DAY 266 - Salta, Argentina

Groan. The bus I'm on to Salta is a cross between a youth hostel and a soft rock karaoke bar. The drivers insist on playing old hair rock very loudly and singing along to it. We've been stopped four times for drug searches and we've still got another 19 hours "together".

It wasn't always so. The bus from Baraloche to Buenos Aires was very nice, with loads of room and meals served regularly. The hostel we stayed at in BA was staffed by, and occupied by, a bunch of kids and could have been a Channel 4 social documentary (let's put children in charge of children and see how they get on).

This part of the trip I'd done before, but Dan hadn't. We trekked around the usual BA sights over the next three days; Evita's tomb, the Pink Palace, etc, but also found some new things I'd missed first time out, such as the small San Telmo street market with its tango dancers, antiques and art, and the Japanese garden.

Evening outs were a lot more expensive this time with an unfortunate lack of economic collapse to drive prices down (well, unfortunate for me). The beer is great. The food, although still dominated by pizza and beef, is (relatively) more varied (we found somewhere doing curry! Hurrah! Shame it was an English-run pub). We even went back to my favorite eating hole from last time, La Estancia, for a slap-up meal. The people are ok although still attempting to air con the world (by leaving all their doors wide open).

After BA we had a one night visit to Iguazu to see the falls. They're certainly spectacular, especially standing above the "Devil's Throat" where lots of water funnels into a small horse-shoe shaped bend, but once you've seen 'em, you've seen 'em. Second time round they were just as impressive, but a single night was enough, however much the town wants you to stay longer. Besides, our room backed onto the bar with its live music, and one night definitely was enough of that. At least they didn't play Bob Marley on endless loop like most hostels around the world. Having them run by kids does have one advantage - reggae had been and gone before they were born.

 

Rich.

DAY 258 - Baraloche, Argentina

We're in Baraloche at the moment. It's the centre of the Argentine Lake District, but Windermere it ain't. It peddles hiking, ski-ing (not much of that at the moment) and chocolate. This is our last stop in Patagonia before heading to Buenos Aires for some cosmopolitan modernity.

 

We arrived in El Chalten last Friday. It's a new "town" that wasn't there 20 years ago. In yet another Argentine border dispute, this time with Chile, they created the place from nothing to claim the lump of land it's on. You really have to see the maps produced here. They're a wish list of future land grabs and include chunks of other countries marked as Argentine. They claim a large chunk of Antarctica (international territory), the Falklands and South Georgia (ours) and land along the borders with Uruguay and Chile. Their theory appears to be if you include the land on your maps and TV weather forecasts, the people currently live there will give up protesting and join the happy family that is Argentina (along with the rickety economy and unstable politics). Anyway. I digress. El Chalten may not have mobile telecommunications, a bus station or bank, but it does have some of the best countryside and hiking in South America. We did two day-walks amongst the lakes and mountains returning each night to our comfy hostel room, microbrew and ridiculously soft mattresses that gave the both of us sore backs.

 

After El Chalten we took a two day trip up Route 40, a mainly unsealed road that runs the spine of the Andes, to Esquel. The middle night we stayed at Perito Moreno in a hotel that definitely hadn't been decorated since the 1970s - orange and brown were the only shades in the decor's colour scheme and the plastic sofas were just embarrassing.

 

Esquel is a pretty average, if soulless, town but it does have a steam train. It leaves the town station, goes around in a loop without stopping and ends up back where it started. We skipped the ride but saw it set off, watching excited Argentines go all doe-eyed in nostalgia.

 

There weren't main foreigners around the town. The main reason we went there was so I could go to Trevelin, a small village up the road. At the end of the 19th century a load of welsh immigrants landed on the Patagonian coast to settle the rather dry and barren pampas. They kept moving inland, settling towns as they went until they got to where Trevelin is now. Being of welsh stock myself, I was interested to see just how welsh it was, and the answer was not a lot. The odd street was named after a Dylan Edwards John Thomas Jones Davies, but the welsh character was mainly restricted to the museum (where the lady behind the counter started talking welsh to me as soon as I said "yaky da", and there was a good selection of welsh memorabilia) and the tea shops. Now I always associated cream teas with Cornwall, but they're considered a very welsh thing here and they are very, very large. Five types of cake, scones, sandwiches and a bottomless pot of tea. I was feeling decidedly sick, but happy, at the end.

