The Iguacu Falls posts are complete

In case you didn´t notice, the two posts about Iguacu Falls dated 16 and 17 October have been written up and are complete.

Punta Arenas doesn`t do Mondays

It´s COLD down here in the South. When I walked out of the last Internet cafe it was snowing in Ushuaia. Nothing settled underfoot and fortunately there was no wind. Conditions are about the same temperature here in Punta Arenas, and I think I saw a snowflake or two this morning.

Yesterday (Sunday) was election day in Argentina. A lot of shops were closed in Ushuaia`s main street in the morning but that may have been a normal Sunday. There were a few people standing around a school so I guess that was a polling station.

I was due to fly to Punta Arenas in Chile and I checked in early in case the flight was oversold. No need to bother. There were barely 30 people on the jet.

Naughty Chilean taxi drivers at Punta Arenas Airport tried to tell me the shuttle wouldn`t go at all and then wouldn´t go for at least an hour. I stood firm and saved myself 5,000 pesos. The shuttle dropped me in the plaza and I walked from there to my guidebook selection, Hostal O´Higgins. Almost the whole block was a building site. The hostal is now a hole in the ground. So that´s why the phone wasn`t answered!

My hike to second choice Hospedaje Independencia took me past a large statue of the heroic Bernardo O´Higgins. I think I must go and photograph it. His name cracks me up every time I come across it. He was one of the commanders – together with José de San Martín – of the military forces that freed Chile from Spanish rule in the Chilean War of Independence. For more information on him click here.

The lodging has proved very comfortable, and the owner, Eduardo, has been very helpful with travel information, so I´m well pleased with it.

I had been warned (thanks, Jack) that Punta Arenas was not a riveting tourist destination. Unless I want to do another penguin tour there´s not much on offer. One travel agency promotes birdwatching tours in the window but they have been scrapped for lack of takers. A regular historical tour is unlikely to go ahead tomorrow unless it can recruit minimum numbers. Eduardo had recommended a museum in town, but it is closed on Mondays. And today is ....

What I did manage to do, with Eduardo´s help, was book my passage on the ferry from Puerto Natales to Puerto Montt. This entails sacrificing my flight to Puerto Montt but it will be so much more interesting to see the Chilean fjords. The boat leaves on Friday morning but I have to check in on Thursday and spend the night aboard. Winds, tides, whirlpools, tsunamis and kraken permitting.

I also visited the cemetery. This was also Eduardo´s doing. There are some little houses for the dead as in Recoleta, Buenos Aires, but most plots are much more modest. There is an "English Section", where the epitaphs on the headstones are in English. The dearly departed are from all parts of the British Isles, with the Scots particularly well represented. There is a also a memorial to the crew of HMS Doterel, which exploded and sank near Punta Arenas on 26 April 1881.

The largest plot by far is devoted to the Braun-Menendez family, which became extremely wealthy and dominated Punta Arenas society. The Braun portion originated in Russia and Mauricio was Russia´s diplomatic representative until the 1917 revolution overthrew the Czar.

The most famous name I came across was Admiral Maximilian Graf von Spee, victor of the Battle of Coronel. There is a large memorial tablet topped with an eagle. I´m not sure the black-painted shells are in good taste, though. I presume the admiral is not there in person since he was sunk at the Battle of the Falkland Islands in 1914.

My last lot of photos were downloaded to a DVD, despite my instruction to put them on a CD. This was done with good intentions. The photo shop thought they needed room for a full 2Gb memory card. The mix-up resulted in a disagreement about the correct fee for the service. That was resolved, but I have not yet visited an Internet cafe that can read the DVD.

The upshot is that all my recent posts are text only. Sorry. I will fix this when I can.

Tierra del Fuego

Tierra del Fuego means Land of Fire. I think it is most inappropriate, because the only fires are inside. My suggestion for a new name is Tierra del Viento Frio, Land of Cold Wind.

Today has been an excellent example. It´s perishing out there, even though the wind is not strong. Not by local standards, anyway.

In the morning I shivered my way along to the Yamana and Municipal Museums, which educated me in the ways of the local indigenous people. In Tierra del Fuego as a whole there were four groups. They were all hunter-gatherers, but had different languages and not all other aspects of their cultures were the same. One group, the Selknam, lived mainly on the grassland of the main island, hunted guanaco and wore skins. One small, and now totally extinct, group, the Haush, occupied the far eastern end of the main island, hunted guanaco and lived off the sea. The other two groups, the Alcaluf and Yahgan (or Yamana), lived solely on what they could harvest from the sea. They never allowed their fires to go out, even in their bark canoes, which is pretty amazing.

The fires, along with a coating of sea lion fat, were what kept them warm in the absence of clothes. These ubiquitous fires were what prompted the first visiting European to christen the locality Tierra del Fuego.

There were no chiefs and food was shared amongst all irrespective of who brought it in. Labour was shared. The children would occupy the centre of the canoe, keep the fire going and bale out the excess water. The mother paddled from the back and Dad stood in the bows with his harpoon at the ready. Men made the canoes but the women maintained them. It was also the women who moored the vessels to kelp and swam ashore at the end of the expedition. Only women could swim.

Although violence between europeans and amerindians seems to have been very infrequent, it did occur in both directions. However, it was european hunting of their main food sources and european diseases that caused the steep decline in numbers of the indigenous folk.

Is that enough anthropology for today?

Having explored the Beagle Channel on Thursday, yesterday I turned my sights inland and went on a tour by 4x4. I noted with interest that the Argentine tour operator used Land Rovers. Animosity toward the English does not extend to prejudice against a British vehicle.

We were a party of four, accommodated in relative comfort in a new vehicle, which compared very favourably with the seating provisions made in Bolivian 4x4s two months ago. My companions were a young man from Michigan who had been living in Buenos Aires for six months and a pair of newlyweds. Aah, wasn´t that nice? Chris is English and Mercedes is a Buenos Aires native. Clearly not all Argentinians bear a grudge. They live and work in London. They had recently had their second marriage in a Buenos Aires church. The first was a civil ceremony in London - so all the relatives got to one celebration or the other.

All the other passengers spoke better Spanish than I do. This was crucial because our driver/guide, Juan, spoke no English.

I was sold the tour with a promise that there would be an English-speaking guide. Oh well. It was just bad luck that I found Juan difficult to understand. Sometimes I can follow Spanish-speaking guides quite well.

A second Land Rover with 6 tourists (I think) had a lively young driver who spoke quite a bit of English and even knew the proper English names for the larger birds we saw.

We were headed to see mountains, forests and lakes. At our first photo stop to admire a view there was graffiti on the stonework, "Ingleses = Pirates". Grinning hugely Chris ran to be photgrphed standing beside it. Mercedes liked the joke so much she could hardly hold the camera steady.

Next we paused at a winter activity centre, looking rather forlorn without any snow. Huskies and Alaskan dogs are bred there to pull sleds. We passed what I guess was a sawmill, with me straining to follow why the logs were left in the lake to absorb water when the wood was later dried in an oven (if I understood correctly).

Then we left the main road, four-wheel drive was engaged and the serious business of the day commenced. The forest track got worse and worse the further we went. I guess the drivers are recruited primarily for their ability to handle the vehicles and both of them relished the ruts, deep mud and crazy angles on steep slopes that we encountered. I noticed that when they chose to tilt the camionettas to the side it was always with the driver´s side uphill. I was in the front passenger seat so I would have borne the brunt of any miscalculation.

Along the way we were told of the miseries caused by the release of 50 pairs of Canadian beavers. There is no accurate beaver census, but the numbers are certainly in the tens or hundreds of thousands. With no predators the beavers are gnawing their way through the native nothofagus (southern beech) trees at a great rate. We drove along a valley that was a succsssion of beaver dams and stopped at one point to inspect the chewed stumps. It seemed like the whole valley was a mess of trees felled so that the beavers could chomp the bark.

