After the Galapgaos we had 2 days back in Quito and in the nice hotel, this time in a room that appeared once to have been the garden shed but quite cosy once we got another heater! A torrential downpour on the first afternoon caused chaos in the city and blew the power supply in our area of town so candles were required in the hotel for an hour or two. Apart from that, nothing very exciting happened and we had rather lost our appetite for doing anything much other than think about all the things we had to do when [View Full Entry]

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And so we headed off back to Quito airport for our flight to the Galapagos. Despite the hotel being lovely the staff were not quite what we had hoped and the taxi we had asked them to order the night before had not been ordered but we only found out when it didn´t show! Quito airport seemed a little larger than I recalled, or at least the facilities were better, but it was chaotic with queues everywhere of people buying passes for the Galapagos, getting their luggage checked for banned items, checking in and then finally security. And then they showed [View Full Entry]

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And so, we returned to Santiago early evening to a different hotel from before as they had been booked up. A little unfortunate as the new place was not quite so comfortable but we did have a tiny apartment rather than just a room. Tiny being the operative word though and H was reminded of some of the Japanese bathrooms as he tried to squeeze into the shower the first morning! However, it redeemed itself with free internet and a great breakfast including lots of fresh fruit. We had lots of admin to do and have lost interest a bit in [View Full Entry]

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(The location is not actually quite right but not all places are listed - we actually stayed in Farellones but we did ski in Valle Nevado a couple of days...) So, it was pretty cold the morning we arrived at the ski shop around 7.15am to catch a minibus up into the mountains. While waiting for them to start selling tickets the shop next door caught Hugh´s eye and he discovered that their transfers were 2/3 the price and the bus was just leaving so off we went. Despite the fact that I was already wearing much of my ski gear, [View Full Entry]

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The bus from Mendoza headed off into blue skies meaning that there was no fresh snow on the pass into Chile. The road takes a beautiful route through vineyards before it starts to climb towards the distant snow capped mountains. After more stunning views and passing a couple of small ski resorts we finally arrived at the border crossing. Despite driving past a huge queue of lorries waiting to pass through, we still had a long wait and it was probably another hour before we were allowed to get off the bus. And this was just to hang around outside the [View Full Entry]

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We were both pretty excited about going to Mendoza - the centre of wine country in Argentina and at the gateway to the Andes mountains. The bus journey started well with a jolly steward who gave us blankets and cushions and we soon curled up to catch up on some sleep. However, we were awoken for breakfast which was another Argentinian culinary masterpiece - dry crackers (with some jam to dip them in if you wished), a white chocolate covered wafer bar and a white chocolate alfajore (a very popular biscuit sandwich containing dulce de leche - caramalised condensed milk - [View Full Entry]

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THe overnight bus from Salta was a small improvement from the one we took to get there due to blankets and a pillow and seats which seemed a bit more comfortable. However, H had been snoring for some time and I had disappeared into my eyemask with the Archers by 11.15pm when they came round trying to serve dinner - I declined on behalf of both of us! And luckily we had set an alarm as we were getting off at La Rioja, before the final destination and nobody bothered to wake us! So, a little bleary we stumbled into the [View Full Entry]

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So, of into the sun again, this time south into the Calchaqui Valley for some hairy roads and more spectacular scenery. The first few miles out of Salta were fairly flat but soon we got into more interesting views and as we began to climb the road narrowed. We stopped for a brief coffee at an isolated cafe at the bottom of the Cuesto del Obispo, the long winding road that goes up into the mountains. The views were wonderful but slightly spoilt by the broken down truck containing 2 children who wanted 1970s middle of the road classics played at [View Full Entry]

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As we were reserving our hire car, the American guy who had been before us and had gone out to take his car, came back in and asked if they had any automatics....turned out he'd never driven a non-automatic and had just assumed that all cars in Argentina would be, just like in the US! We saw him and his girlfriend walking towards the bus station later in the day looking rather down - isn't it funny the assumptions we make about the world based on our own home experiences. Luckily everything went smoothly for us when we picked our car [View Full Entry]

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So another overnight bus journey, this time around 11 hours, from Cordoba to Salta. We knew that this wasn't going to be quite as luxurious as they weren't offering the same service. The seats reclined some way but were nowhere near as comfortable as the full recline though we did manage to sleep a reasonable amount. Dinner appeared to be a range of different cheese and ham sandwiches - brown bread, white bread, some kind of rolypoly pudding thing - with cheese and ham - and a main course of rice with unidentified meat. Overall probably worse than airline food. In [View Full Entry]

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