Jez and Bridget

And so, to the final place on our trip, and our final blog. We arrived in Buenos Aires from Puerto Madryn to be greeted with beautiful sunshine and lovely warm days. Are you enjoying this in Blighty?! (Actually, by the time you read this we'll be back home so that'll wipe the smirks of our faces.) We spent four days in the city, and what a fab city it is. Both of us agree it's the best big city we've been to, for a number of reasons. The architecture, even though the vast majority of the city is 20th century, is magnificent. Street after street lined with apartment buildings with ornate stonework, balconies that look down on the street below, and superbly designed doorways (and doors). There's alot of traffic of course, but the streets are ... read more

Over the course of three days, and 25 hours on buses, we made our way from El Calafate to Puerto Madryn on Argentina's east coast. On the first night after leaving El Calafate we stayed in a place called Perito Moreno (nothing to do with the glacier, and famous in our eyes for topping the "Most Boring Town We've Been To In South America" list - or anywhere come to think of it). Not only is there nothing to do there, but we were there on a Sunday, when even the church closes. (Not really of course, but that's what it seemed like). We amused ourselves by hitting the bottle early: 11am. The only place we could find open was a cafe, so we sat and nursed a couple of glasses of wine until they started ... read more

Brrrrrrrrrrrrr. Actually, it's not that cold down here in Patagonia. When the sun shines, which it does quite alot because it's summertime, it is very pleasant. But when the wind blows, it really blows. After leaving Ensenada and the beautiful Lake District we spent a couple of days on Chiloe Island, a short ferry ride from Chile's mainland. It's a very nice place, nice and quiet, and because we were driving we were pleased to see that it only has one road, making it pretty difficult to get lost. Alot of the scenery is like Ireland, rolling hills and wooded countryside. Also like Ireland the west coast takes the brunt of ocean storms, but the east side (where we were) was lovely and sunny. We dropped off our hire car in Puerto Montt (we would love ... read more

... to give it it's full name. We had three great days in Chile's capital city. The weather was sunny and hot, the food was good, the public transport system works, and the sights were fab. The sprawling mass of the city lies on a flat plain surrounded by snow-capped and un-snow-capped mountains, some of which you can just about see in the photos. There are two large hills in 'downtown' Santiago, the largest of which (San Cristobel) you can ascend on a fenicular railway or in a cable car, or walk up (we chose to go up on the railway and come down in the cable car, lazy buggers - but it was in the high 20s Celsius) and you get fantastic views over the whole of the city. At the top is a large ... read more

One of the 'must do' things in Bolivia is a tour across the 'Salar de Uyuni', the largest and highest salt flats in the world. It's also a good way of getting into Chile because the 4x4 vehicles go cross-country from Bolivia into Chile which is much quicker than going by bus along the paved (or unpaved) roads. So, on Saturday morning we met our fellow gringos (from Spain, South Korea, Poland, and the USA) and our guide, Javier, and bundled all our worldly possessions on to the roof of Javier's ageing Toyota Landcruiser. Unbelievably, for the second time on our trip, the donkey-work was being done by a beast named Sue. (Our 'emergency horse' on our Inca Trail was Christened Sue by Stuart, and our Toyota had the registration number 285 SUE). After saying 'Adios' ... read more