Argentina/Chile Northbound Part 2

Oh... It's you again.. Back again eh? Not sick of me already? Thanks Mum!

So, erm, where were we??

Oh yes..

So we left the little town of Bariloche in Western Argentina and hit border crossing number One thousand three hundred and fifty seventh into Chile. We made a bee line for the town of Pucon home to spectacular scenery where they mix snow topped Volcanoes with snow topped mountains in a clever way.. Anyway, we were here to climb said Volcano. The name of the Volcano sounds like Billericay but it's not, it's something like that and it's definitely not in Essex, it's in Chile..like I said before... Are you listening? It's called Villarrica I've just been told by Sam who's sitting next to me reminding me not to forget bits as she does so well..
Now, you're sitting there thinking he was bangin' on about Glaciers in his last blog, now he's gonna be bangin' on about Volcanoes like some bloody do-gooder harping on about natural beauty and all that shit.. but no, the way they sold it to us was: YOU GET TO SLIDE BACK DOWN ON A PIECE OF PLASTIC LIKE SLEDGING!!!!!!!
I know. I know. AWESOME!
So we hit the Volcano early morning after being dressed up like astronauts. You get the ski lift up like a quarter of the way then you start trekking up slowly. They give you an ice pick to help you on the way but the guides are all well equipped, they cut a pathway in the snow for everyone and you follow them with little steps all the way up. It was frickin' hard work getting up especially when your digestive system is grumbling and you're farting like a night after 9 Guinness with Beans for dinner.. Anyway, long hard trek short we made it to the top and the view was incredible.. plus we got to look in the volcano that was still smoking after it last erupted in.. erm.. 1963 I think.. Sam? She's lost interest. Typical.
Then came the best bit.. the sledging! They gave us a small bit to start off with. You put the plastic under your arse and strap it to your belt which first of all seemed like a perfectly designed ball crushing device but turned out to be grand. Then you have to use your ice pick as a brake, the ice pick with a razor sharp edge willing and able to stab you in the arse. The first little sledge was fun but then it got epic. In was going so fast I had lost control and was literally flying down until the guides were shouting at us to use our breaks. It was great till I got stuck behind a really slow German woman who I had to kick in the arse to get moving. Anyway, as you can probably tell it was immense craic and everyone said it was the best Volcano they'd ever gone down on. I said: "You haven't tried mi.." Never Mind.

From Pucon we went further west and hit Santiago, Chile's capital. This was a sad little couple of days as it was where we had a change over in the group. 9 people were leaving and 8 were joining. So it was a sad goodbye to Karen and Chris, Lucy and Suzie, Harry and James, Aoife and Sinead and Tanin. Some great people that it was a pleasure to know and I am looking forward to seeing again when I return to real life. After a quick walk around Santiago to see the city quickly and a fruitless search for some stupid clothes shop we capped off our short stay here with a group meal and a killer Karaoke night, just in case there was any dignity that we had yet to lose in front of each other we made sure it was all gone.

Some of the gang

So I woke up the next morning still pissed as a parrot with a new group of people (I like to make a good first impression) and made our way, you guessed it, towards Argentina and the wine regions of the north. Our first stop was Mendoza, a large city that gets 315 days of sunshine a year. Unfortunately, we were there for those un talked of 50 days, but we didn't get rain continuing our tradition of great weather despite the season. The campsite we were staying at had a fun park next door with a large wavy slide and a bucking bull so we naturally attacked it like big kids and I bashed my arse really hard on the slide as I used the piece of carpet they gave us to slide down on the wrong way round so went too fast like an eedjit..

Anyway, we didn't come to Mendoza for slides and mechanical bulls we came for the wine my friend. The next day we did a wine tour by mini bus. We started off at the largest Winery in the region called Norton's. Here we had a civilised Steak lunch with lots of wine. We had lots of wine as Sam stole the half full bottle off the side and distributed it unfairly and mainly to our table mwuahahah.. After this we hit a small Organic winery who wanted to show us how the wine was made..?? We were like "Just let us taste it motherfuckers!" So we did and it was good. The last one we went to was a small little winery with a really nice old guy called Carmelo Patti who was quite famous in the wine world apparently. He still did things in the old way like bottling them by hand ect which was really cool. Needless to say we brought a few bottles and had a very merry evening sampling our purchases back at the campsite and playing spin the bottle..livin' the dream..

Steak dinner and wine obviously!

Birthday hats (It was Georgia's bday!)

The Organic Winery..

How they make it zzzzzz

All of us getting typsy

Kate enjoying the grapes!

The next stop was a little town right in the heart of the wine region called El Cafayate. This was a cute little town with 2 industries: Wine and Wine Tourism. We arrived late afternoon and took in two wineries as we arrived called Nanni's and Domingo's, just to start off in style. This was one place that I had been looking forward to immensely as it was where you could do a wine tour by bicycle. So, I went to bed early the day we arrived despite an epic game of 21 so as to be fresh for this ultimate being pissed on a bicycle. The next morning we were up and fresh and ready to attack. Got into town BOOM all wineries closed as it was the 1st of May and a huge holiday in Argentina.. :( Sad Face!!! Absolutely gutted about this as I had been looking forward to it so much. Instead we went out for lunch which took 3 hours cos the waitress was a mong and then had ice cream and beer for the afternoon in the sunshine which wasn't a total loss.. All in all a lovely little town with lots of character but still gutted about missing the tour..

Domingo's Winery

Good Shit!

In the garden...

 Last stop in Argentina was Salta. We had 2 nights here with 2 seperate campsites. The first was a campsite called Salta Rafting where you could, believe it or not, go rafting. As I was still buzzing from the immensity of Futaleufu I decided against this. However, you could also do Zip Lining. The campsite was in the middle of a large canyon which made zip lining a lot of fun. We climbed 600 metres up the side of the mountain and Zipped our way down. It was quite scary at first but once you got used to the controls it was great craic. The final bit ended right in the campsite. We then moved on into Salta and went for lunch out at this big old house on the outskirts of Salta where we had great steak and shit loads of wine included so we were pissed by 2pm. We camped that night next to a massive public swimming pool that unfortunately was empty and didn't sleep a wink cos of a concert that was going on in a football stadium next door, some shit Argentinian singer went on until 6am.

Kate and Kyle making us pancakes...Kyle loved his outfit!

The drive to Salta..

So, that's it. The next day we crossed the border into Bolivia with 9 million Argentina stamps in our passport but this would be the last one. Argentina is a great country witha  huge variety of things to do and is the most developed of the South American countries. You won't get the crazy shit and friendly people you see from undeveloped places but you get great food, wine and activities with fantastic natural beauty...

Next week, on Ben's Blog: Bolivia! See Ben's bum in all it's glory on the Salt Flats, Read as he visits a Silver Mine and will he survive the famous Death Road in La Paz?? Read all about it next week...

Chao for now, Ben.