Zoe & Dave's Shot To Nothing

Photos and words from our travels across the Americas.

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Wonder-falls

It felt like a real wrench to be leaving Buenos Aires behind, but at least we were about to see the mighty Iguazu Falls, one of the 7 wonders of the world, so every cloud has a silver lining!

Our longest bus ride yet - 19 hours in total - was also our most comfortable. The Cruz del Norte coach had fully flat beds, personal tv screens and pretty good food (even by bus standards), so we arrived on the verdant and tropical Brazil/Argentina/Paraguay border a little better rested than on previous overnighters.

We decided to spend a day on the Argentinian side of the falls and a day on the Brazilian side, because we’d been told the experiences are quite different. Both sides have towns very close to the border and the park, and we found both - Puero Iguazu and Foz do Iguazu - to be unremarkable and not particularly nice.

What we weren’t prepared for, on arriving at the Argentinian side of Iguazu falls, was the sheer scale of the operation. Apparently we were there on a quiet day, yet we still found ourselves queueing to catch the little train that trundles you from the park entrance to the falls themselves. Perhaps we’d fallen into the classic backpacker trap and just become too used to having beautiful sights to ourselves, but we resented how much like Disneyland the park infrastructure felt.

Aside from the gazillions of tourists, the Argentinian side of Iguazu Falls is stunning, with forest and parkland winding you along easy trails. At a certain point, you begin to hear the constant roar of falling water, then you begin to see tourists coming in the opposite direction in rain-soaked ponchos, and then the vegetation breaks and Iguazu Falls are below you, and stretching out to either side of you, pretty much as far as the eye can see. Words barely describe the falls, and pictures cannot do justice to them either...you just have to go. Seriously, if you're ever anywhere near that part of the world, take a look.

So there we were - unable to verbalise what we were seeing - standing, inches from the cascades, covered in spray...just...staring. The Argentinian side of the falls also brings you very close to the fierce heart of Iguazu, the ‘Devil’s Throat’. We went, we had a look, we got soaked. Seeing the falls up-close on the Argentinian side was good fun, and the little hikes were nice too, but we were looking forward to getting the views which the Brazilian side promised.

After a day doing the border crossing and settling into our Brazilian hostel in Foz do Iguazu, we made our way to the Brazilian side of Iguazu Falls, which was similarly theme-parky, but a little better organised, with fleets of buses queued up to take visitors from the park entrance to the falls. We decided to start with a bang and signed up for an expensive but thoroughly worthwhile boat ride, which took us from up-river tranquility into the raging rapids at the bottom of the falls. Our pilot even took the boat underneath one of the waterfalls, getting everyone soaked in the process! It was thrilling to see the falls up close, and as we zoomed back up river, drenched and shivering, we both decided this was the best way to see Iguazu Falls!

After drying off we 'did' the Brazilian side of Iguazu Falls, which was easier and less intensive than the Argentinian side, ambling along a path which runs for around 2 miles, offering incredible views across the river to the Falls, before finally bringing us up close to some of the falls on the Brazilian side. Overall, we enjoyed the Brazilian side more, preferring the panoramic views to the up-close intensity and hikes in Argentina. There was also a markedly more fun-loving atmosphere on the Brazilian side, with people slurping beer while they queued, cheering at each other as they passed on open-top buses, and generally having a good time.

An incredible couple of days at Iguazu Falls gave 2 tired travellers the final zing of energy required to get us excited about the final stop on our long journey: Rio de Janeiro.

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Tango'd in Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires is so stuffed with tango, it spills out onto the streets. Our first taste came during the free city tour we did, during which our guide took us to the historic area of Abasta, where the late great tango legend Carlos Gardel lived. There, along the narrow streets, we saw statues, wall paintings and graffiti to the great man. A little further afield in the trendy BA neighbourhoods of San Telmo and Palermo, we saw tango buskers in the streets, brass-cut tango footsteps for passers-by to follow, and even tango dancers in street squares and restaurants. Tango was everywhere, and we had to give it a go!

There are many tango shows in Buenos Aires - for every Broadway musical or London show there is a BA tango show, it seems - but we chose an alternative 'off broadway' evening called We Are Tango. This was a smaller, less glitsy, more intimate affair. At We Are Tango, we enjoyed front row seats (as did the rest of the capacity crowd of 20!) as we watched an incredible tango couple whizz around the floor, flinging limbs within inches of our faces and dazzling us with their fierce physicality. Here we got a real sense of the passion and melancholy of the dance and accompanying music which make tango what it really is. Afterwards, the dancers had us put down our wine glasses and even try a few steps for ourselves! We left We Are Tango tingling with excitement, knowing we had to give tango a proper go, and if we were going to do so, it'd have to be in a proper milonga (tango dance hall). But to do that, we'd need a lesson or two!

