Taxi-ing to the hostel in Palermo, the first glimpses of BA were bizarre, masses of women laying on their backs exercising in the parks....dogs doing that thing they do becuase they can't use toilet paper.....one of BA's more noticable problems...canine poo everywhere....watch your step, and men dressed as Barney the bear...with not another sole around? But a good looking and lively city if ever you saw one.The following morning we walked all over Palermo...

Left Pucon, in a storm, of course, leaving on an overnight to Santiago. Our practised upright sleeping got us a few hours kip, then a search for the right bus terminal the following morning to get us to Mendoza. The bus jouney was amazing, taking us up a 29 hairpin twist road, nicked-named the "catapilla" (if we got the translation correct) to almost 3000 metres, where we crossed the Andes through a long tunnel and crossed the border on the other side, ...

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 Fon...

Quick stopover for coffee in the very coffee house where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid hid out for a month after robbing the Bank of London and then we pulled into El Chalten. This place is so tiny and so in the middle of nowhere, it makes El Calafate look like a veritable modern day metropolis. Just 500 residents, no paved roads and surrounded by massive mountains on all sides. Weather was unusually blue and non-rainy for these here parts according to a ver...

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...