 

The next day we paid 40 quid to see a 2,600 year old tree. The trip to the Alerce National Park took a coach, a walk, a boat trip and six hours. The guides wouldn't stop talking the entire way there, barely coming up for air and unfortunately they were only speaking Spanish. When we got there the guide showed us the really old Alerce trees and spoke about them in Spanish for a few hours before continuing to describe all the other really interesting trees (in Spanish) too. Tall ones, short ones, wide ones, broken ones. I know trees do a really useful job with the oxygen and carbon dioxide and stuff, but I feel I've had my fill of trees for now, 2,600 years old or not.

 

Baraloche is a very quaint town and a lot busier than the other places we've been to in Argentina. Yesterday we had a look around town and bought some of the famous chocolate from the place the guide book says sells the best. I reckon if you're going to make yourself sick, you might as well do it with the best.

 

Today we made some sandwiches and had a hike around Llao Llao National Park. Sounds welsh, but isn't. Great mountainous scenery and plenty of lakes. And more trees. Ah, the trees...

 

Dan's put his trainers on the window sill to air, but they're still to close.

 

Rich.

DAY 250 - El Calafate, Argentina

The two days sailing through the Drake Strait were calm and sea-sick free. Not a lot happened on board as everyone was starting to prepare for our disembarkation back at Ushuaia. We had one moment of excitement though as we rounded Cape Horn. Cameras flashed pointlessly as we tried to get a half decent photo of a small lump of rock, shrouded in mist about 3km in the distance. The captain's dinner on the last night was pretty much like all the other dinners, except the Russian in charge of the boat turned up, made a few naff jokes in broken English, and we had cloth napkins instead of paper ones. Pushing the boat out indeed (no pun intended).

 

Having been without the Internet for almost three weeks, the first thing i did on returning to dry land was to check my emails (that's why you got three in one go), check how much more of my pension had disappeared up the crunch (lots!) and tried to stop wobbling (my body seemed to refuse to believe it was now on terra firma).

 

We had two nights booked in Ushuaia before we had to move on. On the second day we walked up to the much hyped Glacier Martial. Global warming had clearly taken it's toll - either that or after seeing the glaciers in Antarctica my expectations had been raised just a little bit too high. Either way, it was in a sorry state. It looked no better than Orpington Park, three days after the February snow this year when the snow had been trodden to a mucky black by hundred's of people's feet and had sufficiently melted in parts to show the ground beneath. Part of the way up we could have been taken by chair lift, but it was AR$65 (£13) and it only took you about 500 meters - you had to walk the rest. Major rip-off.

 

Monday we flew to El Calafate. It's a town named after a berry. It's sort of like calling somewhere in Britain "The Strawberry". Still, it works for them. After a quiet day on Tuesday, we took a day trip into Chile on Wednesday to see the Torres del Paine National Park. It's very like the lake district, only the mountains are in a different league (this is the Andes, after all). The "Towers of Pain" themselves are a set of spires that rise vertically upwards over the landscape. They're surrounded by some very strange mountains with black rock on top and light grey rock beneath. Have a look at the pics (www.energiser.net) to see what i mean, but they reminded me of those little two-toned Toblerone chunks you get in tins at Christmas. It was a very long day, most of which was spent in the various coaches we were shuffled between at different points of the trip and at the inevitable border crossing points. Still, worth it for the scenery.

 

Today we went to see the Perito Moreno glacier, about 80km west of El Calafate. It's famous mostly because you can drive to it rather than having to take a long boat trip (as you do with the numerous other glaciers around here) and because it moves at a whopping 200 metres a year. Apparently that's really fast for a glacier, but the most it would do for us today is drop a few lumps of ice off it's edge into the lake. It's still pretty spectacular, even after seeing hundreds of the things in Antarctica. It comes off the mountain and bisects a lake causing it to dam up every couple of years. When the weight of water becomes too much, it breaks open again in a "calamitous explosion". It didn't do this today.

 

The hostel we're staying at has a kitchen, so we bought a couple of slices of cow today and had them for tea. The beef comes in huge chunks and is dirt cheap. Tastes good as well.

 

Next, El Chalten... 

DAY 243 - Drake's Passage, Southern Ocean

Drake's Passage between Antarctica and South America has a reputation as one of the roughest seaways in the world. We're there now, heading back to port and it's pretty rocky, but so far not so bad. It's exemplary of the luck we've had with the weather in the last week, with almost universally clear skies, still seas and chilly, but wind-free conditions. The scenery has been incredibly beautiful, and unlike anything I've ever seen before. Life on the boat has been very busy and tiring, but even when I haven't really felt like going outside into the cold for a landing, I've dragged myself up to do it and have been glad I did. The Zodiac cruises have been very cold, particularly when zipping across the semi-frozen sea between the icebergs, pancake ice and "bergy bits". At times the cold was quite painful on the toes, fingers and face. And of course, I've bagged the seventh continent, landing twice on the Antarctic Peninsula at isolated beaches populated only by seals, penguins and tourists. After a great couple of weeks, I'm hoping the only unwelcome experience to come on the way back to Ushuaia is paying the bar bill.

