CHILE, Santiago down to Puerto Montt, Monday 24th September

Jumping off cliffs or climbing active smoking volcanoes and sticking your head into them... I do wonder at the lemming-type impulses that overcome us sometimes. Coughing from the sulphur gasses, legs burning from over-exertion, an ice-pick in hand, I pondered this as I watched spurts of molten hot magma and hoped that whoever was responsible for monitoring the activity of Volcano Vallaricca was doing their job. More adventures in South America...

I returned to Santiago just under a week ago, via a stunning drive through the Andes, zebra-striped with melting snow and found myself in a ghost town. Ah yes, the National Holiday. There go my plans for changing travellers cheques, doing laundry and generally sorting myself before I head south. Plenty of backpackers where at a loose end so I made lots of new friends, drank lots of beer and played lots of card games.

On Thursday 20th I was scooped up by our guide Nico and swept off, along with Jen, Eric and Paul on our trip down South.
Out of Santiago and through field after field of blossoming fruit trees, stopping for a quick empanada lunch at Pomarie before arriving at Pichilemu on the coast. Jen and I went riding on the beach while the boys sipped beer. It was a beautiful afternoon but our enjoyment of the ride was hampered slightly by the oddness of our escort, a strange young boy who ogled shamelessly, muttered to himself and mooed provocatively at cows, hmmmm. We watched the sunset on the headland and had a good BBQ dinner at our nice, if cold, hostel.
Up early the following morning for cold showers (something I can´t get used to) and a long day on the bus. We stopped briefly at Santa Cruz to visit a museum displaying a collection of things from rocks, to cars and some indigenous artefacts thrown in for good measure. The museum is owned by an arms dealer who ticked off the FBI by dealing Iraq and is consequently not allowed to leave Chile. Still, he seems to have a keen appreciation for his native country and its heritage...
That night we arrived in Pucon, a small, touristy town set beside Lake Villaricca and under the disconcerting shadow of the afore mentioned volcano, named the same. Our plan was to climb the volcano the following morning so we got kitted out by bossy Frenchmen, ate dinner and went to bed early in anticipation of our 6.30am start.
Rain, however, put a dampener on that idea so we had a lie in and then visited Huerquehe National Park. Gorgeous lakes surrounded by snow capped mountains, icy waterfalls to hunt for... Just the job for a girl who loves to go hiking inappropriately attired. Trainers + snow = soggy feet but I discovered that the slipping can be controlled into a sort of skiing motion if armed with a couple of sticks. Needless to say, the cause of much amusement for the rest of the group.
On our return Nico was waiting for us with the news that the weather for tomorrow was forecasted to be beautiful and would we like to forgo the drive around the lakes for one more shot at the volcano? Well, lakes we have seen, active volcanoes we have not so the decision was not a hard one. That evening Nico took us to some hot springs where we spent a blissful couple of hours floating about in steaming hot water under the stars, sipping beer. Wonderful.
At 6.30 yesterday morning then, we were up, kitted out with waterproofs, wind-breakers, climbing boots, helmets and ice-picks and we set off on, I think, the hardest physical endeavour I have ever attempted. The sky was blue and cloudless and the volcano we´d seen glowing the night before was white with snow and smoking gently. We laboured uphill, one heavy step after another, through the deep snow, hypnotised by the boots of the person in front and the steady crunch of our ice-picks as we dug them into the mountain for support and balance, climbing gradually higher and higher until the snow became peppered with ash and the sulphur made our throats sting. It took us 6 long, tough hours. I´m not usually one to moan but I confess I began to whimper. Jen, Paul and Eric pressed cheerily onwards seeming hardly to be braking a sweat. Just as I was about to collapse in a heap and beg for mercy, we arrived at the crater, a huge gaping hole breathing smoke and belching sprays of lava. Incredible. That, and the breathtaking view, made all the pain worthwile. Delerious with happiness, and exhaustion, we posed for photos (although I was lothe to turn my back on a very obviously active volcano, meaning that I look a little nervous in most of the shots) and made our merry way back down the mountain mostly by way of sliding on our arses. Much more fun.
I don´t think a beer (drank on a chair lift) has ever tasted so good, nor a burger, neither do I think I have slept as deeply as I did last night.