Our teacher was called Cristian, and in his Palermo-based studio, under the watchful eye of a man who had clearly developed a failsafe technique for beginners, we began to learn the steps. Perhaps because of Cristian's brilliance, and also the fact that we were enjoying a private lesson, we found ourselves progressing quickly, and within our first hour-long lesson we were managing a rather stiff tango walk together, up and down the studio. In our 2nd lesson, Cristian moved us on to a few classic tango 'blocks' (where the man literally has to block the path of the woman's foot and she must respond with a deft flick and stepover), along with the 'ocho', a simple eight-step routine which gave our tango walks a little variety. So we had the basics down, but were we ready to dance in a milonga? Cristian didn't think so, warning us it might be too much for us...which of course increased our determination to give it a go!

We decided on a place which was an old staple of the BA scene (and allegedly Evita's favourite milonga), La Confiteria Ideal. We arrived at about 11.30pm (things begin late in BA!) and immediately could see and feel the faded charm that we'd read about in Trip Advisor reviews. The place was certainly grand but everything seemed to be hiding under a thick layer of dust and apathy. We paid a tired-looking reception lady and made our way up a grand marble staircase, past the main hall in which we could see tourists being wowed by a flashy tango show, and onto the next floor, where a large upstairs chamber was divided into three by lines of faded gilt-edged pillars. And there, in the centre of the room, was the real heart of the BA tango scene: a selection of couples - of all ages - elegantly and whisking round the dance floor in intimate holds to the strains of piped, tango classics from a tired looking DJ in the corner. We sat down at one the many spare tables on the edge of the dancefloor, ordered some drinks and felt a faint whiff of disappointment at how run down everything felt.

Was this BA's famous tango scene on its last legs? Perhaps, but actually the longer we sat and watched the couples, the more we became hooked on the music, dance and general feel of the place, realising that under the faded veneer the passion and melancholic madness of tango was here in spades. We watched as apparently old and fragile couples arrived, downed their coats and suddenly became entwined in deft tango tangles, whilst aloof and more flashy younger pairs joined the fray. Couples stopped dancing between numbers and chatted to one another, occasionally swapping partners for a dance. We sat in our creaky old chairs, too scared to dance, but transfixed by what was unfolding in front of us.

But all of the changed in an unexpected instant when a garrulous older gent bowled up and whisked Zoë onto the dance floor! Suddenly Dave watched as his wife melted into the BA tango scene in front of him, gliding around the floor with her new charge. She returned and breathlessly demanded that we both step out. And so it was that we found ourselves striding out on Evita's favourite dancefloor, flushed with embarrassment and excitement, and 'did' our version of the tango. Leaving the place at around 1am, we felt an immense sense of pride that we'd managed to dance the tango at a real Buenos Aires milonga. We wandered home with a spring in our step, no blue toes, and a story to write home about. It was the perfect way to round off our Buenos Aires adventure!

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Food and drink in Buenos Aires

1 Cafe y media lunas - Anywhere!

Argentinians have a slightly different take on breakfast, which is that if you eat so blinking late at night (around 10-11pm on average), you don't have such a big breakfast. However, all is not lost, brekky fans, for anytime from 10am onwards, you'll find cafes in Buenos Aires overflowing with Porteños munching their way through the sticky, sweet Argentinian equivalent of croissants, called media lunas. 

We tried so many different places it's impossible to recommend one...but we recommend you give it a try!

2 Coffee/Brunch/cakes - Faranelli

Our favourite cafe for hanging out and brunching during our time in BA was this smart little italian place in the Retiro district. Nestled in sidestreets, near posh hotels and on the way to Recoleta, Faranelli does amazing juices, great sandwiches, tarts to die for, and great coffee too. https://www.facebook.com/farinelliba

3 Dulce de Leche

This isn't a BA-specific tip, but more a general Argentina recommendation: if you haven't tried the unctuously diabetes-inducing delectable Dulce de Leche, then you need to remedy that. The best way to eat it is with a teaspoon, straight out of the pot!

The thing is, with at least 20 brands on the market, where do you start? Our favourite was Jaserenisima 'Estilo Colonial' which was available in all supermarkets and had a really buttery smoothness but also a beautiful burnt sugar background flavour. We loved it so much, we brought nearly 2KGs back to the UK with us!

