I'm not gonna paint a delightful picture of Uruguay for you because the truth is that I am most certainly not its biggest fan, and have been telling all who will listen about how disenchanted I was with it! The main problem was just that it was so SO expensive. We visited four places in Uruguay, the capital, Montevideo, Punta del Este, Maldonada, and Colonia. We stayed in the CHEAPEST hostels in each of these places, and the cheapest hostel ranged from £16 a nig...

Let me start by saying happy new year to everyone and I hope you had a fantastic Christmas! Our festive period was spent in Buenos Aires, and as it was Christmas and new year we decided to splash out a little bit and stay in a good hostel, the milhouse, which turned out to be a good decision! There were loads of people staying there and there was a bar downstairs and a party every night at either our hostel or the sister hostel just down then street, and we had ...

Ok, so before I start this blog entry I'm just going to apologise to our families, who are not going to like this one at all, and give you the opportunity to opt out of this next page of writing... So we left Puerto Natales on a bus to Rio Gallegos, in the South of Argentina. Had a little confusion on our border crossing as to why they made us fill out arrival and departure sheets for Argentina, but then didnt stamp them or take the arrival one off us! But it se...

The bus drive from Los Antiguos to El Calafate was literally the most boring of my life! The scenery consisted of totally flat landscape with tiny shrubs no higher than 30cm, not even any trees, for 12 hours, with the occasional sighting of nandus (emu like birds) and guanacos (kind of like llamas). The bus driver actually stopped the bus when we got to a lake and made us get out and take a photo as it was the first remotely interesting thing we'd seen! However ...

The bus ride from Chiloe to Bariloche, although long, was pretty cool. As we headed east we got closer and closer to the erupting volcano that we had seen earlier in the trip. It is right near the border of Chile and Argentina, but because of the way the wind blows pretty much all the ash ends up in Argentina! As we approached the border we drove up mountains covered in dead trees, plants with layers of ash on them, piles of ash at the sides of the road where it ...