Day 30 of the beard growing project....

We´ve been in Argentina for 30 days now, and I´m pleased to say that so far STA have done nothing more to balls it up. On another positive note, I´ve started to grow a beard and nothing has started living in it as yet (although a cockroach was eyeing it up the other day).

Argentina is a great country, if not a little on the large side. We´ve clocked up 98hrs of bus time just on the top half of the country. Turns out the buses are really nice, and more comfortable than some of the hostels I´ve been in so far. You can kind of sum up Argentina in the following ways; Waterfalls, trekking, glaciers, wine, and steak, so here goes....

Waterfalls: We went to Iguazu Falls which was incredible, a must see for anyone in Argentina. I got so excited I forgot that digital cameras aren´t waterproof. When the screen went crazy and pixellated I remembered.

Trekking: You can do this pretty much everywhere, and we chose Bariloche in the lake district, which was beautiful. Howeer, our 3 day trek in the hills was scuppered by the stomach bug from hell. I was in bed for 2 days, apart from the first night when I barely left the toilet. My routine was basically go to the toilet, go back to bed and drink water, then get up 10 mins later to go to the toilet again. This continued for 6 hours. Little did I realise the only thing coming out of me was the water I´d drunk 10 mins before. Don´t know why it took me 5 hrs to realise that.

Once I was better, the snw came in so trekking was off the adgenda. We high-tailed it out of Briloche and headed for the Andes near Mendoza. 2 days later, after 14 hrs of trekking, heights of 4,200m and views of a glacier, we felt the trekking box was ticked and headed to Mendoza to get pissed (seamless link).

Wine: Mendoza was the highlight of Argentina, basically because it involved cycling round vineyards getting hammered and pretending to smell floral notes in posh wineries.

Steak: We´ve had this everywhere, and it´s awsome. Polished off a nice 500g chorizo last night, follows by wine and 2 litres of beer before finding myself in a randon club at 3am with a few mates, all in the same condition as me. Writing this blog is the only constructed thing I´ve done all day. (Except for seeing a perfectly preserved 7 yr old Inca child sacrificed in the Andes 500 yrs ago, which was slightly disturbing).

On to Bolivia next, in search of a lesser known species with chalky white skin and ginger (sorry - strawberry blond) hair, answering to the name of Matt Bell.