Buenos Aires!!

We arrived into Buenos Aires on a lovely sunny and hot morning.

We stayed in Palermo, a part of the city reserved for the beautiful people. The area is set amongst lovely green trees, boutique shops and funky restaurants. With our faded, ratty travel chic, we fit right in!

The hours of the city are really strange to us. Restaurants only really begin to pick up in trade at about 10pm. If you are there at 8, the kitchen may not even be open! The weather was great and we did a huge, huge amount of walking. We saw colourful La Boca, where 'hand of god' Maradonna hails from. We wondered around the cemetery for beautiful/famous people - including Eva Perone. We checked out the antique market in San Telmo. The city is quite Parisian in parts, apparently, or so Tash tells me.

Given Buenos Aires is the birthplace of tango and we were keen to experience it for ourselves. Most shows are geared for the tourists, and waaaay out of our budget. So we asked around for some local clubs, and were directed to a nearby club. We walked into a beautifully ornate room, with enormous romantic tango images lining the walls and a dance floor full of beautifully dressed dancers intimately dancing. Any vague notion of us giving it a crack, went straight out the window - there was no way we were getting on that floor!

El Bolson - aka mountain hippy town

After a spectuclar drive through snow capped mountains, we arrived in this small, peaceful town in time for the local hippy market. Decided against the weird spider jewellery, pottery knomes/fairies, organic soy burgers and found a beef burger! (yeah more cow!).

We were both psyched for some hard core white waterrafting. Unfortunately we discovered there was little snow over winter so the river was very low. So rather than a wet ´n´wild adrenaline-ride, we had a stuck-on-another-bloody-rock ride. Still the water was crystal blue and scenery tres pretty...

Now for a 26 hour bus journey to Buenos Aires!

Bariloche

Welcome to Bariloche, a beautifully pictuesque town located on Lago Nahuel Huapi, at the top of the lakes district in upper Patagonia. That will be $5 per breath thanks. Its high season in this area and all the folks getting away from places like Buenos Aires come down here to relax, and the local traders know it. Its for this reason that we decided to look for a way to beat the cost and get some badly needed nature time as well.

A short bus ride later and our 3 day trek into the lakes district mountains had begun. Our plan was to stay in mountain refuges for two nights and walk for three days. And what a plan it turned out to be!!!! We began walking along a track overlooking a beautiful lake under crystal clear skies before headed into the hills, with scenery reminiscent of a Lord of the Rings movie. After what turned out to be a rather hard climb we made the first night´s stop.

This refuge was packed as there is a huge climbable rock face towering over the site. After a rough night sleep in a tightly packed, 26 mattress loft, we headed out on day 2.

Day 2 was by far our most enjoyable day of walking of the whole trip. We went past snow fed lakes, climbed rocky hillsides across snow remnants, slid down 300 metres of loose gravel on descents, spent two hours lounging by a crystal clear stream, climbed over gravely ridge lines and finally made it to another gorgeous lake which the second night`s refuge overlooked.

The water was good enough to drink and extremely clear. We ate a great dinner chatting to a couple of girls from Melbourne, one of which was married to a Brazilian and they were bringing along a small kid! Impressive.

The third day began walking out along a valley and as with the first two days the views were impressive. Once we reached the end of the line, we understood a bus would be taking us back into Bariloche. However as we were to discover about an hour later, that bus hasn´t run for about three years and we managed to share a taxi with a couple from Israel, organised by some local Argentinian boys. Lucky as we were both tired and didn´t fancy the extra 3 hours of walking it would have taken!

Safely returned to Bariloche we headed to the greatest ice cream shop we´ve ever been to. I could have bought the place. Heaven in a cone! Now its on down the line to El Bolson........

Mendoza and one big (well not really) new year.......

We landed in Mendoza, Argentina after a looooonng bus ride feeling that our excercise levels were a little lacking in the recent past. This was good because Mendoza is a town set up for large amounts of walkng, and we did plenty. Our little B&B was situated about 8 blocks from a very picturesque town square, which is about 12 blocks from the bus station. Packs on, we walked the whole way in the morning heat.

Mendoza is actually situated in the desert, but due to river diversion programs that were instituted when the town was founded in the 1800´s there is now plenty of water and so this area is the largest producer of wine in Argentina.

We decided to taste some of the local produce - just about every bottle of vino in Argentina is from this area - and so thought we would ventur outside the city to do a popular wine-bike tour. Sound simple - right?... But not to be.... the bus driver told us to get off the bus, we couldn´t see any vineyards so we started walking, walked 1 hour in heat in one direction, discovered wine town was another hours walk, caught bus to wine town, found info office, told original place where we got off bus was right spot, eventually got bus back to original wine spot, found bike hire place, told all vineyards in area closed literally 5 minutes ago..... So we went to a bottleshop and drowned our disappointment in a local red....

On New Year´s Eve, we were given the ¨hot" place to be. But as we discovered, Argentinians spend time at home with their family/friends and don´t seem to hit the streets and party. Unfortunately the advised "hot spot" was a "quiet spot". Still there was wine, champagne, beef and random fireworks to bring in the new year....