Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Like Bariloche, 6.30am on Sunday morning is still definitely part of Saturday night in Rio Gallegos. I decided to head for the waterfront, partly in the name of avoiding too many road crossings which might involve encountering drivers of unknown sobriety. It wasn't a terribly scenic run, but then I've been rather spoilt in that department in the last week. The run itself felt a bit like the morning after the day before, but the Achilles warmed up eventually.

This was the prelude to the last long haul southwards - once you hit Ushuaia the only ways to go further south are to hit the air or the water. It was a longer haul (in time terms) because by far the narrowest point of the straits between Tierra del Fuego and the mainland are in Chile, so there were two border crossings as well as the ferry crossing. These are proper borders too (not the sort you find in Europe where the only way you find out you're in a new country is that the colour of the road signs has changed). There's even the odd minefield left over from skirmishes associated with a late 1970s border dispute, which failed to escalate to a full-scale war after the Pope told both parties to the dispute to stop it or they'd go blind (or words to that effect).

The northern half of Tierra del Fuego, like eastern Patagonia, is windswept and treeless. Coming towards the end of this was Rio Grande, which announced itself with a grandiose sign proclaiming it (in Spanish and English) to be "the city of your dreams". The only people for whom it was likely to be a city of dreams were those who had the good sense to sleep for the duration of our transit - it was actually one of the most dismal places I've seen on this trip (although it does get a few points for having a bowling lane in the bus station). As I understand it, local economic activity mostly involves either digging (or pumping) stuff out of the ground, or taking advantage of tax rorts incentives; the place also comes from the we've-got-lots-of-room-so-let's-use-it-all school of urban planning.

The trip, as expected, got a lot more interesting after that, getting into hillier and more forested country in the first 100 kilometres before building to a crescendo of glaicated mountain ranges in the last 100 into Ushuaia (unfortunately, there was too much gunk on the bus windows for good photos - there's still a fair bit of gravel road on the Chilean side - but I'll get another chance on Wednesday). Got into Ushuaia at 8.30, an hour earlier than expected, and will be here for the next couple of days, setting various furthest-south milestones and, depending on the weather, seeing some of the surrounding mountains.

Snow to sea level is a possibility on Tuesday night (the air should be cold enough, the main issue will be moisture).

This time, the day started with good news from home in the form of the Victorian election result (which was not quite finalised by the time I set out, but was all but certain).

Headed out a bit before 8; unusually for this trip, after breakfast (most places I've stayed don't start breakfast until too late for this to be an option so I've been running on bananas or muesli bars, but here they start at 6, I think because the flights out of here leave early). Original plan was to climb up onto the range behind town - perhaps the first proper Six Foot training run - but the track up there (marked as a road on a map I'd seen) had a "private property" sign at the start so instead I stayed on the road running southwest along the base of the scarp, which meant a smaller climb, peaking at around 500 metres instead of 700-800 (from a base of 180). Excellent conditions, with temperatures around 6-8 and light winds by local standards.

The first few kilometres getting out of town felt reasonably mundane, apart from seeing the local hoons in action (memo: despite its favourable weight properties in the power-to-weight ratio, a rusted-out Fiat Uno is not really the vehicle you want for street racing). Picked up once I left the El Calafate town limits at about 4k, still not very fast on the steady uphill, but feeling as if I was enjoying it - as I've noted before, particularly in the context of desert runs, there's a certain purity about it when it's just you, rolling steppe (with a distant backdrop of glaciated peaks) and a strip of gravel stretching endlessly into the horizon. This sense of purity was strengthened by the lack of traffic, as in the next 45 minutes I saw more horses being ridden (two) than motor vehicles being driven (one). (There was more traffic coming back - a few tours head out this way and evidently 9ish is a common departure time).

Throughout the later stages of the outward section it felt like one of those runs which would take off once I turned around and it shifted to being flat to downhill (and the wind, such as it was, became a tailwind), and so it proved as the second half was one of the most enjoyable runs I've had in a long time, particularly the last 5k, almost floating along at times. The bubble wasn't even pricked when I got back into town and hit the local equivalent of the Parkwood Minor Industrial Estate (perhaps I was especially keen to get out of the place because that kilometre was the fastest non-speedwork kilometre I've done in yonks). Finished off really well and felt as if I still had a lot left in me, despite this being the longest I've done in some months.

The parallels with a run at least as good in mountain country on roughly this weekend three years ago (the Pyrenees that time) did not go unnoticed.

The remainder of the day saw the reasonably mundane trip down to Rio Gallegos on the east coast - the transit point to pick up the Ushuaia bus tomorrow. Rio Gallegos is definitely back off the tourist track (after a few days of being in places which are essentially tourist centres) - it's the biggest place for a very long way around, a regional centre roughly the size of Wagga or Dubbo, and has that sort of feel to it. One feature of it which I was keen to see was the Museo Malvinas Argentinas, though it turned out to be different to what I'd been led to believe - instead of being largely about stating their claim to the islands, it was mostly a war museum from the 1982 war. (Of course Australia would never build a museum to mark a spectacular military failure). Rio Gallegos is the closest Argentine port and has a large military base, which means it probably ranks fairly high on the list of places that might get bombs dropped on it if there is ever another war.

And I've got the hut bookings I wanted for Torres del Paine, which means that the tent I've been carrying around the Americas is going to turn out to be surplus to requirements (except as an emergency backup if the weather turns really foul mid-leg). The long-range forecast is also not too bad, although I'm not sure if a model run which says a small intense low to the west on Friday is going to dive south-east and miss the area is one I'd want to stake my life on yet.

Weekly rest day today - unlike some other weeks on this trip, there isn't a day this week when the timing of such has been driven by trasnport schedules making a run impossible. The hotel here has a gym, of sorts, and I did consider doing a bit of an exercise bike session, but its resistance setting wouldn't change from the lowest so I didn't really see the point.

Today was devoted to visiting the Perito Moreno Glacier. This is a particularly interesting set-up. It's a glacier of fairly stable size (like some other glaciers fed by the westerlies, such as some of the Norwegian ones, increased precipitation is offsetting higher temperatures), and goes into an arm of a very large lake, which it comes very close to cutting in two - at present the gap is perhaps 50 metres wide. Every so often it does advance far enough to cut the lake in two and water builds up on the southern side to quite a height (probably 10 metres or so judging from the lower limit of vegetation) before the ice wall collapses under the weight of water and unleashes a monstrous outflow. This happens once every few years on average, most recently in June 2012.

The configuation does mean you can look at its face (which is probably 50 metres or so high) from not too far away on the other side of the lake, and watch as big blocks of ice regularly fall into the water below - something the size of a car or bigger falls off every few minutes or so.

Last night's entertainment was the latest instalment of the River Plate-Boca Juniors rivalry (the clubs, and the TV stations, can't be too upset that the draw for the South American Cup saw them meet twice in a week). In the early minutes, which featured a penalty (which was saved) inside 30 seconds, and four yellow cards, I was wondering if the teams had taken up Australian Rules instead from the number of hip-and-shoulders delivered. It settled down a bit after that, but I'm still very surprised that the match finished with only one goal on the scoreboard, and 22 players still on the pitch. One feature of the telecast, though, will be very familiar to Victorians, at least - incessant government ads spruiking everything from new trains on suburban lines in Buenos Aires to the new Malvinas Museum.

And there are a lot of things I'll miss about Argentina, but their financial system is not one of them - I'm continuing to learn that when it comes to paying for things here, US$ cash is definitely the first preference, then euros, then other major South American currencies (like Brazilian or Chilean), then local cash, with credit cards a distant last - whether this is because of bank fees, because it makes it harder to avoid tax, or because with inflation running at 20-30% by the time they get the money it will be worth a lot less, is unclear. Either the machines here are very unreliable or I'm being told porkies by at least a few of the people who say their credit card machines are "broken" (the latest being the bus company I was getting tickets from today).

C • Perito M 4

Rose this morning to be greeted by the bad news from home. I hadn't fully absorbed it by the time I started running - that was to come later in the day - but it was still something to be thought about from time to time during a couple of hours on Patagonian gravel. Like a lot of people, it seems, this has affected me more than the passing of just about any other public figure I can remember. Part of it is the sheer shock, part of it, it seems to me, is that we're so used to seeing batsmen hit on the head and take strike again a minute or two later (or, if they're unlucky, break something and miss a couple of matches) that to see such an incident from which someone doesn't walk vway is totally alien to the way we think things should happen. This is definitely a day I feel a long way from home.

Cricket, more than any other sport I know, has a keen sense of its own history, and I suspected I wasn't the only person who thought of the parallels with Archie Jackson, another swashbuckling NSW opener of three generations ago cut down in his mid-twenties, though by illness rather than accident. (Later in the day, indeed, I was to read two pieces - one in the Guardian, one in the Australian - on exactly that theme).

It's also a reminder that the one presidential duty I hope never to have to carry out is to give a media statement of the sort given today by James Sutherland or Michael Clarke.

