We started early in the morning fully laden (packs front and rear) to catch a bus to Torres Del Paine in Chile …. Only 6 hours this time. The border crossing was fairly straight forward except that we stopped and picked up random Chileans just before the crossing point and they crossed with us - seemed kinda strange but nothing untoward happened and we arrived in the town of Puerto Natales on schedule, only to find that several people we had met previously on...

Another early start with a taxi to the bus station for the 8.00am bus to El Chalten (Argentina's trekking capital). We stopped en-route for no apparent reason. However, it turned out to be La Leona, a ranch where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid once hid from the long arm of the law - They still had "Wanted" posters on the wall (I guess the statute of limitations does not apply here). We travelled along the shore of Lago Viedma, made more picturesque by a...

The bus was big and luxurious with fully reclining seats, food and films in English. A good journey, through vast expanses of desert plain, llamas (guanacos), rheas, sheep, mountains in the distance etc. We fell asleep and woke up to a beautiful sunrise, shortly before arriving in El Calafate. The town itself was very friendly and safe, although more tourists than we had seen for some time. They, like us had journeyed vast distances to see the Glaciers and we...

Laurence Wood (a friend from back in the UK) has a brother Jeremy who lives in Esquel. We had spoken to Jeremy on Skype earlier in our trip and he had given us several good travel tips for South America but this would be the first time we met him. Jeremy arrived at our apartment on our first night and took us back to his house for dinner - Not surprisingly he was very flamboyant and hosted an excellent evening. Cristina (Jeremy's wife) , their son Tomy - David,...

Arrived in El Bolson by bus and found a delegation of local dogs waiting for us, not sure how they knew we were coming but it was nice to feel welcome. By now we had increased our Spanish word count to about 400, which was very useful for ordering food and beer or organising accommodation and travel but now we find that Argentinians pronounce their Spanish in an entirely different way to the Chilean version. Our limited language ability combined with Heather's s...