The Great South American Adventure

The Story Continues

2007-07-26T23:59:15Z

I´ve been up to a lot recently, hence the long wait between entries, both due to the increased demand on my time and to having a lot more stuff to write about, making the prospect of doing so even more daunting. However, I have summoned up the inspiration and have managed to free up some spare time to devote to my beloved readers, if they haven´t given up on checking already. One of the things that has happened is I have had my camera, iPod and PSP stolen out of my locked bag, from between my feet on a bus from Nazca to Ica, so to see the photo´s that go with this section of the blog you will have to check out hutchi´s flicker,

http://www.flickr.com/photos/8075577@N02/sets/72157600767324997/

monkey´s blog

http://randomphotomonkey.blogspot.com/

and this site which has photos of us riding down the worlds most dangerous road, the password is "photos"

http://www.shutterfly.com/progal/sign_in.jsp?aid=768a5498cf40ad58caed

and for some photos of Lima taken with my new camera, check out my flickr at

http://www.flickr.com/photos/12875483@N00/

Anyway, after Cusco, Hutch, James and I headed to Copocaban to check out lake titikaka. From Copocabana most people take tours on the Island of the Sun, which they reached by ferry. However, we figured we didn´t need any fancy, motor powered ferry to get to the Island of the Sun, so we hired a wonderful little sail boat for the very economical rate of 30 bolivianos (about AU$5) per hour. We later named the vessel crapsack, soon after we had given up on ever reaching the island. When we left port, the wind was heading more or less straight back into port, making it very dificult for us to leave, to the great ammusement of those watching from the shore. However, after a while the wind started to turn around and we started to make a bit of ground. We ended up making it around a point, which we had taken as our new goal after conceding that the island of the sun was out of reach, so we decided to turn around and head back in, only to find that the wind was then blowing into our faces again coming from the direction of Copacabana, our intended resting place for the night. With my sailing savy, I reasured the guys that we should be able to zig zag back in without any problem. However, poor old crapsack was not the best boat at pointing upwind, not actually having a centerboard, and we were finding it dificult to make ground. In fact we were getting blown back around the point we were so proud to reach. We decided to row back around the point, then hopefully the wind would somehow be different and we could sail back in. Rowing proved to be more dificult than expected, until we moved the oars from the front to the middle of the boat and took the sails down. It was good to finally put all those rowing trainings to good use. All the five ergos I did were not done in vain. Pretty soon we were back around the point, and with the sight of Copacaban so far away we decided to try the sails again. We broke the paddle off the end of one of the oars while moving them back to the front of the boat, so we had no other choice but to sail in, or so we thought. As soon as we put the sails back up we were getting blown backwards and the waves were washing us into the rocky shore, so we "decided" to beach the boat just as it crashed sideways into one of the bigger river rocks, as if we had any other choice. So we took the sails down, pulled the rudder in, jumped out and started trying to pull the boat up onto shore. Luckily for us, a much more sea savy kid came along and started to help us out, first advising us to stop trying to pull the boat sideways over big rocks and push it around them instead, and showing us a good trick using the broken oar handle to slide the boat on up the beach. After we got it far enough out of water he asked for money then left and we started our long walk back into town. I was worried and thought we would be thrown in gaol for destruction of private property or something, but as we were about to get into town, the guy who had sent us on our journey came out to meet us on his push bike. He asked us where the boat was, we pointed and tried to explain, then he said we owed him 70 bolivianos for the extra time we had the boat. We paid and asked how he was going to get it back. He was going to ride out and row it back in. We explained that an oar was broken so he turned his bike around and started to ride back to his storage shead. I could not believe our luck and felt bad that this guy was going to row back by himself in the dark. He didn´t even charge us extra for the time it would take for him to do it. We figured that 70 bs would be going straight to his pocket, which is a fair bit for locals, but we still felt bad but helpless and lucky at the same time. Anyway, it´s a funny story. That´s all for now folks. Signing out, Marc/Plummers.

The Story Continues remains copyright of the author plummers, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Sucre to Cusco

2007-07-09T20:42:55Z

It´s been a while, but here is all the places I have been since Potosi.

See the itinerary of this trip, and details about each destination.

So, after Potosi I went to Sucre, which is a pretty nice city. Went out to Joyride, a total gringo hang out, a couple of times. Had a shot drinking competition with the table of travellers next to ours and won a nacho eating competition by because a friend emptied my bowel of crumbs while no one was looking. I also went looking for 7 waterfalls with 2 guys called Anders and Nick and an english guy called Dan. We didn´t find it the first day we looked for it, partly due to my misinterpretation of spanish directions. So we just followed the river for a while, suppoing we would find the waterfalls, without drinking water, because why would you take srinking water to waterfalls. But it was the dry season so the river was low and full of algae, so we didn´t risk it and went thirsty, walking up a massive ridge, which was meant to be some kind of shortcut and to get better view of the area, and eventually giving up our search for the waterfalls and heading toward the closest settlement, where we were ill recieved by the local street dogs, given strange looks by locals, who probably weren´t expecting to see 3 blond foreigners and one 6´3¨ guy in boardies with towels, and unable to buy any water. So we settled for a few mandarines and caught the next mini bus back into town. The next day, with better instruction in english, we managed to find the waterfalls, which are on a seperate stream that joins the one we walked along, and had an awesome time rock climbing our way to the last (7th) waterfall, where there is a natural waterslide, which we enhanced by dambing upstream then unleashing a torrent of water to aid your ride down. Then we had to jump of the 6th waterfall into its pool to get down, because it would be too hard to climb down, so I threw my shirt and wallet down without any problems, but my beloved calculator watch, which I had just meanded with superglue specifivally bought for the job, caught the wind in the wrong direction and bounced off a rock into the pool, where it shall forever rest in peace.

