Happy New Year 2006!

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Hope you all enjoyed the New Year celebrations wherever you were. We´d planned to celebrate in Valparaíso but when we arrived yesterday afternoon it was so hectic that we decided to retreat into the foothills of the Andes cordillera! There was no accommodation available in Valparaíso anyway, so people were camping, jam-packed like sardines, along the side of the motorway! Glad we gave it a miss because we´ve ended up in a village hotel with views of the peaks in the Cerro La Campana national park and guess what we were woken by on the first of January 2006? An earthquake!!! Only measured 3 on the Richter scale and, to a slumbering Jessie, felt like undulating massage pads in the mattress but it was enough to wake us! Apparently it´s quite unusual to be able to hear it too but this one kind of sounded like rumbling thunder. They say that it´s to be expected to feel an earthquake of some sort if you spend an extended period of time along the Andes.
Since we last wrote, we moved on from Bariloche to MalargÜe, which is a great little one-horse town situated in a volcanic area. We visited the Parque Provincial La Payunia, which has over 800 volcanic cones (all extinct, the most recent eruptions having been over 5000 years ago). It´s a crazy, crazy place and we´re really glad we made the effort to go. We also visited local turquoise lagoons and some thermal baths in the ruins of an old hotel that had been destroyed by a mudslide. It was very picturesque and, although the water was pretty darn hot, it was just about bearable and the sulphuric mud felt great on the skin!
Last stop in Argentina after that was Mendoza again and this time we did a wine tour. Now know how to taste wine properly (although feel a bit of a prat doing it!) and will look out for the Argentinian wine we enjoyed when we´re back in England. Most of the wineries seem to export to the U.K. so we should recognise some names.
Only a couple of days left on the South American continent before Nick flies home and I move on to New Zealand. Will be very sad to leave Argentina behind but, fortunately, I didn´t quiiiiite get to visit all of it so there´s always a reason for us to come back!

P.S. Only just noticed I´d put "Happy New Year 2005!" as a title to this entry. Sorry about that - was living in the past and am now fully up-to-date!

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Photos

Nick half way up volcano
We stopped for about an hour to have lunch and climb this volcano in the park. It was so windy that you almost had to lean into the wind to stay upright! The earth was kind of sandy in some places so it was quite fun running down again.

Volcanic bomb!
Some of the volcanoes threw out large "bombs" like this. Bizarre to think that they´re still sitting where they landed thousands of years ago.

Nick covering himself in mud
... from the bottom of one of the baths. This particular bath was so hot that I couldn´t get in and Nick had to pass me the mud!