Back to the run. I headed north from town this time, hoping to reach the point where the valley takes a 90-degree turn, thus exposing even more views. This mission was duly accomplished. The wind again made its presence felt - definitely a negative split (to the tune of 3 1/2 minutes) today. The run was pretty solid for the most part (though with a bit of a scare with a hamstring twinge right at the end, definitely not the place you want something to go wrong in a remote area); fell away in the last 10 minutes, which I think might have been at least partially through losing more fluid than I thought on a warmer morning than the last few (judging by the amount I drank through the rest of the day).

Timed my walks well: the high peaks were all in cloud today. I've been falling on my feet a bit on this trip, and another example came when the place I stayed offered a substantial discount if I paid US$ cash - something I had enough to do with $2 to spare.

Headed down to El Calafate this afternoon. This is a more substantial town, and most importantly, has a functional post office (which I got to 15 minutes before closing time), so the voting mission was finally accomplished. (It's still got to get back to Melbourne inside two weeks, which might be pushing it).

San Martin count: now 4 out of 6.

C • Media coverage 4

Not sure exactly what this is referring to (Hoggster, whom I presume is at the meeting it was sent from, may be able to enlighten us), but it's good to know I'm being missed :-)

Headed north from town in pursuit of a waterfall, initially on the gravel road (which I plan to spend more time on tomorrow), then on a (fairly flat) foot track for the last 1.5k or so. The waterfall having been duly sighted (and photographed), I then had the choice (given my intended distance) of continuing north for another 10 minutes, or going back and doing the extra in town. I did the town option, mainly in the name of checking out the conditions on the peaks (Fitz Roy is visible from the southern part of town but not the northern). Rather sleepy in the earlier stages, and Achilles wasn't having a great day either.

There was quite a lot of cloud around the village and I was wondering if it was going to be worth doing serious walking, but closer inspection revealed that the cloud was fairly high and that Fitz Roy, at least, was generally visible. I headed in that direction but didn't do quite what I'd originally planned - the last part of that walk is a fairly rugged climb (400m in 2k on scree) to a glacial lake, and the weather was good enough that I thought I might have a decent chance of seeing Cerro Torre if I went somewhere from which it was visible, whereas the climb was likely to give me a closer-up view of what I could already see quite spectacularly. I therefore decided to scrub the climb and instead do a 6km track which cut across to yesterday's route about halfway along.

The stated objective was achieved - I got a Cerro Torre summit sighting (well-timed; it was in cloud again within 20 minutes). What I hadn't anticipated was that the route to get there took me through some of the best orienteering terrain I'll never run on. The top couple of kilometres of the valley looked magical - open southern beech forest with very little understorey (though a bit of fallen timber), a reasonable number of clean rock features but not much rocky ground surrounding them - a bit like the nicer Australian granite areas - and not particularly steep as long as you didn't go too far up the mountain. The next ridge across looked even better from a distance, although I'm not sure if there was a good way across the dark green marsh in between to get there. (Note for those readers who aren't orienteers, and I know there are a few: dark green is the colour used on maps to show impenetrable or near-impenetrable vegetation: in Victoria it's usually blackberry or gorse). It will never be used on at least three counts ((a) it's in a national park where even off-track walking is technically forbidden (b) the closest vehicle access is about 7km away and (c) there are currently no orienteers based within 3000km of the place), but it was still fun to imagine events there during the half-hour or so that it took me to walk through it.

Today's walk ended up being about 20km as well; knew I'd had a decent day out by the end of it. A post-trek waffle and hot chocolate definitely hit the spot.

C • Not that you need it but 4

Under normal circumstances, an intervals session in a car park sounds like it's the stuff of last resorts. It certainly doesn't sound like a likely scene to what will probably go down as one of my most memorable runs of the year (caveat: there are likely to be numerous opportunities for its displacement in the coming fortnight).

I'd come to the car park of the national park visitor centre on the southern edge of El Chalten for a couple of reasons; it had some chance of being a bit sheltered from the wind, and being a little out of town it was also likely to be out of the range of stray dogs, which I'd heard (inaccurately as it turned out) were a real issue here. What I didn't know in advance was that it was a location which, on a morning such as this, offered the most stunning views of one of the world's more stunning mountains, Cerro Fitz Roy - certainly something to savour during the recovery periods.

It was certainly an inspiring setting and I was reasonably inspired, running a much better session than this time last week (admittedly not the highest of bars to clear). It helped that the loop I was doing was such that the downhill half was upwind and the uphill half downwind - the reverse might have made for a tough 30 seconds out of 60.

Warm-up and down, going from one end of El Chalten to the other and checking out what's here. It's a somewhat oddball place which is essentially here to support one thing only - trekking (with a bit of climbing and mountain-biking on the side). You don't come here unless you're prepared to do some reasonably serious walking - even the shortest worthwhile walk is around 6km with some solid climbing. At this time of year it's definitely spot-the-local (probably a bit different during the January holidays), with English being heard around the place at least as often as Spanish (and German making regular appearances too).

(Actually, the town's original purpose wasn't tourism - it was built in a hurry in 1985 because, in an era when relations between the countries were tenser than they are now, Argentina wanted to forestall any possible Chilean claim to the land).

Walking was what I did with much of the rest of the day (once I'd tried to sort out a few other things, of which more below). There are overnight trips from here but most of what's worth doing is doable as long day walks (unlike Torres del Paine). Today's was to Laguna Torre and return, about 20km, with a solid climb in the first couple of kilometres but fairly flat thereafter with just a few ups and downs. (You can hide a lot in 50-metre contours - even Cerro Torre, one of the world's most difficult technical mountaineering challenges, looks like a steepish knoll at that interval).

The main objective of this walk is views of Cerro Torre and the remainder of that range. I didn't quite get a complete view of Cerro Torre as bits of its peak came in and out of cloud, but that was only a minor disappointment because there was plenty of other scenery to be stunned by. Laguna Torre, at the end, is a glacial lake (I suspect of very recent vintage in geological terms), complete with ice floes from the glacier feeding it at the other end piling up against the lake's eastern shore. A steady stream of people without it feeling overcrowded. Walking times here bear a bit more resemblance to reality than they sometimes do in Australian national parks, but something advertised as 6-7 hours was completed in a bit under 5 without having to push too hard. The weather was a pleasant surprise - the howling winds of the valley were blocked by the Fitz Roy range once up on the walk, and only at the lake were they even moderate.

There weren't as many photo stops on the way back - partly because I'd already got a lot of good ones, and partly because cloud was beginning to descend over the higher peaks. (You'll have to wait a few days for the photos - bandwidth here is too poor to support anything much beyond AP, which may also explain things if you're waiting for me to respond to an e-mail - but if you feel like getting a preview, I'm sure there are plenty of online images of Fitz Roy and Cerro Torre).

Tomorrow's plan, if the weather is OK (it's not going to be worth doing all of it if there are no views), is a 24km out-and-back to the northwest.

And I still haven't succeeded in voting. I did find the El Chalten post office (or rather, what looked like an ordinary house with a post box out the front and a 'Correo Argentina' sign on the wall), but there was no indication of what hours, if any, postal services are provided from the premises - it certainly wasn't on any of the three occasions I went past today. El Calafete on Thursday afternoon is looking like a better prospect (and it would probably still get there as quickly or more quickly, given that El Calafete has direct flights to Buenos Aires).

C • El Calafete 1

This was an example of the sort of run I quite like to do when I'm on the road - find an empty back road (preferably dirt, but bitumen with not much traffic will do), preferably not the one I entered town on or plan to leave by, and do an out-and-back, just me and the road/track stretching to the horizon. The road to Perito Moreno's less-than-overwhelmed airport did this job quite nicely. I did, however, get to experience some more of the local headwinds, most notably in the 2k before the turnaround when I climbed out of the valley onto the plateau and hit the full force. (Nearly all the Patagonian settlements I've seen so far have been on valley floors, probably for access to water but a bit of wind protection's a nice bonus). Working hard at that stage but feeling pretty good later on (including in crosswinds). Might have to do some advance planning of long runs if this keeps up - going into winds like that continuously for an hour (either going out or coming back) will be challenging. The brilliant sunshine was a reminder that I'm heading into ozone hole territory (though it's a bit late in the season for the worst of it).

That was the prelude to another long day on the road - this time we were nearly two hours late (arriving at 8.30, though still with plenty of light). I also neglected to take the opportunity of our brief stop at Bajo Caracoles - accurately described by Bruce Chatwin as "a crossroads of insignificant importance with roads leading all directions apparently to nowhere" - to get supplies for lunch and therefore didn't get another chance until 3pm. Irregular food timetables and sometimes rough roads aside, it was another interesting day, lots more epic bleakness but with enough glimpses of distant delights to let us know what to look forward to over the next few days. There were times when one could easily imagine oneself somewhere out past Coober Pedy - rocky low tablelands, sand dunes and straggly saltbush - and then you turned your head 90 degrees and saw the glacial lake and the jagged white range in the distance....

