After our overnight bus we arrived Monday morning in the Lake District, in a town called Bariloche. The views as we arrived were amazing ... the views once we had checked into our hostel were incredible!! We stayed at a hostel on the tenth floor of an apartment block, which had huge windows and a balcony all the way along one side of the kitchen and lounge, overlooking the beautiful lake and mountains that provided the backdrop for Bariloche. It really felt li...

Having finally reached Puerto Madryn, we checked into a lovely hostel, had a quick shower and went out for some lunch with an American girl, Jo, who was in our dorm. We had decided to visit Puerto Madryn as it was the perfect time of year for whale watching, so that afternoon we headed to the seafront to walk along the beach and the pier. Within a few minutes we were seeing whales (southern right whales) breaching so close to both the pier and the beach, it was...

We arrived late evening in Mar del Plata, jumped into a cab and checked straight into a hostel. After a nice lie in and brekkie, we walked along the seafront towards the city centre. Fortunately the weather was gorgeous and it was nice to be by the sea again! The city was pretty with a few nice plazas, some nice cafes and plenty of shops. That evening we cooked in and had an early night. The next morning we caught a bus to the pier, where you could walk thro...

We arrived in Tapalque ridiculously early in the morning, and because it is such a small town, the bus terminal was completely deserted! Fortunately there was one guy there who spoke a tiny bit of English. He called Tapalque police who arrived in a 4x4 to take us to a nearby petrol station which had a few huts next door with double ensuite rooms inside!! We crashed in one of them to catch up on some sleep and woke up to a phone call from David, the owner of La...

From Salta we had originally planned to either cross the border into northen Chile or go back up into Bolivia again. However, we had heard from a lot of people that Chile was really expensive and if we went back up to Bolivia then we would have a lot of travelling to do to get back down to Santiago for the end of September. So eventually we decided we would head back down south in Argentina and make our way to the top of Patagonia, then cross into Chile for the l...