Argentina

Got back here again on our way through to Santiago. Went out immediately to get laundry done then spend the rest of ourfirst evening in our favourite brewery wasting away the time drinking homebrew and playing cards. Off to Chile tomorrow

Only stopped here one night to wait for our next bus. However turns out the whole world had as well and I got turned away from 9 hotels before finding a place to stay. Nothing else to say, didn´t go out except to check the football on the internet.

Finally got off the busses in this town in Argentinian Patagonia. The whole place is basically set up to visit the Moreno Glacier, which is one of the worlds biggest, or most active or something like that glacier in the world.

The whole place was pretty busy so we ended up staying in a 4 bed dorm rather than a hotel room. Not much to say about the town itself, pretty enough, but the Glacier was amazing. You get up really close and then watch in amazement as bit of it fall into the water surrounding it. We even got to go on a boat to look up at it, but the driver didn´t get us very close as I think he was worried of bit of ice falling on the ship. Amazing photos, although hard to describe - Massive - Icy? that about sums up my description. Rach reckons this is the most amazing and beautiful natural thing she has ever seen, which goes some way to showing how amazing it was.

Apart from that nothing else to say about the place

Got to Bariloche in the Lake District of Argentina a few days before New Year. The whole area is stunning, mountains, forests, lake, probably the most beautiful place I have ever been to.

Spent the first day relaxing before going for a hike up one of the hills. There was a cable car but I made us walk up as It cost 5 USD each! Although the views were amazing the walk wasn`t, they have these flies that are as big as your thumb here and don`t go away when you swat them, you have to kill them! When we got to the top it was such an awful walk that to get back down we snuck onto the cable car as they were not checking tickets. On the way home went to a local brewery and sampled all the local beer they brewed

Being the "adventure capital" of Argentina we went White Water Rafting the next day, not bad although try as hard as I could I couldn`t get the guide to flip the raft either acidentally or on purpose (the Americans onboard din`t think this was funny) so we will have to do it again in New Zealand. That evening we had a chocolate fondue as this place is alegedly world renown for its chocolate - Rach loved it.

Third day we went for a long hike through the forrests and hills surrounding the area before heading into town for New Years Eve. Rach was badgering me to hurry up and leave the hostel as it was nearly 9pm, but when we got to town amazingly everthing was shut! We hadn`t been told about this and it came as a surprise to find all the bars closed, bars closed on New Years Eve! Found one bar open but all the tables were reserved for a set meal so we just sat at the bar drinking. However we had no idea how we were going to eat until we got drunk and Rach had the great idea of asking if we could have the set meal at the bar. After some delibertaion they said yes but it was all such an anticlimax. Even after midnight (no chimes, no old langs aye, no kissing or dancing in circles) the town was still pretty deserted, seems all the locals go to their homes for parties so I have no idea what all the tourists did unless all the hotels lay on events. When we got up today still nothing was open, we cannot even buy water from the corner shop!

Anyway we are off to El Califate today down in Patagonia to see some glaciers do some hiking and go camping for a couple of week.

Following the bus journey we got in at 7am! Because the hotels wouldn´t be ready and we new BA so well we took a bus from the station to our hotel - almost like locals now!

The day was spent recovering from the journey before Rach went for Dental Surgery the next day! 3 hours of root canal followed by 3 hours of exploratory surgery the next day and to be honest we spent the next few days just hanging out in bed recovering.

I won´t spoil Rach´s story by telling you what happened, but finally her brace has been removed and she can smile nicely. Unfortunately the repair is only temporary as we have to wait and see if her body rejects what has been done (it was such a high-tec surgery, they took blood from her arm and mixed it with plasma and bone harvested from elsewhere in her mouth to fix the damage! I´d like to see your local UK dentist do that!)

Met more friends in BA and hung out, so I´ll just summarise what we did whilst waiting for the dentist to OK the surgery and let us travel (we went to the dentist almost everyday). I had more Spanish lessons, we ate Parilla, had Tango lessons (I can´t dance, official) watched a Tango and dinner show, went drinking till 5am (naughty Rachel), saw Evitas grave. Basically BA is fan-bloody-tastic

Caught a plane and flew to Chile!