Arriving in Buenos Aires

Having left the south earlier then expected as there wasn´t much in Puerto San Julian, we arrived in Buenos Aires (BsAs) about a week early. As we stepped off the bus, we were hit with an enormous wave of hot, humid air and a smile certainly came to my face! Warmth at last!

We found our hostel in the centre and chilled out for the rest of the day. We spent the next few days buying summer clothes and trying desperately to work out what to do for New Years Eve to ensure it wasn´t the wash out Christmas was.

Our hostel was V&S Hostel Club. It´s a lovely hostel in a town house in central BsAs, located close to the main shopping strip and with good access to all the touristy stuff. The rooms are clean and airy, the bathrooms nice and the place generally ok. However, the price is different to the website, you have to pay additionally for the air conditioning and the staff are a bit disorganised (although I hear, they´re the most organised in BsAs). The most frustrating thing was that you couldn't bring in your own drinks, so you had to buy their beer (only one option). This makes it quite hard to socialise in the hostel and meet new people. We still met some cool characters though.

Christmas in Puerto San Julian

We moved on from El Calafate as we wanted to spend Christmas up the coast in the hope of seeing some wildlife and warmer temperatures. We decided to go to Puerto San Julian and arrived on Christmas Eve, only to find everything closed. Luckily we found a hotel, but literally everything else was closed, and would be for the next few days.

After further investigation, we found a small corner shop and an internet shop, but as it happens were open for much of the time. The owner of the shop was a Bolivan - and so works all hours God sends to scratch a living. The shop never seemed to close and so we manage to buy enough food for our Christmas dinner. This consisted of cheese sarnies, some fruit and some lovely red wine.

Strangely enough, it was similar to most Christmases - sitting around watching naff films on cable TV and eating junk. The only thing missing was friends and family!

As Boxing Day arrived, the town livened up again and we managed to get a bus out that night - straight to Buenos Aires.

No photos as there really was nothing to take pictures of.

Crashing Icebergs and Huge Glaciers

From El Calafate, there are lots of excursions as you´ve probably guessed. Our final ´must do´ tour was to the Perito Moreno Glacier in Los Glaciers National Park. The glacier is part of the southern Patagonia ice field which is where we´ve seen all the various glaciers, however this glacier is different. It´s the largest, most active and most impressive glacier in the ice field and the good thing is you can get right up close, allowing you to see how truely awesome a glacier is.

I´m hoping you´ve read Stu´s glacier facts from his ice-climbing trip, so you´ll know a little about them. Well, this glacier is stories high and as I said, this one is active, which means huge chunks fall off and drop into the lake frequently. You can hear the glacier groaning and cracking as it´s slowly moving, and then when a section splits off, the sound is like thunder. Unfortunately, by the time you´ve heard it, the section of ice is already in the water creating a small tidal wave across the lake!

It´s possible to take a boat trip near the glacier, but you don´t actually get that close, mainly because it´s so dangerous! To give you some scale, here´s a picture of the glacier with a boat. You can just about see the boat - it´s the little black dot on the right!

We spent around two hours here, simply gazing in awe at the mass of ice, waiting for the next chunk of ice to drop off. Quite incredible.

Searching for the Towers at the Torres del Paine

After ice climbing and generally freezing our arses off down in El Chalten and Fitz Roy, we returned to El Calafate to sort out the next big tour - Torres del Paine. This is another incredible national park with stunning mountain ranges, except this time just over the border in Chile. It´s possible to do an 8 day trek around the mountain range, but we opted for the slightly easier 4 day ´W´ trek (as it resembles the letter W). We also decided to take our time and do it in 5 days, particularly since we were camping and it was likely that our sleep would be disrupted by the gale force winds, with which we became very familar!

The walk itself is stunning. On the first day we saw glacial lakes and stayed in a campsite at the foot of a glacier. We spent the evening staring out of the refugio window as icebergs floated by and sipping cheap red wine. The second we returned to our starting point and that evening we stared out of another refugio window at an incredible mountain. Again we sipped cheap red wine and chatted the night away. The third day we crossed moors and marshes to reach a valley between the mountains and a fabulous look out point. Unfortunately at this point the weather turned a bit nasty and snow and ice-rain whipped our faces - so no great views today. The fourth day we walked to our final campsite and settled in as tomorrow we were to climb to a high look out point for a close up view of the Towers. In the morning, Stu went alone to the look out as one of my tendons had been acting up and so I rested. It had been cloudy and the Towers hadn´t been visible for a day or so, but Stu was blessed that morning. Just as he reached the look out, the clouds parted and rewarded him with perfect views.

