The Lake District

San Carlos de Bariloche (Barry to it's friends) is the start of Patagonia on the west side of Argentina and after a paltry 19hr bus ride the difference in temperature and air quality was apparent. 

Our first hostel with heating that worked was welcome as after a few days hiking around the lakes and mountains in autumn sun, the nights felt cold.  We spent a great couple of days schlepping around lakes and mountains, I went on my first ever ski lift (not quite as hateful as a cable car but still being swung off a high piece of wire is not fun), and Chris didn't enjoy cooking our own food in the hostel (his worst meal in 7 months, the first one with anything other than carbs in it for me). 

Other than the incredible scenery in this heavily Swiss influenced city (will let the pics speak for themselves) it's worth mentioning the black market/blue dollar system in Argentina. 

Economic crises after economic crises has led to the peso being at times worthless, and the dollar being highly sought after. As such every backpacker knows that it the month before entering the country you withdraw as many dollars as the random ATMs in neighbouring countries will dispense (Chile useless, Bolivia pretty good) and change them for a better rate on the street (currently 25% higher than the official exchange rate but has been up to 50% in the last 12 months).  To do this illegal transaction you ask anyone in the town where to head, then go to (typically) a city centre street where a group of men will shout 'cambio?' At every passing gringo.  You negotiate the rate (shouted at full volume), then follow a Cambio man into a nearby shop (in our experience often jewellery shops) where the owner will produce a fat roll of pesos and the deal is done.

Some streets are so full of illegal cash exchanges the police stand outside to ensure no-one gets robbed whilst breaking the law. 

Typically South American to be so brazen, and for the police to be in on it, but helpful to budget travellers navigating one of most expensive countries on the continent. 

Hostel wisdom (thank you Gus & Carla) informed us that contrary to our belief we could still get a lot further south as the winter weather doesn't shut down towns/tours and transport until the beginning of May.  30hour bus trip to El Calafate booked - glaciers here we come. 

Mendoza. One for the road?

Mendoza. The city where a bottle of incredible Malbec costs $3. The city where it'd be rude not to with every meal. The city where a lot of people (or one at least) get so drunk on their first night they're sick ( proper teenager first night out ever sick) for the next 24 hours.  After 7 months of not much booze, my drinking tolerance is diminished to say the least. 

But we're in Mendoza so one must push through the pain and work harder so we booked in to  Maipu, home of the wineries and bodegas, for 3 days of intense training. 

The done thing in Maipu is to hire a bike and cycle from bodega to bodega enjoying the educational wine tours and the sampling sessions. With this in mind we had visions of French-style countryside, lanes with tipsy cyclists ambling from site to site and vineyard picnics.  The reality is an incredibly busy road dominated by trucks and buses with intoxicated tourists (as much though diesel fumes as wine) desperately trying to keep balance on a bike with no brakes, gears, and invariably after a few hours of cycling, air in the tyres. 

Once off the main road though, the vineyards are lovely and the family run boutique ones especially (some only making 90k bottles a year) give great tours and tasting sessions for a couple of dollars.  Day one of touring was quite civilised - we got home around 8.30 after a wobbly ride home in the dark (with a stray dog running alongside us the whole way- chris thought this was funny but I suspected it was mental and probably had rabies) having learned quite a bit, and drank quite a bit more.  Day 2 however got a little out of hand. 

We started at mid-day with a terrifying cycle to the furthest vineyard, listened to the guide telling us pretty much the same as we'd heard the day before, and went on to the tasting.  Learning from the previous day when it became apparent that not many places do food, we took advantage of this bodega having a restaurant so ate lunch. And had a bottle of red with it. 

From there it was only a short cycle to 2 more bodegas. One of which had the standard 3 glasses included approach, but the other had a tasting placemat so you could keep track of every wine you'd tried.  Clearly this made it a challenge and being competitive types we drank our way through each variety until we'd won.   Then, as the sun had come out and it was a nice  view, we had a bottle of red. 

On route to the next venue Chris got a puncture so we phoned Shouting Mario, the morbidly obese bike-rental man, who bellowed his way to us with a new bike. By the time he reached us though we'd decided we were bored of cycling so he agreed to load all 3 bikes on his car and drive us to another tasting bar instead.  As a gesture of good will he then bought us a bottle of red. 

Chatting with 3 lovely Americans we'd seen at the first venue (and therefore after a days drinking greeted like old friends) we 'sampled' a further bottle of sparkling red (every bit as awful as you'd imagine), a white (Argentina is not famous for its whites but the torrentino is very impressive) which we disrespectfully treated like a pallet cleanser, and then a further 2 bottles of red. I only know this from photo evidence of our table. 

Then Shouting Mario turned up with 2 more bikes for us to get home on, so we finished off our drinks, bought another bottle (?!) and proceeded to cycle home. 

