El Chalten, Argentina

07/12/12

We left Calafate and headed 4 hours north to El Chalten also still in Los Glaciers National Park. I'd love to say the scenery was amazing but I actually slept most of the way!! The weather was awful when we got there, lots of wind and rain but we still managed to head out for a short walk. El Chalten is one of the trekking capitals of Argentina so most of us dug out our boots and went for a hike. On the 1st day we headed for a 7 hour long walk to see Glacier Grande. It was pretty spectacular scenery, if a little windy. The next day I headed out my myself to walk to see Mt Fitzroy. It was a relatively flat walk past beautiful lake Capri. It was eventful though as I saw 4 woodpeckers, a condor, a mini avalanche and a bolt of lightning

Pete and Graham rocked into town with perfect timing on the last day, just as we were eating tea. They looked shattered after surviving on minimal sleep after picking up the truck in Uruguay. As a celebration we all had a few drinks in the local micro brewery before heading south the next day

El Calafate, Argentina

We are currently in the west of Argentina, still in the region of Patagonia. We are staying in a very nice hotel in in El Calafate so we could visit the southern side of Los Glaciares National Park famous for the Perito Mereno glacier. Getting here was a bit of a mission though. We checked out of the hostel in Puerto Madryn at 10am and hung around until our very long distance coach journey to what looks and feels like temperature wise the other side of the world! We had a very comfy journey with edible food, a game of bingo and some very caring staff who made sure that the films were in English or had English subtitles and I think most people didn't have too much of a bad nights sleep. We had to change buses in Rio Gallegos in the very south of the country and had a 4 hour wait for our bus going west. I think everyone noticed the drop in the temperature as all the warm gear was put on, but it still isn't too cold though. We finally arrived at our destination at 5pm!

El Calafate is small but touristy and looks a little bit what I would imagine an alpine ski resort to look like. We are in a great hotel with views looking towards the snow capped mountains of the Andes. Lisa and I are delighted with the size of the room- 2 singles and a double bed between us. The down size of a big room is that there is less reason to keep all your stuff in a nice neat pile which makes packing up and moving that little bit harder.

Our main reason for coming here is to see the Perito Mereno glacier. It is one of the few advancing glaciers left in the world, advancing 2m a day and regularly carves huge chunks off the face. The face is 5km wide and the glacier stands to about 60m above a lake. The whole area is kitted out with lots of boardwalks so everyone's not in the same area. We spent about 3 hours just watching and listening. It was exciting and addictive to watch as you tried to guess which bit was going to fall next. When small chunks of ice fell it sounded like a gunshot, when larger pieces fell the sound echoed like thunder, then a huge splash. I thought that we would have to wait for ages to see sections collapse but I think the most we stood waiting was about 20 minutes. We were also given a spectacular finale as an entire section if the wall fell. The glacier took a long time to get to but it was definitely worth it.

Next we are heading to El Chalten at the northern end of the national park for some more glacier fun. After a 3 nights there we should finally get the truck as it has docked and is waiting to clear customs and get put back together after shipping.

Valdez Penninsula, Argentina

After a very comfortable 19 hours on a sleeper bus we arrived in a cool and rainy Puerto Madryn in the region of Patagonia. Originally we would have camped to explore the Valdez Penninsula but since we don't have the truck we are currently based in the hostel which has been nice as there has been WIFI and cooking facilities to help save the pennies

As a whole group we had a private coach around the penninsula leaving at 7.30am and arriving back at 6pm it was a long but great day. The weather was back to what we were expecting- sun and it made great photo taking. The penninsula is a UNESCO site for biodiversity so we expected to see different land and marine wildlife along the section of the 400km coast that we were travelling.

First stop was to visit the penguins who were just chilling on the edge of the cliff, some sleeping, some socialising others just waddling around. I could have watched them for hours. It was also funny to see them all run up the beach away from the water when the saw a seal in the distance. Also on our journey through the penninsula we saw lots of the flat scrub land that covers Patagonia and the wildlife that lives there- eagles, sheep, guanacos (a bit like a llama), maras (looks like a giant rabbit) and Rheas which are the South America relative to the emu and ostrich. The temperature here ranges from -20 in the winter to +40 in the summer so all the wildlife has to adapt to the temperature range.

