Note to readers - this entry is pretty much only about snowboarding and if such things don't interest then probably best not to waste your time... if however you like to have fun standing sideways going down a mountain - there should be some interesting reading. After a frustrating 3 days of waiting out the snow storm (Carsty had to leave to go to work with the snow still falling, knowing that he was going to have to miss possibly the best days of the season - Mijic I hope they realise what you do for that company!) finally the sky [View Full Entry]

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By the last week of August we found ourselves in a mini snow drought in Las Lenas. Worse still the temperatures had risen dramatically and the winds were up. Days were being spent getting up early and getting in some fun slush runs and then heading home before the mountain turned into cascading water with terrible dust storms that raged up the valleys. Still it was pleasant enough to sit out in the sun of an afternoon, sheltered by our house from the worst of the wind and down a few cold cervezas sitting in shorts and t-shirts. Mijic was starting [View Full Entry]

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Hola muchachos!! Well its a very, very balmy day here in Las Lenas.. you certainly wouldn't believe that its the middle of winter because its about 10 degrees outside and you can almost see the snow dissapear off the hill... Its been an up and down couple of weeks really... July saw us with very little in the way of new snowfall but cold temperatures and no crowds (thank you GEC) allowed us to really explore the high mountains within a few hours walk of the valley and we still managed to ride fantastic snow on steep mountains almost every day. [View Full Entry]

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All right So I'm sure everyone is sick of getting these things by now.. but this one is a good one I promise with lots of photos of snow and very little writing. So we've been here for 3 weeks now and things have gotten of to a fantastic start. When we arrived on Thursday evening they had just finished clearing the streets from a massive storm and opening day wasn't set until saturday, so I went back down the valley early next morning to get a few things that we were missing from the apartment and was very surprised when [View Full Entry]

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Cordoba is a seriously cool little town. Like so many of these Argentine towns it looks very run down and 3rd world as you come in through the high density council housing and half finished public works projects that look like the money ran out about 8 years ago (which of course is exactly what happened) But then you get into the city centre and there are these fantastic cobble stone streets with towering 18th century cathedrals and opera houses which have been converted into museums and art gallerys. Interspersed into all this is the university which uses the centre of [View Full Entry]

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So, the Argentinean bus rides..... If you are ever travelling through Argentina, don't ever think about flying....Argentinean buses are excellent. Nothing like the rest of South America, these Argentines sure know how to travel.... Pulling out of the BA Retiro Station.... (might I add, on a differently named bus than the company we bought out ticket from). We were meant to be traveling with “Via Bariloche” and our ticket said to be waiting at least 20 min before departure time. About 30 min before our scheduled departure time, we noticed there was another bus called “ [View Full Entry]

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Well its been a hell of a two weeks but I won't bore you with the details... wait - thats not right, I am going to bore you with the details. We got into Buenos Aires about 30 minutes after we left Sydney 14 hours earlier. Sleep had been minimal and jet lag was high. We stumbled through the airport like a couple of zombies and were lucky not to be robbed there and then. After negotiating a taxi to take us and our enormous pile of baggage to our hostel we sat back and watched the seedier outer suburbs of [View Full Entry]

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We arrived in San Rafael (about 3hours drive from Las Lenas) at about 8:30am which left us about 20 minutes to find the right connecting bus to the mountains... we found the bus no problems as it was easily identifiable from the long line of people with ski gear waiting to get on it... a little too many people as it turned out. The bus was sold out and we were told that there “might be another one a little later”. Where this bus was going to materialise from was unclear, as was how much later this might occur. Frustrated that [View Full Entry]

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We arrived in Iguazu Falls early the next morning and checked into our hostel (which conveniently was directly across the road from the bus station - lucky since the weight of my snowboard bag, travel pack and backpack were starting to take their toll!). After eating breakfast (again, sweet sugared cornflakes, and toast with dulce de leche)....wait, let me digress...... Food observation - Argentines are huge meat eaters - apparently they eat 70 kg of beef a year (compared to the US who eat 40 kg per capita per annum). However they don't like spice. Their food is relatively bland (Scot [View Full Entry]

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