OK No Bullets... From Fuetaleufu we ride straight back onto the dirt and ride some tough but lovely tracks to the start of the Carretera Austral. This is a largely dirt (They are trying to tarmac it slowly) road connecting the top of Chile to the bottom built by Augusto Pinochet's Chilean Army in the 70's and 80's. It was originally only there for the army but opened to the public in the late 1980's. It varies from deep sand and gravel, hard compacted surface two lanes wide, to rocky narrow twisty hairpins. Two stretches of newly graded sand catch at [View Full Entry]

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Street Corners 1 Calle 6 / Avenida 51 La Plata (Argentina) 15 November 2009 16:20 I had spent the afternoon exploring the plazas and churches of La Plata, the state capital of Buenos Aires province. I was now beside a bench in the Plaza San Martin. In front of me were the main government offices, housed in an ornate whitewashed building decorated with sme occasional reddish brown brickwork. The construction was fairly recent, but its formal aspects of pillars and roofing were drawn from the European Renaissance while the elaborate and more unusual features around the windows were dist [View Full Entry]

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Street Corners 2 Lestra / Juarez Chascomus (Argentina) 16 November 2009 15:21 I sat at the base of a tree in the wide leafy boulevard which led down to the laguna in Chascomus. A hundred kilometres or so south of Buenos Aires, and set on the edge of the pampas, this town developed with the rise of the beef industry and the gaucho culture which came with it. Still an agricultural cente, the town now shows evidence of newer farming methods: tractor repair workshops, machine part dealerships, various allotments and small-holdings. Looking down at me from the centre of the road, [View Full Entry]

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dingy streets, dodgy salami, late night tango. Tango classes are stalling somewhat,its difficult for the man at the start as you have to learn the moves and guide the lady but the rewards can be great... silk adorned mermaids await in dingy sultry ball rooms with the fans blowing above or outside on a leafy balcony where a smokey brunette might ask you - de donde sos? The seductive nature of the tango culture is what gives buenos aires appeal, apart from being cheap. Its time to move on though as the noisy polluted backstreets are starting to impose themselves on [View Full Entry]

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The hostel had insisted that I get to the airport v early so I got almost no sleep for a 7:20 flight... it was great to BA from the air, but then I quickly passed out, only to be woken for food... grr!! Flew in to Trelew, over Puerto Madryn and my first view was of cobalt seas and semi desert scrub, with next to no hills. The road to PM confirmed this - it only had about 4 bends in it! Also no trees. Talking to our guide he said they get the same amount of rain as essex, but [View Full Entry]

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We crossed the river Plate on a fast cat - a surprisingly large body of water - took about an hour and a half, with free wifi...! Have to confess that I wrote one of the earlier blogs from there! Buenos Aires was really not what I expected... it started when we got off the boat and had our luggage x-rayed.... wrong way around, I feel! Then it was a cab ride to the hotel - moderately tame, and it being a sunday I teamed up with Rick and Simon and Shal to wander over to the San Telmo antiques market. [View Full Entry]

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Greetings from Cafayate, in the northern province of Salta. I am very sorry i have no photos to upload for you today. Today i took over 100 spectacular photos but alas the computer at our hotel has a floppy disk drive and no usb port. maybe next time i can go back and add. this morning we checked out of our dogdy youth hostel room and got our rental car. we hit the road south taking a route completely unknown to us. we had an amazing road trip today. it was awesome. the scenery here is breathtaking. we drove though the [View Full Entry]

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After staying in bed nearly a full day and doing nothing but watch the sole english chanel in argentina <woo hoo 90210 reruns) we decided to book some day tours and get out and see bariloche. it is beautiful here. the scenery is spectacular. on our first day of guided tours we took a bus, then a boat to Victoria island which is a national park. we took a short walk with the stroller but could not venture out on most paths. malaya had to fall asleep in the stroller and it was so cold and snowy outside. we bundled her [View Full Entry]

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Having given up on climbing Volcan Villarica we headed to Mendoza for some vineyards, wine and bife de chorizo. This meant another crossing of the Andes which true to form didn't disappoint. The weather was typical of the mountains - as we climbed higher the snow got heavier but the sun also sometimes came out, beautiful. Then once more we'd be in mist and cloud, all four seasons in a day, again. This is the land of the Monkey Puzzle tree, there are thousands of them in the parque nacional the road passes through. They really are strange. On the Argentinian [View Full Entry]

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hola from san carlos de bariloche 2 days ago we flew out of buenos aires. silly me didn´t realize there are 2 airports in b.a. and we went to the wrong airport. it costs us 80 in taxi fares to cross the city twice. luckily it was no charge to switch to a later flight. yesterday was pretty much a travel day. we got to bariloche around 3 p.m. and spent the evening unpacking at our very nice time share. we also walked to the grocery store and stocked up for the week. i was very very happy to cook on [View Full Entry]

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