For the second time on my travels I have found myself in the middle of a general election - last time was in Sarawak, Borneo; but in a big country with a very chequered political history, this one seems rather more significant. We didn't experience much more of it than the fireworks, loud cheers, car horns and a band of drummers slowly marching through the barrios, but we got the impression that Buenos Aires was happy with the landslide victory that brought a sec...

A caballero (horseman) came riding down the mountain path on which we were hiking. We made light conversation in our broken Spanish, and he was very amused when Helen asked if she could take his photograph; but not as amused as we were when from under his alpaca-wool poncho he produced a camera of his own and proceeded to take a photo of us. We are finally heading south. We stopped off in the little town of Cafayate to relax and do some wine tasting. This is a...

Never work with animals. Llamas in particular! My camera lens broke when I was pointing it at elephants in India; I got it fixed in Kuala Lumpur, but now it has developed the same fault again whilst I was pointing it at llamas. And just for an added bonus I was approached by a very aggressive llama farmer demanding money for photographs that I couldn't even take. But I must say that the llama farmer (who could have been calmer) was an exception. The vast majori...

We crossed the bridge over the Iguassu River into Argentina on a bank holiday (Columbus Day), which was a bit unfortunate as all the banks and moneychangers are closed. This has also meant that the number of visitors to the Iguassu Falls is very high. We had to queue for ages to get into the National Park on the Brazilian side. It's not easy to describe the falls, which are listed in my book of top 100 places to see before you die, and therefore one of the wor...