BuggslifePhotography, Homebrew, Canoe, Travel, Nature…

We’ve covered a hell of a lot of ground now having passed back up through Argentinian Patagonia and just crossed into Chile the other day.

This picture says a few things about Patagonia…

Long straight roads, vastness and broken windscreens! I only noticed one which wasn’t broken so far. Most are so knackered up it’s mad. This one is typical and is from the top deck of a bus we took.

What the pic doesn’t say is how incredibly big and deep blue the skies here have been.

Oh yeah, a new hitch-hiking experience. We had some more success last week hitchin from Perito Moreno to the nearest town 60km away. On the way there Clare got the comfort and warmth of a front seat and I got the open bit of a big pick up. Twas cool to have 360 degrees views. I loved it but was lucky I had my hardcore snowboard jacket and snowboard gloves on me as the Patagonian wind was icy as!

Nice town too – Los Antiguos – on a river and huge lake.

On the way back a cool well chilled dude gave us a lift in his car, chatting about clubbing in England and stuff.

Since then we left the comfort of our own pad and are in fantastic surroundings in Chile. This current town – Coyhaique – has mountainess views on all sides which are cool as they all have patches of forest of different autumnal colours.

I’m in Perito Moreno (the town rather than the glacier) at the moment and have just had a great week.

First of all, we managed to blag the coolest pad to stay. It’s a cabin (kind of flat/apartment) all to ourselves! With 3 double bedrooms and a spare single, bathroom, big hallway room, a cool kitchen with 2 tables and even our own garden! You can’t appreciate your own time and space until you’ve been staying in other people’s for 6 weeks. And all of this at a rate cheaper if not the same as hostels we’ve been staying at. Sweeeeet.

From here we made a 2 day trip with a local guide (Daniel – a big, friendly bloke with a big beard and a gaucho hat). We drove for ages in his huge pick-up (with loads of features including a snorkel for the engine so it can keep going when submerged), maybe 3-4 hours, to a lake I read about before Xmas – Lago Posadas. It was really cool as the landscpae is full of loads of different colours, deep reds, sandy yellows, turquoise everywhere you look.

Two lakes are divided by a narrow bit of land (an isthmus I´m told) but the lakes are both quite different colours themselves. We spent time fascinated by the different stones and pebbles, setting up camp on the isthmus, walking, a little bit of fishing (spinning) and, of course, making a fire. Later we cooked up a feast on the fire including Daniel’s freshly caught trout! Mmmmmmmmm.

During the evening it was real peaceful being 30km from the nearest village – population 290.

The next day, after our routine transport problems that seem to happen every Weds (the motorbike at the horse trek and the miserable hitch hiking) of the pick-up’s battery being dead and not being able to push start it due to thick mud from the all night rain (luck came from a jump start later), we made our way towards the cave of the hands. The journey away from the lake was classic pushing the pick-up to the limit; slipping and skidding through the thick mud and deep puddles.

A few hours later we were passing through the awesome valley and started seeing a lot of guanacos (similar ish to llamas) and ostriches (local name choique). The caves are mostly overhanging cliffs but also one big cave that were used by idigenous indians (Telheulche) who painted the images using the different earth colours mixed with water and fat from guanacos. It was fantastic to see them all, mostly pairs of hands but also maps of guanaco trails, an iguana, guanaco figures, hunting scenes, even an ostrich hoof print and dots made by dipping animal droppings in the paint and throwing them up at the overhangs! The oldest paintings are dated at 9,300 years old.

We also walked along the river in the canyon basin and saw cool tucu tucus (rodents that look like big gerbils – kind of), a condor and an eagle.

A cool 2 day venture getting us back to our pad late the 2nd day.

We spent some time at Ushuaia on (the island) Tierra del Fuego – have a look at a map, it’s mad when you look at how south it is. Often referred to as the End of the World it’s the last stop before Antartica.

We had a good time here. The town is reasonably touristy, nice shops and good atmosphere. It’s on a slope starting from the bay so you get good little views around town with the mountains rising up to the north.


