El Chalten, a one horse town

El Chalten, Patagonia

Argentina

We arrived late at night in the tiny town of El Chalten and it was chucking it down. Of course it was, we had both packed our waterproofs at the bottom of our bags! We ran the 150m to our hotel dodging massive puddles in the gravel roads, and trying not to get blown away by the howling wind. A lovely toasty welcome in our hotel though, a double room all to ourselves complete with heater and blankets, worth every extra penny we had spent on it.

Our reason for coming to this tiny town in the middle of nowhere is that it is situated at the base of the Argentinean Andes and has become known as a trekkers mecca. Now you may wonder why we of all people chose to come here. Well, as Mik said we thought we should have a practice with a couple of single day treks before heading to Chile.

The night before we wanted to go trekking the weather closed in again and as the wind howled and the rain lashed down I was secretly hoping it wouldn't change by morning and we would not be able to embark on the 8 hour trek we had planned. When we awoke at the crack of dawn, well 8am, the sun was shining. Damn! So off we set, Mik in his proper traveller zip off trousers and a sarong for a scarf, me with my Top Shop cargo pants and my pashmina (don't scoff it has many uses!) , a packed lunch and a couple of pack-it raincoats.
We passed many people who had the full kit - top to tail in waterproofs, proper hiking boots and even trekking poles. We did think they looked a little foolish as we were going great guns in our Blue Peter, double sided sticky tape mountain trekking outfits.



It was hard work and as neither of us are exactly 'outdoorsy' I think it was a surprise to both of us that the first 3 hours passed with relative ease. That is until we hit the steep climb to the top and the view that was keeping us going. So steep was this climb that half way up I realised there was snow on the ground and a few minutes later it actually started to snow. I was ready to give up but we made it, having trekked through about 2 foot of snow to get to the top of the windiest mountain in the world! Now who was feeling foolish as those with full kit sauntered past us.....! To top it all the mountain we had come to catch a view of was enshrouded in cloud and snow so we could barely even make out it's silhouette. Mount Fitz Roy - where? We were also informed afterwards that there is a lke too - well we didn´t see any sign of that whatsoever. DOH! We took a couple of photos, Mik scoffed a sandwich and then we legged it, or rather slid our way back down to a drier and less windy spot. As one who suffers from vertigo I found it particularly hard and was so very glad to get back down onto flatter ground.

Eight hours of hard trekking, a quick practice of my german with a 73 year old from Cologne, who could walk faster than us, and we were back in our hotel and feeling very pleased with ourselves! Big steak dinner to celebrate and an early night. Well it would have been early had I not spotted something on the floor of our room which turned out to be a scorpion. Only a tiny one luckily but enough to have me stood on the bed and Mik reaching for the camera. In a placky bag and out the window thank you very much. The next morning we both checked inside our boots before putting them on!

The following day we managed another 6 hour trek and this time we were rewarded with great weather and fatastic scenery. A backdrop of snow capped mountians with rivers, forests and wetlands in the foreground. Not to mention the glacier and lakes. The water in the glacial lakes is a wonderful creamy turquoise colour, difficult to describe but beautiful. An absolutely stunning place, you can certainly understand why those with a passion for trekking would come here. Mostly older generations from Germany it would appear.

Dinner was consumed in the hostel that night, cheese and ham sangers once again, as we were unable to walk as far as the nearest restaurant once we had stopped. Luckily the next day we only had a bus to catch back to El Calafate a mere 5 hours drive away.

So while El Chalten is still a one horse town I'm sure it has grown substantially in recent years and will continue to do so. It is the perfect place for novice trekkers like us to start out. So it was with an element of sadness that we left this beautiful place, but also with a feeling that we would be able to cope on the longer treks in Chile. Once our legs started working again that is.

Cara

Foxes, Glaciers, Mince

El Calafate, Patagonia

Argentina

From Puerto Madryn we had decided to head to a place called Puerto Natales in the Chilean Andes, famed for it's breathtaking scenery and excellent trekking. We thought it was about time we experienced the great outdoors proper, although 3 to 4 days in a tent and trekking over 60km, through trecherous terrain, in unpredictable weather and carrying everything including the kitchen sink could well be considered jumping in at the deep end. As you well know, my experience of 'outdoors' is usually limited to what I see walking home from the pub. If you can't get a pizza delivered at 2am then I don't want to be there. How would I cope eating beans out of a tin and bed by 9pm? Well fortunately I've not had to find out yet, and the reasons why will be dragged out below.

