Ushuaia, Uruguay and Home

The end of the world - Ushuaia

Yet another long bus ride was required to reach Ushuaia. Unfortunately there was no night bus so we had to spend pretty much a full day getting there. Tierra del Fuego is an island seperate from mainland south america that is split evenly between Chile and Argentina. We had to catch a  short ferry ride across to Tierra del Fuego, and watched Dolphins in the water alongside the boat. Ushuaia sits on the Argentinian side at the southern tip close to the Chile border. Its a really pretty little port town. It has a backdrop of mountains (fairly low level for patagonia, up to 1600m) and sits in a bay so there are mountains visible all around.

Sea Lions

We only had one full day there, so took an all day trip that was split between a half day boat tour around the beagle channel and a land tour.This included a visit to a sea lion community on a rocky island in the channel. Sea lions look great so close up, there was one enormous male bull that looked the size of a car. After that we visited another penguin colony. Penguins look so awkward on land, but when they entered the water they were very graceful, moving at incredible speeds, looking like they were hardly putting any effort in to move.
 We visited an Estancia (ranch) that was established by a British missionary in the 1800's, complete with English gardens! The most 


only 13400km to London!

 interesting part was an area where scientists researched sea mammals, using the bodies of animals that had unfortunately been beached (whales) or caught in nets (dolphins).
There was a gruesome workshop where a couple of workers were stripping fat from Whale bones using a vat of acid and knives, and a couple of freshly skinned Dolphin heads. The museum was impressive, displaying many remains of enormous Whales alongside Dolphins and Sea lions.

We had an extra half day in Ushuaia as our flights back to Buenos Aires where delayed by a few hours so took a trek up one of the ski runs (no snow) to get a view of the town but the visibility was poor . It also started snowing so we cut it short.
One thing about Ushuaia is the weather changes in an instant - sunny, then suddenly its raining, then snowing.

On mountain outside Ushuaia

Our taxi driver to the airport was a huge premiership fan, and had instantly bonded with Emma by saying he loved Alan Shearer!
Its interesting that nearly every South American i spoke to about football loved the Premiership and said it was there favourite league, more than the Spanish league because its more exciting to watch.

We had a couple more days left and had exhausted Buenos Aires, so we took a ferry for the short hop over to Uruguay. We arrived in Colonia then took a bus to the capital Montevideo and visited an Aunt of Emmas who has lived there for several years teaching English. Montevideo is a pleasant city, far smaller than Buenos Aires and has a friendlier, small town feeling about it. We went out for Steak and a large quantity of Red Wine.

Plaza, Colonia in Uruguay

Uruguay recently overtook Argentina as the biggest per head consumer of steak in the world, which apparently caused a huge amount of shame and debate in Argentina! They also did a lot better in the world cup, i don't think Argentina are enjoying being suddenly outdone by their little cousins in the North.

We spent the final night in Buenos Aires and went to see a tango show. It was fairly enjoyable. I really liked the actual Tango bits but it turned into bit of an all round Argentina theme show. There was an annoying cowboy/indian bit (dressed as gauchos, playing ubiquitous "ethnic" pan pipe music same as you hear everywhere in Peru and Bolivia) and renditions of My Way (in spanish) and Don't cry for me Argentina (surprise!!).

So that is the end of the trip. Its been really amazing, as enjoyable and exciting as i hoped it would be. I met some great people, saw some stunning scenery, had some adventure, learnt to speak spanish (to a degree!).
Its scratched a huge itch on one level, but you meet so many people that talk about how wonderful other countries are that they have visited, you find your travel wishlist lengthening not shortening.

Having said that, i was looking forward to coming home. I felt surprisingly happy as i saw England for the first time in 14 weeks as we descended into heathrow.
Its late November, and its cold, wet, and dark but what can you do? Its home.
Bring on the curry!

Southern Patagonia

Perito Moreno Glacier

El Calafate sits in southern end of the lake district in Patagonia, and serves almost exclusively as a jumping off point for tourists wanting to see the nearby Perito Moreno glacier.
Perito Moreno is an enormous glacier, at its front it rises 40-70m out of the water and a further 140m below the waters surface.

