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Published: November 24th 2006
Monday 23rd October Quito, Ecuador
Arrived back into Ecuador Sunday 22nd after our Galapagos adventure. Back to the real world and city life!
Lye in bed watching Jaws 2 to try and relive the memories of the last week!!
Afternoon spent visiting the botanical gardens and natural history museum which had a stuffed female condor as one of the highlights, big bird to say the least!!
Evening flight to Santiago and another country, Chile!!
Tuesday 24th and Wednesday 25th October Santiago, Chile
Arrived in Santiago 6am! Firstly get ripped off by the taxi driver (!) then arrive at the hostel Paris (not quite Paris Hilton shall we say!)
Spend two days in the city shopping, eating, drinking and some culture!. Very much like a Spanish city with large squares, outdoor eating and drinking areas (yer!), and museums (much to Dee´s delight!). Take a trip on the funicular (cable car) to the statue of the Virgin with some great views over the city and take a long walk back to the hostel through the quiet parks.
Although a good city with plenty to do, it’s a bit of a shock being back in a
city after the Galapagos Islands and we look forward to moving on (especially as next its Mendoza in Argentina and one of the main wine regions, brilliant!!
Thursday 26th October, Mendoza, Argentina!
After a 7 hour night bus we arrive in Mendoza at 5am, arrrrgh! Slowly make our way to the hostel which doesn’t open until 8am great! When the hostel does open it seems they haven’t received our booking and have no room, even better!
We spend the next few hours trudging round Mendoza looking for one with space. Eventually have to take a room in a hotel Gran Bilbi which although is more expensive has a pool! A pool which, after we change into our swimming trunks and bikini, we find is currently closed for repairs, aghhh!!!
Afternoon spent exploring the town which is a lovely place. Visit the main park and arrange a cycling wine tour for my birthday, tomorrow!
Book into another hotel for tomorrow night which is cheaper and closer to the nightspots.
Lovely bottle of Chilean Merlot in a café which doesn’t have a wine menu but a temperature controlled wine room you can walk into and pick
your bottle, whoopee!
Friday 27th October
My 28th birthday, arrgh!
Good buffet breakfast with coffee and biscuits (for breakfast!!!)
Bit of a rush but manage to take our bags to the new hotel were staying at this evening and wait for our pick up to the vineyards.
Great day on a cycling wine tour with four other people round the Mendozan vineyards!! We visit four fantastic vineyards (as far as I remember!) and a farm where they made jams, chocolate and some very potent local fire water, oi!
No accidents although I’m not sure mixing cycling and wine are the best idea!
Get sung happy birthday in Spanish by a ginger Scottish lad in one of the vineyards, ummm, not quite what I had in mind when Dee suggested a romantic birthday serenade!
We buy a couple of bottles of wine to take back and the obligatory chocolates!
Bit of a mare when we get back to Mendoza! We get to the new hotel to discover they haven’t got our bags which we dropped of this morning, arrrrrrrrrgh! We insist that we dropped them off and spend some time describing the
woman we left them with. It turns out no one works at the hotel with the description we give. Mad panic sets in as all of our essential belongings - passports, bankcards, bottle opener etc. are in the rucksacks! The staff spend ages frantically searching the hotel and all the rooms for our bags.
Dee has a walk down the road to clear her head and to retrace our steps and spots a very similar looking hotel further down the road. Oh dear! In our rushing this morning we took our bags to the wrong hotel!!! After a considerable time spend apologizing to the ´right´ hotel we have to spend the night at the ´wrong´ hotel as by now they’ve put our bags in one of the rooms! Woops!
I decide to give the receptionist a tip to try to make up for the confusion and only afterwards realize I had made the mighty gesture of giving him about 4p!!
Had a lovely meal in the evening at a local Parilla (open fire meal grill) with some good local wine and a very big steak and chips!! At the end of the night the waiter appears with
a birthday pudding complete with candles Dee has managed to sneak into her rucsac!
Saturday 28th October
Slow rise to a good buffet breakfast (needed to help with the headaches!)
Lazy day spent pottering around the town trying to avoid the hotel from yesterdays mix up!
Visit the local craft market at the main square and modern art gallery (not great but very dark and air conditioned which seems to help with the hangovers!)
Book onto a rafting trip for tomorrow and night bus to Buenos Aires on Monday.
Quiet evening!
Sunday 29th October
Rafting minibus picks us up from the hotel and we head off into the Mendozan countryside.
All the other people on the bus are Argentines and don’t look too happy to have two Brits tagging along especially when they realize were not too confident with our Spanish for paddle left, paddle right, stop and swim!!