To get to Puerto Natales, we would first have to reach Rio Gallegos in the deep south of Patagonia, a mere 20 hours away by bus (it seems that in this country, every town is 20 hours away from it's neighbour). From there we hoped to head straight into Chile. Being the dingbats that we are we left it too late and couldn't get a big seat on the bus, so we had to travel upstairs in the small seats. The journey itself wasn't actually that bad, even though the food had been imported specially from British Rail (although it didn't look like it had already been eaten once) and the toilets were bought in secondhand from Vietnamese National Railways, complete with toxic aromas and unidentifiable stains. Although a bit narrower and shorter than previously experienced, the seats turned out to be quite comfortable. Put Cara in any moving vehicle and she almost instantateously falls asleep, because of some wacky Pavlovian reflex she's acquired. I also have a conditioned response to long bus journeys, but mine tends to manifest itself in restless fidgeting, sleeplessness and mental challenges where I count in how many languages I can threaten the young boy who keeps jabbing his feet continuously into the back of my chair.

As we left P. Madryn the landcscape out of the window was of the flat, dry and haunting looking Patagonian Steppe. 20 hours hard driving later, a glance out of the window showed the same flat, dry, dusty expanse. Either this place is enormous or the driver was lost and had been driving around in circles for a day. We finally arrived in Rio Gallegos the next afternoon, two hours late, by which time our bus to Chile had gone. The next bus was not for another 2 days, so we made an executive decision and bought a ticket to El Calafate, 4 1/2 hours to the west on the Argentine side of the mountains and the jumping off point to see the Perito Moreno glacier. The El Calafate bus was not leaving until 8.30pm so we took a taxi into town to find an internet café, try and arrange a room for the night in Calafate and get some food. Rio Gallegos is where concrete goes to die and that's the only nice thing I can say about it, other than the bus left on time.

El Calafate is a pleasant enough place, built on the southern side of the valley formed by Lago Argentina, the country's largest lake. We spent the first day there mooching around, eating and trying to figure out how to get to Puerto Natales. We had dinner in yet another parilla restaurant, and back at our hostel we polished off another bottle of wine chatting to an Irish guy we were sharing the dorm with. I'm really not handling this dormitory thing very well. It's not so much that I mind having to share a room with a stranger, but rather I feel sorry for them having to share with me. I don't know how but my body can produce a spectacular range of unctious odours. After a day in walking boots my feet smell like decomposing haddock and I fart in my sleep as a matter of principle. Now would you be happy to pay hard cash to experience that? Didn't think so. I still don't understand how Cara puts up with it without having her nose surgically removed. She needs nose plugs, not ear plugs! Sometimes I think I'm lucky to have no sense of smell.

First thing the next morning we were up bright and breezy for our trip out to the glacier. With our winter woollies on, packed lunch and thumping hangover, we were ready for anything. On the way to the Parque Nacional Los Glacieres, our bus took a gravelly back road so we could see the local wildlife and get a bit of a geology lesson from our guide, Mariano. We managed to see eagles, flamingos (!), condors, vultures, a little brown thing, rheas (which are similar to ostriches), guanacos (similar to llamas and members of the camel family), hares, Patagonian grey foxes, a small red thing and lots and lots of sheep. The soil here is so dry and barren that each sheep needs 5 hectares of land to be able to graze. I have no idea how big 5 hectares is, but apparently that's a lot.

Once inside the park we drove on for a little while. The hills turned into mountains and forests sprang up on their slopes. All of a sudden we turned a corner and there was the glacier before us and it was enormous. It is, so I read, 24 kilometres long, 2 kilometres wide at the mouth and 150 metres deep when it reaches the water. That is a lot of ice. I did a quick mental calculatiuon and I reckon there was enough ice to make something like 500 to 600 ice cubes !! Maybe even more. And that's a lot. We drove to within a few kilometres of the base, then walked the rest of the way around the shore of the glacial lake into which it eventually melts. At one of the observation points, just a few hundred metres from the leading edge of the ice, we saw a huge chunk of ice break off from the glacier and fall into the lake. The noise was immense, as were the waves in created when it hit the water. Obviously, I had just seconds before switched off the camera and put the lens cap back on. Bollocks ! We had lunch looking out over the glacier then drove back down to the lake edge for our boat ride along the south face of the glacier. While we were on the boat, Cara was taking a picture of the glacier face when right in front of her, an even bigger chunk than before broke off and dived into the water, like a bus off a springboard. Fortunately for us, she was more successful at getting a picture of it than I had been earlier. Once back at our hostel we made ourselves dinner in the hostel kitchen for the first time. Patagonia is quite a bit more expensive than northern Argentina and the sightseeing was taking it's toll on the budget. We popped into the local supermarket to buy the obligatory tomato sauce and beef mince that by law must constitute the majority of hostel dinners. When Cara asked at the meat counter for the mince, the fella behind the counter just grabbed a huge lump of steak and threw it in the mincer. I almost cried. Back at the hostel I whistled up a quick gnocchi with bolognese, washed down with a couple of litre bottles of Quilmes beer. The whole lot cost around four quid. Who needs fabulous steak restaurants when you can knock out that kind of slurry every day and save about a fiver !

