Hi.... We are in Bariloche (for all you trip-trackers!) and have finally found a speedy internet café... and I have managed to get a lot of photos up! 

Okay, since I last wrote.... we set out on the Monday... a week ago yesterday... the 5th February... at 7am... from El Chaltén, to do the trek up to Cerro Torre and the glacier... in the pouring rain. There were no views for the rain clouds and we spent the whole time up to the campamiento (two hours from the start and where you get kitted out with crampons and harnesses) with our hoods up and heads down trying to avoid the puddles and mud... and when we arrived, the guides told us that the weather was too bad to walk on the glacier!

Scuppered again...

So we had some coffee and biscuits in their tent with the rain loud on the canvas... and turned round and went all the way back, the guides suggesting that we tried again the next day... so we did... and, despite thinking we must be slightly mad starting all over again, walking the same two hours to the campamiento, it was really really worth it - a very brilliant day...

From the campamiento, we (a group of about 12 with our guides, Diego and Matthieus... real hardened, salt of the earth, ruddy-faced blokes with big thighs - I couldn't help but notice!)... we walked another two hours along the morraine at the end of the glacial lake and around the lake to the glacier. On the way round we had to traverse a river via a 'zipline', and my pulley got a bit stuck half way over... I got my knickers in a twist (as I do) dangling over not particularly deep or dangerous, but icy cold waters, all very much to Simon's bemusement (as always!)... We then spent the next two hours, with crampons on, walking on the glacier, balancing along ridges and peering into crevasses - I loved it!

The peak of Cerro Torre remained in cloud all day (that's the base of it, on the left of the photo of Simon), but the views up to the top of the glacier and back down the valley towards El Chaltén were brilliant. We even tried a bit of ice climbing, which I tackled with a lot more sophistication and agility than I had the zipline - just look at the photos(!); it got Simon really wanting to get back into climbing...

Finally we made our way back down to El Chaltén, arriving at 9pm, 14 hours later, really very knackered and achy, but pleased that we'd decided to give it another go.

The next day (Wednesday) we caught the bus out of El Chaltén to Los Antiguos on the border with Chile, but took the decision quite last minute to get off earlier, at the small town of Perito Merino, and make our way north on the Argentinian side instead. It was likely going to be quicker and allow us more time in the Lakes District. So we've sadly not seen the Chilean side of the Patagonian Andes - and will definitely have to come back to do it another day. We stopped the night in Perito Merino and caught the bus out the next day to Esquel, several hours further north again, having thus travelled the length of the infamous gravel road 'Route 40' - miles and miles of not very much at all....

We stopped the night in Esquel, and the next morning, on Friday, hired a car. We've spent the last four days driving northwards from Esquel through Parque Nacional Los Alerces (so called for the huge endangered trees it protects), and yesterday (Monday) leaving there and travelling up towards the Lakes District, stopping briefly yesterday afternoon to see the old wooden buildings where Butch and Sundance set up home with the intention of 'retiring'... We also stopped at a nearby tearoom in the middle of nowhere for more 'Welsh tea and cakes'. Mmmm! That was all in the west of Chubut, the other end of the Welsh Chubut valley from where we stopped weeks and weeks ago in Puerto Madryn and Trelew... Where does the time go?

The town of El Bolsón on the 42nd parallel marks the border between Chubut and Río Negro provinces, and hence for us the end of Patagonia - I think possibly my biggest love of South America. A sad day, but not the end of beautiful places just yet...

Yesterday afternoon we pushed on up here to the Lakes District and we're going to spend the next few days until Sunday driving around the lakes and mountains here. It's beautiful.

We just stopped to say hello from Bariloche (very touristy and the urban hub of the Lakes District, not to mention chocolate capital!) and let you know where we are, about to get in the car and head off again out of town for the backwater campsites and a bootful of bootiful Argentinian red wine! Hmmm! I have no idea how we're ever going to lead responsible working lives again...

Talk to you soon. Lots of love, us xxx