Next stop was a stretch of coast which has a colony of elephant seals. Sadly the ones with the big noses weren't to be seen and it was mainly mums and pups. The photos don't show how huge they were and the noise they made was pretty special. Most of the group took a boat tour to see Southern Right whales. Whale watching is something I'd done in South Africa so I decided to give it a miss and use the money to do an activity elsewhere that I'd not done before so I happily relaxed in a beach side cafe. They came back all smiles and seemed to enjoy as they saw mums and babies bobbing near the surface.

After 3 nights in Puerto Madryn we are headed tomorrow across the width of Argentina to the western side. We still have no truck but it's looking more hopeful to dock soon and Pete and Graham will be able to catch up with us! Next stop is Los Glaciares National Park but sadly we have 24 hours minimum (we are learning that the Argentinians don't really keep to times) of travelling on 2 different buses to get there. The adventure goes on!!

Whats new Buenos Aires...? Argentina

I arrived in Buenos Aires 5 days ago after an un- eventful flight with TAM airlines who were very good. I was delighted to get an empty seat next to me and lots of free drinks and a simple connection flight from Sao Paulo.

Buenos Aires is not quite what I expected. I'm staying just outside the main centre in an area called San Telmo. It's got some old traditional buildings mixed with newer and some very clever graffiti. It feels pretty safe. I'm more worried about the state of the pavements and the traffic than the people around me!

I fitted quite a bit into my days here. Everyone on the trip has arrived throughout the week so now we've all met each other. Everyone seems nice and pretty sane. I'm the youngest on the trip by 7 years but it doesn't really matter.

I've walked many miles and got a hop on hop off bus to see the sights. Some of us mingled with the rich and the regular of Buenos Aires at a polo match which is very popular here. It was great to see the game and try and work out the rules which we nearly got at the end. We've also been for day and evening wanderings around Puerto Madero which is pretty new and the home to many office blocks, fancy restaurants and parks. I've also visited Plaza de Mayo which is home to Casa Rosada which is the pink coloured presidential palace which is where the famous balcony Eva Peron spoke from. In the north of the city in Recolata the cemetery in which she is buried is full of people trying to find her grave. It's not as fancy as others there and it's said that it's more expensive to be buried in that cemetery than to live in the area. The cemetery was amazing to walk around with some of the mausoleums looking like mini churches it was like a small town! Another must see in the city is Caminito street in La Boca. Its colourful buildings nearby the banks of the Riachuelo river were originally settled by Spanish and Italian immigrants during the 1880's when there was a meat trade boom. Originally the houses were painted with the left over paint from the barges but now it's a very quirky tourist trap.

The food here is for meat lovers only, the steaks are massive and not well cooked enough for me so I've avoided them. Everyone's raving about the steak but I'll be pretty happy to get normal food on the truck.

On the note of the truck, we are leaving tomorrow, heading south without it. Having been shipped from the UK the truck was supposed to arrive in Montevideo in Uruguay on the 12th November but it is stuck in a queue to get in the harbour. We have stayed an extra day in Buenos Aires to give us a bit of time for the truck to catch us up. We are going to head south to the next stop in an overnight sleeper bus which are apparently very nice and hopefully after a couple of nights on the coast in a hotel the truck will have arrived.

1 more sleep

So the time has come. Just 1 more sleep before I head down to Heathrow to head to Buenos Aires. I'm sorting out the last bits and pieces after a relatively stress free packing session yesterday. I'm quite pleased with myself after the rucksack shut 1st time. I think it maybe due to the complete lack of things i'm taking with me. Just the bare necessities. I'm even just taking the one pair of flip flops so time will tell if that was a foolish move! I'm flying TAM Airlines and for some reason (I hope i've not read incorrectly) I can check in two 32kg bags for free. This means that i can check all the extras such as sleeping bag and tent that would be tied on the outside of my bag in as an extra piece of luggage. Happy days, if it turns up! The next time you hear from me I will hopefully have touched down in Buenos Aires, have seen the sun and made some new friends!

The countdown begins!

