Buenos Aires

After a three hour flight from Ushuaia, we arrived in the Argentinian capital on Sunday night. The hostel we are in is really tastefully decorated and even has free internet, which is always a bonus! As it´s only been open two months, so everything is nice and new, which makes a change!

Buenos Aires is a great city, it´s really alive and full of interesting things to do and see! The main road through the city is the widest in the world, a mere 17 lanes of traffic! It takes forever to cross as its really manic!

So, what have we done??? We have wandered around the city centre and various other parts including the San Telmo area, mainly looking in Antique shops and markets, Luke managed to get himself ANOTHER watch, of course, a 1970´s Lucerne Direct Time thing, it´s nice and was quite a bargain.

We´ve eaten in many a cafe and also the Hard Rock Cafe, which was fairly mediocre, but we thought we´d give it a go. We visited the Cementerio de La Recoleta and saw Evita´s Tomb and thousands of other dead people, it was fairly gross as some of the tombs have partially open doors and you can see coffins all stacked up....urgghhh!!

We spent last evening at an underground (literally under the ground) theatre watching a tango show, we were told that this would be a modern production of tango, and it was certainly very alternative...but neverless we enjoyed ourselves and had lots of free wine and beer!

We also managed to squeeze in a trip to the cinema, we saw An Inconvenient Truth which was interesting, but we´ll save that for another time.

Tomorrow we are off to Uruguay, the capital Montivideo to be precise, by boat, and we get to leave here at the ungodly hour of 8.00am! So we must go and finish off a half bottle of wine as we won´t be able to take this with us tomorrow, its a hard life!!!.....

By the way, thanks to everyone who´s left a message about our Engagement!!

It Gets Better.....

We spent a day trekking to another local Glacier, but never really made it as the final stretch was a really steep uphill snowy climb, the next day we went to Tierra Del Fuego (Land of Fire) National Park with the sole aim of seeing Beavers. Saw no Beavers as apparently they dont come out until evening, when all the tourists have gone home!

At the end of the day, we went for a nice walk along the shores of Roca Lake in the Park and Luke was obviously overwhelmed romantically as he asked me to marry him!!!! I said yes and then cried for ages, obviously, as I am one of the most over emotional people I know! Clearly the reason he waited till we got here was that its the perfect excuse to keep coming back to this freezing cold place at the end of the world, to do excessive amounts of outdoor activity!!!

Wedding planning is on hold till we get back in February, so you have all got loads of time to lose weight/save money/buy the perfect hat or whatever else needs doing!!

(The blog with resume normal service with photos soon, when we remember to bring the camera lead out with us)

It gets worse.......

I checked my bag this morning and found I have also lost a Petzl Head Torch $30.00. I am starting to wonder why I brought a bag with me in the first place. Looking on the bright side, at least its getting lighter.

Ushuaia, the end of the world!!

We arrived safely in Ushuaia last night after 12 hours of glorious bus travel, where we went through four border control points, as to get here you need to leave Argentina, enter Chile and then leave Chile to get back into Argentina again. Very long winded and very boring.

We arrived at about 9.30pm, it is still light here then for a good couple of hours more, so we trekked around town looking for a hostel, everywhere decent was full so we decided to camp....it is hilarious that we have managed to only use the tent in all the coldest, wettest places we have been too! Luke did not die last night, which is surprising as he is only using a summer weight sleeping bag, so that was lucky.

Today we have managed to bag ourselves a couple of plane tickets back to Buenos Aires!! To say we are overjoyed would be an understatement, the thought of a 48 hour bus ride was killing us. So, we bit the bullett and spent a fortune, we dont leave till Sunday so we have plenty of time to hang out here in the Southernmost city in the world!

Our last bus trip was our most successful so far in making new travelling friends, we met Andre from Cologne, Germany and we even had dinner with him last night, we also managed to offload a padlock onto him which we had inadvertantly stolen from a hostel in Pucon... An English guy, who was really quite normal (which is unusual, believe us) But our favourites so far though have to be the three Northern pensioners (who now live in Spain) who have been travelling around Argentina for the last few weeks. We keep bumping into them in town and think everyone must think we are all related!

Having checked through his bag this morning here is a list of all the things Luke has managed to lose since we arrived in South America:

3 Hats;
1 Cap Custom made in America $46
1 Sun Hat (Marks and Spencers) $16
1 Wooly Peruvian Hat $5

1 Pair River Island Shorts (camo) $35
1 Travel bag for Rucksack $40
1 Pack of new razor blades (Mach 3) $8
1 100 peso note (short changed) $33
1 Timex Triathlon watch $40

These prices have been converted to dollars for ease and because there are no pound signs on these computers. There is probably also other stuff he has lost, but has not discovered them missing yet!