Thank god Maipu doesn't have CCTV on the streets. I lasted a good 4 meters before I fell off. I then resorted to scooting as I couldn't do the bit where you take both feet off the ground and start pedalling, but couldn't balance enough for that either so ended up using the bike like a Zimmer frame and pushing it back to Mario's. 

It took a long time to get back to our hostel and when we did, we opened a bottle of red. The octogenarian who owns the place must have been thrilled to sit up with us talking (shouting I expect)  Spanglish at her until the early hours. Every pensioner's dream. 

Remarkably no sickness the next day but it was all I could do to lift my head off the pillow for 3 hours before returning to my pit with the most immense fear.   Vowing to stay off the pop for a few days, giving myself the 'moderation in moderation' talk, and packing a fair amount of self- loathing in with our luggage, we left Mendoza and caught the night bus south to Bariloche.   Please don't let there be vineyards there too.....

Chile. It's alright s'pose.

San Pedro de Atacama is known for being a tourist hot spot in the middle of nowhere - the gateway to the salt flats from the Chilean side. It's a small town full of overpriced artesan (tat) shops, bars and hostels. And the most miserable people I think I've ever met. 

In our 30 hour stay we witnessed some of the best bad service we've seen since setting off- from the full on row we had with the hostel owner who thought it was ok to change the rate once we were in the room, and then change the check out time by 3 hours (neither happened but only due to my one woman sit-in until 11.59) to the consistently indifferent service in the bank/shop/bars.  For a town reliant on tourist dollars they really can't be arsed with tourists. 

Luckily we were only there to get a bus down to Santiago so didn't loiter. On night one we went out stargazing in the desert with a local astronomer and saw some beautiful views of the planets and various constellations, and then the next morning Chris did some sand boarding (like snow boarding but shit) while I continued to argue with the battleaxe. 

Getting on a 23 hr bus was a relief and we slept/read/slept through the most unremarkable scenery ever. For the first 7 hours it was boring to see desert, scrubby bush, desert repeated but when we woke up the next morning and the view was still identical we did wonder whether we were actually progressing or if in the spirit of Atacama hospitality we were going round in a big loop.  Then a glimpse of the Pacific appeared and in no time (relatively speaking, it was probably another 3 hours) we hit Santiago. 

3 days was enough to see that Santiago is a fully functioning modern city - very easy to navigate, great Metro system, easy to kick back and relax in the parks, bars and restaurants etc. but has little of interest to offer travellers looking for cultural difference. Probably a great city to live in (reminded us a lot of London with it's 'many small towns make up the city' feel) but not that compelling to travel in. 

The exception was the human rights museum which chronicles the Pinochet regime.  It serves as an idiots guide to modern Chilean history and a memorial to all those who died/disappeared in the struggle.  Pinochet, like his bestie Thatcher, very much divides opinion in Chile and while the 200+ monuments across the country acknowledge the suffering experienced by his opponents, there is a substantial living contingent who prospered under his rule.  However good he was at economics he was a sadistic dictator and we were suitably ashamed to be British when it came to the end of his story. 

The plan was to move from Santiago due west to Valparaiso but a huge fire had been raging for 3 days, thousands of homes destroyed and the town declared a disaster zone so we changed direction and headed for Mendoza, Argentina instead.  Sad to miss Valpo, and sad to see what was happening in Valpo but tourists getting in the way  didn't seem right. Time to make up for months of fizzy beer in the home of Malbec. Sorry liver. 

What's flat, salty & Bolivian?

The antiplano is a high altitude huge strip of land that runs down Bolivia where the Andes split. Once upon a time it was the bed of the Pacific but now is a bizarre landscape of salt flats, lagoons and geysers. 

Bolivia boasts the worlds largest salt flats, and claims that only the locals know how to cross them without getting lost, or driving on the thin bits and drowning.  With that in mind we got into our jeep with Driver Leo and three kiwis we'd met in Sucre and set off for 3 days of brilliant white terrain and, it quickly transpired, a soundtrack of techno. 

Because the white salt is so white, perspective gets confusing and it's customary to dick around for a hour with a load of props and a camera.  As one who refuses to high five or whoop as a collective I was dreading this bit of 'enforced fun' but surprised myself by partaking with a modicum of enthusiasm. Was secretly a bit relieved when it was all over though. 

That night we slept in a salt hostel, on a salt bed, eating on a salt table etc..  Very comfortable and warm but remarkably no table salt. 