In Sucre, I got in touch with Hutchi and decided to head north to La Paz with the intention of meating up with him further north. La Paz is a pretty cool city with lot´s of stuff to do, but the first time I was there I just chilled out and waited to hear from Hutch while he was coming down from Quito. When I did get on to him, we decided to meat up in Cusco, so I got on a bus the next day, and twelve hours later I was in Cusco, Peru.

I thought Hutchi and James were getting there the night after I did, so I just went to watever hostel I could find the evening I got there, then decided to look for another place the next morning before they arrived. But after I found a place then came back to the first, who should be in reception but my old friend Hutchi, James amd two Columbians they shared a cab with. A little surprised and unprepared, I told them, to the disappointment of the receptionist, I had found another place and off we went. Cusco is a bit of a party town, with all the gringos, and there are four bars with totes out the front handing out free entry (yay) and free drink cards (now we´re talking). So we had a pretty big night the first night, which was fun. I can´t really remeber too many details so it must have been good. The next day we sorted out how we were going to get to Machu Pichu and the next morning we were off. Unfortunately the Inca Trail hike was booked out till like september at that stge so we decided not to do one of the alternate hikes, which didn´t really compare because none of them go via any other ruins and they all arrive at Machu Pichu by train then bus (or you could walk along the rails then the road, awesome). So we decide to skip the stroll around the country side and take the train an bus anyway. On the way though, we went to some other Inca archeological sites, Morray and an Inca salt farm, which were cool (photos coming soon). Machu Pichuu itself was pretty awesome. We were actually there on the winter solstace, which is pretty cool, but I think all the cool stuff had already happened at sunrise. Me and James climbed up Waynapichu, which is the big hill in the background of most of the photos of Machu Pichuu, while Hutchi, who was feeling a bit under the wheather, slept like a baby. It was a pretty crazy climb, then we went like half way down the other side to the temple of the moon, then had to climb about 3/4 of the way back up before heading down to Machu Pichuu again. We were ruited so unfortunately we couldn´t be bothered to climb this other hill called Huchupichu on the way back, despite it sounding like hutchi. After the climb we saw the few last things we wanted to then got the bus back into Aguas Calientes, which means hot water. It is named such because there are ¨hot¨ springs, which we went to and decided would be better described as luke warm springs, but it was still nice to relax after the big day. We caught the train back to Ollantaytambo the next day then got a taxi back to Cusco. That´s enough word nourishment for now, more to come later.

Sucre to Cusco remains copyright of the author plummers, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Potosi

2007-06-27T22:43:39Z

After Uyuni, I went to Potosi, the highest city of it´s size at an altitude of about 4 and a half thousand meters. On the bus I met a nice canadian/english couple and a cool family of four, who were travelling around the world together, who I stayed with in an awesome hostel called the Koala Den, the first Bolivian hostel with 24h, real hot water (pre heated, not electric) and comfy beds at the very economical price of 30 bolivianos per night, about AU$5. During the Spanish rule of Bolivia, Potosi was the richest city in all of the America´s, comparing to cities like London and Paris in population. All because next to the city is a large mountain that was once filled with pure silver, Cerro Rico. However, nowadays there is hardly any pure silver found and government mining operations have ceased. But cooperations, ranging from 5 to 40 miners, still mine there of their own accord, providing all there own equipment, including dynomite, which is sold freely in markets in town, and they just split the money they get from the minerals they extract, mostly a mixture of zinc, lead and a little bit of silver. These mines are also the main tourist attraction in Potosi, apart from the excellent colonial architecture from more prosperous times. We did a tour of one of the mines, which included buying gifts for the miners, soft drink, coca leaves and dynomite, and taking a stroll/crawl/climb around the interior of one of the mines to see the miners at work. We didn´t really get to see them actually digging but we saw them coming past with carts full of the material they had removed. Our guide was very insiteful about the mining and other aspects of bolivian culture and history, which made up for not really seeing that much. To put it nicely, the working conditions in the mines are very uncomfortable. Hardly any miners live past sixty, if that, because of the harmful fumes they are always inhailing, not to mention the accidents that often happen. At the end of the tour we were all very happy to be out of there, and to make us feel better we got to blow up two sticks of dynomite, which the guide lit, pretended to smoke like a cigar, then passed around for people to take photos, before his assistent took it off to a clearing on the side of the road, where it made more noise than I expected, causing me to jump and take a crap picture. That´s pretty much all I did of interest in Potosi, then I headed to Sucre, where I parted ways with my friends to find cheaper accomodation, but more about that later. Over and Out.

