Hola Chicos!! (Craig FORCED me to write that!) Unfortunately "F" and "T" don´t work very well on this computer, so the spelling may be a bit off....oh and "B" apparently! Anyway, we have left this rather a long time, as the internet is either too expensive, or too slow, but I will try and summarise so as not to bore everyone.

We visited the Iguazu falls from both the Brazilian and Argentinian side, we managed to do this by public bus, as opposed to an expensive tour, although for the Brazilian side we had to take all our bags, which caused a huge scene on the little bus we had got on...mainly because Craig tripped over his bag and landed on me with his full weight, but at least we provided some entertainment for the rest of the bus. The two sides of the falls are very different, the Brazilian side shows the length of the falls, whereas on the Argentinian side the walkways are above, and therefore show off their height. Hundred of bats dive from above into the spray as they live in the walls of the falls. We had perfect sunshine for the Brazilian side, therefore all with the rainbows you see on the postcards, but we had torrential rain for the Argentinian side, which made the day far more amusing, especially as I wore my rucksack on my front covered by a bright yellow, full length poncho. It was a sight.

We had had to do the border crossing by public bus, from Brazil to Argentina... changing bus in the middle of nowhere, but somehow it worked. Only trouble was...craig had lost his immigration card...(luckily he is he one looking after the passports....apparently the "responsible one!) which meant a 50 pound fine!! He now has a (rather cool) "naughty stamp" in his passport, banning him from Brazil until he has paid the fine!! To be fair, it was only due to luck that mine was still there, and luckily they let him out of the country!!

From Puerto Iguazu, we got another 16hr or so coach down to Buenos Aires. This was the most amazing coach you will ever see, and I was far too excited about it. The seats were as comfortable as my bed and went right back, we had blankets, pillows, films (in spanish, which I vaguely and badly translated for craig... I think we got the gist) and a man who brought us sweets and drinks every couple of hours! There was a 2 course hot dinner and breakfast... I didnt want to get off and sleep in a dorm!!

The hostel we had booked was called chillhouse, but they had messed up our booking (ironic) , and only had one bed. So they squeezed in another bed to one of the dorms, and Craig and I slept on different floors...with 6 other random people which I didnt like much!!We stayed in Buenos Aires for 3 nights, and ate a huge amount of yummy rare steak, and lots of red wine...completely blew our budget. It was such good value (we kept telling ourselves) and we couldnt resist the steak...I was actually getting meat cravings after that 3 days (and now we are being good and have been eating the cheapest things on the menu...which is certainly not steak...I miss steak:( ) Anyyywaaaayyy.....I´ll stop saying steak now...We were in a really relaxed and atmospheric area of Buenos Aires called Palermo Viejo, which is considered the "soho" area, with loads of lovely restaurants and bars, tango in the street etc... We had to get a flight down south as the journey would have taken 2 whole days on a coach, which was completely worth the 100 pounds! This cut short our time in Buenos Aires, as all the flights were full and had to take the only seats they had, so we did one of the extremely cringe worthy touristy city tours, as we had so little time to do it ourselves. We were on an airconditioned bus with plenty of americans/germans etc, all with gigantic cameras, but at least we saw more than we could have done on our own; The government building "the pink house," (here people protest every thursday against the "dirty war" where 30,000 people just disappeared during the last dictatorship) the cathedral, la bombonera stadium, la camineta street in la boca, where all the houses are painted with bright colours. This was the area the immigrants first settled, and they painted the tin houses with the paint left over from the ships. Its a bit like a theme park now though, and only for tourists. We really enjoyed Buenos Aires, but the Agentines realy dont like the english much!(not surprising really!) The first taxi driver we had when we arrived called the English "pirates" and "sons of b****es" (I think!!) ...nice...

We arrived in El Calafate in Patagonia a few days ago and are staying in (another) rip off hostel...the walls feel like they will fall down, and you can hear everything...This area, we have discovered is extremely expensive as people come on very expensive package holidays here to see the Perito Moreno Glacier in the Los Glaciares National Park. Its not exactly backpacker friendly...lots of restaurants and bars, but we are picking the very cheapest things on the menu and getting on with it! We paid a lot of money for our tour, but that was the reason we came here, so we had to bite the bullet! This was booked for Valentines day, which tuned out to be oficially the best Valentines day ever (sorry...cheesy) trekking on a glacier! (and Craig also managed to get me a card, but it was in Spanish, so he didnt exactly know what it said on the front...a bit risky I thought!!) We had a couple of hours on the balconies right next to the face of the glacier, to watch the pieces breaking of the front as it melts and moves. You can hear the whole thing creaking, and when even a tiny piece breaks off the crash was extremely loud. Occasionally pieces the size of a house can break off, but you have to be very lucky to see that. We then got a boat across to the face, which was manic as they had crammed so many people on the boat, as everyone was desperate to get the same photo in front of the glacier instead of actually looking at it. We then had the crampons strapped to our feet, and did an hour and a half trek on the glacier, which was amazing...we were totally surrouned by snow, and the groups set off at sufficiently long intervals that we felt ike the only ones there. We came acoss a sink hole in the ice, which drains the surface water from the glacier, so can be the length of the whole glacier, which was 70m above water level, and 120 m below, so if you slipped down this you would apparently be squished at very high speed into a gap far too small for your body...ummmm, and die!! we all peered into this hole, while the guide held your arm...but definatly not a time to be clumsy! We had bells whisky at the end of the trek on the Glacier, with Glacier ice scooped up from the ground. It was a really lovely day, and worth every penny, but we cant afford to do anymore of the big tours, so have had a couple of days chilling out around here. We took a makeshift picnic to the local bird reserve, which has a 2 km trail, which cost us 30p each to get in, and spent all day here. Its only a km from the town, but we only saw a handful of people all day, very relaxing and our cheapest day so far!!

We are off to el Chalten next, which is in the Northern part of the same park, but sounds slightly more tailored to hiking and trekking than extremely expensive all inclusive tours, we are staying in what looks like quite a crappy dorm for 5 nights, but its all we could get at the last minute...we had to shell out for our bus here, then up to Bariloche (24 hours) and 7 nights in a hostel all in advance...nearly made me cry....we will let you know if we survive...(I sound a bit depressed at this point..but I am not at all and having a lovely time...and haven´t killed craig.....yet!)

Lots of love and speak to you soon xxx