Going Gaucho - Argentina

Welcomed with traditional mate tea and warm baked bread, cakes & cheese at breakfast by Leo and his wife Mercedes, the day at the gaucho farm got off to a perfect start. Impressively, Pete got back in the saddle for the first time since the horse did the splits of him on the beach in Nicaragua. As the gaucho said, Pete and the horse were pretty happy together by the end of the day!

Nick, having moved to Salta a couple of years back from London, seemed seriously at home with the gaucho lifestyle and swapped a day at his B&B for the day on the ranch. We did a great tour of the farm, through tobacco fields, over lots of rivers, through old archaeological sites and did plenty of galloping over the open fields. Being winter, it hasn't rained for about 6 months so it was pretty dry and all the fields were being ploughed ready to get planting tobacco - shipped out to big cigarette companies like Philip Morris!

Check out the size of the cactus in the picture of the guys. This mighty cacti is called Calixto, after the famous gaucho who galloped for 9 days straight all the way from Salta to BA to tell them the Spanish had arrived in the city. Not suprisingly, legend has it he couldn't walk for 6 months after that!

Luckily we were only in the saddle for 3 hours, after which we were treated to vino tinto and a delicious rustic steak asado out in the sunshine. Now that is living...

Salta - Argentina

Salta had a boomerang effect, we ended up back in town on three separate stops in between travels. The city and the region has a laid back charm and lovely people that make you not want to leave.

On our first stop there, we stayed in a little village Cerrillos just 15 kms outside of the city with a lovely Brit/Argentinian family Nick, Alicia & little Calixto. Their B&B was recommended to us by John who we met on the Ecuador project, family friends of his, their home was a home from home (http://www.ponchohuasi.com/). With a toasty fire, great hospitality and all the PG Tips you could want, it was perfecto! It was however freezing cold on our first visit to Salta, so we wondered the markets and plaza's all wrapped up & spent a day down on a gaucho ranch riding, drinking vino tinto and enjoying an asado.

For our next stops the weather had seriously warmed up, away with the woolly jumpers and on with the sun dress! Opting for some city life, we stayed in the center of town at a sociable hostel where we drank lots of vino and enjoyed chatting over steak suppers around the big dinning table.

Kept fit by jogging around the local park and walking up 1070 steps instead of taking the cable car to check out the view of the city... but undid this saintly work with a big fun night out in the Balcarce (party street) with roomy Steve (lovely Aussie guy we met on our Bolivian travels) and some other friends we made at the hostel.

Argentinians are night owls, it's hard to keep up! Dinner is at 10pm and you don't hit the bars until gone midnight, needless to say in the space of an evening a serious amount vino can be enjoyed.... and the worlds worst hangover accomplished. Ouch but very worth it!

Argentina - Iguazu Falls

Everyone says its amazing, and it is. In Machu Piccu they charged $50 for a burger (not that we had one) and $6 for a water.... but here in Argentina they believe in keeping thier national monuments national. No Chiliean owners milking it, $20 for a day pass and just $1 for a Fanta. Nice.

The falls are too huge to describe, or remember all of their names. It's breath taking in scope and scale; loads of walkways, rainbows, steps and flowers.

We did every turn and corner, one of the best parts was the 3km walk down to a huge waterfall with toucans, monkeys and tapiers along the way. Not a cage in sight.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iguazu_Falls

Tres Fronteras - Arriving in Argentina

Breakfast in Paraguay, lunch in Brazil and dinner in Argentina. After quite a day of border crossings to finally get to Puerto Iguazu - our first taste of Argentina - we thought it only polite to treat ourselves to a parilla (BBQ) and a good bottle (or 3 as it ended up) of Malbec. The Chirizo (like a sirloin but better) is the cut to have, smother on some Chiri (herbs and spices) and pour a glass of vino tinto. The best so far has been the vino La Linda, a complex flavour and the very best the label says, like his mother, Pete commented after a few glasses.

With bottles of vino at $1.50 in the supermarket, we're working our way through the local vineyard offerings and are on the third night of steak dinners. When in Argentina...!

Paraguay - Salta Monday and Ipaitu dam

I am writing this in Argentina. Having seen 'the' falls, Salta Monday is no Iguazu... but if you're in Asuncion and are travelling east or in Cuidad del Este and fancy an easy day out you can get to it by public bus.

We spent a morning in Salta Monday and went to the hydroelectric dam which 'drowned' the 'more impressive than Iguazu Falls waterfall in the sake of progress' later that day.

The Ipaitu dam, which supplies 98% of Paraguay's and 25% of Brazil's electricity, is epic. 7km of concrete and generators the size of olympic pools.... ok it's geeky. But they put on a free VIP bus and it is the biggest green power generator in the world!

Note the cost.... $26bn in 1980 to build, today they make just $360m a year from it... not exactly a great ROI

Paraguay Asuncion

If we had not flown to Paraguay I think I may have thrown myself off of one of the 250ft cliffs we'd have had to have gone over. It took just 12 minutes to fly on TAM from Cochabamba to Santa Cruz, in the south of Bolivia on route to Asuncion. But the bus....15 hours... can you believe that.. well the mountains are insane!