Eventually we arrived at Lago Fagnano and drove straight into it! Why have a high wheel base vehicle and not play with it was the drivers´ attitude. Smiling broadly at our surprise, Juan backed out of the water and released us to our own devices for half an hour or so. While I scoured the lake shore and the forest for birds (several species but no ticks) the drivers built a fire and prepared an asado (Argentinian BBQ).

We were fed steak, chorizo sausages and wine. There was actually fruit for dessert (vegetable matter other than bread, potatoes or unimaginative salads are scarce in Argentine restaurants) and a choice of hot drinks. Juan promoted the mate. It must be very bitter because I had to add sugar.

Our afternoon route went along, or in, the lake before following a rather tame track back to the road. But we were not done yet. There was Lago Escondido to admire and, if we wished, paddle a canoe on. I don´t like canoes much anyway, and by now it was cold and drizzly so I declined. In fact only three hardy souls, all from the other vehicle, chose to brave the chilly waters. While they got wet the rest of us went into the lakeside hotel and clustered by the fire.

Eventually the canoeists squelched in to join us and were given immediate access to the huge fireplace, where they steamed and waited for the blood to return to their fingers.

I thought this was the end of the tour but no, we took the scenic route back to the main road. Initially this was simply a rough track, where we saw a fox, the Michiganer´s first, but the trail quickly deteriorated. It was steep, strewn with rubble from barely cleared slips and offered plenty of other hazards that only a 4x4 could attempt. There was even a patch of snow left over from winter.

Finally we did rejoin the main road adjacent to Ingleses = Pirates and this time it truly was the end of the tour. We followed the tarmac back to Ushuaia.

Tomorrow, Sunday, is election day in Argentina and the start of my journey back to NZ. Well, it feels like it. I shall be going North and using the first sector of my Lan Chile air tickets that will eventually return me to Auckland. However, there are three weeks still for adventures and I´m sure they will not be dull. I have spent part of today investigating cruises in the Chilean fjords. One, the most expensive, is already fully booked. I have two enquiries still waiting for answers.

Because of tomorrow´s election I am told that bars will not open tonight and restaurants will not serve alcohol. However, I am sure they will still serve meat.

The Beagle Channel

This very afternoon, Thursday 25 October, I have reached my furthest South - Bridges Island in the Beagle Channel. Ushuaia is 54 degrees 24 minutes South and the Island must be a few minutes nearer the South Pole. This does not compare with my furthest North in Canada two years ago, which is Tuktoyaktuk beyond the Arctic Circle at 69 degrees 26 minutes, but it´s about as far South as you get without going to Antarctica.

We had a short trek on the island. The guide told us about the original inhabitants of the region, who survived in this harsh environment by coating themselves in sea lion fat. They were otherwise naked. I think I´ll continue to rely on Goretex. There were also brief lectures on the island´s plants. One I recognised as the slow growing "living rock" last seen on the altiplano. That or a very close relative.

However, the main purpose of the voyage was to spy on the local wildlife.

The advertised targets were colonies of cormorants and sea lions, because they were numerous and involved in their breeding cycle. There were two species of cormorants; the imperial or king cormorant (depending on which field guide you rely on) and the rock cormorant. They were at the nest building stage and I´m sure I saw one filching material from another half-constructed nest.

The sea lions had growing pups and, to my surprise, were sharing their rocky islet with many birds, including nesting cormorants. Clearly sea lions do not have the same gastromonic interest in seabirds that leopard seals are noted for.

However, I got much joy from other bird species that turned up, including dolphin gulls with bright red legs and beaks, kelp geese, chilean skuas queuing to steal cormorant eggs or chicks, and sheathbills, the pure white birds with disgusting eating habits. They clean up placentas and excrement. And on Bridges Island I saw wrens perched on high twigs and singing prettily.

My memory card is well loaded with attempts at wildlife photography

So, all in all, a good afternoon´s endeavours.

So Much Has Been Happening

The recent shortage of posts has nothing to do with a shortage of interesting activities. In fact it has more to do with the concentration of fun stuff leaving little time for blogging.

Right now I am in Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, the southernmost city on the planet. It´s on the Beagle Channel and there are several islands between here and Cape Horn but it is seriously far South. From the map in the hostel it looks to be something like the latitude of Maquarie Island. Can someone confirm that, using Google Earth maybe?

The recen history is, very briefly:

In El Calafate I went on tours three days running;
1. A boat trip on Lago Argentina to see Upsala and various other glaciers and the beautiful icebergs that have formed from the pieces that fall off. It had not occurred to me previously that there were freshwater icebergs.
2. A bus trip to the Perito Moreno Glacier, which sprint along at 2 metres per day and calves off chunks of ice almost to order. The trip was not spoiled by spending the previous day admiring glaciers. Also, I think I got some good photos of the sparrows and sierra-finches that compete for the crumbs from tourists´sandwiches.
3. A marathon bus trip (6am to 10pm) to Torres del Paine in Chile. This park is the place to go in Chile and for me did not live up to the hype. However, the recommendation is to trek through for at least 5 days and that would be more special.

And the timer on this computer is about to shut me off ...

OK, You can stop worrying now

Of course you aren´t worrying because I didn´t tell you there was a potential problem.

Today was a good day, but rather boring. I spent several hours waiting in the local hospital. Everything is OK, but I´d better tell you the story.

Last week, after getting sand in my eyes, which is painful with contact lenses, I became aware of something in my right eye that looked like a bit of brown fluff. When it didn´t go away I emailed my optometrist, who said that it was very likely a harmless "vitreous floater" but I must get the eye checked in case there´s a rip in the retina. So today:

9 o´clock - go to hospital. Told to come back at 1pm to give details of name, etc. I understood that the doctor would be seeing patients from 2pm.

1 o´clock - wait around. Told that details will be collected at 2pm and the doctor will start seeing patients at 4pm.

2 o´clock - form queue in apparently random order to make appointment. No that´s not right, to get my name on the list. Pay 15 pesos ($7.50). Told to come back at 5pm to see the doctor at 5:15 or 5:30.

5 o´clock - return to hospital and take seat outside the opthalmology room.

6:15 - see the doctor. A friend had translated the correspondence with my optometrist into Spanish. Your translation was excellent, Tracey. All was clear to Dr Gruccio, who applied pupil-dilating fluid.

6:20 - sit outside again "for 20 minutes" while the fluid takes effect.

6:50 - readmitted to consulting room. Retina examined very carefully. Given the all clear.

So that´s all right.

I then went to the bus terminal to book seats to Rio Gallegos and Ushuaia. Because of the strong winds the ferry isn´t running and the buses can´t get to Ushuaia. I have to go back tomorrow and see what the situation is.

I don´t mind an extra day in El Calafate, but I do want to see a bit of Tierra del Fuego before I step on a plane out of Ushuaia next Sunday.

I think I shall go back to a "parilla libre", an all you can eat BBQ buffet, eat a kilo of steak and drink lots of red wine to remind myself that it doesn´t really matter.

The next post may be a few days

I am now in El Calafate, in Argentina´s glacier district. Internet connections here are expensive and slow. Also, I have booked a full day tour for each of the next three days, so there will not be much time for blog posts.

So if there is nothing new for a few days, that is why.

Don´t let that hold up the comments and emails.

Iguacu Falls - Brazilian side

My time to visit the Brazilian shores of Iguacu Falls was severely limited. I had to get back to Puerto Iguazu in Argentina to catch a bus. If I missed it I would be late for the hockey in Rosario.

I though the weather the previous day was disappointing, but my third day at the Falls was much, much wetter. Thunder rumbled and lightening played as I splashed through the puddles to the bus terminal.

Getting a bus to Brazil was easy, but border crossings are notoriously tricky. We stopped at Argentine Immigration. Everyone got off the bus, was processed efficiently and reboarded. Over the bridge and into Brazil. The bus stopped at Brazilian Immigration and only the tourists got off. Goodness knows what the system is for the locals but it doesn´t involve a queue or a questionnaire. And when I emerged as a legal person in Brazil the bus had vanished. No waiting on this side of the river!

A Japanese girl in a blue rain cape looked even more lost than I felt. "What do we do?" "We get the next bus, I suppose." The next bus was, of course, a different company so we had to buy tickets all over again.

