Day 151 (cont): A dinner date with an old friend The flight back to Buenos Aires passed without incident, and I arrived at Hostel Firulete in the city centre (the one with the chair stackers) at about half-four. I still wasn't feeling so good and was resigned to curling up on the sofa in the hostel and watching England play some atrocious football and losing to France. A bit gutted that I was feeling lousy (and that England can't play football), I got ready to go out, and walked down to my old residence to meet Marianne. It was a lovely [View Full Entry]

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Day 148: Puerto Iguazu I woke up rather early this morning and so went for a walk in town to get some breakfast and try and find an internet cafe that was open on Easter Sunday so that I could check in online (a bit optimistic, but at least I got breakfast), before getting a taxi to the domestic airport and boarding a plane for Iguazu a few hours later. The flight was only two hours and with the plane half empty, the journey wasn't too stressful at all. Disembarking at the other end, the sweltering heat was a little beyond [View Full Entry]

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Day 145 cont: Back in Buenos Aires Our flight arrived back in Buenos Aires on time and we were soon in a taxi on our way to a different hostel in Buenos Aires. On a par with the Bed and Breakfast in Mendoza, we had a really nice room. There were even dried flowers, a chest of drawers and a carpet! More like a hotel than a hostel, I'm almost starting to feel like a grown up again! We didn't stop for long, but went out for a walk around the main shopping streets to get some food (for me at [View Full Entry]

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Day 142: Mountains, chalets and chocolate With a hearty breakfast of some savoury crackers and a cup of coffee (alfajores were also on offer, but I wasn't that desperate), the journey continued. The scenery was starting to get a bit more exciting as we drew closer to Bariloche, with lakes and mountains either side of the road making the journey just a little bit less boring. Lunch was a bit of a non-event for me, consisting of cheese and ham sandwiches, and we were both relieved when the bus finally pulled into the small terminal in Bariloche. We took a taxi [View Full Entry]

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Day 139: Food tours Having been woken up at six to a delicious breakfast of coffee and two minipackets of savoury and sweet biscuits, there was only half an hour of the journey left, before we arrived at Mendoza bus station. As is always the way with long nightbus journeys, I hadn't slept too well and was looking forward to having a hot shower and getting settled in our next accomodation; but not wanting to appear too eager, we sat in a cafe at the bus station for a second and third round of coffee, before showing up at our accomodation [View Full Entry]

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Day 136: Wanderings in Cordoba Sorry, but this entry starts with a moan..... *whinge start*: Having left Hostal Obelisco this morning, we headed to the airport early. This was not only to ensure that we caught our flight on time, but was also meant to enable me to speak to an airline allied to British Airways to see if I could change my flight from Santiago to Caracas, to an alternative route. What with the political situation in Venezuela at the moment (they're not getting on so well with Columbia), and reports from people I've met who've travelled there that they'd [View Full Entry]

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Day 120: Busy San Telmo amidst Sunday shutdown What with a slightly erratic sleeping pattern which tends to involve me getting more sleep in the afternoons that I do at night, the boundaries delineating one day from another seem to be getting somewhat blurred. Nevertheless, I got up this morning, and after a rather nice free breakfast which included some Argentinian-style pastries covered in dulce de leche (a thin, very sweet caramel), headed down to San Telmo. It being a Sunday, pretty much everything in the centre of town was shut, including the supermarkets, cafes, phonebooths and kiosks [View Full Entry]

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Day 117: Sleepy Montevideo I arrived at the port bright and early, and having checked in my luggage and cleared immigration, I boarded the boat, hoping to use the journey as an opportunity to catch up on sleep. Used to the roaring temperatures of Buenos Aires, I hadn´t really planned my trip across to Uruguay so well and had failed to put a jumper in my hand luggage. With icy cold air conditioning blasting out from all angles, the chances of getting any sleep were fairly slim, and I spent a miserable three and a half hours, goosepimply and shivery all [View Full Entry]

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Day 115: Buenos Aires With 'the longest day ever' coming to a close, I finally got here at one in the morning and set about the rather tedious but important task of trying to trace my luggage. Even when quite dazed and confused, I was able to make myself understood in spanish when explaining what had happened, unfortunately it turned out that I couldn't actually understand a word that anyone says in response, but after asking several people and taking some detours around the airport, including through police controls and back offices, I finally saw my backpack amongst a pile of [View Full Entry]

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Day 114: The longest day ever continues... The first leg of the journey from Auckland to Santiago proved to be uneventful. Leaving soon after five, I was quite excited for the first hour when noone sat down next to me and I spread myself out a bit taking up two seats next to the window. As soon as I had made myself at home, someone arrived to take the space next to me because the video screen in his seat didn't work. Shortly after this, mine stopped working too and so I spent the rest of the journey with just the [View Full Entry]

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