Well it's that time again when excitement about the next trip kicks in! Since returning last November i've had 2 different jobs but my current contract finishes in a few weeks time so it's time to explore a bit more of the world before I definitely must get a real job! In 5 weeks time I will have touched down in Buenos Aires, Argentina for a 6 month jolly in a loop of South America. South America was considered a few years ago and dismissed but after meeting lots of people in Australia who had been I just couldn't resist the opportunity to see whats going on that end of the world so it's time for another wander! As I had such a good time travelling through Odyssey Overland with Pete and Kirsten I've rebooked with them again. We will be heading round and about Argentina, then making our way North through Brazil, Venezuala, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and finally Chile before finishing up in Buenos Aires again in early June. I'm currently back home for a few days to sort out and organise stuff as I only have a couple of days to do this in November. I've definitely learnt a few lessons from last time though and ensuring that i take less by buying a rucksack 20l smalller! I may regret this when i try and fit everything in it though. Another lesson learnt is that wind up head torches are useless. They may provide 90 minutes of light for a few winds but only about a minute of that light is bright enough to use, plus they really annoy fellow campers with the winding. Hence the purchase of a lovely and tiny pink one. Other items that will definitely be making it to my rucksack this time is my netbook, Spanish phasebook (not learnt anything yet), thermals and a universally fitting sink plug! Another new arrival is a point and click camera which is shock proof, water proof, freeze proof and dust proof. Hopefully it will live up to its name!

Home!

Instructions for toilet use in KL. Amused me greatly.


I spent 3 long days travelling home as I booked all my flights individually as it was cheaper than buying a Cairns to Manchester flight. My first flight was down to the Gold Coast. I got some amazing views over the Great Barrier Reef and islands as I headed south down the coast. Next stop was Kuala Lumpur. I stayed in an airport hotel for just 12 hours before I headed to London and then onto Manchester. It's very nice to be home after 569 days (it doesn't feel like that) and the sun is even shining. I'm looking forward to a week of sorting myself out before the dreaded job search.

I really enjoyed keeping the blog and I hope people have enjoyed reading it. I will keep wandering the world in the future (next stop the America's) so the blog will continue but for now it's time to enjoy the comforts of home.

Cairns

Over the past 10 days I been having lots of fun and relaxing times in Cairns. Cairns is a small city and very tropical. It's full of partying backpackers and coach loads of older people on their holidays. There's plenty to do here with the reef and rainforest so close.

We had a couple of days of rain to start with so I made the most of the weather and went white water rafting on the Tully river for the day. The town of Tully is one of the wettest in Australia and the river is raft-able all year round as the water input is controlled by a dam. The town was badly damaged in cyclone Yasi this year so I think the residents are pretty happy that the rafting is still drawing people to the town. It was a fantastic day and I had a great group who were considerably more adventurous than the other boring bunch and our guide realised this, so we took harder routes down the rapids, hung back so we could go for swims, rapid surfing and flip the raft. We even got wedged between two boulders and took a route down a small but practically vertical waterfall that the guide had never rafted before!

One of the reasons everyone visits Cairns is to have a day out on the Great Barrier Reef. I was in two minds about the reef. There are probably over 100 different companies who will take you out on the reef and a lot of the boats go to pontoons that have swimming pools, sun decks, water slides, hot showers etc and then will charge you a small fortune to go and see the fish. I wasn't so keen on this as I'd been diving in tropical waters before, so it's all going to look the same. On the other hand, it's the Great Barrier Reef, and I'd get some stick at home if I didn't see it, so I booked a day out to go diving. I visited the outer barrier reef where a lot of the slower boats can't get to, so it was nice that there weren't many other boats around. I'd only ever been diving from small fishing boats so it was a completely different experience on the double decked shiny new boat that I was going out on. The staff were great and I had to do very little with my gear which was good and our guide was even on hand in the water to take our fins off as we were getting onto the boat! The diving was great fun, the coral was massive and I saw a 2m long reef shark and got very close to a Green Turtle which was amazing. The big disappointment of the day was the fact that the reef is huge and yet we kept going past other dive groups. I didn't understand why everyone was in the same area. I'm glad that I went out on the reef as it was a different experience to diving in the past as you obviously pay a lot more than in Asia and you get a better service. My diving improved and I got to use a dive computer which I'd never used before. As for the Great Barrier Reef, it was nothing special compared to other tropical reefs but I guess that there is big money to be made from its name.