4 Steak - Don Julio, Palermo

Parilla restaurants, where steak is served Argentine-style, straight from the flaming grill, are everywhere in Buenos Aires and we tried a few during our time here. Our favourite was this place, which consistently tops tourist and expat polls, Don Julio. 

Nestled in the heart of Palermo, the place oozes charm, has a beautiful romantic ambience, cool decor and really knowledgable (English speaking!) waiters. The price tag is BA standard too, so it won't break the bank...and even if it does, you'll have put away some of the most mouthwatering steak you've ever had in your life!

We went early week at around 8pm and had no trouble getting a table without a reservation.

http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Restaurant_Review-g312741-d1066728-Reviews-Don_Julio-Buenos_Aires_Capital_Federal_District.html

5 Ice cream: Persicco, Jugo

With such a large italian population, BA is rightly proud of its ice cream heritage, and pretty much every street corner has a gelato selling creamy italian style ice cream, usually in a huge range of flavours which ALWAYS include variations of Dulce de Leche ice cream. Mmmm! 

We really did our research on this one, visiting at least 5 of the top ice cream places in BA, and a few random ones mid-sightseeing too!

The best we came across were Persicco, which has several outlets across the capital, and Jugo in Palermo, which had some really interesting flavours (Dave tried Cardamon!) and the hands-down-best Dulce de Leche ice cream of them all.

6 Alfajores/churros at Cafe Tortoni

This place is the oldest cafe in Argentina. It feels like the Ritz, only with less starch and more faded charm. Go along for afternoonzies, queue for a bit, then be sure to order Churros and Alfajores (cookie-chocolate-Dulce de Leche combo). Once your cakes are on the way, sit back, watch the penguin-suited waiters work and admire the incredible history of the place.

http://www.cafetortoni.com.ar/index_ingles.html

7 Fernet cola - Any BA bar

Fernet is a potent italian spirit which is currently the groovy drink of choice for Porteños. Drink it with coke (ask for 'Fernet Cola'), which is similar to rum and coke, only according to locals, Fernet won't give you a hangover. We tested the theory out, and enjoyed both the drink and the ensuing hangover!

8 Red wine: Bonarda or Bonarda blend

This is a country obsessed with red wine, but if you're anything like us, you'll get tired of the spicy punch-in-the-face Malbecs. So if you're looking for something a bit more subtle, but still want an authentic taste of Argentina, look for mid-priced Bonarda or Bonarda-blend wines. This is a grape you might not have come across, but it is big in Argentina and used to be just for table wine (hence why we say look mid-range, not bargain basement) but is now undergoing something of a renaissance, as a fine dining wine. It's smooth, fairly light (compared to Malbec) and utterly delicious with red meat!

9 Salmon sandwich: Cafe Nucha, Recoleta

Smoked Salmon sandwiches are something of a brunch favourite in Buenos Aires, and the one at Cafe Nucha was the best we tried. The cafe is the perfect spot for having coffee and watching the refined Recoleta types going about their business, but more than that, the sandwich is to die for!

http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Restaurant_Review-g312741-d1139333-Reviews-Nucha-Buenos_Aires_Capital_Federal_District.html

10 Self catering surf n turf

We were living in an apartment during our time in Buenos Aires so ate in a fair amount...so imagine our surprise when, in the supermarket, we realised we could enjoy a beautiful surf and turf meal, with langoustine and fillet steak, for pretty much the same price as fresh pasta! It pays to look at what is cheap locally, and we're certainly glad we did!

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Top 10 Recommendations for Buenos Aires

1 Walking tour

Jonathan from http://www.buenosaireslocaltours.com/ is a Brit abroad who hasn't lost his sharp English wit. His free Buenos Aires tour is a great introduction to the city, including vital practical information about how to use buses and subway, and some cracking facts about the city, it's architecture, bonkers politics, food and plenty else besides. A great way to spend your first day in BA.

2 Boca Juniors game

Getting a ticket to a game at the Bombonera isn't easy (though we do know someone, message is for a tip) without paying through the nose for a 'tour', but once you get inside the towering 1930s stadium, you understand what the fuss is about. Porteños are passionate about their football, so every kick of the game is cheered ferociously. The game is incidental, the atmosphere and people-watching is unforgettable.