I'd planned this as a rest day some time ago - unusual for a Sunday - because I was expecting to be on a bus from 6.45am to 9pm, on the first leg of the trip to the deep south, from Bariloche to Perito Moreno. (It turned out we got in just after 7 - presumably because there's less dirt road than there once was - and if I'd still had a streak going I would have had time to squeeze something in, but I don't so I didn't).

This was the first day of a two-day trip down Ruta 40, a road of legendary status in Argentina which runs the entire length of the country (all 5000km of it) roughly tracking along the eastern foot of the Andes. The Patagonian component of it used to have a reputation of being a local equivalent of one of our outback tracks, but all but about 20km of today's stretch was bitumen and that remainder is under construction. (I don't know whether this has anything to do with this being the President's home turf). Those who've come from the opposite direction tell me there's still some old-school stuff to look forward to tomorrow.

There was quite a bit of life on the streets of Bariloche at 6.30 on a Sunday morning (almost exclusively consisting of people for whom it was the morning after the night before). From there, it was mountain country for 300 kilometres or so - a few too many clouds around for good photos but still beautiful - before we got into the really barren and remote country, flat and treeless with just low saltbush-type growth, not even really grass except in the valleys - could easily have been a colder version of the SA outback (at least in those places where the snowcapped mountains to the west were out of sight). There were a few one-horse towns (actually, in the town where we had lunch I saw two horses), and a larger place, Rio Mayo, which managed to have the sense of a one-horse town despite a four-figure population.

Perito Moreno is more substantial than that (its main streets are paved for a start). The hotel's pretty basic but will do the job; I'm also getting my first introduction to something which will become very familiar over the next couple of weeks, Patagonian westerly winds. There was another Australian on the next table at dinner, which meant I was able to clear the second-last hurdle to casting my postal vote (getting a qualified witness to sign the envelope); just need to find a post office now...

(Originality does not appear to be a strong point in Argentine street names; this is the third place out of four where I've stayed on San Martin. Others which make regular appearances include 25 de Mayo, 9 de Julio, Juan Peron, Belgrano, and of course Islas Malvinas or variations thereof).

C • San Martin 4

Took a very long time to get to sleep last night (like sometime after 2), and with no opportunity to sleep in because of a 6am OA board meeting (it's something of a miracle of modern technology that I can run these from the mountains of Argentina), I thought today might be a bit of a struggle.

Nonetheless, I stuck to my original plan of getting the bus up to the Cerro Catedral ski resort and then running back via the back road, which I thought would be about 2 hours. Started off reasonably well (with the help of a solid downhill from 2-6k which accounted for all of the net elevation loss), and enjoyed being on dirt for the first 10k - except for the bit through a village which raked very high on the loose dogs quota. Not such attractive immediate surrounds on the second half along a reasonably substantial road (though with a good verge), but the views were still good. Toughest part of the course was the last 5k, with a solid climb followed by a watch-your-quads descent into town. Certainly not as good a run as last week's long one, but not too bad.

After a couple of hours I decided I was in sufficient shape to do one of the other local highlights - renting a bike and riding around the Circuito Chico, an intermittently spectacular and always hilly 25km loop. Unsurprisingly found this hard work (up the hills anyway) on the rental bike - quads finally gave out on the last climb (and the rest of me on the bus back to town). I'll sleep well tonight, I expect. The circuit circumnavigates Lake Perito Moreno, not to be confused with the town of Perito Moreno (where I'll be staying tomorrow night), the Perito Moreno Glacier (currently planned for next Friday) and the Perito Moreno National Park (an exceedingly remote place I won't make it to). Sr. Moreno was a noted 19th century explorer of Patagonia so it's not really any different to the proliferation of Humes, Sturts and Eyres on the relevant corridors in Australia (to say nothing of Major Mitchell).

I set off further south first thing tomorrow morning. Bariloche is technically in Patagonia (as is Neuquen), but I'll feel as if I'm really getting into it properly once south of here.

Getting to explore Bariloche in more detail (and feeling better) than yesterday. The major objective was to get to the top of the ridge behind the town to see the next range properly, and this objective was achieved, through what was a pretty solid climb for the first 4k. Didn't feel stunning, but certainly better than the last couple of days. Crispest running conditions I've been in for a while - brilliantly sunny but chilly in a Canberra September sense (it was -0.5 overnight, though got close to 20 today).

One slightly annoying feature of the run was the large number of loose dogs (I've seen this before a bit in South America, but not to this extent) - only a couple gave any sort of trouble but still a bit disconcerting. I'm told there are many more in Chile (though Chile is also rabies-free which takes one issue out of the equation). Somewhat to my surprise, most of the residential streets outside the immediate town centre are gravel (even though the housing quality suggests that many served reasonably well-off areas; maybe this comes from the East Ivanhoe Boulevard school of traffic calming).

As I expected, the more ambitious walks from here were off the agenda because of too much snow cover (the snowline is at about 1600m) and/or because they're served by summer-only buses which aren't running yet, but I still managed to get a nice one in along the top of the ridge next to town, about 600m above (accessed via chairlift) - lots of stunning views. (That said, if I understand the course directions correctly, a lot of the under-snow ones feature in this race to be run on Sunday, especially in the 80k and 50k).

Other items on today's agenda included making acquisitions from one of Bariloche's famous array of chocolate shops, and being only partially successful in the latest stage of my bid to cast a vote in the Victorian election. (I've received my ballot papers, but the declaration envelope needs to be witnessed by either an Australian citizen or a local government official/police officer; I haven't found any of the former yet, and the latter will only do it through a specific office for certifications which doesn't open again until Tuesday - it's a long weekend here - by which time I'll be long gone. I think I've got a decent chance of finding a fellow citizen in El Chalten, but whether the vote will then make it back from such a remote place in time to be counted - 11 days after polling day is the magic number, I think - is anyone's guess).

C • More boxes ticked 3

I didn't sleep that much on the bus. It was one of the less plush ones I've been on (though still better than home), was quite full, and they stuck to the original meal schedule in terms of place (buses here normally give you food on board rather than stop for meals), so we had dinner at 3am.

We got to Neuquen (or so I thought) around 4.30. I'd booked (and paid for) a hotel there and thought about going out there to see if anyone was awake to check me in and get maybe three or four hours' sleep before the next leg, but the taxi driver at the bus station, who was perhaps waiting for a booking, didn't seem terribly interested in me (he might have been more interested if he'd known how big a fare he was going to get - see below), so I settled into to try to keep myself awake for five hours at the bus station. As bus stations go it seemed pretty good - clean and felt safe in the pre-dawn hours (many don't), though smaller than I expected in a place of Neuquen's size, and there was a cafe there which accepted US$ at the unofficial rate. (If you don't want to chance dealing with the dodgy street dealers who can be found on any tourist-area street saying 'Cambio, Cambio', another less dodgy way to do exchange deals is to find a place which accepts US$, as many restaurants do, pay more than you need to and get your change in pesos at the unofficial rate - which at the moment is about 13 compared with the official rate of 8.5).

Held out until the arrival of the next bus, albeit with some moments which felt like I imagine 5am must feel like on a rogaine. The staff seemed a bit puzzled by my ticket but let me on. It wasn't until I'd been on the bus for about 15 minutes that it dawned on me - I'd got off in the wrong town (the town on the other side of the river to Neuquen, about 10km away) - and it was fortunate that my connecting bus also stopped there. Probably fell on my feet in that sense because the small-town terminal was a nicer place to wait in the early hours than I expect Neuquen's would have been.

Unsurprisingly, I was asleep pretty quickly on the Bariloche bus, but did wake in time to experience the last 250 kilometres - starting with arid saltbush country which wouldn't have been out of place in Woomera, gradually becoming hillier but still barren, then a stunningly scenic last 100km which made me wonder if I'd been asleep for a very long time and ended up in Queenstown. If this is what Patagonia is going to be like it's going to be a fun couple of weeks.

The run, done not too long after I arrived, was rubbish, but what do you expect? Achilles, again to my less than overwhelming surprise, was particularly touchy today but eventually settled down in the second half.

C • I can confirm your suspicions. 1

Longer run this morning, up to the local peak with the aim of getting a good early-morning view of the Andes - turns out you don't really get a view of the main range there, just the initial range which is quite impressive enough. It was almost continuously uphill for the first 6.5km but never steeply so (250 metres climb in total), to the summit of Cerro de la Gloria, renamed some decades ago in honour of a military campaign (at least they didn't call it Cerro Malvinas Argentinas). Felt OK, if somewhat grinding, on the climb, but pretty ordinary on the descent (with a diversion past the Mendoza meteorological observatory), and ended up going not quite as far as planned.

The reason for this ordinariness manifested itself as soon as I cooled down - something strained in my upper back (not the usual spot). I was thinking "could be fun trying to haul a pack around with this", but it seemed to settle down more or less by the end of the day.