 

The two days sailing from South Georgia to the South Shetland Islands were uneventful. The four-a-day lectures were starting to be attended by fewer people (particularly Axel's "here's another picture of a penguin" talks) although most people were still making the early breakfasts.

 

On Saturday we arrived off Elephant Island. This proved a taster of the landscape we would see for the next week. The island had a rocky base with an ice sheet hundreds of metres thick resting on top. Sharp shards of stone broke through in places, but otherwise it was utterly uninhabitable and inhospitable. Jutting out into the rough sea was a small peninsula, only a few metres across in places and constantly being washed over by breaking waves. This was Cape Wild were 22 men survived for over a hundred days under small overturned boats. It's now occupied by a statue of the Chilean captain who rescued them and several hundred Gentoo penguins. The seas were still quite rough at this point so we didn't land (not that anyone wanted to), just sailed around in the Zodiacs. It was the most nervous of all the Zodiac rides and my camera battery packed up halfway around which was a bit of a blessing in disguise as it meant I could use both hands to hold on.

 

On Sunday we started with a landing at Half Moon Island, a much calmer affair. As well as being home to loads of penguins there was a good walk up to a high vantage point where we could take in the view. The sky was clear and we could see for miles. Great stuff. In the afternoon we pulled into Deception Island, a collapsed caldera ring of land with an entrance a couple of hundred metres across. It's like a cold Santorini, only virtually no vegetation and certainly no tavernas. We had a wander around a deserted whaling station (most of which had been destroyed in the volcano's last eruption in 1970), said hi to the penguins and climbed up to Neptune's Window to look out to sea. Some people took up the suggestion to go for a swim under the premise that the active volcano heats the sea water in the caldera. If it did, they couldn't tell and were out as quick as they entered.

 

Monday we took a Zodiac cruise around Charlotte Bay, mainly to look at the ice. It can be incredibly beautiful stuff, carved by the glaciers, sea and penguin poo into some fantastic sculptures. Where the ice is cut clean and exposed, its true colour of deep blue can be seen to stunning effect. Orne Harbour in the afternoon was more of the same thing, but the beach there was going to be our first opportunity to land on the Antarctic Peninsula. Unfortunately, the staff felt it was too icy (really? In Antarctica?) to walk on and there were too many fur seals (complete with bad tempers and sharp teeth) around the landing site. We were a bit disappointed but the Zodiac cruise was pretty good and almost made up for not getting a landing.

 

Tuesday morning we landed at Port Lockroy, a former British base now run by the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust. What's amazing about the place is it's built on a tiny outcrop of rocks, no more than 100 metres wide surrounded by ice cliffs across the bay hundreds of metres high. Four people live here during the summer months to tend to the buildings and sell stuff to tourists. It's the most visited tourist location in Antarctica. The middle-aged man is slightly mad and the other three are all young girls in their twenties – it felt a bit like one of those dodgy American religious cults, but we're assured it's all strictly above board. I bought a t-shirt and posted a card to me mum who should receive it by November, I'm reliably informed. There's a middle-sized Gentoo penguin colony across the bay where we saw a Leopard seal catching and munching away on penguins. It will apparently try to eat anything, including Zodiacs and people. We saw it sneak up on penguins on the rocks, grab them, then slash them around to turn them inside out. This way it could get to the meat inside. The alternative would be the eat the bird from the outside in – equivalent to chewing on a feathery duvet. Gruesome but spectacular.

 

After sailing up the spectacular Neumayer channel we arrived at Cuverville Island for another beach landing and penguin colony. These penguins weren't as curious as some of the others we'd met and didn't want to come over and play. That said, there were the usual groups of juveniles who would throw the most entertaining tizzies, running around like maniacs flapping their flippers and squarking for no apparent reason. That night we had a barbecue on the aft deck, which was a bizarre experience. It was pretty cold but the grills and salads were out and the scenery was considerably better than the average back garden in London.

 

Wednesday was our final day on the Peninsula, and the best day of the lot. It started at Neko Harbour and our first landing on the continent itself. There were penguins, one of whom tried very hard to eat my waterproofs, spending several minutes trying to get its beak around my legs and Wellies. After climbing a snow covered hillside there was a great view of the bay and the glacier which fed it. Unfortunately, the glacier wouldn't drop any ice into the sea while we were there which was a bit inconsiderate of it. There was also the remains of a hut which had been in tact on the crew's previous visit but had been completely destroyed in a storm last week. The penguins were making good use of the remains for shelter. We finished off with a very cold Zodiac excursion around the bay.