We were quite surprised how easily we found it. The walks are easy to moderate, but there are some steep hills and hard climbs, particularly when you´ve been walking for a few days. At first I was surprised how many people had walking poles, but by the third day I was so envious - I really could have done with some!

The views are stunning to say the least and we were blessed with good weather (well, good for Torres del Paine), so most of our views were clear. Camping was hard. It was cold and very windy, but spending the evenings in the refugios was great. Warmth and red wine - what more can a girl ask for!

On our return to Puerto Natales, we made a beeline for El Living , a small cafe with fabulous food, so we could stock up on fruit and veg after camping for 5 days. The food was delicious, my favourite so far. Yum.

In Search of Accommodation in Puerto Natales

Just a quick note here about Puerto Natales, Chile. It is a very stange place, but the point to reach the Torres del Paine. The houses are all very ramshackled and the town is terribly poor, so the budget accommodation is particularly bad. We stayed in a couple of hostels. The first was filthy and awful so when we returned from our trek, we went out on the search for an alternative.

We were recommended a little hostel called Casa Teresa which we found easily as it was a two floored, bright pink house made from corrogated iron. We thought we´d also check out a few other places, but we found much the same - filthy, strange houses run by people that were straight out of the League of Gentlemen. Our little hostel was spotlessly clean, the owner incredibly helpful, the bed was heaven and the breakfast was lovely (far better then the usual bread and jam).

Ice Climbing and Clambering on a Glacier

We set off at 7.00am in the morning to make it to the base camp of the glacier by 9.00am. We made a quick stop at the base camp to collect our equipment and have some tea and biscuits before the final part of our trek to the glacier. The second section held the treat of crossing the river using a fixed rope, so we had to drag ourselves across.

After a further climb over a woodland pass we decended onto the glacier. Our guide gave us a demostration of how to use the crampons and a few pointers about how to walk safely. The basics of which are - don´t step on anyones feet, don´t kick anyone and walk like a duck which felt a bit quackers! Luckily Nicky had to decided to stay at the hostel otherwise I would have had a few spikes up my jacksee. The crampons are excellent they allow you to walk on icey surfaces that are at extreme angles!

A few glacial facts:
• Glaciers are formed by large amounts of snow falling, melting and compressing into ice.
• There is no air in the ice when the glacier is formed in this way, so the glacier looks blue instead of white.
• When a body of ice is formed and is greater than 20 tonnes it can be classed as a glacier.
• The weight of the ice and snow high up the glacier causes the glacier to move slowly down the mountin valley. As the glacial moves, rocks and debris under the glacier are crushed into small pieces which form a lubricanting layer allowing the glacier to continue moving. As the glacier shifts down the valley the ice breaks and cracks creating large in the glacier.
• At the end of the glacier there is usually a lake and river formed from the glacial melt. The lake takes on a bluish turquoise colour from the small particles of debris.
• Where the glacier meets the lake, this section is called the tongue of the glacier. High up in the mountains small glaciers form called hanging glaciers, which I have renamed the `ears of the glacier´!
• 5,000 years ago the glacial tongue which I walked on was 200km longer than it is today. Since the last ice age, the earth has slowly warmed and the tongue has retracted.

We also has a chance to try ice climbing on a small wall in the glacier, this was excellent, if not a little slippy. Wacking ice axes into the wall was harder than it looked and the once grippy crampons suddenly were not much help with a very hard compacted vertical wall of ice.

In all I spent about 3 hours walking and climbing on the glacier, it was really excellent. The 4 hour trek to the glacier and 4 hour return was definately worth it, even if I had to walk like a duck the next day because my legs were so stiff!

On the way back we were lucky enough to see a skunk carrying its little baby in it´s mouth. It was very cute until she got a bit perturbed by us and chased us away, there we were 4 grown males running away from a tiny fluffy animal, felt like something from the Monty Pythons Holy Grail! Better that, then stinking for a week!

Down in the Deep South

Over the last week we´ve been down in the deepest depths of Argentian Patagonia in the freezing cold. We took our tent and sleeping bags and headed off toward the small town of El Chalten to see Fitz Roy - a huge mountain whose summit stands out about 1,000m above all the others around, so it´s fairly impressive to say the least. We were blessed for our arrival by a clear day and the prominent mountain, clearly in view. Fitz Roy is strange, as it nearly always has a bed of cloud behind it and as it reaches the summit, this cloud slowly rises creating the look of a smoking volcano. Strange, but very intriguing. It´s so impressive, it´s very hard to take your eyes off it.

