Three in One

After our trip to the Brazilian falls, we decided to return by public transport. So, we got a bus from the park to the center of Foz. One idea was to look around town and perhaps find a Portuguese phrase book (B.T.W. we have decided to go to Rio de Janeiro for a few days and see if we like Brazil.)

After seeing Foz through the bus windows, we decide that maybe we'd go to Paraguay instead. (Actually, I wanted to do this all along, but T wasn't desperate to and didn't see the point - women!) So, we found the bus to Paraguay and got onto it.

After ten minutes or so on the bus, we got in a big queue to cross the border over a pretty stunning bridge over the Parana river.

There seemed to be a new type of traffic on the road: the motorcycle taxi. Given the congestion and queues - this didn't seem such a bad option. If you don't value your life very much I suppose.

We got off the bus on this big, wide street and wandered around some shops. I still harboured some desires for a Nintendo DS lite and I still owed T a birthday present (nearly 3 months ago). She fancied an iPod.

Lots of haggling and stuff later, we knocked the DS on the head, but got a good deal on a 30G iPod. Unfortunately, my credit card didn't work with their system, so we had to go and get cash.

We left the arcade with the shop in it into a downpour. The streets were, basically, torrents of water and the rain was wetter that the waterfalls nearby.

After alot of searching and asking, we finally tracked down an ATM where I got out a million and a half Paraguayan ibbles (or whatever that are called). I hoped that was about 140 quid. We will see :-)

We found a bridge over the road/river on the way back and returned to the shop to pay for an iPod.

All we had to do now was get back to Argentina.

We wandered across the street (the rain was pretty light by this point) and the first bus said 'Argentina' on it. We hopped on and the driver made sure we knew we were going to Argentina. Many others got on with their Paraguayan purchases (Paraguay has no sales tax and seems to have stocks of things that simply aren't easily available in Argentina). Fluffy bedcovers seemed to be unusually popular. As were umbrellas - but only in batches of three for some reason. Perhaps there is a '3' related umbrella based superstition - who knows.

Although there is a bridge between Paraguay and Argentina, this bus went from Paraguay to Brazil to Argentina. Nobody was allowed to get off in Brazil (except the chap who was taken off by customs, much to the displeasure of his missus). Border controls were pretty much a formality. No entry stamps to Brazil and no sign whatsoever that Paraguay cared about anything.

Thus ended our three country trip. Brazil we are to explore more fully soon (as fully as one can explore a country that size in a couple of days) and Paraguay is, well, wet.

23

On the buses that we take from place to place, they show films pretty much continually. Sometimes they are in English with Spanish subtitles; sometmes vice-versa and sometimes just Spanish. From memory, we have seen:

• Some Spanish film in Spanish
  
• Swordfish
  
• Driver
  
• You and your stupid mate
  
• Deja Vu
  
• 23
  
• A Night at the Museum
  
• Catch a Fire
  

Sometimes the sound is piped over the PA, sometimes you need headphones. Anyway, the final film on the Santiago del Estero to Puerto Iguazu bus was 23. It's a dark film with Jim Carrey playing a serious role. I'm not going to spoil anything by saying that part of the plot revolves around some people feeling that they are being persecuted by the number 23 and feel hounded by it.

Well, I know how they feel. The very day after seeing the film, the couple below were sitting on the train at Iguazu falls right in front of us.

Polo 23

Then, our bus ticket ended in 23

Bus ticket 23

At this point I started to feel that the curse of 23 was transferred to me. The change I got from my next purchase has the following serial number ...

Banknote 23

9 9 3 0 3 2 1 2.

Now, if you add up all those digits, it comes to 29. But, clearly, as it is a two peso note, you then need to subtract 6 (four for the two twos in the serial number and two for the fact that it is a two peso note.)

29 minus 6 is ....

23

Scary.

And it doesn't stop there, oh no. Our room number at the hotel was ...

503.

O.K. maybe it did stop there.

Utter bollocks.

Iguazu Falls

We have come up to Iguazu to see the falls. We arrived at the bus station (after copious quantities of ham and cheese sandwiches, naturally) early in the morning. I had hardly slept on the journey and so T was dispatched to fact find whilst I rested.

