Barry Travels the World

Departure from Buenos Aires was a little erratic. I had a mid morning flight, so was anxiously awaiting the opening of the breakfast room at 8:00. By about 10 past, I decided I couldn't wait any longer, and set off to catch the bus to the airport. Once again my fallibility when it comes to directions kicked in, and I found myself almost back where I started. Eventually, after another long walk in the wrong direction, I gave up on the bus. Now there are all sorts of warnings about taxis being fake and how they'll steal your lungs or luggage, so you should always telephone for what they call a radio cab. But well, I had neither telephone nor number to call, so when I saw a wee man washing his taxi, I grabbed the opportunity. It was only when I got to the airport I realised why there was no breakfast: I'd set my clock to the wrong time when I arrived in Argentina and it was an hour earlier than I thought it was. I guess that's one indication you're on holiday, if it takes two days to notice.

Before I move on, here are a few buses, which I really liked the look of:

I'm not sure what the occasion was, but I noticed quite a few people around town with face paint (I tracked them back to the source, the university):

Random street scene:

The flight down was largely obscured by cloud (but once again Aerolinas Argentina was exactly on time). Luckily things cleared as we hit the Beagle Channel and made the descent into Ushuaia (the plane window doesn't help the photo quality, nor does the fact I forgot to turn on the autofocus on my lens, but they give the general idea):

I could actually walk to my hostel, the brilliant La Posta (there's a very scenic video to watch on their website), where I stayed for three nights. Walking into town and along the waterfront, I struck gold in the shape of the El Almacen de Ramos General, a cafe/bakery/museum - I made several visits over my time in Ushuaia, mainly to get a cafe doble and a donut

- the waitress taught me the spanish word for these very patiently, but I could never get it right and always had to point. It was only on my last day I noticed these:

I was happy to just go in and read, and soak up my surroundings:

One of the things I had read about and decided I must do was the local train, Tren del Fin del Mundo

It is a pretty famous train, running along tracks built by convicts to retrieve timber for firewood for the prison, but it really wasn't much of a trip, just a short jaunt into the corner of the Tierra del Fuego National Park:

The fellow sitting opposite me was a local, complete with cup, thermos and mate straw. The cup gets filled to the brim with mate leaves (the local tea), then is continually refilled with water, with the resulting drink sucked up through the straw. I drank quite a lot last time I was here, but wasn't really into having any more. Not so my fellow passengers - my seatmate passed his cup and straw through the entire carriage, for everyone to have a suck - not for me, sorry. He did seem like a decent chap so when the trip was over and I noticed him calling for a taxi, I gestured that he should share my one back to town. He had not a word of English, but made sure to shake my hand before getting out.

I really liked Ushuaia and have another post to make about it - it is just a fairly small town almost at the end of the world (there's actually a Chilean town further south). Here is its main street:

and the kind of office the local lawyers have:

Departure this time was a little more complicated than usual, for two reasons. First, I was leaving someone behind; someone I would rather be with than be traveling away from but my plans were old plans. Someone who had me in tears before I left, for the nicest of reasons. Second, I had things to do; vote and pick up a car in Auckland, so that I could enjoy the second phase of my holiday with the person I had left behind.

I left Dunedin the night before my flight to Buenos Aires, as there was no way I wanted weather to affect my flight out (it was bad enough that I was traveling on an airline with a particularly bad reputation when it came to reliability). I stayed at a hotel near the airport; the Airport Pacific Inn had done a nice deal on car storage for a month. By about midnight, I was feeling peckish and found a service station which doubled as a fried chicken joint. A crew of very large and evidently hungry men wiped out the entire stock of cooked chicken, but I was in no hurry and eventually had my wee box of deep fried goodness. To hell with health scares, for one night anyway.