Instead of the three day trek over the mountains, we decided on the easy route. Two hours in the air to the capital, also in our favour was three weeks on intense cold. So with a lack of good buidget accomodation, I managed to find a suite in a nice neighbourhood hotel for a great price, roof top swimming pool and 80's syle gym included! We got there on a Saturday evening so everything was closed, but we managed a fantastic local steak dinner and a bottle of rum from the korean market was only $3.... so it went well.

Didnt do much, other than lounge... take in the view from the balcony and pool and spend monday messing around with HSBC, global is not their thing.... and looking at the stunning buildings and railway stations built for a time gone by.....aventure was beyond Asuncion.

Cochabamba - Bolivia

We'd planned to carry on the adventure with a trip to the famous Bolivian salt flats - home to lagoons, geysers, trick photography and starry nights. But with road blocks and protests running all the way south, it wasn't to be. We're going to wait a few weeks and return to Bolivia through Chile's Atacama desert.

So in the interest of thawing out our frost bite, we decided a little sadly, to leave bright lights and friends in La Paz behind and catch the bus to Cochabamba. There's not a lot to say about Cochabamba apart from it's a pretty colonial city, apparently in the top 3 in Bolivia, that feels more like a village. It's extremely laid back and the sun shines everyday. We did catch Bolivia's final day of Independence celebrations there, so we were treated to marching bands and military processions. But wiith everything else shut down for family celebrations, the plaza made the perfect place to read a book in the sun.

After a couple of nights in town, we caught a flight out of Cochabamba's little airport to the equally sleepy city of Asuncion in Paraguay...

6080m's to the top of Huayna Potosi - Bolivia

Quite honestly the hardest thing we have ever done. I thought I might not mention the altitude sickness, thumping headaches, inability to get air into your lungs quickly enough, lovely nose bleeds, turning blue or -20 temperatures but quite frankly, they were all part of the adventure. Day one of the Huayna Potosi adventure was actually brilliant fun, acclimatising to the altitude (4,700m) and practising climbing in cramp-ons and using picks to climb sheer ice walls. Not a natural climber, I surprised myself by loving it.

The evening at the Refugio passed with lots of cups of tea and sharing stories with a couple of vets from England who were on a 14-day hiking adventure - and were wisely bypassing Huayna Potosi for lower climbs. By midnight though, it was icy cold - thank god we had invested in some sexy thermals!

Day two we hiked up to high camp (5,200m) which only took us an hour or so with all our gear, water etc on our backs. But with beautiful views over the glacier and the sun high in the sky to keep us warm-ish it was a pretty nice place to relax. The whole camp was in their sleeping bags by 6pm and trying to get some kip before setting off at 2pm the next morning for the BIG day!

So, we woke up at 1am, piled on all our clothes, got on our snow boots and cramp-ons and after a cup of coca tea, we were armed and ready with our ice picks for the ascent to the top of the mountain. I have to say I don't remember much about the climb. When walking in the pitch black, surrounded only by snow, slowly digging in your cramp-ons, cautiously moving one foot in front of the other, with a small headlight and delirious from the cold and panicking that you cannot feel your hands, feet, nose... time goes surprisingly fast.

It was testament to Pete and my relationship that we were still, just about, talking by the end of this expedition. It is quite testing to be tied to your loved one under such extreme conditions. A lovely Canadian friend Jess summed it up well, she conquered the mountain with her boyfriend Justin. 'Did you cry? We were pushed to breaking point that day, like 10,000 times'. Jess, why didn't you tell us this until after we returned to La Paz!

Still, we trudged up the glacier digging our cramp-ons in deep to secure ourselves on the glass-like ice, climbing like this for 6 hours to finally ascent the summit ridge pulling ourselves up with our ice picks, and getting up onto the narrow platform on top of the mountain for sunrise. With the 6080m ridge totally exposed to the wind, the sun was more than welcome and unveiled an incredible landscape of the whole Cordillera Real mountain range, La Paz city, Lake Titicaca and all the way over to Brazil. Quite an amazing view.

As were the views of the glacier now glaringly lit by the morning sun all the way back down to camp, a long route back down to the first nights camp. All in all we hiked 10 hours that night. Thankfully, we had two amazing Bolivian guides with us, Rogelio and Victor, without which I think I would have collapsed on the ice and asked to slide back down (though I think I probably did request this in my exhausted state). I can't believe they do this 3 times a week - wow!

To hike at the altitude is quite an experience, your body and mind do strange things! On return to La Paz at 3pm in the afternoon, Pete disappeared to bed and didn't emerge until the next day. I hadn't been able to eat for a couple of days, so a warm cosy bar and some home-made soup worked for me!

Incredibly Pete has now got his eye on a 13-day expedition up Aconcagua in Argentina, only a mere 6962m. Easy for climbers now so experienced as us he says! Maybe he has it in his genes... hopefully his climbing-star uncle Rab can point us in the right direction for some seriously warm climbing gear for next time, if indeed there is a next time... I might be on the beach with a surf board instead!