After four days in Mendoza, sitting in Parks, drinking red wine and sampling various of the city´s fantastic ice-cream parlours, I felt like I was in danger of never leaving. I knew I had to leave but not before one last Argentinian Steak! Two girls (from Sydney and new York respectively) had the same idea and so we jeaded to a really nice restaurant for the obligatory mammoth steak and red wine. Was up early the next morning to pack and battle through the dehydration - I promise it wasn´t just the red wine, the Argentinians put tons of salt on [View Full Entry]

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So, my original plan after heading right down to the South of Argentina was to gradually work my way North, taking in the picturesque lake-district town of Barriloche along the way. Well...things didn´t quite pan out that way! Having spent about a week and a half taking in the beautiful mountains, lakes and glaciers of Patagonia, I decided that I needed to see something a bit different. I promptly bought myself a bus ticket for Mendoza and "hey presto", 40 hours and over two thousand miles later, I arrived in city of Mendoza. Mendoza is an old city in a semi-desert, [View Full Entry]

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After Calafate, I wanted to head for what I thought would be one of the big highlights of my trip, Torres Del Paine, Chile's most famous national park. In order to do this, I had to go to the town of Puerto Natales in Chile. This involved a five hour bus journey and a right palarva at the border. Apparently, the Argentinians haven't gotten on with the Chileans ever since the latter decided to assist the UK in retaking a certain group of islands from the former. This dislike now manifests itself in many ways, two of which are (1) the [View Full Entry]

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So I arrived in Calafate with one aim in mind; to see the Perito Moreno glacier. I had heard that there wasn´t much in the town itself except places to sleep and buses to the glacier so I only booked the hostel for a couple of nights. Was up early the next day to head to the Glacier. Now, there are bigger glaciers around, including one close to Calafate. However, the big attraction of Perito moreno is that, despite global warmng, it is still advancing towards the sea at around 2m per day. This means that large chunks keep falling off [View Full Entry]

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The 4th of November arrived much quicker than I anticipated. I'd really enjoyed my three weeks in buenos Aires. The family I stayed with were lovely and I'd gotten on really well with quite a few people in the language school. However, the time had come to head South. I therefore promptly took a flight to Ushuaia, which is the southernmost city/large town in the world, or as the Argentinians like to put it, El Fin del Mundo. It's actually on an Island right at the bottom of Argentina, which is shared with Chile, called Tierra del Fuego (the land of [View Full Entry]

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The following weekend, I set off with Joe and Brandon (two American guys from the language school) to Uruguay. We took the slow boat across the Rio de la Plata to Colonia and then took a bus to Montevideo. It was quite a strange city with some really nice buildings but also a lot óf drab grey tower blocks that looked like they´d been lifted straight out of Communist Russia. When we arrived in mid-afternoon, there were hardly any people in the streets, which made a nice change from permanently busy Buenos Aires. We explored the city for a while on [View Full Entry]

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The holiday weekend has meant that I´ve had plenty of time to wander around Buenos Aires with Joe. On Saturday, we looked around the centre of town and the wealthy area of Recoleto, which looks a lot like Paris and has lots of the expensive shops that you´d expect to find there, Luis Vuitton for example (oddly all the staff I could see through the window were men! Who´s going to trust their advice on handbags!) Recoleto is also home to a massive graveyard for the wealthy of Buenos Aires. It has the grave of Peron (two time president of Argentina [View Full Entry]

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Obviously, being in Argentina, I wanted to see some Futbol. I really fancied going to see Boca Juniors but on this particular weekend, their match was suspended (something to do with a risk of hooligan problems and a legal challenge by the other club!). So Joe and I booked ourselves on a tour at the official tourist office in Buenos Aires to go and see River, thinking that this was the safest way to go. However, far from being official, it turned to be three guys with a white minibus and a load of season tickets in the names of random [View Full Entry]

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