The morning proved rather damp. I found my bus out to the railway line and the train down to Pukekohe, where I had a wet walk to the local high school. I arrived looking like a drowned rat, much to the amusement of the receptionist. She summoned Rowan, who had the car I was buying, and after a few false starts with the change of ownership process, I was on my way in what seemed to be an absurdly cheap Nissan Maxima. I still had to vote; because I was doing it early, Rowan said I would need to head to Botany, some 45 minutes distant as that was the nearest place. I have to say that Botany is not an easy destination to find; no indication of which motorway exit to take and then, as you approach it, the road signs prove unhelpful. I found myself in a completely different shopping centre, one which seemed to be focussed on South African migrants. Eventually, I made my way to Botany town centre, a place I had vague memories of being sort of interesting. Not so: it is just the standard array of brand name shopping destinations in a slightly different array. Luckily, I found the library, where the internet revealed the comforting news that the voting place was actually in the library. So, that proved easy but, given that there were a dozen places nearby I could have voted, I rather doubt I had to make a mission to Botany to do so.

After dropping the car back at the hotel, I planned to catch the bus to the airport (the hotel was so good, it actually rang me at the bus stop to see if I wanted a shuttle). Somehow, I missed it but thought that since it was only 3 kilometers, I'd walk it. Bad move - I walked down what I thought was the old road to the airport (the new expressway has no footpath) but after an hour or so was confused to find myself at the beach, then to find cow sheds and planes flying away to the north of me whereas I knew the airport to be north of the beach and south of my starting point. In other words - I had no idea where I was. A quick text to work got me a number for a taxi company and eventually I was rescued and taken to the airport (thank God for cellphones!). The flight over was a bit of an anti-climax: Aerolinas Argentina was on time and totally acceptable. My only concern was that they used old style central TV screens to show the movies and one was directly above me.

Buenos Aires airport is fairly low key - a shop, a bar and a couple of money exchanges. I converted some dollars to pesos and had my first beer, hoping to get some coins. No such luck, and the only place to get them was the bank. By this time, the queue had grown rather long, as was the processing time for each transaction. Luckily, as I was fidgeting and wondering if I should take some other method into town, I noticed the fellow in front of me seemed to be a local counting his change: I offered him a 2 peso note for the same in coins, was accepted and on my way. I used the coins in the local bus (it had a machine which only took coins) and, two and a half hours later, was finally in the centre of Buenos Aires. I was most impressed with one woman on the bus; it took some alarming turns, moved very fast and lurched repeatedly, yet she managed to pluck her eyebrows as if she was sitting in the Hilton. I think I would have stabbed myself in the eye!

I did enjoy this bus - it gave me a great introduction to the city and dropped me just a block from my accommodation, Los Patios de Montserrat. This was a fantastic guesthouse with big, airy rooms,

a very friendly host and gorgeous staff just a block from the central plaza. I am not sure what function the building served in a previous life but breakfast was served in the ballroom:

I only had two nights and a day in Buenos Aires; they were spent just wandering around the local area. Within minutes, I found a very posh sort of cafe facing the plaza, so popped in for a beer and a couple of empanadas while I watched the world go by.

The one place I wanted to see was a bookshop in what had been a theatre:

The stage has been converted to a rather pleasant cafe

Although I hadn't been in Buenos Aires much more than 12 hours and there was lots of it to see, I thought "bugger it, its my holiday" so just hung out in the cafe, having a beer, reading, people watching - some seemed to have taken up residence for the day. The bookshop was not a whole lot of use to me, as the books were 99.83% in Spanish, and I couldn't even get a useful looking Spanish-English dictionary, so I wandered around for a bit:

I would have liked to have scored a box for myself, but only the ones on the ground floor could be used, and they were busy

Heading back to my digs, I was most impressed by the buses - they're older Mercedes, but very well kept and shiny (I took way more photos of them than is healthy!). I was also rather taken by this building

There was no sign indicating what its function might be so I wandered in, to find it was the office of the waterboard, or as they liked to call it, the Palacio de las Aguas Corrientes (Palace of Running Water). There was even a wee museum, comprised of a few ceramic pipes and an abnormal number of toilets.

Oh, and here's how they apparently do takeaways in Buenos Aires:

So far, so good.

