During April and at the beginning of May I made two day trips to Durham and Newcastle. Durham My parents and Angie dropped me off in Durham on their way to Edinburgh. Durham is a wonderful historic city between Darlington and Newcastle. Durham is quite small compared to York and Edinburgh. It took me only half a day to look around the main attractions. I had a walk by the River Wear where you can look up to Durham Cathedral, the city's impressive landmark when everyone sees when arriving in the city especially by train. Then I visited the cathedral which is an impressive building. The cathedral was built from 1093 to 1274 AD and I took the opportunity to climb up the tower and got great views despite the weather being overcast. After visiting the ... read more

On the very day we were going to fly out to Greece and meet our cruise ship, we never thought nor anticipated that a volcanic eruption would be in our way!! It was very unexpected!!! The volcanic ash ascended from Iceland and descended into the UK airspace causing severe flight restrictions. This meant on our arrival, Manchester Airport was officially closed and chaos reigned!!! We did not hear anything on the news prior so the situation came to us as a complete shock! We thought there was a glimmer of hope for us to still fly when we checked in but this was diminished quickly when we were given food vouchers for our indefinite wait. I would have preferred to have been told the trip was off and then go home than doing all this waiting ... read more

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 on my first leg of the trip was the Garden Hostel in San Telmo. It was adequate although I found my room too hot because of the weather. However, the staff were nice and friendly ... read more

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 a few days in Chalten and returned to the hostel for two nights and stayed in a private room, which was great! I felt pampered and the room was more like a hotel room with ... read more

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 bus. We first stopped at Lago Sarmiento then onto Laguna Amarga where we saw stunning views of the three Torres, that the park is famously renowned for! We saw a variety of animals in the ... read more