Buenos Aires is everything that everyone raves about and more. It's a big city, with even bigger character. After the 52 hour bus ride up from Ushuaia, we stumbled into Terrazas Estoril hostel on Avenida de Mayo smelling the worst I've smelt in a long time but feeling like heros. Our dorm room  was a small dome room on the roof of the hostel. There was a pool just outside the door... a very cool blow up baby pool. I immediately loved the hostel and the [...]
Crazy? Yes Alternative options? No. I was at the End of the World after all... Ushuaia Argentina, Distance to here... Any sane person would take a flight. I'd take a flight, if there were any... but there was a two week wait. Booking a flight ahead of time would have required planning, and in Patagonia we were already planning 2 weeks in advance, which was quite enough for this trip heavily based around Freedom. We asked the receptionist at our hostel where we [...]
You can't expect the most southerly inhabited town in the world to be easy to get to by road. Leaving Puerto Natales in Chile the journey went a little something like this... 2 buses, one side of the road switch to a bus going in the opposite direction, 1 border crossing, 1 ferry, and 1 minibus with a trailer attached driving through the mountains... 14 hours later and I arrived in Tierra del Fuego. The land of Fire. Tierra del Fuego, Argentina It [...]
After the hike and the bed bug saga of El Chalten I was ready to move on. We decided not only to move hostels, but to move town... A three and a half hour bus ride south from El Chalten is a town called El Calafate, about 5 times the size of El Chalten and home to Perito Moreno Glacier. As it turns out, every tourist within a 500km radius had also decided to head to El Calafate, so it was Goodbye sacred quiet of the [...]
After 32 hours on the road we staggered off our Route 40 bus at 6am into the rain, fog, and icy cold winds of El Chalten. El Chalten is a small town in Patagonia in Argentina, about 3.5 hours north of El Calafate. It is set at the top end of Parque Nacional de Los Glaciers and is famous for Monte Fitz Roy, the jagged peak of which can be seen stretching skyward out of the national park on a clear day. I had been told [...]
This blog post is dedicated to the original Doughnut. You and your pink sun visor would have made this ride that little bit more special. Route 40, Patagonia, Argentina. The long and winding road... very long and very winding. Route 40 stretches south from Bariloche, hugging the Chilean border. Its a long stretch of winding road through flat desert, most of the road is dirt track. I'd been warned about Route 40, everything from it being the slowest and most boring bus ride known to [...]
"A bit of snow maybe, but you should be fine if you've got some hiking experience", was the information from the guy at Club Andino Bariloche, the local hiking association. A great resource and the place to visit before hiking in the local area. He also gave us a map, a route, and gave me a concerned look…. "ah, you hike before?"…. "Not much…. well actually I have zero hiking experience…. but my friend here, he is the most experienced hiker I have ever met, I'm [...]
There's one way into Argentina by road from Pucon in Chile. And it consists of a 4 hour bus ride south to a town called Osorno, a 3 hour wait, then a 5 hour bus ride to Bariloche and one border crossing. Being so use to travelling by night, I initially wasn't too keen on having to do it all during the day, but I hadn't taken into account the the views. The drive from the Chilean border through to Bariloche was absolutely stunning. Snow capped mountains, [...]