While in El Calafate we met up with a Canadian couple, David & Lisa, that we had met in Puerto Iguazu. We spent the night in a local bar with them, getting plastered and having a great laugh. We made it back to the hostel in the early hours of the morning desperately trying not trip over every obstacle we could blunder into in the dark and wake up everybody else. We had to be up early the next morning to pack up and check out as we were heading to a place called El Chalten 4 hours away at the foot of the Andes. It was apparently a great place to do day treks up the mountains and still be back in your comfy bed by evening. We wisely thought this would be the best way to ease ourselves into the trekking habit without our legs falling off.

Mik

Watching Whales in Wales in Patagonia

Peninsular Valdes, Patagonia

Argentina

Patagonia is an enormous area pretty much covering the southern two thirds of Argentina. Predominantly flat and dry, there is very little that can grow there and prosper. Much of the land is covered by a thin coating of small, thorny bushes and rough grasses and most of the indigenous wildlife has taken to drinking bottled water. Its eastern edge is fenced in by the steep rise of the Andes mountain range and the western edge is buffeted by the cold South Atlantic. The winds come mainly from the west and drop any moisture they carry over the Andes. By the time the air reaches the atlantic coast it is so dry you will be licking you lips every other second and spending more time than normal thinking about cold beer. The roads stretch away across the seemingly endless steppe to distant horizons on all sides and you can drive for hours without seeing another living thing, save for the scavenging condors. Eaking out a living here is hard and as such not too many people live in the region. The main cash crop here is dust, which is harvested in huge quantities and shipped all over the world to be spread over bookshelves and under beds. You can also buy gravel there much cheaper than back home, which is a handy tip if you're thinking of getting that driveway done. It can be an incredibly bleak place, somewhat like Burnley, but it is also extremely beautiful, so actually nothing like Burnley.

Lets go there, we thought !

(Patagonia that is, not Burnley)

As you may or may not know, I am utterly fascinated by wildlife and natural history. I will be glued to the TV whenever there is a documentary on about any kind of fauna, be it the migration of the wildebeest or the gill parasites of atlantic salmon. Many years ago I saw a David Attenborough programme called Life on Earth showing Orcas, AKA Killer Whales, almost beaching themselves to snatch young seal pups directly off the beach. Those scenes were filmed on the Patagonian coast of southern Argentina and ever since then I have wanted see it.

Our first port of call then was to be Peninsula Valdes, where these programmes were filmed. More specifically, we were to stay in Puerto Madryn, a few kilometres away from the peninsula. Puerto Madryn was originally a Welsh settlement at the end of the 19th century, presumably founded by people sick and tired of the crap they had to put up with at home simply for 'being Welsh'. The influences are still visible in the street names and the fact that almost every local claims some degree of Welsh ancestry and proudly displays Welsh flags on their walls and photos of the national rugby team circa 1983. Now the town is built on aluminium mining and tourism (those obvious bedfellows) and pretty it certainly is not. It looks a bit like Hull but without the class!

What generates the tourism is the nearby Peninsula Valdes, which from June to December is the calfing ground of the southern right whale, so called because no left-handed specimen has ever been found! It is also the favoured breeding grounds for southern elephant seals, sea lions, magellenic penguins and home to the famous orcas. Unfortunately the orca/seal/ouch-that-hurt season is only during high tide from Feb to March so I guess we'll have to come back for that one. You can also scuba dive here, but it is expensive and the same effects can be achieved by donning a wetsuit and climbing into a bathtub of almost defrosted vegetable soup. Save your money and grab a tin opener.