Potosi remains copyright of the author plummers, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Bolivia

2007-06-24T00:08:23Z

Sorry about the long wait again. There are new photos at

www.flickr.com/photos/12875483@N00/

check them out in all their Bolivian glory.

To make it to Bolivia before my Argentinian Visa ran out, I undertook a mamoth bus journey from Puerto Iguazu to Pocitos, on the Bolivian border, via Tucuman. This meant that I missed out on seeing Salta, which was a shame, but I saved getting fined 50 pesos. Anyway, from Pocitos, I was escorted over the boarder by this great guy who carried my bag for me while I went through Argentinian immigration, gave it to a friend of his on the Bolivian side of the boarder, then told me he needed 50 pesos to pay the immigration officials, which they must have forgot to ask for on my way through their office, plus a tip for carrying the bag. I had just been on a bus for 30 hours and wasn´t thinking very clearly or particularly in the mood to argue, so there went the 50 pesos I didn´t get fined. Anyway, Yacuiba, the town on the Bolivian side of the boarder wasn´t very pleasant so I got the first bus I could to Tarija, the capital of the region. So the mamoth bus journey became even more mamoth after an hour longer than expected wait in extreme cold at the Yacuiba bus terminal cause Bolivia is an hour behind Argentina.

Tarija was a nice place. I chose a place to stay out of footprints due to it´s description as having hot water and my need to shower after travelling by bus for two straight days. Unfortunately this description was unaccurate and my room had an ellectric shower, which only has on water handle, for cold water which is supposedly heated by an electric device on is way through. Basically your passing water through some kind of insulated toaster (safe), which barely warms it before it gets to you anyway. However, my need to clean out wayed my discomfort of having a cold shower, and in the end I felt better for having it. I had a bit of a walk around town and while I was there there was a sort of demonstration and a march through the city, comemorating the Chaco War, where Bolivia lost a fair bit of it´s territory to Praguay a while back, so that was interesting. I also got some decent food which was nice after the long journey. Tarija was a really pleasant place, especially after Yacuiba, but there didn´t seem there was that much to do there, so I decided to move on to Villazon, another town on the boarder of Argentina, where I would take a train to Uyuni, the first place I had previously planned to go to in Bolivia, from where I would take a tour to the famous Uyuni salt flats.

My bus from Tarija arrived around 1:30am, friday morning, despite the bus drivers best effort to get there quicker, despite the treachorous, cliff sided, one and a half lane, windy road which we took to get there. After finding a place to stay, I went to the train station the morning after to find out there was no train on friday. I had already known this, but in my rush to keep moving forgot before I left Tarija, and I shouldn´t have, given the immense supperiority of Tarija over Villazon in general niceness, things to see and places to eat. Villazon is a hole and the only thing I managed to do there was get the shits from eating in a dodgy restaurant. I don´t like Boliva/Argentina boarder towns. So I got the train on Saturday afternoon, which had a toilet, thank god (bolivian buses don´t), and got to Uyuni about midnight. The first place I tried to stay at wouldn´t answer the doorbell. The second place I looked at cost US$20 a night, a far cry from the 35 bolivianos I had been paying. So I ended up staying at the third place I came across, which only cost 15 bols per night, but exagerated my bad neck from the train and only had electric showers, which I gave a second chance, to no avail. In Uyuni itself there wasn´t much to see, but I was able to get my clothes cleaned, which was desperately needed by that stage, I organized to go on a salt flat tour and I changed to a hostel with hot, not electric, showers (between 8:30 and 9am).

The Salt lake tour was awesome. We headed out to the Salt lake first, which was amazing, check out the photos. On the salt flats we went to the Hotel de Sal, which has walls, furniture and beds made out of salt. Then we stopped for lunch on this island of dirt, rocks and cacti, called Isla Pescado, which just sticks out in the middle of the huge salt flats, surrounded by a sea of white. From there we left the comfort of driving on the flat salt and hit the markedly less smooth dirt roads, heading towards volcanos and lakes coloured strangely by the different minerals they are full of. We stayed the first night in San Juan de Rosario, a bizzarly lage town, given its location in the middle of nowhere. The second day we hit up a few of the lakes and volcanos and stopped a few times to change a couple of tyres and then we stayed inside the national park in extremely basic conditions. I slept in all my clothes and a beany, in a hired sleeping bag, under the blankets of the bed, and struggled to stay warm. On the third day we went to a hot spring, which was wonderful to get the warmth back into the extremeties. We had breakfst there, then went to Laguna verde, the most spectacular of all the lakes, a rich green lake in the forground of a conical volcano. After that we headed back to Uyuni, with a stop at a river to have lunch with some Llamas and at a small town with an old stone church.

That´s probably enough for now, but I´ll update soon with tales from Potosi, Sucre and La Paz.

