Hello Rat-fans - Yeeeaaah!After the rocky Ruta 40, we landed safely in the luxury haven ski town of Bariloche. Early swiss inhabitants, keenly spotting the good ski-ing in decades to come, still leaving their mark.

Loads of chocolate shops fighting for tourisitc attention on the streets, and its fair to say they got ours, after spending many an afternoon chowing down on the freebie handouts and buying a box or six. Also munched heartily on a triple whammie of Fondue courses, yep three! Cheese (of course), various meats dipped into boiling oil, and chocolate fondue, with lots of fruits for dessert.

Have to say tho' it wasn't all sitting on our swollen behinds, we also got out to do a canopy tour, zip-lining from platfrom to platform through the tops of the trees sporting crotch-enhancing harnesses, day-glo orange hard hats and S 'n' M style leather brakin gloves. Fairly successful mission: Deb only collided into the one tree after forgetting to brake and I only had to be tugged in a highly undignified fashion onto the platform by my foot after getting my glove trapped. Spent the rest of the day exploring a cute little village called Colonial Suiza and watching village members feast on meat cooked on rocks under leaves.

Spent one day on a "total bariloche tour", which saw us effortlessly reaching the pinnacle of a mountain, with the slight aid of a chair-lift to the top admittedly! But we did have to avoid a blonde maned Michael Bolton look-a-like trying to take our photo as we dismounted...so it wasn't all smooth sailing! At the top we got amazing views of all the surrounding lakes and a look at the most famous hotel in Argentina, The Llao Llao, part owned by the Highlander himself, Christopher Lambert.

After lunch, we were thrown into kayaks donning sexy rubber skirts. Will we ever learn, not as fun as it looks!...have vowed never to darken the kayak s doors again. But a little needed exercise i 'spose!

Also managed to stop eating just long enough to board a terrifying cable car, weighed down with ginat stone slabs to stop them swinging themselves off the ropes presumably! to the top of Cerro Otto, for more fab views from the revolving restaurant...one of which was, strangely, a rather large statue of Michaelangelo's David and some real life St.Bernards making some extra dinero from snap happy tourists.

Spent our days in Bariloche with Kool gang, cute Kiwis Kat and Bin, Engliah lass Vicky, and dark horse Glenn, who drunkenly revealed his once-upon-a-time James Bond double life as some hotshot in the military... we could tell you the details, but we'd hace to kill you..(make of that what you will!!)...and lovely Canadians Yori and Ian who gave us the low-down on Prince William after being captained by him on the water polo team at St Andrews, ooooh, get him!

At the weekend, we bagged ourselves a Renault Clio Yahoo sprecial edition to head around the Lakes District, including a vomit inducing 3 hour gravelly muddy road...puncuated with...well, some bueatiful lakes. Making it to a small, pretty town called San Martin de Los Andes, we checked into a hostel, then checked out the town. Highlights included playing cards with a local deck with symbols such as stumpy tree, golden crown and magic discs..bringing on phrases you don't often use like, I see you magic disc and raise you a stumpy sword....helped we were drinking mojitos I think.

Also a fine indian meal, which we surely got way to excited about when the bread was delivered to us via a pulley system from the ceiling, but as though it was manna from heaven itself. Shame the curry was more like a Beef Strog.

The return trip dragged a little having to double back 200ks to get the very forgotten debs fanny pack back from the hostel. However we had a tasty lunch by, wait for it...a lake..then sped home through the desert admiring the huge orangy rock formations and condors overhead.

Onward and upward into Chile....