Dec 2007

We tore ourselves away from Buenos Aires and eventually boarded the bus - the aim being Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world, with a few stops on the way down.

First stop was Puerto Madryn on the east coast where we picked up a hire car and headed out to Peninsula Valdes for a spot of whale watching. Jumped onto the first boat out that day and managed to see lots of southern right whales, they came really close to the boat too so you could almost touch them.

Back to shore and we spent the rest of the day checking out the peninsula, loads of wildlife you can get really close too, although we stayed way back from the massive sea lions! The Corsa held up well as Rich was speeding down gravel roads, the American chick who was in the back of the car suddenly went very silent as we nearly off-roaded it a couple of times ...

Penguins and sheep sharing the same beach

Next day we stopped at Trelew and the nearby village of Gaiman, which became Welsh mining settlements back in the 1800's. We stopped at a Welsh teahouse for tea and all you can eat cake. Found out there is actually a limit to how much cake I can eat as felt sick for the rest of the day but was well worth it!

Onwards and downwards towards Ushuaia and it's absolutely freezing, haven't seen snow this deep for ages. Suppose it's to be expected with Antarctica only 500 miles further south. Very quaint little town but so isolated. Headed up to the nearby glacier and found we were the only people up there. The beauty of South America so far is that all the 'touristy' places haven't been full of tourists, it's great!

Not sure they needed to bother with the English translation ...

We began our journey back up into Central Argentina via El Calafate to check out the Perito Moreno Glacier, still advancing, moving around 2 metres per day. The thing is absolutely huge, 5km wide and around 55 metres high above the surface. We were lucky enough to see huge chunks falling off into the lake, makes a deafening sound.

View from the boat

Back in the hostel, after eating a lovely peanut M&M, my back filling decided that South America would be a great place for it to fall out, gutted. Decided to get it checked out in the next big town, Bariloche - a place famous for it's chocolate, more gutted. In broken Spanish and English, the dentist and I had a conversation in which I only managed to pick up the words 'root canal' ... and that they could fit me in later that day. Good job else I would've been on the first bus out of there given time to think about it.

Turned out it wasn't actually that bad, but only after I made her give me close to eight injections and a promise of super duper painkillers afterwards - mountain view from the window was good though!

Beautiful Bariloche

Mendoza was out last stop in Argentina, a city famous for producing around 70% of all Argentinian wine. We hired a couple of bikes and spent the day touring four or five wineries - turned out you get a whole glass of the stuff when tasting which was a nice surprise. We returned the bikes about four hours late after a slightly hazy cycle back. Not a bad day out for 8 quid all in!

We whiled away a couple of days in the heat of Santiago after enduring the most painful border crossing so far via Mendoza - next stop the Cook Islands and then onto New Zealand.