Bolivia remains copyright of the author plummers, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Finally, Another Update

2007-05-28T21:27:46Z

I know it´s been ages and I apologize, but I really don´t have that much to report. New photo´s again at www.flickr.com/photos/12875483@N00/ . From Cordoba, I went to Rosario by myself, where I really got off on the wrong foot. The bus left Cordoba at midnightish and was scheduled to arrive at Rosario at 5ish in the morning. However, Rosario was not the end of the line, so I didn´t really allow myself to properly fall asleep, for fear of waking up and finding myself in Buenos Aires. I hadn´t made any reservations in Rosario and when I arrived the tourist information at the bus terminal had not opened yet. So I found a kiosko, like a milkbar, that had computers, because none of the internet cafes were open yet, and started to look for places to stay. The second one I rang had room so I marked it on my map, which I had grabbed from the unmanned tourist information, and headed outside for to take a cab. I asked the cab driver to take me to Rosario Hostel. Instead he took me to Rosario Hotel. With much difficulty, I explained to him that this was not where I wanted to go. He seemed a bit thick and confused as to why I would ask to go somewhere I didn´t want to go. Then I tried to explain to him that the place I wanted to go was on the street ´urquiza,´ so he took me to Hotel Urquiza. When I explained to the bell boy that I wasn´t interested in staying in his hotel and that I wanted to go to Hostel Rosario, he translated my bad bud obviously understandable spanish into correct yet seemingly confusing spanish to the driver. I showed the bell boy the mark on my map and he gave the adress to the cabbie and finally he took me where I wanted to go. Not straight to the door but close enough to find with a bit of searching. I rang the door bell and waited. And waited, and waited, until a guy finally came and had a look at me, gestured for me to wait then left. Eventually he came back and let me in, made me pay more for my room than advertised up front, then showed me to a huge room with ten beds, of which the only one being used would be mine. At this stage I decided I would check out the other hostels later that day, but first I had a shower and a nap, after which I felt much better, had a bit of breakfast and headed out to see the city and find a new hostel. The first hostel I, which was the first I had called, went to looked quite cool and had a free bed for me the following night. So I reserved that and actually met some english guys there straight away, due to the fact the actually had no reception or apparent administration. I ended up staying in that place for about 2 and a half weeks. Activities mostly consisted of gowing out on weekends, which Rosario was quite good for, as it is renowned for having the prettiest and nicest girls in Argentina, a reputation that is well deserved. Apart from going out and practicing my spanish and dance moves with the local ladies, I also spent some time between monday and wednesday trying to see the local sites. Rosario was a nice city but it wasn´t exactly full of tourist attractions, which I didn´t mind too much cause it mean it wasn´t full of tourists. Of the few tourist attractions I went and saw the modern art museum, the flag monument, where the first argentinian flag was raised and I tried to go to the flea market and the planetarium but was too early for both. I also did a little bit of shopping and tried what is apparently the best icecream in argentina at Smart, Rosario, and was inclined to agree with its reputation. I also spent my birthday in Rosario and had a great night, including party hats and cake, although I did miss my family and friends back home.

Not long after my birthday I decided it was time to move on to my next destination, Puerto Iguazu, where I came to see the incredible Iguazu falls. The hostel I´m staying in here, Hostel Inn, is pretty nice. Well not really nice. It is a little too large for my liking and unfortunately I got put in a room full of israeli stoners, in one of four outdoor lodges, rather than in the main complex, near the showers which actually have hot water. However, it has a massive pool which I got to sunbake around a couple of days so that kind of makes up for it. As for falls, which I went and saw on the argentinian side a couple of days ago, they are absolutely amazing. First I went on a bit of a hike to a smaller secluded waterfall, which I was quite impressed by. Then I was completely blown away by the scale of the main falls and amplitude of water falling at one time. Absolutely amazing. Check out the photos. In the arvo I weant on a tour on truck through the jungle, pretty crap, not recommended, then a boat ride up the river to the feet of the various falls, which was pretty cool, although you couldn´t really see much when you got really close and were getting showered by the spray. Still, it was a very unique esperience.

Tonight, I am taking a bus around the southern part of Paraguay, cause you need a visa to go through it, to Tucaman in the North West of Argentina, where I will have about three hours to have some dinner tomorrow night and have a look around, before I get on a bus bound for Bolivia, which will arrive the morning after. Why such a large distance in one go you may ask? Well, my Argentinian visa last to the end of May. It sucks cause I am bypassing some cool places, like Salta, to make it and I just heard this morning that the fine for overstaying your visa is 50 pesos (like AU$20). But 50 pesos saved is 50 pesos earned and that should go a bit further in Bolivia, which is a fact I´m looking forward to. Hope everything back home is going well, keep in touch, and stay tuned for more TALES OF INTEREST!!!

Finally, Another Update remains copyright of the author plummers, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Cordoba

2007-05-10T18:49:02Z

Cordoba was pretty cool. It`s the second biggest city in Argentina, after Buenos Aires, and there was a fair bit of stuff to do there. I travelled to Cordoba on bus overnight from Mendoza with an english guy named Ledger who is a friend of Harry, Jasper and Jeremy who met up with us in Mendoza. After trying another hostel which was full, looked crap anyway, we booked into a hostel called Baluch, which was in a renovated big old apartment down town which was cool, highly recomended. First thing we did was not much. We watched a lot of dvds in our first days there, including such classics as Madagascar and fight club. This is how we met Clarisa and Charlie, an unlikely pair of poms (oh yeah, alliteration) travelling together. In an rare moment of motivation, we decided to go out one night to a club called mitre. Not a bad place, questionable music, but that was made acceptable by the abbundace of good looking argentinian women.