In the same way that Niagara falls is shared between the USA and Canada, Iguazu falls is shared between Brazil and Argentina. T had discovered that the bus would go to the park for 66p each; as had just missed one, we got a taxi instead.

Once in the park, we walked a fairly long way, then got a little train and then walked along a raised walkway for about 15 mins to arrive at a viewing platform at the top of one of the falls. It was quite funky, but both of us felt it was missing something. The problem being that all you could see when you looked down was spray. No sense of scale.

The butterflies were cool though.

We had planned on getting wet in a boat under the falls (a kind of Extreme Sports version of the Maid of the Mist) but time was pushing on and my lack of sleep meant that food was more important. We planned to come back the next day and went back to our hotel.

The next day was cloudy, so we decided to do the Brazilian side and hope that the weather improved. Again we took a taxi, this time over a border, to their Park. There was a cash machine, so I got out some Brazilian pennies and we went in.

On this side, there is no train - just a bus system. We got the bus and started to walk along the path. The views were spectacular:

A part of the falls

The thing that is amazing is the sheer scale. Niagara (our common point of experience) is pretty cool, as you can see the whole thing in one vista. Iguazu is a whole series of sets of falls, the volume of water and the number of different places it is continuously falling actually seems to make it less comprehensible. Some aerial pictures capture it, but the lasting impression is just 'big' (or, 'massive' to coin a term)

Five Musketeers

In the lower tier are two sets of falls, on the left are the three musketeers and on the right are the two musketeers. D'Artagnan misses out completely.

Under water

After getting thoroughly soaked (see below) there was an opportunity to take a picture right beside one of the cascades. Pretty stunning (and amazingly noisy).

It was wet down there

As we had got thoroughly wet already (and as the weather appeared to be getting worse, not better) we decided not to go back to the Argentinian side, but went to Paraguay instead. (a whole blog entry in itself)

On the Way to Iguazu

From Mendoza to Puerto Iguazu is a 36 hour, two night, bus journey. We had already done an overnight, 19 hour journey from Bariloche to Mendoza, so (as long as we could book posh seats) we were happy to do that distance. However we felt that we should break the journey into two chunks.

Deciding where to stop by time; we elected to alight at 13:30, which meant a city called Santiago del Estero. It is Argentina's oldest city, has a copy of the Turin shroud and is a capital of its province. The best hotel in town is a four star affair, running at GBP34 per night for a double room.

And that's about all we knew about it.

We boarded the bus at the station at about 9:00 pm and T was out like a light. I dozed for a bit until getting to the land of nod in the early hours. We (in posh class, remember) were treated to breakfast.

Breakfast - Andesmar style

Breakfast is three different types of sandwich.

1. A sandwich
   
2. A vegetarian
   
3. A Milanese completo
   

This needs some explanation: A sandwich is, de facto, cheese and ham. (Tostado is toasted cheese and ham, but I digress). You can request completo (which adds lettuce and tomato) and you can ask for no ham. I say you can, but if you do, expect to have to repeat yourself a couple of times and then, as the panny drops, be asked if you are (hushed tones) vegetarian. It is not worth trying to explain that you are not vegetarian but are just sick of highly processed dead pig. Trust me.

A Milanese is breaded veal (or cow). A Milanese completo sandwich is a Milanese with cheese and ham, (No tomato and lettuce this time).

Therefore, our breakfast was three types of ham and cheese sandwich. Yummy.

Oh, and a biscuit with Dulce de Leche (posts passim) in it.

After our culinary treats, we dozed for a few more hours until we rolled into Santiago del Estero. After the usual scramble for bags, we tried to get a cab. We had to wait a good ten minutes before one arrived and took us to the hotel. About half-way there I realised that there was no meter and that we hand't asked how much it would cost. Stupid tourist makes schoolboy error I thought to myself - right until he asked for the princely sum of 33p for the journey. In a spirit of unparalleled genorosity, I gave him 50p.

Our hotel was OK. The pool wasn't and the checkouy time had been changed in an effort to extract an extra fiver from late sleepers, but we had a nice room with a balcony overlooking the square.