We had freakishly good weather on our visit, it was mild weather and blue sky. The site of that much ice is difficult to take in! From the viewing platforms at the front it looks like a huge field of milky coloured ice. There was occasional loud bangs like gunshot as cracks opened up

Lake Capri, Los glacieres national park

on the glacier surface because of the enormous pressures it is under as the glacier advances. As we watched the front there was also huge roars as ice at the front collapsed into the water. In the lake surrounding the front there were large lumps of ice that had broken off from the glacier previously.

We took a trek on the top of the glacier that was fascinating. I´ve never worn crampons before so they took a bit of effort getting used to (emma got used to them more quickly, evident as she tried to make me tango on the ice while i was still staggering around trying to walk

Torres del Paine park, Chile

properly!) but we trekked for a couple of hours and got a great tour of different features on the surface. There was deep cracks of a very unusual blue where the ice had opened up recently, very deep turquise lakes and sink holes, and streams running along the top. The end was perfect, we were given grants whiskey with ice from the glacier! Walking off the glacier turned out to be trickier than walking onto it.


The following day we took a 3 hour bus to the village of El Chalten, a small village that was built specifically for trekkers and climbers visiting

Glacial lake, Torres del Paine

the Los Glacieres national park. Not really sure how to describe it as i ran out of superlatives long ago! It was the most beautiful scenery i have ever seen. We did a couple of treks over 2 days, one was 2 hours to the Lake Capri and it was perfect. More lakes, mountains and pine forests but it was perfect. Huge granite peaks towered towered away in the distance alongside snow capped mountains, and the sky was cloudless. The park ranger said it was very unusal weather so we got very lucky again.

Penguins

Although we were running out of time a little. we wanted to see the Chilean side of Patagonia aswell, so we went over the border to the town of Puerto Natales.
The first day we visited a penguin colony a short distance out of the city, the Penguins were breeding and had made there way there from the falklands (ooops, i mean Las Malvinas......!) and Brazil. They were very funny, looking very undignified waddling around a few feet away from us. That night we managed to make a curry! Much to my surprise the local supermarket sold curry powder and loads of indian spices, so i made a half decent effort given the circumstances! They also sold a great range of vegetables, far more than were available in Argentina, so we had a good choice of ingredients aswell.

The second day we visited Torres del Paine National park on an all day trip, as we didn´t have time to do one of the recommended treks that take several days. It was similar scenery to the Argentinian side, although there were large amounts of Guanacos (similar to Llamas) and a sizable Puma population that are thankfully nocturnal so we weren´t in any danger from them. It was beautiful of course, but the highlight was a large glacial lake we visited at the end of the day - the glacier was 19km away in the distance, but huge icebergs had broken off and were sitting in the water at the far end of the lake where we were. A couple were 20 meters tall, and must have been enormous when they first broke away.

We crossed the border the final day as we headed back to Argentina for the final southern leg to Ushuaia. Emma did a great job smuggling the curry spices over the border, so we have more curry to look forward to at least in Argentina........!

Northern Patagonia, Whales and the Welsh

Los Alerces National Park

Lake near Bariloche

Los Alerces National Park

We had a relatively short bus ride to Bariloche (6 hours!). Bariloche sits on the northern end of the lake district in northern Patagonia. Its a beautiful location, surrounded by snow capped mountains and sitting on the edge of a huge turquoise lake. The area feels like Switzerland, even the buildings are similar style - chalets and ski lodges are everywhere. We took a couple of walks in the surrounding area, then a couple of days later we got the bus to Esquel. Esquel was yet another town that didn´t feel particularly touristy! Esquel serves as the base for visits to the Los Alerces national park, a huge park about an hour away. On the first day we took a bus to the town of Trevelin, originaly settled by welsh immigrants in the late 1800´s when they moved west away from the east coast in search of more land for farming. It was a sleepy little place, the people looked very British complete with pasty faces! We went into a welsh tearoom (one of several) and had a welsh tea, a huge plate of cakes and scones. I ate those, Emma had a pint of tea. We then found a fantastic welsh history museum with original items from the first Welsh settlers.