The main agenda item for the day was a long bus trip - a bit of a nothing leg to an overnight stop in Neuquen, ahead of a connection to Bariloche the next morning. With a 10pm scheduled arrival it always looked like a long day, particularly when we left 30 minutes late.

I'd seen a march when I arrived in Mendoza which I gathered was something to do with objections to a mine and its potential effect on downstream water supplies (important in a region which depends on irrigation), and there were a few more relevant signs on the road south (my Spanish may be limited but you don't need much to work out what's going on with "NO A LA MINA" and "AGUA CONTAMINADA"). It got a bit more serious when we were held up for about 45 minutes coming into General Alvear, a town about 300km south of Mendoza, by a protest, but that turned out to be only the warm-up.

The next stop was about 10km out of town on the way south. Here there was a kilometre-long line of heavy vehicles (cars were finding other ways around) whose cause we all worked out pretty quickly, and it was apparent it was going nowhere in a hurry (word was it had already been going for four hours). It did get nowhere in a hurry; we were eventually stuck there for six hours, stretching well into the evening. I was thinking this trip wouldn't be complete without colliding with South American street politics at some point, and this was it. After the first couple of hours most of us spilled out onto the road which made it hard to tell who was involved in the protest and who wasn't (by this point a secondary blockade had appeared pretty well next to our bus). It was all quite a festive atmosphere with only two bits of aggro that I saw (and only one piece of horn-blowing) - surprising me a bit as patience isn't really part of the Latin American stereotypes you think of. (I suspect the protest had overwhelming local support, including from the police who were nowhere to be seen until it was pretty much all over). There were a couple of Brits on the bus so at least I had someone to talk about the situation with.

Once it became apparent that we were going to be several hours late, I was quietly hoping that it would drag on for a couple more (on the grounds that I'd rather spend most of a night on a bus than half of it on a bus and half in a bus station). We eventually got moving again shortly after 10, with six or seven hours still ahead of us. In what was to be the first of several surreal moments of the coming hours, as we went past the main protest site the crowd cheered us passing as if we were a football team bringing home some important silverware.

Next step was a test of my counting skills in Spanish - the bus bingo game (won by one of the Brits - I wouldn't have been able to do anything with the prize, a bottle of Mendoza's finest, anyway).

Overnight buses here are definitely a much more pleasant experience than they are in Australia (it occurred to me today that I'm now only a few hundred kilometres away from the volcano which was responsible for my most recent overnight bus trip in Australia). That said, travelling overnight meant one significant negative - ruling the morning out as a running possibility.

With no sign of the 'chance of a thunderstorm' turning into anything substantive and the temperature sitting on 35 degrees, I headed out in the late afternoon into the Mendoza sun. A shorter, faster session was the least unsuited to these conditions (and it was about time I did something faster anyway), so did a 10x1 minute on the town side of the San Martin park - which was at least shady. (Looking forward to the Andes views, which were impressive on the way into town, from the highest parts of this park tomorrow morning). Felt horrible on the warm-up and still only modestly functioning during the reps themselves, but managed to get through which will do me for today. Probably better going uphill than down (there was a slight slope to the place where I was doing them).

Mendoza is an arid place which functions on irrigation (a bit like Mildura, though the main agricultural activity here is wine), and there are irrigation channels along a lot of the streets (not things you would want to fall into). Lots of trees on the streets too, at least in the parts of town I've been in. It's the last large city I'll be in for a while.

Going to/from the park. Horrible going up, better (but still rather hot and bothered) coming back.

Was looking up sunrise/sunset times earlier on. In effect Argentina has permanent daylight saving (its time zone is GMT-3 when its longitude fits GMT-4, even GMT-5 in western parts). One consequence of this is that in winter, sunrise isn't until 8.30 in Mendoza (and 10 in Ushuaia).

From a comments thread on the Poll Bludger blog: "Family First have preferenced the Australian Sex Party last in the Victorian state election. Obviously no-one's had the talk to them yet about how families get started".

Weird orienteering and meteorology (combined) dreams department: the one which involved 165 (a very precise number) millimetres of rain falling in Launceston in a few hours and washing away the crossings of the gorge before the World Cup prologue. (In reality, nothing close to this amount of rain has ever fallen in Launceston, one of the least likely places in the country to get that sort of extreme short-period rain; their big floods, and they've had a few, come when there are big dumps in the north-east highlands which make their way down the South and North Esk).

Certainly knew I'd been for a run yesterday when I got up this morning. Achilles was tight (as it was every time I got up during the day after sitting for any length of time), and so were quads, but both loosened up quickly and the run was a reasonable one thereafter.

Once again headed to the Puerto Madero docklands, mostly in the name of minimising road crossings (though the traffic wasn't quite as crazy as I was expecting it to be). It's one of numerous affluent areas of the city; on the basis of what I've seen on this visit, you certainly wouldn't think you were in an economic basket case. The rich areas in Brazil are probably as rich or richer, but the very visible security there gives you a barbarians-at-the-gate sense you don't get here (the only electric fences I've seen so far in Argentina are the sort with cows on the other side of them). I'm well aware, though, that there is extreme poverty here too, some of it not too many kilometres away on the outer fringe of the city where running water and electricity are luxury items.

Did a bit of a double-take towards the end on spotting someone who bore a very striking resemblance to Asha as she was three or four years ago, walking down the street in a white lab coat. (On rounding the corner it became apparent that the white lab coat was the uniform for the local school).

It was another warm run, although with a nice breeze on the waterfront. I have two days of summer remaining (for now); the forecasts for my route are 37 for Mendoza on Tuesday, 11 for Bariloche on Thursday.

Had another pleasant day exploring various bits of Buenos Aires (including a trip out to the science museum which demonstrated that kids get as excited about dinosaurs here as they do at home), before getting on the bus for Mendoza.

First proper long run of the trip (and since early September), apart from races, heading out northwest from the centre of the city to the parklands around Palermo. These parklands are extensive and most of the run was done in or alongside them. Settled down pretty well and had a good first half-hour. Started to fade a little towards halfway but taking on some water (on a warm, but not especially humid, morning) helped - steady from there for a while, then had a very good patch around 18-20k. Couldn't quite bring it home at this level, but as a run this was still definitely in the top decile of 2014 performances - pleased that I've still got my endurance (although a dead flat course wasn't the most searching test for it).

There would have been no shortage of races to do had I felt so inclined; I saw two in action (or, to be more accurate, about to start) and two more advertised (all were billed as "Maraton" but the term seems to be used pretty loosely in these parts). The we're-definitely-not-in-Kansas-any-more one of these was the Maraton por Malvinas, which would have provided some interesting souvenir T-shirts had I felt so inclined - though I suspect there will be plenty of further opportunities to purchase souvenirs relevant to this cause in more southern parts of the country. (This is one I'll be watching - it's clearly still a very live issue here and it certainly wouldn't be the first time that a government facing a difficult election embarked on a military adventure, although it's hard to imagine a 2014/15 result being any different to the 1982 one).

Lots of people out and about in the parks early in the morning (even apart from those associated with the races). Other sports also featured in different ways en route; towards the far end was a queue camped outside the River Plate stadium, presumably in search of tickets to tonight's game (as it turned out they probably shouldn't have bothered), and earlier on there were numerous signs in honour of Juan Manuel Fangio (their location explained by this being the venue of the 1950s Argentine Grand Prix. He was the first great F1 champion, and also had the distinction of living to a ripe old age when most of his contemporaries (except for those who were "lucky" enough to suffer career-ending injuries instead, like Stirling Moss) died on the racetrack.

This didn't flatten me for the rest of the day in the way that long runs sometimes do; I would, I think, have walked about 10km in the remainder of the day taking in various Buenos Aires sights, including the Sunday markets at San Telmo and the Recoleta cemetery (a somewhat bizarre place where all of the tombs are above ground - high water table, apparently - and you can still see some of the coffins). It was rather fitting that the day's unscripted moment, on the way to the latter, was to find myself in the middle of the Buenos Aires march of the zombies (I'd say at least 10,000 of them). I'm assuming it was a cultural event and not a political protest (despite there being a few signs that looked political), if only because there were hardly any police to be seen.

All in all, this was an enjoyable day of absorbing myself in the life of the city.

C • Walking around 2

Overnight saw the second of three overnight bus trips in a bit over a week. I'd been wondering for the last couple of days whether I'd been scammed, as when I went to buy my ticket out when I arrived in Asuncion, I was told that the one I'd asked for "wasn't running" on Friday, but that they could sell me a ticket at a similar time with another company on a better standard of bus with less money. I was wondering whether I'd arrive at the bus station to discover a non-existent bus (or the long-distance equivalent of the antiques running Asuncion's urban services), but in fact they delivered everything they promised and the only minor annoyance was that the luggage handler unloading things at the border made it known he wasn't impressed at the size of the tip I offered him (although later passengers confirmed that 10 pesos was indeed the going rate).

