Buenos Aires to San Pedro de Atacama

Traveling on overnight buses is a pretty good option altogether, your accommodation for the night is included and if timed correctly it's possible to have a full day at both origin and destination. The trouble is they are massively confusing so on arrival at around 10:00 in Buenos Aires I had even less concept about which day we were on, how far we'd traveled and whether I should be going straight back to sleep after arriving at the hostel. After a supremely heavy nap we wandered out to explore the San Telmo district where we were staying.

This formed a pretty useful landmark. Turn right at the giant donkey riding a bicycle.

It's a nice little area with a quirky character and some great bars and restaurants. That evening we headed to an Argentine grill and completely mis-judged how much cow to order from the menu. Delicious food and comically grumpy service. Perfect.

Fortunately we managed to mime "doggy bag" and ate the rest the following evening.

The next day we wandered to the La Boca district in the morning which didn't really offer all that much. So we wandered to the Puerto Madero which is an area on the banks of a canal. It was a bit more swanky and was a fairly nice wander but otherwise didn't really offer all that much either.

Welcome to La Boca, a place entirely inhabited by muppets.

CRANES

The next morning we went on a walking tour of downtown Buenos Aires which was pretty good. The guy leading the tour was properly enthusiastic, describing one of the roads as the widest avenue IN THE WORLD (which it isn't - the widest is in Brazil).

The "Pink Palace" - the Argentine equivalent of the White House. The barriers are to keep demonstrators out, of which we were told there are on average three different protests a day.

On our penultimate day we headed to the Palermo district where Lucy went shopping and I went to the Museum of Latin American Art. Oddly they had a temporary exhibit of some video works by Tracey Emin which turned out to be the best thing there. On the last day we went to the San Telmo market which is chock full of junk and watched some Tango whilst having a coffee in a plaza. I'd summarise Buenos Aires as "fairly nice".

It's a monster. Made out of marijuana.

We caught another overnight bus north west to Córdoba, Argentina's second city. It's famous for its huge and historic university founded by Jesuits exiled from Spain. The reason I know that is we did a tour of the university which was really interesting. We discovered that the original founders were quite sadistic towards their PhD students who had to sit a three day long grilling from the seniority of both the university and the town. Should they fail this ordeal they would be pelted with rotten fruit by the locals on dismissal from the test chamber. Good incentive to pass I suppose.

What is it about Argentines and protesting? This is a student protest in Córdoba for what reason I know not why.

We also took a day trip to Alta Gracia where we visited the house Che Guevara grew up in.

I never dreamed I'd be able to say I've been in the same room Che Guevara took a crap. ¡Viva la Revolución!

From Córdoba we caught a bus to Tucumán which we got to spend a few hours exploring before catching a connection to Cafayate. Not much going on in Tucumán but the people seemed friendly enough.

Cafayate is a tiny little town in the Valles Calchaquíes. Nice enough for us to spend three nights there relaxing and trying some of the locally produced Torrontés wine. In addition to touring wineries we did a tour of the Quebrada de las Conches. Some beautiful rock features.

Multicoloured rocks in the Quebrada de las Conches

Our last stop in Argentina was Salta, a really nice small city nestled up close to the Andes and the borders of Chile and Bolivia. We only had one full day which we spent wandering the city centre and visiting the Incan archaeology museum where they have on display one of three mummified sacrificed children found on the top of a nearby mountain. Very spooky due to how well the little girl had been preserved.

Not my photo obviously

Leaving Argentina we caught the bus bright and early for the mammoth day-long trip into the Andes to San Pedro de Atacama in Chile. The spectacular views out the window made up for the 12 hours stuck on a bus. Even when the bus overheated and conked out having climbed to 4000 metres above sea level. Atacama was an ok very tiny place. We only really stayed to acclimatize before heading on an off road, three day trip along the Altiplano to Uyuni in Bolivia. More on that later.

Bright and early start in San Pedro de Atacama before joining our tour to Uyuni

Argentina: Awesome.

Love to you and yours,

Ralph xx

Some notes:

• Argentina has the biggest beer bottles IN THE WORLD. 1 litre bottles which you have to pay a deposit on and return. Just like Corona bottles.
• We saw a middle aged man sat on the ground chomping on raw meat just outside San Telmo market in Buenos Aires. Was he mad, hungry or both? Sadly we'll never know.

More photos: https://plus.google.com/photos/101454232293966616010/albums/5861943685956902481?authkey=CJTqpLiY68XESQ