Don't cry for me Argentina

Leaving Bolivia behind we began the final leg of our journey, heading back to Argentina felt a bit like a home coming, suddenly we were stopping at service stations with well stocked snack shops, the pace slowed down from the frantic world of Bolivia where everyone is a businessman to the laid back lifestyle of the Argentines, where shops shut for 5 hours in the middle of the day for a BBQ break. But the scenery was no less stunning as we headed South through the wild-west like canyons and multi-coloured gorges, we gulped up lungfuls of thick oxygenated air as we descended from altitude and all began to feel rather more human!

Back in Argentina

Chris

Steve

Our first stop was the city of Salta which gave everyone a chance to relax and partake of some of Argentinas favourite pass-times of sitting in the plaza drinking coffee, or sitting in the plaza drinking wine (we were happily back in wine-land again!) Soon we were on the road again and heading down through another stunning valley to the wine region of Cafeyate, set in the beautiful Calchaquies Valley. We stopped off in town to do some wine tasting, half the group (mostly the male half) seemed more excited about the bottling machine than the wine itself, which says more about them than it does the excellent wine we were offered, but they managed to force some down nonetheless!

On the wine tour at Finca Quara

Oh the excitement!

Very tasty Torrontes

Emma tries to translate 'the bouquet has an astringent quality' and realises she doesn't know what it means in English, let alone Spanish

This dog adopted us in Cafeyate and proceeded to follow us around, stopping for regular rests in the supermarket. We are all going to miss the dogs of South America very much

We were to make the area home for 3 nights up in a village called San Carlos, our base was the beautiful Vaca Tranquila Ranch, a working dairy farm owned by a Belgian couple who, alongside making their own cheese and yoghurt also ran a very successful brewery, and in traditional Belgian style the weakest of them was around 6% alcohol, and they were excellent! Add to that the wine we had stocked up on in Cafeyate and the wood fired lamb they baked for us we ate and drank rather well during our time there!

Most people also headed off on some of the ranch's stunning horses for a few hours to explore the beautiful scenery in the area.

Vaca Tranquila

Beautiful evening scenery

Moon rise

Evening light and another adopted dog

Sunset

The horses

Dinner time

Simon makes sausages

Lee's dramatic potato mashing

Cooking by head torch, a common overlanding activity

Horse time

Roadblock

Claire

But sadly soon it was time to drag ourselves away and begin our trip back down to Buenos Aires, but we did manage to stop off at some ruins in Quilmes and have a rather exciting lunch stop complete with llamas, which everyone enjoyed immensely.

The Quilmes ruins of the town that managed to hold off the Spanish for 130 years

Simon, Emma & Gen

Final lunchstop

Friendly lunch neighbours

Recycling our organic waste

Paul

The end was approaching faster and faster and there were mixed feeling for everyone, excitement at the prospect of putting toilet paper in the toilet again (what decadence) the prospect of there being toilet paper available in the first place! Of drinking tap water, of carpets, of putting your clothes in a wardrobe, it's amazing what long-term travel will make you appreciate! But there was sadness too, 6 months have flown by and the idea of not waking up in a tent listening to the birds around you, of not crawling out of your tent to see a desert, a mountain range, a jungle and the friendly faces of your travelling companions was a hard thing to adjust to. Going back to a world of rules and order, of health and safety, of polite indifference, well, it wasn't sounding too appealing! But it came to an end, as all good things must, and we approached Buenos Aires and headed off for our final group meal and spent the night reminiscing about the trip and all that South America has given to us/thrown at us!

South America is an amazing continent, unique in its size and isolation from the rest of the world, in being one of the few places in the world where English is barely spoken (not a bad thing in the slightest, most of the group has made an impressive effort to learn Spanish over our 6 months here.) There are many things I could say about South America but I think I'll pick my favourite, and that is the complete and total insanity, passion and warmth of the place. South Americans generally wear their hearts on their sleeves and aren't scared to tell you what they think. Its reputation of being an unstable place where military coups are the only way to get things done may not be as true as it once was, but the same passion that gives them the strength of belief to overthrow their government also makes it a continent that will never EVER bore you. We have been at both sides of it, getting stuck at a roadblock in Peru on one hand, and laughing at the groups of men in Colombia who would explode in to a mess of excited waving and shouting upon seeing us in our truck on the other. You know exactly where you stand with South Americans, which can be scary if they decide they don't like you, but thoroughly heart-warming when they do. And can you blame them for being like this? In the last 50 years this continent has dealt with major natural disasters, major political upheaval, drugs lords, terrorism, border skirmishes, political kidnappings and disappearances, you name it, they've survived it. It is a continent that is changing, modernising and, dare I say it, stabilising, but the people here remember the past and have come out of it with a great sense of the importance of living for the moment, of grabbing every opportunity, of celebrating anything good, however small, of proudly holding some of the best parties in the world. It makes it an amazing place to visit, warm-hearted, passionate and, above all, fun, and I like to think we can say we've taken a leaf out of their books and made the most of our time, no matter how exciting or tumultuous, we've come out of it stronger and happier and with a great sense of living for the moment.