Los Alerces National Park

The second day we took a tour to Los Alerces Park, but we struggled to find a tour originaly as they are 2 months away from the start of the season. We ended up on a trip full of Argentinian OAP´s, and the tour was in Spanish! The people were great though, they kept coming over and explaining things to us (in spanish, but slower than the guide) and had a great sense of humour. I have perfected my football conversations in Spanish, so talked a lot about Messi, Maradona, and the world cup with the Guys in the group. Emma talked about Guitierez of Newcastle! The scenery was predictably breathtaking - lakes, mountains and pine forests.

Mother Whale off Puerto Madryn

We took an overnight bus to Puerto Madryn on the Atlantic coast. It is an unattractive seaside town, and was the first town the Welsh settled in 1885. There is still evidence of the first shelters they built in the clay next to the beach. The main reason was to visit the Whales on the coast that were there to breed. We took a boat trip out to see the Whales and watched them for a couple of hours, a mother and her pup played close to the boat. It was wonderful watching them so close. Later in the day we also went to see a seal colony further down the coast, hundreds of Seals were lazing around on the beach conserving energy waiting for the tide to come in and carry them back into the sea.

Seal and pups

That night we took yet another long bus ride (this country is far too big!!) for 20hours south to a town called Rio Gallegos which was very unpleasant looking. We had to wait for 4 hours for a connecting bus to El Calafate so wondered around the town for a while before giving up and going back to the bus station. The next bus took 5 hours so we got to the hostal at 1am. Far too much travelling in the last few days, and we are still nearly 1000km from Tierra Del Fuego where we catch a flight back to Buenos Aires next week.

Dinosaurs and Nestor Kirchner

Plaza Mayor Buenos Aires - we want our Islands back

We planned to have a couple of relaxing days in Buenos Aires before heading south. On the second day we had a look around the city and went to the giant Mausuleum in the city centre, full of over the top buildings housing family coffins. The most interesting was that of Eva Peron, national treasure and subject of Andrew Lloyd Webbers and Tim Rices attention writing the play Evita about her (don´t cry for me Argentina etc).  We heard that on the third day there was going to be a census count so nothing would be open so decided to stay an extra day.

On that day we woke up to find Nestor Kirchner had also died aged 60 - the countries previous prime 

Don´t cry for me Argentina....Eva Peron Grave

minister and also husband of current prime minister Christina Kirchner, so 3 days of mourning were also declared. That day  was really bizarre, the city was completely dead. We went into the city centre and found one cafe open in the whole city. Mcdonalds and Burger king were even closed! Consequently we had no lunch, and had to wait until 8pm when all the restaurants reopened.

On the day we were due to get the night bus south to Neuquen, we went into the plaza to see the huge gathering of Argentines that were waving flags and lining up to view the body of Kirchner. A woman approached us asking if we were German, when i said i was English she poked my chest and launched into some tirade about the Falklands, i couldn´t make out exactly what she was saying but it wasn´t friendly!! There was a falklands 

Fierce creatures (and Emma!)

demonstration also going on in the plaza nearby (amazing how any large gathering attracts nationalists with  flags, especialy when the nation is feeling a bit wounded....), and Christina Kirchner had recently been twittering away about the British being colonialists because we are practising Navel maneouvers in the Southern Atlantic, so i don´t think that helped the anti British mood any.......

The bus to Neuquen took 16 hours and wasn´t wonderful but fairly comfortable. Neuquen was another city like Santa Cruz a couple of weeks previously, it was a large functional city with no tourist facilities. The next day we took the bus to a village called El Chocon to visit the dinosaur museum and footprints. The museum was easy to find, and had some very impressive skeletons in it including a huge T-rex type creature. We went to a cafe and asked 

Dinosaur Footprints

where the footprints were, and it seemed they were some distance but we set off anyway to find them.


Dinosaur Footprints in the rock



Then the girl in the cafe came out and asked if we wanted a lift there!  We ended up on an ATV being driven around for a couple of great hours by the 12 year old son of one of the workers there. It was great, i loved the rules stuck on the ATV. No under 16´s. No passengers. Don´t go on roads. We managed them all.



