What a week! I´m now in Bariloche in Argentina, which is soooooo gorgeous! You might think that you´re in Austria or Switzerland if you just looked at the landscape - beautiful lakes, mountains with snow on the top, pine forests.... and then there´s the chalet-style houses and the chocolate shops! Bariloche has to be one of my favourite places I´ve been to on this trip so far.

My week has been pretty hectic... when I last spoke to you I was in El Calafate and on my way to see the Moreno Glacier.  Well that was just awesome...  it´s one of teh most active glaciers in the world, and we were able to watch whole columns break off the ice wall and fall into the lake right in front of us with the most almighty splash!  And the ice was so blue!

Since then we moved onto El Chalten...  I´m not really sure how to describe this town...  literally a one-horse town!  Dusty streets, tiny ram-shackle buildings - all that was missing was the large balls of tumble weed blowing down the street and it would have looked like a town from an old western movie.  And the wind is quite something else...  I thought Torres del Paine was bad...  at least we weren´t camping here - we really would have blown away!  The reason we were in this godforesaken town (which actually became quite endearing towards the end of our stay there) was the nearby beautiful scenery in the Los Glaciares national park.  A group of us went horse-riding one day, and the views of Mount Fitz Roy were amazing.  The only drawback of horse-riding however is that my backside felt rather tender the following day!  But the glutton for punishment that I am, the next day I went rock climbing!  I don´t think I have been so scared about anything in a long time...  despite the fact that I had the harness to catch me, the falling feeling, and that first lean back on the abseil down is still petrifying!  But I did it, and really feel that I´ve achieved something...  a lot of what this trip is about for me is trying out new things, and I´ve certainly never rock climbed before (whether I will again is quite another matter!!!).

We had a couple of long driving days again to get to Bariloche, but it has definitely been worth it.  I spent a fantastic day mountain biking with six others of the group.  We did a 25 km circuit around the lake - it doesn´t sound very far, but the uphills were killers!  We were rewarded with the downhills though!  Plus we got out to some little lakeside beaches where the cars can´t get to.  The weather was just perfect as you can see from the photos, and we just had such a brilliant day.

I´m really conscious that I´ve been using loads of adjectives like amazing, awesome, beautiful, stunning, etc etc.  It sounds like an exaggeration, but really I am running out of vocabulary to describe everything.  I´m having such a fantastic time.  I just wish you could be here too - I miss you loads!

I´m also conscious that you´re probably reading this in the office or something, and you´ve probably had enough of me gloating about what I´m up to while you´re working, so I´ll stop now!

I hope everyone´s well, and look forward to hearing from you.

Until the next installment....

All my love
Nikki xxxxx