Santiago del Estero by day

Arriving on a Sunday, mid-afternnon, the place was pretty much dead. We ended up eating a very poor lunch in the hotel and having a siesta.

The town woke up at night, but we were too ensconced in bed to venture out further than the balcony for another picture.

Santiago del Estero by night

In the morning we packed and vacated without incurring the lazy-tax and I did some internetting whilst T pootled around town.

We then both went out to get some lunch. First stop was the market, just for a look. It reminded me of Bolton market. T was somewhat shocked to walk past some bizarre looking meat things hanging up. Bull penises. We were too suprised and embarrassed to take pictures.

A yummy (and cheap) lunch with a very nice waiter and a ridiculously cheap taxi later and we were back on the bus.

Which is where I am now. Listening to Gotan Project and typing up the blog.

We get into Puerto Iguazu in 12 hours. There may well be more sandwiches before then. Wish us luck.

Wine tasting

We were picked up from our hotel in a minibus along with seven others and taken to a series of small wineries.

First up was one which got very good marks in some magazine or other and they seemed a bit pretentious about the whole thing to me. It was nice, new and clean; but when they started yabbering on about yield density and other things, I wondered if they really didn't just decide to do everthing as 'perfectly' as possible just to dare the wine community to say it ended up tasting crap (which it may or may not have done - I don't know).

Anyway - as it was our first stop - we were instructed in a way of tasting wine. We tasted a few. They tasted like wine.

There was one set of three bottles that supposedly had the same grapes; treated the same way; blended the same way etc etc, but from different places in the valley. The idea was that you can taste the difference in the terroir. Who knows?

Not me, that's for sure.

Ah, yes! Red Wine

(at 9.00am, whilst a little -ahem- delicate.)

We then went to another winery which wasn't even open properly. It was on a much larger scale and, as we were told, designed with typical Swiss attention to detail. Apparently the layout was a wine-makers dream. We walked past some fellas in one room and were told in hushed tones that he was one of the top winemakers in Argentina. Our guide knew his face from wine magazines. He was drinking wine - I bet he could taste some differences.

More tasting - this time with an amazing view to break up the monotony of trying to taste anything important about each of the different wines.

A view of the Andes

Come to think of it, endless pictures of the same thing (e.g. the Andes) and endless different types of the same thing (i.e. Red Wine) have alot in common - only of interest to a select few.

We had a lovely lunch (apart from the bored and pretty much useless staff) with five courses and a different wine with each. This time we were allowed one glass-ette of white.

After luncheon, our last stop was at a very small winery belonging to a local winemaker - Carmello Patti. Now he seemed to really enjoy what he was doing and also seemed to have a real affinity for his product. It was a really pleasant change from the previous sterile environments. He also had a kitten. Everyone except us bought wine from him. Maybe because it was the end of the tastings, or maybe it was his charm, but his wine did seem pretty popular.

Carmello and a bottle or two

We returned to Tapiz to get our bags

Pinot Noir

Finally, we went into Mendoza to recover before setting off early for Valparaiso.

Wine Country

We spent a couple of quiet days at Club Tapiz. It is a small winery, just south of Mendoza, which has relocated operations and turned the old buildings into a 7 room hotel and very nice restaurant.

I had got quite annoyed with the laptop having periodically flaky WiFi connections, which I guessed were sometimes due to the US/UK differences in implementation (I've had this issue before). So I left lady T to recover in bed and went for an explore to the local Wal-Mart.

The hotel had an extensive wine cellar.

Wine Cellar - extensive

We had a little bit of a tasting session each night. I'm no wine buff, but we are planning on doing some more tastings soon and so I thought I'd try them out. They tasted like wine.

Once Madam had recovered sufficiently to be fit for public consumption, she spend a goodly number of hours in front of the fire in the lounge.

Relaxing in the lounge

We had a lovely meal in the restaurant and chatted to a journalist and a professional tango dancer (who also works as a data warehousing consultant).

Mendoza

Tired and hungry, we bickered about where to eat as we wandered around Mendoza for a while. The problem is that we were starving and it was only breakfast time (11:30 am). All the non-breakfast places were either shut or (worse, apparently) empty. Eventually we spotted the Liverpool Pub, full of old men drinking coffee - but smart enough to say yes when we asked for food at such a ridiculous time.