He took us to see 2 sets of footprints that were really clear, set in stone on the edge of a beautiful artificial lake which were really amazing, over 100million years old and there was quite a few of them. We would have had no chance of finding them ourselves, there was  no signposts and they were miles away.

So it turned out to be a great day, however no thanks to the argentinian tourism industry.......!

Return to Buenos Aires and the return of the holiday curse

After a really pleasant couple of days in Foz i got a transfer over the border into Argentina to the town of Puerto Igazu. Its a small town and one that serves only as a base for Igazu falls, unlike Foz which is a large city (and a lot less safe and pleasant).

The site to visit the falls is alot better developed on the Argentinian side. There are several circuits that can be walked in the Jungle surrounding the falls so i spent a very pleasant few hours following the routes as they went in and out of the Jungle and regularly passed over and beside stunning waterfalls. The highlight was a very long bridge that crossed a river for half a mile before ending at devils throat, the area where the biggest volume of  water converges and crashes into the river below. It is truely spectacular, very difficult to get your head around the volumes of water that are passing through. There were huge clouds of mist arcing into the sky and giant rainbows when the sun caught it. Very beautiful.
There was also a huge amount of wildlife in the surrounding area, large lizards crossing the paths and invading the cafe stops, clouds of brightly coloured butterflies and also a lot of brightly coloured birds everywhere. It really is a wonderful place.

I then had to get the bus to Buenos aires, after my experience in the Chaco i was not thrilled at the prospect as it was at least 18 hours away. I treated myself to the more luxurious Cama option, where you get better seats that recline almost horizontaly, better meals and alcoholic drinks provided. It was great! Really comfortable, great cooked food, wine, champagne and whiskey handed out during the evening. I sat watching Mad Max on the TV, it would have been difficult to improve on!! Crossing the chaco and watching Transporters 1, 2 and 3 back to back at ear splitting volume while getting baked alive quickly became a distant memory.

Buenos Aires is a fantastic city, something i couldn´t appreciate as much last time as  i was jet lagged and only had a full day here before flying to Salta. I met an Australian couple Rene and Gerard on the first day went out and got fantastic steak with them, then took a city tour by bicycle. The tour was great, although we cycled through La Boca which is a tourist no go area because its very poor and violent. We cycled up to Bocas stadium and past the training ground where kids were spying on the team through gaps in the fences. Everybody were playing football in the parks. I loved the fact that the Coca Cola signs outside the stadium are black and white because their much hated rivals River Plate play in red and black and they wouldn´t allow them to advertise in those colours. 
The day after i went to San Telmo market which has a huge range of stalls selling everything from 100year old maps of Argentina, to antiques, to very old toys, to stunning oil paintings of couples dancing Tango, to vintage musical instruments, old old signs advertising tango bars. A guy was playing Tango on guitar, groups were standing in circles playing drums. Wonderful.

Boca fans top tier. Louder





I predict a riot....Boca vs Independiente

That afternoon i had booked to go and see Boca Juniors playing Independiente. I didn´t check the details too well as it turned out they played at Independiente! None of us realised as the stadium was very close to the city centre, it was only when somebody asked why the seats were red and black not the blue and gold of Boca that we realised we were watching the legendary side but away!! grrrr. It was an entertaining match, obviously a much higher skill level than games i´ve seen in the UK. The Boca fans created a great atmosphere on the far side of the stadium, the whole time chanting and playing drums. It turns out Boca aren´t the powerhouse they once were, sitting mid table alongside Independiente It was 0-0,  Independiente were slightly the better side.

Emma arrived today!! Very early might i add! I got to the airport for 7.15am, and she appeared looking very sleepy but very lovely 45 minutes later just as i was wondering if she had missed the flight.....shes having a quick powernap at the moment. I could do with one aswell, had a fairly late night (for an old person - midnight!) with Gareth and Lizzie who i met originaly on Lake Titicaca a few weeks ago. Another amazing steak of course, and it would have been rude not to drink a reasonable quantity of red wine........

Marvellous. My memory card has corruped and lost all my Igazu and Football pics, that is indescribably annoying. God damn my piece of shit camera. Will try and get some copies of the footy and stick them up later.