3 Dante Building (Palacio Barolo)

The Palacio Barolo, an office building like no other, is a must-see in BA for any architecture or literature nuts, or anyone who liked The Hudsucker Proxy (being inside the building feels eerily like the Cohen brothers' corporate monstrosity). We took the daytime tour of this crazy building (aim for sunset hour) which has a floor dedicated to every level of heaven and hell in Dante's 'Divine Comedy', but there is a nighttime tour with wine tasting too. The period details and story behind the construction of the building (we won't spoil it for you) are worth the trip alone, but the view of Buenos Aires from the top is jaw dropping. www.palaciobarolotours.com

4 El Ateneo Bookshop

Yeah, we know, a bookshop, but unlike any other bookshop you've ever seen. El Ateneo was a beautiful theatre until it was taken over by the present owners, who chucked up some shelves and started selling books...and that's about it. No other details have been changed, with chandeliers, stage, curtains and grand circles retained. You'll do more swooning at the artwork on the ceiling than the books, but if you want to curl up with something good, the old theatre boxes are now little reading nooks.

5 Tango lessons

There are a gazillion different people offering dance lessons in this, the city of Tango, but we found Cristian from http://www.tangopiola.com/ to be a brilliant choice for English-speaking dance dummies like us. Cristian has a fail-safe system for beginners, making you feel confident right from the start. Private lessons are reasonable, and his studio in Palermo is well-placed for dinner and milonga fun after your lessons.

6 Milonga

Milonga is the name of tango dance halls in Argentina. It's also confusingly the name given to a modern form of tango, but here we're talking about the former, because you simply have to get yourself down to a dance hall and watch Porteños of all ages cavorting around the floor. We went to La Confiteria Ideal for its faded charm and history, but La Catedral is also worth a look, and there are plenty others across the city too.

7 Outdoor gyms/running in the parks

Great for working off all the steak and wine! If you want to feel like a local, then strap on a water bottle, pour yourself into some lycra and go pound out some miles through the city's beautiful parks. There is outdoor gym equipment in most parks too, when you need a change from the running.

8 San Telmo market

Every Sunday the entire Defensa road becomes a practically never ending array of stalls selling everything from leather goods to weird dolls, antiques and souvenirs. It's not your classic tacky market fair, and if you're lucky there'll be some live tango on one of the street corners.

9 Recoleta cemetery tour

Though you could wander alone for hours in this palatial city of the dead, some direction can be helpful, and luckily there are free English tours every Tuesday and Thursday at 11am. The tours do more than just showing you Eva Peron's tomb, and all in all are short, fun and informative, going a little way to explain why hundreds of thousands of dollars change hands when plots are bought and sold in the cemetery. Once you're acquired, it's a very peaceful place to wander and ponder, too.

10 Take a bus

BA sometimes feels dauntingly big, but there is a great bus network to whisk you around, if you pluck up the guts to use it. We found ourselves drifting slowly (heavy LA-like traffic generally keeps the going slow) through weird and wonderful districts, the most memorable being an entire city street dedicated to shops selling shop mannequins. Beyond bizarre, and beyond the reaches of most tourists who stick to taxi and subway. Get out and explore, you won't regret it! If you do brave the buses, you need exact money in coins, and a bus directory (pocket sized, called Guite and available from news stands) is pretty essential too. Take the city tour suggested above, and you'll find out exactly how to use the buses!

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A month in Buenos Aires

Arriving back in Buenos Aires after our Gaucho Week on the estancia, we booked into an apartment on the sixteenth floor of a city centre high rise, and stayed for a whole month.

It was great to unpack, and it was even greater to take the sightseeing at a gentle pace, going out and seeing stuff when we felt like it, and staying in, watching films and cooking for ourselves when we felt lazy. These were great days: we had all the luxuries afforded to city dwellers without the stress of long working hours, and we had all the benefits of citybreak tourists without the time constraints.

So what did we make of Buenos Aires during our month? It’s a sprawling mass which is practically impossible to get a handle on. We explored the central areas on foot, including the trendy Soho-esque Palermo, the cobbled historic streets and markets of San Telmo and the old money palaces and boutiques of Recoleta, including the famous cemetery with its towering mausoleums to the city’s great and good, as well as Eva Peron. We found ourselves marvelling at the city’s ubiquitous faded Parisian charm: everywhere are grand old palatial buildings which lie empty, forgotten or unloved. Here is a city which peaked at the beginning of the last century, and has tumbled down through a series of economic busts ever since.

