Buenos Aires

We arrive in Buenos Aires to a hot sunny day and baggage delays. After 45 minutes standing around the carousel, the locals start up a slow clap that builds into a foot stamping, raucous chant that echoes down the arrivals hall. Welcome to the city of public protest.

Artwork befitting of grandad's basement drinking den

But after this delay, nothing else can upset our week here and we love the place. So much so that it's moved to number 1 on our cities to live list.

Our accommodation couldn't have been better - an old stone manor on the fringe of a leafy inner-city suburb. A great find by my brother who did well to book something that met all the requirements for the ten of us.  Built in 1916 and now run by the owner's grandson, the house and fittings have been carefully looked after to keep the original feel (opening the wardrobe I half expect to find Narnia). Thankfully there were some modern touches - a flat screen telly broadcasting RWC.

Breakfast at corner cafe

Our week is spent ambling around the streets and parks of Palermo, enjoying the pastries, coffee and sunshine. After 2 months of traveling by ourselves it takes a while to adjust to the group dynamic, but it's great to spread the planning duties around and be able to share our time here with my family.

Floralis generica

Recoleta cemetery - free for the living

Calatrava's Puente de la Mujer. From some angles it supposedly looks like two tango dancers locked in embrace. We couldn't see it, but a beautiful bridge all the same.

Museo del Bicentenario 

Our last few days are set aside for my cousin's stag night (and hens night for the ladies), whose wedding is the following week in Brazil. The stag, who is inexplicably allowed to disappear during the afternoon to run errands, seems to escape the punishment owed to him (or perhaps he didn't? recall struggling here 3 weeks on).

What we fail to recall at the time is that my brother-in-law, fresh off the plane from NZ that morning and thrust straight into the pub, doesn't have a key to our house. Somehow we find ourselves in separate taxis heading in opposite directions across the city - he's outlasted the rest of the house despite being awake for 24 hours straight.

So it's with surprise that we see Cam come down the stairs for breakfast the next morning. Arriving home alone at dawn, speaking no spanish, with no bearings of the city and only a business card to mark the address he scales the 8 foot high stone wall, another similar sized wall fencing the internal courtyard and then two stories of trellis to reach his balcony. Peter Parker would be impressed.

We leave BA wishing we could have had more time, but excited to be heading to the tropical temperatures of Iguazu. We splash out to travel on the Rolls Royce of all buses - Tutto Letto class, which means full recline seats, movies on demand, wifi and hot meals served with champagne. For half the price of flying and none of the airport hassles, we can't recommend highly enough!

Taken from the boat behind this one. The camera went straight into the dry bag afterwards and the boat charged into the falls.

We spend a day at each of the Argentinian and Brazilian sides of the falls, as well as a short tour of the Itaipu Dam (which is the highlight for me from a geeky engineering perspective). But the falls live up to the hype too. We were told that the water levels were relatively low, but it was still an impressive display. It certainly felt like enough water when they parked the boat underneath.

The boat close to saturation point

Itaipu Dam - the largest hydro dam in the world. 8km long and produces 14, 000MW which is enough to meet the needs of all of Paraguay and a quarter of Brazil. Hard to think how something of this scale is built (the face of the dam shown here is 65 stories high).  

Don't touch the coaties

But feel free to wear awful novelty hats and pose like a dick

Special cousin

More soon from Rio and the wedding...

El Calafate to Bariloche

So we find ourselves back in catch up mode after meeting up with George's family in Bariloche and getting caught up in the whirlwind of the Quirk Family Circus (George's term not mine...). Apologies, the next few blogs may be brief.

Laughing at George's moustache? You might have to zoom in to find it.

From Torres del Paine we headed for El Calafate, excited to see Perito Merino glacier which we had heard so much about. El Calafate welcomes us with a fantastic sunny day, and we settle in at our hostel to plan more adventures. We have heard a lot about nearby El Chalten and decide to head there to do some hiking the following day. The weather a 3 hour bus-ride away is completely different from sunny El Calafate and we end up nearly running a supposedly 4 hour walk in 1.5 hours - the camera didn't make it out of the bag in the horizontal rain, but it was supposed to look like this (the lake was frozen solid when we saw it though). We spend the rest of the day warming up with hot chocolates until the return bus comes to collect us.

Cerro Fitzroy

The following day the weather is looking good and we are up early to get the bus to Perito Merino. On board we bump into some friends we had met on Torres del Paine. We arrive at the boat to see the glacier and as we are herded onboard, we get our first taste of mass tourism. Having barely seen any tourists for the last 2 months during low season in Patagonia, this comes as a bit of a shock.

Perito Merino Glacier

But Perito Merino doesn't disappoint, it is absolutely breathtaking how big this thing is. The average height of the front face is 74m. Unfortunately we aren't lucky enough to see any pieces falling off as it was such a cold day, but you could hear the ice constantly creaking and crashing down. Again we end up taking shelter with hot chocolates as icy winds continue.

Team uniforms: with Michelle and Tom, Suesanne and Sven

Back on the bus

We steel ourselves for our next long haul - a 28 hour bus ride covering 1841km to Bariloche. Fortunately the only option for this drive was to take a full cama bus - which is supposed to mean a flat bed. This wasn't quite the case, but the journey wasn't as bad as we expected despite our decision to sit in the front row which at times felt like being on a roller coaster.

Bariloche

Bariloche second time around was completely different from our first brief visit. The sun was out, the puffer jackets were gone and we met Georges' parents and sister here. We spent the week exploring the sights around Bariloche and walking through a lot of snow.

The black glacier. A touch underwhelming.

George and Stewart played a much anticipated round of golf at Llao Llao Resort though they were restricted to playing the same 9 holes twice as the ash is still being cleared from the course.

Hard to tell the fairway from the bunker 

A Sinclair victory

The Seven Lakes drive to San Martin

On our final day Harriet, George and I headed up Cerro Catedral for our last day of skiing in South America. After a mild week the snow was quickly disappearing but we had great BBQ chorizo and beers for lunch and the skiing was pretty fun too.

More coming soon...