South/Cental America #3 - Argentina

1. Puerto Madryn
2. Bariloche
3. San Martin

Photos: Argentina

All,

Well I guess all good things come to an end.....

After three weeks of glorious sunshine in some of the harshest environments in the world the weather finally turned against us and has now pretty much rained for the past two weeks. Since leaving the non existent Orca’s (only showed up for 2 of the past 18 days) we have been in Puerto Madryn, Bariloche and now in San Martin waiting for a bus to take us to the coast and Mar del Plata.

So how did we get here? Well after waiting for 5 hours for a big fish we ran into some guys (Dalius and Jay) that we met in El Chaiten and they offered us a ride in the Green Hornet’ their two seater mini-van. Well Jay was heading off to Buenos Aires and thus made room for us. After saying good bye to Mark and Eugene after a couple of restful days in Puerto Madryn, Dalius swung by the hostel and drove us straight back across the country to the beautiful lakes district and the main town Bariloche....only problem is that we arrived at 4am, so after some amazing flexibility shown by Matt and his koala like ability to sleep in any situation (he fell asleep around the gear stick with two 80 litre packs balancing on him) we managed some rest.

Bariloche and the lakes district are the ski towns of Argentina and in fact the best in South America, the great towns all have fantastic buildings modelled on Swiss chalets, wood work everywhere and the wealth floating around ski towns is always a welcome comfort compared to the other towns in S.A. 1t is here that we embarked on some Spanish lessons, from 8:30 – 12:30 and then 6 – 8:30 for 4 days we plugged away at the lessons making many mistakes but learning a lot, if only we could remember something. In the afternoons we had some activities organised and went to the museum, rode the green tube of death, almost killed myself on a downhill toboggan ride, went to an atomic plant and went for a rock climb one day with Dalius who had all of the gear in the car.

Well with classes over we took off for a couple of drinks on the Friday night and managed to have the best steak in the world (Albertos – after 9 different individual recommendations ), followed by a trip to an Irish pub (why are they in every town?) and then back to the hostel for some interesting card games. That morning we decided it was time to go and after 3 hours sleep we were back in the green hornet with a new passenger (Fiona - from Scotland, sorry Jon she does not know you) and heading up through the lakes district and San Martin. Well fitting three was a struggle so 4 was even harder but the car makes for an exciting ride, and luckily enough Fi is a physio......

Well San Martin is even more beautiful than Bariloche, shame that it has the same weather. With the following rain pattern and reports of it hanging around, we took a trip to the hot springs (Matt had been hanging out for this for about a month after I mis-read something and promised another place with hot springs) we are off to the coast where a promise of beach side living 35 degree days and a strong desire to get rid of the pasty white skin, piles of jumpers and get into the surf again has us wanting to drive the bus ourselves.

But at the same time it is a little sad as Dalius is off to BA and then blazing the way for us in Brazil, Fi has left for Santiago, but by the looks of things we may be meeting Dalius and Jay somewhere in Brazil, if not we are meeting up for a ski on 15th June and then meeting Fi in Ecuador, so all good.

Weather a side though we still love it over here, any time you can order 6 schooner size G&T’s for $14 is good by us. The locals are great; there is still millions of Israeli s running around just to let all chocoholics out there know this place has to be No. 1 for chocolate in the world.

All for now, speak to you soon when we are sitting on the beach drinking pinna-coladas.