joblessandhomeless09

So how to prepare for the impending week in Ibiza, well there is a God because we arrive in Logrono bang smack in the middle of the festival celebrating the grape harvest. From the off its apparent that she's not going to let us off lightly. We take in a bullfight, having seen one (which I'll admit I wanted to) I'll agree they're as mindlessly gruesome as you might imagine but the 30,000 locals in a purpose built arena suggest it'll be around for a while yet. The old town is buzzing so after a spot of people watching we go indoors to a bar about midnight, when this starts to die down a couple of hours later we resolve to call it a night ... but we just take an innocent walk down to the ... read more

The sky still looks dark so we decide to keep heading west. To contrast yesterday´s contempory art showing we hunt down some paintings that have been around a little longer, 20,000 years to be exact. The cave housing them is pretty impressive itself, all huge stala-ctites/gmites and where minerals have ´flowed´over rocks over the centuries creating an odd vision like a solid waterfall. Then continuing the historic theme we bed down for the night in Santillana del Mar ... a 16th century preserved village. When we wake the sunshine is still not playing ball so we go on a little trip west, actually about as far as you can go without getting your toes wet. It turns out to be a bit further than expected ... so far in fact that we have to enlist the ... read more

So we make our camping debut at a great spot due west from Bordeaux, in a forest and next to Pyla, a sand dune some 100 metres high. Time passes quickly without apparently achieving very much. I realised this when trying to explain to Juliet how I´d spent my day when she´d been working until 10pm ... the list of activities was so short that eating a cake was worthy of a mention (it was something pretty special though). The dune is heaving with paragliders by day but deserted by night and after steak on the bbq it provides the best setting for some star gazing that I´ve found in the northern hemisphere, its never really done it for me before but staring up it seemed like the universe was about to fall in. Then I ... read more

So the end of part 1 and we're back in the UK. We land to wind, rain and grey skies ... good 'ol Blighty never fails to give a warm welcome. Last day in BA was spent at by far the grandest cemetery I have ever seen, row upon row of two storey marble tombs for the great and good of Argentinian life. Finished off with an evening at the tango hall .... superb show. Specifically for Pete ... to your New York barmaids perfect stomach I can now add an exquisitely toned back, the one in the middle in the tango photo. So a short lapse in blog entries while I do some washing (continued thanks to Mum for washing the kit, making the lunches, baking the cakes) and prepare our trusty steed for it's ... read more

We seem to have arrived in the wild west, half built roads that just stop and the airstrip that doubles as the main street of the town. In fact we´re so far south that if you set off swimming due west, you wouldn´t reach land again until you´d gone all the way round the world. Still found somewhere that serves a decent bottle of wine though, they´ve got their priorities straight here. But what we´re here to see is the Perito Moreno glacier, 30km deep, 5km wide and almost 200m high ... quite simply an awesome sight when it appears over the hilltop glistening in the sunshine. We´ve organised a trek into the ice using crampons and its just full of crevasses stretching away to infinity with the most amazing variety of blues. Again the locals ... read more