildings well-preserved but rather because of its position – the views in every direction are to die for and unlike many other locations, it is relatively flat, although built on the top of a rise. The spring flowers were out, the sun was still shining and it felt good to be alive in the late afternoon after such a fine outing.

Vince and Rosy have now returned home to London after having spent a few days in Heraklion. When asked to choose her favourite site, Rosy plumped for Gournia, which I can well understand but I think she and Vince will long remember their walk up the Mesonas Gorge to the Kastro.

If you would like to see a video of the first part of the walk (not mine but courtesy of YouTube), paste the following link into your browser.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwPMh_YW–zg

John

 

The Great Wall of China

As avid readers of our Blog will know, life here in our house in Kavousi has been somewhat dominated by the need to repair the wall which runs along one side of the property.

Below the wall, a small road runs down to a bridge over the dry bed of a river which is perhaps fifty feet below the level of our terrace. The problem has been that water running off the roof has found its way in between the stones which make up the wall and gradually over the years, parts of the wall have disappeared into the garden immediately below.

Back in December, we asked a surveyor to advise on the best way of effecting a repair and he and his chosen contractor came up with the idea of a grand concrete structure about twelve meters long and four and a half meters high. It would no doubt have done the trick but it was expensive and would have looked hideous. More to the point, it required us to either get permission from the landowner below to use part of their land or to make an offer to buy such land.

At one stage, the latter course seemed to be the more likely option and readers may recall that I thought I had bought the land in question. However, it was then that the locals stepped in! They had never been very happy about us building ‘The Great Wall of China’ as I called it because they thought it was too expensive and when they found out how much I have offered for the land, they were apoplectic with anger that the woman in question was prepared to take us for such a ride.

Then, one day, another surveyor came to measure the land and quite by chance met a fellow on the bridge who asked him what he was about. When he told him, he was informed that the fellow owned part of the land in question and a huge row ensued! After the surveyor had left, we discovered that the new landowner was the son of our neighbour but why she had never told us about the ownership issues, is still far from clear!

Anyway, the upshot was that as he was not about to sell us his land or give us permission to use any of it to support the foundations of ‘The Great Wall’, we had no option but to revert to Plan B and take the neighbours’ advice and employ Vasili, the Albanian stone mason, to repair the wall using stones, which is what they had been suggesting all along.

By this time, we were happy to agree and as Vasili’s quote was only about one-fifth of the original, this was an easy decision!

The first thing that happened was that Vasili arrived one Sunday and began demolishing a huge section of what was left of the wall, leaving parts of our terrace literally hanging over the ravine below and we were given strict instructions not to go near the edge!

The next day, a truck turned up with bags of sand and concrete mix but was too large to get round the corner onto the bridge.

It went away and then came back with a more experienced driver who also tried but gave up. Then it rained for a few days and nothing happened!

Finally, another truck came with yet another driver, who finally managed to make the turn and parked the vehicle below us. After severely pruning the fig tree below us, he was then able to use the telescopic arm to lift the bags onto the largely unsupported terrace.

Before long we had become a tourist attraction among the village folk and all manner of people turned up with or without their dogs to have a look!

The next day, when work was due to start, our water supply failed and it was three more days before the water board fellows came out and told us that it was not their problem.

In the meantime, various fellows had turned up from the village and in the pouring rain, fiddled with valves and so on but to no avail.

However, it gave them the opportunity to dry off afterwards with a drink of raki, wine or whisky!

 

 

 

 

A blockage in the house seemed more problematic but Dimitri, the plumber, soon arrived, summoned by bush telegraph and found the difficulty – gunge in one of the pipes!

So finally, Vasili then got to work and before long the repairs began to take shape and we had the makings of a pretty good wall.

Sheila was kept busy making coffee and providing water for the gang and I extended my Greek vocabulary to include a number of building-related terms, which no doubt will prove very useful in the future!

More rain then intervened and then Vasili went down with what we thought was probably bronchitis and was unable to work for a few days. Finally, a few days after the arrival of Vince and Rosy from London, our first guests of the season, Vasili pronounced the work finished, was paid his money and the concrete mixer was moved to the next job.

He has done a great job and has talked us in to allowing him to build a largely decorative parapet wall on the edge of the terrace above which the top part of the existing fence will be replaced. This will be constructed from contrasting red, grey and white stone from the mountains and today the first such stone arrived.

Yesterday, the truck was back and the next load of sand, cement and mix was delivered to the terrace for work to commence next week.

Andreas, our neighbour, appointed himself foreman of the unloading work and another exciting time was had by all, including Vince and Rosy who had had to put up with a pile of building materials outside their door and builders arriving at all hours, from the time they arrived.

