We took a Tur Bus from La Serena to Valparaiso during the day, arriving in the city around 7pmish. Arrived at the hostel, Nueva Mente and rang the bell and waited, waited and waited. No answer and there appeared to be no one around. We were just thinking about our next options when a man appeared, let us into the hostel and told us to wait! A few minutes later, hostel manager arrived and showed us our room :) hostel was quite nice over 2 floors but very very cold as the building was from 1900's and there was no heating! I sat in the hostel with my coat on and actually didn't need my coat for outside as it was warmer. Anyhow, we located the local mini market, a lovely local chap welcoming us 'Chicas' ... read more

The journey to Santiago from Bariloche, as I know Fuzzy likes to know about these things, was a two buses journey, one from Bariloche across the border, leaving Argentina and entering into Chile to a place called Osorno and then second bus from Osorno to Santiago. The bus journey took us across the Andes with a customs stop out of Argentina and one into Chile. No major incidents or delays involved and the view from the bus window was lovely as we winded around the hills of fir trees and great lakes. Following the beauty of the mountains we arrived in Chile at Osorno which was grey with fog and closed for Sunday! Some Chilean money in our pockets from the ATM we purchased a bus ticket to Santiago but had a long wait till the ... read more

Dearest Readers, It gives me great pleasure in announcing that without a doubt for me, Puerto Madryn, the Pennisular Valdes is my favourite place so far in Argentina, and yes that has everything to do with the fact we saw Southern Right Whales both from the shore and in a boat :) Anyhow, where to begin - so when I last wrote we left El Calafate and took a bus (via Rio Gallegos) to arrive in Puerto Madryn. I won´t bore you with long bus tales however a few things to highlight is the cute kid at Rio G who took much amusement from patting mr gently and running away, the conductor of the bus who seemed to like the English chicas and kept checking we were ok, along with a fellow female passenger who kept ... read more

The snowcapped mountains and blue water and minus 2 degrees celcius! That is right people, we have made it from Buenos by plane, a much shorter journey of 3 hours ish to Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the WORLD! A slight shock from the warmth of Buenos Aires but Brim and I came prepared with warm clothes and waterproofs :) At the Airport Brim was worried about me and swine flu questions, no coughing, sneezing allowed! Thankfully no questions asked except where were we staying in Ushuaia! The lady did not recognise it but the taxi driver (no buses from Airport in case you thought we were getting lazy) found it with no problem. The hostel, Posada Costa Serena, was more of a B&B than a backpacker hostel but it was warm with fresh towels every ... read more

After our long day in Colonia we had an easy morning whilst I chatted away to the hostel guy whilst he kindly burnt all the pictures we had taken so far on our travels onto CD. Having told us the location of the nearest post office we managed to package up our CDs and some other bits and send them Argentine post with bar code label!:) hopefully the CDs make it so we can free up some space on our SD cards for more picture taking :) Next task was to head into town and book some tickets for a Tango show. The hostel had already telephoned around and confirmed I could take a Tango lesson at a place called Cafe Tortoni with no reservations required! However, purchasing the Tango tickets was far more time consuming ... read more