This afternoon I sadly parted company with the others and am in Puerto Monnt for the night before I can catch a flight down to Patigonia. I am armed with all kinds of clothing fashioned from lama wool and so I hope I am prepared for the cold...

ARGENTINA, Mendoza, 17th September (See below for last week with Posy in Buenos Aires)

"Is, erm, no normale to fly with the condors"
"I´ll say", I thought as I surveyed the distant ground that was swinging to and fro beneath my dangling feet, not a normal occurrence for me at all. Two condors were sweeping above our heads riding the same thermal pockets as we were. I think another "wow" might be in order.
Paragliding over Mendoza, truly amazing. Once, that is, you have got over the initial butterflies made only more acute, I think, in the simplicity of the instruction: "Just run." Right, yes, just run off the cliff? Sure, no problem. That doesn´t in any way go against all my instinctive reactions when perched on top of a mountian at all... However, once strapped in you don´t really have much choice so you do Just Run. I was particularly lucky, we were able to get swept up in one of the air currents and climbed higher and higher where as the others glided in an elegant but swift decent. My instructor was as excited as I was and the other´s hurried to shake my hand on landing so that they might have similar luck next time.
The view, as you might imagine, was staggering. Just floating above the Andes at 2000 ft drifting in the air currents. The closest, I´d imagine to how it really feels to fly. I have literally just landed and am gabbling like a maniac. Needless to say, I´m still rather excited.

It is partially thanks to 2 slightly lost Swedish girls that adopted me on arrival to Mendoza. They had no where to stay so thought they´d check out the hostel I´d booked into. One of them mentioned wanting to Paraglide and I thought "¿Per que no?"

Now, I think it might be time for a celebratory glass of wine. Tomorrow morning I am off on the bus over the Andes back into Chile arriving in Santiago tomorrow evening. A day to sort myself out and then the journey down to Patagonia begins...

La le le la!

ARGENTINA, Buenos Aires, 13th September

¨Ok, two forward, one sideways? Hang on, what was that she just did? Slow slow quick-quick slow? Now I´m confused. Sorry, is that your foot? Why do we seem to be going in the opposite direction to everyone else?!¨

Ah, the romance of the first tango lesson. Posy and I were quickly adopted by 2 guys as useless as us and so giggling, but with grim perseverance, we bumped our way around the room until one of the instructors, tutting with dispair, would grab one of us girls and sweep us around the floor in a flawless tango, depositing us back to our partners exhilarated but none the wiser. I rapidly came to the conclusion that men ought to learn the steps so that we just have to follow. Much easier.
Our lesson came to an end and we slunk to the side, leaving the floor to the experts, and watched in awe as the young slinky couples stepped up and did their stuff, competing with each other and trying out new steps while Posy and I speculated which of the couples actually were couples. My my, what a sexy dance!
The tango hall itself was everything I´d hoped for. High ceilings with bare rafters, walls seeped in damp and covered in pictures (Che Guevara lurking on a wall by the bar). There were wires everywhere due to the crude stage lights rigged around the dance floor that cast a pool of light, leaving the rest of the room in a sultry gloom where onlookers could lurk and lovers smooch. Perfect.