Catherine has not managed to mislay anything.

Not bad for 8 weeks on holiday. Parp!!!!

At least we still have each other!!

Rio Gallegos - El Calafate - El Chalten - Rio Gallegos (again)

We picked up our hire car (we were upgraded to a corsa with a long boot - strange but quite spacious) Luckily it was in our favourite colour, graphite grey, so we felt quite at home in it. We drove the three or so hours to El Calafate where we pitched our tent for the night, wandered around the highly touristy town, ate some dinner, bought some beer, the usual.

Next morning we packed everything up and drove to the National Park to see The Moreno Glacier, a massive 60 metre high Glacier which covers 257 sqKM. It advances 2 metres per day and massive chunks break off the edge and fall into the water all the time. After spending a few hours there we drove to El Chalten, a tiny village in the middle of nowhere, near the Fitz Roy Mountain range. The town itself was a bit of a dissapointment, the hotel cost a fortune and it was cloudy, so we didn´t get the amazing views we were expecting!

The next morning we drove the 7 hours back to Rio Gallegos, we got to see loads of wildlife (rabbits, llamas, skunklike creature, sheep, horses) lots of very blue lakes and tons of snowy mountains. Having to stay in Rio Gallegos for two days however is quite crap. There´s nothing to do but go on the internet and read as the town practically shuts down between midday and 4.00pm so everyone can go to sleep, but we´re not allowed back to the hostel till 5.00pm - go figure!!?

Tomorrow morning we are booked on yet another bus ride, this time to the Southernmost city in the world - Ushuaia, plently of things to do there - more tours of penguin colonies and another Glacier to look at. We have tried booking flights for a couple of days later back to Buenos Aires, to save time and 48hours plus of bus rides, but to no avail....All booked for quite a while and very expensive. Argentina kindly operates a two tier pricing system for practically everything. So we get to pay at least double for most bus journeys, flights, hotels etc, which is nice.

Pleased to announce we are still dorks!!!

Puerto Madryn, Argentina

Hola Chicos! (hi guys)

The long bus ride to Puerto Madryn had it´s bonuses, we actually participated in a game of Bus Bingo! The Bus Attendants managed to say the numbers in English too, thank God, otherwise it would have been a lot harder to keep up. We didn´t win, but the guy sitting opposite us won a bottle of Wine. The remainder of the journey was fairly crap as we didñ´t get any food, not even breakfast. Usually you´ll get a cheese or salami roll, some biscuits and coffee etc, but there was nothing on this journey, so we just had to starve.

We got to Puerto Madryn (a portal town, founded by the Welsh in 1886!) and checked into the nearest and cleanest hostel we could find, we then wandered round (without our heavy bags) and found another hostel that was a bit nicer for the next two nights! While in Puerto Madyn we did a tour which involved visiting a couple of Elephant Seal Colonies, one of which is the one we´ve all seen on TV where the Orca Whales come up on to the beach and snatch baby seals (not till January time though) a Penguin Colony and Whale Watching, which was by far the highlight! While out in the Neuvo Golfo on a small boat we saw about 10 Whales, they are massive and came really close to the boat, Catherine even managed to look one in the (red) eye, which was quite scary! We took loads of photo´s but they don´t really do justice to what we saw, it was an amazing experience!

We´re now getting ready for another long and unexciting bus ride to Rio Gallegos, which is way down South. Once we get there we are hiring a Car (a VW GOL, no F) for three days to do some of our own exploring and to see a few sights. Surprisingly it is really cold down by the South Pole, so I expect we will need to put on literally all our clothes to keep warm, at least it will make our backpacks lighter!

Once we have seen some of the sights in the South we might try and find out about nipping over to the Falkland Islands (Isla Malinas - Argentinian owned according to all the maps here...) We think you can go on a cargo ship but are not sure, we´d love to go though, so if anyone fancies meeting us there you can fly direct from RAF Brize Norton, Oxfordshire, it costs just a couple of grand!!

Pucon, Chile To San Martin De Los Andes, Argentina To Barriloche, Argentina!!

We spent three days in Pucon, a small ski resort type of town in The Lake District, Chile. Weather was great so we spent some time kayaking on the Lake. Luke also spent a day climbing a local active volcano (see snow covered peak in background of photo) while Catherine sunbathed and read and re-read copies of Maxim and Elle in the garden of the Hostel!!