We took full advantage of the city’s love affair with food: in the mornings we lounged in cafés eating sticky medialunas (a deliciously sticky, glazed croissant), while the evenings belonged to steak; we visited several Parrilla Restaurants (Argentine BBQ) and enjoyed fillet steak at home at least once a week. Porteños also famously love Tango, and we took some of that in too, trying a few lessons, catching a show and wandering Carlos Gardel’s home district of Abasta, which feels like a square-mile-wide shrine to the giant of Tango. The final obsession here is football, so we had to take in a Boca Juniors game, enjoying the thunderous atmosphere at their famous 1930s Bombonero stadium.

We took buses, passing through districts entirely dedicated to fancy dress hire, streets lined exclusively with mannequin shops, children’s toy stores, cake decorating accessories, school uniforms and other odd niches which all commanded their own areas. We visited the city’s famous leather district, admiring the fine bags, shoes and jackets, sniffing in the addictive smell of the hides whilst hiding our wallets from each other. We also took in a bit of art at the city’s two main contemporary galleries, both of which had seriously small and only occasionally interesting collections.

Our unexpected highlight was a tour of the Palacio Barrolo (aka the Dante building), a towering Art Deco skyscraper inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy, with floors dedicated to the various stages of hell and heaven and a breathtaking view of the city. We stood at the top there, in Dante’s ‘heaven’, admiring one of the great Latin cities, thanking our lucky stars that we’d been able to call it home for a short while.

Boarding an overnight bus for Brazil in a fierce electrical storm, we both felt a pang of melancholy as we left our temporary home behind, knowing that the final chapter of our trip was now upon us.

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Gauchos for a week

After the animal and wine fuelled fun of Mendoza, we travelled south to the vast Argentinian pampas flat lands for a completely different side of rural Argentina: exit stage left vineyards, enter...COWBOYS! Argentina has a serious red meat habit, with cow being on the menu at least every second meal. To feed that habit, many thousands of kilometres of rural countryside is grazed by hundreds of thousands of cattle, and those cattle are ruled over by the gauchos (Argentinian cowboys). Keen for an authentic taste of the gaucho life, we decided to volunteer on an estancia for a week.

Estancia La Margarita, where we were staying, is now dedicated to tourism. So whilst they retain horses, a few cattle and other animals, it is (to all intents and purposes) the argentine equivalent of a very charming small-holding catering for guests.

Set amidst thousands of acres of flat pampas grass, the estancia house is an impressive old building which is all roaring fires and gaucho memorabilia. Outside are the various farm buildings, along with a cute row of rose-coloured terraced cottages. These little self-contained units were the original dwellings of the estancia, and it is here where we were lucky enough to be holed up for a week.

Gaucho life and style We were thrilled to be out amongst the cattle and gauchos, and it was so different to the perfectly manicured Mendoza wine country. If Argentina is all about steak and wine, this was the ying to Mendoza's yang.

La Margarita really had a relaxed feel to it. Protected from the rolling pampas winds by its own little woods, life ticked over gently. Piglets, dogs and chickens wandered about in free-range fashion, cattle grazed and horses mooched, and they were all overseen by the equally-relaxed La Margarita gauchos, Mario and Ignacio. Both of them, we were delighted to see, were in traditional gaucho dress, with floppy berets, loose trousers and little canvas shoes, and if we’d thought this was just for the benefit of tourists we were mistaken, for on our travels in the area that week every gaucho we saw was similarly attired. We found them both impossible to understand, with their thick regional drawl, so most conversation was nods, smiles and sign language!

In these parts the gauchos are jacks-of-all-trades, looking after the cattle from horseback, tending the other animals, wood-cutting, gardening…anything which comes up really! Everything they did, though, was generally completed with expertise and a brawny silence. It seems unlikely the gaucho culture has changed much in generations, so it was nice to catch glimpses of this authentic slice of Argentine culture

Volunteering As volunteers for the week our duties were decidedly gentle, giving us ample time to soak up the local area: we ate with the staff in the cosy farm kitchen, rode out with and entertained estancia guests (although this being low season there weren’t that many), made juice from the surrounding fruit trees, collected eggs, and did a little manual labour weeding the gardens and clearing the woods of fallen branches and rubbish. Although it wasn’t particularly taxing, it was still a bit of a shock to our louche lifestyle to be doing some manual labour, but we enjoyed the toil, and spaced it between meals, siestas and chats with the animals. We also learned how to milk cows, which was good fun and Dave proved to be a natural!

Zoë meets the puppies The animals, it has to be said, stole Zoë’s attention for much of the week! Though the horses weren’t massively interested in human affection (more used to the stern gaucho ways), the 4 dogs were extremely friendly, so we made firm friends with them all, especially the Springer Spaniel puppy named Francisco (after the pope of course), who would accompany us on walks and rides, and whose favourite trick was hiding under our bed during nap times!