The ride to the bus station in Foz de Iguacu seemed very long. The town is not very close to the Falls. Signs were starngely familiar. Portuguese must be similar to Spanish.

At the bus terminal there was an information office where the attendant spoke English. We needed bus 120. Luckily Argentine pesos were accepted. There was nowhere at the teminal to change money. The system was very strange. We had to pay to get on to the "platform", but that included the bus fare. Why bother when every bus has a fare collector? The system on the bus was odd, too. A passenger boards at the front and is admitted to a small area with about 4 seats. To get off they have to pay a fare to the collector and pass through a turnstile into the main part of the bus and exit through the rear door. It seems to make no difference whether you pay as soon as you get on or just before you alight. The turnstile takes up an awful lot of space. It must significantly reduce the carrying capacity of the bus.

Before setting off the driver performed a strange ritual. He scattered sawdust over the steps and the floor of the not-yet-paid area. That makes sense. It is raining and people will be boarding with very wet shoes. He then produced a large bottle of mineral water and poured it all over the sawdust. Why? Please leave a comment.

The bus weaved it´s way around Foz de Iguacu for what seemed like an age before moving purposefully back along the road from the border. We passed so close I could see the immigration building.

On the bus I discovered that, despite being able to interpret many signs around me, I could not understand a word of spoken Portuguese.

The Japanese girl´s name was Ai. Well, it was pronounced "Aye" so I guess that´s how it is spelled in our letters. She also had a deadline to get back to Puerto Iguazu, one even more tight than mine. By the time we had detoured to the airport and finally arrived at the Falls Park it had taken us 2 hours to do little more than cross the river.

The entrance to the Brazilian park is so far from the Falls that there is a bus to take you to the viewing places. The tariff for using the buses is shown separately but it does not conceal the fact that visiting the Brazilian Falls is notably more expensive than going to see the Argentine side.

We rode on past the optional extras to the main viewing path. In Argentina the visitor gets up close and personal with many more cascades, but from Brazil you can get a much better impression of the whole system, particularly the two levels.

Ai´s English was not very fluent and her Spanish almost non-existent, but she was adept at using sign language to coax strangers into taking photos for her.

When Ai chose to have a photo taken with me I quickly handed my camera over as well. Our hoods are down so that our faces are visible. The umbrella on the right confirms that it was still raining.

Ai was first to spot this little snail enjoying the moisture on a handrail.

But Ai didn´t spot the much bigger coati that ambled past her and almost into the ladies´ toilet before vanishing into the undergrowth.

The Devil´s Throat is in Argentina. Brazil does not have a single cascade of comparable size, but there are some pretty substantial falls and cunningly sited walkways to permit close observation.

There are more of the great dusky swifts on the Brazilian side. And they were demonstrating their famous habit of flying behind and even through the curtains of water.

This shows how the birds can take advantage of small breaks in the cascade to dodge behind the water. Some, probably the guy swifts, just zoom straight through the main current to the perches and nests behind the falls.

Ai and I were barely in the park for an hour and a half before hopping on a bus back to the entrance. There we parted, Ai to race back to Argentina and self to make a pilgrimage to an adjacent bird park.

This park is noted in the Lonely Planet guidebook an had received good reviews from travellers I had met along the way. There was no way I was going to miss it. I reckoned I had about an hour before I should line up at the bus stop. Well, maybe an hour and a quarter.

These blue and yellow macaws have their perch at the entrance. They were slack about greeting visitors because, as you can see, some mutual preening was going on.





The common crane is not an American bird, but it makes a delightful picture.





There are several walk-through aviaries. In one of these I was able to photograph a toco toucan. Those I saw in the wild were much too high for a picture.





The birds were is marvellous condition. Clearly they are very well looked after. However, some of the sun conures had been rescued from bird smugglers. The parrot trafficers clip some of the feathers (see this bird´s tail) to persuade the purchaser that they are chicks. Young birds are preferred and presumably command a premium price.

I really wonder at the intelligence of someone who is willing to pay the small fortune these gorgeous yellow parrots can fetch and yet knows so little about birds that they are taken in by this clumsy fraud.

Fortunately the treatment at the bird park has restored the conures well enough that they have started to breed. I believe the mutilated feathers will eventually be moulted and replaced with normal ones.

In the last walk-through aviary there are large numbers of parrots, including several species of macaw. Visitors are warned that they enter at their own risk.

As you can see, this tourist´s pack is being checked for anything edible or shiny.

Naturally I thought this was most amusing and I was still laughing when a similar unidentified parrot perched on my day pack. However it was not so funny when it was chased away and its place taken by a hyacinth macaw, the biggest of the family. Do you know how very big a macaw is when its beak is level with your eye? And it is true that a macaw can crack a brazil nut. Taking aggressive action against this feathered pirate seemed like a poor option.

It decided that the toggles on the drawstrings of my red waterproof looked like a shiny new kind of nut to sample. Another visitor intelligently suggested that I slip out of the day pack but the parrot wouldn´t leave until the toggle was entirely removed. So the garment is now minus one toggle.

Somehow I had the discipline to leave the park after my self-imposed hour and a quarter. It would have been so easy to spend all day there.

The buses back were just as tedious as in the morning. What is wrong with waiting at the Brazilian side of the border, I wonder? But I got back in good time to recover my big pack from the hostel and catch my bus.

Iguacu Falls - Argentine side.

The Iguacu Falls are just one part of a substantial national park that extends across the border to incorporate land in both Argentina and Brazil. It is protecting Atlantic rain forest, which harbours a prodigious diversity of life. Visiting the Falls is not just about one of the world´s most spectacular arrays of cascades, it is an excursion into luxurious forest with plants, insects and vertebrate animals to delight any nature lover.

In fact, I´m going to start off with what I think is my all time best bird photograph, rather than a view of the falling water. This is a plush-crested jay. Even with the maximum magnification that my little camera can manage I had to get pretty close to capture this shot. The blue feathers are, if anything, even more vivid when you meet the real bird than they are in this photograph.

There is a Sheraton Hotel right in the park, but the plebs are accommodated well away from the protected area in Puerto Iguacu. Hostel Iguacu Falls is handy to the bus station and the day I arrived it put on a barbecue. There was more meat than we could eat and somehow my bottle of red wine was empty by the time I turned in rather late. Unsurprisingly, I was not up terribly early the next morning.

Buses leave for the park every half hour. I just missed one, so it was after 10 o´clock when I finally handed over my 40 pesos (Argentina uses the $ symbol to denote pesos. I find this most confusing) and started my tour.

Butterflies were everywhere. The only place I have seen more lepidoptera is by the creek in the jungle near Puerto Maldonado. And these were nearly all large, colourful butterflies. They bounced and fluttered through the air, alighted for a moment on a flower and then danced away.

Because of this reluctance to stay still they were virtually impossible to photograph. This half-in-shadow portrait is the best I could get.

There were plenty of birds, too, from the sombrely dressed thrushes to the blue suited swallow tanager (tick).

A visit to the Falls is not for the unfit. Although there is a little train to help you, the important parts of the park are accessible only to pedestrians. Not all the paths will accommodate wheelchairs. Following the recommended route, I walked along the Green Trail. At one point there is a sign warning of dangerous animals. It is just possible that you might meet a jaguar in the early morning, but I suspect the sign is intended more to scare the public into staying on the footpaths.

I was going to scorn the little train, especially when I saw the length of the queue, but I was amazed when the train took all the waiting sightseers in one go, so I finished my very late breakfast and caught the next one.

At the end of the tracks the groups surged off along the walkways behind their guides. They take the visitor over long, thin bridges built from island to island across the river above the falls. On some of the islands there are benches and a family pausing for a snack had attracted the attention of a group of plush-crested jays (tick). There were at least a dozen birds clustering in the branches and on the handrails looking for crumbs, scraps or a handout.

