argentina

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Sorry for the late update.
So, we took the boat from Colonia to Buenos Aires at sunset. The view of the city as we approached was pretty beautiful. We were a bit cautious as we left the terminal (our bags were the last ones on the carousel!) and we took a taxi for 50 pesos (ripoff!) to the hostel we thought we had booked over the net. But they were full (saturday night in BA with a U2 concert on) so they tried to help us find accomodation, but eventually i found some dorm beds on the net. We took another taxi to the next hostel and were in a 12 bed dorm, kind of separated by a semi wall, so we shared a smaller area with 6 beds, with 2 british gals. The place was cheap but nice, $9 a night inc free wifi and brekky. We needed dinner, so walked about a bit, up Avenida Corrientes, a large avenue in the city with lots of shops and restaurants that are all open late, we ate great steaks in a large restaurant on the corner of Avenida 9 de Julio, which is the biggest avenue in BA, with a giant obelisk in the middle.
Next morning we found out that some great friends were actually in BA from sydney! and they offered to take our extra bag of stuff home with them that week when they went back which was awesome! So we met up with Ofelia and Roberto with our bag and organised to meet them later at the museo de glace. We didnt do much until we walked the hour to meet them, passing by many amazing statues and buildings on the way. We saw the large market that is on at a nearby park and then saw the exhibition in the museum with them. We walked through the market and had a drink together and some food at an irish pub type place nearby. Then walked to an icecreamery called Freddo... the BEST icecream EVER! if you go to argentina you have to find one of these! It is now a chain so there are a few of them around. Roberto bought Dario half a kilogram of ice cream and he ate it all!! Then we walked to their friend Lidia´s house and Dario managed to help them fix up their internet a bit. We drank T2 tea as she is addicted to it and Ofelia always brings her some 😊
We left there late, Jose, Lidia´s husband drove us back to our hostel. Ofelia and Roberto had gone with her cousin to stay at her house.
Next morning we decided to see a bit of the city, we walked around checking out the pink palace and other great and famous buildings. We saw Tango in the street, and ate lots of pizza and icecream. Next day we went to Buenos Aires zoo! lots of fun, but some of the cages seemed a bit unkept and small for the species in them. We bought some food they sell to feed the freerange animals, little deer, geese and water rats that follow kids around.
Then we took the train to a place called Once, a suburb where we bought some cheap jackets to keep us warm in Ushuaia before heading back to the hostel and going out for dinner.
Next day we had our flight to Ushuaia, so checked out, hung out in the hostel until we had to take a taxi to the airport. There was an accident on the autopista (highway) so we had to detour with all the rest of the traffic and arrived a bit late, but we got on the flight without a hassle. We arrived in Ushuaia after dark... it was freezing and raining! We went to a hostel we had found on the net and they had beds available. Next morning I wasnt feeling well, I had a cough and runny nose 😞 But we decided to go and grab some money out and then book an afternoon with the penguins on a penguin tour to their island. We got to the atm and it said there was no money in Dario´s account, so we tried another one and it said the same... this was odd as we knew there was definately money in the account. We went back to the hostel and checked online... someone had drawn 3 lots of money from an atm in LIMA! PERU! so we were like huh!!!! We rang the bank and got the card cancelled... only the guy accidently cancelled the credit card instead of the debit card, so dario had no cards at all that worked... luckily he was with me and not alone! (a few weeks later they refunded the money since it was an obvious theft).
And to make things a bit more miserable that day, the penguin tour was full which apparently never happens this time of year 😞 But we booked it for the following afternoon instead.
That afternoon I slept a bit and Dario went for a walk up to the glaciar that is nearby and took some great pics and got stuck in a small blizzard for 10 mins.
We decided to cook dinner for ourselves so went to the supermarket once i got money our of my cards. Next morning we got up latish, just in time to have the included brekky and then went for a wander to see if there was anywhere we could buy cheap, warm and waterproof gloves. Nope... all expensive!! so then we went to book the bus for the following morning to El Calafate... they were shut for 2 hours over lunch, and we had to go to the penguin tour before they reopened, and then the scheduled time for our return was when it was shutting so we had our fingers crossed we´d get back a little but early as there is only 1 bus to el calafate each day at 5am and you need to prebook! agh!