Riding: snakes and barrels Riding here was relaxed and good fun, especially towards the end of the week when we took a half-day ride into the surrounding (seemingly never-ending) countryside and had plenty of gallops, and our final day was our highlight, because we saw a paddock had some barrels laid out in it, we did some impromptu barrel racing…something Dave had never tried before but, to his surprise, managed at a canter first time out! The young gaucho Ignacio was more expert, weaving in and out of the barrels with ease before turning his horse on an impossibly tight circle and thundering back down the course. Zoë found her favourite horse on that last day, Margarita, a much finer bred mare than the stockier horses favoured here. Generally though, loping around the endless pampas and watching the cattle and wildlife, especially at sunset, was a real pleasure. On one day we even came across a couple of snakes, which thankfully the gauchos dealt with!

Meaty mealtimes We enjoyed a couple of delicious asados (Argentine bbq) while at La Margarita. Even here, the women stand back and allow the men to burn the meat! The gauchos were decidedly better at it than your average Dad, though.

As in Mendoza, dinner wasn’t until late (9pm earliest), but we had a couple of really nice evenings eating with the guests, and a couple more boozy ones chatting with the English estancia owner David, with whom we swapped traveling tales and stories from back home. David is a musician who left the UK many years ago and somehow wound up in Argentina, first buying a place in the capital before moving out here and embracing life as a gaucho. He blogs here, if you’re interested in his story: http://englishgaucho.blogspot.com.ar

All in all, the week was great fun, gave us our fix of horse riding and gaucho life as it rolled by at a gentle pace, punctuated by morning piglet sightings (they were usually outside our window when we drew the curtains!), incredible nighttime stargazing, some lovely rides, fun times with dogs and other guests, and for us, just a small insight into the life of a gaucho.

We headed into Buenos Aires with a well-researched understanding of 2 pillars of Argentino life, having seen both red meat and red wine in their natural habitats!

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Mendoza wine week

After the tremendous fun we had back in April, when we spent a day getting sozzled in California’s Napa Valley, we decided a wine follow up was in order. So as soon we crossed the border into Argentina, we headed for the famous wine region of Mendoza, close to the border with Chile, in the north east of Argentina.

A bus ride to the northern city of Salta, where we ambled around and got used to being back in civilisation again, was followed by a long overnight bus which brought us to the pretty and wealthy city of Mendoza, eponymous capital of the wine region.

Through a friend-of-a-friend, bizarrely we actually had a contact in Mendoza, a Texan expat called Mike who had a small organic finca just outside the city. So as soon as we’d checked into our hostel, we gave Mendoza Mike a call. To our surprise, Mike offered to bring us to his place that day, so after a snooze, a heavy lunch of steak and wine (and a negotiation with the hostel, who gave us a half day rate, seeing as we hadn't actually slept in the beds!) we jumped in Mike’s car and headed out into the Mendoza countryside.

The buildings quickly gave way to vines and as night fell we turned off the highway, headed along a dirt track, and arrived at Mike’s place. ‘Stay as long as you like’ Mike told us ‘What do you want to do while you’re here?’ he asked. Dave explained his My Year In Flux blog and told Mike that this week was to be ‘Wine Week’, ‘so we’d quite like to chill out, get over our Bolivian hangover and drink an awful lot of wine’ Dave told Mike. And for the next few days, we did just that.

Mike is an exceedingly generous man, and though the house on his finca was pretty rustic, we were made very comfortable and looked after extremely well. When he was around, Mike cooked us delicious food, introduced us to some eccentric friends, showed us his small vineyard as well as the surrounding area, and generally made sure we had a good time. And when he wasn’t around (Mike is training for a marathon, so he disappeared into the mountains for a couple of days training) we hung around on the vineyard, Zoë making friends with the horse Palomo, and the dogs, kittens, rabbits and chickens, while Dave concentrated on drinking and learning about wine.

Though it was cold at night, we had a great roaring fire and wine aplenty to keep us warm, and during the day it was warm enough to wander the local vineyards, gazing up at the snowy mountains in the distance. The whole 4 days passed in a complete daze for both of us, but we did get a real insight into the life and wines of Mike, who’d gone from knowing nothing about wine when he bought the vineyard back in the mid-noughties, to making a medal-winning wine, of which he produces 15,000 bottles of each year. Quite an inspiration!