We then went by Bus (of course) across the border to San Martin De Los Andes in Argentina. This is another small ski resort town, which also benefitted from nice weather. Luke had his first shop bought haircut in San Martin, so now looks like an Argentinian. Considering Luke doesn´t know what to do in a hairdressers and the language barrier, it doesn´t look that bad. Not what he asked for, but not bad all the same. We only spent one night in San martinbefore moving on, so after sampling the local Argentinian Steak and Chocolate (very good) and spotting a few Gouchos (cowboys) on their horses herding their cattle, we boarded another bus to Barriloche.

Barriloche is a larger town than the previous two and benefits from amazing views of the lake and snow covered mountain ranges which go on for miles. The Patagonian weather has taken a turn for the worst and needless to say the we now get to use our waterproof jackets and wear jeans. Although it is still fairly warm!!

We are heading out tonight to the Atlantic Coastal town of Peurto Madryn (a mere 17 hours of bus travel awaits) where we intend to spend a few days wildlife watching, before heading further south.

Sightseeing in Santiago

We explored Santiago for a couple of days, went up a mountain in a cable car which gave us spectacular views of the town (See opposite photo) and perfected our use of the Metro system. Today we went to the cinema mid afternoon while waiting for our bus this evening, saw "El Grand Truco" or The Prestige for those who may see it without Spanish subtitles. It was excellent and we fully recommend it!! After a very large and thorough search of the city we finally found some English (American really) magazines which is fantastic as there is only so much fiction one can read. We are not sure how these magazines have been sourced, a few of them seem to be on subscription to people in Miami. We know this because they have the names and addresses of the subscriptees printed on the front cover. So we can only thank Jaun Palma of NW 97th Avenue for having the kindness to send his old copy of Rolling Stone to his cousin in Santiago (or maybe his entreprenurial binmen!!!).

We are getting on our night bus to Pucon in an hour, seats 3 and 4 are ours, so we get the best view of the road ahead!!!

Valparaiso and Santiago

After spending two nights in Valparaiso (a port town 120km from Santiago) and having done some sightseeing, we hopped on the bus to Santiago.

Santiago is the Capital city of Chile and generally not well liked by "travellers" as it has an abundance of fast food outlets and is seen as being too American/European/expensive (we have come to the conclusion that these travellers are only truly happy when they discover a chicken leg in their soup of the day though, which they bought for 10p) We happen to really like it here, it has an excellent selection of shops, including a Laura Ashley(!!??) and a Zara, it is clean, there´s lots to do and also has great views as it is surrounded by the snow capped Andean Mountain range. Santiago also has a clean and efficient Metro system which costs a mere 35p per journey.

We´ve recently decided to get a bit more down to earth and have abandoned the use of taxi´s, in favour of cheaper local buses!!! We obviously nearly miss our stop each time we use them but they help keep us grounded, so we will continue! They also help offset the cost of food and accomodation which is creeping up....We had a lovely meal last night in a Lonely Planet "Splurge" eatery, both the main courses and deserts were gorgeous, it did cost us $40.00 though which is about 4 times over budget, but we are beyond caring really now!!!

As we miss Brandy loads, we visit every available pet shop to look at dogs whenever we can...it´s really awfull though as they are kept in really small cages and they all look so sad, they are dead cheap ($100 ish) and we want to buy them all and send them home so they can be looked after!!!

We are doing a bit of sightseeing tomorrow and the day after, thenwe are heading further South, possibly to Pucon. As usual we will keep you posted XXXX.

Activity day- Elqui Valley

Yesterday we took a tour of the Elqui Valley, a fruit and veg producing area outside La Serena. It doesn´t sound very exciting, but it was quite good. The valley, with all its greenery, was a refreshing break from the miles and miles of desert we have encountered during our stay in Chile so far. We were shown fields of Papayas (not the sort we get at home), chirimoyas, that we were told we don´t get in England (but I have seen them in the exotic fruit section of Tesco in Slough!!!!). The main product they grow in the region though are grapes for Pisco (a drink).

We were taken to one of the largest distilleries of Pisco, CAPEL, in the country and did a tour that was quite interesting. Then we went to Chiles first and smallest Pisco distillery in the same valley. The tour here was a little rough around the edges (and dusty) but still quite interesting.

http://www.piscocapel.cl/

The guide was really good, although the last one we had would have made anyone look good. He seemed to know a lot about the area and he even seemed to know a little bit more than the Canadian know it all on the tour aswell, which is quite an acomplishment as we think (he thought) he knew everything.

We also went to the birth place of Gabriela Mistral, a Nobel Prize winning poet apparently. She looked quite miserable.

http://www.odisea.ucv.cl/download/recopilacion%20imagenes/Historia%20%20de%20Chile/Chile%20a%20mediados%20de%20sigloXX/Gabriela%20Mistral.jpg



A day of culture.

Today we travelled to Valparaiso, on the coast just outside Santiago.