We now look forward to getting the new wall finished and reclaiming our terrace and Sheila will be able to invite the great nephews and their parents to stay, without fear of losing the small ones over the edge!

And the moral of this story is that when in Greece, listen to the Greeks and save yourself a lot of grief. Wait a minute, is that not the Mayor at the door, telling us to take it all down as we do not have the necessary permits!

John

South America Part 2

There were a number of things which stimulated my interest, as well as my emotions on the trip to South America.

To start with, I have to mention the food and the drink.  I ate the most wonderful fish in Puerto Madryn and the best steak I have ever eaten in a lively restaurant in Buenos Aires, with Jane, Rosie and her boyfriend. It came with chips, no vegetables (the latter were a rare feature in Argentinian cuisine!), it was enormous and I ate it all. The picture doesn’t show exactly this steak but this one was pretty good too!

We drank a bottle of Malbec and discussed Argentina and who knows what else.  And then there was a glorious ice cream cone to follow. It could only have been improved if John had been there! There was good fruit in Buenos Aires, if not veg and very pretty it was.

I was pretty happy with the beer too!

and the Chilean wine.

Almost as good as all of this was the cheap pizza and wine in a small place in Buenos Aires, completely off the tourist track with a wonderful waitress who had a great attitude to life. We encountered another such waitress on Cocacabana Beach.

She introduced us to the relaxed nature of the beach with people selling (but not hassling) loads of things. And I saw a parade in Rio which summed up the beach – people of all ages and sizes having loads of fun.

It was such a pleasure to be a traveller because people were universally friendly in all three countries.

Before I set out, I knew virtually nothing about the history and the culture of the region. In the early 1970’s and studying sociology, I studied land issues in South America and at that time I certainly had a view about the political situation in Chile. So I was particularly keen to find out as much as I could about that period and what has happened since.

In the history museum in Santiago, the final exhibit is Salvador Allende’s broken glasses, removed from him after he committed suicide in the Palace de Monedo in 1973, as the Palace was bombed by the military.

It is a very personal item and one which highlighted the human and political tragedy of that time. Looking at it, I was reminded of the anger that I felt at the time about the military coup there.  Allende was a man of the ‘left’, who wanted radical changes in his country, and he was a believer in the democratic process and in the need to build a coalition in his country to achieve these changes. He worked all his political life towards that end; he had a political vision; he was not corrupt and in 1970 he was elected president of Chile with a Popular Unity Government. In his first year, he nationalised the copper mines and when we visited the Atacama Desert, this was mentioned in a very positive light by the guide, Harold.

But in 1973, Augusto Pinochet and the military took over the country and remained in charge until 1990.  The government had had difficulties and there are many explanations for the coup but they were exacerbated by the USA (who I understand are supposed to believe in the democratic process) systematically undermining the democratically elected government. When I looked at these specs, 40 years later, I felt anger and some despair with the limitations of democracy. Democracy seems to be OK as long as the people vote for ‘acceptable’ people to the powers that be. This reminded me of a badge of mine of that period: ‘If voting changed anything, it would be abolished’!

By chance, Jane and I saw a small exhibition in the Fine Arts Museum in Santiago of  photographs and a textile banner from a rally in London in 1974, supporting a democratically elected government in Chile.

It was a nice reminder, in a small way, of a sense of international democratic solidarity.

Pinochet, himself, never went on trial for the various human rights charges. However there has been some effort at a national level in Chile to examine what happened during the military dictatorship; to remember those who died; to acknowledge what happened; and to move on.

The new Museum of National Reconciliation is a memorial to those who died and others who were tortured and provides loads of information about the military coup; the 15 years of Pinochet’s rule; and the process of what has been done to enable the country to move forward.

There was too much information to absorb completely but the wall with all the names of those, who died because of their political beliefs, was a simple and effective way of honouring them.

When you visit the Plaza de Mayo in the middle of Buenos Aires, you immediately see placards and signs of discontent. A variety of issues are represented including the Malvinas and environmental concerns.

But the most moving were the ‘Madres de la Plaza de Mayo’. Since 1977 at every Thursday afternoon at 3.30, a group of women have marched in the Plaza, demanding information about their grown up children who disappeared  during the military dictatorship between 1976 and 1983.

When the military dictatorship was in power, women risked their own lives doing this and in fact three of the founder members of the organisation disappeared. The women have achieved information and action over the years. This has not brought back their sons and daughters, but bodies have been found and identified and members of the military have been held to account.