Mike’s wine is called ‘MTB’ and is a Malbec (most are here) blended with a little Petit Verdot. The latter gives the wine an interestingly spicy taste, and Mike is currently having success exporting MTB to India, of all places. As well as making the wine, Mike has an interesting publicity tack, in the form of a side project called Luck Hunters, which is basically a reality tv show (yet to be picked up by a TV network) in which Mike and a struggling musician friend, Natalio, travel the world together attempting to sell and promote their wine and music projects. As 2 people who have no jobs and are trying to think a little differently about how we design our lifestyle going forward, meeting Mike was a testament to what is possible if you put your mind to it.

We topped off Mendoza wine week with a delicious meal (with copious wine) in a great central Mendoza restaurant before Mike put us on a bus to Buenos Aires. An incredible few days!

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Salar de Uyuni: the salt flats of Bolivia

A couple of days of nothing in the sleepy town of Tupiza, nestled near the Argentinian border amongst russet mountains and copious cacti, brought us well-rested and (once again) altitude acclimatised to the awesome swan-song of our Bolivian adventure: a 4 day tour to the salt flats of Salar de Uyuni. PRACTICALITIES We chose to begin in Tupiza, with the aptly named Tupiza Tours, due to universally good reviews, and we'd definitely recommend both the starting point and the company. Sure, the accommodation was basic and food of patchy quality, but the alternative of beginning the tour from Uyuni, where you set out with hoards of other tour companies (many of whom have terrible reputations for drunk drivers and poorly maintained vehicles stuffed to the gunwales) just didn't appeal to us. Beginning from Tupiza, as we did, you occasionally encounter 1 or 2 other tour jeeps, but generally you have the stunning scenery to yourself. We shared our tour with cheerful and gummy coca-leaf-chewing driver David, our cook Liboria (in traditional dress, and mostly knitting Alpaca garments or snoozing in the passsenger seat) and two other passengers, a delightful and funny French basque couple, Thomas and Cyrielle. MORE THAN 'JUST' SALT FLATS The salt flats tours are a bit of a misnomer because, when leaving from Tupiza, you only spend a chunk of the final day on the Salar de Uyuni, with the rest of your time spent covering almost 1000 miles of desert/mountain tracks, peering out of dusty jeep windows at incredible natural wonders, stretching your legs amongst weird desert rock formations, watching the sun set over colourful mineralised lakes teeming with flamingos, and dutifully poking your way hurriedly around the occasional tourist trap. FAVOURITE SIGHTS Aside from countless giant cacti and copious curious llamas, a few of the many sights which we saw really stood out: On the first day we took a slight detour to see the weird rock formations of Ciudad de Encanta, where the desert winds have carved out some odd structures which, to uninitiated eyes, look just like a city carved from the red mountain stone. Locals have named some of the structures, so our imaginations didn't have to work too hard as we saw 'Devil's Door', 'Angel Wings' and the 'Cathedral'. It's hard to explain how weird it is to be driving for hours over mountain passes and through deserts, to be suddenly confronted with such a sight. On the second day we climbed to ear-popping heights of 5000+ metres, as our driver David negotiated the jeep up onto and across glacial plains littered with snow and ice spikes, which was pretty incredible, and then we rounded a corner to be confronted with the Geisers Sol de Mañana, which are essentially a bunch of bubbling blow holes, belching sulphurous volcanic vapours amidst the glacial landscape. We stumbled around the Geysers in a surreal daze, watching a guide from another group fry an egg in seconds (by dropping it into one of the smaller geysers), peering as closely as we dared into the fiercely-bubbling holes and realising we'd got EVEN closer to violent volcanic activity than we did during our Volcano hopping stint in Costa Rica. Volcanos soon began popping up on every horizon, and beneath them lay boulder-strewn plains with mineral-rich lakes. Easily the most impressive of these lakes was the Laguna Colorada, populated by hundreds of pink flamingos and appropriately named because a combination of algae and borax sometimes turns the lake a brilliant rusty colour, sometimes a limy yellow, and sometimes just plain water colour. In an hour of flamingo-watching, we saw all of these colour combinations, to our utter amazement. When nature puts on a show here, it really goes all out. Finally we wanted to mention how much fun we had with our French chums, who helped us have an unforgettable and occasionally hilarious time through really basic dormitories and toilets (we awoke one morning with frost on the INSIDE of the window) and hours of jeep riding. SALAR DE UYUNI Finally, of course, we arrived on the edge of the salt flats and, after an evening sleeping in an Adobe-structured Salt Hotel, we awoke in darkness early on Dave's birthday, and journeyed out onto the salt flats, where we caught a spectacular sunrise and got to see where we were: on the moon. Well that's a 33rd birthday present he'll never forget! Stretching for many, many miles in every direction, was the salt flats of Uyuni. The skyline was only broken by occasional 'islands', one of which we paid to visit, in order to gain an unbeatable 360 degree view of the Salar. After a surreal breakfast of birthday cake (that was a nice surprise!) we headed into the middle of the Salar and had some photo fun (the horizon is a moveable feast out here) before journeying on to Uyuni where we left Thomas and Cyrielle before an extremely long, bumpy ride back to Tupiza. Now there's a birthday experience Dave won't forget in a hurry!

