A Brief Stop in Sydney

With our South American adventures over, we left Santiago airport for Sydney late on Friday 20th June. Our journey was 18 hours with an 18 hour time difference to boot so we were a little spaced out when we arrived into Sydney. We were met at the airport by a couple we made friends with on the Inca Trail who had invited us to stay with them on our 2 day stopover in Sydney (en route to Fiji). We stayed in Coogee, a very pleasant and upmarket beachfront suburb just outside the main city and adjacent to Bondi. After freshening up we were taken on a tour along the coast where we walked around Bondi and Bronte. It was a crisp but sunny winter day and the coastline was spectacular. We were both experiencing full-on ‘reverse culture shock’ being back in a very upmarket and expensive district, seeing all the extortionate modern apartments, flash cars, cafes, boutique shops and restaurants, with joggers running along the beach with their iPods and the many people out for a walk wearing all their expensive clothes, sporting their Luis Vuitton handbags and expensive sunglasses. It caused a mixed set of emotions......on the one hand we were very excited and pleased to be back in such normality but on the other, it was a sudden reminder that we had truly finished our time in South America and just how different life is for some people. Everything suddenly appeared extremely materialistic and in stark contrast to what we had seen throughout South America and we actually missed it.

We later headed to Watson’s Bay for fish and chips and from our table we had magnificent views across the harbour to the city, the Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge. Ash enjoyed his first Aussie beer but we could not get over how expensive everything was. After spending $3 for a burger/fish and chips in South America, $20 each felt like daylight robbery and boy did we go on about it! We didn't last too much longer as the jet lag caught up with us so by early afternoon we flaked and fell asleep for a few hours, only to be woken by the smell of a good ole Aussie BBQ for dinner!

On Monday we were up early and ventured out for our first English Full Breakfast (which we had promised ourselves as a treat one morning as we ate stale bread in Bolivia!). However, we were so horrified at the prices being charged for breakfast in all the cafes that we ended up buying a fresh juice and a Danish from the local bakery. We happily sat and ate our breakfast on the beach! We spent the rest of the day with Bi's dad who was in Sydney for the day. Bi has not seen her family for 18 months now so it was really nice to see her dad. He took us out for lunch on the beachfront (again we were complaining left, right and centre about how expensive everything was!) and then we all headed into the city centre to do some shopping. At the end of the day Bi's Dad drove us back to Coogee and in the evening we took our hosts out for a Thai dinner to thank them for having us.

On Tuesday we were up early and packed ready for our lunchtime flight to Nadi, Fiji. We crumbled and decided that we would splash out on a full breakfast so we treated ourselves to what has to have been the most enormous cooked breakfast either of us have ever eaten... but it was heaven! We don't think that it will be any trouble piling back on all the weight we lost in South America.... much to Bi's disappointment (she is desperately trying to keep it off but it's not working!. At 10ish we took a taxi to the airport and boarded an enormous 747 chock full of Aussie tourists and screaming children for the 3 hour flight to Fiji. We have never seen an airline serve out so much beer in all our flying experience!

The end of our journey through South America

Today is our last day in South America (in Santiago, Chile) and we are genuinely sad to be leaving. We have had the trip of a lifetime! We have comprehensively covered most of the contintent and have been fortunate to get through our travels unscathed, with us and all our belongings still intact! Over the past 4.5 months we have had so many varied experiences, some amazing, some good and some downright scary but they have taught us a lot and fending for ourselves and planning every step of our overland journey all on our own has been incredibly rewarding. The months of research we did last year have definitely paid off.

We thought we would end the South American part of our blog with a short summary of facts about our time here.