 

In the afternoon, the ship moved to Paradise Harbour. There were more penguins and another hill to climb for a view, but the best moments came in the Zodiac. A Minke Whale came up under our boat and blew it's nose on us. We got a great close up look of the 10 metre long animal as it circled the Zodiac a few time before disappearing. After that a crab-eater Seal followed us around the bay and then tried to get into the boat. According to the guide this was not something we would want to happen as then we'd have to get the thing out again, teeth and all.

 

See you back in Ushuaia.

 

Rich.

DAY 236 - Southern Ocean, nr South Georgia

I'm bunking off school to write this. There's a lecture on "Penguin Identification and Biology" but I can't be arsed. The guy who's taking it, Axel, is a bit monotonic and very dull.

 

The two days between the Falklands and South Georgia were taken up by more of these lectures – four a day. They're actually – usually – quite interesting, but the daily agenda is so full that between them and the eating, you don't really get much time to yourself. Here's the meal pattern of a typical day; pre-breakfast pastries and tea, breakfast, lunch, mid-afternoon cakes and tea, happy hour bar snacks, lunch. It's a lot of food and there are few ways to expend any energy on the days in the open sea.

 

We had three days at South Georgia. What we could do each day was very much up to the weather which was even more changeable and extreme than in the Falklands. Most of the expedition staff seem obsessed with Earnest Shackleton, an early twentieth century British explorer who did heroic things down here. Although dedicated to his men and the do-er of many brave deeds, from what I can tell he seemed a bit of a git, punching people who disagreed with him, bearing life-long grudges, having his how's-your-father with other people's wives, and all because he wanted to be remembered as a "great man".

 

We followed the island's east coast, starting on Monday with an attempt to get into a place called Possession Bay for some penguin watching, but the weather was too bad. That afternoon we had better luck, and managed to get ashore at Salisbury Plain to see a huge colony of King Penguins. They're really wonderful birds with very entertaining and curious personalities. As soon as I got off the Zodiac and sat on the beach one waddled up and had a peck at my Welly. On discovering it wasn't a new kind of fish, he wandered off again. You only had to stand still for a few minutes and small groups would nervously approach to check you over. Others would be pecking at each other, squawking or strutting their stuff with members of the opposite sex. There were thousands of individuals on the beach, mixed in with a handful of baby fur seals being insanely cute and staring at you with huge saucer eyes. The adults were quite aggressive and have a reputation for biting unwary tourists, so we kept our distance.

 

On Tuesday we sailed further around the coast and had a very early morning in Fortuna bay, the sight of another King Penguin colony. The newly risen sun cast a yellowy glow over everything and the sky stayed clear making the visit more peaceful and serene than on the previous day. There are a lot of introduced species on the island, including the reindeer at this site. The government are trying to decide which species to remove and which to leave, but haven't really decided about the reindeer yet. In the afternoon we were back on the main ship and sailed around Stromness harbour where you could see the remains of at least three whaling stations. The industry was huge here in the first half of the twentieth century and the mainly Norwegian whalers culled almost 90% of the stock in the surrounding waters – it's thought numbers will never return to their previous levels. It was considered a very noble occupation back then when attitudes were very different. Now the abandoned stations sit decaying on the coast waiting for the government to make them safe and remove all the toxic materials and asbestos from them.

 

In the afternoon we carried on around, past Thatcher Peninsula (yes, she liberated South Georgia from the Argies too) to the main settlement. The term is relative of course, as the "settlement" comprises of the museum at the abandoned whaling station at Grytviken (population about 3) and the British Antarctic Survey station next door at King Edward Point (population in the teens, but varies). After raising a toast to "the Shack" (Shackleton) – who's buried in the cemetery here – at the tour leader's behest (and watching his eye's glaze over in admiration) we split up into groups for different activities. I chose to climb Brown Hill, as did about eight others. We were led by Yvonne, the Gladys Pew (remember the Welsh announcer on Hi-De-Hi?) of the tour. Permanently happy and with a silver smooth voice, she set off up the hill with boundless enthusiasm and at a pace that would put the Royal Marines to shame. We trundled up after her as the rain started pouring down. By the time we approached the shale-covered summit, the weather was hailing and howling, but we still had some amazing views over the harbour and the island's interior. Once down again, I had a quick wander around the whaling station (asbestos removed) and museum. A long but excellent day.

