ZacandRenee

The bus we caught from Santiago took 23 hour to reach a place called Calama, on our way to San Pedro de Atacama. Up until this point, our South American long-haul bus trips had not been very successful regarding the movie entertainment on offer. This trip started pretty well but soon deteriorated as the kilometres, and hours, wore on. The first movie was in English with Spanish subtitles; a really good Christian movie call Courageous about men committing themselves to being men of God who stand up for their beliefs and who lead by example for their family and friends. The Fast and the Furious soon followed, a no-brainer of a movie made even less interesting (or more interesting, I'm not sure) by the fact it was dubbed in Spanish with Spanish subtitles. Vin Diesel somehow ... read more

What did we know about Patagonia before this trip? We knew it was cold, it had extreme weather, it was wet, but it was beautiful, and that it was way further south than Tassie. How relevant these ideas were would remain to be seen... We arrived in Puerto Natales in the southern part of Chile to blue skies and not a breath of wind. We chose to stay at a hostel called Erratic Rock as they are known as the people to talk to about hiking in Torres del Paine National Park. We checked in and were greeted by a lovely pair of American friends who own and run the business. We arrived too late for their famous pre-trek talk so we decided to wait a day to leave for the trek we had been looking ... read more

Arriving into Rio is quite interesting, you drive in through the favelas (slums), where the houses are just built on top of each other, all in this red light weight bricks. Then come into the nice suburbs of Rio with big apartment blocks and fancy buildings. It is a city of contrasts. It is quite a surreal feeling to see places like sugar loaf mountain and Christ the Redeemer, places that you know from photos and movies, and then to catch a glimpse of them on the skyline. Rio was a place that I had heard mixed reviews about, so due to what turned out to be unreasonable paranoia, I had booked us into a nice hotel just one building back from Copacabana beach. Now after dorm rooms this place was a palace! We were met ... read more

Our overnight bus took us to Puerto Iguazu way up in the north of Argentina. When we arrived at the place we were staying, we were met by the most helpful guy we have met yet. He was so keen to help us out and to make sure we got the most out of our time in the national park. We pretty quickly got ready and headed straight our to explore the falls. What an amazing piece of creation! The falls are magnificent! They are shared by both Argentina and Brazil. The Argentinian side covers the greater share of the falls. There are a two main trails to explore the park one views them from above and the other from the bottom. Within the park there are about 275 waterfalls, the main attraction is the Garganta ... read more

Yesterday we planned to catch the ferry from Buenos Aires to Colonia del Sacramento, just a short one hour ferry ride across the Rio de la Plata. We bought the tickets the night before, woke up to a slightly windy day with a forecast of rain, nothing unusual as they had forecast rain for the last 3 days and we had not had any. We had breakfast checked out of our hotel, weather is cloudy but fine. Bussed down town and then walked to to port. Got there an hour and a half prior to the sailing at 1100. Checked in went through immigration and got stamped out of Argentina and then into Uruguay all while in the boat terminal, weather is now over cast and slightly windy nothing to worry about... Or so we thought. ... read more