Fraser Island is a big deal in Queensland tourism - its a world heritage site, almost entirely made of sand (123 km long and 22 km wide) but with lots of freshwater lakes and even some rainforest. Since I was about two hours down the road, it seemed a good idea to pop up and check it out. I did leave in fairly good time, but things went awry on the way. I blame Gympie - I was there by lunch time, and thought I'd eat. Its not a particularly special town, a fairly standard rural Australian town, population about 10,000, a town which was mostly shut even. But still, it took more than a couple of hours to wander the streets (since I was just getting lunch, I left the camera in the car). According to its Wikipedia page, there was a gold rush there in the 1850's, which saved the new colony from ruin and left a legacy in terms of buildings rather more grand than you might expect.

And there's a train, a steam train even, the Valley Rattler. I may have ridden on if I wasn't going to Fraser Island (and it didn't cost quite a lot for a fairly short trip). But wandering around the grand old Gympie station and ogling the train was another time soak.

The nearby Railway Hotel caught my eye as well, a fine old place:

So, all of this put pressure on getting to Fraser Island. And then there was Maryborough - this is a town I would like to come back and stay in - it has loads of heritage buildings in very good condition (and a statue of Mary Poppins, as this is where her creator comes from). All in all, it was about an hour before dark and I still hadn't made it to the coast and was to be back in Noosa. I thought I should make the effort to at least see Fraser Island, but you can't make much out from the mainland, have to actually go on to it to see it for yourself. That, I had no time to do. So, it was back to Noosa for me - my examination of the various tourist type maps revealed the possibility of a shortcut rather than going back down the Bruce Highway - past the evocatively named Tincan Bay and through the Toolara State Forest. Sounds nice, right? Hah! The road was not great, turned to gravel for a while, there was a definite shortage of road signs and did I mention there was just an hour of light? So most of it was a fairly spooky drive, trundling through the forest in the dark. I think it would be nice to come back and explore this region with a bit more light and time.

Next day, it was time to head back to Brisbane. I'd done the coastal route, so I thought I'd take the inland route, through the hinterland and check out Montville in particular. It has a reputation for being an arty-farty bohemian town up in the clouds. I have to say, the road in is a bit crazy, as I became convinced I was going completely the wrong way, had to stop and ask four dear old ladies tripping about for confirmation.

On the way I came across a place called Mapleton. It had a wonderful looking old pub

which offered grand views back towards the coast

I couldn't really just sit on the verandah and drink, as I was driving. Luckily, I found the next best thing - coffee shops. There were three or four of them - this place looked good (and is now for sale, $75,000)

but there was another which offered better food (and, to be honest, another factor was that its staff looked rather more easy on the eye). So, I hung out there and had lunch, then wandered around taking photos (but not of the place I ate at, so I don't remember its name).

As for Montville, lets just say its not my kind of place - loads of people, very commercial

and nothing in particular I wanted to buy, except for something highly impractical

There were a couple of places I liked looking at,

but after a walk up one side of the main street and down the other, and a pie, I was ready to move on. And now google maps and the road conspired to confound me - I had a plan to go a bit further inland, just on a bit of an explore. I followed the google map directions I'd written down to the letter, and found myself at the end of a dead end road and no idea how to get back into the roads I had noted down. All of the road signs pointed to little towns I'd never heard of and so it was more by good luck than good management I managed to extricate myself from the web of wee country roads and end up in Brisbane.

One thing I did particularly enjoy about the late afternoon driving was seeing the Glass House Mountains catching the fading light

And so, it was off to the quaint wee motel in Redcliffe then a flight back home the next day. I have two more Australian trips to post, but first I have something a bit more recent and exotic.

I had a car and all afternoon to get to Noosa, which was all of 140 kilometres away, and still I managed to be doing the last bit in the dark. This is mainly because I decided to take every little coastal road I could find to get there, rather than tramping up the main road. I did manage to go 37 km before a stop of any significance, but when I saw Redcliffe, it felt like somewhere I needed to stop. I later learnt that it has a reputation for being a bogan town, being in the top ten bogan suburbs in Australia - here is what one proud local has to say about the place:

Redcliffe, where the local shopping centre is an architectural marvel resembling giant boobs pointing skywards,” Strutt writes. “Redcliffe, where they once paved the main street of this paradise and put up a toilet block.Yes, there may now be some posh parts of the Peninsula, but I am proud to say “’The Cliffe’’ remains a haven to the true and faithful Boganista.

