Argentina

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.

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/

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

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