Nice country... shame about the name....

Hello all

Last time we had left the blog we were in Uruguay, after just seeing the amazing iguazzu falls in Argentina and Brasil.

With little time, but much curiosity we ventured down to Montevideo, birthplace of the soccer world cup and capital of Uruguay, with a small stop on the way at the touristy summer beach town of Punte Del Este on the way. Carrie and I were looking forward to sun and beaches but unfortunately we had 10 days straight of rain and antarctic winds, not good for beaches but it did allow us many days of eating in nice restaraunts sampling the best food that Urugauy could muster.

Montevideo is a great city, modern, around the same size of adelaide with a very similar feel, they are still using horse and carts within the city centre (though adelaide did update to the automobile several years ago for those who didnt know) it was quite amusing to see the horsemen doing their best to run the red lights across busy interestections with their trusty steeds.

High on our priority list with our time in Montevideo was to go and see a soccer game at the birthplace of the worldcup. We saw the flagship side of Urugauy football, Nacional, beat their opponents 1-0 with a 80 mintue strike from long range that found the top corner of the net... the celebration from the nacional fans was amazing to watch, their goal celebration nearly rivalling their celebration when the other team missed their penalty shot earlier in the game. Despite no alcohol being allowed into the game the dancing and cheering did not stop for the entire 90 minutes.

The other highlight of our time in Montevideo was a saturday market where restaraunt owners turn their small shops into flaming BBQ pits and serve up massive meat meals and whisky straight to the thronging crowds. The lonely planet stated that you should only go to the market if you want to truly test your carnivore status, happily my carnivore status is intact and to be honest has never been healthier.

From a rainy Montevideo we headed west to the rainy town of Colonia, a UNESCO world heritage city, a beautiful little place where we were able to take a self guided rainy walking tour see some rainy buildings and generally hang out in the rain. With spirits slightly dampened we booked our ferry for Argentina, wandered down to the pier and jumped on board for our trip across the River Plata to Buenos Aires. The boat ride was supposed to take 3 hours, but due to rain and strong wind our 8:00 evening leaving time was postponed. At 10:00 it is fair to say that the crowd started getting a little anxious and by 11:00 a full blown riot was on the cards. It is quite amusing to see the ways different cultures will handle these type of situations, and the latin american tradition of people power and strike action was on full show with a full boat load of people chanting and rallying behind one Che Guevera type wannabe. It wasnt until they marched on the port authority and had his confirmation that the weather was as bad as the captain was saying and the first mate before him that the chant changed from ¨leave the port!¨to ¨we want food!¨ A few free drinks and some crappy sandwiches later and we were informed we wouldnt be leaving until around 9 the next morning. At 9 the next morning, with us unloaded onto a faster better ferry and we arrived in Buenos Aires.

Buenos Aires (or BA for hip traveller types) is a wonderful city, home to around 12 million people, it is busy and noisy and to navigate the piles of dog crap everywhere you need the skill and finesse of a russian ballerina, but its alive at all hours of the day, affordable, design conscious and super friendly. Birthplace of the tango, seeing a show over some dinner was high on our list of priorities, so with little thought on choice of venue we set off. The show basically consists of an emcee who introduces the dances, the other singers, sings a little himself and interacts with sparkling spontenaity with the crowd. Given that the crowd was Carrie and myself and a table of Chilean women and a couple from Brazil there was not a lot to work with, but the red faced fellow certainly did his best, encouraging us all to sing along with the music. With one of the singers (bearing a striking resemblance to Sollazo from the Godfather) singing a tune that brought the entire audience to tears. The singing wasnt too bad so i can only assume that the lyrics had escaped my spanish knowledge and were quite moving. A small moment of embarrasment occured as during one number he thrust the microphone in my face for me to sing along a few words, but with spanish flying out of my brain at rapid speed all i could muster was a ¨whats the words again bro?¨not my finest hour, but im sure other people may have made the same mistakes (hey mat?)

Despite the banter and the redness of the emcee we had come to see the dancing and it was very entertaining, wide sweep kicks small steps and long lunges, it was very romantic to watch, and even worth stopping chowing down on the massive meat servings we were enjoying, wine meat and tango, definitely a recipe for a good night.

The other principle tourist attraction of the city is the Recoletta Cemetry, centred in one of the wealthier areas of town this place has been a family burial place for the wealthy of Buenos Aires for hundreds of years. Each family building a grand crypt to celebrate the life and acheivements of their family. They are collosal things, and a morbid but entertaining afternoon was spent wandering around having a look. The star attraction of the site is the grave of Evita Peron.

After a week of general sight seeing and the best steak i have ever had we have left BA and bussed south. A stop in at Puerto Madryn, principle place for whale watching, had us hopeful of a sighting or two. It didnt take long as the first time we wandered down to the beach we spied several whales around 50m from shore. Confidence high we booked in for a boat trip and were lucky to see many whales so close you could reach out and touch them. They truly are awesome in size and to see them passing under the boat and playing around near was a wonderful experience.

From Puerto Madryn, with a Rachel and English Mick a couple of new travelling buddies in tow we headed further south still to El Calafate, a small town deep within southern patagonia. El Calafate was our jumping of point for seeing the Puerto Mereno glacier, one of the few advancing (growing) glaciers left in the world. It is fair to say that we have seen some pretty speccy spots on our trip, but this one i think has taken the cake, a stunning blue glacier on a milky grey lake with mountains in the background... photos do not do it justice.

The glacier face is around 50m-65m tall and extends 180m deep into the lake and extends back for several kilometres, for an idea of scale on the picture below the boat on the right hand side of picture (the white blurry dot) is a 200 seat ferry.

The glacier is growing in the centre and therefore pushing the glacier down the mountain, this creates enormous pressure on the ice and occasionally forces massive pieces of ice to ´calve´of the face and dump into the water.. With great theatre the ice groans and cracks and you can hear rumblings of ice breaking constantly, but we were lucky enough to see a massive piece of ice fall from the glacier (approximately the size of a 8 story building) and dump into the water, the roar was tremendous, and truly one of the most memorable events on our trip thus far.

The other highlight of El Calafate has been falling snow, for the first time Carrie and i got to experience hiking thru falling snow, snow fights and a pretty decent snow man too sadly the snowman was unable to survive a snow eating dog incident.... and a word from the newly snow experienced... stay clear of the yellow snow....

Anyway long blog, once again, i am currently preparing myself for a 4 day puke-fest boat trip thru rough seas in southern chile by downing truckloads of dramamine. Thoughts go out to the victims of the horrendous tragedy in Melbourne last weekend, and good luck to the Reynella Wineflies in their first forray on the green stuff.... will be thinking of you all, wish i was out there facing that first ball.

Brett and Carrie