So Posy and I finally managed to leave Cafeyate and head back down to BA. We awoke on the bus as it trundled into a service station to a bleak, grey morning, the rain pattering on the window. This was a far cry from the blue skies and scorching sun of up north! Buenos Aires was doused in cloud and rain as we pulled in and we made our way through gloom to our hostel in the barrio Palermo (the young trendy one). Still, it was lovely to be back in a big city and we spent Posy´s last few days making the most of it. Tango lessons, clubbing, sipping cocktails in beautiful ´twinkly´bars and eating as much Asian food as we could. After a stint in rural Argentina we were desperate for something other than meat, cheese and bread. Never thought I say it.
As seemed fitting with the weather, we visited the Cementerio de la Recoleta where Eva Peron is buried. An amazing place, more like a little city than a grave yard with some very grand family tombs, all standing at a storey high, shadowy staircases leading into the crypts below...
We spent a happy hour or so spooking ourselves out wandering along the ´streets´. I snapped away at everything and became entranced by the fact that every grave seemed to have its own cat. Imaginations worked overtime.
The following day we visited the barrio of La Boca. Set around the docks, it is the working-class barrio of Buenos Aires and, we were warned, a little more unsavoury. La Boca made up for being a little rough around the edges by being totally gorgeous. The houses are all painted in blocks of bold primary colours and even on a grey day the place seemed sunny. There was a wonderful market and brightly painted shop fronts offering cheery souvenirs and tango shows. We ate lunch in a wonderful cosy little restaurant, the walls covered in black and white photos and dark polished wood. Everything a little scruffy but beautiful.
Too soon it was Posy´s last night. We celebrated and commiserated with a Buenos Aires clubbing experience. Club 69, transvestites, raunchy police women and break dancers, what more could 2 girls want?
And then goodbye Posy! What a wonderful 2 and a half weeks we´ve had. I was extremely sorry to see her go, I´d rather got used to having some company and a good friend to talk endlessly with on topics of varying importance over bottles of Argentinean wine. Still, onwards onwards for me too. I left BA the following evening in the direction of Mendoza.¨

ARGENTINA, Cafeyate (yes, still) Saturday 8th September

Goat dung has to be mellowed for one year before it can be put on the fields as a fertiliser. Before then it is too potent for the soil, kid goats are allowed to remain with their mummies for 45 days and the nannies are played classical music during milking in order to relax them.

It might be fair to say that Posy and I know more about goats than either of us ever deemed necessary, but it was worth it for the cheese. Whilst slurping away at surprisingly yummy (and potent) wine ice cream, we wandered off along a dirt track to a goat farm in hunt of, well, goats. We were greeted by a friendly woman who showed us round the maternity wards, nurseries and daunting-looking milking apparatus. No wonder the goats need to be soothed whilst plugged into those things! The whole farm was a-bleat with baby goats frolicking around. Very sweet, we both decided we ought to eat goat before we left. True carnivores we are. We bought far too much cheese and took it back to our balcony, opened a bottle of local wine and enjoyed another blissful sunset.

Yesterday, in a sudden spirit of activity, we set off to explore the local natural wonders. It is moments like this that adjectives desert me and I am left saying "wow" a lot. I am not a geologist and my Spanish wasn´t good enough to follow the explanations of our guide, other than what Posy was kind enough to translate for me, so I will stick to the aesthetics.
We walked through dusty valleys, waded through shallow rivers, traversed narrow, earthy peaks and climbed into gorges in a strange, rocky landscape of staggering size and colour. Bright reds, yellow and green, multicoloured stripes, the size of which made us feel like ants. Vast, earthy and deserted with only the odd cactus and shrubby trees for company. How am I doing? I took about 1000 photos so that might help, although I doubt my little camera could capture the scale. Suffice to say that it was wonderful. I was reminded of Texas and also those huge David Hockney landscapes but it was altogether different too. Our insignificance by sheer size was magnified by the age of this landscape. We are a tiny spec, both physically and with time-wise. Very humbling. An amazing afternoon.

We are still in Cafeyate at the moment. Poor Posy is feeling less than brilliant after suffering a nasty bout of food poisoning (she should have opted for grilled goat like me) and we´ve put off leaving until she feels better. We have a lovely big room and will doubtless have to down grade when we move on. Great for me though, I have been lulled into the lazy contentment that a small town, friendly (and by now familiar) locals, and all the goat´s cheese I can eat, can induce. I´m in no hurry. But we will have to head off at some point. Posy leaves me in just under a week and we are keen to get back to Buenos Aries for a few days R&R (and some serious partying) before we sadly part company.

