So here I am back in Buenos Aires for the 4th time this trip and am eagerly awaiting the arrival of my friend Andrea tomorrow. Its been a few weeks since Andrew left Anthony and I and we headed down to the Lakes District with all intentions of making our way down south. Unfortunatley the weather had different ideas for the 2 of us. When we got to Barriloche we didn´t mind the cold weather as our plan was to simply cook, eat and sleep for a few days and enjoy being out of the city. However when the cold turned to snow and it turned into a freakish cold snap in the south we turned back to the north. And it was back to Mendoza to enjoy the sunshine for a few days. I know this photo doesn´t appear to be very warm and it wasn´t. Anthony and I took a day trip out of Mendoza to the biggest mountain in Argentina, close to 7000mts and we forgot to bring coats, needless to say we only managed a walk to this natural rock formed bridge and didn´t make it on the walk to the lookout of the mountain. Luckily it looked amazing from the bus and it wasn´t a complete waste of an 8hr return trip on the bus before we caught another 12hr night bus back to Buenos Aires.
Now Anthony had plans to head up to Iguazu falls and then onto Brazil so I decided that it would be nice to head to Uruguay and catch some sun on the beach. After a brief stopover in Buenos Aires for the 2nd time, meeting some good fun English people there were 3 of us that set off in search of some more sun. And basically that was really all that we did for 4 days, sun, pool and more sleep. You´d think I´d get bored of all the relaxing but I just don´t think that it´s possible. Had Anthony known I was going to make friends with such a hot English girl he just might have taken a different route.
Again I had my new found friends leave me in search of these waterfalls and I was making my way back to Buenos Aires to catch a plane down south. I had decided before I left the city the last time that I was heading down to the Patagonia no matter what and was just going to cross my fingers for good weather. Now having no set plans whilst I had a day to kill in Buenos Aires I thought I´d just pop to the Brazilian Embassy and enquire about visa (previous to this I had made firm plans about not going due to the cost and restriction on time I would have) but I thought it can´t hurt to check things out. As fate would have it, on the way there I literally ran into Anthony on the street (he was in town for 1 day waiting for a bus to go down south) and over our usual McDonalds ice-cream we discussed Brazil where he had just come from and once again it was decided that I definately wasn´t going, funny how things work out. So after a few hours catch up it was time to say goodbye to my friend (turns out this wasn´t going to be the last time in this trip) and it was a 5am flight the next day to El Calafate.
Now the reason that people visit this particular area is soley to see the Moreno Glacier. And I truely think for the first time in my life something was as amazing as everyone says it is, and its as incredible as all the pictures look. It was by far for me the best thing I´ve seen on this trip. I´ll let the pictures do the talking.
A long way from home............................
Then the next day I headed off to an area called El Chalten, famous for the mountains and walks, so naturally this is where I was next to see Anthony- an ever so slightly annoyed Anthony at his unenjoyable 40hr bus ride down, tried telling him that the plane wasn´t all that but he wasn´t having a bar of it. Secretly I was loving it, sometimes its hard mot to take joy in other people suffering:) On my first day there I walked with a different English girl I had met in El Calafate and we walked in the snow for 7 hrs, not something I´d highly recommend to people, obviously the visibility was non existent and basically it was freezing. This was the path for nearly the whole day.
So the next day I booked myself in the do a hike on the glacier, a different one from 2 days before, it was a bigger glacier but not quite as nice to look at. Im terrible with remembering names of things but I think its called Viedma Glacier. It was harder work than I thought it would be, and the ice was different to what I thought too, again I´ll let the pictures explain. It was a nice finish to the trip to have a bailey´s on ice on the ice!
Cliff Hanger eat your heart out.................................................
mmmm baileys..................
Which brings me to yesterday which was pretty much a hikers dream, not a cloud in the sky and visibility was perfect, so Anthony and I set off to see some mountains, other than the pair of us having dodgy knees and Anthony also with his hip, we didn´t have a single thing to complain about. We finished the day off with the most delightful dinner, we have been in search of the perfect steak in this country for over a month now and we´re pretty sure we found it last night, of course it was followed by a cheeky desert. I know most of you think its just girls that have sweet tooths and love their chocolate but between the 2 of us I hate to even think how many kilos of Cadbury´s chocolate we have demolished in the last month. I was sad to say bye to Anthony but my waistline sure as heck wasn´t.
So thats me, more than ever I´ve realised how much I love the country compared to cities and had the greatest time in the south of Argentina. After a few days in the city with Ange we´ll be off to Iguazu falls (finally) so stay tuned..............
So thats me, more than ever I´ve realised how much I love the country compared to cities and had the greatest time in the south of Argentina. After a few days in the city with Ange we´ll be off to Iguazu falls (finally) so stay tuned..............