The far north of Argentina is a lot emptier than adjacent parts of Paraguay, probably because it's at the better end of the available land in the latter but the worse end in the former. Reminds me a bit of latitudinally-roughly-similar areas around, say, Walgett in a wet year. Like the Walgett area, it also has a large indigenous population - obviously they end up with the land no-one else wants here as well. (It's also an area that storm-chasers occasionally salivate over because it can throw up some truly spectacular storms on satellite imagery, but the Argentine Chaco is presumably referred to as "El Impenetrable" for a reason). Can't tell you much about anything further south because I slept through most of it; somewhat to my surprise, we reached Buenos Aires on time.

Spent the middle of the day looking around central Buenos Aires in the company of a friend from the Argentine meteorological service (we've worked together on WMO stuff). In the central city and on the redeveloped waterfront you don't exactly get an image of an economic basket case, though the whatever-the-Spanish-is-for-a-favela on the other side of the tracks (literally) coming into the bus station was a reminder that not all is roses here. There are a lot of grand monumental buildings, streets and squares in this city. One of the latter, the Plaza de Mayo, is the traditional home of protest here and there were two separate crowds there today, a gay-pride festival and a more permanent encampment of Falklands War veterans, although it was not immediately obvious what the latter wanted (other than the islands).

(On crossing the border, after the "Welcome to Argentina" sign and one which said how many hundred kilometres it was to anywhere of consequence, the next one proclaimed "Las Malvinas son Argentinas" (the Falklands are Argentine). There's a Museo Malvinas Argentinas in Rio Gallegos which is definitely on my to-do list if it's open when I'm there).

I delayed the run as long as I could because of one of the major talking points of our lunchtime discussion - Buenos Aires's unexpected run at its November record high temperature. (36.7 is the magic number but I think it ended up about 35). It turned out that there was a seabreeze boundary about 500 metres east of where I was staying and for most of it it was mid-20s (though very humid), so the run was nowhere near as challenging as expected, and proved to be a situation normal day. I'll probably get another shot at serious heat in Mendoza on Tuesday. A toe blister caused me some grief walking on Friday but no issues running.

Headed initially south and then west this morning, the opposite direction to yesterday, dropping down towards the river and then back up again a few times. It's obvious the desirable real estate here is as far away from the river as possible, as the roads transition from bitumen to crumbling cobbles as you go downhill and the buildings transition similarly. (I suspect this has as much to do, historically, with being as far away as possible from mosquitoes that might give you something that might kill you as it does to do with floods). Saw a few more temporary settlements (which are clearly organised - I saw signs from the WHO and a local relief agency at one) in places such as a median strip and a basketball court, although some things are sacred - the football field was untouched. This route also took me past the national stadium, named in honour of a 1930s war with Bolivia which, like a lot of Paraguay's football matches, ended in a scoreless draw.

The run started promisingly in nicer conditions than recent days (as a runner you can immediately tell the difference between a dewpoint of 14 and 19). Faded away a bit in the second half, on a day which was a bit longer than planned. Pretty slow but I think rough ground in places may have contributed to that.

One of the interesting features is that, while there are traffic lights here (and some of them even work), the vast majority of the city's intersections have no visible indication of who does and who doesn't have right of way. This is a bit of a recipe for chaos - seems to be a case of whoever gets in first - and I certainly wouldn't fancy driving here, but I didn't see any crashes or evidence of any while I was here so it might not be quite as crazy as it sounds.

It's not a place I'd want to spend the rest of my life, but I liked Asuncion - got into the city much more than was the case with the Brazilian ones, perhaps because I had the confidence to step outside the bubble a bit more (in turn, it helps here that my Spanish, though still far from adequate, is less inadequate than my Portuguese). Definitely glad I took this step off the beaten track.

I haven't really used a run for suburban exploration so far in South America - partly because of traffic, partly because some of the places I've been to are ones where setting off in a general direction could land you somewhere where you really don't want to be. I thought Asuncion was the right sort of place to give it a go, and so it proved, even if I didn't manage to find, on map memory, the park which was my sort of target at the far end.

It was certainly a landscape of contrasts, summed up by two moments. Somewhere around 10k in, in the leafiest suburban pocket I'd seen on the run, there were numerous banners which, once I'd worked out what they said, could have been in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne - expressing opposition to higher-density development in their suburb. Those who know me will know that this is not usually a cause which gets a lot of sympathy from me (except in extreme cases), and it gets even less sympathy from me here, because 3k further down the road, you will find (for want of a better word) a refugee camp, with plywood shacks and a few portaloos for some of those still displaced by the midyear floods. There are a few such camps that I saw (and probably plenty which I didn't), one of them on the lawns directly across the road from Congress - I'm not sure if the location of this one (which appears to be officially sanctioned/organised, not something that appeared spontaneously) is Congress showing its solidarity with the flood victims, or the city government trying to embarrass the national one.

The first hour of the run was decent but the humidity eventually caught up with me - I should have done what I did in Rio and used the cash I took with me to buy some water halfway. (I've heard wildly conflicting reports on the safety of the tap water here). Achilles a bit sore early but didn't play up later on like it did on Tuesday.

Was in the city for the day, partly wandering the central city (interesting atmosphere and a few old colonial buildings but not a huge amount in the way of actual sights), then went out to a museum in the suburbs in the afternoon - the museum itself was only moderately interesting but the bit I'll most remember is the bus trip to and from. The buses are probably the best part of half a century old and well-decorated (a disconcerting number have the Spanish equivalent of "Jesus guides me" or similar on the front - I'm always worried by drivers who think a god/gods are on their side, whatever the religion). They also don't generally have any such thing as bus stops - the bus slows down (only stops if you're really lucky) and you jump on/off while it's still moving - not something to try with a big pack. To add to the experience, people periodically get on to sell stuff - one of them gave such a long-winded spiel before getting her bag of things out that I thought she might have been giving a political speech instead. Some things are the same as at home though - the people next to, in front of and across the aisle from me were all texting or reading Facebook on their phones.

(Speaking of political speeches, there was a demo near Congress this morning, but I have no idea what it was about. One of the banners referred to families and a Mama and a Papa; such a banner at home would make me suspect a Christian rally against gay marriage - and some graffiti around town suggests that gay rights are a live local issue - but there was no obvious Christian connection, and there was a tent there from Amnesty, who I wouldn't have thought would involve themselves in that issue).

Also occurred to me, on seeing it for sale at a street stall today, that the quintessential Ciudad del Este purchase would be a pirated copy of Grand Theft Auto.

Forgot to mention yesterday's thought-I'd-taken-a-wrong-turn-and-ended-up-in-Hanoi department: seeing a woman breastfeeding while riding pillion on a motorbike.

C • Well at least 3

North this time, on a circuit which involved, for much of its length, the boundaries of the army base (i.e. no significant road crossings - always a plus in South American traffic). Got out a bit further into the suburbs too, partly in search of a road through on Google Maps that didn't exist in reality, and came quite close to the impressive local mosque which caters for the quite substantial Arab population here (I wonder if this generates the sort of paranoia in Brazil that it does in Australia these days?). Not a particularly good run - certainly a step down on yesterday. Quite humid.

I'd expected today to be the most challenging and adventurous of the trip in a travel-logistics sense. There weren't any suitably timed through buses from Foz to Asuncion so I had to get myself across to the bus station in Ciudad del Este.

For those who haven't been paying attention, Ciudad del Este is the city on the Paraguayan side of the border, which got its start as the main construction town for the Itaipu Dam but, once that was done, became a "free zone" (I suspect, in part, because the then-still-a-dictatorship Paraguay wanted to make life difficult for the not-a-dictatorship-any-more Brazil). It's truly a city of superlatives. 90% of goods sold in the city counterfeit! World's largest stolen car supermarket! Estimated value of goods smuggled through city each year approximately five times Paraguay's official GDP! Sounds all very Wild West and is (although the wild westness is confined to a relatively small area near the bridge, where Brazilians come in their droves to avoid their country's import taxes), though I gather it isn't a particularly dangerous place, at least if you're not in the business of trying to close down any of the aforementioned rackets (and nobody in a position of relevant authority seems to be; one of the pieces I read before arriving was about how the provincial governor of the time was facing a, probably half-hearted, investigation after being unable to explain the existence of a clandestine airstrip and two unmarked planes on his property).

The challenge with the border crossing is its porousness. Locals (officially) and anyone else (unofficially) can cross freely between the two sides of the border as long as they don't go beyond the border towns, which means that if you need the relevant stamps to go further (and without them, you will probably get a fine, or possibly a "fine", when you try to leave the country), you need to go to some effort to get them, and local transport's not geared up for that. The procedure was therefore: get bus heading across border (there's one every couple of minutes), show passport to driver and do some stamping gestures to let it be known you need to get out at the Brazil exit post, do so, walk across the bridge (I could have got back on the bus but the traffic was so slow I was walking faster), find Paraguay immigration (I'd been led to believe this was tricky, but it wasn't), go through, find the taxi drivers on the other side, employ one's very limited Spanish to bargain the fare to the bus station down from an ambit claim 100,000 (about $25) to a that's-more-like-it 40,000, and on you go. It all worked far more smoothly than I expected it to, and for good measure there was a bus leaving for Asuncion 15 minutes after I got to the bus station, so I was there by 4, much earlier than expected.