ARGENTINA, The North West, Thursday 6th September (see entry below for Buenos Aires)

Destination selected we set off for our first stop: Rosario. Rossario is the second largest city in Argentina and famous for being the birth place of Che Guevara. It is a smaller version of Buenos Aires but also has the nice relaxed feel of being a student town. We arrived in time for lunch and strolled along the banks of the Rio Parana, lined with lounging students, enjoying the notably warmer temperature. We idled around a few sights in the late afternoon sunshine, through pretty plazas and down streets heaving with young people in outside bars winding down at the end of the week. As instructed by our guidebooks we ate river fish for dinner and sampled a touch of the famous night life before retiring. We had a long way to go still.
The following day we were back on a bus to Cordoba. The landscape continued to be vast and flat, its hugeness rendering the odd tree dotted about as insignificant as a matchstick in the massive brown expanses of empty space. Every now and then a farm would appear but aside from that the emptiness was eerie.

In 2006 Cordoba was named Cultural Capital of the Americas. Quite a claim. We both promptly fell in love with the place and were disappointed to discover that (all geared up for a Saturday night out in another famously fun town) everything was closing at 12 that night due to the regional elections taking place there following day. Humph.
Oh well, back to English Time then. I had grown rather used to the ´drinks at 9, dinner not before 10´ way of life. We sauntered out to see what kind of life we could find before 12 and stumbled across a beautiful little restaurant to have a delicious dinner in before settling ourselves in a lively outside bar. Were soon adopted by a group containing 3 Argentineans, 1 Swede and an English guy, all of whom equally unwilling to adhere to the suggested curfew so we went and had a mini fiesta in one of their flats.
We spent a couple of days exploring the little streets, plazas and attempted to visit their abundant and very beautiful churches only always finding them shut. We went out with the Brit and the Swede, an unlikely but very amusing duo, to an incredible steak house where the fillets came the size of our heads and cut like butter. Wow. We had a lovely evening laughing at our double-act entertainment after which Posy (not feeling so good) had an early night and I went bowling. As you do.

After another day of cafe crawling we took a obscenely luxurious night bus to Tucuman. Our plan was to head up to Cafeyate in the heart of the wine region, surrounded by dramatic, rocky landscape, perhaps with a waterfall or two...
Stupidly it had not occurred to either of us to check the time of our connecting bus from Tucuman and were told, as we tumbled off the bus at 6.30am, that the bus to Cafeyate had just left and the next was not until 2.00pm, getting in at 8.30pm. Damn.
Still, not to be discouraged, we took the opportunity for more chatting and 7 hours passed surprisingly fast.
It was the bus ride, however, that completely salvaged our spirits. After the endless stretches of impossibly straight roads it was exhilarating to suddenly be on hair-pin-bend roads that twisted up into the mountains, higher and higher between steep, scrubby hillsides, dripping with with bizarre trees dangling foliage like chandeliers, over-hanging deep ravines in which wound narrow, low rivers. Then we emerged into wide yellow-brown valleys dotted with distant farms and settlements, enclosed by barren, reddish mountains. Now this is Argentina. We both felt that we had finally left Spain behind and entered something far older. The complexions of our fellow passengers darkened and we were surrounded by more and more indigenous faces, our own fairness growing increasingly incongruous.
At 8.30pm and by now deep in the middle of what seemed to be no where we came to Cafeyate, a welcome oasis from the endless blackness on either side of the narrow road. A friendly girl from our hostel greeted us at the little bus station and led us through neat, well-lit streets to our digs and checked us into a beautiful room complete with 2 beds, onsuite and a balcony. We bot decied that it might be an idea if we came to a standstill for a day or two, having travelled for 22 hours by this point.
After a much needed sleep we awoke to bright, hot sunshine, blue skies and the sould of bustle from the street below. The weather had become steadily warmer on our jouney north and by now I was delighted to be back in linin trousers, flip flops and vest tops once again. We wandered around the main plaza for a late breakfast and set out to explore.
Once again Spanish influence was everywhere in the pretty, ordered streets and tidy little plaza, overlooked by a freshly painted church and lined with little umbrelled cafes. Souvenier shops sell alpaca gloves, scarves and ponchos, unthinkable in this heat, and Argentinean tourists flock by the bus load on day trips from Salta, streaming into Bodegas and emmerging laden with wine boxes. Posy and I hunted out a Bodega just outside of town, the oldest, and managed to get some wine tasting in between the bus loads.
In the evening we made our way, with chilled wine and goats cheese, out of town, past simple, sturdy little bungalows and children skipping on the sidewalk, up a little hill to watch the setting sun cast its pinky light on the surrounding mountains and felt extremely smug to have found ourselves somewhere so beautiful.
In the next day or two (no rush) we will head up to Salta. But in the mean time we have some hard core lounging, a little more wine sipping and some exploring to do. What lucky girls we are...