There were military dictatorships in Argentina, Chile and Brazil in the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s, when I was a young person. I spoke to one of the Chilean guides, who was my age, and he said ruefully that it wasn’t much fun being a young person living under a military dictatorship with an evening curfew for years. That comment and others made me appreciate the freedoms of my own youth and what the reality was to live in a country with a military dictatorship.

And then what about the Perons? We went to the Eva Peron museum which was interesting but mainly confirmed that I didn’t really know enough about the Peron era and what they were about. So I have a serious book on my kindle to try and remedy my lack of knowledge. Eva certainly was a busy woman between 1946 till she died in 1952 in the social welfare world and her dresses were pretty stylish too!!!  We made a visit to Recoleta graveyard where Eva is buried.

The graveyard is nothing like I have ever seen before.

Only the powerful and the rich are here. Eva only scraped in and her ‘small’ family tomb is nothing in comparison with some, such as the one below.

Jane and I also learned a lot about the Wars of Independence in Argentina and Chile in the early nineteenth century. We visited museums and read about and saw the statues of the ‘liberators’. We saw the grave of Jose de San Martin in the Cathedral in Buenos Aires and he was obviously important as he had two guards beside him.

He is described as the liberator of Argentina, Chile and Peru so he definitely deserves recognition!  We were picked up from the plane in Santiago by a employee of Journey Latin America called Bernard and he told us about his namesake, Bernardo O’Higgins, one of the liberators of Chile, and of his mother. It was a great story involving sex, wealth and illegitimacy. The next day, I was very pleased to see a picture of both in the History Museum.

I felt that I knew them both from Bernard’s story!

The economic issues in all three countries become more real when you talk to people and look around.  I sat next to a young woman teacher on a plane, from Santiago. She was very positive about teaching, about Chile and was extremely confident. But she said there needed to be changes in Chile. The wage for teachers was 400 dollars a month and this was not enough. She said people were looking for change. The new government in Chile has work to do.

Gabriella, who rented the flat to us in Buenos Aires, gave us the benefit of her views on the Argentinian Government which were pretty negative. There had been a heatwave in Buenos Aires and some people had lost their power for a considerable length of time. Gabriella was not impressed and was very angry.

In Argentina, we didn’t see the poverty but we heard about it. When Rosie took us to Retiro railway station, she warned us to look after our bags. There is a shanty town, nearby.

In La Boca there are many tourists who visit to see the colourful houses but it is advised not to walk far from the houses.

Rita, our guide in Trelew and Puerta Madryn

told us about her own life and the economic conditions in the area. She moved with her parents to Trelew from Brazil because her father had got a job in the aluminium works. She said things had changed in the time they had been there and that Trelew now has social problems, related to lack of work.

The day we came home, there were riots in Rio and there have been more since. People were angry at increased transport costs but there was also a connection with the fact that Rio is hosting the World Cup in June.

There were people querying how Rio can afford to host the World Cup whilst there is such poverty or to put it another way, why isn’t the priority to give people better housing etc?

It did seem to be a city of the rich and the poor. When we were driven from the airport to our hotel near Cocacabana beach, we were told that the first bit of the drive was through the poorer part of Rio. Certainly the housing looked poor. Then, at a particular point further south, we were told this is where the middle classes and the rich live. It seemed like there was a specific line dividing the well off from the not so well off.

When we were driven back to Rio airport, we got caught up in traffic in the poorer area and could see that boards were being put up so that you couldn’t see the housing and houses were being demolished.

Jane and I thought this might be about hiding the poverty to the World Cup fans. But we were just guessing.  We could see lots of construction and again assumed this was to stop football fans being caught up in delays such as the one we were in.

As for the money, I yearned for a single currency in South America. Moving from one currency to another currency is not easy. In Chile, which seemed to have a growing economy, they surprisingly had a currency which had loads of noughts on it. £1 is worth about 950 Chilean pesos. I never got to grips with it! In Brazil £1 is worth 3.9 reals and in Argentina a month ago, £1 was worth about 11 pesos. Today it is 13!  I think that might be something to do with the state of the Argentinian economy! So while both Argentina and Chile call their currency pesos, they don’t have any link in terms of value.

Lastly, thinking of the upcoming vote on Scottish independence,  I met a guide called Carlos, in the Torres del Paine, Patagonia, who was from Puerto Naturales, a town very near to the National Park.