Liverpool Pub

It was quite a pleasant change for the music to be the Beatles (what else could they play in the Liverpool pub? - Dead or Alive? Echo and the Bunnymen? Space? The La's? Scorpio Rising? Frankie goes to Hollywood? - I rest my case). Anyway, what was nice was that it was the Beatles and not the CD that seemed to plague us on the Cruce de Lagos of "Andean Beatles" i.e. Beatles songs murdered by the Pan Pipes. I half expected Awatinas to jump onto the ferry and start moaning about the PA at any moment (an especially bizarre moment from my student days).

After a nice lunch (including, due to a miscommunication, a bottle and not a glass of white wine) we took our leave and went off in search of tourism.

We weren't drawn in by the marketing of the first company we passed - for some reason:

Perhaps not aimed at the Brit market

After a siesta, we then popped into the nearest one to the hotel (which I had seen in some guidebook) and were sorted out with a lovely place to stay (which Tourist Information had said was fully booked - liars) and a wine tour.

More admin was achieved at the bus station, as we booked tickets to Valparaiso, back to Mendoza and then on to Iguazu. We have busy week to look forward to.

At this point I should mention that both of us suffered from Travellers tummy. It may have been the Liverpool pub, or perhaps the toilet on the bus - which has a sign on the door that says "In order to prevent Cholera, please use only in an emergency." Who knows. At least we had a nice room to be in to run to the loo from.

Overnight Adventure

We arrived at the bus station at 12:30 for our 1pm departure. The bus was impressive.

Bus - impressive

We were downstairs in the posh bit.

Seats - posh

We had a really comfy trip. I didn't sleep solidly, but did manage to get a reasonable number of hours in. T fared better than I. It's really nice travelling in the bottom bit. There is a good deal of room and the seats recline pretty well.

We will do this again. Especially if we are going to soften the blow a bit by staying in a posh place the night after. For Mendoza we chose the Park Hyatt. Very nice. We got our money's worth though - checking in at 9:00am.

Bariloche

We stayed a couple of days in Bariloche.

A lake, some mountains - get the picture?

Our first night witnessed the exit of United from the Champoins League. That didn't go down well (mind you, thanks to the unlikely help of Man City and Arsenal, we've just won the league - woo hoo). We did alot of admin tasks in town. We sent another parcel of unnecessary stuff home. This was a lot easier (and cheaper) than in Belize. We also booked an overnight coach trip to Mendoza.

We got our washing done, bought provisions for the trip (chocolate) and booked somewhere to stay in Mendoza.

Bariloche was O.K. but we preferred other places in Patagonia.

Cruce de Lagos

We stayed in a nice place in Puerto Varas and had a very nice meal in the Merlin restaurant. I had cream of beer soup - which was very salty, otherwise it was excellent. Early to bed for the first day of a two day crossing from Chile to Argentina on the, apparently, famous Cruce de Lagos.

We were picked up in the morning and taken, along with a bus load of mostly Brazilians, to the boat on the Esmeralda lake.

Pretty Lago Esmeralda

A fairly relaxing trip on a lightly loaded boat, passing some interesting islands and a pretty waterfall, ended in the small town of Peulla. We were there at around about noon.

We had a forced stop at Peulla, as the 1st of May was the start of the winter timetable and so the 'in one day' option wasn't on.

Peulla is a bit of a tourist trap. There are two hotels; one is a hundred years old (and looks it) the other is one year old. We were in the newer one. The town contains lots of 'things to do'. We chose 'canopy'. The food and service were pretty poor. But the room and the location were quite amazing.

"Canopy" turned out to mean dangling from a bit of string at a great height above a stream. T had a practice a little closer to ground

Mountain explorer in waiting Wiseman

However, the sight of the stream a dizzying distance below proved a little too much, so T had a walk up a hill, across a rickety bridge and then back across the bridge and walked down again. I rolled down the wires a bit slower than strictly necessary and then was abseiled down the last tree at the end.

Going down

Interesting - but I'm not sure I'd bother doing it again.