Where we have visited (chronological):

BRAZIL
Rio De Janeiro
Iguazu Falls


ARGENTINA
Buenos Aires
Ushuaia & Tierra Del Fuego
Antarctica
El Calafate & Perito Moreno Glacier
El Chalten & Mt Fitzroy

CHILE
Puerto Natales & Torres Del Paine
Punta Arenas

ECUADOR
Quito
Otovalo
Galapagos Islands
Latacunga & Quilotoa Loop
Baños
Riobamba & Alausi
Cuenca
Vilcabamba
Loja

PERU
Piura
Lima
Nazca & the Nazca Lines
Arequipa & the Colca Canyon
Cusco, the Sacred Valley & Macchu Piccu
The Amazon Basin (Manu National Park)
Puno and the Reed & Taquila Islands (Lake Titicaca)


BOLIVIA
Copacabana & Isla Del Sol (Lake Titicaca)
La Paz
Sucre
Potosi & the Silver Mines
Uyuni & Salt Flats

CHILE
San Pedro De Atacama

ARGENTINA
Salta
Mendoza

CHILE
Santiago
Easter Island


How we have travelled:
Since arriving in Rio de Janeiro we have travelled (mostly by bus) over 20,000 miles, which is the same distance as London to Sydney.... and then back again! We have spent 185 hours travelling by bus (that's nearly 8 solid days mostly on rickety public buses!), 30.5 hours on planes and 440 hours on different boats (over 18 days). We have made 10 border crossings, some much more pleasant than others and visited 7 separate countries in 2 different continents (Antarctica being the other!). We have been to 16 separate UNESCO World Heritage sites, stayed at altitudes in excess of 5km above sea level and experienced temperatures ranging between -20oC and +37oC. Our favourite places have been Antarctica, the Galapagos, Easter Island, the Iguazu Falls, Rio de Janeiro and the Quilotoa Loop.

Our accommodation has largely been in hostels, ranging from 2 pounds 50p to 6 pounds a night in private rooms in Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia and between 7 and 9 pounds in a 4-bed dorm in Chile and Argentina. We have journeyed by foot, car, boat, bus, plane, motorized canoe, zodiac, horse, jeep and bikes. In Chile and Argentina we cooked for ourselves in the hostel kitchens and in Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia it was cheaper and easier to (gulp!) eat out. We have learned to adapt to living standards far different to what we are used to which has been eye opening and testing at times but on the flipside they have given us some of our most memorable moments. There is very little that shocks or disgusts us anymore! The sad part is we are probably going to miss it!



Today we finished in Santiago with a celebratory almuerzo, topped off with a glass of Chilean wine and the traditional drink called Pisco Sour. We feel very nostalgic. So for now, hasta la vista America Del Sur! Hello to new adventures and new countries!

Easter Island (Rapa Nui)

On Sunday morning we were up at 5.30am and in a taxi back to Santiago airport for our flight to Easter Island (Rapa Nui). We bought the tickets with money Ash's Uncle had given to us celebrate our engagement. At 8am we boarded our 767 LAN flight and flew 5 hours, 4,000km west, out into the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Right from the outset we were both struck by how remote a place we were travelling to. We saw nothing but ocean for nearly 5 hours out of the plane windows!

Easter Island is one of the remotest places on Earth, famous for it's stone Moai heads made centuries ago by the Island's Polynesian inhabitants. It is 3,700km from the nearest main landmass (the Chilean coastline) and it is funny to think that to get further from civilisation you have to go into space! As we headed in we had a full view of the small, green island (known locally as Rapa Nui) which is only 17km long, 11km at it's widest point and covers an area of 173 square kilometres... that's half the size of the Isle of Wight! The climate in Easter Island is subtropical so the weather was warm and humid as we stepped off the plane; noticeably different from the coldness of Santiago. We had been told that the best way to secure accommodation on the Island was at the airport where all the local hostel owners come to greet arriving passengers so while waiting for our bags we wandered around the different stands in the tiny airport and settled for a little family-run hostel called Ana Rapu, close to the ocean. After transferring to our hostel and dumping our bags we walked into the tiny town of Hanga Roa (the only inhabited place on the island). As it was a Sunday, almost everything was closed, including all the tour operators whom we had hoped to visit to get on a day tour for the following day. We grabbed some lunch in one of the few cafes open before deciding to hire a scooter and take ourselves around some of the Island for the afternoon. Thankfully we decided to let Ash have a trial run because he got on the scooter, zoomed across the road and straight into the curb... his legs were too long for the scooter and he found it difficult to ride. It was a quick and easy decision NOT to take the scooter. We opted instead for the safer, more familiar 4x4 jeep and feeling very embarrassed, we headed off. Ash was glad to be away from the hire place... with all his mountain biking experience he thought driving a little moped would be a synch! Bi tried to be supportive but in the end had to fall over with laughter! We drove out of the town and headed towards the centre of the island to see some of the archaeological sites there. Easter Island has a beautiful and unique landscape that was made by the eruption of 3 large now-dormant volcanoes several million years ago. The land is very green and covered in a mixture of palm trees and eucalyptus. The coastline is truly spectacular, very reminiscent of the best parts of the Cornish coast and as the island is so remote the waves from the Pacific are enormous (and very popular for surfing), crashing over the coastline and spraying plumes of water high into the air as far as the eye can see.

