Blogs from Argentina, South America - page 1087

A long journey from Potosi and across the border, which was a much smoother crossing than Peru to Bolivia, and we were in Argentina. Immediately the roads are better, only 5% of the roads in Bolivia are tarmaced. We also started to come down in altitude, the first time in a few weeks. As the drive to Salta ( our destination ) was so long, we camped overnight at a secluded campsite, where we were under the stars, and treated to another spectacular lightning storm, even on a clear night!!! We packed up, the next morning at 8am and set off again, to complete our journey to Salta. By now we had noticed a huge change in the weather, warmer, as we were now at a sensible altitude of 1100 meters. Again we were camping, so ... read more

English The few of you who managed to read through our last blog (thanks guys, we are deeply moved) should know how we got to Bariloche. These few probaly still hate us for the long descriptions (specially the italian one...). We are sure that all the others only watched the pictures and felt asleep after the second sentence (WAKE UP! I SAW YOU! take a seat, drink a coffee, and get ready this time). For them we can summarize. From El Chalten we caught a bus all the way to Bariloche along the Ruta 40 for 26 hours. Nothing more than that. As you may guess the trip was quite tiring, thus we needed a nice place to relax. We arrived late in the night and Mariela took us to the Fabiana's and Pierre's place. We ... read more

What an exhausting day... not that I´m complaining! I awoke at 4am, as my room mate forgot to change the time on her alarm clock, and set it 3 hours early! Breakfast at 7.45 (worse than being at work), then out the door by 8.30am, down to the port. It´s currently summer here in the Southern hemisphere, and today felt very much like a typical English summer day. It was raining, the sky was a definite grey colour, and although not quite cold, the weather wasn´t exactly warm, and I was extremely glad that I decided to pack my waterproof overtrousers at the last minute. However, this morning we went on an amazing boat journey into the Beagle Channel, where good old Darwin came in his famous boat, and made some observations, wrote a book, etc ... read more

Hola todos. Today was the first official day of class. I took a placement test yesterday and they put me in Intermediate Level 1. Which is basically gonna be a review of the last semester I had of spanish about a year ago, which I totally need. The teacher doesn't even know English it seems, so we can only communicate in Spanish, which of course is what we all need. There are about 25 kids in my class, all from the U.S. and all about my age. We had a good time today, played a game to learn some Spanish vocab and did some exercises in the workbook. The class is really long though, 5 hours a day. We get two breaks, one for 15 minutes and another for 30 min. The class I was placed ... read more

Leaving the twisty roads of the Andes crossing behind, we arrived at San Juan back in Argentina. Having chosen a hotel within walking distance of the bus station, we decided to give a taxi a miss and started to make our way there, only to find the city's prostitutes as soon as we turned the corner lining the street behind the station. Bit of a shock, as we thought we may have just wandered into a dodgy area (though it was still broad daylight), but they didn't seem to give us a second glance so no problems here. A greater shock was the infernal heat, especially after having visited much cooler places over the previous 3 months; we certainly wished we had paid a bit more for an air conditioned room, as ours only had a ... read more