Day 2 felt like we were travelling through different countries the landscape was so varied. From desolate flats, to rock gardens, to flamingo populated lagoons we eventually climbed up a volcano of 5300m where mud geysers spurted and spewed all around us.  Unlike other geyser-tastic countries (yes, you Iceland) where regulations decree you must stand behind a barrier a sensible distance away from the 800*c spurting mud and steam, we were given the instruction to 'try not to fall in the wet bits' and set free to pick our way through.   At altitude it's staggeringly cold so being able to stand in a cloud of (admittedly sulphuric) steam was great.  

We'd been warned the accommodation on night 2 was a little more basic but the dry toilet ('just throw some ash on it') and 6 bed non-heated dorms didn't matter once we'd all grabbed some booze, put on our cozzies and pegged it down to the thermal pool 100m away. 

Beautifully surreal to sit in hot water, in cold weather, under a starry sky drinking red wine and vodka with a group of previously unknown friends.  So much so we stayed there for hours until wrinkly skin and lack of booze made us run back to our salt beds. 

A combination of the above, and the respiratory challenges of sleeping so high gave us staggering cruel hangovers the next morning.  Suddenly the aroma of the dry loo was too much  to cope with and it was all we could do to slump our green faces onto the jeep and succumb to some more hardcore house as Leo drove us to the Chilean border. 

For all the altitude, protests, shonky airlines, challenging loos, alligators, and bed bugs we've had a great time in Bolivia.  Sad to wave goodbye but after 7 weeks of altitude we're looking forward to some sea level living again. 

Walking with dinosaurs

Back in La Paz it was hardly a surprise that there was a protest going on but we underestimated the impacts of this one. We'd heard that the city centre was gridlocked due to a protest so walked the 25 minutes to the bus station only to see buses parked across by roads and tyres being set on fire.  Not leaving that night then. 

We trudged back to the city centre and promptly exchanged our bus tickets for a flight out 2 days later (first available).  Bored of La Paz and unable to do any activities (Chris wanted to cycle the death road but no-one could get to that either) we kicked our heels and waited.  When we got to the airport at 5am we we a bit miffed that our tickets were invalid and that there were no seats on any other flights out of there that day. 

Back to La Paz then for a row with the travel agents. Rowing done, tickets were rebooked for the following morning - another day to waste, and another 4am start the following day.

Better luck though and our flights were uneventful if a bit indirect (it took us 3 flights over 6 hours to get to Sucre - normally a 40 minute direct flight) courtesy of Bolivia's military airline. Not entirely sure but given the amount of passengers in uniform we think it's a military fleet that takes the opportunity to make money by putting civvies in the empty seats. 

Who cares- it got us out of La Paz!

How we laughed when fellow travellers in Sucre told us they'd been unable to leave for days due to the same protests and that we were now stuck there instead.  Thankfully Sucre is a lot warmer with lower altitude and a heap of bars to sit around chatting to people in so we found out a bit more about the problems.  The government is trying to dramatically increase the tax miners pay. Mining is a horribly dangerous profession out here (most people die by their mid-40s due to silica inhalation if not due to an explosion/collapse earlier) and due to the depletion of silver is not a prosperous career anymore.  Miners form co-operatives to protect themselves from corporate fatcats who wouldn't pay death in service for example, so a hike in taxes hits the workers directly.  In protest then they'd blown up the major roads around the mining towns (plenty of access to dynamite after all) and called for other unionised workers (hence the bus drivers) to join the cause.  After watching  a documentary on Bolivian mining - The devils mine- and seeing the conditions the 14yr old miners work in (c800 kids die each year in the mines, if they work in the most dangerous they get the most wages - up to $4 a day) we stopped moaning about being stuck and booked another flight out of there. Via b@stard La Paz! 

Sucre doesn't have a huge amount of sites but what it does have is dinosaur footprints.  I didn't know there were dinosaur footprints in existence (subsequently been told there's quite a few on this continent. Stupid) so was almost as excited as the 6yr old boy next to us when we boarded the dinobus out to the park. 

Story goes, an earthquake destroyed a lot of Sucre so they built a cement factory on the outskirts to start the rebuild.  After digging great holes in the mountains for 40+ yrs there was a landslide and one morning someone turned up to work and noticed a load of marks where a new layer of mountain had slid away.  The marks turned out to be hundreds of footprints left by terrapods, sauropods & ankylosaurus.  Due to shifts in the tectonic plates the ground they walked on in the Cretaceous period has been pushed upwards so now appears as a vertical wall - a perfect display. 

To illustrate the type of dinosaurs who'd left the prints there, and to cause general excitement to the real and inner-children, there were life sized models around for us to pose by too.  Who doesn't love a dinosaur?!

Back then to the airport for another indirect route across Andes and rainforest to Uyuni.  After vowing we weren't stepping foot in La Paz again we got delayed in La Paz, again. Wasn't boring though as we all got to watch our plane get the tyre replaced and the landing gears repaired before boarding. Very reassuring.