The distances between the various spots we wanted to visit within the Peninsula Valdes national park were fairly hefty, so we booked onto a day tour of the park and a boat trip to go whale watching in the enormous bay created by the peninsula. On the day, we were outside our hotel at 7am sharp as instructed, waiting for the bus. Unfortunately the lady who ran the hotel forgot to mention to us that the tour company had called to say they would not be there until ten past eight. It was okay though as we only waited in the freezing cold for 45 minutes before going back inside and having breakfast.

First stop was at a beach on the northeast tip of the peninsula used by southern elephant seals and sea lions for breeding, battling, basking and barking. From what we could tell seals like to sleep, eat and fart, which makes them not unlike me. They also have big eyes and make people go 'Ahh' so in that respect they more resemble Cara. Watching a four tonne bull elephant seal flop its way across a beach at speed looked very much like me trying to get to the chip shop before it closes. The next stop was to see the penguins.

Magallenic penguins are hilarious. Of course, all penguins are funny, but these seem doubly so. Penguins are built for swimming and 'fly' through the water using their wings, which are shaped as close to fins as you could imagine. When they are swimming, legs are an incumberence and as such they are very small. What makes these daft birds so funny is that they like to nest in burrows on the sides of vey steep hills. Watching a small penguin scramble and hop up a gravelly hillside is pure entertainment and I could watch them for hours. See them in the water however and it's a completey different story. They zip through the water like torpedoes and they can turn on an exclamation mark. So essentially penguins are walkers like we are swimmers: awkward, ill-adapted and comical. By the way, penguins are cute but by crikey they whiff, or at least the beach does when they are on it. And what does it smell of? Shit. Fishy shit to be precise. Fascinating animals, terrible house guests. While we were here to see the penguins, we also had a couple of quirky little armadillos running around our feet scrounging for scraps. If you knelt down in front of one it would immediately run over to see what goodies you were about to dish out, so I can only assume people are feeding the little buggers, which ultimately does them no good whatsoever. Apart from allowing them to forget how to fend for themselves, quite a few keel over from heart disease or colestrol problems by the time they are 6, which is about 35 in armadillo years (or maybe I made that up, I can never remember). Howdyhoo, armadillos are even funnier than penguins, if such a thing is possible. I imagine if a chihuahua ever mated with a slinky, then put on a hairy suit of armour, it would look just like an armadillo. They also wear flat caps, which proves they are originally northerners!

On our way to the next vantage point we were very lucky to see a pod of orcas swimming together near the shore. On the east coast of the peninsula there is a thin tongue of land which runs parallel to the mainland for several kilometres, leaving a long, thin channel for all sorts of wildlife to live protected from the open ocean on the other side of the tongue. This is where we saw the orcas and apparently they visit regularly to train the youngsters in beach snatching techniques (although I was suspecting our guide was making up more of this than I am). We had lunch overlooking another beach coated with elephant seals and sea lions (although pinnipeds, they are not true seals because they have external ears, although I had stopped believing a word he said at this point). Then onwards to Puerto Piramides for the whale watching.

Once there, Cara, myself and a freakishly tall Dutch fellow were segregated away from the rest of the group because we had special needs or something. We were put on a different boat from the others and with hindsight I'm glad we were as we had a fantastic experience. The boat we were in was quite small and the whales seemed a bit more comfortable coming close to check us out. We also had a couple of whales breaching the surface close to us as well. As you can see from the photos, having a 40 tonne right whale leaping out of the water a few yards from you is a darn sight better than a getting kicked in the shins. We were out at sea for a little over an hour, and we saw quite a few whales up close and personal and many more leaping out of the water off at a distance. Back on shore we discovered the rest of our group had gone out on a big catamaran and hadn't been able to get too close. Result! As an aside, if any of you think it's cruel to bother these animals and that they should be left alone, the following makes interesting reading. Once upon a time the whales would breed in both the north and south bays created by Peninsula Valdes. When the southern bay became a rather busy shipping lane thanks to the nearby aluminium mine, the northern bay was made a protected marine reserve and no shipping or powered craft is allowed in the bay. All the whale watching boats are centred on the southern bay. Now here's the rub, almost all the whales that once to resided in the northern bay have moved to the southern bay and nobody has the faintest idea why. Maybe they are just insecure and crave the attention, who knows? As you can see from our staggeringly impressive photos we were able to get very close to the whales and they are very impressive animals to be around. I had an excellent viewpoint on a raised platform at the back of the boat to get some photos. At least I thought it was a good spot until the above whale vented his blowhole right in front of me and covered both myself and the camera with whale snot.