Apart from the main road between Hanga Roa and Anakena (at the opposite end of the island) the roads are all unmade and extremely bumpy, so we were very glad to be in a 4x4 and not on a little scooter! We toured the West side of the Island and our first stop in the afternoon was Pauna Poa, an old quarry where the Polynesians extracted the red stone to carve the red Moai hats and top knots. We headed further inland and stopped at Ahu Akivi to see our first Moai heads, 6 of them which had been uprighted and restored to their former glory. They were spectacular and we had them all to ourselves! It was great to be finally sat relaxing on Easter Island looking at these splendid statues... it was going to be a memorable trip. After taking many photos, we headed further around the island and visited a lava cave before heading back along the west coast line towards Hanga Roa to see the moai heads at Tahai, just north of the town. As it was not quite sunset, we decided to head out to the Southern tip of the island and drove up to the enormous 324m deep dormant volcano crater of Rano Kau. It has a lagoon in the centre and is one of the highlights of the Island. We sat on the crater lip looking over the island and out to the Pacific and watched the beautiful sunset. We then quickly got the car down off the volcano before it got dark. You cannot get vehicle insurance on Easter Island and therefore have to take full responsibility for paying for any damage to any vehicle you hire. We decided we would not risk driving on the bumpy, narrow road in the dark! We spent the rest of the evening cooking ourselves a gourmet dinner of spaghetti and packet sauce with an onion added for flavour. It is outrageously expensive to buy anything on the Island and supplies are very basic and all imported so there is not a lot of choice as far as cooking and eating is concerned, especially when you are on a budget!

On Monday we awoke to a nice breakfast of Papaya, pancakes and bread and jam! We dashed out by 9.00 am to get to a tour agency and join a tour but they were all full and we had to reserve a place for Tuesday. This turned out to be in our favour as we ended up touring the whole Island in a jeep by ourselves and it was without a doubt the best way to do it. With no tours, we quickly headed to a vehicle hire shop and got ourselves a shiny little red Suzuki Jimny jeep for 24 hours before they were all gone. En route out of the town we stopped at the local market and purchased provisions for a picnic lunch. We started out along the coast as we headed out to tour the East side of the Island. The scenery was so stuning that we had to keep stopping the car to get out and absorb it and to watch the enormous waves crashing into the coastline. After a little time along the coast we headed inland, diagonally across the island to a pretty beach and Maori site called Anakena. It was like a tropical oasis.. a lovely green picnic area adorned with palm trees, a small beach and row of 6 maori heads which faced inland. It was such a beautiful place and we literally had it to ourseleves (the beauty of not being on a tour) so we decided to have our picnic lunch there... avocado and tomato rolls and a tub of pringles. After lunch we set out on a 2 hour walk along the coastline before jumping back in the jeep, heading inland slightly and walking up to the Ano Roi volcano which sits in the middle of the Island and affords lovely 360 degree views across the whole of Easter island. For the remainder of the afternoon we followed the coastline around the whole of the east coast along the bumpy, pot hole filled roads stopping at the various Maori sites along the way. The most spectacular site of the day was Tongariki where 15 huge Maori statues stand proudly in a row, their backs to the ocean. As with all the other sites, we had this one all to ourselves. In fact, it felt like we had the whole island to ourselves as we hardly saw anybody else. It made for a really special and memorable experience. We continued along the coast stopping at smaller sites before arriving back in time to watch the sunset from the high vantage point of our hostel in Hanga Roa. We managed to see all but one of the archaeological sites that Easter island has to offer, the Rano Ranuku volcano so we decided to fake a sicky and cancel our tour and save the 50 pounds. We decided it would be a nice idea to head out early in the morning and visit the volcano at sunrise before returning the jeep at 9.30m. We cooked ourselves a meal of packet tomato soup with the left over spaghetti thrown in... it was actually very nice... we then called it a night feeling pooped!