Eventually I dragged myself away from the jays and finished the walk to the Garganta del Diablo or Devil´s Throat. Here the spectator is at the lip of the biggest single waterfall. Professional photographers with stepladders were busy shepherding groups into position and shooing away independent sightseers who might spoil the picture. Eventually they completed their work and the rest of us were able to get near the mass of water pouring over the lip.

Strangers enthusiastically swapped cameras and took photos of the camera owner with the waterfall in the background. As you can see, I should have adjusted the exposure setting before handing over my camera. That´s me in front of the cascade, honest.

Although impressive, this cataract is not as big as the Horseshoe Falls at Niagara. Those who know Niagara will now that there are essentially two falls, each with a single drop. At Iguacu there are dozens of separate falls which, for the most part, reach the bottom in two stages.

Looking along the top of the Falls from the Devil´s Throat lookout.

As you can see, the river reaches the lip along a series of channels









A slightly better photo. I took this one myself using my left hand and cunningly managed to omit the tell-tale left arm and include the waterfalls in the background.

The Falls are famous amongst birders for the swifts that hunt for flying insects in the spray and then dart behind the cascades to roost and even build their nests. I could see them clearly from the lip of the Devil´s Throat, hawking through the mist below me.

Eventually I remembered that there was much more to explore and set off back along the walkway. I saw fish in the river, sheltering in an eddy to avoid taking a one-way trip downstream over the falls. The jays were not the only birds. I watched cormorants and a large heron fishing confidently.

The river above the cataracts is peppered with islands that separate the stream into many channels.

At the end of the walkway was an optional extra - a trip in a rubber boat through the islands above the Falls. There would be, I was promised, lots of wildlife to enjoy.

Our skipper at the oars. If he dropped them there was no emergency propulsion that I could see. But of course they were secure in the rowlocks.

There was a delay while money changed hands and further passengers were recruited, and them we were off. The current was much more modest than I expected after watching the waters rushing over the lip of the Falls, and the oars were applied to get us moving downstream.
A cormorant on a dead branch drew oohs from the other passengers. Had they been walking around with their eyes closed? It cunningly allowed us to get close enough that even I got my camera out and then dived mockingly into the water.

We were taken to within about 100m of the drop. Ahead of us, perched evenly on a line of rocks with almost mathematical exactness, a platoon of cormorants waited for lunch barely 30m from the falls.

Our course was diverted down a side channel. It was very picturesque, but the promised wildlife stayed away. The skipper was moved to apologise for the inconsiderate absence of anything interesting to watch.

A kingfisher did flash its colours at us as it raced to some urgent appointment elsewhere and then, when we were amost tying up at the little wharf that marked journey´s end, the skipper said, "Look, toucans!" OK, he said it in Spanish, but everyone understood. For several agonising seconds I was certain that I was the only one on board who could not see the toucans, but then one of them flapped to the next branch and two birds came into focus.

I particularly wanted to see toco toucans on this trip because they are spectacular birds and because I remember the Guinness advertisements of my childhood that featured toucans. I can report that in reality the beak is even more colourful than the Guinness artists rendered it. HUGE TICK.

The moustachioed skipper backwatered until both birds had flown away and then our waterborne adventure was over.

The next portion of the park I headed for was the "Lower Trail", but not before a bite of lunch. A large bite for preference, since I had missed breakfast. I had just got my molars around the end of a french bread sandwich when I saw some friends. Jane Tait and Sally Nutbeem are stalwarts of the Wessex Witches, one of the Golden Oldies hockey teams. Calling out was not a practical option with my mouth full of sandwich so I rushed out of the cafe and mutely hugged them both in greeting.

It was not terribly startling to find other Golden Oldies at the Falls. Most of the players would have taken the chance to see a bit of Argentina and Iguacu Falls 3 days before the festival began probably appeared on several itineraries.

Once Jane and Sally had got over the shock we sat down and caught up on each other´s news while other Witches came into the cafe for an ice cream.

The lower trail, as its name suggests, gives a different perspective on the falls. And it allows the visitor to see cascades that are not visible from the Devil´s Throat platforms.

A particularly sheer fall named after an Italian, whose name began with B. It´s on the tip of my tongue.

It also gives access to the boat across to Isla San Martin, which is included in the admission fee, and the boats that take thrill-seekers to the base of the falls, which is quite a lot extra.

The lower trail is very shaded, and thus ideal conditions for impatiens sp., more commonly known as "busy lizzie". This bush must have covered at least a square metre of ground.

I followed the trail, stopping often to take yet more photographs, until I arrived at the boarding point for the Isla San Martin boat. Naturally, it was on the island side of the channel.

Patience was rewarded by the boat returning and refusing to let me board. I had just missed the last sailing. Curses and naughty words!

I associate lizards with sunny, warm habitats, but there was a large population of these jokers dodging in and out of the rocks.

However, there was more of the Lower Trail and all of the Upper Trail yet to explore.

There are so many cascades that it is difficult to maintain the enthusiasm. I confess that I was getting to the stage where the waterfalls were almost ho-hum. Luckily there was more wildlife to distract me.

A toucan was perched high on a bare branch. They are such colourful birds that it was still a joy to observe this one sitting there and occasionally opening its beak. I passed my binoculars around for the benefit of those not so thoughtfully prepared for toucan-watching.

Excitement amongst a group of schoolchildren proved to be due to the appearance of a group of capuchin monkeys.

Signs around the park warn against feeding the animals, and they must work becasue no-one was offering tidbits and, even more surprisingly, the monkeys were not begging for handouts.

They were assiduously working through a group of trees for fruits and any yummy leaves. I had a good view of one that had a taste for the growing point of a palm tree. He or she demonstrated a well-practiced technique for pushing apart the central leaves so that the delectable centre could be bitten off.

OK, one last picture of falling water before leaving the park.

Time was indeed running out so I joined the crowd making its way to the exit.

Around the open space, where the souvenir craft stalls offer carvings of toucans in a variety of bright but imaginary colours, the grass is mown short. This highly modified habitat is favoured by the wild guinea pigs. Unlike the popular pets, these are all the same, dark brown colour. They are also noticeably smaller than the domesticated animals.

There were still things to see. I thought these flowers deserved to be recorded.

Visitors to the park are informed that they should get their tickets stamped and thus qualify for half-price admission the following day. I had missed one wildlife trail and the island so it made sense to get the stamp. If I chose not to return nothing would be lost, but if I came back I would be 20 pesos better off.

The buses follow a rigid half-hourly schedule. No extra buses are put on for the closing time rush. And the bus came later than the scheduled time, so I had to wait more than 20 minutes despite timing my appearance at the bus stop well.

Optimistically I showed the driver my ticket from the morning. But no, it was not a return ticket. By charging 4 pesos each way the monopolist bus company must be making a killing. That´s expensive bus travel, even in Argentina.

Dinner that evening was with Jane and Sally. The other Wessex Witches timidly stayed in their hotel´s restaurant, whereas we marched boldly down the road and selected a restaurant 50m away. This meal also featured quantities of Argentinian wine and once again I slept well and late.

Day 2 started off with thunderstorms and heavy rain. Luckily the rain eased a bit as I sipped my breakfast coffee, so I donned my red waterproof and steeled myself to pay another 4 pesos each way on the bus.

By the time I arrived at the park the weather had moderated to showers. I gratefully claimed my discounted admission and went in. The guinea pigs were out on the short grass again, as was this very large iguana.

To complete my visit I wanted to walk the Sendero Macuco, a nature trail, and visit Isla Grande San Martin.

Unfortunately, I chose the same moment to arrive at the trail head as a school party of 40 teenagers. I don´t know about you, but I would not rate 40 teenagers as my companions of choice when out to enjoy the wildlife. So I pretended to study my field guide as they filed onto the trail with one of the teachers explaining sternly that absolute silence was required. Optimist.

Since I turned my binoculars on anything that rustled in the leaves the school party was soon well ahead and could be forgotten. As is so often the case, the heard-but-not-seen bird was much the most common.

Despite my slow progress I actually caught up with a group. This appeared to be a guided birdwatching party. They all had good binoculars and the leader had what looked like a huge, fur-covered microphone. My theory is that it was a device sensitive to the direction of sound and thus able to point precisely at a hidden, singing bird.