Whilst in Puerto Madryn we attempted to visit the Oceanographic Museum and tramped across town to see it. Unfortunately, this being Argentina, it was a museum that was closed to the public. This seems to be happening a lot in this country. Supermarkets closed on Sauturday afternoon, museums not open to the public and restaurants closed at normal meal times. It can be quite frustrating trying to get anything done when every town essentially closes down from 1pm to 5pm and restaurants are deserted 'til 10pm, bars deserted 'til midnight and nightclubs empty until 2am. It's almost like somebody took a census and asked 'when would you like to use these services?', then chose to be closed for the hours requested. Seemingly following the great buiness maxim 'This job would be easy if it wasn't for all those customers!'. There, got it off my chest. With the museum closed to the masses, we hopped on a bus to the next town of Trelew to visit their world famous paleaological museum, and that was fantastic. Our first hour there was spent watching a BBC Horizon documentary in English, which was quite odd. But the displays at the museum were great, as Patagonia is famed throughout the scientific world as having some of the most fertile fossil beds on the planet (or artificially created tests of your faith, if you happen to be a wacky creationist!). From Trelew we took the bus back to Madryn, where we took a coach back to Trelew on our way to Rio Gallegos. There's expert planning for you.

ghgggh

Off to Chile next to do some trekking, which apperantly means walking long distances without the aid of motorised transport. What a bizarre concept!

ghggh

Mik

Woof!

I've died and gone to carnivore heaven !

Buenos Aires, Argentina

"The food here is terrible, and the portions are too small."
Woody Allen

After the crappy time we had in Rio, Buenos Aires was like a breath of fresh air, metaphorically speaking of course as 67% of the city is car choked roads and every man and his dog chainsmokes, the dogs often more than most. In typical Cara and Mik fashion, we didn't bother to arrange any accommodation before arriving, and as I mentioned previously, we had to spend forever trying to find a bed for the night. Eventually we found a couple of dorm beds in a fairly crappy hostel that hadn't finished being built yet. It could have been worse though, and by midnight we were so exhausted we slept like logs.

As has already been written, Argentina is famous for its beef and here was no exception. Something else we discovered while in Iguazu is that the Argentines do like a pie. They are called empanadas, they come with various savoury fillings and cost just a few pence. Technically they are not pies at all but small pasties, but I was prepared to overlook the error on this one occasion as I was just so happy to have discovered them. We ate like kings every night, and in some damn fine restaurants. The wine here is also excellent. For five pounds you can get a great bottle of red from the supermarket and even if you only spend 2 pounds you can find a perfectly drinkable bottle. One of the more surprising discoveries we made was that the restaurants only mark up the price of wine by about 20-30% from what it costs in the shops, as compared with restaurants in the UK that like to charge 100-200% more for the same bottles you find in Oddbins. After a night out in the city we were walking back to our hotel when we decided we'd buy another bottle of red to drink back in the room, so we called into our friendly neighbourhood 24hr café across the street from where we are staying. Being a bit bleary eyed already I just pointed randomly at a bottle on a shelf and asked for one. The guy behind the counter handed over the bottle and said something incoherent in Spanish. I couldn't make out whether he said 14 or 40 pesos so I handed over a 50 peso note and waited for my change. Turns out the bottle was 4 pesos, which is 80 pence. When we got back to the room we opened it up and were surprised to discover it was not weak piss at all. Actually, it was the vilest tasting filth I have ever had the misfortune to put in my mouth. 10 minutes later, after we'd finally stopped coughing and choking, we thought it best to leave that one alone and call it a day. We left the bottle on the floor and in the morning there was a large patch of wallpaper hanging off the wall above the bottle and 2 dead cockroaches next to it. Good vintage! Out of interest, the cheapest bottle of wine we've seen so far was in a supermarket at 1.89 pesos a bottle, about 38 pence. It was sat beside a 1 litre bottle of coke on offer at 2 pesos a bottle, which I think says more about the profitability of the Coca Cola company than it does about the costs of wine production in Argentina.

