Long time, no blog (if anyone still cares!!)

Now we just need a chance to explain ourselves. We have been extremely busy travelling from literaly the bottom of Argentina to the top, thus the reason for our lack of blogging since Buenos Aries. But now we have some tales to keep you kids on the edge of your seat.

So we left Buenos Aries to head South for the barren plains of patagonia, to hopefully get a little taste of the abundance of nature and wildlife that we were told was crammed into every little nook and cranny of this barren section of the country. Having taken a 17 hour journey from BA we arrived at Peurto Madrin, a small coastal port about halfway down the eastern coast of Argentina. As soon as we jumped off the bus we thought we would head into town for a bit of a guernsy not expecting to see anything spesh, only to be greeted by a whale just of the jetty we had walked down. Furthermore a elephant seal was just lounging about under the peer and we knew we would be in for good things.

The next day was pretty much an experience that would make Sir David Attenborough sit up and take notice. It kicked off with a bit of whale watching about 40 mins from where we were wtaying. Thought it would be pretty good, maybe catch a glimpse of a tail, or a phantom blowhole out in the distance, but what we were met with was more than just a little sureal. When we arrived at the bay itself we could literally see in the space of about 2 minutes, 4 different sets of whales crusing around a bay only a couple of kms across.

We headed out into the bay, and made a beeline straight for the nearest large floating mass. Unfortunately after gunning it from the beach to within a few metres of the beast, it decided, understandably, to disappear into the depths. Having not reared its head for about 30 seconds, our skipper announced that ¨now we go looking for more friendly whales, and we found them.

We spent the next hour and a half with two different sets of whales, both with very energietic calves in tow. Overhere, they haven{t quite caught onto the idea of just observing nature, but rather want to interact with them. This was noted as we would cruise alongside the pair , and then speed up and cut directly infront of the course they were taking, thus forsing the poor creatures to quickly dive down, underneath our vessel, to surface again on the other side.

after the boat ride was over we sat on the shore with mate (tea) and watched as the whales lulled around in the bay. The sight could have been painted by dahli himself- a serreal experience

This peninsula is also home to the natural phenomena of killer whales taking seal pubs from the shore. This is the only place in the world that this happens because of the type of errosion that occurs. The cliffs are erroded in a way that creates channels in the rock bed shore, allowing the killer whales to enter and not beach themselves as they take the seal pubs. We were out of season so we didn{t witness this ourselves. But we didn^t wade our feet in the water either.
The peninsula is like the safari parks of south america. Apart from the whales and elephant seals we saw penguins, sea-lions, emu like birds, condors, giant hare-sheep thingys. it was a really cool day.

The next day we just took it pretty easy, with a 32 km bike ride to a seal colony just outside town. It was the first national park that we have ever been escorted from, a fairly funny experience all round. (In this country they have holes in the pavement you could abseil into, and random spears sticking from the gutters, but cross a fence that is barely there and they become very concerned about your safety... interesting???)

From there we headed further south to El Calafate, a place that is famous for it´s proximity to a shitload of glaciers. We spent two days here seeing some of the most amazing stuff mother nature has cooked up in her kitchen. The moreno glacier was the highlight for us, and spent three hours watching these 15 story chards of ice collapse into the water, to form huge floating icebergs in the glacial lake.

The second day there we took a fairly pricy, but unbelievable, catamarn tour through the icebergs and glaciers that float on and flow into the lake.

From here we headed to El Chalten, a 20 year old town with a population, including tourists at this time of year, of 200 inhabitants. We spent three days here hiking around the Parque Nacional Los Glaciaries... and were both given awesome weather, and a very humbling experience. On the second day of treking around and by now boasting about being extreme treking extraudenaurs, we lost our bearings completely. To find our way back onto the straight and narrow we relied on Richo´s dad´s drug company´s promotional compass (with pink carribena attachment) and our year 3 orientering experiences. This lead us up a near vertical incline, to a needle point summit, with sheer crevasses in all directions (kick ass view though). Eb´s nagged, ¨I´m sure they don´t make everyone scale this cliff¨, only to be met by an know it all Richo who made the comment ¨it´s the Andes Ebony!!!! of course they do". Resting on the other side we met a French couple. When both parties had discussed the ways from which they had come, the Frenchman gasped "from ova sere, but ver ist yor climink gere??" The highlight of the day was hiking to the base of Fitzroy mountain, a mere 5km from the Chilean border, otherwise known as a little slice of heaven.

We are now at the opposite end of Argentina, and have just experienced the Icquazu falls... definitly up with one of the more impressive sites we have seen. Although when you think about, and impressive waterfall is just a shitload of water falling off a cliff, there was something extra about this. Eb´s made the comment that when standing above the Devils Throat (the point at which the water flow is heaviest) it felt like the earth was sucked into itself.

Have spent the last 6 hours sunning ourself beside the hostel pool, both thoroughly burnt, and although not looking forward to the 27 hour bus ride ahead of us, are pumped as about getting to Salta (a small town 8 hours from the border of Bolivia). Until next time kids, will try and get some pictures up at a later date,

Ebs and Richo