Ben and Clare

After our brief but enjoyable romp through Uruguay, we returned to Buenos Aires for the third and, sadly, final time! With Christmas approaching, we took the chance to hit the lovely boutiquey shops in San Telmo and also went to the Saturday market in Palermo. Luckily, our return coincided with a visit from the band The Killers and so we treated ourselves to a couple of tickets and went to see them play an excellent outdoor concert, along with around 20,000 Argentinians! The next day, we took our final night bus in Argentina and so made sure we did it in style on a cama suite bus - around 2 hours into the journey and after a few bottles of free wine and some champagne, we were quite tipsy and drifted off to sleep! After 18 ... read more

El Calafate & El Chalten: Trekking on Ice El Calafate is the small town from where everyone makes thir excursion to the Perito Moreno glacier - one of the few still advancing in the World. We had a great day visiting the glacier - seeing, and often just hearing, huge chunks of ice crashing into the lake. In the afternoon we spent two hours trekking on the ice, which was a beautiful experience, and ended with a whiskey on the rocks - the rocks being ice cut from the glacier itself! There isn't a great deal more to see or do in El Calafate and so we headed for El Chalten, an even smaller town a few hours away that is a mecca for hiking, as it is surrounded by Parque Nacional Los Glaciares. We headed ... read more

Puerto Madryn: Whale Watching and Welsh Cake! We're still days behind with the blog and so here's another quick one to help us catch-up! Our next stop was Puerto Madryn, which is where the legendary Welsh settlers arrived in Patagonia to start a new life away from their English overlords! It's a laid-back seaside town from where trips to Peninsula Valdes leave to see penguins, elephant seals and whales. We were shattered when we arrived as the overnight bus didn't serve food until 11pm and then showed The Fast and Furious until around 1am - this was annoying, but made even worse by the fact that the TV screen near us was broken and so we couldn't even watch the film, instead we were just kept awake by the noise of screeching tyres and Vin Diesel! ... read more

Mendoza: Wine Tasting in Extreme Heat! Our next stop was Mendoza - the wine capital of Argentina from where the famous Argentinian Malbec is sent all over the World. The town has a stunning setting, surrounded by huge mountains and is a popular spot for skiing in the right season. The main reason backpackers pour into Mendoza is to take part in one of the semi-legendary wine tours, which involve hiring a bike and cycling between the numerous vineyards, the olive place, and chocolate factory tasting anything and everything! The day we chose for our ride ended up being incredibly hot with the temperature hitting 40 degrees and making for some pretty tough cycling conditions! We visited a number of wineries, sampled loads of wine, and can now consider ourselves experts on Argentinian reds - sadly ... read more

Salta: Hello Argentina! After the shock of the prices in Chile, which seemed especially high after a few weeks in Bolivia, we were even more excited about crossing the border into Argentina - the land of tango, football, wine, and amazing steaks, as well as glaciers and lots more! However, of those, meat was foremost in our minds as Argentina was to be the place where Ben's travelling weightloss was to be reversed! Not only are there just three buses across the border from San Pedro, but those three buses also travel during the day, which meant we would lose a whole day on the road. Thankfully, the bus showed lots of films including 17 Again with Zac Effron, whose fan club Clare has joined - oh dear! For non-Effron fans, the views from the bus ... read more