It's not the end of the world

We set off from El Chalten in our very comfortable public bus and headed down to El Calafate, a short hop through the beautiful scenery of where the vast Panagonian plains meet the lakes and mountains of the Andes. Our new home was a very lovely hostel in the pretty tourist town which is most famous for its proximity to the famous Perito Moreno Glacier. Everyone went off to see the natural wonder, some went hiking on the ice itself, some on a boat trip and some on a tour through the local estancias or ranches culminating in a very spectacular view of huge chunks of ice crumbling off the swathes of ice at the face of one of the world's most famous glaciers.

Perito Mereno Dramatico

Ice calving off the face

Steve, Louisa, Kaye & Gen on the glacier

Tiny ice trekkers in the distance

Black faced ibis

Estancia, Calafate

Guanaco looking for a belly rub

It's a long way home

Impromptu night out

Kaye bowling - none of your faceless bowling robots here, there was a man waiting at the end to pick up the pins and roll the balls back!

Poor Ithaca was still stuck in Chalten and Simon went off on a very long winded mission to get her fixed up with trips across Argentina and back. In the meantime Emma put together a plan B to arrange transport down to the end of the world and back, literally, as our next destination was to be the most Southerly city in the world, Ushuaia.

Our journey down there proved just how remote Ushuaia is, with a 19 hour bus ride starting at 3am, 2 border crossings as we had to transit through Chile, a ferry ride across the infamous Magellan Straits and a lot of gravel roads until finally we arrived in this beautifully situated place, nestled at the foot of the hills where the Andes disappear in to the water of the Beagle Channel which joins the great oceans of The Pacific and The Atlantic. It's a stunning little town, rough around the edges it still has the feel of a town cobbled together by the first European settlers with whatever materials they could find, blasted by the winds, rain and snow and the glorious clear sunlight, and there was plenty of that, it was coming towards Christmas and our visit coincided with the longest day of the year, at midnight there were still traces of light in the sky and it was dawn only a few hours later. Ushuaia describes itself as “The End of the World” and it really feels like it!

Ushuaia offers great opportunities to explore the surrounding hills, head off on a boat trip to see the amazing wildlife, drink tasty hot chocolate (even mid summer here needs coats and hats) and sample the local speciality of King Crab.

The ferry port on the Magellan Straits

Our ferry

Finally in Ushuaia!  We've come a long way from BA

Ushuaia's beautiful setting

It's a tiny bit windy in Ushuaia - we nearly lost Mike!

Ushuaia artwork

Huge cruise ships line the port ready to head off to Antarctica...

...alongside little handbills houses in the town

The mandatory pack of stray dogs - a common sight throughout South America

At the National Park

King Cormorant

Tufted Tit-Tyrant

David & Helen ready to sail the Beagle Channel

Out on the channel

Sea lions

Paula sailing the Beagle Channel

Then it was time to head North again, with news coming through of Ithaca's return to health we borded a bus, hopped back in to Chile and skirted along the Magellan Straits to the town of Punta Arenas where both Simon and Ithaca were waiting for us – definitely a sight for sore eyes!

Punta Arenas was not on our itinerary but we managed to find a quirky little hotel which used to be the British Consulate run by very friendly people and a dog which Irma, our host, swore blind had been genetically created in a lab and was half Chihuahua, half deer. It was a spot we would have liked to explore more but it was time to head North as Christmas was looming!

Ithaca's back!!  Outside our hotel in Punta Arenas

Half Chihuahua, half deer...

Breakfast at our manor house hotel

Don Victor and Irma our lovely hosts in Punta Arenas… they said we should come back soon, we took them seriously...

Our next stop was Torres del Paine National Park, we stopped briefly to restock as the National Park is very much out in the wilds with no provisions, and being without food on Christmas day is basically illegal, and then we drove off to the stunning scenery of the Towers of Paine mountains, blasted by the winds, with turquoise lakes, glaciers pouring down the mountain sides and herds of Guanacos wandering the hills.

The road to Torres del Paine - happy to be back in Ithaca!

