Iconic Sydney

[From Sarah...] The McFrothys are back to blogging after a bit of a hiatus.  Last we left you, we were leaving our favourite city Buenos Aires headed for Vancouver.  After a quick 48 hours of visiting family and friends, eating as much tasty North American food as possible, and drinking as much craft beer as possible, we boarded a plane again for the long trip to Sydney via Auckland.

We were lucky in Sydney to be welcomed into the homes of two different hosts, to meet up with some friends we made on our boat cruise in Turkey earlier this year, and to see a ton of this awesome city.  I was skeptical going in, but Sydney charmed me as it seems to charm everyone else!

Some shots from our first few days in Australia, including a few pictures of the Sydney icons we all recognize.

A koala!  He was curled up and seemed to be hiding his face from the hoards of tourists.

The Harbour Bridge is a pretty impressive structure, looming over the harbour.  For $200 you can pay to climb it, but we chose the budget, on the ground version.

The Opera House!  Not quite as white and shiny as it looks in the pictures (including this one), especially on a grey day.  Our first few days brought wind and clouds, but it cleared up after that and has been lovely and sunny ever since.  Our hosts kept apologizing for the weather, to which we replied "we're from Vancouver..."  Enough said!

Drinks at the Opera Bar.

A wander through the Royal Botanic Gardens with our host for the first couple nights, Gemma (one of Chad's roommates when he was on student exchange in Copenhagen).

On our second day, we took a walk over the Harbour Bridge.

The view from the top.

Looks pretty much the same from the other side, though this shot was taken in lovely Lavender Bay.

Back in downtown Sydney...

An old church with a new office tower sneaking up behind it.

When the clouds finally lifted we took a walk around the Opera House for some closer up views.

And finally, the Harbour Bridge at night after we had dinner downtown.  Note the fireworks in the background - the city puts on regular shows for free.  Never mind New Years, we got our fireworks out of the way a few weeks early!

Buenos Aires, Round 2

Alright, BA, you get another chance, since we have to fly out of you anyway.

We arrive on the ferry from Uruguay at around noon.  At the nice terminal, in the nice new waterfront area.  It's hot and humid, but the city looks pleasant and summery.  Alright, maybe we were too quick to judge BA.  All we need to do is hop on the subway and it will take as clear across the city and drop us at our hostel in a cool neighbourhood.  We're prepared.

6 blocks walk to the red line.  The gate is locked.  All the gates are locked.  Hmm, maybe the station is closed - walk to the next station.  All gates locked.  No signs, no indication of a problem.  Alright, let's walk a dozen blocks (with 2 packs each in the noon sun) to the green line since that's what we want anyway.  All gates locked.  What the hell?  Ask at a tourist info kiosk - yes, the subways are all on strike today.  Crap.

Traffic is gridlocked around the obelisk where we are.  We could get in a cab and pay an outrageous amount to go nowhere.  Or we could get on a bus, maybe sit or maybe stand, and go nowhere.  Or we could do something crazy, channeling our inner Canuck and hike with two packs apiece across the entire city to our hostel.  Let's do it.

It was damned hot, and a long way (over 2 hours of walking city streets through crowds).  But it was also a welcome bit of exercise combined with a satisfying way to thumb our noses at BA and its always-suspect transportation options.

To be fair, once we finally arrived at our hostel and had cold showers, we had a really fun tango lesson at our hostel that night.  And I had a very decent steak afterwards.  But it's just not enough, BA.  The magic is gone - in fact, it was never there.  We're done with you, it's over.  Maybe you should find someone who is more into partying at 6am, or who is involved in some trendy local scene we're not aware of.  But it's just not us.

And to be clear, it's not us - it's you.

Now give us our sweater back, take your toothbrush out of our bathroom, and let's try to be civil about this.  Thanks.

Oh, and if you could give us a trouble-free ride to the airport on the way out, that would be a nice gesture.

Devils, Widows, and Beaches in Punta Del Diablo

After two days of rustic relaxation in Cabo Polonio, we headed for our next beach destination, Punta Del Diablo on Uruguay's far eastern Atlantic coast (only about 30 km from the border with Brazil).  Punta Del Diablo (Devil's Beach!) was highly recommended by our guidebook as a laid back backpackers' town with nice beaches.  How could we not check it out?  It ended up being better than recommended, and we stayed for three nights.

The route there was a lot more back road than any we had taken to date in Uruguay, as the bus ran along the coast via secondary roads.

Our big fancy bus drops us off at this bus station.

Just off the... um... highway?

And then we get on this mini bus, which was not quite as nice... or air conditioned.

The mini bus took us to another town, where we switched busses again.  In all the little Uruguayan towns we went to, the bus station was on or near a nice green main square.  A nice way to wait!

And... rewarded!  The beaches of Punta Del Diablo were really nice.  Below I am on la Playa de la Viuda.  Widow's beach.  I suggested that Chad not go swim (at this beach, anyway) lest the undertow make a widow out of me!

Sandy McFrothy feet.

This is our hostel, which was a bit out of town but only a ten minute walk from the beach, in the middle of a nice green space, with a pool, and run by great people with nice facilities.  Highly recommended if you ever make it to Punta Del Diablo!

Out back there was an asado, where Chad cooked his dinner.

Unfortunately, in the middle of his grilling a huge storm hit.  I had seen rain, thunder, and lightening that intense before, but never for as long.  It lasted about two hours.

Luckily, the storm did not compromise the results of Chad's tasty looking dinner!