One of our other notible excursions was to Villa Carlos Paz, a nice little town on a river about 40min bus ride out of town, which only cost 4.50 pesos. Our objective was to do some karting, but first, we were hungry, so we went to an italianish looking restaurant by the river. Everyone else got lasagna which was questionable in quality (more alliteration, god i`m good) but not as questionable as my order of the menu of the day, a local delicasy that would best be described as fat soup, kind of like a stew with pieces of fat instead of meat and no vegetables. However, the soupy part was pretty nice and I thought I had made a pretty good go at it until the waiter asked me if i didn`t like it, because I left all the pieces fat, assuming you weren`t supposed eat them. However the expression of doubt on waiters the waiters face when I said I did enjoy it would suggest otherwise. Anyway, after lunch we went go-karting which was good fun. There were some passes, powerslides (not actually that good for mainting speed, usually resulting in being passed) and a few good crashes, that i`m sure couldn`t have been avoided, after we were told that they weren`t dodgem cars and bumping is stricly forbidden.

After Charlie and Clarisa left us for Mendoza, me and ledger went to another little town outside of the city on another minibus called Alta Gracia, where a certain Ernesto Guevara spent most of his childhood. We went to one of the houses where he lived when he was a child where there is a museum dedicated to him, displaying photos, letters and other memorabilia, including the same model of motorbike as that which he travelled on around argentina, and got a photo next to it (so gringo). It was interesting to learn about his family and his childhood but it didn`t really explain much about what he did as an activist. I´ll have to wiki it sometime.

By that stage, it was only one day until the Rally of Cordoba, which is part of the world rally championship. So I stayed around for that and we went to a stadium event, which was really cool, and one of the stages out in the countryside. Also very cool. They drive really fast. Check out the photo`s on my flickr site www.flickr.com/photos/12875483@N00/ and check out this video

How cool is that! Anyway, hope you`ve enjoyed the entry and keep up the comments, I love hearing from you, and stay tuned for more TALES OF INTEREST

Cordoba remains copyright of the author plummers, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Best Blog Entry Ever

2007-04-30T15:35:45Z

Hola amigos, que esta arriba? Once again sorry about the long wait between entries, I promise you won't be dissappointed. There's new photos on my flickr site, www.flickr.com/photos/12875483@N00/ so check it out.

Bariloche

I tried to hitchhike from El Bolson to Bariloche, and I was very confident because I had hitched around El Bolson a fair bit which was easy cause it's a really chilled out place and there's heaps hippies, not meant in a derogatory way, so I just kept walking out of town expecting someone to pick me up. One guy gave me a lift further out of town but he wasn't going all the way but he reassured me that someone should pick me up. However, after about 2 hours of walking and waiting in strategically chosen places, no one would pick me up until I jokingly put my thumb out for a bus, which I didn't expect to stop after I had so blatantly shunned there services, but it did, and I'm glad cause by that stage I was quite a way out of town and given my success thus far, I wasn't to confident about being able to hitchhike back. Anyway, when I got to Bariloche I checked into a hostel called the Tango Inn, which was recommended to me by Hernan, the great Argentinian guy who gave me a lift around Puerto Madryn. The Tango Inn was a pretty good hostel, a little far out of town, but it had excellent staff and I met some cool people there. The first of which was Leigh, another Melbonite, who had injured his arm in a mountain bike/smoking accident and was confined to the bar in the hostel and in serious need of a drinking buddy, something I was able to help him out with. The wheather was pretty shitty while I was in Bariloche, however we did manage to go on one excursion to one of the local peaks which had great views of the surrounding lakes, check out my flickr page for photos. Also despite the shitty wheather we decided to go swimming in the lake on one of the nicer days. Despite being one of the nicer days it was still very windy, making the lake very rough and wavey, making the potentially ankle breaking river rocks difficult to negotiate. Also, it was bloody cold, but what can you expect when you can see snow capped mountains surrounding the lake you are swimming in, so the dip didn't last that long, but it made the decidedly average wheather seam quite pleasant by comparrison when we got out. We went out a couple of nights, first to Wilkenny, a large Irish Pub kind of like pugs except with more 70s and 80s music. The second time we definately didn't want to go there again but did when we couldn't find anything else. And the third night we went to South bar, a smaller more atmospheric place, with cheaper drinks and better music, highly recommended, although watch out for sleazy argi guys cutting your lunch. Another night we made a bit of a bon fire on the lake shore which was pretty cool, but it would have been cooler if this damn welsh girl didn't smother it so much. I also met some english guys, Harry, Jasper and Jeremy, there and travelled to Mendoza with them.

