Valparaiso:
After a few days of chilling and shopping in Santiago, we headed up a couple of hours to the port town of Valparaiso. Most of the town is built up in to hills with every building painted in bright colours. It used to be a major port had a golden age when lots of british and europeans settled there but after the panama canal opened up everyone left and some of the beautiful old buildings were left to crumble. It's UNESCO heritage now though so they are doing a lot to protect the architecture. The town also is home to some of the best graffiti in South America. We also got to meet up with some friends we met in Mendoza who are studying there who showed us a night on the town where we got to try the local drinks of pisco sour, piscola and terrimoto (earthquake - basically a blue drink with pineapple ice cream on top - not joel's favourite to say the least). We loved valparaiso for it's bohemian charm, amazing seafood, crazy graffiti and great nightlife.
View from our balcony, drinking terrimoto, piano steps in Valpo:
Bariloche:
When we finally recovered from the hangover of Valparaiso, we made our way down South and back in to Argentina to the Patagonian lake district town of Bariloche. Bariloche charmed us from the minute we arrived, not so much the town which was a kind of copy of a swiss town with little chocolate shops though way too touristy, but for the spectacular scenery that surrounded us. We stayed about 8km outside of town at a little lodge hostel and this turned out to be a very wise decision. We were very close to the playa bonita - a stunning pebble beach on the lake with views to the mountains and everything you want to see is out of town anyway. We spent the next 5 days doing at least 12km of walking a day just taking in the lakes and the mountains. We also had a day to play in the snow as it was the last days of the ski resort being open. I also got to carry a little st bernard puppy and we had photos with the pup and its mum - a highlight for me of the time in Bariloche!
Our hostel, a mirror lake and the St. Bernards in Bariloche:
Puerto Madryn:
Next stop was travelling back East to the coastal town of Puerto Madryn. This is an old welsh colony and you can see this in the nearby town of Gaiman where you can go for a traditional afternoon tea and there is still lots of Welsh signage around. The main draw of Puerto Madryn though is its wildlife. All we had to do was walk up the peer in the town to see southern right whales incredibly close - wow. We also went to see these tiny black and white dolphins indigenous to Patagonia - very cute but very fast to take a photo of! The highlight of our time here though was going to see the Punta Tombo - a Magellan penguin colony which at this time of year we saw around 400,000 penguins (there are over 1million in December). You could actually stand and walk with them without being restricted - we saw penguins protecting their eggs and penguin couples and friends walking around - an incredible experience we will never forget.
The whales, dolphins and penguins at Puerto Madryn:
Buenos Aires:
After our little tour of the South we headed back to the city for a few days to stay with our friend from our Spanish course, this time in the bohemian area of San Telmo. Needless to say, the next few days were full of indulgence in wine (magnum litre bottles of vino tinto), good food, good company and just general fun and relaxation. We managed to get to the Pepsi music festival as well to see the Maccabees but to our dismay festivals in Argentina don't sell alcohol - that's right, they only had pepsi or water and we didn't even think to sneak some in because we thought it would be cheap! That and the fact that Kasabian had to cancel their performance didn't make it the best festival ever but we met some new friends that were studying in BA who we got to hang out with later so one positive! It was sad to say goodbye to BA which feels like home now but we had to carry on up north to see what other treats were in store.
The Maccabees and fun in BA:
Iguazu:
Next stop, iguazu falls, a "must-see" destination in Argentina. Iguazu falls has been described as a much larger version of Niagara. Arriving at the park itself we were slightly disappointed. It is a very touristy place - there were huge tour buses full of people and the whole place is paved or has wooden walkways so therefore we never really had any of the waterfalls or other bits of nature to ourself. It was amazing though to see the sheer force of the main waterfall, the garganta del diablo (devil's throat) - it would have been scary to be so close had we not been surrounded by argentinian grannys!
The falls:
Tilcara:
After Iguazu, we knew we needed to start heading up towards Bolivia as we needed to be in Sucre on the 5th November to start our volunteering. We originally planned to stay in Salta but realised that it is just another city unless you rent a car and drive outside (which we didn't have time to do) so we decided to keep heading north to the far north Argentinian village of Tilcara (about a 30hr journery nonetheless). Tilcara is a little village in the Andes with only about 5,000 inhabitants and at a 2,500m altitude, we started to feel the effects when we tried to carry our backpacks uphill to our hostel! Tilcara has loads to offer, it has views of 7 colour mountains, lots of walks and our hostel was so friendly. On the first night we had an asado with everyone, using our limited spanish to make conversation, and then headed out to a bar to see some traditional panpipe music and after a few bottles of wine those argentinians really get you doing some crazy dancing. The next day on a hangover we decided to do a 3 hour trek - not a great idea considering the altitude left us gasping for air - good practice for bolivia and machu picchu in Peru though! The trek itself was nice but the ending was a disappointing waterfall and a pretty dangerous canyon path! It was nice to see a bit of northern Argentina but we had to keep on to get to Bolivia.
Panpipes, dancing and giant cactuses:
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