ARGENTINA, Buenos Aires, Thursday, 6th September

The lifting of the clouds and bright sunshine pouring through the window the following morning was enough to prise me away from my cosy TV marathon and go and explore the city that was taking on a much more attractive shape in the sunshine. I spent the day wandering around this dauntingly large city, getting my barings and investigating other Barrios which might be more appropriate for Posy and I than the rather soul-less centre in which I was staying.

The city is supposed to be the most vibrant, classy, sexy city of South America and I spent a happy day adjusting myself to the rhythm of of its streets teaming with elegantly dressed, extremely good-looking Argentineans. I walked up wide boulevards jam-packed with testosterone driven cars honking and jostling with each other, through grand plazas and through heaving pedestrianised shopping streets before arriving in San Telmo an altogether quieter corner of the city with cobbled streets, cheerfully painted houses and plenty of bars, cafes and restaurants in which I could envisage Posy and I sitting for many a happy hour. Perfect.
The following day she arrived beaming and announcing that her taxi driver looked like Antonio Banderas. Bienvenido a Argentina!
We were so happy to see one another after so long that it might come as a surprise to some of you to learn that we talked non-stop for 16 hours after that. Posy was delighted with San Telmo, the hostel, and was sufficiently impressed at the poshness of the bathrooms, of which I was particularly proud.
We set about doing some hard core catch up over a long lunch which was soon followed by a long dinner. So lovely to have her with me.
We continued in that manner for the following 3 days in Buenos Aires, strutting around in the icy winter sunshine, Posy cheerfully translating the endless appreciative whoops from our local admirers who found the sight of 2 blondes hard to ignore. We visited the Museo de las Bellas Artes, ate life changing steak in a buzzy, chaotic local Parrilla, got fussed about by endless waiters, drank delicious wine and generally had A Good Time.

By our 3rd day, however we thought we´d better go and see some more of the country before we got totally imbedded in the city and considered taking up permanent residence. The only problem was where to go, the country being so vast and Posy having such little time. Most people, we discovered, head up North East from Buenos Aires to the staggering Iguazu Falls which, at a length of 3kms and a cascade of over 70 deafening metres are promised to reduce the onlooker to ´giggling, shrieking messes´(according to the Lonley Planet). Given my apparent passion for the odd cascada and seeming willingness to go to great lengths to see them, you might think that I´d be on that bus before you could say "splash." We did have to take into consideration, however that the journey was over 20 hours both ways, which is pushing it even for me. It wouldn´t have been so bad if either of our guide books could promise us much more than a succession of uninteresting towns, landscapes of burned palm trees and toad infestations on route. Hmmmm.
So we began to look to the North West ´off the beaten track´ via buzzy little student towns, pretty, remote villages, gorgeous countryside up to the foothills of the Andes and into wine country. Ah ha... One town even promised that we could combine wine and walking. Splendid.