Mendoza

Despite leaving 3 hours before the english guys from Bariloche, when I walked got to the hostel, there they were already unpacked and lazing about in our new room. That place, Hostel International, was pretty crappy so we only stayed one night then moved to a better one, called Winkas, highly recomended. In Mendoza, we went wine tasting, as it is where the mort reputable argentinian wines come from, and we weren't disappointed. However, I do regret doing the wine tour on bikes, because despite the brosure for the imaginatively named "bikesandwines" bike hire company making it look like all the wineries were just around the corner from each other, I would say there was an average of about 5km between each. And the bikes were not of the highest or comfiest quality, but what can you expect when the place just gives them away for free because you didn't book and pay at your hostel and the guy could be bothered getting you to fill out the froms, so I can't really complain seeing as I didn´t have to pay. However, if I were to do it again or recomend it to anyone, I would definately take the bus. We also went out a couple of nights, all of which were of fairly high standard and sampled some of the fine quisine on offer in many of the city´s restaurants, but apart from that, theres Not that much to report. The english guys I met in Bariloche went to Santiago, Chile, and now I´m in Cordoba living it up ol South America style. Stay in touch, love hearing from you all, Marc/Plummers.

Best Blog Entry Ever remains copyright of the author plummers, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Happy Easter!

2007-04-07T23:10:33Z

What up yo? Happy Easter everyone. How are you all going? Things are going pretty well over here. Puerto Madryn was good, saw some sea lions, elephant seals and a shite load of penguins. I met a couple good blokes from Buenos Aires, Hernan and Gaston, at the hostel in Puerto Madryn. Hernan had his car with him and was going to Peninsula Valdez so I took full advantage of that and got a lift with him. We stayed on the Peninsula at Puerto Pirimides for a night, which was good cause it meant we didn´t have to rush around the place trying to see everything in one day. Unfortunately we did not see any killer whales, despite going to the most likely place to see them at the most likely time two days in a row and waiting a total of about 8 hours. Oh well, there´s always documentaries. A couple of days later, after returning to Puerto Madryn, we went down to Punta Tombo, which was awesome. There is a massive Magellan Penguin colony there, and there is a path that goes right through there nesting area and up to the beach where they were always getting in and out of the water and swimming around in the shallows. It was so cool because they were always on the path and you just walked among them. Photos coming soon.

From Puerto Madryn, I took a bus to Esquel, which was pretty nice but I didn´t really do much there, because there wasn´t really much to do. I did walk to a small lake, which was pretty crap cause the walk was along a dusty road, instead of like a beaten track through forrests, and I watched a kids soccer game which was pretty good quality, on my way out of town. I hitchhiked to El Bolson with a father and daughter from Spain. They were pretty nice. The daughter had just moved over to Buenos Aires and the father had come over to do some travelling with her. I found all that out speaking only spanish, how good am I. In El Bolson, I have been working on a WWOOF farm, which is very chilled out and has been very kind on the budget. Work has included collecting rocks and shovelling dirt. I came down to town today, also hitch hiking, to check out the local handi craft market. I stopped to watch a street performer who was mainly juggling and joking with the crowd, and he asked me to come forward to throw flaming clubs to him while he balanced on a board on top of a cylinder on top of a box. I thought why me as he got the crowd to applaud until I got up and explained to him that I was Australian and didn´t really understand his instructions but he just forwarded this information to the crowd and laughed it off. It wasn´t so funny when he didn´t catch the third burning club cause I threw it to the wrong hand. And after the trick, which was the finale, he asked if I wanted to give him money, then made a joke about how little I gave him. Anyway, it´s all good. From here I´m going to go to Bariloche, probably on monday. Until then, stay tuned for more TALES OF INTEREST.

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More Photos

2007-03-29T22:37:22Z

There are more photos at my flickr site

www.flickr.com/photos/12875483@N00/

from Peninsula Valdez, Cueva de Las Manos and my hikes around El Chalten. Hope you like them. Thanks for all the comments, it´s great to hear from you all,