Paraguay And Igazu falls

The bus ride to Acuncion was about as much fun as i was expecting! The actual bus was ok, but the ride

Plaza in Acuncion

took 23 hours, it was over 100F even through the night and there was no air conditioning, so i spent the whole trip glazing out of the window with my tongue hanging out.
Whenever i looked out of the window the scenery was exactly the same - cactuses, shrubs, no hills or mountains just huge expanses of the Chaco passing hour after hour. There was a few ranches in the middle of nowhere, i assume run by Menomites.
There was a few Menomites on the bus - they originate from Russia, speak a form of German, and looked very much like the Waltons. Thats all i know about them, apart from i couldn´t help staring at them, they look facinating like something out of another age. 

I arrived in Acuncion and was not surprisingly exhausted - despite the lack of things to do i stayed 3 nights as i couldn´t handle the prospect of any more bus time for a while. It was like Santa Cruz in that there was no tourist facilities, just a fairly pleasant, friendly city. The highlight was a train museum where all the old equipment was made in England in the 1920´s. That and the fact that the hostal had its fair share of wierdo´s hovering around all the time making the receptionist really uncomfortable but entertaining me, i did wonder what type of people would be attracted there.....!

I took the far more reasonable 7 hour ride to Foz de Igazu in Brazil, and it was like a different world! Amazing hostal with pool, bar, giant TV, great breakfast - the first time i had decent bread for 2 months, they recycle, the buses are neat and logical, skype works, there aren´t dogs running around everywhere.....
Igazu falls was amazing - really stunning. On the Brazilian side you can get the full panoramic view, so i spent a couple of hours there. The pictures speak for themselves. Tomorrow i visit the Argentinian side, apparently there are a lot more walks you can do in and around that area so i will post more pics then.

Che Guevara

The flight to Santa Cruz was very straight forward i was disappointed / relieved to discover. I was called a military airline but looked and felt like a commercial one. The only difference was that there was no security procedures, no x-rays or searches, nothing! In the west we can learn from that, as it meant that queues were none existent.

The spot where Che´s luck ran out

It only took a 30 minute flight to get well and truely off the Gringo trail. I got into the city, and found there was no tourists, no tourist facilities and so consequently nothing to do. Santa Cruz is a big commercial hub, an attractive looking city that felt nothing like the rest of Bolivia. The chaos in the streets was absent, it didn´t look like a Bolivian town, it is obviously affluent and even the people looked different - more Brazilian than Indian.

I decided very quickly to head to Saimapata, a town a few hours away that i had heard you could book

Laundry table Che´s body was displayed

trips to the nearby Amboro National Park. I went out to eat and bumped into an unfortunate Irish girl (the only other tourist i met) who had been stuck there a week waiting for a road north to open.
The next day i took the Sucre bus which stopped in Samapaita on the way. I justified my decision to fly the reverse route because the bus was in an atrocious condition, seats missing etc, and the window next to me was stuck open so i was happy i wasn´t having to spend 15 hours on it heading all the way to Sucre.

Samaipata was a lovely little town, but i had the same problem that there wasn´t any tourists. Tours to the

Site of Che grave next to Vallegrande airfield

park would have run only for my benefit and cost 100GBP a day in spanish only, which i didn´t want to do. The only tour running the next day (i tried every agency) was a Che Guevara tour. Che spent his last days in southern Bolivia running from the CIA (who didn´t want him overthrowing South American governments as he had done in Cuba) and Bolivian army before being caught and executed for treason. I had the t-shirt a while ago and have read a couple of books by him, so i am pretty interested in him.

It was an expensive and a long day but very interesting. We visited the canyon where he was chased and

Site Che was executed

caught (large memorial marks the spot), the old school building he was executed along with a couple of comrades (full of messages down with imperialism / long live che / love letters to him from confused angry teens etc etc) and the grave where he was dumped anonymously in a military airfield along with several others before being exhumed 30 years later by a Cuban delegation.

There was a German guy with us called Stephan. I had discussed with him on the way my admiration for Germans and the way they travel so extensively so wasn´t surprised that the only other tourist in Samaipata was German, so imagine my amusement when i found out a girl named Tanya buried alongside Che was second generation German...........see! they get everywhere even south american revolutionary groups..........