We were up at 6.30am and on our way to Rano Ranuku volcano by 7am. It was pitch black as the sun does not rise here until about 7.30am. When we reached the site it was still dark so we parked the jeep on some cliffs and sat and waited for the sun to rise over the Pacific. At daybreak we drove into the area of Rano Ranuku, parked and walked up and around the crater which was spectacularly littered with loads of Maori heads. The Maori heads on Easter Island were carved from volcanic rock on the slopes of the Rano Ranuku volcano but there are about 350 still scattered across the side of the volcano which never made it out to their final destinations on the Island. We had the place to ourselves, again, and it was a real highlight. We spent a good hour marvelling at the many statues, some still attached to the crater as they had not been fully carved. We took silly pictures and took in the scenery around us before returning to Hanga Roa to hand back our little Jeep. We decided that having covered all of the Island we would spend the rest of the day relaxing around Hanga Roa. We had our breakfast, which the owner refused to serve us before 9am (!), and headed out on a walk a long the coast. Ash had talked about doing some diving, and having found the main dive centre, within an hour we were unexpectedly putting on wet suits and dive gear for a scuba dive off the coast. We decided that a scuba dive would top off our experience of the Island quite spectacularly and it really did. We headed out with an instructor to a spot just off the coast near Hanga Roa called Anchors Reef. It is called this due to the many 19th century anchors that sit at the bottom around the reef at a depth of 24 metres. We backwards rolled off the boat and down we went. There are not a lot of big fish to see where we dived, it was more scenic diving with clear water, beautiful coral and colourful fish and we loved it. It was like swimming in an aquarium. We had two large jack fish about the length of Bi's arms follow us and playfully weave in and out of us for the duration of the 45 minute dive. We also saw lots of moray eels, schools of large sunset wrasses, flounder, lots of trumpet fish, a scorpion fish, beautiful coral, lots of old anchors and a large maori head that was used in a Kevin Costner film.. not an original but still quite a sight to see under water.

After the dive, we sat and had a picnic before walking up to the museum to learn about the Island and the theories behind the Maori statues. We finished off the day with a meal out. Seafood is the speciality here and Ash took the opportunity to try Ceviche, a dish of raw fish which is very popular here in many parts of South America and something he had not been game enough to try in Peru. It came served in a huge shell. Bi livened up her salad with a big strawberry daiquari and we both sat and reminisced about what a fabulous experience Easter Island has been. It will definitely be one of the major highlights of our time in South America.

On Wednesday morning we had a few hour on the island before catching our 4 hour flight back to Santiago, Chile. We have just a few days left here in South America before we head out to Fiji, New Zealand and Australia.