Plummers

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Bushwalking/ Hitchhiking

2007-03-26T14:16:13Z

So what have I been up to lately. I went to El Chalten and that was pretty nice. I did a bit of bushwalking there. On the first one I thought I was doing pretty good, everyone had said that it was a pretty hard walk, and I thought I was just some naturally tallented hiker, without any training at all. That was until i reached the last couple of hundred meters or so, over which the track rose a couple of hundred meters (about 45 degrees). By the time I got to the top I was absolutely buggard and the Fitz Roy (big granite rock at the top) had just been covered up by clouds and it started to rain.
But enough whinging, I made it and I´ve got the photo to prove it and that´s what matters. I took the next day off to recover and the day after I did another hike which, wheather wise, proved equally disappointing. The wind at my destination was the strongest i have ever experienced. That in itself was pretty cool, but the main attraction was once again covered in cloud. That walk was a lot
easier than the previous one though and in the end was quite pleasant (how boringly lame ). The day after that I got a bus further north toward Perito Moreno, but I decided to stay at
an Estancia (ranch) 75km out of town cause my guide book said it was cheap and I thought it would be cool to gaucho (cowboy) it up for a couple of days. When I arrived there were no other guests there and there was no electricity. The "local" attraction there is La Cueva de Las Manos (Cave of Hands), which the owners of the estancia told me was about a 3 hour walk away, from where I could return by car, I think, because they only spoke spanish and thought that talking faster made it easier to understand. However, I thought that compared to my previous hikes this would be a piece o cake. After about 5 hours walking, following a badly signed track I finally made it and it was pretty cool, 9,000 year old cave paintings mostly of hands, juanacos and hunters. But at the end of the tour when I asked about getting a lift home the guide looked at me blankly and basically said that there were no cars there and he didn´t think
anymore people were going to come that day. It was about 5 o´clock by that stage so I thought I was going to have to walk back and arrive by about 10pm. Luckily another tourist came to see the paintings, did the tour then gave me a lift even though he wasn´t going to go that way. The day after that, which was yesterday, I hitched a ride into Perito Moreno, cause that was the only way into town. I started hitching at about 10am and got a lift at about 12:30pm. In Poreto Moreno I managed to find the bus station after wondering round in circles and asking for directions about 5 times. I caught a bus to Comodoro Rivadavia, which arrived at 10pm and I thought I was going to stay there the night but there was an overnight bus to Puerto Madryn, my intended destinations so I thought I´d kill 2 birds with 1 stone, transport and accomodation. Unfortunately sleeping on the bus wasn´t that comfy, and I awoke this morning with a terrible feeling in my neck to the sound of the driver telling me we´ve arrived after an estimated 2 or 3 hours sleep. Anyway, the plan is to stay here for a while and check out the penguins, seals, dolphins and hopefully an killer whale. Keep up the comments, I know Daino that I´ve written a long winded entry again. Shut up! Peace out, I´m going to sleep.

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Photos at Last

2007-03-19T14:44:13Z

Sorry about the wait. Yes I did take that photo. I know it looks like a profesional shot that I just google and put on my blog, but I can´t help being a prodigal photographer. Only joking . It´s pretty hard to take a bad photo of something like that, and it looks a little underexposed anyway. But anyway, that is Perito Moreno glaciar and I was there. It´s between 40 and 80m high, which is hard to tell because it is surrounded by mountains. But we went out on a boat to get a bit closer and it´s freakin awesome. Pictures just don´t do it justice, so I guess you´ll just have to visit it aswell. This is just a taste though. For more of my prodigal work go to my flickr page, www.flickr.com/photos/12875483@N00/

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BA was great but now I´m in El Calafate

2007-03-19T13:43:19Z

See the itinerary of this trip, and details about each destination.

Hey everyone, sorry about the long wait between entries. This one should keep you busy for a while so I hope that´s some kind of consolation. No photos yet sorry. I haven´t found a good cheap internet cafe where i´m staying yet, but the one I´m in now is alright, but I don´t have the cables with me at the moment, maybe I´ll come back. But enough of my internal dialogue, I´m sure you want to know what I´ve been doing. Well, in Buenos Aires me and Monkey saw a soccer game, which we paid way too much to do it with like this tour group, the seats we had probably cost like $15 (pesos, which
means like AU$7) and we paid P$120, which really doesn´t sit well with our plans to budget to stay for a year. However it did make it easy, as they took us there in our own bus, which was good because monkey and i did not exactly master the public bus system, usually going with the ¨that´s going in the right direction now¨ phylosophy which doesn´t really work when the bus makes a wrong turn and goes down the freeway for a few kms then drops you off on the side of the freeway where there is no bus stop because this is the closest place to where you wanted to go. That was alright though, we walked down to another bus stop that looked like a bus from there might take us to the city, and we waited, and waited, and continued to wait for ages cause all the buses were full of people coming from the free rock concert that we wanted to go to but couldn´t find so they (the buses: fragmented, no suggestion) didn´t stop. But it was alright because we got to practice our spanish with this chick who was also waiting, which was good cause you don´t get many oppurtunities where locals have nothing better to do than try to understand our pigeon spanish and talk back slowly so you can understand. In the end we had to catch a taxi back to the hostel anyway cause none of the buses were would stop, apperently about 200,000 people went to this free rock concert. Anyway, the soccer was really good. We went and saw probably the most popular team play at there home stadium. The croud was crazy, in a good way, there was no violence or anything however the fans of the other team were seperated from us and at the end left before us and were made sure not to hang around by an army of police, which was pretty intense. But back to the game. The crowd was awesome, they had all these chants and would sort of mosh in the stands, where we were we were standing for the whole game, siting down at half time, and there was like a marching band in the stands on the opposite side of us where the craziest fans were, and the band played for the whole game and still played while they were walking out of the stadium. Also across from us and to our right they pulled out these huge banners which they passed over the croud and it was just amazing because they were massive and they´d just pull
out one, pull it back in, then pull out another and another, and you´d just think, ¨where the hell is all that material coming from.¨ It was kinda wierd though because the home team lost 3-0, and when the other team scored a goal there was just silence, because there were so few of the other supporters and you´d go to give them a bit of a golfers clap, you know, good goal, well played, then you´d look around at the frozen faces of the fans around you and think, maybe not, maybe i´ll just keep that one to myself. Also on the list of things to do was to have a tango lesson, which we have and we can confidently say we have mastered tango, along with the entire spanish language . Also I tried the home made caramel icecream which is absolutely awesome. It´s like caramel fudge in sticky, milky, sorbet form. Awesome. We´ve seen alot of the touristy sites and got a bit of an insite into Argentinian
history, google the mothers of the plaza de mayo, and we went to the museum of fine art which is definately world class, with a few picasos and other very nice art (you can tell I´m a real connoiseur, and yes I had to google that word to check its spelling). All the while, we did five days, 4 hours a day, spanish lessons, which we´re really good because they gave us a lot of listening and conversation practice, and a lot more confidence to try to talk to people. After we finished the lessons, we both wanted to get out of the city. It´s a beautiful city but there´s a lot of argentina to see and we had to start sometime. We also decided to part ways for now, to try to focus on our spanish, as we were always talking in english with each other. So Monkey headed towards Cordoba and I took a plane down south to El Calefate in Patagonia. It´s the perfect time to come down because it´s just after the busy season and the wheather is still good. I went and saw the Perito Moreno glacier the other day, which was awesome, and took heaps of photo´s, but if you want to see some just google it, and google earth it, the whole area sould look pretty cool. There´s lots of lakes, glaciers and mountains, ie. the andes. My next port of call will probably be El Chalten, which sould be nice. More glaciers and mountains, then probably on to Puerto Madryn to see sea lions and penguins. Thanks for all the comments, keep em coming and I hope you´ve enjoyed the entry.

