We arrived in the tourist town of El Calafate late afternoon on New Year’s Eve – and there was definitely a ‘buzz’ on the high street. We parked in town and wandered off to pick a restaurant to celebrate the occasion. Normally, Argentinian restaurants open around 8pm, far too late for us, but, because it was NYE, the restaurants were […]
Just north of Tierra Del Fuego, the Torres del Paine National Park is at the southern end of the Chilean mainland. It is a magnificent park comprising mountains (the start of the Andes), lakes, of differing colours, and glaciers. We stayed here for seven days over the Christmas period and we were very lucky with the weather: plenty of sunshine […]
There are not enough superlatives to describe our ten day trip to Antarctica. But I will do my best to describe our exploration of the Antarctic peninsula, journeying to a latitude of 65 degrees south on our planet earth. We embarked on our ship, the Ocean Victory, a purpose-built expedition and ice strengthened vessel, on Friday 7th December, and, after […]
Our Route South We were warned that the long drive down Ruta 3, along the eastern coast of Argentina from Buenos Aires to Ushuaia, a distance of 6292km, would be long and tedious; highlights being the YPF garages with their coffee and stale croissants. It was anything but; the croissants weren’t stale! And it was so much fun, that we’ve […]
Dear Uruguay, Sorry that we couldn’t stay longer, but we have to get down to Ushuaia by December 6th and, frankly, you are just too damned expensive!! Nevertheless, the eleven days we did spend with you were lovely. Chui, your border town with Brazil, was bizarre, sitting in a nomansland between the two border posts. One side of the high […]
Brazil is the largest country in South America and the third largest in the Americas. In other words, it is huge and one could easily spend an eternity exploring it. However, we need to head south for the summer and so after having driven 6840 km and spent 58 days in Brazil we crossed the border into our next country: […]
From Rio we headed south on the magnificent BR101 to Uruguay; 2,300 km (1,430m) of beautiful coastline. Much of this area was inaccessible except by sea up until the 1950s. But the BR101 changed all that and now this coastline, accessible from São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, is a busy strip of chic villages, towns, cities and beautiful beaches. […]
Leaving Barretos, and its Rodeo Festival, behind, we headed towards Ouro Preto and the start of the historic Estrada Real that leads south to Rio de Janeiro. On the way we visited Furnas reservoir and took a boat tour on the lake. We met a group of friendly young Brazilians on board and we joined them for a lovely lunch […]
Except it is. Traveling towards Rio from the Pantanal, we stopped at a roadside stall for a pineapple juice and got talking to a Brazilian fellow camper. Aided once again by Google Translate (English is really not spoken here at all!) we established he was heading to Latin America’s largest annual rodeo festival at Barretos. After checking the map we […]
The Estrada Park Pantanal is a 118km dirt road in the southern Pantanal that serves the farms located there. Fortunately for us there is also great wildlife in the area, predominantly birds, but with a few capybaras thrown in along with the odd jaguar. Oh, and not forgetting the piranha and caiman in the river. We set out early at […]