The trip across the south end of Paraguay was a bit of a mixed bag. It's clearly a poorer country than southern Brazil - lots of shacks (and a few living under tarpualins), muddy side roads and chickens wandering the open space (definitely none on the bus, though) - but one also occasionally saw big commercial-style farms and signs with the names of the giants of international agribusiness (I'm guessing that Paraguay has a GM crop-friendly legal regime?). There has been a lot of rain lately (270mm in Asuncion in the last two weeks, 60 of it yesterday); everything was very green, the streams were running strongly and the low ground was clearly saturated. It wouldn't take a lot more to kick off another flood here, in a part of the world which has already seen disastrous flooding once this year (depending on which figures you read, somewhere around 10-20% of Asuncion's population was displaced by the mid-year floods, and I'm guessing that not all have yet made it home).

Seem to have found a decent place to stay in, in a residential area whose only negative seems to be a lack of local restaurants; I guess it's a sufficiently poor country that people don't eat out much.

Morning run from Foz do Iguacu, heading south in the general direction of the Brazilian 'three frontiers' monument, where three countries meet at the junction of the Parana and Iguacu Rivers. I wasn't sure how far it was, but when I got a possible turnaround point I could see it wasn't too far away and decided to go to it, making this a slightly longer run than planned. Not the worst of settings for it; along a main road for much of the way out of the centre but not one with a lot of traffic (at 7am anyway), rolling hills, getting into poorer but not unsavoury suburbs, before in the last kilometre at the far end getting beyond the town limits and into an area which at that time of day was the domain of fishermen and learner drivers - the smugglers presumably having cleared out before sunrise (they would probably pick more obscure river access points in any case).

Quite a decent run, if a little slow, at its best around the middle. Started to fade a bit in the last 20 minutes and Achilles also a little sore towards the end, which often happens if my calves have been without a massage for a while. Whether I can do anything about this depends on whether I can find somewhere where I can make it understood in a foreign language that I want a massage and not a "massage". (Bariloche, which is a ski and outdoors resort, may offer potential in that respect).

With the run done, it was on to the main business of the day, which was to see the falls, preferably from both sides. The logistics of this are modestly challenging but not insurmountable (of course you could go on a tour rather than use regular public transport, but where's the fun in that?). The mission was accomplished, and the falls were every bit as awe-inspiring as expected, even if what is supposed to be the best viewpoint of all (the overlook of the "Devil's Throat" from the Argentine side) is still closed because of damage from the June floods. Brazil has the best panoramas but Argentina many more opportunities to get close to individual falls (of which there are 70-odd). There was thundery rain for much of the afternoon, but if it was going to happen it was probably better that it happened while I was on the Argentine side where most of the photos are at closer range. Reasonable number of people around without being oppressively crowded; I get the impression this is low season around here, and in the absence of any tour groups staying here I'd say my hotel is at most 20% full (which is why I got such a good deal on it, though apparently it's booked out this weekend).

I was not surprised to see a number of other people who were clearly orienteers (although no-one I knew personally). I was rather more surprised to encounter Simon Rouse in a downtown street, if only because the last time I'd spoken to him his plans for this week involved being somewhere about 1000km vway from here (said plans were amended at the last minute).

Notes on the logistics of the day: the Brazilians didn't bother to look at my passport either leaving or returning (neither or both are OK, one out of two would have been a problem as it would have meant an exit stamp without an entry one or vice versa), and I did my first two unofficial Argentine currency deals, one with the bus driver (not a great rate but meant I was able to offload some Brazilian reais that would have been difficult to exchange otherwise) and one by paying for lunch in US$ and getting the change in pesos.

My watch has acquired the disconcerting habit of spontaneously resetting itself every week or two (most recently yesterday). Should I feel so inclined, I could probably pick up a "Rolex" in Ciudad del Este tomorrow for less than the price of a decent splits watch at home, but I don't so I won't.

I think I may have remarked after the last time I did (getting home from Adelaide in an ash cloud after the 2011 SA Championships) that it had been 18 years since I had been on an overnight bus and I was hoping it would be at least that long before it happened again. I was wrong - this was the first of what will probably be three in a bit over a week.

South American buses (at least the ones I've been on) are somewhat more comfortable than their Australian counterparts (fewer seats, more legroom, seats recline properly). Unfortunately, this doesn't extend to the roads which they are travelling on; Porto Alegre to Iguacu involves a fair number of back roads (from some of the bumpiness during the night, I suspect not all of which were bitumen), as well as cobbled streets in towns and the speed bumps that seem to be obligatory at the entrance to even the tiniest Brazilian settlement. Managed to get bits and pieces of sleep but not what I'd consider a proper night of it - that comes tonight (I hope). It was also a somewhat extended trip; there were two buses leaving at 7 and 7.05 and I'd gone for the 7.05, even though the trip was two hours longer, because it was supposedly a better class of bus for the same price. (Eddie Harwood, his partner, and Roger Thetford were on the 7.00). It turned out that ours was a bit of a milk run (even with some parcel delivery on the side). It was also apparent by sunrise that the timetable was looking rather speculative, and was thrown back further when we were stopped at one point by the army - no idea why, as they didn't remove anyone or anything at gunpoint and didn't ask to check any documents. We eventually got to Iguacu at 1pm, about two hours late.

The afternoon plan was to go out to Itaipu Dam - the second-largest hydro-electric dam (by generating capacity) in the world (the Three Gorges is number one), and I had just enough time to do this, after losing a bit through making a 90-degree error out of the hotel and doing a 4km scenic tour of the city centre instead of the 1km it should have been. I would imagine its construction was the subject of a certain amount of controversy (not that public opinion would have counted for much, given that at the time it was built both Brazil and Paraguay were military dictvtorships), but it does mean that about 80% of Paraguay's electricity, and 20% of Brazil's (not including any other projects they have) come from renewable sources. I don't know enough about what was there beforehand to be able to cast an informed judgement on what was lost. I also got my first look, on the way out, of the border crossing bridge to Ciudad del Este, of which more will be heard on Wednesday.

The hotel had a decent swimming pool - 15 metres or so - and this was a good setting for a session. It was the hottest day of the trip so far (around 33-34) so good to be in the water rather than running in the heat of the day. Not too many muscles had forgotten what they were supposed to be doing. Thought I felt an insect bite at one point, in a part of the world where insects carry more nasties than they do at home (it's not a malarial zone, but there are posters up in a lot of places about dengue fever), but doesn't look to be anything. As far as the cold is concerned, it's at the sounding-worse-but-feeling-better stage.

C • if you get a chance 2

Definitely a not-at-full-strength run - something of a token effort in the morning before departure, exploring some of the residential areas in the eastern part of Canela that I havdn't previously been to. Started to gain a bit of strength vs it went on. Never expected to catch up on a huge amount of sleep last night - the Christmas season here is a big deal, and prolonged, and Saturday night was the festival for Santa's arrival (or something like it), taking place in front of the cathedral half a block from where I was staying. (It ended about 11, which was evrlier than I thought it might have).

Next move was leaving town and heading back to Porto Alegre, in preparation for an evening departure for Iguacu. The organisers had said they'd be putting on an 8am and 9am bus. I arrived about 8.40 to see the 8am bus still loading, but it didn't quite have room for me (or a couple of others, Greg Balter being one of them). This didn't worry me as I wasn't leaving Porto Alegre until 7.05pm, but when the 9am bus hadn't turned up by 10 it was a bit concerning. We'd just given up on it and Greg had gone to get tickets for the 10.15 public bus (finding out that it was full and the next option was 12.10, fine for me but would have made things fairly tight with his 4pm flight) when it turned up.

The ears didn't appreciate the descent from 900m to sea level; it wouldn't have been a good day to be on a plane (or crossing an Andean pass).

As mooted yesterday, various forms of sport-watching provided a good opportunity to kill a few hours in Porto Alegre (not a city I'm too upset to have seen the last of). Contrary to expectations, the football derby did have plenty of goals, most of them at the blue end as Gremio won 4-1. Once they went three down Internacional apparently decided that if they couldn't win the game they might as well at least try and win the fight, whereupon the referee evidently concluded that the situation wasn't going to get any less combustible and blew full-time after 20 seconds of time added on when at least five minutes would have been warranted.

Perhaps it's not such a bad thing I got my WMOC long problems out of the way in the same year. My cold took a significant turn for the worse overnight, and I barely slept (which may or may not have been related), so it wouldn't have been a great day to have been attempting to race hard in an A final.