 

We had another early start on Wednesday as we came ashore in Gold Harbour, but the weather was already closing in. We weren't able to get many pictures because of the rain but we able to see some of the Elephant Seals that live on the sands. These are the four tonne, three metre behemoths that guard their harems and then drop dead a few years later from exhaustion. At this time of year most of the really big beasts are out to sea, but there were some juveniles around and they were already damn large animals. And they really stank. In the afternoon we had to make do with a ship tour around Drygalski Fjord as the weather was too poor to go out in the Zodiacs. The whole island is a crinkly network of black mountains with snowy tops and glaciated valleys, and it all looks stunning, but the stormy weather and filtered sunlight made this last view of South Georgia one of the highlights of the trip. To top it off we saw our first icebergs cluttering up the entrance to the fjord.

 

Last night the storm got a lot worse and gave us our roughest night on board to date. A lot people didn't make it to the evening meal or breakfast this morning. It's one way of avoiding weight gain, I suppose.

 

Rich.

 

DAY 230 - Port Stanley, Falkland Islands

According to the staff, the sea we're bobbing about on is unusually calm for this part of the world. Could have fooled me. We're heading to South Georgia, two days away – assuming we don't sink under the extra weight from the six or seven meals a day we're being pummelled with. No chance of starving on this boat.

 

It was a long flight from London to Ushuaia via Buenos Aires, but largely uneventful. The town is at the same latitude south of the equator as London is north, only noticeably cooler (no Gulf Stream). The first thing you notice is the fantastic setting; buildings clinging to the hillside as the land rises up to meet the mountains, and the many channels and islands surrounding Tierra del Fuego. The second thing you notice is how flipping expensive everything is. Argentina was dirt cheap the last time I was here, but in a country notorious for extreme booms and busts, they seem to be at the overheating economy stage again.

 

We had a couple of days before getting on the boat for our Antarctic cruise, so we took a trip to the Tierra del Fuego National Park (entry £10, up from £4 last year) and had a walk through the very picturesque and crinkly, if muddy, coastal forest. On Tuesday we just took a walk around the town, stocking up on cheap wine for the boat. We finally boarded late afternoon.

 

It's quite a luxurious boat compared to our normal travelling accommodation. The cabin is small, and we have to share facilities with next door, but it's got a window, fridge and desk, and is generally quite comfortable. Except when sleeping, we haven't spent much time in here yet. The ship is run a bit like a holiday camp, with a full programme of entertainment and education running when we're not on land. We've had wildlife films, talks on geology, wars and birds, lifeboat drills and lots of food.

 

We reached the Falklands Islands on Thursday and had two landings on Carcass Island and Saunders Island, off the west coast. The method of getting ashore is via a small flat-bottomed boat called a Zodiac, apparently invented by Jacque Cousteau. Because the landings are usually 'wet' everyone has to don wellies and waterproofs before getting on board. They're quite powerful with the bow rising up well into the air as you zoom ashore. Both islands were desolate places with stubby vegetation and few trees. Carcass island had many thousands of penguins, all huddled together in rookeries, and plenty of ground burrows to break your legs in. After the penguins, we walked around the bay to the settlement (population 10) for a bit of Falklands hospitality – a cup of tea and a table crammed with hundreds of small cakes like your mother used to bake (before she discovered Mr Kipling). Apparently when they hear a cruise ship is coming to the island, all the locals on the surrounding islands (rule of thumb – one family per island) crank up the oven and start baking. They then jump in their Zodiacs with their trays of goodies to fill up this table in someone's front room for the tourists.

 

Saunders Island was similar to Carcass Island with plenty of penguins, but also Albatrosses. The weather is a bit weird. One minute it's sunny the next it's gales and torrential rain. It can, and frequently does, change within a few minutes. The clouded skies can get very dramatic which makes for some good pics.

 

Yesterday we arrived in Port Stanley on the eastern side of the islands. It's an interesting place and somewhere I was really looking forward to seeing given all the history. It has a population of about two thousand people and six pubs, which seems like a good ratio to me. Everyone drives Land Rover Discoveries and the houses are mainly wood with corrugated iron roofs. Apart from the official museum (which has more excellent exhibits crammed into three small rooms than you would imagine possible), there are a few unofficial exhibitions including the anti-whaling garden (harpoons, whale skeletons, gruesome pictures and messages such as "20,000 whales killed by this harpoon" written on car number plates) and the gnome garden (about a hundred garden gnomes in gnomey poses, staring towards the sea). We also took an excursion to Gypsy Cove, but there wasn't much there except for a few dolphins and yet more penguins.

 

On the way to South Georgia now.  They've just announced there are some whales off the starboard bow, causing near hysteria in the passengers (especially the older ones who move so slowly the whales are usually gone by the time they get to the viewing deck). I'd better go and take a look…

 

Rich.