Highway

The daughter got better.

Illness

The daughter got ill.

Bolson

We went up to a place called Bariloche which is known as the Switzerland of the Andes. It is a very popular holiday destination for Argentinians and therefore everywhere was fully booked. This made hard to move around so we decided to rest in a town called el Bolson and sod the rest. This town is nice and good for chocolate, ice cream, beer, berries and pseudo hippies (maybe all hippies are bit pseudo). We stayed in a very nice place on the route just outside the town next to a big petrol station. The most reliable place to eat we found in the whole place was a roadside restaurant for the truckers next to the Petrol station. I found great pleasure in going there. It was a place for the sweatiest, hairiest rural Argentines and truckers who look at you with their bloodshot eyes and eat meat with their teeth.
The mountain in the picture above is called Piltriquitron and is full of magic.

Retards

Benhamo

Although these pictures do nothing in describing the magnitude of the experience, you get a vague idea of scale from the boat right of the center in the above picture. The inset shows the wake of a big bit of ice that dropped off to the delight of on-lookers. I had the delight of on-looking with one eye.

Perito Moreno

This glacier in particular is the reason most people visit the region. It is the most awesome thing I have ever seen in my life more so than the waterfalls of Iguazu. Probably because it is such an alien experience. Although we had already seen some huge glaciers on a boat trip this was completely different and amazing. What makes it so powerful is it´s size and the fact that it comes right up to a penninsula of land from which one can observe it. I spent 5 hours there watching it and you feel it inching towards you. It´s descent is experienced predominantly through the thunder like cracking sound that resonates around the valley. This is accompanied by the constant shedding of ice from its edges. Sometimes these drop offs are immense making a lot of noise and sending waves rippling through the lake. Its jaggedy surface covers a huge area and stretches for miles off into the clouds like some sort of wierd alien tracks.

Passenger

Ice

Here is a cheeky piece of upturned ice. One of the highlights of this place is the colours. The sandy yellows of the patagonian grasses against the turquoise lake sit on a backdrop of lilac from the distant mountains and hazy sky. It tends to have the effect of a black and white photo that has been artificially coloured. This is topped off by the crazy blue of the ice floating in the lake.

Lago Argentina

Next we went up to Lago Argentino, the largest lake in the country and an area of serious beauty. The Lake is at a very high altitude and fed by immense glaciers that come from the mountains. A truly amazing landscape sadly let down by an awful town one is forced to stay at that prostitutes itself to foreigners, bleeding them dry whilst letting most of its population rot. The picture above is of Lago Onelli possibly the most remarkable landscapes I have ever witnessed where several glaciers decend from the clouds all around you into a small lake peppered with pieces of floating ice.

Boat

Hot Chocolate

Tierra del Fuego Nacional Park

Images of Tierra del Fuego

Broken

When my camera broke I was furious and I shouted lots. These are images of that moment. The camera still takes pictures but the display is broken so it involves some old fashioned guess work and finger crossing.

Hostels

The Patagonia is very expensive. I order to save some money we opted for hostels where we met lot´s of nice people.

Tierra del Fuego

Tierra del Fuego is a big island on the bottom of the continent where the Andes slope off into the ocean leaving an array of snowcapped peaks penetrating the the surface. We stayed in Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world. Tierra del Fuego reminded us a bit of home particularly the grass with dandylions, daisies and clover, the climate felt a bit more christmasy and there where Penguins.

Patagonia

Here began the second leg of our tour. From the southerly tip a journey up the Andean mountain range to the top of the country. We began with a few points of interest in the Patagonia where I was hit by a small string of bad luck. On the flight down I found I was sharing the same seat number as another poor desgraciado. After a lengthy boat trip to see the penguins I found my camera to be broken on arrival. On learning that Ushuaia is a tax free zone and the cheapest place in the country to get a replacement camera I found that I´d lost my Credit Card. Then, on the way to the Perrito Moreno glacier my glasses broke forcing me to gaze at one of the natural wonders of the world with one eye. I got a bit of a headache. But at least I could get some snaps with my broken camera.

Bench

Beware of Falling asleep on the benches of Villa Gesell. You might wake up with the word "puto" inscribed on your face.

Gesell

Here is a typical scene from the Argentine beach. After a pleasant christmas back at Buenos Aires (it ain´t so christmasy at 40 degrees centigrade), we decided to spend New Years at the Seaside. Argentine beaches are windy cold and jam packed full of people. It is how I imagine the bay of Naples to get in high season when every Napolitan goes on holiday but with bigger waves.
The nice thing about the Ocean is to look out at night into absolute blacknes where the water just beyond the break turns into the starry sky and to know that there is nothing there to Africa