anyway... we went on the tour, an hour and a half to drive to a property where the boat leaves from, 10-15 mins on the boat to the island with our guide. It was great! we arrived on the beach and there were Magellan penguins everywhere! then a bunch of them arrived on the beach from the water, including Jentoo penguins and one King penguin who has apparently been there for 3 weeks and noone knows why since only the Magellans and Jentoos live there. We spent an hour on the island looking at the different nesting strategies, MAgellans dig holes and use them year after year, the Jentoos build nests out of piles of rocks and every year they remake them since the baby always messes it up when it hatches. Apparently Jentoos are there 12 months of the year, but Magellans only 6 months, and maybe this is because the Jentoos have to rebuild all the time and the Magellans only need to return to their hole. After an hour we were all frozen from the bite in the wind and were relieved to get back on the boat to head back to the property. There was a cafe there and we all had a hot chocolate ´submarine´- hot milk with a bar of real chocolate! We checked out the museum down the road, all about marine birds and mammals, including many skeletons that they find washed up. Was very cool. Then the bus picked us up and we stopped for 5 mins to see the ´flag trees´ that have been blown into a certain angle by the wind.
We arrived back in time to go and book our bus for the morning which was excellent!
We had some dinner and went to bed.
Next morning we were up at 4.30 and walking down the bus as it left at 5am! The bus ride to El calafate is all day and includes about 6 hours in Chile! so we had to do 2 tedious border crossings but hey it was ok, got a bathroom stop 😊 and the views were great on the way through too!
We arrived in El Calafate and had booked over the net a private room in a hostel right up the road from the bus terminal, 2 minutes walk and we arrived. It was still pretty cold! We walked, on advice from the manager, to a restaurant near the centre of town and had some amazing food and wine! Then went to bed after booking a tour to Perito Moreno glacier for the morning.
Next morning we took the bus we had booked to Perito Moreno, about an hour drive through amazing views to the glacier. We also had to pay a national park entrance fee on the way. When we arrived we walked on the many newly built walkways around the hillside in front of the glacier and saw the amazing views it afforded. SO COOL! and we heard the ice cracking all day, and all across the front of the glacier huge pieces of it would fall into the water with a huge noise! We spent all day looking at it from different angles and at 4pm took the same bus back to the town.
Later that same evening we found out through (of all things) facebook, that Dario´s best friend had passed away in an accident back in Sydney. Instantly we rang home and started to organise a way to get home for the funeral. It was Sunday evening where we were and the funeral was scheduled for the following friday morning. We had already bought onward bus tickets for the next morning. We got refunds for that in the morning and went to the Aerolineas office in the town and bought tickets back to Buenos Aires. My dad managed to get both of our flights changed to get us on the flight home on wednesday from buenos aires. All day tuesday we kept ourselves busy, buying presents, new leather shoes and other things for people at home. On wednesday we took our flight back to Sydney. The flight wasnt full and we ended up having a 4 seater row to ourselves so we had a bit of sleep, but mostly just watched movies etc.
Our parents were all at the airport when we arrived at about 6pm and we all went back to my place for dinner together. We were nearly falling asleep, so we then went back to Dario´s house to sleep as we needed to go together to the funeral on friday morning. We both woke up at 3am.... jetlag really sucks and did things to keep ourselves busy before leaving for the funeral.
The funeral for Raj was a lovely morning. Dario and Raj´s sister Pritham spoke beautifully about him and their love of him, Raj´s partner Naomi and daughter Jasmine were there, although (perhaps thankfully) Jasmine was still too young to understand what the day was about and happily played with her cousin and grandmother.
Our next blog entry will most likely be in about 5 weeks when we depart for Madagascar.

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Photos

Water rat at the zoo
always wanting mroe pellets of food!

Happy Feet!
only a king penguin with magellan and jentoos instead of an emperor penguin with adelies