Let's find something really dangerous to do... again.

I have been learning quite a bit about myself in the last while. I've learned that I should never believe anything I say. When I start a sentence with the words 'I'd never do...' I usually end up doing that very thing within a week of swearing I'd never do it, or sometimes even within the hour. I said I would never do a bungee jump and then two hours later I was signed up to do one. It's like when I was doing the death road cycle and I saw a rock on the path, my brain said 'cycle away from it' but my body directed the bike towards it and I always ended up cycling over it and nearly falling off the bike. Its pretty much the same effect with my morals too, I think I have them but I don't. I'm not complaining though, people with no morals have the most fun!

Another thing I am realising is that the more dangerous the activity, the more craic it is. Luckily Naomi has the same view point and the things we are seeking out to do are getting more and more riskey to the point that we had the following discussion over dinner the other day.

Naomi - 'What extreme things can we do here?'

Niamh - 'We can do the zip lines' (high ropes located a few hundred feet or so over the jungle, which you speed down when attached to a harness)

Naomi - 'Hmm, I'm afraid they won't be dangerous enough. Maybe we can do them without the safety harness?'

We did the bungee jump in Argentina and got picked up by two woman working for the activity company driving a massive old American car. The women looked like they were straight from some Latino gang with long greasy hair and wearing basketball tops. They drove around the back street ghettos making various stops without telling us anything. They then stopped off at a high rise building and picked up a young boy who joined us for the rest of the trip. They also stopped off at a garage to service the car whilst Naomi and I waited. All this time I was shitting myself over the thought of jumping off a bridge. We arrived at the place of the bungee jump, it looked so unofficial, like the rope had been sitting there for months unused. I happily saw this as an excuse not to do it and suddenly got brave and said 'I'm totally up for doing one, but I'm just not sure this particular one is safe'. Against my better judgement, I did it and it was fun! We got back into the car for the journey home with the Latino gang ladies, they put on the Bad Boys song from Cops and we cruised around the hood again, dropping the boy off where we had picked him up again with no explanation as to who he was.



The view from the back seat of the car with our three Latino friends in the front.

We got an 8 hour bus to a place called Tulpiza so that we could go horse treking. The bus was insane, full of locals (they stink) and it off roaded for most of the journey so there was literally no road, no track, nothing. We bounced over shrubs and rocks and dust came through the windows. Screw signing up for extreme sports, just getting a bus in Bolivia is white knuckle all the way. Naomi and I booked into a two day tour in a place that looks just like the wild wild west. It was great. We had wanted to do some proper ranching where you actually get to castrate cows, shoot and lassoo things, but we haven't been lucky enough to find anyone that will let us do that yet....some day. We rocked up to the stables and met our guide, a 14 year old local boy. Parts of Argentina, like Bolivia are run by children. I think people must die at an average age of about 16, because everywhere we go, restaurants, ticket offices, tours and activities are all run by kids.

The trek was great, the scenery was amazing but my horse was an asshole. I hated him, lazy ass mother fucker. A horse that doesnt want to move. He also hated all the other horses and kicked and bit them whenever they passed by. I liked when he did this to Naomi's horse though. Our guides horse was like a cartoon character. He was tiny and trotted rather than cantered or galloped, his short legs stretching far in front of him and his head held high, it was the weirdest looking animal I've ever seen.

We are now in Buenos Aries, Argentina. It's nice to be in a city for a while after the dirt roads and smelly locals of Bolivia. We didn't receive the warmest of welcomes here though, as we were letting ourselves into the apartment we are renting for a week, a cyclist passed by and shouted 'Bitches' at us, and then 'Fuck you'. Nice.

We headed out on the piss the other night. We are finding it very easy to get talking to Argentian men. All you have to do is sit still and within seconds they come over. I got chatted up by a cute enough looking one, cute until he opened his mouth. He spat all over my face when he spoke and just kept saying 'I'm a lawyer' over and over. I wiped my face, bid him farewell and left not too soon after that.

We tried to find a gym in Salta. We eventually got to one but it was closing so we asked if we could just have a look around. Next thing I see Naomi headed for a door with 'Sauna' written over it. Seconds later she runs out grinning and saying 'Oh my God, oh my God'. 'Did you see something?' I asked her. 'YES', she said as she legged it out of the gym. She saw about 30 naked men, sitting on plastic chairs all faced in her direction. She said she focused on one in particular 'very hairy', got the shock of her life and then ran out.

Still need to work on my Spanish. We asked the man who works on reception at the apartment block e are renting if he could organise a cleaner for us before we have to leave. He has no English so it was pigeon Spanish and charades all the way. A few hours later our land lady phoned and wanted to know why we had asked the man on reception to get his wife to sit with us for a couple of hours. Lost in translation yet again, love it!