Saturday night in Cape Town - we decided we wanted to eat some of the local Cape Malay food. Our friendly hotel staff tracked down a restaurant at the Victoria and Alfred waterfront and put us in a cab to get there. The V&A is a spectacular waterfront development of shops, bars and restaurants, very smart and crowded on a Saturday evening. Most of the other streets in the centre seemed remarkably empty - apparently not too many people walk around after dark. Anyway we had a different dinner of Bobotie (sort of spicy meatloaf, samosas, and a dish called something [View Full Entry]

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Ok it's not quite alliterative unless you are Jonathan Ross but here goes: How did we come to be here? Andy and Jacqui decide to go to South Africa for a holiday, decide to get married, then Jacqui's research tells them that Grotto Beach at Hermanus has a great venue, invites are issued in August, our decision to go quickly made and flights and hotels booked (how did we do this so easily before the internet). Wed 28 October. We flew overnight with BA from the UK to Cape Town, picked up our hire car and wait for Peju coming on [View Full Entry]

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I am typing this at home in a grey and chilly England after coming back from Buenos Aires where we spent the last five nights of the trip. We had arranged to stay in the same apartment as we had rented in January. Thursday was the quick trip to the local chirpodists (more discussion about the shortcomings of the economy and politics) before they closed for the four day easter holiday and also a wander to look for some light weight books about Argentina to take home. Good Friday was a holiday but many of the BA shops were open as [View Full Entry]

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After our city break in San Juan we went back on the desert road to drive down to San Luis via the Sierras de Quijadas national park. More rocks but different and less developed for tourism than Talampaya. We decided not to descend into the canyons to look for the dinosaur footprints but walked to various miradors and admired the views before going to San Luis. This provincial capital doesn't get much of a write up in our guidebooks but it has some nice buildings and a helpful tourist office with good maps and guides to the city and province and [View Full Entry]

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From San Jose de Jachal we headed north-east initially over a rough mountain road as far as Huaco and then onto paved R40 complete with fords (mainly dry) which took us up to Villa Union which is where we got to back in mid December. The only change is that the scrubby desert is a bit greener after the summer rains but it is still empty and hot! Felt some sort of mixed emotion about realising that we had gone all the way round Argentina - means that going home must be happening sometime too soon! Worked out later that we [View Full Entry]

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From Malargue we headed back to San Rafael, spotting the cosmic ray detector tanks along the way and detouring by the very scenic Cañon Atuel. Tthen, after a quick lunch, hit the road to get to Tupungato for the night. This is about 60km south of Mendoza, where we actually wanted to go but, as it was the big harvest festival/vendimia weekend there was nowhere to stay.. Anyway we were happily bowling along in the afternoon sunshine noticing the occasional hailstorm protection shelter when the skies darkened and we ran into first a rainstorm then running water across the road and [View Full Entry]

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The overnight bus trip from Neuquen north to San Rafael passed quickly, I think we both slept quite a bit despite the lashing rain which we drove through at some point. We arrived at San Rafael about 8am Sunday morning as the sun was rising. We trundled our bags along to the hotel and went in search of coffee. As in nearly every town or village here the local YPF petrol station has a good cafe. After checking in and showers we did the walkabout. San Rafael is dead flat with lots of cyclists - except during the siesta which seems [View Full Entry]

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A holiday within the trip? After Junin we headed further north to Zapala across a more open but empty landscape of vast plateaus between huge crater shaped depressions. It is dinosaur fossil country. From there we turned back west and headed back to the hills to eventually reach Villa Pehuenia. In case you don't know, and why would you, Pehuen is the Mapuche indian word for Araucaria or Monkey Puzzle tree, these grow around here in forests. A bit weird as the older (bigger) ones have bark like an old grey alligator, and they don't really move in the wind. The [View Full Entry]

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We gave ourselves a late start after the travails of the walk the day before. Leaving Bariloche to start wending our way through the northern parts of the lake district. Picked up another car and drove round the eastern end of Lago Nahuel Huapi and along the northern shore to Villa la Angostura. Another very scenic drive with lots of water, trees and moutain scenery under burning blue skies. Our hotel turned out to be on the lake with gardens down to the beach. We had had good intentions of going out to see the Arrayanes park (another sort of tree) [View Full Entry]

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After our mini break down south we returned to Bariloche. This time to stay in a really great cabana, two bedrooms, lake views and a mini garden included, all about 4.6km along Av Pioneros, so also away from the hustle and tourist bustle of the town. We ended up spending most evenings in the house, reading, cooking and watching the sun set and the moon rise. Our landlords were great, drank mate with them one afternoon and freshly baked donuts delivered by them the next morning. When we weren´t just chilling out we did some walking: allegedly there is a path, [View Full Entry]

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