I was in two minds about whether or not to go out at all but decided I might as well at least see how it felt. It didn't actually turn out too badly - cruised around and enjoyed myself on most of the course (except its more physical bits - the eight-contour climb through partially felled area on the way to 1 felt almost as big as the Bon Accord wall), without any sense that I would have had an extra gear to use had I been trying to race seriously. Only a couple of tiny wobbles on 4 and 9. Caught the Swede who I considered my most likely challenger for fastest time today (like me, he had an 11th and a DNF) at 5, and got away on a route choice on the way to 7. Ended up having the fastest time by 8 minutes (though it isn't officially a "win" because people who don't complete the qualifiers aren't eligible for official B final results), which is a pretty good indicator that it was a race I had no business being in (even at considerably reduced capacity).

Course was quite physical but had very little in the native forest (just a couple of creek crossings). More surprisingly, the A final didn't have that much there either and their course profile wasn't so different to ours. Looking at their results, I think even at full strength I'd have struggled to make the top 10, with a position around 12-15 more likely (in today's shape something around 20th would have been more realistic).

Jenny won again. Other Australian top 10s: 7th for Paul and 10th for Ted in M60, and 9th for Ann in W70. Geoff's picked up a similar bug to me and was well down. Simon, I think, can also be pleased with 15th in M35 in his first attempt at this level.

So ends a week which started with promise but ended in frustration. The next stage of the adventure starts from here - beginning with an overnight trip to Iguacu Falls tomorrow night. The plan is certainly to keep up regular training throughout (except if trekking), but it may not conform to patterns as regular as I usually do, with long runs on days when I'm in one place for a couple of days and probably the odd rest day when the transport schedule doesn't allow any other options.

(I'll have about 7 hours to kill in Porto Alegre tomorrow - will be searching for a sports bar or equivalent, as tomorrow afternoon features the Brazilian Grand Prix followed by the Porto Alegre derby in football, a particularly high-stakes affair as both teams are in the pack of four within two points fighting for 3rd-6th and the last two places in the South American club championship - Fluminense, who I saw in Rio, are in that bunch too - and might even be close enough to challenge for the title if the leaders stumble. Don't expect a lot of goals - the season record of Gremio, one of the teams involved, is played 32, goals for 27, goals against 18).

Rest day today not preparing for a (meaningful) WMOC final, and wondering a bit what might have been - as noted in the comments thread, it turns out that there were enough blowouts elsewhere in the field that it might just have been possible to scrape into the last spot in the final with 40 minutes lost had I had a good run from there (though whether a good run would have been possible in such circumstances is doubtful at best).

Didn't do an awful lot with the day - Canela is a nice place to hang out but doesn't have a lot of actual tourist features (unless you have the transport to go further afield). Did go up to Gramado nearby (a seriously posh place by Brazil standards), partly to look at it and partly to take advantage of the washing machine and dryer in the place where Simon Rouse is staying (these things count for a bit when you're on the road for 2 1/2 months). This excursion also put me into the thunderstorm on the way home, which in turn gave me the opportunity to do some wet-weather gear testing (involving some pants I bought in New York which are the ones I intend to use in southern Patagonia treks). Also did exciting things like drafting an update of a few items in the OA operational manual dealing with things like procedures for amending rules, regulations and standing orders, and process for making decisions by e-mail (someone has to do it....).

I also made it through the first couple of steps in what promises to be one of the more significant challenges of the trip, that of successfully casting a vote in the Victorian state election. So far I've managed to download the form, find somewhere to print it, fill it out, and find an Australian citizen to witness it (a fellow WMOC participant I saw in the street; apparently a Brazilian cop would also suffice). Next step is to send it to the nearest 'early voting centre'. There are precisely none of these at any of the embassies in South America so it has to go to Washington, and forms can only be scanned and e-mailed from within Australia (presumably this is something to do with the law about what constitutes an electronic 'signature', but it's still annoying), so it has to be posted or faxed (the latter can be done over the internet, at least, which makes the immediately preceding point look rather ridiculous). If that is done successfully, the remaining steps are to get hold of ballot papers (apparently this will be done electronically, which surprises me a little, but they still have to be printed, filled out and posted), and send them back before election day and hope they arrive within 11 days afterwards (which, given that I'll be spending most of the pre-election week in remote parts of southern Patagonia, may be a stretch). Somehow I'm guessing that not many people who aren't active members of political parties in a marginal seat are going to bother.

22mm of rain in Canela in the three hours 7-10pm, and still pouring. The terrain was not exactly dry on Thursday and it certainly won't be any drier tomorrow (although the rain itself is forecast to stop by dawn).

The calamity referred to yesterday happened: I picked up the wrong map (and realised too late to salvage the situation). More soon.

Picked up the map at the start and was immediately confronted with one of the longest first legs I've seen - probably somewhere around 2-2.5k, into the green. Decided after the model event experience that a full frontal assault on the green first leg probably wasn't a great idea (although it sounds like that's what Magic did?), and went left on the tracks, some of which were rather less prominent on the ground than the map suggested they would be. Went into the green, picked up the relevant features, saw a flag, double-checked my control description, depression, and thought, "this looks a bit strange - there's no depression in the circle".

I realise at this point; I think I've picked up the wrong map. Check the descriptions printed on the map. M40-1. I have picked up the wrong map. Look at my watch; 19.30. Means if I go back to the start I'm going to have lost close to 40 minutes by the time I restart. 20 minutes would have been survivable, probably, if nothing else went badly wrong. 30 minutes, maybe, if enough others made enough mistakes. 40 doesn't seem plausible.

Utter a word beginning with F to myself. My 2014 World Masters campaign is over.

Contemplate going straight back but thought this will be worthwhile as a training run/experience anyway. 3 was through the green, not as fearsome (mostly) as the model event green, but still low enough visibility not to be able to read the shape of the ground, and I tried to attack from above (a risk I probably wouldn't have taken had I still been in the competition). It didn't work, I drifted right when I thought I'd drifted left, and blew maybe 5 minutes. Dropped another 1 or 2 on the exit from 3 thanks to recent logging (so recent there was still active felling just down the road) which obliterated a track and confused me while I was in an easily confusable state. At this stage I spotted a Belgian M40 and asked him what heat he was in (on the off chance that he was in the heat I was supposed to be in and I might be able to memorise the controls - if the two heats had had similar course layouts, I might have been able to get across and do their 1-2-3 in 20-30 minutes and then continue), but he wasn't in the one I wanted.

The course got a fair bit easier from there but unsurprisingly I was suffering from a significant motivation deficit, especially when it came to running up hills (I'm still not quite 100% well but am reasonably sure that today's lack of hill strength was at least 90% above the shoulders). It rather summed the day up when a thunderstorm opened up in the last 10 minutes of the course.

The upshot of this is that I'll be kicking the proverbial dew off the grass in the B final, where I won't even be eligible for an official result - I guess this becomes my second training run for Oceania, the last hour of today being the first. (Strangely, according to the program, the B final is the same length as the A, and has more climb). I've been in this sport for 36 years and it never stops finding new ways to catch you out.

C • 40 minutes a bridge too far? 3

First WMOC long qualifier. A smooth run technically with no wobbles bigger than a few seconds but not as strong as I would like to have been. It wasn't terrain where I expected to need a lot of strength (gently rolling and mostly very open pine forest), but deep needles on the forest floor meant the ground was very soft in places, which made its presence felt, particularly going uphill. Much nicer running conditions today - cool dry southwesterlies on the back side of the low that produced all the rain in Buenos Aires.

I expected the best people to be in the low 50s and they were. Once again I'm in the tougher of the two heats, although (barring calamity) at 13 minutes inside the qualifying cutoff it's hardly going to make a huge difference. (The other heat has an astonishingly large number of no-shows, so at most 10 finishers - fewer if there are any more DNFs/DNSs tomorrow - are going to miss out from there).

Woke up with a bit of a tickle in my throat. I was a bit concerned, given that I've had a few runs go horribly wrong in the developing stages of colds in the last two or three years, and perhaps it did contribute a bit to my lack of strength, but not enough to have a massive impact. In any case I have enough time in reserve to be able to back off tomorrow if necessary.

A reasonably predictable set of Australian results today, with those expected to be near the top comfortably in qualifying positions, Simon Rouse inside the cut with a bit to spare, the Scowns on the edge and the remainder further back than that.

There was a bit of discontent with transport issues today (always the most challenging as it's the most distant day), but it seemed to work reasonably well for me - but then I was anticipating that things wouldn't work 100% smoothly and left extra time to deal with that (as it happened, I didn't quite get onto the first bus I aimed for but was on the next one 10 minutes later). I have some more sympathy for the car drivers who have been suffering from a lack of signs - supposedly it's illegal to put such signs up, but no-one seems to have told any of the election candidates yet (Brazilian political parties don't seem to be in any more of a hurry to clean up their signs after polling day than their Australian counterparts).

WMOC long model event. Had this not been my first chance to get out into non-sprint Brazilian forest I might have given this a miss - there were two rounds of overnight thunderstorms and it was pouring around 8-9am, although it had eased to light drizzle by the time we actually got out there.