In the morning, we started early for the second half of the trip. A short ride to the border and then a series of boats and buses were to take us to Bariloche in Argentina.

Basically it all turned a bit pear-shaped at this point. There was much waiting, faffing, carrying of bags (in Chile they had had the bright idea to put the bags in boxes and move the boxes around - in Argentina they moved all the bags by hand between three buses and two boats - madmen) and - worst of all - hanging about to wait for a group coming straight from Chile (so the winter/summer timetable thing was a lie).

Getting wet on Lago Frias

We sat on a boat in the pouring rain in the middle of a lake for two hours, then went to get the fast-track group and then sat on the boat in the pouring rain for another hour as we got near to Bariloche. Only when we'd tied up did it occur to our guides that they ought to tell us what to do next (to get another bus). However, they managed to give several sets of contradictory instructions and we just sat on the boat for another 1/2 hour as it got dark. We had no accomodation booked in Bariloche yet.

Eventually, we arrived in Bariloche and checked into the nearest hotel - which was fine. So ended the Cruce de Lagos, Badly organised. It is amazing to think that they do that every day.

For Sale

I'm not sure what the issue is, but Argentina has some very old and knackered cars on the roads (most of the really old ones are Peugeot and Citroen; France seems to have found a market for their cars in Argentina earlier than most). I'm not sure if there is a local equivalent of the M.O.T. test, but it certainly isn't enforced. Cars without silencers (mufflers, for my internation audience) are not as rare as one would like (esp. at 2 in the morning) and the fumes kicking out of the buses and lorries is a sight to turn even the most avid Global Warming denier into a fit of remorse, never mind the rest of us.

The sign in the back of this car says "For Sale" (in Spanish, obviously).

A good little runner

I don't know what the spanish for "One Lady Owner" is.

El Chalten

We got up early to get the bus to El Chalten. The taxi dropped us off in plenty of time and we boarded a reasonably posh bus. The roads were a mixture of tarmac and shingle-y stuff. The trip took four hours and we arrived in time for luncheon.

After lunch we went on a short (2hr) walk to the local waterfall. It was pretty.

A waterfall reached

I was a little concrned about the threat of rain and so we hurried back (in the dry - hmm). The wind in the valley was something to behold. We had been warned about the wind in Patagonia, however this was our first experience of it. When it picked up the dust, the only thing to do was turn your back on it until the gust died down.

We returned to our hostel.

Our Hostel

And went out for something to eat. The restaurant we chose was OK, but seemed to not be doing most of the things we ordered from the menu.

Suitably refreshed and tired from the early mornings and outdoor activities - we went to bed.

T fell fast asleep and I read for a bit. The bathroom floor had been a bit wet when we got back, so I got up to check it - to find that it was starting to flood. I quickly grabbed our (only very slightly damp) stuff off the floor and went to reception to see what they could do about it.

They were very quick and moved us to another room with very little fuss. (Apart from the semi-slumbering T scaring the living daylights out of the nice man). Unfortunately, our new room was near the common room and was very noisy until about 1am and then from about 5am onwards. This time it was I who had difficulty sleeping - T slept the sleep of the just.

We had breakfast; got packed lunches and set off for another walk. This was a much longer affair. After about two hours up hill and down dale, we were rewarded with the sight of some pretty peaks.

Torre and friends

We sat and had our packed lunches with a lovely view.

Savouring the view

Upon returning to the hostel, we were assured that the flooding problem was fixed and we returned to our quiet location.

Food was Locro (me) and Pizza (T) in a nice little bistro. (You have to understand that El Chalten is tiny (pop. 317) and the tourist season is almost over - so finding a nice place wasn't as easy as it should have been.)

After rescheduling our return to 8am (instead of 6pm), we returned to the hostel. After learning our lesson from yesterday, we mad sure that none of our stuff was on the floor and went to bed.

Sure enough, the water did come back a bit (not as bad as the day before though) and we were assured that it was under control.

About an hour later, just as I was dropping off, our neighbours across the hall returned to find their room flooded. They were not quiet about it either. It took about an hour of shouting, talking loudly and other noises before they had finally moved into another room. (It had taken us about 5 mins - including waking T up). I did think about popping my head out to tell them to shut up, but felt that they were stressed enough and that there might be a language barrier preventing me telling them that we had the same problem last night and managed not to wake up half of Patagonia.