He had gone to Santiago to study tourism and clearly thought that there was much more investment in the industry in Chile now. He was trying to get a variety of experience in the tourist world but saw his future in Patagonia. He mentioned the fact that there were people who wanted independence for Chilean and Argentinian Patagonia. Geographically, Puerto Naturales is around 3000km from Santiago and to get to the capital, you fly or you drive a journey that either takes you into Argentina or involves a boat trip and lasts for at least 3 days. I have only found a few references to this on the internet but felt an initial empathy with Carlos, as I can imagine Patagonia is not the biggest priority to the government based in Santiago or Buenos Aires!

The observations above are a bit random but I hope you get some sense of how wonderful, thought-provoking and stimulating a trip it was. I’ve got loads of books to read and articles to digest from the internet. I have a number of images which will remain with me for ever. Allende’s glasses and the women marching in Buenos Aires are added to the Three Towers, the Atacama desert, Christ the Redeemer, the Andes and the Perito Moreno Glacier.

Now back to life here!!!!

Sheila

Sheila in South America – Part 1

I am now back in Kavousi after my 4 week trip to South America at the very beginning of the year. I sit here at my computer, looking out at the orange and lemon tree and think how lucky I am.  While I knew I would miss John while I was away, I did wonder what my feelings would be about coming back to live in Crete after a four week break. And I discovered, I was glad to be back ‘home’ here.  John has made the house very comfortable, everyone seemed glad to see me, I was glad to see them, the sun was shining and there was much to look forward to.

The trip had many different aspects to it, was completely memorable and I have written a couple of posts about it, mainly to show some of the pictures as well as being of some interest to anybody wanting to do something similar. This one covers the background to the trip, where I went, the people I went with, the different landscapes, the wildlife and a brief comment on the beautiful cities. The other post is more about some of the people we met and the things which made me want to know more about the history and present day issues in Argentina, Chile and Brazil.

Quite often, in my travelling over the years, the impetus to go somewhere has been because I wanted to visit a friend or relative. My daughter, Rosie, has been living and working in Buenos Aires for a year (having already been there for a few months in 2011).  I wished to see her but I was also curious to find out what so attracted her to the city.

I had never been to anywhere in South America before, so it was with much ignorance and a little apprehension that I planned the trip.  John stayed here with Bonnie and our friend, Jane, came with me. Soon, the trip gained arms and legs. We agreed the places we wanted to see, the type of accommodation, the big budget and that we needed help to organise it. Jane contacted the travel company, Journey Latin America, to plan the trip. By now it included Chile and Brazil as well as Argentina!  After some days of negotiation including, we finally agreed the 27 night itinerary which was as below.

Argentina
1 night flying from London Heathrow to Buenos Aires with TAM airways
7 nights in an apartment in Palermo, Buenos Aires
2 nights in Puerto Madryn, Patagonia visiting wildlife and the Welsh village of Gaimain
2 nights in El Calafate with the highlight seeing the Perito Moreno Glacier
Chile
3 nights at the Patagonia Camp near the Torres Del Paine National Park, South Chile
3 nights in San Pedro de Atacama to see the Atacama Desert
2 nights in Santiago
Brazil
3 nights in Rio de Janeiro
3 nights in the Ilha Grande, a tropical island south of Rio
1 night flying back to Heathrow from Rio

Rosie would join us for the week in Patagonia. In Buenos Aires, Santiago and Rio, we organised our own sightseeing. Everywhere else, we were on mainly shared tours with guides. We covered a lot of miles.  I was staggered to find that the total mileage from Heraklion to Buenos Aires, via London was approximately 8543 miles and the return journey from Rio de Janeiro was 7435 miles. Then while I was in Argentina, Chile and Brazil, we covered 7129 miles, just getting from place to place, mainly by plane and approximately another 1000 miles in tours, mainly by mini bus or car but also a few by foot. No wonder I was tired when I got back!

The trip would not have been the same without my travelling companions, Jane and Rosie. They added such a lot of different things. Jane and I were in each others company for most of the trip and that worked out fine. It was good to discuss what we had seen and learned everyday.  We ate and drank together, we shared our amazement at the ever changing landscapes, we discussed what we had learned and how much we didn’t know, we solved the occasional problem (such as me leaving my passport in the ladies toilet in Calama airport!) and we looked after each other.

Jane and I were a little nervous when we arrived in Buenos Aires but in Rosie, we had an adviser for some part of the week and someone who gave us ideas of where to go. She took us to a restaurant where I think I ate the biggest steak I have ever eaten. It was completely delicious and the red wine to go with it was just as good! In Patagonia and freed from the shackles of work, she was such good fun to be with and she and I spent a memorable two days hiking in the Torres del Paine. We shared a room in a yurt for three nights

and both of us could have stayed there happily for a lot longer!

