Final days in Argentina and Chile

Ladies & gents, it is with great sadness I present to you our last blog post for this adventure... enjoy!

After the absolute battering that our bodies took over the 3 weeks that Ross Gates came to join us we left Rio behind and headed to Buenos Aires. After investigating how to get to BA it turned out that flying Emirates was the cheapest way we could do it and so we climbed aboard our first every Emirates flight looking like a bunch of lost homeless people.

After our super classy flight we arrived in BA and were greeted by our Danish fellow Inca Trail survivor Mikael, who was nice enough to adopt us in to his house for a few days. So for the first time in a long while we spent the night in a quiet, comfortable and completely alcohol free environment! Needless to say it was stunning. There has been a slight mix up with Ross' flights to Canada so it resulted in him only having 1 day to explore town before heading off, so we hit the streets. So after catching the world's slowest public transport system in the city we had a leisurely stroll around BA, checking out the crazy antique stores and eating more empanadas. The real gem of BA though was the BBQ that Mikael cooked us that night - in Argentina it is thoroughly frowned upon to use gas and all the meat is cooked on open coals - absolute erection inducing stuff! So as Tom and Ross sussed out how to construct an "asado", KG quickly churned out some salad and then Mikael could show us the art of how to cook meat! Needless to say the meal was absolutely mental and as with any meal in Argentina more than a few bottles of wine were required - some local customs just have to be followed!

The next day with Ross departing prematurely for Canada, we headed off to see the Argentinian Rugby team, The Pumas, take on the English. Naturally, not wanting to piss off the locals and not really giving a toss about the English we supported the Argies! Katherine chose this as a great time to whip out a few choice pieces of knowledge from her albeit short but illustrious playing career! Unfortunately the Poms were too much for the Argies so we left early and headed out for a quick spot of dinner. Even though we had been in Argentina/Brazil for a few weeks we were still struggling with the whole "eating dinner at a stupid hour of the evening" concept that the locals embrace so dearly! So after killing a couple hours it was finally time for dinner! The next day our epic host Mikael departed for his homeland but was nice enough to let us two bums stay at his house for a few days before we headed off - what a legend! Thanks Mikael!

Mikael working the grill - Tom & Ross admiring the master at work!

Some freak hanging out in an antique store...

Don't cry for me Argentina.

After a couple more days in BA we jumped aboard yet another bus and headed to Rosario, the once home to both Che Guevara and Leonel Messi. We spent a couple days dawdling around Rosario, eating steak, watching the NBA finals and just generally lazing around. The local football team just happened to win the Argentinian Championship while we were there so the town was going ape for a day, we had the opportunity to go and see the team arrive back to town after the game but passed the chance up for the most more enticing prospect of meat and ice cream! Our next stop was Cordoba where we were swiftly reminded of how much a shite hostel could affect our opinions of a town. We spent a few days wondering around the town, checking out the local park, Tom applied for a few jobs, Katherine bought some new shoes and started running again - all that exciting stuff that you associate with travelling. We did manage to drag ourselves out on a day trip to the house that Che Guevara lived in as a child - well worth the trip and the empanadas at lunch were superb!

Judging by these moves I don't think KG had a swing set as a child

Tom at the house of Che Guevara

No idea what this monument was but it was bloody impressive!

After leaving our God-awful hostel in Cordoba we caught our final overnight bus for the trip and arrived in Mendoza where the only thing to do is ride bicycles and drink red wine! So the day after we arrived we headed off with some people from our hostel and hired some bikes and visited wineries all day - it really is a hard life! Much to everyone's surprise everyone made it home completely intact! After a day off we decided that another wine tour was required and we took a different approach on our second tour. The 'taste the wine and enjoy the flavour' strategy was shelved for the 'let's see how much we can drink for as little money as possible' approach - both have their upsides - the second approach definitely resulted in some creative riding, a much larger hangover and even a police escort! The hostel we stayed in during our time in Mendoza was fantastic, we spent several nights around the grill drinking wine, talking rubbish and the English owner even thought it would be a wise move to break out the homemade Grappa... very interesting decision! We were only meant to be in Mendoza for a couple days but due to heavy snow the border to Chile was closed so we had no choice but to stay... not such a bad thing to be honest.

KG with her trusty steed on one of our wine tours

Early morning absinthe... not a clever move!

KG checking out the goods...

A sombre moment, Tom with his final steak in Argentina

With the border closed we finally made the decision to bite the bullet and buy flights to Chile... only to find out 2 hours later that the border had been opened! Classic! Anyway, we flew to Santiago, Chile where we would spend the final 3 nights of our trip. We desperately hoped that Santiago would be crap so we would want to go home but we were disappointed to find out it was an awesome city! We did our final free walking tour of the trip, found an awesome Indian restaurant and even got some culture and education at a couple of the local museums. After 3 days of cruising around Santiago it finally came time to head to the airport and catch our flight back to Australia and home to Adelaide.

Fitting in with the Santiago locals - lining up for a curry!

KG hanging out in front of the President's house in Santiago

Not sure what's happening here...

Check out the rig!

Now would be the time for me to say something prolific about what a life-changing and awe-inspiring 11 months we have had but I can't think of anything insightful enough to sum it up! We have had an absolutely incredible time, seen some of the most amazing things the world has to offer, met some incredible and some not so incredible people. Travelling has it ups, it's downs and it's inbetweens but the last 11 months have been the most memorable of our lives.

Thank you for everyone who read our blog when we got off our lazy asses and posted it, hopefully in the near future when we travel again we can start up another blog full of commentary on food, pictures of us looking homeless in foreign countries, tales of dodgy bus trips and wankers we have met on the road.

Thanks!
Tom & Katherine