Some pictures this time

I´ll try and catch up a bit this time

Ok, so I was in Cordoba for three weeks or so studying Spanish. I didn´t really do anything too exciting while there although I did really like it there. I went to a couple of local festivals which were fun, one of which was a goucho festival. The guys on the horses were absolutely crazy and doing things on horses which were definitely not safe. They did alot of the bucking horses stuff which was very entertaining but resulted in the ambulance coming out a number of times during the evening...

This was my Spanish teacher, I think his name was Gustafa but my memory is bad. My Spanish is still absolutely shocking even after three weeks of lessons


This is a gothic church in Cordoba which was quite a nice building. You´ll notice the missing spire; this was due to the designer not doing his maths properly. The building would collapse if they added the second spire


After Cordoba I decided to go to Mendoza as it sounded nice and is where most of Argentina´s wine is made. So of course the first thing I did was go on a wine tour. The signs weren´t very helpful though

I´m not sure this girl was old enough to drink wine let alone talk in depth about the characteristics of the wines at this vineyard

I met up with a guy called Marley in Mendoza and hung out with him for the week. He was taking the winetasting very seriously

They had these metal buckets at each of the vineyards when you were tasting the wine but I didn´t understand what they were for


So I didn´t plan on going to Chile after Mendoza, but woke up one day and decided it would be a good idea. This is a big statue on the border of Argentina and Chile

And this was my first view of Chile

So I got to Santiago and found my friend Nick who works there and stayed at his flat for a week I guess. It had a swimming pool. Didn´t really think too much of Santiago, it´s very European. On my birthday Nick and I went to a town nearby called Valpairiso and Vina Del Mar. Valpairiso is a very pretty town with lots of colourful bulidings and street art everywhere



This is a famous drink in Chile called Pisco Sour. Tastes a bit funny


Vina Del Mar is a beach town, it was packed with Chilean people on holiday. We didn´t stay there long. That evening Nick treated me to some Sushi which was amazing, Santiago has really good fish and there are some very good Sushi restaurants there.

We drove to a few beaches and Nick did some surfing while I sunbathed I guess



We then drove to Pucòn which is 10 hours south of Santiago. We arrived at the evening and it was raining and decided it was a good idea to swim in the lake. The rain was so hard that it hurt went your body wasn´t in the water. Definitely quite fun though as the lake was relatively warm. After that we went to some 24 hour thermal baths which were a bit odd. Warmed up though. Nick told me there was a volcano near Pucòn but as the weather was a bit off I couldn´t see it. I was beginning to doubt it was there but after a couple of days it cleared up and then appeared


I´m still behind on the pictures but will try and update again in a week or so. I´m in the dessert at the moment, it´s very hot! I´m taking a jeep to Bolivia tomorrow which takes three days so that should be interesting

No pictures but....

Just to let you all know what I´ve been up to really. Well, after Bariloche I got a bus up to Cordoba where I stayed for three weeks studying Spanish. There wasn´t a lot of touristy stuff to do in Cordoba but I quite liked that really as you could just get on with things without worrying about being treated like a tourist all of the time. I went to a couple of festivals while there which were quite fun, one being a gaucho festival and the other a folklore festival.

After Cordoba I travelled down to Mendoza which is near the mountains. I did a wine tour which was nice as you hired a bike and cycled to different wineries. I then stayed in a mountain village for a few days, did a tiny bit of trecking and not much else and then headed back into Mendoza. I was planning on staying in Argentina for a while longer, but a few days ago in Mendoza I just changed my mind and bought a bus ticket to Chile...

...So I´m now writing this from Santiago in Chile. I´m staying with a friend I know from England who works here. He has kindly let me stay in his flat for a while. I´m not entirely sure what my plans are now. It´s my birthday on Thursday so will probably be going out for dinner somewhere nice and then work out what I´m doing after that. I´ll try and edit this post with some picures at some point but it´s a bit of a hassle putting them up and I´m lazy so not sure when.