Blogs from Argentina, South America - page 1144

We arrived in Mendoza after travelling all night from Buenos Aires. The local tourist information office referred us to a hostel called Lifehouse which had a pool. This was very welcome, Mendoza was baking! We chilled for the rest of that day and decided to do a wine tour the next day and a hike the day after (to get rid of some of the post-Christmas podge). Wine 1-01 After some admin stuff in the morning (sorting out buses, planes, accomodation for the next leg) we headed off on our tour of two bodegas (vineyards). The first bodega, Lopez was a factory bodega. When we arrived a huge lorry with a huge tank (not unlike a milk lorry!) was leaving filled with wine. The bodega had a small museum of machinery used in wine making, ... read more

Well I made it back to Argentina with no problems apart from a slight overstay in Colombia that I had to deal with in the Bogota Airport at 4am... but it's great to be back! The weather is perfect and the Pilattis pool is nice and clean so between visiting old friends dotted around the place I've been spending plenty of time in and around the pool with the Pillatis which is bliss. Plenty of drinking Mate(tea) and quilmes(beer) and it's also good to be eating some really decent food again(meat, meat and more meat). It feels a bit weird doing the Christmas preperations without my family and friends that have always been around at this time of the year, so I thought I'd put together a few photos to show you some of the things ... read more

After a quick flight to Buenos Aires from Santiago (2 hours) - the second flight on our round the world ticket - we immediately went to the Aerolineas Argentinas ticket sales counter in the airport to buy our tickets to El Calafate. The flight left next morning, and cost only 300 pesos - about 50 pounds each, bargain. I´ve dated this article 16th December, although we arrived in BA on 15th. We´ll add another article later when we´ve got something more on BA. So, we got to El Calafate and shared a taxi into town with a couple of Frenchies. We found a rather crappy hostal (the Albergue Beunos Aires) but settled for it as it was quite cheap and had a good enough location. We weren´t going to be in El Calafate for very long ... read more

We are coming accustomed to the long range bus journeys here... our latest, the 16 hour hop from Bariloche, near the Chilean border to Puerto Madryn, on the Atlantic coast; followed the pattern that is developing.. we get on the bus late afternoon/ early evening.. we are treated to a couple of pretty decent films, in English, with Spanish subtitles. However, the volume is always at an annoying low/medium level where action scenes and arguments can be heard easily, but intimate conversations cant... as a result, following the plots can be difficult. So if anyone can tell me what happens at the end of "Under Suspicion" with Morgan Freeman and Gene Hackman, I´d appreciate it... I gathered that big Gene´s character confessed to the 2 murders, but then there was a bit of a twist, and ... read more

And so back to Argentina... and what can I say about it's capital, Buenos Aires?? Firstly, I should mention that the first disease that any traveller catches is exaggeration... everything becomes spectacular, awesome, etc etc... now sometimes this is actually true, but mostly the description comes in order to justify whatever time, money or hardship the writer has spent in order to visit the place in question... But... Buenos Aires IS quite simply pretty much the best city I´ve ever visited. It has the wide boulevards and grand early 19´th century architecture of Madrid or Milan, a renovated dockside that throbs with bars and restaurants a la Lisbon or Dublin, quaint bohemian neighbourhoods that attract artists, musicians and dancers, like Prague or Paris, the eclecic food and shopping of New York or London, the worlds classiest ... read more