The next day dawned sunny and hot, and we took a bus up the coast to Parque Nacional Santa Teresa, which boasts a fort and more beaches.

The fort looked pretty cool, but unfortunately wasn't open for us to go into the day we were there.

Also in the park, a free mini zoo with a few animals and bunches of birds.  We're not normally big fans of zoos, but this was nice and (mostly) open space for the animals and I have to admit it was kind of cool.

A baby baboon! I was glad his gigantic Dad was in this cage.

Capybaras, the biggest rodent in the world and featured on one of Uruguay's coins.  They refused to come out in the sun and pose for us.  [Chad: my dream come true - the one thing I wanted from Uruguay was to see a capybara.]

Wart hogs?  [Chad: no, wild boar]

And then more beach.  We ended up walking for a couple hours along the coast in the blazing sun - I must be adapting to the hot weather because normally this would have made me sick but I was fine.

Punta Del Diablo is just past the far tip of the bay

[Chad: ugh, all the factory food, white bread and asado do not make for a beach body...]

We mostly had the beach to ourselves except for the seagulls.

Tadpole convention in a pond along the shore.

Punta Del Diablo is not quite as hippie as Cabo Polonio, but probably still falls squarely in the hippie category.  It is more of a "real" town though, and it's seeing a bit of development.

And a final goodbye to our hostel.  We were sad to leave; headed back to Colonia del Sacramento and then Buenos Aires.

Hippies and Dunes - Cabo Polonio

Many people (both Uruguayan and other travellers) recommended a visit to Cabo Polonio.  It's a beach hippie enclave on the eastern side of Uruguay.  The collection of tumble-down, arty shacks that form the settlement were later encompassed by a national park, but the private land of the settlement was "grandfathered" (as it invariably is in South America), so it still exists.  It sits on a headland, with a 19th century lighthouse in the middle, gorgeous beaches to either side, and sand dunes behind it.  While tooled up for tourists a bit, it has stayed true to its roots: no outside electricity (solar and wind only, maybe a rare generator and gas for cooking), no modern buildings, no banks or ATMs - and there's a good chance your host will be peacefully high or drunk.

After a couple of hours on the bus from Montevideo, you board one of these bad boys for the 8 km trip across the dunes to the settlement.

First beach shack sighting - but outside of Cabo Polonio proper.

Not a bad beach - the south coast of Uruguay appears to be mostly beach and sand, and is refreshingly free of over-development.  (With the exception, we hear, of Punte del Este, which is supposed to be like Monaco on steroids.)

The biggest, fanciest "main street" in town - just a dirt foot path one row of hostels and restaurants from the beach.

The lighthouse near the center of the settlement.

The beach near town is almost entirely composed of sea shell fragments.

You can gather mussels for supper off the rocks right in front of the village.  And seaweed (sea lettuce) that our host incorporated into a very tasty omelette.  Or you can try your hand and night-time net fishing.

Our hostel.  It's tiny and rough and more expensive than you'd think (limited supply of accommodation), but we had a great group of guests, and it was only 80 feet from the beach.

Drinking mate and playing chess at the hostel.

The Swedish guests break out their ukuleles and serenade us with some very accomplished folky tunes.  Including some Neil Young!

I took advantage of the house guitar, though poorly-executed 90s grunge isn't exactly built for a classical nylon-string instrument.

The main attraction - the beach!  Refreshing and clear and now salty since we were finally free of the Rio de la Plata.

Behind me is the heart of Polonio - small and chill.  We came early in the week and it wasn't quite peak season, so it was very relaxed and quiet and seemed to have something more of its original hippie vibe than it probably does when overrun on weekends in peak season.  Even the scrambly middle-aged day-visitors couldn't break the spell we multi-day visitors soon fell under.  Brought me back to my childhood summers spent at the family cabin on Shuswap lake - just cabin, beach and water.  Ahh.  Many people come for a day or two, and end up staying 2 months.  Time works differently in Polonio.

Hand-built playground across the street.

This dog from our hostel was a real pack animal.  He would always follow our group to the beach, lay down with us, and accompany us back, never moving more than a few feet from us.  He always scratched a hole to lie in, down where the sand was cooler.

Almost another duck toller sighting!  This guy was a bit too small to be a full toller, but his colouring sure suggests he's a cross with one.  Almost every time we hit a remote beach town, we see another of Allie's cousins.

Sarah took a walk on the dunes for a different perspective.

I decided to replace my crappy Argentina-purchased wooden mate (which cracked almost immediately) with a proper Uruguayan gourd shrouded in metal and leather like most of the locals use.  Here I am with my first drink from it.

And here I'm displaying proper mate-carrying technique - hot water thermos tucked under the same arm you carry the gourd with.

We had one of the more amazing sunset-light-on-clouds evenings I've ever seen.  Lots of big storm clouds, full moon, and purple through light orange light glowing all around.

The island has private homes, hostels, restaurants and two "provision" corner stores, all in little shacks.  That's it.

Our constant companion sticks with us again.

Looking toward the lighthouse and typical private houses from the far-side beach.

Cabo Polonio was fantastic (apart from a big crop of mosquitoes and no-see-ums that ravaged my forehead despite mostquito netting), though perhaps not for everyone.  We had a very relaxed, down-to-earth time unwinding by the beach, which was perfect for us.  You're only one step removed from camping and you have to create your own entertainment with the other guests and the limited nightlife available.  But it's a unique spot and a cool get-away.