After refusing to board another 12 hour bus journey we took a cheeky one hour flight to El Calafate - still well south - but sadly no longer el fin del mundo.

Bit of an odd town, very touristy with lots of woolly jumper shops and postcard stands, kind of in the middle of nowhere. Plus its only 80 years old and apparently men outnumber the women by 7 to 1!! Thats a different Gaucho cowboy every night of the week ladies...!

Talking of gauchos, we went horse trekking cowboy style for two hours across the Patagonian steppe which was amazing with a lovely orangey sunset...although the romantic nature of it all was somewhat hampered by Tim's stubborn mule refusing to move and mine which had a rather distracting flatulence problem. Still, all very pretty, even if we did end up with totally numb bums and walking ever so slighty bowlegged which is the price we must pay for being cursed with slight behinds.

Got back to El rancho to be treated to some toasty bread, a cup of mate - a local herby tea - and an private view of his collection of animal skins and pre-skinned carcasses....plus a glimpse at the tools of his trade hanging up on the wall which he described as "a Patagonian S and M sex shoppe." He also chose to tell us that the reason we were accompanied by a load of dogs on the trek was to protect us from the wild pumas that roam the hills.....these guys are so tough...he even makes his own boots made by turning horse legs inside-out and wearing them like a weird pair of furry wellies!

Fab weather the next day so we headed to one of South America's must sees...the Moreno Glaciar....Few facts: It is part of the southern Patagonia ice field which is the third largest icemasses after Antarctica and Greenland. It is actually almost too big to believe....80 metres tall above the water and 120 metres below the surface, just massive translucent blue cliffs and pillars.

All day you can hear gunshot cracks and groans as the sun heats up the ice before enormous chunks fall off into the lake causing mini tidal waves...it is mental! Some people have even died after being clocked by a bit of flying ice!

With all this in mine, we willingly decided to not only get on a boat to see it up close and personal but to strap on some uber cool crampons and tramp along the top of it! It was fairly surreal clambouring all over the ice scaling funny little ice stairs carved out of the ice while our guides hopped around like mountain goats protecting us from plummeting down huge crevasses! Thankfully at least our knackering endeavours were rewarded with a glass of whiskey and 1000 year old ice chips. Smooth.

Couple of steaks and a woolly hat later we hopped on a bus to El Chalten to check out the infamous Fitz Roy mountain.....