Up early (this is not a good pattern we developed here) again and back to another hostel in El Calafate.

This one was nice and it did not flood. Chile tomorrow.

El Calafate - Trip 2 - Perito Moreno minitrekking

Up early again (this time we did make breakfast) and then off to a different port (1 1/2 hours away) to get on a boat beside the Perito Mereno Glacier (the famous one - probably as it is the most accessible).

After alghting and heading to the ice, we had crampons strapped to our feet.We then set off onto the Glacier.

A Glacier to trek upon

T (Antarctic explorer Wiseman) and I had not done our shoes up tightly, so we were a bit uncomfortable until the first stop. This made us the slowest. Our guide then decided to promote T to "co-pilot", which meant she had to follow him.

Antarctic explorer Wiseman trekking on a Glacier

After tying shoelaces more tightly (schoolboy error) we were marching as fast as the best of them.

A bar with a unique location

In fact, towards the end of the trek, T was practically running - for some reason.

Filling the ice bucket

On this occasion, I had ice in my whisky. It wasn't a single malt, so I didn't worry too much.

After the drinkies, we returned to the boat and then were taken by coach to a lookout point, an hour there passed in no time at all.

Pictures cannot capture the scale of this thing, nor does it even try to recall this most impressive demonstration of the power of nature - so, I would recommend a visit in person.

And home to a well earned bath.

El Calafate - Trip 1 - All the Glaciers

We got up early (but not early enough to get breakfast) and set off on the hour's drive to the port. It was raining. Picking up our boat, we headed of into lago Argentino in not very nice weather. We were taken to the Spegazzini Glacier, which we got quite close to. It was quite dramatic - the noise that is made when a chunk of ice falls off is quite astounding.

Spegazzini Glacier and ice flow

We then set off for the larger Upsala glacier, passing some pretty impressive icebergs on the way.

An impressive iceberg - on the way

Upsala is slightly different to the others, as the water undermines the face of the glacier and so the ice can break off in the big chunks of icebergs that we see dotted around lago Argentino.

Antarctic Explorer Wiseman in front of an iceberg

Finally, we were set down on land near another glacier-fed lake and walked for a bit (in the rain) to sit and eat our packed lunches with a view (but in the rain).

Lunch with a (damp) view

We then trudged back to the boat (in the rain) and returned to port and to the hotel. We had an early tea and wet to bed. We had to be up early in the morning.

It was nice to see the glaciers, but the whole mass herding of inconsiderate people thing spoiled it a little.

Golf

We have arrived in El Calafate and it is quite a lovely town. Small, wide streets and unashamedly touristy (I am typing this blog in the bar of the hotel as a Tango show passes in the background).

T hasn't been feeling so well, so we have had a quiet day today. (Apparently I wasn't sympathetic enough yesterday. Mea Culpa). It has been nice doing little but organising the next week.

Tomorrow we are going to see glaciers by boat. On Thursday we are going to walk on one (A Glacier, not a Boat - gosh - pronouns can be _so_ imprecise). We are going North to El Chalten for the weekend. And we have booked our bus to Chile (don't know if it is Argentinian or not.)

Oh - and breking news - We are staying in a hostel in El Chalten.

The weather is cold, but dry, clear and crisp. Very nice indeed.

El Calafate

Our hotel has a golf course, so when T decided to relax in bed reading for the afternoon, I played Billy-no-mates on the course. It cost more to buy the balls than the green fees :-) And they lent me clubs for free.

The 'course' is actually 9 tees and three greens. All par 3. They gave me a 2 wood. Heaven only knows why - but I did use it to get from off the green to within an inch of the hole on one hole though :-)

Golf 'course'

Given that I hadn't hit a ball for 18 months I felt I didn't do too bad:

• Only one duffed tee shot
  
• Only 2 blobs (Stableford)
  
• no three putts (putts off green don't count)
  
• No holes in double figures
  
• No lost balls
  
• No lost tees
  

In the end - 11 Stableford points for my nominal 28 handicap.