We did 2 separate day treks; the first up one of the mountains with the whole scenery plastered with deep snow. So some great, tranquil sights and landscape…but…some damn hard, icy, wet terrain. The view from the top was worth it and the sliding down slopes and the immense snowball fights on the way down were great fun. Although the last half hour was a bit of a race for a heated room to prevent frostbite.

The second trek took us through some of my favourite surroudings with a few different forests and a general path following a river up another mountain, so we had some cool rope bridges to cross. One well scary, high up but luckily quite short. All this led to a small glacier at the top that was kind of stuck in the highest cliffs.

After the stay here we had our first taste of hitch hiking in South America…

We did well to get 3 separate lifts, the first a quick one to the police check point on the edge of town, 2nd to nowhere – just nothing there – the third was the life saver. It was probably the most miserable day so far weather-wise – drizzly, cold and WINDY. The 3rd car was 2 Spanish guys who had rented it for the day, they were cool and took us to the next town. From there we cornered a minibus cab thing and paid a bit to get to the next town where, at least, there was accommodation. Rio Grande.

This horse trek was great fun! We got picked up by Luciano early and drove out to an Estancia (farm estate) way out towards a lake (Lago Roca). A slow start; after finding out there were no horses in the stable, failing to get the motorbike started after push starts down a hill, wondering about the Estancia getting headbutted by a resident sheep and exploring with the local pair of cool dogs, Luciano returned with a small horse from a few fields away. He saddled him up and then rode off again with the dogs and returned with a herd of horses!

So, we eventually had a horse each, Remanco (calm) for me, Caballito (little horse) for Clare and Montana for Luciano. We then spent the rest of the day trekking up hills (stopping occasionally for another swig of Cognac!) and around a lake and saw a couple of cool foxes, flamingos, loads of birds of prey and a couple of huge hares.


We also saw fantastic cave paintings from the indigenous indians who used to live in the area.

A great day out finished off with a BBQ, Argentinian style, of the best steak we have had so far and plenty of wine.

Perito Moreno is an awesome Glacier and one of the most active in the world. It advances at a rate of 2m per day! The first echoing crack was a shock and we heard plenty more throughout the day and saw chunks break off.

I took loads of photos but can’t seem to get them onto the blog (managed this one!)but they’ll have their own album on Snapfish soon(ish).

A quick overview (by someone else) of the glacier with photos can be read here…

Plucked from the shallows of Lake Tonchek in the shadow of Cerro Catedral, this stick proved a great companion and aide during the 3 day trek.

We arrived in Bariloche Saturday 1st April after a 20 hour bus ride. It is a nice town on one of the 7 major lakes in this area. Here is the view from our hostel balcony:
On the 2nd day we went out into the mountains a bit to have a look around and ended up trekking for 5 hours through a peaceful nature park…

We have done loads since this and will update when I can.

From Buenos Aires we travelled south to the coast. Mar Del Plata is your typical seaside resort style town. Its not the prettiest but was good fun and a nice break from the huge city of BA.

Just by the beach were a load of pensioners playing this disc game. Unfortunately members only…

It feels like these cows have followed me around the world, even though I have only seen them in two cities now…

Saying that, this lot were all different to those in Bratislava.

We spent Saturday night out and about in BA including a visit to a cemetry for families of high social status or people who are just plain rich. It is a walled of area with loads of different tombs along the streets. Most are old, grand and detailed but there are a few modern, shiny marble ones.

Cool fact: the tomb space costs more per square meter than in the nearby expensive area of town Palermo!

This is a photo taken from within one of the tombs:

Saturday night we went to see a superb Tango show in San Telmo. It was in a cool basement room with walls of just showing brick, completely different to the grand, fancy restaurant and hotel upstairs.

The band consisted of a huge double bass, an accordian and piano. The show was a mix of dancing, drumming and acting based around a basic story full of passion driven by lust, jealousy and typical Argentian front.

Although all photos have, so far, been taken by me; I was advised not to take my camera (or anything of value!) to this match and so the pictures in this entry have been randomly borrowed and are not necessarily from this particular game.

Simply put – this city is nuts!

It’s dusty, well noisy, really busy in traffic and people, vibrant and fantastic!

