Hello everyone,

The last time we wrote we were in Montevideo which was beautiful with gorgeous food and really friendly people. We then left the city and drove to a colonial city called Colonia, they like to keep the names simple here! Colonia is beside the river that separates Uruguay and Argentina. It is a small town with cobbled streets and lots of pavement cafes. We were staying in the beautiful Posada del Flor where all of the rooms were named after flowers and there was a gorgeous central courtyard and also a roof terrace that looked across the river. We´re really being spoilt on this trip, we thought it was going to be hostels and dorms but so far we´ve been very lucky. Let´s see what happens in Bolivia!

It was one of the girl in the groups birthdays so we went to the town´s most famous restaurant, ´El Drugstore´ which despite its name did serve food!

The next day we weren´t getting the ferry to Buenos Aires until 8pm so we had the whole day to do what we wanted. We could have gone horse riding but after my (Kat) bad experience on a pony in France aged 7 she didn´t want to go so we decided to rent scooters instead as it seemed to be the best way of seeing some of the town. Matt rented a scooter but me and another girl decided to rent a dune buggy instead as we weren´t sure we´d be able to ride scooters. Matt took to the bike very easily and looked very fetching in his baby blue Playmobile style helmet! I found the buggy amazing to drive, although it´s top speed was only 45km/hr it was great for weaving in and out of the traffic in! The only issue was how low it was to the ground and the fumes we got in our faces! I did try driving the scooter but forgot which was the brake and which was the accelerator and had a close call with me losing my flipflops and nearly ending up in a stagnant pond!

We were only going to hire them for a couple of hours but found ourselves enjoying it so much and seeing loads of the Uruguayan countryside that we ended up with them for 5 hours. The best bit was when we drove through a poorer area and some kids were really curious about us and the buggy and were running along beside us trying to keep up, which wasn´t hard considering the speed of the thing! It was a fantastic day and a great experience.

That night we got the ferry to BA which took an hour and then had dinner and an early night ready for sightseeing the next day. When we woke up the next day there was thunder and lightning which wasn´t a good sign. We concluded that it was a perfect day for shopping as Matt was desperate for a leather jacket. The main shopping street is called Florida street and is full of shopping malls and leather souvenir shops, perfect but very very dangerous! We ended up shopping for about 5 hours in rain that did not let up all day so eventually we had to admit defeat and give up as we were drenched. Matt did manage to get a great deal on a brown leather jacket though so the day was a success.

In the evening we went to a traditional tangoeira where we had a tango lesson and then dinner and a tango show. The lesson wasn´t easy at all, no matter what the teacher told us. We ended up arguing and crashing into the other couples and Matt got annoyed with me because i was leading instead of him, oops! Also, very randomly, Sian who i did geography with at Nottingham was in the same class and is travelling around SA too, what a small world. After about an hour´s lesson we went for dinner and our first Argentinian steak and all of the red wine we could drink which was fantastic. Then the show started. We thought it would just be a couple of dances and that was it, instead it was an hour long with singing, acting and sooo much dancing. We were spellbound, it was amazing and nothing like what we´d been taught in our lesson!

The next day we did a bus tour of the city as we hadn´t been able to see much in the rain the day before. We all had hangovers as we´d decided to try out our new dance moves at a club until 5.30 in the morning! The tour was ok, we got to see the city but the guide was quite rude and didn´t know too much about the city. We got off the bus in Caminito which is a poorer area of the city but one of the most colourful. All of the buildings are painted in vibrant reds, yellows and blues and there were people dancing tango and playing guitar in the street, it had a great vibe. We bought some beautiful paintings there which really convey the atmosphere. That evening we went to one of the most famous steak restaurants in BA, called La Estancia. It cost about 3 pounds for the most delicious steak we had tasted in a while!

The next day we went to Recoletta which is one of the richer areas of BA and is where Eva Peron is buried. We went to the graveyard which is full of mausoleums of Argentinian families where all members are buried. It was a really eerie place as some of the structures were in quite bad condition so we could see inside and see the old coffins. Some of them were huge and really ornate with carvings and statues but it was still a bit strange and it felt a bit wrong to be taking photos. We saw Evita´s grave which had loads of fresh lilies laid by it which shows how much she is still loved by the people of BA, a bit like Princess Di really.

That night we took a 22 hour bus ride to Bariloche which is in Upper Patagonia, still in Argentina. Bariloche is a ski resort set beside a beautiful lake which is so big that 2 Buenos Aires could fit inside it! Bariloche is also known for being the chocolate capital of Argentina, perfect!

On our first day there we visited the national park where there was a black glacier and huge mountains and beautiful rivers. Our guide was amazing, she knew everything about the area, the geology and history, our guide in BA paled in comparison! The area was stunning with views over the lake and lots of waterfalls. We did a few hikes to get better views and to see the glacier closer up. It was huge and you could hear the thundering noise as bits were breaking off and rolling down the mountain. Our guide told us about how the glacier was retreating due to global warming and how she had been visiting it since the 1960s and it had got a lot smaller since then. It was really sad because it was so beautiful and really important for the area.

The next day we decided that it was time to do something a bit more extreme and so decided to have a go at canopying. This is when you fly on zip wires around the forest. There were 10 wires with 10 platforms between them. All of the wires were different lengths but the longest was 250m and was 60m above the ground, eeek! It was really good fun and gave us a bit of a buzz after having not done much for a while that got our adrenaline pumping. That afternoon we sampled some of the local chocolate which was delicious although the amount that we tried did make us feel a bit ill!

The next day we left Bariloche to go across the border to Chile....