Some fellow has written a ballad to celebrate its bogan-ness and there is even a Faceboook app: "How Redliffe Bogan Are You"?

And here was me, thinking it was quite a nice place, so nice in fact that despite my coast crawl examining everything to see, when I returned from Noosa, I actually stayed in Redcliffe, in an old skool beach front motel. How is this for a beach scene?

It has a decent looking jetty:

Admittedly, the main street looks a bit average:

but from a distance, you would never know:

and it was a lot better than some of the solid concrete town centres of some of the beachfront communities I struck on my coast crawl. But I have to admit, Noosa was rather a lot nicer than Redcliffe, most particularly the beach:

It had rivers and canals, and was evidently quite wealthy.

I, not being wealthy, was staying in the YHA, and what an odd experience that was. When I checked in, I was told to go to the common room for a guest introduction and wine: all new arrivals had to introduce themselves. By the time it was my turn, people had stopped listening - not sure it was worth a wine. The hostel itself is a grand old house, with some less grand buildings out the back where they put me.

Apart from the beach, the other thing about Noosa is its food and shopping street, Hastings Street. Certainly, there were plenty of interesting looking cafes, and lots of places to buy stuff, but when I saw that the Sheraton was doing a seafood smorgasbord, none of that mattered: I paid my $70 or whatever, and gorged myself. The only thing I didn't really take to was the Moreton Bay bug, also known as a flathead lobster, but there was plenty of oysters, mussels, snapper... to be going on with.

I managed to spend quite a lot of 2010 in Australia: before I lose all memory of my three trips, here goes. The first was almost exactly this time last year - I took a quick break in Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast, largely because I could fly direct after work. Things didn't get off to a great start - there was a delay with the 'plane and we were all stuck in Dunedin airport. I occupied my time by chatting to a retired fellow who was on his way to see his grandkids. Even when we were finally allowed on the 'plane, it was not time to go quite yet - they were frantically downloading some software from Christchurch to regulate the temperature on the captain's seat or something equally ridiculous.

So, it was rather late by the time I hit Brisbane and got sorted out in my hostel. Oddly enough, despite having been there for less than an hour, I was being accosted by some passing motorists for directions. Even more odd, the fellow doing the accosting was the same fellow I'd been speaking to in Dunedin airport. More odd still, I could tell him roughly how to get where he wanted to go. I was on a hunt for some dinner - all of the regular places had closed, but I had vague memories of the pancake Manor and of it being open 24 hours. That, and the building it is in (the former St Lukes [temporary] Cathedral)

are the best things about the place. The pancakes themselves were rather forgettable:

On the way home, I tried some night shots with my wee travel camera, but they're all a bit unfortunate. This is the Customhouse in full colour:

In the morning, I had a bit of time to kill before picking up my car, so walked down Fortitude Valley into New Farm (shares the title of having the best cafes with the West End) and stumbled upon a place that I'd been to before, in amongst the converted woolstores: still very good (just wish its name would come to me).

When I came back from my jaunt up north, I had a couple more nights back in the hostel. I wandered over to the State Library

and, although I had a paper to write, spent most of my time in the cafe. Coming back across the bridge, I grabbed a few shots of Brisbane central:

It was the release night of Sex in the City 2, which meant that the cinema near the hostel was chockablock with chicks dressed in fancy clothes sipping champagne. I was there for something slightly more gritty (and maybe even more tasteful): the brilliant Australian crime family movie, Animal Kingdom. When I came out, I was again a bit late for dinner, the place I had planned to eat in the wee mall had closed, so I set off down the hill and found a place I actually went to the very first time I was in Brisbane and have never been able to find since - the Char Grill at the Caxton Hotel. I signed up for a discounted steak and a couple of beers and went home a very happy man.