More Mendozan Wine & west to Santiago

On Friday, our last day in Mendoza, we decided to hire a car to visit the more famous wineries in the Lujan de Cuyo region. Our little silver Corsa was dropped at our hotel at 9.30am (aah the beauty of five star!). It was a little daunting driving for the first time in nearly 5 months, on the manic streets of a South American city and on the wrong side of the road! After some careful navigation from Bi we found the main road out of the city and breathed easy as we headed in the right direction towards the wine region. After 20 kms we turned off the main road and instantly the scenery changed to sweeping views of vineyards which stretched towards the magnificent, snow capped Andes mountains lining the border between Chile and Argentina. The roads were quiet (a good thing for when Bi took over at the wheel so Ash could drink to his hearts content) and the weather was perfect. Ash had sought advice from the wine-buying department at Waitrose on which wineries to visit and we headed first for the largest winery in Mendoza, the Norton Bodega. On arrival we were told that the winery was closed and that there were no tours running but after some pleading they agreed to give us a tour of the winery and tasting at 4.30pm. What a result! What we didn't know when we set out was that you need to make prior appointments with security to visit most of the wineries in this region. Luckily we managed to sweet talk our way into most of them.... despite being dressed like we were about to go on a long hike and looking like we probably couldn't even afford to buy a bottle of coke!

Our second stop was the Chandon winery where we were taken into a lovely and modern building, given a glass of complimentary champagne, and sat down to a very good local red wine tasting (called 'Latitud 33')... the Tempranillo was delicious so we picked up a bottle to drink in Fiji along with a bottle of Champangne. Although Mendoza is the best part of the world for Malbec, we still found it to be too bitter for our taste no matter which winery it came from. The next winery we visited was called Dolium. We really only stopped there just for the heck of it but what a lovely find it turned out to be.... one of our favourites in fact. We received a lovely warm welcome from the Italian owner and she showed us into the winery that she had set up with her husband. It was a tiny operation, producing only 40,000 litres of wine a year and with little advertising. Her son took us on a tour of the winery, taking us underground to see the main fermentation and maturation tanks where we were able to taste straight from the tanks! We tasted wine from this year's grape harvest, including a spectacular 08 Malbec still in the tank which was as far as we were concerned, perfect for drinking already. Our guide told us that it was a superb harvest and this 08 Malbec would be a Gran Reserva (their best wine). We had some more tasting and picked up another bottle for our collection and they gave us a lovely touring map of the Mendoza wine regions!

After a homemade picnic sitting in the car overlooking the vineyards and Andes mountains we visited the Septima winery, one of the bigger in Mendoza where we took yet another tour (we think we're ready to set up our own winery now!!!) and tasting before heading to another very small winery across the road called Sottano. We had a tour and a tasting on a glass floor above the barrel cellar (and yes... we bought another bottle!). We then headed to Norton for our 4.30pm appointment to finish off our winery tour. The complex looked like a country club and had a massive vineyard which is understandable considering the winery produces a huge 10 million litres of wine a year. We became a little conscious of our attire in such prestigious surroundings and gulped a little as we were welcomed into the building with a glass of champagne... they opened the bottle especially for us! After an interesting tour which included a tour of their inner cellar containing bottles of wine dating back to 1959, we had our final tasting of the day; lucky because Ash was about to fall over! We then returned back to our apartment for our last night in Mendoza and Ash celebrated the Argentinian way... by cooking a massive steak and drinking a fabulous bottle of wine!

On Saturday we sadly checked out of our beloved apartment and headed to Mendoza airport where we caught an hour flight to Santiago. The weather was perfect so we had spectacular views over the heavily snow capped Andes from the plane, including a fly-past of Aconcagua, which at 6,962m is one of the seven summits, the highest mountain in the Andes and the highest in the world outside the Himalayas. It was a real treat. On arrival in Santiago airport we were completely mobbed by scores of taxi drivers all offering lifts into town. After a lot of to-ing and fro-ing and bartering we took a taxi to our accommodation in the city centre, the Andes Hostel. We were disappointed to be going back into a hostel after our luxurious apartment in Mendoza but to our surprise the hostel turned out to be really nice.... exceptionally clean, very warm, cosy and comfortable... and nice room mates! Santiago is very developed and has a European feel with both modern and colonial buildings and streets lined with restaurants and modern shops. We could quite easily be in Spain. After taking a walking through the city centre, the main plazas and craft markets we stopped into a coffee bar where Ash's eyes popped out of his head! The coffee bar we had walked into had women serving coffee wearing extremely short, tight dresses and stilletos... Bi said they were dressed just like the girls in Robert Palmers music video 'Simply Irresistable'. It was very amusing and apparently quite the norm in Santiago; supposedly a rebellion against the city's strict catholic past! Bi had a very interesting cappuccino topped with about 15 cms of whipped cream!

In the evening we packed our bags ready for our flight to Easter Island the following day and finished off with a trip to the cinema to see the latest Indiana Jones movie. Despite the cinema looking like something out of the 70s with a tiny screen and those uncomfortable chairs that fling up the minute you stand up, it was great to just do something normal and we sat there feeling very content with our big box of popcorn!

Salta and Mendoza

On Sunday we took a 10:30am bus (a very nice one with food service and reclining seats.. whoo hooo!) 12 hours across the Andes from Chile to Salta, one of the major cities in Northern Argentina. We nearly had World War III before setting out after some very noisy locals had completely ignored their seat numbers and sat in other people's seats...this had a domino effect and the whole bus was in chaos!!! The border crossing was easy, despite a llama threatening to spit at anyone trying to enter the building.... very effective security! The journey was very slow due to the windy, mountainous road over the Jama Pass. We dropped about 3,000m in altitude. En route, Bi overheard someone say that the road from Mendoza to Santiago was closed due to snow and was panicking for the rest of the journey (8hrs!!!). Our intended route was to head down to Mendoza from Salta, and then take a bus back across the Andes to Santiago (7hrs) for our flight out to Easter Island on Sunday. If we couldn't get a last minute flight out of Mendoza we would be faced with three buses and a four day journey up through Argentina where we had come from, across the Andes and back down to Santiago. We arrived in Salta at 10:30pm, took a risk and booked a luxury bus to Mendoza for the following evening and then took a taxi 1km to our hotel which was very pleasant and not too cold. Our first stop the following morning was the internet cafe where we managed to get a flight from Mendoza to Santiago on Saturday (14th) morning (after much research we decided to pull a shifty and book a return ticket which was half the price of a one way ticket). Happy that we had our passage out of Mendoza, we spent the day wandering the lovely colonial town of Salta and visited the main cathedral. It was such a culture shock being back in civilisation and we were practically skipping through the streets past the modern shops and hotels and the lovely coffee houses with REAL coffee! It was like being back in Europe... or to us, Disneyland! We took the teleferiqo to the top of the hill and admired the view over the city, sitting down in a cafe on the top to enjoy a delicious hot chocolate which after all our hard travelling was bliss... it was REAL milk (as opposed to the powdered stuff we have been living off for nearly 3 months) with a big chunk of chocolate in it! We returned to the city and went for lunch in the Solar de Convento restaurant near the main plaza. It was a lovely and charming restaurant (quite the opposite to what we both looked like when we walked in)... complimentary pink champagne, bread and canapes on arrival and we sat down to a lunch of Argentine steak for Ash and Wild Mushroom Pasta with real parmesan cheese (heaven!!) for Bi and a really good local wine called Manterello. Ash was nearly close to tears eating an amazing steak, as opposed to llama and chicken legs... we have both missed our food and wine so much on this trip! We have a new-found appreciation for the things we have so often taken for granted back home. At 4pm we boarded a first class bus (fully reclining leather seats.. like club class) for our 16 hr journey down to Mendoza.

We arrived in Mendoza on Tuesday morning and took a taxi to our hostel. Our hearts sank... it was a dark, seedy bar with rooms above it and nothing like it was described in the guide book... not uncommon!! Our room was not ready (this turned out to be in our favour) so we dumped our bags and headed into the city centre to hunt for alternative digs! Mendoza isn't quite as we expected. We both had visions of a small rustic town surrounded by vineyards but it is actually a fairly sizeable, albeit lovely city very reminiscent of Buenos Aires. We passed lovely shops and lots of wonderful delis which inspired us to cook and this led to the idea of finding a private apartment for our 4 nights here. We checked with the local tourist information for some recommendations and then with a list in hand, we walked about 5 miles around Mendoza, checking out different apartments which were all dingy and horrible. Bi's heart was on the pavement by this point and she was getting very cranky! Eventually, at the point of giving up and returning to our dingy hostel we came upon the Park Hyatt 5* Apartments. We walked in and asked to see an apartment... mainly just for a laugh.. and were told we could upgrade to the Executive Suite for the same price as a normal apartment. Oh WOW! We were blown away by the suite and within 20 minutes of looking around it we decided that was it, enough was enough, after nearly 5 months of really roughing it we deserved to splash out on some luxury and so we did. It's still very cheap by English standards at 54 pounds a night including buffet breakfast but it actually wasn't an easy decision to make because we had lived off that amount of money over a week in Ecuador and Bolivia. We are both suffering a bit with reverse culture shock as we have seen so much poverty over the past few months and lived so simply and we really did feel guilty about splashing out!

So, we walked back to our dingy hostel to collect our bags. When we arrived back at the apartments the reception staff looked mortified by the sight of us entering their lovely hotel. We were wearing all our dirty hiking clothes.. the same ones for two days due to our bus journey, our trainers were covered in red sand and squeaked all the way across the polished floor and we were carrying our big and very filthy yellow rucksacks! They made us pay the whole bill up front... ummh.. wonder why?! However, nothing could take away from our happiness ... we have polished floor boards, central heating, a big living room, dining area, kitchen, bathroom and king size bedroom all with cable TV and have access to a spa, sauna, gym, restaurant and room service woohoo! It's like having our own city apartment and we keep going on and on and on about it because it the polar opposite of what we have experienced in South America so far! We went to the enormous Carrefour hypermarket in the afternoon and stocked up with great food and Mendozan wine which we will be enjoying for the rest of the week. Being in an apartment gives a good feel for what it is like to live in an Argentinian city.

On Wednesday we caught a bus 30 minutes out to the Maipu region of Mendoza to visit the wineries and olive groves that this area is famous for. We hired some bikes to cycle between the wineries, and although they were mechanically sound the saddles were like concrete! We started by visiting the Museo Del Vino, a museum dedicated to this region's wine production. We walked into the museum (also a functioning winery) and were just knocked off our feet by the superb smell of grapes, wine and the barrels. It was like Seventh Heaven! We visited their small but interesting museum dedicated to the production of wine over the years (including several cowhide grape presses.. not for the vegetarians!) and after trying the local wine we were given a tour of the vineyards and wine production process. The vineyards were beautiful, stretching out as far as we could see with views to the huge, snowcapped Andean mountains in the distance. It was fascinating to be taken through the wine production process, from separating the grapes from the vines to seeing the different presses, fermentation and maturation vats and finally the Frenck oak barrels that the wines are aged in.

After visiting the museum we headed to a local chocolaterie, liqueur maker and deli where we tried some (distinctly average) local products. The cycling was fabulous though... once we were out of the main Maipu centre the roads were wide, fairly quiet and lined with tall trees with their leaves changing colour (as it is late Autumn here). We cycled past fields of vineyards and olive groves with more great views to the distant mountains. We felt as if we were back on a normal holiday! We cycled to a very pretty converted farmhouse for lunch called Almacen De Sur, where we had a fantastic but very rich two course meal of stone-baked breads with balsamic and olive oil, steak for Ash, pasta for Bi and creme brulee. After lunch we cycled to our furthest point, the Carinae winery where we had another tour and had some more tastings. We have decided that the locally produced Malbec here is a little spicy and bitter for our taste; we much prefer the smoother Syrahs, Cabernets and blends. In fact, the Carinae Syrah was great, so Ash splashed out on a bottle to be opened in a couple of years! We then visited the Laur Olive Grove and Press and it was very interesting to see the production of local olive oil... not the smallest production at 2 million litres a year! We headed back and stopped in at the very modern Tempus Alba winery where we sat on their sunny roof terrace drinking wine and overlooking the vineyards and olive groves before cycling back to Maipu to take our bus home to our nice (warm!) apartment. We laughed in the evening at what a contrast the whole day had been... just a week ago we were filthy, starving, freezing and very grouchy in Bolivia and now we were sat in our 5* suite having spent the whole day boozing and eating!!

With two days left here before our flight to Santiago we are relaxing and making the most of our apartment and facilities today and are going to have a wander around the city, and who knows, maybe we'll drink some more wine! Tomorrow we have decided we will visit Luján de Cuyo, another wine region of Mendoza where there are bigger, more well known wineries such as Norton and Chandon. We are both now starting to feel a little sad that our journey in South America is drawing to a close.

San Pedro & The Atacama Desert

After some decent food and a comfortable, albeit chilly night's sleep (we´re back in 6 bed dorms as Chile is expensive) we were up early for an actioned packed Saturday in San Pedro de Atacama. San Pedro is a small and lovely town with a bit of a dusty wild-west feel to it as it is situated at 2,400m in the middle of the Atacama desert, the driest place on the planet. It's a far cry from Bolivia.... significantly more developed with paved roads, street lights, finished buildings and nice cafes and restaurants etc. We decided that we would not hang around San Pedro for too long as we wanted to get down to Mendoza for the good wine and steak we had been hearing about and only have a week until we have to be in Santiago for our Easter Island flight. We were near the Argentinian border and decided we would take a bus across to Salta and then down to Mendoza (12hrs and 12hrs). As the bus only leaves on a Sunday, Tuesday and Friday we decided to book 3 almost back-to-back tours for Saturday covering all the major sights and actvities of San Pedro so that we could get out on the Sunday morning bus.

At 9am, we were collected and driven about 10 minutes out of town to the Valle de La Muerte (death valley) to try our hand at sandboarding. The Valley was spectacular with bizarre red rock formations which would not have looked out of place on the surface of Mars. We stopped at a huge sand dune, trudged our way to the top and after some brief instruction we jumped on our boards and headed down! Well, we say headed down... we both went about 3 feet before going headfirst into the sand! Luckily it was very deep and soft so it made for a comfortable landing. We had 3 hours of tuition and by the end we were both doing pretty well, managing to board down the whole sand dune and pick up quite a bit of speed. At 12:30pm we were back in San Pedro, had an amuertzo (set lunch) and joined our second tour of the day which was to the Valle De La Luna (Valley of the Moon). It is aptly named as the valley indeed looks like a proper moonscape. We visited several spectacular viewpoints before heading into the Valley De La Luna National Park where we took a walk through a salt and clay canyon with bizarre rock formations before climbing to the top of the valley to watch the sunset, eating our picnic dinner of banana´s and yoghurt! As the sun dropped below the horizon we watched the surrounding Andean mountains famously turn from yellow to orange to pink to red. We arrived back to San Pedro just in time to grab a hot choccy and then pick up our final tour... star gazing with a french Astronomer! We were taken by bus out to the middle of the desert where there is no light or air pollution. San Pedro is famous for having some of the clearest night skies in the world and they are completely amazing... astronomers come from all over the world to see them here and there are numerous Western-owned observatories. The first part of our tour involved us looking through enormous telescopes at many different objects in the night sky. It was amazing to see the moon in such size and clarity, with the craters all clearly visible. We also saw Mars, Saturn and it's many rings, gas nebulae, star clusters, jewel stars and constellations... it was genuinely fascinating. Afterwards we were given an explanation of the many different stars and constellations and tips on how to recognise them followed by a much needed hot chocolate. It was freezing in the desert at night! We returned cold but happy to our 6 bed dorm for the night before getting up the following morning to take a bus across the border to Salta, Argentina (12hrs).