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! That night we ended up going clubbing to put our new moves into practice!

The next day we did a bus tour of the city with perhaps the least passionate or well informed guide in Buenos Aires. It was a bit of a disappointment but at least it gave us a chance to sleep off our hangovers! The best bit of the tour was our visit to Caminito which is one of the poorer areas of BA but all of the buildings are painted in the most vibrant colours and people are dancing and playing the guitar in the street! That night we went to one of the best restaurants in BA; La Estancia where we ate the most delicious steak ever! As we were leaving at 12.30am people were still arriving for dinner, this crazy Latin American way of life!

The next day we went to Recoleta to visit the cemetery where Evita is buried. This was like no cemetery we had ever seen before. It was mostly made up of mausoleums which had been built by rich BA families and where generations of family members were buried. It was a creepy place especially as some of the buildings were in bad condition and you could see the coffins inside. Some of them were huge and very ornate. It was easy to find Evita´s because it was the only one with loads of lilies laid in front of it.

That night we took a 22 hour night bus to Bariloche.

Bariloche is in Upper Patagonia and is a ski resort in winter. As we arrived in summer season we knew we wouldn´t be skiing but there was plenty else to do, especially as the town is the chocolate capital of Argentina. On our first full day there we went on a tour to the national park where there was a black glacier. It was a beautiful place with huge forests and a lake which had the clearest blue water. Our guide was brilliant, our BA guide paled in comparison. She knew all about the history and geology of the area and was really passionate about the place because she had been visiting it since the 60s. The glacier was amazing and so huge. It was exciting when we could hear bits of it cracking and moving, it sounded like thunder. There was a unanimous decision among the group that today had been one of the best days so far with such beautiful scenery and so much useful information about the area.

The next day we decided that we needed an adrenalin kick so we booked ourselves to go canopying. This involved flying on zip wires through the forest at 60m above the ground. I (Kat) was terrified especially as we had to step off these platforms that were so high off the ground and the basically just sit down in thin air and fly along a wire dangling by a clip attached to your waist, eek! However, by the 6th platform i was ok and starting to enjoy it. Unfortunately there were only 10 platforms in total so it did take me a while. It was great fun though and a real buzz! In the afternoon we decided t reward ourselves with some of the local chocolate. They weighed it by the kilogram and although matt and i only ate about 0.1kg we still felt sick afterwards!

The next day we left Bariloche for Chile....