Patagonia, Wine district, Mendoza and Chile

Hola!



Its been a while and we've done a lot in that time so think this is gonna be a bit of a long one sorry!!



We've got on out first internal flight in Argentina and headed South to a place called El Calafete the flight took 5 hours so it shows how big a country Argentina is!! We arrived in what was probably a one roomed building absolutly tiny and when you stepped outside the airport (if you can call it that) there was nothing to be seen! We got on a trusty minibus which took us to our hostel! We don't really know what we were expecting but it was like a big open space with a couple of houses dotted around with a view of an amazing blue lake! Our hostel was really nice and to our surprise they were putting on free dinner!yey! For dinner that night it was cottage pie which we thought was great. However, we didn't have the usual peas or carrots with it. They had rice! They do love to carbo load and all argentinians still remain skinny! (I hate them!!) We got an early night as the next day we were to do our mini trekking on the glacier!



8am we got picked up by the bus and it was still dark outside, it took an hour and 20 mins to get the glacier by which is had only just got light when we got there! We got on a boat which would take us across a lake. We went on the top of the deck to hopefully get good views but after about 5 seconds we couldn't handle the wind or the rain so it was very short lived! we were met the otherside by our guide 'Carlos'. We had all the clothing to do the trekking i.e warm jackets, hats etc. But we were missing gloves. We had met a northern couple who had done the trek the day before and said they asked to borrow some gloves and they were lent them so we thought we'd do the same! Nic asked Carlos if there was anyway we could borrow some and he turned around and said 'No, you were told to bring all your own clothing'! Following this response he gave a little talk about the glacier and said 'its very important to wear gloves as the ice can be sharp!!' we were thinking thanks Carlos!! Luckily we were fine though and there were no tumbles! The trek was awesome. We were given proper grampons which proved to be very difficult to walk in as you had to walk like John Wayne to avoid tripping over! We were on the ice for about 1 1/2 hours and our reward at the end was a glass of whiskey with freshly chipped ice from the glacier and a chocolate! ( the only problem was, niether nic or i liked whiskey).



After the trek we were back on the boat where we went to a viewing platform whereby you could see how big the glacier really was! (it was bigger than the size of Buenos Aires and BA was big!) Very cold and tired we were out cold sleeping on the bus on the way back and i woke up to forget where i was! We had another free dinner that night but unfortunately got landed talking to the most annoying couple in the world! The girl was from London and boy from Hereford! I couldn't believe Herefordshire could produce such a wanker! They both went to Warwick therefore spoke down to us considering we only did sports science ( in nic's case sports coaching haha!) and banged on about how great peru and bolivia were and couldnt believe we didn't go there! We swiflty made excuses that we had to go to bed and escape the patronising conversation!



The next day we were organising our next move which we soon found out the bus would take 28 hours!! all because one road was closed because it was coming into winter!! But it was gonna be a comfy bus and we hoped for english speaking films again! we got on to find most of the people on their were travellers which was pretty cool! 6 films later and hours and hours of deserted landscape we eventually found our selves in our next destination Bariloche!



We arrived to again more rain and it was 10 o clock at night so we got a taxi to the hostel! We soon found out when we got in there was no seat belts! After this we realised the driver speedometer didn't work and when were were probably going about 70 miles an hour he thought it was a good idea to answer his phone!!! We were very happy to arrive at our hostel to say the least! After a good nights sleep we were pleasantly surpirsed when we came out to breakfast to see a fantastic view of a lake!! On a quite a nice day we thought we would we would be active and go on a famous bike tour of the 7 lakes ( which is what makes Barlioche famous). We were told the distance was 27km which was a scary thought to begin with but they were pretty good mountain bikes with 24 gears and thought we'd stop off for a nice lunch etc. After about 5 km I was pushing my bike up the hill!! ( Yes i know what you're thinking we're sporty we're supposed to be fit, but not hills like we were doing on gravel!!) After about 7 km we were very happy to stop for a hamburger and homemade chips for lunch in a quaint swiss little village. We sampled some homemade beer then were on our bikes again! After lots of pedalling, pushing the bikes up hills and some spectacular views I was more than happy to reach the bike shop and hand the bike back!!!



That night we realised that we were very much hurting from the lack of cushioning on the seats and headed out for some drinks with a scottish and geordie lad to num the pain!! We soon realised we've been out of uni for too long and could not keep up with their drinking pace!!! especially when it was more homemade 10% beer! We played some cards and soon got kicked out of the pub to head home for a goods nights sleep before being active again the day after!!



The next day was the day nic would overcome his fear of horses!! We booked to go on a 2 hour horse trek! We thought we would come to some big stables etc! but no, there was just one man with about 12 horses attached to a tree! The demonstration was very short considering most of us were novice riders!! It consisted of hold onto the reigns and kick the horse! After this he even gave us a stick!



Luckily the horses tended to follow the one in front but this also meant when the one in front trotted your horse started to trot! It was all my luck I got stuck behind an Israelly girl who didn't like hurting animals, therefore didn't use the stick or kick the animal!!! The path was really narrow and I couldn't get past!! No matter how much our guide shouted at her 'use the stick' her horse was happily walking along!! I took it into my own hands to kick my horse as much as possible which made her horse run as well! We eventually caught up with the rest of the group! We climbed up a pretty steep mountain to an amazing view and on the way back down, feeling a little more confident we trotted and cantered a lot more!!



That night we had a couple of drinks with two irish lads which came horse riding. The beer was quite expensive in the hostel bar so we soon moved onto the red wine (which was an error). We woke up very hungover the next and awaited our bus to the next destination.

We got on the bus at 4pm and it was going to take in total 17 hours! We had a very chirpy steward and about 4 hours into the journey he brought round bingo cards!! Although after realising we didn't speak much spanish he put the tray of numbers on nic's lap so we could see what numbers he pulled out of the bag!! Sadly we didn't win being very competitive we were disappointed to miss out on the prize which was a flask!

We arrived in Mendoza (wine district). The first day we walked around the city which wasn't a lot and stopped for steak for lunch! and that night we headed to a pizza party organised by the hostel!! After all you can eat pizza there was free tequila shots and lots of (dodgy) argentine music!! We didn't drink too much considering we were going on a wine tour the next day.

We rented bikes and headed to our first winery, where we had a tour of how wine was made etc and how you are meant to taste it!! We now like to think we are wine experts but that was after a few glasses of malbec!! We also went to a chocolate and liquor place and further wineries one of which we had the best steak sandwich ever!! After what seemed like a very informative day we went to bed fairly early ready for a further day of travelling the day after.

The next day we headed to Chile on an amazing ( hair raising) bus journey over the Andes. We arrived in a very nice hostel and had our daily siesta and headed out for dinner. We asked the guy in the hostel what some traditional Chilean dishes were and one consisted of Chips, fried onion, fried egg and a sirloin steak so that was a definate choice for us and we even shared it and could barely finish it!! The next day we did pretty much the only thing there is to do in Santiago which is to go up a cable car. Which was pretty high and because Santiago is so polluted you could see where there was a layer of smog over the city!

Today we are just wasting time before catching our flight to Auckland, where we will most definately be happy to be able to have conversations with natives in english!!

So Part 1 of our trip ( South America) is over and we're definately looking forward to the rest!!

Nic and Jen