I was certainly glad I went out. 80% of the area was pine forest (a similar mix to what I'm expecting in Q2 and the final), some of it very open underfoot and some of it a bit rougher but still nothing untoward, and that section didn't teach me very much except that any blue feature has lots of water, distinctive trees are distinguished (as in central Europe) chiefly by the orange and white flags at their base, and when you send 1000 people around a set of controls with only one logical route early on it's going to get muddy.

The remaining 20%, though, was the native forest, and this was freak-you-out territory - essentially subtropical rainforest with all that that entails, vaguely reminiscent of NZ native bush but with probably even more understorey. Occasionally it opens out into bits where you can run for 20-50 metres, but it's very easy to be pushed offline, especially as the low visibility means it's very difficult to sense the shape of the contours. I can foresee big parallel errors here (and relocation will not be easy), with potential for double-digit blowouts. Couldn't really tell the difference on the ground between the three shades of green either. I think, even without errors, this type of terrain is 15-20 minute/km territory. Part of me is hoping that there isn't much of this except for quick in-and-outs and providing part of the equation for big route choice legs, another part of me is thinking that I'm not going to win a running race and something that makes running a smaller part of the equation is potentially to my advantage. Fine navigation into controls was made easier today by the noise, but presumably there won't be crowds gathered around discussing things on Saturday...

The opening ceremony was later in the afternoon; had to be moved indoors (and the march cancelled) because of rain which was a pity. It featured the usual mix of speeches from various dignitaries, mostly short (thumbs up to the Mayor of Canela for enthusiasm), then what will surely be the WTF moment of the week when the Star-Spangled Banner was played as the "IOF anthem", then various traditional dance displays by local schoolchildren (I'm afraid my boredom threshold for these is reasonably low). Still, it was done well and the turnout was good, and the locals were commendably enthusiastic in both their own anthem-singing and in celebrating the Brazilian gold medal in M35.

(In the absence of an IOF anthem, perhaps they should have used the tune of God Save The Queen, as it is the only tune which is the national anthem of two IOF member countries.)

Walked around the small sprint model - which will, I think, be almost as relevant to the green parts of the long final (the course length, 7.9 for a 65 winning time, suggests there will be a few) as it was to the sprint. The natural forest, as an orienteering experience, reminds me a bit of NZ native bush and probably won't be a lot faster than NZ native bush - even the white patches don't seem much faster than 10 minutes/km. (Most of the long areas are pine forest which will be much faster).

The landscape of the Canela area itself actually reminds me a lot of the hill towns of the Gold Coast hinterland; the likes of Mount Tamborine or Springbrook (though Canela itself is a much larger town than those places are).

WMOC sprint final, 13th. As expected, a very different race to yesterday and a different result (at least for me - Nick Barrable was an equally convincing winner on both days). This one was in the park around a major waterfall - partly cleared picnic grounds, but a lot of it (thick) forest with an extensive track network. There wasn't a lot that actually made you go into the thick forest - one short leg (9-10), and some 50-metre in-and-outs - but it made for some interesting route choice. Quite hilly too.

Technically this was a decent run. Two minor hesitations, on 1 (where I didn't see a side track I was expecting to, but got out of it with maybe 10 seconds lost) and 9. Didn't feel as if I had a lot of strength on the hills, but the humidity made it a strength-sapping day; glad it was a 19-minute race and not a 60- or 70-minute one. (It should be less humid later in the week, on the back side of the same system that's given Bariloche the snow mentioned in the comments thread and Buenos Aires its second triple-figure daily rainfall in five days).

The placing looks nominally good - I was even in front for 15 minutes - but being over four minutes down on Nick Barrable is a fair indication that, once the pure fast runners fell away with the more challenging navigation (although only a few controls were difficult), there isn't a lot of depth in this field. I certainly won't be 13th with a run like this next year. (Actually, if things are repeated exactly, I might be - a qualifying run like yesterday's in Gothenburg will probably mean ending up in the B final). Have a reasonable feel for the field now, though - enough to think that top ten is the benchmark for an acceptable result in the long, and top six a good one. (The placegetters are too far away unless one or more of them blow up on the day).

Jenny Bourne had an impressive win in W60 - 47 seconds ahead of the field - but our other high qualifiers couldn't repeat their placings of Sunday. Kevin Paine was (a distant) 4th in M85 but I don't think anyone else got beyond the fringes of the top 10 (haven't seen final results in M55 or M60 yet, though).

Update: Now I have and it's a bit better than I first thought: Ted 4th in M60, Geoff 7th in M55.

C • Ted van G 1

WMOC sprint qualification. As in 2012, I had a serious scare (without the 2012 excuse of being sick, although I think my speed when well in 2014 probably isn't too different to my speed when sick in 2012), but just made it through. On the initial results list I thought I had made it by the narrowest imaginable margin - dead-heated for the last qualifying spot - but the addition of DNSs (top half of entrants go through, not top half of starters) moved the cut line down a bit so I made it by the generous margin of 12 seconds...

As expected yesterday, it was largely a running race, although the use of artificial fences added a bit of interest to it, particularly in the first half. This took a bit of getting used to - it's the first time I've run a race with them and it's not intuitive to have to look for them across, for example, main paths. Maybe lost 5-10 seconds on 1 handling the fences slightly inefficiently. Fences of a different sort caught me out on the second-last - didn't check which side the control was on and lost 20 seconds, a silly mistake to make in a sprint and I would have been cursing had it cost me a final place.

Raw speed was lacking, not surprisingly. I mentioned in earlier discussion that I expected some of the Brazilians could run and my one-minute man demonstrated it, catching me by halfway through the course on his way to eventually winning the heat. Just like 2012, it looks like I drew the significantly tougher heat - the cutoff was 2.15 behind the leader (although it probably would have been more like 2.45-3.00 if Thomas Jensen had had a decent run), whereas in the other M40 heat it was over 4 minutes (ditto for nearly all other classes). Not too upset with an early start tomorrow - unless it dries out more than I think it will, I can imagine the walking tracks which I expect to form a significant part of the course cutting up pretty badly.

Rain (mostly light to moderate), of the Sydney-in-a-summer-easterly-dip variety, fell for the entire competition day, which rather spoiled the arena atmosphere (i.e. those who had other options quickly cleared out). No significant technical issues that I saw (and no protests), though the results were fairly slow in coming through.

There were a number of Australian heat wins (Kevin Paine, Ted van G, Geoff Lawford, and perhaps others I didn't notice). Bragging rights of the day, though, go to Bill Jones for finishing one place ahead of Jaroslav Kacmarcik, who in his 1980s heyday was arguably the fastest runner in international orienteering.

The bus trip up to Canela was a bit of an epic - I thought the quoted 3 hours for 130km was a bit conservative but it ended up being nearly 4 (although that included an unscheduled stop, supposedly to allow other buses to catch up, which just happened to be outside a shoe shop having a sale). Canela seems a nice town at first glance (and certainly somewhere where it feels like walking around at night is fine), and the place I'm staying seems OK (and sufficient overlap was found between my very limited Portuguese and the owner's equally limited English to communicate the necessary).

C • M40 favourite 4

Event: WMOC 2014
 

WMOC sprint model event - of only limited value as a model event because the already slim area had been reduced by half by last-minute building works (although I was still able to get some useful info on map interpretations), but getting there and back was still useful as a shake-out-cobwebs run. Lots of people poring over the map and trying to read too much of it, as usual. (The long distance model will be much more useful as it will be our first chance to have a proper look at Brazilian forest terrain).

Met Janne Salmi on the way back to town. He's first-year 45s this year so is someone else's problem from a competitive point of view. Thomas Jensen is probably the M40 favourite (though Nick Barrable will have a decent shot, especially in the sprint), and Rune Olsen will take some beating in M35. I really don't know what to expect for myself competitively because the Brazilians who make up 60% of our field are such an unknown quantity (I'm guessing that not many of them can navigate well but at least some of them can run); if I can get through qualifying OK the final terrain should suit me better.

I may not have mentioned that I'm on the jury for this event. The last time I was on an IOF jury (WOC 2012) we had precisely no protests to deal with but I doubt we'll be so lucky this time - to start with, someone will inevitably be disqualified for crossing something they shouldn't have in the sprint and won't be pleased about it. (Maybe disqualification will be the least of their problems; we heard today that there are 150 soldiers guarding things like uncrossable fences).

Saw my first Latin American political demo in town this afternoon (noisy but peaceful, with no vehicles overturned and nothing set on fire). Judging by the number of "Aecio 45" banners I'm assuming it involved opposition supporters unhappy with the verdict the (slim majority of) the Brazilian people delivered last weekend. (I was wondering what the story was with the "Aecio 45" and "Dilma 13" signs, but it seems that party tickets in Brazil are coded on ballots by number).

I'm still on edge in Porto Alegre in a way I wasn't in Rio (let alone Curitiba) - maybe it's all the electric fences, though the city centre feels OK during the day. One thing I did spot walking through the suburbs which I didn't expect was a Melbourne Victory shirt. (Previously, I've seen two brave - or possibly foolhardy - people wearing Argentine ones).

C • Uncrossable features 3

C • Brazilian competitors 3