Bariloche: Lakes, Mountains and Chocolate Bariloche may well be one of the most tourist oriented places in Argentina but its location, on the shores of beautiful Lago Nahuel Huapi, surrounded by dozens of snow capped mountains, is perfect, and despite the crowds, it's easy to fall under its spell. Our stay in Bariloche was one of the highlights of our trip. We booked a week long Spanish course with "Spanish in the Mountains", and through Maria, who ran the school, we also found fantastic & cheap accommodation in a house in the mountains. Maria picked us up when we arrived and [View Full Entry]

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El Bolsón When I read that El Bolsón was known for it's micro-breweries and hiking, I had a feeling we might be visiting the town. We liked it so much that we based ourselves here for a week, spending most of our days hiking in the mountains around the town, or further afield in Lago Puelo or Alerces National Park, and our evenings drinking beer and planning our next adventures. El Bolsón was founded as a hippy community in the 1960's, but don't come here expecting everyone to be lying around stoned and listening to Bob Marley! The people here seemed [View Full Entry]

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Puerto Madryn: Gateway to Peninsula Valdes After a long, arduous journey from Cordoba to Puerto Madryn, punctuated by an occasional stop in some small village, before moving on slowly through the seemingly endless & bleak Pampa, we arrived in Puerto Madryn, gateway to Peninsula Valdes and Welsh Patagonia. If we thought we had it hard on this 20 hour+ bus journey, it was nothing compared to the journey made by the first permanent settlers in this area. The Welsh arrived in the middle of winter in 1865 after a two month voyage from Wales. Things were no easier once they arrived, [View Full Entry]

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I think we could easily have spent our entire trip exploring North-West Argentina, as it's a beautiful region, the weather is perfect - well a little too hot, perhaps - and there is plenty to see and do, much more than we had initially expected. We had originally planned two weeks in the north west, but that quickly became three, and would easily have become four had we not taken the decision to move on. Tucumán: Where the siesta should be obligatory San Migual de Tucumán (or Tucumán as practically every one calls it) is the largest city in the northwest [View Full Entry]

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Twenty hours after leaving Asuncion we finally arrived at our next destination, Salta, in North-West Argentina. This was the longest bus journey of our trip so far and we were a little unfortunate in that neither of the buses we took had "cama" facilities: I'm not sure such a thing exists in Paraguay, whilst the only bus with spaces from Resistencia to Salta was semi-cama. It might not seem that big a deal but for me it's the fine line between a good night's sleep and staying awake most of the night! At 7am we made it to Salta and were [View Full Entry]

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Cafayate: Where the wine is so abundant they add it to the ice cream Ten days of hiking and cycling had taken it out of us so it was relaxation time when we reached Cafayate. As soon as we jumped off the bus we were charmed by Emma-Inti from El Balcon into taking a room at her family run hostel. Which we liked so much we ended up staying for four nights. We did do plenty of relaxing in Cafayate, but plenty of hiking too. A great hike near to Cafayate is along the Rio Colorado, where, if you are lucky [View Full Entry]

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Quebrada de Humahuaca Stunning scenery, great hiking, a UNESCO world heritage site and the chance to see a way of life that has all but disappeared in the rest of Argentina are just some of the memories we have from seeing the Quebrada de Humahuaca. Jujuy may be Argentina's poorest and least-visited province, but it's rich in natural wonders, with one of the country´s finest sights, the Quebrada de Humahuaca (Humahuaca Gorge), a stunning gorge through the Andes which stretches from San Salvador de Jujuy up to the the Bolivian border. The main road through the Quebrada is Ruta 9, [View Full Entry]

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A few months before we began our trip I remember we went to Stanfords, the best travel shop in London, to ask for books or any information about Paraguay. And they had practically nothing. No guidebook, no maps, no travel literature; all they offered was Lonely Planet's South America Shoestring guide which gives 29 pages (out of 1000+) to Paraguay. So what was it that put everyone off from travelling here? As we crossed the border from Posadas in Argentina, I read the Lonely Planet to see what we could expect from Paraguay: Friendly people, who all carry guns, and in [View Full Entry]

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It seems a little strange that we've allocated only one day of our whole trip to South America´s largest country, but for reasons of cost and language we've decided to leave the rest of Brazil for another trip. It would take at least 3 months to see Brazil properly and we're having enough problems with Spanish (not to mention budgeting) as it is without introducing a whole new language! Our day trip to Brazil was a short hop across the border from Puerto Iguazu to Foz do Iguacu, both towns named after the nearby waterfalls. The Iguazu Falls are divided between [View Full Entry]

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Back in Argentina Just as we were leaving Uruguay a big storm hit the Rio Uruguay area so we abandoned our original plan of going to Concordia and Colon; instead we travelled further inland to Parana, on Argentina´s longest river, Rio Parana. The bus from Concordia to Parana was great - we travelled in Cama class which, despite reclining seats, movies, food and drink, is apparently only the third best class of bus in Argentina. I can´t wait to try the others! Argentina seems to have gone rugby mad since we left. The soccer authorities even changed the start time of [View Full Entry]

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