Gaucho (cowboy) and Patagonian lambs

A dramatic Guanaco with Christmas tinsel - spotted through Ithaca's window

Stunning Torres del Paine

Camp Lake Pehoe

The view from camp

Boots at the ready

Hiking time

Chimango Caracara

Condor

Darwin's Fungus

Gen and Sarah obey the "only 2 on the bridge" sign

Gen & Sarah

Hiking views

Sarah

Iain and Mike got up early to see the famous viewpoint of the Towers of Paine, the weather rewarded them with a break in the cloud

and a view of the Towers in the mist

Sunrise on the Towers on a clear day

Lee, Louisa & Steve rest up at a refugio

Our camp neighbour, the Southern Crested Caracara

The National Park was a great chance to stretch our legs and head off hiking, there was some fabulous day walks to try and whilst it is also the location of the famous multi-day W-Trek no one opted to do it as they wanted to spend Christmas with their new Odyssey family!

Christmas day was spent at our lovely campsite on the shores of Lago Pehoe, the highly unpredictable Andean Weather gave us some almost tropical sunshine for much of the day and with a BBQ on the go, some fantastic desserts and treats put together by the group, a lot of good music, a lot of very bad music (depending on your music tastes) dancing and a visit from Santa a thoroughly good time was had by all in to the night, or at least the seemingly endless dusk that the South of South America is blessed with at this time of year.

Wayne wakes up on Christmas morning

Dave makes Christmas breakfast pancakes

Jess and Gen prepare dessert for later

Wayne & David wash up

Sun's out - Aussies stop for a beer

Simon pops some pre-lunch bubbly

Improvised Christmas tree

BBQ time

Christmas dancing

Look who's here!  Roberta gets a lift from Santa

Wayne & Santa

Simon & Santa

Helen's not sure about her lucky dip present!

Kaye shows off her "hand of God" oven mitt

Heading out of Torres del Paine after 4 days of walking, celebrating and relaxing it was time to head North, well, in a roundabout way as going North here means going quite a long way South first as this part of Chile is cut off from the rest of the country by the fiords and mountains. We made our way back down to Puerto Natales and were happily heading to the border when suddenly Ithaca starting behaving very strangely and we were forced to stop by the side of the road so Simon could see what was wrong. With a lot of smoke, a lot of hand pumping diesel and a lot of concerned looks it was soon decided that Ithaca had had something of a relapse and wasn't infact fixed, she had just seen fit to hold it together enough to get us up to Torres del Paine for Christmas, which was a very good thing. However it soon became clear to Emma and Simon that the itinerary and our trip North were going to be put on hold as the extent of Ithaca's problems became clear.

So we headed back to Punta Arenas, a town with good mechanics and facilities and back to our strange hotel with the deer-dog and friendly staff and settled in for what we hoped would be a quick stop to get Ithaca fixed up. One day turned in to 2, then 3. We found the world's nicest pump and injector specialist named Juan Pedro whose English was better than ours and who took pity on a bunch of poor stranded travellers and has been working silly hours to help us get sorted.

So readers, that's where you find us now, still in Punta Arenas, Ithaca is slowly being fixed up, she has a new fuel pump and the last few bolts are being tightened, there has been a lot of finger crossing and occasional swearing as poor Simon and the mechanics coax her back to life. So Punta Arenas is where we've seen in 2015, not quite where we expected to be but being South America there were street parties, music and fireworks to be had and everyone is staying positive, using the time to catch up on internet, wish happy new year to friends and family back home and explore the town. We keep reminding ourself that it's not the end of the world – we visited that last week!

Cafes - where we've spent most of our waiting time in Punta Arenas John, Paula, Helen, David and Wayne

Shackleton Bar in Punta Arenas

Cool Punta Arenas artwork

Waiting patiently by the Magellan Straits

New Year's dinner

Dave, Lee, Louisa & Steve pop the champagne

Kaye & Mike hair antics

Chris & Sarah

Jess, Sarah & Gen

Out on the streets

Dance party with the locals

Ali shows us his moves

It's not a riot - it's a South American street party!

Gen & Mike

Lee & Sarah

Happy New Year from all of us!

Overlanding is not a holiday, it's something we tell our expedition members at the beginning of every trip, it is an adventure and all adventures have challenges and problems along with the moments of joy and beauty. We are a tight team and these mechanical challenges have brought everyone together. We are all very keen to be back in Ithaca, camping our way up North out of Patagonia, and we will be soon, but for now we have a brief pause in our adventure, a chance to take a breath and look forward to what the new year will bring.

Keep your fingers crossed for us. Happy New Year to all our friends and family wherever you are in the world, see you next time in the next blog entry from somewhere North of here, somewhere hot probably, on another leg of our adventure!