El Chalten, the town at the foot of Fitz Roy is a strange place. It was only built in 1985 to support the increasing tourism in the region and only has about 2,000 inhabitants during the summer and about 200 in winter. Not suprising really, given the weather conditions, which are harsh to say the least. It´s mid summer and the days hardly reach 16 degrees. With the wind chill, you can take this down a few more! The region is known for strong westerly winds, but we underestimated these quite significantly.

We set off on a cool, clear day with the intention to camp in the national park for a few days. This would allow us to take in the frosty blue glaciers, turquoise lakes and aweinspiring mountains. As we set off Fitz Roy was straight ahead in our view (very lucky as it had only been visible for a few hours in the last 8 days) and the fierce wind blowing dust in our faces. Unfortunately it began to cloud over and lashing rain started soon after. Luckily we reached the campsite quickly and set up the tent. The rain didn´t stop until the next morning and so we cut our camping trip short and headed back to the town, all soggy and wet. It didn´t stop raining all the next day either, so we made a good move, particularly since our tent was begining to let water in!

I´ve not been feeling too well, so I spent yesterday chilling out in the hostel while Stu went ice climbing, which he thoroughly enjoyed.

Walking in the Lake District

Throughout the Lake District in Argentina, there are chocolate box towns, many of which have an architectural style similar to Switzerland. This style is a little exaggerated, which certainly annoyed some of our Swiss friends! Of course, being a Lake District, there were plenty of stunning lakes and walks. The thing that amazed me the most was the amount of wild flowers, in particular lupins, which lined vertually all the streets and lanes of the countryside. It was particularly nice to see hundreds of wild strawberries, in typical alpine style.

Gaucho Friends

Whilst in Bariloche, we decided to go pony trekking across the Patagonian landscape in true guacho style! We had two lovely horses and Stu was very brave, especially since he´s not really ridden a horse before. We were guided by two guachos, one guacha girl and a crazy guacho - he spent most of the time hunting hares with his two greyhounds (who were very hungry as they hadn´t eaten for days). Two hours into the ride his dogs had caught two hares, which were skinned and hung up to dry during lunch.

For lunch we found a clearing, with a bit of shelter from the fierce Patagonian westery winds. We tied the horses to some scrubs and searched for firewood to build an open fire, which would later be used as our parilla (or BBQ). Whilst the wood burned, we ate nibbles of cheese and salami with crackers. Once the charcoal was warm enough, the guacha pulled out four massive hunks of steak and eight fat sausages (and some lovely empandadas for me). We watched the world go by, washing down our parilla with cheap red wine.

After lunch, it was back on the horses and back to the ranch. We would definitely to that again - it was a real treat to see the Patagonian countryside by horseback. We used Carol Jones, who was lovely. Food was good and the cake was great!

Working Our Way Down South

Well, we left Huaraz with a great send off by all the other volunteers, which was lovely. Since then, we´ve more or less been sat on a bus. We gone from Huaraz to Lima (8 hours), then jumped straight on a bus to Tacna (18 hours), then taken a cab to Arica in Chile (1 hour) where we stayed overnight (phew). The next day we took a very posh bus with a flat bed - the height of luxury, to Santiago (29 hours), where we stayed overnight again. The following night we took the bus to Osorno (16 hours) and then in the morning took another bus to Bariloche in Argentina (6 hours). So we´ve literally been on a bus for the last 4 days to get right down to the Argentinian Lake District approximately 3,500 KM below Huaraz! It´s absolutely beautiful here. There are plenty of crystal blue lakes sitting at the foot of the lovely alpine mountains of the lower Andes and lots of chocolate shops. We plan to savour both later! One thing though, it´s very chilly down here and the wind is bitter! Ouch! We´re here for a couple of days and then off further south for more cool, crisp days and amazing glaciers.

Time to Go

Unfortunately it´s our last day with the children today, so we´re watching films in the house and having cake. Yesterday, the children in the afternoon made us leaving cards. The cards are all really lovely and there´s some really sweet messages. Stuart spent the afternoon spinning the children around until they felt sick, which was hilarious.

We´ve really had a great time here and thoroughly enjoyed working with the team at Seeds and of course, the children. We´ve also spent a lot of time working with Yuri on communications for the charity, including writing emails, the website structure and copy, taking endless photos for the website and advising on the charity as a business, in particular how to get donations and volunteers. It´s been really great fun and we´re sad to go.