However, they did not need technology to see the group of toucans uttering their harsh calls in a dead tree. There were three of them. I suspect two swains were croaking their desire to the same maid.

Shortly after I left the toucans I caught up with the birders again. The leader was saying, "That´s another olivaceous woodcreeper." I followed the line of his binoculars and a dark bird flew away. It was the right size for a woodcreeper, but it could have been almost anything from the glimpse I got. Can I tick olivaceous woodcreeper? I decided that, in all conscience, I could not.

The rain became heavier and more frequent. Seeing details of the birds got harder in the gloom but I squelched on. There´s a waterfall along the trail. As though I needed to see another waterfall. In fact I almost fell over it. The path took me to the top of the fall, where a stream quietly made its way to the edge of a rock and then dropped away.

At the base of the waterfall was a nice pool and around it were 40 teenagers in wet swimsuits. On a sunny day it would have been a lovely spot for a swim and a picnic.

The path continued down and the rain got harder. Near the bottom I met the school party, now in anoraks, on its way back. Despite the rain they were chattering cheerfully. The rain got harder still and I was grateful for a big overhang where 4 other damp trampers were already sheltering. This, I thought, is as far as I go.

When the skies dried up a little I broke my vow just to go on 10 metres and look at the waterfall from the bottom. And then I really did start back. The climb to the top of the fall was certainly nuddy, but it was not as slippery and difficult as I expected.

Back along the trail who did I meet but Jane and Sally once again. They weren´t pursuing me (I should be so lucky) but had the same idea that there could be interesting things to see along the path. And once again the other Witches were following on behind.

There were still bird calls sounding, but it seemed that I wasn´t going to see anything without a furry microphone to help me until I heard a call behind me and turned. After a couple of seconds a bird flew over the trail and perched on a branch above the path. It was facing the other way, but the metallic green back was enough to tell me it was a trogon. Non-birders will not understand the excitement of this. Quetzals are possibly the most dazzling birds of all, and trogons are related to, and something like, a small quetzal.

I almost stopped breathing in my determination to be silent and move to where I could see what kind of trogon it was. It was absorbed in delivering a 4-note song, waiting and singing again. I saw the essential colours even before I saw the bird front on, but eventually I got right in front of a black-throated trogon. The male I could see had a glossy green head, upper breast and back, black face and throat, and golden yellow belly. To see pictures, click here. MEGATICK.

I´m not sure what the few other tourists thought of the tall man staring raptly at a bird. I offered them my binoculars anyway, so that they could see the glowing colours properly. I think I floated back to the main part of the park.

I marched straight to the Lower Trail and the boat to Isla Grande San Martin. Despite its name it´s not a very large island. Once you get to the top of the cliff the paths to the lookout points are not long. Climbing the cliff, despite the steps to help, was hard work. The rock is steep and high.

The first lookout gave a great view of the Devil´s Throat from out in front and lower down. It also allowed a panorama of other cascades and the river below the falls on the Argentine side.

On my way to the upriver end of the island I spotted a black vulture in a tree. I had been aware that there were always a few in the sky above the park, but this was a close-up view.

And then there were two more, and then more. At the end of the path you could hardly see the waterfalls for black vultures perched on rocks and in trees in every direction. There must have been well over a hundred in sight. What did they all feed on? Tourists who miss the last boat back?

Well that wasn´t going to be on this particular day. Back across the island I marched and carefully descended the cliff path to the little beach where the boat delivered and collected.

For those who came prepared the beachette was a popular swimming spot. But I had neither towel nor time for a bathe.

I had booked an "ecological tour" for 4 o´clock. I had to wait for the ferry, cross the river and climb back up the Lower Trail to get to the departure point.

These guys were organised. Everyone wore a safari-suit type uniform. One jeep was for Spanish-speakers and one for those who preferred a commentary in English. Interestingly, the commentary for both vehicles was given by the same individual. Roberto gave us his spiel in English as he drove. Then he stopped at a place that nicely illustrated what he had been talking about. The other jeep pulled up behind us and Roberto walked back and delivered the story all over again but in Spanish.

At an information stop.

The material included little I didn´t know already about forest ecology. I think all of it could be found in NZ. However, it was interesting to learn that they have the same problems with introduced animals and plants.

At least we had a dry tour. The showers had finally stopped. But there was still a lot of cloud and the light was not good. The pictures I took along the trail were consequently rather dark.

This photo of new growth isn´t too bad.

I thought to ask the guide what the vultures fed on. He started by giving me a lecture on the general habits of vultures. "No, what do the vultures in this park feed on?" "Some scientists did a census once. There are a thousand in the park." "And what do these 1,000 birds feed on?" "There are a lot of road kills." And that´s the best I could get. I´m not sure that incautious raccoons are a sufficient and reliable diet but I have no other theory to offer.

This picture of a moth discovered under a leaf came out really well. This amazing insect had a wingspan of fully 15cm (6 inches) and obligingly stayed put despite the whole group from both jeeps poking their cameras up close to get a photo. Yes, it was alive because it turned around at one stage. How dare you suggest that it was a set-up.

You can tell it is a moth rather than a butterfly by the shape of the antennae.

On the drive back, our guide proudly showed off his only example of - a tree fern.

Pictures of Paraguay Added

The post "In and Out of Concepcion" has now had photographs added. If you want to have a look it is dated 11 September, or search the blog for "NASA". Searching might be quicker.

Punta Tombo

The same tour company as the previous day´s visit to Peninsula Valdez and the same early pick up time of 7:30. And surprise, it was the same guide, Mauricio, and driver, Carlos.

Punta Tombo is a 2-hour drive South from Puerto Madryn. To break the journey, and squeeze some more pesos out of the gringos, there is a break at Rawson where we can take an optional boat ride to see dolphins. This depends on the conditons, and there is a strong wind blowing.

Luckily the skipper thought he could get us all back safely, so we queued to don life jackets. Then we took them off so that we could pull a waterproof cape over our clothes. Re-secure the life jacket. The boat is smaller then the one from which I watched whales, but much faster. Not as fast as a dolphin though. Before we embarked we were warned that we were going to see the dolphins. They are very difficult to photograph, especially with the delay in digital cameras between pressing the button and recording the picture.

Right in the port a sea lion surfaced and peered about. Then, before anyone could unzip a camera case, it dived again and disappeared.

From the port we dropped downriver and on shingle bank were many roosting birds. I must come back and observe them through my binoculars. Out into the Gulf and open the throttle. There was another tourist boat already at sea and our skipper headed towards it. That must be where the dolphins are. After all the concern about conditions, the wind was only moderate and neither waves nor spray were a problem.

And there they were. Commerson´s dolphin is very small for a dolphin, only 1.4m, with racy black and white markings. They come and go at high speed, occasionally slowing to keep time with the boats or diving underneath. Frequently one will jump, apparently simply for the joy of it. Sometimes two jump in unison.

The boats mainly stooged around and let the dolphins come and watch the humans, but at one stage they went at full power on parallel courses. Where the wakes met there was a big wave and didn´t the dolphins love that! They surfed along the pressure lines three or four at a time.

Like everyone else I tried my hand at dolphin photography. 2 or 3 were OK and 2 or 3 showed empty sea. The latter have been deleted.

I think we had about an hour amongst the dolphins before our time was up. I don´t think I will ever tire of watching dolphins.

On the way back to port we spotted a whale. Big oohs from all those who had not yet done the whale watching trip and the cameras swung into action again.

Back ashore I grabbed my binoculars and had enough time to identify a new oystercatcher (tick) and be frustrated that I could not get a good enough look at some snoozing ducks.

During the drive to Punta Tombo I made the acquaintance of a family from New York. They had taken the opportunity offered by the mother´s work trip to Buenos Aires to take their boys out of school and have a few days in Argentina.

Our destination is the largest mainland colony of magellanic penguins. About 200,000 nests. At the end of the breeding season, when the chicks have not yet fledged and the adolescents come ashore to moult, Mauricio reckons there are 900,000 birds in the colony.

