After safely making it out of Brazil, we flew back to Buenos Aires to meet my brother Nick.  Leaving the airport we grabbed a taxi, sat back and relaxed.  Five minutes later as we approached the first toll, the engine cut out.  Generally the taxis in South America aren´t of a high standard anyway, but this one was an absolute piece of crap, and we were happy when the brakes worked.

The driver turned round to us and uttered the only word he knew in English, "Push" (sure he´d said it before many times).  At first we smiled and thought he was joking, until he got out and opened Allison´s door.  Fair enough he wanted me to push, but Allison was a bit shocked at being roped into it too.  Oh well, equal opportunities and all that.

Luckily the car started again and we carried on, however when I asked for a discount for pushing his cab the driver just laughed loudly and slapped me on the back.  Not really the response we wanted.

Nick turned up an hour later at our room.  Was great to see a familiar face, though strange how it seemed like normal and like we´d only seen him a few days back.  Guess our time seems to go quicker out here as we´re always on the move. 

After trying and failing to book passage down to Patagonia (everything was booked due to a national holiday), we took a flight to Bariloche, in the Lake District of Argentina.

Bariloche is a ski town that feels like it should be in Switzerland.  It´s surrounded by lakes and snow-capped peaks, and St Bernards roam the main square (which look scarily like Rob Shreeves!).  The surrounding park is called Parque National Nahuel Huapi.

The day after we arrived we strolled around the lakes near a town called Lla Lla, and due to poor planning ended up walking aimlessly for hours, but took in some amazing views on the way.  Luckily we found a hotel after about four hours, so took a taxi back to Bariloche and hit the local Irish bar, where there was live English rock music.

The first half of the set was great, and the girl sang really well in perfect English.  After we decided to compliment her on her English though, she got a bit over-confident and it turned into a series of warbles and mumbles.  Barely understanding a word in the second half, Nick, after a few pints of Blest (rocket fuel lager from Argentina), loudly shared his thoughts with us, unfortunately just as the music went quiet.  Lucky the locals didn´t understand.

Next day we took a 27 hour bus journey to El Calafete.  Welcome to our world, Nick.

El Calafete is a small town in Patagonia, close to the Parque National Los Glaciares.  The park contains the Perito Moreno Glacier, a 250 square kilometre glacier, 60 metres high and with a 5km long face.  It is 30km´s long and is one of only three glaciers in Patagonia which aren´t retreating. 

The glacier creates a natural dam across Lago Argentina (the countries largest lake), and water builds up behind the glacier as high as 30 metres above the rest of the lake, until eventually the pressure breaks through the ice barrier and causes a massive rupture event.  Unfortunately this only happens once every five years on average, but as the ice advances by 2 metres a day, the face loses ice at the same rate, so in the few hours we were there we saw some pretty large chunks of ice breaking off, which cause a huge roar and waves as they fall.

Enough of the statistics, the glacier is an amazing sight.  There are about five viewing platforms from where you can watch the glacier from about a kilometre away, and as you are on the hill opposite you can see back for miles.  The glacier looks endless, as the back of it is concealed under a blanket of mist and fog, and the sides hemmed in by mountains.  After the viewing platforms we took a boat ride up to the face of the glacier (not too close obviously), before going on a trek to the closest point to the glacier.

At this point we should mention our camera.  The reason we have no pictures on the site recently is because our expensive and annoyingly new camera is broken.  Luckily however Nick joined us just after it broke, so although we have no pictures of Brazilian beach beauties (and in fact there weren´t many, as there was way too much butt hanging out those g-strings), we do at least have pictures of the highlights from the last two weeks. 

We did however worry if the photographer was up to the task, when we stood at the closest point to the glacier and witnessed the largest collapse of ice since we had arrived.  Waves were crashing, the ice fell like dominoes as large chunks of ice loosened other large chunks, and the ice roared like thunder.  After it all finished we turned to Nick with looks of wonder on our faces thinking we must have some pretty special pictures, only to find Nick stood there munching away on a sandwich (probably ham and cheese being Argentina) nonchalently.  Oh well, nothing gets in the way of Nick and his food.  Must be a result of when I used to steal his sandwiches off his plate when we were kids.

All in all a great day, and even managed to see about a dozen condors, a few eagles and a flock of flamingoes on the way to the park.

Next stop Chile.