I also did a day trip into the Atherton Tablelands and to Paronella Park which is south towards Innisfail. Everyone in Ravenswood told me how beautiful this area of Australia was and they weren't wrong. Green fields, hills, lakes and waterfalls made it just like England but with different trees and the sun shining! Our first stop was a wildlife cruise on volcanic crater Lake Barrine which was really nice and despite the lake of wildlife there was a very interesting commentary on the rainforest trees. One of the interesting facts I do remember is that there are no male eels around for 1000km. The female eels swim down the creeks and out to sea to New Caladonia to find a male friend and then only the females make the trip back to the lake. There is a tea room on the lake so I treated myself to cream tea which was so good. I was surprised to see a tearoom in the middle of rainforest but apparently it was set up 100 years ago when the road was single lane and the gates to the road only opened for 2 hours at a time in one direction so you had to wait up to 2 hours before you could get down to the coast. We also stopped at a waterfall and the Giant Curtain Fig tree which is basically a fig tree that's grown on a branch of a host tree so the roots have grown down from way above ground level. The main reason for the trip was to go to Paronella Park which is the equivalent to going to a National Trust house in England. Spanish man Mr Paronella bought the land on the banks of Mena Creek and decided to use the water from Mena Creek Falls to create the 1st hydroelectric plant in Queensland in 1933. He then built his own castle, complete with a ballroom, theatre and cafe. The castle is now an empty shell and is falling down but it was still really interesting to walk around. The highlight to the whole day was seeing a wild Cassowary just metres away!

Cairns has been a nice town to just hang around in. There's a shopping centre and a swimming pool on the water front so it's been good just to sit and do nothing for a while. I met my friend Yoko for lunch which was lovely to catch up. I shared a room with Yoko in Ayr in March when we waited for farm work. I promised that I'd see her in Cairns but I didn't think it would be 7 months later! I've also had a long walk up Mount Whitfield in the north of the city which was great fun through the rainforest, if a little sweaty and lots of mosquito bites. Another very touristy thing to do is the Scenic railway to Kuranda which was really disappointing as you could barely see out the windows as the people sitting by the windows had their heads out of them taking photos. The main views were rocks on one side and trees on the other. I actually enjoyed the bus trip back more, as the driver stopped so we could see the view over Cairns and the coast.

Today is my last day in Cairns and it's very cloudy after torrential rain last night so I guess I won't be doing anything today!

The way to Cairns

I finally left Home Hill yesterday after another few weeks. Picking pumpkins in 32 degree heat was pretty hard work and the last few days was very cool and windy, and they say the wet season has started early so I'm glad I left when I did. I started to help train Spot as well. He was running through the paddocks and chewing the plants so he started to come on the packing trailer with me and he's taken a liking to eating the peppers to keep him happy.

The journey to Cairns was very long. The bus was over an hour late and we drove much of the day through rain and low cloud so I couldn't see much. I checked into a hostel last night just outside the main centre of Cairns, so its nice and quiet and I've a single bed! I've 2 weeks in the Cairns area and there are a few things I want to do, but I'm not booking anything until the weather gets better. For today though it's time to browse the shops for the first time in 6 months!

Home Hill

I headed to Home Hill, about 1 and half hours South of Townsville and very close to the town of Ayr where I was in March. Home Hill is very small with 2 small supermarkets, a pharmacy and a few pubs. I've currently been here for over 12 weeks and have been working full time on a farm for 10 weeks. It was really boring for the first 2 weeks as I only had 14 hours of work but now I'm working about 51 hours a week so all's good. I'm picking pumpkins which is hard work and also packing peppers which is much easier but I have to pack pretty quickly as they are packed on the back of a tractor straight after picking. Thankfully since I'm not picking the peppers so I've avoid all the sore backs. We have also done weeding which is back breaking, pushing seeds into trays, making boxes and also washing trays.

It's definitely the good wage that's keeping me here. The weather's hot and we've also had some cold mornings, days long and the hostel is pretty basic and full of French who only really socialise in French. I am on a small family run farm with only 6 workers so it's been nice to work directly with the farmer. There's a 5 month old puppy who I absolutely love and he's taken a liking to me and spends most of my lunch hour jumping up on my lap. He does bite and chew wrists and ankles though!

We've had lots of run ins with other wild life too. I've seem some huge kangaroos and emus, pigs and lots of snakes. The Burdekin area is full of sugar cane fields which they burn every evening. It's pretty cool seeing all the smoke billowing into the sky and the ash which is locally known as “Burdekin Snow” falling down. We even passed a cane fire right the way up to the highway.

I've the weekend off this week as none of the crops are ready for picking yet. I've headed to Ayr to pick up some bits and pieces. I haven't left Home Hill since I arrived so it's nice to get out even if it is only to Ayr and everything's shut on a Saturday afternoon. I'm staying another 2 weeks in Home Hill before heading to Cairns for another 2 weeks before heading home on the 3rd November.