El Chaltén was amazing but had wiped me out so after a leisurely start where my eyes decided they didn't want to fully open and embrace the world yet, I slept for most of the three and a half hour journey to the town of El Calafate, which was ok as most of the scenery was bleak Patagonian plains. When we arrived, I managed to haul myself and my things up a hill where we checked into our hostel and our dorm room. Yes, we had to check into our first - and only - b...

Our longest bus journey of our whole trip, 25 hours, wasn't as bad as we expected. It certainly wasn't perfect as the temperature fluctuated between hot and freezing and the bus was really dirty; it was by far the lowest quality we've had since leaving Bolivia. My seat belt was covered in chewing gum so I (Simon) didn't use it. The bus took us down Route 40 to the heart of Patagonia with barren but beautiful scenery - we felt very isolated especially when the pav...

The nice man on the bus had forced us into taking extra sandwiches so we had some of them for tea. As we walked round Bariloche, after we had checked into our nice hostel, we very quickly found ourselves in one of the numerous chocolate shops and dutifully bought some to supplement our dinner. Here we also found a large proportion of the tourists in Bariloche - it was rammed! We had a very thorough and helpful introduction at the hostel from a woman who could sp...

Due to unfortunate bus schedules we had a 5am start when leaving Cafayate. A 6 hour journey took us east over a beautiful mountain range to the sweltering city of Tucumán where we had the afternoon to kill before our night bus to Mendoza - Argentina's number 1 wine region. We hid from the heat in a great air conditioned restaurant and had more great steak with a salad bar on the side for healthiness. Tucumán was an ugly city so we spent a few hours in an inte...

So after we had eaten and drank all we possibly could after horse riding, we were taken back to Salta bus terminal where we boarded our bus in a slightly tipsy haze and I fell asleep almost straight away. Fortunately I woke up for the best scenery of the Quebrada de Cafayate: rock formations and vast views from our seats at the front of the bus. We were to return here two days later on a tour to take it in some more. We arrived into Cafayate (Argentina's secon...