We saw the most incredible and different landscapes, one after the other. Rosie took us to Tigre, an hours train ride north from Buenos Aires. The railway station was amazing in itself.

There we admired the Parana River delta, which is a system of rivers, with many small islands and holiday homes to admire. It is just huge. We saw only a small section of it.

In Argentinian Patagonia, around Trelew we saw very flat scrub land with no features.

But then we went to Gaimain where the Welsh settlers had arrived and where, after all their hard work over the years to irrigate the land, it is green and fertile. And we had a nice Welsh tea there!

After a two hour flight west, we looked out from our hotel window in El Calafate to the most beautifully coloured glacial lake

and the next day, as we got near the Perito Moreno Glacier, we were suddenly transported into mountains, ice and snow.

Following on from that, we were driven for 4 hours to the Chilean border along again very flat and featureless land

which contrasted so dramatically with the next few days in theTorres del Paine National Park, in Chilian Patagonia. Here we walked along rivers, went through forests, and saw wonderful lakes.

gazed at huge mountains and were silenced by the sight of the Horns one day

and the three Towers which are slabs of stone, at a perpendicular angle from the ground.

We then travelled to the most southern town in Chile, Punta Arenas through grasslands with no trees.  Some people we met went onto a cruise through the Magellan Strait to Tierra Del Fuego from Punto Arenas but we had decided to forego that and go north to the Atacama desert.

The temperature rose dramatically. While it was summer in Patagonia, the temperature was more like the norm in Scotland and we were told that we were lucky it was as high as that. In the Atacama desert, it was around 30 degrees centigrade in the day. There were different landscapes within the desert. First we saw the beautiful Atacama salt flats. From the salt flats you can see the Andes Mountain range, beautiful in themselves. And then there a flat area directly in front of you that was so beautiful and peaceful. The colours were pastel, the surface was a mixture of white salt crystal and the clear, shallow water and the flamingo’s and birds were just equisite.

But we also saw sand dunes and pink rock formations in Moon Valley

as well as the Tatio Geysers which are the highest geysers in the world but not as big as ones which I have seen in Iceland.

They are situated at over 4000 metres high in the Andes. So it was cold. The geysers themselves are pretty astonishing and they and the surrounding huge, snow topped mountains, mad it feel slightly surreal.

In Brazil, we saw the wonderful setting of Rio

as well as the vegetation and beaches of villages south of the city. It was all so lush and green.

A bit different from the other landscapes I’ve described! We saw such contrasting landscapes and I couldn’t help but marvel at how beautiful our world can be.

We also saw a range of wildlife. I was impressed by the National parks we visited in all three countries. From a visitors point of view, they provided fantastic accesss to wildlife, but seemingly with the animals welfare at heart. There were clear areas and paths for the tourist but they allowed the opportunity to walk and see the animals but without disturbing them too much. In Argentina, we enjoyed watching penguins at Punta Tombo,

sea lions,

elephant seals and an armadillo on the Peninsula Valdez. We missed the whales as they are around in the autumn. We were introduced to a new animal, the guanaco, and we saw them thoughout Patagonia.

We saw flamingoes

and small birds in the desert and birds of prey in Patagonia. In a small village we saw some llamas with the baby called Rosemary.

I loved the flowers everywhere, so different in every area. This in Patagonia,

And something very different in the Ilha Grande.

As for the three big cities we visited, I liked the settings of them all but I thought Rio had the most beautiful location

and it has the advantage of having wonderful beaches. Man has developed Cococabana beach to an amazing extent but the beach itself remained superb.

We found some very grand buildings too in the centre of the city But the one I liked most was the Nova Cathedral, a piece of modern architecture  which apparently has a capacity of 20,000.

I could believe that.

It was, pretty spectacular flying into Santiago airport with the Andes of the left hand side. It was difficult to see some of the buildings and plaza’s in Santiago as work was being carried out on them but we admired what we could see including the changing of the guard at the Plaza de la Constitucion

and a wonderful post office.

On our first day in Buenos Aires, Rosie took us to an area which reminded me of Hyde Park (the trees are a bit different!)

It was Sunday and many people were out enjoying themselves, including ourselves. We found there were many green areas in the city. On the other hand, it was a major journey to get across the roads in Buenos Aires but not a problem as the traffic lights worked well!

Again we marvelled at wonderful buildings. For example, we had a tour round the Theatre Colon and I just loved both the inside and outside of it.

It was a pity there was no opera being performed as we would have have gladly parted with our money for that experience.

There is lots that could be said about the cities and and I want to write more about them in the context of people we met in Part 2.

Sheila