Very late start today. Didn't get out until 11 am. Walked up to the Recoleta Cemetery and started our search for Evita. She is actually entombed in her family's crypt which is Duarte. Whilst looking we enjoyed checking out the other fancy tombstones and crypts. The Duarte crypt is nothing special, just like many of the other family crypts. We ended up finding it because we noticed a queue. Afterwards I noticed that the Maps.me app which are maps you can use off-line actually had Evita's tomb marked out. We spent about 90 minutes walking around the cemetery and also visited the Basilica de Nuestra which is next door to the cemetery and its small museum. It was then a short walk to the Buenos Aires Fine Arts Museum (Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes). First gallery ... read more

Late start today to plan our next four days in Buenos Aires. On recommendations from others we decided to do a hop-on hop-off bus and I decided to book the official Buenos Aires Bus service. There are 3 routes which are all connected at certain stops. We had a late breakfast at a chain café called Havanas which we later learnt sell very popular chocolates so I guess they are a bit like Max Brenner. Coffee was also pretty bad like at Max Brenner as well. Then just another 2 minute walk down the road to the local laundromat and left our clothes to be washed and dried, only cost about $4.50AUS. We then walked about 20 minutes to the Recoletta stop which was the closest to us. We’d bought our tickets online because it’s cheaper ... read more

Woke up at 5:15am, had breakfast and packed our bags and walked the 15 minutes to the bus station and got there at 6:30am. This gave me an hour to hike to the Mirador Los Condors for a view of El Chalten with the mountains behind. However, it didn’t look promising as the clouds hadn’t cleared and there was light rain, so pur first bit of bad luck concerning the weather. I still did the hike anyway and didn’t quite make it to the top as I was worried I wouldn’t make the bus in time and the weather hadn’t cleared so it wasn’t worthwhile. Oh well, you can’t win them all and at least we did sight Mt Fitzroy in silhouette last night. Our bus back to El Calafate stopped at the same rest stop ... read more

Today is a travelling day. Woke up this morning at 7:15 and finished packing before walking to restaurant for breakfast. Our room 60 is the second last room on the western side and the restaurant is located at the extreme eastern side of the hotel so actually a bit of a walk as the hotel is long and skinny so that all rooms have a nice view. The bus left around 9:20 and had to back track towards Punta Arenas to reach the border crossing. We were traveling with Joseph, Marta, Darlene(Boston) , Angeliqua (Texas), Arnie and Benny from Israel. The bus stopped just before the border crossing at a cafeteria/tourist shop for about 60 minutes even though the driver told us 20-30 minutes. We were all looking for the driver but he had disappeared but ... read more

Woke up way too early this morning so only got about 4 hours proper sleep, so not the best way to start this day, doing the most difficult trek on offer, the Los Torres Sendero del Ascencion or in other words the trek to the base of the three towers (Los Torres) which our hotel is named after. This trek turned out to be very close to the hardest physical challenge I’ve had, the other being the 23km uphill cycle ride in Yunnan province in high altitude. I joked that yesterday’s tour was called Full Paine but it was a more appropriate name for today’s hike. The hike is 9kms one way then 9kms back the same way and is basically in three parts, the first is 5km, fairly steep to the rufugio where back-packers trekking ... read more