I saw a small percentage of them. I would have seen more if there was less wind-borne dust. The wind did not seem any stronger, but it was gusty and had the malicious intention of hurling grit into my eyes. This detracted greatly from the enjoyment of penguin watching. Eventually I had to return to the bus and switch from contact lenses to spectacles. That was half an hour wasted - almost one third of our allotted time.

The penguins seem quite unconcerned by the humans and many nest right up close to the path. I should perhaps point out that a penguin´s idea of a nest is usually just a salad-bowl size scrape under a bush. Or if there is no bush a scrape with an overhang. I think calling it a burrow is unjustifiable flattery. Anyway, there was no shortage of subjects and photography here was extremely simple. I even got a picture of a bird with its egg.

A few birds, with even less IQ than your average penguin, nest right in the public area.

Most nests had one bird present, presumably incubating. It is early in the season and not all the eggs (there are usually two) have been laid yet. The chicks will not hatch until next month. Some scrapes had two penguins flopped on their tummies. Some were asleep and didn´t even twitch as human feet scrunched on the gravel only a metre away.

Some of the nesters were waddling to or from the beach. Humans have to give way to any penguin wanting to cross the track, although the main penguin highways were bridged so they could always pass underneath. There was a large group on the beach, presumably urging each other to be the first one to test the temperature of the water.

I wasn´t exactly on time for the 3 o´clock return, but I wasn´t the last one to board the minibus. Mr & Mrs USA were busy buying rather nice cuddly toy penguins for their boys.

The return trip was also broken half way, this time in Gaiman, a small town establishged by settlers from Wales. They make a big deal of serving Welsh teas. I guess it makes as much sense as Devonshire teas in Puhoi. Two of the tea houses make much of the fact that they were the first to offer this treat in 1944. Unless they opened on the same day I cannot see how this can be true. I can report that the tea was good and the accompanying plates of edibles were very generous. The jam was excellent.

A lot of the early settlers in this area were Welsh or English. Mauricio explained that the Spanish arrived first but didn´t like Patagonia so they went away again. This explains many of the place names. Rawson is English and Madryn, Trelew and Gaiman are Welsh. Streets are named after local notables with surnames like Lewis, Roberts, Davies, Humphreys and Evans.

Carlos kindly dropped me at the bus terminal so that I could organise my next journey. There are no buses direct to El Calafate, so I have booked to Rio Gallegos for Wednesday and will have to find an onward bus when I get there on Thursday morning.

Peninsula Valdez

This won´t be a long post, but I just have to write something about today´s fantastic trip.

I chose an early start tour to be sure that I would have maximum time amongst the wildlife. There are several possible routes, but most of them start with a dash from Puerto Madryn to Puerto Piramides for the whale watching.

You don´t actually need a boat. You can see the whales quite well from the shore. Even in Puerto Madryn you can see them cruising up and down off the beach, just a few hundred metres from the shore. At first glance they look like rocks awash, but rocks seldom move across the bay. There is no question, though, that admiring them is so much better from a boat.

Southern right whales congregate in the area to give birth to their 4,000 kg calves and to get the next generation started. They were called right whales by the early whalers because they were the right whale to hunt. They swim slowly and they float when they are dead, making them easy to catch.

Before we got near the whales the boat rules were explained. If the whale is to the right, all the people on the right stay seated and those to the left may stand. And vice versa. Seemed simple and sensible enough.

Only one tourist boat per whale is the limit, so we had to go out a ways to find an unattended whale. In fact it was a mother and her 2-month old calf. Everyone in the boat immediately stood up to get a better view. At least I was on the side permitted to do so. Mostly the whales just dipped below the surface, letting out noisy exhalations from time to time. But the mother did dive now and then, giving the classic tail wave as she did so.

The small, modest-priced digital camera I have with me is usually OK, but it´s not very prompt to reply to the shutter button. I now have lots of snaps of whales just disappearing below the surface.

After one dive the mother surfaced well away from our boat and we were treated to two ´jumps´. Fantastic.

Finally our skipper gave them a rest and moved over to another awash rock. This turned out to be three whales, one of which seemed to be a calf. One of these animals seemed to stand on its head. Certainly it waved its tail in the air many times for us. And another rolled on its side and cruised around playfully slapping the surface of the sea. I think that we witnessed just about the full set of surface behaviours, and all in brilliant sunshine with hardly any wind and a calm sea. Perfect.

Along the road we saw guanacos, the one member of the llama family that lives away from the mountains, and rheas (tick), which look very similar to their Australian relative, the emu. There were also lots of maras. These are a large rodent that burrows in the dry soil.

The next stop was to admire a colony of elephant seals. To simulate the excitement of an elephant seal family get some water ballooons: 10 or a dozen huge size in black or grey to represent pups, 12 to 14 enormous ones in brown and grey for the females and one humungous brown balloon for the bull. Two-thirds fill them with water. Place the humungous balloon on the beach any which way near the water. Place the others in a bunch all oriented up and down the beach. It doesn´t matter whether it is head or tail towards the water. Sit and watch.

I exaggerate of course, but there was not much action. The males displayed evidence of recent battles and an occasional flipper scooped some beach gravel over the sunbather´s body. Three were actually in the water. A couple of the pups bleated loudly. Their fond mothers were either at sea or too deeply asleep to respond.

There were birds around, including giant petrels (tick), a kind of chocolate-coloured albatross. But the most striking bird was in the scrub at the top of the cliff. The cock long-tailed meadowlark has red all down his chin and front and bold white stripes on his head. The scarlet marking is irregular, as though he´s been hit with cartoon tomatoes. HUGE TICK. The female was much less gaudy.

A little way North there is a small colony of magellanic penguins. You can get so close you could almost pat them. But I won´t get too excited about them because tomorrow I am off to Punta Tombo where there is a colony of 400,000 penguins.

Bariloche

The chonologically last instalment, Greetings from Uruguay, had me in Carmelo waiting for the Saturday evening ferry.

The bars were showing soccer. Uruguay was not involved in the rugby world cup, so why would their television devote time to it? I found an Internet cafe that was open and followed the score on the official web site. O woe for NZ.

So it was with shock and a heavy heart that I queued to board the Delta Cat II. This is a modern vessel, but not as rocket propelled as the Buquebus that I left Buenos Aires on. The sun was low, but still in the sky, so we had daylight for the start of the crossing.

The wharf is a few hundred metres up a tributary of the main river, so we started gliding down between tree-lined banks. There was actually nearly half an hour before sunset, motoring between low islands. Some had only grasses and rushes, others had trees. A vast improvement on the featureless water all the way to Colonia del Sacramento. There was enough light to see by for about another 30 minutes and then it got very dark.

There were very few navigation lights that I could see, but the skipper had radar, a chart plotter and plenty of experience so we didn´t hit anything and fetched up in Tigre on time.

This was the third time I had entered Argentina and the first time I had been asked to fill in a customs declaration. I confessed that I was carrying bee products (honey), but the customs officer shooed me through. He didn´t want his evening spoiled by people carrying illegal honey. The same honey had been in my pack on the previous two border crossings, but no-one asked about it.

An information desk in the port building directed me to a nearby B&B, but it was full. The port area had lights and grass and a McDonalds so it was perfectly safe to scout around, but the tourist information office was closed. That´s pretty reasonable for 9:30 on a Saturday night. I reasoned that the train station might have cheap hotels nearby or an information desk so I toddled over there. No hotels and no info desk, but I asked at a snack stall.

The lady on my side of the counter conferred with the serving lass and they agreed on a place but, they said, it was quite far and dangerous to walk. The lady came with me to the taxi stand to make sure the driver knew where to take me. Wasn´t that kind?

The streets didn´t look dangerous to me, but it was a drive of several minutes with many turns. Walking would have meant almost certainly losing the way. I was dropped at a large residencial but, alas, they had no rooms either. There were no rooms in anywhere in Tigre that night I was told. It was now after 10pm. Even if there was another train, it would deposit me in central BA after 11 o´clock. Not a welcome prospect.