We spent the first 3 nights staying at a hostel in San Telmo, which is the old side of town and is associated with being the Tango quarter. The streets are all old looking, cool antique / junk shops, mini art galleries, local cafes, restobars…you get the gist. It’s a cool place to walk about, go for dinner (no earlier than 11pm though!) or check out some bars. I really like the area but our hostel is also a restobar downstairs and is unbelievably noisy. The rooms have shutter style high doors, really high ceilings and feature almost nothing more than two beds pushed together and a sink. There are areas where you can see directly down to the bar from the landing with only some netting between you and the people eating, drinking and talking (the locals’ version of drunken talking here is pretty much as loud as I can shout). It was fine for midweek as we went out until fairly late anyway but we were warned not to expect to sleep before 7 or 8 am during the weekend and last night (Thurs) was a good taster of that (it quietened down about 6ish).

So, we’ve moved on to a place in the more northern side of town, partly to give us the option of sleep in case we don’t stay out as late as we plan tonight and tomorrow but also to see a new side of the city. This city is huge with loads of areas with their own characters.

What have we been doing? Right, we spent hours going around La Boca Tues looking for ways of getting a ticket for Sunday’s match – Boca Vs River. No luck. Members only! By the way, I quote from the Lonely Planet about the area (barrio) of Boca “The worst neighbourhoods you, as a tourist, will encounter are La Boca (stick to those few tourist streets like glue, even in daylight)…”. We got lost twice and trekked most of the area and it wasn’t all that bad. Don’t ‘always’ believe the hype. More details will follow about Boca next week but I HAVE GOT A TICKET.

Like good tourists, we also checked out the main squares and stuff on the first day and joined the masses for the ritual of lunch. A real big deal here. We’ve had some good meals and some average. A Uruguayan restobar had good food – one was thin chicken wrapped around ricotta and other good fillings which I couldn’t work out and the other was close to a big fry-up style bap. Tasty. Plus the beer was good and cheap – 1.20 pounds for 1 litre.

That reminds me, Buenos Aires is very very cheap. That meal I mentioned was 5 pound for 2 main meals plus 2 litres of beer.

We also sampled a few big bifes (various types of steak). Most have tasted awesome, perfect texture but they also tend to have too many fatty bits for my liking. Especially one I picked up from an asado on the street by the river. There are loads along this big stretch, little stalls with a tent style roof, painted sign and huge BBQ with monster slabs of beef cooking on them. By the time I had dissected my way through that one I was covered in grease and sauce. The sauces, however, have been consistently quality. Chimichurri is my favourite so far – fresh herbs, garlic, chilli and oil. Works a treat.

Best wrap this up. The meals have been mostly really good, the bars great, the weather real good but real hot and humid even though around only 27C temperature.

The new hostel is more intimate and we can use the kitchen and the roof terrace which is sweet as! I’m gusselling a bottle of red wine right now, we splashed out on a more expensive bottle at 1.20 (pounds) and are going to cook for the first time and enjoy it on the roof. Then off out to check a new area of bars we’ve ben told about…

Yesterday me and Jordi had an afternoon out at the turtle sanctionary and then at the beach. The sanctuary’s pretty cool, as you might expect they rescue turtles and if possible release them in the future.

A couple of the turtles’ names caught my eye…

…firstly Bentley looking as aged as always…

…and also Jonah…

…some strong resemblances eh.

After the Molly entry I have now been informed by my cousin, Jordan, about the other pets that she can remember them having…..

“All the ones I remember having…a snake, an iguana, 4 turtles, 2 guineau pigs….ok….”
Jordan lists these off whilst making me feel ill because she’s bouncing up and down on a giant space hopper…

“4 dogs, yep, 4 dogs, ummmm, 4 cats, 2 hamsters” she is now making me dizzy by pacing round and round the room whilst thinking of any others…

“I had a slug for a pet for a day. And I had 2 millworms. It’s a worm that turns into a bug.”

“That’s it.”

Meet Molly; one of the local resident pets at my Uncle Chris’ house in Florida along with another – much more butch – Rotweiler called Rascal, a very vocal and chatty cat named Sooty, a more elusive moggy by the name of Magic plus numerous other non-residents including lizards, frogs, birds and some omni-eating squirrels.