Butch Cassidy, flamingos and a lot of salt

Having passed the border crossing between Argentina and Bolivia with ease (apart from trying to lift our backpacks in the altitude), we carried on to a little town called Tupiza in the south of Bolivia. The town of Tupiza itself isn't that spectacular but it's the surrounding mountains and scenery that really made it worth a visit. . Legend has it that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid met their end at the hands of the Bolivian army near Tupiza and the place certainly had a wild west feel about it. With this in mind, we decided to do a spot of horse riding. We walked to the ranch and when we got there we were given leather chaps and cowboy hats - a good start already! It was just the two of us with a guide and we got to ride out and see some amazing rock formations. The ride was around 3 hours though and by the end our bums had had enough riding for one day!

Tupiza was also the jumping off point for our 4 day tour in to the salt flats of Uyuni Bolivia (Salar de Uyuni). These are the largest salt flats in the world (basically a huge flat salt crust that goes on for miles) and not to be missed when in Bolivia. We set off early one morning in our 4-wheel drive, full of excitement for the trip ahead, little did we know what treats were in store. Along the way we got to see thousands of llamas, thousands more flamingos, lagoons of green, red, white and blue, some incredible space age scenery nicknamed "the Dali desert", a rock balanced like a tree and tons of cactuses. In fact, the salt flats was not even the most impressive thing we saw - although we did get to take some cool perspective pics when we got there. Our car did break down on at least three occasions where we had visions of ourselves being stranded in the weirdest of places but we had an excellent driver who always seemed to be able to fix any problem that could go wrong. Overall, the whole trip was one of the most incredible things we've ever done!

The rest of Chile & Argentina en rapido!

The blog is getting so far behind (at least a month) that we've decided to summarise the rest of our time in Chile and Argentina and get up to where we are now in Bolivia. So here goes:

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:

Over the Andes and into Chile

Ok, pack our stuff, chill out and  have an early night, then we will awake fresh and ready to enjoy the bus from the front windows from Mendoza to Santiago. But, as with all great laid plans something got in the way, in this case....wine. So waking up at 6:30, we grunted at each other, grabbed our bags and slowly put them on our red lobster shoulders, cursing the fact we have pasty British skin that cant accept temperatures over 26 degrees! Trudging to the bus station yawning was not the start I had envisaged. But, as we left Mendoza, my tiredness quickly disappeared and I stayed wide awake for the whole magical journey to Chile (I say I, Fran was too excited from the whole experience once we crossed the border she quickly found herself in her usual bus state....asleep)

Thanks to the DJ set from the suggestion of Boom (thanks mate), I had the perfect soundtrack to take in the amazing snow capped mountains and winding roads. To be honest we were spoilt for views from the first minute til last. I don't think I need to describe the journey in any more detail as the pictures themselves do perfect justice!

Views from the bus journey:

We arrived in Santiago early afternoon and, after our excesses in the Argentinean wine region of Mendoza, we used it as a chance to stop and chill for a few days. The movie channels and takeaway pizza made this quite an easy task! It was a cool place. When we weren't walking up the mountains and gazing back down across the city we spent much of our time wandering the streets. While exploring, we found ourselves buying cheap vintage clothing from the eclectic range in Providencia (and even managed a quick stop off at Topshop to make us feel at home).

Santiago:

Mendoza - wine, wine and more wine

After leaving Cordoba we were really excited to visit Mendoza, vineyard central, to get our wine on! We met up with our aussie friend from BA and made a plan to have a chilled evening ready to go wine tasting the next day at the vineyards. This plan went awry, however, as there was a free wine tasting in our hostel that night (and our hostel gave us free wine every night anyway) - so after learning a little bit about wine they gave us the bottles we were tasting and the early night gave way to us all having a mammoth hangover the next day. So, after a lazy day in Mendoza, we decided the following day to finally head off to the vineyards.The wine tasting here consists of a tipsy bike tour where you rent a bicycle, ride the 10km stretch to the end and then ride back visiting the various vineyards along the way - so much easier to ride when you've had a few wines in you! Throughout the day we managed to fit in three vineyards and an olive oil plantation. The views were incredible, particularly at one vineyard called Mevi where they had panoramic views of the the plantation with the Andes in the background. We returned to the bike rental place at the end of the day (Mr. Hugos) and Mr.Hugo himself gave us glasses of juice and much needed sustinence in the form of crisps. He also walked us on to the bus home giving us a huge hug!

Maipu vineyards: 

We returned to the hostel that night to a huge asado (BBQ) - we ate so much meat with unlimited wine and we could have ended up in a meat coma but we decided to check out the bars in Mendoza with our newly found friends at the hostel. 

The BBQ:

The next day, a little groggy, we went to check out the hot springs up in the mountains. We travelled through winding roads to get there and when we arrived we were not let down by the views. There were various pools ranging from steaming hot to freezing cold (very reviving after a night on the tiles), most of which had imposing views of the mountains behind. 

The hot springs:

We spent a lovely day chilling here before heading back to our last night with an empanada making class - we finally know how to make them ourselves - guess what we'll be cooking for everyone when we get home! 

Empanada making:

Next stop, over the Andes to Chile.

Cordoba

So, with both sadness to leave and excitement to see what lay ahead, we finally decided to pack up and head out of Buenos Aires. We were to go North-West to Cordoba first for a couple of days and then South on to Mendoza. To get to both places though we had the daunting task of catching 10 hour night buses to each one. Usually this kind of bus travel would fill me with dread - particularly after some of the buses I travelled on through China - but bus travel in Argentina is a whole different affair. On both buses we were greeted with giant leather seats and on the bus to Mendoza we travelled in suite class so our seats reclined all the way to a bed where we were served dinner with wine and we got private TVs to watch a movie with two of my faves - Jen Aniston and Adam Sandler - could this get much better! In fact, when they chucked us off the bus at 7.30am I could have done with a few more hours kip.

Bus fun:

We arrived in Cordoba early doors and went to check in to our hostel - unfortunately on this occasion we picked a rotter - our room was more like a prison cell than the lovely private room it described and the hostel was a bit of a shambles. Joel and I had a nap though and went off to explore as the sun was shining but as we walked around, although the place was pretty, it appeared that everything was closed - we put this down to being a Sunday but we woke up the next day to the same fate. Turns out we came to Cordoba on a bank holiday weekend which means nothing open - oops! Cordoba is the second biggest city in Argentina and it's a university town with countless universities and a studenty feel - I can definitely see why people live here it's got a really nice atmosphere. 

Empty Cordoba:

On our second day we took a local bus to a little place called Alta Gracia - this is where Che Guevara used to live when he was a young boy and his house has been turned in to something of a museum. It was very interesting to see some of his personal letters and things he had and they even had a replica of the bike he used as a child in motorcycle diaries.

Che:

On our last day in Cordoba we got to meet up with my friend Bernardo who I met in Asia two years ago. He's from Cordoba so it was a great opportunity to see where the locals go and what they do. He picked us up in his car (a luxury for us travellers) and took us to a lovely place called Carlos Paz which is where all the Cordobans go in the summer for weekends and rent houses for holidays and partying. It was a lot quieter at this time of year but we got to go up the hill on a cable car and see the local cuckoo clock. We also tried some of the Argentinians special cakes called alfajores - yum! We headed back to Cordoba for a little drive around the city and to get a lomito sandwich (basically a giant steak sandwich) before we were to head off on our next bus to Mendoza!

Carlos Paz: