Iguazu Falls

I arrived to Ciudad del Este (Paraguay) at 4am and it was freezing. Quickly got the beanie out and walked through the nice parks to town, which was just setting up for a busy day of shopping. Caught the bus out to Itaupi Dam, which is the biggest hydro-electric facility in the world and one of the 7 wonders of the modern world. Watched the movie and did the free tour inside the dam wall and around the top. I then walked across the bridge to Brazil, and eventually found someone to stamp my passport. Spent a few hours in Foz which had a nice main street with plenty of cafés, then caught the bus over to Puerto Iguazu in Argentina to stay the night since it was a smaller town and much cheaper. Today I explored the Argentine side of the falls. The island and top walk were closed due to the high water, but the waterfalls were impressive which looked like the chocolate waterfall out of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The upper walk was amazing... the walkways went right over the water, and you could look over the edge. The bottom walkway gave a fantastic view of the entire waterfalls. The must have photo was taken in the spray of the waterfalls, where everyone was soaked within seconds.
Tomorrow will see the Brasilian side and will look to take an overnight bus to Florianopolis.

Tatii´s 15th Birthday Party

I was fortunate enough to be invited to Tatii´s (Tatiana) 15th birthday party. She is the neighbour here in Wilde. Rather than celebrate the 18th or 21st birthdays like we do in Australia, in Argentina they celebrate their 15th (and the guys miss out completely), and they do it in style!
We arrived there about 8.30. They had the reception upstairs all with fancy lights on the walls, funky music, waiters going around with flash sandwiches, pizza and empanadas, and drinks. Everyone was dressed up with their best dresses and suits. I wiped my sneakers so they weren´t full of mud, so i looked the part also! Then we went downstairs where Tatii had changed into a new dress looking like she was getting married, and walked out with her father and greeted everyone. We sat down and she did the waltz with her dad, then everyone else joined in. She had to dance with all the boys in the room, but didn´t get all the way through them! we then had an entré which was some nice tandoori chicken, and the waiters were serving drinks constantly to us all night.
Dinner consisted of an amazing number of courses. Next was served entré with some omelette things, stuffed eggs, etc, then the main course which was hot chicken, some fancy potato, etc then we had dessert which was icecream and fruit salad (this was about 3am). The next course was cake, they had a big wedding-like cake, and tables full of other cakes. I got stuck into the lemon merangue pie while being filmed by the film crew that were making a DVD of the night. The final course at 5.30am was beer and pizza. All the courses were spread out over the night, with different dancing, and ceremonies like the speaches, candle lighting ceremonies where the candle was presented to 15 special people in her life, 3 videos that were professionally made, and everyone getting dressed in colourful funny hats. The final event almost turned the whole place into a foam party.
So we didn´t get home from the 15th party till 6.30am, and the kids and grandparents were only just winding up!
Feliz cumpleaños tatii!

More Buenos Aires

Wednesday I headed back into town and walked around the Parque Ecológico, where there were some lakes (the national mosqueto breeding centre) and wild guinea pigs running around everywhere. Had lunch on the banks of the Rio del la Plata.
Thursday I spent some more time in the microcentro then we went out to Cominito, La Boca where the famous colourful houses are, and plenty of cafe´s in the street with live music and tango dancers. Cominito was only very small, and it was winding down when we got there, so we headed home shortly after.
Friday I went back to Cominito and had lunch in the street watching the tango shows and listening to the live music. We then went out to Avellenada to visit one of Any´s friends who cooked up some brownies for us. After calling past home we went to El Balcony restaurant in San Pedro Telmo which had tango, singing and some other folk dances performed. Then it was time to go to the Requim club, an underground place that played 80´s music all night. Any loved this place so we were here till it closed at 8am, and eventually made it home at 10am.

Buenos Aires

The long bus trip from Bariloche was uneventful, with no signs of the demonstrations in Neuquen. Arrived to Buenos Aires at lunchtime on Sunday and was met by Any (HC any84) and caught the bus for 45 mins back to her place where I will stay for the week.
Monday I went in to the micro-centro. There were huge demonstrations following the death of the teacher in Neuquen, so I had to aviod these. The busses were also shut down for several hours, and many places closed and police barriers blocking many streets. Fortunately didn´t get violent so I walked around the city to Puerto Madryn, saw some famous bridges (Mothers Bridge), some impressive government buildings. The big obelisk was of course seen in the middle of the worlds widest avenue, which took 3 traffic light changes to get across. People have said it takes their whole lunch break to go across the road to get a hamburger - which is very beleivable!

Yesterday I caught the subte (subway) out to Palermo to see the Botanic Gardens which was just filled with thousands of cats, and swarms of mozzies! The zoo was next on the agenda, but being chased my hoards of angry mosquitos it was decided to give this a miss. The rose gardens and Planatarium were seen, and then walked down Ave Liberator to Recoletta seeing many statues and old buildings along the way. Then walked back along the pedestrian mall of Florida where there were some tango dancers performing in the street, and met up with Any once she finished work. We walked up to San Telmo to go to the restaurant where they have tango performances, but they were only happening on the weekend. So we headed out to Avellenada to the local Parilla (steak house) and had all we can eat steak which went down very well!
Today its raining heavily, so have to decide what to do.

Party time in Bariloche

So we went to the salsa lessons but they were cancelled since there was no salsa music. Thursday was my last day of spanish lessons, so now I can say a couple of words, but lots more practice is required. Finishing at lunch time we headed to the local pub with the Europeans who couldn´t miss watching the UEFA Cup Quarter Finals of Tottenham vs Seville, only for them to be disappointed with a loss my Tottenham.
We then met up again at my hostel, and then rounded up a few recruits from the hostel and headed to check out the nightlife with a small reggae club and the irish pub.
Friday was a relaxing day about town, sampled the chocolate, and then just about everyone from the hostel (about 20 of us) headed back to the bars for some more partying with plenty of jokes about the NZ and South African accents.
Saturday is just bag packing, chocolate shopping for Easter, and running to the bus stop for my 20 hour bus trip to Beunos Aires.
Friday night was some demonstrations in Neuquen by the teachers who complain they don´t get paid enough (must be a common thing among teachers everywhere). With one teacher getting killed when he was hit by a tear gas canister, it was probably a good thing not to stay in Neuquen for Friday night as previously planned.

La Montaña Spanish School

This week I´ve been learning a bit of español at the La Montaña Spanish School in Bariloche. I have a class just with one other student, Nitay from Israel, and our teacher Silvina who does a good job. So we do some classes in the morning, and then in the afternoon or evening we go to do some activities. Tuesday afternoon a few of us students headed out to a poor barrio of Bariloche where they were teaching some English, and we challenged them to a game of futbal. We retired and headed back into town for a cervesa with a few of the New Zealanders (was good to brush up on the sheep jokes).
This evening we will all go to a local pub for some salsa lessons with the other students.

El Bolson

Saturday morning I caught the bus down to El Bolson to spend the weekend (just 2 hours away). When I arrived the local markets were in full swing, so I checked them out, and got a good feed of empanadas and nice stawberry tart. El Bolson was living up to its reputation as a hippie and organic farmer´s hangout, so I escaped out of town and headed to the top of Cerro Amigo which was only 20 minutes walk.
Then I walked the 5kms to the south of town to reach the 42nd parrellel. This is the most southern point in my trip, so from here its all overland to the equator just past Quito, Ecuador to complete the first leg of my trip.
Dinner was had at the local pizzeria. Given I was hungry and the menu was only in spanish, I went for the pizza with the most toppings. This choice was popular I later saw that almost everyone else in the restaurant was eating the same pizza. Turns out that the pizza toppings consisted of a a thick layer of cheese, 3 thin slices of cheese, and then another extra big layer of cheese. There must be a lot of ways to say cheese in Argentina!
Sunday I walked up to Mirador del Rio Azul which had a nice view of the valley and the mountains to the south. Then jumped on the bus back to Bariloche in time for my Spanish lessons tomorrow, which is also the Malvinas Day public holiday.

Cerro Catedral

So today I headed to Cerro Catedral which is a big ski resort. The guys at the hostel told me the bus to get out there, but it didn´t go all the way, so while I was waiting for the proper bus I started walking up to Villa Catedral. I don´t know how often that bus was meant to run, but by the time it turned up, I only had 500m left to the village of the 10km from where the other bus dumped me.

So once I got to Villa Catedral, I caught the cable car and then a chairlift up to the top of Cerro Catedral. I arrived to the top and trekked along the ridge for a few hours towards the next refugio where a few other people were walking to spend the night there. Had great views over to Volcan Tronador, the biggest one around here (about 3400m) and could just see a bigger volcano on the northern horizon (about 3770m). Would be great to be up there with my snowboard for winter.

Booked a few bus trips before the Easter rush starts. Off to El Bolson for the weekend, and then will spend the Easter weekend doing a 19 hour bus trip to Buenos Aires.

Circuito Chico

With the plan to give my legs a rest for a day after all the trekking of the last couple of days, I caught the bus 20km out of town to the Circuito Chico and found the bike hire shop. But in all their wisdom they didn´t have any bikes to hire out. So it was back to walking for another day.
Nearby was Cerro Campanario, so I walked up there quick, again meeting all the tourists catching the chairlift up to the restaurant up the top.
I got back down the bottom again, and caught the bus further out to the fancy Hotel Llau Llau. From there I walked around the lake further and eventually found a walking track that went to the summit of Cerro Llau Llau. Had a great view of all the mountains around and the lakes. Trekked back to the bus in Llau Llau and made it back to Bariloche.
The plan for the next few days is to hike up Cerro Catedral tomorrow, then spend the weekend in El Bolson, back to Bariloche on Sunday evening for Spanish Lessons at La Montana Spanish School for 4 days. Then I´ll go to Neuquen on the Friday for easter, and then take an overnight bus to Buenos Aires on Saturday night.

Cerro Otto

Packed my bag with lunch and walked out of town, eventually found a path that headed towards the summit of Cerro Otto (relatively small at 1405m). Wound back and forth up the front of the mountains, with good views over Lago Nahuel Huapi towards Chile. Checked out the local military trying to practice their rock climbing skills, then called past the Alpine Club´s Refugio Berghof which was quite flash and even served up a cold beer for all the hikers heading to the top.
Made it to the summit to meet up with all the old tourists that came up on the gondola. Went to the revolving restaurant for a few revolutions. Some weird yank bought me a drink so he could tell me that he didn´t like Australians since his last Australian girlfriend was a nazi and didn´t put out.
I left the tourists and found a trail that headed below the summit of Cerro Otto towards Piedro de Habsburgo where I had lunch looking over Lago Gutierres. Made it down to the lake and then the search was on for a bus. Trekked for a few km´s to a supermarket in the middle of nowhere, and waited an hour with some old local guy for the bus back into town.
Staying at Ruca Hueney Hostel and hopefully getting a different room away from the obnoxious poms.

San Carlos de Bariloche

I have arrived to Bariloche after a fantastic bus trip through the Andes. Left Puerto Montt and went through a few small towns on the way to Osorno, then headed towards the mountains. After the Chilean border post we continued over the pass. Had terrific views of the mountains all around, nice forests, running mountain streams and blue lakes.
Bariloche is a nice enough town. Too touristy but appears to be a good place to use as a base to get into the mountains. Have been checking out some treks into the Andes and to stay at a Alpine Club hut for a night or two. Will see how it goes and if I can pack enough food in my pack.