The couple running the residencial did know of an expensive hotel in another suburb. What was the alternative - sleeping in the park? They generously telephoned and booked me in and then telephoned for a taxi. It was a long ride and the hotel was not easy to find. Journey´s end was getting on for 11pm.

Hotel del Casco is a boutique hotel and very expensive. However, it had a room free and I graciously accepted the neccesity of luxury. The ensuite bathroom had both a bath and a shower. There was a chocolate on the turned down sheet. I had a long shower and used lots of the shampoo and conditioner. The TV had at least 5 sports channels, but they were all in earnest after-match discussion mode, except one that was broadcasting baseball. I don´t know the game well enough to enjoy watching it, so I stretched out in my king-size bed and fell asleep.

Next morning I was either the first guest up, or the last. Anyway, I had the breakfast room to myself. I made the most of a first-class breakfast buffet and the best coffee I´ve had in South America. I selected some fruit for later consumption and souvenired the partly used soap and shampoo.

When I checked out it was the first time I had used my credit card for anything but a cash withdrawal since Lima in June. The scarcity of hotel beds in greater Buenos Aires was due to a convention of dermatologists, the clerk explained.

I don´t think many of its monied guests leave Hotel del Casco carrying a pack and walking to the train station. But the rest of the day was plain sailing. The train took me to Retiro station, which is next door to the long-distance bus terminal. I found a convenient overnight bus to Bariloche and bought a ticket. I watched the last 20 minutes of S. Africa vs Fiji in one of the cafeterias and had a satisfying lunch.

There was a moment of confusion when I tried to board the 14:00 hours bus, instead of the 14:05. Well, only the 14:05 was showing on the electronic departure board. But that was quickly resolved and we set off in a bus so modern the upholstery still had a whiff of that ´new vehicle´ smell.

The Via Bariloche cama service has restored the reputation of Argentinian buses. It was very comfortable. There was coffee and a sandwich for afternoon tea and a hot meal with wine for dinner. There was even champagne, but it was served so late I was too tired to want any.

We cruised smoothly over the province of Buenos Aires. I have come across so much flat land in South America. From the top deck of the bus I could see to the horizon in every direction and it was FLAT. There were fences and trees and cows and buildings all on flat, flat land. I even imagined I could see the curvature of the earth. This continued until the daylight failed 6 hours into the journey. As far as I could see it was still flat when I woke to visit the loo in the night.

In the morning we were gently but firmly awakened. And there were scrub-covered hills outside instead of grassy plains. Were we on a different planet? To our left, so I could not see it well, was a slow-moving river. Either that or an immensly long lake. Coffee and breakfast helped to get the brain working properly.

The timing of the wake-up call was just right. By the time breakfast had been served and the empty trays gathered in, there was just enough time to pack up and put my contact lenses in before we drew up in Bariloche bus terminal a quarter of an hour early.

San Carlos de Bariloche is soooo like Queenstown. All that´s missing is jet boating. It is on a lake with tree-clad mountains at the back, a large ski-field nearby and all facilities for tourists, including over-priced restaurants. Many Swiss have settled in the area and it has the additional attraction of chocolate-making. Many shops in the town sell nothing else. One of the more prominent chocolaterias is called Rapa Nui. Why is it named after Easter Island? A Spanish-speaking Austrian at the hostel went in and asked. "No reason."

I stayed at Hostel 1004. The unusual name has a very good reason. It is on the 10th and top floor of an apartment building near the lake in Bariloche. It is apartment 1004. Simple. The views over the lake from the common room are stupendous.

Having got my bearings I set out to enjoy the mountain scenery. A local bus took me along to withing easy walking distance of a national park. I followed a trail through the woods where the heard-but-unseen bird was abundant. Amongst a school party coming the other way I spotted a youth with iPod earphones in each ear. I fear the birdsong was wasted on him.

In the afternoon I took a boat ride on the lake to visit Isla Victoria. The significance of this island was lost on me because I could not understand more than 5% of the commentary. On the Altiplano I usually understood 50% or more of what the Spanish-speaking guides said. Anyway I had an hour to roam this island before we re-embarked and carried on to a special area that is a park in its own right within a national park.

The tree that makes this area so special is the arrayan.

It has lovely cinnamon coloured bark and there is one peninusla where it particularly flourishes. We were only allowed 45 minutes there, but that was ample to go round the walkway and take many photos of the beautiful trees.

That evening the hostel organised a "wine tasting". Everyone bought a bottle of wine, they were all carefully opened and set out on a big table, and then the music was turned up and it was party time! No-one made any tasting notes. I can´t explain why, but the ambience of Hostel 1004 generates a special atmosphere. Conversation flows particularly freely. It is one of the sleeping places I can most heartily recommend.

On Wednesday we all got up a bit late for some reason. Patrick, the Spanish-speaking Austrian, planned to trek around all of Bariloche´s chocolate shops. I opted for a more prosaic walk up Cerro Otto. The tramp was harder than I expected. The last kilometre was through and around patches of snow. This would not have been such an issue if I had remebered to change into my tramping boots, but I set off in sneakers. Silly Bill. However, the views were glorious.

Back in town I elected to cook myself a steak meal in the hostel´s excellent kitchen. The supermarket offered, amongst other labels, wines of the "Aberdeen Angus" brand. I am not making this up. There is a photo of the label in the camera. It was not a premium product, so I selected a bottle of the syrah for about $4. It wasn´t as good as the meat was, but it was better than some of the wines tasted the previous evening.

Today I have moved down the road to El Bolson. It´s a very laid back town and I like it. The craft market today has some interesting stuff, but there`s no room in my pack. However, it provided some interesting snacks for lunch and some very good locally brewed beer.

Oh dear. This reads like I´m becoming an alcoholic. I promise it´s not true, dear readers.

Please leave comments or send emails. It´s good to get feedback.

Buenos Aires

This is a bit back to front, because I was in Buenos Aires before Uruguay, but that´s how the mood took me. This post was going to be an account of the scenery around Tupiza in Bolivia, but the computer here is just too slow on the photo CD. Maybe I´ll move to another Internet cafe later.

As previously mentioned, I arrived in BA in glorious sunshine with the Hampshire Harlequins. I left them to the perils of their 4-star hotel and hied me to a centrally located hostel.

It was a Sunday, so my first sortie found useful things like supermarkets closed, while the pedestrian mall of Avenida Florida had boutiques and souvenir parlours open for business. Not everyone took that view. I met some Grammar Lions (Golden Oldies hockey players from Auckland) who were excited at the prices of leather jackets. Their enthusiam was rather wasted on me, because I have no desire for leather clothing.

The intersecting Avenida Lavalle is also pedestrians only for several blocks, and here I located plenty of eating houses. I would not starve. A number of these have employees standing in the street handing advertising to passers by.

This wasn´t too bad, but lurking in the shadows were other distributors of literature, trying to lure the visitor into bars and clubs. When I relate that the first one I accepted carried a picture of a woman with nothing on you will understand which industry these pests were in. Thereafter I declined all handouts.

Monday dawned wet, so I limited myself to the central sights near the hostel. In the cathedral there are not only side chapels with attendant saints, but the last resting place of General San Martin, liberator of Argentina from Spanish rule. From the information around his tomb you would get the impression that he also freed Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador. But in Peru and Bolivia all the credit is given to Simon Bolivar. Where do I get an unbiased history of South America?

It was at San Martin´s grave that I encountered more Golden Oldies, this time from the Dutch Over-65s team. However, we respected the signs requesting silence. We contented ourselves with smiling our recognition and shaking hands.

Outside the showers persisted. I took a couple of photos of the Casa Rosada (the US president lives in a White House, the Argentine one in a Pink House) before following a sign to an ethnographic museum. This turned out to be a department of the university and mainly, if I understood the signs correctly, a research facility. The signs were clear that it was not open to the public on Mondays.

However the route took me past the Iglesia de San Francisco, which was open. Unusually, it had no gold leaf or other bling around the alter. Instead there was a large wall hanging, a tapestry I think. Since photography was not forbidden I tried to hold the camera steady enough for the long exposure necessary in the gloom.