Marc/Plummers

BA was great but now I´m in El Calafate remains copyright of the author plummers, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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We´re alive and safe in Buenos Aires

2007-03-05T02:06:42Z

Hola amigos! We survived the plane trip which wasn´t so bad. From Melbourne to Buenos Aires in about 20 hours, with a couple of stops in Sydney and Aukland on the way. I can´t say much about Argentinian in flight entertainment, the airhostest didn´t even run through the safety procedures at the start of the flight, which is one of my favorite parts. Instead they had this dodgy computer animation. However, the food was pretty good compared to the usual aeroplane fodder, and we arrived safely with all our baggage so I can´t really complain.

From the aeroport we got a taxi, which I tried to enter via what, in Australia, would be the front passengers door, which in Argentina is of course the driver´s side door. I soon realised my mistake upon seeing the stearing wheel and pedals where I was planning to sit and made my way to the right side of the car (what an awesome pun). After Monkey, the taxi driver and the rest of the people waiting for taxi´s stopped laughing we were on our way into Buenos Aires, where all the roads are one way and the people drive like crazy. Although, despite the hazardous traffic, our trusty cabby managed to deliver us safely to our hostel, which monkey had only got onto at the last minute after finding out 2 days before we left that the first hostel we booked was actually full.

That´s why it was so funny when we arrived at the hostel and the guy working there pretended not to speak english, after our awesome spanish skills failed us, and gestured that he didn´t know about our reservation and that there were no more rooms. Luckily he was only joking (hilarious), so we have beds and shelter and can communicate with people as most of the people working and staying at the hostel can speak english. But we didn´t come here to speak english so we´re going to do some spanish lessons that have been recomended to us by other aussie travellers and sound pretty good and, like everything else here, are rediculously cheap. So that´s the plan for now, work on our spanish in Buenos Aires until we can get by in a conversation with the locals then see where we go from there.

That´s all for now. Keep in touch,

Plummers

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Parmas at the Royal Mail

2007-02-28T03:41:23Z

This photo was taken at the Royal Mail, where you can get the best value, quality parma around, and where me, monkey and friends had our second last supper, the very last reserved for family obviously. Anyway, we had a great night and I would like to thank everyone who was there for coming along. And special thanks to Swaney for supplying my evenings accomidation. I'm gonna miss that fouton man.

And check this out

See the itinerary of this trip, and details about each destination.

That's where we're going on thursday, not a bad days effort.

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How to leave coments

2007-02-25T11:22:25Z

If you want to leave a comment and tell me how good my blog is or just how cool I am, just click on the entry title that you want to comment on, which is on the side of this page, under latest entries, and leave a comment for me. It doesn't even have to be related to the topic, you can just tell me what you've been up to. Hope to hear from you all soon. Peace out.

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More Photo's

2007-02-25T11:49:13Z

Check out my other photos on flickr at www.flickr.com/photos/12875483@N00/ and Monkey's photo blog, randomphotomonkey.blogspot.com/, for more photos of our travels

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Photo Testing

2007-02-28T03:01:50Z

Melbourne at dusk taken from Swaney's balcony during a poker night. I can't remember what happened so I'll just say I won all the money.

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Welcome

2006-12-24T00:29:43Z

This site is dedicated to documenting the travels of Marc Plumridge and Mark Tyndal through South America. We will be updating it as we go with diary entries and lots of photos, so bookmark this page and share with us an adventure of a lifetime.

The departure date is 01/03/2007, when we will be flying out of Melbourne bright and early and landing in Buenos Aires, Argentina,
about a day later. Until then I am going to work over summer to save up some cash, make travel plans, and try to learn Spanish and how to teach english as a foreign language.

That's all for now, and seeing as I've just summed up my whole summer in the last paragraph, that's probably going to be all until we leave, but once we do, stay posted for intruiging insites into our fantastic journey.

Peace Out

Plummers

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