(Especially when considering recent history with the way the English behave when they come across Argentine ships!!)
We get put into the smallest of three dinghies but luckily the two Argentineans with us speak good English, as does the guide
taking us!
Have a great time on the river, racing the two other boats, lots of splashing and the rapids aren’t too scary!!
We find out all the Argentineans on our and the other boat are members of a choir from Buenos Aries and they’re a great bunch! They sing all the English songs they know (oh Danny boy etc.) whilst we share a beer afterwards. They’ve just finished a tour of the country and when we get back to Mendoza they give us a copy of their CD and give us details of some good places to go in Buenos Aries.
Evening spent sitting in the Plaza Independencia watching the sun set and people watching!
Monday 30th October
Another good breakfast, drop off and later pick up our laundry and head to the park for a walk round and to catch some sun.
Another steak for lunch (very cheap!) in an outside café, yum, then a taxi to the bus station where we catch our night bus to Buenos Aires.
Tuesday 31st October - Thursday 2nd November, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Arrived into Buenos Aries although the 12 hour bus journey
ended up taking 15 hours!
Take the underground to our hostel. Just make it to the top of the stairs from the underground when a local stops us to say that a bird has done its business all down my rucksack. Bit of a dodgy looking character and he has a load of tissues already in his hand. We keep our whits about us and tell him were fine. He eventually slopes off and we realize that its not bird muck but shaving foam! Realise that Dee has it on her rucksack too. It’s a well known trick that whist they wipe the muck off you they slash your bags and steal what they can! Good job we were fairly alert!
Apart from that, we have a great time in the Argentinean capital. It’s a massive city but think we see most of it in a mad three day visit!
Tango shows in the streets outside the cafes, good cheap restaurants, hire bikes and cycle round the city, waterfront bars and cafes, pleasant parks and most of all, friendly football mad people!
Friday 3rd November, Montevideo, Uruguay
We head down to Buenos Aires port in
the morning to catch the ferry across the River Plate to Uruguay.
Very quick boat (40 knots) but unfortunately we can’t go on deck and both feel a bit sea sick during the crossing!
Take a bus when we arrive in Uruguay and arrive in Montevideo late in the afternoon. Get to the Red Hostel to discover that the old town in Montevideo is closed for several days due to a conference of South American leaders in the city!!
Have a walk round the area near the hostel in the evening then back to watch Four weddings and a funeral with Spanish subtitles!
Can´t get onto the hostel computers as there is a group of about 30 school kids staying there who have taken over!
Saturday 4th November, Montevideo, Uruguay
Nice breakfast in the hotel then we head out into the Uruguayan capital.
Montevideo is a bit of a dump to be honest!! As the old town is closed off, the only parts of the city we can get to are the less salubrious parts and the sea front. There are soldiers everywhere with military boats in the bay, helicopters flying overhead and
what look like rocket launchers on the main squares you can get to, not great!!
Spend a couple of hours walking along the seafront to a small fair where we have a ride on the not so big wheel and watch a local getting arrested, ummm!!
There are some lovely old colonial buildings but they’re all in a bit of a sorry state. Very different to Buenos Aries across the river.
Head to a local restaurant in the evening for a cheap dinner then early to bed.
Sunday 5th November
Breakfast at the hostel then we head to the bus station to take a bus to Colonia, an old colonial seaside town on the Uruguian coast. Happy to be out of Montevideo and hoping that Colinia makes up for our disappointment!
Arrive in Colonia and its pouring with rain!!! Just like a summer day in Manchester!!
Take a taxi to our hostel and wait there for the skies to clear, which they don’t for the rest of the night!
Oh dear! At least they have satellite TV at the hostel so I settle in and watch a great Boca Juniors game from
Buenos Aries. Cheer up when we see its pouring with rain in Argentina too!
Monday 6th November, Colonia, Uruguay
Wake up to fantastic weather! Sun is shining and it couldn’t be more different from yesterday!
We have a walk round the town to a small cafe for breakfast and to plan our day.
It´s a lovely town with old fortified walls, cobbled streets, tree filled squares, a pier and harbor, lighthouse and alfresco restaurants! Spend the day wishing we had come straight here instead of going to Montevideo!
There are some lovely old buildings by the waterfront which are in need of a little restoration and TLC. They would make fantastic hotels or houses. Decide that when we win the lottery we may buy one and do it up!
We head back to the hostel in the early evening to pick up our bags and head to the port to take the ferry back to Buenos Aries.
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