And - another Spanisheo ...

Dropeo

Scorchio.

Finally, it seems like BsAs is being flooded - TV pictures of cars stranded in Pelermo on TV. Good job we left a week early.

Tomorrow we are up early for a big boat trip. Goodnight.

Ushuaia - Trip 3 - National Park

Our final trip was to the Tierra del Fuego National Park. Again we were picked up early, but this time in a coach. After a trawl around town for some others, we then set off for the National Park. We passed the most Southerly golf course and arrived at the station for the Train at the End of the world. Where we took pictures ...

T at the Union Jack

The Union Jack is outside the toilets. I presume this is no accident, as the other flags there are Uruguay (Gents) and Brazil (Ladies). Ours lies between them.

We boarded the train and were treated to a narrative from the most plummy Ennglish accent this side of 1950. We were saved from boredom by the screaming child in our compartment - bless.

A train

After the train, we were taken to a few places in the park and wandered about a bit. The park contains the end of the 18,000 Km long Pan-American highway, an almost contiguous route from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. I guess I need to go to Alaska now :-)

T at the end of the Pan-American highway

The afternoon was spent at leisure (i.e. T had a massage) in the hotel.

You may have read between the lines that we have become hyper-sensitive to noise for some reason (sleep) and the fact that we seemed to have the cast to "Stomp" living above us (on a wooden floor) in our apartment didn't help. When we arrived in our lovely, 5 star, middle of nowhere, suite at the end of the world we had expectations of silence. As we settled in the peace and quiet we heard a dog, barking right outside our room. Here we go again - San Marcos La Laguna here we come.

To be fair - the dog never barked much after that 10 minute session and turned out to be quite cute.

Cute Perro

We guessed it had been barking at a sealion in the channel - as the following morning - much to our delight, we saw a sealion right in fornt of us as we sat down to breakfast. Quite a treat.

And that pretty much ends the trip to Ushuaia.

For those dedicated enough to read this far, Ushuaia is pronounced oos-why-ah.

Chilly (Argentinian) Plane

We had been amazingly lucky with the weather: The fantastic view on our arrival; no rain for any trips at all and some amazing views across the channel, however, our last day was quite inclement. It was a bit of a snow-storm. The planes had to be de-iced before take-off and we saw pretty much nothing but cotton wool as we departed.

Ushuaia was certainly an amazing place to visit. Off to El Calafate now.

Ushuaia - Trip 2 - Off-Road

We were picked up from our hotel at the crack of dawn by Bismark - our driver/chef/guide/entertainer who then went to pick up the other six people that filled our Defender 110 (a newer version of my. now sold, Land-Rover). We were the 'English' group. 2 Brits, 2 from the USA, 1 New Zealander (who lives in Lavender Hill in London-town) and three Brazillians.

We were then taken across a pass that goes North-South over the Andes (the only one) and stopped at a pretty place.

P and T in front of picturesque lakes

Apparently, the English are Pirates. To be fair - it does seem that we played that role around the Latin Americas quite alot in olden times. However, I somehow doubt that it refers to Henry Morgan.

The English are pirates

We then went down into the valley, to a hotel that - we were informed - had the last toilets that we would see that day. And they sold coffee. We did both.

A picturesque lake

We then 4x4'd along very muddy tracks and along the shore (and sometimes in the edge) of a pretty lake. Our driver got out at one point and left the L-R steering itself in the deep ruts. It was probably more impressive for the less mechanically minded, as the car went left and right for a few hundred yards - apprently by itself whilst the drivers (we had 2 L-Rs in convoy) pretented to push from behind with their little fingers.

Our Land-Rover

We walked along the lakeside for 30 mins whilst they prepared our food (the best steak we have had so far) and we were treated to the sight of three foxes (who, presumably know that they get fed once a day.)

After returning to town, we ate in a nice bar where they were promoting Chandon 187 (a 1/4 bottle of fizz). Our demonstrably nutty waiter stated that Bismark was the maddest man he had ever met. I had burnt a CD of Hitch Hiker's Guide mp3 files for him - he had a penchant for quoting films and HHGTTG was one of his favourites. (No, that lot doesn't make sense - never mind).