I don't want you thinking that all I ever talk about is food (although clearly it is) but I have to tell you about a restaurant we visited while in Buenos Aires. It is called Siga La Vaca (translates as follow that cow) and it is in the recently redeveloped docklands area of Puerto Madero. We heard about it from a girl in the hostel we stayed at in Iguazu and thought we'd give it a try. Now the good people of Bs. As. have the crazy habit of not going out for dinner until after 10pm and often staying in restaurants until way after midnight, even on a school night. If you were to go to almost any restaurant in the capital around 9pm it will probably be empty. However, we had heard this restaurant was very popular with the locals so we decided to get there for around 9ish and beat the crowd. By the time we arrived, the place was packed and dozens of people were waiting for a table (the restaurant is enormous and probably seats over 300). We put our name on the waiting list and took a stroll around the docks for 20 minutes. When we got back to the restaurant even more people were queuing outside. We took a seat inside and waited for our name to be called out. As we were waiting, a waiter started walking amongst the queuing customers with an enormous tray of empanadas. Now this was a good start. Any restaurant that hands out free meat pies while you wait gets my vote for president. After a while I wandered over to the front of the waiting throng to find out how long it would be only to find out our name had been called and we missed it. I can only assume this is because we had put our name down as Cara. In Spanish, Cara means face and some people find this a little confusing and assume we had meant to write Carol or Carla. Or maybe they just wouldn't feel comfortable shouting out 'table for face' in the restaurant. So now, to avoid confusion we just write B A Baracus. The restaurant itself is what they call a tenedor libre, which essentially means all you can eat. So we did. They had an enormous parilla, which is a meat grill, that you wandered up to, pointed at various types of meat and the chap on the grill would carve you off a huge lump of whatever you fancy. The meat was fantastic and we made a point of letting the chap on the grill know what we thought. He was so happy he cooked us a couple of perfect steaks and had them sent over to our table. We started to get a bit full at this point but soldiered on nonetheless. I just don't understand how they get the steaks so big and tasty here. To give you some idea of what they're like, imagine the cross section of an entire cow, this would most resemble the huge slab of meat that will arrive on your plate. If, like me, you like your steak rare, the expression they use here is 'vuelta y vuelta' which literally means 'turn and turn'. Throw it on the grill, turn it over and slap it on the plate. Fantastico ! The price was 27 pesos each, which equates to £5.40, and included a bottle of wine EACH and all the starters, salads, chips and desserts etc. I really love this country, but I have to admit I'm starting to feel like I'm walking around with an IV drip in my arm and the other end stuck in a cow. A waiter asked me what I wanted last night and I just mooed at him.

If you're a vegetarian, I apologise if any of this makes you uncomfortable. But if you were here, you'd be tucking in as well. And why wouldn't you, because what is a vegetarian but a failed omnivore? So go on, what could possibly be better than chewing on a cows arse? By the way if you call yourself a vegetarian but you eat fish, buy a dictionary.

The weather was perfect for the whole time we stayed in the city. Hot and sunny every day but not humid or uncomfortable. We had a great time wandering the streets, seeing the sights and drinking in the bars and we were sorry to leave the city. But leave it we must so we bought a couple of bus tickets for a 20 hour ride down to Patagonia.

Ganging up on Mik to snaffle his empanadas

Mik.

Iguassu Falls : Big and wet

Iguassu Falls, Puerto Iguazu

Argentina

Our first 2 nights in Argentina were spent in a decent hotel as we still weren't 100%, but the pleasant town of Puerto Iguazu made us feel a whole lot better. The sun was finally shining and the town felt so much safer, quieter and more laid-back that we knew we were going to like Argentina. When we eventually made it out for dinner our love for the country was further compounded when the waiter served us 2 of the most enormous steaks I have ever seen. Fan-bloody-tastic.

The beef here is unbelievable, and cooked on big open grills, which has us looking forward to every meal even more than usual! You may think we are splurging by having steak but they cost less than 3 quid - result!

Now aside from the food the reason for coming here was of course to visit the Iguazu Falls. You can view the falls from both the Brazilian and the Argentinean side but due to our loss of love for Brazil we decided to stay on the Argentinean side. On this side you can get much closer to the falls. They are very impressive, wider than Niagara and due to the high rainfall they had had recently the amount of water coming over them was tremendous. A truly fantastic sight.

After a couple more days hanging out at our hostel we made the journey to Buenos Aires. I should just mention that whilst we didn't witness it ourselves a Canadian guy staying at the hostel had a shower with a tarantula!!!! Yes a big, fat, hairy tarantula. He even took a photo (I didn't ask why he had a camera in the bathroom!). Had I seen it then you wouldn't have seen me for dust. Anyways we left soon enough.