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The heart of Bolivia: Cochabamba, Sucre, Potosi

The three towns of Cochabamba, Sucre and Potosi could not have been more different from one another. We were traveling south through Bolivia in order to reach one of the southernmost towns, Tupiza, from which we'd embark upon a tour of the famous Salar de Uyuni salt flats. Cochabamba, where we flew to from Rurrenabaque (via La Paz, on 2 more tiny planes with more stunning mountain and altiplano scenery), is Bolivia's thriving market city. Here, the corrugated metal and tarpaulin-roofed stalls stretch for what seems like miles across the dusty, dirty centre of the city. Cochabamba is also famous for having Latin America's biggest statue of Christ, standing just a shade taller than Rio's famous Cristo, watching over the inhabitants of this sprawling town from a nearby hillside. Sometimes you get a bad feel for a town more through circumstance than anything else, and unfortunately this was the case in Cochabamba. Thank to a combination of our hostel unexpectedly turfing us out after one night, and Dave developing a nasty stomach bug (probably from the lagoon water at the Estancia during kayak-gate), we decided we really weren't feeling good about the town, so after just 24 hours, in which we saw the market and the Christ statue, we hopped on an overnight bus to Sucre. After a bumpy, uncomfortable ride through the night we arrived early in Sucre, at 5am, and spent the next 2 hours shivering in the bus terminal, feeling it was surely too early to check into our hostel! At 7am, unable to take the cold any more, we decided to chance it, jumping in a taxi and heading to the Beehive Project, where we'd booked for a couple of nights. Luckily for us, a sleepy volunteer welcomed us in, told us our room was ready and said we could also have breakfast. Perfect! Our luck was turning. We collapsed into a comfy bed in a cold but spotless room and, after a short sleep, enjoyed the most delicious hostel/hotel breakfast we'd had since leaving the USA, as a groaning bowl of homemade granola, fresh fruit and yoghurt was put in front of each of us. And this was how Sucre proceeded for us. Everything just seemed to go right. The sun shone, the hostel (an all female-run project which mainly catered for people on Spanish courses) was delightful, friendly and relaxing, and the town was really nice too. In between much hammock swinging, we strolled around the spotless colonial streets, taking in the verdant town squares and chocolate shops (Sucre is the chocolate capital of Bolivia), watching a Bolivian movie in a pub which had a makeshift cinema upstairs, ambling round a late-night market, and generally enjoying the odd Sucre combination of a European-feeling town stuffed with Bolivian charm. To us, Sucre seemed to provide all the good things that Bolivia had to offer without the naked poverty, dirtiness, danger and pollution of the other places we'd seen so far. After 3 days we were hooked, but we knew we had to keep moving, so it was with heavy hearts and heavier backpacks (stuffed with delicious Para Ti chocolate) that we hopped on an afternoon bus to Potosi. More bumpy, dusty roads, through incredible llama-grazed desert-meets-mountains scenery brought us up to Bolivia's mining city of Potosi. Perched as it is next to countless mineral deposits and a gigantic mountain rich with silver deposits, which once bankrolled the entire Spanish empire (all imperial coins were minted here for a while), Potosi is definitely a working town which, despite it's historical importance, remains fairly disinterested in tourism. Nevertheless European travellers arrive in their droves in order to get a peek into the famous silver mountain, which is still mined today in almost inhuman conditions. We felt very conflicted about the mine (have a look around for news stories about child labour, accidents, general working conditions and tours frolicking with dynamite if you want to know why) and happily we were really just passing through Potosi, which acts as a gateway to the south west of Bolivia. So after an evening strolling through the pretty but unremarkable town, we put our heads down for a sleepless night (thanks to the 4000 metres altitude) and hopped on a bus to Tupiza the next morning.