Tuesday was better weather so I elected to follow the Lonely Planet walking tour. To get to the starting point I took the Subte, BA´s underground railway. I did not make the most efficient journey as there are two stations named Callao, which strikes me as an unusual way to arrange a rapid transit system. I later found there are two named Independencia as well.

The walk starts at the Recoleta Cemetry. I thought this rather odd until I got there. It is a necropolis, where the residents are interred beneath or inside little houses, or palaces if you are rich enough. I had seen a couple of these from buses in Paraguay but this was the first time I had ever seen one up close.

I was pounced on by a lady as I arrived. She sold me a map of the cemetery, with a recommended route and the most interesting memorials marked on it. This was very useful. I must have spent two hours or so meandering round the "streets". Some of the little buildings are quite sumptuous and others are falling into ruin. Presumably the latter belong to families who have died out or fallen on hard times.

Evita´s tomb gets a lot of visitors. She is in the Duarte family tomb, while her husband, the former president Juan Peron is in a another, less prestigious, cemetery. However, many of Argentina´s ex-presidents are amongst the Recoleta residents, together with military leaders, writers, scholars (not many of them that I could see) and artists. The biggest tomb belonged to a banker.

Back amongst the living, the walking tour took me past the Engineering School in an odd, but doubtless perfectly sound, building to a huge artwork. A gigantic silver flower, possibly meant to be a lotus, stands in a large artificial pond. At night the petals close, although the postcards I bought suggest that they do not close very tightly.

Apart from a wander round a pretty church, there was not much of note in the rest of the tour. The BA Design Centre is not my thing and the Law School building was not nearly so interesting as the Engineering School.

In the afternoon I had my final encounter with another Golden Oldie. It was Rose from the Hampshire Harlequins enjoying a little free time between a hectic schedule of post-hockey tours.

Wednesday was an altogether different day. No more churches or big buildings, I set off for an ecological reserve. I intended to pop in to the South American Explorers clubhouse, but when I got there it was not due to open until 1pm. Too bad.

The reserve is accessed from a fairly busy street. It´s about 100m to the gates. The layout is very roughly a figure of eight sytem of walking tracks around a couple of lakes. I did not make notes from the helpful signs, but I think the circumference is between 4 and 5 km. It took me hours, and I didn´t go all the way round.

Although it is only 100m from a major city, the birdlife is astonishing. I will not bore you with a full list, but I added 20 ticks and met plenty of old friends, too. There was also one bird I saw twice, both times very clearly, but could not locate in the field guide.

At one point early on a local birder opened a conversation. His English was a little better than my Spanish, but bird talk does not feature in the phrase book. He particularly pointed out where to look for a bird called sietecolores (seven colours).

Amongst the information boards was one that illustrated some particularly colourful birds. They included my megatick vermillion flycatcher and the sietecolores, which I could look up and translate as the many-coloured reed tyrant. I did catch a couple of glimpses of scarlet, but the only one of the colourful birds that I actually identified was the masked gnatcatcher, which sports nice blue wings.

The city was hosting a convention of dermatologists, 15,000 of them according to a delegate I spoke to. He was a Brazilian medical student called Guilherme. He and several other students were staying at the same hostel. Guilherme does not plan to specialise as a dermatologist himself, but the student registration was very cheap and his tutor recommended that he go.

Apart from speaking very good English, polished in part by staying with relatives in Manchester, Guilherme plays the guitar. One evening there was a very enjoyable singalong in the hostel, although most of the songs were in Portuguese and known only to the Brazilian students. He did throw in a couple of Beatles numbers and we discovered that I don´t know all the words these days.

We have swapped email addresses to swap news and hopefully maintain contact until either Guilherme visits NZ or I get to see Brazil.

The dormitory had bunks three-high so there wasn´t a lot of space. I made the mistake of packing while sitting crouched on my bottom bunk. This didn´t do my back a lot of good, so I set off for the fast ferry to Uruguay in some pain. However, the anti-inflammatories calmed things down and I am fine now. Which brings us up to the point where the Uruguay post started.

Hello from Uruguay

I admit that part of the reason for coming to Uruguay was to get another country´s stamp in my passport. I can add a new name to the list of countries visited. It´s quite a small country squished in between Argentina and Brazil on South America´s Atlantic coast. The population, I´ve been told, is 3 million and it doesn´t have any must-see attractions like Machu Picchu or Iguacu.

I did toy with the idea of visiting the capital, Montevideo, where the Graf Spee took refuge after the battle of the River Plate in WW2, but Buenos Aires was quite enough big city for a while so I settled for sightseeing in Colonia del Sacramento and a boat trip through the delta back to Argentina.

Getting to Colonia is easy. Buquebus runs several fast ferries daily from BA across the river direct to Colonia. It´s a popular destination for Porteños (citizens of Buenos Aires) particularly in the summer. The journey is only one hour each way so it can be a day trip. I chose the 2pm sailing, which doesn´t take cars and is therefore probably less prone to complications.

The journey itself was rather dull. The River Plate is prone to fogs, and a light mist restricted visibility. There are no decks for the passengers to take the air. All I could see thrugh the window was the water rushing past at 30 knots. Accoding to Buquebus literature the vessel´s top speed is 50 knots. I get excited if my little yacht goes over 6 knots.

The hostel I had selected from the guide book had plenty of room. In fact I had a dormitory to myself.

There was enough daylight left for a wander. Down by the river a group of schoolchildren were flying kites. The lack of wind made this much more difficult, but it didn´t appear to dampen their enthusiasm. I hope they had insect repellent with them, because some biting things found me. Luckily their range did not extend to the town.

After the noise and bustle of BA, Colonia is delightfully peaceful. Most of the streets are lined by trees and the old streets are "cobbled", although the paving is so irregular that they are a danger to anything less than a Land Rover.

There are many restaurants in the old town, but they are distinctly upmarket. Only a couple of them advertised specials. The one I chose was having a particularly slow evening. I was the only customer. The waitress assured me that they had the opposite problem in the summer season.

In the morning I followed the guide book description of the old, colonial period town. This included the local museums. Each is quite small, but one inexpensive ticket admits you to all of them. And it was a good day to be indoors. Dark, thick clouds hung threateningly overhead and the heavy showers started as I made my way to the bus terminal.

My destination was Carmelo, the departure point for the slower ferries that take the scenic route through the delta to Tigre in Argentina. The bus took me through undulating green fields with cows or soggy crops. It could have been almost anywhere in Northern Europe or NZ´s North Is.

I managed to get off at the right place and find the cheaper hotel listed in Lonely Planet. It had put its prices up, but cunningly not so much that it was worth looking elsewhere. In truth it was a bit of a dump, but the manager was cheerful and very helpful with directions. It was clean, had a private bathroom and it was only for one night.

Or was it? My first excursion was to the ferry company´s office. Alas for my dreams of a picturesque cruise through the islands of the delta. The Saturday sailings were before dawn, which was fully booked anyway, or after sunset. I could wait until Sunday when the sailing was just after midday, but that would arrive in Tigre too late to catch the Sunday bus to Bariloche. If I caught the Monday bus I would not arrive in Bariloche until Tuesday. Carmelo has no particular attractions to enhance an 18 hour delay.

After tossing all the options around I settled for the Saturday evening sailing and hope that the light will linger.

Dinner was grilled meat and salad with a half-litre jug of house wine. Most satisfying. And only two thirds the price of the tourist restaurant in Colonia. The TV news was full of the rain and its effects. It seems that this area got off lightly.

And now it is Saturday. The sun is shining, a little wanly to be sure, but there are shadows. Carmelo has just about shut down. This Internet cafe will close at 12:30 and reopen at 4:00. I did some shopping this morning so I have bread and cheese and fruit in my pack. But surely the cafes will be open at lunchtime?

In other posts, I have added a few words and several pictures to the Uyuni-Tupiza story and redated it 1 October. The Salar de Uyuni Part 2 is now complete with lots of photos.

Keep the comments and emails coming.