As air transport in South America is very expensive the main method of getting around is by bus. Now bearing in mind the size/length of Argentina alone, this means some serious journeys. We had however heard great things about the buses and so were almost looking forward to our 16 hour trip to the capital. It was great, seats like those in a first class cabin food served to you and films to watch - brilliant. What a difference to those bus journeys in Asia although the bureaucracy seems to be the same as we stopped at many check points, had to show ID despite not leaving the country and had our possessions checked out by sniffer dogs. And thus we, well I at least - Mik doesn't sleep well on buses - arrived well rested in Buenos Aires.

Cara.

Rio - Copacabana beach in the rain!

Rio De Janeiro & Buzios,

Brazil

We tend not to book our accomodation in advance as we prefer to see it first but we did do for Rio. So having arrived much earlier in the morning than expected, due to changed flight, we were glad we had booked. Until that is we pulled up outside a rather shabby looking building in Cocpacabana at 6am. We went in, still shabby, and dark.....! Anyway, room was clean and we needed sleep so we stayed. Glad we did as the guys working there were brilliant and made our stay in Rio a lot more fun than it would have been without them.

Whilst we were waiting for Mik's bag to arrive (2 days) we had a wander along Copacabana beach, although as the sun wasn't out there weren't many chicas in string bikinis for Mik to oggle.

We did however see some rather well toned men playing volleyball, so I stopped to watch and pick up some tips - they weren't doing the usual and using their hands and fists but their chests and heads and backs - most entertaining I can assure you! Anyway, true to form food has continued to feature strongly and with the all you can eat churrasco restaurants we were laughing. All you can eat restaurants may conjure up images of a buffet with semi cold bits of beef and chicken - oh no, in Brazil they know how to do it. For just 5 quid you can load your plate with salad from the buffet, we're talking sushi and quails eggs, not limp lettuce and bacon bits, and wait for the men with their skewers of all types of meat to visit your table. We were in heaven - and went back several times! Another other type of restaurant they have is a pay by weight, which if we were people of small appetites could be a cheap option. What it meant for us however was that we piled as much different stuff on our plates as possible and experienced the utter disgust of the people weighing our plates at the end!

We spent most of our time eating in Rio as the weather was lousy. We did have a wander along Ipanema beach in the drizzle though but this meant it wasn´t the people watching spot we had been looking forward to. We did however get one beautiful afternoon which we took full advantage of and went up the Corcovado mountain, atop which is the famous statue of Christ the Redeemer, arms outstretched. The view across Rio is amazing. The Brazilians have been known to claim that God took 6 days to build the world and saved the 7th day just for Rio. Stunning though it is I personally would argue that he may have spent some of that 7th day on Cape Town too. Rio itself is wrapped around the base of several granite pinacles with long sandy beaches wherever it hits the Atlantic. It´s a sprawling city of so many high rises that it must rival Singapore, but punctuated by the jungle covered pinacles makes it far more beautiful and impressive.

Having said all that we didn´t really warm to the city. I´m sure the rain affected our perception but we were keen to get out of the city and so headed north east up the coast in search of sun. Buzios is a peninsula with no less than 25 different beaches. It is a place which came very highly recommended by all those who had been there. Unfortunately for us the rain continued, for about 40 hours non stop at one point so we didn´t get to see it in it´s full glory. Coupled with the fact that both Mik and I came down with some flu/virus thang it wasn´t the most positive experience. Luckily we had found a decent, and massive, room in the centre of town. It even had a TV, although the fact that the owner downstairs controlled which channel was on did prove a little frustrating. Especially when he´d change channels 10 mins before the end of a film! Again we had one afternoon of sun so I dragged Mik out to walk along the beach, and it was beautiful, but that small amount of exertion landed Mik with a fever for the night. Needless to say by this stage we were feeling like every sliver lining had a cloud!

The following day we headed back to Rio, stayed with our friends at Newtons Hostel and the following morning caught our flight to Foz do Iguacu(portuguese spelling). Happy to leave Rio behind us. Foz do Iguacu is the town on the Brazilian side for the Iguacu Falls, which lie right at the point where Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay meet. We were, by this stage, so desperate to get out of Brazil that we paid 12 quid for a taxi to take us straight to the town on the Argentinian side, Puerto Iguazu (spanish spelling). Such extravagance, but the best decision all round.

Cara