Ushuaia the southern most city in the world and the furthest south we have ever been! It feels such a long time ago since we landed in Cancun Mexico and been traveling south ever since and from now on will be traveling north until we reach Salford back in December! The northern most point on this trip was Chihuahua and that was near enough 9000 miles away! Shit we have traveled far and that’s not even including all the miles in all the various countries! To get here was a bit of a hassle and had to travel for 12 hours [View Full Entry]

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We had another night back in El Calafate after returning from El Charlten and then headed back into Chile, a 4 hour bus journey to Puerto Natales for Tores Del Paine National Park. The border crossing was nice and easy as there were only five of us on the bus so were through in a few minutes. Typically as soon as we crossed the border we were welcomed once again by the Chilean rain! Half an hour later we arrived in Puerto Natales and the place was like a ghost town with everywhere closed for winter including the 3 hostels we [View Full Entry]

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Close to El Calkafate is El Chalten and the Fitz Roy Range and this was something we wanted to see since we started planning the trip. We first thought that we would be out of luck because of it being winter the lonely planet said it would be closed and when we heard that it wasn’t we had to go. We took a 4 hour bus north through some more amazing scenery, lots of pretty lakes and the ancient looking mountains of Fitz Roy and Torre range getting closer and closer. The bus took us direct to the park office and [View Full Entry]

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We finally arrived in El Calafate after a 23 hour bus journey that wasn’t that bad, managed to sleep most of the way and when awake the views were amazing so had lots to keep me occupied.. We ended up staying at the America Del Sur hostel all very nice with under floor heating which made the place feel like a sauna but cosy when coming out of the freezing cold. The hostel was built on a hillside overlooking the town and had panoramic views of Lago Argentino the biggest lake in Argentina; it was nice place to chill out with [View Full Entry]

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After Bariloche we decided to go from one side of Argentina to the other for a spot of whale watching in the Atlantic Ocean, the first time we have been on this side since Panama, 5 months ago! We traveled overnight for 14 hours to Puerto Madryn and arrived sleepy and tired at 6am. We tried to check into the hostel we booked but they were full until somebody checked out. Check out was 10 am, so we sat about and waited and typically the people for our room left it until 10 on the dot to check out! Didn’t get [View Full Entry]

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It back over to Argentina and a pretty place called Bariloche, situated on a lake shore and with amazing views of snow capped peaks and hopefully a place we could learn how to ski! To get here was another long bus journey of 11 hours! We set off at 7am on another rainy day which didn’t stop until we were close to the Argentine border when it turned into snow! After about another hour of driving you could see that the side of the roads and fields had snow up to 2 meters thick, it looked amazing lots of pine and [View Full Entry]

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Next up was Valdivia on the Pacific coast 3 hours away. We arrived to rain and misery arse clouds that made the place look very dull and boring and there was not much encouragement to explore the town. We managed to drag ourselves out and got soaked in the process; it’s just like being back at home! Shortly after we reached the port and as you can imagine with it being so close to the Pacific, the place is big on its fish and there were lots of fishermen bringing there catch in and selling it straight of the boat. It [View Full Entry]

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After Santiago was another long over night bus journey of 10 hours to Pucon which is the start of Chiles own Lake District region which we were looking forward to as it looks amazing. As we got of the bus, we were both very glad that we bought the coats as there was a freezing wind blowing. We soon forgot about the wind as we took in the views of the town, Beautiful snowy volcanic peaks and with one of them with steam rising from the top of it as it’s still active! We walked to our hostel and were in [View Full Entry]

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After Mendoza it was another 6 hour bus journey back in to Chile and this time to the capital Santiago. The journey to the border crossing was beautiful and we passed through a number of ski resorts which was a strange site seeing a chairlift going only a few meters over us as we drove under the waving skiers! The border crossing wasn’t too bad apart from the stupid Customs women wanting to search the contents of my bag! Not usually a problem but it was at bursting point and already took me half the morning to pack the thing, so [View Full Entry]

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After Cafeyate we planned to try and get to Mendoza about 700 miles away! There was no direct bus from Cafayate so instead had to get a bus to Tucuman, 7 hours away and then hope there was a later bus to Mendoza so it would give us chance to explore Tucuman. We were in luck there was a bus at 8pm so we stored our bags and went into the city hoping there was something to do for the next 8 hours! It turned out to be a nice surprise with some amazing buildings around the main plaza. We bought [View Full Entry]

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