After a very long and turbulent (It was scary to say the least!) flight, I eventually landed in Paris, for an hour and a half's transit before flying to Manchester where my parents met me and took me home to Leeds. My parents spent a month in the Caribbean and they arrived the same day as I did so they picked me up at the airport on their way home from Gatwick Airport. I thought it would be nice to round off my trip and also my thoughts about Argentina in doing an overall summary. Hostels My first hostel in BA [View Full Entry]

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I returned to Buenos Aires for the final leg of the trip after a slight delay with my flight from El Calafate. I was watching on the news earlier on in the day that BA is having a lot of rain and is on thunder/lightning alert!! I reckon that my final days will be doing BA "indoors". I checked into my hostel before wandering out to find an ATM and get something to eat. During my mission, the heavens opened and I gave up so I went to the local kiosk for some provisions and retired to my room. The next [View Full Entry]

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I spent almost a week in El Calafate, a tourist town in Southern Patagonia and it is a three hour flight down from Buenos Aires. Calafate is the gateway to the Los Glaciares National Park. I stayed in a wonderful hostel, The Marcopolo Inn , just outside the town and a 10 minutes walk to the centre. The hostel is probably the best I ever stayed in and I highly recommend it with its friendly staff. The first four nights I stayed was in a dorm, which was nice and I could not ask for nicer dorm mates. I then spent [View Full Entry]

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I spent a few days in El Chalten in the north of Los Glaciares National Park, three hours north from El Calafate. The scenery was of an interesting contrast, one side of the bus was of Patagonian steppe and on the other side was of lakes, rivers and mountains! We had comfort stop at a cafe on the Ruta 40 before continuing and eventually turning off on the Ruta 23 towards El Chalten. Before arriving in El Chalten, we stopped twice. First stop was for a photo of the village and the surrounding mountains then the second stop was a visit [View Full Entry]

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After an unsettling night with a very early start and the fact that I was woken up at 2.00am with two new dorm mates arriving in the dorm, I got up for a 5.30 am start for the day trip to Torres del Paine National Park in Chile. Noelina, my dorm mate, joined me and we waited in the lobby for the bus. After spending a lengthy time at Argentine/Chilean immigration/customs, we met our guide who was going to take us round the park and after a comfort stop at Cerro Castillo, a Chilean border town, we transferred to our mini [View Full Entry]

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A full bus transported me to Los Glaciares National Park and we travelled along the Lago Argentino where we admired the stunning views out of the window. First of all, we stopped for our first sight of Perito Moreno Glacier. We then drove to the port where we joined a boat trip to the glacier. The description of the glacier is going to have a lot of superlatives! The views were amazing....it was a humble experience seeing nature at its fullest! We got very close to the glacier and I braved it out on the deck despite the cold, wind and [View Full Entry]

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...Continued from the first blog. Recoleta and Palermo I spent the day exploring both barrios. I went to the Recoleta cemetery. The cemetery is very impressive although surreal. A lot of Argentine famous people are buried here including Evita. It was Evita's resting place I wanted to see. I began learning about Evita and how she became a national idol from watching Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical both on movie and on stage. I would imagine the interest would be generated from people seeing the musical. I hope to visit the Evita museum at the back end of the trip because I [View Full Entry]

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I decided to split my Buenos Aires stay into two blogs after doing and seeing so much during the four days I had there. After a very long and uneventful flight, I arrived to a hot and sunny Buenos Aires admist chaos at the airport. I eventually was transferred to my hostel near San Telmo although I had to hang around until my room was ready. However, while waiting, I had an opportunity to do some exploration in the barrio and get used to using the subte (metro) for the first time. Mission accomplished! After going to an ATM to get [View Full Entry]

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The day I had for Edinburgh, I decided to join a free walking tour of the city. Joining the tour entitles you to a free upgrade to a large coffee at Starbucks, which I happily did!!! Handy for a cold day! Seth, the tour guide, took us around the old town where he explained Edinburgh's and Scotland's history in an interesting and interactive way! We took in the Royal Mile, St Gile's Cathedral, Mercat Cross, The Writers Museum (Got to know about the famous Scottish writers, Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson and Robert Burns. There is a big birthday celebration for [View Full Entry]

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Despite the recent problems with the snow, I wondered if I would make it up to Scotland for the weekend. Despite slight train delays from Leeds and from my connecting train from York to Edinburgh, there were no problems! On arrival to the hostel, I saw a travel company advertising day tours to the Highlands. I had originally planned just to stay in Edinburgh and sightsee in the city. However, I decided to take the opportunity to do a tour. I think spontaneity can be a good thing in your life sometimes. I was not too concerned about missing a day's [View Full Entry]

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